Oh Deer!

Moose may be the largest species of deer but they are also the ones with the most newsworthy taste for alcohol.

A couple of weeks ago a drunken moose was scaring children in the school next door to it's precious apple tree; the source of fermented fruit that Mr moose decided needed careful defending.

Another inebriated elk got confused out on a frozen river in Sweden and fell through the ice, drowning in spite of the best efforts of the emergency services; it says here.

In America, however, a hunter shot and killed a doe which had "a huge rack", apparently.

Me? I just can't help noticing that the pissed deer are in Sweden and the transexual one is in Michigan. Some days I like God's sense of humour. (And no, I don't think that laugh is on the poor deer.)

Happy As Larry

Its hard to be a Grumpy Old Bitch when you're as happy as a pig in clover, but I am just tickled pink to be part of a new collective with several brainy, strong and intelligent women. Miss Cellania and Zilla have both already posted at our new site. Superstars.

So, do you fit the bill?
Got something to mouth off about?
Wanna join in?

We all have a flag to wave, once in a while, but sometimes its like realigning your knickers (or your knockers) - necessary but not suited to your own blog. You can join us and fumble your elastic amongst friends. Email me for info.

And I'm going to shut up now because I realise I've just equated the new blog to the mirrored wall in the ladies' loo. I am so proud.

Note: I changed the 'email me' bit to bold. This is because I need your email address to put in the form, without that blogger wont let me invite you. My email addy is in a link off my profile.

Zilla's Idea.....

Here are the rules:

You.
Can.
Only.
Type.
One.
Word.

No.
Explanations.

So:

1. Yourself: overweight
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend (spouse): knackered
3. Your hair: frazzled
4. Your mother: contrary
5. Your father: dead
6. Your favorite item: bed
7. Your dream last night: angst
8. Your favorite drink: decaff
9. Your dream car: ?
10. The room you are in: dining
11. Your ex: failure
12. Your fear: insignificance
13. What you want to be in 10 years? healthy
14. Who you hung out with last night? husband
15. What you're not? tidy
16. Muffins: blueberry
17. One of your wish list items: waistline
18. Time: deceives
19. The last thing you did: type
20. What you are wearing: jeans
21. Your favorite weather: spring
22. Your favorite book: ?
23. The last thing you ate: banana
24. Your life: boring
25. Your mood: flat
26. Your best friend: absent
27. What are you thinking about right now? this
28. Your car: none
29. What are you doing at the moment? answering
30. Your summer: hospitalized
31. Your relationship status: married
32. What is on your TV? paperwork
33. What is the weather like? wintry
34. When is the last time you laughed? yesterday


So,.... wanna play?

Wikipedia Game

Your blogging nick isn't that well known, right? I mean its clever, individual and such and your posts are amazing and deserving of international renown, but that's somehow still in the pipeline, correct?

Good.

That means you can play my new game (Oui je suis l'inventeur de génie) , thus:

* Go to Wikipedia.
* Do a search for your nickname, in the hopes that a 'special page' will turn up, listing the most likely results.
* Share the top ten with the rest of us.

Here are the (altogether fitting) results for a Wikipedia search for Mad Baggage:

• Prophetic perfect tense
  Relevance: 5.2% - -
• 43-Man Squamish
  Relevance: 4.7% - -
• Lust
  Relevance: 3.4% - -
• List of Law & Order: Criminal Intent episodes
  Relevance: 3.0% - -
• Christian the Younger of Brunswick, Bishop of Halberstadt
  Relevance: 2.6% - -
• MADtv: Season Twelve (2006-2007)
  Relevance: 2.6% - -
• Hehe
  Relevance: 2.4% - -
• Pimp My Ride
  Relevance: 2.2% - -
• List of The Harveytoons Show episodes
  Relevance: 2.1% - -
• Howl
  Relevance: 1.9% - -

YOUR TURN! Let me know who and where, so I can come and giggle at you, OK? :-)

20 Stupid Questions

Tagged by Wulfie.

Tagging me is goooood as it absolves me from creativity or the need for an original thought. Tag on.

I tag: everybody who is kind enough to still visit, seeing as how you could have heard a pin drop in here, recently.

Something purple within 5 feet of you:
The packet for my statins

How long can you hold your breath underwater?
no idea

The weirdest thing you've ever heated in the microwave?
Chestnuts. Lie them on their backs. As the steam builds up inside one, it starts to escape from the pointy end making them whizz round in circles on the spot, faster and faster until they explode.

How much Japanese do you know?
Escarator and Erebator. Honestly.

Sparkly things?
What? Have I got any? Do I know any? Can you phrase your question into a sentence? All my sparkly things are in a box in the garage. They're called last year's Xmas decorations. My daughter loves sparkly things, but she's only ten and likes pink too.

Ever crash a car, been in accidents?
Once hit by a seagull on the windscreen, which slid slowly down and off the car. I didn’t know they had tongues and his expression was right out of a cartoon. Wulfie wrote that but I was in that car too. From my position it seemed to have a murderous looke on its face as it approached, like it thought it could win. A possessed seagull.

Do you look good in yellow?
The right yellow, yes. This must have been written by a bloke because all us girls know there are warm yellows and sallow yellows and cold yellows and bold yellows and pastel yellows and neon yellows and powdery yellows and good grief - could you be specific? Banana? Grapefruit? Winter sunset? WHAT?

Do you sing?
Yup

Ever sang in front of a crowd?
Yup. Dance school shows (I was Dorothy one year, c/w gingham frock & pigtails), Butlins talent comps in my teenage years (cringe, but big halls). I was four when I won the talent comp at the Southall carnival for performing 'How much is that doggy in the window' at the long disappeared bandstand, with people all on wooden foldaway chairs.

Do you dance?
Yup. Had to. Docs told mum I was going to end up with one leg longer than the other. She's always insisted she took Thalidomide ("Only 1!" she says) whilst carrying my brother, not me, but they were banned by then. I escaped being too lopsided and grew giant interlocking roots on my teeth instead which makes dentistry a pig. I mean - try getting a 3cm root drill into a back tooth without chipping another one with the back of the drill, or tearing the corner of the mouth. Some of them have 3 roots each, some have four. Oh God, you didn't want to know that. So, yes, from age 2 1/2: tap, ballet and modern dance until I was sixteen, by which time I had the bug and was also very much in demand for being able to stand up and tuck one knee behind my head at the same time. I have no idea why. Now I can't hear music without moving in time to the beat, which makes walking across large foyers acutely embarrassing. I go round the edges instead, trying not to look like I'm taking the piss out black teenage boys.

Is your hair long enough to chew on?
Yup

Least favourite colour?
Pantone green - that strong blue-green that was back with a fury during that latest 80s revival.

Favourite kind of pizza?
Spicy hot one if going cheap and local, or else by preference Pizza Express - they put loads of toppings on in front of you, you know theres not going to be a swamp of sugary tomato sauce underneath and they are also light on the cheese.

Ever had Dippin' Dots?
No but I had German Measles

Ever played an instrument?
Oboe.

Do you own your own car?
Nope, but now the dual fuel cars are becoming more popular I could be sorely tempted.

What kind of car is it?
Told you I don’t have a car, don’t you listen?

Do you want to get married?
That would be bigamy. Very bigamy, as one's enough. Snigger.

At what age do you want to have kids?
When they're cuddly and then not until they're all grown up, please.

How many kids?
Depends on who's paying and who's got to do the packed lunches.

Not-the-Flu

On account of this year's shenanigans I find I qualify for the flu jab 20 years ahead of time.

Went to get poked in the arm on Saturday.

The nurse was running from one side room to the next, marking her next prey by handing them the two small squares of translucent paper, printed on both sides in tiny font, that meant she had officially provided all the information needed to make a decision. I was still working out that I needed different light and/or a magnifying glass to stand a hope in hell of reading any of it, when she returned, positioned me with left arm bare and, as she removed the cap from the syringe, casually began to ask if I was allergic to chicken eggs or eggshells. By the time she finished with "You're not, are you?" the syringe was already embedded in my arm.

Today, two days on, it still itches like hives; is swollen, red and hard. In fact I am still running a temperature and keep wanting to sleep.

Not so much suffering the symptoms of the flu itself, then, as the symptoms of fighting the flu. My body appears to be trying to fry the dead bugs into oblivion; so whilst feeling like absolute shit, I am comforted that my reactions are excellent, also that I would have been knocked for six by a live version of this year's 'most likely' lurgies.

Oh Joy.

Lest We Forget

To save your life, you asked this man to die.
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier, W H Auden



Soldier's Dream

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs.

Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918

Free Association #197

Sorry I left that rant up for so long. I needed to fume, so I did, but then I went off and did other things, leaving the impression, I suppose, that I was still on my soapbox.

I just couldnt think of a darn thing to write, and the same is still true, hence this failsafe entry where all I have to do is make connections.

Even that could be a stretch from this position of contented (and healing) blankness, but hey, it gets the grumble off the top of the page so we're all winning; slowly.

Courtesy of LunaNina

1. Nick :: pilfer, lift, tax, filch, steal
   
2. Focus :: "Look into my eyes; not around my eyes, in my eyes"
3. Police :: Sting was a Geography teacher. Somehow that strips him of all his glamour.
   
4. Miles :: O'Brien. No, not the journalist, this one:
   
5. Earn :: work for, deserve, purchase with labour in advance
   
6. Twice :: double.
   
7. Razor :: sharp wit, haha
   
8. Personality :: flaws
   
9. Dumped :: dropped, discarded
   
10. Reliable :: Robin Reliant (Reliant Robbin) aka the Plastic Pig. Allegedly.

Bye-bye, now. Have a lovely weekend!

So-Called Care For The Elderly

I know house clearance, enough to know that whats not fit for auction gets dumped, and the boys on the van, simply by proximity, get first dibs. Working electricals for a start are very hard to shift because they have to be sold with proof of safety. Old records, books, calendars, matchbox collections(!); all the sentimental stuff also tends to get sifted en route to the tip.

I just ran across the road and interrupted the house clearance team working there. I wanted to at least beg the photographs, having never managed to get away from a visit there without being shown at least a couple of photos with long stories behind them. George was so proud of his pictures.

The awful thing is that George Stripple's wife Ellen is still very much alive. She was his senior by five or six years , became very frail some time back and now lives in an old folks home. George was a grafter, up at the crack of dawn, he never seemed to sit still. He fully expected to outlive her by a decade and I think thats what we all imagined.

They had no children.

He lodged his will with a solicitor.

The first thing they did was lock the doors and refuse entry to the property, even to people who had been given a key.

OK I understand that reaction, perhaps, when the only owner has passed away, but even the solitary nephew who held Ellen Stripple as she wept at George's funeral was barred from running errands on her behalf if they involved entering her property.

See this is the thing. I get that the house would have to be sold if it was in George's name alone and there was a matter of probate. I get that it has to be sold to pay Ellen's care home fees assuming her savings and George's have both been depleted. I very certainly disagree with that, but I comprehend.

What I don't get is how every possession gets treated like an asset, how an old lady, slightly dotty and ocassionally forgetful but very much alive, gets treated worse than a debtor with the bailiffs in, just because she needs care and her husband has passed away. Is that what our Nation has become, predators to the weakest?

Husband dead, dear? No-one home watching your stuff and reassuring you you'll be coming home soon, if you get teary? Never mind ducky, we'll just box it. flog most and fly tip the rest. Say 'Ta-ta' to 60 or 70 years of married life building up a home. No, no you can't have the anniversary clock to remember him by, nor his old moth eaten bedroom slippers. Sod off.

Lets face it, there are some things that mere Bailiffs can't and won't take. For clearance guys, on the other hand, everything* you've got is fair game. And unless I'm behind on some news, you don't even have to be dead yet.


*The only things they count as personal items and save (I found out today) are items like cards and letters, and the precious photographs. Not the frames of course, not even tuppeny matchwood ones. I mean that would involve according you some sort of fucking dignity wouldn't it; and we can't have that.

Heres a game for you - guess what sort of temper I'm in.

Aaargh! I Forgot NaNoWriMo!

I Need Your Help! Scroll to the end of this post.

NaNoWriMo is, for the uninitiated, an acronym of a misnomer.

Short for National Novel Writing Month (although for a good few years it has most definitely been an International affair), the idea is that you start writing a Novel on November 1st, bypass little things like proofreading, or thinking in general, and do your damndest to rattle off 50,000 words (175 pages) by the 30th.

I played the year before last and my initially supportive Husband quickly tired of always being the one to answer the kids, etc, and generally demanded that I quit by mid November.

I tried last year but life and my own lethargy got in the way so that I never really got started.

I really wanted to give it a shot this year in honour of the few good folks who have, at one point or another over the last two years of blogging, repeatedly told me that I ought to write a book. Alright, they have all long since ceased to make such encouraging noises and I suspect half (or more) have likewise ceased to visit this blog at all, but what the hell.

This is how I need your help. I need a subject. I need a genre.

So, just like the poetry challenge, I need your ideas in the comments here; whether they are just bonkers, off-the-wall challenges (which you know I love anyway), or whether they relate to my past short stories, alter egos or even real life, I just need some ideas, some springboards, a place to start.

PURRLEASE PRETTY PLEASE?