Turkey

It was always a favorite story of mine as a kid to hear how my grandfather would walk the turkey home from the market in the Bronx, up to the apartment where my grandmother would kill it.

Horrible slug death

Just last night, the okra corn hot pepper thing cooked and cooling, I sat on the back bench under the crab-apple tree, surveying our one-rod manse, thinking, Gee, there haven't been any slugs this year.

That was obviously a big psychokinetic booboo.  Because this morning, sitting out with coffee at the edge of the patio and admiring that same bench and tree in reverse view, I lolled my head to the right and there on the wall of Joann's place, not 12 inched from my schnoz, was a big friggin' slug-daddy, a real man-sized slug, a full grown index finger of slug, a slug that if it got into your nostril or throat would undoubtedly suffocate you, you would die horribly between asphyxiation and uncontrollable gut wrenching gag reflex.  Do I make myself clear?

Skank!

I quick footed into the kitchen and came out with a handful of salt (it happened to be Kosher salt) and poured that on the beast, which immediately started exuding heroic quantities of snot and writhed in what a human could only sanely interpret as pain.  Intense, deadass pain.  But it wouldn't drop.  I got another handful.  It dropped.  A little while later it was dead.  I felt ambivalent about that and what I had done, but went back to coffee and Jim Harrison. 

Time got later, I needed to ready myself for work.  I started to stand, put down my bare right foot from where it was resting on an old stool... and missed by two inches another friggin' slug.  A smaller one, practically lithe, the size of a young child's pinkie.  I imagined that eeeuuuwwww feeling I would have had if I'd stepped on it barefoot, smooshing it, and I had an involuntary sphincter tightening reaction.  I went inside.

The lesser calico

This morning I gave up sleeping at 4:30 and went out back to read (Jim Harrison's The Raw and the Cooked).  As the sky brightened one of the two calico cats that live in the gap between our place and Lula & Vincent's, the less athletic one - they are strikingly different this way - came walking in from the back of the garden heading for the gap.  For years there has been a thin space between where our fence meets our kitchen, and this cat would slip through it on her way to the gap.  Last weekend, though, I repaired that part of the fence.  Now this cat slinks onto the patio (we don't like each other), leaps to our kitchen window sill, then up to the top of the fence, then backtracks 5 feet to where there's a clear spot to drop down, then walks to the gap on Lula's side of our fence.    Her more able sister just leaps to the top of the repaired fence and then straight down into the narrow space behind.

Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes...

These are two etchings by Charles Emile Jacque (1813-1894), now in the New York Public Library’s digital collection, acquired from the collection of Samuel Putman Avrery (1822-1904).  The images are digitized and on line at NYPL – digital IDs 1220758 and 1220759.  Officially “sujet libre”, but browsable under “sex”.

Songs for Unusual Creatures

Songs For Unusual Creatures - The Robot Show from Michael Hearst on Vimeo.
Hey, clear your calendar for Monday night.  We're all going to Joe's Pub to see out neighbor Michael Hearst perform Songs for Unusual Creatures.  Descrip:

Michael Hearst (One Ring Zero, Songs For Ice Cream Trucks) celebrates some of the lesser-known creatures that roam the planet. From the Australian Bilby, to the deep-sea Magnopinna Squid, the songs are brought to life by a gaggle of bizarre sounds and instruments including theremin, claviola, stylophone, and musical instrument robots.

Song for Unusual Creatures is featuring Michael Hearst (theremin, claviola, stylophone), Ben Holmes (trumpet), Allyssa Lamb (piano), Ron Caswell (tuba), Kristin Meuller (drums), and gaggle of musical instrument robots provided by LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots.

Be there or be square.  Or be there and be square, but very, very happy. 7:00 PM - January 11.

This is the best book about Bigfoot I have ever read, bar none. Ever.

Bigfoot: I Not Dead, by Graham Roumieu.  I laughed, I cried, I shivered, I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one could see what I was reading.  Bubbles of snot formed and had to be whisked away.  Lori picked this up for the two of us for Christmas.  Ho boy.  (Big ups from Juju's local fishwrap - maybe he's read it?)

Right after finishing this miracle of empathetic graphigenic pornoviolent foctobiography -funny! - I tried to pick up Jonathan Nossiter's Liquid Memory.  I tried pretty hard.  Pretty sure this book is the opposite of Bigfoot: I Not Dead.  Pretty sure Bigfoot pop wine-guy head like bubblewrap.  There are no pictures!  None! Dense dense wordy wordy!  I will soldier on.

You're going down, Mr Mouse!

Tuesday I came home a little early, still light outside, and as I opened the front door I called out for Lori, as I just about always do.  I didn't expect for her to be home, and didn't hear any reply to my call, so went about my doings, putting stuff down, picking stuff up, mumbling and singing to myself.  Then, while I was standing in the doorway between the living and dining rooms, in a moment that seemed to stretch time, I saw the dark gray ass-end of an uninvited guest scootch into the gap between the pine floor and the molding of our 130 year old walls, right at the doorway to the kitchen and where the plumbing runs up from the cellar.  Without thought and, I guess pretty loudly, I shouted, You're going down, Mr Mouse!

What did you say?, called Lori from behind me.

Freeze.  Babe, I didn't know you were home.

What did you say?

Uh, when?

Just now.  What did you say?

I don't know.  I didn't realize I'd said anything.  I was mumbling to myself.  I didn't realize you were home.

That night, quietly and without familial discussion, I set out a trap.
And yesterday when I got home, Mr. Mouse had gone down.  With PB on his snout.
And when Lori got home last night, I fessed up.
And Lori said, I thought that's what you said!

At least she didn't see the little dance I did when I said it.

Green Porno

Everyone knows about this except me, right?

Saw this ref in Brooklyn Based:

WEDNESDAY: Birds Do It, Bees Do It
Tonight, join the ever-fabulous Isabella Rossellini at Coco66 for a screening of Green Porno, a book signing, a Q&A session, and truffle popcorn. The acclaimed actress wrote and acted in this series of short films for the Sundance Channel; each segment features Ms. Rossellini in elaborate costume explaining and reenacting the sexual proclivities of creatures from snails to starfish. The event, put together by WORD, celebrates the release of the shorts on DVD, as well as an accompanying book; $25 gets you two tickets to the event and a copy of the book, and of course the aforementioned gourmet popcorn. Date night?

and of course I popped right over to Green Porno itself, where lots of episodes are on line.  Gonna watch them all.

Clearly, the dogs will need to eat the SUVs to survive

Uh... save the planet, eat a dog.  Via /.

Hannibal, Ruhe in Frieden

Sad news from E. So long, fella. Your dreams were big.

Bird doo, grape skins, Labor Day

I walked out the front door yesterday just as Joanne was coming out of hers, and she said, Did you see?, and I said, The Orioles?, and she said, Yes!, and I said, You know, just last night I said to Lori, I have to ask Joanne if she's seen orioles back there, because first I saw some very gold finches and then I thought I saw orioles but worried, hey, maybe they're giant mutant gold finches?

Well, we went on and on and back and forth. And it's great. Don't know if they're still there, but they were for three or four days. And, Man! they love the grapes in our arbor. Wrastling around up there and eating out the insides of the grapes and shitting up a huge gooey white & lavender storm. They were even taking the grapes out of the arbor and back to the crab-apple above our favorite bench and were eating and psychodelicdoodooing there, too.

Can't remember what I was going to say about Labor Day. Let's take the afternoon off and try to remember.

Purple haze all in my eyes, uhh

Buggy diversion

flight patterns from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo. via gizmodo.

something for everybuddy...

and then again,
maybe not...
esteemed amigo Esteban sent link our way yesterday, knowing yourstruly likes puddin' like a mofo alongside serious bent for pulchritudinous female form, and hey, isn't this why we have such great respect for our Nipponese brethren anyway?
here be the linky goodness.

(full disclosure- NOT the same linky bit that Esteban sent ju ju, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa - BUT ya getz da idee, no?)

next up, whilst visiting some o' our bloggos favoritos & dropping in on Roo370 aka R. Dog the Phantasm, we came across this, ahhhhhhh...
well, better you see for yourowndarnedself...

OOOOH, late arriving linky bit, via the NYT,
on yummy stuff & one's relation to same...

this be good advice for Ju Ju...

Dieting Monkeys Offer Hope for Living Longer.

but me gets SO hungry...

some miscellaneous linkage from ju ju's desktop...

long been a fan of Chronicle columnist J. Carroll who delivered this to us yesterday and revisits the topic today;
then, there's an interesting story on the topic of self control provided us via the New Yorker's Jonah Lehrer entitled Don't!;
then, ya already know we pointed ye in the direction of the Morning News in yesterday's post, and that's where we found this piece on our (well, most of us in this category these days) penchant for collecting one thing or another;
and wrapping this up, something interesting and, mmmmmmmmm, well, hard to describe going on at Clusterflock today...
tiny wee bit of clarification necessary here:
today refers to the clusterflock posts of the 14th of May

p.s. ju ju's alter id jaypea be seriously considering resurrecting l'marquis d'monquis effort, currently in hiatus. Dis be sorta inspired by dinner conversation with friend last night 'bout all the hot air currently being expended on the topic of bush cadministration's torture policies,etc. without nary a word of the School of the Americas, and no, we not gonna get started on it here, but consider yerselves forewarned...

Brooklyn Based, and bees buzz

E forwarded mail to me last week from Brooklyn Based (which caused some brain fog that only cleared when when I saw E this weekend: She said, Did you get my email? I said, no, but I got an email from someone with your name - oh, that was you? stroke).

Anyway, it was all about beekeeping in here in River City. Lori says, No. There go the mead plans.

so THAT'S the secret...

not saying that most of yourstruly's paramours have had decidedly simian characteristics (& just what would you expect would attract a big ol'ape fellah like me anyways...)
"hey, my leetle monkee-gal, howzabout a steak dinner?"

p.s. - ain't that the truth...

the will to live...

ahhhhhhh...
Sophie Tucker lives
that picture reminds me so of my late, lamented cattledoggy, Cam...

Sausage!

I don't think my gustatory friend will mind me sharing this:

"I thought you all might appreciate this photo taken at the annual sausage making event that I was fortunate to be able to attend a couple of weeks ago. Thirty of us gathered in a house in K..., New York and we turned over 300 pounds of pork shoulder into sausages over the course of the day. We were supervised by three Italian brothers who have been doing this forever. The shot you see is us seasoning the ground pork before putting it into the casings. Throughout the day, we were fed – fried cheese, various kinds of pizza, grilled pork – and we ended with a feast of pasta, pork stew and home made wine. Truly heavenly ( and I went home with 10 lbs of sausage!!)"

Sent via thingy.

They're so furry, you don't have to worry about hiding the stitches

Have you seen the NYT piece on Melissa Dixon, urban taxidermist?