I read about a poll of dog owners, which revealed that something like (which means I don't recall the exact percentage) 96% of dog owners admitted to kissing their dogs -- and I assume that the other 4% lied about it.
Now, that's all well and good, but I want to know how many dog owners lick their dogs.
Though Valentine's Day has come and gone, the womannequin in the window of AdultMart is dressed in a skimpy red and white outfit. The male mannequin wears a silver outfit with a black mask. I expect them to change into their St. Patrick's Day outfits in the next few days; but until then, there is a "HUGE INVENTORY BLOW-OUT SALE."
You all recall the hubbub about Ice Breakers Pacs, the small blue packets that hold white Ice Breakers powder. You pop one in your mouth, the little blue packet magically dissolves, releasing a rush of minty freshness. While they are still on the shelves of stores while supplies last, Hershey discontinued making the stuff.
The story that made its way around the media and the public was that the little blue packets resembled the plasticene packets in which garden variety heroin, cocaine, crack, and crystal meth is delivered to the consumers by their drug dealers, confusing law enforcement officers, who might mistake a law-abiding citizen wanting to freshen his or her breath with a drug dealer flashing his or her product out on the street and arrest the law-abiding citizen, or confusing children of tender years, who might pay five or ten or twenty bucks to a drug dealer while believing that they are buying little blue packets of breath freshener and enter the seedy underworld of drug addiction.
That's the story you have read or have heard or have seen in the various news media.
But the story you have read or have heard or have seen in the various news media is just that -- a story. A cover-up.
And I am here to reveal the truth. It was the Catholics. It was the other Christians. They stopped the Hershey Company.
If you've tried a little blue packet of minty freshness, you know that the packet, as if by magic, migrated to the roof of your mouth and became stuck there; and nothing you did could get the thing off the roof of your mouth. And if you read the little instruction booklet that came in the little black and blue plastic box, you found out that you're not supposed to bite into the little blue packet of minty freshness, lest you suffer dire consequences.
I was eight years old. Sister Mary Felicia, blessed old battle-axe of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, screamed, "Stop that, young man!" interrupting the dress rehearsal of First Holy Communion for the stupid, stupid, public school Catholic kids; and I was the subject -- or object, rather, because that's how we were treated, of her outrage because I tried to scrape the Body of Christ off the roof of my mouth with my finger. The white wafer wasn't actually the Body of Christ at that time because it hadn't been transmogrified, yet, and was still just a piece of -- well, I guess it was just bread, but it reminded me of Ping-Pong balls.
There were two major rules, along with many, many less-than-major rules about Holy Communion. The first major rule was that unclean hands -- those attached to the arms of stupid, stupid, public school Catholic kids -- could not touch the Body of Christ, a violation of which could only be cured by confessing this Mortal Sin to a priest, who might grant absolution conditioned upon performing the Catholic form of community service, that is, kneeling there outside the Confessional and reciting the Art's-Father-Who's-Art-in-Heaven prayer like about 50 times, saying the Hail-Mary-Full-of-Grace missive about 50 times, and then saying the Act of Contrition, which I never learned, but, you know, like mouthed some words in the religion classes for the stupid, stupid public school Catholic kids; and the second major rule, even more major than the first, was that chewing on the Body of Christ was absolutely forbidden -- stupid, stupid public school Catholic kids who even thought about such cannibalism earned an express one-way ticket to the burning fires of Hell with no chance of redemption; and telling of this vilest of Mortal Sins to a priest during Confession undoubtedly ended in human sacrifice. You remember the excuse -- "Oh, [s]he moved to Montana."
Race memory. Those little blue xylitol packets brought to mind centuries of horrible experiences to Catholics and the rest of the Christians, so much so that the agents of the Pope secretly intervened, kind of like in one of those Godfather movies, leaving the head of a chocolate bunny in Humberto P. Alfonso's bed.
The truth? It was the Catholics. It was the other Christians. They stopped the Hershey Company.
i know, i know i've been neglecting the blog. so much going on here. too busy to write.
bill flew to florida on the ninth, was picked up by the jackal at the airport. quick stop at his place and his workplace, and they were on the road back to cleveland. the crazies drove straight through and were at j's new place in tremont by 10:30 saturday morning. bill and i have been off and on helping him get settled. spent today doing more of the same. dead tired and hurting, we are. the highlight of the day was watching and TRYING to help bill and jax get a queen-sized box spring up a stairway sized for at most a full-size box spring. they wound up having to cut the box frame nearly in half. bill has to fix up a little of the ceiling plaster, too. arghhhhh.
the day before yesterday, jackson got a call from his old manager in florida, rosie, that j's best friend and coworker, katie, was on life support in the hospital. 29 years old, and her mom went in to wake her for work and found her not breathing. today, they took her off life support. j's been a wreck off and on and has not wanted to answer any calls from florida today. he just called me and said there are 9 messages, and he's not sure if he wants to listen to them tonight. too sad.
he's been handling all this really well and with the support of his people up here.
tonight, bill and i spent well over an hour freezing our butts (and noses. and ears. and...) off sitting up at a local park with the car sunroof open watching the lunar eclipse. it was awesome. i hope you got a chance to see it. it was pretty cloudy about an hour before, and we didn't think we'd get a chance to watch it. but it cleared up nicely, and the night sky was beautiful! basically, it looked like a giant single piece of kix cereal floating in mid air. way cool. we sat and talked about the -- bill just said, "here's mine" so i turned to my right and read bill's post up on his computer screen, and he wrote about this, so i won't rehash. but it was a lovely, lovely evening.
my dear cousin, janice, wrote me an e-mail this evening asking me if i have thought about writing about a happy marriage. she's got me thinking. i do believe i have a successful (so far), functional (mostly), and happy (more happy days than unhappy days). and at this point (almost 34 years), i do believe that's pretty good. i've said before (but that won't stop me from saying it again) that i'm still crazy about the guy. and i feel loved. i do. and i know i can depend on him to work with me and for me on anything we need to do to deal with whatever comes our way. we enjoy the hell out of each other's company. but we've had some verrrry difficult times and some verrry unhappy days. i think that you have to expect that in life and in marriage. we married because we were crazy about each other and knew that we wanted to build a life together. we wanted to commit to that and to each other. for us, that is what marriage means. marriage is important to us.
but i also have very dear friends who are in a committed, non-married relationship. and it seems to work well for them. but marriage is what bill and i wanted. marriage is different for everybody. we have what we want, and includes that marital commitment to each other. it works for us.
end of proselytizing.
we picked up stuff at our storage unit today (some stuff to bring to jackson's, some to bring home and go through). and when we finally got home after 6 p.m., i started looking through the boxes. garbage pile, shred pile, more stuff for jackson, some for matt, and plenty o' crap (and not so crap) for us. school pictures, hockey pictures, report cards, notes, calendars, newsletters that i wrote or edited, lots of fun stuff. bill stuck up on the bulletin board between us a u. s. mail postal rate card that the post office would place in the mail chute information slot in one of the buildings that we worked in (it was early in our marriage, and i don't remember from where we swiped the thing -- probably a federal crime, pffft). it says:
"AIR MAIL . . . 8 CENTS PER OUNCE
FIRST CLASS . 5 CENTS PER OUNCE"
heh.
i'm sure there's more i've neglected to tell you, but it will have to wait for another time. i'm beat. night-night, sleep tight. don't let the bed bugs bite.
p.s. i also found a preschool picture of matt in the homemade optimus prime costume i made for him. i'm going to post it here when i have the time and energy.
The sky was cloudy early in the evening, but then it cleared so Stacey and I drove to Edgewater Park on the north coast of the U.S.A., risking arrest for being in a state park after closing, to sit in the dark and watch the total lunar eclipse through the sunroof. Coincidentally, without realizing it, I had thrown on a Dark Side of the Moon Tour shirt.
We sat in the car for about an hour and a half star-gazing. Jupiter was nearby, but I forgot the binoculars; so, we couldn't see the rings. The memories flooded over us, and we recalled the many times laying out on the deck or holding on to the edge of the pool, turning off all the lights, scanning the sky for meteors during various meteor showers. We camped out with sleeping bags in winter's frigid cold, watching nature illuminate the night sky. A part of history, we tracked Halley's Comet together.
We reminisced about home schooling, J-dogg and I spending many nights-into-morning looking up at the heavens, identifying stars, planets, the occasional spy satellite streaking across the sky, dud comets, constellations, and shooting stars, checking out the Moon's craters with our backyard telescope, as a part of his science curriculum. We'd find stars -- Betelguese, Sirius, Regula. We re-discovered the Seven Sisters, as if for the first time in human history, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, featuring Polaris, the North Star.
And we talked about getting up in the wee hours of the morning and finding our way to some bridge over the intercoastal waterway near Cape Canaveral to see a night launch of one of the space shuttles with thousands of other lunatics, the night sky brightly illuminated by the giant fire trail, catching the launch on film.
And tonight, both boys, now in their 20's, living on their own, called to remind us to look up. It's a family thing -- still. Felt pretty good.
Some nights, the dogs decide that they aren't comfortable and conspire to kick me and push me to a four-inch strip at the edge of the bed they allow me to claim as my own; so, I try to get comfortable, which is difficult. There are times when I can't get back to sleep, which was the case last night. I grabbed the clicker, scrolling through the hundreds of channels made available by our new video service provider. I couldn't find anything to watch -- except for "The Knife Show." Yes, "The Knife Show" was on all night long selling to the night owls all kinds of knives. And they weren't selling kitchen knives. Or little pocket knives. These were big fucking knives -- and a lot of big fucking knives. I'm just wondering if Homeland Security camps outside a buyer's door after intercepting the telephone call, waiting for the delivery to arrive.
I did fall asleep, only to be awakened by one of the dogs maybe like an hour later, at 5:30 or so; but I don't really know if that was the actual time because nobody keeps track of time at that hour of the morning. I know that most of you are saying, "Just say NO." And I've taken that advice. It didn't work with the kid -- it's not going to work with the fucking dog.
I rolled the inch-and-a-half off the bed, put on my pants, found only one fucking sock -- didn't put on the one fucking sock -- and got my boots, winter jacket, hat, and gloves on, hooked the dogs up to their leashes because when one gets up to go, the other two automatically get up. They think that there will be a day that I turn my back on them, then they can fucking attack and kill me. But that didn't happen. We went out. They did what they needed to do. We came back in.
Before taking a shower, I picked up my clothes to put them into the clothes hamper. And there was still only one sock, one of a pair with the Periodic Table on each sock, which was a real bummer, because I liked the socks. I looked all over for the other sock, but I couldn't find it. And we have all had that done to us -- a sock inexplicably disappears. Mostly, it happens in the dryer. Or the washing machine. One sock is gone -- no explanation for it. No note. Nothing.
Many have speculated about where the darned sock goes. Is it time travel? Is it a tear in the fabric of space? Gremlins? Tiny clowns hiding behind the legs of your bed? Sock heaven?
I have always been partial to the simple explanation. Wormholes. There has been no proof that wormholes exist.
Until now.
I found my other Periodic Table sock. It was precariously perched on the edge of the 55-gallon drum that the guy selling Christmas trees on the sidewalk in front of our building used to contain a fire to keep warm, which was stored down in the garage. I was slaloming through the garage between the huge 12 x 12 wood posts holding up the building, heading toward the exit door when a flash of color caught my eye -- the flash of color was my sock, obviously sucked up by a wormhole and carried to the nether reaches of the garage 13 stories below by a wormhole.
There can be no other explanation.
The newest Attorney General proclaimed before his god and Congressional committees that waterboarding isn't torture.
"On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced 'a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk.' The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier." [NPR, Nov. 3, 2008]
Court martial? Gee, does that mean the soldier did something illegal?
Let's see. Perhaps, there's some kind of law ... aaaah, lookie here, right in the United States Code in a book marked Title 18 -- Crimes and Criminal Procedure:
§ 2340A. Torture
(a) Offense. Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction. There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
(c) Conspiracy. A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.
Whoa. Dude. 20 years.
But wait. We really don't know what "Torture" is, do we? Wowee! Found that, too. And it's right before the other section:
§ 2340. Definitions
As used in this chapter
(1) "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) "severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) "United States" means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.
Make up your own mind.
Our bank awards points for stuff. I don't know what kind of stuff, but we have gotten Starbucks cards every so often. I guess Famous Footwear does the same thing, giving points for buying shoes, which can be redeemed on a subsequent purchase, which is not really the same thing as the bank because Famous Footwear requires a subsequent purchase, whereas the bank does not.
This isn't anything new. Back in olden times, my mother would give me a few booklets and a box of little green stamps, some loose, most in strips and sheets. Eagle stamps. She would get Eagle stamps from one of the grocery stores. The filled books were worth $3.00 -- I don't know what she bought with the books or whether she just cashed them in. I didn't know how the system worked, just how I don't know how the bank works the points thing nowadays.
All I know is that my mom would give me the stuff; I would lick the stamps and stick them in the books, making sure I pasted them within the lines on each page.
She also collected S & H Green stamps, which were not as green as the Eagle stamps. The "S & H" was printed in a red script against a very light green background. The stamps came in various denominations, so that when filling the S & H Green stamp books, I might stick only one stamp per page, making sure I stuck it in the right box for the denomination of the stamp. More often than not, I was pasting a lot of stamps on a page, making sure I licked them wet enough to stick on the page, but not too wet, which caused the glue to bleed and stick one page to another, which was bad. I never knew how bad that turned out to be. I don't know what my mom did with the S & H Green stamps, just as I didn't know what happened to all the Eagle stamps I licked and pasted.
And I never thought to ask. And now, it's too late to ask.
i posted this originally on 5/20/04, and am posting it again because huckabee looks to be winning republican primary votes today. can't stand the fucker. i'm soooo sick of the debate -- what are you republican assholes really afraid of?
the gay marriage "thing" is a big news item again lately. and jax wrote about a possible suicide in our area where rumors are flying at the high school that the boy was questioning his sexuality and worried that "god wouldn't love him." now, i do NOT know anything at all about this boy at the high school, but it just got me thinking about this whole thing again. i'm gonna lay it all out for you. my thoughts. MY beliefs.
#1. homosexuality has always been. always will be. hear me again. there will ALWAYS be a certain percentage of the human race that are homosexual. always.
#2. homosexuality DOES NOT EQUAL pedophilia. there are heterosexual pedophiles, homosexual pedophiles, priest pedophiles, teacher pedophiles, and garbage collector pedophiles. the adjective has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the noun. non-predator homosexuals (just like non-predator heterosexuals) want other homosexuals. tell me you haven't heard a hetero guy say something "admiring" about a lesbian. most people shrug it off. no big deal. but if a homosexual says the same thing about a hetero, boy oh boy, does the crap fly. this is not predatory behavior, people. get over it. nobody's trying to recruit straight people over to the other side.
#3. this is the big one for me. if you accept that there will be a certain number of human beings who will be homosexual (#1) and that homosexuals are not predatory by nature (#2) [if you don't accept these premises, you're pretty much hopeless. and brain dead. in my humble opinion.] given these FACTS -- oh yes they are FACTS - how can we say to a human being: if you realize that you are homosexual, understand that you will never have the right to love and commit to another homosexual person in the same way that WE can. WE are normal. YOU are a horrible mistake. YOU must live unloved and unfulfilled as a human being. live in OUR world. in OUR WORLD, only heterosexuals may marry. that's OUR sacred right. i don't know about you - but *i* believe that there's room for all kinds of people.
so YOU have a choice. two alternatives.
ONE: you do not accept facts. therefore - you are ignorant.
TWO: if you accept the facts, but believe that marriage is only for heterosexuals, you're just a mean, close-minded bastard. allowing homosexuals to marry doesn't demean you or your marriage. your position against gay marriage demeans you.
and this: don't tell me what your bible/priest/dogma/religion tells you. you need to accept the FACT that we are not a christian, jewish, muslim, wiccan, satanist - whatever you are - nation. that is what separation of church and state means.
imho.
edit: i see that the comments are getting into religion.
there are differences between a religious marriage and a legally sanctioned marriage. religious marriages are recognized legally, but the converse is not necessarily true. look at the catholic sacrament of marriage. there are very specific values and steps that must be accomplished in order to be married in the catholic sense. and the legal concept of divorce is not recognized in the catholic church. unless a catholic marriage has been annulled, it cannot be dissolved.
why is it so hard to distinguish between the two? why cannot homosexuals be married legally without it "demeaning" the sacrament of the catholic church. or any other church's belief system. if a couple does not meet the criteria of a religious marriage -- fine. they're not asking for that. neither did we.
i don't see a problem with the dichotomy. maybe that's just me. a lapsed catholic. one who left the church when a MAN (ok, a priest) denied my little sister absolution at confession because in the eyes of the catholic church, our mother and her husband were still married to their first spouses (they only went through LEGAL divorces). what that had to do with my sister's prayer for absolution, i'll NEVER understand. i guess this guy misinterpreted some scripture? could this be possible? so don't TELL ME WHAT YOUR BIBLE SAYS. i don't care what some men say jesus told them. i don't care. i don't believe jesus was the son of god. i don't deny you the right to your religious version of marriage -- as long as you're not hurting anybody. get your religious views out of my life.
but there MUST be a legal institution of marriage. maybe if the majority of people in this MOSTLY CHRISTIAN nation behaved in a christian manner regarding marriage and offspring, the law wouldn't have to be involved. cuz i don't think that the high divorce rate can be linked to only non-christians. i'm just guessing here -- there are a hell of a lot of christians not behaving very christ-like in their divorce and child-support proceedings. so my advice here to religious leaders: clean your own house before you come to MINE and tell ME what's wrong in MY HOUSE.
so don't talk to me about RELIGION. talk to me about the law. and the values of a compassionate, accepting, LOVING culture that we pretend to be. gah.
Saturday afternoon was sunny and somewhat warmer than it has been. The temperature was above freezing; so, I figured that washing the car was in order. When people can't tell the color of the car, the time's come to wash it. So, my lovely wife and I went on a drive to the Valley Laser Wash. No, I wasn't going to any old car wash; I was getting the ultimate in high-tech, automatic, robotic, industrial-strength, ultra-power-dry, space-age, extreme car washes. And I planned to clean my stuff out of the back seat and three glove boxes, vacuum the interior, and then wipe off the dust and the coffee drips and dog drool and pupkisses.
There are times one is compelled to do unpleasant tasks like cleaning the car in the middle of winter -- compelled, I say, because if one refuses to do so, well ... sleeping with the fishes is distinctly possible; and there are other things that could happen, but that particular one belligerently pushes its way to the forefront of my feeble mind.
Rather than opt for the cheapest wash alternative -- you know how it is, the various options have various clever names, like "The Big Cheapskate," as opposed to "The Cheapskate," which is a dollar more, just to make you feel like the ultimate in frugality -- but I went for the grand prize, the "Grande Ultimo Maximus," which sounds Roman, which, in advanced car washing circles, is a good thing. It also sounds like a drink at Starbucks, which put me in a good light with the spouse for that choice.
Now, Valley Laser Wash is not a pull-onto-the-conveyor-between-the-rails-put-it-in-neutral car wash; it is a pull-your-car-up-till-the-red-light-goes-on-telling-you-to-stop-and-sit-still-and-the-thing-goes-around-the-car car wash. Do you know what happens when you pull up too far? In what would serve as an ominous portent of the future, lights flashed, sirens whined, and the sign blinkered "BACK UP!" until I was apparently out of harm's way; but then, in a matter of inches, the sign switched to green, signaling me to "Move Forward." So, I tried to go as slow as humanly possible, moving forward millimeter after millimeter until the red light came on, ordering me to stop once again. It is difficult to describe the feeling -- terror, I think -- as I moved forward, afraid of what the machine might do to me if I went too far yet a second time. Incorporated into the high-tech, ultra-shiny, robotic car wash device, I noticed a dull, black thing that looked suspiciously like the barrel of a GAU-8/A 30mm cannon, capable of firing 3,900 rounds per minute. I'm not crazy -- well, not real crazy, anyway, because a red dot appeared on the hood of the car -- from the laser sight on the rotary cannon, I bet.
The machine stopped flashing its lights and blowing its horror horn at me, apparently satisfied that I was properly deferential to its designs, and decided to start moving around and around the car, spraying and rinsing and sudsing and rinsing and waxing and rinsing and Rain-X'ing and rinsing and telling me to get the fuck out of there and ahead to the big blowing dryers. I, of course, did as instructed.
After the automatic, Category-5-hurricane-force dryers finished buffeting the car, I pulled out of the building ahead to the stainless steel vacuum canisters. My lovely wife got out of the car and generously helped me clean all of my accumulated crap out of the back seat of her car, with the sun setting and colder night air pouring into the valley, in which Valley Laser Wash is located; and I hadn't yet gotten the quarters from the change machine to feed the vacuum machine.
The vacuum machine sucked. It sucked the floor mats off the floor and tried to devour them. I saw the camera affixed to the building above the exit door -- a camera recording every move I made, recording me choking the fucking hose trying to shake the floor mat loose from the maw of the silvery vacuum canister, recording my lovely wife laughing at me. Four minutes is not enough time to vacuum the interior of the car, especially if one must wrestle the fucking machine with a suction death grip for the floor mat.
And did you know that if you let the time run out before you deposit another quarter for another minute of slapstick comedy, then you have to start over and buy another four minutes; so, having learned your lesson, if you happen to hear the beep-beep-beep signaling you have 30 seconds left, you drop the vacuum canister's instrument of death onto the ground, hoping that it doesn't suck the earth beneath you into a black hole of oblivion, race around the car, trying to get a quarter out of your pocket with freezing fingers, temperature plummeting, under an all-seeing eye, your wonderful spouse doubled over, laughing.
And you've stupidly used up all of your fucking time-outs.
I finally finished vacuuming under high-tech, high-intensity sodium lamps humming their illuminating tune, and started wiping the interior, thankful that my laughing, rosy-cheeked, lovely wife had the foresight to wear her good-to-90-below, mountaineering coat, lime green, so that if she ever gets separated from the group while climbing Everest, the spotter will be able to locate her.
I hurriedly wiped the dashboard off with a damp, soft cloth, just like the owner's manual probably recommends and moved on to the middle console and the driver's side door. I thought I'd accomplish the mission by running around the car to the passenger side so that my cherub-faced, still chuckling wife could get in to a warm, clean interior. You see, I'm such a thoughtful fellow -- starting the car and turning up the heater.
She noticed that, me starting the car and all, then she remarked, "You locked the keys in the car with the engine running."
"What?" I asked, trying to open the passenger-side door.
"You closed your door. When you were cleaning in between the seats, you hit the lock button. And I don't have my set of keys," she pointed out.
after bill read my repost of the other day, he picked up a loaf of wonder bread for us (me) at the grocery store. lately, i've been trying to eat only whole grains, or mostly whole grains; and this can be pretty tough given the fact that we are lucky enough to have some wonderful artisinal breads stocked just a few steps away from our building at the little "grocery" store. thankfully, constantino's has some really, really good whole grain fresh bread, too. i resist temptation, though, not as much as i should.
so ... i'm baking a cake tonight (shut UP, matt and mel!)* and the wonderbread is calling me. it's pleading with me -- "eat me. eat me" in its pitiful wonderbread voice. first i think, american cheese? nuh uh. peanut butter? mayyybee. egg salad? whoa. that would be AWESOME, but i just used up my last 2 eggs in the cake. i got it -- tuna fish. oh yeah, that's it.
i think about how it's lent, and i'm having tuna fish. and it's not even friday! when WE were kids, catholics couldn't eat meat on ANY friday -- not just fridays during lent. pope john the 23rd (i think it was him, and yeah -- that's right. i wrote it in "arabic" numerals, NOT roman numerals. it slides off the tongue easier, doncha think?) made life much, much easier for catholics. you catholics nowadays are pussies! you don't have to keep your heads covered in church (women), the mass is recited in english (!), and you don't have to have fish sticks or tuna casserole every freaking friday of your life. i mean, there's such a concept as too much of a good thing. and now i'm thinking maybe THIS is why i'm wanting a tuna fish sandwich! cell memory! except it's not cell memory, cuz it's just plain memories.
so i head to the pantry for the tuna fish. what? you don't keep your tuna fish in the pantry? and herein lies the point of this post. as i was opening up the can to make my tuna fish "salad," (recipe: 1 small can of tuna fish, add mayo to achieve the consistency your sensibilities allow. that's it. no freaking onion. no freaking celery. no freaking seasonings.) i started thinking about canned tuna. if you're of a certain age, it's what you were raised with (it is that with which you were raised. i know proper grammar -- i just don't wanna sound like a snob. that and the authentic voice thing. heh). i'm guessing i was in my mid twenties before i really thought about the fact that tuna can actually come fresh. or frozen. i think i may have ordered it a couple of times in a restaurant since then. i'm pretty sure of it. but i've not once purchased it to bring home and cook.
it just seems unnecessary. the kind of tuna i use is already cooked. i can be a pretty snobby gourmand when i want to be, but not when it comes to tuna fish. i've served canned tuna in many meals over the years to my family (all hated by the three males): tuna casserole, the cold tuna salad with the tri-color noodles (i think i thought the pretty colors would distract them), the cold tuna bow tie pasta salad with cannellini beans. all meals only i loved. i indulge my tuna-fish cravings now with the much loved tuna salad (recipe above) on wonder bread. and the occasional bow tie pasta/tuna salad with cannellini beans. just enough for only me.
i'm not catholic anymore, basically because i'm not a christian anymore, and the church kind of insists on that. that and the holy TRINITY, even. which i NEVER understood. so the tuna fish thing gets to be indulged only when i feel like it.
i felt like it tonight, and it was goooood.
*there is a rumor going around in my family that i bake far too many cakes. as if!
Relief for More Than Just Mucus!
What kind of sales pitch is that?
It's the new Robitussin slogan.
The Partnership for Drug-Free America, in its annual study of teen drug abuse, states that teenagers are more likely to abuse over-the-counter and prescription medication than illicit drugs, such as ecstasy, cocaine, and methamphetamines.
ONE IN TEN TEENS REPORT THAT THEY HAVE ABUSED COUGH MEDICINE TO GET HIGH.
Relief for more than just mucus.