So, today was the annual trek into that blatantly innacurate anochronism known as a rennaissance festival, or renfest for short. Specifically, we went to Scarborough Faire.

Before I regale you with the events of this day’s excursion, I just want to take this brief time to set forth my viewpoint on these festivals in general.

Now, although they can have some extremely enjoyable moments, personally I have little faith in the “historical accuracy” of these festivals. Most of the Players (Player being another word for actor for those of you playing along at home) couldn’t act their way out of a leaking, wet paper bag if their lives depended on it and they sport a muddled cross-section of fashion faux pas from the 10^th Century through to the 18^th. They butcher the Queen’s English with alarming and shameless regularity and no matter how many ways you slice it, Having gypsies, knights, pirates, spanish moors, highland scots, vikings, englsh tudor monarchs and french musketeers all in one place at the same time tends to stretch one’s level of plausibility to the breaking point.

Out of all that mess, I think the butchering of the English language and the gross historical innaccuracies are probably my biggest gripes. Not only am I an English major, but I’m also an amateur history buff (especially of medieval europe and north africa) and what these people are doing in the name of “history” irks me to no end for its blatant innaccuracies. I like my history to be real, not to be some watered down fun event seen through the rose-coloured glasses of some daydreaming romantic. I may not like the squalor and filth that most of the population of medieval europe had no choice but to live in, but I despise the fact that these festivals try desperately to make you believe that only the way of life was the pampered and privileged life of the noble classes. The 14^th Century sucked people. The Black plague sucked people. Personal Hygiene was nonexistent people. Hullo! These things happenned. Quit trying to make believe that all everyone back then ever did was run around spouting “thee” and “thou” every third word. Hearing people “thee” and “thou” every other word starts to feel like nails running down a chalkboard after about the 4th time. And to top it off, I tend to take the mimicking of accents fairly seriously… or at least british/scottish/irish accents, and to hear a non-native try to produce an authentic lilting irish brogue or scottish burr is frustrating to say the least. After awhile I just want to reach out and throttle the wee bastard for trying to give the real scots/celts/brits a bad name. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but there are some things that I consider sacrosanct.

I know this is all in good fun and some people would say I’m being overly sensitive over a stupid series of minor issues, but that’s how I see things and I doubt that will ever change. Some things just bug the living fuck out of me…

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the festival to the bone. There are tons of interesting vendors selling lots of handcrafted knick-knacks of all shapes and sizes as well as quite a few excellent shows and performances. Sure the items are overpriced and the food is occasionally questionable but if you look hard enough there will always be something fun that you can do. Hey if nothing else you can always just stare at the bevvy of scantily clad wenches and muscled men in leather (depending on your preference). Or if the mood suits, you can try to see what really is under a “scotsman’s” kilt.

…

And now to today’s festivities…

Well, as I said earlier, today we (myself, my wife and her mom and dad) went to Scarborough. The weather started out fairly overcast and all the weather reports we had couldn’t decide whether there would be a thunderstorm in the afternoon or not. We decided to risk getting a little wet, and headed out. We arrived a little behind schedule and missed a small bit of the opening ceremonies. From my comments above you’ll all note that for me this was no stellar loss, but as this was Rachel’s dad’s first time going, we wanted him to experience everything.

Once inside we made our annual wandering trek towards the fabled delicacy known as Steak on a Stake and then towards the hillarious comedic stylings of Don Juan & Miguel. We managed to miss the first show due to the fact that we were taking our time letting Rachel’s dad snoop through the vendor stalls and ogle some of the scantily-clad girls selling flowers as they passed. *grin*. It wasn’t a big deal though as we caught the early afternoon show and laughed till our cheeks hurt. They put on a great show. If you have the chance of seeing them, I highly recommend it.

The crowds were fairly light in the morning as most folks probably stayed away with the threat of rain, which was good because we could explore the booths and stalls at our lesiure but also was bad as most of the hawkers were desperate for a sale and so we were innundated with fake fourteenth century British accents cajoling us to try their wares. My nails on a chalkboard meter was rising steadily. By midafternoon though all we had seen of the rain was a light sprinkle and the crowds started to get thicker so the hawkers had more targets and we were harassed less.

I won’t bore you with telling you about all the shops we went into as many of them were just carbon copies of each other, with thematic variations such as artist’s location, materials used, or just different colours available. Instead I’ll just blather on about the various cool demonstrations and shows we took in.

As I said already, we saw Don Juan and Miguel which was amazing as always. It may have even been more funny this year because they actually screwed up visibly and cracked themselves up more than once. It was just a great time all around.

I also was hypnotically drawn (and dragged everyone along with me) to a sheepherding demonstration using my favourite breed of dog, the border collie. Now for me, herding sheep is about as interesting as watching paint dry, that’s why I’ll never be a farmer, but watching the dogs and looking at them work was brilliant. They were gorgeous. I love the way they look, act and just are. They’re smart, athletic and as lovable as can be. We went over and petted the dogs after the show and that in and of itself made my day as I instantly became the new best friend to all the dogs there. To me, there is nothing more heartlifting and thereputic in the world as the unconditional, exhuberant affection a dog can provide…

*Ahem* I’m going to move on before I go off on a tangent about the merits of dogs over other pets… and before I start to talk about the puppies for sale….

We also took in a glassblowing demonstration which was interesting despite having a poor view of the work as it progressed. Glassblowing is one of those fine arts where a master craftsman can make things look so simple and can produce works of amazing beauty with so little effort that it fools you into thinking anyone can do it.

The final demonstration of the day was a falconry demonstration which, despite having a flock of really cool raptors, leaned too heavily towards the preachy “save our environment” bandwagon for my tastes. Not that I’m against saving the environment, it’s just that I went in expecting to see more falconry demonstrations and less preachiness. In a moment of poignant irony, the narrator for the falconry demonstration just happenned to be wearing a monk’s cassock. Strangely fitting if you ask me… but who knows it could have just been by chance. The birds were very cool in and of themselves. We saw two red-tailed hawks, one with a genetically recessive trait that made his feathers all white as opposed to the natural tawny brown. They also had a peregrine falcon, the fastest animal on the planet, but we never got to see it fly, which to me was a big dissapointment. We also saw a great horned owl, a vulture and a harrison’s hawk, of which only the vulture gave us a decent display of a bird in flight as he swooped over our heads by inches.

Overall it was a good show and a good way to end the day. We collected our last few remaining knick-knacks and headed for home. The weather wasn’t great but it didn’t stop us from having a great time. If we’re lucky, Rachel and I may go back before the season ends but for now all we have is the anticipation of next year.

Okay… and just because I’m on a roll here and there isn’t much else to say….

How about some more quizzes.

Who is Your 80’s Movie Icon Alter-Ego?

Which Hacker’s Character Are You?

Which Buffy Girl Are You?

Which Buffy Guy Are You?

Which Breakfast Clubber Are You?

All ducks aren’t sweet and innocent and you prove that. You have a nasty streak.

Find your inner rubber ducky.

Okay… Being the total Neil Gaiman/Sandman Fanboy that I am, I just HAD to post this

Which Member of the Endless Are You?

PS – I recommend opening it in any browser other than NS 4.7x

Okay. I found this and I just HAD to share.

How much of a freak are you?

As you can probably tell, my last couple of posts have been fairly negative in theme and direction. As I said last night, this is probably due to the extreme amounts of frustration that not being able to update or tweak my site has caused me. Unfortunately there is sweet-fuck-all that I can do about it at the moment so griping and venting is about my only outlet. So bear with me as it will probably continue for the near future or until things change at my ISP.

In other news though, I’ve been pondering a comment that my darling wife made to me in passing while we were on our honeymoon and it has sort of stuck with me to the point that I’m going to blather on to you all about it *grin*

The comment she made was that if there was anyone she knew that would be a Buddhist, it would be me. Now I snickered a little and made some pithy comment at the time like any good Irish protestant lad would (not that I’m technically a “good” protestant or anything) but after a time I got to thinking about it some more.

Now on one hand, it would seem that my wife was implying that nothing much phases me and I live my life in some Zen-like cocoon and some times, that is exactly how I live my life. It tends to be more of a trance than a cocoon though as there are days when I don’t notice much of anything. On the other hand though, what she said could also mean that my outlook on life seemed to coincide with many of the Buddhist and zen philosophies.

After thinking on it in the time since we returned from our honeymoon, I’ve come to the conclusion that she is probably right on both points. My world views and outlook do tend to follow some natural zen path through everything I do. I tend to take the non-confrontational path more often than not, and I also try to see through all the dross and mumbo-jumbo that surrounds ideas and dogmas to see the crucial central lesson at the core.

Now that isn’t to say that I’m going to go shave my head and put on a saffron robe, but it does say something about me. That here is a man who has grown up with a natural cynicism and disdain for religion and yet, has managed to find an equilibrium within himself that parallels certain teachings.

I’ve always considered the cult of Christianity to be the biggest bunch of hypocritical idiots that the Earth has seen since we climbed out of the trees. Dogma bothers me. Blind faith bothers me. Being unable or unwilling to open your head to the possibility of more than one idea bothers the living fuck out of me (especially when I catch myself doing it).

Paganism has always appealed to me in the sense that, it at least is open to the idea that there is and can be more than one driving force in the universe. And by paganism, I do not specifically mean Wicca or any of these other new age mother Gaea worshipping cults. I’m talking about the pantheistic pagans; those that worship Thor and Loki and Odin or Ra and Anubis and Horus or Lugh and Morrigan and Danu. The ones that have the sense to embrace the idea that all concepts and ideas can have or be a god.

Now I’m not saying that the pagans are right, but at least they have the sense not to blindly follow the 2000 year old cult of YHVH (That’s Yahweh for the uninitiated. The original Hebrew name of God) just because everyone else says that they should. Who knows, perhaps every “god” is all just one tiny facet of a greater consciousness that we’ve yet to even begin to comprehend. Let’s wait and see shall we?

And in other news…

I’m grumpy as all get out because I still can’t update my frigging website remotely. My damned ISP FINALLY responded to me after I sent them two, no sorry it was three nasty emails.

Their response? Guess. Go on, I dare you!

No, “Please hold.” wasn’t quite right, but close enough to win you the weekly prize of not getting your head kicked by me. Their very polite and very vague response was simply that “they were endeavouring to enable remote access and should have it working in their next publish in the near future” but there was no indication whatsoever when that publish or that near future would be.

So in the meantime, I continue to sit with my thumb up my bum and my websites (yes there is a plural there) continue to drift further into the background waste of out of date internet space.

I think perhaps that this too has fueled my ire about the lack of commenting that I so eloquently ranted on about in the previous posts. The fact that all I can do to this website is comment via this blogger is annoying, and it gets boring after a time to be honest. It’s like having a panel full of bright flashing buttons and all I get to do is play with the one black one that turns one red light on and off occasionally. I want to frigging change the damn poll, I want to frigging change my bloody bio so as it says I have a wife rather than a fiancee, I just want to do something other than post here dammit.

Okay…. rant over as this isn’t going anywhere purposeful. I’m going to bed now. G’night

BAH! It figures. The day after I post my rant on the lack of comments, the damn site that I use for the comments went down for whatever reason. Luck of the friggin Irish I tell ya.

So it came to me the other night that I’ve become fairly vain with my blogger posts and am starting to get frustrated with certain aspects that, and lets be honest here, are completely the fault of you, the reader.

I feel that I have posted fairly consistently over the past little while on a broad spectrum of topics from the mindless to the mundane, yet I have no clue if anyone is listening. My topics seem to be the type that nobody wants to talk about or comment on. Every other blog that I go to seems to have comments galore from regular readers (even if those readers are just the blog-master’s immediate friends and family) and I’m dreadfully jealous. Some part of me wants to be part of the in-crowd. To know that I’m liked, admired or that someone is just paying attention to me. All I really want is validation that my time and effort are worth it I guess.

So yes, I admit it. I’m grumpy because no one ever comments on my topics or that I only get one or two comments now and then. I’ve tried the do unto others as you would have them do unto you bit, but that only gets me so far and not everyone likes to comment, but for every 3 that don’t comment there hopefully will be one that will.

Yes I know that this is silly and vain and this is just my desperate cry for self gratification and attention as I plead with you all to appease my fragile ego and comment at least once but I can’t help myself and figure that if I rant long enough, I’ll get at least one grudging comment out of pity or to shut me up.

So with that mini-rant over and done I shall now retire for the evening. Pax

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

to all you poor souls that had the poorest luck not to be born Irish and can’t celebrate daily.

My condolences to you all. I shall endeavour to drink your allotted share of whiskey with good cheer.

Wish me luck.

Today’s random musing has been brought to light by the stupidity of the US government, or more specifically their INS division.

The other day I was reading an Article that was sent to me regarding the pilots of the September 11^th terrorist attacks on the U.S. In the article we find that some idiot approved these terrorists for Student Visa’s so as they could take the technical classes needed to fly the planes. Not only that, but one of the recipients of a Visa had an outstanding warrant out for his arrest in Florida.

Now to me this is very pathetic and is a testament to the stupidity and idiocy of the bureaucracy spawned and propogated by both big business and big governments around the world (though in some cases you are starting to be unable to tell the difference between corporations and government). Not only does the right hand rarely know what the left hand is doing, half the time it isn’t even aware of what it is doing. It is stupid things like this that make you wonder why people are so shocked when events like September 11^th happen. The government isn’t all knowing or all powerful. Hell half the time it’s just going through the motions because that is ALL it has ever been trained to do.

Let this be a lesson to us all. Before everything else: THINK! QUESTION! LEARN!!! Don’t just do something because it’s easy or because it is the status quo of the time.

For those of you looking for more examples of stupid bureaucratic idiocy, I shall direct you to page seven of the INS form that one has to fill out to become a Permanent Resident in the U.S. It has some wonderfully stupid questions that make you wonder why anyone would EVER answer yes to them. Such as: Have you ever committed Genocide?, Are you a Communist?, Are you planning on committing Espionage while in the U.S.?, Have you ever declared Diplomatic Immunity to avoid prosecution while in the U.S.?, And my personal favourite… Do you plan on practicing polygamy while in the U.S.?

The scary thing is that, based on the idiocy evident in the first part of my rant, somewhere in America there is someone who answered Yes to all those questions and is now a Permanent Resident…