Ramen

"Have you tried ramen?"

Images of PhDcomic strips with grad students hording packets of cheap instant noodles in their cupboards flash before my eyes.

"... no."

Somehow I didn't think that was the authentic deal.

"Well, I don't think you'll like it but ... it's something you should try."

Not the strongest of recommendations, I admit, but hey I'm game. Also, it turned out to be great. We went into a small cafe-sized place and were immediately confronted with a machine covered with buttons.

"The good thing about this," I was assured by my hosts. "Is that you don't need to speak Japanese to order."

True, but it does require you to have a certain nonchalance about what you'll be eating since I had no idea what any of the buttons said. I pushed a handful of coins into the machine, pressed a button and handed the resulting ticket to the waiter. The result was a steaming bowlful of noodles bathed in a broth with beef. It was very good and slurping is considered completely acceptable in Japan so eating it wasn't the usual headache such soups can be in the West. 

On the way back home I was almost mowed down by a pick-up truck which was reversing into the guest house drive. My frozen shock came not from the maneuver but from the vehicle informing me of its intent in a highly feminine voice somewhat at odds with the beefy worker behind the wheel.  

Hello, do you speak scribble?

"Eigo o hanashimasu ka?"
(Do you speak English?)

**blank look from innocent Japanese victim I've accosted**

Damn it, that sounded so much more fluent in my head. Well, if I start gabbling in English, they're likely to get the idea.

"I have no idea where I am. Seriously, completely lost. Am I even on this map I'm holding? Am I still in Japan? Yes, I must be because you look Japanese, but it's been hours since I've seen something familiar. Is there anything that resembles a Astronomical observatory around here?"

**Look of dawning comprehension appears on face of poor bystander. He looks at my map and points to a place about 5 inches off the side of it.**

"Arigatou!" I stammer and brace myself for a long walk.

Fortunately, where the USA has fire hydrants and the UK postboxes, Japan has drink vending machines. Hot or cold beverages in twenty different permutations, these machines are on every corner, complete with a recycling bin beside them for when you're done with the can. I revived on a mutant-sized can of Mountain Dew and trekked back home.

Upon arriving back at my desk, I discovered I'd been given a fan. It says "Truth" on it in Chinese characters.

How are you? Will you sign to that effect?

"Welcome to Tokyo!"

Excellent, I was desperate to stretch my legs.

"Please remain in your seats to allow the health inspectors to board."

You what? I guess in the wake of swine 'flu, Japan is being careful. I attempted to suppress images of probity-probes as men wearing surgical masks, robes and gloves starting strolling along the aisles of the plane. I tried hard not to sneeze. The passenger sitting next to me clearly had more of a guilty conscience however, and a conversation in rapid (although friendly) Japanese ensued and he was handed a thermometer. I confess that having your neighbour in the tin box that you've been sitting in for the last 13 hours admit illness that excites a response from people who look straight out of the movie "epidemic" does not make for entirely calm viewing. Fortunately, it appeared that his disease was not the disease they had been looking for and we signed health forms promising that we'd not had so much as a sniffle in the last few weeks. I now really needed to sneeze.

Japanese border control has nothing on America. Maybe they felt the health inspectors were enough to scare off future tourists. Everyone was friendly, they all spoke English and the only question I was asked at customs was how long was I staying for. I guess two large suitcases for one week would look a little odd passing through the 'nothing to declare' barrier... Nice, cheerful, calm. Okay, they win. I was freaked out.

To get out to where I was staying, I had to catch an express train into Tokyo, followed by a subway and then a bus. Probability of success? I was estimating about 2%. However, it honestly was the easiest thing in the world. The trains and buses all had electronic signs that told you in Japanese and English where the next stop was and the subways are colour coded.

Then I had dinner and discovered the restaurant had whole rack of different types of loose tea you could make up in your own individual tea pot. Also, that "はし (hashi)" means chopsticks. Hello Japan, we're rolling.

An ode to packing

Straight from the Alanis Morissette Lyric Generator. I think it's going to be a hit.

"I Think"

I think boxes are really a huge problem
I think duct tapes is too much on my mind
I think bubble wrap has got a lot to do with why the world sucks
But what can you do?

Like a cardboard rain, beating down on me
Like a a moving truck line, which won't let go of my brain
Like a cuboid ass, it is in my head
Blame it on packing
Blame it on packing
Blame it on packing

I think containers are gonna drive us all crazy
And breakables make me feel like a child
I think suitcases will eventually be the downfall of civilization
But what can you do?  I said what can you do?

Like a cardboard rain, beating down on me
Like a a moving truck line, which won't let go of my brain
Like a cuboid ass, it is in my head
Blame it on packing
Blame it on packing
Blame it on packing

Like a cardboard rain, beating down on me
Like a cuboid smile, cruel and cold
Like a moving truck's ass, it is in my head
Blame it on packing
Blame it on packing
Blame it on packing

I think my favourite line is "I think bubble wrap has got a lot to do with why the world sucks". Moving trucks arrive tomorrow. It's going to be a long night....

Car Tales

You step out of your car, swing the door shut and then hit the button on your key chain to hear the reassuring "beeb beeb" of the locks swinging into place. Perhaps you double click that same button to hear a long "baaarb" of the car double locking itself. You glance back. Windows shut, sun roof down. Safe as houses.

So how long do you reckon it'd take someone to break in? Well, okay, there's a limit to what protection you could have against a sledgehammer. But such devices are unwieldy, make more noise than your car alarm and tend to look a little ... well, it's hard to pretend you're using one to drop little 5 year old Susie off at school.

Supposing now that you're the one contemplating the sledge hammer. Or perhaps one of your friends has helpfully suggested it because you've just locked your keys inside the car. There they are, sparkling up at you from the passenger seat.

Fortunately for you, you have AAA cover and one call later and there's a rescue mission underway. A man in a truck finally shows up and you bite your finger nails anxiously. Will he need to tow it to a garage? Will the door need to be broken? Is knocking out the window really the only way?

Or will it take 5 seconds, leave the car completely undamaged and you feeling pleased the keys are in your hand but somewhat disturbed by exactly how easy that was?

Apparently the trick involves a tool that looks like a wire coat hanger and one that looks like trowel for setting tiles.

(For the record, it was not me who locked my self out of my vehicle. Nope, I was the one helpfully suggesting the sledgehammer). 

Firefox will tell you ALL what I'm doing

How are you reading this?

Oddly, I have no idea. You might be reading this post on my original blogger blog, girl & kat. Alternatively, this entry might have appeared on your facebook newsfeed as I set up my "notes" to grab new posts from blogger. Some of you may even be scanning through this on LiveJournal, which blogger excitedly emails when it accumulates a new entry. This revelation inevitably leads to the next question:

Why do you have three identical blogs?

See, I've been considering this all day and came to two profound conclusions: (1) This question has no sensible answer, (2) and yet ... I still need all three. I don't like the set-up of facebook's notes to use that as my only blog. Blogger is prettier, I had it first and anyway, that silhouette I drew is just plain cool. LiveJournal is a recent accumulation which I set up to twiddle with role playing. Since I had the account, it seemed silly not to put something up there. So I got blogger to send across the posts it had.

But it's still not enough.

One of the faintly dissatisfactory things about the above arrangement is that my post looses all its formatting and html links when it's emailed across to LJ. I can fix it quickly, but it does mean I have to log onto both blogger and LJ for the post to display nicely on both. This is clunky and really, I'm all about the one button click.

So hello from ScribeFire, a firefox add-on that allows you to edit multiple blogs at once. This should post to both LJ and blogger and keep all my formatting and add-ins. The only thing it doesn't do is allow me to select my LJ userpic but, meh, none of the other blog editors I procrastinated looking at researched did either.

In case any facebook or twitter users are reading this and smugly thinking, 'ah ha! At least she updates her status directly in our programs.' No, you're both wrong. I use firefox to update twitter that then updates my fb status. Hmm, now I think on it, I wonder if firefox can program for me to. How about packing?

Good grief, could such excessive electronic geekiness be topped?

Actually, yes, I suspect it could. I, at least, have to be at a computer. iPhone users, you know who you are...

Frost in May

It is a gorgeous mid-May morning. The sun sparkles off Jenny Lake in the Grand Tetons, reflecting the clear blue sky as temperatures soar into the 70s. Walkers in t-shirts amble off along the lake side's "must-do" walk, picnics in their backpacks.

I am:

(a) Sunbathing by the lake.
(b) Sauntering along the path, idly looking for the park's population of moose.
(c) Inching along a snow laden precipice a mile along said path, trying not to sink thigh deep into the snow drift.

... you only picked (c) because no one would make that up, didn't you?

It's the strangest thing. The snow falls so thick and deep in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone that the resulting drifts take forever to melt. You start off strolling down a sun-baked trail, regretting not packing your flip flops, turn the corner and boom! You're scrambling over thickly compacted snow that stretches for miles. It's how I imagine riding on the Knight Bus must be like. I contemplated this as I inched along a single-person track along side a near-vertical drop to the gushing waterfalls below.

Despite the ... hellishly unnatural weather ... hydro-challenged nature of the walk, the view of the falls at the end of the trail was spectacular. I also saw a beaver, three marmots, a moose, ospreys and a bald eagle teaching its chick to fly. All of which, it must be said, handled the snow rather better than me. God bless all creatures... and indeed my sturdy water-proof walking boots.

Bison and elks and bears, oh my!

Hello bear, my aren't you big?

Hello from Yellowstone National Park where I have just narrowly avoided been mauled, eaten and probably having my wallet nicked by a bear. Well okay, it was the other side of the river from our car, hanging out behind some trees. I confess we wouldn't have noticed except we had to slow right down for the ten people (it is low season) with telescopic lenses blocking the road. I think it was a black bear, but I only caught a view of its side so I wouldn't like to bet it wasn't a grizzly (both types roam Yellowstone). Hopefully we can examine the remains of said photographers tomorrow to determine the source of the attack.

Apart from bears, I have seen elk, deer, ospreys and herds upon herds of bison with babies in tow. Oddly, baby bison look more like cows than their heavy faced parents. They also, old and young, don't give a hoot about cars. While we have frequently seen them on the roads, today we were caught in a mist of a bison migration where maybe 50 bison were moving from one section of the park to another. Well, I guess the road was the easiest route. However, while at a standstill surrounded by my bovine friends, I started to wonder... do bison have a sense of humour? The unmistakable fact was that the animals moved to block both sides of the road. If one side of the road became clear enough to allow cars through, a bison would step out of the line of its fellows to stand, casually, in the centre of that lane. Sports car, SUV or RV alike, nothing was too big or shiny to be stared down by a bison.

However, after a slow day travelling behind them I got my revenge. Bison... delightful served beside mashed potato.

Dragons cost extra

Just over three weeks until I head for Japan and leave America after 5 years working here. Well, okay, come November I'll be just over the boarder in Canada but that's the Commonwealth! It's practically like coming home! But with more snow.

So, almost all my possessions need to go in boxes and into storage somewhere in Florida. I need to go to Japan with useful things such as a toothbrush and my laptop. My car is going to one friend, my cat is going to another and box of things that aren't needed in Japan but might be needed before all the rest of my gubbins arrives in Canada is going ... somewhere. Got that?

I picked out a moving company based on three quotes from large national firms, since horror stories abounded about the smaller cheaper places. The quotes were ... largely incomprehensible and almost entirely incomparable. So really how much this will cost me remains a mystery. I understand the problem; the 5 months of storage while I take off on an Asian adventure and the t.b.a. destination address does mean the companies can only estimate their costs. For instance, a 1 floor house with no outer wall and a humongous driveway is considerably easier to maneuver my desk into than a tower apartment with decaying wrought iron outer stair, guarded by a dragon. I'm pretty sure dragons cost extra.

Still, the point is, I have signed up with a moving company. I have visas, passport and plane tickets. I have a huge amount of pent up excitement that causes my downstairs neighbour to complain about my dancing round the room. I mean, it's almost organised.

Hello passport, how I've missed you!

"Any requests regarding the status of an application, MUST be submitted in writing, either by letter or by fax. We are only able to reply within 8 to 10 weeks. "

.... or you could just complain on your blog and hey presto! Passport arrives in the mail the next day! Yatta! All is well.

Oddly, my passport itself is completely unaltered. No pretty visa sticker covering a page or a thick wad of official looking paperwork. In fact, all I received was a black & white sheet with a staple hole torn on one corner saying 'yeah, s'cool' and some vague mention of more to come when I actually reached the border. It's amusingly un-American.

The trouble with tribbles

Hello May 4th. Departure date for Japan T-5 weeks.

Japanese visa? Check.
Moving company? Check.
Flights? Check.
Passport? .... Ah.

Sad, but true. The Canadians have stolen my passport. In an impressive act of organisation, I had submitted my visa application for my job in Ontario this fall at the Canadian Consulate in NYC while there on a work trip. It was the perfect plan; I'd go to Japan, return to the USA briefly on a tourist visa to collect cat & car, then speed off up to Canada with all documents in hand.

Maybe it was the confusion of someone applying for a work permit and not a permission-to-enter-Canada-having-been-banned like everyone else who was there (seriously!). Maybe it was the excitement of seeing a British passport in New York. Perhaps they liked my face, or perhaps they didn't.

Panic rising.

Suppress it. It's going to be fine. I can just contact the Consulate and inquire as to my application status, right?

From the website for the New York Consulate:

"Due to Canadian Privacy legislation, individual cases cannot be discussed over the telephone and must be dealt with by letter, by email or by fax."

Panic RISING.

Well, actually email is better anyway. You get a record of the conversation and I actually hate phone. The website continues:

"Any requests regarding the status of an application, MUST be submitted in writing, either by letter or by fax."

PANIC RISING.

Okay okay, not great, but we can work with this. I'll send them a letter by fax.

"We are only able to reply within 8 to 10 weeks."

...... I can panic now, right?

Braids for white kids

10 things you didn't know about getting your hair braided (and which you might not get told since the hair salon is used to dealing with people who know better).

First of all, when I say 'braids' let's just clarify what we're talking about. For anyone who hasn't run into me in the last couple of months, I'm not thinking of some straight up-down french plait. I'm talking about 8 millions 6 hundred thousand 1 thousand 9 hundred and 12 little bitsy braids all over the head (okay, so maybe that number isn't 100% accurate, but it's got a good feel to it). The overall look was pretty dramatic and people stopped to comment on it all the time, which was awesome. Now it's all out though, I thought it might be interesting to recap on the things I learnt.

(1) Most of the hair braids are made of synthetic hair. I think I did know when I saw braided hair that synthetic hair was wound in with it, but I didn't appreciate how much. Apparently, you can just braid the hair as it is, but the braids end up super-fine which means they don't last that long and the whole look is rather thin, which rather defies the point of braiding it to begin with. Synthetic hair is cheap (only a few dollars per packet and I think I needed 4 packets for my shoulder-length hair) but if you have light coloured hair, you will need to get this in advance because chances are the salon will only have black and dark brown hair in stock. Since you're weaving in hair, it might be fun to put a totally different colour in with it. I had strands of blue added to each of my braids.

(2) Hell, it takes ages. The reason braiding is expensive is that someone has to sit there for hours and do it. You're looking at 3-5 hours depending on how thick the braids are you want. Also...

(3) .... if you get beads put on the bottom, then you can only have the finest braids and the beads take a lot of extra time. This was something I didn't appreciate until too late. If you heat the ends of synthetic hair, it seals itself which is a quick way of securing the end of the braid. If, on the other hand, you want a bead on the end, then you have to add the bead and an elastic band which will add several hours onto the process. On the other hand, the beads are cool so....

(4) Your braided hair will be longer than your normal hair. Apparently, it's normal to continue braiding the synthetic hair several inches past the end of your hair, so the bottom part of each braid does not contain any of your natural hair. Quite useful if you just want to cut the beads off rather than undo each one.

(5) For the first couple of days, the braids feel really tight. After this, the synthetic hair relaxes and it's much more comfortable. I read on the web that some people take aspirin for the first few days, but mine wasn't painful enough for that, just a bit sore.

(6) Sleeping took longer to get used to, largely because of all those beads! It's hard to know where to put them. I wrapped a scarf around the top of my head to protect the braids a bit while I slept (though the presence of the beads means I didn't move around too much in the night).

(7) Washing was no problem. Everyone asked me how I managed this, but I just soaped down the braids as usual in the shower and then used a spray-on conditioner afterwards. It seemed to work fine, since my hair wasn't a nasty mass when I removed the braids, although the synthetic hair felt a bit sticky as I unwound it. Possibly this is because it's harder to wash the shampoo out of it.

(8) I had my braids in for about 6 weeks (I lost count, but it's close to that +/- 1). After that time, I could see I had about an inch of hair growth before the braids started. A few braids near the back which didn't have much real hair woven in slid clean out which was an effective, if creepy, way of removing them. The braids themselves get frayed over time as parts of your actual hair escape. I thought this might be a bigger problem than it was for me, but there comes a point when the hair style is clearly at the end of its life.

(9) You loose an alarming amount of hair when you unbraid yourself. It's not really surprising, since for the last x-weeks you've lost no hair, whereas you'd normally loose a bit everyday from brushing. Now you loose all that at once. But it's still a little disconcerting. I found I had a number of small but ferocious tangles but largely my hair was in good shape.

(10) Beware of sunburn for the first few weeks. Your scalp is very exposed!

It's good to be bad

Star Wars, James Bond, Batman... you have to love stories with really bad baddies. I don't mean some confused, misunderstood fellow who is a good sort underneath. I mean the sort of person who, under no circumstances whatsoever, would you ever want to give your last rolo to. With such an individual, you can really get behind the hero as he seeks to destroy him and watch with satisfaction as he's pounded to a pulp and locked up for life... or at least until the box office decides there has to be a sequel. It's like sadism with no guilt.

Yet, when you stop and consider it, is being the good guy really the best option? Take, for instance, the case of Dolores Umbridge in the later Harry Potter books. There is no denying that she is one nasty piece of work. She terrorizes all the students at Hogwarts before switching sides in a pin drop to throw her toad-like self in with Voldermort's crowd. At the end of book 5, you do have the satisfaction of seeing her carried away by centaurs to undergo alien-style anal probing with hoofs (okay, so that was never actually specified, but you find the idea a good one too, just admit it), but then she's rescued to show up again in book 7 tourturing more people in the Ministry of Magic. Finally, when Harry prevails, we are told she is locked up, but is this really very satisfying? I tell you no! The prison is no longer controlled by soul sucking beasts of darkness. It's probably run by an ex-bus conductor named Stan who hands out free sundaes once a week.

Now let's pause for a moment to think what would happen if Harry had lost. The lucky characters would be dead and then rest would be at the mercy of the Death Eaters and Dementors (who, for the uninitiated have names like "Lucius" in the first instance and don't even have names in the second. Now that's scary).

So if you're in a situation where you have to pick a side, isn't it worth taking a moment to think what would happen in all eventual outcomes? If you pick the "goodies", then the reward if you win is probably to return to your life and raise some chickens. If you loose it's probably TOURTURE IN THE FIREY PITS OF HELL. On the other hand, if you become a "baddie" then your reward for success is UNIMAGINABLE WEALTH AND POWER versis a cosy prison cell with your own TV.

It's a tough choice, so pick carefully.

A bus driver's advice

"And here," announced our Savannah tour guide in a cheery voice. "is the shop you can get home made candy. Totally delicious, but if you eat too much, you'll get a stomach ache!"

This, combined with warnings about crossing Bay Street (traffic lights often optional to drivers) and walking down the stone steps to the river side (footing often optional to pre-ER visitors) formed the basis for good advice that afternoon. The only mildly amusing point was that the above tips was issued multiple times and that myself and friend were the youngest people on the touring tram. (Apparently on Thursdays most people don't skip out of work to take a road trip to a historical town in Georgia). But then, you can't trust anyone with knitting needles to maintain self-control when confronted with candy, can you?

The tour was actually excellent, giving a great overview of Savannah. We rattled around the squares admiring the haunted houses, beautiful cathedrals, grave stones 11 year old boys with 12 year old sons and discussing the trenches piled with (now) dead (but at the time not so much) soldiers... I'm detecting an over-arching theme here, but I can't quite put my finger on what it was. Either way, the afternoon found myself and my friend going in search of this
sweet shop, chuckling at the wisdom of bus drivers.

The shop did not fail to disappoint. Caramel apples twice the size of my fist were laid out in rows, each with a different coating of chocolate and sprinklings. Racks of cookies, piles of truffles and multiple chocolate covered ... well, who knows really, but how could you go wrong?

I bought a bag of truffles and a huge ice cream in a giant, chocolate sprinkled cone with multicoloured "birthday cake" ice cream on top and pistachio underneath. Unconventional perhaps, but what an inspiration!

I then proceeded to be horribly sick for the rest of the afternoon.

Moral of his story: you're never too old to listen to bus drivers.

But then, it was worth it. Oh yes, trust me, you should have seen this ice cream.

Barbie Dolls

I never liked Barbie dolls and I have always been extremely proud of that fact. Not for me was the girlish past time of dressing dolls in the latest fashions, plaiting their hair or trying out doll makeup. No siree! I was into space ships and lego and .... a huge collection of pink equine plastic. Far more cool. Yes.

Nowadays, I reserve the term 'Barbie doll' to slam down slimmer, prettier girls than me who I dislike on sight. But there's no denying Barbie's appeal as she reaches her 50th birthday of modelling plastic feminine ideals.

Like any long-lived celebrity, she's come under a fair amount of abuse. Top of the list is Barbie's almost unobtainable figure which is perceived as a trouble spot for weight conscious teens. Allegedly, if Barbie was scaled to human size, she would be toppled by her humongous bust. A more recent report by the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7920962.stm) suggests the situation isn't quite so bad, but Barbie's figure is unlikely to be achievable for more than 1 in 100,000 women. Additionally, she is almost always blond although one of the first version of the doll was also available as a brunette. This tiny waisted, big bosomed blond bimbo is apparently the sole cause of all teenage girls problems, from anorexia to bullying to global warming.

While in many instances I scoff in a similar fashion at Barbie dolls, I do now wonder whether we're being a bit harsh. Okay, so the girl looks like she belongs on page 3, but the thing is, Barbie isn't a naked model. Her careers include doctor, vet, jet pilot, fire fighter, astronaut, cow girl, waitress and even the US president (one of Barbie's rare appearances as a African-American doll). In fact, it would seem Barbie could be anything she desires, reguardless of what she's been before, and isn't that exactly the message we want to give to our daughters?

Barbie also seems to be practicing safe sex, since after 50 years with her on / off boyfriend Ken and brief fling with the surfer Blaine, she's remained childless, preferring to pursue her 50-odd careers instead. (Of course, this could be connected with both her and Ken being named after their founder's children, making them practically siblings). While rumours abounded about the origin of "Barbie's little sister Shelly", she should still be applauded in emphasising the choices available for young women, without resorting to a version of "abortion Barbie".

This doesn't excuse Barbie's impossible looks but, as one reader of the above BBC article commented, boys play with alien villains all the time yet there remains a relatively low take-up rate of adult plastic surgery to make them look like Predator. Although... I do now wonder if I could be given a unicorn horn...

Once there lived a franky grotesque princess

The inaccuracy of fairy tales has been bothering me of late. Take your average story, aimed at an audience primarily consisting of 6 year old girls in pink trainers. A beautiful princess is miss-treated, probably by an evil step-mother, but who overcomes all the odds to marry a handsome prince and be born away to a life of wedded bliss.

Firstly, we must ask ourselves, is this girl really likely to be attractive? In such stories, the very mention of a crown basks the owner in an unobtainable ethereal light. In fact, their uncommon beauty is a common way of identifying such royal members, even when they are undercover. The reality however, is that royalty means this wench comes from an interbred, incestuous litter rife with inherited diseases and probably considerably too few grandparents for a healthy gene pool. This can hardly be the way to produce stunning good looks. Stunted looks and retardation are far more likely, which is probably how such individuals are really identified while in hiding.

This child's grotesquely bad looks are far more likely to be the reason why her step-mother (also probably one of her cousins), despite being hideously ugly herself, decides that the girl has to go. Probably it is a cost-saving measure to reduce the number of steam-cleans the castle carpets need after the servants vomit from seeing the girl first thing in the morning.

Cast out into the wilderness (and basing the details on a popular Disney-made franchise), the only place where this vilely deformed child can find shelter is in the household of 7 vertically challenged men, whose diminutive stature enables them to avoid the full frontal of the girl's cross-eyes stare.

Being severely mentally challenged, the revolting girl draws attention to her whereabouts through her warbling singing and the stampede of wildlife that charges in to see what has destroyed their home. Her stupidity is only matched by that of her step-mother/cousin who tricks her into an enchanted sleep, rather than decapitating her deformed head.

Placed in a glass coffin as a popular horror show item, our beastly little girl is awoken by a handsome prince (but no doubt actually suffering from similar aesthetic issues) and carried away for a life of bliss.

Apart from the obvious fact this has done nothing to improve the gene pool, this benighted child is a princess. This doesn't just mean her atrocious ugliness has to be politically denoted charming, it means she's the heiress to a kingdom. She can't just ride off to a neighbouring land! She has responsibilities. Additionally, what was a prince doing there to begin with? You can't just stroll through another country as the heir apparent for a rival land. The only two options are that he was actually heading an army poised for invasion, in which case our said princess was less of a bride than a prisoner of war, or he was her brother. Given what we've already seen, either seem quite likely.

To the small girl in the red cart...

The USA has a very successful website called "craigslist". Divided city by city, people post here to advertise as diverse objects as furniture, guitar lessons and, indeed, themselves. Within the "personal" section of the site, there is a category called "missed connections". Largely devoted to love interests, people post here when they wish to contact someone they briefly saw at a party / on the subway / the-neighbour-upstairs-with-the-annoying-dog whose name they never got the opportunity to discover. In this vein, I have drafted the following letter to the small girl I met yesterday on the way back from the Hogtown Medieval Faire.

To the small girl being pulled in a red cart on her way back from the Hogtown Faire,

It is true that you did have a better deal than me last evening. You, sitting there in your shiny red cart, while your brother towed it along the road for the hour-long trek back to the car park. I had to walk, clutching the giant soda bottle I hadn't been able to contemplate a free refill on. And yes, I was tired and maybe slightly envious of your cushy deal. Indeed, you might have felt that, given I had no shiny cart, I should have left the Faire earlier, enabling me to catch one of the buses to the car park before the line got too long to make it practical. You may even have felt that, given my situation, I should have arrived at the Faire early enough in the morning to park my car close to the Faire entrance and not in the overflow car park a few miles away. I don't know, we didn't get a chance to exchange thoughts.

That aside, I feel you labelling me a 'loser', as you so clearly did by making the "L" sign on your forehead, was uncalled for. You may be only 3, but there was clear consideration as you gazed up at my face before lifting your right hand in that premeditated gesture.

I feel obliged to point out that your situation was not as secure as you so clearly seemed to believe. I could, for instance, have reached down and tossed you from your cart and taken your place. Then, not only would you have had to walk, but your brother, who was likely no more than 10, would have been left pulling me; a 28 year old woman full to the brim with soda and a giant cinnamon bun roughly the size of your head. As it was, I noted with some satisfaction, your brother got board of his burden (perhaps you too, had partaken in a cinnamon bun) and dropped the cart handle without warning, and it was only your parents quick action that prevented it from rolling down the road into a bush.

So next time you're out there, in your shiny red cart, you just remember that you're not so big yet, nor able to consume nearly enough cinnamon goodness to make a difference, that you can call any person you see a loser. They might just extract revenge. As it was, the humiliation you caused me resulted in my sharp exit (accompanied by friends in mild hysterics). But next time, NEXT TIME, I will take your cart and force you to carry my soda bottle.