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The Work I’m Not Imitating

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As I’ve occasionally carped about mentioned in this space (here, and here and here, to list just a few spaces), I often find writers guidelines [1] to be obtuse, pretentious, long-winded bunk.

 

 

However, I sometimes have the good fortune to stumble across a gem like the following, discovered while checking a clearing-house type website for literary journals seeking material (my emphases):

The James Franco Review Call for Submission

The James Franco Review is seeking fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. (snip snip)….
We aren’t looking for work that imitates James Franco’s work or satirizes—writers need not be so cruel.

I did not send them anything, but I did take the time to savor the metaphorical breath of fresh (and not hot) air.

*   *   *

Speaking of clearing the air….

Which I wasn’t. Not to get all technical, but I was writing, not speaking. I was also trying for a segue. Bear with me.

 

That's not me on the right, but if it was, then the picture would be Bear with me.

That’s not me on the right. If it were, then the picture would be Bear with me.

 

Last week BBC News Hour reported on a story about researchers in Germany and Saudi Arabia who found that “….pollution levels over several major cities in the Middle East are dropping and have concluded that it is due to economic and political unrest and war.” It seems that the chaos of war and instability leads to a lowering of economic standards in many cities, which means that less fuel is burned by cars or used in electricity production.

What a wonderful if totally unintended byproduct of madness, I thought, in that making-lemonade-from-lemons way of mine. People with respiratory diseases suffer and die due to air pollution. People with weakened immune systems and other health disorders, as well as all of us Average Citizens ® , experience diminished quality of life due to pollution. As per the EPA:

“Scientific evidence indicates that ground-level ozone not only affects people with impaired respiratory systems (such as asthmatics), but healthy adults and children as well. Exposure to ozone for 6 to 7 hours, even at relatively low concentrations, significantly reduces lung function and induces respiratory inflammation in normal, healthy people.”

And from the World Health Organization:

“Air pollution is a major environmental risk to health. By reducing air pollution levels, countries can reduce the burden of disease from stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and both chronic and acute respiratory diseases, including asthma… Ambient (outdoor air pollution) in both cities and rural areas was estimated to cause 3.7 million premature deaths worldwide in 2012. Some 88% of those premature deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries, and the greatest number in the WHO Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions.”

However.

After reading the story’s provocative premise and before continuing with his report, the BBC announcer made some toss-off remark about how he hated to highlight such a “trivial” point (as reduction in pollution), given the effects of war and instability.

A reduction in pollution – read: air poison – is trivial?

I wanted to reach through my car radio and slap him.

 

 

 

Sorry to bother you with something so trivial….

*   *   *

Department of More People I Want To Slap

 

Late last week much of Oregon west of the Cascades Range was blanketed by smoke from fires burning in Oregon and Washington east of the Cascades.

I’ve lived here for almost twenty-five years. My brain can’t remember ever seeing (or smelling or tasting) pollution that bad, in this area, but my lungs and bronchial tubes did provide me with a sensory memory: the tightness under my sternum was a flashback to being a child of So Cal in the 60s and 70s.

I remember well (and would like to forget) the days of Smog Alerts, when PE classes and athletic practices were cancelled and/or held indoors and some parents kept their kids home from school and all citizens were advised to restrict physical activity and refrain from driving if possible. [2]  Hospital ERS and doctors offices reported being clogged with the most vulnerable patients (the elderly, and young children) who experienced shortness of breath and headaches, and I felt a distinctive “catch” in my chest when I tried to take a deep breath.

I also remember that it got better. The air quality, that is.

 

Surf’s up…down there, somewhere.

 

Many years ago, during a daytime flight to visit my So Cal family, K and Belle expressed alarm as our airplane made its descent toward the Orange County Airport. [3] “What’s that?” K asked, as he pressed his nose against the airplane’s window. “Yeah,” Belle chimed in. “What’s that brown stuff we’re flying through?”

“It’s the air,” I replied. “Or, at least, what passes for it, here.”

I proceeded to inform my offspring that, believe it or not, it had been worse when I was their age. [4] Although there are twice the amount of people and vehicles in So Cal now then when I was living there, the air, while not clean, is cleaner, thanks to the enactment of strict emission standards.

Here’s where the slapping part comes in: ere’s where the I remembered how furious I was when certain redneck relatives of mine bragged about how they’d removed the catalytic converters from their emissions-belching vehicles, because no gummint agency (cough, rasp, hack) was gonna tell them (wheeze, pant, snort) to sissify their muscle cars.

*   *   *

Yet Another Way To Clear the Air

Or at least, your sinuses.

I mean of course, by consuming roasted peppers. This is the season where you may be fortunate enough to acquire Padrón peppers from your farmer’s market, your CSA or even your local grocery store.

 

The pretty, “before” picture.

 

Padrón peppers are sometimes sold alongside shishito peppers.  How to tell the difference? The two varieties look almost identical. A Produce Dude ® told me that the two are often confused, even among farmers. The shishitos may seem to have a shinier surface and are a bit longer and twistier and “ridgier” than Padróns.

Both peppers are generally milder than jalapenos. No matter; they’re both tasty, with slight differences in flavor. [5] After discovering and then playing around with them, I don’t make ’em any other way than by using the following the skillet dry-roasting method.

Dry skillet roasting requires just three ingredients

(1) Padrón (or shishito) peppers, intact [6]
(2) your best/most flavorful sea salt

(3) your best olive oil
(optional – the oil’s not for cooking the peppers, but for seasoning them afterward)

and five pieces of equipment

(1) a large cast iron skillet (or comal)
(2) tongs
(3) an oven mitt (that pan is gonna get hot)
(4) a shallow (but not callow) serving bowl
(5) okay, it requires only four pieces of equipment

Get your skillet good and hot (a drop of water should wiggle and dance on its surface and evaporate almost immediately). Add the peppers, in batches if you have a lot – don’t crowd ’em, they should be in a single layer. Sear peppers ~ 1m on all sides. They may wiggle-dance just like the water droplets, which is just too cute.

 

Actually, this is just too cute. But not edible.

 

Use the tongs to turn the peppers as they roast – you want the skin to blister. [7]  When they are roasted to your liking, tong-transfer them to the serving bowl, drizzle ’em with the oil (if using), [8] sprinkle with sea salt, and serve: hold by the stem and eat the rest of the pepper. You may want to take a test bite first. (Padróns vary in hotness; some folks say the larger peppers are hotter. [9] )

 

The yummers “after” picture.

 

*   *   *

Department of That’s What He Said

MH and I usually do the NY Times Sunday crossword together during lunch. This past Sunday MH decided to get an early start. As I was cleaning up my breakfast dishes he read aloud one of the clues that, he said, was stumping him, even though the answer was only four letters long.

Clue:  “When repeated, an aerobics class cry.”

I did not spew an immediate solution, and so MH wrote in what was, to him, the only logical answer:

“Stop.”  [10]

Please, please make it stop.

*   *   *

May your personal and professional guidelines be down-to-earth,
May your air be breathable,
May your peppers be wiggly and tasty,
and may the hijinks ensue.

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

[1]  a set of guidelines from a literary journal or publisher that specify their requirements for material from writers, including the length, categories, format and styles of articles they seek, rights purchased and compensation rates, appropriate editors or other contact persons, how to submit work (query first or send full ms.), etc.

[2] Which, for a Southern Californian of that day, would only be possible if they’d lost both arms in a pesky meat grinder accident.

[3] Aka The John Wayne Airport. The name change in 1979 still frosts my butt. Airports should be named for their location, not for a wealthy movie star whose only connection to the airport was grousing about the airplanes flying over his Newport Beach mansion.

[4] And we had to walk to school with barbed wired wrapped around our feet to get through the six foot snow drifts in winter…or was that my mother’s story?

[5] After roasting, Padróns have a light smoky taste, while shishitos may seem slightly sweet/herbal/floral.

[6] Intact as in whole peppers with their stems, not intact as in, with all their boy parts still in one piece.

[7] the padrón’s skin, hopefully not yours, because you’re using the mitts to handle the hot pan, right?

[8] This is optional. They are delicious just dry-fried and tossed w/salt.

[9] Some folks have been known to be wrong.

[10] The answer was, “step.”

The Vacation I’m Not Flaunting

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Because, that would be rude.

To gush about the mahhhhhhvelous trip MH and I took last week, to the San Juan Islands. The trip I alluded to in last week’s pitiful excuse for a blog post?

I’ll start again.

The Fire Pit I’m Not Using

 

We did not use the driftwood fire pit on the picturesque, pebbly beach shoreline in front of the Obstruction Pass beach house we rented on Orcas Island. Even in the San Juans, there are burn restrictions due to the Washington state drought. No matter – it made for a nice sitting-and-watching-the-ocean perch.

For the first three nights during our Orcas stay we were fortunate enough to have guests from nearby Bellingham  join us at the house. It was great fun to be able to visit with friends JT the 18th, JST, and their delightful daughter LT (who knows way too many 80’s songs for a sixteen year old [1]).

So, yes, we did not have fires in the fire pit. We did hike and dine and hike and kayak and hike some more…

 

White strip of paper, taped to Obstruction Pass State Park outhouse near hiking trail, reads “Lovely Ladies Live Here.” [2]

 We also explored Orcas by foot and car and made a day trip to Shaw Island

MH by the Shaw Island Seedshack – an honor system seed store, in the proverbial middle of nowhere. 

and shook our heads (and sometimes, our fists) at all the deer , [3] bought some beautiful pottery and checked out the local art. I’d include my favorite island road sign in the latter category:

I want to know, what happened to the m?

*   *   *

And now, a word about the deer.

No, they’re not cute. They’re pests, and they’re everywhere.

 

According to several Islanders I queried, soft-hearted civilians as well as animal-rights activists resist efforts to cull the massive amount of deer on the islands. A good  portion of land in the San Juans is owned privately, and the limited amount of hunting allowed does jack squat to curb the expanding deer population. For the deer, this is a recipe for disaster: deer compete for limited territory and food resources and have few career opportunities (read: road kill).

Recipe for Disaster

Ingredients:
– 2 cups too many deer
–  1 tablespoon no deer predators

Instructions:

  1. Steal a six pack of Cheap American beer ® from the drunken hunters that will inevitably be enlisted to thin the deer ranks (the hunters will likely not notice, nor even mind, as they’re schlepping another five cases of PBR in the cabs of their Ford F-150 pickups).
  2. Empty one can of beer into an oven-safe mixing bowl.
  3. Drink the rest of the six pack.
  4. Perform five rounds of The Antler Dance.
  5. Ignore step #4.
  6. There is no step #6.

 

Lemme see, so far we have five pictures of someone else’s holiday and one half-assed recipe. Is this is as bad as looking at someone’s vacation slides?

*   *   *

Where was I? After our week long stay at Orcas we took the ferry to Lopez Island and spent two magical nights with our friends-who-are so-fortunate-as-to-live-there, the gracious and witty J and D C-R. C-R, as in, not to be confused with CCR.

Hey, is this my first allusion to Creedence Clearwater Revival in my blog? After all these years, there should have been more.

*   *   *

Once again and as always, I digress.

Thanks to the lovely and talented George Rede, [4] , Oregonian/Oregon Live reporter and Orcas Island lover, for his helpful suggestions for sightseeing and recreation on the island. One of his must-dos included hiking around or kayaking on Mountain Lake (we did both).

 

Pie guard demon, guarding a car (which had two pies in the passenger’s seat) at Mountain Lake boat launch.

*   *   *

Dateline: A Tuesday on vacation, [5] in the later afternoon of the day when we took a day trip to Shaw Island.  I passed the time waiting for the return ferry to Orcas Island by scrambling about the rocks near the pier by the ferry terminal. As I climbed back up to the road my tie-dyed tee shirt elicited a thumbs up and commentary from a man passing by (whom I judged to be in his early sixties):

“That’s some great tie dye! I know tie-dye – ‘Summer of love,’ yeah, I was there!”

Instead of the comment I wanted to make – about the sophistication of today’s tie-dyes, where back in the 60s they were basically just color blotches that resembled what scrambled eggs would look like to someone on a bad acid trip – I merely smiled and returned his thumbs up.

“If you can remember the 1960s, you weren’t really there.”
Robin Williams

*   *   *

Department of Wasted Youth

So I return from vacation and discover, while listening to an interview with Lily Tomlin, that the pictures and art I have framed [6] for all these years – it just pains me to have to type this, but I’ve been doing it wrong. Or rather, it seems I haven’t fully appreciated the practice and have settled for less. You see, I’ve learned, via a blurb on a Fresh Air podcast, that sponsor Framebridge has “reinvented the framing experience.”

Just think of the time I wasted, bordering and encasing cherished family photographs and paintings without thought or purpose, when I could have had a framing experience.

Oh, sure, now they tell me.

 

Yeah, it fits, but it’s not quite the experience I was hoping for.

*   *   *

Department of Spoiled Surprises
Aka, So I return from vacation, 2.0

…and discover two packages had arrived while we were gone.  Having received a shipping notice just before we left for the San Juans, I knew that one of the packages, the one addressed to moiself, was the present I’d ordered for MH’s birthday: a new card game from the twisted creative mind responsible for one of our favorite cartoons, the Oatmeal. I let that sit while MH opened the package addressed to himself. Given the timing of the package’s arrival, I thought it might be a present from his parents (his birthday was yesterday). Instead, it was something he’d ordered for himself,  unbeknownst to moiself. It was the same same card game I’d gotten him.

So. Yeah. Happy birthday.

Now we are the proud owners of multiple copies of Exploding Kittens.

At least I know he would have enjoyed the surprise (if it had truly been a surprise) in that classic, No-really-it’s-just-what-I-wanted way.

*   *   *

May all your surprises be genuine,
May you remember whatever decade wherein you were really there,
and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

[1] I blame the parents, don’t you?

[2] Noted by the alert JTS of Bellingham, Washington. No, we don’t know what it means.

[3] Bipeds exterminated the deer’s natural predators, and there are waaaaay too many  Bambis on the islands.

[4] As you may remember, I generally use initials and/or acronyms in this blog…except for people in the public eye, however you define that. Oh, wait, it’s however I define that.

[5] Vacation mindset: the date isn’t important.

[6] Yeah right – make that, paid for someone else to frame.

The Vacation I’m Not Blogging

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Vacation.  I am having one. Right Now.

A well-deserved retreat for both MH and I, if I do say so moiself. And I just did.

‘Tis also a well-anticipated vacation (we’ve been trying to get where we’re at ever since we moved to the Pacific North West [1] ) that never quite came about due to the usual suspects ($$, time, schedules), and that almost got cancelled the last minute, what with Sandwich Generation concerns. [2]

So, yes, I’m on vacation. Not blogging about what’s right and wrong with the world. Not blogging about this week. Because…vacation.

I thought I’d fill this space with selections from my Greatest Hits. © Then I remembered: Oh, that’s right, I don’t have any.

 

*   *   *

Okay, one vacation story.

The story comes from our first day on The Island (oooooh, big hint!). [3]

 

 

 

We  stopped on our way to our rental house to have lunch at a café which shares space with an art studio. It was a nice day; we opted to sit outside on the café’s cozy (yep, small) deck.  The other table on the deck was already occupied, by four Fashionably Dressed Young Men ® . All of the FDYM were talking loudly and animatedly, their stories tumbling over one another, until one FDYM took the lead with a meandering tale that included him mentioning in rapturous tones “Regis” and “Cathy Lee and Hoda” more times than I could shake a rainbow-colored stick at. [4]

I couldn’t help but think to myself (and then say to MH, with a grin that threatened to split my face):

This is too cute – this is the gayest conversation…do they have any idea?

The FDYM finished their lunch and trooped down the deck’s stairway, which was right by our table. As they were leaving I said, “Excuse me, but you’re far too young to be familiar with the name, ‘Regis.’ “

They all burst out laughing, and one of them (the oldest of the young, was my guess) assured me that, au contraire, “…knowledge of Regis is the key to eternal youth.”

*   *   *

Department of More Hints

The following sight was [5]  one of our island trip highlights. Can you guess where the picture was taken (hint: no):

 

*   *   *

May all of your vacation highlights be blog-worthy,
may your overheard conversations contain the key to eternal youth,

and may the hijinks ensue.

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

[1] Which was…over twenty-four years ago? Yikes.

[2] Read: elderly parents’ health crises.

[3] What island – maybe The Big Island, as in Hawaii? Gilligan’s Island? The Island of Misfit Toys. Dr. Moreau, Lost Souls…?

[4] No, I’m not going to post pictures of Regis and/or the Cathy Lee-Hoda beast. You’re welcome.

[5] There is no need for a footnote after the word “was.”

The Trophy I’m Not Hunting

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All aboard for The Sombrero Galaxy

*   *   *

The New Oven is Here

And it has some really cosmic features. Or so I thought, when I overheard MH reading the new control panel settings as he attempted to liberate the oven from its 10,297 square feet of packaging.

Moiself: “WormholeWORMHOLE !?!?!? – our oven has a wormhole!  This is so cool – I didn’t even care about the convection feature, but a porthole to another galaxy…”

MH: “Um, that’s ‘Warm/Hold.’ It has a warm-hold button.”

 

AccuBake ® Temp System, Steam Clean Option, and convection shortcut to Andromeda

*   *   *

Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F**k

I’d read excerpts of this book, which I’d given to select family & friends last Christmas, [1] but just recently got around to reading it myself. [2]  In doing so, I don’t think I gleaned any new ways to navigate what the author calls the seemingly “jaw-dropping social ineptitude” of my fellow home sapiens. Rather, I felt as if a kindred spirit had confirmed some of my human behavior-related ruminations.

 

 

Certainly, the members of the Axis of Etiquette Evil ©  – i.e., Technology/The Internet/Cellphones/Social Media – collectively and individually enable rudeness on a grander, more immediate and more anonymous scale. However, these things in and of themselves don’t cause discourtesy, disrespect and boorishness. Rather, it seems we have created societies that are too big for our brains. These think-bags of ours have been wired to navigate much smaller, local social networks, where everybody knew everybody and it was in everybody’s best interest to get along. [3]

“We’re experiencing more rudeness because we’ve lost the constraints on our behavior that we’ve had in place for millions of years.
We didn’t evolve to be around strangers and aren’t psychologically equipped to live in a world filled with them, yet that’s exactly how we’re living.”
(from Chapter 1 – “I Don’t Care Where you Put the Fork
(as long as you don’t stab anybody in the eye with it”
Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F**k )

Our new global village has no Protocol Police, no Comportment Cop – no Empathy Auntie to remind us to calm down and be considerate of others. Living in a world of strangers, virtual and actual, we have fewer reminders of and consequences from our rudeness.

*   *   *

As for that world full of strangers…

Department Of So, I Guess I’m Not Going There

Dateline: Thursday (yesterday) morning, in the Mazda service waiting room.

HNKGRSPRAAAAGHONNNNNNNNNNN

The first time it I heard the racket I thought, Ah, in an effort to entertain customers the service manager has installed an exotic petting zoo in the new automobile display area! I walked into said area from whence I’d heard the noise, thinking to spot a gasping, asthmatic alpaca. Nope. Just three shiny SUVs on display, which were being perused by a man in his mid-twenties, who looked way too young and healthy to have produced that bizarre, cloppity-hacking sound.

I’ve heard many, many, many variations of smoker’s hack. It wasn’t that. What I’d heard sounded like no cough I’ve ever heard before.  It sounded as if someone had tried to dislodge a capybara or Rodent Of Unusual Size from his esophagus. [4]

It happened again, this time as the same man came into the waiting room and took a seat by a magazine rack. And it happened many more agains, at about four minute intervals. Other than spewing the Barking Sound from Gehenna, the man appeared to be in no physical distress. [5]  Even so, I began reviewing the Heimlich Maneuver in my mind, wondering if I would then be responsible for the emphysema-stricken pygmy bison – or whatever was making those sounds – that would come hurling forth from Bizarre Hacking Noise Man’s gullet.

If I could adequately describe the noise, I bet this young woman could reproduce it:

 

 

The sixth or seventh time Bizarre Hacking Noise Man treated us to his vocalization, the service department receptionist and I traded WTF? expressions. I turned toward BHNM, favoring him with what I hoped was my Are-you-okay-do-you-need-anything? look of concern, and received a Don’t even-go-there glower from him in return.

Of course, I could have recorded Bizarre Hacking Noise Man’s guttural cries of the banshee vocalizations and posted them online. Purely for altruistic purposes. As in, to get a diagnosis.  Which leads me to…

Department of Futuristic Totalitarian Ruminations

I find the whole concept of Fitbits to be rather Orwellian. Especially the apps and programs that allow and even encourage users to share their personal information, no matter whether it’s with their coaches, their doctors, or on Facebook.

Ah, but the future is here, in the form of a workout nag-band around our wrists. We shall know how many steps we walked/ran/paddled/cycled/swam/flew yesterday, and what our goal is for today. We shall know our resting heart rate and respiration and blood pressure and caloric intake and output.  We know, or have the option to know, all these things, and more, through a variety of  “fitness” and/or “lifestyle monitoring” devices. I look around, in the stores, on the streets, on the trails and in the parks, and behold my fellow human beings, many of them already sporting these apparatuses, and think,

It isn’t helping.

We shall have our own personal, physiological Wikipedia. We shall have more and more bits and bots of all-about-me info, with which we shall…do what?

We can know all, and still understand nothing.

 

Did I walk 14,999 steps today, or was that yesterday?

*   *   *

Department Of Something Than Kinda Maybe Relates To Ruminations About Rudeness

Re the dentist who killed Cecil the lion. When I read that the dentist had (at least temporarily) closed his practice and website, removed himself from social media and gone into hiding, I couldn’t help but marvel at the what-goes-around-ness of it all. I also wondered if there could be a possibility for him, for just a smidgen of self-awareness?

 

 

Failing that, I wonder, can he at least appreciate the irony of a time-worn tale?  The hunter is now the hunted.

The killer [6] seeks protection, a place where he can be safe. Such places are called sanctuaries. You know, like the wildlife sanctuary where Cecil lived. Cecil the lion had a safe place, a sanctuary from which his killers lured him, playing upon his curiosity, his apparent (and unfortunate) comfort around humans, and the instinct of a predator to follow a prey scent.

Unlike many followers of the sad story, my FaceBook wishes for what would happen to this man…I do not want them to literally happen. I don’t want the Dentist Evil Animal Trophy Hunter to be lured from his safe place (although I do want him extradited to Zimbabwe to face charges).

I don’t wish for DEATH’s death, nor even that he experience a mere portion of the 40 hours of torment endured by the creature he ineptly impaled and then had to track and shoot.

I wish for enlightenment.

 

 

I know, I know. What have I been smoking? [7]

If such enlightenment were possible there wouldn’t be so many repellent photos of DEATH proudly posing with the carcasses of the creatures he’d slaughtered.  Still, it’s my wish, gawddammit, and I’ll make it while I blow out the fucking candles on my wishing-for-a-better-world cake.  I can wish that DEATH and other like-minded  ignorant, egotistical, callous killers trophy hunters would come to some understanding [8] of why people are so upset about this.

DEATH is wealthy and looks well fed. Even if he were poor and hungry he wouldn’t need to spend $$$$ traveling to exotic locales to kill animals humans do not typically eat. [9]  Thus, I can wish that DEATH would consider the mental health ramifications – to his psyche in particular and also to that of the society he inhabits – of killing any living thing, no matter it’s endangered status, for “sport.” I can wish that, later if not sooner, DEATH may come to have a change of heart and mind, and regret and renounce the repulsive and cowardly practice of trophy hunting.

 

It’s good to dream.

*   *   *

Apropos of Nothing – Looking For An Investment Opportunity?

My next venture: Nutflix, a streaming service consisting solely of video compilations of what are genteelly [10] referred to as oooomph shots.

 

 

Hey, it’s worked for twenty-five years for AFV [11].

*   *   *

There was something else; I was going to write about…or was I? Whatever it was, it’s slipped my mind. Maybe I’ll ask Shakira’s hips. Because, you know.

 

*   *   *

May the global police have no cause to cite you for insolence,
May your automobile service waiting room experiences be aurally amiable,
May the pigs of enlightenment buzz your rooftop,
and may the hijinks ensue.

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

[1] People whom I thought might appreciate the title –the book was not meant as a  message that I considered them to be Good People who were manner-deficient.

[2] Is that a new mode of rudeness, to give a book you haven’t read?

[3] Or at least be civil, if you want need the services of (and you eventually will) the village’s only cobbler.

[4] I’ve never heard a capybara vocalize, but I just don’t know how to describe the noise that dude was making.

[5] As in, he seemed oblivious to the DISGUSTING NOISES he was making, geeze, take it outside, fella.

[6] His name shall not soil this space.

[7] Nothing, although it’s legal in Oregon.

[8] Even if they are incapable of agreement with the reasoning.

[9] A list of his previous kills include a polar bear, black bear and mountain lion.

[10] That is, by us gracious gentiles.

[11] Can you believe that show has been on for more than 25 years? That’s a lot of sack shots.