F16’s Don’t Kill People, 500 Lb. Bombs Kill People

Dear Blue Bunny,

Are you a boy bunny or a girl bunny (I hope you don’t mind me asking, Mummy says it is rude to ask people if they are a boy or a girl caus’ you’re supposed to be able to tell, but sometimes I can’t).

I’m a little girl and my name is Debbie (NO not that Little Debbie-Mummy says eating that crap will make you sterile-I don’t know why that would be bad, I mean, she’s always after me to keep myself clean. Are you sterile Mr./Ms. Androgynous Corporate Bunny Logo? I hope so, Mummy says I’m not allowed to play with dirty people-I might get cooties.

Oh yeah, why I’m writing. Well you see, I’ve been enjoying your Chocolate Ice Cream in a half gallon for like…I dunno, like forever (ok, I’m only eight, but that’s a really long time when you’ve spent most of it locked in a basement closet by your crack-addled parents for the first five years. The nice lady from DSS that came and rescued me said it was one of the filthiest basement closets she’d ever seen and you know being in her line of work, she’d probably seen more than a few. My new Mummy is kind of anal about hygiene and is always cleaning (no wait, I think it’s called “cleansing”) her colon-do you know what a colon is Mr./Mrs. Androgynous Corporate Bunny logo? She won’t tell me. I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with crack. Do you think I should talk to Daddy about an “intervention?”

Sooo anyway, I really enjoy your chocolate ice cream, but the half gallons are hard to scoop from once you get about ¼ of the way down. My arm gets all covered in ice cream and as much as I tell mummy, “No really, it’s only chocolate”, I don’t think she believes me, and figures it is some type of holdover manifestation of the trauma of being locked in a basement closet with nothing but a razor and my own faeces to play with-for like years. OK, that’s not totally true, sometimes they would throw me uncooked hot dogs and bits of stale donuts, if I was good. One year for Christmas, they gave me a couple of limbs ripped from my older sister’s Barbie Doll. It wasn’t the same as playing with an intact Barbie, but once you smeared faces over the severed leg, it was easy to pretend it was a tree trunk. I had a family of imaginary squirrels living in it, but the ringworms were (I’m told) real. Do you have imaginary friends Mr./Mrs. Androgynous Corporate Bunny Logo? You’re a bunny right (I mean, they call you a bunny-that’s not a front and you’re actually a racoon or something, is it?) so you probably like things like lettuce and carrots. How did you get into the sugary-snack business anyway…if you don’t think I’m being too nosy asking. Mummy says I’m terribly impolite because I never learned proper etiquette locked in the basement closet playing with the severed limbs of Barbie dolls and my own faeces (well, there wasn’t anyone else’s).  If I cannot figure out a tidy way to eat your ice cream, I’m going to have to stop because they’re already dosing me half-out of my mind with atypical antipsychotics (which might explain the cravings for ice cream)and are threatening to use shock therapy. Have you ever been involuntarily drugged by your parents with powerful psychiatric medications Mr./Mrs. Androgynous Corporate Bunny Logo? It sucks shit. It really does. I heard it can make you diabetic too. Does Blue Bunny have chocolate ice cream with artificial sweeteners that are safe for diabetics but won’t cause you to grow a head out your spleen or some other grotesque side effect? Maybe you guys should work on that-just in case. I’m one of your best customers, you know.

I guess I could always just switch to vanilla.

Love and Kisses,

P.S. You know how on the carton it says “Fold this flap in first”? Well I know this was probably an oversight, but it says the same thing on the other end! Have you ever tried folding both flaps in at the same time on opposite ends? It’s hard!

I have an old cookbook series from the early 1960’s called The Women’s Day Encyclopedia Of Cookery . It has lovely photographs and drawings that are marvellous examples of 60’s kitsch. I don’t know how many times I’ve opened a volume to see my mother’s orange juice glasses or a hideous compote given to me by some yard-sale-ing friend. Sure, some of the recipes are monstrous to even think about (pear and cottage cheese mould in green gelatine anyone?) but I have, quite honestly, found the editions more useful than not-particularly as I was learning to cook. In fact, I like the set so much, I recently purchased another in a thrift shop to pack away fro Danny when he’s older (mine are showing some wear).

Not surprisingly, Danny’s favourite books are cookbooks. A couple months ago I was in a used bookshop and saw the Betty Crocker cookbook for children (with the yellow, spiral binding and funky drawings of kids. I had that book as a child and thought Danny might enjoy it as well. No go, I’m afraid. The ham and cheese sandwiches where the slice of cheese is cut-out with a cookie cutter creating a two-toned open face delight does not speak to him.. I’m afraid it isn’t much better for the “watermelon cooler” which always seemed to me (as a child anyway) the sort of thing I’d drink every single day as an adult once I got out of the clutches of living with a diabetic mother that used…I don’t know, what…six or seven saccharine tablets in a cup of (instant) coffee. Sadly, I’ve yet to indulge in a single watermelon cooler as I’ve developed an allergy, albeit mild, to melon and a watermelon cooler would probably make my mouth itch.

The Women’s Day cookbooks are another story. The five pages devoted to apples have been flipped through so many times I’ve gone through nearly a reel of tape piecing it back together. There’s photographs of pie, kuchen, “rosy baked apples”, dumplings and applesauce. There is also an impressive two-page spread chart of the different varieties that were widely available in the US in the 1960’s. You’d be hard pressed to find a Rhode Island Greening these days, and the Golden Delicious still looked elongated rather than the rounded variety common now, but a few like Rome Beauties have made comebacks in recent years. One hardly sees the distinction made between eating and cooking apples anymore-most appleas available in supermarkets are intended to be eaten out-of-hand. I don’t know if that reflects a change in American diets where we simply cook less, but it seems a shame as cooking a Granny Smith will make a decent pie, but is hardly a replacement for the green cooking apples of yesterday.

One day, last summer, I handed Danny a bag of apples (he was being sort of whiny) and a kitchen towel and instructed him to start polishing. I was delighted-I’d found a way to keep my son quiet and occupied. Eventually, he figured out ways to make the routine more interesting and one day happily ran into the kitchen clutching the cookbook that contained the apple chart and demanded to know what variety we had. Smart kid. Dumb mother. I’m now going through apples at a quick rate as he expects to have a few (all different varieties, thank you very much) to “cook” in his play kitchen. When they get too banged-up, I quietly exchange them and cook the old ones.

Then, I bought Danny a Golden Delicious as he’d been pointing to the one on the chart and asking why it was yellow. When I came home and pulled that silly apple from the grocery sack, you’d think he’d just been presented with a valuable item. He literally cradled it, considering it too precious for the colander he keeps his others in, placing it instead in his straw basket from last Easter.

Today, I presented him with a “Pink Lady” apple and while perplexed that it is not pink at all but rather red and green, he lined it up with the others in his current collection and began rattling off their names;

Golden Delicious, Red Delicious (not really, but that’s what they call them), Fuji, and Pink Lady. Then he stopped and accusingly asked;

“Where is Braeburn? Mama took Danny’s Braeburn.”

Shit, I was busted. Not quite two and a half and the kid is already on to my parent tricks. Think about this-sure, it’s only an apple but what the hell am I going to do in a couple of years when all attempts to revive his pet goldfish fail and I find the thing floating belly-up and unable to be revived by sprinkling table salt on it (does that even work? My parents would always make such a solemn thing about it like it was going to be Lazarus. We’d sit there waiting to see the fish flinch, hoping it would turn over and start swimming but it never did. Still my parents weren’t going to be dissuaded by failure and time and again would do the salt-raise-the-dead trick that never had the desired result. Then, I’d have to sit through the lecture about how “everything dies” which was just frickin’ great as my mum was having what seemed like monthly heart attacks before they finally operated on her). But really, if he can spot the impostor apple, do you really think he’s going to settle for replacement goldfish without a fight?

Quiet around here, eh?

I wouldn’t exactly describe it as “burn out”, rather much of the time there isn’t much to be said beyond re-stating the obvious. I haven’t lost confidence in humanity or anything, though there are a handful of individuals causing me to write and delete many a post. I do delete them before posting-a behaviour many of us would do well to engage in whether posting to a blog or penning off a frustrated email. Be an adult means thinking before hitting the send button.

Beyond my frustration with the SSG’s (annoyance really) I really don’t care to turn the blog posts into a series of self-pitying articles. It feels whiny and stupid, particularly in the face of what others have to deal with on a constant basis-I mean, when I go to the hospital, I don’t have people trying to shoot me at checkpoints. No one is dropping cluster bombs on my street, or shooting missiles from helicopters. When I go to the grocer, I can purchase what we want (within reason of course). We have food, shelter and relative safety. This blog is read by people around the world-I cannot really complain without looking like a tremendous asshole. I know how fortunate we are-and that’s all it is, luck. We certainly haven’t done anything to deserve the comforts we have. I know what an insensitive shit head I can be-hardly need to advertise it to the world by posting trivialities.

Country living is getting to me. I returned home to find a ghastly scene beneath my laundry sorting station. First, a bit of background.

The barn behind our house was very nearly falling over and was a danger, so last weekend it came down. This left many of God’s creatures (cats=precious, rodents=less so) homeless. Seeing how we’re just twenty yards away, our place must have seemed like the obvious place to go. We usually deal with this sort of thing in Autumn when the corn comes down, but it is unusual for this time of year-and in such large numbers. Mind you, the weather has been bizarre-we haven’t seen rain like this in a generation-so all sorts of wildlife is coming out (turtles, bullfrogs) to visit. By the way, I think I know where all the missing honeybees have gone, if anyone wants to bring a hive and come collect them.

 Conventional traps are useless on these fuckers. I hate like hell to do it, but we laid out a few glue traps before we left for the day hoping that in the quiet, the mice would come out to play.

Danny was helping me put away groceries when I heard a rustling from behind the cart. Expecting to see a rodent writhing away in glue, I shooed Danny out to the living room. “Oh shit”, I thought looking at the sizeable snake caught in the glue trap. The poor thing’s last thought must have been,

“These people are AWESOME! Look, they even left me a mouse for lunch.”

My husband did the honour of ending its misery, but I felt just awful seeing it not only stuck in glue, but wrapped around the wheel of the cart. I suppose if it were later in the season, the snake might have been upwards of six feet long (we had one of those big-boys in the kitchen the year we moved in). There’s not much you can do to “snake-proof” a home, and bull snakes, while they resemble rattle snakes (and will often shake their tails as though about to strike) are pretty harmless. I’m sure they would bite if you accidentally stepped on one, but otherwise, they’re not much of a bother. In fact, they usually help keep the mouse population down. I felt just awful about this one being caught like that.

Just as I was getting Danny ready for bed, two more little mice (and they are very tiny) scurried beneath the washer and dryer, taunting me. I’m going to get a cat. Allergies be damned, Siberians are supposed to be liveable for people with allergies and if I have to take allergy shots to put up with a cat, so be it. I cannot stand the mice anymore, and I don’t wish to sacrifice anymore snakes.

Blech.

This week, I’ve prepared an orange cake with chocolate buttercream filling and a bittersweet chocolate ganache coating.

This is a holiday weekend in the United States where we honour our war dead by going shopping. I don’t expect to be out making the most of Memorial Day sales (I really loathe shopping) but our curtains do need laundering. Well no, of course I’m not going to climb a ladder and take them down-that’s what 6′4" husbands are for.

Hope everyone has a more interesting weekend than I will.

Danny was flipping through pages of a picture book when he found an illustration of a radish. My son adores radishes-not to eat, mind you, but play with. One day he carried a radish around in his pants pocket bringing it out to show anyone that would look-as though it were a lump of gold.

"See a radish?" he asked, expecting me to have one in the crisper bin.

"I’m sorry honey, I don’t have any."

Danny considered this for a moment before giving me the following instructions:

"Mama will go to Hy-Vee and buy Danny a Radish."

Bossy, eh? I think Mama will do one better and go to Earl May,* and buy Danny a packet of radish seeds. Won’t he be impressed when they sprout.

Speaking of Earl May, I wonder how many jokes get made about "Earl May, but Immanuel Kant. "

I’ll bet they get that all the time.

I don’t care if this is a publicity stunt-the issue needs publicity.

I really do wish they would try to live on 21 dollars a week for food for a longer period of time-six months, a year, etc. Let serious deprivation set in. Exempting their children from it also aleviates some of the anxiety that parents who have no choice face.

Still, I hope it will draw some attention to the absurdity of expecting people to feed their families on such a pittance. From the way some people carry on about "welfare" hand-outs you’d think we were giving away vouchers for lamb chops. $21.00 a week is hardly extravagant.

A breastfeeding parody site. I’m rather fond of the first entry (scroll down) about "If I wanted my kid to be a serial killer, I’d have named him Richard Speck."

"not spigots" hee, hee, hee.

-at least for the next 72 hours. And I have a toothache.

It was sort of funny, the technician advised me to avoid airports and trips to Ft. Calhoun for the next few days, but should I need to travel they can provide me with documentation showing I had “nukular” (as our President likes to say) medicine. Unfortunately, I have to avoid holding Danny for prolonged periods of time. I sort of wish they had warned me about this ahead of time (you know, when they were calling my house three times a day to get just a bit more information about my insurance coverage, which is way, way more important than things like documenting a latex allergy, or informing me that I will be radioactive for a few days). After two straight days of exposure to this crap I wish I knew someone with a Geiger Counter-think of what a cool parlour game I would make!        

Right, so on to the funny stuff (you know there’s always funny stuff in these situations). The Dr. looked exactly like Jack Kerouac, the technician like Monica Lewinsky (except very pregnant) and the nurse was the sort of woman you’d imagine pressing seams into her black denim Levis for her night out at the Country and Western bar to go line dancing. She had a good four inches of root outgrowth offsetting her platinum, crispy, perm. If you’ve ever wondered if there’s a place where it is still 1981, you know, sort of a time-warped universe where it all stopped dead still with the release of Urban Cowboy and the introduction of styling mousse-it’s Omaha! Grab your big shoulder pads and leg warmers-come visit.

So Jack Kerouac is sitting there doing absolutely nothing (nothing but collecting a fee) as Lewinsky and Black Levis Lady make awkward, flirty conversation. I’m propped-up in a chair and wrapped in blankets feeling like my heart is going to jump out of my chest and they’re chatting up young Kerouac, which in the case of preggers Lewinsky Look Alike, was kind of pathetic. I finally interrupted the heartbreakingly stupid exchange to indicate that I was having considerable discomfort and if they could tear themselves away from discussing weekend plans, I could use some help. Geez. I could see if we had socialised medicine and all, but hell, I’m paying for this, I shouldn’t have to feel like I’m being rude interrupting them to ask for some nitro.

The hospital was actually a pretty nice, efficient place. They had free valet parking for crying out loud. It definitely lacked that “hospital vibe” and the lobby had a player piano (I shit you not) giving it a sort of Nordstrom’s feel. My husband, who was in the lobby watching our son informed me that one of the wildly inappropriate tunes it was playing was Auld Ang Syne-which apparently, was really upsetting some elderly woman who probably just lost her husband or something.  There was a coffee bar as well. The loo smelled of ether, which had to be my imagination as I’m pretty sure hospitals don’t still use ether, but whatever it was, it smelled medicinal…like a hospital loo.

My husband works practically across the street from the place, and passes it on a nearly daily basis yet failed to notice that the hospital overlooks a rather large cemetery. Talk about bad planning. I’m guessing the cemetery was there first, so it must have crossed someone’s mind that having sick people look out the window and see mile after mile of graves might be a bit discouraging.

For the Anne Sexton fans, the hospital was located on Mercy Street. Again, my husband drives this road every single day and failed to notice. We have an entire bookshelf filled with Sexton’s poetry (which actually, neither of us are wild about, but I’ve had them for so many years it almost seems wrong to sell them). How awful to observe all these funny things and have no one to tell that can appreciate them. I mean, outside of the heart-liver issue, there have been really amusing moments. I’m trying to maintain a sense of humour, unfortunately all the jokes are beginning to feel private, which is a drag. I really do miss my far-flung friends. When my old neighbour invited a group of us out to California for a get-together I knew exactly what he wanted to assemble. For a few years there in Boston, there was just this fantastic group of people that could enjoy a plate of cold kasha and bowties while sitting in a crummy apartment watching some damn obscure film that we were the only people in a fifty mile radius that had heard of. Before long, the neighbours behind us would start screaming obscenities at one another -the best fight we ever heard was over hairspray. “You little whore, you used up all of the fucking $17. dollar hairspray” (mother to daughter). Now I realise this might not sound like the sort of thing to get nostalgic over, but it isn’t the loud in-breds I miss, but someone to appreciate the fact that they were loud in-breds. I live in rural Nebraska now-everyone’s related, even if not directly in-bred. And no one can appreciate the humour of a cardiologist that looked like Jack Kerouac telling the nurse he intended to “bum around” this weekend. I miss the Fourth of July Pizza parties where we’d all walk down to the harbour to watch the fireworks, and then argue about the best place to take a piss on the walk home. I miss people with a sense of irony. The last time I was this sick, I was surrounded by people that would look at the bottles of medication on my kitchen cart and say;

“No, Jen I really think you’ve read this wrong. The label says “especially good with alcohol” let me get you a drink.”  True, these were the same people that would offer me cigarettes following lung surgery, but what the hell, at least they were fun to have around.

I’m so terribly bored. I know lovely people here, but they’re just not the kind that would bring over a Geiger counter and a bottle of Boodles to amuse me.

Anyway, I should probably share this piece of advice: when your doctor tells you, “There’s something wrong with your liver” the proper response is not, “Would more onions help?”  

These dour Midwesterners just don’t see humour the way we do in the East.

You know, what’s really striking about this story is that it was a blue truck, rather than the ubiquitous white van that always seems to show up in these hysterias. I don’t know why, and a folklorist could probably come up with a master’s thesis studying it, but the “scary stranger stories” almost always feature a suspect driving a white van. You’d think the symbolism would be all wrong and that frightened children would have their bogey man driving something considerably darker.

How many blue vehicles do you suppose the local police stopped today searching for their “lurker?” Frankly, I very much doubt this child’s story of being chased. A few months ago a child freaked-out and rang up the police because a jogger waved to her! Oh horrors, not a waving jogger. These children, and their parents are so freaked out by the fear-mongering of politicians that would have us believe there’s a dirty old man lurking behind every tree that they cannot help but view a man on a public street as a potential criminal. There was also a recent case where a man who lived next door to the school cut across the playground to go to his car and was interrogated by the police. At least in that case, he wasn’t charged with anything, which would stand to reason as he wasn’t committing any crimes, though that hardly seems to matter anymore.

So once again, we have hysterical parents fearfully jotting down licence tags from every blue vehicle they spot and ringing the police to check them out for…what? Being on a public street and making people uncomfortable? “Lurking?”  Swell.

I read where airlines have policies now that children travelling alone will not be seated next to men as the airlines don’t wish to risk being liable should a man molest a child in full view of everyone on an aeroplane. Hard to say which is more absurd, the assumption that all child molesters are men, or that there is any sort of privacy in that environment should in fact a dirty old man be considering carrying out his nefarious acts.

It was also interesting to read the article where the parents were all insisting they would never permit their children to walk to school alone, presumably even if there weren’t an alleged “lurker” scaring them out of their minds. The police and politicians have done such a magnificent job terrifying parents that children are no longer permitted to walk to school, take exercise, or play at the park without parental supervision. You know, a jogger might wave to them.

Everyone panic! ™

How is it, you may wonder that something considered by many to be dubious science at best, and outright quackery otherwise, can gain so much public acceptance that we are now encouraging the screening of newborns for “mental illness.” My bullshit metre went right to the top, dinged the bell and continued rocketing off never to be retrieved-yours may be proceeding likewise which leads me to wonder-what in the bloody hell are the people promoting this thinking?

It is interesting that the article focuses on one child who’s mother (fancying herself an authority on the basis of a bachelor’s degree in psychology) appears (by the way she is represented in the article) to go off in search of something wrong with her child that a diagnosis can be slapped on. In that particular case, yes, something turned out to be “wrong” with the youngster though one would have to wonder if having a “team” (yes, literally, the child has a “team”) working day in and day out drilling him with flash cards and rewarding him with candy and hugs (you know, like a pat on the head and “good boy” you give a dog during housebreaking) might be doing more harm than good. The mother’s motivation seem to be that her son will be able to hold a hold a job someday thus ensuring he will have a meaningful life. I guess if the best you can envision for your child is life as a wage slave, then I suppose “early intervention” makes sense-perhaps someone should have intervened in my childhood so I would be more obedient and willing to accept the status quo…wait, never mind, they did-guess the results were less than advertised-so much for child psychiatry. Perhaps the old man can sue for a refund.

Sure, this screening might catch some children who are obviously not developing at the rate of others, but employing the rubbish argument of “If it helps save one child then it is worth it” is going to lead to thousands if not millions of children being misdiagnosed and forced to endure intrusive psychiatric treatment and medications to which they are unable to consent simply for being tardy hitting a development milestone. If an adult wishes to freely consent to such experimentation-fine and well, but to forcibly expose someone, a child no less to such shamanism is a horrible violation of their human rights-and as a bonus, it is insurance billable!

Many, many of the children being labelled “learning disabled” are (and I know this is going to sound harsh) simply too stupid to learn. Being the parent of a child that is stupid, and unable to learn is considered shameful these days when everyone (including the stupid) are expected to pursue a college education therefore, the learning disabled label. Medicalising a child’s stupidity removes the shame factor for the parents and opens the door to special treatment filling quotas on the road to wage-slavedom. Yes, dumb little Johnny will have a job shoving frozen dinners in grocery sacks waiting for him when he graduates from the school that spent the years they had coaching and drilling him with flash cards and role-playing so that he can learn to behave in a suitable deferential manner. Forget bothering to teach history, music and literature to Johnny, he’s too dumb to get it or worse, he might excel at it, and there’s no useful employment to be had in those fields! Better train him (with treats and pats on the head) not to piss on the floor and snarl at management. Just keep taking your stimulants kid, and try not to fidget during the Pledge of Allegiance.

I should preface this by pointing out that Danny is on a bit of a cowboy kick at the moment and as a result, wears his straw hat just about everywhere. It is really adorable, and I think when people see him, they are reacting as much to the cowboy attire as they are to his being a well behaved child.

It was a very long appointment at my doctor’s office, and Danny was being really charming and quietly looking at a picture book. Realising she was going to need to send me for tests, the doctor whisks Danny off to her desk to ply him with candy. I know, that would never happen in the city, but out here in the country, it would not have occured to her to ask the parent first. I didn’t care.

Without prompting, Danny tells her "Thank You" which really had me beaming. I didn’t get to enjoy the moment long as my son took the lolipop out of his mouth long enough to begin belting out "What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor?" at the top of his lungs.

I need to have a talk with my husband.