In the web of Circe's daughters

Once upon a time, deep in the past millennium, Mrs. J - at that time Miss E. - and I, one day after our engament-party, in Miss E's R4 crossed the Channel to visit our dear friend J.
To cut a lovely and long story short: After a magic fortnight, J. presented me a dish-towel containing following prophesy:

It starts when
you sink
into her arms,
and it ends
with your arms
in the sink.

Don't know why, but at that time I did not take notice of that Miss E. was laughing a bit louder than me, and that there was a certain sparkling in her eyes.

End of the beforegoing.

Two weeks ago the former Miss E., now Mrs. J., and Miss J. kept me busy with washing up, as they were baking twelve different kinds of cookies all Saturday and Sunday.
And what shall I say? They knew to make me feel a very important person.
- Great, Sean, you are faster than any dishwasher.
- Popoye [not Popeye!!], would you like to taste a champagne-cookie?
- Without you, Sean / Popoye [not Popeye!!] baking would be really boring.

Well, it might have been tactic - αἰεὶ δὲ μαλακοῖσι καὶ αἱμυλιοῖσι λογοῖσι θέλγει :) - but one thing is for sure: If Circe's daughters had done the washing-up, the result of the baking would have been exciting.

Just a tiny selection

Well, and last Saturday Mrs. J made three marvellous cakes / tortes (?) to spoil her Mum and the five ladies she had invited for Sunday afternoon. And again my arms ended in the sink.

20 hours later: 491 years happily sitting in one room, and how lovely to hear the girls chirping like birdies, enjoying to get served like Queens. And how flattering to hear them praising Mrs. J's art of baking. And how ... err ... polite none of the ladies would ask why their charming waiter had webs between his wizened fingers.


All this just to let you know that said webs have almost disappeared, and I am back again.

In the mood for ...

... Dvorak's Humoresque No. 7

Welcome to ...

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Can't believe they would have given you the very job. Ha ha ha.

If so, here's to make it easy for you: The irrelevant posts - irrelevant as they don't transport anything new - you are looking for are to be found by clicking the label food-monopoly.

To help you not losing your job, I'll try to offer one or two posts per week that will let your contracting entity believe (sic) they've found Gene SH221bBSt*.


Blimey, did you ever think of that afterwards they will let you pay for 'their' patented knowledge?

Or well, good night, and good luck.

Vision & Reality

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It might be of interest
to compare the articles above
to my recently published

Essai on the universal validity of certain virtues

The peace of the night

Kafka-esque conundrum

Strange things happening this evening: Why would I, while re-reading Kafka's 'Metamorphosis, feel reminded of Monsanto?

In general I do like insects.

For sure I shall have to ponder about this, for a while; be sure, however that I shall offer you a roundup as soon as I'll have found a solution to this conundrum.

The pea...

Ah well, once the name of the honourable society has been mentioned, I shall not ask what Monsanto could do for me, but what I could do for Monsanto.

For a beginning: I could skilfully organise Monsanto's worldwide watchdog system (MWWS).
Just send me your offers and, if they meet my demands, almost immediately MWWS will get efficient.

Presently it's a pigsty: nonprofessional, inefficient and - stakeholders' money wasting.

Example: No Ministry of Defence, no secret service, or any other sinister organisation, would ever let more than three, four watchdogs check Omnium. Okay, Homeland Security seems either chaotically organised.
However, Monsanto?!
To cut it short, and to coin it in your terms: The pigsty needs new genes!

Nothing against the individual janitor, but what's too much, is too much.

There are (up til now) at most ten posts to be found on this blog which are somehow Monsanto relevant. And: They are telling nothing new.

By the way and in this context: I do highly recommend reading Thoreau.

Oh well, very probably one janitor in Reno - and some (!) others elsewhere - already did. Why else should s/he have spent 10 hours 28 minutes and 30 seconds during one (!) visit, when ... look above.

Don't get me wrong. Of course, it's a pleasure to widen one's horizon by reading this blog, but please, not during office hour.
This will definitively end, when I am your boss.

Which brings me back to my offer, and to all of you who each have to waste hours and hours, when two separately working colleagues would be enough.

I could understand when any of you doing this nonprofessionally organised job - which is not your fault - in Englewood, Reno, Henderson, St. Louis, Bloomington, Durango, New York, Naperville and Seattle, to name but some, fearing for her/his job would not pass on my offer.

Perhaps it helps when I promise that none of you will get fired (moreover I guarantee optimal climate, joyful team-work), and the first to pass this offer to the boss of the bosses, as soon as I am his boss will become my assistant.
Now ladies and gents: Who's the first? :)

But now:
the pea...ce of the night.

Natural Arts

Click to enlarge

Nothing about potatoes

Surprise. No potatoes, for a change.

Those were (almost) the last courgettes / zucchini we harvested on the first September Sunday Altogether we may have got about ten times more from two (!) plants. The more grateful I was that Welshcakes 'just in time' posted one of her marvellous recipes. Again, mille grazie, Signora Limoncello. :)

Anyway, good to have neighbours, too, as we just could not eat all ourselves, and as courgettes - to our knowledge - unlike cucumbers when preserved ought to be eaten within three, four months.


Oh yes. As she thought the first photo to be pretty unimpressive, Mrs J. suggested to take another one so that you might get a glimpse of the dimensions ... especially when comparing the courgettes to the daisies. :)

A Pook is Here

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.*

With thanks to the Doubtful Egg who posted this on Master Flann's birthday which is probably why I'd have felt reminded of Sweeney when the Pook appeared sitting in the tree.


Note:
Similarities to persons living or dead is purely incidental.
Those feeling offended are meant. :)

CPJ's 2008 prison census

Reflecting the rising influence of online reporting and commentary, more Internet journalists are jailed worldwide today than journalists working in any other medium. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, released today*, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found that 45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors. Online journalists represent the largest professional category for the first time in CPJ's prison census. Full article here.

* tomorrow this 'today' will have become the day before yesterday. :)

Spy in the sky

The German military commissioned its first spy-in-the-sky satellite system on Thursday, Dec. 4 enabling it to peek through clouds or the darkness of night at any spot on the planet.
Continue here.

Wow, somehow I feel safer now.
The peace of the night.

Monsanto-soybeans for Monsanto-pigs

It was a small step for the EU, but a great one for the bosses of Monsanto on their 'mission' to win the global food monopoly.

Good night, and good luck!

Top of the pops

It's never too late to talk about potatoes, isn't it? :) Thus, as anounced only eleven days ago, here some pics and but a few words.

As already mentioned, this year I felt I ought to be a bit worried. :)

Seriously, digging was a pleasure, not only for our cat which was ...

... meticuously supervising ...

and with Argus-eyes kept guard.

The potatoes, too, had their fun.

Drinking

Talking

Sunbathing

Dozing

On an even more serious note: Although we had planted only ten short rows (5 rows with 'early', 5 with 'late' potatoes', at the end we had carried around four hundredweights into the cellar. Marvellous potatoes many of which would not been sold in supermarkets, as their shape's considered political incorrect - and thus they are (somehow) illegal, the more as they don't contain of the average pesticides-level.
Anyway, I can assure you: despite all these flaws they do taste delicious. :)

XIX by Daffyd ap Gwilym

Miserable poet, fear filling him, harrassed and stumbling. Dark is the night on the cold bog. Dark - O God a torch! Dark over all, how shall I come out alive? Dark - great madness grips me! Dark now is the treacherous bog, dark the growth of the moon. Miserable man, that the sun, the good sun, is hidden. Dark it is for me, a poet, shut out with all my fame in dark and bitter winds outside. And if I were found here in the one land that hates me, bared to the guile and treachery of strangers, how should I and the gray horse escape?

Worse though, if I were caught, drowned in the bog-hole as I went with my horse in the mud at the bottom of the bog, after all the reverence I have had. Who can escape the bog-hole filled with the fishes of Gwynn of the Mist, a pit between crag and moor, place of ghosts and of their children, a lake of vinegar and bloody waves where swine wash?

I ruined my good Carnarvon stockings on this wrong road, I do not know why, except ill-luck, my horse and I fell in the bog-hole. The cold first overcame the lout, then was he heated as he dug and scrambled out. So now I am come to land, and can freely give the bog my blessing.