The most amazing thing has happened to me. Absolutely amazing. Utterly amazing.
OK so I wrote that last post, and I was all verklempt, because writing that 'memoriam' had taken a lot out of me. You can tell that I was rattled when I posted. The writing is not well thought out and I'm all over the place. That whole fucked-up 'thing' that had been hanging over my life gave me a last few feeble kicks that evening, is what happened.
I slept out the last of it in some sad dreams that night.
I woke up the next morning and began my day, and did my ordinary stuff, and then, as it closed in on 2:30 in the afternoon
IT ALL JUST DIED AND LIFTED AWAY.
It was the most astounding sensation you can imagine. When people say 'the weight of the world suddenly lifted off my shoulders' that shit is literally what it feels like. It is a real sensation. Everything slowed down, one, two, three, as a huge, huge, huge psychic weight simply rose up off me and dissipated.
Today I am still walking around in that astounding head space. Everything looks bigger. The world feels wide open. I can see everything.
Years ago, I fell in love at first sight, and that is exactly what this feels like - minus the falling in love part, but the feeling of all the doors and windows of the world being opened.
Pastrami on rye with kosher dill pickles: Peak spiritual experience
So you know what I did? I pulled the trigger on that Star Trek Cooking manual.
Well, I went ahead and did it. I had been promising myself I'd do it for decades. What I did was leave a painfully true 'In Memoriam' on my fathers' obituary page.
I feel small and mean spirited at the same time that I feel decades of women and girls inside me cheering wildly.
I won't post a link to it here because who needs that shit. I've done enough posting for one evening anyway. I wouldn't even have done it except that I read the other 'memoriam' post and it was, just, a complete work of fantasy. Some random niece looked at what a lifetime of dissimulation and familial denial wrought and wrote a spun sugar account of my parents marriage and my late fathers' character - and it lit me OFF. Just thinking how this kid had bought the whole, alcoholic family LIE. Thinking about all the shabby, shitty treatment I've endured over the years from this revolting group of people - like I said, it lit me off.
My feeling is, OK. That side, they had their say. Now I've had my say. And only six people have visited the site since he passed away so what the fuck does it matter in the long run.
Honestly, I have been having a wonderful life these days. I never think of this shit, or if I do, it's without bitterness. It happened a long time ago and I spent a lot of time in therapy getting straightened out, and it worked.
Where have I been? Freaking the fuck out about Trump is where.
The cost of things has absolutely skyrocketed. Many social services are at a standstill. Businesses are firing people.
And we're about to retire in a few months.
!!!! SO LETS TALK ABOUT COOKBOOKS !!!
This month I said to myself 'Self, let's buy you a Valentines gift' so I bought myself a pile of used cookbooks online yesterday and now I can't remember the names of them all. Well, I remember one - Sunset's Kitchen Cabinet cookbook from (1935?)
I collect vintage Sunset cookbooks, and this one has been on my list for years!
Tell me you wouldn't buy this. HA. You can't. You would totally buy this.
Thing is, I was supposed to buy a baby shower gift for a friend of mine. Off I trotted (figuratively) to her online baby registry, which refused to co-operate and pissed me off, and now I have to wait and try it again in another week, don't ask me why. I may just buy her a gift card and send it snail mail. ANYWAY. So there I was looking at my credit card balance, and I thought to myself 'Self, you can't take it with you.' And then...I must have entered some sort of fugue state.
Yeah. That sounds good.
Thing is, I have two in my cart over at Abe Books, marinating, waiting for that 'Hey Nations! Get 20% off what's in your cart if you purchase now!' notification. Well worth waiting for are these:
The Biker and I are rabid Tony Bourdain fanatics and this is going to take a place of honor our bookshelves!
I have been wanting this since the freakin' 1970's, when I could have bought it for a buck ninety five, it looks like. Now? I am spending way, way too much money on it and I don't care.
Yes it's available for free online.
THAT'S NOT THE SAME.
And remember, I have all these waiting on me too:
I guess this is a predicament I look forward to having.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE COOKBOOKS? Answer at length in the comments!!
...or the passive aggressive twat who drives this car that I spotted in Lynden will come chew on your doorknob at night!
Now I love an indoor Inauguration as much as the next person, but I'd feel a lot better about this one if this bitch >>>
lovelovelove kizzeskizzeskizzes
...were the ho about to get the Golden Presidential sceptre/Bamix.
Because Lady Bunny is NOT going to be the next President, I am expecting the next four years to be retrograde fucking progress for 3/4 of the citizens of the world, because it's still a sad but true-ism: whither goeth the USA shalt the rest of the hithers go.
Were you thinking of car detailing as a nice side hustle?
Consider the downside before you invest!
"Just a sec," sang Dee "Judy's checking out my rack!"
"Here's a wet-wipe," said Desiree. "Now try to act surprised when they get here."
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Last summer (what evocative words!) I purchased a number of very carefully selected books that I was going to read over this Winter. Have I read them? I've read one.
Halfway.
You wanna see a picture of the rest?
All those books stacked up on the floor ^^^. And no, I didn't stand around and wait for the TV to float me a provocative bit of subtitling - it just did it itself.
So yeah.
You know what I have read? A lot of vintage Sci-Fi, is what. Lummox-heavy, female-denigrating, actually-bullet-shaped-rockets with little fireworks-fins on them spaceship-flying Science Fiction,
- oh and let's not forget! SCIENTIFICALLY FUCKING WRONG science fiction. With bad illustrations.
Ate that shit up.
ATE IT UP.
Oh and hand me that complete Riverworld collection.
Another thing I did was get way into a genre of music known as Yacht Rock.
"Holy God Olaf we are rockin' in the free world on this yacht."
"Yes Ivy, this is the Good Life indeed, with a capital 'Cocaine'. It's why I shaved my legs."
Yacht Rock is 1970's - early 1980's happy, poppy rock that did not require you to sit in a dark room with a bunch of candles going, but did require that you have a shit-ton of posters and they were of peace signs, mushrooms and wizards.
Hello I'm k d lang.
Top yacht Rock groups are Hall and Oates, CSNY, Toto, and Ambrosia.
The song "Baby Come Back" by Player is a Yacht Rock anthem.
The song "How Deep Is Your Love" by the BeeGees is quintessentially Yachty in tone.
Anything by Atlanta Rhythm Section is Yacht Rock.
Why the yacht? Because.
Picture it. It's 1978. It is a beautiful day. You don't have any communicable diseases, and you're hanging out on your yacht. It is quite possible that you've had a couple of cocktails and the hint of a spliff; and you need some tunes, and "Oh hey dude leave this on, I love this song by Firefall/Toto/ Little River Band...."
Ahhhhh.
Listen to the whales.
Scrape some barnacles off your hull.
Yacht Rock.
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In direct competition with Jon, I present my own Camp As Tits video selection:
Yachty as fuck
FATHER FIGURE
by George Michaels
Yeah! I can feel that tide rising, kids. The gulls are calling and the buoys are rockin'! Other nautical puns! Now if you will excuse me I am going to hang out on this yacht and pretend that Trump isn't president again! DAMMIT OLAF BRING ME A NEGRONI
When I am totally involved in a project, I can't hear what people say to me, I forget to eat, I forget what day it is and I keep odd hours. I am utterly absorbed and oblivious to the world. And it was this level of absorption that lead me to entirely miss what was happening in California until the day before yesterday. So yeah, I'm feeling super guilty about this. Savannah, I wish I'd known sooner. Anybody out there lurking in California, that's my explanation. Stay safe. Hug your family.
A news report intruded during a documentary I was watching and it was like getting hit with cold water. Everything went by the ways. I pulled up every report and video I could find. I got ahold of Ms. Savannah. I was, and am, horrified.
What's going on isn't ordinary. It's almost apocalyptic.
The only fire I've ever been in the middle of happened years ago when we were riding through Eastern Washington in August. We had gone way inland toward the east, and there had been lightning storms in the night, so as the morning wore on, soon all the hills around us were showing areas of fire. You could see it get bigger and creep down slopes and across fields like a black stain. Sometimes it would just go out. Sometimes you'd be looking at a patch of grass and suddenly it would just go up without warning. A fire would spring up on one side of the highway and leap to the other, like it was chasing us. The way it moves over the land doesn't make sense, and it moves terrifyingly fast. We'd come out from under the smoke and ride for five miles, blue sky, yellow fields, no wind, and suddenly there'd be a blast of furnace hot wind at your back, and long orange claws would come reaching across the grass on either side of the highway, the sky would turn smoky orange, and suddenly embers are falling, they're landing on you, they're landing in the road ahead. The fire that we'd been trying to outrun all morning long jumped in front of us, and we were doing well over 70mph at the time. All we could do was speed up and hope that someone or something wasn't blocking the road. That's just a little bit of what a wildfire is like in dry country.
What I'm describing wasn't even a match lit against what's going on in Los Angeles.
I can't believe what I'm seeing come out of California. Most of those houses have not just burned, they've been incinerated. This is a huge firestorm with 100mph gusts pushing it. Houses and trees are vaporizing. And the worst thing, the most heartless and disgusting thing in all of this horror is how the insurance companies are cancelling policies.
I'll just leave this here. Yes I will.
Speaking of disgusting things, Paris Hilton went online (aka used a natural disaster to put herself in the public eye) saying that she was 'Heartbroken beyond words' that her beachfront house had been destroyed - which I assume has no more importance to her financially than losing a fake eyelash in the toilet. The very last people who need to be involved in this discourse are the wealthy. You lost your car collection? You lost your mansion? You had choices. Lots of choices. Way more than the thousands of families living around you did. Have the grace to shut up.
Here's a good overview of the situation on the ground from the Guardian US:
There are links to relief efforts included in the article. I don't know how well The Guardian vets things like that; I would do my research, but if you want to help, it's a good place to start.
Yes it's 2025 and I am feeling FOXY! Gone are the drab laments of the old year, all gummy and weird and covered in lint. Come are the culinary blandishments of KAY KELLOG and her High Fructose Corn Syrup Chanteuses!*
Except there are no Chanteuses. Instead we get
The Saucy Beef Bake!!!!!!!
Just look at this saucy fucker!
You know what that sauce is?
One can of tomato sauce, straight out of the can, dumped into a bowl.
Don't trust me? Read on:
Kellog's Cereals were invented by a crazy person who wanted America to stop masturbating. I did not know that this was such a huge problem for our nation at that time but apparently it was. And what better way of achieving that end than...corn cereal! It seems so obvious now, doesn't it?
Now here it is 1971 * whooshing time travel noises* wow we are there. And things are groovy.
Wow lookit the grooviness
In these modern times Kellog has given us a product known as Kellogs Corn Flakes Crumbs, because the average housewife in these modern times was way too busy to do something as time consuming as whacking a bag full of Corn Flakes with a bottle.
However you arrived at the crumb state, you then dumped them into this mixture....
...and made a nice little wreath out of it.
I'm assuming a wreath because I wouldn't eat this shit on a bet. Can you fucking IMAGINE.
Allow me to persist in this fantasy.
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Calm down. You need more breakfast cereal atrocities. Well who doesn't? And I am here to please you ravening thrill cultists. No, I really am. But you will have to wait.
I have written a serious one. It lacks the visceral horror of a chicken crawling with staphylococcus, and I figured you'd be happy about that; still, it's not the usual devil may care, mis-punctuated mess you see here.
Suffer.
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Well, my darlings, it's been a long year. This one has been full of insights. I'll spare you that saga and just go on to say that I've gotten a lot of 'me' work done.
Now I'm ready to crawl back out of my ass, stop isolating, and rejoin the world of people made of meat. The ones you see in cars and stores that you can touch, if you want, but you shouldn't.
Them.
One of the realizations I had while I was rebuilding myself as an old woman was: I'm really peculiar.
Also: When it comes to real people made of meat, I only want fond acquaintances, not bosom friends. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
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People seem to have a set way they deal with little old ladies. I've discovered that as long as I keep on twinkling, I'm the sweetheart of Sigma Elderly. Doors are held for me, beers are comped, flirting is done (and it's really ridiculous and uncomfortable, cis men, so please stop) and kindly allowances are made.
And I have learned how to negotiate this. As long as I'm not holding up a process or getting in the way; as long as I restrict myself to a very restrained version of 'Feisty Old Lady' I am coddled. I become a mascot. I've been a mascot in every pot shop I've ever patronized, in fact, and it kind of rules, to be honest. They give you free shit.
But that isn't real.
I want friends. People who hang out with you in your neighborhood, that you can make coffee for.
I'd love to know someone who could offer me good conversation. Someone who can brainstorm a subject, who gets carried away by crazes, who can tell me new things and laugh.
Now me, of course, I'm overfuckingloaded with good conversation. Are you looking for someone who can offer you good conversation? Step right the fuck up. I am interesting as hell! I know lots of shit! I am your ultimate Trivia Night team member!
And that's half my problem, is that I like so many things, and that so many things are so interesting and tremendous and overwhelming to me that I have to fight down the urge to barf it all over my interlocuter, and I fail, and that person panics and leaps through the nearest window to their death.
You get comfortable living with yourself. You lay aside all the posturing and signaling you had to learn as an adult person. Now you are an old person. So you relax.
You scratch where it itches.
Not a whole lot phases you, or surprises you, so you come off as stolid. But it's just that you've been there and done that and the lesson is learned. Someone tells me about how flamboyantly their love life has been destroyed, and you go 'Yup..................." because, well, yup.
You get lost deep in contemplation. You fall into a flow state and narrate your adventures aloud as they happen. In one recent senior episode I was contemplating the error of all flesh in a particular location, and I said aloud 'Yeah RIGHT, you cheating goddamn fuck,' and tottered on, leaving a very confused girl in kitty cat glasses in my wake.
It's really like this.
I am the unnerving old lady with resting bitch face that I used to dread when I was young.
I am that old person now.
Shit.
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So tell me, my friends. What's it been like for you? And feel free to write long replies, or make a post about it, because I am intensely interested in your answers.
Some of you are social butterflies. Some of you are recluses. Some of you are out there living it as real as you can day by day. Have you noticed the shift? Have you noticed the way the world grows older but you stay the same?
What do you do to make friends these days?
And for God's sake don't tell me 'Well I don't know, I just go about my day, I've never noticed a thing' because COME THE FUCK ON PEOPLE.
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(OK fine. If there are any young people here, which....damn...but if there are any of you, just hang back. THIS IS YOUR FUTURE CUPCAKE)
