Paul. Because 'Paul' is a nice name.

This is a space filler. Please disregard.

2011-09-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

No seriously, this is. If you're interested in reading this blog, I've just created HANDY TAGS which you'll find down at the very very bottom of this page by scrolling down, so you can go directly to the - and I use this term loosely-'Good Stuff', and skip all the crap where I whine about my family and talk about Swiss Belted cows and other crotch-punchingly dull trivia like that.

Now here is a picture of some random strangers' ween.

Exotic ball comments, Asian Pee

2011-01-06T15:43:00.001-08:00

Yes, it's time. Long since time, in fact. What is it time for? It is time to discuss why so many Americans are so poopy, is what time it is. And who better to ask than that sage of the sands, the pimp daddy of the prognosticators....

MR. EGYPTIAN PENIS MAN!

Q- Mr. Egyptian Penis Man, how did people come to live in America?

A- Oh, thats easy. America is where everyone from the rest of the world used to send all their dipshits.

You see, it all started with the prehistoric Asians...

The early Europeans were slow to catch on, although the rudiments of the practice were already in place...
Of course, once the Industrial Revolution started and the losers and dipshits started piling up faster than wars and plagues could kill them off, the Europeans re-discovered America and started loading up the boats.

Q- Despite that, America went on to be quite a worldwide social and economic influence during the 20th century. What factors lead to it's current troubled state?

A- Lead consumption.

....Seriously. It started during the Victorian Era.

The Victorian Era: Sixty-four years of wacky hijinks and madcap hilarity

Q- What was the Victorian era?

A- Crap, do you have a library card? Ring ring pick up the clue phone! The Victorian era was the freakin' SHIZNIT!

Everyone in the Victorian Era wore elaborate goggles with multiple lenses. People carried Navy Colts and wore corsets and dressed in leather aviator helmets and fingerless gloves. Plus about 1/3 of the population were vampires! The only downside was that lead contamination was omnipresent, because of the Industrial Revolution, which required lots of lead because it kept the zombies who worked the looms in check. Soon everything contained lead. Common household products like medicines, cosmetics and cleaning agents contained lead. The post-combustive exhausts produced by dirigibles, patent autoperipatetikoticons and armoured land leviathans filled the air with lead-laced smog. Fish taken from waters polluted by those same early industrial wastes were high in lead, and when troops ran out of conventional ammunition during the Great Zombie Uprising of 1843, those same fish were used as bullets by villagers . Un-spent cod and bream 'rounds' dropped by panicked troops were devoured by starving children left orphaned by the fighting.

This brings us to the Dutch.

Lumpy, un-circumcised and feelin' the breeze: If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much

Earlier in their history the fun-loving Dutch had dealt with the problem of excess pee-babies and asscabbages in a haphazard manner.

Solving the Vegan Problem Haphazardly, Amsterdam c. 1500

But all that changed during the Dutch Waffle Famine of 1755:

Insufficient dietary fiber leads to rampant grouchiness, poor millenary choices, and Calvinism: Solving the Vegan Problem, Amsterdam c. 1723

And so it was that one small boy found himself chained in the hold of a dirigible bound for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave...one small, seemingly insignifigant boy, young in appearance but already ancient in the ways of evil......

Q- Oh no! What happened then, Mr. Egyptian Penis man?

A- Wait another couple of weeks and I might tell you.

TO BE CONTINUED

Not my words, but I wish they were.

2011-01-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

From me, and from all of us living in random conservative pockets of social wilderness still grimly holding the line, I thank you humbly, Dan Savage, for the following stark, wonderful words. Mr. Savage, you and your family can come have dinner at my place any time. Just call first and let me know if y'all have any food allergies.

_____________________________
IN YOUR IMAGE (article originally printed in The Stranger)

Oct. 14, 2010

"...I heard an interview with you about your It Gets Better campaign. I was saddened and frustrated with your comments regarding people of faith and their perpetuation of bullying. As someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage, I can honestly say I was heartbroken to hear about the young man who took his own life.

If your message is that we should not judge people based on their sexual preference, how do you justify judging entire groups of people for any other reason (including their faith)? There is no part of me that took any pleasure in what happened to that young man.

To that end, to imply that I would somehow encourage my children to mock, hurt, or intimidate another person for any reason is completely unfounded and offensive. Being a follower of Christ is, above all things, a recognition that we are all imperfect, fallible, and in desperate need of a savior. We cannot believe that we are better or more worthy than other people.

Please consider your viewpoint, and please be more careful with your words in the future.

L.R."

(Mr. Savage replies:)

I'm sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.

No, wait. I'm not. Gay kids are dying. So let's try to keep things in perspective: Fuck your feelings.

A question: Do you "support" atheist marriage? Interfaith marriage? Divorce and remarriage? All are legal, all go against Christian and/or traditional ideas about marriage, and yet there's no "Christian" movement to deny marriage rights to atheists or people marrying outside their respective faiths or people divorcing and remarrying. Why the hell not?

Sorry, L.R., but so long as you support the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, it's clear that you do believe that some people—straight people—are "better or more worthy" than others.

And—sorry—but you are partly responsible for the bullying and physical violence being visited on vulnerable LGBT children. The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy. And while there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are gay and lesbian children in your schools. And while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children have the option of attacking actual gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.

Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not "sinners." Gay and lesbian children.

Try to keep up: The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of "faithful Christians," and the lies about us that vomit out from the pulpits of churches that "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays, give your children license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your children—having listened to Mom and Dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry—feel justified in physically abusing the LGBT children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" queer kids. Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we're seeing the fruits of it: dead children.

Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?

Did that hurt to hear? Good. But it couldn't have hurt nearly as much as what was said and done to Asher Brown and Justin Aaberg and Billy Lucas and Cody Barker and Seth Walsh—day in, day out for years—at schools filled with bigoted little monsters created not in the image of a loving God, but in the image of the hateful and false "followers of Christ" they call Mom and Dad.

__________________________________

For more, go here. Go now.

Spastic Twitching Muk Has Seven Seizures!!

2010-12-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

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!!

2010-12-06T18:07:00.000-08:00

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!!

2010-11-29T20:13:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-11-22T12:39:00.001-08:00

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!

2010-11-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-11-10T16:09:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-11-08T20:43:00.001-08:00

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.

2010-11-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-11-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

...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

2010-10-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

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!!

2010-10-25T09:10:00.002-07:00

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 звездам
the 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.)

Methode
LET 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 laudenum.

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

2010-02-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

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!!

2010-02-02T17:40:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-29T12:36:00.001-08:00

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!!

2010-01-20T13:31:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

...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.

RAT SAGA PART DEAUX: Emerald Aoudad Awaken The Twisted Scheme!

2010-01-12T10:12:00.001-08:00

I noticed the first unusually casual Norway rat on my property about five years ago while I was out gardening. What I thought was a mallard duck bumbling around in the flowers turned out to be one of the biggest Norways I've ever seen. This thing had an ass the size of a softball. And there it was, maybe three feet away from me, ambling along, making no attempt to hide. It just gave me a casual 'S'up?' kind of a glance and paid me no further mind.

The first thing that springs to mind when you've grown up around wild animals and one of them starts acting atypically is that it's probably sick, and 'sick' usually means 'rabid'.

I eased back toward the house. The rat ignored me.

For the rest of the afternoon I looked out the living room window and watched while the rat sauntered around in my flowerbeds. "Jesus Christ come look at this thing!" I'd say, while my husband continued to watch Powerblock. "No seriously! The goddamn thing is still out there! Come look at this!"
"I've seen rats," he'd reply.

Over the next couple of years we saw a few more, from a distance. Since I have no problem with distant rats I grew to accept their presence as one of the unpleasant aspects of living in a rural area, like Avon products, fundamentalists, and widespread methamphetamine abuse.

Then we had our next close encounter. You can read about that here. G'head. I'll wait.

As the next couple of years went by I began to see more wildlife around the place, rats included... but since they weren't parking their Winnebagos on my lawn or trying to sell me Amway I shrugged it off. Until the morning I stepped out onto the front porch last summer and a huge goddamn Norway rat came trotting up the steps toward me.

No shit! Just heard the door opening and came merrily right on up the steps like it was going to come in the house! Like a dog!

I took a threatening step towards it, clapped my hands and yelled 'Shoo! Go home! Go home now!' I flapped my hands at it and stomped my feet a couple of times too.

It stopped short and looked up at me, totally perplexed. Just flummoxed.

When it finally dawned on me that I was standing out on my front step attempting to interact with a feral garbage rat as though it were a stray poodle, I booked ass into the house and slammed the door.

I looked out the window a couple of seconds later.

It was on the porch.

Over the next couple of weeks I watched as several more rats came roaming through the yard. Now, not to be boastful, but up until then I'd had one of the showplace gardens in my town. Nothing takes the bloom off that 'showplace garden' image faster than a couple of huge rats wandering around. Not even cement deer. Not even Canadians.

These were some chill rats, too. Nothing phased them; not pedestrians, not passing cars, nothing. They were out there basking in the sun, washing their little ratty faces and licking their little ratty asses! Seriously! And some of these newer rats were not doing real well. They had some kind of scabby rat disease and their hair was missing in big patches. So not only did I have rude rats; no, that wasn't bad enough! I had rude diseased crack addict rats with eczema out in my front yard performing acts of intimate personal hygiene!
No!
This was not acceptable!
No way in hell was this acceptable!

You want to know what was really unacceptable, though? When my husband, the Yummy Biker, walked into the mud room a few days later to find a huge goddamn disgusting filthy vermin covered rat calmly eating out of the dog* bowl.

YES.

A wild Norway fucking rat had come into my house THROUGH THE DOG FLAP, and was EATING THE DOGS FOOD.

Now, I was outside when this happened and had no idea what was going on. I remember a huge shout going up and then a lot of loud crashing and banging and yelling. I decided my presence was not required.

Apparently upon seeing the rat, my husband grabbed a broom and began randomly flailing away at the rat there in the small entryway. The rat responded by leaping at the broom and hanging onto the end of it, which caused the Biker to whip it around in the air, kind of like rat lacrosse, which activity finally flung the rat up into the air and behind the dryer. The Biker jumped right up onto the dryer after it, and with the broom now held like a javelin began stabbing at the rat, which was jammed back there down in the small space between the dryer and the wall. All this did was dent the dryer and chase the rat beneath the nearby washing machine. My husband leaned over, yanked the washer out from the wall, and continued to try and skewer the rat with the bristle end of the broom, something he reports wasn't getting him much of anyplace fast, although it seemed to annoy the rat, which ran out into the kitchen. Where it went after that he didn't know. It disappeared. So he ran into the bedroom, grabbed a rifle and systematically began tearing the entire house apart. Broom in one hand, rifle in the other. He was prepared.

Thank God it was summer. We think what happened was that the rat ran straight through the house and out the front window. We never found a single trace. Still, getting to sleep that night was....difficult.

*TO BE CONTINUED!!!!!!!!!!!!*

_____________________________

*we briefly owned a dog this last summer, but he will be the subject of a future post.

Temperate Azure Chicken In Instant Rescue Caper!

2010-01-11T08:35:00.000-08:00

If you've been visiting 'Paul' awhile you know that I've had ongoing problems with my next door neighbors.

Big sister, while usually a quiet type, occasionally goes prowling around her yard at night growling and screaming. She also has some kind of ongoing conflict with the pear tree back there, which has lead to several loud disagreements with same. Mom and Big Brother are harmless, if quiet, furtive and unwashed. Actually all of them are harmless and generally pleasant folks (unless you're a pear tree)and its not them specifically I've had the issue with; its the overflow animal problem.

At first it was just cats. Sis collected cats. White cats, when we first moved in, although as they had kittens that changed rapidly. Over the past ten or so years I've had these cats die in my compost bin, have kittens in my flower pots, barf on my front porch, climbing my trees, digging up my plants, and crapping everywhere they damn well pleased. Now, that last issue is just not normal cat behavior. I've had cats. Even the feral ones are usually cool enough to take a dump in an out-of-the-way place. These things were shitting on the hood of our pickup truck. They shit in the middle of the porch. They shit in the middle of the lawn. They built big volcanoes over their butt nuggets in the middle of the driveway. I have no idea what that was about. They shit in my potted plants, in the middle of the steps, just any damn place the urge struck. And these cats were host to some downright frightening intestinal fauna too. Huge squirming clods of it. This was not, as my grandson would say, beautiful OR propriate.

Now as time went on the neighbors' property became overgrown to the point that you could not make out the house behind all the underbrush. That was fine with me. It was also fine with the wildlife. I enjoyed the various native and migrant birds the thick brush and tall trees invited. In the summer evening three different types of bat flutter and chirp overhead, venturing out and returning in acrobatic loops to the immense Scoulers willow in their front yard. I even got a kick out of the big old boar raccoon that used to amble around in the evening, fat jiggling, in no hurry, like he owned the place.

Until he started living under my back deck.

And climbing up the lattice on the side of my house, right next to my bedroom window.

In the middle of the night.

Did you know that raccoons make noise? They do. They make lots of noises. Not just 'throwing your garbage all over the driveway' noises, or 'going through the toolbox in the garage and throwing sockets onto the floor' noises. They also make creepy yipping, growling, barking, screeching noises. At night. They have lots to say, turns out. All of it at night. Outside my bedroom window. I have no idea what its about, or why they're doing it; I didn't ask. They probably would have told me, though. I should have.

Turns out there were a lot of raccoons living over there. Lots and lots of them. Enough so that they were sending out reconnaissance squads to my place. They've blazed a permanent trail, bare of grass, across the lot and straight into my back yard...From there it goes around the garage, the shed, the raised beds, around the side of my house and right up onto my front porch. How do I know it's raccoons? I've seen them. Bold as fuck. And they leave footprints, too. They aren't big on wiping their feet. They come right up on my front porch, go right up onto the bench out there and look in my window. Oh look, the fat broad got new curtains.

Now, right from the beginning when we moved in, there were rats. Not in the house, mind; outside. Regular field rats; of course, this is farmland so you simply expect field rats. Not a big deal.

A couple of years later, the Norway rats showed up.

Well, OK, you know, Norways are a part of life. What are you going to do? Again, theres a lot of farms out this way, lots of manure ponds and grain silos and silage tips. The fact that you'd see them in broad daylight was a little worrisome; but I'm no rat expert either. I figured they came from the surrounding farms, and they'd gotten a little bold from smelling the presence of people all the time or something.

As time passed this all became so much a part of everyday life it went without notice.

Then last summer the animal population around here just exploded.

I had raccoons running around on my roof every night. I had raccoons going through my garbage, looking in my windows, barking and yipping from the top of my umbrella tree, dragging boxes around the back of our pickup truck and tracking dirty footprints all over my car. Cats everywhere, crapping in my garden, wandering up and down the sidewalks, yodelling from the top of the shed, squashed into little cat pizzas all over the road up and down the block.

And rats.

Oh yes.

...and rats.

*TO BE CONTINUED*

Eleven Blue Moles Plan A Resounding Active!!

2010-01-07T10:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening the Biker and I went to our weekly therapy session, and I found myself regaling our counsellor with the following tale (apropos of what exactly I don't recall.)

__________________________________

I had an arrangement with my parents the year I was 16. I would, without complaint, accompany my mother to every single one of the crackpot, embarrassing, bizarre, humiliating, excruciatingly awkward religious events she attended, and in return I got to continue to live in their house*. I've gone into the reasons why this arrangement was made elsewhere; the short version is that my mom wasn't going to put up with anyone who was 'possessed by an unclean spirit' using her bathroom.

That any arrangement was made at all was sheer lucky timing on my part. Shortly prior to this my mom had found Jesus, and apparently Jesus doesn't like for people to turn their daughters out in the street. Now I was grateful as all heck to Jesus for the opportunity to continue to sleep indoors, and maybe I shouldn't complain; but to tell you the truth Jesus- who was a great guy otherwise- could not manage his money for jack shit.

Fortunately for him, as long as my mom was around Jesus never had to worry about his credit rating.

The only thing about any of this that benefited me personally was that it got me out of the house, and gave me an opportunity to meet a entire sector of the American public that I never would have known existed otherwise.

One day my mom decided that we were going to go to Las Vegas and see Kathryn Kuhlman. And so it was done. The woman who saved bacon grease until it grew an afro and hoarded boxed muffin mix in case another depression suddenly hit coughed up the wherewithal for a couple of round trip airplane tickets, two event admissions and a sizable 'love gift'...and my dad drove us to the airport.

Kathryn Kuhlman's popularity is difficult to describe to anyone who isn't familiar with 'Born Again' evangelical culture. How she was able to get away with what she did for as long as she did is a testimony to the same American tendency to 'willing gullibility' as was noted by that other giant of the religious community, Aleister Crowley. Weighing in at maybe 70 lbs, standing about four foot nothing, with bad hair and a voice that alternated at random between alto and baritone, you could not call her physically compelling. Her preferred dress was white chiffon. When I saw her she'd added a cape and train, wizard sleeves and a Mary Poppins neckline, all of it edged in scallop.

As she spoke, or rather, declaimed, she would dramatically flow across the stage from left to right and back, taking large measured steps, and then suddenly STOP! ...one arm outstretched! and hold the pose while her garments hurried to catch up with her, face ablaze with fervor. Then suddenly back she'd go as though someone had released a spring, arms fully outstretched and circulating like goldfish fins, and once again STOP! Then dart to the front of the stage full tilt, and STOP! right on the very edge of disaster! The whole time croaking away about Gods heavenly loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove for his chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren, and his glooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorious heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealing POW-errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

This show was one well-oiled machine. She had an orchestra. She had a choir. She had soloists. She had costume changes. She also had a crack team of gimps. 'Patients' on gurneys parked around the front of the stage with 'nurses' and 'doctors' in exaggerated attendance, a large coterie of the 'differently-abled'; the whole crowd of them clearly playing roles, slicker than hell. I'm not being bitter here. It was so clearly rehearsed and had been repeated so many times that it looked as mannered as a kabuki theatre production. While whatever passed on stage took place, the folks down in the pit area on the floor ground through their accompanying routine...a nurse suddenly rushing to the side of a patient struggling to get out of their wheelchair...two doctors holding an impromptu emergency consultation while one of the gurney folks showed the first signs of consciousness in years; ushers rushing to their sides and then whispering loudly to one another 'She was blind for 14 years! She says she can see shadows!' and sending rumors up through the crowd**. All clearly cued by orchestral flourishes, key lines, and the ends of songs.

I had been under the impression that we were here to attend a revival. After a short while of watching it,though, I thought 'Oh, OK. This is like a play' and settled in to patiently wait for the whole weird-ass thing to be over.

I was right, as it turns out. This was a theatrical performance, in the same tradition as psychic surgery, the medicine show, and the carnival pitch . It even has a name. It's known as the 'straight healing service'. What Kathryn did was, she got the crowd whupped up, stuck her hand on people, they fell down, and it cost 65$ a head to see her do it.

Meantime Kathryn is healing the halt and the lame hand over fist. A long queue of people snaked down through the aisles and up onto the stage. As soon as she'd stick her hand one one person WHAMMO down they'd go like a sack of crap. The ushers would expertly catch them under the arms and hardly have them drug off before the next one hit the floor. People in the audience were standing and waving their arms in the air, speaking in tongues! Huge ovations went up when the formerly speechless uttered their first words in years! Plane crash victims with both feet sewn to their faces gave eloquent testimony! Cancer patients who'd had their entire brains removed calculated square roots! The crowds went wild!!!!!

And all of a sudden Kathryn stretched out one scrawny arm and everything HUSHED.

The whole place-silent. All eyes on her.

She swept to the very edge of the stage, faced 'A' section, stretched out one arm like a flagpole and announced "SEIG HEIL!"

....naw, I'm fucking with you.

She stretched out one arm like a flagpole and announced "FEEL THE POWER OF GODS LOVE!"

And every single person in 'A' section went down like they'd been scythed.

EVERY SINGLE PERSON.

She suddenly darted across to stage right! Stuck out her arm toward 'C' section and shouted "FEEL THE POWER OF GODS LOVE!"

Every single person in 'C' section hit the floor.

I'm seated in 'B' section, center floor, with my mom on one side of me and her best friend on the other. We are standing up praising the Lord with our arms upraised. Everyone around us is speaking or singing in tongues, moaning, swaying, crying, laughing...

Kathryn sweeps to the center of the stage, and out goes the arm. She's pointing at us. 'B' section falls silent.

Kathryn Kuhlman shouts "FEEL THE POWER OF GODS LOVE!"

And everyone in 'B' section goes down like dominoes.
Every single person.
All of them.

Except me.

______________________________________________________

Now imagine for a moment that you're a 16 year old girl who's been told that she is literally harboring demons. I showed up at this event carrying quite a burden of guilt and shame and fear. And lest you think I had my mind closed, know that I did not, not this early on; I was all for Jesus and love and forgiveness and God. I thought that a lot of what I had already seen was sad and embarrassing, but there was enough sincerity floating around to keep me hoping that maybe I was just missing something and that eventually I'd 'get it'.

And I did. As I was standing there, all alone, literally in the middle of the auditorium, glancing around...slowly putting my arms by my side...slowly sitting down in my seat...my mom shooting me dirty glances, her best friend shooting me dirty glances, people looking away in embarrassment...I finally got it.

These people were all nuts.

___________________________________________________________________

* instead of at the Perry Center Home for Wayward Youth, where my cousin was currently being raped by the staff and her fellow inmates.

**How obvious was it? When the program was over and we were all filing out, the 'doctors' were helping stack up folding chairs.

Yellow Mouse Comeback is Dire

2010-01-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

I am here to tell you that money most certainly does not buy happiness. It buys choices, as the saying goes, but you can have a whole pocket full of cash and a whole array of choices and still be having an absolutely suck time.

This is the first time in my life that I can say that; at least the part about money. The Playboy of the Western World (my father in law, now gone to that big bath house in the sky) left us pretty well off. Having money is definitely better than the alternative, but it made no difference in the quality of the suck factor when everything around here decided to take a massive shit.

I am a person who likes my home life stable, happy and free of drama. I work hard to keep things that way. Growing up surrounded by alcoholics, criminals and sociopaths, I swore that I would never let my family life be tainted by that kind of chaos, once it was my turn. That decision had absolutely no magic 'drama-averting' effect on my life subsequently, but it did mean that, like any other vermin, problems were hunted down and exterminated as they arose, instead of being left to fester and multiply. I loved my family, I sacrificed, I made good decisions, blah blah blah blah fucking blah.

I don't know if it's just American culture or just me or what, but once you have achieved the home and family thing, the societal models kind of peter out. So I assumed,like a doofus, that things must pretty much just peter out on the inter-familial stress front since there was apparently nothing left to report. I figured the kids moved out, you got wrinkly, you went to Vegas a lot, then had a hip replacement and eventually died.

Ahem.

There are times over the past year that I wished I'd never made the decision to have a family. That's a new one for me. I went into the endeavor thinking that if I did everything 'right' that things would, you know, turn out right. Which in retrospect was astonishingly naive of me. Had I been raising feeder mice perhaps that expectation might have proven closer to the mark; feeder mice don't cause a lot of drama and either way you end up feeding them to anacondas. During the course of this past year, there were people in my life that I would have liked to have fed to anacondas. I would be surrounded by obese anacondas right now. Obese, non-dramatic anacondas.

Half the problem is me. I might be pushing 50 hard but the rotten kid who used to vandalize things at random and get into fights is still very much alive and well here. I should be mature enough by now to be able to keep my shit together; to be able to pull back, to separate from things that are no longer under my control. Am I? I am not. I want to leap onto things that are no longer under my control and rend them into bleeding shreds, kind of like what happens to stray teenagers out for a casual walk through the woods around Forks, Washington on a moonless night, only everyone involved would be wearing a shirt. The only difference between me now and then is that back then I used to get off on being enraged. Now it just makes me feel like shit.

So are we in counselling? You bet your little red wagon. This rotten kid does not give up. Ever. Resistance is fucking FUTILE.

Red Gopher Has Spasmodic Breathing Sound Or Discoteque!

2009-12-31T09:23:00.000-08:00

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.
________________________________________

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.
________________________________

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

2009-12-29T09:27:00.001-08:00

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.
___________________________________________

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.
_____________________________________________

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.
__________________________________

Just for the record: I now own NINE different Jimi Hendrix t-shirts!
____________________________________

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

2009-12-23T19:13:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-18T07:48:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-04T14:51:00.000-08:00

One of the most interesting things you will ever go through is a colonoscopy, although this is hearsay on my part 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 screen 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. And what we should all take away from this is that you should never use your colon as a form of alternative watercraft.Of course you should bring your colon along; your colon wants to have fun too, but I mean you should use an innertube, and 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 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 private, and 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, and nobody will know it was you who hung a loaf on their front seat because you'll be way downstream by the time they find it.

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. I was a vegetarian for years, and I still avoid animal for the most part. 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 might best be 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 theres photographic proof.

Oh yes!

I was offered copies of these Polaroids, in fact. Now what in the hell would I 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 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 intestinal tract was pink? Those are wrong. They're red.

When you get a colonoscopy the first thing they do after they pump you full of anaesthetic and you say a bunch of weird 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, you could stick a lot of stuff up there and never notice it unless it was square. But if it was stuff like old rubber gloves or margarine you could walk around with that all day long 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, and shiny, too. Theres all these little red spidery veins all over the place. To tell the truth though, it pretty much looks like guts. Or one of those party balloons that are all lumpy and are about 2 ft long? If one of those was big enough to walk inside of, and the inside was all covered with wet spar varnish, and was red, and had scary eyeball veins, then that's exactly what it looks like.

Before all this takes place though you have to drink this liquid laxative stuff called phosphorescent citrate of manitoba for two days. This is so they can see the forest through the trees, or at least the forest without all the bear crap laying all over the ground or however that goes. Man does this stuff clean you out. Much to my surprise it tasted pretty good. Kind of like Squirt soda, appropriately enough. You should plan on 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. The fat lady about took the shine off the enamel. All the trees in that forest blew down.

Besides diverticules I had a couple of polyps. This pleased a certain dark, vile, Lovecraftian part of my psyche: ewwwww. Polypsssssssssssss.

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 'Dave'. It would be humiliating to die from butt Daves.

Intestinal polyps supposedly can turn into colon cancer. I have no idea how this happens or why. If it actually were a mutated deep-sea fish that barfed up corrosive acid you could appease it with blood sacrifices, but its not, which is why they have to inflate your butt and stick a camera up it. Life is a mystery. In any event they took this 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 the 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 left to bitch about anyway. 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. You are completely empty; not having eaten anything for 24 hours will do that to a person. Thanks to modern medical science and a small compressor you now also contain the cubic air mass of a military weather balloon. Combine these factors with the unmistakable aroma of vaporized ass growths and you are now primed to cut the fart of a lifetime. As soon as you wake up and turn over EVERYONE in the office will know what kind of a procedure you just had. And everyone in the parking lot. And passengers on commercial flights. And scientists aboard the international space station. It is both awe-inspiring and humbling.

The human body is a miraculous thing, kids.

Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

2009-12-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
_______________________________________________________

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.

____________________________________________________

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

2009-11-24T16:42:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

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*

_____________________________________________________________

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

2009-11-13T14:10:00.000-08:00

Once I have this hammered out the way I like it I'm going to send it to all the bicycling sites I can find on the web and get heard, since Paul doesn't exactly stand at the center of the average bicyclists’ media universe. It's come to that.
_________________________________

Yeah, I've been here before. There, in fact vvv
http://1hplovecraft.blogspot.com/2008/03/die-two-wheeled-slime.html

I'm gonna go there again.

This past summer was a beautiful one here in the PNW. Absolutely gorgeous. Unbelievably gorgeous. We spent a lot of time out on the road. Travelling was a joy.

EXCEPT FOR THE GOD-DAMNED BICYCLISTS.

Are you a bicyclist? Then you do this or you have done this. Yes, you have. None of you are the magic exception to the following. You all need a goddamn wake-up call because you simply do not comprehend the concrete reality of the following FACTS:

1. On any road, but particularly on the freeway, in a showdown between your 7 lbs of recycled beer cans and my Buick, you are going to lose. Maybe I was driving poorly. Maybe an unforeseen obstacle up ahead caused a sudden, unavoidable hazard. Maybe a strong side wind blew you in front of me. THAT DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE.

Are you in deer country? How about dog, cat, possum, raccoon, skunk and/or squirrel country? Is there blowing trash or dust? Silage? Something being harvested nearby? Is there bad weather? No shoulder? Are there signs that say 'Strong Side Winds Next 5 Miles'? Are there drunk drivers on the road? How about semis? Loaded log trucks? Nigerian cabbies? Finally, are you riding one of those stupid recumbent things?

If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes' then YOUR PLACE IS ON THE SIDE OF THE FUCKING ROAD. STAY OUT OF THE TRAFFIC LANES.

2. In a showdown between your 7 lbs of recycled beer cans and my motorcycle, YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE. Yeah, that never occurred to you did it. It doesn't seem to occur to most of you.

2a. Don't think that simply because we are both on two wheels that you can split a lane with me. You can't and you shouldn't. And there is more at work here than greater mass and power vs. an exhausted vegetarian on a kids' toy. For example, if you come up from the right along beside me, YOU WILL GET BURNT-BADLY- by my exhaust. Chances are I will have sped up to get well ahead of your sweaty ass which is something I do for safety's sake( only one vehicle per lane here, Paco...that’s the law.) Therefore chances are good that I'll never know it happened. Again- this is not because I'm an asshole and don't care, although I am and I don't. It's because I am operating a motorized vehicle in a safe and orderly manner on a system of roads designed for motorized vehicles, and I am already a mile away.

3. You all seem to think that simply because you find yourselves in a rural setting, or at least between major towns and not riding on a multi-lane highway, you can ride all over the goddamn road any which way you want, singly or in large groups, not paying any attention whatsoever, because you are in 18th century fucking France.
This is not France.
This is not the 18th century.
Rural American roadways carry more large motorized commercial vehicles and agricultural implements more of the time than do the major highways. Why? Because actual WORK is being done here, and summertime is the time when most of that work is being done. Summertime does not mean that Pierre hitches up the oxcart and merry peasants go dancing down the road with baskets of cabbage balanced on their heads. It means that local business people fire up the semi, the tractor, the raspberry processor, the silage harvester, the combine, the manure tanks and the hay baler and drive them from one field to the next. They are working against the clock just like any other businessperson. Furthermore, there are special laws that allow agricultural vehicles to use lower-grade, smoky fuels, travel at speeds other than posted, and for underage operators to drive them.

THEY HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY.

Remember too: they are also subject to the same laws of physics as cars, motorcycles and you-

Tiny frail objects traveling slowly get turned into nasty bloody confetti when their paths cross those of large heavy objects traveling rapidly.

4. If you are operating a bicycle in an urbanized area, particularly where there is on-street parking, stay out of the traffic lane. PERIOD. I don't care what the law says you can and cannot do. In this case any law allowing you into the flow of motorized traffic is a bad one and should be changed for your safety and mine. You simply cannot accelerate as quickly, maintain posted speeds or stop as quickly as a car can. That this statement pisses you off or that you disagree does not in any way take away from its truth. Get over yourself.

4a. DON'T BRING YOUR LITTLE KIDS ON THEIR LITTLE WOBBLY BIKES OUT INTO TRAFFIC WITH YOU. Every single one of you who thinks that they're 'training' their children to ride in town by doing this should be cited for gross child endangerment. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen the following scenarios:

SCENARIO A: Mommy hippie, daddy hippie and three little child hippies are waiting at the corner for the light to change. Once it does, mommy and daddy hippie pedal right off, followed by oldest child. Second child, not wanting to get tangled, waits for the pack to get going before taking off, and struggles to come up to speed, and by now the light is halfway over. Smallest child has been looking at a fire truck and only realizes at the last minute that its time to ride, and drops the bike, then gets back up on the bike and begins to trying to pedal, struggling to get up to speed.
And the light changes.
And smallest child is in the middle of the intersection.

Try and make it through any neighborhood in urban Portland or Seattle and count how many times this happens. Honest to snot. These are probably the same parents that wouldn't dream of giving their children processed sugar or letting them walk alone to school, and yet it seems perfectly OK to let them chance getting squashed by a goddamn ambulance.

SCENARIO B. A giant pack of bicyclists (including a lot of little kids on little bicycles) waits at an intersection for the light to change. The light changes and the ones who aren't deep in conversation or using their cell phones or getting a blowjob take off slowly, trying not to get tangled. Kids drop their bikes, freeze like deer in the headlights, or take off in random directions at random speeds. The rest of the pack straggles off slowly, some riders jumping off halfway to push their bikes, some running into the others, some swerving out into oncoming traffic as they try and go around the cluster-fuck. The whole mess continues to meander across even after the light has changed. Now traffic is backed up. Cars are gunning their engines and honking. Meanwhile more bicyclists hurry to tag themselves on to the last stragglers in the pack, which is now mainly comprised of little kids and assholes. At least one of them (generally an 'adult') flips me off.*

SNAP THE FUCK OUT OF IT PEOPLE.

Roads are designed for motorized vehicles.
You, on a bicycle, are not a motorized vehicle.
The moment you go out onto the street you are at a disadvantage and that’s simply a fact. If there are designated bicycle lanes in your town, USE THEM EXCLUSIVELY. Particularly if you are riding with children.
If there are no bicycle lanes, pull you head out of your ass and operate your goddamn bicycle DEFENSIVELY.
___________________________________

*OO. Scary bicyclist. One day, scary bicyclist, you won't be flipping off the lady laughing at your sad antics from inside the Buick. You'll be flipping off an undercover cop, or a delivery truck driver in a hurry, or my buddy Chris, who'll flat stop his car, jump out and beat you into a screaming, crying pulp with a jack handle. He is OUT there. And he doesn't care. You already made him late.

Green Ox Reads Seven Government Form: Gluey!!

2009-11-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

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.

___________________________________________________________

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.)

______________________________________

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

2009-04-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-03-25T08:21:00.000-07:00

NOW WITH PICTURES! AT THE END!! SCROLL DOWN!!! QUICK!!!!
_____________________________________

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

2009-03-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-03-12T20:04:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-03-09T09:56:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

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

2009-03-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

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.

Red Gerbil Extreme Getaway!

2009-02-25T05:25:00.000-08:00

Snaps and Pix day here at Paul!

Let's see what's on the ol' chip, shall we?

Sometimes you'll be driving down the road and messages appear out of the fog.

And sometimes, answers.

It was a sign. No, I mean really, it was a sign. Furthermore the timing was eerily apt. Should I continue at my present breakneck pace or was it time to slow down? I snapped another picture to be sure.
DEAL WITH THIS. THIS WAS TOTALLY CHANCE. ARE YOU ALL TINGLY? BECAUSE I AM.
Clearly, God scoffs at posted speed limits! This is practically a divine mandate here!

Nothing I have ever endured as a melanin-challenged Native American can match the sorrow on this noble natives' pale face. Imagine his life if you can. Surrounded by a virtual bird ghetto, his head emitting some kind of...an emission, chest-television permanently tuned to the blue screen of death, standing next to the road in all kinds of weather, wearing an orange miniskirt with a big huge 'W' on it and his butt cheeks hanging out (butt cheeks which, as a result of nuclear testing in the late 60's, are located in front instead of in back.)

Primeval father-god of the Teletubbies? Postmodern totem? Any way you look at it this shit is just TRAGIC.

Breakfast food gone wrong.
Time: yesterday afternoon
Place: Squalicum Parkway, Bellingham, Washington

I called Blockbuster Video and no, they had no recently-released pancake films that they were promoting. This leaves us with a giant pancake in a miniskirt holding down a corner on the most notorious stroll in Bellingham.

Yes, I blame society.

When I describe Washington State as 'blue' I ain't just whistling Dixie, chicks. We are inclusive to a fault and tolerant as the day is long.

Yes, even if you're a British dyke and you aren't real picky how either adjective is spelled.

Of course now that I look at it again I wonder if it might be some kind of message: STOP DIKE BRITT! Or : BRITT DIKE STOP! You could take it a number of ways I guess. 'If you're british and a dike, stop' is a possible interpretation, as is 'Stop, dike britt' which could be like destiny telling you to pause for a moment in the midst of your dikey brittness. Actually, you need to go bug someone else about this because I have no friggin' idea what it means. Quit bothering me. Seriously. Can't you go play? Is your room clean? Maybe you should go ask your mom for something to do.

funk!

2009-02-18T20:03:00.001-08:00

I have a really, really sensitive nose, at least when my sense of smell happens to be working. Most of the time it isn't. (Weirdly, this effects my memory.) When it is, I rival a pedigreed trufflehound. I can tell if something I'm cooking has been salted or not. I can tell where any given cloakroom is by the smell of all that concentrated detergent and hairspray and smoke and aftershave. I can smell peoples' individual scents before they enter a room. And that's creepy. I don't like it a bit, particularly after discovering the fact that smell is particulate. Bad enough I can identify you in complete darkness, but to know that I'm huffing actual matter shed by God only knows what...regions... No.

Still, its a cross I bear. Without warning. This makes it worse, like a sneak attack. One minute I'll be wandering around in an absentminded fog and breathing will be the involuntary, unconscious activity that it's meant to be....another moment and suddenly I WILL KNOW what brand of douche the woman on the escalator ahead of me uses. Or if she...does. Yeah.
No really, it's honestly that bad. Ignorance really is bliss, kids.

If I'm in a public place and my nose suddenly decides to work I instinctively switch to breathing through my mouth, which is always attractive. I don't know why this makes it any better; I'm still sucking in funk chunks. I guess not being instantly aware of their probable source is a comfort. Huffing ass frag is one thing... KNOWING it's ass frag is another thing entirely.
An assy thing.

Assy things were plentiful in the hospitality trade, as you might imagine. I dreaded Monday mornings for just this reason. I would walk in to a recently vacated room, a room that had been closed tight for at least two solid days while the guests drank, smoked and performed carnal acts of slappity squittiness on each other. Sometimes it was all I could do not to give notice. Motel rooms are typically tiny and stuffy to begin with. That compounded with the rank, porklike human smell of skin and hair and sweat, the body-temperature humidity, knowing you were inhaling other peoples' exhale, stirring up their buttflakes and dick particles when you stripped the bed, shuffling up clouds of foot frag as you vaccuumed...it was not propriate. Or beautiful. At all. You tried not to think about it.
Particularly because you still had the bathroom left to do.
__________________________________

I used to do a lot of amyl nitrate during vocational training class. Me and my buddy would roll in already baked, and then run back to the darkroom and take a couple rips just to get into a 'graphic arts' frame of mind. We'd sneet a few more for the road during break. Beside giving you an excellent sweeping headrush, amyl, and the combination of various noxious darkroom chemicals, would effectively kill your sense of smell for about 15-30 minutes. Once we discovered that our intake doubled, since we used it pre-emptively for those times when we knew we'd have to deal with Meg, our instructor.

I have no idea what kind of medical condition this woman had, but her breath smelled like boiling cat urine. The most ammoniac, venomous piss stench imaginable, like a bus shelter full of winos. The fact that it was definitely her breath made it even more disturbing. It made you wonder what she....ate.

Her office was a small glassed - in cubicle and it had absorbed that pee-breath smell deep into its very subatomic structure. Opening the door was like taking the lid off a diaper hamper. That held true whether she was in there or not.

During class she'd come around and appraise everyone's work on the light table. The atmosphere back in that area was already pretty thick; light tables, adhesives and teenagers give off a lot of heat. Every time she'd lean in to speak to me, my eyes would literally begin to water and sting. It was beyond belief! You could taste it! You could practically see it shimmering like paint thinner fumes, scorching your sinuses, bleaching all the color out of your eyebrows. It was just horrifying.

Me and my buddy went through an entire 8 gram perfume bottle of amyl during that quarter. That in combination with the chemical darkroom stew we were already breathing probably destroyed a whole lot of vital brain cells, which may go a long way toward explaining why I am the way I am now. Or not.

Quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

2009-02-17T16:44:00.000-08:00

We've hit that stretch of 'false spring' we get up in these parts. Certain signs: bulbs breaking dormancy with frostbitten noses, eagles sitting their nests, and FirstNations ass-up next to the road pitching and bitching. I nabbed back some shrubs and trees, tore out a bunch of old dead stems and seedheads, and walked around shaking my head and squinting at things. Still, it COUNTS. I made a mess. It's gardening.

I'm going to finish up all my late winter pruning, stack that up, and then get into some serious compost turning action, weather permitting. I cannot wait to stick a pitchfork into that stuff and see what happened over winter. I had an amazing amount of breakdown this season, about 2/3 less mass than what I started out with. Usually it's about 1/2. I think its because of the extreme weather we've had; that, and all the visitors, like crows and ravens and raccoons and mice and hippies and whatnot.

I look forward to the first turning of the year. I really get a kick out of seeing who's been in there and the traces they've left behind...tunnels, seed caches, tiny round nests, flask-shaped hibernaculums lined with clematis fluff, and occasional mortal remains. I'm particularly curious to see if maybe I have an extra large number of angleworms in the heap because of the flooding we had during the winter.

After any spell of cold or rainy weather the compost heap will have a zone of giant freaky long angleworms, chased up out of the deep soil by the rising water table, knotted up in big tangles like spaghetti all around the edges . If I'm careful I can transfer them in handfuls without waking them up too much right into the soft soil of my raised beds and cover them over. Once they wake up they're amazingly fast, strong and agile. They go through my heavy clay soil like mining equipment and leave tunnels as big around as my index finger. These are some buff damn worms. They can beat up your angleworms. Seriously. I try not to piss them off.

Anyone else that gets uncovered has to take their chances, though. The robins always line up on the fence impatient for me to finish and watch me while I turn the heap, giving me one-eyed glares with their heads thrust forward in a grouchy manner. When I get done I watch them from the kitchen window going back and forth from the fence to the heap, flinging chunks of compost out into the yard in their greed, getting chubbier and chubbier as they feast on all the slug eggs and redworms and centipedes and potato bugs I've turned up.

This year I have to take out a couple of trees...a Bradford pear and a Leyland cypress. The Bradford is simply a nuisance. We bought it as an ornamental. It was supposed to be male. It wasn't supposed to fruit. After a few years of throwing a single pear, if that, it suddenly decided to blast out bushels and bushels of fruit like a mad thing, much to the delight of every hornet, crow and raccoon in the neighborhood. Time for you to die, Bradford pear.

The Leyland simply got away from me. And take that as a warning, kids: cupressus leylandii grows like a mad motherfucker. I had been nabbing it back pretty faithfully, keeping it low and stout, but then I left it go for a year. That was all it took. Now instead of a nice short, trim, full tree I have a tall wandy nuisance that's shading out my magnolia stellata. I have to jump on it too before it gets too big for me to handle myself, thus begging the intervention of the Yummy Biker, who does NOT belong in the garden because he makes my plants very sad. (Plus he has cooties and boy germs.) Besides, this gives me an excuse to use my chainsaw, and I'M BY GOD GOING TO USE MY CHAINSAW.

...my chainsaw! MINE!!!!!

Seriously, can you think of a better way to bring in the new gardening season than by using loud destructive equipment to kill a perfectly healthy tree? I can't. It's gonna be awesome!

Moneyless in Seattle

2009-02-13T07:57:00.001-08:00

Being on Welfare wasn't as bad as you might think it would be. Yeah, there was a lot of paperwork, but nothing worse than what you'd run into during a typical day at school. Some of the people were less than polite, but that's life in general; no problem. I guess the worst parts were the long, interminable waits in the DSHS office, sitting on the sticky chairs, watching the 'challenged' couples making out in the corner while feral children ran batshit around the room with their hair full of bugs. None of which is a treat, but imagine sitting in the middle of same with two black eyes, holding a helpless infant in your arms. Yeah, that I could have done without.

Anywho, the actual day-to-day living was remarkably free of worry. I could count on having money to pay the bills when they came due every month. I got the best medical care I have ever received in my life. I never needed for anything related to caring for my child...food, medical care, supplies, diapers, you name it. I was able to make a budget for the first time since moving out of my parents house and not have to worry about someone going on a big self-pity jag at the end of the month when bills were due, smacking me around, grabbing the checkbook and dashing out to purchase, say, a dartboard.

LENGTHY DIGRESSION FOLLOWS:
And not just any dartboard; a competition-quality dartboard. Because all the other guys where he worked could play darts and he couldn't, see, and it took inches off his dick or something, so this meant he had to go buy the most expensive dartboard available and specialty darts RIGHT NOW and practice so he wouldn't be embarrassed. (and in doing so take out the entire wall around the sonofabitch for about a foot around and lose us our cleaning deposit...because we were renting at the time....) OO, or then there was the time we ABSOLUTELY NEEDED A BANG-OLUFFSEN STEREO and I got slapped around because I pointed out the fact that we were a month behind on the rent and our only means of transportation (a benelli road racing motorcycle, just what the urban couple with a kid on the way needs, parts scarcer than hens teeth and made of platinum when you did find them; another MUST HAVE RIGHT NOW purchase) had just shit the bed. Again. Or then there was the time we ABSOLUTELY HAD TO GO LOOK AT A SMALL PLANE for sale in Enumclaw...even though by this time we had to take the bus to get there because were living in an attic, our 4wd (...guess why we had that?) was being reposessed, and we were both 'employed' by a cult that 'paid' in past life regression sessions, but that he deserved because he also worked at a print shop and earned a paycheck (ostensibly for standing next to a machine with his hand resting on it for 8 hours, when he wasn't screwing the secretary) and my pregnant ass did not. Then he decided that he needed an emerald tree boa. Want to hear about the emerald tree boa? A week after not buying the small plane we're out at some goddamn sporting goods store in Bumfuck Egypt looking at bamboo flyfishing pole blanks (because everone who is dirt poor and in debt and who lives in the middle of the city and has no transportation and works for a cult that pays in past life regressions and has a baby on the way NEEDS TO MAKE THEIR OWN FLYFISHING ROD -which I might add, is NOT the cheapest hobby in the world but one that absolutely had to be pursued) and while we were there we happened to wander in to a pet store where there was an emerald tree boa. SUDDENLY WE HAD TO OWN AN EMERALD TREE BOA.

So yes, being on welfare was a significant step up compared to that shit.

My absolute favorite thing about Welfare was food stamps. I don't know how they do it these days, but back when they gave you sheaves of what looked like Monopoly money, all colorful and fake looking, just screaming to anyone who cared to look 'hey, I'm indigent!' Of course, you got over the stigma real quick when everyone else in line was buying their groceries using stamps too....and you had a baby to feed.

Since I was fortunate enough to be poor in downtown Seattle, I had access to what were possibly the best ingredients available on the West Coast, and that at the beginning of the 'Pacific Rim Cuisine' movement as well. Even ghetto little corner markets carried things like craft brewed beers and frozen quail. Soon I was shopping at the foggy break of day at the Pike Street Market, expresso in hand, baby in frontpack, bumping elbows with world-class chefs and food managers, buying duck, goose, salmon, wildcrafted chanterelles, you name it. ON FOOD STAMPS. It was awesome!

Now, I might have bought upmarket, but I was a single woman with a child who made my own everything. This meant that at the end of any given month I had a full freezer and a whole stack of funny money left over, stuff that could ONLY be used to purchase food. Since you can only buy so much duck, and you can only fit so much food into a freezer, this was when you started 'cracking stamps.'

Anything that cost less than a dollar was changed back to you in coin, at par. (This is why you can go in to any quickie mart here in the Northwest and find boxes of apples, onions and potatoes next to the checkout stand.) You could actually make money cracking stamps, since their face value was some percentage less than real cash, so some dedicated cheaters would get their stamps at the beginning of the month and crack the whole stack. You came out money ahead, and it was all real coin money you could spend on ANYTHING YOU WANTED....plus, you ended up with a whole bunch of stuff like single onions and potatoes and turkey tails lying around, so you could make stew, too.

I completely let down welfare queens everywhere. I should have cracked my stamps and then run out and bought a whole bunch of malt liquor and a couple of rocks, right? Nope. My coin went to cab fare.
Yes, it's sad. I know.

I hated riding public transportation with a baby. Public transportation is NOT CLEAN. That, and I hated riding mass transit anyway because I am a freak magnet. I am. If there is someone within a city block of me wearing a tinfoil hat, they will be irresistably drawn in by my freak magnetron and end up in the seat right next to me talking about how the CIA implanted a tracking device in their penis that shoots out radio frequencies whenever they masturbate.
Oh yes.
The final straw was when I was riding the bus just looking out the window, caught a motion and turned and found a filthy freaky drunk slowly stroking my sleeping baby's head. I was nice. I told him to please stop. This earned me getting my shit called a fucking whore for the rest of the bus ride, and then Mayor McFreak followed me off the bus and called me a fucking whore all the way down the street too. So yes, whenever possible, I preferred to take a cab.

I like cabbies. Every single one I ever met was a man with a plan, a total scamming motherfucker, and a smartass. They were pretty good to me at a time when I really needed the break...helping me with my groceries, taking me the shortest routes and then waiving half the fare, showing me around town and telling me where things were, and just being friendly, decent and real. In a different reality, with a better driving record, I could totally get into driving hack, and God help pedestrians everywhere; right, so I guess it all worked out for the best. To this day I will take a cab if it is at all possible or necessary.

I was driving around shopping yesterday with the 'all-growed-up' version of the baby I was packing around back then, musing back on how different things are. Some things haven't changed, though. We're still shopping together. I guess thats pretty cool.

Oh good gravy Marie enough of that already.

2009-02-09T15:07:00.000-08:00

Here. Look at this instead.

Kinda brightens you whole day, doesn't it?

Release the Hounds

2009-02-07T11:57:00.001-08:00

By the end of next week I will have sent my first story to be published by an actual 'we will give you money' type publishing outfit!

I expect nothing. I have no illusions about my skill or my chances. Aw FUCK no. But just doing this is a rush and a half! And I figure I'm going to keep on doing it if only to learn a lot, first hand, about what not to do and how not to do it...and what the fuck, right, I'll be learning it free, and firsthand! THIS MAJOR BIGTIME TOTALLY KICKS MAJOR ASS MAJORLY!!!!!

Back when I was still doing visual art as a primary medium I found it was pretty easy to get shown and even to sell. I'm not talking about anything huge here, but just that if you do it, chances are that someone else will notice. I've done business cards, concert posters, an album cover, tons of automotive art, tattoo designs, portraits, cartoons, just all kinds of shit, and been paid for it too. It was no big deal. No formal training, no portfolio, no nothing. I just put it out there and did it.

I'm hoping it turns out to be the same way with writing...that the big, huge 'thing' that I've put up there about it's being difficult and frightening and only for such and what kind of qualified people is just that....a thing.

Cross your fingers. AND IF ANYONE HAS ANY PRACTICAL ADVICE ABOUT THE BUSINESS END OF THINGS WOULD YOU PLEASE PASS IT THE FUCK ALONG TO A BITCH?

Legalize it

2009-02-04T19:23:00.000-08:00

Oh my God lets all jump up and run around in circles flapping and tweaking because Michael Phelps smokes dope! Lordy lordy shit oh dear!

my man phelps sparking off

Yeah, who'da thunk it...an athlete smoking dope. What IS the world coming to. Not even his top sponsors give a fuck.

Look at him. Please. If I thought it would give me a middle body like that I'd smoke a hell of a lot more of it than I do now. Unfortunately it gives me a middle body like Jello Pig.

Right about now the best thing that could happen for this fucked up economy is the legalization of marijuana. Its time. It is really, really time. Slap a tax stamp on that shit like they do cigarettes and watch the dollars roll on in. Now lets look at Mark Spitz.

You think this boy here didn't be mokin da doink? Please. He put ALL KINDS OF THINGS in his mouth.

Is this messing with anyone else? Because I remember that swimsuit being a hell of a lot briefer, I truly do...although that could be time and wishful thinking operating on my memory. I also remember that rockin' little happytrail and I see I got that right, at least. God bless the photographer who thought to mist him down lightly with baby oil before this shoot, and God bless You, Mr. Spitz, and your happy trail, wherever you are. Burn one for me. Now we need to look at Michael Phelps again:

Whoever decided to make this picture the Sports Illustrated cover shot needs to be hit with an orange rubber shoe. The only thing I can think of is that they didn't want to intimidate their straight male readership. Seventy-leven gold medals and good looking too, laying there on the coffee table laughing every time you walked by would probably cause terminal pecker shrivel.

I would love to bounce dimes off that. I bet if you got him wasted enough he'd let you, too.

You want to bring back farming in a big way? Legalize it. Acres and acres of bud stretching out toward the purple mountains majesty, full of happy farmers and profoundly stoned bees....tell me that's not a beautiful picture.

Get some overseas money flowing back into the economy? Holland is thinking about repealing its openness policy. There's going to be a lot of disappointed stoners out there if that happens. Vancouver BC already turns a blind eye toward their burgeoning green culture and believe me when I tell you it turns over a stack of cash for them; I've seen it first hand! Shit, I've done it first hand. Stoned people buy things! And then they sit around for the next four hours and laugh at them! Come on!

You want to turn things around for small business? Legalize it! Dope cafes, the snack food industry, the novelty toy market, head shops, tie-dyed clothing manufacturers, beanbag chair makers, they all win! There is no downside. It smells better than cigarettes and it doesn't lead to the kind of horror that alcohol can.

LEGALIZE IT.

Kind of blue

2009-01-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

Blues music is as ordinary as a dog. In a lot of cases you're talking about a man and a guitar and a time signature like cold molasses; lyrics cut down to nothing but a single declaration of fact.

The moment I 'got it' is engraved very distinctly in my mind. It was genuinely like falling in love. I don't mean romance, I don't mean the limerance; I'm not talking about an emotion at all. I mean that thing that's bigger than you, that flow and change that rolls through you and brings something new to life. I was about 12 or 13 at the time. Nothing has changed.

Now here in my declining years I'm still stuck with this thing and I carry it like a worry. I like a lot of different kinds of music. I love metal, thrash, rock, funk, Motown, I can sing everything off Goodbye Yellow Brick Road word for word in my sleep, I love the Kronus Quartet, Robert Kyr, Bach, Glenn Gould, Aretha Franklin...my tastes are pretty fucking eclectic. But none of it happens to me the way that blues music does and I do not understand that now any better than when I was in Jr. High.

I know I've been annoying on the subject too. I know I have. And I swore I would not be this kind of person. One CANNOT dictate taste to other people. I KNOW this. It's rude. I remember the first time I read American Splendor... I was so blown away that I wanted to walk up to people on the street and MAKE them read it. Of course, I did not do this. That 'social restraint' mechanism in your head that keeps you from having public arguments with trees and cats and dumpsters and shit kicked in, as it should. I restrained myself, realizing that not everybody wants to have complete strangers come up on them raving and slobbering about Harvey Pekar.

That restraint is completely absent when the subject of John Lee Hooker comes up. 'You need to buy this,' I'll inform some poor fool down the racks from me. Apropos of nothing. Just turn to them and hold up the Rhino compilation like John Brown's bible. 'You see this? You need this. Right here. This is the VOICE OF GOD, DUDE.'
I've done this. Yes I have.

Not to say that I like the blues unconditionally, or that I could stand listening to it all the time either; I mean, come on, right? There are simply times you don't want to hear about how someone wants to lay on the railroad tracks and die. But then again, you can hear that in the context of the blues and it will raise you up in your heart like the St. Matthews Passion being sung in a big church will raise you up, if anyone can get with that.

I have no more in common with someone like Leadbelly now than I did when I was a poo-butt kid. I have no idea what it is about this particular kind of music that is speaking to me so clearly. None whatsoever. But nevertheless it cuts straight through me like I don't even exist. I'd like to be able to apologize if I've offended anybody, but to tell you the truth I'm not sorry because I did it for your own good.

The Red Balcony

2009-01-29T11:17:00.000-08:00

this is a description of a real place that I used to go to in Portland back in the '70's. I've been looking for a mention of it or pictures of it and no luck. The whole building is gone now.

__________________________

The Red Balcony was a bar, and like most bars in downtown Portland it had a big mirror and a cute bartender and some old movie posters on the brick walls. What it lacked were the Boston ferns, Nagel prints, and the 'flamingo and palm tree' neon sculpture that would have said 'gay bar'. It was, though.

The first thing you noticed was the height of the ceiling. The walls with their antique molded pilasters seeming to go up and up and up into the gloom until complete darkness obscured their capitals. Sometimes in the evening the sunlight would reflect in off the windows of the skyscrapers and reveal it for a moment; ship lapped fir with flaking paint, blind chipped athenas with acanthus garlands atop the dusty columns.

The bar was mahogany and the top was either zinc or steel; some kind of grey metal that bore the mark of every sharp blow it had ever received. It smelled like money in your hand on a warm day. None of the taps wore a distributors pull. You took the bartenders word that the glass he filled for you was what you had ordered.

This was not a place you ordered a daiquiri. Napkins, no. Umbrellas, monkeys, picks, toy fish, no. If you found anything other than booze and ice in your glass you picked it out and reminded yourself that alcohol is antiseptic.

There were two slate top pool tables in the front next to the only two windows in the place. Twelve bar stools lined the bar, six on either side of the grab rails. Six tables with four chairs each in the front of the house, then a stage in the middle with a dance floor the size of a postage stamp, and finally a large back room with more tables, the walls lined with booths.

A semicircle of eight brass columns rose in barley twists around the stage to support the floor of a large half-moon balcony. A person seated up there had a view over the entire space and yet remained in constant shadow, unless they sat right against the rail.

A perilous, narrow and distinctly non-code corkscrew stairway lead up to the balcony. Each step you took made the entire structure shudder and creak. Flakes of rust fell down onto whoever was standing in line waiting to use the restrooms below. If you didn't think you could make it, then you'd probably be better off staying downstairs. If you made the climb, then chances were you knew enough to conduct your shit once above just as carefully.

Up above in the balcony everything was red and black, all of it old and stained and smelling of spilled drinks and cigarettes, aftershave and Brasso. Low backed chairs lined the rail overlooking the bar, and more of the same were scattered around, along with padded hassocks and low side tables. Bounding this was a Moorish-styled railing, bellied wrought iron, scaled with ancient paint. The only light was provided by one small candle on each table. No waiters served the balcony.

I used to sit at the bar in the early part of the evening and watch the young boys come in after school and go up the stairs, dark hair and sweet smiles as they glanced your way. You could hear them laughing up there in the shadows, lanky arms and legs, smooth faces up above you in the gloom, holding hands as they sat and leaned along the railing, sharing cigarettes, passing pipes.

and the rest of this is up at UJ.

NEW ONE UP AT UJ

2009-01-27T13:57:00.001-08:00

...ok now go down and read the dugong thing. VVV

rerun: Black Lynx Caution the Five Angry Diatom!!!!!

2009-01-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

q: What is a dugong?

The dugong is a member of a small group of aquatic mammals known as 'Sirenia'. Other members include the manatee (which is not nearly as fun a word to say as 'dugong' so we'll just pretend that it doesn't exist) and the (now extinct) Stellars' Sea Cow.

...yes, it's two you-know-what-atees. it's my blog and i'm calling them dugongs.

...which was in fact not terribly cow-like; it was more like a big hippo-seal type thing.
Although it would be really cool if it HAD been like an aquatic cow and it gave milk and said 'moo'? and like maybe it had these huge horns that stuck out REALLY FAR and they would stampede and they'd get in cool fights and stuff? and divers could go down and have rodeos and the seaweed would be like tumbleweeds?
Yeah.

Centuries ago, the first Dugong sightings were reported in the logbooks of Spanish sailors who (upon seeing the bald, grey, flippered animals swimming around chewing on seaweed and burping) immediately mistook them for a race of seagoing human women.

This may say more about Spanish femininity than we care to know.

q: Where do dugongs come from?
a: Duh; the ocean.
q: Oh Jesus fine. What is the life cycle of the dugong?
a: Ah. Well then. That's an interesting question.

When a mommy dugong and a daddy dugong love one another very much, they want to share that love with a baby dugong. So the Mommy dugong lies on her back, and the daddy dugong orders one from Ikea.
But ordering from Ikea can take time, and sometimes the quality sucks, so the smart mommy and daddy dugong usually go to the KING OF THE DUGONGS and ask him for one.

...click; it gets bigger. waaaaaaaay bigger.

This is the beginning of a magical, mysterious process that has very seldom been documented on film. Are you paying attention? I said put down the damn ocarina and pay attention. I don't care if it's called a sweet potato in the rural South put the damn thing DOWN.

Opie, King of the Dugongs, goes out to a sacred place far, far back in the woods where small dugong bulbs lay dormant in the soil. At his command, a small gnome-like creature emerges from the grass and begins excavating.

It digs and digs and digs and digs, throwing soil everywhere and getting exceedingly filthy...soil in its ears, soil in its butt crack, soil absolutely everywhere.

...until finally, the first tiny newborn dugong emerges.

Close enough.

q: Is communication with dugongs possible?
Yes! Recent experiments using extra sensory perception have yielded undreamed-of results in the field of dugong-human communication.

Here a diver uses the 'mind meld' technique.

"Can you understand me, fellow earth dweller? Gentle giant of the sea, can you understand me?"

"HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO REPEAT MYSELF HERE. RING RING PICK UP THE CLUE PHONE. LEAVE. ME. THE. FUCK. ALONE."

Q: Do dugongs spy on America and then give all our secrets to hostile foreign powers?
a: Yes.

....plus they sneak up on your when you are swimming and yell "DUGONG!" in your ear real loud and then swim away.

Dugongs SUCK.

q: Do dugongs migrate?

a: During certain times of the year the trans-oceanic currents shift, and with this shift comes a subtle change in the temperature of the sea. ...image of migrating dugongs thanks to KYAHGIRL

This is the signal that the dugongs have been waiting for.
Once a reliable source of medical-grade helium has been found and the deliveries completed, they line up along the shore in the light of the full moon, wait for a favorable wind, and ascend towards the stars.

Aren't you glad that only happens in Florida? Talk about making a mess of your car. I mean that would be RASTY. They're herbivores.

The Umpqua River Valley, Highway 38, Oregon

2009-01-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

I filled the chip on my camera with pictures of this drive. Out of all of those pictures, only three give you even a vague hint of what this place looked like. THREE. And to tell, you'll have to click to make them bigger because the effect is that faint.
Now, trying to capture exactly what I was seeing that particular day might not have been a realistic goal anyway owing to the subtlety of the light. But I managed to get three hints. Completely inadequate hints.
I cannot urge you strongly enough...if you ever, ever get a chance, go drive through the Umpqua River valley. There's other locations in Oregon that are more spectacular and impressive; but there is something about this place that is so beautiful, gentle and perfect that it almost broke my heart.

________________________________

So here I was:

View Larger Map

I took I-5 down past Roseburg to Winston, and headed west to Coquille on highway 42. You can deedle around with the map enlargement thingie if you're really interested in seeing for all the good it'll do you. They show highway 42 doing this:

and what it really does is this:

which, to be fair, is a scenic enough drive too; at least those glimpses you manage to catch as you're speeding downhill with a log truck ramming your rear bumper and turkeys attacking you.

Had I to do it over again I would have still gone by this route if only because it goes directly into Coquille and no place else; and when you're going somewhere for the first time in a state where people think that logical city planning, good roads and street signs are vain extravagances, DIRECT is GOOD.

Once, however, was enough.

I went back this way:

View Larger Map

...I took 101 up the coast to Reedsport. There, I took a right at Highway 38, heading east toward Drain, then caught 99 up to Curtin and I-5.

I am taking particular pains to direct you here because everyone needs to go see this place at least once before they die.*

The area is the Umpqua River Valley. I didn't name the river or the valley; I have no idea what Umpqua means, if anything. Just be nice. I bet you think that the Callapooia and the Skookumchuck rivers have funny names too. That's just fine. *snif* You think that.

If you own a motorcycle or a sports car, go NOW. It is one of the most beautiful stretches of roadway on the West Coast. The road is twisty but not perilously so; the surface is well maintained and the grades are all pretty gentle. You travel alongside the river for the most part. The whole time you are going through beautiful low-altitude forest interrupted by open stretches of rolling fields that look something like wine country. And no turkeys. That I saw.

The Umpqua valley is fairly wide and the hills around it are mostly uniform in height. It was about 3 in the afternoon, full on day and beautiful... not a cloud in the sky and 72 degrees. The valley, however was filled with just a trace of mist, just barely enough to soften the outline of everything and diffuse light that was already oblique owing to the low angle of the winter sun in the sky. The hilltops all around were standing in the sunshine like islands. The valley itself stayed in a mild, constant twilight.

For the greater part of the trip I drove alongside the calm, flat river. There was only an occasional stretch of small rapids crossing it. From a distance I thought I was seeing white horses walking through the water. In the darker turns spray had frozen into lace shelves along the banks.

The forested stretches are filled with lots of different kinds of trees, most prominently cedar, fir and hemlock, bare alders and oaks, with Scoulers' willow and hazel and osier and vine maple along the water. All the branches of the oaks and alders and a good portion of the barer evergreens were furred with a thick, pale jade lichen, crisp as kale, unexpectedly bright and amazingly profuse. For some reason the trees closest to the water didn't support quite as much of this growth. There the Scoulers' willows were the tallest and stood in drifts along the bank, grey trunks, bright ochre yellow wands of new growth carried above like huge clouds. The new wood of the vine maples was bright red, and the osiers scarlet-orange. Wild hazels had hanging catkin fringes of golden tan. Separately, all this color wouldn't have been terribly noticeable, but growing in swaths as they were along the riverbanks, picked out by the odd quality of the illumination, they looked like colored mists..scarlet, yellow, golden and red.

The hillside cuts were filled with evergreen trees, the lower branches draped in long scarfs of ghostly bryophytic moss. These loomed over a rocky understory covered in cushions and blankets of yet more moss, every imaginable variety and shade of green, interspersed by huge splayed sword ferns and delicate skeletal snowberry bush with fruit clusters like white moths. Ranks of liquorice fern hung from the sides of the boulders, growing up through velvet green moss five inches thick and perfect, studded with little pearls of ice. Deep as the shadows were all the greens positively glowed...and when I say glowed, I mean that literally. It was as though everything were faintly luminous.

The further I drove the more I also began to take note of an odd, lambent, slightly unreal quality that informed everything I was seeing. What you saw were familiar things, of course, but as though everything was partially removed from the present. Not quite real. Everything visible flattened by distance and faintly, barely blurred by mist, and colored just slightly to the left of natural by the soft, reflected, pervasive light. It filled the valley with the same kind of glimmer that light under water has; everywhere at once and sourceless, tinted by whatever color happened to be most prominent. That effect was further picked up and spread into optically illogical places by the pale lichen which filled the branches of nearly every tree.

You'd drive around one turn and enter a swale covered in yellow meadow grass, and everything was tinted gold; perfect, diffuse, orange gold filling the valley, spread by the haze like smoke. Everything took on a subtle difference in color from it, right down to the shadows. Anything already colored green was rendered even more brilliant and stood out like a star.

Around another corner where the black rock walls rose up around the road, everything was deep somber grey and colorless; black with damp or furred thick with needles of white frost. Then the next turn took you down into a valley filled with faint, faint violet as the sun skimmed the hilltops;

palest violet sky, pale violet mist condensed in little glittering drops on the barbed wire, on the broken antlers of an elk grazing next to the road, greens turned russet and sienna, shadows faintly blue.**

The most common effect of all was a perfect encompassing, pale green light, the color of a monarch butterfly chrysalis. Like what the insects first view of the world must look like from inside.

Occasionally you'd come on to a small town. Most of them consisted of a few wooden false-fronted buildings still open for business, not a plumb line in sight, all painted clean white. Usually a couple of grand Victorians graced Main street; an Odd Fellows Lodge or a bank or a company mercantile with a curly date in a demilune on top and a poured cement staircase leading up to the front doors. Narrow farmhouses on little rises, two arborvitae on either side of the door and two maples down by the road at the entrance to the driveway. Red barns. Blackberry tangles growing over old trucks. Sheep and lambs with clouds of steam rising off their backs. Two herds of elk, each one lead by a lone male who stood guard by the road, chewing grass like a cow.

Royce, you gave this to me. Thank you. And I really, really hope you still have a job.

__________________________________________________

*But remember: don't move there. Just go visit and spend a lot of money. Then leave.

*Yes, I missed the elk. Forget the elk. You know what an elk looks like. They weren't doing anything interesting anyway.

Green Tube Snake Crime the Plot is Thick!!

2009-01-22T05:12:00.000-08:00

I tell you what, crossing the state of Washington to get back home here was like trying to swim the Amazon river holding a t-bone steak between my teeth.

...6 a.m. just outside of vancouver...the worlds prettiest traffic jam

The roads in Oregon suck, but the traffic in Washington just trumps that all to shit. What the fuck, people, you were all supposed to be home watching St. Obama take office, not out on the freeway driving like a stinky bad toilet! NO!!!! It was two in the freaking afternoon on a Tuesday, people! NOBODY NEEDS TO GO ANYPLACE AT TWO IN THE AFTERNOON!

Nevertheless, the trip went well. Once again I listened to the sound of silence coming from the direction of the passengers seat, nobody checking the goddamn speedometer, nobody checking the gas gauge, nobody hearing noises that mean we're all going to die coming from the engine compartment.
Of course I'm assuming silence here since the radio was playing loud enough to delaminate the safety glass.

And now, a PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE.

My boy and I went wandering around Portland on Sunday, and decided to hit one of the local music stores. So we go driving up and dang; there I was smack in the middle of what used to be 'The Pink Triangle' up on Burnside; up by the notorious Kachina Lounge, the Family Zoo, and the Red Balcony.

Not no mo it ain't.

The Zoo is kaput, The Kachina is history, The Balcony is gone entirely, building and all. Here I was all braced to be chasing drag queens off my son, and nada.

And to top it off, Burnside as a whole is no longer lined two deep in winos, either. We did get spanged by a guy with a walker. I gave him a buck. He was wearing red nail polish.

First we (me and my son, not me and the guy in the walker) went to a music store and spent too much money, and then he (my son, not the guy in the walker) took me to this incredibly excellent place here:
...that's The Arborist with his elbow up on the bar...photographic proof that the apple did not fall very far from the tree. It fell as far as the next barstool over.

Here is the view past him, looking toward the front door. Pay attention, foreign persons in general and Mr. The Dog in particular; I took these for you. This is the inside of a cool bar in America.

Ok. Here is looking directly up at the ceiling. I'm not sure what purpose it served, but that round thing up there was covered in green and clear mirror pieces and it rotated. It kind of reminded me of that mind-control device in original Star Trek, where Kirk goes to the insane asylum planet and they put him in the device and it messes with his brain and makes him kiss that one broad? And then the one guy gets trapped in there and it sucks all his thoughts out and he dies of loneliness and then Captain Kirk says something pithy and they play the closing theme? Yeah.

I swear to you I am not falling off the barstool here; I was holding the camera at an awkward angle. Just turn your head sideways.

Look at how cool this place is. The Arborist has the most excellent taste, I swear. I loved it. They had excellent brew too. Plus there was a hot guy playing pool just out of shot to the right.

This was a bicycle parked out front of the place.
We are looking west up Burnside toward the old 'Kuntz Plumbing' building. -hey, I shit thee not. Kuntz Plumbing. I almost rented out an apartment upstairs from it years ago. The name was kind of offputting, of course...

This is the Oregon I remember when I left:
You have to make the bigger by noise of an insect becoming largeness in order to really get it, unlike this sentence. Boarded up tacky old buildings, general crumminess, squalor...
I shot this someplace way out in the brush somewhere. It's the exception to the rule now.

Here is an excellent example of what I mean when I talk about Portland being better than it used to be. This is Third Street in downtown Portland, right across from the Old Spaghetti Factory building (now an architects' office.)
Third used to be a pretty gritty area. You were getting too close to Burnside at this point, and down near the low-rent, filthy waterfront area beside...it used to be heinously dirty, the storefronts were largely unoccupied, there was lots of vandalism, and there would have been people asleep on the street and lots of graffitti and posters rotting off the walls as well. Now look.

I'm standing in the same spot looking in the opposite direction, toward the college.

No winos. No garbage in the street. Trees.
I tell you, its like that one episode in original Star Trek when they all go back through a time portal thing and Kirk falls in love with that Edith Keeler broad and has to let a car hit her so that history isn't changed? And then they go back to the Enterprise and Mr. Spock whips off his shirt, and he has a tattoo, and they have wacky space love.

Some things did stay the same. See that circle thing in the curb? The one right next to my foot there?

That's from waaaaaaaay back in the day. It's an iron ring to tie your horse to. Finding this made me really happy. I always got a kick out of them when I was a little kid and look; something good from back then is still here. Cool!
______________________________________

When I lived in Oregon, you used to hear people from out of state bitching about the poor condition of the roads and think "Aw geeze, grow some hair on your ass." Now, having lived for 23 years in a state that actually maintains its highways, I can go back and appreciate from an informed perspective just how bad it was, and is. Not only poorly maintained surfaces - think 'downtown Baghdad'- but unnecessarily narrow, poorly marked, and what the fuck is it with the off-camber turns? Middle of a mountain pass on a 50 mph stretch of road and suddenly you're coming around a turn and you feel the entire chassis begin to plane. And there's a log truck on your ass. And a Mexican broad in an Aerostar is passing you on the left so close her kids are trying your doorhandles and she's weaving in and out of the lane, talking on her cell phone.

The thing that complicates all this even more is that, down in Oregon, suddenly there IS SCENERY WORTH SEEING, even on the interstate. Good scenery. World class scenery, in fact. Your only choice is to pull over and stop, or miss it. You can't casually gaze out and enjoy the passing landscape; there might be a giant goddamn chuckhole coming up with a submarine floating around in it that you have to manouver around.

Once off the main highway the scenery goes from merely pretty to 'astoundingly beautiful.' Particularly along the coast, immediately west of the coastal range, along what they used to call the Miracle Miles. Now its just plain U.S. 101.
Go there. NOW.

-wait. I mean, don't move there or anything; they don't want you. Just go visit and spend a lot of money. Then LEAVE.

So anyway, there I was, traveling west through the coast range, losing altitude at an astonishing rate, going through the most excellent, moss-draped primeval forest, past incredible rock formations.... doing 55 around hairpin turns canted in defiance of ballistic motion, with a log truck gaining on me. I'm driving along with my eyes bugging out, trying to stay on the mountain, when suddenly out of nowhere all these godawful GIANT BIRDS go blasting right across my windshield! Jesus H. Christ!

At first I thought 'vultures,' but no. TURKEYS. Oh yes, definitely turkeys. I got a real good look at them. I could even read the little 'made in Macao' tags.

Nothing gets your blood moving brisky along like getting fucked with by turkeys on an frost-covered, 70% downhill grade.

I was on my way to visit a friend of mine who lives in Coquille. Now, had I been thinking, I wouldn't have just gone right in off the road without getting my shit together first.
I was not thinking.
No, I showed up at her place of work shortly after the turkey incident with my hair all sticking out wild, face pale, hands trembling, wearing my black trilby, a stained 'Spam' t-shirt and a rasty old leather jacket with crap all dangling off it.

Asked the receptionist to announce me as 'FirstNations.'

....eeeeeYeah.

This is a professional workplace, bear in mind. This nice woman comes walking out into the lobby and a deranged hippie wearing a Zippy the Pinhead badge comes clanking and jangling up and throws her arms around her in a big ol' cloud of patchouli and adrenaline-laced fear sweat...oh yes, it was choice.

...this is the view from the parking lot where she works. Deal with this. This is a view from a fricken' PARKING LOT. In Oregon. Does your parking lot at work have a nice view like this? No it does not.

She wanted to buy me lunch, but I said no, that's ok. Then I ate most of her french fries and forgot to catch the tip.

Anyway, we sat and relaxed and just chatted nonstop. She is just as smart cool and laid back (not to mention groovy in a far out, happening way) as she comes off in her writing. We got along like a house afire. The woman is incredibly interesting, and I swear she has read EVERYTHING. I wish I'd have stayed longer, I really do. She was so nice to me. Before I'd left, she even loaded me up with dirty romance novels, and I mean, dang; lunch AND porn. That's hospitality.

In parting, she told me "Head on up the coast a ways and then take the Drain exit back to I-5. It's just a much nicer drive." A friendly bit of advice which I took. And I'm glad I did, too. Had I stuck to my original plan, I would have missed one of the most extraordinary experiences I have ever had. Retro, that was a star in your crown. That valley along the Umpqua river was one of the most gorgeous places I have ever been.

NEXT: a lot of descriptive crap about that drive, with average pictures!!!

Spotlight on: FRANCONIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-01-15T13:52:00.001-08:00

Perhaps some day you might like to take a nice trip someplace. You could go to FRANCONIA!

Franconia is located in the land. It is near Europe, French, and Dutch Holland. You can only reach it if you take three boats, and then you have to rent a car. Here is a map:

Fact: French Fries aren't really French. They are potatoes.

Danger in Franconia:

Wolves are a very dangerous part of life in Franconia. Nobody likes them. If you have a chicken, or some sheep? Wolves will eat them. Plus things that are made out of meat, like kids.

Pie is dangerous.

Fire. It can burn stuff.

Mean dogs. Everyone has to beware of mean dogs in Franconia.

One day the Spain people had a fight with the Franconia people! "We will fight you!" they said. They were sneaky. They dressed up in the disguises of baseball players, clowns, and waiters, and sergeants, and they got in their car and snuck in! They were very rude to everyone.

The Franconia people were sad.

But one day a new hero appeared across the land... Super Franconia Man!

...actual unretouched photograph

Nobody knew who he was, but he could fly! And he had a chainsaw! He chased the Spain people and made them give back all the stuff they took, and it was all greasy. The Franconia people said "Why did you make our stuff all greasy?" And they said "Oh, get your mom to wash it for you." And so Franconia had a new freedom!!!

Here are some Franconia facts:

The Flag of Franconia is pine scented.

The official Franconia mascot is the pileated womb ferret.

...actual size

Franconians like to have a spoon or two around the house.

Children in Franconia learn Klingon and Esperanto in addition to their regular classwork.

The national Anthem of Franconia is "Hey, Franconia, You are a Land"

In Franconia, no one can hear you scream.

So when you go to Franconia, you will be very happy, and your family will too! They have stores, and cheese, and television. Remember to always flush and wash your hands. You are a representative of your country, and you wouldn't want people to think that country was Canada.
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Meanwhile, I will be in Oregon doing secret Oregon things that you can't know about. Maybe when I come back I will tell you all about what happened there. But not now. I haven't done them yet.

The Yellow Mouse Has A Mysterious Secret

2009-01-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

As we travel down lifes' highway we all have times of doubt...

...of worry...

...of not knowing which way to turn...

...of having reached one of lifes' crossroads in a Volkswagen with faulty brakes, and got in a huge flaming wreck with a busload of nuns and mexican wrestling personalities...

Yes, when times get to be too much, and you wish you had a friend...

...someone to trust,

...someone to provide counsel and a shoulder to lean on during this difficult time...

you need someone like Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude.

....thats him.

Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude is standing by right now waiting for your questions. Ask Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude about any concern you may have...life, love, money or what lies beyond the veil, none of these things are hidden from Mr. Egyptian Penis dude. He can help. Let him help now.

FACT: Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude has devoted his life to the service of others. Many consider him uniquely qualified to service others. Gifted, even.

Anyone may approach Mr. Egyptian Penis dude with a question. Here we see Mr. Yen Shi Baby asking Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude for his sage advice.

Seeker: Please can you tell me if i will ever-

EPM: Blah blah blah blah yes, fine, sure, I know, I know already. I'm psychic. I know. Please God, I know. Seriously.

Seeker: But can you tell me-

EPM: Would you like to meet my twin brother? We get in fights all the time. Watch us fight. Watch.

EPM: EEEEE Hawakowa! I FIGHT YOU!

epm2: OW OW OW OW OW OW

EPM: OK now I have defeated my evil brother! I can answer now.

Seeker: Ok, Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude, I'm ready to receive your wisdom!

EPM:....OK. Are you sure?

Seeker: Yes.

EPM: Are you sure you're ready?

Seeker: ...

EPM: Are you really really super-allidocious top secret ready?

MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER TODAY. ASK MR. EGYPTIAN PENIS MAN A QUESTION.

NOW.

...SERIOUSLY. NOW.

Welcome!

2009-01-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

Say hello to my new grandbaby!! Isn't she adorable?

....and so smart!!

Submerged Vignettes From My Quaint Underwater Idyll

2009-01-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

If you've been paying attention to the news you'll know that we have some flooding going on here in Whatcom County. Here's what it looks like so far at the Rancho. Don't expect much excitement. A flood here means 'really deep puddle' instead of 'raging currents of death spreading watery destruction.'

...looking due south out my front door, we have my front yard, the street, and the hay field.

...and turning slightly southwest, the corner of the hayfield where the t-intersection cuts across it.

Now for the backyard. Looking toward the grade school, north...

...that was yesterday afternoon. Now lets take a look at it the way it looked this morning at 8:am...

...a little deeper...

And now, this afternoon.

...it's risen a little, huh!

Look at the seagulls swimming around. This is looking northeast from that last picture...

All morning long huge flights of geese and swans have been migrating BACK UP FROM THE SOUTH.

The rain is hitting in a succession of waves. We'll have nothing for 45 minutes and then it sweeps in again for a couple of hours. Fortunately for us, we don't live near any major rivers so there isn't any current to contend with.

We are, however, housing five flood refugees. The SSA, the Lucky Bastard, the Goonybird, their dog and cat got evacuated last night and spent the night here. They'll probably end up staying at least one more night before the Corps of Engineers decides its safe to go back to their area. Now, their property is in no danger, realistically speaking, but the area they live in qualifies as alluvial fan and so they got a blanket 'voluntary evacuation' warning.
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Yes, its been nonstop excitement here at Rancho FirstNations. I just had my very first blogmeet! Inner Voices and Cheese stopped by for a visit!

...where the great man sat

No of course I didn't take pictures. That would make sense. I was so overcome with relief that y'all are in fact more than figments of my imagination that the last thing on my mind was taking pictures, yo.

They were kind of freaked out to find things so damp, so they cut things short and got moving up toward Canada, to do whatever hockey and Gouda-intensive Canadian activities they had planned up there. I will say this much...they are lovely people.

...generous,too.

Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

2009-01-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

Good Gravy Marie enough of that already.
OO! Theres a new one up at UJ! It's not very dirty, but it is inappropriate.

Deal with this, my darlings:

I FOUND THE MEADOWS BROTHERS ONLINE.

Don't know who they are? Scroll down to the tags window at the very bottom of the blog here and hit the ones marked 'Meadows'. Go by the numbers. Think of it as research. Think of it as another step on the way towards your degree in Abnormal Anthropology, a discipline which I just made up.

I cannot tell you how surprised I am. Mainly to find them both still alive, both in possession of higher technology, and apparently both still functional enough to use same.

I honestly thought that Kelvin would have committed suicide long before this. My guess (hope, truth be known) is that Kelvin is contacting the www from inside the sex offenders' wing of Rocky Butte prison, and that him being in seg is the only reason he is alive. But see, now that inevitably leads me to the thought...'Well, if I was wrong about him being dead, then maybe I'm wrong about him being locked down, and he's still out there on the streets, being.....Kelvin. And working in a grade school. As a night janitor."

Can you see where I'm coming from here? Really, honestly, if you live in the greater Portland Metropolitan area and you have children in any of the grade schools around there? Really? Leave me a message in the 'comments' section because we need to get together and talk. And the main thrust of this talk will be based around your busting out your parents' school directory and hitting the 'meet the staff of 'X' elementary!' page. Because, yeah.

If I could be a fly on the wall, I would love to take a peek at the kind of life that Eldest Brother is leading now, though. I honestly hope its a good one, and that it's being lived in complete isolation from the rest of his family. He always was cougar bait, that boy, and so my fondest wish for him is that he found some luscious older lady to please and was sole beneficiary of her vast estate when he finally fucked her to death. That would be awesome. I can just see him now, a cheerful chubber bear just entering a comfortable and certifiably insane late middle age... sitting amidst the oolong stains on a once-proud Ethan Allen sectional, wrapped in the Dorito-scented darkness of his living room, contacting Pay Pal in order to purchase another cyborg vagina slave* for his Second Life character.

Having found the Meadows Boys I then proceeded directly, without hitting 'Go' or collecting 200.00, to the Oregonian newspaper site and from thence, GoogleMaps. I needed to brush up on my Multnomah County geography, and fast. If this seems paranoid, just know that I am the official Murphys' Law poster girl. If there is a chance in hell that our paths might cross, that chance will happen to me. There I'd be stopped at a light, and the guy in the crosswalk will turn to flash me, and I'D recognize Kelvin, and-worst of all- HE'D recognize ME. I want to avoid that if at all possible.

So there I am tiptoeing through the newspapers. As I'm reading along about my old part of town, I keep stumbling onto these references to a place called 'Felony Flats'.

I'd never heard of it before. Huh. I wonder where that is. I'll take a look at a map.

It is here:

View Larger Map

...and right at its epicenter is Milwaukie, Oregon. My home town.

If you jigger around with the zoom feature, you can roughly bound the area known as Felony Flats by Sandy Boulevard to the north (traditional), Clackamas River Drive to the south, Mt. Scott Boulevard to the east, and the Willamette River to the west. Note also, as you zoom out, that Felony Flats is located just a short drive southwest of Wankers Corner, and southeast of Boring, Oregon. In case you wanted to, you know, visit or anything.

An interesting bit of trivia is that Felony Flats is one of the only ghettos in the world with an actual dormant volcano in the middle of it. Take a closer look. See Mt. Tabor there? Yeah. The City of Portland in its infinite wisdom decided not only that incorporating a volcano into a central metropolitan area was a good idea, but also to make it into a park. Sure, why not?...its just a deadly geological feature. Now, given what usually goes on in that park and the present unstable nature of the Pacific Rim faultline, one day here soon everyone's going to hear this loud explosion and look up in the sky and its going to be nothing but tweakers and naked people flying through the air. Followed shortly thereafter by flaming molten lava destruction with all fiery explosional destruction flames plus lava.

I was not all that shocked to realize that my old stomp has the reputation it does...only to find that reputation finally being openly acknowledged by the people that live in and around there. Of course nobody acknowledges the fact that the blight doesn't just stop abruptly at Sandy Boulevard. It never did. What happens is, the color of the majority of the inhabitants changes from white to black. But apparently it's only crime if it happens where white people are living, thus going to show that sometimes you can go back home again because ain't shit for nothing changed there, attitudes included.

Really, though, to cover the whole with a blanket appellation like 'Felony Flats' is a gross generalization. Many of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Portland are contained within those boundaries, like Laurelhurst and Top o' Scott, Waverleigh and Westmoreland-Reed and Willammette Bluffs. What remains is split evenly between quiet middle-and-working class suburbs, and total white trash slum. There is simply a whole lot more of it than there used to be.

I think what happened was that the slum portion simply got too big to ignore any more. A small slum is bad, right; but a great big honkin' slum is lots worse. And a great big honkin' slum in a part of the world where there never have been that many jobs and it rains all the time? You got some stupid, damp, pissed off white folks with a lot of spare time on their hands. And hell, a person don't always feel like getting drunk or banging close relatives, you know? Sometimes a fool gots ta break out and....you know, bury a drag queen ** somewhere on the property. I guess that's why people finally had to quit pretending that things were hunky dory. The elephant in the living room simply got too big to ignore. Or the dead drag queen. Either way.

__________________

*dibs 'Cyborg Vagina Slaves' for the name of my punk rock band. They'll play double bills with 'Bitchy Sister in Law and the Delusions of Entitlement'.

** no, seriously, you HAVE to read this article. It happened less than two miles from where I grew up.

Trippin

2009-01-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

I was adopted back in 1960. The polite term for what happened was 'privately arranged.'
The real story goes like this: the poor girl, my mother, was red, about 15 years old and unmarried. The father was a white boy off the nearby Army base. She had the baby in a charity hospital. With the 'help' of the attending doctor and the collusion of the staff of the maternity ward I was basically stolen from her and then sold to whoever. If you hit my archives you'll find out what exactly I mean by 'whoever'.

Now, over the years I've gotten a few arched eyebrows and long-suffering sighs when I've recounted this, as though I were making it up, right? Trying to inflate the drama factor, the romance, make the story more tragic?

You would be SHOCKED how common that shit was.
You would be shocked at how common it was right up until about the mid '70's, in fact.
Here.
In America.
If you were white.

Oh yes.

Recently I joined an online group for birth-moms who have been reunited with the children they gave up for adoption. Meet the Arborist:

(I was reunited with my son last January, and it's been fucking AWESOME, mainly because he is fucking awesome, and he gardens, and cows fear him. And the suspenders.) It's been really cool to know that I'm not the only person out there with a happy ending!

The group is great. The chance to share this unusual, overwhelming, emotional rollercoast of an experience is great. But the thing that is just blowing my shit away is not that other people have been reunited with their children, but HOW INCREDIBLY COMMON MY ADOPTION STORY WAS!

So many of these women went through the exact same thing that my birth mother did! And these are not old ladies either, folks...this shit went on right up until the mid-Seventies! They STOLE your baby! And the racism behind it! If you were white (looking,) unwed and indigent, you stood a really good chance of having your kid taken-just flat fucking taken- right out of the nursery by any one of a number of 'social service' organizations, (or in my case a crooked G.P.) and SOLD. They didn't screen prospective parents, either! Hell no they didn't do any screening! Sure, if it was a rich family going though a legitimate agency, sure, then there might have been some kind of a cursory background investigation, but in the majority of cases? If the check cleared, congratulations. Have an infant. And it's horrifying how many of those infants went to people just as evil and fucked up as my parents were. The fucking Humane Society spends more time and effort clearing people to adopt stray dogs.

I cannot tell you how shocked I am. I associate this kind of thing with, like, Victorian-era New York or something. I mean come on. But it's true!

Before anyone asks, no. No, I'm not going to resume the search for my birth mom. I'm not going to drop that bombshell into the lap of some elderly stranger. I've already tried once and got stonewalled, and that was years ago. I've had enough drama in my life and I sure in the fuck don't want to go around mongering more drama for complete strangers. That episode is done. But can you imagine?

I just cannot get over this. And here's the kicker...had I taken after momma instead of daddy? I'd have grown up in Eastern Oregon in a hogan. No fucking lie.

Life is a fucking trip, I tell you what.

Chicken Stock for Danger Panda! (and the benefit of all mankind) now with handy conversion chart so british people can make it too

2009-01-01T17:16:00.000-08:00

NOTE: Remember how in the last post I said that its difficult to write a recipe? Well, it is. I transposed the last two steps in this recipe, but I just fixed it. PUT THE CHICKEN DOWN. STEP AWAY FROM THE CHICKEN SLOOOOOOOOOWLY. Now go back and read it so you can do it the right way. Yikes! Sorry.
___________________

I am a stock Nazi. I don't care. I cannot go by a can (or worse yet, a BOX) of stock in the supermarket or see it advertised on television without making this noise: ffff. Please. Really? Canned stock? Really? Stock in a BOX? No. Begone. Please.

Making stock is effortless. In fact it's almost like doing nothing, only it smells better...the most return for the least effort of just about any activity I can think of.

Want to cook from scratch? You absolutely must have stock. You want high nutrition, amazing depth and complexity of flavor that you simply cannot get otherwise? Stock, baby. It is a necessity. It keeps for months in the freezer, it's highly nutritious, it tastes good, it's the starting place for so many different things....really folks. Please. Make stock. Your life will be so much better.**

Stock is a natural companion to thrift. I buy full body fryers and fish, and primal cuts of red meat when it's at all possible to do so. It's cheaper to buy meat this way ultimately, and it only takes a few moments to whack into cuts and pitch into the freezer, thus ensuring that the meat is cut to your liking along the way. Plus, you end up with a lot of trims...bone, scraps of meat and fat, skin and cartilage. All this is valuable stuff. None of it goes to waste. Frozen and labeled, and then thawed overnight in a pot of cold water; that's the beginning of stock.

The most useful, versatile stock of all in home cooking is chicken stock. I've been stocking off once every couple of months ever since 1979 using the recipe that follows, a recipe I got from people who know what the hell stock is all about. It straight up kicks ass.

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This recipe will yield not only 1 and 3/4 gallons of nutritious, useful stock, but an entire chickens' worth of cooked meat, which you can use for any number of lovely things. If you can keep your finger out of your nose I will include a nice recipe for chicken salad at the end here.

Truthfully? You really ought to be paying me for this. You really should. Seriously.
___________________
Dave's Delicatessen CHICKEN STOCK

RECIPE MEASUREMENT CONVERSION TABLE THINGIE FOR FOREIGN PERSONS:
http://www.wwrecipes.com/convert.htm

You will need:
One whole body chicken, minus the liver but plus the giblets and heart. ( Fry the liver up for a treat. It's good for you.) For me its easier to work with a whole body chicken than one that's already cut up, but it really doesn't matter as long as all the parts are present.

carrots, 1 cup chopped
celery, 1 cup chopped
white onion, 1 cup chopped (it MUST be a white onion. no substitutions here)
1 large bay leaf
vegetable oil
plain tap water
optional:
salt, to taste
fresh garlic, or shallot

also: One 2-gallon size pot with a lid that fits tightly, big enough to put the whole chicken into and cover with water.
_______________

-Place the chicken into the pot and fill it up with cold water. Cover it to keep the farm animals out of it and put it aside for a few hours where it will stay cool. This will draw the juices from the chicken and open up the fibers in the meat.

-Now put the chicken-pot onto the stove top and turn the heat on beneath it to it's lowest setting.
DO NOT COVER.*

-Over the course of a half an hour, slowly bring the heat up on the water until the surface of the water just begins to break a hard, rolling boil. (Depending on the heat of the day this can take more or less time..the important thing is that you slowly bring the heat up. Slosh the chicken around gently every now and then so the water washes all around it and everything comes up to the same temperature at the same time. This is called mechanical convection!! It's science!) What this highly complicated process amounts to is wandering around doing whatever chores and taking an occasional peek at the chicken, giving it a nudge, and giving the heat control another tweak upward.

-The moment the top begins to roll, turn the heat completely OFF, wait for the bubbles to subside, then cover the pot tightly.

-Slide the pot off the hot burner and onto a cold one. Let it sit, covered tightly, for ONE HOUR.

-At the end of the hour, take the chicken out of the pot. It should be just cool enough to handle. Drain, returning the drippings to the pot, and then strip the chicken, reserving the meat to one side. Retain all the skin, the fat, the cartilage, and the bones. Pretty does not count; nor does perfectly stripping the carcass.

-Crack any large leg bones. Return the stripped carcass to the pot of water (bones and cartilage) as well as the giblets and heart, and turn the heat onto its LOWEST setting. AND LEAVE IT THERE.

-Top up the pot with more cold water to bring the level up to the 2 gallon mark.

-Add the bay leaf.

-If you are using garlic or shallot, add these now, raw. Scored or chopped, it doesn't make any difference. It's up to you how much.

-Chop coarsely: 1 cup carrots, 1 cup celery, 1 cup white onion. The object here is to create more cut area than skin area but don't worry about pretty, or size.

-In a large frying pan (not nonstick) saute' these vegetable ingredients in batches in a little plain vegetable oil. You want them soft, not browned, and not swimming in juices, so keep the batches on the small side so the pan doesn't crowd. As each batch finishes, dump it into the soup pot with the chicken carcass. What this does is burst the cell walls in the vegetables so that the flavor, nutrients and juices can be readily released into solution.

-If you build up a little fond by the end of this process, deglaze the frypan with a little of the warm stock and add this back into the pot.

-Now take the chicken skin and fat and put it into the frying pan. Turn the heat on to medium. Let it fry in its own oils until it is a beautiful golden color, turning it until its all browned. It might stick together in a big clump; that's fine.

-Lift the browned skin out of the pan, let it drip for a few moments, and then lower it gently into the warm stock. It might sizzle a bit. This browned skin adds rich, delicious layers of chicken flavor and gives the stock a pretty yellow color.

- Dump out the fat, then deglaze the bottom of the frying pan with some of the warm stock, and return that to the pot. Additionally, you can strain the fat for any leftover crumbs and add those to the stock as well. Now you can discard the fat, or render it to make schmaltz. You get to look up how to do that, though.

-Let's say its about 3pm by now. Leave the stock pot go OVERNIGHT. On the lowest heat setting, remember, uncovered, stirring occasionally. I mean, don't bother waking up at night to stir it, although you could if you were up already, but yeah.

-Seriously. All night. No kidding.

-No, it won't all cook away. You'll only lose 1/4 to 1/3 of the liquid to evaporation, depending on the ambient humidity.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: You will be tempted, but NEVER NEVER NEVER LET THE STOCK RETURN TO A BOIL, OR EVEN SO MUCH AS A RIPPLY SIMMER. Some faint steam will rise from the surface. Thats IT. Keep it stirred. This is the 'secret' of good stock.

Heres why: What happens if it boils is that the dissolved juices, sugars and proteins you've been working so hard to extract from all your ingredients will combine and bond to the dissolved haemo-proteins from the chicken (this turns grey and is called floc when it congeals) and when you strain that out, you'll strain out everything else along with it and lose the entire reason why you made this in the first place. Don't worry; your stock will be perfectly clean and germ-free despite never having boiled because it will have spent so much time at a scalding temperature. Remember too: when you go on to use your finished stock it in other things, you'll be cooking it again at a higher temperature anyway.

-In the morning, pour through a colander to strain out the bones and the vegetables. Pitch these. There's nothing left of them to speak of, although chickens and other birds love it because there's easily assimilated, dissolved calcium in it.

- Now strain it through something fine, like a clean cotton sacking towel, a cheese cloth or a fine mesh strainer, to get the greyish, cardboardy looking fragments (the congealed haemo, or 'floc', remember?) out of it. Don't bother trying to get it perfectly clear, but DO strain as much out as you can. If you leave the floc in, it will give the stock a rankish, livery taste. It's gotta go.

-Cool the stock, and then put it in the refrigerator until the fat rises to the top and can be lifted off in pieces, which can take a day. (Are you making schmaltz? Add this fat to it!) When the stock chills it will turn into jelly. It's supposed to!

You are done! You now have a simple chicken stock.

You'll taste this, and it will taste kind of weak, like chicken tea. It's supposed to. This is not broth, bouillon, or soup. It's a separate thing entirely. Stock is the starting place for all those things, and many others besides, but it is not an end in and of itself. If you reduce it down and add salt, you can get a very 'souplike' flavor from it, and that's what you would do if you were to make a soup with it anyway, so there you go. But stock is meant to be just an ingredient. I know. It took me years to get this; I thought I was doing it wrong. It's not supposed to be terribly salty or chickeny, like the canned or boxed stuff. That is WRONG. That's why when you make things with canned stock it ends up tasting bitter and gasoline-ish, because canned stock has been boiled to death, using substandard ingredients, and then over salted and over-seasoned and finally steam canned in fucking plastic-lined steel. It's CRAP. It's inferior. And its expensive!!

By making your own, you have just saved yourself about 25 dollars and a whole lot of space in your recycle bin. Freeze it in 16 oz containers. To use it at canned strength, use 32 oz (two containers) and reduce to roughly 1 cup (more or less, to taste.) And salt it up, of course.

Bonus recipe for non-nosepickers:

Chicken salad!!
This is a really informal recipe here. You can swap around the ingredients or omit whatever you don't like. Get all crazy with it. Simply chopped chicken and mayo is good, for you minimalists out there, but this is how I like it:

cooked chicken meat, chopped into small dice
onion, coarse mince
celery, coarse mince
sour cream, for binding, to taste, and/or mayonnaise
cashew nuts, 1 cup broken pieces
dried dill, 1/8 tsp
salt, to taste
fresh ground pepper, to taste
garlic, to taste

Mix and chill. Spread it on sandwiches or fill up a hollowed out tomato with it and serve cold. Is so yummish!
_____________________________________________
*
why do i keep insisting 'do not cover'? because when you cover liquids that you're going to be keeping on the fire for awhile, it keeps certain compounds from volatilizing out of the mix. These things will then just lay in there and lend it a distinctive 'stew' or 'crockpot' flavor. Its not necessarily a bad thing, but its simply not what you're looking for here. when you do finally cover the chicken, you're doing it to retain heat. The 'active' cooking has been completed.

** This is not to say that I don't use mix. In the absence of base (a super reduced version of highly seasoned stock, like a syrup, that requires huge amounts of materials and time and energy to make) I make do and call it well fought. I'll use powdered mix before I'll use a commercial liquid base, though, since you KNOW everything's dead in the powder...God only knows what was swimming around in the base pot. I don't trust the shit. I've worked in factory food before. Since I don't make a lot of complex sauces, though, base rarely becomes an issue.

Black Dog Been A Long Time: Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely TIME

2009-01-01T12:32:00.000-08:00

I've noticed that people who think that cooking is difficult make the same three mistakes:

1. If low heat is good, then high heat is better and faster, so turn everything up on high.
Nope. You're working with sugars and proteins. They all react differently to different temperatures. If the recipe says 'low heat' then it MEANS low heat. If you don't know why it should make a difference, then look that question up on the Internet or ask someone. Then do it.

2. Get bored and then walk away from things while they are on the stove top.
DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM A HOT STOVE TOP. NEVER. An oven is a different matter; still, for safety's sake, always, always use a timer.

3. Address their lack of skills as though it were a charming foible. 'Gosh, I am just such a ditz! And it's cute!"
It's not. It's annoying and lame. Anyone who can read can cook. Stick to the easy stuff at first; master a few tasty things with only a few ingredients and instructions. Once you get comfortable with that, move up.

The best advice I can give to a beginning cook is, that when you first start out cooking, your only objective is to produce EDIBLE FOOD THAT YOU LIKE. Ugly doesn't count. All food needs to do is taste good and be nourishing. Period. All those gorgeous pictures in the magazines are staged, folks. Presentation only counts in a commercial establishment.

A good way to learn is to work out of a cookbook like this one, even if you're an adult:

You can buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Kids-Cooking-Slightly-Messy-Manual/dp/0932592147

Do it now. It really is that good.

This is the best kids' cook book out there. The format is light but not dorky, the steps are easy, the tools are laid out, safety and preparation are explained and most of all, the recipes are easy and TASTE REALLY GOOD. We still use a lot of the recipes, in fact.

If working out of a childrens' cookbook doesn't appeal, I would work out of a reliable standard like The Joy of Cooking. This book is like my family bible. Buy it in hardcover. It's worth whatever you have to pay for it. If you don't have it, you should. I am dead serious.

Joy's recipes are tested and reliable and presume no skill on your part. Joy not only gives you recipes but also explains why things happen in cooking and how to do them.

Don't-as a beginner, anyway- go try and cook things using the recipe sites out there on the Internet. Here's why...

Most of the recipe sites out there are built using recipes that random people submit. They aren't tested, they take skill for granted, and they just plain suck sometimes. Or rather, if I'm going to be generous, its that lots of those folks who contribute are probably better cooks than they are writers. Writing a recipe is difficult! Ask me...it's a lot harder than it looks.

That having been said, the best reference resource out there for a beginning cook is online: Egullet.com, a site I highly recommend as a learning tool. They have technique demonstration videos that you can play as many times as you like, and people on staff that can help you out. It's a recipe collection, a forum, a reference and a cooking school. All skill levels are represented, and the instructors and moderators are really patient and helpful.

Here's my rundown of the common sites:

EGULLET.COM -Great everything-recipes, resources, information, links, recommendations and tutorials

Egullet.org Online Culinary Institute-EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT

Allrecipe.com- very iffy but excellent if you're researching variations of a particular dish, since they'll present you with, say, five different versions of a given dish submitted by five different people.

Recipezaar-average to iffy, and also excellent if you're researching variations of a particular dish for the reasons given above there.

Cooks.com-Home of the white trash recipe...if you're looking for that weird pretzel and jello dip (this exists) they served at uncle Billy-Bobs' funeral, look no further. Recipes range from very good to very, very bad indeed. And I mean 'whoa Nellie' bad.

Myrecipes.com-Good. They link to Sunset Magazine recipes, which I like.

Gourmet Magazine online-Average, good recommendations and links

Epicurious-Not the most user friendly site, but good

Cheftalk.com - The moderators can be assholes, but their archives are SOLID GOLD. Absolutely invaluable information and resources particularly for obscure or very new things. Hash slingers, Cordon Bleu grads and everyone in between all gather here to worship. Aimed at the professional (or the highly skilled amateur), assumes a high level of skill.

Martha Stewart.com-Not the most user friendly site out there. The recipes tend to be hit or miss, but the few good ones are very, very good. Excellent resources, reliably high quality.

Joy of Cooking online-Good, but not as good or as comprehensive as the book.

Americas' Test Kitchen- Meh. The show and the magazine are much, much better (I subscribe, in fact. You should too. Its like an advanced degree in cooking. The magazine is called Cooks Illustrated.) The site is very aggressive in its marketing tactics and the recipes are only up for a limited time.

Zombie Dog!

2008-12-29T07:57:00.000-08:00

Lets start the new year out right, shall we? Lets start the new year out with a story.

A story about the Meadows family.

Why is this the right way to start the New Year, you ask?

Because if you swallow a live toad first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen to you all day.
_____________________________

I'm sure that at some point in the past Brendel the dog had been readily identifiable as a specific breed, and I'm guessing that it was some kind of a terrier situation. When I met him, though, Brendel was in such an advanced state of deterioration that he was only vaguely canine, and that only when stood next to a cat or a possum or a raccoon.

Brendel belonged to the Meadows family. Specifically, Sunshine Meadows.

Now, Sunshine Meadows was a person that I would have hesitated to trust with a toaster oven. That much was stark raving obvious before you'd even spent one full minute in her presence; she was like a fat, loud, functionally retarded Sue Ann Nivens, if Sue Ann Nivens had dribbled a constant stream of rat scabies and mushroom soup and evil. Nevertheless, someone actually took at look at this complete waste of skin and sold it a puppy. The only thing that can possibly explain this is that reincarnation exists and Brendel was Hitler before he was Brendel.

Brendel was about the size of a large housecat. I think he was originally a brindle dog, which the Meadows steadfastly insisted was spelled and pronounced 'Brendel'*; although by the time I made his acquaintance he was almost entirely white.

I have never seen a dog this old. Nobody knew how old he was exactly. In fact one of the common Meadows evening conversations centered around trying to figure out how old Brendel was by attempting to date him to different events.** If aroma was anything to go by Brendel was 800 years old. You KNEW when this dog was in the vicinity. He didn't smell like a dog, though; he smelled like burnt tunafish casserole. I honestly do not think this dog had been bathed ever. I mean clear geologic levels of filth on this dog that would fly off in discernable chunks when he got kicking. He'd always stop when he was done and sniff his toes. 'Hmmmm. 1954...a very good year.' And then he'd go around and vacuum up all the frag.

Oh yes.

He was drawn up into a perfect knobby half-moon shape, and tiptoed around on the ends of his claws instead of moving his legs. This made him look eerily as though he were a childs' evil decomposed pull toy rolling around. He always carried his head held low to the ground, glaring at you through eyes milk white with cataract tissue. His teeth met in a jagged cross stitch of fishbones and fangs on the outside of his lips and saliva drooled out of his flews in a perpetual stream.

He did not breathe. Not visibly. Not audibly. You could hold your hand in front of his nose and not feel a single thing, even when he was asleep.

The shape of every single bone in this animals body was clearly visible, and I mean right down to the separate bones in his tail. When he ate something you could literally watch as it lumped and bulged its way through his entire intestinal tract. Now this was not a symptom of starvation by any means...this dog ate like a machine. Anything. At all. Constantly. Dog food, dead robins, hamburger wrappers, tinfoil, old gum, sheetrock...

One time I watched this animal go down the side of the road vacuuming up smashed, blackened cherries out of the gravel. And he ate every single one, pits, skin, gravel and all, his head scanning back and forth like a zombie flamingo in the brine shrimp. He was completely blind, this dog, and yet down the block he went, looking like something that fell off Stephen Kings ass, with his muzzle just dusting the ground, darting and swallowing, trailing drool, and all the while this little dog is making this horrible burbling wet noise:

UHAGARK fffart WHIFFLEharf EEEEblargkaffkaff GORPslurp eeeeewaaaAK AK growfBURPooappsnorf snorf FFFfrapSNORKLEakbarfHATCHOOfrap

There was nothing natural or cleanly about this whatsoever.

Now despite being blind as a stone this animal would track your movements. As soon as you came into the room his little bald head would slowly rise and his muzzle would come around and point directly at you while you walked by. His eyes were like perfect moonstone opals, completely opaque, dry and hard. Obviously there was nothing wrong with his hearing or his sense of smell. You could call him from anyplace and he would come gliding up on his tippitoes and stop with his dry, dry nose touching your leg, and just stand there. "OK, boy", you'd say, and he'd come back online and glide off.

Nobody mistreated Brendel. Brendel was a vicious as a pirrahna. He did not want pets or love or to be a lap dog. He would come up and present a body part to be scratched; you scratched it, and then he rolled off, perfectly content. Any attempt to pick him up would result in Brendel going from completely stock still to SCREAMING RAVENING MAELSTROM OF CANINE DEATH and back to complete immobility once you decided not to follow through, or were in another state.

Screaming is no exaggeration either. The very worst, most unnatural, horrible thing about Brendel was his voice.

I was seated over at Sonnyboys house next door one evening right after I'd arrived back in town. It was about 2 in the morning and we were just smoking and talking and having some beers when suddenly I heard a....noise. I am not ashamed to admit that I gave a yelp and jumped for Sonnyboy.

"Isn't it horrible? We decided it sounds like a bum being tortured to death," Sonnyboy explained.

"Well is someone torturing a bum to death?" I asked, completely appalled. I'd never heard anything like this. It really did sound like a human in pain, or several humans in pain, and by pain I mean horrific agony, and by several humans I mean like the emergency waiting room at Harborview Medical Center late on a Saturday night. Horrible loud screaming and groaning and banshee wailing, with a distinct vocal quality to it:

Aoo wawawawa waaaaaa, BUFFA. Boov. VoooOOOO. Wuhwoo. UUOOWAAA aaa aaaaaaaaaaoooooo...oooooOOOOOWAUGHAOUAOU, waOOOOO. WOOWOOWOOOaaaauuuuuwauway........ OR! WORRAUauau! roOOOAU AIEEEEEEE!AIK!AIK!AIK!AIK!AIK!AIK!

"Oh my God Sonnyboy we have to go see whats wrong, Jesus Christ now come on," I said. I was really panicked. I thought someone was in real trouble or something.

We both snuck out the back door and over the fence.

There in the moonlight, sitting on the back step of the Meadows shed, still as a statue, was Brendel. Brendel, with this NOISE coming out of him. His mouth never came wide open and he never hopped up off his front feet like some dogs will when they're all excited and giving voice just to hear themselves be goofy; no, Brendel was just sitting there still as a statue, moving his lips as though he was chewing.

Wumgum. Hmrmwmwmwmwaaaaaaaaaaa. WMWMaaaa. OOOO oo oo, RAIGH! AWRAIGH! AIAIAIauauaooooo. WHY! WAWHY! marowauOOOOOOOOOOOOOWAGGAWAGAAAAAA!

I backed into the fence and got tangled up in it. Sonnyboy nearly pissed himself laughing at me. I ran back indoors and stayed up for the rest of the night. Every time I'd try and sleep this fucking dog would start up again and I'd come up off the couch about a foot.

"Oh my God, if he'd just bark like a normal dog it would be one thing," I kept saying. "You could throw something at it. You wouldn't be afraid if it were just a normal dog noise. This is like...oh my God. Somebody ought to do something. I mean, this is from hell," I exclaimed.

"Nobody in the whole neighborhood will say a word anymore,"explained Sonnyboy, "because then Sunshine shows up at your door. And NOBODY wants that. Brendel is bad, but Sunshine might play the accordion or something. And the thing is, I don't think you can actually kill Brendel anymore. He'd just return and put a curse on you."

Sad to say, though, it was possible to kill Brendel. It took a dump truck.

By this point I had resumed my campaign of evil and I was busily emptying the bank account of a useless cheating wad of fuck named Brae. Brae, although engaged to another girl, just knew he was Gods gift to women in general and me specifically. I knew that if I kept treating him like crap and holding out on him he'd get so broke trying to buy his way into my drawers that he'd have to re-enlist in the Navy. Which is exactly what happened but is another story. Ahem.

One evening he had picked me up at the Meadows house and we had just driven down to the end of the block when we saw a creature coming down the center line toward us in the headlights, eyes glowing, staggering along on three legs.

Apparently Brendel had wandered down the block to where a housing development was being built and one of the dumptrucks had gone over him; we found the dual wheel tracks full of dirt going right over the bloodstain on the pavement.

And the goddamned dog was still walking.

Brae stopped the car and we both got out and stood over the dog. "I can't touch it," he said. "I couldn't even look at the thing when it was OK, now its a mess. Jesus."
And Brendel was.
Brendel had a rib sticking out of his side, and that side was flat. One hind leg was completely dislocated at the hip socket and was broken in several places besides, bent at several strange angles like a paperclip, the foot hanging like a rag.
One ear was almost completely smeared off the side of its head and hung down on its neck attached to a strap of skin.
Part of this animals skull on that side was caved in.
And missing.
You could see this dogs BRAIN.
As we stood and looked down at it in horror, pieces of gravel fell out.
And yet this dog was still walking.

Brae wrapped it up in his coat and we put it in the trunk with the lid open; I sat back there with it while we rolled back up the street slowly. Brendel growled when I tried to pet him. I stopped.

Sunshine reacted like Sunshine did, which meant she giggled and dithered and laughed and looked around and blinked and flapped her hands and dithered some more and screeched "Oh my God! I can't decide! I just can't decide! What do I do! What do I do! I just don't know, I've never been good at deciding! Oh no!"

"We should take the dog to the emergency vets in Portland," I said. "It's down in Northwest."

Sunshine paused a half-beat and frowned down at me. Then she resumed her fluttering and dithering. "Oh my God! I can't decide! I just can't decide! What do I do! Someone make this decision for me! Oh please! I just don't know!"
-And remember, all this time she's giggling, kids. Giggling.

"We should drive down there and you can follow in your car," I said. "Just get in your car and we'll go. Go get your keys, here, here's your keys on the wall here, let's take them off the hook and put them in your hand, here, OK, and now let's go out into the driveway, here let me open the door for you, get in your car, OK, good, and now you start the car and you FOLLOW us into Portland, OK? You have to start the car-OK. Good. Now FOLLOW US IN TO PORTLAND."

Once at the vets she continued to be useless, and the doctor looked at us and we looked back and shrugged and rolled our eyes.

Brendel jumped down off the examination table and headed for the door.

The doctor tried to catch him. When his hands closed on him, Brendel came around like a wolverine and buried his teeth in the mans' hand.

We had to threw the coat back over Brendel in order to lift him back onto the table, and all the while this animal is fighting like a hooked marlin and SNARLING in hatred at the top of its lungs.

We all backed away and left Sunshine there. She just stood there looking down at Brendel, watching his brain oog around, giggling. "You're the owner so you have to make a decision," the vet said.

"Well I can't, I just can't, Oh I don't know what to do I just can't," she simpered.

"We're going to leave now," I told the vet quietly. "We got her here. I'm done with the bitch."

"Wait! Does she have transportation?" The vet looked a little panicked.

"Oh you bet she does," Brae laughed. "She drove herself here. The dog was bad enough. There's no way in hell I'd let that in my car."

We stopped at a gas station on the corner of Burnside. Brae cleaned out the trunk of his car and gave his jacket to a bum. Then we went to a bar and got shitfaced stinking, rompin' stompin', ratshit, motherbuttfucking, blind-ass drunk til that bitch closed doors down.

Brendel came back in the form of a handful of ash in a little box. Sunshine kept it on the mantle. When people would come over she'd lead them over and say "thats my poor little doggie Brendel Wendel," and then glare at me.

Apparently Brendels' death was my fault. I never was able to pin her down as to how exactly it was my fault that her blind senile dog that ran around the neighborhood at large had been run over by a goddamn dump truck....it just was. So whenever she pulled this I'd just grin real big like Alfred E. Neuman and nod enthusiastically.

This apparently was not the reaction she was looking for from me. She also seemed less than amused when the person she was attempting to zoom cracked up laughing.

The great thing about Sunshine was she had no clue that everyone had her number. None whatsoever.

___________________________________________
*When I first heard this dogs name I thought they'd said 'Grendel' and I started laughing. "At least they have a sense of humor about it," I said.

Blank stares.

"You know, Grendel? Like Grendel the monster?" I said.

Blank stares. Some drool.

"....Oh. From Beowulf," said Eldest Brother.

Which was what finally made me decide to do him.

**
scene: dinner conversation, around the table. all family members and our narrator are present.

Dad-Brendel has to be about 22 now. Sure. We got him wasn't it right around the time when Eldest Brother had to get circumcized? Remember? Back when Kelvin spilled a pot of hot tea on his crotch and he got 2nd degree burns and all the skin sloughed off and it got infected and then he got pimosis and it closed off the end of his dick and he had to get an emergency circumcision?

Mom-No, I think it was back when Mysterion got her period. Wasn't it? Right around then? I remember finding a lot of bloody underwear in the laundry right around then...

Eldest Brother-No no no it was back right after we made Kelvin go live in the garage because he kept going in to Mysterions room at night. I remember we were putting up the wallboard when you brought Brendel home.

Kelvin-I never went into Mysterions room at night. That was a lie. She was lying.

Mom-She was not lying; we found your underpants right next to her bed, Kelvin.

Kelvin-Well, we didn't have Brendel then because I remember I had just started working nights and I'd come home and wake up in Mysterions bedroom and not remember how I got there.

Dad-I thought you said she was lying.

Kelvin-Well...well, she was lying; I was never in there. Not really. And we didn't have Brendel then anyway.

-cue happy family laughter all round

OH YES.