Apparently there's been something called World Idol going on the last month or so. I had no idea. Let me explain it again: I am Amish. No TVs here in Allisonville. I've been out cleaning the buggy and feeding the horses. For the last month. I know, I know, you're all busily pointing out, "But you don't have Amish communities in South Dakota! You've got Mennonites and Hutterites, but no Amish. You're a dirty stinking cheese-for-brains liar."

Shh. There's a secret Amish colony on the eastern edge of central South Dakota. Don't tell anyone. We live in a big network of caves underground, and some of us fight crime. The Amish League to the rescue! "Truth, liberty, and justice ahoy!" That's our motto. I'll bet you didn't know that the Amish used the word "ahoy."

And as for those of you who are wondering just how I post to the Internet when I live in a world free of the evils of modern technology, I can only say "Om....mind-freakin'....brrrrrrrrrrazpp ...... zeezuwezuwez.....telepathy.........shh.....you didn't see this." I've resurrected the powers of the Quail Eye. "Prepare to be helpless and stupefied!" (It's from the old Nickelodeon show Doug, for those of you who didn't grow up in the early nineties.)

On a sort-of-but-not-really related note, I have a friend who used to be a Hutterite. I'm totally convinced that he's secretly a hobbit. He's very short and scrappy. I've also met his cousin, a current Hutterite, who's even more hobbitish. (Maybe Tolkien was friends with a lot of Hutterites. You know, British Hutterites.) Cal knows another guy who's a former Hutterite. He worked at a cafe with Cal before he went to prison on a DWI charge. They're everywhere, I tell you. Hutterites, that is. Not DWI charges. I don't even know if we call them DWIs in SD; maybe they're DUIs. Is there a difference?

Anyway, back to my original reason for posting: World Idol. Apparently that Kelly Clarkson girl got second, and some Norwegian dude won. Good for the Norskies. We've got lots of them around here--there are even more Norskies than Hutterites. I'm one of the few non-Norwegians in this town. I'm sure all the crazy bastards will be very pleased with their pseudo-countryman. Actually, no, they won't. Nobody pays attention to pop culture here. There are people in my class who don't know who John Lennon is. Honest. It's pathetic.

Now that I'm ranting about Norwegians, is it just me, or do they have no taste buds? Just to refresh your memory, Norwegians eat lutefisk. What is lutefisk, you inquire? It's fish. Herring, specifically. Pickled in lye. And they like it. My duodenum is shrieking in horror at present. I don't get the appeal of pickled fish.

They also like lefse. Correction, they worship lefse. All my little Norwegian friends eat it like it's candy. They make it on big griddles with this weird wooden stick thing that they use to flip it (the lefse, not the griddle). Now, I've had lefse, and again, I cannot understand the appeal. It's basically a tortilla made out of potatoes, except it tastes like wet paper bags. According to my friend Amanda, it tasted bad because I didn't put enough cinnamon and sugar on it. Maybe it's just me, but why go to all the trouble of making a big ol' hunk of pseudo-bread that's only good if you coat it in sugar?

A quick disclaimer for all you Norwegians who are flaming at the ears right now: I like you. Really. A good majority of you are fat, happy farmers. Nothing wrong with that. Almost all of my friends are Norwegian. Being fat, happy farmers is not a bad thing. It's better than being husky peasantstock Eastern Europeans (keep your pants on, the rest of you--I'm a good portion Czech). However, my Czech ancestry is not very apparent on the husky peasantstock side of things; I seem to have inherited the paler, more delicate features of my mostly English-Irish father.

I'm sorry, but I'll have to be off now. I've got to go fetch Zedekiah for our prayerful worship service. Then I've got to churn some butter. Godspeed.