Don't you just love the show "Entertainment Tonight"?  They'll announce with great acclaim the items they are covering for the evening and when at last they get to a particular item, there's bog all to it!  Now we Brits have been supporting America in Afghanistan and Iraq so you would think ET would at least know something about Britain - not a chance!  During 'Tthe Wedding' they mispronounced The Mall - no it's not a shopping mall it's a street you twits!  Even worse, to the great dismay of every Welshman who may have seen the program, they referred to Anglesey as a town when it's actually an island, separated from the mainland by the Meni Strait (a rather wide stretch of seawater).

I thought that maybe that if they can't get 'The Mall' right, it would be something of a giggle to hear them try to pronounce the name of one of the towns on Anglesey:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

If that tongue twister doesn't get them all of a flutter nothing will.  They'll no doubt call on Catherine Zeta Jones for some help - at least she can pronounce it (No I can't, but then I'm a Brit poking fun at ET).  Oh yes, the above place name is for real - Google it and see for yourself.

Perhaps we're too far north on the Mississippi to be too threatened by flood waters, we also missed the worse of the storms, but we did get hit with quite a few homes with holes in their siding from the hail.  The river flooded, but not enough to do much damage.  Downstream the river got gradually higher, now their having real problems in the southern states.  Here it was expected because of all the snow, it had to melt and go somewhere and that somewhere is the Mississippi.  We need to keep the folks down south in our thoughts and prayers.

Our web site The Cook Companies looks a little better with a new home page and an updated page for out Catholic links.  It took me a while to check out which links were still working and which were not and keeping abreast of changes to other web sites is a pain in the sitting place.  All four of Karin's books are still listed on our web site and I hope to update some of our pages in the near future.

Corned Beef and Cabbage?

The Real Irish Dish

No I don't mean Enya, I mean the traditional St. Patrick's Day feast of bacon or beef joint, potatoes and greens.  Sorry but corned beef and cabbage is not traditional Irish fare even if it is an integral part of Irish-American culture.  It apparently originated with Irish-Americans in the eastern states who used corned beef in place of the more traditional pork.

One clue to this is a rather simple question: where in the name of heaven would the Irish get cabbage at this time of year?  St. Patrick's Day falls in March - the beginning of the planting season and not harvest time.

The picture above of the half-British half-Irish scruff and his wife was taken at the end of the summer last year.  Right now we have another winter storm threatening later in the week - so much for March being the beginning of the planting season.  It seems to me that the seasons haven't so much changed as somehow become scrambled - freeze in winter and spring and fry in summer and fall.  If we fry enough the red and gold of fall isn't so much the leaves in the trees but us!

In any case, to return to the subject of St. Patrick's Day.  With St. Patrick being the Patron Saint of Ireland and his feast day falling in March, it often falls during the time of Lent.  So the rule is that the Lenten fast is lifted for that one day in Ireland so that the Irish can tuck into their meal and down a pint or two and have a good time.  It's a day on which everyone seems to become Irish.

So on March 17th (four days before my birthday - big hint) have a great St. Patrick's Day, a decent meal and a pint of the black stuff (Guinness).   Lay off the green beer it'll only make you puke!

When Gibbs isn't busy with a pressing case, Abby takes a well deserved rest with her pet hippo.  She's the lass who puts the 'cute' in Forensic Science.  Where, I wonder, would NCIS be without Abby?  Gibbs relies on her to find the answers to difficult questions and somehow she finds those answers.

It's not all forensics in her lab either - even Christmas has it's place as well it should.  Christmas is a time of peace, a time of light in the darkness and not just a time for the stores to make profits - even though they often do.

Well I suppose someone has to play Santa!  For this Elf it's probably her best choice; Gibbs? Definitely not! Dinozzo, I doubt it. McGee, Naa!  Ducky, I think not. Director Vance? Er... Not a chance.  No there's only one Santa, skinny though he is... may need some meat on his bones but then what else can she do?

When the cast are through for the day they will no doubt have a few laughs before going home to their respective families - where they should be.  That's the thing about Christmas, it brings people together while celebrating the birth of a man who made a big impact on the world - and for good reason.  His teachings still hold true, let's face it.


My thoughts are that soon we face the austere season of Lent, then Easter - a time of new life, the rising of the Son of God.  Winter is behind us, summer ahead along with the promise of a brighter future, providing we let it happen.  Be not ashamed of Jesus. Christ because he really did have the words of life - the teaching of love and the extent to which is should be expressed.  We should keep him in mind when we think of our neighbours, beyond our own city or nation.  We should keep him in mind when we think of our planet and it's needs.

Maybe that's what Abby's dreaming about when she takes her nap, a better world in which love replaces hate and it's people care about their planet.  If its not worth dreaming about, its worth praying about I think.

This is what it looked like way back in November 2010... All that white fluffy stuff just seemed to pile up and pile up with each successive snow storm as the weeks and months rolled by.  Well it's now starting to melt and with the melting snow the ground is starting to look ugly - leaves, cigarette buts and bits of trash covered by the white stuff are starting to show.

First we have the back-breaking work of shoveling the snow (if we haven't got a snow blower to hand) and then when it's gone we have the back breaking work of cleaning  up the yard!

In an email addressed to Karin was the wise and true saying, "Life is like taking a hot bath... the longer you're in it the more wrinkled you get."  Maybe we do feel our age and maybe we do show our age with each passing winter, spring, summer, and fall (or autumn as it's called in Britain) but one thing is certain: getting old is bloody hard work!

If you are young and you think life is one big party - or should be - just remember this: after each party you will experience  that hangover that will make you feel more miserable than death warmed up!  Headache pills will not cut it and there's no cure.  Age will eventually bring about the realisation that going to church rather than to the bar not only frees you from the promise of a hangover, it really does give you a feeling that your life means something.  With Jesus Christ right there in the center of things, your life does mean something and you can do something with it.  Sod the party, really live!

Back on board.

First of all my laptop went down in the middle of work I was completing (off line).  Then after re-booting I found few of my programs would actually work.  I managed to get one to clean up my registry, then used another to re-set the laptop.  After almost a day of trying this and that, having to re-boot each time, I finally got the thing working.

Then it happened again.  Something was not right.  But this time my security software kicked in suggesting a Trojan was on board.

I rebooted and ran a full security scan of the laptop and sure enough there was a Trojan - two files were identified, one was deleted by the software but the other left.  This I was able to delete using the security software.  After re-booting, yet again, the laptop behaved itself.

A Trojan is mallware that hides inside another innocent looking program.  Some Trojans are just pests, others are downright dangerous.  Even though I'm careful about anything I download, trying to stay with trusted companies, it still happened to me and if this can happen to me it can happen to anyone.  This Trojan caught me off guard, even though I run my security software often.   This time I was able to deal with the mess it made of my computer files.

Be careful, there are nuts out there in Cyberspace who love to mess with your PC or Laptop because they've nothing better to do with their sad, pointless lives.  Check with the companies that provide your security software for infomation on mallware and the like and follow their advice.

Mick - Glad to be back.

Special Knowledge? No Way!

It would appear that there is some confusion regarding the Gnostic gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the teaching of Gnosticism. So first of all some clarification: the Gnostic gospels are dated from the second to fourth century AD and the writers of these gospels never even met Jesus Christ. Most of what we know of Gnosticism and it's teaching comes from St. Irenaeus and his work: “Detection and Overthrow of the Gnosis Falsely So-called”, also known as, “Against Heresies”. The Gnostic gospels were discovered accidentally by two farmers in Egypt in December, 1945 and although some were duplicated in different finds, only one copy of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene exists. The discovery of these writings did not devalue the writing of St. Irenaeus but rather confirmed what he had written. Indeed, St. Irenaeus remains the primary source for our understanding of the Gnostics.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of some 972 documents, including text from the Hebrew Bible discovered between 1946 and 1956 around the ancient ruins of the settlement of Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea and have nothing in common with the Gnostic gospels. These documents date from around 150 BC to 70 AD and written mostly in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Karin and I have actually seen them with our own peepers!

Now then, St. Irenaeus was the second Bishop of Lyons, succeeding the martyred St. Pothinus. Irenaeus was originally from Asia and he was a pupil of St. Polycarp, ordained bishop by the Apostles in Asia. In his above mentioned work, St. Irenaeus wrote:

[Marcion], moreover, mutilated the Gospel according to Luke, removing all that is written about the generations of the Lord; and he removed much of the teaching of the Lord's utterances, in which the Lord is recorded as confessing most clearly that His Father is the Maker of the universe. He also persuaded his followers that he himself was more truthful than those Apostles who have handed down the Gospel; and he furnished them not with the Gospel but with a small part of the Gospel.

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes Gnoticism's origin as:

Whereas formerly Gnosticism was considered mostly a corruption of Christianity, it now seems clear that the first traces of Gnostic systems can be discerned some centuries before the Christian Era. Its Eastern origin was already maintained by Gieseler and Neander; F. Ch. Bauer (1831) and Lassen (1858) sought to prove its relation to the religions of India; Lipsius (1860) pointed to Syria and Phoenicia as its home, and Hilgenfeld (1884) thought it was connected with later Mazdeism. Joel (1880), Weingarten (1881), Koffmane (1881), Anrich (1894), and Wobbermin (1896) sought to account for the rise of Gnosticism by the influence of Greek Platonic philosophy and the Greek mysteries, while Harnack described it as "acute Hellenization of Christianity".

Gnosticism then, has no place in Catholic or Protestant Christianity. So now you know!

Calendar Girls: A True Story.

Was the movie Calendar Girls based on real-life characters? Not really, even if the movie is actually based on a true story.  Intentional similarities do exist when comparing the close friendship of Annie (Julie Walters) and Chris (Helen Mirren) to that of Angela Baker and Tricia Stewart in real life. -BBC.

The women decided to do the calendar to raise money to help fight leukemia after Angela Baker's husband John died from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in July 1998 at age 54. John, played in the movie by John Alderton, worked as a National Park Officer for the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and from the onset of his illness he grew sunflowers.  The image of the sunflower is present throughout the calendar.

Much of the film was fictionalized, including most of the characters and their names.  However, the basic storyline is true.  Women aged between 45 and 65 posed nude for a Women's Institute Calendar to raise money for charity.  Unlike in the movie, the women had the full support of the local and national WI for the calendar.  What was not mentioned in the movie was the additional support of Actress Glenda Jackson, one of the calendar's sponsors.  Glenda is the only member of the British Parliament to have actually won an Oscar!  Naturally, her support for the calendar drew attention.

In 2000, the calendar had raised more than £450,000. The money was used to fund cutting edge research into lymphoma and leukaemia at the University of Leeds. A plaque dedicated to John Baker was placed in new laboratories at Leeds. The plaque reads, "The work in this laboratory is dedicated to the memory of John Baker in recognition of the exceptional fundraising achievements of ‘The Calendar Girls’ of the Rylstone & District Women’s Institute."  -Leukaemia Research Fund

See: The Calendar Girls Official Site

Above are actress's Helen Mirren, born July 26th 1945 and Julie Walters born February 22nd 1950 (I was born one month later)!

In addition to the calendars, six of the original WI Calendar women posed for a postcard titled "Baker's Half Dozen" (shown above). The women include Lynda Logan, Beryl Bamforth, Tricia Stewart, Christine Clancy, Angela Baker and Ros Fawcett.

Why not visit: The Cook Companies