JaFeNoWriMo

I have a deadline. It involves finishing my work in progress by the end of February, which basically boils down to 35 000 words in 35 days. A challenge, but a not insurmountable one. January and February are not particularly busy times of the year for me, at work or socially. Basically, they're no November. So I apologise for the lack of bloggery. I beg forgiveness and offer the first snippet from the work in progress as a teaser. I think I've already put the first line up before, but here's the entire first BIT.

On entering the taxidermy laboratory in Melbourne Natural History Museum’s department of Preparation on the morning of January 18th, at approximately 9:25, Beatrice May Ross noticed six unusual things, all of which turned out to be of utmost significance. The things (in no particular order) were:

a. The clock on the wall was running three minutes fast, putting the time at 9:28.

b. On the third shelf from the right (four shelves down), a jar marked “Eyes, mammal, XL” was missing a lid.

c. Gus, the head taxidermist, was eating a wholemeal sandwich containing roast chicken, mayonnaise, alfalfa sprouts, plastic cheese, tomato and beetroot.

d. The beetroot was about to make a desperate bid for freedom and head for the relative safety of the front of Gus’s bottle green Natural History Museum hoodie.

e. Gus didn’t seem to be particularly concerned that Bee was running 25 minutes late (or 28 if you believed the clock on the wall).

and

f. Someone else was in the laboratory. A young man, probably a couple of years older than Bee. He had artfully messy dark brown hair, black plastic framed glasses and a glint in his eye that Bee found simultaneously alluring and deeply irritating.

The kindness of strangers and the mystery of old books

It's lovely when things just come to you, unexpectedly.

I got an email about a month ago from a kindly soul who said she had an old Collins' dictionary that was inscribed to a Lily Wilkinson in 1924, and would I like to have it?

It was her husband's, the kindly soul told me. He used it to learn English when he first came to Australia. It's such a beautiful little dictionary, with lovely little woodcut illustrations.

The inscription says "To Lily, with love and best wishes from E Anderson, 2.11.24", and above it is written "Miss L Wilkinson, Post OFfice, Woodford". I'm not sure if it's a Woodford in Queensland or England or the US, and I'm pretty sure that this Lily Wilkinson isn't directly related to me (surely Family History Mother would know if she was), but now I'm all afire with curiosity to learn who she was.

In her email, Joanna (the kindly soul) said this: "Only if 'old books' could talk... you could find out so much more."

She's right, and yet I also love the mystery of an unknown Lily Wilkinson. She could have been anyone. I wonder what her favourite word in the dictionary was.

I'm pretty sure this dictionary will make its way into a novel or story sooner or later, so thank you, Joanna, for this amazing and generous gift!

Homemade Christmas

So I didn't do EVERYTHING home made this year, but I still got my crafty oar in.

teacher gloves for a @jellyjellyfish

strip quilt cushion for Michael's mum

patchwork cushion for Erin

coasters for mum and dad

strip quilt cushion for mum and dad

2009

I wasn't going to write this post, after reading everyone else's 2009 wrap-ups, but people convinced me.

A lot of people I care about had a crappy 2009. I didn't.

2009 started well, surrounded by my friends in Philip Island. Then Michael came into my life and made everything just that little bit more awesome. I've never felt so lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful, inspirational, supportive people.

It's also been a bloody good year for writing. I was a guest at the Edinburgh Book Festival and did about a zillion school visits which I thoroughly enjoyed. I had two books published, Angel Fish and Pink. I'm especially proud of Pink because it's the first book I've written that I wasn't commissioned to write, it was all me. It's been so exciting to see it do well, and I can't wait for it to come out in the US next year and see what they make of it. This year I've also sold books to the UK, Italy, China and Turkey, and I saw my first international editions (the UK and German versions of Scatterheart).

I did NaNoWriMo, which nearly killed me but felt like a pretty awesome achievement. I baked Christmassy things. I learnt how to use a sewing machine. My cat that I'd had since grade 5 died. I visited my senile grandmother and was pretty sure she had no idea who I was. I helped deliver another successful Reading Matters. I turned 28. I fell in love. I joined a writers' group. I walked along Hadrian's Wall for three days. I learnt the six steps of drinking whisky. I read lots of books. I finally started watching Battlestar Galactica.

I've watched people I love be sad this year, and struggle, and make hard decisions. And sometimes I feel guilty, because my life is pretty damn awesome. But guilt is a useless emotion, so my New Year's Resolution is to feel lucky instead of guilty. And take the awesome while it's here, and acknowledge that I've worked damn hard for it.

I'm really looking forward to 2010. I'm looking forward to writing a lot, and getting better at it as I do. I'm looking forward to reading exciting new things. I'm looking forward to all the adventures that life presents (except for the complicated provisional tax thingy the ATO wants me to do). And most of all I'm looking forward to spending time with the people I love, and doing everything I can to make their 2010 as awesome as my 2009 was.

Happy New Year!

Potatoes!

You can't have Christmas dinner without some good roast veg. Potatoes are a must, and a little roast pumpkin and onion and garlic won't go astray either.

I also steam some green beans, just so there's something in the meal that isn't totally artery-clogging.

Let's start with potatoes. I par-boil them first (just peel and boil them in salty water for about 10 minutes). Then drain, and bash them around a bit in the pot with some salt, rosemary and a little semolina.

Now, there are two options.

1. When my turkey has been cooking for about an hour and a half, I pour off most of the juices from the dripping pan and save them for gravy and more basting. Then add the potatoes to the pan (with pumpkin if you like, but you don't have to parboil that), and let them roast while catching all that delicious turkey juice.

2. Pour a jar of duck-fat into the now-empty dripping tray, and let it heat up while the turkey does its last hour in the oven. When the turkey's out, crank the oven up as high as it will possibly go. When the fat is HOT HOT HOT, put in the potatoes. They'll need about 20 minutes each side. Duck fat has a higher burning point to other fats, so it can get REALLY hot. This will make them all crunchy and awesome on the outside, but it does mean resting your turkey for nearly an hour.

Either way, make sure your potatoes are the last thing you take out of the oven and serve at the table. They should be PIPING hot. Crunch crunch crunch.

Stuffing

As I mentioned in the turkey post, I don't put stuffing in my bird. But that doesn't mean there is no stuffing. WHAT A TERRIBLE THOUGHT.

My stuffing recipe is pretty flexible and changes every year. But it usually goes a bit like this:

Fry an onion (or two), some garlic, and 3-4 finely chopped celery stalks in butter, in a reasonable sized pot. Then add:

-pepper

-salt

-lots of parsley

-lots of sage

-a bit of rosemary and/or thyme if you have any

-more butter

-bacon, if you feel like it

-1 egg

-mushrooms

-some kind of nuts - I like walnuts or pine nuts, although chestnuts are traditional.

Then chuck in about 300g of roughly cubed bread. I like to use a really seedy multigrain with a hearty rye flavour, but if you want to go more traditional you can just use white bread.

Add some chicken stock to keep the whole thing moist, then put into a baking dish. I usually do this the night before Christmas, so it has plenty of time to get tasty and flavourful. But take it out first thing Christmas morning so it'll be room temperature by the time it goes in the oven.

My oven is usually pretty full of turkey and veggies by this stage, so I just chuck it in as soon as the turkey comes out, uncovered, for 40 minutes, as high as my oven will go. It warms all the way through and ends up all crunchy on top.

Bread sauce is one of those awesome traditional dishes that sounds disgusting until you actually eat it, and then it is the best thing ever. This is my grandma's recipe, spruced up a bit with additions from Nigella.

You will need about 800g stale white bread, so make sure you leave the bread out overnight if you've brought it fresh. Then cut or tear it into rough cubes (about 1-2cm square)

Then on the day, heat a pan containing 1/2 a litre of full-fat milk, and 1/2 a litre of chicken stock. Then add:

• 1 finely diced onion
• 4 cloves
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon peppercorns
• 1/4 teaspoon ground mace
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg.

Heat it all up but don't let it boil. Remove from heat once it's almost boiling, cover with lid. The longer you let it sit and infuse, the tastier it will be. This is a good thing to do in the early stages of the day, when you've just put the turkey on.

When you're almost ready to serve (turkey is out of the oven), put the mix back on the stove over a low heat, and either strain or fish out all the cloves and bayleaves and peppercorns (this is optional, you don't have to). Then add the stale bread cubes and cook for 15 minutes.

Just before serving, stir in 30g of butter, and if you've still got a bit of time, pop it in the oven for a bit. Serve with turkey.

TURKEY

Roasting a Christmas Turkey is a daunting task, but it's really not that hard. It just takes a bit of planning. So here are my tips.

1. Buy a turkey. A good one, free-range. It will make all the difference.

2. Brine your turkey for 24 hours before you cook it. This is this totally complicated scientific thing that I don't quite understand, but soaking a raw bird in salt water makes it retain its moisture and juiciness when it's cooked. Plus it's a good opportunity to add some FLAVOUR.

To Brine A Turkey

Get a bucket containing

• about six liters of cold water
• 2 quartered oranges
• 250g Maldon salt
• 3 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tbsp caraway seeds
• 4 cloves
• 2 tbsp allspice berries
• 4 star anise
• 2 tbsp white mustard seeds
• 200g caster sugar
• 2 unpeeled quartered onions
• 1 6cm piece of ginger, cut into slices
• 4 tbsp maple syrup
• 4 tbsp honey
• stalks from a bunch of parsley (you will use the leaves for the stuffing)
• a bunch of sage
• a turkey (5-6 kilos, will serve around 10 people)

Doesn't it look pretty? Cover it all up with some gladwrap, and stick it somewhere cool and out of the way for 24 hours before you cook it (the turkey should be pretty cold and possibly frozen anyway, so you don't need to worry about it going off. Just don't stick it in the sun).

3. Don't stuff it. Stuffing means your turkey is denser, which means you have to cook it for longer, and the meat is dry and tough. I cook my stuffing separately in a dish, which has the added bonus of it going all awesomely crunchy on top.

4. Prepare your turkey.

After taking your turkey out of his briney bath, give it a good pat down with some paper towel, then rub it all over (inside and out) with a lemon and some squished cloves of garlic. Then make a glaze containing:

• 75g butter
• 3 tbsp maple syrup
• juice from 1 lemon
• chopped sage
• a few cloves of garlic.

Paint the turkey inside and out, then chuck a bundle of fresh herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme - really!) and your lemon carcasses in the turkey's front and rear cavities. I do not truss my turkey, because it takes longer to cook that way.

5. Cook your turkey. BUT NOT TOO MUCH.

Stick your oven on at 200C. Put the turkey straight onto the wire rack of the oven, breast up. You will not have to turn it. Put a pan below the turkey to catch the drippings. Chuck a cup or so of water into the pan, so the drippings don't burn. Baste the turkey with these drippings every half hour. Roast a 5-6 kg turkey for 2 1/2 hours. Yep. Two and a half hours. That's all. Then take it out and let it sit for AT LEAST 20 minutes, but ideally 40 or even an hour. The turkey will continue to cook when it comes out of the oven, and reabsorb all of the juices. Letting it sit also makes it easier to carve, and gives you a good opportunity to reheat your stuffing and bread sauce, and really CRANK your roast veggies to get them all crispy.

Here is last year's turkey, fresh out of the oven. So juicy! Such crispy skin on top! NOMMM. I'm about to tent a bit of foil over the top so he doesn't get cold.

And that's it! Not really that hard.

Next week, stuffing, bread sauce and veggies.

The Words We Found

Be! You are the winner of last week's giveaway! Send me an email at liliATliliwilkinson.com with your address and I'll post you your shiny copy of The Words We Found.

Hurrah!

Christmas noms!

I'm not much of a baker from January-November, but come December, I'm all over it.

Last year I blogged my recipes for mince pies and Christmas pudding, and now here's my recipe for Christmas gingerbread cookies. And when I say "my recipe for Christmas gingerbread cookies", I of course mean "Nigella's recipe for Christmas gingerbread cookies.

(makes 35-40)

Mix:

300g plain flour

pinch of salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

2 tsps freshly ground black pepper

(1 tsp ground ginger - Nigella doesn't have this, but I reckon it gives them a bit more kick)

Then slowly add

100g soft unsalted butter

100g soft dark sugar

2 large eggs, beaten with 4 tbsp runny honey

Make two fat discs of pastry, and wrap one in gladwrap and stick it in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 170C.

Dust a work surface with flour, and roll out your first disc of pastry to about 5mm thickness, and cut them using cookie-cutters (Nigella and I use snowflakes, but you could do stars or trees or angels or whatever).

Repeat with the second disc of dough, rolling all the leftover bits together until you've used up every scrap.

(if you want to turn these cookies into hangable decorations, this is a good time to use an icing nozzle to cut a little hole at the top of each biscuit)

Arrange your cookies on lined baking sheets and cook for about 20 minutes. It's a bit tricky to tell when they're done, you might need to give them a bit of a poke. Just watch carefully because they go from being "done" to "burnt" very quickly. Transfer them to a wire rack and leave to cool.

Prepare your royal icing - I buy the instant stuff from a cake-decorating shop, because it's easier than making it from scratch, and also more hygienic what with egg-whites and all. You can colour it if you like, but I leave mine white. Make sure you don't make it up too thick, otherwise it'll be hard to get on the biscuits.

Ice your cookies! I use an icing nozzle to trace designs, and add a few silver cachous (you know those little balls, yeah, I didn't know they had a name either), but you could completely blanket each decoration in white if you wanted, or add all sorts of other edible sparkles and fancy bits.

And that's it! Either nom them as they are, or thread a bit of ribbon if you made a hole and hang them on your tree.

Later this month I shall blog my tips for brining and roasting a forreals Christmas Turkey, and recipes for bread sauce and stuffing. NOMMM.

NaNoWriMo - finished

!

So I finished NaNoWriMo, with only two crying tantrums (thanks to friends and loved ones for hugs and patience) and most of my sanity intact. November is a hard time of year, particularly in Australia, when things are warming up and everyone is racing towards the end of term. I had about a zillion other things to do this month, and they all (more or less) got done.

I'm pretty happy with my 50 077 words. I mean, they're all rubbish, but it's a rubbish first draft that I think I can probably wrangle into something a bit better. First job though, is to stick it in a drawer for a couple of months and GET MY CHEER ON.

Voiceworks, The Words We Found + a COMPETITION

A lot of people ask me how I first got published.

It happened when I was twelve. My mum bought me a copy of Voiceworks magazine. Voiceworks (in case you are unfortunate enough not to know) is Australia's literary journal for under 25s, published by Express Media. It's awesome.

Well, I wrote a poem and sent it off to Voiceworks, and to my utter joy it was accepted, and soon afterwards I received a cheque for $40 and a shining copy of the magazine. My first publication.

That was in 1994 (I think). I had an opportunity to revisit that poem recently, and let me tell you - it isn't very good. It's bloody awful, actually.

2009 is Voicework's 21st birthday, and I'm totally excited to still be involved (I'm on the management committee of Express Media). Voiceworks gave me my start, and 5 published books under my belt, I couldn't be more grateful or admiring of the work it does.

Happy Birthday, Voiceworks!

Now...

Do you want to read that terrible first poem I wrote? Here's your opportunity. To celebrate the 21st, Express Media has published The Words We Found, an anthology of Voiceworks' best writing by young people (edited by Lisa Dempster).
To WIN a copy of this anthology, leave a comment on this post. A winner will be picked at random on Monday 29/11/09.

And wondering what to get a budding young writer for Christmas?
Buy a copy of The Words We Found.
Subscribe to Voiceworks.

NaNoWriMo: Half way

So yesterday was the half-way mark for NaNoWriMo.

I'm on track, with 27 000 words under my belt. It's certainly the most I've ever written in such a short time. I'm not sure if any of it's any good, but I think some of it will be salvagable. I'll need to put it in a drawer for a month or so and then spend some serious time reworking it, but as I always say, it's much easier to turn a crappy story into a great story than it is to turn a blank page into a great story.

But I have to say I'm kind of enjoying the pressure. I like only having to write a small amount each day (1667 words). I like being able to compare my progress with other people (I am a competetive little monster). I like the idea of a REAL deadline, no extensions allowed.

And I really like updating my word count at Nanowrimo.org and seeing the blue line get a little longer each day.

Jellyfish

I have a friend who is a jellyfish*.
I've known her since I was born (she is a couple of months older than me).

We used to play a game called Hawaiian Grandmother. It involved some wire-rimmed glasses and a hula-skirt.

When we were about 4, we climbed up her chest of drawers, pretending we were scaling a mountain. We pulled the whole thing down on top of us.

Now we are grown up, my friend Jellyfish lives next door to me. Sometimes mean people pull her tentacles, and that makes her a sad Jellyfish.

Which is annoying because she is not a poisonous jellyfish, and she doesn't sting.

My friend Jellyfish is very good at her job (teaching little jellyfishes to share and read and do maths). She is totally awesome and I'm very proud of her.



*Did you know that the collective noun for jellyfish is "bloom"? Pretty.

NaNoWriMo

When I was in the UK I read an article in one of the Sunday magazines. And like the very best lazy-Sunday morning reads, I thought - that'd make a great book.

So I've put the murder-mystery-in-a-natural-history-museum on hold for a month, and am delving into NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50 000 word first draft in the month of November - 1667 words per day.

So Michael (who has also signed up) and I headed down to the Great Ocean Road for a few days to get some serious, internet-free, no-distractions writing done.

pretty place makes pretty writing?

I know there're some days this month where I won't be able to get any writing done at all, so I wanted to get a good head start. So this is the morning of Day 5 and I'm sitting on 10 715 words. Not very good words, I admit.

Back to it!

Alan Turing and Bletchley Park

When I was in the UK, I made a special visit to Bletchley Park. This was part-research for a percolating book-idea, but mostly I went there for wholesome nerdy awesome. And Bletchley delivered.

Ever since I read Neal Stevenson's Cryptonomicon I've wanted to visit Bletchley Park. It's an hour and a bit out of London, and there's a fascinating (and pleasingly lofi) series of museums and things there, including the National Museum of Computing. Also, Ian Fleming used to work there as a gopher, and obviously got some good spy-related ideas because he ended up writing some books that became quite popular.

I meant it when I said lo-fi

Bletchley Park was a code-breaking centre during WW2. It was where a very intelligent man called Alan Turing broke the Enigma Machine - a contraption for encoding messages used by the Germans. It looks like this:

Working at Bletchley Park involved lots of TOP SECRET things, and you couldn't get in or out without a special pass. There were also lots of women who worked there, because working on code-breaking and other surveillancey things was a good way for women to be involved in the war without having to put on special pants and actually go and kill people. And some of those women had kids who had to go to school. So even the kids needed the special pass to get in and out of the Park. These kids were the youngest people ever to sign the Official Secrets Act.

So let's talk about Alan Turing. The good news is that he invented something (called a Turing machine) that ended up evolving into the machine I'm typing this on right now. His use of electronic calculation and algorithming was what enabled the British to break the Enigma machine.

Time Magazine declared Turing as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, and said: "the fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

Now here's the bad news. Alan Turing was gay (that bit wasn't the bad news, it's coming next). And during his lifetime, homosexuality was illegal and thought of as a mental illness. Turing was prosecuted in 1952. He had a choice between going to jail or taking female hormone treatment to "cure" him. His security clearance was removed and he was no longer permitted to work for the government. In 1954 he killed himself by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

BUT, on September 10 2009, after a recent petition endorsed by Richard Dawkins and Ian McEwan, the British government officially apologised to Turing. Here's what Gordon Brown said:

While Mr Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him... So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better. (full statement here)

Which is awesome and encouraging and only 55 years overdue.

This was from a totally awesome exhibit titled PIGEONS IN WAR. Did you know some pigeons got bravery medals?

Here are some Real Live Boffins working on a Very Old Computer.

And more good news - for the first time ever, Bletchley Park is going to receive National Lottery Funding, so it won't have to just survive on donations any more. Hurrah!

Anyway, I totally recommend a visit. And if you want to read more, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is a great read that blends all sorts of computery code-breakingly nerdery into one awesome novel.

Three things you might not have known about SLOTHS

1. There are two kinds of sloth, the Two-toed Sloth and the Three-toed Sloth. The Two-toed sloth, rather confusingly, has three toes (but two fingers). The two kinds pretty much look the same, do the same things and live in the same places.

2. The sloth is the only animal in the world to not have seven cervical (or neck) vertebrae (apart from manatees). BUT the Two-toed and Three-toed sloths have a DIFFERENT number of vertebrae. The Two-toed has six and the Three-toed has NINE.

3. This crazy vertebrae inconsistency is because the Two- and Three-toed sloths do not have a shared ancestor until you go back 40 MILLION YEARS. They are a brilliant example of convergent evolution, where critters look the same and do the same things, because they've been surviving next to each other in the same environment for a very long time.

The E-word

I'm currently reading Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth. And it's awesome. For those of you who get offended or irritated by Dawkins' attitude towards religion*, fear not! He barely mentions it**.

The book instead is a fascinating, straightforward and entertaining explanation of evolution. And I have to say I'm confused. Not by the evolution thing, but by the people who say they "don't believe in it". Because, well, here:

1. Dog breeders select dogs that carry desired traits to mate and produce puppies. Like a ridge on a Rhodesian Ridgeback, or a long body and teeny legs on a dachshund***. The parents pass these traits on to their puppies. And over time, the desired traits become more pronounced. Here are three pictures of a dachshund - the first from the 1800s, the second from 1915, the third a contemporary dog. This is what we call artificial selection.

2. This happens in nature, too. Peahens are attracted to peacocks with fancy bright plumage - it shows that they're healthy and strong. So the peacocks with the brightest, fanciest plumage are more likely to be chosen as a mate, will mate more times, have more offspring, and will pass their traits onto those offspring. This process is sexual selection.

3. And just one step further on, traits develop and endure without a breeder or potential mate actually choosing them. The critter that has the longest legs, the best eyesight, the most effective camouflage, will survive longer, produce more offspring and pass on those traits. This is called natural selection.

So what's evolution? Evolution is the name we give to random mutations in the gene pool. So for every giraffe that's born with a longer neck, there's one born with a twisted spine, or a stumpy tongue, or a slightly different coloured hide, or an infinite number of other random mutations. And some of these random mutations make no difference at all. Some make it harder for that giraffe to survive - the twisted-spine giraffe might not live as long as one with a straight spine. And the long-necked giraffe might live longer and be healthier because it can reach higher branches than other giraffes, with fresh new leaves. And because that giraffe is healthier and lives longer, it has more opportunities to mate and pass on its long neck to offspring.

So what confuses me is... how can people deny evolution? Being able to observe evolution and natural selection working together is fascinating and awesome and utterly beautiful. And while I personally am not religious, I don't particularly see how what I just said above necessarily excludes the existence of God. Maybe the existence of the Ark...

'Oh,' they say, 'but it's just a theory.'

It is. But there are two definitions of theory. One means 'hypothesis proposed as an explanation'. The other means 'A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation of experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles or causes of something known or observed'.

It is not the job of scientists to prove things. That is the job of mathematicians. A scientist's job is to try really really hard to disprove something, and fail. They have failed to disprove the theory of evolution. If evolution is just a theory, then so is gravity. And the theory that the sun is bigger than the moon. And the theory that the planets orbit the sun.

Anyway. I haven't actually finished the book yet. I'm just finding it fascinating and wanted to share.

_______________

*although to be honest I think he's vastly misrepresented in the press.

**apart from a rather amusing story about people trying to get around the no-meat-only-fish-on-Fridays rule. One community decided it was okay to eat a critter that was like a giant swimming hamster, because it swam, so it must be a fish. The French Catholics were even more sneaky - they lowered a leg of lamb into a well and then "fished" it out again, making it alright to eat.

***often to the detriment of the animal's health. Did anyone else see that documentary? Horrifying.

Analyse THAT

Last night I dreamt that the Nazis built a huge 40-storey circus on the steps of Capitol Hill in Washington. Made from bluestone. Then President Bartlet and CJ, under cover of night, climbed up the outside bluestone circus, where the President set a chair on fire with his cigarette and then distracted the Nazis by pretending to be God. Allowing CJ to throw a snake at Hitler and kill him.

Coming out young

This is a really great feature article from the New York Times about how more and more kids are identifying as gay or bisexual in middle school, when they're 11 or 12 years old.

A new kind of gay adolescent was appearing on the page — proud, resilient, sometimes even happy. We profiled many of them in the magazine, including a seventh grader in suburban Philadelphia who was out to his classmates and a high-school varsity-football player from Massachusetts who came out to his teammates and was shocked to find unconditional support.