Ray Bradbury died yesterday.
Anyone who is not appalled that this news isn't featured on the front fucking page of every newspaper in America has no soul.
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
How To Get An Opposum Out Of Your Dryer
It is 11:01 and I have just heard a gunshot, close, followed a second later by a man yelling 'Aaa!"
I didn't see anyone outside. Before you castigate me for being a reckless dipshit, know that where I was sitting when these events occurred there are three huge picture windows. If I was going to be seen by anyone, I would have already been seen, if you catch my drift. All I had to do was turn my head slightly. Nope. Nope. Nope.
So now what do I do? Nothing is what I do. Absolutely nothing. Which freaks me the fuck out.
None of this would have gone through my mind when I lived in Seattle. I'd have heard the noises, it would have been someone getting shot, and I would have unobtrusively slipped to the floor and butt-scooched my way into another room to call the police. Same as when I lived in Portland. That's what you did. It was tough on pants.
But here, since I didn't see anything, I can't do anything...except sit here and worry about spree murderers.
The thing is, people fire guns a lot out here. Back when I lived in a city, you heard gunfire anywhere, it meant one thing, you did one thing in response, and that was that. You at least were left with the illusion of safety, depending on the police department involved. Situation finished. Here...? Not so simple.
Sound could simply be travelling particularly well that day. It could be hunters up in the foothills, it could be a nearby farmer killing a bull calf, it could be smugglers, or just kids shooting bottles off a rock. It could be a drive-by across the border in Huntingdon (thats right Canada, don't be all smug like 'Oh, there's no gun crime here, we're a civilized country' damn old cheese-worshipping puck-humpers with your 'eh?' and your goofyass money.) It could be someone putting down a dog. It could be someone test-firing a bird cannon. Shit, for that matter maybe someone found a possum in their dryer. Talking to the appliance recycler, he says this happens all the time. They come in through the outside vent (the possums, not appliance recyclers.) You generally don't freak the fuck out about it, though; you leave the laundry room open to the outside and throw some dog food out there to bait him in the right direction. Then you slam the door behind him and buy a louvered metal vent cover. A surprising number of dryers get shot that way, though. Imagine opening your dryer one morning and there's an ugly greasy possum in there with a mouth full of underpants; you're going to freak the fuck out. Anyone would.
When I first moved to the country I was played for a rube by an Australian Shepard dog, who herded me, in my car mind you, all the way down the street and into the driveway of his masters' home then ran around the house in furious circles barking. "Aha!" I thought, veteran viewer of the old 'Lassie' series, "His master is probably in there seriously injured and unable to reach the phone!" (I've also seen one too many LifeAlert commercials.) So I zoomed back to the police department and filed a report. Eyes were rolled, my friends. Then there was the time I called the cops one midnight because I thought someone was trying to break down my door, and it turned out to be another dog. It can be said that I am known for goofy reports down at the cop shop. It might also be said that dogs like to fuck with me. I'll just sit here ignoring the impulse to call the police, and hope the next knock at my door isn't the worlds most polite spree murderer. Or a possum.
I didn't see anyone outside. Before you castigate me for being a reckless dipshit, know that where I was sitting when these events occurred there are three huge picture windows. If I was going to be seen by anyone, I would have already been seen, if you catch my drift. All I had to do was turn my head slightly. Nope. Nope. Nope.
So now what do I do? Nothing is what I do. Absolutely nothing. Which freaks me the fuck out.
None of this would have gone through my mind when I lived in Seattle. I'd have heard the noises, it would have been someone getting shot, and I would have unobtrusively slipped to the floor and butt-scooched my way into another room to call the police. Same as when I lived in Portland. That's what you did. It was tough on pants.
But here, since I didn't see anything, I can't do anything...except sit here and worry about spree murderers.
The thing is, people fire guns a lot out here. Back when I lived in a city, you heard gunfire anywhere, it meant one thing, you did one thing in response, and that was that. You at least were left with the illusion of safety, depending on the police department involved. Situation finished. Here...? Not so simple.
Sound could simply be travelling particularly well that day. It could be hunters up in the foothills, it could be a nearby farmer killing a bull calf, it could be smugglers, or just kids shooting bottles off a rock. It could be a drive-by across the border in Huntingdon (thats right Canada, don't be all smug like 'Oh, there's no gun crime here, we're a civilized country' damn old cheese-worshipping puck-humpers with your 'eh?' and your goofyass money.) It could be someone putting down a dog. It could be someone test-firing a bird cannon. Shit, for that matter maybe someone found a possum in their dryer. Talking to the appliance recycler, he says this happens all the time. They come in through the outside vent (the possums, not appliance recyclers.) You generally don't freak the fuck out about it, though; you leave the laundry room open to the outside and throw some dog food out there to bait him in the right direction. Then you slam the door behind him and buy a louvered metal vent cover. A surprising number of dryers get shot that way, though. Imagine opening your dryer one morning and there's an ugly greasy possum in there with a mouth full of underpants; you're going to freak the fuck out. Anyone would.
When I first moved to the country I was played for a rube by an Australian Shepard dog, who herded me, in my car mind you, all the way down the street and into the driveway of his masters' home then ran around the house in furious circles barking. "Aha!" I thought, veteran viewer of the old 'Lassie' series, "His master is probably in there seriously injured and unable to reach the phone!" (I've also seen one too many LifeAlert commercials.) So I zoomed back to the police department and filed a report. Eyes were rolled, my friends. Then there was the time I called the cops one midnight because I thought someone was trying to break down my door, and it turned out to be another dog. It can be said that I am known for goofy reports down at the cop shop. It might also be said that dogs like to fuck with me. I'll just sit here ignoring the impulse to call the police, and hope the next knock at my door isn't the worlds most polite spree murderer. Or a possum.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
A Note from Normal
As you may recall, I was recently diagnosed with ADD. Nearly three hours ago I took my very first dose of Adderal ever.
This is the first time in my adult life that I've ever sustained the kind of mental focus I'm now experiencing for longer than 45 minutes at a stretch. Not a narrow, intense focus either...a generalized, 'yeah, uh-huh' kind of focus. And I'm not knocking that; it's interesting in a 'yeah, uh-huh' kind of way. I'm also discovering just how much of my time and energy has gone into maintaining a whole battery of coping strategies. Having that extra mental activity absent, letting those strategies go unused for this long is also mildly interesting; the key adjective so far being 'mildly'. So far, 'normal' as a base state is kind of like moving from Castle Frankenfurter into an anonymous tract home.
What in heaven's name do you people get out of this?
When my life is going well and outside annoyances aren't being annoying, the inside of my head is entertaining as hell, vivid and colorful. I experience the world as a succession of intensely interesting, surprising, and exciting things. This is not to say that it isn't also full of giant robot pterodactyls and wiener dogs and Volkswagens and stuff, because it is.
Apparently the average mind is an index that operates like a three-dimensional flow chart, and query 'x' will always, in the average mind, follow proscribed pathways through that flow chart to arrive at solution 'y'. My mind, however, is like a latex Habitrail in a state of constant molecular passage through an intricate perpetual-motion sculpture filled with hummingbirds and random explosions.
You will always reliably arrive at 'y'.
I'll arrive at 'y' too, but the process will also trigger a hundred other operations along the way, so I'll simultaneosly arrive at w, r, q and d. And a small cow.
On the other hand, my learning and coping abilities, such as they are, have been forged by the kind of undersea pressures that would crush your average lifelong normal thudpucker. Now that I've emerged from those aphotic depths, lurching like some unimaginably primeval beast from the midnight sea onto the innocent shore, garlanded with seaweed and emanating a presentiment of ancient evil like a foul aura beneath the frozen moons' averted gaze and so forth, beware all upon whom I turn my unswerving gaze.
I noted the same effect when I was treated for depression years ago (minus the seaweed.) Once the fog was lifted, all the strength of will I had developed in the effort to simply survive catapulted me into the lead. I was able to process and internalize twice the recovery twice as fast. Now I can feel the same potential for forward progress. I think that once I learn how to trust that my attention will remain undivided, anything that I train that faculty upon will eventually give way before it, or be whammed into chowder with a shovel, depending on the mood.
Still, I honestly fail to see what this state has to recommend for itself on a long-term basis. This is so...average. But now I finally understand why the rest of you take drugs.
You take drugs to feel like I do when I'm not on drugs.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Souptacular Recipes from Yesteryear
I'd have to nominate Campbells' Soup as the biggest negative influence on the average middle-aged Americans' diet. It was a soup, of course; although unless it was Chicken Noodle I am hard pressed to remember it being served as such. More often, Campbell's Soup was used as a sauce, an extender, a binder...
....and apparently as a cake ingredient.
In my house, as I suspect it was in many other homes, it was also used a culinary band-aid. Don't throw awayunrecognizably charred horrifyingly over boiled perfectly good food! Just blop a log of Campbells' Cream of Something on top and bake the sapsucker! And don't forget to stick some cheese, pearl onions, tater tots, Corn Chex, cornflakes, fried onions-in-the-can, Doritos, Fritos, Ritz crackers, soda crackers, coconut flakes, walnut chunks, whipped cream, miniature marshmallows or barbecue motherfucking potato chips on top particularly if what's underneath is extra disgusting.* Take it from one who knows...you could hide a lot of evil under a thick coating of Campbell's. Or a locomotive, or your mother.
There was no escaping it! The stuff was everywhere! Any family or group event you attended - weddings, funerals, picnics, reunions, potluck dinners and birthdays - half the food on the table would have been made using Campbell's soup.
And so, in the spirit of sharing the dark side of our American culinary heritage, I'd like to present this recipe to posterity:
AUNT LILLIANS' BISQUICK, CAMPBELL'S AND VELVEETA PIZZA
... My cousins used to tear this shit up like wild pigs.
CRUST:
-2 cups Bisquick
-1/2 cup water...knead for 1 minute then roll out and shape into circle 1/4 inch thick on pan. Pinch dough around edges to form slight rim.
TOPPING:
-1 can Campbell's Tomato soup, undiluted, shlooped out of can directly onto raw dough and spread with a rubber spatula to cover thinly
-1 lb hamburger (crowd pan and boil until grey. DO NOT DRAIN.)
-Velveeta cheese, sliced, to cover every single square inch
-1 can black olives, sliced in half
Bake at 425 for 30 minutes.
The thing about this recipe is that it would probably be marginally edible if the cheese was anything but Velveeta.
Velveeta does not melt well when baked. What it does, is burn. And at this temperature, it burns rather spectacularly, complete with flames, black smoke and little specks of ash floating around the kitchen; and this is exactly what happened every single time my Aunt Lillian served it. The smell was exactly what you'd expect any milk product in flames to smell like (i.e a sweaty t-shirt covered in baby formula barf and then used to clean a wood stove.) In presentation this dish resembled a well-used manhole cover, the hamburger sticking up in craggy lumps beneath a fragile vitreous glaze of burnt processed cheese-food, the olives laid out all shiny and wizened up on top of the thing like little black Volkswagens caught out by an asteroid strike.
I trawled the back alleys of my cookbook collection, and here's the closest printed thing I could find right offhand to the above:
You see? I'm not making this shit up.
Neither am I making this up:
Heres' the thing about the Campbell's recipe books c. 1940-1970 (and I have several)...they suck.
Campbell's Inc. clearly gave less than a lukewarm, runny shit about what went between the covers as long as there was something there besides clip art. Now you market this shit to newlywed girls with little to no clue, and put it on the table in front of a public who all smoked like fiends anyway, who's going to know any different, right?
Campbell's is responsible for popularizing such staples of the mid-century table as:
And...
Green bean casserole, from the kitchen of someone who likes food, is really delicious and something to look forward to. This one will give you something that looks and smells like the aftermath of a nuclear incident nearby a tiny alien logging operation.
I don't remember anybody ever making this with Cream of Chicken soup, probably because that would have been marginally tasty. No, they always made it with gross-ass Cream of Mushroom because vegetables are supposed to be obligatory and disgusting, not delicious.
The Campbell's version of stuffed peppers was something I used to dread... a slimy, wrinkled, parboiled punishment on a plate. You stuck a fork in them and they burst, and this liquid that tasted like over-boiled green beans ran out and filled up your dish as the pepper deflated and laid there like a gross saggy wrinkled Jolly Green Giant scrotum.
Here's the cookbook picture:
Looks pretty good, right? Until you look closer. That pan has never seen the inside of an oven. Those peppers are raw. That's right. This is fucking staged. And you know why; because they took the first pan out of the oven, recoiled in horror, and called in a professional. You make this dish according to their recipe and the peppers come out all pale and squatty and freaky, the tomato soup on top burns black because it's full of corn syrup. Remember?
And what about these taste temptations?
I have no idea why this even exists as a recipe. But this is the actual Ur-tuna casserole recipe, right here. Lucky you!
Everyones' parents LOVED this shit. Absolutely loved it. I have no idea why. Not only did it look disgusting and taste disgusting, it smelled like a taxicab seat. And there's fucking PEAS floating around in it.
And vying for number one with 'Pressure-Cooked Anything' on my childhood list of culinary horror:
This isn't out of the Campbell's cookbook. It's out of this one again:
This recipe is absolutely the most horrible thing that's ever been done to a piece of beef in the history of food. It's absolutely revolting. Our house version was, you took the steak and dumped the seasoned flour all over it and then beat it to death with a toothed mallet for about 20 minutes, turning it over and scraping all the frag and flour off the board and dumping it back on and whamming it in until the meat was pale gluey Easter pink and thin and holey enough to read a newspaper through; and so huge you could use it as a bathmat. Then you just flopped in in the pan with everything else and let it boil for an hour while you stood over the stove with a Pall Mall dangling from your lips and poked it with a fork.
So remember, middle-aged America, the next time anyone tries to face you up about some of your food horror stories, you just show them this. And don't forget to tell them...it gets worse.
Much, much worse.
________________________________________________________________
*ever notice that? You could always tell which casseroles were the nasty ones; they were the ones with the most delicious toppings.
....with a tip of the hat to DaNator
....and apparently as a cake ingredient.
In my house, as I suspect it was in many other homes, it was also used a culinary band-aid. Don't throw away
There was no escaping it! The stuff was everywhere! Any family or group event you attended - weddings, funerals, picnics, reunions, potluck dinners and birthdays - half the food on the table would have been made using Campbell's soup.
And so, in the spirit of sharing the dark side of our American culinary heritage, I'd like to present this recipe to posterity:
AUNT LILLIANS' BISQUICK, CAMPBELL'S AND VELVEETA PIZZA
... My cousins used to tear this shit up like wild pigs.
CRUST:
-2 cups Bisquick
-1/2 cup water...knead for 1 minute then roll out and shape into circle 1/4 inch thick on pan. Pinch dough around edges to form slight rim.
TOPPING:
-1 can Campbell's Tomato soup, undiluted, shlooped out of can directly onto raw dough and spread with a rubber spatula to cover thinly
-1 lb hamburger (crowd pan and boil until grey. DO NOT DRAIN.)
-Velveeta cheese, sliced, to cover every single square inch
-1 can black olives, sliced in half
Bake at 425 for 30 minutes.
The thing about this recipe is that it would probably be marginally edible if the cheese was anything but Velveeta.
Velveeta does not melt well when baked. What it does, is burn. And at this temperature, it burns rather spectacularly, complete with flames, black smoke and little specks of ash floating around the kitchen; and this is exactly what happened every single time my Aunt Lillian served it. The smell was exactly what you'd expect any milk product in flames to smell like (i.e a sweaty t-shirt covered in baby formula barf and then used to clean a wood stove.) In presentation this dish resembled a well-used manhole cover, the hamburger sticking up in craggy lumps beneath a fragile vitreous glaze of burnt processed cheese-food, the olives laid out all shiny and wizened up on top of the thing like little black Volkswagens caught out by an asteroid strike.
I trawled the back alleys of my cookbook collection, and here's the closest printed thing I could find right offhand to the above:
...from 'Favorite Mormon Recipes' p.o.box 3075 Montgomery, AL 36109...in case anyone wants the address
You see? I'm not making this shit up.
Neither am I making this up:
Heres' the thing about the Campbell's recipe books c. 1940-1970 (and I have several)...they suck.
Campbell's Inc. clearly gave less than a lukewarm, runny shit about what went between the covers as long as there was something there besides clip art. Now you market this shit to newlywed girls with little to no clue, and put it on the table in front of a public who all smoked like fiends anyway, who's going to know any different, right?
Campbell's is responsible for popularizing such staples of the mid-century table as:
And...
Green bean casserole, from the kitchen of someone who likes food, is really delicious and something to look forward to. This one will give you something that looks and smells like the aftermath of a nuclear incident nearby a tiny alien logging operation.
I don't remember anybody ever making this with Cream of Chicken soup, probably because that would have been marginally tasty. No, they always made it with gross-ass Cream of Mushroom because vegetables are supposed to be obligatory and disgusting, not delicious.
The Campbell's version of stuffed peppers was something I used to dread... a slimy, wrinkled, parboiled punishment on a plate. You stuck a fork in them and they burst, and this liquid that tasted like over-boiled green beans ran out and filled up your dish as the pepper deflated and laid there like a gross saggy wrinkled Jolly Green Giant scrotum.
Here's the cookbook picture:
Looks pretty good, right? Until you look closer. That pan has never seen the inside of an oven. Those peppers are raw. That's right. This is fucking staged. And you know why; because they took the first pan out of the oven, recoiled in horror, and called in a professional. You make this dish according to their recipe and the peppers come out all pale and squatty and freaky, the tomato soup on top burns black because it's full of corn syrup. Remember?
And what about these taste temptations?
...this wins, hands down, as the defining gross childhood dish of the 20th century.
I have no idea why this even exists as a recipe. But this is the actual Ur-tuna casserole recipe, right here. Lucky you!
Everyones' parents LOVED this shit. Absolutely loved it. I have no idea why. Not only did it look disgusting and taste disgusting, it smelled like a taxicab seat. And there's fucking PEAS floating around in it.
And vying for number one with 'Pressure-Cooked Anything' on my childhood list of culinary horror:
...published by people who really, really did not like Mormons, although that's just my opinion.
This recipe is absolutely the most horrible thing that's ever been done to a piece of beef in the history of food. It's absolutely revolting. Our house version was, you took the steak and dumped the seasoned flour all over it and then beat it to death with a toothed mallet for about 20 minutes, turning it over and scraping all the frag and flour off the board and dumping it back on and whamming it in until the meat was pale gluey Easter pink and thin and holey enough to read a newspaper through; and so huge you could use it as a bathmat. Then you just flopped in in the pan with everything else and let it boil for an hour while you stood over the stove with a Pall Mall dangling from your lips and poked it with a fork.
So remember, middle-aged America, the next time anyone tries to face you up about some of your food horror stories, you just show them this. And don't forget to tell them...it gets worse.
Much, much worse.
________________________________________________________________
*ever notice that? You could always tell which casseroles were the nasty ones; they were the ones with the most delicious toppings.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Old Cookbooks: Why, God, Why?
I've been collecting old cookbooks for years and years and years and years. Just lots and lots of years. Lots of them.
I have good cookbooks, average cookbooks, old cookbooks, and new cookbooks...but mostly, I have weird cookbooks and I have very, very BAD cookbooks.
Here's a few of the weird ones.
I got this one at a YMCA thrift store in Sequim. Sequim, for those of you unfamiliar with the PNW, is where lifelong residents of the Northwest go to die. Now we know how.
The title is 'Cooking With Condensed Soups'. Ladies and gentlemen, there is a CAKE on the cover.
I haven't even cracked the thing yet. I just love knowing I own it.
You gotta clickie for the biggify on this one. It's worth it.
This is like a bad acid trip you'd have after reading the Wizard of Oz books. Seriously, if you opened your oven and found these things climbing around inside it you'd ask the landlord for a refund on your cleaning deposit, wouldn't you? Irregardless of which, you really want the recipe, don't you.
I have good cookbooks, average cookbooks, old cookbooks, and new cookbooks...but mostly, I have weird cookbooks and I have very, very BAD cookbooks.
Here's a few of the weird ones.
This is like a bad acid trip you'd have after reading the Wizard of Oz books. Seriously, if you opened your oven and found these things climbing around inside it you'd ask the landlord for a refund on your cleaning deposit, wouldn't you? Irregardless of which, you really want the recipe, don't you.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Your Worst Nightmare
I have a bad haircut, no patience for bullshit, a drivers license and a handgun.
Furthermore...
I'VE JUST BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH ADHD.
Be very afraid.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Why I Live Here Redux - a - go-go
This is real, this is not Photoshopped, this really appeared on the church readerboard down the street:
..it was a barbecue. What do you suppose was on the grill that day?
Sunday, March 25, 2012
It's Greek because the price is hairy, fool
Let me take a few moments of your time here to save you 3000.00 dollars a year off your grocery bill, OK? This won't hurt. Stop struggling. No the handcuffs are part of the proceeduWOULD YOU HOLD STILL DAMMIT.
You go to the store and what they're selling as 'Greek' yogurt is running SIX FUCKING DOLLARS (and change) A PINT. And this is the part that makes Big Dairy wealthy and you stupid: The only difference between regular yogurt and 'Greek' yogurt is that the 'Greek' version has been drained of about 1/3 to 1/2 or more of it's whey content.
That's it.
I am completely serious.
If you've been buying so-called 'Greek' yogurt and paying that kind of cash for it you need to quit being retarded now and read this carefully so I can un-tard you.
You will need:
-One bigass container of regular plain yogurt-the milk fat content is up to you. This should cost you four dollars and change. You will be saving TWO ENTIRE FUCKING DOLLARS is what I'm trying to tell you here.
-A bowl
-A colander or strainer that fits into the bowl, leaving an inch or more space between the bottom of the bowl and the bottom of the strainer thingie. (You could sit the colander up on an overturned coffee cup set in the bottom of the bowl to get some height.)
- clean, white paper towel
Instrucciones de yogue of Greek:
Colander goes in bowl.
Paper towel goes in colander.
Container of yogurt is blorped out into this.
Let stand at least one hour
VOYLER! What's left in the colander is now 'Greek' yogurt!
Need flavoring? Add flavoring. Or stir in 1 1/4 cup raw hamburger and walk around with it packed in your armpits until it starts to itch.
You will lose about 1/3 the mass you had originally in the form of whey. You can dump this out, or drink it (I do; it's very sour but I love sour things) use it to make bread or pancakes with, or-if you used unpasteurized live culture yogurt- use it as starter for any cultured food you might be making. If you're manufacturing cyborgs and you've chosen to use a wetware CPU (i.e a raccoon brain) or growing a dermis using your own skin cells, room-temperature whey makes a good interim nutrient solution.
_____________________________________
Or you can use the whey as a home remedy that is going to sound gross as hell but I swear to you this works like magic:
Got a sinus issue? By which I mean a seeping horrifying festering infection filled with dark strands of necrotic tissue and other suspicious-looking fragments which might be insect parts?
We can fix this.
-Strain the whey free of white chunks.
-Add some warm water, enough to give you about three cups of liquid
-Add about a level tablespoon full of salt and stir to dissolve
-Bend over a sink and gently suck this mixture up out of a cup using your nose. Seriously. I mean this. The salt will keep it from stinging and burning. Really! This works!
-Fluid will collect in your mouth; spit it out. Alternate spitting with just sucking up water into your nose until it just fills your sinuses, holding it, then blowing it out of your nose. Finish off the whole cup. AND RINSE THE SINK OUT AFTERWARD geeze. Including the trap. Trust me.
Repeat every couple of hours.
This will take care of your sinus issues in a couple of days. Usually takes two with me. No really I mean this. Take it from a lifelong allergic person who spent a lot of years being really poor-this works like MAGIC. Yes it's repulsive. That's part of it's charm.
Does it taste funny? Does it smell funny? A little. Nut up. Your disgusting sinus infection tasted and smelled funny too, didn't it.
DIDN'T IT.
You go to the store and what they're selling as 'Greek' yogurt is running SIX FUCKING DOLLARS (and change) A PINT. And this is the part that makes Big Dairy wealthy and you stupid: The only difference between regular yogurt and 'Greek' yogurt is that the 'Greek' version has been drained of about 1/3 to 1/2 or more of it's whey content.
That's it.
I am completely serious.
If you've been buying so-called 'Greek' yogurt and paying that kind of cash for it you need to quit being retarded now and read this carefully so I can un-tard you.
You will need:
-One bigass container of regular plain yogurt-the milk fat content is up to you. This should cost you four dollars and change. You will be saving TWO ENTIRE FUCKING DOLLARS is what I'm trying to tell you here.
-A bowl
-A colander or strainer that fits into the bowl, leaving an inch or more space between the bottom of the bowl and the bottom of the strainer thingie. (You could sit the colander up on an overturned coffee cup set in the bottom of the bowl to get some height.)
- clean, white paper towel
Instrucciones de yogue of Greek:
Colander goes in bowl.
Paper towel goes in colander.
Container of yogurt is blorped out into this.
Let stand at least one hour
VOYLER! What's left in the colander is now 'Greek' yogurt!
Need flavoring? Add flavoring. Or stir in 1 1/4 cup raw hamburger and walk around with it packed in your armpits until it starts to itch.
You will lose about 1/3 the mass you had originally in the form of whey. You can dump this out, or drink it (I do; it's very sour but I love sour things) use it to make bread or pancakes with, or-if you used unpasteurized live culture yogurt- use it as starter for any cultured food you might be making. If you're manufacturing cyborgs and you've chosen to use a wetware CPU (i.e a raccoon brain) or growing a dermis using your own skin cells, room-temperature whey makes a good interim nutrient solution.
_____________________________________
Or you can use the whey as a home remedy that is going to sound gross as hell but I swear to you this works like magic:
Got a sinus issue? By which I mean a seeping horrifying festering infection filled with dark strands of necrotic tissue and other suspicious-looking fragments which might be insect parts?
We can fix this.
-Strain the whey free of white chunks.
-Add some warm water, enough to give you about three cups of liquid
-Add about a level tablespoon full of salt and stir to dissolve
-Bend over a sink and gently suck this mixture up out of a cup using your nose. Seriously. I mean this. The salt will keep it from stinging and burning. Really! This works!
-Fluid will collect in your mouth; spit it out. Alternate spitting with just sucking up water into your nose until it just fills your sinuses, holding it, then blowing it out of your nose. Finish off the whole cup. AND RINSE THE SINK OUT AFTERWARD geeze. Including the trap. Trust me.
Repeat every couple of hours.
This will take care of your sinus issues in a couple of days. Usually takes two with me. No really I mean this. Take it from a lifelong allergic person who spent a lot of years being really poor-this works like MAGIC. Yes it's repulsive. That's part of it's charm.
Does it taste funny? Does it smell funny? A little. Nut up. Your disgusting sinus infection tasted and smelled funny too, didn't it.
DIDN'T IT.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Like, and love
Here is where I am at, right now, me.
'Love' is oxytocin. Love is limerance. Love is that emotional rush, that 'you are my everything and my reason for being' primal, animal, meat bond that forms between animals for the sole purpose of survival and perpetuation of being.
'Like' is my choice. 'Like' is based on who I am, my history, my preferences and my predelictions, based on reason and experience. 'Like' is intellectual. 'Like' is WHAT I CHOOSE. 'Like' is based on who I am and my taste.
'Like' is what survives when 'Love' wanes.
'Like' is what keeps me connected to the fellow beings I select, based on what I prefer.
'Like' never dies.
'Like' is what Love takes root in, and the only thing that will make it flourish.
Holy shit I am a profound motherfucker.
'Love' is oxytocin. Love is limerance. Love is that emotional rush, that 'you are my everything and my reason for being' primal, animal, meat bond that forms between animals for the sole purpose of survival and perpetuation of being.
'Like' is my choice. 'Like' is based on who I am, my history, my preferences and my predelictions, based on reason and experience. 'Like' is intellectual. 'Like' is WHAT I CHOOSE. 'Like' is based on who I am and my taste.
'Like' is what survives when 'Love' wanes.
'Like' is what keeps me connected to the fellow beings I select, based on what I prefer.
'Like' never dies.
'Like' is what Love takes root in, and the only thing that will make it flourish.
Holy shit I am a profound motherfucker.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Three Things People Overcomplicate With Rhetoric
The Patriarchy: I'm right because I can beat you up.
It is no more complicated than that. It simply isn't.
Juggalos: I'm really, really, really, really stupid.
Really stupid. Just amazingly, amazingly stupid. Truly, profoundly, just stupid.
Vegans: Animals are people and my eating disorder is a virtue.
Speaking of vegans, please...save the Jethro Kloss 'stand on the seat in your Birkenstocks and pee all over yourself' stuff for home. Seriously, that's just retarded.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
More Nevada, or, Go On Another Trip Already We're Sick of Hearing About This One
The coolest 'vacation spending' thing we did on our trip to Nevada was rent a car. I mean, we've rented cars before, but this particular experience was so streamlined it was fun.
You hit a tram right at the airport that goes through a tunnel and over a freeway at 650mph with little kids and baggage glued to the back wall; you end up at a huge traffic complex filled with taxicabs, shuttles and car-rental buses. All the little kids and baggage fall to the floor and you get out. You get onto one of the buses that your car rental agency runs. The bus smells really good, like a delicious tropical fruit drink. The driver puts your bags away and you whip off at 650mph over another freeway to a hugeass complex that kind of looks like that three-dimensional chess game from Star Trek (TOS) only it's not made of Lucite and it's full of cars and rental agencies, and only on the inside because the outside just looks like a big concrete box surrounded by depressed palm trees. You are dropped off at your rental office and a person takes you to your car, you get in and off you go. It's almost as quick as it takes to describe it.
Of course, once you get in that car, you're on your own. And finding your way out of Vegas is retardedly difficult. I more than suspect that's the whole point.
Our car was nice. Tinted windows, air conditioning that would freeze a side of beef in three minutes flat, and faster than almighty shit. Either I am way older than I thought, or they have made amazing strides back at the Pontiac factory. This thing would crack 100mph without any encouragement whatsoever and the only way you realized it was that the 'Coyote and Roadrunner' landscape loop got kind of blurry as it went past. This is no exaggeration, it really happened. Usually while I was driving.
It's true that as you get all old and shit you return to the tastes of your childhood. Specifically, those tastes that come loaded down with artificial colorings, guar gum, polysorbate 80 and monosodium glutimate. It probably has a lot to do with the soft texture and oversalted, fat-laden mouth feel too, but whatever it is, you go back to it in times of uncertainty, like when you're travelling and you don't know where's good to eat. Like we did.
Now to be fair there's nothing whatsoever in the way of decent cuisine going on in Nevada...or if there is it's guarded more closely than the secret of the Wu Tang clan. No, there isn't, you folks who are saying what about those fancy restaurants in the big name casinos. It all comes off the same truck. It's all food service. It doesn't make that much difference who is back there setting it on fire when what they're starting out with is identically sourced and identically average.
And surprisingly this didn't bother me too much. We ate a few meals at the buffet in our hotel, and it was pretty bad, but it was bad in a nice, familiar way, which was weird until I figured it out. It had as much to do with the ambiance as it did with the mooshy textures and neon colors. Aside from a few odd decorating choices and all the morbidly obese old people, it looked, sounded and smelled exactly like a school lunch room.
This held true wherever we went. Food service in Nevada is aimed at slopping the hogs fast and efficiently, and you cruise right on through no matter where you go, no waiting, no fucking around, pay, get your food, eat it and leave. Food isn't the main event there. Gambling is. Apparently gamblers aren't real concerned with food. They are concerned with cars and shitty jewellery.
There was an entire neighborhood devoted to luxury car dealerships. Not just one BMW dealership, but competing BMW dealerships, and Cadillac, and Lexus, and Rolls, and Ferrari. After awhile you simply don't care anymore. Yeah, there's another Lincoln dealership, whatever. But our interest in late-model cars is pretty jaded anyway since we've owned so many vehicles over the years. Once you've owned and driven a vintage luxury barge from the Golden Days of Automotive Excess, a brand-new status car just doesn't have that much appeal. We're so cool.
There were more jewelry shops than I have ever seen; just an unbelievable freaking heap of jewelery shops everyfucking time you turned around. And it was just awful crap. If there's a shortage of industrial diamonds, I know why; because I have never seen so many shit-colored diamonds in my life. Actually this was my first time, but still. They sold every kind of jewelery you can possibly imagine, including stuff that had no business being jewelery like engine parts and exercise equipment and giant bugs and dead shit. Mostly skulls. Not small skulls. Not 'Day of the Dead' stuff. Just regular average skull skulls. They even came in sizes, from infant to 'oh what the fuck.' The things were everywhere, and they were all covered in 'diamonds'. I had no idea there was such a market for skulls with sparkly shit glued to them. The most popular were: wolf, human, saber-toothed tiger, dragon, and deer. Some of them were hinged so you could keep your stash in there. Some of them had a loop on top with a chain so you could wear them around your neck. What shall I wear today? Full sized deer skull, with antlers. Yeah, going to the supermarket in my life-sized deer skull necklace, with antlers, that's covered in crap-grade diamonds, that's hinged, picking up a gallon of milk, getting tangled up in the grocery cart because my necklace has antlers, yeah I have a coupon for that right here in my deer skull, hang on.
The number one market for all this crap jewelery seemed to be middle-aged women from Luzon. Every single one of them were covered head to toe in metric shit tons of cheap sparkly Chinese bling like a protective exoskeleton of awesome sparkly over tight, black, fetishy clothes. Like the officers' uniform of a disco spy unit, or really short extras from The Road Warrior. I have no idea what this is about, but it was a welcome treat for the eyes. Other than them, the people watching was kind of dismal, unless you had some kind of weird interest in old white people, which I do not.
We had fun, though, and I'm glad we went. The last time I was in Las Vegas was in 1977, when we saw Kathryn Kuhlman make people fall down, after which we all sat in a dusty baseball field eating Kentucky Fried Chicken out of a box. Seven hours was not enough time to develop much of a feel for the place. I still can't say I have a perfect feel for the place, but then again I now know I don't feel a need to anymore, so theres that. See? Travel is broadening. Particularly if you eat at the buffets.
You hit a tram right at the airport that goes through a tunnel and over a freeway at 650mph with little kids and baggage glued to the back wall; you end up at a huge traffic complex filled with taxicabs, shuttles and car-rental buses. All the little kids and baggage fall to the floor and you get out. You get onto one of the buses that your car rental agency runs. The bus smells really good, like a delicious tropical fruit drink. The driver puts your bags away and you whip off at 650mph over another freeway to a hugeass complex that kind of looks like that three-dimensional chess game from Star Trek (TOS) only it's not made of Lucite and it's full of cars and rental agencies, and only on the inside because the outside just looks like a big concrete box surrounded by depressed palm trees. You are dropped off at your rental office and a person takes you to your car, you get in and off you go. It's almost as quick as it takes to describe it.
Of course, once you get in that car, you're on your own. And finding your way out of Vegas is retardedly difficult. I more than suspect that's the whole point.
Our car was nice. Tinted windows, air conditioning that would freeze a side of beef in three minutes flat, and faster than almighty shit. Either I am way older than I thought, or they have made amazing strides back at the Pontiac factory. This thing would crack 100mph without any encouragement whatsoever and the only way you realized it was that the 'Coyote and Roadrunner' landscape loop got kind of blurry as it went past. This is no exaggeration, it really happened. Usually while I was driving.
It's true that as you get all old and shit you return to the tastes of your childhood. Specifically, those tastes that come loaded down with artificial colorings, guar gum, polysorbate 80 and monosodium glutimate. It probably has a lot to do with the soft texture and oversalted, fat-laden mouth feel too, but whatever it is, you go back to it in times of uncertainty, like when you're travelling and you don't know where's good to eat. Like we did.
Now to be fair there's nothing whatsoever in the way of decent cuisine going on in Nevada...or if there is it's guarded more closely than the secret of the Wu Tang clan. No, there isn't, you folks who are saying what about those fancy restaurants in the big name casinos. It all comes off the same truck. It's all food service. It doesn't make that much difference who is back there setting it on fire when what they're starting out with is identically sourced and identically average.
And surprisingly this didn't bother me too much. We ate a few meals at the buffet in our hotel, and it was pretty bad, but it was bad in a nice, familiar way, which was weird until I figured it out. It had as much to do with the ambiance as it did with the mooshy textures and neon colors. Aside from a few odd decorating choices and all the morbidly obese old people, it looked, sounded and smelled exactly like a school lunch room.
This held true wherever we went. Food service in Nevada is aimed at slopping the hogs fast and efficiently, and you cruise right on through no matter where you go, no waiting, no fucking around, pay, get your food, eat it and leave. Food isn't the main event there. Gambling is. Apparently gamblers aren't real concerned with food. They are concerned with cars and shitty jewellery.
There was an entire neighborhood devoted to luxury car dealerships. Not just one BMW dealership, but competing BMW dealerships, and Cadillac, and Lexus, and Rolls, and Ferrari. After awhile you simply don't care anymore. Yeah, there's another Lincoln dealership, whatever. But our interest in late-model cars is pretty jaded anyway since we've owned so many vehicles over the years. Once you've owned and driven a vintage luxury barge from the Golden Days of Automotive Excess, a brand-new status car just doesn't have that much appeal. We're so cool.
There were more jewelry shops than I have ever seen; just an unbelievable freaking heap of jewelery shops everyfucking time you turned around. And it was just awful crap. If there's a shortage of industrial diamonds, I know why; because I have never seen so many shit-colored diamonds in my life. Actually this was my first time, but still. They sold every kind of jewelery you can possibly imagine, including stuff that had no business being jewelery like engine parts and exercise equipment and giant bugs and dead shit. Mostly skulls. Not small skulls. Not 'Day of the Dead' stuff. Just regular average skull skulls. They even came in sizes, from infant to 'oh what the fuck.' The things were everywhere, and they were all covered in 'diamonds'. I had no idea there was such a market for skulls with sparkly shit glued to them. The most popular were: wolf, human, saber-toothed tiger, dragon, and deer. Some of them were hinged so you could keep your stash in there. Some of them had a loop on top with a chain so you could wear them around your neck. What shall I wear today? Full sized deer skull, with antlers. Yeah, going to the supermarket in my life-sized deer skull necklace, with antlers, that's covered in crap-grade diamonds, that's hinged, picking up a gallon of milk, getting tangled up in the grocery cart because my necklace has antlers, yeah I have a coupon for that right here in my deer skull, hang on.
The number one market for all this crap jewelery seemed to be middle-aged women from Luzon. Every single one of them were covered head to toe in metric shit tons of cheap sparkly Chinese bling like a protective exoskeleton of awesome sparkly over tight, black, fetishy clothes. Like the officers' uniform of a disco spy unit, or really short extras from The Road Warrior. I have no idea what this is about, but it was a welcome treat for the eyes. Other than them, the people watching was kind of dismal, unless you had some kind of weird interest in old white people, which I do not.
We had fun, though, and I'm glad we went. The last time I was in Las Vegas was in 1977, when we saw Kathryn Kuhlman make people fall down, after which we all sat in a dusty baseball field eating Kentucky Fried Chicken out of a box. Seven hours was not enough time to develop much of a feel for the place. I still can't say I have a perfect feel for the place, but then again I now know I don't feel a need to anymore, so theres that. See? Travel is broadening. Particularly if you eat at the buffets.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Why I Live Here
The sign at either end of town reads 'Sumas: A Nice Place To Live...And Do Business'. My house is the first thing you see right after you pass that sign, and I try to keep the place looking nice. So it was that I came to be outside yanking weeds last Summer when a couple of bicyclists came riding past reading the sign to each other in snarky voices and laughing. I flipped them off and said 'Yeah, keep on riding, assholes' as they passed. They had the nerve to look astonished. But I was hurt, y'all. Snotty fucking bicyclists and their snotty fucking attitudes. Keep pedalling your kids' toy right on out of town and don't let a combine hit you on the way out, dipshits. We wouldn't have you.
Is it perfect here? Depends on your definition.
The wind through here can reach hurricane force in Spring and Fall, and does so often. If you have a metal shed, you either tie it down or you watch it fly away like the Wicked Witch. On the other hand, snow doesn't stay around for long, since it never really gets a chance to touch the ground.
There are times that it smells like you're living in a cow butt. Silage, flattened skunk, aged dairy pee and rotting cole add to the symphony of delicious aromas on certain still, humid days.
We have weird next-door neighbors. They live in a tottering house just barely visible behind a tangle of un-mowed grass and overgrown shrubs and trees. (Migrating birds love this jungle and I've added seven new species to my life list just by looking out my kitchen window at their yard.) The neighbors hoard animals. Rats seem to be their favorites. Occasionally those tame rats come over to visit and to amble around in my flowerbeds and lick their butts in my front yard. The daughter likes to argue loudly with the pear tree, and occasionally on nice nights she comes out onto the back porch and screams gibberish. Perfectly nice woman in her right mind, as is her mother, who I haven't seen in two years. We haven't seen the father in over five.
I've had worse neighbors. Hell, I've had worse family. Add prime birdwatching and the knowledge that they'll never, ever complain about anything we do over here (mainly because they don't come out during the daytime), and you have a situation that is pretty much ideal for both Hippie and Biker and the type of element we attract. In fact it's like the Small World ride at Disneyland here. I dress up like a toy nutcracker and the Biker puts on his dirndl and everyone sings about global brotherhood, and you never hear a peep from next door.
Across the street is a hayfield. In the spring and summer, and on into the early fall they take a harvest off it about once every three weeks, and my allergies kick into high gear. The mower sends a fine green mist into the air as it circles the field, which you can taste. When the silage equipment comes through and shoots the cut green hay into the wagon, the fermented spray that creates acts like a heavy drifting fog that leaves dried ripples of fibrous stuff on windshields, windows, and the side of the house. The crud I dump out of my vacuum cleaner turns beige and fluffy for a couple of days, and when you sneeze it tastes like grass. That can get annoying.
On the other hand I can go into City Hall dressed in yoga pants and a cut off t-shirt with my tattoos hanging out, or caked in mud with shit all in my hair like aphids and twigs and stuff, and compost down the front of my pants and my shoes tracking wet lagoonage, and I can speak with the Mayor just by asking to. Any damn time I want. Or the Chief of Police. Or anyone on the City Council or in the Works Department. I've done this. Despite my appearance they'll listen to me and take me seriously. They did.
This kind of casual accessibility is priceless. These people aren't sequestered, they aren't faceless; they don't belong to a different class than me and they don't live in another part of town...they're neighbors. I see them wearing torn sweatpants buying animal beer at the Quickie Mart. We know each other. Cops included.
Last winter when the Biker was working graveyard I was up alone about midnight when I heard something outside at my front door. Something THROWING ITSELF at the front door! I could see the door shudder with each blow! Pistol in hand, eyes bugging out, I dialed the police. Before I hung up the goddamn PHONE they were in my driveway shining a spotlight.
No it wasn't a tweaker. Or a zombie. Or a zombie tweaker. It was a stray dog. Why some random-ass dog tried to bread into my house at 12:03 at night is still a mystery. I still get a big smartass grin and wave every time I see the officer who answered that call.*
Here's another example. One day the Biker decided out of the blue to stop off for a drink after work at the local watering hole, three blocks away. Once there, he thought that it would be a good idea to take three of the brand-new pain pills he'd just been prescribed that afternoon with a Long Island Iced Tea, because he is a man. After that hit, he realized he was feeling a little funny; so because he is a man and also sixteen and bulletproof, decided it was time to drive home. Very slowly.
On the wrong side of the road.
With a police car following him.
The police simply made sure he got home safely and let it go. Never said a word, never issued a ticket. Why? Because they know us. We're not fucked-up people. We don't make a habit of visiting the local watering hole, let alone driving 10mph on the wrong side of the road. That, and they probably realized that the best thing they could do in terms of deterrence is to let him face ME.
But the best example of why we live here happened while we were away in Nevada.
We pay our utilities directly to the City. Once they bill you, you have I think it's three working days to settle before they send a guy out.
We got caught up in the preparations for our trip, and the bill went due two days before we left.
We came back after four days gone and receive a telephone call from the city. Did we know they had to shut off our lights?
WTF? Our lights are still on.
Oh, 'Local Philanthropist' paid your bill. Holy crap lady, we're glad to hear from you. We've had the police making welfare checks on your place for the past three days! We were scared you guys were laying dead in there or something! I mean there were cars in the driveway, and...
OK freaked-out person. We'll be right in. Don't worry.
I went down and everyone in the office is all relieved. Oh, there she is! Thank God!
The cops peek in from their desk in the next room. 'We didn't know what happened to you guys! You usually let us know when you go away! We didn't know what to think! I was going to get a dog and, because..'
Local Philanthropist wanders in. 'Listen, it's OK if you need time. I know you just got back from Vegas-'
Not at all. Here's the cash. We shake hands.
And that's why we live here.
________________________________________
*Of course, I have a history of dog-centric police calls. Like the time someones' Australian Cattle Dog decided to herd me, in my car, all the way back to his house, and then lead me around the whole farmyard five times barking and crying before running off. I called the police on that one, because I've evidently seen too many episodes of 'Lassie' as a child, and figured Timmy was laying in there with a broken leg helpless to stop the weasels from eating his face. Turns out this dog likes to herd vehicles. He's even stopped semi trucks and herded them back to his farm.
Is it perfect here? Depends on your definition.
The wind through here can reach hurricane force in Spring and Fall, and does so often. If you have a metal shed, you either tie it down or you watch it fly away like the Wicked Witch. On the other hand, snow doesn't stay around for long, since it never really gets a chance to touch the ground.
There are times that it smells like you're living in a cow butt. Silage, flattened skunk, aged dairy pee and rotting cole add to the symphony of delicious aromas on certain still, humid days.
We have weird next-door neighbors. They live in a tottering house just barely visible behind a tangle of un-mowed grass and overgrown shrubs and trees. (Migrating birds love this jungle and I've added seven new species to my life list just by looking out my kitchen window at their yard.) The neighbors hoard animals. Rats seem to be their favorites. Occasionally those tame rats come over to visit and to amble around in my flowerbeds and lick their butts in my front yard. The daughter likes to argue loudly with the pear tree, and occasionally on nice nights she comes out onto the back porch and screams gibberish. Perfectly nice woman in her right mind, as is her mother, who I haven't seen in two years. We haven't seen the father in over five.
I've had worse neighbors. Hell, I've had worse family. Add prime birdwatching and the knowledge that they'll never, ever complain about anything we do over here (mainly because they don't come out during the daytime), and you have a situation that is pretty much ideal for both Hippie and Biker and the type of element we attract. In fact it's like the Small World ride at Disneyland here. I dress up like a toy nutcracker and the Biker puts on his dirndl and everyone sings about global brotherhood, and you never hear a peep from next door.
Across the street is a hayfield. In the spring and summer, and on into the early fall they take a harvest off it about once every three weeks, and my allergies kick into high gear. The mower sends a fine green mist into the air as it circles the field, which you can taste. When the silage equipment comes through and shoots the cut green hay into the wagon, the fermented spray that creates acts like a heavy drifting fog that leaves dried ripples of fibrous stuff on windshields, windows, and the side of the house. The crud I dump out of my vacuum cleaner turns beige and fluffy for a couple of days, and when you sneeze it tastes like grass. That can get annoying.
On the other hand I can go into City Hall dressed in yoga pants and a cut off t-shirt with my tattoos hanging out, or caked in mud with shit all in my hair like aphids and twigs and stuff, and compost down the front of my pants and my shoes tracking wet lagoonage, and I can speak with the Mayor just by asking to. Any damn time I want. Or the Chief of Police. Or anyone on the City Council or in the Works Department. I've done this. Despite my appearance they'll listen to me and take me seriously. They did.
This kind of casual accessibility is priceless. These people aren't sequestered, they aren't faceless; they don't belong to a different class than me and they don't live in another part of town...they're neighbors. I see them wearing torn sweatpants buying animal beer at the Quickie Mart. We know each other. Cops included.
Last winter when the Biker was working graveyard I was up alone about midnight when I heard something outside at my front door. Something THROWING ITSELF at the front door! I could see the door shudder with each blow! Pistol in hand, eyes bugging out, I dialed the police. Before I hung up the goddamn PHONE they were in my driveway shining a spotlight.
No it wasn't a tweaker. Or a zombie. Or a zombie tweaker. It was a stray dog. Why some random-ass dog tried to bread into my house at 12:03 at night is still a mystery. I still get a big smartass grin and wave every time I see the officer who answered that call.*
Here's another example. One day the Biker decided out of the blue to stop off for a drink after work at the local watering hole, three blocks away. Once there, he thought that it would be a good idea to take three of the brand-new pain pills he'd just been prescribed that afternoon with a Long Island Iced Tea, because he is a man. After that hit, he realized he was feeling a little funny; so because he is a man and also sixteen and bulletproof, decided it was time to drive home. Very slowly.
On the wrong side of the road.
With a police car following him.
The police simply made sure he got home safely and let it go. Never said a word, never issued a ticket. Why? Because they know us. We're not fucked-up people. We don't make a habit of visiting the local watering hole, let alone driving 10mph on the wrong side of the road. That, and they probably realized that the best thing they could do in terms of deterrence is to let him face ME.
But the best example of why we live here happened while we were away in Nevada.
We pay our utilities directly to the City. Once they bill you, you have I think it's three working days to settle before they send a guy out.
We got caught up in the preparations for our trip, and the bill went due two days before we left.
We came back after four days gone and receive a telephone call from the city. Did we know they had to shut off our lights?
WTF? Our lights are still on.
Oh, 'Local Philanthropist' paid your bill. Holy crap lady, we're glad to hear from you. We've had the police making welfare checks on your place for the past three days! We were scared you guys were laying dead in there or something! I mean there were cars in the driveway, and...
OK freaked-out person. We'll be right in. Don't worry.
I went down and everyone in the office is all relieved. Oh, there she is! Thank God!
The cops peek in from their desk in the next room. 'We didn't know what happened to you guys! You usually let us know when you go away! We didn't know what to think! I was going to get a dog and, because..'
Local Philanthropist wanders in. 'Listen, it's OK if you need time. I know you just got back from Vegas-'
Not at all. Here's the cash. We shake hands.
And that's why we live here.
________________________________________
*Of course, I have a history of dog-centric police calls. Like the time someones' Australian Cattle Dog decided to herd me, in my car, all the way back to his house, and then lead me around the whole farmyard five times barking and crying before running off. I called the police on that one, because I've evidently seen too many episodes of 'Lassie' as a child, and figured Timmy was laying in there with a broken leg helpless to stop the weasels from eating his face. Turns out this dog likes to herd vehicles. He's even stopped semi trucks and herded them back to his farm.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll
The Biker is descended from original (white) settlers here in Subdued Excitement. If there is a street out hyar that was named prior to 1900, chances are that it's named after the pioneer family homestead it lead to, and that the Biker clan is related to that family. They liked their strange, those Bikers. Which is a good thing, particularly when you consider the whole 'rural and isolated' part of the equation. This is a part of the country where memories are long and people stay put generation after generation. Long-time residents hear a last name and go 'Oh. You're a 'Fill In the Name,' huh?' after which you're either welcomed and accepted, or turned down for a loan, or remanded to sheriffs' custody. If you've ever read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' you know what I mean.
We got a visit yesterday from one of the self-appointed family historians, who came to consult the photographs and papers we inherited from the Bikers' father, the Playboy of the Western World. In passing he mentioned that what we'd thought was the original family homestead was instead the second one. The actual factual first homestead was only a short distance away, and the two cabins that those early Bikers had hammered together from cedar logs, sawpit baulks and hand-whittled pegs are still there and still inhabited. They've been remodelled over the years of course, but the original structure is still clearly visible.
Across the street from the main ancestral manse is a graveyard. We walked through and found where the Bikers ancestors were planted. I was happy to see that despite their age, isolation and Goth appeal, the old granite and marble markers have lain unvandalized all these years.
It brought back a lot of memories for us about the Playboy, and how much history was lost when he passed away, and how much our visitor had resembled him in feature, turn of phrase and gesture. There is no mistaking a member of the Biker clan. It was the type of sodden winter afternoon, overcast and windy, and certainly the type of excursion, that made you think about mortality. It was an interesting day.
Today, the Biker was almost killed in a head-on collision on the way to work.
_______________________________
A car tried to pass a semi in the oncoming lane, doing 70. It shot out in front of the Biker, who braked hard. The car missed him by less than a foot and continued on into the ditch at the side of the road, plunging at speed beneath a concrete flood control grate.
The Biker pulled over. The car in the ditch was bent in such a way that the rear tires were actually higher than the roof, and the roof was smashed backward by the impact. The Biker reached through the window and held the man upright because he was drowning in his own blood. It took a rescue team and lots of equipment to cut the car from around the man. He was alive and in a lot of pain when they took him away in the ambulance.
The Bikers vehicle? Not a scratch. The Biker? Not a scratch.
So he went to work.
The Bikers are a hardy fucking breed, folks.
_________________________________
We got a visit yesterday from one of the self-appointed family historians, who came to consult the photographs and papers we inherited from the Bikers' father, the Playboy of the Western World. In passing he mentioned that what we'd thought was the original family homestead was instead the second one. The actual factual first homestead was only a short distance away, and the two cabins that those early Bikers had hammered together from cedar logs, sawpit baulks and hand-whittled pegs are still there and still inhabited. They've been remodelled over the years of course, but the original structure is still clearly visible.
Across the street from the main ancestral manse is a graveyard. We walked through and found where the Bikers ancestors were planted. I was happy to see that despite their age, isolation and Goth appeal, the old granite and marble markers have lain unvandalized all these years.
It brought back a lot of memories for us about the Playboy, and how much history was lost when he passed away, and how much our visitor had resembled him in feature, turn of phrase and gesture. There is no mistaking a member of the Biker clan. It was the type of sodden winter afternoon, overcast and windy, and certainly the type of excursion, that made you think about mortality. It was an interesting day.
Today, the Biker was almost killed in a head-on collision on the way to work.
_______________________________
A car tried to pass a semi in the oncoming lane, doing 70. It shot out in front of the Biker, who braked hard. The car missed him by less than a foot and continued on into the ditch at the side of the road, plunging at speed beneath a concrete flood control grate.
The Biker pulled over. The car in the ditch was bent in such a way that the rear tires were actually higher than the roof, and the roof was smashed backward by the impact. The Biker reached through the window and held the man upright because he was drowning in his own blood. It took a rescue team and lots of equipment to cut the car from around the man. He was alive and in a lot of pain when they took him away in the ambulance.
The Bikers vehicle? Not a scratch. The Biker? Not a scratch.
So he went to work.
The Bikers are a hardy fucking breed, folks.
_________________________________
Saturday, February 11, 2012
You're Happy And You Have The Lobotomy Scar To Prove It
Part un: How do I find the meaning of life and the reason I exist?
Damn it's a good thing you came here. I can seriously help you with that shit because I'm old and I know more than you do. Now this will get a little convolute but I don't feel like making it any clearer because I've spent a long fucking time getting it narrowed down this far. So then.
Start by looking in the right place. Don't ask your dog, for example. Try to use some common sense here. People who seem to have a lot of meaning and reason for their lives are a good place to start. The microwave is not.
'Reason' and 'meaning' are then formed from what is found in the combination of ones' favorite personal experiences of observable reality and ones' personal history of experienced reality with ones' favorite versions of other peoples' stories about their history of experienced reality.* Doesn't mean the result will be right, but you'll get a reason and a meaning you can understand.
Bear in mind that expecting the conclusion you arrive at to apply perfectly to everything all the time is like looking for a pair of shoes in a steak using a sweater. It won't. Why? Because at the same time you're engaged in this process, other people (although not nearly enough of them) are doing it too, which means that ideas and points of reference will shift. Things outside your sphere of perception and control are meanwhile continuously beginning, changing and ending. Bear in mind too that your ability to perceive is limited, and you will never achieve omnipresent omniscience, which even if you did, might not provide you with much of a 'reason' or 'meaning' anyway.
It's OK though. Here's what you do in the meantime:
Come up with an idea you like about meaning and reason and test it by attempting to use that idea to effect a specific outcome. If the test bears out your idea, then you adopt the result and use it as a tool to investigate more ideas. This is called 'having a life and living it'. If your idea works, then at this point, you experience 'belief' and 'certainty' and 'increased efficiency'.
If it doesn't work, then this is the point at which you experience 'doubt' and 'instability' and 'suckage'.
What do you do then?
You don't just continue to try and wham the original fucking idea into fitting the results....you come up with a new goddamn idea and see if that works.
It will not kill you. In fact about 3/4 of the time you will experience the resulting paradigm shift as an enormous sense of relief. That 1/4 of the time you experience it as fucked up, when it destroys everything that came before and leaves you bereft of formerly familiar landmarks, is the point at which you get to make a very simple decision: build a new paradigm, or go back to the old one?
What do to?
Well...did the old one paradigm bite? Build a new one. All the phenomena you based the old one on is still there, you just have to recombine it and probably throw out a lot of stuff. This is an important point. Subtraction is a part of creation.
Did the old paradigm provide you with things that you believe to be important to you? Return to it.
All done? Good.
I know what you're saying. No seriously I do. Yes I do too. Which is why we'll tackle the issue of happiness next.
______________________
Part deux: Happiness - it's not just a city in China!
If you listened to your dog when you asked it about meaning and reason, then right now you're probably eating cat crap. Do you experience this as pleasant, fulfilling, relevant and survival-enhancing? Then you're happy, and you need to go sit over there and be happy.
If not, you're unhappy, and you still need to be sitting over there.
You do not fix unhappiness by telling yourself that you actually are happy, any more than you fill up your gas tank by telling yourself it's full.
You certainly do not solve it by telling yourself that you should be happy. Why? Because 'should' doesn't put you at 'happy'. 'Should' puts you at 'still pre-happy'.
Nor do you fix it by making other people agree that you're happy and getting pissed off at them when they won't play along.
You fix it by deciding to be happy according to your own standards, as discovered by implementing the principles in part un, and then changing things around you until you are.
Start here:
The more fallacies you base your life around, the shittier your life will be. Thus it follows that if your life is shitty, what you believe-or are trying to believe- right now is REALLY STUPID. Therefore:
Quit believing in stupid things. It makes you do stupid things. Doing stupid things makes you unhappy.
_________________________________
Part C: 'Qui Custodit Portam Asinum Caput Mouere Prius Habito'
Which is French for 'wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.'
People who deceive themselves are first of all aware of the stupidity of their data. In order to complete the operation they must then decide to continue to utilize it.
Stupidity is a state.
Self-deception is the decision to impose that state upon yourself.
As such, it is usually painfully obvious to onlookers. Those who lack the mental furniture to detect it are exactly the type of supporting cast that anyone looking to achieve happiness does not need, yet deserves, and will get. Nothing attracts more stupid like stupid, as we observe in the case of the Insane Clown Posse.
Magnets: how do they work?
Muthafuckin' rainbows.
The decision to replace action and change with self-deception subsequently and invariably creates great deal of unpleasant suck. Where many people would say 'hey, this sucks' and stop doing it, the determinedly self-deceived generally refuse to abandon the use of lies, and attempt to lie their way around this suckage by erecting higher and more elaborate buttresses of lies, which effort feeds back into itself resulting in an ever-increasing rate of material and metaphysical entropic decay; or, as it is commonly known, a giant clusterfuck of stupid.
The by-now completely overwhelmed self-deceived will commonly react to this snowballing state of affairs not by abandoning their initial strategy, but by imposing a greater volume of self - induced stupidity....attempting to cover it all over like a cat shitting in a gravel driveway by using more lies combined with abreactive stress responses. And all the while, their fucked-up paradigm state steadily propagates as they continue to apply it to the people and things around them.
Get it? It propagates.
Your determination to be stupid and behave stupidly makes other people miserable to the direct degree of their involvement with you. Your determination to CONTINUE this behavior makes their lives worse exponentially right along with yours.
Got it? Now QUIT BEING A FUCKING IDIOT.
_________________________________
*Wasn't that easy? You can stop paying for those e-meter sessions now!
Damn it's a good thing you came here. I can seriously help you with that shit because I'm old and I know more than you do. Now this will get a little convolute but I don't feel like making it any clearer because I've spent a long fucking time getting it narrowed down this far. So then.
Start by looking in the right place. Don't ask your dog, for example. Try to use some common sense here. People who seem to have a lot of meaning and reason for their lives are a good place to start. The microwave is not.
'Reason' and 'meaning' are then formed from what is found in the combination of ones' favorite personal experiences of observable reality and ones' personal history of experienced reality with ones' favorite versions of other peoples' stories about their history of experienced reality.* Doesn't mean the result will be right, but you'll get a reason and a meaning you can understand.
Bear in mind that expecting the conclusion you arrive at to apply perfectly to everything all the time is like looking for a pair of shoes in a steak using a sweater. It won't. Why? Because at the same time you're engaged in this process, other people (although not nearly enough of them) are doing it too, which means that ideas and points of reference will shift. Things outside your sphere of perception and control are meanwhile continuously beginning, changing and ending. Bear in mind too that your ability to perceive is limited, and you will never achieve omnipresent omniscience, which even if you did, might not provide you with much of a 'reason' or 'meaning' anyway.
It's OK though. Here's what you do in the meantime:
Come up with an idea you like about meaning and reason and test it by attempting to use that idea to effect a specific outcome. If the test bears out your idea, then you adopt the result and use it as a tool to investigate more ideas. This is called 'having a life and living it'. If your idea works, then at this point, you experience 'belief' and 'certainty' and 'increased efficiency'.
If it doesn't work, then this is the point at which you experience 'doubt' and 'instability' and 'suckage'.
What do you do then?
You don't just continue to try and wham the original fucking idea into fitting the results....you come up with a new goddamn idea and see if that works.
It will not kill you. In fact about 3/4 of the time you will experience the resulting paradigm shift as an enormous sense of relief. That 1/4 of the time you experience it as fucked up, when it destroys everything that came before and leaves you bereft of formerly familiar landmarks, is the point at which you get to make a very simple decision: build a new paradigm, or go back to the old one?
What do to?
Well...did the old one paradigm bite? Build a new one. All the phenomena you based the old one on is still there, you just have to recombine it and probably throw out a lot of stuff. This is an important point. Subtraction is a part of creation.
Did the old paradigm provide you with things that you believe to be important to you? Return to it.
All done? Good.
I know what you're saying. No seriously I do. Yes I do too. Which is why we'll tackle the issue of happiness next.
______________________
Part deux: Happiness - it's not just a city in China!
If you listened to your dog when you asked it about meaning and reason, then right now you're probably eating cat crap. Do you experience this as pleasant, fulfilling, relevant and survival-enhancing? Then you're happy, and you need to go sit over there and be happy.
If not, you're unhappy, and you still need to be sitting over there.
You do not fix unhappiness by telling yourself that you actually are happy, any more than you fill up your gas tank by telling yourself it's full.
You certainly do not solve it by telling yourself that you should be happy. Why? Because 'should' doesn't put you at 'happy'. 'Should' puts you at 'still pre-happy'.
Nor do you fix it by making other people agree that you're happy and getting pissed off at them when they won't play along.
You fix it by deciding to be happy according to your own standards, as discovered by implementing the principles in part un, and then changing things around you until you are.
Start here:
The more fallacies you base your life around, the shittier your life will be. Thus it follows that if your life is shitty, what you believe-or are trying to believe- right now is REALLY STUPID. Therefore:
Quit believing in stupid things. It makes you do stupid things. Doing stupid things makes you unhappy.
_________________________________
Part C: 'Qui Custodit Portam Asinum Caput Mouere Prius Habito'
Which is French for 'wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.'
People who deceive themselves are first of all aware of the stupidity of their data. In order to complete the operation they must then decide to continue to utilize it.
Stupidity is a state.
Self-deception is the decision to impose that state upon yourself.
As such, it is usually painfully obvious to onlookers. Those who lack the mental furniture to detect it are exactly the type of supporting cast that anyone looking to achieve happiness does not need, yet deserves, and will get. Nothing attracts more stupid like stupid, as we observe in the case of the Insane Clown Posse.
Magnets: how do they work?
Muthafuckin' rainbows.
The decision to replace action and change with self-deception subsequently and invariably creates great deal of unpleasant suck. Where many people would say 'hey, this sucks' and stop doing it, the determinedly self-deceived generally refuse to abandon the use of lies, and attempt to lie their way around this suckage by erecting higher and more elaborate buttresses of lies, which effort feeds back into itself resulting in an ever-increasing rate of material and metaphysical entropic decay; or, as it is commonly known, a giant clusterfuck of stupid.
The by-now completely overwhelmed self-deceived will commonly react to this snowballing state of affairs not by abandoning their initial strategy, but by imposing a greater volume of self - induced stupidity....attempting to cover it all over like a cat shitting in a gravel driveway by using more lies combined with abreactive stress responses. And all the while, their fucked-up paradigm state steadily propagates as they continue to apply it to the people and things around them.
Get it? It propagates.
Your determination to be stupid and behave stupidly makes other people miserable to the direct degree of their involvement with you. Your determination to CONTINUE this behavior makes their lives worse exponentially right along with yours.
Got it? Now QUIT BEING A FUCKING IDIOT.
_________________________________
*Wasn't that easy? You can stop paying for those e-meter sessions now!
Friday, February 03, 2012
Muk Visits Nevada: A Photo Essay, With Photos
The Biker and I visited Laughlin, Kingman and Oatman, and a little bit of Las Vegas, which was horrifying. We took pictures with our digital picture taking thing. There are batteries inside it. It is called a 'camera'. 'Camera' is Latin for 'room'. Now quit bugging me about it. The pictures show images of things we saw. Like this:
This is the road to Laughlin. Whole lotta nuffin, is what you see in Nevada, in between casinos and tiny, bleak towns filled with mobile homes and identical tan houses. Why didn't I take any pictures of Vegas? Because you can go online and see pictures of Vegas. That, and we spent only as long as it took to rent a car and return that rental car in Vegas. Fuck Vegas. I mean seriously fuck Vegas.
This was taken on the main street of Kingman. Why didn't I take any pictures of Laughlin? Laughlin is fucking ugly, is why. Laughlin consists of one main street with five or so bigass casino-hotel complexes, surrounded by identical tan houses, and desert. Fuck Laughlin. The Colorado River runs through it, and it's ok as rivers go but it's a RIVER, PEOPLE. If it were on fire, or was filled with hybrid dolphin-humans, that would be another story, but it isn't.
This is the side of the storefront Catholic Church (traditional) in the last picture. Remember? The one with the fat chick? That one. Jesus has an air conditioner on his shoulder. Remember back in the 80's when everyone was carrying around a bigass boombox on their shoulder? Yeah. But Jesus is a practical guy, and this is the middle of the Great Basin desert. If he wants to hear tunes he can duck into a tavern.
...like this one. Only this is a cocktail lounge. I think Jesus would dig the sign.
This is another painting of Jesus we saw in Kingman. Someone needs to buy this because it is cool as shit. You want it, it was in an antique shop called 'Bubbies'. The same person painted another awesome-ass painting of a Chicago Dog, and I wanted that sapsucker bad, but it cost 300.00 and there isn't a hot dog in the damn world I'm going to spend 300.00 dollars on cool or not. Fuck hot dogs.
This is a random mountain just poking up out of the desert outside of Kingman. This mountain is so old it is actually CRUMBLING into dirt, just from standing out in the hot sun getting baked to shit and then freezing at night for weeks on end like it has. If you have a mountain you should think about this. You can ruin a perfectly good mountain without meaning to really easily.
You see this here? This is the reason me and the Biker came to Nevada in the first place. This is some of the last few remaining miles of the original Route 66. We wanted to see this and travel on it ourselves. Now it's paved. It wasn't 60 years ago.
This is a ghost of what the Dust Bowl migrants faced in their desperation--20 unpaved miles across waterless, shadeless, open desert, headed straight toward the sudden dangerous grades and washouts of the jagged stone mountains in the distance. Crossed with sand-filled arroyos that the tires of the cars sank into, washes that could turn into a pit of death and erase you without warning if a flash flood occurred...caused by a rainstorm you never saw, that happened far away in the hills. The desert is still giving up the bones and belongings of these people.
Once well into the hills the stone and sand begin to give way to amazing desert plants, cacti, mesquite brush, palo verde and spanish dagger, alien and spiny. There is no sound and no smell of water anywhere. The still air perceptably draws the moisture from your skin and your hair crackles with static.
In places the road is supported on piles of stone rubble. Once well into the mountains it shrinks down until it is barely two cars wide. The hairpin turns and switchbacks are short enough so that you can scrape your car on the stone walls of the mountain in navigating them, and the grades are dangerously steep. Some of the washes you cross are so narrow that long vehicles can get lodged tight stem and stern between the downhill and uphill. This shit is not for the fainthearted driver even today. Imagine it in a Model T. I wish I could have gotten pictures of it to illustrate what I mean, but there was literally no place to get out of the car to do so. This was taken on the only wide turnout we found. It's some plants.
Up in the middle of these mountains you suddenly come into the little town of Oatman. Named after a Victorian era woman with a facial tattoo who was enslaved by the Paiute, in fact. (go Red Team!)
Among other inhabitants of the place are a herd of semi-tame hippie-ass donkeys that were turned loose way back when the mine up the road switched over to mechanized transport. The donkeys lie down in the middle of the road. They wander into the stores. They lick your windsheild. They eat cactus. They crap where they want. They do not give a fuck.
This is pretty much it for Oatman. It's in a ravine, and the town, such as it is, is perched up on the hillsides on either side of Route 66 going right through the middle.
You have to look around the corners for the 'old' Oatman to peer back at you. A lot of what stands is whats been built and re-built for years out of what remained after something fell over or burnt down. Some of it still remains, though.
If I have to live in Nevada, I'm going to live here. I'll craft motorcycle 'windsheild wipers' out of donkey leather and sell them in the summer for beer money. Come winter, I'll just pop the air conditioner out, give it back to Jesus, unblock the stack and stick on the tin chimney, fire up the woodstove with 100$ bills, uncork the Recipe, light up a cigar and watch the snow fall in my living room.
This'd be my next door neibors. The house is a cabin thats been sided and drug up to another cabin as an addition. It's built up on mesquite posts and rocks for a foundation, and the gap between the floor and the hillside closed in with shaved log slabs. The aluminum windows are salvaged, and the old shingle roof is roofed over with another roof of tin for whatever reason.
Just out of Oatman the road flattens out and becomes straighter, the grades become less nerve-wracking, and it's a long glide down into the desert along the banks of the Colorado River. This is the perfectly magic, perfectly timed sunset we saw as we rounded the last bend on Route 66. It went straight through me.
Now I have to go pee. You should probably go pee too.
This is the road to Laughlin. Whole lotta nuffin, is what you see in Nevada, in between casinos and tiny, bleak towns filled with mobile homes and identical tan houses. Why didn't I take any pictures of Vegas? Because you can go online and see pictures of Vegas. That, and we spent only as long as it took to rent a car and return that rental car in Vegas. Fuck Vegas. I mean seriously fuck Vegas.
This was taken on the main street of Kingman. Why didn't I take any pictures of Laughlin? Laughlin is fucking ugly, is why. Laughlin consists of one main street with five or so bigass casino-hotel complexes, surrounded by identical tan houses, and desert. Fuck Laughlin. The Colorado River runs through it, and it's ok as rivers go but it's a RIVER, PEOPLE. If it were on fire, or was filled with hybrid dolphin-humans, that would be another story, but it isn't.
This is the side of the storefront Catholic Church (traditional) in the last picture. Remember? The one with the fat chick? That one. Jesus has an air conditioner on his shoulder. Remember back in the 80's when everyone was carrying around a bigass boombox on their shoulder? Yeah. But Jesus is a practical guy, and this is the middle of the Great Basin desert. If he wants to hear tunes he can duck into a tavern.
...like this one. Only this is a cocktail lounge. I think Jesus would dig the sign.
This is another painting of Jesus we saw in Kingman. Someone needs to buy this because it is cool as shit. You want it, it was in an antique shop called 'Bubbies'. The same person painted another awesome-ass painting of a Chicago Dog, and I wanted that sapsucker bad, but it cost 300.00 and there isn't a hot dog in the damn world I'm going to spend 300.00 dollars on cool or not. Fuck hot dogs.
This is a random mountain just poking up out of the desert outside of Kingman. This mountain is so old it is actually CRUMBLING into dirt, just from standing out in the hot sun getting baked to shit and then freezing at night for weeks on end like it has. If you have a mountain you should think about this. You can ruin a perfectly good mountain without meaning to really easily.
You see this here? This is the reason me and the Biker came to Nevada in the first place. This is some of the last few remaining miles of the original Route 66. We wanted to see this and travel on it ourselves. Now it's paved. It wasn't 60 years ago.
This is a ghost of what the Dust Bowl migrants faced in their desperation--20 unpaved miles across waterless, shadeless, open desert, headed straight toward the sudden dangerous grades and washouts of the jagged stone mountains in the distance. Crossed with sand-filled arroyos that the tires of the cars sank into, washes that could turn into a pit of death and erase you without warning if a flash flood occurred...caused by a rainstorm you never saw, that happened far away in the hills. The desert is still giving up the bones and belongings of these people.
Once well into the hills the stone and sand begin to give way to amazing desert plants, cacti, mesquite brush, palo verde and spanish dagger, alien and spiny. There is no sound and no smell of water anywhere. The still air perceptably draws the moisture from your skin and your hair crackles with static.
In places the road is supported on piles of stone rubble. Once well into the mountains it shrinks down until it is barely two cars wide. The hairpin turns and switchbacks are short enough so that you can scrape your car on the stone walls of the mountain in navigating them, and the grades are dangerously steep. Some of the washes you cross are so narrow that long vehicles can get lodged tight stem and stern between the downhill and uphill. This shit is not for the fainthearted driver even today. Imagine it in a Model T. I wish I could have gotten pictures of it to illustrate what I mean, but there was literally no place to get out of the car to do so. This was taken on the only wide turnout we found. It's some plants.
Up in the middle of these mountains you suddenly come into the little town of Oatman. Named after a Victorian era woman with a facial tattoo who was enslaved by the Paiute, in fact. (go Red Team!)
Among other inhabitants of the place are a herd of semi-tame hippie-ass donkeys that were turned loose way back when the mine up the road switched over to mechanized transport. The donkeys lie down in the middle of the road. They wander into the stores. They lick your windsheild. They eat cactus. They crap where they want. They do not give a fuck.
This is pretty much it for Oatman. It's in a ravine, and the town, such as it is, is perched up on the hillsides on either side of Route 66 going right through the middle.
You have to look around the corners for the 'old' Oatman to peer back at you. A lot of what stands is whats been built and re-built for years out of what remained after something fell over or burnt down. Some of it still remains, though.
If I have to live in Nevada, I'm going to live here. I'll craft motorcycle 'windsheild wipers' out of donkey leather and sell them in the summer for beer money. Come winter, I'll just pop the air conditioner out, give it back to Jesus, unblock the stack and stick on the tin chimney, fire up the woodstove with 100$ bills, uncork the Recipe, light up a cigar and watch the snow fall in my living room.
This'd be my next door neibors. The house is a cabin thats been sided and drug up to another cabin as an addition. It's built up on mesquite posts and rocks for a foundation, and the gap between the floor and the hillside closed in with shaved log slabs. The aluminum windows are salvaged, and the old shingle roof is roofed over with another roof of tin for whatever reason.
Just out of Oatman the road flattens out and becomes straighter, the grades become less nerve-wracking, and it's a long glide down into the desert along the banks of the Colorado River. This is the perfectly magic, perfectly timed sunset we saw as we rounded the last bend on Route 66. It went straight through me.
Now I have to go pee. You should probably go pee too.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
This is a space filler. Please disregard.
No seriously, this is. If you're interested in reading this blog, I've just created HANDY TAGS which you'll find down at the very very bottom of this page by scrolling down, so you can go directly to the - and I use this term loosely-'Good Stuff', and skip all the crap where I whine about my family and talk about Swiss Belted cows and other crotch-punchingly dull trivia like that.
Now here is a picture of some random strangers' ween.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Exotic ball comments, Asian Pee
Yes, it's time. Long since time, in fact. What is it time for? It is time to discuss why so many Americans are so poopy, is what time it is. And who better to ask than that sage of the sands, the pimp daddy of the prognosticators....
MR. EGYPTIAN PENIS MAN!
Q- Mr. Egyptian Penis Man, how did people come to live in America?
A- Oh, thats easy. America is where everyone from the rest of the world used to send all their dipshits.
Lumpy, un-circumcised and feelin' the breeze: If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much
Earlier in their history the fun-loving Dutch had dealt with the problem of excess pee-babies and asscabbages in a haphazard manner.
MR. EGYPTIAN PENIS MAN!
Q- Mr. Egyptian Penis Man, how did people come to live in America?
A- Oh, thats easy. America is where everyone from the rest of the world used to send all their dipshits.
You see, it all started with the prehistoric Asians...
The early Europeans were slow to catch on, although the rudiments of the practice were already in place...
Of course, once the Industrial Revolution started and the losers and dipshits started piling up faster than wars and plagues could kill them off, the Europeans re-discovered America and started loading up the boats.
Q- Despite that, America went on to be quite a worldwide social and economic influence during the 20th century. What factors lead to it's current troubled state?
A- Lead consumption.
....Seriously. It started during the Victorian Era.
The Victorian Era: Sixty-four years of wacky hijinks and madcap hilarity
Q- What was the Victorian era?
A- Crap, do you have a library card? Ring ring pick up the clue phone! The Victorian era was the freakin' SHIZNIT!
Everyone in the Victorian Era wore elaborate goggles with multiple lenses. People carried Navy Colts and wore corsets and dressed in leather aviator helmets and fingerless gloves. Plus about 1/3 of the population were vampires! The only downside was that lead contamination was omnipresent, because of the Industrial Revolution, which required lots of lead because it kept the zombies who worked the looms in check. Soon everything contained lead. Common household products like medicines, cosmetics and cleaning agents contained lead. The post-combustive exhausts produced by dirigibles, patent autoperipatetikoticons and armoured land leviathans filled the air with lead-laced smog. Fish taken from waters polluted by those same early industrial wastes were high in lead, and when troops ran out of conventional ammunition during the Great Zombie Uprising of 1843, those same fish were used as bullets by villagers . Un-spent cod and bream 'rounds' dropped by panicked troops were devoured by starving children left orphaned by the fighting.
This brings us to the Dutch.
Lumpy, un-circumcised and feelin' the breeze: If you ain't Dutch, you ain't muchEarlier in their history the fun-loving Dutch had dealt with the problem of excess pee-babies and asscabbages in a haphazard manner.
Solving the Vegan Problem Haphazardly, Amsterdam c. 1500
But all that changed during the Dutch Waffle Famine of 1755:
Insufficient dietary fiber leads to rampant grouchiness, poor millenary choices, and Calvinism: Solving the Vegan Problem, Amsterdam c. 1723
And so it was that one small boy found himself chained in the hold of a dirigible bound for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave...one small, seemingly insignifigant boy, young in appearance but already ancient in the ways of evil......
Q- Oh no! What happened then, Mr. Egyptian Penis man?
A- Wait another couple of weeks and I might tell you.
TO BE CONTINUED
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Not my words, but I wish they were.
From me, and from all of us living in random conservative pockets of social wilderness still grimly holding the line, I thank you humbly, Dan Savage, for the following stark, wonderful words. Mr. Savage, you and your family can come have dinner at my place any time. Just call first and let me know if y'all have any food allergies.
_____________________________
IN YOUR IMAGE (article originally printed in The Stranger)
Oct. 14, 2010
"...I heard an interview with you about your It Gets Better campaign. I was saddened and frustrated with your comments regarding people of faith and their perpetuation of bullying. As someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage, I can honestly say I was heartbroken to hear about the young man who took his own life.
If your message is that we should not judge people based on their sexual preference, how do you justify judging entire groups of people for any other reason (including their faith)? There is no part of me that took any pleasure in what happened to that young man.
To that end, to imply that I would somehow encourage my children to mock, hurt, or intimidate another person for any reason is completely unfounded and offensive. Being a follower of Christ is, above all things, a recognition that we are all imperfect, fallible, and in desperate need of a savior. We cannot believe that we are better or more worthy than other people.
Please consider your viewpoint, and please be more careful with your words in the future.
L.R."
(Mr. Savage replies:)
I'm sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.
No, wait. I'm not. Gay kids are dying. So let's try to keep things in perspective: Fuck your feelings.
A question: Do you "support" atheist marriage? Interfaith marriage? Divorce and remarriage? All are legal, all go against Christian and/or traditional ideas about marriage, and yet there's no "Christian" movement to deny marriage rights to atheists or people marrying outside their respective faiths or people divorcing and remarrying. Why the hell not?
Sorry, L.R., but so long as you support the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, it's clear that you do believe that some people—straight people—are "better or more worthy" than others.
And—sorry—but you are partly responsible for the bullying and physical violence being visited on vulnerable LGBT children. The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy. And while there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are gay and lesbian children in your schools. And while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children have the option of attacking actual gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.
Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not "sinners." Gay and lesbian children.
Try to keep up: The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of "faithful Christians," and the lies about us that vomit out from the pulpits of churches that "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays, give your children license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your children—having listened to Mom and Dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry—feel justified in physically abusing the LGBT children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" queer kids. Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we're seeing the fruits of it: dead children.
Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?
Did that hurt to hear? Good. But it couldn't have hurt nearly as much as what was said and done to Asher Brown and Justin Aaberg and Billy Lucas and Cody Barker and Seth Walsh—day in, day out for years—at schools filled with bigoted little monsters created not in the image of a loving God, but in the image of the hateful and false "followers of Christ" they call Mom and Dad.
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For more, go here. Go now.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Spastic Twitching Muk Has Seven Seizures!!
Folks, I am back. Really I am. I know I haven't been posting. The reason why is because I am quitting smoking. Anyone out there who has tried to quit smoking knows exactly what I mean when I use that as an excuse, too. But for the rest of you smug pottyheads with your shiny pristine lungs, I will explain.
I cannot keep myself on task for longer than a minute before I'm up and pacing, gritting my teeth and clenching my fists like a goddamn tweaker. 10:am rolls around and I want a smoke. The phone rings and I want a smoke. The news comes on tv and I'm reaching for my lighter. I crack a beer? FORGET IT. But yeah...I sit down to write a post and before I finish a paragraph I'm wanting a smoke so bad I can taste nicotine in my mouth. So bear with me folks. Meanwhile, here is a nice picture of Jimmy Olson riding a big weiner:
As you can see, our man Jimmy is experiencing such a ride that all the words fell out of his word balloon! What do you suppose he's saying? What would you say? Do tell us as we gather in the comments lounge, won't you?
I cannot keep myself on task for longer than a minute before I'm up and pacing, gritting my teeth and clenching my fists like a goddamn tweaker. 10:am rolls around and I want a smoke. The phone rings and I want a smoke. The news comes on tv and I'm reaching for my lighter. I crack a beer? FORGET IT. But yeah...I sit down to write a post and before I finish a paragraph I'm wanting a smoke so bad I can taste nicotine in my mouth. So bear with me folks. Meanwhile, here is a nice picture of Jimmy Olson riding a big weiner:
As you can see, our man Jimmy is experiencing such a ride that all the words fell out of his word balloon! What do you suppose he's saying? What would you say? Do tell us as we gather in the comments lounge, won't you?
Monday, December 06, 2010
Maroon Dog Is Have The Misplace Preposition!!
Oh for heavens' sake I have been Christmas shopping and cooking things and babysitting grandbabies already. I have also been procrastinating on my super secret Canada post because cows have been looking at me funny. Seriously. I drive by and they all look at me funny. Like they know something. Something bad. Something serious. Something involving my social security number and address kinda stuff. I have duct taped all my windows and am only leaving the house to purchase sugar, coffee and flour. I am making candles out of lard and re-using bacon fat in oil lamps I made out of old soup cans and tampons (unused. I am not gross.) All my breakers are in the 'off' position and I am busily wadding up old newspapers and stuffing them down between the wall studs which is difficult while wearing a gas mask but I am coping. The cows are near, after all, and time is fleeting.
the cxows.
the COW2SSSSSSSSSSS.
the cxows.
the COW2SSSSSSSSSSS.
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