Oh yes I most definitely did!

What the *beep*! broth

So this morning I'm watching Fox History and Traveler, and they're showing Kazakhstan, and I'm sitting they're going - well, the obvious "oh, that's gorgeous. I never knew. I wonder what it would take to get there?" - but also, the usual patronizing, ignorant, condescending, well, they seem pretty liberal and well-adjusted and normal: I guess it's just a regular nation with rights and stuff like that, go figure! And then the show changes to David Rocco's Dolce Vita and he's on the streets of florence, at a stall, getting this really delicious looking sub kind of thing, which he calls the firenzian equivalent of the ubiquitous american hot dog. And it looks delicious, just a bun and meat and sauce and some greens, but beautiful, you know. And they're showing how it's made, and the voiceover goes 'and then you add the boiled *beep*'. And I'm like huh? For the life of me I can't figure out what possible obscenity they could have censored there, right, and I'm literally sitting there going down a list of possible obscene cuts or pieces of meat that they could object to, though what's on screen just looks like regular meat, not any particularly identifiable possibly obscene parts you know, like balls or something. Though hey, food being food, I fail to see how even balls could be obscene enough to censor when you're going to eat them.
uh...
Anyway, so the show proceeds, and we're on a lovely stone terrace, and he's got this whole setup and he proceeds to break down the making of this wonder sandwich for us. And he starts with pulling out this luscious big healthy red chunk of beef, and proceeds to tell us how to cut it and then boil it, and keep the broth, and that's when I get it, 'coz everytime he says beef, or tries to, a big giant shrill *beep* is all over that. That's right, BEEF is the obscene word our wonderful censor board finds it absolutely imperative to obliterate, as we sit in our wonderfully liberal, modern, developing, secular democracy, watching shows about all these other 'poor third world nations', where they have no rights, and are backward, and oppressed, and absolutely sunk if they're members of some minority community, and ohmygod, how does the rest of the world live like that?!!

Anyway, just to get it out of my system, a little bit, can I please just say
BEEF

BEEF

BEEF

BEEF!!!!!

AAARGH!!!

PINK FLUFFY UNICORNS DANCING ON RAINBOWS

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Who's the Rat?

"Let's get soaked and shampoo"!

Make of it what you will. I just can't resist wanting to share something like this on a day like today, in a year like this one promises to be.

Ashita, genki ni naare - Miyavi:



Here's a putative translation I found floating around the ether:

Dreams are as dreams are. Therefore, they're dreams - but don't say such lonesome things!
Seeing a dream is free, and granting them is also free, right? Let's daydream in bed together.

"May tomorrow be a better day"

I wonder if there are people who have never gotten wet in the rain in their whole lives?
Someday somehow, if you get wet, let's get soaked and shampoo.

"May tomorrow be a better day"

If there are sad times, please give me half of the pain.
If you're happy, just that smile will do, so it's like let's be in love as if we are each other's aspirin.*

"May you be happy"

I, too, really wish I could be with you, sleeping like this
But there is a place I gotta go, so I will go a step ahead of you.

God speed.

May you not lose your way. May you not shrink in fear. May you not avert your eyes.
May there be no doubts. May there be no sadness. May you not stop and stand there.

(http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/m/miyavi/ashita_tenki_ni_naare_english.html)

currently crochet crazy

I made a hat for my mom. And it didn't fit her big head, so it was hurriedly donated to a cousin returning to the frontline - going back to work in delhi, which for us warm and toasty south of the tropic folks is unimaginable bravery, and i set to work making a larger one. Which when finished turned out to be too large to suit my mum's taste: 'too floppy', she said, with a dismissive shrug, and set me back to unravelling, and then crocheting it again. Too floppy, if you please! That's my mum, and nani, and brother, yeah it feels a bit like we're a flock of migratory birds, wintering. Don't be mistaken, though. My nani actually lives here, and my mum is accompanying her and being a dutiful (and extremely well-fed) daughter. The rest of us hangers-on just nose out the free food and gather like rodents, all quivering nostrils and bared teeth.
And here's the random tenant's kid that wanders in occasionally and demands to be fed. We used to joke that mum's training her like a pup with the 'no' and 'sit' and 'stay' stuff. Not to mention the 'no begging'. And then one day my mother picked her up by her ears to do the puppy pedigree test! I probably have a picture around here somewhere.