7 September, 2008, Estes Park, Colorado. It is the last day of the Scottish Festival in Estes Park. Th’ Gaussling and family made way to this annual festival to hear bagpipe music and to see the spectacle. There were several quite decent bands as well as a variety of highland games to watch. You could even lunch on haggis.
It was interesting to see a police officer dressed up in a kilt and scooting around on a Segway. Then there was the curious juxtaposition of holstered stun gun and a kilt.
These highland festivals seem to involve quite a bit of pomp and circumstance. The Marine Corp Marching band put on a show bobbing and weaving to the tuba playing a jazzy beat. Cannons were fired on the top of every hour and a collection of siege engines (wooden trebuchets) hurled stones towards an inflatable Nessie floating in Loch Estes. And at noon, a pair of WWII training aircraft did a formation flyover. Airplanes, beer & bangers, and bagpipes. It just doesn’t get any better than that!
Lamentations on Chemistry 
A new Roman private at Hadrian’s wall was on duty for the first time when the bars began to close. He espied a giant orange hedge of puking, pissing crapping, cursing, singing, hugely muscled and hairy drunken monsters coming his way. The ground shook as they stumbled. He nearly karked hs own breeks but his sergeant held fast and so did he. The orange hedge passed by without incident.
Private. “Well, I guess the Scots aren’t so horrible after all.”
Sergeant, “Yeah, well… here come the men.”
If you have haggis for lunch are you well enough to have dinner?
Uncle Al- “karked hs own breeks ”
That’s a great line. I like it.
CMC- I have a personal policy that prevents me from eating entrails, guts, or innards. While I was tempted to try it, some atavistic waveform deep in my brainstem stopped me from committing a food crime.
My only guidelines on food are 1) the protein sources need to be dead, and 2) it needs to be prepared well.
I used to say it all needed to be dead, but fruits and vegies are arguably not dead.
Having had well prepared and poorly prepared lutefisk, was all the motivation I ever needed for rule #2. Even better, I find that following this rule helps provide moderation in caloric intake: way too much inappropriate food you is poorly prepared.
My Swedish grandparents used to make lutefisk. I remember as a child looking at it sitting in a bowl, translucent and quivering at the slightest bump. Rotten fish soaked in poison.