WISH I LIVED IN ENGLAND

Sometimes I really wish I lived in the United Kingdom, and not just because my ancestors trace back to Stromness, Scotland and Lytham St Annes, Lancashire.

Not only because it seems many of my readers are from "across the pond", so to speak. Also not because English beer is far superior to all others and I really love beer.

It is because I stumbled across a store called Lom Bok. I'll admit, I am a huge fan of home design and decor magazines and I often browse furniture shops and websites just looking for ideas and inspiration. I admire solid craftsmanship and top-quality design but it really seems these days you are limited to two choices, either 'cheesy modern' or 'country kitch'. Then I discovered the store I have been looking for.

Lom Bok brings classic and timeless designs to life, and successfully merges the old world of Colonial England with an Asian flair. When you think about it, many of the best aspects of English culture are what they adapted from others during the glory days when the sun never set on the British Empire. Everybody knows the the best curry in the world comes from London, and everybody also knows that the best beer for drinking with curry is an English Bitter. I rest my case.

If your going to be eating some good British curry, I can't think of a better place then some of these dining table sets. The Malang is my personal favourite, as influenced by the classic American Mission style as it is by anything Eastern.

I've already fallen in love with the Planter's Chair, (pictured left) which is part of their Colonial Collection. As soon as I saw the picture I imagined myself sitting in it while drinking a Mint Julip.

Check out the wide variety of chests of drawers, I specifically like the Canton collection. The wife and I have sort of an Eastern theme going on in our Master Bedroom already and those pieces are exactly the kind of look we are going for.

Speaking of bedrooms, these handmade wooden beds are all made of teak or oak and will last for generations. My favourite is the Seba.

Even better, and very important in our eco-conscious times, is that Lom Bok prides itself on being an environmentally friendly company. Not only do they work with suppliers to ensure sustainable practices for their furniture construction but they operate a furniture trade-in program that ensures your former Lom Bok furniture ends up in a loving home instead of a landfill. More info about the company, its history, and business practices can be found on their website.

It is not all furniture obviously. They are really marketing a lifestyle, with a variety of accessories, light fixtures, lamps, rugs, etc. are all available and (suprise, suprise) match their collections perfectly. They have 8 stores in the London area and new locations opening all over England.

While not available in Canada, they do arrange for shipping both within the UK and overseas, so I'll just put the Planter's Chair on my Christmas wish list. Now if only I had a rich benefactor...

POST #85

This marks the 85th post on The Stupid Neighbour Blog for 2008. Why is this significant? In a nutshell I started this blog in 2002 because I wanted to share some stories about the stupid things my neighbour was doing. I never really did much with it, posting sporadically at best over the years. When 2008 started I promised myself I would try to do a better job of making this blog something worth while (slightly).

So since the beginning of 2008 I've managed to write as many posts as I had in the previous 5 years combined. I figure probably 10% were actually funny, and another 10% may have been slightly informative.

I've managed to get about 25,000 hits total over the last year, averaging anywhere between 25-50 per day depending on if I have updated the content. I havn't checked my RSS feed in awhile but last time I looked I was very suprised to discover I actually had more subscribers then I have fingers.

So a big thank you to all of the regular readers, despite me still not really being sure why you are here. My goal for 2009 will be to double the # of posts again, so depending on the pace I set for the rest of November and December I'll be aiming for somewhere around 200.

DOG DAYS OF NOVEMBER

L.A. County, California - The Assistant Fire Chief of L.A. County has been placed on 'Administrative Leave' after accusations that he murdered his neighbours dog. His claims of "self defence" have been cast in doubt by eye witness accounts who claim he "snapped" and started beating the dog with a large walk after becoming upset that it had escaped its owners yard. It is unknown at this time if there was a history of unscooped poop or other incidents between the neighbours.

Chicago, Illinois - A Chicago man has been sentenced to 75 years in jail for shooting a neighbour who was walking his dog past the man's house at 3am. Apparently he was upset that the dog was barking and this was disturbing his sleep. He is going to be disturbed by a lot more then just barking while spending the rest of his life in prison.

Little River, Australia - A local farmer was charged with shooting his neighbours dog. Not exactly the first time you've read about a similar story here. The twist is the dog had just attacked his flock of sheep. So perhaps the shooting was warranted. The farmer probably have avoided any trouble had he stopped at that point. Instead he tracked the wounded dog back to a shed on his neighbours property and shot it again. Then shot it a final time for good measure as it attempted to escape into its house. Suprisingly the dog survived.

DANGER OF... STUPID

I read yesterday the Police found the body of Brandon Crisp, a young kid who disappeared from his home in Barrie, Ontario a couple weeks ago when his parents took away his XBOX. The parents have been suprisingly silent since his frozen body was found in a corn field near his home. You see, for the past two weeks they have been claiming he was abducted by some child predator who he met via the XBOX LIVE gaming service.

The truth hurts sometimes. The kid ran away from home, and then died, alone, cold, and scared in a farmer's field just a short walk from his house.

News today is his school plans on implementing a program to teach children the dangers of technology, as if the XBOX was somehow responsible for Brandon dying of exposure.

A better plan would be for someone to setup a program to teach tech-challenged parents how to communicate with their 21st century digital children.

NEW COMMANDMENT

After a solid week of 14-hour days I finally had some free time this weekend and since I was pretty much braindead after the week of hell at the office I watched a fair amount of television.

I caught a wonderful episode of '17 and Counting' which is the latest reality show about that crazy-ass slice of Americana, the Dugger family. 17 Kids and another on the way, the wife, in all of her 'Little House on the Prairie' dress glory, has been pregnant since 1990. The episode revolved around their newly engaged 18 year old son. Now that he is engaged, to a pure and equally boring girl that he met at a home-school conference, he is allowed to hold hands. Kissing apparently is to be saved until marriage.

Tonight on TLC was another show called 'Purity Balls' (might as well call it 'Blue Balls') where this same theme came up again. They interviewed a young girl who said that "the bible forbids it" and "it is in the 10 commandments" when asked about why she is saving her first kiss for marriage.

It may be enjoyable to poke fun at the Duggers, but I'm convinced there is currently a large and very organized conspiracy ongoing to make the Evangelical flavor of Christianity a majority in this country so they can seize political power and erode our rights and freedoms via their own special brand of censorship and facism.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you are not supposed to kiss until you are married. It also doesn't anywhere forbid sex before marriage. No matter how you translate it, the 7th Commandment 'Thow shalt not commit adultery' is referring to married people engaging in sex outside the marriage. Lets not open up the can of worms involved in the traditional Hebrew word for Virgin.

After watching these two shows I'm convinced we have forgotten one of the most important of God's Commandments, specifically:

"Thow shalt not be a Dumb-Ass"

I'm all for protecting the innocence of my two little girls, but I'll do that by teaching them about the biology and science behind procreation and making sure they are educated properly and full of enough self-confidence to make safe choices and not be pressured into doing anything they don't want to do.

That being said, with my 7-year old now using the computer on her own I decided to install some parental control software. It was a bitter pill to swallow since being a fan of the EFF I have some pretty strong opinions about this type of software and the fact it blocks quite a bit of perfectly harmless content (Greenpeace webpage for example). I'll just tweak it manually over time. Right now she has access to CBC Kids, Nick Jr, Webkinz World, and a couple other child-friendly sites full of Flash games and other such diversions. No YouTube, no chatting, etc.