27 March 2009: Calendar

I like Dilbert, but this is ridiculous.

For Christmas I was given a 2009 Dilbert every-day calendar: one of those ones where you get a cartoon each day, and the next day you go in, rip off the previous day and reveal the new cartoon. Sounds good, right?

Except for this. After a few days in Cincinnati, it was back to office in Kokomo this morning, a couple of days of Dilbert to catch up on. Rip off Tues 24 March to reveal Weds 25 March. Smile a little. Rip off Weds 25 March to reveal...

Thurs 7 May.

The seventh of May??

And no, not a misprint, the next one is May 8. Then May 9. Then May 10.

There's simply a whole block of six weeks missing from my Dilbert calendar! Aargh! What am I to do?

Bleddy cost-cutting exercise from the Pointy-Haired Boss, I'll bet...

20 March 2009: Sheep

There are those who say it's lazy blogging to just embed some YouTube.

On this occasion, however, you'll be glad that I did.



Thanks to our Salisbury correspondent for this one. My favourite bit is when they do 'Pong'.

14 March 2009: Bacon

I'd have preferred to call this entry "The Ubiquity of Bacon" but for no good reason I have an unwritten rule of one-word titles where possible.

So I gave up bacon for Lent. This will come as a surprise to those of you who (1)know how I feel about bacon or (2)didn't know it was Lent. (Hint: that was what the pancake thing was about a couple of weeks ago).

It came as a surprise to me, too. We were eating pancakes of various descriptions on pancake day (well, American and British) along with much syrup, strawberry sauce, jif-substitute lemon, sugar and of course bacon, when for some reason it popped into my head to think: "what could I give up for Lent that would be something of a sacrifice without being life-threatening?" Chocolate is a frequent answer for many people, but not for me - I can happily live without it, especially the Hershey's nonsense they sell over here (seriously, it makes cardboard taste good and, come to think of it, doesn't have the fibre content of cardboard). So, what else?

Immediate answer: bacon. No question, no contest. That's something I probably could do with eating a great deal less of, and something that might, genuinely, prove an interesting challenge. And, of course, it will save us having to spend six dollars per half pound for not-great-quality imported back bacon from Jungle Jim's.

Of course, it's not the first time I've given something up for Lent. In 1995 (as certain readers of this blog will recall, Gareth), I gave up Pink Floyd for lent. Which all went darn well - I even bought a Floyd CD during this period and did not play it - until Maundy Thursday rolled along and off we went to Spring Harvest. First night, walking towards the Big Top tent, and what are they using to test the sound system? 'Marooned', track four from the previous year's album The Division Bell. Well, what was I to do? Spring Harvest, of all places, were loudly, deliberately breaking my fast.

And so that was it for my giving up something for Lent. I've never even really thought about it since. But for some reason, it came up in my mind, I made the mistake of voicing it, and that was that. No bacon for 40 days. Until Easter. (Except for feast days, of course: well, why do you think there are actually more than 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter? Sunday is suddenly yum yum bacon day.)

So it led me to think a little more: why now? Why after all these years am I being serious(ish) about a Lent fast? And I think it's this: for years I was in churches with an overtone of tradition, where Lent was observed in terms of sermons and liturgy if not in terms of abstinence practices. And so there was always a pressure - a slight legalistic tendency - to say that giving up something for Lent is the Right Thing To Do. It's just a hint of 'works' theology, just a background whiff of doing something to earn the favour of an angry God. And even after time in churches where there was no - or almost no - traditional church calendar observations, the feeling was still there: no way was I going to cede to the pressure (albeit almost non-existent) of fasting from something because that was the right thing to do. Instead, I'd eat more chocolate. And wear a tee-shirt to church. Because I'm under grace not law, right?

So what happened? Am I older and more beaten down by the institutionalised church? Has Christendom finally got me? I don't think so, perhaps the opposite. Here in the US there's little observance of Lent aside from the Catholic tradition, a few of the more established denominations and (of course) Mardi Gras down in New Orleans. There's no pressure here at all, not a hint, not a whiff. And so, the actual value of a Lent fast came and got me: it's a discipline of giving something up perhaps just to provide opportunities for me to remember why I'm giving it up. So each time I think about having bacon sandwiches for lunch, or on a baked potato, I can think, "no, I'm not eating bacon right now, because..." and thus begins a thought process on a slightly higher plane than the usual "why did Gallagher just stop scoring for Argyle, now maybe if they played Fallon a bit deeper..."

Which brings me to my actual point. It's hard to give up bacon for Lent because bacon is everywhere here. I mean that, everywhere. And it's all heavily-fatty streaky bacon: back bacon is restricted to Jungle Jim's, more or less. But everywhere you go and everything you do, bacon will be there. It's like a metaphor for an omnipresent Creator-Almighty or something. To give you some idea:

• Chili's mini-burgers come with tiny bacon bits on whether you like it or not.
• Murder-mystery evening features potato skins as a starter: with crumbled bacon on.
• Visit to friends' house on Thursday featured chicken breast baked with cheese and bacon.
• Catered sandwich lunch at work featured sandwiches that mostly contained bacon either as main or side ingredient.
• Bacon is a regular, common extra for any pizza, salad or frankly anything else you might order.

To be honest, I think the hardest part about being a vegetarian here might be that fact that bacon is everywhere here: it is all, and is in all. How Kevin will survive in August remains to be seen.

Perhaps the best approach is that suggested by Bill Bailey:
I'm a postmodern Vegetarian. I eat meat ironically.

Now, whether I can give up Bill Bailey for Lent...

16 February 2008: Hammered

We went to Nashville and did some music stuff.

No, not that Nashville. The thing about living in the US is that they have lots of places that all have the same name, like Nashville or Columbus or whatever. Indeed, look on a map of Indiana and you'll see that Kokomo is a short drive up the road from Atlanta. Just to the northwest of us lies Galveston, and a short bike ride up US31 lies Miami. So I think that's where the whole "City, State" thing comes from: "Kokomo, Indiana" or "Paradise, Texas" or whatever. It's just a way of letting people know which one of these cities you're talking about. It's possible - though unusual - for a state to have two towns with the same name. So, for example, there are two instances of "Fairview, Indiana": one to the east of Indy near Connersville, and one way down in the south-east corner of the state in a county that appears to be somewhat optimistically named 'Switzerland'.

Of course, everything's bigger in Texas, so they have five Fairviews there.

Anyway, that's beside the point (not that I normally let that stop me). So, we went to Nashville (comma Indiana) because there was an acoustic music shop there - the Weed Patch Music Company. Despite its somewhat understated name (maybe they want to keep expectations low for whatever reason: kind of like the 'Standard Tandoori' on Holloway Road in Islington), it was excellent, excellent, excellent. We walked in to a small, wood-decor shop with a wide variety of instruments on the floors and walls which were mostly made of wood and mostly had strings on them. Up a couple of steps and at the back of the shop were three guys sitting round on stools with acoustic guitars, gently jamming along (one of them clearly being better than the other two, leading while they followed), while the shop worker patiently helped everyone in there with insight and knowledge about all the instruments present, some of which I'd never seen before.

In the middle of the mezzanine were three hammered dulcimers, sitting up on their stands, with hammers out all waiting to be played. Even though we were there specifically to buy a stand for my dulcimer, rather than another actual dulcimer, it was impossible not to try them all out and see how they sounded compared to mine. Most interestingly, one of them bore a striking resemblance to mine - despite the dark wood and the slightly smaller size (although still a 15/14), the designs looked identical. A quick look at the price tag let me know not only that it was indeed made by Master Works down in Oklahoma, but also got a feel for the markup they were putting on it: I paid only a very little markup on mine in Arlington a few years ago because it was a Master Works outlet. The friendly shopkeeper was very complimentary about the Master Works range of dulcimers too, which I found encouraging: I guess I got lucky and got a really good one without knowing much about it.

Anyway, we purchased the stand and headed back north. Stopping in at Broad Ripple in Indianapolis for the best Indian food this side of the Shahi (or indeed the Standard Tandoori), we made it back late in the evening and got our 'music corner' finally set up - almost a year after first saying 'hey, I know what should go in that spot in the living room'. And that's what you see in the photo at the top of this blog: come and visit us, and you too can experience the joy of hammering a dulcimer.

As an aside, we also while travelling had the dubious privilege of driving through a town named "Gnaw Bone, Indiana". Let your imagination run wild with such a name: you won't be far wrong. As we drove through, we did see one sign proclaiming "What Happens in Gnaw Bone Stays in Gnaw Bone", at which point we locked the car doors and sped up slightly, especially when we spotted a couple of locals with a slightly hungry look on their faces.

Maybe I'll suggest it to Rupert Lowe for his next holiday?

Postscript: Kokomo may be the third-fastest dying town in the US, but did you know Clifford the Big Red Dog is from here? Makes my normal Plymouth claim ("Francis Drake, Michael Foot and Trevor Francis") seem utterly pedestrian.

27 January 2009: You Wotte?

McDougal mentions it doesn't seem long ago we were sat in Clapham watching Saints lose the cup final and Claus somehow not get sent off in the first minute, and he asks what is there about the current Saints team that's different and distinctive, what gives us character?

That team from six years ago had two characteristics in particular - Bridge/Marsden combo on the left, either of whom would cross it in for fatboy to head home, which he did that season with astounding regularity (remember watching it more than once in New Zealand at 4am Sunday mornings); secondly Rory Delap's long throws, which were classed as lower-division rubbish but which we now long for. (As we are now lower-division rubbish). The only thing defining the team now is the financial crisis and Rupert the Bear-with-very-little-brain.

Latest is that Leon Crouch was there last Friday offering a deal that would "get rid of our overdraft" and saying "I wanted to put my money where my mouth was" but Lowe/Wilde said "nah, we're doing ok I think, let's appoint Wotte as manager." Story published today in the oh-so-reliable Daily Echo.

It's sad and scary all at the same time to think about it, but there's no denying: the whole thing could just all come tumbling down at any moment. The fact that the major creditor on the stadium is Barclays doesn't help.

Plan is to take nephew Matt to his first league game on Easter Monday - Saints v Palace. At this rate it'll be an empty stadium, hateful chants against the chairman and a Saints team (made up of people little older than Matt probably) being thrashed 5-0 by the Palace reserves. Matt last weekend went to see Salisbury narrowly lose to Stevenage, and frankly he might do as well to assign his loyalties to the Spire Boys.

Won't be too long before Saints go flying past them on the way down to oblivion.

23 January 2009: Jan

Jan Poortvliet resigned as Saints boss tonight.

Saints are currently second-bottom of the Championship, having sold all the expensive players (except for Skacel, in whom nobody seems interested), having lost crowd numbers hand-over-fist and having a Chairman who owns less than 6% of the shares. And now they've lost their manager.

No surprise in some ways - he was seen by the fans as a puppet of Chairman Rupert, with Rupes even being rumoured to be picking the teams and attempting to take training. Whatever the truth of those rumours, it's been clear even all the way from Indiana that the players aren't as fit as they should be, nor is there any evidence of patterns of play. You can rely a little on the skill of your best players, but Surman alone isn't going to keep you up and Kelvin Davis can only perform so many brilliant saves in a match. Last season's manager-in-an-impossible-position, Nigel Pearson, managed to do a great deal better partly by having a pattern to the play, a sense of tactics. The word is that there's been little in the way of tactics or even formations the entire season.

There was a "big meeting" on Wednesday when Rupes went down to Staplewood and had a "clear the air" meeting with Jan, the coaches and the players, and afterwards Jan said "oh, ok, we're in a real fight, let's show some passion."

Now he resigned, and seems to be blaming the crowd anger that was displayed towards the end of last week's game. Erm, ok, so why not resign then? Or on Wednesday? Or...

Well, the rumours are that there's more to this than meets the eye. Not sure exactly what, but Leon Crouch (second-largest single shareholder and main anti-Rupert person) was seen hanging around St Mary's today (which is apparently highly unusual), and the rumour of heading into administration during the first week of February refuses to go away. There was some kind of unofficial shareholder meeting tonight I understand, and the Saintsweb forum folks are trying to organise an anti-Rupert march. I haven't fully perused the various discussion threads out there in webland yet tonight - we've been too busy introducing Delia's Sticky Toffee Pudding to some nice Indiana folks - but there's something more going on here than a sudden, random resignation.

One thing is interesting: Rupert has seen ten managers leave when he's been in charge (I think: Souness, Jones, Hoddle, Gray, Strachan, Wigley, Sturrock, 'Arry, then in his second tenure Pearson and now Poortvliet) and none have been "sacked". Whether it's "personal leave", resignations, contracts expiring and not being renewed or just the good old "mutual consent", Rupert has never officially admitted he sacked anyone. (Although Wigley and Sturrock I have no doubt would have words to say about that, were they not bound to non-disclosure agreements). And today he kept that record up. Amazing how he does that.

Of course, in any other business, it would imply everyone leaves because Rupert is a difficult person to work with. Anyway - we'll see what comes up (or in the case of the league table, goes down) and who knows what might happen.

I hear Dick Cheney needs a new job.

15 January 2008: Cold

Driving to work today (as it's too cold, snowy and icy to cycle), the car told me it was two degrees outside.

As I drove, it changed its mind and told me it was actually minus five. By the time I got to work (about a five minute drive, depending on traffic lights), the car was getting depressed and told me it was minus six. Then I realised it was talking Farenheit, not Celcius. So we were actually talking minus 21 degrees Celcius.

Rick just came into the office and said the temperature was dropping and it's now eleven below. Farenheit. So that'll be minus twenty-four degrees Celcius then.

Weird thing is, the air is so dry and the sun is out, so it doesn't feel that cold unless the wind gets up. Until you're out there more than a couple of minutes...

Weirder thing (maybe) is this: today marks one year, exactly, since we emigrated. If I'd have known we were heading to -24 country, I might have opted to stay in the British January storms.

Postscript: Forecast for tonight is currently -16F. That's -27C. We're rapidly getting towards the point where F and C cross over each other and F numbers start getting bigger than C numbers again.