"Presidential campaigns use all sorts of sophisticated operations against their opponents, but Barack Obama is also relying on some good, old-fashioned lucky charms."

Politics

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

By JIM RUTENBERG

"Andy Martin , credited with starting a whisper campaign about Barack Obama, has been thrust into the spotlight."

"The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: 'Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.'

"That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

"The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.

"Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, 'I have read about him,' and 'he’s an Arab.' Mr. McCain corrected her.

"Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

"But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government."

<>

"He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of 'moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.'

..."When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on 'Hannity’s America' on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

"It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program '48 Hours' in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, 'See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits,' to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also been known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

"He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose 'to exterminate Jew power.' He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

"In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation."

<>

"Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

"Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including 'Obama Nation,' the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin."

<>

"... in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews.

"A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge 'a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.'

"In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, 'I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.'

"In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

"But in his '48 Hours' interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, 'The record speaks for itself.'

"When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that 'Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,' he said, 'That one sort of rings a bell.'

"He said he was not anti-Semitic. 'I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,' he said, 'and I was being victimized by religious bias.'"

And if he was sourced by Hannity's Captain America (aka Bonfire of the Hannities), you know he's just a selfless patriot concerned to bear the light of truth to his trembling and imperilled countrymen (or an Obama double agent) - and we look forward to seeing you all again very, very soon! [cue "Yakity Sax" over stock chase-closing accelerando]

Wie der Titel schon sagt! Echt lustig!!!

I’ve had lots of hits on Crumpled Ear this week.  One day I got over thirty people searching for crumpled ear.  I am intrigued by this.  Perhaps there was a fascinating news story about people with crumpled ears that I totally failed to read about.  Do e-mail me and tell me, feel free to tell me how particularly disappointed you were when you found my blog which just relates the sad tale of woe of the day when I was stupid enough to shut my own ear in the car door. Sad but true.

Here we go then:

My child is never invited to parties.

I’m not really sure what to say here. It’s so difficult to judge tone in this kind of writing.  Are you bragging about it? I would be.  I would be bloody delighted if people stopped inviting my children to parties.  They’re always miles away.  They’re always on at the most inconvenient times and they invariable incur vast expense.  I spend my whole life rotating round toy and book shops trying to guess what a pre-pubescent nine year old boy would like best in all the world that doesn’t cost as much as the national dept of Kuala Lumpur.  I pray to have anti social, hideous children with no friends.  So, if you’re showing off, I wave my fingers at you in the international gesture of ‘fuck off’ and say ‘bobs on you matey.’

On the other hand, if you’re worried about it, don’t be.  You have a child in such a situation.  You think it’s a terrible thing and then when you have worked your guts out, worried yourself sick and flogged about rectifying the situation you find that the grass is not always greener.  Not only does it mean that you too will now have to deal with the horrors I have described above, but you will probably find that your child is a) allergic to face paint, b) hates fairy cakes and vomits over the table or c) and this is the worst thing, becomes so popular that you have no social life left at all because you are forever ferrying your child backwards and forwards to their latest social engagement.  Plus, if your kid goes to parties and is of a nervous disposition you will have to stay and make small talk with people you wouldn’t normally choose to spend time with unless forced at knife point.  It’s all terrible. Count your blessings I say. 

What does shrew sick smell like?

I’m getting slightly perturbed by the number of shrew related enquiries that have been popping up over the last few weeks.  I am no expert on shrews, although I do like to hazard an educated guess now and again.  I can say with hand on heart, that apart from the stuffed shrew at the museum this week, the last time I had anything to do with a shrew with a pulse was in about 1982.  My shrew knowledge is therefore woefully out of date.  I have only read: ‘Run, run it’s scary pooh!’ in the last few years, and although it is about shrews I would put my reputation on the line and estimate that it is largely a work of fiction.  It involves shrews in the jungle sniffing panther pooh, so unless you have jungle shrews, or live in the jungle, my current store of knowledge would be unsatisfying to say the least.

To give it my best stab I would say that shrew sick probably smells of whatever the shrew ate last, but a little more rancid with a hint of stomach acid.  I think that unless you have a shrew town it would be quite hard to detect.  The average size of a shrew is that of a small, ornamental thimble, which means their stomach is about the size of a grain of rice. You’re hardly going to be coming downstairs in the morning to find your slippers brimming with shrew sick and an odour you could cut with a knife.  Welshgirl knows a bit about shrews.  Ask her.

‘Anything is possible’ hair.

That sounds fantastic.  Is it available to buy in the shops? Actually it sounds like the sort of thing you buy on one of those late night half hour long infomercials that comes with a free knife set and some non iron pillow cases.  I think I meant to buy some ‘anything is possible’ hair but picked up the wrong one and got the ‘impossible every time’ hair instead.  Bumhole.  Still, good luck to you.

Funny facts of a beetroot for kids.

It is a little known fact that of all the things in the vegetable world, beetroot are the most hilarious, followed closely by that rib tickling item, the sugar snap pea (yes, yes, I know they’re technically a legume and probably a beetroot is actually some kind of small animal, but what the hell).  Beetroot are witty, debonair and devil may care.  They drive their cars fast, like their women loose and when not nestling in a muddy trench being wrestled to the ground by the ageing Monty Don, are often to be found roaming the world on luxury yachts and gambling in the casinos of Monte Carlo.

They have a wicked sense of humour and one of their favourite jokes is using that soap that makes your face all sooty.  They’re also rather fond of sewing your pyjama legs and arms up and making apple pie beds.  They are passionately fond of the back catalogue of the late and dearly lamented Jeremy Beadle, and the King of the Beetroot (Roger III) is distantly related to Benny Hill.

A night with Ray Mears.

Oh what a night! Late December back in ’63, what a very special time for me, because I made a bivouac with Ray Mears.  They’ve changed the last line of the chorus for commercial purposes, but that is the song in its raw and original form.  Not many people know that it is in fact dedicated to the great King Ray, but I am here to shed, light, sanity and truth throughout the land, so suck it up.

We nestled under an ancient oak tree in our bivouac of Lincoln green.  The firelight flickered on his little ginger face and the slug sausages with nettle coulis sizzled in the pan.  The smell of smoke wafted through the boughs, making the sleeping pigeons cough, and a light rain misted my pacamac. It was marvellous.

They’re now doing Red Letter Days offering a night with Ray for a mere £20,000, bring your own Swiss Army Knife.  Good luck.

Let Sainsburys’ entertain me.

Is Robbie Williams working in the biscuit aisle?  That would be fab wouldn’t it? Perhaps he’s learned to juggle custard creams, or is working on a musical about the fish counter with Dierdre on the deli.  It will have a wonderful dream sequence in which Robbie enters on a shopping trolley decorated with flame proof tinsel and kumquats wearing giant bacofoil angel wings and Dierdre and her band of hair netted shelf fillers serenade him with a gospel version of Angels while Ray the under manager shakes a tin of Jacobs Crackers to keep time.  It’s a hit, a very palpable hit.

Boobs going to work.

What, and leaving you behind to have a nice rest in bed? As if.  If you really can train them to do that I beg you to write a book about it, including diagrams and preferably photographs, and I will buy it.  I’d love to send my boobs out to work while I stay at home and watch Property Ladder. 

Law of serial killing.

The cardinal rule of serial killing is that it is very, very, very imperative not to stop at one.

Other than that they have fairly lax standards. I believe anything goes as long as it’s more than one.

The perfect place to grow Tracey Emin.

In a washed out yogurt pot with a small amount of compost and a dash of baby bio.  She doesn’t like direct sunlight, but too much shade makes her leaves wither.  Water once a fortnight and rub her leaves over lightly with a cloth once a week. (p.s. I do know this is actually about an installation, I’m just being facetious)

What does Keanu Reeves smell like?

Prunes lightly sautéed in vinegar kept in a hat box in the cupboard under the stairs.

My parents are horrid.

That is their job.  If your parents weren’t horrid you would have nothing to rebel against and would plummet off the edge of the world into unending chaos and misery punctuated by meaningless whinging and cries of ‘It’s not fair!’ but if your horrid parents weren’t there to hear you and actually give a toss, nobody would even notice you had gone.

Why won’t my friend take his socks off?

He has. It’s just that his actual feet just look like socks.  It’s a trompe l’oeil. Bobs on you.

¿Pensais que no se puede conseguir hacer divertido cualquier vídeo, incluyendo la canción de Benny Hill?

Los que no lo creais, estais muy equivocados...

Y si no, veamos una triste gamba, andando sobre una cinta dentro de una pecera.

Ahora, observemos cómo dos jóvenes huyen de su asesino.

Y por último, a este chico que practica tranquilamente sus golpes de espada láser-fregona.

¿Quién dice ahora que Benny Hill no hace reir en cualquier situación?

#10 - Lord of rings

#09 - Police

READ ALL THE AWESOME ONES COUYNTS DOWN TO 1 WITH UNFITTING MUSIC LOL

Number 8: Star wars

#7 club penguin

7 friday 13th

Number 06: Thriller

5 Robot vacuum cleaner (that reminds me of my favourite robot vacuum cleaner video)

4 real penguins

3 Pigeons

2 leekspin

1 Shrimp

Shana Tova from Google Israel 2008

Although let's think about this. They scuttle, they're hairy, they eat their wives- there's already a lot for them to deal with.

What justification vindictiveness?

Yet if I Google my brain for spider memories the guilt synapses compete for attention.

There is really only one spider story.

It's the one about the enormous black shadow on the carpet, illuminated by the televisual rays of a John Hughes film, when you were 12. The sheer shocking size and black hairiness of it, that scared the living daylights out of the whole family. The Benny Hill transference of the beast in a cup and post-card, after it concealed itself behind a chair. Or maybe the drowning or crushing of its threatening presence.

Some people will have a special Black Widow tale, or maybe an encounter with a weird kid who kept tarantulas. Most know never to initiate a chat on the subject in the company of anyone who has lived in a hot country. They'll rain all over any anecdote you may have, unless you can pull up your trouser leg and draw a gasp from the crowd.

Surprisingly, my salient arachnid moments seem to be joined together by a cobwebby thread of emotion and these are they:

The Innocent:

At some age under 10, my father made me a bunk bed out of wood, that had a desk and draws under it. It was magnificent. It was also very close to the ceiling, bringing me closer to the creatures that therein dwell.

One night, traumatised by the sighting of such a fellow, I called for my mother, who seemed unwilling to negotiate the bunk-bed ladder and embuggerance of hastening its swift exit. I proceeded to launch into a full Gwyneth. Two minutes later she was looking it in the eye and grappling with a glass.

Everything seemed to happen very quickly. A distracting squeal (me), a bodged lunge (mother) and an ill-advised side-step (spider) conspired to make the operation a failure.

I had caused a death for the sake of a night's sleep- a fact that had not escaped my mother, over whom I had exerted my powerful, murderous influence.

In the event, I did not sleep that night or for some nights to come.

This might have had something to do with the nuns at my Convent school, whispering 'Be sure your sins will find you out' into my ear as I changed into my gym plimsolls every morning.

Nevertheless.

The Victim:

Some years later I was listening to Mozart's requiem in the dorm of my boarding school, while my friends were smoking behind the music wing, when I looked out of the window and caught sight of a large spider on the windowsill.

It was a sunny day and the spider was slap-bang in the middle of it, as if sun-bathing. What a strangely relaxed critter, I thought.

On closer inspection, however, the full horror of its predicament was revealed.

Rather than topping up its tan it was, in fact, being baked alive, its eight legs stuck fast into the drying paint of the recently re-decorated window.

To the strains of classical music, I watched as it heaved its stubby body from side to side within the restricted range of its fixed position, whereupon I embarked on the following thought process:

'Does it realise what has happened? Is it in pain? Is it panicking? Do spiders feel fear? Do spiders have feet? If I intervene, would it be crueler for it to live the rest of its life with eight feetless legs or for me to kill it straight away, even though it is clearly expressing a will to live?

If only I had thought to juxtapose this episode with my formative spider experience. I may have seen that, where I had once cowardly taken action to cause an unnecessary death, I now had the opportunity to take action bravely, to cause a necessary one.

Instead I lay on my bed and thought morbid thoughts and wondered why I was so prone to bouts of childhood melancholy.

The spider perished, one freed footless leg waving aimlessly in the air, grateful perhaps for the sip of water I had dribbled into its mouth during its dying moments.

I went on to study a joint degree in Philosophy and English Literature at university, dropping the Philosophy just before my tutor lost the will to live.

The Unfortunate:

In my later teens I stayed the night with my student sister, drinking alcohol and trying to talk to boys when actually I was itching to get into the kitchen and do all their nasty washing up.

That night I was awoken by the heavy footsteps of a gigantic dinosaur-spider on the headboard of my bed.

I had, at this point, had time to reflect on my childish behaviour and had developed a humanitarian stance towards the whole spider-removal debate.

Responsibly, I fetched a mug and proudly overcame yawning chasms of all-encompassing terror, to trap the creature in its tea-holding void.

Holding it away from my body in case its captive made any clever moves, I took the Bee Gee mug into the un-lit kitchen and flung its contents out of the back door, despite an uncomfortable awareness of the temptation that an open kitchen door at midnight may provide to any shivery spiders waiting outside.

Imagine my horror when, examining the emptiness of the cup in the moonlight, I discovered the dinosaur-spider still lurking within.

Actually, you don't have to imagine it and neither did most of Surrey because I screamed convincingly and dramatically flung cup, spider and honorable intentions onto the paved garden.

Thus killing spider with a sharp shard of Robin Gibb, together with the chance to make peace with the Spider kingdom.

Oh God, will I never make amends?

The Terrorised:

Many years of pedestrian spider encounters passed. No infestations, no escapees from the Creepy Crawly enclosure, no memorable face-offs involving the slippery surface of bath enamel.

Until the honeymoon in Zanzibar.

And a spider so gargantuan, so gob-smackingly, eye-wateringly out-sized it would have toppled John Prescott with the gentle outreach of one casual leg, during nap-time.

Right above the marital bed, thrown into relief by a white mosquito net and stucco walls.

Now, the usual argument for the just eviction of a spider in Spider kingdom court, is that they are out of their element. Whilst one wouldn't chase them around with implements in the garden, when they introduce themselves into the interior of a home they do so univited.

This the domain of nertured Man. This is where Laurence Llewelyn Bowen unwinds.

Things weren't quite so cut-and-dried on this occasion, however. This was a beach hut. A very nice beach hut but no carpets or loo-roll dollies- the usual turn-back signs for a spider who has lost his way.

And yet there were so few places for the spider to hide. And no way there was going to be enough oxygen in the room come sunrise, considering the enormous gulps of air the wall-climbing animal must be consuming, competing with my own rabid intakes every time I caught sight of its shadow throwing the room into darkness.

Q: How do you bring yourself to explain to a local man, at one with nature, that you cannot contemplate one of their national treasures sharing your room?

A: Contemplating the national treasure sharing your room.

Once he had finished laughing, our friendly host made his way towards the intruder, armed with some tools of destruction. Which he very much needed.

Because this sucker was going nowhere.

The Terminator of spiders, it refused to die. To the extent that, had the laughing not made me feel ever so slightly stupid, the spectre of 3 adults losing a fight with a furry foe, would have done the job.

Almost a whole can of poisonous spray finally ended its evening.

And a whole heap of shame ended mine.

The Fooled:

So we arrive at last week.

Not content with wreaking my own twisted form of spider aggression on the world, I now feel it necessary to involve my innocent child, who has recently taken an uncommon interest in the raven rascals.

In the process of examining exhibit number 23 on the way home from nursery, I decide that it would be educational for Bruno to watch a spider negotiate its web to catch some food. Having little patience to wait for a flying sacrifice it seemed like a rollicking good idea to lob a tiny morsel of my raw carrot instead.

Mother and child then spent an agonising five minutes watching the following scene unfold.

Conscious of the 'tug' of food that has landed in its expertly-crafted home an excited spider leaves the comfort of his central position to excitedly approach lunch. Smacking his chops in anticipation, he is confused- to say the least- by the bright orange mass he finds on arrival.

Assuming it to be a super-breed of rare fly, bolstered by a balmy European Summer, it attempts to get its jaws around the vegetarian treat, only to be overwhelmed by the denseness of its composition, the indigestibility of its sinews, the sheer weightiness of its corporeality.

Soon, the combined strain of root vegetable and spirited spider begin to deplete the intricate lacing of the web so that by the time the carrot has fallen from its sticky net curtain and the spider is heading back to HQ in a huff, there are missing rungs of the ladder.

Not only exhausted from exertion and ravenous from the unfulfilled promise of a feast, the hapless spider must now desperately struggle for foothold in the house of his own making.

'Do spiders eat carrots?' is the question that inevitably drives the stake through my callous, spider-hating heart.

*

It is, therefore, with a modicum of relief that I can summon this photograph of my lovely friend's Spider Hoover, which she keeps in Switzerland to deal with her mountain visitors.

Smiley and so very much like a flower, what spider would fail to be charmed into its gentle suction? What spider would resent being lovingly replaced in its own environment amongst the bees and the singing birds?

Certainly not the one I recently helped to re-habilitate- calmly and sensitively and without more than half an hour's rumination.

Then I found this. And I just fell out of my chair laughing. The song fits so very perfectly. It is a video recorded from a Border Patrol agent's car. In this video the agent has stopped a van overstuffed with illegal immigrants. Someone had the mindset to track over the Yakety Sax song from Benny Hill's show and well...it is just perfect. Watching the agents wildly running around while illegal after illegal pours out of the van is just down right funny when laced with this song. All that is missing is some added sound effects..but dang, this is just funny. Enjoy!

~Kryptikos

Pslam 13:5 "But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation."

With 1972 already seeing the likes of Donny Osmond and Marc Bolan at Number 1, it was shaping up to be "the year of the teen idol"

As if to cement the notion, along comes David Cassidy and the (IMHO) awfully turgid "How Can I be Sure"

The son of actress Shirley Jones, Cassidy had already appeared on TV shows like "Bonanza" and "Ironside" before landing the part of Keith Partridge in "The Partridge Family".

The Partridge Family was a kind of pseudo-reality sitcom that MTV would kill for these days. It was about a musical family who played together to stay together, touring America whilst trying to maintain a semblance of normal life.

Cassidy, initially happy about the success of The Partridge Family soon grew weary of its constrictions, not least being his requirement to maintain a squeaky-clean lifestyle in keeping with his character in the show.

In May 1972 he gave a revealing interview to Rolling Stone magazine where he expressed his unhappiness at playing Keith Partridge. As if to underline his point he also posed nude for the cover, shocking the show's producers whilst simultaneously titillating his young fans.

EFA70'sTRO would like to briefly leap out of the Partridge Family closet and openly admit that one of his favourite romantic ditties of all-time is "I Think I Love You". As fine a pop song as it is, he just wishes it wasn't by The Partridge Family.

Quiz time..... Name all the bands you can think of whose band members feature a mother and her son playing together. (The Partridge Family don't count because they were fictional).

I can think of one - Lieutenant Pigeon - and their hit "Mouldy Old Dough", a ramshackle pub-singalong slice of nonsense that was Number 1 for a staggering 4 weeks.

The song is held together by the ragtime piano of Hilda Woodward, mother of band leader Rob whose vocals consist of throating just three words.... "Mouldy", "Old" and "Dough"

Somewhat staggeringly, this song was the SECOND biggest selling single of 1972 (after that crappy bagpipe bollocks). I LOVE it and often find myself 'singing' it in the shower! (If it was at the local bar's Karaoke night I would definitely grab the mic!)

Oh, btw, the correct pronunciation of the band's name is LEF-tenant Pigeon and not LOO-tenant Pigeon. Thought I'd just clear that up for my American readers otherwise ignorant of English *giggle*

Claire was Gilbert O'Sullivan's 6th UK hit single in two years, but his first Number 1.

The whistle-infused song was written about his young niece, the lyric "Will you marry me Uncle Ray?" referring to O'Sullivan, whose real first name is Raymond.

It's sad that Gilbert never gained the worldwide popularity I personally feel he deserved. His lyrics, melodies and vocal style are all as assured as, say Billy Joel's or Elton John's, and his notions of 'whimsy' and 'romance' are always evident.

His relative lack of success compared to his peers can actually be blamed on a massive mid-70's court case he got embroiled in. He discovered that his contract with MAM Records was skewed heavily in favor of the label's owner, with Gilbert earning next to no royalties for the hits he had created, including his massive USA Number 1 "Alone Again (Naturally)". The case rumbled on for over 5 years, during which time he was unable to record a note, so the hits - and his visibility - just fizzled out.

In 1980, he was awarded £7m in damages. A large sum of money, but doubtless FAR less than his earnings otherwise could have been had he remained in the public eye.

I picked up the (terribly-titled) "Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan" a year or so ago, which obviously contains "Claire" and 19 other songs, most of which are surprisingly recognisable and memorable. A great singer-songwriter.

Chuck Berry is one of the pioneers - if not THE pioneer - of Rock & Roll. It's even been said that he invented it.

Think of all the classic songs he's been responsible for... "Johnny B Goode", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", "Roll Over Beethoven", "School Days" and so many, many more.

The antithesis of all his classic songs is the horrendous "My Ding-a-Ling", sadly his ONLY UK Number 1.

Recorded live at a concert in Coventry, "My Ding-a-Ling" is little more than an exercise in Benny Hill-style double entendre, so it's astonishing in retrospect that many radio stations refused to play it!

I guess because it always forms a backdrop to office parties and family get togethers, the UK Christmas Number 1 has always carried an air of 'reverence' about it.

Well, christmas parties in 1972 must have been REALLY scary affairs, with everyone living in fear of having to hear Little Jimmy Osmond with "Long Haired Lover from Liverpool"

Younger - and spottier - brother of Donny, this scored a big 10 on the "crap-o-meter" for many people, myself included. Even my aural fondness for a "novelty hit" refuses to acknowledge this as worthy.

[continued in Part 5]....

This apparently.

It all mixes too well.

This is some good stuff right here.

Enjoy.

Unfortunately, that's one of the forms that may not be enough to get a passport - so I find out that my parents *should* have registered my birth with the State of Pennsylvania (where we moved when we got back from Japan).

So, I truck on over to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's website, and find they have an online form to request those records.  Excellent!

Oh wait, if you were born abroad, you have to mail in for the form.  Ok, no biggie.  I download the form, and start filling it out.

Oh wait, this form requires a copy of my license that shows my current address.  I just changed addresses, so I have to get a new driver's license with an updated address.

So it's off to the State of Texas' online form to change the license address.  This will take about 10-25 business days.

So, in order to get my passport, I have to talk to the State of Texas (done), wait for the new license to arrive.  Then talk to the State of Pennsylvania, wait for the birth certificate to arrive.  THEN I can finally go and try to apply for a passport.

*cues up Yakkity Sax*

brilliant and I don't know why.

Entradas relacionadas:

Pidiendo un deseo.

       More thoughtful silence, this time from him. Eventually, in a puzzled tone he asks her....

       "You want Garlic Chicken Wif Snow Peas?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Hill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Benny_Hill_Show

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001350/
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/bennyhillsh/bennyhillsh.htm

About 23 seconds in you'll wonder why no one else thought to do this to a Friday the 13th sequence before now:

I don't remember them tackling this in Happy Feet, because if they had, children would have run screaming from the theatre:

Penguin Poo

It's ironic that so many stars of the Sunday funny pages suffer from crippling depression:

Sunday not so funnies

This reminds me... I have to go back and watch the old Conan the Barbarian movies...

Conan's mirage

You know... this is one area I think we can take a break... it's pretty much where it needs to be:

Public bathroom innovations

Again, because I saw the Hulk last weekend and it turned out to be not as bad as I was expecting... more transformations... but where is the Eddie Murphy - Buddy Love change from Nutty Professor... genius I tells ya!:

Movie metamorphoses

This reminds me... I can never eat Cheetos ever again...

He has been in bed ever since and it is now half past eleven.  There has been nary a peep from him.  I think he must be going through a growing spurt, as blessed as I am that he is still a boy who likes regular nap times, this is more of a sleeping sickness kind of thing.  I'm not knocking it, but I will have to go and prod him with a pitchfork in a minute because a) I need to feed him some lunch and b) if I don't wake him up soon he will be tangoing on my navel until two in the morning, which would be hideous.

I had many plans for when he went to bed, but I think I too am going through a growth spurt, as when I sat down with my books on Leonardo to go forth into my next essay, I woke up fifteen minutes later with my cheek welded to the text book and a weird wrinkle line in my eyebrow.  I too gave up and went to bed, from where I have just emerged in a blinky sort of way.  The decking men are still here and are listening to some kind of local radio station outside in the garden.  I kept dozing off, dreaming that Amy Winehouse had met Leonardo Da Vinci down the pub and waking up thinking; 'Wah?Huh?' only to hear her dulcet tones blasting out of their infernal machine.  This is why I won't have a clock radio alarm thingy.  I invariably have dreams about John Humphries roller skating through Swindon town centre, and wake up to find This Morning or whatever that Radio 4 news thingy is called blaring away. It's all very disconcerting.

If I wasn’t still exhausted I would be cursing myself for having wasted a couple of valuable hours of free time in this way.  As it is, I am having to use a ruler to stop my chin from drooping onto the keyboard and am typing on automatic pilot from mere force of blogging habit.  I’ve got the kids friends coming round after school.  I’ve got my friends coming round after school.  The house will be swilling with liveliness.  I must think of something to do this afternoon that will keep me awake.  I cannot wander around with a ruler stuck under my chin for the rest of the day.  People will talk.  Clearly coffee is not the answer because I’ve had three mugs already, extra strength and black, and it’s not made any difference at all.

I used to harbour the illusion that caffeine didn’t affect me at all.  At university we used to drink pints and pints of tea and coffee all day.  There were six of us who were really close friends and we spent all day moving from one room to another with the kettle on a constant, rolling boil.  When we weren’t in someone’s room we were in a café, or a restaurant, invariably downing steaming mugs of stimulants and indulging in our cake/biscuit/sweet/icecream fetish.  I lived for three years on sugar and coffee and slept like a top.  The only place we couldn't drink coffee was in the library, which was why it was full of snoring students and nobody got any work done at all.  They should have opened a tea room in the basement.  I might write and suggest it.

I once tried taking pro plus when I was revising because someone suggested they really worked and would help me stay awake into the wee small hours.  They made no noticeable difference to my sleeping and waking patterns and just gave me chronic stomach ache.  They also tasted vile and cost the equivalent of three pints.  Major disappointment all round.

When I was first married I went to see a homeopath who told me that if their medication was going to work I had to give up caffeine.  As it obviously had no effect on me I thought this would be easy and went cold turkey.  I had blinding, sick making headaches for a fortnight and went about looking like an old dish towel wishing I could die.  It was hideous.  If it's like that coming down from coffee god knows what it's like giving up crack.  it's one of the reasons I decided against taking up crack as a hobby.  That and the fact that I'm already an irascible, temper prone old cow with violent mood swings.  Knowing me I'd have taken it and nobody would have bloody noticed the difference until I woke up one morning dead.

Anyway, coming down from caffeine was so hideous that even when I had finished my meds I decided that I would lay off the caffeine and avoided it for about a year.  Then one day, when we were first living in London, a friend of mine invited me out to lunch.  She worked somewhere near the post office tower.  It was a freezing cold day and by the time I’d trogged in from the outer reaches of NW4 and we had found somewhere to eat, my fingers were numb and I wanted a hot drink to face the journey home.

The place we had chosen had either coffee or tea and that was it.  I was so desperate I had a cup of coffee.  One small cup of coffee.  It was insane.  I went home and ran about the house, grinding my teeth, jittery as hell.  I cleaned the whole house from top to bottom.  I picked fluff from the skirting boards with pins.  I ironed underpants.  I regrouted the kitchen tiles and knitted a new shower curtain.  I was still going strong at three the next morning when I'd run out of things to do and was sat gurning in front of Open University programming.  It was an epiphanic moment.  I was a convert to the amazing power of caffeine.  I think previously I had just been so saturated in the stuff that it was coursing through my veins like blood, and a mere Pro Plus tablet was just going to be a drop in the ocean of coffee swilling through me.

I have always tried to monitor my coffee intake since then, but in the last six months it has been on the slide and I reckon that I am now 60% coffee and 40% cake in my genetic make up.  If Jason and I had another baby now I would probably be the first woman ever to give birth to a coffee eclair.  I'd be tempted, just for the money from selling the story, except there's a teeny, weeny chance we might actually end up with another child and then I'd have to kill myself.

If I could give coffee up again and start eating raw tuna for breakfast with pickled ginger tea, I’d probably have bags more energy.  The problem is, I'm a wimp and I don't want two weeks of pain and then the rest of my life in pain as I would have breath like the interior of Billingsgate market on a particularly hot day.  Ginger also makes me burp.  So far, I'm not selling myself on this idea at all.  It's too depressing.

I’m just going to have to find some other way of keeping awake.

My mother thinks it is revenge for the fact that for the first two years of my life I slept for about forty minutes, leaving her a shattered, nervous wreck with a bad twitch and a dependency on Embassy Number 6 and tea so strong you could stand a spoon up in it.  Family legend relates that once I actually fell asleep in the middle of the day and my mum rang the doctor to ask what was wrong with me, because I clearly couldn’t be asleep! Bless her.

I don't really know what I'm worrying about.  Once Oscar gets up he will be incredibly lively and full of zest and vim and vigour (I wonder why all these energy words start with the later letters in the alphabet?)  I can rely on him to wrench my eyelids open and use me as a human trampolene if I get in the slightest bit comfortable looking.  That and his persistent prodding me in the backside with his new toy drill accompanied by the words; 'Oy! Oy! Oy!' shouted at maximum decibellage should do it.  I don't know why I didn't think of it before.  I must have been really, really sleepy.