Holidays | The Blog I'm Not Writing

The Problem I’m Not Talking About

March 29, 2013

Robyn Parnell category-free rants, current events, The Write Stuff (literary life), family life, extended family, politics, Isms (religion), freethought, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men), books & magazines, Oregon, travel, nature, Holidays, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Wright Park, Henrik Ibsen, Evergreen College, Joy, Interrupted, hands free cell phones, Fotografizophobia, Better Marriage Blanket, Richard Nixon treason, LBJ tapes, Vietnam War, sloths, family road trips, Manzanita, Freethought, Easter challenge for Christians, North Korea, Kim Jong-un 2 Comments

A woman clad in body-hugging, long-sleeve Nike shirt, Adidas leggings and New Balance shoes, [1] is running toward me. She is pushing one of those baby jogger strollers. You know how a rhythmic, rocking motion can calm and soothe many a fussy infant? Hers is not that kind of baby.

A lone seagull crouches in the grass, extends its necks and emits staccato, croaking calls, as if doing a series of vocal exercises to warm up for the squawking to come. A man who looks to be in his mid 30′s places a duffle bag beneath the canopy of a large cedar tree and begins some kind of martial arts exercises. I hear a wheezing noise coming from behind me; I’m on “alert status,” as one must be when walking in unfamiliar territory, and stop at a fork in the path and turn around. An elderly gentleman is about 20 feet behind me on the path. He’s rail thin, looks as if a strong breeze could knock him over,. He has a thick mass of shock white hair atop his deeply furrowed head, and he’s wearing a bright neon safety vest. He pumps his arms as he strides past me, flashing a beatific smile and greeting me with a cheery, “Good moooooooorning!” I take the fork to the right, and soon I hear the familiar, shuffle shuffle crunch snuffle snuffle that heralds the approach of a biped and its dog, respectively walking and inspecting the twig-strewn gravel path. Ahead of me to the south, a sleek black lab, let off its leash by its human, intensely and hopefully [2] streaks toward two seagulls resting on the grass by the duck pond. The birds watch the rapidly approaching canine, waiting until the last moment before nonchalantly spreading their wigs and rising helicopter-like over the dog, which rockets beneath them. The dog slows down for a nanosecond, glances back at its human, resumes its speed and slightly changes direction – reminding me of how a cat, when it somehow fails, begins to casually groom itself as if to say, Oh yeah, I meant to do that.

The simple sights and sounds of a city awakening to the assurance of a beautiful day.

MH, Belle and I are staying in an olde apartment building (ca 1912) across the street from the perfect venue for a morning – or afternoon or evening – walk. Wright Park is a 27 acre arboretum with a series of gravel loop trails, a duck pond, a lawn bowling/bocce ball court, a botanical conservancy, several themed works of bronze statuary and one seemingly random memorial. As my après-walk internet search later confirms, I’m not the only person to have wondered why, in the middle of a Tacoma park, is there a monument to Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen? [3]

We are in Tacoma[4] for three reasons.
1. to return K to college (UPS).
2. Belle is interested in UPS,[5] and is doing campus tours and other activities UPS offers to prospective students. On our way back to Oregon we will stop at Evergreen College in Olympia, for similar check-out-the-school exploring.
3. there is no third reason.

K came home for his spring break last week. At the end of the week we made a two day trip to Manzanita and then drove the scenic route [6] to take K back to UPS. It seems as though all of Tacoma was out when we arrived on Saturday afternoon. There is something about Tacoma on a sunny day that reminds me of San Francisco. Perhaps it’s the city’s many hills, and the view you have atop them, to the north, east and west, of the bay (Puget Sound’s Commencement Bay, in Tacoma’s case). In cities like Tacoma and San Francisco, which are known for their often overcast/inclement weather, a clear, bright sunny day seems to bring out the best in residents and visitors alike.

Just in case you were wondering, after reading that last comparison, I neither smoke nor inhale. Apologies to San Fransiscoites: the afore-mentioned weather rumination is the only Tacoma characteristic that reminds me of The City. Your beloved Baghdad by The Bay’s charm remains intact, and unique.

Saturday night, after dropping off K at his dorm, Belle, MH & I had dinner at Pomodoro, in Tacoma’s Procter district. Not long after we were seated Belle removed her sketch pad and pencils from her purse. She and MH were seated across from me, and Belle looked in my direction as she began to sketch. I turned around to see if perhaps a cute waiter or bus boy was lurking behind me. Nope. This put me into a rather mild existential panic. I tried my best not to sound like a bad Robert DeNiro imitation as I asked, “Are you sketching me?”

“Yes,” Belle replied. “Hold still.”

I didn’t hold still. None of us held still. We were doing restaurant-things: eating, drinking, lifting napkins to our mouths, answering questions from our server, as well as allegedly conversing with one another. Belle said nothing more, but from her heavy sighs and eyebrow gymnastics it was apparent that she was disappointed with my lack of stillness, and other attributes that render me unfit for sketching.

I do not translate well to photos. I am not a still life, and loathe having my picture taken in any form and for any cause. The reasons for this are not particularly complicated or interesting; they are known to those supposedly closest to me, and in a kind and just world (calling Mr. Rogers) would be respected, even if not “understood.” This is rarely the case.

From the POV of a fotografizophobic, [7] when people gaze at you intently and allegedly dispassionately, judging the contours (read: inadequacies) of your bone structure and other facial features, hearing them say, “Hold still so I can sketch you/take your picture” is the emotional equivalent of hearing, Hold still so that I may throw acid in your face.

Unsolicited, adult-to-adult advice: when any sentient being declines to have their picture taken by you, respect their wishes and move on. Do not whine and wheedle, do not attempt any form of emotional blackmail (“The family reunion shot will be ruined if you’re not in it, and who knows if Uncle Anus will live long enough to attend the next one!”). Unless I am renewing my driver’s license and you are the DMV camera dude, or you are the hospital’s medical photographer sent to document my Mayo Clinic-worthy bulbous axillary tumor, back off. It’s that simple.

* * *
We interrupt this family travelogue to bring you a political rant.
Your regular programming will return shortly.

Department of I’m glad he didn’t live/I wish he’d lived to see this

My father had an inexplicable, embarrassing (to me) fascination with Richard Milhous Nixon. He’d been to Nixon’s “Western White House” home in San Clemente on official (IRS) business and had met the then Prevaricator Commander-in-Chief. To a man of my dad’s generation who began life as a dirt-poor country boy in a southern family of share croppers, meeting The President must have been seen as a pinnacle of the American dream. Thus, I tell myself my father’s interest was a case of celebrity worship, or that all-too-human fascination with any personal brush with power, and not that he actually admired the lying, venal, foul-mouthed, paranoid, commie-baiting, racist contender for worst president ever.

I thought no new revelations about Nixon could ever surprise me, even though I knew there were more tapes and documents yet to be declassified. Still, it was chilling to read the revelations contained in the LBJ tapes about just how low RMN would go to obtain power. In 1968, fearing that the Paris Peace Talks would end the Vietnam War and thus his election chances, Nixon secretly intervened to sabotage the negotiations. He sent his envoy to get the South Vietnamese to pull out of the talks, promising them “a better deal” if he were elected. LBJ, informed of Nixon’s treachery by the FBI, felt Nixon was committing treason, but feared going public with the information for several reasons, including national security concerns and having to reveal that the FBI and the NSA were bugging the South Vietnamese ambassador’s phone and intercepting his communications. Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, informed of the situation by LBJ a few days before the election, decided it would be too disruptive to the country to accuse the Republicans of treason, especially if the Dems were going to win anyway (they were ahead in the polls).

What is that old saying, something about how all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing?

The peace talks collapsed, Nixon ended his campaign by promising an alternative to the inept Democratic strategy – look at them, they couldn’t even get the South Vietnamese to the negotiating table! – and won the election with less than 1% of the popular vote. His “better deal” led to the war dragging on until 1975…which caused the additional deaths of Twenty. Two. Thousand. American soldiers. [8]

Despite – or perhaps because of – being a fiction writer I’m a huge fan of reality. A part of me wishes my father could have read the transcripts, and that he and I could’ve discuss the revelations, and that he would have been able to understand at least a part of my vitriol for RMN, which is best expressed by Hunter S. Thompson’s He Was A Crook. Another part [9] wimps out on reality, and tries to embrace the idea that an old man went in peace, holding on to whatever fantasies he had, the Nixon one (oh….ick) included.

Richard Nixon…He was the real thing — a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that “I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon.”
(Hunter S. Thompson, writing in The Atlantic, May 1, 1994)

* * *

More freethinker troublemaking:

“Leave No Stone Unturned” An Easter Challenge for Christians

* * *

“It’s the problem…that no one likes to talk about. No wonder they call it Silent But Deadly.”

How’s that for a commercial lead-in? But really, ladies and germs,[10] The same type of fabric used by the military to protect against chemical weapons can be yours, with the purchase of the intriguingly named Better Marriage Blanket. Unfortunately, it’s not what you’re thinking. Or, maybe it is. Oh, who cares – any product with the selling point “offending molecules are absorbed before anyone knows they’re there” is worth a moment of your attention, right? Not only that, it’s given me the idea of how to solve the North Korea situation. Get our Navy Seals to wrap Kim Jong-un in a Better Marriage Blanket, and it’ll be like he’s not even there.

Speaking of other problems no one likes to talk about, there are those family road trips that do not end in all sweetness and light and witty anecdotes. Unsolicited adult-to-adult advice, revisited (the photography-free version): do not endure treatment from family members that you would find intolerable coming from anyone else.

Smarter people than us said this:

* Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
― Alexander Pope

* There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
- Martin Luther King Jr

* Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
- George Carlin

* * *

Joy, Interrupted: An Anthology on Motherhood and Loss. Hmm, not the feel-good title of the year, you say? The collection contains some beautiful, intriguing, moving essays, poems and fiction on the subject of loss in the context of motherhood, including, in the last category, a story of mine. Two years ago I read the editor’s call for submissions and submitted my story “Maddie is Dead.” [11] It was one of those made-me-shiver incidents when the editor contacted me to say that she loved the story and wanted to include it in the collection, and by the way, is the story indeed fiction (it is), and by-the-by-the-way, did I know that her deceased daughter was named Maddie?

The anthology should be in book stores later this year and is available for pre-order on Amazon.

* * *

One last gasp at the road trip story. It was our first night in Tacoma, in the afore-mentioned apartment with Belle & Mark, and Belle was cranky due to a nasty, lingering cold and (gasp) no TV on site. She turned down any suggestion I had for playing cards, games, etc. I passed the time doing an online search for…hmmm, parameters, hmmm. What would be a spirit-lifting image to see? How about sloths wearing onsies?

Best. Search. In. A. Long. Time.

An adorable Bradypodidae, dressed in baby clothes. Hijinks are bound to ensue.

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] The Clash of the Titans?

[2] Warning: anthropomorphizing zone ahead.

[3] A Norwegian-American artist sculpted a bust of Ibsen, his mentor and friend. Three bronze busts cast from the original ended up in places with large populations of Norski immigrants: St. Paul, MN, Wahpeton, N.D., and Tacoma. Just because.

[4] The Tacoma narrative was written earlier this week, on Sunday and Monday.

[5] to her brother’s genuine if mild apprehension.

[6] Up the Oregon coast, crossing the Clumbia River at Astoria, following the Willapa Bay, cutting over to Olympia at the small town of Raymond. Which led us to wonder if there was a man in the town named Raymond, and if so, do all of the townspeople like him?

[7] Fotografizophobia is the fear of having your picture taken.

[8] .and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians soldiers and civilians.

[9] The part spelled “protective daughter,” no doubt.

[10] A lame popularized by Milton Berle in the 1950′s: “Good evening, ladies and germs. I mean ladies and gentlemen. I call you ladies and gentlemen, but you know what you really are.” It was funnier then. Supposedly.

[11] Previously published in The Externalist, issue 4, October 7.

The Woodpecker I’m Not Strangling

March 22, 2013

Robyn Parnell annoyances, books & magazines, community, extended family, family life, foodie, friends, Holidays, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, nature, Oregon, politics, The Write Stuff (literary life), YEE HAW! 4 Seasons in 4 Weeks, cars and cellphones, CPAC, distracted drivers, farting preacher, illiterate feedback, Irish, names, Northern Flicker, singing goats, Suzanne Mathis McQueen 4 Comments

It’s the season. We’ve been reclaimed by a Northern Flicker.

I love woodpeckers, and the Northern Flicker is especially striking in its coloration and behavior. About that behavior – that striking behavior.

During their March – June breeding season, a flicker calls (makes a loud, rolling rattle with a piercing tone that rises and falls in volume several times) and drums (repeatedly and rapidly pecks a tree or other solid object) to communicate with a mate, or proclaim its territory and attract a mate. But why settle for drumming on a mere tree when you can make a MUCH LOUDER SOUND OMG YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LOUD by using our chimney flashing as a drum skin?

“Yo, Freddy. Flicker,” I said, while pounding the exterior of the chimney with a pole to convince him to seek friendlier territory. “I understand that this is your equivalent of placing an ad on perfectmatch.com, but your strident call is going down our chimney and into our house, where the residing, non-flicker females neither understand nor appreciate its intended implications. And that repeated bashing of your beak against the chimney flashing sounds incredibly loud and is incredibly annoying for us bipeds, not to mention what it must be doing to your tiny avian brain…and are you perchance a mentally challenged flicker? Just asking.”

Oh, he’s not stupid, and he’s not pecking on metal because he can’t find a suitable tree, according to a Jackson Bottom Wetlands Friendly Biologist ®. A metal object allows Freddy Flicker to make the most noise in the flickerhood. An accessible chimney flashing – jackpot! That is one awesome find for a flicker, who uses its acoustic amplifications to announce to nearby flicker friends and foes, “Here I am! Everything around here is mine, mine, mine!”

Friendly Biologist said flickers will return year after year to the same house if it works for them. And indeed, we’ve seen a flicker pair, and their offspring, at our suet feeder for the past couple of years. I’m firmly in the pro-woodpecker procreation camp. I could just do without them using our chimney for their pre-coital garage band rehearsal, ya know?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Us

We had a dinner party on Sunday to honor son K, who was home from college on spring break and who had recently celebrated his 20^th birthday.[1] Seeing as how Sunday was the 17^th, That Irish Day, we had an Irishy menu [2] and MH made seating cards with shamrocks or some other leprechaun-worthy fauna decorative picture next to each guest’s name. Our youngest guest was the adorable, precocious, getting’-down-with-the-alphabet, 5 year old “Peach.” P had a minor dramatic episode when she noticed her mother’s name card, and she fussed to her father about it. “That can’t be where Mommy is sitting because it doesn’t start with an ‘M.’”

Her mother (whose name begins with S) relayed that story a couple of days ago, and I laughed to read her email. I was older than Peach but way younger than K when I first reflected upon the discrepancy in how adults address children and children address adults. Why was it, I ventured to ask certain tall people, that parents may and in fact do call their children by name, but kids are supposed to address their parents by their relationship? Mom calls me Robyn, not “second daughter,” but I must call her some variation of Mom, [3] even though her name is Marion. I didn’t see what respect had to do with it, but the tall people always included that word in their answer to my question.

INSERT VIDEO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0

A few years back a friend of mine shared this observation with me, about me: When I’m talking about my husband to my kids, I call him by name if I’m speaking about something between he and I (“I’m going to get M a book on owl pellets for his birthday”), and I refer to him as “Dad” if I’m talking about something between him and our hatchlings [4] (“Are you planning on getting Dad an owl pellet for his birthday?”). If MH calls on the phone and wants to speak with Belle or K, I vary the name-thing: “Mark wants to talk with you,” or, “Dad’s on the phone for you.”

I hadn’t noticed that, nor even thought about it, until said friend brought it up.

When I talk about my parents, sometimes I use their names and sometimes their parental “titles,” and sometimes upset my elder sibling, NLM, by doing the former. N was especially sensitive to this after our father’s death, four years ago. To her, N explained to me, it sounded less-than-appreciative of what a wonderful dad Chester Bryan Parnell was, to call him anything other than what we called him when we were kids, which was “Dad.” I reassured her that I have nothing but love and respect in my heart when I call our father by his given name…and warned her that I will likely continue to do so (although, in consideration of her feelings, I try to remember not to do it around her).

I love my father’s name – always have, for many reasons, including that it was unusual, and that he had acquired various nicknames he had over the years. [5] For whatever reasons, his smiling face and gentle, laughing green eyes become even more vivid to me when I think of him, my beloved Dad, as Chet.

* * *

Speaking of my father, I know he would have appreciated the following blurb, for both content and tone.

* * *

Hands free, my ass

To the guy who almost t-boned my vehicle when you turned left, at a stop sign from a side street onto a busy street, and my Madza 3 [6] was so right there, in broad daylight, lights on, no excuse not to see me unless you were distracted, and you looked right at me, or rather right through me, and even though our eyes made contact your brain was somewhere else. Your window was down and your mouth was moving – your car passed so close I could see your ear bud headset and hear you talking to someone who wasn’t in your vehicle – as I slammed on my brakes and swerved.

You are, apparently, yet another fool who has fallen for the lie [7] that hands-free cell phone devices are a solution to the risks of driver distraction. It doesn’t matter if it’s technically legal – once again, the law lags behind to the science. The law will catch up, and using a phone with brains hands-free anything will, eventually, be outlawed. Until then, dude, educate yourself as to the science behind distracted driving. Or don’t educate yourself. Stay ignorant if you must, but stay off your fucking cell phone, in any manner whatsoever, while your vehicle is moving.

* * *

Last weekend provided one of those last minute treats (besides escaping being taken out by a careless driver): friend Suzanne Mathis McQueen drove up to the Portland area from her home in Ashland for a quick weekend visit. The reason for the quickie was both personal (her two all-growed-up sons live nearby) and professional. The pro part involving Suz’s promotional activities in the Portland area for her book, 4 Seasons in 4 Weeks. One of the few people who looks as fine in real life as she does in her author’s photo (I could slap her for that, but I’d rather hug her), Suz is a wise, witty and compassionate person, a pro-woman, pro-man advocate who is also a kick in the pants to be around. Her book uses the unique, even poetic metaphor of the four seasons to characterize the cycles and rhythms of human life (think circadian, and expand). Along with her positive illuminations of life’s phases, the book’s pictures and illustrations are amazing. Flipping through the pages, I felt like I was in an art gallery.

* * *

Department of
Even writing fiction you can’t make this stuff up

A deep, robust belly laugh strengthens the core/abdomen, makes your teeth look whiter and brighter and your children and spouse seem smarter. And cancer – it helps cancer, somehow. Etc. etc. A true belly laugh is a rare thing, as is lucid feedback for a writer. Feedback itself is hard to come by, and when you get it, ’tis sometimes constructive, sometimes neither here nor there, sometimes remarkably irrelevant, and sometimes downright face-palm worthy. As for the latter, my abs are firmer, my teeth whiter, I am cancer free and live with geniuses as per the laughter provided by the following incident.

Last July I’d queried a literary press to see if they’d be interested in considering a short story collection of mine. As per their guidelines I sent a sample story along with the query. They held on to that story for several months, and replied in October that they liked the story but didn’t understand it. I found this amusing; even so, at their request I sent them another story from my proposed collection.

(Note: that second story was published in the summer. One of the editors of the publishing journal told me they particularly liked the story’s narrative structure.)

This week I received an email from “The Editors” of the press. They wanted me to know that they’d given the story to their readers, many of whom liked it and some of whom didn’t. Thus, the editors felt “stalemated” and decided not to pursue my collection, but had asked one of the readers “who liked your work the most” to provide a short note of feedback for me.

Indeed, the feedback was short, although reading anything with the following WTF? gems seemed to last a lifetime. (my comments)

“Her (the story’s protagonist) flashback with ___ needs to come later. I feel like there is going to be a robbery, because she’s a convent store and there’s no conflict, but bring it in sooner. “

(* These “sentences” are almost incomprehensible to me.
* The flashback is exactly where it should be. It would make no sense to have it later in the story, as it sets up subsequent action…which the reader should know, assuming the “reader” actually read the story.
* Reader “feels like” there is going to be a robbery? Gee, maybe that’s because there is a robbery, in that very scene to which the reader refers.
* The protagonist is not “a convent store,” whatever that is.
* And if there is no conflict, how am I to “bring it in sooner”

“My biggest concern is that I don’t have a feel for ___. At first I think she’s kind of sad and structed and wimpy, but then she so boldly goes after the crook….What is her motivation for attacking him? …It’s all conflicting to me.”

(* My biggest concern is that I have a strong feeling that this press is seriously considering feedback from a remedial adult literary program dropout who thinks “structed” is a word.
* What is her “motivation” for attacking him {the would-be robber, aka, “crook” – a term which, BTW, is never used in the story}? Uh, the fact that the robber threatened and then injured the clerk, and the protagonist had the means and opportunity to do something – maybe, that had something to do with it. Ya think?
* Yeah, it’s all “conflicting” to me, too. Probably because I’m kind of “structed.”

The CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) convention, highlights of which included why-won’t-she-just-go-away Sarah Palin mocking Karl Rove and a straw poll in which Rand Paul narrowly defeated Marco Rubio for…for best Conservative Straw, is certainly worthy of commentary. [8] And speaking of gasbags, [9] although I am still enamored of singing goat videos – relax, you’re safe, none embedded here [10] – nothing quite brings a spring to my step as periodically viewing the compilation of the best of The Farting Preacher, aka Robert Tilton. [11] A fitting tribute for the infamous evangelical cheekflapper, and good wholesome fun for everyone.

Wishing you a weekend of love and laughter, and if you’re feeling “structed”, well, let ‘em rip. The hijinks will surely ensue.

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] My proud FB announcement of the occasion: Today my son is old enough to be the son of a mother who has a twenty year old son.

[2] Wine and honey glazed salmon; colcannon, soda bread, orange and green and white veggies.

[3] Or, “Moth-errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” when disgusted as only an indignant child can be with her parent’s cluelessness.

[4] It’s flicker breeding season, perhaps you’ve heard? I’ve got birds on the brain.

[5] Chet was ahead of his time, going for daily runs when…well, when no one else did. An out-of-shape neighbor saw him heading for a run one afternoon and snickered, “There goes Chet-the-Jet.” The nickname stuck.

[6] Zoom Zoom

[7] No doubt perpetrated by the makers of such devices.

[8] But not my me. I’m still too busy laughing about “structed.”

[9] Can I segue, or can’t I?

[10] There’s always next week.

[11] Televangelist Tilton’s Success-N-Life swindle theology taught those so dumb they couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel gullible, credulous people that their burdens, in particular poverty, were a result of sin, but if they made certain “vows” (i.e. donations to Tilton’s ministry), God would reward the vow-maker with material riches.

The Fritatta (for my father) I’m Not Cooking

February 15, 2013

Robyn Parnell current events, extended family, family life, foodie, Holidays, Isms (religion), movies, Oregon, politics, The Write Stuff (literary life) Band of Brothers, Children's Book Week, frittata, Morning Glory, paratroopers, pope resignation, Powell's Books, Samuel L.Jackson, Snakes On a Plane, Steven Spielberg, The Mighty Quinn, Tom Hanks, WWII Comments Off

Monday, February 11. I headed upstairs (where the backup TV/DVD player resides), a glass of champagne in my hand.

“You’re going to watch something – what?” K asked me.

“Band of Brothers.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Of course.”

Monday was the four year anniversary of my father’s death. He’d called the night before, and we talked for a long time, longer than usual (we talked on the phone at least once a week). He was in a reflective mood. [1] One of the many things we talked about was the HBO series, Band of Brothers. The year after the series came out on DVD I purchased the set for my parents – a Christmas gift, I think. Besides being one of the greatest mini-series in the history of the genre, B-B was the impetus for many detailed conversations between my father and me, about his experiences as a paratrooper in WWII [2] and also those of another paratrooper, his brother-in-law, my Uncle Bill. [3]

My family hears the elegiac, haunting main theme wafting down the stairway, and they know where I am. And what I’m thinking about.

I don’t know how to describe the greatness that is Band of Brothers. So I won’t. Just watch it, if you haven’t already. Were I ever to meet Steven Spielberg and/or Tom Hanks, I would thank them, profusely, for producing that series. Not a word about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or The Money Pit would cross my lips.

* * *

Tuesday morning I had leftover frittata for breakfast. Earlier in the week I’m made a kale,[4] potato, onion, Spanish (smoked) paprika, parmesan cheese frittata for dinner. I don’t know if my father ever had a frittata, for any meal. I do know he would have liked it.

A great scene in a greatly underrated movie, Morning Glory:[5] Grouchy, veteran, respected but currently unemployed television journalist Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford, in a credible Mike Wallace mode) has been essentially blackmailed into becoming the co-host of DayBreak, a ratings-poor, national morning show of the “infotainment” style Pomeroy despises. Pomeroy tries to sabotage the show by getting drunk, refusing to banter with co-host Colleen Peck (a cheerfully acid Diane Keaton), and by making use of a clause in his contract that allows him to refuse assignments, like cooking segments, that he considers beneath him. Pomeroy eventually forms a mutual if grudging admiration with Becky Fuller, (Rachael McAdams), DayBreak’s new, “Energizer Bunny” producer. When DayBreak begins to rise in popularity and ratings, Becky receives a job interview from a rival show. Colleen tells Mike that his refusal to adapt has driven Becky away. He goes to the TV set kitchen where food segments are done, and Becky watches in shock as Pomeroy shows the viewers how to make a frittata.

* * *

Always nice to have something to look forward to, and I – we – have May 13 – 19, which is Children’s Book Week.

CBW is the yearly celebration of “books for young people and the joy of reading.” Every year during CBW author and illustrator appearances, storytelling, parties, and other book-related events are held at schools, libraries, bookstores, museums across the country.

Mark your calendars, if you are a local. Tuesday, Tuesday, May 14, starting at 7 pm, moiself and two other authors will be doing a reading and book signing at Powell’s City of Books, at their Cedar Hills Crossing (Beaverton) location. This event has just been scheduled; I don’t yet know all the logistical details it will involve (walking up and down the book stack aisles, wearing a sandwich board advertising The Mighty Quinn?), but you can be certain I’ll post further harassments reminders as the date approaches.

Powell’s is the largest independent new and used bookstore in our solar system, and if you don’t know this, well…. Even if you’re from waaaaay out of town (any New Hampshire readers out there?), you need to make a pilgrimage to Powell’s if you are any kind of a book lover. If not for my event, then soon. So, you can’t fly to Portland in May? Not to worry, there is a Children’s BW event somewhere near you.

Whatever your favorite childhood book is, was, or will be, may the remembrance of it be worthy of the Pretty Purple Toe award.

* * *

No political commentary, nor rehashes of the latest misogynist pinhead proclamations in this week’s post. I am too focused on fathers and frittatas and positive memories to celebrate, say, the resignation of the leader of one of the most wealthy, opulent, hypocritical, corrupt cults on the planet one mere pope. Now, if we could get all priests, imams, preachers, lamas, gurus, popes — and the ovine followers who give them “authority” – to resign…. Yeah, you can wake me for that breaking news.

* * *

In honor of Valentine’s Day, a reminder of that most romantic of date movies, When Harry Met Sally Snakes On a Plane Snakes In a Dish.

Because I can only imagine that when Samuel L. Jackson gets serious about love – about anything – hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] The temptation, of course, is to think he had some kind of premonition. No evidence or proof of that, on my part. Just gratitude.

[2] In his case, training for the invasion of Japan that never came, due to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[3] Bill somehow survived actions from North Africa to Italy to D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge. Not surprisingly, he was hospitalized after the war for what was then called “Shell Shock”, now understood as PTSD.

[4] Observant readers will note that it is bok choy, and not kale, in the picture. What can I say – all the kale went in the frittata.

[5] I love Roger Ebert’s review of what makes the comedy so enjoyable: “It grows from human nature and is about how people do their jobs and live their lives.”

The Candelabra I’m Not Hearing

January 11, 2013

Robyn Parnell books & magazines, current events, games & puzzles, Holidays, music, nature, politics, The Write Stuff (literary life), Yikes! DDAMM, felt, gun legislation, Liberace, Lost in Lexicon, MADD, Misty River, Mondegreens, otters, Pendred Noyce, Scarletta Press, Stephen King, The Mighty Quinn 1 Comment

THE NEW NECKTIE IS HERE! THE NEW NECKTIE IS HERE!

I like things made from felt. Colored balls of felt strung together make the best necklace.[1] When I’m really playing dress-up[2] I prefer neckties, but although there are a quajillion felt crafters in this world (try doing a “felt” search on etsy), none of them made felt neckties. And then I found her: LeBrie Rich.

LeBrie Rich is the proprietor and felt artist (feltrist?) of Penfelt. Once I saw the variety of hand-crafted felt items on her website, from wearables to objects d’art, I said to myself, “Self,” I said, “this crafty craftsperson may be up to a custom order.” And indeed, HRH Ms. Rich, the self-titled (and deservedly so) Duchess of Felt, was game for a challenge. As per my input she designed for me a skinny, pumpkin-orange felt necktie. Adorned with little orange felt balls. My happiness knows no bounds.

You may say I’m a dreamer….

More stories like this, about river otters returning to formerly uninhabitable habitats , is what I want to see in 2013.

* * *

Holiday detritus

♫Peace on earth and mercy mild/goddamned sinners reconciled♫
Ahem…that would be,
Peace on earth and mercy mild/god and sinners reconciled. (Hark the Herald Angels)

While scanning radio channels a couple of weeks ago, I caught the tail end of a program that had apparently featured a Holiday version of Mondegreens. You know what a Mondegreen is, even if you’ve never heard that particular term. A Mondegreen is a malapropism of your ears. Instead of mis-saying the wrong word or phrase, you mis-hear it. The neologism is attributed to writer Sylvia Wright, who in a 1954 Harper’s column wrote about her chagrin at discovering that as a young girl she had misheard the last stanza of one of her favorite Scottish poems, “The Bonny Earl O’Moray.”

What Wright heard: They hae slain the Earl O’ Moray, And Lady Mondegreen.
The actual line was: They hae slain the Earl O’ Moray/And laid him on the green.

Love the experience, hate the name. Mondegreen? Such a delightful oops phenomenon, the kind that makes us certain we heard John Fogerty giving an antsy concertgoer helpful directions on where to recycle his beer:

“There’s a bathroom on the right”

when he was actually singing, There’s a bad moon on the rise, is deserving of a more interesting appellation. Suggestions, anyone?

My all-time, personal favorite Mondegreen in personal to me in that I might be the only person alive who swears she heard the song this way. A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I thought rocker Billy Squire was singing an ode to the love that dare not speak its name – that of Liberace for his favorite lighting fixture.

Turns out Billy Boy was not crooning, “My Candelabra,” but rather, My Kind of Lover. Yeah, suuuuuuure. Take a listen for yourself , and then tell me I was mistaken.

I’d love to hear your favorite aural mishaps. Here are some of mine, listed by “Mondegreen,” accurate line (song/recording artist)

♫ “Midnight after you’re wasted.” Midnight at the oasis. (Midnight at the Oasis/Maria Muldaur)

♫ “The girl with colitis goes by.” The girl with kaleidoscope eyes. (Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds/The Beatles)

♫ “I got no towel, I hung it up again.” I get knocked down, but I get up again. (Tubthumping/ Chumbawumba)

♫ “Excuse me, while I kiss this guy.” ‘Scuse me, while I kiss the sky. (Purple Haze/Jimi Hendrix)

♫ “Let’s pee in the corner/Let’s pee in the spotlight.” That’s me in the corner/That’s me in the spotlight. (“Losing My Religion”/R.E.M.)

♫ “She’s got electric boobs/her mama, too…” She’s got electric boots/a mohair suit… (Bennie and the Jets/Elton John)

♫ “Are you going to starve an old friend?” Are you going to Scarborough Fair? (Scarborough Fair/Simon & Garfunkel)

♫ “Baking carrot biscuits.” Takin’ care of business. (Takin’ Care Of Business/Bachman-Turner Overdrive )

♫ “Four-headed woman.” [3] More than a woman. (More Than a Woman/The Bee Gees)

♫ “Ham on rye.” I’m alright. (I’m Alright/Kenny Loggins)

♫ “I’ll never leave your pizza burning.” I’ll never be your beast of burden. (Beast of Burden/The Rolling Stones)

♫ “I’m the god of Velveeta.” In the garden of Eden. (In-a-gadda-da-vita/Iron Butterfly[4])

♫ “Pretty Woman, won’t you lick my leg.” Pretty Woman, won’t you look my way. (Pretty Woman/Roy Orbison)

♫ “Secret Asian man.” Secret agent man. (Secret Agent Man/Johnny Rivers)

♫ “Since she put me down there’ve been owls pukin’ in my bed.” Since she put me down I’ve been out doin’ in my head. (Help Me Rhonda/Beach Boys)

* * *

Holiday detritus: The sequel

Despite having abdicated my presidency of the National Sarcasm Society,[5] I have sometimes been accused of viewing the world through jaundice-colored glasses. But my inherent skepticism re sentimentality goes on hiatus for Misty River‘s poignant, Don’t Take Down the Mistletoe. Even a reputed cynic like me can become teary-eyed when I hear this song, with its beautiful harmonies and the theme of appreciating that which so often seems unnoteworthy – the simple joys of what is (and who are) right in front of you. It gives hope to Old Married Farts® like moi.

* * *

That’s enough for a heart-warming interlude. Leave the mistletoe up, sure, but it’s time to get re-pissed about something.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, former astronaut Mark Kelly phoned his wife, the former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who as we all know was gravely wounded in the 2011 Tucson shooting. As per an interview with the Washington Post, Kelly said to her, “Gabby, we can’t just put out a statement anymore….If we just talk about it, things won’t change. We need to try and help.”

I applaud Giffords’ and Kelly’s launching of an anti-gun violence organization to take on the NRA and pro-assault weapons lobbyists and push for legislative changes in America’s gun laws. This is a pathetically long-delayed baby step[6] in addressing an incredibly complicated issue[7]…but all the legislation in the world won’t make a difference until there is a critical mass of attitude adjustment. This country needs a movement to change awareness and perception re firearms, ala MADD.

I’ve heard it said that the slack jawed and simple-minded good-hearted denizens of Droptrou, Alabama will never understand the benefits of regulating civilian ownership of military weaponry, and will cling to their guns like cheap, zero-ply, recycled environmentally-friendly toilet paper to a dingleberry. But there are reasons for hope.

Can you picture today, in 2013, someone bragging about how he consumed three six-packs at ____ (Thanksgiving dinner; Joe’s Bar; his mother’s bat mitzvah), then drove home and took out his neighbor’s lawn jockey when he tried to park in his own garage but ended up on their front porch?

Uh…you can imagine that? Yeah, me, too.

Okay, there are still yahoos like that, and probably always will be. But the number of fatalities related to DUI has been declining in the past 30 years and continues to fall. This is due in large part to a radical change in societal attitudes towards DUI since Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was founded in 1980.

It may be hard to remember that prosecuting attorneys used to defend themselves for not pursuing drunk drivers because they could rarely get a conviction. The P.A.s (and the drunk’s defense attorney) could count on at least a couple of jurors thinking to themselves, “Gee, I’ve driven ‘under the influence’ and I’m not a bad person – besides, the defendant didn’t mean to crash into the station wagon and kill that woman and her daughter and injure her husband and two sons[8]….”

Society needs a MADD-style movement applied to guns. We’ll never be fully able to reason with a truly deranged person; I got that. But I think that the alteration of the association of machismo and even patriotism with civilians having and using guns for anything other than sport shooting and subsistence hunting[9] is possible.

Many hunters hold nothing but scorn for their so-called peers who use semi-automatic or other assault style guns. They consider it ungallant, unsportsmanlike[10] to say the least, and note that no “true hunter” should need – or want – an Uzi to bag a deer.

The drunk driver, once an inspiration for comedy and boys-will-be-boys type excuses, is now an object of revulsion. In addition to the criminal penalties and civil liabilities resulting from a DUI conviction, I think the vast majority of Americans would be horrified, ashamed and humiliated to be known as someone who drinks and drives. Imagine the change, if the same could be said about guns.

Dude, you bought an AR15? What’s the matter – the Viagra not working for ya?

Disclaimer: my support for the attitude-adjusting work of MADD is in no way intended as a slight against a related organization, D-DAMM (Drunk Drivers Against Mad Mothers).

“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you’ll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.” ― Stephen King

* * *

One of these days I’ll gripe blog about yet another fiction writer’s dirty little secret: the lack of time to read other people’s fiction. Here’s a recent read I’m glad to have found time for: Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers by Pendred Noyce .[11]

(I loathe the “age range” rankings common to the (American) book selling biz, and although both Amazon and Barnes & Noble put this book in their 9-12 readers category I recommend this book for adventurous readers aged 9 to 90.)

It doesn’t seem right to be at a loss for words when describing a book with “Lexicon” in the title, but that’s where I find myself after reading Noyce’s unique tale. Nevertheless (however; even so; all the same; as Emily the llama might suggest) I’ll give it a try.

Cousins Daphne and Ivan get more than they bargained for when, attempting to relieve their boredom on a rainy day, they embark on a treasure hunt that takes them from a magical cupola in their Great Aunt Adelaide’s barn to and through the enchanting, mind-boggling and sometimes frustrating Land of Lexicon. As with all remarkable treasure hunts, a quest is involved: all of the children are missing from the various bordering, bickering villages of Lexicon, and their disappearance has something to do with the extraordinary, shimmering lights in the sky. The cousins must keep their wits (and nouns and adjectives and verbs…) about them as they traverse the peculiar, charming worlds of Lexicon, where they must solve a succession of puzzles involving imaginative syntax and math mysteries …

Gotcha, you sneak! – you might say at this point – this is a book adults want kids to read. As in, give ‘em an alleged adventure story to stealth-bomb them into absorbing some grammar and algebra lessons? Yes, it’s fantasy with “educational elements,” but the learnin’ stuff is expertly woven into the story (it is the story), and there’s nothing sneaky about it. Occasionally the narrative is too clever for its own good (if that can be considered a criticism) and the cast of village characters can be hard to keep track of, but it is refreshing to find a book that entices, rather than insults, the intelligence of both its characters and its intended audience. Plus, you gotta (okay, I gotta) love a cast that includes Emily the loyal, thesaurus-ical llama, the verb-loathing Noun Man, the Mistress of Metaphor, bee-keeping witches, Mr. Prosaic, and other quirky characters prone to spouting lines like, “These lands exist as theoretical constructs, not tourist attractions!”

Oh, and the kids save the day and survive getting stung by grammar-sensitive bees. Hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] Because I say so, that’s why. Also, whenever I wear a felt ball necklace someone always asks if they may touch it, which gives me the opportunity to graciously reply, “Yes, you may fondle my balls”.

[2] And for me, it is playing. Anything other than my workout clothes or tie-dye t-shirts is dress-up.

[3] There needs to be a special award for this one, because a four-headed woman would be more than (just) a woman…wouldn’t she?

[4] The band themselves, drunk during a rehearsal in 1968, botched the lyrics, and decided to keep them this way. That is, the in-a-gadda way, not the Mondegreen, cheese-product way.

[5] official fundraising motto: “Like we need your support.”

[6] Paging Congress: report to Giffords and Kelly to be fitted for your testicular implants.

[7] Is anyone willing to substantively address the failure of deinstitutionalization?

[8] Which is what happened to friends of my family, 11:30 on a Sunday morning, on their way to church. A drunk driver blew through a red light. The surviving sons both suffered permanent brain damage.

[9] And those rare cases of real and specific threat to one’s self or family (e.g., being stalked by a gun nut)

[10] Until you arm deer or quail or whatever you target with equal weaponry, I consider all sport-hunting of animals to be the ultimate definition of unsportsmanlike.

[11] Disclosure: although I’m no relation to the author and have never met her, my book The Mighty Quinn is forthcoming from Scarletta Press, Lost in Lexicon‘s publisher.

The Butt Cheeks I’m Not Cooking

January 4, 2013

Robyn Parnell current events, extended family, family life, foodie, friends, games & puzzles, Holidays, music, politics anti-gay bigotry in sports, cat turds, Fiscal Cliff, fish cheeks, French, gay civil rights, halibut, John Lennon, KenKen, New Seasons Market, New Year, NY Times Crossword Puzzle, salon.com, Topsy the Elephant 4 Comments

Lizards may not have lips, but fish have cheeks. The former are imaginary; the latter, delicious.

I’d ordered fish cheeks at restaurants but had never found them available for purchase. An Oregon coast fishmonger told me that the much-prized fish cheeks were sold mainly to restaurants and were rarely available in retail markets. The first time I saw halibut cheeks on sale was over ten years ago, at the newly opened branch of a locally-owned organic market (a shout-out to our beloved New Seasons!). I checked out fresh meats section of the store, passing by other patrons who stood in front of the beef, poultry, lamb and pork cases while the butchers took their orders. When I reached the seafood display case I nearly mashed my nose against the glass with excitement, and the fishmonger smiled in appreciation.

“Look what you have!” I blustered. “You have halibut cheeks!”

“Butt cheeks?” The woman to my right gasped and dropped a freshly wrapped package of New Season’s house-made chorizo in her shopping cart. “They sell BUTT CHEEKS?”

I exchanged bemused glances with the fishmonger, who, I could see, was about to enlighten the aghast shopper. Greedy moi launched a preemptive strike[1]. “Yes, they do.” I grinned at gasping sausage woman, and cheekily (sorry) patted my own behind. “They are considered a delicacy in some Eastern European countries.”

I was able to buy ‘em all: two pounds of halibut cheeks.

Sweet and tender, with a flavor and flaky texture that is often compared to with lobster,[2] halibut cheeks are so tasty on their own that IMHO, the KISS[3] doctrine applies to their preparation. Here’s how we celebrated Little New Year’s Eve[4] at the Black Cat Café,[5] with dear friend and discerning dinner guest, LAH.

Yummers Halibut Cheeks (serves 4)
-1 pound Halibut cheeks (about 8 – 12 pieces)
-EVOO
-Sea salt
-2 ½ T unsalted butter, divided
-2T freshly squeezed lemon juice, divided
-lemon wedges

Film two large cast iron pans with EVOO and heat the pans over medium-high heat until the oil is hot but not smoking. Sprinkle both sides of the cheeks with salt; place cheeks in the pans (don’t overcrowd – give ‘em plenty of gasping room). Sauté the cheeks for 2 minutes. Flip them over, cook second side for 2 minutes. Add the butter and lemon juice (dividing them among the two pans). After 30 seconds flip the fish again, so that both sides are coated with butter. Cook for another 30 -60 seconds (do not overcook; depending on thickness, total cooking time for the cheeks should be a mere 5-6 minutes). Plate and serve with lemon wedges to squeeze on top.

Don’t ask don’t tell

During this lovely dinner, I sniffed a cat turd. There’s no graceful segue; it happened.[6]

I heard something scuttling on the floor by my chair, and with all the holiday goodies we’ve been given (including a package of chocolate goober things called “Moose droppings”) I assumed the cats had once again gotten up on the counters and knocked down some treats down…. And I screamed at K when he said, “Yeah, I was going to say to you when you picked that up, ‘I think it’s a cat dingleberry.’”

Don’t ask. Oh, but you didn’t, did you? I told, without being asked. And if you’re a Facebook friend of my daughter’s, you already know.

* * *

♫ So this is Christmas/And what have you done
Another year over/A new one just begun ♫

As much as I have always loved the Tweenolidays[7] I have a love/hate relationship with New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I have been to and hosted my share of entertaining New Year’s celebrations; still, more often than not, it’s a couple of days to tolerate, not anticipate. This is methinks, a combination of three factors:

1) The Ghost of The Younger Years ® rattling its memory-chain of the Are We Having Fun Yet?! pressure: It seemed to me that I did not have the kind of festive/bacchanal/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new adventures immortalized (and exaggerated, yeah, I know) in cinema and literature, and thought that I was supposed to do that, even if I didn’t want to, and that every other person on the planet was Having A Great Time save for moi;

2) The gut-check of the Mature years: I’ve passed a certain AARP- significant age, and that effin’ John Lennon song gets played over and over this time of year, the lyrics of which seem to taunt me with the reality of the insignificance of my accomplishments during the past 365 days (“…and what have you done?…another year over….”)

3) There is no factor #3.

* * *

A new year. Here we are, two thousand and thirteen. Fiscal cliff, schmiscal cliff. We stared into the void. Dutiful American © that I am, I am supposed to ponder…something. I believe it is my patriotic duty to declare, “No matter what else happens, at least my taxes might not go up.”

Not to be flippant, but the issue was so complex; I tried to find a study guide to help me understand it, but apparently they don’t make Fiscal Cliff Notes.

A New Year. Here we are, two thousand and thirteen. That bears repeating, because just like the intestinal gas bubbles caused by your uncle’s New Year’s Blowout Chili-dawg casserole, the boogeymen of yesteryear keep surfacing.

Despite the number of professional male athletes who spoke out in support of LGBT on rights in 2012, a recent Los Angeles Times article detailed how gay athletes still feel unwelcome in pro sports. To come out as gay (which no active NFL, NBA, major leagues or NHL players have done) is considered a “career-ending” truth-telling, largely – gee, I’m just guessing here – due to attitudes like those of Detroit Tigers right fielder Torri Hunter.

The über-masculine named Torri told the Times that he believes an out gay teammate would make him “uncomfortable.”

“For me, as a Christian…I will be uncomfortable because in all my teachings and all my learning, biblically, it’s not right,” Hunter said. “It will be difficult and uncomfortable.”

All his learning. Okey dokey. Has Hunter done any learning about how someone with his skin color[8] playing baseball alongside white teammates once made the majority of white Americans “uncomfortable,” because in all their teachings and learning, biblically, the “mixing of the races” was not right?

BTW, this isn’t the first time Hunter’s insight-free jaw flapping statements have gotten him attention. In a 2010 interview with USA Today about the changing demographics in baseball, Hunter referred to dark-skinned Latino baseball players as “impostors.”

I look forward to Torri Hunter’s Detroit Tigers teammates addressing the question if being on a team with an ignorant religious bigot makes them uncomfortable. In the meantime, without further ado-doo, Imposter of the Weekgoes to Torri Hunter, for his up-until-now successful imitation of a sentient human being.

The TMI Files

I subscribe to salon.com. I usually find their articles an equal mix of cogent, timely and provocative, seasoned with more than the occasional dash of WTF thinks this crap is news? But on Little New Year’s Eve, the article with the story line: “My Sexual Resolutions,” oh, really, salon? I am so not going there (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz).

I hoped in vain the article would have a subtitle, something along with lines of “…which I vow to keep to myself.” Alas, no.

* * *

This stupid day in history.

On January 4:

- 1649 – English Civil War: The Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial.[9]
- 1885 The first (successful) appendectomy is performed by Dr. W. W. Grant, on Mary Gartside.
- 1974 – President Richard Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

Notable births on January 4 included
- 1809 – Louis Braille, French developer of the touch reading system for the blind
- 1960 Michael Stipe, R.E.M. singer/songwriter

Two significant January 4 bucket-kickers
-1903 – Topsy the Elephant (died in America, born in India, ca. 1875) was electrocuted.[10] Yet another reason to hate Thomas Edison.
- 1999 – Iron Eyes Cody, Italian American actor (nee Espera Oscar de Corti) best known for portraying Native Americans (he was the “crying Indian” in the Keep America Beautiful PSAs).

* * *

2013. I’m going to have to start those…how do you say #@!%& French tapes, en francais? There it sits on my desk, mocking me: Rosetta Stone Francais Level 1. I promised Belle that if she sticks with French for all four years of high school, she and I will travel to France after her graduation. It seems as though I may have to keep that promise, and my two quarters of college French seems like a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Although I’ll have my own translator in the family, I’d like to reacquire some survival basics, other than being able to complain about the lack of TP in the WC (Il n’y a pas de papier dans la salle de bains).

* * *

My KenKen books are full, and this is not to be tolerated in a new year. I’ve become quite fond of the math puzzles[11] and consider doing at least one of them, along with the NY Times Crossword puzzle, a daily, sanity-break necessity. My New Year’s present to moi was a shopping spree on Amazon, where you can (and I did) waste far too much time perusing their puzzles offerings. I limited myself to three: Puzzle-a-day Kenken; Ferocious KenKen, and Crazy for KenKen. It was a tough call to settle for the third book, the full title of which is Crazy for KenKen: 100 Logic Puzzles That Make You Smarter. I kept searching for its companion: Batshit Crazy for KenKen: 100 Irrational Puzzles That Blow Your Higher Reasoning Skills Right Outta Your Nostrils.

The New Year is here; hilarity ensues.

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] There weren’t many halibut cheeks in the display. I wanted them all.
[2] Not by me, but by people who like comparing things to lobster.
[3] Keep It Simple, Sweetie.
[4] The eve before New Year’s Eve.
[5] Aka our dining room. So named for the painting, titled, “The Black Cat Café,” that hangs on one of its walls.
[6] Or, shit happened, as the saying goes.
[7] the days of between Christmas And New Year’s day, briefly mentioned in last week’s post.
[8] Jackie Robinson couldn’t help but be “out” about that.
[9] Some historians believe Charles got a bum deal.
[10] Topsy, a circus/amusement park elephant, had killed three men, including a trainer who tried to feed her a lit cigarette. Although the sadistic trainer was not considered a threat to elephants, Topsy was deemed a threat to humans by her owners and killed by electrocution after the cyanide-laced carrots she was fed failed to do the job.
[11] KenKen is way better than Sudoku, which, IMHO is like watching grass grow while the paint dries.

The Car I’m Not Decorating

December 21, 2012

Robyn Parnell exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, freethought, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, Yikes! Huckabee, prayer inefficacy, rain, Rudolph, Sandy hook shooting, Santa, snowing in Portland, Southern California childhood, The Dropkick Murphys Comments Off

Indeed, the season is upon us. If you need further evidence, let The Dropkick Murphys explain it to you.

Ah, but the season unfortunately includes you-know-what. I’ll get this rant out of the way.

Ban assault weapons! No, ban violent video games! No, it’s the combination of mental illness and access to weapons! At least have the discussion about gun violence! Discussion, schmussion – arm every sixth grader in America!

The enormity of the Sandy Hook tragedy is almost beyond comprehension. Our society, for a slopbucket-load of historical and social reasons (that moiself shall not address at this time), is increasingly called to make even a few baby steps toward comprehension…and consistently fails to do so. Instead, we end up lobbing verbal grenades at one another, occasionally pausing for a moment of silence at yet another memorial service for “the ____ victims” (insert latest shooting locale).

And then of course, there’s Mike Huckabee[1], former Arkansas guv, part-time Republican presidential candidate, ordained Baptist minister and Fox News (surprise!) blowhole. Huckabee is highly regarded in scholarly circles for…well, for nothing. Nothing, that is, that has ever leaked from his lips, although he does get credit for jettisoning something like 300 lbs several years ago. Recent pictorial evidence shows that much of his bulk is returning to the mothership, and his recent rhetoric evinces that most of it is settling between his ears.

In his latest self-serving spewfest exploiting a national catastrophe pronouncement, MH attributes the “violence in our schools” to what he describes as the systematic removal of religion from our schools. Oh, Mike, Mikey Mike, you Hucka-hucka burning…something. The gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the brain train isn’t coming.

I suppose it’s just a matter of time before the Huckster and other religious righties brainstorm knock their empty coconut noggins with the NRA and come up with a plan to place AR15-packin’ preachers in every classroom.

There has been much religious speechifying about the Sandy Hook shootings, to which my reaction is: ick, and ick again. But, it’s more than just ick-worthy. Many of us who are mythology-free find the public prayers/religious invocations that typically accompany such incidents to be almost as galling, and ultimately more perplexing, than the incidents themselves. The rhetoric and rituals are so ubiquitous, oft times it just seems like background noise or white sound, like the distant rat-a-tat-tatting of automatic weapons fire.

Okay. Perhaps another analogy might be more…appropriate? Perhaps not.

Of all the mumbo jumbo about “keeping the victims in our prayers,” “pray for the families of Sandy Hook,” “our prayers were answered when we found out ___ had survived the shooting…” most mind-bogglingly ridiculous to me is when the political talking heads called upon to Respond To This Tragedy ® end their statements with the seemingly obligatory[2] – what is it, invocation? plea? command? suggestion? – “God bless America.”

I do think God Bless America, ala Keep me in your prayers/I’ll pray for you, is one of those phrases that, like much public god-talk, is almost always employed without the benefit of reasoned contemplation. It is used as a reactive response to certain situations – the intellectual/rhetorical equivalent of Gezundheit. But to those who would claim to employ GBA etc., in all sincerity, what are you thinking? I don’t expect an answer, but, really: What particular, magical word combination or incantation do you believe will appeal to your celestial, imaginary friend, whom you apparently believe “is watching over us” and has the ability to intervene in human affairs (to “bless” you) and who may, somehow, someday, do that, despite the fact that if said celestial being exists, on December 14 it was watching over a madman entering a grade school and then twiddling its divine thumbs while six year old children[3] were being slaughtered?

Human beings – in the form of a sad/lonely/alienated/angry/deeply disturbed young man, with – God bless America! – access to high-powered firearms, carried out this vile act. Human beings in many forms – including the principal who died trying to thwart the gunman as he forced his way into the school, the teacher who hid her students in cabinets and cloakrooms but stayed visible to deter the gunman and told him her class had gone to the gym (after which he shot her, and moved on to another location), the teachers who risked their own lives guiding their students to safety, the emergency responders, the community who reached out to friends and strangers alike with generosity and compassion – human beings rushed in to help in whatever way they could.

* * *

Writing this week’s post from Southern California, I’m as close as I get to being a Foreign Correspondent.

Trust me, you do not want to spend several hours of your holiday-season birthday online, trying to book the last seat on a flight that leaves in less than 24 hours. But this is what you’ll find yourself doing if, after making a pre-birthday phone call to your elderly mother, you decide to do A Good Thing ® and surprise her [4] with a visit.

All together now: “What a gooooooood daughter.”

On second thought, hold your applause. I am hardly worthy of such magnanimous regard.

I had a (mostly) enjoyable childhood, growing up[5] in Southern California, to which my increasingly furrowed, sun-blotched skin now attests.[6] Still, I headed north as soon as I could. Although ’tis good to visit with the kinfolk, I get in somewhat of a funk when I travel to the Land O’ My Birth. There are a variety of reasons for this, some of which I may mention in a much later, much less sober post. For now, suffice to say I find the area to be crowded, grimy, desiccated.[7]

As per the latter, considerate Oregonian that I am, I brought some precipitation with me. The mere hint of a light shower elicits the obligatory, “Oh, we need the rain!” from the locals.[8] Out for a walk on Tuesday morning, I experienced a mild epiphany of sorts: I find SoCal almost tolerable in the rain. Even a moderate drizzle functions ala Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak – it serves as a mask or shield, temporarily veiling the area’s aridity, and…well…dirtiness. This place looks, feels and smells different (better) when it’s wet.

THE APOCALYSE IS NIGH, AND IT’S WEARING AN ELF HAT.

Oh, oh oh oh oh, before I forget – another story! Pick me, pick me!

As I returned to my mother’s house after my walk, I spied with my little eye a Hummer parked in her neighbor’s driveway. My self-righteous, what kind of person still has that gas-guzzlin’, manhood-mocking[9] behemoth snort was diverted when I saw something that made me approach the vehicle for closer inspection. The Hummer’s armor was fortified by what appear to be an oversized pair of Mr. Spock ears…no, they’re…elf ears? Plus, an elf hat was wired to the Hummer’s grill.

Soooooooooooooo, I sez to moiself. Last night was not a fluke.

I’d notified older sister NLM (who lives ~ 15 miles from our mother) about my spur-of-the-moment visit, and she’d graciously offered to act as my airport shuttle transport. As was pre-arranged, I called her when my flight touched down Monday evening. “Look for the car with the antlers,” she said, as I was headed for the passenger loading zone. I stood outside the airport terminal, in the dark, repeating “What?” into my cell phone as she in turn repeated her auto antler identification spiel. Sure enough, a red Lexus with antlers attached to the passenger door windows and a red fuzzy nose wired to the front grill pulled over to the curbside in front of me.

“The grandkids love it,” she explained to me. “It’s Grandma’s Rudolph the Red Nosed….”

Well, of course it is.

* * *

But I digress. I was walking.

Walking around my mother’s neighborhood, I crossed the bridge over Santiago Creek (as usual, the “creek” bed was totally dry, even after the rain), to do The Loop. The Loop is a secluded residential circle, composed of two of the nicer (read: most expensive houses) streets in the city. It’s been several years since I’d walked the Loop, but little seemed to have changed. The house’s front yards were, as always, buzz-cut short and impeccably manicured (do lawns have cuticles?). Leaving the loop via the bridge, I walked up and down a series of streets which had apparently been visited by one of those Neighborhood Holiday Beautification Czars, who had intimidated threatened extorted convinced each household to participate en bloc. Every one of the curbside sycamore trees on Ladidah Lane had green plastic wreaths wired to their trunks. I rounded the corner to Decorous Drive, where every curbside pepper tree had oversized, red felt gift bows wired to their trunks. The next street over had multi-faceted, red and green, mini disco glitter ball-style jingle bells affixed to red, green and white ribbons which were…wait for it…wired around the trunks of every house’s curbside Icky[10] tree.

Just as I was starting to get creeped out by the uniformity of the arboreal embellishment I received a text from Belle: Goooood morning!! And by the way – it’s snowing!!

Snow is a rare and generally appreciated weather wonder in the Portland metro area. I phoned my daughter, anticipating the delight I would bring to an old woman when I returned to my mother’s house with the news that it was snowing in Hillsboro and Belle had a day off from school…except that a somewhat disappointed Belle told me that it was a light dusting of snow and school had not been cancelled.

My mother, who spent the first 18 winters in Northern Minnesota, has a kneejerk response whenever I share news of what typically happens after a snowfall in Hillsboro. She trots out a litany of scornful clichés concerning the wimposity of those who let half an inch of snow close the schools and paralyze the freeways and major roads of a major metropolitan area. Every time she launches into her spiel my knee jerks in response, and I trot out my Litany of Justification (LOJ):

a. Unlike Minnesota, snow is not a regular/seasonal occurrence in the major metro areas west of the Cascades Range (Portland & Seattle).

b. Because of (a), the cities and towns of said NW metro areas cannot justify the expense of having and maintaining fleets of snow removal equipment.

c. Due to the geography/altitude and other climatological conditions that make (a) our default winter weather, it is not consistently cold enough in the Portland Metro Area to maintain snow, as snow, on those rare times when it indeed does fall. It will typically either rain a bit after a snowfall, or warm up enough to cause a brief melt, the temps drop overnight…

d. and we wake up to ice. Not fluffy powdery, stomp-worthy snow, but a slick, traction-resistant, accident-causing, coating of ice. Over everything.

And every time I do this my mother reacts to my LOFJ as if hearing it for the first time, and concedes the points I make in our area’s defense. The next time we participate in this ritual I should mention the upside to (d), which is that the phenomena of a thin but determined coating of ice makes for jolly entertainment for so many of us wimpy Pacific NWers. We cup our hands around a warm, foo-foo beverage of choice, huddle by our TVs, and enjoy the petty, smug pleasure that can only be found by watching the local news channels air footage of the idiot hapless drivers whose vehicles are spinning out and sliding down the hills on The Sunset Highway and other major roads leading in and out of Portland.

* * *

Dateline: just about now. Back up in Oregon. I counted at least seven more variations of the Rudolph/Santa’s elf – decorated vehicles while I was in So Cal. I’ve yet to see one up here. Maybe I just need to get out more?

Hilarity ensues.

Happy Holidays nd Thanks for stopping by.

Au Vendredi!

[1] Rhymes with Fuckatree; how portentous is that? Must be a sign from a god.

[2] For American politicians, lest they be perceived as commie/atheist/homo-loving/socialist/Kenyanappeasers.

[3] Many of whom, if they came from religious families, were likely calling out to their god(s) to save them even as they were being gunned down.

[4] and your husband, and children, and Mastercard balance

[5] Or just living. The “growing up” part is still up for debate.

[6] Waaay too much time spent at the beach. Before the concept of SPF.

[7] A years-ago trip to see my folks, our plane descends toward the Orange County airport, K and Belle have their noses pressed against the windows, their eyes widening in alarm: “What’s that brown stuff we’re flying through?” K asks. “Down here, they call it ‘air,’” I explain.

[8] Although it’s obvious they resent the need, or any interruption to their cloud-free, brown/blue skies.

[9] Nothing says overcompensation (read: I have a small penis) like an oversized vehicle. ..or firing guns at a group of children — make that firing guns at anyone, any thing. Except a block of wood.

[10] Mea culpa, botanists – no fauna is in fact “icky.” Since I can’t remember the name/genus of these trees whose prolific, tiny, elliptical leaves are shed year-round, I resort to the moniker bestowed upon them by my Aunt Erva (“they make such an icky mess all over the sidewalks.”)

The Lye-soaked Cod I Am Not Eating

December 14, 2012

Robyn Parnell extended family, family life, foodie, friends, Holidays, making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, Oregon, politics, reproductive rights, The Write Stuff (literary life) Big-Hearted Big Nose Carrot Man award, helilcopter crash, Intel, Irish, lawyers, lefse, lutefisk, Lutheran parents, mall shooting, Minnesota, nametag, Norwegian, Scarletta Press, Southern California childhood, The Mighty Quinn 4 Comments

Had you been so fortunate to be a local lady friend of mine, you might have received an invitation like this:

Ladies Lefse Party
Wednesday December 12, 2012, 6:30 p – ?

Ladies hosting:
-Robyn Parnell & Belle

Ladies Likely to be in attendance:
-the lovely and talented you

Ladies Unlikely to make an appearance:
-The Lady (and the Tramp)
-Lady Marmalade
-Lady Antebellum
-Michelle Obama and Nancy Reagan, or other Past and Present First Ladies
-Ladies Home Journal
-The Bare Naked Ladies
-Lady Gaga

As always, your munificent, bed-bug-free hosts will provide lefse preparing accoutrements and serve lefse and Norwegian meatcakes for supper, in a festive yet pepper spray-free environment

* * *

I am half-Irish, tribally-speaking (as are both of my parents), but residing within approximately 25% of my genes is a lefse-loving Norwegian. My mother’s full-blooded Irish mother married a full-blooded Norski. Perhaps it was the fabled Irish love for potatoes that was partly responsible for Bapa’s[1] love of lefse. It certainly wasn’t her love of all things Norwegian. Although she adored her husband, Al, she refused to allow lutefisk [2] in her house. Every December Albert J. Hole [3] succumbed to the pull of tradition and purchased a chumbucket load fragrant batch of lutefisk atthe Lutheran Ladies ® Christmas bazaar, and every December Bapa would send her husband outside, in the Northern Minnesota winter, and make him partake of the lutefisk by himself, on the back porch.

* * *

JR always has the best Lefse Ladies Party hat, which she custom designs for the occasion.

When I was a young–un my family’s one nod to honoring ethnicity or keeping The Olde Country Traditions ® was serving lefse and meatcakes for Christmas Eve dinner. The feast would be prepared by Bapa and her eldest daughter, my aunt Erva,[4] who fled Spokane every year to winter in Southern California at Bapa’s house. Although my mother loved lefse she never acquired the knack of making it. Her children[5] have continued the lefse dinner tradition with their own families, though none with the panache and sartorial elegance as the lefse events hosted by yours truly, if I dare say so moiself. And I just did.

* * *

Speaking of lutefisk and other things that stink like an eel monger’s morning breath, Oregon has once again garnered another fifteen minutes of the national news tragedy spotlight, after the mall shooting earlier this week. TV media coverage of the tragedy saw the local stations engage in their typical, nuance-free, breathless blathering treatment (TERROR AT THE MALL!!!!) of anything they call a “breaking event.” The news anchors’ and on-sight reporters’ desperation to fill air time, to say something (even when it’s just been a few minutes after the 911 calls came in and no one really knows what’s going on, therefore there is nothing to say) would have been comical, save for the subject matter.

An interesting sign of the times, methought: a number of phone calls were made to TV news reporters from people who’d been inside the mall and had fled when the shooting started. Apparently, their first thought upon reaching saftey was to whip out their cell phones and share their story with the talking heads. Several callers stated they’d seen the shooter, before they realized he was The Shooter ®. The callers each described a young man wearing a load-bearing vest and a white mask, holding something long and rectangular (a semi-automatic rifle), running down a mall corridor. Uh…didn’t that seem alarming, or at least noteworthy? the reporters asked the callers. “Sure, but this is Oregon,” one caller replied, “and you see a lot of strange things in Oregon.” Another caller said he assumed the Masked Dude was running “…to join a flash mob,” or similar happening. Yep. If you see something bizarre, assume the Portlandia crew (or Leverage or Grimm ) is filming nearby.

* * *

About ten years ago there was a series of events that got Oregon in the national spotlight. There was the vacationing California family, on their way to the Oregon coast, who were stranded in the Siskiyou National Forest after the husband/father made the fatal mistake of trying to “shortcut” through a mountain range, driving a non-off road rental car on unfamiliar backcountry roads, in winter, in the snow[6]. Then there was the incident involving nine climbers on Mt. Hood who fell into a crevasse (three killed, four critically injured). A military rescue helicopter, which had successfully plucked two of the injured climbers from the mountainside, returned for a third, tricky pickup at an altitude of over 10,000 feet. The helicopter began wobbling – the wind had suddenly shifted, and the copter’s rotors clipped the edge of the mountain. A news crew covering the rescue operation shot spectacular the video footage, which played over and over on the national news (and which was later featured in a National Geographic Amazing Moments special), of the copter plummeting into a snow-covered ridge and tumbling down the mountainside.

By the third event, which I cannot recall, more than a few friends sent me teasing emails to the effect that my MH and I were raising our children in a hazardous territory (“what’s going on in that wacky/dangerous state of yours?”). This prompted our son, K, to come up with a new state slogan[7]: “Oregon – come for the thrilling recreational opportunities, stay for the rescue helicopter ride.”

* * *

There are several recipients deserving of the AssHat of the Week, in particular, yet another knowledge-free man in a position of power, this time a fucking judge, for the FSM’s sake. Superior Court Judge Derek Johnson , who evidently thinks that eating paint chips is a required judicial practice, said that a rape victim whose attacker threatened to mutilate her face and genitals with a heated screwdriver didn’t put up a fight during her assault, and that if someone doesn’t want sexual intercourse, the body “will not permit that to happen.”

But all that all that lefse has put me in a more generous mood, and I’d rather salute something positive. And so, without further ado or cursing, I promise, the Big-Hearted Big Nose Carrot Man award goes to Scarletta Press, whose awesome Director of Publicity, Desiree Bussier, is interviewed by Publisher’s Weekly about the publisher’s new emphasis on children’s literature, which will include my novel, The Mighty Quinn.

* * *

The new nametag’s here! The new nametag’s here!

Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing annual performance review from Intel [8]. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg. Until I did.

One of the many “things” about being a writer, or any occupation working freelance at/from home, is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens. No one praises me for fixing the paper jam[9] in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to alleviate them…sort of.

About the nametag. You’re at your office party, or a fund raiser for an animal rescue organization, or a neighborhood potluck, your spouse’s family reunion – you’re at an event that is primarily social and so the guest’s professions are irrelevant, and there are a bunch of people who probably aren’t acquainted with one another, so the hosts greet you with those Hello-my-name-is nametags and felt pens at the door. Summon your Andy Rooney voice for this next sentence. Have you ever wondered, when you’re at the kind of party I just described, why some people just can’t leave their credentials behind?

Since I don’t plan on suing the guy who took the last cheese doodle from the appetizer platter, why do I need to know that you’re a lawyer? Yes, you probably worked hard for your degree, as the other guests did for theirs, but in this venue your LL.D. is no BFD, and appending your name with those initials only serves to give the impression that your main credential is that of I.m.D. (imperious dickhead).

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not one of those attorney-haters. Some of my best friends are lawyers.[10] And while the legal profession is much (and often rightly) maligned and thus I chose an easy target for my example, in my experience doctors are the worst when it comes to the afore-mentioned nametag faux pas. If the party has no relation to medicine, not even remotely, and I don’t plan on having a pap smear right here by the punchbowl, why do you think I need to know you’re a doctor?[11]

Hello, my name is

Dr. Pomp O’Ass

Richard Head, Ph.D.; M.D.

I custom ordered my own nametag from a local office supplies store, and it’s finally here! As you can see, it reads Robyn Parnell, N.a.D.

As in, Not a Doctor.

Bring on the next party. I am so ready.

Hijinka ensue.

* * *

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] My maternal grandmother, so nicknamed by my older sister, who couldn’t properly say “grandma” until she was in her late forties.

[2] Some ethnographers believe the preponderance of lutefish in the Norwegian diet was largely responsible for the Norwegian migration to America in the early 1800s.

[3] Yes, Hole. I wonder why my mother never considered keeping her original surname.

[4] I had an Aunt Erva. So did you, although yours may have had a different name. Everyone has had an Aunt Erva.

[5] Her 3 daughters, at least. My brother, I dunno. Yo, bro, are you a Lefse Dude?

[6] The father died of exposure after setting out to find help. The mother and their two young girls were found alive, days later, by a helicopter pilot.

[7] Oregon’s state slogan used to be, “Things Look Different Here.” The Higher Ups ignored K’s suggestion, and in 2003 changed the slogan to, “We Love Dreamers.”

[8] He doesn’t actually work there, but they’d heard he was a good guy.

[9] Always left by the previous user, who loudly wonders who did this evil thing?!

[10] Okay, I have one lawyer friend. If only she were a lawyer-of-color, or lesbian.

[11] I like doctors, too. If only that friend of mine were a doctor, as well. A biracial, bilingual, pan-sexual, multi-cultural doctor and lawyer.

The Classic Songs I’m Not (quite) Dissing

December 7, 2012

Robyn Parnell family life, foodie, games & puzzles, Holidays, music, Oregon, politics, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV amniocentesis, Brussels sprouts, country western music, Garth Brooks, Scarletta Press, Tacoma, The Mighty Quinn, The Partridge Family, University of Puget Sound, zombie Comments Off

♫ Chipmunks chestnuts roasting on an open fire…. ♫

‘Tis the season, oh yeah.

Belle has a pear tree in our front yard. She purchased it, many years ago, using her allowance and babysitting money, and planted it (with MH’s help). Last Saturday she discovered, to her delight, that her father had wrapped the tree’s trunk and branches in green and blue lights.

Not to be outdone in the parental décor department, and because nothing says Happy Holidays like pranking your offspring, I gave myself a decorating project this week. Monday afternoon, walking home from the school bus stop, Belle was greeted by this festive site:

Yes, now she has a ____ in a ____ . I can hear you, humming to yourself.

Belle’s response to my arboreal embellishment was the archetypal teen’s determined-to-stay-cool non-reaction. Part of what made her non-plussment so genuine was that, in a very basic way, she truly didn’t “get it.” MH and I had to explain the Partridge family reference. Seeing as how we are the Cretins Without Cable TV ® family, if Nick at Nite or whatever has the reruns, we’re out of luck.

“Maybe we can check Netflix?” I wondered aloud during dinner. “Or, we can probably find a song or two for her, probably on YouTube.”

Her looked at me askance as she shuffled the cards and passed the deck to her father. MH dealt the next round of Thirteen [1] and said, with possibly the greatest forced nonchalance known to humanity, “I think there might be a Partridge Family album up in the attic.”

After 24 years of marriage, you think you know the man….

Earlier this week I received the preliminary copy of the Marketing Plan my publisher, Scarletta Press, has drawn up for The Mighty Quinn, my middle grade novel. Reviewing the plans was both an exciting and gut-churning, where are my blood pressure pills? task for me. Although I can be the life of the lunch table (or lefse party, as attentive readers will discover next week) I am a pathetic excuse for a self-horn-tooter.[2] The readings and book signing appearances I’ve done for past publications have been ordeals for me.[3] Ah, but who knew that watching a Partridge Family video could be so reassuring? No matter what happens in any public appearance I may have to may be fortunate enough to make, I figure it is highly unlikely I’ll look or act as dorky as the Laurie Partridge character does when she mimes playing the keyboards by robotically flicking her wrists as if she’s trying to dislodge some exceedingly sticky boogers from her fingertips.[4]

* * *

“I couldn’t imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah.” —President George W. Bush, at a White House menorah lighting ceremony, Washington, D.C., Dec. 10, 2001.

That was a truly historical stinker of a Presidential quote. And (how’s this for a segue) some folks think any dish made with Brussels Sprouts is a stinker. Some folks are occasionally right, but mostly, they are wrong. This week, I had some leftover BS – whoa, the judge’s ruling says that acronym has got to go. This week, I had some leftover B sprouts (just lying around, you know, keeping the house safe from bed bugs and Libertarians), and came up with the following for Wednesday night’s dinner.

Let Them Eat (BS) Cakes
- 3 medium shallots, peeled, stemmed & halved
- Brussels sprouts (~ ¾ lb before trimming), stem ends trimmed, outer leaves removed
-3/4 c low fat ricotta cheese
- 2 eggs
-1 t baking powder
-sea salt, freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 1 ½ t or more ground cumin (toasted and freshly ground, if possible)
- ½ c chickpea flour, plus more, if needed
-EVOO (extra v olive oil) or canola or grapeseed oil, plus cooking spray or oil-mist-thingy

1. Place sprouts & shallots in food processor, pulse until shredded, or until evidence of Brussels-sproutness is camouflaged. You should have ~ 4 c of shreds.

2. Use a fork to mix ricotta, eggs, baking powder & spices in a large mixing bowl.

3. Add shredded B-sprouts and shallots to bowl, stir until incorporated.

4. Sprinkle chickpea flour into the bowl and stir. Add more flour if necessary, 1T at a time, until you have the desired consistency.

5. What is the desired consistency? Reflect on this, for a sec. Perhaps recalling those petty but entertaining family spats over the inadequacy of the Thanksgiving gravy[5] will help.
5a. If you’re going the fritter route (ala pakora[6] style) and like using a bucket o’ oil in which to fry foods because you don’t give a bodybuilder’s ass[7] about your arteries, you’ll want the mixture more moist.
5b. For “cake” style (think crab cake texture) you want the mixture just moist enough to hold together but not so dry that it falls apart.

5c. there is no “c” option. Make up your mind.

6. Line a large platter with a piece of wax or parchment paper. Using an oiled or sprayed measuring cup, or just your lightly oiled hands and keen sense of proportion, scoop out ¼ c of the mixture, form/press into cakes, and place on the platter. Place platter in frig and chill at least 20m or up to several hours.

7. When ready to fry ‘em up, film a large cast iron pan[8] with oil, heat pan over medium for two minutes, then add cakes, flattening them with the back of a spatula.[9] Sauté 5-7 cakes at a time (depending on the size of your pan), for 3-4m each side, until browned. Spray or mist the tops of the cakes w/oil before you flip them (quickly remove the fry pan from stovetop; do the oil-spraying thing over the sink, never near an open flame, unless you support the Firefighters Full Employment Act). When cakes are done transfer them to a clean platter and keep ‘em toasty warm in the oven while you cook the remaining batch.

Served with heaping dollops of nonfat Greek yogurt thinned to a sauce-like consistency with a whole lotta lemon juice and spiced with a pinch or so of cayenne.

Dateline: the last weekend in October. MH and I had driven up to Tacoma, to visit son K for the University of Puget Sound’s Homecoming/Parents/Alumni weekend revelry. On Saturday morning, MH participated in the UPS 5k Fun Run while K partook of his idea of Saturday morning fun (sleeping in). I made my way to one of the campus’ cafes, where I sipped the foo-foo drink of the day (pumpkin spice chai; foo foo is sometimes quite yummers), listened to KUPS and read the local (Tacoma & Seattle) alternative newspapers.

Skimming through the events section of Seattle’s The Stranger made me feel young again and older still, all at the same time. We were headed back to Oregon on Sunday the 29^th, which meant – damn! I would have to miss the Zombie Speed Dating event scheduled for the 30^th:

“All (undead) singles 21-39 years old are welcome”…

Oh, never mind. Zero for three.

Scanning the newspapers’ lists of upcoming gigs made me want to extend my visit for another weekend. Surely, I thought, I could talk MH into driving up to Seattle see an amazing triple bill: the bands Bruce Willis’s Smirk and Septic Flesh opening for Bitch Magnet. Or we could trot on over to an adjacent club and catch their house band, Diarrhea Planet. But wait—there’s more. Across town the joints are jumping with the mellows sounds of Truckasauras, White Coward, Bigfoot Accelerator, Laff Hole….

In my college Days of Yore[10] I spent way too much time in my dorm’s lounge, allegedly taking study breaks, which oft-times consisted of my fellow dormies and I dreaming up band and/or song titles of our own. Composing clever band names was easier than actually forming a group or writing songs, and much more practical, given our utter lack of musical talent.

I’ve always had an attraction for song titles that are a story unto themselves. The much (and often rightfully) maligned Country-Western field arguably leads all other musical genres when it comes to evocative titles. “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly” – with a title like that, you don’t even need to hear the lyrics, do you? What I would have given[11] to have composed the inspirational choruses of:

- If My Nose Were Full of Nickels I’d Blow it All on You
- Help I’m White and I Can’t Get Down
- Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart
- Who Bit The Wart Off Grandma’s Nose?
- My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, And I Don’t Love Jesus
- The Pint of No Return

* * *

Twenty years ago, driving home from an yet another unnecessary errand I’d undertaken to keep me busy busy busy on the day I was expecting amniocentesis results,[12] I was aurally assaulted by my car’s radio. Good thing I’m not superstitious, or I might have considered it a bad omen when, two times in a row, I switched the channel because a station was playing my most detested kind of song (“Oh baby come back, I’ll be lower than worm dung if you leave me“), only to find that the subsequent channels were also out to get me.

There I was, driving on a public highway, yelling a How the hell should I know? answer to Michael Bolton’s plaintive (read: screeching) rhetorical entreaty, “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?“

Okay; cleansing breath; punch the radio dial instead of the steering wheel. Punch punch. Oh yeah, just what the doctor ordered: Laura Branigan’s version of the same damn song.

Punch punch punchity-punch. No. This cannot be happening. I’d punched myself right into Harry Nilsson’s plaintive, wailing, “I can’t live/if living is without youuuuu…” Once again I found myself smacking the steering wheel, this time screaming, “Excuuuuuuuse me, but if you can’t live without me then why are you still alive?”

As soon as I returned home I wrote down the lyrics that were swirling through my festered mind. I borrowed an electronic keyboard from a neighbor and painstakingly, one-fingeredly, came up with a suitable tune. I figure the subject matter cried out for a country-western, full-twang treatment; thus was begat my one and only foray into songwriting, the mercifully unrecorded[13], “If You Can’t Live Without Me Then Why Aren’t You Dead?”

Attention, Garth Brook’s manager: if the Garth-man is looking for that next big hit to lure him out of retirement…[14]

And they say nobody writes love songs anymore.

Hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] A card game we often play at dinner. We’re the geeks at the restaurant who pull out the mini-deck of cards after the server has taken our order.

[2] That sounds like some vaguely naughty, self-abuse practice. Not the kind of thing to be mentioned in the same paragraph as a children’s novel. See? I told ya I sucked at self-promotion.

[3] I’m of the writers should be read and not seen school of thought. Not a good fit for the prevailing attitude that everyone should want to be a celebrity, or at least in the public eye, for their 15 minutes.

[4] I hope I’ve redeemed myself for the earlier quasi-sexual reference. Boogers are kid-friendly!

[5] Aunt Erva wanted you to make it soupier and Uncle Anus prefers it clam chowder thick.

[6] An Indian snack or appetizer of almost infinite variety, typically composed of shredded veggies dipped in a gram or chickpea flour batter and pan-or deep-fryed.

[7] Probably not any smaller than the average girly man’s tush, but the musclemen’s gigantamous torso and thighs do give that illusion.

[8] You’re not still using nonstick cookware, are you? That stuff will kill you. Or give you herpes, or shingles or axillary lymph node tumors, or club feet. Whatever you’re afraid of.

[9] I love that word. Spatula.

[10] insert The Waltons theme music.

[11] Well, okay, not much.

[12] Procedure performed due to maternal age, rather than family history of genetic disease, disability or malformation. Unless you think a family tendency to deem The Lawrence Welk Show the height of entertainment qualifies as a disability (and I do). But they don’t have a test for that. Yet.

[13] So far. Hey, the century is young. Any takers?

[14] He just may have to keep on looking.

The Cough I’m Not Suppressing

December 2, 2012

Robyn Parnell current events, freethought, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, reproductive rights, The Write Stuff (literary life), Yikes! asshat of the Week Award, Catholic pedophile apologists, current-events, douchebags, gay civil rights, judgmental, marriage equality, politics, Santa, SCOTUS, The Mighty Quinn Comments Off

Yes, I know it is months before the book’s real-time release, but there is a FB fan page for The Mighty Quinn.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Mighty-Quinn/314422698666956

Like it.
You know you want to.
Please don’t make me beg.

* * *

Now that Santa’s left the proverbial pile of coal in select stockings,[1] it seems fitting to haul out the Asshat of the Week award. I don’t want to be stingy, especially at this time of the year, but really, so many asses, so few asshats.

The Iowa Supreme Court seemed to be a slam dunk, what with their ruling that a woman could be fired if her boss finds her “irresistible.” I’m looking forward to benefiting from the legal wisdumb of the Big Minds in such matters, when the inevitable lawsuit find its way to the SCOTUS, allowing them to rule on the workplace hazards of those deemed to be too fabulous.

As I was saying, the candidates for the award were legion. And during this Solstice season, with its focus on charitable feelings toward one’s fellow human beings, it seems only fitting to list a few of the other contenders.

It seems the Big Daddies of Catholicism spent a good portion of their holy season getting their rhetorical man-panties in a knot. The Imbeciles of Italy’s chief blusterhole spokesman, Joseph Ratzinger [2], used his annual Vatican Christmas message to diss marriage equality and other gay’s civil rights advancements as a “manipulation of nature” and an “attack” on the family. Meanwhile, the gentle folk of Ireland were privy to the gibbering of another pontificating baboon, this one taking the form of Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate[3] of all Ireland (I jest not; that’s his official title). Brady, one of Ratzinger’s fellow pedophile apologists, used his Cardinal’s holiday soapbox to exploit the death of a pregnant woman in a Galway hospital.[4] Brady misrepresented the proposed content of Irish Constitutional legislation while he urged the Irish people to protest plans for legalized abortion (the medical treatment that would have saved the afore-mentioned woman, who suffered an agonizing death from septicemia).

But wait, there’s more. Just days before the RC dudes chugged their Kool-Aid, another public figure was caught after indulging in too much eggnog. I refer to Mike Crapo, the aptly named Republican Senator from Idaho who was DUI’d after a cop caught him blowing through a red light. Crapo, a Mormon who has said he does not drink alcohol,[5] was a member of last year’s “Gang of Six” budget committee and is was considered a candidate for the top Republican spot on the Senate Banking Committee. It wouldn’t surprise me, should Crapo play the penitent, that his party would keep him on their list for the committee. Because there’s nothing our country needs more than a teetotaler drunk Mormon Republican kicking the crap-o out of our nation’s fiscal policies.

Oh, hell’s bells, let ‘em all share it. Supreme Courts, Popes, Irish Primates, Crapos – this asshat’s for you.

* * *

This week, the days I think of as the Tweenolidays, are some of my favorite days of the year. Dec 26-31; the pressure is off while the fun still lingers; there is still another major celebration on the horizon; the seasonal fatigue hasn’t yet set it.

‘Tis also the season to be jolly judgmental. I had the opportunity to refine this art yesterday, while waiting in the checkout line at a bulk/discount grocery store:

The Woman In Front Of Me, whose cartload of items was being scanned by the checker, was going through her wallet and pockets, counting her cash while her way-too-old-to-be-sitting-in-the-shopping-car-seat son dangled his feet from the shopping seat’s legholes. The boy loudly spewed wetness in my direction; TWIFOM occasionally/half-heartedly admonished her son to cover his mouth when he coughed. He ignored her. The next time he coughed I got his attention, smiled at him, and mimed covering my hand over my mouth, indicating he should do the same. He stuck his tongue out at me.

The checker was waiting. TWIFOM apologized for not having enough funds to cover her purchases (“I need to pay in cash”), even as both the checker and I could see that TWIFOM’s checkbook style wallet was bulging with forms of plastic payment. TWIFOM directed the checker to remove and reverse-scan certain items, to get her total down to cash-on-hand. While the checker did this I passed the time by silently critiquing TWIFOM’s choices:

(“No; keep the low-fat mozzarella! Your son does not need that box of Red Dye #2 Krusty Sugar Puffs for breakfast. And neither of you needs that processed lunch “meat,” which, BTW, costs twice as much and has 5 times the fat, half the protein and 100 bajillion times the sodium as the carton of eggs you’re subtracting…Thank you, Sweet Flying Spaghetti Monster, at least she’s removing the Summer’s Eve box – wait,WTF?! She’s changing her mind…she’s directing the checker to rescan the va-jay-jay douche?).

I shut my eyes and took a brief trip down memory lane, back to when I was a health educator in an OB/GYN practice. I had a spiel for the traveling corporate reps who had the misfortune to try to convince me to stock free samples of their “cleansing wash”:

The vagina, like other bodily organs, is self-cleaning; douches are marketed as part of the primitive cultural baggage that teaches women that genitals are icky. Not only is douching unnecessary, the practice is associated with serious health conditions, including bacterial vaginosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility. My boss, Dr. B—, says that your “Summer’s Eve” should more accurately be named, “Summer’s Deceive.” Only a douche would try to promote douching…

It’s one of my fondest memories, that of Fleet Laboratory salesreps leaving skid marks trying to flee our office.

But I digress.

I kept my diatribe to myself and seethed in silence. Meanwhile, TWIFOM placed her V-be-gone product next to a jug of blue-colored sugar water in her “keep” pile and removed – this was so painful to watch, my eyes almost bled – a bag of navel oranges, a second carton of eggs, and a gallon of 1% milk.

Excellent parenting choice. Pay for your lady parts to smell like morning at the bakery while your son’s only breakfast option is to lubricate his Type II Diabetic-inducing cereal with high fructose gel.

After finally settling with the checker TWIFOM bagged her groceries junk. The checker began to scan my items, and I noticed TWIFOM hds left her open wallet (the thing had so many credit cards into its slots it couldn’t be folded shut) on the checkout counter. I hoisted the wallet and managed to catch TWIFOM before she left the store. “Whoops, you don’t want to forget this,” I said. I handed her the wallet; she lamely joked about forgetting her head if it wasn’t on top of her neck, but offered no “thanks.” Nor did she apologize when her son launched one last, obviously intentional, spittle-laden cough in my direction as they exited the store.

On my way to my next stop, the market where I was to purchase the organic produce I am fortunate to be able to afford, I pondered the differing perceptions of, and the relationship between, having good luck and making good choices. I’ll notify the Nobel Prize committee when I figure it all out.

* * *

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.
(Bill Vaughn, American author and newspaper columnist.)

Until next year, when hilarity ensues.

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] It’s too early for a footnote, don’t you think?

[2] Bear in mind that “Pope Benedict XVI” ad nauseum are made-up monikers – attempts to confer an aura of authority to the theology-thumpers .

[3] A fitting label in so many ways, although the RC poobahs would remind you that “Primate” is a title of honor denoting ceremonial precedence in their church.

[4] I blogged about the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in my November 16 post.

[5] But he supported a federal bill to cut taxes on small beer makers (Mormon farmers in Idaho raise barley for Budweiser and Negra Modelo beers).

The Black Friday Sales I’m Not Shopping

November 30, 2012

Robyn Parnell community, current events, friends, Holidays, Isms (religion), politics Black Friday, Blue States, Buy Nothing Day, Pilgrims, Pretty Purple Toe Award, Red States, Secession, Texans, Walter Cronkite 6 Comments

Well, of course I’m not shopping the Black Friday sales today. Black Friday was last Friday. The Thanksgiving week lingers on in my mind; having K and Belle home from school threw off my calendar sense. When all else fails, blame the fruit of your loins.

On the actual Black Friday Day (BFD?), we observed our traditional ode to consumerism: Buy Nothing Day. Getting lunch at a local sports pub doesn’t count, because…well, because. I hadn’t pledged to observe Eat Nothing But Leftovers Day.

* * *

I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.
(Jon Stewart)

Even as a child I was skeptical toward the Disney-fied version of what my school taught about The Pilgrims. The idea that, to this day, there are still people who celebrate the survival of the Plymouth colonists trespassers by thanking a god who supposedly protected and championed the European offensive makes my mouth feel as if I’ve been sucking on a cotton ball.[1] Nevertheless, faced with the mythical vs. factual scenarios –

☺ Pilgrims invited the locals to a feast after surviving their first year in New England.

☺Indigenous Americans broke bread with the invaders they’d saved from starvation, those who later stole their land and decimated their numbers via murder and disease.

– which image would your grandparents favor for their Hallmark holiday greeting card?

* * *

Ah, but I’ve mellowed in my dotage. I am pleased that the observance of the third Thursday of November has evolved into a special day set aside for gluttony gratitude. There was much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, including last week’s politics/world affairs-free blog from moi.

It even seemed as if there were several days (as in, maybe two) that were rant-free. Silence from the Repugnicans – what gives? I began to wonder if the sore losers of the election finally decided to just go away. But, nooooooo. Like a recurrent arse pimple or a psychotic, spurned lover, the acumen-free, neo(lithic) cons are not going to be ignored.

But the latest rightwing hysteria cause caught me by surprise. I’d thought the kind of minds attracted to the secession twaddle would have so many other things on their agenda. After all, they’ve got crosses to burn, mayo-on-white bread sandwiches to eat, pro-wrestling matches to watch, and there are sheep out there, somewhere, in desperate need of lovin.’

But really, some of them sound like they’re serious. And the loudest-sounding seem to be (surprise!) from Texas.

Now, I acknowledge the majority of the whining comes from fringy-wingnut element of politics and punditry. There are many decent, rational, realistic, intelligent and compassionate people from Texas, even some political and media figures I admire, including Ann Richards, Barbara Jordan, Walter Cronkite,[2] Molly Ivins [3] ….

Oh yeah, they’re all dead. Anyway….

Memo to Texas Nationalist Movement President Daniel Miller and like-minded loonies: Stop holding your breath and kicking your feet and otherwise throwing the political equivalent of a marginally potty-trained toddler’s tantrum.

And, hey you — any state claiming to be serious in your girly-man threat to secede: go ahead, make my day. After your residents have ponied up for their share of the national debt[4], don’t let the information highway[5] hit you in the ass on your way out.

Cleverer minds than mine® have taken the secession speechifying seriously enough to come up with about twenty Declarations on the matter. I’ve seen so many variations I can only offer attribution to the version[6] brought to my attention by my alert Swednadian friends. Here it is, with just a bit o- tweaking from yours truly.

~~~~ * ~~~~

The Declaration of Oh please, are you serious? November 2012

From: Red/Slave State Secession Support Group, aka The E.S.A.

To: the Red States Threatening Secession

Dear Red States:

We’re sick of your Neanderthal beliefs and 47% politics. We who support your secession intended to form our own country anyway, and we’re taking all the Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and all of the Mid Atlantic and Northeast states (as per the most recent election, Florida and Virginia have a two-year probationary status).

We believe this split will be beneficial to the hopelessly polarized nation, and especially to the people of our E.S.A., The Enlightened States of America.

You wanna secede? Go for it. A brief summation of the results of your departure:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and almost all of the other slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get Barack Obama and Joe Biden. You get Bobby Jindal, Richard Murdock, and Todd Akin.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
We get Tahoe and Vail and Aspen. You get Utah.
We get Intel, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. You get Chic-fil-A.
We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make your states pay their fair share.
We get science. You get myth and fantasy.

With the Blue States in hand we will have:

firm control of 80% of the country’s fresh water,
more than 90% of the pineapple[8] and lettuce,
92% of the nation’s fresh fruit,
95% of America’s finest wines (y’all can serve French wines at your state dinners)
90% of all cheese,
90% of the high tech industry,
most of the US low sulfur coal,
all living redwoods, sequoias and condors,[9]
all the Ivy League and Seven Sisters schools, plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT,
the Rose Bowl

With the Red States you will have:

88% of obese Americans and their projected health care costs,
92% of US mosquitoes,
nearly 100% of the tornadoes,
90% of the hurricanes,
99% of Southern Baptists (without counting our provisional states),
virtually 100% of televangelists,
the philosophers Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilley, and Sean Hannity
Bob Jones University, Liberty University, ’Bama, and the University of Georgia.
90% of all deep fat fried foods.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite – jackpot! Thank you!

Here’s just a sampling of the cheap entertainment provided by y’all; in other words, what we may actually miss about you when you go:

the 38% of you who believe there was an actual dude name Jonah who was actually swallowed by a whale,
the 62% of you who believe life is “sacred,” except in cases of war, the death penalty, and shoot-first laws,
the whopping 5% of you Republicans (according to Gallup Polls, really) who even partially understand the scientific theory of evolution.
the 61% of you crazies who believe that you have higher morals than we lefties.

Oh, and BTW, we’re taking the good weed from Oregon, too. You can have that crap from Mexico.

~~~~ * ~~~~

Revisiting the subject of gratitude, I am thankful to be able to confer a Pretty Purple Toe award this week, to my most deserving friend and blogging mentrix,[10] SCM.

I’ve always loathed “ess” or “ette” or other attachments to what should be gender-neutral nouns. Such suffixes add a diminutive/diminishing effect, and presume – and teach, IMHO – that there are male “defaults” for certain occupations. If I act in a play I call myself an actor, not an actress. My family (MH, K, Belle and I) has a family practitioner who sees us for our respective medical concerns;[11] when we have our annual exams we see our doctor, not our doctress or doctrette. When I had friends over for Thanksgiving dinner I was their host, not their hostess.

However….

A day or so before I was to host the Tday dinner I e-queried one of our dinner guests, SCM (also an attorney), re questions I had about updating MH’s and my wills. I mildly tweaked SCM for using the term “executrix” in her reply. She was, as always, succinctly witty in her own defense:

I like executrix instead of a gender-neutral executor, or administratrix instead of g-n administrator. It just sounds faintly naughty and it’s more precise. Maybe you should be a hostrix?

Hostrix. I think I could get used to the sound of that.

Hijinks ensue.

* * *

Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!

[1] Or on a piece of overcooked turkey breast. I was the cook. The legs & thigh portions were fine. Sound familiar?

[2] Beloved by most Americans for his “most trusted man in America” journalism, and by moi because I was able to get the traffic court judge to drastically reduce my one-and-only speeding fine when I explained how, mesmerized by an Uncle Walter radio interview, I failed to notice the lowered speed limit and thus was driving ”under the influence of Water Cronkite.”

[3] One of my fave MI witticisms: “I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.”

[4] A whopping portion of it run up by the war now pay later policies of a president from Texass

[5] As well as those pesky Federal $$ paying for your Social Security, Medicare, Johnson Space Center and other defense contract businesses, highway improvements and fee-free interstate travel, the defense of your borders from illegal immigrants….

[6] Paul Magnusson, Spokesman for the Red/Slave State Secession Support Group, The Enlightened States of America (E.S.A.)

[7] Swedish-Canadian

[8] I like pineapple

[9] I like condors, too, but wish they smelled more like pineapple

[10] Not mentor or “mentoress”

[11] It’s a good thing our good Dr. MM can write her own Xanex prescriptions.

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