My morning:
6:am....awaken to howling northeast winds, windchill of 10f. (thats really, really, really fucking cold, for those of you who are foreign and smell.) glorious sunrise, diamond clear. chat with sexy and adorable husband who smells really good. drink coffee. watch news.
7:am.....husband leaves for work
7:30.....daughter calls. peculiar fuzzy, pleading tone in voice immediately arouses suspicion. still somewhat askew from husbandly pheronomes, FN agrees to daughterly plaint.
8:am...drive up mountain to retrieve grandson from lazy daughter
8:15....stopped by police officer for 'going a little too fast'
8:17....charm my way out of speeding ticket by being goodnatured and appropriately rueful about 'going a little too fast'
719....get a ticket ANYFUCKINGWAY for 196$ for driving with expired tabs.
EXPIRED SINCE LAST OCTOBER.
8:22.....pick up goonybird from lazy daughter. bald child is hatless in 70mph winds with a windchilll of 10f. inform lazy daughter of ticket. spot zitty moron in background cleverly camoflaged as pile of laundry. daughterly laziness explained. grandmotherly bloodpressure climbing.
9:00....arrive at local licensing and registration office. buy tabs. restrain goonybird from a.writing on walls of office with pen b. leaping from the counter and falling on his head c. leaping into a nearby bin full of bouncy balls for sale d. writing on checkbook with pen e. swallowing pen f. writing on counter with pen.
pen taken.
goonybird commences sirenlike shreiking and pounds feet against stomachal regions of grandmother.
after purchasing knit cap for bald goonybird, grandmother carries goonybird out of store slung backwards over shoulder. Time - 9:20
9:45....after a brief drive to calm screaming goonybird during which the abc song is sung several hundred thousand times, grandmother arrives at local grocery store.
9:48....extracts goonybird from babyseat in 70mph winds, windchill 10f. car door blowing backwards pops rear body panel on car, must be kicked shut. goonybird removes hat.
9:49.....grandmother pulls hat completely over childs' head and holds it there with fabric knotted around her fist, races into store with goonybird slung over shoulder as goonybird cannot be trusted to walk across a parking lot without getting squashed, and will not hold hands in a public place, deeming it childish.
goonybird has put on considerable weight.
9:50....deposit child into shoppingbasket baby seat. goonybird commences flapping and exclaiming 'car! rrrrmmm! rrm!'
the basket will not do. he wants to sit in the fancy basket with the kiddie car attached to the front.
9:55...no kiddiecar available. grandmother redeposits child in shoppingbasket and runs toward produce section.
9:55.02.....child is offered an apple. child accepts. child is mollified.
9:56.04....child grabs apple for other hand out of center of apple zigurat. using ninja-like reflexes developed during childhood of goonybirds' mommy, grandmother adroitly replaces apple before avalanche gets under way.
9:57....child howls. grandmother parks basket next to hubbard squash. child is soothed by proximity of giant buttocks-like vegetable.
10:48...shopping finished, child replaced in car during 70mph winds w/ windchill factor of 10f.
11:00......stop at fast food outlet. not knowing if child has eaten anything this a.m. beside apple, grandmother throws child box of fries and half a chocolate milkshake.
So. How was your day?
Friday, February 17, 2006
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Clinical depression: the difference between you and me.
Normal people have normal lives. When something abnormal happens to them - having had the benefit of a normal life - they have the perspective to be able to say 'Whoa...something abnormal just happened."
That's you.
People with abnormal lives tend to experience the reverse. The normal events which occur are viewed with a great deal of suspicion, yet at the same time, indifference. Suspicion, because normal isn't their mean, and indifference because in the long run, it's going to pass.
Now, take that second person there and bomb them with clinical depression. That's me.
A person with clinical depression has for their only constant the expectation of overwhelming, crushing depair... which can hit with absolutely no warning, for no reason and without provocation of any sort, and hit like a tsunami. It can last for a few moments, it can last for a few MONTHS. And I don't mean everyday, garden variety despair; I mean the bleakest form, complete with immobility and actual pain...the type you feel when you have lost everything, and there is no hope left.
Yeah. Like that.
For no reason whatsoever.
Welcome to my world c.1964 - 1990.
I include the five years I spent going to therapy twice a week. Ew, therapy? How weak and pukey and unfit to live of you. Was it hard?
Yes.
But nothing at all compared to how hard it is trying to make it through an ordinary day when all you want to do is lie down and go to sleep forever.
Before I got treatment the ONLY two emotions I could count on were anger and sadness. Anger was the only thing that kept me upright, so I spent lots of time trying to piss myself off just so I could function, and then hiding the fact I was pissed off so I could get along. Honest to God. It worked, too...imperfectly.
Sadness filled in the blanks when my guard was down. Other emotions like happiness or satisfaction could only be relied upon to occur as a result of extremes, if then.
It averaged out to about 90% shit. The only reason I didn't commit suicide was lingering Catholic guilt. That, and wanting to live long enough to either outlast everyone I hated, or at least get even.
When all that finally changed the result was curious as hell....I started going through all the developmental stages that I missed because of the masking effect of depression. The profession didn't fully realize at that time that this happened. I wonder if it's understood yet.
So there I was, in my thirties, mother, wife, independent businesswoman...tossing fireworks at passing cars. Saving up old spraycans and stale ammunition and dud fireworks so I could have a big bonfire and toss it in. Flipping people off in traffic...as I hung out the window of the car...with one hand on the horn...screaming 'Learn to drive you IGNORANT FUCKING BAG OF SHIT!' at the top of my lungs. Because that's classy.
I even shoplifted once (a christmas ornament, which was enough to give me the screaming guilties and prevent that ever happening again). I made prank phone calls. I carried a magic marker with me and wrote graffitti in public bathrooms. I made water balloons and dropped them on bums out my apartment window. In college I'd sit in class and access porn sites while I sat in the front row with the monitor turned facing the instructor.
In other words, at thrity, I was the worlds brattiest teenager.
OOoooooooooooo, I had a great time!
Now luckily enough, my present husband was like this naturally so no problem there; we got along like a house afire. I'm sure my daughter was scarred, though. Meh; fuck it, we're even. She went through puberty on my watch.
I cannot stress this enough, though: There are answers there, as long as you're motivated enough to find them, and ornery enough to crush anyone beneath your feet who tries to stand in your way. (And there will be those people.) I was very fortunate in my choice of therapist as well. Furthermore, I pledge my eternal gratitude to the people involved in the discovery of Prozac. No, it aint for everyone but it sure in the fuck was the magic ingredient I needed.
Now I have to get used to being - not normal, that ain't never gonna happen - but more like everyone else. I'll never be normal. For one thing, I have to remind myself of this every day- that I can think positively about something and make myself feel better. And it will work. Normal people generally don't have this as part of their daily routine.
Meanwhile, I love my husband, I garden, I drink beer and I birdwatch - both goony and regular. And I tell you thats better than I thought I'd ever get.
That's you.
People with abnormal lives tend to experience the reverse. The normal events which occur are viewed with a great deal of suspicion, yet at the same time, indifference. Suspicion, because normal isn't their mean, and indifference because in the long run, it's going to pass.
Now, take that second person there and bomb them with clinical depression. That's me.
A person with clinical depression has for their only constant the expectation of overwhelming, crushing depair... which can hit with absolutely no warning, for no reason and without provocation of any sort, and hit like a tsunami. It can last for a few moments, it can last for a few MONTHS. And I don't mean everyday, garden variety despair; I mean the bleakest form, complete with immobility and actual pain...the type you feel when you have lost everything, and there is no hope left.
Yeah. Like that.
For no reason whatsoever.
Welcome to my world c.1964 - 1990.
I include the five years I spent going to therapy twice a week. Ew, therapy? How weak and pukey and unfit to live of you. Was it hard?
Yes.
But nothing at all compared to how hard it is trying to make it through an ordinary day when all you want to do is lie down and go to sleep forever.
Before I got treatment the ONLY two emotions I could count on were anger and sadness. Anger was the only thing that kept me upright, so I spent lots of time trying to piss myself off just so I could function, and then hiding the fact I was pissed off so I could get along. Honest to God. It worked, too...imperfectly.
Sadness filled in the blanks when my guard was down. Other emotions like happiness or satisfaction could only be relied upon to occur as a result of extremes, if then.
It averaged out to about 90% shit. The only reason I didn't commit suicide was lingering Catholic guilt. That, and wanting to live long enough to either outlast everyone I hated, or at least get even.
When all that finally changed the result was curious as hell....I started going through all the developmental stages that I missed because of the masking effect of depression. The profession didn't fully realize at that time that this happened. I wonder if it's understood yet.
So there I was, in my thirties, mother, wife, independent businesswoman...tossing fireworks at passing cars. Saving up old spraycans and stale ammunition and dud fireworks so I could have a big bonfire and toss it in. Flipping people off in traffic...as I hung out the window of the car...with one hand on the horn...screaming 'Learn to drive you IGNORANT FUCKING BAG OF SHIT!' at the top of my lungs. Because that's classy.
I even shoplifted once (a christmas ornament, which was enough to give me the screaming guilties and prevent that ever happening again). I made prank phone calls. I carried a magic marker with me and wrote graffitti in public bathrooms. I made water balloons and dropped them on bums out my apartment window. In college I'd sit in class and access porn sites while I sat in the front row with the monitor turned facing the instructor.
In other words, at thrity, I was the worlds brattiest teenager.
OOoooooooooooo, I had a great time!
Now luckily enough, my present husband was like this naturally so no problem there; we got along like a house afire. I'm sure my daughter was scarred, though. Meh; fuck it, we're even. She went through puberty on my watch.
I cannot stress this enough, though: There are answers there, as long as you're motivated enough to find them, and ornery enough to crush anyone beneath your feet who tries to stand in your way. (And there will be those people.) I was very fortunate in my choice of therapist as well. Furthermore, I pledge my eternal gratitude to the people involved in the discovery of Prozac. No, it aint for everyone but it sure in the fuck was the magic ingredient I needed.
Now I have to get used to being - not normal, that ain't never gonna happen - but more like everyone else. I'll never be normal. For one thing, I have to remind myself of this every day- that I can think positively about something and make myself feel better. And it will work. Normal people generally don't have this as part of their daily routine.
Meanwhile, I love my husband, I garden, I drink beer and I birdwatch - both goony and regular. And I tell you thats better than I thought I'd ever get.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
aphis CAN be prevented. Heres' how
This morning finds my grandson hairless as a doorknob. The Stainless Steel Amazon shaved the Goonybirds' head last night. Well, she and her dad did. Lacking equipment normally used to restrain livestock for branding, they removed to the bathroom, shut the door and hoisted the 'bird up on the counter - the biker shaved him, the amazon held him. Because I am not stupid I opted out of this nightmare; I watch the kid all day; I know what he's capable of. I'm lucky I have any intact sheetrock left in there. That kid bucked and flapped like a rodeo bull, and screamed and bellowed and raged, shit. I'm surprised he didn't bring the Border patrol down on our ass. I'm sure air traffic had to be diverted.
He needed the haircut, though. The 'Amazon had given him a fauxhawk some months earlier (because she NEEDS CABLE) and the back was getting all nappy and fuzzy like the rear end of a sheep. Cleanup is easier, I will say that...but geeze, this kid has a BIG ROUND HEAD. I can't stop sneaking looks at him. Dang, that is a big. round. head.
See, but his mom had a big round head too. Round and shiny. When the sun shone it was like the strange giant glowing babyhead on the Teletubbies show. She was bald as an egg until she was about three years old.. You'd put her in the bath and run some water on her and the few platinum blonde hairs she did have would go all clear. You know how, when you wash a white poodle? yeah. And I have photographic documentation to back up these allegations. Maybe I'll post it. Or maybe not. Depends on the money.
Speaking of scary pictures, I am amassing quite the list of gross out sites. I don't know what this says about me, but I like 'em. Cabbie with the skull blown out of his head and his skin draped like a banana peel on his shoulders? Bring it on. Male to female operations? Motorcycle crash at 145mph? I'm there. (No, I will not post links. Stop buggin me.) I read all the stories too. I try to avoid the sex stuff, although the clear assumption is being made that, if you like pictures of squashed korean dockworkers, then *ding!* you probably want to see naked lesbians with wubby jelly toys and-ew, delete. The arguement can be made that both are porn. I don't know. I do know that I deny myself nothing; if I'm curious then I'll look. In the oft-mentioned case of the - ahem - Recirculating Japanese Mustard Fountain, sometimes I'm really, really, really sorry I looked. But not all the time.
The Stainless Steel Amazon and I got into a conversation last Christmas about this, and she mentioned dendrophilia. (yes, Christmas at Rancho First Nations puts the 'holy' in 'holidays') so of course I made her prove she wasnt just yankin' my chain.
And she wasn't.
There are actually people out there who enjoy a very special relationship with their landscaping. Making me review a whole new constellation of insights about, oh, hiking alone in the woods, and tree surgeons. Does it matter what kind of bark? Are there people who are maybe queer for certain types of trees, like guys who only date blondes? Can you get aphids? (actually you can. While not a dendrophile, I do garden, and yes, if you drink pop and garden you will get aphids...they do bite and it does hurt. So the moral of the story is, my children, when next you approach that alluring alder, don't use flavored lube.)
And I would never have known this had I not looked. Has it made my life any better? Hasn't made it any worse. Now, if I stop and compare my choice of reading material with that of your average rural grandmother, then o.k, I start to feel kind of odd. But then, I like puppies and babies and wrinkle dogs and flowers, so maybe I'm not too far left of center after all.
...........Oh hell yeah I am.
He needed the haircut, though. The 'Amazon had given him a fauxhawk some months earlier (because she NEEDS CABLE) and the back was getting all nappy and fuzzy like the rear end of a sheep. Cleanup is easier, I will say that...but geeze, this kid has a BIG ROUND HEAD. I can't stop sneaking looks at him. Dang, that is a big. round. head.
See, but his mom had a big round head too. Round and shiny. When the sun shone it was like the strange giant glowing babyhead on the Teletubbies show. She was bald as an egg until she was about three years old.. You'd put her in the bath and run some water on her and the few platinum blonde hairs she did have would go all clear. You know how, when you wash a white poodle? yeah. And I have photographic documentation to back up these allegations. Maybe I'll post it. Or maybe not. Depends on the money.
Speaking of scary pictures, I am amassing quite the list of gross out sites. I don't know what this says about me, but I like 'em. Cabbie with the skull blown out of his head and his skin draped like a banana peel on his shoulders? Bring it on. Male to female operations? Motorcycle crash at 145mph? I'm there. (No, I will not post links. Stop buggin me.) I read all the stories too. I try to avoid the sex stuff, although the clear assumption is being made that, if you like pictures of squashed korean dockworkers, then *ding!* you probably want to see naked lesbians with wubby jelly toys and-ew, delete. The arguement can be made that both are porn. I don't know. I do know that I deny myself nothing; if I'm curious then I'll look. In the oft-mentioned case of the - ahem - Recirculating Japanese Mustard Fountain, sometimes I'm really, really, really sorry I looked. But not all the time.
The Stainless Steel Amazon and I got into a conversation last Christmas about this, and she mentioned dendrophilia. (yes, Christmas at Rancho First Nations puts the 'holy' in 'holidays') so of course I made her prove she wasnt just yankin' my chain.
And she wasn't.
There are actually people out there who enjoy a very special relationship with their landscaping. Making me review a whole new constellation of insights about, oh, hiking alone in the woods, and tree surgeons. Does it matter what kind of bark? Are there people who are maybe queer for certain types of trees, like guys who only date blondes? Can you get aphids? (actually you can. While not a dendrophile, I do garden, and yes, if you drink pop and garden you will get aphids...they do bite and it does hurt. So the moral of the story is, my children, when next you approach that alluring alder, don't use flavored lube.)
And I would never have known this had I not looked. Has it made my life any better? Hasn't made it any worse. Now, if I stop and compare my choice of reading material with that of your average rural grandmother, then o.k, I start to feel kind of odd. But then, I like puppies and babies and wrinkle dogs and flowers, so maybe I'm not too far left of center after all.
...........Oh hell yeah I am.
Monday, February 13, 2006
...and a mask and a ball gag and some leather pants with no seat, and one of those bustier things, and a
I swore to myself that when I started this thing I was not going to turn it into a bunch of political ranting, and I think I've been good for the most part, but damn. I mean, for the love of fuck.
The vice president shot a guy in the head.
Yeah.
I stood in the kitchen window this morning looking at Canada and envying them while I drank my coffee and just shook my head.
Where was the CIA? Arent they supposed to keep an eye on these guys? Keep them from running out in the street and petting strange dogs and shit? So then what in the name of Christ Almighty was the man doing waving a loaded shotgun? He's a politician! You dont let them play with guns! Same reason you only let them eat with spoons!
You know, a shotgun is a big thing. It's a dangerous thing. It's not something that you just idly whirl around like your dick or a propeller or something! And not LOADED! You're supposed to carry a shotgun CRACKED in the field because you're in a field. Fields are bumpy. Ducks get up early. It's usually cold out. Sometimes theres ice. I just want to cry. *
I know exactly what happened, too. Ill bet you any money he had a little too much wake up juice( hot coffee and Black Jack) on an empty stomach. Any money at all.
Ooo, speaking of running amuck in the field, guess who charmed his way out of the hospital last night? Yep. The playboy of the western world. And I'm about ready to put the old coot right back in. I am hot. He pulls this every time and they fall for it every time. Earn your paychecks, folks; its called dissimulation!!!! All the neurologist had to do was mention the word 'operation' and suddenly he was all better! He's going to go right back home and try to drive his car or something and...no, it doesnt bear thinking about; I've been here before. I'm about to get him a shock collar, though.
I need a whip and a chair. I really do.
*and some research skills, apparently. it was evening and they were tracking quail. otherwise I stand by what I said. what the hell, man, fucking ol' moron out there with a loaded gun like he needs quail. I ask you.
The vice president shot a guy in the head.
Yeah.
I stood in the kitchen window this morning looking at Canada and envying them while I drank my coffee and just shook my head.
Where was the CIA? Arent they supposed to keep an eye on these guys? Keep them from running out in the street and petting strange dogs and shit? So then what in the name of Christ Almighty was the man doing waving a loaded shotgun? He's a politician! You dont let them play with guns! Same reason you only let them eat with spoons!
You know, a shotgun is a big thing. It's a dangerous thing. It's not something that you just idly whirl around like your dick or a propeller or something! And not LOADED! You're supposed to carry a shotgun CRACKED in the field because you're in a field. Fields are bumpy. Ducks get up early. It's usually cold out. Sometimes theres ice. I just want to cry. *
I know exactly what happened, too. Ill bet you any money he had a little too much wake up juice( hot coffee and Black Jack) on an empty stomach. Any money at all.
Ooo, speaking of running amuck in the field, guess who charmed his way out of the hospital last night? Yep. The playboy of the western world. And I'm about ready to put the old coot right back in. I am hot. He pulls this every time and they fall for it every time. Earn your paychecks, folks; its called dissimulation!!!! All the neurologist had to do was mention the word 'operation' and suddenly he was all better! He's going to go right back home and try to drive his car or something and...no, it doesnt bear thinking about; I've been here before. I'm about to get him a shock collar, though.
I need a whip and a chair. I really do.
*and some research skills, apparently. it was evening and they were tracking quail. otherwise I stand by what I said. what the hell, man, fucking ol' moron out there with a loaded gun like he needs quail. I ask you.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
state o' the Nation (get it? get it? *snerk*)
I am mostly over my fit of temper today. Oh fine, I'm over it. Still pisses me off on principle, though.....If someone is going to jump my shit about something, at least make sure we actually disagree first, geeze. And base it on something other than my address. Oh, and this was nothing to do with you, my darlings. I was a-wandering the world wide web and fell in with a bad crowd. Oh, there was talk of politics, there was strong drink and cigarettes being smoked...heady stuff for little muks. I am a bit bruised, but wiser.
..............Nah.
Visited my father-in-law at the hospital today. He hasn't died once since he's been there, which is a good sign, but his blood pressure is still all over the charts for no apparent reason so the neurologist is keeping him there. Probably because she has a crush on him as much as anything. Meanwhile he sits there being charming and twinkly and looking pretty damn fine for an 81 year old man, with his usual crowd of admirers dropping by to pay tribute and sneak him chocolate and goofy toys and buy him dirty get well cards. I think they ought to organize themselves and buy matching ties and sweater vests.
The hardest thing for my father in law during these visits to the hospital is the food. The man was a professional chef for 40 years; a natural, self-taught. So when he gets rubber eggs for breakfast and the inevitable lime jello in the evening it just bums him out.
The second most difficult thing is, it tends to put a cramp in his sex life.
Maybe 1 and 2 are interchangeable. Probably.
It makes me angry to see him there again. Not at him, but at age in general and sickness in particular. I want to see him out on the prowl again making all the young guys blush and drinking Metaxa and baking bread and feeding the seagulls and driving his Porche. I want him to be well again.
..............Nah.
Visited my father-in-law at the hospital today. He hasn't died once since he's been there, which is a good sign, but his blood pressure is still all over the charts for no apparent reason so the neurologist is keeping him there. Probably because she has a crush on him as much as anything. Meanwhile he sits there being charming and twinkly and looking pretty damn fine for an 81 year old man, with his usual crowd of admirers dropping by to pay tribute and sneak him chocolate and goofy toys and buy him dirty get well cards. I think they ought to organize themselves and buy matching ties and sweater vests.
The hardest thing for my father in law during these visits to the hospital is the food. The man was a professional chef for 40 years; a natural, self-taught. So when he gets rubber eggs for breakfast and the inevitable lime jello in the evening it just bums him out.
The second most difficult thing is, it tends to put a cramp in his sex life.
Maybe 1 and 2 are interchangeable. Probably.
It makes me angry to see him there again. Not at him, but at age in general and sickness in particular. I want to see him out on the prowl again making all the young guys blush and drinking Metaxa and baking bread and feeding the seagulls and driving his Porche. I want him to be well again.
Friday, February 10, 2006
NOT condoleeza rice. really.
Due to recent remarks made during international correspondence, I feel I must issue a statement of political position re: international affairs. This is a self-indulgent medium, in other words, and any excuse to run my mouth is a good excuse. Not that I need one. Because I don't. And if you think I do, you are obviously new here.
AIM FOR THE ENEMY....NOT YOUR FRONT LINE.
A. Anyone traveling the web using the moniker 'First Nations' is not going to get too exercised when you slag off the U. S. federal government.
B. Explore and discuss the differences between the following concepts:
1. Individual
2. Government
C. Discuss and explore the differences between:
1. Focused political discussion
2. Light, general conversation.
D. If your personal sense of self worth is so very small, your perception of the relative worth of the country you inhabit so very withered, and the burden of living in the shadow of the ill-percieved 'superiority' of another nation - a nation that no amount of watching 'The Dukes of Hazard' qualifies you as an expert on.... if all that is just too much for you to bear without assing off with some unconsidered excuse for an opinion every time your Spidey Sense picks up the presence of an American, First Nations makes the following suggestion:
1. Open a 'party size' bag of potato chips.
2. While you're up, bring me a beer.
3. Dump the chips out, put the bag over your head and tie the opening tightly around your neck.
AIM FOR THE ENEMY....NOT YOUR FRONT LINE.
A. Anyone traveling the web using the moniker 'First Nations' is not going to get too exercised when you slag off the U. S. federal government.
B. Explore and discuss the differences between the following concepts:
1. Individual
2. Government
C. Discuss and explore the differences between:
1. Focused political discussion
2. Light, general conversation.
D. If your personal sense of self worth is so very small, your perception of the relative worth of the country you inhabit so very withered, and the burden of living in the shadow of the ill-percieved 'superiority' of another nation - a nation that no amount of watching 'The Dukes of Hazard' qualifies you as an expert on.... if all that is just too much for you to bear without assing off with some unconsidered excuse for an opinion every time your Spidey Sense picks up the presence of an American, First Nations makes the following suggestion:
1. Open a 'party size' bag of potato chips.
2. While you're up, bring me a beer.
3. Dump the chips out, put the bag over your head and tie the opening tightly around your neck.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Air quality issues
Is it time for the diaper story?
Yeah, its time for the diaper story.
__________________
Once upon a time there were two very bad evil dogs who used to go rambling in the woods with their mom. This one time we were down by the Nooksack river (yes, thats really its name)following a railroad embankment. It was salmon season, meaning March, and quite warm, and so thaw was well under way. This is the time of year that...lets call them 'woods dwelling skank beasts, holler monsters and pintos' begin to notice that the trash is starting to stink, so they start sneaking all the garbage that they'd accumulated over the winter months out of the carport - or the back bedroom, or wherever - and down to the river banks so the spring floods will wash it away. Anyway thats the theory. The most convenient hidden dumping place nearby was the riverward slope of the railroad embankment. This had been going on for years and years-there were Model T cars down there, parts of old treadle sewing machines, all kinds of stuff on up to microwave ovens and plastic milk jugs.
And diapers.
Lots and lots of diapers.
LOTS of diapers.
Which, you know, had I known about beforehand would have made me think again about my choice of hike, see.
Jett kept coming back to me down the tracks all wriggling and wagging and grinning with her head and front paws covered with what I thought at the time was, um, mud. Kind of, um, reddish mud. She'd do her little 'This is so great, mom!" dance and run back up the tracks and down into the woods again.
Meanwhile I'm just sauntering along in my childlike stupor, admiring the river, when Opie comes out of the brush ahead pulling something in his mouth. I take this something for a fast food bag. I trot up to grab it away from him but he dances off trying to entice me into playing chase. He gives his head a little shake.. "C'mon, Jiggles, don't you wish you had this? But its mine! And YOu can't have it! And I've got it!" and as he does this it unravels, and a big fat chunky baby turd rolls out.
These animals had found a virtual Mt. Everest of diapers. Was it all from one kid? One really big, fat obese mutant kid who liked ketchup? Or a lot of kids? Like crop circles and much of the Catholic religion, it is a mystery.
There is no way to describe the smell. AND there were salmon carcasses mixed in with it. It was all nice and warm with pretty curls of mist coming off it, and my dogs obviously hadn't been the first ones at the banquet either, and oh Jesus it was everywhere. In the trees, hanging in the brush, floating down the river....
And y dogs? My dogs were romping in it. Romping in this giant pile of swollen, festering, ghastly-ass funky baby shit. They are accomplished poo rompers; theres a horse story I will recount at a later time; but now is not that time. This is the time........ of the DIAPER.
I had to drag them away by the collars.
They each got repeated duckings in the river, which seemed to irritate them for some reason, probably because it was pure snowmelt, and then we all trudged back to the car and left.
Halfway home, Jett barfed.
By the time we had pulled into the driveway Jett had filled both the entire rear footwells. With barf. Baby shit barf. Both of them.
Opie was pretty quiet, but I watched as he swole up like a little inflatable hairy pig full of poo. And he was burping. Until that moment I did not realize that dogs got face farts. They do. Oh indeed they do.
They both ended up at the vet overnight and both of them had to get their stomachs pumped.
The admitting nurse seemed to have some very real elemental difficulty getting her mind around the whole shit issue. 'Feces? Oh. You mean, poop? They've been eating...some kind of doo?"
Now here I'm thinking 'Madam, aren't you the one with the degree in veterinary medicine? Is it really such big news that dogs are coprophageous?' So I lead her to the car, and opened the rear door.
"Oh", she said.
Just, 'Oh.'
'You got any paper towels?" I ask.
"No!" she replies. Before I'd finished saying the word 'towel', even.
Cost me 300$. Little fuckers.
Yeah, its time for the diaper story.
__________________
Once upon a time there were two very bad evil dogs who used to go rambling in the woods with their mom. This one time we were down by the Nooksack river (yes, thats really its name)following a railroad embankment. It was salmon season, meaning March, and quite warm, and so thaw was well under way. This is the time of year that...lets call them 'woods dwelling skank beasts, holler monsters and pintos' begin to notice that the trash is starting to stink, so they start sneaking all the garbage that they'd accumulated over the winter months out of the carport - or the back bedroom, or wherever - and down to the river banks so the spring floods will wash it away. Anyway thats the theory. The most convenient hidden dumping place nearby was the riverward slope of the railroad embankment. This had been going on for years and years-there were Model T cars down there, parts of old treadle sewing machines, all kinds of stuff on up to microwave ovens and plastic milk jugs.
And diapers.
Lots and lots of diapers.
LOTS of diapers.
Which, you know, had I known about beforehand would have made me think again about my choice of hike, see.
Jett kept coming back to me down the tracks all wriggling and wagging and grinning with her head and front paws covered with what I thought at the time was, um, mud. Kind of, um, reddish mud. She'd do her little 'This is so great, mom!" dance and run back up the tracks and down into the woods again.
Meanwhile I'm just sauntering along in my childlike stupor, admiring the river, when Opie comes out of the brush ahead pulling something in his mouth. I take this something for a fast food bag. I trot up to grab it away from him but he dances off trying to entice me into playing chase. He gives his head a little shake.. "C'mon, Jiggles, don't you wish you had this? But its mine! And YOu can't have it! And I've got it!" and as he does this it unravels, and a big fat chunky baby turd rolls out.
These animals had found a virtual Mt. Everest of diapers. Was it all from one kid? One really big, fat obese mutant kid who liked ketchup? Or a lot of kids? Like crop circles and much of the Catholic religion, it is a mystery.
There is no way to describe the smell. AND there were salmon carcasses mixed in with it. It was all nice and warm with pretty curls of mist coming off it, and my dogs obviously hadn't been the first ones at the banquet either, and oh Jesus it was everywhere. In the trees, hanging in the brush, floating down the river....
And y dogs? My dogs were romping in it. Romping in this giant pile of swollen, festering, ghastly-ass funky baby shit. They are accomplished poo rompers; theres a horse story I will recount at a later time; but now is not that time. This is the time........ of the DIAPER.
I had to drag them away by the collars.
They each got repeated duckings in the river, which seemed to irritate them for some reason, probably because it was pure snowmelt, and then we all trudged back to the car and left.
Halfway home, Jett barfed.
By the time we had pulled into the driveway Jett had filled both the entire rear footwells. With barf. Baby shit barf. Both of them.
Opie was pretty quiet, but I watched as he swole up like a little inflatable hairy pig full of poo. And he was burping. Until that moment I did not realize that dogs got face farts. They do. Oh indeed they do.
They both ended up at the vet overnight and both of them had to get their stomachs pumped.
The admitting nurse seemed to have some very real elemental difficulty getting her mind around the whole shit issue. 'Feces? Oh. You mean, poop? They've been eating...some kind of doo?"
Now here I'm thinking 'Madam, aren't you the one with the degree in veterinary medicine? Is it really such big news that dogs are coprophageous?' So I lead her to the car, and opened the rear door.
"Oh", she said.
Just, 'Oh.'
'You got any paper towels?" I ask.
"No!" she replies. Before I'd finished saying the word 'towel', even.
Cost me 300$. Little fuckers.
editing
You might notice I edited the crap out of yesterdays' post. I felt like shit knowing that was out there. My husband, Rq, is a good guy and he doesn't deserve that kind of lampooning. Plus, imagine him taking a notion and reading this...you just know that would be the post that popped up. And then all of yesterdays troubles would redouble themselves.
Which would suck since all of yesterdays troubles are gone! YAY!
We've had a car for sale for a little while-I sold it yesterday afternoon. A man came up, drove the car around the block and handed me 2 bills to hold it for him while he went about the rest of his day. Never asked me my name, never asked for a reciept...that, my friends, is life in the country.
My daughter came in with good news about her life and plans...which in a circituous fashion solved part of the problem with my father-in-law's care. I'll end up with more time to look in on him without the goonybird in tow. Normally thats kind of amusing, watching Great Grandpa be totally charmed watching the 'Bird lay waste to his home, but not real practical now since both of them are unsteady on their legs.
I'm wondering what the next few years will be like, taking care of an elderly person. My daughter is the one who is brave. She used to facilitate for the challenged; she's the one who can wipe up dirty asses and deal with geeking and drooling and not think a thing of it. Not me. Frankly, sickness and infirmity scare the living fuck out of me. Incapacity repels me. Both of these things combined with old age....fuck, I'm having trouble typing. Forget it.
Make of that what you will; there it is.
What I am certain of is that I can suck it up and deal with it.
What I worry about is being able to deal with it with grace. I want to be a blessing to the man. Certainly there are things in this world more awful than helping another person on the toilet or cleaning up after they miss.
It's the level of intimacy that is geeking me out. That moreso than my detestation of human filth, although that is running a close second.
So theres the whole issue in a nutshell. It will probably turn out to be one of those things that isn't nearly as bad as the anticipation of it is. After all, I love the man. Meanwhile I deliberately go to gross-out websites and read the ill stories and look at the ill pictures to kind of steel myself for it...and God willing, nothing in my future is going to be as bad as 'the Death of the 600 Pound Man" or the *ahem* Recirculating Japanese Mustard Fountain. No I will not post links you icky potty person.
Which would suck since all of yesterdays troubles are gone! YAY!
We've had a car for sale for a little while-I sold it yesterday afternoon. A man came up, drove the car around the block and handed me 2 bills to hold it for him while he went about the rest of his day. Never asked me my name, never asked for a reciept...that, my friends, is life in the country.
My daughter came in with good news about her life and plans...which in a circituous fashion solved part of the problem with my father-in-law's care. I'll end up with more time to look in on him without the goonybird in tow. Normally thats kind of amusing, watching Great Grandpa be totally charmed watching the 'Bird lay waste to his home, but not real practical now since both of them are unsteady on their legs.
I'm wondering what the next few years will be like, taking care of an elderly person. My daughter is the one who is brave. She used to facilitate for the challenged; she's the one who can wipe up dirty asses and deal with geeking and drooling and not think a thing of it. Not me. Frankly, sickness and infirmity scare the living fuck out of me. Incapacity repels me. Both of these things combined with old age....fuck, I'm having trouble typing. Forget it.
Make of that what you will; there it is.
What I am certain of is that I can suck it up and deal with it.
What I worry about is being able to deal with it with grace. I want to be a blessing to the man. Certainly there are things in this world more awful than helping another person on the toilet or cleaning up after they miss.
It's the level of intimacy that is geeking me out. That moreso than my detestation of human filth, although that is running a close second.
So theres the whole issue in a nutshell. It will probably turn out to be one of those things that isn't nearly as bad as the anticipation of it is. After all, I love the man. Meanwhile I deliberately go to gross-out websites and read the ill stories and look at the ill pictures to kind of steel myself for it...and God willing, nothing in my future is going to be as bad as 'the Death of the 600 Pound Man" or the *ahem* Recirculating Japanese Mustard Fountain. No I will not post links you icky potty person.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
y'all see this ass here? BITE IT!
heres the links again:
http://marlowefish.blogspot.com/
http://dflatchimebar.blogspot.com/
http://drivingthebustohell.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/witchbabywiggbat
http://wornoutshoe.blogspot.com/
http://collagemama.blogspot.com/2006/01/rooney-rants.html#comments
http://greatsheelephant.blogspot.com/
.....I tried to post them in the sidebar but apparently thats beyond my capabilities at the moment. But I tried! I did!
Warning: what follows is
WHINING! UNREPENTANT, UGLY, SELF PITYING WHINING! YES! THATS RIGHT!
Adulthood just blows. Not all the time, and really, not that awfully much, until lately.
My husband, as he does every year after a prolonged interval of bad weather, has decided that we are poor. But not just poor; no, we are at the doorstep of the workhouse poor. Eating rats poor. Wearing rags wrapped around our feet, Charles Dickens poor.
This is not the case. This is SO not the case.
Just like it isn't the case every year.
Every.
Single.
Year.
For the past 20.
Yes, this is seasonal dissaffective disorder, I know...see, but its one thing to know that and quite another to have to live with it.
Anyway, as I do every year around this time, I look for work. Which stresses the hell out of me because simply anticipating having to work alongside the same people day in and day out makes my hands tingle with anxiety. Knowing this probably isn't necessary in the first place again adds to the merriment. But it makes dh feel so validated, and it makes me feel like I'm doing something, even if it doesn't make any goddamn sense. Wierd, the funny games and rituals you find yourself performing. Still the stress level around Rancho FirstNations is pretty high.
A contributing element is my father-in-law, who is loveable; really...he is in his mid-seventies and lives alone in a huge house with bad stairs. Of course, he also has trouble walking. Of course he refuses to move. And then theres bad habit he has of, oh, just fainting for no particular reason and DYING TEMPORARILY. The man's heart just stops and starts again for no reason anyone can determine. One time he came to stuck between the toilet and the vanity, no idea how long he'd been there. Thought it was pretty funny. Mainly he calls us from the hospital and airily announces "Guess where I am?"
This is the phone call we got last night. "Mmmnhello-oo......guess who? I'm in the hospital again; came in this afternoon.....I really don't know why....I felt kind of dizzy. Well yes, I fell down. But I'm fine. I think they'll be releasing me tomorrow....unless they decide to keep me...."
Fuck I hate trouble in my house! Everybody just get a fucking grip for the love of Christ! ' *slappity biffity slappity slap*
Yeah, thats gonna happen...not. Everyone else can be a puke; ah yes, but let mom have a moment and ITS JUST ABSOLUTELY UNFUCKINGFORGIVEABLY THE WORST THING EVER!
Why now, I ask you? Why now, I beseech the skies?
Its early spring! We have blue skies for the first time in months! The snowdrops are up! Its beautiful! It's not raining! We have money!
Thats my new mantra. If I say it often enough, it'll come true.
http://marlowefish.blogspot.com/
http://dflatchimebar.blogspot.com/
http://drivingthebustohell.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/witchbabywiggbat
http://wornoutshoe.blogspot.com/
http://collagemama.blogspot.com/2006/01/rooney-rants.html#comments
http://greatsheelephant.blogspot.com/
.....I tried to post them in the sidebar but apparently thats beyond my capabilities at the moment. But I tried! I did!
Warning: what follows is
WHINING! UNREPENTANT, UGLY, SELF PITYING WHINING! YES! THATS RIGHT!
Adulthood just blows. Not all the time, and really, not that awfully much, until lately.
My husband, as he does every year after a prolonged interval of bad weather, has decided that we are poor. But not just poor; no, we are at the doorstep of the workhouse poor. Eating rats poor. Wearing rags wrapped around our feet, Charles Dickens poor.
This is not the case. This is SO not the case.
Just like it isn't the case every year.
Every.
Single.
Year.
For the past 20.
Yes, this is seasonal dissaffective disorder, I know...see, but its one thing to know that and quite another to have to live with it.
Anyway, as I do every year around this time, I look for work. Which stresses the hell out of me because simply anticipating having to work alongside the same people day in and day out makes my hands tingle with anxiety. Knowing this probably isn't necessary in the first place again adds to the merriment. But it makes dh feel so validated, and it makes me feel like I'm doing something, even if it doesn't make any goddamn sense. Wierd, the funny games and rituals you find yourself performing. Still the stress level around Rancho FirstNations is pretty high.
A contributing element is my father-in-law, who is loveable; really...he is in his mid-seventies and lives alone in a huge house with bad stairs. Of course, he also has trouble walking. Of course he refuses to move. And then theres bad habit he has of, oh, just fainting for no particular reason and DYING TEMPORARILY. The man's heart just stops and starts again for no reason anyone can determine. One time he came to stuck between the toilet and the vanity, no idea how long he'd been there. Thought it was pretty funny. Mainly he calls us from the hospital and airily announces "Guess where I am?"
This is the phone call we got last night. "Mmmnhello-oo......guess who? I'm in the hospital again; came in this afternoon.....I really don't know why....I felt kind of dizzy. Well yes, I fell down. But I'm fine. I think they'll be releasing me tomorrow....unless they decide to keep me...."
Fuck I hate trouble in my house! Everybody just get a fucking grip for the love of Christ! ' *slappity biffity slappity slap*
Yeah, thats gonna happen...not. Everyone else can be a puke; ah yes, but let mom have a moment and ITS JUST ABSOLUTELY UNFUCKINGFORGIVEABLY THE WORST THING EVER!
Why now, I ask you? Why now, I beseech the skies?
Its early spring! We have blue skies for the first time in months! The snowdrops are up! Its beautiful! It's not raining! We have money!
Thats my new mantra. If I say it often enough, it'll come true.
Monday, February 06, 2006
As near as I can figure it
I am sitting in the kitchen typing away, and Goonybird grandkid rushes in.
"Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!" gestures of great amazement.
"What, honey?"
" Oh no! Oh no! Dog dog!" pointing into the livingroom with great emphasis.
"What about doggie?"
"Dog dog nose! Ow! Nose! Ow!" smacking self with an open hand on the nose.
Translation: Grandmother! I've discovered the most amazing thing! The dog and I share a common feature! We BOTH have a nose! Its inconceivable! Furthermore it hurts every single time I do this!
___________________
I am folding laundry, sitting crosslegged on the floor. The Goonybird is racing around me in circles.
"One two! One two! One two! One two! One two! Oh no! Got go! Got go!" pointing at me.
"Go where, honey?"
"Go! Go go! rrrrrm! buk! One two!" pointing with great intention at the front door.
Translation: I am marching! Quite determinedly! On your stacks! Of clean clothes! We need to leave immediately ! Go start the car, woman, I need a book from the library! In the meantime It's vitally important that I continue to march on the laundry!
___________________
Goonybird comes racing up to me as I carry clothes into the bedroom.
"Wheddo go? Whaddoo gots? Go! Buck a buck a buck a buck!" gesture of confusion.
"I'm going into the other room, kiddo."
"Oh! Shit! Geddoo go! buckabuck! Rmmmm!" both arms raised over head.
Translation: where are you going and what in Gods' name do you think you're doing with my grandfathers clothing? Very well, move along. In the meanwhile I will imitate a chicken. Oh shit! Where are you going, did you say? Ah yes; fine. Carry on. Here's my chicken imitation again. Now heres' a car.
"Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!" gestures of great amazement.
"What, honey?"
" Oh no! Oh no! Dog dog!" pointing into the livingroom with great emphasis.
"What about doggie?"
"Dog dog nose! Ow! Nose! Ow!" smacking self with an open hand on the nose.
Translation: Grandmother! I've discovered the most amazing thing! The dog and I share a common feature! We BOTH have a nose! Its inconceivable! Furthermore it hurts every single time I do this!
___________________
I am folding laundry, sitting crosslegged on the floor. The Goonybird is racing around me in circles.
"One two! One two! One two! One two! One two! Oh no! Got go! Got go!" pointing at me.
"Go where, honey?"
"Go! Go go! rrrrrm! buk! One two!" pointing with great intention at the front door.
Translation: I am marching! Quite determinedly! On your stacks! Of clean clothes! We need to leave immediately ! Go start the car, woman, I need a book from the library! In the meantime It's vitally important that I continue to march on the laundry!
___________________
Goonybird comes racing up to me as I carry clothes into the bedroom.
"Wheddo go? Whaddoo gots? Go! Buck a buck a buck a buck!" gesture of confusion.
"I'm going into the other room, kiddo."
"Oh! Shit! Geddoo go! buckabuck! Rmmmm!" both arms raised over head.
Translation: where are you going and what in Gods' name do you think you're doing with my grandfathers clothing? Very well, move along. In the meanwhile I will imitate a chicken. Oh shit! Where are you going, did you say? Ah yes; fine. Carry on. Here's my chicken imitation again. Now heres' a car.
a triumph of the embalmers art: The Rolling Stones live at halftime
I remember it as though it were only yesterday. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was some other shit. It was THE DAY THE ROLLING STONES PLAYED THE HALFTIME SHOW AT THE SUPERBOWL.
Yes, and what a show it was. The Rolling Stones! Can you hear them back at the NFL boardroom? Oh, dude, we grab the boomer demographic and make everyone forget about that whole Janet Jacksons' tit thing!
The problem? The Rolling Stones are deceased.
They need to retire. Retire, retire, retire. Please, please, please. I sat through the whole thing hoping for I don't know what. I just did.
Man, it was like watching a breakdown in the air conditioning at the House Of Wax. They don't play their own instruments anymore so much as they just randomly flap away at them while three other 'mystery guys' tucked away at the back fill in the blank spots. (exception: Ol' Charlie Watts was keeping his end up.) It was blatant, and it was sad and ludicrous.
I cringed watching old Mick breathlessly trudging around the stage chasing chickens off the porch, yelling lyric fragments when the whim took him. Keith Richards staggering about picking up cigarette butts off the floor and looking for his Vicodin.
There were four of us watching. We sat here, former rockers every one and three of them Stones fans, and do you know what we said as we watched this debacle?
Not 'Gosh, you just gotta admire those Stones, they just keep on going!'
Not 'Wow, they're still SO GOOD!'
No, what we were all saying was 'Mick, keep your shirt on. PLEASE keep your shirt on. God, keep your shirt ON, Mick.'
The only equivalent on the 'painful to watch' scale was the pathetic last years of Frank Sinatra, another man tried in the court of Not Knowing When to Take His Hat and Go and found guilty. Maybe it's a generational thing, but watching the Stones creak through the same farce was somehow more pathetic. A lot of it had to do with Mick. It was just gross. He's still out there flogging the sulky youth -gamin- rough trade thing. With a more attractive man, it would have been a caricature. But as played by an underfed 63 year old frog wearing hiphuggers and a demi-tee........fuck, the indignity.
Old age does not have to be that ugly. Jesus God Almighty.
So no, I was less than impressed with the halftime entertainment.
Yes, and what a show it was. The Rolling Stones! Can you hear them back at the NFL boardroom? Oh, dude, we grab the boomer demographic and make everyone forget about that whole Janet Jacksons' tit thing!
The problem? The Rolling Stones are deceased.
They need to retire. Retire, retire, retire. Please, please, please. I sat through the whole thing hoping for I don't know what. I just did.
Man, it was like watching a breakdown in the air conditioning at the House Of Wax. They don't play their own instruments anymore so much as they just randomly flap away at them while three other 'mystery guys' tucked away at the back fill in the blank spots. (exception: Ol' Charlie Watts was keeping his end up.) It was blatant, and it was sad and ludicrous.
I cringed watching old Mick breathlessly trudging around the stage chasing chickens off the porch, yelling lyric fragments when the whim took him. Keith Richards staggering about picking up cigarette butts off the floor and looking for his Vicodin.
There were four of us watching. We sat here, former rockers every one and three of them Stones fans, and do you know what we said as we watched this debacle?
Not 'Gosh, you just gotta admire those Stones, they just keep on going!'
Not 'Wow, they're still SO GOOD!'
No, what we were all saying was 'Mick, keep your shirt on. PLEASE keep your shirt on. God, keep your shirt ON, Mick.'
The only equivalent on the 'painful to watch' scale was the pathetic last years of Frank Sinatra, another man tried in the court of Not Knowing When to Take His Hat and Go and found guilty. Maybe it's a generational thing, but watching the Stones creak through the same farce was somehow more pathetic. A lot of it had to do with Mick. It was just gross. He's still out there flogging the sulky youth -gamin- rough trade thing. With a more attractive man, it would have been a caricature. But as played by an underfed 63 year old frog wearing hiphuggers and a demi-tee........fuck, the indignity.
Old age does not have to be that ugly. Jesus God Almighty.
So no, I was less than impressed with the halftime entertainment.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
BUT I LIKE IT and you have to too.
So I'm driving down the road, the rain and wind rocking my little beater car, and I'm listening to the radio, when what to my wondering ears did appear, but jolly Led Zeppelin playing Whole Lotta Love, and eight tiny reindeer.
Forget everything ever written about how lame and sad it is to listen to the music you liked your senior year- I was 17 again.
And I was ROCKIN THE FUCK OUT.
I pulled up into the parking lot of the store and parked, and I'm still showing John Bonham how its done, man, I'm singing, I'm playing air guitar, and I look up and another car has parked next to me, and the passenger is looking at me with the white showing all the way around her eyes.
'Aw, you poor thing', I thought, 'You probably feel bad because you want to listen to the nice music too.'
So I turned it up.
I have a good stereo. If you'd walked by my little car you'd have seen it was probably whoomping in and out like a paper bag on a hysterics' face. But hey-it was Zep. You understand.
And that is the point, after all-it was Zep. Some things transcend time and fashion. Led Zeppelin is one of those things. Another one is Jimmi Hendrix. In particular, the recording titled 'Hendrix Live'.
I've pillaged and burned my way through TWO MOTHERFUCKING vinyl copies of 'Hendrix Live' and one cd so far. Everyone knows Hendrix is best enjoyed at the 'Ears bleed; small animals die' setting, right? RIGHT.
Nothings changed now that I live out in the country. When the neigbors' cows start giving paisley milk, thats when Hendrix is being played at the right volume. And seriously, it is my job, nay, my responsibility, being a former resident of civilization, to bring culture to these poor toiling rural proles. And what better way, I ask you?
When I lived in Portland Oregon I had a third story apt. at the top of Hall Street (1984 was the address; is that not cool?) I'd get up early Saturday morning, crack a beer, fire up a joint, face my speakers out the window and blast Hendrix' 'StarSpangled Banner' straight down 5th Avenue into downtown, baby. Damn, you could hear those notes rising and bouncing off the buildings and echoing down the streets all the way past Burnside and trailiing off into the distance, and man, it was BEAUTIFUL! All over town, you could hear people doing concert screams. Bums would wave up at me. College kids would start rocking out on the sidewalk. Man, it was fucking glorious.
So if you lived in Portland during the 70's, that was me, and you're welcome.
That was also me on 9th and Pine.
And Republican and Queen Anne in Seattle.
And driving through Wenatchee a couple of years ago.
Forget everything ever written about how lame and sad it is to listen to the music you liked your senior year- I was 17 again.
And I was ROCKIN THE FUCK OUT.
I pulled up into the parking lot of the store and parked, and I'm still showing John Bonham how its done, man, I'm singing, I'm playing air guitar, and I look up and another car has parked next to me, and the passenger is looking at me with the white showing all the way around her eyes.
'Aw, you poor thing', I thought, 'You probably feel bad because you want to listen to the nice music too.'
So I turned it up.
I have a good stereo. If you'd walked by my little car you'd have seen it was probably whoomping in and out like a paper bag on a hysterics' face. But hey-it was Zep. You understand.
And that is the point, after all-it was Zep. Some things transcend time and fashion. Led Zeppelin is one of those things. Another one is Jimmi Hendrix. In particular, the recording titled 'Hendrix Live'.
I've pillaged and burned my way through TWO MOTHERFUCKING vinyl copies of 'Hendrix Live' and one cd so far. Everyone knows Hendrix is best enjoyed at the 'Ears bleed; small animals die' setting, right? RIGHT.
Nothings changed now that I live out in the country. When the neigbors' cows start giving paisley milk, thats when Hendrix is being played at the right volume. And seriously, it is my job, nay, my responsibility, being a former resident of civilization, to bring culture to these poor toiling rural proles. And what better way, I ask you?
When I lived in Portland Oregon I had a third story apt. at the top of Hall Street (1984 was the address; is that not cool?) I'd get up early Saturday morning, crack a beer, fire up a joint, face my speakers out the window and blast Hendrix' 'StarSpangled Banner' straight down 5th Avenue into downtown, baby. Damn, you could hear those notes rising and bouncing off the buildings and echoing down the streets all the way past Burnside and trailiing off into the distance, and man, it was BEAUTIFUL! All over town, you could hear people doing concert screams. Bums would wave up at me. College kids would start rocking out on the sidewalk. Man, it was fucking glorious.
So if you lived in Portland during the 70's, that was me, and you're welcome.
That was also me on 9th and Pine.
And Republican and Queen Anne in Seattle.
And driving through Wenatchee a couple of years ago.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
woooooooo...........the evil 'tree' post!
first published february 3
if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
Does anyone remember Barbara Walters asking poor Kate Hepburn this question? I saw the interview when it first aired and remember thinking "Oh Jesus God, Barbara, what the fuck.' I still don't know what kind of answer she was expecting.
If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
1. Why, A fuzzy tree, Barbara. The one that the itchy man was climbing in the Elvis song.
2. The one that falls on your car and causes you to go off the side of a hill where you die a slow, anonymous death after spending your last pain filled days sucking the dew off the steering wheel and licking up ants.
3. Bitch, listen. I'm Katherine Hepburn. I'll be Katerine Hepburn when this interview is over and I'll be Katherine Hepburn when they lay me in the grave. You, on the other hand, will from this day onward be the dumbshit who asked me what kind of a tree I resembled. *Slaps Barbara Walters briskly across the face several times*
Waiting for the Goonybird and the Stainless Steel Amazon to show up. It's black as the inside of a cow, no stars, no moon, just milk trucks going past. Ah, but no wind either, and best of all, no rain for the moment. The evil dogs are pleased-they hate rain. I keep telling them, they're DOGS, for Gods' sake. Something that licks its own ass has no right to be finicky about anything. Still, it is pretty saturated out in the back yard; they're leaving belly deep dogfoot-sized puddles after every step. Just the right conditions for a big south wind storm to start taking out trees. (later note: do I know my shit or what? i'm fuckin'cosmic, is what i am.)
Last year we finally convinced the city to take down a dying tree that was about to crush our house. This thing had a trunk that my daughter and I together could just barely circle with our arms, and that was stretching to tickie fingers on each side. Problem was it was a softwood; Lombardy poplar. Probably twenty years before somebody had pollarded the fuck out of it so it would limb out instead of growing straight up like a pillar, but in the doing had left the core wood open to the elements; it promptly rotted out. So we had a mature tree in our front yard the size of a small Spanish galleon, no exaggeration-the only thing standing due south between us and Seattle, and the fucker was full of waterlogged cottony slop instead of solid wood. Giant limbs would calve off and shatter in the driveway every time we had a storm from the south-and we get some horrible storms in February, 70mph winds, rain like an ocean wave continuously crashing over the house. (later note: and it happened two cocksucking hours later, baby.) Anyway, it took a couple of years of making ourselves intrusively friendly at city hall, but they finally did it. Wanna visit our tree? It's down at the city compost. The trunk sections are taller than your car. And they're hollow. I was horrified when they were taking it down; I knew it was bad but not that bad.Still, we got action, and it was free. Small town life in the year 2006 aint too bad. When you can roll on in to the halls of government and grab the mayor for a chat wearing trashed gardening shoes and a 'speed racer' t shirt, and he does what you ask, thats just the good life. (Yes, pants too; please.)
if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
Does anyone remember Barbara Walters asking poor Kate Hepburn this question? I saw the interview when it first aired and remember thinking "Oh Jesus God, Barbara, what the fuck.' I still don't know what kind of answer she was expecting.
If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
1. Why, A fuzzy tree, Barbara. The one that the itchy man was climbing in the Elvis song.
2. The one that falls on your car and causes you to go off the side of a hill where you die a slow, anonymous death after spending your last pain filled days sucking the dew off the steering wheel and licking up ants.
3. Bitch, listen. I'm Katherine Hepburn. I'll be Katerine Hepburn when this interview is over and I'll be Katherine Hepburn when they lay me in the grave. You, on the other hand, will from this day onward be the dumbshit who asked me what kind of a tree I resembled. *Slaps Barbara Walters briskly across the face several times*
Waiting for the Goonybird and the Stainless Steel Amazon to show up. It's black as the inside of a cow, no stars, no moon, just milk trucks going past. Ah, but no wind either, and best of all, no rain for the moment. The evil dogs are pleased-they hate rain. I keep telling them, they're DOGS, for Gods' sake. Something that licks its own ass has no right to be finicky about anything. Still, it is pretty saturated out in the back yard; they're leaving belly deep dogfoot-sized puddles after every step. Just the right conditions for a big south wind storm to start taking out trees. (later note: do I know my shit or what? i'm fuckin'cosmic, is what i am.)
Last year we finally convinced the city to take down a dying tree that was about to crush our house. This thing had a trunk that my daughter and I together could just barely circle with our arms, and that was stretching to tickie fingers on each side. Problem was it was a softwood; Lombardy poplar. Probably twenty years before somebody had pollarded the fuck out of it so it would limb out instead of growing straight up like a pillar, but in the doing had left the core wood open to the elements; it promptly rotted out. So we had a mature tree in our front yard the size of a small Spanish galleon, no exaggeration-the only thing standing due south between us and Seattle, and the fucker was full of waterlogged cottony slop instead of solid wood. Giant limbs would calve off and shatter in the driveway every time we had a storm from the south-and we get some horrible storms in February, 70mph winds, rain like an ocean wave continuously crashing over the house. (later note: and it happened two cocksucking hours later, baby.) Anyway, it took a couple of years of making ourselves intrusively friendly at city hall, but they finally did it. Wanna visit our tree? It's down at the city compost. The trunk sections are taller than your car. And they're hollow. I was horrified when they were taking it down; I knew it was bad but not that bad.Still, we got action, and it was free. Small town life in the year 2006 aint too bad. When you can roll on in to the halls of government and grab the mayor for a chat wearing trashed gardening shoes and a 'speed racer' t shirt, and he does what you ask, thats just the good life. (Yes, pants too; please.)
Friday, February 03, 2006
Not a fun one. Might want to skip it.
Bit of a preamble:
Everything in this blog is true. This is where I get to have my full, unedited say for a change. The following is true. It's kind of disgusting, but it's true.
______________
My mom, once she had her hooks in something never let it out of her grasp again. She was a hoarder, of the variety known as 'Diogenes Syndrome'.
Back then it was called 'being a saver' and lots of people who survived the Depression Era did it. I'm certain thats what lie behind why she did it. At least, I'm certain thats one of the reasons. The other is that the woman was simply greedy and gloating. There was nothing deep or pathological about what she did. It all boiled down to a simple schoolyard bully singsong... 'I have it and YOU DON'T.'
The biggest and sickest manifestation of her disorder had to do food. You could buy it, but you couldn't eat it unless she cooked it....and mom was NOT A COOK, so we ate out a lot. This is probably why I survived my first 18 years without any major diet-related illness beside severe anaemia (which cleared up after living on my own for three months- and never came back.)
We had moved to a brand new house in 1964. Of course the contents of the pantry came with us. It stayed with us, too. In fact it's still there, last time I looked (1985).
Over time, she gradually filled up every available kitchen space- and I mean packed the cupboards until the doors wouldn't shut correctly-with food. She then packed a wardrobe-sized pantry the same way. Then asked dad to build her another pantry space in the basement. In a matter of months that too was stuffed to the ceiling with food. Things she had canned and never opened. Institutional containers of vegetables. Jars of capers! Capers, for the love of Christ! We never ate capers! I didn't even know what a caper was until a few years ago!
The contents of the refrigerator were guarded like the Hope Diamond. When things finally went bad...furry, slimy, semiliquid unuseably bad, they were smuggled out of the house under cover of darkness into the outside garbage.
The woman who never baked bought flour by the 20lb sack and let it get grey with shed weevil parts until she would consent to let my dad take it out, screaming in rage the whole while. Sugar turned into a yellow solid mass in the bag. Things went unused for so long inside closed cupboards that when you went to move something it had to be pried free, and left a sticky ring of grime behind it.
She saved bacon grease in a container stuck to the back of the stove until it became so rank you could smell it in the front doorway. Then it too was snuck out of the house in rolls of newspaper.
Obviously, the woman was no housekeeper.
Besides food she also hoarded paper. Things like pamphlets and books and clippings. But although she had stacks and rooms full of that shit, you never found it hidden behind the towels...what you did find was old antique Halloween candy she'd stolen out of my bag. Paper was her avocation, but food was where she veered off into 'Batshit crazy' territory.
Every room of the house had stacks of crap. The dining table was buried under newspapers and junk mail. The living room was a reeking den of stale cigarette smoke, old upholstery, scorched dust, and books. Their two bedrooms? Don't even ask. We had a full daylight basement. Oh yes, it was full, all right. Absolutely full. Not of daylight either.
And nobody saw a thing.
Now my father would reach a certain stage about halfway down the bottle and start bitching about the state of the house... and boy, then the fireworks would start. With a certain justification...his areas, the garage, the outbuildings, the yard, the things only he had anything to do with-those things were beautifully, even compulsively kempt. Outwardly we had the nicest house in the area by far.
But yeah; he'd get his dutch courage up and then it was nothing but ranting and screaming and ranting and screaming.... until I was drug in and ranted and screamed at by both of them for not keeping the house clean.
Which, had I been older than six (when it started in earnest, and from then on until I moved out) would have been somewhat reasonable....
...that is, had I been allowed to clean. Oh, yes. Oh yes!
The sickest manifestation of my mothers' hatred for everything living happened after I moved out in early 1979.
My room was taken over instantly by my mother as what she termed 'a study'. It happened a couple of years after having met the Lord (the way a semi meets a bug) and her pious horseshit had moved from the 'Jesus loves you happy rapture' stage to the 'deep purple, bible thumpin', satan is everywhere' stage.
I had come to visit.
My mom was grinning when she threw open the door to my former room.
My room was filled to the ceiling. 'Well', I thought, 'I expected that.'
But once I took a better look I realized that my former room was now filled to overflowing with religious things.
Posters and holy cards were pinned to every wall.
Bibles-not singular, plural.
Devotional statues, to the point it resembled a Santeria chapel.
Boxes and boxes and boxes of tracts stacked along the walls and out into the room.
Just imagine the most insane, over the top collection of God-related anything all thrown together in one stale little room with a lock on the door and the curtains clothespinned shut.
And topping it off was the Crucifix of Doom.
This was a full on, bleeding Jesus Catholic crucifix, really a rather beautifully executed thing, and that easily enough judged for its being FOUR FEET TALL.
Where does a layperson even find a thing like that?
The corpus was like an illustration out of Greys Anatomy. If you've ever seen a lifesize Mexican waxwork statue of the Agony of Christ, or ever been in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Tijuana, then you know exactly the type of over-the-top, S and M, eerily lifelike - special effects realism I mean.
And there it was in my room. Bleeding. A lot.
I have never.
NEVER.
...been so taken aback in my life. I mean I literally did take a step back in horror when that door came open.
And she laughed at me.
_______________________
When I finally broke off from these people for good in 1985 , one particularly irritating and self- righteous cousin kept after me for years about how I should shut up and play nice, finally saying 'At least do it for the money! They've got to be loaded!' (Yes, he's a class act. They all are.)
Surprise!
There's none left.
My mother was a fanatic, remember. She'd spent every single cent my father made on T.V. preachers.
She looted my bank accounts, so money that was supposed to come to me in trust never did.
She emptied their savings. Not even the house or the property remained in the family. It's all been left to Jesus.
If anyone happens to run into Jesus, would you ask him what he did with it?
Everything in this blog is true. This is where I get to have my full, unedited say for a change. The following is true. It's kind of disgusting, but it's true.
______________
My mom, once she had her hooks in something never let it out of her grasp again. She was a hoarder, of the variety known as 'Diogenes Syndrome'.
Back then it was called 'being a saver' and lots of people who survived the Depression Era did it. I'm certain thats what lie behind why she did it. At least, I'm certain thats one of the reasons. The other is that the woman was simply greedy and gloating. There was nothing deep or pathological about what she did. It all boiled down to a simple schoolyard bully singsong... 'I have it and YOU DON'T.'
The biggest and sickest manifestation of her disorder had to do food. You could buy it, but you couldn't eat it unless she cooked it....and mom was NOT A COOK, so we ate out a lot. This is probably why I survived my first 18 years without any major diet-related illness beside severe anaemia (which cleared up after living on my own for three months- and never came back.)
We had moved to a brand new house in 1964. Of course the contents of the pantry came with us. It stayed with us, too. In fact it's still there, last time I looked (1985).
Over time, she gradually filled up every available kitchen space- and I mean packed the cupboards until the doors wouldn't shut correctly-with food. She then packed a wardrobe-sized pantry the same way. Then asked dad to build her another pantry space in the basement. In a matter of months that too was stuffed to the ceiling with food. Things she had canned and never opened. Institutional containers of vegetables. Jars of capers! Capers, for the love of Christ! We never ate capers! I didn't even know what a caper was until a few years ago!
The contents of the refrigerator were guarded like the Hope Diamond. When things finally went bad...furry, slimy, semiliquid unuseably bad, they were smuggled out of the house under cover of darkness into the outside garbage.
The woman who never baked bought flour by the 20lb sack and let it get grey with shed weevil parts until she would consent to let my dad take it out, screaming in rage the whole while. Sugar turned into a yellow solid mass in the bag. Things went unused for so long inside closed cupboards that when you went to move something it had to be pried free, and left a sticky ring of grime behind it.
She saved bacon grease in a container stuck to the back of the stove until it became so rank you could smell it in the front doorway. Then it too was snuck out of the house in rolls of newspaper.
Obviously, the woman was no housekeeper.
Besides food she also hoarded paper. Things like pamphlets and books and clippings. But although she had stacks and rooms full of that shit, you never found it hidden behind the towels...what you did find was old antique Halloween candy she'd stolen out of my bag. Paper was her avocation, but food was where she veered off into 'Batshit crazy' territory.
Every room of the house had stacks of crap. The dining table was buried under newspapers and junk mail. The living room was a reeking den of stale cigarette smoke, old upholstery, scorched dust, and books. Their two bedrooms? Don't even ask. We had a full daylight basement. Oh yes, it was full, all right. Absolutely full. Not of daylight either.
And nobody saw a thing.
Now my father would reach a certain stage about halfway down the bottle and start bitching about the state of the house... and boy, then the fireworks would start. With a certain justification...his areas, the garage, the outbuildings, the yard, the things only he had anything to do with-those things were beautifully, even compulsively kempt. Outwardly we had the nicest house in the area by far.
But yeah; he'd get his dutch courage up and then it was nothing but ranting and screaming and ranting and screaming.... until I was drug in and ranted and screamed at by both of them for not keeping the house clean.
Which, had I been older than six (when it started in earnest, and from then on until I moved out) would have been somewhat reasonable....
...that is, had I been allowed to clean. Oh, yes. Oh yes!
The sickest manifestation of my mothers' hatred for everything living happened after I moved out in early 1979.
My room was taken over instantly by my mother as what she termed 'a study'. It happened a couple of years after having met the Lord (the way a semi meets a bug) and her pious horseshit had moved from the 'Jesus loves you happy rapture' stage to the 'deep purple, bible thumpin', satan is everywhere' stage.
I had come to visit.
My mom was grinning when she threw open the door to my former room.
My room was filled to the ceiling. 'Well', I thought, 'I expected that.'
But once I took a better look I realized that my former room was now filled to overflowing with religious things.
Posters and holy cards were pinned to every wall.
Bibles-not singular, plural.
Devotional statues, to the point it resembled a Santeria chapel.
Boxes and boxes and boxes of tracts stacked along the walls and out into the room.
Just imagine the most insane, over the top collection of God-related anything all thrown together in one stale little room with a lock on the door and the curtains clothespinned shut.
And topping it off was the Crucifix of Doom.
This was a full on, bleeding Jesus Catholic crucifix, really a rather beautifully executed thing, and that easily enough judged for its being FOUR FEET TALL.
Where does a layperson even find a thing like that?
The corpus was like an illustration out of Greys Anatomy. If you've ever seen a lifesize Mexican waxwork statue of the Agony of Christ, or ever been in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Tijuana, then you know exactly the type of over-the-top, S and M, eerily lifelike - special effects realism I mean.
And there it was in my room. Bleeding. A lot.
I have never.
NEVER.
...been so taken aback in my life. I mean I literally did take a step back in horror when that door came open.
And she laughed at me.
_______________________
When I finally broke off from these people for good in 1985 , one particularly irritating and self- righteous cousin kept after me for years about how I should shut up and play nice, finally saying 'At least do it for the money! They've got to be loaded!' (Yes, he's a class act. They all are.)
Surprise!
There's none left.
My mother was a fanatic, remember. She'd spent every single cent my father made on T.V. preachers.
She looted my bank accounts, so money that was supposed to come to me in trust never did.
She emptied their savings. Not even the house or the property remained in the family. It's all been left to Jesus.
If anyone happens to run into Jesus, would you ask him what he did with it?
Thursday, February 02, 2006
middle aged and sick of bitches
I was casually playing internet roullette yesterday when I came upon a picture of a young Japanese lady in a shower standing on her head -I mean, completely out of the blue, now-that I can only describe as a Recirculating Japanese Mustard Fountain.
I really wish I hadn't.
But I admit I took a good, long look. And in looking I realized that, even though this woman was exposed in the most explicitly proctological manner imaginable, the one molecule of girlyness she had left had lead her to cover her eyes so she couldn't be recognized.
It flat out cracked me up.
No pun intended.
I mean, my grandmother remembers being terribly offended by the guys who would wait by the streetcar stop to cop a glimpse of feminine ankle as the ladies stepped onto the trolley. You'd almost be tempted to say ' Gosh! We really HAVE come a long way since then, haven't we?'
Nah. Bitches be the same, yo.
I was at a product party not terribly long ago. If you're foreign you have no idea what I'm talking about. Think of the term '[product party' as meaning 'an excuse to gather all my friends and co-workers into one room and guilt them into buying shit they don't really need rather than just crassly asking them for a loan because that would be tacky'.
Now the kitchenware parties? Hell, bring them on. In fact, just show me the catalogue, I'll get my checkbook. But I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to invite me to a Yankee Candle show, or why they thought I might need a candle, but I played nice and showed up so the sponsor would get her party gift.
I sat through the sales pitch. I handed round the selections... 'Ooo, look, a gel candle! It looks just like phlegm with a wick in it! Damn thats fucked up! Pass it to the right, yes, please, quickly!....'
About forty-five minutes into the thing my eyes were watering, between sitting tit deep in scented candles and all the fortysomething partygoers bathed in Avon 'roaches die instantly' perfume... fuck, the vinyl flooring was starting to curl. So I retreated to the kitchen.
While I'm helping tray snacks, the hostess introduces me around, and tosses in the phrase, 'She's the hippie Martha Stewart, you know. '
Why no, I didn't.
'I mean, she's just out in the yard just growing flowers and vegetables and taking care of her house and doing embroidery, she just does everything! She even hangs clothes out on a line! I mean, she just makes me sick!' continues my hostess, all grinning and singsong.
This is what's known as a 'for fucks' sake' moment.
You know what; I just let her fall flat. I just couldn't be bothered to put on a show. She pissed on the floor, now she had to stand in it. I let her stand in it a good, long time.
I smiled and made small talk, oh yes, I really do hang my wash out on a line, have a cookie, and made myself a nice big sandwich, paused, casually reached past her, grabbed a couple of beers out of her fridge, stuck them both in my coat pocket and...left.
You see? Age does bring wisdom. Years before I would have fronted her up or keyed her car or done something really uptown like taken a big ol' dog dump in her bathroom and not flushed or something.
This way.....? Ah, this way, I showed class. AND I HAD BEER.
This sort of thing, the female underhanded smiling dis....this my husband simply does not get at all. He can be sitting in the same room and hear the same thing I do and not even realize that a very bitter exchange of insults has been taking place. If you point it out to him he just takes the infuriating attitude 'Oh gosh you must be mistaken you delusional oversensitive little violet, this is one of those women things my father who hated women warned me about' making me want to hurt him violently with a violently violent fucking shovel, violently.
His mother pulls this. Every time I visit.
The man is utterly oblivious.
Our dear friends' aging bitch of a mother pulls this shit repeatedly on the guy's wife, making sure she has a nice, big audience, an audience my husband usually happens to be sitting in.
Just plumb eludes him.
Zoop.
Over his head.
But most maddeningly of all? You explain what happened. You translate. You re-enact it even, carefully, word for word. You lay it all out...
... and he airily dismisses it.
So what? Doesn't matter.
Well it does matter.
But what matters most?
Winning.
And getting BEER.
*Damn, I just went from The Wall, past Aretha Franklin and landed on Ozymandias in one swell foop. Not too fuckin shabby.
I really wish I hadn't.
But I admit I took a good, long look. And in looking I realized that, even though this woman was exposed in the most explicitly proctological manner imaginable, the one molecule of girlyness she had left had lead her to cover her eyes so she couldn't be recognized.
It flat out cracked me up.
No pun intended.
I mean, my grandmother remembers being terribly offended by the guys who would wait by the streetcar stop to cop a glimpse of feminine ankle as the ladies stepped onto the trolley. You'd almost be tempted to say ' Gosh! We really HAVE come a long way since then, haven't we?'
Nah. Bitches be the same, yo.
I was at a product party not terribly long ago. If you're foreign you have no idea what I'm talking about. Think of the term '[product party' as meaning 'an excuse to gather all my friends and co-workers into one room and guilt them into buying shit they don't really need rather than just crassly asking them for a loan because that would be tacky'.
Now the kitchenware parties? Hell, bring them on. In fact, just show me the catalogue, I'll get my checkbook. But I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to invite me to a Yankee Candle show, or why they thought I might need a candle, but I played nice and showed up so the sponsor would get her party gift.
I sat through the sales pitch. I handed round the selections... 'Ooo, look, a gel candle! It looks just like phlegm with a wick in it! Damn thats fucked up! Pass it to the right, yes, please, quickly!....'
About forty-five minutes into the thing my eyes were watering, between sitting tit deep in scented candles and all the fortysomething partygoers bathed in Avon 'roaches die instantly' perfume... fuck, the vinyl flooring was starting to curl. So I retreated to the kitchen.
While I'm helping tray snacks, the hostess introduces me around, and tosses in the phrase, 'She's the hippie Martha Stewart, you know. '
Why no, I didn't.
'I mean, she's just out in the yard just growing flowers and vegetables and taking care of her house and doing embroidery, she just does everything! She even hangs clothes out on a line! I mean, she just makes me sick!' continues my hostess, all grinning and singsong.
This is what's known as a 'for fucks' sake' moment.
You know what; I just let her fall flat. I just couldn't be bothered to put on a show. She pissed on the floor, now she had to stand in it. I let her stand in it a good, long time.
I smiled and made small talk, oh yes, I really do hang my wash out on a line, have a cookie, and made myself a nice big sandwich, paused, casually reached past her, grabbed a couple of beers out of her fridge, stuck them both in my coat pocket and...left.
You see? Age does bring wisdom. Years before I would have fronted her up or keyed her car or done something really uptown like taken a big ol' dog dump in her bathroom and not flushed or something.
This way.....? Ah, this way, I showed class. AND I HAD BEER.
This sort of thing, the female underhanded smiling dis....this my husband simply does not get at all. He can be sitting in the same room and hear the same thing I do and not even realize that a very bitter exchange of insults has been taking place. If you point it out to him he just takes the infuriating attitude 'Oh gosh you must be mistaken you delusional oversensitive little violet, this is one of those women things my father who hated women warned me about' making me want to hurt him violently with a violently violent fucking shovel, violently.
His mother pulls this. Every time I visit.
The man is utterly oblivious.
Our dear friends' aging bitch of a mother pulls this shit repeatedly on the guy's wife, making sure she has a nice, big audience, an audience my husband usually happens to be sitting in.
Just plumb eludes him.
Zoop.
Over his head.
But most maddeningly of all? You explain what happened. You translate. You re-enact it even, carefully, word for word. You lay it all out...
... and he airily dismisses it.
So what? Doesn't matter.
Well it does matter.
But what matters most?
Winning.
And getting BEER.
*Damn, I just went from The Wall, past Aretha Franklin and landed on Ozymandias in one swell foop. Not too fuckin shabby.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Make a note of it
Dates to remember in FEBRUARY:
Monday, February 20...........Dia de las Presidentes, Puerto Rico.
On this day all Puerto Ricans gather together to comemorate the Presidentes' return to their roosts in the picturesque, ruined chapel of Capistrano.
Lets all sing:
o festival é feliz para meu fÃgado, Mariao softener da tela,
meu fritar é doloroso, simcante, o meu pancreas hostilpara
baixo no prado, no poo bitty ittymina,
a frase erectile do yorena
costa atlantic selvagemdo
thee eu canto
Translation:
The festival is happy for my liver, Maria softener of the screen,
mine to fry is painful, yes, sings my pancreas
hostile in the Prado,
in poo bitty mine,
the phrase erectile, phrase erectile, the wild coast atlantic,
of thee I sing.
February 2- Groundhog Day. Nobody knows what this holiday means.
February 28-Mardi Gras. Go to New Orleans, get dog-raping drunk, show your tits, puke, get arrested, go home. Yes, we know how to party here in America.
February 12- Lincolns Birthday. Inventor of the famous childrens building toy. He freed the logs.
February 22-Washingtons Birthday. I live in Washington. Nobody told me about this.
Lets all sing:
Sie sind glücklich, glücklich veil das Vieh,
wenn die Sonne einstellt,
Verzweiflung
Translation:
They are lucky, lucky to veil the cattle, if the sun adjusts,
mocking Patti LaBelle,
forgotten never our Patrimony
those violent socks of despair.
February 24- Dia de la Bandera. Day of The Band. In Mexico, they really, really like Bob Dylan.
February27- Dia del Cevismo. Day of Beer in Brazil.
Conversational Brasilish:
Ach, du Leiber? tentamos alguns de este deliciouso braino. Fiz -me do the corpse.
Have a cevismo? It is quite delicious.
Tente chumpam meu dick se ousa.
Don't mind if I do, Mr. Brazil person. Thank you kindly.
I el-misso a roupa interior por vezes.
No, not at all America person, we encourage drunkenness.
Dar todos os seus dinheiro, sair.
Mr. Brazil person, you are truly a civilized man.
O cheiro como o meu gato., gosto de estrangeiro.
February 14-Washingtons birthday. No wait, St. Valentines day. St Valentine is the patron saint of pawnbrokers. His motto: If you can't sell it, then you just sit on it, 'cause you sure aint' givin' it away.
Words I live by.
February 22- Washingtons Birthday. What did these women do back then, just lie around and breed presidents? Jesus!
February 5- Aniversario de la Constitutio, Mexico. Anniversary of Walking, also known as National Constitution day. How is your constitution doing lately? I know mine is a little under the weather.
That was a political joke! Ha!
February 6 -Waitangi day, New Zealand.
Lets all sing:
Waitangi, waitangi, a laissé le désespoir de blokes de ghoulish!
Les oiseaux de la lumière ont-ils collé rapidement
dans le gril de votre automobile?
notre greatness de foretathers brille sur le newt dans le dell,
ainsi chantez chantent chantent mes enfants,
vont, Biloxi, vont!
Waitangi, waitangi, oh, the desperation of blokes of ghoulish!
The birds of the light have stuck quickly in the grill of the automobile.
Ours, the greatness of forefathers shining on the newt in the dell,
So it sings sing sing my children,
Some other stuff, yeah!
Monday, February 20...........Dia de las Presidentes, Puerto Rico.
On this day all Puerto Ricans gather together to comemorate the Presidentes' return to their roosts in the picturesque, ruined chapel of Capistrano.
Lets all sing:
o festival é feliz para meu fÃgado, Mariao softener da tela,
meu fritar é doloroso, simcante, o meu pancreas hostilpara
baixo no prado, no poo bitty ittymina,
a frase erectile do yorena
costa atlantic selvagemdo
thee eu canto
Translation:
The festival is happy for my liver, Maria softener of the screen,
mine to fry is painful, yes, sings my pancreas
hostile in the Prado,
in poo bitty mine,
the phrase erectile, phrase erectile, the wild coast atlantic,
of thee I sing.
February 2- Groundhog Day. Nobody knows what this holiday means.
February 28-Mardi Gras. Go to New Orleans, get dog-raping drunk, show your tits, puke, get arrested, go home. Yes, we know how to party here in America.
February 12- Lincolns Birthday. Inventor of the famous childrens building toy. He freed the logs.
February 22-Washingtons Birthday. I live in Washington. Nobody told me about this.
Lets all sing:
Sie sind glücklich, glücklich veil das Vieh,
wenn die Sonne einstellt,
Verzweiflung
Translation:
They are lucky, lucky to veil the cattle, if the sun adjusts,
mocking Patti LaBelle,
forgotten never our Patrimony
those violent socks of despair.
February 24- Dia de la Bandera. Day of The Band. In Mexico, they really, really like Bob Dylan.
February27- Dia del Cevismo. Day of Beer in Brazil.
Conversational Brasilish:
Ach, du Leiber? tentamos alguns de este deliciouso braino. Fiz -me do the corpse.
Have a cevismo? It is quite delicious.
Tente chumpam meu dick se ousa.
Don't mind if I do, Mr. Brazil person. Thank you kindly.
I el-misso a roupa interior por vezes.
No, not at all America person, we encourage drunkenness.
Dar todos os seus dinheiro, sair.
Mr. Brazil person, you are truly a civilized man.
O cheiro como o meu gato., gosto de estrangeiro.
February 14-Washingtons birthday. No wait, St. Valentines day. St Valentine is the patron saint of pawnbrokers. His motto: If you can't sell it, then you just sit on it, 'cause you sure aint' givin' it away.
Words I live by.
February 22- Washingtons Birthday. What did these women do back then, just lie around and breed presidents? Jesus!
February 5- Aniversario de la Constitutio, Mexico. Anniversary of Walking, also known as National Constitution day. How is your constitution doing lately? I know mine is a little under the weather.
That was a political joke! Ha!
February 6 -Waitangi day, New Zealand.
Lets all sing:
Waitangi, waitangi, a laissé le désespoir de blokes de ghoulish!
Les oiseaux de la lumière ont-ils collé rapidement
dans le gril de votre automobile?
notre greatness de foretathers brille sur le newt dans le dell,
ainsi chantez chantent chantent mes enfants,
vont, Biloxi, vont!
Waitangi, waitangi, oh, the desperation of blokes of ghoulish!
The birds of the light have stuck quickly in the grill of the automobile.
Ours, the greatness of forefathers shining on the newt in the dell,
So it sings sing sing my children,
Some other stuff, yeah!
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
lord, get me out of this house.
ah shit.
noshit is a girl. and I am a big retard.
go here immediately and read: http://drivingthebustohell.blogspot.com/
note to self - reread 'Our Bodies, Ourselves.' Use highlighter.
I just heard a flock of trumpeter swans go past like a schooner under full sheets. Such a big, beautiful looking bird, the most pure shade of white this side of paradise, yet what an underwhelming song. Not the call to arms you might expect with a name like 'trumpeter' but a vaudville 'frap! nork! nork!' as they go overhead. Not too damn far overhead either, although when you're the size of a compact car and you can fly, people probably get out of your way.
This time of they year they are still paired up and travelling with the young they fledged the past spring. You can tell that the winter has been wearing away at the fabric of their patience with this arrangement. Instead of catering to the every whim of the cygnets the adult swans now chase them off. 'Goddammit! Get off me! You have wings; get a job!'
I remember those days.
As the days lengthen my gardening dna is beginning to act up bad. I notice myself spending more time pacing in front of the picture windows thinking 'Jesus, the yard looks like shit, it just looks like shit. I need to mow. I need to weed. I need to trim. I need to.....'and so it goes. The front beds are just a pathetic disaster. The scene only lacks a bewildered third world child with no drawers chewing on a shoe to complete the squalor. Please, give generously. It takes only pennies a day.
There's a henbit just outside my front window in the middle of my lillies that has been mocking me all winter long and all I can do is just stand and stare at the thing hating it. Now would be the perfect time to go murder it like the wicked scum vegetable that it is, since henbit, as my grandma would put it ' has a Chinaman hanging off the other end' and it's easier to pull chinamen through soft mud than it is to chip them out of the soil later in the year. But if I go out to pull it, I'll sink up to my ankles in the mire as soon as I step off the porch; and it knows that. I hear it at night while I'm watching CSI. 'IIIIIIIm ouuuuuut here.........IIIIIIm groooooowing.......I can reach the latch on the window beHIIIIIIIIIIIIIND youuuuuu.....'
Fuck I need to dig a hole!
No, it REALLY IS that bad. The last place we owned sat on a lot which was pretty small, and as we usually do Rq and I divided it down the middle and flipped a coin to see who gets right and who gets left. My side was so small, and I finally became so desparate that I went to the owner of the house next door and asked if I could garden there as well, because I had flat run out of things to dick with in my yard. Think of it as horticultural colonialism. It worked out pretty well. He got free maintenance and I got to make sure that the people next door didn't trash the fucker up and make my place look bad. Which they probably wouldnt have done, but you never know.
I made that sapsucker BLOOM. I turned it into a perfect, self-maintaining native plant paradise. No of course I didn't take plants from the wild off fresh logging clearcuts where they would have just died anyway and thereby continued the process of native species extinction due to loss of habitat. That would be tresspassing and tresspassing is wrong. Because, boy, if somebody else owns the land, say, the state of Washington, or Weyerhauser, or Japan, well, thats their land and you should just stay right the heck off it.
.....Oh hell yes I broke the law. No justification. Had fun doing it too.
So do I have a problem with the nutty people next door's overgrown tangle? Not at all. There's no trash. Since they tend to stay indoors (talking to the mothership via the static channel) they have a whole, undisturbed, wild mini habitat going on...raccoons, foxes, bats, squirrels, falcons, dang. I kind of feel bad though, since I birdwatch, and it can't be comfortable (for people who already suspect the CIA is using the plumbing to influence their thoughts) to see the neibor lady standing in her window with a pair of binoculars and a notebook. But I think a balance has been struck... My dogs eat all the cat crap in their yard, a free service which I provide out of sheer community spirit; thus, they owe me gratitude for witholding the wrath of the Almighty God Cthulhu and his minions, who long to take them bodily, gibbering and screeching in dawning horror, into the eternal utmost blackness of space where Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos, reigns, amid the hateful whine of unseen flutes urging on the mindless Elder gods capering awkwardly and obscenely in the abyss.
And yes, THATS what happened to the trick-or treaters who egged my car.
noshit is a girl. and I am a big retard.
go here immediately and read: http://drivingthebustohell.blogspot.com/
note to self - reread 'Our Bodies, Ourselves.' Use highlighter.
I just heard a flock of trumpeter swans go past like a schooner under full sheets. Such a big, beautiful looking bird, the most pure shade of white this side of paradise, yet what an underwhelming song. Not the call to arms you might expect with a name like 'trumpeter' but a vaudville 'frap! nork! nork!' as they go overhead. Not too damn far overhead either, although when you're the size of a compact car and you can fly, people probably get out of your way.
This time of they year they are still paired up and travelling with the young they fledged the past spring. You can tell that the winter has been wearing away at the fabric of their patience with this arrangement. Instead of catering to the every whim of the cygnets the adult swans now chase them off. 'Goddammit! Get off me! You have wings; get a job!'
I remember those days.
As the days lengthen my gardening dna is beginning to act up bad. I notice myself spending more time pacing in front of the picture windows thinking 'Jesus, the yard looks like shit, it just looks like shit. I need to mow. I need to weed. I need to trim. I need to.....'and so it goes. The front beds are just a pathetic disaster. The scene only lacks a bewildered third world child with no drawers chewing on a shoe to complete the squalor. Please, give generously. It takes only pennies a day.
There's a henbit just outside my front window in the middle of my lillies that has been mocking me all winter long and all I can do is just stand and stare at the thing hating it. Now would be the perfect time to go murder it like the wicked scum vegetable that it is, since henbit, as my grandma would put it ' has a Chinaman hanging off the other end' and it's easier to pull chinamen through soft mud than it is to chip them out of the soil later in the year. But if I go out to pull it, I'll sink up to my ankles in the mire as soon as I step off the porch; and it knows that. I hear it at night while I'm watching CSI. 'IIIIIIIm ouuuuuut here.........IIIIIIm groooooowing.......I can reach the latch on the window beHIIIIIIIIIIIIIND youuuuuu.....'
Fuck I need to dig a hole!
No, it REALLY IS that bad. The last place we owned sat on a lot which was pretty small, and as we usually do Rq and I divided it down the middle and flipped a coin to see who gets right and who gets left. My side was so small, and I finally became so desparate that I went to the owner of the house next door and asked if I could garden there as well, because I had flat run out of things to dick with in my yard. Think of it as horticultural colonialism. It worked out pretty well. He got free maintenance and I got to make sure that the people next door didn't trash the fucker up and make my place look bad. Which they probably wouldnt have done, but you never know.
I made that sapsucker BLOOM. I turned it into a perfect, self-maintaining native plant paradise. No of course I didn't take plants from the wild off fresh logging clearcuts where they would have just died anyway and thereby continued the process of native species extinction due to loss of habitat. That would be tresspassing and tresspassing is wrong. Because, boy, if somebody else owns the land, say, the state of Washington, or Weyerhauser, or Japan, well, thats their land and you should just stay right the heck off it.
.....Oh hell yes I broke the law. No justification. Had fun doing it too.
So do I have a problem with the nutty people next door's overgrown tangle? Not at all. There's no trash. Since they tend to stay indoors (talking to the mothership via the static channel) they have a whole, undisturbed, wild mini habitat going on...raccoons, foxes, bats, squirrels, falcons, dang. I kind of feel bad though, since I birdwatch, and it can't be comfortable (for people who already suspect the CIA is using the plumbing to influence their thoughts) to see the neibor lady standing in her window with a pair of binoculars and a notebook. But I think a balance has been struck... My dogs eat all the cat crap in their yard, a free service which I provide out of sheer community spirit; thus, they owe me gratitude for witholding the wrath of the Almighty God Cthulhu and his minions, who long to take them bodily, gibbering and screeching in dawning horror, into the eternal utmost blackness of space where Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos, reigns, amid the hateful whine of unseen flutes urging on the mindless Elder gods capering awkwardly and obscenely in the abyss.
And yes, THATS what happened to the trick-or treaters who egged my car.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Call me 'puskahosu', will you?
I got kind of curious after writing the entry about my grandads funeral, so I went a-roaming on the World Wide Web. And check out what I found...grandad was IOOF!!
International Order of Odd Fellows, that is. Sort of a Catholics and workingmans' budget version of the Masonic Lodge. Their main thing was disaster relief funds for their members and burial insurance; kind of like the Grange* does. Of course, the Grange is also a quasi-Masonic thingie; a rural one. Those darned old quasi-Masonic thingies, them.
Anywho, thats how grandad rated the funeral from Verdi!
Grandad was a guy who never learned English-or so he'd have you believe- a drunk, a wife beater and a pig, who worked in the woods for months at a time. Rather than suffer the disgrace of putting his son out to neibors, because that would be asking for charity, left him instead in an orphanage. Although to hear it told it sounded more like one of those lockers in the bus station. He'd drop off my father and then come back around when the mood lead him and 'redeem' him.
And did this repeatedly.
And sometimes forgot him there for years at a time.
Reflect: this was not the orphanage out of 'Annie'. This was something out of Dickens, if Dickens had been into child porn.
My memories of my grandfather consist of him being old, drinking coffee out of a saucer, drinking Old Crow hot with spoon of sugar, dropping his upper plate to freak me out (and you'd freak too... old man spit googling around in a toothlss pink maw is not pretty), and either smacking me or tripping me with his cane whenever I came into reach.
I would like to express here my sincere gratitude to the International Order of Odd Fellows for giving me such a vivid and lasting memory of this vicious mans' demise.
And for encasing him in not one, not two, but three separate containers-a steel casket, a steel vault and a cement enrobement.
That oughta hold him.
*I was actually SCOUTED by the Grange. I seriously was. They wanted me to join but I balked at the whole 'beer stein full of piss' thing. Thats' not clean.
International Order of Odd Fellows, that is. Sort of a Catholics and workingmans' budget version of the Masonic Lodge. Their main thing was disaster relief funds for their members and burial insurance; kind of like the Grange* does. Of course, the Grange is also a quasi-Masonic thingie; a rural one. Those darned old quasi-Masonic thingies, them.
Anywho, thats how grandad rated the funeral from Verdi!
Grandad was a guy who never learned English-or so he'd have you believe- a drunk, a wife beater and a pig, who worked in the woods for months at a time. Rather than suffer the disgrace of putting his son out to neibors, because that would be asking for charity, left him instead in an orphanage. Although to hear it told it sounded more like one of those lockers in the bus station. He'd drop off my father and then come back around when the mood lead him and 'redeem' him.
And did this repeatedly.
And sometimes forgot him there for years at a time.
Reflect: this was not the orphanage out of 'Annie'. This was something out of Dickens, if Dickens had been into child porn.
My memories of my grandfather consist of him being old, drinking coffee out of a saucer, drinking Old Crow hot with spoon of sugar, dropping his upper plate to freak me out (and you'd freak too... old man spit googling around in a toothlss pink maw is not pretty), and either smacking me or tripping me with his cane whenever I came into reach.
I would like to express here my sincere gratitude to the International Order of Odd Fellows for giving me such a vivid and lasting memory of this vicious mans' demise.
And for encasing him in not one, not two, but three separate containers-a steel casket, a steel vault and a cement enrobement.
That oughta hold him.
*I was actually SCOUTED by the Grange. I seriously was. They wanted me to join but I balked at the whole 'beer stein full of piss' thing. Thats' not clean.
Don't bother looking for this on their website.
Do you live in a foreign country? Have you suddenly found yourself suffering from a need to laugh at how fucked up Americans are? Then this post is for you, sugar tit.
I was released long enough this past Sunday to do some shopping and visit a garage sale or two. Because I live in a tiny little town, and am a bad hippie and don't care about my carbon footprint, I head to the nearest shopping-sized town, which is Lynden. Yeah, it's the town where the Lynden Fryers grocery store chickens come from ( although I have yet to locate the processing plant or the chicken farms. Maybe it's all done by Magic Dutchmen. Like the Keebler elves, only repressed and filled with hate.)
Once my shopping is done I hit the garage sales. And let's not kid ourselves: this is the real reason I'm here.
A lot of people with more money than sense live in Lynden. They throw the best garage sales in history. Something goes out of style or they've worn it in public more than three times, out it goes. New stuff. Kids stuff. Furniture, water heaters, pallets of shingles, cryogenic semen storage cannisters (oh yes); hell, an AIRPLANE-dig it! at a garage sale! They don't care, man! And you better stay the damn fuckedy hell off my hunting grounds, buckwheat, cuz I've pissed on all the posts. MY TERRITORY. I OWN GUNS.
'K. Anyway.
Lynden is known here in Whatcom County for its very vocal, active, megamonstertruck-type Christian conservatives. They range from super separatist homeschoolers living completely off the grid, to mere Real Estate Christians, but besides being hardcore Christians all, they share two things:
1. They are the most thoughtlessly acquisitive people on the planet and,
2. They ARE their brothers keeper, baby. They honestly will come up to your door and point out the unseemly number of liquor bottles in your recycle bin. True story, really happened. Man, we are lucky to have people like this, right? People up there on their higher moral ground who take mercy on us sinners and take the time to show us the error of our ways and such, like so many pink little Imitations of Christ?
Here's their dirty secret, though.
THEY'RE KLAN.
As in 'Ku Klux'.
Back in the bad old days the Klan was big news out this way. In the newspapers and everything. They used to represent HUGE in the Lynden 4h of July parades. Let's ignore the fact that back in the 1920's there may have been two black people in the entirety of Whatcom County, ok?...and I guarantee you there wasn't a damn one in Lynden. Yet there they were, keeping their fellow citizens safe from the tsunami of rape-crazed darkies threeatening all that was good in America or whatever the hell they were high on.
Hell, they even ran a float. Perched atop the float was that years' Miss Klan, a pretty cornfed Dutch girl, waving and smiling, wearing a 'Miss Klan' sash and all. Following that came all the local Klan members...nice old dairy farmers and local businessmen and Lady's Christian Aid Society wives AND THEIR CHILDREN in their dress whites, pointy hoods and all.
This is a stone fact. Anyone who wants to can go to the Photographic Archive of Whatcom County, housed in the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham Washington, and view the stacks of photographs and newspaper articles documenting this fact. I used to volunteer there. I helped catalogue them.
It went on for years. Then suddenly, poof! gone! No more Miss Klan! No more float! No more parade! What Klan? What parade? Never happened! Not here!
Well, what do you expect, I guess. I applaud them for even having a sense of shame about it, however money motivated. But the thing that bothered me for the longest time was, what the hell was a chapter of the Klan doing at all in the Godforsaken, howling, Injun-infested wilderness of Whatcom Fucking County? It doesn't make any sense. Back then the scapegoats 'round these parts wuz the Injuns. You tossed them a bottle of whiskey and problem solved. And as for culture, forget it. Nobody in Lynden was from the South; they were all from Dutchpersonsylvania, which is somewhere in Holland. We are so far north of south that you simply cannot go any further away from the South than here and still be in America. You end up in Canada, and nobody wants that.
Ah, but then I started attending garage sales there in Lynden. And what I found gave me the answer.
I think the churches brought it.
And that it was a conscious, deliberate, church-sanctioned doctrine of hatred.
What evidence do I have to support this wild allegation?
Say Granny pops her clogs and the kids hold an estate sale. Lets say it's on beautiful, tree-lined 17th Street, right in the center of Lynden, although it could just as easily be out on a nearby farm.
You go to any one of these estate sales and you will find boxes, honey, boxes and boxes filled with tracts bearing titles such as 'What the Jews Have in Mind for You' and 'How the Catholics are Buying America' and 'God Wants the Races Separate'! See, and those are just the titles that come immediatly to mind.
I see this shit at EVERY SINGLE ESTATE SALE I GO TO IN LYNDEN!
So judging from the dates on these things, back until not too terribly long ago-like the 70's-you could go to church in Lynden, and after services were over you could stand in the foyer, chatting with your pastor, and put a couple three of these in your purse on the way out the door.
Son of a Bitch.
This Klan bullshit lies deep in the mindset of the Lynden Old Guard. Although their actions reveal as much, let's look at the dates involved just for kicks. This reveals the fact that, more than likely, their parents were marching in these parades. Some of their grandmothers and mothers and sisters and aunts were 'Miss Klan.' Very possibly they were marching too, on their little stubby legs, right alongside the float. Now they belong to the Chamber of Commerce and the Christian Businessmens' Association and City Hall.
Yes...I live 6 miles away from this motherfucker. It ain't far enough. This brand of cultural leprosy taints the entire area. Having grown up with a Born-
again religious fanatic and blue-ribbon hypocrite I can smell this shit stinking by moonlight. But I tolerate it. Why? Because I am just a wonderful awesome human being like that.
And they DO throw a hell of a garage sale.
I was released long enough this past Sunday to do some shopping and visit a garage sale or two. Because I live in a tiny little town, and am a bad hippie and don't care about my carbon footprint, I head to the nearest shopping-sized town, which is Lynden. Yeah, it's the town where the Lynden Fryers grocery store chickens come from ( although I have yet to locate the processing plant or the chicken farms. Maybe it's all done by Magic Dutchmen. Like the Keebler elves, only repressed and filled with hate.)
Once my shopping is done I hit the garage sales. And let's not kid ourselves: this is the real reason I'm here.
A lot of people with more money than sense live in Lynden. They throw the best garage sales in history. Something goes out of style or they've worn it in public more than three times, out it goes. New stuff. Kids stuff. Furniture, water heaters, pallets of shingles, cryogenic semen storage cannisters (oh yes); hell, an AIRPLANE-dig it! at a garage sale! They don't care, man! And you better stay the damn fuckedy hell off my hunting grounds, buckwheat, cuz I've pissed on all the posts. MY TERRITORY. I OWN GUNS.
'K. Anyway.
Lynden is known here in Whatcom County for its very vocal, active, megamonstertruck-type Christian conservatives. They range from super separatist homeschoolers living completely off the grid, to mere Real Estate Christians, but besides being hardcore Christians all, they share two things:
1. They are the most thoughtlessly acquisitive people on the planet and,
2. They ARE their brothers keeper, baby. They honestly will come up to your door and point out the unseemly number of liquor bottles in your recycle bin. True story, really happened. Man, we are lucky to have people like this, right? People up there on their higher moral ground who take mercy on us sinners and take the time to show us the error of our ways and such, like so many pink little Imitations of Christ?
Here's their dirty secret, though.
THEY'RE KLAN.
As in 'Ku Klux'.
Back in the bad old days the Klan was big news out this way. In the newspapers and everything. They used to represent HUGE in the Lynden 4h of July parades. Let's ignore the fact that back in the 1920's there may have been two black people in the entirety of Whatcom County, ok?...and I guarantee you there wasn't a damn one in Lynden. Yet there they were, keeping their fellow citizens safe from the tsunami of rape-crazed darkies threeatening all that was good in America or whatever the hell they were high on.
Hell, they even ran a float. Perched atop the float was that years' Miss Klan, a pretty cornfed Dutch girl, waving and smiling, wearing a 'Miss Klan' sash and all. Following that came all the local Klan members...nice old dairy farmers and local businessmen and Lady's Christian Aid Society wives AND THEIR CHILDREN in their dress whites, pointy hoods and all.
This is a stone fact. Anyone who wants to can go to the Photographic Archive of Whatcom County, housed in the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham Washington, and view the stacks of photographs and newspaper articles documenting this fact. I used to volunteer there. I helped catalogue them.
It went on for years. Then suddenly, poof! gone! No more Miss Klan! No more float! No more parade! What Klan? What parade? Never happened! Not here!
Well, what do you expect, I guess. I applaud them for even having a sense of shame about it, however money motivated. But the thing that bothered me for the longest time was, what the hell was a chapter of the Klan doing at all in the Godforsaken, howling, Injun-infested wilderness of Whatcom Fucking County? It doesn't make any sense. Back then the scapegoats 'round these parts wuz the Injuns. You tossed them a bottle of whiskey and problem solved. And as for culture, forget it. Nobody in Lynden was from the South; they were all from Dutchpersonsylvania, which is somewhere in Holland. We are so far north of south that you simply cannot go any further away from the South than here and still be in America. You end up in Canada, and nobody wants that.
Ah, but then I started attending garage sales there in Lynden. And what I found gave me the answer.
I think the churches brought it.
And that it was a conscious, deliberate, church-sanctioned doctrine of hatred.
What evidence do I have to support this wild allegation?
Say Granny pops her clogs and the kids hold an estate sale. Lets say it's on beautiful, tree-lined 17th Street, right in the center of Lynden, although it could just as easily be out on a nearby farm.
You go to any one of these estate sales and you will find boxes, honey, boxes and boxes filled with tracts bearing titles such as 'What the Jews Have in Mind for You' and 'How the Catholics are Buying America' and 'God Wants the Races Separate'! See, and those are just the titles that come immediatly to mind.
I see this shit at EVERY SINGLE ESTATE SALE I GO TO IN LYNDEN!
So judging from the dates on these things, back until not too terribly long ago-like the 70's-you could go to church in Lynden, and after services were over you could stand in the foyer, chatting with your pastor, and put a couple three of these in your purse on the way out the door.
Son of a Bitch.
This Klan bullshit lies deep in the mindset of the Lynden Old Guard. Although their actions reveal as much, let's look at the dates involved just for kicks. This reveals the fact that, more than likely, their parents were marching in these parades. Some of their grandmothers and mothers and sisters and aunts were 'Miss Klan.' Very possibly they were marching too, on their little stubby legs, right alongside the float. Now they belong to the Chamber of Commerce and the Christian Businessmens' Association and City Hall.
Yes...I live 6 miles away from this motherfucker. It ain't far enough. This brand of cultural leprosy taints the entire area. Having grown up with a Born-
again religious fanatic and blue-ribbon hypocrite I can smell this shit stinking by moonlight. But I tolerate it. Why? Because I am just a wonderful awesome human being like that.
And they DO throw a hell of a garage sale.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
The alzheimers is taking root
Geeze, before I forget, Here:
http://carrieouoftown.blogspot.com/
and here:
http://collagemama.blogspot.com/2006/01/rooney-rants.html#comments
Two women nearly as cool as my daughter. Good writing, interesting lives!
also here:
http://drivingthebustohell.blogspot.com/
a wacky brrrrrriticher person who has the brain of a duck, you know.
Oh, so is my laughing humor! Not really. He's GOOD.
And I think he's a wacky new zeeeeeeelandiche person, anyway. I could be wrong.
http://carrieouoftown.blogspot.com/
and here:
http://collagemama.blogspot.com/2006/01/rooney-rants.html#comments
Two women nearly as cool as my daughter. Good writing, interesting lives!
also here:
http://drivingthebustohell.blogspot.com/
a wacky brrrrrriticher person who has the brain of a duck, you know.
Oh, so is my laughing humor! Not really. He's GOOD.
And I think he's a wacky new zeeeeeeelandiche person, anyway. I could be wrong.
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