The Transporter Couch

Here’s the transporter couch, hopefully back up and running fast.

Don’t ask.  Don’t even ask where I’ve been for the past six months.  The shortest version involves the destruction of my laptop when the cats were playing and knocked a cup of coffee into its bowels.  Add to that how busy I was making and selling tortillas and growing a business and spending available down time swimming and sunning, then a long series of holiday events.  The end.

 This guy in the weather channel just said, “Texans can’t drive very well in the snow.  I’m from Indiana so I can drive all right but up here in Ft. Worth there are fender benders and major accidents galore.”  I take exception to this … er … observation.  I’m a Texan and I know perfectly well how to drive in the snow and ice.  I know how to ski in it, too.  Never got around to snowboarding though.

 So I don’t think any place in the continental US escaped this storm, which isn’t even over yet.  I like cold weather, and don’t mind a brisk walk on a chilly day.  But lots of people get in really bad moods when their feet are cold and their power and gas bills arrive and it’s twice what it usually is.  Whine whine whine.

I’m also frustrated because Saturday the front right tire on my car blew out at 11:55 AM.  I called Stroeher Tire and Auto, who sold me the tires and who manage the warranty, and was informed they close at noon on Saturdays.  The guy was pleasant but he wasn’t going to do me any favors.  So I locked the car and walked to my parents’ house about four blocks away, which is closer from that place than my own and it was already freezing cold (but no precipitation yet).  I got to the house and let myself in and announced my guandary.  They were sympathetic but could only shrug their shoulders. 

I called a variety of other places, including Wal Mart (which was open for business and said come on in, but the three other reputable places in this small town all close at noon on Saturday.  By this time, it was sleeting in earnest.  My car has alloy wheels and the spare is just one of those donuts and I didn’t want to go out into the sleet to change it.  And of course it couldn’t be driven with a blowout.  The towing companies on a Saturday afternoon would charge me $100 to pull the car anywhere in town, and I’m not cheap but I have better things to do with $100.  So I hunkered down and waited for the sleet to stop.

It didn’t stop.  After a while it snowed, and then it stopped (and that could have been my window of opportunity but I was doing something in the kitchen and by the time I had my time back to myself it was snowing again and then it was frozen rain and then it was nightfall.

Thus Saturday.  It’s now Wednesday morning and the precipitation has only just ceased but not for long.  The doomsayers allow that it will start back up any second now and if you don’t have to go anywhere, then don’t.  No one has left the house because the roads are treacherous.  I suppose if we HAD to go to the hospital or something we might venture out, but mom pretty much said, “uhh h…. no you may not use my car.”  She’s not mean, just nervous.  And I don’t have the best history with cars.  Plus they have a nice comfortable house and a pantry the size of my bedroom, three freezers full of all sorts of food, and I keep numerous items of clothing over here.  Dad keeps a roaring fire going in the living room.  And I don’t have any obligations, so I just sort of moved in.  My friend Gabe called me ysterday and asked if that was my car parked up on Main Street and I assured him it was.  He said, “Buddy, that sumbitch has at least two inches of ice covering it.”  Nice.  I’ve read three books and watched lots of TV and played with the cat a lot.  She doesn’t like cold weather and won’t go out unless you go out with her, and then she’ll play around.  Inside, where it’s wawrm, all she does is sleep.   Outside she gets frisky.

It’s been a long, dry week, as far as this venue is concerned. Been busy with cats, for starters. My sister’s cats are staying with me for a couple of weeks while she completes a move. It’s been challenging. For one thing, they have to stay INSIDE which means they have to employ a litter box and that’s not appealing. I have to clean it but also it’s just a LIE that a litter box doesn’t have to stink. My own cat, Aretha, goes out. She has a litter box but she never uses it. I should check in there for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains.

Busy, too, with the tortilla factory. They were short-handed all week and I did a little bit of everything. Hilda had a meeting Friday for which I happened to be present, though I wasn’t part of it, and she was reading beads left and right. Good for her. People take her for granted and get away with all kinds of shit.

I went out Friday night and met Deborah. Beautiful beautiful woman and she knows it. Youngish, in her …. 40s I’d say, and very well put together. I didn’t MEET her as in an introduction. I ran into her, I should say. For our own peculiar reasons neither one of us drinks and so we sit around and flirt endlessly and uselessly. She’s way too beautiful for me to say we make a match, especially not for a camera, but everyone thinks we look good together and assumes we’re a couple and we play it. Anyway, that was fun.

And I went to my niece’s dance recital yesterday and was absolutely utterly completely wonderfully delighted. There were 19 routines (BEFORE imtermission) and I was never bored and frequently amused and constantly delighted. This dance academy is top notch. Some of the older girls did serious ballet routines. I wanted to stay for part 2 but it wasn’t feasible, on several fronts. I just loved it. And they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Well, there wasn’t any food to speak of but there was a feast of entertainment. Beautiful costumes, carefully choreographed dance routines, running the gamut from ballet to modern to Broadway. And the staging was outstanding!! When I learned I had to go to my niece’s dance recital I thought, “OK” but I expected it to be a pedestrian experience. I was absolutely mesmerized.

See, the lesson here is, these girls don’t go to dance school just because their parents don’t want to deal with them on cloudy days. Rather, they have a passion for the art…. They WANT to TRAIN and they HOPE to LEARN and perhaps they even hope to go on someday to be professionals. And they outdid themselves.

It takes a LOT for me to say something is “top notch” but I readily assert it now, the Fusion Dance Company in Austin, Texas is top notch.

Congratulations to all the dancers! You did well.

All in all, I thought the President’s remarks were well presented, measured, and sensible. One comment I have is that he says these guard troops he’s sending to the border will not be “militarization.” I bet you they will be carrying guns, though, and that certainly smacks of military to me. I suppose he’s equating “militarization” with “declaring war.” And of course we’re not at war with Mexico, though we are in a “War on Drugs” which is in theory one reason we already protect that particular border. A war we’re losing, as well. And a “War on Terror” which is in theory why we protect all borders. Another war we’re losing, by the way. IMHO.

The ID card thing confuses me. It isn’t just the “wetbacks” who have to complete the I-9 form when they apply for employment. Everyone does. Does that mean we all have to have these I-9 ID cards? One more piece of identification to mess with. Of course I have a US Passport which is perhaps not impossible to forge but would be very expensive to forge, if the spy novels are to be believed as accurate. So expensive that anyone who could afford to do it probably isn’t looking for a job. But who is to say that the ID card documentation isn’t forged in the first place. So why not just modify the existing “green card” to reflect that documentation has been satisfactorily examined? And what’s up with the fingerprint on an ID card? What does that accomplish?

Next, the business about making people learn to speak Enlgish ignores the fact that English is not the “official” language of America. There have long been advocates of making it so, and opponents as well. But until Congress votes to make it so and President Bush signs it into law, you can’t MAKE anyone learn English. Personally, I think it’s just bad manners to live abroad (and I don’t mean just go on vacation for two weeks, but actually LIVE there) and NOT strive to learn the language. And since I live in a heavily latin-populated part of the world I’ve taken it upon myself to learn Spanish. But I have a facility with languages in general and some people do NOT, so isn’t it really my duty as a good person who appreciates his environment to do some of that work? I mean, for instance, if my friend gets nervous driving on the highway and really isn’t very good at driving in traffic, and I don’t really like it either but I’m better at it than he is, don’t I have some duty to do the driving when we go somewhere? The alternative of course is just not to drive on the highway with my friend. But I digress. The point is that Enlgish is not the official language of the USA.

And finally, I KNEW it was coming because it always does, but MUST HE end his addresses with “God bless?” It panders to his base. I’m not offended, but annoyed because it’s presumptuous. Other people might in fact be offended and the President’s handlers should know that and just leave it out of his speeches. (On the plus side, we can take comfort in the dwindling of that base. We’ve organized a pool as to exactly how low the ratings will go. My own bet is that it will bottom out at 26%. Not that it matters really since he’s not going to need a base for too much longer, and I rather doubt Cheney will run for that office. Anyway … …)

I like being nice to people. I have moments of specific anger and I have to act on that but I’m not an angry person. I’m a sweet, kind, polite, giving, thoughtful person. Why would someone want to be mean, rude, stingy unkind and selfish? Why? WHY? Why would someone WANT that to be the way their life is? Why would someone allow himeself to live like that?

Maybe that’s why so many people are on Prozac and shit.

I should credit my parents…. I know this is an afterthought and that’s tacky but I live in the moment. When I was a kid all my friends’ parents got divorced. Well no not all of them but it was the 70s and 80s and some part of me thought “it’s only a matter of time.” But they didn’t. And while they were far from perfect as parents, I’m sure I was far from perfect as a child, but we all turned out ok and I was lucky to have what I had.

Marriage is not for me. For specific reasons but philosophically because I have no faith in it. But someone else’s marriage isn’t about me, just as their love isn’t about me and their bond isn’t about me. If I get invited to the wedding them I’m delighted for the invitation, honored by the invitation, and pleased by the experience. And often the food is good. And sometimes they serve drinks.

Kidding.

But more and more I get wedding invitations and I step back and look at the couple and think, Brian, this is so wrong. Couples who get married out of frantic desire to stabilize their lives. I don’t think marriage should be about stability, or rectifying the past. It should be aout the future, if it should be about anything, if it has to even happen. And “the future” isn’t a metaphor for making babies. Little annoys me more than hearing about people who have babies to “save their marriage.” Hmm, come to think about it, little annoys me more than people having babies period. (OK I just said that for effect.)

This has turned into a mean post and that’s not where I wanted it to go. But you know what, I’ll let it stand as it is. Mom, Dad, congratulations on 43 years.

Oh My God

First off, I just have to say that Dark Eyes was (is?) vodka, not gin, but gin is where it’s at. I just looked in the dictionary to make sure I spelled “addendum” correctly, and just OPENED the book to the page at the top of which was listed “Drag Queen.” Well I’ve certainly known some drag queens over the years and didn’t need the dictionary to supply definition, but I allowed myself to be curious. The Websters New World Dictionary defines a drag queen as “a male homosexual who dresses in women’s clothing.”

Well that’s not entirely wrong but it’s like defining a car as “a thing with a motor in it.”

This post isn’t about drag queens it is, in fact, an addendum to my previous post. But if my beloved dictionary can get one thing so wrong wrong wrong, how else might it misguide me?

I was told that when cats “clean their ears,” in other words paw at them, that the weather was going to change. That they have pockets, perhaps, or chambers or something that harbor air or fluid (I guess air is a fluid, actually) that responds to the changes in barometric pressure and annoys them, which is why they are the mythical indicators of the change in weather. If this is true, and there’s no reason for me to utterly doubt it though I do question the source just a twinkle, then my poor cat must be in hell. The pressure rises and falls 19 times a day here (in central Texas) and lately it’s been humid atop all that so not only is Aretha in hell, she’s in hell and moist. Go with that where you will. In all events it’s a dangerous combination.

I ate a Wonder-Roast chicken last night. Not the whole entire thing but MOST of it. It just looked and smelled so good in that little display thingy. It isn’t a Wonder Roast for real, but the local supermarket’s knock-off. And they do a pretty good job but the skin isn’t as crisp as I’d like it. It was good! I ate that and some leftover rice and a pineapple. Eclectic! Yay! What remains of the chicken is a carcass and it will make good soup. But last time I used a fowl carcass to make soup, …… well actually I made a good stock that served me well. Turkey. But this chicken probably doesn’t deserve to be made a part of anything spectacular.

I remember reading a story, possibly in Larousse Gastronomique but I don’t recall, about a cook who had a dozen men show up at his door demanding food and all he had was ONE cow and maybe some carrots or something and he made them a regal meal from soup to dessert. (No nuts) I don’t know if it was a true story or just a tale, but it’s been my beacon when I have a fridge full of leftovers.

Maybe now is as good a time as any to discuss Twice Cooked Adventure Chicken. Not every Friday, but many Fridays, Art and I would get our weekend off to a great start by drinking too much and a component to the kickoff was “Twice Cooked Adventure Chicken.” It wasn’t, as you might think, leftover chicken reheated in an adventurous way. It was always fresh (or freshly purchased) chicken breasts that got cooked in an adventurous way, and twice to afford us more time to drink.

And by “adventurous” I mean that the seasonings were always changing and the coatings were always changing and the experience wasn’t one of cooking to perfection but more like cooking as an opportunity to bond. And as we all know, bonding can be dicey. But it can be beautiful.

We’re grown up and respectable now and we use credit cards and dine out and drink better gin and travel the world and have in-laws in addition to our out-laws and the days of Dark Eyes and Twice Cooked Adventure Chicken are but charming, foggy memories. Is there a lesson here? Probably. But I’m just going to make do with the memory.