Happy Fortune Cookie Day!

Sept 13th

"Its pretty clear that the Fortune Cookie did not originate in China. Rather, it was invented in California. There appears to be some uncertainty over who invented it. Some historical references suggest it was Makoto Hagiwara who invented the fortune cookie at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco in 1914. Others believe that David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Company, was the first to make fortune cookies in Los Angeles in the 1920s." [source: holidayinsights.com]

My Summer Garden

My friends have long praised the health benefits of gardening, but frankly, I never got it. It just seemed like a whole lot of work and mess. In my case, lots of mess. But this summer, for no discernible reason, I got the urge to get back to nature -- being an urban faerie, you sometimes forget your roots, so to speak.

Peek inside:

And see some of the results of my gardening

Don't Panic. I have an extra one

It's a big holiday today in my household. So much so that I really don't have time to go into the background as to why, so I've hired Wikipedia to do it for me:

In my guest bath. It's important to be thoughtful of others

Towel Day is celebrated every year on 25 May as a tribute to the author Douglas Adams by his fans.
On this day, fans carry a towel with them to demonstrate their appreciation for the books and the author, as referred to in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after Adams' death on 11 May 2001.

The original quotation that explained the importance of towels is found in Chapter 3 of Adams' work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. 

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. 

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.) —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The emphasis on towels is a reference to Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe by Ken Welsh, which inspired Adams' fictional guidebook and also stresses the importance of towels.

The original article that began Towel Day was posted at "Binary Freedom", a short-lived open source forum.

Towel Day: A Tribute to Douglas Adams 

Monday 14 May 2001 06:00am PDT 

Douglas Adams will be missed by his fans worldwide. So that all his fans everywhere can pay tribute to this genius, I propose that two weeks after his passing (25 May 2001) be marked as "Towel Day". All Douglas Adams fans are encouraged to carry a towel with them for the day. 

So long Douglas, and thanks for all the fish! 

— D Clyde Williamson, 2001-05-14

Chris Campbell and his friends registered the website towelday.org to promote the day, reminding people to bring their towels. Towel Day was an immediate success among fans and many people sent in pictures of themselves with their towels.

In May 2010, an online petition was created asking Google to recognise Towel Day with either a Google Doodle or by returning search results in the Vogon language for a day.

Thanks Wiki peeps.  I'm out.  Gotta get my quota of petition signatures!  And then, as is my tradition, I'll be off to a secluded interstellar spot with a friend, putting our towels to delightful use.

Santgraninus V, where I'll be celebrating this afternoon

Can't wait to get arrested... again

I wish May 26 was a weekday so I could call in sick to work.  Instead I'm going to spend the day with the most dysfunctional family I know... by choice. 

I've been accused for years of having a dark and twisted sense of humor.  Maybe my fae friends are right, but humans are no better.  There is a huge off-kilter community of those who share my enjoyment of all that is wrong and disturbing as is evidenced by the improbable resurrection of my favorite 'sitcom'

—Arrested Development.

For those who don't know about it...well...it's not only aberrant in every way imaginable, but is wryly narrated by the most wholesome man in Hollywood—Opie! AKA Ron Howard.

Set in Newport Beach in Southern California... or as locals dub it, NewPorsche Beach, the show is full of quips that will appeal to neighborhood folks with over-the-top archetypes most everyone can recognize, and yet still guffaw at.  In addition to jumpstarting the careers of Michael Cera and Will Arnett, the show pumped fresh blood into the careers of Jason Bateman and Jessica Walters.  Bateman has been busy ever since, and Cera's persona has become his shtick.  In fact, every person in the cast is stellar, even the visiting celebs such as Liza Minnelli, Henry Winkler, Carl Weathers, Scott Baio and never-nude Zach Braff.

I know this is a very serious blog compared to my normal fae fare, but that's because I take AD very very seriously.  On 26 May, 2013.... the day that Netflix releases all of Season 4 simultaneously... a day that will live in legend and song, I will get my stew on, celebrating the too-long awaited return of the Bluth family with faerie cake, champagne and a turned-off cel phone. Vive les Bluths!

Leggo my Lembas!

Who needs Lembas? Who doesn't?!? And this informative product commercial explains exactly why. 

Lembas [from Wikipedia]
Appearing in The Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion material, lembas is a special bread made by the Elves, also called waybread in the Common Speech. Shaped into thin cakes, it is very nutritious, stays fresh for months when kept unbroken in its original leaf-wrappings, and is used for sustenance on long journeys. It is tastier than cram or Beorn's honey-cakes. It appears brownish on the outside and cream-coloured on the inside. Lembas is a closely guarded secret, and only on rare occasions is it given to non-Elves. Like other products of the Elves, it is offensive to evil creatures; Gollum outright refuses to eat it, even when starved. Melian, the queen of Doriath, originally held this recipe. Later it was passed to Galadriel and other Elves. Galadriel gives a large store of lembas to the Fellowship of the Ring upon its departure from Lothlórien. Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee subsist on it through the majority of their journey from there into Mordor.

As with cram, Tolkien may have modelled lembas on hardtack, and commentators have noted that lembas has Eucharistic overtones in accordance with Roman Catholic teachings. Lembas literally sustains the hobbits' lives, strength and will, while the Eucharist is the spiritual "Bread of Life". Also, Gollum and other evil creatures cannot abide lembas, while Catholics are instructed not to receive the Eucharist if in the state of mortal sin. Further, the Eucharist is sometimes called viaticum, a Latin term meaning 'for the way,' literally the spiritual food for the Christian's arduous journey through earthly life to heaven. The term viaticum was more commonly heard in Tolkien's day than today. In a private letter, Tolkien acknowledged that lembas bore religious significance.

In Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the term "lembas bread" is occasionally used; because the gift of lembas at Lothlórien is not included in the theatrical release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (though the scene is included in the "Extended Edition" DVD of that film), the redundant term "lembas bread" was probably chosen in order to immediately identify the substance to filmgoers at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. In the extended cut of The Fellowship of the Ring Legolas says one bite of lembas "is enough to fill the stomach of a grown man" (while Tolkien says that one whole cake is sufficient for "a full day's march"). Pippin eats four - a reference to the large appetites of hobbits. Lembas is used as a plot device in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; Gollum uses crumbs of the remaining waybread to frame Samwise Gamgee for consuming all the rations, contributing to his separation from Frodo Baggins prior to his encounter with Shelob. This sequence does not appear in the novel. In the DVD commentaries, director Peter Jackson notes that the prop lembas used in the trilogy was a sort of unsweetened shortbread.

After searching troll high and hobbit low, here is the best & easiest recipe I could find in all of Middle Earth.

Minutes to Prepare: 15
Minutes to Cook: 15
Number of Servings: 12

Ingredients 

• 2 1/2 cups of flour 
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder 
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt 
• 8 tablespoons of cold butter (1 stick) 
• 1/3 cup of brown sugar 
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon 
• 1/2 teaspoon maple syrup/honey 2/3 cup of milk/heavy cream (or more, if necessary) 
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

Directions 

1. Preheat oven to 220 degrees Celcius (425 degrees Fahrenheit). 
2. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. 
3. Add the butter and mix with a fork or a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles fine granules. 
4. Add the sugar and cinnamon, and mix them thoroughly into the mixture. 
5. Add the milk/cream and vanilla and stir them in with a fork until a nice, thick dough forms. 
6. Roll the dough out about 1/2 in thickness. 
7. Cut out 3-inch squares and transfer the dough to a cookie sheet. 
8. Criss-cross (DO NOT cut all the way) each square from corner-to-corner with a knife. 
9. Bake for about 12 minutes or more (depending on the thickness of the bread) until it is set and lightly golden. 

[Recipe from SparkPeople.com, submitted by user PESCETARIAN]

♚ Long May She Reign ♛

I may be a california-born urban faerie, I may be in my 20's, but I could never forsake my British roots.  Today begins the year-long celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's 60th year as monarch of the Commonwealth.  And I for one intend to join in the jubilee.  Regardless of politics, regardless of privilege, I consider The Queen to be an incredible woman and role model.  She has been through challenges most of us can hardly comprehend.  In one year alone (1992), at what in the U.S. would be considered retirement age, she experienced what she has since dubbed her 'annus horribilis' (horrible year).  That was the year her sons Charles and Andrew separated from their wives, her daughter Anne divorced, and a fire wreaked havoc on a portion of Windsor Castle.


Most of us recognize her at a glance.  In fact, any photo of a 'cute white-haired lady with a hat' brings to mind The Queen.  But today I want to touch on just a few of the sweet moments of her life that we seldom see photographs of these days... And I will mention some of my favorite bits about her, per ever-useful and omniscient Wikipedia.

Princess Elizabeth aged 7, 1933 Painting by Philip de László

Elizabeth's only sibling was Princess Margaret, born in 1930. The two princesses were educated at home under the supervision of their mother and their governess, Marion Crawford, who was casually known as "Crawfie". Lessons concentrated on history, language, literature and music. To the dismay of the royal family, in 1950 Crawford published a biography of Elizabeth and Margaret's childhood years entitled The Little Princesses. The book describes Elizabeth's love of horses and dogs, her orderliness, and her attitude of responsibility. Others echoed such observations: Winston Churchill described Elizabeth when she was two as "a character. She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant." Her cousin Margaret Rhodes described her as "a jolly little girl, but fundamentally sensible and well-behaved."

Under service number 230873 she trained as a mechanic and driver during WWII... love this girl!

At the end of the war in Europe, on Victory in Europe Day, Elizabeth and her sister mingled anonymously with the celebratory crowds in the streets of London. She later said in a rare interview, "we asked my parents if we could go out and see for ourselves. I remember we were terrified of being recognised ... I remember lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down Whitehall, all of us just swept along on a tide of happiness and relief."

As a beaming bride, age 21

The Queen's 4-tiered wedding cake was created by British snack food company McVities & Price and measured 9 feet high and weighed 500 pounds.

Coronation day -- age 27

Prince Charles, sister Anne and a Corgi friend. Photo taken by Queen Elizabeth. 
Photo Credit: Photo News

xoxoxox
God Save The Queen!

my mom, back in the day... more like century

it is no secret that my mom is kinda old.
she is middle-aged, pushing the big 500 and boy is she proud of it
many of our line have lived to be millennials and mum is right on target to make that list.

i decided it would be fun to post some pics of her when the old girl was my age... wide-eyed, eager and full of promise... nothing like me who is bitter, cranky and just needs coffee and craves cake most of the time.

so here she is .... Mlle. Dorothea Fae... for your consideration

mum's gig as a flatware model... the manufacturers loved that she was the same size as the cutlery

mum during her showgirl days, this headdress went straight up... till mum had a run-in with a klieg light

here with her sister, my aunt althea, they had a dance act together. they were called the Papagenettes

couldn't resist throwing this into the mix.... this was my mom when she tried to run away from home as a child.  her wings hadn't come in yet, so she didn't make it more than a block or two from home

my parents while out at a cafe -- no that's not my dad you see next to mum.  dad was off to the left.  the handsome devil on the right was mum's faithful hound, Horatio Hornblower

as you know, my father is of vampire extraction, and as such does not show up in photographs.  that said, this is a pic of my parents while they were courting

here they are pitching woo at a local eatery.  i hear they were notoriously shameless with the pda's

here they are on their honeymoon, in the champagne suite of the Romanoff estate. i think a bellman snapped this pic while they were otherwise engaged and oblivious

this is one of my first memories and fave pics of my mom.  this is how i think of her, getting ready to go to the ballet

mum actually took this picture.  this is the first Mother's Day tea party she hosted for her own mom, my grand-mère josephine

happy Mother's Day mum.... i heart you more every century! ❤