Infinite Nothing

I was invited and asked to do the “Infinite Summer” read-a-thon by a lot of people (hi people) There were going to be read along groups on Ravelry and even some local people suggested we get together regularly and discuss.
I declined.
Beyond my mixed feelings about DFW’s writing (I have liked some and disliked other bits) there is just some uncomfortable association in my head. He was smart and funny and artistic and also he suffered from crippling depression. He fought depression his whole life and every time it would seem to get better, then bam! it would return worse than before. Eventually it wore him down. The futility of it all was just too clear to him and he ended his life.
Having had my own battles with depression and having seen the abyss of futility more than once I felt it best to give the Infinite Summer a pass.

It’s the little things that distract

the problem with the ‘microblogging’ (twitter and its inelegant cousin, the facebook wall) is that I’m able to brain vomit whatever is sloshing around in the head at that moment without concern for things like crafting paragraphs and intelligent transitions. So, being able to just dump without thinking (I’m like a bear! sitting next to the pope! in the woods!) sort of distracts from this place where presumably I put a modicum of thought into what I write.
So here are some random tidbits:

  • 36th birthday = big Indian food picnic in bed
  • I’m moving the Bubbo Designs shop from Etsy to Artfire. Mostly, I just happen to like the way Artfire works, their interface for listing items is way more streamlined, the payment set up makes more sense and they have happen to have a bunch of features I’d been wishing Etsy had. Listings are slim right now, I just pulled a bunch of yarn and sent it out to a brick and mortar, we’ll see how that goes. You will notice, however, that I have started selling some hand dyed roving. Coming soon: bigger Cthulhu awesomeness, purses, superwash roving and handspun.
  • take one medium eggplant, cube it, toss with kosher salt and let it weep for about 90 minutes (or the time it takes to go to walgreens to buy soap and then to Petco to buy a muzzle and then come home, laugh at chester in his muzzle, drink a beer and read a short story about apartheid and…)
    mince 3 cloves of garlic
    cook a small spaghetti squash in the microwave (please poke more holes in yours than I did in mine! the top assploded right off the squash and the guts are stuck to the microwave door) let cool and shred
    wash, de-rib and tear up about half a bunch of baby collard greens
    open one 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes
    open one 14 oz can of cannellini beans (or great northern), rinse the beans
    Rinse the eggplant quickly and fry it up until brownybrown on the outside and completely cooked through (undercooked eggplant makes me gag). Once the eggplant is done cooking toss the garlic in and saute until it starts to go a little golden. Add tomatoes to stop the garlic from overbrowning. mix it all up. Add 2 handfuls (mmmmmtechnical measurements! I have very little hands, so maybe do 1 handful) of Penzeys Pasta Sprinkle and maybe a fat tablespoon of Penzeys Greek Seasoning. Add beans and collard greens cover and let simmer.
    Make some spaghetti according to package directions. When the spaghetti is almost done, throw some golden raisins into the sauce.
    Serve sauce on spaghetti and also have a beer. Beer is good.
  • I love David Attenborough
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  • The dry mouth side effect that comes from taking effexor is linked to a “meth-mouth” type condition in the mouth where you don’t make enough of the awesome antibacterial saliva you need. This would explain why the enamel has literally been crumbling off my teeth a little bit at a time for the past year. I’m going to end up with fucking guv’ment dentures! my mouth will look like this: (UUUUUU)
  • Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad
    1. In the minibowl of the food processor throw about 1/2 head peeled garlic cloves, a rightly good chunk of peeled ginger chunked up, about a tsp kosher salt and 3 tbl or so canola oil. whir it up, scrap down the edges, add more oil if necessary. If you whir too long you’ll get some sort of ginger garlic aioli but that can’t be a terrible thing, can it. put this to the side.
    2. dressing: mix together 3 tbl fish sauce, 2 tbl sugar, 1 tbl mirin, 1-2 tbl sesame oil, juice of a lime, 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 1 tbl ginger garlic paste you just made and chili oil to taste. Whisk and fridge for at least an hour.
    3. mock duck marinade: I discovered I was out of honey which sucked, but i found a jar of my peach clementine marmalade that I made like 2 years ago! 1/4 merciful peaches marmalade, 2tbl ginger garlic paste, 2 tbl sesame oil, 1/4 rice vinegar, few drops of chili oil. Whisked this and added one can of WELL SQUEEZED mock duck and that’s sitting there. Fry over high heat to caramelize it
    4. Chop, shred or otherwise prep: romaine lettuce, cilantro, papaya, tomatoes, cucumbers, sprouts. Cook and rinse rice noodles.
    5. Rice noodles in bowls, veggies on top, mock duck on that, dressing on everything.
    6. delicious
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screw edjakashuns!

I was flipping through yesterday’s paper and came upon an ad for the local grocery store. A large banner was proclaiming “PORK IS SAFE”. What? Has there been some concern with this nation’s pork supply?
As an aside: Yes, yes there is something wrong with this nation’s pork supply but it is still safe. In fact, some of the very issues related to the modern pork industry are exactly why it’s so safe. Pigs are now so fragile and so unlike real pigs now that they live in these weirdly sterile environments suspended over a lake of toxic shit. There is about 12 inches of dead air between this amazing dichotomy. Sterility to the point of fragility above, overwhelming toxicity below. Incidentally, the next time you eat a mass produced pork chop close your eyes and think of pee. Really! Do it. Just once. That weird flavor you’ve been covering up with sauces and brines? Ammonia! You can’t live over that much physical effluvia and not absorb the gases. Next time, take some care and buy small farm pork.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Of course the pork supply is safe. Why do we need a big old ad telling us….
oh…right….the ‘swine’ flu. They took out a great big old ad to assure people that you can’t get the flu from a pork chop. Ads are expensive and I imagine they would not have placed the ad unless this was a real issues with consumers.
Holy 12 pound pig shit on the floor! Seriously? Enough people believed this that pork sales went down? I do not have words for this, I really don’t. Is the general pork buying population so lacking in basic science that this is an issue? Sure, in Afghanistan they quarantined their only pig against the possibility of it just spontaneously developing the flu….developing the flu in a strain that can transmit from pigs to humans! I think it’s pretty easy to see that education in Afghanistan has been a pretty sketchy proposition since 1979. Basic biology might not have been a big priority. Egypt? Well, yeah, pig slaughter but it’s pretty obvious that’s more about politics and religion than anything.
But here? HERE? Really? Well, this is a nation where we debate the scientific merits of religion and people actually believe that the philosophy of creation should be taught in the science room. maybe that’s the problem, a systematic unraveling of logical processes, a discounting of scientific method and rational thought. Teaching creationism isn’t about promoting a religion, it’s about teaching blind acceptance. No evidence, no experiments, no hypotheses, no proofs, you just accept that this thing happened.
Things get dumbed down over and over and I guess it is little wonder that someone is dousing the spare ribs in Thera-flu and chicken soup.
Well, thank god they’re cutting education funding again in the state! Holy crap! Who needs education funding? We’ll just send out monthly newsletters based on whatever current panic is in the news and just tell people what to think.
This is why I drink so much Blue Moon, people! I have no faith in the future! I fear I’ll be walking through the refrigerated section to find an exorcism being performed among the fish in order to the Salmonella Demons from attacking the eggs and perhaps little altars to the Gods of the Complete and Balanced Breakfast will be erected by the Cheerios.

Today was the day

that i
darnk a lot of coffee, ate pancakes with Owen, bought lawn bags, 409 and barkeepers friend from the Home Depot*, enjoyed the sunroof, mailed 2 packages to customers, made some flowers from recycled sweaters,had some ice cream, watched some Doctor Who (9th Doctor, debated the relative merits of the Doctor vs Cap’n Jack), drank 2 beers, made a little jellyfish minimini purse for the stargrrl (had to re-do the lining, I screwed it up the first time), ate 1/2 a quesadilla, walked the dogs, rearranged my schedule for the week, played some solitaire, and wondered why after so many years does Capital One think that maybe TODAY’S piece of junk mail will convince me to get their card**!
kind of in that order but with some overlap here and there.
Fascinating yes?
*it is my sincere opinion that Home Depot and HGTV have conspired to make every splitwiener in the land think he’s Bob Villa or something and this is why when I go looking at houses I just see one home after the other with half finished remodeling jobs and SCARY plumbing mishaps.
**I’ve gotten a piece of mail from capital one at least 4 times a week since I moved into this place in 2005. I am not kidding about this, I really am not.