Rhubarb Ranch

Custard

2012-02-06T23:21:00.000-06:00

So help me, the fricking object writing word today is custard. My roommate Willie was from Puerto Rico, and used to make homemade flan on the gas stove in our apartment, usually after a long night of heavy dope smoking and drinking. This was 1982 or '83, after all, and he would bust out cans of evaporated milk and proceed to caramelize sugar under open flame, like I would see a future roommate do to cocaine, speed, and heroin - on a spoon, on a much smaller scale - the bubbling substance turning brown and hard under the flame, suddenly concentrated, potent, fully sweet and high-strength; illicit, without credentials or currency, no passport, completely contraband, living free without oppression in these United States of America. That's why people who come here from other countries, even Puerto Rico, which is practically the 51st state, love it here: Where they come from, speaking out is illegal. Doing your own thing is illegal. Going against the government is illegal. Bearing arms is illegal. Making flan is illegal.

Beam

2011-12-17T13:32:00.001-06:00

I never got to be an architect, and am probably ruling it out completely now that I'm in the "latter" stages of my life. I never liked delusional idiots who claim that "fifty is the new twenty-five" or similar nonsense. That's just some middle-aged nincompoop in rampant denial about their wrinkles, age spots, sagging boobs, and ever-expanding ass and gut; folks who haven't quite come to terms with the fact that they can't get it up anymore, can't hit on twenty-year-olds with any remote probability of success, and are looking down the barrel of disease, discomfort, sickness, and eventual death - probably alone, their loved-ones resentful of having to exercise the grieving process, resentful of being inconvenienced by disposing of your remains and dividing whatever pittance might remain of your estate after the government has confiscated it.
Not that I'm bitter.

Incarnation

2011-06-12T15:54:00.011-05:00

My friend, Scott Stalker, wanted desperately to believe in something, and ended up hitching his wagon to God, in the form that is typically taught by liberal California junior-college philosophy professors; a Buddhist or Hindu god, an Eastern god, I guess because the Judeo-Christian God isn't sophisticated or cool enough. I can see the point, Baptists aren't very cool; Catholics smoke and drink, but then there's that confession thing, and then there's Methodists and Presbyterians, very boring, those ten commandments, and Assembly of God and Pentecostals on the fringe, speaking in tongues and handling snakes. At least, that's the way it looked in 1978, and we thought ourselves much too intelligent to be misled by some Bible-thumping, lacquered-hair, tea-totaling, wing-tip-shod T.V. evangelists. Besides, smoking dope was a bit of a stumbling block on the road to the Christian God. So my friends and I looked East. I eventually came back to the West, after seeing the tie-dyed, beaded and bearded, sandal-wearing, hash-smoking maharishis and yogis and their unthinking followers chanting mantras for hours on end with an empty, feigned happiness that was disingenuous at best and disturbingly pathetic at its worst. It drove Scott Stalker insane, and then finally to his death, and he threw himself off of the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge one September morning (9/24/1979). Probably wondering all the way down what he would see in a few seconds, and probably had some second thoughts. Maggie walked up to me in the cafeteria and said simply, "Big Scott is dead." We didn't really shed any tears; for several years prior to that event, his torment was well known by everybody, and yet nobody could do anything about it.

Confession

2011-06-11T15:30:00.005-05:00

I've got one of those Post Secret confessions to make, now that the wife and son are out of town for the weekend: Sometimes, I like it better when they're not around.
There it is, I said it, it's out. I'm basically a loner, always have been. And, I knew this trip was coming, I knew they would be leaving early this morning, although not as early as I'd like. I woke at sunrise, unable to sleep, knowing that they would be leaving soon, and that I could do what I wish after that: eat pork chops or steak without vegetables, ride my motorcycle to the lake and watch bikini-clad hotties on their boats and jet skis, watch movies on the tube, drink the Macallan, run the air conditioner at insanely low temperatures. It's not that I don't like my wife and son; I love them very much, and can't imagine my life without them. But sometimes, I just need the space, the alone time, I need to be away from people. I'm very honest about this, the conversation last night went like this: "I'm sure you can't wait to get rid of us", says the wife, a little sarcastically. "Yes, that's true", I reply, and quickly add, "Well, I talk a good game, but I know that by Sunday night, I'll be lonely and I'll miss you." Which is true, but only for a little while, and then I'll be looking for another pretense to get away on the motorcycle on a Saturday morning, or take the long way home from work.

Stale

2010-12-27T11:50:00.004-06:00

Really out of practice on this, very stale, rusty, blog may be dead. Beyond resuscitation, hard, crusty, like an old baguette. A little mold on the side, let's just scrape that off. Toasting it probably won't help, maybe I can make croutons out of it...Been working a lot, but I don't think I'm going to be a dot com millionaire anytime soon. I do have stock options, worthless today. How about those folks at Google, or Amazon, or AOL, or Netscape, or Microsoft? Their stock options weren't worth the paper they were printed on, at least in the beginning. There's hope, anyway. The last startup went tits up in short order, bankruptcy by the owner and I got stiffed for several months of pay. This one's different, at least the check still cashes, and paying customers are starting to line up. But the blog remains neglected, unposted-to, rigor mortis setting in. Wilted, like a flower.

Well, maybe not a flower. The blog is really more of a weed.

Generated

2010-01-19T18:57:00.004-06:00

Received this Spam* today:
"I'm dame. I have a red hair with copper shimmering. My eyes is green. I am not high. I have beautiful arms. My hair is long straight. I live in a metropolis. I work in education. I like to watch programs about animal. Representations in the theater. I like look after flowers . I like forest. If you talk about me I am beautiful cat. Most of all in men I value tenderness. When I you noticed theater. lightning realized should. Because I can be for you a beautifull friend if you want. I'm write me on my e-mail."

What. The. Fuck.

Clearly, this is either:
a.) Pidgin English
b.) Computer generated
c.) None of the above

I'm in the twilight zone right now. I live in a metropolis? I am not high? Random punctuation: When I you noticed theater. lightning realized should.My eyes is green; cyclops?

Shudder...

*Spam is a registered trademark of the Hormel corporation, and its mention here is not an endorsement of, nor is it meant to disparage, their fine products.

Random Conspiracy

2010-01-12T10:14:00.009-06:00

So, if you hit the "Next Blog" link on the Blogger toolbar, supposedly you get redirected to a random blog, but like all things random on the computer, this isn't so random. The other day, I was "randomly" redirected to environmentally-themed blogs 28 times. In a row. Any statistician can tell you that the odds of that happening "randomly" are about 15,235,789,421:1. Today, it seems to be artsy-craftsy-fartsy-foodsy day, with links to numerous hausfrau blogs featuring recipes for croissants and corn fritters, advertising for Scentsy products, revelations like "I am an old soul yet a young playful girl trapped in a 30 something body," and the cats! Oh, God in heaven, the cats! Hey, I've got cats, too, but let's not get ridiculous with the adoration. Here at the ranch, they damn well better be working for a living, catching mice and keeping the scorpions and snakes at bay, otherwise, they're out on the street. They're a necessary evil, otherwise I wouldn't put up with a sandbox full of cat shit and having my toes attacked in the middle of the night. But I digress...There seems to be a preponderance of blogs originating from Fairbanks, Alaska today as well. Godforsaken place this time of year, shrouded in darkness; the entire day is about 2 minutes long, the sun only 2 degrees above the horizon. Sorry, but I'd rather be on the Equator in January. Last blog I visited featured a recipe for Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Gluten Free. OK, I'm down with the roasted garlic, but gluten free? Seriously? Who the hell puts gluten in mashed-fucking potatoes? Aren't all mashed potatoes gluten free? "Hmmm, these potatoes are missing something, how about adding a handful of wheat germ?" OK, so I know about the whole celiac disease thing already, so just calm the fuck down. Is it really necessary to label everything without gluten as "gluten free?"

2009 Resolution Time Revisited

2009-12-31T15:10:00.005-06:00

Last year about this time, I wrote
this, my New Year's Resolutions for 2009. Here's a recap of how I've done:
1. This coming year, I resolve to keep a journal, which will, hopefully, improve my marriage and my relationship with God.
Uh, not so much, on all 3 counts. No journal (unless this stupid blog counts, except that I've hardly done even that this year), and scant improvement with either relationship.
2. I resolve to exercise regularly, and hopefully, lose the extra 40 pounds.
I now have 50 pounds to lose.
3. I resolve to further reduce, and hopefully eliminate, our debt. Getting a better job is, naturally, part of this resolution.
A little better here, A++ on the latter, but haven't reduced the former because we're saving up for an international adoption ($). I could have reduced the debt by nearly half with what we've saved, so that should count for something. Geez...
4. I resolve to turn off the evil television, and pick up a sketch pad, camera, guitar, or writing instrument instead.
Did I mention that I haven't missed a single episode of House or the O'Reily Factor this year, or that I've added The Good Wife, Fringe, and Lie To Me to my viewing list?

Shit.

I still don't smoke, though...

Dead Blog

2009-12-23T20:53:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas greetings from El Rancho Del Rhubarb. It'll be interesting to see the outcome of last years resolutions, but that's next week. Right now, the blog is dead, a victim of neglect and gainful employment. Last year at this time I wasn't working at all. Feast or famine.

Hot Dog

2009-07-25T09:24:00.003-05:00

Summertime, and the living is easy, mostly because the Rhubarbs are working, and not blogging. And here it is, the end of July, and we've only consumed about half of a 40-pack of Ballpark Franks, "they plump when you cook 'em." We buy the 40-pack at Sam's, but usually they're gone right away - a big picnic, a cookout, camping with friends - along with a case of those ready-made quarter-pound hamburger patties. Hell, this summer I haven't even reloaded the propane in the gas grill or been to the lake. I don't really know the difference between a Frank (Frankfurter for you Krauts out there, like my lovely wife) and a Hot Dog, except maybe the quantity of unacceptable bovine body parts and organs contained within each. Hebrew National, "no ifs, ands, or butts," probably make the best hot dogs: beef, Kosher, bovine anus-free, but you can't beat the price of Ballpark (all-beef, but probably chock-full of anus tissue and other organ meats) at the Sam's; chunk some of those bad boys on the grill, toast up some buns, break out the Guldens Spicy Brown! Light on the Heinz, some diced onions, good all-American food, named after Germans or canines, go figure. I love the summertime.

Quisling

2009-04-29T12:45:00.000-05:00

From Wikipedia, Quisling:
Quisling, after Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany to conquer his own country, is a term used to describe traitors and collaborators.

Ahhh, so many parallels, so little time.

"I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate," [Spector] said.

So, in other words, Arlen's not going to have his career decided by voters, hell, that would be un-Democratic.

Good frigging riddance.

Naivete

2009-04-28T12:16:00.003-05:00

The wet-behind-the-ears Obama administration and their left-wing congressional counterparts are either stupid or evil, as indicated by the recent declassification of photographs and documents about "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on enemy combatants captured in Iraq and elsewhere. These politicians - mostly well-off, mostly Democrat, mostly urban-dwelling, elite, effete, pseudo-intellectuals, who have never served in the military, never held a job outside of government, never done an honest day's labor in their life - refer to these interrogation methods as "torture", but clearly have no real-world frame of reference to what "torture" really is, or what really goes on over there in enemy territory.

Here's what the enemy does to people they capture: They wire their testicles to car batteries, they blow off their kneecaps with handguns, and eventually cut their heads off with a saw.

Here's what we do: we have dogs bark at them, we play loud music, we pour water up their nose, and make them wear underpants on their head. Sounds like a frat party, only without the beer.

Historically, Enemy Combatants are treated by the Geneva Convention as spies, and therefore, aren't entitled to the same protections as prisoners of war. In World Wars I and II, and even Korea and Vietnam, enemy combatants were simply taken out and shot. Let's bring back that policy; it will save us all from the pointless debate about what to do with Guantanamo inmates or what constitutes "torture."

Ambulance

2009-04-15T11:01:00.004-05:00

I've never been in an ambulance, but have always been curious. Anything with a siren going by was fair game for us kids; if we were lucky, we could follow on our bikes and witness real-life adventures performed by real-life superheroes - firefighters, police, emergency medical technicians. Maybe there would be carnage - a car accident, or perhaps a house on fire - but sometimes it was just the cops pulling someone over, never a shootout or hostage situation. You generally didn't get a look inside the ambulance, it was a lot different than a fire truck, with all the controls on the outside, the dials and valves and hoses and ladders. Back in the day, the firemen would ride on the back of the truck, ready to jump off and pull out ladders and hoses and start fighting fire at the drop of a hat. The ambulance was always secretive, curtained, or doors with very small windows, now big cubic vans, but formerly low slung custom Cadillac station wagons, with a big gumball machine on top. My dad had the chance to ride in a number of ambulances before he died, including several rides on an Air Ambulance, probably CareFlight, a big Sikorsky or Bell or Huey helicopter, multi-million dollar equipment and personnel, and a pretty expensive ride, but I think most people would think it was worth it.

Are Folks Still Falling For This One?

2009-04-15T10:02:00.000-05:00

I received the following email the other day, which was automatically routed into the Spam folder, but I was curious because the subject line said "Good News", and we could all use some good news nowadays, or at least a good laugh:

This is Mr.Fisher

Uh, don't you mean "Phisher?"

Kelton from the Microsoft Lottery Board

Wow, Microsoft has a lottery board?

i have depositedyour winning cheque of 550,000,00GBP for delivery since the bank and courier has refused to contact you for delivery

bastards

I have left for Africa(Nigeria) for some seminar

For some seminar? A little vague, don't 'ya think?

so i have deposited a Confirmable Bank Draft 550,000,00GBP

Isn't GB on the Euro now?

with the FedEx Courier Plc for delivery i have also paid for delivery. What you have to do now is to contact the FedEx COURIER SERVICE as soon as possible to know when they will deliver your package to you For your information, I have paid for the delivering Charge, Insurance premium and Clearance Certificate Fee of the Cheque showing that it is not a Drug Money or meant to sponsor Terrorist attack in your Country.

What, is there a form with checkboxes or something?
I hereby certify that these funds are not
a.) Drug money,
b.) meant to sponsor a terrorist attack,
c.) all of the above,
d.) none of the above.

The only money you will send to the FedEx COURIER SERVICE to deliver your Draft direct to your postal Address in your country is (£60.GBP) Dollars only.B eing Security Keeping Fee of the Courier Company so far. Again, don't be deceived by any body to pay any other money except 60.00GBP.

Okay, now we're down to brass tacks: 60.00 Great Britian Pounds (Sterling), or about a hundred US bucks. Seems like a lot of work for a hundred bucks.

I would have paid that but they said no because they don't know when youwill contact them and in case of demurrage.

Demurrage? Awfully big word in such an otherwise illiterate and poorly punctuated correspondence.

Had to look it up:
Demurrage (n)
1. Detention of a ship, freight car, or other cargo conveyance during loading or unloading beyond the scheduled time of departure.
2. Compensation paid for such detention.

You have to contact the FedEx COURIER SERVICE now for the delivery of yourDraft with this information bellow; Contact Person: Mr Akeem MachelloManager FedEx COURIER SERVICE NigeriaEmailAddress: enquiries@redstarexpress-ng.orgTel: +234-80-5267-6084 Finally, make sure that you reconfirm your Postal address and Directtelephone number to them again to avoid any mistake on the Delivery and askthem to give you the tracking number to enable you track package over thereand know when it will get to your address.Let me repeat again,try to contact them as soon as you receive this mail toavoid any further delay and remember to pay them their Security Keeping feeof £60.GBP for their immediate action.

Ahh, there it is, the other cornerstone of a good scam - urgency - "...contact them as soon as possible...avoid further delay."

Sound familiar? Can anyone say TARP, Stimulus Bill, Multi-Trillion Budget? Your Democrat-controlled Congress and the Obama Administration have used the exact same crisis language and sense of urgency to further their agenda as Nigerian email scammers, but the swooning voters who thought their Messiah had come have yet to get on board the Clue Train. Tickets, please!

You should also let me know through email as soon as you receive your Draft. NOTE: Do not contact the FedEx Courier if you know you are not ready to pay the £60.GBP And claimyour Confirmable Bank Draft of 550,000,00GBP. Yours FaithfullyMr. Fisher KeltonMicrosoft Incorporation

Jesus, how about some friggin' punctuation?

I heard the other day on The Dave Ramsey Show that an old lady actually fell for this scam, to the tune of about five figures, and was wiped out, and was now in hock to some PayDay/CashForTitles Loan (shark) place in order to pay her bills, which is a terrible and pitiful story. You would think that anyone with a lick of sense could look at the above email and automatically know that it was completely bogus. I wouldn't send this clown money just because of the poor grammar, not to mention the fact that I haven't played the Microsoft Lottery in at least several weeks.

Test Tube

2009-03-12T11:17:00.005-05:00

The test tubes that came with the chemistry set were lame; tiny little things, fragile, not heat resistant. My dad, a biochemist at the time, fixed that right away, delivering large, thick Pyrex tubes, built for real industrial-strength chemistry. My experiments were confined to the garage, smelling of toluene and kitchen matches. The chemistry sets of 30 years ago were certainly better than today's: I don't think you can even make a decent stink bomb with one now, and they probably don't contain anything dangerous, like mercuric oxide, which, when heated up over a burner rendered a little silver blob of mercury. I bet today's chemistry set doesn't even have a burner, and I'm sure any kind of fire (or even heat), or flammable chemicals, is regulated out and forbidden in today's nanny state. Back in '60s, it was caveat emptor, you're on your own, don't fuck up. That kind of freedom is ruined by Stupid People. My dad's famous college chemistry story, probably apocryphal, is that he blew up a chem lab while making nitro glycerin. That kind of initiative would probably be unappreciated today.

Buckle

2009-03-10T15:08:00.003-05:00

They seemed impossibly large; how could you sit down wearing something like that? Like WWF trophies, but won for riding or roping or staying on a bull for more than eight seconds. I guess that last part is kind of like the WWF, hanging on to a multi-ton gyrating bovine, who's every intent is to shake the would-be passenger to the ground and stomp him to jelly. Risking your life for a damn belt buckle, although usually quite large and made out of (mostly) precious metals, like gold and silver. Even the FFA kids raising calves or pigs could get one, highly engraved and filigreed. And they would sport them around their freshly laundered and pressed jeans, Wranglers or Levi's over ostrich skin polished boots, a crisp starched shirt with pearl buttons tucked in, and the giant WWF trophy girding their loins like a shield, protecting their abdomens from a Mexican shiv or a rearward hoof. I always wondered how they stayed so clean and pressed and shiny around all those animals and their dust and waste, those polished boots that never seemed to step in steer manure.

Sidewalk Ring

2009-02-23T12:05:00.000-06:00

Found this 3 or 4 inch iron (steel?) ring held in place with a spike in a concrete sidewalk, downtown in Sherman, Texas, next to the wooden curb. Purpose? Anyone? Anyone?

Fashion

2009-02-20T12:03:00.009-06:00

Just what the hell were we thinking in 1976? I distinctly remember: bell-bottom jeans (Levi's), polyester shirts, ruffles, puffy sleeves, Dacron, acrylic, garish geometric prints in avocado and rust, and the hair! Oh, the hair, my God in heaven, the hair! Long, but it only looked good on folks with straight hair. If your hair was wavy, or heaven forbid, downright curly, it became not only long, but Big with a capital "B", a tremendous structure cantilevered out from your skull, gravity-defying, possibly even a pseudo-afro, as large horizontally as vertically, a living, breathing, talking Chia pet. And now, it has all come back around, that clothing, those hairstyles, because Fashion has run out of ideas, again. This too, happened early in the 1970's: leather jackets, t-shirts sporting a deck of Marlboro's rolled up in the sleeve, peg-leg jeans, boots, a greasy DA combed-back, the Fonz, Grease, Happy Days, Brillcream, an embracing of 1950's hoodlum style. I'm actually hoping for the day when fashion promulgates the look seen in post-war film noir, the men wearing grey flannel business suits and fedoras, and the women in tailored A-line skirts and fancy hats and high-heels. A cigarette in every hand (lit with a naphtha-fired Zippo), scotch whiskey and martinis all around.

Fun With Eggs

2009-02-19T09:47:00.000-06:00

On a single day, we have nine, count 'em, nine, different colors of eggs, ranging from peach and pink and brown, to off white and bluish green. I hope the hens can do that this Easter, I don't like messing with the dye.

Pastry

2009-02-19T07:57:00.005-06:00

The white icing comes first, sticky, slightly gooey if it's warm, drizzled in a matrix, a latticework or swirl or whorl of sweet atop yeasty dough painstakingly rolled flat again and again, flour and lard forming paper-thin layers that compress and ooze when bitten, sugar seeping out onto taste buds and into cavities, pain and pleasure emitting forth from this invention of the Danes; manna, not from Heaven, not nourishing but hellish, clogging the arteries and slowing the heart, eventually killing the overweight host by starving it of oxygen, diabetes destroying its internal organs and blinding its eyes, dead at breakfastide, oatmeal and fresh fruit untouched.

But the humorless Norsemen have nothing on Greeks bearing gifts; how about some baklava?

Poetry

2009-02-18T08:48:00.004-06:00

I'm not really a poet, but occasionally I'll write a song. Typically, these songs don't see the light of day - they are usually bad - but more often than not, they just sit unfinished in a notebook, hidden away. When I was younger, much younger, I and my pseudo-intellectual friends would sit around, smoke joints and cigarettes, drink copious amounts of coffee, and have long very, very meaningful conversations about all things pseudo-intellectual, from philosophy to politics, physics and psychology, basically anything that started with a "p", or made that "s" or "f" sound while using the letter "p". Part of that exercise involved writing long passages in a common journal called a "Bitch, Want, and Stroke" book. The concept was simple: we all lived in, more or less, the same house, most of the time, and the book was a way to say things that might be awkward or uncomfortable to say in person, in real time. Sure, there were times when we would move back in with our parents, or shack up with a girlfriend, or even get our own place, but we would spend a great deal of time together, often weeks or months, at the same house. The book was the low-tech version of Facebook or MySpace, a way to keep in touch, abreast. There was ranting about people not doing their fair share of the vacuuming or eating the last yogurt, compliments given and favors cashed in, and the random bit of prose or poetry. Sometimes an excerpt from a song, sometimes something original, usually in response to a jilting or a perceived injustice; maudlin, bad poetry, brimming with teenage angst, seasoned with bitterness, garnished with narcissism, littered with adverbs.

Playground

2009-02-06T10:27:00.005-06:00

In the small California town where I grew up, we had some of the best city parks and playgrounds in the world. Huge expanses of manicured green grass, rolling hills, tennis courts, mature pine trees that were easy to climb, all in safe neighborhoods free of crime and child predators and gang violence and graffiti. There were huge sand pits surrounding the massive steel playground equipment - giant slides, monkey bars multiple stories high, towers and ladders and huge swings hung with steel chains that could secure an ocean liner. The inevitable human-powered merry-go-round, kids falling off into the sand, dizzy, sometimes puking, laughing. There wasn't any sense of responsibility or liability on the part of the Parks and Recreation department; if we got hurt, it was our own fault and we shouldn't be so careless. The responsibility was on us, the liability our own, as it should be. The cool pits of sand sheltered by sycamore trees was a favorite place to play in the summer, we would make sand castles, but we had to dig down deep to get to the wet sand, in order to make massive ancient cities perfect for army men or Matchbox cars or Tonka trucks. Occasionally, we'd be digging in the sand and run across an unexpected clump of the wet stuff, too shallow to be the mother lode, and we'd hand it off to our sister, who'd be asking, "Did you find some wet sand?"
"Sure, here it is; oh wait, no it isn't, it's cat shit!"

Concentration

2009-01-27T10:00:00.004-06:00

This is harder to do, the older I get - keeping this many balls in the air - there just doesn't seem to be enough time for anything anymore. My feet hit the floor in the morning, and it's a sprint, then a long distance run, followed by another sprint, sucking the life force away until evening comes and there's nothing left; it's all I can do to just sit in front of the television, not really watching it, just staring into the light, the remaining life force sucked away until it induces a fitful sleep. Then awake in the middle of the night, always have to get up in the middle of the night, only a few hours until the alarm goes off, then back in the hamster wheel. I get less accomplished every day, and as a consequence, that which was not accomplished piles up in the Unfinished Basket, further behind each day, one step forward, two steps back. Unfinished, unrealized, undone. Harder to keep the focus, maybe soon I'll be repeating myself, treading ground already trod upon while the undone grows in scope and complexity. The sunset, the twilight, once one of my favorite times of day, soon to be accursed, a lovely time turned horrible, the things which were once so familiar now unrecognized, unrecognizable.

Blackberry

2009-01-23T10:32:00.003-06:00

I don't really know what the Object Writing people intend here; is this the fruit, or the electronic communication device? We have the former, growing wild here on the ranch; but not the latter, which we eschew because of their cost and annoyance factor (both high). One can make jam out of the former, which is exactly what Mrs. Rhubarb did this year, her first effort at canning, wonderfully executed. The grandson and nephews promptly devoured it, and placed an advance order for more. Well, unfortunately, there won't be anymore until next Fall, but then Mrs. Rhubarb and I will put on our tall rubber boots and work gloves, and subject ourselves to thorns and minor lacerations as we pick wild blackberries from our own property (eating plenty as we go) so that our friends and relatives can have blackberry jam for the Christmas holiday.

Subway

2009-01-21T08:35:00.005-06:00

The stations were very space age, gleaming chrome and glass and enamaled colored brick, long escalators rising impossibly high above the street, or descending impossibly low underground. The shiny white cars, built by Rohr - I think they were Germans, legendary for prompt locomotive transportation. Now the cars are brushed stainless steel, I know, I've seen pictures. Back then, you got on at Concord or Richmond or Orinda, purchasing a ticket from the machine, and placing it in the reader slot at the gate - whoosh! - instantly your ticket would pop up out of another slot five feet away, and the gates would slide open, tilting away like a ladies fan, inviting you in. That long damn escalator up to the platform, the chirp of the electronic train whistle as the gleaming electric car rolled quietly, quickly into the station, pushing a wall of breeze before it followed in the wake. Through the East Bay hills, then plunging into the Trans-Bay Tube, under San Franscisco Bay, underwater but dry, emerging on the other side to the smell of busses and steam and fish and Chinese food and saltwater, today overrun by idiots - transplants and busybodies looking for free love or lunch, minding everyone's business - but back then, maybe even now, beautiful.

Workshop

2009-01-20T11:19:00.002-06:00

Dim and dusty, the darkness sliced away by shafts of light coming from windows and skylights, a divine lighting, the particles in the air giving definition to the pillars of light solid enough to support weight. The sweet smell of lacquer - nitrocellulose - poisonous and carcinogenic, milky white and thick like sugar water, nauseating and rich. Tung oil, woody, thick, and slippery. Spruce and cedar and oak, smooth and raw, white, unprotected, the grain impossibly complex and unique. I sharpen a chisel on a stone until I can cut paper, and carve away translucent curls of wood, wispy and delicate.

Sandpaper

2009-01-15T09:32:00.002-06:00

Gritty, it puts my teeth on edge, like the blackboard when I was a kid. I hated the blackboard, biting the inside of my cheeks as I took the chalk in hand, chills raising goosebumps on my arms as the white stick hit slate. The silica-coated sheet of thin cardboard does the same, but only briefly. Attached to a sanding block, it's perfectly manageable as I run it across a piece of cedar, the aromatic red dust collecting on the board, smelling of memories and old blankets and a cardigan sweater. It's smooth to the touch, but I switch to a finer grit anyway, further abrading away any slight imperfections - microscopic really - and I run my fingers down the board, not just feeling and not looking, but looking with my hands, the way blind people do. Seeing with my fingertips and then the mind's eye, grinding away the high spots until there's nothing left but glass, Teflon, a pond on a windless summer day, silk.

New Digital Camera

2009-01-13T12:07:00.000-06:00

Taking some pictures around the Ranch with my new digital camera:

Heartbeat

2009-01-13T10:26:00.009-06:00

Most of the time, I don't even notice it - that's because it's working correctly, more or less. Occasionally, there's a flutter, some confusion in my chest cavity, right behind my sternum, and I put my right hand to my chest, over my heart, a salute like I'm saying the Pledge or watching the flag raise while listening to the Star Spangled Banner. I can't feel it with my hand, but I can feel it inside my chest, wobbling around, a spasm. I don't know what it means, it only lasts a second and it's gone, no ill effects remain, and I pretend it isn't there, like it will go away. My dad's problem didn't go away, and eventually his valves became leaky sieves, his labored heart only pumping 10% of the blood needed by the rest of his body. He was cold and tired all the time, and finally decided to have the surgery. A crusty old veteran talked him into it - I no longer remember the guy's name, he was a golfing buddy of my dad's, probably the Korean war and a smoker, now tubed up to an oxygen tank, but had a handshake that said, "I can still kick your ass, even though I have one foot in the grave. We didn't screw around back then, men were men; you kids nowadays, you're just a bunch of pussies and pantie-waists." He came through the valve replacement surgery intact, and convinced my dad to do the same. My dad didn't make it; post-op he was drowning in his own blood, not able to hang around long enough to heal and realize the benefit of new heart valves. The heartbeats finally ran out, stopped, nice and quiet now after 67 years of relentless pounding and thumping. Done.

Milestone note: this is the 100th post to Rhubarb Ranch.

Departure

2009-01-12T09:56:00.004-06:00

I love to fly, even wanted to do it for a living for awhile. Flying is expensive, learning to fly is expensive, airplanes are expensive, fuel is expensive, travel is expensive, parking is expensive, airport food is expensive. Some would say, "overpriced." Still, I love to fly, I love the "Departure" part of the airport, now behind security, a private club available only to ticket holders, sometimes containing further mysterious private clubs available only to "VIPs" or "Admirals" - frequent flyers, folks who spend half their business week in an airport, who require and demand a quiet, paneled lounge with drinks and special smoking areas and high-speed internet ports and concierge service. Before the security lockdown, it was fun just to go to the departure gates at the Big Airport and watch the travelers on their way to exotic destinations: Tokyo, London, Singapore, Cancun. The women were always beautiful in airports - rich, thin, sexy, well-dressed and well-heeled, with no real job and nothing to do but travel and shop - the modern-day jet-set.

Vaccination

2009-01-07T15:45:00.008-06:00

I remember vaccination day when I was a kid; it wasn't unusual, back in the 60's, to be vaccinated before the school year started, or even be vaccinated at school. One of the things they vaccinated you against was Polio. The polio vaccination was still pretty new then, but I didn't know this at the time, it seemed pretty commonplace. What also seemed commonplace was an adult or child wearing arm braces connected to walking canes, but you didn't stare because you didn't want to be impolite; get caught staring by your mother and you were often the recipient of a quick forehand to the back of the head. Yes, my mother didn't want us staring at the polio victim because it was impolite, but I suspect there was a superstitious reason as well - there were still kids with arm or leg braces, still kids in iron lungs, still old-wives tales going around about how you could catch polio by sleeping next to an open window or some other innocuous act. We didn't look, our mothers made us look away, because we didn't want to be next.

Whiskey

2009-01-06T08:15:00.005-06:00

Warm molten amber coats my throat and then my stomach slow like honey, but tastes like naptha or witch hazel, except with a slightly smoky, oaken finish - my lips go numb, the lower part of my face soon follows, I can no longer feel my cheekbones. Only a Scotch will do nowadays, and an old one at that. Kentucky Straight Bourbon or Canadian no longer make the cut, unsophisticated booze for unsophisticated drinking - multiple shots of Crown with a Coors Light chaser, then a night of throwing up in a parking lot followed by a morning of headache and dehydration. Or a pint of Jack hidden in an overcoat on a cold winter's afternoon, consumed straight, in secret, in public. I breathe fire - antiseptic, sterile breath, clean, my lungs filtering and separating the foreign solvent from the hemaglobin, scented, as Vonnegut says, "...like mustard gas and roses."

Floodlight

2009-01-02T11:51:00.003-06:00

It's night, and I'm hiding. I can hear the static of a police radio nearby, and see spotlights and flashlights flickering this way and that, their beams shooting off into the darkness, illuminating a tree or a gate or a bush. I'm breathing hard, trying to keep silent, escape and evade. Mostly evade. Folks get caught because they panic, they run, they make noise. They'll catch you if they see you running, and if you run, they will see you. So I stay still in the shadows, statue still, freeze-tag still. But the breathing will give me away if they hear it, it's very loud. Thank God they don't have dogs. We were looking through the hole in the fence once, the acid just taking effect, spying on the neighbors. They hadn't seen us, but the dog at their feet was downwind. His ears stood up, his nose to the wind, and then looked straight at us, or rather, at the fence, through the fence, like x-ray vision. "The dog smelled us!" We bolted, laughing, barely able to run. It was the funniest thing I've ever heard.

Resolution Time

2008-12-31T10:36:00.000-06:00

I don't normally write these things down - that way, a year later, I don't have this annoying printed reminder of my procrastination and failure - but I've decided to write them this year. Like it or not, it'll be here a year later, and I'll have to answer for what I've done. Or haven't done, as the case may (probably) be.

One year, I sat down and wrote some musical goals in a notebook, with time lines and due dates, and then didn't look at it for about eight months. When I finally opened it up and blew off the dust I felt disappointed and somewhat humiliated, even though I hadn't showed it to anyone, hadn't told anybody about what I had written. I hadn't met a single goal, I hadn't achieved anything. This was several years ago, and I still probably hadn't met many of these goals, although I could probably scratch off one or two. Of course, I don't really know, because I tore the damn thing out and threw it away. A year from now, I may be deleting this blog post. Blog post? What blog post?

I did quit smoking several (three?) years ago, and so far, this one has stuck. Of course, I had started in October, so I was well on my way by New Year's Day, and I had the help of expensive nicotine patches and even-more-expensive pharmaceutical drugs that re-wire those areas of the brain that receive pleasure from smoking. I have nearly forgotten what it was like to smoke, and I don't really miss it.

So, let the humiliation begin:
1. I'm involved in two book reading/personal growth projects that are designed to a.) improve my marriage and b.) my relationship with God. These projects require journaling. I hate journaling. I don't do journaling. I hate the word "journaling." Shit, it's not even a word, it's a made-up word, and I hate it when people make up bogus words, especially when they turn a noun into a verb by adding a gerund: Verbalizing. Any kind of journal writing I've ever attempted ended up being this narcissistic, incoherent, pensive, maudlin ranting and raving; the sort of thing that suicidal 15-year-old girls like to write when their boyfriends break up with them because they're not putting out. Anyway, I've kind of gotten off track. This coming year, I resolve to keep a journal, which will, hopefully, improve my marriage and my relationship with God.

2. I'm a fatass. Or rather, I've become a fatass. Mostly because I quit smoking (see above), and I like to eat. I eat more now because I don't smoke, and I enjoy it more, because I don't smoke and actually now have working taste buds. But one cannot eat well and be sedentary, unless one wants to be a fatass. Before quitting smoking, I was already about 10 pounds over. I've gained another 30, so I've got about 40 to lose. I've already started a regular exercise routine, therefore, this coming year, I resolve to exercise regularly, and hopefully, lose the extra 40 pounds. I've lost about 3 so far.

3. We're in debt, which we've been working on now for a little over a year. We've cut out about one-third, with two-thirds left to go. This resolution is a carry-over from last year, which is, to wit: this coming year, I resolve to further reduce, and hopefully eliminate, our debt. Getting a better job is, naturally, part of this resolution. The old job is now gone, a casualty of the economic crisis.

4. Lastly, there's my somewhat inconsistent pursuit of the Arts, with a capital "A". I'm not a good artist, mostly because I don't draw regularly. I'm not a very good photographer, because I don't regularly shoot pictures. I'm a mediocre writer, because I don't write regularly. I play music most often, but don't practice regularly. See the pattern? See the problem? I enjoy all these things, but largely suck at them, not for lack of talent (which is largely meaningless), but for lack of devotion. Mostly, I just get overwhelmed with the whole idea, and watch T.V. instead, and live in a fantasy world. I got a wild hair in September when I heard about the National Novel Writing Month, which is held in November. But by November I had talked myself out of participating, and deleted all blog posts and links, pretending it never existed. I started playing music this year in public, but now I should be writing songs, perfecting my craft. I ain't doin' shit. Therefore, this coming year, I resolve to turn off the evil television, and pick up a sketch pad, camera, guitar, or writing instrument instead. Maybe I'll even do the NaNoWriMo.

There are some other, minor long-term goals which we started last year or the year before that we're still working on, and will hopefully improve on this coming year - improving our yield from the chickens, better gardening, better animal and land management, increased recycling efforts, increased energy management efforts - with the eventual goal of reducing our dependence on store-bought food, grid electricity, and the meddlesome outside world. We'll see.

Compost

2008-12-31T09:28:00.011-06:00

I'm still working on the compost pile here at the ranch. Right now, it's just a corner of the garden where we throw stuff: eggshells, coffee grounds, banana peels, cat turds, chicken shit. It isn't this finely organized lasagna-layered textbook-orderly stratum of waste by-products designed for optimum fermentation in order to produce rich organic compost; no, it's a big pile of rotting crap and trash that I'll rototill into the ground this winter and hopefully it won't contain so much ammonia that it kills everything we plant. We're novices at this gardening crap - we're just not old enough, we're not retired, we don't have endless time on our hands, and we're not British. We just like to eat. We got great zucchini last year - monstrous, mutant zucchini, as big as a man's leg. We got a bumper crop of hot peppers and tomatoes the year before. And tender yellow squash. But our potatoes and onions disappeared. Thriving one minute, dead and gone the next. I dug in the dirt in vain looking for a potato or onion, finding nothing but want.

Dry Run

2008-12-30T09:38:00.006-06:00

I don't drink anymore. (What's the old joke? "I don't drink any less, either." Rimshot.) I don't drink anymore, mostly because it doesn't agree with me. I get a headache. I can't read or play video games, they give me vertigo when I'm drinking. Mostly, all I can do is sit in the bar, and drink more. Maybe watch some T.V. Other disagreeable things happen to me as well, like finding myself arrested west of Fort Worth at 3:00 in the morning when my last memory was being in downtown Dallas at 1:30. Like getting up in the middle of the night and peeing on someone's piano. Like picking a fight in a biker bar when you're a skinny white guy in your mid-twenties. Like knowing what the jail cells look like in five different cities and four different counties. These are clues that your life isn't quite going like you planned. These are clues that maybe one should moderate his behavior and limit one's alcohol intake. Dry Run: the opposite of Beer Run.

Download

2008-12-23T08:40:00.003-06:00

There's a brief hesitation, then click! And we're off, we're downloading. The little sideways thermometer, the Progress Bar, starts moving slowly to the right from zero degrees to warmer climes, through sub-zero up to freezing, then temperate and hot and damn hot and Texas in August. Progress, shown in graphical form, like those United Way fundraising signs out in front of City Hall: "We've raised x millions toward our goal of z millions!" Progress, usually based on a simple calculation taking into consideration the size of the download and the number of actual bits received, sometimes estimating a finish time based on the rate of transfer, as ones and zeros are streamed from thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of miles away, your special set of ones and zeroes navigating a maze of fiber optic and Category 5 cables, switches, routers, satellites, copper wire, repeaters. An amazing invention, truly a Twenty-first Century Miracle Of Technology, used mostly to view pornography.

Merry Christmas From Mali

2008-12-23T02:00:00.000-06:00

We got a Christmas card from the Republic of Mali the other day, here's the stamp:

We sponsor children through World Vision. Most people we know don't even know this, unless they come to our house and see pictures of the kids on the refrigerator and ask about it. It doesn't cost very much; we spend as much sponsoring three children as we do on satellite television.

I personally know people who spend more at Starbucks in one month than what it would take to sponsor a child, and those folks aren't even wealthy. They're just regular American folks with decent American jobs, who think nothing of pissing away 30 bucks a month, probably don't even realize they're doing it, but that same 30 bucks could be helping to feed or clothe or educate a child, or provide fresh water in a place like Mali, where (as you can see from the stamp) it is primarily unimproved desolate arid desert, a century behind the rest of the world, and in some areas, millenia.

Our child from Mali is named Modibo, he's 11 years old, about a year older than our grandson. His family are "subsistence farmers." That means you eat what you grow, and if nothing grows, you don't eat. Here's the picture (probably of his home) he drew on the inside of the World Vision Christmas card:

I'm always a little skeptical about these type of programs because I'm a jaded cynic. I'm not always sure that our pittance of a contribution is getting where it needs to go, not sure if those hopeless pictures of impoverished children are really authentic or just a clever advertising tool designed to maximize contributions, not sure if our sponsored children are even aware of who the Rhubarb's are, but it is still nice to get an architectural elevation drawn by an eleven year old boy half a world away, or a drawing of a cheetah, and realize that cheetahs might be as common in rural Mali as coyotes are here in rural Texas.

It's worth the thirty bucks.

Push-Up

2008-12-19T11:16:00.008-06:00

OK, let's crack off a couple, and see where we stand: hands positioned, back straight, and one! Oh, crap, I'm out of shape. Half a push-up, the back cracks, a loud pop in several places, vertebrae clicking into position like Legos, and two! Shit! Barely lowered my fat body a few inches, and a struggle to get back to the starting position, back still straight, pain in the left shoulder reminding me of a long-ago rotator cuff injury, and three! Whew! OK, that's enough. Three. Terrible. Pitiful. They weren't even good push-ups. Marine drill instructors are laughing right now, as they crisply bust off a hundred push-ups without even sweating, each with a clap in the middle. Foreign Legion members are shaking their heads in French dismay. Special Forces men are embarassed by my excessive American sloth and gut, and will think twice the next time they are called to make great sacrifices to protect my freedom.

Tide

2008-12-15T10:16:00.004-06:00

I grew up near the beach; not on the beach, or in a beach town, but easy enough access that we spent a great deal of time there in the summer. We didn't trouble ourselves with worries of jellyfish or sharks or eels or big waves, but the damned evil Rip Tide (always spoke with capital letters, in boldface) was an object of great myth and folklore. Every summertime, kids were subjected to tall tales of hapless swimmers swept out to sea on the sneaky Rip Tide, miles offshore in the shipping lanes eaten by sharks before they even realized it, or dragged to Davy Jones' Locker, exhausted, after hopelessly trying to swim against it. Driving high on a cliff on Highway 1, you could look down and see the sons-of-bitches, the keyhole shape moving rapidly out to sea, the imaginary swimmer caught in the middle in a futile struggle against the unforgiving, unstoppable forces of nature, puny man(kind) outmatched, outclassed. We were taught to swim parallel to the shore when caught in the bastard Rip Tide - counterintuitive, yes, I know, like turning into the skid - but it was the only defense. Stupid people tried to swim straight back to shore, and were inevitiably killed, Darwinism in practice.

Dry Plates - Lunch Time

2008-12-12T10:09:00.000-06:00

Found several boxes of these in the cedar chest:

The picture below is from a box marked "Preston & Scotland":

Most of these now 100 year-old glass negative plates were found at flea markets and garage sales nearly 20 years ago, when scanner technology, digital photograpy, and the ubiquitous internet were expensive science fiction.

The idea was to eventually print these using traditional darkroom techniques - darkroom, photo enlarger, print on photographic paper, develop in trays by hand - but in the twenty-first century, you can simply scan these with a cheap scanner, invert the scanned image, and print in daylight with an inkjet photo printer on photo paper.

Rice

2008-12-12T08:41:00.004-06:00

Brown sticky starchy grains, boiling in water on the stove, reduce to a simmer, cover, steam the remaining water out until there's nothing left but brown sticky starchy grains; they should be seperate, each kernel an individual, but my rice sticks together in a collective mass and I refuse to use one of those rice-making machines; eventually I'll get this, I'll get how to make rice. I'm getting used to it being gummy asteroids, chewy. I refuse to use "Minute Rice"; rice should take an hour to cook, dammit. Minute Rice is too white, too perfect, too quick, too completely devoid of any benefit rice would normally have, the brown and the fiber and the vitamins and nutrients processed and bleached away. Rice should be dark and heavy. Rice should stick to your ribs. Rice should be like oatmeal, but fried, with vegetables and eggs in it, or combined with pasta and exotic herbs and barley; pilaf with a slab of grilled salmon on top, or dirty with beans and crawfish, or mexican with frijoles and enchiladas.

Highway

2008-12-11T09:50:00.006-06:00

Two-lane blacktop, asphalt smooth as glass, the gravel road-bed showing through at the shoulder where man-made petroleum materials meet graded dirt, where engineers stood decades ago with a transit, peering through a scope drawing an imaginary line through the foothills in three dimensions, massive earth-moving diesel-powered machines waiting to dig and flatten and smooth, cajole and persuade the earth to bend to man's will; and if the earth isn't compliant, just haul it away and pile it up somewhere else. The blacktop comes later, a greasy tanker smelling of diesel oil leading the way, the countryside smells like Hell, like fire and brimstone, steam and smoke rising from the asphalt truck, the workers pants and boots permanently covered with the black sticky mess using rakes and shovels and brooms also black and sticky, trying not to get flattened by the steamrollers behind them creating a smooth surface which is then finished off with a jaunty yellow stripe down the center, shiny, glinting in the noon sun.

Toupee' Or Not Toupee'

2008-12-10T10:36:00.000-06:00

Heard this from Ben Stein on the radio yesterday:
"If that's not a rug, then there are no rugs."

Indigestion

2008-12-10T08:05:00.012-06:00

OK, I'm now officially a fat guy. I used to be thin, now I'm fat. Typically, about 175-180 is as big as I used to get. I'm 5'11". My waist, for many years, was about 28 inches. Then it held pat at about 32. Now, I've ballooned to 220, my pants are tight at 38, my gut hangeth over. When I look down to see if my pants are buttoned or my fly is zipped, an expanse of whale blubber blocks my view. I cannot see my penis or my feet when I look down. Thanksgiving behind and Christmas ahead: homemade fudge and cookies, rack of lamb, turkey, ham. Thanksgiving behind, indeed. Just a frickin' salad, thanks. I hate salad. Americans are fatasses. The greatest country in the world, with the richest (and fatest) poor people. How do you suppose things like Tums and Pepto Bismol are selling in Cambodia, Mali, or Bangladesh? They don't have indigestion caused by trenchermen-like behavior, because they have no food. Only in America can you see a fatass in line at the Walmart, buying friggin' Lays fucking potato chips* with goddamn food stamps. Buy some green beans, lardass. Buy some fruit and vegetables. Get off your ass, put down the Gameboy. Walk somewhere, ride a bike. I hate myself today.

*Friggin' Lays fucking potato chips is a registered trademark of the Frito-Lay Corporation and their mention here is not intended to indicate an association with or sponsorship by Frito-Lay, nor is it intended to disparage their fine products.

Sympathy

2008-12-08T10:10:00.005-06:00

It's been over a year since I got the call, late at night. I booked a flight for the next morning, got a few hours sleep, and drove to the airport. My wife gave me a long hug, probably realizing that the time to receive her call was now that much closer; she, along with the rest of us, had just moved up one step in line. It wasn't a good death, I had talked with my Dad after his surgery that same afternoon, only briefly, he could barely breathe or talk, I said I would talk to him later, when he was better. Except now it will be much later. At the hotel, where they knew my father, the staff and management extended their condolences, sent flowers and a card. Lilies. I could smell them days later, long after I had checked out and driven to the Arizona border town that was to become my Dad's final resting place. His friends, mostly crusty old golfers, hard-drinking retired folk who came to Arizona for desert air and cheap greens-fees, gave him a send-off at the country club, and offered their sympathies to his widow and his surviving children.

Obama Mania

2008-12-03T09:56:00.000-06:00

In keeping with the latest wave of sycophantic cult-of-personality Obama hysteria, I present the famous Sheppard Fairey Obama "Hope" poster:

It's graphically interesting, but uncomfortably close to Communist party propaganda posters, circa 1930.

There are many parodies of this poster; my favorite:

Full disclaimer: didn't vote for Obama. I think I'm going to have a t-shirt made.

Landing Gear

2008-12-03T08:19:00.003-06:00

On the downwind leg now, about to turn base, going over the checklist: flaps down, throttle, prop, mixture, gear down. I reach for the wheel-shaped handle and flick it downward, three red lights above the handle turn green: gear down and locked. On base now, perpendicular to the runway outside my left window. I glance to the right, checking for unannounced traffic on final. "Lancaster traffic, Bonanza 335Niner Whiskey, on final one-three Lancaster." On the runway below, a Cessna emerges from the runup area and taxies into position on the numbers, then throttles up and is rolling. They don't see me floating in behind them, haven't checked their radio, don't know that I'm about to land right on top of them. If I land, I'll drive it right up their ass; if I go around, I'll probably hit them in mid-air halfway down the runway. Mixture rich, prop, throttle up, "Lancaster traffic, Bonanaza 335 Niner Whiskey, going around." Flaps now up, trim for takeoff attitude as I gain altitude and speed much faster than the Cessna. Gear up as I establish a positve rate of climb and buzz the Cessna, passing 10 feet over the top of a low-time student and a time builder here on an H-1 visa with a freshly minted instructor certificate.

Speedboat

2008-12-02T09:46:00.004-06:00

Miami Vice soundtrack music from Jan Hammer plays in the background (I still hate the Eighties) as a forty-two foot, twin-engined Cigarette skims across the water at seventy knots. Nowadays, bringing in a couple of keys; thirty or forty years ago smuggling rum or Cuban cigars (or actual Cubans, or perhaps Mafia henchmen?). A six-figure boat, as unattainable to the average guy as a Beechcraft Baron or an Aston Martin DB9. I sit anchored a hundred yards off shore, fishing in my aluminum jonboat, six horsepower outboard fitted to the stern, a hose running to the five gallon tank sitting in the bottom, tackle box open on the seat amidships. Later on, I'll drag it back home behind the old Chevy pickup: no power steering, no power brakes, no air-conditioning, three on the tree.

Numb

2008-12-01T08:25:00.005-06:00

When you get old, things start to happen to you. One of these things is a numbing of the extremities called "peripheral ..." something or other, I can't remember what it's called. The other thing is the memory starts to go. Neuropathy. That's it. "Peripheral Neuropathy." Now, what was I saying? I can't recall...Oh yeah, numbing of the extremities. Sometimes, so severe that a person can't feel their feet hit the floor when they walk. This is beginning to happen to older folks on my wife's side of the family, along with other hidden ailments that are only now starting to manifest: Liver diseases, diabetes, Alzheimer's, dementia, heart problems, stroke. My people are relatively healthy, save for my Dad, now dead from a bad ticker, after suffering several small strokes over a period of five years or so. My mom had some major surgery performed over several months when I was a kid; nobody talked about it then, and nobody talks about it now. Everyone pretends that it didn't happen, didn't exist. Mom is the picture of health now, but still doesn't talk about whatever it was, as if mentioning it will again summon the demons of disease, perhaps this time to fully destroy that which was merely damaged decades ago.

Moonlight

2008-11-26T14:56:00.004-06:00

Out here at the Ranch, the moonlight is a bright bluish-white - so bright, you can see well enough to read a book. This is a nice magical time in the summer, but now it's cold, November, the wind blows the few remaining leaves off of the skeletal trees, coyotes howl over to the north, the neighbor's dogs bark. The once green tall grass is now brown and rustles in the wind, everything dead and withered. No late-night traffic or distant sounds of an outdoor concert, just a bitter breeze and silence, winter right around the corner, four months of bleak and dark and gray punctuated by the occasional snow.

Soldier

2008-11-24T11:27:00.006-06:00

I come from a long line of draft-dodgers, cowards, conscientious objectors, intellectuals, and religious pacifists. At least on my dad's side. I actually tried to enlist once, in my twenties, but was turned down during the physical because I have a skin disease. My mom's uncle, my great uncle, Barney, was in the U.S. Navy during WWII, the Pacific war. But there was nothing Pacific about it. Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Wake, Iwo Jima. Jap Zeros, shark-infested waters, torpedoes, ancient diesel-powered submarines, battleships, aircraft carriers and radial-engined propeller airplanes. Uncle Barney had a hula girl tattooed on one arm, an anchor on the other, in a day and age when only burly sailors or outlaw bikers had tattoos, instead of today when every Hell's Accountant and misfit teenager is tatted up like Sonny Barger. My wife's family is second-generation U.S. Navy, and second-generation submariners, who, next to aviators, are probably the elite of the elite in the Navy. They are polite, clean-cut, no-nonsense people, with an air of seriousness that comes from being the custodians of movable, hidden megatons of nuclear destruction; a key in their pockets that will unlock a safe containing missile launch codes, their fingers on the button (actually, it's more of a trigger). They don't have tattoos, but then again, they don't have funny stories about drunken whoring in the South Pacific, circa 1945.

Mortgage

2008-08-18T10:00:00.005-05:00

Fortunately, we didn't get a mortgage when we wanted one. We were saved from our stupidity by a condescending loan officer, a pencil-necked geek in a suit and tie, a real tool of a man. He had probably been a salesman before getting promoted to an office, and now he was tasked with the unenviable job of telling newlyweds their jobs and their FICO scores weren't good enough for the bank to loan them money. In short, I had to have money in order to be loaned money. I didn't understand at the time that this was actually a blessing; all I knew was that our apartment was small and rundown, the new neighbors probably sold drugs, and my wife's bicycle was just stolen off of our front porch, probably in broad daylight. I was finally desperate enough to subject myself to the scrutiny of the mortgage application process, to wit: the endless anal probe by faceless financial institutions who seem to take unnatural pleasure in examining your past sins and pronouncing you redeemed or condemned. This was long before they were giving out half-million dollar loans to welfare mothers in San Jose, long before sub-prime no doc ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages, no documentation required, enjoy the 15% rate). The mortgage companies now have those houses back, thank you very much, or at least, they would have those houses back if the mortgage companies themselves weren't bankrupt. We've had a mortgage for 20 years now, and have never even been late, or missed a payment.

Lookout

2008-08-15T08:28:00.003-05:00

"Wait here. Let me know if you see anything strange."

Now, how in the hell was I supposed to do that? I guess I could honk the horn, but they probably wouldn't hear it. This was the day before everybody had a cell phone, before cell phones were even invented, unless of course you count those things that looked like world war II army field phones and cost about a thousand dollars a month. I didn't have anything like that. Semaphore? Morse code? It's difficult to watch the back of someone who is, effectively, psychotic. Yes, it's a drug-induced psychosis, but psychosis nonetheless. Let him know if I see anything strange. Hell, everything in this world, the drug world, the speed world, is strange. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to a weeks worth of sleep deprivation? How does someone decide to take apart their washer and dryer, at three o'clock in the morning, to clean them? It would be night, and he would be peeking out the bedroom window, for hours, seeing the demons no one else could see:

"Hey, is that someone trying to break into my car?"
"No, there's nobody out there."

Indeed.

Inspection

2008-08-13T09:30:00.003-05:00

A white glove across the top of a windowsill or chiffarobe, or a rubber glove - no, I'm not going there, that will happen soon enough, an event to commemorate my fiftieth birthday. Let's try this again: the mechanic's grease-stained fingers leafing through the multi-colored state paperwork, a mark made here, an initial there. The razor-scraper comes out and flashes in front of my face, then pressed against the window, and the old sticker is removed. The scraper goes out, and the hand comes in, the right one - busted knuckles and chipped fingernails coffee colored with 40 weight - pressing the new sticker onto the back of the windshield (windscreen for you Limeys and Aussies). The hood is closed (bonnet for you Limeys and Aussies) and I'm hoping the guy in the trench underneath tightened the oil drain plug just enough, but not too much that he split the pan, or cross-threaded the bolt.

Footlights

2008-08-12T09:30:00.008-05:00

The theater people and band students were the dope smokers at my high school. I wasn't in the theater or the band, I was an electronics and radio geek. Our high school had a FM radio station (90.5), and the radio station people were probably the third biggest group of dope smokers, so it was fitting that radio people would be involved in theater and band projects. It was the way high school politics worked. My first high school girlfriend was in theater, loud and brash and forward, which is just what a geeky, nerdy, radio station guy needs. A girl who will make the first move, a girl who's not shy about giving it up. Geeks are far too polite to ask such things, and far too afraid of their own shadows to assume that it will be received if asked. And no competetion from the theater guys, either: gay. My friend Jason West and I would run the lights and sound, and in between cues climb high into the theater scaffolding, fifty feet or so above the stage and my badly overacting girlfriend, and smoke cigarettes and the occasional joint. We couldn't get away with that now, we'd have smoke alarms and dogs and the P.C. police hunting us down if we so much as struck a match.

Fireplace

2008-08-11T09:41:00.004-05:00

We weren't allowed in the Living Room, except on special occasions. For the longest time, that meant Christmas, and only Christmas. Every once in awhile, a cocktail party, jazz music playing on the Scandinavian-designed 1959 Packard-Bell stereo, candy and nuts in glass dishes, men in suits with skinny ties eating hors d'oeuvres, glamorous women with bouffant hairdos drinking martinis and Tom Collins. Once a year, we'd move the television into the living room and watch the Wizard of Oz. On the far wall, the brick fireplace, painted off-white to match the off-white carpeting, a tall hearth to sit on or use as a performer's stage. My dad would sit there, and wad up newspaper to stuff under dried logs, and then light the paper with matches. A real fireplace that burned real wood; some richer neighbors had gas jets. The hissing wood would pop and explode and send sparks up the flue; on a winter's day when we could see our breath, we'd step outside and smell the burning oak and walnut smoke escaping from the neighborhood chimneys.

Crook

2008-08-08T09:40:00.005-05:00

Crook? What, are you kidding me? We already had burglary this week, now crook? As in, "I'm not a crook"? No. I'm not going there, that's too easy, Nixon. Crook of an arm, crook of a tree, niche, crotch, bend, turn, curve, crosier, shepherd's crook. This isn't going well, time for an Apollo theater exit: The Hook.

Junkyard

2008-08-07T09:55:00.002-05:00

Rust, twinkling broken glass in the dust like diamonds and gems, caved in doors and engines pulled from smashed front-ends, greasy suspension parts and rubber tires, steel wheels. The point of impact frozen for now in metal sculpture; we saw our fair share of white vinyl upholstery, blood-spattered. Automobiles stripped of their final value before being turned into six-foot-square bales of recycleable steel and aluminum. Treasure to be discovered, uncovered: hood ornaments from Mercedes-Benz and those airplanes from 1950's Chevrolets, a 1959 ElDorado taillight, a Mustang GT gas cap.

Burglary

2008-08-06T11:47:00.004-05:00

At first, I didn't notice anything was gone. It was only after I walked out to use it, to where it was supposed to be, and I could no longer find it. It wasn't where I left it, that much is certain. Maybe in the backyard? No, it's not there, either. The place isn't that big, it's not on either side of the house, nor under the porch. I'm a little nervous now, my stomach empty, my blood sugar low. I'm beginning to get a headache, my brain struggling to interpret what the other sensory organs were now reporting. A little bit of panic now, check the back, the front again, each side of the house, the neighbors, it's gone. Anger replacing confusion now, and fear, and the after effects of the violation that has taken place. I ask around, nobody saw anything, nothing suspicious, nobody out of the ordinary. A ghost. I've been robbed.

Inexplicably, Neil Simon's words come to mind:

We've been robbed.

Robbed?

Yes, robbed. People come in, they take things, they used to be yours, now they're theirs. Robbed.

That used to be funny, when Anne Bancroft was yelling it at Jack Lemmon.

Locomotive

2008-08-05T09:40:00.005-05:00

I grew up near train tracks and trains, steel rails and spikes and gravel track-beds, flattened pennies and quarters and dimes and nickels. The trick was to get the coins on the track and get away fast enough; if the coins were placed too early, they would fall off or get stolen by hobos (we never actually saw any hobos), too late and well, you'd never want to do anything too late around a train. It required blood of icewater and lightning-quick reflexes. We would stand on the track, the heavy beast bearing down on us, inexorably - even if the engineer put the brakes full on, it would be hundreds of yards, perhaps even a mile, before he could get it stopped and anyone left on the track would end up a greasy spot, or flattened, or blown clean out of their shoes and found hundreds of feet away down the embankment - we would stand there and jump up and down and mock the engineers blowing their airhorns, jumping out of the way at the last minute. The older kids would hop the train, catching it when it slowed for Roosevelt Avenue before it lumbered through town. It shook the ground as it rolled by, wooden creosoted ties compressing stone under an unimaginable weight of iron and diesel.

Convention

2008-08-04T09:21:00.004-05:00

Convention - an established practice, a general agreement about basic practices or principles - doesn't really work for me. Unconventional, I would hope, but probably not true. We all like to think of ourselves as unique rugged individuals, iconoclasts bucking societal norms, victims of and warriors against the capricious and fickle grey-flannel-suited Establishment, islands of integrity and truth and justice. Bullshit. So few of us truly have the backbone for that kind of thinking, the stomach for that way of living, which is why - when we look to the right or the left, ahead or behind - we see someone who looks just like us, a fellow drone, and we project our self-loathing, much easier to point the finger away than towards. I can remember when I sold my soul; what I can't remember is why or for how much, or how to get it back.

Crash Helmet

2008-08-01T09:27:00.009-05:00

Truth in advertising, I guess. Most folks just call it a "helmet", but the Object Writing site is powered by Aussies - who of course are former criminal Limeys - and they tend to call things by funny names. I'm still fairly new to motorcycle riding, but there's an interesting phenomenon I've noticed, which I'm sure has been pointed out before, but I'm pointing it out again.

Here in Texas, there are three kinds of motorcycle riders: Harley riders, crotch-rocket riders, and everybody else. I'm in the third category. I always dress as suggested by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation: helmet, jacket, long pants, decent shoes that cover my ankles, gloves.

Harley riders tend to wear a lot of protective leather gear: chaps, sometimes full leather pants, vests, jackets, gloves, big-ass boots, do-rags, most all of which was purchased at a premium at their Harley-Davidson store. Everything they wear is festooned with Harley logos, and there is no doubt what they ride. They typically do not wear helmets, although sometimes they'll wear those German storm trooper combat helmets, or those little "half-helmets" or something like what the cops wore in Electra-glide In Blue. Bear in mind that these are largely inexperienced "new-school" Harley riders, middle-aged professionals with more money than sense. They usually sell their bikes with pretty low mileage after a short amount of time. I've heard them referred to as "Hell's Accountants."

The crotch-rocket (Sportbike) rider typically wears a thin t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, but wears a hyper-expensive helmet like an Arai. They are often scofflaws, doing 140 and wheelies in the middle lane of the freeway during rush hour.

So, if you crash a sportbike, do you land only on your head? If you lay down a Harley, do you only need to protect yourself from road rash?

Magazine

2008-07-30T09:03:00.003-05:00

Thin, perfect-bound, glossy, with thick pages and full-color photographs, inspiration and information and advertisement and article cut and pasted together on nearly any bizarre subject; there is a magazine for all occasions. Whenever I contemplate exploring something strange and different, the first place I go is the newsstand, to find a magazine on the subject. It doesn't matter what it is, there are magazines for folks who build hot rods, have tattoos, collect ceramic figurines, play bridge or poker or blackjack, write, read poetry, ride motorcycles, have any kind of pet of any kind of breed or type, are gay or straight, live in whatever state or city or town, ride a BMX bike or mountain bike or racing bike or a skateboard or a kite board, go to movies, shoot movies, write movies, are fans of movies or teens or rock stars or rappers or classical music, build model railroads or models of anything, fly an airplane, own a yacht, fish for crappie (yes, Crappie magazine), are getting married, have been divorced, are single, like to cook and eat and scrapbook and read the airline magazine while on their way to distant lands that they read about in a travel magazine.

Petrol

2008-07-29T09:08:00.016-05:00

Petrol, Brit-speak for gas, gasoline, a refined petroleum product: "Let's put some petrol in the lorry and motor down to Bishops Itchington for some fish and chips and bit of cricket." The Brits and their ilk would probably make fun of the Steely Dan lyrics in Kid Charlemagne: "Is there gas in the car? Yes, there's gas in the car! I think the people down the hall know who you are." What kind of lyrics are those? Genius ones, I tell you!

I'm old enough to remember when gasoline (petrol) was mere cents per gallon, 29.9 or less, so I'm going to take an old fart's walk down Nostalgia Alley and reminisce about them good ol' days buyin' gas (petrol) at the Humble or the Ulrich or the Union 76 station, so screw you, whippersnapper, and get the hell off my lawn, damn kids!
Entering the station, you rolled over this rubber tube see, and the bell would ring, ding ding, alerting the attendants to your presence. They came hustling out like an Indy 500 pit crew, washing your windows, checking your oil and tires, putting 29.9 cent per gallon gas (petrol) in your car, "Fill it up?" And you would be driving a big car, damn it; we had a Studebaker Lark, a piece of crap whose driver side door would fly open whenever you made a left-hand turn. We called it mostly by its nickname, "The Junker." The Studebaker was so notoriously crappy that Warren Zevon actually wrote a song about one just like ours (it may have even been ours, purchased by Warren late in the Sixties from my Dad after he bought an English Ford Cortina):

I left my home in Monterrey
Just another low prospects man
Who'd rather work in the foundries
Than put fishes in a can

I'm twenty five but I haven't travelled far
And I spend all my money on this misbegotten car

I'm up against it all, like a leaf against the wind
And this Studebaker keeps on breaking down again
This Studebaker keeps on breaking down again
I thought I'd go to Fresno to see my friend
But this damn Studebaker keeps on breaking down again

I was speeding south on 99
When the manifold started smokin'
I ran her off the shoulder
And now the axle's broken
Made a sound like crackin' my heart in half
With less than half a
Half pint of vodka left

I'm up against it all, like a leaf against the wind
And this Studebaker keeps on breaking down again
This Studebaker keeps on breaking down again
I thought I'd go to Fresno to see my friend
But this damn Studebaker keeps on breaking down again

- Studebaker, Copyright © Warren Zevon

My Dad and Warren Zevon, now both dead, are probably comparing notes on their damn old Studebakers, and having a good laugh.

Wardrobe

2008-07-28T09:17:00.004-05:00

I don't really know what they mean here, are they referring to the thing which contains the wardrobe, which is also called a wardrobe, like The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe? Or are they referring to the contents contained by the wardrobe, the clothing, also called the wardrobe? And who is "They"? We have a wardrobe (the container, not the contained), and we also have a chiffarobe (smaller, here). The smell of cedar is prominent, the nice one is solid oak and walnut veneer, tall enough to hide a few men, or several small children. You probably couldn't get the whole of Narnia in it, though we did have quite a time getting it up the stairs and around the corner into the first bedroom. We had to start taking things apart, light fixtures and trim pieces. In the end, we just gave it a good shove, and didn't break anything. I think we had to take a door off its hinges. I don't have a wardrobe (the contained, not the container), which is somewhat ironic considering that I have at least two of the damn things in my house (the container, not the, well, you get it), not in the formal sense; I might be able to dig up a sportcoat, nearly matching pants, and a tie leftover from the early nineties when I had to wear such things on a daily basis. My suits don't fit anymore, I've added nearly half a foot to my formerly trim waist, a 42 regular doesn't seem to cover the girth anymore, the pants way too tight, as if they were spray-painted onto my thighs and ever-expanding ass.

Quiz

2008-07-25T09:36:00.006-05:00

More friendly and less critical than a Test, 10 Ways to Enrich Your Word Power or Your Sex Life or Your Poor Career Choices. Usually, these things are preceded by the short test, where There Are No Wrong Answers, we're just trying to establish a baseline, a starting point, a reference. There actually are wrong answers, or you wouldn't be doing this to begin with. You feel stupid because you don't understand big words, or your sex life sucks, or you have a crappy job. There are wrong answers, to life, and those are some examples. You seek to improve your situation, but first, let's find out Where We Are (meaning, of course, Where You Are). Remember, there are no wrong answers, as long as you don't deviate from that high spot on the bell curve, stray off the reservation. Those on the left of the curve, thanks for playing, but you're probably too stupid to be reading this, or too oblivious to care, hated and unappreciated because you are miserable dullards with less personality than a cabbage. Those on the right of the curve will be forever publicly subject to the petty tyranny and whim of the majority, hated and unappreciated because you are pedantic pontificating nettlesome trolls with less personality than a cabbage.

Museum

2008-07-24T12:10:00.004-05:00

We used to take her daughter there, when she was younger, 9 or 10 or so. She was a smart girl, and modern and classical works of art simply added depth and breadth and experience to a developing foundation. It was a better time back then, we were poor and lived in the city but we were happier, newlyweds. Viewing works of art was cheap and accessible, an afternoon of culture for very little money. I thought then that we might actually become a family, and happy, but this was before smart little girls turn into reticent teenagers, before the shine comes off being "newly wed", before the new car smell gives way to that of cigarettes and fast food and gasoline and burning oil. Before workaday life takes over, the "salad days", according to Joel and Ethan Coen. You dream big during the salad days, about perhaps creating fine works of art yourself, but then you have to go out and make a living and suddenly there's no time for that sort of nonsense anymore, it's not serious, not productive, not essential, not useful, you can't make any money doing that. Just things to fill a museum.

Minimart

2008-07-23T10:26:00.006-05:00

Orange is the color, and 11 is the number, 11:00 PM to be exact. That's when the graveyard shift starts; I get about a fifty-cent an hour bump (back in the day), but I work all night and sleep during the day, and just when things are starting to liven up around here, I have to go to work. My friends have already come and gone from work and are into about half a case of a case-a-day end of work celebration. I participate, knowing that in a few hours I'll be up all night, with nothing but cops and drunks to keep me company; and the lonely people who themselves work the graveyard, or don't work at all and are up all night anyway, looking for drugs or sex or just something to do, suburban vampires. A vampire named Christy comes in at night and plays video games. She still lives at home, she's a year or two out of high school and still hangs at the 7-Eleven, drinking and smoking with her high school friends, the ones that didn't go off to college. Occasionally she'll leave with one of them, her car still in the parking lot when dawn starts cracking. I'll be stocking the walk-in when she returns for her car, her hair all wrong, her clothes not fitting right. Mostly I don't like the sleep deprivation, or drinking alone at 7:00 in the morning. I quit, finally, after being transferred to a different store in a rougher part of town, right next to a bar a couple blocks up from the 'hood, still working graveyard. The guy they hired to replace me was shot to death a week later.

Night

2008-07-22T09:25:00.002-05:00

Cool light so bright you could read a book out here under the full moon. It's hot and muggy, no breeze in July, quiet, birds and cicadas finally asleep, only the crickets and frogs down by the pond make any noise now. I can see everything, lit up almost like daylight, like night vision; but I'm unseen by anyone, now effectively invisible. I am far away from the city, from any city, no pool of amber or green sodium or mercury vapor street lighting on the horizon, just a black dome, pinpricked by white stars, and a bright bluish-white xenon light reflecting off a gray surface a quarter of a million miles away, the light coming ninety-three million miles before that.

Raconteur

2008-07-21T08:19:00.004-05:00

I don't really know if they were true or not, all those things he talked about. He had some stories, about all kinds of things, adventures and misadventures. Tales of life and death, of chivalry and larceny, facts, statistics, lies, and damn lies. I would be sworn to secrecy, only to overhear it slurred out months later at party, the tongue loosened after consuming several six-packs, names changed to protect the innocent. I believed when I first heard, but later became jaded and skeptical after hearing the same stories told again and again and again, always after too much alcohol, trying to win acceptance from people decades his junior; perhaps spoken repeatedly as an incantation against growing older, tales of near-death to keep Death at bay.

Rickshaw

2008-07-18T11:32:00.002-05:00

The streets here are dark and narrow, glorified back-alleys, city smells coming from sewer grates and dumpsters and bus exhaust, everything crowded and makeshift, multipurpose. People cooking in improbable locations, cooking improbable meals, fishy and starchy. Smoke and steam and brick and noise, this part of the City hasn't changed much since it was rebuilt after the fire. Way before then, people who built one of the most audacious engineering achievements of the day, all that wood and iron over and through those damn granite mountains.

Blackberry

2008-07-16T09:24:00.003-05:00

A pair of pruners in one gloved hand, the other hand bare, gingerly venturing forth with fingertips into a sharp forbidding mass of razor-sharp thorns, poked and sliced, pricked, hundreds of pinholes in my arms and hands and fingers, blood and berry juice mixing and turning a purpleish-red. A cluster of dark-purple here, snatched and placed in the bucket, a mass of red ones there, ignored for now, they'll be ready next week. Damn, it's hot out here; shouldn't be doing this in the full July afternoon sun. The pruners cutting away parts of the plant that will never give berries, these offshoots only produce thorns, green and sharp, shielding and obfuscating the fruit, keeping the fragile humans - who cut easily - away.

Lifejacket

2008-07-14T08:50:00.003-05:00

Not as stylish as a P.F. (Personal Flotation) device; for starters, there's that safety high-visibility orange color. You wouldn't look cool on a jet ski wearing one of these. Waterskiers and boogie-boarders usually have those cool vest things, which, above all things, are not safety orange. The lifejacket is usually cold and clammy (from being stored under the seats in a boat) and kind of musty and moldy smelling (from being stored under the seats in a boat), puffy and foam and the cheapest safety device that still meets the requirements of the Coast Guard and whichever constabulatory body has jurisdiction over your local waterways. Since they're smelly and hideous looking, it's hard to get anybody but kids to wear them, which is probably why a bunch of folk drown in boating accidents around here every year. At least the orange foam device would have prevented them from sinking to the bottom when they got drunk, passed out, and fell out of the boat.

X-Ray

2008-07-11T09:05:00.004-05:00

"Alright then. Stand right here, back straight. Rest your chin up here. Good." She walks to the back, behind a lead-lined wall, and peers through glass (probably impregnated with lead). She wears a lead apron, I've got a thin cotton hospital gown (gown indeed, as if I'm going ballroom dancing). "Take a deep breath and hold it." A buzzing sound, and I swear I can feel the radiation, tingling, briefly boiling white and red cells, microwaving my intestines at the speed of light. We wait for the picture to develop, a spooky black-and-white of what I will look like in the far future, after I'm long dead and buried; bones, on my way back to ashes and dust.

Embassy

2008-07-10T08:11:00.005-05:00

Some third-world banana republic jail, built when the French or the British or the Spainiards were here, back in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, quarried stone and iron doors, iron bars and rats. Lots of rats. Remodeled throughout the centuries, retrofitted at various epochs with terra cotta floors, indoor plumbing, electric light, the telephone. The smell of rat piss and human piss and Lysol and Pine Sol, damp and moldy; the criminal incense of cigarette smoke and flesh charred by arcing electricity from car batteries and jumper cables. Echoes reflecting now off the tile, wing tips and combat boots, broken English and Spanish vaguely recognized from yesterday's conversation on the crackly dial-up phone; the guy from the embassy has arrived.

Interview

2008-07-09T09:10:00.007-05:00

"So, uh, Mr. Rhubarb, is it? And how are you today?"

"Uh, it's actually Ranch, Rhubarb Ranch. I get that a lot."

I do, really. My first, middle, and last names could all be first, middle, or last names, and people have been screwing it up for years. I started using all three names on resumes so there wouldn't be any ambiguity: Rhubarb Frigging Ranch. That's my name, don't wear it out. It didn't help much. My eighth-grade English teacher never could get it straight, Mrs. Munson, senile old bat. "Ranch Rhubarb, diagram this sentence. Mr. Rhubarb, get rid of that gum." I spat it on her desk, right in the middle of her attendence book. I hated English.

So, here I am, talking with someone from India or Pakistan about an information technology job. I'm a contractor, so I interview a lot. Pressed slacks, sport coat, starched shirt, tie. Clothes I don't normally wear, except to an interview. Once I have the job, most folks don't even see me. I usually wear cargo shorts, t-shirts, and sandals. I'm nervous that he'll ask me some obscure computer science question about design patterns, which everyone likes to say they use but nobody really does. Indians love design patterns. And UML. And Java, probably because it's free. And Ruby. And Ruby on Rails. And Ajax. Hell, I was using design patterns before they had a catchy computer science name. To me, they're just tools, just another way to get the job done. But for a lot of folks, they're religions. They'll even use terms like "language agnostic." And I'll probably kill the next person that uses the term "syntactic sugar" in my presence. Already I hate this job, and I haven't even finished the interview.

Franchise

2008-07-08T09:14:00.006-05:00

It would've been about 1968, inside a Pizza Hut or a Pizza Inn or a Pizza something, but it wasn't Shakey's pizza. This was on the other side of town, and it wasn't open yet; a new business, lots of folks bustling about trying to get things done. It was a business venture, my Dad was a biochemist by trade and training, not a pizza monger. I don't know what he was doing in a Pizza Inn in 1968, drinking beer and eating pizza, somehow affiliated with the owners, giving me enough money to play songs on the jukebox. A psychedelic number by The First Edition (yes, Kenny Rogers, before the gambler. Way before.) "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)", backwards guitar intro by Glen Campbell (always underrated). I didn't like the pizza, there were too many green peppers, in rings rather than diced like Shakey's. The mushrooms weren't cooked right (Shakey's seemed to saute theirs or something). The crust was thin and burnt. But all the root beer I could drink and jukebox somehow made it O.K. I can't hear the word "franchise" without smelling pizza and hearing that stupid song.

Audience

2008-07-07T07:27:00.003-05:00

Kind of like fire, inanimate but alive. A contradiction, moving without thinking, responding autonomously, a collective hive consciousness like the Borg. It's docile when it is at rest or content, but don't piss it off or cause it to panic, it'll turn on you - perhaps kill you - trampled underfoot. Don't bore it with something it can't understand, it will respond with indifference, perhaps polite clapping - the same sound you hear at golf tournaments. Or, instead of applause at the end of a number, crickets chirping, silence. Something has so greatly increased the gravity of the audience that not even sound can escape: it has become an audio black-hole.

Airport

2008-07-03T08:25:00.007-05:00

I'm sitting in the left seat of a mid-sixties Piper Cherokee 180, white and blue, with red stripes. I'm on the ramp at Love Field in Dallas, and shout "Clear!" through the little vent window on my left. This is more of a formality than anything; jets are taxiing everywhere, the air smelling of kerosene. I seriously doubt anyone can hear me shout "Clear!", but you don't want somebody getting tangled up in the prop, either. My instructor has just received a bunch of garbled radio jargon from "clearance delivery", and I turn the key to start the airplane. We get ground control on another frequency, and I inform them that I'm in front of Avial with information Bravo and ready to taxi to the active, trying to sound like Chuck Yeager on the radio. They reply in garbled radio jargon with a bunch of cryptic nonsense concerning taxiways and runways and tower frequencies. I do a mechanical readback using my best Chuck Yeager-like manner, completely without a clue. Jesus, those guys talk fast. My instructor deciphers it all and points his finger, saying "Turn left here" and "Go this way!" I stop at the runup area, throttling the engine to the runup speed, switching magnetos back and forth, looking for the slight drop in RPM that will tell me everything is working properly. I inform the tower that we're ready, trying to sound like Chuck Yeager, and they reply with garbled radio jargon about us being "number 2 behind the Citation" and then "hold short" and then "position and hold" and finally "cleared for takeoff. Caution, wake turbulence." I roger the last instruction like Chuck Yeager, but I'm sure my voice is cracking in a very non-Yeager-like way. I'm no sooner down the runway and up in the air where more garbled radio jargon is received over the crappy mid-sixties speaker, something about turning "left to heading one-eight-garbled, ascend to and maintain garbled thousand five hundred, contact departure on garbled." I do a mechanical readback, trying to sound like Chuck Yeager, and finally a "Good day" from the tower.

London

2008-07-02T09:28:00.007-05:00

Full disclaimer: I ain't never been. I'd like to go, I'd like to be an experienced world traveller, but that sort of thing takes disposable income, and mine has already been, uh, disposed. I can go in my mind's eye, to a claustrophobic, cobblestone lined city, stone buildings covered in soot, folks with bad teeth dressed in rags, everything gray, Oliver Twist picking your pocket, Jack The Ripper lurking in the alleyway, Bob Cratchit hoisting Tiny Tim on his shoulders, Mary Poppins and Dick Van Dyke singing and dancing and sweeping chimneys. That's kind of the reverse of what the English think of us Texans, isn't it? Gun-toting, ten-gallon-hat wearing cowboys, sporting chaps and spurs and fancy pointed boots, drawling and spitting tobacco, shooting first and asking questions later. Yee-haw. I'm sure London isn't nearly as Dickensian as I think; no more so than all of us Texans having oil wells in our backyards. More's the pity. The food sounds a little weird: spotted dick and bangers and fish and chips. My wife says, "But Gordon Ramsay, your hero, is English, isn't he?" I think he's Scottish dear, but then there's haggis.

Bus

2008-07-01T09:41:00.006-05:00

In April of '81, everything I owned consisted of a Les Paul guitar, and whatever would fit into a metal strongbox and a duffel bag. I had already sold my amplifier, and it would be five years before I got another one. I checked it through on a Greyhound bus to Medford, Oregon. It was two in the morning and I was sneaking out of town, and my friends (who had written me off) would never hear from me again, except for once, about a month later. That phone call would be like Kurt Vonnegut's phone calls in Slaughterhouse Five: fueled by alcohol, breath smelling of mustard gas and roses. It wouldn't go well. Shortly thereafter, I would go down to the park by the Rogue River, and burn all of the documents and pictures linking me to that prior period of my life, my friends and I both dead to each other. So it goes, as Kurt would say. I enjoyed the bus ride through Central and Northern California, the stop in Sacramento, seeing Mount Shasta in the early morning sunrise. I enjoyed it until Ashland, only about 15 miles from my destination, where this idiot who had embarked at Reddding or Red Bluff or Eureka or Yreka or some damn place sprinted from the front of the bus in my direction. I was seated at the rear of the bus, in the smoking section, next to the lavatory. His hand was over his mouth, he was gagging, and saying "Sorry, sorry." He was desperately trying to reach the lavatory, but he had waited too long. He was bus-sick. He damn near made it, but stopped short mere feet from the lavatory door and Blew Chunks. Puked. Bought Buicks. Would have Driven The Porcelain Bus, had he made it. Missed his conference call to Huey, Ralph, and Earl on the Great White Phone. It was a cottage-cheese and lite beer-looking mixture on the aisle floor of the bus, smelling of mustard gas and roses. The Smokers (including myself) instantly forgot about our deadly addiction and moved en masse to the front of the bus. So it goes. It was the longest 15 miles ever travelled on a bus. I never rode the bus again, except once to a recruiting facility for my military physical. I didn't pass; I have a non-contagious, non-debilitating genetic skin disease which was used as a technicality to keep me out of the Air Force. My skin dies and replaces itself at three times the normal rate. So it goes. But on the way back, in the dark, I made out with a totally slutty really cute drunken girl in the smoking section. I was drunk too, and our breath smelled vaguely of mustard gas and roses.

Border

2008-06-30T08:57:00.006-05:00

Some parts of Douglas, Arizona are so close to Mexico that your AT&T cellphone picks up the Mexican cellphone company. I'm here to bury my Dad, talking to the Hispanic funeral home director. I go to make a call, and there it is: Telmex on the display of the Motorola. We're about a block from the Mexican border. There are green Border Patrol Dodge pickups and SUVs everywhere. I don't know how or why my Dad picked Douglas, Arizona as a retirement location. I don't think he had ever been here before. I don't think there's anything in particular to recommend it. He made a few friends when he moved here, but had no friends, no connections to begin with. It is a dusty border town, and most of the inhabitants are Mexicans, Indians, or Anglo desert rats, golfers and military retirees; crusty tough guys with firm handshakes who served in Korea and Vietnam, who could still kick your ass even though they're hooked up to oxygen tanks for emphysema. My dad played duffer golf, and probably wasn't too good after his stroke, but he played anyway. It is hot here, and dry. If you continue down Pan American Avenue, pass the Walmart, you'll run smack into the Mexican border, a tall iron fence, turned inward so that it can't be climbed over. On the other side, Agua Prieta. On the Douglas side, First Street, lined with low pseudo-adobe hovels, desert architecture from 1957. The line between Mexico and Arizona is very blurry in Douglas: nearly all businesses are bilingual, with Spanish as the primary language. I didn't go to Agua Prieta when I was in Douglas, had just got back from Cancun, as a matter of fact. But going there wouldn't be any big deal, just another couple of blocks past the Walmart, and through the big gate. And folks in Agua Prieta feel the same way, the two are practically the same town, with a big-ass fence running through it. Kind of like Berlin during the cold war. But much easier to cross back and forth. Hell, it's harder to get into California from Oregon or Nevada.

Bucket

2008-06-27T08:22:00.008-05:00

There's a Japanese Black Pine sitting at the far reaches of the back yard, surrounded by boulders hauled in from Gold Country; it is not indigenous to the Central Valley, and requires a great deal of water. For some reason, water that must be carried. I don't know exactly why, perhaps we don't have a long enough garden hose, because my Dad is cheap. Or perhaps he thinks it will build character, carting 25 gallons of water several hundred feet to the nether-regions of the back yard. Nevertheless, I fill a five gallon plastic vessel from the faucet at the side of the house, my ten year old body straining to lift the damn thing, water sloshing on my Keds, awkwardly holding it out, first in front, then at the side. Not too many people know this, but it is easier to carry two five-gallon buckets than one, even though it is twice the weight (a gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds; that's 41 pounds in one five-gallon bucket). Much better balance. One in each hand. But did I mention my Dad is cheap? We only have one. And I make five trips out there to the damned Japanese Black Pine, loaded one way, dead-headed the other, carting water in a bucket.

Chest Of Drawers

2008-06-26T15:01:00.004-05:00

Hooo boy! Exciting. Chest of drawers. Misheard as "Chester drawers" when I was a kid. Back in the day. I thought somehow, it was related to "Chesterfield", since both referred to furniture. Davenport. Divan. Sofa. Couch. It seemed that everyone in the neighborhood called it something different, even though it was the same piece of furniture. Chester drawers. Chiffarobe, as in To Kill A Mockingbird:

ATTICUS:
You say that you asked Tom to come in and chop up a... What was it?

MAYELLA (sarcastically):
A chiffarobe!

Oak, with big brass handles. Cedar lined, I'll bet. Antique by now, we got one just like the one Tom probably busted up right there in the bedroom. In another bedroom, an ornate one made from birdseye maple. The wife likes the antiques. Billy Bob Thornton is superstitious and has an irrational fear of antique furniture, even references it in a few of his movies. He'd hate our house, riddled with antique furniture, ladders, black cats, and broken mirrors.

Piccolo Pete

2008-06-25T10:03:00.000-05:00

First, a definition:
1. A small tube firework that emits a loud, piercing screech for about 30 seconds.
2. A small tubular whistling firework that can be hammered flat and made into a small explosive.
Yep, in remembrance of my late Dad (who taught me, and may have invented, this trick back in the 1960s), and our upcoming national Independence Day, it's time to make an exploding Piccolo Pete.

If you do it right, you'll get a long whistle, followed by an extremely large Kaboom. Nowadays, the fireworks are made cheaply, and there's less powder in the tube, so you might not get the whistle, just the kaboom. And, you may not be able to find the classic, venerable Piccolo Pete, but have to settle for his lesser cousin, Whistling Pete. Theoretically, you could probably do this with any whistling or non-whistling fountain firework, but the Pete is the Classic Coke of exploding fountains. There's plenty of video, go to YouTube and search "Piccolo Pete." Simply use a pair of pliers and/or a hammer to crimp the bottom part of the tube, right where the powder ends. Light fuse and get away. (Yes, these instructions are deliberately terse and cryptic.)

I really have to stress the "get away" part. Did I mention large Kaboom?

All disclaimers apply. Here at the Ranch, we will not be held responsible for anything, anytime, anywhere, especially dumbasses who might try this and screw it up somehow. If you blow off a leg, don't come running to me. This has been common knowledge for at least 40 years, and we don't have any money anyway.

Late breaking news:
It would appear that the availability of the Piccolo Pete is somewhat limited, and perhaps on the verge of extinction, largely because some assclowns probably made the aforementioned modification and probably blew stuff up (perhaps even their limbs, one hopes), which then caused overreaching nanny legislatures (Connecticut, Yankee jackasses) to ring their hands and pee their pants and pass bad law. Crap, it's hard to find even a picture of one.

Pity. First my Dad, and now the Pete. Clearly, the end of an era.

Fireworks

2008-06-25T09:31:00.006-05:00

I'm not sure why we ended up celebrating our national Independence Day, perhaps like the Chinese would, with the glorification of explosive ordnance, rockets red glare and all that. All I know is, it's perfectly legal to blow stuff up around here for about a week preceding the fourth of July. This is Texas, and the fireworks are dangerous and plentiful. I remember when I lived in California (now 25 years ago), all the fireworks stands proclaimed their wares were "Safe and Sane." Bullshit. Unsafe and Insane here in the Lone Star State. Roman Candles that you hold in your hand (so you can aim it at somebody) that shoot hurtling Balls of Fire. "Artillery Shells", basically an old-fashioned fuse-lit mortar, shot several hundred feet in the air, then exploding into a shower of multicolored sparks. Firecrackers. M-80s ("that there's a quarter stick o' dynamite." No, it really isn't). Bottle rockets. Even sparklers, hotter 'n welding rods. Or this. These things are quite exciting, especially when they go bad (like when the artillery shell tube tips over. Horizontal trajectory. Priceless). There's nothing like a big Fourth picnic, especially at dusk, when about 20 or so pyromaniac rednecks start firing off artillery shells. It's better than Disneyland. I love the smell of napalm in the evening; it smells like...Texas in July.

Taxi

2008-06-24T07:42:00.003-05:00

Yellow. Checker. Drivers from Mogadishu and Mumbai and Moscow, but almost never from Muncie. Crown air-freshener on the dash, or evergreeen hanging from the rear-view. The smell of cigarettes, even in a non-smoking cab. Smell of countless body odors and DNA, the cabs around here are pretty rank, not unlike the Gypsy Cab Company in the Royal Tenenbaums. "Where to?" I tell him, and he shakes his head slowly from side to side, sighing as he throws the flag on the meter. He knows that he'll be out of commission for at least an hour, knows that he'll have to traverse cross-town rush hour traffic, knows that this fare isn't going to pay off like he'd hoped. I just hope he keeps his mouth shut, I don't feel like talking this evening.

Shampoo

2008-06-20T07:58:00.003-05:00

What a silly-ass topic to write about. I'm getting kind of tired of the Object Writing site lately and its semi-random word generator. Shampoo, indeed! My very first memories of getting my hair washed was me as a toddler and a little older, laying on my back on the kitchen counter, my head back at an extreme angle in the sink, while my mom nearly drowned me trying to wash my hair. I guess she thought that this was the way it was done, holding your kid's head under the faucet while you hosed him off like yesterday's dirty dishes. She later admitted that she didn't really know what she was doing; not so much the hair washing, mind you, but Motherhood in general. This was probably before Johnson & Johnson's Baby Shampoo; I remember that whatever my mom used on my hair burned like hell when it got in my eyes; when combined with the water up my nose and the screaming and crying, hair-washing was a rather unpleasant activity at the homestead.

Manager (redux)

2008-06-17T12:42:00.004-05:00

Rhubarb's Note: Today's object writing word is Manager, but we've already done that one, back in February. Read it here.

Candle

2008-06-17T12:18:00.003-05:00

Not really a primary source of light for anyone anymore, and the wife uses them to make the house smell nice. I've had to use candles before for their original intended purpose, and just try to read and write without a dozen or so blazing away. It's really bad if you have to do this during the summer, because of the heat. Uneven light, flickering about, a paraffin powered strobe, dancing across the page you're trying to read, a glimpse of a word here and there, and darkness. The smell of heat and wax, curtains or a cat catching fire if you're not careful, wax spatters on the table and the rug, burned spots on oak and berber and shag. I had to use candles because they turned off the electricity for non-payment. Although, why I had a full ice chest of beer but no electricity eludes me to this day. Priorities, I guess. Nowadays, I have all the electricity I need, but no beer in the fridge. Priorities.

Rest Room

2008-05-16T07:55:00.002-05:00

Shouldn't the bedroom be the Rest Room? What exactly are you "resting" in the rest room? In my house, it's a bathroom, and yes, all three rooms have actual baths. Some bathrooms only have showers, but nobody calls them Shower Rooms. Some bathrooms have no facility whatsoever for bathing, and yet...The public rest room is the most godawful breeding ground for unsanitary conditions I've seen, far worse than any super-secret Department of Defense biological warfare laboratory. Good God People! Do you treat your rest room (restroom?) at home like this? Lift a seat, for Christ's sake! Aim! Pay frickin' attention! Use an Ass Gasket! Flush, I implore you! Don't brush your teeth in that sink, you don't know where it's been, or what's been done in it, or to it! No amount of Pine Sol or Lysol or Clorox is going to clean this mess up! Don't look at it with a blacklight, just get in, do your business, and get out. Quickly. And don't talk to me, I'm not there for chit-chat. Wash your goddamn hands!

Towel

2008-05-13T10:19:00.002-05:00

It's almost a joke to call them a "towel", they were as thin as dishrags and not much bigger, yellow with a red stripe, ribbed and rough like corduroy. They smelled clean but rather odd, washed in a neutral-smelling unscented detergent, not springtime fresh like linens hanging outside on the line. The gym towel attendant grudgingly gave you one and only one to use after your shower, which came after P.E. class, and I hated them. Them? Yes, P.E., the shower, the gym instructor, the towels, even the towel guy. But mostly the shower, showering in front of people, showering shoulder to shoulder with guys. It didn't help that I really wasn't very athletic, and always on the worst team. After awhile, the team that I was on stopped showing up at P.E. altogether, and I don't think we were missed.

Mushroom

2008-05-06T09:04:00.002-05:00

They grow on cow shit, and have inscrutable Latin names. They'll kill you if they get the chance, or you can have 'em on pizza. The carpenter who used to live in my apartment complex would occaisionally bring some by, in a plastic bag. I don't know where he got them, or where they came from. There's no good way to eat them, they taste like crap, and smell bad. I crack open a cold beer, to wash them down. They're dried out, so I pour them out of the bag, and kind of chop them up with a knife, diced fine the same way I do garlic, but I'm not Julia Child or Gordon Ramsey, and I'm not making a Ragu di Fegato di Pollo. I scoop the chopped pieces in my mouth all at once, like ripping a Band-Aid off just to get it over with quick, and quaff the beer down behind it, chasing it down, about three-quarters of a Samuel Adams in one belt. And wait. Watch some T.V. Play a little music. Kill about an hour and a half. Drink about four more beers. Eventually, the objects in the room start to develop rainbow colored auras around them, kind of the effect you get when you look at old-time 3-D pictures without the glasses. The carpet, normally beige, now looks like a kaleidoscope, pattern and colors constantly moving, ever-changing.

Ice Skate

2008-05-02T08:33:00.002-05:00

I'm wearing a scratchy wool pea-coat and leather gloves, sweater and a knit hat. The skates are lashed to my feet and ankles, too tight, you can never get size 12 rentals that fit right. I'm breathing refrigerated air with a vague metallic smell, which reminds me of the walk-in freezer at the restaurants where I've worked. There's a tentative, slippery stumble onto the ice, would-be hockey players and figure skaters go blowing past as I take awkward steps along the rail, pigeon-toed, weak ankles turned in. If this were wood or concrete, and the steel blades replaced with wheels, I'd be one of the hotshots. But no, this isn't roller skating, and I'm just another amatuer out with the wife and daughters, humoring their wish to indulge in the romance that is Ice Skating. I get the hang of it eventually, but it is fundamentally different from roller skating, and this California boy will feel out of his element in a place where it's always Michigan or Wisconsin.

Dashboard

2008-04-25T08:41:00.002-05:00

It was about 4 AM when Garry-Mark came staggering into the bedroom, and informed me that he had just wrecked my 1963 Buick LeSabre. Most folks pronounce this as "Le Say-ber", but he was an idiot and said "La Sah-bray." What a tool. We drove out to the crash scene, and there it was, where the blacktop transitioned to gravel, wrapped around a tree. Literally. The car, formerly straight, was now bent into an obtuse angle (I make it to be about 160 degrees), with the apex at approximately the passenger side front door. The windshield was gone, it had popped out on impact. Garry-Mark had followed it out, and ended up sitting cross-legged on the hood of car, facing the cockpit where he had previously been sitting. He was drunk. He wasn't wearing the meager lap belt that came standard on a 1963 Buick. He (fortunately) didn't hit his head on the 1963 dashboard, which is completely devoid of safety features that we take for granted today. Steel and chrome, with sharp edges and stuff poking out.

Kitty Litter

2008-04-18T08:28:00.002-05:00

Here at the ranch, we have cats to keep the mice population in check. Cats aren't pets here, they're employees. In exchange for their luxurious life of eating and sleeping, their job is to catch mice. We have inside and outside cats. The inside cats are fat and lazy, declawed so they don't tear up the furniture, but my wife insists that they're still not pets, but highly skilled mousers. "Have you seen any mice in here?" she'll say. "Well, no, but I haven't seen any elephants, either." The outside cat is a skilled mouser, so skilled in fact, that she survives almost exclusively on what she can catch and eat. Which is why you might find a vast assortment of beheaded rodents and woodland creatures randomly strewn about the ranch. She likes the heads.

Security Deposit

2008-04-16T07:16:00.002-05:00

It was adjacent to the garage, just a door and a sash window, garage apartment for rent. It may have been all of 250 square feet, just a kitchen and a bathroom and a bedroom with a single bed. The walls and ceiling were tounge-in-groove three-quarter inch solid pine. There would be no punching the walls here. There was just enough room in the kitchen for my drafting table next to the window, and my bike hung up in a corner. There was an ancient Frigidaire, rounded and white, a glacier where the freezer compartment should have been. The apartment upstairs was nicer and bigger, but it's only me, and this is just $110 a month, all bills paid. My friends called it the "Hobbit Hole", because it was so small. They were all reading Tolkien then, and smoking pot and cigarettes; psuedo-intellectuals away from home for the first time, scratching out a living that was good enough for us, because we didn't know any better.

Dial Tone

2008-04-15T09:43:00.003-05:00

Almost an anachronism now, the hum you hear when you pick up Alex's device, a sound invented by the Bell System, before it was American Telephone and Telegraph, before it was Bell South and New York Bell and Pacific Bell, before it was AT&T and Cingular and then AT&T again and Sprint and Verizon and Nextel. Cell phones don't have a dial tone, and soon there will be a whole generation who grew up not knowing that a phone had to be hard-wired to a jack in your house, and a mysterious man would arrive in a green truck with wierd tools on his belt to work on it, because it was illegal for common folk to simply touch the inside of telephone. A whole generation who use these Star Trek communicator-like things that you can carry around in your pocket, and send pictures and email. Just try to do that with your old Western Electric dial-up dial phone. It was heavy, all of it, plastic and metal and magnets and wire. It smelled like the last person who used it, your dad after drinking too much beer, you mom's perfume. If you hit someone with it, it could incapacitate them. It was black, or green, or red, or beige. Or yellow. Or white. But that's about it; none of this metallic red or charcoal black or hideous multicolored beads. You couldn't carry it in your pocket, unless you were Paul Bunyan.

Fruitcake

2008-04-14T10:59:00.002-05:00

Nominally a doorstop or a boat anchor, a lead weight soaked in rum, candies long dead, now embalmed, but not Aunt Esther's. Her's was great; still soaked in rum, lots of it (most recipes call for a few tablespoons, but I'm sure she measured her rum in "cups"), and not a brick either, but moist and light. The first reaction is usually disgust, "Oh, crap, not another fruitcake, " but then "Aunt Esther's? Oh, well that's different, isn't it?" Her sister-in-law, Audrey, was a fruitcake, but it's not her fault. She just couldn't cope with Africa during the big war, being a missionary and the malaria and the jungle. Just not cut out for that. Kids with reumatic fever (it later killed Jack, along with the fatty foods and all that beer), and Adam always gone somewhere. Esther made great kuchen too, and always cooked with real butter and fat. And remained sane. Audrey was a vegetarian.