Lord of the Gingerbreads

So, last Christmas we all got really bored and decided to make an edible tribute to Peter Jacksons "The Lord of the Rings". We explored Gingerbread as a medium.

For your enjoyment, I now present "The Lords of the Gingerbreads: Fellowship of the Gingers"

Take a special note of the tower of Baradur, complete with the eye of Sauron, Saramon the duck and the fearsome Balrog.

K

Summer: A Sonnet

Summer.

Oh for thee, you fiery dame,
You force of nature none can tame,
Weary the bone doth ye to me
And render my limbs lame.

Twas naught and 20 years ago
Upon ye I first gazed
When heavens flames and plasma core
Amongst Earth ranked and blazed.

When in it's 1st seasons angular rotation
Earth, our home, doth spin,
Optical density for the suns penetration
Is high, so it all comes in.

At least, that, is in the south of the globe,
Which is blessed with climates, temperate,
Where sweat covered brows and temporal lobes
Your light and warmth do irritate.

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
Yes.

5 Things To Do At A Home Open

Home opens can be very educational experiences. Being inside a home that has been meticulously cleaned and polished for the purpose of masking its flaws and improving its appeal shows us a window into a world which could be our own. A shiny bathroom floor, ornamental fruit in a bowl on the counter, the fragrant scent of pine, gently wafting through the corridor. It's enough to shame even the most proud home-owner. Being in such an ambient, peaceful environment does, however, tend to inspire boredom in those less interested in the subtleties of furniture arrangement and sensible, but stylish decor. The following list is a guide to help you attain that sense of joy we receive from the ecstasy of self-induced entertainment.

1: Make a science project and present it on the kitchen counter/dining room table.

What better way to create intrigue and excitement than by exploring the intricate world of science through the clever use of paper mache, bi-carb soda, food-colouring and vinegar. Demonstrate the wonder of discovery and the innovations of modern science in the comfort of someone elses future home.

2: Have a shower.

Being in a house full of people can be stressful. The constant jostling through tight spaces, the shoulders pushed against yours, the smell of pine mingling with the sweat of 20 people in an enclosed space, it's enough to send a more sensitive person up the wall. So take a load off, cool off in the shower, wash away all the stress and discomfort with soap and warm water. Don't forget to bring a towel. The water mains is usually located at the front of the property, gas on the left side of the outside of the house.

3: Stage a home invasion.

In a lot of ways, home-opens are like really boring parties with no food. The enthusiastic chattering of a real estate agent explaining the virtues of 1970's plumbing and the gentle droning of classical music in background can all get a little bit draining after a while. Why not mix it up a little, add some excitement to the party.
What's more exciting than danger?
Don a balaclava, bring along your baseball bat or switchblade and assault the synthetic tranquility of ideological perfection.

4: Pretend to be a ghost.

Empty houses have a mystery about them, they raise questions about the circumstances of their desolation and the cause for sale. Why not amplify that mystery and build on the suspicions of those more open-minded attendees. Set up and conceal a surround sound system throughout the house, making sure to place a bass emitter in the floorboards, then tell the house guests via broadcast to "Leave this place and never return!" and also that "Death awaits ye in this house", then turn the bass right up and rattle the house. Attach pockets of fake blood to the rear side of paintings and set them to detonate via a remote signal, causing 'blood' to seep through the canvas and trickle down the walls. Alternatively you can simply run around the house wearing a white sheet over your head, shouting "Ooooh Ooooh!"

5: Make a salad.

Display homes are full of things that are fake. Fake fruit, fake bread, fake drawers and cupboards. The art of illusion, it seems, plays the biggest role in the disguises worn by average homes. Don't be taken for a fool. You see through the cheap ploys employed by deceptive people. Show them for what they are. Take a bowl of fake fruit, slice, dice or peel them and arrange them neatly on a plate. Dress them with imitation lemon juice, for added synthenticity and offer them around to fellow home-open attendees.

K

Confidence

Self confidence can sometimes be a misleading and unmanageable thing. It can lead you to think that you can do things which are clearly not possible or which do not even remotely pertain to your skill set. For someone whose skill set is very small, self confidence can be a very real problem and can lead to Compulsive Failure Syndrome (CFS), a disorder which causes you to fail at just about everything you attempt, and then feel good about yourself afterwards.

This cycle of failure, followed by self appraisal, eventually collapses on itself and leaves you feeling like a terrible, useless person. There are exceptions, of course. Daniel Radcliffe is one. His consistent failure to be a competent actor has had no effect on his disproportionate ego.

I suffer from an acute case of CFS. I like to think of my skill-set as  'specialised', focused. Specifically, my skills include puns and music. This lack of skills, however, does not prevent me from believing that I am capable of successfully undertaking any activity known to man. Constant encouragement and praise from my wife and other such supportive figures has greatly inflated my sense of self-worth.

Inevitably, an inflated ego leads to illusions of grandeur and a craving for power.

Possibly the hardest thing for someone with CFS to do is to look at his/her own accomplishments objectively. A good way to do this is to compare your own accomplishments with the accomplishments of prominent historical figures and take note of the vast, vast, vast differences between the two. For example;

  Putting batteries in a torch VS the lighthouse of Alexandria. 

or

Making a sandwhich VS Feeding 2000 people with a fish and some bread

or 

Flushing the toilet VS Inventing Hygene

I call this "Grooming your Ego".

Like many things, however, too much of it is bad. Too much Ego Grooming can result in feelings of worthlessness and insignificance. Self-confidence in moderation is the recipe for an accurate, un-exaggerated life.

K

"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you *1up*"

In the intermediate time between my last blog and the present date, many things have happened in my life. There's been drama, action, mystery, romance and a whole bunch of other stuff. In all this time, I've come to notice that certain aspects of my life have radically changed. I'm not just talking about weight, build, height and all those other physical things, but my social aptitude, personality, social status, they've all undergone a metamorphisis of fairly substantial proportions. Some time ago I discovered that each social/physical/mental improvement was the result of a continuous accumulation of experience due to the undertaking of many and varied tasks. This discovery can be summed up as such:

"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you 1UP."

Procrastination

Pro-cras-ti-nate

 verb

1.

to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.

Procrastination. We all do it. How often have you sat down at the computer to study and somehow ended up watching a video of a bear falling out of a tree, or logging on to Facebook and spending the following hour scrolling down and down, delving into the rich, cultural goldmine of the last three days of status updates. 


It's a question which plagues us daily, "To do or not to do". And the point is this - it's a choice. As much as we may try to limit our options down to a single factor, to hone in on a single goal, to optimise our time and automate our lifestyle into a machine-like, success-creating machine, we are flawed by a fundamental human-factor. I would argue that being a human is more about our flaws than it is about our achievements as a race. 


Success is widely viewed as the accumulation of comfortable wealth and happiness, procrastination, the enemy of progress.  The end that we work towards is, more often than not, no more than the reflection of modern idealism, where the measure of a man is the number of zeroes on his/her bank statement and the size of his/her house. 

Something I've learnt this year is that I'd much rather be distracted. Procrastination is just another way of saying "paying attention to what interests you." And if I don't become a lawyer or a doctor, what have I really lost? A 6 figure salary? A predictable future? Individuality is something that is worth preserving. To sacrifice that for stability and wealth is truly a wasteful use of time - not spending four hours learning a new song, not spending your gap-year travelling the world, not taking a tap-dance class. 




Invest in the things that distract you and don't let the expectations of a materialistic world shape who your are.

K