Today I saw my first white-supremacist, Neo-Nazi family … in person and totally certain that’s what they were. I’m sure I’ve seen some before, but they weren’t advertising the fact loudly or at all. This family? The skin art alone was a walking billboard for racist hate and Neo-Nazism.

Stunned into gawping at the recognition of what I was looking at, I actually inhaled sharply and audibly.
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So, after spending a while working on the back-end of my web site, I had a thought, which lead to writing one of those posts where I babble incoherently about often entirely divergent subjects jumping from one bizarre tangent to another. I ran out of steam at about five-hundred words. That’s a good thing. I don’t think the incoherent babbling was ever going to arrive anywhere. I don’t even think there was a course set to begin with. I’ll be sparing you the horror of reading those five-hundred or so words.

But … I do think I may have said something interesting, worthwhile, or so damn crazy it shouldn’t be forgotten and must be shared, so I am going to very quickly read the post and pull out anything interesting, without thinking about it too much. If I start to think about it too much, there will be another five-hundred word burst of brain activity, and I really do need to go do the dishes.

Here goes:

These paragraphs are only loosely cohesive. It’s still a lot of mindless babbling. Yes, I am quite likely insane.
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“It’s OK, as an artist, to put aside the thing you have been doing forever and begin doing something you have never done before.”

“In fact, I strongly suggest it.”
–Orb

“Have you ever watched weeds grow over the course of a long, hot, Texas summer? I mean really watch them grow and propagate themselves and live their little plant lives to the fullest!”

“I have, and it made me feel alive.”
–Orb

As much as I hate to start the blogging day with a depressive note:

Immokalee is the tomato capital of the United States. Between December and May, as much as 90 percent of the fresh domestic tomatoes we eat come from south Florida, and Immokalee is home to one of the area’s largest communities of farmworkers. According to Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Immokalee has another claim to fame: It is “ground zero for modern slavery.”

This story of one particular location’s migrant farm workers doesn’t get better. It gets worse. It’s so bad, I hope everyone who reads it thinks about it every time they look at tomatoes at the grocery store … and decides not to buy them.

This is the sort of story that should influence people’s food choices. It won’t though. Most people don’t care where their tomatoes come from or who is picking them. They only care that they are available all year long at the cheapest prices possible. What does it matter who slaves in the fields to get them there? As far as I can tell, most people don’t even care whether or not they taste like a tomato –or taste like anything at all. What matters is that they be stacked sky high –red, perfect and unbruised– and be on sale for 89¢ a pound.

Many things about the sources of my food matter to me. Where did it come from? How many chemicals were used in its production? Does it contain the nutrition I expect it to contain and does it have any flavor? What environmental costs are associated with its production and transportation? Is it safe to eat? Was anyone abused so I could enjoy it? These things cross my mind every time I am pushing my cart through a grocery store. These were the factors which led to us eating locally produced seasonal goods and growing our own. My long-term goal is to completely disconnected our eating habits from the corporate food chain. I don’t know if I will ever be successful and achieve this goal 100%, but it’s a worthy goal to work toward. Every step we take in that direction is one step away from promoting the international food machine that neither leads to a healthier body nor a healthier society.

I bought approximately six tomatoes this winter … all from Mexico, where things are really no better than they are in Immokalee, Florida. I had my internal conversations over which to buy, from where, and whether or not to buy them, every time I stepped into the produce department of my local grocery store. I knew the people who picked them were not being treated as well as they should be. I knew they’d been sprayed with environmentally damaging and health damaging chemicals. I knew entirely too many resources had been used to transport them to my location. I knew they might even be unsafe to eat and would disappoint me. They always disappoint me. But … sometimes I just want some color in my winter salad and just want to pretend I am eating a tasty tomato, even when there is no flavor at all behind the shiny red skin.

I felt bad when I bought those tomatoes. I felt bad when I chopped them up for salads. I felt bad when I ate them. All in all, the tomatoes were worth the low, low purchase price for me, and while there may be complaints from other quarters of the household come the winter of 2009, I will likely not be purchasing any off-season (or in-season) tomatoes not grown locally again. When the complaints about lack of salad color begin, I will be pointing out the above linked article for my reasons why. No one should be abused or enslaved so I can eat a tomato –or anything else, for that matter– whenever I like.

Note: I am not a pompous snob about this. I don’t hold everyone else to my own personal standards for living or eating. If I come to your house for dinner, and you’ve created a meal from countries I would never purchase food from or foods I would never have in my home, I will happily eat it and not even think about it. I would never preach to anyone about it, at least not over dinner. I even eat at restaurants from time to time, and who knows where any of that food comes from or what transpired to create those plates of tasty edibles. I realize not everyone has the means or wherewithal to produce their own food. Many people don’t even have alternatives to the sky-high stacks of imported produce at the neighborhood grocery store. I don’t know that we will succeed at moving further off the food grid, but I’m going to try. I guess that’s all any of us can really do is to try to educate ourselves on where our food comes from, how it gets to our plates, and whether or not there are alternatives that are better for our environment, our own health, and the health and safety of others and our society as a whole.

Making educated decisions about what we eat and when, who we support with our meager dollars or not, and thinking about and caring about what goes on in connection to our daily meals are the right things to do. Every effort –from the smallest to the grandest– helps.

And now I will cease reminding everyone about the facts of where our food comes from and how many people, animals, and places are hurt by our need for out-of-season tomatoes. I have to go work in my garden anyway, and I find I have a renewed vigor to do so after reading about the issues in the Florida tomato fields and being reminded once again that those bright and shiny orbs are simply not worth buying at any cost.

I could go on. Really, I could. But, I do have a lot of work to do in my own “fields” today. I know it’s a hard thing to think about –where your food comes from– and the answers you find are often depressing or confusing, if you find any answers at all. I’ll say this now: if you want to know more and want to educate yourself and make different decisions about what you are eating and from whence it comes, but you don’t know where to start or don’t have the time to seek it out on your own, feel free to ask me. I either already know the answer, or I would be more than willing to find one for you. This issue is just that important to me. It should be that important to everyone, and I pray someday it will be.

Sitting here in front of the computer reading, in a dazed and mostly asleep state of mind, I heard a siren scream down the road … saw the flashing lights as it passed. It took me a moment to remember that we no longer live in the apartment, where sirens screaming down the road were a regular occurrence. No, we now live on a street where I haven’t heard a siren –on our street or even nearby– in the entire time we have lived here. Firetrucks, cops, and ambulances with flashing lights and moving in a hurry? That happens a few times a year, but they never ever use the sirens.

By the time my desire to rush to the window kicked in, whatever it was had already passed well beyond our house. I stepped out onto the front porch just in time to hear the siren wail the last time and see lights flashing on the far, far end of the street. Of course, I hadn’t bothered to grab my glasses on my way outside, so the fact there were lights flashing was about all I could see. They looked like big twinkling stars. Incidentally, so does our street light. I really am quite blind without my little lenses.

I trudged back inside and got my glasses. In order to see what it was making all the commotion, I had to walk all the way out to the street. Still had trouble seeing what was going on, as not only does that end of the street go much further than our end before terminating, it’s at the bottom of the hill we live on. It’s not that much of a hill, but it is just enough to make seeing anything going on beyond the t-intersection a few houses away almost impossible. I did manage to discern, from the pattern of the flashing lights, that it was an ambulance, and it was alone. No cop cars or firetrucks. Obviously not good for whoever is having a health crisis, but at least it wasn’t a fire or an ugly crime. I guess that sounds callous, but that end of the street –only a block away– is a world unto itself. Tonight, I only have enough strength to care about my end of the street.

There’s no reason I should be awake this late. I had such a long day. I was so incredibly busy and active … and got so much done. In another five minutes, I’d have finished reading the Metafilter thread I’ve had open much of the evening. Then I would have been in bed, happily asleep. Now my state of near sleep has been broken by the sound of a screaming siren and a jaunt out into the somewhat chilly night air in too few clothes.

The TV is blaring. Lin is asleep on the couch. The cats have given up on the humans going to bed and have retired to the bedroom for the night without us. I bet they didn’t even flinch when the siren screamed by our house. I didn’t flinch either. I had a very delayed reaction. This makes me realize I live in a much safer place than I used to live, where sirens were a daily –sometimes hourly– event. The thought makes me happy, until I realize someone just down the street is being loaded into an ambulance, and their emergency was do dire, the never-heard sirens were sounded. I should feel something, if only interest and intrigue in the events going on a block away, and yet, I don’t. I’m so very tired.

I think I’ll have a cup of hot chamomile tea and try to approach that state of near sleep again. I still need to finish reading that Metafilter thread anyway. Tomorrow is another day full of work and sweat and getting things done. Better drink the tea quickly, and read those last few comments without refreshing the page, and then … joining the cats in the bedroom for some much-deserved sleep.

The Texas peanut industry^† is taking a bit hit thanks to one small-time player, Peanut Corp. of America. It’s sad, because they aren’t involved in the recall, and for all I know, they produce perfectly good peanuts and peanut products. The problem is, I, as a consumer, have no way of knowing whether the peanuts in any particular product are from Texas, Georgia, or the outer plains Orion’s Belt. Therefore, peanuts are off the platter in my household until further notice.

Though I may break down soon. We eat a lot of peanut products. We miss them dearly. At some point, the desire to eat something containing peanuts will overwhelm the desire to not potentially eat something which could make us sick. I imagine it will be a little while yet, since there was yet a new case of peanut-related salmonella discovered right here in Central Texas last week.

When I consider that a very small player in the food production industry has been responsible for the largest product recall in the history of the USA, it makes me consider what the scope would be if it was a larger company … one that really has a busy production line and creates even more consumer products and ingredients for consumer products. Then I freak out and think about something else for fear of never being able to happily eat anything bought in a store again.

I don’t expect perfection in processed foods or factory-farmed fresh goods. Perfection is not possible. It’s not even feasible to consider achieving perfectly processed consumer foodstuffs, but it is a worthy goal that all companies and farms should be striving to achieve, not because someone tells them they have to do so, but because it’s the right thing to do. What happened to pride of product? Making something good that’s worth paying for? Oh yeah, it got drowned in the bathtub and buried in the back yard by corporate greed.

What I expect when I buy a jar of peanut butter is it will be a better jar of peanut butter than I could make myself. The companies have the equipment, the manpower, the raw materials, and the knowledge for how to make a jar of peanut butter which won’t kill me. I do not have the equipment, the manpower, the knowledge, or the raw materials to do so myself. Buying equipment is expensive. My time is worth more than a jar or two of peanut butter. I could acquire the knowledge, but there are so many hours in the day. I could never grow enough peanuts to fulfill our yearly needs. Therefore, I am willing to outsource the production of peanut butter to those who are better able to produce it, and I am willing to pay them a decent price for their labor … even if it occasionally contains an animal hair or ground up bugs, which anything I produced in my own home would likely also contain. All I ask is they do their best to produce a product which is as near perfection as humanly possible, and when they realize they have produced something substandard to not ship it to the shelves anyway for fear of monetary losses. I want them to take pride in their product and respect for the human lives who have outsourced their own food production to those who should be more capable of doing the task. I want them to be as horrified to consider causing harm to someone as I am when I make someone cookies or give them vegetables I grew in my yard. I don’t think I am asking too much by asking companies and those who run them to have a conscious.

So one of thousands, possibly millions of small-time food producing companies didn’t have a conscious, and now an entire industry has been painted with a broad brush as being unsafe. That’s both sad an unfortunate, because I still have faith there are peanut companies out there creating perfectly edible and safe peanut products. I have no way of knowing which products these are, and every day more and more products are put on the recall list. The cookies I buy today may get put on the list tomorrow, and by then, it would be too late, and I would have gambled with our health. That’s not something I gamble with lightly. My health is certainly worth more to me than my craving for a peanut butter cookie.

I don’t really have a solution to this problem. I think one step in the right direction would be more self-monitoring and self-testing by the companies themselves, combined with total transparency to the consumer about the results of the monitoring and testing. I should be able to go to a company’s web site, see from whom and where they buy the ingredients. I should be able to see the results of safety testing without having to write letters or get court orders. If a company’s goal is a healthy and safe product which comes as close to perfection as humanly possible, then work toward that goal, and show everyone how well they are doing. Wouldn’t need to be mandatory. Everyone wouldn’t need to keep up with every company on a weekly basis either. In this day and age, a company that was cagey about showing test results or who was doing poorly at producing a good product would feel pressure from consumers all the same. Word of mouth is still the greatest marketing tool of them all.

So that’s one possible step toward a solution to companies that don’t give a damn about anything but the bottom line. I’m sure there are others, but transparency of production is one I would personally find helpful in making decisions about which products are worth outsourcing their production to companies who should be able to produce them better than I could do so myself. And it all boils down to pride of product and respect for consumers … and a little less greed.

Tangential Note: I visit the FDA web site about once a week to read through the latest recalls. I visit more often when something like the current recall is ongoing. What I have noticed since the peanut recall has begun is that the only things listed on the daily lists are peanut products. I know all the medical supplies, drugs, and other foodstuffs haven’t suddenly achieved production perfection, and yet, there hasn’t been anything other than peanut products listed for weeks. Makes one wonder what other illness producing or deadly products are slipping through the cracks right now while our overworked system deals with peanuts.

1. † Texas is the second largest peanut producer after Georgia. [↩]

Since it’s still chilly outside and keeps drizzling off and on, I’ve been sitting here searching for and reading the blogs of fellow Austin gardeners. It’s been informative, but perhaps not in the way they’d like. What I have learned is that a lot of these Austin gardeners are outright big-city snobs.

There is a rant on the horizon!
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Friday, the SCOTUS had the conference in which they discussed the latest Obama-not-natural-born case. No word by close of business Friday on whether or not they are going to deny it like they did the other(s). Great, another long weekend of insane blathering from the supporters of these cases going on about them waiting to announce they will hear the case so the National Guard can be in place to handle the riots and going on and on and on about protecting the Constitution and saving the United States of America from having an illegitimate President … all the while fomenting plans for their own riots should they not get things their way.

There’s been an undercurrent of something throughout all the posts and comments I have been reading the last few weeks that I just couldn’t put my finger on. It wasn’t until today that it all became clear to me. All of these people — every last one of them, of those who are willing to at least admit Obama was born in Hawaii — are quoting case law and historical documents which state that citizenship passes through the father. No mention of the mother, of course, because in the 1800’s, women were chattel, and their citizenship was determined by who they were married to if their citizenship even mattered at all. Women were … worthless as citizens. They were barely citizens at all, having almost no rights whatsoever. They couldn’t even vote!

Well, I have news for these people. We don’t live in the 1800’s anymore. Women have rights. Women are equal citizens by their own birthright, and that citizenship passes from them to any offspring they may have. Welcome to the modern era!

I have a 100% made-in-America, natural born citizen vagina. Any child passing through my vagina acquires my native and natural citizenship, and it doesn’t matter what the father was/is anymore than it used to not matter what the mother was … back when women didn’t matter. You want to talk about equal rights? Well, there’s an equal right for you! My ova have just as much natural-born-citizenship-granting power as any male American citizen’s sperm. I could go out right now, grab the first foreign, non-citizen male I can find, become pregnant, carry the baby to term, and pop it out in my back yard, and that child would be a natural born citizen of the United States of America.

If “a father has every legal right in the world to have the laws of his nation apply to his son” then so do I. I am not a lesser citizen, and why should my citizenship not pass directly to my child in the same way it does for a father? Why should it not be just as powerful and important? IT SHOULD, AND IT IS!!! F*ck anyone who thinks otherwise.

I can’t believe it took me so long to put together the pieces. I’d noticed how hung up they were about the nationality of Obama’s father, and then I started noticing how no one ever mentioned his mother, who was also the owner of a 100% made-in-America, natural born vagina. Then I read the statement quoted above, and it all made sense. They don’t care that his mother was a natural born American citizen giving birth on American soil, because she just doesn’t matter at all. She’s a WOMAN, and it’s all about the men and the power of their almighty sperm.

I am so livid, I can’t even rant coherently, so I think I will close with this:

This kind of thinking is a million times worse than not being paid equal pay for equal work. This is the diminishing of women back to the day when they didn’t matter at all, aside from doing the work men didn’t want to do and giving birth to sons to carry on the family name and inherit the family estate. Well, why don’t they just take away our right to vote while they are at it? I’m sure they could find some case law from the 1800’s to defend that as well.

You want to see me foment a rebellion? This is exactly the sort of thing that can and will set me off. I promise you right here and right now, if the SCOTUS takes this case on and finds Obama is not a natural born citizen because “a father has every legal right in the world to have the laws of his nation apply to his son” … I will go to Washington, DC. I don’t care if I have to hitchhike the whole way there, live on the streets in the dead of winter, and eat out of dumpsters. I am not kidding.

Right after dinner, I fell asleep on the couch. It’s the most normal thing I have done since last Monday.

[five hundred words of mindless babble deleted]

[thirty minutes of deep thinking]

[four hundred and forty-six words of mindless babble deleted]

I’m safe. My friends and family are safe. None of us are homeless or dying. We have food and clean drinking water. These are the things I am thankful for today. Everyone should be so lucky as to be able to be thankful for these things so many people take for granted.

About time for some train-of-thought babbling, yes? It’s been a while.

The usual warning applies: I haven’t read this. I may never read this. I have no idea if it even makes sense. There are undoubtedly spelling and/or grammatical errors. It is my brain channeled through my fingers and into the keyboard on something that has been rattling around in my brain for too long.

The reason politicians can repeat, almost exactly word-for-word, responses to questions — talking points and sound bites — over and over again, is because no one ever asks different questions. Interviews are repetitive dances of call and answer memorization. Little more than theater. Acting. Might as well type out the script, send it around, and skip all the bother of doing the interviews in person.

The reason a particular governor from Alaska was flummoxed by someone asking her what news sources or magazines she read. It isn’t that she doesn’t read or doesn’t read regularly. She wasn’t expecting the question. It was off-script. It made her engage her brain to recall a fact she wasn’t prepared to be asked about, and it tossed her momentarily off her pre-scripted and prepared answers to the things she was expecting to be asked.

The way to become a master interviewee is not to have pre-scripted answers to questions. Speak the truth, as you see it. If you know something, you know it. If you feel something, you feel it. It doesn’t have to be answered exactly the same way every time using the exact same words. Be prepared for all questions by being true to who you are and your beliefs and values.

The way to become a master interviewer is to not ask the same questions as everyone else. Come at things from new angles or even ask things that may seem irrelevant, like “What news sources do you regularly read?” It isn’t a difficult question. I’d say the answer isn’t especially relevant or tells us much about the person answering it. What asking that question, or any question that might not be expected, is seeing how the person thinks while asking the question, and any conversation that may come from that answer. “So, you read the New York Times. Have you read the article they did on you yesterday yet? What did you think about [insert pull-quote from article here]?”

This has recently come to be known as Gotcha Journalism. When I was in and around the newspaper business and considering a career as a reporter or photographer, we simply called it Journalism.

Reporters asking the same damn questions as each other over and over and over again, and being answered by their interviewees with the exact same words and phrases over and over and over again is not journalism. It provides no new information, and so it might as well not even exist. The script isn’t that exciting. We don’t need to see it performed multiple times.

Furthermore, reporters jumping on any variation in the pre-scripted answer as some sort of gaffe or object of derision is not helping the matter at all. I am often asked “Why do you blog?” My answer has never been identical to any other answer to that question. I may word it differently every time, but the core of it is the same, because the reasons are the truth. I actually think about the question every time it is asked, and so the answer changes over time … as things should. I’m sure I could manufacture a stock reply to spit out as soon as I heard the question, and people would like the answer, and they would call it good. The fact that I — or anyone else who also considers the questions asked of them rather than spout memorized replies — don’t doesn’t make me or they wishy-washy or prone to gaffes. It makes us thinking, feeling, living human beings.

Stagnation is death. Talking points are stagnation in the journalism process. So are identical questions asked by competing news services. It isn’t Gotcha Journalism to ask creative questions that haven’t yet been posed. A person who knows what they are talking about and who they are can answer any question you pose them on either subject. A politician who knows how they feel about abortion or gun control or any issue at all should be able to answer questions about them without any preparation at all. All that obvious memorization of answers seems far more tedious and fraught with danger than simply being oneself and standing firm to ones convictions, causes, and beliefs.

Reporters: Ask some different questions and be able to think on your feet to devise more questions based on replies.

Interviewees: Be yourself, consider questions and answers, and speak the truth from your heart and mind.

Also, it is inherently impossible to have more than one exclusive interview. The word “exclusive” has a meaning, and I do not believe people in the television industry know that meaning. If everyone is showing the same show, playing off the same script, on different days of the week, we call that reruns. Since there are some variations in location, time of day, wardrobe and cast due to the live nature of television news interviews, let’s call them encore performances, shall we?

It isn’t just television news either. This problem extends to newspapers and magazines as well. Everyone is locked in the endless loop of asking the same questions, getting the same answers, and pointing out who made mistakes in their reading of the script, which then leads to even more perfectly scripted and memorized answers to the expected scripted questions. It’s maddening, and it’s boring, and I wouldn’t give it an amateur theater award.

And if someone doesn’t want to be interviewed by you, unless you hand them the questions in advance, or because you are known to ask off-script questions, well too bad for them. The interviewee is never the one doing a favor for the interviewer by being there. It has been and always shall be the other way around. Somewhere along the line, journalists forgot the simple fact that politicians and other notable people wishing to be discussed in the news should be courting the news services, not the news sources begging the politicians and such to please talk to them.

Free press is a powerful thing. The power of the press lies in the hands of journalists and reporters and photographers. Unfortunately, they have either forgotten that or become too fat, lazy, and comfortable to care.

The first time I saw real snow — not the occasional wet stuff we get in Texas, but real snow — was in Chicago. It was my 21st birthday, and I had a light schedule of meetings and workshops that day. I decided to walk around in downtown Chicago until I found a place that served drinks, and I would order my very first legal alcoholic beverage. I pushed my way through the brass and glass revolving doors in the hotel lobby, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and was instantly snow-blind.

When my eyes adjusted, I stepped into a shadow and looked around at all the large piles of fluffy, clean snow everywhere. I wanted to go play in it, but I was trying to appear adult and cosmopolitan, and running over to the first pile of snow to build a snowman while giggling wildly seemed a little Backwoods Texas comes to the Big City, so I resisted the urge, bundled my coat tighter, and went off to find that purveyor of alcoholic beverages I had set out to find.

Two days later I spent 48 hours stuck in O’Hare, thanks to snow. Let’s just say my glee about seeing “real” snow was dampened somewhat.

The second time I saw real snow was in Lake Tahoe on a skiing trip. Hey, skiing was not my idea, but I was excited about seeing snow –and gambling. We arrived at night, and it was snowing hard. The trip from airport to resort was even somewhat horrifying at some points. The only snow I could see was what was hitting the windows. The next morning, I put on my sunglasses, pushed open the front doors of the resort, stepped out on the sidewalk and took in the view. Stunning to see snow-covered mountains first thing in the morning.

I allowed myself to run out and play in the snow for a while. Then I ran up to our room, put on my cute white ski-suit went to take the beginner’s skiing class. They passed me, which to this day seems like a criminally insane thing for them to do. One of my friends, who had also just been told she could ski, headed to the lift to go down her first real slope. I headed to the outdoor patio on the lodge and ordered a hot toddy. Settling into a comfy chair, I watched the slope for signs of my friends coming down, so I could try to convince someone they wanted to have a hot toddy and play in the snow with me rather than doing that skiing thing.

I sat and watched for about 30 minutes, and I began to think it odd that my friend and fellow classmate hadn’t come down a very simple and extremely short little slope yet. I’d seen some people pass by a few times already. The thought had no more crossed my mind when I saw several rescue snowmobiles take off up the slope. They returned shortly, my friend in tow. She hadn’t injured herself, but she had taken a tumble and then refused to put her skis on ever again. She’d been walking down the slope crying her eyes out. I ordered two hot toddies. Finally, a drinking and snow-playing buddy.

Though after a while of goofing around in the snow, we both realized that even nice snow is wet and cold and in the end isn’t really all that much fun. So we changed into comfortable clothes and hit the casino. Snow can’t top central heat, free watered-down cocktails, and nickel slots.

I’ve learned to love Texas snow. It’s pretty when it’s falling from the sky, it dusts the world with glittering white, and then … it goes away. I think if I had to live with real snow on a regular basis, I would go stark raving mad. Yes, I will admit right here and right now for the first time in my life: I hate snow.

This post inspired by Jen.

For about a week now, the cats have been showing an especially high level of interest in one specific spot in the house, usually late at night. The spot in question is the area between the stove and the kitchen cabinets, a space I use for the trash can and a stashing spot for glass to be sent for recycling. Not exactly the sort of spot one wants cats getting boisterous and rowdy. All the same, almost every night for a week, they have been hovering in the area, and a few nights ago they started getting boisterous and rowdy about it. Last night, one of them went all out, knocked over all the bottles and jars, and nearly dumped the trash can over. Very late last night, of course. More like really early this morning.

Lin slept through it, as he always does. The world could end while that man sleeps, and he’d never notice. I was awake and in the kitchen in a heartbeat, ready to kill some cats. Well, not just that. I also hoped they had gotten whatever it was they wanted to get, which I had begun to suspect was a mouse. Not that I’d seen any mouse-like evidence anywhere, but I did hear a slight scratching noise in that area one of the nights I was chasing the cats out of the kitchen. Due to the fact there is a cabinet there which has not been opened since I stashed a bunch of old, unused small appliances in it five years ago, I had begun to imagine all kinds of things living the high life in there and slipping out to dine on our refuse every night. Naturally, this didn’t inspire me to move the trash and recycling and open the cabinet, because … I really didn’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss.

Seeing as the cats made a royal mess of things last night, I went ahead and moved all the jars and bottles out of the area, swept up coffee grounds that had apparently missed their target, and pulled out the trash can to give the cats full access to the spot that drew their most sincere and rapt attention. Then I turned off the light and sat at my computer. Yes, I send the cats in where I fear to tread! It’s not like they needed any convincing. They very urgently wanted to get in that corner.

It didn’t take longer than a couple of minutes until I heard the sounds of Ronin playing with something under the kitchen table. I didn’t really want to go look, but I also didn’t want him eating a mouse — or whatever it was — or worse, killing it and hiding it somewhere for me to step or sit on later. He does this, and I swear he does it on purpose.

So I crept into the kitchen and turned on the light. Sure enough, Ronin is under the table losing his mind, and Myu is sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor watching from a safe distance. I stoop down to get the view from her vantage point, and even without my glasses on, I can tell it is not a mouse. It is, in fact, a very, very large bug. Since Ronin seemed to have incapacitated it enough for me to safely get within focused viewing distance, I moved in closer.

Remember recently I reported having seen and killed the largest freaking roach I had ever seen before? Well, I have now topped even that monster. Except, it didn’t look like any roach I had ever seen. It reminded me altogether too much of these bugs they used in a stupid horror movie I saw as a kid, in which these large, brown and somewhat-armored, wingless bugs were overrunning civilization, and when they landed on people, their skin started sizzling and everyone died horrible and gruesome deaths. It was at least two inches long, and it was not yet dead. My fight-or-flight instinct was telling me to RUN! But of course, I can’t allow myself to be run out of my home by a bug, now can I?

Well, it was too big for me to feel comfortable squashing in any way, and it was too large to let Ronin have his way with, so I grabbed a paper towel and went to pick it up for the formal trip to the toilet. Instead of picking it up, which I didn’t really want to do, it grabbed a hold of the paper towel and just hung there. I quickly and smoothly walked down the hall to the bathroom, prepared at any moment to drop it and scream had it made any menacing movements. I most certainly wasn’t going to allow it to touch me, and there were two cats hot on my heels making grumpy noises who would have been more than delighted to incapacitate it again.

It just hung there on the paper towel calmly, not realizing its fate. I opened the toilet, tossed the paper towel into the bowl bug side down, and flushed … all in one quick movement. Normally, the wet paper towel drags the poor critter into the watery depths and out into the sewer. Not this time. No, this creature from hell got out from under the swirling paper towel and swam against the rotating current. I kid you not! I have never seen such a thing! Then it got out of the water and crawled up somewhere under the rim of the toilet bowl — somewhere I could not see. I flushed the toilet a few times to see if I could wash it out. It didn’t work. Just wonderful.

I didn’t want to leave the room to find something to do battle with the beast, for fear that as soon as I did so, it would crawl out and go who knows where, so I grabbed the bottle of bleach I keep in the bathroom and just started splashing it up under the rim of the bowl. Finally, the monster slipped just enough for me to see where he was. I grabbed a good wad of toilet paper and kept brushing against the damn creature until it slipped into the water, I dropped the toilet paper on top of it and flushed again.

It tried it’s best to avoid going down the drain, but this time I watched it disappear from sight. I repeated the toilet paper and flushing a few more times, just to be damn sure it was gone, gone, gone.

Of course, at that very moment my bladder realized I was awake, and I really, really had to pee. Like hell was I putting my butt on that seat at this particular moment! So I waited as long as I possibly could, and then … I hovered over the toilet as though it was in some scummy nightclub rather than my personal bathroom. Even then, I had to keep watch, because I didn’t want any surprises. That kind of surprise could put me off toilets forever. As it is, I’m going to be all weird about sitting on the toilet until I forget about the giant whatever-it-was I flushed to its doom there. This will, I imagine, take weeks. I may even need therapy.

By the time all this excitement was over, it was too late to go back to bed just to wait a little while for the alarm to go off. Oh how I would love to go back to bed, but it’s Monday, and there’s a long, long list of things I have to get done today. It’s going to suck to be so tired, but after a week of not getting anything done due to my allergies, I am more than a little backlogged on required life activities.

Please don’t remind me that I was apparently sharing a kitchen with the damn giant-assed bug for about a week. I don’t want to think about it. I also don’t want to think about the fact it may have brothers, sisters, and offspring living in that long-unopened cabinet. I will certainly not be investigating that situation until after this week’s grocery shopping trip during which I intend to buy the most powerful bug poison I can find. I hate to use the stuff, but who knows what’s in there, and as they say … don’t take a knife to a gunfight.

Why do my Mondays always start with a crisis or some other form of insanity? Why?!

Works of poetry and literature do not have to be placed within their historical perspectives in order to be understood or the tale to be told and the message received by the reader/listener. While I am willing to acknowledge literary works do carry with them a sense of the mood of the age in which it was written, I do believe some things are simply universally understood no matter in what age they are written or read.

Which isn’t to say I am at all buying into the whole collective unconscious theory of literary creation — where the ideas and concepts are all just floating around out there in an invisible primordial soup of interconnectedness waiting to be tapped into by those open to it, actively seeking it, or just accidentally happening upon it.

Just an odd little train-of-thought that’s been running through my mind all night. No idea why.