My Musings On The British Royal Family

I recently red on the Guardian website (a British newspaper) that Prince William and his bride are the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Well, isn't that...something. I guess for ol' Billy the title of "prince" has become a tad passe, but whatever the large toothed royal thought of the additions to his resume, I was preoccupied by a far more pressing question: What if the queen ran out of places and titles to give to the seemingly prodigious amounts of aristocrats, many of whom have enough names and titles to sound like a law firm? Will it ever come to the point where Her Majesty will grandly bestow upon some relative the auspicious title of Duke of Heathrow Airport? Then again, I imagine random towns or well known locations will find themselves honored with their very own members of the aristocracy before Heathrow. Perhaps we'll see a Duke of Goole or a Duke of Stonhenge? Or what about the Princess of the Spittal of Glenshee (not making that name up) or the Duchess of Beachy Head? (If you receive a title named after one of the most notorious suicide spots in the world, I think it's a pretty good indication the family doesn't like you and you may stand in danger of being secretly edited out of the line of succession. I give you fair warning.)
I for one am dreadfully worried about this scarcity. I'd rather not see the queen telling her third cousin twice removed that he can't be the Assistant Duke of Kent because someone already called it before he did and, shucks, the title of Count of The Mumbles (again, not making that place name up) was taken just last week. Tsk tsk tsk.
On a related note, I think it might be fun to be queen and come up with various titles and honors. Anyone I didn't care for would become a Knight of the Grand Order of the Keepers of the Colostomy Bag, commonly referred to as the Crap Keepers. Anyone who takes umbrage (a very fun word) can stuff it.
And one final thought to tickle the mass of nerves we call a brain, does anyone else feel like the queen's living a preternaturally long life? Or is it just me who feels like she's been seventy for the past twenty-nine years? And does she ever feel haunted by the thought that her unfortunate-looking son may be wishing she would just pop off already?

So I was listening to old Scottish Jacobite songs the other day and it got me to thinking about certain moments in history and which side I would've been on had I been born then.
1) Battle of Hastings 1066-I'd have been on the English side
2) Jacobite Wars 1715 and 1745-I'd have been a Jacobite
3) 1970s Northern Ireland-I'd have been in the IRA. For that matter, a century or two earlier I'd have been one of the Irish getting dispossessed by the Scottish immigrants.
4) 1500s Mexico-I'd have tried to kill Cortez
5) 1500-1700 Americas- No surprise for guessing which side I'd be on.

This is just a short list, but as I was thinking it over, I realized they all had one thing in common. The side I sympathize with were always the losers! Which is probably why I wasn't born then.
Then my thoughts turned to my genealogy and where my European ancestors where from and where would they be during these momentous events? *Sigh* They were on the opposite sides. They were the Normans who invaded England, the royalist supporters, the Scotsmen who pushed the Irish off their land in Ulster, and a great deal of them (though not all!) were the hairy immigrants swarming onto America's shores. Hmmmmmm. This could prove to provide interesting conversations in the hereafter.

The Stench of the Snow

Walk in the south doors of the Snow building on the BYU-Idaho campus and you are attacked by a smell that's a cross between sweaty feet and unwiped butt. You spy a bronze statue of Christ, His face twisted in disgust, and you ask yourself the question "Why does a building dedicated to God smell like the bowels of hell?" Should you brave the stench and continue further into the building, you pass by a dozen or so students lining the walls and chatting amiably or concentrating on their computers. All are seemingly unaware of the puke green vapors swirling around their heads and causing the carpets to curl. These people are not Sweating to the Oldies, or mimicing Richard Simmons's figure on a TV screen, nor do I hear the telltale trumpeting coming from their netherregions, the hallmark sound of 'cutting the cheese'. So where does this smell come from? Are the music majors practicing behind the closed doors of the narrow hallways working up a massive sweat as they empty their spit valves? I can imagine a pianist playing with such passion the keys are slick with sweat and their bowels are weakened and let loose bursts of methane. On one hand you have to admire such malodorous dedication, but on the other hand, a certain orifice needs a cork. Since it's not very likely that the University is going to spring for a truckload of Febreeze (because apparently there are students who enjoy basking in the pleasures of pit funk because why else would they hang out there? It's not like there's ten other buildings to loiter in) and since it is also unlikely that a general disclaimer will be issued, I take it upon myself to give you unsuspecting and innocent victims of the general public this fair warning: Beware the Stench of the Snow!

It's snowing outside like a mo-fo. Most unfortunate. As I was watching the snow fall and waiting for the computer to open my program, I noticed the recycle bin icon was full to the brim of crumpled paper. "Hmmm," I thought. "There's a lot of deleted things in there. I should empty it and make room on my computer." There's only one thing inside. So if there's only one item in the recycle basket, why show all those crumpled papers and make you think it's overflowing? Why not show only one crumpled paper?
Sigh.
I haven't had much time for updating my blog. I've been plotting out my giant 48x48 painting. As of now it will be of the Laie Temple, but if that turns out to be too complicated...well...maybe I'll do something abstract (aka it can look like crap and no one will notice because it's "abstract").

Outside my window are snow flurries and the ground is slowly being covered by the deathly white I'm sick of seeing. It has been raining recently and silly me was sure I saw spring in the air. I've been digging out my sandals and my ballet flats to wear because I'm sick and tired of my snow boots. So much for that...
Still no job. I've stopped counting how many applications I've filled out. Somewhere around the 60s or 70s. And its always the same reply, "We're going with someone more qualified." Whatever.

The Threat to My Life

Water is evil discarnate, but over the years H2O and I have come to a tenuous agreement. I don't go near him, and he holds off on his homicidal tendancies. I'm not entirely sure what I've done to make him so angry, but my word has he tried to kill me an awful lot of times!
By the time I reached high school, I realized he was thristing for my blood and I'd so assiduously avoided any incarnation of him I scarcely showered. But junior year we went to Hawaii and when you're on a tropical island, you have to go in the water.
It was there and then that Senor Agua decided to pull his dirty trick. You see, I was very careful not to go too near the water or spend too much time in the water, so as not to give him the uperhand. He realized this and devised a way to make sure I was miserable even when I wasn't in the water.
All he had to do was get me wet and I'd break into this horribly read and painfully burning, itchy rash all over! The heavily touristed beaches have makeshift showers to wash the salt water off, but seculded beaches do not. So I sat there and burned and itched and everyone wondered why I was so allergic to paradise.
At first we thought it was just that one year. Perhaps some sort of odd weather event with a Spanish name (El Itcho?) had caused some strange microbes to churn up in the water. Plausible. But everytime I've returned to my island home, water still gives me a rash that threatens to eat me from the outside in.
And H2O likes to keep me on my toes. He likes sending reminders that even on dry land, a thousand miles away from the nearest ocean, he's watching and waiting. He'll send me a dream full of tidal waves larger and more ominous than anything reality can produce.
But although my life is in constant peril, I have my little revenges. I drink a glass of him and there's nothing he can do about it and after a while, I'll smirk and wave as I flush him down the toilet.

The Lone Democrat

Last night I did something completely out of character. I walked around looking at cows...for fun! Actually they were bulls, but whatever. The fam was headed to Riverbend to check out the bulls they'll be auctioning off today and to eat a ranch-worthy meal of steaks washed down with Mountain Dew and I figured I'd go along. You know, spend time with the siblings. Anyone who knows me knows when I was younger I had reoccuring dreams about cows (with blood dripping down their vampire teeth) eating people. Probably a product of my life-long fear of cows. And anyone who knows me knows I'm not really a farm/ranch/cowboy kind of person. Apparently that gene skipped me. So while Shay and Sidnee were eyeing the bulls with FFA trained skills and making a mental wish list, I was fretting about the mud getting on my boots and wondering who was stupid enough to climb in the pens to walk around with the giant, scary animals. Once they were satisfied they'd seen every last animal, we went back into the barn-that-looked-more-like-a-hotel-than-a-barn-cum-auction-area and got in line for the food (which, of course, was the real reason I came). The salad was delicious, the cheesecake to die for, and the steak...well...I came to the realization that despite my previous declarations, I could never eat a human being. No matter how hungry I was. The steak, though it smelled really good, was bleeding all over my paper plate and soaking through onto the plastic table covering. It wasn't really cooked at all, just browned on the outside, so that the inside was chewy and reminding me very much of the autopsy I'd witnessed. When you get right down to it, flesh all looks like flesh, no matter where it comes from. I tried to eat some, to be polite. I mean, I was surrounded by BIG beef people, all of whom looked like they could beat the crap out of me (and who no doubt could tell I was completely out of my element). But every bite I took made me feel like a cannibal. Unlike some carnivorous vampires (aka my brother), I can't handle the taste of blood. About half way through the dinner I realized a few things. Practically everyone there had a cowboy hat on and the same exact mustache, the ones that look like it's dripping onto their chins. I also realized the only guy I saw there that was remotely attractive was the only one not wearing cowboy gear. That's rather telling. And the third thing I realized? My little sister is smarter than practically everyone on our table. She was holding conversations with doctor so and so from Simplot and miss so and so from Altech. I didn't understand a single flipping word she said, so I started holding coversations in my head with imaginary people. And then the room started to smell like cow poo, so I looked around and noticed the farmhands, or whatever they perfer to be called, had walked in to get some dinner. No one else noticed the smell, I'm sure. To them it no doubt smells like money or washes them in waves of nostalgia. As for me, well, I was wearing Dolce and Gabbana perfume, thinking it would be funny if my reggae ringtone went off, and realizing I don't fit into any category whatsoever. Hmmmmm.....