Ham

Bruce, pig terrorist, gets a scratch on a bench.

Just a quick word of warning to any readers considering leaving out some tablescraps for the 175-pound stray pig in your neighborhood:

Angry pig holds woman hostage

(From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

A pig has turned on a woman who tried to look after it, effectively holding her hostage on a property in northern New South Wales.

Sixty-three-year-old Caroline Hayes says she has been unable to leave her Uki house to use the farm's outdoor toilet at times because the white pig is aggressive towards her.

Ms Hayes says the animal came from a home two kilometres away, but its owners could not handle it and let it loose in the rainforest.

She says she and her neighbours began feeding the pig, who they named 'Bruce', after it first showed up at their homes 10 days ago.

"When I found it, it had 15 ticks in its eyes which I actually took out," she said.

"One of its eyes it couldn't see out of, so I put cream in it and I fixed its back up, but apparently it's actually claimed my land and claimed my place."

Ms Hayes says the pig became aggressive when it wanted more food, recently biting her on the leg when she tried to go to the toilet.

"It started getting very pushy, started pushing me around, so I started to get a bit frightened, until the stage that it started knocking on my door at 4 o'clock in the morning, actually head-butting my door," she said.

She says she locked herself into her house yesterday afternoon and was too afraid to get out until late this morning.

"This morning, I wanted to go to my toilet, which is outside. I opened up the door and the pig pushed me that hard, it pushed me back into my room, where I fell over," she said.

"I picked up a broom and poked him out with it and he snapped it in half with his mouth."

Even rangers from Murwillumbah Council have failed to capture the animal, which Ms Hayes claimed was as big as a shetland pony.

"The rangers came out to my house yesterday with a dog cage and this pig is that big, it's like trying to put an elephant in a dog cage," Ms Hayes said.

"They tried for a little while and they couldn't do it. They got him halfway in and he just backed off and went back to my dam, where he was having a lovely time in the water."

She says Bruce is also causing mayhem in her yard.

"He's pulled a big king-size mattress out of my garage and he's ripped it up all around the yard," she said.

"And then he's come up again and I've got a mat outside my door, which he's actually rolled up.

"[He] put his nose underneath it and actually rolled it up into a perfect roll."

Rangers will try to capture the pig today but Ms Hayes says she does not want to know what they plan to do with it.

"I haven't stopped crying because I'm a major animal lover and a vegetarian," she said.

AD editor's note: Bruce is officially off the baby name list.



JEM

Protuberance

pro·tu·ber·ance (pr-tbr-ns, -ty-, pr-) n.

1. Something, such as a bulge, knob, or swelling, that protrudes.

2. The condition of being protuberant.

American Ferengi

An actual e-mail I received yesterday from my bro-in-law, Adam:

"I was reading Missy's blog and posted a comment. While doing so, I realized that Jake's picture reminds me of Todd Nichols and Jasmine's reminds me of Quark."

Just for reference, Todd Nichols was a bearded, semi-heavyset but for the most part inoffensive-looking guitarist for Toad the Wet Sprocket. Quark, on the other hand, is a repulsive, obnoxious, double-crossing, sexual harassment-prone, aroused-by-ear-rubbing Ferengi from "Star Trek".

I think I can safely say I've been more flattered. Though the resemblance, I must admit, is startling. Especially considering I've never openly discussed my ear fetish.



JEM

One Night in Würzburg

This is Würzburg, Germany. It's located in the northernmost tip of Bavaria in a region called Franconia and is home to roughly 135,000 people. It was first described as a town in the year 762, and over the coming centuries was a front row seat to all manner of Medieval exploits. Between 1626 and 1631 it was the epicenter of one of the most massive witch trials in history, and in 1945, just a little over a month after the bombing of Dresden, the Royal Air Force pummeled it with 1,127 tons of bombs, including about 370,000 incendiaries, destroying about 90 percent of the city in 17 minutes.

It's also the birthplace of Jake's two older sisters, Laura, who visited us about a month ago, and Amy, who has been touring Germany and Austria with her husband Dave since Saturday.

Amy and her birthplace

Both women were born while their father, Paul Michaelson, was stationed at the U.S. Army Garrison Franconia, based in Würzburg, for several years during the 1970s. Both were toddlers when the family left Germany and have basically no recollection of their early childhood here, but both felt compelled to come back and explore their birthplace. So it was actually lucky that their baby brother took off for the Vaterland, since it gave them a valid excuse to return.

Jake and I also wanted to see the city his parents speak of with such fondness, and since we were unable to see it with Laura and John, we took the chance to hop in with Amy and Dave.

Unfortunately, the weather was rotten.

But Amy, in all her wisdom, said she liked it better that way because it all felt more (for lack of a better word) "German".

We visited the royal residence in the center of the city, which was lovely.

It had really cool grounds.

And then we crossed the Main River and hiked up to the fortress you can see behind us in this picture:


After which I went into labor.

Not really.


But we had a super view.

Then we found the military base where Amy spent her toddler years, which was all but abandoned, since it's being decommissioned this year and, according to the guy at our hotel, turned over for use by the University of Würzburg. But we were still able to locate the church where Amy was blessed as a baby ...

... and the hospital where she made her big debut.

We also found a traditional German clothing shop where Amy tried on dirndls and looked so adorable that my brain literally exploded.

Unfortunately they don't make maternity dirndls, so I couldn't join in the fun, and Dave and Jake weren't too keen on trying out the knee socks and lederhosen, though they would've undoubtedly looked dashing.

Then, sadly, Jake and I had to hop a train back to Dresden so that I could teach an English class that night. But Amy and Dave will head back this way tomorrow before they fly back to the States on Saturday, and we can't wait to hear about the adventures they had without us.

Thanks for coming out, guys! We had a blast with you.




JEM

The End is Here

Well, Planet Earth and all of its living inhabitants, no one can say we didn't have a great time, am I right? Unfortunately, every party has to end some time and it looks like ours might do so (in rather spectacular form) today.

Say hello to the end of the world:

This is the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. This is how big it is:

Entirely underground, this single machine spans about 17 miles. It has been built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to crash tiny subatomic particles called hadrons into each other, using giant magnets, at just under the speed of the light. These particles will explode, theoretically creating 100,000 times more heat than the sun — though only for the smallest fraction of a second and on a far smaller scale (the area of the explosion will be about a billionth part of a speck of dust).

CERN scientists believe this could help them recreate conditions similar to the Big Bang, on a very miniaturized scale, thereby gaining a greater understanding of — well, everything. Terms that come up with the Large Hadron Collider tend to be pretty grandiose — discovery of the "God particle", for example, or the development of a legitimate "Theory of Everything".

So, theoretically that's what this thing will do.

Theoretically.

Thing is, they don't really know what it will do because they haven't actually tried it out yet. That's why other scientists have petitioned to halt the project. They fear turning this thing on could create a black hole. To which Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of CERN replied, "The chance we produce a black hole is minuscule. ... Even if we do, it can't swallow up the Earth."

Although certainly intended to be comforting, the immediate cry heard round the scientific community was one of: "Wait, you mean there is a chance that this could create a BLACK HOLE???"

But efforts to stop the project didn't pan out. And today, Sept. 10, 2008, at some point between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Central European Time (my time zone), they're going to turn it on.

I recommend spending the last hours of your life checking out these incredible photo essays of the Large Hadron Collider (here and here) and looking directly into the eyes of your imminent doom.

See you on the other side.



JEM

P.S. You can read more about the Large Hadron Collider all over the Interwebs, but since you don't have much time to sift through all that stuff, what with the end of the world and all, I'd recommend this in-depth National Geographic article. It explains all this business of God particles and Theories of Everything better than I can. Happy reading!

In the Belfry

So there I was last night, sitting in our IKEA cantilevered rocking chair, making a list of potential baby names, when something with a pretty substantial wingspan swoops into our living room from the direction of our open bedroom window.

I, of course, freeze and scream bloody murder, scaring the bejeebies out of Jake, who was in the other room, the baby, who started doing jumping jacks in my belly, and I'm pretty sure the sensitive-eared-creature-intruder, who crash landed on the floor under our living room window and lied there motionless but blinking.

Yeah. That's a bat. And a pretty fine specimen, if I do say so myself.

I think nature may have been trying to send me a sign.



Bruce is a nice name.



JEM

I Spy with My Little Eye

How to spot a German tourist
Any combination of two or more of the following traits strongly indicate that observed tourist(s) may be German.
1. Wearing glasses. Especially if the frames are excessively angular and/or brightly colored.
2. Extraordinarily well-behaved. They wait patiently at crosswalks when no cars are in sight and everyone else has crossed the street already. They also never cut in line.
3. Quiet. Unlike their Mediterranean-area European Union brothers and sisters, Germans almost never raise their voices in public. And unlike the Americans, they don't talk if they have nothing to say.
4. Wife looks like she could take her husband in a fair fight. This isn't true of all German couples, but it is apparently much more common among middle-aged to older German couples than it is among couples of the same demographic from other nations, because it was a dead giveaway for us every time.
5. Strange, short, asymmetrical hairstyles on otherwise conservative looking middle-aged women.

How to spot an American tourist
Any combination of two or more of the following traits strongly indicate that observed tourist(s) may be American.
1. Wearing T-shirts.
2. Smiling with their teeth for photos. Without fail, every person we noticed smiling broadly between a camera and the Eiffel Tower was an American. Everyone else either gave a more demure closed-mouth smile, or didn't bother smiling at all.
3. Laughing loudly.
4. Wearing baseball caps.
5. Talking about people openly in front of them, assuming (usually erroneously) that the people being discussed can't understand English.



JEM