It sort of creeps up on your sorry ass, so sneakily smoove [sic] and subtly without any warning, and then Ba-Bam!
  Remembering back years ago, BNB was down in Cancun for a mid-winter wedding just after this special day, so it was combinated [sic] for added life effect. Sun, sand, sea, surf and cervezas, along with the girlfriend partner of significance at the time. What could go wrong?
 
It’s kinda funny how relationships can go to hell in a handbasket pretty damn skippy quick. But that’s a whole other ball of wax not related to today’s theme. Still, good, bad, or ugly, that was one of  Bob's most memorable Valentine's to date.

It’s a big day generally, for some many coupled up, and a boffo orchestrated commercial “$ma$h and grab” with coerced and captive consumers on the hook. You are expected / supposed to do certain shit, or you might get messed up super "bigly yuge" by your significant other.

For those curious, the celebration's origins may not well be all lovey-dovey though, as detailed here with  The Gory Origins of Valentine’s Day | The holiday began as a feast to celebrate the decapitation of a third-century Christian martyr, or perhaps two. So how did it become all about love?

This next piece odes back to Roman daze [sic], with stuff like sacrifices, drunken nakedness and other wilder elements. The Dark Origins Of Valentine's Day.

Here are two varying stylistic views from a couple of well-known mainstream TV types, not that their opinions mean more than anybody else’s. Make of it what you will, as Bob's just throwing it in the mix. 
 
We all need to make choices in life, on matters small and large, so choose wisely. Just like this cat done did.
 
Our main man got the wisdom on that! Long-term marriage is a kind and masterful teacher it would appear. It's all so clear.

Bob's attitude and perspective are pretty crystal—he spreads that around more than peanut butter and jelly on bread. Remember, it's always funny until someone loses a testicle, as he is wont to state on occasion. 
 
The actual off-line StVD plan will be hanging out post Friday sundown with a few folks, rustle up some vittles at the hacienda, and crack open some accompanying adult alco-poppage, to help grease along animated cerebral conversation and assorted world witticisms.

Today’s theme will hardly get mentioned, in part because one punter in particular will be marking their birthday a day late as a convenient distraction. Said punter also abruptly cancelled his "casual" StVD date plan, cuz ... like ... the other side wanted romance, candlelit high-end dining, going dancing, and other stuff like that. 
  Some of tonight's celebratory crew will be paired up, but most will be flying solo, on both sides of the genital divide. Valentine's Day is as much about a mindset anyway, as with a lot else in life. 
 
Bob ain't hating on the day at all. It is what it is, and you gotta do what you gotta do. So get out there, and make the most of the it, whether alone, with others, or lonely in a loving relationship. Y'all can be at home, stepping out, on the road, or away at a tropical wedding and experiencing all the joys and tender moments love and romance have to offer. Bob wrote a whole book chocka-blocka full of shit like this and other funny / "out there" stuff to do with weddings, marriage, and relationships, set against an exotic worldwide backdrop. No doubt, his debut novel must have that de rigueur HEA (or at least, HFN) ending in all run-of-the-mill romance that (female) readers crave? Yeah, let's smoke another one, shall we. 


 

A funny book about Bob's travels around the world to see / experience / participate in weddings! It's light-hearted and would make a GREAT GIFT for those getting married or divorced! Ha ;) A MUST read!

Rating: 5 / 5 ^*

Original Posting: Padideh Jafari, Esq. | March 17, 2016 | Source Link: Goodreads

Is thirteen an unlucky number? I guess it depends who you ask, and where in the world you are. This Wikipedia entry covers it off well from both sides of the coin, but it sure looks like this number remains largely viewed as being more unlucky rather than lucky.

This Straight Dope piece from 1992 delves into the matter a little more, pretty much solidifying the take that 13 is really not gonna be your friend most of the time.

In the interest of fairness to the overall debate, and covering both sides, here's a little more on why some state 13 can be your friend and not a foe. Some think the symbolic presence of 3 in there from a numerology perspective makes it all good and positive. Plus the preceding 1 is good too on its own, and putting them together means there is some greatness in union, and it's a prime number to boot. Here's some more on this thread posting on the positive aspects of 13 worth mulling as well.



Apart from the background above, it boiled down to just one of those little things I noticed, while sitting in a church for a wedding, and looking around a bit to kill some time, and then spot the church organ pipes as below.


Yo, what was up with that? Who would build 13 pipes on an organ ? Maybe for Sunday services, it may fly and not matter, but one is sure a few getting-married folks may well notice that, and perhaps be a little spooked by it.

This wedding happened way back in 1991, but I was recently curious to find out who built this puppy. Turns out it was put in back in 1908 by Bishop and Son in the UK, which has a history dating to 1795. Bob will ask them why thirteen pipes on this sucker they apparently built and see if they come back with an answer. Maybe it was all just pure coink-e-dink, or limited by budgetary reasons on the part of the church at the time, like they only had enough do$h cum dinero for the 13-pipe version, and not a pipe more, or sumpin' like that.

Additional church pictures of St. Nicholas in Shepperton (interior and exterior) can be found here. The stained glass windows looked nice enough, and the appreciation thereof at the time certainly may have had a helping hand by all the pints the lads consumed before the ceremony.

More pictures of the wedding day's venues at the pub, church, reception, and in and around the Greater London area can be found on this Pinterest Board.

Last but not least, this couple got divorced in 2008. They lasted a long time, at 17 years (beyond our unlucky 13 subject), but not "forever" and whatever that is supposed to mean in this day and age where our average life expectancy has pretty much doubled from the point when these vows were created iand put into practice in the first place.

It would be neat to try and get some church statistics over the years to see how many couples married in this church got divorced over time, as compared to the norm locally or in the UK in general, and see if the numbers reveal something significant regarding 13 pipes on the organ being a factor (or not) in long-term marriage success. One could then use that as a bellwether for 13 being lucky or unlucky, in that limited sense only.

What's in a name, especially, when it's Hell?


Supposedly, that "hot spot" has several characteristics, and certainly many names (to describe its multiple facets), judging by this here interesting and informative Islamic piece alone. Call it what you will, be it Jaheem, Jahannam, Lazaa, al-Sa'eer, Saqar, al-Hatamah and/or al-Haawiyah, but it takes on a whole new dimension when you're down in Cancun, mid-winter, with your girlfriend, and fighting daily about anything and everything on what is otherwise supposed to be an awesome tropical vacation getaway.

Okay, so we took a break from sparring on Valentine's Day, just for optics, praise be Allah.

Regardless of what was going on with our personal relationaship at the time, bottomline, we were there for a wedding and had to suck it up, be nice, and make like we were a tight couple.

Here's how Bob's mindset at the time made that day in paradise for the couple come out and seem, at least upside his head. Go figure.


Nice work here by the way. Diggin' that whole Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead in Ingreesch) look, even if that doesn't really come around in reality until Halloween in the rest of North A-merry-ka, and we were there in February.

By the end of that trip, Bob and her had split up, but the couple married that day back in 1996 are still trucking along just fine. Maybe all that tequila on the day/night of helped a lot long term.

Despite my whole "go to destination wedding with Swedish girlfriend and break up" domestic strife siutation at the time, the wedding was set against a dazzling beach backdrop in Cancun and the area around it on the Mayan Riviera, as this Pinterest Board attests to with some great photos (all of which are NOT his cuz like, Bob didn't own a cameria). This was all well before the day of mobile smartphones and tablets with hi-res, built-in, on-board cameras.

The wedding, coupled wirh the GF split, all made for one of the more memorable and unique wedding experiences in Bob's life, as some single stumblebum hitting matrimonial events worldwide.

Wade Roe laid out the rules pretty plainly for his favorite L.A. bar game, Celebrity Cross-match, in that chapter. Okay, maybe it's a little obvious he was named after Roe v. Wade, so that one wasn't much of an Easter Egg after all, but it may have slipped by a few folks.

As Wade saw it, the game was much more fun and challenging than a more typical, and boring, random celebrity spotting in and around L.A. This variant required a little more quick-on-your-feet thinking and some imagination. Per his decree in the book, any twofold hybrid worked that best fit a target's description, be it a same-sex or male-female fusion. The odd triple-mix combination was rarely permitted, as were easy dead ringer solo shots, but they were not mainstay.

In this small way, everybody was a celebrity, and if everybody was a celebrity, then nobody was a celebrity.

Sounds simple enough, but let's put theory into practice. Here are a few examples with characters taken from that very wedding chapter, as this easily distracted single guest's mind was prone to wandering all over the place.

1) The bride that day, Ku'ene Penelope Makamae Pe Ts'ai Fook Chang Kaneaiakala, was Anne Hathaway meets Joan Chen. Whaddup with her crazy-ass long name too?


2) Her Mom, Paula, was Imelda Marcos crossed with Ann B. Davis of The Brady Bunch TV series fame.



3) Dad, Eala, mashed up Gregory Peck with Herman Wedemeyer (Duke, on the original Hawaii Five-O series). Note for all you detail sticklers, the original series was named with the letter "O" in the title, and the current modern-day resurrection uses the number zero "0" for sly and subtle differentiation.



4) Wade Roe was a younger Christopher Lee meets Ben Affleck.



5) Best man Isaiah Washington was pegged as Morris Chestnut morphed with Ving Rhames.



6) And, saving the best for last, perhaps Wade#39;s sharpest shot ever, from one night long ago at James' Beach, in Venice, CA, was a Carrot Top (aka Scott Thompson) fused with Kenny G combinaton sighted across the room from where we were hanging out nursing cocktails along.



And, if you're bored or have a little idle time on your hands, you can morph and muck about on your own at MorphThing.com.

Every now and again, if it fits, some folks get by with a pure-play, solo shot, like Jock Finn doubling for Rob Schneider. And that's the real deal.

NOW CLOSED Sign up at The Book Landers blog for a Wedding Chronicles giveaway drawing.

Enter fast and free for a chance to win a US$20 Amazon Giftcard or one of five ebook copies of the novel.

The drawing closes Sunday March 30, 2014 at 23:59 EDT / 20:59 PDT (North America time zones)

Planning a wedding, and feeling a bit overwhelmed with how to manage and cut down your guest count? Maybe you are also struggling with risking to offend some by not inviting them? 

There are lots of reasons folks want a smaller wedding, whether it is because you want a small intimate affair, have budgetary restrictions, or your significant other wants really big, when you want really small. There is always a way around this, and still be able to safely say you invited everyone fair and square, so they can’t bitch about it later on behind your back to others if not straight  to your face.


Or you can listen to some single guy who has been to select weddings all around the world for a few decades and take some knowledge straight from the trenches.

Applying my four simple rules will help to solve anybody's wedding guest list quandary. 

1. Make the wedding far away and difficult to get to.
2. Announce it on very short notice (e.g., next week).
3. Have it midweek and during the school year.
4. Make it expensive to get to.

Let’s look at the four of these gems one by one for added insight. You can choose to use these solo or in various combinations, depending on the effect you and your partner desire for your big day so you can share it confidently and happily with all your family and friends.

On this first rule, that alone can keep many away, if they don’t want to make the effort to get there. The further away you make it, the more will fall off the back end of the wedding wagon. Take the "difficult" part and even push it to say "dangerous" and you will be really rocking the guest count cutback. Dangerous need not be in some war zone,  place of conflict, or lawless land with kidnapping and other crime possibilites, but it could be for reasons of disease/health risks or hazardous flora/fauna depending on your location. “Difficult” can also be tied to logistics and planning, for things like visas, vaccinations, and if you plan a destination that requires multiple hops and modes of transport to sort out, that is an added bonus for keeping ‘em away.

The second rule is a great one too, as the less amount of time you give folks to react and plan, then you have a way better chance of less participation. This one can all by itself can accomplish a whole lot.

Rule number 3 is great for knocking your friends with kids out of the box, if they don’t want to pull them out of school, and/or can’t find someone like family or a babysitter to take care of them. A lot of couples fret over the invitation list to include kids or not to include kids, because, depending on what life stage you are at, and your friends, the kid factor can really mushroom the final count overall. No worries there.  With this third rule in the mix, they need to make the decision to go without them, or bring them along. Midweek is also great, because now you are essentially forcing your guests to generally take more time off work too. Do they really want to blow a bunch of their limited vacation days to hit your wedding, especially if it ain’t in some garden spot of the world? You know it!

Then, if you still really think too many folks may squeak in, pulling the financial stakes up a notch or two, above and beyond what rule number 1 played to, then you can get rid of a few more clingers on.  The money you save in fewer guests can now be put to your own travel, accommodation and honeymoon budget. It is win win all around, amigo.

So, okay, enough for theory. How does one actually go and put this into practice in the real world?  School time is over, kids. Here’s the real deal for your benefit that I crafted.

All four elements are put into play, and I put in a few extra tweaks as well, by using e-mail only, playing up the family-friendly angle, and putting some kool food options front and center to help knock off some of those pain-in-the-ass fussy eaters. This will guarantee the final guest count is right where you want it to be and no one will feel slighted whatsoever that they didn't get the big welcome to come out.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Boguslavski & Ginger Akin
Sent: Nonday, Remember 13, 2019 37:98 AM
Subject: We’re Getting Married!

Hi there.

Just thought we’d let you know that we’re getting married. And you are invited!

Sorry for this short-notice, e-mail-only invite, but we just decided today, about 20 minutes ago actually. Hopefully it doesn’t bounce or get trapped in your spam filter.

Thursday next week—in Bumblefuck, Bongobongostan. Be there. No visa required if you are from neighboring countries.

First, long haul to Baklaliviatatlaglooshen City, the capital (GMT +7). Next, regional jet to Batorrorheet Island (90-minute flight). Last air leg is a short float-plane puddle-jumper charter to Lower Uotarrorheet (25 minutes), which will bring you to the mouth of the Billabbillabbiloxi River. You are almost there!

A short 1-hour dugout canoe ride follows, but beware the piranhas and water moccasins. You have arrived at the portage point. Machetes will be on hand as necessary. Greenery grows quick and thick around these parts! Last (we promise), a brisk 1.28-mile jaunt inland over semi-rugged rolling jungle terrain with your bags, and you will have arrived to share in our joyous day in paradise.

Since the military junta’s coup last summer, any holdups in-country at checkpoints and impromptu shakedowns along the way can usually be quickly resolved by discretely slipping the odd 50 nuevo bakhfir note as baksheesh for safe passage.

Don’t forget all precautionary yellow fever, hepatitis A/B, human papillomavirus (HPV), tetanus/diphtheria (Td), and meningococcal vaccines, and bring along malaria tablets. We will have ample supplies of antivenom for the local elapid varieties and fabled wandering recluse spiders should they invade your hut.

We are definitely a family-friendly wedding and welcome your bringing along your loved ones. We will have arrangements with the local witch doctor to care for younger children during the pagan celebration and after-dark offering. There is adequate complimentary mosquito netting at night, but not to worry unduly as the plasmodium falciparum type of malaria is not too prevalent here.

In the interest of planning, kindly select your main course in advance:
- BBQ moray eel in blood reduction
- Whole roasted giant scorpion vindaloo
- Filet of free range Chtorran gastropede

We are happy to make accommodations for vegetarians, given the plethora of locally available fresh produce, including red kudzu.

We look forward to seeing you all and sharing the moment with us.

With lots of love,

Ginger & Bob
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sent from our new and improved CrackBerry Intergalactic Kommunikator / Time Warp Teleportal / Holographic Orgasmatron / Illuvian Disruptor Death Ray


Now that is a wedding invitation! If you are really good with this (and lucky), it will keep your future mother-in-law away too.

You should be now easily capable of crafting your own strategy here. No need to thank me by the way, but in the end, you will still need to make your food selection for the evening’s dinner. Thanks to David Gerrold for the food inspiration. As the groom in the above, I’d probably go for the gastropede with some red kudzu on the side.

Digging a little deeper on a silly passage for shits and giggles, and what was meant here one night in Amman back in August 2000.

I hopped off the bed where I'd been watching the telly for a little local flavor and to get a quick peek at the news. Telly here was not to be confused with Telly Monster or Savalas, unless you were watching Sesame Street or Kojak. Then it would have been Telly on the telly,without consideration for either the U.S. awards or U.K. Addicts varieties in that telly mix.

Just what the hell was Bob blathering on about with all that crap? Let's break them puppies down one by one.

1) Telly = Brit slang for TV / television, pretty straightforward on this one.


2) Telly Monster from Sesame Street, the long-running children's TV show.


3) Aristotelis "Telly" Savalas of Kojak TV series fame that ran from 1973 - 1978.


4) Telly Awards (US) - "Honors the very best film & video productions, groundbreaking online video content and outstanding local, regional, & cable TV commercials and programs" per their website.

5) Telly Addicts (UK) - This was a TV trivia game show and needing to know your stuff. It ran there from 1985 - 1998.


And then as an added bonus at the end of it all, and keeping with the British angle on the last telly, let's not forget about Roger Mellie, The Man on the Telly, the killer strip/series character from that stronghold of UK funnydom at Viz. Here's a little sketch entitled Challenge Roger with our main man in fine form from the animated TV series adapation.


Note Bib couldn"t mention the Indian Telly Awards, cuz they only started in 2001, and the Amman wedding dates to 2000, unless he wanted to time travel or sumpin' in the book. Perhaps Roger sums it up best with this reply to Kojak's trademark line.


At the end of the day, this nonsense is all tied to the telly, and as Roger himself would throw out there with his catchphrase: "Hello, good evening, and bollocks!"

What is it about Singapore (SIN) and a reference to a tie feeling a little tight?

The original mention comes from the (in)famous autumn 1993 piece by William Gibson in Wired Magazine [1.04], entitled "Disneyland with the Death Penalty."

He ends his review of the place and trip there with "I loosened my tie, clearing Singapore airspace." Happy to be out of there and on his way to Hong Kong, he was at the time, feeling perhaps a bit like these two cats.


Paying homage to the close of Gibson's piece, this Singapore-set wedding chapter in the book signs off with the nod, "My tightly knotted tie felt loose."

Bob's own first SIN trip was three years before Gibson's, and not that his viewpoint wasn't valid, (although some criticized it), but Bob still had a good enough time there in September 1990, even when he was not some typical "shopper on steroids" tourist. Maybe that was because he was living and working in India at the time, but that's a story for another day.

Despite any restrictions and curtailed personal freedoms in that Asian city state, when you are hanging out at a wedding with other single guys like Edward Pickett and Edwin M. Terry, aka Dr. LoveSexy, you can still have a lot of fun there (or pretty much anywhere in the world for that matter with those two). If Gibson had been in tow with our trio that September 2004 day and through the evening into the wee hours, he may have come away with a somewhat softened opinion. Otherwise, he may have found SIN a tad more interesting back in the heyday of Bugis Street and when it was an international "spot" to hit until the early 80s. It sure seems like the place really knew how to play and get its groove on back then.

Wedding Chronicles might eventually be banned in Singapore (if not for this particular chapter, then for some other goings on throughout the book), if word gets out, giving it an air of some infamy and added Singaporean street-cred and edge. If so, it would be in good company with Wired Magazine (at the time after Gibson's piece) and local punk rock outfit The Boredphucks (for being cast a little too far out from the normal Singapore mold) and their album Banned in da Singapura.


Bob still likes the place, for a few days at a time anyway, and the food's great, so that is always a good start in his opinion. A few expat friends have lived there, liked it, and some are still there to this day. But one can see how it may not be for everybody, especially if you are a creative type wanting to push the boundaries of your craft, lifestyle and/or general cultural environment. This short Tech In Asia piece with Steven Wozniak touches on the general aspect of creativitah there.

This 2012 Wired opinion piece by Kenneth Jeyaretnam revisits Gibson's take nearly 20 years later, but from an insider's perspective. You be the judge of what's changed, or not. It's certainly a better job and closer to the core of the place than Bob could pen. What with all the stuff going on in the world today in many places, and Big Brother watching over all we do anyway, maybe it ain't so bad after all.

Hey, if Robert Mugabe is there to hang out, have fun, and shop until you drop by the container load per the 2012 take (partly cuz, uhm, he ain't allowed in Euroland and the USA) and this more recent health-driven reason, that is saying something too, if not also attesting to the state of medical care there.

Eduardo Saverin moved there in 2009 and renounced his US citizenship in 2011. He seems to like the life there per this article. One supposes it can't be all that bad, including those purely coincidental favorable taxation advantages that may have factored into his decision making process along the way. Like, the dude musta done some research and tested the waters before diving in. However, this roaming single guy remains unconvinced as to a personal potential long term play there, but to each his or her own. However, Bob would be open to consider it though if life circumstances offered a move there.

Maybe they all hang out at Orchard Towers (per Bob's other post) and some of the erhm, uhm, higher-end "health spas" around town.

In parting, Bob has slapped a few shots of the place together on this Pinterest Board if you want to take a look at the place for yourself.

The conversation with Cory McCracken in the pub over some beers before the wedding attempted to describe the differences between European countries on a simplistic level, but there is actually a lot more going on for sure if you really dig into it, country by country, culture by culture, and language by language.

The Heaven and Hell comparison is a classic take, not invented here at all, and I really did see it on the wall of some pub pisser for the first time as this photo can attest (to the fact it was on a wall somewhere in the world). There are several variations of the joke using more or fewer countries in the mix.


But, unless one is European, or knows that region of the world well enough from living there or via extended travel, it may not mean much. For someone like Cory who had never been there at all, that was certainly the case. So that's why Bob decided to take that old advertising industry maxim of Above the Line, Below the Line (sometimes called ATL BTL) and put it to different use altogether to explain Europe succinctly in a way that most folks could easily understand circa 1991.



From Bob's perspective at the time, being some single guy traveling the word for weddings, and looking at Europe with a meandering, simple, two-zone North-South dividing line:


Sure, the reality on Europe (and the rest of the world) is a lot more complex than that, and these pretty funny yet insightful map perspectives reflect that (scroll well down the page to hit the Eurocentric ones) as put together by Bulgarian designer, Yanko Tsvetkov. His maps are a little more polished and refined than this one here looking at how the English see (the rest of) Europe through the lens of soccer / football.

These two videos below poke a little fun at Italian - German, and British - French stereotypes. Take what you will from them, and you could create an endless list pitting different countries against each other in similar fashion. Like hello, Canada - USA, for example.




Then there was this more structured 2013 Economist take on how Europeans viewed each other from different parameters.

This last Daily Candor piece from September 2007 drills even further, and looks at many European nationalities one by one and what they think about each other, as aggregated by an American (albeit with Croatian heritage) living over there. If you really have time on your hands, you can troll through the hundreds of related comments by others and a follow-up posting if you are into this.

One can sit and debate this for hours on end with all kinds of examples and exhibits to prop up a perspective, but the best way for me is getting a diverse bunch of my European friends around a table somewhere over there with several bottles of sumpin' to grease the conversation, and sorting it out that way with some good-natured jousting and taking the piss out of each other over the course of an evening.

At the end of the day, maybe Turkish (Jason Statham) had it right in Snatch, and our needing to generally pay better attention and be a little quicker with things..."before zee Germans get there" anyway.


But what does Bob know, as some Canuckistani born-and-bred palooka of Ukrainian heritage with a Polish passport, and a bunch of years living and working in different places in Euroland? He certainly remembers giving folks over there a good laugh on a few occasions while struggling to learn a few local lingos over the years. But hey, you know you are down and good with learning a new language when you can, eventually, debate argue with your girlfriend in her native tongue, and give as good as you get.