rerun: Black Lynx Caution the Five Angry Diatom!!!!!

q: What is a dugong?

The dugong is a member of a small group of aquatic mammals known as 'Sirenia'. Other members include the manatee (which is not nearly as fun a word to say as 'dugong' so we'll just pretend that it doesn't exist) and the (now extinct) Stellars' Sea Cow.

...yes, it's two you-know-what-atees. it's my blog and i'm calling them dugongs.


...which was in fact not terribly cow-like; it was more like a big hippo-seal type thing.
Although it would be really cool if it HAD been like an aquatic cow and it gave milk and said 'moo'? and like maybe it had these huge horns that stuck out REALLY FAR and they would stampede and they'd get in cool fights and stuff? and divers could go down and have rodeos and the seaweed would be like tumbleweeds?
Yeah.


Centuries ago, the first Dugong sightings were reported in the logbooks of Spanish sailors who (upon seeing the bald, grey, flippered animals swimming around chewing on seaweed and burping) immediately mistook them for a race of seagoing human women.






This may say more about Spanish femininity than we care to know.



q: Where do dugongs come from?
a: Duh; the ocean.
q: Oh Jesus fine. What is the life cycle of the dugong?
a: Ah. Well then. That's an interesting question.

When a mommy dugong and a daddy dugong love one another very much, they want to share that love with a baby dugong. So the Mommy dugong lies on her back, and the daddy dugong orders one from Ikea.
But ordering from Ikea can take time, and sometimes the quality sucks, so the smart mommy and daddy dugong usually go to the KING OF THE DUGONGS and ask him for one.

...click; it gets bigger. waaaaaaaay bigger.

This is the beginning of a magical, mysterious process that has very seldom been documented on film. Are you paying attention? I said put down the damn ocarina and pay attention. I don't care if it's called a sweet potato in the rural South put the damn thing DOWN.

Opie, King of the Dugongs, goes out to a sacred place far, far back in the woods where small dugong bulbs lay dormant in the soil. At his command, a small gnome-like creature emerges from the grass and begins excavating.


It digs and digs and digs and digs, throwing soil everywhere and getting exceedingly filthy...soil in its ears, soil in its butt crack, soil absolutely everywhere.














...until finally, the first tiny newborn dugong emerges.








Close enough.




q: Is communication with dugongs possible?
Yes! Recent experiments using extra sensory perception have yielded undreamed-of results in the field of dugong-human communication.


Here a diver uses the 'mind meld' technique.


"Can you understand me, fellow earth dweller? Gentle giant of the sea, can you understand me?"







"HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO REPEAT MYSELF HERE. RING RING PICK UP THE CLUE PHONE. LEAVE. ME. THE. FUCK. ALONE."



Q: Do dugongs spy on America and then give all our secrets to hostile foreign powers?
a: Yes.





....plus they sneak up on your when you are swimming and yell "DUGONG!" in your ear real loud and then swim away.

Dugongs SUCK.



q: Do dugongs migrate?

a: During certain times of the year the trans-oceanic currents shift, and with this shift comes a subtle change in the temperature of the sea. ...image of migrating dugongs thanks to KYAHGIRL

This is the signal that the dugongs have been waiting for.
Once a reliable source of medical-grade helium has been found and the deliveries completed, they line up along the shore in the light of the full moon, wait for a favorable wind, and ascend towards the stars.

Aren't you glad that only happens in Florida? Talk about making a mess of your car. I mean that would be RASTY. They're herbivores.

The Umpqua River Valley, Highway 38, Oregon

I filled the chip on my camera with pictures of this drive. Out of all of those pictures, only three give you even a vague hint of what this place looked like. THREE. And to tell, you'll have to click to make them bigger because the effect is that faint.
Now, trying to capture exactly what I was seeing that particular day might not have been a realistic goal anyway owing to the subtlety of the light. But I managed to get three hints. Completely inadequate hints.
I cannot urge you strongly enough...if you ever, ever get a chance, go drive through the Umpqua River valley. There's other locations in Oregon that are more spectacular and impressive; but there is something about this place that is so beautiful, gentle and perfect that it almost broke my heart.

________________________________





So here I was:



View Larger Map

I took I-5 down past Roseburg to Winston, and headed west to Coquille on highway 42. You can deedle around with the map enlargement thingie if you're really interested in seeing for all the good it'll do you. They show highway 42 doing this:




and what it really does is this:



which, to be fair, is a scenic enough drive too; at least those glimpses you manage to catch as you're speeding downhill with a log truck ramming your rear bumper and turkeys attacking you.

Had I to do it over again I would have still gone by this route if only because it goes directly into Coquille and no place else; and when you're going somewhere for the first time in a state where people think that logical city planning, good roads and street signs are vain extravagances, DIRECT is GOOD.

Once, however, was enough.

I went back this way:


View Larger Map

...I took 101 up the coast to Reedsport. There, I took a right at Highway 38, heading east toward Drain, then caught 99 up to Curtin and I-5.

I am taking particular pains to direct you here because everyone needs to go see this place at least once before they die.*

The area is the Umpqua River Valley. I didn't name the river or the valley; I have no idea what Umpqua means, if anything. Just be nice. I bet you think that the Callapooia and the Skookumchuck rivers have funny names too. That's just fine. *snif* You think that.

If you own a motorcycle or a sports car, go NOW. It is one of the most beautiful stretches of roadway on the West Coast. The road is twisty but not perilously so; the surface is well maintained and the grades are all pretty gentle. You travel alongside the river for the most part. The whole time you are going through beautiful low-altitude forest interrupted by open stretches of rolling fields that look something like wine country. And no turkeys. That I saw.

The Umpqua valley is fairly wide and the hills around it are mostly uniform in height. It was about 3 in the afternoon, full on day and beautiful... not a cloud in the sky and 72 degrees. The valley, however was filled with just a trace of mist, just barely enough to soften the outline of everything and diffuse light that was already oblique owing to the low angle of the winter sun in the sky. The hilltops all around were standing in the sunshine like islands. The valley itself stayed in a mild, constant twilight.


For the greater part of the trip I drove alongside the calm, flat river. There was only an occasional stretch of small rapids crossing it. From a distance I thought I was seeing white horses walking through the water. In the darker turns spray had frozen into lace shelves along the banks.

The forested stretches are filled with lots of different kinds of trees, most prominently cedar, fir and hemlock, bare alders and oaks, with Scoulers' willow and hazel and osier and vine maple along the water. All the branches of the oaks and alders and a good portion of the barer evergreens were furred with a thick, pale jade lichen, crisp as kale, unexpectedly bright and amazingly profuse. For some reason the trees closest to the water didn't support quite as much of this growth. There the Scoulers' willows were the tallest and stood in drifts along the bank, grey trunks, bright ochre yellow wands of new growth carried above like huge clouds. The new wood of the vine maples was bright red, and the osiers scarlet-orange. Wild hazels had hanging catkin fringes of golden tan. Separately, all this color wouldn't have been terribly noticeable, but growing in swaths as they were along the riverbanks, picked out by the odd quality of the illumination, they looked like colored mists..scarlet, yellow, golden and red.

The hillside cuts were filled with evergreen trees, the lower branches draped in long scarfs of ghostly bryophytic moss. These loomed over a rocky understory covered in cushions and blankets of yet more moss, every imaginable variety and shade of green, interspersed by huge splayed sword ferns and delicate skeletal snowberry bush with fruit clusters like white moths. Ranks of liquorice fern hung from the sides of the boulders, growing up through velvet green moss five inches thick and perfect, studded with little pearls of ice. Deep as the shadows were all the greens positively glowed...and when I say glowed, I mean that literally. It was as though everything were faintly luminous.

The further I drove the more I also began to take note of an odd, lambent, slightly unreal quality that informed everything I was seeing. What you saw were familiar things, of course, but as though everything was partially removed from the present. Not quite real. Everything visible flattened by distance and faintly, barely blurred by mist, and colored just slightly to the left of natural by the soft, reflected, pervasive light. It filled the valley with the same kind of glimmer that light under water has; everywhere at once and sourceless, tinted by whatever color happened to be most prominent. That effect was further picked up and spread into optically illogical places by the pale lichen which filled the branches of nearly every tree.

You'd drive around one turn and enter a swale covered in yellow meadow grass, and everything was tinted gold; perfect, diffuse, orange gold filling the valley, spread by the haze like smoke. Everything took on a subtle difference in color from it, right down to the shadows. Anything already colored green was rendered even more brilliant and stood out like a star.

Around another corner where the black rock walls rose up around the road, everything was deep somber grey and colorless; black with damp or furred thick with needles of white frost. Then the next turn took you down into a valley filled with faint, faint violet as the sun skimmed the hilltops;

palest violet sky, pale violet mist condensed in little glittering drops on the barbed wire, on the broken antlers of an elk grazing next to the road, greens turned russet and sienna, shadows faintly blue.**

The most common effect of all was a perfect encompassing, pale green light, the color of a monarch butterfly chrysalis. Like what the insects first view of the world must look like from inside.



Occasionally you'd come on to a small town. Most of them consisted of a few wooden false-fronted buildings still open for business, not a plumb line in sight, all painted clean white. Usually a couple of grand Victorians graced Main street; an Odd Fellows Lodge or a bank or a company mercantile with a curly date in a demilune on top and a poured cement staircase leading up to the front doors. Narrow farmhouses on little rises, two arborvitae on either side of the door and two maples down by the road at the entrance to the driveway. Red barns. Blackberry tangles growing over old trucks. Sheep and lambs with clouds of steam rising off their backs. Two herds of elk, each one lead by a lone male who stood guard by the road, chewing grass like a cow.

Royce, you gave this to me. Thank you. And I really, really hope you still have a job.

__________________________________________________


*But remember: don't move there. Just go visit and spend a lot of money. Then leave.

*Yes, I missed the elk. Forget the elk. You know what an elk looks like. They weren't doing anything interesting anyway.

Green Tube Snake Crime the Plot is Thick!!

I tell you what, crossing the state of Washington to get back home here was like trying to swim the Amazon river holding a t-bone steak between my teeth.

...6 a.m. just outside of vancouver...the worlds prettiest traffic jam

The roads in Oregon suck, but the traffic in Washington just trumps that all to shit. What the fuck, people, you were all supposed to be home watching St. Obama take office, not out on the freeway driving like a stinky bad toilet! NO!!!! It was two in the freaking afternoon on a Tuesday, people! NOBODY NEEDS TO GO ANYPLACE AT TWO IN THE AFTERNOON!

Nevertheless, the trip went well. Once again I listened to the sound of silence coming from the direction of the passengers seat, nobody checking the goddamn speedometer, nobody checking the gas gauge, nobody hearing noises that mean we're all going to die coming from the engine compartment.
Of course I'm assuming silence here since the radio was playing loud enough to delaminate the safety glass.

And now, a PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE.


My boy and I went wandering around Portland on Sunday, and decided to hit one of the local music stores. So we go driving up and dang; there I was smack in the middle of what used to be 'The Pink Triangle' up on Burnside; up by the notorious Kachina Lounge, the Family Zoo, and the Red Balcony.

Not no mo it ain't.

The Zoo is kaput, The Kachina is history, The Balcony is gone entirely, building and all. Here I was all braced to be chasing drag queens off my son, and nada.

And to top it off, Burnside as a whole is no longer lined two deep in winos, either. We did get spanged by a guy with a walker. I gave him a buck. He was wearing red nail polish.

First we (me and my son, not me and the guy in the walker) went to a music store and spent too much money, and then he (my son, not the guy in the walker) took me to this incredibly excellent place here:
...that's The Arborist with his elbow up on the bar...photographic proof that the apple did not fall very far from the tree. It fell as far as the next barstool over.


Here is the view past him, looking toward the front door. Pay attention, foreign persons in general and Mr. The Dog in particular; I took these for you. This is the inside of a cool bar in America.





Ok. Here is looking directly up at the ceiling. I'm not sure what purpose it served, but that round thing up there was covered in green and clear mirror pieces and it rotated. It kind of reminded me of that mind-control device in original Star Trek, where Kirk goes to the insane asylum planet and they put him in the device and it messes with his brain and makes him kiss that one broad? And then the one guy gets trapped in there and it sucks all his thoughts out and he dies of loneliness and then Captain Kirk says something pithy and they play the closing theme? Yeah.



I swear to you I am not falling off the barstool here; I was holding the camera at an awkward angle. Just turn your head sideways.

Look at how cool this place is. The Arborist has the most excellent taste, I swear. I loved it. They had excellent brew too. Plus there was a hot guy playing pool just out of shot to the right.




This was a bicycle parked out front of the place.
We are looking west up Burnside toward the old 'Kuntz Plumbing' building. -hey, I shit thee not. Kuntz Plumbing. I almost rented out an apartment upstairs from it years ago. The name was kind of offputting, of course...


This is the Oregon I remember when I left:
You have to make the bigger by noise of an insect becoming largeness in order to really get it, unlike this sentence. Boarded up tacky old buildings, general crumminess, squalor...
I shot this someplace way out in the brush somewhere. It's the exception to the rule now.



Here is an excellent example of what I mean when I talk about Portland being better than it used to be. This is Third Street in downtown Portland, right across from the Old Spaghetti Factory building (now an architects' office.)
Third used to be a pretty gritty area. You were getting too close to Burnside at this point, and down near the low-rent, filthy waterfront area beside...it used to be heinously dirty, the storefronts were largely unoccupied, there was lots of vandalism, and there would have been people asleep on the street and lots of graffitti and posters rotting off the walls as well. Now look.




I'm standing in the same spot looking in the opposite direction, toward the college.

No winos. No garbage in the street. Trees.
I tell you, its like that one episode in original Star Trek when they all go back through a time portal thing and Kirk falls in love with that Edith Keeler broad and has to let a car hit her so that history isn't changed? And then they go back to the Enterprise and Mr. Spock whips off his shirt, and he has a tattoo, and they have wacky space love.


Some things did stay the same. See that circle thing in the curb? The one right next to my foot there?

That's from waaaaaaaay back in the day. It's an iron ring to tie your horse to. Finding this made me really happy. I always got a kick out of them when I was a little kid and look; something good from back then is still here. Cool!
______________________________________


When I lived in Oregon, you used to hear people from out of state bitching about the poor condition of the roads and think "Aw geeze, grow some hair on your ass." Now, having lived for 23 years in a state that actually maintains its highways, I can go back and appreciate from an informed perspective just how bad it was, and is. Not only poorly maintained surfaces - think 'downtown Baghdad'- but unnecessarily narrow, poorly marked, and what the fuck is it with the off-camber turns? Middle of a mountain pass on a 50 mph stretch of road and suddenly you're coming around a turn and you feel the entire chassis begin to plane. And there's a log truck on your ass. And a Mexican broad in an Aerostar is passing you on the left so close her kids are trying your doorhandles and she's weaving in and out of the lane, talking on her cell phone.

The thing that complicates all this even more is that, down in Oregon, suddenly there IS SCENERY WORTH SEEING, even on the interstate. Good scenery. World class scenery, in fact. Your only choice is to pull over and stop, or miss it. You can't casually gaze out and enjoy the passing landscape; there might be a giant goddamn chuckhole coming up with a submarine floating around in it that you have to manouver around.

Once off the main highway the scenery goes from merely pretty to 'astoundingly beautiful.' Particularly along the coast, immediately west of the coastal range, along what they used to call the Miracle Miles. Now its just plain U.S. 101.
Go there. NOW.

-wait. I mean, don't move there or anything; they don't want you. Just go visit and spend a lot of money. Then LEAVE.





So anyway, there I was, traveling west through the coast range, losing altitude at an astonishing rate, going through the most excellent, moss-draped primeval forest, past incredible rock formations.... doing 55 around hairpin turns canted in defiance of ballistic motion, with a log truck gaining on me. I'm driving along with my eyes bugging out, trying to stay on the mountain, when suddenly out of nowhere all these godawful GIANT BIRDS go blasting right across my windshield! Jesus H. Christ!

At first I thought 'vultures,' but no. TURKEYS. Oh yes, definitely turkeys. I got a real good look at them. I could even read the little 'made in Macao' tags.

Nothing gets your blood moving brisky along like getting fucked with by turkeys on an frost-covered, 70% downhill grade.

I was on my way to visit a friend of mine who lives in Coquille. Now, had I been thinking, I wouldn't have just gone right in off the road without getting my shit together first.
I was not thinking.
No, I showed up at her place of work shortly after the turkey incident with my hair all sticking out wild, face pale, hands trembling, wearing my black trilby, a stained 'Spam' t-shirt and a rasty old leather jacket with crap all dangling off it.

Asked the receptionist to announce me as 'FirstNations.'

....eeeeeYeah.

This is a professional workplace, bear in mind. This nice woman comes walking out into the lobby and a deranged hippie wearing a Zippy the Pinhead badge comes clanking and jangling up and throws her arms around her in a big ol' cloud of patchouli and adrenaline-laced fear sweat...oh yes, it was choice.

...this is the view from the parking lot where she works. Deal with this. This is a view from a fricken' PARKING LOT. In Oregon. Does your parking lot at work have a nice view like this? No it does not.

She wanted to buy me lunch, but I said no, that's ok. Then I ate most of her french fries and forgot to catch the tip.

Anyway, we sat and relaxed and just chatted nonstop. She is just as smart cool and laid back (not to mention groovy in a far out, happening way) as she comes off in her writing. We got along like a house afire. The woman is incredibly interesting, and I swear she has read EVERYTHING. I wish I'd have stayed longer, I really do. She was so nice to me. Before I'd left, she even loaded me up with dirty romance novels, and I mean, dang; lunch AND porn. That's hospitality.

In parting, she told me "Head on up the coast a ways and then take the Drain exit back to I-5. It's just a much nicer drive." A friendly bit of advice which I took. And I'm glad I did, too. Had I stuck to my original plan, I would have missed one of the most extraordinary experiences I have ever had. Retro, that was a star in your crown. That valley along the Umpqua river was one of the most gorgeous places I have ever been.


NEXT: a lot of descriptive crap about that drive, with average pictures!!!

Spotlight on: FRANCONIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps some day you might like to take a nice trip someplace. You could go to FRANCONIA!

Franconia is located in the land. It is near Europe, French, and Dutch Holland. You can only reach it if you take three boats, and then you have to rent a car. Here is a map:


Fact: French Fries aren't really French. They are potatoes.


Danger in Franconia:

Wolves are a very dangerous part of life in Franconia. Nobody likes them. If you have a chicken, or some sheep? Wolves will eat them. Plus things that are made out of meat, like kids.

Pie is dangerous.

Fire. It can burn stuff.

Mean dogs. Everyone has to beware of mean dogs in Franconia.

One day the Spain people had a fight with the Franconia people! "We will fight you!" they said. They were sneaky. They dressed up in the disguises of baseball players, clowns, and waiters, and sergeants, and they got in their car and snuck in! They were very rude to everyone.

The Franconia people were sad.

But one day a new hero appeared across the land... Super Franconia Man!

...actual unretouched photograph

Nobody knew who he was, but he could fly! And he had a chainsaw! He chased the Spain people and made them give back all the stuff they took, and it was all greasy. The Franconia people said "Why did you make our stuff all greasy?" And they said "Oh, get your mom to wash it for you." And so Franconia had a new freedom!!!

Here are some Franconia facts:

The Flag of Franconia is pine scented.

The official Franconia mascot is the pileated womb ferret.

...actual size

Franconians like to have a spoon or two around the house.

Children in Franconia learn Klingon and Esperanto in addition to their regular classwork.

The national Anthem of Franconia is "Hey, Franconia, You are a Land"

In Franconia, no one can hear you scream.

So when you go to Franconia, you will be very happy, and your family will too! They have stores, and cheese, and television. Remember to always flush and wash your hands. You are a representative of your country, and you wouldn't want people to think that country was Canada.
____________________________________________________



Meanwhile, I will be in Oregon doing secret Oregon things that you can't know about. Maybe when I come back I will tell you all about what happened there. But not now. I haven't done them yet.

The Yellow Mouse Has A Mysterious Secret

As we travel down lifes' highway we all have times of doubt...

...of worry...

...of not knowing which way to turn...

...of having reached one of lifes' crossroads in a Volkswagen with faulty brakes, and got in a huge flaming wreck with a busload of nuns and mexican wrestling personalities...

Yes, when times get to be too much, and you wish you had a friend...

...someone to trust,

...someone to provide counsel and a shoulder to lean on during this difficult time...

you need someone like Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude.

....thats him.

Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude is standing by right now waiting for your questions. Ask Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude about any concern you may have...life, love, money or what lies beyond the veil, none of these things are hidden from Mr. Egyptian Penis dude. He can help. Let him help now.

FACT: Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude has devoted his life to the service of others. Many consider him uniquely qualified to service others. Gifted, even.

Anyone may approach Mr. Egyptian Penis dude with a question. Here we see Mr. Yen Shi Baby asking Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude for his sage advice.

Seeker: Please can you tell me if i will ever-

EPM: Blah blah blah blah yes, fine, sure, I know, I know already. I'm psychic. I know. Please God, I know. Seriously.

Seeker: But can you tell me-









EPM: Would you like to meet my twin brother? We get in fights all the time. Watch us fight. Watch.

EPM: EEEEE Hawakowa! I FIGHT YOU!

epm2: OW OW OW OW OW OW

EPM: OK now I have defeated my evil brother! I can answer now.






Seeker: Ok, Mr. Egyptian Penis Dude, I'm ready to receive your wisdom!

EPM:....OK. Are you sure?

Seeker: Yes.

EPM: Are you sure you're ready?

Seeker: ...

EPM: Are you really really super-allidocious top secret ready?

MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER TODAY. ASK MR. EGYPTIAN PENIS MAN A QUESTION.

NOW.

...SERIOUSLY. NOW.

Welcome!

Say hello to my new grandbaby!! Isn't she adorable?





....and so smart!!

Submerged Vignettes From My Quaint Underwater Idyll

If you've been paying attention to the news you'll know that we have some flooding going on here in Whatcom County. Here's what it looks like so far at the Rancho. Don't expect much excitement. A flood here means 'really deep puddle' instead of 'raging currents of death spreading watery destruction.'

...looking due south out my front door, we have my front yard, the street, and the hay field.



...and turning slightly southwest, the corner of the hayfield where the t-intersection cuts across it.

Now for the backyard. Looking toward the grade school, north...

...that was yesterday afternoon. Now lets take a look at it the way it looked this morning at 8:am...

...a little deeper...

And now, this afternoon.

...it's risen a little, huh!

Look at the seagulls swimming around. This is looking northeast from that last picture...

All morning long huge flights of geese and swans have been migrating BACK UP FROM THE SOUTH.

The rain is hitting in a succession of waves. We'll have nothing for 45 minutes and then it sweeps in again for a couple of hours. Fortunately for us, we don't live near any major rivers so there isn't any current to contend with.

We are, however, housing five flood refugees. The SSA, the Lucky Bastard, the Goonybird, their dog and cat got evacuated last night and spent the night here. They'll probably end up staying at least one more night before the Corps of Engineers decides its safe to go back to their area. Now, their property is in no danger, realistically speaking, but the area they live in qualifies as alluvial fan and so they got a blanket 'voluntary evacuation' warning.
______________________________
Yes, its been nonstop excitement here at Rancho FirstNations. I just had my very first blogmeet! Inner Voices and Cheese stopped by for a visit!

...where the great man sat

No of course I didn't take pictures. That would make sense. I was so overcome with relief that y'all are in fact more than figments of my imagination that the last thing on my mind was taking pictures, yo.

They were kind of freaked out to find things so damp, so they cut things short and got moving up toward Canada, to do whatever hockey and Gouda-intensive Canadian activities they had planned up there. I will say this much...they are lovely people.

...generous,too.

Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

Good Gravy Marie enough of that already.
OO! Theres a new one up at UJ! It's not very dirty, but it is inappropriate.


Deal with this, my darlings:

I FOUND THE MEADOWS BROTHERS ONLINE.

Don't know who they are? Scroll down to the tags window at the very bottom of the blog here and hit the ones marked 'Meadows'. Go by the numbers. Think of it as research. Think of it as another step on the way towards your degree in Abnormal Anthropology, a discipline which I just made up.

I cannot tell you how surprised I am. Mainly to find them both still alive, both in possession of higher technology, and apparently both still functional enough to use same.

I honestly thought that Kelvin would have committed suicide long before this. My guess (hope, truth be known) is that Kelvin is contacting the www from inside the sex offenders' wing of Rocky Butte prison, and that him being in seg is the only reason he is alive. But see, now that inevitably leads me to the thought...'Well, if I was wrong about him being dead, then maybe I'm wrong about him being locked down, and he's still out there on the streets, being.....Kelvin. And working in a grade school. As a night janitor."

Can you see where I'm coming from here? Really, honestly, if you live in the greater Portland Metropolitan area and you have children in any of the grade schools around there? Really? Leave me a message in the 'comments' section because we need to get together and talk. And the main thrust of this talk will be based around your busting out your parents' school directory and hitting the 'meet the staff of 'X' elementary!' page. Because, yeah.

If I could be a fly on the wall, I would love to take a peek at the kind of life that Eldest Brother is leading now, though. I honestly hope its a good one, and that it's being lived in complete isolation from the rest of his family. He always was cougar bait, that boy, and so my fondest wish for him is that he found some luscious older lady to please and was sole beneficiary of her vast estate when he finally fucked her to death. That would be awesome. I can just see him now, a cheerful chubber bear just entering a comfortable and certifiably insane late middle age... sitting amidst the oolong stains on a once-proud Ethan Allen sectional, wrapped in the Dorito-scented darkness of his living room, contacting Pay Pal in order to purchase another cyborg vagina slave* for his Second Life character.

Having found the Meadows Boys I then proceeded directly, without hitting 'Go' or collecting 200.00, to the Oregonian newspaper site and from thence, GoogleMaps. I needed to brush up on my Multnomah County geography, and fast. If this seems paranoid, just know that I am the official Murphys' Law poster girl. If there is a chance in hell that our paths might cross, that chance will happen to me. There I'd be stopped at a light, and the guy in the crosswalk will turn to flash me, and I'D recognize Kelvin, and-worst of all- HE'D recognize ME. I want to avoid that if at all possible.

So there I am tiptoeing through the newspapers. As I'm reading along about my old part of town, I keep stumbling onto these references to a place called 'Felony Flats'.

I'd never heard of it before. Huh. I wonder where that is. I'll take a look at a map.

It is here:


View Larger Map

...and right at its epicenter is Milwaukie, Oregon. My home town.

If you jigger around with the zoom feature, you can roughly bound the area known as Felony Flats by Sandy Boulevard to the north (traditional), Clackamas River Drive to the south, Mt. Scott Boulevard to the east, and the Willamette River to the west. Note also, as you zoom out, that Felony Flats is located just a short drive southwest of Wankers Corner, and southeast of Boring, Oregon. In case you wanted to, you know, visit or anything.

An interesting bit of trivia is that Felony Flats is one of the only ghettos in the world with an actual dormant volcano in the middle of it. Take a closer look. See Mt. Tabor there? Yeah. The City of Portland in its infinite wisdom decided not only that incorporating a volcano into a central metropolitan area was a good idea, but also to make it into a park. Sure, why not?...its just a deadly geological feature. Now, given what usually goes on in that park and the present unstable nature of the Pacific Rim faultline, one day here soon everyone's going to hear this loud explosion and look up in the sky and its going to be nothing but tweakers and naked people flying through the air. Followed shortly thereafter by flaming molten lava destruction with all fiery explosional destruction flames plus lava.

I was not all that shocked to realize that my old stomp has the reputation it does...only to find that reputation finally being openly acknowledged by the people that live in and around there. Of course nobody acknowledges the fact that the blight doesn't just stop abruptly at Sandy Boulevard. It never did. What happens is, the color of the majority of the inhabitants changes from white to black. But apparently it's only crime if it happens where white people are living, thus going to show that sometimes you can go back home again because ain't shit for nothing changed there, attitudes included.

Really, though, to cover the whole with a blanket appellation like 'Felony Flats' is a gross generalization. Many of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Portland are contained within those boundaries, like Laurelhurst and Top o' Scott, Waverleigh and Westmoreland-Reed and Willammette Bluffs. What remains is split evenly between quiet middle-and-working class suburbs, and total white trash slum. There is simply a whole lot more of it than there used to be.

I think what happened was that the slum portion simply got too big to ignore any more. A small slum is bad, right; but a great big honkin' slum is lots worse. And a great big honkin' slum in a part of the world where there never have been that many jobs and it rains all the time? You got some stupid, damp, pissed off white folks with a lot of spare time on their hands. And hell, a person don't always feel like getting drunk or banging close relatives, you know? Sometimes a fool gots ta break out and....you know, bury a drag queen ** somewhere on the property. I guess that's why people finally had to quit pretending that things were hunky dory. The elephant in the living room simply got too big to ignore. Or the dead drag queen. Either way.



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*dibs 'Cyborg Vagina Slaves' for the name of my punk rock band. They'll play double bills with 'Bitchy Sister in Law and the Delusions of Entitlement'.

** no, seriously, you HAVE to read this article. It happened less than two miles from where I grew up.

Trippin

I was adopted back in 1960. The polite term for what happened was 'privately arranged.'
The real story goes like this: the poor girl, my mother, was red, about 15 years old and unmarried. The father was a white boy off the nearby Army base. She had the baby in a charity hospital. With the 'help' of the attending doctor and the collusion of the staff of the maternity ward I was basically stolen from her and then sold to whoever. If you hit my archives you'll find out what exactly I mean by 'whoever'.

Now, over the years I've gotten a few arched eyebrows and long-suffering sighs when I've recounted this, as though I were making it up, right? Trying to inflate the drama factor, the romance, make the story more tragic?

You would be SHOCKED how common that shit was.
You would be shocked at how common it was right up until about the mid '70's, in fact.
Here.
In America.
If you were white.

Oh yes.

Recently I joined an online group for birth-moms who have been reunited with the children they gave up for adoption. Meet the Arborist:

(I was reunited with my son last January, and it's been fucking AWESOME, mainly because he is fucking awesome, and he gardens, and cows fear him. And the suspenders.) It's been really cool to know that I'm not the only person out there with a happy ending!

The group is great. The chance to share this unusual, overwhelming, emotional rollercoast of an experience is great. But the thing that is just blowing my shit away is not that other people have been reunited with their children, but HOW INCREDIBLY COMMON MY ADOPTION STORY WAS!

So many of these women went through the exact same thing that my birth mother did! And these are not old ladies either, folks...this shit went on right up until the mid-Seventies! They STOLE your baby! And the racism behind it! If you were white (looking,) unwed and indigent, you stood a really good chance of having your kid taken-just flat fucking taken- right out of the nursery by any one of a number of 'social service' organizations, (or in my case a crooked G.P.) and SOLD. They didn't screen prospective parents, either! Hell no they didn't do any screening! Sure, if it was a rich family going though a legitimate agency, sure, then there might have been some kind of a cursory background investigation, but in the majority of cases? If the check cleared, congratulations. Have an infant. And it's horrifying how many of those infants went to people just as evil and fucked up as my parents were. The fucking Humane Society spends more time and effort clearing people to adopt stray dogs.

I cannot tell you how shocked I am. I associate this kind of thing with, like, Victorian-era New York or something. I mean come on. But it's true!

Before anyone asks, no. No, I'm not going to resume the search for my birth mom. I'm not going to drop that bombshell into the lap of some elderly stranger. I've already tried once and got stonewalled, and that was years ago. I've had enough drama in my life and I sure in the fuck don't want to go around mongering more drama for complete strangers. That episode is done. But can you imagine?

I just cannot get over this. And here's the kicker...had I taken after momma instead of daddy? I'd have grown up in Eastern Oregon in a hogan. No fucking lie.

Life is a fucking trip, I tell you what.

Chicken Stock for Danger Panda! (and the benefit of all mankind) now with handy conversion chart so british people can make it too

NOTE: Remember how in the last post I said that its difficult to write a recipe? Well, it is. I transposed the last two steps in this recipe, but I just fixed it. PUT THE CHICKEN DOWN. STEP AWAY FROM THE CHICKEN SLOOOOOOOOOWLY. Now go back and read it so you can do it the right way. Yikes! Sorry.
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I am a stock Nazi. I don't care. I cannot go by a can (or worse yet, a BOX) of stock in the supermarket or see it advertised on television without making this noise: ffff. Please. Really? Canned stock? Really? Stock in a BOX? No. Begone. Please.

Making stock is effortless. In fact it's almost like doing nothing, only it smells better...the most return for the least effort of just about any activity I can think of.

Want to cook from scratch? You absolutely must have stock. You want high nutrition, amazing depth and complexity of flavor that you simply cannot get otherwise? Stock, baby. It is a necessity. It keeps for months in the freezer, it's highly nutritious, it tastes good, it's the starting place for so many different things....really folks. Please. Make stock. Your life will be so much better.**

Stock is a natural companion to thrift. I buy full body fryers and fish, and primal cuts of red meat when it's at all possible to do so. It's cheaper to buy meat this way ultimately, and it only takes a few moments to whack into cuts and pitch into the freezer, thus ensuring that the meat is cut to your liking along the way. Plus, you end up with a lot of trims...bone, scraps of meat and fat, skin and cartilage. All this is valuable stuff. None of it goes to waste. Frozen and labeled, and then thawed overnight in a pot of cold water; that's the beginning of stock.

The most useful, versatile stock of all in home cooking is chicken stock. I've been stocking off once every couple of months ever since 1979 using the recipe that follows, a recipe I got from people who know what the hell stock is all about. It straight up kicks ass.

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This recipe will yield not only 1 and 3/4 gallons of nutritious, useful stock, but an entire chickens' worth of cooked meat, which you can use for any number of lovely things. If you can keep your finger out of your nose I will include a nice recipe for chicken salad at the end here.

Truthfully? You really ought to be paying me for this. You really should. Seriously.
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Dave's Delicatessen CHICKEN STOCK

RECIPE MEASUREMENT CONVERSION TABLE THINGIE FOR FOREIGN PERSONS:
http://www.wwrecipes.com/convert.htm

You will need:
One whole body chicken, minus the liver but plus the giblets and heart. ( Fry the liver up for a treat. It's good for you.) For me its easier to work with a whole body chicken than one that's already cut up, but it really doesn't matter as long as all the parts are present.

carrots, 1 cup chopped
celery, 1 cup chopped
white onion, 1 cup chopped (it MUST be a white onion. no substitutions here)
1 large bay leaf
vegetable oil
plain tap water
optional:
salt, to taste
fresh garlic, or shallot

also: One 2-gallon size pot with a lid that fits tightly, big enough to put the whole chicken into and cover with water.
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-Place the chicken into the pot and fill it up with cold water. Cover it to keep the farm animals out of it and put it aside for a few hours where it will stay cool. This will draw the juices from the chicken and open up the fibers in the meat.

-Now put the chicken-pot onto the stove top and turn the heat on beneath it to it's lowest setting.
DO NOT COVER.*

-Over the course of a half an hour, slowly bring the heat up on the water until the surface of the water just begins to break a hard, rolling boil. (Depending on the heat of the day this can take more or less time..the important thing is that you slowly bring the heat up. Slosh the chicken around gently every now and then so the water washes all around it and everything comes up to the same temperature at the same time. This is called mechanical convection!! It's science!) What this highly complicated process amounts to is wandering around doing whatever chores and taking an occasional peek at the chicken, giving it a nudge, and giving the heat control another tweak upward.

-The moment the top begins to roll, turn the heat completely OFF, wait for the bubbles to subside, then cover the pot tightly.

-Slide the pot off the hot burner and onto a cold one. Let it sit, covered tightly, for ONE HOUR.

-At the end of the hour, take the chicken out of the pot. It should be just cool enough to handle. Drain, returning the drippings to the pot, and then strip the chicken, reserving the meat to one side. Retain all the skin, the fat, the cartilage, and the bones. Pretty does not count; nor does perfectly stripping the carcass.

-Crack any large leg bones. Return the stripped carcass to the pot of water (bones and cartilage) as well as the giblets and heart, and turn the heat onto its LOWEST setting. AND LEAVE IT THERE.

-Top up the pot with more cold water to bring the level up to the 2 gallon mark.

-Add the bay leaf.

-If you are using garlic or shallot, add these now, raw. Scored or chopped, it doesn't make any difference. It's up to you how much.

-Chop coarsely: 1 cup carrots, 1 cup celery, 1 cup white onion. The object here is to create more cut area than skin area but don't worry about pretty, or size.

-In a large frying pan (not nonstick) saute' these vegetable ingredients in batches in a little plain vegetable oil. You want them soft, not browned, and not swimming in juices, so keep the batches on the small side so the pan doesn't crowd. As each batch finishes, dump it into the soup pot with the chicken carcass. What this does is burst the cell walls in the vegetables so that the flavor, nutrients and juices can be readily released into solution.

-If you build up a little fond by the end of this process, deglaze the frypan with a little of the warm stock and add this back into the pot.

-Now take the chicken skin and fat and put it into the frying pan. Turn the heat on to medium. Let it fry in its own oils until it is a beautiful golden color, turning it until its all browned. It might stick together in a big clump; that's fine.

-Lift the browned skin out of the pan, let it drip for a few moments, and then lower it gently into the warm stock. It might sizzle a bit. This browned skin adds rich, delicious layers of chicken flavor and gives the stock a pretty yellow color.

- Dump out the fat, then deglaze the bottom of the frying pan with some of the warm stock, and return that to the pot. Additionally, you can strain the fat for any leftover crumbs and add those to the stock as well. Now you can discard the fat, or render it to make schmaltz. You get to look up how to do that, though.

-Let's say its about 3pm by now. Leave the stock pot go OVERNIGHT. On the lowest heat setting, remember, uncovered, stirring occasionally. I mean, don't bother waking up at night to stir it, although you could if you were up already, but yeah.

-Seriously. All night. No kidding.

-No, it won't all cook away. You'll only lose 1/4 to 1/3 of the liquid to evaporation, depending on the ambient humidity.


THIS IS IMPORTANT: You will be tempted, but NEVER NEVER NEVER LET THE STOCK RETURN TO A BOIL, OR EVEN SO MUCH AS A RIPPLY SIMMER. Some faint steam will rise from the surface. Thats IT. Keep it stirred. This is the 'secret' of good stock.

Heres why: What happens if it boils is that the dissolved juices, sugars and proteins you've been working so hard to extract from all your ingredients will combine and bond to the dissolved haemo-proteins from the chicken (this turns grey and is called floc when it congeals) and when you strain that out, you'll strain out everything else along with it and lose the entire reason why you made this in the first place. Don't worry; your stock will be perfectly clean and germ-free despite never having boiled because it will have spent so much time at a scalding temperature. Remember too: when you go on to use your finished stock it in other things, you'll be cooking it again at a higher temperature anyway.

-In the morning, pour through a colander to strain out the bones and the vegetables. Pitch these. There's nothing left of them to speak of, although chickens and other birds love it because there's easily assimilated, dissolved calcium in it.

- Now strain it through something fine, like a clean cotton sacking towel, a cheese cloth or a fine mesh strainer, to get the greyish, cardboardy looking fragments (the congealed haemo, or 'floc', remember?) out of it. Don't bother trying to get it perfectly clear, but DO strain as much out as you can. If you leave the floc in, it will give the stock a rankish, livery taste. It's gotta go.

-Cool the stock, and then put it in the refrigerator until the fat rises to the top and can be lifted off in pieces, which can take a day. (Are you making schmaltz? Add this fat to it!) When the stock chills it will turn into jelly. It's supposed to!

You are done! You now have a simple chicken stock.

You'll taste this, and it will taste kind of weak, like chicken tea. It's supposed to. This is not broth, bouillon, or soup. It's a separate thing entirely. Stock is the starting place for all those things, and many others besides, but it is not an end in and of itself. If you reduce it down and add salt, you can get a very 'souplike' flavor from it, and that's what you would do if you were to make a soup with it anyway, so there you go. But stock is meant to be just an ingredient. I know. It took me years to get this; I thought I was doing it wrong. It's not supposed to be terribly salty or chickeny, like the canned or boxed stuff. That is WRONG. That's why when you make things with canned stock it ends up tasting bitter and gasoline-ish, because canned stock has been boiled to death, using substandard ingredients, and then over salted and over-seasoned and finally steam canned in fucking plastic-lined steel. It's CRAP. It's inferior. And its expensive!!

By making your own, you have just saved yourself about 25 dollars and a whole lot of space in your recycle bin. Freeze it in 16 oz containers. To use it at canned strength, use 32 oz (two containers) and reduce to roughly 1 cup (more or less, to taste.) And salt it up, of course.

Bonus recipe for non-nosepickers:

Chicken salad!!
This is a really informal recipe here. You can swap around the ingredients or omit whatever you don't like. Get all crazy with it. Simply chopped chicken and mayo is good, for you minimalists out there, but this is how I like it:

cooked chicken meat, chopped into small dice
onion, coarse mince
celery, coarse mince
sour cream, for binding, to taste, and/or mayonnaise
cashew nuts, 1 cup broken pieces
dried dill, 1/8 tsp
salt, to taste
fresh ground pepper, to taste
garlic, to taste


Mix and chill. Spread it on sandwiches or fill up a hollowed out tomato with it and serve cold. Is so yummish!
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*
why do i keep insisting 'do not cover'? because when you cover liquids that you're going to be keeping on the fire for awhile, it keeps certain compounds from volatilizing out of the mix. These things will then just lay in there and lend it a distinctive 'stew' or 'crockpot' flavor. Its not necessarily a bad thing, but its simply not what you're looking for here. when you do finally cover the chicken, you're doing it to retain heat. The 'active' cooking has been completed.


** This is not to say that I don't use mix. In the absence of base (a super reduced version of highly seasoned stock, like a syrup, that requires huge amounts of materials and time and energy to make) I make do and call it well fought. I'll use powdered mix before I'll use a commercial liquid base, though, since you KNOW everything's dead in the powder...God only knows what was swimming around in the base pot. I don't trust the shit. I've worked in factory food before. Since I don't make a lot of complex sauces, though, base rarely becomes an issue.

Black Dog Been A Long Time: Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely TIME

I've noticed that people who think that cooking is difficult make the same three mistakes:

1. If low heat is good, then high heat is better and faster, so turn everything up on high.
Nope. You're working with sugars and proteins. They all react differently to different temperatures. If the recipe says 'low heat' then it MEANS low heat. If you don't know why it should make a difference, then look that question up on the Internet or ask someone. Then do it.

2. Get bored and then walk away from things while they are on the stove top.
DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM A HOT STOVE TOP. NEVER. An oven is a different matter; still, for safety's sake, always, always use a timer.

3. Address their lack of skills as though it were a charming foible. 'Gosh, I am just such a ditz! And it's cute!"
It's not. It's annoying and lame. Anyone who can read can cook. Stick to the easy stuff at first; master a few tasty things with only a few ingredients and instructions. Once you get comfortable with that, move up.

The best advice I can give to a beginning cook is, that when you first start out cooking, your only objective is to produce EDIBLE FOOD THAT YOU LIKE. Ugly doesn't count. All food needs to do is taste good and be nourishing. Period. All those gorgeous pictures in the magazines are staged, folks. Presentation only counts in a commercial establishment.

A good way to learn is to work out of a cookbook like this one, even if you're an adult:


You can buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Kids-Cooking-Slightly-Messy-Manual/dp/0932592147

Do it now. It really is that good.

This is the best kids' cook book out there. The format is light but not dorky, the steps are easy, the tools are laid out, safety and preparation are explained and most of all, the recipes are easy and TASTE REALLY GOOD. We still use a lot of the recipes, in fact.


If working out of a childrens' cookbook doesn't appeal, I would work out of a reliable standard like The Joy of Cooking. This book is like my family bible. Buy it in hardcover. It's worth whatever you have to pay for it. If you don't have it, you should. I am dead serious.

Joy's recipes are tested and reliable and presume no skill on your part. Joy not only gives you recipes but also explains why things happen in cooking and how to do them.

Don't-as a beginner, anyway- go try and cook things using the recipe sites out there on the Internet. Here's why...

Most of the recipe sites out there are built using recipes that random people submit. They aren't tested, they take skill for granted, and they just plain suck sometimes. Or rather, if I'm going to be generous, its that lots of those folks who contribute are probably better cooks than they are writers. Writing a recipe is difficult! Ask me...it's a lot harder than it looks.

That having been said, the best reference resource out there for a beginning cook is online: Egullet.com, a site I highly recommend as a learning tool. They have technique demonstration videos that you can play as many times as you like, and people on staff that can help you out. It's a recipe collection, a forum, a reference and a cooking school. All skill levels are represented, and the instructors and moderators are really patient and helpful.

Here's my rundown of the common sites:

EGULLET.COM -Great everything-recipes, resources, information, links, recommendations and tutorials

Egullet.org Online Culinary Institute-EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT

Allrecipe.com- very iffy but excellent if you're researching variations of a particular dish, since they'll present you with, say, five different versions of a given dish submitted by five different people.

Recipezaar-average to iffy, and also excellent if you're researching variations of a particular dish for the reasons given above there.

Cooks.com-Home of the white trash recipe...if you're looking for that weird pretzel and jello dip (this exists) they served at uncle Billy-Bobs' funeral, look no further. Recipes range from very good to very, very bad indeed. And I mean 'whoa Nellie' bad.

Myrecipes.com-Good. They link to Sunset Magazine recipes, which I like.

Gourmet Magazine online-Average, good recommendations and links

Epicurious-Not the most user friendly site, but good

Cheftalk.com - The moderators can be assholes, but their archives are SOLID GOLD. Absolutely invaluable information and resources particularly for obscure or very new things. Hash slingers, Cordon Bleu grads and everyone in between all gather here to worship. Aimed at the professional (or the highly skilled amateur), assumes a high level of skill.

Martha Stewart.com-Not the most user friendly site out there. The recipes tend to be hit or miss, but the few good ones are very, very good. Excellent resources, reliably high quality.

Joy of Cooking online-Good, but not as good or as comprehensive as the book.

Americas' Test Kitchen- Meh. The show and the magazine are much, much better (I subscribe, in fact. You should too. Its like an advanced degree in cooking. The magazine is called Cooks Illustrated.) The site is very aggressive in its marketing tactics and the recipes are only up for a limited time.