NoJoMo 21: Nemesis

Tonight we went over to some friends for dinner.  I’ve talked about them before, my British friend and his Norwegian not-wife (seriously, there needs to be some better word for this in English.  They are not married but they might as well be as they have been together for years and have two kids and live together.  Here there is a word, samboer, which means the person you are living with, usually in a relationship very much like being married.  In English, girlfriend doesn’t really describe it.  Wife is not right as they aren’t married.  Partner sounds either gay or some business relationship.  We need a word!).  They served leg of lamb with roasted potatoes and brussels sprouts.   Seriously, people.  I have no idea why Americans eat so little lamb and sheep because holy crap it is good.  Even the kids chowed down on the lamb meat.  Maybe everyone should eat lamb for Thanksgiving instead of turkey.

Yeah, I hear that there is a holiday on Thursday.  We call that day Torsdag (Thursday).  And around here it is pizza night, for our family anyway.  So when you all are eating turkey I will be eating pizza. 

I remember one Thanksgiving when I was living in Los Angeles.  My roommate and best friend at the time was going down to San Diego to visit some family and eat some turkey and invited me along.  It was crazy warm that day, like in the 80’s and I remember sitting outside in the swimming pool, on Thanksgiving, talking to my dad on the cordless phone while he enjoyed eating turkey in Iowa where it was about 20 degrees.  It was awesome, and surreal in a way because I had never experience such a strange atmosphere on Thanksgiving.

And of course the food was all wrong.  Every family has their own traditions and whatnot, the things they serve with turkey, the kind of stuffing they make.  My grandmother made a sausage stuffing that was extremely moist, almost like a paste actually.  What I have always tried to do is recreate the taste of my grandmothers stuffing while making it a little more, uh, chunky I guess.  Not so moist that the bread smooshes out into a paste but not like crunchy.  And I make my own sausage and normally use some really nice sage bought in Greece.  

I remember that at the San Diego Thanksgiving we all stood around the table, held hands, and prayed.   Now, I am basically an agnostic/atheist at this point, after being raised Catholic and going to eight years of Catholic school.  At the same time, I have never understood why some atheists and agonstics get their panties all in a bunch when people pray, or they are led in prayer at some public function.  Hell, I am pretty sure there was a prayer at my high school graduation.  And I stood there, respectfully, not praying.  Which is exactly what I did at that Thanksgiving, bowed my head and followed along with the prayer and said "amen" at the end and everything.  I was in their home, about to eat their food and share the company of their family, the least I can do is show respect for their traditions, religious or otherwise.

I have a tremendous respect for those who have faith.  Some of the finest people I have known have been deeply religious.  Some of the finest people on OD here are religious (you know you all are!).  I respect that and, while I am not a believer, I respect those who are.  Hopefully, no one here has read me denigrating anyone based on their religious beliefs, or criticizing those beliefs outright, unless of course they have a specific place in the argument at hand.  Even then I would try to avoid it.  I guess I was just raised to have manners and respect the personal beliefs of others.

I had no idea where this entry was going when I started.

Videos!

I was unemployed for a time when I was here, and when I was one of the things I kept busy with at home was compiling a bunch of 80’s music, making a definitive collection of my favorite songs of the 80’s.  Probably should have been, you know, looking for a job or applying at schools or something, but there it is.  It all started because of another diarists mention of Kajagoogoo.  So here is the song that started my reminiscence. 

 A band that I don’t remember being into in the 80’s but only later was Shriekback.  I can’t imagine why, because they are awesome!  Not only is this song fun and funky, but it comes up with a rhyme for "parthenogenesis" which should win some reward not only for the rhyme but for being probably the only song ever with that word in it.

 The first time I heard this song, and it is a bit more obscure, was in the car of a neighbor of a friend of mine.  He was all into this song and the band Berlin and Missing Persons.  I think I was still all into Rush or whatever but on the verge of discovering much cooler music (though I still don’t mind Rush actually).  I just remember this song and his car stereo which had lighted bars for the equalizer which were jumping up and down to the beat of this song. 

Zaphod