Fat Sparrow: Fire in the hole: A true story
Go read this now. This cracked me up so bad it was PITIFUL!
Kind of ties in nicely, what with my recent tales of oven- toasted horror, and the immanent arrival of the latest boyfriend for dinner. We are serving roast beef, dinner rolls, sauce, mashed, and salad. The guy hasn't seen a piece of beef since he met my daughter so I figured I'd do it up 'flyover state' stylee.
This (poor bastard) young man comes from a family of judges and attorneys, heavily Democrat by the sound of it. While I applaud the Stainless Steel Amazons' choice, I cannot help but wonder what kind of bizarre political notions she's going to whip up for herself, just to be difficult. This is why I worry for the future of this relationship because she does this, oh my God, she does it and nobody knows why, least of all her.
Eighty times out of a hundred she is the soul of reason. Then there's that last twenty percent when she's just batshit off her rocker. And I don't mean anything as simple as 'I say black, she says white, 'contrariness either, no no no. It's a case of 'I say black, she accuses me of being racist. Or argues that there is no such thing as black because black is the absence of light and nobody can see without light so black doesn't exist and even to say the word black means you are hatefully ignorant and not worthy of breathing the same air.' Or she'll go completely off the deep end, give you the stinkeye and snarl 'what's wrong with my shoes?' So in a couple of weeks I expect to hear she's become a Workers' Party revised orthodox whig or something; a position she will argue to the death until the hormones wear off.
Poor fucker has his work cut out for him.
Anyway, here I sit, braless and blogging instead of rushing around like Mary Tyler Moore on amphetamines like I usually do the day we officially 'meet the boyfriend'. There's a bag of boughten (it is too a word) rolls on the counter. I might skin the potatoes before I mash them. I am a rebel, dammit!
I've reached the point that I just don't give a rusty rats' ass whether the guys she drags in think we're weird or not. What good has it done me in the past? None whatsoever. I've fed these dinks, I've been June Cleaver nice, I haven't worn the 'fuck off and die' t-shirt, I've boiled the entire house and so far it's turned out to be wasted sweat. So fine. He comes over, the titty mags are staying in the bathroom and devil take the fuckin hindmost if he can't hang with it. Judges son? Meet the hippie-ass biker mofos who raised your girlfriend. We listen to Vivaldi and we say FUCK* whenever we want because that's just how we roll.
And that smell is EXACTLY what you think it is.
*Actually the Yummy Biker was roaming around the house yesterday chirping 'Nipples!' randomly because it was cracking me up. I dared him to go out on the back porch and do it and he did, and there were kids riding bikes past on the sidewalk, and it was ugly. Behold the dire badness of our ruthless G !
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
it's 9:p.m...do you know where your deceased are?
You want Halloween? I gotcher Hallowfreakinween right here. Is this something out of Robert Bloch or what?
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/061018_ap_body_parts.html
No, you have to read it. You're human; you will die. Go read the damn article.
This is not only callous, it's not merely fraud, it's just not clean. These are people who know better than most why it is not a good idea to carve up the deceased like deli salami and pass them around. But they did! To anyone! They didn't care! They even went ahead and parted out Aleister Cooke!!! For the love of God, people, Aleister Cooke! You don't part out Aleister Cooke! No no no!
Furthermore, poor Aleister died raddled with cancer, so someone with a compatible blood type got an unexpected bonus gift along with their cadaver meniscus or skin graft.
This was just waiting to happen. In fact I'm not at all surprised to see it.
Leslie P**** ran the funeral parlour in the town I grew up in and he had an established reputation for stealing things off the dead. To this day, I think of that pallid, hand-wringing waste of skin eyeing my grandmothers' ring and wondering whether it was worth the trouble of taking and my blood just boils.
He hired one of my cousins as a mortuary beautician and fired her when she walked in on the night janitor enjoying the charms of a female drowning victim. ( Your 'moistened bint' joke here.)
My high school asked him to donate the use of a coffin to our high school haunted house.
We got a cardboard box. A goddamn cardboard box with a cardboard lid; an actual, brown, unadorned cardboard box like appliances come in. (And I know all about this particular one because I spent Halloween night in it dressed as Dracula, which was most excellently cool, especially as I was stoned off my tits and my eyes glowed green under the black lights hanging overhead and my face and shirt were smeared with fake blood as though I'd hit an artery the last time I had lunch.)
When the haunted house was over the cheap, cheap, cheap prick asked for it back.
Someone went to their reward in a USED CARDBOARD COFFIN.
A girl I was friends with was engaged to a mortician in California. Guess what he did as a sideline? For a certain consideration, he would 'lose' those pesky dead drug dealers you had stacking up around the place. Permanently. Right up the flue.
My daughters' first grade teacher was married to a mortican with one of the only crematoria in the county. It was in a residential neiborhood, on a busy intersection. We used to drive past it every morning. Some mornings, thick, black, greasy smoke was oozing out of the stacks and across the road and lawn, raining ash onto the cars passing by.
I started taking a different route.
A retort operating at legal temperature emits nothing but superheated air. Only one in which the temperature is illegally low will put out smoke....and only one operating at household oven temperatures will put out BLACK smoke. Black smoke is cold smoke. And cold smoke contains PATHOGENS.
The only thing that will act to lower the preset temperature and hold it there in a crematory retort is cold mass in excess of manufacture standards.
The disgusting bastard was doing multiple body burns. Utterly in defiance of the health code, not to mention decency. And doing them in a residential neiborhood, two blocks down from an elementary school. I called the health department. Mr. Le V*** was 'retired' from the operation shortly thereafter.
A mortuary retort fires at kiln temperatures. To comply with public health standards, Mr. Cadaver's water and fat-based elements must completely volatilize and the mineral content reduced to clinker; a shrunken heap of black-grey crud similar in appearance to what you find on the bottom of your oven at home after you run the 'self-clean' operation. (The morbidly obese cadaver has been taken into consideration here when they design the things. The chamber is pretty big.) Consequently, an optimum crematory burn consumes an enormous amount of energy. And that's the problem.
If they still perform them, most cremations undertaken by a small, family type operation are probably in violation of the public health code. Unless the funeral parlor is charging rates even more obscene that the norm, the place couldn't break even otherwise. That's one reason why the funeral industry in America is moving from privately run operations into one made up of corporate franchises.
If the place has no viewing chamber, if you do not see dear departed Aunt Gazania actually enter the oven alone, you can begin placing odds that Gazania may have had some very diverse companions on her last trip. She may have gone in with a load of amputated parts from the local hospital. The teeth the dentist pulls. Bales of marijuana. Heroin seized by the cops. Even animals from the local veterinary. That old 'urban legend' about the guy finding a six inch fang in the cremains of his uncle has a basis in truth.
The old switcheroonie is another time-honored method of making sure the morticians kids go to college. Family A buys Grandpa a top of the line funeral...viewing coffin, sealed enrobement, and concrete vault. While you're all piling in to the limo to ride to the boneyard they dump grandpa out of the nice coffin, stuff him into a cheap one, seal him up and ship him out. All you see going into the hole is the concrete vault.
"But I stood there and watch the guy seal the enrobement! He used a morticians key and everything! We heard the vaccuum! "
The sealing mechanism is REVERSABLE. It's the law. It has to be. It's a simple screw-driven latch. A morticians' key is not magic. It's a socket driver.
There is no such thing as a Funeral Home Enforcement Squad. Most municipalities would prefer to spend their resources on the living, which is perfectly understandable. But it leads to an enforcement gap wherein a complaint must be pursued before any action takes place. People who are grieving a personal loss are not likely to be in that kind of a headspace, and people who are struggling to pay bills already are not going to have the kind of money it takes to prove a case of fraud against a crooked funeral home. Furthermore, most people are willfully ignorant about mortuary practices in general, fraudulent practices in particular, and utterly in denial that anything of the sort occurs anyway.
Given this state of affairs only the most egregious offenses are the ones that tend to come to light.
Like Ray March, a funeral director in Kentucky who inherited the business from his father and carried on the fine tradition of dumping bodies in the woods behind his house. 322 have been found so far.
Or the funeral director in California who operated an urban crematory in such vile, blatant disregard of public health that his night attendants used to bet on how many bodies they could cram into a single oven...and burnt the place down when the rendered fat pouring out of the retort chamber caught fire. They were using broomhandles...salmon gaffs...rakes...yeah. The same man, David Sconce, openly referred to intake procedure as " harvesting AU" (that's the periodic table of elements sign for 'gold', y'all) . Never without his pliers, he had an amusing habit of playfully snapping them like castenets at employees. Sconce was keeping a fence in business almost singlehandedly by sending him 'harvested' gold bridgework and teeth and letting him keep a portion of the smelting.
The moral of this story is: Unless your faith prohibits it, get an organ donor card. If you don't have one, become an organ donor. At LEAST do some good.
Another option is to be an observant Jew and be buried in accordance with halacha. It's clean, reverent and very sane.
OR GO ALL THE WAY. State explicitly in your will that your body is to be donated for research and donorship. Specify an institute. Inform your family.
This is what I have done. I will end up in a nice clean medical facility somewhere and be portioned up, shipped off, used for practical jokes and finally reduced to hamburger by enthusiastic medical students under the auspices of a single, well-regulated agency. There is no way in hell that I'm letting the funeral trade get ahold of me.
News story about David Sconce, California:
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_4242337
Books: 'Chop Shop' also 'Family Business' (out of print)
News story about Ray March, Noble, Georgia funeral home scandal Feb. 2002:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1825248.stm
http://crime.about.com/od/news/a/marsh041116.htm
By the way, the Crime.about.com site above there is an excellent place to gorge on tales of violence and depravity. Visit today!
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/061018_ap_body_parts.html
No, you have to read it. You're human; you will die. Go read the damn article.
This is not only callous, it's not merely fraud, it's just not clean. These are people who know better than most why it is not a good idea to carve up the deceased like deli salami and pass them around. But they did! To anyone! They didn't care! They even went ahead and parted out Aleister Cooke!!! For the love of God, people, Aleister Cooke! You don't part out Aleister Cooke! No no no!
Furthermore, poor Aleister died raddled with cancer, so someone with a compatible blood type got an unexpected bonus gift along with their cadaver meniscus or skin graft.
This was just waiting to happen. In fact I'm not at all surprised to see it.
Leslie P**** ran the funeral parlour in the town I grew up in and he had an established reputation for stealing things off the dead. To this day, I think of that pallid, hand-wringing waste of skin eyeing my grandmothers' ring and wondering whether it was worth the trouble of taking and my blood just boils.
He hired one of my cousins as a mortuary beautician and fired her when she walked in on the night janitor enjoying the charms of a female drowning victim. ( Your 'moistened bint' joke here.)
My high school asked him to donate the use of a coffin to our high school haunted house.
We got a cardboard box. A goddamn cardboard box with a cardboard lid; an actual, brown, unadorned cardboard box like appliances come in. (And I know all about this particular one because I spent Halloween night in it dressed as Dracula, which was most excellently cool, especially as I was stoned off my tits and my eyes glowed green under the black lights hanging overhead and my face and shirt were smeared with fake blood as though I'd hit an artery the last time I had lunch.)
When the haunted house was over the cheap, cheap, cheap prick asked for it back.
Someone went to their reward in a USED CARDBOARD COFFIN.
A girl I was friends with was engaged to a mortician in California. Guess what he did as a sideline? For a certain consideration, he would 'lose' those pesky dead drug dealers you had stacking up around the place. Permanently. Right up the flue.
My daughters' first grade teacher was married to a mortican with one of the only crematoria in the county. It was in a residential neiborhood, on a busy intersection. We used to drive past it every morning. Some mornings, thick, black, greasy smoke was oozing out of the stacks and across the road and lawn, raining ash onto the cars passing by.
I started taking a different route.
A retort operating at legal temperature emits nothing but superheated air. Only one in which the temperature is illegally low will put out smoke....and only one operating at household oven temperatures will put out BLACK smoke. Black smoke is cold smoke. And cold smoke contains PATHOGENS.
The only thing that will act to lower the preset temperature and hold it there in a crematory retort is cold mass in excess of manufacture standards.
The disgusting bastard was doing multiple body burns. Utterly in defiance of the health code, not to mention decency. And doing them in a residential neiborhood, two blocks down from an elementary school. I called the health department. Mr. Le V*** was 'retired' from the operation shortly thereafter.
A mortuary retort fires at kiln temperatures. To comply with public health standards, Mr. Cadaver's water and fat-based elements must completely volatilize and the mineral content reduced to clinker; a shrunken heap of black-grey crud similar in appearance to what you find on the bottom of your oven at home after you run the 'self-clean' operation. (The morbidly obese cadaver has been taken into consideration here when they design the things. The chamber is pretty big.) Consequently, an optimum crematory burn consumes an enormous amount of energy. And that's the problem.
If they still perform them, most cremations undertaken by a small, family type operation are probably in violation of the public health code. Unless the funeral parlor is charging rates even more obscene that the norm, the place couldn't break even otherwise. That's one reason why the funeral industry in America is moving from privately run operations into one made up of corporate franchises.
If the place has no viewing chamber, if you do not see dear departed Aunt Gazania actually enter the oven alone, you can begin placing odds that Gazania may have had some very diverse companions on her last trip. She may have gone in with a load of amputated parts from the local hospital. The teeth the dentist pulls. Bales of marijuana. Heroin seized by the cops. Even animals from the local veterinary. That old 'urban legend' about the guy finding a six inch fang in the cremains of his uncle has a basis in truth.
The old switcheroonie is another time-honored method of making sure the morticians kids go to college. Family A buys Grandpa a top of the line funeral...viewing coffin, sealed enrobement, and concrete vault. While you're all piling in to the limo to ride to the boneyard they dump grandpa out of the nice coffin, stuff him into a cheap one, seal him up and ship him out. All you see going into the hole is the concrete vault.
"But I stood there and watch the guy seal the enrobement! He used a morticians key and everything! We heard the vaccuum! "
The sealing mechanism is REVERSABLE. It's the law. It has to be. It's a simple screw-driven latch. A morticians' key is not magic. It's a socket driver.
There is no such thing as a Funeral Home Enforcement Squad. Most municipalities would prefer to spend their resources on the living, which is perfectly understandable. But it leads to an enforcement gap wherein a complaint must be pursued before any action takes place. People who are grieving a personal loss are not likely to be in that kind of a headspace, and people who are struggling to pay bills already are not going to have the kind of money it takes to prove a case of fraud against a crooked funeral home. Furthermore, most people are willfully ignorant about mortuary practices in general, fraudulent practices in particular, and utterly in denial that anything of the sort occurs anyway.
Given this state of affairs only the most egregious offenses are the ones that tend to come to light.
Like Ray March, a funeral director in Kentucky who inherited the business from his father and carried on the fine tradition of dumping bodies in the woods behind his house. 322 have been found so far.
Or the funeral director in California who operated an urban crematory in such vile, blatant disregard of public health that his night attendants used to bet on how many bodies they could cram into a single oven...and burnt the place down when the rendered fat pouring out of the retort chamber caught fire. They were using broomhandles...salmon gaffs...rakes...yeah. The same man, David Sconce, openly referred to intake procedure as " harvesting AU" (that's the periodic table of elements sign for 'gold', y'all) . Never without his pliers, he had an amusing habit of playfully snapping them like castenets at employees. Sconce was keeping a fence in business almost singlehandedly by sending him 'harvested' gold bridgework and teeth and letting him keep a portion of the smelting.
The moral of this story is: Unless your faith prohibits it, get an organ donor card. If you don't have one, become an organ donor. At LEAST do some good.
Another option is to be an observant Jew and be buried in accordance with halacha. It's clean, reverent and very sane.
OR GO ALL THE WAY. State explicitly in your will that your body is to be donated for research and donorship. Specify an institute. Inform your family.
This is what I have done. I will end up in a nice clean medical facility somewhere and be portioned up, shipped off, used for practical jokes and finally reduced to hamburger by enthusiastic medical students under the auspices of a single, well-regulated agency. There is no way in hell that I'm letting the funeral trade get ahold of me.
News story about David Sconce, California:
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_4242337
Books: 'Chop Shop' also 'Family Business' (out of print)
News story about Ray March, Noble, Georgia funeral home scandal Feb. 2002:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1825248.stm
http://crime.about.com/od/news/a/marsh041116.htm
By the way, the Crime.about.com site above there is an excellent place to gorge on tales of violence and depravity. Visit today!
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
i seen 'em
It's been a week full of semisignificant synchronous signs and symbolic postrational parallels here at Rancho FirstNations. Inevitably we find Billy woven throughout the cosmic mesh of it all.
Here's how it all lays out: (I swear to you I did not do that intentionally)
1a. Billy is hitting that stuff like the fist of an angry god. Yay!
1. Larvae come from eggs.
2. Larvae are freaky.
3. Cute little baby chickens come from eggs.
4. So do baby GEESE.
5. Some people like geese A LOT.
6. If you make a burrito with scrambled eggs it is still called a burrito
7. The face of Jesus has appeared on both EGGS and BURRITOS.
Chickens (like ducks* and other birds and some reptiles and one mammal, unless I am wrong about the platypus and she just poots her eggs out all over the woods without regard for their aesthetic appeal) shape the egg in their cloaca, an oval sort of waiting room that exits under their tail. The finished egg bloops down into the cloaca while the chicken is going about it's daily chicken business, and
when the shell hardens a bit, the mommy chicken runs back to her nest and squits it out.
Not all cloacas are created equal, and thus, not all eggs are created egg shaped*. We raised chickens when I was very small, and we saw all kinds of bizarre eggs... round, empty, solid, teardrop, dumbbell, conjoined, peanut, and oddly textured. Any particularly unusual example would get put aside and hauled out of the 'fridge to show company. Then consumed. No big deal.
I remember hearing older people talking about having seen chicken eggs with the face
of Jesus on them*...Apparently these showed up mainly in the South, during the Depression Era. Nobody made too big a deal out of it because everyone knew chickens had artistic butts. I wonder where all those Southern Miracle eggs are now? Hopefully 
emptied and preserved. You never see oddball eggs any more. Nowadays the bumpy eggs are the ones that get put aside for dehydration or preshelling. They aren't pretty enough to make it into a store dozen.
Aha; see, but Jesus was prepared for this; and apparently He had a backup plan already in place . One that involved the humble tortilla.
(Digression follows: skepticism raises it's ugly head)
The questions that always burned in my mind were
1. How did chickens know what Jesus looked like?
2. How did the person who discovered the egg know what Jesus looked like? Did they throw the ones that looked like Sandy Duncan in the trash? What about Andy Griffith?
Well here's how. How the farmer, I mean, knew what Jesus looked like. (The rest is a mystery, like the Antikothera device and how to make the alarm on my new wristwatch shut up.)
Here's how it all lays out: (I swear to you I did not do that intentionally)
1a. Billy is hitting that stuff like the fist of an angry god. Yay!1. Larvae come from eggs.
2. Larvae are freaky.
3. Cute little baby chickens come from eggs.
4. So do baby GEESE.
5. Some people like geese A LOT.
6. If you make a burrito with scrambled eggs it is still called a burrito
7. The face of Jesus has appeared on both EGGS and BURRITOS.
Chickens (like ducks* and other birds and some reptiles and one mammal, unless I am wrong about the platypus and she just poots her eggs out all over the woods without regard for their aesthetic appeal) shape the egg in their cloaca, an oval sort of waiting room that exits under their tail. The finished egg bloops down into the cloaca while the chicken is going about it's daily chicken business, and
when the shell hardens a bit, the mommy chicken runs back to her nest and squits it out.Not all cloacas are created equal, and thus, not all eggs are created egg shaped*. We raised chickens when I was very small, and we saw all kinds of bizarre eggs... round, empty, solid, teardrop, dumbbell, conjoined, peanut, and oddly textured. Any particularly unusual example would get put aside and hauled out of the 'fridge to show company. Then consumed. No big deal.
I remember hearing older people talking about having seen chicken eggs with the face
of Jesus on them*...Apparently these showed up mainly in the South, during the Depression Era. Nobody made too big a deal out of it because everyone knew chickens had artistic butts. I wonder where all those Southern Miracle eggs are now? Hopefully 
emptied and preserved. You never see oddball eggs any more. Nowadays the bumpy eggs are the ones that get put aside for dehydration or preshelling. They aren't pretty enough to make it into a store dozen.Aha; see, but Jesus was prepared for this; and apparently He had a backup plan already in place . One that involved the humble tortilla.
(Digression follows: skepticism raises it's ugly head)
The questions that always burned in my mind were
1. How did chickens know what Jesus looked like?
2. How did the person who discovered the egg know what Jesus looked like? Did they throw the ones that looked like Sandy Duncan in the trash? What about Andy Griffith?
Well here's how. How the farmer, I mean, knew what Jesus looked like. (The rest is a mystery, like the Antikothera device and how to make the alarm on my new wristwatch shut up.)
Everyone in America owns a copy of this picture. Everyone in America has seen this picture except Stevie Wonder. My parents had a huge copy of it hanging in their bedroom, in fact. Which is teh sexy.
(Digression: I was too young to hallucinate something this tacky)
Now I remember a picture of Jesus from my youth which showed him with long blonde hair. The damn thing was everywhere; and the lower down the redneck religion scale you visited, the more likely it was to be sitting on top of the T.V. It was a really creepy version of this one...
but full face, with large, almost Carolyn Keene-style eyeballs 
that regarded you with an altogether-too-knowing expression.
For Catholics in our class, 'Blonde Jesus' was considered far too tasteless to display in the home.
Remember, these were people who thought nothing of putting this
up all over the house. Catholics in my youth were big into bleeding, flaming internal organs and thought nothing of using them as decorating accents. But a blonde Jesus? Come on.
So anyway, you have nothing to worry about because I cannot find the Blonde Jesus image anywhere on the net. It's nowhere. This really really bugs me. I cry 'revisionism!'
I remember it played a significant role in the set decor of 'Raisin in the Sun'.
I remember my best friends' grandmother had a huge one on her wall that lit up.
Steven King mentions one in the book 'Tommyknockers'. As would not surprise anyone who had to grow up with one of the things in the house, it talks this lady into shooting her husband.
( LENGTHY 'I AM NOT NUTS' DIGRESSION) Years ago this section of the Tommyknockers was published as a separate short story in Cavalier magazine...a publication known for 
its unique layout i.e. picture of a broad on a couch with her innards on display, story, picture of Seka, story, picture of a naked chick with one knee behind her head, story'. It got passed around a motel I worked at in Portland, back when Steven King was barely a blip on the screen. Damn good story, too, I must say. Pictures not so much. And years later King admitted to it. I felt vindicated for all the times I'd told people about seeing Kings' writing published in a porn magazine and everyone told me I was dreaming. HA!.)
Now the image above is only one of a number of popular depictions of Christ wallpapering the Americas. For example, here's what people are seeing on tortillas and burritos:
Kind of a combination of
and
isn't it? Variations on a theme.
Here's Jesus the way the early Christians saw him
Here's a Mediterranean person of the day
Here's a Semitic man from modern times
Here's Eleanor Roosevelt and a hot dog
There's Catholics and quasi-Catholics all over the world and whatever else they may or may not hold in common, they all believe in miracles and apparitions. Yet you see no Jesus faces appearing on the hum bao of the devout.
Nestorians do not see Him on their toaster pastries or Fig Newtons or whatever Nestorians eat. The Orthodox aren't running through the streets brandishing Jesus on rye.
In other words, nobody else in the world is seeing Jesoids on their ethnic bread products. Just the Catholic indigenous people of the Americas.
To me, it all points to one inescapable fact.
Jesus wants me to eat more burritos.
*Hey, nerds? Remember this one?
**Drop a hit of acid and visit here to view the ROTATING DUGONG RESEMBLING EGG OF DIRE PORTENT.
*** Go here
Now don't take this explanation at face value,comrades. Ask yourself these questions:
A. Might the discussion of sex with geese at Billy's place the other day have had other, more sinister layers (not intentional I swear) beneath what at first glance seemed a mere exercise in speculative sexuality? One involving ALIENS?
b. Goose down is known for it's warmth. Might primitive man, shuddering in the chill of the last Ice Age, stuffed a live goose onto the head of his infant and forgot and left it there long enough to make the baby's head egg shaped? Because I could never keep a hat on my kid. What is it with kids and hats? Should I have tried a goose instead?
c. Is this what happens when you don't cut the head off Billy's goose, and it escapes and limps away and blends in with all the other geese, and then nine months later you're out in the goose house and you findOH DEAR GOD NO!!! RUN!!!RUN AWAY!!
For those of you who think I need to increase my medication:http://skepdic.com/pareidol.html
signs and omens part 1
The first news story that popped on to the screen when I turned on the television this morning was about a young mother in Sacramento CA who found the holy visage of Jesus staring back at her from the surface of the burrito she'd just cooked.*
I maintain that it is no mere coincidence that Jesus would choose Mexican food as his Sacred Venue. So far this makes two Holy Burritoes found this year, and if we count the wrapping separately, five Sacred Tortillas. That I know of. Who knows how many others have gone unheralded, eaten in the hunger of the moment, blessing the intestines of the faithful and the apostate alike????
In humble acknowledgement of this miraculous event I am going to grab my nickles and my Metformin and head down to El Nopal for lunch. This is clearly the Chosen Food. And who knows, perhaps even my Lourdes. I will leave my lancet and test strips outside the door of the lounge and go forth rejoicing.
Other than missing my favorite resteraunt (where I was putting their kids through college), I'm finding diabetes more a minor irritation than anything else, and that's only when it happens to cross my mind. I've lost weight, changed my eating habits and made better food choices, and it's been no great strain. I think having been a vegetarian hippie child helped because I already know how to 'do' healthy. Now it's just a question of finding a happy medium between 'reasonably tasty and low in dietary sugars' and healthy.
So what am I reading for nonfiction lately? A book on how to recreate the great mother sauces of French haute cuisine in the home kitchen. Yes, I saw the title ('The Sauciers' Apprentice'...oh, ha! so laugh the face of me!) on a shelf at a garage sale and dove on that action like a fullback. Outta my way bitches.
The first thing the author wants you to do is order 30 gallon stockpot with a tap from Williams Sonoma.
The next, cultivate a smoochy relationship with your local butcher. Now sadly enough, or fortuituously enough; however you want to view it, I already am on amiable terms with the man. Hint**: most men, you tell them they have beautiful meat? They'll view you in all future dealings with a friendlier eye. Yes I honestly said that to the guy. In the spirit of the moment, now, come on. I realized how it sounded about halfway home.
So. Anyway. Next? Invest in ungodly amounts of animal flesh. Beefy Deathberg? Check.
Finally, devote an entire weekend to simmering and skimming. Not a problem. Thats already part of my routine. Seriously, I take a weekend out every month or so and put up all my stocks, my salsas, etc soups and what have you to freeze.
I have most of the requirements already in place; but I must tell you that I will be rat fucked before I play around around with no huge ass stockpot. Never mind the expense; I'd have to stand on a stepstool to stir the thing. There's just no way I want something like that in my kitchen full of hot liquid, too heavy to lift.
You can tell I'm thinking about this, though, can't you. Yeah. 'Well, I could do it in the summer, outside, on a gas ring. Oo, better yet, I could pick up one of those big gas-fired beach boilers at a yard sale! I'm always running into those! And set up on the deck! And run a stock line from the kitchen out through the utility room...yeah...the washer and dryer are work height....I have good knives...'
Making a brown stock is only part un. Part deux involves all the extra flapulation of reducing it down to a demiglace, which is what I'd be doing ideally.
But hey! We'll be bathing in Bourguignonne for the rest of the year! And that doesn't sound like such a bad thing at all.
Update:
OH MY GOD ITS LIKE AN OMEN.
Just as I was getting up to go down to El Nopal? At that very instant? My Yummy Biker came home. Do you know what he had?
Never mind what he had.
Fine, he had a burrito por moi.
An UNSOLICITED BURRITO.
I must meditate, and pray.
*Q13 Fox News Seattle, Bill Wixie reporting, Tuesday October 17.
** I'm assuming the butcher is male here. It seems to be a standard. Proceed with caution. Straight ladies and men with fully functioning gaydar only. Otherwise, guys, I hope I don't have to tell you that if you go up to an American straight man who can bust down a hanging beef in under three minutes? Using only a knife and a steel? And drop the 'beautiful meat' line on him? Probably no.
I maintain that it is no mere coincidence that Jesus would choose Mexican food as his Sacred Venue. So far this makes two Holy Burritoes found this year, and if we count the wrapping separately, five Sacred Tortillas. That I know of. Who knows how many others have gone unheralded, eaten in the hunger of the moment, blessing the intestines of the faithful and the apostate alike????
In humble acknowledgement of this miraculous event I am going to grab my nickles and my Metformin and head down to El Nopal for lunch. This is clearly the Chosen Food. And who knows, perhaps even my Lourdes. I will leave my lancet and test strips outside the door of the lounge and go forth rejoicing.
Other than missing my favorite resteraunt (where I was putting their kids through college), I'm finding diabetes more a minor irritation than anything else, and that's only when it happens to cross my mind. I've lost weight, changed my eating habits and made better food choices, and it's been no great strain. I think having been a vegetarian hippie child helped because I already know how to 'do' healthy. Now it's just a question of finding a happy medium between 'reasonably tasty and low in dietary sugars' and healthy.
So what am I reading for nonfiction lately? A book on how to recreate the great mother sauces of French haute cuisine in the home kitchen. Yes, I saw the title ('The Sauciers' Apprentice'...oh, ha! so laugh the face of me!) on a shelf at a garage sale and dove on that action like a fullback. Outta my way bitches.
The first thing the author wants you to do is order 30 gallon stockpot with a tap from Williams Sonoma.
The next, cultivate a smoochy relationship with your local butcher. Now sadly enough, or fortuituously enough; however you want to view it, I already am on amiable terms with the man. Hint**: most men, you tell them they have beautiful meat? They'll view you in all future dealings with a friendlier eye. Yes I honestly said that to the guy. In the spirit of the moment, now, come on. I realized how it sounded about halfway home.
So. Anyway. Next? Invest in ungodly amounts of animal flesh. Beefy Deathberg? Check.
Finally, devote an entire weekend to simmering and skimming. Not a problem. Thats already part of my routine. Seriously, I take a weekend out every month or so and put up all my stocks, my salsas, etc soups and what have you to freeze.
I have most of the requirements already in place; but I must tell you that I will be rat fucked before I play around around with no huge ass stockpot. Never mind the expense; I'd have to stand on a stepstool to stir the thing. There's just no way I want something like that in my kitchen full of hot liquid, too heavy to lift.
You can tell I'm thinking about this, though, can't you. Yeah. 'Well, I could do it in the summer, outside, on a gas ring. Oo, better yet, I could pick up one of those big gas-fired beach boilers at a yard sale! I'm always running into those! And set up on the deck! And run a stock line from the kitchen out through the utility room...yeah...the washer and dryer are work height....I have good knives...'
Making a brown stock is only part un. Part deux involves all the extra flapulation of reducing it down to a demiglace, which is what I'd be doing ideally.
But hey! We'll be bathing in Bourguignonne for the rest of the year! And that doesn't sound like such a bad thing at all.
Update:
OH MY GOD ITS LIKE AN OMEN.
Just as I was getting up to go down to El Nopal? At that very instant? My Yummy Biker came home. Do you know what he had?
Never mind what he had.
Fine, he had a burrito por moi.
An UNSOLICITED BURRITO.
I must meditate, and pray.
*Q13 Fox News Seattle, Bill Wixie reporting, Tuesday October 17.
** I'm assuming the butcher is male here. It seems to be a standard. Proceed with caution. Straight ladies and men with fully functioning gaydar only. Otherwise, guys, I hope I don't have to tell you that if you go up to an American straight man who can bust down a hanging beef in under three minutes? Using only a knife and a steel? And drop the 'beautiful meat' line on him? Probably no.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
second cousin leota
You have BEAST to thank for this one. Go bitch at him.
________________
I have no idea if Bill T was really related to us. What I remember is that he was supposed to have been my grandmothers' second cousin, so that's how we referred to him and his wife.
He was a nice old guy. He used to come over to our house quite a bit, his wife in tow, and play cribbage with my mom and her friends until the wee hours. Every hour or so he'd slip off outside to the trunk of his car where he had a bottle of Canadian Mist stashed and sip on that while he stood in the driveway and admired the stars.
His wife's name was Leota.
She was 5000 years old, had eight hairs left, weighed maybe 80 pounds and stood four feet tall.
Smoked constantly. Sometimes she'd have a cigarette going in each hand and one in the ashtray. We would find more of them smoldering away all over the house, long black foul things melting a line in the countertop or the arm of a chair, lying on the wool carpet in the middle of a glowing patch of nap.
Little Leota wasn't much for conversation. The complete lack of teeth was a barrier, as was the advanced senile dementia. Being perpetually pickled in vodka didn't help.
You have to stop and consider that for a moment. I can guarantee you she wasn't driving down to the liquor store even before the Altzheimers' set in because she couldn't drive and wouldn't have been able to see through the windsheild anyway. Where was she getting the stuff?
Every morning, Bill would get her up, run her through the tub, get her dressed,
shovel some Malt-O-Meal down her (very occasionally Maypo...she refused to eat anything else) and then set her in a chair out on the porch with her fifth of vodka and let her wave at the cars going by.
Yes I know that lacks class. But I was 13 years old. I had no class.
Not like I do now.
________________
I have no idea if Bill T was really related to us. What I remember is that he was supposed to have been my grandmothers' second cousin, so that's how we referred to him and his wife.
He was a nice old guy. He used to come over to our house quite a bit, his wife in tow, and play cribbage with my mom and her friends until the wee hours. Every hour or so he'd slip off outside to the trunk of his car where he had a bottle of Canadian Mist stashed and sip on that while he stood in the driveway and admired the stars.
His wife's name was Leota.
She was 5000 years old, had eight hairs left, weighed maybe 80 pounds and stood four feet tall.
Smoked constantly. Sometimes she'd have a cigarette going in each hand and one in the ashtray. We would find more of them smoldering away all over the house, long black foul things melting a line in the countertop or the arm of a chair, lying on the wool carpet in the middle of a glowing patch of nap.
Little Leota wasn't much for conversation. The complete lack of teeth was a barrier, as was the advanced senile dementia. Being perpetually pickled in vodka didn't help.
You have to stop and consider that for a moment. I can guarantee you she wasn't driving down to the liquor store even before the Altzheimers' set in because she couldn't drive and wouldn't have been able to see through the windsheild anyway. Where was she getting the stuff?
Every morning, Bill would get her up, run her through the tub, get her dressed,
shovel some Malt-O-Meal down her (very occasionally Maypo...she refused to eat anything else) and then set her in a chair out on the porch with her fifth of vodka and let her wave at the cars going by.
This was how a lot of poor, older people coped with a loved one's dementia, and still do.
She was loved. She was cared for. And as far as I could see she didn't have a bad life at all. What the fuck, you know?
__________________________
Now Bill and my mom would get playing Crib and nothing could stop them. They played like demons. My dad and I weren't big card players, and we would have had to have been real hot shots to keep up with them anyway, so dad napped on the couch and I hung out in my room listening to records.
Dad could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. And when he did, more often than than not he would have really interesting dreams. I grew up with it so I didn't notice so much but it could really freak a visitor out. "Gahno farah muld gahyub! Call Jim!" he'd shout, with his arms waving around randomly. If it was coming from the couch, you ignored it.
Leota would watch the card playing and smoke. Occasionally she'd giggle. No reason, just joie d' vivre. Other times she'd come out with a brief statement and end it by saying Ha!
"You horse you, get that ol' cat! Fan room the store. Ha!"
Evenings at my house could be interesting.
The only thing she ever contributed regularly to the conversation was this kind of a verbal tic. She'd WUP.
Just out of the blue. No reason. She'd just be sitting there smoking quietly and suddenly out would pop 'WUP!'
Some days, you'd only hear one every two or three minutes. Other days she'd be wuppin' all over the place.
Sometimes she'd come up missing during the summer, when we kept the doors open. But all you had to do was be very quiet for a few minutes, and then off in the distance you'd hear 'Wup!' and you'd follow that. My parents were rather impressed when I showed them this discovery. You'd find her over in my Grandma's yard, looking over the fence at the neibors having a barbecue, take her by the hand, everyone would wave 'bye', and home you went, wuppin' all the way.
One night I was lying on my bed reading and listening to the intermittent 'Wups' coming from the kitchen when I was struck by a bolt of inspiration so hard it hurt my brain. Inspirations like these came frequently the year I was thirteen.
I crept down the hall into the entryway, where I was hidden from the view of anyone in the kitchen, except Leota.
Leota went 'Wup!'
I went 'Wup!"
Then she said 'Wup!"
I answered 'Wup!"
And she replied 'Wup!"
Everyone playing cards at the kitchen table was totally oblivious. Leota was having fun. I was having fun too when dad caught me.
He thought it was hysterical. I mean, yeah, he sent me to my room, but he was laughing.
An hour later I happen to glance up towards the living room and there's dad on the couch, peeking over the easy chair towards the kitchen.
'Wup!" said my dad.
The ensuing silence was so thick you could cut it!
"Wup!" came from the kitchen.
"Niilo! Now stop that! That's not funny!" yelled my mom.
Man, I fell OFF THE BED. I laughed so hard I think it stunted my growth.
________________________________________________________
You couldn't help but like Leota. She was in a happy, simple place, like a (really really wrinkly) baby (who smoked) enjoying a sunbeam.
Now, ninety-nine times out of a hundred Leota was happy to watch the card players; but sometimes she wanted a change of scene. However, because she had a form of Tourettes' that caused her to chirp "WUP!' at regular intervals like a smoke alarm with a failing battery, she was fairly easy to ride herd on.
The thing was, you had to be paying attention. She would go into closed rooms and stand quietly in the dark, nothing evident but the ember on her smoke and you'd never know she was there until you happened to hear 'wup!' float out from behind the door.
Once in the bathroom I heard a cheery 'wup!' coming from the cabinet right next to where I was sitting and about died of a heart attack. We found her in the basement standing under the metal laundry chute, wupping away, entertained by the echo.
This is what happened the very last time she visited:
One November afternoon, everyone was sitting around the kitchen table, my mom and all the other card sharks, partying it up loud and happy, knocking back the 7 and 7's. As usual I was avoiding all this by hiding in my room.
My mom came knocking on my door. "Leota's gone. Is she in here?"
Nope.
Since it was cold, and I was the kid, I got sent outside to look for her while everyone else staggered around the house hooting 'LeOOOOTaaaa....'
Me, I glanced around close by, listened for her, didn't hear her, and promptly put all thought of her completely out of my mind. Evidently everyone else did too, because when I returned they were all pretty surprised to see me. "Where'd you go?" asked Mom.
I needed to hit the Ritz. The half bath was for the card players, so I went down the hall to the master bathroom.
Knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I opened the door.
I found Leota.
My moms beautiful pink bathroom with the pink fixtures and the pink towels and pink curtains, yeah. Not any more.
Leota had been fingerpainting.
She had decorated the entire wall, from the floor up as high as she could reach, with shit.
She had painted the entire side of the bathtub with shit.
She had painted the entire inside of the bathtub with shit.
And the faces of all the cabinets.
And the mirror, the counter, the sink, and the floor.
Everything except the toilet, oddly enough.
The entire bathroom was covered in shit. And so was she.
She had a smoke going. She smiled at me toothlessly from where she sat on the bathmat. 'Wup!' she said.
Complete disaster. Yelling, buckets, throwing things out the bathroom window onto the lawn, people running in and out of the house brandishing Pine-Sol, playing cards on the floor, forget it. Total chaos.
I was gone when it happened, but I understand Leota got her very first shower that day at our house and didn't care for it much. She went home in a bathrobe. She got to keep it.
I was outside at the time. My parents put me outside. They were pissed off because I wasn't helping. I wasn't helping because I could not stop laughing and I couldn't walk. I laid on the back stoop with the tears streaming back into my ears and lost my mind, man; I howled. It was not my finest moment.
She was loved. She was cared for. And as far as I could see she didn't have a bad life at all. What the fuck, you know?
__________________________
Now Bill and my mom would get playing Crib and nothing could stop them. They played like demons. My dad and I weren't big card players, and we would have had to have been real hot shots to keep up with them anyway, so dad napped on the couch and I hung out in my room listening to records.
Dad could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. And when he did, more often than than not he would have really interesting dreams. I grew up with it so I didn't notice so much but it could really freak a visitor out. "Gahno farah muld gahyub! Call Jim!" he'd shout, with his arms waving around randomly. If it was coming from the couch, you ignored it.
Leota would watch the card playing and smoke. Occasionally she'd giggle. No reason, just joie d' vivre. Other times she'd come out with a brief statement and end it by saying Ha!
"You horse you, get that ol' cat! Fan room the store. Ha!"
Evenings at my house could be interesting.
The only thing she ever contributed regularly to the conversation was this kind of a verbal tic. She'd WUP.
Just out of the blue. No reason. She'd just be sitting there smoking quietly and suddenly out would pop 'WUP!'
Some days, you'd only hear one every two or three minutes. Other days she'd be wuppin' all over the place.
Sometimes she'd come up missing during the summer, when we kept the doors open. But all you had to do was be very quiet for a few minutes, and then off in the distance you'd hear 'Wup!' and you'd follow that. My parents were rather impressed when I showed them this discovery. You'd find her over in my Grandma's yard, looking over the fence at the neibors having a barbecue, take her by the hand, everyone would wave 'bye', and home you went, wuppin' all the way.
One night I was lying on my bed reading and listening to the intermittent 'Wups' coming from the kitchen when I was struck by a bolt of inspiration so hard it hurt my brain. Inspirations like these came frequently the year I was thirteen.
I crept down the hall into the entryway, where I was hidden from the view of anyone in the kitchen, except Leota.
Leota went 'Wup!'
I went 'Wup!"
Then she said 'Wup!"
I answered 'Wup!"
And she replied 'Wup!"
Everyone playing cards at the kitchen table was totally oblivious. Leota was having fun. I was having fun too when dad caught me.
He thought it was hysterical. I mean, yeah, he sent me to my room, but he was laughing.
An hour later I happen to glance up towards the living room and there's dad on the couch, peeking over the easy chair towards the kitchen.
'Wup!" said my dad.
The ensuing silence was so thick you could cut it!
"Wup!" came from the kitchen.
"Niilo! Now stop that! That's not funny!" yelled my mom.
Man, I fell OFF THE BED. I laughed so hard I think it stunted my growth.
________________________________________________________
You couldn't help but like Leota. She was in a happy, simple place, like a (really really wrinkly) baby (who smoked) enjoying a sunbeam.
Now, ninety-nine times out of a hundred Leota was happy to watch the card players; but sometimes she wanted a change of scene. However, because she had a form of Tourettes' that caused her to chirp "WUP!' at regular intervals like a smoke alarm with a failing battery, she was fairly easy to ride herd on.
The thing was, you had to be paying attention. She would go into closed rooms and stand quietly in the dark, nothing evident but the ember on her smoke and you'd never know she was there until you happened to hear 'wup!' float out from behind the door.
Once in the bathroom I heard a cheery 'wup!' coming from the cabinet right next to where I was sitting and about died of a heart attack. We found her in the basement standing under the metal laundry chute, wupping away, entertained by the echo.
This is what happened the very last time she visited:
One November afternoon, everyone was sitting around the kitchen table, my mom and all the other card sharks, partying it up loud and happy, knocking back the 7 and 7's. As usual I was avoiding all this by hiding in my room.
My mom came knocking on my door. "Leota's gone. Is she in here?"
Nope.
Since it was cold, and I was the kid, I got sent outside to look for her while everyone else staggered around the house hooting 'LeOOOOTaaaa....'
Me, I glanced around close by, listened for her, didn't hear her, and promptly put all thought of her completely out of my mind. Evidently everyone else did too, because when I returned they were all pretty surprised to see me. "Where'd you go?" asked Mom.
I needed to hit the Ritz. The half bath was for the card players, so I went down the hall to the master bathroom.
Knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I opened the door.
I found Leota.
My moms beautiful pink bathroom with the pink fixtures and the pink towels and pink curtains, yeah. Not any more.
Leota had been fingerpainting.
She had decorated the entire wall, from the floor up as high as she could reach, with shit.
She had painted the entire side of the bathtub with shit.
She had painted the entire inside of the bathtub with shit.
And the faces of all the cabinets.
And the mirror, the counter, the sink, and the floor.
Everything except the toilet, oddly enough.
The entire bathroom was covered in shit. And so was she.
She had a smoke going. She smiled at me toothlessly from where she sat on the bathmat. 'Wup!' she said.
Complete disaster. Yelling, buckets, throwing things out the bathroom window onto the lawn, people running in and out of the house brandishing Pine-Sol, playing cards on the floor, forget it. Total chaos.
I was gone when it happened, but I understand Leota got her very first shower that day at our house and didn't care for it much. She went home in a bathrobe. She got to keep it.
I was outside at the time. My parents put me outside. They were pissed off because I wasn't helping. I wasn't helping because I could not stop laughing and I couldn't walk. I laid on the back stoop with the tears streaming back into my ears and lost my mind, man; I howled. It was not my finest moment.
Yes I know that lacks class. But I was 13 years old. I had no class.
Not like I do now.
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