year in review

in pictures.

january:
a new year's day walk on the south downs in west sussex near the village of south harting.

le village. waaaay down there.

another walk, with charges, down a roman road. with fog.


february:
success in sabering fine champagne in the berkshires!
(except..... this might have been in march- i'm not sure i took any pictures at all in feb.)


march:
bar in springtown. with seestor. the great wedding planning commences!


april:
gravel dump. part of great wedding scheme.


may:
jenny and matt get hitched, ed and shley get drunk. jenny and matt follow suit.



then we go down to the river to wash it all off.



june- this month in lomo:
workin' (that is, breakin') at the bistro.

driving over the confluence of the mississippi and ohio rivers.


july:
space age ice cream making in the berkshires! golden raspberry was my favorite.


august:
birthdays in colorado.

driving home from the farm with tomato hands.


september:
the first great squash picking. (i still have one of those warty hubbards- the green one on the left. yes, i recognize individual squash).


october:
first snow.


november:
walking to the argonaut in second snow. (or third?) denver backdrop.


contemplative about thanksgiving leftovers.

marley sitting on a portable printing press.


december:
flowers at the mancave- an image of the blizzard, taken from indoors (use your imagination).

dolly burger

FDA will allow cloned food! creeeeepy science fiction world!

denver is expecting lots more snow ,.lots n lots.

ruhe sanft

Ich beneide Sie um Ihre Ruhe. which is what i found when trying to find out what ruhe sanft means. seems to be a bit of a redundancy, but i'm sure there's some poetic explanation to this aria.

the sudden interest in audience behavior and german translation is because, once again, i find myself needing to listen to mozart exclusively. i bought the remastered soundtrack for amadeus and it's solid gold! well- it's plated gold! 24 karat gold discs, it says. maybe i'll make a ring out of one.

definition

the 'bayreuth hush' is the quiet that descends upon an audience in the few seconds preceeding the beginning of a classical music performance that, somewhere along the line in audience etiquette history, became the standard for examplary sophistication. i'd like to experience the good old days when composers were treated like rock stars and shouted at during their performance. enthusiastic clapping after a particulary stunning passage! whoops and hollers! lighters in the air (which, in mozart's day, might've been... a candelabra?)

google it and you'll find my new favorite scholar- simply because i envy his choice of subject matter and fucking status at the new yorker.

bayreuth hush

i'm experiencing a new addiction to mache. it's a simple little green with mild nutty flavor and i think the chief reason why i like it is because it comes in a box and looks like lamb's ears. soft little nutty lamb's ears! in desperation for a crunchy addition to my salad i poured some oat flake cereal on top. results are fairly boring- oaty cereal lost it's crunch, or maybe wasn't crunchy in the first place, being that it's au naturale. in fact, it's getting pretty goopy as it mixes with my salad dressing and...... ew.

we saw the ground today for the first time only to be told that another winter storm is on its way tomorrow. yay. strange time to be learning the ropes of grocery store produce ordering- blizzard, christmas, post-christmas fasting, preperation for another maybe blizzard- when will i ever understand the shopping habits of the average elder hippie? and why does everyone want to eat green beans on christmas? we at least had food on our shelves, which is more i can say for the supermarkets. this begs the question: where do they get their food from that they still don't have basic food stuffs on their shelves one week after the snow storm?? i imagine some giant safeway warehouse in nebraska where all canned, fresh, frozen and bagged products are magically conjured from within to be loaded on a truck and distributed around the country once a week- whereas at natural food stores there is an emphasis on getting local, or at least regional food from smaller vendors. so we get it more frequently because it's sorta local? i don't know how else to explain the lack of potatoes at safeway. apparently the magic food warehouse is what most people imagine, though- people looked at me increduously when i told them the green bean truck didn't make it, even though there was a foot of snow on the ground and any normal person should know goddamn well that green beans don't grow in WINTER unless you're in california, and therefore they must be driven here and...... can't drive in the snow!! mountain passes, people! anyway. at least christmas is over and i don't have to listen to the most wonderful time of the year anymore.

christmas in denver was accented by casino royale, tamales, and sake. let it be known that, although i can't envision your average mexican and japanese fellow being boon companions, their food and drink go together remarkably well. and that new james bond is righteous.

marley has a serious case of the waggy friskey tail.

santas on skates

here they are:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

my cat just licked my cookie

and i'm debating whether i should keep eating it.




well, that was a short debate. yum.

so now, a word about my neighbor. she has apparently only recently discovered john lennon, for she listens to his greatest hits all the damn time and it's starting to wear me out. not that there is anything wrong with lennon wailing about his mother- oh no, i like it!- but how many times can you listen to 'imagine' without it losing a bit of the magic. i reached that point at age 11 and thereafter everyday i was forced to listen to the classic rock radio station at work, so the song, while still very nice, has joined the ranks of over-played, over-memorized classic rock hits. songs that were once good but now booooooring, like 'tangled up in blue' and every fucking fleetwood mac song ever written. so i'm thinking there are at least two explanations for her continuous playing of john lennon's greatest hits (now we're on 'jealous guy' which i'll be really pissed if she ruins for me by over-playing): either, as i mentioned before, she just discovered john lennon and has not dived deeper into post-beatle expression of inner torment; or she only has the one greatest hits cd and can't find it within her to buy an original album; or she has very limited taste in music that allows her only to buy greatest hits albums and this might be the strangest music she has, but she's really into it because she recently got a divorce. ...now that i think about it, i think the last option is the most likely. sh regularly rocks out to denver's classic rock station and otherwise pretty much only listens to this john lennon album.

thus concludes my analysis of my neighbor's musical interests.

it is the day before the day before christmas and i'm either completely annoyed with christmas things or excited about the big christmas day. actually, i think this is a conflict i experience every year. this year my annoyance is dominated by people driving poorly in the post-blizzard mess to get their christmas shopping done, the constant absorption of christmas music at work, and people getting pissed that we don't have belgian endive at the store because they absolutely must have it for their christmas dinner even though there was a blizzard! and the damn belgian endive truck didn't show up. my excitement stems from the gifts that i've created (and am still creating) that will soon be opened by my peeps. but mostly i'm feeling foggy about the whole thing because i banged my head on the u-boat (big cart thing that we haul shit around on) so hard that i thought i broke my glasses, when what i really did was smash my frams into my forehead pretty hard. ow.

padal snieg

tired. trudged. snow. deep.

snow

it's snowing like crazy here. i believe this is one of those times when headlines across the country read "denver pummeled by snow storm" and "colorado hammered in blizzard". i went to work at 6 am and there was nothing on the ground. i left at 3 and there was at least 10 inches. maybe a foot. people were panic shopping and by the afternoon we were nearly out of potatoes, because when it snows people require potatoes. and because our delivery truck didn't come. no mo potato. the store closed soon after i left and on the drive home (our vehicle being the only one on the road with chains- wtf??) i noticed that even taco belch, e. coli haven, was closed due to the weather. everything done be closed.

now i'm holed up in the mancave with a fire roaring and the cats playing (hissing). we all came over for a winter sleep-over!


i've just been handed a list found in the police auction car sitting in the mancave shop:


porn store??
ANAL LUBE?

7-11- smokes

bank- ATM

liquior store
mixer


all the vices covered. emphasis and mispellings his own. wonder if he got those errands taken care of before his car was confiscated by the po-lice and sold at auction with all his other weirdo stuff. ex: several hand made leather pouches with odds and ends enclosed, like misshapen rocks (he was trying to make an arrowhead??) and a tidy collection of all forms of ID the fellow had since 1990ish. a mystery!

part time christmas music

sleigh bells. frosty the snowman. both annoying. both ear worms. both playing all day at the store.

Oh, but the christmas music gods do smile upon the dutiful workers of christmas retail (which, you might know, is ANY retail in america this week. no escaping! not even at the east side kosher deli!- ok, they're probably not torturing their employees). i don't know if we have satellite christmas crap pumped in or if it's a hand-picked selection from on high, but somehow, someway, in the midst of all the winter wonderland, "part time lover" came on the speakers and the workers were happily nodding their heads to the sounds in the key of stevie. aaaah.

then it went back to christmas.

inquiring minds want to know

why does my neighborhood always smell like chicken soup?

and why, after getting red spray paint from the can, to my fingers, and thus onto every surface of my apartment, am i taking this opportunity to type?

shley quote

"it's paralyzing, like writing about colonialism. you're just fucked"

-somewhere in the berkshires, sometime in july 2006

lemme esplain. no there is too much, lemme sum up

my favored wireless provider (who may or may not be my next door neighbor) has inexplicably disappeared, and my excursions to the darkest corners of the mancave have been limited by my new early morning produce duties, and so, dear people of shleydom, i have not been posting on my blog. yes, i could go to any one of the number of coffee shops in my neighborhood, but... i haven't.

updates? there is nothing to report. i have a cold, which might be due to drinking beer in an alley in downtown denver the other night. we were walking to a bar but instead ran into a catering crew that had just dropped a case of sierra nevada, so we got to take some foamy beer and make off to the nearest alley to slurp it up like hobos. i could also have a cold because my hands are cold and wet for much of the day at work as i shove heads of lettuce into the wetrack to create towering, impenetrable walls of greenery so no one will buy the shit for fear of making everything fall. this is my job. gone are the days of coddling eggplants and apples because they might bruise, we regularly THROW boxes of apples in the cooler and slam stalks of celery into place. i guess you're more careful with food when you grow it and pick it versus when it comes in a box on a truck from california. it's a weird disconnect that i'm not sure if i'll get used to. i will also not be able to get used to the fact that there is zero tolerance for employees taking bunk pieces of food, like bruised peppers or slightly-to-old limes. instead we toss it into this compost/trash bin in the back (which MIGHT go to a compost facility....) or give it to a couple of local organizations. i'm a local organization! i need bunk lettuce! i revolted yesterday by thieving- that's right, thievery!- three meyer lemons that we would've thrown away. apparently meyer lemons are the lemon bomb, and to prove it we sell them at $5.99/lb. i must see what this lemon craziness is about.

that is all. i will make it to the mancave/local coffee shop more often and post about my life in hopes that i will indeed one day get an emmy.

GE, don't bring good things to life

honey, let's have a nice baked chicken with LL601 for dinner tonight.

onions

from "Federal Tests Find No E. Coli in Green Onions" in the ny times today,

"At the same time, the New York State Health Department retracted last week’s announcement that its more sophisticated tests of green onions from a Taco Bell on Long Island had found the virulent strain, E. coli O157:H7, believed to have sickened more than 300 people in New York.

Instead, the agency said, that sample was actually white onions that had been mislabeled, and the strain of E. coli found was not the same as the one that had caused illness."

so was it the agency that mislabeled the onions or taco bell? and who can't tell the difference between a green onion and a white onion? even scarier- how many strains of e. coli are living at taco bell?? unless the NY state health dept. is seriously stupid and getting their lab results all screwed up. or maybe they didn't and tabo bell is paying them off to say that their information was wrong, due to a ridiculous, department-wide mislabeling malfunction that made everyone think they were testing white onions instead of green ones.

frugality

as much as i'd like to think i'm a frugal person, i know better than to pretend that i'm not a child of the eighties and that true frugality is beyond me. for example- i was unemployed for a month, so the funds ain't exactly at a comfort level. i've asked my parents for money. and yet, i need paté. i don't want it, i need it. i also need goat cheese. and i need to go grocery shopping before i get my discount card from work. in just two short days i'll save 15% on all my groceries, paté and all. but no! must have it now! and it's not like i'm hurting for food stuffs. you might remember that i am well-equipped for the soviet invasion by way of pickled beets, canned tomatoes, peach jam, and squash. i also have a lot of garlic. but none of these thingscan mimic the livery creaminess that is delicious paté.

i also need to buy beer and wine. because even though i'm broke and ignoring my cell phone bill, i require a twelve pack of heineken. not pabst or some other low-cost beer that i know i'd enjoy. nope! frugality be damned!

does this mean that my mind is unable to grasp what it means to really be needy? alas.

the apocolypse

is upon us. we fill up theaters on make-believe main streets to watch mel gibson's latest display of mel gibson egotism.

seeing a black panther was cool, though, even if it was alternated with a hand puppet during the face-eating scene. that could be such a cool moment in a period piece about civil rights.

wesley willis

you are my harmony joy music!

sausages!

did it have something to do with sausages?? i honestly can't remember what the hell was going through my head that seemed so important, because it's been quickly replaced by an intense craving for preserved meats and i'm now preparing a dinner which involves both sausage AND bacon. delicious. i blame the book i've been reading about civil war army diets. and yet i don't have a craving for hard tack. this tends to happen every year- winter comes and i want to read about the civil war, and as a result develop cravings for corn mush and salt pork creations. maybe it's a subconscious trick my body plays to get me to eat more fat for winter.

maybe i'll blab about my new job. i stack produce. i'm a produce stacker. one day i'll move on to ordering produce, but for now it's just stacking. the accountant on high came down today to give me my official clock-in number and i promptly lost it. so i had to sheepishly ask him to write it down again and he returned with four tiny post-it notes, all with my name and number on them, and said, "here you go, magna cum laude."

wuh

i had something perfectly blogable just now and have forgotten what it was. something important, some compelling, something that would spark commentary from the married folk in missouri. what was it..... we just don't know.

sans trans

my borrowed wireless connection is flighty, so i'm hooked up at the mancave via a 100-foot ethernet cord and now dividing my time between trying to make up for being a bad resident of shleydom, tending the fire, and checking the bird. i'm decidedly distracted, despite my effort to sit and write, and will switch erradically from subject to subject as a result.

how come there isn't a fucking taco bell meltdown freakout in the press because of the e. coli outbreaks? and if there was some national taco bell recall and signs posted on all taco bell restaurants saying "no yo quiero taco bell" or something, would people make the ridiculous link that ALL bean burritos are nasty like they did with the spinach? we had a serious problem selling our spinach during the relatively minor outbreak (in comparison with all the e. coli DEATHS per year as a result of delicious ground beef patties and whatever nastiness they're putting into taco bell creations). people didn't even want to see spinach, regardless of my explanation that it didn't come from california and wasn't irrigated with shit water. i don't think taco bell will suffer very much from this outbreak- i think people are really that disconnected from their food to rationalize that taco bell remains safe because it's so unfood and spinach is unsafe because it's unprocessed.

trans fats ban in NYC? ok, well-intentioned but misguided. it's ultimately up to the individual what they're going to put in their bodies and banning all trans fats in restaurants isn't doing anything educational. it's simply making it unavailable in that sphere. people should know what they're putting into their bodies- you don't die from having one serving of fries at a restaurant. you die because you get heart disease from eating the shit every day and not knowing why you feel like hell as a result. banning trans fats in places like mcdonalds does not encourage people to stop eating there, which is what they SHOULD do if they want to be healthier- it only makes is slightly less disgusting. but people will continue to eat there four or five times a week and therefore continue to put whole shitloads of corn syrupy, feedlot whatever into your system. yuck.

banning alcohol didn't help anything! let us remember this day, the day of the 21st amendment!

i think our chicken is done.

sowing me oats

to clarify: i am an up and coming assistant produce manager and will have these things known as benefits for the first time in my life. unless you count the free drugs in grad school... all bow to her royal shleyness! reports of jobdom to follow, but first let me regale you with stories of getting drunk at the irish snug in the daytime before traveling through sobriety and ending up at a motorcycle fashion show at night. during these short days of the year i find that to be quite an achievement.

so we have: employment- check. apartment- check. man cave- check. kitty cat- check.

jobjobjob

gotta job job job

beirut

i have nothing to say- except that i have been alerted to a scheduled outage on my blog and i thought it said 'scheduled outrage'. oh, and beirut is my new favorite indie balkan band.

monkey and bear

it's official, joanna newsom is a freak. little elfy harp woman. and a.... a green bean! (to be sung with eyes squeezed shut in elfy voice). love it and feel somehow invaded by pesky miniature people at the same time. there's a name for those- pixies? fairies. sprites. hm..... no, i like pesky miniatures.

shley's take on the metrosexual

in haiku form, no doubt written in a coffee shop while "working"

meadowsexual
work that cookie all night long
you like eestory?

yet another digression

this time it's to the shley undergrad experience! i knew i saved this shit for some reason: so i could find it years later and marvel at how silly i got while sitting in class. oh, you thought i was paying attention, but really i was scribbling ideas on the following:

Bigfoot as Mackdaddy
-with phrases like "bigfoot doesn't get his feet wet" and "bigfoot don't play like that"- referring to himself in the 3rd person, playing the part of sexual hero to the unsatisfied women. a kind of mackdaddy sex monster.


ok, i have no idea what this was in reference to, but it was found among my creative writing class notes, so that might explain it. perhaps we were to think of a character?

another note of slight humor- we were supposed to think of three ideas for a short short story, called a blaster:

Blaster Idaes
1- the hardships of dyslexia in college life
2- the pain of forced brainstorming- student goes nuts and can't think of anything original, runs out of class and takes up smoking
3- maybe custer didn't die at the ballte of little bighorn


my professor picked up on the royal tenenbaums cop-out at the end, which i think was the only reason i wrote it the first place.



oh, ho ho.

lazy jane

i've lazed the past two days away and nowi't smonday morning i'm drinkingcoffeeandontheballreadytogooooooooooooooo get some work down wahooooo weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

biodegradable skeet

i've fulfilled my duty as a true american today by stuffing myself a second time with an absurd amount of food, then making a trip to a MALL AND BASS PRO, THEN going to a GUN CLUB to SHOOT at things with SHOT GUNS. note the capitals, this is for real. ok, well, the trip to the mall was strictly business- the brochure box installation team on the job for the time when brochures are needed most. you can count on us. also of interest in the mall was the sighting of my first "duck press"- which is, in this case, a brass contraption tagged at $2000, complete with decorative ducky feet and intended for expedient extraction of duck juice. seems completely unnecssary and therefore desirable for cherry creek mall shoppers. i only noticed it because, just yesterday, i happened across the definition for a duck press while looking up "gaud" in the dictionary in a scrabble challenge. gaud is a word. duck press is a tool. clarification. the trip to bass pro was slightly less enlightening- save for the glimpse into gun culture that i hitherto hadn't appreciated. people will pay $16000 for a shot gun. so you can shoot skeet in style, i presume. the gun section of bass pro was teeming with eager thanksgiving weekend hunters, all choosing their favorite red riders and aiming them at imaginary targets in the store. or maybe that's what the stuffed bucks are for- so you don't really need to go outdoors when you go to bass pro's outdoor world. the whole package is inside for you- handling of boxes of ammo, aiming, make-believe firing, then voila! your twelve point buck already mounted on the wall for all to see and admire. we saw a real buck at the gun club, but it's against the law to shoot at those in a shooting range, thus creating fearless local bucks that willingly prance through the gun club grounds amid sounds of BUCKshot.

despite our venture into americana, however, i did not spend any money. not even when i ran out of gas next to the women's correctional facility on north havana.

stuffed

lincoln proclaimed: "The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God." .... and then he talked a lot about war.
thoreau said: "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."

rotkraut and gas scares

the potential of sleeping in gasoline saturated wonder tonight is too hard to resist. we could all blow up anytime! yay! never fear... we won't blow up. at least i really hope we won't blow up. proper ventalition precautions have been taken, as well as fire department ruses. um, we don't have a wood-burning fireplace. noooo. we just smelled gas coming from the putzbags next door, so we were, um, bbqing outside.

the rotkraut is in preperation, the pies are cooling, and the stuffing has been forgotten. the meal was not done in a 100-mile style. the only thing that came from within 100 miles was the beautiful pumpkin that i handpicked myself as the first date pumpkin. it is now baked an in pie form. everytihng else probably came from either canada or california. so uch for my ethics.

balls

i've once again taken to walking around and cursing- my new favorite word is balls. just.... balls. very satisfying to say- try it. occasionally i'll say fuck balls. my job search is resulting as follows: either not hiring, position filled or position offered in 50 degree environment with disgruntled sandwich-making mexicans. balls!

i'm stuck between wanting to fill the time between now and april, when i can go back to the blissful surroundings of the farm, with getting a temporary lame job or getting a job job type job that would offer more money and possibly even benefits AND the opportunity to work with mexicans. un poco.

unemloyed in greenland.

don't feel like writing

so i won't

dude, this is pretty fucked up right here

why is it that the shorter my posts get the more comments they solicit?

so i have a handful of farmy knitters coming over in about an hour and have no food to give them, save for squash. but, being that they're farmy, they too have the problem of having too much squash, so

also, my friend just reintroduced me to the originales south park video via the wonders of youtube. my seestor somehow acquired it through her supercool friends in chicago long ago and it was an oft quoted subject, back then, in the days when swearing cartoons were still scandalous.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vmr--FJDxZ4&mode=related&search=

must prepare for knitters.

prediction

christian bale will be james bond some day.

dear log.....

still no emmy....

monkey bars

yummy cacao/cane sugar creations from costa rica that i've suddenly come into exclusive supply of.

i don't think you're supposed to end a sentence with 'of'.

knives out

embark with me, noble travellers, on new culinary adventures! butternut squash and goat cheese pasta bake! yum! and tomorrow night's welcome home dinner could very well be spaghetti and meatballs- spaghetti SQUASH and buffalo meatballs. all must enjoy my squash abundance! i might be able to eat it every day this winter, which means i need to think of new ways to cook the shit. oh, and i bought some weirdo indian spice today that i have no idea what to do with. it's called "asafoetida"- waddya do with that? the bottle says "don't let the powerful odor turn you off!"

marley is bored mored.

the english empire was founded on piratry..... so how did "aaarg" come into the picture? is that what englishmen at sea sound like? i mean, if you stay on a boat long enough do you naturally descend into over-pronounced r's?

haikus from england

since jenny doesn't like my 'return to grad school' theme, i'm taking her to england instead.
written in a bar in chichester- 12/9/05

the slug and lettuce
drinking wine alone againe
tugging on my lip

nutella in bag
waiting to get eaten up
instead of ripe cheese

premanently scowled
she drinks half her still water
flicking ashes on the floor

housewives go crazy
talking to toddlers all day
mine. now! no i won't!

subject does something
conjunctions prepositions
make things confusing


i guess that last one was after i'd consumed my fill of wine....

oo, and here's something from the bar again:
12/31/05
slug and lettuce..... again.
3 pm and proceeding directly to beer. bitter, that is. john smith's extra smooooooth. mmm. i just came in out of the cold wet to write some thank you cards. the cult of thank yous in this family- always doing whats Right drives me bored. i'm actually wondering whether my thank you cards are big enough- ah, such is the countryhouse conscience. ya, well, they can kiss my american ass.

last day of grad school

unpacking continues and, since i've gotten to the point of just staring at my boxes, i thought i'd share more random life notes i've discovered.
may 2005. written on the back of a paper in polish that- hm, i got a 'b' on. amazing. wow, i can't understand anything i wrote in polish, but apparently i had "good thoughts on stachura's poems". ...m'ok.

My Last Class: "Memories" (that was the class... anthropology of memory, i think?)
I've been passed a book- "Rhetoric of Empire" by David Spurr and asked "you read this, right?" um... nope. "Oh, I thought you read it in Maria's class- it was one of your favorites." ok- thus is the legacy of my grad school experience. one of my favorites? right.... now i'm sitting between fedja and jennifer, my best buds. and waiting through several presentations. i expect boredom.

elizabeth says "that's fabulous" and we all release a sigh of great relief- she approves, her royal highness of of name-dropping approves! now she won't shut up. and fedja is reading over my shoulder. stop it! my memories! he's attempting to colonize my memories, but the indeginous people are strong! i'm thinking about maybe reading this aloud to the class as an example of the creation of historical narrative- but is it collective? can i speak for the class? i think not- i'm too cynical. wait- i just realized.... NO MORE POLISH CLASS. ha HA! all i know about the dominican republic is that sammy sosa is from there. and this is the extent to which i'm paying attention to THIS presentation. instead, i'm thinking about working on an organic farm in europe this summer. i need to WORK- and elizabeth WILL interrupt every presentation. hm... now i know more about the dom. rep. fancy that. but, this doesn't mean that i don't realize that i'm only one presentation away from thai food and the END of grad school. HA! feck, two presentations left.

jennifer mennifer is performing- i cannot verify any of the dates in polish history on her hand out about polish-jewish autobiographies framed by interwar polish independence. jack hutchins was wearing a socialist worker pin today and i had to refrain from asking him how getting a phd in polish literature would help the worker's cause. does he work? no- he's overweight american with a polish wife. i'm to mean- but really...... workers of the world unite so the intellegentsia cane write about you!

meanwhile, yiddish strives as ever before to free itself of it's proletariat associations as a language. high culture, oh, how we cherish thee. question!: is the intellegentsia effective in creating social change? and to who, top down? probably, since the 'down' can't/dont's have/don't want to read about shit like this.

seized- i'm quite capable of seizing into cement-like state. does collectivizing ruin individuality? making it part of something whole, which has its own definition/identity. the good and the bad of organization- a new clint eastwood film. all right, it seems my grad school courses will end with a funny presentation on the out-dated tradition of chief illiniwek at u of i. stupid school. i like this presentation- good note to end on. but still, as ever, elizabeth won't shut up.

and........ DONE!!!!!!!!!

journey back with me two years, will you?

one of the joys of moving into a new apartment is seeing your STUFF for the first time in a year and a half. most of it is unremarkable.... like the tupperware. hoorah for my tupperware. but other stuff is downright entertaining! i'm suffering serious distraction while unpacking and looking at old notebooks and pictures and what not. since i can't think of anything else to write about my life NOW, i'm going to copy what i wrote about my life THEN.

6/27-6/28? (if i remember correctly, this was written while sittin gon the floor waiting to get through customs in newfoundland)
O Canada... I'm stuck here overnight......
techincal malfunction on AA flight #122 en route to london. apparently the audiovisual system started over-heating. it zapped off just as the climax of "miracle" was building- the triumphant victory of capitalism over the commies, on ICE! i'll skate my way out of communism! i would've been happy without seeing the rest of the movie, but "our safety is paramount", so we turned around somewhere mid-atlantic (not sure where because the indiana jones screen was burning up) to retreat to newfoundland, home of sturdy dogs.

we are currently waiting in customs for our luggage- then it's a wuick over-nighter at a local hotel before coming back to this wonderful airport at st. john's for a NEW flight. i want my movie, cued up to the tie-breaking scene between US and the USSR. and i want to be promoted to first class. and it would be convenient to have a cell phone that understood being in canadia.

but i have always wanted to go to newfoundland. here i am! flight AND a totally unnecessary hotel for $750- what a deal.

now- about the family- the EXtended family of hassidic jews aboard our flight. the whole lot of them can't seem to understand seatbelt signs and kept getting up to wander about yelling "miiiiiiriam?" and soliciting nasty responses from the flight crew. i asked one guy where everyone was going- cause they seemed to all have a ridiculous amount of luggage- and got absolutely no response. i know he heard me. is there some code that the can't answer politely to non-jews? or answer at all for that matter? wish i was at the dog run. i'm turning into a disgruntled passenger. but no bitching.... just sitting on a cold floor waiting....


6/30
i've just been served the hottest cup of tea ever. this and the fact that the english will eat every conceivable flavoUr of chips possible are the two greatest observations that i've been capable of today. so far the morning's thought are dominated mostly by concern over the katowice-krakow connection- going over my minimal polish possibilities to converse and generally fretting. they won't understand me and i'll get stuck there, i know it. or they'll send me to newfoundland.

7/1
minimal possibilities indeed! lots of non-productive smiling and a 220zl fare on a private bus from katowice- with andrzej! big mole. now i'm waiting for my traveler's checks to be cashed- apparently it is a rather delicate process, requiring lots of patience for a broken computer. soon- money, rest. unpack for the first time in 5 weeks. my room is huge- 8x10 with 2 people- and i share it with one of the program coordinators- kasia. she seems very pleasant and drinks mocha fix- a beverage i thought they said goodbye to with lenin (movie fact). my bed is 2 feet wide and the shower is 1x1. alas.

i have to wait a lot- i'm becoming at expert- and exercise an enormous amount of patience. and then take a nice hot shower in a tiny stall at the end of the day.

7/6
lessons learned:
1st: krakow weather is completely unpredictable. always have a sweater. and umbrella
2nd: never assume that your destination will have a toilet- and even then, never assume that the toilet will have toilet paper. or that it will be designated for one gender only. or that if you weigh 250 pounds you will be able to get inside the stall.

7/13 (in the bar on the ground level of our dorm)
it was fine until she started yelling about how drunk she was, and it's only 9:30/ "i'm so fucking wasted at 9:30!!" i guess I could be the loser for coming to poland to do work in a bar at 9:30.

decorative mirrors, leftover russian novels that can be used as tripods, bottles with candles, foosball, locals.

sun goes down late. 9:50. morning class starts early. 8:30. now she's making out with some guy.

here is a poem:
Love, by maria pawlikowska-jasnorzewska

i have not seen you for a month
and it is nothing. i may be a little paler,
rather sleepy, a little more silent,
but apparently you can live without air!

7/19
obiad is an adventure everyday. adventures in obiad!
chicken balls with chicken ball gravy!
jello surprise cake!
beetrot!
cabbage creation!

pan tadeusz, by wajda- long, epic, boring, "but it is by wajda, so we will watch it"
romantic nationalism! more that i can take, but what place does it have in poland in 1999? how long can they carry that around? who's the enemy now? a question i run into a lot.

7/27
introduction to polish grammar = intro. to BOREDOM. "what IS language?" there is a case of miscellaneous pieces of iron in the classroom. some look like plumbing joints, some like machine parts. i can't imagine what their display is meant to evoke in the viewer. "i must work in industry!" otherwise the case is empty. "polish is richer in consonants"- i'll say. people carve and write the same things on desks here- "KORN" "PANTERA"- a universal teenage language. now i'm really dreaming of a nap, but i came here to learn polish, damn it, and i paid well to do so, so i better sit through 'aspects of polish inflection'. god, i hate linguistics. crazy people. NAP. oh, a nap! spac! may i also note that these chairs suck. folding pieces of wood that come out of the desk behind so everyone is attached and shoved together! what i really want is a class covering the evolution of hair-dye usage in eastern europe. "what is a noun?" blah! i'm starting to become more red and less tan in the summer. i'm victim to random thoughts about anything BUT polish grammar! such as... rearranging my rooms- doing the switcheroo between office and bedroom. oh yes, it will be done. and how about money? i have none! what to do, what to do. and my craving for tacos. what a poorly designed classroom. 8-9 rows, desks about one foot wide, no room to study/write, can't see anything from the back. seems to be the case with many polish constructions- either they didn't plan ahead or needed to cram as many people into one space as possible. or both. tokyo has space issues, but lots of money, too. good engineering. what is poland famous for? salt? suffering? i know! salt on wounds. i can't take it, this is too boring.
mysz= mouse (drawing of mouse) "mickey mouse was a problem to translate"
niemozliwe!

8/8
ed in krakow! he arrived last night at the PJPII airport and i took him on a long, uncomfrotable busride to the hotel chopin. next we walked to old town and had dinner at szara- yum! veal medallions with grilled zucchini and potato..... balls. fried mash, i guess, but quite tasty.

8/11 LAST DAY IN KRAKOW
ed is currently filming my looking 'studious' in the courtyard of the jagiellonian museum. we all thought we would learn in some environment like this, but no- socialist realism awaited. ed has also just purchase an amber ring dla mnie. piekna! bomba!

8/12
hell ya i'm riding on the second story! wizzair is bomba- big huge double decker bus straight to katowice. AC, fun view of the polish countryside, and all around a posh way to leave krakow. got my paluszki! (i can't remember what the hell that word means.... but i guess i got it!) the taxi here took every conceivable side street- i thought maybe he was mad at me because i asked him if driving a taxi was good work. maybe that was rude and ostentatious- but heck, i just wanted to exercise my polish once more. then i swear he said something about belorus while pointing me in the direction of the bus station- cause he dropped me off about a block away.




ok, back to 2006. time to go crawl into my tent and sleep.

SCORPACCIATA!!

look it up. then do it.

laugh at it

that's what the cool people call lafayette- the town, that is. i live on the street. i wonder if it's laughable. certainly in the center of hipsterville, so there's hope there.

i moved my squash into my apartment today. and then i went to my farmy friend's house and ate squash soup.

waxing squash

how do artists maintain consistency?
there's backstory to this question, but.... can i really go into it, or am i unable to grasp that little thread of thought long enough to write about it? how do you hold onto a thought or emotion long enough to expound upon it in whatever medium- long enough to actually express it in a coherent way instead of just slapping it out there. i guess some artists have done a bit of emotion-slapping, but it seems like, for the most part, artists are very deliberate and controlled- and emotions are the exact opposite. i sometimes can't imagine holding onto a feeling that long to nail it down in color. maybe that's why music is good- because of it's fluidity. check me out, i'm going off on one.

so i was wondering- is art inspired by boredom, loneliness, confusion, longing? because once you get involved in creating something, aren;t those feelings somewhat fleeting? you immediately begin sharing as you create, thus alleviating the that desperate sensation that drove you to reach out in the first place.

on the flip side, i think that happiness and excitement are equally inspirational on the 'i wanna share creatively' front.

mlah- i dunno know. maybe i should go back to writing about squash. colorful, vibrant, yummy, nutritious. it's a little art project in itself! but really... why do i love the squash so much?

reflective. no matter how long it takes. that's all art is, is reflection of a... something. god, i'm hopeless when it comes to art theory. blah blah blah.

what's up pussycat

marley lives in denver now! she's very happy to be here- walking around chirping and rubbing against everything. meow meow meow. she seems especially pleased with the carpeted floor and is walking around with her paws spread out and spontenously flopping on the floor to have a roll.

best part of drive: marley not meowing the whole way. and making it back to denver yaaaay. oh, and listening to disc two of 'the wall'- when was the last time YOU rocked out to pink floyd? not since high school? exactly.

worst: precious little election coverage on xm radio- we had to resort to fox news for information, and that was sickening. i revolted by turning on the 80's channel.

comment of the day: "wake me up when we get to the milkshakes" (or insert favorite excuse to stop on the highway- gas, colorado state line, world's largest gopher. well, we didn't stop, but ed's been there and he's here to report that it's a concrete gopher. or groundhog. whatever. prairie dog?)

scenery: kansas. despite popular bitching about this state, it's actually very pretty in it's own prairie sort of way.

weather: just gorgeous, mum. 70 degrees and sunny. pretty sunset.

smell: more manure. CAFOs. dis-gusting.

which didn't stop me from breaking down and eating a cheeseburger en route. dee-licious.
fast food establishments visited: 1
fast food eaten: oh man it was a good cheeseburger. i wonder if it came from one of the cows nearby. probably not.
real food eaten: nussing. forgot real food! yummy italian meats abadoned in springfield! boo. apples, too.

miles driven: a few. around 800. we estimate that we've spent 40 hours in the car in the past five days. that's a full time job.

roads: fine

election day

elsey knows to bark at republicans! i've trained her well. vicious.

as though a yellow flyer is going to change my mind on election day. did those teeny-bop girls get out of school today to run around with jim talent flyers?

i had a horrible dream last night that the election went red all across america.

let's dance

best thing about drive today: hearing the bob dylan theme time radio hour for the first time.

worst: not being able to scoot the booty during song after song devoted to the theme 'dance'. luckily, the show was being reaired by the time we got to grand street and matt and i sillied ourselves in the kitchen.

comment of the day: "you're going to have to plan ahead in advance."

smell: manure, burning leaves, skunk

scenery: corn corn corn then grey grey grey.

weather: drizzle. fog.

fast foods establishments visited: 2 ...disgusting- i refuse to go in one tomorrow.

fast food eaten: baked potato with broccoli and "cheese"- very bright orange cheese food drip on otherwise safe-sounding potato.

real food eaten: capicolla ham on yummy italian bread acquired on the hill in st. louis. deeelish. squash dinner at jenny's.



let's hear it for getting all my crap in the trailer! spiders, mouse droppings and all!

where nothing is expected of you

holy shit the esquire has wireless- which means i can post from my favorite bar!
.....but i have nothing to say. get me a few more beers....

bloo danube

though not in minor, still very satisfying. especially with fried chicken.

secret life of plants

it's friday night and i'm going through farm withdrawal, so i'm going to read myself to sleep with the secret life of plants.

CO to MO

in springtown, kitty in lap.

one year ago.....

i was on a plane to england.
this is what i saw from my room when i got there:

llama protectorate

what happens to all that damn squash you didn't sell, you ask? i'm about to tell you:

first, it freezes on top of half rotten straw bales. then, it gets thrown into wyatt's truck with great zeal- shley quote: "it's so nice to not have to be careful with this shit anymore." cause despite the strange desire one gets to toss a pumpkin when one get's their hands on it, it musn't be done. oh, you've got to be gentle with the little orange rounds, lest they get scratched and unsellable. not anymore! chuck 'em! when the truck is weighted down to the point of sagging dangerously, it's driven over to george's farm, where it gets thrown again into a great pile of sheep food. they love the stuff and their faces turn orange after eating a lot of it. also, it helps with sheepy fertility. check your local animal husbandry source to find out why (something to do with a boost of nutrients that make it easier to keep a lamb in yer belly full term). the sheep were goin' at it while i was there, though, so that's all the proof i need. go sheep!

after chucking squash at the sheep, one miss shley is free of her squash burden!! that is, all but two bushels that she was convinced to take home for the winter months. i can't help it, it looks so healthy and full of vitamins. and it's orange inside! two bushels is about 80 pounds. that's a lot of fucking squash to eat. but hopefully, being free of the daily task of moving and displaying and moving and moving and MOVING squash around, i will now be able to write about things other than you know what.

george keeps one llama with his sheep as a guard. a llama. i guess the llama gets downright ugly if a predator comes around and will spit furiously. when we drove up in the pick-up the llama positioned itself between us and the sheep and looked as though it was gathering a great lougy* in the back of its llama throat. we got out hesitantly (like we're on safari or something) and left the doors of the truck open just in case we needed to put some glass between us and the spit, but the llama decided we were ok because we had food and sauntered off to nibble on a butternut. oh man, it's satisfying to toss a pumpkin on the ground and watch it split open! some of the squash don't split though, no matter how hard you throw them, cause they're freakin' storage vegetables and hard as rocks. i now feel the sore coming on from throwing something like 3000 pounds of squash on the ground.

i'm also definately going to be sore form the rotten straw bale moving. y.u.c.k. is what rotten straw smells like and i had it all over me today. moving straw bales was a wholly unpleasant experience, especially after i uncovered a little mouse nest complete with little pink baby mice. i had to give them a straw burial. boo.

so all in all it was a very farmy day. sheep, mice, straw and squash. now i'm off to missouri- employment upon return is unknown......


* i can't decide how to spell lougy. loogee? lougie? loogie? loogy.

das laaaaaaand

geschwinde geschwinde geschwinde geschwinde geschwinde

swiftly! apace! apace apace apace apace apace!

a beautiful song, but once we got to the five times geschwinde we lost it and choir went from serious to gigglenous.

your feets too big

who's that walkin around here.... mercy. stompy foot is off to work!

the squash liberation army is headed to the farmstand today to take it all away to george's sheep. i don't know who this george is, but it's been mentioned frequently that his sheep will be happy this year. i wonder if their little wooly coats will turn orange from all the squashy vitamins. THAT would be some wool i would want to knit with!

adagio for violin and oboe

i think this is one of the reasons why i decided to play the oboe.

and SORRY to those that can't make the magic link between yesterday's blog and the op-ed in the nytimes..... gaw.

farmstand is o-ver. piss off to all and to all a good night!


ok, a little acerbic. a funny juxtaposition between the music playing in my headphones and evil lurking inside. perhaps sweet shley will return tomorrow. perhaps not! bwa ha ha!!!

i'm on havel's team

it really doesn't matter what the article was about- did i even read it? not really. something about north korea being baaaaad. but it was WRITTEN by the triumvirate of humanitarian badasses: vaclav havel, some dude from norway (ya, who knows anything about scandinavia...) and elie wiesel. ...i just looked up middle character- he was the PM of norway and took leave of his office due to mental illness- ah, depressive episode, which is undoubtedlly linked to the meeting with pres. bush pictured directly below mention of depression. not particularly well-written, to be honest, but rather effective only because of its authors. i'm now willing to campaign for human rights in n. korea, just as soon as i go back and find out why i ought to be concerned about the situation there.

i'm deep into mozart. again. it happens every few months.

i'm also about to fall asleep.

"how long are you guys going to be out here?"
"till halloween"
"oh, is that all?"
"um.... things don't really grow that much in the winter. and um, it's 40 degrees out here. november starts in two days... think about that. oh, you don't like to think, you just like cruising around in your cadillac escapade (or is it an enclave?)"

i have no costume picked out for tomorrow. piss.

mozart k466

cold weather and dark evenings mean shley listens to music in minor.
one should be able to search songs by major/minor in itunes.

beer for breakfast

actually it's beer at noon, but ACTUALLY it's beer at 1 in the AFTERnoon because we've got this time change bullshit that's supposed to HELP farmers. no. don't help the farmers. just makes the farmers get colder earlier in the day.

so here comes the moment when shley bitches heavily about the farmstand: i went there this morning and stayed for a total of one and a half hours, most of which was spent cursing at the craptastic contraption others might know as a tent. piece. of. shit. it's a 10x10 foldable thing that does not want to fold or unfold. broken! i almost ripped the thing apart out of frustration at one point- a sort of daffy duck moment of tearing something to shreads while screaming, then standing their with chest heaving while holding little shreds of tent in his hands. that was almost me. so we had only one functioning foldable tent that didn't serve any purpose because the sun is too low in the sky to necessitate 10x10 roofs, so there's only a sliver of shade and a pissed off shley.

and WHY do i have to continuously have to deal with the shortcomings of impermanent structures?? the FIRST tent blew away. the SECOND collapsed because of the snow, which, by the way, has turned into a twenty-foot-long rotten squash muddy slip and slide zone that i get to slop around it every now and then. the once great piles of beautiful pumpkins and butternuts froze and thawed a few times, resulting in sickening muddiness. yesterday i had to use clothespins to hold up my jeans whilst slopping through the pile because they wouldn't stay rolled up by themselves. farmstand fashion at it's best.

so the people trickle in, complain about things, leave without buying anything and expect me to provide some explanation as to why we don't have tomatoes and basil and goddamn honeycrisp apples anymore, as though it's a personal decision i've made to deny them these things- or maybe i've got bushels of them horded in the trailer and if they're bitchy enough i'll decide to sell them some. i'm thinking of making a science fair presentation of the solar system so that people can relearn the reason behind the SEASONS. tilted axis!!! that means we have winter! things die! cycle of fucking life, come back next year please, thank you. just because king soopers has tomatoes doesn't mean that the rinky-dink little farm on the corner has tomatoes. we're all out. and we're fresh out of TENTS too.


ok..... feeling better.

now, a moment with farmer dan. last night at the end of season potluck he shared with us the tragic story of how his reading glasses broke (cause dan is older and needs reading glasses to read his howard zinn). i'm not sure where dan was when his glasses broke, but it was somewhere where resources were fairly limited, because his solution was to employ electrical tape and a drinking straw. he retrieved the glasses from his car and much giggling ensued. farmer dan and darth squash are now the only things that bring me joy at work.

disturbance in the force

darth butternut has been slain by the emporer's new apprentice, darth spaghetti. dark times lie ahead.

need a piano

are there any original members left in pink floyd? they all look really young-

snow, slow, and so
it snowed, i was slow, and routed for so. SO taguchi. he's the smallest ballplayer ever.

i should really start writing on this thing earlier in the day when i'm actually thinking coherently instead of waiting till nighttime when my thoughts have turned to squash.

the farmstand has apparently collapsed from the snow, so we'll be exposed for the next four days in tentless pumpkin world. how many calamities can the poor place sustain? we already lost the tent once! it's strange how quickly i've lost interest in the happenings there- as have the owners, it seems. they could've gone out to knock the snow off the canopy but didn't, for some reason. i think it's largely to do with the lack of activity and end of season laziness bearing down. (not to say they're lazy, but i certainly am). today i guess they harvested in the snow, but in farmstand world- which i've been relugated to since the farm is too slow to warrant shley help- there is really nothing to do but sit around, restack squash, remove rotten pumpkins, stack gourds, and wait for it to be over. which is depressing. it seems like all i do is sit there and wait for the occasional customer, and when they come i have to explain to them that it has snowed TWICE (three times now) and therefore we no longer have tomatoes and basil. it seems absurd, having been so close to the farm for these past two months, to imagine that EVERYONE isn't as in tune with the weather and it's effects on local agriculture as i am. aren't people paying attention, or are they that far removed from their food that they don't realize that the SNOW killed the tomatoes?? it's october!

ed is entranced with the pink floyd light show on tv. i myself am not.
but i'm secretly jealous of the back-up singers on stage. i've always wanted to be a back-up singer, with a little synchronized dance. or the horn section!

ed is also astonished with the fact that high fructose corn syrup is in a number of his favorite foods. fat free half and half- HFCS!! we've switched back to regular full fat deliciousness. oh, but his beloved bran flakes have the stuff in them- his expression upon hearing this news was priceless! like someone shot his dog, poor guy.

tonight over dinner and searches through ingredient lists of pantry products we joked about me being kicked out of his apartment once my job is over (which obviously won't happen.... but i can't help but be paranoid that he's getting sick of me crashing on his couch.) i can just see him tossing out all my un-ed items: and take your food dehydrator! and all those beets! out with your giant kettle and muddy boots! and those books on poland!! nooooo, he loves the baby shley and her food preservation and HFCS alerts. and, according to him, "if the soviet union suddenly comes back into existence and bombs us, we'll be prepared."

jacques chiractober is almost over!

paint the moon

have just purchased the three liquids that i hope will ward off the cold i feel is setting into my system: orange juice, hot chocolate, and red wine. i'm so excited about the tastiness of all three that i want to drink them all at once, but know that could be potentially disgusting, even if i drink them in close succession. which first.....

the nws has been forecasting serious snow accumulation all day and i fear that it's all hype and i'll really have to sit with teh pumpkins tomorrow.


and now.... brokeback mountain, ladies and gentlemen. i could very well be snivelling soon.
let it be known that i'm drinking NONE of the aforementioned beverages, but have instead opted for a beer.

prova d'orchestra

dorkestra. huhuhuhuhuh.
thus is the soundtrack for tonight's posting.

my bearded brother-in-law says that if all posts mentioning squash were removed from my blog there would be precious little left. what. ev. i have things to write about other than squash! you wait!

....... i had some orange juice earlier.
and....... my hair is getting long.

oh, i can't stand it, i must write about squash!! tonight i had pumpkin in my burrito, which was odd but tasty. and.... SQUASH! i love squash!!

i missed obama's visit to the rockies today. but i didn't miss the cardinals! they elected a new pope!

farmer dan smells like funyons.

stock raving mad

i think i've finally succombed to farmstand insanity. i just used the excuse, while chatting with my friend in NYC, that i was "too into my pumpkin" to do look something up for her. meanwhile, a huge pot of rooty stock boils away on the stove. ed is afraid, but pretends to be interested in the turnipy concoction and stirs it occasionally with eyebrows raised.

while throwing onions and turnips into the compost at work today i had an epiphany- i should collect the composting rot and make stock to freeze for the winter! yum! ok, not rotten stock- i took the questionable-not-good-enough-to-display-cause-they're-holey veggies, not the squishy moldirific ones. and then i got all kinds of excited about my project and picked every conceivable vegetable that might be yummy when boiled and piled them into a box to take home and stockify, which included a stemless pie pumpkin. i baked it and ate half of it yum! because i'm pumpkin crazed!! there are two known truths about me that i've come to accept in the past month: one, that a day of work isn't complete unless i move at least 500 lbs of pumpkins around, and two: that this activity doesn't repel me from squash, but rather makes me want to eat it all the damn time! my hands are turning orange and today i horded some choice squashes for the winter. no, they're mine!

the plural of squash seems like it should be squish.

ok, i had some really important things to say about seasonality, but can't be bothered to go into them now cause i'm tired and still need to shower. lazy shley!

hearts of space humor

just switched to the hearts of space channel to find "a tinge of sadness" playing.

BBC sense of humor

"Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic has been invited to vote in an upcoming referendum, despite having died while awaiting trial in March."

i can't wait to take a vasarnap.

blog blog blog
tomatoes froze, people, didn't you notice the snow?

ickle pickle picker

the quest to find an apple corer entered day two today. who knew it would take so long to find such a thing? it seems like it's one of those utensils that's in everyone's drawer that never gets used, but once you need it, it's elusive. i didn't heed my own advice this afternoon and went to bed bath and beyond on an empty stomach- it was an act of desperation! once inside i was daunted by the high walls of repeating oxo utensils and smell of christmas potpourri. in the 'fruits and vegetables' section they had everything BUT an apple corer- including such useful items as the "pickle picker" (cause you can't use a FORK to select your pickle from the jar), and the "artichoke holder". i don't know what this is for.... ok fine, it's to hold the artichoke while you steam it, but really. there were also several "butter carvers", "avocado slicers", and TWo different kinds of canoli wrap things, but no bloody apple corers. on my way out some cheerful bed bath and beyond worker asked if i'd found everything all right, to which i replied a singular "nope!" lest i stopped to give him an earful on why it's stores like these that are bringing the decline of the american economy AND family values. ya, that's right, i get radical when in big box stores and make giant leaps in rationalization. i have no corroborating evidence, but i'm sure that the 'beyond' is referring to the coming depression and return to medieval tactics in household coping techniques. i'm not even sure what that means.... it means that people won't be able to buy pickle pickers less than two miles from their home and will resort to ridiculous behavior because they've lost the resourcefulness required to take care of themselves.

anyway.

so i have a bushel of slowly rotting apples in the garage waiting to be turned into yummy winter snacks, all because i slept too late today, then spent waaay too long trying ot find the one little utensil that would make my apple-drying project a bit quicker (cause i HAVE to have apple rings- no other dried apple shape will do!). really i'm just procrastinating because i'm just as lazy as the next big boxer and prone to consumer distractions.

it snowed!

farmstand gods are with me! and the best part is that it's all melted now- but i'm still not at work! bwa ha ha.

someday the waves

oh please oh please let it snow tonight so i don't have to sit around at the farmstand tomorrow. don't let it go from sparta to stockton. pleaaaaaaase.

today was loooooong and boring, with only occassional diversions from the stinky squash pile and stupid customers- both annoying things to deal with. i discovered a layer of rotten squash at the bottom of the butternut pile today and..... ew- puts me off my butternut. lesson learned: don't put squash on the grass. cause it gets wet and ROTTEN and gross yuck ew! when i wasn't moving rotten butternuts i was telling customers, no, you cannot have a free pumpkin. there is some end of season phenomenon wherein people start asking for free or radically discounted produce. sure, take a gooey butternut squash. it's free.

at the end of the day i drove a tv to shrill's house and stunk up her kitchen with my rotten-squash-knees stank while wolfing down the end of her kung pau chicken.

snow! please!

burping vs stomping

i'm secretly at war with our upstairs neighbor, who is THE stompiest woman i've ever heard walk around. she stomps at all times of day, beginning at 4:30 in the morning sometimes and going till midnight. what is she so upset about that she has to stomp everywhere in her apartment? and who is walking around that much so early in the morning? who has such a complicated morning routine?

so i was watching the baseball came tonight and drinking beer and thought i'd challenge her noise with the loudest burps i could muster. i hope she heard at least one.

dropping the hubbard

i think there's a group of senior citizens hanging out in the back of a lafayette church sharing secrets about their hubbard squash connections. they come in pairs sometimes to buy the giant hubbard squashes, and the go straight for them without glancing at anything else in the stand. it's weird- why do old ladies like hubbard squashes so much? one crotchity old bird came in today clutching an empty trash bag and i thought she meant trouble- she picked out a 10lb hubbard, paid for it, then stuck it in the trash bag and asked me if i'd get on the table and drop it on the ground for her. "cause that's how they used to do it." i didn't get on the table, but busted it open pretty good anyway and she was delighted.

which was going to segue into writing about my frustration at not being able to remember the doop-di-doo rhyme the english girls used to sing, but i can't remember how.

doop doop di doo
the cow was in the loo
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
and you're a stinky POO.

or something like that- it was a loo fav but i refrained from showing my interest in having them repeat it because the mom would get right uppity about them saying such 'crass schoolyard rhymes'. whatev. i've googled to no avail- "cow loo", "cow loo poo", "english loo rhymes". nothing.

i have no respect for the mets. i mean, who is a mets fan? what kind of people are they? if you're from NYC, why wouldn't you be a yankees fan? it seems like an obvious team choice.

pujols! oh, they walked pujols. chicken shits.


oh- so i looked up the old mother hubbard rhyme (which is evidently about cardinal wolsey and henry VIII) and momentarily thought i might be hot on the doop-di-doo trail.

puking pumpkin

stolen from www.extremepumpkins.com
that's all i have to say for the day.

darth butternut and competitive gourd stacking

just in case you were wondering, yes, i am a weirdo. here's what i do when it's slushing at work:




it's true- i dressed up the bunk butternut in mr. potato head/darth tater attire, placed him on the galeux d'eysines moony squashscape and took pictures. the mask fell off just as i was snapping another photo, resulting in fits of giggles and then hiding darth buternut in the trailer for some unsuspecting farmstand worker to find.





at this point i decided i was bored enough to see how many gourds i could stack. five! my recently acquired mad jenga skills came in handy.




then my gloves got wet and i descended quickly into grumpiness. it was 34 degrees and snowing, so i opted to close le farmstand and take my funny pictures with me.

seussy squash

hoorah for people with a seussian flare (and, possibly, too much time on their hands? too much reading of seuss to small children? i'm no one to talk, i wrote 'the grinch who stole valentine's" last year). here are two excellent examples of the human ability to be goofily poetic:
(i might request deadwood-inspired squash prose next, for my enchantment with squash is waning daily. there's so fucking much of the ball-breaking shit)


In the far-away farmland of the red wheelbarrow farm
Sat Wyatt, self-anointed, seed slinging king, short on charm.
A nice little farm-stand. It was clean. It was neat.
There was plenty of sunshine. There was PLENTY to eat.
The farmhands had most everything farmhands might need.
And they were all happy. Quite happy indeed.

They were…until Wyatt, the king of them all,
Decided the harvest was much too much small.
“I’m ruler”, said Wyatt “of the crops that I see.
But I’m way too uptight, that’s the trouble with me.
With this squash for a throne, I look down on my farm
But I can’t see beyond, thus I am quite alarmed.
This squash that I sit on is far too close to the ground.
It ought to be higher!” he said with a frown.
“If I could sit high on a custom posh and squash thrown
What a king! What a ruler! All my farmhands would moan.”

And Wyatt, the farm king, barked a command.
He bade to his farmhands, bring him more squash
And, pile them high with aplomb and panache.
He made each farmhand slosh pumpkins forward and back
And pile them precariously in a big pumpkin stack.
And then Wyatt climbed up. Placed his rump on the pile.
“I can see all of Denver!” he said with a wry smile.

“Mine O mine!” Wyatt cried. “Behold all that I rule!
I’m the king of all produce! Good lord I am cool!
I’m the kind of all turnips! And all organic food!
Of all things delicious both sautéed and stewed
I’m Wyatt the farm-king! Oh, marvelous me!
Perhaps the next season I’ll plant sugar snap peas!”

And all through the morning, he sat on his perch,
Giving sermons to patrons in his produce like church.
Until just about noon, then he heard a faint me-ow.
“What’s that?” snapped the farm king and he stared down to see
Way way down at the bottom a farmhand named Shley.
Just one of his farmhands, who, would no longer be quite,
Looked up, and said, “um, beg your pardon, king Wyatt
You’re a pain in my ass, my back, and my knees –
How much more squash must we slosh through the mud, tell me please?”

“SILENCE!” the farm king barked mercilessly
“I’m king, and you’re just a farmhand named Shley.”

“You slosh through the mud, I’m the king of produce!
I’m the almighty turnip and zucchini Zeus!
I’m the king of all veggies and organic food!
You just slosh through the mud, there is no time to brood.
My squash throne shall be higher!” his farm-fresh voice thundered,
“So pile more squash! I want more then two hundred!”

“More squash! Much more squash!” he hollered and yelled.
And the farmhands worked harder and sweated and smelled.
Just so the farm kings shrill voice would be quelled.
From all over the farmland, the farmhands they came,
Each carrying squash – their poor joints were aflame
And all of them sloshed mud all over poor Shley.
As they piled the squash to three-hundred-and-three.

Then Wyatt, the farm king, was seated so high,
He could see past the mountains that just touched the sky!
“Hooray!” bellowed Wyatt. I’m the king of field greens!
I’m the king of the squash! I’m the king of green beans!
I’m the king of the bees, as they buzz through the air!
Oh, joy! What a wonderful pumpkin throne chair!
I’m Wyatt the farm king! It is great to be me!
I’m the splendiferous squash god! He said with great glee.

Then from far down below, came a disgruntled plea,
From that plucky young farmhand, whose name it was Shley.
“Yo, farm dude, beg pardon…but I think you’re insane,
Do you know that you are causing your farmhands great pain?
I know, up on high, you are our great farm-stand king,
But we have enough squash here to last until spring!
We farmhands can’t take it. Our arms are like brie!
And besides, we need food!” said the farmhand named Shley.

“You hush up your yap!” Snapped the mighty king Wyatt.
“You’ve no right to talk, pile squash and be quiet.
I rule from this mountain of squash, all I see!
There’s nothing, nay, NADA, quite as high as me!”

But, while he was howling, he realized with surprise
That the full harvest moon was now on the rise
And its perigeal light would soon fill the skies.
“What’s THAT?” chortled Wyatt. “Tell me what IS that thing?
I just don’t have the time for celestial bling!
I can not allow it! I must go much higher!
Heed my words lowly farmhands, lest ye be fired!
Get the led out you farmhands, stack these squashes to heaven!
It should only take five hundred thousand and seven!”

But, as Wyatt, the farm-stand king, lifted his hand
And started to bellow and give the command,
That plucky young farmhand who had let out the plea,
That plucky young farmhand whose name it was Shley
Decided she’d had it. And had it she had.
She was tea kettle screaming and boiling mad.
And that plucky young Shley did an uncouth little thing.
She burped!
And her burp squelched the pumpkin squash throne of the king!

And Wyatt, the self-proclaimed-farm-stand king of produce,
That zealot organic-mad zucchini Zeus,
That king who sat high on his posh squash pumpkin stool…
Well, that was the end of the farm-stand king’s rule!
For Wyatt, the farm king, that king short on charm,
Fell off his squash throne, with a thud, to his harm.

And today the great Wyatt, that splendiferous he,
Is king of the mud. All because of the Shley.
And the farmhands, of course…all the farmhands are free
As all farmhands and, perhaps, all squash should be.


*based on yertle the turtle, or so i've been told



That Josh!
That Josh loves squash!
That Josh loves to nosh on squash!

That Josh knows not that I don't like squash
Josh knows that I like corn and peas
and occasionally macaroni and cheese
Still, that Josh thinks that a meal needs squash
But for me, that sort of veggie meal won't wash!

Josh learned to nosh on squash when he was a frosh
a frosh at Drury, ain't that posh!
He ate it in the Commons at noon, and while researching Daniel Boone,
in the library, and under a full moon, while traipsing across
the 40 acres so dear, while on his way to a party, we hear,
his squash obsession was plain to all, they talked about it at
Sunderland Hall

"He likes pumpkins, gourds, zucchini and more! Summer squash, winter
squash, acorn squash, Hubbard!
This Josh is a little weird, I think, he's sort of "out of the cupbourd"
Perhaps a little therapy would do, a little love of other veggies too.

So Josh was given only spinach from then, sometimes an occasional
tomato.
But his palate cried for squash, you see, and occasionally a potato.

A potato? What's this? Has Josh found new love? A new culinary
obsession?
Latkes, fries, mashed or hashed, will these be his new possession?

It seems our Josh has learned that tastes will come and go
but squash, dear friend is drawn on our hearts,
and he will always love it so.

goat heads

i've just noticed that i've posted three cartoons in the past week.

the farm staff is seriously considering an employee invasion of the goat dairy in boulder county. we're all coming to the quick realization that our jobs are ending soon (i only worked 35 hours this week!) and are entering into a panic over what we'll do without farminess in our lives. many of us have developed the habit of roaming the field in the down time- which there is suddenly a lot of- and looking for that last little pepper or eggplant that has somehow escaped frost damage. my preservation needs have not yet been filled- i'm thinking about drying apples and secretly stock-piling squash for my upcoming winter of being broke. i also gathered about 30 lbs. of squishy tomatoes at the farmstand today with canning in mind, but wyatt whisked them into the back of his truck as part of the great compost collection project. let me say this: rotten squash isn't nearly as attractive as bright fresh squash. it be stinky. so the farm crew is talking about getting winter jobs at the goat dairy, because apparently we're so addicted to this lifestyle that hanging around with a bunch of stinky goats sounds like a good thing to do. at least we'd learn how to make cheese. or hate cheese. hard to predict. goats are funny little animals that like to stand on top of things and eat inedible items. they also have creepy, goaty irises. could i hang out with goats for a season? i made the mistake of walking barefoot over a patch of gravel this morning. hidden, sharp, evil goat heads! ow. i could take this as a divine hint that i shouldn't deal with goats... much like i take cues from newman's own alphabet cookies. ask a question, choose three or four cookies, interpret cookie acronym to your liking.

farmstand humor

sharpened fartichokes

for those about to rock we salute you. i am no longer in need of a wall-mounted pencil shapener, so if you were about wrap one up in pretty bows to send to me, save your ribbon. gots me a pencil sharpener. do not, however, hesitate to send discarded library card catalog drawers or any other random piece of schoolroom furniture. i'll take them to bars with me for a PBR toast, too.







everything is coming to a grinding halt in the world of fresh produce. which is not really true- we have lots of lettuce and other greens (yes, spinach, goddamn it), and loads of root vegetables, including the ever popular fartichoke. aka jerusalem artichoke. pretty flowers on the plant but that's about all i can say about it that's discreet. here's a picture (of the damn fartichoke flowers last month, not of the english tiny-diesel-car-filled wiht-four-fartichoking-people discomfort last december- story available upon request).

stacks

the librarian said, "i hope you ate your wheaties" after she made two trips to the hold shelf for me. ya, i'm going to need all the vitamins and minerals i can get to plow through titles like "when nationalism began to HATE" and "between dignity and DESPAIR". i have the grad school bibliography in my possession once again and am not sure how i feel about it. it's at once satisfying to be on track with this thing and reminiscent of wanting to throw my books down my stairs on clark street. so far no books have met their violent gravitational fate, but there's still plenty of time. and i havne't even opened any of them yet. maybe tomorrow while i'm bored at the farmstand i'll dip into the problem of polish modernity and see how i feel.

distraction

i slept for three hours last night and slopped around ineffectively in the mud at the farm as a result. not that slopping wouldn't have occured anyway- just a little more prone to slop. my boots turned into big discs of mud and on the drive home i couldn't decide whether i was smelling myself or the turnips- both had kind of an earthy aroma. i then took a big nap that was dominated by big leaves of purple and orange chard that i was trying to find a home for. i think maybe i dreamt about pumpkin legs, too. that means legs made out of pumpkins.

my dad showed me pictures of his trip to germany and i was quick to spot the produce on the street markets. and dream people have pumpkin legs.

snow snow snow!

it's going to snow tonight!! i have an apple pie in the oven and two pumpkin breads cooling on the counter, all in preparation for snowy comfort. there is the crappy chance that we'll have to cut lettuce and pull beets in the snow tomorrow... but there's only supposed to be a couple of inches and i think it'll turn to sluch pretty quickly, which will make it al the more fun! slushy beets! hence the need for baked rewards. trying to be positive about the likely suckage that will be work tomorrow.

bring me the workhorse

the musical/metaphorical horse theme continues. i keep running into songs that are about the white horse on 96th. today when i drove past he was standing with his two front legs in the tractor tire that holds his food and looking like he needed a drink (of.. horse whiskey, guess). i think he's the tired workhorse.

s.q.u.a.s.h.

i am the founding member of the Society of Quartered and Unused Acorn Squash Havers. as in, people that have. have lots of squash. this proud organization was formed on october the 7th, 2006 and all who have baked squash leftovers, acorn or otherwise, are welcome to join. so far there are two members... will YOU be the next?

harvest moon

today is the harvest moon and i missed the harvest. i usually work fridays at the farm but got today off for being the farmstand-wonder-queen dutiful worker for 11 days in a row. it was blissful to sleep a bit but i feel left out of the farm fun.... it's probably the last warm sunny harvest day we'll have and, you know, it's the harvest moon and all. not that we'll be out there at moonlight, but we could be if we wanted. and i want another turnip.

i am seriously preoccupied with pumpkins and sqaush and am getting a little worried about it. last night on my DATE i found myself talking about squash a lot and then took the poor guy to my car and gave him two squash. cause i drive around with squash in my car. and today i chopped one open to bake and it was so beautiful that i considered going out to buy a disposable camera because mine is broken and i simply HAD to document its beauty. i stopped myself, but almost regret it and might get a camera to document the next squash i hack open. and yesterday, while sitting at work and loathing the moment that 5,000 lbs of pumpkins would arrive, i found while moving them that i loved each and every one and didn't care that i was, once again, moving tons of squash around. hey're so pretty and orange and round!

i've got problems.

moo shu pork

had a date had a date had a date date date

but not until i steal this cartoon to use as an example of how easily i can be cracked up when i'm tired.

mleh

tired. going to bed early.

packageses

another package slip received today! could it be the pencil sharpener? socks from australia? an expanding cake? nope- it was a notebook used in the berkshires. not pencil-sharpener exciting, but interesting to look at all the same. notes on how to make ice cream and various drawings of million dollar t-shirt slogan ideas:
"i live vicariously through heterosexuals"
"sober, caffeinated, confident"
"gay, austrian, anthropologist"
yes, that last one will make me millions. millions, i tell you!
also in the notebook was an attempt to list 200 words that start with p. (i think there are about 80). and notes to self about what life direction to take, none of which mentioned moving to colorado to work on the farm again. that's what note-taking gets you!

i am now in high demand for my squash-handling skills. a restaurant in boulder that we sell to asked if i could come over and fill a mining cart in their front yard with our beautiful edible autumn decorations. pretty soon the housewives will be calling!