Ah Ah Ah Ah Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive

Spring Freeze

maro9

Alien Plant Life

Woodpile Altar

White House Kitchen Garden

I'm verklempt. This has made my day. After so many years of the White House insanely trashing the environment (and everything else), it's unreal to me that someone in that very same house is doing something I like. And it just keeps happening!

from msnbc:
WASHINGTON - The White House is getting a new garden. First lady Michelle Obama is scheduled to break ground Friday on a new garden near the fountain on the South Lawn that will supply the White House kitchen.
She will be joined by students from Bancroft Elementary School in the District of Columbia. The children will stay involved with the project, including planting the fruits, vegetables and herbs in the coming weeks and harvesting the crops later in the year.
"We're going to get a big one in our back yard, the South Lawn," she promised the volunteers.
Such a White House garden has been a dream of noted California chef Alice Waters, considered a leader in the movement to encourage consumption of locally grown, organic food. She has been appealing for change through the taste buds since the 1960s.
She organized a series of fundraising dinners in Washington before President Barack Obama's inauguration in January that served foods purchased from local producers at an area farmer's market to show how it can be done.
Reached Thursday at her Berkeley, Calif., restaurant, Chez Panisse, Waters said she was thrilled by the news. "It just tells you that this country cares about people's good health and about the care of the land," she said. "To have this sort of 'victory' garden, this message goes out that everyone can grow a garden and have free food."
Victory gardens were vegetable gardens planted during the world wars with encouragement from the government to make sure there was enough food for civilians and the troops. Waters says her family had such a garden.
Waters has been lobbying for a vegetable garden at the White House since 1992. Recent White Houses have grown some herbs and have practiced limited container gardening on the mansion's roof to supply it with tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables.
The new garden will be the first on the White House grounds in many decades [Since Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden during WWII], Waters said.
She said Michelle Obama always has been receptive to the idea.
"She talks about food in connection with children, and it's a beautiful thing," Waters said.
Waters also has pushed the administration to adopt her Edible Schoolyard project in which children plant their own produce to eat in the school cafeteria. Most public schools are serving too much processed food that is contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic, she argues.

from HuffPost:
[T]he Obamas' garden will have 55 varieties of vegetables -- from a wish list of the kitchen staff -- grown from organic seedlings started at the executive mansion's greenhouses.
The Obamas will feed their love of Mexican food with cilantro, tomatilloes and hot peppers. Lettuces will include red romaine, green oak leaf, butterhead, red leaf and galactic. There will be spinach, chard, collards and black kale. For desserts, there will be a patch of berries. And herbs will include some more unusual varieties, like anise hyssop and Thai basil. A White House carpenter who is a beekeeper will tend two hives for honey.

Action Shot

Can you find me?

Pope Condom XVI

I'm out of the loop on what's a sin and what's not. I don't believe in sin. Unfortunately, the pope does and he thinks that condoms are a sin. If he could just put it in his mind that women are not baby machines, maybe his eyes will open to his sin: denying god's children protection from a deadly disease. Or maybe his attitude towards Africans is the same as the way he feels about women.

from msnbc [bajesus in red]:

"Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa on Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent's fight against HIV." [But, he didn't have a better answer]

"He has said that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. [yeah, on the offensive side] The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease." [For adults?! Hello, we're human, not gods!]

"'You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms,' [Okay, but we don't have a resolution--this will suffice] the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. 'On the contrary, it increases the problem.'" [Sources? The problem of what? More Africans?]

Protesters say No to pope and Yes to condoms.

Ta-Daaa!

The Stuff

Have you ever seen "The Stuff"? I can't say I highly recommend it and I can't say don't rent it. I can say that this is B-Horror movie Gold. It's the shittiest movie, but the palet of ridiculousness allows the viewer to engage and interact with this visual medium. I was young, my mother, two sisters and I were down at the lake. My family had a lake place thats ownership stretched back to my great grandfather, Leo. He divorced my great grandmother, Avis, and moved to Warsaw in a house on the bluffs of Turkey Creek. He stayed there, I think, until his death. Which coincidentally, came two days after my birth. I know he was aware that I was his first great granddaughter. My grandpa told me that Leo wished to have his ashes buried next to his house on the bluff. I always invisioned his urn as an old Mayonaise jar. His children granted that request, but then my grandpa and his brother decided to dig it up. He said they just didn't think it was right. It just occured to me that it probably had to do with their Christian beliefs. It also just occured to me that I don't know what they did with Leo's ashes. Hmmm. I guess I'll have to ask. Moving on, I have some interesting memories of that place. The time I foggily remember cutting my heel on glass that was in my crib, roaming around the old boy scout camp and getting riddled with seed ticks, going to "the point" and climbing around gigantic limestone slabs that created a fossilized superman's house, buzzing around on my cousin's dirt bike shouting out the name of a kid who was missing and later found drown down by a dock we saw him swimming by, swimming down at "the point" and having schools of shad hit my face and neck, walking down to the bird cave which was covered in bird shit and wasn't as cool as I dreamt it to be, jumping off our dock without my life jacket, realizing it mid-air and then sinking like a rock for the first time, and fearfully pushing off the slimy bog bottom to finally break the surface where the air never tasted so sweet. As time went on, Leo's house turned into a certified condemned building. A raccoon lived there. My father's generation were abuzz with ideas on renewing the home's shabby image. The architect, cousin Steve, was drawing up plans while his brother Gary rehabbed the bathroom. My cousin Kenny and I drew up our kid ideas for the lake place. And then my grandfather got upset and all the joy came to a halt. He cautioned his fear of in-fighting over the property and that his experience with his siblings proved it inevitable. Bitterness and grudge holding ensued and probably still does. Yes, there's a natural tendency for that in our breed. Years later, the property saw a renaissance and Leo's home was torn down and replaced by a double-wide trailer courtesy of Avis' sister Aunt Bess. This is where my mom, sisters and I first watched "The Stuff". After we arrived at our trailer by the lake and unpacked the car, we ventured off to Simpson's, a convenience/sundries store a little ways back on the MM highway. It's weird, the store was even painted the color of the Simpson's cartoon characters. I always wondered if they did it on purpose. In keeping up with the times, the tiny backroad grocery installed a video section. We happened to bring our portable TV/VHS player so we picked through their off-brand video collection. Of course, we couldn't pass up "The Stuff". There is one thing you should know, my sisters and I never shy from a cheesy B-Horror movie, be it, "The Granny," "The Paper Boy," "Dolly Dearest," or "Crawl Space." We got back to the trailer under ominous tornado scented skies. Fake wood weather radio in hand, my mother sat on the couch and watched us while we made fun of and laughed good hearty laughs at this campy vehicle. Our favorite line was after the stone-faced film noir wannabe detective and a curious youth escape from the young boy's home. It was too late, the boy's parents had eaten The Stuff, which I guess, expanded in their body cavity like caulk or sprayable insulation. The boy had to pretend to eat The Stuff to satisfy his parents/Stuff zombies. He tactfully tricks his parents/Stuff zombies into letting him eat The Stuff in the bathroom. After dumping The Stuff down the toilet, where it oozes around of its own accord, he ingeniously replaces it with shaving cream and comes out of the bathroom scooping heapfuls of it into his pie hole. Driving away from his house the boy gets sick in the back seat and proclaims wildly that he just ate shaving cream. The detective deadpans, "Well, everybody has to eat shaving cream once in a while." Really? One of life's little lessons, eh? It was a good night and even better because the skies cleared of tornadic clouds so my mom rested easy. She doesn't take too kindly to tornadoes especially since, according to my family, it's a scientific truth that trailers are tornado magnets. A few more years later, the trailer became derelict again and young Ozark toughs smashed out windows and littered the property with beer cans. My husband and I stayed there one time early in our relationship. I got to show him the cool limestone rock that jutted out of our property and seemed to suspend over Turkey Creek lake. We observed the bird's eye view from the bluff as magnificent winged turkey vultures glided so near. With the beer cans, broken windows and no one in the vicinity aware of our presence, we had a hard time going to sleep with visions of "Deliverance" hillbillies dancing in our heads. It was still a nice time, but it was the last time. My grandfather decided to sell it, no one in the family except the poor ones were interested. My family lake property, R.I.P.

Hot Fuzz

I love this movie--I could watch it a million times and not be sick of it. Here is one of my favorite scenes:

Supercop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) has been reassigned to the small quaint town of Sandford. On his first day, he goes to lunch at a pub with his new coworkers, who are feeling a bit inferior to this big city cop.

Nicholas Angel: I didn't mean to upset the apple cart.
Detective Andy Cartwright (in a snarly tone): Oh yeah, cause we all sell apples 'round here, don't we?
Police officer Danny Butterman: Your dad sells apples, Andy.
Detective Andy Cartwright (cheerful, now): And raspberries.

It's mainly the way Det. Cartwright says "And raspberries" so quick and proud that makes this scene funny. I tried to find it in Youtube, but unbelieveably, I couldn't. You will have to see the movie for yourself.

Speaking of Simon Pegg, if they ever make a movie of "The Adventures of Tin Tin," I think he should play Tin Tin.

The Adventures of Tin Tin is another show I can't get enough of--it's a really great cartoon. The creator, Herge, is a very interesting character. I saw a POV on PBS a couple years ago about him, called "Tintin and I".

Oh man! I just googled Simon Pegg and Tintin and I found out Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are making a Tintin movie and Simon Pegg is in it, but not as Tintin! Bummer! He and his frequent cohort, Nick Frost, are going to play the two bumbling detectives Thompson and Thomson. It looks like the film will be animated with motion capture technology (think Beowolf and Polar Express). Aaah! I hope they change their mind and put Mr. Pegg as Tintin.

Remedy for the Bitter Cold Strikes Again

Ha Ha Ha

Ha-ppy Birthday!

Just for the hell of it

Will there ever be another Leo Sayer? Does anyone prognosticate a return to the sensitive 1970s white man that isn't afraid to sing cheerful and heartfelt love songs like "When I need you," "More than words can say," and "You make me feel like dancing"? A white man that isn't afraid to let his naturally curly hair resemble a 1970s microphone? Sadly, I think that that innocence is lost. Any resemblance of this would be done with sarcasm and cheesiness. Happily, I'm fine with it.

Elements of Camp

shunt of air, like smoke

The energy transferred

through a shunt of air

inside somewhere puffed,

as if through a straw and quietly exploded

and pushed out of me and into it

It is what I was doing

the thing I was doing: massaging my husband

paying attention to the bones; massaging all along the bones

the nooks in the joints

scrubberly cleansing the daily stress on the body

I wrote this down soon after this event happened. I really felt this--it was weird.

Education, Medication

Yes! I found some old educational television series I remembered watching in grade school. I'm still trying to find a clip of "Cover to Cover with John Robbins"--it's so awesome and relaxing. Also, I'm trying to remember the name of another educational tv series that I think I watched around the same time as "All About You"--I can't remember if the entire series was about weather or if it was a topic on a particular episode. If I remember correctly, there was a talking clock, which was really a man with a painted face sticking his head through a whole in a set piece that resembled a clock. Anyone out there know what I'm talking about?

1st grade, The Letter People:


2nd grade, All About You:


All About You

5th grade, Mulligan Stew: