Rikk Utas

My Balls

2011-12-27T14:20:00.001-06:00

Ok, so for the first time in thirty years, I cooked a turkey. Why is it that the smallest turkeys available seem to weight 8 tonnes?? and you know what that means: left-over turkey for the rest of the millenium. I decided to experiment with uses for left-over turkey and, having horrible memories of home-made turkey soup from my childhood, I decided to forgo the boil-the-bones approach and ground up the meat. Then I ground up some left-over ham. And some raw pork pieces that ponged a bit but didn't seem poisonous. Add some Chinese "five spice", an egg or two, some dry bread and stale crackers and voila! Depending on your level of masochism, sit or stand to make the goop into balls. And because we basically don't have a hope in hell of telling when they are cooked, make little balls. Then (deep-)fry them until they are dead. I mean crispy. Then throw some flour and shite together to make a gravy. Serve with aplomb. They are not going to taste like turkey - in fact they are guaranteed to taste like almost nothing you have ever eaten before.

Ok, así que por la primera vez en treinta años, he cocinado un pavo. ¿Por qué es que los más pequeños disponibles parecen pavos de peso de 8 toneladas? y ustedes saben lo que eso significa: el pavo sobrante para el resto del milenio. Me decidí a experimentar con el uso derestos de pavo y, con horribles recuerdos de sopa casera de pavo de mi infancia, he decidido renunciar a la ebullición-los-huesos y he molido la carne. Entonces anadir un poco de jamón sobrante. Y algunas piezas de carne de cerdo cruda que fue disputada un poco, pero no parece venenoso. Agregue un poco de chino "cinco especias", un huevo o dos, un poco de pan seco y galletas rancio y ¡voilá! Dependiendo de su nivel de masoquismo, sentado o de pie para hacer el pegote en bolas. Y debido a que básicamente no tienen una esperanza en el infierno de contar cuando se cocinado, hacen pequenos bolitas. Entonces (profundas) se fríen hasta que estén muertos. Quiero decir que estén crujientes. A continuación, echar un poco de harina y unas mierda para hacer una salsa. Servir con aplomo. Ellos no van a sabor a pavo - de hecho, se les garantiza a gusto como casi nada de lo que han comido antes.

2011 09 08

2011-09-08T08:53:00.000-05:00

Cat news! Bruce and Muttney have reached detente! Shadow and Bruce have reached detente! Shadow would rather that Muttney cease to exist but occasionally forgets to try to hiss him to death. If this is to be the usual state of affairs, some of us are going to be really unhappy.

Last Friday was Cele's birthday - 28! - and we were unable to host a dinner for her because of compromising events. The cleaning lady comes Tuesdays and Fridays, so the house was sparkling. She taught me how to make mole this time as well as cleaning. Tuesday night the kids came over to celebrate her day: Cele, her husband Fernando, Saint Paul and Miguel. I made a herbed pork roast in my pressure cooker and risotto with shrimp and tomato. Desert was peaches warmed in butter, vanilla and brown sugar and sprinkled with cinnamon and cream. Gary cobbled together a big enough table, draped it and made it all look pretty. Everyone had a good time and ate lots of food and laughed a lot. We are still washing up. I wonder where I was on my 28th birthday...

Speaking of birthdays and dates with which to mark the passage of time ... Gary and I will have been together for 10 years December 4th. Bruce is 14 or 15, Shadow is 12, Muttney is 7. We are in the usual state of health, Gary is fine and my knee is being a pain. We are discussing how and when to go back north to get the truck across the border and have a couple of ideas that seem to make sense. What we actually end up doing is anybody's guess. Muttney has decided that his bed is the bathroom sink, which he fills completely and inconveniently.

We are going to look at hand-made wooden furniture this afternoon. And that is all the excitement we have for this post. It is rather nice to be retired - Tuesday was the most stress we've had in two weeks.

R

2011 09 02

2011-09-02T10:40:00.002-05:00

We went out for supper the other night with Saint Paul, a new-to-us restaurant near downtown. I'm fine but the G-man has the usual symptoms of food-borne illness. Unlike the cats, boyfriends don't give any warning before they vomit on your feet. Speaking of cats, hissing and spitting are no longer at fever pitch, but detente has not yet been reached.

Now where did I get to ...

Trip Two to the border

Our Intrepid Travellers left the Nogales motel with mostly functioning air-conditioning and in relative calm. They reached the border crossing, and did the routine with American Customs, then paid the toll to drive to and arrive at Mexican Customs. This is actually when the lack of import sticker screwed things up. So, he paid the toll to drive to and arrive at the American border, where he did the routine with the bike and the door and the cat and the door and the bike and the cat (in that order) and then crossed back to the US side. Much conversation with yours truly ensued, and we decided that returning to the scene of the actual crime would maybe possibly in some way be better easier smoother or at least cooler than continuing to muck about in Nogales.

Trip Three to the border at Agua Prieta

After much searching the previous night, G had located a lot of paper proving that the vehicle to which the sticker had been attached was no longer in Mexico, and was in fact no longer his. (California had impounded it for various reasons.) This, to our minds, should smooth the cancellation of the previous sticker and the issuance of the new. Somewhere along the 114 miles from Nogales to Douglas, the pump and or the clutch on the air-conditioning ceased functioning. What else is new? The border crossing did not involve American Customs (I don't know why the same at Nogales did involve the US agents) so he proceeded to Banjercito with his papers to discover that yes, it looks like this will be sufficient to cancel the sticker. So, you need to send it with these forms to Ciudad Mexico and in three months you will get confirmation that the sticker has been cancelled. At no time in this conversation did G get the impression that a little cash under the table would smooth the process. We are intrinsically honest and don't really know enough Spanish to offer a bribe nor to read the signals requesting one in the first place, so this whole Corrupt Mexico thing seems to be mierda del toro to us. Therefore, our Intrepid Traveller gathers his papers, reaches the American border, goes through the routine with unloading the bicycle etc. and re-enters Douglas irritated and not relishing the prospect of spending more time baking in the autumn desert heat spending money we can't really afford on food and motels. More conversations with yours truly and we have a plan.

Precis: I have an appointment in Oakland to see the quack, and will return to Guadalajara on August 26th. Gary can find a place to store the truck, get himself and the cat on a flight to meet me, and then we will bus home together. All, of course, does not go as planned. I get to Guadalajara and discover that G&M will not be flying because the airline doesn't like the carrier. He gets a new carriers, gets on the flight the next day and we catch a ride home with The Doctors, all as previously described. I think. I write this shite and then promptly forget it, so if this is news, let me know and I will tell you alllll about it.

So we are back home. He found a place to keep the truck safe for a small fee each month, so we are not unduly worried about The Bloody Possessions. We are without the things that I have been missing, but we are home safely and in (relatively) good health. The cat thing will sort itself out. The plan for trying the border one more time will come together when it comes together, and we will (or he will) fly/ride/float back to the US and re-attempt the penetration of Mexico. As usual, I think that whatever we have planned will change before we return to Zamora, but hopefully our household goods will return to Zamora with us next time, whatever the changes to the plan may entail.

I'm exhausted just thinking about all this shite.

R

2011 09 01

2011-09-01T00:17:00.002-05:00

Does anyone have an opinion on how irritating it would be to have ads on these pages? After some threshold, I would get paid. Real money. It is tempting. Opine away, please.

2011 08 31

2011-08-31T11:25:00.002-05:00

Guarded warfare continues, although Shadow has decided that his Two-legger allies are to be tolerated and that Bruce is his bosom buddy once more. Oh goody, cat hair in the sheets once again. We are hoping that the situation continues to improve and that detente is reached among the herd in short order.

Where were we? Oh right, Las Vegas. Did you know that the name means 'fertile lowland' or 'meadow'?, actually the plural thereof, but you can manage that on your own. Kind of obvious to anyone who has visited Las Vegas that the name is a joke. Anyway, brand-new tyres, 114F, no air-conditioning and our intrepid travellers hit the road. Leaving Las Vegas is always more fun than entering Las Vegas, in my humble opinion. The sense of relief ... The road rapidly takes one to the Hoover Dam, over which one drives. On a two-lane road, with millions of tourists. The fun in that is not immediately apparent. However, the scenery is fun, sand-coloured rock hills surrounding sand-coloured concrete dam with a lot of blue water off to one side and a precipitous fall to the other. The G and the Mutt suffered the heat for many miles until the belt on the fan for the air broke. Changing the belt required a step-tool, padding on the hot radiator and still resulted in a third-degree burn on Gary's arm. Finally reached Phoenix, where G thought they might find somewhere cool to hang out until evening. This proved harder than he had anticipated, but they survived until cooler temps and then got to our friends' place in Tucson. Our chums made them welcome, and happened to know a mechanic who, for a reasonable fee, did what he could to repair the air. Oooo, that rhymes! He also did something else to the truck that I can't recall, and things were looking up for the remainder of the trip. After a few days' rest and recuperation, they were once again on the road, heading for Nogales Arizona/Sonora. At 114F. With the windows open the interior temperature was probably only 130F.

There were a couple of snags that we expected to complicate the crossing, so G was prepared to spend some time sorting some bureaucratic shite in Nogales. The first of these is called 'menaje de casa', which is either required or not required or being phased out. It is a list of everything that is being imported into Mexico, with serial numbers and ages of the articles and maybe cubic size of container but maybe not and is required to be in quadruplicate, translated into Spanish, and approved by the Mexican consulate. This G duly wrote up and translated and printed and copied and submitted. The Consulate added its stamp of approval and a cover letter.

Trip One to the border

Under the current American state of permanent paranoia, American customs agents stopped G at the border, asked all the usual asinine questions and then made him exit the vehicle, remove the bicycle from its rack at the back door, unlock the truck and then wait 'over there'. They opened the door. They gazed in awe at the solid wall of things that greeted them. They conferred briefly with themselves and then waved him away. G closed the door, mounted the bicycle, caught the cat, got in the cab and proceeded into the almost Mexico zone that exists between the two countries. There was a man standing in the middle of the road, leaving G the option of running him down or stopping. He chose to stop, which in retrospect he might change. No uniform, no identification, no proof that the man was what he claimed to be: 'working with' Mexican Customs. He instructed our hot and tired Intrepidness that he would have to drive 12 kilometres along this road, where Unidentified Stranger and his partner would meet him and deal with the rest of the process of entering the country. Twelve kms and 88 pesos toll later, the G pulls up to a parking area and gets out to talk to these guys. At 114F. With no shade. They glanced at the approved menaje. They said: 380.00 US fee, please. They then escorted G to Aduanas, where G continued through the identification process, the wait around and see process, the I don't know what to say process and the maybe this maybe that process. During one of these mysterious goings-on, the Customs agent discovered that the Consulate had used the legislation that applies to Mexicans returning to live in Mexico, not foreigners moving to live in Mexico and refused to accept the menaje without alteration. Meanwhile ...

Problem Two. There are some strict rules about importing a vehicle into Mexico. Drugs, slaves I mean illegal emigrants, guns, bombs, gangsters and prostitutes cross the border with impunity, but if a foreigner manages to leave Mexico without returning the Temporary Vehicle Import sticker, all hell ensues. At 114F. With no shade. Guess who left Mexico without returning his sticker three years before? The Unidentified offered to fix the problem for $600US and three days. Banjercito, the company that actually is responsible for the issuance and control of said stickers said well, no, maybe, sometimes, in the future, or maybe never. How the Unidentified intended to deal with this in three days remains unknown, as by this point, the G-man had decided that this was nuts. He returned to the truck, paid 88 pesos to drive the 12 kms back to American Customs. Usual asinine questions, park over there, remove bicycle, open door, take cat and go wait in there because we are using dogs. At 114F. With no shade. Sniff, stare at wall of things, talk amongst themselves, and wave G back to the truck. Close door, mount bicycle, enter truck and the G is back on the road to a motel on the Arizona side. Next day, visit Consulate, get proper wording on paper. Be really fed-up with treatment at Nogales crossing and decide to drive to Douglas Arizona/Agua Prieta Sonora, where the problem sticker was issued in the first place.

Stay tuned! Coming Soon! Will our Intrepidness really get across the Border? Trip Two next time!

2011 08 30

2011-08-30T10:59:00.000-05:00

So, we got to Zamora the end of May, and suffered through the heat with lousy creeping lung crud, and then actually started to feel human. There was a bit of a deadline in returning to California to move the truck, as the registration was valid only until the end of August. About July 12, we attempted to get the G-man his Michoacan driver's licence, but the bureaucunt in the office insisted that she could do nothing without his birth certificate. Americans hardly ever carry this document, and their bloody passports state that the carrier was born in State, USA. Not sufficient for Bureaucunt. This put us a day late for the flight reservations, but Volaris offers a flexibility option for a small fee, and we had availed ourselves of same. Our Santo Paul drove us to Guadalajara aeroport and we dropped off the G-man in plenty of time to catch his flight. However, the staff didn't understand the flexibility thing and refused to let him on the plane. After much yakking and phone calling and shortening of temper, he was finally on-board a flight to Oakland - arriving three hours later than expected by our friends there. That worked out because our Fox is a bit of a saint herself. G spent some time with her and running around the Bay Area, and then headed north to the truck.

We had hired a neighbour, supposedly well-versed in the maintenance of diesel engines, to get it prepped and ready for the road. We paid the pendejo to change the oil and fix anything that needed fixing and get it to the storage place G had arranged. He assured us that he had done so. Well, he is a liar. And a cheat. And an alcoholic. However, the G-man collected the cat and finally got the truck started and on the road. The first time he turned it off there was someone close to jump it back to life. The second time he turned it off, he had to call the AAA. The third time he turned it off was in the parking lot of Costco, where he bought a new battery. End of that problem. However, the air-conditioning didn't, and I don't remember everything else it couldn't, so the first leg of the journey was a little uncomfortable, but not that bad. The poor old thing (I mean the truck) climbed the 7,000-foot range between California and Nevada very slowly, but the poor old thing (I mean my husband) managed to get it to limp into Nevada. He got a couple days' rest in Carson City for two reasons: the tyres and the heat. As you may realise, as one descends from the heights, the ambient temperature increases - to 104F and higher in this case. In August. In the desert. Without air-conditioning. The G-man thought the cat was going to die, he was so hot he was panting and throwing-up any water he drank. The G-man thought he was going to sweat to death. He finally drove, to grossly misuse the term, into the parking-lot of a casino, encased the cat and hit the cold inside air. Muttney was so grateful to be cool he didn't make a sound.

After recuperating (and losing $2.00), he walked outside to see the truck leaning to one side. Upon inspection, the tyres revealed their true inner selves: if you've ever wondered if steel-belted radials actually have steel in, they do. And it ain't pretty. About $1,200.00 and several hours at 114F later, all six of the tyres were back in fighting form and the passengers were in Las Vegas, TKO'd. More resting in cheap motels ensued because by this time the G-man was not only frustrated, he had a sinus infection. Muttney likes air-conditioned motel rooms. Many calls back and forth to his Medicine Man in California, and the G-man had antibiotics and a better temper.

And here we leave our intrepid travellers to rest and regain their composures. And I can therefore call the next instalment 'leaving las vegas' ha ha ha

R

2011 08 29

2011-08-29T11:42:00.001-05:00

Well, things have been rather interesting lately. I went to Oakland for a week and saw my (girl)friends and ate sushi and generally did not much. It was great fun and thanks to the Fox for the roof and NP Val and her husband for the fun dinner and lift to the airport. The flight was delayed because the Volaris staff doesn't know how to count. After sitting in the plane for 45 minutes, they called roll - 92 passengers and they couldn't sort whatever their problem was in any other way. Flying Elementary School is now in session. We finally got to Guadalajara at 07:50 without incident - no-one got sent to the Principal's office - and interestingly enough, arrived "on time". I take it that they meant the flight was actually 3 hours 50 minutes as planned, rather than that we got there at 06:50 as scheduled. G was supposed to be on a flight from Hermosillo with the cat, arriving in Gdl at noon of the same day. His aeroport staff didn't like the carrier, so he spent the day trying to find a carrier that they would accept and caught the flight the next day. I spent the night with my friends in Gdl, met him at the aeroport and we caught a ride home with my Doctors, who were in Gdl for classes. We are tired and very glad to finally be here. There will be a return to Arizona in the near future to actually get our shit to Zamora, but some of us need to rest up a bit first.

The cats are another story. They lived together for three years in California, and then apart for three years with Bruce and Shadow here in Zamora. Now that Muttney is in the house, we have spitting and hissing and hurt feelings all 'round, and it is a pain in the ass for the two-leggers in the place. Second day of guarded warfare - I hope they get their shit sorted soon, this pussy-footing around is boring. They slink about the place in a crouch with their hackles up expecting to be ambushed at any second. Shadow has a fabulous growl, though. Unfortunately, he uses it at everyone, regardless of former amiable associations. Felis e mobile, music by Verdi.

That is about it for now, the saga of getting the truck from California to Arizona will wait for another day. Have to go buy food for the hissers now.

R

(Non-opera people: fickle is the cat)

2011 08 08

2011-08-08T14:59:00.001-05:00

Hello, we're back up and writing. Or blathering, depending on your opinion of what I write. We have moved to a new house about 4 doors down from the first one. It is three bedrooms, so we have room for visitors as well as a room for the computer/work shop/whatever. They are a little smaller than the two in the other house, but we like the colours of this one much better. I still hate the kitchen, it is a little smaller than the other, or at least feels it because there is a wall between it and the living room. Gary is in Arizona with our truck, getting all arranged to cross the border and drive down here. I am trying to arrange what is already here, and even though I am capable of organisation, it is not all that much fun so I end up doing other stuff, like cooking, instead. I don't have time to share all the gory details right now, I need to get some things done. More pearls of wisdom to follow. I originally typed 'pears' which actually suits me better.

R

2011 07 25

2011-07-25T11:45:00.000-05:00

No tengo acceso a Internet en la nueva casa, no sé por cuánto tiempo. I don't have internet access in the new house yet, I don't know when it will be installed.

20110620

2011-06-20T02:01:00.000-05:00

I was looking for some of the old newsletters that I thought I had transferred from the other site, but these three are the only ones I have on my computer. Other than that, I have nothing to say because I am exhausted. The washing machine is in California, the dirty clothes are here and the situation in the town is not promising: we have driven past one and only one sign saying 'lavendaria' but the business appears to never be open.

In the soi-disant backyard there is a concrete sink with built-in washboard and running water, and I have been washing our clothing the old-fashioned way. When I hurt myself falling on the rocks at El Rancho, the local contingent of aunts volunteered to do my laundry for me. When I told them that I could manage because we had a washing machine, they tut-tutted and informed that the laundry would not be as clean, done in a machine. Well, I don't know about that, but I know now why they all have shoulders like an american line-backer.

Health news is about the same: post-nasal deluge in me, hacking cough in G. We are tired of feeling ill, let me tell you. The weather is a treat, the cats are a treat, it is a treat to have a roof over our heads and food to eat. All is well in our little corner of the world

R

20080803

2011-06-20T01:52:00.001-05:00

2008 08 03

La doctora at our local clinic has served her time, and was released this Thursday. We have established the Wednesday Evening English Discussion, Roxana and I, and the Doctor and the Nurse have been attending. I think for the tequila, but that is a different matter. This Wednesday, we had a little going-away celebration, with many kinds of tequila, and Roxana's brother made shrimp ceviche. The clinic closes around 18:00 (six), so they were planning on being here soon thereafter. The clouds started to really build up around 17:00 (an hour earlier than closing), and by 18:30 (half-hour past closing), it was raining so hard I couldn't see the driveway from the pasillo. All the rain that hadn't fallen in the previous three days fell in the course of an hour or so. We had a good time anyway, until 02:00 (8 hours past closing) but managed to speak absolutely no English. I keep having trouble with the endings, all those verbs changing all the time really seems to twist my tongue. Our arithmetic is impeccable, though.

We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart?

Friday evening, we all went to a concert by a quartet called, I think, Treintanos, in Zamora, in rain almost as ferocious as Wednesday's. The Doctor's boyfriend and a friend of his, whose name translates as 'Cross', the which he looked, performed a set in the middle of the concert. Music from many South and Central American countries was performed, and I really enjoyed most of it. I don't much care for the sound of wooden pipes, which featured in many songs, but particularly enjoyed the songs from Chile. I didn't, claro, understand the joke song let alone a lot of the intervening palaver, but the rest of the crowd had a good laugh. We met more of the Doctor's friends, both of whom are utterly charming, if unilingual. Well, Paul (accent on the 'u' which I can't find – Odin I loathe Miscreant-osoft Word!) speaks French and Italian, but, as I've become utterly unspeakable lately, we restricted ourselves to Spanish. I found out later that this was the first ever performance of the Boyfriend and Cross, which could explain why Cruz looked a little sombre. They were all very talented, and the Boyfriend has lips to die for.

Damn, it's the Richard Claydermann hour on the PA again.

The next day, Paul and two-thirds of the WEEDs (no Nurse) drove to Uruapan where Paul was to conduct some exotic-sounding seminar. Well, exotic to me because I didn't quite translate some of the words. Uruapan is a million-and-a-half people, thereabouts, built in the bottom of a steep valley. It is very old, with narrow streets and

some very interesting buildings. We had coffee in a building which would have been quite usual in Tudor England. Unfortunately, the city has Los Angeles' air, so one doesn't particularly want to spend a long time there. It has a beautiful national park within the urban gloom, flora and fauna allowed to behave as though humans didn't exist.

There is an awful lot of water running in channels and rivers and creeks everywhere, including a quite spectacular waterfall. The air is cool and fresh because of it, and there are many beautiful trees and flowers. Unfortunately, it is also very, very popular, so there were hordes of cameras with people attached everywhere one looked. Our route to Uruapan included many old, and in some cases incredibly ugly, towns and villages with spectacular vistas into the surrounding mountains. It also seemed to be through the corn-producing region of Mexico, as everywhere one looked was corn in various stages of growth. I do mean everywhere, by the way. On our return, we stopped in a town (Pachuco??) which seems to be the centre of the guitar-producing region of the state. A festival was/is in progress, and there is a museum of guitars that is simple but fascinating. Around and in the

plaza were many booths of traditional hand-made products, from clay jars and plates to guitars and wooden jewellery to extremely intricate needlework and cut-work. I love the colours in the traditional pallette, and there was a guitar I'd love to have made from the most beautiful of woods. An exhausting but very satisfying trip,

especially as we'd all had about three hours of sleep the night before.

The livestock are all well and happy, bounding or flapping according to physiology around the place in evidently high spirits. The chicklet is feathered except for her head. Adam and Eve regularly ingest a bit of grain from my hand. Miss Kate is still being a good candidate for stewing. The other avian populations have shrunk drastically, although many restful minutes have been spent watching various members in the bird-bath. I haven't managed to replace the lawnmower blade yet, but Adam and Eve are doing a credible job of keeping a lot of it under control. The neighbours have been ignoring me, except for the little hoodlums who come by demanding water. I usually acquiesce, but I occasionally enjoy the look of shock on their faces when I refuse. Don't they have homes? mothers? water of their own? The cute goatherd has been less in evidence as various otherwise useless boy-children have been herding the flock up to the pasture. Various equines and bovines have produced off-spring, who are very charming and inquisitive on their sojourns up and down the street. Encounters with blood-sucking parasites have abated somewhat, and other forms of uninvited guests have been appearing less, as well. It

ain't 'cause it's drier and colder, let me tell you. Paul told a long joke about satellite television and various nationalities, but I didn't understand the punch-line. There are scrabbly footsteps in my bathroom roof, so one wonders what creature is producing them. I'm sure-as-hell not going up there to find out. I saw what appeared to

be a fat, hairy tail-less squirrel scurry across the drive the other day; fortunately or un-, the Canine Contingent were tethered so that I could leave. The lizards are everywhere and growing bigger but not slower. There are many trumpet-vine type flowers around in many pastel colours, and some very vibrant morning glories are crawling up the other vines near the east pasillo. I have seven or so tomatoes thriving in a pot; everything that went into the ground has croaked. The peppers that resurrected themselves in one of the 'empty' pots are looking quite edible. A light-bulb in an unused fixture high up in the kitchen committed suicide just now with a resounding crash.

An elderly man and his wife were dining at a restaurant. After the man received his food, he carefully cut his portion in half, and poured exactly half of his drink into another cup. Then he gave these to his wife. Their waitress noticed that the old lady was not eating her half and said, "That's so sweet that you share the meal, but why aren't you eating?" The old lady said: "I'm waiting for the teeth!"

And that's about it for this week! Have a good one, everyone.

20080709

2011-06-20T01:44:00.001-05:00

2008 07 09

El Rancho has been a positive beehive of activity this week. I happily admit that I don’t know weeds from trees, so, when the growth got about knee-high, I started ripping out anything that had a flower I didn’t like or which out-numbered the other green things by three-to-one. It’s a method, okay, so get off my back. Speaking of which, mine is killing me. As are my knees, elbows, neck and hips from kneeling, crawling, digging, grunting, swearing, pulling and avoiding obnoxious snakes and insects. I don’t know how anyone can purport to actually like gardening. It’s physically dangerous, dirty and just generally bloody hard work. And, as I really don’t know which ones we want to cherish and which we want to eliminate, a guessing game.

Gone with the Wind over the Neighbour’s Goat Pen

The weather has been … changeable. The late afternoon/early evening usually produces a storm, with thunder and lightning and wind and dropping temperatures. Unfortunately, the wind is predominantly from Over the Neighbour’s Goat Pen. Now, the little dears that wander up the road to pasture and back down the road to water, shitting copiously as they go, are quite fun to watch. Well, not that I have much choice, as the only way to shut up the barking Spawn is to hold his collar as they pass. They don’t seem to stink much, to my non-canine olfactory system, and some of them are cute, pretty or have interesting appendages. Horns, people, horns! Many different colours and sizes and attitudes to the barking Spawn, and the adult goatherds are friendly. Not much expansion to my vocabulary, mind; I’ve mastered ‘good day’ and ‘good afternoon’ in Spanish, thank you. However, collected masses of goat shit are unpleasant to smell (understatement as literary device). Pigs are worse, of course, so I should be relatively thankful they don’t raise those, but still, the coolness comes with a price. A pungent, acidy, putrid, offensive, gagging stench of a price, to be exact. Unfortunately, the wind from the other direction is over the cow shit, so as much as I appreciate the coolness, I’m really terribly glad to have sleep apnea and a CPAP to filter out most of it. Oh stop me: w-w-when the w-w-w-ind blows over the cow shit, I’ll be stuffing plastic up my nose …

Some further amusement is garnered by observing the newest additions to the family. Adam and Eve are calming nicely; Eve doesn’t run away when I approach and Adam loves to have his chin scratched, at least until she goes into estrus, and then all bets are off. The vegetation is being trimmed in very interesting patterns. They have a Lamb Smorgasbord of choice, and make interesting decisions: let’s eat the front lawn for breakfast, have a little cud chew, then eat around the palm trees and have a little cud chew near the chicken coop and then for dessert, let’s eat the lower leaves of some of those pretty trees and have a little cud chew. They are missing their flock, though. When the goats parade, bells jingling and babies lowing, they set up a bawling that initially brought me running because I thought they were being molested by the dogs or something. Don’t let anyone tell you that sheep are stupid: Adam has learned that the low retaining wall between the back forty and the bits closer to the house gives him a leg up in reaching the top of the wall along the road. It appears to be a good place to have a little cud chew – the other day, he got up there, folded his little legs under himself and had a little nap. Eve is such a little lady, she stays on the ground, mewling plaintively. They are quite delightful, actually. Their new house is progressing nicely, walls are rising on the foundations the men built and cemented. It is an amazing process to watch because it is all being done manually. The guys mix the cement by hand, they dug the trenches by hand, they placed, shaped and cemented the rocks by hand; in short, they are working their asses off in some very warm temperatures in ways that North Americans couldn’t. I could sit and watch all day, were there some shade.

I am pleased to be able to report that we still have one chick alive. I haven’t yet figured out how the Corleone cross got the first one, but I’ve tried to keep strategically placed obstacles in place at likely locations in order to prevent a repeat. The Black Beauty is being put upon a little – how typical! just because she’s a hen of colour, she’s being driven from the feed by Miss Kate. Whom, by the way, is much more protective of the remaining chick than she was before the Horrible Fate of the first. The Barred Rocks are growing individual personalities along with their increasing sizes, and one of the lightest-coloured will eat out of a cup in my hand. Some Orioles – one male, two not – have been cavorting in the bird-bath and trees, which pleases me greatly as they are such beautiful colours. Smaller than the Audubon’s, they are swift and graceful in flight. But how greedy - two females. Today I saw the largest butterfly I’ve ever seen: yellow and black tigerly stripes, so I’ll bet its name has tiger in, with a wing-span as big as my spread hand. Incredibly graceful, floating from flower to flower, and very pretty, too. I accidentally discovered that we have fire-flies, to which I’m not sure I’ve had much exposure. I managed to coat myself with enough repellent repellent (that is not a misprint) that I could stand to be out on the pasillo (paseo? I still don't know so this will do) at dusk, and there they were. And then they weren’t. And then they were. Quite dizzying, actually. The clouds were black, serving to highlight the lights quite nicely. That funny lightning that just kind-of generally lights up an area of sky occurred too, so I don’t think it was the wine that made it all seem so magical. I have been having friendly if incomprehensible conversations with Leonardo and horse, and getting all the gossip about the goat-keeping neighbours, for whom he appears to tend goats. Unfortunately, the neighbours have chosen a particularly bilious shade of teal-pus-green with which to paint parts of their house and their gate; obviously a bunch of straight people. The cute goatherd shaved off his beard and is now much cuter with a Latin film-villain/lover moustache. As I was sitting and watching the fire-flies, it got fully dark and the night-scented jasmine stunk up the entire yard. Lovely, absolutely lovely.

I thought of something as I was struggling with the weeds that would have been delightfully amusing and clever to include in this edition, but it blew off on the Goat Wind. Oh well, it may return as I get more senile.

As Yet Unnamed

British health care is totally free to Britons; Canadian is only slightly free to Canadians. Britain is on the other side of the big puddle of the Atlantic Ocean; Canada is only across a theoretical line in the dirt and the smaller puddle(s) of the Great Lakes. And yes, those pretty pieces of coloured paper that say “legal tender of Canada” on are in fact legal tender in the whole damn country, even Quebec. Five dollar a gallon gasoline serves you right for supporting the American automobile industry.

Buddhist thought of the day: "He who crushes the great 'I am' conceit finds, indeed, happiness supreme." This is a most difficult task to complete. We are taught from birth: "I am a girl or boy, white or black, thin or not, smart or dull, et cetera". What we should focus on is: "I am one with the divine nature” and stop dividing ourselves into sub-groups that are made up of concepts that don't really exist.

I have to go smell the jasmine now. Have a good one, everyone.

20080622

2011-06-20T01:30:00.002-05:00

2008 06 22

An alert Canadian reader (not the oxymoron it appears to be) informs that the trews (and jodhpurs) worn by the arsey empy are in fact dark blue, not black. Not having been that close to one, who the hell can tell? However, in the interest of accuracy, we are corrected.

I am sort-of being stalked. The Virgin Queen, whose real name is Luis something-or-the-other and who lives in Rincon Grande, has been hanging about at unlikely times and, for example, standing in the neighbour’s field and watching me shower. I hope he got a thrill; I didn’t. It may not be necessary, but I want it perfectly clear to any of you who had doubts that I have not touched the little prick, have no intention of touching the little prick and have been boning up on my sexual Spanish for the theoretical interview with the Policia, should the little prick get creative. He has not been around in several days now, but my sisters were CGIT whose motto is ‘be prepared’.

As Yet Unnamed

Canada is, as you alert readers are aware, the second largest political entity on Earth. It is divided into nine provinces, three territories and Those Damned French-Canadian Separatists. Each province, territory and TDF-CS has a head of government called a premier. As an aside, this designation usually has little to do with Hollywood movies. Each of these political divisions houses many different political ideologies, except for Alberta, which has only one and Saskatchewan, whose name is larger than its population. The main political parties are: the NDP National Democratic Party, which is really socialist); the Liberal party (which is slightly less socialist), the Bloc Quebecois (which is totally socialist if you’re a French separatist), the Conservative party (which is totally reactionary but still far to the left of the US Democrats) and some minor parties, with names like the Hippopotamus Party or something, which usually have the success of Ralph Nader in winning seats. No-one really knows what actually goes on in the Territories or Labrador, except that they have snow, oil reserves and really big mosquitoes, not necessarily in that order. Most of the provinces have a judicial system consisting of ascending levels of courts culminating in the Supreme Court of each province. These are overseen by the Supreme Court of Canada, which also regularly over-rules the reactionary rulings of the Supreme Court of Alberta. The oversight of the Supreme Court of Canada is what keeps the place working toward some degree of social equality. Canada also has a Senate, which is where politicians go when they die. HRH Queen Elizabeth II is the official Head of State of Canada. The official representatives of the Queen of Canada (doesn’t that have a nice ring?), and therefore the Heads of (various) State(s), are the Governor General of Canada, who does virtually nothing but drink cocktails and, in the incumbent, listen to reggae; and the Lieutenants-Governor (pronounced lefTENant, by the way) in each of the provinces, who act like the US Supreme Court and rubber-stamp whatever gets put in front of him/her. The territories, always needing to be different, have Commissioners instead, but their function is the same. Bills passed by the parliament and senate do not become law until the Governor General has given them royal assent. The Governor General does a bunch of rubber-stamping and invites the leader of the political party with the most support in the House of Commons to form a government. We wish the current idiot had RSVPed no. The Governor General also delivers the Speech from the Throne at the beginning of each parliamentary session, which is why he/she is usually an announcer from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Our elections always have a party which receives the majority of the votes cast (usually 12), so there is never any doubt as to the Will of the Pipple. And there you have it, exercised franchise in action.* Unfortunately, this has not been as amusing as I’d like, but I’m too tired to do anything about it.

Sample of what it was like around the family dinner table: “Woohoo! Two chicks!! That's very cool. And I'm thinking not too bad for a rookie (I mean Miss Kate, not you..... at least, I think that's who I mean....)”

The Canine Contingent continues to miss the lizards, who are growing larger in noticeable increments. The Official Rancho Chicks are progressing well, starting to feather in a bit and eating well. They are so adorable! The new members of the Coop are settling in well as well, appearing to have doubled in size during the last week. Miss Kate is proving to be a very competent mother, and John has finished moulting, mostly, and is looks quite fine. Unfortunately, he’s in good voice, too. We are positively inundated with ants, there are mounds of excavated

earth every couple of feet everywhere one looks. I’ve tried a new poison; I’ll let you know how it goes. The Unknown Vegetables are blooming lovely yellow cup-like things, and the seventy tomato seeds that I mistakenly germinated have reduced themselves to about a dozen in the transplant process. Many interesting and unusual bugs have put in an appearance, primarily to fly about a bit and then die, from the look of it. The cute goat-herd has confused the hell out of me: I asked him how much it would cost to buy two youngish goats and he made a peculiar gesture at his side that could be interpreted either as “a hug” or as “a bushel of dinero”. Storms have been at a minimum this week, so I’ve been forced to water things. One of the decorative plates on the outside wall

committed suicide the other night by leaping to the patio. A young man on a horse named Leonardo has been asking me to give him one of the large sombreros (sombreri??) the owners have hung on the computer bedroom wall, the which I have refused. However, we did have lemon water and a 2.5 hour Spanish chat, which was good practice for me and something of an education for him. My acquisition of really badly-made mosquito netting has, in fact, reduced the incidence of nocturnal feeding upon my person, a relief in many ways. The neighbour’s attempt at piling layers of rock on the road as paving have washed down the actually-paved bits in the rains, making the entire hillside a massive mudslide. Muchas gracias, I say. I have to go gaze at my navel, now.

How surprising, another Sunday.

* the act of voting is called exercising one’s franchise, for those of

you needing a translation of that joke.

2011 06 15

2011-06-16T00:11:00.000-05:00

I rather hesitate to relate this story, but I think you are all adults and can handle it. And I don't think I shall suffer any repercussions. Astute readers will remember that three local hoodlums came calling when I lived on the Ranch, and that I thwarted an effort to break into the main house. I think they were responsible for poisoning the last three dogs, which in my books is a cardinal sin, too. Well, what goes around...

During about a year after I left, houses were broken into and things went missing. One of the pendejos responsible - for the break-ins after I left and the attempted break-in at the Ranch - was found dead, but the other two carried on. Until about a year later, when, stark naked, they were whipped many times around the zocalo by men wielding boards with nails in. They were refused treatment at the local clinic, and have not been seen around since. I think they got off lightly, but here's the rub: it was not the police who administered punishment, it was the state-wide narco-familia, La Familia.

This group, whose name I don't want to use to often during this tale, is an interesting mix of contradictions: they present themselves as being devout members of the Church; they act as the police force in the small towns in the state; they dumped 25 dead people into an abandoned mine; they sell hard drugs to 10-year-olds; they probably have more money than the national government; they kill and/or assassinate police officers and federal agents. So you see the dilemma: I applaud the result but abhor the method. People in Quiringuicharo generally have very little. They are inter-related in the extreme, they help one another with everything and they mainly focus on getting through life as best they can. Family members, often in the US 'under the radar', send home what they can, which is often not a lot but is more than they could earn here. To have these evil little bastards breaking into homes and stealing what little the residents - probably their relatives - have, is more offensive to me than the more anonymous crime in places like LA. Some crime should be punished and the situation causing the rest of them should be remedied. There is more of a social network here than in the US, so people can get some subsistence money, and are entitled to medical care because they were born here. Families will pull together - which is probably where the name of the narcos comes from.

The situation reeks of vigilante justice, but the fact that these three tried to break into the house I was calling home deeply offended me, and I can't whole-heartedly condemn the instrument of retribution. What do you think?

2011 06 13

2011-06-13T12:55:00.003-05:00

Well, we’re still recuperating from the virus, but the rains have started so we’re not as miserable as we were. We are getting accustomed to the house and the neighbours, the routines of life in a hot country. We are so lucky in our friends, they have all been an immeasurable help, as well as a lot of fun.

Speaking of which, I am no longer a Catholic virgin. Yes, I have actually set foot inside a Catholic church and lived to tell the tale! My doctors, Celeste and Fernando, got married on Saturday. They were beautiful. I didn’t understand a lot of the mass, and the bits that I did understand offended my egalitarian/feminist principles, but all this stuff is important to the Kids, and therefore requires some degree of (feigned) respect on my part.

The church was hot as hell. It was full of people, some of whom were familiar to me from my last sojourn here. It was fun to see them, but my virus has settled in my larynx and I couldn’t talk so much as croak. The bride wore a white gown, quite simple, with black accents, such as the laces up the back of the bustier and in her hair. It was pretty. The groom, of course, was in a black suit. The parents of the nuptial couple were in long gowns or suits, gender appropriately, and looked very happy with the whole thing. The rest of the attendees ran the gamut from formal gowns to mini-skirts a la puta to jeans. Paul sang as part of the service, and did a beautiful job, especially considering that his throat was sore. I was surprised to hear such a lovely voice, actually, because when he sings along in the car, it ain’t quite so tuneful as one might like. As I get deafer, of course, slight variations in pitch no longer seem so apparent to me.

The mass was … interminable. All that bobbing up and down and talking back to the priest. Speaking of whom, he is a trained singer, and performed ‘Ave Maria (Schubert) during the ceremony, and immediately afterward, some Spanish high-range thing that I didn’t recognise. The Voice was more baritone than tenor, but he got the high notes easily if quietly, and was very pleasant to listen to. This is apparently not the norm, for priests to sing so much. I thought pride was a Catholic sin?? The accompaniment was a choir of 7 women, an organ and a violinist who suffers from the same affliction as I - he was noticeably out of tune. Cele and Fernando entered and exited to the Mendelssohn, but it was recorded badly - and why was it recorded with an organist in house? The choir and the priest had occasional disagreements about pitch as well, methinks the priest was correct.

We adjourned to a local hotel for the reception, and suffered massively from heat and noise, I mean music. The windows did not open, and the air-conditioning only affected half the room, so my table was dripping sweat most of the time. The food was interesting if unidentifiable. The band consisted of two men, a keyboard and a computer - and 8 million decibels of amplification. I couldn’t talk in the first place, and with all that, I couldn’t hear either. Gary had decided to stay home as he was coughing non-stop and didn’t want to interrupt the service, which turns out to have been absolutely unnecessary. I was disappointed to not be able to introduce him to the acquaintances at my table. Poor Cele and Fernando - the bride-and-groom first dance was to recorded music, played so loudly the speakers were blathering, and went on for 7 minutes. Then the parents of the groom danced with them, then the parents of the bride, all for another 6 minutes. Need I mention that my 29 year old friends don’t actually know how to waltz? 13 minutes of shuffling around while being video-taped is my idea of a good time, how about you? I made my escape - I mean departure - about 23:30, after the bride threw the bouquet. It was, all in all, an interesting experience, if one that I will hope to never have to repeat.

The other exciting trip this last week was to Morelia to finish getting Gary’s visa in order. Enrique drove us, which turned out to be the best of all possible worlds. In the first place, I wanted someone with us who is fluent in both English and Spanish and in the second, familiar with Morelia - we would have been completely fucked without him. The first address we had was the wrong office, and the right office was far enough away that it took us a little while to find it. Directions in Mexico consist of drive that way until you see X, then turn right and keep driving until you find what you’re looking for. Try telling that to a bus driver in broken Spanish. It was hot. It was crowded. It is impossible to find street addresses. People drive as though they are headed to an emergency, and frankly, in many cases, they are - of their own making. The ‘proper’ office closes for the day at 13:00, and we arrived at 12:33. We made it, G has the proper paperwork to complete, and then we have to return to Morelia. I hope Enrique is going to be available to navigate the currents, I don’t have any idea where in the hell we ended up.

Well, that about covers it. I have to go get a cell phone that works - the one I have has no Spanish language option and I can’t figure out how to dial international calls - and pay the internet bill. Have good week!

R

2011 06 08

2011-06-08T18:59:00.002-05:00

Some pictures and info about our town: http://www.retireearlylifestyle.com/zamora.htm

2011 06 07

2011-06-07T16:27:00.000-05:00

Part Two

So, after a couple of days' sleep, we started to surface for short periods, interacting on some level and with various degrees of success with our friends/housemates pro tem who looked after the cats whilst we were gone. Lovely people, we are so lucky to have met a quintet of 20-somethings who think we're pretty cool for old shits. They didn't sign up for two years of cat-sitting, of course, but things do move more slowly in Mexico ... harrumph.

Speaking of cats, we have acquired a rare and special article of clothing: the Bripper. Bruce wanders over and flops himself upon one's feet and falls asleep. Living slippers! internal temp of 107! in the fucking summer south of the Tropic of Cancer or Capricorn or whatever we is. You realise, of course, that when we lived in the Cesspits and the average temps were 30F the Bripper was under the down comforter with his nose in his paws. No wonder they were worshipped by the ancient Egyptians.

Gary is thrilled. We have had two little thunderstorms in the last week, and he was missing them living in California. I like them 'cause they drop the temperature a bit. The cats ignore them, which is kind of surprising as Bruce was a stray and has been traditionally frightened of noise, including people he has met a million times but with whom he doesn't live.

The neighbourhood is a mix of newer and older houses, well-maintained for the most part and very quiet, which is a nice change from living on the Ranch. We have a tiny patch of dirt supporting a two-fronded palm of about my height. Gary is hoping to cultivate some of the veg we are not going to easily find here - different kinds of tomatoes, melons, whatever. I say more power to him, as long as I can eat what he grows, I'll be happy. There is also a concrete 'backyard', in which we will locate the laundry and the large fridge when they get here. We have two bedrooms on one side of the house, the living room and kitchen on the other, with the Bog in between the bedroom and kitchen. The humidity and temperature of the bog are a constant 44C regardless of ambient temps in the rest of the place. It is about a metre wide, and the toilet is equipped with a plastic split seat which happily sticks to one's arse from the sweat thereon. the shower enclosure is 10 m. square, which is a delight, and the shower head is so high up the wall I can almost reach it. I can see the installers on ladders up there putting it in - it ain't a pretty picture.

We are slowly recuperating, the lung crud (thanks, Arlene) gradually vacating the premises. We went out with our friend Paul last evening, who kindly took us shopping, and then we went to supper at a restaurant called La Poblanita. A lot of good food for three - for $30 US. The drawback with restaurants in Mexico generally is that they all have large televisions, loud and intrusive. I suppose it makes a change from US restaurants, where the patrons are loud and intrusive ...

I have to go stick my head in the refrigerator now.

R

2011 06 05

2011-06-05T22:20:00.000-05:00

Journey to the Centre of Mexico, part one

We have touched down in Zamora de Hidalgo, Michoacan. Finally. Some of you may know how difficult it has been to get to this point, but here are some high-lights anyway. Gary was forced to retire about the same week that the mortgage increased by 63 per cent. $2000 mortgage payment from $800 cheque = the kind of financing that only Banks that are Too Big to Fail get away with, so there went the house. This was an emotional blow and took some time to deal with. As in three bloody years. And it came to dirt at the end, as the former friends with whom Gary had been staying decided that it was time to plant a "cash crop" on the land we were infesting, and pulled some dirty tricks to get G moved out of their yard. It worked to our advantage, as we actually got moved, but it was rude and unnecessary. And the Vicious Asp Queen has succeeded once more in ending Princess K's friendship with someone not of her choosing. And may it bring them both the joy they deserve.

So, after working without sleep for two days, we had the moving truck packed up and the help of a stranger who wandered by in the night and wanted to look at the stuff we were putting in the dumpster. He turned out to be a real treasure, did Craig, and we are eternally grateful. He helped pack and clean up and drove us 100 miles or so to the train station in Emeryville, which is sort of Oakland for those who don't know. We had decided that we had to relax a bit before we got on a plane, and there is a train from somewhere up in Washington that runs down the coast to Los Angeles - The
Coast Starlighter. It was a reasonable price, and we thought that 13 hours gently swaying to the rhythm of the rails would do the trick.

We eventually relaxed, but the bloody train station was a nightmare. I had (still have) a bad chest cold, and could hardly breathe and walk at the same time, and the train stops with the engine at the door from the station. We were riding steerage, about a half-mile from the front of the train. No porters. Hot. No breath. Many bags. I had to stop and gasp near one of the doors to a sleeper and the attendant at the doorway said: why didn't you arrange ahead of time for baggage assistance? She shut up after I looked at her and I limped the rest of the way to our car. It was better in LA, they called ahead and arranged baggage help. We got on the shuttle from Union Station to LAX, went through the bullshit with bags and 'security' and finally got on the plane and collapsed. flight was okay, but by the time we got to Guadalajara, the cold had hit Gary and we were both miserable. We don't have a lot of money, but the thought of several more hours in buses trying to get from GDL to Zamora was beyond us, so we splurged on a taxi. We then spent two days in bed.

Thus endeth part one. Pardon spelling mistakes, I'm sick and it's hot.

R

2011 05 15

2011-05-15T13:30:00.000-05:00

Well, that was way overly optimistic. We're still in California, but slowly getting (1) healthier and (2) packed. Que sera, sera. I'll keep you posted

2011 01 18 - Leaving on a ... slow RAV4

2011-01-19T20:37:00.000-06:00

We are finally on the road!! As of Thursday, January 19th, our spotty internet access is going to be non-existent. We will get back in touch as soon as possible, but it could be a couple of weeks. Por fin, estamos en el camino! A partir del jueves, 19 de enero, el accesso a internet irregular va a ser inexistente. Pondremos en contacto tan pronto como sea posible, pero podría ser un par de semanas.

2010 12 02

2010-12-03T20:30:00.001-06:00

We are, unfortunately, still in California. Sigh. I wanted to share my newest Joy of Cooking Out-of-doors recipe with you:

Sloppy Joes al mapache

Scrumble fry a bunch of hamburger with some onions and spices. In the outdoors, in the cold, on a camp stove. Chop some carrots whilst the meat is browning, in the absence of cutting board cutting your thumb at the same time. Find cans of tomato paste and prepare to borrow a can of beans from the landlord. Stir meat. Look for can opener. Stir meat. Whilst locating can opener, discover that el mapache who lives under the truck has been at the closed and locked-down bin with the bread in, and has powdered the buns you were going to use as the Joes under the Sloppy. OK, no bread. Stir meat, add carrots. Fail to borrow a can of beans because you've failed to locate the can opener. OK, no tomato paste, no beans. Stir meat, add chicken bullion and water. Serve hamburger soup with Melba toast, pepper to taste.

Don't I love Nature? - living in the wilds and cooking over the campfire. In the cold, the rain, the wind and the fucking mapaches. I had a mapache-fur coat once upon a time, when it was more socially acceptable to wear animal skins. I think I may soon get another - or at least the beginnings of one.

Hint: Spanish nomenclature

2010 11 09 - Better late than never

2010-11-09T19:43:00.000-06:00

It is raining. It is cold. I am cold and wet. And grumpy. Gary is cold and wet. And grumpy. I have had a virus/cold since Labour Day. Ditto Gary. Our possessions are cold and wet. The truck is cold and wet. We have no place to sleep that is not also cold and wet. Therefore, we have decided to throw the stuff into the truck and get on the road to Tucson, where we will put it all in a storage unit and sort it out there. We should be there before the 1st of December. It is not raining in Tucson, and it is unlikely to rain like it is here. We will sort out enough to live on for a couple of months and head to Zamora, where it is warm and dry. And Christmas, but that is a problem of a different colour. Once we have thawed, we will return to Tucson and deal with actually getting the rest of the house moved to Zamora. We think this is a much more sensible plan than trying to fight the rain here, even though it is going to use up money that we don't really have. Too bad we didn't get to this point a year or two ago, eh?

2010 09 28

2010-09-28T14:36:00.000-05:00

Samuel Clemens, with or without 't', never remember - and otherwise known as Mark Twain, has never been a favourite author of yours truly - that folksy down-home southern american crap simply does not appeal. However, he did say this:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

He was a little optimistic, and definitely not modern P.C. but I think that should be required learning in schools, don't you?

ease of access

2010-08-19T13:20:00.002-05:00

Please let me know if there is any difference in how long you wait or any trouble you have with this Live Journal blog compared to the Blogger. If one is better than the other for all or most of you, I will kill the one that is slowest. Thanks for your help!

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Up-date sort-of well maybe

2010-08-19T12:32:00.001-05:00

I have realised that I have started way too many of these entries with the words "well, here I am ...". Well, I am going to try to change that.

Well, here we are, sitting around the camp-fire dreaming of the time when we can sleep in a bed, bathe in a bathroom, eat at a table, shit in a toilet - you get the point. We're camped out in the back forty a friend owns and it is getting way too tiresome for words. We have a lot to do yet to pack up, but we are seeing progress, light at the end of the tunnel, ground through the trash ... pick your euphemism. We're not on our way to Mexico, but we're on our way. And if ever anything interesting happens, I'll be sure to blog about it here. You'll be the first to know.

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It is better to laugh than to cry

2010-03-06T02:33:00.000-06:00

This is a long one, so get your coffee and kick back. It's worth it, really it is, because if there is anything that will get your sense of humour a work-out, it is this. I get a kick out of Mark Morford, even though it is sometimes harder to read his convoluted prose than it is to read mine!

Friday, March 5, 2010 (SF Gate)
Radical homosexuals ate my baby!
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

And now, ladies and gentlemen, right here on our stage, a fine and terrifyingly hilarious -- or is that hilariously terrifying? -- spectacle,for your disquieting reading pleasure. Please, remove the children. Ready?

Behold, an item known henceforth as the National Impact Survey of the Radical Homosexual Agenda in California Public Schools, as recently and furtively received/discovered by yours truly, your humble and sexually perverted and imperfectly liberal, very-straight-but-very-gay-rights-supporting satire columnist, in a roundabout manner I cannot divulge right now lest I might get shot waiting in line at Starbucks.

What is the NISRHACPS, you ask? Why, it's a document. It's a mailer. It's a survey of sorts, a short, wretched little questionnaire made entirely of sadness and bile and fear.

It's a piece of paper sent out en masse to particular members of the Republican party who are so openly terrified of all homosexual personages, they fully believe said gays are actively bewitching and recruiting your
innocent children behind the locked doors of hugely perverted schoolhouses near you.

This document is, apparently, highly confidential. Everything about it -- the shouty ALL CAPS HEADLINES, the copious red ink, the simpleton second-grade language -- screams that I'm not supposed to be reading it,
given how I have, you know, a functioning intellect, can walk upright, enjoy copious amounts of sex, and speak in complete sentences. Often all at the same time. I know!

In fact, most liberals, moderates, chimps, garden gnomes and humans with intact brainstems have likely never seen this document, given how it is carefully targeted only at persons of dangerously limited consciousness,
people who clearly think book learnin' is for elitists, the vagina was created by the devil and Sarah Palin is like, super-duper smart, and stuff.

You perhaps think I am exaggerating? I am not exaggerating. Behold:

RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA IMPACT RESEARCH SURVEY BACKGROUND: American
standards of sexual morality have eroded to the point that almost nothing
is off-limits in our schools. [...] Graphic details of perverted sex
practices are being taught to high school children, and parents are being
locked out of assemblies lead by radical homosexual activists. How long
will it be before sex between adults and children is just the next barrier
to be torn down? How long will it take before radical homosexual activists
achieve their next evil objective?

That's the first paragraph, more or less. It was difficult to transcribe verbatim, given how it's such a bizarre arrangement of verbiage, such a sickening cluster of sentences, I couldn't really write it without my
heart clenching and my brain actively recoiling. Also, it's tough to type when you're laughing, shaking your head, and slamming Maker's Mark to numb the savage karmic pain, all at once.

There are 10 questions in the NISRHACPS. They are all, as you imagine, completely silly, front-loaded, leading questions along the lines of "Pimply spidermutants from planet Fukulon-7 like to devour the severed
heads of newborn baby deer like popcorn. Do you support this practice? Yes [ ] No [ ] Don't Know [ ]"

In other words, they aren't really questions at all, and are far more like validations of an outlandish kind of ignorance, a repressed sexual fantasia, the honest belief that godless heathens have penetrated the
public school system using giant strap-on dildos and are secretly teaching your little ones about, presumably, leather chaps, Adam Lambert, love and other such abominations.

I shall not attempt any sort of itemized correction of this amazing document. I am not here to shine a light on all the obvious lies and misstatements contained in this "survey." The fact that it's total nonsense, or that the framing device is hilariously lopsided, is not for this column to remedy.

Besides, it's nothing really new. This kind of shrill fearmongering and right-wing propaganda has been going on since Rush Limbaugh was knee high to Pat Roberston's gay bathhouse towel boy's coke spoon. What's more, if you're reading this column, odds are extremely good you're already many, many times smarter than the target demographic of this survey.

But oh, what a target. Allow me to point up one aspect of the NISRHACPS I find particularly distressing. It is this: the document comes from -- and is aimed straight at -- women.

True. The survey is apparently the dark creation of a little D.C. splinter clan called Concerned Women for America (CWA), who in my imagination aren't really women at all, but are far more like bulky bundles of bad
skin and beige polyester with only faintly female characteristics, such as thigh stubble, cankles and a creamy fondness for Jay Leno and lumpy pancake batter and cats.

In other words, I imagine the Concerned Women for America much like I imagine neo-Nazi skinheads in rural Idaho, wacky black metal dudes from Norway, or "Real Housewives" cast members; a weird and ragtag huddle of
unstable, nervous humans smelling faintly of stale Doritos and light beer, who have endured a complete lack of agreeable sexual contact since, well, ever.

Unfortunately, the NISRHACPS is not easily dismissed. Many of you will note it was exactly this kind of trickery and lie-mongering used to scare thousands of already overanxious Mormons into giving millions of their kids' underwear money to help pass Prop 8.

This new campaign plays on the same sort of heartless fears, only this time it's targeting one of the weakest and most gullible of all American demographics: mal-educated conservative moms who don't know any better.
Sad doesn't begin to cover it.

The NISRHACPS ends with a petition to Gov. Schwarzenegger to please put an end evil homosexual propaganda in our public schools, and instead help "promote views toward sexuality that support our nation's traditional
moral values."

Do you remember those values? The moral codes that have helped shaped America lo these many years of joyful Christian goodness and open-hearted love? I bet you do.

From the top, they include: Unchecked sexual guilt, shame, hysteria, pedophilic priests, failed abstinence programs, banning birth control education in schools, dangerous illegal abortions, widespread teen
pregnancy, the 50-percent divorce rate, and freaking the hell out over a single exposed nipple on primetime TV.

Also, by extension, unhappy marriages, sexual unfulfillment and a deep misunderstanding of God, love and simple human connection. You know, values just like mom used to enjoy. Thanks for reminding us, CWA!

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BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO drive their traffic stats up, here's the posting from the forceps babies of the cwa:

National Impact Survey of CWA Members Reveals Concern, Dedication 3/30/2009
By CWA Staff

Last fall, Concerned Women for America (CWA) conducted a survey of its members' opinions about the impact of the radical homosexual agenda in the public schools. Thousands of members participated in the survey. As expected, CWA members feel strongly about these issues. They are rightly alarmed at the pervasive influence of activists whose agenda has nothing to do with education and everything to do with evangelizing young people into a dangerous and harmful lifestyle.

The results of the National Impact Survey of the Radical Homosexual Agenda on America's Public Schools showed overwhelming support for common-sense approaches to education. Clearly, CWA members have a strong preference for schools to be free of radical politics and free to focus on the "Three Rs." The radical homosexual agenda has nothing to do with education and no place in our public schools.

Radical activists, however, are paying no mind to overwhelming public concern. In April, they will hold yet another Day of Silence designed to disrupt classroom instruction and promote their agenda. Many parents and students will respond by removing their children or themselves from these political demonstrations. Many others will participate in a more appropriate effort called the Day of Truth, sponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund. CWA supports both efforts. For more information, listen to our recent multimedia presentation, http://www.cwfa.org/articles/16703/CFI/family/index.htm, and watch our website for updates for ways you can take your stand.

The CWA National Impact Survey contained fifteen questions. The responses to each were overwhelming, and there was only the smallest variation among the states. Here are the questions to which our members responded:
Do you support teaching children in grades as early as kindergarten that cross-dressing is acceptable? CWA members do not support this.

What kind of impact do you believe this kind of teaching would have on young children? CWA members universally felt such instruction would have a negative impact on young children.

Do you believe school children as young as 13 should be exposed to explicit, detailed discussions and instructions on homosexual practices (including sodomy) as are being conducted by homosexual teachers and activists right now? CWA members in every state said "no."

What kind of impact do you believe this kind of instruction would have on young children? Again, CWA members felt strongly that such instruction would have a negative impact.

Do you believe the increase of homosexual experimentation among teens is related to presentation of pro-"gay" instruction in the classroom? Yes, the vast majority of respondents felt this was very likely.

Is it possible for the radical homosexual agenda to succeed in achieving its overriding goal of changing the moral character of our young people and the moral landscape of our nation through our schools? The overwhelming response was "yes" - CWA members clearly understood the danger of attacking moral standards.

What impact would this have on our nation and the next generation leading it? Most responses followed logically: If our moral character and the nation's moral landscape fall prey to the radical homosexual agenda, the result will be negative and future generations will suffer.

Do you agree that instruction in some classrooms is a blatant push to unashamedly promote and encourage the homosexual lifestyle and ultimately force "gay marriage" on the American public? Yes, most respondents agreed some activists would not be able to resist pushing their agenda to its most extreme.

Do you feel instilling positive views of homosexuality in schools will result in America accepting same-sex "marriages"? Huge majorities of responses agreed they felt this was likely.

Do you agree that homosexual "marriage" is as valid as traditional marriage, as is being taught in some school districts? Most responses indicated they did not agree at all with this claim of the radical activists.

What impact on traditional marriage do you believe this kind of classroom instruction will have in the future? Respondents in every state said this would have a negative impact on marriage.

Do you support laws requiring schools to obtain parents' permission before their child is exposed to information of a homosexual nature? Strong majorities of responses support such laws.

What impact on traditional marriage do you believe homosexual teaching would have in the future? Again, overwhelming majorities felt such politicized instruction will have a negative impact on marriage.

Are you will to take a moral stand against pro-homosexual classroom curriculum by taking grassroots action against the organizations who promote it? The vast majority of CWA members were willing to make this commitment to make their voices heard in the public square.

Will you help Concerned Women for America as we stand strong for Biblical principles and against the radical homosexual agenda in our schools? CWA members were nearly unanimous in their willingness to help as CWA joins hands with each of them to stand for righteousness.

Often, folks will read a survey like this one and notice that the responses are overwhelmingly in one direction. What is the point, they may wonder? The point is you are not alone. The radical homosexual agenda is dangerous. It is wrong. CWA is fighting for marriage, against dangerous "hate crimes" laws and resisting the politicizing of our public schools - and we have the backing of hundreds of thousands of friends like you across the country. Though only a fraction of our overall membership of 500,000 responded, the result was still many thousands of replies. You can be sure that those thousands speak for hundreds of thousands more who did not receive the survey or could not reply.

Our call is to "prayer and action." We must remember in prayer those caught up in the homosexual lifestyle. The Good News is indeed very good: You - each one of us - can be set free from your sin, no matter what it is, no matter how hard a grip it may have on you. Thousands of men and women have been freed from the homosexual lifestyle. Their lives are evidence of this great Truth. We must remember in prayer those who promote wrongdoing, especially to innocent children, that God will change their hearts and protect the next generation. We must remember in prayer all who will take a stand for righteousness, that we may do so with grace and with wisdom.

To all who took our National Impact Survey: CWA extends our warm thanks for your commitment and generosity. To all whose concern the Survey has sparked, please prayerfully join us. You aren't alone. We can make a difference.

2009 09 01

2009-09-01T13:26:00.003-05:00

We're still in California. I will no longer be attempting to estimate departure dates, it is way too frustrating to watch them slip by. Nothing is new, so that's why I haven't been blogging lately. MaryTwo, this blog's for you, darlin'! I'll pick up the pace here if we ever get on the road ...

2009 07 24

2009-07-24T17:54:00.002-05:00

Well. It's been a while. Lately, we've had the swine flu, sick sick sick. We're still packing and arranging and listing things that the border agents want to know about, but we're taking a lot longer than we'd hoped. And losing ten days to the bloody flu didn't help. Wish us luck, we need to be on the road mid-August.

Susan Boyle

2009-04-17T12:09:00.002-05:00

I am disgusted with all of you. Susan Boyle is a perfectly ordinary-looking woman nearing fifty, a little overweight and with the colouring of someone who lives in a colder climate and maybe hasn't taken a lot of interest in her appearance. The fact that she can sing seems to astound. Why? Dame Joan Sutherland was no beauty, but no-one denies her ability to carry a tune. Your idea that only "beautiful" people can have talent is ridiculous - Maria Callas was considered if not beautiful at least interesting-looking and was one of the worst singers in opera, lousy technique and shrill high notes. Your idea of beauty is skewed and screwed - anorexic females with plastic tits and vacuous expressions and no discernable talent are more beautiful than someone like Emma Thompson who can make you believe in whatever character she is portraying? You'd rather watch Jessica Simpson simper than Glenda Jackson tear up the screen as Queen Elizabeth I? So, because Susan Boyle hasn't plucked her eyebrows you call her ugly and assume that she should be hiding herself from public view - and compound your shallow stupidity by assuming that her looks have anything to do with her talent. You want to see ugly? Look in the mirror. I'm ashamed of all of you.

2009 03 24

2009-03-24T10:16:00.002-06:00

Well, here I am, sitting around my palatial accommodations, basking in the warmth of a beautiful cloud-free day, eating grapes and wondering how I am possibly going to spend the vast amounts of free time at my disposal. Then I wake up and discover that I'm really in Northern California freezing my ass off. I talked to the boss in Mexico (gracias, jefe), and Gary and I are going to drive back together, hopefully before mid-April. There is a lot to do to finish packing and sorting the moving truck, and it makes sense for us to travel back together - my Spanish is a lot better than his, which doesn't say much but would mean that we need to call bilingual friends a lot less. Besides, I'll have a road-trip about which to blog! I have to go back to sleep now.

2009 03 02

2009-03-02T10:31:00.004-06:00

Well, here I am in rainy cold rainy grey rainy cold Northern California. I want to go home to Mexico! I go to see the quack today, to try to sort my meds and find some way to live with the drugs I need to take in order to live. Assuming the boat will float down the freeway ... LOL. Wish me luck. Please.

2009 02 22

2009-02-22T13:21:00.000-06:00

I had a heart-attack almost two years ago, and have been taking a selection of chemicals to prevent a recurrence. They have been causing me some grief, especially pain in my joints and muscles, which is inconvenient, to say the least. Yes, it's better than the alternative, but I would really like to be out of pain for at least short periods each day. So, I have a new doctor, and I want to reassess the drugs that I take, and started doing some research.

I have come to the conclusion that we don't know what the hell we are doing.

Some combination of chemicals is discovered to relieve or reverse, say, high cholesterol. Unfortunately, these drugs not only sometimes do what they are intended to do, they also cause things: chest pain, headache, fatigue, dizziness, rash, nausea/vomiting, diarrhea, heartburn, increased transaminases, myalgia, cough, influenza, allergy, lens opacity, libido change, memory impairment, muscle weakness, neuropathy, paresthesia, taste disturbance, tremor, vertigo, anaphylaxis, angioedema, cholestatic jaundice, cirrhosis, cranial nerve dysfunction, dermatomyositis, erythema multiforme, ESR increase, fulminant hepatic necrosis, gynecomastia, hemolytic anemia, hepatitis, hepatoma, lupus erythematosus-like syndrome, myopathy, pancreatitis, peripheral nerve palsy, polymyalgia rheumatica, positive ANA, purpura, rhabdomyolysis, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, vasculitis, angioedema, cataracts, depression, dyspnea, eosinophilia, erectile dysfunction, facial paresis, hypersensitivity reaction, impaired extraocular muscle movement, impotence, leukopenia, malaise, memory loss, ophthalmoplegia, paresthesia, peripheral neuropathy, photosensitivity, psychic disturbance, skin discoloration, thrombocytopenia, thyroid dysfunction, toxic epidermal necrolysis, increased, transaminases and vomiting - in that order of occurrence.

How can a drug cause a virus like influenza?

And that is just the cholesterol drug I take, one of, I don't know, eleven or so. Each of the others has more or fewer 'adverse reactions' in its arsenal. And they work in combination, or fight one another, or affect the performance of one another, or play merry hell with one's liver, kidneys or heart. Some foods, notably grapefruit, cause unknown amplification or suppression of some drugs' actions. Anti-depression drugs cause ... depression. Asthma drugs cause ... bronchiospasm and difficulty breathing. One asthma drug causes high blood pressure, which I take another drug to lower. The drug I take to lower my pressure causes some other drug to do something else that causes some other drug to cause me to take a drug to combat the nausea that they all cause. Is this sounding rational to you?

I've come up with a list of drugs that I think do all the things that my current selection are supposed to do, and, according to a web-site designed to track these things, don't interfere with one another, I started a spreadsheet of the adverse reactions, and now am not sure that I should change any of them: I'm accustomed to the way I feel taking this set, and don't know if I'm interested in accommodating a new plethora of side-effects. The myalgia and arthralgia caused by this set are absent or way down the list on the new set, so it may be worth it. We'll see what my doctor has to say next week. Wish me luck.

2009 02 18

2009-02-18T20:30:00.001-06:00

I'm a little worried about my reaction to this. On Saturday, three young men, one about 10, the other two more than 15 but less than 20, stood in the field next door and nattered at me in Spanish that I didn't understand. One of them finally said "fucking money give" and I told them to go away. I continued to work at the other side of the house. A little later, I caught them in the bodega, and they ran away. Once I realised that they were in the yard, I called the police, and the operator hung up on me without saying a further thing once I had explained my situation. Very reassuring. A little while after that, they came to the street side of the house and asked for water, which I declined to give them because I was getting more than a little fed up with their antics, and then they sat across the road and watched me water the plants. Monday, mid-morning, I was in the flat quietly working on my spreadsheet after I'd finished watering, and I saw two of them sneak across the pasillo towards the front door. I went downstairs and scared them as they were trying to jimmy the lock. I was pretty pissed off at this point. I had to go to town to shop, so I had a friend come and babysit the house while I was gone. When I got home, Enrique was here, and we talked about the situation, and he went to Ecuandureo and spoke to the police. Two officers came by later in the day and gave me a direct telephone number to the dispatcher in Ecuandureo, and have promised to add our street to their rounds.

I am not a believer in violence as an answer to problems. I don't think the first action of diplomacy/resolution should be to reach for a gun/nuclear warhead/army. I don't think that bored almost-adults should break into apparently empty houses for the hell of it. While shopping, I seriously considered buying a firearm.

I'm old-ish, fat, can't breathe and can't run. I'm not a muscle queen. I can't handle two Mexican farm-boys on my own, if they decided to get physical in response to my getting physical. Because they didn't know I was here, they ran away when I startled them, but who knows what will happen next time? From what Enrique found out through the grapevine (his innumerable relatives), these kids are supposedly known to the local gendarmes, but they can't do much, as the law prohibits holding minors in custody. So they arrest the little bastards and book 'em, Dan'o - and then have to release them. At this point, I don't give a damn about the sociological pressures or any of the other supposedly mitigating circumstances that led them to a 'life of crime'. What I care about is that I can't afford to replace anything that they might steal, I don't want to have to clean up the mess they are sure to leave, I don't want to have to live in an armoured enclosure and wonder what nasty surprise is waiting for me on the other side of my twelve-foot -high walls. After five years there, I won't live in the US again because of the official 'culture of fear' that permeates everything from airports to McD's, and I sure as hell don't want to live in a gated complex of terrified North-American expats here in Mexico. But I also resent this violation of the rules of good behaviour.

I fired a rifle once, from the back of a bouncing truck, on my uncle's farm, when I was short, which is sometime before I turned 13. I didn't hit the vermin we were trying to eliminate, my father took the gun away after I'd fired one shot, and that was the end of it. I think that the US National Rifle Association is a collection of nuts. I think that the ease with which people, especially in the US, reach for a firearm to settle disputes is disgraceful. Canada has more guns per capita than the US, and less annual firearm-related crime than Los Angeles on a bad day. (Yes, the entire country has fewer gun crimes in a year than LA on a bad day. Think about it.)

I'm appalled that I actually considered purchasing a firearm. I would probably shoot myself rather than the thieves. But the thought of blowing their knees away as a service to mankind was pretty tempting for awhile - it would be really trying to attempt to sneak over a fence in a wheelchair.

Bigotry is a double-sided affliction

2009-02-13T07:23:00.004-06:00

I may be a cranky ranter, thank you Baggie, but I am an equal-opportunity curmudgeon. I'm also assuming that anyone who reads my blogs is not going to be a raving homophobic moron, so I don't think I'm running too great a risk of reinforcing silly stereotypes with this post. I try to be informed before I make decisions. I look at both (or all) sides of an issue and then make as informed a choice as possible. (It can drive boy-friends crazy.) A lot, I would even say a vast majority, of anti-gay writing (in all forms, but especially blogs) is based in fear, ignorance and lack of critical thinking. My Tribe is not immune from said sad disease, and the following, from a virtually anonymous comment section on a gay news site, illustrates my point:

Uniting for a “common” cause with heterosexuals who cannot possibly grasp what it’s like being us spells nothing but political SUICIDE! Oil and water do NOT mix(much like science and religion). I prefer it to be ZERO affiliation with the heteros. Simply put I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could toss a semi! LOL! They will always have a superiority attitude in dealing with us merely because they can crank out lots and lots of unwanted babies. For all of our gay “brothers” who pal around with these overactive breeder reactors maybe you should step back and ask yourself exactly what do you wish to accomplish? Your so called straight friends really don’t give a flying F**K about you, about us or(most importantly) about our civil rights movement!! All one needs to do is check out the list of donors to the Prop H8 campaign to confirm THAT! OH how I so SO wish that the names of the signers of that petition were put online! I think it would’ve been quite a eye OPENER for all these yuppie, artsy fartsy middle class homos to discover what many of their absolutely fabulous hetero friends really think of them and US in general. Ass kissing is SO simply pathetic! LMFAO!

This particular site requires that one put in a name and an e-mail address, but only the name one uses is visible to the general reader. This means that the moderators of the site would be able to contact a truly offensive person and/or provide said information to police, in the case of real extremists. It unfortunately doesn't add any personal responsibility to what is published, as one is not required to use one's real name. There are some very thoughtful posts, some of which even get written in real English with punctuation and everything. There are rants from The Enemy, people who read articles on gay-positive sites and then post virulent, offensive, or merely astoundingly uninformed opinions from their religious/right wing/outsider perspective. There are rants Against the Enemy, with which I have more sympathy but which sometimes come from the same mentality as the rants 'from' The Enemy. The quoted post is my first exposure to such stupidly blind bigotry from, I assume, a gay person.

I understand the feelings expressed but abhor the reverse prejudice. I saw ten minutes of some afternoon American talk show, LaToya or some such, in which the black hostess informed the general public that she "would never hire a white man, no matter how qualified he was for the job". I understand the feelings there, too. Unfortunately, both of these people, and undoubtedly many others, espouse truly revolting prejudice in the guise of repudiating prejudice, and without any irony or sense that they are just as bad as what they purport to be fighting.

2009 02 12

2009-02-12T17:09:00.001-06:00

I could learn to hate people, and here are two reasons why.

Reason 1. When I came to this little village in southern Mexico, there were four dogs about the place, three little ones and a Dalmatian. I blogged, on a different site, about Walt Disney having a lot to answer for in popularising a difficult dog such as the Dalmatian: high-maintenance puppies who require a lot of consistent and patient training, starting from when they are very young. They, and Great Danes, get purchased as cute little pups for all the wrong reasons by people who don't know anything about how to raise them or what they'll look like when they grow up, and then, when they get older and are turning into a total pain in the ass or a giant that no longer fits into the one-room flat, they get abandoned or shunted off to other people or fates even worse. This is the case with the Dalmatian here: the original owner got rid of him to the owners of my house because they couldn't control him. He had a lot of bad habits firmly entrenched by the time I arrived on the scene, and I put a lot of work into persuading him to behave in a more gentlemanly fashion. I was making good progress, and he was becoming a good companion. The proper work when he was young, and he would have been a very good companion from the get-go. Everyone with children has seen 101 Dalmatians, and all the local children used to love to come and see the living example. Which leads to ...

Reason 2. This is a very rural, agricultural living-off-the-land kind of village. There are seventeen identifiable types of animal shit in the road leading to the front gate. There are cows in the fields next door, just like on the real farms you drive by between major cities. Apparently, there is also some kind of predator that the locals kill off with poisoned meat. Reverting to Reason 1 for a minute, there are some cardinal rules in raising dogs, and one of the most important is to teach them not to eat anything that you don't give them. It isn't easy, but if you don't, you end up with a dog that eats whatever it finds on the road or in the field or wherever. Getting back to Reason 2, all the dogs have died from poisoning. One of the Dalmatian's bad habits was not allowing fences to delineate his territory, so that every time I left the yard, he came too. On the occasions that it wasn't convenient to have him with me, I would put him on a leash tied to something he couldn't move. The neighbours like to throw food they won't eat out into their 'trash' heaps, and the Dalmatian would regularly go visit in the night if I didn't confine him in some way. And they complained bitterly about it if I didn't confine him at night, so it had become a regular habit.

This morning, I needed to go into the village to buy food, so I left him on the leash with his water and feed and blanket. I got home, let him off the leash, and he raced around the yard a bit and then followed me around doing my chores. Sometime in that first hour of freedom, he ate something in the yard that killed him. I don't think he jumped the fence, but if he did, it was only for a very short while, as I couldn't move without him underfoot. Whatever it was, it was very fast-acting: he was running around and being a dog and then he was writhing in pain and convulsing.

This whole sordid episode could have been avoided by a little bit of thought on the part of the people who bought the dog and then couldn't/didn't train him, and the locals, who don't think about the ramifications of their actions in throwing poisoned meat into their fields to control the coyotes or whatever the hell they are. Manchas, 2007 - 2009 R.I.P.

2009 02 10

2009-02-10T12:33:00.005-06:00

A while back, I wrote about thesaurus.com and the stupid definition I'd found for oral. Well, I actually wrote them, and very politely told them that they are a bunch of asinine wankers (paraphrasing here) if they think "verbal" can mean "written". Surprise surprise - I haven't heard a thing from them, not even an automated reply. Wankers.

I'm not the only one who likes to have things spelled properly, and thinks that words have meanings that represent concrete things and ideas, am I?

I came across a posting on some other site with (some other) smart-arse writer saying he was looking for someone who knows the difference between they're/their/there, your/you're and some other common misuses. He was listing his age at not much under 40, which I thought of as a personal cut-off: anyone under forty is very unlikely to know the difference between syntax and sales tax. I didn't bother to check if he had a public school education or not. Like it or not, bad grammar and bad spelling are signs of sloppy thinking, and the current cult of SMS abbreviations (u = you, et cetera) is not really going to improve the language.

There is a difference between using a second language badly and not bothering to learn your first language properly, so I don't need lectures about that, either. Language usage changes with time; basic rules of grammar get stretched but remain the same. If you have a clear idea of what you want to say, and say it clearly and grammatically, most people will manage to get a clear idea of what you had to say. Surprising, but true. It's/its your/you're option to learn how to communicate. They're/their/there will be more on this cite/sight/site regarding language, I think it is more important then/than blogging about my toenails.

repost 2009 02 09

2009-02-09T08:42:00.001-06:00

Another example of that damn left-leaning media making life inaccurate.

Quoted entirely from: http://www.dailykos.com/ ("Fighting the Spin")

As debate on the economic recovery bill continues in the Senate, a reminder of how the spin war has been fought:
Last week, ThinkProgress released a report showing that, in the debate over the House economic recovery bill on the five cable news networks, Republican members of Congress outnumbered their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of 2 to 1. [...]
In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democratic lawmakers 75 to 41 on cable news interviews by members of Congress (from 6am on Monday 2/2 through 11pm on Thursday 2/5):

And adding insult to injury, a number of the Democrats who appeared are opposed to the stimulus bill.

© 2005 - Steal what you want

2009 02 08

2009-02-08T19:53:00.001-06:00

I think one of the great disservices perpetrated on the world during the Bush interregnum was the soi-disant debate about global warming. I know that most of you think that global warming was invented by Al Gore along with the internet, but it is a serious issue that deserves serious attention. We, humanity as a whole, are fucking up the planet to the extent that we are not going to be allowed to continue living on it if we're not pretty damn quick about fixing the issues we've been causing. Yes, George, there is world outside the US and because of idiots like you, it is in serious danger. I tend to read a lot of articles and reports on the issues that I think are important, and I came across a piece on msnbc.com that deserves my attention. Don't ask me how I got to msnbc.com, I usually get my news from reliable sources such as the BBC. Anyway ...

After many pages of fairly interesting exposition on his trip across part of Greenland on a dog sled, and citing lots of examples of how global warming is affecting the locals, animals and men, the author ends his piece thusly:

"After all, new signs of climate change are occurring constantly. For example, the largest floating glacier in the Northern Hemisphere, the Peterman Glacier, in northwestern Greenland, appears to be coming apart. In July 2008, satellite photos showed a giant crack in it, seeming to indicate that a massive breakup of the glacier might be imminent.

I have no idea how all of this will affect the way Greenland will look in a hundred years or 20 or the next decade, or what it will mean for the rest of us. Yet when I give Mathaeussen [local guide and sled driver] a tip which I feel he well deserves, he is so profuse in his thanks, swearing he will spend it on dog food (although I know there is also a fresh supply of pipe tobacco and probably a little whiskey involved too), that I suspect that as long as tourists are coming to see global warming up close, Greenlanders will continue to adapt just fine. (my emphasis)" (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29040497/, "Going to the Dogs in Greenland")

I find it offensive that he passes off global warming as a tourist attraction. But maybe I was reacting badly because, just before this little titbit, he meandered into hetero-sexist bullshit that could easily have been edited out without loss to the world of literature:

"We spend our final night in a cabin similar to the first day’s, except it’s bigger and we share it with two Danish women and their dogsledding guides, all of us wedged against one another on a sleeping platform — in the Inuit tradition, apparently. Although it is a long evening of conversation, mostly in Danish, my only recollection of note is that there is nothing like sleeping in close quarters with women who are of slight acquaintance and quite attractive to make you realize how desperately you need a bath."

Thank you for sharing. However, this is a story that I would never be able to write because I don't think I will ever be able to force myself to endure temperatures of less than zero again as long as I live, so I point it out to you with caveats.

2009 02 07

2009-02-07T19:15:00.004-06:00

Yet another example of that damn left-leaning media making life inaccurate:

quoted from http://www.dailykos.com/

"As debate on the economic recovery bill continues in the Senate, a reminder of how the spin war has been fought:
Last week, ThinkProgress released a report showing that, in the debate over the House economic recovery bill on the five cable news networks, Republican members of Congress outnumbered their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of 2 to 1. [...]
In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democratic lawmakers 75 to 41 on cable news interviews by members of Congress (from 6am on Monday 2/2 through 11pm on Thursday 2/5):

[there's a lovely graph here that won't copy into this post]

And adding insult to injury, a number of the Democrats who appeared are opposed to the stimulus bill.

© 2005 - Steal what you want"

One day, you, too, will be over 30

2009-02-03T14:19:00.002-06:00

My Tribe really pisses me off in another way. On another site, there was an article about "middle-aged men" being arrested by policemen in one of those narrow-minded states - New York City, in this case - and charged with prostitution. Apparently, a good-looking young (plain-clothes) policeman comes on to men in adult bookstores and eventually offers to pay for having sex with the victim. The victim is then charged with prostitution whether or not he agrees to accept the money offered. Leaving aside the considerations of false arrest, entrapment and homophobic police bullshit for the moment, the description "middle-aged" gets interpreted in the public comments as " old men" who are "so grateful to be picked-up by good-looking younger men" that they are flattered into total imbecility and are "probably thrilled" to accept money for sex. Everyone knows that gay desirability ends at 22, but the comments on this story ignore the entrapment and homophobia angles and concentrate on deriding anyone older than 30. Come on, boys, get real. When you turn 30, I sincerely hope that you have the good manners to off yourselves so that up-coming generations won't have to be embarrassed by you drooling on real gays.

Which leads to the broader issue of age discrimination in general, and the issues that face Tribe members as we age. Such as our partners being denied visiting rights when ill enough to be hospitalised, among a lot of other issues. There are groups attempting to address these issues, of whom very few of you have heard, I'm sure. A gay actor by the name of Robert Gant (the US version of 'Queer as Folk'; http://robertgant.com/bethechange/ ) has been actively supporting the work of two of them: SAGE (http://www.sageusa.org/index.cfm) and GLEH (http://www.gleh.org/). Read up, get involved: your turn is coming, one day, you, too, will be over 30.

20090203

2009-02-03T14:03:00.000-06:00

continuing the theme ...

I visit several gay-themed blogs and news sites, which purport to glean news from all available sources that would be of concern to the members of my Tribe. I get fed up with the lack of inclusion in the 'mainstream' media we experience, and the negative coverage if we are included. There are problems with the gay sites, too, and one of the most irritating is the lack of training most of the writers for these sites have in basic logical thinking and the use of English. This is taken from one of the talking heads on a site called 365gay.com:

By Emma Ruby-Sachs, Blogger, 365gay Agenda Blog 02.02.2009 1:32pm EST

For those who have had a chance to look through the list of new donors to the Yes on 8 campaign on the California Secretary of State’’s website might happen across radio personality Gary Bryan from KRTH 101.1 FM. Other observations include a suprising number of teachers and administrators from colleges in the State. For those of you in California, I’d check and make sure your kids aren’t attended classes with one of these people. At least, knowing who they are could make the next parent-teacher meeting more interesting…

I don't' even know where to begin, there are so many things wrong with what she's written. I know what she was trying to say, but really, it takes some decoding to get there. This particular blogger has a habit of going off half-cocked, as it were, not bothering much with fact-checking or accuracy or any of those mundane tenets that apply to reporting news, or in opining thereon. The site allows readers to comment upon news stories, and the Tribe's comments range from so badly written as to make no sense to the well-thought-out but atrociously spelled missives of people who at least try, a little. Sandwiched In between are the idiot knee-jerk reactions consisting of cries for the blood of all straights and off-topic rants about whatever wrong has irritated the writer first that morning. Someone said "the public gets the kind of leaders they (sic) deserve", and I'm beginning to think whoever said it was right. Ungrammatical, but right.

2009 01 25 - ban Webster's!

2009-01-25T21:19:00.000-06:00

I love words. I respect words. Unlike most americans, I think words actually mean something and that they should be used as accurately as possible. One of the lovely things about English is that there are soooo many words, and shades of meaning (nuance) are available in English that don't really translate to a lot of other languages. I don't much care for the sound of a lot of English, the Romance languages are so much more musical than the Germanic, and Odin knows that spellings in English are a bloody nightmare for foreigners and americans alike. I love having the ability to shade a sentence to the exact degree I want. Synonyms are our friends! Having lightened up a lot to move here, I don't have my Oxford dictionary, I don't have a thesaurus or two, and I find I miss them. So, I've been trying to find on-line sources. I came across one the other day that really pissed me off.

Thesaurus.com appears to be a partnership between something called askmenow and Merriam-Webster, now a disgraceful part of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Noah Webster started a 'dictionary' in the late 1800s that tried to restrict American English to biblical sourcing. Over the years, it developed into an American institution, eventually becoming the reference source for well-respected newspapers like The New York Times. Unfortunately, it has been edited by idiots to the extent that it now has definitions that completely warp the language I love. Today's word of the day on thesaurus.com was 'unconscionable', which they Websterised (read: bastardised) into meaning "lacking conscience". I was, not to put too fine a point to it, astounded by the stupidity of this definition, and with the lack of decent editing employed by both of the companies involved. 'Unconscientious' would be closer to the definition offered, as conscientious means taking care to do something with accuracy and .. well .. care. Unconscionable means something that shouldn't be thought of, as in, "an unconscionable size, amount, or length of time is too great and is unacceptable" (Cambridge Learner's, on-line). I wanted an alternative to 'oral' in the sense of in the mouth, and the returned list of synonyms was equally unconscientious as it took the time to note that 'oral' means "spoken" and that 'verbal' means "either spoken or written". So, not only did they ignore synonyms meaning 'in the mouth', they Websterised the usage of 'verbal' into nonsense. If the editors have ever heard the phrase 'a verbal contract is not worth the paper it is written on', they probably think it refers to substandard paper supplies.

Growing up in Canada, where the official spelling is British but the informal usage accepts American spellings, I've forced myself to accept shite like jewelry instead of jewellery, but this goes way beyond differences in spelling. For any of you still confused, oral is a synonym for verbal and vice versa, and neither refers to something that is written down. The point is that words represent things, sometimes concrete things, and pretending that verbal can mean two contradictory things at the same time is not merely confusing to students of English, it is down-right wrong. The current direction of American usage seems unrelentingly towards useless: impacted does not mean 'that which happens when two things hit one another'. Webster's is at the forefront of the dumbing-down of English usage. I didn't know of the connection between thesaurus.com and Webster's or I wouldn't have bothered to use it. I don't expect useful help from the dictionary that gave us 'dord' and took something like fifty years to realise that they'd made a printing error.

P.S. - this site must be using Webster's as its dictionary: I had originally typed Meriiam instead of Merriam and it didn't catch the typo.

20090105

2009-01-10T08:34:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine from the village stopped in some time ago, accompanied by a fanatic. My friend credits his evangelical 'family' with saving his life. He was a drunk and an addict, and had ruined his relationship with his children and family with his behaviour. Finding religion turned is life around. In my opinion, he has replaced one set of drugs with another, but it makes him happy to believe as he does, and that is fine with me. We've established ground rules that preclude discussions of his beliefs: his myth structure is of no interest to me whatsoever. The other day, though, he had a visiting 'brother': one of those men who look as though they are starving to death and have those intense eyes sunk in deep, dark recesses. You've seen them, sometimes even without the white jackets with the really long arms. I greeted my friend, and his companion informed me he was spreading the gospel of John. I told him quite graphically where and how he could spread it, and turned back to my work. But it made me wonder again: who the hell do you think you are? Why should I, a total stranger, care one whit about your religious myth and what you believe it has done to improve your life? It makes no sense to me, this belief in some creature who is all-powerful and governs one's life from some invisible place, but if it makes you happy and a better person, then go for it. I just don't need to know about it, because it is none of my business. So why do you have this compulsion to tell me about it? All flavours of religion are the same: 'we're saved, you're not, ha ha ha, we win'. Well, some of us have grown past the fear of the unknown that started these myths in the first place, and think the joke's on you: this is what we get, and if you choose to spend your life spreading hate and exclusivity, you deserve pity, not praise. The only difference between organised religion and Hitler (and his chosen race shite) is that the murders are more subtle. If your belief brings you joy, which in most cases I don't think it does, then more power to you. It's not a rational basis for a life, and it sure as hell is incompatible with government (and education), so keep it to yourself. We'll all be much better off.

2008 01 05

2009-01-03T21:56:00.001-06:00

Well, that's pretty much done, thank Odin. I mean, of course, Christmas in a Catholic country, something of a trial for those of us with a different (and, by the way, highly unappreciated here) take on the whole damn thing. For the first twelve or fifteen days of December, a diurnal saint had to be celebrated with (1) fireworks and (2) loud soi-disant dance music. Unfortunately, I haven't found the Mexican equivalent of earplugs yet, so have had to listen to a lot of stuff I'd rather ignore. This is a small village surrounded by other slightly-distant small villages, and the position of the house up its hill between two of them means that I get to hear all this much more clearly than I'd actually like. Especially the five carols over and over from the bell-tower. Anyway, I've been thinking about the relief of not hearing all this shite every night, and here it is again, another techno drum driven three chord assault. Oh well, it has to end sometime. This all vaguely leads to thinking about New Year resolutions and the pointlessness thereof, and my take on the whole "new start" thing. I like to think about the preceding year and decide what was fabulous about it, to concentrate on the good. And that has been quite a chore this year, with one thing and another. To the good, I'm living in a much more congenial climate, surrounded by pretty little mountains. I'm learning a veritable cornucopia of skills I never needed living my urban life-'til-now, such as ovine herding and chicken-coop cleaning. I've made great new friends who are kindly correcting my Spanish and helping me acclimate to the expat life. My health is not deteriorating in leaps and bounds. On the other hand, I haven't seen my husband/boyfriend/partner (choose desired flavour of nomenclature) in basically a year, we both have no money, and I'm learning a veritable cornucopia of skills I never needed living my urban life-'til-now. Computer access is the lifeblood of my global existence, and all my friends around the world have been less present than I'd like because of the lack of decent, reliable internet access here. The world's economy is being dragged into the toilet by American 'globalisation', and I don't even want to think about what damage G.W. Bush can still manage to accomplish in the last throes of his tenure in the White House. Pres Elect Obama got there with the help of my Tribe, and has chosen a virulent homophobe to deliver the invocation at his inauguration to say thank you for our help.

All that and six bucks will buy you coffee, but it is important to remember that life is like that, shit happens, and try to go on being a positive force for good in the world. A small way to help is freerice.com, a lexicon game that donates twenty grains of rice to starving people for every right answer. It's fun, simple, and makes a small difference.

Have a good New Year, everyone.

20081223 p.s.

2008-12-23T09:50:00.001-06:00

After I posted, I remembered that I had originally described the other blogger, in vague terms designed not to identify her but to indicate that I had not made her up. I commented that she was from Texas and that she had one hell of a good plastic surgeon, and at the end of my post thanked her for voting. A Democrat from Texas is worth noting because of the rarity of the occurrence, and I sincerely compliment her on her choice of surgeon because she doesn't look Joan Rivers, she looks great. Either surgery or she has a portrait in her attic that really looks awful. And with the traditional low turn-out in voters, it is great to read about the work she did stumping for her beliefs. I didn't think I needed to explain any of that, but I should have known better. The point of her post was that she made a difference; the point of my comment was that she was not the only one who worked hard to get someone elected and that a whole group of those others had been insulted or spurned or denigrated by the winner's choice of a raging homophobe to deliver the invocation.

20081223

2008-12-23T01:28:00.000-06:00

First post on the new site. I came across a post on the old site that gushed poetic about the election of Barack Obama and the author's good work in stumping for her candidate. I have been reading a lot about the inauguration and the number of gay people appointed (or not) to the incoming administration. I thought that it needed a little leavening, so I left a comment (paraphrased because the original was wiped by the old blog moderator):

"PresElect Obama has chosen a 'pastor' named Rick Warren (who was a very vocal supporter of the Proposition 8 'amendment' to the California constitution which stripped gays of the court-ordered right to marry) to be part of his inauguration. This choice has really insulted a lot of the liberal and gay supporters who helped get Mr. Obama elected. He has justified his choice by saying that he is a uniter, not a divider, and that, even though he doesn't agree with everything Rick Warren has to say, it is somehow, magically, not an endorsement by Obama to have Rick Warren officiate at this inauguration. By that reasoning, PresElect is saying that he would be honoured to have the KKK David Duke, Himmler and Hitler, and George Wallace on the dais with him. After all, they don't agree on everything but they can still be friends. So, Liberals' and gays' high hopes aside, Obama appears to be the same old same old in a new (darker) colour, and gays are still the lowest life-form in the country. President Elect Obama: "Thanks for getting me elected, suckers"."

This post got me thrown out of the old blog community for violating their terms of service, so here I am. As I don't consider this post to be: "verbal abuse, bigotry, hatred, harassment, threats, lewdness, offensiveness, obscenity, illegality, spamming, commercial messages, mass messages, or even that which is simply deemed antisocial, without value to the discussion, off-topic, irrelevant, or duplicative", I am unclear as to how it violated said terms, but they write the rules, so there we have it. Rick Warren can equate same-sex marriage to paedophilia, bestiality and incest, but my saying that Obama is not the golden boy that the original poster thinks is not allowed. Go figure.