A few days ago, one of my favorite sources of online commentary, Fake AP Stylebook, posted this: “About 176,938 reporters are covering the Royal Wedding, or three for every person actually interested in the story.”
I certainly don’t propose to precipitate on the procession of the Prince and Princess. They deserve a jolly nuptial.
But for Pete’s sake, these past weeks, I couldn’t escape the coverage. I switched from one news channel to the next, seeking something else. One would hardly know there was anything else going on in the world. Perhaps this is the reason – our fellow planet dwellers have been looking for a fanciful distraction and the news outlets were only too happy to deliver.
The fact that American network anchors are in London to cover the festivities has me a bit puzzled. It’s as if the whole world were in an imperial trance.
I tried to come up with a unique angle from which to write about it, but it’s all been done. The weird and tacky commemorative souvenirs. The event as perceived by the male species. How British police have deployed a special team of security forces for the “mentally unhinged and the royal-obsessed.” The repeated use of the word “commoner” to describe the bride. Even how much fun the name of her home town is to say: Bucklebury.
I don’t recall that the 1981 affair received this much ink and air time. Then again, I didn’t have a television. I was attending university in Spain. We had no TV in our dorm rooms, but we had a whopper of a movie theatre in the basement, where we watched weekly episodes of Dallas dubbed into Spanish (¿Quién tiró J.R.?). And the Royal Wedding.
It was truly a thrill, being a young woman of 21 (even then I was older than the Princess), watching the procession on the big screen, without having to have gotten up at 4:00 a.m., with fellow students from countries around the world, including Texas.
It must have made quite an impression because just four years later, I walked down the aisle of an Anglican church, carrying calla lilies and English roses, wearing the second poofiest dress you’ve ever seen, pulling a really long train behind me. And I married a prince.
Now that proceedings are underway, I’m a bit more excited, but I must be off to work. I’ll be watching the reruns tonight at a small gathering of my college chums. Don’t expect a review to appear here tomorrow because everything that can be said will have by then.
Cheerio!
Marcus was aware of the uncertain nature of his condition—including the fact that his extensive head surgery might hamper his chances of serving in the military—but he kept looking ahead. Make-a-Wish and a local Air Force base invited him to be a pilot for a day and fly in an F-16 flight simulator. They gave him his own flight suit and his wings.
There wasn’t as much time as I had hoped yesterday to read my new Euphemisms 
I received many blessings this Easter, including SweeTarts and other goodies. One gift is something you and I will be able to enjoy together in weeks and months to come.
Pick one, guys. It’s either “the 800-pound gorilla” or “the elephant in the room.” These expressions mean two different things, the latter being more apt for Axa’s campaign. Perhaps the elephant failed the audition.
Once the book cases were moved out, left behind were:
It wasn’t all solemn. We often played in the yard or at the park, visited the local pet store where they had baby bunnies available for petting, we visited the cheesy Easter Bunny at the mall and had a picture taken. Then we went to church in the evening, often counting daffodils and forsythia blossoms along the way.
Some 40 days have passed and we are now at the Holy Triduum—the three days preceding Easter, beginning today with Maundy Thursday, which commemorates, among other significant happenings, the Last Supper.
I’m a little ashamed of our household’s size 16 carbon footprint. We are the antithesis of the Johnsons. I’m not sure exactly how two humans and two felines can generate enough weekly waste to fill the Johnsons’ bins for more than a year. See for yourself. Not counting the bags of yard waste that already await pick-up at the curb, we’ve filled a 20-gallon can and an even larger sized Hefty bag in less than a week. Plus this large recycling bin and a paper bag’s worth of newspapers joining the yard waste at the curb as we speak.
Word Nymph 