Yellow Monkey Irregularity Caper!! Danger!!

Oh good gravy Marie enough of that.

Instead, here are two sauce recipes.

And here is the link for measurement conversions for wacky and non-wacky foreign persons:
http://www.wwrecipes.com/convert.htm
...so don't say I never gave you anything.

Tomato-Lemon-Basil Toss Sauce (you shut up, Frobi)
...best over fettucini


1 handful sun dried tomatoes (you shut up, Beast)
1 cup hot water
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Juice of one cocktail lemon (you know, those little bitty round lemons, not the big honkers that look like a boob.)
1/2 tsp fresh rosemary, approx.
1/2 tsp fresh thyme, approx.
1/4 cracked black pepper (I use more)
Chiffonade of fresh basil, 1/4 cup (measured after cutting)
Zest of one cocktail lemon
salt to taste

optional: 1/4 cup simple white sauce.


-Soak the tomatoes in the hot water. When hydrated, remove and julienne, reserving liquid.
-Chiffonade basil
-Zest lemon, using one of those zesters that makes long strips if you have one. If not, no biggie. Use a grater. See if I care.

Set all these aside in a bowl, and add the cracked pepper.

To juice the lemon, first wham the zested cocktail lemon against the counter, roll it around, and squish it in your fist a few times. I mean, don't burst it, but make it say your name. This helps break up the little pearls inside it, which makes it easier to squeeze out all the juice. Of course if you have a lemon squeezer thingie don't bother smacking your lemon around. I don't have a lemon squeezer thingie. I just squash the lemon half in my hand and pick out the seeds, because I am a low tech barbarian.

-Dump tomato soaking water, olive oil and lemon juice into blender with the rosemary and thyme and blend until completely liquified.

-Dump into the bowl with the other stuff. Now, give it a taste and salt it. Depending on your ingredients, you can stop here and use this 'as is' over pasta. Maybe use a little parmesan cheese to help it stick.

By adding a little white sauce, you get a thicker sauce which has a milder, richer flavor. This would go nice on some spinach noodles.

_____________________________

Asiago Cream Sauce....because your arteries are not clogged enough.
...wondering what to do with that boring-ass poached chicken breast? Wonder no more. Dump this sauce over it, run it under the broiler to put a nice brown on there, and once you taste it you will forget all about how you are speeding recklessly toward a quadruple bypass.

2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup (packed) cream cheese
1 heaping teaspoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons powdered bread crumbs
1/4 tsp grated garlic
1/2 cup grated Asiago cheese
salt and WHITE pepper to taste

Dump all this into the Cuisinart and blend the everloving crap out of it. Get it completely liquified.

Now taste it for salt, add what it needs, and put it over the fire. This is a cornstarch sauce, so you know the drill....stirring constantly, bring it up slowly to medium, then crank it up to high. Keep on stirring! When it begins to kick, turn down the heat to low, keep on stirring to make sure theres no big lumps, then once the danger of boiling has passed let it sit. It will continue to thicken up a bit.

Before serving, run an immersion blender through it just to make sure it's completely smooth. Thin with a little milk if necessary.

shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. and shit.

Thank you everyone for all the music suggestions. I've got them all stashed and saved and hopefully I can put them to use. Once I , you know, join the 21st century and actually get an IPOD. Ahem.

____________________________________

Things are sucking a big one around here right now.

...Or rather,'still sucking a big one'.

OK fine. There was a brief letup in the sucking, but then it started again, is what I'm trying to say. I'm going to tie up a couple of loose ends, whine about my life for a few paragraphs, and then go someplace and sulk for awhile. Who knows at this point.

Loose end one: The people next door had been raising rats to sell, except they never sold them. Instead they took all the doors off the rooms up on the third floor, left the sink and the bathtub running and hove a bag of Purina Rat chow across the floor once every couple of days. The rats quickly overran the entire house and property, coming and going freely through holes they'd chewed through the walls. Wild Norway rats soon joined them, and were welcomed inside and eventually hand tamed just like the pet-stock rats. We called the health department and Animal Control. The police decided to get involved too. They came over and gave us the details of what was going on, and the rest was filled in by various people around town. Oh, we were local celebrities for awhile. Anyway, the neighbors cleaned up their property, got rid of the rats, and I haven't seen them since. I know, big anticlimax.

Loose end two: I have a new baby grand daughter! She was born last May and has finally figured out how to crawl forward! (She was stuck in reverse for a couple of months. This was funny to everyone but the baby.) This is the Stainless Steel Amazons' baby that we all thought was permanently attached up in there and was going to have to attend high school graduation in utero; well, she finally blooped out. And because attending ones' daughter giving birth once was more than enough, grandma was NOT in attendance for this one. The SSA had her at home just like she did the Goonybird, with a midwife, and from what I understand it was just as squitty and funky as getting born usually is so I don't feel like I missed anything.
_______________________

Well then.

Me and the YB have been in marriage counselling for a few months. It just took a giant shit.

To make a long story short, I'm the only one who thinks theres a problem and there wouldn't be one if I'd just "shut up and stop complaining". That is a direct quote from our therapist. Oh yes! He has been full of terrifically humorous little comments like that. At my expense, generally. He tossed off that little bon mot last night.

I fired him this morning.

This leaves my marriage right back where it was three months ago, and us several hundred dollars poorer. Basically what it amounts to is that I just paid out several hundred dollars to learn that there's really no reason to hire someone with a degree to ignore you when you are already being ignored for free.


Life is given its depth and meaning by these small moments of clarity.


Now I went into this knowing that I was going to look bad. I wanted to get things fixed, right; so I chose to see a male therapist thinking that at least my husband would feel comfortable talking to another guy. All along I suspected that I'd be hard for him to take, training or no, because in my experience MEN HATE THIS SHIT. Training, education, whatever; when it comes right down to it, if you have tits, men just want you to shut up and stop complaining. And here I was: big tits, heap big upset. The ONLY one who's upset, I might add. Because my husband is fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. My husband is tolerant and a little hurt and befuddled but being kind by humoring me and showing up for appointments. This is because my husband is a genuinely nice guy. Unfortunately, he's also one of those guys who figures if nobody yells or acts upset, then there isn't anything wrong.

No, seriously. Really. He honestly thinks that if you don't act like anything is wrong, then there magically IS NO PROBLEM. Yes, I know this is screamingly counter intuitive. Pay attention. We're not talking about academic issues here; this is emotions, and as Mr. Spock teaches us, 'emotion is illogical'. See what you can learn here at Paul? And from Star Trek?

I figured, as I can be excused for doing, that someone with a degree in marriage counselling might be able to help show us a middle road to take so that issues would resolve instead of just building and becoming horrible. I also figured we had a good shot at success... my husband and I are still best friends after everything is said and done..despite the fact that once one of those squishy emotional family marriagey icky issues would crop up, I was set adrift out there all alone on my ice floe screaming in the darkness, because everything would be just fine if I'd just stop making such a big deal about it.

Apparently our therapist agrees. And really, who wants to deal with some whining, histrionic broad when who just keeps on bringing up a bunch of problems; Jesus lady, come on! when its so much more fun to sit around a chat about motorcycles and Alaska and then get a check for it at the end of a couple of hours? Shit yeah!

So I don't know where things are going to go from here. I know that attempts are going to be made to get me to be a nice lady and play nice and apologize to the nice therapist for firing him and quit being 'so emotional'. I also know that I'm going to refuse because I'm sick of being treated like I'm someone who can be cozened and co-opted and bought off with lip service and then immediately ignored once the proper response has been jacked out of me. I am not asking for the fucking moon here, folks. I just want to be able to talk about things outside of an increasingly narrow range of safe subjects without being consigned to Outer emotional cocksucking Mongolia.

Oh well. It does free up my Wednesday nights, I guess.

Please come through for me, y'all!!

I'm having a difficult time writing the third and last chapter of the Rat Saga. I think that's mainly because I'd just like to forget that whole period of time ever happened, and sitting here trying to remember it instead is really fucking with that impulse. Therefore, I've decided to go to Oregon for a week.


It makes perfect sense. It does.


Now: what I want you-alluns to to is to go directly to the comments lounge, have a cocktail and leave me the answer to a serious question:

WHERE DOES ONE FIND NEW MUSIC THESE DAYS?

I can guarantee you it ain't on the radio. Not around here.



But see, I also want to get an Ipod and download bunches and bunches of music; big talk from someone who has only the very faintest idea of what an Ipod is or how it works. Still, I've been making playlists, using Amazon Music recommendations and Youtube. While I was doing that I ran across lots of music that came out during those years between 1979 and the present when I was busy doing other things, like having a life, and some of it is INCREDIBLE! I feel so cheated! All this stuff was going on and I FUCKING MISSED IT!! Go check out Critters Buggin', Buckethead, Blues Saraceno, and anything Les Claypool has ever been involved with, for example. Of course, you probably already know about this stuff. I didn't until just recently. You see how serious this is? It's pathetic.


The only radio stations we get out here are country, christian rock and classic rock (and whatever happens to float in over the border from Canada when they aren't jamming our signals with Radio Free Cheese broadcasts.) I swear to God I will start flinging shit like a macaque if I have to listen to 'Love to Watch Her Strut' ONE MORE TIME.




My favorite music comes in two flavors: blues and metal. By 'metal' I mean stuff like White Zombie, Tool, Filter, Rage Against the Machine. You know, songs about babies dying, napalm and global warfare. I particularly like screaming guitarists who make strange faces and play until their fingers bleed . Hopping around is a plus.

By 'blues' I don't mean Dr. Hook. Lord save me from Dr. Hook AND his Medice Show. No. I mean BLUES. I mean elderly black men singing about shooting people, selling their souls to the Devil, women with large butts, and drinking themselves to death.

I am not particularly interested in pop, country, girl singers or anyone who has been on American Idol. If they aren't demonstrably psychotic, depressed, violent, on drugs or in need of medication then I don't want to hear from them.



See, I know a lot of music is coming out via the Internet, and I need to know where that music is. I don't know where to find it! Send me links! Websites! Don't assume I know a goddamn thing about this stuff because I really don't. Use short words.

Seriously, folks, I'm desperate here. I am seriously desperate. It's serious. So please, fill my comments lounge with links and names and places. Please. Please give me

1.Leads on new music,

2.How to find new music,

3.Where to find new music

HOOK A BITCH UP!!!!

Dog is not the answer

...and now for something completely different!
_______________________________________



People deal with stress in different ways. I get scared, which pisses me off, and then I attack whatever is pissing me off, and violently destroy the crap out of it, render it into tiny little quivering peeing bloody shreds, which I then set on fire and stomp on and call bad names. That's me.

My husband retreats immediately to the top of some remote inner Himalaya from where he'll issue infrequent communiques in response to whatever faint cries happen to reach him, form letters which invariably read 'I don't know', 'nothing', and 'no I didn't'. That's him.

This disparity in coping methods combined with a year of incredible personal upheaval finally resulted in me locking myself in my bedroom for two solid days, during which I did nothing but sob uncontrollably and smoke menthol cigarettes.

In the middle of the afternoon of the third day, as I was lying on the bed thinking about how truly vile menthol cigarettes are and wondering why I was smoking them, I heard his car door slam out in the driveway.

Then I heard a series of excited yips.

Say what?

Oh no.

Aw fuck.

AW FUCK .

Please God. Please God tell me that isn't a dog.



PLEASE GOD DO NOT TELL ME THAT THIS MAN HAS BROUGHT HOME A DOG.


PLEASE GOD.





The bedroom door opened and in ran a dog.

"Guess what? " The Biker announced cheerfully.

.......








Now, 'I got YOU a dog' is bullshit for 'In utter disregard for whatever the underlying cause of this present episode might be, I decided to use it as an opportunity to go get a dog from the pound without your input because I want a dog, and so I'm going to make like it's a sweet cuddly attempt at making up; and in the rapture of the moment, overcome by the mesmerizing cuteness rays emanating from the dog, you'll buy this, and everything will be great.'

I sat there on the bed in utter disbelief. I looked from one to the other, feeling my whole inner being just shrug and give up.

Fine. We have a dog.

Hooray.

Now to be honest, I really wanted to like Maxwell. Maxwell was a good boy and could have been a great boy given an experienced trainer. Experienced trainer, unfortunately, does not even remotely describe anyone who lives at this address. Still, he was a cute little guy, a mutt cross between a rat terrier and a shih tzu, and was as happy and good natured as the day was long.

He was also completely un-housebroken, and, as we were to find out, completely un-house-breakable.






He had a long white high-maintenance coat made of Fiberglas and static electricity that tangled itself into thousands of hard little knots that worked their way into his skin. He was a yapper. He was a climber. He was a humper. He was an eater of carpets and houseplants and shoes and upholstery and the corners of walls and furniture and books and mail.






He carried toilet paper around the house.





He climbed out of the windows.





He climbed into the dryer.





He drug my bras out of the dirty wash and out into the yard. And rolled on them. And got tangled up in them. And then wore them.


Until you looked out the window and realized your dog had been outside wearing a bra for God only knows how long, and ran out to get him, only he wriggled out from underneath the fence and ran off into the middle of the soccer field.


Wearing a bra.




If the lid on the toilet were down he would use it as a step in order to climb up onto the vanity where he'd eat soap. When the lid was up, he fell into the toilet trying to use it as a step to get up onto the vanity so he could eat soap.






His idea of going on a car ride meant to ride quietly in your lap, which is a total lie. Max's idea of a car ride was climbing on top of your head while you were going 75mph down the freeway. Sometimes it meant weaving himself through the steering wheel. It also meant leaping out any windows he found open, and sometimes we found ourselves driving down the road with half a dog dangling out of the side of the car. He would suddenly dive over the back of the seat and land on the side of your face and neck, claws extended, and have to be forcibly removed. Not that he wasn't being safely restrained; he was! I swear to God! Right up until he....wasn't, somehow. And he certainly wasn't scared. He was having the time of his life! He was just being a puppy.


A puppy spawned by Hell.

Since I'm a stay-at-home wife, it fell to me to 'train' him. Dad could go to work each day and come home and either ignore or enjoy doggies' cute antics per his whim. I had the responsibility of attempting to civilize an animal that you literally could not turn your attention away from for a single moment. I now have something of an inkling of what it must be like to raise a hyperactive child. You simply could not have anything but your fullest attention on this animal one hundred percent of the time or he was trying to open drawers, climb into the stove, pulling books off the shelves, or drinking coffee.



Yes. Drinking coffee. He preferred it black.

Cute puppy Maxwell was a non-stop Maxwell. The high speed mayhem and destruction caused by a caffeinated Maxwell was worthy of Sam Peckinpah . But yeah...somewhere along the line before he came to us he'd developed a taste for coffee. At first it was kind of cute. He would sit on the kitchen floor in the morning and stare at the coffee maker and whine. "You aren't getting any, buddy," I'd say. "It'll stunt your growth!"

"Oh yeah, chubby?" he'd grin. "Just set that cup down where I can get at it."

And as soon as your attention was diverted there he'd be with his whole head jammed in the cup, sucking it down like a little bilge pump. I'd chase him around with a rag, wipe off his steaming, coffee-sodden face, and feel him beginning to vibrate as I held him in my arms. One of the very first things I learned about Max was to to keep my coffee mug inaccessible. I was finding full cups for a week after we got rid of him, stashed on top of the entertainment center, the cabinets and the refrigerator.

The novelty of Maxwells' antics soon wore thin when his destructive campaign moved from general household items to things that belonged to the Biker. When he pulled up long strands of carpet and ate them, that was him 'just being a puppy'. It was a case of 'You shouldn't have left those lying around' when Maxwell ate my glasses. Chewing shoes was funny when they were my shoes. It rapidly became not so funny when they were the Bikers' 250.00 Red Wing work boots. Or his favorite running shoes. Or his socks. Or his pillow. Or...


Maxwell could jump like a little kangaroo. It was amazing. If you've ever seen a Jack Russel terrier leaping six feet straight up over and over and over again as though it had a spring in its butt you have an idea of what I mean.



Max liked to jump up, catch the drawstring of the Bikers' pajama pants in his teeth and give it a tug. He'd come out of nowhere, leap, catch the string between his teeth and the Biker would let out a whoop, by which time Max was a speck in the distance.



Tugging on the string quickly became 'giving the string a good healthy yank and pulling the pajama pants halfway down the Bikers' ass'. And that was hilarious....right up until that fateful day that Maxwell...missed. And nipped the wrong...drawstring.

But the big turning point came when we caught Maxwell humping the baby.


This perplexed the baby and made everyone else fairly uncomfortable. Everyone but Maxwell, that is. No, you'd lift him off the baby for the 500th time and he'd keep right on going, humpityhumpityhumpityhumpityhumpity, humpity, humpityhumpity.....humpity.......hump........what?



So it was that the Biker finally came to agree that he'd made a spectacularly bad decision, and posted Maxwell on Craigslist.

A seller quickly responded, and Maxwell and all his accouterments were gone two days later. I felt kind of dishonest taking their 200.00, truthfully, but somehow I found it within me to do so.



And you know what I did with that 200.00?
I took that 200.00 and went out and bought STUPID SHIT.

RAT SAGA PART DEAUX: Emerald Aoudad Awaken The Twisted Scheme!

I noticed the first unusually casual Norway rat on my property about five years ago while I was out gardening. What I thought was a mallard duck bumbling around in the flowers turned out to be one of the biggest Norways I've ever seen. This thing had an ass the size of a softball. And there it was, maybe three feet away from me, ambling along, making no attempt to hide. It just gave me a casual 'S'up?' kind of a glance and paid me no further mind.

The first thing that springs to mind when you've grown up around wild animals and one of them starts acting atypically is that it's probably sick, and 'sick' usually means 'rabid'.

I eased back toward the house. The rat ignored me.

For the rest of the afternoon I looked out the living room window and watched while the rat sauntered around in my flowerbeds. "Jesus Christ come look at this thing!" I'd say, while my husband continued to watch Powerblock. "No seriously! The goddamn thing is still out there! Come look at this!"
"I've seen rats," he'd reply.

Over the next couple of years we saw a few more, from a distance. Since I have no problem with distant rats I grew to accept their presence as one of the unpleasant aspects of living in a rural area, like Avon products, fundamentalists, and widespread methamphetamine abuse.

Then we had our next close encounter. You can read about that here. G'head. I'll wait.

As the next couple of years went by I began to see more wildlife around the place, rats included... but since they weren't parking their Winnebagos on my lawn or trying to sell me Amway I shrugged it off. Until the morning I stepped out onto the front porch last summer and a huge goddamn Norway rat came trotting up the steps toward me.

No shit! Just heard the door opening and came merrily right on up the steps like it was going to come in the house! Like a dog!

I took a threatening step towards it, clapped my hands and yelled 'Shoo! Go home! Go home now!' I flapped my hands at it and stomped my feet a couple of times too.

It stopped short and looked up at me, totally perplexed. Just flummoxed.

When it finally dawned on me that I was standing out on my front step attempting to interact with a feral garbage rat as though it were a stray poodle, I booked ass into the house and slammed the door.

I looked out the window a couple of seconds later.

It was on the porch.

Over the next couple of weeks I watched as several more rats came roaming through the yard. Now, not to be boastful, but up until then I'd had one of the showplace gardens in my town. Nothing takes the bloom off that 'showplace garden' image faster than a couple of huge rats wandering around. Not even cement deer. Not even Canadians.

These were some chill rats, too. Nothing phased them; not pedestrians, not passing cars, nothing. They were out there basking in the sun, washing their little ratty faces and licking their little ratty asses! Seriously! And some of these newer rats were not doing real well. They had some kind of scabby rat disease and their hair was missing in big patches. So not only did I have rude rats; no, that wasn't bad enough! I had rude diseased crack addict rats with eczema out in my front yard performing acts of intimate personal hygiene!
No!
This was not acceptable!
No way in hell was this acceptable!

You want to know what was really unacceptable, though? When my husband, the Yummy Biker, walked into the mud room a few days later to find a huge goddamn disgusting filthy vermin covered rat calmly eating out of the dog* bowl.

YES.


A wild Norway fucking rat had come into my house THROUGH THE DOG FLAP, and was EATING THE DOGS FOOD.

Now, I was outside when this happened and had no idea what was going on. I remember a huge shout going up and then a lot of loud crashing and banging and yelling. I decided my presence was not required.

Apparently upon seeing the rat, my husband grabbed a broom and began randomly flailing away at the rat there in the small entryway. The rat responded by leaping at the broom and hanging onto the end of it, which caused the Biker to whip it around in the air, kind of like rat lacrosse, which activity finally flung the rat up into the air and behind the dryer. The Biker jumped right up onto the dryer after it, and with the broom now held like a javelin began stabbing at the rat, which was jammed back there down in the small space between the dryer and the wall. All this did was dent the dryer and chase the rat beneath the nearby washing machine. My husband leaned over, yanked the washer out from the wall, and continued to try and skewer the rat with the bristle end of the broom, something he reports wasn't getting him much of anyplace fast, although it seemed to annoy the rat, which ran out into the kitchen. Where it went after that he didn't know. It disappeared. So he ran into the bedroom, grabbed a rifle and systematically began tearing the entire house apart. Broom in one hand, rifle in the other. He was prepared.


Thank God it was summer. We think what happened was that the rat ran straight through the house and out the front window. We never found a single trace. Still, getting to sleep that night was....difficult.

*TO BE CONTINUED!!!!!!!!!!!!*




_____________________________

*we briefly owned a dog this last summer, but he will be the subject of a future post.

Temperate Azure Chicken In Instant Rescue Caper!

If you've been visiting 'Paul' awhile you know that I've had ongoing problems with my next door neighbors.

Big sister, while usually a quiet type, occasionally goes prowling around her yard at night growling and screaming. She also has some kind of ongoing conflict with the pear tree back there, which has lead to several loud disagreements with same. Mom and Big Brother are harmless, if quiet, furtive and unwashed. Actually all of them are harmless and generally pleasant folks (unless you're a pear tree)and its not them specifically I've had the issue with; its the overflow animal problem.

At first it was just cats. Sis collected cats. White cats, when we first moved in, although as they had kittens that changed rapidly. Over the past ten or so years I've had these cats die in my compost bin, have kittens in my flower pots, barf on my front porch, climbing my trees, digging up my plants, and crapping everywhere they damn well pleased. Now, that last issue is just not normal cat behavior. I've had cats. Even the feral ones are usually cool enough to take a dump in an out-of-the-way place. These things were shitting on the hood of our pickup truck. They shit in the middle of the porch. They shit in the middle of the lawn. They built big volcanoes over their butt nuggets in the middle of the driveway. I have no idea what that was about. They shit in my potted plants, in the middle of the steps, just any damn place the urge struck. And these cats were host to some downright frightening intestinal fauna too. Huge squirming clods of it. This was not, as my grandson would say, beautiful OR propriate.

Now as time went on the neighbors' property became overgrown to the point that you could not make out the house behind all the underbrush. That was fine with me. It was also fine with the wildlife. I enjoyed the various native and migrant birds the thick brush and tall trees invited. In the summer evening three different types of bat flutter and chirp overhead, venturing out and returning in acrobatic loops to the immense Scoulers willow in their front yard. I even got a kick out of the big old boar raccoon that used to amble around in the evening, fat jiggling, in no hurry, like he owned the place.

Until he started living under my back deck.

And climbing up the lattice on the side of my house, right next to my bedroom window.

In the middle of the night.

Did you know that raccoons make noise? They do. They make lots of noises. Not just 'throwing your garbage all over the driveway' noises, or 'going through the toolbox in the garage and throwing sockets onto the floor' noises. They also make creepy yipping, growling, barking, screeching noises. At night. They have lots to say, turns out. All of it at night. Outside my bedroom window. I have no idea what its about, or why they're doing it; I didn't ask. They probably would have told me, though. I should have.

Turns out there were a lot of raccoons living over there. Lots and lots of them. Enough so that they were sending out reconnaissance squads to my place. They've blazed a permanent trail, bare of grass, across the lot and straight into my back yard...From there it goes around the garage, the shed, the raised beds, around the side of my house and right up onto my front porch. How do I know it's raccoons? I've seen them. Bold as fuck. And they leave footprints, too. They aren't big on wiping their feet. They come right up on my front porch, go right up onto the bench out there and look in my window. Oh look, the fat broad got new curtains.

Now, right from the beginning when we moved in, there were rats. Not in the house, mind; outside. Regular field rats; of course, this is farmland so you simply expect field rats. Not a big deal.

A couple of years later, the Norway rats showed up.

Well, OK, you know, Norways are a part of life. What are you going to do? Again, theres a lot of farms out this way, lots of manure ponds and grain silos and silage tips. The fact that you'd see them in broad daylight was a little worrisome; but I'm no rat expert either. I figured they came from the surrounding farms, and they'd gotten a little bold from smelling the presence of people all the time or something.

As time passed this all became so much a part of everyday life it went without notice.

Then last summer the animal population around here just exploded.

I had raccoons running around on my roof every night. I had raccoons going through my garbage, looking in my windows, barking and yipping from the top of my umbrella tree, dragging boxes around the back of our pickup truck and tracking dirty footprints all over my car. Cats everywhere, crapping in my garden, wandering up and down the sidewalks, yodelling from the top of the shed, squashed into little cat pizzas all over the road up and down the block.

And rats.

Oh yes.

...and rats.




*TO BE CONTINUED*

Eleven Blue Moles Plan A Resounding Active!!

Yesterday evening the Biker and I went to our weekly therapy session, and I found myself regaling our counsellor with the following tale (apropos of what exactly I don't recall.)

__________________________________

I had an arrangement with my parents the year I was 16. I would, without complaint, accompany my mother to every single one of the crackpot, embarrassing, bizarre, humiliating, excruciatingly awkward religious events she attended, and in return I got to continue to live in their house*. I've gone into the reasons why this arrangement was made elsewhere; the short version is that my mom wasn't going to put up with anyone who was 'possessed by an unclean spirit' using her bathroom.

That any arrangement was made at all was sheer lucky timing on my part. Shortly prior to this my mom had found Jesus, and apparently Jesus doesn't like for people to turn their daughters out in the street. Now I was grateful as all heck to Jesus for the opportunity to continue to sleep indoors, and maybe I shouldn't complain; but to tell you the truth Jesus- who was a great guy otherwise- could not manage his money for jack shit.

Fortunately for him, as long as my mom was around Jesus never had to worry about his credit rating.

The only thing about any of this that benefited me personally was that it got me out of the house, and gave me an opportunity to meet a entire sector of the American public that I never would have known existed otherwise.

One day my mom decided that we were going to go to Las Vegas and see Kathryn Kuhlman. And so it was done. The woman who saved bacon grease until it grew an afro and hoarded boxed muffin mix in case another depression suddenly hit coughed up the wherewithal for a couple of round trip airplane tickets, two event admissions and a sizable 'love gift'...and my dad drove us to the airport.

Kathryn Kuhlman's popularity is difficult to describe to anyone who isn't familiar with 'Born Again' evangelical culture. How she was able to get away with what she did for as long as she did is a testimony to the same American tendency to 'willing gullibility' as was noted by that other giant of the religious community, Aleister Crowley. Weighing in at maybe 70 lbs, standing about four foot nothing, with bad hair and a voice that alternated at random between alto and baritone, you could not call her physically compelling. Her preferred dress was white chiffon. When I saw her she'd added a cape and train, wizard sleeves and a Mary Poppins neckline, all of it edged in scallop.

As she spoke, or rather, declaimed, she would dramatically flow across the stage from left to right and back, taking large measured steps, and then suddenly STOP! ...one arm outstretched! and hold the pose while her garments hurried to catch up with her, face ablaze with fervor. Then suddenly back she'd go as though someone had released a spring, arms fully outstretched and circulating like goldfish fins, and once again STOP! Then dart to the front of the stage full tilt, and STOP! right on the very edge of disaster! The whole time croaking away about Gods heavenly loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove for his chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren, and his glooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorious heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealing POW-errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

This show was one well-oiled machine. She had an orchestra. She had a choir. She had soloists. She had costume changes. She also had a crack team of gimps. 'Patients' on gurneys parked around the front of the stage with 'nurses' and 'doctors' in exaggerated attendance, a large coterie of the 'differently-abled'; the whole crowd of them clearly playing roles, slicker than hell. I'm not being bitter here. It was so clearly rehearsed and had been repeated so many times that it looked as mannered as a kabuki theatre production. While whatever passed on stage took place, the folks down in the pit area on the floor ground through their accompanying routine...a nurse suddenly rushing to the side of a patient struggling to get out of their wheelchair...two doctors holding an impromptu emergency consultation while one of the gurney folks showed the first signs of consciousness in years; ushers rushing to their sides and then whispering loudly to one another 'She was blind for 14 years! She says she can see shadows!' and sending rumors up through the crowd**. All clearly cued by orchestral flourishes, key lines, and the ends of songs.

I had been under the impression that we were here to attend a revival. After a short while of watching it,though, I thought 'Oh, OK. This is like a play' and settled in to patiently wait for the whole weird-ass thing to be over.

I was right, as it turns out. This was a theatrical performance, in the same tradition as psychic surgery, the medicine show, and the carnival pitch . It even has a name. It's known as the 'straight healing service'. What Kathryn did was, she got the crowd whupped up, stuck her hand on people, they fell down, and it cost 65$ a head to see her do it.


Meantime Kathryn is healing the halt and the lame hand over fist. A long queue of people snaked down through the aisles and up onto the stage. As soon as she'd stick her hand one one person WHAMMO down they'd go like a sack of crap. The ushers would expertly catch them under the arms and hardly have them drug off before the next one hit the floor. People in the audience were standing and waving their arms in the air, speaking in tongues! Huge ovations went up when the formerly speechless uttered their first words in years! Plane crash victims with both feet sewn to their faces gave eloquent testimony! Cancer patients who'd had their entire brains removed calculated square roots! The crowds went wild!!!!!

And all of a sudden Kathryn stretched out one scrawny arm and everything HUSHED.

The whole place-silent. All eyes on her.

She swept to the very edge of the stage, faced 'A' section, stretched out one arm like a flagpole and announced "SEIG HEIL!"



















....naw, I'm fucking with you.

She stretched out one arm like a flagpole and announced "FEEL THE POWER OF GODS LOVE!"

And every single person in 'A' section went down like they'd been scythed.

EVERY SINGLE PERSON.

She suddenly darted across to stage right! Stuck out her arm toward 'C' section and shouted "FEEL THE POWER OF GODS LOVE!"

Every single person in 'C' section hit the floor.

I'm seated in 'B' section, center floor, with my mom on one side of me and her best friend on the other. We are standing up praising the Lord with our arms upraised. Everyone around us is speaking or singing in tongues, moaning, swaying, crying, laughing...

Kathryn sweeps to the center of the stage, and out goes the arm. She's pointing at us. 'B' section falls silent.

Kathryn Kuhlman shouts "FEEL THE POWER OF GODS LOVE!"



And everyone in 'B' section goes down like dominoes.
Every single person.
All of them.



Except me.


______________________________________________________


Now imagine for a moment that you're a 16 year old girl who's been told that she is literally harboring demons. I showed up at this event carrying quite a burden of guilt and shame and fear. And lest you think I had my mind closed, know that I did not, not this early on; I was all for Jesus and love and forgiveness and God. I thought that a lot of what I had already seen was sad and embarrassing, but there was enough sincerity floating around to keep me hoping that maybe I was just missing something and that eventually I'd 'get it'.

And I did. As I was standing there, all alone, literally in the middle of the auditorium, glancing around...slowly putting my arms by my side...slowly sitting down in my seat...my mom shooting me dirty glances, her best friend shooting me dirty glances, people looking away in embarrassment...I finally got it.


These people were all nuts.


___________________________________________________________________






* instead of at the Perry Center Home for Wayward Youth, where my cousin was currently being raped by the staff and her fellow inmates.


**How obvious was it? When the program was over and we were all filing out, the 'doctors' were helping stack up folding chairs.