baby recipes

For Chaucers Bitch or whatever the hell she's calling herself now...because she wanted to know how to make a baby.

The woman married a sailor, right; you'd think she'd have that stuff figured out by now, but no. Apparently it takes the wisdom and advice of an experienced woman to bring these younger girls along....so here goes.












DELICOUS IRISH RED BABY

....ah yes; sure 'n its the drinkin o' the green

Irish Red Baby....a tasty treat on a cold winter afternoon...served with a heapin' helpin' of boiled cabbage and a steaming glass of delicious mulled cabbage, it's the kind of homespun fare that will have them emigrating to Boston before you can say 'have some delicious cabbage'!!

1 1/2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
1 tablespoon unprepared horseradish embarrassed by Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt (sodium chloride may be substituted)
ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons vinegar in which a human toe has been preserved
1/2 gallon vegetable oil
4 freight cars filled with spoiled butter
1/2 cup sweet onion, chopped until its disposition changes from 'sweet' to 'distinctly irritated'
2 teaspoons garlic, minced, browned in lamprey squeezings, chilled and set aside
1/2 cup apple, peeled and chopped, ground, re-constituted in used motor oil, set on fire, rolled into a ball with some lint and set with pinecones, and a stick. And some rocks.
3/4 cup pickled beet juice reduced to a quivering emotional wreck by merciless jeering
5 cups cabbage, shredded (well duh, its an Irish recipe, gotta stank up the house with a bunch of nasty old cabbage up in here)
1/2 teaspoon salted salt, extra saline
1 tablespoon vegetable oil, extracted using the Vulcan galvanized extraction system (allow for counterclockwise motion in the southern hemisphere)
2 pounds baby, cut in 3 inch pieces
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups pickled beets, soured in the light of a waning moon
1/2 cup not-so-fresh parsley, minced

Directions

In a Buick hubcap, whisk together horseradish, Dijon mustard, 1/4 teaspoon salt and several grammes of cocaine cut with mannite. Discard.
Whisk in vinegar very rapidly. Pretend that javelinas are eating your feet and jump around too. DO NOT OMIT THIS STEP.
Slowly whisk in 1/2 cup oil until thick, tarry, and perfectly motionless. Set aside. Shun for several months. Refuse to accept calls.
In Dutch oven, melt some plastic toy army men over the highest possible heat the settings will allow. If using a Finnish oven a 'Hello Kitty' figurine may be substituted for the army men. Deglaze with urine.
Add onions, garlic and a potato bug. Saute until tender, about 5 hours.
Stir in beet juice and scrape any browned bits from bottom of pan. Then fling the entire mess out the window. Use a backhand motion.
Stir in cabbage and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bring to a bubble for some unspecified reason. Let cook for three days. Because we wouldn't want the house to NOT smell like a Dubliners jock strap; please. This IS an Irish recipe after all.
Cover and cook over low heat until cabbage is tender, yeilding, and somewhat slutty in appearance.
Meanwhile, 1 tablespoon oil in skillet with a disdainful sneer. Add baby and brown. If baby is already brown, omit this step.
Add wine to baby and tell it knock knock jokes.
Cook until deviated from the norm.
Slap Norm. Combine pickled beets with prepared horseradish vinaigrette. Pour into underpants.
To serve, arrange several pieces of baby on each plate next to a mound of cabbage, since this is an Irish recipe and it wouldn't do not to have a metric shit-ton of fucking cabbage in it.
Arrange pickled beets around the house and sprinkle each plate with tears of remorse.
1. Go find a nearby overpass and start shooting at cars.

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BEBE MAL DE MER (French for 'Never take take a baby on the Orcas Island ferry during March')

...oregon baby sez: a little dank before that rough crossing makes 'whoopsie tummy' say 'bon voyage!'

Surprise your friends this holiday season with this tasty, tangy treat! It's sure to tickle their tastebuds! Barring that, ram it through their stoma with a broomhandle; its a sin to waste food.

HINT: For a really festive effect, bring this into a darkened room a la flambe and watch their stunned amaze as the ceiling catches fire and flashes over onto that cheap plastic tablecloth you bought thinking 'Ooo, it looks just like lace; they're just a bunch of rubes, they'll never know the difference' only now its too late and everyones running around with their heads in flames and the cat is making that weird HORK HORK HORK noise.

Ingredients:

4 ounces (1 stick) baby
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup very finely minced lean street person, unbathed
1/2 cup finely minced mincing mincers, minced like a big minced thing which is all mincey
3/4 cup mushrooms, finely chopped (minced)
4 tablespoons finely minced onion , camp as tits, wearing a tutu, doing its Katherine Hepburn impersonation WHAT THE FUCK IS IT WITH ALL THE MINCED CRAP GEEZE
4 tablespoons finely minced garlic SEE WHAT I MEAN?
1 teaspoon salt (minced)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (minced)
1/8 troy ounces cayenne pepper
1 cup rich beef stock, made from old wool sweaters COME ON FOLKS ITS BEEF STOCK. one assumes beef here. Go hunt down a beef. I'll wait.
Marrow sucked from the shinbone of a gnu
1/2 cup dry red wine or more depending on the success of the beef hunt; beer or Wal-Mart store brand mouthwash may be substituted

Directions:

In a large heavy saucepan melt the butter over low heat. Gradually add the flour, stirring constantly, and cook until the ceiling is light brown. Quickly add the man, the box of #5 fuses, the dilithium crystals, mushrooms (minced), onion and garlic (make sure that shit is minced) and go rent a carpet steamer. Add the salt, pepper and cayenne and some crud out of the window tracks. Keep the mixture in a shoebox and gradually add more baby, an unbaptized infant elk, and a half cup of vasoline, stirring constantly to keep the sauce as smooth as possible which ought to be pretty easy given the vasoline. When the sauce is blended, stand in the back yard with no pants on and holler at kids walking by to come over and see your new puppy. When the police arrive run and hide. Makes 2 cups.
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What is your unusual talent?

hey kats and kittens! two new ones up at UJ!!!!!
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I was up at 4am for some unfathomable reason this morning. That is a crappy hour to be awake on a winter morning, and particularly when you're all by yourself. I was lonely for some company, so I proceeded to try and roust the Yummy Biker. Since he sleeps in a separate room that is kept at arctic temperatures (you can literally see your breath in there; it's that cold) I wasn't tempted to go in and jump up and down on the bed. What I did was, I just wandered around and sang songs.

'Born Free' is an annoying song anyway, but it's really annoying when you kind of holler it like a tard.

'Granny's in the Cellar'* is a favorite of mine from my days at summer camp.

'Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road"....always sure to raise a boil.

Another perennial fave is 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips' sung in the character of Tiny Tim. I cleared my throat and warbled the first stanza, and was gratified to hear distinct waking-up sounds coming from the direction of the Bikers' room.

Then, Tiny Tim in mind, I suddenly remembered my special talent.

A certain very specific set of circumstances have to be met before I can express this skill: I have to be very well hydrated, I have to have taken decongestants an hour earlier, and I have to have just swallowed a glass of milk. But when these conditions are met, I can, at will, open my mouth, throw back my shoulders, take out a chair, and channel the spirit voice of BILLIE BURKE:

"Cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooome ooooout, come oooooout, where EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVER you aaaaaaaaaaaaaaare,
and seeeeeee the young laaaaaadeeeeee who
fellllllll
frooooom
aaaaaaaa
staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!"

Imagine this delivered full voice in a bizarre, fluttering tremelo, using a falsetto that makes dogs howl in pain.



Good morning, darling! Aw, did I wake you up?

WHATS YOUR UNUSUAL SKILL?

________________________________

*"Oooooooooh,
...Granny's in the cellar, oh lordy can't you smell her, making biscuits on her fucked up dirty stoooooooove...in her eye there is a matter that keeps dripping in the batter, and she whistles as the -(here you rustle up a wad of phlegm and go) *SNUUUUUUUURK*-runs down her noooooose!
DOWN her nooooooooose,
DOWN her noooooooose,
yes she whistles as the *SNURRRRRK* runs down her nose!"

IT'S REQUEST TIME MADNESS HERE AT PAUL!!!!!

One again I'm opening up the floodgates of mayhem and asking YOU to give me YOUR REQUESTS!!

...you'll never really know whats possible around here until you ask

Got a subject you've always wanted me to write about but have yet to see here? Well how do you know I haven't already? HIT THE GODDAMN ARCHIVES YOU LAZY

...I mean, REQUEST that sapsucker!! Remember: If you repress things like that they only cause all kinds of problems later anyway.

...people who do NOT make requests make baby jesus CRY.

Would you like some suggestions? Because I can come up with suggestions, yo. Believe you me, there is nothing wrong whatsoever with my ability to come up with ideas for things to do on this blog, kats and kittens.

...bald pussy? check!!

One idea I've had is, I've always wanted to do an interview with one of you. Or have one of you interview me. Another idea I've had is NO NO NO screw it now come on see, you thought you could trick me into doing this WHOLE THING for you like that. That won't work here. I'm on to you.

MAKE A REQUEST!!!

farting the national anthem, playing baseball spontaneously

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I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack

Didja miss me? Didja huh? Huh didja?

I was visiting my son in Oregon and it was supposed to be a surprise because it was his birthday. That's why I never mentioned it here. Then once I was there I remembered that Oregon is a very primitive and backward place; there was no Internet access and we had to club our food over the head with big rocks and start fires with flint and tinder and associated boolsheet, so I continued to not mention the fact that I was going to be away, and I already WAS away so there was that to consider too. Then a couple of days later it was Thanksgiving, so I figured 'what the hey' and decided to stick around for that. Then it was Black Friday. Tell you what, I just flat hid out from that action. So yeah, then it was Saturday, and there was a Mythbusters marathon on television, and obviously I was going to stick around for that, right; but Heineman still refused to drop goddamn trou for a bitch which seriously harshed my holiday mellow, so I figured 'what the fuck' and took it back on the road, and here I am.

Not counting side trips, I drove 660 miles this past week all by myself. Now, by 'all by myself' I mean that I was the only one in the car, you see; just me, a duffle bag, and a cooler full of human corneas. OH MY GOD! Can you believe it? Unaccompanied! Alone! By myself! JUST LIKE A REAL GROWNUP LADY!!!!

Yes, despite what some people fervently believe, I successfully performed the highly advanced, complex tasks of using a map and driving a fucking Buick. And the strangest thing happened: for the first time in I cannot tell you how many years, I took an extended car trip during which NOTHING UNUSUAL, UNSAFE OR LAME HAPPENED. I went there; I came back. Coincidence? PSHAW I say. Actually I said 'pft, yeah, right'.

Here are some of the things that did not happen:

Nobody grudgingly 'allowed' me to drive.

Nobody second-guessed every single fucking thing did. It was almost incomprehensible. The silence was eerie. I just decided to, you know, do something, and then I, you know, did it, and-steady now - IT TURNED OUT OK. WITHOUT ANYONE BULLYRAGGING ME FOR FIVE SOLID MINUTES BEFORE AND AFTER THE FACT COMING UP WITH 'BETTER' ALTERNATIVES.

Nobody gasped and clutched the armrest every time something wildly unusual like, say, changing lanes or going around a corner happened- AND THEN DENIED IT.

I was the only person watching the gas gauge and- guess what? My car did not run out of gas! Why? Because I never let the gauge run below half a tank. Unlike some people. I was ON FIRE. I was OUT OF CONTROL. GOD WILL SOMEONE STOP THE WACKY NUTTINESS AND MADCAP HIJINX?

Nobody insisted on doing the entire run in one fell swoop and got overtired and fell into a glazed state of road hypnosis and crossed the center line a shitload of times or nearly sideswiped random vehicles or ran over onto the rumble strips a hundred times or slowed down to 30mph repeatedly and DENIED IT.

I could actually HEAR THE RADIO.

...and while I was hearing the radio? NOBODY LISTENED TO GERIATRIC CRAPASS TOP 40 MUSIC ON THE RADIO. Why? Because I didn't play geriatric crapass top 40 music on the radio. AND WHAT I DID PLAY I PLAYED LOUD ENOUGH TO FUCKING HEAR.

OK fine, loud enough for people in other cars to hear too.

OK FINE loud enough for people in other states to hear too. Which was actually a very altruistic gesture on my part considering all the folks out there who have crappy taste in music. *Ahem*

The car did not develop any kind of worrisome mystery noise signaling immanent mechanical failure and subsequent bankruptcy due to huge repair costs. Not that I would have heard it; but then again if something were going to fail catastrophically I think I might have gotten the hint during the actual event. That event did not occur. Conclusion: I forgot what my point was.

Nobody kept the window on their side wide freaking open in subarctic temps and then bitched and whined like a whiny bitch when asked to close it because FROST WAS GATHERING ON THE INSIDE OF THE GLASS.

NOBODY GOT LOST.
REPEATEDLY.
AND DENIED IT.
AND GOT LOST MORE AND TRIED TO PLAY IT OFF LIKE IT WAS INTENTIONAL. And God how I missed THAT. Truly.


Yes, none of those things happened. None. I drove on a major interstate highway, crossed one state line, went through three major cities during peak hour all by my little lonesome self, without anyone 'helping' me; completely and totally engulfed in a solitary state of car drivingness.

How did I manage this? I must have; I dunno, prepared for it somehow. Got enough sleep. Looked up my route. All that complicated strategy 'Art of War' type stuff.

Yes, now that I have tasted the raw power of the open road I will never relinquish control. From this moment on resistance is futile. I am driving. 'You can take our cheese, but you can never take our freedom' will be my new motto. Or maybe 'This is Spartaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' which I like better because it lends itself to being yelled out a car window doing 90,and you get to brandish a short sword and be topless. You know what, just fuck it; give me the keys.

PART 2: The potty monsters win

with a totally unrelated updated below. you are welcome.
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The Charismatic Catholic prayer meeting we attended was socially divided along a polite, faint, yet very real line. The organizers were on the main thoughtful and spiritual people, most having attended parochial school all the way through college. The lunatic fringe were mainly working class, high school drop-outs, and were tolerated at arms' length. Never the twain did meet... except to act like a bunch of Fruit Loops in a rented hall three times a week. Yes, we were all brothers and sisters in the Lord...and we were all very careful where we sat during Mass so that when called upon to deliver the sign of peace we wouldn't end up hugging anyone icky.

Bambi the high-functioning schizophrenic had been taken up as a cause by the groups' organisers. And I have to say that they did themselves proud. In short order they found her a clean, safe place to live, bought her a bus pass and put her in touch with a social worker and Catholic Community Services. It was pretty clear from the start that this womans' problem was more a matter of failing to take her medication regularly than any 'spiritual darkness'.

Bambi's parents were quietly contacted. I felt really bad for these people. The way the laws ran at the time, if a person was over 18 and not presenting a clear danger to themselves or others, they could go run around and be nutty until they fell off a bridge trying to fly.

Bambi's family recounted the problems they'd had in dealing with this woman over the years and how people in her condition regularly slip between the cracks of society, and thanked us for caring and for doing what we had.

This move was viewed with horror by the Lunatic Fringe. They saw it as a terrible violation of Bambi's trust. After all, her father was rich and powerful and she was in hiding because her family was trying to have her committed and had poisoned her and the Mafia was trying to find her because her ex-husband had blah blah blah etc etc etc...and to top it all off there were demons in her apartment!

Bambi, meanwhile, was feeding off the attention of the group in general and the Lunatic Fringe in particular. The Fringe bought into her delusions hook, line and sinker. Per their literal interpretation of Scripture, the things that were supposedly happening to Bambi were concrete proof and vindication of the 'Fundamental Christianity' that they practiced. With the backup of these people and their magical explanations for what was going on Bambi soon felt 'lead by the Lord' to 'refute her medications' and 'claim a healing'... and that's exactly what she did.

That is why Bambi never did succeed in chasing Satan out of her bathroom.

A number of exorcisms were performed -but she claimed that the demons kept returning stronger. Then they started speaking to her. Writing messages on her walls that only she could see. Finally she started bugging the owner, causing scenes, demanding that as a Christian it was his duty to remove the demon-infested, Island-themed tub surround so she could shower without worrying about Satanic Tiki idols tickling her crack.

The place had been completely and expensively remodeled before she'd moved in (and that aside from the fact that it was a ridiculous demand anyway) so naturally the owner refused. Then the lunatic fringe took up the banner and started pleading on her behalf and doing 'prayer battle' against him*. He still refused. Which was the beginning of the end.

This issue actually split the group. It boiled down to this: Either you believed that this woman was desperately in need of Thorazine, or you were on "Gods' side" and believed that the fucking bathroom wallpaper was possessed.

What was truly sad was that while Bambi was rapidly losing the last of her marbles, both sides were wasting time agonizing over this issue.

Here's why:

These were Fundamentalists. As Fundamentalists, then, a 'secular, scientific' explanation for any given phenomena was by it's very nature wrong-factually and morally. It was, in fact, even sinful to entertain such explanations. Born again, Fundamentalist Christians utterly refuted the 'false religion' of Science. They believed in the literal existence of demons, angels, possession, miracles, exorcism, speaking in tongues, healing and all the rest of it because it was in the Bible, and the Bible was the revealed word of God! Period! So the explanation that best tallied up with what was in the Bible was, had to be, and could not be other than the right one. Therefore, if you took the Bible literally in this case, a person was not schizophrenic. That's not in the Bible, consequently it is a lie. However a person could be possessed by demons. And how do they take care of persons possessed by demons in the Bible? You prayed over them, rebuked Satan, and the demons were cast out.

But if that didn't work?

...Yeah. They don't cover that one in the Bible.

It all ended in a pathetic mess. The lunatic fringe moved en masse to weirder (MUCH weirder) pastures, taking their checkbooks with them. The remaining members disbanded when they lost the use of the hall due to lack of funds. Funds provided in large part by my mother, turns out.

Bambi stopped paying rent. Finally she had to be evicted after she'd almost burnt the building down leaving lit cigarettes all over the floor. She eventually went back to living on the street.

I met up with her a couple of years later, though.

Guess where?

Church of Scientology.

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* what this amounted to was meeting in Bambi's apartment across the wall from the owner, or standing on his front stoop, or sitting in his driveway in their cars holding hands and praying 'at' him, loudly, that he would 'do the right thing and follow the path of righteousness', calling each other up and holding prayer meetings via conference call, bringing it up in a disruptive and confrontation manner during prayer meetings...yup. It was a classy AND adult situation.

**I am not being flippant and I am not making this up... this is honestly what they believed and how they believed.
You can take that line of thinking as far afield as you like, too, and it still applies. Modern medicine is evil, electricity is a lie, Buddhists worship Satan, fossils aren't real; they were created by Satan to deceive the faithful.
YES.
Now, that's far, far to the right...and also far, far from being as extreme as I've been exposed to. Think of it as 'middle of the road' far right.
That is Christian fundamentalism.
Welcome to America.
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PROMISED TOTALLY UNRELATED UPDATE:

Everyone here needs to go here and listen to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5o-IOP7EYM

Have you seen the new trailer for the XBOX game 'Call to Arms: World at War' and wondered what the fuck that awesome goddamn song was? Its this guy-Blues Saraceno. I am a fan for LIFE.

Rerun: Bambi vs. the Potty Monsters, part UN

All right. THIS is the one that SurlyGirl requested. And what SurlyGirl wants, SurlyGirl gets! Because she WILL shank you with her rattail comb, yo.

...oh. and before anyone asks, it's true. every sorry word.
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My mother found Jesus the way a Peterbilt truck finds a raccoon on the highway-sudden, hard and messy. At first it was a positive thing...for a short (and rather confusing) time, she went from being God's miserable hemorrhoid to being Jesus ' little sunbeam. Was this my mother? Smiling?
Anyway, for a variety of reasons I may go into at another time, I found myself an unwilling participant in what rapidly became my mothers religious mania, going to what were termed 'Charismatic Catholic' , Born-Again style prayer meetings three evenings a week.

Lemme digress a bit. Catholicism in white, working-class America isn't remotely ecstatic. Catholicism in white, working-class America is in fact about as exciting as attending a talk at the public library about Gypsy moth infestation, except with more kneeling and a light snack towards the end.

Understandably, then, Catholics did not do the charisms, or 'ecstatic religiosity' very well. These prayer meetings tended to be rather shy and restrained things until the very, very end, when people got that 'now or never' feeling and suddenly went belly-flopping awkwardly into the deep end. It was essentially two hours of quiet prayer with upraised hands followed by a half-hour of crying, speaking in tongues, falling, twitching, and singing loud songs with accompanying gestures while hopping up and down.
Yes, really. Barney the Dinosaur meets our Lord Jesus Christ.

Still, I honestly think the greater part of the people in attendance were sincere, if misguided. Unfortunately my mother, being who she was, got drawn into the lunatic fringe.
Eventually she was running buddies with this unbelievably odd bunch of Jesus-groupies. All of them were garden-variety unfulfilled Catholic women...morbidly obese 50-year-old virgins, glum married lesbians in brick-wall denial with six kids , borderline (and not-so-borderline) psychotics, rage junkies, low-norms who smelled like pee and beat-down throw pillows, mostly. All of them could have been case studies in a book called 'Women You Should Never, Ever Be Like When You Grow Up'.
And I took note, yo.

One evening there was a new member in attendance, a thin, trembling fawn of a woman draped in scarves and ethnic fabrics, like an aging ballet dancer with a thyroid problem. Her buggy eyeballs never stopped scanning the room. She smoked with a strange metronomic regularity, sipping at the filter and blowing steadily until the cigarette was one long ash drooping gracefully down over her red bony knuckles. She sat at the edge of the group drawn up into a knobby heap on the metal folding chair .

The Fringies were instantly enthralled. The poor thing, let's go be friendly!
Poor thing indeed.
Soon she was in the middle of a circle of chairs filled with a whole bunch of terribly friendly, sympathetic women listening raptly to her 'testimony'.

This stuff was usually pretty gross, so I went outside and lit a smoke.*

I was joined by one of my moms' friends a short while later. "You'll never believe what happened to this poor woman," she said.
She was right.

According to 'Bambi', she'd grown up in a wealthy family, her father was a very well-known public figure who she was afraid to name, all of them were against her and they wanted her to stay married to a man who was beating her. They had been drugging her for years and had finally poisoned her with a mysterious substance in an attempt to 'keep her quiet'. She was also being chased by a cult, by organized crime and by an ex husband, and all of them were trying to kill her while at the same time plotting to have her committed to a mental institution. This was why she was hiding out on the streets and in homeless shelters AND living in her car and also why nobody could know her real name.

Man, I was 16 and I smelled this bullshit a mile away, even secondhand. The woman breathlessly recounting all this to me as fact was 56. You could tell she thought this was the coolest, most glamorous and interesting thing that she had ever heard EVER.

Once I'd finished my cigarette I went back inside. 'Bambi' was being prayed for.

Now, in an ordinary setting, this might mean that people were, you know, sitting, maybe kneeling, hands folded, praying.

In this group it meant that everyone present stood in a circle around the person being prayed for, placed one hand on them and raised the other hand high into the air (presumably to get better reception) closed their eyes and made bossy demands on the Lord. "Jesus! See this woman! Jesus, help this woman! Yes! Jesus, help her bear this burden! HEAL her! Heal her now! Jesus heal her! HEAL HER NOW! IN JESUS NAME! LIFT HER BURDEN! LIFT THIS BURDEN FROM HER!"
They typically did this in turns, getting louder and more vehement until the whole group was crying, moaning, and speaking in tongues.

Yep, yep yep. Just another typical Friday night with the Catholics.

The thing was, these women were all on the downslope of middle age, and they couldn't stand for very long without getting tired. They started to droop and lean on one another after they'd been at it for a while. From a distance this looked like a bunch of people peering at something down a well while signaling to passing aircraft.
And as I knew from personal experience, the person in the middle, the one being prayed for, bore the full weight. Poor waif- like Bambi was nearly bent double.

We heard a lot from Bambi in the passing weeks. Oh my God, did you hear what happened? Bambi threw off a group praying for her with 'supernatural strength'. Bambi had 'spoken in an unnatural voice and cursed God'. Bambi had 'accepted Christ and suddenly become ill'.

Clearly, Bambi was under demonic attack.

Consequently Bambi became very, very popular. Everyone had Bambi over for dinner. Everyone took Bambi out for coffee after the meetings. People fought over who would drive Bambi back to the shelter. The group took up a collection and got Bambi out of the shelter and into an apartment. Everyone listened raptly to Bambi's stories about being raped by shadowy figures on orders from her family, receiving threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, Bambi finding her belongings had been gone through by the Mafia, Bambi seeing demonic messages appear on the ceiling above her bed at night. The 'let's pray for Bambi' session at the end of every meeting became the main draw. You never knew what would happen, and something dramatic always did. Attendance was never better.

One evening I was smoking outside in the garden when one of the Fringe came out to get me.
'We need you to come help us! Do you think you could be a prayer warrior?' she said breathlessly, clutching my arm.
" Well, let me finish my smoke first," I replied. "What's going on?"
"Bambi's apartment is haunted!" said the Fringie. "That's what's been at the center of all these disturbances!"
"You mean her new apartment she just moved into?" I asked.
"It's not new," said the Fringie. "It's in an old house. And there were people who were drug addicts and Satan worshippers living there before she moved in. And they had orgies."

I'd like to say that I laughed in her face, but no. Whaddya gonna do; it's how I was raised. We bought that kind of thing without thinking twice about it.

Now how drug-dealing Satan worshippers had managed to move into a place owned by one of this Christian groups' leaders and live there, holding orgies, drugging and worshipping away for a matter of years, was never explained. What I accepted without a thought at the time** was that kind of thing really happened, that it really called up demons and that it really opened a PORTAL TO HELL.

And I was being asked to help cleanse it! I was being asked to help cast out demons, to help a fellow Christian and to bring the light of the Lord into her home! Well fuck yeah I'll help, are you nuts? An exorcism? YOU WANT ME TO PARTICIPATE IN AN HONEST TO GOODNESS EXORCISM? I am A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL! Color me THERE!

We all piled into the Mystery Mobile-I mean, the former prostitutes' car- in an excited, Bible-toting heap...the grumpy lesbian, the vindictive Jap-hater and the former prostitute that nobody was supposed to have figured out was a former prostitute in the front seat, and the 55- year-old morbidly obese virgin, the sixteen-year-old smoker, and the smokers batshit-nuts mother in the back. We zoomed away, praying and holding hands. When the traffic lights changed we prayed for the traffic light to turn green.
Some of the ladies in the front seat started getting a little excited. Unknown tongues began creeping into the mix.

"Don't get carried away by the Spirit,' called the former prostitute as she drifted a corner on two wheels "I don't have any insurance!"

We prayed for her to get a raise so she could buy insurance at the next light.

We caromed through downtown Portland and over the Powell Blvd. bridge. Smokers' Mother had the brilliant idea to roll down the window so that upraised hands could poke out.

We passed the Poulson House, a grim Victorian I was secretly in love with. 'That's a Satanic looking place,' said the Jap Hater darkly. "I've always hated it."

We prayed holding hands over the back of the seat, all the way up McLoughlin Boulevard and down River Road until we drove up to the house, the Rental of Evil, and stopped. We prayed a little more before we climbed the stairs.

We prayed before we went inside.

We went inside, and stopped to pray in the foyer.

Bambi was already there, looking pale and twitchy in the bare overhead light.
"Where's the disturbance?" demanded former prostitute.
"I don't know", breathed Bambi. "It's the whole place, I think.."
We all joined hands and began to
....guess?


The whole group moved in an awkward clump into the first room off the foyer. Speaking in tongues began in earnest. Then singing in tongues. I got mashed into a wall by 55-Year-Old Virgin's huge ass and there I remained. Trembling hands reached out and touched the walls. The furniture. The pictures. The telephone. "You never know," said Jap Hater. "Oh! Good idea!" they agreed.

The clump shuffled down the hall and moved to the next room, lead by Bambi. An overhead bulb flickered and she screamed. "It's here!"
The praying gained volume.
I got mashed into a door by the 55-Year-Old-Virgin.
We entered the kitchen. The kitchen was tiny.
Closet doors were opened and prayed into. Someone started swaying, and the whole group started rocking back and forth in unison. I was mashed into another wall at this point, and resigned myself to simply trying to draw breath while the others did the heavy battling with the demons infesting the cabinets. "It's here! I can feel it moving! It's running before us!" various people commented. "Where's it going? It went past me! I felt it! OOOOoooooooo! Lord JeEEEEEEzuz amalavangAFALAworingafala, bilitimaSIGUNAfala....."

The whole group moved as one, in a clump. A couple of the women were already reduced to panting, barely able to gasp 'Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus' by this point. Nobody'd told them that Satan would be wearing track shoes.

"It went in here! cried Bambi. The group surged forward.
'Here' was the bathroom.
A very tiny, tiny bathroom.

The group pushed forward and found that not all of them could fit into the claustrophobic, closet-sized room at once.
Satan had obviously chosen the venue for this final showdown with care.

The group decamped to the entry and considered. Bambi twittered and meeped in the background like a nervous gerbil with a bad nicotine habit. I noticed that there wasn't one single place on the floor that didn't have a cigarette burn.

Suddenly "I found it!" cried the former prostitute. She was a tiny woman, and had wormed her way to the front of the group. "Come look! I found it! Here it is!"
Everyone crowded forward.

Ever heard of Masonite? It was marketed as a waterproof, decorative material for tub surrounds in the 60's and 70's...kind of a cross between Formica and wallboard. The smooth 'space age' material it was coated with supposedly*** rendered this material moisture-resistant and easy to clean. This coating was often printed with designs...flowers, snowflakes, geometrics...

This tub surround was printed with a tropical island scene.
Straw huts, palm trees, coconuts, ocean waves.

And Tiki god statues.

"I knew it! I never felt comfortable in there! I always felt like I was being watched!" exclaimed Bambi.

Grumpy Lesbian was crammed against the sink. Former Prostitute was seated on the toilet. Jap Hater had what floor space there was in the center of the room.
I was crammed into the bathtub, by now utterly mortified, with Smokers' Mom and the 55-Year-Old Morbidly Obese Virgin.
'Now everyone put their hands on the wall and pray!" Former Prostitute commanded.

And they prayed. Please, God, deliver this house from the clutches of Satan. Please, God, drive the presence of demons from the images on this bathroom wall. We refute thee utterly, Satan, and all thy works, and thy leering image of thyself as rendered in driftwood and dogs' teeth by the Polynesians and the DuPont Corporation in gold glitter paint with a light waterproof coating.

Oh yeah... there they were. Jesus' little prayer warriors. Standing in the bathtub.

Exorcising the wallpaper.

Amen.



___________________________
*one of the first things I found out about being a charismatic catholic was that the typical unfulfilled adult catholic woman had really good reasons for being that way, most of them horrifically gynecological. also, that it takes very little provocation for your typical unfulfilled catholic woman to explain the exact nature of her particular problem at length and in excruciating detail.

**also the subject of yet another story. lucky you!

***masonite is bullshit. one scratch and the stuff swells up with black fungus like the black plague.

UPDATED: Quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

It's been a week of fun projects and home improvement here at Rancho FirstNations! Almost a 'duel' of projects, in fact.


The Yummy Biker made me a new computer station?

I made a Japanese-style lamp (which cleverly turns into a Rennie-inspired lamp when lit).

Inspiring the Teutonic Delinquent to stride manfully off to the garage and whomp up a small display bookcase for the front room...just because.

I cut, prepped and tempered some grounds?
The Delicious Degenerate re-routed the lighting fixtures in the front room.
I concocted a unique 'moonglow' effect for the aforementioned lamp?
The Scrumptious Sinner concocted a 'setting sun' addition to help describe the 'autumn light' quality that I was trying to reproduce, and made it PERFECT.
I threw together a collage?

The Tasty Terrorist threw together a fall meal that would have made Anthony Bourdain cry like a little bitch.

Lets all stop and enjoy that image for a few moments, shall we?

...aw, what the hell; go ahead and enjoy this one too

OK.

The Delectable Deviant had pulled into the lead by the end of the week. One glorious breakfast, a pot of excellent chili, a batch of oatmeal/chocolate chip/cocoanut/date/walnut cookies, a whirlwind cleaning of the garage and subsequent profitable 1/4 hour spent on Ebay that netted him a quick couple of bills won him the 'Home Improvement Capo Di Tutti Capo' crown.

What motivated this sudden burst of 'can-do' spirit?

THE BANANA SPLITS!

...specifically BJ.


*ahem*

___________________________________________


Nah, I'm messing with you! There wasn't really a Banana Split named BJ. But it's not like it wouldn't have been entirely in keeping with the general tone of 'WTF?' that informed everything that came out of this particular cartoon syndicate. Plus, it would have been pretty cool, huh.

Their names were Bingo (I think he was a muskrat or a beaver or a marmot or something; something in need of large-scale orthodontic intervention), Snorky (an elephant with paralyzed vocal cords), Drooper (a lion with erectile dysfunction) and Fleagle (an unbathed dog of some sort). As was common in many rock-n-roll supergroups of the time, they never appeared without their signature sunglasses, worn to hide the tragic evidence of their narcotic dependence.

The Banana splits were one of those Sid and Marty Kroft abominations. Another one was H. R. Puffinstuff. GOD I HATED THAT THING. "Oh MAH, Jimmay, whad're we a-gonna DEW?" seemed to be Puffinstuffs' favorite line.

..."Hey! You said it wouldn't hurt when you touched me there, Mr. Puffinstuff!"

I have no idea what H. R. Puffinstuff was supposed to be, aside from the hallucinatory product of one hell of a lot of lsd (i.e a mugwump, in which case a blowjob would not have been entirely out of the question.) My impression was of a guy with some kind of a serious, serious endocrine disorder. He had a tail, he wore a frock coat, had a giant clam for a head and he held some kind of political office. Maybe he was the Antichrist. I personally suspect him of being the sperm donor for South Parks' Ike.

...remember that lost weekend in Vancouver, H. R? Yeah that's RIGHT.

These feature cartoons were the time slot lead-ins to the suckiest lineup of the stupidest cartoons and live features ever to puke all over childrens programming.

This is one of those things from the 70's, like the band KISS and disco music, that was NEVER COOL no matter what their subsequent marketing claims. Banana Splits and Puffinstuff ATE ASS. Little kids were SCARED of them - that's why they took them off the air! GAAAAAAH big nasty stupid old dumb looking things flapping their mouths and jiggling around like lipid tumors in shoes; ick.

There's many reasons my generation turned out the way it did, kids. Sid and Marty Krofft were a big one.

RERUN: elderly hover peeing and other sins of the mothers

oh for goodness' sake of COURSE its been edited.
this request per SURLYGIRL, who you really need to go see and get reacquainted with because she is rollerbitchin' and live action and funky fresh and also groovy in a happening way!

...ACTUALLY, you know what? SURLYGIRL requested the exorcism story. BEAST requested this one.

Kinda says it all, doesn't it?
_______________________________________________

You can go to numerous places...say, any tavern, for example- and hear terrifying accounts from men forced to take a dump outside their castle walls. Once I stop laughing I can commiserate, because after all, everyone has to 'vote Republican', right? And eventually you have to do so in a public restroom, where you run the chance of having an audience of people who are not close family. Depending on which part of the South you live in.

But see, guys know nothing about this, not really. Oh, they whine and bitch about being serenaded whether they want to be or not, but has anyone really addressed the horror that is THE WOMEN'S' SIDE OF A PUBLIC RESTROOM? No.
Because it's too horrible.

Of course, that is why I am here.

This, then, is what WE have to contend with.


Nice enough looking woman, right?
No.
You see, from the navel down she's nothing but holding tank. I can say that with complete confidence because a number of years ago it was standard operating procedure for women to have pretty much all their lower organs removed once they'd hit menopause. They'd just pack whatever was left into a plastic bag and let it bob around in there. Meanwhile Zelda is still putting away the sauerkraut and cabbage rolls, only now it has all this ROOM in which to accumulate...and compost...and it's all expected to exit out one hole...a hole upon which gravity, not enough dietary bulk and childbirth have taken a certain toll.

So lets say you're an average female-type gal sitting in a stall taking a leak, maybe humming a little tune, when the swollen ankles and black K-Mart tennies of this woman appear beneath the wall next to you.

They always sigh.

Then there's a Rgnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Which is more of a concentrated lack of breathing than it is an actual sound, although sadly this is not always the case.

Then they bear down and WALOOPAGAZOWPAKASPLOOSHKADOOSH WABOBP FRAPPO KADOOSH out gallops every meal they've eaten for the past week.

Then the pyroclastic wave hits. Your shoelaces start crying and crawl away and hide.
The hair on your ankles begins to singe.

Now some women are content to simply expel this burden in one long, LOUD, chunky rush, kind of like when the city flushes the hydrants in the summer.
Other women, midway through this process, become so intent that they evidently lose all sense of their surroundings and begin to emit long, sustained birthing groans.

UUUUUUUUUUUhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooooooooooh.

~SplooshFlabbabbabbablatchow~

HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNnnn

~Gaslooshasooshagadonk,foosh gadooshgoooooooooosh~

Little ladies can surprise you with their capacity. And they're yippers rather than groaners. But it's the big ones who perform the awe-inspiring crimes against nature.

They are also the ones most frequently guilty of firehosing the entire back wall of the cubicle.

Let's revisit that concept for emphasis, shall we? FIREHOSING.
Over the years they've lost track of where exactly their rear exit is anymore so they just work their pants down over the rolls, bend over and hope some hits the water.

Ever gone into the ladies room in a club and heard the drunk woman in the next cube crying and farting at the same time?
'BwaAAAAAha..." ~fuurrrAAAAAAAAAAP! pt pt'
'Hic, Uwuaaaaa,huh hwaaaa,WwAAAA haaaaaaa!"
~FFFFFFFFFFFfft pt pt pt`

It's tragic.

At Charlies' on Capitol Hill all this was playing out one drunken evening when my glasses fell off and clattered under into the adjoining stall. She handed them back to me.
"H H H Here, are thehehese yours?"
I thanked her. "Listen, are you ok?"
"Y Yeah, I'm fiiiiii huhiiiiii hi hi hine UWAAAAAAAAAA...." ~FFRAP! pt pt pt~

OK then.

Many older women have a deep aversion to placing their bottoms onto a seat which has recently supported the bare buns of a stranger. And that's understandable. Use one of those hippie t-shirt things in the wall dispenser. Or craft your own ass gasket out of toilet paper, Martha Stewart style.

But no. That will not do.

No, these women would rather STAND UP AND PISS ALL OVER THEIR OWN FEET.

And their pantslegs. And their shoes.

Because peeing all over yourself is ALWAYS WAY BETTER than sitting on a bare toilet seat. EW GROSS A BARE TOILET SEAT EWWWWW.

You glance over and see a pair of trembly blue veined old ankles with some big old underpants streeeeeetching out between them as elderly Mrs. Anonymous Potty Person tries to convince those Teflon hips to let her straddle the bowl and you can pretty much be certain it's gonna rain.

And it does. All you can do is hope the floor slopes away from your position. You think I am exaggerating. HA.

The rest stop on I-5 at Smokey Point seems to be where all their potty alarms start ringing at the same time. I've been sitting in there when an entire flock of old ladies has gathered to stage a group performance of ELDERLY SYNCHRONIZED HOVER PEEING.

Invariably, these are the woman who pee in splurts.
Or who make motorboat noises.
Imagine Angelina Jolie with a mouthful of Mountain Dew making motorboat noises.
That's what I mean.
And then you hear them flush, and then here they come out of the stalls, chattering away, and off they go, feeling that sense of accomplishment that comes of having successfully avoided sitting on a DISGUSTING BARE TOILET SEAT, soaked with piss from the knees down.

Some of you may be too young to remember these.



No. Not butts; girdles.

Now, in the '60's, back when coelecanths ruled the earth and I was a little kid, all the older ladies wore them. You were supposed to wear them over your big old underpants but nobody did, because with nothing to grip they'd slip and shift suddenly and flub would come shooting out in odd places. And back then girdles were still made with rubber...either rubberized sateen, or just...plain rubber.
This is a recipe for evil.

1. Rubber girdles......had an......aroma. Already. Right out of the box. A very rubbery aroma.
2. Rubber girdles were not machine washable.
Hand wash only. In the bathroom sink. Strange. Tan. Floaty. MOMMY THERES A SCARY THING IN THE BATHROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
3. Rubber girdles DID NOT BREATHE LIKE EGYPTIAN COTTON. (Except for this one, which looks it could have been played like an ocarina.)

No, very little air passed in and out of a rubber girdle.
....Except when it did so under pressure, in a series of sharp little reports, out the waistband or the legholes. SNAP! SNABABABAP!
And remember - this air had exited first through an aperture better left unimagined and then spent an unknown amount of time racing desperately around and around the hot, sweaty, compressed flub of a fat womans ass like a hamster in a Habitrail.
As Redd Foxx points out, this woman may have been riding in a taxi cab. This woman may have run to catch a bus. She may have had liver and onions for lunch.
Usually she was standing next to me on the elevator in Meyer and Franks. Giving ME dirty looks every time it happened.

Rerun: You gotta wash yo ass!

This is a story about the Meadows family. See the sidebar? If you have not met the Meadows clan yet, do go and hit the list there. You'll probably regret it. In the meantime, this is true story about a real family that I rented from....BRIEFLY.
...and yes, its been edited. I remembered a few things. Lucky you!____________________________________

Driving professionally takes a certain toll on one's lower body, and Mr. Meadows was decidedly gimpy after twenty some-odd years behind the wheel of a milk truck. In full stride he walked like a sailor in a full diaper. When he got up from a chair it would take him a couple of minutes to build up steam, during which he'd make a great big dramatic deal out of hitching around room, bent over at the waist, groaning and exclaiming, knocking over potted plants and end tables with his giant ass.

We were all sitting around the kitchen table watching this show one evening when Kelvin laughed and said to his brother "Hey, aren't you glad you don't have to squeeze his butt anymore?"

WHAT?
___________________________

I thank God that this following episode happened before I knew these people.
___________________________

Many moons gone*, seems ol' dad had been bothering a zit on his ass. After a couple of weeks he'd succeeded in making it nice and infected. The time he spent loading and unloading his truck each night further aggravated this condition, as did hustling back and forth making deliveries. The additional hours spent behind the wheel of an unsprung truck seated on vinyl might as well have been spent scooting his bare backside across a patch of coarse grit sandpaper for the effect it had on his carbuncle. It grew into a distinct, golfball-sized entity one could detect through the heavy twill of his white uniform pants.

Yes, well. The spreading pinkish stain was also a giveaway that all was not well in assville.

But he carried on, brave soldier. And sure enough, his Spartan regimen of shitty diet, hairy crack, poor hygeine and neglect paid off; the thing subsided and went away. See? Nothing to worry about.
And all was well.

Until he hopped up into the seat of his truck one night and a quart of green pus shot out of his ass. He screamed, he jumped, and in doing so drove his forehead into the windshield so hard he passed out.
Dad had given himself an anal fistula.

(Now at this point in our story Mr. Meadows himself sauntered over and chimed in, all smiles, to helped tell the tale. By the end even Sunflower had joined the fun. And the important thing to bear in mind here is that none of them saw anything inappropriate at all about entertaining a guest with a story about ass disease.)

Mr. Meadows woke up in the hospital on his stomach with a freshly shaved fundament and some nice big dressings.

The original carbuncle had moved back beneath the skin and fat into the meat of the muscle, and then had actually migrated downward toward a vestigial anal gland, which it ruptured and emptied into. Because this gland had an open channel to the rectal passage, all the old pus and other chunky necrotic guck met up with some brand new bacterial buddies floating around in the fluid that was already there. The whole stew turned into a horrifically toxic ticking bomb. When he jumped up into the truck, the impact of his giant lard ass hitting the seat with all his weight behind it made the fistula explode. It burst, sending a quart of unimaginably horrible semi-fluid corruption geysering out through the pore-sized exit of the gland, enlarging it to the size of a dime.
All this had happened right at the ingress to his egress.
Yes.
He'd literally been torn a new asshole.

Now that dime, and the tennis-ball-sized cavity behind it, were cleaned out and filled with cotton packing. They sent him home and told him he could remove it himself in a couple of days.
Oh by the way. Don't leave rejoicing just yet, Mr. Milkman. If you don't keep your ass clean, the thing will FILL BACK UP.

Skip ahead one week.
It filled back up.
With the packing in place.

The only course of action now was to nut up, remove the packing, express the gland and keep it filled with Neosporin.

Sunflower flat out refused. Of course.

So the task fell to Eldest Brother.

There were several YARDS of surgical gauze up there.

Luckily, once the part that had hardened into a solid, cork-sized plug of blackened matter had been worked out, the rest of it came slithering out pretty easily. Yards and yards and yards and yards of it. Slithering out.

Don't imagine that this was accomplished without lots of commotion on the part of Satan's Milkman. Eldest finally had to tie him to the bed.
With belts. Leather belts.

So every night for a couple of months thereafter, it was Eldest Brothers' job to collect up everyones' belt, buckle them together, tie his father to the bed face down, spread dads giant nasty asscheeks and then pinch his dads' nasty infected asshole between his thumbs and express the infected gleeg out of the gland into a washcloth until it was empty. No matter how many washcloths it took.
Then he had to poke a tube of goo up there, root around until he found the right hole, and squeeze until the goop started to squit back out.**
Then he'd fold a bath towel into a square and slap it up against dads pucker, let his asscheeks slap back together, and wrap it all in place with an ace bandage.

All done!

I never took a shower in that house again.


______________

*like I was going to resist that? please.

** Sometimes Eldest Brother didn't find the right hole and went through a whole tube of Neosporin before he realized that he'd just disenfected his fathers entire lower colon, and somehow never thought to wonder why dad never bothered to mention that something felt different. (I did. And then I thought about it for a second, and I.... didn't.) Sometimes the Neosporin came squitting back out at velocity right into Eldest Brothers....whatever happened to be in range. This Mr. Meadows idea of a fun little joke. Surprise!

FUCK YOU CALIFORNIA

Right in the lungs. You passed Prop 8? You evil, bigoted hypocrites. How dare you legislate discrimination in my country. You make me ashamed to be American.



I add my fickle finger of fate to that of Joe In Vegas and Heather.
There's my wedding ring. That represents 22 years of marriage. I've upped it with the tattoo I got that represents my permanent commitment to my family. I put all that behind my convictions here,. I will not tolerate this bullshit in my country. Repeal Proposition 8 NOW.

quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

My husband is the type of man who might just happen to have a whoopee cushion on him at any given moment, sadly. He is also the kind of person who thinks it's real funny to gives said cushion to his four year old grandson. Who subsequently ran around for the rest of the evening frapping it loudly at people and then collapsing on the floor in hysterics. This made it difficult to follow Antiques Roadshow (shh, honey, quit farting for a second; grandma wants to hear how much the Victorian nipple electrodes are worth!) until his mommy took it away from him. And started farting it at people and collapsing in hysterics. This proves a. that there is such a thing as genetically heritable disposition, and b. we are a real classy group.

Despite the rain, this leaf season has been unusually brilliant. The deciduous trees that color up look as though they are artificially lit. I took a few pictures outside:
Welcome to the view out my front windows as of yesterday afternoon! Let's start by looking northeast from my front porch. What ARE they growing down in that white barn?

...moving ese...the twin to this tree used to stand in the middle of my driveway.

...southeast, toward Tweaker Hill (or Kendall, as its known on maps)

...and straight south.
Let's give my zillion dollar view a big hand!!! This view is one of the many reasons I keep saying that Bill Gates has nothing I want. And I'm serious about this too. CALL THE SALVATION ARMY BILL. REALLY. NO REALLY QUIT IT BILL. GO AWAY.


Remember the pumpkins?
...the full horror becomes apparent after a week out in the weather.

...This is the Opie tree looking spectacular with a wild and crazy black cohosh coming up through it

...and this is my favorite little magnolia stellata going off like fireworks.

Now that we have worshiped the glory that is my view, lets take a quick rip through the galley, shall we? Yes, lets!

The best thing about being my age is that I finally know how do some things with a certain degree of expertise. It's taken me years to finally get to the place where I think that I know a little bit about how to make bread, for example.

Out of everything I've set myself to do, learning how to work with fermentation and grain flours has been the one that turned out to be the trickiest. You can produce a pretty and edible loaf of bread on your first time out provided you can follow a recipe carefully, of course. But to really turn out something that can stand up to an informed opinion means years of practice. You have to develop a knowledge of your materials, tools and even climate with all five of your senses. The only way to do that is to just plain make a whole fuck of a lot of bread. And eat a whole lot of bread, and read about bread, and baking, and flour, and yeasts, and talk about bread, and basically turn into an obsessive with a bread grudge.

At first, when I was around 10-11, I was afraid of the breadmaking process. The dough is all...weird. It was messy and floury. But I was bound and determined that I was not going to be defeated. My grandmother used to make bread every three days from the time she was eight years old for heavens' sake, and she worked with salt batter, sourdoughs, wild yeasts and nonstandard flours!!!! If a barefoot kid in a covered damn wagon could make bread in an iron pot then I damnsure was going to make some bread too.

Making bread is a basic human skill. Once you get into it your realize that you make bread by feel and by intuition moreso than by recipe or technique-once you dig your hands in you can understand how a bunch of pre-literates could have come up with it. The ability to make fermented (and thus easily digested and long-keeping) protein food out of grains is the one thing that separated us forever from the hunter/gatherers. Making bread is how civilization started. People think its agriculture? Oh lord no. Agriculture is just planting seeds in convenient places; good lord, robins do that. Mice do that. Civilization started from the need to settle near the supply long enough to not only plant, guard and harvest a crop, but to husband the final product through its different stages of refinement as a food, document the changes, record the amounts, and store it. As beer.
Yup.
Bread was not the intended final product. Bread was just a stage on the way toward making beer. Which proves that our ancestors were smarter than we are.

Because I am only partially civilized, I just make bread. In this case, challah.
...with a scroungy old Yummy Biker finger serving as a prop there upper right.

This is the best loaf of bread I have ever made in my entire history of making bread, and its also my favorite bread in the entire world. This, friends, is a challah for the ages. A resplendant challah. A perfect challah. Usually its braided, but this time I wanted it for toasted sandwiches so I left it loafy (which is a word because I said it was.) The next time I make it I'll braid it, because I'll be celebrating. Do you know why they braid it? So you can pull it into nice pieces and throw it. Yes. This is a fact. Apparently, you hand bread to people who are mourning. You chunk bread at people who are celebrating.
Consider yourselves chunked at!

UPDATED: Suggest that funky music, white boy!

UPDATE:
OH YEAH! ITS STAYING UP AAAAAAAAAAAAALL WEEK, KATS AND KITTENS! MAYBE EVEN LONGER!!! SO DIG OUT THEM 8 TRACK TAPES AND DUST OFF THAT MP3 PLAYER! SEND IN THOSE PLAY LISTS!!!!


Wow! One failed music meme = a whole weekend listening to your excellent musical suggestions (and a few real stinkers, but hey, we can't all be ballerinas.)

OK. Y'all have suggestions. And complaints.

"Why didn't you include brit faves 'The Overproduced Sellouts' singing "I Got Drunk And Sat On The Side Of The Road And A Policeman Talked To Me'?






Where's 'Rabies Vector' by 'Alvin and the Chipmunks?












And what about the Iggy Pop version of 'Unchained Melody'? "


Fine. I have a comments lounge....use the sucker. Feel free to include as many suggestions, links and titles as you want!!! IMPROVE THE AIRWAVES HERE AT RANCHO FIRSTNATIONS...AND AROUND THE GLOBE!!

What music should we REALLY be listening to?