Le Monde de Fromage de Kate

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, Laddies and Lassies!

Today we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and the wearin’ o’ the green, kissing the Blarney Stone, shamrocks, and, in many parts of the world, the drinkin’ o’ the green beer.

We honour St. Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland, believed to have died on March 17, 460 A.D. Many legends surround the man, including the ubiquitous “snake” story. In the narrative, St. Patrick stood on a hilltop in Ireland (now called Croagh Patrick) and, with only a wooden staff at his side, banished all the snakes from Ireland. Many people now believe this to be an apocryphal tale, as, apparently, no snakes were indigenous to the island. These people like to think of the snake banishment as a metaphor for St. Patrick’s converting of the Pagans to Christianity.

But let’s examine this further: If St. Patrick banished ALL the snakes from Ireland in the 3rd century A.D., then OF COURSE there are no snakes native to Ireland. It’s not like there were great biologists at that point who did herpetology studies (especially censuses of the suborder serpentes) beforehand and afterwards to verify the whole “no snakes indigenous to Ireland” hypothesis.

But here is the sad chronicle of what happens when the natural balance of things is destroyed. Eventually, since all the snakes were driven from Ireland, the isle was overrun, quite naturally, with rodents (since the chief predator of these animals had been eradicated).

Then, The Pied Piper arrived. He claimed to be an expert in pest control. People especially wanted to get rid of the rats (they didn’t realize about the rat-flea-plague connection, but they thought that rat tails looked like snakes so they detested them the most of all the rodents). The people of Ireland offered to pay him a great deal of money if he’d rid the island of the odious rats, thinking that he was probably just a crazy phony (distrust of musicians was born early in the history of civilization) and they’d never have to come through with the loot. The Pied Piper, armed only with his little Pied Pipe (?) charmed all the rats with his beautiful pastry music so that they ran into the sea and were drowned. Unfortunately, though the Irish were awfully glad that the rats were gone, they didn’t “pay the piper” (so to speak) because they thought, “Hell – what’s he gonna do to us with only that little whistle?” Consequenly, the Pied Piper, with his beautiful pastry music, put all the little children of the island under a spell, and he stole away with all of them.

This is, perhaps, when the Irish get their reputation for drinking quite a lot. I think after all the snakes and the rodents and the pie music and the disappearing children ANYONE might want a good, stiff drink.

I need a bigger and wider putty knife!

Feelin’…..purple. Definitely violet, lilac and a smidgen periwinkle to boot.

I’m out of the country.

Doesn’t that sound exotic? The truth of the matter is I’ve never, ever been anywhere that required a passport. We’re in Ottawa at the moment (a wonderful city – don’t get me wrong). You do go through customs, but they only need you birth certificate (to assure themselves that you are actually a human being who was BORN as opposed to a droid from the states that is there to take over all the Provinces, especially, Nunavut).

Some of the highlights of the trip have included skating on the World’s longest skating rink, being rescued by Spiderman on the World’s longest skating rink (a story for another time), seeing the amazing ice sculptures at Winterlude or “Bal de Neige,” eating poutine and Beaver tails (not at the same time), eating lovely food, having a delightful time with family and meeting lots of lovely people.

When I get home I’ll put some pictures up (at least one of Spiderman, eh?).

Okay – just one more.* Take a look at this:

Just let me know: Is it nearly as HILARIOUS and simultaneously worrisome as it is in the middle of the night? The interesting (or just sad) thing is that it somehow reminds me of To Kill A Mockingbird when Scout is a ham.
Whatever the time of day, it is an image that tells a story.

*Though you really ought to take a look at the first few pages of this.

A wise man once said, “Everybody’s fancy, everybody’s fine.” But, alas, my “Monde” is not fancy nor is it fine. It lacks pizzazz, magnificence, aesthetic appeal and even zest. I kvetch and whine about falling down and spilling under the pretense that it is amusing to the reader. I glorify cheese. I venerate cheese poetry.

All this when there are those in the world with texture, witty prose, amusing photographs, and yes, oh YES, ART. Take a look at this. My friend, Wee Chris, has galleries (and that is plural – GALLERIES). But he has a Masters of Fine Arts, you might argue; he should have a gallery or two. Ah ha, say I. I say that for no apparent reason.

BUT, and this BUT I do say for a reason, note the blog of his lovely and talented wife, Maria. She has a portfolio of her HANDICRAFTS!!!!

It is official. I have blog envy. I have no patterns or pictures or ANY design element of note. I can’t even figure out how to get my blog entries to line up on the left when I want. See? SEE??????

P.S. I do have a shop. It’s just a fetus shop at the moment, but it will mature and grown into a full-blown SHOPPE (with, naturally, the ostentatious extra “p” and the inexplicably silent “e”).

For those who don’t know, for my “Joe Job*” I work in a hospital in an office setting. This means that though I am, at this very moment, in a state-of-the art medical facility that is rated very highly by someone (US News & World Report or Playboy or something), yet I couldn’t tell you how to put your hands on a Band-Aid or some aspirin or such. I take it back. I know for certain that you could purchase those items in the pharmacy. But I don’t know how to get a Band-Aid for FREE like at most workplaces. Then again, if I coded I probably would get some quick and excellent treatment…

Today, in the cafeteria, which is now very officially called “8th & C Street Cafe” (This theoretically makes it tastier and more like Paris? I would say that too many people dragging IV poles around distracts from the Parisian illusion rather effectively), it was “Asian” day. I should back up a tad – it’s “Diversity” week or “Multi-cultural Hullabaloo” or “Foreigner Fête” or “Funny Talk Hootenanny” this week.

Please don’t think I’m a wretched, ethnocentric bigot. I’m most fond of multi-culturalism. I am the whitest woman in the world – literally – but I honestly do love meeting and learning about all sorts of people and cultures. And kudos to the hospital – they had some great dancing and singing and informative displays around the hospital this week about many different cultures and peoples and such. And yesterday I ate a tasty and rather authentic-looking tamale (wrapped in the corn husk and everything). What I mock is the concept of “Asian” food all lumped into one category so that the reality today was that they served a lot of rice and fried meat lumps, put out the soy sauce and called it “Asian.”

But then there was the sushi. Yes, I kid you not, sushi. And not just California rolls – there was tuna and salmon, and what’s more, the chef was even trying to make the presentation lovely. So I got two pieces of salmon roll and some yummy pickled ginger and enjoyed it thoroughly. This brings me to my point (and it only took a number of semi-lengthy paragraphs – HUZZAH!):
Today I ate RAW fish served in a hospital cafeteria located in the Capitol city
of a land-locked State.

Was I brave and fun-lovin’ or was I foolhardy? I feel fine; I’ve had nary a sign of food poisoning and I ate the fish hours and hours ago. I should also add, for those who don’t know Salt Lake City, you can actually get excellent, fresh fish here. They fly it in daily for a number of restaurants (including sushi bars) and markets; they actually claim it may be fresher than its coastal counterparts as they purport to catch the seafood and throw it right on a plane. Ha. That’s a funny image if taken too literally. Envision big-ol’ tunas and halibuts flopping all over some Southwest Flight Attendant. Afterall, don’t most fish take passenger jets?

Anyhooo, the question is, what kind of raw fish makes its way to a hospital cafeteria????? Since I am not dead, it’s still an interesting question.

*Joe Job = The job you work that actually pays the REAL bills though you have a degree in music or acting or some other completely unmarketable pursuit of the fine arts vein but no – oh NO, SIR – you would never claim the “Joe Job” as your career, especially since you have private students or get paid for a few gigs here and there or do a show once in a blue moon and get paid 50$ or so and thus you are a PROFESSIONAL, SIR, A CONSUMATE PROFESSIONAL!!!! This means that you certainly would never, ever, EVER list only “Office Coordinator” on your taxes, for you actually have to pay self-employment taxes on your 50$ or so of fine arts income. This also means you’ve earned the very officious title of “independent contractor” and that you can “Do Business As” and just put your own little name on the dotted line. It does beg the question – can you “Do Business As” (DBA) Flunky Toilet-Squirt (that is, by the way, my Captain Underpants name)? Yes, but you’d have to incorporate as Flunky Toilet-Squirt and be an S Corporation or the like, and that’s just too much for this artist. Fí­n.

In addition to the “Facts of the Day” text message service, I subscribe to the “German Phrase of the Weekend” service. Usually, these phrases consist of translations of such fascinating tidbits as “Remember to bring your sunscreen,” and “I need to see an internist.” In case you’re wondering, those are actual examples. They are, I tend to think, generally more enthralling in German. For example: “I need to see an internist” is “Ich muss einen Internisten aufsuchen.” That last verb (which, as I’ve pointed out, doesn’t mean what it sounds like on the surface) brings me to my point. The crux of the matter is this: some perfectly innocuous sayings from other languages sound positively indecent to the English-speaking ear (the reverse situation is equally true, I’m sure). Here’s the case in point: the English phrase is “What are the teams?” This sounds innocent enough. But here’s the German: “Was sind die Mannschaften?” That sounds pretty ribald to your average English-speaker (or at least those with filthy minds like mine). It’s not very mature, I suppose, but there’s still a part of me that giggles a little bit when I think of a certain past tense conjugation of the German verb “essen,” which means “to eat.” It is “ass.” Yes, ha ha ha. That’s beyond hilarious in a junior high school German class.

I have laryngitis.

In German (auf Deutsch) that is Kehlkopfentzündung.

My German ability is mostly rusty and was never stunning, but I do know that Kopf means “head.” So where are they going with this? Okay, more research. Ah ha – Kehl means “throat,” and Kehlkopf means “larynx.” “Throat-head” means “larynx?” That’s perfectly logical. (?) And finally, entzündung means “inflammation” (as does “itis” – but in the logical German compound word fashion it’s three or four times as long).

Those damn Germans are always smushing thirty or forty words together and trying to pass them off as one word. Moreover, they’ll take a verb with a separable prefix, insert the verb portion, add about 700 phrases and THEN add the required prefix. They are just plumb crazy. I can say that because I have German ancestry; they are “My People.” More precisely, they are about 3/16th’s my people.

Another one of my people, Mark Twain (Yes, I am related somehow to Samuel Clemens), is completely in agreement with me. Read this segment fromThe Awful German Language:

The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called “separable verbs.” The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab — which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:

“The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED.”

However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it.

You see my point. Even so, I’m strongly considering telling people (or more accurately, croaking to people or writing to people) that I have Kehlkopfentzündung. It at least sounds exotic. “Have you been traveling in the “TROPICS?” they might query.

If one must be ill one might at least sound well-traveled. Infirmity has little else to offer.

A couple of weeks ago I learned about “String Theory” from the Late Show with David Letterman. I should explain, it was a physicist guest who did the instructing, not David Letterman. Mind you, I’m not presuming anything one way or the other about David Letterman’s knowledge of physics; he may be the next Stephen Hawking for all I know. In fact, remember how he used to conduct very scientific “suit” experiments – like the suit of Velcro, the suit of Alka-Seltzer®, etc.? And remember how he used to hurl various objects off of very tall buildings? If that isn’t some fine physics I don’t know what is.

Anyhoo, the physicist guest, who will soon host his own show (which means he’s a pretty boy physicist – for whatever that’s worth in the physics world), provided this definition of String Theory (I paraphrase a tad):

EVERYTHING [all matter] is composed of extremely tiny, wiggling strings.

That’s a very good theory. It could only be improved by a slight substitution so that it read “everything is composed of extremely tiny, wiggling string cheeses.” (Hmm. That would make it the “String Cheese Theory,” I suppose). I would probably also substitute the word “wee” for “tiny” – that always improves the cuteness ranking of any scientific theory without getting as saccharine and cloying as to say “teeny weeny,” “teensy weensy,” or “itty bitty.” I might also say “undulating” instead of “wiggling.” It’s far sexier.

The whole “String Theory” thing reminds me of Monty Python’s “String Sketch.” “SIMPSON’S INDIVIDUAL STRINGETTES!” and whatnot. Come to think of it, what with the silly walks and all, what brilliant physicists!