So. To sum up, my 82 year old father-in-law is SUPERFLY.
How in the hell am I going to follow that?
With a post on celery, bitch.
Oh yeah? Oh HAIL yeah.
You see what I do here?
"Why no. Just what is it that you do here?"
JUST EXACTLY WHATEVER the living, breathing motherfuck I want to do, is what I do here, dogaroonie.
If I want to do a post on the lint I find in my dryer I'll just do that humbear. If I want to do a whole cockalockin' post on soil bacteria I'll just DO that rasty bastard. Picture of my dog's butt? HA! DONE ALREADY DONE THAT ONE, BABY! SUCK ON IT!!!!!
I could sit here and just type the letter 'A' a whole bunch of times if I wanted to.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAa
]
Oh yeah.
And I'll leave that bracket too. FUCK yes, D.B. Cooper. Hijack THAT plane ya little bitch.
*takes medication*
__________________________________
Your soil must be rich, neutral and on the damp side...a clay loam is perfect.
1. In the fall, buy a regular head of celery from the supermarket.
2. Use the whole head except for the very center where the stunted, yellow-white leaves are.
3. Leave as much of a root stub on this 'heart' as possible. Using a very sharp knife, shave a fine, fine slice off the bottom of this stub, leaving the end clean and white.
4. Wash the whole thing carefully under cold water, and trim off wilted or damaged parts.
5. Place the cleaned start in a glass of clean, cold water on a north-facing windowsill so that the root stub is well immersed. Don't let it contact the bottom of the glass.
6. Change the water frequently, and keep the glass clean. You might notice cloudy goop forming around the root stub; simply wipe it off gently under the faucet in cold water.
7. In a few WEEKS you will notice small white rootlets beginning to form in a circle around the base of the stems. The stems might also have grown an inch or so. This might take all winter long, so don't panic if you don't see any action for a long time. As long as the leaves and stems are still healthy looking, you're good.
8. In spring when the last frost has passed, plant the rooted celery in a raised mound of really rich, well-cultivated soil (the same way you plant zuchinni and pumpkins,) and keep it moist. NOT SWAMPY. It needs to drain. Later in the summer you can make a moat around the crown to help the water soak in instead of running off the surface. The more water the celery receives the fatter the stalks will get and the taller the plant. However, this increases the chance that the plant will suddenly decide to send up a flowerstalk and die (bolt.) Just give it a nice shower in the evening (unless it's rained the day before) and call it good.
9. Otherwise, ignore.
10. Clip stalks off the side of the clump all spring, summer and early fall whenever you need some, leaving the central bunch in the ground.
Homegrown celery tends to run smaller and darker green than store-celery. It also tastes far more aromatic than store celery, so you need less.
11. Come fall, after the first light frost, pull up the whole plant and cut off the root ball to within an inch of where the stems begin. There will be 'offsets'; mini-plants that grown off at an angle out from the central root and the main crown. Just crack these away from the main root. Select the smaller, healthiest offsets, the ones with the most root, and repeat the process at one.
_______________________________
But no, 'Nations! That's CHEATING! That's not REAL GARDENING! Real gardeners grow things from seed! If you don't grow it from seed you're NOT A REAL GARDENER! You're BREAKING THE RULES! You're doing it the EASY way! Furthermore, you're not maintaining GENETIC DIVERSITY! You're only creating CLONES! And, and, a big DISEASE could come along and wipe out your whole crop! And then move on and wipe out everyone elses' crop that's growing the same variety! And then get stronger and stronger and mutate and breed! And fall into a nuclear reactor and then maybe a guy sweeping the floor will sweep it back outside where it will grow and spread at a geometric rate and KILL ALL THE WHOLE CELERY IN THE WORLD! AND MARS AND VENUS PLUS ALL THE ASTEROIDS! AND SATURN!
Get a fucking grip people. You stick shit in the ground and it grows; that's gardening.
Seed is selected from cloned varieties. How do you think they maintain commercial variety? By asking the celery nicely? By magic? Does 'lil Harry Potter wave his winkie over the celery and say "Celery est!" or some jive ass trumped-up Latin crapola and WHOOMP there is more celery?
NO! They select healthy plants with desirable traits and....wait for it.....take clones! And let them bolt! And take seeds from the cloned plants and....
wait, wait.......
-Sell them!
Theres a problem, though. Celery seed is NOTORIOUSLY BUTTLICKING DIFFICULT to grow on from seed! It takes 6 and one half Federation Standard light-years to germinate, and Mr. Spock has to urinate on it all that whole time. Oh yes! Plus it has to have a constant high soil temp and must lie on the top of the dirt undisturbed in the light where CELERY PREDATORS can just come along and KILL IT AND EAT ITS BRAIN AND RIP OUT IT'S PANCREAS AND LEAVE THE REST TO ROT IN THE TORRID, UNFORGIVING HEAT OF A MERCILESS SUN!
In addition, seedling celery damps off for no reason. The shit just dies. Or cutworms chew it off at the soil, or celery flies and carrot flies come along and land all over it and lick it all over or do whatever they do and kill it in the prime of its young and promising celery life, thus depriving you of vital celery nutrients! AND NOBODY WANTS THAT!
So yeah. Root a clone in water and then plant it out.
*takes more medication*
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Playboy of the Western World
I found out why my father-in-law keeps ending up in the emergency ward.
Would you like to know why my father-in-law keeps ending up in the emergency ward?
Guess why my father-in-law keeps ending up in the emergency ward.
I'll tell you why.
When I met this man twenty years ago he was partying like an 18 year old. He smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day. He drove a Porsche. He could drink like a fish and never show the effects, work all day, cruise tail all night and then come home to the waiting arms of a new guy every few months. Not b-list desperation cases, either...hot college guys.
Magically twinklicious college guys.
Doe-eyed, slutty college guys, tight pants, magnificent upper body development-type-of-guys.
Shall I stop now? OK.
He knew everyone. Everyone knew him-and liked him. He always had visitors and he always had plans. In fact, it became apparent after I'd known him awhile that my father-in-law, a man in his late 60's at the time, was the guy in the group that all the other guys hung out with so they could catch the overflow.
It was NUTS.
This was not like the 60-year-old people I remembered. The 60-year-old people I remembered had canes and smelled like pee and watched television all day.
Make no mistake, this is still one charming, sexy old bastard, too. I mean, he's one of those people who's got 'IT'. He walks into a room and everyone knows. Or rolls into the room at this stage of the game. Still.
20 years later. The man can't drive his Porsche any more. He can't climb a set of stairs. He has COPD, he uses oxygen, he wears compression stockings and uses a walker. Has this slowed him down? Oh HELL no, buttercup.
Now they come to him.
For example, when I busted him and the cute cable guy right after he'd moved in to assisted living I just figured "Aw, what a nice kid." (No, no, nothing gross...just a little bluster and delay answering the door and a couple of big grins. This has happened before and I've kind of figured out what's up by now.)
After it happened a few more times I started realizing that my father in law knew ALL the nice young kids. In Washington. Possibly in the entire Northwest. And Vancouver.
The last time was a couple of weeks ago, when I busted one of the surfer-boy maintenance guys leaving his place (poor kid saw me standing there and blushed purple.) I just smiled and walked on by. Room service. Just one of the many features of modern assisted living.
One of the Fan Club clued me in to the rest of the story. "Why do you think he never answers the phone in the evenings? You know he hardly spends any time there. Everyone's dragging him to the clubs."
Now he's in interim care for a few weeks. I went in today to pick up a few things from his apartment for him. The day manager had a quiet word with me on the elevators.
"You know, I think he's....overdoing things..." she said. Then she paused and did the Groucho Marx eyebrows thing a couple of times at me. I blinked.
"He goes out a lot. And he he has a LOT of...um...visitors." She did the 'woo woo' thing with her eyebrows again.
-Oh.
I thanked her nicely, got off the elevator, and waited for the doors to close before I started snorting and whooping. It hurt.
Evidence left behind at the scene confirmed her theory.
Here is some good advice: You should be careful what drawer you check when you look for someones' medication. Lots of people keep it in the kitchen. Like my father in law does. Not in the bedside table. No, he certainly does NOT keep his medication in his bedside table.
No, he doesn't.
So then.
Why is my father-in-law in the hospital?
My father in law is in the hospital for overexertion.
Jesus Christ.
Would you like to know why my father-in-law keeps ending up in the emergency ward?
Guess why my father-in-law keeps ending up in the emergency ward.
I'll tell you why.
When I met this man twenty years ago he was partying like an 18 year old. He smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day. He drove a Porsche. He could drink like a fish and never show the effects, work all day, cruise tail all night and then come home to the waiting arms of a new guy every few months. Not b-list desperation cases, either...hot college guys.
Magically twinklicious college guys.
Doe-eyed, slutty college guys, tight pants, magnificent upper body development-type-of-guys.
Shall I stop now? OK.
He knew everyone. Everyone knew him-and liked him. He always had visitors and he always had plans. In fact, it became apparent after I'd known him awhile that my father-in-law, a man in his late 60's at the time, was the guy in the group that all the other guys hung out with so they could catch the overflow.
It was NUTS.
This was not like the 60-year-old people I remembered. The 60-year-old people I remembered had canes and smelled like pee and watched television all day.
Make no mistake, this is still one charming, sexy old bastard, too. I mean, he's one of those people who's got 'IT'. He walks into a room and everyone knows. Or rolls into the room at this stage of the game. Still.
20 years later. The man can't drive his Porsche any more. He can't climb a set of stairs. He has COPD, he uses oxygen, he wears compression stockings and uses a walker. Has this slowed him down? Oh HELL no, buttercup.
Now they come to him.
For example, when I busted him and the cute cable guy right after he'd moved in to assisted living I just figured "Aw, what a nice kid." (No, no, nothing gross...just a little bluster and delay answering the door and a couple of big grins. This has happened before and I've kind of figured out what's up by now.)
After it happened a few more times I started realizing that my father in law knew ALL the nice young kids. In Washington. Possibly in the entire Northwest. And Vancouver.
The last time was a couple of weeks ago, when I busted one of the surfer-boy maintenance guys leaving his place (poor kid saw me standing there and blushed purple.) I just smiled and walked on by. Room service. Just one of the many features of modern assisted living.
One of the Fan Club clued me in to the rest of the story. "Why do you think he never answers the phone in the evenings? You know he hardly spends any time there. Everyone's dragging him to the clubs."
Now he's in interim care for a few weeks. I went in today to pick up a few things from his apartment for him. The day manager had a quiet word with me on the elevators.
"You know, I think he's....overdoing things..." she said. Then she paused and did the Groucho Marx eyebrows thing a couple of times at me. I blinked.
"He goes out a lot. And he he has a LOT of...um...visitors." She did the 'woo woo' thing with her eyebrows again.
-Oh.
I thanked her nicely, got off the elevator, and waited for the doors to close before I started snorting and whooping. It hurt.
Evidence left behind at the scene confirmed her theory.
Here is some good advice: You should be careful what drawer you check when you look for someones' medication. Lots of people keep it in the kitchen. Like my father in law does. Not in the bedside table. No, he certainly does NOT keep his medication in his bedside table.
No, he doesn't.
So then.
Why is my father-in-law in the hospital?
My father in law is in the hospital for overexertion.
Jesus Christ.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Purple Moon Snail Laughs Bad Fifty Monsters
I swear I wrote a post on Scientology back when. Does anyone remember it? I went back through all my old crap and I can't find it. Unless you really want the fluffy kittens next.
Don't make me get my fluffy kittens.
Cuz I will.
Meanwhile, use your head for something other than a hatrack.
Go read this : What goes up...Alter Egos
Then read everything else.
Then go
here, read the post entitled "A Little Yellow" and bug her to post more often.
Now check out Awaiting:
Isn't that what you always kind of figured? Me too.
Now here's Frobisher. Check out the sunburn he copped in Marbella:
Of course, the side that was facing the sun most of the time is a lot worse.
Don't make me get my fluffy kittens.
Cuz I will.
Meanwhile, use your head for something other than a hatrack.
Go read this : What goes up...Alter Egos
Then read everything else.
Then go
here, read the post entitled "A Little Yellow" and bug her to post more often.
Now check out Awaiting:
Isn't that what you always kind of figured? Me too.
Now here's Frobisher. Check out the sunburn he copped in Marbella:
Of course, the side that was facing the sun most of the time is a lot worse.
Monday, October 08, 2007
bambi vs. the potty monsters (they win)
The Charismatic Catholic prayer meeting we attended was socially divided along a polite, faint, yet very real line. The organizers were on the main thoughtful and spiritual people, most having attended parochial school all the way through college. The lunatic fringe were mainly working class, high school drop-outs, and were tolerated at arms' length. Never the twain did meet... except to act like a bunch of Fruit Loops in a rented hall three times a week. Yes, we were all brothers and sisters in the Lord...and we were all very careful where we sat during Mass so that when called upon to deliver the sign of peace we wouldn't end up hugging anyone icky.
Bambi the high-functioning schizophrenic had been taken up as a cause by the groups' organisers. And I have to say that they did themselves proud. In short order they found her a clean, safe place to live, bought her a bus pass and put her in touch with a social worker and Catholic Community Services. It was pretty clear from the start that this womans' problem was more a matter of failing to take her medication regularly than 'spiritual darkness'.
Bambi's parents were quietly contacted. I felt really bad for these people. The way the laws ran at the time, if a person was over 18 and not presenting a clear danger to themselves or others, they could go run around and be nutty until they fell off a bridge trying to fly. THEN the state could step in, if there was anything left. Bambi's family recounted the problems they'd had in dealing with this woman over the years and how people in her condition regularly slip between the cracks of society, and thanked us for caring and doing what we had.
This move was viewed with horror by the Lunatic Fringe. They saw it as a terrible violation of Bambi's trust. After all, her father was rich and powerful and she was in hiding because her family was trying to have her committed and had poisoned her and the Mafia was trying to find her because her ex-husband had blah blah blah etc etc etc...and to top it all off there were demons in her apartment!
Bambi, meanwhile, was feeding off the attention of the group in general and the Lunatic Fringe in particular. The Fringe bought into her delusions hook, line and sinker. Per their literal interpretation of Scripture, the things that were supposedly happening to Bambi were concrete proof and vindication of the 'Pentecostal Christianity' that they practiced. With the backup of these people and their magical explanations for what was going on she soon 'felt lead by the Lord' to 'refute her medications and claim a healing' and that's exactly what she did.
That is why Bambi never did succeed in chasing Satan out of her bathroom.
A number of exorcisms were performed -but she claimed that the demons kept returning stronger. Then they started speaking to her and writing messages on her walls that only she could see. Finally she started bugging the owner, demanding that as a Christian it was his duty to remove the demon-infested, Island-themed tub surround so she could shower without worrying about Satanic Tiki idols tickling her crack.
The place had been completely and expensively remodeled before she'd moved in (and that aside from the fact that it was a ridiculous demand anyway) so naturally the owner refused. The lunatic fringe took up the banner and started pleading on her behalf and doing 'prayer battle' against him*. He still refused. Which was the beginning of the end.
This issue actually split the group. It boiled down to this: Either you believed that this woman was desperately in need of Thorazine, or you were on "Gods' side" and believed that the fucking bathroom wallpaper was possessed.
What was truly sad was that while Bambi was rapidly losing the last of her marbles, both sides were wasting time agonizing over this issue.
Here's why:
These were Fundamentalists. A 'secular, scientific' explanation was by it's very nature wrong. It was, in fact, even sinful to entertain such an explanation. Born Again, Charismatic Christians utterly refuted the 'false religion' of Science. They believed in the literal truth of demons, angels, possession, miracles, exorcism, speaking in tongues, healing and all the rest of it because it was in the Bible, and the Bible was the revealed word of God! Period! So the explanation that best tallied up with what was in the Bible was, had to be, and could not be other than the right one. Therefore, if you took the Bible literally in this case, a person was not schizophrenic. That's not in the Bible, consequently it is a lie. However a person could be possessed by demons. And how do they take care of persons possessed by demons in the Bible? You prayed over them, rebuked Satan, and the demons were cast out.
But if that didn't work?
...Yeah.
It all ended in a pathetic mess. The lunatic fringe moved en masse to weirder (MUCH weirder) pastures, taking their checkbooks with them. The remaining members disbanded when they lost the use of the hall due to lack of funds. Funds provided in large part by my mother, turns out.
Bambi stopped paying rent. Finally she had to be evicted after she'd almost burnt the building down leaving lit cigarettes all over the floor. She eventually went back to living on the street.
I met up with her a couple of years later, though.
Guess where?
Church of Scientology.
__________________________________
* what this amounted to was meeting in Bambi's apartment across the wall from the owner, or standing on his front stoop, or sitting in his driveway in their cars holding hands and praying loudly that he would 'do the right thing and follow the path of righteousness', calling each other up and holding prayer meetings via conference call, bringing it up during meetings...yup.
**I am not being flippant and I am not making this up... this is honestly what they believed and how they believed.
You can take that line of thinking as far afield as you like, too, and it still applies. Modern medicine is evil, electricity is a lie, Buddhists worship Satan, fossils aren't real; they were created by Satan to deceive the faithful.
YES.
Now, that's far, far to the right...and also far, far from being as extreme as I've been exposed to. Think of it as 'middle of the road' far right.
That is Christian fundamentalism.
Welcome to America.
Bambi the high-functioning schizophrenic had been taken up as a cause by the groups' organisers. And I have to say that they did themselves proud. In short order they found her a clean, safe place to live, bought her a bus pass and put her in touch with a social worker and Catholic Community Services. It was pretty clear from the start that this womans' problem was more a matter of failing to take her medication regularly than 'spiritual darkness'.
Bambi's parents were quietly contacted. I felt really bad for these people. The way the laws ran at the time, if a person was over 18 and not presenting a clear danger to themselves or others, they could go run around and be nutty until they fell off a bridge trying to fly. THEN the state could step in, if there was anything left. Bambi's family recounted the problems they'd had in dealing with this woman over the years and how people in her condition regularly slip between the cracks of society, and thanked us for caring and doing what we had.
This move was viewed with horror by the Lunatic Fringe. They saw it as a terrible violation of Bambi's trust. After all, her father was rich and powerful and she was in hiding because her family was trying to have her committed and had poisoned her and the Mafia was trying to find her because her ex-husband had blah blah blah etc etc etc...and to top it all off there were demons in her apartment!
Bambi, meanwhile, was feeding off the attention of the group in general and the Lunatic Fringe in particular. The Fringe bought into her delusions hook, line and sinker. Per their literal interpretation of Scripture, the things that were supposedly happening to Bambi were concrete proof and vindication of the 'Pentecostal Christianity' that they practiced. With the backup of these people and their magical explanations for what was going on she soon 'felt lead by the Lord' to 'refute her medications and claim a healing' and that's exactly what she did.
That is why Bambi never did succeed in chasing Satan out of her bathroom.
A number of exorcisms were performed -but she claimed that the demons kept returning stronger. Then they started speaking to her and writing messages on her walls that only she could see. Finally she started bugging the owner, demanding that as a Christian it was his duty to remove the demon-infested, Island-themed tub surround so she could shower without worrying about Satanic Tiki idols tickling her crack.
The place had been completely and expensively remodeled before she'd moved in (and that aside from the fact that it was a ridiculous demand anyway) so naturally the owner refused. The lunatic fringe took up the banner and started pleading on her behalf and doing 'prayer battle' against him*. He still refused. Which was the beginning of the end.
This issue actually split the group. It boiled down to this: Either you believed that this woman was desperately in need of Thorazine, or you were on "Gods' side" and believed that the fucking bathroom wallpaper was possessed.
What was truly sad was that while Bambi was rapidly losing the last of her marbles, both sides were wasting time agonizing over this issue.
Here's why:
These were Fundamentalists. A 'secular, scientific' explanation was by it's very nature wrong. It was, in fact, even sinful to entertain such an explanation. Born Again, Charismatic Christians utterly refuted the 'false religion' of Science. They believed in the literal truth of demons, angels, possession, miracles, exorcism, speaking in tongues, healing and all the rest of it because it was in the Bible, and the Bible was the revealed word of God! Period! So the explanation that best tallied up with what was in the Bible was, had to be, and could not be other than the right one. Therefore, if you took the Bible literally in this case, a person was not schizophrenic. That's not in the Bible, consequently it is a lie. However a person could be possessed by demons. And how do they take care of persons possessed by demons in the Bible? You prayed over them, rebuked Satan, and the demons were cast out.
But if that didn't work?
...Yeah.
It all ended in a pathetic mess. The lunatic fringe moved en masse to weirder (MUCH weirder) pastures, taking their checkbooks with them. The remaining members disbanded when they lost the use of the hall due to lack of funds. Funds provided in large part by my mother, turns out.
Bambi stopped paying rent. Finally she had to be evicted after she'd almost burnt the building down leaving lit cigarettes all over the floor. She eventually went back to living on the street.
I met up with her a couple of years later, though.
Guess where?
Church of Scientology.
__________________________________
* what this amounted to was meeting in Bambi's apartment across the wall from the owner, or standing on his front stoop, or sitting in his driveway in their cars holding hands and praying loudly that he would 'do the right thing and follow the path of righteousness', calling each other up and holding prayer meetings via conference call, bringing it up during meetings...yup.
**I am not being flippant and I am not making this up... this is honestly what they believed and how they believed.
You can take that line of thinking as far afield as you like, too, and it still applies. Modern medicine is evil, electricity is a lie, Buddhists worship Satan, fossils aren't real; they were created by Satan to deceive the faithful.
YES.
Now, that's far, far to the right...and also far, far from being as extreme as I've been exposed to. Think of it as 'middle of the road' far right.
That is Christian fundamentalism.
Welcome to America.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Purple Cat Big Heist Caper! Praising Lord!
For more background and Halloween hijinx, go here!
My mother found Jesus the way a Peterbilt truck finds a raccoon on the highway-sudden, hard and messy. At first it was a positive thing...for a short (and rather confusing) time, she went from being God's miserable hemorrhoid to being Jesus ' little sunbeam. Was this my mother? Smiling?
Anyway, for a variety of reasons I may go into at another time, I found myself an unwilling participant in what rapidly became my mothers religious mania, going to what were termed 'Charismatic Catholic' , Born-Again style prayer meetings three evenings a week.
Lemme digress a bit. Catholicism in white, working-class America isn't remotely ecstatic. Catholicism in white, working-class America is in fact about as exciting as attending a talk at the public library about Gypsy moth infestation, except with more kneeling and a light snack towards the end.
Understandably, then, Catholics did not do the charisms, or 'ecstatic religiosity' very well. These prayer meetings tended to be rather shy and restrained things until the very, very end, when people got that 'now or never' feeling and suddenly went belly-flopping awkwardly into the deep end. It was essentially two hours of quiet prayer with upraised hands followed by a half-hour of crying, speaking in tongues, falling, twitching, and singing loud songs with accompanying gestures while hopping up and down.
Yes, really. Barney the Dinosaur meets Jesus.
Still, I honestly think the greater part of the people in attendance were sincere, if misguided. Unfortunately my mother, being who she was, got drawn into the lunatic fringe.
Eventually she was running buddies with this unbelievably odd bunch of Jesus-groupies. All of them were garden-variety unfulfilled Catholic women...morbidly obese 50-year-old virgins, glum married lesbians in brick-wall denial with six kids , borderline (and not-so-borderline) psychotics, rage junkies, low-norms who smelled like pee and beat-down throw pillows, mostly. All of them could have been case studies in a book called 'Women You Should Never, Ever Be Like When You Grow Up'.
And I took note, yo.
One evening there was a new member in attendance, a thin, trembling fawn of a woman draped in scarves and ethnic fabrics, like an aging ballet dancer with a thyroid problem. Her buggy eyeballs never stopped scanning the room. She smoked with a strange metronomic regularity, sipping at the filter and blowing steadily until the cigarette was one long ash drooping gracefully down over her red bony knuckles. She sat at the edge of the group drawn up into a knobby heap on the metal folding chair .
The Fringies were instantly enthralled. The poor thing, let's go be friendly!
Poor thing indeed.
Soon she was in the middle of a circle of chairs filled with a whole bunch of terribly friendly, sympathetic fat women listening raptly to her 'testimony'.
This stuff was usually pretty gross, so I went outside and lit a smoke.*
I was joined by one of my moms' friends a short while later. "You'll never believe what happened to this poor woman," she said.
She was right.
According to 'Bambi', she'd grown up in a wealthy family, her father was a very well-known public figure who she was afraid to name, all of them were against her and they wanted her to stay married to a man who was beating her. They had been drugging her for years and had finally poisoned her with a mysterious substance in an attempt to 'keep her quiet'. She was also being chased by a cult, by organized crime and by an ex husband, and all of them were trying to kill her while at the same time plotting to have her committed to a mental institution. This was why she was hiding out on the streets and in homeless shelters AND living in her car and also why nobody could know her real name.
Man, I was 16 and I smelled this shit a mile away, even secondhand. The woman breathlessly recounting all this to me was 56. You could tell she thought this was the coolest, most glamorous and interesting thing that she had ever heard EVER.
Once I'd finished my cigarette I went back inside. 'Bambi' was being prayed for.
Now, in an ordinary setting, this might mean that people were, you know, sitting, maybe kneeling, hands folded, praying.
In this group it meant that everyone present stood and placed one hand on the person being prayed for and raised the other hand high into the air (presumably to get better reception) closed their eyes and made bossy demands on the Lord. "Jesus! See this woman! Jesus, help this woman! Yes! Jesus, help her bear this burden! HEAL her! Heal her now! Jesus heal her! HEAL HER NOW! IN JESUS NAME! LIFT HER BURDEN! LIFT THIS BURDEN FROM HER!"
They typically did this in turns, getting louder and more vehement until the whole group was crying, moaning, and speaking in tongues. Just another typical Friday night.
The thing was, they were all on the downslope of middle age, and they couldn't stand for very long without getting tired. They started to droop and lean on one another after they'd been at it for a while. From a distance this looked like a bunch of people peering at something down a well while signaling to passing aircraft.
And as I knew from personal experience, the person in the middle, the one being prayed for, bore the full weight. Poor waif- like Bambi was nearly bent double.
We heard a lot from Bambi in the passing weeks. Bambi threw off a group praying for her with 'supernatural strength'. Bambi had 'spoken in an unnatural voice and cursed God'. Bambi had 'accepted Christ and suddenly become ill'.
Clearly, Bambi was under demonic attack.
Consequently Bambi became very, very popular. Everyone had Bambi over for dinner. Everyone took Bambi out for coffee after the meetings. People fought over who would drive Bambi back to the shelter. The group took up a collection and got Bambi out of the shelter and into an apartment. Everyone listened raptly to Bambi's stories about being raped by shadowy figures on orders from her family, receiving threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, Bambi finding her belongings had been gone through by the Mafia, Bambi seeing demonic messages appear on the ceiling above her bed at night. The 'let's pray for Bambi' session at the end of every meeting became the main draw. You never knew what would happen, and something dramatic always did. Attendance was never better.
One evening I was smoking outside in the garden when one of the Fringe came out to get me.
'We need you to come help us! Do you think you could be a prayer warrior?' she said breathlessly, clutching my arm.
" Well, let me finish my smoke first," I replied. "What's going on?"
"Bambi's apartment is haunted!" said the Fringie. "That's what's been at the center of all these disturbances!"
"You mean her new apartment she just moved into?" I asked.
"It's not new," said the Fringie. "It's in an old house. And there were people who were drug addicts and Satan worshippers living there before she moved in. And they had orgies."
I'd like to say that I laughed in her face, but no. Whaddya gonna do; it's how I was raised.
Now how drug-dealing Satan worshippers had managed to move into a place owned by one of this Christian groups' leaders and live there, holding orgies, drugging and worshipping away for a matter of years, was never explained. What I accepted without a thought at the time** was that Milwaukie, Oregon was simply raddled with Satan-worshipping, orgy-holding druggies, and that that kind of thing called up demons and opened a PORTAL TO HELL.
And I was being asked to help cleanse it! I was being asked to help cast out demons, to help a fellow Christian and to bring the light of the Lord into her home! Well fuck yeah I'll help, are you nuts? An exorcism? I am A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL! Color me there!
We all piled into the Mystery Mobile-I mean, the former prostitutes' car- in an excited, bible-toting heap...the grumpy lesbian, the vindictive Jap-hater and the former prostitute that nobody was supposed to have figured out was a former prostitute in the front seat, and the 55- year-old morbidly obese virgin, the sixteen-year-old smoker, and the smokers batshit-nuts mother in the back. We zoomed away, praying and holding hands. When the traffic lights changed we prayed for the traffic light to turn green.
Some of the ladies in the front seat started getting a little excited. Unknown tongues began creeping into the mix.
"Don't get carried away by the Spirit,' called the former prostitute as she drifted a corner on two wheels "I don't have any insurance!"
We prayed for her to get a raise so she could buy insurance at the next light.
We caromed through downtown Portland and over the Powell Blvd. bridge. Smokers' Mother had the brilliant idea to roll down the window so that upraised hands could poke out.
We passed the Poulson House, a grim Victorian I was secretly in love with. 'That's a Satanic looking place,' said the Jap Hater darkly. "I've always hated it."
We prayed holding hands over the back of the seat, all the way up McLoughlin Boulevard and down River Road until we drove up to the house, the house of evil, and stopped. We prayed a little more before we climbed the stairs.
We prayed before we went inside.
We went inside, and stopped to pray in the foyer.
Bambi was already there, looking pale and twitchy in the bare overhead light.
"Where's the disturbance?" Demanded former prostitute.
"I don't know", breathed Bambi. "It's the whole place, I think.."
We all joined hands and began to....guess?
Pray.
The whole group moved in an awkward clump into the first room off the foyer. Speaking in tongues began in earnest. Then singing in tongues. I got mashed into a wall by 55-Year-Old Virgin's huge ass and there I remained. Trembling hands reached out and touched the walls. The furniture. The pictures. The telephone. "You never know," said Jap Hater. "Oh! Good idea!" they agreed.
The clump shuffled down the hall and moved to the next room, lead by Bambi. An overhead bulb flickered and she screamed. "It's here!"
The praying gained volume.
I got mashed into a door by the 55-Year-Old-Virgin.
We entered the kitchen. The kitchen was tiny.
Closet doors were opened and prayed into. Someone started swaying, and the whole group started rocking back and forth in unison. I was mashed into another wall at this point, and resigned myself to simply trying to draw breath while the others did the heavy battling with the demons infesting the cabinets. "It's here! I can feel it moving! It's running before us!" various people commented. "Where's it going? It went past me! I felt it!"
The whole group moved as one, in a clump. A couple of the women were already reduced to panting, barely able to gasp 'Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus' by this point. Nobody'd told them that Satan would be wearing track shoes.
"It went in here! cried Bambi. The group surged forward.
'Here' was the bathroom.
A very tiny, tiny bathroom.
The group pushed forward and found that not all of them could fit into the claustrophobic, closet-sized room at once.
Satan had obviously chosen the venue for this final showdown with care.
The group decamped to the entry and considered. Bambi twittered and meeped in the background like a nervous gerbil with a bad nicotine habit. I noticed that there wasn't one single place on the floor that didn't have a cigarette burn.
Suddenly "I found it!" cried the former prostitute. She was a tiny woman, and had wormed her way to the front of the group. "Come look! I found it! Here it is!"
Everyone crowded forward.
Ever heard of Masonite? It was marketed as a waterproof, decorative material for tub surrounds in the 60's and 70's...kind of a cross between Formica and wallboard. The smooth 'space age' material it was coated with supposedly*** rendered this material moisture-resistant and easy to clean. This coating was often printed with designs...flowers, snowflakes, geometrics...
This tub surround was printed with a tropical island scene.
Straw huts, palm trees, coconuts, ocean waves.
And Tiki god statues.
"I knew it! I never felt comfortable in there! I always felt like I was being watched!" exclaimed Bambi.
Grumpy Lesbian was crammed against the sink. Former Prostitute was seated on the toilet. Jap Hater had what floor space there was in the center of the room.
I was crammed into the bathtub, by now utterly mortified, with Smokers' Mom and the 55-Year-Old Morbidly Obese Virgin.
'Now everyone put their hands on the wall and pray!" Former Prostitute commanded.
And they prayed. Please, God, deliver this house from the clutches of Satan. Please, God, drive the presence of demons from the images on this bathroom wall. We refute thee utterly, Satan, and all thy works, and thy leering image of thyself as rendered in driftwood and dogs' teeth by the Polynesians and the DuPont Corporation in gold glitter paint.
Oh yeah... there they were. Jesus' little prayer warriors. Standing in the bathtub.
Exorcising the wallpaper.
Amen.
___________________________
*one of the first things I found out about being a charismatic catholic was that the typical unfulfilled adult catholic woman had really good reasons for being that way, most of them horrifically gynecological. also, that it takes very little provocation for your typical unfulfilled catholic woman to explain the exact nature of her particular problem at length and in excruciating detail.
**also the subject of yet another story. lucky you!
***masonite is bullshit. one scratch and the stuff swells up with black fungus like the black plague. god i hate masonite.
My mother found Jesus the way a Peterbilt truck finds a raccoon on the highway-sudden, hard and messy. At first it was a positive thing...for a short (and rather confusing) time, she went from being God's miserable hemorrhoid to being Jesus ' little sunbeam. Was this my mother? Smiling?
Anyway, for a variety of reasons I may go into at another time, I found myself an unwilling participant in what rapidly became my mothers religious mania, going to what were termed 'Charismatic Catholic' , Born-Again style prayer meetings three evenings a week.
Lemme digress a bit. Catholicism in white, working-class America isn't remotely ecstatic. Catholicism in white, working-class America is in fact about as exciting as attending a talk at the public library about Gypsy moth infestation, except with more kneeling and a light snack towards the end.
Understandably, then, Catholics did not do the charisms, or 'ecstatic religiosity' very well. These prayer meetings tended to be rather shy and restrained things until the very, very end, when people got that 'now or never' feeling and suddenly went belly-flopping awkwardly into the deep end. It was essentially two hours of quiet prayer with upraised hands followed by a half-hour of crying, speaking in tongues, falling, twitching, and singing loud songs with accompanying gestures while hopping up and down.
Yes, really. Barney the Dinosaur meets Jesus.
Still, I honestly think the greater part of the people in attendance were sincere, if misguided. Unfortunately my mother, being who she was, got drawn into the lunatic fringe.
Eventually she was running buddies with this unbelievably odd bunch of Jesus-groupies. All of them were garden-variety unfulfilled Catholic women...morbidly obese 50-year-old virgins, glum married lesbians in brick-wall denial with six kids , borderline (and not-so-borderline) psychotics, rage junkies, low-norms who smelled like pee and beat-down throw pillows, mostly. All of them could have been case studies in a book called 'Women You Should Never, Ever Be Like When You Grow Up'.
And I took note, yo.
One evening there was a new member in attendance, a thin, trembling fawn of a woman draped in scarves and ethnic fabrics, like an aging ballet dancer with a thyroid problem. Her buggy eyeballs never stopped scanning the room. She smoked with a strange metronomic regularity, sipping at the filter and blowing steadily until the cigarette was one long ash drooping gracefully down over her red bony knuckles. She sat at the edge of the group drawn up into a knobby heap on the metal folding chair .
The Fringies were instantly enthralled. The poor thing, let's go be friendly!
Poor thing indeed.
Soon she was in the middle of a circle of chairs filled with a whole bunch of terribly friendly, sympathetic fat women listening raptly to her 'testimony'.
This stuff was usually pretty gross, so I went outside and lit a smoke.*
I was joined by one of my moms' friends a short while later. "You'll never believe what happened to this poor woman," she said.
She was right.
According to 'Bambi', she'd grown up in a wealthy family, her father was a very well-known public figure who she was afraid to name, all of them were against her and they wanted her to stay married to a man who was beating her. They had been drugging her for years and had finally poisoned her with a mysterious substance in an attempt to 'keep her quiet'. She was also being chased by a cult, by organized crime and by an ex husband, and all of them were trying to kill her while at the same time plotting to have her committed to a mental institution. This was why she was hiding out on the streets and in homeless shelters AND living in her car and also why nobody could know her real name.
Man, I was 16 and I smelled this shit a mile away, even secondhand. The woman breathlessly recounting all this to me was 56. You could tell she thought this was the coolest, most glamorous and interesting thing that she had ever heard EVER.
Once I'd finished my cigarette I went back inside. 'Bambi' was being prayed for.
Now, in an ordinary setting, this might mean that people were, you know, sitting, maybe kneeling, hands folded, praying.
In this group it meant that everyone present stood and placed one hand on the person being prayed for and raised the other hand high into the air (presumably to get better reception) closed their eyes and made bossy demands on the Lord. "Jesus! See this woman! Jesus, help this woman! Yes! Jesus, help her bear this burden! HEAL her! Heal her now! Jesus heal her! HEAL HER NOW! IN JESUS NAME! LIFT HER BURDEN! LIFT THIS BURDEN FROM HER!"
They typically did this in turns, getting louder and more vehement until the whole group was crying, moaning, and speaking in tongues. Just another typical Friday night.
The thing was, they were all on the downslope of middle age, and they couldn't stand for very long without getting tired. They started to droop and lean on one another after they'd been at it for a while. From a distance this looked like a bunch of people peering at something down a well while signaling to passing aircraft.
And as I knew from personal experience, the person in the middle, the one being prayed for, bore the full weight. Poor waif- like Bambi was nearly bent double.
We heard a lot from Bambi in the passing weeks. Bambi threw off a group praying for her with 'supernatural strength'. Bambi had 'spoken in an unnatural voice and cursed God'. Bambi had 'accepted Christ and suddenly become ill'.
Clearly, Bambi was under demonic attack.
Consequently Bambi became very, very popular. Everyone had Bambi over for dinner. Everyone took Bambi out for coffee after the meetings. People fought over who would drive Bambi back to the shelter. The group took up a collection and got Bambi out of the shelter and into an apartment. Everyone listened raptly to Bambi's stories about being raped by shadowy figures on orders from her family, receiving threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, Bambi finding her belongings had been gone through by the Mafia, Bambi seeing demonic messages appear on the ceiling above her bed at night. The 'let's pray for Bambi' session at the end of every meeting became the main draw. You never knew what would happen, and something dramatic always did. Attendance was never better.
One evening I was smoking outside in the garden when one of the Fringe came out to get me.
'We need you to come help us! Do you think you could be a prayer warrior?' she said breathlessly, clutching my arm.
" Well, let me finish my smoke first," I replied. "What's going on?"
"Bambi's apartment is haunted!" said the Fringie. "That's what's been at the center of all these disturbances!"
"You mean her new apartment she just moved into?" I asked.
"It's not new," said the Fringie. "It's in an old house. And there were people who were drug addicts and Satan worshippers living there before she moved in. And they had orgies."
I'd like to say that I laughed in her face, but no. Whaddya gonna do; it's how I was raised.
Now how drug-dealing Satan worshippers had managed to move into a place owned by one of this Christian groups' leaders and live there, holding orgies, drugging and worshipping away for a matter of years, was never explained. What I accepted without a thought at the time** was that Milwaukie, Oregon was simply raddled with Satan-worshipping, orgy-holding druggies, and that that kind of thing called up demons and opened a PORTAL TO HELL.
And I was being asked to help cleanse it! I was being asked to help cast out demons, to help a fellow Christian and to bring the light of the Lord into her home! Well fuck yeah I'll help, are you nuts? An exorcism? I am A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL! Color me there!
We all piled into the Mystery Mobile-I mean, the former prostitutes' car- in an excited, bible-toting heap...the grumpy lesbian, the vindictive Jap-hater and the former prostitute that nobody was supposed to have figured out was a former prostitute in the front seat, and the 55- year-old morbidly obese virgin, the sixteen-year-old smoker, and the smokers batshit-nuts mother in the back. We zoomed away, praying and holding hands. When the traffic lights changed we prayed for the traffic light to turn green.
Some of the ladies in the front seat started getting a little excited. Unknown tongues began creeping into the mix.
"Don't get carried away by the Spirit,' called the former prostitute as she drifted a corner on two wheels "I don't have any insurance!"
We prayed for her to get a raise so she could buy insurance at the next light.
We caromed through downtown Portland and over the Powell Blvd. bridge. Smokers' Mother had the brilliant idea to roll down the window so that upraised hands could poke out.
We passed the Poulson House, a grim Victorian I was secretly in love with. 'That's a Satanic looking place,' said the Jap Hater darkly. "I've always hated it."
We prayed holding hands over the back of the seat, all the way up McLoughlin Boulevard and down River Road until we drove up to the house, the house of evil, and stopped. We prayed a little more before we climbed the stairs.
We prayed before we went inside.
We went inside, and stopped to pray in the foyer.
Bambi was already there, looking pale and twitchy in the bare overhead light.
"Where's the disturbance?" Demanded former prostitute.
"I don't know", breathed Bambi. "It's the whole place, I think.."
We all joined hands and began to....guess?
Pray.
The whole group moved in an awkward clump into the first room off the foyer. Speaking in tongues began in earnest. Then singing in tongues. I got mashed into a wall by 55-Year-Old Virgin's huge ass and there I remained. Trembling hands reached out and touched the walls. The furniture. The pictures. The telephone. "You never know," said Jap Hater. "Oh! Good idea!" they agreed.
The clump shuffled down the hall and moved to the next room, lead by Bambi. An overhead bulb flickered and she screamed. "It's here!"
The praying gained volume.
I got mashed into a door by the 55-Year-Old-Virgin.
We entered the kitchen. The kitchen was tiny.
Closet doors were opened and prayed into. Someone started swaying, and the whole group started rocking back and forth in unison. I was mashed into another wall at this point, and resigned myself to simply trying to draw breath while the others did the heavy battling with the demons infesting the cabinets. "It's here! I can feel it moving! It's running before us!" various people commented. "Where's it going? It went past me! I felt it!"
The whole group moved as one, in a clump. A couple of the women were already reduced to panting, barely able to gasp 'Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus' by this point. Nobody'd told them that Satan would be wearing track shoes.
"It went in here! cried Bambi. The group surged forward.
'Here' was the bathroom.
A very tiny, tiny bathroom.
The group pushed forward and found that not all of them could fit into the claustrophobic, closet-sized room at once.
Satan had obviously chosen the venue for this final showdown with care.
The group decamped to the entry and considered. Bambi twittered and meeped in the background like a nervous gerbil with a bad nicotine habit. I noticed that there wasn't one single place on the floor that didn't have a cigarette burn.
Suddenly "I found it!" cried the former prostitute. She was a tiny woman, and had wormed her way to the front of the group. "Come look! I found it! Here it is!"
Everyone crowded forward.
Ever heard of Masonite? It was marketed as a waterproof, decorative material for tub surrounds in the 60's and 70's...kind of a cross between Formica and wallboard. The smooth 'space age' material it was coated with supposedly*** rendered this material moisture-resistant and easy to clean. This coating was often printed with designs...flowers, snowflakes, geometrics...
This tub surround was printed with a tropical island scene.
Straw huts, palm trees, coconuts, ocean waves.
And Tiki god statues.
"I knew it! I never felt comfortable in there! I always felt like I was being watched!" exclaimed Bambi.
Grumpy Lesbian was crammed against the sink. Former Prostitute was seated on the toilet. Jap Hater had what floor space there was in the center of the room.
I was crammed into the bathtub, by now utterly mortified, with Smokers' Mom and the 55-Year-Old Morbidly Obese Virgin.
'Now everyone put their hands on the wall and pray!" Former Prostitute commanded.
And they prayed. Please, God, deliver this house from the clutches of Satan. Please, God, drive the presence of demons from the images on this bathroom wall. We refute thee utterly, Satan, and all thy works, and thy leering image of thyself as rendered in driftwood and dogs' teeth by the Polynesians and the DuPont Corporation in gold glitter paint.
Oh yeah... there they were. Jesus' little prayer warriors. Standing in the bathtub.
Exorcising the wallpaper.
Amen.
___________________________
*one of the first things I found out about being a charismatic catholic was that the typical unfulfilled adult catholic woman had really good reasons for being that way, most of them horrifically gynecological. also, that it takes very little provocation for your typical unfulfilled catholic woman to explain the exact nature of her particular problem at length and in excruciating detail.
**also the subject of yet another story. lucky you!
***masonite is bullshit. one scratch and the stuff swells up with black fungus like the black plague. god i hate masonite.
another lame excuse (too busy chasing hine)
'Nother short one. Hey, the short strokes are the best ones, y'know!
The Yummy Biker got a promotion! YAY!
He is no longer working the potlines (i.e. wearing several layers of flameproofed wool, suspended in a rickety piece of obsolete techonology over huge electronically supercharged vats of molten metal)
Obviously, THIS IS A GOOD THING.
Mr. Smithers switched him to Safety Ops.
No, ha ha! That is a joke! Ha! No, he is now in the machinists apprenticeship program! And instead of working all night long whenever the hell they felt like calling him in, he works days, 4 on, 3 off. And on his 3 off, he attends COLLEGE!
*Snif* They grow up so fast! *snif*
Now I like to walk up behind him and growl 'Heeey, little schoolboy, ahhm a little schoolgirl too!" in my best blues voice. A yuk a minute here at Rancho FirstNations, I tell ya.
So yeah, I'll see ya Monday.
Are you SURE nobody wants to hear more stories about the Meadows family? Gosh, I thought that would bring the requests just rolling in! SO confused.
oo, also- I just saw a sharp-shinned falcon take a robin off the hawthorne tree outside! Nature is happening in my yard! Very cool! Could someone tell me what they do with the bird once they take it? A SSF is almost the exact same size and weight as a robin, and this robin was loaded with berries. Can they actually take off and fly away with them? How do they eat them?
The Yummy Biker got a promotion! YAY!
He is no longer working the potlines (i.e. wearing several layers of flameproofed wool, suspended in a rickety piece of obsolete techonology over huge electronically supercharged vats of molten metal)
Obviously, THIS IS A GOOD THING.
Mr. Smithers switched him to Safety Ops.
No, ha ha! That is a joke! Ha! No, he is now in the machinists apprenticeship program! And instead of working all night long whenever the hell they felt like calling him in, he works days, 4 on, 3 off. And on his 3 off, he attends COLLEGE!
*Snif* They grow up so fast! *snif*
Now I like to walk up behind him and growl 'Heeey, little schoolboy, ahhm a little schoolgirl too!" in my best blues voice. A yuk a minute here at Rancho FirstNations, I tell ya.
So yeah, I'll see ya Monday.
Are you SURE nobody wants to hear more stories about the Meadows family? Gosh, I thought that would bring the requests just rolling in! SO confused.
oo, also- I just saw a sharp-shinned falcon take a robin off the hawthorne tree outside! Nature is happening in my yard! Very cool! Could someone tell me what they do with the bird once they take it? A SSF is almost the exact same size and weight as a robin, and this robin was loaded with berries. Can they actually take off and fly away with them? How do they eat them?
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