what does the future hold in store for YOU?

My renowned powers of prognostication have proven themselves again! Ha!

Some months back I mused upon the theme of glow in the dark wrinkle dogs, and proposed the development of a glow in the dark cat
(with adhesive properties to make them more appealing to the multitasker). I also said that we were certain to see the luminous pet in our future,and that the Japanese would most likely be the first to develop it.
BEHOLD MY PROPHECIES REALIZED, PUNY MORTALS!
http://www.weirdpicturearchive.com/pics/glowingfish.html

Yes, it is a strange but largely satisfying although somewhat itchy feeling to know that I alone out of millions have been gifted by the mysterious forces of nature with the ability to predict the pet trends of the future. And you, my darlings, shall benefit from this gift!
Behold! The veil ripped away from fickle Futures face!!!!!

The wily French beat the Japanese to the novelty pet market in the spring of 2009 with the 'Canard Montgolfier' hot air duck. Children worldwide require trauma intervention after witnessing their parents attempts to inflate it.









Also a marketing failure, only the very wealthy could afford Japans offering that year, the Helium Hippo Child Peaceful Flies. Many felt the problem lay with the the filling mechanism, which was difficult to maintain.







The Japanese regrouped and concentrated on developing alternatives. Market research focus groups reported that existing pets had serious issues that veterinary science had done little to alleviate beside suggesting the family refrain from letting Sparky eat cat crap. The Japanese spent millions of yen addressing this issue.

Their answer left much to be desired.


Many felt that a return to the origional research was in order. Once again the laboratory roof was laboriously cranked open. Once again the research tems waited, hoping, scarcely daring to breathe, for a passing thunderstorm to ignite the spark of life in the slumbering clay which lay upon the gurney suspended like an offering to some unknown god of frowning cloud and furious rain.
(You know, they're Japanese and it works. Are you going to argue with success?)


This time the form upon the altar of science was HUMAN.
Kinda.

Pictures stolen from the research files show that cells were harvested from Jay
Leno's body in a series of fiendish processes kind of resembling a foot Matrix had the Matrix been about feet*, that left poor Mr. Leno permanently lamed, although leaving his legendary ability to kiss celebrity ass intact.A grateful country thanks you, Japan. Not.

Other possible donors of genetic material can only be speculated upon, as the future

is not in the habit of telling me every damn thing, so quit bugging me.

Thus it was that an unsuspecting public opened their eyes one June morning to find the world a different place, and debatably a much better one, for the addition of
The Cute Cute Child Companion Changeable of Animal Pet!

Awww! Devloped to meet the emotional needs of its owners and demand litle in return save basic cleanliness and feeding, the CCCCCAP was biologically programmed to morph in response to its owner, sensing changes in pheremones and responding accordingly. See, some stuff the future is pretty specific about. So there.
Now, if they had just stuck with the good old Glow-in-the-dark Wrinkle Dog and the Adhesive Lumacat, things would have been a lot better. But noooooo. Some people just can't leave well enough alone. They have to go dipshitting around with the very foundations of life as we know it.
Just as in the indescribably foul case of the Canard Montgolfier**, unresolvable problems appeared in the design.

Although hell, I'd vote for it.
And maybe YOU SHOULD TOO (hint hint, future, wink wink, hint.)





* if the Matrix had been about feet, and had the Matrix starred a foot instead of Keanu Reeves, who while undoubtedly easier on the eyes than a foot nonetheless learned acting from a foot and has the emotional range of a foot.

**Oh! So is for laughing Ha my face! You see what I did there? Is humor laugh!

it's raining and i can't garden! crap!

While we were coming back from Wenatchee we stopped in an antique store in a little town just to stretch our legs. It was a private home turned into commercial property, with all the fixtures left in place; kind of a charming way to display antiques, I thought. There was a screen door in place between the kitchen and the carport, and when that screen door clapped to behind me with that distinctive sound of zinging spring and creaking hinges, wood and wire mesh, I went back in time instantly to my grandmothers house. It made me take a breath and clasp my hands to my chest. That made the Yummy Biker rather exasperated, since we'd all rather I didn't have these sudden attacks of Victorian ladyhood, really.

It used to be that houses were built to the measure of the person building them, long before building codes and standardization of materials. Part of my present house was built like this; the original one room cabin was measured by notches on a story stick; and this story stick is still nailed to the south rafter up in the attic, over where the front door of the house used to be. That was the luck of the house, people believed. I was completely delighted to find it still there.

My grandmothers house was built the same way. My grandfather came from Finland and was a woodsman and carpenter. When he wasn't out cutting timber he did carpentry and general woodworking around town, and when he built his house he measured by the hand, finger and forearm, and also by knots on a string he kept looped in his pocket. The house he made fit him like a suit of clothes. There is not an inch of it that he did not touch. All his tools were hand tools and many of them were things he'd also made, whittled out of cherry or hammered out of iron on a small forge.

My grandmothers house was supposed to come to me, but my mother intervened, and my cousins sealed the deal, and now it belongs to the local parish instead.

It stood at the rear of a small orchard of Gravenstein apple trees which my grandmother had wound a flower garden around, with no particular logic. After my grandmother died I used to steal the key off the ring and go over to just sit on the rug or wander around from room to room. The smells were still the same, of cooking and my grandmothers perfume and old house wood. Every window had a fragrant flowering tree or shrub planted next to it, and by midsummer you were in dappled shade in every room of a house that smelled of roses and apples and grass.

It was not a large house by any means, and like my present home it had started life as a one room pioneer cabin, added onto as the family circumstances changed. The niche in the wall of the front room had once held a Murphy bed, and that was where my father was born. The kitchen had been converted to electricity only in 1965. The indoor 'facilities' had been tacked on in the 1940's while my father was overseas fighting the battle of Midway. The outdoor privy and summer kitchen still stood until the mid-1970's, when my dad tore them down to make a garden plot. Until then, you could look out our back door and see the little skinny shack with the crescent moon shape in the door, and sometimes kids who came over would beg to use it. It was full of bees and spiders and birds nests by then, but it was always something of a bragging point to say you used the old outhouse.

Unusual for the times, there was a full basement, with a section left in dirt so that mason jars of canned food could be bedded in the cool soil. The cement walls and stairs had been poured using scrap planking and a plumb bob, pail by pail.
Those were the stairs that my grandmother died on. She passed in a nursing home several years later.

All in all, it was a tight little set-up. My grandfathers craftsmanship was idiosyncratic,and downright goofy in places, but it held up beautifully well. Hell, the man planed his own window casements rather then buy them, and they are probably still keeping the wind out.

That was the highest price I ever paid for something in my life, was that house.

SOLUTION FOR POSTING PICTURES ON YOUR BLOG

HAVING TROUBLE POSTING PICTURES TODAY?

DANGER CHIHUAHUA HAS THE SOLUTION! (honestly, it works.)
update: THIS IS BULLSHIT, BLOGGER.COM, IT'S BEEN THREE DAYS NOW! COME ON!
in your 'edit posts' screen, go down to an earlier published post....mine was 5-5-06, for example.
1. open the selection in 'edit post'
2. select the 'edit html' tab.
3.put your cursor at the very first character and 'space' down three or four spaces, just to give yourself some viewing room. now return your cursor to the top of the page.
4. now, using the regular old 'upload pictures to blogger' controls, upload your picture. and voila! it will load in no problem; at least it did for me.
5. now highlight the entire html code containing your picture and copy it
( ctrl + 'c' )
6. open your NEW post in the 'edit post' screen and paste the code (ctrl + 'v') wherever you want it to be. in doing this, the picture disappears from the old post when you hit 'yes' at the 'contents have changed' warning.
7. repeat as needed.
7. publish.
UPDATE:
Some commenters complain this fix does not work for them. Why that is, I don't know. anyway, THE PICTURE BELOW PUBLISHED on Saturday afternoon, June 3, 2006 AT 5:54 PM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME, U.S. using the method described above. Don't give up if you haven't tried it yet. Yes, regular Blogger picture posting is still down for me.

All together, now!
Whos the leader of the club, thats made for you and me?
Get your shit together, Blogger M-O-U-S-E!

The Diabolical Devil-Face Crab Red's Magic Commandment!

The Stainless Steel Amazon burst in this morning seething with rage. "Listen to this!" she commanded, and played back the latest message from her landlord
WHO IS A STUMP FUCKING ASS-DOG
and whose sad drawling attempt at a superior tone shrieks "Oh! Mah God! Mah penis is
SO little! Everyone come look at mah tiny wiener! MAH WIENER IS SO TINY IT LOOKS LIKE A BABY TOE WITH A HOLE IN THE END!"
Oh, what effort he put into his snide delivery! Positively Shakespearian, if Shakespeare had written for six-year-old girls. Good Lord.

The thing was, he had all of his facts WRONG. All he had heard when my daughter initially called him was 'I'm going to be moving at the end of my lease" which in his mind translated into "WOOP!WOOP!WOOP! Decline in revenue!" and off he went on his abusive tirade without registering the rest of the message at all.

How do people like this survive? If he was in my town I'd fucking cut his brake lines.

This is the type of shit I dealt with all while I was single. I'm sorry to say, there is a certain type of man who sees a single woman as dirt beneath his feet. Simply put, he knows he doesn't have to be nice (because he perceives her as not having the power to MAKE him be nice), so he isn't. Fronted up with this, they will accuse you of being 'oversensitive'. Oho, yeah, I hear that booming, paternal, impatient, 'talking to a retard and resenting every minute' tone and I just go fucking ballistic to this day, not that you could tell or anything.

Certain people only hear cash register bells. You give them a bunch of testosterone and a couple of credit cards and you have a bully who is going to get his way unless you refuse. Either be richer than them and use it, or have nothing to lose and be smarter. And WAAAAAAAAAY meaner. (Voice of vandalism-um, experience. )

And I'm sorry, but to retain any sort of self respect and to maintain your place in the world, YOU HAVE TO REFUSE TO BE REAMED. I remember the 'Seventies feminists that were going to create an alternative order and failed again and again miserably. I remember the assertions 'women don't need to act that way. We aren't that way, and we don't have to be that way in order to get things done. Hierarchy is a tool of the patriarchy'

Uh-huh, yeah.

Hierarchy is the way THINGS WORK. Shit rolls down hill. This may not always be pleasing or serve ones purposes, but there's nothing wrong with it and there's nothing immoral or dastardly about it. It is also not a quality at odds with being female, or feminine. Ever been part of an all-female organization? Ever belonged to the PTA? Ever been a mother? Yes? How do things get done in those circumstances?
My point proven.

You simply cannot have respect without earning it and without defending it. That means WOMEN TOO. You don't get to sit back on your pear shaped ass and receive fair treatment merely by virtue of menstruation.
Germaine Greer was one of these stupid ivory tower twats. Man, I laughed out loud when she moved to Catholic, conservative rural Italy. *snerk* Oh, honey. Ivory tower? Meet Reality.
She, of course, does not live there anymore.

Anyway, Mr. 'Delusions of Donald Trumpery', Mr. "Doctors mistake it for a vestigial teat' I pity the fuck out of you. My Amazon is going to BEAT YOU DOWN.
Then it's my turn.

geology. geology, dammit! or, our vacation east of the cascades

small update: I have a post here
http://bitterbierce.blogspot.com/
where i was asked to guest. it's a good blog! and not just because the guy was classy enough to ask me to contribute (which he did, despite the instructions at the bottom of the post. really. honestly, he did.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I have just returned from a vacation-ette in Wenatchee, Washington. Unlike here, where the ground is covered with vegetation and used surgical gloves, Wenatchee is a paradise of sagebrush and stone, Mexicans, people driving trucks randomly entering the traffic flow and fruit trees.

Really, it is a beautiful place and we love it there. It has odd street names and strange vernacular architecture. Verdant farms and gardens exist seamlessly next to office buildings, or groves of peaches ripening in their millions, or desolations of baking stone. And the stone itself is on awe- inspiring perpendicular display everywhere. Cropping up in the middle of a parking lot will be a blade of basalt...In the middle of a manicured city park, an aircraft carrier sized slab...Even the stone hillsides sport strange irruptions of alien rock, like evidence of a meteor bombardment that I'm really glad I wasn't around for.

This is the first time we have gone in the springtime. We usually go in August, which in retrospect was kind of demented of us. The place is known for extreme summers. But we just slathered on the baby sunblock and rode merrily around in our tank tops and enjoyed the smell of the sagebrush.

Oh, but in the springtime Wenatchee is wonderful. All the hills have a wash of green and wildflowers burst out of the bare stones. It almost looks phony, like some crazed cat lady stuck bouquets of silk flowers in random crevices...The only thing giving lie to that hypothesis being the lack of cat ladies rappelling down the rock faces or hovering in helicopters. But that would be cool, wouldn't it?

The town of Wenatchee is medium-sized for eastern Washington. It's economy is based on fruit growing and shipping. It is divided by the Columbia River, which is dammed off into various lakes above and below the city. Cholo guys hang out in front of tiny ramshackle homes with swept yards, Mexican rap blaring out of beater whips, next door to over-the- top-mansions bristling with laser security and Escalades and satellite dishes. What strikes me as odd, in this agricultural town, is that most residents live behind a fence. Gated communities are everywhere, too, some with armed security guards. I wonder if this is prejudice or experience?

Wenatchee is surrounded by mountains, soft and rounded at the tops and jagged on the sides, green spread around their bases and creeks runnelling their sides; creeks lined on each bank with ribbons of lush,lush, lush verdure. These arroyos are the home of dream ranches from the pages of Dream Ranch magazine, elk, deer, lost antelope, coyotes and amazing small lizards which appear to be made out of gravel and sand. Some of the hills are snowtopped all summer, or begin the day white and melt to sueded brown by noon. Ravens and buzzards glide overhead. Doves call in the evening. Quail run everywhere in between like handfuls of rolling marbles, two scoops of bird with a flurp! on top and a kamikaze heart.

In the evenings, around sundown, a wind rises from the ground. This is how it feels, anyway, if you are standing outside when it happens. Your hair lifts and breezes tickle up under your shirt. This wind expands and fills, an invisible balloon of warm air perfumed with roses and sage and dust. Then it rolls down the hillsides and through the town to the river. From our favorite motel on a hilltop we can watch it gather leaves and curls of dust at a lazy rate high into the air overhead, and drift towards the river, and roll on downstream with the current.

Most days there is a thunderstorm, if not in the immediate vicinity then somewhere visible. Distances are big. Later in the year the rain falls as virga*, never touching the ground, but while we were there it rained and cleared by short turns all day, never ruining our plans in the least.

Our time was divided between hanging out at the cool, retro motel, watching the Food Network in the nice room that other people had to clean, and driving. We drove up and down the river and as far around nearby Lake Chelan as the road permitted. We explored many of the small towns along the way and made plans to retire in each one. We selected our homes from the number of wonderful Craftsmen style places everywhere and laid out the landscaping. We discussed whether it would be better to live up a canyon with only one road in and out, or whether living in the middle of the big open would be the wiser decision. We wondered, 'does the DEA run overhead infrared scan and then stage raids, or do they simply wait at the intersections and check cars at random?' (We are going to be *ahem*farmers in our golden years.)

We went up one canyon to the end of the maintained road, beyond which the highway department assured us lay two more towns. But it was in Ardenvoir, where the pavement ended, that we were accosted by the Arm Stroker and his wife, and that decided us against proceeding any further up the valley.

Now downtown Ardenvoir consists of one crappy, charmless, battered building . It contains a general store, a post office (closed in defiance of regulations, with a faded quilt for a curtain nailed across the window) and a tiny cafe floored in old license plates.Two old gas pumps stand outside bearing evidence of having stopped many a car, with their hoses all patched with prehistoric fluttering duct tape.

We bought a soda and marveled at all the beer on display in the the ancient windowed coolers still in use, the type insulated with rags and cotton, dating back to the days when ice was hauled up from the Columbia by mules and bedded in sawdust all year. There were lots of mounted elk heads looming above giving us the stinkeye. Buffalo jerky was for sale. Horseshoe nails were in stock, as were unreasonably numerous liters of Coke and plastic milk jugs (used for baling dope and jarring shine, respectively.) Everyone in the place knew each other. The clerk could barely wait on us for shyness.

The Yummy biker was putting in a fresh chew when the Arm Stroker approached out of nowhere. "Niiiiiiiice tats!" he enthused, circling my biker and stroking his arms. "Where did you get them? How old are they? Is that red? Whats that supposed to be? Wow!" Then he drifted over to me me, grinning. "Niiiiiiice tats" he reiterated. Then he reached out and ran his knuckle down my arm lovingly. Just as quick as it takes to read this it happened; it was over and he was gone, with his 11 lb. crack wife and her crennelated smile in tow. We never did figure out where they came from. Honey, we just LEFT.
But we are hardy, and we are easily amused too, particularly at the expense of the less fortunate. Nothing daunted, we antiqued; we shopped. We ate to excess. We had a great time!





*i had written 'verga' there, but upon looking it up discovered that 'verga' is an anatomical term for penis. Which would be interesting, provided you could observe it from afar, but i wouldn't want to be flying an airplane and run into a front of it. suck a few of those into the engines and see what happens to your lear jet, boy. try explaining it to your insurance company.

one tired hippobottomous (but tanned nicely!)

My darlings, I have just returned from vacation, and I am pooped and tuckered out, like. The Yummy Biker neglected to book us separate beds so I have spent the last two nights lying awake next to a comatose, sleeping man who yet manages to sleep all over the whole bed, gurgle, snort, snore, gag, flap, ask me to cosign checks, yell incoherently, wander around, curse in the bathroom, hold entire rational conversations which he does not remember the next day......yeah. like that. So y'all just be patient and tomorrow I will recount for your reading pleasure the adventures of Muk in the Hindermost Hinterlands!
Right now, night night.

Pink Tiger's Amusement Park Assault

IS THIS NOT THE ROCKINEST PICTURE OF NOAHS ARK EVER?

There is a lot about Noah that isn't readily known. A lot more than I had ever heard of, in fact. Of course, Catholic youngsters aren't exposed to the juicier side of the bible much...not too much time is spent on the Song of Solomon, for example, except to quickly cite it as a parable of Gods love for his church. All I know is that 'thy breasts are like turtledoves' is not what comes to MY mind when I think about church.
So when one of my darlings reminded me of the sad episode of Noah's drunkenness and subsequent wardrobe malfunction I had to go look it up. And there it was, all right, right there in the regular Bible.
First thing, right off the Ark, Noah takes a couple of the animals he worked so hard saving and sacrifices them to give thanks to God.






You know, the man was required to as a proto-jew so lets not go judging. After being brought through an event like that alive I'd be feeling thankful and extravagant too. ( Not to mention there exists some textual disagreement about whether or not he might have taken a few extra pairs of ritually 'clean' animals so there would be a surplus.)

Apparently Noah then settled down and became a farmer. He raised wine grapes. As is only to be expected, comes ripe the crop he made some wine and drank it. But as he had not tasted the fruit of the vine in some time, he passed out cold with his pants around his ankles (or whatever he was or was not wearing in those days.... anyway he was hangin out.)






One son finds him and hollers over at the other two to come check out dad.
Showing considerably more class than their brother, they take and cover dad up while looking the other way modestly.
When dad wakes up he curses the first son and his line to be slaves for all eternity. Now while first son was an asshole, this seems kind of harsh.(I would have got cursed for sure. In fact I'd probably still be lying on my side by the door cracking up.)



The other two got to divide the world between them.












Explains so much, doesn't it?


Serious part:
Now, this, my darlings, is nothing whatsover compared to what's written about Noah in the various Apocrypha.
And thats another new thing dear old FirstNations has learned in pursuing this subject...Hell, I was barely aware of ONE Apocrypha, let alone Apocryphae.
It is disturbing and powerful stuff. The Books of Enoch and the Noachic fragments look to me like a prefigurement of the modern Gospels...or the model which they were drawn on. Noah, far from being simply a beleaguered old man with too many pets, was a Savior according to these writings, born with supernatural powers of speech and understanding, who knew secrets of agriculture, healing and exorcism. Very, very interesting stuff...it's filling in some of the missing information I've noted during my travels around medieval art and literature.


And now, if you will 'scuse me, I'm going to go look at pictures of hairy men kissing each other on the LIPS.













a reference you should bookmark, if you haven't already
http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm

some very freaky fringe-oid ark crap.....
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sitchin/sitchinbooks01_06.htm

a nice gallery of hairy men..but you'll have to work to earn it. (y'all underage folks, you just don't worry about this.)
http://www.flickr.com/people/98289833@N00

more quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

From where I sit here in Command Central I can look out the kitchen window down onto a small shade garden I planted when we first moved in. A huge granite boulder sits there, providing potential burglars with a nice stepping stone in through my kitchen window, and also making a protected place behind which I planted a hosta...either 'Big Boy' or 'Blue Boy'; I forget the variety. In any event it had not shown any signs of being either big or blue sincethe pathetic little thing went into the ground. That's been ten years ago.
Some weeks back the Yummy Biker was feeling poorly, if you recall. While he was sitting here at the computer the urge to blow chow came upon him suddenly; so, he simply opened the window and, well, blew chow.
My hosta is almost 2 feet tall this year.

While the Goonybird was taking a nap this afternoon I snuck out to the garden shed to put up some special succulents I had set aside to dormant. Yes, I know I don't really have to take that kind of trouble with succulents, but these have been little bastards trying to get multiplied.
When I entered the shed I checked for roosting swallows before I ventured past the doorway. It was raining very gently, and I was afraid some were waiting out the shower up in the beams, asleep. You see, when they wake up suddenly, they wake up grumpy and confused; they fly and cheep and spin and frisbee; sometimes they disorient themselves with panic and bash into the walls, so I try not to startle them. All clear, nobody home.
While I was working the gentle rainfall ramped up suddenly to a torrent. I looked out through the door at the silver lines coming straight down, hammering the grass flat while I was dry in my little fort, and warm, with the smell of compost and rainwater, gasoline and warm metal. Then just as smoothly the rain subsided, tapered off to a sprinkle, and stopped. The swallows flew down from the neighbors cottonwood trees like tickertape streamers and whirled around my yard skimming the grass.

A flock of fat, fat geese, almost too fat to fly, flew overhead going south towards the flooded fields of Skagit county. Now that the big tulip harvest is over the farmers are turning the earth. That and the rain are bringing the large, cold angleworms up to the surface. Every beat of their wings accompanies a bleated 'whonk' as they toil past, ruddering around the phone poles, their funny triangular feet stuck out and fluttering in the breeze.
Yeah, I cuss them all winter for tearing up my grass, then I miss them in the spring.

Jett, my girldog, is shedding great wads of undercoat. I could knit a new dog out of what I pluck off her in the evening. I think it must feel tickly, because she only takes so much, then she dances away grinning and wagging like a big goofturd. Then comes back and wants mom to start all over. I must have taken a grocerysack full of fur off this thing already and the end isn't in sight. Actually the end is in sight, and it needs a damp washrag. Skanky dogbutt! Yay!

The tomato starts I bought are waiting patiently for a sunny day to go in. First time in at least 6 or 7 years I've bought in my main crop plants. I got 'Olpaka' for paste, and two big slicers...something from the 'Beef' series, I forget which one. I'll strip the leaves off to the top four pair and sink the rootball in compost, then backfill with soil and water with compost tea, cage 'em up and then let them do the rest. Around early September I stop watering and cut off all the leaves to stress the remaining tomatoes into ripening, and call it a year. And it's such a short year, dammit.

NOAH AND THE ARK

THE ARK ( contemporary photograph )


This post was requested by one of pervy Frobishers friends. Suspiciously, I cannot access his suspicious blog of suspicion for some suspicious reason. I can only conjecture that it is because I am not cool enough or I have girl germs. Well fine. I am a bigger person that that, so HA HA on you. We aim to please here at Rancho FirstNations. Suckered or not, here's the continuing story of the Old Testament.
When last we left our struggling planet The humans had eaten the forbidden fruit of the tennis tree and God sicced one of his scarier angels on them to chase them from the Garden of Eden. Humanity found itself in a bleak desolation filled with prarie dogs. But they were a hardy breed, and so by dint of hard work, determination and sheer reproductory prowess they raised up great cities, governments, and armies almost literally from the dust...until the humans killed them and stole it. And promptly fucked it all up.
This one is dedicated to SurlyGirl.

Things had gotton entirely out of hand.
People were messing up an large scale. What had once been an orderly world had become a clothing optional themepark with bad water sculpture, and people were doing things with strawberries that defied description.
'Ok, thats it,' said God. "Y'all are just disgusting."








Noah and his family were the exception.
Despite a shocking lack of navigation skills, God liked the cut of their jib.God is omniscient like that. "Don't worry", said God. "All you have to do is float around for forty days and nights. And try not to sink. And keep the animals fed."




And as if on cue, The Animals showed up and scampered onto the ark. God took Noah aside and had a word with him about taking things too literally. Unfortunately, it didn't take too well, did it?

Two of every kind of animal started showing up to go onto the ark. God reassured a skeptical Mrs. Noah "It's ok, they're supposed to. Its not like it's an infestation." Although an infestation of camels would be interesting, wouldn't it? Stinky too.

But after number of alternative couples had slipped past the gate, Noah decided it would be a good idea to put his sons, Nephi and Shempy, by the door to check i.ds. Noah was a busy guy and God was up to his Godly armpits flooding the world.

Still, the fact that they had to wear helmets should have been a clue relative to their job performance.

As luck would have it, Sasquatch turned out to be a Cordon Bleu graduate so they put him in charge of the officers mess.





Once the world was good and flooded they started floating around and taking in the sights, which were mostly along the lines of coelecanths chowing down on all the dead bodies bobbing around. "Did anyone remember to buy groceries before we left?" Mrs. Noah asked.
.



That was when the pirates attacked.







Yes, it was none other than Captain Programmer, toast of the Spanish Main! With his cutlass in one hand and his other hand lost in a tragic cannery accident, he rallyed his men for an attack!

Nothing daunted, brave Noah gave the command "Stand by to repel boarders!"
Sasquatch ran out on deck and brandished the naked mole rat. The boarders were repelled. It was a Victory at Sea.




But trouble continued to dog the Ark. Ha ha, get it? Because a couple days later the cats staged a mutiny."He pours our drinking water on the breadfruit trees when people are dying of thirst!" they cried. .
While the humans were cracking up the cats regrouped to devise a better rallying cry. "Ok! We got it! Ok! They make us use a STUPID BOX to crap in! Those days are FINISHED!"








And Chaos reigned supreme.





The first item on the evil feline agenda was a change in uniform.





Finally, sick unto death of Andrew LLoyd Webber, desparate to get that 'Macavity" song out of his head, Noah regained the upper hand. "Yes, we know we belong to the land", he said, as the cats swabbed the decks morosely, chains clanking "And the land we belong to is GRAND."

Finally Noah decided to check to see if the water was going down.

Three days later Shep returned with a hemerrhoid doughnut .

Shep, as it turned out, was not a good first choice for this task.


Next he tried a dove,which proved to be a little more survival oriented than the dog.

But the flood had taken it's grisly toll. The earth was not as it had been. Needless to say, things were pretty fucked up.

But it was no longer a job for the elder generation. Mr. and Mrs. Noah, having taken a liking to the nautical life, retired to a small home in Florida

The sun set on the devastated earth, as a humid stench rose in an indescribably foul cloud from the grim leavings of the flood.

Nephi and Shempy decided to grab the bull by the horns. After all, when life hands you lemons.....

this post brought to you by the letter 'Y'

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
A meme: Ten words with Y and what they mean to me.

1. whY
...do I garden? I am sunburned. My lawnmower just crapped a spark plug wire. My raised beds are falling apart, my hands are swollen and my back hurts. My penstemon has crown rot and my rosa multiflora chinensis is unhappy for some stupid spoiled brat reason. The weeds are thriving and I lost my sandwort v.'Cherry Pie.' The grass is growing too fast. The Cupressus Leylandii is a giant monster beast seconded only by my tam junipers. The Noble fir is sulking. POOP.

2. Yellow
This is the color of the sun, which I could stand to see a lot more of in my life. I have seasonal affective disorder, among numerous other things, and I have to fight like a rabid weasel just to stay awake during the winter, and to stay in a positive mind space too. Thats why I started this blog...to get me through the last part of winter without going on a shooting spree.

3. Yolanda
This is a name I am glad is not mine. It sounds like something you spread on toast.

4. Yiff
A sound I never, never want to hear. A web search you should never, never do. This is a realm of the sexual that lies right outside my limits of tolerance. Not because it's dirty, but because it's just dorkier than fuck.

5. Yogurt
I know how to make my own yogurt. Do you?
Yogurt is also a main ingredient in my amazing homemade bread recipe that I made up all by myself because I am clever like that.

6. Yawn
I do a lot of this in the winter. I go to bed around 7pm and sleep until someone wakes me up. Then I nap around noontime. I know; its terrible. But I can put myself to sleep with a form of self-hypnosis and choose my dreams and even do lucid dreaming and problem solving; and thats pretty cool.

7. Yale
I don't think I would have had a very good time there. Also one of the dorkier looking heraldic beasts ( but it beats the breast spurting milk all to hell. Hey, look it up.)

8. Yelm
A town here in Washington where J.Z. Knight lives, the dipshit broad who has suckered some very rich people into believing she channels Ramtha, a 3000 yr. old warrior spirit. BWAHAHAHAHAHAH! Yeah, right. She has a horse barn near the main highway that has french windows, gauze curtains and a freaking chandelier in it. Because horses appreciate fine Swarovski crystal.

9. Yegg
A yegg is a criminal. I do not like criminals; they suck. See #8.

10. Yarrow
I grow a variety of yarrow; v. 'Paprika'. Unless I lost that over the winter too. Dammit. Apparently the dried stalks of yarrow were numbered and used to cast the I Ching. R. Crumb, an artist I love and hate, used to submit material to a comic called 'Yarrowstalks.' It must have choked him.





Wanna be a part of the self-replicating thought form thingy? (ie the modern equivalent of the chain letter) let me know in your comments and I'll assign you a letter. I know, I know, that's not how it's supposed to work; I'm supposed to 'tag' you and shit, but how rude; like you don't have a life? So, you know, if you wanna play (and avoid getting cancer or having your business fail because your REFUSED) lemmie know. 'K?

Sponge Green Lives Thrice!

Yesterday as I was finishing my gardening the Avon lady came by and gave me a chance to sit down and talk. She always brings me five or six different catalogues and they're always full of products I never use, but the woman herself is so likeable that I usually get a little something...anyway, for her part I think she just uses selling cosmetics as an excuse to go out and visit. I traded her two garden plants for a botle of Avon Volumizing shampoo. Thus we keep the alternative economy alive here in rural America.

People around town have been dropping hints lately about my annual plant sale. Which is a sale of perennial plants that I have, you know, once a year. I kind of wonder where they all were last year when exactly ONE person showed up? DESPITE my papering the town with signs AND telling all the local gossip ladies. Well, ha on them. Stupid bastards. That one person who showed up took away 3/4 of my stock for 25 cents on the dollar. Her poor husband kept rolling his eyes at me as he sweated and puffed back and forth to their motorhome, loaded down with foliage. I got rid of plants, she was glad; I was glad, and it's all profit. The pots are free and the plants are seedlings or divisions of things I already own. Why be greedy? I hate to throw a perfectly lively plant into the compost. So some nice lady got the beginnings of a very nice perennial border for an insane low price and I had money I didn't have before she pulled up.

We'll see what happens this year. I just finished freshening my stock for this years sale. I'm working a month late, but the good weather ought to bring them along nicely. They all look so good!

If I was placed in the position of having to choose just one gardening task to specialize in, this would be it. Maintaining potted stock is like the entire gardening experience distilled, minus the heavy digging (and being attacked by hummingbirds high on testosterone.) A perennial plant relies most of all on its root system and crown. Plants in containers quickly become root bound and must periodically be lifted. Those with a system of cable-like roots must be shaken free of most of the medium and the roots themselves cut away, sometimes at their length, sometimes by volume, like taking away a wedge of cake. These are the plants that will strangle themselves as the roots circle round and round looking for medium and eventually constrict their own nutrient uptake. Perennials that form fiberous systems-think of fibrefil batting, for example- are shaken to loosen the structure and then sliced down the length of the root ball, placed into a larger pot and then re-packed with fresh meduim, taking care to spread the root ball apart and press medium into the cut.

During al this hacking and gouging, you get to see the entire plant. I like to examine its various parts closely, and this is better done with something that isn't the size of a small car. You trim away old dead growth and prune for shape. You learn more about each plant as a whole, rather than relying on pictures in a book, and in this way you develop a 'feel' for each individual plant in it's seasons much more fully than you would otherwise.

I make my own medium, and this is another favorite job. I use my own compost, and my own garden soil. Now turning compost is a bitch, and sifting compost is tedious and dusty, but the end product outweighs the toil. It is beautiful stuff, and it smells WONDERFUL, like autumn. I remember carting out a wheelbarrow load to show my husband in the garage one day, shouldering my way through a pile of bikers, going 'Oh my God! You have GOT to look at this! This is bioactive as fuck! It's incredible!' and by God, they all agreed. Hint: it's amazing how you can get through a packed room if you're pushing a wheelbarrow full of squirming compost in front of you.

So, by making my own medium, I can tailor drainage and richness levels for the pot depending on the specific plant. Once in the ground, plants seem to find their own balance given a particular biome, but in pots it's best to take some pains. They aren't designed to be confined at that high a temperature, and they aren't meant to take all of their moisture and food from the public water supply. Even the healthiest perennial in a pot (unless it's a succulent) is already under a certain amount of stress, which means uptake of nutrients will increase, which means more water in the main.

And see, you thought I was just a scroungy broad pulling weeds.

that one shitheel

At every job I have ever had, in every group it has been my misfortune to have belonged to, there is THAT ONE SHITHEEL.
This is the person who is directly responsible for bringing down the tone of the entire establishment by virtue of being a complete and utter twat. They are not only incompetent, they are jumping up and down incompetent AND they are fice. They are possessed of unnatural powers...deadly like the plague, dangerous like toenails caught in the rug, rip roaringly annoying, like fat adolescent girls who think they're vampires. Yet for some reason management never seems to be able to ferret them out. They are to businesses what icebergs are to the White Star Line. They chase off good staff with the determination of tracking hounds. They dampen the morale of everyone around them by being sneaky, spying, whining, thieving tattletale mutant ninja cheesesteaks who deserve to be humped for all eternity in Hell by the wheezing, wart covered Daemon Saliva Poodle. Or the Boner Chihuahua. Either one.

I was lurking at another blog (Everything is Electric) when the lovely hostess there mentioned having an enemies list. Now since one of my fondest secret desires
has been to emulate Richard Milhous Nixon, I thought "An enemies list! What a wonderful idea. But who goes at the top? Who is number one?"

Who indeed.

Do I have a specific person in mind? Yes, and no. Yes, The Shitheel travels under many names, but is actually a single, evil aetheric entity that moves from body to body, using it's host for awhile and then casting them away....considerably richer.

The Shitheel never gets caught. Never. They rape and pillage their way merrily through the workplace minefield you and I must gingerly navigate every day with nary a thought and never a consequence. The Shitheel can sit reception wearing nothing but an adult diaper and a paper chef hat, one finger rootling up his nose. The boss? May as well be blind. The Shitheel can lay out an tarp on the rug and proceeds to dismantle a vital bit of office machinery, like, say, the computer mainframe, and the boss? will just step over him. (really happened) But should our Shitheel not get his copies back quickly enough? The ensuing book throwing, screeching, foaming scene will pass completely unnoticed by management, despite the scissors in the wall and the broken window next to The Shitheels' desk (yep).
Whoops! The Shitheel has taken it into his head to go on a rampage. First stop, the bosses office; where he treats his larruping love chicken to a quick spank while he goes through the bosses' desk looking for cocaine (really happened) Then, he proceeds to the employee locker room where he masturbates again standing in the middle of the ladies shower (really happened) Lets say he then continues on to the front of the house, where he greets customers with a damp, suspicious smelling handshake and throws an arm around their shoulders, treating them to a steaming bowl of armpit (really happened) And calls them 'Bucko' (really happened). And shoplifts in front of them (*sigh* yeah.)

Fucker gets a RAISE.

That is the unholy power of THAT ONE SHITHEEL.

Golden Bat Sorcery At Work

It's pretty good to be alive lately.
Springtime is springing here springily. It's eighty degrees-unseasonably hot, for those of you thinking in celsius. Everything has opened into bloom at the same time instead of in its' usual monthly procession, which is quite pretty to see. The starlings are reproducing as though they were living on a diet of viagra and raw oysters. I am sitting next to my kitchen window at Command Central and I can hear them in their multitudes shrilling their strange, buzzy flock identity song...just as I wrote that, a barn swallow flew into my kitchen and fluttered around in circles! I guess I don't pass muster; he flew back outside.

This is a very, very old home and has been added to many times, and that has left lots of inviting nooks and crannies for bee nests and bird nests and plant seeds to grow. The starlings have staked out our attic and defend it against all comers. Now I like birds and I encourage them, but dammit, starlings are kind of a nuisance after awhile. They crap three-quarters again the amount they actually eat, and they do it on our cars. They shrill and shrill and shrill to the point you want to run around outside yelling 'Shut up already!' At least if it ever comes to that point I won't have to worry about what the neibors will think being they're nuttier than a goddamn family of crack squirrels theirownselves. Maybe we can get together and make an outing of it.

With an eye towards rousting them out, (the starlings) I've been up in the attic to have a look at the situation. The access door is in the 1800's section, from back when this was a single room cabin, and you have to clamber through each decade up to the sixties to get to the part where the starlings are. Unfortunately as it turns out the nest is a mat of hay and chicken feathers about the size of a crib mattress, with one small baseball-sized cup in the middle of it. This is added to enthusiastically every year. The starlings regularly fledge from four to six not-very-bright young from this conglomeration of crap. The ones who don't quite meet the demands of nature are scattered between the rafters in little mummified piles. So aside from busting a hole through one of the outside walls, theres no way thing's thing is going to be shifted. Looks like we have upstairs neibors. Neibors whose children regularly become lost and wander around in my attic and die.

Now that sounds rather sad, I know, but the hard reality is that a young starling is the dumbest damn animal on Gods' green earth...putting aside Fundamentalists, farm turkeys and Republicans for the moment. This is kind of a shame because they are also rather endearing little chickens, walking awkwardly around on the lawn bumping into each other and getting lost in the grass, playing with cigarette butts and following after mom in a tripping, bumbling crowd. That they are also more attractive then the stumpy, greasy looking adults is probably what keeps them fed.

While I was watering the beds yesterday I accidentally watered a starling child who had become lost in the vinca. He fluttered awkwardly away for all the world like Woodstock the yellow birdie from the Peanuts cartoon. He wandered under the garbage can; he wandered under the car. He tried to eat a rock out of the driveway. He wandered into the field next door, tripping and waddling, and I'm pretty certain he made one of the neibors' cats a nice lunch.

Another young couple new to the neiborhood are the ravens who took over an old crows nest in an alder. Not crows, now, but ravens. The wedge shaped tail, in flight, and the cornute beak with the nose whiskers are diagnostic...and I had to put in the time watching carefully to make this out because the two of them are on the small side. This is probably their first year.
The husband, the larger of the two, is terribly curious about everything that goes on over here and lurks around keeping an eye on me as I garden. Sometimes he'll perch in a tree near me and say 'mom? mom! mo-om...' in a soft, conversational tone, or just whistle a few soft notes. He has a lot to say, too. Now, I mean this in a very literal sense. It sounds like a human voice. Like a person, one with a bad, bad cold, is speaking to you in a confidential tone. Then you look up startled and there's this bird the size of a banty rooster looking at you in frank curiosity from a nearby limb, and it's really disconcerting.

They are not good neibors, by the reckoning of the other birds. They steal the unfledged young from the nests and leave them to bake like ugly dumplings on the roof of my metal garden shed. In the evening the young couple alight to dine at their leisure atop Chez Garden Shed, audibly pulling apart the now- tenderized wad of goop and feeding each other romantically, making low whistles and soft, hollow clacking noises to each other as they watch me puttering around in the backyard . Yes, I am the floor show... the sweaty broad turning compost into her raised beds. I guess that's fine. Better that than dinner.