This blog is in hibernation.

I’m not sure if it’ll be back, or even if it’ll be in a blog format. I’ve had some other things on my mind and in my life lately.

But I was dragged back here because I’ve been getting a rash of apparently inebriated people at godawful hours of the morning feeling the need to comment on years-old posts and discuss my upbringing, my religion, my sexuality, and the fact their significant others have left them…

I don’t care. I’m not your momma or your therapist.

So, you know, all commenting on old posts is now closed.

The Lord is risen, indeed!

Happy Easter!

Here, have some irreverence.

Portland Smoothie

I hereby dub this the Portland Smoothie. Not so much for what’s in it, but for the directions on how to make it.

This came out of a fascinating discovery I made this weekend. If you really like pulpy orange juice like I do, the best way to go is to get a navel orange (they don’t have seeds), peel it, then toss it in the blender. No water needed. Pulptastic, pulptacular, and since citrus is just finishing up its season, delicious and wonderful.

Then I cleaned out the freezer and found some frozen berries in the back and in trying to figure out what to do with them, said to myself, OH HEY BLENDER!

The Portland Smoothie

Consumables:

• 1 small to medium sized navel orange
• frozen blackberries
• frozen strawberries
• water

Hardware:

• Blender. Regular ol’, not fancy Vitamix or Blendtec, $29.95 from Fred Meyers blender.
• Beer Festival Mug

Instructions:

• Peel the orange. Toss it in the blender.
• Fill the Beer Festival Mug with frozen blackberries to the taster line. Toss in three or four frozen strawberries. Fill with water to the taster line. Toss whole lot into the blender.
• Put lid on top of blender securely. Just sayin’.
• Blend. Mine seems to come out perfectly after 45 seconds on ‘Liquefy’.
• Pour blended concoction into Beer Festival Mug. It should fit perfectly with about 1/8th of an inch of space on the top, as in photo illustration which is my kitchen counter and the cutting board propped against the wall. WOO FANCY FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY!

Football as a Metaphor for Work Ethics in the Americas

The sport that USAdians call ‘football’ (despite the low percentage of the time that feet actually come into contact with the ball) is clearly a metaphor for the corporate management culture of the USA. Wherein nine-tenths of the time on the field is spent in committee meetings discussing what went wrong in the other one-tenth of the time, and how they’re going to work to reach the benchmarks necessary to achieve the goal. Of course, to reach the benchmark, the quarterback starts at the current place of advancement, then proceeds to back up 5-10 yards and then wonders whyinhell they aren’t moving foward more quickly. When they do finally reach the goal, there’s an inflated amount of credit given and an extensive celebration, during which time everyone else just kind of sits on their hands and wonders when they’re going to get around to getting back to actually working on delivering the next goal. This is increasingly important as the quarters slip past because someone must win this game. If you won last week, and for the previous twelve weeks in a row, but lost this week, you are therefore a loser and someone must pay!

However, the sport called ‘football’ by the rest of the Americas (norte y sur) where you get penalized if you dare to touch the thing with your hands, is a metaphor for the regular staff, who run their butts off, have a constantly ticking clock looming over their heads, during which time they must pass many, many times. Finally their work pays off and they achieve a goal, and while there is celebration, there’s a push to get back into the game and begin running and passing again because the clock. Never. Stops. And hey, if the game ends in a tie, that’s ok, because the point is not to win or lose each individual game, but to be the one at the end of the regular season with the most cumulative points.

(Baseball, of course, is a unique commentary on USAdian culture as a whole. It’s less a team sport and more of a team, “Hey, betcha I can hit this ball over that wall!”
(And then the other team says, “Betcha can’t!”
(At which point the first team says, “Oh yeah?! WATCH THIS!”)

Open letter to Barb Anderson from Champlin, MN

Dear Barb Anderson from Champlin, MN:

I recently learned of your letter to the editor in the Coon Rapids Herald dated 6/1/2011. This was pointed out to me by a Rolling Stone article which quoted you, but did not provide your name. Thanks to the wonderful Internet, a simple Google search found me the entire letter, wherein I could read for myself the comment you made in its original context.

See, when you were quoted in Rolling Stone as saying,

“Let’s stop this dangerous nonsense before it’s too late and more young boys and girls are encouraged to “come out” and practice their “gayness” right in their own school’s homosexual club,”

I was kind of hoping it was out of context with your letter. I am an inherent optimist that way. But twelve (12!) paragraphs before that, you stated,

“homosexual attractions and behavior which for men is built around the practice of anal sex—the leading cause of HIV”

which only proves to me you’re not just misinformed about what goes on in queer relationships as contrasted with heterosexual ones, but dangerously so*.

But I do want to get back to your dangerous nonsense quote. See, my high school didn’t have a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). I was terrified of even thinking about my sexuality in high school, let alone going to a room and telling others I might possibly kind of be one of them. Part of the terror was that judgemental people like you would find out and treat me like the poor young woman in the Rolling Stone article. Therefore, I did not date in high school, nor in college until my senior year.

Thus, I never practiced being queer.

However, when I finally did start dating my college girlfriend, I was very good at being queer. Oh my, yes! I didn’t change my clothes or my lifestyle, still went to the same church, still had the same friends. But boy howdy, I was so good at being queer right off the bat, no practice at all, that in light of your statement I can only come to one conclusion:

I am a queer prodigy!

Clearly, I was born with an innate gift for being queer. Thank you, Ms. Barb Anderson, for assisting me in coming to this realization. And despite the fact I’ve been single for many years and plan on continuing in my blessed singleness for many more** I’m sure that if I was to start dating a woman again, my queerness would not have suffered one iota for not being ‘practiced’.

Sincerely,
Mary Sue
Portland, OR

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*the largest growing demographic of HIV cases in the US are heterosexual women age 25-45 who engage in unprotected oral and vaginal sex.
**Now that I’ve said that, however, I bet you five dollars God’s going to play a practical joke on me.

My rage keeps me warm

It seems lately I’m angrier than usual.

The world seems to be doing its best to escalate my blood pressure.

And I really wonder whyinhell people spend time on Twitter searching for people who have opinions contrary to theirs, and then call them bad names.

Seriously. Learn to knit or something.

What Girl Scout Cookies Mean To Me

Girl Scout cookies mean summer camp.
Girl Scout cookies mean arts and crafts.
Girl Scout cookies mean learning to work together with people you hatehateHATE.
Girl Scout cookies mean Bridging Ceremonies walking across the Golden Gate bridge.
Girl Scout cookies mean dancing the Electric Slide.
Girl Scout cookies mean taking classes to become a Red Cross certified baby sitter leading to a first job.
Girl Scout cookies mean learning how to fold a flag.
Girl Scout cookies mean sewing a waterproof butt cushion with bright orange yarn.
Girl Scout cookies mean creating a project plan and following the steps to completion.
Girl Scout cookies mean tours of the Jelly Belly factory.
Girl Scout cookies mean becoming a better person, a better citizen, and a better leader.

And that’s why I buy Girl Scout cookies from every girl of every age* who asks. Someone else bought the cookies 15-25 years ago when I was in Troop 39, Napa-Solano Council, so I could do all the things above and be in the same organization as these women and so many more over the past 100 years of Girl Scouting.

Now, it’s my turn.

You want to help, too? Girl Scout Cookie Finder.

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*And if you weren’t around back in the dark ages when I posted it, here’s my blog on Ageism, Girl Scout Cookies, and the Internet.

I made a pretty!

I’ve been knitting a lot lately. It’s not something I ever really did before, because I was a die-hard hooker crocheter, and I still am crocheting, but knitting has some fun stuff. Like the Hitchiker scarf, which is supposed to have 42 points.

[pause for nerds to chortle]

Unfortunately, I ran out of yarn at point 41. Therefore, this is named One Exit Left.

The strange thing for me has been the response to this pretty thing I made. I’m actually kind of sick of it, because it went from two stitches to DeargodamIdonewiththisrowyet length, but I wore it to work because HI I MADE THINGS!

And as I’m writing this, a coworker walked up behind me and said, “I WANT THAT SCARF”.

I told her, “You can take it off my cold, dead neck. And only if you want to fight my zombified corpse.”

(If you want all the gory details about yarn and needle size and such, click the picture and it’ll take you to the Ravelry project page)

Mesoamerican Archaeology Lesson

This is the Monolito de la Piedra del Sol, sometimes referred to as the ‘Aztec Calendar’. It has a 365-day calendar cycle, a 260-day ritual cycle called tonalpohualli, which form a a 52-year “century”.

This is Tortuguero Monument 6. It is a Mayan calendar, one of several that reckoned calendar and ritual dates differently. Each of those glyphs are an individual number. See that smashed bit in the bottom right hand corner?

That smashed bit, where you can’t read the numbers correctly?

That’s what damnfools are trying to scare your money out of you with by saying it predicts the ‘end of the world’.

What’s the fastest way to know you’re dealing with a damnfool?

Well, other than saying OMG THE WORLD IS GOING TO END IN 2012!!!, they’re using the Monolito de la Piedra del Sol to illustrate their scare tactics.

(Also if they refer to the Mayans as extinct. My buddy E would like to discuss that with them, but they probably can’t since they likely don’t speak the same Nahuatl (in English that language is called MAYAN) he grew up speaking in the Yucatan*.)

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*Which he tries to teach me when we’re both out drinking beer which is why I can only pronounce Nahuatl when tipsy.

Chag sameach Chanukkah!

Yeah, it’s the 8th night, so here’s Matisyahu on ice.