Varying Degrees of Awful

Last Saturday, I was walking into my local Metro station when I was asked for spare change by an allegedly homeless person.  The exchange damn near broke my spirit because it happened like this:

"Hey, man, spare some cha-oh, sorry, bro."

I was wearing some green, heavy-duty carpenter's pants that I use as hiking pants.  They are durable, but have wide enough legs that the thick denim isn't stifling, even in a DC summer.  These pants are pretty faded, worn around the hem, and have some permanent grass stains at the knees.  I was also wearing a green, long sleeve shirt that I always think makes me look like a revolutionary.  Apparently, I looked so pathetic that even a homeless man didn't want any change I might have had.

Thanks, Universe.  I needed this.  Everything is now cobagulating.

I try to remind myself that my life could be so much worse, but this doesn't feel helpful.  Everything can always be worse.  There can always be some other, larger, more hideous monster around the corner.  As much as I sympathize with the plights of so many people in the world, reminding myself that other people live in utter terror for their lives doesn't make me want to thank the Good Lord Pasta for my life.  I am torn between feeling guilt for being lucky enough to be born who I was born, and for trying to assuage that guilt by remembering that I didn't have any choice in the matter, so far as I know.

At least I can go to sleep, reminding myself that life isn't fair, there is no plan.  This comforts me more than any other platitude.

Goofy Confessions Used to be Thing

Confessional Mondays or whatever used to be one of those go-to joke posts or go-to emotional posts that people would use for inspiration in the days before Facebook consumed all everything.  To remind myself to attempt to live up to my own ideals, here is a hopefully funny, but probably lamely egotistical posts.*

I often confuse Cracker Barrel with Crate and Barrel.

I thoroughly enjoy and support high school robotics competitions, but worry about the use of drone technology by any entity.

I don't read as much as I'd like, but I am playing video games much less than earlier times in my life.

I can barely keep up with the pace of the New Yorker's print schedule, mostly because I spend so much time in my garden during the day.

I have not applied to jobs because I was worried I would be offered those jobs.

I find mowing my lawn tedious, but will spend hours weeding around my roses, hyacinths, irises, and lilies.

I am willing to shoot a deer, but almost cried when I ran over a hiding rabbit with my lawnmower. 

I refuse to look in medical textbooks, unless I am forced to perform surgery after the whateveralypse.

I have many books on my shelves that I haven't read because I want my guests to think I have read them.  This desire has greatly lessened since Lady Chemisty joined my life.

I like to think advertising doesn't work on me.

I have yet to finish writing a single story.

* 90% of this sentence is redundant.

Cooking With Reckless Abandon: Bacon and Egg Biscuits

So here's the thing about these amazingly awesome breakfast cupcakes: I was inspired by a picture I saw on Imgur.  I didn't bookmark it, so I can't link to it.  Imgur uses a shit-ton of my monthly allotment of internet, so I am not able to go searching through piles of pictures.  If you have a problem with this, go blog about it.  The only reason I am prefacing this recipe with this information is to explain why I am not naming these biscuits anything fancier than Bacon and Egg Biscuits.  Had I invented them, I might call them Grandmother's Revenge, or perhaps The Uncanny Canadian's Secret Desire.

Let's get down to biscuitness:
Ingredients:
Coffee - Preferably hot and fresh, like my women.  Ha.
Bisquik - Yeah, this is straight up unpaid product placement, but I don't care so you should shut your dirty mouth.
Milk - Thanks for the check, cows.
Garlic - I put this in just about everything now. Deal with it.
Bacon - Whatever kind you like.  I used some Costco thick-cut, hickory smoked.
Eggs - The kind that comes out of a chicken.  If you have access to ostrich eggs, you may need less of those.
Spices - You can forgo these if you are Scandinavian or live in the Midwest and claim a specific ethnic heritage but can not actually speak the language of your ancestors.


Make some coffee.  Start your oven preheating your oven to 450, if you're using a convection oven this should end up at 425.  Drink some coffee.  Slap that slab of bacon on your cutting board, take a look at your cupcake pan, and cut some strips of bacon into thirds.  I chose thirds because I didn't think I had enough bacon to provide a full lining around the edge of each cupcake divot.  If you have a full bacon lining, that might be more grease than you would like, but you can always eat a few more salads next week, maybe go for another jog next month.  Put your bacon sections in the cups, and drink some more coffee.  Remember to wash your hands.

Make some biscuits from the back of the Bisquik box, 2 3/4 cups of mix and 2/3 cup of milk.  Think about the total package for a minute while drinking some coffee.  Refill your cup while you remember everything about these biscuits, the bacon you're using, and every egg that you have ever consumed.  Drink some coffee, and then grab some garlic.  Smush your cloves with the flat of the blade, just like Anthony Bourdain or The Half-Blood Prince would, then dice the cloves.  Throw the garlic into the bowl with the mixed biscuit dough, drink some coffee, and then knead the garlic into the dough.  Tear the dough, knead it, and really mix that garlic into the proto-biscuits.

Wash your hands, drink some coffee, and then contemplate the nature of cupcakes and biscuits.  Even if you are using a non-stick pan, I would recommend smearing the bacon around the cupcake divots to grease the divots, just in case.  Tear a bit of dough, about a one to two inch thick ball, and squash that into the bottom of each divot.  You want to fill the divots no more than half-full. 

Now, you are ready for the egg phase of this masterpiece.  Drink some coffee, and then grab an egg.  Take a spoon, or maybe a knife, and whack the narrower part of the egg.  You want to crack the egg, but not shatter it.  Pour the egg into the cupcake divots, over the dough.  The bacon will fill the role of the paper lining people sometimes use with cupcakes.  When you've finished topping all the divots with eggs, wash your hands, and drink some coffee.  Maybe remind yourself that you won't stay up until 3 am cruising Imgur again.  If you want to cut down on the number of eggs used, you may not own a flock of chickens.  As I was saying, if you want to cut down on the eggs, you could try mixing the eggs before pouring them over the divots.  I would estimate that you could probably get away with only 2/3 the eggs, as compared to the eventual biscuits.  For today's recipe, I could have probably used eight eggs for twelve biscuits.

Grind some fresh pepper over the eggs, drink some coffee, and then put the whole pan in the oven for about 12-13 minutes.  I set the timer for 8 minutes, since the Bisquik box said 8-10 minutes for pure biscuits, but I ended up leaving them in for another 5 minutes.  The eggs developed large bubbles, and I poked these after 8 minutes because I knew that the thin egg in the bubble could get burned or crusty.

Anyway, once the eggs look done enough, take the pan out of the oven, wake up your sweet babboo, drink some coffee, consume the biscuits, and marvel at my genius.

Variants: You could add cheese to the dough, or sprinkle some on top of the egg.  You can use other spices, like some provincial herbs on the eggs, or chopped fresh rosemary from your garden in the dough.  Chives would also work, but I would put those in the dough or between the dough and eggs.

Philosophy in Comic Form

This recent Scenes from a Multiverse reminded me of Action Philosophers.  I should reread my collections, and maybe my philosophy texts.

Housewarming

Throwing a housewarming party, or a wedding, is not that hard at the core of it.  You invite friends and family, maybe some neighbors, maybe your real estate agent, and then a few people who you don't expect to show up.  You organize some snacks and a selection of drinks, coordinate some musical entertainment, and the party handles itself as long as people actually show up.  Typically, there is some gift-giving, unless you are in the habit of throwing these sorts of parties less than once a year.  The typical gift is some sort of useful home tool or accent.  You know the crap of which I write, candles, towels, big spoons, breadmakers, wall hangings, etc.

These gifts are all supposed to help you make the place a home.  Your friends have given you these things to ease your transition from one space to another, and in the case of a wedding, from one lifestyle to another.  There you were, with those things that were yours, and here you are, with these things that are the happy couple's.  You don't need to worry about how you will grate your cheese from now on, but you will worry about who will shower first.  You can focus on the two of you, now that you have an automatic coffee maker.  You can throw away that towel that other women or men have used, but you can not throw out those memories.  You have the time to talk while the slow-cooker makes dinner for the next few nights.  You have an unsafe number of scented candles gathering dust on your bookshelf, but now you need to buy a new bookshelf because that one doesn't quite fit the style you're aiming for in this room.  You buy furniture with a style, formerly second to purpose.

Somewhere in all this, the relationship will fall into place.  These gifts will aide you in merging two lives into one.  All fear for the future will be eased matching flatware and silver.  All doubts will disappear as the home becomes a comfortable place.  All desire will dissipate under the relentless wheel of routine.

I Got Your Cup of Cheer Right Here

And I spiced it with cinnamon and nutmeg!

In ages past, I hated Christmas.  The Shopping Season emphasized everything about my culture that I absolutely despised, with the added feelings on intense disappointment in my family when they didn't give me what I requested.*  I remember a December when I received exactly nothing on my list, and I thought my family was a bunch of jerks who thought they knew better than me.  I was thirteen or something, so just about anyone other than my brother did know better than me, but that didn't stop my from being an angry little snotrag about it.

I abandoned this feeling of disappointment a few years later for a whole new feeling of disappointment in humanity as expressed in American media.  This feeling was only intensified by being unable to buy anything for the people I wanted to give stuff.  I was in boarding school and then college, and any money I made during the summer didn't last longer than my short-sighted budget.  The only gift that I bought that I still remember and feel somewhat good about was a special mug I bought for my dad when I was a sophomore.**

I wanted to be happier during this time, because I like my family, for the most part.  I like visiting them, and we have fun together, despite my brother's attempts to ruin everything with plans.  I found it hard to be cheerful when I was bombarded with scenes of utter assholery in malls and on television.  Basically, I was angry because Christmas was a constant reminder of how I wasn't a kid anymore.  I couldn't just sit in a pile of wrapping paper and experience sheer joy anymore.  The world was sitting on my head, just crapping all  over any fun I might have had.

Something changed in 2008.  No, not something, someone.  I was trying to win back a woman I had wronged, and I had this idea, inspired by Gene Hackman in Heist, that if I wanted to be a better version of me, maybe I could just fake it.  I'm a pretty good liar on a bad day, so I thought maybe I would change the way I lie to myself.  Maybe if I pretend to be a better person, I'll eventually be that better person, and I won't have to keep pretending.  I'm not 100% there yet, but I'm not pretending anymore.

Part of this whole thing was that I realized that I was over Christmas.  If other people want to run around and be assholes to each other in malls and parking lots, so be it.  I'm just gonna make cookies, not send them to my friends, and eat the hell out of them.***  I'll invite my friends over for rum drinks, cookies, pie, and the Star Wars Holiday Special.  I'll try to find one or two small, meaningful, little gifts for my people.  Or maybe I'll make something to give.

The short of this is that I can also enjoy holiday music again.  This is much easier when i am not out in the world, but even when I am in the world, I just tune it out.  I just play Mahna Mahna on constant loop in the jukebox of my subconscious, and I move through the world.  I could have written a much shorter version of this post by just typing, OMG HOLIDAY MUSIC MASH-UPS HERE!!!1111!!1!!

*  There's a paradox somewhere in there that a kid might miss for a few years.
**  Much like a certain lamp, I'm pretty sure my mother introduced this mug to Mr. Baseballbat, and Mr. Backyard.
***  One of these years, I'm gonna mail some cookies to some friends, and those friends will be so frigging impressed.  Some jokes aren't worth it.

Who am I? 1

One of the high schools I attended required incoming freshpersons to write a paper titled "Who am I?"  These papers were fairly big deals for the kids, and a source of much stress.  Every year, there were rumors of kids trying to photocopy their student I.D. cards and turn them as a clever meta-essay, but none of these rumors were ever confirmed by me.*

These papers were then read by the student at the end of their four years at the school.  I guess the goal was a forced existential examination, but given the vast gulf between the person I was in my senior year of high school and the person I was in the fall of my first year of college, I can't imagine that this would have been particularly fruitful for the students. 

Since I started attending this school with my sophomore year, I did not write one of these papers.  I have plenty of written paragraphs that can only really be described as journal entries from the last fourteen years, a great many of which are thoroughly public as blog posts.  Leafing through them traces a character arc that I doubt is unique among the lives of American consumers aged 18-35.  Looking back at my various journals, paper or digital, is a great way to remind myself that while I may be unemployed, at least I am not as much of a chundernozzle as I used to be. 

Who am I?:  I make two u-turns and hold up traffic on a one lane road to move a turtle off that road.

* I never cared enough to even begin the process of asking my advisor about the grading process for these papers.

The Daily Caller Will Never Become "the Conservative Huffington Post"

"In his new book, “The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Things And Why He’s Convinced That Ignorance Is Bliss,” Sayet strays from the humorous to explore why what he calls “Modern Liberals” support the policies they do."

"Explain the title, 'The KiderGarden of Eden.'"

So I was flipping some news on Yahoo, I think, and I saw a link to this Daily Caller piece.  The Daily Caller is usually good for a laugh because of frequent copy editing errors.  Every time I see one, I laugh at The Great Orange One's attempt to start a conservative version of the Huffington Post.  Maybe if you could frame your worldview in some way that wasn't a conservative version of someone else's work, you might succeed someday, Tuckbag.  Maybe if right wing cobags had some imagination, they might criticize Obama about something real instead of "He's so well respected and I don't like that! Waaaaaah!"

The article claims that Evan Thomas of Newsweek said that Obama is a god, but there is no link to back this up.  In fact, the only links in the article are from those Ad Choices auto-links.  This is just lazy, lazy reporting.  There is no attempt to fabricate even the smallest shred of journalistic integrity. 

The whole article fails to mention that Saturday Night Live has been making fun of Obama nearly every week, but I suppose they are too cool for SNL.  I think SNL has gotten much better lately. A search for Obama parody returns a wealth of hits, but I will admit that I have not investigated the political opinions of the people involved with those hits.  They could all be conservative, but I think can safely that this isn't the case because Key and Peele are on the first page of hits.

I took a screenshot to preserve these failures for posteriority.  That is not a typo, that is term that means we will all be wiping our butts with rags like the Daily Caller after the Whateveralypse.

Exactly the Kind of Robot I Want

This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my desire for pets of unusual cuddle-less-ness, but if someone were to buy me a robotic companion, I would want a tarantulabot friend.  We would hang out all day.

My daily task calendar just reminded me that I am a couple years late on Tarantula Tuesday posts. 

VW: 2, Me: 1

Every time I drive both of my parents anywhere, I make a mistake.  In 1998, I took over driving so they could both nap in the backseat, and was stopped for speeding as soon as my parents fell asleep.  79 in a 65 in rural New York.  Were we driving on I-90 toward Chicago, I would be in the right lane and most of the other cars would be passing me.

In September, we were on our way to my niece's birthday party and stopped to buy a cake.  The parking lot was the first floor of the grocery store, and it had almost pristine, white support columns.  I made some poor estimations of distance and crunched the passenger side mirror housing.  The mirror itself popped right out of the housing, and was fairly well obliterated.  The housing was basically fine.  I thought about gluing a cheap plexiglass mirror onto the cracked mirror, and then popping that mess back in until we could get a real mirror.  I was overruled.

Our annual inspection is due tomorrow, so of course I spent most of the day driving out to a salvage yard that had a compatible mirror.  It was a nice day, so I got to enjoy some scenery on the old state roads up to the yard.  Two hours and $70 later, I was on my home.

I took a quick look online for instructions, remembering the only previous time I have tried home auto repair and that mess.  I found some helpful pictures at VWVortex, and then proceeded desconstructing my car's door.

In progress, the mirror is wired.

Hey!  Look at that!  The panel actually fit back on!

Yeah, the green of the new mirror housing doesn't quite match the rest of the car.

The door is a little scratched up around the handle, and most of the stupidstupidstupidirritatingstupid tabs that are supposed to "just pop right off" are broken, but the speakers work, the window rolls up and down, and the mirror moved with the joystick.  Or it did, until the joystick snapped off while I was carefully adjusting the mirror.

Frakking cobag joystick.

Updated on Friday, November 1, 2012: Technically, the score could be said to be 3 to 2 in VW's favor, since the keyfob battery died about this time last year.  I was able to replace this about a month ago.

In adding insult to injury news: to pass the annual inspection, the car needs new tires, rear brake pads, some flim flams on the woozle wazzle, the right-hand samoflange has sheared from the dimensional moorings, the alluvial calibrators need new dampeners, the inertial compensators have decompensated, and seven of the valves were found to be on backwards.

Let's call it 4 to 2 for VW, but the game is not yet over.

I Still Have Hope for Videogames

I thoroughly enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas, and regularly enjoyed Fallout 3.  This article explains just one aspect of why I think New Vegas was the far superior of the two.  I hold on to my hope, as does the tediously metaphorical man dangling from a tediously metaphorical cliff by a tediously metaphysical root, that Bethesda Softworks learned from Obsidian's success while working on the much rumored Fallout 4.

Maybe someday I will finish that article I am working on about how to make a great Fallout Online.

Pinko, Hey Pinko, You Listening?

Hunkering Down

Hurricane Sandy is apparently aimed straight at New Jersey, obviously proving without a doubt that God is angry with Republicans, but Lady Chemistry and I are snug as bugs in a rug, who shouldn't be all that snug because rugs get stepped on.  So we are snugger than the aforementioned bugs.

I cleaned up the yard yesterday to minimize any missiles, taking the yard chairs to the barn, dragged the logs from the broken birdhouse and broken clothesline to the brush pile, and put our grills in the garage.  As long as the barn or garage isn't obliterated, we should be fine.  Well, there is the giant pile of house trash leftover from our neighbor's move, but hopefully that won't be launch in our direction.  And there are the dead branches in the maple tree that might hit a window if they fall, but we've got renter's insurance, and I warned our landlords about them twice in the last two months.  I can't do anything about the new leak in the roof by the kitchen chimney, but our landlord decided he wanted to wait until the first of November to have someone take a look at that.  That was a week ago that I warned him, and I hadn't heard of the hurricane either.

We've got plenty of wood cut for heating the house anyway, so if we lose power for days, we can still cook.  Our power was up and down last night, but seem fine today.  Right now, we're getting torrential rain with strong breezes, but by tonight things could be different.  We are in the peidmont, so I think we are far enough inland, and south, that we won't see much worse. 

Should this turn storm return Virginia to a libertarian post-apocalyptic paradise, I have an 80-pound hunting bow, and I know how to use it.

Simpsons Did It! Simpsons Did It!

The Koch brothers have pulled a Sweetums.  This is a bullshit scare tactic.  All they are trying to do is convince a few thousand of their employees to avoid voting for Obama, or voting at all.  The implications in actions like this should enrage everyone in America, regardless of political affiliation, because this is a direct threat against out freedoms, and the democratic process. 

An Assignment for the Amateur Photographers of L.A., of Whom I Know None

I was listening to NPR this morning while driving Lady Chemistry to work, in part because I like NPR most of the time, but also because our options are Jee-ZUHUS, country music, gawd, a cackling hyena's morning show, Jee-ZUHUS, what passes for hip-hop these days, Jee-ZUHUS, Jee-ZUHUS, and more Jee-ZUHUS.  Since we have no working radio at home, and can't stream radio without burning through our ridiculous cellular internet too fast, I can only listen to NPR in the car.  While I enjoy this, it tends to put Lady Chemistry to sleep.  This effect is not always beneficial.

Aside from the political reporting, the items which interested me were all in Space!, or Space! related.*  As we all know, everything is better in space, or better once related to Space!.  The space shuttle Endeavour is moving to the California Science Center, and will be cruising around posing for photographs, like the other shuttles have. The shuttle will be driven through the museum's neighboring urban areas at one mile per hour because the shuttle is both enormously big, and enormously fragile.  Or so the shuttle claims, I think this is just another shameless attention grab.  This trip will provide flickr and Instagram users ample opportunity to take all sorts of semi-artsy pictures of Endeavour passing Starbucks and McDonald's symbolizing two visions of American success, and probably also the opportunity to take all sorts of semi-artsy pictures of Endeavour passing empty stores and other available real estate symbolizing the end of the shuttle program and the twilight of America's economic hegemony.  Internets, hear my call!  People with photoshop skills, your assignments are in the mail.  Instagram users, start filtering your bad photos now!  flickr users, start doing whatever it is you do with those camera-thingies that don't make phone calls or send texts.  Get on this.

The other bit about space was slightly more musical, and just enough to make me smile.  NASA apparently shot some probes into near space to do some science, including recording the sounds made when charged particles impact our home's magnetic field.  If you can't listen to it where you are,*** imagine the sound of a spring evening in the boonies.  The peepers are chirping, a few crickets are peeping, and the raccoons haven't yet found your trash.

This bit reminded me of a previous thing I found on the internet, a live stream of sound derived from the information recorded by radio telescopes.  I haven't found the original website with the stream, which I listened to in 2008 or '09 on my brother's computer, and my craptacular internet won't let me stream this site either.  The music that results from the interpretation of radiation into audio is atmospheric.****  I have seen a lot of bands that come close to sounding like they are a planet, spinning in infinity and deflecting particles with a magnetic field, but nothing quite comes close.  Maybe a Phillip Glass score, if you were physically able to make through one.

* This post could also have been titled "The Less Ragey Post of the Two I Wrote in My Head While Driving, Because Politics."

** In a related note, every single time I tried to type shuttle in this post, I first typed shittle, including the one in this sentence.  I guess I remain unadjusted to this keyboard, or have fallen out of my habit of typing, or have some unconscious dislike of the shuttle program.  I just did it again, how odd.

*** I know no one reads this anymore, but I like to pretend, so play along.  You might even be wondering who is the intended audience of this note, if I don't believe I have any readers anymore.  In answer, I say-WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE! and then run away.

**** This is a bad pun for so many reasons.

Yelling Bird VS Res Publica

Wherever Res Publica is blogging now, Yelling Bird is screaming it shorter, and harder.

And what is with that woman on NPR I heard a few days ago?  "I don't like Obama.  I hate him.  I can't even look at him."  She can't even look at Obama?  How could anyone interview that person without then asking them how it feels to be a bigot?  If you can't even look at someone because of their appearance, you need to reevaluate your, ahem, principles.  I am against everything Mitt Romney says he stands for, but I don't hate him.  I think Paul Ryan is giant prank being pulled on the Tea Party and everyone who has ever claimed to be Libertarian, but I don't hate him.  I don't even know if I am capable of hate anymore.

To Be Added to the List of Super Gross People: Grocery Bathroom Guy

I was recently in a grocery and store, and I decided to use the bathroom while Lady Chemistry was looking at some items.  There was a guy using the other urinal when I walked in, and I walked over to the other urinal.  As I am unzipping, the dude finishes, flushes, and strolls out.  I glanced at the door, and then the sinks.  He cruised right past Go, did not collect his $200, did not wash his hands, and went out into the store.  A grocery store.  Which has food.  Which he may have touched.  With hands that were just shaking his pee pee.

How do I know he shook his pee pee, you might be asking yourself.  He did that lean back and shoulder shake thing that means he was shaking his wiener and flinging the last drops of urine everywhere, including, most probably, his hands and pants.

Mister Pee Pee Hands, you win.  I officially hate Virginia again.  Thanks for ruining the small pleasures I had cultivated in this formerly mediocre state. 

Jumping the Fence Between Universes

I went for a walk in my neighborhood today, I thought it might be nice to meet more of the neighbors.  First, I checked on my garden, down the hill, past the barn.  I pulled a few weeds, decided to wait on picking the orange tomatoes.  The pepper plants seem to be doing well, the jalapenos are growing back after their savaging by some unknown critter.  The cucumber still looks sickly with yellow leaves, but maybe that is normal.  The sole cucumber on the vine grows a little each day.  The eggplant may even make a full recovery for the third time, and possibly even produce some fruit.  My vine beans are attempting to reach the bottom rung for the third time, but I doubt they will produce anything before being eaten by whatever has been gnawing them to nubs.  My bush beans are steadily growing, and continue to resist the devastation visited upon their vine brethren.  Not much for me to do.

I thought about jogging up to the road and back a few times, but the weather was so nice, temperature in the low 80s, humidity below 40%.  I decided to find that pond I have seen on Google Earth, so I hopped the fence and strode out into the pasture.  I kept an eye out for cows, and their leavings.  I was mostly worried about wandering into a bull’s vicinity.  The cows move away, but a bull might attempt to get real friendly.

I walked up the small hill on the other side of the fence, and took in the view.  Ahead, there was another, slightly taller hill on the other side of divot that couldn’t exactly be called a valley, more of a slump.  There was some promising looking scrub on top of the hill that might conceal the pond, which is probably man made due to its shape.  To my far left down the hill, there stood a line of pines and cedars that I was pretty sure marked the path of a stream that joins the stream from which I water my garden.  I walked onward, staying within seventy yards of the fence on my right.  I guessed that I might be able to reach the fence before any bull reached me, as long as I saw the bull first.

As I walked on, I found a cluster of lilies growing among the tall grass of the pasture.  Pale pink and white that looks like faint blue to my eyes, the flowers were almost done with their time in the sun.  The petals were falling off, but among all the greens and browns of the grass, even a well worn flower looks pretty.  There were some small blue flowers on plants that had rough or spikey stalks, and I appreciated those flowers less than I enjoyed the lilies.  The lilies were pretty without being defensive about it.  I only tolerate thistles because goldfinches are cool.

Reaching the top of the other hill, I realized that this was not the border of the pond, because there was no pond to be seen.  Picturing it in my head, I realized that the pond had to be on the far side of the stream bed with the cedars and pines because the pond is surrounded by trees.  The direct path to my next suspected location was to go left, but there was a cool old tree standing alone about thirty yards from the top of my new hill.  The tree had lots of old, dead branches, and maybe even a hole through the trunk.  Worth checking out.  There was also a circular, concrete thingy that I could check out after the tree, while swinging west toward the stream and possible pond.

I heard a strange droning sound above me, and looked southwest at the source.  Upon seeing the source of this sound, I immediately though that I might have leapt a fence into another quantum reality.  The source of the sound was a zeppelin.  I walked toward the tree while keeping an eye on the airship.  The angle was such that I was head-on to the zeppelin.  I thought to myself, if that thing is carrying passengers or doesn’t have a logo, I am in a tough spot.  I am dressed in a jogging outfit, and this may be why I haven’t seen any cows yet.  To my dismay and also joy, the airship turned slightly and I could see a Metlife logo.  The brief moment of combined existential dread and joy was worth all the scratches I had received.

I walked up to the tree, and saw that something had dug out a little lair at the base of the knotted, old tree.  The tree, which I called Old Farmer because he looked like a weather-beaten farmer standing in a corner of his fields, was oak or maple and six to eight feet in diameter.  I took one step onto a thick root, and peered into the hole.  The rotted roots of tree had been dug out and scattered in a fan around this wedge of the tree, and I looked around for other animal signs.  Six inches in front of my foot, I saw animal sign.

There was a section of black snake on the root in front of my foot.  Having recently cleaned up a deceased black rat snake, I did the only natural thing for a person in my position.  I took a step back, and found a nice bit of grass with which to poke the unmoving snake section.  The snake section moved immediately upon the gentle poking.  This was only the last ten inches or so of the snake, so I looked in the grass along the direction of travel and spied a snarl of snake about two feet from the previous location of my foot.  I moved a few feet back and a few feet to my left to get a better view of the snake’s head.  I couldn’t quite see it between the clumps of dried grass, but I wasn’t about to reach my hand in there, I’ve learned that lesson enough times previously.

I gently nudged the snake with my foot-long piece of grass, and immediately regretted the length of my chosen implement of harassment.  The snake coiled up and struck, reaching the length of the piece grass and the space that my hand had occupied before I reacted.  This was an unusual snake.  I was not penning it in at all, but it really did not want to run away like the other snakes I have encountered out in the boonies.  I grabbed a longer piece of grass, and we replicated the results of the first prodding.  I took another step back and another look at the snake.  My internal monologue’s accent defaulted to Australian as I surveyed the scene.  It was definitely not a moccasin, but it was oddly aggressive, or maybe I was being an inordinately rude person.  Probably both.  The flash of insight that it may have laid some eggs in the rotting base of the tree slowly flickered into my skull, and I walked backward a few more feet before turning to leave the snake in relative peace.

I crept over to the concrete circle, attempting to sneak up on whatever may live inside the ring.  This would have been funny to anyone watching, as I probably made the same amount of noise as before, while moving considerably slower.  It is hard to be quiet in dry, dead grass that is piled up to your knees.

The circle turned out to be devoid of visible animal life, but the plants inside it were quite green and happy.  The concrete ring was about four feet high, and four inches thick, and seemed like a section of pipe laid on its back to create a pool or something.  Except that it was dry, had no bottom to contain any water, and seemed to tall for any calfs to drink out of, had it been full of water.  Weird.  I noticed some mouse runs around the outside base of the concrete circle, so I looked around the base for any potential mouse houses.  I found a large flat-ish rock on the far side of the ring, and gently pried it up away from me like I have seen on countless nature programs.  I hit jackpot.  A mouse and a blue tailed skink raced out from under the rock to the shelter of the taller plants around the concrete ring.  The mouse left behind a little, grass-lined burrow with three to five baby mice, and the skink just left.  After looking at the mice for a few seconds, I gently replaced the rock exactly as it had been before I left it.

Then I had a little fit of paranoia, and lifted the rock to check on the babies.  They were fine, so I gently replaced the rock, again.  I went on my merry way down the hill toward the stream bed and the cedars and the pines.  When I reached the line of trees, I saw lots of cow tracks.  The streambed was dry, but only just.  The muddy soil didn’t look like it would steal the shoes off my feet, but I decided to leap across it anyway.  On the other side of the streambed, there were all sorts of flowers: blue thistles, little blue clusters, some yellows, and the white flat ones that have the profile of an upsidedown mushroom cap.  There were happy bees everywhere, and some mud wasps, too, but none of them seemed to mind me crashing my way through the taller grasses and flowers.

There was another row of small cedars between me and what looked like a man-made embankment, and this row of trees was well meshed by thorny bushes, with a dash of poison ivy to make it challenging.  I found a small space to carefully squeeze through, even though I realized that this was unnecessary.  I could have just walked about forty feet to my left to walk through a gap between trees, but that wasn’t the point.  I carefully stepped over the poison ivy, under the thorny bushes, and between the tree branches.  Walking up the embankment, I found my goal.

The pond was a muddy, rain-filled watering hole.  It was nothing special, most likely built for the cows to drink and cool off.  The pond was probably only a couple feet deep, not including the mud, and also probably a foot shallower than it would be in a normal year.  This didn’t matter to the turtles and frogs that scattered into the safe, brown water as I crested the embankment.  The turtles and frogs seemed happy enough, either leaping out of my way or shuffling off the various rocks and floating tree branches.  I walked the circumference of the pond, and was startled by a fox.

The fox leapt out of a clump of grasses with a brown furry creature in its jaws.  I saw only a brief glimpse of the head of the fox because it was running away from me, but it had caught either a rabbit or a mouse of unusual size.  I started whistling as I walked the rest of the way around the pond, hoping that any other foxes, or snapping turtles, or bears, or snakes, or bulls would stay away.  I am not afraid of these animals, but I think we would all be happier if I didn’t startle any of them by somehow sneaking up on them.

I made my path away from the pond, and walked in the general direction of home.  On the north side of the pond, down the embankment, I found the remains of a dead cow.  The beast had been dead for longer than a week, and possibly less than a year.  The spine was in a few pieces, as was basically all the rest of it.  The bones were all white, and some of them had been scattered a good distance, as I realized that I was standing on one, while looking at the rest of the carcass from a distance of ten feet or so.  There was some brown mud around the nearest section of ribcage, and while it may have been leftover skin, it may also have been mud smushed up between the ribs.  I looked at it for a bit, there’s the skull, the other half of the rib cage, some leg bones.  I walked back down to the streambed, through the little field of flowers, and jumped across to the main pasture.  I walked back home, crossing the other stream, up the last hill, and back over the fence into the universe of job searches, blogs, and cobag politicians.

Debate Club

For the record, I didn't start this conversation, and I tried to stay out of it.  This was a work function for Lady Chemistry, and I was on my Best-Regular behavior.*  I remained calm and quiet while the Raging Conservative Tool repeatedly said, "I hate Obama."  The host said, "hate is a really strong word, with lots of connotations..."  "I hate Obama," repeated the RCT.  I politely continued the conversation about whatever I had been discussing with my dinner neighbor.

Despite all my attempts to remain calm and talk about something else, I was dragged into a conversation about politics.  When pressed about why I support Obama, I said that I could not conscience voting for a couple men who insist that women be second-class citizens.  The RCT, a woman, laughed this off.

I tried to keep it reasonable, and give her something we could agree on, and talk about how Congress used to compromise to get things done.  She credited this all to Reagan, and Clinton moving to the center.  I refrained from saying that Clinton wouldn't have had to move to the center if the Republicans would be willing to compromise anything.  I was trying to defuse the conversation so we could go back to talking about fun stuff.

I tried to tie in the previous topic to the fact that it doesn't really matter what the Presidential candidates want to do domestically because of the deep divide and lack of compromise.  The only important aspect of any Presidential candidate is how they can handle foreign affairs, but she said that the whole issue really comes down to what the role of government is.

"The government's only role is to protect us from foreign invaders," she claimed, with a hint of victory in her voice.  I completely disagreed, as the Constitution clearly states otherwise.  She claimed that "if you really read it, that is all it says."  She could point out no specific phrase to support her view.  I then threw manners out the window, and said, "well, let's get rid of the Bill of Rights because that has nothing to do with protecting us from foreign invaders."  She shrugged.  Let's toss out all the laws that prevent the poor from kicking in your door, killing you, and stealing your stuff.  That has nothing to do with protecting us from foreign invaders.  If that is the sum total of any government's role, then let's go for it.

She then claimed that it doesn't matter what she thinks because she can retire tomorrow and be set for the rest of her life.  She's out, and nothing will prevent her from living in luxury for the rest of her days.  It doesn't really matter to her who wins because she is done.  I said, "no wonder you like Paul Ryan, he has the same ideals.  He is set for life thanks to Social Security, so let's get rid of it."

The final thing that I held back from saying, for only the sake of making Lady Chemistry's worklife easier, was if she is truly done, and it doesn't matter to her comfort who wins, THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU VOTING?

* I shouldn't need to explain this, but there are varying degrees of best behavior.  Best-Chuckles (for blogging, being funny, maybe a little insightful), Best-Regular (for regular, non-Genius, non-chuckles levels of best), Best-Genius (for seriously bringing it hard and smart).

Before You Ask

Yes, the landlords are renovating the bathroom in our cottage.  No, it is not because of anything I ate.  And this is a picture of Mars, not my toilet.