The boob tube

My parents had some pretty creative child-rearing methodology, some practices so clever that I cannot wait to try them out myself (though I think I'm fairly certain this isn't the only reason why I hope to have kids someday). When, as a moody and sullen teen, I slammed my bedroom door in response to being asked, "Erin, could you please [fill in the blank]?", my dad's solution was to remove said door for one week. If I dawdled on the phone for longer than three or fours hours, the extension in the kitchen somehow wound up, off the hook, next to the radio with classical music on top volume. When my siblings and I started to resemble drooly flat-line robots from too much "Love Boat" and "The Newlywed Game," my dad spliced a negative (female) plug onto the TV cord, and then made a little adapter cord with two positive (male) plugs, making it impossible to watch TV without that dumb %@!*&#in' cord thing, which was always hidden or in my mom's purse, out of the house. Also, they made us eat WHOLE WHEAT BREAD and drink SKIM MILK and NO CANDY AROUND ANYWHERE EVER EVER EVER. How I longed for the day I could watch TV for weeks on end and eat double-stuff Oreos 'til it came out my ears...

Well, they don't have Oreos here, but they do have TV. Per, principal trumpet in Don's orchestra, gave us an old Bang & Olufsen TV the other day, and now we're trying to make some sense of Danish programming. Supposedly, there are three national channels, but we only get two, one of which comes in when it feels like it. I've heard watching TV in another language can be a pretty effective learning tool, and we've turned on the closed captioning to try to get a visual for this tongue, which to me sounds quite a bit like shouting while rubbing your face hard and fast with a big towel. But, every 49th word or so is recognizable, which is, I guess, progress. Babysteps...

This morning I sat in front of the idiot box for a bit of Danish language immersion. I learned about a gal (somewhere) and her garden, which contained a lot of plants. She was happy about the plants. And she liked to grow things from seeds. That's all I got.



And then there was an investigative story about how planeloads of Danes are popping over to Poland (MY PEEPS!!!) for all kinds of plastic surgery as it's about 1/3 the price, very quick and relatively anonymous.



This gal seems quite happy with her boob job. So happy that, five months later, she had no problem -- ZIPWHISKFLICK -- doffing her top for the cameras to show the audience the Polish surgeon's handiwork. Her boyfriend was also pleased with the results, and then he said something alarming that freaked out the interviewer, but I couldn't understand what it was. Maybe that her implants were full of herring.