Scorpion Brown Maddened By The Human Bombs

Occasionally rambling around old literature and art you run into these strange 'B' list legends that nobody's heard of, like Pyramus and Thisbe. Who the fuck; Pyramus? Thisbe?
I thought, well, fine, Pyramus and Thisbe. I'll have a look round the internet and see what falls out da calabash.

This is the first thing that popped up on the search, which I incidentally misspelled.
I have no idea what is going on here.
We have a nicely dressed young lady, wholly unaware of the tornado approaching from the upper right. She seems to have found a transvestite passed out next to her ugly fountain, which a flying baby roosts atop...fly, baby! fly! That thing sprays water out the top every five minutes and it's been four minutes already!
Meanwhile the lady is busy worrying about the transvestite. 'Oh crap' she thinks. 'Are we insured?'





Now this is a sad, little known episide from the life of Benny Hill. Seems he called the local Shriners Lodge to come and install a satellite dish and the poor man was struck by lightning, God evidently offended by the brevity of his tunic. Benny rushed outside in a dexadrine fueled frenzy and stuffed a breadknife through him. 'Manoona!! he shouted, slapping a little bald guy on the head.
I kind of like the pointy hat. But not even the pointy hat was enough to deter God's wrath.
It seldom is.





Ah hell, Thisbe.
You did it again, didn't you.
Your ear's stuck in the crack in the wall.
Dammit, how many times do we have to tell you; if the monkey tells you to do something, its probably not a good idea?











PIGPIIIIIIIIIIILE!



Ok. One tit is hanging out and BLOOD IS SHOOTING OUT OF HER CHEST. She is about to execute a full body block on what to all appearances is a dead guy...and we don't know how dead, either.
The next frame in this cartoon could be kinda gooey.

Time to consult Bullfinch.

All right, I'm back.
So apparently this is the ancient basis for the story of Romeo and Juliette. Shakespeares' version at least had the advantage of having been revised to frame a true story by a master; Bullfinch takes this poor defenseless legend and Victorians it all up till its just hard to read without urping up a little in your mouth. Here is the link. Use a basin. Make sure to wipe up if you splatter: http://www.syc.k12.pa.us/~sms/zart/mythology/bulfinch/fables/bull310.html
The thing that always bugged me about Romeo and Juliet is the same thing that bothered David Merrick...why in the hell didn't they take a couple seconds to MAKE SURE that the other one was dead instead of spazzing out and killing themselves like a couple of dipshits?




At least here Thisbe is giving it the old college try.
With one tit hanging out.*
Always do the stick test. If you poke it with a stick and it moves, it's not dead. But if it doesn't move, try an eye.

These things are important.



This is honestly called 'Pyramis and Thisbe II'. It is the winner of the coveted 'Plumb fucking eludes me' award.

'Jesus CHRIST, what kind of dog is that?'
'A mixed breed, effendi. Get it? It has two heads? Thats a little central asian joke.'
'Your humor arouses me. Let me satiate my uncircumcized lusts upon your heathen hindquarters.'


Here is a kid gooping around with a dead fish.
See? this is what it was like before they invented television. All we had were Legos and salmon. It was HARD.
Hey, it has as much to do with Pyramus and Thisbe as the dog picture did.







So what important lessons do we take away from 'Pyramus and Thisbe'?
1. Flying babies without diapers are a REALLY REALLY BAD IDEA.
2. God never did like Mary Quant
3. Monkeys will tell you stupid things
4. Always carry a pointy stick
5. Radioactive isotopes and dogs do not mix.

...Nope, I don't feel any smarter either.




*and and ugly fountain. and a flying baby.

blue blossoms

As far as garden perennials go, this spring has been practically ideal. The sky has been overcast to a greater or lesser degree and the air and soil temperature bathtub-warm. No wind to speak of, and the only rain has been gentle and brief. Walking outside is like entering a commercial greenhouse, full of the smell of growing plants.

The slugs are EVERYWHERE.

I carry a rose shears with me everytime I do my rounds and I halve them where they lay. Disgusting icky nasty slugs, DIE! DIE! As far as I can tell thats the only service they provide; is supplying me with a safe and socially sanctioned method of playing out my revenge fantasies about GW. I used to stab a stick through them and heave them over the fence, but sometimes there's a back spray, and thats kinda ill. I've also thrown them out on the sidewalk, but that's kinda ill for passers-by. Plus they re-hydrate in the rain and lay there like wrinkled, blackened, severed fingers oozing guck. Stylish!

Throwing them out on the street works, unless you hit a car accidentally and it slows down and you have to duck down until they speed up again and hope they didn't see you. To the driver of the green Aerostar on South Pass road; I'm sorry. You were supposed to run over it, not collide with it.

I have a rosa floribunda chinensis by my front door that is so covered with perfect, perfect tiny blossoms that the wands are laying over like a willow. I had to wire it back to the porch railing and the perfume cloud that operation stirred up almost made up for being savaged by the thorns. But unlike former years of damp springs, this year the leaves are absolutely clean. The only blemishes are hail spots; unavoidable. I was dreading powdery mildew but thankfully no such thing has happened! Soapy water clears that up, but you have to drench the entire surface of the plant and the ground beneath it; and I swear that rosebush reaches out and GRABS for you.

My easter lilly is as tall as me. 5ft 5in. No lie.

I have a ceanothus 'Victoria' by my front room window that finally finished blooming. Every year I look at it and consider cutting it down because it is not the most attractive plant in the world....not the ugliest either, but all it does is sit there and have leaves most of the year. I like a little more pizzaz. Oh, but in the spring it comes covered with small cones of Prussian blue, and the baby bumblebees come to it in their hundreds.

I love bumblebees. We have about three or four different types here, and they are all funny. First thing in the spring the queen bumbles emerge from the dirt, full of fat and baby bees, and helicopter around looking for food. In another couple of weeks the baby bumbles emerge and start working. Just a tiny wee ball of fluff dozily rambling around the flowers. Sometimes they pack themselves so full of pollen they can't fly off. Sometimes they have takeoff collisions and they run into each other. They'll stop to repack their little saddlebags and all the while the other little bee is picking up the fragments and packing her self up as tight as she can, and they go around in a circle robbing each other and dropping pollen, but all at a very lazy rate.

I think thats what I like best about bumbles...they aren't full of frantic scrabbly itchy activity like most insects. They arent spiny and poky, but fuzzy and round, and they hum. If you annoy them, a bumble will not attack you, but it will fly around and around your head like a grumpy bird. If you happen to jostle one, it will lay on its side and stick its leg out, like 'whoa, dude, mellow out. It's cool.'

In the morning you find sleeping bumbles in the cups of large flowers, blanketed by petals and dotted with jewels of dew. They are so greedy that the evening catches them unaware and they fall asleep in the midst of their banquet. You can roll them out into your hand and warm them up, and they will fly away in a tiny mist of water, dew from their bodies sprayed away by their buzzing wings.

I love to watch them get lost in a papaver orientale. The center of the blossom is a maribou stole of pollen bearing structures, velvety black and opulent. The bumbles evidently find quite a bounty of nectar in the blossom, and they roam around and around, dipping and drinking and tripping and falling, rolling in the pollen, sliding down the velvet petals and roistering around inside this ridiculously luxurious, decadent Art Nouveau setting like fat puppies in a drawing room.

Thats why I keep the ceanothus. If my bumbles like it, then I like it.

The Death Beast Helmet Crab Rouge Pays A Visit!

Last night the curtains in the kitchen fell down. Someone (a yummy biker, bold and true) was kind enough to gather them aside in a neat bunch and place them out of the way so that the expert(read: the only person who cares about how things look past simply being clean and presentable) could re-hang them. So, after drinking a couple of cups of coffee I got up on a chair with a hammer and pliers and proceeded to discover that the curtains had been replaced on the rod backwards and cattywompus. Of course I made this discovery once the bracket had been nailed in place. Of course.
And standing up there juggling with the sections of expandable rod and the curtain rings and the curtain itself and random bug carcasses and oh look, there's a big skanky cobweb up here behind the freezer, I had a sudden, sweeping seizure of red RAGE.
Oh goody! I'm premenstrual. I'm standing on a chair, I'm using hand tools and I'm premenstrual.
DEEEEEEEP breath.
When I was younger and my pineal was in charge, this wasn't such a big gory deal. Yeah, sometimes I got moodier than usual (and to be honest, 'usual' was pretty fucking moody) but sometimes I didn't. Total crapshoot. I never got greasy or zitty and I never blobbed out full of water like SpongeBob. Now, thanks to the miracle of HRT, I experience all three, plus the requisite five days of, um, yeah. Like clockwork.
A Clockwork Orange, to be precise.
What the fuck is the point of menopause? Speaking in terms of evolution, that is.
I am a 46 year old woman. Childbearing time is over. (yay!) so fine. The faucet turns off and I get grey hair. So why should that take going on five fricken years? Puberty only took one. Tops. Boobs (woomp! poomp!) then the rest of it. (ewwwww.)
You have to realize here that without HRT I would be 3/4 bald by now and probably dead, because everyone in town would have come up to the house some years back carrying torches and pulled me screaming from the bosom of my family, tied me to the flagpole in front of city hall and set me on FIRE. I am a very very unpleasant woman INDEED, running under my own steam, left to the whims of natural physical processes.
Now, I am not altogether joking when I say this: could this have been what sparked the witch hunts? Really. Say there was a few good harvests in there...Moderate weather, not too many wars, no real pestilence to speak of...And you get all these spare older women living somewhat past the usual span of years, making everyone's' life a living hell, running around, setting shit on fire, digging holes, knitting, screaming at passers by from their porches, throwing bottles full of pee at the horses and smacking people? Because quite honestly that's what I'd be doing.
Can you imagine the kind of killing machine an army of healthy, buff menopausal women would be?
Damn.
Hundreds upon hundreds of women lining the hilltops.
Gunning the engines of their sedans, astride their Harleys, armed with Molotov cocktails, good insurance, German potato salad, napalm, and HK mp5's?
Imagine them hovering overhead in helicopters, arguing at the top of their lungs about who gets to drive, weeping, screaming, dropping pro-life republicans and plastic milkjugs full of botulism on the enemy?
Imagine the charge of the vanguard, several thousand naked crying women painted blue, tits a' flappin, hurtling down the hillside firing UN Barrett Light 50's fitted with supercooled sustained-repeating systems? (the antimateriel armament of the discriminating middle aged woman)
Imagine the rearguard action, women with their false teeth buried in the throats of the fallen, taking scalps, bashing the dying repeatedly with baseball bats, Maltese and chihuahuas and shih tzus all tearing at the dead and yapping in unspeakable cacophony?
Imagine them dragging the officers back to camp for interrogation...The greasy polaroids...The family dog nobody can remember the name of...The red eyes... The recounting of obscure relationships between people you never heard of and don't care about over and over and over again until the blood runs from their eyes and ears and they writhe on the ground and spill their guts no no no please I can't hear about how Carmel and Nadine fouled up Maria's wedding dress again just please MAKE IT STOP! GODPLEASEMAKEITSTOOOOOOOOP!
Deep breath.
This, my friends, is why god created tequila. Lets all go have some RIGHT NOW.

The Monster Blue Bulldog's On A Rampage

Well, the results are in.
-Dyson vacuum: This issue aroused passions similar to those seen in mating pirahnna. The Dyson is either a gift from a loving god or the very tool of satan. Connoisseurs of carpet cleanliness spoke out with equal vehemence from either side of the issue. An impasse was reached. Thanks. Meanwhile, my Hoover dies by slow degrees, howling like one of those howling things that howls really loudly and is annoying and makes the neibors dogs bark.
-Opera-length fist fucking: only one person was actually rat enough to come out with a solid answer on this one. Unfortunately photographic evidence reveals his opinion to be nothing more that the wistful wish of a man in search of a country; a country of greasy buff guys in sweatpants.*
-Silos: Grain storage.
-Boobs: Wherever you want. Go ahead and get all crazy with 'em.
-Donny Rumbelow: Made up.
And finally:
-Do your insides turn into an undifferentiated bag of sloshing offal from repeated indulgence in the practice of opera-length fist fucking?: Nobody knows (or will admit to it, anyway.)
I say yes. I think that after a certain number of years you have to be really careful of what you eat because you could get gas, and be trying to impress your buddies by belching really loud and end up wearing several loops of pulsing gut on your chest. Or even worse, that same could come shooting out the opposite end after a few bowls of chili, and wouldn't that look nice poking out your trouser leg in the elevator at work?
So be careful. Don't go spelunking up past the wrist. Its just unnecessary.
_______________________________________________

The playboy of the western world has decided to sell his house and move into assisted living!
Hooray!
You never saw a bunch of fat people move so damn quick. Man, we sprang into action like the Fantastic four. I was the really stretchy guy. I thought I would have to make the real estate arrangements, but it turns out the estate administrator has had an agent waiting in the wings...And he's a good one too; known around town and quite successful. Given the current strong real estate market and the great location and excellent condition of my father in laws' house, this could turn out ot be relatively painless! Lord, I sure hope so.

This latest hospital visit of his was necessitated by a trip down the basement stairs to do the laundry.
That's all it took. Nothing bad happened, thank God, but the man very nearly didn't make it back UP the stairs. In the meantime he blew out a bunch of capillaries in his lungs and landed in the emergency room. It was only luck that made a friend drop in for a visit just then and FORCE him to go to the hospital.

He had a caregiver for housekeeping and personal assistance. She was hired to do the laundry. She offered to do the laundry. She BEGGED to do the laundry. (Everyone offers to do the laundry for my father in law when they come to visit; it's like part of the greeting: Hi, Willie, need any laundry?') But no. Apparently all he allowed the caregiver to do was light housekeeping. We all expected that. So in choosing to prove, ONCE AGAIN, that he really didn't need any help, he almost killed himself.

Now, if this were a recent state of affairs, these efforts to retain self- sufficiency could be seen as heartbreaking and brave.
It isn't. They aren't
It's been going on for TEN SOLID YEARS. Without improvement. Quite the opposite.
You bet I'm pissed off.

I have sworn to my daughter that I will not do this to her. Now, it's somewhat easier for me to make this statement than it would be for a lot of people; I've had health issues all my life so I'm used to accepting the inevitable. Anyway, I have resolved that, when I get to the point where I am not able to do for myself I am going to RECOGNIZE THAT FACT and pretend to accept it gracefully with all my might. Because this fight for independence crap, after a certain point it doesn't impress anyone; it doesn't inspire admiration; it only creates dread.
Age doesn't go backwards. If there's one damn thing I've learned from all this, that's the one thing.
So remember. Nobody gets out of here alive.
And no fisting past the wrist.



* I understand he is shortly to be made supreme leader of such a country and is accepting applications for Royal Cabana boy, Imperial tanning emollient applicator and Executive in Charge of wearing a net thong.

questions

note: the urgent appeal that appeared here but a few moments ago has magically become a non-issue.! and speaking of rectification, see the following below.
*ahem* as it were.



1. Who and or what is Donny Rumbelow? And why does CrustyBaker think he/she/looks like a villain from the year 2000? This is messing with me. I looked all over the Web and I can't find it/ him/they anywhere.
2. Fist fucking: how is it humanly possible for one average-sized male to accept another average male's clenched fist and forearm ALL THE WAY UP TO THE ELBOW? (give me your email and I will sidebar you the site.*) Normal physiology would seem to preclude this, yet there it is. And it doesn't seem to be photoshopped either. I can't help but think' if that guy had a coronary right now, he could receive cardiac massage internally'. At least thats how it looks.
3. Does anyone have a Dyson vaccuum cleaner? If so, how are you liking it? Are there issues with things getting pulled past the collection chamber and getting stuck in the fan?
4.What exactly were silos used to store? grain? hay? sileage? sea monkeys? It looks like a pretty inefficient way to store plant material; seems like it would turn into a big pillar of seeping ick. Although most of the ones I see anymore are no longer in use...didn't you always think, when you were a kid, 'that would make an excellent house!'
5. Gay women and chubby bears: when you are slow dancing, and you are the same height as your partner, where do the boobs go? Do you sort of dovetail them(which makes you face a funny direction and gets uncomfortably hot...also a certain danger of someone getting a nipple tweaked in a sticky armpit-ew) or dance tit to tit (which makes you hold each other at arms length depending on the amount of boobage) or do you just wait out the slow ones? Or mosh to every song and to hell with it?
6. Ok. Now, using a flat chair, a tape measure I dug out of my purse and the questing spirit of the early scientific pioneers, I determined that the distance from my *ahem* solemn mystical egress to the center of my sternum is 14 inches, subtracting 2 inches from the total for compressed butt flub. From the inside of my elbow to the top of my curled fist is 11 1/2 inches, flub included. The human heart varies anywhere from three to five inches in length. Any way you look at it, there's a whole new insight into the figure of speech 'warming the cockles of my heart'.
Presuming this ('opera length' fist fucking) really happens, then, wouldn't your insides eventually come unmoored?

I had to have suspension piercing explained to me a number of times before I got it, too.


these are real questions. if you don't believe me, just visit the stainless steel amazon and ask her (link from: neurotica). she'll be mortified.



*unless i have reason to believe that you are underage. then i will laugh! and I will say in your face 'Ha ha! you bad faker person who has tried to trick me into giving you the address to a naughty bottom sex site! go ask your mother!'

rule brittania!!!!

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Well darlings, I'm telling you now.
When I started doing this I have no idea that I would end up with readers, nor that most of my readers would be flying the Union Jack. How this happened I have no idea. But I am not complaining! Not in the least!
Y'all folks are NUTS.
Unlike many Americans, I am not a slavering Anglophile. I mean, I like Angles, I just didn't particularly phile you any more wildly than I phile any other bunch; thus not stimulating my salivary glands to excess and causing me to go through a lot of t-shirts.
You do have some cool things, though... I like Stonehenge, thats excellent...and I like all the cool king and queen stuff with the swords and velvet and farthingales and beheadings and whatnot, right up until Queen 'Wet Blanket' Victoria. Boy, she really took all the fun out of being royal, didn't she?
I also like Led Zeppelin quite a bit.
MONTY PYTHON.
I like that we are mainly in the same climate zone so I can follow British gardening guides without wanting to set something on fire. You folks are some gardening geniuses. Be PROUD! Stand TALL!
Marmalade.
Led Zeppelin.
You make the Triumph and the Norton, both of which are badass.
Rolls Royce; also pretty wicked.
Chuck Windsor, for all his sans-trousers tomfoolery. He is a powerful advocate of organic agriculture, and I liked his book on the project at Highgate quite a bit. I don't know about over there, but over here he's made a difference, believe it or not.
Rowan Atkinson
John Cleese (He will be mine. I will bear his children.)
The language. It's a good language, as languages go. I try and use some every day.
Led Zeppelin.

Now, this means all you in the U.K., and all you transplants too, like my top coon NoShit Sherlock. And I'm counting all you Canadians. Now ok, Canookies, before you get all peeved and start heaving cheese, YOU HAVE NEIL YOUNG.
Neil Young is GOD ALMIGHTY.
Did I say that about anyone in Britain? No. So just calm yer shit down.


Actually, I love you all. All of you. Everywhere. Even in Wisconsin. Even if you are not British. (That just means you have to try a little harder.)
Now quit asking me for money.

susannah and the elders

Here is a story that draws out some of the best and worst in human nature Best, because it is a great story about honor, and worst because the story was used as just another excuse for rich men to hang pictures of lumpy naked woman all over the place.
Honestly, can you imagine having this staring you in the eye every morning while you ate your medieval cheerios? I mean different standards of beauty or not, that would get REALLY OLD REALLY FAST.

Anyway, here is poor Susannah. All she wanted to do was take a freaking bath, ok? She lived in the Middle East and it was HOT.
And here we have Rembrandt; master of the lumpy naked broad. Even though there is nothing prurient about his poor frightened Susannah I still wouldn't want this hanging in the breakfast nook.










Here's Tweedle old and Tweedle older. The Jews in exile appointed them to act as judges. So how do these assholes repay that trust? By hanging out in the underbrush whacking off while they watch their hosts' wife take a bath.
This is my favorite picture of the lot of them. Not only are the elders clearly up to no good, but the one is actively trying to suborn us by enlisting our help.
'Shhhh! We're gonna rape this broad! Don't let on we're here!"
That, and the relative modesty with which Susannah is portrayed, takes this out of the realm of bare ass and into the realm of what this moment in the story is about-betrayal and corruption. Well done.
Still wouldn't hang it in my house.





Here we have an *ahem* less that reluctant Susannah, her rather intrusively curious King Charles spaniel, a nice bowl of fruit and a few yards of brocade slung about.

The old guy in her armpit is just about ready to take a bite out of something. I won't say what, but he has a pretty good grip on her ankle there. I'm just saying. Good heavens, man, have some dignity.

Swear to God this is those same three nasty, out of shape ugly people who model bdsm suspension harnesses in the popups. That I've heard about. And not seen.

Really.



Now this? This is just wallpaper with tits.




Look like Susannah is knee deep in wet cement, doesn't it? Acually she is. First book of Quik-crete, 3:56:7 "..and Susannah was trapped like a trap in a trap, yea, she was as Jimmy Hoffa who was made a goalpost at the Meadowlands, with vile wrinklies to her right and her left who would grope her with a vile groping."



What the hell. This is just uncalled for; this nasty old fuck grabbing a hunk of boob here.

Tell you what, would you try this on someone built like Susannah? She has thighs like a fullback. She could kung fu the piss out of this old guy.

There should be more kung fu in the Bible.





A pitched towel battle ensues. They thwack away at each other for awhile to no avail. Suddenly a man appears. His fly is open. Nobody knows where to look.

Now you gotta admit that kung fu would work way better here. Susannah could whip up on their butts with her Big Jiggly fu.

Come to think of it, remember that giant motor-driven antitank gun in 'Predator'?
Oh, you betcha.
Dirty old fuck flavored confetti.

There should be more machine guns in the Bible, too.




Let a girl douche in peace, for heavens sake!
Here sits Susanna, in the wings of the Paris Opera house back by the scenery flats, spritzing her hoo-ha with some Perrier, just enjoying a private moment of personal hygiene after a hearty meal of lard out of the can...when all of a sudden who should come busting out of the orchestra pit but Shylock for the love of Mike. Buddy, you are SO lost.
Once again we see that Susannah is an afficianado of the toy breeds. Ill bet you next time she goes for an Alsatian.
'Wow! You guys got treats? Wanna play fetch? I can roll over! Come on! Fetch the Ball! I love Ball! Got a frisbee? I can play frisbee!'



'Excuse me, miss? Does the Ardenwald bus come by here?'
"Shhhhh! Wilsons Warbler! Three o'clock! Mating plumage!"
"No really, miss, we need to deliver this dolphin to the vet."
" Shh! Your aquatic dog is of no consequence to me. Only the warblers. And Scientology."

This is why I no longer ride public transportation.

"Pardon me, madame, but your head is inordinately small and I should like to collect it for my cabinet of curiosities. Quickly Jensen, administer the chloroform!"

"No! No! Get back! My head! Miiiiiiiiiiiine!"

" Hey, wait, are you naked under here? Damn! Come check this out, Jensen!""

'So listen honey, if-
wha...what the f-
oh man,did you just...?"
" No, dude... I thought you...man thats bad."
" I didnt...phoo, geeze, what'd you have for lunch, dude?"
" I'm telling you I didnt do it. You'd have known it if I did it."
" Sure as fuck wasn't me."
" Well, It wasn't me either."
" Well I-damn."



Everyone misses the point. The point is, this poor womans goose was cooked.
These two men had literally all the power in the world over her. She was told to let them rape her without making an outcry; if she did not, they assured her, they would drag her reputation through the mud and have her executed.
And Susannah still said no.
She said no.
There is something very important being said here about power, and weakness, and honor.
With that one word the whole thing changes.
I think it's excellent.

test to destruction

Not a fun one. Might want to skip it.
My father in law is in the hospital again.
The god I was taught about in catholic school is exactly the type of hateful bastard who would torment a helpless old man like this. Therefore, in this instance, and in this context, I believe in that god. He's proven himself.

What point is there in this? My father in law never gets a fucking break. It's always something, and just as he's recovering from one blow he gets knocked back another couple of steps further. It's sadistic. He's dying by inches...only to be given a little glimmer of hope,only to have that dashed. Over and over again.
I wish he would die. I do not say that out of hate; I say that out of love.
The idiots, criminals and cowards who made up the bulk of the adults I was acquainted with as a child always used to say 'well, now, you know, god never gives us anything that we can't handle'.
I see. that explains it.
Yes, that god has certainly proven himself.

In the real world, there is nothing I can do.
Age does not scare me. Illness and helplessness do. The combination of the three is just about more than I can tolerate.

My grandmother suffered a great deal of abuse and neglect in her final years. She injured herself falling down a flight of stairs and was dumped into a rest home that made the front pages of the local newspaper as being one of the FIVE WORST FACILITIES IN THE STATE OF OREGON. It was not lack of money that kept her there; it was sons who could not be bothered to take care of someone who was female, old and sick. Oh, and not really their mother, just some gold digging woman my grandfather had married in his old age. So she didn't count, you see. And that was the excuse for letting her lay in filth, with dried food on her face, with bedsores so vile that there was exposed pelvic bone, racked up on tranquilizers to keep her from screaming and 'making a fuss.'

Negotiations were discussed with the staff...should they keep her going? Or should they 'let her go'?
Oh, heavens no...let her go? That would be WRONG.

They actually discussed this. My parents, my uncles and aunts, discussed this with the staff, every visit, in front of me, in front of my grandmother. I was ten.

She laid there with a broken hip that refused to mend. Steel pins were needed to hold it together, and the incisions made for their insertion never healed. She laid there for years, constantly running a fever from low-grade infection until it destroyed her mind, neglected, unwashed, untended.

There were three sons sharing the expense. Three prosperous sons. Nobody had the character to make a decision about her care. Nobody wanted to take any blame. That was obviously a far worse thing than letting an old woman die in pain.

If I came within arms reach of my grandmother she would latch on to my arm so tight she would leave bruises, and she would repeat 'I want to go home, take me home, let me go' over and over again. The staff and my family would have to remove her hands by force. Then I would get hustled out into the hallway and scolded for upsetting my grandmother. And screamed at all the way home.
Because this was more acceptable than admitting to themselves the relief they felt at having an excuse to leave, you see.

I showed the newspaper to my parents when the article about the Stanley Home came out. I was screamed at. There was a scene. Both my parents rapidly became incoherent with rage. ' You dont know nothin about it! Thats none of your business!' Two people in their early fifties with flecks of foam, literally, gathering at the corners of their mouths, spittle flying, purple faced with rage, screaming noises at a ten year old child.
I was ten. I was the only one who cared, and I was ten. And I was absolutely powerless. There was nothing I could do.

So which god is responsible for this?

Despite my anger at religion I really do try to do the right thing. I believe that stuff about 'love one another.' I agonised over the commandment 'honor thy parents'. In the case of my parents 'honoring' meant keeping my family safe from them and making sure they had an estate administrator before I bid them and their venom adieu. It meant not pressing charges. It meant letting the entire episode come to an end, refusing to feed it, and repairing the damage.

In the case of my husbands father it seems to consist of watching him die by slow degrees and buying him a load of groceries every now and then.
I really hate this.

The Crazed Jiro Attacks Komyoji

Taking the easy way out today at rancho FirstNations with a meme I stole from...hell, I forget. But if you recognize your meme, I'll be glad to credit you; just leave a comment saying ' Hey, that's my meme, you dirty stealer woman!'
I gardened my heinie off yesterday -not just pretty words; my caboose is no longer the jiggly junk it was a while back!-anyway I am tired. Well, that and they hayed off the fields on either side of me while all that was going on and now I am producing snottal resources at a truly alarming rate. Fortunately it's going to rain again, so, yeah. Heres yer stinkin meme.


I am highly allergic to certain grass and tree pollens. Always a helpful trait for a gardener to posess.

I want a new nose.

I wish someone would give me a new nose. I am accepting nose donations at the address below. But it has to be a nice nose, not one of those big purple turd noses.

I hate my nose.

I love my yummy biker. He is allergic too and keeping me company in my misery.

I miss what I aim for a lot less frequently since I developed allergies because I get a lot of target practice hucking snotty tissues at the wastepaper basket. Score!

I fear , at least in my dreams, being stuck in a situation where I have to use an indescribably horrible public restroom. And given my imagination I have dreamed up some doozies.

I hear there are several 'stand up to pee' aids for women on the market. These have not made it into my dreams yet.

I wonder...drawing a blank on this one. Need coffee. Will return. Ok. Nope, still drawing a blank on this one.

I regret not having handled certain situations in my youth more aggressively. There are certain somebodies out there who really should have had their tires cut and their coffee dosed with nasal spray. And their heads set on fire and their fields sown with salt. Repeatedly.

I am not in bad shape for a woman my age. Not at all.

I dance a lot, mainly with my grandson, although sometimes for the amusement and edification of passing milk truck drivers. Usually I am wearing clothes. I love to dance! You get some good old Motown kicking and I MUST SHAKE MY ASS!!!!!!!

I sing nonsense songs to my dogs to the tune of old Don Ho hits. I am in the habit of making up spur of the moment nonsense songs about whatever...'Iron Man' by Black Sabbath and "Down in the Meadow in the Iddy Biddy Poo' are favorite melodies to desecrate.

I cry a lot less than I used to.

I am not .....drawing another blank. Ok. I am not as shy as I used to be. Now I just get bored easily. I'd rather fake interest than fake being comfortable anyway.

I make with my hands all kinds of things. I think most people do, unless they're like that one blonde lady in 'Freaks' who has no arms and drinks beer with her feet. That was a big honkin glass of beer, too. I was impressed.

I write a lot. Always have.

I confuse other people a lot. Always have.

I should grab myself some breakfast.

I start my lawnmower using starting fluid. Starting fluid is made of ether. The possibilities strive to make themselves realities, but I fight it. I fight it. Although I own a lighter. Yes, I do.

I finish my gardening work with a great feeling of personal satisfaction.
And apparently I am finished with this too. O tay!

NOTE TO ALL MY DARLINGS:

(AND FROBISHER)
For the past few days Blogger has been fucking with my head and trying my patience. I cannot post pictures without resorting to Byzantine methods. I cannot access some blogs. Half the time I cannot access my own. Others I may read but cannot comment upon. Others, comments show but verifications taunt me a second and even a third time before I am reduced to a gibbering, weeping heap randomly stabbing at the 'enter' button. God only knows how todays entry is going to look.
Todays entry is below this one. Scroll down to see it.
Send me an email and tell me how it looks. are you getting code? closed frames? do comments open? can you post? let me know. I intend to send Blogger admin a blistering missive detailing my woes!!!!
redace1960@yahoo.com

Now go!!!
VVVV

what does the future hold in store for YOU?

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

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

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

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









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







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

Their answer left much to be desired.


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOLUTION FOR POSTING PICTURES ON YOUR BLOG

HAVING TROUBLE POSTING PICTURES TODAY?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh-huh, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

one tired hippobottomous (but tanned nicely!)

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

Pink Tiger's Amusement Park Assault

IS THIS NOT THE ROCKINEST PICTURE OF NOAHS ARK EVER?

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






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

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






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



The other two got to divide the world between them.












Explains so much, doesn't it?


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


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













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

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

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

more quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

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

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

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

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

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

NOAH AND THE ARK

THE ARK ( contemporary photograph )


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

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








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




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

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

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

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

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





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



That was when the pirates attacked.







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

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




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








And Chaos reigned supreme.





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





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

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

Three days later Shep returned with a hemerrhoid doughnut .

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


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

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

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

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

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