my first rerun...The Flatbutts: Savage Investors of the Old West

I've been creating honorary Flatbutts lately. Here is their story.
The Flatbutts, not the honorary new members of the tribe. Which is imaginary. But I'm the queen of it so don't piss me off or I will whap you with my magic wand and scream 'You're a toad! You're a toad!' until you cry.

(Extensively revised because I felt like it.)

I am Native American. What tribe? The Flatbutt tribe. ( like the flatHEAD tribe from the upper clatsop region. get it? huh?)
See, thats a joke.
I can make these HYSTERICALLY AMUSING jokes because I am a Native American. Just like I can say honky ofay, and exactly like I'm always calling the catholics a pile of twats because I'm part white and I was raised catholic. See? Using the same logic, you will never find me referring to the spoos, the slipperheads, the kites or the eelshoes because I made those up.

THE HISTORY OF THE FLATBUTT TRIBE-SAVAGE INVESTORS OF THE OLD WEST

Back , back, my children, back in the dim mists of time, the Flatbutt tribe lived their charming, primitive lives undisturbed by the passing parade, amid the peaceful ponderosas high in the hills. It was a time of innocence. The mighty Flatbutts stalked game (mainly Twister, sometimes Monopoly) in the primeval forests. They made highly sophisticated pottery and are known from the archeological record as the inventors of the sippy nipple booby mug. They were particularly known for their greeting cards, which they imbued with powerful magic charms and a strong, greasy aroma.

The children of the Flatbutts were reared with a keen appreciation of something. Nobody knows what exactly. They spent much of their youth high in the elms, waiting for salmon to pass beneath and attempting to hit them with water balloons.

Life for the young Flattbutt was idyllic, and most of all, unhygenic. When a Flatbutt lad or lassie came of age they were initiated into adulthood by members of the tribal Amish Death Metal Society...felled from their lofty aeries and then flung headlong into the mighty Lager river, which ran strong, foaming and yeasty, through the center of their ancient tribal lands. For days afterwards those living downstream tasted, and knew.

Using long pointy sticks, the newly-made adults were then rescued from the malty torrent and greeted by the tribe. A huge bonfire using wildcrafted sofas was set ablaze. The next three days were passed in feasting, catered by Port O' Subs, attempting to light off damp fireworks with gasoline, peeing for distance, fart tag and Twister. During this time, and for some afterward the buffalo were wary.

The adult male Flatbutt was of average height, not counting the additional inches added by the pirate hat and cuban-heeled boots it was their custom to wear. Each man also wore a penis sheath, a ribbed length of dryer vent decorated with feathers and crackerjack prizes, held fast to the body with duct tape and many inches longer than was entirely necessary. This article of clothing, it was believed, aided the hunter in attracting the police.

Sometimes in bad weather the males would cover themselves in fried eggs and burrow deep into the forest duff in search of Playboy magazines cached earlier in the year.

Women customarily went topless (inspiring the tradional indian war cry WOO WOO), wore raffia platform shoes with cherry toe clusters, and midlength circle skirts adorned with poodles, eiffel towers, and frenchmen riding bicycles. No ensemble was considered complete without the traditional Hermes bag where the scalps and genetalia of their enemies were carried.

Then came the pioneers... those europeans banished from their own lands by a populace sick to death of their constant whining about being too cold and too wet and too muddy and oo, can't I have another blanket and oh dear the thatch is leaking again and could somebody bring me something hot to drink? and maybe a magazine? and could you turn the channel before you leave?

They crossed the plains leaving trails of used tissues, and the rumor of their passage was told in the sudden increase of postnasal drip among the tribal peoples with whom they traded for vicks vaporub and aspirin along the way.

The first doomed meeting between the two peoples happened on Friday.
Last Friday.
Everyone was settling in for a nice picnic lunch and maybe later a swim in the river if it wasn't too chilly (making certain they waited the traditional one sacred hour after eating to appease Paul, the giant monster lager lizard who was rumored to live on the bottom of the channel eating the Adidas of the unwary) Without warning, from over the rolling hills in the distance appeared the Chevrolets and Pontiacs of the settlers, drawn by tired oxen.

Without so much as a howdy do the feverish pioneers unhitched their beasts and simply allowed them to trample oxishly towards the river heedless of the noshing natives, who scattered willy nilly and hither and yon and Simon and Garfunkle and Seigfried and Roy, only before Roy got his head ate by a tiger, and then into the very river itself, where the thirsty beasts drank their fill, promptly passed out and floated away downstream.

The Flatbutts rallied. Gathering up their blue tarps and styrofoam coolers they waded in, chunking rocks and bottles, sandwiches and eight-track players in a valiant attempt to sink the beasts, and finally, desparately, pelting them with the used diapers of their own children.

Sadly, there really never was any hope.

And so history was played out on the sage-strewn stage of the painted praries. Intermarriage alloyed the pride and strength of the Flatbutts. Competition for cigarettes drove the price up. Korean investors swept in like locusts on really big fast things and bought up the primeval forestlands for a pint of pee and built Outback Steakhouses where once proud Flatbutts had hunted in proud and flatbutted nudity. Although that naked part was supposed to have been a little Flatbutt secret.

But a ray of hope gleams through the crack in the bathroom stall of history, blocked though it may be by the wadded up toilet paper of Caucasian revisionism. Today, using laptop computers which they cleverly assemble from sticks, rocks, squirrels, and some of those cardboard tubes that paper towels come on*, the Flatbutts are slowly regaining their former status as the savage investors they were of yore.

Given time, a clearly written pattern-preferably Bernina- and the right yarn, they will rise again.

WHITE MAN, PRAY TO JESUS THEY HAVE YOUR CORRECT SIZE.



*a perfect example of Flatbutt injun-uity.

FirstNations explains it all for YOU.

When you switch to a vegetarian diet you will have to clean the toilet a lot more often.


It's the poo issue. When a carnivore visits the Ritz, it's like the helicopter delivery of a refrigerator.
When a vegetarian does, it's more like a tickertape parade.










Good news: Recreational drugs are lots of fun. Try some today!








Odor is particulate. Actual particles of what you are smelling are entering your nose and flowing outward through your entire body.












You cannot teach a cow to memorize the periodic table of elements.

Not even if you wear a fez.







There are a lot more crazy people in the world than you might think. And not good crazy, brothers and sisters.

Be afraid.









Any drug that you can take orally also comes in a form meant to be introduced anally.
If this intrigues anyone I do not want to know about it. LALALALALAICANTHEARYOU, LALALALA.
Found this out because a guy my husband worked for had an irrepressable gag reflex. He carried acetomeniphin suppositories in his lunchbox in case he got a headache.







Sometimes you do need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

warning: dickensian childhood interlude

My childhood was pretty extreme. There's layers upon layers of sickness that went on. None of it happened for a reason and none of it made any sense. My only job was to survive it and then get as far the fuck away from it as I could. And thats what I did. But I'm still living with a couple physical reminders of it that crop up now and then. And I resent it like hell.

Between two mentally ill chronic smokers and the stress and chaos they generated, (not to mention catholic school) by the time I was six I had asthma. I remember it's onset and I remember the doctor who told my parents that it was psychological.
First of all, they thought it was very funny to teach me to explain 'it's not catching, it's only psychological' to people. Ha! yes, thats high comedy. Taking advantage of a kid is ALWAYS high comedy.

They wasted no time spreading the word. Every teacher I had knew 'it's only psychological'. It was in my school records. Every gym class I was forced to attend I was reviled by whatever barely literate health nazi happened to be teaching at the time and made to participate, conspicuously, until I damn near passed out to the jeers of the entire class. Jeers that went on all day long.

Being an object of contempt everywhere you go, and being accused of lying when you are genuinely sick is really not a good way to grow up. I was a normal looking kid. I was smarter than average. And none of that mattered because I was already branded as a snivelling liar and hated for it. I remember having attacks in school to a chorus of the entire class singsonging 'faker! faker!' And of course the teachers did nothing. Of course.

Asthma doesnt look like anything much worse than a cold from the outside. You're just out of breath and coughing, to the outside world, and to them all that means is that you are lazy and out of shape. And the cure for that is forced activity!

There was a Doctor on television at the time named Lendon Smith, a supposed expert on child care. He is the one who really popularized the notion of the neurotic, substandard wimpy asthmatic kid who literally made himself sick to avoid stress and gain attention.
How I hate that phrase.
"You're only doing it to get attention. You're just trying to get attention"
The LAST motherfucking thing I wanted at that point in my life was attention. Attention was the enemy. If people paid attention to you, you'd get treated like shit. I most assuredly did NOT want attention. I hated having asthma. It was like I was being betrayed by my own body.

Asthma is slow suffocation. The tissue in your lungs swells and loses elasticity. Every breath you take you have to force and think about. Your lungs hurt. The breath you force in has to be forced out. Gallons of mucous form, and capillaries in your eyes and chest burst from coughing and trying to breathe. Your lungs simply will not expand and your windpipe is narrowed and full of snot. And it gets worse and worse and worse. You can't talk without gasping for air. You cannot walk across the room. The headaches are intense. Your hands and feet tingle from lack of oxygen. And it HAPPENS WITH OUT WARNING AND WITHOUT AN OBVIOUS TRIGGER.
And it commonly happens in the middle of the night when you are sound asleep.

That's what turns my parents out. I would have needed the involuntary impulse control of a buddhist monk to program an episode like that.Much less repeated episodes.

Despite what they saw and heard, my parents were more than happy, suspiciously relieved, in fact, to take the word 'psychological' to mean 'all in her head, nothing really wrong with her'. What makes it heinous is that they acted as though it was the expense...but when I moved out I found out that all my medical care had been free through CHAMPUS through my 21st year. Career military dependant.
Free.
I was denied FREE medical care.

Now that I am their age and have spent some years away from their sickness, I know, without any more conforting doubts, that the reason they did this is because they really didn't like me or being parents very much. And that as extreme and dramatic as it sounds, they hoped I'd die so they wouldn't have to do it anymore.
Thats the truth, whether anyone wants to hear it or consider it or think about it or not. I know it. I was there. I'm there now.
This is the kind of white trash, waste of skin bullshit you see on COPS or SERVE AND PROTECT. And thats what I grew up with. Those were my parents. They had a nice house and wore clean clothes, they'd spend whatever it took to make things LOOK good, but that was my parents.

I don't even want to know where they're buried.

little mary sunshine has left the building

(updated: end)

Living in a body that is intent on dying despite all your best efforts is a total fucking pain in the ass. I've been fighting asthma for forty fucking years and I cannot express how sick and goddamn tired I get of it. You dont' look particularly sick, but Christ, let me tell you, it's real. It hurts. Your body isn't getting enough oxygen. You can't do anything; you can't think, you can't walk up a flight of stairs, you can't talk and yeah, shit.
Imagine you have just blown up some party balloons. That tight, raw feeling you get in your windpipe? That's what asthma feels like. Now imagine the same, but add a bucket full of jello.
Imagine trying to breathe through all that.
Imagine that happening for no particular reason.
Imagine that happening in the middle of the night.
That's how I spent last night. At least until about 4:am when I finally took a Benadryl. It didnt' stop the asthma but it did make me sleep.
You put up with a lot of shit with asthma...not only the disease itself, but the nutjobs and fuckwits with their moron remedies and advice. I've heard it all and tried it all..herbal teas, drier climates, diet, you name it. Particular thanks go out to one U.S. Health department quack bastard motherfucker who told my parents that asthma was 'only psychological' and thus doomed me to ten years of being called a liar and having medical treatment withheld because supposedly I wasn't really sick, I was just faking it.
The upshot?
the kicker?
The punchline?

All our medical care was free. All of it.

My father was career military. Full coverage. Hospital, medication, everything.
Free.
They spent thousands of dollars out of pocket having my teeth straightened, though.

update: i've returned to this several times since i've started blogging. eventually i'm going to have to do an in-depth thing on this whole withholding of medical care issue. i promise it will not be pretty. but maybe i'll be able to lay the motherfucking issue to rest once and for all.

mexican death sushi

The definition of the burrito

A Burrito is pretty much anything edible, folded up in a tortilla. Unless you flap the tortilla in half; that's called a taco. If you roll it into a tube shape, it's called a burrito. Or sometimes a soft taco. Unless you tuck in the ends AND heat it up in a frypan, thus returning it to 'burrito' status. If you stick fried brains into it, it's called a delicacy. If you deep fry it, it's called a chimichanga, which means 'female monkey'.

The abominations known as the 'wrap' sandwich and the burrito canape, and the instant constipation cure known as the breakfast burrito (which is McCheese, McEggproduct in a drum and McCrap strained out of the deep fryer rolled up in a McFlour McFrisbee) are not real burritoes. They are ersatz burritoes. Trust me.

My particular downfall is the bean and cheese burrito. I developed a fatal addiction to these in my latter vegetarian days, when I was single and working two maid jobs. You can live cheaply, thrive, work like a dog and never suffer a midday letdown on two generous-sized bean and cheese burritoes a day. I am living proof of that. You can also blow up like a goddamn hot air balloon if you continue to eat that way in addition to a diet that includes meat. I am fat diabetic proof of that.

You need:
1 flour tortilla
refried beans
cheddar cheese

necessary condiment: hot sauce

unnecessary condiments: salsa, guacamole, sour cream or abondigas soup
......or all of the above.

You dump the beans and cheese in the middle of the tortilla, roll it up into a little package,tuck the ends in, fry it up in a pan on all sides until the cheese starts to melt and the package is sealed shut, then consume in flurry of saliva and partially masticated protein, dipping the sodden, gnawed end intermittently into the condiment (s) of choice.

Food of the GODS, y'all.

Now, it sounds innocent enough, a burrito....until you deconstruct it.
You have:
1 flour tortilla = flour, water, lard. Cooked in lard. Reheated in lard.

Refried beans = water, pinto beans (and any combination of pintos and reds, kidneys, black, turtle, flor de mayo, soy, great northern, soldier, jacobs cattle....... my favorite being pintos, soy, black and flor de mayo)....raw onions, epezote, salt and lard

Cheddar cheese = whole cow milk, rennet, carrotene, salt, cheddar germs or whatever plague makes cheese 'cheddar'

...You may as well carve a hole in your chest and stuff one of these right through your aorta because it's basically a handheld infarction.

Then the condiments:
Sour cream = whole milk and plague bacteria
Guacamole =mashed avocados, lemon, salt (mayo, sour cream, crema mexicana, whole yogurt, chopped tomatoes, onion, garlic, lime, salt, pepper, chile)
Hot sauce = hot chiles, vinegar, salt (lime, lemon, cilantro, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, lard, salt, beer, sugar, vodka, whiskey, corn syrup, red food coloring, tequila.....)
Salsa = tomatoes, onion, chiles, tomatillas, salt, pepper, cilantro, lime, (corn, beans, chicken stock, pumpkin seeds, pignola seeds)

Abondigas soup = minted beef meatballs, beef stock, carrots, celery, onion, epazote, colantro, dried chile, tomato
Obviously this is a dish in itself instead of a condiment, but I love it so much with burritoes that I dunk. And not just any burrito, either....a butterito. Which is exactly what it sounds like; a warm flour tortilla slathered in whipped butter and dunked into the soup.

I hope this clears up any confusion.

TOMORROW: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BURRITO AS GOD INTENDED IT AND A CRAPPY BURRITO THAT SUCKS AND IS STUPID AND MADE OUT OF BIRD POOP AND ROCKS WITH A HAIR STUCK TO IT, AND A PINECONE. AND SOME LINT.