UPDATED: a peek inside the sanctum sanctorum

NOTE: this is my SPARE BEDROOM. I was in a frolicsome mood and I did a post about my SPARE BEDROOM, OK???
There are a couple of pictures of my husbands' GARAGE tacked on at the end.
Good Gravy MARIE. This is not what my whole house looks like. We are somewhat civilized. Even though there is a great big picture of a naked blue woman displayed in my dining room in such a way that it can clearly be seen from halfway down the street in either direction. It is a Matisse, therefore it is classy.
Now then.
Welcome to the craft room and emergency dormition chamber!
Everyone should have one of these. This is where I keep all the supplies for my art stuff. It also holds a purportedly 200 year old bed to which I retreat when the Biker is staging one of his nocturnal performances of 'Drowning Phlegm Mammoth Submits to Liposuction.'


Yes it's sideways but you get the idea. It's a poster with different North American snakes on it. I buy old posters at garage sales because they're pretty useful for making patterns, or to back collages with. I really liked the picture on this one so I stuck it up.
I like snakes; they're so graceful and elegant. And yes I pick them up and shit. It helps that there aren't any poisonous ones on this side of the Cascades. I can just run around thoughtlessly waving them about. And I do.



One wall papered with Civil War era sheet music, masterfully applied by this little Muk if I do say so myself. I cooked up -literally, on the stove- an archival adhesive to stabilize them with, treated the ground with the same and finished it with water based polymer. Shit was like handling cigarette ash, some of it. Time is not kind to acid treated pulp. Makes rockin' wallpaper though. Plus it cost 3 dollars and sweat. Can't beat that.



The Skeletal Hand of Doom suspended over the Purportedly 200 Year Old Bed of Obscene Frolic. I'm probably the first splittail thats been between these rails since Pearl Harbor was attacked. From the Biker side of the family. 'Nuff said.


I've had this poster since I was 17. It is a reproduction. No you may not have it. No I will not accept money for it. Quit bothering me.



My beloved Tank Girl sticker, blocking the breeze that shoots out of the cable outlet whenever there's a high wind from the south. Why someone saw fit to put a cable outlet halfway up the center of a wall is a mystery, like Mothman, and why Lindsay Lohan refuses to wear uns and REALLY REALLY SHOULD.



I've had this map of Stonehenge for 20 years. It was folded up in the back of a British Parks Department (whatever the correct name for that is) booklet. The whole thing is beautifully, beautifully hand inked. No not this exact one. You know what I mean.
Whoever produced this map was a master. I've done calligraphy since 1978 and I know how difficult it is to simply maintain uniformity, let alone freehand map symbols. A beautiful thing.
I was on a Stonehenge kick about ten years ago. I read every nonfiction book and article I could find on the subject. What I learned is that nobody knows who built it or what its for, but they DO know that it's 1. big, and 2. made of rocks.



Let's call the large skull here Mr. Coyote, although I suspect that it may actually be a rottweiler. Really. We won't ask, though. The small one is Mr. Bunny Rabbit. The neibors cat drug it in off the road and left it in my shed to rot into a squirming mat of bones, fur, and what we ardent compost devotees here at rancho FirstNations refer to as 'motile rice'.

Did you know that if you dump bleach on maggots they foam up? They do. Just like pop. Try it sometime and see! It's science!




Speaking of unpleasant decay, here's some socks.
I like socks.
I should wash these.
No this is not why we have maggots.
Come on. We live in dairy country = cows = manure = flies, and the neibors cats like to kill shit and leave it laying in my yard = dead shit in my yard = flies = promiscuous fly sex = muk with a shovel full of maggoty field rat walking towards the neibors yard looking pissed off.
Ooo. Wait a sec:

Meet Hanta!
Hanta here is a field rat I found dried into a hairy little hardtack wafer in my shed. I brought it through the shop on my way to go flick it over into the neibors yard when I had a brilliant idea.
I nailed it next to the doorway to the Bikers' spray booth. At eye level.
And said nothing.
It took him ONE YEAR to notice it.

As long as we're invading his privacy...

The Shop of Evil.
There is No Humping in the Shop of Evil.
That USED to be our Sportster.

...and this USED TO BE MY WORKBENCH.
Can you spot it?
This is where I used to refinish furniture and make things. This is where I used to keep my bench vise, circular saw, clamps, bits, my detail sanders, my power drill, my woodworking tools, abrasives, paints, brushes, hand tools, thinner, masking, tape, scribes etc. All organized, all painted orange so they couldn't get mixed up with his tools, yeah.
See much orange in that picture? Me neither.
It's been taken over.
It was built for me. It was made for me. It is too short for the YB to use.
Now you know who uses it?
Miniature bikers.
All YB's miniature toy-sized companion breed biker friends come over and use MY WORKBENCH and get all their miniature biker crap all over it.
Stupid miniature bikers.

Blue Mole Misery Of Entrail Kikaido!

THE EVIL SUBSTANCE HAS VANISHED!
The weather gods have seen fit to remove the vile, vile frozen vileness and return something approaching normalcy to my little slice o' heaven. Which means rain, floods, high winds, falling trees, power outages and death dealing, cartwheeling, jagged sheets of corrugated barn roof flying past.
But no snow!!!!

This week I discovered that I have a WAY BETTER car stereo than I thought I did.

Monday, I left early and was driving through Lynden on my way to go pick up the Goonybird. I had the radio on, something of a novelty for me because I really don't need the distraction. That and if a good song comes on it makes me drive faster and I don't need any more speeding tickets either. But the Yummy Biker had left it on turned to his classic rock station, and they were playing 'Queen', and so, you know.
When I heard the first bars of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' play I reached over and beeped the volume control a couple times. The speakers didn't distort or anything, so I beeped it a couple more times and that was pretty good too. I gave it a good 'shave and a haircut, two bits!' and yup, still clear as a bell!
So then I sort of kept my finger on it for a couple of seconds and the volume went up REALLY REALLY LOUD.
I mean DAMN.
The rearview mirror was actually vibrating along with the bass notes. The metal grille off the drivers side speaker popped out.
Yeah.
Righteous.
Me and Freddie Mercury were well into 'gotta MOUCHE gotta MOUCHE can you do the fan DAN go?' at the light on Benson and Grover when I noticed all the kids at the bus stop staring. I think the side panels must have actually been fluttering at this point. I keep a lot of change in the ashtray but it sounded like a great big 'ol vibrator on the 'Xaviera' setting buzzing away in there.
I have never had a really good car stereo in my life.
I was feeling COOL.

Despite having a city budget that allows for things like providing detailed, fitted Dutch costumes for all the employees of all the businesses along Front street, the streets in Lynbden were covered in ice and slush about seven inches deep.
Perfect roostertail conditions.
So I hit the side streets and did a little painting.
For those of you who had parents who actually gave a fuck, 'painting' means you select a suitable medium, in this case filthy, icy slush full of gravel, and apply it to your ground, in this case maybe possibly the fronts of some houses. And some cars. Now what I might actually have been doing was simply gunning the engine in order to avoid being stuck, and should that have happened to kick up a little bit of a roostertail or maybe even quite a sizeable roostertail, maybe like a tsunami kind of a thing actually, well, blame that on the city of Lynden. Lax bastards.
Amped on vandalism, I went down (sideways) to the Dairy Queen and grabbed a couple of burgers. As I waited in the drivethru I noticed that the parking lot of the nearby Fairway Center grocery store was nearly abandoned and was also covered in beautiful brown heaps of slush.

When the accident involving a double trailer semi truck and the Land Rover occurred I missed the whole thing. I sure as fuck had no chance of hearing it because me and Jimmy Page were singing 'Valhalla' at the time. I was also going in rapid circles, or maybe sideways. I recall being more concerned with trying not to hit any light poles. My view was further obscured by grease, ketchup and splattered tomato fragments. This happened when I had the wheel cranked over hard with one hand and was kind of gesturing operatically with the burger in the other and slapped it into the passengers side window.
DOWN INTHE LAND OFTHE ICE! AND! SNOW!
WHERE THE MIDNIGHT SUN ANDTHE HOT! SPRINGS! GLOW! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
-HA!
Blat!
Because you have to gesture right there at that 'HA!' part. Only not with a hamburger. And probably not going in circles in a tiny underinsured car in an icy parking lot with the radio cranked so loud it was making Baby Jesus cry.

And maybe not with two sherrifs' cars parked out on the main road.

When the revolutions slowed I finally noticed the wreck. A nasty one. Someone had come around the corner of Kok Road and run their Land Rover under the rear end of a semi trailer carrying a metal cargo container. The entire front of the 'Rover was peeled back to the windsheild. I mean, this thing was BAD FUCKED.

As I sat there and goggled at the wreck I noticed the sherrifs get out of their car. Then they turned to each other. Then turned and looked straight at me.

I turned off the stereo.
I drove away.
Slowly. With part of a tomato and a piece of cheese stuck to the passengers side window.

make it go away.

POME ABOUT HOW SNOW SHOULD NOT BE ON THE WORLD.

make the bad potty snow leave.
bad, bad toilet snow.
dirty smelly potty snow,
stinky butt fart snow.
i hate snow.

No longer snowbound thanks to the City of Sumas, I roamed at large yesterday. Our streets are plowed and sanded and have been maintained that way. No sweat; no problem. Run the plow-sander around every few hours while the snow is falling, every evening when it isn't, problem solved, move on.

See, out here on this end of the county people retain some dim memory of weather past and don't spaz the fuck out like a bunch of overstimulated chihuahuas every time the white stuff arrives, like they do down in Seattle. I swear to you.
And whats even worse is that every person with an ailing car and a fresh lobotomy scar decided to take to the goddamn freeway at the same time. And what time was that? Why, right in the middle of the assbastardly BLIZZARD. C'mon, Ru Leen, git them kids inta their shorts and t shirts! Hell yeah I know yew having labor pains. Don't be a damn wimp. Lemme crack open this here bottle of Canadian Mist and go warm up the Volkswagen!
And there they still sit, knawing on their own extremeties and huffing their own funk inside the frozen tombs that their Mitsubishis and Toyotas have become.
WHAT
THE
FUCK.
When I lived in Seattle, I was poor. I was a single mother. I relied on public transport. Still, I did not instantly dash outside like a depressed lemming when the snow hit. I watched the news and the sky and stocked up on cnadles, canned food and baby milk. You see, I knew, thanks to something coded deep within my dim ancestral pool of instinct, that ICE IS SLIPPERY.
And so I would sit in my cozy apartment, cuddled in the bay window seat drinking nice hot soup with my baby, watching the Mercedes-es and the BMWs-es of the financially fortunate skating sideways down 17th Avenue hill, twirling and pinballing from side to side of the street, bouncing off parked cars and snow berms and retaining walls and the front of busses while the clueless organism behind the wheel frantically floored the gas and honked the horn. This would happen all damn day and on into the night. You could hear them beeping and whirring into the distance as they glissanded down into the center of the MLK way five way intersection at the bottom of the hill, where they were turned into the worlds most expensive bump actuated pinwheels.

I got out to see my Goonybird yesterday, and my face still aches from smiling. This is the BEST KID. Of course he has the BEST MOMMY too. He is way into playing lets pretend games, so we sat in a circle on the rug, and he made us a campfire out of whole wheat bread crusts.

So far the Stainless Steel Amazon has failed to chase off her boyfriend, so who knows? I may have to come up with a nickname for this one. Seeing as how he has chosen-voluntarily, without outside coercion, kids; CHOSEN- to contend with my daughter and her amazing Random Death Dealing Temper and Explosions With Fire and Death Fragments Of Deadly Death and Exploding Gasoline Napalm Angry Of Temper, that nickname might just end up being 'Poor Bastard'.
In fact, I think that's it. D, you are hereby christened The Poor Bastard.

If my daughter reads this I am so dead.*snerk!*
MISUSE OF BLOG MEDIUM ALERT:
well, maybe if she changed her tune he would be 'lucky bastard.'
MISUSE OF BLOG MEDIUM COMPLETE

Yeah, I'm going to quit now while I still have an extended family.
I love you all deeply and unreasonably, my darlings, but I cannot spend the time visiting around that I used to because this end of the house is freezing.
This SUCKS.
I MISS YOU.
XOOFN
*snif*

The Callous Red Donkey Siphons Kikaido Car Petrol!

SOM POMES OF IN HONUR THE SNO



1.
Six inches more. Quick;
plow the road in case some dumbshit
wants to drive in this.


2.
Birdie feetie prints
hop, hop, hop in the snow. Go
put on some damn shoes


3. Muk prints in the snow
reveal that someones cat has
peed next to the door.



4. my dog has four legs
though you might guess five. click to
enlarge, then use +.

snow: six inches by tonight. for more, visit Frobishers site.

Since the snow hit my life consists of daytime television, keeping toilet paper stocked in the can and coffee, coffee coffee. And thats fine; I mean, it certainly beats the fuck out of being out in this. I feel particularly bad for all the guys up in the woods at this time of year...I can see the lights in the dark of the morning as their log trucks toil up the mountainside and it just makes me shiver.

As my daytime activity shrinks to almost nothing my nightime dreaming life becomes incredibly vivid. As probably comes as no big surprise to anyone, I dream BIG. And even in busy times my dreams are complicated and vivid. I was told when I started taking Prozac that it tends to make you dream vividly at night, and laughed out loud. The addition of Prozac to my nighttime cranial stew has made as much of an impact as throwing a brick into the Grand Canyon. Prozac didn't stand a chance. I dream bigger after a slice of anchovy pizza. (And by the way, anchovies are good and nice and great, with all tastiness and goodness and deliciousness? and are also very yummy and super of tastiness? So don't dis on my damn fishies of anchovies.)

If you have never seen the movie 'Dark City' then do so AT ONCE. It's in my list of favorites for a reason, and that reason is that whoever planned out the concept for that thing has an imagination I admire and a brain that works a lot like mine does at night. (Not that my dreams are all dark and full of flying alien zombies in bowler hats...um, not that they aren't; c'mon, just, you know, not exclusively.)

When I dream, I dream in detail. Full detail. Smell, sound, songs on the radio, patina, taste, temperature, it's like daytime life.
But now I have episodes.
Continuing stories, reacurring characters and places, subplots. The backdrops and props are places and things I've seen in everyday life over the years, but with no regard to the time in which I first encountered them. A building I lived in when I was 19, full of people I knew in gradeschool, a car I owned when I was 23 parked out front, on a street I remember from a movie I saw last year...like that.
But all these things stay the same.
I could draw a map of the place. It would have to be on layers of transparencies, like the visible man in the medical books*, but I could do it, and I can visualize it. It stays the same. Details that get added stay added. Details like fabrics. Perfume. People that get older. Things that get broken and are repaired. Seasons. And layers of combinations patched together from my daytime life that make no sense in my daytime memories stay combined in the dreams, from night to night, and from year to year.
Year to year!
This has been going on for years!
It's not bothersome in any way, just odd. I've never heard of anyone else who has dreams like this. Unless you do?
Do you?
I have my own private television shows!


*you ever notice that the Visible Man had no dick? he didn't. Visible Broad had boobs and a uterus with a baby in it, though. christmas miracle? or Visible Damian? you decide.

postcard from the frozen wastes of Leng

...Quite a different picture this morning, eh, my best beloved? The snow blew away during the night. The sky is so blue it's painful to look at. My front yard is clear, our driveway is clean, and the windchill factor is -20.



The back yard is a different story, though. And this isn't even my damn snow; this is snow from somewhere up around Cultus Lake.
The wind has been blowing steadily, gusting up to 40-50 mph. The ground is frozen hard as iron. The snow that fell as wet flakes has been transformed into diamond sand. Snow ghosts and whirlwinds and huge tall mares' tails all made of ice crystals are blowing past. I wish I could get a picture of what it looks like when the sun hits these brief formations and turns them into moving diamond rainbows; it is enough to break your heart for beauty.
Not quite beautiful enough to distract me from the fact that my hot water lines are frozen solid, and Opie is refusing to eat because he doesn't want to have to go outside. I can't take a shower, and my dog is emitting foul, green, chunky gasses that simply defy explanation. I mean, even worse than usual.
But while I sit here, unshowered, watching daytime television inside my chilly house with my farting dog, I can console myself by looking out my front window and seeing this:



At least I didn't have to hire heavy equipment to dig me out of my brand new house. Thats right. Enlarge this and check it out. I watched it all morning as it scooped snow only to have half of it blow out of the bucket when it turned to dump it.
I am trying SO HARD not to feel all smug about this.

quaint blizzards from my charming rural ice prison

This is the view out my front window this morning...


That white fog you see in the distance? That's freeze dried Canada coming at us in 40-50 mph gusts. Come the thaw it will all reconstitute and I'll be living in Saskatchewan. I have no problem with that. Oh hell yes. If I become a Canadian by default? Hello, no Bush? NHC? Fuck YEAH I'll fly the maple leaf. *warms up pipes* 'Ooooo, Ca, Na Daaaaaaa, some something are so something...'



This is why, in a northern clime, with prevailing northeast winds all winter, you do NOT want to build your home with the front door facing...what directions, kids? NORTHEAST. Brand new fucking houses, too. Every one of them up to the doorknobs in packed snow.
Btw, do you like our festive Christmas lites?
Nothing says 'Holiday Spirit' like a string of bloodshot eyeballs.



As the wind went crackin down between my house and the flowerbeds it carved the snow all the way down to the grass in my front yard. The sidewalk is gone, and beyond that the road is under 2 inches of polished milk ice. That stripe you see in the next field that looks like a road? Not a road. A wind carved bare patch that leads up to the base of a utility pole one block north. Through a blur of blowing ice, this can be really deceptive looking at night. Many drivers end up in the ditch taking too sharp a turn at the corner, thinking they're aiming for bare pavement.

Unfortunately nothing brings out the 4-wheeler dipshits like a blizzard around here. Because having 4 wheel drive means you can drive around the county like a bat out of hell with it's ass on fire, righteo? Having 4-wheel drive means you are INVINCEABLE. Despite which a lot of morons get vinced anyway.

We are fine. BORED OUT OF OUR FUCKING MINDS, but fine.
Stay home, my darlings.

quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

It is quaintly snowing here at rancho FirstNations this morning.
Behold:

...the rancho at 6:am.
Actually it was quaintly snowing then. Now, it is a baby blizard. We have a full on northeaster wind howling down the Frazier valley and the snow is drifting and packing.
The rancho is mostly uninsulated. What that means is that some portions have some insulation in stupid places like over half a ceiling of a closet and one wall, but most don't. Like eighty percent-type most. Like the entire original house section.
Which faces due northeast.
This means that the back half of our house is colder than a dead eskimos' dick, a witches tit in a brass bra and a whores' heart. And the master bedroom is the coldest of all, placed as it is in the apex of the triangle facing northeast... followed by the bathroom and the kitchen. And the kitchen is where Command Central is, so I'm sitting here inside a heap of ultrafleece blogging with only the tips of my fingies and my nose sticking out.
'Oh gosh', wished the starry-eyed young dumbass, 'it would be SOOOOOOOO ultra cool to live in a historic farmhouse.'
Be careful what you wish for, my darlings.

There is a frozen puddle just beyond the back fence, in back of the garage where in warmer weather the blue herons like to fish and wade. The steady winds have blown the ice to a high polish, and it resembles a slab of black obsidian lying in the snow. The weather has brought out tiny, tiny birds in their hundreds...a tiny little needle-beaked grey and black thing hardly bigger than a female hummingbird, and they are merrily boucing round the gutters and windowframes and the branches of my trees like popcorn. They seem to be finding something of interest to pick at on the ice, because they wait in ranks on the wire of the fence to take their turns inspecting it. While the latecomers wait, the one's whose turn is up hop down to pick at the surface, and as they pick, facing into the wind, the wind is blowing them steadily, steadily backwards along the length of the puddle like little skaters.

The night before the snow started I woke up to the sound of a frog. Down behind the foundation just under my bedroom window, this little frog creaking his little frog song was the only sound I heard for miles and miles around. He will gradually make his way around to the south side of the foundation, under the front porch, and for the rest of the winter he will sing his creaky song every time rain threatens, as he does every year.

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful. For the first time in awhile we had the place to ourselves. The Yummy Biker and I made a meal I would have been proud to serve Careme.
The Biker went down the street and stole some apples off a tree in front of a vacant house. He made an applesauce out of them that would have made a stone saint cry. I could devote an entire post to the perfection of ingredients, method and flavour that was this applesauce. My house smelled like the land of the Blessed all day long, y'all. And just for something to do while he was waiting he threw together two pies and a lasagne for the next day.

He is MINE. He is TAKEN. Back WAY OFF.

I made a sauce and a small loin of pork, and added in a couple of small ears of local corn from this autumn. There was stuffing too, just a neutral one to catch the sauce and the juices.
Now that sounds simple enough, right?
But it was perfect.
Perfectly made perfect ingredients, perfectly combined, perfectly executed. If I do say so myself, he and I know our food backwards, forwards, inside and out. We are one of those rare combinations in the kitchen where the sum is astronomically greater than the parts. Nobody eats better than us on the holidays.
Anyone can bathe things in spices and gravy and call it yummy, but when you can compose a meal where all the ingredients are perfectly in balance? That's a gift. When you can do in in harmony with another person, that's just a damn miracle.

ALL MINE, bitches.

Now I have to go into the other half of the house and thaw out my fingers. Try and stay warm today, northerners! (Southern Hemispherians? Go suck my socks.)

Viridian Elephant Mad Sandwich Debacle, is Jiro Defend?

Mangonel immediately captured my heart by being able to hurl large objects, sometimes in flames, quite a long distance where they would land and cause all kinds of damage. Plus Mangonel knew that Pangur Ban means "White Cat'. But I know what 'Blodduydd' means, so HA. (This is where Chaucers Bitch struts onto the scene and blows us all away with her Old and Middle English and a smitch of Welsh fu. Smartass.) I'll do the linkie squinkie thing after I've had some coffee; in the meantime link back through my comments on mangonels avatar. SUFFER.

So-FIVE THINGS ABOOT ME, tagged via MANGONEL:

1. Other children want to be firemen, president, perhaps ballerinas. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a wilderness person. Or, in other words, a hermit. Seriously. I must have read 'My Side of the Mountain' fifty times. I gathered survival supplies like wax coated striker matches, a pocket knife, tinder, first aid stuff, string, boullion cubes... oh yes. I had them hidden all over the neiborhood. I studied the old Boy Scouts manual on woodcrafting, army manuals, hunting magazines; I was totally into it. I was going to survive, man. Raise bees, weave wildgathered mountain goat wool, gather berries and herbs, kill and dress my own game...I was going to build a stone cabin and chop wood and dam a crick and raise trout. I have all the Foxfire books and the early hippie Whole Earth - Shelter publications, and I have them practically memorized. I was totally into biology and animal and plant identification, all that stuff. In fact I was....

2. One of the few, the proud, the Rangerettes. Yes, I was a charter member of Ranger Ricks Nature Club, and I have the badge to prove it. (It was a kids wilderness magazine.) Had I not had the respiratory difficulties I would have happily gone into the Forest Service. Mountain Muk!

3. I have never been arrested or questioned by the police. And that's their fault, not mine. Ahem.

4. I cannot display a picture of a person if the eyes are staring straight out at the viewer because eyeballs creep me out. I also do not display family pictures. When I want to see them, I will. Otherwise I already know what they look like.

5. In 1978 I was solicited to appear in a porno movie.

Nails on the head with a pinecone: Chaucers Bitch, Ziggi, Tom 909, Treespotter and Noshit Sherlock!

this is what i did

...in between bouts of hacking, barfing and trying not to pee myself from all the hacking and barfing. Yes, it's been nothing but refined and tasteful family fun here at rancho FirstNations.

I have mentioned in passing that I like to do embroidery.
Well I do. Like to do embroidery.
It's a perfect sick-person craft. The supplies are small and not too messy and the working of it is fascinating in the best sense of the word; it captivates your full interest.

I taught myself embroidery when I was about twelve or so and by the time I was in high school I was embroidering Levi jeans, jackets and cutoffs for $$bux. Lotsa peace signs, dope leaves, that 'Cocaine' design that looked like the Coca-Cola script, album covers, 'Keep On Truckin', etc. (It was the 'Seventies, ok?) I never did the tea towel and antimacassar thing. I learned to make all these dainty little stitches through heavy denim because I didn't know any better. That and nobody was asking me to embroider 'Things go better with Cocaine' on tea towels. The unexpected side benefit of all this was, I got fast, because I wanted that cash, and I developed a lot of strength and dexterity in my hands.

I wanted to make a quilt out of embroidered patches. In order to keep this quilt from ending up weighing 50 pounds I couldn't use full weight denim. That meant I had to re-learn all my techniques when I started working on lighter weight cloth. I still have a really heavy touch so I have to stitch all my fabric into the embroidery frame or else it warps. Once I do that, though, I can work in fine detail at an even faster pace and use longer hanks of thread - heavy fabric wears thread down to a hair so you have to keep it short if you want your finished design to look nice. I work like lightning now, and thats a new and interesting thing. If you're, you know, sick and limited in terms of outside stimulation.

The stitches I rely on most of all are the split stich, wrapped split stitch, the chain, backchain, buttonhole and modified french knot. I used to work a lot of things in blocked or couched satin stitch, but it doesn't hold up well under wear. Lately I've been using forbidden stitch and although it's ruining my eyesight, the outcome is dazzling!
Every one of the following images can be clicked on and enlarged, in case you are bored enough to want to examine the work closely. So here ya be:
(CAUTION-CUTENESS AHEAD)




Three kinds of bumblebees that live in my garden, full and fat and all loaded up with pollen. I didn't include the stingers because this is a friendly quilt and maybe little kids might sleep under it, so you don't want stingy bees.






A single wild rose with a variegated petal. This is in honor of my grandmother, whose name was 'Rose', and so it is simple, beautiful and old fashioned.







Here's one for you cat lovers. This marmelade kittys' name is, of course, 'Kells'. He started out plain, but ended up illuminated. I thought this sleeping cat looked very much like calligraphy and vicey voisey, so I hung some from his tail and illuminated that, too.


Everyone always wants to see what the back looks like. So here ya go; the back. Looks like crap, right? Thats why it's not the front.
I tack these patches onto a percale backing which protects the knots and bridges. Sometimes I'll dab a bit of clear nail polish on things if they seem tenuous just to be sure. Another leftover from working on denim clothes; things have to be sturdy.



The Mystic Pontiac 442 Tesseract of Mystery! I thought it would be neat to have the shadow of a fourth dimensional object on my quilt. Drawing a hypercube is a lot harder than you'd think it would be. I was going to make it look all electrical and lightning-y, but I decided to customize it with hot rod flames instead.









The initials of a person who paints like a magician. I hope it doesn't look like he owns the Gas company. It's supposed to be an attenuate painters brush.














This is a blue frog with a wand of black pussywillow over the top and a wand of staghorn willow on the bottom. I started it 2 weeks before the Goonybird was born; my willows were in bloom then and they'd come on like mad things!
When the Goonybird emerged he was cerulean, shaped small and sweet like a small frog you find in the garden, all curled up and blinking. He changed from blue to pale pink to vermillion like a chameleon, all in the space of five minutes, and then he was in our world.

Ok. Thats the result of seven days work. Next are a few pieces I've done in the past and an overview of the project so far. So sit down, strap in, and keep your head, hands and feet inside of the car while this ride is in motion, kids!



This is very much like a beautiful (dead) moth I used to have (tacked to my kitchen wall with a straight pin). When it fell apart I copied this picture of it out of a book. I did it in full strength thread (six strand floss) using a seed stitch and french knots to represent its' matte, velveteen texture.




Step back; the grooviness is almost too much for mortal eyes to bear!
This is cotton floss worked on a cotton-polyester ground, and the polyester content has made it pucker over time. Had it all been pure cotton all the fibers would have 'come into agreement' after being washed and dried on a flat surface and the piece would have remained relatively stable. All embroidery puckers to a certain extent, though. Just not this damn much.






This is an imaginary spider. Honest. I had Shelob in mind; the first Ring movie had just come out. I had a blast working in the beads and the different strengths and stitches of floss to represent the crustaceous abdomen.





I join different patches together on the backing with an embroidered overlay. This is a fatty-fat little chinese good luck bat and some chinese clouds for him to fly through.







Tree copied from a medieval manuscript. The red fruits are fancy cast glass beads and stand proud of the surface. Those sapsuckers are fastened on like barnacles, too...I used fishing line and nail polish to reinforce them. I ain't fucking around here.







Tree copied from a Persian manuscript. Experimenting with a more traditional look I worked in a very loose stitch here and didn't like it much. It's pretty, but it pulls, and eventually it will come out. Traditional embroidery was more for looking at than using.







My girldog Jett. Although she is black, not blue, and does not fly. Much. I'll sew the patch with the stingless bumblebees next to her so she can always play with her favorite toys and never have to worry about them biting her back. Yes, her head really is that small in relation to the rest of her, poor dippy thing.







A cartoon rendering of my boydog Opie, tatoing.
And farting.
Both dogs are done in contoured forbidden stitch with a wrapped split stitch outline and lettering. Opie also sports a split stitch aura of mystic tatoness.










...And this, finally, is a really bad overview of the work so far; at least the stuff on backing. Theres a whole pile of other finished patches waiting to be pieced and joined. However I intend to spare you.

For now.

Bison Demanding! Surgical Mandate, Chrysler LeBaron!

AHA!
You are not rid of me that easily!
I am back!
Yes!
*hackgaghackhackbarfgag ack bleah frap*

Right now I'm at the Stainless Steel Amazons' house watching the Goonybird.

I have arm cars.

A Chevy, a vintageT-bird, a Caddy and I think an Impala.

I was wondering why he kept running back and forth to his room and patting me on the arm. I just looked down and noticed I've been running around for the past few hours with a bunch of car stickers on me.

Taking those off oughta feel real good. Thank you, white people dna, for the fuzzy arms. And for the fuzzy legs, the fuzzy upper lip* the sideburns, and the hairy hobbit toes. Thank God I'm Red. That counteracts the ofay somewhat. Therefore I have the gracious dna of my native ancestors to thank for the fact that, apres shower, I do NOT look like I am showing a Komondor while carrying a Poodle under each arm.

Little Crufts joke there.

I'm ambulatory, but I'm still coughing, and by this I mean coughing until I barf, sometimes. No shit. Of course it doesnt take much to make me blow chow; I even have to be careful brushing my teeth, but still. Not cool.
Ok, maybe a little cool, but it depends on what I've et recently. Say, Oreos. Fuck yeah. Profoundly cool. Black vomit? Come on. Gene Simmons doesn't even do that.

So it looks like I am as recovered as I'll ever be. Seems this last bout of flu fried the fuck out of my lungs to the point I have to go back on a steroid inhaler and a steroid nasal spray too. Now, that has a good side and a bad side...the good side is that I'll be able to breathe and my allergies won't bother me. I'll also have beautiful skin and hair, put on muscle mass with little effort and be full of ambition. The down side is threefold: 1. My face will get round and peachy colored like a goddam alcoholic Swede 2. Merely walking past a person who is thinking about a donut will cause me to gain weight, and 3. I'll be hornier than a three peckered billygoat. Yup. All side effects of steroid use. And I always get 'em. In another week the Biker's going to have to lock himself in the truck to get any sleep.
I'll be standing on the hood flexing my hairy biceps as I try to pry open the cab with a crowbar.
"Let me in, sweetheart! I only wanna talk to you!" WHAM! BASH!

Still, breathing is better than, you know, not breathing. Because not breathing sucks kinda.
Ask me. I know.

Tomorrow I will show you what I spent my week doing. No, not for me this vapid languishing on any bed of pain...mainly because lying down makes my damn lungs fill up with guck; otherwise I'd be on the olympic languishing team, yo...no, I know how to keep myself amused.

Anyway, I have a bunch of pictures to download so watch this space!

Oh. And, a burrito is a rockin' ass combination of a flour or corn tortilla wrapped around some nice warm refries, with maybe some onions, maybe some cheese. Definitely hot sauce. I've done a disturbingly large number of posts devoted to this most perfect of foods, so backread.



*also partially the fault of Catholocism. Check it out sometime; it's a fact. Catholic women are fricken Sasquatches. Even converts. Oh hell yes. When My ex-mother-in-law converted, one week later BAMMO! Barbershop quartet! It's just one of those mysteries of nature.

burritos in the news

Burritos in the news! Newsmaking burritos! Burritos on the move! Around town and in your neiborhood! Burritos that are newsworthy and making news even as we speak! Or whatever. Read. I dunno.
Burritos: natures' most perfect food

My darlings, I am going to take a break for about a week. We are all recuperating and nobody wants to hear about that. Same shit, different day, nay say, pa?
I love you all deeply, truly and alarmingly. If you MUST communicate, communicate via the magic of email at:
redace1960@yahoo.com

.....Now if you'll excuse me, I have about a quart of phlegm to chuck up.

please help me.

It has been a Carnival of Pestilence here at Rancho FirstNations. Bacteria roam freely, breeding in uncontrolled wads. Virii are forming herds of brackish evil. The trail of pain is written in effluvia, phlegm and befouled towelling.
Yes, I am sick again, yes, I have bronchitis again; or rather, I still have bronchitis, and it is resisting all antibiotics. Next week I will be rippin down the Cephalexin, most likely, and that means I'll be blogging between frantic sprints to the toilet and frantic trips to the quickiemart to buy Ritz Crackers to forestall frantic trips to the toilet. Because Cephalexin and my lower intestinal tract are not the best of friends, friends.
Meanwhile....
Yesterday I juggled Germans.
In this corner at upwards of seventy the Playboy of the Western World, his walker and his overly complicated, day-long series of nuclear cardiac assesments!
...And in this corner, weighing in at none of your business, The Yummy Biker and his amazing Blooping Bellybutton! Bloop, purple! Bloop, not purple! Bloop, outie! Lookit! Bloop, innie! Are you looking? Look!
Both of them were scheduled for their procedures
ON THE SAME GODDAMN DAY.
And I was barely able to walk without pausing to huff and blow and drool and pant and watch the pretty fireworks go off around the sides of my field of vision and try not to pass out.
YAY!
Guess who had to drive?
First up, the Playboy. We pull up in front of his residence and there's a fire engine and an ambulance out front and a gurney in the lobby, which was full of interested wrinkly observers. No, it wasn't the Playboy's turn, but I didn't know that before I took a sprint into the place and almost passed out in front of the receptionists desk and rolled down the stairs. It was like a goddamn wedding reception and how we managed to get the Playboy out of there I'll never know...A tiny little old lady with blue lips was the star of the show and she was doing the Rose Festival float wave as they loaded her onto the gurney, everyone was chatting and re-establishing old acquaintance with the firemen and the emt's, people from different floors and dinner schedules who hadn't seen each other for a few hours were catching up, and the Playboy in the middle of it all announcing to everyone at random 'I have to get a Nuclear Assesment!' and receiving the admiring congratulations of everyone in earshot.' Wow! I've never heard of that before! A nuclear assessment! '
We bundled him into our tiny car, folded the walker into the tiny trunk, bungeed it shut and headed off to the lab, which was running late. OF COURSE.
Left him there with some magazines.
Took the Biker to his appointment...oh no, wait, I mean, the Biker DROVE and I PASSENGED BECAUSE AS LONG AS THERE IS A BREATH OF LIFE IN THE MAN HE HAS TO DRIVE. I AM INCAPABLE OF DRIVING AT AN ACCEPTABLE LEVEL OF SKILL TO SUIT HIM. Of course you have to realize that JUNIOR MOTHERFUCKING JOHNSON , MARIO ANDRETTI, AND SHIRLEY 'CHA CHA' MULDOWNEY WOULD BE INCAPABLE OF DRIVING AT THIS LEVEL OF SKILL.
We got there and made arrangements to meet at noon, assuming (naiively) that since his procedure was scheduled for five minutes hence, that it would be over and he'd be all straightened up from the anaesthetic.
I was NOT looking forward to this part of our program. The man reacts very badly indeed to general and becomes combative and loud. That kind of behavior from a sober person his size is frightening, but coming from a disoriented man who is both incoherent and unable to walk a straight line who I am married to i's hilarious, because I am kind of a bitch like that. I mean fall on the floor hysterical, too...but god help you if you laugh. Because THAT, he'll remember. He won't remember asking you at the top of his lungs to 'Ma fa gub wha voobuh nuh gub" in the lobby and he won't remember trying to enter the car by the drivers side door and then denying loudly and publically and repeatedly and semicoherently that he had any thought whatsoever about driving as he attempts to sidle past you and sit behind the wheel... oh, but he will remember that when he tried to put a chew in, and he missed and poked himself in the side of the face, you laughed. Yes. That, he will remember, and you'll never hear the end of how you ridiculed him while he was helpless.
Marry a German. Do it now. I'll wait.
Drive back across town to the Playboy, who is finished with his first procedure. Since he hasn't eaten since 6pm the previous day we go out for lunch at the olde englishe halfe timberede lesbian bar. Outside, we were greeted by a wino who was scavenging cigarette butts off the pavement. He followed us inside and began loudly trying to bum a pancake off the bartender. ( Hey! I want a pancake! How mush I got fo a pancake! Gimme one! Gib me a pancake!) While the company was iffy, the food and service remained excellent and we had fun people watching and cracking each other up with outrageous observations.
Then back we go to the same clinic for his second procedure, which is running late, of course. We kill time reading magazines and criticising all the recipes.
Then I have to leave him cooling his heels while I go back to get my Biker out of pawn.
It is noon.
The Biker has only JUST GONE IN FOR HIS PROCEDURE.
Please come back in 45 minutes, he'll be all done by then, I am assured. Oh, he'll be completely out of the anaesthesia too, I am promised.
Yeah. Right. Ok.
Back across town to get the playboy.
The Playboy has ONLY JUST GONE IN FOR HIS PROCEDURE. Come back in an hour. he should be done by then.
Back across town to the Biker.
By now I am nervous as a stripper in a room full of lacrosse players. I am expecting to have to drag him out of the office with him three sheets to the wind, trying to steal all the candies off the receptionists desk and slurring 'Wheres my chew? Go get me some chew! I forgot my chew! They took my chew! Go look for my....' you get the picture.
I go back.
He's done.
You want to come on back and we'll give you all his post-op instructions?
No.
They make me.
And he's fine.
Apparently once they FINALLY got around to making the 1/2 inch incision and taking the three tiny little stitches, they only used a twilight anaesthetic and lots of local. He's lucid. He is ambulatory.
And he wants to drive.
I do not let him drive.
He wants to eat. In a restaurant.
I make him sit in the passengers seat and watch me order him a small shake from a drive-thru. All the while he is clutching the grabhandle as though AT ANY MOMENT I will floor the gas and drive off uncontrollably into oncoming traffic and hit a fuel tanker and explode and roll in a ball of flames into a grade school full of crippled orphans and DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE... yeah. By the time we are partway down the road the fabric around this handle is beginning to tear from him grabbing it like a spazmodeus every time I slow down for a corner.
Grab the first German you see and marry him. Really. You'll thank me.
Baaaaaack across town to the Playboy.
The playboy is still cooling his heels. While I am commiserating, the biker roams off while I'm not looking. When I get up to look for him, I come back and the Playboy is gone as well.
Where is my father in law? Oh, they took him back for the stress test a minute ago. He'll be right out.
I decide to stay in one place. I figure that will make me easier to find, in case either one of them is so inclined. I am also experiencing the coming attractions of an asthma attack, so I take a couple big woofs off my inhaler and wonder whether or not passing out and being hospitalized might not be the better option at this point.
The Playboy returns.
He looks like he has seen a ghost.
He is walking very, very slowly.
You can see the white all the way around his eyes.
He died again.
When they injected him for the stress test.
While all this is being explained to me, the Playboy and I both sit down, wheezing and gasping and holding our chests and shaking our heads.
The biker returns and everything is explained all over again.
The procedure is rescheduled.
We leave.
The Biker wants to drive.
No. I realize that is been almost an hour and a half now since you had abdominal surgery but no, you cannot drive. I know this is both unreasonable and mean on my part. Sit in the back seat and grab the headrest every time I slow down for a corner. Ok? Ok.
All the way back to the Playboy's residence he and the Biker make plans about how they're going to go shopping together the next day.
Right. And run the Boston Marathon and conquer Everest and fight rabid republicans in a steel cage suspended over a pen of starving zombies, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Today, the biker, as predicted, is lying on my sofa watching SpongeBob Squarepants, moaning and clutching his tummy and asking me to bring him shit, refusing to take his pain medication and stumbling around like Frankenfrickenstein.
However I think I was able to convince the Playboy yesterday that the isotopes they shot him full of would make his whiz glow in the dark, and the thought of him turning the light out every time to check the contents of the bowl is the only thing that sustains me.
That's all I have left.
Pray for me.

yoost a qvikie

Aha! Access at last!
Blogger has been its usual self lately and that is why I haven't been visiting around like usual. No, I am not floating around on a sheet of plywood inside the K-mart, in other words.
We continue un-flooded.

Skagit County, as per usual, is completely tits deep. The cows are swimming right alonside the salmon and they're both hitting the road, if you'll notice. Governor Christine Gregoire says 'Give it up, people! Move! Move, for the love of God! You flood out every year! You've flooded out every year since 1885! Get the message! Earth calling Skagit county! Are you deef? We're sick of spending half the state's budget every fucking year rescuing the same people off the roof! WAKE UP! You live on alluvial fan! Half the fricken county is reclaimed salt marsh! "
You know things are getting bad when the only voice of reason is that of a politician.

Parts of Snohomish and King are using their efforts to gather up animals two by two to free those being held for 'recreational' purposes in Enumclaw and Stanwood.

We have...from what I can see, we have a small puddle in the cornfield across the street. The 'river' never even crested.

I attribute this to France.

The French have obviously been eyeing our precipitational resources with a greedy eye for some time and have coerced the World Bank into redeploying their weather satellites into an altered array, brandishing slabs of unrefrigerated whole foi gras as a threat. The rain which should have been falling onto the heads of the wicked here in Sumas has instead been falling into a field outide of Nimes, where the citizenry have set out Tupperware containers to catch the vital resource.
Never underestimate the power of liver.

DON'T PANIC....updated!!!!!

...There's a picture there...just click on the big empty space and it will magically appear!
Ok. So apparently half of Whatcom County is underwater this morning, and pretty much all the rest of Western Washington along with it. And truth be told, it has been a trifle dampish lately....I went out to pick up the Goonybird yesterday and almost got cut off by floodwaters that rose suddenly. And by that I mean within a 45 minute period of time it went from dry pavement to pavement under sixteen inches of flowing water.
But once you get inside Sumas city limits? Nothing. Oh yeah, its raining...but nothings flooded.
Refer to the map above.
Sumas is six feet below sea level. It is reclaimed floodplain. It was origionally seasonal marshland drained by the so-called Sumas river, and a smaller part of the Fraser River flood complex. This is a water-created geological formation you can see from space.
We have nothing.
Now either something is just about ready to give way and pour the entire county's worth of flood into the little muddy dog dish we live in, or the Illuminati or whoevers in charge of the weather satellites will spare us just for a laugh. Either way, it's a trip.
Usually, the first sign of rain, our property goes from suburban to lakefront. We have a couple of mallard ducks that move into the back corner and tear up my lawn all winter dabbling for whatever mallard ducks eat (mud? gravel? used cars?) We've had great blue herons fishing-yes, fishing- behind our garage. Just beyond the fence we'll get flocks of huge trumpeter swans FLOATING around.
Today?
Nothing. The usual couple of seagulls and a crow or three.
I'ts.......creepy.
We've never had the water come into our house, although we've had plenty of water UNDERNEATH the house...which sets on piers. Yeah. No foundation slab here. Remember, part of this house was built before America was a country...no building code. I am thinking about installing a brace of marine diesel inboards. Maybe a couple tiers of sweeps and a burly slave to beat a drum.
Actually, that would be cool! Instead of building houses as though simply by denying the existance of flooding you could magically prevent it, build houses equipped to float around like boats! You could go visiting! You could make big rafts out of a whole neiborhood by tying a bunch of houses together and then you could climb all through the windows to go see your friends, run across the roof, jump between doorways, shit. It would be cool! You could have wars! The Yummy Biker and I would run up the Jolly Roger and go plundering down south for this year's Christmas presents! We'd just tie off on the Space Needle and prepare to repel boarders! Hoist the mizzen! Flail the jeebers! Revamp the foc'sle franes!
Yeah, fuck...I need breakfast.

UPDATE FOR WASHATONIANS!
as Danator would say, clickie for biggie:




Did you see the SALMON MIGRATING across the highway down in Skagit county on the news? no fricken lie, man, theres SALMON swimming upstream to spawn on highway 9!!! Check it on Fox News 13!

how to acheive world peace

....Serve this Brown Gravy.

"Nations", ya say, "Nations, yer gross. All we ever get outta you is potty legends and exploding road kill...well, dammit, we're sick of it, ya hear? Sick of it!'
Well fine. Don't get all in a bunch for heavens' sake.

Here's a recipe. Actually, it's a recipe and a tutorial! Lucky you!

Read the entire recipe before you start...remember, I have a strange brain. And in using this recipe, please bear in mind that these are not exact measurements. I repeat: THESE ARE NOT EXACT MEASUREMENTS. It 's more important to use the exact ingredients than it is to measure them with scientific accuracy. Have all your tools accounted for and set out beforehand, including little plates or bowls to hold the 'aside' portions. Ideally ingredients should be at room temperature.


1/2 cup dry, fine, white breadcrumbs. May be sourdough, french, egg, potato or wonder. Not whole wheat EVER. No sweet breads, no highly spiced or herbed breads, no rye, just plain white damn bread.
...brown these in a teflon pan over med-hi heat, turning with a plastic spoon or spatula, until they are a yellow golden brown, set aside on a saucer to cool. Put the teflon pan away because you will not be using it again.

4 cups brown stock, unsalted, to which may be added any drippings and





cast juices from one beef, vennison or pork roast, DEGREASED.
...combine. pour off 1 cup or so of this mixture into a jar with a tightly fitting lid and set aside.

1 heaping teaspoon cornstarch-if it's a rainy day you may add a little more

1/4 cup milk, room temp

2 ribs celery, with leaves
1 carrot (or 1/2 if you have big carrots or don't like the sweetness that carrot imparts)
1/2 cup chopped onion, med. dice for purposes of measuring. More or less to taste.
...combine these three items and chop fine in cuisinart, set aside

(optional..crimini mushrooms, coarse dice. These cook down to about one third their initial size and cast a lot of juice in the process which may be poured off into the stock with no effect on its subsequent thickening. To your taste and bite with these.)

plain vegetable oil for sauteeing. not olive oil, not any other type of oil like canola, safflower, corn etc. just plain VEGETABLE OIL. NOT MARGARINE. NOT BUTTER.

plain beer, like Miller. nothing flavored, fancy or extra dark needed here. crack a can and enjoy it while you cook; you'll only be using a two-count pour of it.

white zinfandel or any 'blush' crap wine, for deglazing


1. Take the cooled breadcrumbs, the cornstarch, and the milk and add them to the 1 cup of stock in the jar. Place the lid on and shake until the contents are mixed throughly and there are no big chunks or dry places, and set aside. Return and shake this mixture throughout the rest of the gravy making process so that the contents don't settle to the bottom and turn into a brick. This slurry mixture may be made in the morning and set aside to soak, and be shaken occasionally, until it's time for dinner. The longer the crumbs have to rehydrate and cast their flavor the better .


2. Place the remaining stock and juice combination into a saucepan and heat to low.

3. In a large saute pan, (bare steel or well-seasoned cast iron works well, but not calphalon because it's bullshit and definately NOT teflon because you're trying to develop a fond here) add a little vegetable oil and the chopped vegetables (not the mushrooms, though, if you are using them). DO NOT crowd the pan. Saute and turn. When the vegetables have become golden, add a small amount of the beer(a slosh, in technical terms). It will foam up briefly and then subside. Do not panic. When the contents of the pan have returned to the volume they were before the addition of the beer (in other words, reduced) pour the contents into the warm stock. DO NOT SCRAPE THE PAN.
( optional step-now add the mushrooms and a little more oil. Pour whatever juice they cast into the stock. When the mushrooms are dark and beginning to brown a little, pour into stock. As above, DO NOT SCRAPE THE PAN.)

4. Replace pan on fire. When the bottom begins to sizzle, pour in a little (a slosh) of the wine so that the pan bubbles and foams up. Using a spoon or hard spatula, scrape and stir the bottom of the pan until all the crud on the bottom is lifted and mixed into the wine. Continue to stir. Use your nose, now, and smell the steam. When it no longer has that sharp 'booze' smell, dump the contents into the stock. NOW you scrape the pan.

5. Raise the heat on the stock. When the surface shimmers, shake the contents of the slurry jar and then stir them into the hot stock. An ideal tool for this is a flat bottomed spring style whisk, NOT a balloon whisk. Do not whisk, just stir constantly. Do not flail. Do not panic. The stock will turn murky; this is fine.
Your sauce should begin to 'kick' momentarily. Small dark blobby pieces like clouds will rise to the surface of the stock. Now you should begin to pay careful attention to getting the entire bottom of the pot stirred. Figure eights all over, right down on the bottom of the pan. Now the thickening will commence and you will feel the new resistance increasing as you stir.
During this portion of our show the contents of the pan will begin a small boil. As long as you are attentively stirring the bottom of the pan and you are not meeting any resistance or speed bumps there you are fine. The instant you begin to feel resistance, take the pan off the fire and set it on a cool burner. Continue stirring as before until the bubbles stop rising. (at this point you can go back and forth to the burner if you feel the mixture needs the extra high cooking.) In a few more moments, stop stirring. Take off the fire. Let this sit over the oven vent for the rest of your meals cooking time, and stir it again before you serve it. You may also strain it, or run an immersion blender through it if you like a smooth gravy. NOW taste it for salt and add as needed!

It am good!

Sometimes gravy just flat doesn't gravy; it refuses to thicken. The reasons for this include cursing by Gypsies, so go look it up elsewhere if you're interested. But how do you fix it?
Take the pan filled with the failed gravy off the fire. Fill up the sink with cold water and set the pan in it, as deep as possible with out overflowing, and stir very briskly. Now is a good time to use that balloon whisk. What you're trying to do is to lower the temperature quickly. Stand there and do this for three minutes or even longer, until you can stick your finger in the liquid without getting burned.
Now spoon off about a half-cup of the liquid into the jar, and drizzle in a little cold milk to further reduce the temp to warm, not cold. To this add a teaspoon of cornstarch and a teaspoon of white flour, cap and shake well.
Return the pan to the fire, and this time raise the heat slowly, stirring, until you have a simmer. The top of the fluid should be moving but not bubbling. Get out your trusty spring whisk and pour the shaken contents of the jar slowly into the liquid, stirring steadily.(It helps to count off a waltz time here...one side, then the other, figure eights, 123, 123, 123) That done, reach over and raise the temperature once again to high, continuing to stir as before, making sure you get the bottom of the pan but not whisking or whipping. When the sauce kicks, it will do so quite suddenly. Do not panic, just keep stirring in waltz time, covering the entire bottom of the pan. When you start to feel resistance on the floor of the pan, take it off the fire, do not return it, and keep stirring until the liquid remains at a constant thickness and the increasing has stopped.

Yay! You are a gravy hero!

How do you fix gravy that has solidified into a hard mass? Drizzle in warm water form the tap and stir. When the desired consistancy is reached, test for salt and adjust seasoning.

meat meat meat meat

The first job I ever found all by my little lonesome was at a fast food joint called Arby's. I was living in my first apartment with the Dishrag. As the only reliable source of income, I clung to this job like a barnacle despite the ensuing horror. Besides, I knew I'd been lucky to get it in the first place. I'd been hired not because I had experience, not because I had a nice personality, but quite frankly because I had big tits.
They got exactly what they paid for, too. After one night on the counters, during which I gave a guy 15 dollars in change for a two dollar purchase made with a five dollar bill, I was relegated to the sandwich board.

The 'Seventies may have been the era of disco elsewhere, but I recall them as a time of scuzzy polyester clothes, dopesmoke and poverty. Our state economy was gasping it's last. The Japanese were buying up moribund businesses right and left; anyone who wanted to pay bills had to dance to their tune. The tune playing was 'Japanese Management Technique'. And oh my God, if you ever want for an example of cultural misapplication, then picture trying to force the children of the pioneers into the role of identical happy worker ants.

In a corporate environment it must have been exasperating; but in a minimum wage environment it was just grotesque. This was FAST FOOD. Our manager was a crying drunk. The assistant manager was a chainsmoking slutbag who used to ash her smokes in the coleslaw tub. Our crew was made up of high school students, poverty-stricken young marrieds and the marginally employable.
Manditory morale building seminars?
Let me see if I understand this...You want me to give up my evenings to attend 'manditory morale building seminars' until 10:00 at night? I won't be compensated, there will be no child care, but there will be singing? And cake? And we'll split up into teams and do cheers? 'Night Crew, Night Crew, we're number ONE! We're the ones who'll get it done!'

Listen, fucker, I have bills to pay. I don't own a car; you don't pay me enough to own a car. I ride the bus an hour each way just to get here. You have me down for split shifts; I get no damn sleep as it is, this is a minimum wage job with no benefits.
I am an adult with A LIFE.
AND YOU WANT ME TO COME TO A PEP RALLY???????
Oh fuck yeah, they did. And if you didn't participate, you got fired.

Now this was bad enough. But working day to day at Arby's on top of all that had a lunatic charm all it's own.

Arbys was new at the time and was struggling to find an image. It opened with the full-on hearty cowboy thing. This didn't fly too well in a town populated by folks who had moved there to escape from cowboys and were doing everything short of building a palisade to distance themselves from everything beefy, hearty and cowboylike. Somehow Arby's got the message and backed off on that, but the lobby remained distinctly 'chuckwagony' It was very weird to see a group of Pakistani standing there waiting for their sandwiches, surrounded by saddles, longhorn mounts and wagonwheels.

Arby's pride and joy were it's big, beefy sandwiches, meat meat meat sliced from 100% pure beef roasts cooked fresh daily in their beefy hearty convection ovens on site. By cowboys. (Or at least quasi-cowboys. Oh fine; people in chequered neckerchiefs.)
The description and the reality were two different things, however. What you got was a hamburger bun with a bunch of hot deli slices mashed onto it, and then you proceeded to a condiment bar and added things like mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup...and a very unfortunately named, whitish, translucentish substance known as Arby's 'Horsey Sauce'.
Do NOT go there.*

....let's say it together, shall we?
What. The. Fuck.

....So it wasn't really a burger and it wasn't really a deli sandwich, and you were supposed to put ketchup on it.
People who had seen the advertisement on television ended up milling in the lobby with a brightly wrapped sandwich on a plastic tray, searching for an answer. It was tragic.

In a desparate bid to remain open a salad bar was installed, but you had to police it to keep people from making the honest assumption that it was there to build sandwiches from... probably aided in this mistaken impression by the fact that there were NO DRESSINGS OFFERED. Regular customers learned a Pavlovian fear of the salad bar** and refused to buy salads, and the salad, consumed by grief, rejected and alone, withered and turned brown and limp and looked the very picture of appetizing, being the first thing you greeted right through the door.

There is no other way to put this: The Arby's beef roast was a thing of crawling horror in it's raw state.
Pay, attention, children.
Remember the movie Soylent Green? No, now stay with me. The kicker was that dead people were hauled off to a central location where they were dumped into giant vats filled with a digestive fluid that broke them down into a sort of undifferentiated slish from which nutritious Soylent Green was made.***
Arby's roasts used emergency room discards.

No, ha ha! Oh, ha, to my joking is laugh!

No, Arby's roasts only looked like they were made from emergency room discards. What they were made from were the chunks of meat trimmed from premium cuts to pretty them up. Honestly, it started out as good stuff. But then they would soak these trims in a papain solution, and they would begin to....get...kinda....soft.
And kinda....greyish...on the outside.
The meat chunks which had started out as discrete entities became an intertwined mass, which was then drained like a cheese. Spices - the industry term for chemical colorants, a truly frightening list of preservatives and SALT up the wazoo - were injected, and the whole mass was forced into collagen tubes, which were in turn forced into heavy visquine and vaccuum sealed.
The roast you unwrapped weighed in at about 30 pounds, although I don't recall exactly. Once freed from its' casings it would lie there on the board and....creak.
I swear to God.
Black-red chunks of raw beef bulged from a cocoon of grey foam; interlaced with loooooooong strands of partially digested tissue# ...the whole weeping a thick, clear liquid that smelled of kerosene.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Cree ee eeak.
The roast went into convection ovens and came out transformed. What was once something that looked as though it had shot out of Cthulhu's asshole was now a deceptively normal looking roast of beef.
Smelled great, too.

Other meats were served as well...turkey, chicken, ham and roast pork, as I recall. All produced by the same process, all fascinatingly disgusting in their uncooked state. Each roast went onto an electric slicer and whipped back and forth in a blur of juice and protein sawdust as the slices were cut away, thin enough to see newsprint through. The stub ends were loaded into a bustub, and at the end of the evening they were bundled together tightly, loaded onto the slicer and cut up. Then back into the tub. Two huge plastic jugs of barbecue sauce were stirred in and the contents left to marinate overnight. The next day this was heated in the oven and sold in scoops as barbecue sandwiches. Good ones.

Now, barbecue is a pretty primordial affair and generally the less you know about it the better, but that sauce....oh my God, that sauce. I do not know what was in it, but almost as soon as I bent over the tub to mix the ice-cold shit into the sliced meat my eyes would burn, my sinuses would swell shut and my pyloric would start to flutter and shimmy. Just remembering it makes my mouth fill up with spit and my tongue cringe. It smelled perfectly fine, though. Regular ordinary barbecue sauce-smell.
Once it was baked, like I said, it was delicious.

It being the 'Seventies, our uniforms were ugly enough to make small children cry and were made of plastic. Plastic clothing is always a good choice for people who work around open flames as it melts into a hard candy shell that protects the body's tissues from unsightly charring as they cook. Plastic clothing is washable, and although no actual soil is ever extracted by washing plastic clothing, it is washable. You can dump a gallon of dishwasher solution onto it and run it through the Hobart, you can beat it against the hard stony heads of Republican party members, you can dry clean it and you can wash it with solutions used to DEGREASE ENGINES, but the shit simply will not come clean. But it is washable.
That's why everyone always smelled like sour tallow whenever they were in uniform. As a consequence we Arby's galley slaves were very big on perfume and aftershave. Sadly, this only compounded the fonkay behind the counter during a rush.

The first time I was ever flashed was at Arby's. I was mopping the floor around 2: a.m. when a bum knocked on the glass door. When I looked up, there was his tiny shriveled weenie hanging out of the zipper hole of his pants. He was doing a little dance, too, grinning and bobbing, pointing to it delightedly with both hands as though I might miss out on the whole purpose of this performance without the extra visual cue.
Everyone laughed at me. Ha, ha ha, you got flashed.
They called the cops, grudgingly, and the cops thought it was pretty funny too, ha ha ha, gave the premises a quick once over and drove off.
I, on the other hand, had to ride my bicycle home. Alone. By myself.
Three miles.
At 2:30 am.

I quit. Ha ha ha!






*it was tasty sauce, as long as you didn't actually see it. the mental picture was inescapeable.
** the grouchy broad with the big tits and the meat slicer would bean them with rolled up balls of foil from behind the pop machine. death from above.*** gosh, I hope I didn't ruin the ending for anyone.


#science experiment time!
(You spent night shift getting stoned in the walk-in!! so instead of thawing the wrapped roast in a sink full of hot water overnight, you unwrapped the roast , threw it into the bottom of the sink and dumped several hotel pans full of stale water from off the steam table over it, and left it over night.)

take one uncooked Arby's roast at room temperature. place in large, deep sink full of hot tap water. leave overnight. the next morning, skim the foam, which should come away from the surface of the water in solid, styrofoam-like chunks, and describe what's floating in the water.
OO! OO! I know! pick me!
Ok. You remember Cousin It, right? Little hairy lump? Imagine if, like cousin It got married? To another It? A girl one? And she got pregnant? But since they're Its, shes, like, going to have a whole litter instead of just one, right? But cousin It doesn't have a job, so Mrs. It has to get an abortion?

um, yeah.

Brown Gila Monster The Vengeance Car Is Fast!

I get to have the Goonybird overnight tonight! Yay!

I'm sorry, but really now - is there anything better than grandchildren?
This is how I wanted to be able to love my daughter when she was this age...just to play and enjoy her presence, not to be the mommy police and spoil the fun with 'no no!'
It does not hurt that my Goonybird is the most beautiful, sunny, intelligent child in the known universe.
I look at this kid and I feel pure satisfaction and pure, unconditional love. He's like finding money! Or receiving unexpected good news!
It never grows old. I marvel at his perfect little feet and hands and the little rosebud mouth and I feel the same way as I did when I first met him, when he was quiet and blue and covered in ook and opening his eyes and looking around like a space traveler.

He wrote his name on the bathtub last night with his soap crayons. Two years old, folks!!! Needless to say this bathtub has taken on the status of an international shrine in my eyes. (His mother took pictures so don't start with me.)

When I pick him up at daycare he spots me and his eyes light up. His whole face lights up. He runs to me with his arms wide shouting 'Grandma!'
It knocks me out, folks.

I keep trying to remind myself that in no time at all he'll be a sniggering, zitty adolescent boy.
I will probably feel the exact same helpless, sappy adoration I do now. Aw look, he just set that abandoned car on fire! That's grandmas' boy! Hey, let's go shoot rats out at the dump this weekend! Grandma will show you how to fire the sawed-off!

I wish we had trick-or -treat pictures of him, but it was below freezing Halloween night so he went out as a 'sensibly dressed person'. The cuteness would have been blinding. Cuteness sensors all over the globe would have registered 7.62. Citizens would have been evacuated from street level buildings where the cuteness rays were the highest. That's what happened last year. Really. The Japanese were pissed.
He's growing up so fast, dammit. I've got to get busy with the sewing machine for next Halloween. In a couple more years, he won't make a very convincing Holy Infant of Prague.

one for the printers and two for the road.

Having successfully avoided abduction and incarceration in some noisome tidal cell during his country's latest political upheaval, Tim Footmanhas managed to deliver the finished manuscript of his book on RADIOHEAD to the printers!
Dear Jesus, I would be absolutely trippin my tits off.
Can you imagine? Getting published?
Order it HERE, NOW..
Do it. I'm going to. It's HERE.
If you read Cultural Snow you know it'll be good. And if you don't read Footman, quit being lame. Go read him. Use your head for something more than a hatrack. Geeze.
_________________________

TWO FOR THE ROAD, Jane and Michael Stern

I have been reading the Sterns ever since the beginning. While they always turn out something entertaining and well written, they've also tended to be real heavy on the 'arch'. Plenty of that East Coasty 'Ew, how rustic' tone that everyone from Tom Wolfe to Howard Stern thinks they have some kind of right to cop regarding the rest of America. I could go off on a rant here about how the United States does not in fact terminate at the western borders of the Thirteen Original, but I will not. This latest book by the Sterns is damned good, and I'd rather talk about that.

'Two For The Road' is an overview of their years as self-designated traveling food critics. It is a genuinely remarkeable tale, too, reminiscent of the best adventure writing... how two urban naifs, armed with nothing but rumor, instinct and the gargantuan appetites of bull hippopotami, traversed America in search of their next meal.

The chapters are bracketed with recipes, and these recipes are generally nothing to exclaim over. They're the only weak part of the whole. I suspect they may have been the idea of the editors, though (because after all that's trendy and all the cool intellectual but whimsical books are doing it. I swear, ever since that Like Water For Chocolate* book everything has just gone to hell.)

Despite a few forgivable and non-toxic lapses, the Sterns have finally managed to get ever themselves and do their subject, American food, without apology.
That sound you hear is not stampeding buffalo, by the way, it's all the foodie dipshits running for their Pepto Bismol. Everyone KNOWS there is nothing worth eating and paying for outside the city limits of New York, right? and only two places there, and they're French. Right? Right?

You cannot accuse the Sterns of being dilletantes, that's for damn sure. They have been doing this for years. They not only eat and enjoy, they pass through doors even I would fear to pass. They get shitfaced drunk at the Let-er-Buck in Pendleton...no word as to whether Jane adds her brassiere to the collection that moulders in the rafters, though. They order from roach coaches and dine in the back of semi trailers. They guzzle red beer. They eat steamed cheeseburgers, scrapple, tripe and red velvet cake. They dine off paper plates and drink from plastic cups. They fearlessly order mystery croquettes, hot turkey sandwiches and macaroni salad, and eat jello full of
things that should not ever, ever be found in jello. They do fried food. Boiled food. Food from boxes and cans. Wild game. Home preserves. And they manage to do so without having to drop constant snide little bon mots or laughing up their sleeves for a change.

What makes this book so worthwhile is that this is a pair of people who know and love their subject, who have well-educated palates and who share a poison pen they aren't in any way afraid to use. Anyone who has read their excellent articles in Gourmet magazine knows this. In Two For The Road they take the courageous and unheard-of step, finally, FINALLY, of taking fried chicken and mashed potatoes as seriously as they take haute cuisine. With the playing field level, they go after each dish and make it prove itself. And it works, and I think they deserve a damn medal.

After all these years, they've got it right. They've finally taken their subject more seriously than they take themselves.



* the only book I've read that was both worthwhile and had good recipes was Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flag, although the recipe of the title is an acquired taste at best.

Gold Wolf Howls In Hell

This is Mr. Grumpy Punkie! Say hi to the kids Mr. Grumpy Punkie!
Now go HERE, and read this post
(Sunday, October 29, 2006 My Son Has Outdone Himself Once Again )
and find out how a pumpkin should REALLY be done. And join me in welcoming the newest member of the FlatButt Nation, Burning Buffalo Chaos!!!!



Well. Now It's time to write the dreaded Halloween Spooky Post you've all been waiting for and I'm a little reluctant to do it. But here goes.

Yes it really happened. And thats the first and last time I'll ever say that here.

I have had lots of bizarre things happen to me in my life...some of them perpetrated by the living and some of them perpetrated by the living in ways I didn't quite understand at the time. I strongly suspect this story falls into the latter case. At the time I was so frightened it didn't all hit me at once but kept rolling over me in waves for weeks afterwards. At the time, I thought it was proof of Satan.

My mother, up until the time of her conversion experience, was a deeply superstitious person. She was a believer in spirits and Spiritualism, communication with the dead, angels, demons, posession and ghosts. When an item would turn up missing in our house, once everyone had been found guilty and then dismissed through lack of evidence she would head for the hall closet and pull out her Ouija board to ask the spirits for assistance. This was standard procedure for years.

From the time I was old enough to sit still, about four, I was often the second set of knees under the board and the second set of fingertips on the planchette. I recall her using the thing by herself, too, seated in a chair next to my bed while I settled down for a nap. And this never seemed odd to anyone, not even to me, not for years. It worked.
And thats something to remember here. Bear that in mind.
It worked.
Lost items were found. Forgotton names were revealed. It was used to find lost keys, jewelry, paperwork, gravesites (we were the caretakers of our town's Pioneer Cemetary and records were sketchy) waterlines, etc. In fact it succeeded on the waterline location issue where the city and a dowser we'd called in had failed.

My mother was convinced that I had either a gift of 'sight' or at least attracted unseen helpers gifted with same. In any event I grew up believing that an unseen world with purposes of it's own surrounded me, rearranging small items around the house, making the cats stop and stare at nothing and generally dicking with our heads, and that I was attracting them.

By the time I was eleven or twelve the weird was running full bore. My mother taught herself to compose astrological charts. I had been given a set of Tarot cards-her old ones. 'Fate' magazines littered the basement and front room, Edgar Cayces' collected works were in the bookshelves, Jeanne Dixon was a household word and Yuri Gellar was taken at face value. Oh, we never missed Yuri. And each time he appeared my mother would send me into the kitchen and dining room during the commercial breaks to check and see the clocks were still running and the silverwear wasn't jumping around inside the drawers. In fact he got the blame when her watch stopped running and she wondered whether or not she should call the Mike Douglas Show and tell them about it. I suspect she may have, and I think she wanted Gellar to pay for it to be repaired.

Oh yes.

One evening we had company and the subject of the Ouija board came up. Everyone was all for it, until the thing actually came out of the box and then they chickened out. My mom came and got me, and I was happy enough to join her. Everyone gathered around us and we set up, chairs facing, knees touching and the board resting on our laps, fingertips barely contacting the planchette. My mother was very particular about all this.... your fingertips had to be arched high and over, like a pianist, so that only the barest dot of skin actually contacted the surface. Nobody could talk. Nobody could laugh. Nobody could interrupt and the television had to be turned off.

I don't remember what the questions were. Stuff like 'name everyone here' and what's your name' and 'when did you die' and shit. The questions never mattered much because the whole point of the experience was watching the planchette glide around the board, A, B, C...Yes, No....and this time was similar. And as soon as I touched the thing it set off around the board in long, slow arcs and away we went. Our company was absolutely fascinated.

The initial glee and amusement wore off instantly when the planchette began moving faster. It started spelling out words so quickly that our designated scribe had trouble keeping up. The whole company started calling out the letters. Everyone was gathered closely around watching.
The damn thing would not stop. It circled around and around the board, stopping over letters just long enough for the group to call them out to the scribe.
It started to be a chore to keep my fingers on the planchette. My mom realized this at the same time and we glanced up at each other in surprise a couple times. Her touch was so light you could hear her fingernails chattering lightly on the plastic. Finally I had to lean over the board and follow the movement with my arms in motion just to maintain contact.
The group was still calling out the letters and the scribe was frowning at her notepad. She started to act concerned, then irritated and then put the notepad down. 'It's a bunch of dirty words', she said, only half amused.
My mother took her fingers off her side of the planchette and settled back in her chair. My fingers were still on the thing, and I was still concentrating on keeping up. The planchette kept racing around, pulling me after it.
And then suddenly it shot sideways off the board, across the room, and hit the fireplace like a bullet.
Pause.
And then scream. Everyone jumped back, my mother stood up, knocked her chair over backwards, and there I sat with the board still on my knees gaping at the fireplace with my hands still poised midair. Everyone was jumping out of the way and yipping and milling. 'Why'd you do that for!' shouted my my mom.
'She didn't!' replied several guests. 'I didn't', I added. 'It did it itself!'
The notepad was being passed around and when it reached my mom she laughed, tore the page off and threw it away, with me clamoring after her to show it to me.
The Ouija Board got burned.

To this day I look back on that and time still hasn't changed my perspective or my understanding of the event. And I really want that to happen, y'all; I mean, I want a rational explaination for what I remember clear as a bell. I was barely, barely touching the planchette when the thing thing shot away sideways-horizontally-like a whipcrack. It shot across the room like an arrow for twenty five feet, hit the fireplace in the next room with a crack and rebounded off it. I felt it take off. I was looking at it when it took off. My mother, my aunt and uncle, and a woman named Meta were looking too, and my father and another man were present in the living room and complained loudly when the thing hit the fireplace near them. The lights were on, I for one wasn't in an altered chemical state and...there you go.

Oh yes. Happy Halloween!