A Well-Dressed Oyster

 There are things we approve of here at the Rancho.  We approve of:

Hanging out in the garage in the summer, drinking beer

Drag Queens

Drag Queens in the garage hanging out with us in the summer

Red meat

No active volcanos

All these things and more meet with our approval.  And upon them one might be tempted to affix a seal of approval, thusly:

I like that he's wearing a sweater and has human hands.  Maybe he's a Centaur-seal, is what I think.  Seal above, human below.  Imaging standing next to that on an elevator.   

But this is Rancho FirstNations, and we don't go around handing out tired memes like socks filled with raw liver, you know? (All the kids in the neighborhood look forward to that come Halloween.)  No, we prefer to hand out Swanky Oysters of Good Taste and Discernment:

The Swanky Oyster of Good Taste and Discernment sees you out there, and He approves.  

Mr. Swanky Oyster also heartily approves of Mr. Indigo Roth for his recent gift of an inflatable pickle, and the re-emergence of Z onto the scene!

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I found out the most awesome thing!  L. Ron Hubbard, the DEAD (in case there's any lingering doubt out there) former leader of Scientology, was for a brief period of time the commander of a small Navy vessel.  During his short, yet incompetent career as a commander, he carried out his duties exactly as you'd expect - he mined 'a Japanese sub' off the coast of Oregon, and then he sailed South to attack Mexico.

Yes.

Having detected a suspicious, elongated radar echo in the waters off the Oregon coast, he immediately jumped to the conclusion 'SUB!' and mined the everlasting fuck out of that sapsucker, called in the troops, called in air support, called in the Coast Guard, called in local fishermen, and generally pulled a lot of people away from more serious concerns to come look at what he'd doneded.  

Which was to kill a whale.

You can imagine everyone rolling their eyes and trudging back whence they came.  C'mon, dude.  Seriously?

After that astounding feat of fuckery, what next?  Go attack Mexico, of course.  So that's what he did.  Cap'n Hubbard in his little cruiser sailed straight down to Mexico and proceeded to blast the fuck out of the shoreline with his woefully limited battery.  What he hoped to accomplish by this is not known.  What is known is that he was drop kicked out of the Navy shortly afterward with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.  Of course, you're saying, Captain Queeg got away with that shit for years, no fair.  But you have to remember that Captain Queeg was Humphrey Bogart. He ran a tight ship.  Not even the strawberries were too small to escape his supervision.  And you know that Humphrey Bogart would never dump a bunch of sea mines on a whale.  It just wasn't in the man.

I have a brief, pathetic history with the C of SCN.  In my desperation to catch a man I agreed to join the 'church' that he belonged to.  Which was ol' 'Nuke the Whale' Hubbards ship of fools; and I'll say here that I never saw so many ignorant, incompetent misfits gathered under one roof in my life as I did during my short tenure as a member.  Luckily, I'd been through the cult thing with my mother years earlier and so I knew bullshit when I saw it.  

I lasted less than a year; and shortly after I left the church and my ex, my ex-husband was frog-marched out the front doors by several burly staff members for throwing one of his tantrums on staff time.  This really happened.  And it proves that there's nuts, and there's incompetent people searching in vain for direction, and then there's 'nutty is nutty but you don't get to turn red and kick over furniture and scream like an infant when you don't get your way and threaten to punch your superiors.'  So he got tossed out onto the sidewalk in the middle of town, and then stood there and raged and continued to have a tantrum until they called the police, which for a Scientologist is tantamount to drinking strychnine - they just don't DO that.  But in ex-hubby's case, they made an exception, and having been his wife, I understand it completely. 

So, even though it was not an episode of my life that I'm particularly proud of, here's to you, unknown burly Scientologists sick of my ex-husbands hissy fits:

Happy After-Christmas!!!

 Here at Rancho FirstNations our asses are all partied OUT. I have a flaccid pickle, y'all.  Mr. UK Happy Pickle could not take the action and he just laid his pickled self out on my floor, it was so wild-ass here.    There was jumpin'!  There was shakin'!  There was funky merry makin'!  We thought globally and acted locally and our personal badassery melted all the snow, and lo, there was grass beneath and it was good in our eyes!  Normally you don't want grass in your eyes so we kept our distance.  It was still good.  Now here is my Boxing Day present to y'all:

Tio Choko is blowing up all over everywhere and dammit, he deserves it all.  This guy is amazing!  My bud Rocky Lawrence Green turned me on to the dude.  This man is a natural all the way, and he looks into the lens and honey, you'll GET there.  I love this guy and I'm happy to read that he's getting noticed.  You could ride that moustache like a bicycle, kids.  Believe.

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Make The Bad Snow Go Away!

 It snowed yesterday.  It was not supposed to snow.  It was supposed to be sunny and 42f.  But it snowed.  And today, the shit's still there.

I am way over snow.  Living out here, snow means 'some dumbass is going to drop a tree on the lines and our power is going to go out."  Because sure as shit, someone will decide that the cottonwood (not a good firewood tree, but an excellent 'fall on your house' tree) next to the power lines on their property will make perfect firewood, fire up the chainsaw - or, in one memorable incident, run their tractor into the tree until it fell on him, the tractor, and the line - and, boom boom! out go the lights!  

Still, it's pretty, and I should quit bitching.  We have a generator if the power goes out, and this is not our first rodeo.  Country livin', friends. 

So someone sent me, for Christmas, a three foot tall inflatable pickle.  I inflated it immediately.  It seems like a happy pickle, and it saved me having to get a Christmas tree - hell, it's green!  and so, I have a three foot tall inflatable pickle in my house.  My friends know me well!  Indigo Roth, if you're out there, thank you SO much!  I got a good laugh out of it and so did the Biker.

We have Christmas lights up, and they looks great.  Red, white and blue! We also have both our Biden-Harris signs prominently displayed, and we've had a couple of coal-dumps

"Blowing coal"  is when somebody with a diesel truck and a tiny dick wants to show his ass.  

 and an angry honk-n-rev or two because of that, and I love it!  

See, Democrats are supposed to be Un-American socialist sleazebags looking for a free ride, at least in local tradition, and it just burns the Republicans to see us, proud home owners, with our flag out on all national holidays, our tidy yard, display garden, our late model cars and our red, white and blue Christmas lights.  We refuse to comply with their stereotypes and dammit, that just will not do!  What kind of an idiot lets that kind of thing get them so pissed off that they present a hazard to traffic? Coaling a house???  REALLY??   Back during the elections, I had my Biden-Harris sticker, and a nut in a truck almost sideswiped me, flipping me off and honking, at one of the busiest intersections in Bellingham - I mean the idiot swerved out of his lane and acted like an ass because of a sticker! And my husband was repeatedly coaled on his way home from work because of his Biden-Harris sticker.  That certainly showed him.  Gaah, what a bunch of losers. 

Of course I hope all of you have a wonderful Winter Holiday.  The Biker is going to fire up the smoker and do a pork loin wrapped in bacon.  You know you wish you were me!

Let me know in the comments what you're going to be up to!

 

You Are Here

I've been rambling via comment links around the Blog world and leaving comments where I have hithero gone unseen and foul in the lonely places, like The Elder Gods.  If your interest has been piqued and you're new here, hello and welcome!  C'mon in! Set a spell!  Spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!

  It doesn't get more normal, and I live in the smallest town in America so don't expect any cosmopolitan accounts of fine restaurants, glittering company and interesting occupations either. This is rural fuckin' America and my neighbors are Hereford steers.  I've got a Biker, a display garden and an eleven year old Ford.  I also have a flamboyantly screwed up past, so there's that to run into along the way.

I believe in keeping a light and irreverent view.  I make occasional excursions into serious territory and blah-some whining about politics and the weather.  Sue me.

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 I am tired of having a bare, boring blog.  This joint looks like old tat and I'll be damned if I can figure out how to make anything work, or show up after I've made the changes.

I'd love to have a colorful background, and the advertisement for my favorite artist Mr. Rocky Green up there in lights, and a list of blogs that I follow, but can I get the bitch to cooperate?  I cannot.  Now I've had problems with Blogger of late and I read that others have too, so I'll take that into consideration, but still,  I wanna be like the cool kids too!

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OO I have run into the best thing ever!  Actually two.  One is Snoop Dog/Lion/wtfEVER singing 'My Medicine' with Willie Nelson.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fWCa3GvbNUE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>  

The other is Marc Rebillet, all over YouTube doing on the spot, mix-and-loop funk like a full grown man.  Here's a taste:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EuIuxbfk7ko" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe

Now lets see if that shit actually embeds.  Man, if it doesn't, here's the links to YouTube and just, you know, hit the link and let it happen.  

Snoop and Willie:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWCa3GvbNUE

Marc Rebillet giving you smooth, sexy geek funk on the spot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuIuxbfk7ko

Now honestly, don't deny yourself.  This is your early Christmas present!  Stick that rock in your sock and get some soul in your stroll!

Shit It's Cold

 It is cold.  It is December, and I live up near Canada, so yeah, you'd figure, and you'd be right.  But I don't fucking care if I live near Canada and it's supposed to be cold in December at this latitude.  It sucks.

Because I only have a strange wrinkled place where my thyroid used to be, my body temperature is all over the goddamn place at any given moment, and I'm usually doing the elderly Dance of the Seven Veils taking off or putting on various pieces of clothing throughout the day.  I am told that this condition is something I'll just have to live with, and I say I should have been issued a personal valet, because suddenly needing to struggle out of an 'Aah Bra' is no joke, kids.  

For those of us with Partonesque mammaries, the Aah Bra is a Godsend.  It's a devious little garment that in flesh tone looks like a large discarded condom, but flattens into a tiny bra in it's native, un-stretched state.  I mean it is minute. You take it out of the package, look at it and go "Oh no my friend, this is not going to occur."  But the Aah Bra is a miracle of expansion.  It works like a Tardis.  Something that looks as though it would fit comfortably on Barbie expands by the power of Greyskull (I assume) to enclose even the most unruly frontage.  Once you get everything tucked in and your nips leveled out, because nothing is sadder than uneven nips in a cold climate, you look reasonably perky.  It's kind of amazing.

Do you know how you have to put on one of those things?  You have to step into it. Yes. While it is infinitely stretchy, it doesn't give way without a fight.  The Aah Bra is no pussy.  You have to pre- stretch the thing and then ooch it up over your ass and your rolls and so forth and then drop titty into each pocket while rubber-banding it over your arms and adjusting the shoulder straps.  This is an unsightly operation that looks like that one guy who can pass himself through an unstrung tennis racquet, so I don't suggest you do this in front of a mirror, because it's distracting.   

And the instant you bend over, the straps fall.  Oh, your boobs are just fine.  They stay put.   But any back tit or pit rolls are going to be flapping like salmon in the bottom of a boat, and it's a case of either retire to the bathroom and get all your excess  flesh re-arranged in the damn thing or just roll it down over your shoes and kick it into the corner.  Because there's one thing they don't tell you about the thing - it gets HOT.  The Aah Bra is not a breezy piece of clothing.  Once it's on you, it's on for good,  like a python strangling a hapless swamp dweller, and if you crack a sweat, the Aah Bra does not care.  It just melts into your skin and jeers you.

This is why I'm generally that old broad.  The one working out in her yard with the whole front of her jangling around under the t-shirt, where you drive by and go "Oh my God someone should say something."  Because only the Aah Bra can tame these tigers,  unless I have somewhere to go that isn't jiggle friendly, I prefer to fly free, and if I'm out in my yard looking like I have a shirt full of raw liver and you're watching, ask yourself why you're checking out a sixty year old womans' tits, ya pervert.

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I have sweaters, t-shirts and hoodies strategically strewn about the house so if I experience a sudden rise in body temperature I can do a quick change on the fly.  I've got this down to a science - I had my thyroid removed about fifteen or so years ago.  Right on the cusp of menopause.  It was a confusing time. 

I had to drop out of college one quarter shy of getting my Bachelors, in fact.  When your thyroid goes to hell, it will fuck with you bad, and if you're already a. firmly planted on The Spectrum, and b. beginning to get extra extra because your hormones are feeding your propensity to act a fool, and 3. experiencing the confusing symptoms of Graves Disease on top of 8. raising a teenage girl and going to college, it's an all flags flying colossal shitshow.  With monkeys. Do not try this at home.

It's cool if you time it right.  If I'm feeling a hot flash come on, I run for the kitchen, grab the trash and take it out to the curb, and won't notice a thing.  This works like magic.  Of course two minutes later I'll be running for the nearest hoodie, shivering, unable to feel my fingers, but my trash is out of the house and I did it in a t-shirt, which I'm certain the neighbors all envy.  "Look at that badass old rip trotting around in the sleet with a sack of trash.  I want to grow up and be just like her, momma."  I know they're saying it.  And they're right.  Momma, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.  Give them a "Live Long and Prosper" Spock t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants and send them out in the snow now, while they're still young and malleable.  

 

Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

 The BB had to go get a secondary cataract removed today.  This procedure took five minutes, was accomplished with the use of a laser, and caused him no discomfort whatsoever - aside from having to be a passenger while I drove him home.  Oh, that man cannot abide being a passenger, no no no no no.  If he is not in control of the vehicle then his world is just all out of alignment.  But with one pupil blown out like Trump in mid-rant, nope. Ah, but I had thoughtfully provided him with 10mg. of Valium before the procedure, so he was a pleasant and chatty car companion, instead of his usual clutching, gasping, putting on the passenger brakes and constantly checking the speedometer and giving helpful little criticisms;  and thus was spared having to walk 16 miles home in the rain.  

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The pro-Trump contingent has, if anything, only put up more signs, purchased and home-made.  I honestly think these people are crazy.  The results are in, the electoral college has closed up shop, the show is over, but Trumps Theatre of the Absurd continues, and a disturbing number of people out there are still not using their native reasoning capabilities.  And I mean absolutely refusing to look outside their narrow worldview.  These are generally the very first people who would tell you that this nation needs unity, too.  Most of them are small business owners; all farmers are small business owners - but still fully invested in the fantasy and the show while determinedly ignoring the very real and lasting damage that has been done to this country by the Funny Orange Monkey. You want to ask these guys "Would Jesus brag about grabbing women by the pussy?  Would someone who was concerned with your well-being tear apart the Public Land Use Act? Would you leave your fifteen-year-old daughter alone in a room with Trump?"  

These are God-fearing, well meaning people for the most part, and the obscene shit show that was spread all over Hells half-acre for the last four years has been nothing but diametrically opposed to everything Christian and well intentioned - but their allegiance continues, and I do not understand it.

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My quest for weirdness continues and I've turned up a doozy.  John Jacob Astor Jr. - of 'died on the Titanic' fame - wrote a science fiction novel in 1894!  And I'm reading it on Internet Archive!  He was the black sheep of the famous Astor family, considered too mentally unstable and sickly to inherit, although he was still worth several billion in today's dollars when he bounced off the iceberg because the Astors had a metric buttload of money and laid some on him as a 'no hard feelings' gesture.  I'm willing to bet JJA Senior took one look at this work of sheer WTF, titled "A Journey In Other Worlds:  A Romance Of The Future" and changed his will accordingly.  

There are not enough !!!!!'s to describe this mans whackery.  I think him and Mr. Piggot (of "(Paraphrase) After you have retired for the night, inject a quart of soapy water up your bunghole to prevent tuberculosis, which is caused by millions of microscopic worms. This is guaranteed to 'knock the worms silly.'" fame)  would have gotten along famously.  I can see them now, smoking cigars and talking about aethric vibrations and electric shampoos and the pneumatic creatures that roam Saturns' vast prairies.

"Compulsive" is such an ugly word

I've been working my way through the house doing deep cleaning, because now that it's Winter, I'm seeing now all the stuff I'd been walking past on my way out into the garden all Summer, and it's kinda grubby.  One thing that struck me in going around is just how damn many collections I have.

I used to collect old kitchenware and appliances bigtime. I had Fire King (early Pyrex) for days. Enamelware pots and pans.  I had every single item in the Foley antique kitchen gadget catalogue in red and white. Yes.  I was venturing into apple green, and had some yellows and a few of  the rare blue ones too. I had vintage electric counter appliances too, like waffle irons, stand mixers, popcorn poppers, toasters...the list goes on. And I  had this stuff in multiples. Twelve eggbeaters.  Four kitchen scales. Four breadboxes. Like that. A LOT of a lot, and all of it, everything mint, perfect.  I had sub-collections like Bakelite handles, glass measuring cups, 1950's chrome appliances...basically I was on the verge of having an all-vintage kitchen.

  My husband and I were seriously considering it when we moved into our present home.  We had a color scheme and an era ( 1940's -1950's) picked out.  We got vintage cabinets from the architectural salvage store, put in some boomerang patterned Formica...and all this, up until this point had been totally on the cheap!  I had it ready to go, right down to the escutcheon on the wall switches, the overhead light, and a big old cast iron and enamel kitchen sink!  Only the jump to large appliances remained. There are places out there where you can get  restored and working condenser-topped refrigerators and reconditioned kitchen ranges, the big old ocean liner sized ones that look like jukeboxes and have three ovens and all the bells and whistles.  But that represents a major investment too. After buying a house? That wasn't gonna happen.  

I kept a vintage electric stand mixer because it's in perfect condition and it's just soooooo Deco, and four select pieces of Foley and sold the rest. C'est la vie. 

  But I seem to have started a vintage soda pop collection without even being aware of it in the meantime.  I realized this as I stood washing the fifty vintage pop bottles I have in my kitchen window.

Let's  not forget the wall-mount bottle capper, and the soft drink advertisements.  And all the old bottle caps. Many, many old bottle caps. I made them into a nice frieze over the kitchen doorway and the spiders love to play on it.

And that's just the kitchen. My natural history collection and my cookbook collection is in the dining room, and my Tonka Toys are in the family room.  My Tonkas keep my husbands collection of automobilia company, and all of it keeps our house-wide book collection company (part of which consists of my Leonardo DaVinci collection and my 'classics to 1519' collection.)  Some of it sits on my collection of Mid-Century Modern furniture, which is accented by my collection of vintage suitcases, which contain my collection of Last Gasp comic books, part of which is a collection of Gilbert Sheltona and R. Crumb-inalia, near my collection of vintage vinyl record albums.  Of course, none of it compares to the queen of my possessions, a 400.00 replica of the USS Enterprise, under glass, that I keep in my bedroom so I can see it when I wake up every day.  What, like I wouldn't have a Star Trek collection?

The funny thing is, it all started with a glass measuring cup. I still have it.  It was given away as a premium inside a bag of flour back during the Depression, and I'll never get rid of it.  Something about that one goofy little measuring cup lit off this urge to collect.  Weird, right?  I never collected anything up until my husband brought that little cup home from the Salvation Army one day, because our other one had broken in the sink.  The instant that thing came into my house, I was like "I love this look!  It reminds me of my grandma!" and the rest...is what I have to dust.

Pigeons On The Roof! Pigeons On The Roof!*

Good Heavens, I must send out for more champagne and canapes!  The guests are beginning to throw the cabana boys into the pool!

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Reuters reports that White House chief of Staff Mark Douglas urged the FDA head Steven Hahn to approve the new Pfizer covid vaccine by Friday (yesterday) and quipped "he should prepare to resign if not."  Smell something?

There's also a link in the article here at the FDA site about the covid vaccine:   https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine

You can scroll down the article to find the links to the various handouts they'll be providing to health care workers, the public, etc.  I urge you to read the FDA article and the handouts.

Folks, make up your own minds. 

Me, I'm going to wait.  Of course I have the luxury of waiting so that's easy for me to say.  I live in the country, and I've already had covid.  So has my husband.  This first course of inoculations is going out to health care providers and people in long term health care facilities.  I'd be making a different decision if I were in that position, I know.  But at 60, with a long-term respiratory condition, I'll wait until something less 'hurried onto the stage' comes along.

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Thank you all for putting up with my petty household disasters.  I get cranked up easily when things break, or don't work right - yeah, I'm the lady who asks to speak with the manager and writes letters of complaint and returns food to the kitchen and calls customer services a lot.  Not in an entitled, Karen kind of way, but because I expect new things to work.  That's not unreasonable.  What's unreasonable is the way it enrages me - I know, I know.  Shit happens.  Mistakes occur.  At least I don't cause public scenes and berate waiters and take shit out on people who have no responsibility for the thing; I've seen that and been on the other side of that, and it's not cool.

This is not to say that Samsung did not get a couple of scathing emails from me last night.  I might have mentioned 'poor design', 'pirated technology', and 'chimps'.  You want feedback?  You'll GET feedback from me. Even if you vet your comments, I'll find a way around it. 

Now catch me at home and yeah, I freak right the fuck out when something I've owned suddenly croaks. If I'm at home and my 20 year old washer/dryer suddenly stops working I lose my shit, because I LOVED YOU WASHER/DRYER YOU WERE MY HELPER WHY GOD WHY and I cry and flail.  I think this is the legacy of having been raised by Great Depression Babies. -fine, and I'm really clumsy.  If you're a lawnmower, you do not want to be owned by me.  Same goes for power drills.  I might want to be a robot, but the robots probably won't have me, I've killed so many of their mechanical kin.  The trail of rusty corpses in my wake is long and very greasy, arrrrgh.

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In case you were wondering, we are now settled in happily watching our new Visio television.  The return went smooth as silk, thanks to The Bejewelled Biker!  We had it set up and running in the time it took us to find the sign-in site for Samsung online last night!

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*This is what we used to yell when someone was railing up in the back room and only wanted to share with a select few.  Yes, the party never stops here at the Rancho!

OH NO

 So our television fried, and the Bejewelled Biker brought home a Smart TV.  A Samsung.  It rhymes with 'piece of shit.'

I am now living in George Orwells' 1984. This thing can and will watch ME.  It wants to connect to all our devices and it can detect them all from our internet bringer inner thingie

 - router.  Hello, router.  Sorry I forgot your name.  Please don't hurt me.

I am freaking OUT.  I do NOT want a smart home.  I do not need my television talking to my laptop or my phone.  Or watching me.  And it has a direct internet connection as part of the package, you can Skype on it, so there's a camera in there someplace and I want it DISABLED. 

NEVER buy a Samsung.  Setting it up is like trying to break into Fort fucking Knox.  They rush you through the terms with a set-up password that you only have a limited amount of time to use before it disappears forever, so you can't read all the terms even if you wanted to.  The site won't let you create an account from your laptop - oh, it says it will, but try. I did.  You end up in a closed loop of account confirmation. No, Samsung wants to own your phone.  I don't have a smartphone.  The hubs does.  Both of our devices in the same room, and it wants the phone.  Fine.  It got the phone. 

Still, we've been chipping away at this monster for close to an hour now and we still can't get the goddamn thing to play a movie or show anything but more sign in screens and then - black screen, back out, try again, more passwords, more accounts, more emails, more onscreen navigating with their astoundingly cheesy remote....FUCK THIS THING IN THE HEART.

UPDATE:  After dealing with this thing for less than four hours, we've decided to return it.  It's a piece of garbage...slow as molasses, with bad speakers and lots of interruptions.  Our poor late lamented cheapo Vizio was it's superior in every way.  And that's what we'll be buying. 

I Am TOO A Robot

 Blogger has that stupid 'prove you're not a robot' thing.  Dammit, I feel highly insulted when I have to prove that I'm not a robot.  I absolutely want to be a robot. If I had the chance; hell yeah, download me into that sucker! And give me the full extra attachments package! Robots are excellent!

Yes.  I've seen all the Transformer movies at least twice, and the first one about six times so far because it has the best, full-metal-nerd robot battle sequences EVAH.  When they're kicking footholds out of the sides of buildings and diving in as one iteration and doing rolling midair transformations in multiple planes and shit - I just let those fight sequences go, hit 'back' and let it roll again a couple of times, hitting pause a lot, (Thank you, Netflix!) just to deal with all the incredible, imaginative, awesome detail that goes into every single second!  There were some genius nerds in on that shit!  

I saw the first three Transformer in the theater, which is really what they're meant for, that big screen experience, and I was losing my mind right along with my grandson, much to the embarrassment of my husband.  All the little kids screaming and cheering there in the dark and this one lone adult female screaming right along with them; fine, I know, I get it, but still. Robots.  It was robots having a full on roboto a' roboto free for all in the middle of a city, people. Trash entertainment simply does not get any better than that!

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Why does Samuel L. Jackson appear in so many movies wearing an eyepatch? 

Why does the Klingon general in 'The Undiscovered Country' have an eyepatch? (albeit a leather one that's nailed into his skull, which is totally what a Klingon would do, but still, it's the future. Get that shit rectified.)

Why do so many Special Ops team leaders in action movies wear an eyepatch?  You'd think you'd want the guy who dodged that bullet to lead you, right?  The one with full 20/20 vision?

These are the things I ponder.

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Nature note:  The fish continue to migrate across the road about a mile away from here.  The Bejewelled Biker has pictures of them swimming around in the flooded blueberry field, waiting for their turn to cross the road at the flooded place.  He also grabbed a shot yesterday of two flocks of swans that were so huge that it took three snaps to encompass!  We figured it out on Google maps. Those pictures represent THREE ACRES of swans.  Hundreds of swans!  

Do I have those pictures? No. Of course not.

Non-Stop Party Action At Rancho FirstNations Continues

So, I finished Marcus Aurelius.  He seemed like a very anxious, bummed-out, harried person, and so there go my aspirations to be Philosopher King of Sumas.  His thoughts read so much like the way I grew up in Catholicism that I felt sorry for the guy.  Basically 'Suck it up, ignore  your feelings, nobody cares about your opinion, it's all in your head, and you're just going to croak and be forgotten anyway.'  Not even kidding.  This dude is no advertisement for being Emperor of Rome.  "Would you like some honey covered slave girls scattered in edible gold, your Majesty?"  "Naw, gimme a bowl of cold oatmeal.  I'm gonna go sit in the outhouse and eat it.  In the rain."

So, to cheer myself up a read a few old, forgotten Grimms Fairy Tales, which were by turns bloody, really bloody, full of random talking animals and bloody.  And violent.  Me being me, this worked, and so, greatly heartened, I ventured forth outside and did a little mowing with my push mower, for the exercise (That's me thinking.) I...  

1. punched myself yanking on the pull starter, then I  

2. ran over a dead rat, and then I

3. had an asthma attack.  

Not because I ran over the dead rat, which to be honest did not look anything like a dead rat until the lawnmower was just starting in at it, when the tail and feet suddenly appeared out of the sodden mass; by then it was too late and I was wearing tall boots so screw it, rats are biodegradable.  No, I had the asthma attack because I've had asthma since 1966 and it was cold and damp and I was exerting myself = asthma attack.

I'm going to put in a word here about asthma.  It's not imaginary.  It can't be cured. Nobody knows what causes it. You can control it, and learn to live with it.  So here's what growing up and living with asthma looks like: You look healthy and hale but can't perform the kinds of prolonged strenuous activity that  3/4 of the rest of humankind can, so you have to refuse, which gets you branded 'lazy' and 'a liar.'  

It's why, at my last job, I had to go from doing rooms and collecting big tips, to working in the laundry, which is less physically stressful, and does not include tips.  The only tips you get in the laundry of a hotel are the turds that people wrap in towels and send down the chute, lots of baby binkies and for some odd reason, single shoes.  Even when I work out in the yard, it's do a little, then rest. Do a little more, then rest. Rinse, repeat. All. Day. Long.  I'm not a Maserati - I'm a bulldozer.  That kind of thing.  

If you know someone who has asthma, don't  belabor them with your ignorant opinions and remedies. For example, this one: 'You just need to stretch out your chest muscles!"  (?)  I heard this one so many times it's just stupid. I train with weights, folks. The only thing you gain is a stretched out chest. You get to keep the asthma. 

Don't say "Oh, it's just allergies."  No. It is not just allergies, Karen.  (And allergies are not a 'just' kind of subject either.  They can kill you.  Now you can have allergic responses that trigger asthma-like symptoms.  Or, like me, you can have asthma AND allergies, and have allergic reactions that trigger asthma-like symptoms, that trigger an asthma attack.  Huzzah!)  You can't fix that shit with Benadryl and a couple of aspirin.  

"Just drink honey and whiskey!"  How 'bout not? All you get a drunk kid who is still having an asthma attack.  This shit was tried on me for years by literally every old person in my neighborhood, including my tea-totaller grandma, who kept a short dog of whiskey just for me if I happened to have an attack at her house -  which is probably why I like a sip of Bushmills to this day.  I was smart enough to sputter and put up a fuss, too, which made my folks even more determined to pour it down me.  While it wasn't a cure, it was fun.  

"Oh, it's all in your head.  Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Everyone knows that asthma is just psychological."  Do they.  Funny.  I went through seven solid years of therapy, twice a week, read the books, faced my shit, did the work - with a few shorter sessions in later years - and at no time did my asthma subside.  And yes, having asthma was one of a number of  therapy issues for me.

Nobody really knows what causes childhood onset asthma.  For me, it was something that showed up in the middle of my first grade year after a week spent in the grip of a strange, intense floaty feeling.  The buzzy, distant, carefree sensation you get right before you faint, basically, only I never did faint, I just said odd things very slowly and walked around feeling like I was at a foggy remove from everything.  Then one night I woke up and I was barely able to breathe, coughing up guck, and the rest is history. 

An attack can literally happen at any time.  No trigger.  No warning.  Now yes, strenuous physical activity is a trigger.

Sometimes.

This is what gets you branded a malingerer.  Asthma is not 100% predictable.

Intense emotional turmoil can be a trigger.

Sometimes.

This is how you get accused of 'playing it' as a way to manipulate people.  I promise you I was not outside mowing my lawn this afternoon trying to manipulate anyone.  Or in the middle of a deep sleep, come to that.

Here's what an asthma attack feels like.  Imagine you've just run full tilt boogie down to the end of the block.  You're winded. Suddenly, someone swaps out your trachea for something the size of a cocktail straw, and you have to try and breathe through that, and remember, you're winded already.  Now add mucus!  Gallons of it!  Your lungs are producing it because they're trying to wash away an irritant that isn't there!  Way to go lungs!  This creates a horrible downward spiral of forcing yourself to cough to clear your lungs, which inflames them, which causes them to produce more guck, which you have to cough to get rid of, and so on, getting worse and worse, until you end up in the emergency ward, where I have been about twelve times in my life.  For asthma anyway.  

The emergency treatment for a severe asthma attack used to be adrenaline.  It was given in a drip I.V. and you'd go from lying on the gurney like a blobfish to 'fight or flight' the instant it hit.  Worked like a charm.  And also made it look like you, the kid, had been scared out of your fakery by the needle and the hospital surroundings.  There were some very outspoken, bitchy doctors and nurses in those days too.  "Oh, we see this sudden recovery stuff aaaalll the time with the asthma kids," they'd sneer disgustedly.  Thanks folks.  I really needed you to reinforce that notion in my parents' minds.  Kudos to you!

In latter years they switched treatments to something else, either using an I.V or delivering it via inhalator, which works on the same principle that a vape does, only it was a much more elaborate contraption back then.  You'd have oxygen being fed through a nose tube, while sucking on this big collection of hanging tubes and drip chambers, and exhaling the most amazing huge clouds of cold, rolling fog; it was awesome.  The nurses would yell at you for doing that. "Just keep your mouth on the inhalator and breathe through that!" they'd say.  I say if you're going to come into a hospital damn near dead then you get to have a little fun.

The last time I was hospitalized for a severe attack, shit hit the fan in the middle of the movie 'Full Metal Jacket', right there in the theater.  My husband and daughter half pulled, half carried me out past the line of people waiting to go in, and I can only wonder what they were expecting after that sight.

So there you go.  I'm feeling just fine now, thank you, I have a shredded rat carcass in my back yard, and the Bejewelled Biker Beast just  made oatmeal cookies and I get them all! Not a bad way to end the day!

Party, Party, Party

 Quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll!

I seem to have picked up another pet teenager!  Pet Teenager #1 grew up and moved to Las Vegas, which she is in the process of taking over.  This new one is just another neighbor kid who started coming by because of my garden also.  I shall refer to her as Occasional Teenager.  Just a nice, friendly kid who stops by every now and then to say hi and see how I'm doing.  It's so weird!  Really nice, but...of all the things I thought being older would bring me, Pet Teenagers was not one.  

________________________

James Joyce is really annoying.  He can fuck right off.

________________________

I am making a conscious decision this Winter to exercise and get outside when I can. Last year when the monsoon season began, I basically stayed inside all winter flat on my ass writing and studying, which made the subsequent Springtime Rush out in the garden excruciating!  

By the end of Summer, I'm usually in pretty good shape.  I still build up biceps that rip my t-shirt sleeves 

This is totally a picture of me.  Really.

and I'm flexible enough to not just touch my toes, but lay my palms flat on the ground.  You don't use it, you lose it.  To go from a high level of activity to sudden dormancy is not good, which I suppose should go without saying. (Can you say 'severe constipation'?  Then go run outside and scream it in the middle of the street ten times! I'll stay here and enjoy that mental image.)  To spend an entire winter on your ass is super de duper extra no good.

I'm seeing the benefits of my new regimen.  Even if it's just doing exercises indoors, the improvement in my mental health in particular is marked.  Whoda thunk it?  All this time doctors really did know what they were talking about.

Gotta exercise those brain cells as well.  So, I girded my loins and delved into the world of 20th century poetry, which is way, way, way, way out of my comfort zone - because it is way, way, way, way out of my comfort zone.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there's a lot of stuff out there that is not only readable, but beautiful and enjoyable too.  Will I be forsaking my beloved Beat Poets anytime soon? Not on your amphetamines, buddy.  But I've found out a new thing, and gone in a new direction.  Now even my brain cells will have little biceps that rip their little t-shirts too!

I decided to take a more active role in Good Reads, too.  I have three books going at any given time, not including the nonfiction articles I read online, so that's been a pick and choose proposition.  But it's also a form of social media on a higher level of discourse than "Here is a picture of some clouds" and "I hate the Tories" ; or, as they call it, Facebook.  I just started 'The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius' because I  know how to party.  We'll see how that goes.  Gotta be less annoying that Joyce.

Z Nation - Post Thanksgiving Edition

I had to go out and at least walk around the garden and then take a drive through town today because I've just about had it with quarantine.  Not a single soul was outside today, despite it's being mild and sunny; there were no cars, no trucks coming to or from the border, not a sound, no wind at all, and it was EERIE.  

I mean, usually you'll see a dog, or somebody's cat, or a tractor, or a kid, but nope.  Went to the post office, nobody.  Drove around, which doesn't take any more than 20 minutes, just at an idle, letting the car drift along - nobody.  Something was on fire south of here in one of the fields; I'd say slash, because it's that time of the year, but I didn't drive down to look because we've had flooding and I have my doubts as to the state of the road headed in that direction. 

(Scene:  FirstNations tootling down a quaint little farm lane in her Wagoroonie mini SUV or whatever the hell I'm driving now.  Tootling along.  Suddenly the pavement gives way and gasploosh!  There I am! Tit deep and sinking, in a jumble of migrating salmon, ecology blocks, traffic cones, broken pavement and crick water - and the zombies all suddenly look up and come stumbling my way.  No, no no no no.  Not worth it to go see a fire.  I've seen fires before.  They're made of flames.)

Speaking of salmon, the Bejewelled Biker, who now drives the Baby Blue Sedan of Sadness, was stopped by a school of migrating salmon just last week.  I mean actual migrating salmon crossing the road, no crosswalk, no 'Danger Fish Crossing' sign, no UFO's, nothing.

There's a notorious high-water spot about three miles from here that runs through a blueberry field, and when conditions are right, big, huge salmon go wriggling across the road in the overspill, from a flooded blueberry field, across the pavement, to the wetlands on the other side.  There were people out on either side of the road taking videos of this, and also wading around doing a little hand-fishing too.  I went back the next day to the very spot and saw the same thing happening!

The Bejewelled Beast snapped an excellent shot of a teenage kid who had hand-caught himself a super nice fish, holding it up on the side of the road. Do I have those pictures?  No I do not.  Just imagine a tall skinny kid, standing in the middle of a street full of salmon swimming like mad bastards across a wet two-lane road, from a blueberry field into a marsh, with a crowd of people taking pictures and about three semi's stopped in the road.

This is trippy country.  Also, when nature tells you it's time to fuck, you gotta fuck.  Even if it means swimming through a blueberry field and wriggling your fishy tummy over wet pavement to deposit your milt/eggs in a cedar swamp.  I'm sure you can relate to the feeling.

OH WAIT I DO HAVE THE PICTURE!!!!!

Live, from Sumas WA, here is the picture of the kid who hand-caught a fish!

Note that this kid is not wearing matching sandals and has been photographed against a backdrop of cedar swamp with what appears to be a house in the background.  I don't know what he has in his pocket, but it's ruined now, because according to the BB, this kid was up to his armpits in the cedar swamp just moments before this was shot.  So there you go.  Kid with a fish, and a borked cell phone most likely.

This fish is what's called a 'Chum Salmon'.  It is of such unsatisfactory quality that it was cut up and used to 'chum' for bear, or fed to dogs, or slaves, by the indigenes.  Me, I've eaten plenty of chum salmon pulled in from the mouth of the Columbia River and it's a perfectly delicious fish.  It's the change they undergo as their systems adapt to fresh water from salt water that gives the flesh a weird flavor and texture.  As far upstream as we are from the ocean, this kid probably took one bite of his prize and then fed the rest to his dog.  Old fresh-water chum salmon is a funky, funky eating experience.  Still, to see a natural fish run for the first time in years is further proof to me that Nature is coming back with a vengeance thanks to Covid!

Your Great-Great-Grandparents Were Vegetarian, God-the-Mother Worshipping, Gay, Naked, Hippies

...but first, a word from FirstNations.

So here in the US it's Thanksgiving, and we here at Rancho FirstNations are thankful that Biden is our President elect.  All that "I refuse to leave office" Trump horseshit on the news is just Trump spin-doctoring for his peasants. 

 Here's the scoop:  right now we're in a period known as a 'Lame Duck Presidency'. It's the period of time between the election of the new President, and when he officially takes office on January the 20th.  All this spreading fear, the tales of locked doors and the Million Maga Marches is the result of credulous people having been trained to be ignorant by the Right media, or just plain not being aware of how their own goddamn country works.  

The 'lame duck' period is in place with the idea being that the outgoing president will have time to get his affairs in order, take care of loose ends and get his shit packed and so forth.  It's the 20th Amendment of our fucking Constitution for Heavens' sake!  This is business as usual in the United States. 

Our press is absolutely guilty of assuming that the general public has any real knowledge of history past who was voted the winner of  America's Got Talent, or who won the Superbowl in 1977.  I guess putting out boring facts isn't as cash productive as reporting The Orangapresidents' latest wacky antics minus context.

So if you're in another country freaking out thinking that Trump is going to nail the doors of the White House shut and not come out, Do Not Worry. It's just the same old asswind from the Orange Thing.

_____________

 The International Association For The Preservation Of Spiritualist And Occult Periodicals is based in Forest Grove, Oregon (surprise, surprise!) and is absolutely solid gold.  If you are a Pagan, a Wiccan, or whatever your left-of-center persuasion, your great-great grandparents were enthusiastically writing about it and practicing its tenets.  If you want proof in the form of a whole treasure trove of primary source materials including personal diaries,  go here:

http://iapsop.com/about.html

I sincerely hope that anybody out there who is a practicing Pagan of whatever flavor will use these archives to learn about their history as it ORIGINALLY appeared in popular context.  The collection comes from all over the world!  The UK is well represented, and they were in close contact with the US; there's a lot of ideological cross pollination.  It's wonderful stuff!  Some of it very thoughtful, and some of it absolutely....damn.  Just DAMN. Here is an example of what I mean:

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/advanced_thought_and_divine_science/

If you were a steampunk writer, this would be your playground.  The same goes for historical mystery and horror writers.  Phillip K. Dick would have shit himself with rapture if he'd had this to play with.  If you're me, you're giggling with delight!

____________________

Lesbians! Wacky, Wacky Lesbians!

 Well I did my research, wrote my story, and found out a number of very interesting facts!

1. I was living in the middle of Lesbian Central back in the day. Southeast Portland, man.  All the co-operatives, the communes, the all-gal apartment houses, the bars, the church, everything!  There I was like "I need a beer and a lez'bean!"  And I was knee deep in the things!  The reason I did not realize it was because...

2. The lesbian community was so ridiculously fractured and political and insular that it was more like an archipelago of warring islands than it was a community.  I lived in 'Blue Collar, Prison Record Land, which explains a lot. Up the next couple of blocks was 'Total Separatist Land'. Up past them was 'Pacifist Co-Op Lipstick Land'. Over another few blocks and you were in 'Lets All Live In An Undifferentiated Heap And Eat Brown Rice Land'. Then there was the "Butch As Fuck' apartments and the 'Indian Print Fabrics and Weaving' duplexes. There was one Womens' bookstore and a Food Co-op in the middle of this area (naturally) and they were cruisy in the afternoons, but everyone generally stuck close to home and went to their own bar and store and seldom ventured further.

3. The gay guys all did their thing across the river, and they did it better than the ladies. 

 Downtown Portland is divided into four parts, unlike Gaul, which is divided into three parts. 

North and South are divided by Burnside Avenue, and East and West are divided by the Willamette River.  In the Seventies, the Northwest and Southwest side of downtown was the wealthy white educated area, and the East Side was everybody else plus Lez'beans.  

On the Northwest side,  around the Flatiron Block, and straggling down North of Burnside Avenue were the awesome gay bars (and some freaky ones too, like JR's Cell.)  If you wanted to go out and you were gay and female, you had two choices (if you were me) - go to your local, listen to Hall and Oates, and hang out with grouchy unemployed women who didn't read  -  or go alllllllll the way across the river, and then head waaaaaaay north, to the Pink Triangle, as it was unfortunately called, and go to the fun bars with the good music, where the bathrooms were actually clean, and there wasn't a huge dyke standing by the door making sure you didn't spend too much time in there.  Yeah, that was still done.

This cleared up a lot for me.  I knew that there were a lot of politics going on - and I mean a lotta a lotta politics, all strident, but I simply wasn't meant to live up to the ridiculously strict rules that every little tiny faction upheld.

4. There was another, scary reason that the ladies were so clannish.  You'd go into another neighborhoods' local and get frozen out.  And I'm thinking what the fuck? I'm cute! I'm a fun date!  I'm a blast when I'm out on the town!  So there I was, all butthurt for years wondering what the deal was, until now, I'm sixty, and I find out that the ladies bars were getting jacked up by the police three times as often as the guys were.  They'd send in a female cop and wait for someone to make a move, and then...yeah. And there I was, unfamiliar, not part of the local 'thing'...no wonder I got the hairy eyeball.  

Well screw you, ladies.  You missed out.  You missed out by two stinkin' inches.  What do I mean by that?  I mean that the minimum height requirement for a woman on the Portland Police Force back then was five feet, seven inches.  I am an adorable little 5-5. So if you're gay and sixty and used to live in Portland, and you saw a girl who looked like Bernadette Peters and dressed like Fred Astaire, that was me, and you shoulda said hi. HMMPF.

A Blast From The Past

 Hey there fellow nerds!  Ya wanna read a surprisingly enlightened exploration of love, homosexuality and the fluidity of gender from 1908?  No shit, kiddies - nineteen oh eight.  Surprisingly, us folks used to be called 'Uranians'.  Or 'Urnings.'  (Insert Rowan and Martin joke here:  How much are Greeks Urning?  About a buck fifty!!!)  

Admit it. That's some funny shit right there.

Here the linkie:    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53763

Everybody needs to belong to EGutenberg.  It is The Tits.

I'm trying to write a story about a lesbian, so I'm doing my research.  I mean, I was there, but being Bi, I just went around everywhere and waited for the vibe to happen.  I wasn't entrenched in the lesbian community.  (Yes.  In Oregon in the 1970's, lesbians lived in trenches.  It was rough out there.) There was a definite culture going on, but I never stuck around long enough to learn the secret password and handshake.  I just remember really, profoundly, shitty, grim, horrifying bars full of women in casual wear dancing to 'I Can't Go For That' by Hall and Oates. I did learn how to close dance with another woman, though, which was fun.

I read Stone Butch Blues years ago, and I only related to half of it, as you'd expect.  A lot of what was being described was not what I saw, either. It being the Seventies in Portland, I was around a lot of younger women trying to rewrite what being queer was all about, and it seemed to be about wearing casual clothes and dancing to Hall and Oates. And boycotting Coors (booo) and drinking Anchor Steam Beer (yay! support your community!)  Then I met my girlfriend, and coasted on that for a year.  

So, I study, and in my travels found this little gem of a book.  It's not a terrifically engaging read- BUT! there are some awesome passages so it's worth the slog, lil buckaroo; don't be lazy! - until you get to the Appendix, where there are a number of testimonials from gay men and women of the day.  They're amazing to read.  Everyone is a little leery of coming right out and admitting to the sex, but consider the times.  And then there's those that do own it, and that is absolutely mind blowing.  Think of how brave you had to be to even write that letter, or talk to the author!

________________________

As long as I'm here I'm going to add this issue:  Women wearing mens' underwear. Specifically tighty whities. This, I do not understand and never have.  Fitted uns are constructed to fit certain bodies.  If you are female and you wear tighty whities, (y-fronts to you Brits) you are going to have this floppy pouch sticking out in front.  It feels weird and it looks weird and it is unpredictably breezy at times. 

Yes, I have worn mens' tighty whitey-style underwear on a number of occasions. Once, out of of sheer curiosity. (Therein lies a tale.)  The rest of the times, I was out of clean uns.*  My ex-husband, who was built like a chihuahua, wore the same size as I did, so necessity ruled the day.  As petit as he was, I still had that funky pouchy thing sticking out in front. And t.w's have these beefy leg bands that are apparently there so that your dick and balls don't fall out and run down your leg and off into the distance laughing hysterically. They are horrid and they chafe. But apparently wearing these things is de rigueur among studs. This is not a news flash by any means, I know, but...they're not comfortable.  If you're not wearing high heels, why are you wearing Tee Dubs? Why do that to yourself? WHY GOD WHY.

Not that I am the Underpants Police, or a Bottom Inspector.  Link follows.  If you don't hit that link your soul is dead.

http://viz.co.uk/2014/10/26/dawn-bottom-inspectors/  

If you can get with mens' briefs, that is totally OK with me.  I am only concerned for the comfort and general welfare of my people.  So if you're female, and you're reading this post sat in a pair of mens' beefers, take a moment and ask yourself "Am I really comfortable?  Or am I just sitting in a lie?"  I think everybody should do this at some point in their lives.  Are you really getting the most out of your underwear experience? Is your hine ruled by your politics, or do your politics rule your hine, or however I meant that sentence to come out?  I say you should always put comfort and hygiene first.  

That's why I go commando in mens' sweat pants.

*Speaking of a blast from the past, do hit this link (demanding, aren't I?) and revisit the last time I ever wore a pair of mens' underpants, which post is most excellently well and truly described as 'A Blast From The Past'

https://opiejett.blogspot.com/2018/09/hammer-time.html?zx=7087e31b821ffb0d

It's Suddenly Winter And It Sucks

 I am gonna whine.  We didn't even get a real Fall.  We got two weeks of crappy windy weather, one hard freeze and all the leaves blew off and now it's Winter and it sucks.  It's not fair, and I'm cold.  Plus there are weird, fat, fluffy grey birds, big chubby ones the size of chickens, sitting in the trees and I don't know what kind of birds they are.  It's Winter, I'm cold, and I'm a disgrace to birders everywhere.

One good thing about Covid is that the Guns of Autumn seem to have been largely silenced.  I live in a migratory corridor and the cornfields and ponds are usually ablaze with gunfire as the ducks and geese go over, every morning and evening, like an artillery barrage.  Really, that bad.  From sunup for a solid hour, and then around sundown for another good hour.  Apparently you can hunt all day long starting in September until March (waterfowl, upland game birds, and turkeys.  And you know what; go for the turkeys.  Shoot those motherfuckin' turkeys.  I have been menaced and victimized and taunted and harassed by turkeys for years now and just fuck turkeys.)   

Now, I am not anti-hunting.  Not at all (see above statement about turkeys.)  But this area is a bottleneck in the migratory corridor, and there is usually, as I've said, a metric shit-ton of gunfire going on. Very little gets through.  And then I come to find out that a lot of those birds get left lying in the field. And people are very casual about it; like a living thing is no more important than a beer bottle you'd shoot off a stump.  These are the same people who bitch about all the coyotes coming down from the mountains and taking their February calves, you understand.

That's not hunting.  Hunters eat what they shoot.  If someone leaves an animal dead in the field, that person belongs in a gravel pit shooting television sets and washing machines, because that person is not a hunter.  That person is a dick.

But then comes Covid, and the skies are alive again!  Thousands of snow geese, swans, you name it, flocks like I used to see when I was a kid! 

I still hear a few guns go off, and that's the way it is.  But the huge difference it's made in the number of animals I see is remarkable.  Between one year and the next!  Despite my inability to identify the mysterious chubby grey birds, I do keep track of this kind of thing, and I swear I have not seen anything like this since about 1968, back when I lived in another migratory flyway/ bottleneck, in the Willamette Valley.  The skies, day and night, filled with migrating birds.  It's astounding!  Birds blacking out the stars!  The whole auditory landscape filled with the calls of brandts and snow geese, for hours!

And I think, fly fast and fly sneaky, birds.  Get where you're going and keep your heads low.  I want my great-grandchildren to be able to see hundreds of hawks kettling overhead, and vast flocks of redwings circling and turning and flashing through the sky like immense schools of fish in the ocean; and the geese flying overhead in chevrons, from horizon to horizon in the Fall.

The Backlash You Fear May Be Your Own

 Now, I listened to this.  Dave Chappelle, Saturday Night Live.  If you haven't, here it is:

UPDATE:  NBC seems to have peacock-blocked it.  Oy vey.  Just look up 'Dave Chappelle monologue Saturday Night Live 2020.  You can do it lil' buddy!

Now,  I made it through.  I laughed.  I sat here and was culturally white as snow and I made it through this monologue, and my first thought after it was over, was "Damn, I'm glad I don't live in the city."

My first thought.  My first fuckin' thought.

I remember 1968 and 1969 in Portland, Oregon.  Real well.  

Portland was BURNING.  The police had cordoned off the bridges to keep the black people on 'their' side of the river.  I lived on that same side, less than three miles away.  You could look to the north and see the buildings burning, you could see the smoke rising to the north.  I stood on the roof of the house and looked at the smoke, eight, nine years old. 

I listened to the news and heard, there in the background as the reporters spoke, enraged people being shot down in the streets by the police.  Being blocked from crossing the Willamette River over to the 'white' side.  Coast Guard and dockyard fire boats were patrolling the river and the people raged on the banks and got water cannons shot at them - and bullets too.  Those bodies were not counted. 

None of the bodies were counted, not anywhere. Nobody counted the bodies.  Nobody that I knew, anyway.  

Everybody I knew, on the television, the radio, the newspapers, were all white.

We didn't have to know.

We didn't have to know.

Not our problem.  

It was 'those' people, tearing down their own businesses and homes, look at those crazy people, you think they'd be fighting who they're supposed to be mad at! But see, it's all fake!  No, all they want to do is have an excuse - and I was told this by my parents and other adults - they just wanted an excuse to rob and take away what the 'uppity' ones had, because most of them were too lazy to work. The Russians were behind it.  Destabilizing the nation by riling up the poor dumb people who didn't know any better in the first place.  So bottle them all up and let Devil take the hindmost. That's the only way to make it stop.

They say that inside every liberal is a racist waiting to get out.  

Me, I'm scared.  And if you listen to Dave Chappelle, he addresses that - hey, white people!  There's this feeling that you might begin to experience...that people you don't even know, who don't even know you, are going to do something bad to you because of the color of your skin.

I'm not a racist.  What I am is someone who knows what's right, who wants to do what's right, but doesn't know fucking how.  I didn't know so much, for so long - and didn't even realize I was ignorant - that I AM going to fuck up.  I'm going to offend somebody.  Hell, I may be doing it right now in this post.  I guarantee you that Black rights was not way up on my list of things to worry about when I was younger.  I didn't have to.  

So now I'm reading.  A lot.  Way out of my comfort zone.  

How many of my neighbors are?  

I remember being absolutely appalled at the sheer number of people who lived in my little speck on the map, who were like "HOORAY!  WE CAN BE OPENLY RACIST AND HATE GAYS NOW!" as soon as Trump came into office.  Little old ladies I've known for years ffs. Kids my daughters' age.  The sheer GLEE of people who genuinely felt more free once it was 'cool' to hate.  Just following the President's example.

They're all out there freaking out right now.  Some very vocal, hateful, ignorant, mislead, average people, half the nation.

I've got nothing to end this with.  

I need to go find a kitten.

More Love, Less Attitude, and No More Cofeve

 I listened to President Elect Bidens speech and I was left thinking two things.  The first thing was YAY OMGWTFBBQ WE'RE FREE THANK YOU NO MORE TRUMP ROCK ON JOE!  

The second thing was "This dude is not a ball of fire."

Can he do what he's promising?  I think that everyone who voted for him is of the inclination to pitch in to heal what the last four years has done to this country.  But as far as leadership presence goes?  Biden said all the right things, invoked all the correct issues, and came across as, God love him, the Calvin Coolidge of 2020.

Can we take it?  Are we as a nation big enough people to forego being entertained by our politicians and put in the hard, not fun, dreary, drab, slogging work to truly abolish ignorance and hate?  Because Biden isn't going to wave a magic wand and Lo:  Harmony reigns!  (That was Obama.  Keep up.)  

He is not what you'd call a demonstrative guy. He seems like a nice, everyday kind of person. I like that.  But here's my point:   For the past four years, everyone in this nation, Red or Blue, has been jacking off to the Funny Monkey and his Tweets.  This poor mook Biden has a long uphill climb, to try and follow that freak show. And face it. The Freak Show was horrible, but it certainly was exciting, wasn't it?  Every day a new outrage!  Another mindless tweet!  Another groping of a foreign dignitary!

  Biden is essentially on a tightrope over a bottomless pit of Hot Republican Garbage.  Keep your ass over the rope, buddy.

 And WTF Republicans?  You used to stand for something, as I recall.  Less government. Increased states rights.  Now you're like those mean girls in grade school, all huddling at 'their' lunch table, hissing shitty insults and tripping the unpopular kids, with the grinning collusion of the Arch Lunch Room Lady, Donald Trump/Vladmir Putin.  (Seriously, I was shocked to see how many people I've known for years suddenly throw off their facades and rejoice in letting their inner bigot out to play during the Trump Administration.  It was fuckin' scary.)  The party that used to be all about self-determination is now nothing but the Ignorant Trailer Park Pukes, violently color-coding their surroundings in blithe disregard of the positive effects of things like public education and genetic diversity. 

 I don't even know what the hell Montana is any more. Or Utah.  Then you head south and run onto Texas and we're all on another planet now, and it's covered in suck. Chunky suck. There's stuff floating in the suck.  All the Texans have turned into angry Klingons who didn't make the grade and have to stay on their planet sweeping up all the suck, and they're doing a really bad job.  I mean seriously, Republicans!  I never thought I'd see the day that I'd actually be able to sit through a documentary clip featuring Richard Nixon and 1. Not start in, or 2. think 'Wow, he was so polite and well-spoken.'

Joe, you  have my best wishes.  But it's gonna be tough.  Nobody is going to be wearing a 'Grab My Pussy Mr. President' t-shirt on your behalf, dude.  And that's a good thing, but those bitches are still out there, and so are their husbands, and you scare them to death.  

Take no shit, Joe.

PRESIDENT ELECT BIDEN, BITCHES!!!!!!!!

 Recount?  Oh hell yes I imagine so, there'll be a recount.  And a recount of the recount.  And an examination of the hanging chads and suspect electoral college 'contributions' and all the subsequent whining and bitching we see every single time a Republican doesn't get his way. Waaaaa waaaa waaaa.

Still.

PRESIDENT ELECT BIDEN, BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  

Strange Cravings, Oxycontin Edition

 The truth of the matter is, I am not averse to a  little oxy every now and then.  And my excuse this time is 'The Season'.  Which is Fall.  

The thing is, I'm an 'atypical responder' so a combination of substances that would land other people flat on their faces, licking the sidewalk, has me doing household minutia, happy as a clam, at 10:p.m. like:  

1. Organizing and consolidating my spice cabinet.  And kids, we have a whole damn three-shelf average kitchen cabinet filled top to bottom, back to front with bulk spices.  I just went through 76 different bottles of various substances, organized them labels forward,  and got rid of all the little half and 3/4 bottles by dumping all the matching substances into other, larger jars, and labelling them.  This took me about an hour, and it smelled really good.

2. 11:30 p.m.  I rinsed and ate half a jar of Spanish pimento olives.  This had to happen.  My stomach was a little upset, and if I have an upset stomach, the only thing that will settle it is either a lot of olive oil on a piece of bread, or straight-up olives.  If you don't rinse the salt out of those green olives you end up with a worse problem than you started out with, but I am super smart and so I'm sitting here feeling fine.  

Yes.  I know.

3.  Took care of my plastic waste.  This means crushing and smashing and stomping on all our used rinsed out plastic bottles, out on the porch, smash, bash, RRRAW GODZILLA and then putting them into a big garbage can, which I did loudly. At  11:03 p.m.   Hi, neighbors!  I'm nuts!  

4. Looked up the history of carnivals, amusement parks and fairs - the slang, the people and so forth, and now a large part of my childhood lies in ashes.

5. Took lil' Gourdie, yanked off his head to save for the seeds, and then jammed the rest of him into the mouth of our truly huge barfing pumpkin (I got rid of the barf to make room for Gourdie.)  I set this charming vignette up near the sidewalk.  For the past hour people have been slowing down to take a good, long look at my personal weirdness.  I feel happy about this.  It is offensive and inappropriate, and everyone will blame The Bejewelled Beast aka The Biker, and not me, because jolly, chubby, nice  old ladies don't do shit like setting up carnivorous pumpkin-eating-a-baby-displays in their yards at 10 p.m.

6. Eaten half a bag of Doritos XXXtra Nacho Cheese Chips because who wouldn't do that at 10:p.m.? (See entry number 2.  I paid for my Dorito-y sins with green pimento stuffed olives, rinsed.  I should sleep well tonight.  Right?  Huh?)

7. Made detailed plans to use my Bissel Steam mop on the kitchen and bathroom floors.  Planned that shit out like the Invasion of Normandy Beach.  Then I realized that my Bissel Steam Mop died last month. 10:30 p.m.  Bummed out.

8. Decided that making a list of the stupid shit I've done this evening follow a logical timeline was too damn much trouble, and then went into the bathroom and cleaned out my ears with Q-Tips.

This is what acting a fool looks like when you are elderly, folks.  You abuse pain medication, drink vodka and eat olives late at night.  This is life ON THE EDGE DAMMIT.

ACTUAL PHOTOS FROM RANCHO FIRSTNATIONS: BIKER (BEJEWELLED BEAST) EDITION!!!

 OMG I married the right man.  I totally did.  Male or female, it was a tossup - and the universe finally threw me a fuckin' bone (hur hur) and gave me The Bejewelled Beast!  Who is a biker.  My husband. With a dick. Keep up.

OK so this year out of nowhere he decided that he was Gonna. Do. Halloween. Bitch.

I stood back and let him work his fucked up imagination like a dastardly machine made to warp the minds of hapless youth and disgust their elders.  He thought this shit up and bought all the supplies, and I, the former Mrs. 'Do All The Holidays Or Not - Nah, Let's Not' just let him go where the Spirit (Mephisto Q. Kimchee) lead him.  And I am absolutely worshipping the layers of subtle and not so subtle fucked-up-ness he put into this.

First, he put together a costume for work.  They held a contest competition, and he won second place, because 1. He is awesome, and 2. He growled and drooled.  I present to you....DR. DEATH!

Why is he wearing Grandma Shanaynay's weave?  Because he STOLE IT OFF HER CORPSE.

There he is.  My Bejewelled Beast.  Labcoat spattered with the blood of surgery indifferently performed, in Grandma Shanaynay's weave.  

Now here we have his concept for our lil' Welcome Halloween Host:

Lil' Baby Gourdie died of an unfortunate fungal disease, which enlivined his lil' baby corpse and caused it to rise again to wear the onesie of the living!  The message on Zombaby's onesie?  As befits a baby hungry for brains - 'Gobble 'til You Wobble'. My husband is a GENIUS.

And here is our porch display.  As night falls, our porchlight gleams off this horrifying vignette - lil' baby Gourdie, his buddy Scully, and his best friend Up-Chuck:

Barfing pumpkin? CHECK.  Scully?  CHECK.  Lil' baby Gourdie, shedding fungal excrescences? CHECK. Don't lick the Halloween display, folks.

Stop on by!  Knock on the door!  We have Covid-friendly treats in plastic bags - and not bullshit like Smarties or Jolly Ranchers, either.  We have CHOCOLATE. Come on by!

...unless you're too scared.

HUZZAH!! The New Laptop, She Is Here! Ole'!!!!

 I am doing the boogie dance, that dance from France, that dance without your underpants!  

This very dance here!  Without underpants!           

My new laptop is here and it is a dream! It is sleek, it is understated, I could fling it like a Battle Frisbee of Death and decapitate my enemies because it is razor thin, and setting it up was a JOY.  

OK it was a joy in comparison with the hours I've spent having to dodge and undercut the crapware on the reconditioned laptops I've been wasting my $$ on for years.  I have nobody but myself to blame.  On the other hand, I am the Ninja Warrior of setting up computers and digging into their entrails to extract the hidden "whoopsie, gosh, did we put that in there?  well golly how the heck did that happen?  do you know how that happened? well I am stumped.  just stumped" bullshit they  hide way back in the registries.   See, to me, less is more.  I'll never use this thing for gaming or watching television or Skype or recording or any of that other shit.  Uninstalled! 

My favorite piece of crapware is:  The Calculator.  You can literally type any equation you can equate into the regular search bar and get an answer just by hitting 'Search'.  I mean Geeze Louise.

Of course the first thing I did was download a bunch of TOS pix.

Because I use the Cloud - and if you don't, you should be - all my stuff was safe and sound.  I am not worried about Big  Brother reading my shit, because he should.  It's good stuff.  Go ahead.  I live in a 'Constitution-Free' zone anyway, so it's not like I'm not used to it.  

Hi Homeland Security!  Hi Border Patrol!  Hi Sumas Police Department!  Hi County Sheriffs! Hi....The Navy!  Hi Sister Mary Petronella!  Hi Santa!   

Speaking of crapware, let's visit a crap site - or not.  PINTEREST.  Now, isn't this what they used to call....bookmarking?  Except, this makes all your shit public - IF YOU JOIN, of course.  Try and visit a Pinterest site that's been sealed with The Seven Seals of Gargob-Ra the Vile Selfish Fucker.  You cannot.  Nope.  If you like to search by image, all that Pinterest shit is 'Nyah nyah, Pinterest only, you suck, ha ha ha.'  

Y'know, fuck dat.  It means being creative, and it takes a little longer, but the internet is a bigass place and that idea you're chasing will come up, for free, no strings, if you're willing to think - and search - outside the box.  Meanwhile, I have Ye Olde Bookmarkes, and somehow, I just don't feel the blazing need to have complete strangers rifle through them and comment.  Weird, right? I'm such a rebel.

In a completely unrelated vein, in my travels on Google Maps: Street View, I found a very, very tall and formidable working girl dressed in a colorful lycra catsuit - and I mean this garment was subject to some astounding compound curvage -  soliciting trade  in Portland, Oregon, my hometown.  

On Google Street View.  

This freaked me out because those little Google cars usually go out on Sunday afternoons, and this Amazon Entrepreneur was Flagging. Down. Traffic. out there by the side of the road.  Huge wig.  Tall, tall, tall shoes. Glorious makeup.   Maybe she was out there on Sunday afternoon hoping that someone was ready to get sinning again.  Believe me, this would have been the woman to lead you down that path and make you grateful. 

Sadly, the picture has since been updated, and the multicolored, glorious Amazon Entrepreneur is no longer to be seen. But I remember her fondly.  That's my Portland. 

Youth Fades and the Truth is Elton John

 I found an obscure channel on our t.v.  I'll probably never find it again.  It's a music channel, but they play live performances instead of just the hits with an annoying background, or a montage of album covers.  I'd been watching it - moving wallpaper, really.  Then suddenly a few piano chords rang out.

And then a torrent of them.  Raging, dancing, showing off, Fred and Ginger dancing like it was nothing at all, using all the quarter notes and half notes and eighth notes and weaving in the syncopation,  dissonant, perfect leaps off the high dive straight into the water with barely a splash. This pianist was running those keys like he'd invented sound,  and I looked up from the book I was reading - 

-and there was Elton John.

In his prime.  Before the flamboyance got too flamboyant.  Playing solo to a live audience and turning it into something that went into amazing, obscure places and came out like a rack of fireworks being set off one after another.  I set down my book and just watched this performance, Elton making hard, funky love to a honky-tonk piano, lost in his sound, and I was just stunned, amazed, nearly in tears.

Back when I was a little Muk I was a rabid fan of Elton John.  Had every single one of his albums.  Even the ones that hadn't been released in the U. S. , I was that into him.  (Shit, I still know all the words to 'The Bitch Is Back', stone cold sober as a matter of fact.)

But I had not realized, from 1973 until just this evening, right here in the year of our Lord Covid 2020 that the man COULD PLAY LIKE A MAD BASTARD.

I fell into teenage love with the showman without even realizing that he was a prodigy.  All these years later, I watched that young man give 110 percent of himself to an audience that was largely fucked up on pot and there for the showmanship.  I remembered the poster I'd had of him in my room, all hairy chested with a feather...jacket....of some sort... barely covering his adorable pot belly, and I wish I could apologize to the dude. Of course I was a kid then, and I was attracted by his like-greets-like vibe as much as I was anything else, but it has to be admitted before the world. Now.

Elton John can tear the fuck out of a piano.

Amen.

Rainbows, Puppies, Shrimp, Kittens, Unicorns

"The better part of valor is discretion, in which the better part I have saved myself." 

 And so, lacking the computer security of my convictions, I have deleted the last post; sent it off to the great 011010111010 in the sky.  Now it's nano-dust on an unremarkable, anonymous asteroid, which is what I imagine Internet Deletion Limbo looks like.  Just a beat-up asteroid, all covered in the micro-schmutz of everything that's ever been deleted online. Every now and then, the ghost of John Glenn goes around with a leaf blower, and all our dusty old www.sins and mistakes go flying off into space.  When he's done he throws a stick for Laika the space dog, and they have a nice time.

________________________________________

Having given the issue careful consideration, the conclusion is in:  Captain Johnathan Archer was a better captain than Captain James Tiberius Kirk.

There.  I said it.

Archer did his level best with way less than Kirk had to work with. His poor ship could only do warp factor 4!   And even though there wasn't a Prime directive in Archer's time, he always tried to act as though one was in place.  His crew was more disciplined and far less likely to get dead.  He had a special ops team, the MAKO's.  He was also burdened with something at the rear of the bridge that would blow up like the Fourth of July every time the ship bumped into a rock.  That had to be super distracting for everyone involved.  But he made it home, ended the Temporal Cold War, and participated in an apology ritual involving a chainsaw, which is badass.

Kirk was, God love him, basically a pirate.  Well, a privateer, lets give him that much.  And he knew it; his friends knew it, his superiors knew it.  Nobody had any illusions about Kirk.  What he had going for him was a natural ability to command.  He was a born explorer. He had charisma, sincerity....and he was one wily sonofabitch. Odysseus in space.  Never turn your back on Kirk.

Another thing I've noticed is that you get the feeling that yes, the NCC1701 crew has been together for a long time, they're all familiar with one another, they're kind of sick of each others' bullshit, and it's business as usual as they interact.  That has yet to be reproduced in any of the Trek series.  Oh, you get a standout character, or pair of characters (think Quark and The Constable) here and there, but in TOS all three of the primary players and their adjuncts are strong personalities, and I think that's why it still has the magic.

Captain Picard...was a CEO.  He was a negotiator.  A diplomat.  Kind of a cold fish, and kind of pissy, too.  Now I love me some Picard, do not get me wrong.  He would fuck you up.  But dear Lord the poor man was surrounded with floor sweepings, like a bunch of junior fankids got together and cobbled up characters, then the producers reached into a hat, picked one, and then told the writers 'bash to fit, fuckers.'  I kind of hate to credit Whoopie Goldberg with anything, but Guinan is the only other character on that ship worth a damn.  The rest are just walking loose ends with no feeling of real connection going on at all.   

Now, I love Brent Spiner, but he was just cringeworthy on TNG. Do not get me started on Wesley. No.  Or Deanna Troi, yech.  Or the Doctor, gaaah. WTF, woman, leave the kid at home. And what the fuck was Riker?  All he did was run around with a beard.  Mr. Worf had so much character potential! It wasn't for fault of trying on his part. The writers on that show just had their heads up their asses when it came to writing the crew of the Enterprise. But their worst sin?  When all else fails, why, fire up the holodeck! 

I'm glad that TNG was there to carry the flag.  The fact that the series even existed is the best thing about it.  

There you go.  Now that I've gotten all the important matters out of the way, the rest of you kids can discuss politics and covid and trivial junk like that.  You are welcome.

Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

 OOOO children my Biker has himself a new 'Nom de Internet'!  He is now and henceforth to be known online as...

The Bejewelled Beast! 

That is supposed to be a badass warrior king all covered in jewels with a sword and shit but the internet is not complying with my wishes, so imagine this dipshit up above here, only more studly, like this dude down below here:

THIS DUDE, WITH A SWORD.

  The reason comes down to ornamental squash varieties.  I'll skip the extraneous explanations.  When a man brings you, unbidden, a bushel of exquisitely malformed squash, he becomes your 

                        Bejewelled Beast. 

We tried 'Precious Star of Aegypt Eld,' but he didn't get it, so I tried 'Priceless Jewel of Magnificence' but he thought I was saying "Jewel of monstrance' which is an entirely different and Catholic cup of tea, so I gave up.  And to think we owe it all to a bunch of lumpy-ass squash.  God is great.

___________________________

We have got some political kids in this neighborhood.  We are repping hard for Team Blue-State Dems, with yard signs, bumper stickers and even a rather large banner nailed up high on the actual house, so the rednecks in their jacked up 4x4's can see it. 

 All the new kids in the neighborhood love us (for some ungodbeknownst reason) and every single one of them rode or glided past and gave their views on the subject.  There are some Trumper kids out there, and there are some LibDem children fighting the good fight.  We had us a regular civil, mannerly child debate going out on the sidewalk out front for quite awhile yesterday, about seven kids out their with their bikes, scooters and skateboards, all discussing politics, and not one of them older than 12.  Kinda gives you hope for the future.

____________________________

I will not be getting a new computer any time soon because WhaalMorte (The mart that sells walls) borked my order TWICE.  

Now WhaleMark online wants you body, soul and dna.  You have to go through all kinds of horseshit and info and filling out of all your vital statistics just to order something.  You end up with an account whether you want one or not. (Unless you're willing to go through one hell of a lot of screens and info and links and FUCK IT.  I was not; ergo, unwanted account with WohlShart.)  After waiting patiently, I went back like a cringing dog and checked on my order, only to find it cancelled once again.  Really?  Too much for your sad ass to deal with? Funny; Crate and Barrel didn't have that issue.  How strange!

  I deleted that bitch. And I did it super undercover.  Now do I believe that WhoreFark actually deleted my account?  Yeah, the same way that FaseBukk deletes accounts; which is, NO, NEVER.  Neither does KuAHRHA. (sound it out.)  All you have to do is mention the name of that smartypants intellectual question-ass site online three months after 'deleting' it, and it reactivates.  

Do I sound old and paranoid?  Yes.  Yes, I do.  And yes, I am.  If I can keep them guessing, then I will.  I don't smoke dope anymore so I need something to keep me amused.

_________________________________

Pet Teenager actually made it all the way to Las Vegas and her future.  She is on her way.  We are still in laborious contact (kid insists on texting and my poor dumb phone does not make that an easy task) and she knows that if it all goes to hell, I will be there.  I am stoked, and I am scared at the same time.  But still... imagine getting your drivers license, and then making your first long trip three days later, over unknown roads, from essentially Northern Canada to Nev - fucking - ada!!!  She did that without a hitch!  This kid is going to own us all.  It WILL happen.