OK, as you probably know by now, my favorite American holiday is Halloween. Nothing is more fun than Halloween. It's the one day of the year that I am legally allowed to be "myself". Yes, I use that term VERY loosely. I have spent way too many thousands of dollars putting costumes together for just a couple of hours of fun. I have been a pack of cigarettes (Marlboro's), a bottle of Clorox bleach, a vampire pancake, Amelia Earhart, the 102'd dalmation (totally special needs), Frieda Kalo (not pretty), a cinder block, a bottle of ketchup, a computer mouse, several different state cops and last year, Mount St. Helen. Hey, I spend at least half a year getting these things right. What can I say, money is no object. You just gotta do what you gotta do. Tomorrow I will be Medea. I just can't figure out which children to eat or what cliff I should throw myself off of after I set myself on fire. Yes, I dearly love Halloween!!!
But it's the next two days that really float my boat. Dia de los Muertes. This is where I really shine. This celebration makes me smile. You get to honor those who, how shall I say this, have gone "beyond". You get to build alters. You get to eat more skull shaped marzipan goodies than you can shake a chupacraba at. You get to party all night in a cemetery, eating and drinking your brains out at grandma's grave. With a boom box blaring. After you have spent the better part of a week cleaning it up and festooning it with marigolds and paper flowers not found in nature. I love that!!!
But the best part is that I get to raid every Mexican bakery in town for a trunk full of pan de muertos. Con azucar. This stuff just rocks and I am addicted to it. I vacuum seal it and freeze it so I can savor it over the winter. It is a bread so heavenly. It is sweet. It is flavored with orange blossom oil and a hint of anise. It will make you smile, think of grandma and do a whole-hearted "grito". Yeah, it's that good!!!
Several years ago in Mexico a opossum broke into our house during a rainstorm and violated the pan de muertos that I had stupidly left laying on the kitchen counter. I was not happy. I sat out bear traps for that little motherfucker. Do NOT mess with my pan de muertos!!!
On Friday and Saturday I will be indulging (overindulging???) in homemade bittersweet hot chocolate from Mexico and happily dunking large chunks of pan de muerto in it while the excess runs down my face and ruins yet another one of my polo shirts. What can I say, I have "food shirts" and the ones that I can still wear in public without being too embarrassed by the stains of my latest feeding frenzy. Yep, I'm kind of a sloppy eater.
My blood sugar is going to shoot through the roof. I will be covered in crumbs. My mustache will have sugar-cycles trailing off of it and my eyes will be sort of glazed over. Well, actually VERY glazed over. Life is SO good!!!
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
HER NAME IS CAROLINE...
She is my upstairs neighbor. She is from Puerto Rico, She can cuss like a sailor in several languages, as can I, and we swap recipes like there is no tomorrow. She knows how to do things with platanos I could never imagine and I ply her with peanut butter cookies. She makes me smile. If I spoke Spanish as well as she speaks English I would be doing a happy dance naked. Sorry, not a pretty picture...
This July she damned near died. Her heart gave out. A triple bypass, a couple of new heart valves and an aortal transplant. In the middle of the fucking night. Holy fucking shit!!! When she finally got out of the hospital she knocked on my door as she was going upstairs, held up by two of her children, opened her robe and showed me the incision scar. I sank to my knees. Yep, I've seen her tits. As I tell her, "Cupcake, they opened you up like they were gutting a deer".
She is an incredibly feisty woman and I love those kind of women. Yeah, she's one of those women who could eat through you like chain saw. She is my friend. Thank god, I'd hate to be her enemy. I would surrender immediately. She can make a hurricane look like a walk in the park with a purse dog pale in comparison. I love that!!! Lord knows, I love a woman with some stones...
This afternoon we sat down with some of her Puerto Rican coffee and a bag of my homemade cookies. She does coffee as good as I do cookies. I knocked on her door wearing a red foam clown nose and google-eye glasses and she welcomed me in. Hey, life just don't get no better than that.
Sometimes life deals you Aces and Eights, sometimes it just gives you a couple of Deuce's but if you're very lucky sometimes it gives you a wonderful lady from Puerto Rico with a soul so large it just makes you smile. I am blessed and dancing naked at the moment....
This July she damned near died. Her heart gave out. A triple bypass, a couple of new heart valves and an aortal transplant. In the middle of the fucking night. Holy fucking shit!!! When she finally got out of the hospital she knocked on my door as she was going upstairs, held up by two of her children, opened her robe and showed me the incision scar. I sank to my knees. Yep, I've seen her tits. As I tell her, "Cupcake, they opened you up like they were gutting a deer".
She is an incredibly feisty woman and I love those kind of women. Yeah, she's one of those women who could eat through you like chain saw. She is my friend. Thank god, I'd hate to be her enemy. I would surrender immediately. She can make a hurricane look like a walk in the park with a purse dog pale in comparison. I love that!!! Lord knows, I love a woman with some stones...
This afternoon we sat down with some of her Puerto Rican coffee and a bag of my homemade cookies. She does coffee as good as I do cookies. I knocked on her door wearing a red foam clown nose and google-eye glasses and she welcomed me in. Hey, life just don't get no better than that.
Sometimes life deals you Aces and Eights, sometimes it just gives you a couple of Deuce's but if you're very lucky sometimes it gives you a wonderful lady from Puerto Rico with a soul so large it just makes you smile. I am blessed and dancing naked at the moment....
Sunday, October 6, 2013
IT WAS A FRIDAY...
I remember it all too well. Everyone alive at that time does. November 22, 1963. I was in 5th grade and we were in the middle of our math lesson. Twenty minutes away from lunch break. We all could smell what what was being prepared down in the cafeteria. And then all hell broke loose....
The principal came running into the room, hysterical. Screaming. The President had been shot. She was maniacal. She and my teacher went hysterical. We all sat there, confused. They both broke into tears while we sat there, confused even more. What the hell had just happened??? Over the next 20 minutes even more hell broke loose. Our nation had just been shattered. Much like our Presidents head.
I was way too young to understand the true damage of this but I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. WAY terribly wrong. For shit's sake, I was in 5th grade and I watched my world go to hell in a hand basket. By the time that I got home we had a new president. And my world, our world and your world had changed. Irreparably. Even as a child I was stunned. But I wasn't really sure why.
It was "simpler" time back then. Today this would have caused a total lock down. EVERYWHERE. Back then it was different. We just got sent home. With no lunch. I was still confused as I walked in the front door. The television was on and my mother was on her knees, hunched over the coffee table in front of our big Curtis-Mathis. In tears. Listening to Walter Cronkite who was also in tears. What had just happened? Something was so horridly wrong and I was too young to understand the depths of it. It would only get worse...
School was canceled. Regular broadcast television was canceled. It was nothing but news broadcasts. And they were all ugly and desperately looking for absolution. And then a couple of days later all hell broke loose again. I was setting at the snack bar in our kitchen, my mother and I sharing a couple of fried egg sandwiches and watching the news over a 16-inch portable television when we both witnessed the live assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. The sandwich fell out of my hand and onto the floor. Our English Bulldog dived on it in a second. In grainy black and white, on a small screen, with some aluminum foil on one of the rabbit ears I had just witnessed a murder. Live. I was 10 years old. And once again, without lunch. A murder on live television. Over lunch. It took me almost 30 years to regain the courage to even consider a fried egg sandwich on toast again. To this day, I can only finish about half of it.
Thru the decades that followed I acquired some understanding. Some insight into those happenings. And doubts and questions as well. I have witnessed the death of his two youngest brothers, his wife and his youngest son, all tragically. By bullets, disease and accidents that make no sense whatsoever. And once again, I sit here with half of a sandwich in front of me, made way to salty by way too many tears...
w
The principal came running into the room, hysterical. Screaming. The President had been shot. She was maniacal. She and my teacher went hysterical. We all sat there, confused. They both broke into tears while we sat there, confused even more. What the hell had just happened??? Over the next 20 minutes even more hell broke loose. Our nation had just been shattered. Much like our Presidents head.
I was way too young to understand the true damage of this but I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. WAY terribly wrong. For shit's sake, I was in 5th grade and I watched my world go to hell in a hand basket. By the time that I got home we had a new president. And my world, our world and your world had changed. Irreparably. Even as a child I was stunned. But I wasn't really sure why.
It was "simpler" time back then. Today this would have caused a total lock down. EVERYWHERE. Back then it was different. We just got sent home. With no lunch. I was still confused as I walked in the front door. The television was on and my mother was on her knees, hunched over the coffee table in front of our big Curtis-Mathis. In tears. Listening to Walter Cronkite who was also in tears. What had just happened? Something was so horridly wrong and I was too young to understand the depths of it. It would only get worse...
School was canceled. Regular broadcast television was canceled. It was nothing but news broadcasts. And they were all ugly and desperately looking for absolution. And then a couple of days later all hell broke loose again. I was setting at the snack bar in our kitchen, my mother and I sharing a couple of fried egg sandwiches and watching the news over a 16-inch portable television when we both witnessed the live assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. The sandwich fell out of my hand and onto the floor. Our English Bulldog dived on it in a second. In grainy black and white, on a small screen, with some aluminum foil on one of the rabbit ears I had just witnessed a murder. Live. I was 10 years old. And once again, without lunch. A murder on live television. Over lunch. It took me almost 30 years to regain the courage to even consider a fried egg sandwich on toast again. To this day, I can only finish about half of it.
Thru the decades that followed I acquired some understanding. Some insight into those happenings. And doubts and questions as well. I have witnessed the death of his two youngest brothers, his wife and his youngest son, all tragically. By bullets, disease and accidents that make no sense whatsoever. And once again, I sit here with half of a sandwich in front of me, made way to salty by way too many tears...
w
Thursday, October 3, 2013
HANG ON, WAIT A SECOND, SOMEONE'S KNOCKING ON MY DOOR. I WONDER WHO THAT COULD BE...
Oh, shit, it's the NSA!!!
C'mon in guys, I'm totally safe and completely unarmed.
heh, heh, heh....
C'mon in guys, I'm totally safe and completely unarmed.
heh, heh, heh....
WHAT THE HELL HAS JUST HAPPENED IN D.C.???
I am at a loss right now. I don't know whether I should be appalled, relieved, disgusted or just plain confused.
Depending upon which "report" that you read on line you get the most fucking convoluted "reporting" imaginable. I went to college through the Journalism Department. There was ONE HARD FAST RULE: Who, What, When, Where and Why. You did NOT deviate from that. You reported NOTHING until you had the facts. Yes, the facts. The "coverage" of this story has sickened me. Apparently, no one has the fucking facts yet but they still insist on "reporting" what they think they "know". This story changes by the minute. How fucking sad is that???
OK, I'll give you my spin on this. A woman from Connecticut, driving a black Infiniti sedan with a child in the back seat hits a security barrier wall out side of the White House. She is then forced into a high speed chase by WAY to many police cruisers. She ends up on the circle drive around the Capitol Building, again under siege by many cop cars. She is finally trapped, surrounded and held at gun point by screaming "security forces". What do they do? Knee-jerk like any well trained, paranoid and over-processed officials of law enforcement would do. Start screaming at her and then open fire. What kind of idiots are these idiots??? Can you not see a baby in a car seat in the back seat.???
Did she make a wrong turn. Probably. Did she panic? Probably. Was she lost? More than likely. Did we (and I use that term VERY loosely) take the opportunity to overreact? Yep. Who started the gun fire that shut the nations capitol down? That would be the cops. Who killed this woman? That would be the cops. In force. Violent force, with possibly no reason whatsoever. Until they can prove that the Infiniti she was driving with her child was packed full of explosives, chemical weapons or nuclear waste (with her child in the back seat) then I want to hear some serious groveling and a whole lot of apologies. Probably not going to happen though. National Security, don't you know.
I am so FUCKING tired of this kind of shit. When did we (as in, the People) just let our rights, freedoms and everything that we are supposed to be holding dear just disappear in the name of "freedom and security"???
I hope that this woman is proven to be an innocent. Cut down for no reason other than paranoia, small dicks with guns and a warrant to use them against an enemy that has yet to be clearly defined. When the bloody hell did "we" become the enemy??? Stop this fucking insanity!!!
And yes, I know fully well that "they" are watching "me". Fuck you, you do not scare me...
Depending upon which "report" that you read on line you get the most fucking convoluted "reporting" imaginable. I went to college through the Journalism Department. There was ONE HARD FAST RULE: Who, What, When, Where and Why. You did NOT deviate from that. You reported NOTHING until you had the facts. Yes, the facts. The "coverage" of this story has sickened me. Apparently, no one has the fucking facts yet but they still insist on "reporting" what they think they "know". This story changes by the minute. How fucking sad is that???
OK, I'll give you my spin on this. A woman from Connecticut, driving a black Infiniti sedan with a child in the back seat hits a security barrier wall out side of the White House. She is then forced into a high speed chase by WAY to many police cruisers. She ends up on the circle drive around the Capitol Building, again under siege by many cop cars. She is finally trapped, surrounded and held at gun point by screaming "security forces". What do they do? Knee-jerk like any well trained, paranoid and over-processed officials of law enforcement would do. Start screaming at her and then open fire. What kind of idiots are these idiots??? Can you not see a baby in a car seat in the back seat.???
Did she make a wrong turn. Probably. Did she panic? Probably. Was she lost? More than likely. Did we (and I use that term VERY loosely) take the opportunity to overreact? Yep. Who started the gun fire that shut the nations capitol down? That would be the cops. Who killed this woman? That would be the cops. In force. Violent force, with possibly no reason whatsoever. Until they can prove that the Infiniti she was driving with her child was packed full of explosives, chemical weapons or nuclear waste (with her child in the back seat) then I want to hear some serious groveling and a whole lot of apologies. Probably not going to happen though. National Security, don't you know.
I am so FUCKING tired of this kind of shit. When did we (as in, the People) just let our rights, freedoms and everything that we are supposed to be holding dear just disappear in the name of "freedom and security"???
I hope that this woman is proven to be an innocent. Cut down for no reason other than paranoia, small dicks with guns and a warrant to use them against an enemy that has yet to be clearly defined. When the bloody hell did "we" become the enemy??? Stop this fucking insanity!!!
And yes, I know fully well that "they" are watching "me". Fuck you, you do not scare me...
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