Task Avoidance can be wearying, as all Lichtenbergians know. It’s the driving force behind Lichtenbergianism‘s success, after all: putting off all the stuff you need to work on eventually drives you crazy enough to do the work.
Thus it was with my garden markers project. I just kept putting it off until it had to be done, and now… well, we’ll come back to that.
The concept was simple. I needed herb garden markers that would a) identify the weirdo herbs I’ve planted without making me put on my glasses; b) remind me what they’re used for (coughs, flavoring, etc.), along with any notes about harvesting, etc. Simple enough, but it took weeks.
I bought a cedar board and cut it into little blocks.
I drilled holes into the bottoms:
I sanded them mostly smooth:
I designed a little template for my information, printed those out, and affixed them to the blocks with Mod Podge, of all things. (It was the outdoor variety, supposedly weather proof.)
I cut 8″ lengths of 1/8″ steel dowel, inserted those into the holes, and stuck them into the ground:
(Those are butterfly garden flowers, not weeds. Leave me alone.)
And we’re done!
Only not really. I made a dozen blocks. I needed about eighteen. Maybe next month…
This is the “evidence” used by racists whenever they’re doing the uh-UH you’re the racist thing: since the Democratic party took this position over a 100 years ago, they’re the real racists.
There’s plenty of this type of thing in archives about our great nation:
Like with today’s racists, it seems to have been a talking point passed freely around:
But back to my point about today’s racists’ uh-UH stratagem. I have found that there’s no point in arguing any kind of historical perspective, because those folks don’t do historical perspective. (Cf., “Why was there a Civil War?” With a conservative and a liberal take from writers who do have historical perspective.)
So when confronted with this fuppery:
… I shall now reply, “That’s absolutely true. Those voters were racist cretins. Here’s the deal, though: those voters haven’t changed. They’re still racist cretins. Their party allegiance has certainly switched, though.”
People who voted for the Current Republican Administration have gotten very defensive about their new leader. It seems that the rest of the world looks on agape as the man flounders his way through actually governing the nation, and his supporters are miffed when anyone points out that on the whole a seven-year-old has better self-control and predictive skills.
“SNOWFLAKES!” they yell. “HE WON! GET OVER IT!” Their point seems to be that nuh-uh, he isn’t floundering, he’s the bestest President ever look at how he’s done the most of any President evAR.
Ahem, as Delores Umbridge would say.
This morning, I read this article and realized a thing.
Here’s the money quote:
“…because the president knows effectively nothing about policy, he doesn’t understand in advance whether developments have worked in his favor or not. Trump relies on media coverage to tell him, after the fact, whether he’s done well or poorly, and he then reacts accordingly.”
I would like to point out to the Trumpettes that this is why you voted for him. The very fact that he knows nothing about policy, nothing about government, nothing about protocol, is why you voted for him. You wanted someone who was going to go in like a bull in a china shop and wreck the status quo.
So when the rest of us point and laugh at the man because he trips over his own ego and ignorance at every turn, you don’t get to get huffy about it. You have to embrace it. “Yes,” you must say, “we admire him for getting all pissy because he lost the spending bill battle. In fact, we love that he got outmaneuvered by the Democrats—we think that kind of incompetence is exactly what we need in the White House! Drink Brawndo!”
Yep. Keep reminding yourself: this is why I voted for him. This.
I’ve been reliably informed that Robert Mitchum apparently has a credible fifties rockabilly hipster outlaw vibe in the real world. Who knew? I live, I’ve been informed, a sheltered life.
Anyway, Mitchum’s son has capitalized on his cult classic Thunder Road by opening a moonshine distillery of the same name in Tennessee. Coming home from Virginia last month, we stopped and got free tastings; I ended up buying a basic moonshine and their rye, which is completely raw, i.e., this stuff has not spent a second in a barrel of any kind.
As such, it has presented a challenge, a challenge that I decided to tackle yesterday.
Given the raw, even nasty, nature of the stuff, I decided to fight fire with fire. I pulled out the Montenegro Amaro, which I’ve never quite developed a taste for, and went to the herb garden. Next year perhaps I’ll have a better grip on angelica or vervain or valerian and how they might work, but for this drink I chose lovage, one of my favorite herbs, for its strong peppery flavor.
I thought about whether lemon or lime juice would help take the edge off, but my mental taste buds couldn’t see it doing much good. Maybe grapefruit might be worth a shot in the future, though.
Finally, I thought, this thing is going to need a strong undergirding of bitters to make it through the aftertaste. I used 18•21 Bitters’ Tonic and then, at first, their Havana & Hide Bitters before settling on their Saffron & Tart Cherry Bitters.
And here we are. I figure it may be an abortive attempt; if upon a second one I find that it’s still not quite delicious, I may adjust the proportions, or toss it altogether, but for the time being:
Mitchum’s Scam
2–3 leaves of lovage
1.5 oz Thunder Road Runner’s Rye
.5 oz Montenegro Amaro
.25 oz 18•21 Bitters Tonic
10 drops 18•21 Bitters Saffron & Tart Cherry Bitters
lemon peel for garnish
Muddle the lovage with all the ingredients. Stir with ice, strain into a coupe. Garnish with the lemon.
As I said on Facebook, this drink is not my best, but it’s not my worst either. It has the potential to become a cult favorite on its own. My first assessment — “The herbal nastiness of the Montenegro is rounded out by the unbarrelled nastiness of the rye, with nice floral notes from the bitters and a lovely overall pall created by the lovage” — may need to be adjusted.
This is very funny, is it not, the reduction of an act of violence, a fupping missile strike, to a bon mot, a piquant witticism to make one’s fellow billionaires chortle?
These are the people in charge now: so rich, so insulated, so absolutely unconcerned with the other 99.9% of the earth’s population—or the earth itself—that the death and misery of other humans is a humorous abstraction for a stand-up routine.
I swear I thought I had blogged about this two years ago, but either my MySQL database is borked or I am delusional—none of the key words I’m about to write show up in a search of this blog.
This is a ceramic piece sitting in our living room. Yesterday an old friend who was visiting noticed it and asked me about it, and since I can never remember the artist’s name, I came to the blog to search for it. As I’ve said, no such blog post exists despite my bestest memory, so I’ll now tell you the story behind the piece.
Two years ago, my Lovely First Wife and I were in Asheville, soaking in the ambience. We went into Blue Spiral 1 Gallery downtown, looked at all the nice art, went downstairs, looked at more nice art, and that’s when we saw this piece.
I should say at this point that the photo here is not mine; I pulled it from a Pinterest page in the UK, of all places. But it is my piece, although it is secured not with twine but with airplane cable. Bolted. Hold that thought.
The name of the piece is Cremains Vessel No. 5. We really liked it. We kept coming back to it. It was within our price range, and besides, it was an investment.
We went upstairs and asked the young men working behind the front desk if the piece were actually a cremains vessel. They seemed a little nonplussed, finally stammering out that there weren’t anyone’s ashes in it.
We laughed, which probably seemed odd to them, and I told them that what we were asking was whether the vessel was actually built to hold cremains or was it just, you know, art? They pretty sure it was an actual vessel.
So we went back to the condo where we were staying and I did some googling and calculating: if we both shriveled a bit in our declining years, plus reserved a cup or so of ashes for scattering/rituals, then we should both fit in there.
We went back the next day and bought it. I tell people that my LFW finally figured out a way to screw over that whole “till death do us part” thing.
One thing that gave me a frisson was that it was more or less locked shut. At least one of us would never know what the inside looked like. Then, on a subsequent visit to Blue Spiral, there was a similar piece by the same artist, and my LFW opened it. It may be that our piece looks different inside, but I’m thinking the suspense is ruined.
So who is the artist? We were given a little card with his name and not much more: Don Penny.
I went looking, of course, and was stunned to find that I already knew the man’s work. He was the ceramics professor at Valdosta State University until 1990, and I had seen his work in the faculty display case every summer since 1984.
And then I had an inkling that I knew exactly who he was. After I called a friend in Valdosta’s music department to go down the hall and read a plaque for me, my suspicions were confirmed: Don Penny was the artist who created the mural in the lobby of Whitehead Auditorium:
2013 GHP Jazz majors playing at the Art majors’ exhibit opening. Don Penny’s clay mural is behind them.
I saw this piece nearly every day of every summer for 30 years.
And in an astounding wallop of synchronicity, I bought a cremains vessel by that very same man, to stick my ashes in.
First, a photo of the back garden area, aka the privet hedge garden:
That does not look like much, but the echinacea, borage, and Joe Pye weed will by this time next year have colonized the area. It will be a riot of blossoms and butterflies.
You may, if you are a long-time reader, remember the Dill Plant That Ate Newnan (RIP). Pfft. That plant was a piker compared to the Cardoon That Couldn’t Be Stopped.
The acanthus-looking leaf there is the cardoon plant one year ago after arriving from the Growers Exchange.
Here it is in its second year of life. And it has a secret. Yesterday I peered into the rising central stalk and…
The thistles have arrived! Yes, they are cousins to artichokes (which are themselves thistles); one cooks and eats them basically the same way. I counted six on their way, and I bet there are more.
Remember how Bill Clinton was always referred to as a “draft dodger”?
Or how we all slagged Barack Obama for not saluting a Marine when getting off the helicopter?[1]
Or how none of us liberals “support” the “troops”?[2]
Hold that thought, because it’s time to play yet another round of IOKIYAR!
The Current Occupant was inspired recently to personally pin a Purple Heart medal onto Army SFC Alvaro Barrientos, where he congratulated the young man, whose leg had been amputated, telling him it was “tremendous.” Just tremendous, not yooge? But I digress.
The Current Occupant’s brain, from my observations, seems to be pretty binary: A/NOT A. There is no B, and Cthulhu help the rest of the alphabet. He sees winning and not winning. The young man won a Purple Heart. He was to be congratulated for winning. Simple.
The idea that perhaps the young man would rather have his leg than the ribbon, that there might be more layers to this man’s experience, that perhaps other words might better express the Commander in Chief’s appreciation for a citizen’s service/sacrifice, never entered the Current Occupant’s brain.
So “Congratulations!… Tremendous!” it is.
Now imagine, if you will, if Barack Obama had handed a Purple Heart to a wounded soldier—let’s say, for the fun of it, a white boy from North Carolina—as if he were getting the immunity idol instead of being voted off the island.[3] Imagine how Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly or god help us Michelle Malkin would have reacted. Imagine the huffing and puffing on the Sunday circus shows from Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham or John McCain.
How do you think the rightwing Wurlitzer is reacting to this tone-deaf gaffe?
[1] Which, as a civilian, the President is not supposed to do. Reagan, that Great Pretender, was the first to pull that stunt.
[2] Limited to bumper stickers, yellow ribbons, and yelling at hippies. Funding veterans healthcare or GI Bill not included. Prosthetics sold separately.
You will recall that we left the front garden a little bare, though tilled:
Finally the big order from The Growers Exchange arrived, Friday afternoon. This was a bit problematic, since once one unboxes these plants, one is supposed to let them sit out of direct sun for a day or two before planting them, but no longer than four days. The problem was that 1) on Sunday I had to go to Duluth for the State STAR Student selection process, not getting home until Tuesday; and 2) it was going to rain on Sunday in any case.
I like Growers Exchange; they’re good people, and they have interesting plants. But I ordered these plants in December and they were supposed to be here mid-March. That worked for me because starting in late April I was going to be pretty much unavailable till June: the aforesaid State STAR Student process, followed by Euphoria build weekend — packing for Euphoria — Euphoria — unpack — pack for the Danube — cruise up the Danube for a week or so, past our beloved homeland of Hofvonstein — unpack from the Danube — pack for To The Moon burn — To The Moon. On June 6 I expected to come up for air.
However, the plants arrived. I unboxed them, sat them under the work table, watered them, and told them they had 24 hours to acclimate.
Late Saturday, when the sun was on the other side of the house, I popped those puppies into the earth:
There was also the privet hedge area, but I didn’t get a photo of that. Maybe Tuesday when I get home…
Anyway, Jobie said that there should be a cocktail created especially to employ these tawny, vaguely Latino youth. (Why Jobie is interested in full employment for tawny Latino youth, I am not prepared to speculate.[2])
My first reaction was to laugh gently at my friend’s humor and go about my business, but then I noticed a curious detail:
These tawny Latino youth have the whitest white boy names emblazoned on their asses.
This one came together rather immediately, flashing into my imagination as a gift from the gods.[4]
Brad’s Bebida
1.5 oz gentle tequila (I used Casamigos Reposado; their silver might be even better)
.75 oz vanilla vodka (VANILLA VODKA, BRAD!)
1.5 oz pineapple juice
2-3 dashes 18•21 Japanese Chile & Lime Bitters
honey sea salt, dosed with sriracha salt
lime wedge
Rim the glass with the salt. Shake the other stuff with ice, pour. Garnish with lime wedge.
It’s pretty tasty, although I think I’m going to try it again with an actual vanilla liqueur instead of vanilla vodka (VANILLA VODKA, BRAD!), either Navan or Tuaca. In which case maybe I’ll rename it the Classy Brad.
Stay tuned for updates.
—————
[1] I was not scandalized. Especially since the day before I had sent him an escalating series of double-entendre photos of children’s toys while on a jaunt through Five Below, which I seem to have deleted from my phone, quel dommage.
