I’m kind of disappointed my blogging diploma isn’t from Miskatonic, but that’s nothing a little hacking won’t fix.

Blogging Degree
From Go-Quiz.com

And this reminds me, it does, of the time my mother wanted to buy me a Doctorate from Harvard.

She was living in Saudi Arabia, as one does, shacked up with a CIA agent whose job it was to teach battlefield communications to the Saudis. As one does.

Islam was the bane of his existence, as five times a day no matter what they’d all pull out their rugs and face mecca and present a nice, juicy target to the Israelis. No indeed, this did not take him to his happy place, for yea, he was a very conscientious battlefield communications instructor. Over and over he lectured them, over and over he proved that the Israelis could wipe them all out at any of those five, widely known and unvarying times of day. And over and over they happily replied “if the Israelis kill us we will go straight to Paradise as martyrs,” and I believe one of them even made a reference to that bugger, I can’t kill him when he’s praying scene in Hamlet, obviously stretching to try to find some common ground with Jerry the Baptist, out in the wild Arabian desert.

As a sideline, Jerry ran the local casino and house of ill repute, which brought in several times his salary, and which he was allowed to keep because what his bosses were truly interested in was the blackmail material gathered by the tiny cameras placed strategically around the premises. He also had the local distribution rights for Johnny Walker, which was as the mines of King Solomon in terms of putting out the gelt.

Where was I? Oh yes, about to get to the religious police.

Naturally, Jerry was quite conscious of the activities of the religious police. The main trouble with the religious police was, as you can imagine, that they tended to be quite…well, there’s really no way around this, I’m just going to have to come out and say it… quite religious.

And the whole living-in-sin-with-a-Canadian-and-a-socialist-at-that thing was exactly the sort of thing with which they were Not Cool.

At. All.

Now, Jerry and my mother were by no means originals in their living arrangements, which did tend to give a rather louche reputation to even the primmest Mormon that the Yanks sent over, and so, as always happens where there are problems and lots of money around, a man materialized with a solution.

He materialized at the same time every year, swinging through the Middle East like an olden days tinker would swing through, say, Simcoe County, offering his wares.

He was a Filipino forger, and he was a very busy man.

They took one of the American marriage licenses for $250, which is really cheap for a piece of paper that you show the religious police and they don’t have you stoned, when you think about it, really, and my mother pondered long over the very tempting Harvard Doctorate, but decided that even she was not overpaid enough to spend $500 and besides, what would she get my sister, eh? Answer me that!

That year she got a camel saddle and I got a silver veil. Gee, I guess Mom DID love me best, even if she thought I was ugly.

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