Passover begins tonight! Swill the Manischewitz and enjoy last year's post on this theme.
4/14/08: Pesach, Baby
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Wow, America, so all it took for you to be into your president again was for him to go out on the world stage and flirt with some other countries? Old Europe lines up to blow him and suddenly you're like, "I got it!" Entire editorial pages of eager fellation. Those nose hairs and the porcupiney technocrat he picked for Treasury aren't bothering you quite so much now. Mmhmm. Relationships 101 trick right there.
Friday, April 3, 2009
...I will unplug stuff more...
I unplugged some stuff and I was like, wow, that felt so amazing. I'm doing my part. What made me want to do that? Oh yeah, it was that friend of mine. Great lady. She's got like these barely tamed red curls and we were talking and she told me she was planning to unplug stuff more and I was like, wow: yeah. I'm gonna do that too.
And then, after that, I left the car at home. I had been meaning to do that more. I don't know why. No, wait. I do know. It was because of my neighbor. She has this amazing cocoa butter complexion and she said she was planning to leave her car at home more, and I was like, yeah, she's so right on. I want to do what she's doing.
The last time I felt this healthy and right was during my Thrive phase, when I had this mysterious compulsion to eat blueberries and catch frisbees on the beach and do yoga in the park.
I saw this flock of geese flying in like an inverted V-pattern and I got this warm feeling like there was something really positive about that shape. For some reason, it reminded me of going to see The Nutcracker at the Paramount Theater. At the end, they gave every audience member these little boxes of chocolates? And it was like, wow, so generous. And on the box there was a symbol like that. And a word. I want to say it was...CHEVRON.
Yes! That was the word. My mind was spinning. In a flash I knew the redhead and the cocoa butter lady and the Nutcracker chocolates magically intersected at this word. That the redhead was not my friend but my guardian Chevron angel. I felt the aura of this Chevron everywhere, encouraging the use of solar power, funding the local arts institutions, asking me to join. What was this extraordinary force for good? What shape did it take? I knew not. I asked around and apparently they are running this virtue factory right out of nearby Richmond.
I will visit sometime.
And then, after that, I left the car at home. I had been meaning to do that more. I don't know why. No, wait. I do know. It was because of my neighbor. She has this amazing cocoa butter complexion and she said she was planning to leave her car at home more, and I was like, yeah, she's so right on. I want to do what she's doing.
The last time I felt this healthy and right was during my Thrive phase, when I had this mysterious compulsion to eat blueberries and catch frisbees on the beach and do yoga in the park.
I saw this flock of geese flying in like an inverted V-pattern and I got this warm feeling like there was something really positive about that shape. For some reason, it reminded me of going to see The Nutcracker at the Paramount Theater. At the end, they gave every audience member these little boxes of chocolates? And it was like, wow, so generous. And on the box there was a symbol like that. And a word. I want to say it was...CHEVRON.
Yes! That was the word. My mind was spinning. In a flash I knew the redhead and the cocoa butter lady and the Nutcracker chocolates magically intersected at this word. That the redhead was not my friend but my guardian Chevron angel. I felt the aura of this Chevron everywhere, encouraging the use of solar power, funding the local arts institutions, asking me to join. What was this extraordinary force for good? What shape did it take? I knew not. I asked around and apparently they are running this virtue factory right out of nearby Richmond.
I will visit sometime.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Meeting the Night Neighbor
Nightly came the crashing sounds below: toppling stacks of plastic pots, tomato cages that bent and thwanked, a persistent metallic scraping. I initially theorized that the neighbors' funny-eyed cat was hunting rats down there and rested easy on this theory, with its benign implications, until the neighbors and cat moved out. Then I moved on to thinking a homeless drunk was bedding down in the crawlspace. (The challenge was explaining the spectacularly awkward movements that would create such mayhem. Most creatures are sneaky and smooth; they don't trip over stuff with every step.)
I developed half-waking paranoia that the drunk would break into the coop and slaughter the chickens for a meal, and Crim amused himself exploiting my fears. I'd bolt awake in the night and say, What the fuck is that? and he'd say, Shh, go back to sleep. It's just Ernie the Homeless Guy, stumbling home hungry.
A few times I whined enough to make Crim gallantly step out the back door, peak under the house and report that there was nothing there. We let the mystery persist for a good half-year. It became de rigeur to pretend it wasn't really weird to have something crawling around down there.
Was it rats, drunk off whatever was in the corners of the bottles Ernie left behind? A raccoon doing dissertation research on coop security systems? A skunk? In any of the above cases, I didn't want to encounter the perpetrator, which fed the systemic denial. But then fleas fled the cats and invaded our bedclothes (nice work, Advantage), and one fitful night I lay awake with fleas and phantom fleas crawling all over me, hearing Ernie or Skunkie or whoever down there knocking shit over. Classic invasion of grossness. I snapped. I threw on my robe, grabbed a flashlight and said, I'm ready for you, fucker. Be thee skunk or drunk, I shall face thee.
As I stumbled down the back steps, I thought about Writing. I think about it a lot, Writing being the altar at which I have sacrificed whatever money, power, respect I might otherwise have coming as a thirty year-old college graduate. When you want to write things, stories tend to come. And maybe also courage. Because you want a good story, and a good story requires going out there and meeting the beast.
(When I was ten, a skunk got into my bedroom at night--don't ask--and I spun it into my first publication feat: a proud check for $10 from Stone Soup, the magazine for children that no child has ever read. The check was tacked to my wall for years, beginning what I can only hope will be a lifetime of Writing paychecks so tiny that they are more trophy than income.)
I soothed the hens, who were making quiet sounds of anxiety. That's the best they can do, defenseless in the night: commiserate with each other like, You hear that?--sounds like something--well I'm okay--you okay?--everybody here?--united front, girls, stick together--we're okay--not to worry. Then I looked under the house.
Nothing there, of course. Silence where the crashing sounds had been. But I wasn't going back inside. I crouched among the cobwebs and the rat droppings and waited.
Finally, near the opposite wall, I saw something. A swish-swish. A long, white tail. No other movement. No other sound. It became The Sound of Music: me as Nazi soldier with my flashlight and this thing as the Von Trapp family hiding in the abbey. But there would be no climbing the verdant Alps to Switzerland on this night; I was persistent.
Whatever this creature might be, it was not bright. No self-awareness where the tail was concerned. It was struggling mightily to keep the rest of its body concealed, but the rattish tail was out there unselfconsciously flapping in the breeze. That tail looked familiar, and I gradually remembered why. I had seen one like it when I accidentally caught a baby opossum in a rat trap (an unfortunate incident, which may or may not have made me cry).
Finally the fugitive was ready to give himself up. Lowered his gray and white fur girth out of his hiding place and stepped into the beam of my flashlight. Big, fat possum. And an affable creature: once he decided the jig was up, he started tightroping across an elevated pipe bridge--there was the metallic scraping!--right toward me.
Posse the Possum. Long last we meet. I was taken with delight. Possums make unobtrusive neighbors, and their appetite for snails, rotten fruit and pre-killed carcasses earn them the nickname 'Mother Nature's cleanup crew.' They don't disturb the garden and, best of all, they are North America's only marsupials! Who wouldn't want to cohabit with a species that carries babies in a pouch?
Posse stopped a few feet away from me. We stared at each other for a while, then went our separate ways. I went back to bed contented, knowing that somehow I wasn't going to mind all the knocking and scraping and thwanking. Because I would think, hey, it's Posse, of the Midnight Marsupial Janitorial Crew, just going along to get along. I still don't know why he makes such a racket; supposedly opossums' jutting eyes give them excellent night vision. But now his awkwardness seems kind of sweet. I'm glad we met.
I developed half-waking paranoia that the drunk would break into the coop and slaughter the chickens for a meal, and Crim amused himself exploiting my fears. I'd bolt awake in the night and say, What the fuck is that? and he'd say, Shh, go back to sleep. It's just Ernie the Homeless Guy, stumbling home hungry.
A few times I whined enough to make Crim gallantly step out the back door, peak under the house and report that there was nothing there. We let the mystery persist for a good half-year. It became de rigeur to pretend it wasn't really weird to have something crawling around down there.
Was it rats, drunk off whatever was in the corners of the bottles Ernie left behind? A raccoon doing dissertation research on coop security systems? A skunk? In any of the above cases, I didn't want to encounter the perpetrator, which fed the systemic denial. But then fleas fled the cats and invaded our bedclothes (nice work, Advantage), and one fitful night I lay awake with fleas and phantom fleas crawling all over me, hearing Ernie or Skunkie or whoever down there knocking shit over. Classic invasion of grossness. I snapped. I threw on my robe, grabbed a flashlight and said, I'm ready for you, fucker. Be thee skunk or drunk, I shall face thee.
As I stumbled down the back steps, I thought about Writing. I think about it a lot, Writing being the altar at which I have sacrificed whatever money, power, respect I might otherwise have coming as a thirty year-old college graduate. When you want to write things, stories tend to come. And maybe also courage. Because you want a good story, and a good story requires going out there and meeting the beast.
(When I was ten, a skunk got into my bedroom at night--don't ask--and I spun it into my first publication feat: a proud check for $10 from Stone Soup, the magazine for children that no child has ever read. The check was tacked to my wall for years, beginning what I can only hope will be a lifetime of Writing paychecks so tiny that they are more trophy than income.)
I soothed the hens, who were making quiet sounds of anxiety. That's the best they can do, defenseless in the night: commiserate with each other like, You hear that?--sounds like something--well I'm okay--you okay?--everybody here?--united front, girls, stick together--we're okay--not to worry. Then I looked under the house.
Nothing there, of course. Silence where the crashing sounds had been. But I wasn't going back inside. I crouched among the cobwebs and the rat droppings and waited.
Finally, near the opposite wall, I saw something. A swish-swish. A long, white tail. No other movement. No other sound. It became The Sound of Music: me as Nazi soldier with my flashlight and this thing as the Von Trapp family hiding in the abbey. But there would be no climbing the verdant Alps to Switzerland on this night; I was persistent.
Whatever this creature might be, it was not bright. No self-awareness where the tail was concerned. It was struggling mightily to keep the rest of its body concealed, but the rattish tail was out there unselfconsciously flapping in the breeze. That tail looked familiar, and I gradually remembered why. I had seen one like it when I accidentally caught a baby opossum in a rat trap (an unfortunate incident, which may or may not have made me cry).
Finally the fugitive was ready to give himself up. Lowered his gray and white fur girth out of his hiding place and stepped into the beam of my flashlight. Big, fat possum. And an affable creature: once he decided the jig was up, he started tightroping across an elevated pipe bridge--there was the metallic scraping!--right toward me.
Posse the Possum. Long last we meet. I was taken with delight. Possums make unobtrusive neighbors, and their appetite for snails, rotten fruit and pre-killed carcasses earn them the nickname 'Mother Nature's cleanup crew.' They don't disturb the garden and, best of all, they are North America's only marsupials! Who wouldn't want to cohabit with a species that carries babies in a pouch?
Posse stopped a few feet away from me. We stared at each other for a while, then went our separate ways. I went back to bed contented, knowing that somehow I wasn't going to mind all the knocking and scraping and thwanking. Because I would think, hey, it's Posse, of the Midnight Marsupial Janitorial Crew, just going along to get along. I still don't know why he makes such a racket; supposedly opossums' jutting eyes give them excellent night vision. But now his awkwardness seems kind of sweet. I'm glad we met.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Deep Thought for Friday
Wouldn't it be funny
If a guy made a comment about my ass
And it answered
With a fart
If a guy made a comment about my ass
And it answered
With a fart
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Might As Well Have, Much As My Cat Accuses Me of Cheating
I thought he would like seeing the Facebook page of another kitty, but Paulie was: devastated. Apparently I had made some recent comment about how the gray and white neighbor cat was cute, and Crim had come home from a social function with Maine Coon furs on his sweatshirt, and then he finds out I'm Facebook friends with this other feline and, being Paulie James Walnuts III (drag name Molly Pecans, blues name Muddy Paws) he had to bend it into some overarching theory.
You guys are seeing other cats. Don't bother to deny it.
Of course we rolled our eyes at this nonsense. How much vet debt must we accrue, how much biting abuse must we tolerate, how high-end a cat food must we buy to prove our boundless loyalty? Assurances were made that he is a very special cat. Staggeringly handsome, impeccable wit, always top predator in our ecosystem, master of all he surveys, &c.
And how superficial did he think we were? As if we would judge our animal companion by mere degree of cuteness, or proportion of assholish to sweet behavior, or amount of particulate matter stuck to rectum, or number of fleas leaping off onto our bed.
What about your charming wiles and pocketful of foibles? And his anarchist saboteur technique of clawing the mattress underside until his demand to be let outside is met--I have a grudging respect for the strategic means there, even if the ends are questionable. What other cat puts on stunna shades and does hip thrusts to "Poker Face"? What other cat wept at the end of Milk with such passion? And your comic timing! He has great comic timing.
That night he stayed out late. We played right into his paws, were worried sick, calling from the back door and then the front and then the back. Around midnight he showed up, flea-ridden, cobwebs stuck to his face, and got just the worshipful welcome he had angled for. We saw the trap and fell in anyway. Because he may be a dictator. But he's our dictator.
More weird Walnuts posts:
Four Paws Marching
Goodkitties
My Cat is a Narcissist, But I Love Him
Walnuts v. Walnuts
You guys are seeing other cats. Don't bother to deny it.
Of course we rolled our eyes at this nonsense. How much vet debt must we accrue, how much biting abuse must we tolerate, how high-end a cat food must we buy to prove our boundless loyalty? Assurances were made that he is a very special cat. Staggeringly handsome, impeccable wit, always top predator in our ecosystem, master of all he surveys, &c.
And how superficial did he think we were? As if we would judge our animal companion by mere degree of cuteness, or proportion of assholish to sweet behavior, or amount of particulate matter stuck to rectum, or number of fleas leaping off onto our bed.
What about your charming wiles and pocketful of foibles? And his anarchist saboteur technique of clawing the mattress underside until his demand to be let outside is met--I have a grudging respect for the strategic means there, even if the ends are questionable. What other cat puts on stunna shades and does hip thrusts to "Poker Face"? What other cat wept at the end of Milk with such passion? And your comic timing! He has great comic timing.
That night he stayed out late. We played right into his paws, were worried sick, calling from the back door and then the front and then the back. Around midnight he showed up, flea-ridden, cobwebs stuck to his face, and got just the worshipful welcome he had angled for. We saw the trap and fell in anyway. Because he may be a dictator. But he's our dictator.
More weird Walnuts posts:
Four Paws Marching
Goodkitties
My Cat is a Narcissist, But I Love Him
Walnuts v. Walnuts
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
USEFUL VOCABULARY: "thirsty"
thirsty (adj.) 1. Afflicted with horniness that knows no bounds, esp. in men. 2. Shamelessly solicitous. 3. Dehydrated of female affections.
As,
"I went out to Easy the other night and the guys were mad thirsty. I told one of them, look, my boyfriend is right over there. He offered to intercourse me in a way that would cause my gray matter to extrude, regardless."
"Wow. Thirsty indeed."
As,
"I went out to Easy the other night and the guys were mad thirsty. I told one of them, look, my boyfriend is right over there. He offered to intercourse me in a way that would cause my gray matter to extrude, regardless."
"Wow. Thirsty indeed."
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