Spastic Twitching Muk Has Seven Seizures!!

Folks, I am back. Really I am. I know I haven't been posting. The reason why is because I am quitting smoking. Anyone out there who has tried to quit smoking knows exactly what I mean when I use that as an excuse, too. But for the rest of you smug pottyheads with your shiny pristine lungs, I will explain.

I cannot keep myself on task for longer than a minute before I'm up and pacing, gritting my teeth and clenching my fists like a goddamn tweaker. 10:am rolls around and I want a smoke. The phone rings and I want a smoke. The news comes on tv and I'm reaching for my lighter. I crack a beer? FORGET IT. But yeah...I sit down to write a post and before I finish a paragraph I'm wanting a smoke so bad I can taste nicotine in my mouth. So bear with me folks. Meanwhile, here is a nice picture of Jimmy Olson riding a big weiner:



As you can see, our man Jimmy is experiencing such a ride that all the words fell out of his word balloon! What do you suppose he's saying? What would you say? Do tell us as we gather in the comments lounge, won't you?

Maroon Dog Is Have The Misplace Preposition!!

Oh for heavens' sake I have been Christmas shopping and cooking things and babysitting grandbabies already. I have also been procrastinating on my super secret Canada post because cows have been looking at me funny. Seriously. I drive by and they all look at me funny. Like they know something. Something bad. Something serious. Something involving my social security number and address kinda stuff. I have duct taped all my windows and am only leaving the house to purchase sugar, coffee and flour. I am making candles out of lard and re-using bacon fat in oil lamps I made out of old soup cans and tampons (unused. I am not gross.) All my breakers are in the 'off' position and I am busily wadding up old newspapers and stuffing them down between the wall studs which is difficult while wearing a gas mask but I am coping. The cows are near, after all, and time is fleeting.

the cxows.

the COW2SSSSSSSSSSS.

Nine Flamingo Runs With Dangerous Have Pointy!!

What has FirstNations been doing lately, you ask?

1. Not doing a hell of a lot to quit smoking.

2. Gauge'n her ears out. I am presently wearing what appear to be large stainless steel curlicue fish hooks though each earlobe and while I don't recall the exact gauge they are about as big around as a common framing nail. They look wicked cool and divert attention away from the fact that I am 50, and dye my hair. Seriously. It works.

3. Chillaxin' here at the Rancho next to the heater while the ass half of me freezes (1 degree Fahrenheit, which is 'Shit, we ran out of degrees it was so fucking cold' in Celsius) and the other half of me watches large pieces of other peoples' barns whip past at 30mph. Well, actually that was the week before last. It snowed at some point during the proceedings but it all turned into freezing white sand and blew away north someplace. Of course, the only thing north of here is Canada. And our used snow. So that's OK.

4. Trying to offload some excess muffin top after a Lucullan Thanksgiving at my sons' place. Two duckies, half a delicious sugar saturated pig bottom, lots of gravy and gratuitous usage of butter makes Muks chubby. You too.

5. Slapping on the Retin-A with the same clandestine recklessness as Michael Moore hiding in a rented room with a jumbo sized jar of Nutella and a big spoon. And the news is: the stuff WORKS. I mean, the stuff works crazy good. Are you all old and shit? Run out right now and get you a big ol' Costco-sized jug of Roc and start slapping it all over yourself. It actually reverses time. Did you see that Superman movie where he makes the world revolve backward so fast that time itself reverses? Exactly like that. I now look just like my third grade class photograph.

6. Making a lot of bread. Loaf bread, not money bread. Although you'd be happy to pay money to eat this bread because it's really that good. I turned out a challah for Thanksgiving that would have made the Pope reverse his circumcision. Really.

In the quest for better bread I even made myself a new little friend: it's name is Dave, and it is a sourdough starter that lives in a mason jar in my kitchen. I feed Dave some flour and honey and a little of this and that and then shake the living daylights out of it a couple of times every day and then when Dave gets good and bubbly I dump off part and make bread with it. Owning a Dave is like owning a dog....it smells funny, its gassy and you have to feed it every day, but unlike a dog it doesn't hump the baby or eat cat crap.

7. Working on a super spectacular post about Canada, which is a secret.

8. Having a head cold.

9. Sitting underneath a nice new haircut, which is really really short.

10. Owning three new tattoos: an einkorn plant on the inside of each forearm going from the center of my palm up to the inside of my elbow:

...this exact picture, only I copied it so it would be one whole plant and made the roots look better and drew in a taproot that ran down into the lifeline of my palm which didn't feel real wonderful but was worth it, plus both plants mirror one another which looks awesome.

...and a nice picture of John Lee Hooker on my left shoulderblade. Jimi Hendrix is next up, and he'll be on my right shoulderblade. And yeah, I know exactly what you're thinking and you should get your mind out of the gutter.

That's what I'm doing.

What are you doing?

Green Bonobo Strike Force: Nadular Dangling!

Another cooking post!

Yes! More cooking stuff, despite the pleas of certain of you for more hot dugong action.


This photograph from Beasts' last Indonesian vacation explains why he came home wearing that ankle bracelet.

Yesterday I made a nice pasta dish using CHANTERELLE MUSHROOMS. And it was...nice. Chanterelles have a very delicate flavor. It's a good flavor, but not a terribly assertive one. What I want is a way to bring that flavor forward.

Another peek at his vacation piccys: A recent day trip to the Isle of Jersey reveals Beasts' unnatural fascination with fruit bats.

It might be as simple as using more chanterelle, or making some kind of an infusion; I dunno. Has anyone out there ever worked with chanterelle? If so, gimme some tips on how to achieve this.

YES I have looked online. NO I don't want to use a bunch of spices or onions or sausage or other types of mushroom. I just want the chanterelle flavor to be LOUDER.

Any suggestions? That don't involve links to Epicurious? Please?




"This very bad man makes kissing of dugong, then and try walk away date underage dugong like as though he can come to foreign country like big talking imperialist and just do whatever he want to. We here in Jakarta say no Mr. Beast who is all hairless like ladyboy is not welcome back here ever!"

Violet Ibis Amusement Of Fire: Drapery Hot Flaming!

This is the story of my second-to-the-top Worst Date Ever. Number 1 is here.

Now, many of my dates have had bad moments, but this date was bizarre from beginning to end, which is why it earns the second place ribbon. So..... (extensive preamble follows)


_______________

My senior year in High School my parents decided to allow me to have a social life*. My new friends-to-be were selected from the offspring of my mothers' religious buddies, a rather shallow and murky pool at the best of times.

Our outings were...charming, I guess you'd have to say. It was sort of like the 50's...we would attend evening 'Youth in Christ' meetings and then all go out in a big heap to McDonalds or something and sit around with our huge bibles stuffed with tracts, talking about the Lord and sipping pop. One memorable evening found the ten of us seated in a greasy banquette at Lani Louis' while the boys chugged Pepsi and then treated the other patrons to a belching contest, which is what passed for 'pushing the social envelope' among this crowd. Maybe the adjective I'm looking for is 'sad'.

My Mom had decided that I was going to be best friends with one girl in particular, and this girls' mother was consulted and had agreed. T's mother described her daughter, the eldest of eight children, as being mature enough to be able to keep an eye on me and steer me in the right direction, and firm enough in her walk with the Lord to be able to resist any temptations I might throw in her path. (T recounted this end of the phone call to me and we were both almost too appalled to laugh about it. Almost)

T's mother was a very sincere and sweet lady, but she had no memories whatsoever of what being a normal teenager was like**. As soon as T and I were out of the driveway the fuckity-fuck-fuck started flying and we lit up a smoke. Then we hit a gas station, slapped on a couple of layers of makeup in the restroom, and headed out to see if we could get served alcohol somewhere.

One night T stopped off at a house and picked up two boys. Surprise! It was one of those 'guess what?' double dates. Her chosen was a nondescript young man with a sprinkling of violently red acne. His version of 'hello' was to step into the car, slide across the seat and attach himself to her mouth like a lamprey.

My date was a total Red Shirt. His name didn't even appear in the credits...all I remember about him was that he was male and somewhat taller than me. He said nothing. He just took my hand in his, covered it with his other hand, and spent pretty much the rest of the evening patting it gently from time to time. This was better than having a lamprey attached to my face, and as lampreys tend to run in schools I was content to let things remain on this lower rung of the piscine 'affectionate display' scale.

T and her date smooched and slurped pretty much constantly from that point on. Me and the Red Shirt sat in the back seat and looked out opposite windows. How we managed not to end up dead in a ditch still amazes me. Still, I wasn't complaining; I was out of the house. So it was that we spent what seemed like the next 10 hours driving aimlessly around Clackamas County, no radio, no conversation, just the constant slurp blat splat blurble of Lamprey Boy attempting to hickey T's face into a meaty goo so he could suction it into his tooth-rimmed maw.

Somewhere in the outskirts of Oregon City Lamprey Boy broke suction and said "Hey, turn here. I know a guy who lives up the street. He'll probably let us party at his place."

That was how I met Jay.

We walked into an apartment filled with overweight armchairs, a cabbagey smell, hobnail glass and crocheted doilies. It looked like it had been decorated by someones' grandmother, probably because it had. Jay's grandma. Jay had been living there taking care of grandma during her last days and had simply failed to move out once she'd gone on to that big Bingo hall in the sky. His only personal addition to the decor from that point on had been to take his deceased grandmothers' lipstick and write 'affirmations' all over the walls. "You are a worthwhile person" "You matter" "Life is good" and other things like that. A huge mirror dominated one wall directly across from the couch, framed in roccoco gilt, and this was completely covered in happy mottoes, a little sparkly place with a crown on top drawn right in the middle where our boy Jay could admire himself.


Anywho, I could see at once where the evening was headed so I pleaded cigarettes, and with that Lamprey Boy took his overactive salivary glands, T and Red Shirt into the back bedroom and shut the door. Jay seemed to take this in stride. "Would you like to sit down?" he said.

Jay and I perched on his couch and made distracted, awkward small talk for the next hour while I chain smoked and angled around trying to frame my face in the bare spot on the mirror. While we sat there and the silences grew longer, someone obviously sent by God chose that moment to set a series of dumpster fires up and down the block. We opened up the window and leaned out to watch the firetrucks and police cars caroming up and down the street randomly while flames and smoke roiled up from the alleyways. The evening had taken a distinct turn for the better, I decided. It certainly was less creepy than trying not to hear what was going on in the back bedroom...and distracted me from dwelling on the fact that I still had what was bound to be an extremely awkward ride home ahead of me.

(Now we're coming to the date part. Hang on.)

A week later the phone rings and who should be on the other end but Jay, sweet talking my mother, asking her for permission to take me out.

What, as they say, the FUCK.

T, as it turned out, had given him my phone number. And since T was approved by God and my mother, that, it seemed, was good enough. Sight unseen, permission was given, and just like that, I was going out on a date. What I thought about it was obviously immaterial, but after a moments' reflection I figured, as I did a lot in those days, what the fuck. It got me out of the house.

Saturday night Jay showed up at the door with his thinning mullet, Michael Caine glasses, and a friendly expression. He wore a yellow percale shirt with a tie and neatly pressed slacks. He looked so...nondescript. My mother was simply thrilled! I was completely bemused. He lead me out to his car.



It was his grandmothers car.

It was a Rambler.

This is the first and only time I have ever been in a Rambler. I am here to tell you that riding in a Rambler is a completely average experience, crocheted doiley on the rear package tray notwithstanding. It becomes less average when the driver begins giggling and veering randomly across four lanes of heavy traffic on 82nd Boulevard like a small motorboat piloted by a drunk. During this time Jay taught me how to let the slipstream coming from the wing window suck the ash off the end of a cigarette, and told me that he was 35. Being 17 and thus kind of an idiot, I had no problem with that. He smiled over at me. "Anyway, I thought we'd go see a play," he said. "A live theatre performance up at Lewis and Clarke College. Is that ok?"

I was thrilled! "Why sure, thats fine!" I replied.








.........It was 'Equus'.




An hour later I was seated in a small auditorium filled with middle aged people in tweed and hand-woven fabrics, not ten feet away from a naked kid smacking himself with a wire coathanger, a makeshift snaffle bit in his mouth, followed shortly thereafter by a naked kid riding another naked kid wearing a horse head sculpture made of rebar, which happened just before the part where the naked kid has sex with a naked girl and then the naked kid jumps up and runs around screaming and blinds a bunch of other naked horse head things with a pointy thing. I was fascinated, but mainly I was trying not to imagine why this 35 year old man had taken a 17-year-old girl to see a naked play about horse-blinding.

After the play was over he announced that we were going to go visit a friend of his and the whole bunch of us were going swimming.


What he failed to tell me was that this friend of his did not own a pool.

And was female.

And had three kids.

And five pythons, one anaconda the size of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, and one rattlesnake. And lived in an extremely bad part of town.

It turned out that this woman had not been expecting him, which added a whole new level of awkward to the evening. She stood there in the doorway, completely surprised and obviously more than a little dismayed to see us on her front step at 11 pm, looking from him to me and him to me again, her frown deepening. "God, Jay, are you kidding?" she finally said.

She was even more surprised when he asked her if the group of us could go swimming. "You mean, at my work? I'm......not sure that would be such a good idea right now," she explained uncomfortably. "It's a full moon."

"Oh," said Jay, nodding.

I didn't get it.

"She's head nurse up at the psych ward at O of U hospital," Jay explained. "So she has the keys to the therapy pool."


We all looked at each other.

It only occurs to me now that I should have wondered under what circumstances he had originally made this womans' acquaintance. What I did wonder was why on earth anyone would think "Hey! What a great idea! It's nearly midnight; I'll just invite myself and my retardedly underage date here over to a psych nurses' house in the middle of deepest, darkest Albina and ask that she jeopardize her career by sneaking all of us into the county charity hospital so we can go swimming in a pool full of nutty people whiz!"

I went outside onto the porch and had a smoke. I had several as I watched the lowriders thump past, smoke lazing out of the windows. Fortunately it was a lovely night. As far as I could tell. One clue was the distinct absence of light. There was a lot of it. I reached inside and flipped on the porchlight. The lady of the house leaped over and turned it back off. Through the thin crack of the rapidly closing door the lady of the house told me that if she left on the porch light and let me stand there under it looking white I'd probably get shot.





Gosh. Thanks.





I figured 'Oh well' and went around to the side of her house to take a leak.





So there I was with my skirt clutched in a bunch before me, bare ass hanging in the breeze, taking an alfresco piss between two houses in the middle of a slum...still, I had the trees, I had the grass, the night sky, and sweet music in the distance (Bootsy Starr 'Dr. Funkenstein' as I recall) which all combined to make this the most romantic part of my evening.

When I came back inside, she and my date were missing. I went straight to the bedroom door and listened. Bob Marley was playing on the stereo. She was giggling.

This was not as dismaying as you might imagine.

I wandered around the room and looked at the snakes. I found a butter tub full of crickets and dumped some in with the rattlesnake. I watched it capture and eat the crickets. It was interesting. I dumped the rest of the crickets out behind her couch (crickets-the perpetually chirping gift that keeps on giving). One of her kids woke up and I got him a glass of milk. He let me watch him feed a white mouse to the anaconda. That was interesting too. About 45 minutes later I knocked on the door of the bedroom and announced that I had to be home by 1:am. My dishevelled date emerged and we went home.

Inevetably, INEVITABLY, Jay called me a couple of days later.

My mother could NOT understand why I refused to come to the phone.

_____________________________________


*Little did they know!

**T's mother had entered a convent at 17 and was back out at 23. Ten years later she had eight children. I kind of expect that her version of 'happy teenage memories' involved saying seven decades of the rosary while kneeling on uncooked rice.

Blue Monkey Battles Seven Dog!

I've been on a weather kick lately.

I live in an interesting kind of microclimate here. I am in a long, flat level valley running ne to sw in a little town which is almost surrounded by mountains, only not...oh shit I'll just draw it:



OK. So this terrain makes for some really interesting weather formations. My picture taking skills blow or I'd post some pictures I've taken; they kind of lose their impact when all you see is a strange blur in the distance and I have to explain "See, that huge cloud is a thunderhead and that thing hanging down from it is a verga formation filled with locusts, see, and it's like raining from three different cloud levels, but the wind is bending it into an 'S' shape, or a W, only you can't make that out, and those blurs are meteorites so yeah, Vancouver is on fire out of frame there to the left, and that building there is just about to explode because some lightning struck it right after I took this."

Anyway, my question is this: What's the wildest, weirdest weather phenomenon you've ever seen? And/or experienced?

Bleeding Doughnut Take Daring Leap Of Fly!

I have a pah. It's spelled 'pie' but I like to say 'pah'. So anyway I have one.

I have a pah because I bought the wrong kind of yogurt. I went to buy plain whole milk unpasteurized Guernsey yogurt but I got vanilla instead. Both yogurt containers have a picture of a cow on them and I only looked as far as the cow picture.

I wanted to make Greek yogurt. I used to make this waaaay back when the same product was called 'yogurt cheese' and only hippies made it. I used to use it in place of mayonnaise. I used to make my own yogurt too. This is because I don't watch a lot of television and I don't play a lot of video games and I'm beginning to think I should start.

So I made the Greek yogurt, only when I went to drink off the whey (which I like; plus, if you fart a lot this will totally cure it. Someone please buy me a Gameboy.) it was totally sweet plus it tasted like vanilla. I drank it anyway and it was good. But that still left me with a pound sized lump of sweet vanilla flavored Greek yogurt about the size of a grapefruit. I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do with that. It sat in my refrigerator. I thought about it.

Two days later it was still there so I decided to make pah.

A yogurt pah.

When it was done I made a little heart on top of it with some Hershey's chocolate syrup but the top of the pah was still warm so it spread out. Now it looks like the floor of a tavern where loggers hang out; plus there is a bug on it.

It is a a fruit fly. It is 41 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Why are fruit flies dying on my pah?

YOGURT PAH

All ingredients at room temperature:
1 pound of whole milk Greek yogurt made out of vanilla yogurt, well drained and firm
1 package of plain cream cheese
1 tbl vanilla extract
1/3 cup of honey
1/4 cup confectioners sugar
4 eggs
Whup all these together until they are completely shiny and smooth.

-1 graham cracker crust in the aluminum pan like how you buy at the grocery store in the freezer case

Bake the crust for 15 minutes on 350. Cool to room temp.

Dump the filling into the crust.

Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.

Make a heart design on top with some Hershey's chocolate syrup using your ass.

Pick off dead bug. Or just sink it and smooth over the place with a wet spoon.

____________________________

GREEK YOGURT

I have no idea why this is Greek or whats supposed to be so Greek about it. It looks nothing like any Greeks of my acquaintance.

Utensils you will need:
One fine mesh strainer or some cheesecloth doubled over which you will have left over from making laudanum

One bowl to catch the whey


-Dump the yogurt from its container into the a. cheesecloth and hang this in a bundle over the bowl overnight. b. strainer, put this over the bowl and leave it overnight.

-Drink off the whey to keep you from farting so much.

What is left in the a. cheesecloth b. strainer is Greek yogurt. If you leave it go longer in the a. cheesecloth b. strainer, you will have yogurt cheese. It's good to cook with. I really don't care what you use it for.

If you don't ever fart and you're standing there looking at the bowlful of whey going 'ew there's no way in hell I'm going to drink that shit' you could make Kimchee instead.

__________________________________

KIMCHEE (makes about 16 oz)

One head of NAPA cabbage. Has to be Napa cabbage. You will think 'Holy crap this is a lot of cabbage' but have faith.

One bunch scallions (about five or six scallions)

brine (very salty water which you make yourself using KOSHER salt and water. Add enough salt to the water until it tastes oceany. That being said, do not use sea salt or worse yet, sal gris that some old broad in France scraped off the beach and is full of seagull crap and dried shrimp buttholes; use PLAIN KOSHER SALT. It's simply a better, cleaner product.)

flavoring-
Garlic
fish sauce, sparingly...its salty and rather assertively flavored
Mild chili powder
toasted sesame oil
fresh ginger
1/3 cup whey off live culture yogurt, plain

-Wash your vegetables very, very thoroughly. Core and cut up the Napa cabbage into bite sized pieces. Take the root end off the scallions and pitch, rough chop the rest. Put the chopped veggies in enough brine to cover them. Wash them around in the brine with a spoon and then put a plate on top of it to keep the veggies submerged.

-Leave overnight.

-Drain the veggies and pat them dry with a towel, or put them in a salad spinner. Reserve about a cup of the brine. Taste it for saltiness; you might want to add a little plain water to make it palatable.

In a blender or Cuisinart, mix together the spice ingredients. I used about 1/3 cup chili powder, half a head of garlic, about three tbls of ginger (peeled and grated) and then the fish sauce and sesame oil to taste. You know I also used hot chili powder but I went into this assuming you were kind of a weenie so I neglected to mention that in the ingredient list.

With a spoon or your hands, blend the vegetables, the whey and the spice mix, coating every surface. It will smell SO DELICIOUS!

Put the whole shebang into a very clean glass jar or crock. Tap it on the counter to get it to settle and bring the air bubbles out of it. Now, top up with the brine. Fasten the lid on but not too tightly. Now place this into a plastic bag and fasten that shut. What's going to happen is that this whole mixture will begin to ferment, which is exactly what you want, and it will need to be able to spill out a bit. The bag is to prevent a mess.

Store this in a cool, dark place. Check it every day, morning and evening. In about two or three days it will begin to ferment and you'll have a mess, but the bag will have caught it. Clean up the jar, tip out some of the juice if you need to, then fasten the lid down but don't reef on it. Now put it into another clean bag, fasten the top and put it in the refrigerator.

Keep on checking it. If you need to, change the bag and clean up the jar. This is all perfectly fine; it doesn't mean the kimchee is spoiled. But yeah, since this is fermenting, it might leak again. Then again, it might not. I don't know. That's the fun of cooking. Sometimes everything goes according to plan, and sometimes things explode and you end up with a bagfull of broken glass and cabbage and crap in your refrigerator.

This will keep for about 30 years. You can dip out a little whenever you want and eat it on rice, or your dog, or even put it on a hamburger. It is supposed to be one of the top five healthiest things you can eat. No kidding.
_____________________________

You'll still have a lot of whey left. My advice to you is to drink it because you really do fart a lot more than you think you do.

It gets better. Meanwhile, you don't have to put up with shit.

I grew up in Milwaukie, Oregon, which was then, and by all accounts still is, a very poor, rather squalid, working class area just outside of Portland. In fact they refer to that whole area these days as 'Felony Flats'. My family was a mess. I spent the first three years of my school career in Catholic school, and it was there that I met my first crushes...a little girl named Robin and a boy named Patrick...both of whom I wanted to marry. Both of whom I felt exactly the same way about.
Yes, I was bullied.
The thing is, I wasn't bullied for being bi. I was bullied for being a victim. Bi never came into the equation. Of course I got called 'dyke' and 'lezzie' like every other girl did back then, but it was just another epithet. Shit; I didn't even realize there was such a thing as 'bi' until I was in high school, and hadn't a clue that it applied to me until I was 18. That's why my voice doesn't really belong in Dan Savages' 'It Gets Better' project. But having been bullied is something I need to come out about anyway, and maybe some kid will read this and grab a few pointers about how to survive until they can get away from the vile, substandard, hopeless snake pit full of dull norms, moral cowardice and future real estate salespersons that is the American school system. Feel free to pass this along, but be warned: it is not politically correct, and it is not the typical adult 'just tough it out' sophistry that people my age are supposed to pass along when talking to kids. It's real, and 'real' is not pretty. I'm not going to dumb this down or lie.


I was bullied. I was the goat. I was the kid in class that everyone could mistreat, and did. I was the kid that all the adults disliked and ignored. Anything you did to me you did with impunity, in front of anyone you pleased, without a care in the world for any reprisal or punishment whatsoever. I was that kid. It started in first grade and continued up until I started Jr. High. Bear in mind that the things I'm going to recount were perpetrated by little children, little grade school aged children, ON a little child. Your precious angels are capable of being bloodthirsty little hyenas, folks. If you look away, you collude.

I was hit. Shoved. Cursed. Struck with tree limbs and dirt clods and pieces of pavement and rocks. I had traps laid for me, where some kid would pretend to be my friend and lure me to some secluded place where a group of others would ratpack me. One group of kids tried to catch me by the neck with a rope. I had shit thrown at me many, many times...and I mean actual shit. I was hunted around the neighborhood by huge packs of kids, on bicycles, running, screaming 'Kill her! Get her!' I couldn't go swimming unsupervised; not at someones' house and not at a public pool. I cannot tell you how many times kids tried to drown me, holding me under and take turns doing it.

This kind of thing went on every day. Every single day. It happened in front of adults, who would simply turn their backs. It happened in front of teachers at school, who either turned their backs or made me spend recess in the classroom. It happened in front of my parents, who did nothing to hide their utter contempt of me, who did nothing to prevent it, and who blamed me, to my face and to anyone who happened to be present, because I was being spoiled and sensitive and weak. That I was just doing this for attention. That I was deliberately inviting other kids to bully me because I liked the attention. Yes indeed.

School was its own kind of hell. Summers were worse. At least in school there were rooms to hide in and doors that closed behind me. In the summertime if I was out in the open I was prey. The only way I could go outside my yard was to either sneak out at night or wait until it was Sunday, when all those good little children were in church.

I spent the majority of my childhood hiding. From everyone. I spent that entire time in a constant state of mortal fear. And that's no exaggeration. I had absolutely no backup whatsoever. Any adult who took my side was actively discouraged from doing so by my parents, who took pains to explain to them what a contemptible, sick, bad, weak, lazy little girl I really was. Once again, this is no exaggeration. None of it.

By the time sixth grade rolled around I had perfected the art of judging when it was relatively safe for me to be seen, and how, and where. The vigilance was constant. I cried in school every day. I went home and cried every single day. All the adults in my life were either sick to death of me or had been so thoroughly co-opted by my parents that they worked at ignoring what was going in in the name of not feeding into my perceived sick attempts to get attention.

To this day it horrifies me to think that most of the children responsible for the worst of the bullying actually went on to have children of their own. Most of the kids in on it were simply going along with the crowd and acting out whatever aberrant group behavior dynamic was happening. But some of those children, more of them than you'd think, were absolutely fiendish... calculating, unrestrained, gleeful little psychopaths. I always wondered what their parents would have done if they'd known that their darling little angels spent recess kneeling on a little girls chest wiping dogshit in her face and trying to force it in her mouth, or trying to pull down her underpants and shove sticks or pencils into her crotch. I remember looking up into the glittering eyes and hectic faces, the spitty red lips and fast breathing, and being repelled and horrified and feeling terror beyond belief. It was like rape. It was like being attacked by demons. And I wonder of any one of the group of kids standing around in a circle laughing and jeering, watching all this happen to me, ever remembers any of this at all. Or what they think of their own participation, if they do.

The adults, when they deigned to notice, wrote it off as 'kid stuff'. I cannot tell you how many times I heard that hateful, dismissive phrase. "Oh, its just kids being kids. One of these days she'll figure it out but I guess she just has to learn it the hard way!"

The first time I ever thought of suicide was when I was six years old. I thought of suicide every single day. The first time I realized that God was not there was when I was six years old. God still isn't there, but I no longer expect it either, which is a huge relief. Adults lie about God to children. God will fix everything. Nothing happens to you without a reason, and the reason I was given was that I was being punished. I was told to pray. I was told to ask God for forgiveness. That was supposed to fix everything. All it did was take the complaints out of their ears.

The reason that all this happened to me was because of two things: First of all, I was raised by extremely disturbed, antisocial people, and my earliest behaviors were all centered around trying to placate and please people who simply were not going to be placated or pleased by anything except the opportunity to bully someone. I learned how to be a bully magnet, in other words. A perfect one. By their lights, when I was being 'good', I was being a victim. I was trained to be a specialist at drawing out the worst behaviors out of the worst people. And I was no charming little girl to be around either. When I was very little I acted out many of their behaviors. No, I was not a nice or a pleasant little girl.

Secondly, I had juvenile onset clinical depression. I would go in one sweeping moment, apropos of nothing at all, from feeling normal to barely able to think or move, and I can remember these episodes occurring when I was as young as four years old. As I got older they would happen more frequently and would last longer each time. My only defense was to simply 'blank out' and become inert. This did nothing whatsoever to further my career as 'nice' or 'pleasant'.

Everyone learns that survival of adversity is a matter of inner strength and perseverance and bravery and clean living and moral rightness. And if your name is Meg, Jo, Beth or Amy that might in fact be the case...but here in the real world the only thing that counts is what you DO. No psychopathic ten year old is going to stop and reflect on the error of their ways in the face of their victims courage. A psychopathic ten year old is going to continue to gleefully smack the crap out of that victim and to enlist all her little friends to come help. Children love a victim. A victim is someone upon whom they can act out their anger and take out their frustrated powerlessness. A victim is someone who has even less power than they have. This same dynamic plays out for adults too. Ever noticed? It also explains why girls are by far the most horrifyingly evil, sadistic, calculated and most of all SNEAKY bullies that walk. Society still has a long way to go, and there is nothing angrier or more frustrated than a thwarted little girl. Give that same the leadership of some deranged little psycho and a secluded spot on the playground and your darling daughters think nothing of stabbing that kid on the ground with a sharpened pencil. In the breasts.


I was not the worst case of a bullied child at that school. There was one boy who got it worse than me. There were two other girls who were shunned for being poor and smelling like piss. I have to say though that I hold the dubious distinction of having been the most hated girl at Seth Llewelling 1968-1971. Go me!


The thing-the ONE thing- that saved me was anger. And how did I discover that buried beneath everything I had learned and everything I was going through?
I went through puberty.
Nothing releases the floodgates of hell like a few extra squirts of estrogen, folks. I'm telling you!

And boy, did I know all about acting out anger. I learned from PROFESSIONALS. My whole childhood was like a textbook. And I practiced. Yes, I actually practiced. In a mirror. I looked back on my own history and thought about what had worked and why. I read all kinds of things I should not have to pick up as many swear words and putdowns as I could. I studied movies for devastating lines. I plotted out sneaky tricks and pranks. I began paying a lot of attention to vandalism and the tools of that trade. I laid plots for revenge. Most importantly, I mapped escape routes and devised convincing alibis. The day I first set off to Jr. High my feeling was "There is no way in hell that I'm going down without a fight. Fuck them ALL."

As important as this decision was, there was another aspect to it that is possibly more important than simply the declaration of war. You see, there was no doubt in my mind that I WAS going down. There was no other fate for the person I was then. As I laid my plans, I had also, as a consequence of finding out just how much anger and hate I was filled with and capable of putting into action, come to the realization of who I was. I finally faced and accepted, with the worst grace and the worst motives in the world, myself as I was. There was no 'love' involved. Self love played no part in that whatsoever. I did not like who I was. Frankly, I was not at that point a lovable person. But that acceptance, THE SIMPLE FACT OF THAT ACCEPTANCE OF WHO I WAS, resigned and grim and negative though it was, was in fact the most important thing I ever did in my life. And it's important that I make that as plain as possible here.
Your inner motives are secondary to your ACTUAL DEEDS. The fact of acceptance. That you HAVE ACCEPTED. No matter what you are or how you feel about yourself or what brought you to that place is all aside the point! Having accepted yourself will lead you to great things. Having accepted yourself, as shitty as you might be, will actually lead you out of the darkness. It will lead to good things. It will lead you to a better self. It will lead you to the rest of your life.

All you have to do to get there is survive. Your inner reasons for surviving don't have to be pure. Revenge is a perfectly good reason. In fact it's a great reason. So is hatred. And anger. My reason, back then, was that I wanted to live long enough to see my parents get old and die, which is certainly less than noble or pure.
AND IT WORKED LIKE A CHARM.

You only have to find something that you want more than you want to die. It doesn't have to be nice.

Nobility or purity of motive play no part in survival whatsoever. You don't NEED nobility or purity! There is no RIGHT way to survive! That you DO survive is the only thing that's important! Nobility and purity of motive are luxuries of the privileged and the protected. They're superfluous. Not necessary. Aside the point. They don't matter a damned bit more for the privileged and the protected than they do for the victimized and the abused.
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SURVIVE.
ANY FUCKING WAY YOU CAN.

Now, I never expected for a moment that I would survive past my 18th birthday anyway. I have a chronic lung condition that was severe enough to put my life expectancy at about 18 to 21 years (that is, if the people who 'loved' me didn't take me out first.) But I was determined as hell that when I did go out, I was going to go out trailing a wake of nuclear fucking devastation. People wouldn't just be sorry....people were going to be MADE SORRY. By ME.

And they were.

And IT WAS GREAT!

I am a 50 year old woman with five grandkids. I have been married for close to 22 years to an amazing Biker. I am thought of by most as a relatively nice, unassuming, average little lady. I'm a housewife. I grow sunflowers. And yet to this day some of the proudest moments of my life are when I set the school bathroom on fire...spit on the chair of the boy who'd come up and grabbed my tits hard enough to leave marks, just before he sat down (to the delight of all his 'friends')...took a magic marker, disguised my handwriting and wrote even viler crap on the walls about the bitches who were tormenting me than they were writing about yours truly. I am proud of all the times I snotted off to the teachers who played to the popular kids and mistreated everyone else. I am proud of vandalizing their cars, their purses and their desks. I am proud of devising the most disgusting rumours imaginable about the people who took such glee in starting them about me. And nobody ever wanted to get on the wrong side of my sense of humor once I developed the ability to make up phrases and nicknames that STUCK.

This all began to take on momentum. Soon I thought nothing of snotting off to anyone who irritated me, despite who they were, despite their threats. I knew how to duck their threats. I had no problem whatsoever running from a fight. Oh HELL no. I was no fighter. I'd skip a class, hide, duck around corners, I had no problem with that. Pain HURTS. Many's the day I took a later bus or walked home to avoid people who were waiting beat me up. Was it cowardly? It was. Did I get called a pussy? I did. But I didn't get beat up either, which I figured was the more important issue at hand. And after all, 'pussy' was the least of what I'd already been called. That, and the expletive 'pussy' was merely a minor weapon in MY arsenal.

I ended Jr. High with the reputation as a flaming bitch; meaner than catshit. I was avoided. I was feared.
And I started to make friends.
Real friends.
The bullying stopped. Gradually, but after word got around that I was taking less shit than before, it cut off sharply and just kept on diminishing.
It took six months.
And when I got to the point that I took no shit whatsoever, the bullying STOPPED.
Oddest of all, when it did flare up, the teachers suddenly began to step in and do their jobs.
I swear to God this actually happened.
It was the Goddamndest thing.

I did not treat my first friends very well...I thought they must all be snivelling victims like I was who were simply drawn to my acting out and who would probably desert me as soon as I stopped being amusing and dangerous. I got rid of them first.

But I made more.
And people started to like me!

By the time I hit high school I had quite the reputation as a dangerous, though amusing, nutcase. I dressed outrageously. I said and did outrageous things. I was not by far the most outrageous, disturbed or amusing person in school, but I was among their number, and for the most part I still kept my head pretty low. I am proud to say that never once did I stoop to bullying, that I stuck up for people who were being bullied, and that I never started shit. I just FINISHED IT.

And all of this was done without resorting to interpersonal violence. I mean, God help your locker and God help your car if you fucked with me, but I didn't smack anyone around....for what that's worth in light of all the property damage I caused. I dunno.

I arranged my classes so that I graduated half a year earlier than the rest of my class. I did not attend graduation. Fuck that. The day I graduated high school I walked out the front doors, turned around and flipped the place off with both hands. I will never forget that day. I went down to Perry's drug store and caught a bus home in a daze. I walked around in a daze for a week before it all finally hit me: I never had to go back to that place EVER, EVER, EVER AGAIN. IT WAS OVER FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

It was immediately better.

It was far from perfect. I had two bad relationships and five years of therapy ahead of me before all the monsters from my past were slain. But I swear on John Cleese and H.P. Lovecraft that the worst day of my adult life (and I've had some doozies; you don't just stop being a hateful bitch and I inflicted a lot of pain on myself and others) was still better than the best day of being nine years old. Or any day of any age between 1960 and 1978. Because I was out of prison. I had got the fuck out of Dodge. My tour of duty in Vietnam was over. I was free.

I AM free.

Seven Dangerous Dogs Carry A Terrible Tune!

...and speaking of contemptible pukes, I started smoking again a couple of months ago. Oh yes! And I'm now in the process of trying to quit.

It is a stone bitch.

Now, I deny myself nothing. If I feel so inclined, I will and do avail myself of whatever recreational chemical, unhealthy eating practice, dangerous idea or impulse that captures my fancy. Avail away, is my motto; life is short and all that crap. But I never get surgically attached to any of those things either. Why that is I have no idea; it certainly isn't because I posses any uncommon strength of character. What I dislike I leave by the wayside and what I do like I continue to do when the whim strikes, or not.

That doesn't apply to smoking, unfortunately. I am having one tough motherfucking time getting this nasty smelly expensive monkey off my ass. What the hell is that about? Smoking? Of all the things? If anyone has any insight into this issue it would be most appreciated because it is baffling the fuck out of me.

_________________________

I went out trick or treating with the Goonybird and the SSA last night. The Goonybird was G.I.Joe, his mommy was Gwen from 'Mad Men', and I was kind of a cross between Wendy O. and Adam Ant, although I told everyone I was Sarah Palin. Danger Lady, the SSA's newest bump, was dressed as a kitty. She had to stay behind with the Biker and her daddy The Lucky Bastard, which made her cry, the treatment for which, according to her grampa and her daddy, is chocolate. When we left she was a little pink kitty, When we returned she was a little brown kitty with a 'Twix' wrapper stuck to the side of her face.

The neighborhood was full of kids out trick or treating; running up and down the streets, their parents standing under the streetlights talking and laughing. It was so great! I was so glad to see it! For a lot of years there you saw nobody out, and nobody decorated their houses either. Something has changed. Maybe parents feel safer, or maybe everyone just got sick of the whole 'Halloween is evil and Satanic' thing that was part of the local culture around here for so long. I know even when I was a kid, if given the chance to choose between going out trick or treating in a cool costume for candy, or going to some lame church-sponsored 'Harvest Carnival' and playing musical chairs for a plastic ring with a pumpkin on it, I wouldn't have even stopped to think about that shit. Maybe all those new parents, former Harvest Carnival survivors all, vowed to themselves 'I'll never do this to my kids when I'm a grownup!' and carried through on the promise!

The coolest house we stopped at this year had the single most freakyass decoration I've ever seen...up in the second floor windows, right over the front porch, they had set up two big television screens. Each screen had the image of a huge green eyeball, and they moved together and blinked in unison, as though the house was aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive and its big ol' eyeballs were looking up and down the street AND AT YOU! I would have never gone up to this place when I was a kid. Shit no, are you nuts? I would have stood at the end of the block and cried! It was excellent!
_______________________________

LAST MINUTE UPDATE FROM THE SSA:
I cannot help but snort in derision whenever I pass the boxed and canned stock in the supermarket. Please. What a scam. Just go set some dollar bills on fire and toss them into the toilet, folks; really? Box O Stock? No. No no no no no. Make your own stock. Need instructions? Here:

http://1hplovecraft.blogspot.com/search?q=chicken+stock

See? A nice post about making stock. Just go. Make your own stock. It's ridiculously simple. Need a good reason? Because I said so. There ya go.
Now go here:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_259-260/ai_n10299306/

read that, feel great guilt, then fire up the stove and fill a big pot with water. Get going.

Suck it the fuck up

Dear men* (particularly men in committed, long-term relationships):

I love you all. You are wonderful friends and fun companions, you are strong and smell good and are hairy and have wacky dangly bits.

That having been said, you need to stop acting like a bunch of contemptible whining pukes when it comes to your relationships. Like it or not, relationships are emotionally based and need tending in order to continue to exist. So read the following and then take this GOOD, FREE advice and do yourself a favor:

Deal with your family of origin issues NOW.

Or were you looking forward to long-term unresolvable grief, horrible depression, job loss, constant ill health, getting divorced and losing everything you have, dipshit?

One of the many things you are not told about marriage is how the death of your parents will screw it up. Royally. Like a big dog. No, really, you have NO FUCKING IDEA WHATSOEVER how much impact this will have on your marriage.

Watching anyone you love going down the last road is horrible. Watching a beloved parent die is excruciatingly painful. But losing a parent with whom you had a difficult relationship comes with its own particular brand of hell.

Every single one of your unresolved 'family of origin' issues will come back to bite you in the ass. Guaranteed.

That's how the mind works. Here, now, at the worst possible time, sure as the sun rises in the east, while all your emotions are raw, all those issues will all come rocketing to the forefront, adding a huge unwanted burden of conflicted bleeding emotion to what is already a bad situation.

What you learned from your parents, good and bad, impacts your marriage daily on hundreds of levels simultaneously. Yeah. Now think about when that rug gets yanked out from underneath your feet suddenly and all those levels begin to shake down into unrecognizable rubble. And remember, you still have to deal with what's already been going on at the same time...financial issues, your own family's issues and your own personal crap, all on top of all this. You bet your sweet fucking ass your marriage is going to take a monumental hit. And do you really need that on top of everything else? No you don't.
Neither does your partner.

You cannot treat this like something you can ignore and it will go away. That shit never works anyway. Oh, you may think it's working fine. That's because the only person you're fooling is yourself. Once again, this is how the mind works: for every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. Your inner upset, despite the fact that you think you're hiding it so well, is in reality translating into irrational and bad decisions, intolerable irritability, sleep and health issues, and oh so much more. In effect you are channelling your petulant inner three-year-old in desperate need of a nap, acting all your shit out on everyone and everything around you. And again; don't fool yourself: playing the 'Duh' card will not automatically cause everyone else around you to magically agree with you ('He says he's not acting like an asshole and has no idea what we're talking about...so....he must not be acting like an asshole and we must just all be wrong!' Um...yeah, no.) No, what that does is to eventually make everyone around you so angry with you and your unresolvable bullshit in their lives that they choose not to have it in their lives anymore. And that will be....disruptive, at best. You feel me?

Want to avoid this?
It is absolutely vital to your emotional welfare, as well as to the welfare of everyone around you, that you make an honest attempt to go to your parents NOW and attempt to confront all those things that have been swept under the rug. Don't wait until they're so infirm that you have no chance whatsoever of bringing anything up and finishing it because you'll never forgive yourself, or them.

It doesn't have to be a big scene. It doesn't even have to work. In fact, chances are good that if you're dealing with parents with long-term substance abuse issues, impulse control disorders or borderline personalities, you'll get absolutely nowhere.

The important thing is that you try. That you approach them in good faith, with honesty, as an adult....THAT is what makes all the difference in the world. Why? Because you will have just been shown beyond all shadow of a doubt where you end and they begin, and that you have no power whatsoever over their actions.
Just like you didn't when you were a little kid.
Just like you never had, and never will.
And this needs to happen in real time. Just accepting it intellectually won't mean shit.

What you have when a failed attempt at reconciliation is done is your adult perspective and their up-to-date reactions....information with which you can go back and re-evaluate all those things that went awry in your relationship with your parents. You use these to re-evaluate those things. You'll be surprised to realize that many of the guilty burdens you have been carrying belonged to someone else. You'll mourn all the emotional energy that you wasted trying to change people and events that were never under your control to begin with. That mourning period should burn up a couple of weeks. Have a good book handy. It won't kill you so quit putting it off.

You will come away with the knowledge that you, the adult, have been brave in the face of difficulty. You honestly tried your best. And then, when the time comes, as it will inevitably, saying the final goodbye will be uncomplicated by other issues. Your life will go on.
_______________________________

*OK fine women too. Although the only experience I have with this crap is with men doing it...and I gotta say that y'all are by far the worst offenders when it comes to playing the 'emotions are pussy so I just won't deal with any of them and ignore them and pretend that everything is fine and it will be' game. And you know that's true so get over it.

Green Weasel Smells Loudly The Destroy!!

It's been a year of degeneracy and terrible thrills here at Rancho FirstNations, my darlings. I will eventually get around to writing about it all, I'm sure, but for now I'm going to (puss out) fall back on a favorite subject: RECIPES FOR THINGS THAT COULD POSSIBLY KILL YOU!

It is with great pride that I bring you the following. I call it 'The Recipe', which is a little Waltons humor there for ya...but you should call it

Лестница к звездамthe Baldwin sisters never had it so good

Supplies you will need:
-A HUGE JAR OR CROCK WITH A LID that will fit into your refrigerator.
-A JELLY FUNNEL (also known as a 'Chinese Hat' and a 'jelly drip'. It is a long, pointy conical COLANDER, not a funnel, although it's called a funnel, which it's not, with a little stand it sits in. Oh look it up; you're sitting in front of a computer.)

-A CHEESECLOTH. You can get this at any supermarket. Cut it to fit the inside of the jelly funnel and overlap the side a couple of inches, doubled over once.
...OK listen. Cheesecloth is this very loosely woven cotton cloth used in cheesemaking and canning and for some cooking operations, right? And it's sold all folded over in a bag. Take and unfold it on a clean tabletop until all of it is lying out there flat, then fold it over ONCE. Now, poke that into your dry, clean jelly funnel, arrange it so that it laps over the top a couple of inches all the way around (it won't be tidy looking) and then take a scissors and cut off the excess. Now fold the excess up nicely and stick it back in the bag so you can use it for the next batch which, I assure you, you WILL be making.)

- A BROAD, SHALLOW BOWL

-A LARGE TOWEL, sheet or what have you, big enough to cover the jelly drip and the bowl. This keeps the snoids out.

-A STANDARD KITCHEN FUNNEL that will fit into the neck of a bottle
-A FOOD PROCESSOR or a blender

Ingredients:

-1 Fifth + 1 Quart of acceptable Vodka. Not flavored. Just plainass bar-standard vodka. Actually, if you have a Brita pitcher you could bang some cheap vodka through that ten or twenty times which will give you a smoother vodka to start with. As any muppet knows, the only difference between the good shit and the cheap shit is the number of times it's filtered. Purchase wisely. But if you do decide to filter your vodka, do it NOW, BEFORE you continue. Further reading will reveal the reason why, or not.

-A whole fucking shitload of well-washed Shasta Daisies, stripped of leaves, roots and petals. For best flavor these should be bone dry. Don't worry about seeds; they go in the mix too. For an explanation of the term 'Shasta Daisy', go to that little white box up at the very top left of this screen and enter 'Shasta Daisy' so that it searches my blog and then the answer will come up and you will know a lot more about 'Shasta Daisies' than you know now.

Cave Vodkanum et Papaveracea: Having been a habitue of this blog and consequentially having slavishly tried all the recipes given previous to this post, you should know by now not only how much Vodka you can handle, but how many Shasta Daisies you can safely ingest given your age, weight and health. You should also be able to judge your personal crop of Shasta Daisies for relative strength. If not, you should fuck right off and not try this because you will DIE.

-up to 1/4 cup freshly ground black pepper

-2 tbls ground chipotle (Yes, this matters. Has to be chipotle.)

MethodeLET GRAVITY DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU. AT NO TIME DURING THE FOLLOWING ARE YOU TO SQUEEZE, FORCE, SKLIT, MOOSH, WHOMP, SIT DOWN UPON OR OTHERWISE APPLY WEIGHT OR FORCE TO THE MASH. Why? Because I said so. Jeeziz would you just quit having to dick with stuff all the time. Are you six?

1. Break up your Shasta Daisies until they will fit into the jar of the blender, or the bowl of the cuisinart, which you would have if you had any pride.

2. Now add a little vodka, enough to get things moving, and whup them around until they're pretty well chopped up. Not liquid, but not big rough chunks, sneering and shopworn and underfed and pallid, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from their ripe, bitten lips, slouching up against the filthy brick of an alley rank with the smells of cabbage and old sin. No, what you want is kind of a wet, chopped up mess.

4. Dump this, and as much of the vodka will fit, into the crock or jar. Seal it, give it a shake, and put in the fridge.

4. Shake it once a day for 10 days.

5. By the end of 10 days the solids should have sunk to the bottom of the container. If not, let it go until this happens, shaking once every day.

6. At the end of this time, take it out of the fridge and get your other tools ready.

7. Put the jelly funnel, lined with the cheesecloth, over the bowl.

4. Now dump the chopped-up Shasta Daisy goop out of the container and into the jelly funnel, which you will have lined already with the doubled-over cheesecloth, RIGHT? OK. Fill the cone of the funnel about 3/4 full. This will already have begun to drip. Good. Cover the whole works with the towel since the snoids will have begun to circle, and nobody wants snoids in their goop.

11. Now go find something do do while this finishes dripping.

602. Is there room for more glop? Dump it in. Wait.

8. Used all the glop now? Good. Now start tipping in your unused vodka, unless you've drunk it in the interim, ya lush.

6. Done? Good. Now dump some more vodka through it. Once again, cover the whole works with the towel or your mother or whatever and go find something to do for an hour or so. Every now and then, tip a little more of the vodka into the jelly funnel.

7. You've used all the unsued vodka. The jelly funnel has completely stopped dripping into the bowl. Lift the jelly funnel away from over the bowl and put a saucer under it just in case the jostling makes it drip anew...you don't want to lose any.

12. Now, put the small, ordinary but not at all frumpy kitchen funnel into the neck of the larger quart empty bottle and pour the concoction from the bowl into the bottle. It won't fill the whole thing...don't worry, the angels have taken their portion; which explains how angels fly but now how come there aren't angels all smashed out of their gourds flying into office buildings and picture windows and shit. Still, it's a small price to pay so quit complaining.

9. Put the jelly funnel back over the bowl.

11. Now. Dump all the vodka BACK THROUGH the whole mess AGAIN.

12. Done? OK. Take the top two-thirds of chopped up Shasta Daisy mush out of the jelly funnel and pitch it. Now, pour all the vodka back through what remains AGAIN.

13. Once this has dripped through, take out the cloth and rinse it very well in plain running water. Wring it out as dry as you possibly can. Replace it in the jelly funnel and put the black pepper and chipotle in it.

14. Now dump the whole shooting match through this.

YOU ARE DONE!!
You will end up with one quart of laudenum, roughly. Because yes, thats what this is; it's laudenum. GASP! CLUTCH THE PEARLS!

Now, remember: this is not your grandmas' laudenum. First of all it's got a vodka base and not glycol or wood alcohol or gasoline or whatever they used to use. B, because of the peppers you used it will be the most lovely smoky amber color and it will taste FUCKING WONDERFUL. As in, top shelf gourmet booze. Seriously! I impressed the hell out of myself! You'd pay bank money for something this tasty at the liquor store but you made it at home! And its full of heroin!!

Well, actually it's full of opium, codeine and other fun alkaloids. Bearing that in mind, know also that drinking this is tantamount to squeezing an entire tube of shoe goo up your ass, by which I mean its constipating. Keep up. You'd do well to plan your meals accordingly. Do not ingest this directly before or after eating a whole bag of flour, in other words. STAY WELL HYDRATED*.

Does this make a smoking hot Bloody Mary? My word YES it does. One shot is enough for me.

To get all sciencey for a moment: This is a tincture. A tincture dosage is measured by the drop. If you have any doubts about what you've got here, you should start out with about seven drops in a glass of plain water on an empty stomach and then go from there, documenting the effects. Don't just go off all willy nilly and slam a shot like you're all G because you could drop dead or nod off onto one of the stove burners or bite the end off your own dick or something and I refuse to be responsible for that kind of crapola.

I missed you.

________________________________________

*That means water, not more laudenum, Voices.

Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

I am sitting here on the most beautiful, sunny early spring day, looking out at my million dollar view and listening to the album 'Precious Lord' by Aretha Franklin, and let me tell you, life is extraordinarily GOOD. In fact, I cannot imagine anywhere I'd rather be right now than right here. So tell ya what, more later....because right now I am gonna just do like Ram Dass and BE HERE NOW, chilluns.

__________________________________

Yellow Monkey Irregularity Caper!! Danger!!

Oh good gravy Marie enough of that.

Instead, here are two sauce recipes.

And here is the link for measurement conversions for wacky and non-wacky foreign persons:
http://www.wwrecipes.com/convert.htm
...so don't say I never gave you anything.

Tomato-Lemon-Basil Toss Sauce (you shut up, Frobi)
...best over fettucini


1 handful sun dried tomatoes (you shut up, Beast)
1 cup hot water
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Juice of one cocktail lemon (you know, those little bitty round lemons, not the big honkers that look like a boob.)
1/2 tsp fresh rosemary, approx.
1/2 tsp fresh thyme, approx.
1/4 cracked black pepper (I use more)
Chiffonade of fresh basil, 1/4 cup (measured after cutting)
Zest of one cocktail lemon
salt to taste

optional: 1/4 cup simple white sauce.


-Soak the tomatoes in the hot water. When hydrated, remove and julienne, reserving liquid.
-Chiffonade basil
-Zest lemon, using one of those zesters that makes long strips if you have one. If not, no biggie. Use a grater. See if I care.

Set all these aside in a bowl, and add the cracked pepper.

To juice the lemon, first wham the zested cocktail lemon against the counter, roll it around, and squish it in your fist a few times. I mean, don't burst it, but make it say your name. This helps break up the little pearls inside it, which makes it easier to squeeze out all the juice. Of course if you have a lemon squeezer thingie don't bother smacking your lemon around. I don't have a lemon squeezer thingie. I just squash the lemon half in my hand and pick out the seeds, because I am a low tech barbarian.

-Dump tomato soaking water, olive oil and lemon juice into blender with the rosemary and thyme and blend until completely liquified.

-Dump into the bowl with the other stuff. Now, give it a taste and salt it. Depending on your ingredients, you can stop here and use this 'as is' over pasta. Maybe use a little parmesan cheese to help it stick.

By adding a little white sauce, you get a thicker sauce which has a milder, richer flavor. This would go nice on some spinach noodles.

_____________________________

Asiago Cream Sauce....because your arteries are not clogged enough.
...wondering what to do with that boring-ass poached chicken breast? Wonder no more. Dump this sauce over it, run it under the broiler to put a nice brown on there, and once you taste it you will forget all about how you are speeding recklessly toward a quadruple bypass.

2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup (packed) cream cheese
1 heaping teaspoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons powdered bread crumbs
1/4 tsp grated garlic
1/2 cup grated Asiago cheese
salt and WHITE pepper to taste

Dump all this into the Cuisinart and blend the everloving crap out of it. Get it completely liquified.

Now taste it for salt, add what it needs, and put it over the fire. This is a cornstarch sauce, so you know the drill....stirring constantly, bring it up slowly to medium, then crank it up to high. Keep on stirring! When it begins to kick, turn down the heat to low, keep on stirring to make sure theres no big lumps, then once the danger of boiling has passed let it sit. It will continue to thicken up a bit.

Before serving, run an immersion blender through it just to make sure it's completely smooth. Thin with a little milk if necessary.

shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. and shit.

Thank you everyone for all the music suggestions. I've got them all stashed and saved and hopefully I can put them to use. Once I , you know, join the 21st century and actually get an IPOD. Ahem.

____________________________________

Things are sucking a big one around here right now.

...Or rather,'still sucking a big one'.

OK fine. There was a brief letup in the sucking, but then it started again, is what I'm trying to say. I'm going to tie up a couple of loose ends, whine about my life for a few paragraphs, and then go someplace and sulk for awhile. Who knows at this point.

Loose end one: The people next door had been raising rats to sell, except they never sold them. Instead they took all the doors off the rooms up on the third floor, left the sink and the bathtub running and hove a bag of Purina Rat chow across the floor once every couple of days. The rats quickly overran the entire house and property, coming and going freely through holes they'd chewed through the walls. Wild Norway rats soon joined them, and were welcomed inside and eventually hand tamed just like the pet-stock rats. We called the health department and Animal Control. The police decided to get involved too. They came over and gave us the details of what was going on, and the rest was filled in by various people around town. Oh, we were local celebrities for awhile. Anyway, the neighbors cleaned up their property, got rid of the rats, and I haven't seen them since. I know, big anticlimax.

Loose end two: I have a new baby grand daughter! She was born last May and has finally figured out how to crawl forward! (She was stuck in reverse for a couple of months. This was funny to everyone but the baby.) This is the Stainless Steel Amazons' baby that we all thought was permanently attached up in there and was going to have to attend high school graduation in utero; well, she finally blooped out. And because attending ones' daughter giving birth once was more than enough, grandma was NOT in attendance for this one. The SSA had her at home just like she did the Goonybird, with a midwife, and from what I understand it was just as squitty and funky as getting born usually is so I don't feel like I missed anything.
_______________________

Well then.

Me and the YB have been in marriage counselling for a few months. It just took a giant shit.

To make a long story short, I'm the only one who thinks theres a problem and there wouldn't be one if I'd just "shut up and stop complaining". That is a direct quote from our therapist. Oh yes! He has been full of terrifically humorous little comments like that. At my expense, generally. He tossed off that little bon mot last night.

I fired him this morning.

This leaves my marriage right back where it was three months ago, and us several hundred dollars poorer. Basically what it amounts to is that I just paid out several hundred dollars to learn that there's really no reason to hire someone with a degree to ignore you when you are already being ignored for free.


Life is given its depth and meaning by these small moments of clarity.


Now I went into this knowing that I was going to look bad. I wanted to get things fixed, right; so I chose to see a male therapist thinking that at least my husband would feel comfortable talking to another guy. All along I suspected that I'd be hard for him to take, training or no, because in my experience MEN HATE THIS SHIT. Training, education, whatever; when it comes right down to it, if you have tits, men just want you to shut up and stop complaining. And here I was: big tits, heap big upset. The ONLY one who's upset, I might add. Because my husband is fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. My husband is tolerant and a little hurt and befuddled but being kind by humoring me and showing up for appointments. This is because my husband is a genuinely nice guy. Unfortunately, he's also one of those guys who figures if nobody yells or acts upset, then there isn't anything wrong.

No, seriously. Really. He honestly thinks that if you don't act like anything is wrong, then there magically IS NO PROBLEM. Yes, I know this is screamingly counter intuitive. Pay attention. We're not talking about academic issues here; this is emotions, and as Mr. Spock teaches us, 'emotion is illogical'. See what you can learn here at Paul? And from Star Trek?

I figured, as I can be excused for doing, that someone with a degree in marriage counselling might be able to help show us a middle road to take so that issues would resolve instead of just building and becoming horrible. I also figured we had a good shot at success... my husband and I are still best friends after everything is said and done..despite the fact that once one of those squishy emotional family marriagey icky issues would crop up, I was set adrift out there all alone on my ice floe screaming in the darkness, because everything would be just fine if I'd just stop making such a big deal about it.

Apparently our therapist agrees. And really, who wants to deal with some whining, histrionic broad when who just keeps on bringing up a bunch of problems; Jesus lady, come on! when its so much more fun to sit around a chat about motorcycles and Alaska and then get a check for it at the end of a couple of hours? Shit yeah!

So I don't know where things are going to go from here. I know that attempts are going to be made to get me to be a nice lady and play nice and apologize to the nice therapist for firing him and quit being 'so emotional'. I also know that I'm going to refuse because I'm sick of being treated like I'm someone who can be cozened and co-opted and bought off with lip service and then immediately ignored once the proper response has been jacked out of me. I am not asking for the fucking moon here, folks. I just want to be able to talk about things outside of an increasingly narrow range of safe subjects without being consigned to Outer emotional cocksucking Mongolia.

Oh well. It does free up my Wednesday nights, I guess.

Please come through for me, y'all!!

I'm having a difficult time writing the third and last chapter of the Rat Saga. I think that's mainly because I'd just like to forget that whole period of time ever happened, and sitting here trying to remember it instead is really fucking with that impulse. Therefore, I've decided to go to Oregon for a week.


It makes perfect sense. It does.


Now: what I want you-alluns to to is to go directly to the comments lounge, have a cocktail and leave me the answer to a serious question:

WHERE DOES ONE FIND NEW MUSIC THESE DAYS?

I can guarantee you it ain't on the radio. Not around here.



But see, I also want to get an Ipod and download bunches and bunches of music; big talk from someone who has only the very faintest idea of what an Ipod is or how it works. Still, I've been making playlists, using Amazon Music recommendations and Youtube. While I was doing that I ran across lots of music that came out during those years between 1979 and the present when I was busy doing other things, like having a life, and some of it is INCREDIBLE! I feel so cheated! All this stuff was going on and I FUCKING MISSED IT!! Go check out Critters Buggin', Buckethead, Blues Saraceno, and anything Les Claypool has ever been involved with, for example. Of course, you probably already know about this stuff. I didn't until just recently. You see how serious this is? It's pathetic.


The only radio stations we get out here are country, christian rock and classic rock (and whatever happens to float in over the border from Canada when they aren't jamming our signals with Radio Free Cheese broadcasts.) I swear to God I will start flinging shit like a macaque if I have to listen to 'Love to Watch Her Strut' ONE MORE TIME.




My favorite music comes in two flavors: blues and metal. By 'metal' I mean stuff like White Zombie, Tool, Filter, Rage Against the Machine. You know, songs about babies dying, napalm and global warfare. I particularly like screaming guitarists who make strange faces and play until their fingers bleed . Hopping around is a plus.

By 'blues' I don't mean Dr. Hook. Lord save me from Dr. Hook AND his Medice Show. No. I mean BLUES. I mean elderly black men singing about shooting people, selling their souls to the Devil, women with large butts, and drinking themselves to death.

I am not particularly interested in pop, country, girl singers or anyone who has been on American Idol. If they aren't demonstrably psychotic, depressed, violent, on drugs or in need of medication then I don't want to hear from them.



See, I know a lot of music is coming out via the Internet, and I need to know where that music is. I don't know where to find it! Send me links! Websites! Don't assume I know a goddamn thing about this stuff because I really don't. Use short words.

Seriously, folks, I'm desperate here. I am seriously desperate. It's serious. So please, fill my comments lounge with links and names and places. Please. Please give me

1.Leads on new music,

2.How to find new music,

3.Where to find new music

HOOK A BITCH UP!!!!

Dog is not the answer

...and now for something completely different!
_______________________________________



People deal with stress in different ways. I get scared, which pisses me off, and then I attack whatever is pissing me off, and violently destroy the crap out of it, render it into tiny little quivering peeing bloody shreds, which I then set on fire and stomp on and call bad names. That's me.

My husband retreats immediately to the top of some remote inner Himalaya from where he'll issue infrequent communiques in response to whatever faint cries happen to reach him, form letters which invariably read 'I don't know', 'nothing', and 'no I didn't'. That's him.

This disparity in coping methods combined with a year of incredible personal upheaval finally resulted in me locking myself in my bedroom for two solid days, during which I did nothing but sob uncontrollably and smoke menthol cigarettes.

In the middle of the afternoon of the third day, as I was lying on the bed thinking about how truly vile menthol cigarettes are and wondering why I was smoking them, I heard his car door slam out in the driveway.

Then I heard a series of excited yips.

Say what?

Oh no.

Aw fuck.

AW FUCK .

Please God. Please God tell me that isn't a dog.



PLEASE GOD DO NOT TELL ME THAT THIS MAN HAS BROUGHT HOME A DOG.


PLEASE GOD.





The bedroom door opened and in ran a dog.

"Guess what? " The Biker announced cheerfully.

.......








Now, 'I got YOU a dog' is bullshit for 'In utter disregard for whatever the underlying cause of this present episode might be, I decided to use it as an opportunity to go get a dog from the pound without your input because I want a dog, and so I'm going to make like it's a sweet cuddly attempt at making up; and in the rapture of the moment, overcome by the mesmerizing cuteness rays emanating from the dog, you'll buy this, and everything will be great.'

I sat there on the bed in utter disbelief. I looked from one to the other, feeling my whole inner being just shrug and give up.

Fine. We have a dog.

Hooray.

Now to be honest, I really wanted to like Maxwell. Maxwell was a good boy and could have been a great boy given an experienced trainer. Experienced trainer, unfortunately, does not even remotely describe anyone who lives at this address. Still, he was a cute little guy, a mutt cross between a rat terrier and a shih tzu, and was as happy and good natured as the day was long.

He was also completely un-housebroken, and, as we were to find out, completely un-house-breakable.






He had a long white high-maintenance coat made of Fiberglas and static electricity that tangled itself into thousands of hard little knots that worked their way into his skin. He was a yapper. He was a climber. He was a humper. He was an eater of carpets and houseplants and shoes and upholstery and the corners of walls and furniture and books and mail.






He carried toilet paper around the house.





He climbed out of the windows.





He climbed into the dryer.





He drug my bras out of the dirty wash and out into the yard. And rolled on them. And got tangled up in them. And then wore them.


Until you looked out the window and realized your dog had been outside wearing a bra for God only knows how long, and ran out to get him, only he wriggled out from underneath the fence and ran off into the middle of the soccer field.


Wearing a bra.




If the lid on the toilet were down he would use it as a step in order to climb up onto the vanity where he'd eat soap. When the lid was up, he fell into the toilet trying to use it as a step to get up onto the vanity so he could eat soap.






His idea of going on a car ride meant to ride quietly in your lap, which is a total lie. Max's idea of a car ride was climbing on top of your head while you were going 75mph down the freeway. Sometimes it meant weaving himself through the steering wheel. It also meant leaping out any windows he found open, and sometimes we found ourselves driving down the road with half a dog dangling out of the side of the car. He would suddenly dive over the back of the seat and land on the side of your face and neck, claws extended, and have to be forcibly removed. Not that he wasn't being safely restrained; he was! I swear to God! Right up until he....wasn't, somehow. And he certainly wasn't scared. He was having the time of his life! He was just being a puppy.


A puppy spawned by Hell.

Since I'm a stay-at-home wife, it fell to me to 'train' him. Dad could go to work each day and come home and either ignore or enjoy doggies' cute antics per his whim. I had the responsibility of attempting to civilize an animal that you literally could not turn your attention away from for a single moment. I now have something of an inkling of what it must be like to raise a hyperactive child. You simply could not have anything but your fullest attention on this animal one hundred percent of the time or he was trying to open drawers, climb into the stove, pulling books off the shelves, or drinking coffee.



Yes. Drinking coffee. He preferred it black.

Cute puppy Maxwell was a non-stop Maxwell. The high speed mayhem and destruction caused by a caffeinated Maxwell was worthy of Sam Peckinpah . But yeah...somewhere along the line before he came to us he'd developed a taste for coffee. At first it was kind of cute. He would sit on the kitchen floor in the morning and stare at the coffee maker and whine. "You aren't getting any, buddy," I'd say. "It'll stunt your growth!"

"Oh yeah, chubby?" he'd grin. "Just set that cup down where I can get at it."

And as soon as your attention was diverted there he'd be with his whole head jammed in the cup, sucking it down like a little bilge pump. I'd chase him around with a rag, wipe off his steaming, coffee-sodden face, and feel him beginning to vibrate as I held him in my arms. One of the very first things I learned about Max was to to keep my coffee mug inaccessible. I was finding full cups for a week after we got rid of him, stashed on top of the entertainment center, the cabinets and the refrigerator.

The novelty of Maxwells' antics soon wore thin when his destructive campaign moved from general household items to things that belonged to the Biker. When he pulled up long strands of carpet and ate them, that was him 'just being a puppy'. It was a case of 'You shouldn't have left those lying around' when Maxwell ate my glasses. Chewing shoes was funny when they were my shoes. It rapidly became not so funny when they were the Bikers' 250.00 Red Wing work boots. Or his favorite running shoes. Or his socks. Or his pillow. Or...


Maxwell could jump like a little kangaroo. It was amazing. If you've ever seen a Jack Russel terrier leaping six feet straight up over and over and over again as though it had a spring in its butt you have an idea of what I mean.



Max liked to jump up, catch the drawstring of the Bikers' pajama pants in his teeth and give it a tug. He'd come out of nowhere, leap, catch the string between his teeth and the Biker would let out a whoop, by which time Max was a speck in the distance.



Tugging on the string quickly became 'giving the string a good healthy yank and pulling the pajama pants halfway down the Bikers' ass'. And that was hilarious....right up until that fateful day that Maxwell...missed. And nipped the wrong...drawstring.

But the big turning point came when we caught Maxwell humping the baby.


This perplexed the baby and made everyone else fairly uncomfortable. Everyone but Maxwell, that is. No, you'd lift him off the baby for the 500th time and he'd keep right on going, humpityhumpityhumpityhumpityhumpity, humpity, humpityhumpity.....humpity.......hump........what?



So it was that the Biker finally came to agree that he'd made a spectacularly bad decision, and posted Maxwell on Craigslist.

A seller quickly responded, and Maxwell and all his accouterments were gone two days later. I felt kind of dishonest taking their 200.00, truthfully, but somehow I found it within me to do so.



And you know what I did with that 200.00?
I took that 200.00 and went out and bought STUPID SHIT.