I just don't have the strength for this anymore as, oh wait, I'm writing this two days from Easter Sunday (today is Good Friday) and shame at my own inadequacies fills me with a special, lingering guilt that can really only be enhanced by the cadaverous memories of a Catholic upbringing. The sensation is rather like being piped full of ditch-water, old ashtray leavings and cold, step-on-some-gick-at-7 AM-barefoot cat hurl.
Domonic (wavingthewhiteflag) Potorti
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
Ten lords a'leapin'.
Long ago, in a place where the landscape can most aptly be described as "monotonous, but with shit-tons of corn" and where one can (and one has) nearly broken one's face open after almost plummeting to the earth after slipping on a three-pound, muddy-brown, Grizzly snuff-induced snot-and-saliva slick-rope, two young, dapper and happy lads got themselves all tarted up and went to the ballet.
One of these gents was - despite a cultured upbringing and a burning, seething, nearly incapacitating desire to experience the ethnographic, the exotic and and, most of all, the ceaselessly bizarre - never taken to a ballet. Since he was unsure that he was willing to be talked about behind elegant gloves and through clenched teeth as "the guy who goes to operas and ballets alone, and most likely has either an apartment filled with pet serpents named after people in the Bible or dozens of mewling, nearly feral house-cats he imagines are his savage minions", he'd waited until the right time - and for the right person - to take the plunge into the world of high culture.
As a small child, this gent would often be found curled up with a small book near holiday-time; within, the book told the thrilling story of living toys, of three-headed anthropomorphic rats, and of a valiant object whose humble beginnings as a servile, seed-coat-crushing oddity did not reflect the bravery and courage within him. Of course, the whole "what the living hell?" factor was significant when selecting the book over, say, a book about grisly, unsolved mysteries which he surely didn't ever read with a flashlight in bed until he nearly soiled his undergarments. Some things in life, he concluded, are inexplicable. Like that bag of potato chips that appear on top of the fridge - just out of reach - once a month, when Mom gets a little edgier and starts asking us to "get the blue feck out of her fecking hair." Or like how one's father could stand by as one was nearly murdered by waterfowl. Or like how, after asking for a sister to be produced from one's mother's swelling belly and then getting one, nobody really seemed as interested in purchasing the squalling, moist mass of evil as one would have hoped.
Many years had passed with little thought given to the illogical and, if one considers it closely, rather terrifying story when the other dapper chap presented him with two tickets to see it perfomed by real people as a holiday gift. Real people. Real people in remarkably snug clothing, flopping about on a stage on toes strengthened with strange wooden blocks. He could scarcely believe that it was finally happening.
As they sat in the darkened hall, beholding a cherished holiday classic being performed for them, Dapper Lad #1 found himself unable to gain sweet release from three thoughts that, like popcorn hulls, had lodged themselves somewhere they ought not be.
One: One can actually hear shoe hitting ground when a ballet dancer hits the floor from a leap. On television, one can't, and thus one magical thing that ought to have remained that way - the idea that ballet-folk were actually airy, weightless wind sprites - was murdered and was interred, and lay moistly mouldering in the humus.
Two: The story really didn't become any more accessible to the adult mind, and one should just really sit back, revel in the enchanted music, and forget that three-headed anthropomorphic rodents aren't really all that common.
Three: Those tights really do not leave anything to the imagination. As I silently prayed to Saint Martinus, the patron saint of blinding, gonna-vomit-in-your-own-beard testicular injury, I hoped that each of the leaping 'lords was packing a jock-strap at the very least; one of those pointy, wooden-tipped shoes to the twig n' bits would be enough to ensure that one would shoot blanks for the rest of one's life, to be sure.
And so, on this, the tenth day of Christmas, I am reminded of the realization of a cherished childhood hope to personally witness humanoid vermin attempt to skull-feck a young girl and a living parlor decoration, and of a fervent hope that ten leaping 'lords had at least packed a sock in that shet. Because damn.
Until later, I remain,
Domonic (thenutcracker,indeed) Potorti
One of these gents was - despite a cultured upbringing and a burning, seething, nearly incapacitating desire to experience the ethnographic, the exotic and and, most of all, the ceaselessly bizarre - never taken to a ballet. Since he was unsure that he was willing to be talked about behind elegant gloves and through clenched teeth as "the guy who goes to operas and ballets alone, and most likely has either an apartment filled with pet serpents named after people in the Bible or dozens of mewling, nearly feral house-cats he imagines are his savage minions", he'd waited until the right time - and for the right person - to take the plunge into the world of high culture.
As a small child, this gent would often be found curled up with a small book near holiday-time; within, the book told the thrilling story of living toys, of three-headed anthropomorphic rats, and of a valiant object whose humble beginnings as a servile, seed-coat-crushing oddity did not reflect the bravery and courage within him. Of course, the whole "what the living hell?" factor was significant when selecting the book over, say, a book about grisly, unsolved mysteries which he surely didn't ever read with a flashlight in bed until he nearly soiled his undergarments. Some things in life, he concluded, are inexplicable. Like that bag of potato chips that appear on top of the fridge - just out of reach - once a month, when Mom gets a little edgier and starts asking us to "get the blue feck out of her fecking hair." Or like how one's father could stand by as one was nearly murdered by waterfowl. Or like how, after asking for a sister to be produced from one's mother's swelling belly and then getting one, nobody really seemed as interested in purchasing the squalling, moist mass of evil as one would have hoped.
Many years had passed with little thought given to the illogical and, if one considers it closely, rather terrifying story when the other dapper chap presented him with two tickets to see it perfomed by real people as a holiday gift. Real people. Real people in remarkably snug clothing, flopping about on a stage on toes strengthened with strange wooden blocks. He could scarcely believe that it was finally happening.
As they sat in the darkened hall, beholding a cherished holiday classic being performed for them, Dapper Lad #1 found himself unable to gain sweet release from three thoughts that, like popcorn hulls, had lodged themselves somewhere they ought not be.
One: One can actually hear shoe hitting ground when a ballet dancer hits the floor from a leap. On television, one can't, and thus one magical thing that ought to have remained that way - the idea that ballet-folk were actually airy, weightless wind sprites - was murdered and was interred, and lay moistly mouldering in the humus.
Two: The story really didn't become any more accessible to the adult mind, and one should just really sit back, revel in the enchanted music, and forget that three-headed anthropomorphic rodents aren't really all that common.
Three: Those tights really do not leave anything to the imagination. As I silently prayed to Saint Martinus, the patron saint of blinding, gonna-vomit-in-your-own-beard testicular injury, I hoped that each of the leaping 'lords was packing a jock-strap at the very least; one of those pointy, wooden-tipped shoes to the twig n' bits would be enough to ensure that one would shoot blanks for the rest of one's life, to be sure.
And so, on this, the tenth day of Christmas, I am reminded of the realization of a cherished childhood hope to personally witness humanoid vermin attempt to skull-feck a young girl and a living parlor decoration, and of a fervent hope that ten leaping 'lords had at least packed a sock in that shet. Because damn.
Until later, I remain,
Domonic (thenutcracker,indeed) Potorti
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Nine ladies dancing.
Long ago and in a land perfumed delicately with hidden, spicy things, meats on various skewers, and with but a hint of human hair lanolin, partially-enclosed sewers and car exhaust, a young man, his deliriously delightful cousin and his uncle saw fit to interrupt a potent moment of modern Mexican history by patronizing a touristy staged folk dance-stravaganza.
In our defense, three conspiratory situations led us, Judas goat-like, to this betrayal without being in full franchise of what we were getting ourselves into.
1) At that time, two of the three of us were severely challenged in the "speaking and/or reading Spanish" department; my uncle's involvement with the activities of our host family meant that he wouldn't necessarily have been paying attention to, oh, the news.
2) CNN.com is pretty much how I get my news, and without access to it, I might as well be residing on some random Pacific atoll for the amount of knowledge I have about goings-on when I am abroad.
3) We were pretty much doing anything that the Mexican host family we were staying with decided would be awesome to do.
The majority of the time we'd spent in country by this point was in Hujuapan de Leon, a largish Oaxacan city nearish to Tlaxcala (in the northern part of the state) and Mexico City. However, one of the brothers of this family secretly lived in Oaxaca City, the Big Mole-Sauced Chicken Thigh herself, and thought that the city's beautiful landscape, baroque architecture and lively culture would be interesting to us. After a few days in Hujuapan - which, I hasten to say, is a lovely place - I fiercely desired to see a more vivid, in-your-face (read: exotic) Mexico; the anthropologist in me clamored for regional costumes and the opportunity to purchase ass-loads of handicrafts, the historian lusted for sight of fifteenth-century architecture and the part of me that remains human lusted after food that wasn't hacked out of or drained from a goat.
We get to Oaxaca in the middle of the night and proceed to pass right the feck out after driving from Huajuapan. And by "driving" I mean "my uncle did all of the driving because a) it was a stick-shift car and b) because it was Mexico." While tooling around the city the next morning (and, as an aside, frightening my relatives with my insensate, rabid lust for ethnographic artifacts), we casually mentioned that we'd not seen anyone in more traditional clothing to our guides. While I certainly wasn't expecting everyone to be girded in hand-woven woolen delights, we had been assured that Oaxaca was a city that prided itself as being a bastion of traditional Mexican lifeways. That, and, uh, we'd been promised that we'd see cool things. One of our guides then disappears and is gone for about thirty minutes; he returns as though he'd not been gone, and our unspoken supposition - that he'd needed to duke - was not challenged.
Later that night, we begin moving toward Oaxaca's zocalo, a word that I have been assured means "stewed chicken neck that one dredges up from the bottom of an otherwise perfectly lovely soup." No, it's the city's biggest plaza or square; Mexico City's zocalo (which I believe is capitalized [pun!] with a "Z") is pretty damn enormous and has the biggest flag I have ever seen in my entire life flying above it. Anyway, at this point we're told that there had been some "problems" in recent months in Oaxaca involving teacher strikes. My uncle indicates at this time that he'd been peripherally aware of this; my cousin and I are like, hmm, yay! Civic unrest! In Latin America! While we are here!
At that moment, an earlier exchange I'd had with a shopkeeper made much more sense.
Me: How much is this weird rug-thing with the creepy birds on it?
Elderly but spry shopkeeper: [fantastically enormous sum of money]
Me: Feck this shet. [leaving]
EBSS: [grabs my shirt and partially kneels] Lemme level with you. I'm hungry. My eight kids and my fifty-nine grandkids are hungry. Nobody comes to this god-forsaken hole anymore now that the teachers have gone and fecked everything to death. Putas! Bad for tourism. Bad for my belly. Hey, make me an offer, man. It's either that or I'll hide in the alley and wait to slit your throat for your debit card. What'll it be?
Me: How's twenty-five bucks sound? Isn't that, like, two billion pesos?
He mumbled throughout the entire transaction, which led me to believe that I'd royally bum-banged him for betraying his desperation. However, seeing many other, similar objects later that week for sale at a quarter of that, I came to the realization that I might as well have greased up, licked my lips and bent over for what I'd paid. (My guides nearly died with shame that a) a Oaxaceno could have done that to a tourist and b) that I was nearly functionally retarded when it came to how much one should pay for things in Mexico).
So: teacher strikes. Widespread unease. A highly weakened tourism base, through which one out of three Oaxacenos earns a living. Well isn't THIS effin' fancy, I thought, but kept my white, round-eye trap shut as we moved toward the zocalo.
As we move toward the city center, I begin to wonder why we'd be doing so. Heaps of things laying the middle of roadways reminded me a little too much of the barricades in Les Misrables; a confirmation that this is what they actually were didn't necessarily reassure me. Let's keep going, our guides insisted, and because Conspiratory Situation Number Three was still in effect, we just went with it.
At this precise astral moment, 1691 miles away, Keith logs in to CNN.com to see that there has been some "violent" unrest in Oaxaca, Mexico that week. He proceeds to lay a golden egg in his boxer-briefs.
In another part of the forest, we begin move through the zocalo, which had been cordoned off by protesters and was covered in graffiti, posters, and wet garbage. My uncle, who'd been to Oaxaca's city center before it looked like that, sighed at the passage of a beautiful thing
and then began to take pictures.
It was only after the second flash that I realized what he was doing, and lawd, did I become sore afraid. "Pray, dear uncle, what are ye doing?", I squeaked, trying to look as grave and somber as the unwashed folks who were cooking things in holes in the pavement. "Perhaps these fine AND CERTAINLY JUSTIFIED folks would like to not have this bit of hell immortalized in thy camera."
I don't think he heard me, or else politely ignored my entreaty; the unwashed folks who were cooking things in holes in the pavement went back to moistly reeking and cooking, and my uncle got quite a few great pictures of the zocalo. I can say they are great now because a) I'm about 2,000 miles away and b) I didn't get murdered.
At the center of the zocalo, they'd covered over what I've been assured was a lovely fountain with anti-Ulises (the then-governor of the province) smear.
On the surface of this note: we're sorry things look like shet but we're making history.
Subtext: Go home, white round-eyes, and leave us the feck alone.
The tarp-city.
Finally, my cousin got up the chutzpah to ask the all-important "WTF are we doing here?" question of our guests, and we were led quietly to a building just on the edge of the zocalo and guided inside.
Ah. A Mexican folk-dancing troupe. Our whining about not seeing "traditional" Mexican things meant that our hosts had secured us five seats at a performance of Oaxaca's very own Grupo Folklorico Teotzapotlan, which held court on what would ordinarily have been a rather beautiful hotel's dance floor. However, as the front entrance of this establishment was, oh, directly off of the city's ruined zocalo, things had...well...gone south a bit. There was still pride and charm, but let's just say that big metal bars do not a decoration style make.
The leader of this group was a woman who apparently calls herself "La Gordita", which, yes, means "The Little Fatty." In Mexico, like many other much cooler places in the world, being plump is pretty fly. She whistled through her teeth a lot to signal dance maneuver changes.
Ladies dancing. OK, motherhumpers: there are only seven of them, as opposed to the requisite nine. But two of the gentlemen DID have a rather feminine energy...
Also: I don't know why there are pineapples on their shoulders, so don't ask.
And the "Gaily-Painted Gourd Calabash Held Aloft While I Have a Lacy Headdress-Thing On Dance", which was my favorite of all.
We left the folk dance feeling better that we'd seen some local color and that we'd (through our hosts) been able to pump a little money into the city's dying perishing tourist infrastructure. The fact that we'd crossed over a de facto picket line to do so, though, meant that I felt as though the acts canceled themselves out in terms of karmic retribution.
Later that week, though, as electrolytes were ejected from my body at speeds generally regarded when speaking of horseracing, I became aware of the ghastly, altogether stark truth.
And so, on this "ninth day of Christmas", I am reminded of a crossed picket line, a dancestravaganza, and, as high retribution for this from an as-of-yet undetermined spiritual force, losing twelve pounds of water weight in a foreign country.
I remain, as ever,
Domonic (maybeitwasthatchickenneck) Potorti
In our defense, three conspiratory situations led us, Judas goat-like, to this betrayal without being in full franchise of what we were getting ourselves into.
1) At that time, two of the three of us were severely challenged in the "speaking and/or reading Spanish" department; my uncle's involvement with the activities of our host family meant that he wouldn't necessarily have been paying attention to, oh, the news.
2) CNN.com is pretty much how I get my news, and without access to it, I might as well be residing on some random Pacific atoll for the amount of knowledge I have about goings-on when I am abroad.
3) We were pretty much doing anything that the Mexican host family we were staying with decided would be awesome to do.
The majority of the time we'd spent in country by this point was in Hujuapan de Leon, a largish Oaxacan city nearish to Tlaxcala (in the northern part of the state) and Mexico City. However, one of the brothers of this family secretly lived in Oaxaca City, the Big Mole-Sauced Chicken Thigh herself, and thought that the city's beautiful landscape, baroque architecture and lively culture would be interesting to us. After a few days in Hujuapan - which, I hasten to say, is a lovely place - I fiercely desired to see a more vivid, in-your-face (read: exotic) Mexico; the anthropologist in me clamored for regional costumes and the opportunity to purchase ass-loads of handicrafts, the historian lusted for sight of fifteenth-century architecture and the part of me that remains human lusted after food that wasn't hacked out of or drained from a goat.
We get to Oaxaca in the middle of the night and proceed to pass right the feck out after driving from Huajuapan. And by "driving" I mean "my uncle did all of the driving because a) it was a stick-shift car and b) because it was Mexico." While tooling around the city the next morning (and, as an aside, frightening my relatives with my insensate, rabid lust for ethnographic artifacts), we casually mentioned that we'd not seen anyone in more traditional clothing to our guides. While I certainly wasn't expecting everyone to be girded in hand-woven woolen delights, we had been assured that Oaxaca was a city that prided itself as being a bastion of traditional Mexican lifeways. That, and, uh, we'd been promised that we'd see cool things. One of our guides then disappears and is gone for about thirty minutes; he returns as though he'd not been gone, and our unspoken supposition - that he'd needed to duke - was not challenged.
Later that night, we begin moving toward Oaxaca's zocalo, a word that I have been assured means "stewed chicken neck that one dredges up from the bottom of an otherwise perfectly lovely soup." No, it's the city's biggest plaza or square; Mexico City's zocalo (which I believe is capitalized [pun!] with a "Z") is pretty damn enormous and has the biggest flag I have ever seen in my entire life flying above it. Anyway, at this point we're told that there had been some "problems" in recent months in Oaxaca involving teacher strikes. My uncle indicates at this time that he'd been peripherally aware of this; my cousin and I are like, hmm, yay! Civic unrest! In Latin America! While we are here!
At that moment, an earlier exchange I'd had with a shopkeeper made much more sense.
Me: How much is this weird rug-thing with the creepy birds on it?
Elderly but spry shopkeeper: [fantastically enormous sum of money]
Me: Feck this shet. [leaving]
EBSS: [grabs my shirt and partially kneels] Lemme level with you. I'm hungry. My eight kids and my fifty-nine grandkids are hungry. Nobody comes to this god-forsaken hole anymore now that the teachers have gone and fecked everything to death. Putas! Bad for tourism. Bad for my belly. Hey, make me an offer, man. It's either that or I'll hide in the alley and wait to slit your throat for your debit card. What'll it be?
Me: How's twenty-five bucks sound? Isn't that, like, two billion pesos?
He mumbled throughout the entire transaction, which led me to believe that I'd royally bum-banged him for betraying his desperation. However, seeing many other, similar objects later that week for sale at a quarter of that, I came to the realization that I might as well have greased up, licked my lips and bent over for what I'd paid. (My guides nearly died with shame that a) a Oaxaceno could have done that to a tourist and b) that I was nearly functionally retarded when it came to how much one should pay for things in Mexico).
So: teacher strikes. Widespread unease. A highly weakened tourism base, through which one out of three Oaxacenos earns a living. Well isn't THIS effin' fancy, I thought, but kept my white, round-eye trap shut as we moved toward the zocalo.
As we move toward the city center, I begin to wonder why we'd be doing so. Heaps of things laying the middle of roadways reminded me a little too much of the barricades in Les Misrables; a confirmation that this is what they actually were didn't necessarily reassure me. Let's keep going, our guides insisted, and because Conspiratory Situation Number Three was still in effect, we just went with it.
At this precise astral moment, 1691 miles away, Keith logs in to CNN.com to see that there has been some "violent" unrest in Oaxaca, Mexico that week. He proceeds to lay a golden egg in his boxer-briefs.
In another part of the forest, we begin move through the zocalo, which had been cordoned off by protesters and was covered in graffiti, posters, and wet garbage. My uncle, who'd been to Oaxaca's city center before it looked like that, sighed at the passage of a beautiful thing
and then began to take pictures.
It was only after the second flash that I realized what he was doing, and lawd, did I become sore afraid. "Pray, dear uncle, what are ye doing?", I squeaked, trying to look as grave and somber as the unwashed folks who were cooking things in holes in the pavement. "Perhaps these fine AND CERTAINLY JUSTIFIED folks would like to not have this bit of hell immortalized in thy camera."
I don't think he heard me, or else politely ignored my entreaty; the unwashed folks who were cooking things in holes in the pavement went back to moistly reeking and cooking, and my uncle got quite a few great pictures of the zocalo. I can say they are great now because a) I'm about 2,000 miles away and b) I didn't get murdered.
The crudely-drawn hand with the middle finger is pretty saucy, no? I have to admit, though: I couldn't draw a better hand myself, so more power to the proletariat.
At the center of the zocalo, they'd covered over what I've been assured was a lovely fountain with anti-Ulises (the then-governor of the province) smear.
On the surface of this note: we're sorry things look like shet but we're making history.
Subtext: Go home, white round-eyes, and leave us the feck alone.
The tarp-city.
Finally, my cousin got up the chutzpah to ask the all-important "WTF are we doing here?" question of our guests, and we were led quietly to a building just on the edge of the zocalo and guided inside.
Ah. A Mexican folk-dancing troupe. Our whining about not seeing "traditional" Mexican things meant that our hosts had secured us five seats at a performance of Oaxaca's very own Grupo Folklorico Teotzapotlan, which held court on what would ordinarily have been a rather beautiful hotel's dance floor. However, as the front entrance of this establishment was, oh, directly off of the city's ruined zocalo, things had...well...gone south a bit. There was still pride and charm, but let's just say that big metal bars do not a decoration style make.
The leader of this group was a woman who apparently calls herself "La Gordita", which, yes, means "The Little Fatty." In Mexico, like many other much cooler places in the world, being plump is pretty fly. She whistled through her teeth a lot to signal dance maneuver changes.
Ladies dancing. OK, motherhumpers: there are only seven of them, as opposed to the requisite nine. But two of the gentlemen DID have a rather feminine energy...
Also: I don't know why there are pineapples on their shoulders, so don't ask.
And the "Gaily-Painted Gourd Calabash Held Aloft While I Have a Lacy Headdress-Thing On Dance", which was my favorite of all.
We left the folk dance feeling better that we'd seen some local color and that we'd (through our hosts) been able to pump a little money into the city's dying perishing tourist infrastructure. The fact that we'd crossed over a de facto picket line to do so, though, meant that I felt as though the acts canceled themselves out in terms of karmic retribution.
Later that week, though, as electrolytes were ejected from my body at speeds generally regarded when speaking of horseracing, I became aware of the ghastly, altogether stark truth.
And so, on this "ninth day of Christmas", I am reminded of a crossed picket line, a dancestravaganza, and, as high retribution for this from an as-of-yet undetermined spiritual force, losing twelve pounds of water weight in a foreign country.
I remain, as ever,
Domonic (maybeitwasthatchickenneck) Potorti
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Eight maids a'milking.
Good sweet hay-scented baby Jesus, how does one move forward from here?
Long ago, in a fertile, silo-studded valley that was perpetually fragrant (not unpleasantly so, mind you) with the dung of hardworking domesticated beasts of the earth, a cripplingly naive youth in improbably inappropriate clothing learned exactly how the white substance that one dumped out of a carton onto a morning bowl of Pectin-Bearing Arboreal Treet Rings came into existence.
Now, of course I knew that milk came from cows; I wasn't raised on some forsaken coral atoll in the Pacific somewhere. However, when one approached the subject of exactly how the milk sprang forth from the ungulate and found itself deposited into the merry little pail that the Happy Farmer Man carried about, the books I had as a child were strangely mum. (This has definitely changed, let me tell you). For all I knew, the milk was secreted from the cow's sweat glands, or was vomited into the bucket with mild finger-down-the-throat coercion. Needless to say, as a child who loathed milk intensely, I wasn't altogether eager to piece together how this process played out and I turned my attention to other matters, like how one can catch things on fire, like innocent insects in the vicinity, if one has a magnifying glass and some nice direct sunlight. The fact that cows had violently pink, swollen teats hanging from their undersides similarly did not make a connection, either, even when seen with a calf asuck upon them. (I just made that word up, but I enjoy it. Asuck. Huh. Awesome.)
I went at a tender age a few times to visit with my uncle, a small and large animal veterinarian who served the entirety of this sweet dung-fragranced valley, and, when his schedule and my tender sleep cycle permitted, I would ask to go on "ride-alongs" as he went on call to serve the livestock on many area farms.
It goes without saying that I learned an intense amount of crap about life, about death, and about the ghastly, oozing things that animals can produce upon their bodies. In short order I'd seen bovine twisted stomach surgery, a live calf-birth, administration of bovine birth control, the slick-glove-up-that-place test for bovine fetus development, and a good, old-fashioned digging-the-shet-out-of-an-impacted-hoof session. I saw a goat get induced to vomit after eating several nightshade plants and got to witness how steers get de-horned. However, what nasted me out the worst was the ultimate discovery of how milk was taken from a cow.
So, we arrive at a lovely family dairy and I, knowing full well that I'd soon be encountering massive amounts of freshly-extruded shet everywhere EVERYWHERE OH DEAR GOD EVERYWHERE, I maneuvered myself to be near the cow's heads. This is because - and I have no idea why - cows immediately evacuate bladder AND colon upon smelling/seeing/hearing my uncle, the vet, as he enters the barn. A small barn-child, oddly barefoot, notices me and asks me if I want to see the cows get milked. Since my options were, at that point, go with this strange barefoot waif or linger long enough in my uncle's nearness to get asked to hold a cow's tail away from its taint so that he could thrust his whole arm up in that shet, I decided to follow.
At this point, the previous cow was being led out of her containment and was lumbering toward the freedom of the outdoors and a new cow was being led into the restraints. As she was secured, a strange, octopus-like device with tubes was produced and, to my unblinking horror, was attached to each of her four teats.
Well, as I mentioned before, I wasn't wholly aware that they were teats. In fact, I was fairly certain that they were very small, yet potentially functional, penii.
I can fairly hear the sound of Diet Caffeine Free Coke atomizing in your throat as it is expelled through your sinuses and into your nasal cavity. Yes. Make your fun. The sad little town-kid thought that cow's udders were where their four tiny penises (penii henceforth) held delicate court. Sad, isn't it, that he didn't even know that cows were always female? Yes, this was the same kid who could name the genus and species of several dozen dinosaurs, and yet was poleaxed in horror at the sight of the savage fellatio he'd assumed was part of the milking process. Feck you all: I was seven, and I have unhealthy genetic material.
I watched, agog, as the machine began to withdraw milk/'sperm' from four tiny penii, and I turned to the mutated child near me to ask if it hurt them. He said that he didn't think so, but that they were usually pretty glad to get out of there when they were done. I bet they are, I thought, as whiteness swirled down into the tank nearby.
I spent the better part of the night lying awake following a particularly vivid dream wherein I was sucked dry by a milker that had been attached to my eyes and face.
It was only later that week that I was able to see a young Amish woman milking a cow, stool and bucket, and ask her about what it all meant. Through her slight Pennsylvania Dutch accent, she explained that yes, cows were girls and yes, the milk that came from them was channeled through nipples, like the ones I and she had, except, uh, cows have four of them. A nearby cat that was laying in the sun showed me that some animals have six of these things.
Then, she turned one of the teats toward my face.
And pulled.
Warm, unpasteurized milk sprayed in my face, and I swooned and nearly fainted in abject horror. She thought this was funny and demonstrated it on herself, but this time the milk ended up neatly squirting into her maw. The part of me that could not imagine milk being warm (outside of a kitchen) immediately knew, deep within, that I'd been ejaculated upon, despite recent evidence to the contrary.
Haha hell, Amish tart: you'd later become one of my roots, and methinks that the lifestyle that ensued would be abomination to you and your people.
And so, on this, the eighth day of Christmas, I'm reminded of how what can only be labeled profoundly retarded naivite coupled with a savage attack from a woman who lived as though it were 1750 caused me to believe fervently that a female bovine had released unspeakable jizz upon my seven-year-old face.
I shet you not.
Until later, I remain,
Domonic (traumatizedforyearsyetvindicatedeventually) Potorti
Long ago, in a fertile, silo-studded valley that was perpetually fragrant (not unpleasantly so, mind you) with the dung of hardworking domesticated beasts of the earth, a cripplingly naive youth in improbably inappropriate clothing learned exactly how the white substance that one dumped out of a carton onto a morning bowl of Pectin-Bearing Arboreal Treet Rings came into existence.
Now, of course I knew that milk came from cows; I wasn't raised on some forsaken coral atoll in the Pacific somewhere. However, when one approached the subject of exactly how the milk sprang forth from the ungulate and found itself deposited into the merry little pail that the Happy Farmer Man carried about, the books I had as a child were strangely mum. (This has definitely changed, let me tell you). For all I knew, the milk was secreted from the cow's sweat glands, or was vomited into the bucket with mild finger-down-the-throat coercion. Needless to say, as a child who loathed milk intensely, I wasn't altogether eager to piece together how this process played out and I turned my attention to other matters, like how one can catch things on fire, like innocent insects in the vicinity, if one has a magnifying glass and some nice direct sunlight. The fact that cows had violently pink, swollen teats hanging from their undersides similarly did not make a connection, either, even when seen with a calf asuck upon them. (I just made that word up, but I enjoy it. Asuck. Huh. Awesome.)
I went at a tender age a few times to visit with my uncle, a small and large animal veterinarian who served the entirety of this sweet dung-fragranced valley, and, when his schedule and my tender sleep cycle permitted, I would ask to go on "ride-alongs" as he went on call to serve the livestock on many area farms.
It goes without saying that I learned an intense amount of crap about life, about death, and about the ghastly, oozing things that animals can produce upon their bodies. In short order I'd seen bovine twisted stomach surgery, a live calf-birth, administration of bovine birth control, the slick-glove-up-that-place test for bovine fetus development, and a good, old-fashioned digging-the-shet-out-of-an-impacted-hoof session. I saw a goat get induced to vomit after eating several nightshade plants and got to witness how steers get de-horned. However, what nasted me out the worst was the ultimate discovery of how milk was taken from a cow.
So, we arrive at a lovely family dairy and I, knowing full well that I'd soon be encountering massive amounts of freshly-extruded shet everywhere EVERYWHERE OH DEAR GOD EVERYWHERE, I maneuvered myself to be near the cow's heads. This is because - and I have no idea why - cows immediately evacuate bladder AND colon upon smelling/seeing/hearing my uncle, the vet, as he enters the barn. A small barn-child, oddly barefoot, notices me and asks me if I want to see the cows get milked. Since my options were, at that point, go with this strange barefoot waif or linger long enough in my uncle's nearness to get asked to hold a cow's tail away from its taint so that he could thrust his whole arm up in that shet, I decided to follow.
At this point, the previous cow was being led out of her containment and was lumbering toward the freedom of the outdoors and a new cow was being led into the restraints. As she was secured, a strange, octopus-like device with tubes was produced and, to my unblinking horror, was attached to each of her four teats.
Well, as I mentioned before, I wasn't wholly aware that they were teats. In fact, I was fairly certain that they were very small, yet potentially functional, penii.
I can fairly hear the sound of Diet Caffeine Free Coke atomizing in your throat as it is expelled through your sinuses and into your nasal cavity. Yes. Make your fun. The sad little town-kid thought that cow's udders were where their four tiny penises (penii henceforth) held delicate court. Sad, isn't it, that he didn't even know that cows were always female? Yes, this was the same kid who could name the genus and species of several dozen dinosaurs, and yet was poleaxed in horror at the sight of the savage fellatio he'd assumed was part of the milking process. Feck you all: I was seven, and I have unhealthy genetic material.
I watched, agog, as the machine began to withdraw milk/'sperm' from four tiny penii, and I turned to the mutated child near me to ask if it hurt them. He said that he didn't think so, but that they were usually pretty glad to get out of there when they were done. I bet they are, I thought, as whiteness swirled down into the tank nearby.
I spent the better part of the night lying awake following a particularly vivid dream wherein I was sucked dry by a milker that had been attached to my eyes and face.
It was only later that week that I was able to see a young Amish woman milking a cow, stool and bucket, and ask her about what it all meant. Through her slight Pennsylvania Dutch accent, she explained that yes, cows were girls and yes, the milk that came from them was channeled through nipples, like the ones I and she had, except, uh, cows have four of them. A nearby cat that was laying in the sun showed me that some animals have six of these things.
Then, she turned one of the teats toward my face.
And pulled.
Warm, unpasteurized milk sprayed in my face, and I swooned and nearly fainted in abject horror. She thought this was funny and demonstrated it on herself, but this time the milk ended up neatly squirting into her maw. The part of me that could not imagine milk being warm (outside of a kitchen) immediately knew, deep within, that I'd been ejaculated upon, despite recent evidence to the contrary.
Haha hell, Amish tart: you'd later become one of my roots, and methinks that the lifestyle that ensued would be abomination to you and your people.
And so, on this, the eighth day of Christmas, I'm reminded of how what can only be labeled profoundly retarded naivite coupled with a savage attack from a woman who lived as though it were 1750 caused me to believe fervently that a female bovine had released unspeakable jizz upon my seven-year-old face.
I shet you not.
Until later, I remain,
Domonic (traumatizedforyearsyetvindicatedeventually) Potorti
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Seven swans a' swimming.
Long ago, in a land perfumed once a week with the tang of Skittles manufacturing, a desperately nerdy, ill-dressed youth entered an art contest hosted by a nearby community's public library.
The theme of the contest was simple: draw a picture, freehand, of a scene from your favorite book. As shrewd as I was nerdy, I quickly surmised that many of the entrants would be coached by their loved ones to depict humble, classical Americana - Huck Finn rowing the Mississippi, deleriously happy children being disgorged from a Conestoga wagon - you know, that kind of smarmy, trite crappola. Fortunately, my favorite book at the time did not fit neatly into that framework. It was Helter Skelter.
Haha! No, I'm just kidding. Well, maybe. Anyway, my favorite book at the time was E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan, which made sense because a) I'd apparently developed a debilitating interest in non-goose waterfowl and b) I played the trumpet as a child. Actually, I did no such thing, but I wanted to divert attention for all of the Freudians in the audience regarding my childhood obsession with eggs and phallus-necked waterfowl.
At any rate, I developed a color-pencil-on-white-computer-paper sketch of swans doing something - flapping about, perhaps, or dipping their necks into the pond or some crap like that - and sent it in to the contest folks.
A week later, I got a phone call.
So yeah, I'd won. $25, if memory serves. That and some sort of plaque. But we had to go this this creepy ceremony to get it, which, while I was on board, likely served to ruin a perfectly lovely Saturday for my parents.
We'd been at the ceremony center (a small room off of the pathetic little library) for about ten minutes when I realized that my hunch was confirmed: dozens of children had depicted the overdone (yet, of course, vitally important) classics and had neglected lesser-known works. I mean, come on: how many ways can one represent Tom Sawyer tricking his friends into whitewashing that fence?
After the ceremony (during which all of our works were projected onto a largish screen for all to see), a young woman who'd gotten "Honorable Mention" to my "First Prize" came up to shake my hand. As she did so, and as our parents exchanged forced formalities, she leaned in so that I could hear her speak. And by "speak" I mean "hiss, as though she were speaking Parseltongue":
Your drawing is shit it looks like a fat ugly white duck and I know you copied it out of the book and mine was better and you'd better give me that money and I'll cut you faggot yes I will just give it to me now and I won't have to slit your mother's throat with a soup-can lid in front of you and then rape your cat to death with a broomstick just try me I will
I backed away from her slowly, smiling all the while so as to not alarm our families. Then, reconsidering my options, I moved toward her, her fiery eyes nearly incandescent with rage and hatred, and leaned in myself.
I didn't copy those out of a book you pus-filled she-harpy no I didn't I went out to a lake with a machete and waited for those swans waited for hours waited for days and when they came I sketched them and when I was done I hacked them into two thousand bloody pieces and ate some of them raw so I could have them with me for all time and then I buried the rest under your house and the heads are under your pillow oh yes they are so you'd better go home and check also don't feck with me or you'll know what it's like to be skinned like a deer and then decompose in a shallow grave in the Barrens oh yes you will don't test me bitch
From my pocket I withdrew the snow-white feather I'd brought with me for "luck" - yes, I already knew I'd won, but one can never be too careful - and I brushed it lightly over my slick-moistened lips. Slowly. Deliberately. She didn't need to know that it came from one of the hideous white pigeons that the crazy old Polish woman (Mrs. Pzxwycwcki) across the street raised. Her eyes betrayed nothing in terms of the level of sheer, steel-melting hatred, but they'd grown wider in shock. Her father - whom I must assume was a hell-imp of some kind - hugged her and told her that they'd be going out for ice cream. As she left, she looked back at me, and I mouthed "Enjoy your five dollar prize, whore of Satan" to her and she politely, daintily, gave me the finger behind her back.
So, you ask, what was her favorite book?
Would you believe that it was none other than Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret?
Girl was probably on her first rag, uh.
[inappropriate?]
[do I honestly give a fig?]
[because, uh, she threatened to kill my mom and my cat]
And so on this, the seventh day of Christmas, I am reminded of how a depiction of swans, swimming about on a sheet of cheap computer paper, won me $25 - and four Ninja Turtles, subsequently - and of how I nearly got sent to juvie for shanking a fellow ten-year-old in a dank New Jersey public library.
Until later, I remain,
Domonic (no,really,shesaidshe'dcutme) Potorti
The theme of the contest was simple: draw a picture, freehand, of a scene from your favorite book. As shrewd as I was nerdy, I quickly surmised that many of the entrants would be coached by their loved ones to depict humble, classical Americana - Huck Finn rowing the Mississippi, deleriously happy children being disgorged from a Conestoga wagon - you know, that kind of smarmy, trite crappola. Fortunately, my favorite book at the time did not fit neatly into that framework. It was Helter Skelter.
Haha! No, I'm just kidding. Well, maybe. Anyway, my favorite book at the time was E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan, which made sense because a) I'd apparently developed a debilitating interest in non-goose waterfowl and b) I played the trumpet as a child. Actually, I did no such thing, but I wanted to divert attention for all of the Freudians in the audience regarding my childhood obsession with eggs and phallus-necked waterfowl.
At any rate, I developed a color-pencil-on-white-computer-paper sketch of swans doing something - flapping about, perhaps, or dipping their necks into the pond or some crap like that - and sent it in to the contest folks.
A week later, I got a phone call.
So yeah, I'd won. $25, if memory serves. That and some sort of plaque. But we had to go this this creepy ceremony to get it, which, while I was on board, likely served to ruin a perfectly lovely Saturday for my parents.
We'd been at the ceremony center (a small room off of the pathetic little library) for about ten minutes when I realized that my hunch was confirmed: dozens of children had depicted the overdone (yet, of course, vitally important) classics and had neglected lesser-known works. I mean, come on: how many ways can one represent Tom Sawyer tricking his friends into whitewashing that fence?
After the ceremony (during which all of our works were projected onto a largish screen for all to see), a young woman who'd gotten "Honorable Mention" to my "First Prize" came up to shake my hand. As she did so, and as our parents exchanged forced formalities, she leaned in so that I could hear her speak. And by "speak" I mean "hiss, as though she were speaking Parseltongue":
Your drawing is shit it looks like a fat ugly white duck and I know you copied it out of the book and mine was better and you'd better give me that money and I'll cut you faggot yes I will just give it to me now and I won't have to slit your mother's throat with a soup-can lid in front of you and then rape your cat to death with a broomstick just try me I will
I backed away from her slowly, smiling all the while so as to not alarm our families. Then, reconsidering my options, I moved toward her, her fiery eyes nearly incandescent with rage and hatred, and leaned in myself.
I didn't copy those out of a book you pus-filled she-harpy no I didn't I went out to a lake with a machete and waited for those swans waited for hours waited for days and when they came I sketched them and when I was done I hacked them into two thousand bloody pieces and ate some of them raw so I could have them with me for all time and then I buried the rest under your house and the heads are under your pillow oh yes they are so you'd better go home and check also don't feck with me or you'll know what it's like to be skinned like a deer and then decompose in a shallow grave in the Barrens oh yes you will don't test me bitch
From my pocket I withdrew the snow-white feather I'd brought with me for "luck" - yes, I already knew I'd won, but one can never be too careful - and I brushed it lightly over my slick-moistened lips. Slowly. Deliberately. She didn't need to know that it came from one of the hideous white pigeons that the crazy old Polish woman (Mrs. Pzxwycwcki) across the street raised. Her eyes betrayed nothing in terms of the level of sheer, steel-melting hatred, but they'd grown wider in shock. Her father - whom I must assume was a hell-imp of some kind - hugged her and told her that they'd be going out for ice cream. As she left, she looked back at me, and I mouthed "Enjoy your five dollar prize, whore of Satan" to her and she politely, daintily, gave me the finger behind her back.
So, you ask, what was her favorite book?
Would you believe that it was none other than Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret?
Girl was probably on her first rag, uh.
[inappropriate?]
[do I honestly give a fig?]
[because, uh, she threatened to kill my mom and my cat]
And so on this, the seventh day of Christmas, I am reminded of how a depiction of swans, swimming about on a sheet of cheap computer paper, won me $25 - and four Ninja Turtles, subsequently - and of how I nearly got sent to juvie for shanking a fellow ten-year-old in a dank New Jersey public library.
Until later, I remain,
Domonic (no,really,shesaidshe'dcutme) Potorti
Monday, December 17, 2007
Six geese a-laying.
Long ago and in a land where satellite dishes are considered to be the state flower, a porky youth with abnormally large hair nearly perished under the steely, unyielding beaks of a trio of trained assassin-geese.
"Old news", some of you interject, partially masticated sustenance dropping in globs from your maw. "So you're going to tell us about the time that a goose nearly murdered you under the 'watchful' gaze of your paternal unit. Let me get back to my knitting/online chess tournament/bong/spy novel/bondage session."
Well, truth be told, I was going to tell that one again because a) it was about two years ago that I'd written it and b) it's exceedingly relevant, as we'd gone to specifically identify nesting geese, for I'd developed a nearly paralyzing interest in eggs. However, there exist among your numbers a few who remain devoted and faithful despite what would appear to be my singular inability to 'blog consistently, and I fear the crushing weight of your cold, stony judgment as much as I fear, say, heavily make-uped flesh-consuming circus entertainers.
As I'd mentioned in a previous post, my grandparents had purchased or otherwise procured three greylag geese to serve and protect the other, potentially more vulnerable fowl on their small farm. As many people are aware, geese are highly respected for their fearlessness and their ability to, as need arises, feck the living daylights out of marauding night-creatures that dare to breach their territory. The Romans revered geese, as it was din created by the Vestal virgins' gaggle of geese that awoke the Roman guardsmen as unkempt Gauls attempted to take the city; later, the dogs who remained asleep on the watch were, erm, ucified-cray. Anyway, long story short: geese are good guards because they are fiercely vindictive, unrelentingly cruel, balefully sleepless, and intuitively understanding of what one would need to do to hurt other living things until they begged for the sweet release of death.
Once one gathered up the fortitude to venture beyond the fenced safety of the front and side yard of the house, it was inevitable that the geese, pressed wing-to-wing and forming a three-headed, hydra-like feathered mass, would be waiting just beyond the gate, feigning disinterest and lathing their tongues over their nonexistent goose-lips in eager anticipation of the melee that would surely result. My grandfather had, in his wisdom, placed a stout walking-stick near the gate which was to be used by his ungrateful, ankle-biting grandchildren to make sure that they weren't able to get close enough to actually snuff any of us, as surely that would have been bad times. However, since there were three of them, they became slowly clever enough to plan velociraptor-style attacks where one or two of them would remain in plain sight while the other hid, hoping you'd turn your young, nutritious back to it. My rule of thumb was, therefore, if I didn't see three of them, I'd climb the other fence - tetanus be damned! - to get out into the pasture and the other parts of the property.
One day, however, I - perhaps under the influence of Benadryl, as I'd often need to take it for several days after I arrived at the homestead - went and unlatched the gate and began to walk toward the barn
without the gee-dee stick
and, incidentally, wearing thong sandals.
I look back on that moment and wonder if, perhaps, it was the voice of Satan as funneled through the hissed whispers of three greylag geese that made me do it. The fact that I'd not procured the stick was bad enough; the flip-flops made the situation lethal, as running would be out of the question in the slick shet-encrusted barnyard. I knew better than to wear them out there, but I was clearly entranced by corporal evil and was being led to an untimely death.
I made my way through the barnyard past the long-abandoned turkey coop and was within several dozen yards of the barn - and safety - when I became acutely aware that my passage had not gone unnoticed. Low at first, but growing steadily in volume, a hissing sound began to emanate from what I'd initially taken to be a smallish gray bush. As three serpentine necks reared out of the "bush", I moistly evacuated into my Rude Dog and the Dweebs jams. (Raise your hand if you remember jams). The largest of the geese detached from the group and it turned one of its infected-wound-yellow eyes toward me. In a moment of what I presume to be stark insanity, I could faintly hear it hiss-speaking to me.
Your mistakes will cost you your tender, delicious life, it said. Your pathetic, battered carcass shall nourish me and mine for a week. Also: jams are SO thirteen seconds ago.
I launched myself toward the barn in fluid motion that I would be unable to replicate in the present day; it involved nearly twisting my spine in twain. It was also at this time that I began to shriek like a seven year old girl who'd fallen into a well in the vain hopes that someone would resond to my pleas for merciful intervention. The goose similarly began its hellish pursuit; possessed of the knowledge that I'd worn my day-glo green flip-flops and that I would most likely avoid flop-piles as best as I could because of them, it lurched forward, beak agape, to snuff me.
As I hurled myself across the barnyard I was overcome with a sense that I should not, as Lot's wife had been unable to resist, turn around. I had just come to the threshold of the barn when something heavy and unspeakably feathery struck me in the small of my back and I fell to the earth face-first, gasping. It was in that moment that I knew that I'd not survive this experience and at once I began to envision what my memorial service would be like: the tiny black coffin containing the four pounds of gristle that the geese had left behind holding court at the front of a black-draped chapel, guilt-stricken, weeping relatives and friends, and a pianist gently hammering out the best of Bruce Hornsby's corpus. I could feel the goose's hot breath in my ear as it prepared to deliver the coup de grace when, suddenly, the weight of the creature was mercifully lifted off my back. I sat up and beheld, wheeling the the heat-shattered heavens, an abnormally large red-tailed hawk; the geese, fearing for their own sky-delivered mortality, had abandoned their fatty treat to clumsily hide themselves in a stand of brush nearby. With only one flip-flop remaining, I clambered into the hayloft and prayed earnestly that the hawk would eviscerate mine enemies.
By dusk, it was noticed that I'd gone missing, and my grandfather found me rapidly rocking myself, muttering incoherently about pâté, in the darkening hayloft.
The eldest, largest goose was to be found for the better part of a week carrying around my other flip-flop in its horrid bill as a grim reminder of its powers. I would gaze upon it from behind the fence, hands clenched around a scythe, with a mixture of fear, hatred and what I later would realize was a strange version of respect. You know, the kind of respect one must have for something that can slaughter you.
In later years, as the geese aged and began to succumb, one by one, to their own delicious mortalities, I found myself rooting for their antagonists with a fervor one generally associates with Latin American soccer devotion. God bless that fox whose gullet was to be filled verily by the largest, slowest goose; finding his wing and a spray of down-feathers in a field caused me to nearly tent up in my pants. God bless the bitter, unrelenting cold that crept into the bones of the next goose, transforming it one night into a twenty-five pound lump of frozen, corporeal evil. God bless the load of buckshot that blew the head off the last of them when it became so old and senile that it broke both of its feet chasing cloud shadows.
And so, on this, the sixth day of Christmas, I am reminded of how a trio of trained goose assasins nearly laid me out for the Big Dirt Nap. You know, because childhood isn't unsafe enough without worrying that you'd pass through the belly of a web-footed, hissing louse-bag.
Whatever.
Until later, I remain,
Domonic (Iwillfinishthisblogseriesevenifitkillsme) Potorti
"Old news", some of you interject, partially masticated sustenance dropping in globs from your maw. "So you're going to tell us about the time that a goose nearly murdered you under the 'watchful' gaze of your paternal unit. Let me get back to my knitting/online chess tournament/bong/spy novel/bondage session."
Well, truth be told, I was going to tell that one again because a) it was about two years ago that I'd written it and b) it's exceedingly relevant, as we'd gone to specifically identify nesting geese, for I'd developed a nearly paralyzing interest in eggs. However, there exist among your numbers a few who remain devoted and faithful despite what would appear to be my singular inability to 'blog consistently, and I fear the crushing weight of your cold, stony judgment as much as I fear, say, heavily make-uped flesh-consuming circus entertainers.
As I'd mentioned in a previous post, my grandparents had purchased or otherwise procured three greylag geese to serve and protect the other, potentially more vulnerable fowl on their small farm. As many people are aware, geese are highly respected for their fearlessness and their ability to, as need arises, feck the living daylights out of marauding night-creatures that dare to breach their territory. The Romans revered geese, as it was din created by the Vestal virgins' gaggle of geese that awoke the Roman guardsmen as unkempt Gauls attempted to take the city; later, the dogs who remained asleep on the watch were, erm, ucified-cray. Anyway, long story short: geese are good guards because they are fiercely vindictive, unrelentingly cruel, balefully sleepless, and intuitively understanding of what one would need to do to hurt other living things until they begged for the sweet release of death.
Once one gathered up the fortitude to venture beyond the fenced safety of the front and side yard of the house, it was inevitable that the geese, pressed wing-to-wing and forming a three-headed, hydra-like feathered mass, would be waiting just beyond the gate, feigning disinterest and lathing their tongues over their nonexistent goose-lips in eager anticipation of the melee that would surely result. My grandfather had, in his wisdom, placed a stout walking-stick near the gate which was to be used by his ungrateful, ankle-biting grandchildren to make sure that they weren't able to get close enough to actually snuff any of us, as surely that would have been bad times. However, since there were three of them, they became slowly clever enough to plan velociraptor-style attacks where one or two of them would remain in plain sight while the other hid, hoping you'd turn your young, nutritious back to it. My rule of thumb was, therefore, if I didn't see three of them, I'd climb the other fence - tetanus be damned! - to get out into the pasture and the other parts of the property.
One day, however, I - perhaps under the influence of Benadryl, as I'd often need to take it for several days after I arrived at the homestead - went and unlatched the gate and began to walk toward the barn
without the gee-dee stick
and, incidentally, wearing thong sandals.
I look back on that moment and wonder if, perhaps, it was the voice of Satan as funneled through the hissed whispers of three greylag geese that made me do it. The fact that I'd not procured the stick was bad enough; the flip-flops made the situation lethal, as running would be out of the question in the slick shet-encrusted barnyard. I knew better than to wear them out there, but I was clearly entranced by corporal evil and was being led to an untimely death.
I made my way through the barnyard past the long-abandoned turkey coop and was within several dozen yards of the barn - and safety - when I became acutely aware that my passage had not gone unnoticed. Low at first, but growing steadily in volume, a hissing sound began to emanate from what I'd initially taken to be a smallish gray bush. As three serpentine necks reared out of the "bush", I moistly evacuated into my Rude Dog and the Dweebs jams. (Raise your hand if you remember jams). The largest of the geese detached from the group and it turned one of its infected-wound-yellow eyes toward me. In a moment of what I presume to be stark insanity, I could faintly hear it hiss-speaking to me.
Your mistakes will cost you your tender, delicious life, it said. Your pathetic, battered carcass shall nourish me and mine for a week. Also: jams are SO thirteen seconds ago.
I launched myself toward the barn in fluid motion that I would be unable to replicate in the present day; it involved nearly twisting my spine in twain. It was also at this time that I began to shriek like a seven year old girl who'd fallen into a well in the vain hopes that someone would resond to my pleas for merciful intervention. The goose similarly began its hellish pursuit; possessed of the knowledge that I'd worn my day-glo green flip-flops and that I would most likely avoid flop-piles as best as I could because of them, it lurched forward, beak agape, to snuff me.
As I hurled myself across the barnyard I was overcome with a sense that I should not, as Lot's wife had been unable to resist, turn around. I had just come to the threshold of the barn when something heavy and unspeakably feathery struck me in the small of my back and I fell to the earth face-first, gasping. It was in that moment that I knew that I'd not survive this experience and at once I began to envision what my memorial service would be like: the tiny black coffin containing the four pounds of gristle that the geese had left behind holding court at the front of a black-draped chapel, guilt-stricken, weeping relatives and friends, and a pianist gently hammering out the best of Bruce Hornsby's corpus. I could feel the goose's hot breath in my ear as it prepared to deliver the coup de grace when, suddenly, the weight of the creature was mercifully lifted off my back. I sat up and beheld, wheeling the the heat-shattered heavens, an abnormally large red-tailed hawk; the geese, fearing for their own sky-delivered mortality, had abandoned their fatty treat to clumsily hide themselves in a stand of brush nearby. With only one flip-flop remaining, I clambered into the hayloft and prayed earnestly that the hawk would eviscerate mine enemies.
By dusk, it was noticed that I'd gone missing, and my grandfather found me rapidly rocking myself, muttering incoherently about pâté, in the darkening hayloft.
The eldest, largest goose was to be found for the better part of a week carrying around my other flip-flop in its horrid bill as a grim reminder of its powers. I would gaze upon it from behind the fence, hands clenched around a scythe, with a mixture of fear, hatred and what I later would realize was a strange version of respect. You know, the kind of respect one must have for something that can slaughter you.
In later years, as the geese aged and began to succumb, one by one, to their own delicious mortalities, I found myself rooting for their antagonists with a fervor one generally associates with Latin American soccer devotion. God bless that fox whose gullet was to be filled verily by the largest, slowest goose; finding his wing and a spray of down-feathers in a field caused me to nearly tent up in my pants. God bless the bitter, unrelenting cold that crept into the bones of the next goose, transforming it one night into a twenty-five pound lump of frozen, corporeal evil. God bless the load of buckshot that blew the head off the last of them when it became so old and senile that it broke both of its feet chasing cloud shadows.
And so, on this, the sixth day of Christmas, I am reminded of how a trio of trained goose assasins nearly laid me out for the Big Dirt Nap. You know, because childhood isn't unsafe enough without worrying that you'd pass through the belly of a web-footed, hissing louse-bag.
Whatever.
Until later, I remain,
Domonic (Iwillfinishthisblogseriesevenifitkillsme) Potorti
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Five golden rings.
Two nights ago and, uh, less than a quarter mile from my window, the restless North Atlantic began to whisper and moan through the Penobscot's thick, fluminal ice-crust. Its voice - at once the nearly inaudible sound of a harbor seal sliding into the icy brine, of bladder wrack settling onto itself after winter neap tide's ebb, of innumerable unseen crustaceans scuttling across moonlit rocks encrusted with mussels - traveled through the still of a midwinter night past the garish slot casino, up Larkin Street and through my opened "bedroom" window, whereupon it found me scaring myself silly with a dogeared copy of Needful Things.
"You haven't blogged for days", it hissed. "Fecker. Feckerrrrrrrrrr."
It's true, but I have to give myself credit where it is due: I've been on a holiday bender, and asking me to do anything other than remembering to not allow the contents of my colon to festoon my festive holiday skivvies would have been asking a whole hell of a lot, let me tell you.
In actuality, I've been fairly poleaxed by the task of preparing an entry that is framed with the concept of golden rings. Birds I can do: as a child who was fabulously obsessed with fowl of nearly every variety - and, more pointedly, the calcite-coated spheroids they produced - endless fodder was at my beckon call. But rings? Golden rings? And five of them?
At first I thought I'd write about how, on a brisk early spring night in March of 1980, I came into the world in Utah, a state known at that time for being more socially permissive of polygyny than most places outside of the tribal world. Five golden rings placed upon five dowdy women's liquid Dawn dishsoap-encrusted hands. Five golden rings on five hands as they tousle the blinding white, nit-ridden Aryan hair of the litter of children they'd inflicted upon the world.
Then I thought I'd launch into a venomous rant about how one golden ring, when placed upon my hand by an adorable, impish lad next October, won't provide me with legal authority in the corn - or in forty-seven other, similarly shitty states in a country that purports to be the Land of the Free. But then I thought that I didn't want to be THAT blogger, and I left it alone.
Then I thought I'd tap out a hopeful message about how five rings, joined together in symbolic unity, will fly over China's profoundly ancient capital Beijing this summer as thousands of athletes from around the globe join together in amicable international sporting venues. However, sports bore me so badly that all I want to do during the Olympics is scream until I black out whenever well-meaning people I know ask if I'd managed to catch a particularly tasty American victory over some tiny, developing nation's athletes on the telly the night before.
Instead, I'll take those few and devoted back three nights ago, to my nearly aborted entry into the Pine Tree State, and to a bearded twentysomething lad who'd been seated diagonally across from me on the flight from Detroit to "Portland."
I try my darndest - Lord knows I do! - to not stare at people who have large, disfiguring tattoos or crippling, impractical body jewlery. However, those of you who have had the "pleasure" of my company for even twenty minutes know that one would have better luck leaving a box of Little Debbie snacky-cakes in the chow hall of a juvenile fat camp and expecting to find it virginal an hour later. And so I stare, and stare hard. Like I'm the product of first-cousin mating hard.
The gentleman in question boarded long after I'd buckled in and had begun mentally providing dialogue bubbles for the blocky figures in the laminated Passenger Instruction Manual that was provided in the seat-pocket in front of me. As I provided the flight attendant who was ushering people onto the inflatable slide a naughty bit of wit, I became aware out of the corner of my eye that the bearded lad was a little twitchier than most. Maneuvering my eye in its socket a little further, I beheld a magnificent webbing of Japanese-inspired tattoos that radiated from his wrist up toward his elbow, where they disappeared under his t-shirt. His hand disappeared into his breast pocket, fell upon the 3/4 full pack of Native American Spirit Lights, gently toyed with one of their filters, and fell back to his lap. "Oooh, a hippie", I thought, "a tattoo-obsessed, nicotine-dependent hippie."
Ordinarily, that would have been the end of the entertainment, but when Tattooed Hippie Man reached one of his yellowing hands to the reading light (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, if one can believe it), the resulting light glinted off what I momentarily presumed to be a lost pirate's treasure that had lodged itself on this gentleman's face.
Three golden earrings. Two in the left, one in the right.
One golden ring, bull-like, across the nose.
One golden ring that was STRETCHING A HUGE HOLE IN HIS BOTTOM LIP LIKE HE WAS SOME SORT OF AMAZONIAN TRIBESPERSON BUT WITH MORE BLING-MONEY.
Two things immediately leapt to mind as I attempted, in vain, to not dry out my eyes staring at him.
1) How does one smoke when one cannot produce suction? Was there a cork he put in it when he wanted to go to Flavor Country? Or, oh wait, a tipi-encrusted landscape where one is offered peace-pipes?
2) Sometimes the Baby Jesus provides me with the most precious gift of all. No, it's not peace, or food, or money, or contentment. It's blog fodder that neatly addresses a difficult topic, and it's worth all the myrrh in Arabia.
Until next time, I remain,
Domonic (Isnexttimegeesea'layingbecausethatwillbeeasy,havingnearlybeenslaughtered
bysaidwaterfowlundermyfather's"watchful"gaze)
Potorti
"You haven't blogged for days", it hissed. "Fecker. Feckerrrrrrrrrr."
It's true, but I have to give myself credit where it is due: I've been on a holiday bender, and asking me to do anything other than remembering to not allow the contents of my colon to festoon my festive holiday skivvies would have been asking a whole hell of a lot, let me tell you.
In actuality, I've been fairly poleaxed by the task of preparing an entry that is framed with the concept of golden rings. Birds I can do: as a child who was fabulously obsessed with fowl of nearly every variety - and, more pointedly, the calcite-coated spheroids they produced - endless fodder was at my beckon call. But rings? Golden rings? And five of them?
At first I thought I'd write about how, on a brisk early spring night in March of 1980, I came into the world in Utah, a state known at that time for being more socially permissive of polygyny than most places outside of the tribal world. Five golden rings placed upon five dowdy women's liquid Dawn dishsoap-encrusted hands. Five golden rings on five hands as they tousle the blinding white, nit-ridden Aryan hair of the litter of children they'd inflicted upon the world.
Then I thought I'd launch into a venomous rant about how one golden ring, when placed upon my hand by an adorable, impish lad next October, won't provide me with legal authority in the corn - or in forty-seven other, similarly shitty states in a country that purports to be the Land of the Free. But then I thought that I didn't want to be THAT blogger, and I left it alone.
Then I thought I'd tap out a hopeful message about how five rings, joined together in symbolic unity, will fly over China's profoundly ancient capital Beijing this summer as thousands of athletes from around the globe join together in amicable international sporting venues. However, sports bore me so badly that all I want to do during the Olympics is scream until I black out whenever well-meaning people I know ask if I'd managed to catch a particularly tasty American victory over some tiny, developing nation's athletes on the telly the night before.
Instead, I'll take those few and devoted back three nights ago, to my nearly aborted entry into the Pine Tree State, and to a bearded twentysomething lad who'd been seated diagonally across from me on the flight from Detroit to "Portland."
I try my darndest - Lord knows I do! - to not stare at people who have large, disfiguring tattoos or crippling, impractical body jewlery. However, those of you who have had the "pleasure" of my company for even twenty minutes know that one would have better luck leaving a box of Little Debbie snacky-cakes in the chow hall of a juvenile fat camp and expecting to find it virginal an hour later. And so I stare, and stare hard. Like I'm the product of first-cousin mating hard.
The gentleman in question boarded long after I'd buckled in and had begun mentally providing dialogue bubbles for the blocky figures in the laminated Passenger Instruction Manual that was provided in the seat-pocket in front of me. As I provided the flight attendant who was ushering people onto the inflatable slide a naughty bit of wit, I became aware out of the corner of my eye that the bearded lad was a little twitchier than most. Maneuvering my eye in its socket a little further, I beheld a magnificent webbing of Japanese-inspired tattoos that radiated from his wrist up toward his elbow, where they disappeared under his t-shirt. His hand disappeared into his breast pocket, fell upon the 3/4 full pack of Native American Spirit Lights, gently toyed with one of their filters, and fell back to his lap. "Oooh, a hippie", I thought, "a tattoo-obsessed, nicotine-dependent hippie."
Ordinarily, that would have been the end of the entertainment, but when Tattooed Hippie Man reached one of his yellowing hands to the reading light (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, if one can believe it), the resulting light glinted off what I momentarily presumed to be a lost pirate's treasure that had lodged itself on this gentleman's face.
Three golden earrings. Two in the left, one in the right.
One golden ring, bull-like, across the nose.
One golden ring that was STRETCHING A HUGE HOLE IN HIS BOTTOM LIP LIKE HE WAS SOME SORT OF AMAZONIAN TRIBESPERSON BUT WITH MORE BLING-MONEY.
Two things immediately leapt to mind as I attempted, in vain, to not dry out my eyes staring at him.
1) How does one smoke when one cannot produce suction? Was there a cork he put in it when he wanted to go to Flavor Country? Or, oh wait, a tipi-encrusted landscape where one is offered peace-pipes?
2) Sometimes the Baby Jesus provides me with the most precious gift of all. No, it's not peace, or food, or money, or contentment. It's blog fodder that neatly addresses a difficult topic, and it's worth all the myrrh in Arabia.
Until next time, I remain,
Domonic (Isnexttimegeesea'layingbecausethatwillbeeasy,havingnearlybeenslaughtered
bysaidwaterfowlundermyfather's"watchful"gaze)
Potorti
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Four calling birds.
Long ago in a distant, and, might I add, significantly hillier, land, an ennui-afflicted youth began rifling through his grandfather's belongings in what would ultimately be a futile attempt to find a hidden stash of Dum-Dum lollipops. (Had I but asked for them, I would have been provided with enough of them to cause my teeth to plink merrily out of my skull onto my grandmother's linoleum with a sound I'd like to imagine was reminiscent of a steel-drum band tuning their instruments. However, the hunt is often more rewarding than the kill).
Near the root-cellar door - the cellar being the repository of home-canned goods AND a gigantic, mutated translucent mouse-consuming spider named "Earl" - I found a curious contraption that looked rather like a snuff-box. It had a lid that was loosely circle-hinged to one side of the rectangular box and, burned into the box's bottom was the image of a wild turkey. When I asked my grandfather what it was, his eyes twinkled a little as he slowly moved the lid across the box, making a god-awful din. A din which, once he got it working properly, sounded suspiciously like a turkey's gobble. He handed it to me and, in a wise move considering the burning stares being generated by my grandmother at the racket-making device, took me outside and pointed up the side of the mountain at the brooding forest beyond.
"There are turkeys up there - go see if you can scare some of them up." Again with the twinkle. Before I could ask for my slingshot so I could plug one of them with should it be lame enough to traipse into my midst, I was shepherded beyond the yard-gate into the barnyard and given a lollipop. He disappeared quickly into the house, most likely to cackle himself into flushed oblivion at the thought of a ten-year-old in the woods calling birds.
By the time I got up the side of the mountain and into the woods, the old fear began to creep inside me. Many were the times when I was wandering through those woods and I would hear a large creature walking nearby - walking with me - just out of sight. And, in a part of the world where bears are numerous, it didn't pay to not be aware of your surroundings at all times. My grandmother loved to tell the story of how she had given me a colander once and bade me collect blackberries from a nearby bush on the mountainside; as she watched, a young bear collected his own treats from the other side of the bush, neither one of us aware of the other's presence. Honestly: it's enough to make you want to lay cable in your boxer-briefs.
After collecting myself from the hike up the mountain I began to fiddle with the turkey call, at first only making awkward squeaking sounds akin to the sound of a rusty nail being pulled out of a transient's head. Oh, I mean, um, an old board. Anyway, after ten minutes I'd gotten The Sound down-pat and I set upon burying myself in the humus surrounding me, so as to be, ahem, invisible to my "prey."
After a half hour of squealing and screeching, I'd begun to feel like I'd accomplished my task of driving any living thing - insects included - from me for a quarter-mile radius when I looked up into the trees.
Birds.
Big, black, ugly birds.
They had come!
As I gazed upon the magnificent creatures who had responded to my (clearly) expert call, I came upon a grim realization when I beheld how the dappled woodland sun glinted off one of the bird's naked pate.
Awesome. Vultures. The din I was creating must have sounded like a pitiful creature's death throes and, eager for the opportunity to plunge their naked heads into its bloated mortal shell, they'd gathered to watch the show. Finding a ten-year-old crouched under a pile of dead leaves must have been utterly anticlimactic, I imagine. Though, considering their brains are about the size of a standard pencil eraser, they might have been thinking about, oh, bird-lice.
And so today, on the fourth day of Christmas, I am reminded of the very special youth who spent an afternoon calling birds unto him only to become acutely aware that those that came would have, if not for their profoundly weak bills, pecked his eyes out for wasting their time.
Until tomorrow, I remain,
Domonic (Irealizethatthebirdsthemselvesweren'tcalling,buthey,who'swritingthisthinganyway?) Potorti
Near the root-cellar door - the cellar being the repository of home-canned goods AND a gigantic, mutated translucent mouse-consuming spider named "Earl" - I found a curious contraption that looked rather like a snuff-box. It had a lid that was loosely circle-hinged to one side of the rectangular box and, burned into the box's bottom was the image of a wild turkey. When I asked my grandfather what it was, his eyes twinkled a little as he slowly moved the lid across the box, making a god-awful din. A din which, once he got it working properly, sounded suspiciously like a turkey's gobble. He handed it to me and, in a wise move considering the burning stares being generated by my grandmother at the racket-making device, took me outside and pointed up the side of the mountain at the brooding forest beyond.
"There are turkeys up there - go see if you can scare some of them up." Again with the twinkle. Before I could ask for my slingshot so I could plug one of them with should it be lame enough to traipse into my midst, I was shepherded beyond the yard-gate into the barnyard and given a lollipop. He disappeared quickly into the house, most likely to cackle himself into flushed oblivion at the thought of a ten-year-old in the woods calling birds.
By the time I got up the side of the mountain and into the woods, the old fear began to creep inside me. Many were the times when I was wandering through those woods and I would hear a large creature walking nearby - walking with me - just out of sight. And, in a part of the world where bears are numerous, it didn't pay to not be aware of your surroundings at all times. My grandmother loved to tell the story of how she had given me a colander once and bade me collect blackberries from a nearby bush on the mountainside; as she watched, a young bear collected his own treats from the other side of the bush, neither one of us aware of the other's presence. Honestly: it's enough to make you want to lay cable in your boxer-briefs.
After collecting myself from the hike up the mountain I began to fiddle with the turkey call, at first only making awkward squeaking sounds akin to the sound of a rusty nail being pulled out of a transient's head. Oh, I mean, um, an old board. Anyway, after ten minutes I'd gotten The Sound down-pat and I set upon burying myself in the humus surrounding me, so as to be, ahem, invisible to my "prey."
After a half hour of squealing and screeching, I'd begun to feel like I'd accomplished my task of driving any living thing - insects included - from me for a quarter-mile radius when I looked up into the trees.
Birds.
Big, black, ugly birds.
They had come!
As I gazed upon the magnificent creatures who had responded to my (clearly) expert call, I came upon a grim realization when I beheld how the dappled woodland sun glinted off one of the bird's naked pate.
Awesome. Vultures. The din I was creating must have sounded like a pitiful creature's death throes and, eager for the opportunity to plunge their naked heads into its bloated mortal shell, they'd gathered to watch the show. Finding a ten-year-old crouched under a pile of dead leaves must have been utterly anticlimactic, I imagine. Though, considering their brains are about the size of a standard pencil eraser, they might have been thinking about, oh, bird-lice.
And so today, on the fourth day of Christmas, I am reminded of the very special youth who spent an afternoon calling birds unto him only to become acutely aware that those that came would have, if not for their profoundly weak bills, pecked his eyes out for wasting their time.
Until tomorrow, I remain,
Domonic (Irealizethatthebirdsthemselvesweren'tcalling,buthey,who'swritingthisthinganyway?) Potorti
Friday, December 14, 2007
Three French hens.
Long ago, in a faraway land perfumed with heady balsam and the wild North Atlantic’s briny tang, UMaine's Hilltop Dining Commons decided that they’d fit a sow with a fine silk hat and go all fancy for the final celebratory holiday meal of the year.
As those of you who attended a college/prep school/boarding school/prison are aware, the culinary finery that is put forth by the average cafeteria is usually limited to tarted-up extruded meat products, lukewarm soup that originated from gigantic, industrial drums and soggy, deep-fried starch-bits. Hilltop Dining Commons, however, was usually more up to snuff and had, by the time I graduated, extended their fairly creative cafeteria-style entree/side selections to a full salad, soup, and stir-fry bar. Plus, once a semester, the Maine Lobster Council (yes, there is one of those) donated lobsters for the Steak and Lobster Night, which I, during my four years at beloved Maine, never missed.
Nonetheless, when we began to see flyers advertising an olde-timey Yule Ball-themed finale dinner, we were sore afraid. No good can come of this, I thought, as I saw allusions to wassail, figgy pudding (uh, what the feck is that?) and, most alarming, "wilde game."
Granted, this was Maine, and while the state in general was likelier than most places to provide a righteous bounty of non-domesticated protein, I wasn't entirely certain that we'd necessarily need to be confronted with the prospect of going hungry in the face of poorly prepared deer and moose venison, bear cutlets, or, God forbid, sundry lacustrine or pelagic waterfowl. As the "feaste" drew nearer, the organizers let slip a few more details of what would be served. To our mute horror, "French hens" appeared on the menu, spawning a raging debate about what makes a hen French, necessarily. Would it be rude to the other woodland fowl? Did it, even in stifling heat, don a kicky beret?
When darkness fell over Central Maine at 3 PM that night, we found ourselves eerily quiet as we made our way through the sub-arctic chill to the Commons. That afternoon, as a backup, we'd purchased a case of ramen, lest we find inedible the "holidaye treates" that had been prepared for us.
I found myself standing in front of Hundreds of Angel Pins on Your Hat Surly Serving Lady and blankly asking for a "French Hen", which was being served wrapped in a protective layer of tinfoil. Shapeless and about the size of a toddler's head, it was unceremoniously dumped on my tray with a wet-nap and the other "treates" I'd asked for and I made my way to the sitting area to begin consumption. None of the others in my group had dared order the hen and sat mutely staring at me, awaiting the un-mummification of the tin-clad parcel that was, at that point, emitting a vaguely poultry-from-a-spit odor. Yet, there could have been anything in there. As I began to wonder once again what had become of Jimmy Hoffa's remains, I peeled back the foil to reveal a mass of flesh and bones that had, at one point in the not-too-distant past, been a smallish bird. Like a tiny chicken. A tiny chicken -
Wait -
Squab?
No - they wouldn't be able to clear that through the University. I jabbed at it with a utensil for a moment as we regarded it with wonder and apprehension. What kind of bird is this small and yet looks remarkably chicken-like in death?
At that moment, a (balding) woman who was wiping some spurped-over ranch dressing off the counter of the salad bar noticed the commotion coming from my end of the table.
"It's a goddamn Cornish game hen, you assholes", she belched. "Now eat it."
While not as profoundly disappointing as the partridge vs. quail debate that was to become a part of my life three years later, I have to admit that I ate that hen with less gusto once I found out that a) I'd been deceived and b) someone hadn't blown it away in the woods. And, much like a crab, it was a lot of g-d work for about three largish mouthfuls of food.
And so, on this third day of Christmas, I am reminded with wistful nostalgia of the time that the University of Maine provided me with a purportedly festive, yet nearly unidentifiable avian carcass upon which I would sup.
Until tomorrow, I remain,
Domonic (enoughwiththebirddays-whendowegettolordsa'leaping?) Potorti
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Two turtledoves.
Long ago and far away, in a distant land redolent with the fluminal reek of the shallow Muskenetcong, an elderly Eastern European woman whose primary claim to fame was her palmistry raised snow-white birds as a grim hobby. Many an afternoon I'd look across Liberty Street to her garage, above which the fowl waited to live, waited to die, and waited for an absolution that came with her adept egg-shaking population control.
Many who saw these creatures wheeling through the heavens around the self-proclaimed Chocolate Capital of the Western Hemisphere - a title it futilely attempted to wrest from Hershey, PA - thought that they were doves. Chunky, white doves. Doves, like those which were provided as sacrifice in the ancient world and which graced their tables later on in a startling variety of preparation. Doves, like the one which Noah sent forth from the Ark.
In reality, they were pigeons. Cornish-game-hen-sized rats on the wing, perpetually poised to take enormous, righteous dumps upon any shiny surface. What's more, these pigeons owed an allegiance to the old woman and formed an air-force of considerable might. Each morning, as she made her way to the church for her morning prayers, they followed her on the wing and supplanted themselves upon the spires and belfries of the sanctuary, awaiting her return home.
Oh, they had their enemies. Small y-chromosome-possessed children with slingshots made quick work of several, and supervising adults, gazing upon their newly-washed vehicles that had been festooned with white-hot bird excreta, usually looked the other way. Best still, as illustrated by my sister's youthful shrieking bedroom commentary that "one of the pigeons was eating another pigeon", they often met less pleasant ends by passing through the digestive systems of a largish legion of falcons that found the dumpy feather-lumps a rather satisfying feast.
And yet, on a frigid, moon-lit December night, with the scent of church incense still in your nostrils on the walk home from midnight mass, they were almost beautiful - hundreds of fluttering snowflakes set amid the canopy of the heavens.
And so, on this second day of Christmas, I am reminded of those "doves" and how no creature, no matter how repellent, is really completely an abomination.
Well, except for hagfish.
And, uh, lampreys.
And blackflies.
[and my pets]
Huh. Well, it was a nice thought.
Until tomorrow, I remain,
Domonic (IwieldedaslingshotlikeanAmazonmaiden) Potorti
Many who saw these creatures wheeling through the heavens around the self-proclaimed Chocolate Capital of the Western Hemisphere - a title it futilely attempted to wrest from Hershey, PA - thought that they were doves. Chunky, white doves. Doves, like those which were provided as sacrifice in the ancient world and which graced their tables later on in a startling variety of preparation. Doves, like the one which Noah sent forth from the Ark.
In reality, they were pigeons. Cornish-game-hen-sized rats on the wing, perpetually poised to take enormous, righteous dumps upon any shiny surface. What's more, these pigeons owed an allegiance to the old woman and formed an air-force of considerable might. Each morning, as she made her way to the church for her morning prayers, they followed her on the wing and supplanted themselves upon the spires and belfries of the sanctuary, awaiting her return home.
Oh, they had their enemies. Small y-chromosome-possessed children with slingshots made quick work of several, and supervising adults, gazing upon their newly-washed vehicles that had been festooned with white-hot bird excreta, usually looked the other way. Best still, as illustrated by my sister's youthful shrieking bedroom commentary that "one of the pigeons was eating another pigeon", they often met less pleasant ends by passing through the digestive systems of a largish legion of falcons that found the dumpy feather-lumps a rather satisfying feast.
And yet, on a frigid, moon-lit December night, with the scent of church incense still in your nostrils on the walk home from midnight mass, they were almost beautiful - hundreds of fluttering snowflakes set amid the canopy of the heavens.
And so, on this second day of Christmas, I am reminded of those "doves" and how no creature, no matter how repellent, is really completely an abomination.
Well, except for hagfish.
And, uh, lampreys.
And blackflies.
[and my pets]
Huh. Well, it was a nice thought.
Until tomorrow, I remain,
Domonic (IwieldedaslingshotlikeanAmazonmaiden) Potorti
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
The first day of Christmas: A partridge in a pear tree.
I know I haven't blogged for, oh, a month and a half. If you'd like to know why, please send me a request including a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:
Domonic Potorti
Nashville, IN 47448
Note on the sending envelope the phrase "I'm Whiny for Absolutely No Good Reason" and I'll make sure to send you very special holiday greetings, perhaps with a photograph of me proffering an obscene Mediterranean hand-gesture.
***
Long ago, in a distant, herb-and-lamb perfumed land, I found myself retiring most nights to an eleven-floored, single-sex dormitory on the edge of the Anatolian steppe. After greeting the danışma dudes who were ensconsed in a wee glass box in the threshold of the dorm - and, more often than not, dodging their well-meaning yet irksome requests to teach them how to play guitar (which, apparently, all American males are able to do from the moment of their blessed nativities), I'd retire to my ground-floor room and await the inevitable.
Many nights, it would usually only be a few moments before a young gentleman would, having discerned that I'd returned from my daily toil, knock on my door with a very special request.
*knock knock knock*
Me: Hi, [insert Turkish man's name here].
Young Turkish Male: Hey there. [averts eyes to ground, kicks floor shiftily]
Me: What's up?
YTM: So, yeah.
Me: Let me guess: you have a shopping bag full of random meats and other sundry ingredients and you're wondering if I can transform them magically into something edible, yet savory.
YTM: You're the best.
Me: You are aware of my cut, no?
YTM: A plateful of whatever you come up with, check.
I would then retire to the ghastly little kitchenette on our floor, pots and pans under each arm, a bag of weirdness in tow, to make some magic happen. Usually it was a box of pasta, some extruded meat products, some butter/olive oil/prepackaged herbs, and perhaps some tomato paste. That wasn't usually too hard - "American chop suey" became a staple dish that semester - but occasionally I got thrown with what I was presented with, given my meager cooking talents.
[As an aside, these weren't lazy boys. They often were ashamed to ask for my help, but given that many of them were raised in families where a woman, usually their mother, was a stay-at-home, they'd never had to cook for themselves at any point. This, coupled with the fact that many Turks distrust pre-packaged dinners, meant that my ground floor Yurt Yetmiş Sekiz angels were about as useful in the kitchen as a jar full of warm sputum.]
One late spring day a chap from down the hall came to me with a little box of macaroni, a jar of salça (spicy pepper/tomato paste) and a curious carton filled with impossibly small, speckled eggs.
Me: Uh, what the hell are those?
YTM: They come from the bird.
Me: Yes, I am aware of that, as I assume you'd not consume, say, reptile eggs. But what manner of bird squatted these out?
YTM: I don't know their name.
Me: Look: you're a nice enough chap. But if I am going to be making - and partially consuming! -an omelet fashioned out of endangered songbird ova, I'll need to know now.
While I prepped the rest of the ingredients, I held one of the miniature eggs in my hand. You'd need at least twenty of them to make a decent single helping of scrambled eggs, I surmised. In the meantime, he'd scuttled away to his room to pore over his Turkish/English dictionary, and came back with triumph written on his eighteen-year-old face.
YTM: From a partridge. They come from a partridge.
Me: You're kidding me, right?
YTM: What do you mean? They're delicious. [makes smacking sound, licks lips and rubs belly in the international sign language for tastiness]
Me: OK, fine. Let's cook this crap up.
Twenty minutes later, my fork was hovering hesitantly over a tiny portion of partridge eggs. I'd not asked how they were collected, or where, but I felt as though I had to experience them if for no other reason than to be able to say at a later point in my life that I'd done it. I find that this is the impetus for many of my more rash, hasty decisions, and eventually the part of me that commands that I do things like this will be the death of me.
Domonic Potorti
Nashville, IN 47448
Note on the sending envelope the phrase "I'm Whiny for Absolutely No Good Reason" and I'll make sure to send you very special holiday greetings, perhaps with a photograph of me proffering an obscene Mediterranean hand-gesture.
***
Long ago, in a distant, herb-and-lamb perfumed land, I found myself retiring most nights to an eleven-floored, single-sex dormitory on the edge of the Anatolian steppe. After greeting the danışma dudes who were ensconsed in a wee glass box in the threshold of the dorm - and, more often than not, dodging their well-meaning yet irksome requests to teach them how to play guitar (which, apparently, all American males are able to do from the moment of their blessed nativities), I'd retire to my ground-floor room and await the inevitable.
Many nights, it would usually only be a few moments before a young gentleman would, having discerned that I'd returned from my daily toil, knock on my door with a very special request.
*knock knock knock*
Me: Hi, [insert Turkish man's name here].
Young Turkish Male: Hey there. [averts eyes to ground, kicks floor shiftily]
Me: What's up?
YTM: So, yeah.
Me: Let me guess: you have a shopping bag full of random meats and other sundry ingredients and you're wondering if I can transform them magically into something edible, yet savory.
YTM: You're the best.
Me: You are aware of my cut, no?
YTM: A plateful of whatever you come up with, check.
I would then retire to the ghastly little kitchenette on our floor, pots and pans under each arm, a bag of weirdness in tow, to make some magic happen. Usually it was a box of pasta, some extruded meat products, some butter/olive oil/prepackaged herbs, and perhaps some tomato paste. That wasn't usually too hard - "American chop suey" became a staple dish that semester - but occasionally I got thrown with what I was presented with, given my meager cooking talents.
[As an aside, these weren't lazy boys. They often were ashamed to ask for my help, but given that many of them were raised in families where a woman, usually their mother, was a stay-at-home, they'd never had to cook for themselves at any point. This, coupled with the fact that many Turks distrust pre-packaged dinners, meant that my ground floor Yurt Yetmiş Sekiz angels were about as useful in the kitchen as a jar full of warm sputum.]
One late spring day a chap from down the hall came to me with a little box of macaroni, a jar of salça (spicy pepper/tomato paste) and a curious carton filled with impossibly small, speckled eggs.
Me: Uh, what the hell are those?
YTM: They come from the bird.
Me: Yes, I am aware of that, as I assume you'd not consume, say, reptile eggs. But what manner of bird squatted these out?
YTM: I don't know their name.
Me: Look: you're a nice enough chap. But if I am going to be making - and partially consuming! -an omelet fashioned out of endangered songbird ova, I'll need to know now.
While I prepped the rest of the ingredients, I held one of the miniature eggs in my hand. You'd need at least twenty of them to make a decent single helping of scrambled eggs, I surmised. In the meantime, he'd scuttled away to his room to pore over his Turkish/English dictionary, and came back with triumph written on his eighteen-year-old face.
YTM: From a partridge. They come from a partridge.
Me: You're kidding me, right?
YTM: What do you mean? They're delicious. [makes smacking sound, licks lips and rubs belly in the international sign language for tastiness]
Me: OK, fine. Let's cook this crap up.
Twenty minutes later, my fork was hovering hesitantly over a tiny portion of partridge eggs. I'd not asked how they were collected, or where, but I felt as though I had to experience them if for no other reason than to be able to say at a later point in my life that I'd done it. I find that this is the impetus for many of my more rash, hasty decisions, and eventually the part of me that commands that I do things like this will be the death of me.
Upon consumption, I found them to be...eggier?... than that which is extruded by hens. It wasn't an altogether unpleasant taste, but I can't say that I would - given the amount of work involved in breaking dozens of eggs for a decent meal - be eager to experience it again.
Later on - much later, and in the US - I found out that the eggs in question were not actually partridge eggs, but had come from farm-raised quails, as this is popular in Turkey. My friend's dictionary had betrayed him and I was robbed, ultimately, of a good story.
However, to this day I choose to believe that they came from a partridge because a) I am insanely stubborn and b) because I just want to, OK?
And so, on this, the first day of Christmas, I am reminded of that Anatolian partridge who provided me with the ability to consume what I have to assume was the most minuscule omelet ever recorded.
Until tomorrow, I remain,
Domonic (quailsandpartridgesareinthesamebirdfamilysoit'snotincoceivablesoleavemealone) Potorti
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