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.

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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!

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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

Happy Belated Osmosis

 I have just come back from an

Our ship blew up and everything.   

  

NOW LOOK AT THESE HARD.

First we have the  

And I mean there you are. Feel the Hawaiian emanations.  

This was a welcome wagon-type publication. It was meant to go on souvenir racks in restaurants, military bases, corporate vacation resorts, supermarkets and hotels. It wasn't cheap; for fucks' sake it cost 2.95 in 1971. That's 29.77 in 2024 dollars. Pfft. 

Oooo clip art!  Look at these happy haoles out underneath the coconut palms!! SO TIKI! Cue the Rockabilly tunes!  

Here those folks are in real life, learning the Finger Method.

The first recipe in this book?  Is probably NOT Hawaiian. That's just me guessing. But yeah.

                                  Looks tasty though - and it makes three dozen pupus. 

                                                   Thats a lot of pupus, my friends.




This is pretty much Polynesian Palace - type food straight from the 1940's.  Choose a protein and then add pineapple and a few maraschino cherries, maybe some mango, maybe a little soy sauce. There's nothing very remarkable going on. Blessedly, there aren't any outright atrocities either.  Take this excellent recipe for Char Siu. Which is Chinese, but China is near Hawaii...right? Sorta?

 

The Biker does an excellent version of this with a whole pork tenderloin.

We get a cautiously positive assessment of poi...

                                     

My dad and mom were stationed in Hawaii during the war, and they liked poi, so if it didn't kill a backwoods Fin and an Irish Greek, you should probably be OK.

                                   

                                              And finally, this outrageous assault on the liver:

I have to add that they're talking about a 1963 pineapple, those huge things the size of a cat, not the little dudes they sell nowadays. You'd need a huge pineapple to deal with all these jiggers. It's the honey that does it for me, though. It's like a Satanic Daquiri.

Fine fine fine now here we have Nine Thousand Ways to Serve Pork:

...I mean, close enough. Sixty Ways To Serve Ham. Whatever. 

Ham produces heat = ham makes you hotter. 

Try it.

Try a slice of ham under each armpit. 

Mmm.

And this is what you get. Ham with eggs. Ham with toast points. Ham and cheese. Ham and vegetables. Ham in a tin diaper pail. Egg, bacon, sausage and Ham. Ham ham ham and ham. 

Oh go ahead and sing it. It's in your head now.

We get a Ham Chart, too! Now you see, you never knew you needed one and here it is.  I think it would make a great decoration to hang in the kitchen, but unfortunately, it's the size of a postcard.

This little cookbook was a courtesy premium. Local, too!

OK OK one more:

I mean look at that. 1937! There is no way I could pass this up.  I've never found this specific booklet complete with the string hanger until this one, so I might have squealed a little when I discovered it at the Humane Society Thrift Store.

You know what I wonder? I wonder what happened to this hand-embroidered tea towel. It is to swoon.

This book is as useful today as it was back in the 1930's. They give you a whole section on the basics before they start in with the recipes, and it's excellent.

Then we get to the good stuff!  This was the most used page in the booklet, and I fully agree with Ms. Long Ago Cooks' choice. 

Feel that Deco vibe!

Now check out what happened. This was the first time I'd opened the book, and here in the middle, held in place with the string hanger, was an old, tattered recipe! I definitely squealed. Then I took the pictures.

Looks like it saw some use.

It's how to stretch your wheat flour supply by using cheap-as-dirt potato flour. I wonder if this handout, and this little cookbook, were given out with your weekly Relief Food Allotment. (Also a good chance that it was something you picked up at the county fair, or were given in Home Economics class.) That program was still going on out here in the county by 1937, so who knows?

How many times have you been frustrated with the way old recipes are written? Ever asked yourself 'The fuck is a slow oven?'  Here's the temperature conversion information. Now you know.

And let's not forget - all this information was given to you for free by Big Baking Soda. 

You bet I'll be keeping this one. It's a gem!

_____________________

Now here is your Leftie reading list. 

You sit down and read that. 

I'll be over here avoiding my next-door neighbor, who is a three-ring circus, and is chatty, and huggy, and belches so loud it sounds like she's bringing up her spleen.