part one in a series

Lets take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
(note: this a.m. i spellchecked and changed the family names. oops!)

Waaay back in the late 'Seventies, after I left The Dishrag, I found myself temporarily homeless. I moved back to Milwaukie where I stayed for awhile at a former boyfriends house until that arrangement upset his mother.
Now mommy dearest lived in a separate house, and sonny boy was 22; still, she ruled the roost. But rather than simply ask me to leave, she did a very strange and rather creepy thing... she started following me to the bus stop every morning and pointedly ignoring me. And by this I mean following me at a distance of about five steps, up a number of blocks to the top of the street and standing nearly shoulder to shoulder with me, waiting for the bus...with her back turned the whole time. Making sure she sat in a seat near me. Looking away whenever I glanced in her direction.
She had no idea how badly this backfired. That is, if her object was to keep me off sonny boy.

Fortunately (or not, read on and you decide) the people next door to where I was staying were in the process of remodelling a nearby house. They offered it to me as a place to stay, free of charge, so that they could continue to claim it as occupied and keep the fire insurance rates low.
I was happy to take them up on this. I moved into the abandoned house, set up a mattress on the floor and a little bedside table for my tequila, ashtray, lighter and asthma inhaler, and I was all set. I had my unemployment check (my boss fired me after he found out that I'd left my boyfriend and wasn't looking like giving him nexties) so I could buy sandwiches. It was June and the weather was fine. The place had a roof, some clean places on the floor where the previous resident's appliances had been, no electricity and no heat.
There was no toilet; but there was a hole in the floor where the toilet had been. Not a problem unless I had to get rid of some beer in the middle of the night. After splashing my feet a couple times I soon became an expert markswoman, and remain so to this day.
Everyone has hidden talents. Sometimes it takes a certain set of circumstances to bring them to the fore.

And life was actually pretty good for awhile. At least, I wasn't living with a junkie and being threatened with corkscrews anymore. So yeah.

But that couldn't last, of course. I was expected to help with the remodel,and that meant having contact with the family.
The family themselves were named Meadows. Remember that name, kids. (or not because I just changed it. woops.)

Mr. Meadows was a milkman. He delivered for Dairygold in North Portland, where he spent a good part of his shift committing acts of commercial miscegenation and eating pork feet. Every morning I would meet with him and his sons around their breakfast table, where he'd pour us a pitcher of screwdrivers and line out what the remodelling project was for the day, and brag about hookers competing with each other for his business, and berate his sons for being lazy and useless and not worth feeding, and question me, leering like a chimp, about my recent past as a 'shack-up job' as he termed it, and other warm family subjects like that.
Because he was Satan. Satan the Milkman.

Son the youngest was named, and I kid thee not, Kelvin.
Kelvin.
Kelvin was exactly what you'd expect with a name like Kelvin... a 22 year old bachelor who lived at home and worked nights as a janitor in a grade school (eew). His bedroom was in the garage. The front portion of the garage, partitioned off with some plywood. (still had the garage door; when it would rain the water would wash a puddle full of earthworms underneath it) His room was exactly what you'd expect, too; tinfoil on the windows, black mold growing up the walls, full of unwashed wads of laundry, science fiction paperbacks, and old t-shirts stuck to the floor with jizz.

Kelvin had the worst case of night terrors I have ever seen, and I've seen quite a bit in my time. He could fall asleep almost instantly, anywhere he was, and in a matter of minutes he would be screaming and fighting ghosts. One morning, as we were sitting around the breakfast table discussing panelling and passing a bottle of Midori, Kelvin wandered off to sleep on the couch. Five minutes later he was bucking some couple of feet off the cushions in full arching convulsions, , eyes bugged out, screaming, punching himself and yelling "Motherfucker!' He ended on the floor and rolled halfway across the room. Never woke up.
I didn't know whether to shit or fly south. Everyone else ignored him. Ignored him COMPLETELY.

One night in particular I recall him tearfully begging me to go out with him. His endgame very nearly melted my resolve, too..when he said, with utter sincerity, in a hurt puppy tone "Well, you're doing it with everyone else on the block, I don't understand why you won't let me go too!"
Kelvin...how you say...lacked game.

So finally, one night he tried to 'kidnap' me, presumably to have his evil way with my tender flesh. He was supposed to be giving me a ride into Portland when he suddenly turned off the man road, smiled at me and started to head out into the county. I burnt him on the wrist with my cigarette and told him to quit screwing around and take me into town.
And he did. Happy as a clam.

Ever read 'Myra Breckenridge?'

Years later I realized that I gave him a moment right then that he's probably spent the rest of his life trying to recreate.

To be perfectly honest, I was not screwing everyone else in the neighborhood. Just his older brother and two other guys.

Now his older brother was an interesting kind of guy. Interesting, friendly, kind, sociable, extremely intelligent and a stone fucking lunatic.
He quit a job working at a meat cutting plant 'because there was too much blue light'. He quit a job in a refrigeration manufacturing plant because there was 'too much emr and it was giving him epilepsy.' He quit his job with the Navy by dumping a bucket full of sand into the ships' engine and then reporting himself to the officer on watch, still holding the bucket, because 'he knew it was time.' He claimed to have been handed the reins of the universe by God while walking over a bridge in Singapore. Explains a lot, doesn't it? The universe is presently run by a man in Oregon whom I had to teach to wear suspenders so his pants didn't fall down around his ankles every time he got up from a chair. Because he wouldn't wear a belt; it cut off his chi.
I wish I was lying.
And yes, I was bonking him. Enjoyed every minute, too. Guy was nuttier than a tree full of squirrels, but he had a great 'can-do' attitude.
He firmly believed that he had to protect me from the evil forces wielded by his mother, who was trying to 'posses' me and 'vampirize my aura'. He caught her fingering a pair of earrings I had left on the table one morning, and when I went looking for them he presented them to me in a cup of salt water. In order to 'purge the bad vibes' from them before I put them back on, as he explained. Hell, I thanked him. I'd met momma.

Her name was Sunflower. I cannot adequately describe this woman and I've had years to think about it, too. I'm gonna try.
Imagine Betty White, playing the character Sue-Ann Nivens on the Mary Tyler Moore show. Cheerful to the point of mania, syrup-sweet, smarmy, utterly insincere. Now blow her up like a big, red, manic balloon and feed her a bunch of LSD and caffeine. Dress her in a flowered dirndl, rolled hose, and a pair of harlequin glasses and give her lines like "You kids don't know what I have to go through! Your father makes me take my teeth out for him!" and have her interject them into casual conversation.

The woman would say and do whatever came into her head, like a two year old. she had no boundaries and no sense of what was or wasn't appropriate.
One evening I walked into the kitchen and caught her eating out of a pot of ramen soup I had made for myself. Dip, slurp, spoon back in the pot, slurp, drip, back in the soup. No 'may I' no nothing. I put it in a bowl for her, and made myself another pot.
And dumped a third of a bottle of Tabasco sauce into it.
And went to the bathroom.
About a minute later I heard a screech from the kitchen and the pot hit the sink.
'You shouldn't do that! she scolded, ramen everywhere. 'That much Tabasco isn't good for you!'
Yeah, you either, huh? After that everything I made in that kitchen had Tabasco in it. And it's a good thing because I'd catch her huffing whatever I had on the stove just to check and wrinkling her nose. I learned to keep the bottle of Tabasco out on the table where she could see it and told her I was part Mexican.

Then she decided she didn't like my hat-a nice grey cashmere flatcap I kept my hair up under. One morning I came into the living room to see the last of the bill crumbling away in the fireplace. 'Oh, I threw it in the fire. I didn't like it on you,' she cheerfully said. A 20 dollar hat. In 1970's dollars, too.
Well, alrighty, then.
I decided I didn't like her mail.
For the rest of the time I associated with them, she never received another piece of mail. As long as it had her name on it, into the fire it went, flick, flick, flick. Birthday cards, bank statements, magazines, paychecks-oh yes. You bet. Up the chimney like Good Saint Nick.

She had a repulsive and bizarre habit of grabbing you by the arm suddenly and talking to you, for no apparent reason. Her grip would get tighter, she would pull you in closer, and whatever she was talking about would gradually turn into some kind of strange, confidential rambling story about God knows what, as anything like logic or subject was completely overtaken by whining, or weird, sexualized free-association. It sounded like it was about something. The intonation was there in the right places. But you'd wrest yourself away and think about what you'd just heard and it was just...freaky weird.

But now and then I would catch her looking at me with the oddest-for her- expression of calculation on her face; her usual look being one of utter simpering vacancy, like a drunk person at closing time. That's what convinced me that there was probably a really good reason why her son thought she had demons that did her bidding. Not that she did, but that she was way less sick than she acted, and she played it because she plain got a kick out of being disgusting and weird.

One night I came in to take a shower. Took the shower. Turned off the shower.
Gracious, what was that odd sound?
The Mr. and Mrs. were doing the hibbity-bibbity.
And not just the hibbity bibbity.
The pounding the walls, bouncing the bed frame off the floor, slapping, squitting, grunting hibbity bibbity.
Now the fact that those two had...relations...at ALL was wrong. Wrong, and sick. That the two of them kept up a steady commentary throughout in what honestly sounded like character voices...Like Edward G. Robinson fucking the daylights out of Billie Burke to be specific, I swear to God. THAT was Blue Velvet times Videodrome.
Little Caesar banging away on Glinda the Witch. Squit, smack, thump, yip, Oh daddy.
This went on forEVER.
And I was trapped.
The bathroom opened right across from their bedroom, and their door was hanging WIDE OPEN.
I turned on the shower again. I flushed the toilet about six or seven times. I ran the water in the sink. I put my fingers in my ears and put a bathmat over my head.
Finally I just decided fuck it; I pried the screen out and climbed out the bathroom window with my hair still in a towel.

Middle of the night. Teenage girl with a towel on her head wandering around town barefoot. Walked back to the abandoned house, sat on the stoop and drank tequila. And smoked. I coundn't quite bring myself to laugh, but I couldn't quite keep from laughing. I'd get chuckling, and then gross out and stop. And then do it all over again.
Middle of the night, sitting there with a pink flowered towel on my head, slashing booze straight out of the bottle, chain smoking and giggling to myself.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was beginning to fit in.
__________________________



Oh yes, there's more.

Book Meme!

book wishlist meme, janked from Billy

1. The White Goddess
It made my brain hurt. What a book! There were simply too many new ideas and theories to digest before I had to return it! (are they good ideas and theories? that I don't know; I could never finish it.) I need to own it - in paperback, used- so I can stick it full of postits and spill shit on it.

2. The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath, Arkham hardcover edition
I have it in paperback and I've just read it to death. I forget how many copies that makes now.
Arkham House puts out a beautiful edition, and how perfect and appropriate that I own my favorite Lovecraft under the marque that was started in his honor! I already own three early Arkham editions of Lovecraft, and every move I've ever made they travelled on my lap wrapped in a cloth.

3. The Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci
I've read the quatrecentennial set five times. Because they're library books, so have lots people who smoke, eat jelly sandwiches, own cats and have small children with crayons. I no longer feel like sharing.

4. Albrecht Durer, His Complete Works
Because I heart Albrecht Durer.

5. The Bauhaus and Early Modernism
Has a good beat; you can dance to it.

6. Ancient Textiles, Methods of Construction, Design and Embellishment
I just need it, ok? I do.

7. Annotated Margery Kempe
I have the commentary 'Life of a Medieval Woman' but that's not the same as owning the origional, is it? Margery Kempe was a nutjob. Her writing is referenced all over the place by people I suspect didn't realize that they were taking the words of a woman with a severe mental illness as gospel. I need this.

8. " " Hildegaard of Bingen
Nutjob lite, with purdy pichers.

9. The Story of Alchemy and Early Chemistry
Fantastic book. Superior book. The last time I checked it out, the thing fell apart in my hands; the binding just crumbled. I killed it. I need one of my own to mistreat.


Tag yourself; I'm out of pinecones. Stupid ducks.

chasing babies

As the Stainless Steel Amazon's fiance, the Poor Bastard, has taken on more responsibilities (YAY FOR HIM!) I see the Goonybird less. I had him 24/7 in his infancy, and during the days after that, then two days a week, and now one evening each week. The less I see him, the faster he grows up.

A little boy is entirely new territory for me. I had no brothers, I raised no sons. The only little boys I knew about were two young cousins, who were not entirely human so I don't think that counts. Unfortunately, they made a very deep impression on me. Consequently I always search my grandson for developing feral traits, which is both unfair and stupid. But I still do it.

Following the instructions to the letter, my cousin's parents had money, owned a house, car and boat, and mom stayed home to raise her kids (that last probably a large part of why they ended up being psychotic, rabid weasels.)

The Goonybird's mommy rents, works outside the home and attends college...and sometimes other people watch her child. The Goonybird is not a rabid weasel. In fact he does not resemble any member of the mustelid family. He is a sunny, happy little guy. He still eats stuff off the carpet, but now he avoids things that obviously aren't food, like tacks and paper.

The difference is, the Goonybird has an excellent mommy who loves him. The weasels had a couple of raving drunks who didn't even like themselves.
____________________________

Now that the Goonybird is three years old the baby traits are fading away. I admit; I miss that. He was such a cute little chuckle duck, and way more portable too. He is becoming an independent little person of his own now, and he's heavier and kicks harder. But like his mother before him, he is becoming a very strange little person. Just in a different way.

His mommy liked to play with lettuce. I could crack off a leaf of iceberg lettuce, hand it to her and she'd derive hours of entertainment from it. Wear it on her head, lie on the floor with it on her face, sticking it to the TV screen, slap herself on the tummy with it, stick it down the back of her diaper; she was a happy camper. The Goonybird is not interested in lettuce. The Goonybird would rather cook firetrucks in his Teflon frying pan with pepper and water.

His mommy was mildly intrigued by the contents of her potty but was content to slosh them around and sing them songs.
The Goonybird went through an intense 'brown period' , during which he explored feces as an expressive medium. He developed a preference for vinyl flooring as a support, having experimented variously with the carpet, the television screen, and the inside of the tub.

His mommy was perfectly content to wander around crusted with drool, partially masticated carrot, fuzz, hair, lint, stray candy bar wrappers and bits of string. She had distinct adhesive qualities, in fact. Instead of vacuuming you could just roll her across the rug.

The Goonybird has an absolute COW if he makes an accidental mess. His entire world falls apart; he starts screaming for a towel. Not that he won't paint his head green in art class; he is his mothers son in that respect. But that's intentional. That's different.

His mommy was born with an Imelda Marcos gene. She and her father got along like cats and dogs a lot of the time, but send the two of them shoe shopping and they were of one heart and one purpose.
The Goonybird loves his barn boots. Them, and only them. He will take a fit if he cannot wear his barn boots. There is no other footwear in his world than the barn boots.
The last time I gave him a bath he went right to the barn boots, grabbed the towel for a cape and marched around the house naked announcing "Flying man! Flying man!'
Apparently you cannot fight crime without barn boots.

bitch bitch bitch.

I'm here...just kinda burnt out. Been chasing around after old men and babies.

Sometimes being the Playboy of the Western Worlds' gal Friday is a pain in the ass.Mainly because I have to drive all over hells half acre when I run errands for him in addition to the sixty mile round trip, and the man always has an 'Oh, by the way'. Then there's the doctors' appointments that are never, never running on time, and the getting in and out of the car whang dang doodle... open his door, get him in, fold up the walker, carry it around to the trunk, open the trunk, rassle the walker into the trunk, close the trunk, close his door, run around and open the drivers side door. Lordy, it gets old. And when I have to dodge traffic, weather and winos it's even more fun.

Most of the time I'm happy to do this because I like to get out of the house too, and the man's simply good company. We have a blast together. But sometimes, dammit, I simply do not feel like leaving the house or socializing. When I'm in this mood, dealing with a man who says 'Huh?' or 'Excuse me?' every SINGLE time you say something because he doesn't feel like getting a hearing aid makes me want to put him in the trunk and drive down ten miles of rough road. Him and his goddamn walker. And his 'oh by the way.'

I know I am blessed in so many ways by knowing him. He's someone that I would have been buddies with anyway, and that he's my husband's father is icing on the cake.

I think the reason I'm mad is because all his doctors just wrote him off. After all those tests and all that horseshit, every single apointment I've taken him to lately is another doctor telling him 'There's nothing else we can do. Go home and die.'

His neurologist showed him the results of his catscan, showing progressive narrowing of the nerve channels to the brain. Told him 'You're too old to operate on. Bye now!'

His heart specialist handed him a printout of his cardiogram, which shows every artery blocked to a greater or lesser degree, and some of them in several locations. All near the heart. The guy told him 'You could have a stroke at any time. You might have ten years, you might go five minutes from now. Well, bye now!'

He's at peace with it. I'm not. It's not the death part. I know from what I went through when my grandmother died that he's getting off easy. Really easy. It's that I feel like I just got to know him and he's not going to get better.

shit.

Lady Red Eland Plot For Robbery Wealthy!

The noble bald eagle! Proud symbol of the United States!
Essentially a carnivorous chicken.

Ever spent much time around chickens?

Nobility is not one of their attributes.

If you live in these parts, it isn't 'bald eagle', it's 'ball-headed eagle'. This is not only an example of poor enunciation, but a strange meeting of vernacular and inner wisdom. Your common eagle has about as much sense as a cue ball. Shits quite a lot more than the average cue ball though. In venery terms this is called 'slicing'. What it is in reality is nine gallons of partially digested road kill ejected at high velocity. (The only other creature that produces biohazardous wastes in excess of intake and body mass aside from the human infant.)

Favored eagle roosting sites are heavily coated, Jackson Pollock style, with this substance. The ground below them is...crunchy.

What eagles do, mainly, is stand around.

...9:30 am

And stand, and stand, and stand.

....9:45 am

And stand some more.

...2:35pm. yes, all the same day.

They stand in fields, they stand on trees. They stand on dead cows. They stand on light poles. They stand in ponds.
Around here, any pond extant is a stagnant stew of rotting vegetation and cow by-products, which seems to bother the eagle not one whit. They'll wade in tit deep and....stand.
For hours.
Literally hours.

Very occasionally they have minor altercations, which vigorous event entails some flapping at one another and then one flying off a few feet.
Where they stand.

They will cooperate in breaking up kill. A family group will patiently deploy around, trudging through the mud like grumpy toddlers, tugging and twisting until everyone has a leg or a head.
After which they drag their lunch-chunk off, and stand.

It is a stirring and inspiring sight to see one of these great birds in flight.

It is somewhat less inspiring to see one with its head buried to the shoulders up a dead cow's ass, making the entire carcass shudder and jump.

This is a regrettably common sight around here, too. Farmers set down cows out next to the road so that the dairy service can haul them off for incineration. What is convenient placement for the Morgans' truck becomes a traffic- slowing sideshow for tourists.
Welcome to Sumas! Ignore the eagle backing down the side of the road pulling the intestinal tract out of that dead cow there. Nature is beautiful.

They wonder why we still have ten empty businesses on Main Street.

BEARMEAT SWAP

This years' ABATE motorcycle swap meet was held in the substantially warmer and more civilized Exhibition Pavillion at the Monroe Fairgrounds. The bastards usually cheap out and put it in one of the unheated 'small animal' buildings, which is hardly appropriate, OR suited to March weather conditions, but I digress, y'all.

This year the clubs were out in full force! I can say with confidence that at least 75% of the people in the picture below are affiliated. That's why most of my people pictures didn't turn out; I had to be stealthy. 'One little muk : giant room full of large psychos with prison records' is not a safe muk- to-psycho ratio.

Same politics as last year...despite the colors, most of the clubs are HAngel affiliates, with the Bandidos representing out front. Nice guys individually, morons in groups.

Now I'm going to stop here and explain something.
There are bikers, there is a lifestyle.
Some bikers belong to clubs.
Most do not.

WE DO NOT.

The Yummy One has been asked to prospect for several but has turned them down because his idea of individuality does not include things like hanging out in a group wearing identical clothing. We've done high school already.
...because freedom's what it's aaaaaaaaaall about.


Then too, there's the whole 'catch a wild animal and fuck it, beer stein full of piss' thing and, just, no.

On a whim, because we are biker assholes after all, we went around back, sauntered in through the cop entrance, past the cops, past the Banditos, and strolled around all day long. When we gate hop, we don't fuck around. (Don't start with me. It was a Red and Gold event. It doesn't count.)

...a little drag never hurt anyone.

Our buddy with the Ferengi-head had his usual hooch full of the usual stuff, and just to fuck with him while he was off visiting, I sat down and sold a bunch of it for him. Albert is a trip-he doesn't really need or want to sell anything. He's just there for the event, socializing away happily while people try to shove money in his face. He finds this distracting, so he avoids his booth.

I ended up with 200$ of his cash in my pocket by the time he finally came back. I handed him the money and he stood there and looked at me like he'd been hit with a brick. 'What's this for?' he said.
I pointed out all the empty space in his booth.
No clue.
I know, I know; I should have booked ass.
...same shit, different day. about 10,000$ of the same shit in this corner right here.



At first I thought this chick's cutoff was stupid, but then I took another look at it and realized that it was true folk art, utterly sincere. This is all beadwork, all hand done.
It knocked me out.





Don't you wish you owned this?
...rule brittania! lotta 1970's going on here. paughco front end, smoothed frame.



That's a 'Monster' series Ducati, kids. I just wanted to lick it all over.
...grandma needs this motorcycle now.



Here is a stone stock Harley Whizzer. It's a runner, too!

...a museum piece.


The acoustical tiles above each throne in the ladies' room had suspicious holes poked in them, each one positioned directly over the bowls. All the way down the line, too...I checked. But hey, it was indoors.
...expect to see my smiling...um, smile...on a paysite soon.



You ever looked in the mirror and asked yourself this question?

...if you were wearing this sluttay lil' number, the answer was '49$ worth of cheap'.

...no I will not buy it for you Mr. C; quit buggin me.


Ha! And conservatives claim to be against abortions.

...its a car! its a bike! its a train! its a blender! it's a printing press! its a...

Pink Velociraptor Wave of Vengeance: Seize Have!

It has been a busy week and it ain't over yet, except it is. The Yummy Biker just went back to working days, after having spent last week working nights, and my pineal gland is really really upset about the whole thing.

The Stainless Steel Amazon took me to an art show at the Frye exhibit hall in Seattle!!
I was ready to take The Leaker, but The Yummy Biker insisted we take the Park Avenue, an automobile which is essentially a geriatric care facility with a big block.
Yes, my pimp hand was showing strong.
Still, it looks exactly like one of the big unmarked sedans the sherrif's office uses, which means it's really fun to pull up behind a carfull of teenagers and tailgate them for a couple of miles and watch them throwing shit out the windows and checking the mirrors. There are always compensating factors if you just take the time to look for them.


You can just tell that that is a building filled with interesting, priceless and important works of art, can't you? Unfortunately for you it was and unfortunately for you again, they were real buttheads about the whole 'no photographs' thing.
Review:
Mr. and Mrs. Art Collectors went over to France a lot. France was getting tired of Realism. Paintings where you could tell what they wuz were going for firesale prices to make room for the Impresionists. Mr. and Mrs. Art Collectors had cash. They came home with a geeeet big pile of paintings. Unfortunately, Mrs. Art Collector seems to have been the one who did the picking (while Mr. Art Collector stood in the background, signing checks and rolling his eyes one assumes). The collection on display is mainly pretty girls, pretty children, pretty saints, pretty landscapes, pretty buildings and pretty groups of farm animals.
Life sized farm animals.
Duckies, goosies, chickies, piggies, sheepies.
Horsies.
Cowsies.
Life sized.
Imagine that in your dining room: this bigass wall - cow looking at you with it's cow eyeballs while you tuck into your standing crown roast.

There were a couple of Hoch landscapes that I thought were very fine. Early Impressionist, standard fare, but rendered very poignant by contrast.

Part of the permanent collection on display, an interesting Nouveau 'evocation of lust', after Edvard Munch, but with some odd Manet-style brushwork thrown in for good measure...set into the most ridiculous frame I have ever seen.
What were people thinking? It was the size and shape of a Rumford fireplace, all in gold leaf. Poor Ms. Lust in her green, dusty cave with her carnival prize anaconda peeps out at us from under the mantlepiece, utterly cowed by her frame. I imagine the men of the period found her very stirring nonetheless but I felt kind of sorry for her, stuck in the fireplace with her goofyass snake.

Oh, and there were some ok Dutch Modernists from the 'Giant Enormous Fucking Canvas' school. I liked one called 'Film' but had nowhere to hang it.

Here are some pigeons that tried to mug us on the way out:

The fattest, sleekest, roundest pigeons I have ever seen. You could actually hear their feet pattering as they surrounded the car and started to rock it.

Later the Stainless Steel Amazon and I got lost looking for La Conner and ended up on Camano island. Here is a picture of the exclusive supper club we dined at:


Mainly, it was a nice 'girls day out', no boys allowed. We drove around and discussed things like how buouyant are ducks really, and if one went over a waterfall would it sink or bob back up and if it mattered how big a waterfall it was.
Yeah.
_________________

The DaVinci Code: Fiction or Documentary?

Anyone who has read 'The DaVinci Code' knows that religious art is teeming with secret symbols and messages only meant to be interpreted by the initiate. In fact, these truths were consciously withheld from the greater part of mankind by a jealous Papacy and the universal, unswerving complicity of Catholicisms' innumerable adherents.

As a small child I was initiated into the basic secrets of the Roman Church. Ritually married to the Godhead in my sixth year, each new year built new levels of esoteric knowledge onto that primary foundation, each stage of indoctrination capped off by rituals and oaths administered by black clad virginal acolytes of the inner circle.

By the time I had reached adulthood I was privy, as each Catholic is, to all the occult knowledge. All the hidden agendas. I was ready to go forth and fulfill my role in the Popes great army of world domination.
My orders: Seize control.
My rank: Uterus with legs.

It is only after years of sorrow and indecision that I have come to the conclusion that to continue to hide these secret teachings from the rest of mankind is to do my fellow man a grave disservice.

Let me begin with the revelation of a despicable incident known as The Suppression of J. M. Barrie:








...'We simply do not see the blessed mother battling pirates' says Rome.

The first version of 'Peter Pan' was banned by Pope Pius X.



A surveillance device familiar in all Catholic homes, placed there to ensure silence and to report all lapses of faith to the nearest Parish authority:
The Icon.
"The saints are very, very disappointed in you.
The saints are ALWAYS very, very disappointed in you."



The tentacles of the Pope remain a strong yet invisible presence in modern popular culture. Here is the proposed cover art for 'Hallelujia Kid Hitz volume 14' featuring Sir Mix A Lot:


"...I like big butts but I can't deny...that horse is gonna smush that guy!"
Oh yes. The Church is 'Down' with the 'Street'.



The true message of many paintings has long been a subject of debate among scholars. Know them now.

The flying babies failed to arouse St. John's enthusiasm at the prospect of being martyred in boiling oil.


You cannot escape the possibility of uninvited company when you have a glowing baby.


If Mary had owned one of those really big bug zappers history would be different.



Not even matters of the most basic household management or personal life were exempt from the mandates of the Church:


"...Yes I know you're the King of the Beasts and I know you have wings but as long as you live in this house you'll crap in that box."

When the hallucinations get shitty about your spelling it's time to go to bed.


Things you leave outside during a tornado will get blown away.
Know where your grandpa is.

Before you demand that miracle, balance how much you really miss the deceased with 1. how dead he is, and 2. how comprehensively freaked out you'll be when he comes back to life in the middle of August.



In some instances, a spray-on repellent like DEET simply isn't enough to keep away flying babyheads. Sometimes you need a steel-tipped flail and a grenade.

understanding class

I just got reminded that the word class has a straight definition.

When I was in making a payment on my furniture in ultra-Christian, ultra-conservative Lynden the other day I happened to use the term in passing. Extreme 'have you taken all your medications today?' look from the clerk. WHOOSH! Right over the windmills. Gone.

To have class or to show class are bike culture terms.
When I say class I mean something completely different than the traditional American definition of the word.
Martha Stewart pre-prison defines the generally accepted use of the word.
Martha Stewart post-prison defines mine.

Examples:

Our own Pamelas' son, Burning Buffalo Chaos, shows an innate understanding of the term. Not content with chopping enthusiastically at a pumpkin close to his tender regions with a huge knife, he subsequently filled same with gasoline, lit it on fire and lost all the hair on his arm in the resulting mushroom cloud. Then, in a brave attempt to save his home and family he kicked it. It rolled across the patio and into the yard leaving a trail of flaming cucurbitty devastation in it's wake.
As this demonstrates, class is equal parts panache and disaster. And fire.

A martini with an olive in it-traditional class.
A martini with a glass eye in it- true class
A martini with a severed human extemity in it - a Sourtoe cocktail.

The Hells' Angels showing up for a members' trial en masse in full colors THINK they have class.

The president of the Hells'Angels motorcycle club carrying the Olympic torch through the streets of Los Angeles riding his Harley actually WAS class...on the part of the Olympic Committee. Although they didn't realize it. Which actually kind of makes it even more classy.

A wealthy socialite getting stabbed in her own apartment by a burglar is a stupid rich twat who should have locked the damn door.

A wealthy socialite getting stabbed in the lung by a burglar in her own apartment, who PULLS THE KNIFE OUT OF HER OWN CHEST AND JAMS IT THROUGH THE PERICARDIUM OF THE BURGLAR AND THEN CALLS THE POLICE, PUTS ON A NICE ROBE AND WAITS FOR THEM ON THE COUCH WHILE THE BURGLAR WRITHES IN AGONY AT HER FEET is true class. Yea, a camel passes through the eye of a needle more easily, but this broad did it.*

Scale of class:

3. The Magnificent Seven
2. Lee Marvin drinking whiskey out of a dirty glass
1. Fat, hairy, leather-clad German with bleached hair smoking a big cigar and ripping throttle on a pre-AMF Harley rigid running shotgun pipes

Phantom class, with modifiers:
An apparition marching around the Tower of London with her gross messed-up severed head tucked under her arm and blood totally running down her dress and the stump of her neck all sticking out with tendons, and nasty ill gross crap all hanging down it is pretty goddamn classy.

An apparition of the spirit body of John Lee Hooker standing on top of a pile of burning Harleys is very fucking classy. If it hasn't happened it needs to.

A poltergeist manifestation of George Washington appearing to George Bush in the can and giving him a presidential twirlie while sticking a chicken up his ass is probably too classy for this dimension to sustain for more than a nanosecond without tearing a cataclysmic hole through the screen door of reality and letting in a bunch of flies and shit.


See! That wasn't so difficult! In fact, like MJ that was both fun AND easy!

Now that you have mastered this term you can hold your head up high at the next ABATE run. To be absolutely certain, take this quick test:

1. Guy in a brand new Viper doing burnouts in front of the Harley shop crashes into a line of parked bikes is...

2. Fat drunk naked broad doing circle burnouts in the parking lot, catches gravel, crashes into line of parked bikes is....

3. Fat drunk naked broad doing circle burnouts in the parking lot, catches gravel, crashes into a rest home, lands in bed next to an old man who has a heart attack, fat drunk naked broad found humping the corpse is....

4. Fat fully clothed broad crashes bike into side of ditch, bounces three times and leaves three separate craters is...

Answer:
1. classy. And true. I was there.
2. sad and lame but hysterically funny. No it wasn't me.
3. extremely classy but a lie.
4. this one was me.



* True story, too - even though I can't find it anywhere on the www; dammit. She had a fairly well-known name, too. Anyway it happened in the 1970's.

IT'S PAYBACK TIME

Hold still, duckies.
I have a burlap sack here full of pine cones and I know how to use them.
I'm tagging all of you.

See, it just ain't gonna be a perpetual bouillabaisse of syntax errors and the word 'fuck' around here, kids. I have another, darker side. A side that I fully intended to blog about as much as I do all the other stuff until I became seduced by the bright lights and applause.

I am a history nerd.
I like medieval and renaissance Italy.
I read classical literature.
I DO IT FOR PLEASURE. Because I LIKE IT.

And I have questions. Several of them. I damn well intend to get them answered.
And what I need from you, my darlings, my lurkers, my pseudonymous peeps, are answers.

Good answers.

And be forewarned:

The mere mention of the first item on my list made one womans' e-mail go down and blew another blogger completely off the www for a period of months.

Scared yet? Too bad.

Because I am leaving this shit up until I get TEN USEFUL ANSWERS.

• I need the title of a good, scholarly discussion of the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo.

Specifically, I need the assistance of someone who has braved at least the Confessio and come out the other side alive, and who can hold my hand and pass me Kleenex. Only in book form.

• I need a list of the complete works of Plutarch. (I know there's one of TCWP which exist on the www. I need to know the titles of everything Plutarch wrote. I don't care where it is, or if it's lost. And...
  

• ...I need to know the date when each one of them was first published in Italy A.D and an idea of how widely they were distributed.
  

• I need titles of good, scholarly, detailed works about agriculture as it was practised in Italy c.1452 - 1519. Preferably with lots of pictures and archaeological stuff.

• " " about clubs, guilds and secret societies in Italy c.1452 - 1519. THE FIRST PERSON WHO MENTIONS 'THE DAVINCI CODE' WILL BE HUNTED DOWN LIKE AN ANIMAL AND FLENSED.

• " " about homosexual culture in Italy, 1452 - 1519.

...and this is the short list.
Git crackin'.


UPDATE: the lovely and frequently transplanted ARABELLA comes in at number ONE! only nine more USEFUL ANSWERS to go before we're back to stories about public restrooms and how much I hate my cousin's wife!

BEAST slides into home with answer number TWO! (Appropriately enough.) Only EIGHT MORE TO GO before the 'shit, piss, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker and TITS' resume!
I mean resume more.

VioletForTheMoment via her Companion Viola just came through with more Augustinian references than Carter has little liver pills! Companion Viola, you are a strong and brave viola with the cast iron constitution of a grizzly bear. I get to the part about the damn pear orchard and I throw the book against the wall every single time. ONLY SEVEN MORE!!!

PINK saves your whining asses with TWO SEPARATE ANSWERS bringing the total to FIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The South HAS RISEN AGAIN AND THE SOUTH IS PINK!

so if the South is Pink and the East is Red...fuck it.

oregon stylie

Short version of story-
This morning I was sitting in my favorite chair, watching my shows, stitching away, when my glasses fell off.
Ok, fine; this happens all the time.
Upon finding them I realized that the earpiece had cracked off the frame.
So I fixed them:


Note the innovative use of sandwich bread, and the attitude correction which a hair elastic provides while the superglue hardens.

The moral of this story is a long one, but read it anyway. Or did you have something else to do? So:
When you purchase glasses, bear in mind that the reason you need glasses is that you have POOR VISION. Hence the glasses themselves should be massy and/or colorful enough that finding them is at least a remote possibility when you are not wearing them. Do not be lured by the promise of light weight and unobtrusive design.

Also bear in mind that, having purchased the wrong frames (i.e. weighing no more than a cotton ball, cobweb thin, partially held together-and I shit thee not-with heavyweight nylon FISHING LINE) a safe resting place for them is probably not on the deceptively convenient shelf your boobs provide when you are sitting down. Because the phone will ring, and you will forget they are there, and you may hear them clatter faintly to the floor. Where they will lay. Invisible. Completely, utterly and tragically invisible.
And in the process of searching for them you might step on them and crush them flat.
Really, really flat.
Except for the piece that fell off.
Stuck in the sole of your slipper.

I hope we can all learn something from this. Besides the obvious 'I am a dipshit' implications.

updated DEATHWISH: OREGON part deaux

update!
you say you feel like deep fried doggie squattos? you say all your clothes smell like the carpet in an elevator? you say your mother braids your hair all funny? dammit, bucko, go HERE now and read the post entitled 'Nothing Compares to 02' and get over yourself! you, like me, will laugh so hard you will pee yourself a little bit.
NOW GO!!!!!


Another group of climbers had to be rescued off Mt. Hood this week. However, unlike their counterparts back in December, this group had taken precautions. And so, even in weather conditions every bit as horrific as they were back in December, this group of amateurs was found and rescued only three days later with no loss of life.

Why?

This group carried with them a GPS rescue locator.

This device costs about 500.00. It can be rented from REI for FIVE DOLLARS.

This group was nowhere near as experienced as the group that Mt. Hood took back in December. They probably had no business up on any mountain, really. They brought a Labrador Retriver with them, for heavens' sake. But unlike their counterparts, they did realize, apparently, that
1. Winter on a mountaintop means the chance of shitty weather. This has the potential to make 2. mountainclimbing, a dangerous sport at the best of times, an even more dangerous sport. And so
2. taking reasonable precautions is a good idea.

The governer of Oregon is considering making these GPS devices mandatory for climbers statewide.
I say well done. Do it yesterday.
It's about goddamn time.

tatos in the news

This here is my boydog Opie.



...actually no.
This is my taterman...


The vet pulled every tooth from his upper jaw two days ago. All he has left up there are the incisors.

I am a sucky dog owner.

Now, in our defense I will say that neither my husband or myself have ever owned a dog that lived to be Opie's age (either 14 or 18, depending on who examines him. We got him from the pound as an adult dog.) So when he gradually became smellier, skinnier and grouchy about having his head touched we figured 'well, he's just getting old' and continued on in our ignorant, brain-dead stupor. Then my husband happened to catch him asleep and lifted his flews to see what was going on...and came into the kitchen white as a ghost. That poor dog's mouth was BAD. I won't even describe it and that's not to spare your sensitive constitutions but because I'm ashamed that something in my care reached such a condition and I never noticed.

The good news is, we took him to the vet, they cleaned him up, and now three days later he is tatoing around, burping and farting and saying 'eeuroop' like NOTHING HAPPENED. He is a new dog. He slept off the anaesthetic and never looked back. He has to eat soft food now; that's it. I am absolutely blown away.

I really feel like shit about this. He must have been miserable for so long. It's a lot like when you have an infant and they get an ear infection...they can't tell you what's wrong, they just cry all the time, as usual, and you never get a clue until they get really bad.

I want to apologize to the poor little guy. But he's a dog. So he still loves me like nothing ever happened and nothing was ever wrong.
I just feel like shit.

HEY CLAIRE

Check out your grumpy turtle!
I used your picture to get the face and the markings just right!
This turtle is not as angry as yours was, though; he's just kind of disappointed.

Ok.
When I wake up at three in the morning I want to wake up for a good reason. Instead I woke up at three thismorning because I was ferociously thinking about something I had gone to sleep idly considering. See, my daughter has a teacher who is convinced that Ingres is just a FANTASTIC artist.
The woman actually receives a paycheck to teach people this shit.
Ingres was not a fantastic artist.

This is not a collage. It is a painting. Although it looks like he sat on the floor and cut random pictures out of a magazine and then pasted them to a canvas, you must remember that the magazine had not been invented yet.

Let's call in our guest hamster, B. Schmuggleware, young rodent about town and ENTIRELY WITHOUT ODOR, as you may recall.

...his fu is unbeatable

Mr. Ware, tell us in your own words what this is a picture of. Spit out the goddamn sunflower seeds first, though. And sit up straight.
_
Its.....wow. Ok. Um. Ok, its the barbecue scene from 'Oklahoma' and in the middle of it this guy doing star jumps knocked over a hibachi.
No.
...It's the Roman centurion dance number from Fame and everyone else stopped dancing but he's still going..."I'm gonna live for-ev-errr, Baby remember my name-FAME!' and the director up there is yelling at him. And a dog got in.
No, you silly hamster person, it is obviously the Martyrdom of St Symphorian!

...See; he is defiantly forming the letter 'X'! It's a symbol! X for No! X on sacrificing to pagan gods! Defiant, noble X to that crap right in your face! DEFIANTLY! Then they kill him.

Never mind that nobody in this picture occupies the same frame of time or space. Each and every item in this picture plane is completely unrelated to anything else. It's like a prop closet. And everything is marked out in a completely different light, which comes in from completely random directions, as though they were all watching a fireworks display, only it isn't night and they didn't' have fireworks, except for in China, but this is supposed to be Roman Autun so there you go.

The castle-y tower-ey wall thing in the background there just makes me sad. It has been the victim of an act of senseless, random miniaturization. No. Let me cry.

As you can see, this was a man to whom perspective was a complete mystery. So much so that I honestly think there was some kind of physical impairment there. The popular opinion holds that this was purposeful exaggeration on his part, but even a casual overview of his work gives lie to that. The guy just had no damn depth perception. It gave his pictures an odd quality...some things appear as though they are stamped upon the outside of a ball, they have that distorted, swollen, fish-eye lens look.

When the sitter was less than classically beautiful this could have really unfortunate consequences.


Things he likes are big and detailed and REALLYREALLYCLOSE. Things he doesn't care much about are small and barely sketched in. Each item is portrayed from it's own separate dead-on point of view, giving the whole the appearance of a luxury store window designed by a profoundly stoned child.

Ingres was also desperately uncomfortable with the undraped human form.

And let's not forget the guys...

...yeah.

Now womens' arms; that's another matter entirely.

Here we have as lascivious an image as Ingres was ever to produce. Bare nekkidness as far as they eye can see. (I mean, no fluffies or anything; that would be gross.) There's even girl-on-girl booby honkage going on. But what you see are aaaaaaarmssss. Successive undulating waves of them which disappear into the distance like a seascape full of pink water balloons. It's one of his hallmarks. Most of his depictions of women have this trademark erotocized, plump arm.

Hand it to the man, his craft technique is fantastic. His paintings are beautifully finished objects. Furthermore, as is plain from his portrait drawings, the man can capture a likeness. He knows about texture and color, but he tries to make it all patch over his shortcomings in the depth of field department.

And that's what gives his work this odd, 'ahead-of-it's-time' modern look. Nearly all his stuff has the odd, flattened out, discontinuous look of modern art that is trying too hard. But that wasn't because he was a rebel. It was because he needed laser surgery.

it is 3:45 am.

Yes it is.
3:45.
I woke up at 3:am. would you like to know what woke me up at 3:am?
It was not cats.
It was not junkies.
It was not the Yummy Biker, more's the pity.
No.
It was Ingres.
Ingres.
I woke up, wide, wide awake, at 3:am thinking about Ingres.

You are going to get your request, Tim.

What is the matter with my brain. Why can't I wake up and worry about my future or something normal people wake up thinking about? I've woke up thinking about things like dystopic fiction, The Andy Griffith Show, bird migration, gardening...oh hell, the times I've woke up thinking about that. And I mean like a whirlwind, with my mind just going 100mph! Thinking about the impact of the Japanese popular aesthetic on modern design!
Man, I'm going to go drink some fucking coffee. Sometimes I hate my brain.

WHERE IS BEAST?

Where did he go?
I want him back.
He is my beastly bud.

crap.

kinda rough.

When I was a kid we lived on the West Coast in a small town which is now a suburb of Portland, Oregon. My fathers' side were original pioneer settlers there.

It was an agricultural community to start with. My first generation dad would point out with disgust how whatever new shopping center or paved roadway used to be Gundersons' farm or Bardo's dairy pasture and what a shame they sold out during the depression. Or Nokamura's radishes, or Watanabes' celery field, and how they'd lost their land during WWII. Of course , they had to go. They might have been spies and helped the enemy. You couldn't take chances back then.

Which is how I grew up knowing about Japanese interment camps and never thought a thing about it.

When I was about 10 my grandfather died and a box turned up in his stuff. When it was opened it turned out to be filled with photographs and legal documents that belonged to the Watanabe family. My dad went through the whole thing...laid it all out on the table, had my mom read him the papers, went through all the photos. Some of them were extremely old... cabinet daguerreotypes with weddings, babies, stuff like that, things that came over from Japan.

My dad wanted to throw it away. Because it would 'just bring up bad memories' and 'it's just a lot of old stuff anyway; they've probably forgotten about it, if it'd been important they would have got it already.'

Now they might have been fighting at the time; probably. I don't remember. Anyway my mom made the phone call. (Small town, small phone book, few Watanabes, all related.) My dad stood in the background red in the face hissing 'Why'd you have to go and embarrass me like this for?"

The entire Watanabe family came over. Tiny, tiny little Great-grandma and grandpa came too. Grandpa was so frail that two big boys held on to him and helped him walk. He was swimming around inside of his best suit from about 1940 and wore a big old fedora hat that rested on the tops of his ears. He shook my dads' hand and thanked him and they lead him back out to the car to sit down.

His wife stayed and looked through the things and cried. She was overcome, and had to sit down, and everyone hugged her, and she rocked back and forth. The whole time somebody was thanking us and shaking our hands, and I mean me, too.

That little elderly couple had been in the camps.
Their citizenship papers and land titles were in that box.
The family's history was in that box.


One of the guys that showed up that night was 'G' Watanabe. My dad attended school with G. Watanabe. My dad was on the Milwaukie High School football team with G. Watanabe. All while this took place, the team photo hung on my parents bedroom wall, and there was G. Watanabes' face, and there was his name.

As you might imagine, growing up with these people and having a different racial heritage had it's difficult moments.

quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

Yesterday I went out and played a little game. I would birdwatch without going over one mile away from my front step. I took my digital with me, but birds are small, so the only images that showed up were of the larger birds. Fortunately there were metric shitpiles of them.
So bear in mind, now...every single one of these pictures was taken within a ONE MILE RADIUS of my front door.
They are not fantastic pictures, but they ARE pictures of giant carniverous birds. And some cows, and a car. And a couple of nests.
Nests the size of ATV's.


(Remember, you can click on these to enlarge them. In most cases you'll have to.)


Seven town blocks from my front door, headed south, we see this young lady up a hawthorne tree on the road shoulder.

...on the lookout for Al Qaida

This isn't some backroad, either; it's the newly enlarged freight crossing. Here; I'll prove it...


I'm standing right under this Huge Killer Bird with my back to her, facing north now. There is my new tiny shitty car, beyond it a picturesque dairy farm and beyond that, Canadialand.

...it's a leaker.


This is three blocks straight off my front porch, on Hovel.
There were three eagles. Now only dad is left, and he is not real pleased with me. I was standing on the side of the road, making 'kiss-whistles' to try and make them turn their heads towards me. Mom and daughter got disgusted and flew off to another tree where they sat and called me really dirty eagle names at the top of their lungs.

...use the flash you ignorant peasant.

Now 'kiss-whistles' didn't impress the eagles, but they worked really well on cows, I discovered. There was not cow one in sight when I pulled over. I looked down and theres this big pile of them close enough to lick me. I never heard a thing.

...disturbingly silent. unsettlingly watchful.

That was beginning to feel like a well-rehearsed mugging set-up so I booked.



Seven blocks north of my house, on Gough. Inside city limits. This nest is about five years old now and you could park an ATV on it. One of the owners is in the background. That tiny tiny dot. That's an eagle. Yeah.

...missing any children?


Seven blocks west of my house. This nest is two blocks off Main (called Cherry Street.) The site is at least eight years old, but it blows down every winter and so it doesn't accumulate layers like most eagle nests do. The birds build it back up in the same tree every year.

...we like the neiborhood and the schools are excellent.

The nest site is less than 100 feet from this thing...

...an asphalt shingle plant.The largest enclosed space in Whatcom County. There are a constant stream of rednecks, semi trucks, trains, and forklifts running around right underneath the nest. I know this for a fact because my husband used to be the redneck in the forklift.

Almost exactly one mile from my house, heading northeast on Hillview. I am parked right beneath this young man. It's a crappy picture and a dark day, but he still wouldn't have shown up real good because he is still in his dark-brown juvenile plumage. His distinctive profile, as well as the yellow beak and feet give him away.


His mate (also wearing brown feathers) sits out in the field beyond him, waiting. Waiting for....

...A nice duck dinner.
These mallard ducks decided not to migrate and as a consequence are living pretty thin. The eagles will wait and see who takes off last, or not at all. Eagles aren't total scavengers; they'll take live prey very neatly. I've been out fishing on Silver Lake and had them come skim right across the bow of my little rowboat and pluck a trout out of the water like music.)

In addition to the ducks, different fish are starting to run now. Every little creek, ditch and river around here is full of bright new fish and the eagles are here to take advantage.

The fact is, though, that dairy farmers around here have their milk cows bred in August so they freshen right around now. In addition to the usual giant heap of guck produced by a normal calving, the harsh weather tends to cull out the weak calfs naturally. All that goes to the eagles. I live in dairy country, and so that explains why in a one mile radius I saw OVER FIFTY BALD EAGLES. Today, in Sumas, Washington. February 9, 2007.

Supposedly Eagles only take a mate once they're out of juvenile plumage. This is not true at all; I've watched juvenile pairs in full mating display, seen them breeding, watched them engaged in nest building. This young couple have a nest back at the base of the foothills there in the background.

I've heard it said that the farmers who leave out culls are disrupting the natural breeding cycles of the eagles. Could this be an example? No. It's a case of plentiful food resources impacting the breeding cycle, but there isn't anything unnatural about it.
An eagle is primarily a scavenger. The most popular aquila nesting place in this end of the county is in Cedarville...not on the river, but in the firs that surround the dump. In wilderness areas their habit is to nest around the mouths of rivers, the bases of waterfalls and the headwaters high up in the mountains...not for the live fish so much as the bounty of dead, spawned-out salmon, and the scavenging to be had from the leavings of other predatory activity around these places. And so, in accordance with their natural tendancy, they nest here, in the alders that line the creeks, near the dairy farms. They clean up the dead calfs and birthing waste, which they do in the wild, too. What in the hell do people think happens around here when a moose or an elk births? Or dies, for that matter? Or gets hit by a logging truck?
What do they think happened to beached whales and other sealife carcasses?

Another fact that folks tend to try to ignore is that before the settlers came the local NA performed 'sky burial'(if they liked you. If not they slung you into the brush.) The dead could be seen on platforms in the trees around Ferndale, on the land my husbands' family homesteaded up until at least the 1920's. My father-in-law remembers seeing them, or at least what was left by then. And the local NA created lots of dead people. We were not nice indians. We were mean, head-taking, slave killing, settler shooting, liver eating Indians. Thanks to us, back in those days the eagles probably took cabs everywhere because they were too damn fat to fly.

It was co-existing then, and it's co-existing now.