Pointy...Bedointy...
Nov. 23rd, 2004 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rain_gryphonSo, last night I was making hard sugar candy for Christmas, the sort that involves dumping oil of peppermint into a 150C sugar solution before pouring it out on a cookiesheet to cool. I make this stuff every year, but I've always been in a much larger house or apartment. The current place is small. I should have taken that into account in my planning. Under the circumstances, I also probably shouldn't have made a double batch.
The kitchen is always unbearably pepperminty after the candy is poured. This time, though, the whole apartment got that way. Flaster ran into my bedroom and hid. Literally every inch of my skin was cool and tingly with that 'peppermint' feeling, the one that you get in your mouth from eating peppermint. This was like whole body immersion, though. It's a weird sensation, and impossible to adequately describe. Today my clothes smell of peppermint :)
What's interesting too is that peppermint oil makes me cough, but cinnamon oil makes me sneeze.
If I ever become an evil overlord, I'll celebrate Xmas by putting my enemies into the Peppermint Chamber....
*****
On the bright side, if the place ever catches fire and fills with acrid smoke, I now know where Flaster will go to hide.
*****
Adapted from a reply to a friend's LJ. I think it stands on its own, though:
I think in general Brits and Commonwealthers undervalue the importance of the Monarchy to a stable and civil society. The Canadians I know seem consistently appalled at just how feral and vicious Americans can be, yet these very same people will sneer and turn their nose up at any mention of the Queen, professing (and apparently believing) that the rule of the common man is the sure cure for all evils.
If you look at the United States today, this is where you get with the rule of the common man. We're rich and powerful, but mainly because we never let any consideration of decency or the rights of the weak stand in our way. God help you if you can't defend what's yours. We talk a lot about how rights and dignity derive from natural law, but the concept of the inalienable rights of man didn't really help the indians much whenever they had anything that we wanted; nor does it seem to help the poor very much when they can be exploited for gain.
When you give up the Monarchy, you free everyone to do anything the majority dictates, and is capable of enforcing. Anything. Americans are taught from the cradle to worship that idea without thinking, and way too many Commonwealthers seem to think it's a recipe for Utopia. In reality it's the law of the jungle in fancy dress.
The existence of the Queen somehow protects the weak and exploitable. The indians are Her subjects, just as the poor are. I think that single concept - that your fellow citizens are also answerable to and in the care of the Queen, just as you are - is the single most important difference between the US and the Commonwealth. The Canadians never slaughtered their indians en masse like we did. They don't let their poor die for lack of medical care and housing like we do. They *could* do those things - they elect their government more or less as we do. They don't though, and I think the concept of everyone being the Queen's subjects is why.
*****
Last night I dreamed that I was riding along in a sort of open-topped jalopy with my mother and my stepfather. We had a flat tire, and stopped at this little service station to get it fixed. The owner was very old, and had some model racing cars on display. These turned out to be models of cars that he'd either driven or crewed. One of them represented a racing motorcycle welded to the side of a modified stock car kind of like a sidecar, except that the car and motorcycle both had an engine and driver. He explained that they raced like this in 1947, but then gave up on the idea because it didn't work too well. He had a kind of hobby store in there too mixed in with the service station, but I couldn't find a model of the car-motorcycle hybrid. I ended up buying some WWI British soldiers in 33mm scale. He also had a glass floor with electric trains beneath it.
I should probably draw the hybrid. I pictured it very vividly, and in colour. It was a late 30s sedan with amateurish sheet metal fairings added on, painted red and blue. Sitting here writing this, I just realized that the colour scheme was based on the Noc-Out Hose Clamp Special from the 1941 Five Hundred, but using darker glitter shades. I can just see this on the cover of some old Lindberg models box.
*****
I need to finish my model of Dan Gurney's Ford GT40. It was coming along nicely, then everything else intervened. Maybe I'll work some on that over Thanksgiving.
*****
It's puerile, yet entertaining, to listen to 50s love songs, and mentally replace occurrences of the word 'kiss' with 'kick', then imagine it acted out as a music video.
*****
Equally, I've never been able to listen to the line about 'raise her head [to give her] one last kiss' from "Teen Angel" without picturing the hero hunting around after the wreck and picking up his girlfriend's decapitated head. Apart from that one unfortunate image, it's a very moving song.
The kitchen is always unbearably pepperminty after the candy is poured. This time, though, the whole apartment got that way. Flaster ran into my bedroom and hid. Literally every inch of my skin was cool and tingly with that 'peppermint' feeling, the one that you get in your mouth from eating peppermint. This was like whole body immersion, though. It's a weird sensation, and impossible to adequately describe. Today my clothes smell of peppermint :)
What's interesting too is that peppermint oil makes me cough, but cinnamon oil makes me sneeze.
If I ever become an evil overlord, I'll celebrate Xmas by putting my enemies into the Peppermint Chamber....
*****
On the bright side, if the place ever catches fire and fills with acrid smoke, I now know where Flaster will go to hide.
*****
Adapted from a reply to a friend's LJ. I think it stands on its own, though:
I think in general Brits and Commonwealthers undervalue the importance of the Monarchy to a stable and civil society. The Canadians I know seem consistently appalled at just how feral and vicious Americans can be, yet these very same people will sneer and turn their nose up at any mention of the Queen, professing (and apparently believing) that the rule of the common man is the sure cure for all evils.
If you look at the United States today, this is where you get with the rule of the common man. We're rich and powerful, but mainly because we never let any consideration of decency or the rights of the weak stand in our way. God help you if you can't defend what's yours. We talk a lot about how rights and dignity derive from natural law, but the concept of the inalienable rights of man didn't really help the indians much whenever they had anything that we wanted; nor does it seem to help the poor very much when they can be exploited for gain.
When you give up the Monarchy, you free everyone to do anything the majority dictates, and is capable of enforcing. Anything. Americans are taught from the cradle to worship that idea without thinking, and way too many Commonwealthers seem to think it's a recipe for Utopia. In reality it's the law of the jungle in fancy dress.
The existence of the Queen somehow protects the weak and exploitable. The indians are Her subjects, just as the poor are. I think that single concept - that your fellow citizens are also answerable to and in the care of the Queen, just as you are - is the single most important difference between the US and the Commonwealth. The Canadians never slaughtered their indians en masse like we did. They don't let their poor die for lack of medical care and housing like we do. They *could* do those things - they elect their government more or less as we do. They don't though, and I think the concept of everyone being the Queen's subjects is why.
*****
Last night I dreamed that I was riding along in a sort of open-topped jalopy with my mother and my stepfather. We had a flat tire, and stopped at this little service station to get it fixed. The owner was very old, and had some model racing cars on display. These turned out to be models of cars that he'd either driven or crewed. One of them represented a racing motorcycle welded to the side of a modified stock car kind of like a sidecar, except that the car and motorcycle both had an engine and driver. He explained that they raced like this in 1947, but then gave up on the idea because it didn't work too well. He had a kind of hobby store in there too mixed in with the service station, but I couldn't find a model of the car-motorcycle hybrid. I ended up buying some WWI British soldiers in 33mm scale. He also had a glass floor with electric trains beneath it.
I should probably draw the hybrid. I pictured it very vividly, and in colour. It was a late 30s sedan with amateurish sheet metal fairings added on, painted red and blue. Sitting here writing this, I just realized that the colour scheme was based on the Noc-Out Hose Clamp Special from the 1941 Five Hundred, but using darker glitter shades. I can just see this on the cover of some old Lindberg models box.
*****
I need to finish my model of Dan Gurney's Ford GT40. It was coming along nicely, then everything else intervened. Maybe I'll work some on that over Thanksgiving.
*****
It's puerile, yet entertaining, to listen to 50s love songs, and mentally replace occurrences of the word 'kiss' with 'kick', then imagine it acted out as a music video.
*****
Equally, I've never been able to listen to the line about 'raise her head [to give her] one last kiss' from "Teen Angel" without picturing the hero hunting around after the wreck and picking up his girlfriend's decapitated head. Apart from that one unfortunate image, it's a very moving song.
