He's coming up tomorrow with his whole family.
I am tripping hard.
I know all the words of encouragement and I am thinking clearly here, but it's still an emotional maelstrom, kids.
Don't try this at home. Trained professionals on closed course.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
...WELL GODDAMMIT, THERE YA GO.
Blogger keeps chowing down on my pictures so fuck'em.
Well. I guess a few updates are in order.
My daughter eloped and broke my heart. I will never speak to her again and I hope
Nah, I'm lying. It was great!!! She looked BEAUTIFUL, she married a great guy, AND IT DIDN'T COST ME A DIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you want to see the picture you have to go HERE, though. MY blog won't print them.
Ninjas are cool, but not as cool as robots. If robots break down you can repair them. Plus you can bolt on awesome stuff like laser cannons and circular saws that come shooting out of their chests and fly out and saw through stuff. You can't do that with ninjas.
I gave up a baby for adoption in 1979, and lo and behold, he found me three days ago! He is a gorgeous young man and he had a wonderful life growing up. We are still getting acquainted, but I think things are going to be great. I have five more family members now...and three of them are grand kids! What does it feel like? A BIG DAMN RELIEF IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE. I know from bitter experience exactly what Moses' mother must have felt as she put her baby into a basket and set it adrift on the water. And when that's the best, sanest option, you know things must suck....and they did.
I am so overjoyed now that it keeps hitting me in waves. Strange? You have no idea. But very joyful too. Incredibly joyful!
My husband finished his first half of college ON THE HONOR ROLL. This is not too damn shabby for an evil, cigar chomping, tattooed old reprobate. In fact, this cigar chomping old reprobate placed in the top 2 percentile IN THE NATION.
My dog smells bad. That's not news, but I thought I'd say it.
The Playboy of the Western World has moved once again, into a facility that is something in between a full-on nursing home and simple assisted care. I just went to help him get his phone service transferred and had to cut my visit short because he had a 'gentleman caller'. Once again I am pleasantly surprised, not to mention relieved and grateful, at how far care for the elderly has come since I was a child. It's nice to know that being old and sick no longer means poverty, squalor, bad smells and over-medication. These places are WONDERFUL. If anyone is having to face the time when their parents need more than you can provide, I cannot urge you strongly enough to go out there and take a look around. This place costs 2350.00 a month, with a supervising R.N. and L.N.s to administer meds and assist with other personal and medical needs. That ain't too damn shabby at all. All meals provided, trips, shopping, housekeeping, a billiards room, visiting doctors...the list goes on and on. He's private pay, but Medicaid COVERS THIS. YES.
Things have changed for the better, and I mean REALLY CHANGED FOR THE BETTER.
Well. I guess a few updates are in order.
My daughter eloped and broke my heart. I will never speak to her again and I hope
Nah, I'm lying. It was great!!! She looked BEAUTIFUL, she married a great guy, AND IT DIDN'T COST ME A DIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you want to see the picture you have to go HERE, though. MY blog won't print them.
Ninjas are cool, but not as cool as robots. If robots break down you can repair them. Plus you can bolt on awesome stuff like laser cannons and circular saws that come shooting out of their chests and fly out and saw through stuff. You can't do that with ninjas.
I gave up a baby for adoption in 1979, and lo and behold, he found me three days ago! He is a gorgeous young man and he had a wonderful life growing up. We are still getting acquainted, but I think things are going to be great. I have five more family members now...and three of them are grand kids! What does it feel like? A BIG DAMN RELIEF IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE. I know from bitter experience exactly what Moses' mother must have felt as she put her baby into a basket and set it adrift on the water. And when that's the best, sanest option, you know things must suck....and they did.
I am so overjoyed now that it keeps hitting me in waves. Strange? You have no idea. But very joyful too. Incredibly joyful!
My husband finished his first half of college ON THE HONOR ROLL. This is not too damn shabby for an evil, cigar chomping, tattooed old reprobate. In fact, this cigar chomping old reprobate placed in the top 2 percentile IN THE NATION.
IN THE NATION.
Y'all.
My dog smells bad. That's not news, but I thought I'd say it.
The Playboy of the Western World has moved once again, into a facility that is something in between a full-on nursing home and simple assisted care. I just went to help him get his phone service transferred and had to cut my visit short because he had a 'gentleman caller'. Once again I am pleasantly surprised, not to mention relieved and grateful, at how far care for the elderly has come since I was a child. It's nice to know that being old and sick no longer means poverty, squalor, bad smells and over-medication. These places are WONDERFUL. If anyone is having to face the time when their parents need more than you can provide, I cannot urge you strongly enough to go out there and take a look around. This place costs 2350.00 a month, with a supervising R.N. and L.N.s to administer meds and assist with other personal and medical needs. That ain't too damn shabby at all. All meals provided, trips, shopping, housekeeping, a billiards room, visiting doctors...the list goes on and on. He's private pay, but Medicaid COVERS THIS. YES.
Things have changed for the better, and I mean REALLY CHANGED FOR THE BETTER.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
wack up smel the coffee
Before Jesus and my mom met we had a subscription to 'Fate' magazine.
It was actually a pretty entertaining read. Anyway, when I was a little kid I used to sneak down into the basement with a stack of them and scare the living crap out of my self, reading about demonic possession, banshees (I was convinced there was one lurking around outside my bedroom window just waiting for me to relax my guard) UFO abduction, the Loch Ness monster, The Jersey Devil, Bigfoot and all the rest. In addition to that, we owned copies of: Flying Saucers: Serious Business, Chariots of the Gods, A Gift Of Prophecy, The Sleeping Prophet: Edgar Cayce,
...Seth Speaks, The Search For Bridey Murphy, You Have Lived Before, The Lost Continent of Mu....on and on. And on. And on and on.
As I read my way through all of this I came to the realization: "Goodness me, this here is some sad made-up old bullshit isn't it?" And time has borne this out...all of the above titles have been utterly debunked. I gotta say, though, if a grade school kid can figure this out without the need to consult with The Amazing Randi, well...
I think I was lucky in that I was encountering it at the same time I was running onto the great storytellers because I learned how to recognize the 'psychological structure' of fiction, I guess you'd call it. Really, though...you read some of that
shit alongside Bradbury or Tolkein and all the seams and strings show up horribly. It becomes very apparent that fiction is precisely what it is...whether it be fiction written by people who have decided that anything that happens to pop into their heads must be real because they're thinking it (like Edgar Cayce or L. Ron Hubbard), or fiction written in a cold blooded attempt to deceive (i.e. Seth Speaks, anything by J.Z.Knight.)
That's one of the things I thought was interesting about it and still do...that the mind, even the malfunctioning one, has a way of organizing things that are drawn from the imagination in a different way than it structures things experienced as an exterior event. People who are recounting a 'real' experience seem to struggle to whatever degree with what they've encountered. They don't have answers. There isn't a theme or a plot. Of course, that doesn't mean that their perceptions were accurate...it just means that they perceived that 'x' happened and they want to tell you about it in whatever words come close to
getting the job done. The other stuff always has some kind of giveaway narrative or thematic structure, however cryptic. I've always thought that's part of what makes it so seductive, though. That glimmering of organization you can just barely sense is, in fact,an OCCULT TROOTH...and the trooth is, the shit's made up.
What really makes me shake my head, though, is when people continue to believe in a supernatural explanation long after the subject has been conclusively exposed as fraudulent. Take crop circles for example.
I used to make hay highways the same way in the field next door; you'd take a big cardboard box and scoot around in it to flatten the stalks down. After we'd done we'd climb up the neighbors tree and go look at the designs we made. Come on! How obvious does it have to be?
This is more complex than a hay highway, but anyone with a compass, a straightedge and some basic design layout skills could draw this. To execute it, the only supplies you need are a scaled design, a few friends, something like a surveyors stake and string, and a length of board. Come on people. This should never have needed debunking. Yet time and again, even after the creators come forward and claim responsibility, people STILL INSIST SPACE ALIENS DID IT.
You find a similar reaction to the man who was responsible for the famous Loch Ness Monster photo. The poor guy came forward shortly before he died and admitted it was all a hoax, yet no one wanted to believe him. He still had the fricken' toy submarine he used to fake 'Nessie'!
Using the original prop, they recreated the photo, and lo and behold!
Nessie sails again! Irregardless of which people are still spending God knows how much money every year to go annoy fish in Scotland. Loch Ness has got to be the most well explored body of water full of the most pissed-off fish on the face of the earth. Not to mention home to the most well-documented case of non-existence. Every single year they rediscover the same exact thing: There is no Nessie, no swimming elephants, no mutant anaconda, no landlocked whales, no pleisiosaur. Truthfully I wish there were a Nessie, and I wish it was a pleisiosaur because it would be completely badass if if were a pleisiosaur, but it is not, because they are extinct. Coelecanths have nothing to do with it.
...innocent, and delicious
Everyone always bring up coelecanths here. 'Well, ' they say, 'the coelecanth was thought to be extinct but it turned out not to be, so there!' The problem with this argument is that people have been catching and eating coelecanth for hundreds of years in blithe disregard of the fact that some twat in a museum decided they didn't exist. Not so Nessie. The only eyewitness documentation we really have for the existence of a Loch Ness Monster is that time St. Columba yelled at it.
...don't make him admonish you. 'cos he will.
Of course once he yelled at the Loch Ness Monster it hoofed ass and nobody's seen it since, so there ya go. Blame him.
Then thars Bigfoot.
I cannot believe this shit is still around. This is one of those things thats so excruciatingly fake it makes spoon bending look plausible by comparison.
It stands to reason that if you run into a big, hairy, smelly thing in the woods, there's a better than 50% chance that IT IS A CANADIA
A BEAR.
It's the damn woods, people. Bears live there.
...someone at Steiff has a very peculiar sense of humor
Something a lot of people don't know is that your basic wild bear rolls in all kinds of nasty shit like a dog does, by which I mean they are BAD FUNKY. A bear also stands on it's hind legs and walks when it feels like it, and if it has an opinion it needs to voice it will. Your average person thinks 'bear' and pictures Dan Haggerty's loveable buddy. Or Dan Haggerty himself smeared in Vaseline, hanging from an engine hoist with his ankles handcuffed together, wearing leather motorcycle chaps and smoking a cigar. But when they run into something on the way to the outhouse at 2:am that's 6 feet tall, smells loudly of ass and screams when it gets scared, they don't think 'bear'. The conclusion they jump to is Bigfoot. That conclusion is wrong. It could be Dan Haggerty. If it smells like Vaseline it probably is.
Footprint casts? Don't even.
Look at this. That's just sad. If you're gonna fake something, put a little effort into it; geeze.
The 'hair' they find has always been proven to be either BEAR HAIR or PRIMATE HAIR.
Hint: we're primates. So if it wasn't a bear, that only leaves one thing: HOLLER MONSTERS.
...I seen 'em
Now I am here to tell you from my own experience that there are in fact some awesomely inbred nutty motherfuckers running around out there in the Mt. Baker Wilderness Area; and they don't wear pants of they don't feel like it. And just like nutty people will mess with you on the bus in town? Nutty people will mess with you in the woods, too. They do not care. If you are in the woods and they are in the woods they will mess with you. That's just how they roll. No, the big mystery here is why don't the bears get on the damn job and eat them? As we all learned from Timothy Treadwell, bears only put up with a limited amount of shit from nutty people.
Now maybe that's just Alaskan bears. Short-temperedness in bears could be regional; we don't know. Maybe Mt. Baker bears are the peaceful hippie-bears of the bear world. I'm not going to run out and stick a daisy up ones' tailpipe, though.
As far as UFO sightings go, I've known a lot of people who have claimed they've seen one. George, for example, has seen a UFO.
That's the category most UFO witnesses fall into, at least in my experience. Then there's the segment of the population who don't normally qualify for that distinction but who were having a 'George moment'.
And we've all had them, kids. Admit it. Eat some of that Alice fudge; you'll have one.
I did see something one time that I think might go along way towards explaining a lot of UFO sightings, though. I was standing on a hillside overlooking a small clearcut. It was a sunny day, but with large clouds overhead. I saw a movement up near a snag at one side of the clearcut, and as I watched a brilliant silver ball flew out of the top of the dead tree and circled over the clearcut a few times, during which I experienced a mild coronary event.
It was about the size of a cantaloupe and as shiny as polished chrome. Then the object tilted to one side. Immediately it darkened and resolved into a small kite shape, which sailed back into the snag and landed on a branch. I had my binocs, and when I got a closer look it turned out to be a little saw-whet owl.
Now those two pictures bear no resemblance whatsoever to each other, do they? But thanks to a trick of perspective and refraction, the shiny surface of the feathers on the owls' back caught the light in such a way that it reflected the sun like a mirror.
I picked up a rock and chunked it at the base of the tree, and the little owl startled up and flew around again-sure enough, when it was banked a certain way it appeared to be a silver circle for a few moments.
Am I saying that UFOs are actually stupid, highly reflective owls who might think they're really funny but aren't funny at all? Since that time I've seen the same light effect on swans and on, of all things, chickens. So yes, I guess I am. Some of them are birds, anyway. The rest of them are real.
No, ha ha, that is a joke! No, FirstNations is just running her toes through your brain there; I think UFOs are 99% horseshit, 1/2 % USAF and 1/2% birth trauma artifact.
Do I know* that? Nope. But neither do you, so get off my case.
______________________________________________________
* If its certainty you're looking for, go HERE. They have a whole great big boatload of it.
It was actually a pretty entertaining read. Anyway, when I was a little kid I used to sneak down into the basement with a stack of them and scare the living crap out of my self, reading about demonic possession, banshees (I was convinced there was one lurking around outside my bedroom window just waiting for me to relax my guard) UFO abduction, the Loch Ness monster, The Jersey Devil, Bigfoot and all the rest. In addition to that, we owned copies of: Flying Saucers: Serious Business, Chariots of the Gods, A Gift Of Prophecy, The Sleeping Prophet: Edgar Cayce,
...Seth Speaks, The Search For Bridey Murphy, You Have Lived Before, The Lost Continent of Mu....on and on. And on. And on and on.
As I read my way through all of this I came to the realization: "Goodness me, this here is some sad made-up old bullshit isn't it?" And time has borne this out...all of the above titles have been utterly debunked. I gotta say, though, if a grade school kid can figure this out without the need to consult with The Amazing Randi, well...
I think I was lucky in that I was encountering it at the same time I was running onto the great storytellers because I learned how to recognize the 'psychological structure' of fiction, I guess you'd call it. Really, though...you read some of that
shit alongside Bradbury or Tolkein and all the seams and strings show up horribly. It becomes very apparent that fiction is precisely what it is...whether it be fiction written by people who have decided that anything that happens to pop into their heads must be real because they're thinking it (like Edgar Cayce or L. Ron Hubbard), or fiction written in a cold blooded attempt to deceive (i.e. Seth Speaks, anything by J.Z.Knight.)That's one of the things I thought was interesting about it and still do...that the mind, even the malfunctioning one, has a way of organizing things that are drawn from the imagination in a different way than it structures things experienced as an exterior event. People who are recounting a 'real' experience seem to struggle to whatever degree with what they've encountered. They don't have answers. There isn't a theme or a plot. Of course, that doesn't mean that their perceptions were accurate...it just means that they perceived that 'x' happened and they want to tell you about it in whatever words come close to
getting the job done. The other stuff always has some kind of giveaway narrative or thematic structure, however cryptic. I've always thought that's part of what makes it so seductive, though. That glimmering of organization you can just barely sense is, in fact,an OCCULT TROOTH...and the trooth is, the shit's made up.What really makes me shake my head, though, is when people continue to believe in a supernatural explanation long after the subject has been conclusively exposed as fraudulent. Take crop circles for example.
I used to make hay highways the same way in the field next door; you'd take a big cardboard box and scoot around in it to flatten the stalks down. After we'd done we'd climb up the neighbors tree and go look at the designs we made. Come on! How obvious does it have to be?
This is more complex than a hay highway, but anyone with a compass, a straightedge and some basic design layout skills could draw this. To execute it, the only supplies you need are a scaled design, a few friends, something like a surveyors stake and string, and a length of board. Come on people. This should never have needed debunking. Yet time and again, even after the creators come forward and claim responsibility, people STILL INSIST SPACE ALIENS DID IT.
You find a similar reaction to the man who was responsible for the famous Loch Ness Monster photo. The poor guy came forward shortly before he died and admitted it was all a hoax, yet no one wanted to believe him. He still had the fricken' toy submarine he used to fake 'Nessie'!
Using the original prop, they recreated the photo, and lo and behold!
Nessie sails again! Irregardless of which people are still spending God knows how much money every year to go annoy fish in Scotland. Loch Ness has got to be the most well explored body of water full of the most pissed-off fish on the face of the earth. Not to mention home to the most well-documented case of non-existence. Every single year they rediscover the same exact thing: There is no Nessie, no swimming elephants, no mutant anaconda, no landlocked whales, no pleisiosaur. Truthfully I wish there were a Nessie, and I wish it was a pleisiosaur because it would be completely badass if if were a pleisiosaur, but it is not, because they are extinct. Coelecanths have nothing to do with it.
...innocent, and deliciousEveryone always bring up coelecanths here. 'Well, ' they say, 'the coelecanth was thought to be extinct but it turned out not to be, so there!' The problem with this argument is that people have been catching and eating coelecanth for hundreds of years in blithe disregard of the fact that some twat in a museum decided they didn't exist. Not so Nessie. The only eyewitness documentation we really have for the existence of a Loch Ness Monster is that time St. Columba yelled at it.
...don't make him admonish you. 'cos he will.Of course once he yelled at the Loch Ness Monster it hoofed ass and nobody's seen it since, so there ya go. Blame him.
Then thars Bigfoot.
I cannot believe this shit is still around. This is one of those things thats so excruciatingly fake it makes spoon bending look plausible by comparison.
It stands to reason that if you run into a big, hairy, smelly thing in the woods, there's a better than 50% chance that IT IS A CANADIA
A BEAR.
It's the damn woods, people. Bears live there.
...someone at Steiff has a very peculiar sense of humorSomething a lot of people don't know is that your basic wild bear rolls in all kinds of nasty shit like a dog does, by which I mean they are BAD FUNKY. A bear also stands on it's hind legs and walks when it feels like it, and if it has an opinion it needs to voice it will. Your average person thinks 'bear' and pictures Dan Haggerty's loveable buddy. Or Dan Haggerty himself smeared in Vaseline, hanging from an engine hoist with his ankles handcuffed together, wearing leather motorcycle chaps and smoking a cigar. But when they run into something on the way to the outhouse at 2:am that's 6 feet tall, smells loudly of ass and screams when it gets scared, they don't think 'bear'. The conclusion they jump to is Bigfoot. That conclusion is wrong. It could be Dan Haggerty. If it smells like Vaseline it probably is.
Footprint casts? Don't even.
Look at this. That's just sad. If you're gonna fake something, put a little effort into it; geeze.The 'hair' they find has always been proven to be either BEAR HAIR or PRIMATE HAIR.
Hint: we're primates. So if it wasn't a bear, that only leaves one thing: HOLLER MONSTERS.
...I seen 'emNow I am here to tell you from my own experience that there are in fact some awesomely inbred nutty motherfuckers running around out there in the Mt. Baker Wilderness Area; and they don't wear pants of they don't feel like it. And just like nutty people will mess with you on the bus in town? Nutty people will mess with you in the woods, too. They do not care. If you are in the woods and they are in the woods they will mess with you. That's just how they roll. No, the big mystery here is why don't the bears get on the damn job and eat them? As we all learned from Timothy Treadwell, bears only put up with a limited amount of shit from nutty people.
Now maybe that's just Alaskan bears. Short-temperedness in bears could be regional; we don't know. Maybe Mt. Baker bears are the peaceful hippie-bears of the bear world. I'm not going to run out and stick a daisy up ones' tailpipe, though.
As far as UFO sightings go, I've known a lot of people who have claimed they've seen one. George, for example, has seen a UFO.
That's the category most UFO witnesses fall into, at least in my experience. Then there's the segment of the population who don't normally qualify for that distinction but who were having a 'George moment'.
And we've all had them, kids. Admit it. Eat some of that Alice fudge; you'll have one.
I did see something one time that I think might go along way towards explaining a lot of UFO sightings, though. I was standing on a hillside overlooking a small clearcut. It was a sunny day, but with large clouds overhead. I saw a movement up near a snag at one side of the clearcut, and as I watched a brilliant silver ball flew out of the top of the dead tree and circled over the clearcut a few times, during which I experienced a mild coronary event.
It was about the size of a cantaloupe and as shiny as polished chrome. Then the object tilted to one side. Immediately it darkened and resolved into a small kite shape, which sailed back into the snag and landed on a branch. I had my binocs, and when I got a closer look it turned out to be a little saw-whet owl.
Now those two pictures bear no resemblance whatsoever to each other, do they? But thanks to a trick of perspective and refraction, the shiny surface of the feathers on the owls' back caught the light in such a way that it reflected the sun like a mirror.
I picked up a rock and chunked it at the base of the tree, and the little owl startled up and flew around again-sure enough, when it was banked a certain way it appeared to be a silver circle for a few moments.
Am I saying that UFOs are actually stupid, highly reflective owls who might think they're really funny but aren't funny at all? Since that time I've seen the same light effect on swans and on, of all things, chickens. So yes, I guess I am. Some of them are birds, anyway. The rest of them are real.
No, ha ha, that is a joke! No, FirstNations is just running her toes through your brain there; I think UFOs are 99% horseshit, 1/2 % USAF and 1/2% birth trauma artifact.
Do I know* that? Nope. But neither do you, so get off my case.
______________________________________________________
* If its certainty you're looking for, go HERE. They have a whole great big boatload of it.
update on the lowdown
Well then.
I have been in touch with my son, and he has had a WONDERFUL LIFE.
...and really, that's all that needs to be said, you know?
I have been in touch with my son, and he has had a WONDERFUL LIFE.
...and really, that's all that needs to be said, you know?
Monday, January 07, 2008
.....dang.
Well heres one for ya:
I had a baby that I gave up for adoption back in 1979.
My daughter just called me all freaking out....apparently, in Googling my maiden name, she discovered that he's trying to contact me.
I had a baby that I gave up for adoption back in 1979.
My daughter just called me all freaking out....apparently, in Googling my maiden name, she discovered that he's trying to contact me.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
I am so goddamn loaded it isn't funny, y'all
Let me tell you something about Alice B. Toklas. You remember that post I done did about her 'fudge' recipe?
BITCH KNEW WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT. MOTHERFUCKING WORD.
I made that recipe. I made it as part of my Christmas Eve buffet. I put a quarter ounce of prime red-haired BC bud into that mess (my Cuisinart is still smiling.) I just ate the last five little hazelnut-sized pieces of it a couple of hours ago AND BITCH IS TOASTED.
Here, for your edification, am the recipe done did FirstNations stylee:
*********************
We're making chocolate AND date candies at the same time here. Fine, just read it first.
1 generous handfull each: shelled pecans, shelled and toasted almonds
1/4 cup each: powdered cinnamon, whole or ground nutmeg (yes, this isn't excessive at all)
1/4 oz good bud, well cleaned and very dry
Heave all of this into a cuisinart and pulverize it all until it won't get any smaller (a coffee grinder would work excellently here too, but in that case do this in small batches.)
Once combined, divide and set aside.
next:
-1 generous handful each: raisins, pitted dates , run through the cuisinart until chopped fine, set aside
-4 (out of a package containing six) cakes of 'Ibarra' brand chocolate octagons...grated or run through the cuisinart until chopped fine, set aside
NOW:
... add half the bud mixture to the dates and the other half of the bud mixture to the chocolate. Toss to combine.
NEXT...
melt 1 c butter
over a low fire. dissolve into this
1 cup sugar
NOTE: do not cook this mixture...simply stir the sugar into the just-melted butter and take off the fire. Cool until mixture can be handled. Dump one half of it into the chocolate mixture and the other into the date mixture.
Turn out onto a cool smooth surface and knead to combine thoroughly. Keep them separate...or mix them together at this point; I don't care, it will taste good either way. I kept the chocolate separate from the date stuff.
once each mass is well combined, roll it into a log, from which lumps may be cut and rolled into balls about the size of a filbert nut. Alice said 'a walnut' but my ganja is a hell of a lot better than what she had to work with so I went with the smaller nut, yo.
I dusted the date mixture with powdered sugar, and the chocolate mixture in powdered baking cocoa. Because sometimes you feel like a date; sometimes you don't.
Try and do your best to let these sit at least overnight so that the flavors blossom. They will firm up but never quite solidify.
fuck im' stones.
BITCH KNEW WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT. MOTHERFUCKING WORD.
I made that recipe. I made it as part of my Christmas Eve buffet. I put a quarter ounce of prime red-haired BC bud into that mess (my Cuisinart is still smiling.) I just ate the last five little hazelnut-sized pieces of it a couple of hours ago AND BITCH IS TOASTED.
Here, for your edification, am the recipe done did FirstNations stylee:
*********************
We're making chocolate AND date candies at the same time here. Fine, just read it first.
1 generous handfull each: shelled pecans, shelled and toasted almonds
1/4 cup each: powdered cinnamon, whole or ground nutmeg (yes, this isn't excessive at all)
1/4 oz good bud, well cleaned and very dry
Heave all of this into a cuisinart and pulverize it all until it won't get any smaller (a coffee grinder would work excellently here too, but in that case do this in small batches.)
Once combined, divide and set aside.
next:
-1 generous handful each: raisins, pitted dates , run through the cuisinart until chopped fine, set aside
-4 (out of a package containing six) cakes of 'Ibarra' brand chocolate octagons...grated or run through the cuisinart until chopped fine, set aside
NOW:
... add half the bud mixture to the dates and the other half of the bud mixture to the chocolate. Toss to combine.
NEXT...
melt 1 c butter
over a low fire. dissolve into this
1 cup sugar
NOTE: do not cook this mixture...simply stir the sugar into the just-melted butter and take off the fire. Cool until mixture can be handled. Dump one half of it into the chocolate mixture and the other into the date mixture.
Turn out onto a cool smooth surface and knead to combine thoroughly. Keep them separate...or mix them together at this point; I don't care, it will taste good either way. I kept the chocolate separate from the date stuff.
once each mass is well combined, roll it into a log, from which lumps may be cut and rolled into balls about the size of a filbert nut. Alice said 'a walnut' but my ganja is a hell of a lot better than what she had to work with so I went with the smaller nut, yo.
I dusted the date mixture with powdered sugar, and the chocolate mixture in powdered baking cocoa. Because sometimes you feel like a date; sometimes you don't.
Try and do your best to let these sit at least overnight so that the flavors blossom. They will firm up but never quite solidify.
fuck im' stones.
Monday, December 31, 2007
I Was (nearly ) a Teenage Hive Queen
quick note: I'll be highlighting all the things in this article that ARE EXAGGERATIONS. ok? now onward.__________________________________
Finding this picture a few days ago sure brought back some shit, lemme tell ya:
You know why? Because I came close to MARRYING this guy.
My senior year of high school was a bizarre period of time for me. On one hand I was utterly miserable. My (straight) life sucked. On the other hand I had an after-hours thing going that John Waters would have envied. Plus, I was experiencing by then a kind of strange cult popularity at school that I had no idea how to cope with-puzzling when you consider that I wasn't particularly social and had no idea who most of these people WERE.
That notwithstanding, according to my parents I was nothing but DAMAGED GOODS.
That is a quote.
My misadventures began officially at 15. Shortly thereafter, my mother found my birth control pills (the less said about which episode the better.) At that time I was informed by both of my parents, point blank, in precisely the terms put forth below, that now
Bear those words in mind. They're important to the rest of the story.
Marriage wasn't even on my agenda, of course. That's something that I gave no thought to even in passing...after eighteen years with a front row seat to my parents wedded bliss I wanted no part of that shit whatsofuckingever, thanks.
Now, in the late 70's, in my town, girls still married right out of high school. At least the 'nice' ones did. It was common practice to include a proposal of marriage in ones graduation commencement speech, in fact, which made graduation both overlong and extremely tiresome.
Meanwhile, my secret after school life continued CENSORED FOR THE SAKE OF THE STAINLESS STEEL AMAZON and an unemployed amputee. Other persons of momentary interest drifted in and on. Ganja and I became close acquaintances, along with speed, lsd, valium, cocaine and a vile screwtop concoction put out by Ernest and Julio Gallo called 'Ruby Chablis'. But once the sun rose I was Suzy Suburbia again, and never the twain did meet until the last time I walked out of those 'prison' doors in 1978. I figured post-high school life would simply mean 'more time to devote to CENSORED FOR THE SAKE OF THE STAINLESS STEEL AMAZON a bowl full of raw eggs. '
My parents, of course, had a completely different plan in mind for me. Some might say that it was an unbelievably insulting, stupid, outdated plan, a plan reminiscent of, say, Sharia law, or Chinese family values as they were practiced during the time of the Mandarins. Of course, I had not the vaguest whiff of a clue about any 'plan' at all until they sprung it on me. Even then it took me a couple of weeks to figure out what was going on.
My dad had a buddy named Phil. Nice guy. Nice house. Nice wife. Phil and his wife had mentioned in passing that they had a kid in Milwaukie High too, and did I know Ritchie?
Nope.I never gave it another thought.
Come the Sadie Hawkins dance my senior year, suddenly my parents are terribly interested in who I'm going to ask.
Huh? Same person I always ask; nobody.
Well.....why didn't I ask Ritchie?
Because I didn't know the guy.
Subject closed and forgotten.
Until the next football game. Was I thinking about going to the football game? It was a home game.
First of all, when have you ever known me to attend a fricken' football game?
Well....Ritchie was going.
.......well, good. Good for Ritchie.
Subject forgotten until...
You get the picture. Me, I didn't get the picture. Not the whole picture. No, the only thing I thought at this point was, if my parents were pushing him this hard, Ritchie was obviously someone I was not going to get along with AT ALL.
And I was right.
I did not know how right, though.
No, I did not.
In high school, four times a year every year we all did a pointless do-si-do from class to class for no good reason. My senior year, 1978, was the first class year that them there newfangled computin' machines were being used. As a consequence of this, and because everybody down in Administration was reduced to gibbering terror when confronted with DOS, I was mis-scheduled into Science I*.
With Ritchie.
Only, having never met the guy, I had no idea it was Ritchie at first.
What I registered primarily was the worst skin condition I'd seen up until that point in my young life-and I'd seen some doozies. He glistened. He oozed foul sebaceous oils. His blackheads were legion; he perpetually looked as though he needed a shave. He was studded with boils. Not zits, my friends. BOILS. And his boils had boils. Huge, angry, seeping boils; boils of an indescribable and horrifying purulence which swarmed across his face, neck and arms.
No, really.
The guy had boils on his ARMS.
Prior to this I'd had no idea one could develop arm-boils. But here it was.
And here he was, gangling, insectoid, overactive glands producing an ice arena of horror where feculent bacteria went curling with Satan, sniggering, hunch-shouldered, hands the size of hubcaps and feet like landing craft, sitting in the back of the class where his constant picking wouldn't distract anyone. He was a hee-hawer. He perched with his bony knees poking up on either side of the desk and his bony shoulders and elbows at random angles. Clearly, Mom cut his hair - and she used a mixing bowl. Mom also bought his clothes. Problem was, mom had failed to realize that her son was not 40 years old, or a size 'small'.
Now you'd think a guy like that would make up for it all by being Brainerd McBrainiac, right? Those are the guys who graduate high school and go on to make their first million three years later developing military software, right?
You would be wrong, in Ritchies case.
One evening my father happened to remark that his buddy said that Ritchie and I had a class together. Which one?
I had no earthly idea. I'd never met the guy, remember?
Lo and behold, a couple of evenings later, Ritchie came to our house after church. With mom and dad.
How mom and dad had produced Ritchie is still a mystery to me. You could detect a resemblance, and you could even see who probably contributed what to the pot....it was just...that....they weren't from the same....species.
There they were on our doorstep....nice mom, GIANT CARPENTER ANT**, nice dad.
My first and only thought was "Oh Lordy."
They all trooped in and a sad and obviously rehearsed little charade commenced.
I'd already wandered off by this point and gone to my bedroom.
But this time I got in HUGE ENORMOUS TROUBLE. You would have thought I'd set the joint on fire or something. They had a COW. Why couldn't I be nice? Why was I so rude? Why did I have to hide in my room all the time? Same shit, true; but this shit went on for DAYS.
What the fuck?
After that, whenever I went past Ritchie in the hall at school he'd turn crimson. He'd look at the ground and grin and snigger. Once I said 'Hi!' and he took off running. I wrote that up to embarrassment and nerdliness and didn't waste another second on it. I had other things on my mind, and they have been censored, for the sake of the Stainless Steel Amazon.
Another thing that happened after that episode was that suddenly my future became an increasingly common topic around home. Out of nowhere one of my parents would suddenly come out with 'You know, I figured you'd be engaged by now, like your cousins were...." or "Don't count on living here because we'll kick you out on your fanny as soon as you graduate." Which was reassuring.
Finally one night my parents called me into the front room and made me sit down.
Oh GREAT. What NOW.
Your mom and I think that you should......go out.
Well I couldn't agree more; I think I should go out too. Give me 20 bucks and I'll be on my way.
And we know....your dad knows...you remember...you know...you know Phil's son? Sure you do. You have him in class.
Yeah, I know him. I said 'hi' to him once and he ran down the hall.Oh well, you know, well, he's, hes just shy, is all, you know, a young guy, he's shy. He just has a little trouble, you know.
Actually no, I think there's something wrong with him.
No no no no no now thats not nice. There's nothing wrong with him! Him? Ho, boy, if his dad could hear you say that! There's nothing wrong with him, boy, you, you're the one who's probably scaring him half to death! There's nothing wrong with him!
I said 'hi' and he ran down the hall, dad."
No no no no no, now, that's not right, that's not true, boy, you're making that up, you gotta be! Hes, uh, a smart kid! He's a real smart kid, he is! No, boy, you're off the beam there, boy...
and so on.
The upshot was, a blind date had been arranged.
I freaked.
My parents threatened me.
I continued to freak.
My parents told me that if I didn't go out with this guy that I'd never set one foot outside their house again unless it was to go to school and come straight back, period.
Ah.
I'd just spent my sophomore year that way. I knew I didn't want to go there. So, I figured, what the fuck, right? Fine. I'd go out with the guy. It would be horrifically painful and awkward and then it would be over.
Problem was, Ritchie didn't have a car.
Problem solved: they'd drop me off at his parents house and we'd walk from there to the football game a few blocks away.
Yay.
As my date shambled along down the sidewalk beside me, leading each step with his head like a chicken, giant hands banging off his knees, I considered my position. The guy would not speak to me. The guy would not look at me. The guy would not respond to me even if I asked him a question. That covered the first block.
Conversation was out.
I drifted toward the center of the sidewalk. He started walking on people's lawns. Then he dropped back. I slowed down. He dropped back further. I stopped and waited for him. He caught up to me and stopped. I started to walk again. Three paces later, so did he. From this I gathered that whether or not we appeared together was obviously not an issue for him. Me either.
We were making progress.
We found a seat in the grandstand-rather, I found us a seat in the grandstand, as close to the exit as I could get and right at the very end of one of the bleacher seats. Ritchie folded himself into a sitting position, knees up around his ears, elbows stuck out on either side like rocket fins, big ol' canal boat feet flapped over at the end like a Don Martin cartoon. Actually not really but just pretend they were for the sake of the image.
And slowly, slowly, he began to slide away from me. Slooooowly. Sliiiiip. Scooooot.
OK then.
The marching band had just come onto the field. The game hadn't even started yet. I looked over at Ritchie.
Ritchie was staring straight ahead at the field, mouth gaping wide, eyes vacant.
And Ritchie was drooling.
Ritchie was DROOLING.
Ritchie had a long silver strand of drool hanging from the bottom of his lower lip. Because he was DROOLING.
I got up and walked home.
Three miles.
In heels.
My parents, of course, launched into a major enormous earth-shattering mega-cow when they saw me there. But something must have been different about me.
Yes, when I explained "Why did I leave? Because I looked over AND MY DATE WAS DROOLING, DAD," well, something seemed to register. They cut the dramatics short, and let me return to my room.
A few years later my mom was musing about how nice it would have been if I'd gotten married to that nice boy Ritchie they introduced me to. After all, he was Catholic, they knew his family and they were nice people, it had been discussed and they were all for it, and I wouldn't have had to look for work after I graduated. (Yes. Really.)
"He was slow, you know" I said.
She snorted. "There wasn't nuttin' wrong with him, Miss Picky," she replied.
I gave up.
Back in high school I'd had friends in Computer Lab. Remember, this was 1978, back when the students programmed the computers for the school district because the adults had no clue, good partying buddies who filled me in on the rest of the story.
Ritchie had been in Science I his senior year, not because of a scheduling mistake, as I had been. No, Ritchie had been in Science I because he NEEDED TO BE in Science I. And he failed that.
Ritchie was what they used to term 'educable'.
____________________________________
* science at about a 7-8th grade level. no caustic chemicals, nothing sharp, nothing that could catch on fire. the teacher spoke very clearly and distinctly.
**"where does this come from?" you might ask. too bad, I say; go ask your mom.
OK fine.
one day a buddy of mine was standing with me when he saw Ritchie coming down the hall. "See that guy?" he said. "One time I was sitting in class ripped on acid and he turned into a giant carpenter ant. He just sat there looking at me, chewing on his desk. I've been kind of scared of him ever since."
It was true, sadly enough. the guy really did look like a carpenter ant. he had a long round head, no chin, spindly little shoulders and a huge butt. and he was shiny. i never saw him eat a desk. i wish i had. it would have been cool.
______________________________
john waters? no....maybe his sister, though.unemployed amputee? no...lots of amputees had jobs in the 70s.where feculent bacteria went curling with Satan? pure speculation. might have been hockey.
Finding this picture a few days ago sure brought back some shit, lemme tell ya:
You know why? Because I came close to MARRYING this guy.My senior year of high school was a bizarre period of time for me. On one hand I was utterly miserable. My (straight) life sucked. On the other hand I had an after-hours thing going that John Waters would have envied. Plus, I was experiencing by then a kind of strange cult popularity at school that I had no idea how to cope with-puzzling when you consider that I wasn't particularly social and had no idea who most of these people WERE.
That notwithstanding, according to my parents I was nothing but DAMAGED GOODS.
That is a quote.
My misadventures began officially at 15. Shortly thereafter, my mother found my birth control pills (the less said about which episode the better.) At that time I was informed by both of my parents, point blank, in precisely the terms put forth below, that now
I WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO MARRY ANYONE WORTH A DAMN BECAUSE NOBODY WORTH A DAMN WOULD WANT ME.
Bear those words in mind. They're important to the rest of the story.
Marriage wasn't even on my agenda, of course. That's something that I gave no thought to even in passing...after eighteen years with a front row seat to my parents wedded bliss I wanted no part of that shit whatsofuckingever, thanks.
Now, in the late 70's, in my town, girls still married right out of high school. At least the 'nice' ones did. It was common practice to include a proposal of marriage in ones graduation commencement speech, in fact, which made graduation both overlong and extremely tiresome.
BILL: in his mortarboard, clutching his diploma "Oh, and....Mandy? Will you marry me?"
MANDY: and her syncophants, as one 'SQUEEEEEEEAL! OMIGODYESYESYES! (etc. hopping up and down and crying and hugging for ten fricken' minutes )
Meanwhile, my secret after school life continued CENSORED FOR THE SAKE OF THE STAINLESS STEEL AMAZON and an unemployed amputee. Other persons of momentary interest drifted in and on. Ganja and I became close acquaintances, along with speed, lsd, valium, cocaine and a vile screwtop concoction put out by Ernest and Julio Gallo called 'Ruby Chablis'. But once the sun rose I was Suzy Suburbia again, and never the twain did meet until the last time I walked out of those 'prison' doors in 1978. I figured post-high school life would simply mean 'more time to devote to CENSORED FOR THE SAKE OF THE STAINLESS STEEL AMAZON a bowl full of raw eggs. '
My parents, of course, had a completely different plan in mind for me. Some might say that it was an unbelievably insulting, stupid, outdated plan, a plan reminiscent of, say, Sharia law, or Chinese family values as they were practiced during the time of the Mandarins. Of course, I had not the vaguest whiff of a clue about any 'plan' at all until they sprung it on me. Even then it took me a couple of weeks to figure out what was going on.
My dad had a buddy named Phil. Nice guy. Nice house. Nice wife. Phil and his wife had mentioned in passing that they had a kid in Milwaukie High too, and did I know Ritchie?
Nope.I never gave it another thought.
Come the Sadie Hawkins dance my senior year, suddenly my parents are terribly interested in who I'm going to ask.
Huh? Same person I always ask; nobody.
Well.....why didn't I ask Ritchie?
Because I didn't know the guy.
Subject closed and forgotten.
Until the next football game. Was I thinking about going to the football game? It was a home game.
First of all, when have you ever known me to attend a fricken' football game?
Well....Ritchie was going.
.......well, good. Good for Ritchie.
Subject forgotten until...
You get the picture. Me, I didn't get the picture. Not the whole picture. No, the only thing I thought at this point was, if my parents were pushing him this hard, Ritchie was obviously someone I was not going to get along with AT ALL.
And I was right.
I did not know how right, though.
No, I did not.
In high school, four times a year every year we all did a pointless do-si-do from class to class for no good reason. My senior year, 1978, was the first class year that them there newfangled computin' machines were being used. As a consequence of this, and because everybody down in Administration was reduced to gibbering terror when confronted with DOS, I was mis-scheduled into Science I*.
With Ritchie.
Only, having never met the guy, I had no idea it was Ritchie at first.
What I registered primarily was the worst skin condition I'd seen up until that point in my young life-and I'd seen some doozies. He glistened. He oozed foul sebaceous oils. His blackheads were legion; he perpetually looked as though he needed a shave. He was studded with boils. Not zits, my friends. BOILS. And his boils had boils. Huge, angry, seeping boils; boils of an indescribable and horrifying purulence which swarmed across his face, neck and arms.
No, really.
The guy had boils on his ARMS.
Prior to this I'd had no idea one could develop arm-boils. But here it was.
And here he was, gangling, insectoid, overactive glands producing an ice arena of horror where feculent bacteria went curling with Satan, sniggering, hunch-shouldered, hands the size of hubcaps and feet like landing craft, sitting in the back of the class where his constant picking wouldn't distract anyone. He was a hee-hawer. He perched with his bony knees poking up on either side of the desk and his bony shoulders and elbows at random angles. Clearly, Mom cut his hair - and she used a mixing bowl. Mom also bought his clothes. Problem was, mom had failed to realize that her son was not 40 years old, or a size 'small'.
Now you'd think a guy like that would make up for it all by being Brainerd McBrainiac, right? Those are the guys who graduate high school and go on to make their first million three years later developing military software, right?
You would be wrong, in Ritchies case.
One evening my father happened to remark that his buddy said that Ritchie and I had a class together. Which one?
I had no earthly idea. I'd never met the guy, remember?
Lo and behold, a couple of evenings later, Ritchie came to our house after church. With mom and dad.
How mom and dad had produced Ritchie is still a mystery to me. You could detect a resemblance, and you could even see who probably contributed what to the pot....it was just...that....they weren't from the same....species.
There they were on our doorstep....nice mom, GIANT CARPENTER ANT**, nice dad.
My first and only thought was "Oh Lordy."
They all trooped in and a sad and obviously rehearsed little charade commenced.
Oh, what a surprise!
Well, we were just in the neiborhood!
Well come on in!
How ya doin?
You've met my wife, haven't you?
Hello!
And heres my son, Rich.....
...and here's my son, Rich....
...Rich, step up here, son; shake the mans hand.
....Look up. Up, son.
My son Rich....
I'd already wandered off by this point and gone to my bedroom.
But this time I got in HUGE ENORMOUS TROUBLE. You would have thought I'd set the joint on fire or something. They had a COW. Why couldn't I be nice? Why was I so rude? Why did I have to hide in my room all the time? Same shit, true; but this shit went on for DAYS.
What the fuck?
After that, whenever I went past Ritchie in the hall at school he'd turn crimson. He'd look at the ground and grin and snigger. Once I said 'Hi!' and he took off running. I wrote that up to embarrassment and nerdliness and didn't waste another second on it. I had other things on my mind, and they have been censored, for the sake of the Stainless Steel Amazon.
Another thing that happened after that episode was that suddenly my future became an increasingly common topic around home. Out of nowhere one of my parents would suddenly come out with 'You know, I figured you'd be engaged by now, like your cousins were...." or "Don't count on living here because we'll kick you out on your fanny as soon as you graduate." Which was reassuring.
Finally one night my parents called me into the front room and made me sit down.
Oh GREAT. What NOW.
Your mom and I think that you should......go out.
Well I couldn't agree more; I think I should go out too. Give me 20 bucks and I'll be on my way.
And we know....your dad knows...you remember...you know...you know Phil's son? Sure you do. You have him in class.
Yeah, I know him. I said 'hi' to him once and he ran down the hall.Oh well, you know, well, he's, hes just shy, is all, you know, a young guy, he's shy. He just has a little trouble, you know.
Actually no, I think there's something wrong with him.
No no no no no now thats not nice. There's nothing wrong with him! Him? Ho, boy, if his dad could hear you say that! There's nothing wrong with him, boy, you, you're the one who's probably scaring him half to death! There's nothing wrong with him!
I said 'hi' and he ran down the hall, dad."
No no no no no, now, that's not right, that's not true, boy, you're making that up, you gotta be! Hes, uh, a smart kid! He's a real smart kid, he is! No, boy, you're off the beam there, boy...
and so on.
The upshot was, a blind date had been arranged.
I freaked.
My parents threatened me.
I continued to freak.
My parents told me that if I didn't go out with this guy that I'd never set one foot outside their house again unless it was to go to school and come straight back, period.
Ah.
I'd just spent my sophomore year that way. I knew I didn't want to go there. So, I figured, what the fuck, right? Fine. I'd go out with the guy. It would be horrifically painful and awkward and then it would be over.
Problem was, Ritchie didn't have a car.
Problem solved: they'd drop me off at his parents house and we'd walk from there to the football game a few blocks away.
Yay.
As my date shambled along down the sidewalk beside me, leading each step with his head like a chicken, giant hands banging off his knees, I considered my position. The guy would not speak to me. The guy would not look at me. The guy would not respond to me even if I asked him a question. That covered the first block.
Conversation was out.
I drifted toward the center of the sidewalk. He started walking on people's lawns. Then he dropped back. I slowed down. He dropped back further. I stopped and waited for him. He caught up to me and stopped. I started to walk again. Three paces later, so did he. From this I gathered that whether or not we appeared together was obviously not an issue for him. Me either.
We were making progress.
We found a seat in the grandstand-rather, I found us a seat in the grandstand, as close to the exit as I could get and right at the very end of one of the bleacher seats. Ritchie folded himself into a sitting position, knees up around his ears, elbows stuck out on either side like rocket fins, big ol' canal boat feet flapped over at the end like a Don Martin cartoon. Actually not really but just pretend they were for the sake of the image.
And slowly, slowly, he began to slide away from me. Slooooowly. Sliiiiip. Scooooot.
OK then.
The marching band had just come onto the field. The game hadn't even started yet. I looked over at Ritchie.
Ritchie was staring straight ahead at the field, mouth gaping wide, eyes vacant.
And Ritchie was drooling.
Ritchie was DROOLING.
Ritchie had a long silver strand of drool hanging from the bottom of his lower lip. Because he was DROOLING.
I got up and walked home.
Three miles.
In heels.
My parents, of course, launched into a major enormous earth-shattering mega-cow when they saw me there. But something must have been different about me.
Yes, when I explained "Why did I leave? Because I looked over AND MY DATE WAS DROOLING, DAD," well, something seemed to register. They cut the dramatics short, and let me return to my room.
A few years later my mom was musing about how nice it would have been if I'd gotten married to that nice boy Ritchie they introduced me to. After all, he was Catholic, they knew his family and they were nice people, it had been discussed and they were all for it, and I wouldn't have had to look for work after I graduated. (Yes. Really.)
"He was slow, you know" I said.
She snorted. "There wasn't nuttin' wrong with him, Miss Picky," she replied.
I gave up.
Back in high school I'd had friends in Computer Lab. Remember, this was 1978, back when the students programmed the computers for the school district because the adults had no clue, good partying buddies who filled me in on the rest of the story.
Ritchie had been in Science I his senior year, not because of a scheduling mistake, as I had been. No, Ritchie had been in Science I because he NEEDED TO BE in Science I. And he failed that.
Ritchie was what they used to term 'educable'.
____________________________________
* science at about a 7-8th grade level. no caustic chemicals, nothing sharp, nothing that could catch on fire. the teacher spoke very clearly and distinctly.
**"where does this come from?" you might ask. too bad, I say; go ask your mom.
OK fine.
one day a buddy of mine was standing with me when he saw Ritchie coming down the hall. "See that guy?" he said. "One time I was sitting in class ripped on acid and he turned into a giant carpenter ant. He just sat there looking at me, chewing on his desk. I've been kind of scared of him ever since."
It was true, sadly enough. the guy really did look like a carpenter ant. he had a long round head, no chin, spindly little shoulders and a huge butt. and he was shiny. i never saw him eat a desk. i wish i had. it would have been cool.
______________________________
john waters? no....maybe his sister, though.unemployed amputee? no...lots of amputees had jobs in the 70s.where feculent bacteria went curling with Satan? pure speculation. might have been hockey.
boofay eatin' places
When I was a little kid, we went out to dinner quite a lot. Nine times out of ten, if we went out, we went to a buffet.
Two reasons for this: first, my mother was not the worlds greatest cook. Nor was she the neighborhoods' greatest cook. Or even strictly speaking a cook, unless you also count 'laundry' as it was done in the Victorian era as cooking. Mom boiled EVERYTHING. It may not have been tasty, but it was clean, and it probably included lye soap.
Second, buffet restaurants were extremely popular back then. All you could eat for one low price? Hell yes!
Oregon had been hit very, very hard by the Depression. Everyone had a clear and living memory of it. Hell, I had a clear and living memory of it - even though it happened before I was born. I'd grown up hearing so much more than I'd ever, ever cared to hear about the stupid goddamn fucking Depression that I figured that I counted as a survivor too. The impression I'd been left with was that it was a time in American history when everyone had been really depressed because there was a war, so they were too bummed out to work, so nobody had any money which of course meant that nobody could buy enough to eat. *
Anyway, right around the end of WWII some creative individual introduced the 'classy' buffet restaurant concept to Oregon. Institutional-style service presented with 'tony' atmosphere...or at least a 'Ladies' Home Journal' interpretation of that -in the Wild West! Like a perpetual 'high society' event, only open to the public! And looking back you can see that nothing probably appealed to the ordinary people of that time like the promise 'All You Can Eat'. Throw in some real linen, a bunch of plastic flowers and one of those whirly shoeshine things by the front door and success was assured. I remember waiting in line for AN HOUR IN THE RAIN to get into the place and not whining because I was so excited the closer we inched to the door! Not only any boofay, noooooo Paco. This was the king of the Oregon boofay eatin' places...Obies' on McLaughlin Boulevard.
The first thing you saw as soon as you entered the place on the red wool carpet was the buffet line *cue angelic choir*. Surrounded with plastic flower arrangements, gleaming with stainless steel, brass, nickel and glass...the brontosaurus-sized roasts, the servers in gleaming whites bustling by with huge hotel pans filled with gravy-topped cholesterol, backed by red velvet curtains against which the clouds of fragrant steam arose...it was pure Burlesque! It was The Food Capades! Oh, and the lighting...! Dark and moody punctuated with bold and dynamic! Heavenly glory piercing through the darkness to illuminate the Miracle of Beets!
In addition to the track spots, Obies' had one of those revolving colored Christmas tree lights that shone down on the line of people ahead of you. If you were there long enough, you could watch everyone turn from blue to red to lemon yellow to green and back. And as if this weren't enough, the salad line - your first stop - was filled with clear Lucite bowls nestled in ice, and the station had a hidden lexan base that was lit from beneath so that the ice in it twinkled like blue diamonds. For a little kid this was just about the pinnacle of class.
First came the salads. This was the mid- Sixties, so a lot of what was on offer bore little resemblance to salad as we know it now, much less Earth food.
First, an obligiaory bowl of browning vegetation with oil and vinegar. Obligation having been served, next came the "GOOD" stuff. Macaroni salad (barf.) Three bean salad (barf.) Egg salad (barf.) Potato salad jaundiced with Frenchs' mustard (barf.) Jumbled bergs of multicolored jello on silver platters wreathed with savoyed cabbage leaves (barf), celery boats (barf), radish roses (barf), carrot curls (barely acceptable), cucumbers fanned like winning hands(barf.) Sheer fantasy and Jello took over at this point. Since I was too short at the time to read the identifying tags, I've come up with my own names. There was Glazed Caldera of Grated Carrot Studded With Flies, Mausoleum of Green Jello With Sheep Eyeballs, the fearsome Aztec Death Pyramid Of Red Stuff With Red Chunks...Pink Toothpaste Shaped Like a Fish For No Good Reason...Weeping Cucumbers With Chopped Fescue and Crud Sauce...Pink Christmas Wreath of This Little Piggie Went Wee Wee Wee All The Way Home, Disgusting Fruit With Sheep Eyeballs In Disgusting Sauce, and Mayonnaisey Mystery Situation with Paprika Dumped All Over The Top. For some reason this preparation was always tastefully garnished by jabbing a dolly into one corner. Yes really. She had cream cheese piped around her in ripples, forming a dress, with a sprig of parsley at her waist for a corsage. I have no idea to this day what the point was, but I still feel sorry for her.*
Next came the sides. Piles of rolls...clovers, dinners, soft, hard, butter, Parkerhouse, and plain Wonder sandwich bread. Bowls full of icy butter pats stacked in pyramids. Mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise and tartar sauce (and you better have tartar sauce if you run a restaurant in the Northwest, bucko.) After that, the hot vegetables...corn swimming in cream or butter, carrots the same, baked beans so heavy with molasses and brown sugar they trailed strands when a spoonful was lifted, green beans, oceans of bobbing peas, Matterhorns of mashed potatoes.
As you inched along you slowly approached the carving station, a small island of drama detached from the rest of the food. The carver wore chefs whites. He presided over the giant mountains of smoking protein beneath the infrared lamps, glowing eerily in the hot orange light.
The carving station was raised up a step, so that the 'chef' looked down at you. He was equipped with a Viking longsword and a long, needle-tipped meat fork straight from Hell. Despite which it reminded me of nothing so much as taking communion a Catholic church, complete with gleaming brass rail, candles, and mysterious shadows. We all took our turns, offering our plates, as the chef murmured "One slice or two?" and we replied 'One please'. In no more than three graceful strokes the dripping slice was removed, pressed between the fork and knife and deposited on your plate with a stylish half-turn that left it bunched up like a breaking wave of deliciousness. Body of Christ? Amen.
Three steps took you from the sanctuary to the dining room beyond, separated by a half wall. The transition was a little jarring...from darkness and steam and low voices and gleaming mood-lit food to a bright and noisy auditorium filled with Formica tables, bustling waitresses, men in brown suits and women in pillbox hats.
This was the era of the huge black purse, and they lay out in the aisles beside madams' chair like huge floating mines. I could be counted on to take out a couple as we sidled along between the tables searching for an empty place.
Now oddly enough I have no memories from this time of people actually putting food into their mouths and eating it. But eat they did. The usual stay was at least an hour, and during that hour you could count on seeing the same faces surrounding you and the same people standing next to you as you filed back in towards the line for another round, simply circulating, stopping long enough to empty a plate and then rejoining the line again.
I always seemed to get stuck in line between two old ladies, and old ladies always appalled me. Not because they were old or ladies, but because of the sheer amount of food they could pack away. The smaller they were, the higher they stacked the chow, and then crammed the bare spots full of rolls. Most of them had two dinner plates on their trays...one for whatever, and another strictly for salad. In fact the salad line was perpetually two-deep in old ladies staggering beneath the weight of their trays, circling like little sharks in baggy hose. I secretly guessed it was because most of the salady things didn't really look like food so much as they simply looked pretty. Pretty food doesn't count. And thus you don't look like a pig, and it doesn't get you fat.
People had a lot of odd notions in regards to food back then. I know, I know, it had to do with the Depression and everyone not having enough so you only took a small bit of what was offered and nice people didn't gorge and wasting food was a sin and a lady only nibbled...still, that didn't stop them from loading up on the groceries. They just did it sneaky.
One person would go back to the line, but that one person had to bear in mind all the specific requests from everyone else at that table. Once they returned everyone would take a fast look around, like meerkats. Reassured that nobody was paying undue attention they then swiftly portioned out the food and made it disappear.
My parents weren't quite that goofy, but I never did leave the table for seconds without someone giving me an 'as long as you're headed back...' request. Sometimes this was used as a tactic to trick me into trying new things-'Ha! Now you eat every bit of that before you touch the rest of your plate!' but I got wise and learned to let the bottom of the serving spoon merely dab a spot on my plate, then return and exclaim 'but you didn't say how much!' It was always the same thing, too. What, I have no idea. I only remember it as being some sort of godhorrid pink crap with chunks in it. I still have no idea what it was. It could have been just about anything back then; suburban Oregon was a (sinkhole) backwater, and food coloring was used with a very liberal and 'creative' hand.
Now the only places you see food presented with anything like that kind of homespun elan are a casino, or occasionally a wedding reception. Buffet restaurants are different places these days. It's more like eating in the school cafeteria now-the only thing even slightly different is the lack of announcements over the public address system, the kind prefaced with three 'dings' on a toy xylophone. The food is the same. Exactly the same.
Our high school cafeteria was supplied by SAGA Food Services Inc. The same truck that made those deliveries also pulled up to unload Christ knows what into the kitchens of every North's Chuckwagon Buffet in town. I think the only difference was the quality of the deep-fry grease. And I could be wrong about that.
Here in Whatcom county the flagship restaurant in the Izzy's buffet chain just went stern up. An era has come to an end. What began as a dutchified 80's version of buffet dining turned quickly into a blackened, greasy free-for all complete with women crying in the restroom. See? Just like high school. And this pretty much describes any buffet place these days, at least the ones serving 'Merican food...filthy fat kids running around butt wild, half-inflated balloons stuck against the ceiling ventilation grilles, plates stacked twelve high at the end of the tables loaded with uneaten food. Desperate waitresses who come by every 2 minutes scavenging for tips, offering you beverages and asking if everything's all right. Heavily pierced meth addicts, their checkered pants held in a bunch at the waist with a shoelace, wheeling bus tubs down the aisle. People greeting friends from across the room by shouting 'hey NIGGA!'**, or throwing rolls.
Still, no place offers the kind of "FEED ME NOW DAMMIT' gratification that you get at a buffet. And this is why the casino buffet is the biker's friend.
If you're in the middle of nowhere, you're probably near a casino. And all casinos have a buffet. Oh yes....come innnnnnnnn, hungry public, but first walk through the entiiiiiire length of our colorful flashing fun gamblinnnnnnnnnnnng parlooooooooor...and waaaaaaalk....and waaaaaaaaaalk...lookee at the freeeee moneyyyyy....it's fuuuuun......
This ploy probably works on rich elderly people with low blood sugar much better than it works on sunburnt fat people who've just left all their cash parked out in the 'motorcycles only' space, though.
The only thing you want around noon after a morning spent motorcycle touring is to take a whiz, offload some leather and poke some groceries down your neck NOW. Add a nice booth to sprawl out in, someone unobtrusive to keep your coffee topped up, and, most importantly, an endless supply of saturated fat, and that's called copacetic. You can get all that plus a pleasant background of hypnotic, coruscating jangling noises in a casino buffet. You also get a flashing display along one wall that enables you to play Keno at the same time you're putting away the macaroni salad, if that sounds like fun.
Is the food good? Strictly speaking? No. The food is edible for the most part, often delicious, but very, very rarely is it good. This is stuff supplied by factories, dumped out of plastic bags and cans into hotel pans, and sat over some hot water. If you want 'calories', rejoice. If you want 'good' you've come to the wrong place.
Only once have we run into anything that could be described as 'quality' food at a buffet, and it so happens that it was a casino buffet. It was a small place, somewhere smack dab in the middle of Absolutely Nothing Whatsoever, Idaho, just past...near...Idaho. Somewhere. I don't recall it's having been actually near anything. At all. Except wheat. Oh my yes, there was wheat. Lots of wheat. There had been wheat for quite some few hours by that point.
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat.
And then suddenly plop in the midst of all this fricken' wheat, there's a casino with 500 Escalades parked all around it.
We parked the Dyna and trudged through the gaming floor, past the zombies plugged into their penny slots, pulling off our leather as we went. Nobody gave us a glance. We ran our credit card, found a booth, dropped our helmets and slouched up to the line.
And it was FANTASTIC.
Huge, broiled New York steaks. Bearnaise sauce! Lobster. Wild cedar-planked salmon. Eggs Benedict! CHILLED BLUE POINT OYSTERS ON THE HALF SHELL. An omelet bar! The coffee was Starbucks and the sides were glorious. Everything was glorious.
We just sat and looked across the table at one another in silence, completely amazed. Grateful. Unbelieving. Then we fell on it like rabid javelinas.
We did the same thing later on that day in Pullman, where, after a VERY, very very, veryveryvery, very very, extremely incredibly indescribably enormous motherfucking amount of time spent traveling through what must have been the source of wheat for the entire goddamn Earth, AND Jupiter, we happened across an all-pizza buffet.
One price, all you can eat.
Free refills on the pop.
The carnage was indescribable. I think the State police took our picture .
I don't think Idaho wants us back.
_______________
* For years I thought that the 'Great Depression' was simply a time in the past when everyone was just really, really sad. I had no idea it had anything to do with economics.
*Think I'm exaggerating? Were you American in the early 60's? Then you know I'm not. I know you remember this crap. You're probably just repressing it. And who can blame you?
**Yes, I'm sorry, this is true. Hereabouts the apple-cheeked offspring of two Nederlandischer parents frequently address each other with 'Yo nigga' ...and yes, it is terribly, terribly sad.
Two reasons for this: first, my mother was not the worlds greatest cook. Nor was she the neighborhoods' greatest cook. Or even strictly speaking a cook, unless you also count 'laundry' as it was done in the Victorian era as cooking. Mom boiled EVERYTHING. It may not have been tasty, but it was clean, and it probably included lye soap.
Second, buffet restaurants were extremely popular back then. All you could eat for one low price? Hell yes!
Oregon had been hit very, very hard by the Depression. Everyone had a clear and living memory of it. Hell, I had a clear and living memory of it - even though it happened before I was born. I'd grown up hearing so much more than I'd ever, ever cared to hear about the stupid goddamn fucking Depression that I figured that I counted as a survivor too. The impression I'd been left with was that it was a time in American history when everyone had been really depressed because there was a war, so they were too bummed out to work, so nobody had any money which of course meant that nobody could buy enough to eat. *
Anyway, right around the end of WWII some creative individual introduced the 'classy' buffet restaurant concept to Oregon. Institutional-style service presented with 'tony' atmosphere...or at least a 'Ladies' Home Journal' interpretation of that -in the Wild West! Like a perpetual 'high society' event, only open to the public! And looking back you can see that nothing probably appealed to the ordinary people of that time like the promise 'All You Can Eat'. Throw in some real linen, a bunch of plastic flowers and one of those whirly shoeshine things by the front door and success was assured. I remember waiting in line for AN HOUR IN THE RAIN to get into the place and not whining because I was so excited the closer we inched to the door! Not only any boofay, noooooo Paco. This was the king of the Oregon boofay eatin' places...Obies' on McLaughlin Boulevard.
The first thing you saw as soon as you entered the place on the red wool carpet was the buffet line *cue angelic choir*. Surrounded with plastic flower arrangements, gleaming with stainless steel, brass, nickel and glass...the brontosaurus-sized roasts, the servers in gleaming whites bustling by with huge hotel pans filled with gravy-topped cholesterol, backed by red velvet curtains against which the clouds of fragrant steam arose...it was pure Burlesque! It was The Food Capades! Oh, and the lighting...! Dark and moody punctuated with bold and dynamic! Heavenly glory piercing through the darkness to illuminate the Miracle of Beets!
In addition to the track spots, Obies' had one of those revolving colored Christmas tree lights that shone down on the line of people ahead of you. If you were there long enough, you could watch everyone turn from blue to red to lemon yellow to green and back. And as if this weren't enough, the salad line - your first stop - was filled with clear Lucite bowls nestled in ice, and the station had a hidden lexan base that was lit from beneath so that the ice in it twinkled like blue diamonds. For a little kid this was just about the pinnacle of class.
First came the salads. This was the mid- Sixties, so a lot of what was on offer bore little resemblance to salad as we know it now, much less Earth food.
First, an obligiaory bowl of browning vegetation with oil and vinegar. Obligation having been served, next came the "GOOD" stuff. Macaroni salad (barf.) Three bean salad (barf.) Egg salad (barf.) Potato salad jaundiced with Frenchs' mustard (barf.) Jumbled bergs of multicolored jello on silver platters wreathed with savoyed cabbage leaves (barf), celery boats (barf), radish roses (barf), carrot curls (barely acceptable), cucumbers fanned like winning hands(barf.) Sheer fantasy and Jello took over at this point. Since I was too short at the time to read the identifying tags, I've come up with my own names. There was Glazed Caldera of Grated Carrot Studded With Flies, Mausoleum of Green Jello With Sheep Eyeballs, the fearsome Aztec Death Pyramid Of Red Stuff With Red Chunks...Pink Toothpaste Shaped Like a Fish For No Good Reason...Weeping Cucumbers With Chopped Fescue and Crud Sauce...Pink Christmas Wreath of This Little Piggie Went Wee Wee Wee All The Way Home, Disgusting Fruit With Sheep Eyeballs In Disgusting Sauce, and Mayonnaisey Mystery Situation with Paprika Dumped All Over The Top. For some reason this preparation was always tastefully garnished by jabbing a dolly into one corner. Yes really. She had cream cheese piped around her in ripples, forming a dress, with a sprig of parsley at her waist for a corsage. I have no idea to this day what the point was, but I still feel sorry for her.*
Next came the sides. Piles of rolls...clovers, dinners, soft, hard, butter, Parkerhouse, and plain Wonder sandwich bread. Bowls full of icy butter pats stacked in pyramids. Mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise and tartar sauce (and you better have tartar sauce if you run a restaurant in the Northwest, bucko.) After that, the hot vegetables...corn swimming in cream or butter, carrots the same, baked beans so heavy with molasses and brown sugar they trailed strands when a spoonful was lifted, green beans, oceans of bobbing peas, Matterhorns of mashed potatoes.
As you inched along you slowly approached the carving station, a small island of drama detached from the rest of the food. The carver wore chefs whites. He presided over the giant mountains of smoking protein beneath the infrared lamps, glowing eerily in the hot orange light.
The carving station was raised up a step, so that the 'chef' looked down at you. He was equipped with a Viking longsword and a long, needle-tipped meat fork straight from Hell. Despite which it reminded me of nothing so much as taking communion a Catholic church, complete with gleaming brass rail, candles, and mysterious shadows. We all took our turns, offering our plates, as the chef murmured "One slice or two?" and we replied 'One please'. In no more than three graceful strokes the dripping slice was removed, pressed between the fork and knife and deposited on your plate with a stylish half-turn that left it bunched up like a breaking wave of deliciousness. Body of Christ? Amen.
Three steps took you from the sanctuary to the dining room beyond, separated by a half wall. The transition was a little jarring...from darkness and steam and low voices and gleaming mood-lit food to a bright and noisy auditorium filled with Formica tables, bustling waitresses, men in brown suits and women in pillbox hats.
This was the era of the huge black purse, and they lay out in the aisles beside madams' chair like huge floating mines. I could be counted on to take out a couple as we sidled along between the tables searching for an empty place.
Now oddly enough I have no memories from this time of people actually putting food into their mouths and eating it. But eat they did. The usual stay was at least an hour, and during that hour you could count on seeing the same faces surrounding you and the same people standing next to you as you filed back in towards the line for another round, simply circulating, stopping long enough to empty a plate and then rejoining the line again.
I always seemed to get stuck in line between two old ladies, and old ladies always appalled me. Not because they were old or ladies, but because of the sheer amount of food they could pack away. The smaller they were, the higher they stacked the chow, and then crammed the bare spots full of rolls. Most of them had two dinner plates on their trays...one for whatever, and another strictly for salad. In fact the salad line was perpetually two-deep in old ladies staggering beneath the weight of their trays, circling like little sharks in baggy hose. I secretly guessed it was because most of the salady things didn't really look like food so much as they simply looked pretty. Pretty food doesn't count. And thus you don't look like a pig, and it doesn't get you fat.
People had a lot of odd notions in regards to food back then. I know, I know, it had to do with the Depression and everyone not having enough so you only took a small bit of what was offered and nice people didn't gorge and wasting food was a sin and a lady only nibbled...still, that didn't stop them from loading up on the groceries. They just did it sneaky.
One person would go back to the line, but that one person had to bear in mind all the specific requests from everyone else at that table. Once they returned everyone would take a fast look around, like meerkats. Reassured that nobody was paying undue attention they then swiftly portioned out the food and made it disappear.
My parents weren't quite that goofy, but I never did leave the table for seconds without someone giving me an 'as long as you're headed back...' request. Sometimes this was used as a tactic to trick me into trying new things-'Ha! Now you eat every bit of that before you touch the rest of your plate!' but I got wise and learned to let the bottom of the serving spoon merely dab a spot on my plate, then return and exclaim 'but you didn't say how much!' It was always the same thing, too. What, I have no idea. I only remember it as being some sort of godhorrid pink crap with chunks in it. I still have no idea what it was. It could have been just about anything back then; suburban Oregon was a (sinkhole) backwater, and food coloring was used with a very liberal and 'creative' hand.
Now the only places you see food presented with anything like that kind of homespun elan are a casino, or occasionally a wedding reception. Buffet restaurants are different places these days. It's more like eating in the school cafeteria now-the only thing even slightly different is the lack of announcements over the public address system, the kind prefaced with three 'dings' on a toy xylophone. The food is the same. Exactly the same.
Our high school cafeteria was supplied by SAGA Food Services Inc. The same truck that made those deliveries also pulled up to unload Christ knows what into the kitchens of every North's Chuckwagon Buffet in town. I think the only difference was the quality of the deep-fry grease. And I could be wrong about that.
Here in Whatcom county the flagship restaurant in the Izzy's buffet chain just went stern up. An era has come to an end. What began as a dutchified 80's version of buffet dining turned quickly into a blackened, greasy free-for all complete with women crying in the restroom. See? Just like high school. And this pretty much describes any buffet place these days, at least the ones serving 'Merican food...filthy fat kids running around butt wild, half-inflated balloons stuck against the ceiling ventilation grilles, plates stacked twelve high at the end of the tables loaded with uneaten food. Desperate waitresses who come by every 2 minutes scavenging for tips, offering you beverages and asking if everything's all right. Heavily pierced meth addicts, their checkered pants held in a bunch at the waist with a shoelace, wheeling bus tubs down the aisle. People greeting friends from across the room by shouting 'hey NIGGA!'**, or throwing rolls.
Still, no place offers the kind of "FEED ME NOW DAMMIT' gratification that you get at a buffet. And this is why the casino buffet is the biker's friend.
If you're in the middle of nowhere, you're probably near a casino. And all casinos have a buffet. Oh yes....come innnnnnnnn, hungry public, but first walk through the entiiiiiire length of our colorful flashing fun gamblinnnnnnnnnnnng parlooooooooor...and waaaaaaalk....and waaaaaaaaaalk...lookee at the freeeee moneyyyyy....it's fuuuuun......
This ploy probably works on rich elderly people with low blood sugar much better than it works on sunburnt fat people who've just left all their cash parked out in the 'motorcycles only' space, though.
The only thing you want around noon after a morning spent motorcycle touring is to take a whiz, offload some leather and poke some groceries down your neck NOW. Add a nice booth to sprawl out in, someone unobtrusive to keep your coffee topped up, and, most importantly, an endless supply of saturated fat, and that's called copacetic. You can get all that plus a pleasant background of hypnotic, coruscating jangling noises in a casino buffet. You also get a flashing display along one wall that enables you to play Keno at the same time you're putting away the macaroni salad, if that sounds like fun.
Is the food good? Strictly speaking? No. The food is edible for the most part, often delicious, but very, very rarely is it good. This is stuff supplied by factories, dumped out of plastic bags and cans into hotel pans, and sat over some hot water. If you want 'calories', rejoice. If you want 'good' you've come to the wrong place.
Only once have we run into anything that could be described as 'quality' food at a buffet, and it so happens that it was a casino buffet. It was a small place, somewhere smack dab in the middle of Absolutely Nothing Whatsoever, Idaho, just past...near...Idaho. Somewhere. I don't recall it's having been actually near anything. At all. Except wheat. Oh my yes, there was wheat. Lots of wheat. There had been wheat for quite some few hours by that point.
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat.
And then suddenly plop in the midst of all this fricken' wheat, there's a casino with 500 Escalades parked all around it.
We parked the Dyna and trudged through the gaming floor, past the zombies plugged into their penny slots, pulling off our leather as we went. Nobody gave us a glance. We ran our credit card, found a booth, dropped our helmets and slouched up to the line.
And it was FANTASTIC.
Huge, broiled New York steaks. Bearnaise sauce! Lobster. Wild cedar-planked salmon. Eggs Benedict! CHILLED BLUE POINT OYSTERS ON THE HALF SHELL. An omelet bar! The coffee was Starbucks and the sides were glorious. Everything was glorious.
We just sat and looked across the table at one another in silence, completely amazed. Grateful. Unbelieving. Then we fell on it like rabid javelinas.
We did the same thing later on that day in Pullman, where, after a VERY, very very, veryveryvery, very very, extremely incredibly indescribably enormous motherfucking amount of time spent traveling through what must have been the source of wheat for the entire goddamn Earth, AND Jupiter, we happened across an all-pizza buffet.
One price, all you can eat.
Free refills on the pop.
The carnage was indescribable. I think the State police took our picture .
I don't think Idaho wants us back.
_______________
* For years I thought that the 'Great Depression' was simply a time in the past when everyone was just really, really sad. I had no idea it had anything to do with economics.
*Think I'm exaggerating? Were you American in the early 60's? Then you know I'm not. I know you remember this crap. You're probably just repressing it. And who can blame you?
**Yes, I'm sorry, this is true. Hereabouts the apple-cheeked offspring of two Nederlandischer parents frequently address each other with 'Yo nigga' ...and yes, it is terribly, terribly sad.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Time off for little muks
This was without a doubt the best Christmas I've ever spent EVER.
...but I gotta tell ya; I am so partied out.
I mean, lordy; I am partied OUT.
My boogie fu was unbeatable.
Think I'll take a bit of a blogging break. Maybe pursue some other interests.
...catch up on my reading. You know.
See y'all in a week!
...but I gotta tell ya; I am so partied out.
I mean, lordy; I am partied OUT.
My boogie fu was unbeatable.Think I'll take a bit of a blogging break. Maybe pursue some other interests.
...catch up on my reading. You know.See y'all in a week!
Friday, December 21, 2007
Super secret cookies!!! and other recipes
Note: Don't have a big 'ol cow because you live someplace where they use mutated cooking nomenclature, standards of measurement based on the weight of King Henry VIII's gall bladder, or that have gimpy ovens. I'll post the link to the conversion site at the end like I always do so just keep your damn pants on.
I bake these wearing Jacqueline Kennedy dark sunglasses. SSSSSshhhhhh!!!!
Wack Up Smel the Cookies! caution: unnecessarily complicated
(all ingredients room temp. preheat oven to 350.)
First, you make a standard butter cookie recipe:
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tbl vanilla extract
some fresh grated orange peel, to taste-can be omitted or other citrus may be substituted
1 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
also have on hand, but to one side...you won't use these yet:
1 tsp cocoa powder
1 LEVEL tsp finest grind french roast coffee beans
1/3 c butter, very soft
2 tbls or more honey
optional for decoration: plain or chocolate covered espresso beans
_______________
PART ONE: The object of this part is to end up with very dry, browned cookie crumbs, so go ahead and proceed by eye.
-Halve the cookie dough. Set one half aside and hold at room temp.
-Take the other half, chill for an hour in the fridge. Then...
-Roll this chilled dough out about 1/3 inch thick and cut into pieces about 3 in. big...pretty is not an issue.
-Put onto an ungreased cookie sheet, not touching-but if they run together, no problem. You might have to do them in batches. Only one sheet in the oven at a time!
-Bake these at 375 until they are beginning to brown on the bottom, about 10 minutes or so-check them and see.
-Then take them out, cool them a bit, and then turn them over and brown the other side, which won't take quite as long. Go ahead and peek in the oven all you like.
-When they're brown on that side, turn off the oven, leave the door ajar and let them cool in there while you go vaccuum or shop or something for a couple of hours. The object is to get them perfectly golden brown and crisp all the way through.
-When they are cooled off completely, run them all through the cuisinart until they're as small as they can get. Set aside.
*
Now for the cookies proper!
-Crank the oven up to 400.
-Take the other half of the ROOM TEMPERATURE cookie dough, chunk it up and put it in the cuisinart. Add in all the extra ingredients, blend thoroughly, scraping down the bowl and getting in all the corners.
-Turn it out into the bowl with the crumbs and knead it all together by squishing it between your fingers. You can add a little more soft butter if the mix is stiff.
-Press the dough out onto the counter with your hands until it's about 1/3 inch thick, and cut out rounds a little bigger around than the size of a walnut. (You cannot overwork this dough so use all the scraps too!) Scrape these up using a spatula and...
-Place them, not touching, onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
-Bake in the 400 oven for 7 or 8 minutes.
(-optional: if you are using the espresso beans for decoration, press one into the center of each cookie NOW while they're still hot and soft.)
-When they have sat a couple of minutes, try and pry one up. If it comes off clean, slide them off the cookie sheet and set aside to cool. They should flatten out and be crispy when they cool.
These will definitely Wack your ass UP.
________________________________________________
Spicy cheese dip!
1 1/2 lbs of sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2/3 cup of wholefat yogurt- drained overnight in a sieve until all the whey is out of it (there will be a little less after it's drained, obviously)
4 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup red onion, minced very fine
1/3 cup jalapeno (for hot!) or anaheim (for not so hot) peppers, minced finely
1 tsp. 'Via Nueva' chili-limon spice (look it up on the web; I'm not your mother)
1/4 tsp or to taste garlic granules
1 tbl Knorr powdered chicken stock
Heave it all in the Cuisinart and whir it for a very long time, stirring it down as necessary. It will be kind of sandy looking. Oooo so good!
______________________
Tangy cheese dip-this has to set overnight in the fridge to get good.
1/2 cup feta cheese with kalamata olives (or plain feta with five minced kalamatas added)
1/2 cup blue or roquefort cheese
1 cup sour cream
4 oz cream cheese
1 shallot squeezed through a garlic press or minced very, very fine-DO NOT OMIT.
Once again, heave it in the Cuisinart and whip the crap out of it. Don't forget to stir it down every now and then!
___________________________
Smoked salmon dip-so easy a caveman could do it.
4 oz soft-smoked salmon, whatever cure you prefer (we use alder smoked with a cracked pepper cure)
4 oz cream cheese
1/3 cup either mayonnaise, drained yogurt or sour cream
Take the skin off the salmon but leave the peppercorns or whatever spices there may be ON.
Chunk it up, put it into the cuisinart with the other ingredients (I use sour cream) and whir until it's all a uniform smooth texture-scrape down as necessary. This cannot be over-mixed; it just gets lighter and fluffier.
_________________________
Chicken Livers Mit Schmalz-I am the only person who really really likes this at my house so I get to eat ALL of it! But it is SO GOOD. Really. It is. On a Wheat Thin cracker? Oh my yes.
-1 lb chicken livers, poached very gently in 1 cup chicken stock until just done through, cooled.
-reserve the stock and cool
-1/2, 2/3, or 1 cup rendered chicken fat, depending on how soon you want to die of arteriosclerosis (recipe follows)
-2 small or one large green onion, minced very fine
-salt and pepper to taste-I like lots of fresh-ground black pepper here.
(optional-softened cream cheese to taste)
-All cooled ingredients into cuisinart minus the stock. As the mixture whirs, add a bit of stock until you have a light paste consistency-(err on the side of thick; more can be added later.)
-Chill overnight. The mixture will have turned into a soft solid. If it is too hard, chunk it up and put it back through the cuisinart, adding a little more stock. It will be a light grey cardboardy color and very smooth and light, a little sandy textured.
-At this point you may also add a little cream cheese to taste if you feel the flavor is too 'rank' or 'livery'. Correct seasonings.
To make rendered chickenfat, or 'schmalz'
(This is something you make when you want stock, fat and cooked chicken meat for separate things, so plan ahead for chicken and dumplings for dinner or chicken noodle soup or something like that.)
1 fryer, cut up or whole
water to cover
-Bring the chicken and the water to a boil, cover and reduce to the lowest setting. Let it go for 45 minutes.
-Take the chicken out and let it drain into the pot. (Then cool the carcass aside and return the drippings to the pot. Strip the meat once it's cooled-if you save it on the bone it gets funky.)
-You now have 'chicken water', the beginning of stock. Cool this in the pot, then refrigerate overnight, covered.
-The next morning, the hardened fat may be lifted off the top of the chicken-water in solid chunks.
-Melt these over a low flame just until they turn clear, then strain them through a very fine sieve or a cloth. Throw away the grey crumbs you strain out, or give them to your cat; they love them!
-Now you have pure rendered chicken fat! You should have about 1/2 cup more or less.
links:
http://www.wwrecipes.com/convert.htm
This is a new one I'm trying. Let me know what you think of it. If it sucks I'll go back to using the other conversion sites.
I bake these wearing Jacqueline Kennedy dark sunglasses. SSSSSshhhhhh!!!!
Wack Up Smel the Cookies! caution: unnecessarily complicated
(all ingredients room temp. preheat oven to 350.)
First, you make a standard butter cookie recipe:
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tbl vanilla extract
some fresh grated orange peel, to taste-can be omitted or other citrus may be substituted
1 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
also have on hand, but to one side...you won't use these yet:
1 tsp cocoa powder
1 LEVEL tsp finest grind french roast coffee beans
1/3 c butter, very soft
2 tbls or more honey
optional for decoration: plain or chocolate covered espresso beans
_______________
PART ONE: The object of this part is to end up with very dry, browned cookie crumbs, so go ahead and proceed by eye.
-Halve the cookie dough. Set one half aside and hold at room temp.
-Take the other half, chill for an hour in the fridge. Then...
-Roll this chilled dough out about 1/3 inch thick and cut into pieces about 3 in. big...pretty is not an issue.
-Put onto an ungreased cookie sheet, not touching-but if they run together, no problem. You might have to do them in batches. Only one sheet in the oven at a time!
-Bake these at 375 until they are beginning to brown on the bottom, about 10 minutes or so-check them and see.
-Then take them out, cool them a bit, and then turn them over and brown the other side, which won't take quite as long. Go ahead and peek in the oven all you like.
-When they're brown on that side, turn off the oven, leave the door ajar and let them cool in there while you go vaccuum or shop or something for a couple of hours. The object is to get them perfectly golden brown and crisp all the way through.
-When they are cooled off completely, run them all through the cuisinart until they're as small as they can get. Set aside.
*
Now for the cookies proper!
-Crank the oven up to 400.
-Take the other half of the ROOM TEMPERATURE cookie dough, chunk it up and put it in the cuisinart. Add in all the extra ingredients, blend thoroughly, scraping down the bowl and getting in all the corners.
-Turn it out into the bowl with the crumbs and knead it all together by squishing it between your fingers. You can add a little more soft butter if the mix is stiff.
-Press the dough out onto the counter with your hands until it's about 1/3 inch thick, and cut out rounds a little bigger around than the size of a walnut. (You cannot overwork this dough so use all the scraps too!) Scrape these up using a spatula and...
-Place them, not touching, onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
-Bake in the 400 oven for 7 or 8 minutes.
(-optional: if you are using the espresso beans for decoration, press one into the center of each cookie NOW while they're still hot and soft.)
-When they have sat a couple of minutes, try and pry one up. If it comes off clean, slide them off the cookie sheet and set aside to cool. They should flatten out and be crispy when they cool.
These will definitely Wack your ass UP.
________________________________________________
Spicy cheese dip!
1 1/2 lbs of sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2/3 cup of wholefat yogurt- drained overnight in a sieve until all the whey is out of it (there will be a little less after it's drained, obviously)
4 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup red onion, minced very fine
1/3 cup jalapeno (for hot!) or anaheim (for not so hot) peppers, minced finely
1 tsp. 'Via Nueva' chili-limon spice (look it up on the web; I'm not your mother)
1/4 tsp or to taste garlic granules
1 tbl Knorr powdered chicken stock
Heave it all in the Cuisinart and whir it for a very long time, stirring it down as necessary. It will be kind of sandy looking. Oooo so good!
______________________
Tangy cheese dip-this has to set overnight in the fridge to get good.
1/2 cup feta cheese with kalamata olives (or plain feta with five minced kalamatas added)
1/2 cup blue or roquefort cheese
1 cup sour cream
4 oz cream cheese
1 shallot squeezed through a garlic press or minced very, very fine-DO NOT OMIT.
Once again, heave it in the Cuisinart and whip the crap out of it. Don't forget to stir it down every now and then!
___________________________
Smoked salmon dip-so easy a caveman could do it.
4 oz soft-smoked salmon, whatever cure you prefer (we use alder smoked with a cracked pepper cure)
4 oz cream cheese
1/3 cup either mayonnaise, drained yogurt or sour cream
Take the skin off the salmon but leave the peppercorns or whatever spices there may be ON.
Chunk it up, put it into the cuisinart with the other ingredients (I use sour cream) and whir until it's all a uniform smooth texture-scrape down as necessary. This cannot be over-mixed; it just gets lighter and fluffier.
_________________________
Chicken Livers Mit Schmalz-I am the only person who really really likes this at my house so I get to eat ALL of it! But it is SO GOOD. Really. It is. On a Wheat Thin cracker? Oh my yes.
-1 lb chicken livers, poached very gently in 1 cup chicken stock until just done through, cooled.
-reserve the stock and cool
-1/2, 2/3, or 1 cup rendered chicken fat, depending on how soon you want to die of arteriosclerosis (recipe follows)
-2 small or one large green onion, minced very fine
-salt and pepper to taste-I like lots of fresh-ground black pepper here.
(optional-softened cream cheese to taste)
-All cooled ingredients into cuisinart minus the stock. As the mixture whirs, add a bit of stock until you have a light paste consistency-(err on the side of thick; more can be added later.)
-Chill overnight. The mixture will have turned into a soft solid. If it is too hard, chunk it up and put it back through the cuisinart, adding a little more stock. It will be a light grey cardboardy color and very smooth and light, a little sandy textured.
-At this point you may also add a little cream cheese to taste if you feel the flavor is too 'rank' or 'livery'. Correct seasonings.
To make rendered chickenfat, or 'schmalz'
(This is something you make when you want stock, fat and cooked chicken meat for separate things, so plan ahead for chicken and dumplings for dinner or chicken noodle soup or something like that.)
1 fryer, cut up or whole
water to cover
-Bring the chicken and the water to a boil, cover and reduce to the lowest setting. Let it go for 45 minutes.
-Take the chicken out and let it drain into the pot. (Then cool the carcass aside and return the drippings to the pot. Strip the meat once it's cooled-if you save it on the bone it gets funky.)
-You now have 'chicken water', the beginning of stock. Cool this in the pot, then refrigerate overnight, covered.
-The next morning, the hardened fat may be lifted off the top of the chicken-water in solid chunks.
-Melt these over a low flame just until they turn clear, then strain them through a very fine sieve or a cloth. Throw away the grey crumbs you strain out, or give them to your cat; they love them!
-Now you have pure rendered chicken fat! You should have about 1/2 cup more or less.
links:
http://www.wwrecipes.com/convert.htm
This is a new one I'm trying. Let me know what you think of it. If it sucks I'll go back to using the other conversion sites.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll
Something that bugs the crap out of me are the photographs used for identification purposes in birdwatching magazines and manuals. Nine times out of ten you'll get a prettily presented birdie posing to it's very best advantage or doing something cute...very seldom if ever presented in it's typical state. For example, the blue heron:
If you were to try and identify a blue heron by this picture you would be shit out of luck. Blue herons never look like this, at least not out where you can see them. This is a social nesting posture. All their display characteristics are-well, on display. The 'whoop de do' on the head and the spikey feathers at the neck; the white shoulder epaulets and the position of the neck are all characteristic of the bird as it rests in a place only accessible by a nut with a ladder or a pirogue. It's pretty, but it doesn't do me any good.
Now this is more helpful:
Here's a heron doing something typical out where regular people can see them. It's standing on a private boat dock in an 'alert' posture. You'll also notice that there is nothing particularly 'blue' about it, probably because calling it the 'tall scroungy looking heron' wouldn't sound as poetic. Still, this is the heron you'll see standing in every field and in every ditch in Whatcom County, watching the cars go by. 'Oh, theres a heron," you could say, right before it comes leaping in through the windshield and tears out your throat.
No, ha, herons don't do that. And most herons are not poisonous. Mostly what they do is stand around looking like that picture. That, and jumping out of swamps late in the evening and flying across the front of your car like a giant pterodactyl and saying'GRONK'. I've almost gone in the ditch twice now because of these things. I'm not joking. Down on the corner of Goodwin and Sorenson by the haybarn where it always floods? Yeah. Watch out.
This has been a banner year for blue herons. The things are everywhere! I don't know if it has anything to do with the weather or what; they must have fledged a lot of young last summer or something. I can look out the kitchen window almost every morning and see one or two of them standing in the soccer field behind the house, or fishing in the 'seasonal lakefront' that forms at the corner of my fence line. My poor girldog nearly has a seizure when she sees one standing too close to "her" yard. She explodes out the dog door barking like a lunatic. Then again, if you look at it from her point of view, a heron is a big, freaky, pointy bird taller than she is; I guess that would be alarming now that I come to think about it. Maybe I should be more grateful she's on patrol. We are safe. Safe from blue herons, Guatemalan soccer players and women pushing baby strollers. And Mormon kids on bicycles. And the UPS guy.
************************
I noticed the return of the 4 resident nesting eagle pairs back on December 2. They've been sailing around the sky ever since, not doing much besides looking primeval and roosting wherever it pleases them to by night. They don't have much interest in their nests right now, besides keeping their claim staked. In any case it would be a never-ending job of repair given the successive waves of wind and rain storms we get here all winter.
After they fledge young, the eagles only stay around for a few weeks in January and February. I'm told they go then either up to the San Juan Islands or out towards the coast. I don't know what they do there...drive cabs, work at McDonalds...probably something that involves standing around. Eagles are good at that.
While they're here, though, they raise their families in the best American tradition...doing next to nothing, gorging to the point of bloat on bad food and making a lot of pointless noise.
Now, maybe I'm being a little harsh; I've lived so closely with them for so long. An eagle in the wilderness is a glorious thing, but then it has a glorious backdrop too. An eagle dragging an afterbirth across a calving pen is...not quite as glorious.
***********************
Once the ground is well and truly soaked down to the substrate, right around grimmest, bleakest late November, early one morning you hear the Trumpeter swans coming in through the low clouds. Hundreds of them. Later you find that your ungaraged car is now an entirely new color and texture. Say what you want about the destructive cloacal acts of the Canada goose; nothing dumps a payload like a Trumpeter swan. I don't know what they eat but it makes for some truly spectacular poo. Ever see a small plane pulling a banner behind it? Like that.
Like the eagles, the Trumpeter swans spend a large part of their time majestically doing jack shit. The swan, though, prefers to do this in mud. A mown hayfield glimmering with a winter-long standing puddle or a cornfield full of stubble suits them to a T, although you'd think it would be poky. As soon as they land they begin striding back and forth picking stuff out of it. What I have no idea. Rocks, sticks, bugs, wristwatches; whatever it is, they like it, and there certainly seems to be a lot of it too. A field that a flock of swans have visited will be as plowed up-looking after they leave as though a cultivator had run through it.
In the afternoon you can see them gathered apart into small groups to have what you can only describe as conversations...making quiet chickeny bucks and clucks to each other. All of them are by this point thoroughly splattered with mud and God knows what else...but if the sun happens to come out from the clouds the group will gleam like a beacon.
It's that quality of whiteness, their complete absence of color, that takes me by surprise every year. You think of a swan as white, but this is something altogether different; a perfect white, so perfect it's difficult to hold in your memory. You can clearly make out a group of swans even in the center of a field completely blanketed in the newest, whitest, cleanest snow.
A swan with no place in particular to go flies with a certain deliberation. Their wings stay bent in an air-collecting crescent shape when they move through the lower atmosphere, giving them a rather un-bird-like silhouette. And thought it sounds trite, a trumpeter swan really is whiter than white; the most completely white thing you've ever seen. A flock of them flying down the valley against the snow-covered hills looks like a flight of spirits drifting through the air.
If you were to try and identify a blue heron by this picture you would be shit out of luck. Blue herons never look like this, at least not out where you can see them. This is a social nesting posture. All their display characteristics are-well, on display. The 'whoop de do' on the head and the spikey feathers at the neck; the white shoulder epaulets and the position of the neck are all characteristic of the bird as it rests in a place only accessible by a nut with a ladder or a pirogue. It's pretty, but it doesn't do me any good.
Now this is more helpful:
Here's a heron doing something typical out where regular people can see them. It's standing on a private boat dock in an 'alert' posture. You'll also notice that there is nothing particularly 'blue' about it, probably because calling it the 'tall scroungy looking heron' wouldn't sound as poetic. Still, this is the heron you'll see standing in every field and in every ditch in Whatcom County, watching the cars go by. 'Oh, theres a heron," you could say, right before it comes leaping in through the windshield and tears out your throat.
No, ha, herons don't do that. And most herons are not poisonous. Mostly what they do is stand around looking like that picture. That, and jumping out of swamps late in the evening and flying across the front of your car like a giant pterodactyl and saying'GRONK'. I've almost gone in the ditch twice now because of these things. I'm not joking. Down on the corner of Goodwin and Sorenson by the haybarn where it always floods? Yeah. Watch out.
This has been a banner year for blue herons. The things are everywhere! I don't know if it has anything to do with the weather or what; they must have fledged a lot of young last summer or something. I can look out the kitchen window almost every morning and see one or two of them standing in the soccer field behind the house, or fishing in the 'seasonal lakefront' that forms at the corner of my fence line. My poor girldog nearly has a seizure when she sees one standing too close to "her" yard. She explodes out the dog door barking like a lunatic. Then again, if you look at it from her point of view, a heron is a big, freaky, pointy bird taller than she is; I guess that would be alarming now that I come to think about it. Maybe I should be more grateful she's on patrol. We are safe. Safe from blue herons, Guatemalan soccer players and women pushing baby strollers. And Mormon kids on bicycles. And the UPS guy.
************************
I noticed the return of the 4 resident nesting eagle pairs back on December 2. They've been sailing around the sky ever since, not doing much besides looking primeval and roosting wherever it pleases them to by night. They don't have much interest in their nests right now, besides keeping their claim staked. In any case it would be a never-ending job of repair given the successive waves of wind and rain storms we get here all winter.
After they fledge young, the eagles only stay around for a few weeks in January and February. I'm told they go then either up to the San Juan Islands or out towards the coast. I don't know what they do there...drive cabs, work at McDonalds...probably something that involves standing around. Eagles are good at that.
While they're here, though, they raise their families in the best American tradition...doing next to nothing, gorging to the point of bloat on bad food and making a lot of pointless noise.
Now, maybe I'm being a little harsh; I've lived so closely with them for so long. An eagle in the wilderness is a glorious thing, but then it has a glorious backdrop too. An eagle dragging an afterbirth across a calving pen is...not quite as glorious.
***********************
Once the ground is well and truly soaked down to the substrate, right around grimmest, bleakest late November, early one morning you hear the Trumpeter swans coming in through the low clouds. Hundreds of them. Later you find that your ungaraged car is now an entirely new color and texture. Say what you want about the destructive cloacal acts of the Canada goose; nothing dumps a payload like a Trumpeter swan. I don't know what they eat but it makes for some truly spectacular poo. Ever see a small plane pulling a banner behind it? Like that.
Like the eagles, the Trumpeter swans spend a large part of their time majestically doing jack shit. The swan, though, prefers to do this in mud. A mown hayfield glimmering with a winter-long standing puddle or a cornfield full of stubble suits them to a T, although you'd think it would be poky. As soon as they land they begin striding back and forth picking stuff out of it. What I have no idea. Rocks, sticks, bugs, wristwatches; whatever it is, they like it, and there certainly seems to be a lot of it too. A field that a flock of swans have visited will be as plowed up-looking after they leave as though a cultivator had run through it.
In the afternoon you can see them gathered apart into small groups to have what you can only describe as conversations...making quiet chickeny bucks and clucks to each other. All of them are by this point thoroughly splattered with mud and God knows what else...but if the sun happens to come out from the clouds the group will gleam like a beacon.
It's that quality of whiteness, their complete absence of color, that takes me by surprise every year. You think of a swan as white, but this is something altogether different; a perfect white, so perfect it's difficult to hold in your memory. You can clearly make out a group of swans even in the center of a field completely blanketed in the newest, whitest, cleanest snow.
A swan with no place in particular to go flies with a certain deliberation. Their wings stay bent in an air-collecting crescent shape when they move through the lower atmosphere, giving them a rather un-bird-like silhouette. And thought it sounds trite, a trumpeter swan really is whiter than white; the most completely white thing you've ever seen. A flock of them flying down the valley against the snow-covered hills looks like a flight of spirits drifting through the air.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
My angel is married : UPDATED
...and for more celebrations, go here!!! the post, the video link...it's ALLLLL GOOOOOOD!!!!!
http://danator.blogspot.com/2007/12/hot-hot-hot.html
Monday, December 17, 2007
Helpful and NSFW Hints for the Holidays
1. If you catch on fire, don't put it out with a hairbrush.
2. New boobs are not always the answer.
3. There comes a point when your pathetic cry for attention will guarantee you receive exactly the opposite.
4. See 3.
5. See 2 and 3.
6.Yes, they invented 'Hello Kitty'. They also invented bukakke and hentai.
7. Sometimes it's the toys without batteries that are the most fun.
8. See 7.
2. New boobs are not always the answer.
3. There comes a point when your pathetic cry for attention will guarantee you receive exactly the opposite.
4. See 3.
5. See 2 and 3.
6.Yes, they invented 'Hello Kitty'. They also invented bukakke and hentai.
7. Sometimes it's the toys without batteries that are the most fun.
8. See 7.
warping a new generation
Last night the Goonybird and I sat up until way late and watched all three Lord of the Ring movies. Not only did he sit relatively still, he did really well, too. Once I explained to him that the monsters were just cartoons made by people who could draw really, really well he had not one problem with the scary stuff or the action. In fact he got right into the spirit of the thing and helped defend the Hornburg by running back and forth smacking orcs with his toy dog.
I'm really glad I didn't spend money going to see these movies when they were out in the theaters. As it was I drove the Biker out of the room by the end of the first one pointing out all the mistakes and correcting the backstory on everything. I do have to admit, though, when they got it right, they REALLY got it right. The Riddermark? Hobbiton? Orthanc? Gondor? The Ringwraiths? Oh HELL yeah. Not to mention Mordor, the Orcs, or particularly Sauron. Or casting Sir Ian McKellan as Gandalf. Genius!!!!
Why, why, why, though, did they have to ruin the Ents??? The Ents could have been so much better. They could have taken 3/4 of the budget they spent on the oliphaunts (which I admit were cool as fuck and kicked serious ass) and redirected it towards making the damn Ents halfway decent. After all they are kind of an important story element. And for the love of fuck why do we have Legolas skateboarding down the steps of Helms Deep? What the fuck is that? Why?
Yes I am a Tolkein nerd. I own everything. Even the scholarly stuff. In different editions.
Ok, geek, even.
Fine, 'tard.
Ok, yes, I threw a huge screaming baby fit until my mother promised to go stand in line out in front of B. Dalton in the cold on the first day the Silmarillion was released in order to get a first edition in hardcover.
Why? Because I couldn't.
Why? Because I was competing in a debate tournament.
We placed.
Fine.
Meanwhile, it was really great to see the Goonybird get into the story. He really liked Frodo and Sam and Gollum. He 'got' that whole part of the story right away. We both woke up grandpa cheering when Eowyn cut the head off the Nazgul and killed the Ringwraith. He caught on to Theoden being nuts and Pippin feeling sorry for him. Not too damn bad for a three-year-old kid.
I have three days left before his mommy and daddy get back. I figure by that time I should have laid in a good, elementary groundwork in geek lore. And just think! Once he gets old enough to handle fireworks and ride a motorcycle...!
God help this child.
I'm really glad I didn't spend money going to see these movies when they were out in the theaters. As it was I drove the Biker out of the room by the end of the first one pointing out all the mistakes and correcting the backstory on everything. I do have to admit, though, when they got it right, they REALLY got it right. The Riddermark? Hobbiton? Orthanc? Gondor? The Ringwraiths? Oh HELL yeah. Not to mention Mordor, the Orcs, or particularly Sauron. Or casting Sir Ian McKellan as Gandalf. Genius!!!!
Why, why, why, though, did they have to ruin the Ents??? The Ents could have been so much better. They could have taken 3/4 of the budget they spent on the oliphaunts (which I admit were cool as fuck and kicked serious ass) and redirected it towards making the damn Ents halfway decent. After all they are kind of an important story element. And for the love of fuck why do we have Legolas skateboarding down the steps of Helms Deep? What the fuck is that? Why?
Yes I am a Tolkein nerd. I own everything. Even the scholarly stuff. In different editions.
Ok, geek, even.
Fine, 'tard.
Ok, yes, I threw a huge screaming baby fit until my mother promised to go stand in line out in front of B. Dalton in the cold on the first day the Silmarillion was released in order to get a first edition in hardcover.
Why? Because I couldn't.
Why? Because I was competing in a debate tournament.
We placed.
Fine.
Meanwhile, it was really great to see the Goonybird get into the story. He really liked Frodo and Sam and Gollum. He 'got' that whole part of the story right away. We both woke up grandpa cheering when Eowyn cut the head off the Nazgul and killed the Ringwraith. He caught on to Theoden being nuts and Pippin feeling sorry for him. Not too damn bad for a three-year-old kid.
I have three days left before his mommy and daddy get back. I figure by that time I should have laid in a good, elementary groundwork in geek lore. And just think! Once he gets old enough to handle fireworks and ride a motorcycle...!
God help this child.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Paisley Baboon Very Making Leveraged Buyout!
One of my favorite things to do on the Internet is to look up por
One of my favorite things do do on the Internet is to play 'where will this lead?' The rules are simple...start someplace that interests you and read along. When you come to a question or a reference that seems interesting, go there next.
Yes, now that I have the interwebs I can take this game as far afield as I like. Gone are the days when I had to approach sensitive subjects from oblique angles in order to find an answer in a footnote or an obscure textbook. Now, by God, if I run across a reference to, say, 'looners' why I can just type that sapsucker in and get an answer that I really, really could have gone the rest of my life without knowing. Oh my yes.
So it was today, when I threw in my Rob Zombie compilation, cranked the gain to 11 and typed in the search phrase 'bunny man'. I ended up at the most interesting site just full of information about ancient Central and South American glyphs.*
Along the way I found St. Brigids Beer Prayer:
Also this picture, which the clicking that maketh bigness will make bigger:
And this picture of a hybrid carrot-man in formal attire:
...You see what kind of interesting shit there is on the internet if you just take the time to look? Who would have ever thought that the Victorians had this kind of biotechnology? I sure didn't. You could buy seeds and grow your own hybrid carrot man! How many hybrid carrot-people might there have been planted that, even as we speak, lie waiting for the day that their Vegetable Master calls them all forth from their dormant state to take over the earth? I say bring'em on. Wouldn't you rather be ruled by a race of sentient man-carrot hybrids? I know I would. And you got to admit this is one spiffy damn carrot. He's even got a monocle. Do you have a monocle? No you do not.
Anyway, this interesting site I found about the Mayans:
http://www.mayalords.org/mayafldr/index.html
There is is.
Apparently this guy has a real hard-on for proving that the Mayans recorded catastrophic astronomical events all the fuck over their buildings and pottery and everything.
In one of these events, there was this hugeass giant comet that circled the earth three times and burnt everything up. People jumped into the water to get away from it. Meanwhile the frogs and the fish were all jumping OUT of the water to get away from it. Basically everyone in Mesoamerica was either jumping into or out of the water. You would too.
Then, several hundred years later or so, another giant comet comes along, breaks up into four pieces and bombards the shit out of Yucatan and South Carolina. This somehow leads to the invention of an ancient form of handball that you play with your ass. If you won you got a sore ass. If you lost a guy with an obsidian knife hacked open your chest, grabbed your heart, ripped it out by the roots, took a damn bite out of it and then chunked it off the top of a pyramid.
Some years later there was a disasterous meteor shower, in response to which the Mayans decided it would be a good idea to start stabbing stingray spines through their dicks.
Personally, what I think this all is, is pretty fucking indicative of why the Mayan civilization failed.
________________________
Don't try this at home, kiddies. Well, not the above either. Anyway remember: I've had brain damage a lot longer than you have.
One of my favorite things do do on the Internet is to play 'where will this lead?' The rules are simple...start someplace that interests you and read along. When you come to a question or a reference that seems interesting, go there next.
Yes, now that I have the interwebs I can take this game as far afield as I like. Gone are the days when I had to approach sensitive subjects from oblique angles in order to find an answer in a footnote or an obscure textbook. Now, by God, if I run across a reference to, say, 'looners' why I can just type that sapsucker in and get an answer that I really, really could have gone the rest of my life without knowing. Oh my yes.
So it was today, when I threw in my Rob Zombie compilation, cranked the gain to 11 and typed in the search phrase 'bunny man'. I ended up at the most interesting site just full of information about ancient Central and South American glyphs.*
Along the way I found St. Brigids Beer Prayer:
I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us. I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all. I would like Jesus to be present. I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us. I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts. I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me. I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings. I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity.Which you have to agree is a lovely sentiment.
Also this picture, which the clicking that maketh bigness will make bigger:
And this picture of a hybrid carrot-man in formal attire:
...You see what kind of interesting shit there is on the internet if you just take the time to look? Who would have ever thought that the Victorians had this kind of biotechnology? I sure didn't. You could buy seeds and grow your own hybrid carrot man! How many hybrid carrot-people might there have been planted that, even as we speak, lie waiting for the day that their Vegetable Master calls them all forth from their dormant state to take over the earth? I say bring'em on. Wouldn't you rather be ruled by a race of sentient man-carrot hybrids? I know I would. And you got to admit this is one spiffy damn carrot. He's even got a monocle. Do you have a monocle? No you do not.
Anyway, this interesting site I found about the Mayans:
http://www.mayalords.org/mayafldr/index.html
There is is.
Apparently this guy has a real hard-on for proving that the Mayans recorded catastrophic astronomical events all the fuck over their buildings and pottery and everything.
In one of these events, there was this hugeass giant comet that circled the earth three times and burnt everything up. People jumped into the water to get away from it. Meanwhile the frogs and the fish were all jumping OUT of the water to get away from it. Basically everyone in Mesoamerica was either jumping into or out of the water. You would too.Then, several hundred years later or so, another giant comet comes along, breaks up into four pieces and bombards the shit out of Yucatan and South Carolina. This somehow leads to the invention of an ancient form of handball that you play with your ass. If you won you got a sore ass. If you lost a guy with an obsidian knife hacked open your chest, grabbed your heart, ripped it out by the roots, took a damn bite out of it and then chunked it off the top of a pyramid.
Some years later there was a disasterous meteor shower, in response to which the Mayans decided it would be a good idea to start stabbing stingray spines through their dicks.
Personally, what I think this all is, is pretty fucking indicative of why the Mayan civilization failed.
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Don't try this at home, kiddies. Well, not the above either. Anyway remember: I've had brain damage a lot longer than you have.
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