the type of people who give liberal hippie scum like me a bad name.

Today is the opening day of the farmers market season in Bellingham. The Stainless Steel Amazon and I are planning on making it a 'girls only' affair, and the goonybird gets to have a male bonding day with the yummy biker.

But there is a cloud on the horizon of this day, a little hairy cloud named Emily.

Emily is the phobic, whining, twat that married 'my' cousin, the supercilious prick. Thumbnail sketch: 'My' cousin ran for city treasurer a couple of years ago, a position which I have to admit he was well qualified for. Not only that; his opponent was pretty much just a high school kid with a notary seal. And she won by a landslide. Nobody voted for him. He is not likeable. And remember, this is the country that made Howard Stern a rich man.

How do you describe Emily?

For years she worked for the NEW YORK TIMES (fanfare) where she was shop steward for the union, making graphs. She moved here and got a job on the local newspaper where she worked for fifteen years and was shop steward for the union, making graphs. Recently she bought a share in, and is the editor in chief of, the floundering local Liberal newspaper, which has no union, and where her vast journalistic background in making graphs has paid off in hard hitting editorials about subjects nobody remotely cares about, with lots of graphs.

This is a woman who, when she first met me, bragged about having been able to 'pass' as a straight Christian all her life when in actuality she is a gay Jew. (What lead her to marry a straight irish catholic, one wonders? Particularly the one she chose? And why brag about it to a stranger you know is related to the man? It is a mystery, like the chupacabra, but with more hair.)

She followed up that statement with the SHOCKING LEFTY REVELATION -at least it had to have been to a simple country turd like me, right?- 'You know, back in NEW YORK our babysitter was GAY. And a MAN. And he was BLACK, too."

WOW!

OMIGOD!

Emily! You are SO LIBERAL! THATS TRIPLE POINTS!!!

So anyway, family issues of a vicious, revolting nature rear their ugly heads, sides are taken accusations are made, letters and phone calls fly back and forth and finally I make break with them all. And that is all. Just, 'the end.' Goodbye. No more contact of any kind. None. Nada.

That was 19 years ago. Time moves on.

Except not for Emily. Emily, who was only on the utter periphery of this affair but took up arms despite that like a woolly little Hun. Emily, who hardly knows me.

Well, how dare I indeed? I can't just run around all acting like I have self-respect; all choosing who I will and will not associate with like I'm somebody and all! I'm just a simple country turd! I drive a compact car! I HAVE to associate with her until SHE says otherwise! SHE is from NEW YORK!!

I'm going to gloss things over here and just say that her misdeeds are legion, and tawdry, and her cheap antics at one point became a therapy issue for my daughter *. The woman is, frankly, bizarre. And there I will let that matter rest.

..........except to say that if you are at the beach and you spy Emily in the distance coming towards you wearing a bathing suit, cover your childrens eyes and RUN THE OPPOSITE WAY. You do not ever want to see Emily wearing a bathing suit. Or shorts. Not even long shorts. Not any kind of shorts. Ever. Ever.

No. I do not like Emily.

This being opening day of the Farmers Market, Emily is very likely to be in attendance. What, and miss the first big event of the Granola year? Unthinkable! Plus she has to be there to record it for posterity now, too, I suppose.

God help both of us if I see her hairy little face. I'll fucking break it.

*until my daughter tore the bitch a new asshole to match the one in the center of her furry forehead. if you ever wondered why I refer to my daughter as the Stainless Steel Amazon, wonder no more.

at least it isn't shuk yon.

My yummy biker has been diagnosed with deviant Buford syndrome.
is this:

a. a medical condition caused by eating fried pork rinds at a Klan meeting
b. a medical condition caused by shouting 'WHOOOO-EEEE!' through the bathroom door at your mother
c. a medical condition caused by swerving your Harley in order to see how far you can kick a possum
d. a pathological lesion of the glenoid labrum, a triangular fibrocartilaginous structure that serves to deepen the glenoid
e. a medical condition caused by your first cousins' five 'o clock shadow


the answer is b.

He'll be going though physical therapy. Eventually he's going to end up with a permanent suture which ought to be giant heaving heaps o'fun for all involved. Poor guy. Send vicodin.

I'm just about the only person I know who isnt in physical therapy now.



update-
dang, folks, he'll live! (you are nice.)
I've already received a phone call about this. deviant buford syndrome is an injury to a piece of cartilage in your shoulder. its nothing so serious as a rotator cuff injury, even, but it makes it hard to reach overhead without pain. its only about this __ long.
sorry.

oo! i have the b manuscript too!

While some are born to serve the Lord and, some are born to battle, I am born to garden. That is my vocation. I'd say I have a green thumb, but that doesn't go nearly far enough and could lead to a series of unfortunate but tempting analogies concerning green body parts. Still, if I lived in a climate that permitted it, I would garden all year and live outdoors, right smack dab in the middle of it all in one of those southwest chikee hut things (with plumbing.) In total abject poverty, gnawing on a carrot and starving for want of food with a face, but doing so in the middle of a bitchin stand of delphinium x var. chinensis 'Blue Mirror'.

Yes, this could very easily become a gardening blog for the next few months. I'm making no promises. I'm already guilty of referring to plants by their botanical names in casual conversation, which I know annoys non-gardeners to tears. But they roll off the tongue so mellifluously! hemerocallis lillioasphoedelus! lonicera japonica! papaver betonicafolia! plus you can Google:Image the name and see exactly what I'm talking about better than if I said ditchlilly, honeyjasmine, poppy.

Now, after all that having been said, I have to admit that lately I have been doing just about zero in the garden. Yeah, after spending all winter bitching about how I just HAD to get outside or I'd go nuts.

Last year I put gardening to one side because we were all busy rearranging our lives around the new addition, Mr. Goonybird. And lets be honest- its more fun to play with a sweet dumpling baby than it is to turn compost, though some of the aromas produced are similar.
This spring I am paying for that. Bigtime. Oh hell yeah, bigtime...I put on 20 lbs right off the bat because I kept eating like I was digging ditches when all I was doing was gazing in adoration at the sweet baby. While chomping on a burrito.

So this spring I look out onto beds where last years cobby old stems are still nodding. Grass is growing in lush hummocks out of the middle of my groundcovers. The HENBIT OF DOOM is still there, laughing, mocking me, despite it being exactly the right time to yank it out and stomp it and set it on fire and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh

So today, while the 'bird is napping, I will go outside and do some long-overdue housekeeping. I promise.
(update2:30pm .....and i did, too. yay!)


Now a little blog housekeeping.
Check my link. If I submitted it, I may very well have put in the wrong url. It's supposed to be
1hplovecraft.blogspot.com
Thanks to Piggy for the headsup!

i explain reality

Some folks out there (not you, my darlings) are continuing to experience problems making that big emotional leap from 'It's SO OBVIOUS that the X Files was real but the government forced them to write it like fiction' to 'There is no Laura Croft really, but I will manage somehow.'

But hey, don't feel bad, you pathetic dork, I am here to help you! So sit down, shut up and let dear old First Nations root around in your brain with a stick.


See, there are things that are true, and there are things that are not. No matter how hard you try to make an untrue thing true, it never will be, no matter how elaborate the buttress of lies you erect around it. The only thing that you will make is yourself look like a moron.

Now. Bearing that in mind, repeat after me:

1. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS VAMPIRES.

Question: How goddamn lacking in self esteem do you have to be to run around in white pancake makeup and fake fangs like Eddie Fucking Munster? Answer: Pretty goddamn lacking. But you are different? You really drink blood? Well gosh, why didn't you say so in the first place? That is SO COOL! Now go slap yourself across the face and drink a gallon of tetracycline you pathetic retard. Congratulations! You're a plague vector. I bet your mom is proud.

2. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FAIRIES

Or Sidhe, angels, elementals, fauns, genie, peris, dryads, naiids, leprechauns, cluricauns, any cauns, kahunas, gnomes, kobolds, ghouls (except for Pickmans' Model; in fact, everything Lovecraft wrote was taken directly from personal experience because I said so) Bigfoot, Mothman, Boogieman, or Stick Indians. Even if they talk to you. That happens because you need 1. Interests other than World of Warcraft and 2. MAOI inhibitors. Fast. Now. Run.

3. YOU DO NOT HAVE PICTURES OF GHOSTS.

It's not a vortex, it's not ectoplasm, and its not an orb, it's you not knowing how to operate a camera, fuckwit. Yes, it would be cool if it were a ghost, but ghosts are bullshit and we can't all be ballerinas, either.

4. THE DEAD DO NOT SPEAK THROUGH PSYCHICS.

The dead are dead. They don't do anything anymore. Psychics? Take Sylvia Brown (please? somebody?) If she could really attract ghosts, wouldn't an aethric Versace have beaten her to death with a handbag by now?

5. YOU DO NOT HAVE AN INDIAN SPIRIT GUIDE. You can have a TV Guide, You can have a Michelin Guide, and in the UK you can even have a Girl Guide. You cannot have an indian spirit guide. You can have a disassociative personality disorder caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, though. **

6. ASTROLOGY IS JUST, NO. PLEASE. JUST NO.

7. AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON FENG SHUI.

My bitchy, innapropriate, rude ex-sister-in-law, rather than seek real help for her many problems, instead paid some lemming to come in and Feng Shui her house. Yes indeedy, that's a little lemming who laughed all the way to the bank that day.


8. OUIJA BOARDS ARE CREEPY.

...and this Halloween I will tell you my creepy, true ouija board story. Now, do I think it's Phil Spector making the planchette move? No. But...

9. RELIGION? GOTTA AGREE WITH MARX.

Offended? Stop reading me immediately. Honestly. I mean it. You will not like it here. Don't forget to pick up your Rice a Roni on the way out.

THERE!
Yew are cleansed!
The eeeeeevil has left you!
Now go fowerth, brothers and sisters, and THINK!!!!

I mean really, for the love of fuck.



* I blame Anne Rice. No really, I do. I just want to puke when an interviewer jokingly asks "Was 'Interview With The Vampire' real?" and she acts all coy like 'oo, if I say too much the Talamasca will put a hit on me!'

**Why do people think that dead Native Americans have nothing better to do with their afterlife than hang around with fat white women who dropped out of high school?

***'Ex Sister-In-Law and the Delusions of Entitlement' would make a sweet-ass name for a band, wouldn't it?

CSI Sumas

Well, we made it through yesterday in one piece. Seems to have been just a bug after all. The forensic evidence follows.....

1. Instead of lying on the couch all day and subjecting me to the spectacle of his misery, he WENT TO BED. In the bedroom. And slept.
In the early stages of diabetic wierdness, he lies on the couch all day moaning and yet insisting nothing is wrong and that he's not acting defensive...defensively, and scowling and talking to you as soon as you're out of earshot and then pouting when you ask him to repeat himself. Occasionally he'll get up with his hair all sticking out like Astro Boy and stumble off to the bathroom holding one side of his stomach as though his liver were migrating. Where he spends 45 minutes making odd noises, reading magazines and snarling when someone asks if he's going to be much longer. Then it's back to the couch for another round of 'how long can I irritate my wife before she puts me out on the curb in a heftybag? IN PIECES?'

2. He actually took pain medication. For pain. *
Instead of bitching all day about having a (headache, backache, toenail ache...) and then getting all defensive (and denying it) when you ask him if he's taken any asprin.

3. He barfed. The clincher! Not a person who just goes around chunking up chow on a whim, he.

Now, I play this for laughs here, but actually it's not funny. It flat fucking sucks to have to keep second and third guessing the actions of someone you respect like a spy, particularly when you know they're not feeling well. On the other hand, the suckage factor goes way up when you have a 250 lb biker who benches 300 lbs undergoing a diabetic event in your house wandering at large and hallucinating. Its just not fun. Getting said into the car to go to the emergency room is not fun. Keeping him in the car is not fun. Having him check the speedometer every fifteen seconds to see if you're speeding is not fun.
Now don't go getting all worried and shit. That only happened once, ten years ago. I'm just venting off some excess paranoia. But keep us in your thoughts, won't you, because I just may take a baseball bat to him yet.


* just poopy old naproxin, dammit. wheres the fucking vicodin? someone call keith richards for me.

For sale cheap: biker, used, stretched front end, wide glide, custom paint.

This morning finds me stuck at home with TWO children...the goonybird, who has as his excuse lack of years, and the yummy biker, who has NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER.
Now before you go rolling your eyes and saying "oh geeze, another man-hating 'guys are such children when they're sick' thing" let me just say that this is a 'yummy bikers with Monday-itis make me want to set shit on fire' thing.

Actually, let me qualify that further. The yummy biker has diabetes. Diabetes that is inoxerably making its way from type II 'everybody thinks this can be cured with diet' to type I 'blindness, foot amputation, running sores'. It's genetic. Runs in his family. He could be an uber-healthy kenyan marathoner who subsists on a diet of air and spirulina and it would make no difference.

One of the side effects of diabetes in men is depression. In his case it manifests itself by turning a normally wonderful person into Satan's three-year old boy. This is not an exaggeration, my darlings. I wish it were. He gets phantom stomach aches, gets weekenditis and mondayitis, sulks, pouts, refuses to go to bed...yeah.

Any change in his body chemistry is presaged by odd behavior. He becomes absolutely convinced that we are broke. (remember the last time that happened? He needed his meds adjusted bigtime, turns out.) He also does this thing where he settles in on the sofa for the evening and becomes COMPLETELY INERT. He kind of semi-dozes, semi-watching tv and semi-paying atention. Meanwhile the goonybird could be making long distance calls or butt-naked, chasing the evil dogs with a chainsaw...but if it doesn't happen to cross his line of vision, he takes no notice whatsoever.

Which for some reason makes me blisteringly pissed.

Even though I know its not that big a deal. Still. When he's howling like a bad shakespearian actor for the bazillionth time that day because the goonybird smacked him in the 'nads with a book again, you just want to heave them both out in front of a silage truck.

Heres the problem.

Maybe this isn't Mondayitis.

Maybe he really does have a bug. God knows it's going around.

Or maybe it's not.

Fuck.