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.

____________________

Get ready for a lot of ellipses and dashes.

____________________

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. 

________________

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.

________________________

How you doin'?

Nuttin' Honey

I have nothing to report.  No pithy observations, no dick pix (I know, right?) nothing.  And they say that no news is good news, so there you go.

I do have a book, though.

                                             Cumming and going and going and cumming...

And also, this:

Really Awesome Sylvania light bulb commercial - YouTube

It is, in fact, really awesome.  You owe it to yourself to watch this.

No, I don't know how to embed it.  I forgot how to do the html thingie, so if someone would explain that to me I'd be grateful.  

Also the fact that 'noog' means 'Chattanooga', or 'a Chattanoogan' - and is also a seed found in Nigeria that is used for producing cooking oil, and also in many bird seed mixes, when it is marketed under the misnomer 'Nigerian Thistle.'   As in, 'My cousin the 'noog from 'Noog bought some noog and cooked the songbirds she atttracted with it in noog oil.'

You see what you can learn here at Steve?

Music and Space Bedrooms

For all you jazz dogs out there. 

Marcus Miller, Zycopolis Productions, "Tutu".  Listen HARD.

Marcus Miller - Tutu Revisited feat Christian Scott - Hannibal - 2009 LIVE HD - YouTube_

I like this Marcus Miller guy.  

                                                                            Him.

He's a generous performer.  He allows his ensemble to improvise and will step aside to let them shine while he backs their sound with brilliant, minimal bass stings.  Jazz doesn't come much finer than this stuff.  Look this guy up on Wikipedia - he's done everything!

The algorithms have concocted a wonderful YouTube channel for me.  It's got Al Blakey and the Jazz Messengers doing 'Moanin' ', Herbie Hancock playing 'Speak Like A Child', good standard Grover Washington Jr. doing 'Mister Magic', old as the hills and twice as dusty Dave Brubeck on 'Take Five', and the incomparable beauty of Oliver Nelson with Bill Evans playing 'Stolen Moments', a rave fave here at Apartmento el FirstNations.  And that's not all, but I'll spare you.

This is perfect rainy, windy night music, and that's what we've got going on outside now. I am soooo cozy.

My go-to for all things rare and sweet is Herbie Hancock. 

You've all heard the ferociously danceable "Rockit".  Well here they are, the gang from 'Future Shock.'

He's done some things that aren't to my taste but the man has never put out a bad song.  He's like the caffeine/chocolate/opioids of jazz - the man just makes everything better.  Even if he's just sitting on on keyboards, that piece is going to be 100% better for his presence.  This is a true fact, no bullshit.

Another man that deserves national treasure status is Stanley Clarke.  

                                    I was just a poo-butt kid, but I knew quality when I heard it. 

I saw him live years ago in 1976.  I can't even remember who I went with.  I'll spare you the tale; if you've been a-hangin' round Paul or Steve for awhile you'll have heard me go on and on about that concert before, so I'll just shoot you a link to his 1974 album:

Stanley Clarke Album - YouTube

And what is the first cut called?  VULCAN PRINCESS.  

                                        T'Pring, you dumb bitch.  You passed up Spock for that?  

I saw Stanley Clarke play 'Vulcan Princess' LIVE. Lost my mind?????

ANYway.  Back to the present.

So I'm putting together my third Space Bedroom.  

My first one was just a few movie posters.  

The second one was way over the top.  Sort of Space-Goth. I painted my bedroom this super dark burned espresso color and then dotted it all over, and I mean All Over, floor, furniture, linens and ceiling, with glow in the dark galaxies and constellations, lovingly applied with a fine brush.  It was wicked bad and disorienting as hell once the lights had charged up the paint. I had blackout drapes, and the instant you closed the door those stars would fade up and daaaaamn.  I liked it.

This time I'm paring it down to some Trek collectables and some new posters and lobby cards.  I have a Deco chrome blender that The Biker turned into a table lamp for me, and - what?  Everyone in the future will have blenders that serve double duty as table lamps. Don't question my motives.

I found a nice cheap poster of 'Metropolis', the gold and black one, and that's on the outside of my bedroom door, like I'm twelve or something.  The Biker gave it the hairy eyeball this afternoon. I just said "God made man. Man made Maria." all portentously like you do when you're trying to impress someone with your knowledge of science fiction and shit. 

Anyway, he has nothing to feel all holier than thou about. There's this.  When you figure the man subjected me to this atrocity:

Yes it's Robert Williams, yes it's 21st century edge street-pop-car culture-West Coast, but honestly, it's huge and he had it hanging in his room as soon as you opened the door, and you know what; I just quit vacuuming in there.

yeah, that fucking thing, for years, until I took to keeping his bedroom door shut all the time?  He can just put up with lovely, soulless, intimidating Maria, the antithesis of everything good in this world.  I mean it's just pop art too. There really isn't that much difference, right? 

                                                                        You tell me.

 I thought seriously about doing a 'Spocks cabin', and if Mr. Beast is still out there lurking, he'll remember the epic Trek House we both coveted, where the woman who owned the place had done the whole interior over to resemble the starship Enterprise set.  It had a Vulcan themed telephone nook. Now that's class right there.

And then I thought 'No, I don't own this place, and I'm going to go looking for that weird shimmery fabric or the expanded metal dividers. Life is too short.'  And they sell that shit online.  It's tempting.  But so is owning a 'Forbidden Planet' poster.  And a 'Gort and Klaatu' poster.  And a '2001' poster. And a 'Things to Come' (1936) poster.  And maybe some replica spaceships hanging from the ceiling on fishing line.  I did buy another bottle of glow in the dark paint....

I already bought a 'femme of the future' moderne dresser for a steal. That and my nightstand are going to be painted silver once the weather improves.

Yes. Everyone in the future will have chrome bedroom furniture and dual-purpose blenders. I'm just way ahead of the curve.

Like A Delicate Blossom

 

I find myself opening like a tulip in the springtime lately!  I don't know what it is!  Could it be that the burden of all the worries our old house held in store has been eradicated in a stroke?  Could it be that, suddenly having found myself no longer isolated in The Valley of  Pointy Republicans and holding myself in constant check, I am perforce and by the grace of Dog reborn in mid-flight, like a magnificent fois gras spreading its wings for the first time in decades?  What could this strange euphoria mean?

Well, I've been drinking, so that could be a factor.

_______________________________________________

I thought I'd be in deep mourning by now.  

I'm not.

Instead, I'm shedding old possessions and saying a cheerful 'Fuck off and die!" to the life I had in Sumas.

A lot of unhappiness took place in that house. The worst years of being a mother and a wife happened in that house.  The last few years I've lived in constant dread of the horrible winters.  I could go into a hundred other worries and negative vibe sources associated with that house and the property and the town and the region.

Y'all are saying 'but what about your garden?'

Kids, I was at the end of my ability to keep up with the garden. I still love plants and I've been thinking of ways to finagle my way into someone's yard.  The urge hasn't left me.  I already have one person nearby seduced with promises of David Austin roses and rampageous clumps of Japanese irises. Nice small yard. Tools supplied. Yeaaaaaah.

All of next Spring and Summer I get to go back to Sumas to keep the joint from looking like it's abandoned, at least from the outside.  It has to sell and it will sell, believe it or not.  It's going on the market. That's written in stone. The regional infrastructure in place is so obsolete, the area so imperiled, so many lies were told over the years, and the local governments so in denial that it would be idiocy to hang onto the property any longer.   For me, this coming summer will be like a weaning process.  A prolonged farewell to horticulture.  I'll distribute a few things locally to old friends, put stuff out next to the road with a "Free ( fill in the name of a plant)! Bucket and All!" sign.  I'll talk to all my Canadian tourists, say goodbye and thank you; and maybe unload some stuff that way too. 

It's time for that to happen.  I won't miss the backbreaking labor that tending a mature garden takes.  It's 20% enjoyment and 80% culling, trimming, cutting back and reiving out when it gets to this point, and I am no longer up to climbing trees with a chainsaw, hauling around 100lb. clumps of overgrown hosta crowns and turning a compost heap that is half as tall as my house.  OR sifting the motherfucker; I mean Jesus in a bouncy castle already.  

For the past five years my life went like this:

I got three months - March, April and May, to keep June, July, and August from looking like shit. Full eight-hour days.  In and out of the house, drinking water like a fish, slathered in sunscreen, always tired, always in pain, always tripping over shit or stuck full of thorns or falling on my ass.  

During June, July, and August I sat trapped in the house and sweated while the heat and humidity rendered everything a nightmare, only sneaking out in the early morning or after the sun had gone down to do some necessary stuff.  Early in the morning, starting in September I'd be able to grab a few more hours each day to go out and speed-garden. October was all labor all the time, until it got too cold and rained too much, and all for the sake of November, December, January, and February not looking like shit.

So there's that.  Now I'm two Bloody Mary's in (four, the way I pour 'em) and I'm gonna go full bore now.

If this flood had not happened, we would have spent the rest of our days pouring money down a shithole. Hiring repairmen, hiring contractors,  hiring garden help (the poor bastards cringing under threat of the lash... me and my riding crop, all dressed out in latex and spikes in of those funky mask thingies with a zipper where the mouth should be, prowling constantly, looking over their shoulders, making inhuman sounds, drinking from the hearts of the weak etc.) having the house put up on cribs, putting in new sill plates, new window frames, having the old block foundation demolished and hauled away,  getting new foundations poured,  building a new bathroom from the ground up, connecting to the city sewer... increased insurance costs, literally trying to stay above water and losing ground all the time as every single winter hence gnawed away at the house, the outbuildings and the garage.

OK. There's that picture painted. 

I would have been miserable, and my husband would have felt even worse.

He goes out there now, most times.  I can't.  There's too much mold growing.  The dust that kicks up is toxic and my lungs are weak.  

He's out there mourning.  Brings back a few things.  We clean them off in the bathtub and let them dry on the back porch and then have to clean them again because whatever was dissolved during the flood clings like paint to everything it's touched.  The longer any of our belongings stay there, the more they smell like anaerobic rot, diesel and sewage.

Biden finally declared Sumas and Everson federal disaster zones.  We've applied for FIMA assistance, and we'll be meeting the inspector this coming Monday.  If we don't fall outside income and savings restrictions (if any are in place) we should get a little something to put in the bank. At some point in the future. I think. 

Back to the present moment.

The only bitch I have to pick now is the sheer amount of plastic in our daily lives.  It's the difference in the market region.  Twenty miles down the road, North toward the border, people still make their own lye soap and live off the grid.  They still buy things like Lydia Pinkhams - no shit - and alum.  They want to be able to handle their groceries and won't buy if they don't have that kind of assurance.  Here, you have all the Eighties and Nineties babies.  They think nothing of having to unwrap one clementine from three separate layers of plastic packaging.  It's how they were brought up (unless one happened to be in the small minority, whose parents were hippies and belonged to the Co-Op.) Just the ridiculous band-aid idea of reducing plastic waste by outlawing plastic bags? That's just a fart in a hurricane! I trip on the sheer amount of plastic waste I have now.

And that's it. That's my only complaint.

I've been here before - back in the 1980's and '90's, Portland and Seattle.  All those old habits; never leave your purse unattended, always keep that strap across your body, money in your front pockets, doors locked, windows locked, don't make eye contact with the nutty people, don't advertise your belongings, always size things up going in or out, that's all coming back to me.  Sumas was already in the beginning stages of social decline.  Here it's just back to the damn future with shorter buildings.

I'm safer.  I'm warmer.  I have reasonable people in my daily life and they aren't all Dutch ffs.  I get out more and see more things.  I said 'SHIT!' out loud in WinCo yesterday - twice! and nobody infarcted.  Folks know what my 'Weyland Yutani' shirt means.  I'm surrounded by the world again.

Fuck Sumas.  That life is over.

Quaint Vignettes From My Ordinary Urban Apartment Complex

 Me and the Biker are sitting here singing along to 'Papa Was A Rolling Stone' and laughing like idiots.  Is this how you envisioned your golden years?  I figured I'd be in a flying wheelchair on Moonbase Alpha or some shit. 

________________________________

I have a bad habit of being interested in too many things at once, and when that happens I have to do an information dump.  What this means is walking around the place doing chores and talking to an imaginary person about whatever comes to mind, just to get it out of my head already. This is just a private idiosyncracy, and I never gave it much thought. 

 As I was rambling around the apartment this afternoon talking away about What is there to say about the Rolling Stones that hasn't been said already, what constitutes soul, the mighty Hammond B3, Herbie Hancock, math rock, the invention of the theremin, Cement Music, how hot Pavrotti was before he became a ham planet, it suddenly occurred to me that, OMG. I now have upstairs neighbors! And the walls here are paper thin!

I'll tell them I was doing a podcast. Yeah.

______________________________________________

Gladys Kravitz Department:

Our former upstairs neighbors would have never noticed that shit. They were a busy group.  Two women, five children under the age of 12, one undercover dog, three regular gentleman callers, and one dude I'll call The Midnight Creeper.  It sounded as if they were juggling lawnmowers up there.  They were a happy group, thank God, no screaming fights or anything like that, but then again it wasn't me lying on my couch in the silence of the agricultural day listening to crows walk on the roof, either.

The Midnight Creeper would come in between 11:00pm and midnight without fail. Wham wham wham wham wham wham up the stairs. 

Bam, front door. 

Goes to the kitchen. 

50/50 chance of being treated to the sound of Creeper puking in the kitchen sink. 

Feeds and then plays ball with undercover dog. Bounce bounce bouncebouncebounce, skitteritteritteritteritter slide, scrabble, gudunk gadunk gadunk gadunk gadunk. 

Repeat eleven more times. Without fail.  

M.C. takes a shower. Then he takes a firehose piss. Flushes. Has animated, if muted conversation with unknown woman.  Fall into bed.  All sound ceases at 1:30am.

6:am rolls around and here comes our man Creeper! Bam goes the front door! Wham wham wham wham wham wham down the stairs! Off into the rising sun! 

Life begins again for our two ladies and their children at 7:am.   In and out and all about, doing whatever it is they do at high speed while wearing Elton John shoes.

This all changed three days ago.  Come 9:am that morning an amazing changing of the guard took place as one group of people speed-moved out of that apartment and another speed-moved in simultaneously.

Yesterday, silence.

Today, silence.

...but the little dog remains.

_______________________________________

One of the unkindest things that can happen to a person is to stumble across Witness Money.

I've collected some over the years.  It used to come in the form of an Eisenhower or Kennedy dollar coin; now you've got Susan B and Sacagawea too. Steam polished aluminum. One side looks legit, the other side is a bunch of demented 'Come to Jesus, money is the root of all evil Moloch 666 only Christ can redeem, turn or BURN' stuff.  

Lately it comes in the form of folding money, commonly given to waitresses instead of a real tip, or found on the floor in resale stores, or near the Mission. Isn't this a wonderful way to call poor people to the throne of the Lord?  Be short of cash, get pranked by a random stranger, get rebuked by fake money, and given a bible quote to make it all better.  Make me feel all churchy just thinking about it.

OK. 

Our handyman is named Jake.  This guy is a mensch.  Friendly, not creepy, busy, competent, shows up on time, keeps the place looking sharp.  Super nice dude.

We're talking in the laundry room, just he and I; he's fixing the coin machine and I'm folding slogan t's. So many slogan t's.

                                                           So very, very many slogan t's.

When he leaves, there on the floor is a folded bill.  I bend to pick it up, and sure as shit, there's Benjamin Franklin.

"Oh fuck no. Come on man, don't be one of these," I think, terribly disappointed, and I bend to unfold the bill.

 I have a brick. 

A hunno, children. 

Cold hard cash! Swimmin' pools, movie stars!

"oh shit," I think, all in lower case like that.

The next day he's striding past with a big sheet of fiberglass and I ask him "Did you notice you had something missing last night after we talked?"

"A hundred dollars," he said, eyes big.

"I got it. Hang on."

And Jake is soo grateful.  He is overjoyed. He is thanking me over and over and over.

Stone Troll Roll Dode 12, Icosa twentaaaaay, BOOM shakalaka! 

I am gonna get my toilet fixed FOREVER!!!!!!!!

Putting the 'dugong' back in Christdugongmas!

 Good lord, the crowds out there!  The teeming hordes have all crawled out of their dens, pale as maggots, and descended on every retail outlet here in my part of the planet.  It's like a state fair, where all the weird people you've never, ever met, but who clearly live nearby, come shambling out of the forest like lost Innsmouthians, slavering after deep fried Twinkies and corndogs.

It takes centuries of inbreeding with fish-humanoids who worship Dagon to produce a grandmother like this, and dammit, she wants waffle fries with her fried twinkies.

I do not miss The Reddest Corner of the Bluest State at all when it comes to shopping.  Yes, the crowds were thinner, but they were made up of white folks busy policing everyone else's morals, 

 

Look at the joy on those faces.  LOOK AT IT.  

folks with too much religion wearing MAGA hats, and they had truck nuts on their vehicles. On a farm truck this form of ornamentation is barely excusable, but on the family sedan it's just heartrending.  

I really have felt like a kind of social weight has been lifted from my shoulders here in town.  I live in an area with two colleges nearby, so there's a lot of diversity, a lot of young energy, and a huge out and proud LGBTQ+ community too.  Many, many hippies. Big pagan presence. Many, many people from places other than Holland.  It's wonderful!  Example:  I can exclaim 'Shit!' absentmindedly and nobody looks at me as though I'd just shot a loop of gut out my ass!  I CAN WEAR MY FRANKIE SAYS RELAX t-shirt and people laugh! And talk to me! About the Eighties! Not about how God disapproves of butt sex!

We've been doing a pile of necessary shopping amid all the holiday preppers.  Most of it's just been replacing things we lost in the flood, which was kind of boring (Oo, a blender.  Oo, a toaster.  Oo bedding.)  But now the bulk of that is finished, and we've been able to turn our thoughts more toward Christdugongmas and gifts and thank-you cards, and it's starting to be fun again. 

                                     'Merry Christdugongmas!  Ho ho holy shit I'm drowning!'

Retail is nice.  I have nothing against retail.  But thrift stores are more fun, and the thrift shopping out in this area of Bellingham is fuckin' nuts, y'all.  There are warehouse sized places, small places, weird places, smelly places, clothes only places, machinery and tool - only places, shit; I could keep going but you either get the picture, or you don't care.  I've picked up so many high-end items for so cheap lately it's stupid.  And that stock revolves, let me tell you.  Not a week goes by that they haven't all completely turned their inventory!

And here's something that kind of blew me away, now that I'm back in the new and improved, bigger, better, faster Bellingham I've found that in my absence apparently all of Bellingham has become a Designated Wildlife Corridor.  There are warning signs everywhere.  I've seen more of Gods lil' critters here in a week than I did in a month out Sumas way. Deer! Birds galore! The fattest, sleekest squirrels you've ever seen, like real American squirrels that need to go on a damn diet and stop wearing tennis shoes everywhere! 

Back in 1985, when we first lived in Bellingham, there were the occasional deer, black bear and cougars (the Wilderness Death Kitty kind) roaming around at night right in downtown, and since it invariably follows that where there's deer - and there sure in the fuck are some damn deer  - 

                                                 Yes. Not even kidding.  Like this.  Don't they look tasty?  

- there will also be black bear and Wilderness Death Kitties, I can but surmise that there are now more black bears and Wilderness Death Kitties out there too to go along with all the freakin' damn deer. 

'And we're just the vanguard! Let's not forget about coyotes, mink, wolverines, bobcat, martens, velociraptors and bass!'  

It's just like living in downtown Portland Oregon again! (sniffle)

And let me make the same parallel when it comes to nutty people.  I haven't seen so many free-range nutty people since I left Portland multiple decades of years ago.  (Don't make me count on my fingers, just move on.)  Portland back in the 1970's was overflowing with floridly nutty motherfuckers.  So too is Bellingham lo these many years later.  And the odd thing about the nutty population is:   if they're wearing a lot of pink?  Man or woman, they're meth heads.  I've had lots of people tell me the same thing, and it matches up with my observations. Apparently you ingest a certain amount of meth over time and bammo, you're weird as shit and in the girls' apparel aisle shoplifting tutus.  Meth heads love them some pink clothes.  Dora the Explorer-themed togs are au courant among the meth set, followed by Barbie anything and Glitter Girls. I do not know what this is about, but it's killed my urge to try meth once just to see what it's like.

And remember the motto of Christdugongmas:  Don't chew on your mother, even if she's already dead.

I Am Still Here

 I would have gone for the 'I Am Alive!' gambit but I'm writing this on my phone, and I can barely manage as it is in this tiny format.

Well, we are still moving in to our new apartment, and I cannot express how incredibly convenient our location is!  While still being wooded!  And scenic!  Or as scenic as the Wood Hood gets.

Yup, we went with the Wood Hood apartment.  Turns out the old cess pit has gentrified some.  Our building is very secure, very modern, and the landlord is fantastic.

Tell ya what, I am liking all this 21st century doings.  The whole place stays warm, for starters.  I don't have to huddle in the front room by the gas heater and pray for summer.  And this whole notion of energy efficiency and the roof not leaking is the cat's tits!  All six of them!  CATS HAVE SIX TITS AND ALL OF THEM ARE AWESOME!!!!

The Biker found a $500 work beater, and it's great. The only problem is that it has km instead of miles on the speedometer, and a bitch does not know metric.  I am a Murrican.  I don't need to know metric.  That's what they told us on sixth grade. We didn't need to know metric OR geography, because Murricans.  We only needed to memorize all the counties in our state and then it was off to play sports!  Because sports are important!  Like cat tits!

Anyway, this makes the thing problematic for me to drive, because it's so much more easy to leadfoot the gas when the speedo is telling you that your happy ass is moving at a tremendous rate of speed.  Driving is a competition sport, as we all know, or at least as far as I'm concerned because I never learned geography.  And I'm determined to win, for the cats.

I BREAK THE SPEED LIMITS FOR THE CATS.   

Imagine that you are a cat-ess and all you have are four tits.  Now imagine all the baby cats out there fighting like Marines every meal time because their mothers have no thumbs and can't spoon feed them, or even hold a bottle of vodka to numb the pain?  Insufficient nipplage is no joke if you're a mommy cat, and baby cats don't know metric because they don't speak English as far as anyone knows.  And that's why I must break the speed limit. I have thumbs.  I use them.  To drive.  And I use all my other assorted fingerage too.  You can take that to the bank, Paco.