UPDATE: awwwww, too long? thats ok! i'll just leave it up for a NICE LOOOOOOONG TIME so everyone can enjoy it when they have time. We aim to please here at Paul!
kids, you want fast thrills go hit an amusement park. you want pseudoscholarly discussions of sweat, botanical neologisms and men in turbans then sit down and keep your hands inside the car while PAUL is in operation.
this one goes out to the recently married Chaucers' Bitch! Congratulations my darling! Here is a lovely tale for you to read together on your wedding night.
CAUTION: CONTAINS ADULT SITUATIONS, LANGUAGE, DUFFEL BAG
______________________________
DR. EMMANUEL BRADY: private notes, fat soluble lipids
Despite the findings of quantum physics certain phenomena related to the human mind can in fact be explained by mechanical processes. For example the human sexual response is largely due to a simple, mechanical process which occurs in the brain. You see, certain neural receptors are shaped in such a was as to admit only a certain molecule, and nothing but that molecule. Very much like a key in a keyhole, amusingly enough, given the titillating Jungian associations that the image conjures. Ha!
In the case of the sexual response this particular molecule is produced in the human apocrine glands. In a condition of arousal, or at least, a condition of just having come back from the gymnasium after their lunch break without having showered first, these compounds fill the air in a cloud, much like a blizzard of fruit flies around a bowl of overripe bananas and oranges and whatnot, waiting to stuff themselves right up the nose of any passing inhale-ee who will then experience an embarrassingly ill-timed boner and have to hide it behind a sheaf of files and walk about bowlegged for the balance of the afternoon.
The sexual response in also partially a learned behavioral response. It is! Its all conditioning, you see. An organism first primed into expectation of certain stimuli by the receipt of the proper chemical 'hint' learns through trial and error that a particular activity or activity set will more that likely lead toward an erotic reward. After a few repetitions of same there you have it, that organism is trained. Reproduce the stimuli and ding! The bell rings and Pavlovs' dog ejaculates, and should at that point in the proceedings be hit with a rolled up newspaper to make sure he doesn't do that in the house again. In the case of a human subject it means that the approach of the clock hands ever closer to the 'twelve' and 'one' positions causes a sudden increase in blood flow to the groin region irregardless of whatever activity that subject might otherwise be engaged in. Hypothetically.
As was my mentor Dr. Gordon Wasson, I too am a firm believer in the controlled use of psychotropics. Purely as an aid in making those sudden intuitive leaps of creative reasoning that so often propel the willing explorer of the mental frontiers into Nobel Prize territory, of course. However unlike the good Doctor I eschewed the mycological path, and was instead an acolyte of the poppy.
It was during one of those dreamy interludes spent lapping at the perfumed bosom of Madame Yen Shi that I first evolved the following hypothesis: a person who could control the precise regimen needed to incite the brain might evolve a method whereby he (used editorially, of course) could produce all kinds of interesting effects without having to raise the least bit of..shall we say...sweat.
My assistant Ms. Phail was a lovely girl. Entirely uninterested in me whatsoever. No, I was simply the beige gent in the lab coat who signed the check that made it possible for her to purchase highly indecent items of underclothing, such as the delightfully scanty balustrade of lace which forced her bosoms up into to delicious vanilla orbs which jiggled like kittens down the front of her lab coat whenever she moved suddenly, such as, when another person happened to brush up against her in an entirely inadvertent fashion.
Repeatedly I sought the embrace of my papaveracaeian beloved in hope that my supplications would earn me the necessary inspiration and finally, after a prolonged bout a' soixtante-neuf with my stern Yellow Mistress it did indeed. It would be a relatively simple task to capture the necessary cerebrostimulant compounds and render them into a concentrated state. The introduction of this solution to a selected subject would no doubt inspire an overwhelming subconscious biochemical response. If one were to use that preparation in conjunction with a ritualized series of operations aimed toward training the already- susceptible subconscious mind, the outcome could be tailored to whatever the operator desired. In this case 'outcome' being equal to 'show me her beaver'.
Unfortunately any further development of this idea was brought to a halt as I was forced to spend some weeks in hospital with an uncomfortable case of epigastric paralysis requiring an unfortunate, painful and rather humiliating surgical procedure. Furthermore, the notes I'd taken turned out to be an indecipherable mass of hieroglyphics. Nothing quite dampens the urge to translate same than an inflamed rectal incision.
Finally intellectual curiosity overcame my native reluctance to experience another bout of peristaltic inactivity. And so, stitches removed, all systems go as it were, I armed myself with three quarts of vegetable juice cocktail and a gramme of black resin, raised my lighter high in the direction of the Mystic East and chased the dragon once again...this time directly to the Rosetta Stone. Excelsior!
I had a fine collection of state of the art equipment that I'd liberated from the clutches of my academic overlords tucked back in an unused corner of my apartment. Soon I was turning my every private hour toward the development of what I amusingly christened my 'Ms.Phail cocktail'. Ha!
My first efforts were based on the theory that the fastest route into my assistants knickers would be to concoct a solution in which our amorous secretions were already combined; priming the pump as it were. One readily available source of half the necessary compounds would be found in the ladies room, although sorry to say, after an incident back in my second year at university there wasn't going to be any more of me lurking around those environs. Then I hit on the idea of raiding the contents of her purse. Certainly ladies carried all kinds of things about with them loaded down with their charming by-products...? And so, one afternoon I sent her down to the Administration annex on some routine task and, armed with a nail file and the unquenchable spirit of scientific inquiry I jimmied the lock on her desk drawer.
This provided me with a few things; a lipstick I didn't think she'd miss, a few crumpled tissues...but no. No, it simply wasn't enough and I certainly couldn't stand about waiting for the silly cow to remove her diaphragm, not after the incident in the airport at Brussels. No, I'd simply have to secure a larger supply of the necessary organic lipids someplace else.
Ah, but then I remembered. My charming assistant belonged to the local gymnasium, didn't she. Of course.
Once I'd crunched the electronic lock on her car I was able to open the boot and there was her gym bag pretty as you please. I took a fast look around and then drew the zipper down carefully.
The sudden vision of her that rose like a tormenting flame in my mind was enough to render this simple operation into very potently charged terms, as well as to cause me to pop an almost instantaneous log.
I buried my face between the canvas flaps. I felt the coarse plastic edges of the zipper as a kind of delicious 'duffel dentata' that my imagination described in shades of scarlet, caressing the sides of my face in an inviting way as I inhaled the delicious, womanly perfume of her unlaundered sweatclothes.
This had the most aggressive effect imaginable on my now-rampaging libido and in a moment I had drug the unsuspecting bag over the front edge of the car boot where it dangled invitingly, its slattern, wanton gap a lascivious 'v' of invitation. "There, you filthy bitch," I snarled, inserting two fingers roughly into its aching depths. "Now moan like you want it!"
Clumsy with need I hurriedly released the furious demands of my turgid manhood from the confine of my trousers and thrust it savagely between those canvas lips. Immediately I groaned in orgasm, spewing the viscous yogurt of my man-seed; jet after jet of superheated lava emerging triumphantly from the earths very core; deep, deep into the quivering, greedy chasm of her sweatshirt.
"Doctor Brady?" I heard a stern male voice at the far end of the parking garage calling. "Sir? Can I help you?" Hurriedly I did up my flies and scurried away.
It looked like I was back at square one: collection of my own product. Ah well. Setbacks are to be expected, I suppose.
The first thing I did was purchase the services of a very nice Asian lady who depilitated the entire surface of my body from the neck down using some kind of adhesive. I found this a uniquely painful and humiliating process but one which I gladly suffered for the sake of the outcome.
For the next week I wore a garment made from a deionized hyperfabric comprised of a chemically inert substance which absorbed and preserved within its weave every particle of my precious secretions. Before I donned this erstwhile cocoon I purified the surface of my skin with a dilute solution of iodine. Then into the garment through the long slit up the front, on with the suit and tie and over it all a nice clean lab coat and within a matter of minutes I was sweating like a large and very foul boar hog.
Of course during this time I avoided introducing anything into my system that might adversely effect my scent. I lived for the next week entirely on distilled water and rice cakes, one of the most horrifyingly awful things I have ever put into my mouth I might add, forgetting a certain regrettable episode involving the neighbors dog.
After a week of collection the garment was finally removed-much to my sudden regret; I had become quite fond of its moist embrace- placed into a steeping chamber filled with a therapeutic-grade carrier oil and heated to 79 c . I checked and checked again, desperate to make certain that each element was precise and in its proper order. Yes, perfectly and precisely yes; down to the special container fixed in place beneath the tappet, sealed against the contaminating atmosphere, waiting to receive the first precious, wanton droplet of my primal pong.
Studies showed that certain compounds contained in frankincense, myrrh and cloves produced a marked increase in the oxygen content of the brain, and that in turn gave rise to an increase in the output of neurostimulants which homed in on the centers of gustation and pleasurable response. I set to work concocting a melange of these ingredients, and after some experimentation I arrived at a combination that wasn't too terribly ecclesiastical. Quite nice, actually, in a Tutankhamenish, Valley of the Nile kind of way. I then added a hefty dollop of my own homonid essence, my personal stock as it were, and set to work surreptitiously perfuming her environs.
Some on the receiver of the telephone at her desk...a little on the back of her chair where she'd rest her hand as she drew it out...a bit on each armrest...a wipe down the length of each pencil and pen in the holder...the handles of the drawers...aaaaaaaaaand a few daring droplets on the seat of her chair, just because. I also treated all the surfaces in her work areas and sprinkled a bit inside the first few pairs of sterile gloves in the box nearby.
"Are you wearing some kind of aftershave?" she asked the next morning. I ignored her, although inwardly I rejoiced. Excellent!
"I'm going to go check and see if the night crew changed the animals bedding..." she continued, heading toward the next room.
I looked after her retreating form wearily.
-No no no no no good heavens NO, man; she's keying on an animal level. This is a limbic response! Precisely what you intended! And here's you not providing the necessary positive pleasure ritual. You idiot, of course. You have to reinforce the aroma with positive stimuli. But what?
"I've put your samples into the separation unit for you," I said cheerily when she returned.
"But they weren't' meant to go in yet," she said, hurrying to the chamber and looking worriedly at the readout. "Well there's that batch fucking spoiled," I heard her mutter.
Hm. "Well now no matter," I said, struggling to inject a hearty, cheerful note into my voice. "That's easily remedied. What's a few more bits of whatever?"
"The deceased was sent to the crematory last week, Dr. Brady" she replied. "I don't expect we'll be getting many more gastric samples from that quarter."
"Well. I'm sure...." I decided a change of subject was in order. "Did I happen to mention that you....your work, that is....its quite, you know...satisfactory."
She looked at me quizzically.
"...yes. Well. I've been....considering giving you a raise, you know," I continued. "Say, oh, another dollar an hour, hm? Yes, just the thing! A dollar an hour!That's another..."
"...forty dollars a week," she said.
"Yes yes I know that. So then. Would you like to....go out to lunch to celebrate your raise?" I said. Excellently played, Brady, excellently played! "...I'll pay of course. Of course! Its my, I invited, well yes. So then! To lunch!"
_____________________
" Did you know," I said, leaning in across the table conspiratorially, "That the vomeronasal organ of the dog is capable of detecting over seven million different molecular compounds? Imagine that kind of information being fed directly into your brain every time you inhale! The implications are staggering actually," I continued. "No wonder dogs never developed much of a cortex; they hardly need it."
"They certainly wouldn't back at the lab," Ms. Phail murmured, taking a sip of her coffee. Inwardly I smiled. I'd already taken the liberty of dosing it with a pure form of my special concoction and as I watched it pass her lips my imagination took flight on scarlet wings. Yes, dear lady, take it. Take it all. And swallow. Good girl.
"Yes, but what I mean is, with that much visceral, actual molecular material being fed directly into the limbic regions you'd simply be in a continuous state of analogue response to your surroundings," I said. "There'd hardly be any need for higher cogitation. That is of course if the necessary chemical precursors were in place, you know," I laughed. "Of course."
"Of course," she said, glancing down at her watch. Ah, I thought, now there's an opportunity missed; the back of her watch would've made a perfect application site. "Isn't that how ants work?"
"Yes yes, quite right, exactly. A perfectly ordered miniature society. No internal strife, none of your angst ridden teenagers running about dressed like Victorian corpses....no no no." I smiled down at her. "You know,that's a very acute observation. Yes, quite incisive."
"My parents bought me an ant colony for Christmas one year," she said. "That was on the box it came in. All about how ants communicate. " She looked around and sighed.
"Delightful. Of course we as humans have the ants put to shame when it comes to mank...we're capable of producing someplace in the range of 5665 different aromatic combinations in our sweat. Now of course all that has first to be distilled through the decompositional labours of our friends the Staphylococci. That's what produces the dreadful foul, rank stench you notice when you've been exercising. Activity raises the body temperature of course and that rouses our microscopic passengers into an absolute frenzy of activity, which is all to the good considering the subsequent increase in waste secretions oozing out of our pores, particularly in the axillary and genital regions. By the way, did you know, you have the most remarkable eyes?"
She turned both of them upon me and blinked several times rapidly.
"Oh yes, quite," I continued. "Tell me, have you ever tried drugs? I mean illegal ones, of course. A little MDMA at a rave party perhaps? Smoked some 'grass'? Hm?"
"Now really," she began. I held up my hand. "No no no no no, now Ms. Phail I assure you we're all adults here. I myself am not adverse to the occasional 'trip'. Oh no. Do you find that shocking?"
"Actually not in the least," she replied.
Earlier I'd taken the liberty of tipping the waiter heavily for turning his back a few seconds while I poured a few grammes of my 'elisir d'amor' on her order. Now I thrilled as he placed the steaming plate before her. My face displayed no trace of emotion, of course. She gazed down at the plate and I saw her brow furrow. "Whats this?" she asked.
"Fettucine alla beurre", I replied.
She took a hesitant bite and chewed thoughtfully. I watched her mouth, that splendid mouth like a strawberry. A lush, wanton, trollopy little strawberry aching to be filled with my
"Is this something Greek?" she asked. "It tastes like goat."
I gestured at her plate. "Don't lets be provincial. Eat up."
My heart was now positively hammering against the walls of my chest. I watched her as she devoured her portion.
Soon, Ms. Phail, you will be devouring mine.
"So as I was saying....yes. Drugs. Recreational drugs. Controlled substances. Did you know, for instance, that as we speak I have a quarter ounce ball of raw opium up my jacksie?"
She grasped for her napkin and began to cough.
"Not to worry dear lady, I am long acquainted with Madame Dragon. I can assure you you have nothing whatsoever to fear from me inasmuch as I would much rather roam the fertile, perfumed oases of my inner landscape during these interludes than engage in any coarser delights. Although I admit to having given more than a passing thought to...oh what do they call it nowadays..." She looked at me anxiously through the light of the candle that flickered between us. "Oh dear. A hallway? A strip mall? A....a landing strip,that's it! Your taco. Oh now don't blush; you shouldn't wear a skirt around the lab if you don't want people dropping things on the floor and looking up it. Or sit at your desk all splayed out as though you were about to take a run at the pommel horse ," I gestured in an illustrative manner "...wearing those kite-shaped little scraps of cloth that pass for girls pants nowadays. Heaven only knows what your father would say if he knew you were dressing like that; I'd thrash mine within an inch of her life if I had one. In fact I wouldn't mind reddening your bottom for you, Ms.Phail."
"Please put your hand down, people are looking," she hissed.
"And what pray tell is exactly wrong with my hand Ms. Phail?" I asked, leaning close, feeling the heat of the candle like the flaming breath of a dragon. Small crumbs of eyebrow fell to the table as she reached out and pushed me back into my chair.
"Actually its not so much your hand as you flicking your tongue at me from between your fingers," she continued in a whisper.
I felt a surge of blood infuse my nether regions. The experiment was working better than my wildest dreams had anticipated! "You are indeed a woman of rare discernement; a woman of many parts; all of them eminently suited to being painted a la Motherwell with the product of my loins; my love-custard, if you will. Tell me, Ms. Phail, have you ever had a wine bottle inserted up your
Suddenly I found myself in the back of a cab.
"Good Lord would you please stop licking the windows," Ms. Phail muttered, pulling me back from the glass. "You don't know whose been licking them before you. Please just sit back and try and calm down."
"Madame, I am unable to calm down when my very atomic structure rages in a violent maelstrom of lust," I announced. "Sir, attend your driving," I added, and the cabbie turned away. "He wants me," I whispered. "It's the heat of the East that rages in their blood. These turbanned Lotharios will penetrate your ringpiece quicker than a rat up a drainpipe."
"Please be quiet," Ms. Phail pleaded. "Honest to God. What do I have to do to get you to shut up?"
I announced my intentions by tearing aside the twill that hid my glory. "There is your Golden Fleece Ms. Phail!" I exclaimed. "Ignore that! I can find another button! No don't scrabble about on the floor after it its only a button! Ms. Phail, I command you to stuff my weenie up your hooha!"
"Oh dear," she said.
"Miss, please. We have a cop on horseback directing traffic up here," the cabbie said. "Please find some way to keep him quiet. I can't have him screaming about his weenie like this in public."
"Oh dear," she repeated. And with that she took me in her delicate hand.
I howled like a war-dog, a dire wolf, some distant primeval ancestor of the savage male species triumphantly braced against the hindquarters of its mate!!
"Please, sir, just shut up and let me wank you off," she muttered, pulling at my love muscle as though she were hauling anchor out of the black muck of Rangoon Harbour. "Just sit back. close your eyes and for the love of heaven SHUT YOUR GODDAMN PIE HOLE."
"Evoe! Your resolve is but a dialectical hymen concealing your throbbing need for my ding dong! Ope wide your piscine portals to the hammer of my sex, Ms. Phail ere I impregnate you with a glance of my eye! Join me in coition! Let me ravage the ridges and vales of your oral sanctum! Let me fling the hollandaise of my love against your vaginal vault!! Let me "
"Miss, please! I cannot remain employed if I receive another chit against my operators license," the cabbie pleaded.
"Oh God help me, alright...move aside you lummox. I can't..."
Her lips descended, fell, drew closer, and finally closed around my peepee!
VICTORY AT LAST!
Suddenly my throat closed and I struggled to draw breath. A wave of venomous heat rose up my chest, up my neck and over my face like a thousand stinging ants. "I.....I can't seem to...."
"Oh fucksakes, what now," I heard her mutter as I faded into black.
__________________________________
"I'm afraid you've had a mild heart attack," the doctor informed me. "You seem to have experienced a massive anaphylactic response to your own sweat, as far as we can determine..." the doctor shook his head and sighed down at the chart in his hand. "We don't see this type of thing very often, I'm afraid. I must say I've never seen a case of urticaria this extreme either. You came in covered in actual blisters. Hopefully you heal well; there shouldn't be any permanent scarring associated with the event....although I see here that we've had to sedate you nearly to the point of coma to keep you from mastu....hm." He looked up at me quickly. "...and I see you're going to need a skin graft. Well then. Hm." he looked around awkwardly, handed the chart to a nearby nurse and hurried out into the hallway.
When I was finally able to return to work I found a notice of transfer waiting for me. Under the circumstances I was not entirely displeased.
Until I read it.
I was being moved completely out of the forensic research department. I was, in fact, to be relocated to another wing entirely.
It seemed I was the new head of Egyptian Antiquities.
Oh dear.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
The Beast of Bournemouth: part deaux
When last we left I was but a youth of 22 years, member of the popular pop vocal combo The Ladybirds.
...yours now on Ebay for only 7.95
At first life was simple. Papa sang bass, momma sang tenor, me and ol' Holler Log would join right in there, our voices raised in the innocent joy of popular music, bringing happiness to the drab, dismal, and, most of all, British world around us. But soon we were driven far from the public eye by the vile and vicious violence of a Beast!
We were followed...hounded one might say...daily...nightly...afternoonly...over hill and over Dale (who subsequently sued) relentless in his pursuit, , his hot breath in our ear, dogging our very footsteps!!
...get it? dogging? footsteps? and they're outdoors, see, and he's...yeah.
Late at night I could hear him beneath my window...panting. Growling. Licking the siding. I swapped bedrooms with Marion Davies but it didn't help. Like the Beast that he was he soon picked up my spoor!!!
...'Don't leave your spoor lying about all over the place! cried the beast. "People could trip!'
In desperation we assumed a disguise for our next performance!
...The American Nuns 'Let Freedom Ring' tonight live all ages 6.78
But after our very first show under our new identities, as we raced down the alley at the back of the theatre, headed toward our limousine in an attempt to avoid the shrieking hordes of fans waiting out front, there, blocking our path like a path blocking blocker of paths was...
...oh noes
We froze in horror!!!
Shock-instant, heart freezing fear-took hold of our hearts! A shock more horrifying than finding a small peevish owl in ones toilet!!!!
...english toilet owl
In a trice we were bound and gagged!!
..interior view of trice, bournemouth uk. other Ladybirds out of shot left occupy a row of theatre seats modified as enema chairs
"What do you want from me fiend!" I shouted, struggling against my bonds. "I will not go gentle into that good night, sir! I tell you I will die with the words of Patrick Henry on my lips-'Give me liberty or give me..."
...defiance defined: the few, the proud, the under-dressed
"...give you what?" Said the Beast, saliva dripping from his flews.
"Well I forget. Something. Honor? Probably something like that. Honor or Victory or something."
"Dinner? Give me liberty or give me dinner? Sort of a last meal scenario thing? He could have been hungry. I would have been."
I lowered my steely gaze to his.
...hangin' tough, stayin hungry; just a man and his will to survive
"And are you hungry, foul BEAST?" I asked, daring him to show me his fangs, baring my lovely throat, determined to go down into death with a sardonic smile playing about my cruel yet sensuous lips.
"NO no no no no nooooooo, good heavens no." He looked down in sudden chagrin. "Oh and I meant to say I'm sorry about your mate Johnny Jones by the way but I asked him what he was doing and he said 'Your momma' and I lost my temper a bit. I have a touch of gastritis you see and I'm afraid it makes me somewhat vexatious at times."
...vexatious: it's not a word
Well. Color me stunned. I gazed in wonder at this prodigy before me. "What is it you want then, Beast?" I ventured.
"Well, I don't know." I said. "We can't always be running off down to the pet store for fresh shavings and bags of kibble. What kind of nourishment do you require?"
"Bananas," he replied, the saliva now flowing in a copious stream from the corners of his mouth. "Bananas are lovely. I always keep a bowl of them on my kitchen table. They're such a decorative fruit, you know...very long...and yellow....and, you know, long and yellow."
...bournemouth beach earlier this year during the annual spring banana festival. crowds of locals gather with buckets to capture the masses of schooling bananas as they lay their eggs in the sand
He twisted his handkercheif anxiously. "And you know, I can do this one trick-actually its very popular at parties- you see, I take a handful of vegetable shortening and ask one of the younger boys to go bring me a banana from the bowl, right? And then I unbutton my "
"Yes, that's wonderful," I said. "I'm afraid ocarina virtuosity, vacuuming and louche party hijinks aren't enough to earn you a place with the Ladybirds. Do you have any other talents we might find useful?"
"Allow me to demonstrate," he said.
...because the only thing sexier than a man with an eight inch tongue is a man who licks his own bone.
And so it was that the Ladybirds gained a new voice.
______________________________________________
If you'd like to book an appearance of the popular british vocal combo 'The Ladybirds Plus One' You can reach us at our website here: 05780O4UJ5.COM
or contact Robert Plant at:
Suite 55, Upton Sinclair, Liver Fluke, Finister Bar Sinister-on-Whipweal, UK, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE, EARTH 3BM 9G7
...yours now on Ebay for only 7.95At first life was simple. Papa sang bass, momma sang tenor, me and ol' Holler Log would join right in there, our voices raised in the innocent joy of popular music, bringing happiness to the drab, dismal, and, most of all, British world around us. But soon we were driven far from the public eye by the vile and vicious violence of a Beast!
We were followed...hounded one might say...daily...nightly...afternoonly...over hill and over Dale (who subsequently sued) relentless in his pursuit, , his hot breath in our ear, dogging our very footsteps!!
...get it? dogging? footsteps? and they're outdoors, see, and he's...yeah.Late at night I could hear him beneath my window...panting. Growling. Licking the siding. I swapped bedrooms with Marion Davies but it didn't help. Like the Beast that he was he soon picked up my spoor!!!
...'Don't leave your spoor lying about all over the place! cried the beast. "People could trip!'In desperation we assumed a disguise for our next performance!
...The American Nuns 'Let Freedom Ring' tonight live all ages 6.78But after our very first show under our new identities, as we raced down the alley at the back of the theatre, headed toward our limousine in an attempt to avoid the shrieking hordes of fans waiting out front, there, blocking our path like a path blocking blocker of paths was...
THE BEAST!
...oh noesWe froze in horror!!!
Shock-instant, heart freezing fear-took hold of our hearts! A shock more horrifying than finding a small peevish owl in ones toilet!!!!
...english toilet owl
..interior view of trice, bournemouth uk. other Ladybirds out of shot left occupy a row of theatre seats modified as enema chairs "What do you want from me fiend!" I shouted, struggling against my bonds. "I will not go gentle into that good night, sir! I tell you I will die with the words of Patrick Henry on my lips-'Give me liberty or give me..."
...defiance defined: the few, the proud, the under-dressed "...give you what?" Said the Beast, saliva dripping from his flews.
"Well I forget. Something. Honor? Probably something like that. Honor or Victory or something."
"Dinner? Give me liberty or give me dinner? Sort of a last meal scenario thing? He could have been hungry. I would have been."
I lowered my steely gaze to his.
...hangin' tough, stayin hungry; just a man and his will to survive"And are you hungry, foul BEAST?" I asked, daring him to show me his fangs, baring my lovely throat, determined to go down into death with a sardonic smile playing about my cruel yet sensuous lips.
"NO no no no no nooooooo, good heavens no." He looked down in sudden chagrin. "Oh and I meant to say I'm sorry about your mate Johnny Jones by the way but I asked him what he was doing and he said 'Your momma' and I lost my temper a bit. I have a touch of gastritis you see and I'm afraid it makes me somewhat vexatious at times."
...vexatious: it's not a word Well. Color me stunned. I gazed in wonder at this prodigy before me. "What is it you want then, Beast?" I ventured.
"Ooo, I want very much to be a member of the band, please!" he replied. "I can play the ocarina! And I'm very handy around the house. I own two vacuum cleaners in fact. Yes."
...double your cleaning pleasure
"Well, I don't know." I said. "We can't always be running off down to the pet store for fresh shavings and bags of kibble. What kind of nourishment do you require?"
"Bananas," he replied, the saliva now flowing in a copious stream from the corners of his mouth. "Bananas are lovely. I always keep a bowl of them on my kitchen table. They're such a decorative fruit, you know...very long...and yellow....and, you know, long and yellow."
...bournemouth beach earlier this year during the annual spring banana festival. crowds of locals gather with buckets to capture the masses of schooling bananas as they lay their eggs in the sand He twisted his handkercheif anxiously. "And you know, I can do this one trick-actually its very popular at parties- you see, I take a handful of vegetable shortening and ask one of the younger boys to go bring me a banana from the bowl, right? And then I unbutton my "
"Yes, that's wonderful," I said. "I'm afraid ocarina virtuosity, vacuuming and louche party hijinks aren't enough to earn you a place with the Ladybirds. Do you have any other talents we might find useful?"
"Allow me to demonstrate," he said.
...because the only thing sexier than a man with an eight inch tongue is a man who licks his own bone. And so it was that the Ladybirds gained a new voice.
______________________________________________
If you'd like to book an appearance of the popular british vocal combo 'The Ladybirds Plus One' You can reach us at our website here: 05780O4UJ5.COM
or contact Robert Plant at:
Suite 55, Upton Sinclair, Liver Fluke, Finister Bar Sinister-on-Whipweal, UK, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE, EARTH 3BM 9G7
Saturday, September 20, 2008
UPDATED: Frilled Lizard Yellow Takes Many Servings Meatloaf: Greed!!!
UPDATE: new one up at UJ, pervs! and its short, too! yay!
Here are my glorious potatoes and equally glorious tomatoes. You may worship them. Seriously. You can.
Starting on the far left we have the little Andean blue potato. I planted these at the same time as the rest of the potato crop, but they took the longest to mature. It grew into a huge big sprawling plant and blossomed (pink) continuously for 2 solid months. The other potatoes were ready in July; had already blossomed (blue and white) and begun to fail a bit while this one was still throwing baby tiny little potatoes far out from the main stalk, so I left it in. Suh-PRAZ,Suh-PRAZ,Suh-PRAZ... the thing threw nearly half a bushel of little tates per plant!
When you cut these open there is an intense ring of purple blue surrounding flesh that is almost baby duck yellow, although some of them will be lavender blue all the way through. It is very sweet and nice, on the mealy side rather than the waxy side, and the flesh cooks white. It isn't a long keeper at all; it goes soft very quickly even though the skin is relatively thick.
Next comes the standard 'Roma' tomato. This is the tomato that I would grow if I had to choose just one; it has huge, huge flavor and really firm flesh thats easy to work with...not overly juicy either. The only drawback is that the plant itself doesn't run too terribly hardy, but it produces like a mad thing so I guess it all evens out.
The new red potato is the one with what's described as 'waxy' flesh, although thats kind of a disgusting way to describe a structure that's just very fine grained once cooked. You can't make mashed potatoes with this one because it starts forming gluten like bread dough; it has no structure at all once its crushed and lots and lots of carb-sugar. This is perfect in potato salads, cold potato dishes with a dressing, things like that. It doesn't keep very long because the skin is thinner than tissue paper.
The grapette is just your standard little oval-shaped tomato. I found it in a salad and thought it tasted really good so I saved the seeds and I've been growing it for about six years now; maybe longer. Its not icky sweet like a cherry tomato, and like the Roma it has huge, huge flavor. It's very juicy and the plant is quite vigorous. Never had a problem with any kind of blight or spots with this one. Its a heavy producer, so I always have more than enough. I like to dry and pack them in a good thick olive oil with garlic for a special treat in the middle of the winter.
The Early Girl tomato is a Burpee hybrid, and its supposed to be a beefsteak. What I get here is more of a saladette because I don't manure heavily or do any fussing, and the season is really short. Still, its a great tomato, firm like a Roma but much juicier, and running somewhat more acid than the Roma. The seeds are spread throughout the meat of the fruit, not collected in a central vault around a core like the Romas. The plant and the fruit are really succeptible to blighting off, though, although its super vigorous in early growth and it sets fruit enthusiastically.
Yellow Pear is really different. First of all, I have never seen a plant that grows like this; it grows rampantly, just goes totally apeshit,. It's the rankest smelling tomato plant I've ever smelled; and when you crush the plant it leaves a substance on you (and anything else) that turns yellow. The Yellow Pear is the tomato most likely to volunteer as well. The fruit is very sweet, citric and yet almost buttery; very juicy too. It still tastes like a tomato, though, which is what I was after. (I won't grow a standard cherry tomato like 'Sweet 100'. Whats the point? All they taste like is sugar water.) This is what makes my tomato sauce taste different and really good, this little guy here. It just transforms the whole mix.
White Rose potato is just a nice, basic, somewhat sweet potato. Not a very long keeper; it has the thinnest skin of all the potatoes I grew this year.
The Russet is simply the standard Idaho baker. Keeps damn near indefinitely; the skin is more of a hide and the cooked texture is nice and mealy.
I grew this combination of potatoes because, when cooked and riced together, they make the most heavenly, meltingly delicious combination imaginable. The dish I make with them is kind of fussy simply because you need to have special equipment (a ricer, which is essentially a big thing with two handles and a basket that looks and works exactly like a garlic press) and you have to hurry and get it to the table before it 'sinks', but its so very worth the effort. It needs no butter, no salt, no nothing. You've never had a potato dish that did this; it melts like snowflakes on your tongue. Mmmm!
The recipe is simply this:
-Equal weights of blue, white, red potatoes: the total weight equal to the same weight in Russets, (think of it as a ratio) peeled, chopped medium and boiled all together in salted water until tender, drained
-While still hot, squeeze through a ricer into a warm bowl and serve immediately.
Lets look at them again, shall we? Yes, lets!
And heres my recipe for perfect tomato sauce:
-Roma, yellow pear, grapette and early girl beefsteak tomatoes, washed, seeded and run though a food processor until smooth
Place in an 8 1/2 by 11, 3 inch deep baking dish and put into a cold oven on the middle rack.
Set the heat at 325.
Cook for several hours in increments of 45 minutes, stopping each time to stir the sauce thoroughly and checking to see that it is not bubbling..not even a simmer. If it is, turn the heat down to 300 or even 275. The sauce is done when it is reduced by 1/2 (less for thicker sauce or paste. As it thickens it will have to be checked and stirred more frequently to ensure that it does not burn.) This can take up to 4 hours, depending on the juiciness of the tomatoes and the temperature and humidity of the day. Use this time to have a cocktail...read a trashy magazine...give someone special a nice blow job. Or two.
Cool, then return to cuisinart or better yet a blender and blend until smooth; freeze.
When you thaw this out it will taste exactly like summer. It will simply fill the entire kitchen with the smell of fresh tomato and blow you away.
Here are my glorious potatoes and equally glorious tomatoes. You may worship them. Seriously. You can.
Starting on the far left we have the little Andean blue potato. I planted these at the same time as the rest of the potato crop, but they took the longest to mature. It grew into a huge big sprawling plant and blossomed (pink) continuously for 2 solid months. The other potatoes were ready in July; had already blossomed (blue and white) and begun to fail a bit while this one was still throwing baby tiny little potatoes far out from the main stalk, so I left it in. Suh-PRAZ,Suh-PRAZ,Suh-PRAZ... the thing threw nearly half a bushel of little tates per plant!
When you cut these open there is an intense ring of purple blue surrounding flesh that is almost baby duck yellow, although some of them will be lavender blue all the way through. It is very sweet and nice, on the mealy side rather than the waxy side, and the flesh cooks white. It isn't a long keeper at all; it goes soft very quickly even though the skin is relatively thick.
Next comes the standard 'Roma' tomato. This is the tomato that I would grow if I had to choose just one; it has huge, huge flavor and really firm flesh thats easy to work with...not overly juicy either. The only drawback is that the plant itself doesn't run too terribly hardy, but it produces like a mad thing so I guess it all evens out.
The new red potato is the one with what's described as 'waxy' flesh, although thats kind of a disgusting way to describe a structure that's just very fine grained once cooked. You can't make mashed potatoes with this one because it starts forming gluten like bread dough; it has no structure at all once its crushed and lots and lots of carb-sugar. This is perfect in potato salads, cold potato dishes with a dressing, things like that. It doesn't keep very long because the skin is thinner than tissue paper.
The grapette is just your standard little oval-shaped tomato. I found it in a salad and thought it tasted really good so I saved the seeds and I've been growing it for about six years now; maybe longer. Its not icky sweet like a cherry tomato, and like the Roma it has huge, huge flavor. It's very juicy and the plant is quite vigorous. Never had a problem with any kind of blight or spots with this one. Its a heavy producer, so I always have more than enough. I like to dry and pack them in a good thick olive oil with garlic for a special treat in the middle of the winter.
The Early Girl tomato is a Burpee hybrid, and its supposed to be a beefsteak. What I get here is more of a saladette because I don't manure heavily or do any fussing, and the season is really short. Still, its a great tomato, firm like a Roma but much juicier, and running somewhat more acid than the Roma. The seeds are spread throughout the meat of the fruit, not collected in a central vault around a core like the Romas. The plant and the fruit are really succeptible to blighting off, though, although its super vigorous in early growth and it sets fruit enthusiastically.
Yellow Pear is really different. First of all, I have never seen a plant that grows like this; it grows rampantly, just goes totally apeshit,. It's the rankest smelling tomato plant I've ever smelled; and when you crush the plant it leaves a substance on you (and anything else) that turns yellow. The Yellow Pear is the tomato most likely to volunteer as well. The fruit is very sweet, citric and yet almost buttery; very juicy too. It still tastes like a tomato, though, which is what I was after. (I won't grow a standard cherry tomato like 'Sweet 100'. Whats the point? All they taste like is sugar water.) This is what makes my tomato sauce taste different and really good, this little guy here. It just transforms the whole mix.
White Rose potato is just a nice, basic, somewhat sweet potato. Not a very long keeper; it has the thinnest skin of all the potatoes I grew this year.
The Russet is simply the standard Idaho baker. Keeps damn near indefinitely; the skin is more of a hide and the cooked texture is nice and mealy.
I grew this combination of potatoes because, when cooked and riced together, they make the most heavenly, meltingly delicious combination imaginable. The dish I make with them is kind of fussy simply because you need to have special equipment (a ricer, which is essentially a big thing with two handles and a basket that looks and works exactly like a garlic press) and you have to hurry and get it to the table before it 'sinks', but its so very worth the effort. It needs no butter, no salt, no nothing. You've never had a potato dish that did this; it melts like snowflakes on your tongue. Mmmm!
The recipe is simply this:
-Equal weights of blue, white, red potatoes: the total weight equal to the same weight in Russets, (think of it as a ratio) peeled, chopped medium and boiled all together in salted water until tender, drained
-While still hot, squeeze through a ricer into a warm bowl and serve immediately.
Lets look at them again, shall we? Yes, lets!
And heres my recipe for perfect tomato sauce:
-Roma, yellow pear, grapette and early girl beefsteak tomatoes, washed, seeded and run though a food processor until smooth
Place in an 8 1/2 by 11, 3 inch deep baking dish and put into a cold oven on the middle rack.
Set the heat at 325.
Cook for several hours in increments of 45 minutes, stopping each time to stir the sauce thoroughly and checking to see that it is not bubbling..not even a simmer. If it is, turn the heat down to 300 or even 275. The sauce is done when it is reduced by 1/2 (less for thicker sauce or paste. As it thickens it will have to be checked and stirred more frequently to ensure that it does not burn.) This can take up to 4 hours, depending on the juiciness of the tomatoes and the temperature and humidity of the day. Use this time to have a cocktail...read a trashy magazine...give someone special a nice blow job. Or two.
Cool, then return to cuisinart or better yet a blender and blend until smooth; freeze.
When you thaw this out it will taste exactly like summer. It will simply fill the entire kitchen with the smell of fresh tomato and blow you away.
666
yes! i lost your previous comments! thank you blogger! thank you so very much!
__________________________________________________
I've been trying to put this off for as long as possible but the truth is out there, clawing big holes in the screen door, plus it crapped out next to the back step and then walked in it and now its tracking it all over the place. Someone please go get a rag and turn the hose on and wash off the Truth before it comes in and tracks crap all over the rug, OK?
Many of you have written in asking "Why is it that you never visit the UK like you used to?" and "Why do my underpants feel all funny after I dry them with synthetics?" And to this I have one answer:
BEAST IS THE REASON.
It started many many years ago, back when Ronald Reagan was just a schoolboy parading around in his mothers bra and panties in the bathroom mirror while his uncle with the funny accent watched through the keyhole. Back in those days the rules were different. People were different.
Babies were different too.
"...congratulations, mrs. bournemouth! it's a....little... strange...thing!"
Some hinted darkly that his mother had been scared by an unknown assailant while she was out taking a pregnant, naked romp through the underbrush one day and that her offspring had somehow been marked by this trauma.
Everyone knows that's bullshit of course but its what people said and I'm not going to argue with them. Some people pointed a finger of blame at Winston Churchill. I like to blame things on Winston Churchill too. Winston Churchill would totally fuck with you. He'd do shit like unscrew the cap on the salt shakers and people would be like "Aw Jesus, Winston, don't be such a douche" but he'd just laugh.
The Beasts' early years are shrouded in mystery. Only this picture remains
...lady of spain i adooooooooooore you
...relic of a time when the Beasts parents had tried to foster a love of music in their growing boys' breast, despite the fact that it kept getting pinched in the bellows.
Back when I was making regular visits to the UK (or as we liked to call it back then "The UK") as a member of Led Zeppelin, we often found ourselves playing venues out in the trackless wastes of the English high desert...our only light the smouldering gypsy campfires; our only audience the smouldering Gypsies. It was a simpler time... a time when a middle-aged woman could lie about being a member of one of rock and rolls' most popular power groups and get away with it. I was happy as their lead singer. Happy save for one thing....
The BEAST.
Somewhere in the darkness you could hear him. Breathing. Panting. Lusting after the taste of rock and roll flesh and entrails and guts and hair and stuff.
In the mornings you would find the print of his huge...print....waiting for you just outside, like a hideous 'Get Well' card signed by a disturbed stranger in a public restroom.
"...and the mark of the beast shall be upon the hand and the forehead of those whosoever follow him, and upon the canvas lawn furniture of them also shall that mark be found" REV 5:33
He was out there.
Waiting.
Watching.
MAKING PRINTS.
For years we remained one step ahead of him, like some maniac game of Cribbage with life and death as the stakes, until Robert Plant would put one of the little marker dealies in his mouth and everyone would go "Oh Jesus Bob get that out of your mouth; are you six?" and he'd sulk, and nobody could remember what the score was.
THE BEAST KNEW.
...he does, too.
One fateful night he executed his fell masterstroke! In one savage moment reeking of blood and panic he leapt upon the prostate form of John Paul Jones and shredded his mortal coil, festooning his still-quivering flesh like icky bloody shredded stuff across the panicked landscapes of our shocked and shreiking brains!!!!! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" went our brains. Just like that!
...prostate form of john paul jones, enlarged*
We fled, we knew not where, deep into the dark blackness of the black British night.
AND THE BEAST LAUGHED!
Tune in next week for the further adventures of The Beast of Bournemouth! WHY? Because if I don't hit 'publish' this won't save for some demented reason! So yeah! Do that!
_____________________________________
* oh come on that's funny. get it? get it? enlarged? and its a picture of an enlarged prostate? because prostate sounds like prostrate, and
yeah.
__________________________________________________
I've been trying to put this off for as long as possible but the truth is out there, clawing big holes in the screen door, plus it crapped out next to the back step and then walked in it and now its tracking it all over the place. Someone please go get a rag and turn the hose on and wash off the Truth before it comes in and tracks crap all over the rug, OK?
Many of you have written in asking "Why is it that you never visit the UK like you used to?" and "Why do my underpants feel all funny after I dry them with synthetics?" And to this I have one answer:
BEAST.
BEAST IS THE REASON.It started many many years ago, back when Ronald Reagan was just a schoolboy parading around in his mothers bra and panties in the bathroom mirror while his uncle with the funny accent watched through the keyhole. Back in those days the rules were different. People were different.
Babies were different too.
"...congratulations, mrs. bournemouth! it's a....little... strange...thing!"Some hinted darkly that his mother had been scared by an unknown assailant while she was out taking a pregnant, naked romp through the underbrush one day and that her offspring had somehow been marked by this trauma.
Everyone knows that's bullshit of course but its what people said and I'm not going to argue with them. Some people pointed a finger of blame at Winston Churchill. I like to blame things on Winston Churchill too. Winston Churchill would totally fuck with you. He'd do shit like unscrew the cap on the salt shakers and people would be like "Aw Jesus, Winston, don't be such a douche" but he'd just laugh.
The Beasts' early years are shrouded in mystery. Only this picture remains
...lady of spain i adooooooooooore you...relic of a time when the Beasts parents had tried to foster a love of music in their growing boys' breast, despite the fact that it kept getting pinched in the bellows.
Back when I was making regular visits to the UK (or as we liked to call it back then "The UK") as a member of Led Zeppelin, we often found ourselves playing venues out in the trackless wastes of the English high desert...our only light the smouldering gypsy campfires; our only audience the smouldering Gypsies. It was a simpler time... a time when a middle-aged woman could lie about being a member of one of rock and rolls' most popular power groups and get away with it. I was happy as their lead singer. Happy save for one thing....
The BEAST.Somewhere in the darkness you could hear him. Breathing. Panting. Lusting after the taste of rock and roll flesh and entrails and guts and hair and stuff.
In the mornings you would find the print of his huge...print....waiting for you just outside, like a hideous 'Get Well' card signed by a disturbed stranger in a public restroom.
"...and the mark of the beast shall be upon the hand and the forehead of those whosoever follow him, and upon the canvas lawn furniture of them also shall that mark be found" REV 5:33He was out there.
Waiting.
Watching.
MAKING PRINTS.
For years we remained one step ahead of him, like some maniac game of Cribbage with life and death as the stakes, until Robert Plant would put one of the little marker dealies in his mouth and everyone would go "Oh Jesus Bob get that out of your mouth; are you six?" and he'd sulk, and nobody could remember what the score was.
THE BEAST KNEW.
...he does, too.One fateful night he executed his fell masterstroke! In one savage moment reeking of blood and panic he leapt upon the prostate form of John Paul Jones and shredded his mortal coil, festooning his still-quivering flesh like icky bloody shredded stuff across the panicked landscapes of our shocked and shreiking brains!!!!! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" went our brains. Just like that!
...prostate form of john paul jones, enlarged*AND THE BEAST LAUGHED!
Tune in next week for the further adventures of The Beast of Bournemouth! WHY? Because if I don't hit 'publish' this won't save for some demented reason! So yeah! Do that!
_____________________________________
* oh come on that's funny. get it? get it? enlarged? and its a picture of an enlarged prostate? because prostate sounds like prostrate, and
yeah.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Blue Bear Seasons With Garlic: Vigorous Shake
I've started reading a book called 'Writing On Drugs' , and I'm finding it to be really good stuff. Lady named Sadie Plant wrote it. Check it out, its worth a read.
It might be kind of obvious to some of you now that I have a fascination with altered mental states. This book goes into some depth describing the influence of voluntarily altered mental states on the creative process and I'm all over that crap, lemme tell you.
I have no future career as a professional opium eater, sadly. What Coleridge and Baudelaire and them'uns had to purchase at the local apothecary shoppe I seem to posses by right of genetics. Not that I travel around in a perpetual haze (despite what some might think); no, just that I have an inner landscape that I'm pretty well able to traverse at whim. Even the really freaky parts. Their quest seemed to be finding the entrance to Alladins' Cave in order to stuff their pockets with gold doubloons. Mine seems to be finding something in there I can use to peel the gold foil off with so I can eat the chocolate inside.
Really, that's the punchline. It looks like valuable treasure, all that fascinating stuff in your brain, but its just candy, really. If you have a poverty of emotion and imagination in your everyday life, then taking something that allows you to hold dark discourse with Nyarlathotep is going to be an enrapturing experience you'll want to return to...particularly if the alternative is unrelievedly banal. The problem is: Brains are fun*, but you don't get much vacuuming done. Everyday life and everyday things are important, despite what religion and fancy and imagination and everything else would lead you away from believing. Changing the water in the dogs' dish is more valuable than anything you experience or 'learn' while under the influence of drugs.
The first and last time I ever took LSD is a case in point. Oh my goodness was I wasted. Oh heavens to Betsy yes;. But the perceptive shifts were nothing different than things I experienced on a nightly basis, in dreams, or even all that terribly different than some of the things I imagined vividly in daydreams. Furthermore, it was not only 'induced' imagination, it was 'enforced' imagination. And you had to watch, little Alex, you had no choice. It was going to last as long as it took the chemicals to run out of your system.
The 'wastedness' part of the show was kind of fun at first, but got really old after five hours, and after ten it was a real pain in the ass. Being too intoxicated to perform simple tasks blows. Seriously, there's nothing more annoying than over-boiled peas come to find out, particularly when you have to chase them around on a plate and kill them individually, and your manual dexterity is suffering and every time you finally poke one with a fork it bleeds greenish, cloudy lymphatic fluids and makes a disgusting tiny popping noise like a ripe carbuncle finally cutting loose...you get the picture? Yeah. And for that I paid money? I really rather would have had the chocolate doubloons. Chocolate tastes good and you can do crafts and shit with the foil. I mean really.
This is not to say that drugs aren't fun, because they are. As long as you use them for the occasional holiday from reality and you know what you want out of the experience, they're a delight. They just aren't really a means to any other end than simple temporary entertainment.
I met a girl years ago* who frequently used the phrase 'people who'd learned a lot of things from using acid' with a great deal of heartfelt reverence, as though what you and I would term 'burnouts' existed in some perpetual exalted state (one that you and I would term 'brain damage'.) People suffering from a medieval lack of personal hygiene who live on kale and shit in public aren't living in an exalted state. Maybe that looks romantic from the vantage point of a sheltered little suburban teenybopper, but watch them going in to pick up their disability check at the welfare office sometime and see how exalted that shit looks, and take careful note while they shed that 'exalted state' long enough to cash the fucker and not get kicked out of the bank. Squatting to take a dump in public because they've 'forsaken conventional mores' or are 'trying to shock the Man into a moment of reality' is still taking a dump in public, idiot. But oh no, she was all starry-eyed over this supposed 'alternative wisdom path', one of these college freshman types fresh from mommy and daddys' house in the suburbs who'll get allllllll sanctimonious and start in with the 'now, just because it isn't your reality doesn't mean blah blah blah, we have to be open to alternative modes of blah blah blah' and I had to say no, taking a dump out on the sidewalk because I'm too goddamn wasted to remember where the public bathrooms are certainly isn't something I'll be making a part of my chosen reality. Now go join a cult, you retard.
Oh wait...she did.
*snork*
_________________________________
*particularly giant evil brains from outer space that drive flying saucers and kidnap women to bring back to their home planets for breeding purposes but then they get their tank that they float around in all shot up full of holes and all the gross fluid leaks out and the brain explodes and sick chunks of brain crud go flying around all over the place and some lands on the lady and shes all screaming and shit but the other guys rescue her and she falls in love with one of them but has an alien brain baby nine months later.
*one of my ex-husbands subsequent girlfriends. nothing gets you over the residual heartache of a broken marriage quicker than realizing that your ex is dating a self-inflicted revenge even sweeter than anything you could have cooked up on your own!
It might be kind of obvious to some of you now that I have a fascination with altered mental states. This book goes into some depth describing the influence of voluntarily altered mental states on the creative process and I'm all over that crap, lemme tell you.
I have no future career as a professional opium eater, sadly. What Coleridge and Baudelaire and them'uns had to purchase at the local apothecary shoppe I seem to posses by right of genetics. Not that I travel around in a perpetual haze (despite what some might think); no, just that I have an inner landscape that I'm pretty well able to traverse at whim. Even the really freaky parts. Their quest seemed to be finding the entrance to Alladins' Cave in order to stuff their pockets with gold doubloons. Mine seems to be finding something in there I can use to peel the gold foil off with so I can eat the chocolate inside.
Really, that's the punchline. It looks like valuable treasure, all that fascinating stuff in your brain, but its just candy, really. If you have a poverty of emotion and imagination in your everyday life, then taking something that allows you to hold dark discourse with Nyarlathotep is going to be an enrapturing experience you'll want to return to...particularly if the alternative is unrelievedly banal. The problem is: Brains are fun*, but you don't get much vacuuming done. Everyday life and everyday things are important, despite what religion and fancy and imagination and everything else would lead you away from believing. Changing the water in the dogs' dish is more valuable than anything you experience or 'learn' while under the influence of drugs.
The first and last time I ever took LSD is a case in point. Oh my goodness was I wasted. Oh heavens to Betsy yes;. But the perceptive shifts were nothing different than things I experienced on a nightly basis, in dreams, or even all that terribly different than some of the things I imagined vividly in daydreams. Furthermore, it was not only 'induced' imagination, it was 'enforced' imagination. And you had to watch, little Alex, you had no choice. It was going to last as long as it took the chemicals to run out of your system.
The 'wastedness' part of the show was kind of fun at first, but got really old after five hours, and after ten it was a real pain in the ass. Being too intoxicated to perform simple tasks blows. Seriously, there's nothing more annoying than over-boiled peas come to find out, particularly when you have to chase them around on a plate and kill them individually, and your manual dexterity is suffering and every time you finally poke one with a fork it bleeds greenish, cloudy lymphatic fluids and makes a disgusting tiny popping noise like a ripe carbuncle finally cutting loose...you get the picture? Yeah. And for that I paid money? I really rather would have had the chocolate doubloons. Chocolate tastes good and you can do crafts and shit with the foil. I mean really.
This is not to say that drugs aren't fun, because they are. As long as you use them for the occasional holiday from reality and you know what you want out of the experience, they're a delight. They just aren't really a means to any other end than simple temporary entertainment.
I met a girl years ago* who frequently used the phrase 'people who'd learned a lot of things from using acid' with a great deal of heartfelt reverence, as though what you and I would term 'burnouts' existed in some perpetual exalted state (one that you and I would term 'brain damage'.) People suffering from a medieval lack of personal hygiene who live on kale and shit in public aren't living in an exalted state. Maybe that looks romantic from the vantage point of a sheltered little suburban teenybopper, but watch them going in to pick up their disability check at the welfare office sometime and see how exalted that shit looks, and take careful note while they shed that 'exalted state' long enough to cash the fucker and not get kicked out of the bank. Squatting to take a dump in public because they've 'forsaken conventional mores' or are 'trying to shock the Man into a moment of reality' is still taking a dump in public, idiot. But oh no, she was all starry-eyed over this supposed 'alternative wisdom path', one of these college freshman types fresh from mommy and daddys' house in the suburbs who'll get allllllll sanctimonious and start in with the 'now, just because it isn't your reality doesn't mean blah blah blah, we have to be open to alternative modes of blah blah blah' and I had to say no, taking a dump out on the sidewalk because I'm too goddamn wasted to remember where the public bathrooms are certainly isn't something I'll be making a part of my chosen reality. Now go join a cult, you retard.
Oh wait...she did.
*snork*
_________________________________
*particularly giant evil brains from outer space that drive flying saucers and kidnap women to bring back to their home planets for breeding purposes but then they get their tank that they float around in all shot up full of holes and all the gross fluid leaks out and the brain explodes and sick chunks of brain crud go flying around all over the place and some lands on the lady and shes all screaming and shit but the other guys rescue her and she falls in love with one of them but has an alien brain baby nine months later.
*one of my ex-husbands subsequent girlfriends. nothing gets you over the residual heartache of a broken marriage quicker than realizing that your ex is dating a self-inflicted revenge even sweeter than anything you could have cooked up on your own!
Friday, September 12, 2008
Nutty people
Up until recently, my cousin-by-adoption M. Antony was the most gorgeous man I'd ever laid eyes on. How this happened was a miracle of random genetics because everyone else on his side of the family was butt ugly; all bones and knuckles and pocked with the most heinous shotgun collection of acne scars I have ever seen. M. Antony, in sharp contrast, was glorious....when I was younger I simply could not look at the guy because I'd blush so hard my hands would tingle. Think of a young Peter Frampton, only darker, somewhat more butch and really, really stoned looking and you have M. Antony.
Of course he married a raving nutcase.
At first, Kathee was a lot of fun. I really liked her and we were friends. She was from Florida and came from money; her accent was so thick you could spread it like marmalade. She was a pretty girl. She joked and gave her husband a hard time, and I was (extremely jealous) happy for him. The times we went out and partied together she was just as salty as the guys and could drink us all under the table.
And then she met JuHEEEEzuz.
Not Jesus, mind you. I'm pretty sure the guy she met was a thought emanation shed by Charles Manson, dressed in a bathrobe. It sure wasn't Mary's little boy. This guy was MEAN.
Overnight-literally- Kathee went from being a cheerful, fun, joking person to being a strangely rigid, completely literal tool of righteousness. I never saw her smile again. Not once. Suddenly her internal monologue simply disappeared. Totally gone. If she thought it she said it, and what she said was often thoughtless, cruel and horribly inappropriate...with absolutely no human malice powering it whatsoever.
Her kids became haunted looking little wraiths who never spoke and never looked an adult in the eye. She took to switching them or smacking them on the leg whenever they came within arms reach; ostensibly to 'beat the devil out of them', like a dose of preventative medicine. My cousin M. Antony, in the course of less than a year, went from being a handsome, healthy young man to a pot bellied, slouch shouldered furtive old man who mumbled and shuffled and pretended to fall asleep so nobody could hold him accountable for his wifes' behavior.
Kathee became wide and stumpy and took to wearing gingham dresses. She would help herself to whatever was at hand; go through cabinets, look in drawers, wander into the bathroom while you were busy and use the mirror (I've done a post mentioning one episode here:
http://1hplovecraft.blogspot.com/2006/10/filet-of-doom-2-yellowfin-tuna-attack.html), casually ask to borrow a tampon while everyone was seated eating dinner, things like that. Now that last is tacky enough given an average social situation; imagine it happening during Thanksgiving dinner seated at a table full of Kelly green Catholics in full-on denial that people even had parts, let alone parts that needed tampons, and there you have the makings of a truly memorable holiday get-together.
Weirdly enough, my mom, Jesus' little sunbeam, hated the woman. Absolutely HATED her.
Years later I found out the reason. Kathee'd matter of factly informed my mom that the Pope was the Antichrist and that she was going to hell for acknowledging him as Jesus' appointed successor. "And here she's still a stinkin' Baptist married to a Catholic boy," my mom sniffed. "You oughta see the churches they got, talk about swanky." Church swankiness was a sore issue with my mom, as were wives who did not submit to their husbands (she kept hers well pickled in Canadian Mist; it did make him a lot easier to submit to.)
Still, the fact that everyone overlooked for whatever reason was that Kathee was STARK RAVING BATSHIT NUTS. Heaven only knows what she's like now; let alone her poor children. Let alone my poor cousin, if he's still alive; because if someone could run a person into an early grave it was that broad. Imagine riding in a car with this woman listening to the news on the radio and suddenly she pipes up with something like 'well you know they're going to hell for eternity because Mormons are pagans who worship a gold idol' or 'sodomites are all dying of the AIDS plague and I for one see it as the coming of the end of days; it's Gods' judgment on them for their sin and on us for allowing that sin' and other well-informed, thoughtful pronouncements like that and you can well imagine the wacky fun that even a quick trip to the supermarket could be. Again, there was no hostility in these remarks, not even that nasty little superior smirky thing that too many convicted religious do; it was just some strange joyless, blank thing that came echoing up from someplace. Kathee was gone.
___________________________
I have spent my entire life living next door to nutty people. Or with them. From the time I was 18 on I went through a succession of apartments and directly adjacent to every one lived someone with rabid weasels scrambling around in between their ears and a bald cat up their ass tuned to Radio Free Mars.
Always a screamer.
No matter what their particular flavor of brain drip, they always took to screaming at some point in the proceedings. Ordinary people can cut loose a racket when properly provoked; you lose a limb suddenly, a meteorite falls down the front of your pants, your average person will protest loudly. Nutty people simply haul back and let fly from the pancreas, apropos of Jack Shit. I never even knew human people could make noises like the noises I heard come out of some of these folks. And the provocation in their case was imaginary! Whatever lives in the human subconscious, whatever drives these folks to scream, is something so Lovecraftian that I'm really GLAD they have shit like Thorazine. If I was nutty I'd be chucking that shit down like peanuts at the circus. Screw these emo morons who romanticise insanity. There's nothing romantic about screaming gibberish at the moon and clawing bloody gouges down your face until you have to be hauled off in leather restraints so you don't blind yourself. I lived next door to that person; and that person was taken off; I stood out on the corner on 9Th and Pine and I could hear them screaming from inside the ambulance all the way to the river, huge suffering superhuman roars that echoed off the buildings.
Another variety of screamer is the ranter. Now a ranter will start off talking. Not always coherently, but there will be words. But at some point in the proceedings the diatribe will turn into rhythmic, singsong, increasingly loud proclamations until suddenly one word comes tearing up out of their throat like a top fuel dragster, right into the wall, flying apart, trailing flames. It seems like a sheer need to be heard, almost. The volume is astounding, and yet it's just wind and muscle driving it, over and over again like a maniac siren. I've lived near a lot of these people. We lived next door to one when my daughter was growing up. I live next door to one now, in fact.
_____________________________
Years ago I was living in downtown Portland and since I was on the third floor of a building I didn't always feel like calling the elevator and dicking around with that, so instead of night walking a lot of the time I just opened a window and sat out on the sill. I had a wonderful view straight down 5Th avenue, and although I was too close to street level to really get the whole effect of the lights and cityscape thing, still, it was nice. One night I was perched there out my front room window, having a bottle of beer and a smoke, when I heard someone yelling far off downtown. Nothing unusual in that at all; shit, it was Portland. Even though it was Sunday night, crazy knows no sabbath, right?
As I sat there and smoked I could heart the voice come closer; someone was walking slowly up from Burnside, someone calling at the top of their lungs in a long, drawn out singsong, 'Heeeeeeeeeeelp........heeeeeeeeelp me......." like that. Like a lost soul. Not crying, not in pain, not drunk or slurring, just...' Heeeeeeeeeeeelp meeeeeeeee....helllllllllllllllllp meeeeeeeeeee' over and over again. "Oh God...God heeeeeeeeeeeeelp meeeeeeee....'
I will never forget that. Sunday night, the whole town is silent, not a car in sight, not a bus going by, the only headlights moving across the river on I-5 and very few of them at that hour, and this lone voice chanting 'help me' in the night. I must have sat there for a couple of hours, lighting one cigarette off the ember of the next and listening to this person slowly walk up the hill and then pass some blocks up from my street until their voice finally disappeared into the distance as they crossed South Slope.
I feel strange to this day remembering that I even had a reaction to it. It was someone elses' private drama and I didn't have anything to do with it; but there I was awake, and there this person was, chasing something through town. It was like overhearing odd unexpected music from a passing car. It was like being all alone in a church and then gradually becoming aware of someone saying their rosary fervidly someplace far behind you. It was like the first time I ever came around a bend in the road up alone in the hills and found a bobcat staring at me.
________________________________
About a year later I was out walking one night in the lower numbers down on the East side of the river, in around the old Victorian residences and the remains of Mission bungalow neighborhoods all surrounded by autobody shops and warehouses. The sidewalk was broken and you had to watch your step; it was grown up in rank tufts of Johnson grass, and overgrown rhododendron reached out from the yards you passed. I came around the bow of one and found myself standing in front of an old, long, low Mission house with a deep porch and concrete steps leading up from the sidewalk. I stopped and lit a smoke to have something to do while I admired the place and wished that I lived there, and as I stood there I became aware of a person standing up on the porch. I almost apologized but I kept my mouth shut because something didn't feel just right, so I stood there and looked around for awhile, not quite knowing what to do all of a sudden, not wanting to look suspicious and probably looking suspicious as hell.
Meanwhile the person simply stood, somewhat back from the porch railing, near a window through which you could see a black and white television playing, and it was the light from this that revealed him there. An old, old man, older than Ramses III, thin to the point of starvation, standing very, very still. Intensity radiated off this man like heat. His face was like an oxyacetylene flame. He stood there in absolute silence, absolutely motionless, ramrod straight. Looking out into the distance, out toward the horizon, through where the huge rhododendron grew and obscured the view completely.
I started walking away. He never glanced in my direction. As I walked off I turned around several times to check but no, he was real, he was alive, and he was still there. Rigid as stone. Looking intently off into the distance, looking into the complete darkness of the leaves and shadows, just standing there in the dark. I can still see that so plain.
Of course he married a raving nutcase.
At first, Kathee was a lot of fun. I really liked her and we were friends. She was from Florida and came from money; her accent was so thick you could spread it like marmalade. She was a pretty girl. She joked and gave her husband a hard time, and I was (extremely jealous) happy for him. The times we went out and partied together she was just as salty as the guys and could drink us all under the table.
And then she met JuHEEEEzuz.
Not Jesus, mind you. I'm pretty sure the guy she met was a thought emanation shed by Charles Manson, dressed in a bathrobe. It sure wasn't Mary's little boy. This guy was MEAN.
Overnight-literally- Kathee went from being a cheerful, fun, joking person to being a strangely rigid, completely literal tool of righteousness. I never saw her smile again. Not once. Suddenly her internal monologue simply disappeared. Totally gone. If she thought it she said it, and what she said was often thoughtless, cruel and horribly inappropriate...with absolutely no human malice powering it whatsoever.
Her kids became haunted looking little wraiths who never spoke and never looked an adult in the eye. She took to switching them or smacking them on the leg whenever they came within arms reach; ostensibly to 'beat the devil out of them', like a dose of preventative medicine. My cousin M. Antony, in the course of less than a year, went from being a handsome, healthy young man to a pot bellied, slouch shouldered furtive old man who mumbled and shuffled and pretended to fall asleep so nobody could hold him accountable for his wifes' behavior.
Kathee became wide and stumpy and took to wearing gingham dresses. She would help herself to whatever was at hand; go through cabinets, look in drawers, wander into the bathroom while you were busy and use the mirror (I've done a post mentioning one episode here:
http://1hplovecraft.blogspot.com/2006/10/filet-of-doom-2-yellowfin-tuna-attack.html), casually ask to borrow a tampon while everyone was seated eating dinner, things like that. Now that last is tacky enough given an average social situation; imagine it happening during Thanksgiving dinner seated at a table full of Kelly green Catholics in full-on denial that people even had parts, let alone parts that needed tampons, and there you have the makings of a truly memorable holiday get-together.
Weirdly enough, my mom, Jesus' little sunbeam, hated the woman. Absolutely HATED her.
Years later I found out the reason. Kathee'd matter of factly informed my mom that the Pope was the Antichrist and that she was going to hell for acknowledging him as Jesus' appointed successor. "And here she's still a stinkin' Baptist married to a Catholic boy," my mom sniffed. "You oughta see the churches they got, talk about swanky." Church swankiness was a sore issue with my mom, as were wives who did not submit to their husbands (she kept hers well pickled in Canadian Mist; it did make him a lot easier to submit to.)
Still, the fact that everyone overlooked for whatever reason was that Kathee was STARK RAVING BATSHIT NUTS. Heaven only knows what she's like now; let alone her poor children. Let alone my poor cousin, if he's still alive; because if someone could run a person into an early grave it was that broad. Imagine riding in a car with this woman listening to the news on the radio and suddenly she pipes up with something like 'well you know they're going to hell for eternity because Mormons are pagans who worship a gold idol' or 'sodomites are all dying of the AIDS plague and I for one see it as the coming of the end of days; it's Gods' judgment on them for their sin and on us for allowing that sin' and other well-informed, thoughtful pronouncements like that and you can well imagine the wacky fun that even a quick trip to the supermarket could be. Again, there was no hostility in these remarks, not even that nasty little superior smirky thing that too many convicted religious do; it was just some strange joyless, blank thing that came echoing up from someplace. Kathee was gone.
___________________________
I have spent my entire life living next door to nutty people. Or with them. From the time I was 18 on I went through a succession of apartments and directly adjacent to every one lived someone with rabid weasels scrambling around in between their ears and a bald cat up their ass tuned to Radio Free Mars.
Always a screamer.
No matter what their particular flavor of brain drip, they always took to screaming at some point in the proceedings. Ordinary people can cut loose a racket when properly provoked; you lose a limb suddenly, a meteorite falls down the front of your pants, your average person will protest loudly. Nutty people simply haul back and let fly from the pancreas, apropos of Jack Shit. I never even knew human people could make noises like the noises I heard come out of some of these folks. And the provocation in their case was imaginary! Whatever lives in the human subconscious, whatever drives these folks to scream, is something so Lovecraftian that I'm really GLAD they have shit like Thorazine. If I was nutty I'd be chucking that shit down like peanuts at the circus. Screw these emo morons who romanticise insanity. There's nothing romantic about screaming gibberish at the moon and clawing bloody gouges down your face until you have to be hauled off in leather restraints so you don't blind yourself. I lived next door to that person; and that person was taken off; I stood out on the corner on 9Th and Pine and I could hear them screaming from inside the ambulance all the way to the river, huge suffering superhuman roars that echoed off the buildings.
Another variety of screamer is the ranter. Now a ranter will start off talking. Not always coherently, but there will be words. But at some point in the proceedings the diatribe will turn into rhythmic, singsong, increasingly loud proclamations until suddenly one word comes tearing up out of their throat like a top fuel dragster, right into the wall, flying apart, trailing flames. It seems like a sheer need to be heard, almost. The volume is astounding, and yet it's just wind and muscle driving it, over and over again like a maniac siren. I've lived near a lot of these people. We lived next door to one when my daughter was growing up. I live next door to one now, in fact.
_____________________________
Years ago I was living in downtown Portland and since I was on the third floor of a building I didn't always feel like calling the elevator and dicking around with that, so instead of night walking a lot of the time I just opened a window and sat out on the sill. I had a wonderful view straight down 5Th avenue, and although I was too close to street level to really get the whole effect of the lights and cityscape thing, still, it was nice. One night I was perched there out my front room window, having a bottle of beer and a smoke, when I heard someone yelling far off downtown. Nothing unusual in that at all; shit, it was Portland. Even though it was Sunday night, crazy knows no sabbath, right?
As I sat there and smoked I could heart the voice come closer; someone was walking slowly up from Burnside, someone calling at the top of their lungs in a long, drawn out singsong, 'Heeeeeeeeeeelp........heeeeeeeeelp me......." like that. Like a lost soul. Not crying, not in pain, not drunk or slurring, just...' Heeeeeeeeeeeelp meeeeeeeee....helllllllllllllllllp meeeeeeeeeee' over and over again. "Oh God...God heeeeeeeeeeeeelp meeeeeeee....'
I will never forget that. Sunday night, the whole town is silent, not a car in sight, not a bus going by, the only headlights moving across the river on I-5 and very few of them at that hour, and this lone voice chanting 'help me' in the night. I must have sat there for a couple of hours, lighting one cigarette off the ember of the next and listening to this person slowly walk up the hill and then pass some blocks up from my street until their voice finally disappeared into the distance as they crossed South Slope.
I feel strange to this day remembering that I even had a reaction to it. It was someone elses' private drama and I didn't have anything to do with it; but there I was awake, and there this person was, chasing something through town. It was like overhearing odd unexpected music from a passing car. It was like being all alone in a church and then gradually becoming aware of someone saying their rosary fervidly someplace far behind you. It was like the first time I ever came around a bend in the road up alone in the hills and found a bobcat staring at me.
________________________________
About a year later I was out walking one night in the lower numbers down on the East side of the river, in around the old Victorian residences and the remains of Mission bungalow neighborhoods all surrounded by autobody shops and warehouses. The sidewalk was broken and you had to watch your step; it was grown up in rank tufts of Johnson grass, and overgrown rhododendron reached out from the yards you passed. I came around the bow of one and found myself standing in front of an old, long, low Mission house with a deep porch and concrete steps leading up from the sidewalk. I stopped and lit a smoke to have something to do while I admired the place and wished that I lived there, and as I stood there I became aware of a person standing up on the porch. I almost apologized but I kept my mouth shut because something didn't feel just right, so I stood there and looked around for awhile, not quite knowing what to do all of a sudden, not wanting to look suspicious and probably looking suspicious as hell.
Meanwhile the person simply stood, somewhat back from the porch railing, near a window through which you could see a black and white television playing, and it was the light from this that revealed him there. An old, old man, older than Ramses III, thin to the point of starvation, standing very, very still. Intensity radiated off this man like heat. His face was like an oxyacetylene flame. He stood there in absolute silence, absolutely motionless, ramrod straight. Looking out into the distance, out toward the horizon, through where the huge rhododendron grew and obscured the view completely.
I started walking away. He never glanced in my direction. As I walked off I turned around several times to check but no, he was real, he was alive, and he was still there. Rigid as stone. Looking intently off into the distance, looking into the complete darkness of the leaves and shadows, just standing there in the dark. I can still see that so plain.
Maroon Elephant:: Seven Hours Fatal Bean Legume
A while back I was having a conversation with my girl Andrea, and we started in reminiscing about the hideous food we used to have to eat when we were kids. Odd thing was, the same recipes came up, her and me. Now granted, there was a perceived 'poverty' mentality going on in both cases...I think everyone who had kids back in the 50's and 60's was required by law to assume they were one step away from some horrible rat infested Dickensian poorhouse situation-and being poor means you have to eat shitty food that tastes bad. At least it did then. Now apparently it means you suck warm lard out of the bucket and chase it with bacon. But back then if you didn't serve your family institutional grade ground beef at least three nights a week you were just DOING IT WRONG.
1. Swiss Steak.
What the hell was this shit and what was so goddamn Swiss about it? Seriously. To this day nothing about this dish says 'Switzerland' to me. It doesn't look like the Matterhorn. It isn't made of chocolate. It IS made of cow, of course, and they do have a lot of cows in Switzerland, but they have a lot of cows here too so it could have just as easily been Sumas Steak, except then it would have bacon and lard in it.
ingredients:
1 huge round steak (you never see these any more. They used to be the size of a fricken manhole cover and they wept nearly 1/3 their total mass in cooking as water. Aquatic beef? Sliced dugong? What? )
1 can of tomato paste
1 can of tomato sauce
1 yellow onion
1 can of canned tomatoes
1 cup flour
a mallet with poky things on one side
1 cup water or 2% milk
pepper
diced tomatoes
methode:
-slap the steak out on the counter and dump one half of the flour on it. spread it all around with the side of your hand.
-Take the mallet and, using the poky side, beat the living shit out of the steak, making sure that flour flies all over hells half acre and forms a weird pink doughy scabby thing in the neddles of the mallet. Pick this off and attempt to wham it into the surface of the steak, which should by now be thin enough to read a newspaper through. Fail to make scabby thing adhere. Pick off surface of mallet and eat. Wasting food is a sin.
-Slap steak into frying pan into which several scoops of vegetable shortening or used bacon fat are smoking. The steak should immediately being shrinking. When it has shrunk up until it fits into the pan, boil in the resulting cast water for 1 hour.
-place in a 9 inch baking pan tomato sauce, tomato paste and canned tomatoes. Do not combine. IN fact the more they resemble the container they left the better.
-slap boiled steak into pan.
-dump onion and diced tomatoes into hot frying pan, making sure that everything sticks uniformly. When smoke appears, chip off the bottom of the pan onto the top of the steak.
-Season with pepper and add water. Sprinkle remaining flour over top.
-Bake for three hours, or until substance in pan no longer resembles anything found in nature. Serve with....
2. Wooden beans
Once again the motto 'It's a sin to waste food' should be your watchword here.
ingredients
-Three double handfuls of late beans. Beans so late they resemble the gnarled, swollen, knobby fingers of arthritic people. Beans so late they cannot be snapped-not even over the edge of a table. Beans so late that the strings really are made of string; a string so tough and durable that it is used by third world countries in making radial tires.
-The fat end off a slab of bacon, cut into giant greasy wads about the size of a shooter marble. At least one of these should have a black hair stuck to it.
-1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped
-water to cover
methode: dump all ingredients into a pot and bring to a boil. Boil for three hours. Beans are done when they are khaki green.
3. Tuna Casserole with frozen peas
because tuna is cheap, mayonnaise makes it stick together, and peas make it pretty!
ingredients
-1 can tuna, drained
-1 yellow boiler onion, chopped coarsely
-1 package macaroni noodles
-1 cup mayonnaise
-1 tube saltine crackers, broken
-1 stalk celery, chopped coarsely
-1 package frozen peas
-optional: barbecue potato chips, fried onions, Corn Chex cereal, corn flakes cereal, croutons (assume an 'or' in between each item in the preceding...or not. Its a free country. I'm not your boss.)
methode: thaw peas. Do NOT drain. Cook macaroni noodles until swollen three times their original size, drain. Combine all ingredients and pour into a 9 inch baking dish, top with optional ingredients. Bake in a 350 degree oven for three hours. Top should be blackened and sides should be at least one inch away from the wall of the pan. Saw into slices and serve.
4. Macaroni and cheese with hot dogs
Better living through chemistry! Mmmmm! Kids love hot dogs....and kids love macaroni and cheese! Please those picky eaters with this double whammy of deliciousness! Dont' forget the Benadryl chaser to treat those pesky allergic hives! We all know the little bastards just fake anaphylaxis for the attention anyway.
ingredients
-1 package instant mac and cheese, preferably Kraft as you'll be using their 'cheese' in this also and we want things to stay matchy matchy.
-1 package Oscar Meier hot dogs. Because they have the cute ad with the kids singing about how they want to all grow up to be weiners. I just think thats the cutest thing...and they're all marching along having a little parade? It's so cute! I know the whole song too!
-1/2 cup Velveeta cheese, cut into small squares (at least one of these should have a black hair stuck to it)
-optional: 1 can of chopped pimientos. You can't taste them; its just to be fancy. They just make it look pretty. Seriously, they just taste like salt water or something.
methode:
-open package of hot dogs and put into boiling water. When burst, remove from water and cut into bite sized pieces. Let dry on counter until dark red and somewhat pliable.
-make the mac and cheese according to the directions on the box. When finished, pour into a 9 inch baking pan.
- stir in hot dog pieces and optional ingredients
-bake in a 350 degree oven for three hours.
Italian Spaghetti
a taste of the old country for todays busy modern cooks
ingredients: SAUCE
1/3 cup tomato catsup
1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes
1 yellow boiler onion, diced
celery salt
garlic salt
pepper
1 lb hamburger, boiled in its own juices until grey, drained
methode: combine all ingredients and boil for three hours. Serve over spaghetti noodles. Cooked, preferably.
___________________
...Ever wondered why everyone in our generation is diabetic? Wonder no more.
1. Swiss Steak.
What the hell was this shit and what was so goddamn Swiss about it? Seriously. To this day nothing about this dish says 'Switzerland' to me. It doesn't look like the Matterhorn. It isn't made of chocolate. It IS made of cow, of course, and they do have a lot of cows in Switzerland, but they have a lot of cows here too so it could have just as easily been Sumas Steak, except then it would have bacon and lard in it.
ingredients:
1 huge round steak (you never see these any more. They used to be the size of a fricken manhole cover and they wept nearly 1/3 their total mass in cooking as water. Aquatic beef? Sliced dugong? What? )
1 can of tomato paste
1 can of tomato sauce
1 yellow onion
1 can of canned tomatoes
1 cup flour
a mallet with poky things on one side
1 cup water or 2% milk
pepper
diced tomatoes
methode:
-slap the steak out on the counter and dump one half of the flour on it. spread it all around with the side of your hand.
-Take the mallet and, using the poky side, beat the living shit out of the steak, making sure that flour flies all over hells half acre and forms a weird pink doughy scabby thing in the neddles of the mallet. Pick this off and attempt to wham it into the surface of the steak, which should by now be thin enough to read a newspaper through. Fail to make scabby thing adhere. Pick off surface of mallet and eat. Wasting food is a sin.
-Slap steak into frying pan into which several scoops of vegetable shortening or used bacon fat are smoking. The steak should immediately being shrinking. When it has shrunk up until it fits into the pan, boil in the resulting cast water for 1 hour.
-place in a 9 inch baking pan tomato sauce, tomato paste and canned tomatoes. Do not combine. IN fact the more they resemble the container they left the better.
-slap boiled steak into pan.
-dump onion and diced tomatoes into hot frying pan, making sure that everything sticks uniformly. When smoke appears, chip off the bottom of the pan onto the top of the steak.
-Season with pepper and add water. Sprinkle remaining flour over top.
-Bake for three hours, or until substance in pan no longer resembles anything found in nature. Serve with....
2. Wooden beans
Once again the motto 'It's a sin to waste food' should be your watchword here.
ingredients
-Three double handfuls of late beans. Beans so late they resemble the gnarled, swollen, knobby fingers of arthritic people. Beans so late they cannot be snapped-not even over the edge of a table. Beans so late that the strings really are made of string; a string so tough and durable that it is used by third world countries in making radial tires.
-The fat end off a slab of bacon, cut into giant greasy wads about the size of a shooter marble. At least one of these should have a black hair stuck to it.
-1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped
-water to cover
methode: dump all ingredients into a pot and bring to a boil. Boil for three hours. Beans are done when they are khaki green.
3. Tuna Casserole with frozen peas
because tuna is cheap, mayonnaise makes it stick together, and peas make it pretty!
ingredients
-1 can tuna, drained
-1 yellow boiler onion, chopped coarsely
-1 package macaroni noodles
-1 cup mayonnaise
-1 tube saltine crackers, broken
-1 stalk celery, chopped coarsely
-1 package frozen peas
-optional: barbecue potato chips, fried onions, Corn Chex cereal, corn flakes cereal, croutons (assume an 'or' in between each item in the preceding...or not. Its a free country. I'm not your boss.)
methode: thaw peas. Do NOT drain. Cook macaroni noodles until swollen three times their original size, drain. Combine all ingredients and pour into a 9 inch baking dish, top with optional ingredients. Bake in a 350 degree oven for three hours. Top should be blackened and sides should be at least one inch away from the wall of the pan. Saw into slices and serve.
4. Macaroni and cheese with hot dogs
Better living through chemistry! Mmmmm! Kids love hot dogs....and kids love macaroni and cheese! Please those picky eaters with this double whammy of deliciousness! Dont' forget the Benadryl chaser to treat those pesky allergic hives! We all know the little bastards just fake anaphylaxis for the attention anyway.
ingredients
-1 package instant mac and cheese, preferably Kraft as you'll be using their 'cheese' in this also and we want things to stay matchy matchy.
-1 package Oscar Meier hot dogs. Because they have the cute ad with the kids singing about how they want to all grow up to be weiners. I just think thats the cutest thing...and they're all marching along having a little parade? It's so cute! I know the whole song too!
-1/2 cup Velveeta cheese, cut into small squares (at least one of these should have a black hair stuck to it)
-optional: 1 can of chopped pimientos. You can't taste them; its just to be fancy. They just make it look pretty. Seriously, they just taste like salt water or something.
methode:
-open package of hot dogs and put into boiling water. When burst, remove from water and cut into bite sized pieces. Let dry on counter until dark red and somewhat pliable.
-make the mac and cheese according to the directions on the box. When finished, pour into a 9 inch baking pan.
- stir in hot dog pieces and optional ingredients
-bake in a 350 degree oven for three hours.
Italian Spaghetti
a taste of the old country for todays busy modern cooks
ingredients: SAUCE
1/3 cup tomato catsup
1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes
1 yellow boiler onion, diced
celery salt
garlic salt
pepper
1 lb hamburger, boiled in its own juices until grey, drained
methode: combine all ingredients and boil for three hours. Serve over spaghetti noodles. Cooked, preferably.
___________________
...Ever wondered why everyone in our generation is diabetic? Wonder no more.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Paisley Chicken Revolution Under Way!
And the winner of the "too much free time" award is....
.....thanks to all our strangely compelling contestants! *Distributes Rice-A-Roni*
Y'all cracked me up! I managed to log on down in Oregon and I got laughing so hard I made the baby cry! Of course that's something that happens frequently in my presence but this one time I can definitely attribute to extreme guffaws on my part.
Part UN of the vacation is complete, and now part DEAUX continues with the day trips and home improvement thing going on. I am home again home again jiggity jig, back from the Wild damn West and the sage brushes and the truck drivers and the sheeps and the wheat and whatnot, and the large vastness of the hugeness extending out in every direction all covered in not a whole fuck of a lot of anything with all buzzards circling high overhead.
Actually that is a lie; only about 1/3 of the entire trip consisted of picturesque bleak; the other 2/3 was picturesque agricultural vignettes, charming towns, winding lanes, quaint derelict barns and smokin' hot rurales with they ain't got they shirts on bucking bales and driving they tractors and shit be all standing up in the John Deere they got them sooWEEEET ass in the Levis read the date on a dime situation going on, honey pick that turkey laig up for gramma I dropped it on purpose you sick thang you.
Hell yeah.
The weather was PERFECT. All the little details were perfect too. We did the 'buy local' thing every time we stopped and never had a bad meal or a crappy nights' lodging. Even got to see part of a Jackie Chan action movie dubbed over in this very butch, deep Spanish voice, which cracked me up so bad I nearly swallowed my husbands dentures. (The fact that he does not wear dentures notwithstanding.) We shared driving and stopped to 'get lost' in interesting places and saw a lot of cool things. Coolest of all, the extraordinarily wet summer we've had here kept everything nearly June-green while the chilly nights caused the trees to turn color and cast leaves high up in the hills. That was new, and it took me days to figure out 'whats wrong with this picture.'
One of the weirdest things about southeastern Washington is that for some reason they have really aggressive food there. In Northeast, you'll pass a fruit stand or a farm produce outlet, or a small diner, and there'll be the usual average advertising sign out next to the road "Prey's Produce" or "Del's Diner" or what have you.
In Southeast, you come up over a rise and see words literally three storeys tall:
Or:
None of these places were open for business. In fact most of them looked to have lain derelict for some time, siding flapping in the breeze, glass broken out of the windows, tumbleweeds piled against the loading bays. It was interesting. We went past innumerable collections of the same... odd little Joad settlements with one house, several travel trailers in use as additions, some pens full of chicken huts and lots of old fucked up logging equipment surrounding one large, long building with empty vegetable displays with the words YAKIMA CHERRIES looming over it all. Or EAT NOW standing over a charred place in the dirt where some lone kid's riding around on a dirt bike kicking up soot.
The town of Yakima itself was oddly bleak and deserted. We'd planned to stay the night there and explore, never having been that far southeast on our travels. We spent the afternoon and drove all around. What we found was one small, gentrified shopping district about 5 blocks long, surrounded by a large zone of anonymous metal buildings housing various types of machine shops and dealerships....surrounded by an even larger zone of unrelieved Tijuana-SoCal ghettoass fucking slum. In all three cases a good ONE HALF of the real estate was abandoned. Empty. High up on the surrounding hills a few tacky mansions overlooked all this scenic wonder, right; but down in town it was just block after block after block of sleaze. Garbage blowing around. That in itself is just not....'Northwest', I guess you'd have to say; we're perfectly capable of being degraded, but we generally keep the damn streets picked up...except in Yakima, apparently. First time I've ever seen so many private residences tagged, too. That's another thing you don't see a lot of in the Northwest...they'll tag everydamnthing else on your property, but very seldom the house itself. Here, nearly everyfrickenplace we passed had been nailed. Cars, utility enclosures, light posts, garages, outbuilding. And the streets. And the sidewalks. Jesus Christ on a red bicycle, folks. We get it; you're here.
I still find all this bizarre. It's not like the land there is infertile or poorly watered; shit, we were passing marshes! In the high desert! It's not like it was super remote; Yakima is the interchange hub of all the major highways in the area. Power, check. Military base nearby (which ought to have provided for at least some skeeze-variety prosperity) check. Power, check...enormous wind farms, hydro crossing overhead....I simply have no explanation. Maybe a bank defaulted bigtime out that way?
Anyway, something told us that perhaps we would be better off moving along down the ol' highway. Lo and behold, about 35 miles on, over a low ridge of hills, the vista opens out over BEULAH LAND. Milk and honey. The most beautiful, smiling valley full of green farms and windrowed hay and wheat and grapes and orchards and livestock. Welcome to Ellensburg.
Up to this point all we had was a very, very bad memory of Ellensburg. The one time we'd visited in the past had been at 2am one dark morning, helping friends of ours move house. We all stopped in a cafe someplace ("Oh hey, a truck stop!" our friend assured us. "Truckers always know the best places!") and got food poisoning. In my case, the most heinous case of food poisoning I've ever had. Let the words 'Old Faithful' be your guiding image here. Not 20 minutes out from the parking lot, man, WHAMMO. It was NOT BEAUTIFUL.
Our original itinerary, then, drew a long detour around Ellensburg.
That would have been such a mistake. What a beautiful, beautiful little town this place is. And the whole valley there is carpeted in the most fat, prosperous, verdant collection of farms. Just gorgeous. It smells like apples and sage, cut hay and water as you drive through in the evening; Mexican food and barbecue and diesel and dust. We only stayed one day and one night, but we're going back next year and we are going to do it RIGHT.
Did I get pictures? Did I fuck, my darlings. What do I have pictures of?
MONSTER TRUCKS!!!
The Arborist took us all to a Tractor pull-Monster Truck show out in Sublimity, a little farming community a few miles away from his place. I thought at first "I'll be a nice old broad and give Girl Getty and Spreidel an excuse to stay home. They'l probably be grateful for the excuse to avoid the crowds and noise...play the 'grandma's tired' card. Monster trucks: riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Boy did I have my head up my ass. I had a total fucking blast!
This wasn't the usual arena, giant crowd - screaming clusterfuck you see on televised events; this was a small, well-ordered show in an outdoor venue, gorgeous weather, gorgeous small fairgrounds, nice friendly people running around chewing tobacco (one beautiful young girl had a can riding atop each tit and a quid in!) and drinking bottled water. Later in the evening the beer concession got popular and there were a few rowdy fuckers, but not obnoxious rowdy, fun rowdy. I even got hit by a couple of high school boys while I was taking my granddaughter (the Princess) to the Port-o-let. Lots of old couples holding hands, lots of clean, polite children running around laughing, lotta farmboys and logger dudes, lotta good ol' girls smoking Camel cigarettes and saying 'shitfire, bitch!" The fireworks show at the end exploded to the tune of that CW song 'God Bless the USA' and Ray Charles singing 'America The Beautiful'.
A tractor pull, for those of you too hifalutin to indulge in canaille things like rural sport, is not necessarily about actual farm type tractors. It's about the pulling, mainly (with a minor in 'blowing up drivelines'.) The tow vehicles were everything from old Studebaker pickup trucks to brand new Expeditions to an actual Allis-Chalmers tractor- albeit an Allis with THREE GODDAMN ENGINES. What they pull is a special sled with a movable weight on a ramp atop it. The faster and further the pulling vehicle goes, the further up the ramp the weight moves and the more difficult the whole sled gets to pull. The object is for the vehicle to pull this sled down a straight, measured dirt course within a certain time limit, staying inside a designated lane. Fastest and furthest wins. Sounds fairly straightforward, but it ain't. This is all about torque: knowing what you brung and not letting your foot get too heavy. If you stomp down on the throttle right off the line you bury the vehicle and sometimes shit bursts and flies off the undercarriage or comes blasting out sideways from the engine compartment, which is not necessarily a drawback the way I see it, but it seems to piss off the drivers. The poor guy driving the sled eats a lot of dirt and exhaust, pieces of track fly up, dust roostertails everywhere and engines scream up past the point that you'd think something would explode, and then get LOUDER. At the end a timer announces the score and a tractor speeds around towing a frame that grooms the dirt for the next run and everyone claps.
The monster truck exhibition kicked ass. You didn't see the kind of wild air and rollover stunts you see on television, but that was more than made up for by being THERE. They towed five wrecks out into the middle of the track and then the entries all stunted over them and did wheelies and travels and who knows what all kinda shit, kicking up a lot of dirt and making some damn NOISE. You really get no idea of the size of these things until one's going right past you and you have to look up to see the tiny, tiny little driver riding atop this column of machinery. And the sons of bitches are quick, too. Really quick. For some reason I'd thought of them as being fairly lumbering sorts of vehicles but I wuz rong. They took wild bounces and nearly turned over, stabilizers bent, tires ruptured, the differentials geysered sparks, steam shot out from random places and engines threw rods, blueass nitrous flames all been shooting out the top of the block; sheeeeit. It was cooler than fuck!
We sat three rows from the front. Little Spreidel watched most of it, then slept through the rest. Passed out.
And then the next day, we went to a roadster show. I mean please. Please. It's going to be a couple of months before I get all the homegirl flushed out of my system here. Even putting aside the fact that it was in a botanical garden in full incredible bloom aside, it was so, so fun. We go to a lot of these anyway, the Biker and I, but its great to see so many new vehicles-at least, new to us- and in such a great venue. There were also a lot more later model muscle cars than you usually run into up here in Washington, which I like to see. Model T's...meh. Fine. Wow. Dime a dozen. But you get into the late 60's stuff and now you're talking! That's what I remember wanting when I was a kid....remember that GTO that came stock with hood tiedowns? The Mercury Cougar with the hidden headlights? Oh my yes. And all the while I managed not to gank one single cutting or seedhead. This is the second time this has happened in this spot. I don't know whether or not to be proud or not. They have some good shit.
Then we all went home and fell asleep in a big pile on the couch.
And that's what I did on my summer vacation! (So far.)
More pix: (lovingly ganked from my daughter in law, because I take shitty pictures as a general rule.)
SPREIDEL...holding that thin blue line in Marion County
TEH PRINCESS...she will whap you with her whappy princess bonking thing, yo
JIMMY THE GREEK...double or nothing top draw; you cut
THE ARBORIST...living proof that green M&M's work
GIRL GETTY...prevailing cooler head in a rockin' hat
CHAUCERS BITCH!!!!
.....thanks to all our strangely compelling contestants! *Distributes Rice-A-Roni*
Y'all cracked me up! I managed to log on down in Oregon and I got laughing so hard I made the baby cry! Of course that's something that happens frequently in my presence but this one time I can definitely attribute to extreme guffaws on my part.
Part UN of the vacation is complete, and now part DEAUX continues with the day trips and home improvement thing going on. I am home again home again jiggity jig, back from the Wild damn West and the sage brushes and the truck drivers and the sheeps and the wheat and whatnot, and the large vastness of the hugeness extending out in every direction all covered in not a whole fuck of a lot of anything with all buzzards circling high overhead.
Actually that is a lie; only about 1/3 of the entire trip consisted of picturesque bleak; the other 2/3 was picturesque agricultural vignettes, charming towns, winding lanes, quaint derelict barns and smokin' hot rurales with they ain't got they shirts on bucking bales and driving they tractors and shit be all standing up in the John Deere they got them sooWEEEET ass in the Levis read the date on a dime situation going on, honey pick that turkey laig up for gramma I dropped it on purpose you sick thang you.
Hell yeah.
The weather was PERFECT. All the little details were perfect too. We did the 'buy local' thing every time we stopped and never had a bad meal or a crappy nights' lodging. Even got to see part of a Jackie Chan action movie dubbed over in this very butch, deep Spanish voice, which cracked me up so bad I nearly swallowed my husbands dentures. (The fact that he does not wear dentures notwithstanding.) We shared driving and stopped to 'get lost' in interesting places and saw a lot of cool things. Coolest of all, the extraordinarily wet summer we've had here kept everything nearly June-green while the chilly nights caused the trees to turn color and cast leaves high up in the hills. That was new, and it took me days to figure out 'whats wrong with this picture.'
One of the weirdest things about southeastern Washington is that for some reason they have really aggressive food there. In Northeast, you'll pass a fruit stand or a farm produce outlet, or a small diner, and there'll be the usual average advertising sign out next to the road "Prey's Produce" or "Del's Diner" or what have you.
In Southeast, you come up over a rise and see words literally three storeys tall:
FRUIT
Or:
EATOr:
FRESH PEACHES HEY HONEY LET'S STOP
None of these places were open for business. In fact most of them looked to have lain derelict for some time, siding flapping in the breeze, glass broken out of the windows, tumbleweeds piled against the loading bays. It was interesting. We went past innumerable collections of the same... odd little Joad settlements with one house, several travel trailers in use as additions, some pens full of chicken huts and lots of old fucked up logging equipment surrounding one large, long building with empty vegetable displays with the words YAKIMA CHERRIES looming over it all. Or EAT NOW standing over a charred place in the dirt where some lone kid's riding around on a dirt bike kicking up soot.
The town of Yakima itself was oddly bleak and deserted. We'd planned to stay the night there and explore, never having been that far southeast on our travels. We spent the afternoon and drove all around. What we found was one small, gentrified shopping district about 5 blocks long, surrounded by a large zone of anonymous metal buildings housing various types of machine shops and dealerships....surrounded by an even larger zone of unrelieved Tijuana-SoCal ghettoass fucking slum. In all three cases a good ONE HALF of the real estate was abandoned. Empty. High up on the surrounding hills a few tacky mansions overlooked all this scenic wonder, right; but down in town it was just block after block after block of sleaze. Garbage blowing around. That in itself is just not....'Northwest', I guess you'd have to say; we're perfectly capable of being degraded, but we generally keep the damn streets picked up...except in Yakima, apparently. First time I've ever seen so many private residences tagged, too. That's another thing you don't see a lot of in the Northwest...they'll tag everydamnthing else on your property, but very seldom the house itself. Here, nearly everyfrickenplace we passed had been nailed. Cars, utility enclosures, light posts, garages, outbuilding. And the streets. And the sidewalks. Jesus Christ on a red bicycle, folks. We get it; you're here.
I still find all this bizarre. It's not like the land there is infertile or poorly watered; shit, we were passing marshes! In the high desert! It's not like it was super remote; Yakima is the interchange hub of all the major highways in the area. Power, check. Military base nearby (which ought to have provided for at least some skeeze-variety prosperity) check. Power, check...enormous wind farms, hydro crossing overhead....I simply have no explanation. Maybe a bank defaulted bigtime out that way?
Anyway, something told us that perhaps we would be better off moving along down the ol' highway. Lo and behold, about 35 miles on, over a low ridge of hills, the vista opens out over BEULAH LAND. Milk and honey. The most beautiful, smiling valley full of green farms and windrowed hay and wheat and grapes and orchards and livestock. Welcome to Ellensburg.
Up to this point all we had was a very, very bad memory of Ellensburg. The one time we'd visited in the past had been at 2am one dark morning, helping friends of ours move house. We all stopped in a cafe someplace ("Oh hey, a truck stop!" our friend assured us. "Truckers always know the best places!") and got food poisoning. In my case, the most heinous case of food poisoning I've ever had. Let the words 'Old Faithful' be your guiding image here. Not 20 minutes out from the parking lot, man, WHAMMO. It was NOT BEAUTIFUL.
Our original itinerary, then, drew a long detour around Ellensburg.
That would have been such a mistake. What a beautiful, beautiful little town this place is. And the whole valley there is carpeted in the most fat, prosperous, verdant collection of farms. Just gorgeous. It smells like apples and sage, cut hay and water as you drive through in the evening; Mexican food and barbecue and diesel and dust. We only stayed one day and one night, but we're going back next year and we are going to do it RIGHT.
Did I get pictures? Did I fuck, my darlings. What do I have pictures of?
MONSTER TRUCKS!!!
The Arborist took us all to a Tractor pull-Monster Truck show out in Sublimity, a little farming community a few miles away from his place. I thought at first "I'll be a nice old broad and give Girl Getty and Spreidel an excuse to stay home. They'l probably be grateful for the excuse to avoid the crowds and noise...play the 'grandma's tired' card. Monster trucks: riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Boy did I have my head up my ass. I had a total fucking blast!
This wasn't the usual arena, giant crowd - screaming clusterfuck you see on televised events; this was a small, well-ordered show in an outdoor venue, gorgeous weather, gorgeous small fairgrounds, nice friendly people running around chewing tobacco (one beautiful young girl had a can riding atop each tit and a quid in!) and drinking bottled water. Later in the evening the beer concession got popular and there were a few rowdy fuckers, but not obnoxious rowdy, fun rowdy. I even got hit by a couple of high school boys while I was taking my granddaughter (the Princess) to the Port-o-let. Lots of old couples holding hands, lots of clean, polite children running around laughing, lotta farmboys and logger dudes, lotta good ol' girls smoking Camel cigarettes and saying 'shitfire, bitch!" The fireworks show at the end exploded to the tune of that CW song 'God Bless the USA' and Ray Charles singing 'America The Beautiful'.
A tractor pull, for those of you too hifalutin to indulge in canaille things like rural sport, is not necessarily about actual farm type tractors. It's about the pulling, mainly (with a minor in 'blowing up drivelines'.) The tow vehicles were everything from old Studebaker pickup trucks to brand new Expeditions to an actual Allis-Chalmers tractor- albeit an Allis with THREE GODDAMN ENGINES. What they pull is a special sled with a movable weight on a ramp atop it. The faster and further the pulling vehicle goes, the further up the ramp the weight moves and the more difficult the whole sled gets to pull. The object is for the vehicle to pull this sled down a straight, measured dirt course within a certain time limit, staying inside a designated lane. Fastest and furthest wins. Sounds fairly straightforward, but it ain't. This is all about torque: knowing what you brung and not letting your foot get too heavy. If you stomp down on the throttle right off the line you bury the vehicle and sometimes shit bursts and flies off the undercarriage or comes blasting out sideways from the engine compartment, which is not necessarily a drawback the way I see it, but it seems to piss off the drivers. The poor guy driving the sled eats a lot of dirt and exhaust, pieces of track fly up, dust roostertails everywhere and engines scream up past the point that you'd think something would explode, and then get LOUDER. At the end a timer announces the score and a tractor speeds around towing a frame that grooms the dirt for the next run and everyone claps.
The monster truck exhibition kicked ass. You didn't see the kind of wild air and rollover stunts you see on television, but that was more than made up for by being THERE. They towed five wrecks out into the middle of the track and then the entries all stunted over them and did wheelies and travels and who knows what all kinda shit, kicking up a lot of dirt and making some damn NOISE. You really get no idea of the size of these things until one's going right past you and you have to look up to see the tiny, tiny little driver riding atop this column of machinery. And the sons of bitches are quick, too. Really quick. For some reason I'd thought of them as being fairly lumbering sorts of vehicles but I wuz rong. They took wild bounces and nearly turned over, stabilizers bent, tires ruptured, the differentials geysered sparks, steam shot out from random places and engines threw rods, blueass nitrous flames all been shooting out the top of the block; sheeeeit. It was cooler than fuck!
We sat three rows from the front. Little Spreidel watched most of it, then slept through the rest. Passed out.
And then the next day, we went to a roadster show. I mean please. Please. It's going to be a couple of months before I get all the homegirl flushed out of my system here. Even putting aside the fact that it was in a botanical garden in full incredible bloom aside, it was so, so fun. We go to a lot of these anyway, the Biker and I, but its great to see so many new vehicles-at least, new to us- and in such a great venue. There were also a lot more later model muscle cars than you usually run into up here in Washington, which I like to see. Model T's...meh. Fine. Wow. Dime a dozen. But you get into the late 60's stuff and now you're talking! That's what I remember wanting when I was a kid....remember that GTO that came stock with hood tiedowns? The Mercury Cougar with the hidden headlights? Oh my yes. And all the while I managed not to gank one single cutting or seedhead. This is the second time this has happened in this spot. I don't know whether or not to be proud or not. They have some good shit.
Then we all went home and fell asleep in a big pile on the couch.
And that's what I did on my summer vacation! (So far.)
More pix: (lovingly ganked from my daughter in law, because I take shitty pictures as a general rule.)
SPREIDEL...holding that thin blue line in Marion County
TEH PRINCESS...she will whap you with her whappy princess bonking thing, yo
JIMMY THE GREEK...double or nothing top draw; you cut
THE ARBORIST...living proof that green M&M's work 
GIRL GETTY...prevailing cooler head in a rockin' hatThursday, September 04, 2008
Do-it-yourself- rude (see youse in a week)
I am going to visit my son for a few days! YAAAAY! Its vacation time for little muks!
While I am gone dear old FirstNations has a little assignment for you. Lets see if it gets any more participation than the last one did, shall we?
Your mission: DO IT YOURSELF FIRST NATIONS POST!
This idea was blatantly ripped off from the lovely, the charming, the no longer blogging SPINSTERELLA. She asked her readers to concoct a phony blog entry ala Spinny, to wild acclaim.
Of course I expect no acclaim and (damned little participation, but I digress). Still, I think it would be a hoot to see what you demented, talented, glamourous people out there can do with an empty comments form and the memory of my deathless prose stylings burning like a septic wen in your recent memories.
So whip out those unused neural connections, grab a bucket of dork-nano and start eating those oysters, buckaroos and buckarettes! Lets see whatcha got. Write a post as FirstNations! (In the comments lounge, dipweasel)
RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!!
While I am gone dear old FirstNations has a little assignment for you. Lets see if it gets any more participation than the last one did, shall we?
Your mission: DO IT YOURSELF FIRST NATIONS POST!
This idea was blatantly ripped off from the lovely, the charming, the no longer blogging SPINSTERELLA. She asked her readers to concoct a phony blog entry ala Spinny, to wild acclaim.
Of course I expect no acclaim and (damned little participation, but I digress). Still, I think it would be a hoot to see what you demented, talented, glamourous people out there can do with an empty comments form and the memory of my deathless prose stylings burning like a septic wen in your recent memories.
So whip out those unused neural connections, grab a bucket of dork-nano and start eating those oysters, buckaroos and buckarettes! Lets see whatcha got. Write a post as FirstNations! (In the comments lounge, dipweasel)
RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!!
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