October 18 is a big day for us folks at gerryarmstrong.org, as that is when we got it all together. Caroline and I put the site online and announced it from the attic of the old parsonage of Thomas and Ute Gandow in Buckau, Germany on October 18, 2002. The Dialog Zentrum Berlin provided the domain name and the web space, which has been such a blessing these two years, a true lifesaver. After gerryarmstrong.org we put up http://www.suppressiveperson.org/ and http://www.carolineletkeman.org Given the direction and stylistic approach we’ve taken in these sites, and their mass that creates an enormous context, it is a miracle that they are directly untouched. That mass has also blessedly steadily increased over those two years creating an ever-greater context that is now demonstrably unassailable. Enough of the whole story is there for people to understand it, not more, not less. My genius is a wife. So we decided to celebrate this day with a clam pizza. Better, we’d throw an intimate little clambake for Erika and Teddy. We took two cans of clams, drained off the juice, and fried the clams up a bit in olive oil. We took a pie, oiled it up, spread out some pretty good pasta sauce, laid on a layer of mozzarella, sprinkled on a healthy amount of chopped garlic, green onions and manzanilla olives, then loaded on the clams To really get how it felt to the clams, run your rodent over the pie. A few years back I made a bunch of these ornaments that I called “Christmas Clams” ® that I gave to friends and family as Christmas gifts. I still had some of the components, and a couple of dozen clam cans that I’d also saved for some years. My mother makes clam chowder once in a while, and if she does, and if I remind her, she saves the clam cans for me. They’re a nice, light, strong container for mailing Christmas Clams, which are fairly fragile. So we created a little atmosphere for Erika and Teddy’s excellent party. Security was the highest priority, but it’s often also a mindless task. Fortunately we found three security personnel who were just perfect. A clambake wouldn’t be a clambake without Xenu. Orange Xenu, Green Xenu, it felt so E. E. Doc Smithish. Even Blue Xenu. Erika and Teddy said grace, had a sip of wine, a Shiraz of some note, and then realized what they were celebrating. So they stuck a candle, a “2,” in the middle of the pie for a photo op. Happy second birthday, gerryarmstrong.org! The terrible two’s, oh my. And Scientology thought we were terrible before. Amazingly, Erika and Teddy polished off the pizza and the wine, so we brought in birthday cakes. We’d thought there was enough clams on the pizza to last a year, and actually Erika was so stuffed that she couldn’t even blow out the candle on her cake. That’s not really a clam earring she’s wearing, but there very well could be a market. Teddy hardly ever wears jewelry, but he wanted to see how a clam earring would work for him too. Notice the way they eye the food.
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