Welcome Bang Bang Happiness Boat: Very 6

What a pleasure it's been to catch up with y'all!  And look at you all still keeping the faith!  My heartfelt thanks and gratitude, folks.

See, I do this. Big tramautic shit happens, and I jump ship for a year.  And I don't see it as a charming foible either; it's not an attribute I am proud of in any way.  Still, there it is - I retreat to my Rancho of Solitude and go incommunicado.  Even with the outside world.

How this has fucked me well and truly this time around is that, between me crawling into a hole and pulling it after me, and two years of Covid, I am now three years out of date. On everything.

That's a lot these days, come to find out.

I went on a news blackout.  Oh, a few things slipped in (I've been following the slowly sinking plague ship that is Trump and all he claims with the greatest imaginable enjoyment), but on the main I just didn't keep up.  Dang. Some shit happened out there.  And you folks are getting around!  Ikea-ABBA concerts and trans-world romps, pun intended if you so desire, and babies and graduations and new love affairs - wow!

Me?  I  

1. Re-examined and finally altered my study objectives,

My hero. Been studying his life and times for over twenty years. No shit. Me. Your secret Italian Renaissance specialist. Yup.  

AND

2. Began reading 'The Classics' in a serious way.

And you know what?  I'm happy.  To be able to devote whole, uninterrupted days to my study interests is the most satisfying thing I've done in years.  I can't garden anymore, but dammit, I can still grow my brain.  

I am reading all the classics, too, like The Epic of Gilgamesh and shit like that, not just English lit, because the Earth is round and covered in people and has been for a longass time and I need to read the words of all the people.  They have important things to say. 

Looking forward to the Tale of Genji. Fuckin' A right, I know how to party.   

I'm glad I waited until I was in my sixties to hit 'The Classics' because I would not have had the necessary context laid down in order for some of this to slot into place. For instance, I just finished 'Silas Marner.'  If I'd had to read that back in High School -when U.S. kids of my generation were traditionally made to choke down 'Moby Dick' 'The Mill On The Floss' 'Beowulf' and all things Jane Austen - I would have thrown Silas across the fucking room. and said screw English Literature. Give me drugs. NOW.  I would have grown up good for nothing but lying on a couch eating Cheetos and dipshitting around on my phone because my brain would be a vast empty wilderness full of vast emptiness.

And Cheetos. Yuck. Rather have a mouthful of dick than Cheetos.  Wouldn't you?    

I won't bore you with my reading list. But one thing I have determined after numerous dips into the pool is I SURE IN THE FUCK plan to avoid Jane Austen because NO. 

This is exactly the kind of content I turn to when I want to be entertained - the facile doings of a bunch of self-conscious high-school soshes with too much money, in a Regency setting.

I read Jane Eyre, it was good, and that's all the rural minor nobility/ class struggle/ dance of manners and taste I need for the rest of my goddamn life.  Have I tried reading Austen? Yes. Many times, over the years. And many times over the years, Jane Austin took a flying lesson across the room. Bam hit the wall every time. Fuck Jane Austin.  Now Oscar Wilde? OH YES INDEED. Come here you Stephen Frye-looking mad bastard you.  Charles Dickens?  Just about anybody else?  Get on in here!  Group hug! 

Heady stuff, I know. Working up a sweat here just thinking of all that page-turning and shit.

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Here's your assignment:  Tell me about your hobbies in the comments!  I mean yeah, tender the usual praise and worship but I'd love to know about all the illegal shit you're up to. Or even if it's perfectly legal; I don't care! G'head!

NOTE: MISS SCARLET, HOW DO I GET AHOLD OF YOU?????

             DINAHMOW! HOW THE Freakin' Freak DO I GET AHOLD OF YOU????

            Both of you please shoot me a viable link. I miss y'alluns.

Fifty Mushroom Detail Dance - Electric!

 Shit: together. Happy, fat and sassy. Hot biker husband still hot, husbandly and bikerlike. 

Former Sumas property?  SOLD.  Made money. Paid in full.  Then the Feds changed all the building regulations for Sumas. Now the poor dude who bought the place can't develop it.

FIMA money?  Funny you should ask. 

Garden?  What was not given away has been looted, and I am 100% OK with that.  

House and property? It's been almost a year since I last drove past the place, and not a single thing had been touched, repaired, hauled away or cleaned.  The city had an 'upkeep notice' posted in the yard.  No longer my problem.

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Get ready for a lot of ellipses and dashes.

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In Washington State, it is absolutely legal to purchase, grow and carry around marijuana. Has been since 2013. 

I have a retail outlet I like and frequent.  It's located in an old drive-thru coffee hut, and I adore the whole concept.  From 'Three seeds in your purse = seven years in jail' to 'Hi! My name is Cleome, I'll be your budstress today! May I take your order?'  (And yes, budstress is a real term. 'Budtender' is the male version.  I know.)   

 I buy a couple of pre-rolls every month or so because I'm a cheap date. It doesn't take much to get me roasted. These days you can just name your preference - mine is indica, locally grown - and off I go,  and I buy me two fat swaggy cones for 1970's prices. Life is GOOD in my old age.  I no longer have to visit vile freaky houses in the middle of the night and freeze my ass off in the rain waiting for a baggie to be handed out through the fuckin' cat door.

Now, because I came of pot-smoking age in the 1970's, I save my roaches. I remember the Great Marijuana Drought of 1976.  The government sprayed crops willy-nilly, from Alaska to Mexico, rumors of paraquat and genocide abounded, paranoia spread throughout the land, and all you could find was $25.00 a 1/4 Mexican Dirtweed,  or homegrown - which was not kolas, kids. It was shade foliage and stems. For $25.00 a 1/4.  That's $114.71 goddamn dollars in 2023 US cash. So yeah, you saved your roaches.

So here I am in the future with a buttload of roaches.

I go online to look up new methods of using roaches, trying to stay up to date and all, maybe learn some new technique, and what do I find? CHEMISTRY EXPERIMENTS.  All this shit using butane and sub-zero freezing equipment and lab ethanol and honestly, after three pages of this, and reading numerous comments on forums that went 'Ew yuck! Just throw them away! Ew!  Nasty! They're useless! Gross! Barf!' and so forth, I had to back off and have a beer.

I'm assuming some of you are being frugal and saving your roaches too.  And it's possible that I am preaching to the choir. In case I am not though, no no no. No yuck. No throwing away of roaches.

No no no no no.

You take those roaches, cut them into tiny shreds with a scissors and you soak all that in FUCKING VODKA.  I mean Good Gravy Marie people, this is not rocket surgery.  If some sad child o' the Eighties is going to get squicky about the flavor, NUT UP.  This is not meant to be snorked and slurped and gazed at thoughtfully or rolled around in the mouth like a fine wine you MORON.  Listen to Grandma. You pound this. Boom. Down the hatch. We caught up?  OK.

What follows is an unnecessarily detailed recipe. 

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Don't throw away your roaches. Instead, make

Tincture of Roach

1 pint - Cheapest Vodka (or any high-test hard alcohol) you can find, in bottle, with lid

All -  your roaches, rendered into little pieces with lots of surface area via whatever means

Instructions:

1. Pour yourself a shot of vodka. Drink it.  Now that you have room in the bottle, dump the roach fragments into the pint of vodka (or what have you.)  Cap it tightly and then shake for as long as you can deal with shaking this container.  Contents will turn black-brown and get thick and chunky. Keep shaking. Enlist the efforts of others.  Shake this bad boy UP.

2. Store in a cool, dark place for 30 days.  This basically means not next to a fireplace or a heat duct.  Room temp is just fine.  An unheated garage would be optimum, but there's really no reason to take things that far.  As far as the darkness goes, I don't really know how this works or doesn't work; just do it my way because it's Muk tested and Muk approved.

3. After 30  days, shake again for a ridiculously long time.  Replace in cool dark place.

4. Wait 30 more days. 

4.5 At the end of those 30 days, remove from cool dark place. Do not shake. Do not agitate. Let it settle.  In the meantime, ready a clean, empty glass container with a generous mouth, fitted with a funnel in which a coffee strainer has been placed.

5. Being careful not to agitate the nasty weird guck that is your vodka and roach mix, tip it slowly into the coffee filter.  The upper portion of this liquid should be a clearish yellow color, and there should be a bottom layer of pure evil.  Carry on. Fear not. Simply tip the clear stuff s l o w l y through the filter, and then follow it with the sediment.  Dump it all out and let it sit there in the coffee filter, straining away into the clean glass container, overnight.

6. Next day!  Good morning! You now have a clean glass container filled with tobacco yellow fluid that has a bottom layer of black sediment.  It will smell like a used ash tray full of vodka. This is what you want. Yes it is. Don't argue.

7. Throw away the coffee filter and its horrifying contents. Don't bother squeezing them to get the last drops. It's spent. Get rid of it.  Wash the funnel.  Pitch the empty pint. Wash your hands.  Now - put a lid on the filtered liquid you collected in the clean jar and put it in the refrigerator.  

YOU'RE DONE!

How to use:  

A real Viking will unscrew the lid, take a slash and pass it around to his/her fellow Vikings, who will also take a rip and not bitch about how it tastes. You're a Viking, right? Like you give a shit!  Tomorrow you're gonna rape a bunch of nuns! 

Non-Vikings: Mix with the undiluted Torani syrup of your choosing.  Man, do NOT use peppermint or cherry flavoring because there will be projectile vomiting. I don't know why this is true but it is.

Bon vivants: Mix like any cocktail that uses vodka as an ingredient and pretend you don't notice the burning restroom flavor.

It'll hit you in about 15 minutes.  Take a few moments to savor and assess this state of being, and then proceed with due care. Believe me, this stuff is potent (and here your persnickety ass was going to throw those roaches away? For shame!) 

So there you go.  No Freon, no Pyrex containers, no burning motor homes.  Far from being waste, roaches are a prime source of crunchy brain fodder.  For the shamefully low price of a pint of shitty vodka you can have hours of fun. I like to spend that time misusing lighters and aerosol hairspray.

Bonus Fun Fact!

If you've been worried about intestinal parasites, worry no more, bucko. Vodka-Roach tincture, once ingested, will kill everything in you that isn't you, and some of it might still be recognizable the next time you take a dump (oh yes) so if you're into that kind of thing, be on the lookout. No I am not joking.

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How you doin'?