I’m a toys-r-us kid

I must be growing up. I actually used up a tube of lip balm instead of losing it.

Big Dic

I found out today that I cannot just keep adding words to my spellchek user dictionary. I find that ridiculous. Why not? It’s digital information storage of single words. How much nano space can that ever really take up?
So, I had to go through the whole thing and delete a couple hundred words. Mostly formal names, but also a lot of items like argh, aarrgghhh, and arghhh.
See now? I’ll just have to add them back or else I’ll have to hit skip every time from here out...
Ridiculous.

I did it for FB, I might as well post here as well

Fine, Fine, Fine, I’ll dingily dang do it (After being tagged in multiplicity)

1) I think I’m becoming one of those old, cat ladies

2) I am all about green

3) I freaking love old marbles

4) I itch 24/7/365, there’s no drug for that you know

5) I believe that aliens are here because up until recently we were the only place in the universe where there are nachos and tacos. Think about it, cattle mutilations, crop circles, USO’s (fish tacos)....

6) I would rather do escapist reading than drugs or alcohol

7) I am woefully, painfully, shy and all that that entails

8) If I had someone cooking Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Ethiopian and OM cafe food for me all the time you MIGHT convince me to give up red meat. Except for that rennetless cheese crap, blecchhh.

9) I love bands with big, farty, coordinated dance moves, horn sections

10) I have TLD. I’m in good company - Swedenborg, maybe Blake, probably Moses, Mohammed and Elijah (or is that Ezekiel?), Dostoevsky, Van Gogh, Alan Hovannes they are all likely candidates according to forensic psychology

11) I am obsessed with boxes.

12) My favourite ice-cream is peppermint stick, with chocolate sauce

13) Art Tendler broke my big toe once, it’s still F’d up

14) Limes, more limes

15) I must have about a thousand pencils and pens

16) I won’t eat food that is dyed blue
17) I still remember Chavez’s grape boycotts of 1965 - 67

18) I have never eaten a twinkie

19) I’ve never been in a Walmart

20) I have wanted to be a parapsychologist since I was 9

21) I really, really, really, wish I could draw

22) I have some trepidation about things like Slave gerbiling Paris Hilton on South Park which I attribute to growing up when Rob and Laura had separate beds. But I bless ol’ Larry Flynt regularly.

23) I learned very early not to show off by karate chopping those big, thick, red, kindergarten pencils. There is still graphite floating around in my right hand somewhere I suppose.

24) Man, was I in love with my (now dead) cousin when I was three and he was nineteen. He had a motorcycle.

25) Sometimes I wish I had had my dead cat skinned for cat fur mittens. How rotten is that?

Breakthrough Bakery

I have had a baking issue forever. I have never been able to make pastry. No biscuits, no pie crust. Certainly not croissant or napoleon or any thing like a french pastry. I have always said that if I pop biscuits out of a tube they will be door stops. It was not an actual joke. I’ve had the pastry finger of death my entire life. Well, knock on my big wooden cutting board, because I might just have it licked.

It all came about because of Southern style chicken n’ dumplings. I was determined to learn this. At work I was asked to make it and I really, totally, bitched it up. I keep telling myself that it could happen easily as I’d never eaten this dish as well as never made it before. However I spent Friday night in a black depression because it was a kitchen disaster. Over salted like mad. Too many dumplings, not enough sauce. Apparently other than that it was pretty much what it was supposed to be. Hah.

The dumplings are essentially a pastry noodle. Flour, fat and seasoning, then liquid. Then rolled out very thin and cut. They become a noodle when they are boiled not baked. The recipe I was using called for the fat to be blended to the flour by hand. This was to be my revelation. Everyone (read Uncle Bunny, Bakeshopboy and Dramamama) kept saying that if I only would get the feel for the dough I would get it. But my mom always had me using a pastry blender which was so ineffective and tedious that I think I was always giving up before the right consistency was reached. Thus no flaky or light to be had in the kingdom. Well, doing it by hand is THE way to feel the dough! (I believe) I totally get it now.

I made another batch of chicken n’ dumplings at home this weekend. Pronounced everything they are supposed to be only better by Dali Madison. Then when my horrible plague woke me up at 4:30am this morning, craving biscuit and honey, I just got up and whipped up a batch of biscuit scones. They weren’t perfect but they were right there in the upper half of the spectrum of reasonable goodness.
I may never before have felt my Scotch side as much I did pulling a tray of beautiful, egg wash browned scones out of the oven before dawn broke.
There is another piece of this I learned the hard way though. Which is that when the liquid goes in the mixing by hand goes out. What a waste of good scone-ness.

Even more obscure

In the past two days, twice I accidentally spilt just enough of what I was pouring so that it exactly fit into the container it was being poured into.
My church will be mighty. I will rake in the cash. But I will still never vote republican.

AM Earworms

Shiloh - Neil Diamond
Later
Sadie May - The Commodores

The influence of confluence

Here’s two examples, one minor but interesting, the other terrific and fabulous.
Yesterday after posting my earworms, I was watching a western, there was a scene of a church raising and surprise, the congregation was singing “Shall We Gather At The River”. Mmmm hmmm.

The other needs a little background.
This year I sent out precisely twelve Xmas cards. I never, ever, send out Xmas cards. But I was given a packet of them as a gift, and on my way to throwing them in a drawer where they would have mouldered for twenty-five years I thought,
“ well that’s just stupid, I’ll just send them out and be done with it, besides they came in a kinda cool box I can use for some baked good Xmas gift.”
So I picked 12 people who either send me cards every year and I never reciprocate, or whom I don’t stay in touch with by mail because I have these really weird issues with mail. I can’t deal with it. I just hate it as much as phone. This sometimes bleeds through here as well, as you have probably noticed. I just have this periodic, temporary paralysis. (I don’t know the plural of paralysis).

Anyway, one of the people I sent one to is my old pal, oh, let’s call him, Quakey McAspen. I had given up on him well over ten years ago when it seemed apparent he had either decided he hated me, or his woman hated me and often that equals the same thing. Nonetheless I had a wish that somehow we could reconnect. He was such a completely quirky freak of nature. You just don’t meet those often and losing one is a real loss. I really missed him.

Last night, just as I was settling in to watch Coronation Street, the phone rang. I didn’t budge from the chair as everyone who knows me knows that you don’t call me between seven and seven thirty on a weeknight or between seven thirty and ten on a Sunday morning. I did, however, cock an ear at the machine. Lo and behold it is Quakey McAspen himself. I flew to the phone, we started yammering and the next thing I knew it was well over an hour later. We were finally wrapping up and making dinner plans when I said;
“so you saw in the card that I got a jenky little degree and...”
“Card? what card?”
“The Xmas card I sent you, isn’t that why you called?”
“You know Stella I have this weird thing about mail, I can’t deal with it, I never look at it, I never saw any Xmas card. I just missed you.”
Mmmm Hmmm.

AM Earworms of the week

Today - You’ve Got To Pick a Pocket Or Two - Fagin
Yesterday - Shall We Gather at The River - The Stella Magdalen Earworm Choir
Monday - Oliver kindly shared his immediately upon waking, which has know been mine for several days. I Saw Her Again Last Night - The Mommas and The Poppas

Clap your hands if you believe

As I'm listening to the ubiquitous news about the latest plane crash, and everyone is going on about the ferries did this and the ferries did that, I'm hearing it like this:

“All of the fairies that are always on the Hudson were first to the rescue and the fairies did a tremendous job of saving the day.”

Am Earworm chain o’ tunage

The dance number song from Napoleon Dynamite, which may be “Canned Heat” by Jamoraqui. Which led to the incidental music from ND. Which made me think of the incidental music from Benny and Joon which in turn brought up “500 Miles” by The Proclaimers.
But now I’m stuck with the J.G. Wentworth Cash Now jingle. Sigh.

I had it for too much time

I just finished rereading the Anthony Burgess 2 volume autobiography . “Little Wilson and Big God” and “You’ve Had Your Time” . First I have to thank Nitrovski Boraxski (or whatever he’s calling himself lately) for his patience in letting me sit on it for oh, maybe, say about a year? Maybe more. Too danged long anyway. Especially since I owe him the debt of hipping me to it in the first place. But, it was actually good that I waited, sort of one of those magical confluence's, because I understand him so much better now than the first time through. As well as that if I hadn’t taken a bunch of philosophy and Lit. classes I would have missed out on a bunch of stuff again. Not that I am claiming to understand Anthony Burgess. That guy is way out here in terms of education, brilliance, talent and a big dose of wackiness.

But things kept popping up that were oddly synchronistic. For example only a day or two after my little spaz about reeds and harmonicas I’m reading about him composing classical pieces for harmonica players such as John Sebastian’s father John Sebastian. Then he gave a little rundown on the musical structure of harmonica playing, which I of course did not understand. And he kept talking about things which I have been thinking about. All kinds of things, from villanelles to Rousseau to Kuala Lumpur to T.S. Elliott. He even touched on the same themes as my John MacDonald quote earlier, when he returned to Malaysia and saw them trying to get westernized.

I have some trouble reading his books, but at least now I get that it’s because he does crazy things like taking an ancient myth (normally that would be right up my alley) then sets it in a more modern time. Then takes some form of something like a Beethoven Sonata, or a mathematical formula, or a Kabbalistic prayer or whatever and overlays it onto the shape of the novel and writes within the parameters of that thing, whatever it may have been. All according to some formulae that almost no one else can recognize except him and a few other brilliant genius types.

He spoke (and read and wrote) like 20 languages. He made the language for the movie “Quest For Fire”. He was this crazy master linguist with the diphthongs and the schwas and all that. He makes me wish that someone had forced me into a classical education. I have missed so much and he did everything!

And how did old skool dudes like him drink so damn much and survive with brain cells intact? Everybody in his world is a total bloody sot . I swear there isn’t a single page without alcohol mentioned on it. I guess once you’ve survived being in the British military in WWII you can survive a lot of other abuse.

So I am highly recommending these books. This from someone who basically never reads nonfiction and things like biographies. It’s got everything travel, animals, lot’s of sex, mysticism, music and sword canes.

“Everybody got problems buddy, I got mine”

I woke up at about 4am (to pee I suppose). When I went back to bed I looked out the window and the whole sky was lit up in pale orange. I’m supposing it was the almost full moon through water vapour overcast. But it was simply divine. And eerie.
I really miss staying up all night and wish I still could. Much like when I was a toddler I resent having to sleep and try to do it as little as possible. I try to stick at no more than 7 hours. I prefer 6. It’s a conflict because I am so in love with my dreams. I dream lots and very vividly. It’s like surrealist movies all night every night. I spent the ages of 11 to 13 sleeping 14 hours a day because my dreams were so much more compelling than (alleged) reality.

I really miss being a creature of the night. Watching the sky revolve, the stars wheeling through their cycle, seeing moonrise and moonset. All the magical, slithery changes things undergo when shadow and light play over them. And those completely unexpected and rare events like purple rain or pale orange snow. That first tinge of dawn which relaxes the primitive watcher at the back of the brain. The gorgeous fears of the darkness. The idea that anything, anything at all could be out there just outside of your field of vision.
“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled”

AM Earworms

I am shamed, deeply shamed.
Everybody Wang Chung Tonight - Wang Chung

And did I mention the booze?

I accomplished maybe about 60% of the socializing I set out to do over the holiday social season.
I Did:
None of the lunches.
A ll of the dinners.
4 out of 7 of the parties.
2 shows
1 spontaneous go out for a drink.
And what I realize is that, especially if you add in one of the last parties I went to before “the season”, I just don’t really fit in anywhere.

I almost fit with the philosophy students circle except the part where they are mostly 25 years younger than me and pretty dang boozy.

I almost fit in with the folks I know from high school and related crews except for the part where I say things and then get the really, really strange looks. I had realized this before, about 15 years ago, when I was at a cocktail party with that general group of folks. The conversation was about murderers and serial killers, so I bit and started talking about all the murderers and murderees that I’ve known. And they all moved away from me on the couch there. No really, it was just like Alice’s restaurant. I should have immediately claimed to have been arrested for creating a nuisance. But they do have really classy booze.

There’s another group I have occasionally tried to hang around. They all live in places like Whitmore Lake, Howell, Fowlerville, Grass Lake and Belleville. There’s a lot of hairdressers and grownup “bomb dudes”. A lot , a lot, a lot of booze. A lot of conversations about kids and sports and bars and work and concerts and their shared history which I’m not a part of and lawn care and hair products. That one is so not working for me that I had already decided a few weeks ago that I am definitely just not going around that one anymore.

There is an adjunct, related group to that one, which is a slightly closer fit in the sense that it is the musical and entertainment business oriented people derived from the former group. There the boozy mess club has found it’s permanent headquarters. And it smells pretty bad. I can only do quickie fly-bys.

There is my very local, very fabulous, gay men scene. That one is a just a little obvious. I am not a gay man. If I am, then I’m one in a woman's body, which doesn’t get you very far points wise. I do ok in that scene, except that I’m broke, not very fabulous, I don’t care about fashion and therefore don’t have nice clothes to do things in, and I suspect my days of serious hagging are pretty much behind me. And again I don’t dig the bar part, as well as that the shredding really gets to me. If I am going to talk about you, and I definitely am, it’s to analyze, analyze, analyze. That’s just what I do. But I don’t want to savage someone just to get the high score.

There are some singleton folk like DramaMama, Danilo, Psyche, Nigel and Floyd’sMom etc. etc. All fine folk I’m sure but I rarely see some of them and anyway I don’t “hang in their scenes”. I know them and them alone, it’s very likely that I would not be a good match with the rest of their peeps.

As for family, well, I can’t even go there from here.

AM Earworms

Sun Is Shining - Bob Marley from “African Herbsman”
That helps cool the fierceness a little....

When Potatoes Kill

As I was waking up, a miraculous thing was occurring, which was that Oliver was also awake. And we then got into a conversation which engendered this dialogue;
ME - “Oh, it never occurred to me to put harmonica into the same realm as oboe, bassoon, saxophone and clarinet”.
OB “That’s because it’s not”
ME “But you just said about reed instruments...”
OB “Yeah like that thing” (hand gesture)
ME “Accordion?”
OB “Yeah and that keyboard thing you have...
ME “Harmonium?”
OB “Yeah, and probably that little electric organ too”.
ME “Oh. But what about the fact that if you play a harmonica, and you have it all broke in good, that you move those things with your tongue?”
OB “That’s just air openings not the reeds”.
ME “Hmmm”.

Which brings us to the next question. Which is, if those are manipulatable air openings, then is one required to use an embouchure to play harmonica? And if so shouldn’t the music snobs be a little less smug about harmonica? And also if so, wouldn’t that put it back somewhere between organs and woodwinds? I know in the old days they did actually call it mouth organ but....
And another thing, embouchure was a word I had never seen, only heard. So all my life I had said it with an R, more like brochure, (if the C was an S). Then I read it the other day in Anthony Burgess’s autobiography. And I said to myself “Oh crap.” and “Duh” and “stupid, stupid girl” as all the millions of times I had mispronounced it went flashing in front of my eyes. This is my version of dying apparently, the embarrassment of unintentionally mangling the language.

AM Earworms

The Doxology - Stella Magdalen Earworm Orchestra
Now that is a really, really strange earworm.

Freaking Brilliant 1st post of the year (koff koff)

My end of the year festivus feat of strength was reading 21 Travis McGee novels by John MacDonald in 19 days. I may never have been more cynical and bitter. I have been more angry. But that was in youth when it was an un-formulated, nonspecific, anger. A sort of devil-may-care, lash out at anyone and get in drunken fist fights with my best friends sort of anger. This one is pretty specific.
But now I pay the horrordays price, because I’m sick. Real sick. So just leave me alone. No, wait coddle me. No, no, just fuck off. But wait, can you bring me some juice and the thermometer first? Oh, and the TV guide?