Debunking the Fly Rotato

 I just saw a black squirrel go past my window carrying a bloody squirrel head in its mouth. 

like this only a squirrel head

I thought you should know. 

Prongfrites Wayward Phlossbottomus

 

Welcome to psychedelic Thursday!  Same sound, different letter! 

I know what I mean!

When your mind goes a-wheelin' and a-walkin'

     

I broke a tooth last week. Out of nowhere. No reason. So I go to the dentist and find out that I broke two teeth. 

Of course, going to the dentist is not my favorite thing to do. This time was particularly extra crappy, though. Why? Because midway through the exam I was suddenly subjected to a hard, hard sales press about a 'special' cosmetic process that takes four sessions. It was, in fact, strongly hinted at by Hard Sell Nurse that I could not proceed with my exam until I had scheduled this procedure, so up up up, let's scoot along to the receptionist and do that little thing!  

Now I was born at night, but it was not last night. 

   

When you search 'elderly babies getting high' there are no actual images of elderly babies getting high, for which I am grateful but by which I am also perplexed, the Internet being as it is

   

I remained civil. I said 'No.' The jacking continued, though. I got interrupted twice more with repetitions of the 'hurry hurry let's go schedule eight hours of unnecessary dentistry' fandango until I finally brought up INSURANCE PRE-AUTHORIZATION. 

   WHOOSH    

Ms. Hard Sell disappeared and did not return, to which I said 'Huzzah' only silently because imagine how that would go over in a dental clinic ffs, some random old broad exclaiming 'Huzzah' aloud while you're in the middle of getting your teeth filed, or whatever bullshit, unnecessary thing Hard Sell nurse has talked you into. 

The good news is that I get two new crowns which our insurance will fund, and also that my bone structure is that of a firm and healthy young goddess, and I will not need false teeth or bridgework in the future, unless I get kung fu'd in the face. Watch this space.

_________________________________

My ex-sister-in-law was a nice little dumpling girl who grew up into a dumpling woman, and during those years in-between she found time to go live in Minneapolis and PARTY WITH PRINCE.  

Here I am the worlds coolest person and no. I did not get to party with PRINCE.  She did. 

From the way she told it, the scene was all very casual. He'd throw potlucks. He'd be outside grilling on the Weber. Kids would run in and out and folks would holler into their phones. You'd think Prince would always be doing flips and twirls and jamming on his guitar, looking fly, wearing eyeliner and maybe a bolero jacket, but no. Apparently he was like real folks and wore t-shirts and whatever, and partied with my ex-sister-in-law, and ate potato salad off a paper plate. 

It was only this year that I bothered to check the timeline on that.

...yup.

__________________________________

Fall has fallen or whatever it does, and everything looks very Autumnal. 

Why what's this?  It's one fine day in Autumn. Do continue.

This guy is so very, very Bellingham that he might as well be called Mr. Bellinghamasaurus Rex. I mean LOOK AT THIS DUDE.

Welcome to Goods, our local, excellent in all respects

Of course it's in an old gas station. Where did you think you were, Utah??

The stores here have been set up for Halloween since September, and the shelves abound with Squishy Brains and skeletal armadillos and giant honkin' bags of candy.  The woods are filled with color. It is Bushmills and a cigar weather.

It is also Chicken Livers on Toast For Breakfast weather.

You will not find a simpler, better, more sustaining breakfast for a chilly morning that Chicken Livers on Toast. You should have some quickly. Here's how:

Two large slices of toast (white bread)

About 1 1/2 to 2 cups (volume) of raw chicken livers, rinsed

1/4 to 1/3 cup of unsalted butter

Lawry's Garlic salt

Method:  

-Melt the butter in a small, warm frying pan. Do not allow to sizzle. When it is too hot to touch, place the chicken livers in the pan.

-Sprinkle a goodly amount of Lawry's Garlic Salt over all.

-Partially cover the pan with a lid.  You are poaching the livers, not frying them. Poaching in butter prevents the livers from developing a metallic flavor, and makes them smooth and rich.

-When livers are set and no longer bleed when pressed (oh ew ick GET OVER IT) lift and place aside. 

-Reduce pan drippings if necessary. 

-Chop livers - not too fine! - and add back into butter drippings, toss to combine, and cool in pan until temperate enough to put on toast.

You will bless my name and the rails I run on. You will. This is really good.

_______________________________

I'm going to go put in some laundry.

                                                You need to go put on your scary underpants.

Where Are The Gentle Gar Avast, This Goomy Preakness Keen?

WOO HOO OLD COOKBOOKS!!!!

Man, I lucked onto a doozy:  The One Pot Dinner by Hannah G. Scheel! 

Ze front cover, mon sewer

WHOOSH FLASHBACK It is 1970, and I am A Kid. I actually remember seeing this book shrink-wrapped with three bars of Dove soap, sitting there on the grocery store shelf.  I lived in an Ivory Soap household, though, so we passed on this incredible one-dollar value at the time. 

OK WHOOSH FLASH FOREWARD WE'RE BACK IN 2024 whew. 

Ze detail du la back cover, el monsieur von dude

Why am I using the sophisticated Fronsh Ag Scent? you ask. Well I will tell you. Shit calm down. See, this cookbook is all class, just like Dove soap, which was and is the classiest of all the soaps.

See? I told you.

 Only the classiest of the cookbook writers could write this special Dove Soap edition, in fact, and so they found a classy broad for the job. 

How do we know that Ms. Scheel was a classy broad? 

She gives us an intro that begins with a quote from Samuel Johnson and goes on to include Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys, Alexander Woollcott, Byron, Alexander Dumas, the Apostle Paul, Thomas Moore, Aristophanes, Chesterson, Cervantes, George Meredith, and back to Byron again.  

This ^^^ kind of adorable horseshittery continues all through the book.

Our first section, SOUPS, begins with a quote (surprise!) from H. L. Mencken, and another from Napoleon, and another from Thackeray.

  No I was not fucking with you.   

And what's up first?  This:

Come on Hannah. That's 'We Need To Defrost The Freezer' soup. Quote Mencken all you want. 

This aside, Ms. Scheels recipes are surprisingly solid. The book is divided into 'Soups' and 'Meats', and, you know...everything fits into one pot, and you cook it. Written before the day of the Crockpot, thank God, hence no 'dump and go' ten-hour atrocities (I'm looking at you, Julie Pachenko),  you are ensured a tasty, if Americanized, meal. 

-no really I mean it. You can take a good, even inspired, meal out of here!  Is it fine food?  Well geeze no it's not, this is a soap premium ffs. But you might like it, you won't die, and nobody will hate you.

_____________

Deep breath.

Whole new ballgame, if baseball were played in the kitchen and the umpire was Richard Nixon, risen from the dead, with stuff all falling off him.

Here we have The Quick and Easy Cookbook.

The Quick and Easy Cookbook is one of those check stand 'impulse buy' publications, Much like The Weekly World News with which it shared space on the rack, it features the strange, the bizarre, and the outright disgusting, although without any of the attention to accuracy, editorial pride or professional standards of The Weekly World News. 

Whatsoever. At all. None.

So listen. As I go through my latest haul of cookbooks, I put little bookmarks in all the places I'd like to highlight, as per figure a. and b.

fig. a

El figuro B      

And see, this^^^ is an aerial shot, and we're looking down at all the wacky bookmarks I have stuck in. Note also the dogeared pages.  Mere slips of paper did not suffice to aid this tiptoe through the culinary tulips, which were all dead.   

Let's just rip off the bandaid and get this over with:

If you didn't know already, the difference between 'Russian' and 'Persian' is the color of the caviar.

Feeling OK?  Got your water wings? That was a first quick dunking. M. Arcati, avert your eyes. Here we go.

This is their idea of a fucking meat loaf, people.

Oh, the substitutions. Oh Lordy. 

If suicidal ideation were edible

Just...

What did the teenagers do to deserve this?  Why is it specifically for teenagers?

...and then come runnin' up to bustin' we got BEEF MOTHERFUCKING WELLINGTON because why not dammit. Why not bend Beef Wellington over a chair too?  

........and because I'm feeling sadistic:  

   Not lying - this recipe made me speechless with rage. I had to get up and roam around for a bit, pretending to harangue an audience on why this^^^ is an affront to the whole idea of food (they hung on every word btw.) I mean, to take one of Gods' most innocent and blessed creatures from the ocean and subject it to...?

    

  GAAAAAAAAH  

I need to go drink now.

 

You better go check on your dog. 

  

An Occult Apperatus

 I live in an apartment, and I don't have a yard.  What we do have is a tiny little back patio, and what I've been doing is growing a few nasturtiums in pots out there every Summer.    

This is where we hang out and talk shit.

I never get tired of nasturtiums. You just cannot beat this intricate flower form - and the hummingbirds adore them!

Look how nicely this little bush form is draping!

This year The Biker presented me with a drilled-out plastic bucket he'd made and told me "Grow a vegetable dammit. You can do it." 

  So I took a white fingerling potato and set the eyes out. Lo and behold they grew.  If the tree rats don't rob me I might actually have enough in there to make a potato salad. We shall see at the end of the month.

Yeah, that's a rogue nasturtium growing in there with them. Yeah, they look ratty. It's late in the season and I've been culling the leaves as they turn yellow.  These were big, fluffy, tall plants there for awhile, though. 

WARNING: HONESTY

The loss of my garden was a huge blow. I feel it still. I couldn't even drive around the neighborhood that first summer, going past everyone's wonderful gardens in bloom, without crying. Lord how I wept. It was dumb.  I also felt cursed too. Like I was the kiss of death or something. No it doesn't make any sense. But I did.

Cursed or not, by the end of our first month in the apartment the windowsills were full of carrot tops, celery hearts and other things all rooted and growing in water glasses. I longed for a real houseplant, though; I mean, celery isn't ideal for that purpose, so I forced myself that first January to go to a good nursery and buy a ficus, figuring that I'd have to actively set a ficus on fire to kill it.

Anyway, I began to lavish a ridiculous amount of care on the ficus, and it has thanked me by continuing to be aggressively alive.

(BTW that is a picture of my husband's great grandfather in a hot rod that he built.)

Shortly thereafter I was at a garage sale and found a little spider plant that I made myself buy. Same rationale - I'd have to run over a spider plant to kill it, was my thought.  Well...it didn't go quite that way. The thing immediately began trying to climb out of its pot and nothing I could do made it happy. This was a big dramatic thing to me at the time.  After months of this, I finally took the last little crown, just  a little button of green, and set it in an egg cup full of water.  And look at this thing three years later!  

Variegated spider plant showing off it's pretty, silvery roots. This vase is sixteen inches high and made of lead crystal. Yes.  I bought my spider plant a mansion. 

And there we go. 

Nobody Talks About The Oort Cloud

  We have had strange weather lately. Suddenly, Nature decided it was November. The temperature plunged overnight to 65f. The sky was overcast. Trees began to color up and drop leaves.  Then an about face! No warning! Two days later and BOOM it was 93f, dead still; there was heavy fog in the mornings and it was so humid it was difficult to breathe. Oh, and still overcast. Yeah. Nobody was having any fun.  

Then blammo! we had three solid days of torrential rain, because why the fuck not. 

The rain dropped straight from the sky in huge bucket-sized raindrops, and it was warm, disgusting, soupy rain, too.  Well, I thought, screw this. I'm gonna go spend money on things I don't need.  So I drove down to the old Bellingham Antique Mall and figured I'd look around for old records.   

I have had better ideas. Driving there was no fun; the whole inside of my car was damp and hot and stinky, and the windows kept fogging up. My destination was a giant warehouse that sits right on Puget Sound, an old, old wooden building that's been marinating in the aroma of Low Tide since before statehood - and I was headed for the basement of that building, which is where they keep the used record store, and hippies. Lotta hippies. Hippies all over the place down in there. 

It was FUNKY in that basement, people. It was STANK. And I had to go down a lot of stairs! By the time I got to the bottom of those stairs, I was pretty stank too.   All that old paper, the old rugs, the building timbers, the sheer gross, rank, dank smell that came up off all that stuff was so thick that it was enough to choke aFINEFINE OK.  

Fine.  I was in a stinky hot basement during low tide on Puget Sound. I didn't die.

In fact, I saw cool things there! I saw this:

This sign hung at the end of a fence up on Mt. Baker for years, and I kept threatening to steal it every time I drove past.  "No no no," said my family. And they got all weird about it. So I did not.

You see this shit?  $145. Will they get it?  Every dime.

I tell you, I have AN EYE for these things. 

I am kicking myself for not having gone out one dark night with a pair of side cutters.

                                         

                                                OO AND LOOKIT AT WHAT I BOUGHT!!!!!

OMGWTFBBQEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!    

Publicity shots!!!! 

TOS PUBLICITY SHOTS!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! 

SPOCK AND KIRK ACTION PHOTO!!!!  

OO and this too, still in the cellophane:

Now these are six for a nickel, practically. They're all over the Internet. But it's the kind of obscure Star Trek stuff I like, and I didn't' have to pay twenty-three dollars for shipping. And the stories are by Allan Dean Foster!       

Was I stoked? Was I over the moon?  YES.

Did I risk my life by walking down a super icky low-tide alley full of meth heads several minutes later as I rushed to my car, feet not touching the ground, to secure my prizes? Yes. 

I was protected by the power of Star Trek. I had that maniac glint in my eye. Nobody wants to fuck with an elderly Trekkie who's high on bargain acquisition, y'all.

__________________________________________

Presenting Food Dehydrator Theatre!  Today we bring you our interpretation of Twelfth Night:

Hi I'm Viola and I'm shipwrecked here in this land. So is my twin brother who is probably dead. I'm going to go dress up like a boy so see ya.

Hey I'm her twin brother Sebastian and I'm not dead, but I'll just settle into the background for awhile.

Hey check me out I'm Duke Orsino!  I own dinosaurs! 

 

YEAH!! I'm Duke Orsino and I'm going to eat this crusty dog with my stomach! WOOOOO I'M CRAZY!!

I am the Holy Infant of Prague. I don't really come into the story but I thought I'd say hi. So yeah.

AAAA! WOOOO! Cray-zee wackiness ensues!  Everybody pretends to be other people! WOO!

AAA I'm Sebastian, remember me?  A dugong ate my face and now I'm dead!  The End!! TA DA!

______________________________________________________________

Some months back I thought to myself 'Self, you need to flow with the times. You should go out into the world and scout for visual content! No more racking your brain for big chunks of text!  People are all about the images these days!'

And this was a lot of thinking, so I rested. I had a beer. I pre-treated my laundry.

So then. I went out, I got pictures, I did posts.

I have done my 'Super average, on-the-ground' posts about places nearby.

Check 'Grocery Shopping in Large Bleak Warehouse-Type Spaces'.

Done 'Old Cookbooks'. Ditto 'Weird Cookbooks and Recipes.'

Done did 'Old Weird Things I See In Resale Stores'.

I think what I'm going to do is to continue in this vein. I might even do a 'Me Cooking A Thing' post.

You? Should go fill your air with tires.  Yup.

Potline Palsy and Malt Liquor

 I have been out being All Cool and stuff since this has been an incredible summer and people need to be exposed to my personal coolness.  Of course for each cult movie showing, street fair, Old Settlers Picnic and graveyard ramble, there's been about five garage sales, antique stores, estate auctions, thrift shops and 'free pile' visits. That is just me doing my part to make the dead peoples' belongings of Whatcom County feel loved. And photographed. And smelled in many cases.

Here we are in Ferndale, WA, locally known as 'Ferntucky'. What is Ferntucky known for across this great nation of ours?  

                                                                            This thing vvv

                                                      And yes, Metallica know it exists.

This is an old railroad bridge through the middle of town that people have been painting 'Metallica' on for over thirty years. Yes, really. The railroad paints it out, someone paints it back. Over and over. Again and again.  Because Ferntucky. The bridge even has it's own Facebook page (which I cannot link because I was kicked off Facebook some years back and refuse to re-engage) in which the bridge is personified and 'speaks for itself', which is cringe as you might imagine. Who's responsible for that silliness?  

City of Ferndale Chamber of Commerce *cue banjos*

__________________________

Anyway, I am in Etta's Attic Antique store in Ferndale snappin' shots:

I used to collect old kitchenware. To this day I am tempted by the stuff.  I spot twenty-one items in this picture alone that I've owned before, and that includes the fabulous yellow kitchen table!  Do I want to own it all again?  YES. 

 

Just kind of a general, plain view of the place. Yes, there's a lot of average crap here, things that aren't that old or that special. 

Then again...

What's that center bottom there?  

Wait. Just wait.

See?  Here is Hangover Cat. I like Hangover Cat. He was going cheap, too. Sadly, I do not have room for Hangover Cat. 

Sigh.

Here's the secret to shopping this place:  you have to DIG.

In a lot of the booths here the stuff is layered three and four deep. I like having to dig; it usually means that the owner doesn't pay much attention to stock, and you can find real bargains and forgotten treasures in that bottommost layer. 

Speaking of garbage, you see that red book "The Return"? with Trump looking orange on the cover? (Center far right - naturally.) That's the kind of virulent Red-State propaganda you find out here in the county, and you just overlook it...or you hide the book face-down underneath a pile of stuff on the floor, way back against the wall. 

Ahem.

Here is your grandmothers' girdle for sale. 

Admit it, that's exactly what you were looking for. 

 

Look at this fucking thing. 

I mean look at it. 

An old playbill!  In a box filled with them! 

They were all from the late forties - early Sixties. 

Could this be a caricature of Jane Withers? It's such a familiar face and yet I can't place it. Possibly Anne Miller? Or Ethel Merman? (My bet's on Ethel.)

UPDATE: Yup, it's Ethel.

Call Me Madam (1953) HD | Ethel Merman | Donald O'Connor | Vera-Ellen | Music by Irving Berlin ! (youtube.com)

And here is another star of the Broadway stage.*  

 

They want $30 for this thing. I looked it up online and yup, it goes for $30.  

COME ON PEOPLE.

Here's something else that almost came home with me!

 A playbill from The Moulin Rouge!!!!! 

Is it not faboo?

And you know what, I might still go back for it. 

That's why I hid the thing under a stack of old Christmas records. 

Always plan ahead, fellow thrift pirates.

This thing was in all the design magazines for awhile. 

It's a teapot with a cup. 

They want 120.00$ for it. 

They can go suck socks.

My aunt Lilian had a huge, huge version of this Crab Platter. It came with with clams for salt and pepper shakers and an octopus wearing a sailor hat and all kinds of seagoing nonsense. This one is a study in tasteful restraint in comparison.

I examined this thing and discovered that it began life as 1. an old photograph (like early 1900s) of a lady with a bouffant hair style, which was 2. then painted over with a picture of a bulldog, that 3. someone then glued clothing onto.

It has a ten-dollar price tag.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE. 

For the person who loves the 'Sword of Shanarra' books!

 For the basement dweller in your life!  

PRE-OWNED FANTASY KNIVES!!!

I don't know why these are A Thing, but ever since the 1970's, they have been. These huge, ridiculous knives are everywhere, at every swap meet, all over the motorcycle events, and in every junk shop. They cost big, too, new and used. 

And what do you do with them? They don't come sharpened. They're made of pot metal. 

I guess they're just a thing you have. 

A thing that says 'I handle money like a third-grader.'

Poor pug doggie is a study in descending layers of flub.  

A salt and pepper set from back in the days when racism was hilarious fun for all ages. 

I hate to tell you how much this is worth.

 

PLEASE STOP LOOKING AT ME MINIATURE ZOSO DUDE

-oh it's a gnome. 

It's a wooden gnome.

Well that's fine then.

From the 1980s, here we have a Decorative Ceramic Pig Mask.  

How many times have you suffered for the lack of a Ceramic Pig Mask on your wall?

I bet a lot of times.

Perhaps the swankiest crustacean dish of them all.  And the leggiest. I counted six legs on the right and five on the right. The gilded crustacean in question rests on a lily pad which is covered in dainty roses. 

This is a lot of swankiness for one leggy lobster. 

She went into shock before she could give the police a description of the killer. 

So what did I get? Because I did buy something.

Guess. Guess what I got. Three guesses. Come on. Was it a.....

OK fine it was cookbooks. SHIT I FORGOT TO TAKE PIX.  

                                              Now I have to go clean up the road I adopted.

                               

You should go clean up the road you adopted too. 

There's a big old double ended dildo down by the stop sign. 

_____________________________________

*Yoda the Jedi Master

Had a very shiny nose

And if you ever saw it

You could even say it glows

All of the other Jedis

Used to laugh and call him names

They wouldn't let poor Yoda

Join in any Jedi games.

      Gold Diggers of Broadway 1928