behold!

i believe a recipe was used in this creation, though i'm not sure who's. the seasoning and type of stuffing was not readily shared, sort of like the location of wild mushrooms or good hiking spots. our thanksgiving host spent something like 8 hours de-boning each bird and layering the splayed carcasses with stuffing before tying (nay, sewing) it back together to make a 25 lb. monster bird with a sort of flattened appearance. it then cooked for NINE HOURS. the resulting roast was the most amazing meat feast i've ever had. and oh, the gravy. the bones from all three birds were put into a giant stockpot and reduced into the thickest, most flavorful stock i've ever encountered (and yes, i've encountered some serious stock). we made a gravy using the stock with some flour and orange vodka slurry, and then we made more gravy using the same process for fear that there wouldn't be enough. i think we made a bout half a gallon of gravy in the end.

none of the food i've had since thanksgiving has been even remotely close in succulence as the turducken and i'm considering having three-bird stock around just to drown everything in to make things more tasty.

eat small

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0318729020071104

all right let's do some math:
1 million pounds of ground beef was produced in four days? that means 250,000 pounds of beef was ground up in one day, so things are obviously moving very fast at the plant. robots do some of the work, which goes very quickly but also results in a lot of... let's call it shoddy butchery. cow parts get all mixed up on the conveyor belt. intestines and chuck roasts wiggle off in all the excitement, then swim together on the bloody floor before getting scooped back up by an underpaid worker, along with the finger he lost from doing that one cut over and over again, and maybe some residual abrasive cleaner.

apparently there was a 27 million pound recall in september. if i hadn't had my head planted at the farm at that point i might have raised an earlier alarm, but better late than never:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FIND OUT WHERE YOUR FOOD COMES FROM

eating food that was raised by a small farm and processed in a facility that pays for care and precision over quantity per hour is a much safer option for everyone.



and what the fuck is with the photograph with the article? i seriously doubt that any of the cattle butchered at the "meat solutions" facility knew the pastoral idyll pictured. they might have had some grass while calves, MAYBE, but even if they did they were shipped off to a confined animal feeding operation at a ripe young age to feast upon a diet of corn and antibiotics.


money-grubbers should not be allowed any involvement in producing food for people. "agricultural giant"- it's obscene.

for my sister

green eggs and rice

I brought home some spinach from the farm the other night and suggested we have it with eggs-

this is what happened:







I was imagining a nice spinach fritatta, or perhaps a soufle? instead i got a plate of 'spinaten puree'. it was actually delicious and, being the favorite childhood dish of one austrian fellow, was quite a success all around. it's basically pureed spinach with garlic and a roux poured over slow-cooked sunny-side up eggs and a bed of rice. i added soy sauce to my rice, which was frowned upon by the traditionalist, but delicious nevertheless.

clubhand

bulbous red hand! not as entertaining as a woman with a stick coming out of her butt, i know.

you asked for it

another "what's going on here?" blog competition! best entries will be considered for highest honor.

i'm going back to naboo

the time has come to finally say 'fuck it' to the corporate produce that i handle everyday. back to the farm! i could elaborate on my decision- cause it's rife with idealism and not-so-much with practicality- but really i just needed to preface the following:

second season with farmer dan = second account of how farmer dan pissed himself.

oh, the tales dan will tell while washing, wedding, picking, driving, or doing anything at all in his presence. the other day we were picking arugula together and i heard everything from a detailed summary of "under the banner of heaven" to how he almost froze to death in utah once to his $600 vasectomy. first subject, very interesting- basically mormons are crazy, and dan has excellent recall of text. third story, whoa, dan. i don't need to hear about how a 50-year-old woman shaved you. middle story, hm, i didn't know you could piss yourself in the process of freezing to death.

some years ago dan was "dropped off in the middle of nowhere utah during a blizzard and damn near froze to death." i didn't pry for the circumstances of WHY he was dropped off in the middle of a blizzard in utah- i assume drugs were involved. not that dan is a bad seed, just that..... i can easily imagine a hitchhiking venture gone wrong over some bad blow and poor dan tumbling out of a moving vehicle into a snow drift. or something. anyway, there dan was in nowhere utah during a blizzard, hallucinating and letting his bladder go. apparently this is what happens during extreme hypothermia. first you hurt, then you become placid and delirious about your condition because you're too damn cold to care about it hurting. then you full-on hallucinate about warmer places and magical leopluridons. then you piss and shit involuntarily because your body decides that the bladder and bowels don't need to be bothered with anymore and then, if it goes really far, you experience something like an extreme fever and peel your clothes off because you're suddenly inexplicably hot. i guess this is the last ditch effort by your body to pretend it's still warm. people that are stranded and freeze to death are often found with their clothes trailing behind them as they go for help. this is the sequence of events according to dan, anyway. fortunately, he did not get to the undressing stage. the sun came up and he got warm enough to walk somewhere in his wet pants.

meanwhile, i'm picking arugula, wondering why this is the second occasion when dan has felt the need to confide in me as to his involuntary pissing. because i love the farm, that's why!

squash and worms meet at last!

approachable radicalism is all well and good, but let me get back to what this blog is really about for a moment: SQUASH! and WORMS! the other night i begrudgingly cooked a spaghetti squash from my winter stash. i haven't craved a squash since last october and the numbers in my stash haven't exactly decreased by themselves, so i'm challenging myself to eat all of them before i'm inundated with another round in a few months. i scooped the seeds and guts out, thinking, "mmm, yummy worm food," and into the worm box it went.

five days later.....

ALL the seeds germinated! i opened the lid to find dozens of six-inch-tall, pale yellow squash sprouts taking over my worm box. it was a squash forest! i didn't realize that things could thrive in sunless, wormy conditions like that. i plucked a couple out and put them in a window planter, so it now appears that my best laid plans to NOT grow winter squash in the garden have been thwarted by volunteer worm plants.

approachable radicalism

this is my new platform.

here's a scene from the composters' potluck tonight:

composter 1: "you know, especially after taking this class, i feel like i'm even more anti-consumerism than i was before." (said with a look of concern on face.)
composter 2: aka, shley: "ya, sometimes i think i'm turning into a radical." (similar look of concern. can it really be? no, shopping is fun!.....)
composter 3: "'turning into'? i thought you were already 14 feet further out there than everyone else here."

so apparently i'm already a radical, by a measurement of 14 feet further than those who spend their evenings talking about dirt. i instantly feared that the common consensus about my personality was that i was some foaming at the mouth organic freak whose radical antics were tiring to the other composters. because, i mean, that's what we mean by radical, right? zealotry? unwavering viewpoints? constant chattering about beliefs on the fringe of society?

well, the good news is that i never did foam at the mouth about anything in composting class, so i'm not THAT kind of radical. rather, i am an approachable radical- one who is educated, partially articulate, experienced, compassionate, and, best of all, approachable.

R.I.P.

pepino died. i guess the shell was too broken and his little snail body couldn't take it.

sniff sniff.

the master composter has spoken

auntie k reports that she is dumping her kitchen scraps in a pile in her backyard and wonders whether worms will crawl in to have a feast and make compost. the answer? um, no, not really. i mean, they might wiggle up into the pile and eat some food, but more likely the pile, if not covered with a layer of dirt or leaves or something, will become home to maggots and other creepy crawly things you don't want in your backyard. that is, IF the pile is ONLY food scraps and no leaves or grass, etc. if it does have those materials then the compost pile should be getting too hot inside to host worms.

but what is shley doing with worms in her kitchen, and why isn't she growing flies?

let's have a compsot lesson to find the answer.

there are two different compost systems that are going on in shleydom: one, the compost pile compost, and two: vermicompost. in the first you rely on microbes and nematodes and roly polys and such to break down the material. in this case, you will ideally have a pile the size of a cubic yard, and it will be comprised mostly of BROWNs and GREENs. browns are carbon-rich materials, think OLDER material, like autumn leaves, perennial prunings, thatch from your yard (the dried-up grass from winter or drought), and such. greens are younger and 'greener'- grass clippings that have dried for a day or two, weeds that have also dried out and are without mature seed heads, alfalfa, straw, and food scraps. when you designate a site for your pile you scratch around in the ground below to make it easy for the dirt creatures to crawl up into the stuff you're going to put there, then you put stuff there. in a 3:1 ratio of browns to greens, pile about 8 inches of material, water it with your hose and stir it up with a pitchfork. the reenactor has one of those, doesn't he? it should be the consistency of a wrung out sponge. so at this point you've got a layer of damp leaves, grass and whatever. now do the same thing on top of that layer- put browns and greens in a 3:1 ratio, water it, stir it up, feel it for sponge-like dampness, and repeat! after a lot of sweating you'll have a cubic yard of damp yard waste. it has the proper ratio of carbon and nitrogen, the proper volume and proper aeration/moisture level to be an inviting place for microbes to get in there and do their work. cover the pile with a tarp or old blanket or something and let it sit there for a week. after a week, uncover it and WHOA the thing should be steaming and hot hot hot inside. it should be about 120-140 degrees. this is great! the pile is heating up like a haystack about to spontaneously combust (but don't worry, it won't catch fire). things are breaking down inside because of the microbial activity and heat, so what you'll want to do is TURN THE PILE. get the pitchfork back out or get a mattock or whatever tool you feel like using and get all the stuff that was on the inside on the outside. mix it up!

what a load of work, huh. you can add food scraps to the pile at any point, but it's a good idea to dig a little hole at the top to place them in and then cover them up so they won't stink or attrack racoons or other varmits. keep turning every week and in a couple of months the material will have decreased in volume by at least half and will be ready to use as compost amendment. yay!

now, vermicomposting. this is ideal for apartment dwellers or people that like worms. i have a storage box in my pantry that i drilled holes in the bottom and sides of. inside i put "bedding", which is shredded newspaper and a handful of leaves i got from outside moistened to be like a wrung-out sponge. i plopped the pound of worms in there and they wriggled to underneath the bedding and made themselves at home, then i fed them my kitchen scraps. i buried the scraps below the surface for the same reason as above: to deter fruti flies and real flies and such. the box stays covered in the pantry and smells like dirt. it doesn't get hot inside like the compost pile because it's not big enough and there isn't enough nitrogenous material to activate the little microbes.

so there's a basic run-down of compost methods. hope i explained it well enough.

lo-mode

1001 new pets

i now have 1001 new pets, and there names are: walter, evelyn, rex, tyrone, yvette, unger, irene, ophelia, patrick, abner, slick, danver, franklin, george, hank, jackson, kyle, leon, zach, xavier, charlotte, vick, bob, ned, and micky. i would've started with 'Q' but skipped it out of my dislike for the name quentin. go ahead, try to think of a name for every letter in the alphabet, see if you like starting with 'quentin'.

actually, only one of my new pets has a name, and it's pepino, a garden snail i found in the cucumber box at work. he/she (all snails are hermaphrodites) had a smashed shell, presumably from the journey from california to colorado, so i decided to take it home to shley's gastropod sanctuary for some calcium rich resting. snails can repair their shells if necessary, so i'm going to see if it happens. so far pepino is just curled up in a weird little throbbing snail ball with ruffled edges, but part of the shell is on the other side of the strawberry box that he lives in, so presumably something is happening.

snails, slugs, caterpillers, ladybugs, and other little creatures are regularly found in the produce at grocery stores- so get over the 'ew' factor. they live in the fields and sometimes get picked up with the cucumber or argula- sometimes they're even packaged in the earthbound farms salads. most of the time we take whatever we find outside, but occassionally the species is way too cool to abandon- ferdinand, for example. he was a tarantula found in the banana box (before my time) and was taken to the butterfly pavillion. and, of course, pepino. pepinito!



the other 1000 new pets are red wiggler worms that live in my pantry. now, before you get all antsy pants about me having worms in my pantry, let me assure you that they are self-contained, odorless, and perfectly safe for kitty consumption. marley knows because she's had a few and happily hacked them up with little fuss. i guess nobody hacks happily... the point is, she learned to not eat the worms and didn't suffer. too much.

anyway.

the worms escaped, see.... but they won't escape again. it was a fluke! i set aside about 500 worms to give to a friend, leaving them in the little travel bag with dirt that came through the mail. yes, i mail-ordered worms. i thought, hey, they came from arkansas in this bag, what's one more evening? i awoke the next morning to the sweet sounds of my cat puking in the next room, then found a bunch of two-inch lines radiating out from under the sink where i'd placed the bag.* escapees! i guess they were looking for food. i 'captured' the ones that hadn't dried up or been eaten by the puking cat and put them with their friends in the worm box. the box stays in the pantry, but, despite previous breakouts and friends sending me videos of mutant worms attacking humans on far-off desert planets, i have no fear of them wriggling out of their new home. i give them lots of yummy, partially decomposed food i find in my fridge and the whole little wormosphere is a pretty happy place. they wriggle, eat, wriggle, poop, and wriggle some more. one day i'll have a box full of worm castings to use as fertilizer on my plants- and just so you know, this stuff sells for a dollar a bag- and i mean TINY bag. meanwhile, i'm not throwing away any food in my trash can, so...yay. recycling!

i would love to take pictures of my new friends but my camera sucks donkey balls. (pardon the language- but how many E18 errors can i have without wanting to throw the damn thing in the loo?) so for now you'll have to imagine

*the compost bucket under the sink has been abandoned. not a big enough space for composting. no heat=stink.

moscow to springfield

blacksburg

"And that was all the killing there would be at one mountainside college campus on one awful Monday."

is this the end of a 'tonight on fox' grimm fairy tale knockoff? is there some moral to the story implied by this statement? a line from a high school newspaper reporting in VA? or is it just a very poorly-written conclusion for the nytimes aritcle about the chain of events last monday.

yes, the latter is true.


the mancave resident is an alum of virginia tech and these few months i've known him i've gone from never having heard of blacksburg toward associating it immediately with a class of uniqueness that must be particular to those old american landscapes of the colonial states. i don't think anyone i've met is actually from VA originally, but they seem to have adopted, just by living there, this gene from our founding fathers that makes them odd, talented, mischeavous, creative, determined in their visions, and easily compassionate. i know just a handful of fellow alums, but others from blacksburg turn up everywhere- i mean, everywhere- and often times gatherings in denver turn into impromtu blacksburg reunions where, when familiar faces turn up, the question isn't "did i know you in blacksburg?" but rather, "how well did i know you in blacksburg?"

m texted me at work on monday, where i was doing my produce thing with no access to national news events, and all it said was "tragic day in blacksburg". having the peripheral/personal connection to it that i have, i immediately wondered whether one of his friends had met with a terrible accident, or perhaps if a beloved landmark had burned to the ground.

anybody would be shaken at the least to hear that a building where they attended class was scene for a massacre. anyone would be shaken to hear that there was a massacre at all. but it was in this place that i've come to appreciate as a source, and, in my most selfish response to this event, i'm hurt that my association with blacksburg has been changed to include a sick young man brandishing guns.

and i'm mad that a write at the nytimes wrote the above sentence. come on.

the dump

part of becoming a master composter is developing a true appreciation for the tricks us modern beings employ to deal with urban waste. our class went on a field trip yesterday (and i forgot my juice box, damn it) to the aforementioned facilities in denver county, and what did i learn? many things (and please, sister, mind that you use the word 'dump' as a noun refering to garbage, not a verb refering to you know what- this is serious stuff!):

1. plastic is evil

2. nothing 'biodegrades' in a dry dump, it just gets buried. ours is dry mostly because of the fact that we live in a desert, but otehrs are designed to be wet dumps because of higher average rainfalls, so the moisture level of the landfill allows for a bit more decomposition. still, an anthropologist, whose names escapes me right now, found an intact hot dog dating at least 25 years in the fresh kills landfill. that stuff you hear about the twinkie is true- even biodegradable things like, i don't know, jiffy pots, will probably never biodegrade so much as they'll get crushed into oblivion. you can easily find readable newspapers 30 years old in many landfills, though i didn't get a chance to date any material at DADS because we weren't allowed to get near the actual 'dumped' material.

3. one cell at the DADS landfill had to be leveled from its height of 400 feet because it disrupted a flightpath from DIA.

4. an average of 1200 trucks tip at DADS every day. each truck holds a fuck lot of trash- i can't remember the weight. tons.



5. hazardous materials will sometimes be detected, but most of the time paint, solvents, cleaners, etc. are thrown out with the trash in residences or go unseen in commercial/construction debris. that means a lot of toxic nast filters through to the bottom and gets caught by the lining, then turns into 'leachate' with the other run-off. sometimes the leachate gets sprayed on the top of the material to cut down on dust.

6. landfills produce 34% of the methane emissions. .... i think i mentioned that in an earlier posting. 34%!

7. on last year's composting class tour to DADS the guide said there was a good 120 years left at this landfill before it is landfull. this year he said there are 100 years.

8. a bale of aluminum cans is worth about $900.


9. most recyclable paper in the U.S. gets sold to china.

10. recycling facilities are really loud and sort of like a willy wonka factory. here are some oompa-loompas sorting paper:


11. most forms of public transportation put me to sleep. this realization had nothing whatever to do with class- just something i've noticed every time i get on a bus or plane.

12. the dump really doesn't stink that much.

13. the wastewater reclamation district DOES. oh man it was foul. i only took one picture there, and here it is:


14. every day, gallons upon gallons of expired beverages arrive at recycling facilities. this beer is only about a quarter of what we saw:


two guys open up each box, take the canned/bottled drinks out of the their plastic holders or six packs and toss them into a big crushing machine to get the liquid out. while we were there they were working on thousands of cases of mike's hard lemonade, so it smelled sort of sweet and lemony. i'm glad we weren't there on a 100 degree day while they were doing beer.

they're prohibited from taking any home.



it is astonishing how much waste we produce. in the past 150 years or so, our waste has grown exponentially, and continues to do so as more people in the world begin to afford stupid plastic products that they can replace again and again. most of it gets landfilled, but some, thankfully, gets put to good use. recycling is doing pretty well in the states, but could and should do a LOT better. in denver, our biosolids (a nice word for SHIT) is treated naturally- that is, with microbes in aerobic and anaerobic conditions, and sold as a class B fertilizer to farms. no worries, kt's perfectly safe stuff. some of it gets composted, too, and, as guests of the wastewater reclamation district, we were given a goodie bag that included a sample of 'metrogro' compost and a packet of marigolds.

reduce, reuse, recycle. it ain't just a slogan, it's the way you should be.

waste

i visited three waste management facilities today- DADS landfill (not my father's), the wastewater reclamation district, and a recyling place.

we produce a LOT of waste.
pictures to follow-

and no, there is no other blog.

mancave street sign, with dandelions

evil

corrupt little snivelling shitheads in washington.

lousy little fucks!

This blog is bor-ring!

my apologies to the queen.

it appears that i was not the only one paying attention to the fact that i was stealing a wireless conntection from my neighbor. this neighbor, whoever it was, tried to hack my ebay account last week, which resulted in me banning all internet access at my apartment and relying solely on the saftey of mancave internet. i mean, WHO might be posting on my blog? who would have the audacity to pose as the one and only SHLEY?

hence my negligence. i cannot risk certain identity theft to entertain anyone, even my sister.

suits

why are the british naval personnel wearing suits upon their release? did they have these digs on the dingy with them while they were patrolling, is THAT how the british navy operates? or did the suits get sent to them while they were in custody, along with mcvities and tea? OR did the iranian government have 14 suits taylored for the release spectacle? where did these suits come from?

and how come the chick didn't get a pant suit?

ads

shley sells out.
that's right, i put a google adsense button on my blog (button blog!) to see just what it was all about. i guess i can make money this way? just click click click! i might start feeling greedy about it soon and take it off, and i certainly don't want to o-ffend by serving the consumer world, but it looks like it's generating relevant material, at least.

admission

well.... my compost bucket stinks. i don't know what happened, but what was once a lovely bucket of properly-heated, well-mixed, sponge-like material became a goopy dripping mess overnight and BOY did it stink. ew ew ew. but, no compost shall be thrown away! i cleaned up the leakage and added some more carbon material (i.e. broccoli stalks and leaves gathered from the alley) and will now hope for the best. perhaps i will come by some red worms and make a proper urban compost bin under my sink, letting the wrigglers do all the work of de-stinkifying my waste. worms anyone? check these guys out, they're making a killing from worms: http://www.terracycle.net/

in other news- i saw "breach" last, which reaffirmed my theory that chris cooper has the capacity to be infinitely creepy in the role of uber-patriotic american. unfortunately, the sound system at the theater was seriously fucked, which made it almost impossible for me to concentrate for about five minutes before using all the willpower i possess to turn off the static sensory repector in my brain. i went out to the tell the manager and apparently i was the second person to do so, the first having already cause the poor fellow to start sweating excessively. before opening my mouth there was a moment in which i considered, 'maybe i should spare this guy the heart attack he seems prepared to have." never! i require retribution for the suffering of my poor little ears. this came in the form of two free passes. aw ya.

talkin' trash

today's challenge:
see if you can go an entire day without throwing anything away. recycle with abandon, compost yer food scrapes, reuse plastic bags, etc., but don't put things in the garbage can. HARD to do. it's something i've wanted to try for a long time but haven't worked out quite how i can do it. obviously, i would have to have the day off from work, cause even in the liberal food zone there is a heck of a lot of trash produced. at home i have a compost bucket (which is heating up nicely, thank you, and relatively stink free). i also have recycling, (though for some reason they won't pick up clam shell plastic containers, so i have a lot of things planted in salad packaging), so that should provide for some of the things i'm not using anymore. otherwise, i would have to rethink eating many packaged foods and sneezing excessively (or composting my kleenex- ew!).

couple o' facts:

the average american produces about 4.5 lbs of trash per day. coloradans produce about 6.88 lbs. for you average types, that's about 1642.5 lbs. a year. for us above average types, that's 2511.2 lbs. per year. trashy!

landfills are the highest producer of methane gas, at about 34%.

"The tender Ash delays
To clothe herself when all the woods are green."
-gilpin

a challenge!

"i wish we still lived in the times when you could challenge someone to a du-el."

if we are all observant readers of shleydom, and i know we are, we will notice to the left that there is a new 'distraction'. (look left.) this isn't so much a distraction as a directive. it's a link to the 'eat local challenge' website and their new 'challenge', which is to eat local food for a week in april.

as you will see, you can define for yourself what eating local actually means. it could mean you eat only things from your farm. it could mean you eat from a 100-mile radius. it could mean, in the case of some prospective participants, that you eat things from the midwest, specifically the mississipp/ohio valley region. in all cases, it might be difficult to find out what is local and what isn't, as some packaged foods don't give you any inkling as to where they came from. oh sure, the picante was made in NEW YORK CITY, but where did those maters come from? and the jalapenos? grown on the hudson? and so the challenge might be to find a local meat, egg or dairy source. it might be to buy in-season veggies from the budding farmer's markets for a week. it might mean to feast upon all the canned products you put up last season. i think the important part of the exercise is to become conscious of the resources used to get your food staples from their origin to your belly. how far did it travel- which is to say, how much fossil fuel was used hauling that truckful of cheerios? what else went into its production? did you SEE the feedlot where that steak came from? (if you did, maybe it wouldn't seem so scrumpcious). eating locally means that you have the opportunity to know more about what went into those eggs in your quiche- beakless chickens snacking on corn feed or little cluckers pecking around for their natural dinner of grubs, seeds, and bits of green?

another aspect of the challenge you will notice is the budget- many people think it's financially prohibitive to incorporate local and/organic/sustainable foods into their budget. looking at supermarket prices in comparison to "farmer's mark-up" prices, it is easy to see why. (incidentally, i will soon be working for 'whole pay check'.) the only thing i can say about this is: shit, man, ya it's expensive and i, of all people, am strapped for cash, but i still manage to get the things i want in my pantry. granted, i do not have a family to feed, but, if you look at the budget on the website- well, my food budget is about half that for a single income household. it's only a week- see what you can do with your usual weekly budget. you probably won't be stockpiling items in your pantry, but you might also end up with some fresh and yummy things that your children won't have to pay for in greenhouse taxes, health problems from pesticides, etc. that's the uber-leftest hippie explanation, but, well, it's true. what did they say about global warming- "eh, i'll be dead by the time the ozone layer disappears, whatev."

also noteworthy:
alcohol is not included in the budget, so you don't have to drink anhauser busch for a week.
participants are encouraged to blog about it!
the act will make you pay attention to how you might do things differently in your daily routines: cooking times, shopping times, etc. it may be that for the week you spend a lot more time doing both of those things and start thinking, "shit, i'm eating locally but i'm sure driving around a lot getting my food." true, but compare it to the distance driven by one train full of grain (grain train!) from the plains to, i don;t know, jersey, then one semi truck full of that one commodity produced to the supermarket warehouse, then another truck full of several commodities to your local supermarket. that's a lot of traveling, too. the difference is that someone else is taking the time.


ok, i've babbled enough about this.
stay tuned for tomorrow's challenge! it'll have to do with composting......

and so, on to the chickens

that being said- my reprise of autocratic bloginess- i would like to talk about chickens.
*please note that this post was started on the heels of 'robin', but my computer batteries sudden death stopped me from writing for awhile.

in addition to bunnies, i would really like some chicky chickens in my life. (benefit of bunnies= watching them be cute while sleeping and lopping around! benefits of chickens= eggs.) i have investigated the requirements for gaining a zoning variance to allow me to keep chickens in the city limits, but have met with some resistance from the mancave, for this is where chickens would actually be housed. understandable, who wants to have chickens? i do! but the mancave space is already being co-opted for shley's rooftop garden project, so chickens might have to wait their turn in the greater scheme of urban farm living.

my desire to keep chickens is strengthened by weekly encounters i have with the chicken lady. not, "straight from my body onto your plate", but might as well be- she's a little cluckish in her body language and prone to excitement over
'her girls', but is very nice and yesterday BROUGHT ME EGGS!! hoorah! i got six eggses from her metrochicks, along with knowledge as to which body produced which egg. "the biggest one is henrietta's, the two pale ones are rosie's." perfect chicken names, no? i wonder if she has a camilla, cause when i get chickens i'm going to name them all camilla, like george foremen's kids. camilla one, camilla two, etc.

i wonder if, when i finally do acquire some on-site egg producers, i will fall into the strange phenomenon that is: bird-keeper's excessive pride in their birds. all the people i know that have birds, of any kind- chickens, parakeets, parrots- have this habit of puffing out their chest about their feathered creatures. i had a class with a woman that actually brought her bird TO CLASS so that we could admire it and talk about how beautiful and royal she was. chicken lady talks about 'her girls' as though they are offspring and will go on about them at the drop of a hat. some people are like that about their himalyen cats or purebreed rat dogs, some about birds. cluck cluck.

robin

robin is the name of kermit's nephew. just in case anyone else woke up this morning wondering the same thing.

how much time do we spend in our age-of-technology-lives waiting for things to happen on our little personal devices? check the cellphone for calls. check the blog. check email. check news. check weather. check email again. check phone. i am at the end of beethoven's 6th and have nothing to show for it save for two new downloaded widgets for my dashboard, all in the effort to create more things for me to check.

in this, my new cynical perspective on 'the internets', i have concluded that my blog is nothing more than another thing for people to check during their daily time spent in cyberspace. i don't even have to do any maintenance here for readers to take the time to make comments, check back for responses to comments, make more comments, and occasionally chide me for not contributing to the great comment forum that my blog has become.

i began the blog as a sort of journal, but over time discovered little notes were being made in the margins that had nothing to do with my thoughts or experiences, hence, perhaps, my ambivalence about posting on a daily basis. there is a lot going on in my life that i could write about but i seem to have lost the motivation to put it down here in shleydom. let the invaders wander around the cyberscape and realize there is nothing left to pillage, then leave from boredom.

ok, i don't mean to sound quite so condemning of the familial comments i receive- i especially like the poetry!, and interest in compost is noted and appreciated! i guess i just want to get back on track here with the shleyness of this space. if i have offended some, then..... sorry. you are always welcome in shleydom.

oh, it's a sad and lonely little blog. woe is blog!

my bucket

i think my apartment might start smelling soon. today, in a moment of inspiration and impatience, i filled a kitty litter bucket with leaves, sticks, coffee grounds, onion skins, and tp rolls and shoved the thing under my sink. in all likelihood this will turn into a rotten mess and not the beautiful compost that i desire for my flower pots. oh, i have the BOOK on composting now that i'm enrolled in the master composter class, but did i take the time to look up kitchen composting methods? did i? no. i did not.

stay tuned for updates on the bucket.

it's march 2

and i'm still cursing the british people's dismal understanding of electronic techonology. WHY can't they simply write a website that MAKES SENSE??

i'm trying to find a recipe for this delicious ginger cake and can't make sense of delia's website. dame delia is the british equivalent of julia childs or betty crocker- except she isn't a no-nonsense women like our strong american-bred cooks! noooo, she's got to make difficult-to-navigate message boards that offer NOTHING by way of actual information.





hmph.

smurfs

'bout time we pretended to be able to read algerian arabic, don't you think?

time to get eastern european on your asses: is everyone aware that yesterday the UN international court of justice found that it "could not prove strict intent" on behalf of the serbs to commit genocide in srebrenica. so, i guess they didn't MEAN to. whoops. genocide did take place, no doubt about that, but the only fault is that the serbian state didn't prevent it from happening. not that they MADE it happen, that they didn't PREVENT it from happening.

what does this verdict mean?? ...it means that the bosnian serbs are being blamed for the massacre because 'greater serbia' didn't have complete control over this military body. whatev. the serbian state could've prevented it, but had no hand in planning the event, and so owes no reparations- monetary or otherwise- to the victims. never mind that the whole notion of a greater serbia fueled these distinctions of national identity in the rest of former yugoslavia. not responsible. didn't mean to. not guilty.

is it because of the babushkas? is it because the balkan people are perceived to be a peasant sort of people that aren't real members of europe? i'm tapping into an argument here that takes dissertations to work out. but really, why doesn't anyone think this is absurd? because some of them write in cyrillic? because... they were once ottomans? is this some bizzare attempt on the part of the UN to de-barbarize the serbs by making them not guilty of such a barbarous crime? desensitizing the zone?

i don't know- i had much more of a critical analysis planned in my head earlier today but it got lost when i blew my nose.

discuss:

warp

apparently i'm not the only one experiencing a time warp with my sickness- my computer thinks my moment of greg kinnear casting inspiration occurred on the 23rd, when really it was a result of watching the oscars last night, the 25th. hm.

sick

i have some kind of flu and have been unconscious most of the day. i was woken up earlier by someone in the hall talking about a jaguar killing a zookeeper. i'm not sure it this really happened.

.... just checked-
denverpost says it happened, so my reality is not entirely composed of feverish moments.

ted kinnear

when will someone cast greg kinnear as ted bundy in the epic biopic, "(insert clever title here... )"

rare are the times

when i enjoy tchaikovsky's swan lake.

even rarer are the times when swan lake is sychronized to the rumble of my dishwasher.




oop- the moment is gone.

rabbit season

in response to jenny's question as to why i don't appear to be bothering with my friends:
i just don't want to bother them with my preoccupation with rabbits.

wabbits.

sure, other things happen in the shley's life, but they have mainly to do with company mergers and garden planning and anticipation for spring and all classes of other things that one can find out all about by using a phone or writing an email. attempts at guiding the content of my blog toward personal expectations will not necessarily result in more frequent postings, though it MIGHT result in the posting of NUDE NUDE NUDE XXX photographs of hot BABES.

rabbits are cute and furry and chew on lettuce in an ever so delicate way.

k-mart

this is where all the freaks are hanging out, just in case you were wondering. there and at my little store- there is a woman that comes in every morning, always wearing the same green sweatpants and always stinking like unwashed hair. fanny pack and odd waddle, like she's got something from the dryer stuck in her pant leg doesn't want it to fall out on the floor.

turns out she WORKS at the store. part-timey cashier at night, which is why i never knew. we hire unwashed hair people?? this is the image we wish to portray to the customers?

am i really a member of the working damned? no! i don't belong there! i belong in a better place, where the sun shines, the workers are happy and talented, and the air is free of dirty hair smell. oh, how do i get there.... certainly not through the doors of k-mart (mental note: never go back! too many things people don't need and too many people buying them! screaming children and bucktoothed freak managers!) OR through the ranks of corporate apathy, albeit at a natural foods store.

how many post-it notes must a man ignore
before you can call him a man

go from here, brudder.....

no compassion

my interest level's dropping, my interest level is drop-ping

i work at a lame store. sometimes i get in trouble for trying to make it not lame. benefits be damned, i must find something else to do with my time!

how the shley stole v-day

seussian motivation prevails!
i wrote this on valentine's day 2006. i'd been back from england for one week, which means i had not read 'how the grinch stole christmas' for one week. that book about 'the naughty little elf' turned out to be a big hit with the english charges, so much so that i had nearly the whole thing memorized. the result?- seussian inspired valentine's poo-pooing!



Every Who down in Whoville liked V-Day a lot
But Shley, who live just north of Whoville, DID NOT
Shley HATED Valentine’s, the whole V-Day season
Now, please don’t ask why, no one quite knows the reason.
It could be her head wasn’t screwed on just right
It could be, perhaps, that her shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that her heart was two sizes too small

But whatever the reason, her heart or her shoes,
She stood there on Valentine’s HATING the Whos
Staring down from her room with a sour Shley frown
At the couples in Whoville holding hands all through town
For she knew all the happy young pairs of Whos
Were busy now, nibbling on candies in twos

“And they’re eating their chocolates,” she snarled with a sneer
“They’re wearing pink clothes! It’s making me tear!”
Then she growled with her Shley fingers nervously drumming
“I MUST find a way to stop all this ‘I’m in love’ humming!”

For on V-Day she knew…

All the Who girls and boys woke up bright and early
They’d lovingly kiss
And they’d kiss and they’d kiss and they’d
KISS
KISS
KISS
KISS
Then the Whos, young and old, would embrace in a hug
And they’d hug and they’d hug and they’d
HUG
HUG
HUG
HUG
They’d hug in the kitchen
And in the shower
And this was an act that made Shley feel dour

And the more that Shley though of this Who lovefest thing
The more that she thought, “I MUST end the smooching!”
“Why, for 28 years I’ve put up with it now,
I must stop Valentine’s Day….
But how?”

Then she got an idea
And awful idea
Shley got a wonderful AWFUL idea.

“I know just what I’ll do,”
Shley maniacally thought
And she dressed as a Cupid
Hoping not to be caught.

Then she crept downstairs with her arrows and bow
And paused, wondering where first to go

“I’ll raid Hallmark stores!”
and she hopped in her car
“I’ll steal all their cards!
And toss them afar!”

She pulled up to the store
Bow and arrow in fist
“This is stop number one,”
And she started to list
All the Valentine’s gifts
That made her lips burn
She’d take them away
And destroy them in turn

Then she snuck through the door
With fake V-Day glee
‘Cause if couples could do it
Then so could Shley
But she stopped at the first display of pink hearts
And momentarily balked when she saw the full carts
Then she gained her composure and proceeded to plan
How to properly execute her Valentine’s ban.

She slithered and slunk with a smile most unpleasant
Through every aisle, and she took every present!
Chocolates! Roses! Love poems and songs!
Candy hearts! Cards! Lipstick and thongs!

Then she did the same thing to the other Who’s stores
Leaving behind only one box of Russell Stovers
She piled it up in her Saab and she drove
Straight to the dump to dispose of this trove
“Poo poo to the Who’s!” she was wickedly humming
“They’re finding out now that no V-Day is coming!
They’re going to Hallmark, I know just what they’ll do
Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
Then the Who’s down in Whoville will all cry
BOO HOO”

“THAT’S a sound,” Shley declared, “that I simply must hear!”
So she paused, and she put a hand to her ear
And she did hear a sound coming over the snow
It started in low. Then it started to grow.
But the sound wasn’t sad, why, this sound sounded merry!
It COULDN’T be so, but it was merry, VERY!

She stared over at WHoville, and Shley popped her eyes.
Then she shook! What she saw was a shocking surprise!
Every Who down in Whoville, the lovers and all
Were KISSING, without any pink things at all!

She HADN’T stopped Valentine’s from coming, it came!
Somehow or another it came all the same!

And Shley, with her Saab rumbling in the snow
Sat puzzling and puzzling, “HOW could it be so?”
“It came without chocolates! There were no plastic hearts!
It came without Barbie cards and gooey pink tarts!”

And she puzzled and puzzled till her puzzler was sore.
Then the Shley thought something she hadn’t before!
“Maybe,” she thought,” Love doesn’t come from a store.”
“Maybe Valentine’s…perhaps….means a little bit more!”

And what happened then…? Well, in Whovile they say
That Shley’s little heart grew three sizes that day!
And the minute her heart didn’t feel quite so tight
She whizzed through the town with a new inner light
And shot out through the sunroof the arrows she took
And threw out some candy

Then Shley
Shley herself,
Felt love struck and dandy

lame

as in, i am. my very important left index finger is impaired and i can't control my typing. not that i was a good typer anyway. it's been sliced open- actually on the side of my hand leading to the very important index finger- and now i'm going to stop shaving and become cave woman hairy armpit cheetah! just the excuse i was looking for!

mid-winter angst comes in many forms: bronchitis, poorly-timed painting projects, inabilty to fold laundry, consumption of too many sausages, near-strangling of produce department hippies, babbling blogginess, and consumption of too many beers. the shley shift to a spring mentality, however premature in this, the first half of february, is designed to combat such angst and bring about new motivation. rejuvinated writing habits! rekindled relationships with surly produce clerks! renewed interest in laundry folding! refresh! re re re! so what that i sliced my hand open doing the job that i find so agri-ethically demoralizing (yes, it's a word! i just made it up). i will approach my lettuce stacking tasks and burned out co-workers with whistling delight.

....maybe.

at the very least i will pretend that it's spring, despite the snow outside.

yesterday i tromped up a canyon in the snow to find breathtaking views across the high plains of the rockies. the day before that i soaked for two hours in the hot springs of pagosa. what more motivation could i need for my re-ness?



rest assured, shley will not stop shaving her armpits.

bbbbb

this is my bbbbbbbbbblog.

raconteurs

i'm torturing my beau with comparisons between the ranconteurs and boston- double lead guitar solo influence has to come from somewhere!
nailed it! 'more than a feeling' IS the source! go listen to 'level' then get that boston classic on yer stereo, with particular attention to the double guitar solo. aw ya.

hop o lop lop e rop

i want a bunny!
but first... i should figure out what one does witha bunny besides admire their cuteness. i think that's the chief reason i want one- cause it's got cute bunny feet and eats yummy lettuces. otherwise, would the novelty wear off? maybe i want a bunny because i'm reading 'watership down' again- duh, didn't realize that i was LIVING on the down where the epic bunny story took place. i knew there was a reason why i went there.

had a dream last night that i named a kitten 'fig'. maybe if i get a wabbit i'll name it that. now bring me some figgy bunn, now bring me some figgy bunny, now bring me some figgy bunny, and bring it right here!

puppy bowl

in a rare moment of television watching the other night, brian williams revealed to me yet another miserable way to entertain oneself on superbowl sunday: the puppy bowl. featured on the animal planet, this is a show that has no other purpose than to woo viewers with cute puppies running aorund a miniature 'football' arena. they don't do tricks or push a puppy football around or 'score'- all they do is play with each other and run around in puppy circles and drink from their waterbowl, which has a camera in the bottom of it for optimum puppy-lapping viewing pleasure.

i have two reactions to this: one- dear god, is this the only thing people can think to do with a few thousand dollars. rent a studio, get some puppies and a few cameras, air the results. and two- damn, those puppies are cute. caught between criticism and sentimentality! what's a girl to do?

oroweat

a note to consumers: i bought some bread of this label at king soopers almost three weeks ago. it's. still. soft. not natural! should be stale!

so, if others are rused by this bread's 'so natural and healthy' marketing technique, be forewarned. HFCS is the second ingredient. and it's STILL SOFT. eeee.

marley has a drinking problem

basically she drinks any liquid in the bathroom. ew.

i reached the pinnacle of winter frustration today and just about threw an avocado at someone at work. that someone being the ex-cokehead alcoholic aries ego produce dude whose job i now have (thus giving him an enormous chip on this shoulder that causes great strife in the workplace- he doesn't want the job but hates it that i have it now). today he got mad at me because i fixed the sign that he put up incorrectly. i mean really. it was going to fall, and it's not my damn fault that you go to N.A. and don't want to be the the asst. manager anymore, so stop giving me shit and saying cockhead shit like 'whatever, you're the boss.' damn right i'm the boss and i'll kick your grumpy ass right out of this department if you keep doing a half-assed job! today we had what i'll call an 'encounter'- cause usually i ignore his bitchiness, but today gave him a bit of the shley. his response? not a word to me for the next two hours of work, throwing stuff around, hiding things i need at the bottom of shelves so i have to move hundreds of pounds of shit to get to them, then leaving two hours early without saying goodbye or finishing his work. so i have to do more work all because i told him the celery shouldn't be on the floor. why do i have to work with fucking fifth-graders disguised as grown men? and who in the dept. can't read???? someone keeps putting conventional lemons with the organic lemons, even though it seems quite clear to me that there is a DIFFERENCE EXPRESSED ON EVERY SINGLE LEMON IN THE FORM OF A STICKER!!! read the sticker people. it tells you whether it's conventional or organic. meanwhile, it's cold outside and the snow from december 21 is still on the ground in the form of thick black ice. so the shley is annoyed.

oh, but tomorrow it will be in the 40's and mr. grumparific won't be at work and i will feel happy and free once again.

marley is going to fall in the toilet.

why is it not july

ok, so the sun was out today, but i was inside moving mangos around and it was buttfuck cold outside, so it didn't matter. buttfuck cold is some cold weather. the wind chill was like minus 15 or something. arg. and now i'm combating a scratchy throat and....... hurumph. sitting at home tonight trying to nurse myself means that there's lots of rumination and general frustration/impatience about: why doesn't winter end; how can i make more money; i'm sick of being cold all the time; what the hell am i doing with my life; why don't i have energy to clean my kitchen; etc. there are obviously no immediate answers to any of these questions, except perhaps the first one. winter won't end cause of the tilt of the earth's goddamn axis. axis of evil!

july

apparently i will be able to do nothing this july but read/watch harry potter.

i've become ambivalent about my blog.

poultry processing plant

can somebody explain gray chicken membranes to me? saw a chicken with a gray membrane around the meat near the tail. couldn't find any online resource divulging the source of said grayness. wtf. threw the chicken away. wasteful, but probably safe.

library huff

arraiving at the library today was inspirational- the denver modern art museum was poking into the blue sky sunshine, and scores of people were waiting outside to get through the doors at opening time. i felt a moment of 'i love the library!' and wanted to talk to all the people about what they were going to go in to study- wed design? roof-top gardening? food and memory? the latest from niall fergerson? no. the doors opened and 15% of the waiters headed straight for the bathroom. it was at this point that i noticed that the majority of library-goers were a bums and/or internetless poker junkies. or they needed to watch some online porn. i've glimpsed some hardcore full screen shit going down in there. within three minutes of the library opening every computer was taken one in twenty was using the library catalog. no bother, shley's got a laptop, so all she has to do is find a sunny corner and tap in to access honest library information. mleh- not possible. no wireless access in the PUBLIC library unless you pay five dollars and hour to a PRIVATE internet provider. balls! i can go buy a cup of coffee in the cafe downstairs and use wireless for free, so ok, go buy some coffee- oh, but the chick at the counter can't find the password. where is the password, she just doesn't knooooow.

so shley left in a huff and went to the only known secure, quick, free and reliable internet provider- the mancave. my moment of feeling that the public really does have bookish pursuits came, then went quickly back to thinking that the average internetless public wants no such library catalog access, but rather the sort of qhite trash entertainment that the internet and television so easily provide. there should be a reality show about people watching online porn, then everyone would be smiley. or maybe we just need to instate 100 days of gladitorial gaming.

bumper sticker

"buy a gun, piss off a liberal"
which translates loosely to, "put this arrogant fuck bumper sticker on your car, piss off someone who thinks about what they do"

this is the state of the union.

weather

frozen citrus in cali, ice glaze in the great midwest, hurricane forces all over europe. winter rules.

buy your oranges now cause them prices gonna go sky high!





all right, people. i need things to write about, cause the subjects in shleydom don't seem to be doing anything for me. i'll take anything, any writing proposals. try me.

poor flick

my apologies to the people of east grand, who in the absence of power have risen to the occassion of wanton self-entertainment, which i will now outline to show my admiration:

1. new pbs show ideas! -"settler bed", a new reality show following the life of two people, their five cats, a dog, and their communal bed. inspired by real life 21st cetury events! stay tuned for tonight's episode, "settler bed: one of the cats ate too fast".

2. they watch agawk at parades of brazilian meats!

3. they celebrate, by candlelight, the simple joys of fart jokes!

4. they (presumably) play old-timey music on the piany!

5. they regale moments of national fame in the washington post, and on shley and ron davis' blog!

hats off to the return to little house on the frozen prairie life. my pa was thinking of coming to aid in tree debris removal and sit by the fire to play his fiddle, but you's gonna get some snow soon and i don[t think he'd like to have quite so much powerless fun, or sleep in the settler bed.




as a side note, let me note my disturbance at the fact that we buy organic red peppers from ISRAEL and sell them for an ungodly sum. israel. that's a long-ass way to travel for a pepper.

insurance

enrolling for health care online- at no cost to me, my plan offers a "Group STD". yay!

chile

my employer has a secret agreement with the republic of chile wherein we buy out-of-season produce from their farms to sell in colorado and unload all our out-of-date chemicals onto them. i'm not sure how this relationship is economically viable. do we really need this produce all year round? peaches, nectarines, grapes, blueberries, blackberries. all expensive, all tasteless, all covered with god knows what chemicals that are still approved in chile but banned in the U.S.- but which are PROVIDED by the U.S. to chilean farms depsite the fact that they have been deemed harmful by the USDA. today we imported some chilean rocks- a.k.a. "tree-ripened" nectarines- to sell to the hopeless souls that think it might be a good idea to bite into a nectarine in january. i was thinking about reporting this chilean agreement to the store's ethics committee- i was given a card with their phone number and encouragement of anonymous reporting on my first day. probably intended for incidents of sexual harassment or something like that, but this goes way beyond the scope of worker relations! this is the company's mission at risk here! out of season ddt-infused nectarine rocks?? wtf?

i have this weird itchy problem on my neck and there are several possible sources: touching hyacinth bulbs that might have been treated with something nasty; touching the sticky, pesticidy, chilean grapes at work; eczema; or something else.

post

i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing i'm writing that's what this blog is all about. such a task to think of something quick and easy to write every day! ah, but that is the point, to not be quick and/or easy about the work of writing. must. write. every. day. aaaaaaah.

planted some plants in defiance of winter today. and cooked some hella-good pork. and....... hum. nothing to write about.

gutenberg

i've completed my apprenticeship into total dorkdom- today i purchased, for 99 cents, a model of the gutenberg printing press. it says it has working parts, so the tiny shley manifesto will be printed and distributed soon. stay tuned.

infamy!!

my sister is (almost) quoted in the new york times oh my god!!!!

icy hammons

is anyone else totally creeped out by this picture?
(stolen from the snooze-leader, jan. 13, 2007)

maybe you have to know the whole statue to find it eerie.

springfield is covered with ice and there ain't no electricity, which means that matt is powerless. powerless to leave silly comments on my blog! oh, what will he do without his daily outlet for 'anonymous' silliness? give it up man, we all know it's you!

black carrot juice

one of the ingredients listed in the weirdo whey protein drink i was given at work this afternoon. it's a wonder.

i hate winter

so damn cold all the time.

campari

is there ANYONE out there that thinks maybe fresh tomatoes are a food that has fat? cause we sell some campari tomatoes in a package at work and it's sure to notify the customer that it is a zero fat food. i'm not sure of the significance- either people are fat-crazed and want to be assured at every turn that their food is fat free, or this tomato company estimates that the american public is really that stupid to have to be reminded, or enlightened to begin with, that tomatoes are a fat free food.


the result of having a mattress in lieu of a collection of mancave cushions in a tent is that shley slept a whole lot yesterday AND slept through her alarm clock this morning and was thus late to work. oh it's so comfortable.

bed

so much for my resolution to be a prolific poster on my blog this year.

i got a bed today. no more sleeping in the tent yay!

i also got the deal of the century on a set of knives.

i saw a book called "a hard man is good to find" and almost bought it before realizing how i was dyslexically duped into thinking it was a flannery o'connor novel.

i also saw the fattest polyestered ass waving around in the air, belonging to a woman trying to shovel her car out with a hopelessly short shovel.

thus is the information i have to share.

quote from my seestor

"BEAN! Say it with me- it's such a fun word! Where have you bean?"

vinland map

i'm on a pbs kick! it's that time of year- post holiday, still winter, time for public television! annie leibowitz was featured last night and tonight we're uncovering the mysteries of the vinland map. ooo. at least it's not pink floyd pulse every night.

do i offend??

judging from the absense of comments on the jewface post, either a) i offended people, b) i confused people, or c) did both long ago and lost all blog readers. alas.

new development in spam email: i am now receiving messages from north korea.

i've been dragging ass all day and will now nap like never before.

jew face- a compilation

i didn't think of the title!
a new album of turn of the century self-demeaning jewish tunes featured on fresh air today. my favorite line:
"i got me a yiddish mamy, and she ain't from alabamy"

get it- jew face, black face. hm? how interesting! how bizarre!