You may want to buckle up here, for I have set afoot a wayward ramble the likes of which I haven't done recently. (hint: someone's going to prison before it's all over). Enjoy.

When I was a little kid, my grandparents lived in Mammoth Spring Arkansas, which is the largest cold-water spring in the US, I believe. Just a couple hundred yards from the spillway below the springs, there's a bend in the river (The Spring River starts there) called the "Gooseneck." There was a cafe on the bluff over the Gooseneck which was Grandpa & Grandma's favorite haunt.

The Gooseneck had a rack of hokey hillbilly postcards with shitty puns up on the counter by the covered cake-stand full of donuts. One postcard was a cartoon of an enormous lady sitting at a soda fountain eating a sundae accompanied by the clever legend "Travel broadens one." This may have been the origin of my love-hate thing with cornball humor.

Gran & Gram gave me $5 for Christmas one year, and it was the most exciting and most fruitful shopping binge of my life. Mom and Gram took us across the border to Thayer, Missouri to a five-and-dime store, and I took my time choosing how to spend my massive wad of cash. FIVE DOLLARS! This really was a lot of money to me - I was maybe 5 and a candy bar was still ten cents. This would have been 1970.

I chose a little bottle of that clear amber-colored glue and a pot of silver glitter. I could just envision all the things I would festoon with my precious horde of glitter. It seemed so special not to buy something already glitter-encrusted, but rather to have the ability to bathe any other object in glitter--what a glorious prospect. I also bought a teeny cheap plastic baby doll with eyes that opened and shut. Mom and Gram were probably bored, but they let me take my time, and I brought all my little treasures to the counter, and although I still love bargains and shoes and pretty things, no shopping trip to John Fluevog or Neiman-Marcus or Archie McPhee has ever rivaled that one for sheer awe and excitement. I remember looking to the front of the store, and them standing patiently waiting for me to make my selections. I'll never forget the look of that store or that feeling. Nope, it'll always be with me. *magic*

Anyway, Gram and Gran spent a staggering amount of time drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes at the Gooseneck Cafe with the other old-timers. There was a jukebox and a pinball machine. Grandpa would give me a quarter for the jukebox every time we went.

Once, my cousin Charlie was in town from California. He was about 5 years older. I was about 8 or 9. I went to put my quarter in the juke box and Charlie looked over my shoulder and told me which song to play. I didn't want to play it--I didn't know it, I wanted to hear something I liked - something like Hot Rod Lincoln or Delta Dawn or some such, but, whatever.

I returned to the table and sat down. Mom glowered at me as the dulcet tones of Elton John's "The Bitch Is Back" wafted through the cafe, no doubt delighting all and sundry. She was so angry. I didn't get it. I didn't know what a bitch was - I'd never heard that word. Now, if "shit" had been in the title, I would surely have known better and wild horses couldn't have made me play it. I'd heard "shit" from some older kids on the schoolbus, and I certainly knew better which made it all the more charming, but I'd be damned if I was going to utter such a thing in my mom's presence.

At that point in my life, I really wanted to start a cussing club, wherein all members must use "shit" or "fart" in every sentence. However, everyone my age was naturally a baby, and none of them were cool enough to be invited, so I just had the cussing club inside my head. Imagine that: there were no 7- or 8-year-olds in my acquaintance I deemed sophisticated enough to be potty-mouthed with me. I'm just that fancy. I'm still having that party, by the way, but occasionally I treat hapless strangers to the delights of my cussing club. This is why if you ever meet me, you'll notice I use "shit" and "fart" on every possible occasion.

When singing opera or in church, as soloist, I've always secretly feared I'd goof up and break out of my dramatic coloratura soprano to say in normal speaking voice "SHIT!" I never have, and perhaps that fear has kept me aware and on my toes. Fear is a great motivator.

Anyway, mom looked at me as if I were the fount of all evil in the known universe. I was experiencing the Vietnamization of my relationship with her and would soon be seeking an exit strategy. I mean, shit! I didn't know. Don't look at me - it was Charlie's fault, the old fart!

Anyway. Now Charlie is on Death Row. I'm not saying it's because he made me play "The Bitch is Back" instead of "Convoy!" But he IS on Death Row.

Welcome Home Little Sister, Brother-in-law, Niece, Nephew and big stinky dog!

Someone put this nice collection of pictures together to Chris Rea's superb song "Texas" from "The Road to Hell" (I love that cd, too). There are some great photos in here that capture the romance of Texas - I don't mean to brag, it's just that there's a lot here to love.

Lessons for renters from January 2007:

a. If you keep your weed in envelopes, kindly remove it from the envelope before you submit your rent in it.
b. If you submit your rent check in an envelope along with some weed, make sure you include enough weed for the landlord to do something with. That way, your underpaid landlord can make a little money on the side by selling it to your neighbors.
c. If you must get sloppy fall-out-of-the-car-in-front-of-your-neighbors drunk, just stay home and drink.
d. (this one's a recap) Don't leave dead animals in the apartment when you move out.

That is all.

The ever-brilliant Tam over at View From the Porch had a succint nail-on-the-head post on the folly of ignoring the oil reserves in ANWR. You should click here and read it and read the interesting follow-up comments, particularly from one person who has been to ANWR and conducted 10 years of research in that region. If you think drilling in ANWR would be tragic for this nation, the world and the environment, you need to back away from the Kool-Aid table, my friend, because someone has been lying to you.

Anyway, in the comments, Erik links to a couple pictures - one from MSNBC that was purported to be ANWR, and links to a National Review Online article that show photos of what, in fact, this coastal wetland actually DOES look like. For the sake of argument, the NRO article also includes photos of what a pipeline looks like in a similar area which you can see here.

All those who commented say it better than I, but in a nutshell, they say that unlike the verdant rolling grasslands populated by buffalo from the propaganda campaign, this area is in fact a mosquito-infested vista of desolation. Winters are too cold and dark for trees to live there, and the journalist from NRO said the nearby mountains resemble piles of gravel. Apparently the earth there is so oil-rich that there are huge ponds of crude oil just sitting around, and the person who did the 10 year ANWR study said if we drill, the environment will be cleaner. Seems to me just leaving this crude everywhere would serve to kill whatever tiny bit of wildlife would otherwise be in the region.

Tam's point was that given the tension in regions of other major oil reserves in the world and/or their lunatic despot leaders, it is inevitable that we will have to dip into ANWR, and which seems a more sensible approach - finally caving and drilling in a panic after our economy is in the crapper, or a well-reasoned, calm and careful approach now while we are not desperate for oil?

I'm in.

There'll be no more meatless Tuesdays...


Well, I've got the first two of many cakes all packed up and ready to ship Tuesday. Miss Bunnydog was underfoot Monday night and doing the antsy-twisty sashay she does when she's in there's-food-around-the-corner mode. If only I'd known - Myron commented after the Sunday post that we could have just sent the half-et cake that doglet got at, him being used to sloppy seconds after his dogs got into the victuals. Of course, I learned this too late and had already unleashed Husband upon the cake carcass, so Myron will have to suffer a full, whole cake, unmolested.

Speaking of molestation, I wonder what is the origin of the euphemism "get at" when used in reference to a person interfering with another sexually? Rather odd, that.

I'm reading How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young which is interesting reading, to say the least. I learned about this book last week when I was venting spleen on Graydon Carter and the toilet-paper quality rag that is today's Vanity Fair. Toby worked for VF under Graydon Carter and dishes up lots of gory details that merely confirm what a dirtbag I had decided GC et al must be to put out such a crap-content magazine. What surprises me, though, is that based on what I read on amazon.com and with that title, I rather expected this book to be an act of contrition in which he basically apologizes for being crappy to people on his way "up." Not so, actually, he just talks a lot of trash (I suspect the people who look so bad in these stories probably found this flattering rather than something to be ashamed of) about what base snobbery and politics go on at this most elevated of all periodicals.

Did you know that the guy who plays the old man's body guard in A Clockwork Orange is the same actor who wore the Darth Vader costume in the original Star Wars? Apparently, because he's 6'7", George Lucas gave him the choice of Darth or Chewbacca. I think Darth was a good call, just based on make-up. Plus no lines to remember, right? Good acting!

War of the Worlds *SPOILER WARNING*

I flipped on the tv this weekend and got sucked in to War Of The Worlds starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. I only saw maybe half the movie from the part where they are in the house and they come out to find the wreckage of a 747 strewn about the neighborhood.

I will say on principle I have generally detested TC, but I thought his acting was rather good at moments - will wonders never cease?

Anyhoo, my beef is with the creative choices the film makers made in depicting the aliens as particularly menacing and terrifying.

Number 1: All those people wouldn't have survived the fall from 100 meters in the crab basket. I'm just saying. We're not some jelly blobs full of free-floating goo - there's some structure in here and it's breakable.

Number 2: I realize they'd probably run over budget and had to wrap the whole mess up, but it sucked that when a group of humans finally figured out how to dismantle the alien monster machines, that the aliens suddenly die anyway of the common cold.

Number 3 - and this is the biggie: When they drop a human to earth and stick that proboscis in to his abdomen to suck out the innards, blood, and/or whatever - they were hilariously channeling the straw scene from Killer Klowns From Outer Space, the 1988 Sci-Fi satire. You see, the Klowns have come to earth to collect humans and they wrap them in these coccoon thingies and when they are ripe, they stick a straw in and suck out the . um. whatever.
Ok.
I'm grossing out, now.
Anyway. I'm just saying. You've got a budget of, like, $100million to make a film, you ought to take a day for research and try to avoid the established cliches of the genre. Ya know, just for the pleasure of the movie-going audience - I mean, it's supposed to be entertaining, right?

She was home alone, bored and lonely. Why do they leave her to knock about this place by herself when she'd rather be loose and free as the wind, running to check out all the interesting odors with which the world is teeming and occasionally chase cottontails? How can the world keep turning without her there to micromanage it?

Sure, she's an old lady these days - 15 - that's about 75 in small dog years - but doesn't she still have needs? Doesn't she still have... desires?

So what if she does have to take several dollars' worth of supplements and glucosamine/chondroitin twice a day to keep the old hips working (too much jumping off refrigerators and the like as a young pup)? All those careful, dainty steps shouldn't lure one into thinking she's not still full of ginger. Yeah, she shivers all the time, but does that warrant the humiliating donning of dresses which her Mistress insists upon? We think not. We think the convention of clothing is beneath our kind and should be left to the trivial species. But I digress.

Her mistress has been baking cakes for all and sundry, and she's stood patiently by, never complaining about getting only occasional crumbs. She knew her day was coming.

Mistress sat Myron's cake, quad-wrapped in cello and taped into a tin on the coffee table, ready to sit down and bedazzle the tin. Distracted and tired on Friday night, Mistress never got around to bedazzling the cake tin and forgot about it.

So the cake sat there in all its rummy goodness, tantilizing fingers of cake scent wending their way through through tightly-wound layers of plastic and a very snug lid. "Come hither" whispered the fingers - "the glories of egg and sugar and rum and butter await inside-- it is useless to resist me."

Lo and verily did she hie and hither forth come, relishing the problem-solving challenge of removing the lid of a tin with no thumbs-- for what tin could be a match for such abiding desire?

When I got home and found the dog had been at Myron's cake (I'm making you another!), I was shocked (shocked!) to find my deaf/half-blind/geriatric doglet had made free to help herself to the cake. My 15 pound she-beast ate about a pound of a 4 pound rum-cake. That would be like a 200 pound man eating 30 pounds of rum cake - incredible!!! Anyway, I hope the old bitch is hung over!

Poor thing. It's funny to think what must go through a dog's mind. Anthropomorphism dictates we'll think dogs are vindictive (OK, Erin's wiener dog Uno IS vindictive, but he's smarter than most) and that they are ornery on purpose, but in fact, probably the closest dogs get to being human is a sheer befuddlement over the fact that we drag lots of lovely meat and other goodies back home to the cave and we don't gather 'round and dig into it all at once - what is wrong with us that we don't set to devouring all that lovely food immediately?

Once about 13 years ago I left a bag of groceries on the coffee table (same coffee table - HEY , mabye there's a connection!) and forgot about it, and a box of butter had been put in this non-cold bag and I didn't realize it. I came into the room to find she had eaten the entire pound of butter and there were little greasy-pukey butter-puddles all over the floor. Fortunately, I lived in a loft at the time and had concrete floors, but sheesh!

So, anyway, she sorta acted sheepish, but i just grabbed the camera and made her stand for photos with the carcass. After all, she's a killer - she should be proud!

The most shocking thing I've heard all week:

I was talking to a friend and she told me an old friend of hers is struggling with a 4th or 5th bout with cancer, and she has a huge inoperable tumor and is too ill for chemo and things look pretty grim.

My friend is upset because a mutual friend of theirs said to the ailing woman "You need to figure out why you keep inviting cancer back into your life."

Seriously?!!!

We've all got to make our way in this world and figure it out as we go along, and I can understand that at difficult moments it's easy for some folks to look to someone materially very successful and treat them as oracles for all the ages-- you know: people like Oprah. At least, that's who I'm blaming for bullshit of this stripe that seems to be cropping up like mushrooms after a rain these days.

People speak in admonishing, hushed tones of not joking about vile or dire things because you "create bad energy" and I simply must say poppycock! These are otherwise incredibly intelligent women. (Yes, to my chagrin, I admit that everyone who has spoken in this way to me has been female, alas.) If bad things only happen to a person because they pre-ordain it by joking or being naughty or through any action or inaction, then how does this explain the lesson a newborn with a birth defect is supposed to be learning? Yeah, one might argue it's a punishment for the parents, but it's just too pat to say it's the sins of the father visited upon the child - this whole paradigm of creating the energy to welcome what you desire in life and to starve out the bad things that scare you is childish at best, and a mass-psychotic-event of magical thinking at worst.

I say embrace reality. Yes, there is pain in life and the world, and into every life a little rain will fall, but the bad things can make the good things ever more sweet.

Or at least that's the energy I'm trying to create. *wink*

Chuck over at http://tcoverride.blogspot.com/ posted this and I simply had to follow suit - hilarious.

I went to Lee Harvey's for lunch Wednesday, and I met the house cat - Bacon. I thought someone had left a black sweater or furry wrap on the barstool, and then it moved, revealing white paws and whiskers. It's funny - all the times I've been to Lee Harvey's and I've never seen the cat. I've seen lots of dogs there, though.

View Bacon Lee Harvey's MySpace page here. This cat has voodoo qualities.

Anyway, I miss living in a loft close to LH's - they have a small menu, but it was great to be able to go a couple blocks in the 'hood and find gourmet-ish food for takeaway. They have a roasted portobello mushroom sandwich, a jalapeno-jack grilled cheese sandwich, and other good things.

Anyway, we were the first people there for lunch, and Tim was working behind the bar when the phone rang. He seemed perplexed immediately. He'd answered the phone "Lee Harvey's" and some salesperson asked if they could speak to Mr. Harvey. Tim said Mr. Harvey had been dead since 1963. He was on the phone with the guy for several minutes - it was strange. He finally told the person that the owner of the bar was Seth, and he told the guy it was hit-or-miss on calling when Seth might be there.

When Tim got off the phone, he said that some months back someone told the telemarketer that Mr. Harvey was on an extended cruise but would return in January and they could call back then. We laughed and laughed.

More from Anna Russell

This whole bit from Anna Russell is fantastic, called "How to Write a Gilbert&Sullivan Operetta." Gilbert and Sullivan operettas made much hay of a caste-type system and snob-appeal, and their stock-and-trade was to make great sport of the serving class - very mean! Anyway, I love her - even at this late stage (I would guess she was well advanced into her 70s in this recording) you can see what a vibrant, clever and lively soul she is on stage. She actually had a disastrous entry into the professional opera realm in the early 1930s when, as poor Santuzza in Leoncavallo's Cavaleria Rusticana, she knocked over an entire set backdrop - mortifying! Anyway, she was incredibly clever and someone urged her to make public performances of her musical satire, and a star was born. I love it. I hope you get a giggle.

Here's a link to the Anna Russell Shrine page where there are several audio clips available.

OK, well I've got it all except the backstabbing & independently wealthy bit...

I just noticed in the new issue of Opera News magazine that the brilliant operatic comedienne Miss Anna Russell died in October. She was side-splittingly funny, and her analysis of Wagner's Ring Cycle will bring you to tears, literally. I can't think of her without laughing - what a delight she was. In fact, I'm going to post another clip from her along with this one. Enjoy.

I was just listening to Don't Stop Believing by Journey. When I was in 9th grade, my band went to Disneyland, and Journey was all the rage. I, of course, was listening to British imports and stuff that couldn't be found on radio, but I was ok with a lot of what was going on in pop and rock and roll. I even rather liked Journey, compared to a lot of the crap on the radio at the time. Still, Bauhaus, Gang of Four and Killing Joke were my thing, and I'm rather proud of having better taste than the pedestrian traffic would allow.

One heifer in my band, an obnoxious clarinet player named Rhonda, was obsessed with Journey and I'll bet I heard Open Arms about 100 times there and back on that California trail of torture. Turned me smack off Journey until about two years ago. I still won't be running out and buying a Journey cd, but at least I can hear them without my skin crawling these days.

When I was about 15, our family went to California over the Christmas holidays to see relatives. A second cousin was visiting our mutual great aunt. He pulled out a cassette tape and played what he insisted was his band doing a cover of Don't Stop Believing, playing one little passage over and over and explaining that he played a slightly different flourish on the guitar there than the original, but he did admit it was otherwise indistinguishable from the original--he was just that good. Uh, yeah. You have to wonder about the compulsive liar types - it's a little sad and a little startling that they think people are so gullible. I remember thinking what an ass he was and that it would probably seem rude if I registered my disbelief, so I just said, "ah, wow, that's really good because it sounds like Journey to me."

Anyway, he's a deputy sheriff now - isn't that comforting?

I always had a spectacular imagination. I remember one particularly mortifying whopper I told once, and to further seal my shame, I'm going to share it with you now.

Aunt and Uncle (she's my pop's sister) are incredibly industrious and put themselves through college and became educators, both eventually taking the role of principals in various school districts. They were(are) known as a formidable pair who brooked no B/S when it came to teenager antics. They were particularly sought out by school districts who had problems controlling the delinquents in their classrooms. Uncle is as nice as the day is long, but he's a huge athletic guy, and would use this to his advantage when necessary. Once a couple troubled youths in his high school who were brought to his office after some sort of fisticuff. These kids thought they were badasses and could intimidate any mere school official. Uncle told them they were going to get in line and stay in line or he'd give them what-for. Then he jumped flat-footed from the ground up to the top of his desk and did a sort of gorilla pose and said "I'm a WILD man!", all crazy-eyed and menacing. Apparently the boys 'bout peed themselves before they got away from him that day, and were thenceforth model students.

So, wait for it. The idiotic lie I told - well, gosh, this is horrid - I had to tell him something impressive about how I could relate to what a tough school he had. (I was about 7, second grade) I told him I saw one kid pull another kid's eyeball out with a stick.

Whew! I'm back. I was shaking so hard from laughing that I had to stop typing for a couple minutes and wipe away the tears. The horrors! What on EARTH made me do that? [Of course, I never saw a kid poke another kid's eyeball out, thank goodness.]

Uncle said "he did? You saw that happen?"
Me, the very picture of second-grade credulity, wide-eyed and nodding: "Yeah! It was gross!"

I remember visualizing how it might have happened, the three of us standing near the street, our backs furtively turned toward the schoolhouse and the joy-killing eyes of the teacher. Inexplicably, I remember envisioning an intestine-like 2 foot rope of viscera spooling out behind the eyeball from the void of the eye socket-- I had not, as yet, made a great study of anatomy, though I did know the neck bone was connected to the head bone.

I would occasionally tell lies as a little kid, but not usually such fantastic, impossible ones. More often mine were more the garden-variety less-verifiable kind like wiping a wet washrag over my teeth and saying that yes, I had brushed my teeth. Fortunately, I learned rather early that the danger of lying was that lies might result in a switching, and we hated those. No, indeed, if one were to tell lies and not get a whipping, one must learn nuance and subtlety and be very, very good at it. Ultimately, lying wasn't worth the mental energy it took to maintain the buttressing that kept the bad story alive.

About 10 years ago, I mentioned my lie to Uncle, about how it made my blood run cold to think that I would ever have been silly enough to utter such absolute twaddle, but he very politely didn't seem to recall it at all. I suppose my whopper seemed minor and had been crowded out of his memory by more impressive spinners of baloney.

Anyway, you have to wonder about people who never grow out of the lying thing - it's got to be absolutely exhausting, and isn't life complicated enough without that? Sheesh.

How to Celebrate the New Year 101

London New Year 2007 Fireworks display. This one's almost 11 minutes, but worth it. For those who haven't seen it, the big circular thing is "London Eye," a 150 meter ferris wheel on the South bank of the Thames river. Spectacular display, and I love how often you can hear the oohs and aahs of the gathered crowd. Those Brits certainly know how to throw a party. I'm glad they got to have the display despite the nasty weather they've been having. Enjoy.

Happy New Year, peoples!

Since the world failed to fall apart last night, this is probably as good a day as any to talk about celebrities.

Most of you probably heard about Sean Puffy Combs' scandale de semaine in which some of his clothing line was pulled from the shelves just before Christmas when it was discovered that some of the fake fur trim was, in fact, the outer casing of an actual wild dog living in Southeast Asia. Why would anyone bitch about this? This is like an airline upgrade or bonus anytime minutes on your cellular plan - free crap! Yay!

On the table at mom's this morning I noticed a newspaper ad for Sean's fragrance line called Unforgiveable. Irony, anyone? Make mine a double with a chaser of K-Fed's new fragrance, Humility 101.

Paris Hilton's Just Me comes with a complimentary cooling cucumber balm for razor burn.

Top Chef guest Anthony Bourdain could make a musky, earthy scent called Flintstonian, and I'd probably buy that one, just for cleverness alone. His show is starting in a couple weeks. Goody.

Oh, and speaking of shows that start in a couple weeks, Rome will parade the sweat-soaked 13th Legion back across the screen on January 14th. Hee Haw. Apparently it didn't all end when they killed Caesar at the end of last season. Who knew? Between you and me, I suspect Antony and Cleopatra will get up to some mischief. Good or bad, I'll be watching. They should make an episode just of sweat drying on Titus Pullo, don't you think?

By the way, when I was about 4, I officiously announced to my mother that when I had a daughter one day, I'd name her Cleopatrice. (pronounced klee-OH-PA-triss). She probably uttered a silent prayer that I'd never have daughters.

I remain childless.