baranduyn: (Default)
I may be out of this now.” Baranduyn, 12/16/2013 “Lohnen nicht, ohne dich; four months gone”

Or not.

In an earlier blog post I explained that my husband found a dog and brought it home under the happy delusion the dog was probably a Labrador Retriever mix. I named him Levon.

I didn’t explain that my husband brought Levon home just three days after the first anniversary of the deaths of Hunter and Gabriel. I didn’t explain that I didn’t want another dog. I wasn’t ready. I forgot that for some events there’s no such thing as ready.

I took one look at Levon and said “I see a broken hip in my future.” Not one of the dogs I’ve had in my life have been leash-friendly. I am within two years of being sixty years old. Levon was maybe not the perfect dog for us.

And while I still believe he is at least part Great Dane the truth is I suspect neither of his parents were any kind of purebred dog. I know he has some hunting dog in him now because he points and flushes birds at every opportunity. I suspect he’s at least a quarter pit bull which brings its own problems.

I’m not a member of the pit bull=evil club. Some owners on the other hand are dwelling in one of Dante’s rings full time and don’t know it. That stupid ‘my dog is so bad assed’ mentality has caused much suffering and pain, mostly to the dogs. I hate those people and I don’t care who knows it.

I also know that Levon’s size and his possible pit bull ancestry makes him damn attractive to vacuum-brained troglodytes who might think “She doesn’t know what to do with that dog but I do.”

You. Know. Jack.

Levon is a couch potato. He likes being right up next to people at all times. He does not like being outside unless I’m on the other end of the lead. Oh and by the way…this is a mindblower here…he really likes cats and not as a toy or a tasty snack.

Much unlike a dog that owned me many years ago, a giant of a white GSD named Kasey. Like so many he was passed onto me by people who couldn’t keep him. Kasey was a compulsive barker and they’d been cited and ticketed so many times for his compulsive barking they knew he would likely be taken away and euthanized. So he wound up with me.

Kasey had so many quirks I could spend days detailing them and I’d still leave a few out purely by accident. Because he wasn’t really dog-like, to my mind, I asked a hard question of my vet who brought in boss vet for a consultation. Their opinion was that minimally Kasey was at the very least one-quarter wolf, which type of wolf they didn’t know. Maybe more. I doubt his original owners knew this either. So there was the face-grabbing ritual and on more than one full moon night I’d give up and go outside and howl along with him. I highly recommend howling at the moon as a pastime, if you’ve got the right dog to help you out. It’s so cathartic.

In the time when Diego was the only dog in the house I often found myself telling my husband stories of dogs I had been owned by. Kasey has more than his share. This will matter in a little bit so keep it in mind.

Then came Levon who was an out-and-out stray. The thing with strays is that you never know certain facts. We didn’t know how old he was. We didn’t know what breeds went into him to produce that sleek gold coat, those giant round paws or his light brown eyes. I wonder if he’s got some Carolina Dog in him. I wonder if he’s got some Vizsla in him. I just don’t know and there’s no one to tell me.

My husband diligently put up ‘found dog’ posters around where he was found and I registered him as found with Harnett County and Wake County since if I throw a ball really hard to the north the ball will land in Wake County. Nothing.

So he was our dog, we thought. We thought so more because one day when I was at yet another dentist’s appointment my husband brought Levon along for company. We stopped at a vet’s office on the way home to see if Levon was microchipped. He is. The tech ran the number and told us the registration of the number had been pulled. He might have been reported as having died. When I was outside walking him and crying because people make me so mad the tech told my husband that a lot of stray dogs are microchipped and the registrations are cancelled just before they’re dumped.

“He’s your dog now,” she said.

We were going to have him neutered. There are many good reasons to neuter a dog. Thousands of dogs are euthanized every week because they have no homes. I lost one dog to testicular cancer. It might curb roaming, which Levon doesn’t do anyway since he can’t take the sofas with him. It does help with marking; he wasn’t housebroken when he arrived and he’s now well on his way. Instead of sixty-five pees in different places outside he locks up and lets it all go at once.

Another reason bluntly is that as a neutered dog he is far less attractive to thieves. Neutered dogs do not make good fighting dogs and if you think that nobody would steal a dog for fighting purposes you’d better do some reading, booboo. He can’t be bred to make more fighting dogs. Many people think a neutered dog is useless as a guard dog or watchdog. Fine by me; think that to your heart’s content if it keeps my dog from a life of misery at your wretched hands.

But before he was neutered my husband got a call from someone who saw a poster with a picture of Levon and thought he was her dog. My husband explained that Levon was unaltered. Balls intact. Her dog was neutered but she still thought he was her dog and now I was losing it.

Because I trust no one. I don’t know her. Is she wracked by grief because her beloved dog is gone to such an extent that she needs to look at every dog who even vaguely resembles hers? I can understand that. We also have a lot of backyard breeders around here and I was ready to go to war if I suspected that was the real goal.

No he wasn’t her dog. She just needed to see this for herself. When I brought him to the door (yes there was an epic fight later between me and my husband while I tried to explain the basic stupidity involved in giving people you don’t even know your damn address) her husband said instantly “That’s not him.” I turned him around so she could see his testicles and I assured her I did not superglue a pair on for her benefit.

Then Levon was neutered. He tolerated the surgery well. He recovered quickly. He didn’t even rip the incision open despite the Cone of Shame unlike my Hunter who had to have his incision reclosed TWICE.

And then my husband decided to have Levon’s existing microchip transferred to us. Which is when we found his previous owners.

The tech at the vet’s office either didn’t do the scan properly or gave the wrong number over the phone or maybe decided if the big boy was wandering around unattended and skinny as a rail they didn’t need to have him back anyway. You can’t imagine how skinny that dog was. Emaciated, if I may say. If he’d had a spinal problem you wouldn’t need x-rays. I could not only count every vertebra, I could see the discs in some areas.

Now phone calls commenced between my husband and the microchip company and from there between him and Former Owner. Former Owner sent him some pictures and I will ever be amused by the one of him sprawled out on their sofa. Then I blinked because there was a cat lying on top of Levon.

I knew he was good with cats. I have three, none of them kittens. Charlie, my oldest cat, was terrifically attached to my Gabriel. Charlie kept coming out into the main house and looking at Levon and every time Levon would lie down, curl around and avert his eyes. Levon knows what to do with cats. Don’t chase, don’t bark, don’t stare, just wait. This is why even as I type the big boy is up on my bed with me, Diego and Callista. Her nose is about five inches from his and from time to time either he will gently extend one giant paw and touch her or she’ll extend her own fluffy white mitten and touch him.

I waited for Former Owner to demand her dog be returned. She didn’t. She told my husband she just wanted to see him, to see if he was all right and she’d explain later. So yesterday they met at a park and the explanation followed.

They adopted Levon from a shelter just about a year before my husband brought him home. He was estimated to be four years old then. They loved him. His thing was lying on sofas or beds and being friends with cats. They knew no more about him than we did.

There were a few problems. They couldn’t housebreak him. My husband told them with some pride I’d finally gotten him to poo outside and for the most part this is true. However when I got up today I found a Levon-sized landmine in the dining room so don’t get cocky here, B-girl, don’t get cocky. They looked him over and loved him up as they say here which means petting and hugging and nothing nasty at all, thank you. They were impressed by his general condition and no, they did not ask to take him home. Levon did follow them a bit as they went to their car but when my husband said “Let’s go home” he jumped into ours.

They have another dog and that dog hates Levon and Levon does not love that dog at all. The conflict got so intense that they had to find another place for the big boy. They did but they did not like how he was being cared for. He was awfully skinny. He was tied out all the time. In other words he’d fallen into the hands of a jackass who understood dogs better than anyone and actually knows nothing at all. I’m glad I don’t know who that person is because my need to unleash a full-on ass-whippin’ with a length of maple is intense.

That person told them Levon slipped the leash. Nonsense. He was found with only a light, reflective flea collar around his neck. The people at the store where he was found assured us he was dumped there.

So Levon came home again. He slurped water, did his ecstasy dance, squashed Diego with one surprisingly gentle paw when Diego got out of control, as he does and we all settled in. The registration of the chip is being transferred to us and if anyone thinks they’re going to claim this dog now they had better be prepared to get beaten half to death by me. That dog is now well-shut of jerks who know nothing while insisting they know everything. I don’t know why they don’t all join our General Assembly, where we keep the really stupid people hereabouts.

He does not and cannot replace the dogs I lost last year. I hold them so close in my heart. I still miss my boys. Diego and Levon are not natural smiling dogs and I miss that like crazy. I still wouldn’t trade the ones I have for any dog unless I’m mopping up the floor again. Almost house-broken is not the same as house-broken but they’re both miles better than they were.

But I promised you an eerie tale, didn’t I? I could point out that I believe the pets in my life were meant to come to me. I could mention that I sometimes see unique behaviors in the pets here and now that I saw in pets now long gone.

No matter; let me give you the twist ending.

Before he was called Levon by me the dog’s name was Kasey.
baranduyn: (Default)
So; this is a thing that happened.

One day my phone rang. I saw the caller was my husband so I answered.

Him: “I don’t know…I don’t know if I’ve done a bad thing or a good thing.”
Me: “Dude, you never call your wife and open with that line. Never. What?”
Him: “I found a dog. He’s in the car. I’ll need your help to get him in the house.”
Me: “What kind of dog?”
Him: “I don’t know. I think he’s part Lab.”

No, no, no. He is not part Lab. We’re still identifying the parts but I’m pretty solidly certain he’s at least a quarter Great Dane. I grew up with Labrador Retrievers. They don’t make Labs that big.

The other part might be aircraft carrier. He’s one big dog and I am not certain he’s fully grown.

But he’s here and the cats are still worried about him and he’s a couch potato/love muffin. I named him Levon. I hope those who abandoned him die of something itchy.
baranduyn: (Default)
Random thoughts from the brain of an aging woman. Compiled while writing, watching videos online when I’m meant to be writing, cooking and other bits of life.

-I like books better.

-That damn cat…

-Dear Sir, it’s my opinion that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You’re also doing a poor job of concealing your ignorance. GONG.

-I refuse to believe I have a zit. I’m squarely in the zit-free age.

-If Wright was alive I’d still go for the Gilmour-Wright sandwich. After a long nap, maybe.

-Dear Madam, not only do you not have the least idea about what you’re discussing, everyone interviewing you knows this. Yet they interview you. Weird.

-How the hell many Kardashians are there?

-Oooooh, shiny.

-I really need to take a dump today but no matter what, no prune juice.

-Why is that twelve year old boy wearing a three piece suit and pretending to be a lawyer on TV?

-That damn dog…

-I really don’t mind when a deer gets up on the porch. I’m supposed to mind, aren’t I? I don’t.

-Politicians=evil

-Gentlemen, you have taught us all that there is such a thing as one tour too many.

-Why is that twelve year old boy wearing a suit and telling me he’s my doctor? Hell no. You need to have achieved puberty first. Nothing against Doogie Howser.

-I’m so glad I don’t watch TV.

-How can there possibly be a Gnostic church? I mean, really.

-Corporations=evil

-Egg replacer= well, no, but it doesn’t work for me.

-What the hell size chicken laid this egg? I wonder if it was an Orpington. An old Orpington. Or she’s taken to keeping teeny ostriches.

-I didn’t fancy twelve year old boys when I was twelve years old. No wonder I don’t watch movies. Oh well, time to build the wall.
baranduyn: (Default)
Hunter and Gabriel died in early August of this year. My thirteen year old and eleven year old dogs. The days which have passed since they went have been mostly good but rarely great. I miss them so.

I suppose they are most palpably on my mind today because this is the time of year they arrived. Hunter appeared in the parking lot outside my apartment in late November; Gabriel came home in December two years later. Winter dogs.

The house has never been cleaner despite Diego’s attempts to strew plush animal guts everywhere. I call it ‘ghost poo’. The house has never been quieter. Now if Diego barks I jump about a foot. I am routinely nearly tripped by Diego or Charlie, elder cat. I miss Gabriel’s attempts to break my neck on a daily basis. Oh, he’d grin each time.

My husband has lost the ability to sleep through the night. For years until he got his CPAP machine he woke up every hour due to apnea. Then the machine allowed him to sleep right through. But, we have separate bedrooms. His health issues and the fact that he is beyond a misery to sleep next to require this. So, since we moved to this house Hunter slept in his room. Now that Hunter’s gone my husband can’t sleep well. I still startle awake every time there’s a thump in the house or outside. I think ‘Oh, God, Gabriel’s having a seizure’ until I remember he blessedly doesn’t have seizures anymore.

I wrote in August that I wouldn’t look for another dog. Every dog that has owned me, from Buddy who raised me (that is not a metaphor, that’s fact) to my boys were individuals to the extreme. They can’t be replaced.

I browsed the adoption sites. I haven’t in a while. Yes, there are tens of thousands of dogs desperately in need of homes because fucking stupid selfish bastard humans don’t have their pets neutered. And those who don’t; fuck you all.

I have thought a bit on the dogs I most loved. When I would hug them I would feel myself go to the bliss place. It’s just a calm, serene place. I don’t have that with Diego. He just isn’t that kind of dog. It’s a rare dog that can help me get there. There’s nothing sexual about this for those who think love and sex are synonymous. As a matter of fact let me share my opinion of people who think it’s okay to have sex with animals; I would cut their throats and leave them to die in a pool of their own stinking blood without missing a moment’s sleep.

In my mind I beep Gabriel’s nose and give Hunter a profile stare and a hug fed and cared for dog instead of three goes to shelters and charities to save every night. You get on and you learn to live with the missing part of mourning; it just becomes a part of life. I miss all of my dogs and my cats, you know.

But I am not a young woman. I am closer to sixty years old than fifty. I have played with dogs at adoption events and there’s no bond, just sadness that they don’t all have wonderful forever homes.

I may be out of this now. The money saved by having only one supremely well-dogs. But I might really personally be out of this now. I’d give anything to see Hunter or Gabriel grin right now but someday I will. We’ll be together someday, I know it.

Lohnen nicht ohne dich.

baranduyn: (Default)
Levon Helm (1940-2012) Dick Clark (1929-2012)
Where’s Don McLean when you need him?

Not exactly; I could argue that Dick Clark was as important to American music as any musician but that’s neither right nor wrong. He was in there, though. He was definitely in there. From my point of view it was Dick Clark among many others who shaped the American music industry in the late 1950s and the 1960s. This is not ancient history, ducklings; people just five years my senior remember well how American Bandstand (which was then a daily afternoon television show) pointed the way, if you wanted to follow it, from your parents’ music to something very different.

Levon Helm followed a very different path…no, that’s not right. Both of them were trailblazers not so much so that others might follow but because the pre-blazed trails didn’t suit. I suppose the basic difference between the two was the number of people who could follow Clark and get it absolutely twisted up. Many watched dear old Bandstand for the fashion and new dance fads as opposed to those the music. Some took all, everything Bandstand had to offer. For a kid in a rural town such as the one I grew up in Bandstand was a rare peek into another world. That the Philadelphia kids probably dressed differently from their normal lives for their turn on Bandstand didn’t really come across.

Levon at that time was an Arkansas boy with a jones for all things musical. Rockabilly as it was called never really permeated the mainstream American psyche save for a few one-off hits and eventually the great Southern Rock run of the 1970s but it seemed to suit Levon fine. Rockabilly is as close as anyone will ever get to a genre-descriptive for Levon’s music with The Band and in his solo years. It is, like all genre-labels, absolutely incorrect.

The right descriptive for Levon’s music as well as The Band’s, for my money, is “American”. Yeah, there were four Canadians and one Arkansan in there but it is literally, to me, the sound of America; the ultimate melting pot of music. I will include Canada as part of the Americas since it is though it is most definitely not part of the United States. American is the whole f’n continent, people, both hemispheres. That music drips America, warts and nasty underbelly and all.

It is more simply just beautiful.

I don’t know now and I can’t be bothered to do the research to find out if The Band or any of its members ever appeared on American Bandstand. I wouldn’t bet on it either way, to be honest. From time to time the guests on American Bandstand would blow one’s mind though never as much as the time John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosted The Mike Douglas show in the 1970s for a full week. I have decided that one is the ultimate mind blower with a few other contenders in the mix and let it go.

You could get to the fringes of the music industry where so much of the really good stuff is from Bandstand if you tried or if like me you just couldn’t help yourself. You could listen to a hit record like, say, Joan Baez’ “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, discard the vocals as I have never been able to really love her voice and wonder where the hell that song came from.

I found out where that song came out and I found The Band. Man, it was beautiful.

You couldn’t find two more opposite people in the music business than Dick Clark and Levon Helm. I don’t honestly know if Dick Clark ever really loved music but he knew a hit when he heard one and that remains for me his greatest claim to fame; the man had ears in the music industry sense. Clark used to routinely be scourged in the press for having the wrong people on his show; people of color at first which of course would end American civilization in the opinions of some. Same with teenaged hoodlums and scantily clad women and on and on and on; highly uptight people kept announcing boycotts and Clark’s viewership like went up.

You could argue Clark’s show became too mainstream and you’d be right; they booked the people who had hits instead of the music that grabbed your guts and made you pay attention for at least four minutes. The mainstream blanderizes everything and that’s a stone cold fact. But from time to time there’d be a literal ray of sunshine in the “I didn’t see that coming” sense and Bandstand grabbed that as well; it was a hit and that was that.

The Band never had hits. The Band simply made the best music I’ve ever heard in my life. The lyrics, mostly courtesy of Robbie Robertson were at best stream of consciousness and utterly amazing. No, they’re not singing about your first boyfriend or your first kiss. They were snapshots with no captions. The music was a mélange of country, folk, rock, Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, rockabilly, blues and probably a dozen other styles; in other words it was what they liked and they liked a little of everything. As do I; let me show you my collection of Breton folk and pop music.

They didn’t belong on American Bandstand no matter who covered the song. Bluntly, there weren’t a lot of covers because the music was so idiosyncratic and utterly right you were better off leaving it alone.

I know hand on heart the first song I listened to by The Band was “The Weight”. If I knew what it was about I would tell you. I don’t. Nobody does. Sad-assed music writers have expended beaucoup words on that song and not one of them got it right. It’s what the song does to your brain and heart and soul and if any of them could define this in a way appropriate to all they’d be songwriters, amirite?

For me it’s the whip crack, razor-sharp and somehow tired if not weary voice of Levon Helm that did the initial grab; the first words over that incredible music:

I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin’ ‘bout half past dead
I just needed some place where I could lay my head
“Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?”
He just grinned and shook my hand and “No” was all he said


I remember my eyes filled with tears and to this day I can’t tell you why. Maybe because I had the feeling I get when something really profound has just entered my ears regardless of its’ origins; that feeling is what I call ‘home’ though it doesn’t mean that at all. That’s just the best I can do.

Last summer, early summer before the North Carolina sun cranks it up to ‘punishing’ I was outside mucking about the yard as I am wont to do. I had my wee box on the steps and I had The Band going.

I sat down on my brick steps to rest my bum and take a moment. Drink some water, have a look around. Behind my house there are acres of fields; to the north are more fields and a fine old red tin barn. It’s about as bucolic as you’d like, really.

Through the fields, about three-quarters of a mile from my side door there is a small town, population under three-thousand. Downtown is a few blocks square and like all small towns or cities for some reason it is a misery in the summer. The sun saturates all that paving and cement and brick work and gets amplified a hundred times in all of the wrong ways there are.

That small city is much like the place I ‘saw’ when I first heard “The Weight”. Granted, all you have to do is get yourself out of all that paved nonsense to feel just a little better, in the shade, under the trees, but it’s getting there that’s the hard part.

I sat on my steps drinking water from my canteen and crying a little. I wasn’t sad or desperate or tired. It was all just kind of perfect in its own way.

At my age I lose two or three real icons of my youth a year. I remember when they were young men and women, young punks in the minds of so many. Trouble makers and hand on heart again I do love a troublemaker. I think I hold those remaining so close in my heart because they will go, we all go and I do not want them to go. I don’t want them to suffer, I don’t want them to become shadows of their pasts but I don’t want them to go.

I don’t live in the past, though. I wondered today if my music collection contained more dead artists than living. I am happy to say it does not and it does contain music by people who will likely outlive me. I won’t have to bury them; I won’t have to mourn them I hope. People still die young.

The number of people who ran home every day to see American Bandstand is dwindling. Even I don’t remember those days. By my era Dick Clark was as well known for hawking Clearasil as for opening a window to millions, showing them that there was more beyond their immediate surroundings.

Levon Helm went on making brilliant music for much longer than he did with The Band. If The Band defined ‘hippie’ to some that definition was shattered by acrimony, law suits, death and suicide. Only Robbie and Garth are left now.

I would see tweets from Levon’s account talking about the upcoming or most recent Midnight Ramble, the shows he put on up near Woodstock which mixed a crazy brew of artists that turned out some fine damn music, Levon at the drum kit playing along. I would smile when I saw those tweets; you couldn’t keep the old man down. So much of The Band’s music is about people on the edge of surrender, knocked down at least once too often to the point of feeling there really was no point in trying anymore. Then they’d go on because, hell, what else was there to do?

I didn’t want to see that tweet today. I knew it was coming, we all knew it was coming. Robbie Robertson found out in time to get himself to Levon’s bed side and I am peculiarly grateful for this. I really believe in many of the real hippie ethics, the ones that got lost in the media’s presentation of it all being nothing but sex and drugs. Ugly damn business got into The Band and it did not end well. For that I’m sorry. That Robbie was able to share a little love and time with his old friend is a truly beautiful thing.

So, I’m old and the world is getting older but no wiser and Levon and Dick are gone and it sucks, you know? It does. The music has never sucked; dozens if not hundreds of artists have made my life richer and fuller than it would otherwise have been. I winced when I read of Dick Clark’s death and wept when I read of Levon Helms’. I could have cut all of this down to that, tweeted it and been done. But I couldn’t; I had more to say.

Catch a cannonball just to take me down the line
Cause my bag is sinking low and I do believe it’s time
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she’s the only one

Who sent me here with her regards for everyone
Take a load off Fanny, take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny and you put the load right on me


Godspeed
baranduyn: (Default)
Well, the surgeon has the gallstone now. And the gallbladder. In a jar.

Bother

Jan. 5th, 2012 03:27 pm
baranduyn: (Default)
The spouse has a gallstone. Not one week into 2012 and the stuff starts up.
baranduyn: (Default)
I received a notice to tell me I had a new follower on Twitter. It happens.

This came, I think, in response to a smart assed comment I made to a comedian I follow. The young lady opened her tweet with "I LOVE YOU MORE!" I have no idea who she meant that for. I'll bet it was the comedian who is not hard on the eyes. Nevertheless she instantly followed me.

I think I'll just let that lie, shall I? :D

Memo

Dec. 4th, 2011 11:16 pm
baranduyn: (Default)
Anyone who feels the need to assure someone else it's perfectly all right to feel the way they feel can go fuck themselves. Your permission was not sought nor is it welcome.
baranduyn: (Default)
Google first.
baranduyn: (Default)
For most of my life by this time on Thanksgiving Eve I was already in preparation lock-step. I had much to do to get ready for the Big Feed.

Not this year. This year I'm playing online games, watching my Twitter feed come as close to scrolling as it can and wondering why this year feels so weird.

One point is that earlier this year I discovered I'm gluten sensitive. I won't tell you how this was revealed since I think y'all might like to eat again sometime soon. Not appetizing to say the least. Just trust me...I have a lot of motivation to avoid gluten whenever possible.

I do love to cook and bake. I can bake still...I have all the stuff I need to make gluten free baked goods. Okay, they're all faux breads, cakes and so on but it's what I can eat. I'm just not motivated to bake or eat them.

My news feeds tell me that poultry growers...and if you want a clue as to what's wrong with so much keep in mind that some do not raise poultry, they grow them...are doing all kinds of nasty things to get Big Fat Birds out to the marketing public. The problem is that science doesn't know what the stuff they do to birds will do to us. Another problem is that if I wanted a locally grown heirloom breed turkey for the day I ought to have started looking a few months ago.

There's a lot wrong in the world right now. I don't suppose roasting up one of those hormone and other stuff laced birds would do much harm but it wouldn't do anyone any good.

There's something else at work though.

I had to go to the market today to get an onion for the braised beef I'm making. I had my observations of the previous day reinforced; it looks to me like I'm not the only one who's not going for the bird.

By mid afternoon on the day before T-day the grocery starts to look picked over. There shouldn't be many pre-baked (anathema to me even before the gluten situation) pies left; there are piles of them in the store. I should have to go to a couple of stores to get the whole cranberries for my sauce. I could bathe in the amount piled up in all of the stores I've hit. I wouldn't recommend bathing in them mind you. Those little berries are weapons until they're cooked.

There are piles of bags of croutons waiting to be purchased. Every bin is full of everything and there are an awful lot of birds piled up waiting to be bought.

The ample supply of unpurchased birds is a very interesting point. Bluntly put, if you're going to be roasting or frying (hey, they do that) the bird it should have been bought and should already be defrosting or bad things will happen. There are a lot of birds left to choose from; frozen, 'fresh', even free range. They're just sitting in the coolers waiting. In vain?

I spoke a bit with the manager of my most used market. He was eyeing his mountain o'birds with a worried expression.

"They're not moving," I said.

"No," he said. "I don't know what's going on."

There's something going on. As the mainstream media picks up on societal changes about six months after they occur I expect eventually someone will look into this. All I know is that as of late afternoon, Thanksgiving Eve, a whole lot of turkeys died for no reason. Worrying.
baranduyn: (Default)
Are you an annual cook? I may h8 you.

So it closes in on us as it does every year, the season of the Annual Cook. This time approaches not on silent feet but with suppressed weeping in the aisles of shops and supermarkets nationwide.

People, I know that for some time now cooking hasn’t been ‘in’. Peons cook. Peasants cook. Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver and Anthony Bourdain cook but they’re hot and famous for it so that’s all right. Many of the people are above cooking. They do not do the cooking. Cooking is what you pay to have others do if you’re…

…Stupid. Or food challenged. I know food challenged exists. It has been my unhappy lot to have known two people who ought to have been prohibited by law from handling food since what they claimed to produce as edible was so definitely not. Okay, I know a few more who are really iffy on the food challenged scale. I’m not being a food snob here, really I’m not. Nor am I going to bore you with an anecdote. I will only say this:

You should not be able to serve chili by cutting it into a wedge that holds its wedge shape when deposited on an unsuspecting hungry person’s plate. I swear on whatever you want I saw this with my own eyes. Expand”For )
baranduyn: (Default)
I love them. SORTED.

No, not at all sorted. I don't much like slasher flicks. No blood and gore fests for me. Not because I'm all that squeamish--who gets to clean the dead, one-leg-missing squirrels out of the yard? Me. What the hell is just ripping off one leg of the poor squirrels and how is beyond me. Sorry, I digressed.

I'm really not that squeamish. I am easily disappointed, though. When a director decides to throw whole tank trucks of blood and body parts at the screen they are going for the gross-out. That'll startle you, scare you and make you scream but it's a cheat in my opinion. It takes some talent to scare the hell out of people with tension and suspense. It takes a decent budget to scare the hell out of people with the gross-out and that's all it takes. Talent is not required. ExpandDo cuts work on Dreamscape? )
Page generated Jul. 24th, 2025 11:42 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios