Spam Haiku

churchyard clot
insulin parallelepiped
adhesive

mutant italic
pontific busboy
civet

The Show

The show went well, and the RLA sold four pieces. They all went to good homes. We had fun, and are both totally spent today. It is just exhausting being arty, cute and conversational for hours at a stretch.

The Old Cat

Is responding well to his treatments, and will be going in for another checkup this week.

Ralph Nader

Is an idiot and a spoiler. I hope, even if he learned nothing in 2000, that the idiots who voted for him did. But that's asking way to much of the American electorate, I'm sure. And I'll tell you something else: the Chevy Corvair was a very cool car, way ahead of its time. Thanks for ruining that for us too, Ralph.

1. Take 15 year old cat to the vet for follow-up (possible feline leukemia)
2. Random errands: grocery store, bank, tobacco store, drug store
3. Pick up "Masked and Anonymous" at the DVD store
3. Try not to think about cat
4. Prep for the RLA's show

This time tomorrow we'll be out in the street, hawking art. Working as an artist is dancing the tightrope of constant rejection. I'd say that is particularly true of the RLA's work, which has gone in this past year, from photo-realism to a surreal jazzy sort of dreamscape. Will the audience be able to relate to it? Will the audience buy it? Is it too far removed from the literal to be accepted by the crowds at a street show? Will it sell?
I don't think that any of that matters to the RLA. He is true to his art and his vision, in what ever direction it takes him. Sell or not sell, it doesn't have any influence in how he wields his brush. It's one of the things I love the most about him.

Because I work, and have always worked, in the realm of the corporation, my graphic design work is, well, safe. It is clean and easy to read/understand. I use paper with a nice tactile element, type faces that are well-designed and highly legible. I would even go so far as to say that my style is no style. That is to say, I have no identifiable style. Whatever is best for the client and the job at hand is what I do. Graphic design-wise, I am a ghost.

My fiber work is just as safe and commercially marketable. Is this shallow? Is this bad? I don't know. There are times when it makes me feel like less of an artist, but is that insecurity or valid self-criticism? Again, I don't know. I know that I can make things that I like, and that stretch me as a craftsman, and people will buy them. But I never stretch too far. I never take that leap that the RLA can take, off the edge and into the unknown.

For me, the bottom line is always the bottom line. That's why he's an artist, and I'm just an artisan.

Title says it all. There IS a double elimination in this round... So if I can just rustle up enough votes to beat what has to be one of the cheeeeziest "faux-porn" stories ever written, I can keep going.

I'm sorry about this, but I've voted against "This Ones For the Ladies" in every round. Now it comes back to bite me, because I have to run the elimination against it.

So, one more time: BlogMadness

I'm entry #18, "Back Home" a tear-inducing tale of love, and loss and AIDS and memories. Follow the links below the box to where it says vote. Then on the left hand side of the next page there will be the area where you click the box. If you want to play nice, read the other entry. If you want to play really, really nice, peruse the whole site and read all the entries. There's some lovely writing in there.

I can't wait to see when this post shows up. Last week's server meltdown also included a new server, with a new IP and a new path... none of which my free host mentioned. So even though I've been updating Today's Shoes, you can't see it. Yet. We'll see how fast Register.com actually redirects.

That's me. And right now I'm bitter in defeat. I'm particularly bitter because the first round I lost in BlogMadness is the round that doesn't have a double elimination, which means I am just O-U-T. I'm also particularly bitter because when I went to bed last night, with another 3 hours of voting, I was ahead by two. This morning, I am out. By two.

Damn you, No Ping. Damn you and your Mr. Bean-esque tale of buying sex lube at Wal-Mart.

I had pathos. I had tears. I had dead friends. You had sex lube.

What a world, what a world. Where a little girl like you could... oh. Wrong story.

Ah, as my old pal Psycho Patti would have said: Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck. I wonder where she is, now? Last heard to be in Georgia, refusing to take her meds. I miss her. At least she isn't dead. I don't think.

Last night I dreamt about Bill. Dead, of course, like so many other of the people of whom I was most fond. We were doing something with ceramics. I was trying to glaze bisques. But the glaze was thick, like icing, and it wouldn't hold to the clay. I was dipping the clay in the swimming pool, and the glaze was peeling off. Running off, actually, like watercolor paints. I thought that it would make for very interesting effects, if I could just get it to the kiln.

Damn. I hate to lose. (tooth gnashing) But thanks to everyone who supported me and help me get as far as I did.

Working for the county has its advantages, now and then. Today I had off in honor of the generic presidential birthday celebration known as "President's Day." I took a nap.

Not just a nap, but the hallowed, mid-afternoon, workday couch nap.

There are just no words.

I also worked on a new quilt top and took the old cat to the vet to make sure he's just old and not old and sick. Old and sick seems to be a theme in my life, at least as far as the humans in it goes, so I was worried about the cat. He's 15 and a half. In cat years, that's um, 108.

The vet's prognosis: just old and he doesn't like his food.

There's only 24-ish hours left to vote in Blog Madness, Round Four. What are you waiting for? Follow the link, and vote for your favorite. That would be me, right? Right? RIGHT?!

Thank you. I promise to go back to my regular bitching and moaning tomorrow. But now, I'm going to bake chocolate chip cookies. With pecans. For the guy at the pharmacy who doesn't suck. He can rub it in and show them to the Insufferable Mr. Pimple, but no sharing.

And if you vote for me, maybe, just maybe, I'll bake some for you too.

Yep. This is getting serious, now. I'm getting spanked in Round Four by "No Ping," a Mr. Bean-esque tale of trying to buy sex lube at Wal-Mart without the children seeing. And how it won't ping the register. As I said in a previous post, it's very funny. I've voted for it. But not now. Now I'm trolling for votes. I want to win. I have to win. It's ugly, but it's one of those little things people love me (or hate me) for: my fiercely competitive nature. There's only another 35 hours at this writing, so get out there and vote... for me.

On another note, the spam haiku is continuing to fill my mailbox. I dump it all in the garbage, but admittedly, the topics are getting more interesting.

aerogene leisure august bronchial concretion
dowling cartilage palladia annotate
monadic fiddle knit bituminous

About Valentine's Day

Despite a childhood scarred with memories of an empty shoebox on Valentine's Day, back in the dark days before politically correct schools boards and soccer moms made their children give a valentine to every member of the class, whether they were popular or not, I enjoy the holiday. I love velvet boxes shaped like hearts, full of dark chocolates. I love the idea of receiving perfume, and flowers and other girly stuff. I love doting on the RLA. Not all the time, mind you, I have a reputation to keep, but on Valentine's Day, I'm happy to just schmear on the L-U-V.

That's just what I did yesterday. I baked a cake, and made a special dinner. Then we watched samurai movies. The cake though, was special. The first Valentine's Day that the RLA and I spent as a married couple we were living in the scorched-earth epicenter of hell* and he was teaching nights until late. That night, while he was teaching, I cooked a nice meal, and decided to bake him a chocolate cake for dessert. A rich chocolate cake that had been one of my mother's best recipes. Two layers. Never fail.

Unfortunately, I grew up at sea level and never lived more than 40-50 feet above it in my life. I had no idea about high-altitude baking. Even though where we were living was far from mountains, it was on the edge of the high plains, and sat about 5,000 feet above sea level.

The cake behaved like something out of a Three Stooges short, rising up and over the rim of the pans, and continuing to do so as I watched helplessly. By the time the RLA came home from school, there was a third layer of cake baking on the floor of the oven, and I was sobbing inconsolably on the floor of the kitchen. The cake, such as I was able to salvage, looked like an elephant dropping covered in a chocolate butter cream frosting.

What the RLA had no way of knowing at the time was that I had never had a cake fail in my life. I'd been baking since I was old enough to see into a pot. And I am damn good at it. But how could he know that? And what reason did he have to believe me when I said I'd never had a baked good come out bad. Darling boy ate the lumpy chocolate cake anyway.

All of which is by way of explaining why I was thrilled to be able to produce another flawless cake last night. I've been on a quest for a variety of Red Velvet cake that isn't chocolate, but flavored with maraschino cherry. There's a nurse at the hospital who makes it and won't reveal her recipe for love or considerable amounts of money. Last night, though, I think I came very close to getting it right. The recipe I used came from a 1950 copyrighted Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook. The only alteration I made was to use maraschino cherry syrup (from the ice cream sundae fixings shelf at the grocery store) instead of the juice from a bottle of cherries. I also left out the nuts and the chopped cherries. I made a mocha butter cream frosting for it, and the RLA ate a quarter of it last night.

Here's last night's menu and recipes.

Bloody Marys

Marinated Skirt Steak
Fresh Steamed Spinach
Baked Potato (really baked, in a super hot oven for over an hour, until the skin was crisp, not nuked until soggy)

Maraschino Cherry Cake

Skirt steak is an underused cut of meat. It's cheap and exceptionally flavorful and lean. The marinade I used also originated in the 50s I think, because it includes soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, two staples of the 1950s kitchen, and very similar to a marinade my mother used to use on lamb chops when I was I child. I pulled the recipe from Epicurious and it was a reader's contribution from 1996.

Grilled Beef Steak Verciano

1/2 cup dry red wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons dried rosemary, crumbled
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

1 1/2 pounds of strip steak (any other kind of steak will do just fine)

Mix first 6 ingredients in a 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Add steak and turn to coat. Marinate 1 hour at room temperature or refrigerate up to 6 hours, turning steak occasionally.

Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat) or preheat broiler. Drain marinade into small saucepan; boil 1 minute and reserve to pass as sauce. Grill or broil steak to desired doneness, about 4 minutes per side for medium rare. Transfer steak to platter. Thinly slice across grain. Serve with marinade.

Maraschino Cherry Cake

2/3 cup soft shortening (half butter for flavor)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 cups sifted cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cherry syrup
3/4 cup milk
5 egg whites, stiffly beaten

Grease and flour 2 9" layer pans
Preheat oven to 350F

Cream together until fluffy the shortening and the sugar.

Sift together the flour baking powder and salt.

Mix together the cherry syrup and the milk.

Alternately add the dry and the wet ingredients to the shortening mixture, beginning and ending with the dry. Fold in the egg whites. Pour into prepared pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool and ice.

Mocha Butter Icing

3 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup soft shortening
3 squares of un-sweetened chocolate, melted
about 3 tablespoons of strong black coffee

Blend together the confectioners sugar, shortening and the chocolate.

Stir in the coffee until smooth and spreadable. You may need to add a little more coffee as the icing stiffens if you don't frost fast enough.

A word about baking soda

Back at the time of my chocolate cake debacle, there was a writer for Gourmet magazine by the name of Laurie Colwin, and she was, and is, one of my favorite food writers ever. She died in 1992, but I still read her two volumes of collected columns: Home Cooking, and More Home Cooking. The latter book has an article written for Halloween that includes one of the best recipes ever devised for butternut squash, but that's for another time. On pages 57-58 of More Home Cooking, Laurie had this to say about baking soda.

"In the back of Edna Lewis's immortal classic The Taste of Country Cooking is a word of advice about baking powder. Mrs. Lewis feels that double-acting baking powder, the kind now generally available, leaves a bitter aftertaste, and she is right. She suggests making your own with 2 parts cream of tartar to one part baking soda. Since I read this piece of advice I have never looked back. What is good for Mrs. Lewis is good for the nation, in my opinion."

Well, once I read Laurie's assessment of Mrs. Lewis and her baking powder, I, too, never looked back. I make my own, and it is heavenly.

And that was what I did for dinner last night.

*Clovis, New Mexico

Boyhowdie, I guess I shouldn't have used the word "flop" because that's what my server did.

There are advantages to free server space, cost being the most obvious. The down side of it is that you tend to sink to the bottom of the list when things go wrong and you go off-line for a day. Or two. Or two and a half, as you may have noted.

But I'm back, and I'd like to steal a trick from Wrapped Up Like a Douche, and give you all a look at a spam mail subject line. It's so abstract/obscure that I've left it in my inbox, sort of a spam haiku.

conjure counterpart enviable bilingual acid

Isn't it beautiful?

Speaking of beautiful, this is the weather the tourist bureau promised you when you thought you'd like to visit Florida in the winter. My office window is open, and the air is mild, balmy, slightly moist. The sky is a hazy shade of French blue (or bleu). I can see the skyline of South Beach off to my right. Don't you wish you were here, right now?

Well, except for the part about it's my OFFICE window. Which means that I am in my office, and not actually slapping back the mojitos on the sands of South Beach. On the other hand, and with me, there is always an other hand, it's not like I'm actually working at the moment, either.

For those of you who follow the trials and tribulations I suffer dealing with the witless wonders in the PR office, I won the last round. The two designs (theirs and mine) were offered up to the committee and my design won hands down. In fact, there was even something said to the effect that design "A" was soooooooooo much more logical, and easier to figure out where information would be found. Yep. I guess the old man didn't waste his money when I got that degree in design, after all. Smug? Yes. Y qual es su punto?

Finally, for those of you in the South Florida area, or who plan to be there next weekend, my husband, the RLA* will be exhibiting some very exciting new work at the South Miami Arts & Crafts Festival on the 21 & 22 of February. He'll be in booth #1. He used to do super realism, but this past year he's changed his direction. I can't describe it, but I'll try.

Be-bop psychedelic surrealism with a little influence from low-rider art and 50's tiki/cocktail culture. Sounds good, doesn't it?

*RLA= Renown Local Artist

Nobody can say that Josh had flop sweats last night, as he woofed his way to doggie stardom. I, personally, was rooting for the Pembroke Welsh Corgi. I thought he had it all together and, in the words of our hosts "made the breed standard come to life." I also know/have known Pembroke Welsh Corgis in my life, and they are fine animals, indeed.

Shout out to Oliver, you good dog, you.

That's the fun part of today's entry. The rest is just misery. I'm having an early attack of spring fever, and the mild blue sky and fluffy white clouds outside my window are not helping any. Neither is the work I have to do today: scanning forms and rescanning forms and making PDFs out of said forms and explaining for the, like, twentieth time to the requesting department the difference in quality between a scan of a crappy print and a PDF made from the original electronic master. Which, of course, they cannot or will not give me.

BlogMadness continues, and once more I have advanced. But now it gets really hard, because I'll be facing off against an entry that is just so funny I've voted for it in every round till now. Now, I'll be forced to vote for myself. And I find that just icky. Even if it is a secret ballot.

Speaking of secret ballots, my boy Wes Clark is dropping out of the Democratic primaries. I'm sad about that. I still want to see someone who really served in the military go toe to toe with the Fly-boy in Chief. I guess all I have left to pin my hopes on is John Kerry. (Whinny, snort, paw the ground)

One of the things I committed to memory in my youth was a poem from the late, great John Lennon's first volume of poetry "In His Own Write". It was a poem about Nigel. Here it is.

Good Dog Nigel

Arf, Arf, he goes, a merry sight
Our little hairy friend
Arf, Arf, upon the lampost bright
Arfing round the bend.
Nice dog! Goo boy,
Waggie tail and beg,
Clever Nigel, jump for joy
Because we are putting you to sleep at three of the clock, Nigel.

This poem caused much laughter in my childhood, and at the same time, a poignant sense of loss. I bring it up today because tonight will find me ensconced in the big comfy chair, AKC Book of Breeds in my lap, watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, live from Madison Square Garden.

Much to my amazement, other bloggers are writing about the show. I thought I was the only dog geek, but apparently I am not alone.

The Blight also talks about agility trials. As much as I love them, I can't watch them. You see, not so long ago, the Good Dog Nails and I attempted to do agility. We were kicked out of training. It wasn't that Nails peed in the ring (he didn't) or tried to fight or hump the other dogs (he did, but I keep him on a short leash). It was because, said the trainer, he didn't have enough of a desire to please me. Well, he's a Jack Russell, what would your point be? (And he's a JRTCA Jack Russell, not an AKC Jack, thank you so much.)*



She told me I couldn't pet him or praise him unless he did something right in the ring. And that meant ever pet him, praise him, or give him treats. I wasn't willing to do that, and that meant he wasn't driven enough.

On the other hand, it also means that tonight I'll get to watch the show with my growly friend on the couch beside me, squeaky toy at hand. I'll throw, he'll chase and retrieve, and it'll be fun for both of us. When he's done playing, he'll let me know by herding me over to where I keep the treats, and he'll bark until I open the cabinet and give him one.

And that trainer said he wasn't driven. Ha! He's trained me quite well.

* The Jack Russell Terrier Club of America was against admission to the AKC on the grounds that the Jack is a working breed, and needs to be kept a working, not a showing breed. I concur.

Yes, she says, doing a short victory lap around the laptop.

I have gotten to Round Three in the BlogMadness Tourney. I am up against a fierce competitor in this round, the witty and evil Charlie of "Where the Hell Was I" and his entry "Can I Buy a Damned Clue Please?". And as I write this, he's ahead of me in votes.

Yes, he's funny, but I'm heartfelt and poignant, dammit. Don't you guys watch the Oscars? AIDS and death is supposed to beat funny every time. So go out there and cast your votes for "Back Home". Please. Please?

Thank you. We can now go back to my usual bitching and moaning about life, the universe and everything.

I'd like to take this opportunity to list ten random things that I find infinitely more compelling than Janet Jackson and her nipple shield. The RLA says that all this brouhaha reminds him of the scene in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex where the giant boob runs amok, and bounces around smooshing people and lactating at them.

1. "President" Bush's AWOL record from the National Guard
2. Why all NASA projects on Mars go wonky (who or what doesn't want us to see what or who?)
3. A multi-trillion dollar nation debt
4. The odds of the Florida Marlins getting a decent baseball stadium in Dade County
5. Paris the city, not Paris the one-pose wonder (does she really think that the 3/4 view and the downward chin diminishes the length of that nose? Puh-leese. The woman looks like a Borzoi.)
6. Speaking of blue-bloods, The Westminster Dog Show
7. Bollywood
8. The Patriot Act
9. What "pipeweed" really is in the LOTR Trilogy
10. My dog, the Jack Russell Terrierist

Check it out: P.J. O'Rourke put a comment on my story about him. He corrected the spelling of his own name (dopey me) and took me to task for implying that the Lone Star is still in existence. I didn't, but it was sloppy writing on my part, and I accept the criticism.

I was so happy to hear from P.J. that I replied to the address he left on the comment. But, alas. If it was really and truly my curmudgeonly idol P.J. who left that comment and address, he didn't want to hear back from me, because the e-mail I sent thanking him for the note came back as "return to sender, address unknown. No such number, no such home."

In the interest of having the last word, here is the note I sent to P.J.:

"If you are, indeed, the REAL P.J. O'Rourke, I'm flattered that you've read my blog and took the time to correct my spelling. I'm also flattered that you chose not to correct my memories of the night we met. But that would be flattering myself to think you'd remember.

I've corrected the spelling of your name in the entry, but I think it was a matter of tense that made you think I was implying that the Lone Star still exists. I'm well aware that it is a thing of memory. Alas.

But then, Wo Hop's (downstairs, 17 Mott Street) is also just a fond memory.

Again,

Thank you so much for writing.

LA

"Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. You will only tell us what we are doing wrong. It doesn't have to been done right, it only has to be done."

The bitch won this one.

My dead friend Gary used to call it arbitrary use of inconsequential authority. I call it working with assholes.

At nine this morning, the PR office approved my new site design. I made a couple of their arbitrary changes, knowing full well that once they saw them in action, they'd hate them. I sent the design off to be made real.
At two this afternoon, the PR office called to say they'd changed their minds about the morning approval and wanted everything different.

My boss called the PR boss, who wouldn't take his call, and left for the day without calling him back. Her flunky couldn't say what was wrong or unacceptable with the design except that I'd done it.

Later in the day I received another call, from someone much higher up the food chain. Based on a misunderstanding of what they were looking at, I was told to remove all the links from our site to the on-line baby photos. The argument was made that we have a hard enough time keeping our babies safe from baby-napping without putting their little pictures on the web.

Yep. Potential baby-nappers shop for babies on-line, I guess.

To steal one of my favorite Dilbert lines: Rats cry when they hear about my job.

I'm off to make myself a slushee. I have a little kid-type ice shaver, and I'm going to make one in my favorite flavor: martini.

Chin chin, sweeties.

Someone asked about an item on my 100 Things list: they wanted me to tell the whole story about the night I met P.J. O'Rourke in a bar.

Let me set the stage. It is March, 1977, and I am living in New York City, in the Village, to be exact. I have just turned 22. This is the opening night party for what will become, for a time, one of the hottest night clubs in the city, The Lone Star Cafe. There is a sizable contingent of Texans living in New York at the time, enough that the New Yorker makes up an acronym (TINYs: Texans Living In New York) and many jokes for/about them.
The Lone Star is at the lower end of 5th Avenue, and sports on its roof a 10-foot sculpture of an iguana, complete with red neon eyes. Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys will become the unofficial house band. I will meet BB King and Lucille there. I will see and hear most of the best country/rock/blues bands of the day. My girlfriend and I will personally cause the cut "Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life" to be removed from the jukebox because we will play it over and over and over and laugh ourselves sick each time.

But that's all in the future. This is opening night, and they are throwing a Texas Independence Day Party to introduce the bar to the city. And I am there, wearing, what is for me, my casual uniform: a Hawiian print shirt and a pair of army fatigues. I'm drinking shots of Cuervo Gold and backing them with Dos Equis Darks. I am slightly drunk and very, very jolly.

I see, across the room, one of my personal heros. There is PJ O'Rourke, editor of the National Lampoon, one of the best and the brightest of my generation. He is tall and handsome and arguably the funniest person I have ever read. He has not yet become an apologist for the Right Wing. I am going to meet him. I just need to think of an opening line that would be worthy of his genius (and mine).

I go up to him, poke him gently in the ribs with my beer, and say "Hey! Who are you and what are you doing with PJ O'Rourke's face on the front of your head?"

He looks down his patrician nose, from his great height of six-foot and change and says "I AM PJ O'Rourke. What do you want?"

I say, quoting PJ, as a matter of fact: "Lick you all over for a dime. C'mon PJ, say something funny."

What he said was "Get the hell away from me." So I did.

I ended up talking to a man who was a writer for the Atlantic Monthly (I think. There had been a bit more tequilla and beer by then.) We were brilliant. The banter and rapier-like wit between us was worthy of the best odd-ball comedy of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Or Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. He finally said, rubbing his cheeks, where they hurt from having laughed so long and so hard, "You are the funniest woman I have ever met in my life. You need to meet my friend, because he's the funniest man I know. Hey! PJ, come over here, I want you to meet this girl."

PJ still didn't find me amusing "We've met." and took George and left.

Somewhere around 3 in the morning a guy tried to sing the Texas A&M fight song. He was thrown out into the snow by a very angry mob of UT alumni (HOOK 'EM HORNS) and the doors were locked behind him. I had found my neighborhood bar.

PS: there's still time to vote on my BlogMadness entry "Back Home."

Several years ago, my then-boss said to me words that have remained seared on my brain. She said them in front of witnesses. She said:

"I don't want you to come to this meeting. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. You're only going to tell us what we are doing wrong. This doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done."
Today I had to go to that same person's office and talk to one of her flunkys about the same topic that she didn't want to hear about then. The bulk of my conversation went like this: "I really couldn't say." "I don't know the answer to that." "Really? You'll have to talk to my boss about that."

Believe it or not, that was good on my part because what I really wanted to say was: "I'm not about to stick a hand into that tar baby. There's no fucking way I'm touching that topic with a ten foot pole." "Why would it be any of your business?" and "Fuck you and die a slow, lingering death. You are an incompetent bitch working for an incompetent idiot bitch and you have absolutely no clue about anything."

Then I came back and sat in my boss's office for twenty minutes and cursed like a sailor for having had to suffer through the meeting. I am a foot soldier in a turf war and just because they're losing, that doesn't mean that the other party isn't going to inflict casualties and damage wherever possible.

No wonder I had a feeling of dread all week.

I came home and sat in the big comfy chair and listened to the rain on my roof. I finished a book. I drank hot tea. I played with my dog. I'm feeling much better now, thank you.