Just for fun - Friday palate cleanser

Given the dire and dreary doings of the Second Fraudulency Administration, I've been trying to actively avoid all their bullshit in the news - it just makes be want to kill people and break shit, which at this point is still somewhere between "treason" and revolution" - and instead I've been trying to find things to enjoy.

Like this; "The Logistics of Road War in the Wasteland" from Bret Devereaux's wonderful A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry blog.  

Besides the pure entertainment value of a serious discussion of the mechanized combat of the "Mad Max" world (and related/similar movies or video games) it introduced me to this insane IRL thing; the "Toyota War" in Chad.

Now there's a fun subject for a "battles" piece! Toyota Hilux versus T-55! I could see doing either the January 1987 Battle of Fada, or the larger and more critical engagement where the Chadians took the Libyan post at Ouadi Doum in March...any interest in either or both? 

What's not to like?

I think I need to get my hands on a copy of Ken Pollack's Armies of Sand first, though. It's supposed to have the best account of the Toyota War, and I'll take a look and see.

But if you've got a moment or two, go read up on Devereaux's take on the Road Warriors:

"All of that is a kind of warfare that actually supports the fractionalization of power, producing the sort of smaller-scale warlordism that the fiction tends to want in these settings. But rather than display their power with massive (but very vulnerable) war rigs, such warlords would likely attempt to overawe foes with impressive displays of their large stock of technicals. And, this being a Mad Max themed setting, by large spikes placed on everything."

Make sure you read the footnote that I've omitted from the end of the final sentence in the above quote to learn more about the "armored codpiece". 

Which reminds me of...

..."Ironlily's" cute take on 14th Century religious orders of knighthood, girly Gothic armor (including armored codpieces) and (okay, yeah, a lot of...) cartoon cheesecake in general. 

Nothing serious, but kind of adorable (in a sort of smutty way...)

OTOH here's cartoon "adorable" without the smutty: Carol Cao and her delightful "little life in the woods" artwork:

(I apologize for the Muskrat link, but Cao doesn't seem to be posting anywhere else...). I love both the sweet feeling of her art and the attention to detail of the things like the rebounding raindrops on the little temple roof, or the suggestion of the kitty hanboks.

I've also been trying to find kind, soothing, happy reads. These have included the very "cozy" little adventure story The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong as well as several more chapters in Kashiki Takuo's series ハクメイとミコチ, Hakumei to Mikochi. 

Not all of this effort has been successful; I'm presently struggling with Axie Oh's The Floating World. 

I love the idea - Korean folklore meets science-fantasy (think a sort of Ghibli-world-building only without the aircraft...) and hero's quest fiction - but the writing just plods. It's not gross or face-smacking, it's a slow drip of little stuff, like this:

"...they waited for the guards to pass, their bright lanterns giving away their positions."

I don't know any other kind of lanterns, do you? I mean, if the guards had something dim, something like little chemlights, that only hinted at their passage, sure, that would be worth detailing. But "bright" is kind of a default "lantern", innit?

Or this, just a couple of sentences later, when one of these random NPC guards stumbles into our heroes:

"Sighting Sunho, he lashed out at him with a concealed dagger."

Not really "concealed", is it now, seeing as how the guy "lashed out" with it? And how do you "lash" with a dagger? Did the author mean "slashed"? Then why not say that? Mind you, slashing with a dagger - unless it's made on the lines of a full-size bowie or a pesh-kabz (a "Khyber knife" for you Great Game/Kipling fans...) is kind of a mug's game, especially given that the Macguffin of this part of the story is that these aren't random rent-a-cops but "Sareniyan soldiers", the regular army of the Evil Warlord dude of the story.

I mean, I get what the author was trying to say; this troop pops out of a door and immediately attacks our heroes who are very obviously not supposed to be where he finds them. Presumably because he's not on guard at the moment he lacks his issue weapon - probably a spear or sword, based on the worldbuilding - so he whips out his sidearm knife to take them out.

So that seems pretty easy to me:

"They stared at the guard and the guard stared back - for only a moment before drawing his belt knife and stabbing (slashing?) at Sunho, the closest of the three intruders."

Fixed.

I've got a couple of almost-sure-winners on hold at the library; Chris Moore's Anima Rising, more inspired wierdness from the Dirty Jobs guy, and a local author (Mark Pomeroy)'s Tigers of Lents, a semifictional story about soccer and our local Felony Flats, the southeast Portland neighborhood once famed for the New Copper Penny and now the home of the ridiculous Portland Pickles amateur baseball outfit.

Portland being Portland you knew there'd be a homegrown reaction to the feeling of being mulcted by big-time pro sports outfits like the Trailblazers and Timbers. This "Pickles" ballclub is one.

(The other is a nonleague soccer team run by the Pickles people called the "Bangers".

I've never seen the Bangers but if the Pickles level of play is anything to go by, well... let's say that I was a Cubs fan back in the day so I've seen some pretty bad baseball, but...

Then you realize that these are college dudes who aren't getting paid, so. 

 One last "fun thing" - Adult High School.

 This little chanbara/bad girl/school comic is just 100%, no-holds-barred, pure fun.

 

 Like BIG fun.

 

If you have a moment and a spare dime. go kick Alexis Flower a buck or three.

That's all I got. 

They've finally developed the boneless cat

And here he is, with Missy:

Drachma really is the sweetest kitty. He's not particularly a lapcat; I mean, he tolerates and even seems to enjoy being petted, but he doesn't really seek you out and cuddle with you in hopes of a pet.

But he's incredibly tolerant of being hauled around and mauled by the urchins. Practically every other cat I've ever worked for would have sliced the little mongers to ribbons for the stuff they do to him. Not Drachma. He simply lies quietly under their abuse until he's had enough, at which point he wriggles free.

I constantly remind the sprogs of this but they seem unconvinced. I await their encounter with a different, more typical, kitty and expect that they will be quickly disabused of their foolish conviction...

Just in case, here's the reference in the title.

It's actually sort of sad, a reminder of the time when Charlie Schultz bothered to actually cartoon and his creation was something other than a vehicle to huck insurance...

Sol Invictus

Well, we're still here.

Another solar year has passed its longest night. We now enter the Dark Ages, the short, cold, wet days of winter that slog painfully towards the light of Spring. The winter is upon us, but the world hasn't ended.

This will probably come as a disappointment to some of the more woo-woo fringe here in Portland as well as those goofs at the National Geographic channel who made those ridiculous half-hour "specials". One hopes that, fueled by that sort of weapons-grade stupidity, very few of the rest of us took the opportunity of impending doom to take out large short-term high-interest loans on the ground that the impending doom would obviate the need to pay the money back.

Or, gee, anything else really foolish, either. Wonder what that could have been..?

Oh.

Yeah.

That.

But now we've dodged that slingstone the hard work begins.

That same hard work we do every day; get up, get dressed. Make food. Care for those who are too young or old to fully care for themselves. Work. Rest. Make love. Make war, or just make something. A chair, perhaps, or a painting, or a poem. Pet a cat, sing a song, filet a fish. Grow a crop or just grow older one day at a time.

Get on with living, in other words, the same way that people have done ever since there were people and will continue to do until the first flicker of the expanding corona announces the nova that really will mean the end is here.

And when all's said, that's the really difficult part, isn't it? Death and destruction and the End of the World are easy. It's living life, or at least living a decent sort of a life; being a good friend, a good lover, a good father or mother or son or daughter, that is hard. That's damn deadly difficult. Fairly amazing that so many of us manage it. I know that I'm going to need some more of this damn cold medicine if it's going to work for me tomorrow, and some more sleep. So I'm for bed, and hope you won't be reading this until the sun is up today.

G 'night.

But, hey, while we're still here - how about those sneaky Mayans with their stealth apocalypse?

Honestly. What a pack of jokers.

That's Amore!

This little video seems to have gone viral, and if you watch I think you'll see why.Even my friends jim and Lisa, hard-headed realists that they are, were captivated (which is where I found this - thanks, guys!)

Anyway, you know I'm a sucker for romance, so I'm getting viral like everyone else. But...in a sense, this is both sweet (since this guy obviously wanted their engagement to be really, really memorable) and scary. Because this little skit took dozens of friends and must have taken hours of rehearsal; who the hell has the time and energy for that?

After they have kids they're gonna look back on this in wonder; where the hell DID all that time go..?

When Mascots Attack

I knew there was a reason that I've pretty much given up on football. The mascots, man...they're just fucking SCARY.And no sensible footy fan would dress up in a huge furry costume like some idio...

Well.

Shit.

But surely, soccer is a cruel game, a game that mirrors the brutal reality of life, a game that exists to remind us that the sun shines briefly before the night falls, that there will always be more failures than successes, that glory is fleeting.

Surely the goofy mascot craze has all but passed the Beautiful game by, surely there can't be more than one or two.....or three or eleven or...Oh, the hell with it. They're everywhere.

Doc Mogart and the Minions of M&M

His given name was Maurice, but he said that nobody called him "Maurice" after infancy. His older brother apparently shortened it to "Little Mo", and by the time he was in elementary school it was just "Mo". By the time his testicles descended I'm not sure he remembered his real name.

His family name was Hogart, though, and the stress of repeating the "oh" sound twice - "Mo Hogart" - was excessive for the grade schoolers in whatever little flyover town he grew up in. By high school his two names had become one all-purpose "Mogart", and it is as Mogart I remember him, standing atop an orange-and-white drum at the barricaded entrance to Sector Control North.Mogart worked for the battalion Supply and Transport (S&T) platoon, the small contingent of logistics specialists tasked with pushing supplies forward from our brigade out to the line companies. Officially he worked with me in Headquarters Company, tossed into the jumble with us medics, the cooks in the mess hall, the clerks in the Battalion PAC, all of us ash and trash that kept the battalion running.

Ask any line dog and he'll tell you that the Headquarters Company is full of more nuts and fruits than a Harry and David gift basket. And if I were to be honest, I'd have to say that we DID have our share of eccentrics, including my alcoholic old boss Monty Harder and the staff sergeant we called "Sergeant Jambo" because he spoke some sort of unintelligible Carolina barrier island dialect which, to our ignorant ears, sounded like something out of a Jungle Jim movie. Nobody in the company could comprehend anything he said including the First Sergeant, who eventually transferred him somewhere at the other end of post. COSCOM, I think.

I should add that this gomer also had a full length portrait of himself in uniform.

Painted on black velvet.So.

Mogart wasn't exactly the standout character in our Headquarters Company. But he was certainly in the running. The announcement of his entry into the HHC "Serious Sinai Freak" contest was probably Fluffy the Flatcat.

Our billet buildings in South Base had a small clowder of feral cats living somewhere inside, probably in one of the exterior stairs or under the building itself. These fugitive creatures were typically seen only at night, by the guys on Charge of Quarters or battalion Staff Duty, or by the night bakers interrupting their lightless raids on the mess hall dumpsters.

Every so often one of these cats would meet with a predictable mishap on one of the camp roads. This was where Fluffy the Flatcat and Mogart made their acquaintance.

Mogart was returning from an evening's amusement at the EOD Club; Fluffy had met his steel-belted destiny some days before and had been baked to a leathery consistency on the arid asphalt by the merciless Sinai sun. Mogart said he had seen the unusual lump from a distance and had ambled over to investigate; those who knew him better suspected that he had tripped on the thing and had practically pissed himself when he fetched up next to Fluffy's petrified snarl.

For whatever reason he peeled the flattened critter off the pavement and toted it back to his billet, carefully depositing it on a picnic table outside the main door. Fluffy was waiting for him there the next morning, and that was the beginning of the brief reign of terror of the Fear of a Black Cat.Because through Mogart's agency Fluffy began turning up everywhere. He perched grinning down from above the orderly room door and gloried in a brief - roughly five minutes, from the time Mogart tied him there until the commander noticed him - elevation to hood ornament on the Battalion Commander's quarter-ton jeep.

Perhaps the most terrifying Fluffy appearance was tied crotch-high to one of the piss-tubes up at Sector Control after dark, where he confronted an sleepy Australian helicopter pilot who came to full awakening at the sight of what appeared to be a vicious animal poised to bite down upon his unprotected and fully occupied penis.

His screams brought the duty squad tumbling out of the TOC trailer wide-eyed and fumbling for their single taped-closed magazine, his frantic evasive action sprayed the piss tube, Fluffy and his trousers with equal thoroughness, and the ensuing international hard words brought a quick and surreptitious burial for Fluffy, who passed from undead catness into legend.Mogart was distraught at the loss of his furry friend. Several of the other guys from S&T accused him of then trying to lure the Shithead from 3A into the road with meat-like food from a C-ration (or more likely an MRE - we were just beginning to get them in the early Eighties) to procure an even larger flat pet.

(Have I mentioned the Shitheads yet in Tales from the Sinai? No?

Well, the Shitheads were supposedly the brainstorm of some psychological genius from DA, who, after spending quite a lot of the government's money, determined that having "companion animals" was good for the boys' morale. Said animals, typically a sort of rangy greyhound-y looking mutt, were apparently obtained at very low prices from a nearby source - probably Israeli, since the Egyptians like most Arabs are not generally dog fanciers - and imported to their new homes to spend their doggie lives warming the hearts of the lonely boys in uniform.

There these poor lads immediately dubbed them individually and collectively "Shithead" and spent what time they didn't ignore them booting them around and cursing their uncleanliness, uselessness, relentless mooching and usual expression of morose self-pity. Which, given the attitude they met, was hardly unreasonable.

When more specific identification was needed, the shithead would be surnamed by its location.

"You hear about that Shithead got run over yesterday up on the MSR near Eilat?"

"Well, damn, that sucks. Shithead there was a cool Shithead. You mean the Checkpoint 3 Alpha Shithead?"

"Nah, he's fine. It was the OP3-1 Shithead."

"Well, there you go, then. That fuckin' Shithead was dumber the the goddamn Sergeant Major. No wonder he got his doggie ass run over."

"Dude, that's harsh. Dog's dead, you're insulting him by comparing him to the Sergeant Major..?"

"Sorry, man..."

My only other Shithead experience came during the Force change-of-command, when the new MFO Commander flew into OP 3-11 and proceeded to ignore all of our military cleanliness and knowledge-of-our-standing-orders sort of brass-shining we'd gotten up for him and instead asked the squad leader about the OP Shithead, of which we knew nothing other than his infuriating habit of crapping in people's unguarded boots.

Anyway, that was the Shitheads)

I went out into sector [a wonderful time and a story I'll have to tell another day, of Sergeant Howard's squad and our adventures as Wadi Ain El Fortaga; Leroy and Jutta, the camels in the wire, Suleman's kite, Old Selim, Sala and Salaha, and the ascent of Gebel Mikemin. But that's for another day] right after this; there was quite a bit of speculation about the effect the loss of his necrotic feline friend would have on Mogart."Fucker's going to really go Asiatic," warned several would-be China hands, "better watch out for him when we get back."

So it was with some anticipation that I looked over the white-painted siderail of the whining deuce-and-a-half as we rolled out of the mountains, crossed the MSR towards the Sector Control wire. My curiosity wasn't long unsated. For there, perched atop one of the empty drums at the main gate, was the man himself.

It was only after I spent a moment wondering what the hell he was playing at that I noticed his worshipers.These consisted of a raggedy swarm of fifteen of so assorted "Bedouin" kids. These weren't the genuine deep-desert Bedu, the like of which we had supped with the preceding two weeks. These were the scaff and raff of the seedy little settlement nearby; town Arabs, drifters, fellahin, really. And there were more than a dozen of these clustered in a sort of half-circle in the dusty waste outside the gate, ranging from borderline-lean just-past-toddlers to underfed-borderline-starvation-thin mid-teens. They were all gazing up at Mogart as if he was a baked chicken, Ramadan, Christmas, New Years and the second coming of Muhammad Ali all in a set of chocolate-chip fatigues.

As we grew closer to the gate, we could tell that the kids were watching Mogart for some sort of signal; this he gave, in the form of a sort of little jump or hop that included bringing his hands together over his head.

The response was immediate and explosive; suddenly fifteen little Egyptians were doing frantic jumping jacks - "sidestraddle hops", in Army terms - their little bodies jigging, spinning, and bounding with the frenzied motion, like jumping jacks performed by spastic methamphetamine users.

Mogart lowered his arms to shoulder height, pointing both index fingers at the ground, which was the signal for his little minions to drop to the bare soil and begin doing pushups. These were more energetic than efficient - most of the kids couldn't keep their backs straight and the resulting sine wave was pretty silly looking. The little toddler types just rolled around on the ground.

And then Mogart raised and spread his arms triumphantly, at which signal his followers jumped to their feet bowing at the waist like so many toy drinking birds. Even over the blat and whine of the trucks we could hear their little voices crying

"Hail Mogart! Hail, oh mighty Mogart! Hail Mogart! Oh mighty Mogart!"

And then the entire scene dissolved into scrambling, kicking, grabbing chaos, because their king scattered largesse among his people in the form of peanut M&Ms. The resulting riot was not pretty to watch, as the older kids snatched and clubbed with brutal efficiency. While the god of the steel drum looked down benignly and raised his arms again. The chanting returned as we rolled through the gate; hail, Mogart, oh mighty Mogart, hail...I don't think anyone said a word for the next mile, until from up near the cab, a low voice opined;

"Well. He's gonna burn in Hell for THAT shit..."

All there agreed that deserved as it was it was unlikely, since Hell was empty and the Devil Mogart was here.

And the sun went down behind the mountains to the west.

Fat-bottomed Girls

One last thing I wonder about.

Does this woman look "fat" to you?Her name is Meghan McCain, and she is the daughter (I'm sorry to report) of John McCain, though I have no idea if she is the child of Crash and his Stepford Wife (a.k.a. The Second Mrs. McCain). Doesn't really matter.

[Although, let me state for the record: Yikes! That's scary! One of the few things I respect about McCain is his willingness to approach that face unclad. I couldn't do it without my testes clambering to re-ascend into my abdominal cavity like Italian infantrymen escaping Caporetto...]

So, anyway, someone called Laura Ingraham, who is described in this article as one of the "conservatives never reconciled to John McCain", upset that Ms. McCain bitched about shemale pundit Ann Coulter being a train-wreck public face of the sneering, pompous, self-satisfied asshats that populate the GOP "leadership" (if by "leadership" you mean "handful of crazed fanatics attempting to suicide-bomb their own compound because their party isn't as fanatic as the 12th Century Inquisition or as heartless and larcenous as the Sheriff of Nottingham"), responded by hammering young Ms. McCain with Fat Girl jokes and similar juvenile coprolalia.

I'm perfectly fine if Republicans want to feast on each other's flesh; they've had enough of everyone else's the past eight years, it's only fair that they consume some of their own, frankly.

But how in hell is this woman fat?

And more to the point, WTF? I mean, there's FAT; dangerous, scary, heart-attack-fat, stroke-fat, joint-failure, hip-breaking fat. But short of becoming a medical problem or forcing you to look like an utter dork meeping around the Safeway in one of those little electric carts, what's the problem with a little...extra?

If I were to admit to an erotic attaction to standard-issue 2009 GOP conservatives, which to my mind would be like sleeping with a hostile alien species determined to exterminate the human race, I would have to admit that I find Meghan McCain VERY attractive; very feminine, very oomphy, very...sexually desirable. Certainly much more so than I find Ms. Ingraham:who appears to be not only a fine example of an authentic smugly Bush-luuurving dominatrix but looks to fulfill every quality of my old Ft. Bragg buddy Alfie Castello's warning about sleeping with a certain type of skinny blonde: "They're entitled, they're edgy, they'll get you in trouble and laugh as you try and talk your way out of it. Their hips are so bony that it's like making love to a sack of old razor blades. And you KNOW that they love themselves more than they'll ever love anyone else."

So aside from the nasty little woman's generic juvenile idiocy of mocking someone because they're chubby, aside from the question of whether anyone should be mocked for being chubby...how in hell, in what kind of fucked-up society, can the woman in the top picture be derided for even being chubby?

I don't get it.

For Whom the Bra Tolls (or: Fun with Underthings)

So.
A couple of you asked about THIS picture...okay, well, YOU asked about this picture, C, and whether the size of this bit of lingerie is an absolute or simply immense relative to Little Missy.

Well.

First, I need to bring in a bit of background. The lovely people below are a friend of Mojo's - let's call her Geochick - and her new DH, the Rockman. They're Good People, and Geochick and Mojo go back a ways and are good for each other in all sorts of Wild and Crazy ways.Now she and Mojo also have some traits in common, like most friends do. And one of those things - at least one of the ones that is most obvious to me, hound that I am - is the fact that they are both...ummm...robust in the anterior torso part of their anatomy. They both have nice, full breasts. Large breasts. Loads of Lovely Lady Lumps. Enchanté with décolleté.

Overstocked in sweater meat. Busting out all over. Gifted with squirming baskets of Snuggle Puppies. Overstuffed Satan's love pillows. Krakatoa and Tambora, the Volcanic Mountains of Love.

Buxom, is what they are.

Now back in the day when Big Peeper was Fetus Peeper, Mojo went through a period where her abondanzas went from merely abundant to immense to oh-my-fucking-god-it's-like-staring-into-the-sun. Her wherewithal grew beyond normal human brassiere sizes. Out of the DDDs. Beyond the Fs and somewhere into the letters of the alphabet usually reserved for sports cars and abbreviating the first names of prep school kids from Saddle River. I mean, the fuckers got to the point where they began to develop their own gravitational fields.And this was the result.

The TitanoBra. Sort of twin personal Hindenburgs with some lacy bits and hook-and-eye closures at the back, this beast of a breast holster is rated at a higher tensile strength than some interstate suspension bridges. It's not exactly "cute" or "frilly" but it tamed the Kraken long enough to get through the "Peeperocene", also known as The Boobolithic Period or Peep's Breastfeeding Days.

Now Geochick and Rockman are Expecting. And it's Geo's turn to experience the Expanding Universe Theory. Our contribution to their burgeoning little family is - the TitanoBra.

But, of course, before we shipped Old Suspenders off to her new family, we ALL had to try her on to see how we would look.

Missy immediately disappeared. This wasn't exactly surprising, since each cup is larger then her head.

Mind you, she recovered nicely (as the topmost snapshot shows). She enjoyed hiding her sippy inside the Chambered Nautilus and whipping it with a giggle. Note: her Mommy's response to that activity, back in the day when little Peep guzzled up to the Korovo Milk Bar eight times a day, was markedly less enthusiastic.

The Peeper looked surprisingly dashing, in a Mae-West-meets-Herve-Villachaize-sort-of-way.

He also pranced around in it a bit, which kinds fits with the metrosexual thing he's got going on right now (changing clothes all the time, emotional crises 24-7...sigh...)

But no amount of difference could keep these two from fighting over the damn thing. I swear, if siblings had one tootsie-roll of dried cat poo, they'd fight over it. Most of the fights they DO have are as senseless as a punchup over a piece of Kitty Roca. And here they are:

Children, children...

Let Mommy show you how it should be worn.

Be still, my trembling heart...

Who is this that comes with tender lightsome step..?

Ah! She walks in beauty like the night...

That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!
Um. Actually, Mommy, it looks like you're doing some sort of "Exorcist" deal where your head turns all the way around...

And, speaking of Satan...

Ohmigod, look away, kids!!

The red eyes of Shemale Evil! It burns! It bbuurrrrnnnnssssss!!!!



Anyway...

...enjoy the underthing, Geochick, and good luck birthin' that baby. We love you. Almost as much as we enjoy dressing up in women's clothes for the camera.

Bye, now.

Update 3/21: I realized that the one person who was probably most permanently affected by Mojo's abundance was Little Pea. And my thoughts on this run two directions:

1. Either he will be so permanently traumatized that he will wind up liking boys or else girls with teeny tiny little baby bumpers, or

2. He will forever dream of being the mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station.

Whadda you think?

Black Irish

I have an odd sort of relationship with St. Patrick's Day.

My ancestry is the usual American mish-mash, but if anything stands out it's the Scots-Irish and Scots on my mother's side. Grandpa McMillian was a straight-off-the-boat haggis-beater back at the turn of the 19th Century. He was a good Scottish Prod through-and-through and took great delight in teaching me "The Orangeman's Toast" ("Here's to Good King William/who saved us from popes and popery, rogues and roguery/from brass buttons and wooden shoes/and whosever denies this toast may he be crammed, jammed and slammed into the Great Gun of Athlone/the gun fired into the Pope's belly/the Pope into the Devil's belly/the Devil into Hell and the key in an Orangeman's pocket/and here's a fart for the Bishop of Cork.") when I was too little to understand the bigotry - and as Millicent reminded me just yesterday, I have one of those pack-rat minds that forgets nothing.

So I tend to sort of gloss over the St. Paddy's Day festivities, feeling a bit like the clarinet player in a Hamas paramilitary band being asked to knock out "Havanagila" at a B'nai B'rith wedding. My type just don't DO that sort of thing.
BUT.

I DO like corned beef and cabbage. So every year I boil up a dinner and we all sit down to it.

This was Missy's first year as an American, where everyone - even little Cantonese girls - are Irish on March 17th. So I dished her up a helping of little cut-up corned beef bits, cabbage, taties and carrots, figuring that worse come to worst she had potatoes and carrots, two things I know she loves.

Who knew!? The girl started shoving the good meat in like a mad Fenian starving for the Auld Sod. Carrots were forgotten, potatoes abandoned. It was ALL about the corned beef. At one point I think she had her arm down her neck to the elbow. I wish I'd gotten some pictures; she was funny in her frantic eagerness to get outside some good corned beef.

So. Perhaps I need to rexamine my stubborn Orange ways. Because if a little girl from the big city on the Pearl River delta can be as Irish in her tastes as Erin O'Bragh, why can't I?

(NB - yes, yes, I know - "corned beef and cabbage" is an "Irish-in-America" meal rather than truly Irish. But I guess that's the point; we're NOT Irish and our St. Padraig's Day isn't really about Ireland. It's about Boston and Father Flanagan and shilleleighs and The Quiet Man and New York coppers and leprechauns and all that silly Irish-American guff. Now sit down and drink your Guiness...)