Twisted Spinster

While I am waiting for thoughts to form themselves into words, I thought I’d share with you some recent photos of how I have been occupying myself for the past few days. First, here is a picture of my dinner of a couple of days ago:

I call that my “pretend it’s already autumn in some place that has proper seasons” dinner. Yes, those are brussel sprouts — I love me some fresh brussel sprouts smothered in butter. And sweet potatoes, I have discovered, are excellent when not canned, and I put salt and butter on them, not brown sugar. (Sweet potatoes are sweet enough — the brown sugar makes them too cloying for my tastes.) And the meat is these pork medallions I found in the grocery store for not too much money. So that was Tuesday night.

Tonight I had this:

First, the photo came out double exposed like that for some reason — I think I need a new battery in my camera. Anyway, that’s green beans (fresh, of course), these really thin steaks, and fresh mushrooms fried in the steak and olive oil grease, with a bit of the zinfandel you see in that wine glass over there poured over them to deglaze the pan. And I also had the brilliant idea of chopping up a shallot, a habanero pepper, and half of a long thin pepper called a “finger hot,” and frying them a bit in the pan as well. Oh oh oh. I am such a good cook. However, I think I had better invest in some gloved for any further chopping up of fresh hot peppers — I had tingly, burning fingers for over an hour.

And that brings me to my project! Which already looks like it’s going to expand… observe:

Yup — that’s a real pot, full of real dirt, planted with real plants: thyme, rosemary, chives, purple basil, and two tomato plants (one a red variety and another a yellow) hidden in the back. If all goes well and my notorious black thumb doesn’t kill any of them I should have tomatoes in or around December. I love fresh tomatoes and fresh herbs, and the plants were so cheap. The most expensive part of the project was the pot and it cost about twelve dollars. Anyway, I am already getting ambitious — Walmart had some varieties of peppers, cucumbers, and other veggies, not to mention more herbs like mint and cilantro. And I’d love to have a lemon tree in a pot. And I could grow lettuce…

Xena (the younger cat) loves the herbs. I’ve already caught her gnawing on my chives, and she can sit and smell the thyme for hours, or would if there weren’t lizards and the neighbor cats to distract her. Squeaky, my older cat, is more mellow; she just likes going out to the patio for warmth. Here she is, getting baked in the hot sun like a cake:

More later…

Remember when “telling it like it is” (that is, speaking and writing in blunt, “real world” language devoid of the fripperies and embellishments of what was seen to be over-educated, dessicated discourse) was promoted and praised? If you’re old enough to remember the Sixties and Seventies you do. And like many of that era’s fashions, this practice soon became overused and exaggerated, resulting in today’s atmosphere of f-word this, f-word that in areas that the liberal arts were supposed to “uplift” and enlighten, which in turn has led to a frantic backpedaling and seeking of the sort of enforced niceness that was once seen as one of the main weapons of the older generation against the young. What a difference a few decades of “brutal truth” makes…

The problem is, along with the rules of polite discourse we have thrown out the idea that there is a superior culture that all must at least have knowledge of and preferably imitate as well as we can. So instead of a movement towards “highfalutin’, fancy-assed” over-cultured activity, we get this:

As lawyers take over the internet, only a certain level of discourse is deemed acceptable. People like me, from lower class backgrounds, where blunt talk about the obvious, undeniable differences between ethnic groups is commonplace, are increasingly pressured to adopt a phony baloney way of writing in order to be considered acceptable.

The flowery utterances of the snobs of yore might have been irritating to the hoi-polloi, but at least it indicated a society firmly planted in the solid ground of Western Culture, all 2,000 plus years of it. Today’s yammering Kos kid and puling “spokesperson” for this or that politically-correct group of busibodies might as well come from another galaxy, one where all the stars have burnt out long ago.

HI folks, I’m not pining for the fjords — I’ve just been really lazy tired busy. Anyway…

I’d like to thank everyone who has donated so far. I need to send you all individual emails, as used to be my custom before I got so lazy busy tired. But seriously, you enabled me to get to work this week — especially since the price of gas has gone up anywhere from ten to forty cents a gallon around here. That being said, it turns out I am not going to be hired on as a permanent employee at the place where I’ve been temping. How do I know this? Well, yesterday I was introduced to the woman who has been hired for the position, and I’ve been training her. Yay. Well whatever — I have at least until the end of next week and maybe one more week to go and then unless I’ve found another position by then I’ll be experiencing more jobless time. I can tell you, I’ve just about had it with Florida. I know I’ve said this before, but now I am really serious. If I can swing it I’ll temp until I’ve managed to gather enough funds, sell everything except my cats and car, and then I’m driving off. I give myself until April ’09 — that’s when my lease ends anyway. I like my current apartment, but it has one drawback: it’s still in freakin’ Florida.

That being said, I still have some time here, so I have started a project. Tomorrow, or as soon as I get around to it, I’ll reveal the details. Until then, sayonara.

Eve Ensler is very worried that Sarah Palin is going to perform dentistry on polar bears. Or rape them. Or something. I’m not really sure, as I find the ravings of demented, pathetic loons hard to interpret. I did get that she is going to vote for Obama in November, despite the fact that she goes on and on about needing the whiteness of polar bears. Doesn’t she know that’s racist?

(Via.)

Update: wow, when you start looking you just can’t stop… Polar Bears for Obama. Do they have to apologize for not being black bears? (Should we start calling black bears African-American bears, even though there aren’t any bears in Africa? This is your head on Democrats…)

This one is more personal. In a previous post, I mentioned that I had to get rid of my debit card and cancel my direct deposit due to some unauthorized removal of funds from my account, which I could ill afford. (And which, as a matter of fact, caused my bank account to go into being overdrawn.) That means my employer, which is based in Atlanta, has to mail my check to me. I just checked the mailbox right now and so far no check. I don’t know if the mailman came yet or not — the postal schedule in Central Florida doesn’t seem to exactly operate like clockwork. I may not get my check until Monday. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I wasn’t almost out of certain non-essentials like food and gas. So to reiterate, if you have a spare dollar or two just taking up space in your life, I’ll be glad to give it a new home…

(I’m serious. Last night I had to break out the emergency penny fund and go to the drugstore for some, ah, necessities. And wouldn’t you know, I get to the cash register and there’s no one around, so I think “at least I won’t have a long line of people behind me waiting impatiently for me to count out $2.99 cents in pennies,” and then lo and behold, a line of people immediately started forming behind me.)

Okay, on to important things — I heard there was this gigantic hurricane about to hit the Gulf Coast. What’s it called? Oh yeah, Ike. It’s odd — I could swear that Gustav got more coverage than this one, even though it’s a much worse storm. (Just checked the tv news — Houston trashed, Galveston under water, over 4 million people without power.) If you ask me, once it was clear that everyone’s fun party playtime town, New Orleans, wasn’t directly threatened (though much of coastal Louisiana is getting flooded by storm surge, but fortunately not where celebrities go to get beignets and gumbo) and there is no special Republican event going on, many of the doomshriekers went elsewhere (to Alaska, apparently, where I hope they all get eaten by polar bears).

Oh, and the cynic in me wonders how many of those idiots who refused to evacuate places like Galveston were hoping to get a big fat FEMA check out of their ordeal? Not to mention some pity face time on teevee when they are rescued off the roofs of what remains of their homes. According to one news story, many of these stranded people started calling for rescue after such had become impossible, as they had been told would happen. Hurricanes: Ma Nature’s way of clearing the human race of idiots for hundreds of thousands of years.

Skulls! We all got ’em. We all love ’em!

(Soon to be removed: the stupid “Web 2.0 style” striped background. I hate stripes.)

Update: striped background gone! Yay! Coming soon: some sort of theme picker thingie, so everyone can have their own flavor of looks instead of having to be hostage to my whims. Unless I decide that holding everyone hostage to my whims is much more fun. Bwahahahahaha!

Okay, now the Obama campaign gaffes are approaching cosmic joke status. All that’s missing from this campaign is running commentary by Mike and his robot friends.

Oh — and yes, not only does McCain know how to send email, he’s been doing so for years. (Via.)

Update: and during the intermission we can all watch Wile E. Reporter, Super-Journalist.

Hi kids. I have either been too busy, or too tired, or too inundated by the cast-off weather of passing hurricanes (for example, Ike may have passed most of Florida by, but that storm I drove through yesterday to get home was no mere drizzle — streets were flooded, lightning hit the intersection five cars in front of me, I could barely see through the rain itself, etc.) to write much. And I’ve had other problems I haven’t bored my readers’ eyes about, such as the fun with a loose alternator belt that made me think I’d be without a car (and thus unable to get to my job), at said job they’ve hired a new supervisor but I still don’t know if I will get offered a permanent position, and I had to cancel my bank’s debit card because of a mysterious monthly charge from some credit checking company that I can’t trace, which threw off my whole bank account, so I had to stop my paycheck from direct depositing, which means I have to wait for it to come in the mail.

Which means right now I have about a dollar and fifty cents to last me until I get that check, and I just read that the gas providers are panicking over Hurricane Ike and are starting to ration gas and raise the prices. Which means this is a bleg! I don’t need much — my rent is paid, at least — but a few dollars here and there sure would help.

Read.

(Via.)