October 31, 2006
Cupcakes! | # |
Uncategorized — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 2:39 am
I made a batch of cupcakes for L. to take to work tomorrow for Halloween. Actually, I had to make them twice. The first batch went into the oven and then immediately puffed-up and spilled over the pan and all over the heating element of the stove. I couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong, as I had been careful not to overfill the cups. As I removed the disaster of a pan from the oven I glanced over to the counter and saw the three eggs I was supposed to add to the batter sitting there-waiting.
I laughed (what else could I do?), cleaned up the oven and started again. It’s true, cupcakes work much better when you remember to add the eggs. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time I’ve ever made cupcakes. They’re orange, with orange zest mixed in and frosted with orange butter cream. I placed a couple of candy corn on each as decoration. Cute, but much more work than they look like.
I put my costume together for tomorrow-I’m going as the Queen (Elizabeth-who did you think I was going as, the Queen of Norway?). I have a very frumpy vintage suit from the 50’s, an elaborate, wide-brimmed black hat, and matching gloves, shoes and handbag. I made a couple of funny pins for the lapel. One has the Intel logo except if you get close enough, it reads, “Inbred Inside.” The other pin reads: “Because I’m the Sovereign. That’s Why!” I also took a litre bottle and drew a very cartoonish Beefeater on it to resemble a bottle of gin. The best detail though, are the teeth I fashioned from cardboard. I’ll get L. to snap a photograph for the blog.
So what are you going as?
Respecting Copyrights Merit Badge | # |
Utter Rubbish — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 2:22 am
Boy SScouts can get a merit badge for “Respecting Copyrights.”
You know how it is, one day you’re file-sharing and the next you’re shooting heroin and having sex with livestock. All because of filthy, filthy file sharing!
When will we stop feigning surprise when the Boy Scouts come up with ever-more-offensive ways to indoctrinate the young? I’m never going to be able to look at scouting as anything other than a modern incarnation of Hitler’s Youth. Please, save me the letters explaining how your child’s scout troop is really not as horrible, etc. It’s like the girl I knew in college that insisted she wasn’t a white supremacist, just “white pride” and that even though she had a shaved head and wore steel toed boots, she wasn’t really a skinhead. Look, didn’t your mother ever tell you that someday you’d be judged by the company you keep? I’m sorry, those cookies and candy bars they sell support an ideology that is fine for an adult to embrace if that’s what they choose, but shameful to hoist upon unsuspecting children.
Wonder if they have a "turn in your parents" badge as well?
Please Don’t Stigmatise the Psychos | # |
Utter Rubbish, Fake Science — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 2:02 am
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (a group that arguably does more advocating for big Pharma than for those diagnosed with ‘mental illness”) would like us to stop using the images of “psychos” for Halloween as it stigmatises people with mental illness.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-(wait, I wet my pants laughing, have to go change…I’m back) ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-…etc.
Fine, this year, I’m going dressed as a member of the American middle class with too much time to spend feeling sad that I couldn’t get the condo I really wanted and had to settle for the one with the lesser view and now the kids might not be able to afford private tutors to get into a good pre-school and, and, and…screw-it, I’m “depressed” I’m going to tell my doctor to write me a prescription for pills. But don’t you dare fucking stigmatise me!
Stigmatising people who take pills is bad for business. We’re against it! The stigma. Not the pills, of course. We luv pills. Love, love, love them. And billable trips to psychiatrists. And psychiatric hospitals where people are held hostage and forced to get “help” for “their own good.” All very good for the people who fund us. But please, please, please-no psychos at Halloween. It stigmatises the psychos mental patients.
October 29, 2006
Halloween | # |
Dannypants — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 1:42 am
Halloween was always my favourite holiday, largely due to the candy. My elder sister was charged with trick-or-treating duties. We had a gigantic plastic, elongated jack-o-lantern bucket (the sort of thing you could imagine El Greco painting, if he were painting jack-o-lanterns instead of religious imagery) that was shiny orange with equally elongated weird triangle eyes. I don’t know this for a fact, but I suspect it was a factory second. So this very large (about 2 ft. high) tear-shaped pumpkin, had a black plastic strap handle that was somewhat sharp along the edges and would start to cut into your hand as the bucket filled with Smarties and tootsies rolls. This was long before “fun sized” candy (personally, my idea of “fun” would be a larger candy bar) and few people would spend the money to hand out Hershey Bars. Once in a while, someone would hand out Charleston Chews, which was a windfall as they were large a few cents more than the typical candy at the drugstore (I think they cost .20 cents). Then there were the people that forgot it was Halloween and tried to give you a few pennies instead which, even in the 60’s and 70’s was pretty damn cheap. And some weird old lady would always run out of candy and start handing out boxes of cough drops (I liked the Pine Bros. drops as they were like a fusion of honey-liquorice gummy candy. My sister J. preferred Smith Brothers. I wonder, why did so many siblings go into the cough drop business? Did we miss an opportunity?).
But yeah, living with a diabetic at home, we didn’t get very good candy on a regular basis. There was some brand of saccharine candy that came in a plastic, conical container that were tiny discs of hard candy with a sort of powdery surface (like a Necco wafer) and they came in flavours like lime and grapefruit. You couldn’t chew them, as they broke apart funny and stuck to your teeth like candle wax on a tablecloth. I can still taste them in my mind-and it is as awful as it was in 1969. That was the type of candy we had at home. Sometimes my dad would bring home Jordan Almonds, or those peas and carrots candy that looked pretty in Mummy’s cut glass dish on the coffee table, but we weren’t really supposed to eat. Sort of like the furniture in the living room we weren’t supposed to sit on-everything was for show.
The only thing I enjoyed more than eating candy as a child was playing dress-up, so you can see why Halloween was so exciting. Unfortunately, my mum didn’t see the point in buying good costumes, so year after year, she sent me out in a costume that would have been offensive and ethnocentric even then. She dressed me as an “Indian.” I had a brown fringe skirt and matching tunic and a headdress with a couple of feathers stuck in it. To make matters worse, she put dark make-up on me. I think I had a small plastic tomahawk and moccasins as well. I wore that costume until I was twelve-each year a new panel being stitched into it to accommodate my growth. Eventually, my mum started sewing on new row of fabric to the skirt so that it did not become indecent. She used to do things like that with knit caps as well-she’d simply crochet on another row if the cap became too small. I still have a particularly absurd one she made for me with row after row of mismatched yarn gauges marking the years like tree-rings.
Each year, my school would also have a Halloween fair they gave the unfortunate name, "The Hallo-weenie." And no, they didn’t serve hot dogs.Each year, I showed up to toss bean bags for prizes in my lovely native attire, really just wanting to get the formalities over with so I could claim my caramel apple and leave.
Last year, I made Daniel’s costume. He was a “beatnik.” I put him in a dark turtleneck, a black beret, and corduroys. I made him a pair of bongo drums from a couple of empty formula canisters, and drew on a goatee with eyebrow pencil. It was cute, and didn’t scream “homemade.” This year, I found some inexpensive fabric in yellow, orange and white to make him a tunic like a piece of candy corn. I thought it was adorable, until today.
The city of Ashland had a street party for the kids and we stopped by on our way home to have a look. Every kid that I observed was dressed in elaborate (and undoubtedly) expensive costumes that really made Danny’s look like the equivalent of sticking a sheet over his head, cutting eyeholes and calling it a “ghost.” This was in a rural, working class community. I might as well have had a sign tacked to me reading “bad mother” for not remembering how important the costume is to kids. Sure, Danny’s a bit young to care, but by next year, I’d better get my act together. L. thinks I’m being silly, that I want Danny to have the commercialism I’d otherwise refuse to partake in-but I also don’t want to have my son singled out as the weirdo. It’s bad enough he’s wearing flood pants and second-hand (foot?) shoes-I really don’t want him to feel different from the other children.
Under the circumstances, I did what any other mother would have done-I took him into the corner drugstore and bought him a “Mr. Potato Head” toy. Mind you, Danny had no clue, but the guilt was eating me so horribly, I popped another buck to get him a plastic sailboat for the tub. I made my way to the register to pay, opened my change purse only to realise that the change I should have received back at the discount store where I had purchased his cough syrup earlier-the store where I gave her exactly twenty dollars and sixty two cents so that I would get seventeen dollars back…you know where this is going. I stared at my empty change purse (save for a couple of paperclips and about twelve cents) and realised immediately what had happened. The owner of the store was ringing us out and I think he realised it right away as well.
“You should call them, they can count out the drawer and get you your money back.” He offered.
“Oh, maybe you could do that, but it was a big chain…” my voice cracked and I realised, somewhat to my embarrassment, that I had tears welling in my eyes. At that point, L. pulled out his wallet and paid, but I was still so upset. The thought of driving fifty miles back for seventeen dollars, knowing it would be a hassle, knowing that I scraped that money together from here and there so I might have a bit of pin money…it was more than I could handle. While I would easily have handed that money off to anyone that would have asked for it, the fact that I lost it so carelessly, on a day where I was feeling Danny was being cheated out of being able to participate fully in the commercial culture…all I could do was cry. Cry because I couldn’t have what I wanted for my son, and cry because I was ashamed that I wanted those things for my son. I’m broke and a hypocrite. Lovely.
I did call the store, and thankfully I spoke with the salesperson that rang the sale and she remembered me (I guess no one pays with cash anymore causing one to stand out). I’ll drive back tomorrow and get it, but damn if I don’t just feel awful from top to bottom. At least Danny really likes Mr. Potato Head.
October 28, 2006
What Do You Do With An Old Hen? | # |
Ask the Anthropologist — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 4:25 am
One of the perks of living in a rural area is that you meet people that can give you free food. Tonight, we dined on a stewed hen that was large enough to feed us through the weekend. The lovely woman that gave us the hen even cleaned it-no small effort. We’ve been the happy recipients of chickens, eggs and my favourite, duck eggs. I don’t know what she feeds her chickens, but the eggs have wonderful colour that begs to be shown-off in a sponge cake. Danny eats an egg every day (he does not eat meat, so it is his only rich protein and he relies upon it) and while the cost is not extreme, it is not negligible either.
I was a vegetarian for seventeen years, a decision that was rooted in a childhood trauma of being dragged along with my Mum and Granny to buy chickens at some filthy place in Chicago. You’d walk in, and the stench was unbelievable. I’d plead with them to let me stay home, to no avail. Mind you, I lived next to a fishery in East Boston for ten years and that didn’t exactly smell like a bottle of Shalimar by the first hot summer weekend-but next to the “pick-which-chicken-you-want-us-to-kill” butcher in Chicago, it wasn’t quite so horrible. As unpleasant as stinky can be, loud makes the experience that much worse, and man, was it loud. There were hundreds of these poor birds crammed into cages stumbling atop one another trying to peck at a few bits of seed. The place was dark, and two men in filthy aprons would get you a bird, go in back and kill it (this was a kosher place so presumably they weren’t lopping the heads off, but rather slitting the neck and letting it bleed in a slower manner). We’d stand around and wait (for the chicken to die) and then the man would return, toss the bird on a giant scale on the counter, and then wrap it. My father (a man so funny only he laughs at his humour) once instructed my sister to tell the butcher to “keep his finger off the scale” which she dutifully repeated to my Mum’s horror. Anyway, the chickens that we took home were still covered in pin feathers. Guess whose job it was to deal with that?
The combination of cleaning and dressing freshly killed chickens, and the memory of the stench and sounds of the shop really encouraged my becoming vegetarian. Honestly, I was not initially thrilled with the idea of preparing, much less eating chicken again. Most things, I’m happy enough to prepare for L. (with a few exceptions) even if I won’t be eating it. Still, what could I possibly say? If someone is giving you their food as a gift, it is my feeling that there is an obligation to eat it. This philosophy has seen me eating some rather strange items over the years (I’m an anthropologist, that’s just an occupational hazard). If you can avoid asking about the particulars of the ingredients, it works better, I mean, it is so much easier for a Westerner to think they just ate hush puppies rather than breaded and fried grubs. So really, in the face of someone’s generosity, what could be done but toss it in a pot with carrots, celery and herbs?
I still don’t care for chicken, but I still have to marvel at how beautifully it turned out. And it was free. Tomorrow, I’ll try moulding it into a loaf (I’ll have to skip the aspic as L. cannot stomach it) and see if I can stretch it even further. I was able to yield broth and chicken fat to render as well. That’s quite a bit of use from one old hen! In a spirit of reciprocity, I’ve sent her pies and bread, but not as an equal barter type of thing (I wouldn’t want her to feel she is being denied the opportunity to be generous-these things are so complicated sometimes). I think it may be time to make another pie and I’d like to be able to use something she gave us in it besides eggs-anyone have experience making pie crusts with chicken fat?
We are so fortunate to have kind people willing to share what they have with us. The more I think, “Well, that’s how it is supposed to work” I realise that I only take such notice of it because it rarely does. Or that we rarely think to share what we have. Perhaps that’s it-we have not grown selfish so much as oblivious. Whether it is sharing food, or tools, or babysitting, or just looking in on a neighbour-these need not be bits of nostalgia we romanticise but never act on, if only we’d give it a moment’s thought. As irritating as the “random acts of kindness” movement is, maybe we really do need bumper stickers to remind us of what we have the impulse to do anyway. These days, when we’re encouraged to throw-up our hands and indulge the worst behaviours human beings are capable of , maybe the very best act of resistance is to be gracious.
October 27, 2006
Rat Out Your Family, Friends, and Neighbours | # |
Police State, They Hate Us For Our Freedom — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 3:32 am
Sheesh,the least they could do is toss-in a secret decoder ring.
I’m not at all shocked. I can think of people I know personally, that would seize this as an opportunity to feel powerful. Sad, huh? What do you expect? When the schools started teaching children to inform on their parents for drug use, I knew we were doomed as a society. Pretty soon the police were encouraging people to call in their neighbour’s expired license tags. Once you’re willing to do that, ringing the feds because there is a dark skinned, or turbaned man driving a truck is commonplace. I wonder if participants can earn a "Keeping America Safe From Filthy Wogs" merit badge as well?
Don’t you feel safer?
October 26, 2006
Interesting Links, Now With Pithy Observations | # |
Uncategorized — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 10:58 pm
-well, maybe not exactly pithy…
(And for extra fun, I’m not spell checking either! Let’s see how bad the typos and misspellings get)
Gee whiz! According to the abstinence only education programmes, it’s my obligation to dress in a way that won’t get the boys excited. Man, who knew avoiding pregnancy was as simple as baggy overalls? Sheesh. All that wasted time learning about reproduction and how our bodies work when really, all I needed to know was "keep covered." Look, I’m not promoting abortion but for crying out loud, kids need to know how reproduction takes place. "Dress drab", does not seem like good guidance.
A very amusing article about television cooking shows. Not having television, I can only imagine what is being described *shudders*. Once in a while, I post a simple recipe at my cooking blog, but I do not specialise in "simple" or "easy" or "quick." Life is filled with enough half-assed attempts, if you cannot devote the time to doing something correctly, perhaps it is best to just watch the television.
In defence of the train driver-it always drives me ape-shit insane when people get on a train and stand still in the doorway without moving in. After repeating herself a few dozen times a day, maybe she simply could take no more. Besides, it was a guy from Newburyport ($$$). Yeah, I know, don’t judge…but the guy was from Newburyport($$$). Let him try driving a train for a day.
US agents are carrying out investigations on Canadian soil, without approval of the Canadian government…but Stockwell Day sez it’s cool (actually,he had a much longer answer, but it came across as "it’s cool") because they are done according to Canadian law! Gosh, the feds can hardly manage the workload here, but have time to go to Canada to keep them safe from "really bad guys." I’ll bet they’re just in it for the whiskey and Cuban cigars.
What a dip-shit. When I heard "caliphate" being batted around last week I thought I was back in a 100 level African history class. Except of course, we actually applied the term correctly. Must have taken quite a bit of elocution practise to get that one down without turning it into "calipers." Of course, it is pointless to correct the usage because all words are devoid of meaning now and are casually tossed about with the authority of a bully thumbing his nose and saying "nah, nah, nah, what are you going to do about it?" You know, cause we’re a freedom lovin’ people on a crusade to bring liberty to the evil ones that hate freedom with their caliphate of claipers measuring stuff.
Yeah, that means you nonviolent types too. Maybe we should just try to establish what is not terrorism, as it will take less time.
As an anthropologist, I like to think I’m on top of all the ethnic slurs in common usage, but some of these really blew my mind. Times change though-thirty years ago Ed Muskie uttered the horrible slur about "canucks" and it really damaged his campaign (well, that was before the crying bit about his old lady’s potty-mouth finished him off completely). Today, a sports team uses it proudly.
If I was sent one of THESE, I’d wet my pants laughing.
Hmmm, a perfume named "Funeral Home." I always thought it would be funny to market a scent called "Compromised. For the Compromised woman." Appears I was simply ahead of my time on that one.
THIS will suck hours of your time, but you’ll have so much fun laughing.
I thought THIS had to be a prank-but it’s for real. I have a few earth science books I could donate to the cause. Anything to keep the schools safe from crazed madmen.
THIS is also very funny (along the lines of the Landover Baptist, and Betty Bowers spoofs).
Miracle Whip is ruined. But if you need a recipe for making good, old fashioned-who-cares-about-salmonella style mayo, let me know.
Canadians in Afghanistan-this piece is remarkable.
Gee whiz-wonder what sort of "syndrome" would be diagnosed after a week in the US? Boo-hoo-hoo, the French were so mean to me, I’m going to go call my therapist right away!
Cash no longer being accepted?
I’m never leaving Danny with a sitter/nanny after reading THIS.
October 25, 2006
Build Your Own Brick Oven | # |
Uncategorized — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 6:25 pm
I was sold by the part where it talks about baking forty loaves of bread on a single firing. Some people build barbeque pits, others build brick bread ovens. Then there’s the people that build fish ponds in their yards but unless you’re planning to batter and fry the koi at the end of the season, it sort of fails in the area of culinary usefulness. Actually, they’re pretty big fish…I wonder…
My first thought when reading about building my own brick oven was;
“Do you know how many people I can feed for next to nothing?”
The more I considered it, I knew that was correct. Wood is super cheap-I have at least a cord out back from when they removed the giant dead trees that kept scraping at our roof and growing into the septic. Flour, salt, yeast and water-also a minimal investment. If this works and could be built into a project with a couple of volunteers, we could certainly provide a staple item to a number of hungry people. At least while it is still legal to feed the hungry here.
October 24, 2006
Still Sick | # |
Dannypants — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 2:50 am
Danny came into the kitchen and tugged at my apron. I turned around to see him pointing at a largish boil on his forearm. Then, he quickly pushed up the opposite sleeve to show me the nearly identical boil on his left arm. He’d been getting over a particularly nasty cold and I thought it might be some sort of canker sore. By Saturday morning it was pretty clear that something was *going on. Danny’s appetite was disappearing and rather than try to communicate with us, he resorted to standing in the middle of the room and simply screaming. We took him to his paediatrician.
Hand, foot and mouth disease! I think I shrieked “What?!” in response to the diagnosis. I mean, it sounds so indicative of bad housekeeping-doesn’t it? He likely picked it up off a grocery carriage, but still. We wash our hands, we don’t eat poop-this shouldn’t be happening to Danny. Apparently, there are dozens of viruses in this classification (it was hard to follow the doctor’s explanation as he has a tendency to get a little ponderous-he was explaining the disease to us in terms of viral classifications and grasshoppers –yes really, grasshoppers. I just wanted to know what Danny had and how to treat it, I wasn’t asking him to draw me a bloody Linnaeus. Part of childhood I guess, the positive being that once they’ve had a particular strain they build immunity. One down, hundreds to go.
I was concerned that I might be at risk for developing it as well, given my suppressed immune system. Dr. Ponderous thought it would depend on just how suppressed my immune system is (steroids and chemo drugs-that’s how suppressed) and whether I’d been exposed to this particular strain as a child. Just as I was beginning to think I’d get out of this ok, the large boil appeared on my arm and numerous ones on my mouth, tongue and throat. I stood at the bathroom mirror large flashlight in hand examining my mouth for white pustules and sure enough, there they were.
I wonder, if I stand in the centre of the room and scream at the top of my lungs, will someone make me some vanilla pudding and let me sleep in their lap?
*Danny is doing much better today, though the boils have now spread out and look just awful. Thankfully, they don’t hurt or itch. So far, he’s avoided a fever though I’m told that can happen. We’re about four days into something that typically lasts about a week.
October 21, 2006
Friday Babyblogging | # |
Dannypants — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 2:11 am
Yeah, I know he’s a toddler…but he’ll always be my baby. I posted a bunch six photographs to Danny’s blog today which may be seen by going to Http://www.dannydumpling.blogspot.com
I really loathe Blogger-it took TWO HOURS to post six photos AND it managed to eat my text making the titles look sort of odd.
Danny has been spending a lot of time watching our neighbours harvest corn, etc. He stands by the window to see them doing "farmer stuff" but I’m bracing for the day that he sees them pulling a dead cow behind the tractor to dump in the rubbish pit out back. I observed that one from the kitchen window one afternoon and forgot to mention it to L. Next morning he had quite a shock when he went to take out the rubbish. It’s not like they have a recycling bin for that, you know?
“Where Do You Rest Your Macrame When The Teapot Boils?” | # |
Uncategorized — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 12:05 am
The brilliance of Bobby Lightfoot.
October 19, 2006
Unknown News | # |
Uncategorized — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 8:46 pm
I have a long-ish piece up at Unknown News, if you feel like reading it.
October 18, 2006
Being Thoughtful | # |
Dannypants — J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder @ 4:34 pm
We’ve all been terribly ill with colds recently. Danny is better save for some sniffles, yet I’ve been rather wiped-out by it. Without paying much attention, I must have been placing my hand to Danny’s forehead quite a bit as he now imitates this manoeuvre with each of his stuffed animals. This morning, it was the stuffed pony on wheels. Danny placed a hand on his head and declared with much seriousness, “Hot.”
“Hmm” I thought, “Perhaps I ought to play along.” And went to get a thermometer to take Mr. Pony’s temperature. I placed it in his mouth and waited for the “beep-beep-beep.” Danny brought his blanket from bed to drape over the toy’s back. “Poor Mr. Pony is sick” I declared, reading the thermometer.
Danny rolled him over to a corner of the room, wrapped him warmly in the blanket and then placed his straw cowboy hat atop the pony’s head and gave him a kiss on the snout. I consider this a wonderful milestone for Daniel-showing thoughtful consideration. While it might be a good idea to keep close watch that he does not take it in mind to monitor the dog’s temperature (doubt he’d be too good natured for that) I am pleased that my son is showing signs of being kind. Never mind that he’s already learned the word “hate” which he now applies to a puzzle piece of the Statue of Liberty (hubby made an “I hate New York” joke and well, guess who picked that up?). At first, I was horrified, though later relieved to hear him mutter the same at the puzzle pieces of the Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal, and Leaning Tower of Pisa. At least no one will accuse my two year old of exclusively “hating” America first. It’s still OK to hate the French as far as I know. I try to correct him and say, “We love, not hate” but at this point “Hate” probably just means puzzle piece to him. Still, it’s a good lesson in how children pick up words you might not want them to use. Really though, he is exhibiting thoughtful, sweet behaviour.
We spent the rest of the morning checking on Mr. Pony and bringing him tiny paper cups to drink imaginary tea from (note to parents of toddlers-a stack of paper cups will keep a child occupied and quiet for a long while). I’m sure with plenty of kisses and warm blankets he should be feeling better soon. Really though, I should have seen it coming-I mean, as my husband observed, “that pony is a little hoarse.”
