STD: Sexual disease? Or Save the Date...a disease in its own right

A wedding of this magnitude might rate an STD...but real royals wouldn't do anything that common! (Wiki Commons)

I am pleased to announce that from the following date onward―from June 15, 2011―any “save the date” notice that enters my house will be immediately immolated and its sender consigned to the column in my address book called “Hopelessly Crass Humans.”

The first time I got a “save the date” card regarding a wedding, I was appalled. It happened about six years ago, and to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t addressed to me, but to the man I was about to marry. Nonetheless, as I was now essentially the co-head of household, I was within my rights to deal with the thing as seemed best to me in the running of my household. I tossed it in the bin because it was so cheeky.  No, it was tacky. And crass. Mainly, it was presumptuous. Yes, that.

Still, I guess I should have figured such things were in the wings the first time I heard of a pre-engagement ring some years earlier. What the heck is THAT? When one becomes engaged, it means the man has asked the woman to marry him. (I am not dealing here with other combinations of humans agreeing to love, honor, cherish and set up house. It’s bad enough sorting out the excesses in traditional marriages in a single column; other permutations will have to wait until the oldest is out of the way.)

What, then, does a pre-engagement signify? That the man has told the woman that if she wears this semi-precious ring, later on he’ll probably get down on one knee and pop the question? Although popping, at that point, would seem the wrong image entirely. What ever happened to going steady? What about shacking up? I realize going steady has been gone since Ozzie & Harriet left the TV screens of America. But shacking up is still around, and indeed, as far as I can tell, most people who engage in pre-engagement and engagement are already quite fully engaged, so to speak.

So now there is the “save the date” card at some time before the bona fide wedding invitations go out, which is traditionally six weeks before the wedding. These days, when one’s family and friends often live a couple of plane rides away, perhaps six weeks is a bit short notice. But why not just send the invitations at, say, eight weeks? That “save the date” thing we received came in February, a week or so before our own wedding. We didn’t want too much fuss for ours―being older―so we booked a venue, ordered a cake, and sent out some hand-written invitations about three weeks before. Amazingly enough, two cousins made a long-distance trip anyway, although I was not expecting to see them. Not getting too wound up in all this does allow one some nice surprises.

That first ever "save the date" card, arriving in the dead of winter, was for a wedding in December, almost a full year hence. We didn't attend.

Is a "Save the Date" card appropriate for a Princess Bride?

What, though, is wrong with sending a “save the date” card if one is planning a big, extravagant, expensive wedding and the last thing one wants is surprises? Simple.

Sending a “save the date” card is assuming far too much. It is assuming that seeing Ms. Kerr wed Mr. Wang is the most important thing on one’s entire social calendar for the year.

And yes, it would be announced in the paper as the Wang-Kerr wedding, which might almost make it worthy of being the most important event on one’s yearly calendar.  As an aside, I always loved the wedding announcements Leno did on the Tonight Show. (Loved them more than bits about the Stupid Criminals who demanded money from banks by handing the teller an envelope with the criminal’s own return address on it.) Other favorite weddings include the Large-Beaver wedding, the Lovegrove-Butts wedding, the Phillips-Bragh wedding, the Small-Johnson wedding….

The sniggers engendered by surnames aside, there apparently is some etiquette surrounding the execrable cards.  On the iVillage website, a short article is devoted to this. The author contends the cards developed as a way to respect guests’ time and “make sure they can attend the wedding.”

Oh? I was of the opinion that attending a wedding or declining the invitation was purely a matter of personal choice, and not something for the person doing the inviting to worry about. This making-sure aspect seems to violate the age-old conventions involving issuing invitations and awaiting the positive replies of those who choose to attend―which is true for any event, not just weddings―and the regrets of those who cannot or will not attend.

In a world in which the least desire of the Princess Bride must be catered for, the making-sure aspect of  “save the date” cards doesn’t even come under the faux pas as enumerated in iVillage.

Advice from the iVillage sage

Here is, abbreviated, the iVillage sage advice:

One is advised not to send the “save the date” cards immediately upon the engagement due to vagaries in family relationships and pressures on wedding budgets.

One is advised not to send a card that’s off-color or seems to celebrate drunkenness and so on. One is advised to be tasteful. (Hasn’t that horse already left the gate if one is even thinking about sending a tacky, obnoxious, imperious card in the first place?)

The best part of it the STD card

One is advised to boldly inform recipients of the “card” when it isn’t a card at all but a fridge magnet, lest they inadvertently lay it down on a computer component and erase memory.  This was my favorite, actually―such total tackiness―until I read the next bit of advice: Senders are advised to give complete information about the wedding venue in the miserable s-t-d card because “Guests need to know how many days they'll need to take off of work.”

My answer to that would be “None.” Regardless. None.*

Finally, one is advised not to fill the envelope with confetti or sparklies as people get annoyed when they must vacuum after opening the mail. “A better enclosure is a sheet of vellum with a poem or something that can be kept - or tossed - with ease,” says the iVillage writer.

If the sender is clever, the recipient can display that poem on the fridge, held in place by the magnet with the smiling pre-nuptial faces of Tiffany and Scott.

Or, if the recipient has any sense, he or she can toss the whole lot in the bin, and spend any time off on something more enjoyable than toting a hundred bucks worth of Pilsner glasses wrapped in white and silver paper to an event where they’ll have to eat cold food, totter in high heels at the non-free open bar trying to kill the pain of the feet and the fête, and pretend to enjoy flapping their wings when Wedding Band Willie cranks up that all-time favorite, The Chicken Dance.

If you’d like to read the entire iVillage instruction article for sending “save the date” cards, click here.

*We did take a day off to attend my nephew’s out-of-town wedding. But his fiancée had not sent the tacky std cards…and they were both surprised when quite a few of us who lived far away chose, without coercion, to attend a lovely small lakeside wedding at an historic hotel in New York’s Finger Lakes region.

Bluefus' first venture outdoors

Bluefus enjoys his first al fresco breakfast in Cornwall. (SP Tiley photo)

For a while--a very long and unfortunate while--I was married to a man who had virtually no discernible sense of humor, little appreciation for the cultural aspects of life, and absolute disdain for those small ceremonies that seem to cement relationships, as large ones cement nations. Thank goodness, that's in the past.

Moving on...I am now married to a man who delights in all the little ceremonies we have, in the six short years to date of our marriage, invented. I thought it was his Britishness; my father once told me that the British are sentimental, and if I didn't want that, don't marry a Brit. (He also told me that the Irish were unreliable, despite the fact that he was half Irish and the most reliable person I've ever known...but then, he was of a generation that tended to generalize facets of a race into the entirety of that race. He can be excused for that. And he would have liked Simon.)

For his birthday, the first year we were married, I gave Simon a spitting fountain made of metal and in the shape of a dog. We named him Rufus, and put him in the gazebo, where he held sway until we moved to England. He was pretty bunged up by then, what with water splashing his little metal feet continuously for about seven hot Maryland months a year. So we buried him, up on the hill behind the house we've since sold, surrounded by the cats, one of whom--Tootsie--existed into my time and whom I loved dearly until he died of great old age.

When we bought this house in Cornwall--or not long after anyway--I saw an advert online for a metal dog sculpture, not a fountain this time, but a planter. Corny. Yes. Corny. But the animal face looked so much like Rufus, the name of our late gazebo fountain. So I ordered him, have filled his planter with lobelia, and given him a shady spot to guard beneath the hedgerow out back. Of course, his name is Rufus II.

Today, he had a visit from another non-canine dog in our house, Bluefus.

Bluefus is a coffee cozy. For a bit more than a year, since we found him in a store in Padstow, Bluefus has been keeping our morning pot of French press coffee warm. Today was the first day it was warm enough to have breakfast on the deck. We hadn't breakfasted outdoors since at least mid-September 2009, a couple of months before we moved to England. While there were days warm enough when we lived in the flat in Devon, and we had a small seating area behind our living room windows, the table was uncomfortably close to the windows of the Gorgon who lived next door, so we simply didn't do it. While I don't mind if people know about our relative nuttiness...or possibly British-style eccentricity--I didn't think she needed to hear our early morning secrets, or natterings as the case may be. So we didn't, simply didn't, use the table more than three or four times for afternoon coffee and a time or two for cocktails.

Bluefus quite liked his excursion. He is hoping for another one tomorrow, and the weather from the Met Office says he will probably get it. And possibly...just possibly...Sunday as well.

And then it appears that March will return. No matter. I'm sure Bluefus is better off for his serving of fresh air, bearing today the scent of new-mown hay from across the Tamar Valley. I suspect we all are.

Writing to sell ain't what it used to be

Could THIS be a search engine? (Wiki commons)

There can be little doubt that one of my household gods is good writing. Mine (I flatter myself), my friend and colleague Judy Carmichael’s (see her blog here), and the great authors of all times, places and styles. I have altars to those gods, myriad bookcases that overflow faster than a stopped up sink. I have prized every unique phrase I’ve ever read. And as a result, I have expanded my vocabulary if not to the point of an Oxford scholar, at least to a serviceable magnitude for all the kinds of writing I do, from journalism to junk.

SEO

And now, learning more than I ever wanted to know about keywords and SEO (search engine optimization), I have begun to understand that soon, Susie will not only be unable to read, Susie will have a vocabulary driven to drivel by the need of authors to construct their offerings around those few words and phrases the internet gatekeepers say are the ones searched for most often.

Morons, because it's a good key word...and also fits Bush

In short, if one wishes to be read, one will have to stuff one’s pages with repetitive―but not TOO repetitive―terms that the lowest common denominator of internet searchers will find. Duh. Maybe I should use that term again. Duh.  OK. So now I have at least one repetitive term that should appeal to morons and is used even by people of normal intelligence when imitating morons. And no, this is not about George Effing Bush, although I suspect he wouldn’t do well on the internet, despite his miniscule vocabulary, mainly because his vocabulary has no repetitive terms. How could it? He made most of them up, or at least, the incompletely firing synapses within his cranium made them up and his monkey mouth spit them out.

This is about making sure every page on one’s website or in one’s blog contains high visibility words, and that the same words appear enough times for a search engine spider to find them and properly catalog (not the right term; still in actual writer mode, sorry) the pages so that googlers will discover them and read them and click on the ads and enable the writer―who used to write as opposed to spending precious hours of intellectual life learning geek-crap―to earn a few measley bucks.

Journalists' tools? Not so much

OK. Journalists have been warned for years not to use the term yellow elongated fruit when banana will do. But this goes beyond repeating banana in the second and third references and avoiding the use of yellow elongated fruit. It means choosing one’s subjects according to what various “tools” will tell you are popular terms in the public’s so-called imagination at present. I actually bought such a tool. It’s called Traffic Travis, and is has a cute little cartoon of a nerd. Uh huh.  Also, one can use Google’s own tool, the Wonder Wheel…if one can only recall how to get to it from one day to the next. (As far as I can tell, you actually have to do a search, which still won’t put it onscreen. You must also open one of the websites arrayed and then, if you’re lucky and the stars are not in Jupiter or something, it will appear.)

So let’s assume that one of the best search terms for me to use would be Cornwall acommodation. Yup, misspelling and all. I mean, can I really write an article about Cornwall acommodation rather than Cornwall accommodation? How illiterate. But that’s how the peckerheads* that apparently know or think they know a word longer than hotel will search for it.

No, I can’t do it. I’ll use hotels. I’ll use lodgings. I’ll use hostelry. But I won’t use acommodation. I suppose I could try accommodation and see if search engine spiders can correct misspellings when they crawl my work. (Isn’t that, in itself, a bit creepy?) Might as well. Hotel, lodgings and hostelry are WAY under the search engine radar.

More search engine points to ponder

I must also remember to use a bunch of H1 headings; is that the same thing as a larger point size? And I must remember not to stuff my pages with the chosen words too much; apparently, spiders get full after about five helpings of each word per page and spit it out thereafter. Their keepers can even ban your site if you try to force feed the little arachnids too much. Oops. Sorry. Fifty-cent word in a two-for-a-penny world.

I really only have one question. It was going to be, “Whatever happened to librarians and recommendations of good books?” But instead, I think I’ll cut to the internet chase, and just ask, “WHY?”

* I'm not sure the journalistic debate over whether dickhead or peckerhead is the preferred term has been definitively decided. Votes?

Mad Hatters: 13 Ridiculous Royal Wedding Hats

Where were the household gods, of so many households, when taste in wedding hats was being handed out?

Click below....and watch early for the electric blue banana bicycle seat.


Mad Hatters: 13 Ridiculous Royal Wedding Hats

Royal Wedding, and hope for humanity. Really.

London dressed for a wedding (Wiki commons)

The Queen of England looked as happy this morning, leaving her grandson’s wedding, as I’ve ever seen her. I think that has meaning. Whether HRH Queen Elizabeth II is finally accepting change, I cannot tell, but I would surmise that her grandson and his bride, the very breath of the modern couple, seem to have lured Her Majesty into something of a thaw. It is possible that the sheer magnitude of their enduring love―lasting a decade and enduring vicissitudes of sorts and still ending at a traditional altar bedecked ecologically, it’s clergy enjoined to offer globally inclusive prayers written by that couple―will bring about change that is good for their subjects, even before, some years hence, they ascend the throne.

How we got here

While Wills and Harry, his children, have always been favourites of the people and the press, Prince Charles has always seemed a sort of poor stick. HRH Prince Charles was done no favours by a forced marriage to a woman he didn’t love, who nonetheless provided two appealing sons and raised them well. His marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles seemed a travesty, and it was, simply because it should have happened decades earlier, nor not have happened at all. Someone needed to be wiser, and no one was.

But what is, as the New Agers say, is best. I believe it. Princess Diana was the martyr to change in the British monarchy, god rest her soul. Prince Charles wasn’t quite ready to be dragged kicking and screaming into what I think, in fact, he wanted―marriage to a commoner he loved. He wasn’t ready to give up the throne, nor tussle with his formidable mother and father. So be it. He didn’t get to marry his commoner, rather than Diana the fake commoner, whose pedigree exceeded that of Charles himself, although the grandest title she possessed was Lady, making her almost common.

If even half what was written by Diana herself and in the tabloids was true, Prince Charles was something of a cad toward her. But think about it: He was forced to marry an incredibly young and sheltered virgin many years younger, a starry-eyed girl who had no equipment either or royal life or to either vanquish, or accept, a romantic rival.

Had Diana been French, she might have said, as so many French woman have done for so long, “Well, have your little fling. Go on holiday with her, if you like. But bring yourself and your pay check home to me.” A practical viewpoint, but one that wasn’t going to wash either with the British monarch-in-waiting or with his child bride. And so, disaster struck.

The other woman, no better than she had to be

Camilla? Well, she was the only cast member in this royal drama who could have made a tragedy into a comedy, but chose not to. Had she walked away, perhaps….but then, what is, is best.

And so, after Diana the fake commoner who was elevated to royalty, and Camilla the bona fide commoner was not elevated by the Queen (doubtless in mind of the havoc wreaked in the royal household by Camilla), we have Kate Middleton, a bona fide commoner who has been elevated to HRH status by the Queen.

It appears Kate Middleton has won acceptance by the guardian of the British monarchy’s tradition, HRH Queen Elizabeth II. It bespeaks not just a small change, I think, but perhaps a large one, all things considered. There has been no hint that HRH Queen Elizabeth was dismayed by this marriage.  Indeed, she did make a few demands―tiara rather than flowers in the bride’s hair, I think, and a traditional wedding breakfast. But despite having relatively little input to the wedding of the second in line to the throne, and a man who will almost doubtlessly reign longer than his father will, the Queen seemed genuinely happy.

Global wedding of sorts

Queen Elizabeth’s grandson and his bride wrote a prayer that was inclusive not only of his subjects-to-be, but of all the world. I think the couple take their vows to each other seriously, but I think they take their vows to humanity more seriously still. They vowed, in that prayer, to attend to the needs of others. Period. End of story. It is unclear what Kate Middleton as done to date that would demonstrate her commitment to a duty to humanity in general and her future subjects in particular. But Prince William has demonstrated his intention with actions: He is a search & rescue helicopter pilot. Search and rescue. Service and assistance. A dangerous job, a job only carried out when mortal peril is on the horizon.

If one combines Prince William’s service to others with...

The compassion he learned from his mother …

The gifts of his father’s nature (who I think history will paint with some errors, big ones, but with some genuine contributions to human welfare as well)…

And the steadfastness of a monarchy―of which he is a part―that endured the WWII blitz in situ (in comparison to the behaviour o that execrable US President George W. Bush who fled Washington, DC, in an highly fortified airplane when 3,500 of his citizens had been savagely murdered from the air and needed a leader)…

Then one gets everything one needs to bring the British monarchy forward, possibly fast forward even during the end of his grandmother’s reign, through his father’s time on the throne and into the world Prince William and HRH The Duchess of Cambridge envision, apparent in every particle of their long and thoughtful relationship and their simple and inclusive--by royal standards--marriage ceremony.

Gene therapy to pass the UK driving test

An English 60 mph road. I swear.* (Wiki commons)

Some people seem to lack the genes for various traits. For example, I think I must not have a gene for putting up with stupidity, because no matter how hard I try, I cannot do it.

I also lack the gene for suffering fools gladly; this is something like the above, but a fool is a fool all the time, while anyone may be stupid once from time to time. Thus with the first statement, I won't necessarily write the person off.  Fools? Gone, early and often.

I lack a gene for eating horse meat; I would puke.

I lack the gene for watching reality shows. Well, I did lack it. I think I must have had some unrecognized gene therapy, because I have now watched 14 weeks of the current 15-week run of Hell's Kitchen--despite the fact that there is NO ONE I can champion to win, and one of the two finalists is the most arrogant SOB I've ever seen still alive after the age of 18. (Usually, someone has pounded them by then and they're either human or dead.)

I also lack the following genes:

1. Backing into a supermarket parking bay.
2. Taking 22 minutes to make a three-point turn in the road while using the parking brake and doing The Exorcist head twirl with each move backward or forward.
3. Coming into a roundabout (Americans will read traffic circle) at 4 miles per hour.
4. Considering a Stop sign (one of those big red things that say, in no uncertain terms, STOP, which are the same in both countries) to be an invitation to roll through in first gear.
5. Failing to gasp that you just keep going when the center line has disappeared on a 60 mph two-lane road cut between two rock-based hedgerows when a disarticulated lorry (Americans will read semi) is hurtling at you downhill around a curve while using 3/4 of a road as wide--exactly--as two compact cars. When the center line is absent it means the road is literally less than the width of two compact cars.
6. Backing around a corner. It is illegal here to back into a main road, but perfectly legal, and expected, to back into a side road from a main road. Don't let questions of whizzing traffic on the mainly two-lane 60 mph main roads concern you; they don't. But I'm telling you, one has to have a gene for this.

To take them in order and deal with them as Ryan, the good instructor, has done:

1. Easy-peasy, he said. He's so unworried about it, he's not even going to bother with it until right before the test. OK. I'll agree with him on that. There's a formula. Plus--which at least makes me feel better--he says it's nuts. "Who would actually do that?" he wondered aloud. "You usually want the back of the car to the rear so you can load the groceries in the boot (Americans will read trunk.)

2. Three-point turn. No, you don't really need to take 22-minutes as the bad instructor said. But The Exorcist head twirl is a requirement. You can actually touch the curb with the wheels and not fail, as long as there is no human or dog in sight along that pavement (Americans will read sidewalk). So you might as well plan on not going back or pulling forward that far ever; as it happens, you can take five, or even seven, "points" to do the turn--as long as you don't fail the head twirl or bump a curb when a person is within the county.  (I think I can make up for this missing gene. OK, so in NY, you make the turn as fast as humanly possible so you don't get nailed in the side or honked at by some meshuginah putz or goombah.....But I can do this one. I can. Really.)

3. Nah, this was just too nuts, the figment of the bad instructor's imagination. If you crawl toward a roundabout that slowly, traffic will be backed up to Edinburgh. His attitude was based on the eco-driving move by the Driving Standards Agency, and is sometimes taught to brand new drivers--17-year-olds--because why not? Why not? Said Ryan, part of it is the block shifting, from fifth to second in one go. Although most newer cars will do it easily, some new drivers cannot--just plain cannot--do it, Ryan said. Maybe they lack the gene!

4. We haven't tackled this one yet. I just treat a stop sign like a stop sign; must be my stop sign gene kicking in. But I feel certain I can learn to creep or roll through it like so many BAD U.S. drivers do.

5. There is really only one thing to say about this:

OH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Ryan has worked with me on this from the beginning. And mainly, I now leave the foliage covering hedgerows where it is. Worst case: I will slow to a crawl and let the massive vehicle (Americans read huge truck) pass me rather than try to wedge both of us in there at once, with the obvious margin for error and possibly dire results, which is, as it happens, perfectly acceptable on the test. So at least somewhere, someone at the Driving Standards Agency knows the roads are bizarre.

 6. Backing around a corner. The reason for doing The Exorcist head twirl here is so there are no surprises, such as people plowing into you while you're on the corner, or backing into it or beyond it.

Indeed. No, we DON'T want surprises like that! But think how much less surprising it would be if we JUST DIDN'T FREAKING DO IT? I mean, how hard is it, especially in a small country, to go a few miles to the next town if need be, find a good turning place (a roundabout, a car park, a one-way system to bring you back around)? Or even turn while moving forward into a side street and then make a three-point turn? Even if it takes you 20 minutes, isn't that better than risking getting whacked two ways by BACKING FROM A MAIN ROAD INTO A SIDE ROAD?

OK. OK. I can see I need some serious gene therapy on that one to pass the UK Practical Driving Test.**

 * It would literally be rated at the national speed limit, which is 60 mph, because it is not in a built-up area. This means you CAN do 60, if conditions permit. Or if you have that gene. Most Americans have the gene that dictates not doing it for fear of dropping off the edge on one side or taking home some hedgerow on the other.

**Yes, using the word practical while demanding drivers learn to do perfectly things they will never do again is a little oxymoronic.

SPAM®. A lot.

YUM! And look how cheap; only one pound, seventy, or $2.72 on April 1, 2011. 

(SP Tiley Photo)

Sometimes, you just have to take a deep breath and admit something.

In the mid-1970s, I once had an enormous craving for SPAM®. I satisfied it. I bought some, fried it up, served it to my husband (who astonishingly had the same craving at the same time) with oven french fries that I tarted up with a small sprinkle of  oil and a large sprinkle of salt.

And then I went back to ridiculing SPAM®, and anyone who eats it…until I found out that not only does my sister-in-law like SPAM®, she has a SPAM® cookbook. A whole SPAM® cookbook. She once made me a dinner of stuffed SPAM®; I had asked for it, because some things one has to see to believe.

But here’s another guilty secret: My brother likes SPAM®. My own flesh and blood. He likes SPAM®. Not just in 1970-something. But today.

When we were exploring in Morrison’s Supermarket last week, Simon and I noticed a SPAM® product in the frozen section, and naturally took a picture of it. Not a good picture; all we had available was his cell phone, which predates the rise and fall of Constantinople. But we had to have it. The picture. The SPAM® Fritters stayed where they were.

While I was on the subject, though, I recalled that there is a SPAM® Museum. I looked it up, and, for good measure, checked out the first recipe in the recipe exchange section, Tomato Spasta*. It called specifically for SPAM® Classic. This led me to believe that there are now variations on SPAM®.

Sho ‘nuff. There’s SPAM® Lite; shoulda figured. But SPAM® with Cheese. Oh, mama.

Hot and Spicy SPAM®. And boon to all those who need the odd cocktail snack, SPAM® Spread. All you need is the crackers; might I suggest bona fide Saltines?

I saw nothing about SPAM® Fritters, though. Maybe they are only made for the European market. If you’re a SPAM® lover, you’re welcome to come visit. I’ll even drive you to Morrison’s; the road is really twisty, barely a car and a half wide, and steep with curves. Americans don’t like the road at all (it took me almost a year to learn to love it!). So I won’t make you drive it. Plus, I’ll let you use the stove, but that’s where I stop. You’ll have to cook the SPAM® yourself.

Though I may sneak a bite.

* I find this an unfortunate name for a recipe, especially for a frankenfood, for so many reasons.