Tuesday, September 3, 2024

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.




17 comments:

  1. Oooooh! You shopping maniac, you! Mr DeVice is going to be jealous about the Star Trek stuff, and Mistress Maddie's going to cry because she wanted "Stud Service". Me, I can just sit back and smell that place. I've been to "Snooper's Paradise" in the UK's "Drop-out Capital" AND the vintage shops of Camden Market. [And a second-hand clothing market in Tunisia!] I know that stench.

    Please, please! Pretty please! Keep up the fab work! Jx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. PS That's the best Shakespeare production I've seen in years.

      Delete
    2. OMG I want to visit Snoopers' Paradise NOW BABY. Maybe in midwinter, though, when the fonk is not so fonky. The closest I ever got to Tunisia was Tiajuana, which is a trifle east of Africa. Definite aroma, though!

      Delete
  2. So, basically purgatory before the rapture of the great Cascadian earthquake. BTW B-Ham updated their evacuation map in 2019. You can download it here. It will take the same amount of time to download as it takes a banana slug to cross the road (about 5-10mins if it doesn't get quashed first.) https://cob.org/wp-content/uploads/Tsunami-Walkmap.pdf

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yikes! Basically you shouldn't get caught out in Squalicum Harbor way out by the yacht moorage. Fat chance of that happening to me, but still. And I like how they assume you're going to stick to the designated paths and streets. Hell no. I'm headed straight up the bluff, clawing my way through the brush and the homeless emcampments, man, just whippin'.

      Delete
  3. fuck, there goes blogger and their comments again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well OMG gal, you have to turn off your tracking protection. go to the little lock icon up in the search window, boop it, and then select 'Manage for all sites' in the drop down menu - scroll down to 'Tracking Protection' and boop ' BASIC'. That's all it takes! Voila! You can comment, and I can comment, and we have Jon to thank for that bit of computer wizardry!

      Delete
  4. I'd have passed on that foray into the stinky scary basement. Not only do I suffer from claustrophobia, but I'm two years into allergy shots and have a renewed sense of smell. Even the slightest whiff of b.o. (and there's SO MUCH of it out in public! Who knew?) and I turn nauseous.

    Love the crazy stuff you found in there, though. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh I feel for you - right after my first sinus surgery, I suddenly had a sense of smell for the first time, a REAL full-volume sense of smell. God the number of people out there who need to just, like, even wash their hair! let alone take a damn bath!

      Delete
  5. God, I had that same conversation with myself about text and images, but I've been pretty scant on images as well!
    I think the weather system in Devon is a lazy version of your weather as we have all the rain coming today and tomorrow and it's been stinky humid though not as extreme as where you are.
    And, I loved this: Nobody wants to fuck with an elderly Trekkie who's high on bargain acquisition, y'all.
    High on bargain acquisition!!! Excellent!
    Sx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm just glad to see you back on Blogger, and posting things, and being Ms. Scarlet.

      Delete
  6. The Oort cloud brings forth Thread which means everyone has to go out and genetically engineer some fire lizards into dragons on which to ride and burn the Thread out of the sky! It's no wonder no one talks about it as they don't want to talk up the Thread. Genetically engineering dragons is hard work! Possibly not as hard as driving to Bellingham Antique Mall and trudging down to the stinky basement, but still.
    And dragons don't conjure up old TOS stuff. What a find!!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. ANNE MC CAFFREY BABY! Oh Lordy you read those too? -well of course you did. Hey, if you collect Trek stuff I'd sure like to see you do a post about your collection one of these days, hint hint.....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...unless you've already done one and I missed it. NO NO WAIT NO. Do a fresh post and include pix of your swag. I demand it!

      Delete
    2. I also read Mme. McCaffrey's endless series, none of which was as good as the very first book.

      Delete
    3. I absolutely LOVED the Dragonriders of Pern series when I was very, very much younger, although I do recall becoming less enamoured as the novels piled up. I enjoyed her Talents series to being with too, but again, wandered off when The Rowan's kids stated becoming the star of the show.

      I'll see what I can do about a Star Trek Swag post...

      Delete
    4. That was supposed to be "to begin with", not "to being with"...

      Delete