How was your Christmas Day? Mine went pretty well – I managed to cook a turkey and a pork roast without turning either into an inedible lump of charcoal.
Today I’ve been taking it easy – but I did take some time out from channel surfing between the Boxing Day Test and the start of the Sydney to Hobart, to grab a few minutes on the sister-in-law’s you beaut PC with the fast internet connection for a bit of web surfing. Just as well I did – I got a belated, but obviously unintentional, Christmas present from Blog RightThinker.
On Christmas Eve, Mr RightThinker let us in on his Christmas wish for this year:
I don’t have much time for misdirected bleeding hearts. It’s not that I don’t want better things for the world; it’s more a case like most conservatives that I would rather see outcomes than rhetoric. When I see a Hollywood celebrity this time of year rail against materialism as they get into a convertible Lamborghini, I yawn. When I hear a left-liberal journalist complain about food wastage and global warming while sipping a wheatgrass smoothie before they fly to Bali for a yoga retreat, I switch off.
What I’d like for Christmas is for these “types” to keep it real and actually help people. By help, I do not mean cutting a cheque, or turning up to a rally about a Guantanamo Bay detainee or signing a letter in a national newspaper, I really mean help. That means visiting these countries that need help to meet the people. They might be surprised to see how entrepreneurial people in the developing world are and they might realize that people want opportunities not a protest rally or a convention discussing their problems.
You’d think, after expressing such sentiments, Mr RightThinker might have laid off posting for a few days – but no, he was right back in the game on Boxing Day, with a post on the Horn of Africa:
While most media coverage over the past two days from Canada to Australia has been spent on the usual Christmas-time stories, a potentially disastrous war is brewing in the Horn of Africa … I cannot do justice to all the issues, history and politics underlying regional tensions in this article but the reason that the now open conflict between the Islamist movement in Somalia and the government of Ethiopia is so significant is the risk that the entire region becomes involved in a conflict which then results in massive amounts of refugees, a multi-front humanitarian disaster and an emboldening of radical Islam as represented by the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. Think the Taliban with a more media-savvy approach.
…
Tragically, I fear that we will be hearing a lot more of the growing conflict in the Horn of Africa. With all the military and diplomatic resources of the world’s major players occupied with places such as the Middle East and North Korea, the ongoing unwillingness of the UN Security Council to act on Darfur, the portents do not look good for the civilians most at risk in this part of the world. Something we should all consider as we enjoy all the luxuries of life in the west this holiday season.
It seems that some people just can’t help themselves.
Since you ask, Gummo, not that I don’t care about the Horn of Africa and so on, my Christmas Day began just after midnight when I turned around holding a long roll of gold wrapping paper and it knocked a full glass of sparkling red over onto the (precious) carpet. On Christmas morning proper, one of the cats got into the lovely pile of rustly-rustly family gifts, with all their lovely ribbon tie decorations; I dropped a frypan full of crisped bacon pieces and boiling bacon fat on the kitchen floor; and I didn’t realise there was something dreadfully wrong with the olive oil until after I had made the mayonnaise and tasted it. At lunch I had a little spatlet with a sister, and when I got home I found that someone had mysteriously left an ancient, bloodstained rat trap in the middle of my front verandah.
Apart from that, it was fab.
Gummo Trotsky:
From my own political standpoint(which is way to the far right of King Henry II, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun), I was struck by the irony of it too …..
Oh, yes, I myself have brought the benefits of our civilization to “the benighted natives” on the odd occasion too – and learnt a thing or two from them while I was at it. ….. Next?
Lovely, thank you – if somewhat exhausting. Intriguingly my yet-to-be-born child received more gifts than I did. I am guessing that this is but a sign of things to come…
I hope that everyone had a good day on the 25th and has had a relaxing day today.
As for the Horn of Africa – it is very concerning, but I am not sure that “going there and meeting the people” would be particularly helpful of me right now. Oh, and when I have “been to those countries” and met the people, I tend to find that it is just that entrepreneurial spirit that is actually being crushed by the utterly skewed and unfair trade regimes that us wealthy countries have been forcing down their throats and that we lefty do-gooders have been protesting about them (in our home countries where the policies are being made) for just that reason.
Pavlov’s Cat – “spatlet”? – I like it very much.
Pavlov, my gut instinct is that the egg yolks may be to blame.
Gummo, my Christmas was lovely thanks. Following a 15 hour drive from Quinceland to Lane Cove, I sufficiently stuffed myself with a traditional North American turkey dinner including stuffing, candied yams and mashed potatoes.
Baking soda for your carpet, Ms. Cat, or a well-positioned rug. Shake table salt over the floor where you spilled bacon fat and oil, the crystals will make it less slippery and easier to clean up. The spilled red is nothing to cry over, unless your South Australian bottleshops observe barbaric opening hours. But how was your trifle?
My own political standpoint, Graham, is somewhere close to Richard III’s. If he was to be reanimated and ‘inserted’ by helicopter into the region, what a wonderful war that’d make.
Was it set?
TheDevilDrink:
You do indeed have an evil mind: England’s King Richard III – or somebody very much like him – inserted into the latest war in the Horn of Africa. Not a very nice thought, DevilDrink. I just have a gut feeling that this time there won’t be a re-run of the Ogadan conflict of a generation ago but something far more earthshaking. Serves us right for ignoring what has been happening both in Somalia and in Sudan …. wonder if Djibouti will be swept away or become the 21st Century’s Tangier or HongKong
GummoTrotsky:
Had another look at other posts on that bloke’s blog: if the Yanks seriously consider a retreaded Newt Gingrich as an un****ed candidate for any public office at all then the United States is finished.
Katz:
Any more clues yet?
Meredith, yes, I just made ‘spatlet’ up, but it does kind of capture the quality of the moment.
Alex, egg yolks is a possibility, but it really did have more of a ‘something has gone horribly wrong with the fruitiness of this extra virgin’ sort of taste. I’m sorry, I would have liked to have put that another way.
DD, excellent tip re salt and spilt fat. Re sparkling red, it was the carpet I was mostly crying over, though the loss of a glass of Fox Creek Vixen is not to be taken lightly either. And re trifle, mine went down very well with la famille. Laura made a version which she said looked very yummy, and Dogpossum has blogged the whole thing complete with link to photographic documentation, here.
Ahem. Here.
Oh and Katz — no, the rat trap wasn’t set; that was the first thing I asked myself, too. If it had been, I would have had to accept the Bloke’s suggestion that I have somehow become trapped in a Stephen King novel. Which might be true anyway.
Disappointing.
Was the blood real? recent? a product of its function as a trap? applied for effect?
“England’s King Richard III” It’s about time people said what they mean SHAKESPEARE’S KING RICHARD THE THIRD not England’s as the real Richard was a remarkable and talented man, and the opposite of the monster the Bard created to justify the usurpation of the Tudors. Get it right folks
PaulTrevorBale:
Stuff Shakespeare (wonder what he would have done to Gerald Ford or how he would have lauded Augusto Pinochet?).
No, I thought TheDevilDrink meant the real King Richard III (or somebody like him)….. leading the Ethiopean forces perhaps ….
The trifle was excellent, Pav, and much exclaimed over. It also lived up to the advertised one million calories per serve.
sshhhh, laura, i had managed not to think of the calories til now…
it was a ROCKING trifle!! not at all a mere trifle.