Would You Like a Cup of Tea?

Cap'n J's brother is to be commended for his fraternal loyalty although he's sworn to kick the shit out of Cap'n J. when he returns. I was milking the goats this morning when J's brother showed up to take the fatties to dearborn to be killed (dearborn is a really funny noun in this context for some reason). I helped him round up the fatties and put them into the back of his mini-van. I also assured him that he wasn't going to hell, honest. He was morally tortured by his actions and petted the fatties sadly before driving off.
More on family relations: Kudos to our friend M.H. who, ehem, attended the democratic national convention (or tried to) by photocopying the invitation that his dad, a labor lawyer recieved. He was using the same part of the brain that inspired some political genuis to photocopy over a thousand coupons worth one free Starbucks coffee and give them out at the last IMF meetings. We still have one, for the historical record. I really want to take them to the The Labadie Collection . They're pink; they're smudge; they have snotty comments about free trade coffee on them. Yet, everyone I know was able to treat themselves to a free latte that day.

 Cap'n J. left town yesterday and left his brother in charge of slaughtering the remaing 10 meat chickens; which we affectionatly call "The fatties" because of their unnatural girth.  Cap'n J, his friends and his brother all became bored with chicken killing over the weekend; killing, plucking and preparing 13 chickens will do that to you. Anyway, his brother has abdicated responsibily by finding Al, the "expert chicken slaughter man" (which is my wu-tang name) who will do it for $1.50 a bird. 
 I think I disobeyed J.'s wishes by feeding the fatties today since a corpse full of poop and half-disgested corn is harder to clean out, but I feel bad for the fatties. They've had all the natural chickens urges bred out them and so they're only joy is eating and pooping.  I keep telling them that they will be reborn as some pampered silkie or something but I don't think they understand.
 Tomorrow night is the Bike Art Auction, a benefit for the perpetually underfunded community bike shop that some of my housemates work at.  It's so underfunded that the pay structure is strikingly similiar to the collapsing Soviet Union. In theory P.T. and B.Y. are paid something like $100 a week to run the place. In practice they are often paid in cabbages until grant money comes through. B.Y. is very hopefull about the fundraiser. She needs new shoes.
  One of the fundraising activities the auction will feature is a both where, for $5, you can pose in a fancy outfit of your choice on a tandem bicycle. The tandem is a star in its own right. It originally belonged to my paternal grandparents who rode it around for most of the sixties. They divorced in the mid-seventies and it sat in my parent garage until last year when I brought it to the compound. Riding around in it seems to bring joy to everyone we pass or at least it prompts more cheerful catcalls from the elderly crackheads.

 The chicken went home this morning, sternly admonished to stop sleeping on the rim of the water trough. She seems no worse for wear and at some point early this morning decided to leave her cardboard box and sleep on the fireplace mantle.  I cleaned up alot of poop.

Tonight in the midst of milking goats I notice that a chicken was sitting in the water trough in the pasture, only her head and neck above water. I removed her and was pretty convinced at that point that she was dead. Poor think was freezing cold and not moving. I lay her down on the concrete and went inside to call M on the telephone in a classroom.
She told me to bring the chicken home and I did so with her wrapped in a Catherine Ferguson Academy t-shirt that I found in one of the classrooms. The entire 5 minute drive from the barnyard to the house I was convinced that little hen was going to die any minute. I bring her in and M wraps her in a dry towel. I suggested that we either a) put her on the stove with the oven on or b) put in the low low heat oven. For this I was ridiculed but I stand by my suggestion. What we actually did was put a towel in the over and then wrap the chicken in the towel. Then we put her in front a space heater in the study, where I am now.
About half an hour later the chicken seemed to inflate like a balloon and then make a little sighing noise. Then, she layed an egg. I went up to tell M and she said, "Bullshit" over and over again.
Now the chicken is doing well. She is currently sleeping in a cardboard box although at this particular moment she is drinking water and clucking.

 I guess if you have to rear end someone when you're 17 and taking your mom's car out of state you might as well rear end a friend. And since the damage to Fidget's car was only cosmetic it turns out I don't have to find a way to fit an entire country western band plus 2 groupies and all their instrutments in my car.  My car, the rear ended party, is fine. It is a 1988 Plymouth tank, from back when they didn't so much believe in crumple zones. 
 The band is from Houston. They include B., who is older and the voice of reason for the band ("no I don't want an unattractive mustache", "I don't think it's funny to tell her that the car blew up") and three minor children.  The minors are cheerful in that special way that people are before they can legally drink and possess the optimism that makes "drop out of high school to play banjo in a punk band" seem like an utterly viable life desicion.  I admire and envy their worldview.
 After the car wreck late last night we prepared at ate omelets with the band. Their groupie mocked us for our unorthodox interpretation of veganism, ie. our chickens are not oppressed therefore it is morally okay to eat their eggs. He decided that we were "Unitarian Vegans"
(cue the cymbols)

  If you ever need to be let into our house make sure to knock on the door with a strong and identifiable rythm, otherwise we will think you are E. and hide.  We have to hide for a while because no one answering the door is never a clue to E. that we are either not home or too busy to attend to his needs.  When he gets sick of knocking he stands on the front porch and hollers "Popppppp Bottttttllllesss! I need some popppppp botttlllllesss" for up to 20 minutes before leaving.
  E. is our mentally disabled neighbor.  Sometimes I refer to him as the Village Idiot but mainly when he's being good natured or doing some sort of wacky Village Idiot type thing. Like, for example stealing my keys. He did that once because we wouldn't  give him spare change and he had exhausted our beer can supply the day before. I tracked him down to the liquor store and said, "Do you have something of mine?"
 "You just left your keys out, someone could have stolen them!" He said
 
Yesterday E. was not being good natured. He wasn't even being lucid. He came over first around 4 o'clock screaming incoherently. Eventually we were able to work out that Henry Ford Hospital had been calling him about a bill.  Cap'n J's little brother (who's intial also is E. so we'll just call him J.'s little brother) who lives down the street came over and offered to drive E. to the Hospital but changed his mind about finding out that E.'s goal was not to get medical care but to beat up the bill collector that he was convinced was at the Hospital.
E. went away but came back around 7:30 telling me that he had been beat up by someone at his home. I drove him to the hospital.  He came back to our house around midnight convinced that fifteen black men were waiting at his house to beat him up. When we wouldn't drive him back to the hospital he stood in the middle of the street yelling obscenities.
 Cap'n J called 911 which were utterly useless and eventually one of my housemates was able to walk E. home. 
 After this my whole house stood around in the street either smoking or not smoking but fullfilling the same psychological needs as fullfilled by smoking: standing, staring, processing. We talked about the uselessness of 911 and then came the moment in all weird situation where someone tells a story that relates to the situation.
 "Remember," said M. to Cap'n J., "that time we found a naked man in the final stages of hypothermia and 911 said it wasn't their problem?"
 "Yeah, and the guy in front of us at the light put the naked guy in the backseat of his pickup truck even though he had two little daughters in the front seat and drove with us to the police station."
 "It was awkward," said M., "You guys went into the police station while I was left to make pleasant conversation with two little girls while a half-naked dying crack head mumbled in the back seat. They gave me M&Ms"
  Evidently when Cap'n J eventually carried the naked man into the police station he began to shout, "There are two kinds of people in this room: nice people......and cops!"
 It was a good punchline.

 Our Intern, G.,  has grown an atrocious mustache. Various descriptions have been offered from, "the village people" to "cop" to "the trucker you don't want to hitch a ride with".  The metadescription is something like "Late 70's sexual decadence and law enforcement". We're a little disapointed in G. as we thought that he was our most normal intern.
 Last summer's intern never wore a shirt or ate with silverware. He spent most of his time skateboarding and filming his 'documentary'.  This usually meant getting banned or nearly arrested for filming some  polluting factory. 
 G. doesn't surf or skateboard and he uses silverware. We still get to make fun of his speech patterns though. All our interns come from northern California, specifically UC Santa Cruz so they have that nasally surfer boy accent and tend to say 'hella'
 Last night J.R. asked him is he would ever refer to something as "hella bunk".
 He replied, "Well sure, if something was bunk. If it was really bunk."
 J.R. had to go lie down.

Mama E. lives in the corner house with her son, her boyfriend and as of recently, the intern. She works 7 days, 60 plus hours a week. Due to this schedule Mama E. is constantly on the brink of a minor emotional collapse. She was, let's say, pissed when she came home today to find the city had repaved our sidewalk and in the process destroyed the little lavender plants she was cultivating between sidewalk and street.
She was able to relax by remembering how great it is to draw in wet cement. Now our new sidewalk is peppered with drawings of flowers, inspiring sayings and circled vowels.

Some times parts of speech just shine through their content and let dorks like me and Cara bask in the wonders of grammar.
  C.X. once told a story about a visitor ejaculating on her couch that, despite its subject matter, was most amazing in the way ten dollar verbs littered it like sixteenth century poetryWhen talking to Cara one time I used the sentence, "Then we had to try and fit the guitar into the trunk of the copcar." She stopped the story short with a discussion of whether 'copcar' or 'guitar' was the funniest noun. Now, my mom's comment that I live in "the shittiest part of the shittiest city in America" or something like that. It just isn't true. I live in the most rapidly gentrifying area. Argueing my point meant explaining gentrification; pointing out the several white homosexuals restoring houses on my block; and reminding her about the 'cool cities' as a irritating capitalist trend.
"Look," I said, "I'm not proud of it but I live the Dupont Circle of Detroit!" 
 But some nouns have the powerto overawe any modifier. 'Detroit' is one of those nouns. Then comments were made about "the Central Park West of Beiruit" and "the Fells Point of Calcutta".
 But giving adjectives one last chance to shine I will describe the local dogs: feral, pregnant and mongrel.

The McMurray Hatchery catologue came today. For a while blogger was, without any effort on my part, advertisizing for McMurray Hatchery on this page. I don't mind. Having a catologue where one can order any number of colorful and exotic chickens is a special mail-day treat.
M. and I desperatly covet a pair of Bantam Blue Silkies but we know that Cap'n J., the self-appointed Head of Poultry Aquisition over at this non-profit corporation, will make fun of us for being a bunch of girls.
"But pretty blue chickens!" We'll say, but he will not be swayed.
We will mention that a we could use a broody hen since all our big-butted chickens are too dumb to sit on their eggs. He will probably counter by reminding us that he gave M. a lovely little broody hen for Christmas last year. M.'s only response will be that that hen is not blue.
He's right really. It's ridiculously bouj to buy looking chickens instead of laying chickens. But c'mon. Who doesn't want an unusually soft blue hen?

On Sunday we played host to a Rockstar, his Fiance and their dog. The Rockstar's main following seems to be in shitty, economically depressed cities up and down the East Coast. He's big in Allentown but huge in Binghampton. Naturally, we love him. His music is good. He's good natured and most importantly, his dog likes our dog.
Our dog is pretty much the textbook mongrel puppy right down to the one floppy ear. She was very confused by the Rockstar's dog, which is one of the those ugly-on-purpose small dogs. She kept licking his face as if to say, "where's your nose?". Dogs in general tend to view rock shows as an excuse for new and exciting kinds of attention. And let's face it, not even the Beatles can compete with two very different funny looking dogs in the attention contest. But on this occasion the dogs were so engrossed in sniffing eachother that they didn't notice until too late that they were locked in the house.
Later, the subject of Baltimore came up in the context of a mutual friend that lives in Charm City now. Both the rockstar and his fiance got misty-eyed, as if we were discussing a friend's new home in Hawaii or Tahiti. "I love Baltimore." said the fiance
"I feel like Baltimore is my second home." said the rockstar.

The mind boggles. I realize that people learn to love the cities they live in, regardless of how shitty. I've loved far lousier places than Baltimore in my time. But these two live in a city with so much to offfer and yet the mention of Baltimore puts them in this wistfully happy mood.

Surely they were fucking with me.

M. and I were watering the sweet corn. It's depressingly short for July because of our cool weather. M. made an excited "Ooh!" noise to get my attention.
"What?" I said.
"It's a Huitlacoche!" she said.*
I looked where she was pointing and saw some horrible slug bodied creature the size of my fist. It was leeched onto the corn stalk all white and slimy. It's what I imagined a puppet-master looking like.
M. didn't seem the least bit bother to find a puppet master sucking our corn. She was expressing joy and excitement in her little 'oohs'.
"Oh! I found another one! Here, pick that one for me but be careful, they're delicate." she said.
I didn't want to be a sissy but I also did not want to touch the thing. So, I asked her why.
"They're delicious! That's why. I'll stir fry it tomorrow for dinner."
I was and am floored. This is the girl that feels guilt about her love for fried cauliflower. This is the girl that is embarressed to be caught eating ice cream for lunch. And here she is, cold bloodedly suggesting we eat this awful corn fungus.
I probably will eat it because I dont' want to be a sissy.



* I discovered the correct spelling by googling "corn fungus". This whole story is much improve if at this point you google image search "huitlacoche". I promise, it's way more disgusting than any written description

This morning as I was brushing my teeth and staring out the bathroom window I noticed two chickens in the compost bin.
"Shit!" I said to the cat
"Meow" he said back; meaning that since I had been selfish enough to sleep in untill 11:30 he had probably spent the morning pantomiming the location of the cat food to a group of freight riding hobos or sid vicious look-alikes in a effort to eat breakfast at a reasonable hour.
"Shit" I said again.
One needs a basic description of our compound's layout to understand my distress. Our compound takes up a whole block, minus the neighbor with the inappropriately pronounced name and vicious pitbull. On one end of the block is Corner House in whose backyard the chickens have their ineffective pen. So Step One would be fly-over the pen. That done, one (if one was a chicken) would have to waddle past the bullet factory that was long ago converted to a performance space then past P.T.'s schoolbus home. Then, where two duplexes once stood is, in order, the firepit, herb garden and cornfield, then in the farthest corner of the lot is the compost pile.
In other words, the chickens had wander a good hundred feet away from their pen. I went out to chase them but by then the growling of the neighbors pitbull had convinced them to stay closer to home.

In other news: Introducing
My Mom!

Goats hate the Fourth of July, for the same reason they are often less than pleased to be living in downtown Detroit. I'm not a big fan of Independence day myself not just because it's my duty as an anti-government militant. No, like the goats, constant gunfire over my head makes me testy.
I'm not yet a connoisseur of gunfire so I decided for my own sanity to assume all noises were actually fireworks, even the very loud and unfireworklike "rat-a-tat-tat". It was important that I project an air of calm professionalism for the poor goats who were cowering in their shed when I arrived.
The Housemates weren't much better. We'd all gone to see Farenheit 9/11 the night before and had therefore turned into depressed little fetuses on the living room couch. Fortunatly, we found 5 pounds of organic chocolate and two bottles of wine in the Trader Joe's dumpster, which can really makes the problems of the world seem less important.

On thursday I had two cats. They were brothers, one an orange tabby and one a blue-eyed siamese.
My siamese cat was hit by a car and killed on friday night. He was an adventurous little fucker, always running around, up trees and in the street.
I don't know who hit him but I do know that my street is the best way to get from the highway to one of the three casinos. Any time day or night older white people zoom by, even though the speed limit is 30 mph and anyone who took a look around them would see that the street is full of houses. I hate that people don't care or notice that someone's neighborhood they're flying through on their way back to Livonia. I hate the whole mindset that cities only exist to entertain wealthy suburbanites and who gives a shit about the people who live in them.
I miss my cat. If I can I'll scan in a picture so people who didn't meet him can see how handsome he was.

On thursday I had two cats. They were brothers, one an orange tabby and one a blue-eyed siamese.
My siamese cat was hit by a car and killed on friday night. He was an adventurous little fucker, always running around, up trees and in the street.
I don't know who hit him but I do know that my street is the best way to get from the highway to one of the three casinos. Any time day or night older white people zoom by, even though the speed limit is 30 mph and anyone who took a look around them would see that the street is full of houses. I hate that people don't care or notice that someone's neighborhood they're flying through on their way back to Livonia. I hate the whole mindset that cities only exist to entertain wealthy suburbanites and who gives a shit about the people who live in them.
I miss my cat. If I can I'll scan in a picture so people who didn't meet him can see how handsome he was.

testing

A tendency to stand on one's head is a pretty good indicator of being a type 3 personality. My roomate, M., is a gymnast so it was difficult to type her at first. But after a closer look she's a textbook type 1. M. needs reassurance that she's not being judged for her unusual behavior and that tends to mean her unusual food choices. I don't judge. M.; I adore her and am amazed at the food she prepares for herself sometimes.
Although she's been sober her entire life M. creates the kind of meals you'd think only the most hard-core stoner would even imagine. Last night, and only, she swears, because there was no peanut butter, M. made a banana and mashed up peanut m&m sandwich....fried.
I told her I loved her.

More on the subject of food: Cheesemaking is my new hobby, has been ever since Kanga gave me some bacteria on Sunday. My feta cheese turned out amazing but yesterday I lost Kanga's bacteria somewhere in the disgusting mass that is our fridge. Therefore, I'm making 'farm' cheese which needs to be pressed, covered in parafin and hung up to age for 2 months. I'm feeling awfully proud of myself because I improvised a cheese press by filling a pieplate with potatoes.

I have managed to enable comments therefore giving me the constant reassurance that I need but this blog was heretofor unable to give me. whee!
In other news, today is my sister's birthday. She and I were far more talented thant those little troll dolls when we were tots. Oh, how different our live would be had our mother put us in show business when we were still cute. My sister way more bitter than I am. She wants a Paris Hilton-style pyramid of $2,000 cakes.