A Day of Reverence

"Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,Great chieftain o' the puddin'-race!"

Happy International Haggis Appreciation Day!

Ye faithful: On this innocently brisk late summer day, as you are frolicking about your daily pasttimes, let us not disregard our anam cara (soul friend, Gaelic) The Noble Haggis. For today, is International Haggis Appreciation Day!

Let us not forsake the form and function of this glorious foodstuff that has graciously nourished both the thoroughbred patrician and the oppressed destitutes with nary a discrimination. For without the revered haggis, my clan, Clan McIsaac, would not have survived feast, famine, or a treasonous attack by the accursed Campbells (1692, Glencoe, lest we forget)! Twas a fortuitous day indeed when the first shepherd decided that the only possible way to get more enjoyment out of his sheep was to stuff the leftover bits (lungs, kidneys, whatev) into its own stomach, along with some wee neeps, tatties, and barley and roast it. YUMMM!!!

<--Tribute to the Glencoe Massacre Were it not for you, dear Haggis, we would not have such sport as the Wild Haggis Hunt (which was mercifully not banned by Parliament in league with fox hunting). Haggis scotius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Haggis) has roamed the highlands for nearly as Ye, my beloved domesticated haggis. Ye also made possible the lovely sport of Haggis Hurling (http://www.haggishurling.org/hweb/Default.htm), a vital part of our national heritage since 1977.

<--Wild and Domestic Haggis

But in all seriousness, my delightfully nutty haggis, ye have been the savior of we Scots in famine and our celebratory sustenance in glory days. Ye were the inspiration of Dear Rabbie (Burns) and the strength o' brave Billy Wallace and Rob Roy. Your revered grayish mushiness hath sustained my kin for nigh 10 centuries and ye shalt be consumed (and fed to unsuspecting tourists) for eons to come. May Your spicy, masticated lung insides never be veganized, for that would be an insult to Your greatness.

To you, esteemed Haggis, I lif' me dram o' Laphroig (for it is 5 o'clock somewhere) and toast ye as only the noble Rabbie Burns could pen:

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin'-race! Aboon them a' ye tak yer place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o' agrace As lang's my airm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill, Your hurdies like a distant hill, Your pin wad help to mend a mill In time o need, While thro your pores the dews distil Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dicht, An cut you up wi ready slicht, Trenching your gushing entrails bricht, Like onie ditch; And then, Oh what a glorious sicht, Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive: Deil tak the hindmaist, on they drive, Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve Are bent like drums; Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive, 'Bethankit' hums

Is there that ower his French ragout, Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad mak her spew Wi perfect scunner, Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu view On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash, As feckless as a wither'd rash, His spindle shank a guid whip-lash, His nieve a nit: Thro bloody flood or field to dash, Oh how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread, Clap in his wallie nieve a blade, He'll make it whissle; An legs an arms, an heads will sned, Like taps o thrissle.

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care, And dish them out their bill o fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies: But, if Ye wish her gratefu prayer, Gie her a Haggis!

~Address to a Haggis, Robert Burns

This entry is dedicated to Erin, who truly understands the meaning of International Haggis Appreciation Day :-)

Its Ten-on-the-Pulpit Friday!!

Now, even though I am quite politically conscious, I don't generally jump on the pulpit this early on a Friday morning. Maybe its the sleep deprivation that has come from my new 6am-2pm work schedule, maybe its just the gradual realization that merely hoping for promised changes will not be enough. Regardless of the reason, here we are. My Dad sent me the attached video this morning, and one line in it truly struck a nerve. I'll try not to be boring about it. In particular, a line in this production says everything: "We spend billions of dollars to make our points clear." This fact, in itself, is not new to me. The true mental bombshell that hit is that these gentlemen are spending billions (millions each) of dollars to advertise THEMSELVES. To further qualify this as an abomination, preceding verses state: "Citizens gather from both and near, for a ritual we practice every four years, when we promise you anything you want to hear". Again, not at all a new concept, but millions of dollars to say what we want to hear? I can get that for free by going to a pub and talking to any guy sitting there. The cost: a drink (which is usually free anyways) and having to endure 10 minutes of self-promotion. But I digress. Now, you may make the point that it's their money, they can do what they want with it. NEWFLASH: its NOT their money. It originated from PACs, unions, and powerfull billionaire businessmen (including foreign oil tycoons if you're Bush.) Why would these organizations want to spend so-called hard-earned money on political campaigns? To legally buy their votes when the candidate is elected. This is disturbing in itself because essentially the newly-elected official is not going to be acting on behalf of his loyal constituents who voted his skeazy ass into office, but for the benefit of the PACs/unions/foreign investors/big businesses who paid for his campaign. So much for democracy. Viva las grandes negocios! Beyond the above-mentioned fallacy of American Democracy, the extent of the donations/expenditures is just ludicrous. Millions of dollars to whore yourself out to the American public with a serpent's tongue?(W00T religious symbolism!) When we are in a recession? With all the money that these donors/politicians have spare, why not spend it on the national debt, education, infrastructure, clean energy research, govt-funded healthcare, social programs, etc? Of course they couldn't- this method would not directly increase their already exorbitant revenues. To put this in perspective: National Deficit = $410 Billion GDP = ~$1.1 Trillion Congressional Budget = ~$3.15 Trillion McCain's Expenditures = ~$180 Mil (as of 31 Jul 2008) Obama's Expenditures = ~$400 Mil (as of 31 Jul 2008) That's just ridiculous. If our candidates are this unwise with their donations/expenditures BEFORE the election, what do their terms look like? Of course I am aware that this is by no means exclusive to the 2008 Election, W. Bush was I'm sure much worse. They just get to be my example. And unfortunately, the candidates can't win the election without the insane advertising costs because the American public wouldn't know what to do if they didn't have the media to make their decisions. HINT: READ EACH CANDIDATE'S PLATFORM ON THEIR WEBPAGE. Without effective campaign spending reform legislation, we will never have a true democracy because votes are indirectly (sometimes directly) bought. Furthermore, your "representatives" will always be wealthy indivduals (truly representing about 10% of the population) because no one else has the connections or independent funding to win. Canada, as an example, has set measures in place to counteract many of the inequalities and excesses of campaigning. Each candidate has a set amount of money they can spend and an equal duration of advertising face time. FURTHERMORE, they do not have a set election day and only know about it 8 weeks beforehand. The candidates elected in Ottawa are much more financially diverse, from chicken farmers and teachers to former hockey players and rock stars. MUCH more representative of the populace as a whole. More importantly, not bought out by a foreign oil tycoon. Well that's your politics lesson for the day. Stepping off the soapbox and back into my hiking boots.

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

After an unfortunate hiatus...

To my few and faithful: I would like to take a moment to sincerely apologize for my hiatus from blogging this summer. Quite unfortunately the vocational engagement that I undertook from June to mid-August prevented me from being blogoliciously productive during the workday. However, by the grace of the glorious higher beings of bloggers, that situation has been rectified. So where to begin? My summer has been slightly less adventurous than usual because of my new life plan: to go back to school for a Masters' in Music Performance in Fall of 2009 in the UK or Ireland. So I've been practicing alot down at St. Mary's. Luckily, I have had time for a few adventures (though not up to my normal volume.) I will address the general highlights in the next few blogs in no particular order (just to mix it up) :-)

Sailing

Since my emigration to DC a year and a half ago, I have not been able to participate in the same frequency of sailing adventures that I became accustomed to in southern Maryland. Fortunately, I was able to snag a ride for Gov Cup (Maryland Governor's Cup)- for non-Chesapeake sailing buffs, that's a 70-mile race from Annapolis (Maryland's current capital) to St. Mary's City (Maryland's first capital). This was my fourth Gov Cup race and because usual boat (Stitch-n-Glue) didn't go in the water, I hopped a ride on Seaduce led by the formidable Captain Bligh (a.k.a. my Uncle Ross).

<--Uncle Ross, Marty, Pete. Joan, Troy, Me --> We sailed 5 hours or so from the boat's marina near Gibson Island to just make the 6pm (Fri Aug 1) start of the race. Unfortunately, the race turned out to be a typical Gov Cup with ABSOLUTELY NO WIND. It was a little "exciting" in the middle of the night while we tried to dodge the excessive tanker traffic. Tankers are not easily differentiated from sailboats in the middle of night- they only have one or two lights. Essentially, if they are coming towards you and you wait until you can tell what they are with the naked eye, give my regards to Davey Jones' Locker!

<--Only good way to navigate the Bay Bridge!<--Sailing Anarchy guy taking pics Start of the race. THATS a tanker. One of my favorite parts of night sailing, when you aren't moving particularly fast, is to lie on my back and look up the mast at the stars; its very surreal to watch the mast move back and forth across a stationary sky- almost Magic Eye-esque. ALMOST makes me wish we still had to navigate by the stars. Almost.

Around 5 or 6 a.m., just as the sky was starting to lighten into its pre-dawn hue, the wind completely dropped to the point of nearly floating backwards (from the tide.) Given the context clues of the extremely overcast sky, it should not have come as a big surprise that this was merely the calm before the storm. Within 2 minutes, the three sleeping crew members were awoken by a sudden onset of gusting 30mph winds. This kept things exciting for a little while as the crew wrestled to keep the lurching vessel under control.

Gotta love watching a front come in!

After the wind died yet again, we came to the sad realization that there was no way we'd make it to the finish line before time ran out and that making it to the party was more important. SO we pulled into Solomon's and caught a ride in ye ol' Martin minivan service.

The infamous After-Party was alright, but I was EXHAUSTED after being up all night so turned in relatively early (8:30pm!!) in preparation for the next day's adventure: Bmore Marching Ravens gig at the Howard County Fair and the Black Crowes' Concert (AWESOME!!)

SMCM<--SMCM Alumni Tent City. Random new friend-->

Fortuitously, through my randomly typical "Six Degrees of Separation Syndrome" my friend Anna's husband Josh owns thebaynet.com, who had a reporter that wanted to interview someone about Gov Cup. So I did a phone interview before and then wrote a lengthy post-race update. This translated into me getting a shared byline :-) http://www.thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/viewstory/story_ID/9367

Which has subsequently led to me doing an upcoming freelance article for them, and hopefully more in the future. W00T!

Gov Cup picture links: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026765&l=bda62&id=115201684

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026763&l=67dcc&id=115201684

Two Buddies, No Bike? Ah well, Quack Attack prevailed anyways!

As usual I have been quite the busy bee. Per che posso! I suppose it is my nature, even though I have been attempting to devote more time to practicing, running, and riding Max. So here's the rundown (eventually I'll get back to that point where I'm writing more than every 2 weeks and can do better than an itemization)

1) Last weekend (11 July) started on Friday with my typical pilgrimage down to The County to go to the River Concert. This concert featured Brian Ganz (il Gnoccho!!) and Giuseppi Nova- the head of the SMCM Italian Music counterpart. He brought along a couple of the staff I met in Italy. Brought back memories, and more power to them for wearing a suit in the oppressive heat of a SoMD summer. I found that my command of the Italian language is not nearly as proficient when used domestically. The college was beautiful as always and the musician after-party was a glorious reunion.

2) 12-13 July I travelled to Richmond for MUDDY BUDDY!!! FANTASTIC time. Unfortunately, Team Quack Attack had a bike malfunction in the first minute of the 7 mile race. What was supposed to be 2 buddies, one bike, quickly morphed into 2 buddies, four feet. Kate and I ended up running the whole thing, but we finished! My run time was actually pretty good, 7 miles in just under an hour including obstacles (climbing and balance beams). And of course the Mud Pit you had to army crawl through was GLORIOUS. Check out the pics: http://www.brightroom.com/view_user_event.asp?S=20&EVENTID=36760&PWD=&BIB=1405&DIVISION=&TEAM= This event lead to my new aspiration to form a Ragnar Relay Team for the end of September (http://www.ragnarrelay.com/) and also an Eco-Triathalon - return of Team Quack Attack! Eco-tri's consist of running, biking, and kayaking.

<--Before -->After--> 3) Last week was fairly uneventful. Mainly highlighted by another awesome snare lesson with Joe McCarthy (principle percussionist in the Navy Band.) Friday I headed down for another River Concert and mostly just wandered around and chatted with people (OK that's what I do every week in reality.)

4) Saturday 19 July I had to wake up REALLY early and go from St. Mary's to Owings Mills (by 9Am) for an all-day drumline rehearsal. Then returned quickly back to DC afterwards to prepare for the 212 Rhode Island Moonbounce Party. Really there was no moonbounce, but the party was awesome and lots of people showed up. The highlights:

a) I got to wear my kitch Italian LBD (mentioned in an earlier blog) that was an utterly unfounded splurge, but is awesome nonetheless.

<-- Me, Steph, and Sam- the 212 RI NW Moonbounce Team b) Mark drinking a fifth of Captain (with some help from BJ) in the 45 min before he left to see Poison

c) Chapman telling me that I am utterly and completely Batshit Crazy, but cool, because of my random activities (he was three 40's of OE into the evening and we all knew I was Batshit already!)

d) Sten and Chapman deciding it was a good idea to play the Electric Shock game. This is a REAL game from Spencer's (http://www.spencersonline.com/fun-and-games_shocking-games/lightning-xtreme-shock-game/). This predictably culminated in Chapman shocking Sten's face and Sten making a jab at Kevin's cahones

5) Sunday spent my entire day running and then practicing

I've been fairly boring lately, but trying desperately to spend some quality time practicing for auditions (coming up in October) and memorizing Baltimore Ravens' music (1st pre-season game Aug 16.) I swear I will make these entries more frequent and interesting soon!

Three parades, One Wedding, and a Funeral

Well, its been quite sometime since I have written in my blog. My apologies to the few and faithful. For the last month I have been attempting to finish up my blog entries about Italia, but things keep getting in the way. Like real life. However, I intend to rectify acknowledging to existence of real life in due time. For the time being, I will skip the last month and start with last weekend. Don't expect to get out of not hearing about the last month though!! So the month of July has gone as follows thus far: 1) Thursday, 3 July, I hastened home from work to throw together my marching band summer uniform (a dashing combo of purple cotten, too-large black athletic shorts, knee high white socks, white shoes [mine are called 'Betty Whites'], and a black ball cap.) After that, I drove out to my fellow drumliner, Julie's house in Catonsville. She charitably offered to provide me with a more Baltimore-centric place to crash, given the 6am call time in Owings Mills. I got to meet her wonderful dog Jack:-)

2) Friday 4 July: Donned the snazzy Ravens' summer uniform and my 75 pound drum and proceeded to survive 3 parades (total of about 7 miles from what I can estimate) in Dundalk, Towson, and Catonsville. Dundalk is a *special* place. For those that are familiar with the reference, it is kind of like 7th District tossed into southern Baltimore. Only without the excuse of being in the middle of nowhere to account for its pure white trashiness. Towson- rather non-descript and mostly uphill. Catonsville- really quite cool. Some house gave us use of their washrooms, as well as rehydration and candy. So we gave them and their large array of guests a personal concert. I DID get plowed into at top speed by a bass drum twice. Kind of painful, but all of those years of riding and rugby have taught me to take a hit. All around a rewarding experience. 3) On the night of 4 July, I discovered I was too tired to put up much of an effort, plus I correctly anticipated an extremely hectic weekend. I wandered over to Jeremy/Greg/Josh/Kevin's house in NE DC for some food, beer, illicit fireworks, and, best of all Rock Band!!! (I am ADDICTED!) Didn't stay too late, and subsequently discovered when I got back to my house that, in DC, there is no real need to go anywhere to see fireworks. This is because, DC's fireworks laws are quite lax, and what DO exist are not really enforced. This is evidence from the wide array of ground and aerborne incendiaries that alit in AT least 3 different locations a half-block from my house. It was rather nice watching fireworks through the skylight above our jacuzzi :-)

4) On 5 July, after getting about 4 hrs of sleep, I awoke at 4am to drive to Dulles. This normally wouldn't have been such a terrible trip, except Daniel, my faithful British GPS seems to be rebelling and will not power up. Regardless, I got to the airport on time and boarded a TINY commuter plane for Detroit. Landed without incident [insert Eminem "Lose Yourself" theme music here]. Erica's brother Kelsey kindly picked me up from the airport and after a brief stint at her house, I was whisked off to the salon in downtown Plymouth to watched the chaos of a bride, a mother of the bride, 8 bridesmaids, and a groomswoman having their hair done by a mere two very talented hairdressers. Everything came together in the end and we dashed off to the church in Grosse Pointe to watch Erica wed Hawkeye (ok his name is really David, but he resembles Hawkeye from "M.A.S.H.", so this is what us SMCM people call him). Erica was gorgeous and the ceremony was beautiful, only to be rivalled by the reception at the exceptionally posh Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. As usual, us SMCM folks turned the whole occasion into a very SMCM QA-esque dance party. Shelbert and I corrupted Erica and Hawk's younger relatives by teaching them the proper way to honour the noble tradition of get-away car decorating. First, stealing toilet paper, handsoap, tampons, pads, and mouthwash cups from the women's room. The night, appropriately finished up with a rendition of Shelbert, Ricky (Erica) and I singing along to "Friends in Low Places", starting a kickline, and adding the mysterious 3rd verse. Finally got back to Erica's house about 2am and crashed.

5) 6 July: I awoke about 8am, grabbed a shower before one of the other 19 people staying at the house could get in, and started helping Erica's parents and her aunts clean and cook for the post-wedding brunch. It was SO good to see everyone again. Erica's family (for those that don't know) adopted me and fed me dinner once a week when I lived in Canada. I miss them alot but am terrible about keeping in touch. Grandma and Granpa Helland send me a Christmas card every year that never fails to choke me up. Mid-year resolution: be better about that. The rest of Sunday was low-key and pretty much involved chillin' with Erica, Hawk, the family, and my SMCM bridesmaids.

6) Went to bed about 2am and had to wake up at 4am to catch a ride to the airport with Mr. Helland. ugh 6am flights. Got back to Dulles by 7:30am and had to immediately drive down to the County (St. Mary's) for the funeral of Mrs. Kathy McFadden. She was my first music teacher in elementary school and is in the hunt club. Truly a southern belle and a lovely woman. Since she touched so many aspects of my life I knew MANY people at the event. Pretty much everyone that I told my future plans to (going back to school for music) said that they weren't sure why I hadn't been doing that in the first place. I guess it just takes some of us longer than others to figure out what our true calling is. The resident Hindu Priestess in the Hunt Club said that I wouldn't regret that decision and would always be happy doing what I loved. I figure you can't ignore advice from Hindu Priestess! So in short (ok not really) that was last weekend. This weekend: a return to the River Concert, and Muddy Buddy!!