Squillionnaire

My husband disapproves of me playing the lottery. He says “Why don’t you just take your ticket price and flush it down the toilet?”

But he doesn’t understand. I only ever play when the expected value is greater than or equal to 1.
Well, mostly…(I assume away the possibility of having to share the jackpot with another winner). And since the odds remain crap – it means it’s got to be a big old jackpot for me to play.

Even when it’s a big jackpot – like this weekend’s Euromillions £75 million pounds (that’s probably around $140 million) – I savor my ticket. I don’t check it straight away. I try to get good value out of my lottery fantasy*.

Well, I just checked my ticket. And guess what!!!!!!!!

Nothing. I did match one number, but that and the price of a cup of coffee will get you a cup of coffee.

But guess what else!!!!!!

Nobody else won either – which means that this weekend’s estimated jackpot is £88 million. That’s a lot of money. That’s a life changing amount of money. That’s awesome and I’m playing again.

(I have a complicated lottery fantasy which is such a great business idea that I don’t think I can share it here.)

Pack of pumpkin lies

The Tennessean carries an article on canned pumpkin today – espousing the LAZY version over fresh pumpkin for your holiday pies and breads. Saying that canned is just as good as fresh.

Now, I might have believed this notion some time ago. I grew up on canned pumpkin myself – and always used it when it was available.

But over here in the UK, such things as canned pumpkin (pre-spiced or plain) don’t exist – and where they do they’re in expensive stores catering to Americans on corporate expat packages living in the luxurious ghettos of South Kensington. When I go to places like that, I feel poor and inadequate, so I generally don’t go. (They are also full of Yankees buying jars of marshmallow cream, to make nutter-fluffer sandwiches for their ill-bred children.)

I admit – cooking down pumpkin for pie does take a while. But once you’ve had fresh – you’ll be reluctant to go back. Yum. Yum.

1. Tip: do a big batch at once – i.e. a pumpkin’s worth – and freeze one cup portions for your autumnal baking needs.
2. Tip: can’t find pumpkin? – other “pumpkin like squashes” will do – butternut squash is an acceptable alternative.
3. Tip: West Indian and Asian stores carry pumpkin – and now most mainstream British grocery stores do as well.

Oops – it did it again

I wrote about the pelican that ate a pigeon in the park in London earlier this week. Park staff said it was a one-off, but it did it again.

And this time there’s video:

Thanks to an NBC affiliate in Florida for the video link.

Who hasn’t?

I voted for Harold Ford. My ballot has already been mailed. There’s no power in the world that can uncast that vote now. Not that I want to. We might not see eye-to-eye on everything, but he’s young, he’s dynamic and he’s not going to be a bland Bush toady.

I saw the Who Hasn’t ad this morning (actually yesterday – blogger problems prevented me from finishing this post). The one with the “bimbo”. You know, this one.

It made me laugh. Especially the porn line “So he took money from porno film producers. Who hasn’t?” That guy’s a corker cracker card. That made me laugh the 2nd time, too. And the third.

The Vol-in-Law watched the ad, too. He laughed. He said “That would make me vote for Harold.”

“Do you think it’s racist?” I said.
“Racist about who?”

*********

Now, I certainly wouldn’t put it past the Republican National Committee to create something that subtly – or even overtly racist. When the mud starts flying, people get crazy and don’t care what kind of mud it is or who it lands on.

But to me, it’s not racist. That is – it doesn’t inspire me to think negative thoughts about Harold Ford based on his race – nor was my first thought that it might do so in others.

However, I know I’m not living in America anymore – where there’s still subtext about black men sleeping with white women. In the UK, black-white romantic partnerships are very common. So common as to not really be notable. (Asian & white or black relationships less so).

Some people think that interracial relationships just aren’t right – to echo the final line of the RNC ad.

As quoted in The Tennessean:

One national observer, Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia, called the ad “despicable,” “disgraceful” and “racist,” but also effective.

“That’s the reason they do these things,” said Sabato, director of the university’s Center for Politics. “There are voters in between who are not fundamentally racist but may have certain subconscious fears energized by an ad like that,” he said.

But I have to wonder – is getting crazy upset about this ad doing to do more harm than good. Yes, it was low and sleezy. But I’m slightly worried that to jump up and down about the racism in this ad is to alienate those who thought “Ha, that’s a funny ad. That Corker is desperate. I’m voting for Ford.” by planting this thought “Are they saying I’m a racist, too because I didn’t pick up on the racist stuff that I didn’t see?”

hunka, hunka uncovered meat

In Australia, a Muslim cleric –Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali- has caused a furore by comparing uncovered women out of the house to uncovered meat. And implying that these slutty women have only themselves to blame if they’re sexually assaulted.

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside… and the cats come and eat it… whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat?” he asked.

Well, I blame neither the cat nor the uncovered meat. Meat is just meat and a cat is a cat. But humans can make choices. And choosing what you wear is a more benign choice (generally) than choosing to sexually assault another human being. I don’t think these choices are on the same level. I think implying that they are is dangerous to women and degrading to men.

But it’s not as if this isn’t an argument that we haven’t had to rehearse in Western society and recently, too. Here’s a paragraph from 19 April post of Tiny Cat Pants:

I don’t think men get this, but we women constantly hear about sexual violence against women. Which makes sense, if you think about it, because rape is not just what one bad man does to one unlucky woman. The way we talk about rape makes it clear that we understand rape as punishment. If you don’t want to get raped, don’t walk alone in bad neighborhoods, don’t dress ‘provocatively,’ don’t get drunk, don’t be alone with a man you don’t know, don’t be in a crowd of men, don’t work in shitty jobs, don’t stand out, but don’t make yourself seem like an easy target. Don’t, don’t, don’t. With the underlying message being “Because, if you do, you will get what’s coming to you.” You might be raped.

So it’s not just non-Westerners or Muslims that have this problem, it’s just that sometimes their limits of “modest” dress are so much more limiting. And the punishment for breaching the dress code is that much more likely (whether through “gentle admonishment” or something worse).

Of course, the Sheikh Hilali doesn’t think just women are to blame. No there are others who don’t understand as well.

“Then you get a judge without mercy… and gives you 65 years,” he added.

UPDATE: After some calls for the Egyptian born cleric’s deportation from Australia, he has backtracked… a little. He says he was talking about scantily clad women who lure men into infidelity. Yes, I too disapprove of infidelity – but I’m not buying it. Last time I checked Australian judges were handing down heavy sentences for rape not for coveting your neighbour’s wife’s ass.

Swallowing pigeons in the park

London has some fantastic parks. Hyde Park, Regents Park…but my favourite is St James Park.
It so happened that I often walked through there on my way to meetings at a previous job – so had a chance to see the park at regular intervals over the changing seasons.

One cool thing about St James Park is the concentration of exotic birds hanging around on its central lake. I’m no bird watcher, so I can’t really tell you what they are beyond “pretty ducks” – but I do recognise the pelicans. There are several pelicans that live in the park and they are all pretty well accustomed to humans. I once saw a pelican take a shine to a family and begin walking in step with them down the wide paths around the lake. It looked like a scene out of ET – three humans and an alien just ambling along.

Unfortunately, the park also has quite a concentration of some more common birds – pigeons. And if you go to feed the pretty birds in the park, you’ll have to aim carefully to keep from being overrun by pigeons.

That little problem may be taking care of itself, though. Yesterday a pelican ate one of the pigeons. Just walked up to it and scooped it up in its beak. Pigeon is a slow lunch apparently, it took about 20 minutes to swallow the bird down – flapping all the way.

Hankering

Every once and a while I get a hankering for some artery stoppering down home food.

Today I would like:

1. Fried chicken (breast only)
2. Mashed potatoes (made with milk, little or no butter, lots of gravy)
3. Biscuits – flaky and sour and hot and buttery – steam rising when I pull it open, I’ll pile on the mash and the gravy and eat it with a fork.
4. Green beans – cooked to mush with bacon grease and lots of pepper
5. A side of fried okra (ideally homemade – but the frozen kind that you fry up will do ok)
6. Sliced tomatos – juicy and earthy

What I’ll have:

Maybe a tuna sandwich?

My biscuits are sub-par and my gravy is poor and lumpy or grease with a bit of flour at the bottom. I haven’t attempted fried chicken since VolMom yelled at me when a mess didn’t turn out right. Green beans take too long and I’d have to clean out my deep fat fryer to make the homemade okra (you can’t buy the frozen kind here). The tomatos are already dull and tasteless this time of year.

Big brother isn’t just watching, he’s collecting

Tony Blair wants to expand the UK’s DNA database – so that everyone’s on record.

Via Maureen – fellow American ex-pat blogger:

The prime minister is not content with his sinister ID card scheme. Now he is calling for the national DNA database to be expanded to include every citizen. (link via the Telegraph)

The UK DNA database is already the world’s largest so why should it expand
to include every citizen? Combined with the ID card/database, the government will be gaining even more power over its citizens if this plan is allowed. There are no guarantees that there will be no misuse of the DNA database.

This is very scary stuff, people! This government is rapidly taking away all rights and freedoms of its citizens and everyone needs to wake up before it’s too late.

Yes. Except it’s probably already too late. The Government is already implementing a database which will store the records of all children in one place. Would you want all the info about your kid – (school records, health records, your home address) on a big old database that thousands of local government, health workers, cops and civil servants could access from all over the country?

And this DNA thing? Freakin’ scary. I don’t want my DNA on record. There’s no telling what someone will do with that*.

This government does not have a great record of respecting ancient freedoms, civil liberties or delivering large scale databases that work on time and to budget. A waste of public money if it doesn’t work – a danger if it does.

_____
*Hmmm – genetically engineered mutant army of Tennessee Vols fans controlling Europe. It might not be so bad.

The cost of freedom

I voted last week – but I only finally got my ballot off yesterday. I’m rubbish that way. It cost me £1.12 – that must be right about $2 to mail my ballot back to Lawrence County Tennessee. That’s one small item in the total cost of freedom.

Now Glenn Reynolds may have revealed his vote. But I’m running late this morning – and the Vol-in-Law is standing over my shoulder menacingly wanting to see if his article was published on Conservative Home this morning.

But I’ll give you a hint, before I post in full… CE Petro wrote:

Ford has been a Bush rubberstamper a lot of the time, I’m sorry to say. However, I would much prefer that over someone that would be a Bush rubberstamper all of the time.

A celebrity blog post

Now, I don’t normally post often on celebrities. There are plenty of blogs that can satisfy any need you have to read about celebs. And frankly, since I hardly buy any popular music or go to see films and sometimes feel that I need a English to Yoof! dictionary to understand most of these celebs I can’t be bothered to keep up with their lives.

But this Madonna adoption thing is actually kind of interesting to me. She sure has got herself into a mess. But somehow I’m less interested in what she’s done and more interested in the press and public reaction to her.

Has Madonna broken the rules?
Looks like it. Madonna doesn’t really believe the rules were made for her. Madonna has mostly broken the rules in the UK. Since she’s a resident of the UK and her husband is British – they really should have gone through the UK’s rather onerous adoption procedures – I think this can take quite a long time. If you’re dead keen on finding out how it works – here’s a link to a council website which describes the process. (I suppose they could go through the US process which is still long – but I hear not quite as tough for overseas adoptions).

In Malawi, I expect the general rule is to grease the hands of officials if you want to speed things up. I expect in Malawi she’s followed the rules – only much, much more so.

Madonna bought that baby. (Example here.)
Yes, she did.

Madonna has acted selfishly. (examples everywhere)
Yes. That’s right. Is this surprising? This is how she got where she is and how she stays where she is. And now that she’s no doubt surrounded by yes-people who’ll indulge her selfishness, she has no reason to stop now.

She’s just doing it because all the celebrities are adopting 3rd World babies. (example here)
Yeah. They’re all doing it. OK, some are. Living in London – it does sometimes get to feel like babies are the latest must-have fashion accessory. And I guess some people have to have more exotic accessories than others.

Transracial adoptions are problematic (example here)
Maybe so. I would certainly think that it would be easier to feel you fit in with your adoptive family if you looked a bit like them. On the other hand, at least it’s always pretty obvious you were adopted so there aren’t any temptations to keep it secret or awkward revelations. And a transracial adoption is better than life in an orphanage – I reckon.

That baby’s dad was confused/tricked (example here)
Now baby David’s father is saying he didn’t really know it was a real adoption. He just thought Madonna was going to look after his son until he left school and then David would return home. Well, I don’t suppose that’s outside of the realm of possibility. But once little David has left Eton or Harrow – I’m not sure how much he’ll be interested in working on the family farm. (Unless it’s for a photo-op for septugenarian Madonna’s latest pop release).

I don’t think so. Baby’s dad seemed pretty clear about it last week. I don’t want to be cynical about this – dad seemed pretty selfless last week. But some of dad’s cousin’s had a bit of ch-ching in their eyes. I think the dad’s extended family may have convinced him to ask for a higher price tag. I suspect Madonna will pay.

Madonna is bringing that little baby to a better life – and a longer life-expectancy. (Example here)
Well, she’s certainly bringing that baby to a richer life. And Malawi life expectancy may be under 40 – but what’s the life expectancy of spoiled rotten celebrity kids. If they’re not starving themselves to death – no doubt they often come to other sticky ends.