Experimental Cake

The philosophy club (Socrates Cafe) is having a fundraising bake sale today so I have been baking.

Several pans of fudge brownies later.... As well as my famous pistachio streusel sour cream coffee cake. Unfortunately, for the first time ever, it broke. I could only salvage 6 cosmetically perfect slices. The household is happy though, we get to eat funky lookin’ but great tasting cake.

Now I just pulled a vanilla spice cake out of the oven. Basic white cake with ginger, cinnamon, allspice, fresh nutmeg, lots of clove, and orange peel. I have no idea how it will taste. I guess I’ll find out in about an hour.

So feel free to just meander by the student center bldg at WCC and meet the philosophy dept. It's tiny but really good. And I just know it's on your way to somewhere.

Shameful Earworm

The dang Fox 2 news jingle. You know... “Good day, have you had a good day lately.”
Oh the humanity.

Maude-ian AM Earworm

If You Want To Sing Out Sing Out - Cat Stevens
Haven’t seen this lately, so why it’s a-poppin I don’t know. Dreamed bout rehab ala “28 Days” which I did see part of yesterday. Can’t fathom why that was part of my soundtrack.

Very weird AM earworm

My Melody Of Love - Bobbie Vinton
This was very popular on AM radio in the Metro area in the early seventies. Maybe it was ubiquitous but I was too young to be able to tell. I always assumed it was embraced so fervently in this area because we have a large Polish community around here.
The reason I think I am relentlessly hearing it is because I had a very odd dream that I was dating a brother in a family of (seemingly) all men and they were certainly ethnic (of some type, possibly Polish), clannish and rich. We ended up going bowling after some intrigue involving a gold digger, the family finances and christmas trees for sale.

Creeper earworm

This came forward somewhere around the kettle whistling and the slicing of bread.
A truly tasty earworm.

Hungry Freaks Daddy - Frank Zappa
Mr. america, walk on by your schools that do not teach
Mr. america, walk on by the minds that won’t be reached
Mr. america try to hide the emptiness that’s you inside
But once you find that the way you lied
And all the corny tricks you tried
Will not forestall the rising tide of hungry freaks daddy!

They won’t go on four no more
Great mid-western hardware store
Philosophy that turns away
From those who aren’t afraid to say what’s on their minds
The left behinds of the great society

Hungry freaks, daddy!

Mr. america, walk on by your supermarket dream
Mr. america, walk on by the liquor store supreme
Mr. america try to hide the product of your savage pride
The useful minds that it denied
The day you shrugged and stepped aside
You saw their clothes, and then you cried,
"those hungry freaks, daddy!"

They won’t go on four no more
Great mid-western hardware store
Philosophy that turns away
From those who aren’t afraid to say what’s on their minds
The left behinds of the great society

Whose got segmented eyes?

Mmm gettin’ up real, real, early and watching good cartoons. The first Rugrats & Rocko’s Modern Life and best of all, the original Ren & Stimpy. Granted I didn’t have the childhood bowl of cereal. Opting instead for the same old, same old tea and toast.

Then wonder of wonders, oh joy, a commercial for “Creepy Crawlers” came on. Oh Mama! I want that!
See, when we used to have those and “Incredible Edibles”, I was too little to do the squeezing. I didn’t get to design ‘em and I didn’t get to get close enough to the hot plates to tweeze them out with the great precision my lack of fine motor skills contraindicated.

And now back to “Ren & Stimpy”. It’s not that I didn’t painstakingly record every single, real John K. episode, cuz I did, all the way up to “Powdered Toast Man”. After they stole it away from him (or however it went down) it just got real stale.

Too bad now they are on to a bunch of more recent stuff. Which basically just can’t measure up. Since I cooked on Monday (we’ve been eating bird all week) and I got up and vacuumed at 6:00am, I guess I get to spend some time switching between parades and Ghost Hunters.

Oh Please

To whom it may concern;
No more school anxiety dreams while on break please, this is the second night in a row. I just call bullshit on that.

Halp me Julia

I almost broke my béchamel. My miraculous whisking power saved the day.

Béchamel - The mother of sauces
Scald milk with onion and clove (I added parsley)
Whisk into a WHITE (not golden, not brown, roux)

Update

OK pictures eventually, but we took home a cat. His name was Hudson but due to an unfortunate kid in school by that moniker he is now Artemus Four Jetson de Sprague.
He’s a gray, ergo Artemus. In my family all grey cats have had the Artemus designation, but he’ll be Jetson and or Sunny for common use. He’s six months old, had been at the shelter two weeks and he wants to be muffler when he grows up, so he’s practicing those skills now.
The two of them have not formally met yet. Thrills and hilarity to follow.

I am crazy busy roasting fowl and making pies, crunions, white girl casserole, my signature orange cranberry paste? sauce? (not sure which), mounds of stuffing with morels, chanterelles and portobellos, taters and a vat of gravy. I probably won’t do pix of that since I’ve done feast spreads a zillion times already. But I gotta get back....

Cat rules

Today begins the great kitten hunt. I don’t know what to expect. Instant love? Vast oceans of disappointment? How does one pick a kitten? What criteria other than it needs to be a boy does one use? How do we know whether he’s a good fit in the long run? Kitten personalities tend to be very subtle and bear studying. How does one do that via the humane Society or vet’s office or whatever.

We spent total shitloads of time picking Naan and ghee-La. Visiting them about every day from the day they were born. Watching their personalities develop. I KNEW my Naanie when he started coming over and sleeping on me every time.

I really miss my sweet boy.......

AM earworm

The “Coronation Street Theme” Oh, well played Stella.
Yesterday I had that “Long Strange Trip” song by the Grateful Dead. I thought “how annoying” then it played on a jukebox later that afternoon. Hmm.

It’s Showtime

I woke up with “Shipoopie” (from The Music Man) this am. Now it keeps blending into the one from “H.M.S. Pinafore” about the sisters and the cousins and the aunts.

The Kings Keyboard truck pulled about about 20 minutes ago, and no, no kind benefactor sent me one anonymously. The neighbor across just got a gorgeous new, black, upright.
Jealousy (as I’ve mentioned before) is always my besetting sin.

Can’t focus, need chocolate

• The student 'zine apparently now hates me, they print only one, of my worst poems, each time. I’m starting to feel patronized.

• Perhaps we shall hear the pitter of little patters? The vet has spoken that Little ghee likely needs a boy toy. We begin a searing and painful search this week.

• Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. Last day before holiday break. Christ you know it ain’t easy....

• I think I’m a senior Betty.

• Chilean Sea Bass. Lightly panfried, HOT PAN, after rolling in herbs, spices and flour then baked at 500, HOT PAN, for 6 minutes = Frickin’ totally fabulous.

• (A • C) ~ (C v A) write a truth table for that! (You only need 4 lines).

• Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. Kant vs. Mill in the battle of the centuries, @ the my brain arena, blood WILL spill. (Probably from my ears).

• The Eye Of The Sybil by Phillip K. Dick, soon to join Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban, in “The Best Things College Has Exposed Me To Hall Of Fame”.

AM Earworm

Teen Angel - Mark Dinning
This was playing in my dream as I woke up. It just got louder and louder as I gained consciousness. Just goes to show how completely twisted the subconscious is, what a terrible soundtrack.

AM earworm

Anna, and, Begun Again - The Bottom 99
That’s what I get for spending the day at home with Oliver, a head full of our own stuff that won’t come away.

AM Earworm

Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl - Robyn Hitchcock
I am obsessed with the idea of going to his show on Sunday. I think I can do this. The Ark is a small enough venue that I think, with a little help from friend Ativan, I can walk in alone and be OK. So this earworm comes as no real surprise.

The big question becomes why should one have to be either pretty or a girl in order to oop themselves in the shower? I was under the impression that most just did, no matter what the mirror shows them.

It’s nice to be heard, and thank you

Did I call for divine intervention? Was it granted? Yes and yes.
Opened up shop on the computer this am only to find that due to a water main break there is no school today! Whoot!

AND I had just finished up all my homework, so other than reviewing for exams for next week and a little light sci-fi reading for Monday I’m cool on all that. Paid all the bills and got the paperwork dealt with which is a major anxiety weight off my shoulders. As well as that while I may be technically broke, what money there is, is mine all mine.

Think I’ll go wrap the wedding present that has been hanging fire, getting that out of the way while it’s early, then actually get the dining room table cleared of all the nagging that had been.

Now we gotta think of something cool to do. I’m for going to the water of some kind. Down to the river or something.

So, later skaters, I’m off to do some stuff to make my life work.

Stopcock and the flat line

This thing that has come up about fun....
It’s really preying on me now. I took a stress questionnaire from my psych book the other day. I got a 27 when the average is 14.

I used to have a really effective technique for de-stressing. Get just stupid drunk and run around like a total fool, basically just tearin’ my ass as my good friend says. It would really take the head off the steam in the pressure cooker. But it takes me like 4 days to recover from that nowadays. I just can’t do it anymore.

But the question is what is the alternative? It’s just really hard to find anything that makes me laugh good, long, and hard which is one of the only really effective, non-harming, methods I know.

It doesn’t help being broke either, as this is a really hard town to have fun in when destitute and not on drugs.

I just need some thing, some method, some divine intervention or something.

AM Earworm

Same Rope - Etta James
Especially just the hook line over and over and over “I believe the same rope that pulled you up is shore gonna hang ya”. What is that, some kind of warning? An ethereal shoe gonna drop just because I had the audacity to be just a little happy and giddy for a half hour yesterday afternoon?
My favourite line from it is where she says “You know you’re wrong, but go ahead on....” isn’t that always the way of it? That is so the essence of the human condition.

AM earworm

A Quick One/ While He’s Away (the You Are Forgiven part) - The Who
No surprise there, we watched the “Amazing Journey” Who documentary last night.
It was really pretty good. I certainly can’t argue with a ton of Keith Moon footage. I love him. He, Bill Ward and Ginger Baker all make my toes curl. The down tight shots of Entwhistle playing are pretty amazing as well.

What was will be