Age, Controversy and Bare-Titty Economics

Today, this morning, for the first time ever I have spoken the words "The goddamn government is fuckin' around with my Social Security check." 

I guess this is a milestone moment in my life. Like butt hair, or one's first federal charge.

This is exactly how I am focused and what I am focused on at this moment, just the minutia of my life and my petty inconveniences, because every fucking thing outside the limits of Whatcom County Washington is going STRAIGHT TO HELL. You watch the news. You know what I mean. 

Pride is going strong here. The 'No Kings' protests were well attended and peaceful.  Around the county the Trump flags have come down, mysteriously. There was even a 'Trans Rights' protest in Lynden!!!!!

   I mean, no shit. There was.   

     

We here at the El Apartmento have just officially retired. We filed for Social Security and Medicaid. The Biker quits his job in a couple of months, for good. 

And we are moving to suburban-rural Idaho.

  

Why? Because it's way, way cheaper to live in Idaho. 

But yeah. Idaho.

Believe me when I tell you that I NEVER FUCKING SAW MYSELF HERE in my advanced age, getting ready to leave the West and move inland - much less to motherfucking Idaho.

IDAHO PEOPLE

IDAHO 

I mean seriously fucking IDAHO.

And I might as well add that there is at present one person living in Idaho who has threatened to kill me. 

This person is at large right now, in IDAHO.

No seriously I am not fucking with you. This is a real fact. 

 

Of course this person is Ozzy Osbourne-level permafried from way back, and is in and out of jail pretty often, but with my luck - and you know my luck - he'll be the dude driving the moving van full of our shit, and he'll recognize me.

Those of you familiar with the regional cultures of the United States will be trippin' balls right about now wondering how my sad red ass is going to survive living in Idaho. The rest of you don't have a clue and are wondering what the big deal is, so pay attention. 

 Idaho is, and always has been, very very conservative, a few pinpricks of liberalism surrounded by miles of uninhabited rangeland, ignorance, and potatoes, most of it owned and operated by ultraconservative Big Honkin' Ag.  This is when one of you pops up with 'Well my aunt lives there and she says it's really cool and I've visited Idaho on numerous occasions and people were super nice to me so yeah YOU'RE JUST DEALING IN NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES'.  

Well of course I am.  Yet the fact remains - here in Bellingham WA it is socially unremarkable to walk around being whatever the Lord made you. In most of Idaho, it is socially unremarkable to walk around covered in White Pride tattoos.  

Why Idaho?  Frankly, this is an economic decision on our part. We can't afford to live on the Washington anymore, now that we're retired. Shit's too expensive. 

Mr. AI tell us:

The cost of living in Washington State is significantly higher than the national average, with housing being the primary driver of this difference. While some basic necessities like groceries and clothing are also more expensive, the biggest cost burden is in housing, which is substantially above the national average. 

There it is.   

Not to despair, though! (I write those words as much for me as for you, gentle reader.)  Idaho is a good compromise for us. Environmentally, Idaho is very much like Oregon and Washington. The culture there is a lot like the 'Sixties and 'Seventies we grew up in, and a lot like the Sumas we spent over twenty years in too.  At our age it's nothing to navigate our way through that bullshit, and we know how to find our own people. 

Another thing that Idaho has going for it is next to no suburban or rural 'homeless' encampments.  

I have not written about what they call 'The Homeless Phenomenon' here in Bellingham.  I am going to do that now, and you may not like what I have to say or how I say it. 

  

I have been very poor. I was on Welfare for sixteen years. I've been homeless.  I've been in shelters and on public programs. Having been a poor person, I promise you that I don't have a problem with poor people or homeless people. No. This is different. This isn't a 'homelessness crisis.' This isn't a group of unfortunate people who just need a hand and a place to live. This is a subculture of squalid, predatory, feral humans who take over abandoned properties and lay whole neighborhoods to waste. They are highly mobile. They have money.  They are not people who simply lack a certain background, or the economic 'breathing room' to be nice - they aren't nice, they don't care, they would rather take, and yes it's the bad actors who always stand out, I know - thing is, most of them are bad actors.   It is a different thing entirely from just homelessness. That's what you have to understand.  Within the last four years Bellingham has become inundated with these groups, from the wealthiest neighborhoods to the log booms on the waterfront.  They are busy taking over the apartments right across the fence from me, and my landlord has been battling it nonstop as long as we've been here. ( Remember  my upstairs neighbor, the one who was almost murdered by her boyfriend?  That's what was going on with her. That was the behind-the-scenes story of that.)

There is no way to make that pronouncement sound good, and I know because I've been trying for three days to make it sound good. I wonder if I sound like one of the old people in the Sixties who saw a hippie and started ranting about the end of the world and the downfall of Western Civilization, and I decided that I don't care because it's fucking scary living here now.  Scary and expensive.

I love Bellingham and adore the liberal culture here and would never, never leave if I could afford to stay and be reasonably secure. But, well, that ain't the case, so...we move to Idaho, and I get rid of damn near every t-shirt I own so I'm not shot at a stoplight by a Nazi.

I mean I'd get new t-shirts. I would not be sitting at a stoplight in rural Idaho bare titty. Unless someone dares me. 

Pink Soap Cowgirl Chews With Mighty Teeth

Oh my God what is this taste. WTF did I just put in my mouth. Why God Why.

_____________________________________

I am drinking the worst glass of wine I have ever had in my life at the moment. 

I am.

This wine tastes like if you rented a cabin deep in Redwoods National Park that had not been rented in several months, and this cabin had spent the prior recreational season being cared for by indifferent teenage girls. 

OK.  

You open the door and there it is, the first thing you inhale.  

That smell. That taste. 

Honestly it is this bad. Oh Lord. 

You'll want to avoid:

Two Vines, Red Blend, Wahington State. Tell your friends. 

I have never tasted anything this bad.  

Oh holy shit this is BAD.

It is so bad.

So very bad.

_______________________________

Note to the makers and purveyors of Two Vines Wine: I absolutely support you and your efforts to purvey a nice beverage. I am mostly sure that you have good intentions.

 

Shocking Cookbook Expose DANGER THRILLS BREAST IMPLANTS

                             We need to have a talk about those Fundraiser                                                               Cookbooks, people.

         You think you are getting authenticity, but                                      it's all a LIE.

               I am talking specifically about fundraiser cookbooks. Not fake titties. This is what's called a visual metaphor.

Companies that help folks publish fundraising cookbooks have been around for a very long time. Take this outfit for example. What the company does is glam up your cookbook. They provide you with a selection of features like pretty covers, household hints, weights and measures, equivalent ingredients, index, glossary, artwork, things like that. You send in all the recipes you've collected, they print them, and it all looks nice.

Thing is, those bitches in the Garden Club don't always step up to the plate and offer their own recipes because they're all talk, those broads, just talk talk talk and then nothing but excuses, and you have to put out a cookbook; and do they care? No they do not. But the publishers understand. So...

                      The publishers also provide recipes, 'standard favorites,' to pad out the content.  

And all of this is fine, except the standard content is, well, standard.  And this is what I'm trying to get across to you - 

Most of the fundraising cookbooks you run across can be 90 or even 100% standard content. 

The companies even add fake contributors' names!  

Do these programs let you in on that?  No they do not.  You are lead down the primrose path by the  Ladies Fundraising Committee of Pacific Luthran Church thinking that Mrs. Peterson of Omaha Nebraska actually contributed her prize 'Olive Tuna Ring' recipe to the Ladies Fundraising Committee of Pacific Luthran Church, when actually there is no Mrs. Peterson and that Olive Tuna Ring recipe was dreamed up by someone at a desk in Missouri who hated humanity and disliked dogs.

When I go thrifting I often see women with tall stacks of these church/fraternal organization/ etc. cookbooks, heading to the checkout, exclaiming in delight about how charming it all is, and I don't disabuse them because why take away someone's happy? But if they took the time to flip through that stack they'd soon realize that they're buying exactly the same content over and over and over again. Particularly if the books are all from the same small town,  because (and I congratulate  myself on this discovery) different agencies will tend to use one publisher whose name gets passed around on the grapevine. Like, some poor volunteer in Milton-Freewater ass of nowhere Oregon gets stuck on the Cub Scouts 'Cookbook Committee' and doesn't have a goddamn clue, so s/he calls the Milton-Freewater Fire Station or the Library or the Hospital and asks the poor person stuck on their Cookbook Committee what publisher they use, and...there you go.  Five organizations in Milton Freewater ass of nowhere Oregon put out fundraiser cookbooks that year, and all five have the same goddamn content, and most of it was written by that asshole at his desk in Missouri.

When I am out trawling for cookbooks, I'll take a stack to the Furniture department, pick out one of the cleaner armchairs, settle in and flip through those sapsuckers before I buy. Damn straight I will.  Go ahead and stare me down, nervous young thrift store employee. I know you're worried that I'll fall asleep or die or set up camp here and have to be escorted out at closing. I know you're expecting me to piss up this cushion. Suffer. I did not come here to throw my money away.

 I've flipped through literally thousands of fundraiser cookbooks over the years. You get to recognizing the signs.  I mean the publishers imprimatur is usually right there in the title page, or on the back cover, so there's a giveaway (duh, it took me ages to figure this one out, which is sad.) Sometimes there are no title pages - but after time, you learn to recognize the stock recipe lineups and get a feel for the writing style, the type and appearance of the feature pages. And a lot of times - bring your reading glasses for that fine print - you'll find that the publishing company is taking money to promote different grocery distributors, so it'll be nothing but recipes with 'Sunshine brand Margarine' or 'Hormel Brand canned brain of something'. 

No, cookbook aficionados, what you want are the fundraisers that some earnest volunteer cranked out on a mimeograph, or on one of the first Xeroxes, and another volunteer collated off a table and stapled together on one of those stand thingies.  If it has title pages or any other features, those will have been drawn by someone's kid.* Maybe it was decorated by some sincere soul with a calligraphy pen, no skill, and benevolent motives. Maybe it's made of hand-laid paper, or grocery bag stock, and hippies have been involved somehow. Maybe it was put out by a cult, a commune, or a maniac food philosopher (like Jethro Kloss), or some isolated, obscure rural organization. And maybe, if you are very very lucky, it was put out before 1950. THERE YOU GO. That's your treasure. That's the really good stuff. 

You want content that was volunteered by real people. That is where you find the gems. That is where you get the most readable, fun content. That is where you find the best food atrocities, and where you find the really good recipes too, the things that people in that time and place really ate and enjoyed and have passed down.  

So there you go. Now go grab your garage sale money and hit the streets, eager young space cadets! Answer the call of the food of our ancestors, some of whom were crazy as shithouse rats! Go forth and refuse to let this stuff die!