Adult Entertainment

What a phrase!  An article in the paper today reminded me of my oft repeated statement that anything labelled ‘adult entertainment’ is usually neither very entertaining nor of any interest to real adults.

Violence, insanity, blood-and-guts, and someone else’s sex life – or what passes for same.  Who needs it or wants it?  I can get all the inhumanity and gore I want for 50 cents from the daily newspaper.  Why on earth would I pay $15 to go and see the same sort of thing, but on a bigger screen?

And as for watching other people’s sex lives, to one degree or another, for Pete’s sake, get a life!  If your own life is so dull that that is the best you can do to spice it up, well, I’d say you weren’t trying very hard.

There are real people out there, with real problems and real lives.  The real problems don’t deserve to be made into entertainment either, and people with real lives have no time or interest in watching pretend people with their pretend lives.

Not to say that some fiction is not instructive and/or engrossing, but for me it has to be much more positive or constructive in order to *really* merit the label of adult entertainment.

Another great day

Davina's Pony Ride

The littlest grandchild wanted to go horseback riding too, since the older kids had all gone, and she was quite put out that she could only ride a pony with me leading it, since she wasn’t old enough to do a trail ride on a horse.

We had a great day though.  took a big bag of apple slices and carrot chunks to feed the horses – and she was very brave about that and was soon feeding them well and not flinching and dropping anything.  She even fed the very big horses.

No one had told me though, that leading a pony is worse than leading a mule.  This critter was determined to go where he wanted to go, and when he wanted to go there.  It had rained a lot and was very muddy, so though I started out leading her along the trail, since I wanted her to see the wildflowers and birds in the bush, the pony kept dragging me into the lovely grass so he could snack, or leaning into me with his shoulder and pushing me into the ditches.  I just knew that if we kept on this course that I would end up sitting in the mud somewhere.

So back we went to the farmyard and just walked around the barn and down all the different lanes where it was dryer.  When there had been enough riding, we went back to the yard and found a brush so she could groom the pony a little.

We had taken a picnic lunch, which we ate in the yard, and we walked around to see all the new colts too.  There was a cat to play with, and a trampoline to jump on, so all in all a fun day.

The little one had talked and sung all the way to the farm, but was tired out and slept all the way home.  I think that is the best end to a day with a small child.

General ignorance and more work words

Well, I’ve got more complaints about folks who don’t seem to understand the basics of their jobs – and this time it’s about food.

A couple times lately I’ve seen examples of people who just don’t seem to know what the words in their own job really mean. I know I’ve said that before, but it’s something that puzzles me.

Went to the local bakery a few days ago, and they had what was called a lemon pound cake for sale. I LOVE lemon pound cake. I grabbed it without really looking at it and brought it home, mouth watering for a slice. What a disappointment – it wasn’t pound cake at all, but a regular risen cake. Not the dense, coarse-crumbed mouth-satisfying weight of a pound cake. I’ll tell you I was ready to pound someone.

Then tonight I stopped for a bit of dinner at a Joy (so-called) Bistro. I ordered a wild mushroom and chicken tagliatelli. Mistake. The chicken was dry, gristly and flavourless, and the pasta was really overcooked as were the mushrooms. On top of that, it had some kind of ugly grease it in that just congealed on the sides of the plate. Totally gross! For dessert I ordered a chocolate shortbread with a white chocolate topping. Well, it sure wasn’t shortbread! There was nothing ’short’ about it. It was so hard that I got marks on my palms trying to force the tines of the fork through it to get a piece.

But you know, and it makes me really mad, I still can’t get past the thing of being polite and eating it anyway. If an order is wrong, I can send it back, but when it’s just really badly cooked, I just suffer and shut up – at least until I get here.  Some day I’m going to get it together to send back gross food.

I’m sure most of the people who know me would never believe I have a problem like that, since I’m not generally a shrinking violet in other circumstances. I just think that if someone cooks something so badly once, then the second try isn’t likely to be much better, so it wouldn’t be much use to make a fuss. You just don’t go there any more.

And another thing that’s starting to really bug me is organic meat. It seems to me that those who are in that business neither know how to raise the meat properly or butcher it correctly. I really, really want to be able to eat organic meat, and to support local farmers, but it’s getting increasingly hard because the product is just all wrong.

Sometimes the carcase hasn’t been hung properly, the pork has often been let grow way too big, the chickens haven’t been grain finished – it just goes on and on. And since so many of them have sprung up, you have to be really careful that the meat is not turning since they aren’t vigilant about taking it off the tray when it gets whiffy. Except for one place that I discovered who seem to freeze the meat for their freezer section when it’s on its last legs.

The whole organic thing is really a rip off in many ways. If you look at what they’re allowed to put on the fruits and veggies and still call it organic in many states and provinces, you’re not that much further ahead. And the prices are ridiculous. I have an uncle who went organic back in the ’70s, and always has claimed that organic farming is cheaper, if you know what you’re doing, than conventional methods – so the product should also be cheaper. And if you buy at the farmers markets, there’s no middleman, so it should be cheaper still. But no, it’s 2 to 3 times the price of regular produce and meat – and I don’t think I’m going to pay that anymore.

I still won’t buy meat at the grocery store, since I can’t eat it anyway with all the crap they pump into it, but I know a couple good regular butchers who have always had good stuff, and it’s time to go back.

I do think that the animals are generally treated better at the organic farms though, and that’s the hard part for me. I only eat meat a couple times a week as it is, so maybe it’s time to go vegetarian?

I’m gonna grow moss . . .

What a summer!  It’s enough to make you believe that “they ” are manipulating the weather.  So far we’ve beat the rain record all the way back to 1879.  And of course, they’re screwing it up . . .

My brocolli just grew straight up and fell over with no heads, my tomato blossoms didn’t get pollinated – I guess bees don’t like rain – and many of them just got ripped off by the heavy rain.  And no sun to ripen the few poor specimens that made it through despite all odds.

If it doesn’t dry up and get warm I’m gonna grow moss, I swear.  It looks as if we’re going straight into winter without any nights laying sweating in bed, trying to stay under the fan – in other words, no summer.  I’ve had the furnace on for short periods on two evenings already and it’s only early August.  This just isn’t right . . .

Summer has just zipped by.  Nothing really big happened, though I almost moved to Lindsay.  I had been looking at houses there for a few months, and finally went to the bank and talked about getting another mortgage and renting this place out.  I got verbal approval for a certain amount, then when I went and spent a few days and made an offer, I come back and all of a sudden the bank changed its mind – not to mention they had all the wrong information and so on, and though the loan guy knew I had a home inspection on the Monday, he took off mid-week the week before for vacation and didn’t even tell me the mortgage application had been denied!  This though he promised to call me on the Wednesday and let me know for sure that things were fine.  I’m just glad I thought to call on the Friday, though it sure was embarrassing to have to back out at that point, but since I had to back out anyway, it’s just good I had a chance to do it before I had to pay for the house inspection.

This branch is sure a major bunch of screw-ups.  I decided to move on the house purchase at this time since my current mortgage was up for renewal on August 1st, and I could do it all together.  They finally called today and said my mortgage papers were ready to sign – I gave up calling about a week into the month – it was always “tomorrow, tomorrow”.  This is a new branch of my usual bank, where I’ve always had excellent service – so that makes this even more exasperating.

BAH!!