Swiss Cheese & Other Crimes Against Humanity

I'm starting Day 11 in Washington. My life continues to spin out of control, in two states at once. It's like I'm living my worst nightmare and I can't wake up.

I make mistake after mistake here. As a result I've been turned into the house Monkey Boy, doing the bidding of all who inhabit these walls. Including the two poodles, Blue & Max.

A couple days ago a coffee disaster erupted when I was caught using my sister's special coffee cup. I was banned from its usage.

Then I drank too much coffee. And so yesterday a new coffee pot was purchased that has been designated "Monkey Boy's Coffee Pot."

Last week I forgot to take in the milk immediately upon delivery. That's right, here in Washington you can still get milk delivered to your door. It is delivered to a white heat reflective (if there was heat) box. There has been much controversy spinning over the fact that I did not bring in the milk within an hour of delivery. My position is that it is colder outside than in the refrigerator. I really don't see why they have refrigerators in this ultra-frigid climate.

When my mom and dad arrived, a week ago, my mom loaded the already packed refrigerator with more stuff. Including, I now know, some Swiss cheese they'd bought at the Tillamook Cheese factory on the Oregon coast.

Apparently, unbeknownst to any of us, my mom had declared one shelf of the fridge as her own. Yesterday my sister organized the fridge, totally obliterating my mom's shelf and moving the Swiss cheese to the cheese bin.

Yesterday, I made myself a steak sandwich for lunch. I saw the Swiss cheese and opened up the package and added a couple slices to the sandwich.

When my mom and dad returned last night and my mom saw we were in a kitchen frenzy, getting ready to BBQ, she checked the fridge, saw her shelf gone and asked where her special Swiss cheese was. I was the only one who knew of the Swiss cheese. And its fate.

When I confessed to cutting into the Swiss cheese my mom claimed that she'd clearly stated this was not to be touched, that it was to return, cheese intacto, to Phoenix.

My sister tried to calm the storm by saying we saw the same cheese at Top Foods that very day. And that we'd replace the damaged Swiss cheese. But that did not do much to mitigate the storm. Eventually my mom resigned herself to the fact that her Swiss cheese had been ruined beyond repair. My sister then said something like, Monkey Boy, go pour mom and dad a glass of blackberry wine.

I've likely already blocked from memory some of the other horrors I've caused these people. Like I parked my sister's car too close to her driveway's humongous rosemary bush, thus causing her to touch the bush upon car entry, thus causing her to reek of rosemary all day long.

My worst crime occurred yesterday morning. I'll spare the graphic details. Suffice to say, I went to my zone to do yoga. I do yoga sans clothes. Unbeknownst to me, one of the inhabitants was in this floor's bathroom. She was up here to take a shower. Why I do not know. At some point, to our mutual horror we realized we were both in the same space. In varying degrees of undress.

In other words, I'm sleeping well, but I'm pretty much in a perpetual state of low level trauma.

Advance Your Business Skills in the Gas Industry

Why would anyone who spent 2 seconds looking at my blog send me the below ad? I really can't see myself going to the Petroleum Club in Fort Worth to advance my business skills in the oil/gas industry. I think free lunch was involved, I believe I saw that mentioned in the full ad. I'm all about getting stuff for free. Maybe I'll go to this thing.........

Recycling in Washington Ordeals

We recycle in Washington. I get reminded of this over and over and over again every time I'm back here, after committing some massive recycling faux pas.

Yesterday I put an empty milk carton in the regular garbage. This got me 5 Bad Recycler Demerits. This morning I emptied a peanut butter jar and put it in the regular garbage. 5 more Demerits.

It's all so confusing. Way more so than when I lived here. Then there was just one bin for newspapers and one bin for plastics and glass and one bin for normal garbage.

I'm not sure I'm all that clear on it yet, even after 10 days of trying to keep it all straight. Near as I can tell there is one big container for paper products, like newspapers and magazines. Another big container for yard waste, like grass clippings that could just stay on the grass after being clipped. That would seem a good recycling plan for grass. Then there is a big bin for bottles. I am not sure if the plastic bottles are separated from the glass ones or not.

I do know that my sister thoroughly examined the glass bin to make sure there were no illegal substances in there. Like used wine bottles.

I have been accused, at least twice, of putting bad stuff in the regular garbage. Apparently if you put a bottle in the regular garbage you can be arrested, fined and forced to do garbage pickup duty in parks and freeway medians.

The various bins get picked up on various days. This makes it even more confusing.

One strange thing is the regular garbage can is by far the smallest of all the bins. And it sits out in the alley where it gets picked up. The recycled stuff goes out on the street where it must be properly located in a correct position so it can be picked up by the auto-recycle bin picker upper thing. It's quite a feat of engineering.

In grocery stores you get asked that paper or plastic question and are greeted with scornful looks if you say you don't care.

There is a lot of eco-friendly packaging here. And novel ways to skip putting something in a bag. Like today at Target my sister bought something in a big box. The cashier attached some sort of tape thing to the box that functioned as a handle. It seemed very clever. But I had concerns about the use of plastic to make the handle.

Texas for the most part has a much simpler recycling method. The litter just gets tossed so that Mother Nature can use wind to recycle it to a new location.

Enough whining about recycling. Don't get me started on the ban here on talking on the cell phone while driving. It is just all to much to have to remember.

Just Say WHOA! In Fort Worth

What are you doing August 7, 2008?

If you are frustrated, angry, depressed, apathetic, horrified or just generally concerned about natural gas drilling in north Texas, mark your calendar, program your Blackberry, scribble a post-it-note, tie a string around your big toe, whatever, just be sure you show up for this important event.

It doesn't matter where you live.

It doesn't matter if you are for or against gas drilling, in general.

It doesn't matter if you signed a mineral lease or not.

It doesn't matter if you Just Said YES or continue to Just Say NO.

Elected officials continue to issue drilling permits without all the facts or a master plan for dealing with an aggressive industry.

The health and safety of our communities has been compromised.

CREDO (Coalition for a Reformed Drilling Ordinance) is the "big tent" for everyone who wants to put the brakes on out-of-control gas drilling and the corrupt political system that has allowed it to flourish in our communities.

We believe in the military doctrine called The First Rule of Holes: If you find yourself stuck in one, stop digging.

MORATORIUM NOW!

See the "Metropolis" section of today's Fort Worth Weekly for more about CREDO and other gas drilling reports.

Don Young
FWCanDo
P.O. Box 470041
Fort Worth, TX 76147
FORT WORTH CAN DO

Yesterday's Rainy Tacoma BBQ

The photo is from last night's rainy BBQ. I somehow managed to burn the steaks. In the rain.

Lulu and her first husband came over. They ate their burned steak without too much complaining. My sister would not take her burnt steak off the steak platter.

The steaks got overly well done due to my attention being diverted by my pizza making. The pizza turned out well. Though a bit deconstructed.

The dinner party turned even more macabre when Lulu took a huge fancy to the popcorn cake my mom made for my sister. The popcorn cake has gummy bears and M & M's stuck in it. Among other things.

The other dessert item my mom also made. Angel food cake with some sorta cream cheese frosting. That was good and I understood Lulu finishing up that cake. But the popcorn cake? That thing is just disturbing.

Gar the Fish in Texas

I know a Texan named after a fish that I thought was a Texas only thing, that being Gar the Fish and the Texan being Gar the Texan.

Both Gar the Fish and Gar the Texan look like somehow a big snake had mated with an alligator creating a very scary looking mutant.

I think the actual name of Gar the Fish is Alligator Gar. I think the actual name of Gar the Texan is Garland the Texan. Maybe he is named after the Dallas suburb of Garland and not the fish.

That is a guy named Tom Wingstad, from a Texas town named Draper, in the photo. Earlier this month he caught the Alligator Gar you see in the photo. He caught it in the Trinity River that flows through the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and my backyard. It took Mr. Wingstad 25 minutes to land the 200 pound monster estimated to be about 50 years old.

I have only seen an Alligator Gar once. At a creek crossing at Village Creek Historical Area in Arlington. I was roller blading, ahead of me, on a creek crossing, I saw a guy looking at something. So, I stopped and asked what he was looking at.

He pointed to the creek and said something like, "on this side I'm looking at a big Garfish and on that side I'm keeping my eye on a big Cottonmouth."

I looked at the Garfish first. I'd never seen anything like it before. I was appalled when the guy told me that Garfish are in a lot of Texas lakes.

And then I looked at the Cottonmouth. It was slithering towards us. Both of us decided it was time to stop gawking at critters and move along.

A couple weeks after that I was mountain biking at trails at Lake Grapevine called Horseshoe. I coasted out on a dock where there were a couple of bikinied sunbathers. They told me a few days earlier one of their friends had stepped on to the teeth of an open-mouthed Garfish. A quick visit to an Emergency Room followed.

So, I went from not knowing this critter existed, seeing my first one and then hearing an account of someone stepping on a Garfish, within a couple weeks. I stayed out of Texas lakes for a long time after the Garfish revelation.

And then this morning I read that a garfish has been caught in Kiwanis Lake in Tempe, Arizona. Garfish do not belong in Arizona. They can cause all sorts of problem to a lake's ecosystem. So, Arizona Fish and Game officials are on the case.

Roe vs. Wade & The Smithsonian Institution

I guess due to it happening so seldom, there are few things I enjoy more than someone telling me something I did not know. In the past 48 hours this phenomenon has happened twice.

On the way back from the airport, picking up my sister on her return from D.C., she was telling me about all the stuff they'd seen, including the Smithsonian. She asked if I knew why it was called the Smithsonian and I realized I had no idea. Nor had she til she was in D.C.

A wealthy Brit scientist named James Smithson, admirer of America and it's promise of bringing a bright different new future to the world, died in 1829. His will stated that should his nephew not produce an heir, that his entire fortune should go to the U.S. government to create an "Establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men." The nephew died in 1835, with no heir. President Andrew Jackson told Congress that the U.S. had received a windfall (worth millions in today's dollars}. Congress passed an act that established the Smithsonian Institution in 1846, during the Polk administration. The Smithsonian has grown to be the largest museum in the world. All thanks to a Brit who never saw America. But, apparently, got what America meant to the world. And still does.

And now the second bit of new info. For how long have we heard the phrase "Roe vs. Wade?" Decades, it seems to me. Well, this morning I was reading the online version of my old hometown paper, the Skagit Valley Herald.

And what do I learn? That the "Wade" part of Roe vs. Wade is yet one more Texas embarrassment to the rest of the county. The Wade in this famous Supreme Court decision is Henry Wade. A good ol' Dallas boy. A prosecutor, who during his tenure earned a rep as having an astonishingly high conviction rate.

Including prosecuting Jack Ruby.

And then a Dallas woman, known to history as "Roe" wanted to get an abortion. In Texas. The rest is history.

With a sad addendum.

Henry Wade retired, reputation intact. He died. Reputation intact.

But now, in the era of DNA testing court reversals, Henry Wade has had 19 of his convictions overturned. The evidence now shows that he zealously prosecuted, well, what amounts to being victims, putting who knows how may innocent people behind bars.

The process of releasing the innocent victims of Henry Wade continues.

While the rest of the nation is growing aware that Texas put a lot of people, wrongly, behind bars, that realization is not really dawning all that brightly in Texas quite yet.

In other words, I had to read about Henry Wade in my old small town newspaper. I did not read about Henry Wade in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Or the Dallas Morning News.

Meanwhile, the innocent victims of malicious prosecutions are gradually being released from the Texas Gulag. This is an issue to me. I have known a victim of malicious prosecution. And it shocked me then and continues to shock me now. And, as God is my witness, someday I will figure out a way to bitch slap back those who perpetrated a malicious prosecution mis-carriage of justice on a friend of mine.

That which you do to the least among you, you do unto me, I always say. When I am in Jesus Durango mode, that is.

Raining, Cold & Gray Tacoma July Day

I tell non-Washingtonians, who think it rains all the time here, that they are wrong. that summers are usually quite nice.

The last summer I was here for a month, July/August 2004, I saw no rain, I saw few clouds, I saw The Mountain out pretty much every day. I was not cold once I got past the first few days of getting used to it being in the 70s.

I'd settle for the 70s right about now. I'd been staying in the basement here. or what I call The Arctic. Last night I moved to the upper loft, what I call The Tropics. My sister thinks it is too hot to live up here. However, the temperature has yet to get as high as I keep my A/C in Texas. Right now the thermometer on the A/C unit, in here, says it is 68. At 2 pm. While I see you in Fort Worth are at 96 heading to a high of 102.

We got in the low 50s overnight here. And this morning, to add wet to cold, it started raining. It's been raining ever since. Rain here does not fall like Texas rain. Texas rain comes in downpours and gets its wet business over quickly, sometimes dumping 5 inches in a half hour. In Washington the rain falls in slow motion. It can take 5 hours to dump half an inch.

So, I am quickly developing a case of Seasonally Affected Disorder. As you can see in the photo, this weather disorder has piled on top of all the other things bothering me and has me being a depressed, bed-ridden nutcase, trying to stay warm in my new little army cot that I fell out of twice last night. But slept remarkably well in. It was the tropics, afterall.

Mom and dad have gone til tomorrow. Or so we've been led to believe. Tonight we are making homemade pizza and BBQing steak. Rain permitting. I'm hoping between the pizza oven and the BBQ, I will at some point today feel some heat. I guess I could go take a hot shower. But that is sort of counter-productive, when you're done you have to step back out into the icy icy air.

This is the first time I've ever been back up here when I've thought to myself the following stunning thought. I miss Texas.

Doonesbury & the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

You may remember me mentioning that I am up in Tacoma. And that I'm reading the daily Tacoma News Tribune. And that the News Tribune and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram are both part of the same newspaper chain, that being McClatchy.

You may also remember me mentioning that the Star-Telegram has been shrinking, ever smaller, for quite some time, with fewer and fewer features and columnists.

Both of these papers have the Doonesbury strip on their editorial pages. When the Star-Telegram had its most recent makeover they shrunk Doonesbury so small you needed a magnifying glass to read it. After readers complained, Doonesbury was made a bit bigger. But it is still hard to read. Sometimes I have to get it under bright light to be able to read it.

So, one would think that the Tacoma News Tribune would have a similar itsy bitsy version of Doonesbury. You would be wrong. It is about twice the size of the Star-Telegram version, I can read it without my reading glasses in natural light.

I think this incompetently sized Star-Telegram version of Doonesbury is a perfect metaphor for what is wrong with Fort Worth's bad newspaper of record, what with their apparent 'Readers Be Damned" editorial philosophy.

To read Doonesbury in all its glory, go here.

Hugh Hefner's Girls Next Door

You may remember me mentioning, yesterday, that I'd not watched TV for over a week and I was not missing it.

Well. Last night I was in my new living space, in what we call The Tropics, due to me being now on the top floor, where, supposedly, it is Hotter than the frigid zone, down in The Arctic, aka the basement. Though it was not quite tropical, as in I had to shut the windows due to it getting chilly, it was much closer to what I'm used to in Texas, though still colder than I keep my place with A/C.

In other words, I slept great and though I went to bed feeling miserable, with a very sore throat, I woke up feeling my usual self for the first time since I've been north.

Maybe I feel better because I turned on the TV last night. I'm not familiar with the local TV lineup, so I ran through channels looking for Fox News, MSNBC, Bravo or anything familiar.

I eventually found Bravo. But the show on Bravo was that Project Runway one that I don't find very interesting, due to it being all about making a dress. That and there just is not much comedy or drama.

Then I happened upon this bizarro thing on E!, called The Girls Next Door. It's all about 82 year old elderly man, Hugh Hefner and his 3 live-in girl friends in the Playboy Mansion, I think. Maybe they live next door, and not in the mansion, hence the name of the show.

Apparently, Viagra has revived Mr. Hefner, hence the 3 girl friends. Hefner claims 80 is the new 40. Which pretty much means I've not been born yet. I'll inform my mom when they return here.

There have been 4 seasons of this show, with a 5th to start in October, God willing. I assume last night what I saw was a re-run. It was all about the girls posing for an anniversary issue of Playboy. It was a historic issue, as one of the girls said, she thought, because, as far as she knew, this was the first time the Playboy had the front view of the posers on the front cover and the back view on the back cover.

Hugh wanted the girls to pose for the second anniversary issue in a row on his giant revolving bed. The girls didn't like this. It seemed to me Mr. Hefner, in his dotage years, did not remember they'd posed on the bed before.

One of the girls talked Hefner into letting each of the girls have her own photo shoot with a theme of their choosing.

But, before we saw that we saw the revolving bed shoot. And yes, it was quite clear the girls were all buck naked. Instead of the usual blurring of the naughty bits, some sort of airbrushing thing was done that rendered the girls into Barbie dolls. The nipples were missing and there were no butt cracks.

Despite the attempt at censoring for those offended by such things, it took no imagination at all to fill in the missing pieces. I sat there thinking this was so stupid. Who are they doing the censoring for? If you chose to watch this show you know what it's about. If you are such a prude that a bare boob or butt upsets you, why are you watching this?

Where it truly troubled me is I thought a pubescent boy could happen upon this and this could be the first naked woman he's ever seen. It imprints upon his imagination. And then, one day, he sees a naked woman in person and is totally horrified to see she has these nipple things, unlike the girls he saw on Girls Next Door.

Anyway, I watched about 15 minutes of this high class entertainment and decided I was over stimulated and turned off the TV and the lights and went to sleep.