Red Gopher Has Spasmodic Breathing Sound Or Discoteque!

RECIPES!!!

The Hebrew National brand hot dog is the worlds' best hot dog. Best quality, best spices, best flavor, period. I bought a pack of these on sale recently, never tried them before, and I was just totally impressed. I mean, yeah, its just tube steak, I know. But it's everything a hot dog is supposed to be and none of the things you run into too often...those gasoline flavored, foamy, splurty, tallowy things coated with elephant ass grease or whatever that weird crap is. I prize that lack of elephant ass grease in particular because its one of those things that if you don't develop a taste for it in youth you're probably never going to and I never did. Hebrew National hot dogs are 100% free of elephant ass grease. They also don't have that weird clear jello crap all over them like canned ham, or visible tattoos. All plusses, in my book.

Go buy some Hebrew National hot dogs and make awesome

CHILI DOGS

1 eight-oz can of commercial beef chili, dumped into a pan and hit with a hand mixer until it's sort of slushy. What you want to do is break everything down into uniform chunks, not make a liquid.

1/3 cup minced white onion
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons lime juice

Stir together and place over medium low heat.
Dump six whole hot dogs into the pan and dunk them under the sauce. Let this heat for about 1/2 an hour, then serve in nice sturdy sandwich rolls with some sauce spooned inside. Don't use regular hot dog buns because they'll melt.
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This fall I had my usual overflow crop of tomatoes (because I rule,) and in addition to those my Bermuda onions went batshit and were rolling all over the place. Right at the same time there was a bumper crop of peppers coming in from Canada...multicolored bells, sweets, hots, Anaheim's, jalpenos, anchos, Hungarians, everything you can imagine. I bought those by the huge bagfull. Once my freezer was full I still had seven metric shit-tons of produce left, and so I switched on my dehydrator, dug out my mandoline slicer and made

CREOLE SPICE POWDER
This is not rocket science.

You need
a good big dehydrator...
...this is an 'Excalibur' brand and its a good one. Don't waste your money on one of those round ones; the only thing they're good for is drying that bud you grew in your bathroom.



a mandoline slicer...
...I wish I had one this nice; if you google/image the phrase 'mandoline slicer' you'll see a crappy one made out of white plastic which is the one I have. Anywho, use the thinnest slice adjustment on it.


a grindey thing....
...truthfully about the only thing a blade bean grinder is really good for; what you want is a BURR style grinder for coffee beans. So HA on you if you have one of these because it sucks and is stupid and smells.



and the ability to ignore the smell of tomatoes, peppers and onions for two days at a time.
METHODE:
1. Slice vegetables as thinly as possible
2.Dehydrate (as in: hit the 'on' button of the dehydrator and then go sculpt the Space Needle out of lard like you've been wanting to do)
3. Pulverize

...OK fine.
The tomatoes will take the longest. The first day, slice your tomatoes very, very thin and dehydrate them until they shatter. Now what I mean here is not merely crispy, I mean they should shatter like a dry leaf. The tomatoes will take about 24 hours. Start them on high, and despite what the instructions on the dehydrator says, turn the trays 180 every hour. Take them out about midway through, pry them off the grids and turn them over. After about three hours of this, or when they are withered and leathery and no longer drippy at all, turn down the heat to low and let them go all night.

The next day, slice up the onions and peppers-once again, very very thinly. Knock the sliced onions into rings, then load the dehydrator. Start everything on high for the first hour, turn them 180, and then then turn down the heat to medium and let them go until they shatter, which should take all afternoon. (The reason I say to do the onions and peppers together is, that while doing them alone would work just fine, a whole load of onions by themselves in the dehydrator going all day long gets pretty stinkass after awhile. Onions and peppers together just smells a lot better.)

Now you can pulverize them. Go ahead and use a mortar and pestle. *snork* Build up those biceps. Go ahead. It'll work. You'll be doing it for a week, but it WILL work.

You can use a regular blender as long as you run very small batches at a time, just a few chips.

A food processor will zip right through them, but it won't powder them as finely as a blender will (in other words, you'll get granules, not talc.)

A blade coffee mill will do the job, but make sure you thoroughly wipe out the mill after you use it for this.

Once pulverized, combine them all together in a jar with a tight lid and shake it up.

I have no interest whatsoever what kind of combinations or ratios or varieties you decide to use because its none of my business. Obviously if you use hot peppers its going to be spicy, and if you use vidalia onions its going to be sweet; just as if you were to use a parakeet it would be parakeety. In addition you could put some salt in there; maybe a little lemon pepper or some chili-lime spice. I mean, go nuts. Cumin, oregano, bay, powdered garlic, plain black pepper, sassafras, achiote, do what you feel.

Dump it on some fish or eggs, or in soup, or on your mother.
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I finally beat the crows to my hazelnuts and took a nice little harvest off my tree for the first time this year! And by 'I' I mean 'my daughter and grandson' because I didn't feel like grovelling around in the grass at the time, so I threw a couple of bowls in their direction, found some shade and cracked a beer.

The only problem with hazelnuts is that they're kind of process-intensive and fiddly. I cannot hull hazelnuts without fragging my entire surroundings in a 9 foot radius. Then I go all gifted and talented on they ass and put the meats into the shell pile and vice versa, or they get stuck in the shell and then I wham them with a hammer to get the shell off and they turn into moosh, or I hit them 67 times and chase them all over hells half acre and they turn out to be empty and it's just sad.

Once you have your small little handful of nutmeats and have disposed of the seven garbage bags of hulls that once held them, you have to toast them and skin them before you can use them to cook with. This means spreading the meats out on a metal tray in the oven and baking them on moderate until they smell toasty, and then dumping them into a big towel, bundling it up and smacking the bundle against the wall which looks both intelligent and sane, while random nutmeats go bouncing around your kitchen and brown flitters fly everywhere.
After all this drudgery you deserve a treat. Make some

HAZELNUT DIP
In a bain marie, melt one cake of broken-up Abuelita style Mexican chocolate, 1/2 cup fondant sugar, a couple of tablespoons of Hershey's special dark unsweetened cocoa, some heavy cream to keep things fluid, six ounces of white chocolate chips, and at least two cups of roughly chopped, toasted hazelnuts. Just keep stirring, tasting and dipping. Add cream until you have what you consider a nice dip consistency. Once everything is melted and you're satisfied with it, put it in a bowl and serve it with an insouciant air and some biscotti.

Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

The best books of the past year:

SMILLAS SENSE OF SNOW
No superlatives are adequate. Stop reading this and run out and get Ol' Smilla RIGHT NOW. The writing kicks ass, the story is riveting and the main character is the only woman in recent fiction that I could see myself being able to talk to for longer than five minutes. Except for the lady in....

THE #1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY
Oh, it starts out simple and charming. It is most assuredly NOT simple and charming. And it most assuredly is not merely a story about a woman who decides to be a detective. This one is worth whatever you have to pay for it, folks. As is...

THE ENGLISH PATIENT
It took me a long time to pick this up, and I was so glad I did. There are passages in this book that are so lucid that you experience them as visual memory. No shit. The only other author I've read that was able to elicit a scene like that was Kipling. Don't go into this expecting a story. It's many stories, and some of them are horrible and vast tangled around stories simple as dirt. How they even thought they could make a movie out of this one plumb eludes me.

I gotta go but I'll be back later this evening...I have to go to the dentist.

YAY.
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The dentist actually was not bad. I had to get a filling, which only took half an hour. Yeah, no kidding! I tell you what, its not like back in the '60's when you'd come out of the office after two hours, picking crap out of your hair and off the front of your shirt and tasting burnt enamel.
Since I have not been in to see the dentist since these amazing strides were made in the art, I was expecting SS Field Marshal Fred Flintstone wielding a stone hammer and a bird with a pointy beak like I'm used to; thus I was baked off my tits on Valium.
Half an hour later I'm completely through the procedure and just beginning to peak back out in the car. Fortunately I had enlisted my daughter to do the driving, and while she nattered on about boob jobs and public transportation I smiled and nodded and enjoyed the chemicals.
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I did something this year that I haven't done since I was a little kid, which was to go hit the post-Christmas sales. I came out of the experience having learned two things: you can make out like a BANDIT, and that I will never set foot in the Bon Marche again. You want to talk about a nasty, sniffy, shitty bunch of entitled women. Meaning the clientele, of course; not the longsuffering and generally excellent staff. They were lovely and attentive, which I can only attribute to some kind of selective Bon Marche clerk breeding program in the Midwest because if I worked there I'd be tasing some bitches in the throat. I had forgotten how utterly putrid a certain class of woman can be. Shopping for a scarf in the accessories department of the Bon brought it all cascading back. Oh the eye-rolling! The sneering! The curled lips and the exasperated sighs! Nasty Clinique-marinated matrons thrusting their diamond studded chicken claws past your face to finger the cashmere with the mindless avidity of zombies eating a baby, botoxed foreheads glinting in the fluorescent light! Skeletal high school girls, bad Ferragamo knock-off bags like buckle encrusted footballs tucked in each ones armpit, huffing their impatience with having to stand and wait to use their credit cards! Nobody meeting anybody elses gaze, grim, pissy and joyless...it was a less than delightful shopping experience. And all to buy a 6 foot length of yarn for 93 goddamn dollars? I walked my ass down to Target and found the same scarf for 23 bucks. Fuck the Bon.
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Just for the record: I now own NINE different Jimi Hendrix t-shirts!
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One more good book for the road:
STONE BUTCH BLUES
Oh man. This one was so intense I had to put it down a lot and just think about it all. I knew these women-not literally, of course- but I had no idea. NO FUCKING IDEA WHATSOEVER. This is our history. Read it. Be ready to feel some shit. This woman;s struggle to simply make a living and live out each day in peace and dignity makes Henri Charriere's efforts to escape the French prison islands look like the Jungle ride at Disneyland.

Have a nice holiday

And remember...no matter what you're serving...



...one flying baby can spoil an entire meal.

Have a wonderful holiday!

Pull Up Your Goddamn Pants You Fucking Moron: more butt humor for the masses

I remember back when the whole 'men wearing baggy pants' look came on board. It made me sad. All that fine denim-clad s-curved hine walking around for years was suddenly hidden from view inside over-sized board shorts*. It didn't seem fair. But after some reflection, I had to admit that not all men were meant to wear pants that fit correctly. If there's one thing I do NOT miss about the late 70's (aside from 'everything') it's men with big sloppy flubba-butts wearing shrink wrap pants. Man that was just nasty. NASTY!

Still, here's the deal: they were wearing pants. There was fabric between them and me. Not a lot, but its psychological distance we're talking about here as much as it is actual dernier, OK? You knew that stuff was CONTAINED. It wasn't going to suddenly break loose and run around going WOOWOOWOOWOOWOO like the Three Stooges.

Most importantly, you could rest assured** that you wouldn't ever accidentally have to SEE ASS.

And now this-and by 'this' I mean 'guys who wear their pants below their whole entire butt'. Not saggin'. I am not talking about saggin'. I mean the whole butt is hanging out of the back of the pants. The ENTIRE BUTT. HANGING OUT. ALL OF IT.

I don't know what this look is supposed to be conveying or who it's supposed to be emulating. All juggalo guys wear their pants this way; which is of course as one naturally expects from the developmentally disabled.

can you pick out which one... a. is only 14 years younger than his mother b. grew up in a single wide c. changed his name legally to 'Violent Hatchetman'?


But wearing your pants as though you've just filled them with shit isn't limited to the halt and the lame. Sometimes you see hip-hop looking guys rocking this look, sometimes meth-heads, dorkboys, rednecks... it just doesn't seem to matter.

For example, when I was in downtown Silverton last summer I saw this hipster kid coming down the street; black eyeliner, Hitler hair and all.
He was wearing a belt.
Cinched up tight.
BELOW HIS ASS.
He could not have pulled his pants up by tugging on the waistband in other words; he wasn't sagging. No, not in the least was he sagging. Them things were practically tattooed on. No, homeslice was doing this DELIBERATELY. Now even though I realized I was in downtown Silverton, smack dab inn the middle of the couture universe, I'm still trying and failing to cope with the sight of this Christmas tree farmers' slutty little 17 year old son taking tiny duckie steps down the sidewalk with his ENTIRE ASS HANGING OUT OF HIS PANTS.


I had no problem with the view as he came toward me. He was cute. Gave me a 'sup?' little nod, even. Hell, once he got close enough you could make out some dick-cleavage. I am all for dick cleavage. I am a huge fan of dick cleavage. But once he passed by I turned around to scope the back pasture and there was, just...... you know.

I cannot begin to describe what a complete buzzkill it was.

Guys, its stupid looking. And it's not even about the ass. It's

-well, actually most of the time, it IS about the ass. Like women and whale tails, it always seems to be the men whose butt you never, never want to imagine seeing who wear their pants like this. Still, you have to take into account the big picture. The whole enchilada. It's about the ass AND the underpants. Your hind end might be smokin hot; I'll never know. I won't care either. You know why? Because you're wearing guy's underpants over it.


Men need to not bother wearing underpants. Mens underpants are bad. They are pointless and bunchy and ugly. I don't even know why men wear underpants. You might think they're keeping your junk corralled; I say save your cash because thats already a lost cause, bucko. Brand new, mens underpants are at best depressing and vaguely medical looking. Once you run them through the wash a couple of times you lose all that sexy. You end up with a sexy which is a kind of 'are these my grandpas?' sexy. This is not a good sexy to have.

Do we see what I'm getting at here? Baggy wore the fuck out skivvies are what I'm getting at here. Look through your underpants drawer, guys. Do they really convey anything close to a 'come and get it' vibe? No they do not. They convey a 'my mom shops at Sears' vibe. Combine that with a less than optimum caboose and pants that hang down around mid-thigh and make you walk like you have a dozen bagels packed up your ass and what one is left with is the exact opposite of 'Let me enthusiastically sire many healthy children upon you'.

Now maybe if you're a 13 year old girl this kind of 'Woo! My butt is HANGING OUT!' retardation seems all daring and bad and therefore terribly alluring...the problem being that what you've just accomplished is to impress 13 year old girl. I mean, I once WAS a 13 year old girl. That's just....no. Guys, seriously. No matter how gross your ass is or nasty your underpants are, you can and should be aiming a LOT higher than that.


__________________

*right, Zack? Uh huh.

**you see what I did there? huh?

*** See! I did it again! did you see? did you get that?

Green Marmot Vexed By An Hundred Sandwich

One of the most interesting things you will ever go through is a colonoscopy, although this is hearsay since I went through mine passed out cold. From what I am told, I woke up midway through the procedure (I have no conscious memory of this whatsoever) facing the monitor where the drama of my lower intestinal tract was showing and loudly exclaimed 'Is that me? Oh wow! That is so cool!' and then fell back asleep. Now I wish I'd been awake enough to remember just what it is I saw that was so interesting. It could have been Amelia Earhart. I'll never know.

As it turns out I have four diverticules. A diverticule is a pocket-like rupture in the tissue of the intestinal lining.

OK fine. You know those big innertubes you use for river rafting, and how they'll get a weak place in the rubber and get this big weird bulgy part that bloops out? That's a diverticule. Or it would be if it were a colon.  So what we should all take away from that analogy* is not to ever use your colon as a form of alternative watercraft.  Of course if you go 'tubing you should bring your colon along; your colon wants to have fun too, but I mean just use the innertube for rafting because that's what it's for. If in the interim you should have cause to use your colon, then for the love of Pete go ashore. It would be gross if you just stayed there floating down the river in your innertube grunting out a dump. Instead, do like we did back when I was a kid in Oregon:  crap in the front seat of someones' car. (Some moron always forgets and leaves their window rolled down.)  It's a hell of a lot more convenient than duckwalking up and down the bank all bent over looking for a restroom since most rivers don't have them. The river will still be there when you get back.

I am given to understand that the major cause of diverticules is too much red meat in the diet, which simply doesn't apply in my case at all. Now as a child of the 60's and 70's of course I ate more than my share of cow, but in my case it had been pressure cooked for three hours beforehand. The result was best described as slippery. I don't see how it could have massed up enough to blow out the colon of a vole, let alone a person. Still, the fact remains. And there's photographic proof.

Oh yes!

I was offered copies of these Polaroids, in fact. Now honest to snot, what the hell would you do with something like that? Send them out as Christmas cards? Which now that I come to think about it I wish I had. They were kind of Christmassy. You know, all red and shiny and kind of....red, and stuff.

Insides are really red, too. I mean, REALLY RED. I figured they would be pale pink. You remember those medical books with the layered transparencies and how the upper intestinal tract was pink and the lower was a tasteful sort of muted puce? Those are wrong. It's red.

When you get a colonoscopy the first thing they do after they pump you full of anaesthetic and you say a bunch of stupid shit that you think is really funny but probably isn't and then pass out, is they take an air hose and pump a couple of blasts of air up there to inflate things. I was kind of appalled at how much inflation they can get by doing that. Jesus CHRIST. Take it from me, if they were feeling frisky they could pack a lot of stuff up there and you'd never have a clue as long as it was stuff like old rubber gloves or margarine. You could probably walk around all damn day just humming a lil' tune and never notice a thing until you took a crap, and then you'd probably scream.

Anyway, once that's done they take that hose out and then stick another different hose up there that has a fiber optic camera in it. It has a little headlight on it too; and what it lights up is shore nuff red, like I've been saying. Shiny, too. And there's all these little red spidery veins all over the place. I was expecting something that looked like raw chitlins. In reality it looks nothing whatsoever like raw chitlins. That didn't bother me as much as you might think it would.

Before all this takes place though you have to drink this liquid laxative called citrate of Manitoba for two days. Man does this stuff clean you out. Much to my surprise it tasted pretty good. Kind of like Squirt soda, appropriately enough. Basically, you should plan on just taking your pants off altogether and sitting on the toilet for that entire couple of days while this stuff does its job since as soon as it goes in, it comes RIGHT OUT. At VELOCITY. And it ain't over 'till the fat lady sings...or in this case, 'till the fat lady shits clear for at least an hour. And the fat lady did. Hell, the fat lady about fucking took the shine off the enamel.

Besides diverticules I had a couple of polyps. This pleased a certain vile, Lovecraftian part of my psyche: Ewwwww polyyyyyypsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

It sounds like something with tentacles and slime that barfs up corrosive acid like those gross deep sea fish that glow in the dark and sneak around at night and lick your steering wheel and go 'wghnnnnn' because they're mutated.  And if you have to have something potentially life-threatening growing in your butt it might as well be something with a cool disgusting name, like 'polyps' instead of something with a lame boring name, like 'toaster'. Think how humiliating it would be to read 'Cause of death attributed to ass toasters' on your death certificate.

Intestinal polyps supposedly can turn into colon cancer. I have no idea how this happens or why. If it were an infestation of things with tentacles and slime that barfs up corrosive acid you could appease them with blood sacrifices, but it's not, which is why they have to inflate your butt and stick a camera up it. Life is a mystery. In any event they stuck ANOTHER thing up there that had an electrified cautery thing and lassoed the polyps and sent a charge through and the polyps went 'PFFFT'. I can't say I was displeased at all. When you consider the fact that this completely obviates the need at some future date to remove several yards of colon, sew your anus shut, and cut a hole in your side so you can shit in a bag, you got to figure you don't have a whole lot to bitch about. The disgusting practical joke potential is, of course, astronomical; but I'll shit in that bag when I come to it.

This procedure takes about an hour, all told. Now that you are finished, when you wake up  you'll know three things immediately:
1.You are completely empty because not having eaten anything for 24 hours will do that to a person.
2. But now, thanks to modern medical science and a small compressor, all that unused storage space now contains the cubic air mass of a military weather balloon and it smells like vaporized ass growths; therefore
3. You are now primed to cut the fart of a lifetime.

And they encourage this!  The nurse who comes in to make sure you aren't dead actually tells you to try as hard as you can to rip ass!  Oh yes! And as soon as you do...for a good two minutes, like five draft horses, a trumpeting bull elephant, plus another elephant that's dead and all bloated up like how they get but then someone threw a rock at it so now it's deflating out this jet of green dead elephant fumes...omg, you will be SO PROUD.  Everybody in the whole building will now know exactly what kind of a procedure you just had, too.  The human body is a miraculous thing, kids.

Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

I remember my ex-husband the way he looked when last I saw him 23 or so years ago: a sweet little catamite angel, pretty as an elf. Naturally platinum blond, with sculpted lips, bone structure forever, chocolate brown eyes, slim, athletic and stylish (and trying to choke me out and kick my legs out from underneath me while I held our infant daughter in my arms. Ahem.)

Time, as they say, wounds all heels. I finally saw a picture of him taken about a year or so ago.

The guy looks exactly like a really mean hard boiled egg.

I could not POSSIBLY be more delighted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The swine and their so-called flu which has the brain of a duck you know have been defeated and I once again reign supreme, striding unseen and foul through the waste places of the earth. I thought it was gonna kill me. I can see why this shit is taking lives-even with good nutrition and timely medical care I was left feeling like I'd had a giant horrible leech sucking my will to live. The only other time I was left feeling this completely beat up and exhausted was after I'd given birth. It scared me badly.

From what I read swine flu heads straight for the lungs and creates all kinds of havoc there. I am here to testify to that fact, chillun. I went straight from it to bronchitis and pneumonia without stopping at GO. I could not walk across the room. I felt like-no exaggeration-I was being shot in multiple places all over my torso and upper legs with an industrial pin nailer every time I coughed (yeah I know I already said this in my last post but it bears repeating. It HURT.). All I can say is thank God I finished my Christmas shopping early because one trip to the seething dish of agar and pestilence called the ladies room at WalMart would have flat killed me. Just touching the latch on the stall door. BOOM. Dead. On the floor.

My advice to you is: don't get swine flu. And if someone offers you some swine flu, like say at a party or on the elevator or something, just say no.

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This past summer the Yummy Biker decided to take a mental health holiday from work. The Playboy of the Western World was kind enough to leave us more than enough wherewithal (which is French for 'massive cash') to take a few months off and enjoy life. We did a little recreational spending, travelled around, took a few road trips on the Victory, and hung out with degenerates. It was awesome!

Whats not so awesome, at least as far as my ego is concerned, is that suddenly the Biker has blossomed into a world class chef.

Here's the deal: I am the queen of cuisine around here. ME.

When I first met this man he was doing lame bachelor white trash things like eating dehydrated mashed potatoes and putting brown sugar into marinara. Meanwhile its been me who cranked out the serious chow and garnered all the applause and had to pretend to be all humble and shit. Sure, I'd let him mess around and make a few side dishes and stuff or do simple shit like roasts. I even let him keep his gimpy kitchen tools in my kitchen; it made him happy. And its not like he didn't have native talent; once I'd introduced him to the concept of respect for ingredients (and hidden the brown sugar) he demonstrated an amazing gift for flavor combinations and textures, better by far than mine. Still, could he make bread? Deep fry? Knock out a hollandaise, or put together a pate brisee or make a comfit or do any of that fancy technique stuff? No way.

Not then.

Here I thought he was laying on the couch all mokin da doink and reading American Iron. I was wrong. What he was actually doing was laying on the couch mokin da doink and watching Food Network and taking notes.

No kidding. I've found notes.

I'd be outside working in the garden, feeding stray cats into the chipper and meanwhile his ass was in the kitchen making fucking tapanade. I come in and he's all like "Oh here," and hands me some dish of amazing miraculous amazingness. "I made dinner."

I put on ten pounds in three months.

I has it

No I did not get a flu shot. Yes I know I'm in the high-risk demographic because I'm an asthmatic. Paradoxically, that is exactly the reason that I can't get a flu shot. Why? BECAUSE IT ALWAYS GIVES ME THE FUCKING FLU.

This is by far the most PAINFUL flu, in terms of general body aches, I've ever had. It started out, weirdly enough, as a horrific painful burning backache and then suddenly jumped up into my lungs. Whenever I cough it feels like I'm being shot with a pin nailer in multiple places on my chest, back, face and legs, and let me hasten to assure you that is NO EXAGGERATION. I've been coughing so hard that I've thrown up. My lungs have filled with a substance that closely resembles semi-hardened carpenters glue, and there's been times that I thought my air passages were going to stick together and stay that way. Bad news, kids.

The good news is, if you can get ahold of some amoxycillin and a bottle of Cheretussin (codeine and guaifenesin syrup), your shit is set. Run a line of the antibiotic, knock back a half a shot of the syrup and stay hydrated. Stay warm. Watch some Food Network. It'll fix you right up.

Quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

THE CANADIAN APOCALYPSE CAPTURED IN DIGITAL IMAGES THAT YOU HAVE TO CLICK ON TO SEE PROPERLY


...holy SHITBALLS

This was taken as I stood directly before a manifestation of God's anger; an ANGRY SABLE CLOUDAL PROW OF ELECTRICAL DESTRUCTION WITH ALL THUNDER AND LIGHTENING GOING SMACK! BAM! FIRE! AND ALL HUGE SMOKING CRATERS OF VITRIFIED FORMER GRADE SCHOOL AND PARTS OF BURNED UP KIDS FLYING ALL OVER AND LEXUS DEALERSHIPS WITH DEATH, AND FLAMES. This is looking WWN toward where MJ used to live before God destroyed it. I mean, just look at this! God is just stomping the crap out of Canada.


...just freaking pitiful

Note how you can clearly see the slashing streaks of Gods' precipitational judgement hammering down upon the teeming, apostate humanity which climb around all over British Columbia, commiting sins, failing to wipe properly and generally messing it up. Meanwhile....



As you can see, God is sparing America. This is because our stuff is the coolest plus we have FREEDOM.

How much clearer does it have to be? God's even following the federally designated boundary between the USA (yay) and the godless cheeser hordes (boo)!
See? Right on the other side of that line of trees is the Canadian Border. And Canada is GONE. It is NO MORE. It's been WIPED OFF THE MAP, BABY. This is what happens when you piss off God. God will flat TAKE YOU OUT.



Here you can see the pulverized pieces of former Canada that have fallen all over my lawn, which I just overseeded a couple of months ago. This happened in three minutes. It's still happening in the picture, which is why its kind of blurry. See, though, this is pretty typical; Canada pisses off God and then I get stuck with a bunch of burnt-up Celine Dion chunks trashing up my yard.

Here we are looking SWW: Lynden is looking good.



...which it continued to do for another two minutes, when this happened:



OK now wait.

OK now wait. Where is Lynden?
OH CRAP LYNDEN IS GONE.
...well wait though. OK, I can live with that. Seriously, Lynden is kind of annoying. I'll just shop in Bellingham and




...now wait. What the fuck.

CANADA HAS REAPPEARED.

...well SHIT.

*scraps plans to rule a post-apocalyptic Canadian wasteland dressed in motocross gear and a loincloth riding around in a dunebuggy firing a machine gun and oppressing people*

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Heres another couple of pictures I took just this morning:



Just another sunny gorgeous morning here in Sumas. Meanwhile, up on Dead Drug Dealer Mountain, a blanket of cloud hides the summit from view...



...then moves away, leaving behind a blanket of light snow five minutes later. This is how quickly things happen and how localized the weather phenomena are here. Lets all give my million dollar view a big hand, shall we? Isn't it excellent?

BICYCLISTS SUCK BALLS

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Green Ox Reads Seven Government Form: Gluey!!

What have I been doing during my long absence from the innerwubs? Thinking only of you, my darlings. Only of you.

With you in mind, then, I undertook to perfect a special recipe. This is particularly for those of you with an open mind, an adventurous palate and a thrill-seeking liver. So without further ado (or extensive disclaimer - if you misuse this it's going to take some deliberate doing on your part and I'm not your mother)I present to you the fruit of ten years' experimentation:

Shasta Daisies a la Mexico
...a delightful beverage you can serve at your next Young Republicans soiree
fig a: "shasta daisy" (wink wink) showing all plant parts.

Note: Effects and measurements of the "Shasta Daisy" are based on results using a middle aged woman weighing 210 pounds with an empty stomach first thing in the morning. Your results may vary. In fact, if you are allergic to opiates, your results may vary as far as death, which is fatal. Don't be a dipshit.

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INGREDIENTS:

-Entire "Shasta Daisy" plants, leaves and all, harvested after the first few seedpods have formed... any undeveloped flower buds removed and discarded, any flower petals removed and discarded, root ends and woody trunk cut off and discarded, the remaining plant parts washed and chopped into manageable pieces. DON'T forget the washing. Particularly if you have dogs. Yeah.
fig. b: "Shasta Daisy" comes in many different colors and petal configurations, which matters not one whit to the relative potency of its psychoactive compounds.

-Lukewarm water as needed

-One whole cake of 'Abuelita' style Mexican chocolate

-One pint heavy cream

-1/4 cup Hershey's Special Dark unsweetened cocoa powder

-Plain white sugar or honey (or fructose) to taste


The following ingredients are optional and to taste and can be omitted if so desired. I don't. These are what makes it extra delicious.
-MORE Hershey's Special Dark unsweetened cocoa powder

-One can of coconut milk (or one handful of shredded sweetened coconut)

-Ground nutmeg

-Ground cinnamon

-Ground black pepper

-More sugar or honey (or fructose.)

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INSTRUCTIONS:

Run the chopped "Shasta Daisies" through a blender, using just enough lukewarm water to make things able to move through the blades, adding bit by bit until you have 2 cups of green chopped up goop. Pour into a saucepan and set aside.

Now pour the heavy cream and/or the coconut milk into the blender. Break up the cake of Abuelita Mexican chocolate and add to carafe, blend until smooth. Or as smooth as it gets, which is a little sandy.

Add the rest of the ingredients into the carafe and blend them together now, if you're the bold type and know your spices. Or, you can wait and whisk them in later and taste often. It's up to you. I honestly don't care. Just do whatever the fuck you want. Just go right ahead.

Transfer the contents of the blender to the saucepan. Now add extra lukewarm water, cream or milk to this if you have to, enough to bring the slurry up to a 'Campbells chicken noodle soup' consistency. It all depends on how 'juicy' the "Shasta Daisies" were, so do whatever you gotta do here.


Stirring often, bring the contents of the saucepan up to a bare simmer, just before it begins to bubble actively. If you were all spineless about adding the extra ingredients earlier, now is the time to whisk them in, tasting often, but sparingly. After all, we're talking about "Shasta Daisies" here. At this point it's going to have a distinctly rank, uncooked green vegetable flavor. This is probably because at this point it's raw uncooked vegetable matter. You see.

Once it reaches the 'almost bubbling' point, lower the heat and let it steep on 'low' for at least 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. This develops the spices, extracts the active ingredients from the "Shasta Daisy" and also kills the 'lawn clippings and raw beans' taste.

Let cool (overnight in the fridge is optimum), then strain. I use a ricer over a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl, working in batches, so I can squeeze out every last drop of that "Shasta Daisy" goodness.
fig. 3: "Shasta Daisy". If anyone at this point actually, actually comments 'Hey, that's not a Shasta Daisy!', please go read Wife in the North.

This is delicious. DELICIOUS . The "Shasta Daisy" adds a pleasant astringency that keeps the whole from being too cloying, actually acting as both a culinary and a psychoactive ingredient. One 16 fluid ounce glass is roughly equivalent to the intoxicating effect of one hefty oxycontin, so if you're a cheap date don't be operating any giant wheat combines or the Space Shuttle or attempting microsurgery or taking care of an infant or trying to conduct serious business. Or actually yes, try and conduct serious business. And make a video of that, and send it to me. In about 30 minutes, assuming an empty stomach and a normal constitution, you should begin to feel the effects, which can last anywhere from 6 to 10 hours.

You Randolph Carter types will already know what to expect from the "Shasta Daisy" and its unique melange of active ingredients, and so you'll be glad to hear that you can use any of the usual enhancing agents to kick it with for that extra something special. I'd advise you to let it happen unassisted for the first trial, though. If I add anything, I add a shot of Bushmills and call it good.

Now, you see? Wasn't that worth waiting for? Yes it was. Now here's a picture of some boobs.

APRIL FUCKING FOOL

My computer was wiped out completely-COMPLETELY- by the April Fools' virus. For Gods sake, folks, be careful opening your e-mails. Particularly forwards. I'm pretty sure thats how it snuck in. I checked my mail, then turned off the computer for the day. When I turned it back on, garbage. Toast. A giant heaving pile of steaming fecal debris rotating silently in the void like a derelict spaceship from the planet Fuckroast.

What this means to you is that Paul is going on hiatus. For those of you new to the nutty wacky zaniness and madcap tomfoolery, go hit the archives and see what you missed and cry. (Ignore the labels. The labels mean nothing.) Hit the sidebar and go visit the Muk-sponsored sites. If you want an invite to Unorthodox Juju, or to wah and kvetch about me going on hiatus, or to send me money, gimme a dingle at

redace196oATgmailDOTcom

While I'm here I'll bring things up to date...
The Playboy of the Western World passed away and left us with a lot of things to finalize. He also left us more than enough wherewithal to finalize said things with, which was an unexpected blessing. As in, DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG.

The Playboy of the Western World is in heaven, and heaven is a significantly more fabulous place because of that

The Stainless Steel Amazon is going to have a baby here in May sometime, and she's going to do a home birth because she is not a simpering tool of the patriarchy and because birth is not an abnormal occurrance

The Lucky Bastard is riding a Sportster, growing a beard and getting ready to be a dad

The Goonybird is growing like a goony weed and doing his damndest to teach himself how to read!

The Arborist continues butch as fuck and hard as nails, making tall trees tremble, cows cower, and slashing tequila out the neck of the bottle

Girl Getty is still far too gorgeous, has 50% more hair and has opened another store!

Jimmy the Greek is cooking and reading!

Teh Princess is dancing!

Spreidel is running!

The important thing is, everyone is employed, healthy and happy.
Me, I'm outta here.

Yes, 'tis I

I'm still here. I'm just busy doing things. Secret things that you can't know about.

Fine, actually I'm re-doing my bedroom. Now here's a nice picture of Mr. Egyptian Penis Man:


Mr. Egyptian Penis Man says "Look busy"
I say "Never drive a car that has one wheel falling off it"

UPDATED: CRAP!

NOW WITH PICTURES! AT THE END!! SCROLL DOWN!!! QUICK!!!!
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I have too many collections.

I have a collection of 50's diner ware (matched, flawless, full service for 6! THATS RIGHT BITCHES!)
I have a collection of metal Tonka trucks and cars
I have a collection of eggs
I have a collection of things which are spherical (round rocks, globes, old bocci balls, slag...)
I have a collection of old pop bottles
I have a collection of paper ephemera
I have a collection of 60's era underground comix
I have a collection of mid-century modern display pottery
I have a collection of dead animal parts
I have a collection of glass measuring cups
I have a collection of vintage kitchen utensils

The only collection I have displayed in its entirety is the pop bottle collection. The rest are in storage, either in part (eggs, display pottery, animal heads) or in whole (all the rest of the stuff I haven't mentioned.)

My husband got me started collecting purely by chance, way back in 1986, when I mentioned that I needed a measuring cup for the kitchen. He brought me home a depression-era glass mug-style cup. "Aw," I thought, "how nice."

60 measuring cups later......some of which I still have....and use....

A need for an eggbeater (still in use) brought a 1942 Foley with a green handle into the house. Similarly, when our coffeemaker tanked, we picked up a 1935 Pyrex glass percolator (still have two of them, guts included.) Of course, by now we were both hooked. At one point I had every single item in this collectors catalogue:

(...well shit, I sold it and I don't recall the name. Had to get temptation completely out of my path. Anyway, it was a pretty comprehensive book.)

...and some that they'd never heard of. Including hand-made ones. 25 different egg beaters. 17 different pancake flippers. Tasting spoons-5. Choppers-5. Cake knives-4. Tinned milk openers-7 (including one given away as a premium by a funeral home. WTF?) Sub-collections included advertsing premiums, red handles, green handles, yellow handles, Foley, Formay, black composition ware....

In the meantime I had branched out into collecting antique working kitchen appliances, Bakelite, vintage crocheted hot mats, vintage Fire King and Pyrex (curse you Martha Stewart for making latter so desirable that it got priced out of my reach, you bitch!) and I had the Biker halfway talked into doing an entire 1940's kitchen.

Because I was working in rental properties I had my choice of any style of vintage appliance or accoutrement I wanted just for the asking. And they ALL WORKED. Condenser-top refrigerators, gas ranges, you name it- anything my demented little heart desired. Wringer washers? Check! Enamel double-sink with attached drainer? Yup. Light fixtures, fans, hardware, counters, trim....fricken' towel bars, even. LIGHT SWITCHES.

Bear in mind that at the time, we lived in a MOBILE HOME.

I finally woke up one day right before my daughter was going to have a birthday party and looked around at a kitchen that was almost entirely encrusted in vintage kitchen tools and asked myself "Self, why are you nuts?" I sold it all. Well fine, most of it. At least didn't lose money, but still. The habit remains, and I still find myself looking without even meaning to.

Same with the pottery. I found a lovely ikebana piece and it fit so nicely in with my decor. Then I found another, and it complimented the first one, and it was only .10 so how could I NOT buy it, right? And so on, and so on, and....yeah.

The dead animal parts collection is just strange on a couple of different levels. Once again, my husband started it. He presented me with a deer skull with antlers intact, and I displayed it, and then one of his buddies brought me a badger skull, and another guy brought me a coyote jawbone, then my daughter found an entire coyote skull...a crow in a tree dropped a squirrel skull right at my feet one day while I was gardening....the neighbors cat drug a rabbit into my shed and the bugs did the rest. I figure when the Universe wants you to collect something, you'd better heed it.

The problem is, I live in a small house. I really don't mean to accumulate all this crap either; its just once you develop an 'eye' for something, you see it everywhere. Like when you buy a certain make of car and suddenly it seems like the entire world owns the same one. And if you're me and you have the scrounge-bargain gene, you see it everywhere, for DIRT FRICKEN' CHEAP.
Whats a little Muk to do?

...Get buried in crap like the goddam DiAmato brothers if she doesn't watch out.

Anyway, I am seriously thinking about selling the mid-century modern pottery. Here's some pictures. You can enlarge them and enjoy the dust and smudges! The only one with any kind of a flaw is the tall white vase, and it has a chip on the base. Which you can't see in these pictures. So, yeah.




Anyone interested? I've got some sweet stuff. Gimme a dingle.

The Watchmen

Visually, The Watchmen ranks right at the top, with Dark Crystal. 300 runs a distant second. It is photographically true to the artists work. It reaches further by being absolutely, painstakingly true to the original story and writing style as well. This is no loose adaptation, and furthermore it works exactly because of these things. The two-story scale of the theatre version can barely contain it.


I'm pretty inured to screen violence, yet parts of this had me absolutely revulsed. It's not the graphic gore-which there is in plenty-it's that its not treated incidentally. You are meant to pay attention to it. Its meant to be ugly and squalid and disgusting and petty and cruel. And it is.


This movie is a lot of things...visually wonderful, exciting, intense-but it is not a 'fun' film. I thought it was almost as emotionally exhausting as Das Boot was. ( and at 2 hrs and some-odd minutes running time your ass ends up almost as numb afterwards.) This film makes a very caustic, mature statement about idealism vs. reality. It's R rated for a reason. Another large, blue, uncircumcized reason is waving around randomly on Dr. Manhattan for most of the movie. And then theres some hot costumed superhero sex too. So its not exactly a total bummer.

Go see it NOW. And go see it while it's still playing on the big screen. It's worth whatever you have to pay. It really is that good.

The Re-Store!!

Let's all go on a field trip to the local architectural salvage place! It'll be fun! Those of you allergic to bargains and terminal cool may stay on the bus. Here's a can of CoolWhip and some Wet Wipes. Let's all remember our manners and share.

If it weren't for the ReStore my kitchen would be a barren wasteland, like parts of Elton Johns head. As it stands, thanks to the ReStore, we no longer have to stack our pots and pans on elderly bald pop stars.

They don't only sell kitchen components, of course. Here's a nice bathroom sink from back in the dim and distant...
...I had one just like it at the place on 9th and Pine. It was so unpredictable that it had its own room, as did the bathtub. The toilet was so difficult it was in another part of the apartment entirely.

What was that extra bulge in front for? To keep you from falling off, I always figured. And look, the price has been reduced!

Behold: the mighty EXPULSO. Even after all these years it's a name that inspires confidence. You know the mighty EXPULSO is ready and willing to handle whatever you can throw at it. Bring it, bitch.

Of course should you host a long weekend full of frat boys and takeout Thai food the Restore has a solution for that too:


The whole place is filled with random strange works of...art...just like this, in odd corners. Some of it is made by the various volunteers who staff the place, and some of it is 'found'
If you and the Wallendas are experiencing one of those slow patches during a visit, here's something you could do to keep them amused! And no, its not for sale. I've asked. They said no. I was shattered.


Looking for a knob? You no longer have to go all the way to Dorset and knock on Beasts door. The ReStore has a hardware section!


Another random display challenges us to ponder the source of our water.

and one persons answer.


At one point in time one of the volunteers must have been from the UK. See, this is so typical. Like I'm not going to get it, right? Like they can hippity hop off and think 'Woo, I'm so clever and British! Those Americans have no idea what that means!" but see, I do; I just don't care so HA HA ON YOU.

This thing has been perched high above the paint and fasteners section for over 20 years.

I'm pretty sure that if you look at it for too long the pet mosquito leaps down and buries its probiscis in your brain.

This was on the back of some old cabinets. Man, if I could find linoleum like that I'd rip up the floor in my kitchen with my teeth!!! Is that not cooler than shit?



Bad 70's downmarket furniture store accessory #45: Glutea Maxitude


Which should serve as a nice lead-in to our 'WTF' category.
Seriously, what the FUCK?


No, now, lets move in a little closer and examine this thing. The more you look at it the more disturbing it becomes.

You see what I mean? Huh?

You see? You see what I mean? What the hell is this thing? I've thought of three possibilities:

1. A chiropractic or surgical device, possibly used for spinal injuries or setting leg breaks.
2. A device used for assembling and dressing store window mannequins
3. A device used for STRAIGHTENING OUT DEAD PEOPLE and keeping them that way while you wired them into place.

Anyway, I want one.

I also want one of these.

I've had one of these in almost every place I ever rented in Portland. They all worked flawlessly, you could break them down into easily washable pieces, and...

...they had this cool enamel cover that gave you extra counter space and kept the javelinas out of your stovetop. If we had NG hooked up I would donate my electric stove and install this sapsucker in a New York minute. I took a lot of really good meals off these things.


This is their trophy case. Its all weird things they found inside donations. Brandish the dried penis of an Alaskan Tigerbat three times in front of your screen to enlarge the image. Or click.

Now, wasn't that fun? Sure it was. Really, it was. Yes I know the man yelled at you. Yes I know Voices kept staring at you and it was creepy. It was fun because I said it was, ok? Now hurry up and get back on the bus before the cyborgs ask to check our ID implants.

You are all WONDERFUL.

I'm taking a break for awhile, probably about a week. We lost the Playboy of the Western World four days ago (we're checking all our pockets and the dryer) and right now the Biker and I are going to hang out in the real world and get things situated.

You can save your condolences; they aren't necessary. This was a good thing, and while we're all sad, we're relieved too. The Playboy had just come through a very difficult couple of months. It had been just one thing after another, and on top of it all he was recovering from a horribly painful bout of the shingles. All of that had stressed his system past what it could tolerate. After a couple of weeks in the hospital he'd been released into interim care. He was in his favorite facility where everyone knew him and loved him - in fact I'd had members of the staff say to me 'You know, don't take this the wrong way but I can't wait for him to be here full time!'
He was doing well, running around visiting and gambling and gossiping and whatnot. That morning the nurse gave him a haircut. When she was done she told him he was beautiful, and he looked in the mirror, agreed, and said "Let the party begin!" And a few minutes later someone walked past his room and found him sitting in his wheelchair. He had just slipped away to the party.

Those were his last words.

Isn't that something?

Isn't that the most amazing thing?

Right now, all the angels are singing 'It's Raining Men'

Probably racist and definitely not cheerful.

When I was about 21 my adopted mom told me my birthmothers name. She also told me that she resembled Keely Smith, was about 15, and 'looked like some kind of Indian'.

That's my ethnic heritage in six words.

If you've hit my archives or been here awhile you know what kind of a life I had growing up, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that very, very early on I'd made the determination that I was going to have to do things on my own. And I did. I am about the alonest person you'll ever meet. I don't even have a race. Shit, I don't even have a pretend family of origin any more. The place I belong is 'not belonging'. And it actually doesn't suck.

It never meant anything to me one way or the other for years, being a member of the Somekindas. And then there was the fact too, that given my mothers limited and racist judgment, anyone darker than piggy pink who didn't have a 'fro probably looked like a Somekinda to her. I could be Sicilian.

You have to learn ethnicity. I learned mine from riding the #3 bus up Burnside seeing Indians passed out on the sidewalk. That was what I learned about Native Americans.

I wasn't one of these people. I don't even look like one of them. I look white. I know I look white because that's the first thing that everyone says when the find out that I'm not. The only thing remotely native about me is the faint hint of an epicanthic fold over my eyes. I could pull my hair back into a ponytail and wear a wolf sweatshirt and the only thing I'd look like would be an idiot with a ponytail in a wolf sweatshirt.

So I'm here on the brink of my 50's and I'm reading 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian' as a part of a county-wide library project. The idea is to meet in discussion groups at the end of the month and share our impressions. I'm not going to do that. I genuinely do not want to hear what a bunch of unemployed white ladies have to say about this book. I know what I think of this story: It's amazing and it broke my heart. Alexie is one of the best writers I've ever read. I can feel every page.

There isn't a single thing in it that I can relate to as a Native American. Not one. Not even if I knew for sure that I was Native American.

I wish I knew, and I hope I never find out. I need a fucking sandwich.

Blue Moose Calls Softly Compel The Cheese

More snaps-n-pix madness here at Paul!

This time dear old Nations has gone undercover at the Lynden Christian Thrift Store with her trusty digital and found a virtual Alladins' Cave filled with the lost treasure of the White People!

Actually it was four banana boxes full of old lp's.



Now is that a clever title or what? Come on now. Thats clever. Sure it is. Get it? You're a believer, right, but your ass is all flabby and you have those wibbly wobbly things all up under your arms so you want to get in shape, or, in other words,'firm up', right? So you can be a 'firm believer'? See? See what they did there?

Tell you what, my old Barbie dolls had more 'toe. No really. Remember? Barbie had the faintest little crease (I know, what kind of a big perv even looks at poor Barbies 'area', I know, I know, mea fricken culpa, I was a perverted little kid, yes yes yes.)

I think these dairy princesses reproduce by exercising until something falls off; and then it divides and pulsates and throws off spores until it turns into a Bratz doll.


God, really, we need to chat. Whats with this thing on my wifes' head? And don't tell me its a mystery; I can already see that. I tell you what; it's is putting a strain on my ability to believe in a benevolent Deity.



...No, you certainly do NOT need to understand. That's why they call it 'Blind Faith'. Which I own. I do not recall Jimmy Swaggart being part of the lineup. Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Rick Grech....yes. Something is REALLY OFF HERE. I need to stop thinking about it too.



This is really really disturbing, and therefore eminently worth clicking on to enlarge and examine.
I read the liner notes, and sure enough, Bride of Chuckie there is the one that does the singing on this album, as if the look of terror and resignation on the face of the cement deer weren't clue enough.
I have a terrible feeling that this manic little homonunculus is going to be featuring prominently in my dreams at some point in the future. And that the nice lady in the background there? will have her hand up little Marcy's butt the whole time.