Jason Brown Skates, Alright!

I'm sure there is a language for writing about figure skating although I don't know it; my only language to express skating is that of dance and music. I'm a music fan of Irish American ancestry, finding the Riverdance music particularly moving; I am culturally encoded to find the rhythms and expressions moving, sometimes enough so to bring tears to my eyes or me to my feet.

Jason Brown's performance at the recent U.S. Nationals held in Boston blended dance, music and skating with such breathtaking results that I find myself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Indeed, his performance must be experienced to be understood.

No matter my previous awful schadenfreudeish new word inclinations, this is one skater I want to see execute without falling. The sheer joie de vivre of his performance deserves nothing less. Follow him on Twitter: @jasonbskates and stay tuned for his performance(s) in Sochi. #NotIrishAMERICANButDidUsJusticeNevertheless

"Fahmtastic Story!" Notes from a New Reader

Amazon.com Review by Harry Hart-Browne:

Our Year at The Fahm: or, Blessed are the Cracked for They Shall Let in the Light (Paperback)

"What a delightful book! Sara Parker gives us an unvarnished tour of her new life with her tongue in her cheek and her heart on her sleeve. It reminded me a little of "George Washington Slept Here" where city folk get countrified the hard way.

Sara shares her woes and triumphs with such humor - both extra dry and fairily whimsical - that I become involved immediately, and stayed that way. A real page-turner. She treats language like a lovely lump of Play-Dough, sometimes creating words, phrases and names for inanimate objects that convey their essence far more effectively than conventional wordery can. (It's catching!)

Although this true account is often a romp worthy of Lucy, it also ventures fearlessly to lonely places, human frailties, political insights, world woes, love of animals, as well as rampant mouse poo and homemade applesauce. It shows us how hard hard work can be, the shock of sudden crises, and helps us, by example, to go with the flow. It honors the beauty of Nature. It celebrates good people and laughs at the meanies. Like the official who railed against local beavers building dams without permits. No kidding.

It connected with me on many levels. Sara's every response to her new life is informed by her big sensitive heart, which in turn warmed mine. My inner child smiles. Her subtitle suits her - she lets in the light. Recommended."

I am humbled. 

Our Year at The Fahm PRINT EDITION Now Available for Purchase!

For those of you who have been pining for the good old-fashioned BOOK book version of Our Year at The Fahm or, Blessed are the Cracked for they Shall Let in the Light, your fondest wish is now reality! Our Year at The Fahm PRINT EDITION is available immediately for purchase through the publisher:

www.CreateSpace.com/Our Year at The Fahm

Thank you again to all who contributed to this version, especially Jean Hayes, Jennifer Basquiat, RV Cummings, and Catharine A. Sowards. This edition has some new content and an expanded references section (as well as a spine!). I am reminded daily that I am lucky indeed to have so many willing and able to help me get this far. It feels pretty darn good to have completed this phase of the project.


The book will also be available via Amazon.com in approximately 10 days. However, I encourage you, Dear Readers, to purchase directly from the publisher, Create Space, here:

www.CreateSpace.com/Our Year at The Fahm

By doing so, more of your book buying power supports an independent self-publishing author, and less a mega Retailopolis new word and that's a very good thing!


If you haven't already, be sure to like Our Year at The Fahm on Facebook. And as always, thoughts and comments - or thoughtful comments - are welcome!

It's a Good Thing Ya'll Keep Austin Weird

...because when my plans went suddenly awry deep in the heart of downtown I was able to stomp my way back to Sanity (and a phone and a map) without a single discouraging word despite my very sweaty public dishevelment, indignant aura, and occasional muttered expletives.  A couple of posts ago I mentioned felix culpa, a series of Miserable Events that eventually lead to a Happier Outcome; the Miserable Events in this case involved riding shotgun in a car driving around direction-less on heavily trafficked urban freeways. After 48 hours of it I was sick, dizzy, cranky, disoriented, and ready to do something else. Before long, I found myself doing something else, all right,  I found myself walking up 5th St. with purpose and certainty.  My purpose was present but unclear not unusual; my certainty was that I would keep walking until I knew where I was going amid all ya'lls apparent obsession with strangely-horned cattle.*

The Miserable Events  (however miserable and eventful) did lead to a Happier Outcome. Had I not exited the wild ride when I did, I certainly would have missed Haus Frauing at Cousin Laurie's which would have been a horrible shame. Haus Frauing that evening was a blast even if Cousin Richard did deliver me there, again sweaty, disheveled, and this time also a little sunburned. Right then my sweaty dishevelment was far more enjoyable than earlier in the day, likely due to the fact that Richard was dropping me off at Laurie's after a very long, lovely drive in his sporty black convertible through the early spring of Texas Hill Country...

* On our way to the Clay Pit to have lunch with Olivia, my friend Tori gave us a quick tour of the downtown area near campus. As we drew near Darrell K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium,

she practically drawled, "You know there's another religion here in TEXAS, right? It's called FOOTBALL."

Eavesdropping on Love, in Stages: 2011 Edition

The Hunt

• "I have 10 months to either get in a band or get married. If either one of those happens in the next 10 months, I'm good." (Young man at Giants game, overheard by Erik Wilson)
• "This is why I can never find my Prince Charming. I keep eating him." (Woman receiving an order of frog legs, overheard at Epic Roasthouse by Jonathan Hood)
• "Pardon me. Would this be a good place to meet eligible men, or should I try Andronico's?" (Woman to clerk at Berkeley's Monterey Market, overheard by Margery Eriksson)
• "I'm partial to the odd ginger." (Woman discussing preferences in men, overheard in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by Ariel Clarke)
• "The basis for our friendship is that I'm too short for you to date." (Woman to man, overheard at the Ramp by Kate Rix)
• "She is a gourmet chef." "Yes, but she is a Republican." (Conversation between man and woman, overheard at Piperade by Donna and Robert Watke)

The Date

• "Oh, you're cute. Not Abercrombie cute. But cute." (Young woman to man, overheard at Diablo Valley College by Laury Fischer)
• "He was bigger, balder, but not better." (Woman of 30 to pal, overheard at Balthazar in New York by Nancy Pietrafesa)
• "I have a date tonight. He is not classically good looking, but he has a job." (Woman power walking, overheard in Saugus, Mass., by the brother of Steven Santilli)
• "No, Dad, you can't date her. She's much older than you and you're married to Mom." (Woman on cell phone, overheard at LAX by Stephen Hochheiser)
• "She's not very good at business, but she can channel. That's how she found me." (Man to woman, overheard in Malibu by Carol David)
• "This is the first time I ever told a girl straight off, 'I'm unreliable.' " (Man to man, overheard on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley by Steve Finacom)

The Excitement

• "You don't get drunk. You get awesome." (Young man to young woman, overheard outside Gale's Central Club Saloon in Petaluma by Roger Weeks)
• "We got on the phone with each other and went through an entire relationship in two hours." (Man to woman, overheard at outdoor cafe in the Castro by Karen Topakian) 
• "You know, a man smitten by a beautiful woman will put up with a lot of crap." (Woman on cell phone, overheard on Indian Rock Path in Berkeley by Amalia Klinger)
• "And I said, 'I don't want to marry you. Unless you start wearing shoes.' " (Young woman to girlfriends, overheard in Alameda by Kate McKowen)
• "Of course he's committed to you. You just can't use that word when you talk to him about it." (Woman talking on cell phone, overheard in a car on Post Street by Bill McCart)
• "When she explained that ref's call to me, marrying her came to mind." (Two guys having beers, overheard in Berkeley after the Big Game by Dick Ahern)

The Ongoing

• "Look at all these men seeking redemption!" (Woman waiting in line among many men at See's Candy in El Cerrito Plaza, overheard just before Valentine's Day by Andy Liu)
• "I'm the boss of my house. My wife lets me smoke cigars." (Man to man, overheard at Tadich by Bob Epstein)
• "I know he really loves me and I take that into account." (Woman on cell phone, overheard at El Cerrito Plaza by Mary Ann Whaley)
• "My husband gave me another necklace. It would be cheaper for him just to say, 'I love you,' but he never does, so I keep getting more jewelry." (Woman to friend, overheard at Westfield San Francisco Centre food court by Alistair McElwee)
• "You'll learn. If she says 'fix it,' you'll fix it." (Man to man, overheard in Italy by Audrey West)
• "It's a lot easier to make up with her when she is crying than when she is mad. Crying takes maybe three seconds, but mad can take hours." (Man to man, overheard at screening of Woody Allen movie by Pamela Gerard)

The Aftermath

• "He broke up with me through an e-mail ... 10 minutes after we talked on the phone." (Woman to pal, overheard in Montpelier, Vt., by Laura Mahanes and Steven Weissman)
• "If you know anyone who wants a boyfriend, I have one I am getting rid of." (Customer to clerk at OSH in San Rafael, overheard by Tom Harrison)
• "I've been in several pseudo relationships that have taken me years to get over." (Young man on cell phone, overheard on 38L-Geary by Dave Stewart)
• "It was so cold this winter, I missed my ex-husband." (Woman in Berkeley art gallery, overheard by Steve Finacom)
• "His ex went to his Amazon wish list and added books on narcissism." (Woman hiker overheard on a trail in Guerneville by Lyndi Brown)
• "Absence makes the heart go yonder." (Man on cell phone, overheard at 24th and Church by Wendy Miller)
• "Now I remember why I divorced you!" (Elderly woman to elderly male companion, in line for lunch at the de Young, overheard by Babs Weiss)

The Bliss of It All

• "I married a guy I met in grad school in the '50s, and so far it seems to be working." (One woman to another, overheard walking in Berkeley by Paul Templeton)
• "My wife and I have replaced our traditional post-coital cigarette with Sudoku." (Man to man, overheard at the Ramp by Leo Maselli)
• "You should see my wife. She is 95 and on a bad day, she looks 50." (Gent of 90, overheard at Solano Avenue post office by Bill Kimberlin)
• "When I first met my husband, we were maladjusted bitches. Now, 30 years later, we're still maladjusted bitches. We're very happy." (Male student at CCSF Ocean Campus, overheard by B. Jackson)

Public Eavesdropping

• "If I had a dog, I wouldn't need a boyfriend." (Person stopping to pet a dog, overheard outside Peet's on Market Street by Steve Abney)

Atoms & Algebra. The Beginning of the End. For Me. Academically.

The story of my arithmatical new word life:

"I was a wonderful little angel “A” student until I turned 12. I was finishing up 6th grade and then suddenly, someone mentioned pre-algebra. 

They talked about it as if it were a perfect storm about to break over our comfy little adolescence. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but I do know that I cried a lot and then I was 30..." Read more here.

19 Degrees F, Weather Service Threat Level Red

What's the difference between freezing rain and sleet?  Or hail, for that matter?  We've observed elsewhere that Ice can be dangerous moves fast hits hard so I find myself wondering, will sleet attack?  Go ahead, laugh at my naivety.  But really, this atmosphere is as foreign to me as the lunar surface might be; growing up in Los Angeles and occasionally having a California-style 'Snow Day' field trip up to Angeles Crest just wasn't enough for me to grasp the sheer enormity of how winter in New England takes over your life if you're not careful.  

I know the doubters amongst My Dear Readers are waiting for me to say, "OK, enough already!"  but I'm not there yet. I'm still fascinated and inspired by both our remote location and the extremes of weather we've enjoyed so far this winter. The cold, relative isolation, silence, snow reflecting sun/moonlight, even the little thrill of living right on the edge of what's comfortable, invigorate me in ways that even I find strange and unexpected...

Back to my original question, that is,the difference between freezing rain, sleet, and hail:

Sleet
c.1300, slete , either from an unrecorded O.E. word or via M.H.G. sloz , M.L.G. sloten (pl.) "hail," from P.Gmc. *slautjan- (cf. dial. Norw. slutr , Dan. slud , Swed. sloud "sleet"), from root *slaut- . The verb is attested from early 14c.

?

Let's try that again, shall we?

Sleet 
1.
Precipitation in the form of ice pellets created by the freezing of rain as it falls (distinguished from hail).


2.
glaze ( def. 17 ) [to cover with a smooth, glossy surface or coating]

3.
Chiefly British . a mixture of rain and snow.

Hail
-n.
1.
Precipitation in the form of spherical or irregular pellets of ice larger than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) in diameter.
2.
Something that falls with the force and quantity of a shower of ice and hard snow: a hail of pebbles; a hail of criticism. 

v. hailed, hail·ing, hails
v.intr.
1.
To precipitate in pellets of ice and hard snow.

Freezing Rain
–noun
1.
Rain that falls as a liquid but freezes into glaze [see above] upon contact with the ground.
Origin: 1790–1800

Now that that's all cleared up... 

Dam Breaking: Walk Softly and Carry a Big Stick

And then get the *fuck* out of the way!


It all started innocently enough. Late last week Raj and I were waddling around in snow shoes after getting about a foot in the last storm.  Raj dug paths from the Coal Room to two of The Bahn stalls while I worked on getting the trash and recycling cans out from under a snow pile nearly as tall as I am.  The sun was out and while there was no Magic in the air, there was plenty on the ground - and the roof.  Raj went around back to dig out the French Room doors and I picked up the Roof Scraper and marched over to the front of The Fahm to deal with the dams and ice pickles and bergs and whatnot.

The Fahm, last winter: no damn dams.

The Roof Scraper - custom made by Frank Polch - is a very, very long branch with a hoe head fastened to the branch with wire.  To think of it as unwieldy is to give it way too much credit; it is downright floppy which added a note of impending disaster to the experience. Hoisting the tool above my head, I maneuvered it uncertainly toward the roof.  Like so many things here at The Fahm, scraping the roof is really, really hard don't make me do it again but I floundered boldly ahead, triceps screaming.


I managed a half-assed job of snow scrapery before turning my attention to ice cycle removal. Raising my wobbly stick overhead, I tapped gently on the largest berg, testing it. Nothing.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap. With a great roar and a deafening crash, the monster fell with surprising speed and force.  I slowly worked my way across the front of The Fahm thusly, tap tap tapping until disaster struck.


One minute I was innocently tap tap tapping and the next thing I knew I was was under attack.

Hoth asteroid field

I had dislodged a huge ice cycle, easily two feet wide at the top and about four feet long from which many other smaller cycles sprung, and I got hit by a softball-sized chunk on the rebound.  Ice doesn't bounce per se but it sure does fly - and it did, right into my jaw.  I was stunned by the violence, followed by the immediate certainty that Mike Tyson couldn't hit me in the face any harder than that iceteroid new word had. At first I thought my jaw was broken, then that fear subsided into 'knowing' that only a couple of teeth were loose.  


The iceberg struck so quickly that apparently my only defensive maneuver was to turn my head ever so slightly to the right, and lift my chin.  "Are you OKAY?" shouted Raj from across the yard; "I got HURT," I said, indignantly.  Then my face *really* started to ache and sting, so I dropped the roof scraper and stumbled toward the Coal Room where Raj caught up with me, and checked the damage.  "I don't LIKE this," I howled, before plopping down in the snow and bursting into tears.  "Is it BLEEDING?"


Raj helped me into the Coal Room, gently removing my snowshoes and untying my boots before helping me up the stairs into the kitchen.  "Is it BLEEDING?" I asked again, "Does it need STITCHES?" "Is it BLEEDING?" Raj wasn't sure how to tell if the cut needed stitches so I asked him if the cut made him sick to look at. "No," he answered uncertainly.  "Well, if it doesn't make you sick to look at, I probably don't need stitches," was my expert conclusion.


By this time it was well-established that the largest of the gashes was indeed bleeding so I put a paper towel over an ice pack and slumped in my chair, sniffling at my sad, sad plight.  "I don't think I'll knock those ice cycles around again," I whimpered. "Or if I do, I am going to stand far, far away..."  The kitchen grew quiet except for the crackling of the fire and my sniffles and gulps.  "I took one for the team, huh?" I asked Raj a moment later, "Just like Big Baby does for the Celtics, huh?" Raj laughed and said in perfect commiseration "You sure DID!"


In the end, no jaw was broken, no teeth were loosened, no stitches were required.  I have only a few gashes on my chin and some bruises. As my physical therapist noted, "It could have been worse - it hit you awfully close to the jugular!" "Yeah!  You could have been IMPALED!" added someone else. 


Note to self: Ice moves fast and hits hard. Walk softly, carry a big stick, and then get the *fuck* out of the way.

But where's Joseph?

"Joseph represents the holiness of the "hidden life," doing meaningful things without fanfare."

The Hidden Man of Christmas: Putting St. Joseph back in the picture By James Martin

"Christmas cards tend to fall into three categories: the family card (cheerful children in red and green sweaters), the secular card (snowmen, snowflakes, snowy villages), and the religious card. The religious card usually bears a portrait of the Virgin Mary gazing beatifically at the crib of her newborn son, Jesus. Behind her, the picture is just as some of the Gospels describe: shepherds, animals, maybe even the three wise men, though they actually were late on the scene.

But where's St. Joseph? Where is the man to whom, according to the Gospel of Matthew, an angel announced the birth of Jesus? Where is the guy who married Mary even though she was already "with child," the man who helped to raise Jesus, the carpenter who taught Jesus his craft? He's off to the side or stuck in the back, behind a shepherd. And he's old, balding, and stooped, looking more like Mary's father than her husband. Sometimes, he's not there at all. Many Christmas cards show just Mary and Jesus. And how many carols even mention Joseph? He is at the Nativity scene and in American Christmas traditions. That's a loss since Joseph can be a powerful figure not only for fathers but also for the average believer.

For a number of reasons, Joseph has presented something of a problem for the Catholic Church over the past two millennia. The miracle of Christmas was not only that God became human but also that this was accomplished through a virgin. Naturally, Mary is one of the stars of the story. But the emphasis on her virginity may have meant that her marriage to Joseph may have been an uncomfortable reality—after all, if they were married, didn't they, well, have sex? That flew in the face of what became an early tradition in the Catholic Church—Mary's "perpetual virginity."

Better, then, to have Joseph in the background. Some scholars have posited that this is also the reason that he is portrayed as elderly in all those paintings, even though some experts estimate he was around 30 years old at the time of Jesus' birth. Lawrence Cunningham, a professor of theology at Notre Dame and author of A Brief History of the Saints, told me, "Nine times out of 10 in Christian art, Joseph takes on more of father-protector role rather than a husband. That was a way of solving the sexuality problem." Cunningham points out that in some paintings, Joseph is shown dozing off in the corner of the stable or even leaving the scene of the Nativity entirely, "out of modesty."

But don't blame Western artists for giving Joseph short shrift. They didn't have much material to go on. Joseph is given no lines to speak in any of the Gospels, and he disappears entirely after Jesus' childhood. Significantly, he is absent during Jesus' public ministry and even at the Crucifixion, where Mary is featured prominently. This has led some scholars to believe that he must have died before the end of Jesus' earthly life.

So what do we know about Joseph? Apart from his trade—he's called a tekton in the Gospels, which is usually translated as carpenter but is more likely a general craftsman—not much. But Pheme Perkins, a professor of the New Testament at Boston College and the author of the widely used textbook Reading the New Testament, says you can draw some interesting conclusions if you read the Gospels carefully.

"The most obvious assumption in antiquity would have been that Joseph had been married before and was a widower," she said. "Most likely, an arrangement was made for him to find a young wife." This is the basis for the Catholic tradition that Jesus' "brother and sisters," who are mentioned in the Gospels, were from Joseph's first marriage. (Mainline Protestant churches are more comfortable with the possibility that Mary could have given birth to other children after the birth of Jesus.)

And given that Mary seems not to have been forced to remarry after her husband's death—the tradition in first-century Palestine—Joseph must have been a good provider, too. "He must have left them well-off," Perkins said. However, she's not certain that his portrayal as an elderly man in so many works of Christian art necessarily had to do with sexuality. "We usually make revered figures older," she said. "If you look at most of the paintings of St. Peter and St. Paul, they look older, no matter what stage of life they're in."

Though most of Joseph's life goes unmentioned in the Gospels, he carried out an astonishingly important task: raising the son of God. For the first years of Jesus' life, and perhaps into young adulthood, he would have learned much of what he knew about the Jewish faith from his mother and his foster father. Perhaps the practices Jesus learned alongside Joseph in the carpentry shop—patience, hard work, creativity—were put to good use in his later ministry. Joseph represents the holiness of the "hidden life," doing meaningful things without fanfare.

Perkins and Cunningham both see Joseph as a central figure in the Nativity story, one who can speak to contemporary men and women. The Gospel of Matthew makes clear that he is a "righteous man" who does what God asks of him. After discovering Mary's pregnancy, Joseph thinks of "quietly" ending their marriage plans, so as not to "disgrace" her. But an angel reassures him in a dream. "Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife," says the angel, who explains the unusual circumstances of the birth. Joseph's "righteousness" enables him to listen to God and carry out his difficult task.

His personality shines through wordlessly. "Here is a model of someone who represents all the virtues in the Hebrew Bible," says Perkins. "He is asked to do something shocking, but because he's righteous, he follows God's guidance. And it's no fun—not only to deal with that, but with the rest of the story—the flight into Egypt, too."

During that latter part of the Christmas story, when the holy family flees from the murderous King Herod, Joseph was responsible for protecting Mary and her son in extreme conditions. Moreover, says Perkins, "To have to take your family into Egypt—that's not a direction that Jewish stories want to go. It's the wrong way." She calls him a "model for how people can follow God through difficult times."

Maybe it's time to take a fresh look at this "model" and restore him to his rightful place in the Christmas story. Remember his natural age. Re-imagine him in our art. And recall his very human example of "following God through difficult times." That's something that can offer encouragement not only to fathers but to every believer.

At the end of our conversation, Cunningham told me about one of his favorite paintings, by a Coptic nun, portraying the flight into Egypt. "It depicts the infant Jesus sitting on the shoulders of a young, robust Joseph," he said. "Mary is actually standing at one side and a servant on the other." St. Joseph is at the center of the picture.

So the next time you're singing "Silent Night" and get to the part about the "Mother and child," don't forget about the fellow in the back, the guy who cared for them for the rest of his life, silently."

Not Yet Winter, As Far As I'm Concerned

To say that I am deeply disappointed that there is no snow yet is an understatement of drastic proportions. Indeed, as far as I'm concerned, this isn't even WINTER yet; it is instead a very protracted Fall, albeit a Fall where all the leaves are already gone, plants have died, and ponds are starting to freeze over.  The sun is out. Due to my California-ness new word I assume that when the sun is shining, there must be warmth.  WRONG!! The presence of sun in the sky has absolutely NOTHING to do with local warmth, and I am struggling to reconcile that with the experiences of my formative years in Southern California, none of which prepared me for Winter in New England.  


The real problem though, the fly in our frozen ointment, is that while it is bitterly cold, THERE IS NO SNOW.  The lack of snow contributes to my Denial about how truly cold it is: if the sun is shining and the ground is clear, there will be warmth.  WRONG AGAIN!!  High temperatures today never got out of the 20s F, and due to the brisk and frisky wind blowing, the "Feels like" number never got out of single digits, topping out at 9 degrees F. Baby, it's COLD outside!


I ASK YOU, WHERE IS THE SNOW THAT MAKES THE COLD WORTH THE EFFORT??

[Blog] Monetization Strategies: Draft Notes - from Rum and Monkey

"Editor’s note: Rum and Monkey has existed as a website since January 31, 2002, well before many of its visitors had mastered the art of fully autonomous toilet control. However, it is not yet the Internet giant it deserves to be. These are the notes from a recent meeting where plans to rectify this by utilizing a win-win, zero-game, synergistic managed innovation strategy were touch-base synchroblurted molepoo dancer blah blah blah.

1. Pay Per Click advertising. We advertise bullshit relevant products and services and negotiate a fee every time an identity slave a user clicks through.
2. Eyeball-based advertising. We laser etch advertisements for relevant products and services on the eyeballs of punters. This gives us an advantage over our competitors Google, whose “don’t be evil” motto holds them back from doing the cool stuff. Luckily, our “be aggressively weird” motto is more permissive.
3. Bikini car wash! We wash bikinis with cars, in a crafty twist on the old classic. For crafty backwards money.
4. Build an iPhone app that convinces iPhone users that they must gently sing to their glassy-faced call-droppers daily or they will shrivel and die. Sell it for $1.99.
5. Organize a webinar. Charge people a fee in exchange for ceasing to use the word webinar. Move the event to Twitter, coin the term twonference, and profit handsomely.
6. Orchestrate a gargantuan reverse 419 scam and buy Nigeria.
7. Redevelop the site into one that has both purpose and definition, in a way that focuses on a specific audience and creates high quality, intelligent content on a highly regular basis. Attract valuable sponsors and sell branded products and services that are attractive to said audience. Probably drop that one article illustrated by a photo of Robert Mugabe.
8. Three words: virtual poo slinging.
9. Enrage the Tea Party by using logical reasoning, measured debate and intelligent political discourse based on a common respect across partisan lines. Also, call Glenn Beck a clownish buffoon whose carefully administered disinformation is viscerally evil. Include a new cartoon character, the ObamaCare Bear, who shoots rainbows powered by socialized medicine and a universal right to healthcare. Charge them to reply. Double if they want to reference Ayn Rand.
10. Become a social meme marketing agency. Describe ourselves as “gurus”. Provide face-to-face seminars, webinars, twonferences and fucktoblasts about how to create social widgets that the unwashed masses will paste upside their sites and spread virally across the twogosphere like some kind of pan-digital syphilis. Get government funding for the fucktoblasts.
11. Bring back Owen. What the hell happened to Owen? Is he still looking at those goddamn clouds?
12. Get as many Twitter followers as possible.
13. The world has a population of over 6 billion, with a total wealth of over $100 trillion. Create a website for everybody. If we can capture just 1% of the market, we’ll be fabulously profitable.
14. Sell own blood.
15. Sell own blood to Google. 
16. Create a service that rewards users for checking in their own blood at local restaurants, cafés, schools and libraries. Award badges.

Actually begin selling rum and monkeys. Licensing for both may be an issue, so perhaps begin by selling just monkeys. But get them drunk first. If necessary, reassure them with a monkey lullaby, or rouse them into rum-sodden joyfulness with a sea shanty. Two words: Internet mugging. Like GroupOn with knives. Accept defeat and sell to AOL."

Means to An End

"It wasn’t my friends gathered around the dining table, and if it had been, the stories I shared would’ve been far more graphic and detailed, sprinkled with offensive language and perhaps even gestures, and more contemporary in nature. But these were people who knew nothing of me other than my connection to the host. So the story was told, and since I hate telling it, I made it ever duller than even I usually find it. My last words, “And so that’s how I ended up… here” hit a wall of such powerful silence that the colors in the room seemed to gray and the eyes of my audience stared too long, as if struggling to see the purpose of my speaking." - from Untitled Until I Think of Something Clever

Echoes of the Extra Stencil... 

A Gift from My Dad

...which I fervently hope will lower the mousicide new word statistics here at The Fahm!  Good one, LZ!  :)

Do You Know The Way to ...

[ALL TOGETHER NOW]

Do you know the way to San Jose?
I've been away so long. I may go wrong and lose my way.
Do you know the way to San Jose?
I'm going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose...

Burt Bachrach/Hal David

I will be in the Bay Area for 10 days, beginning Sunday. When I asked Raj who would update this blog while I was gone, he replied, "You will. I'll send you updates."  So expect news from The Fahm and The Bay Area, from me, between now and 09/14, when I return to East.

p.s. No word so far from Earl.

Mouse Lips Lolahan Returns!

Before disappearing into The Wild, Schnitty must have schooled Lola in the fine art of bloodless rodential take down.  This was brought home to us last night, beginning about 1:30 a.m. I woke up to go to the bathroom, and got there via the door from our walk-through closet. This door is usually closed at night when we have guests, as we did last night; when I opened it, both cats crowded into the bathroom, Lola milling about in the tub, Tricksy folding herself into the sink.  


When I left the bathroom they followed, elbowing one another in the rush for the food bowls; honestly, you might think we hadn't fed them in days, the way they rushed that kibble. Shaking my head, I left the closet door to the bathroom open, hoping they would leave after the feeding frenzy. Shortly after that, I found myself wide awake so I turned on the bedside light and picked up my library book.


I read only a sentence or two before I heard Lola, in the little upstairs landing office next to the bathroom, meowing really, really loudly. I was afraid her yowling would wake Raj and our guests, it was that loud.  "Lola!" I hisspered new word, combination of hiss and whisper which is exactly what I was doing, trying to get her attention without disturbing Raj, slumbering innocently next to me; "LOLA!" I hissed again as I sat up in bed. Tricksy appeared in the closet doorway looking excited. She stepped aside as Lola strode into the room, Lola still making her loud sounds before popping up on the bed next to me, with a small mouse clamped in her tiny jaws.


"GAH!" I shouted, jumping in alarm, whereupon Raj, sound asleep, sat bolt upright in bed, half-shouting himself, "What? What is it?" as Tricksy bounded onto the foot of the bed and Lola dropped the mouse, exactly in my spot, on my 100% cotton, 250 thread count, creamy white fitted sheet, with a resounding PLOP.  Raj, waking up a little, said with great feeling, "YUCK!" I pushed Lola off the bed with one hand, Tricksy off the bed with a foot, and we all took a moment to breathe deeply and regain our composure. Except the mouse. "Is it alive?" Raj inquired delicately; "Nope. This one's dead," remembering with a shudder the sad little PLOP when it hit the sheets. 


Raj sighed resignedly, and muttering bitterly to himself, pulled on his pajamas, and left the room to get something to wrangle to body with. Tricksy eyed the corpse with some interest from the foot of the bed, Lola from the side; both poking their heads up from where I had just flung them to the floor. Lola gave a sidelong glance at Tricksy, looked at me with irritation, looked at the mouse, and reached out a paw in a blatant attempt to swipe the body. "NO!" I bellowed, both word and tone of which my cats know very well. They reluctantly subsided to their haunches, and resolved into two pairs of shifty green eyes peering over the edge of the bed like a pair of crocodiles hiding in a pond.


Raj returned, using toilet paper to grab the poor thing by the tail.  Lola and Tricksy milled about excitedly when he dropped it on the way out the door; a few sharp words from me and they returned to nosing about the spot on the bed formerly occupied by the mouse. Raj returned several minutes later at which point both Kittehs were installed in their customary foot-of-our-bed positions pretending to be asleep, and I had returned to my library book.


Raj crawled back into bed, turned off his bedside lamp, and fell soundly asleep almost instantly.  I continued reading, and for a few blessed moments all was right with our little world.


...


Our domestic bliss was interrupted again, when more very, very loud cat sounds erupted at full volume, from the vicinity of the the little office on the landing, disturbing my momentary appreciation of the "Now." "Lola!" I hisspered, "COME HERE!" I assumed she was protesting the mouse confiscation and various other indignities suffered at our hands; "LOLA!" Tricksy finally sidled into the room, again ahead of Lola, looking back over her shoulder. Lola followed, sliding out of the closet and looking at me warily, another dead mouse, gripped firmly in her little Kitteh teeth. 


"Gawd, Raj, she's got another one!" I groaned, as I struggled upright, and gave him an elbow; "AAnnnggghhhh" was his agonized response, "Is it dead?" "Yup," I said, "It certainly is." He was heard whispering "AAnnnggghhhh" to himself as he got out of bed. He repeated the Night Time Mouse Corpse Removal Ritual as I herded Kittehs through the closet, out of the bedroom, and out of the bathroom, before shutting the door firmly behind them.  I was determined to put an end to The Fahm's Mousenanigans another new word! for the rest of the night. As I say, I draw the line at rodents, dead or alive, in my bed.

Just Another Day at The Fahm

Yesterday began as a very pleasant day, with our morning spent introducing The Fahm to our visitors, my brother Joe and my nephew Benjamin. Raj gave Benjamin a very thorough tutorial in Lawn Tractoring, after which Benjamin rode off to spend several hours towing huge piles of brush to and fro, and mowing the back meadow and the backyard into submission. At nearly sixteen, Benjamin is quite tall, with wide shoulders and a rangy build; he looks perfectly at home with his straw Fahm hat on, rumbling around doing the work of a real live Fahm Hand.

Meanwhile, Joe and I headed out to pick blackberries.  The Sledding Meadow has wild blackberries growing all along the north side of the field, and I have been determined to harvest at least some of them.  Blackberry bushes are very pokey things, and these particular bushes are very, very wild and have never been near fertilizer or soil enhancement in their entire berry lives. The berries therefore tend to be very small and quite tart, and truly a pain in the a** to pick.

But pick we did, dropping the tiny but lovely berries plink, plonk, plink, plonk into our Tupperware containers. Joe was actually going more like "plink, plonk, popinthemouth, plink, plonk, popinthemouth" which went on for about an hour and a half. We ended up with a small but tidy and tasty harvest of just enough blackberries for two small pots of jam. As I've said, tiny berries, pokey plants, and pains in the a** really cut into our harvestational new word motivation.

Later in the afternoon Raj and Joe and Benjamin and Zoya went for a trek down to The Reservoir; I took advantage of their absence to make salsa then went upstairs to put my feet up and read my new library book for a few minutes. Vini went downstairs to start the rice for dinner and a little while later, tapped on my bedroom door. "Sara, the water coming out of the kitchen faucet is brown...What shall we do about it?"

"Perfect!" I thought to myself, "Now the WATER coming from our WELL is BROWN."

Out loud, I said, "Well, that's a problem, huh?" and we both laughed.  I checked the water in the upstairs bathroom, and it was brown. Then I showed Vini a funny video that I had just watched on the Intertubes, and we laughed at that, and then I went downstairs to see the brown water in the kitchen.

"I was just washing the rice, and I kept rinsing and rinsing, thinking, 'this is very dirty rice!' but after the 10th time of rinsing it and having the water stay brown, I said, 'hey, wait a minute!"

I told her I thought having some random thing go wrong while Joe and Benjamin are visiting is the perfect taste of Life in The Vortex that The Fahm represents, and therefore something to welcome, and we laughed at that. I was just trying to decide who to call: Raj? The Well Man up the road? David Oles? when Benjamin returned to The Vortex followed in short order by Raj, Zoya, and Joe. "Don't drink the water!" I commanded the sweaty disheveled quartet, "The water is brown. Something fell in the well."

"SHIT!" was Raj's heartfelt response, although happily he wasn't referring to what might have fallen in our well. He stated with great conviction that the brown color was just dirt, that something had indeed fallen from the interior surface of the well shaft and had just muddied the waters. It was somewhere around this point that Benjamin turned to me and said jokingly, "Relax!" Joe shook his head sharply saying with the wisdom of his own hard experience, "Oh Benjamin, never tell Auntie Sara to relax!" I gave Benjamin a very stern Death Stare but nevertheless said with great patience, "Benjamin, when someone, particularly someone of the MALE persuasion, tells me to RELAX, it really just makes me more UPTIGHT. Like UPTIGHT in a 'Rip Your Head From Your Body' sort of way, you know what I'm sayin'?"

As we explained the "Relax" rules to Benjamin, Raj went to the sink, to do some fiddling and twisting. After a few moments, "Uh...I need a screwdriver - now the tap's stuck open!" He went over to the tool bag and rootled through it muttering to himself, "Phillips or flathead? Phillips or flathead?" Joe, watching the chaos unfold from the relative safety of the kitchen doorway, revealed his perfect grasp of the situation, saying, "Hey! This is a real Fahm moment!"

We ran the water and ran the water and ran the water and eventually the water ran clear again, and so we are back to enjoying the crystalline frosty waters of The Fahm's Very Own Well.  All in all, just another day here in The Vortex...

Legume Visions and Cruciferous Wishes: Beets

I am not particularly fond of beets. They have an earthy flavor that is a little too dirt-y for my taste. However. I dearly LOVE beet GREENS and will even go so far as to say that beet greens are my favorite of all the greens we typically consume, and in point of fact I planted the beets specifically for those coveted greens.

However. I cannot in good conscience simply dispose of the Poor Beets, who after all were kind enough to 'bloom' for me when (and where) I planted them. And, when I discovered that beets have medicinal properties and are so particularly good us, I could only move forward with making them more appealing to my palate.

Most fortuitously I came upon this recipe in the New York Times for Grated Raw Beet Salad that began with the following bragotry new word: "People who swear they hate beets love this salad."

Oh ... really? Well, SHOW ME THE YUMMY! :)

I adapted the New York Times recipe for Grated Raw Beet Salad rather liberally; my adapted recipe version is below.

 Mine.

Ingredients

* 2 or 3 medium-to-largish beets
* 3/4 cup orange juice
* Juice of one lime
* Dash onion powder
* 1 tablespoon olive or canola oil
* 1 handful roughly chopped walnuts
* 1 tablespoon crumbled Gorgonzola cheese

Directions

1. Admire the densely packed beet insides, the wave patterns that display layers of carmine and carnelian, sangria and merlot as they twine themselves into heart-ish shapes.
2. Remove the greens and put aside for furture use.
3. Grate or finely chop beets.
4. Combine all ingredients.
5. Taste.
6. Adjust ingredients to your personal liking.
7. Serve straight (as one might serve cranberry sauce or relish) or perched delicately on a romaine lettuce leaf (as one might if one were a NYT Food writer Stylist with a great photographer).

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Two Things

...made Raj and I think of our friend Josh this weekend:

The beer label from a new IPA Raj tested

&

the Artfully Patched $10 jeans I found at a consignment store in Westminster.

It wasn't until Sunday night that we figured out why he'd been on our minds but sure enough, the label and the jeans explain it all. ;)

Which reminds me of something else: back in the day when I was still living in LaLa, I had a bunch of friends who were musicians, singers, songwriters, actors, etc. and we all hung around together. My then-husband, Brad, and I hosted many a gathering at our various apartments, mostly screaming games of Pictionary. We were a very jolly group, always going for the laugh, and one of our favorite ways of doing that was word play (I know, shocking!). One of my particular faves in the group, Bruce, was often my Pictionary partner - that is until we were banned for life from partnering in Pictionary with one another.  The ban sprang from pure jealousy and competitiveness amongst the other players; Bruce and I had a mind-melding Pictionary connection that meant we pretty much won every time we played together, and some of the other players thought this was unsporting of us, hence the ban.  WHATEVER.

;)

ANYBACKINTHEDAYWAY, during the heyday of Pictionary at Brad and Sara's, Bruce had just broken up with his girlfriend of many years, at her instigation. In fact, she had the gall to leave Our Dear Bruce for someone else, a man named Sherwood. It was only a matter of time before "Sherwood" was re-christened "Sherwoodn't" a word which we then did our best to sneak into as many sentences as we could which I still find hugely entertaining even now some 20 years later. As I've said, we were a merry band...

Tourbillon

Raj and I agreed the other day that The Fahm must lie in a tourbillon (a real word that I did not make up but that I lurve) along the lines of the Bermuda Triangle, or more benignly, the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot.  Murphy's Law trumps every other law including, occasionally, Newton's and Einstein's.

Things that should fit, do not. Items disappear with appalling regularity before reappearing in unexpected places.  Repair and/or replacement of virtually anything on The Fahm costs approximately 4x the national average for the same repair anywhere else AND is 4x more complicated. Latched doors open of their own accord. Lamps turn on and off by themselves in the middle of the night. As noted previously, kitchen utensils are capable of independent motion.

Brimstone Manor - aka The Fahm - is upping the ante!  ;)