Thirty Years Ago Tonight . . .

Thor, Tongue-Tied Cherry Stem Champ, 1976

Actually, the other one is the artist...

Walk-Ins Welcome! No Waiting!

(WordCount 83800-83805: herkimer spoerri narin orthoptic perioperative shotokan)

Mudslide: A One-Sentence Memoir

Too tired to drive the last hour to the mountains, we spent the night at a roadside campground, and so were not buried in the mudslide like the others.

Box in Hand

Rubber: A One-Sentence Memoir

I never dreamed I'd find myself dangling upside down in a hollow tree looking for a four-year-old Rubbermaid box with an eraser in it, but there I was.

The Choir of Babel Goes Caroling

Holly, Ribbon, Gift Wrap...

...and The Wild Sperms of Christmas precision holiday-swim team.

Akela: A 2entences Memoir

When the Cub Scout leader brought us a Christmas tree that his troop had decorated for the poor, he hinted that I might take him "upstairs" and thank him. Apparently he thought I was really, really, really poor.

'Twas Yust a Yoke, Yah?

Six-Word Memoir 2

Final analysis: considerably dumber than tested.


Play the game at SmithMag and Twitter.

Parsnippity

Six-Word Memoir

21,319 days... six were pretty good!


Play the game at SmithMag and Twitter.

Canvas Chair

It just doesn't get any more exciting than this...

Handcuffs: A 2entences Memoir

I suspect my boss was hoping to scandalize me when he called me over to look out the office window with him. Maybe he thought I'd never seen a naked man in handcuffs before.

What the Goose Did for Love

Failed Entrepreneur Mounts Comeback

Eastern Italian cowboy looks to the past to jumpstart new career...

(WordCount 38701-38703: ruggiero ranching ninja)

Jump: A One-Sentence Memoir

When he offered to bring over his jumper cables to help me out, I waited a year and a half before he showed up, and then it wasn't "I'm sorry" that he said, but rather, "I've just gotten married."

Why I Don't Draw

self-portrait, 13 October 1985

In 1985, I acquired a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. This was my first attempt at drawing myself from looking in the mirror. Friends who saw the drawing laughed. "Your nose is not that long," they said, but even at this very moment, it doesn't look all that disproportionate to me.

That should seem stranger to me than it does, because I've just spent some time playing around with this in Paint Shop Pro. I layered a photo of myself over the drawing to see how the features lined up. My friends were right--the nose was laughably long. So I fooled around with it a little, using Paint Shop Pro to shorten it. In the throes of laughter over the length of the nose, nobody mentioned that my eyes are not that big either. And the rest of it was somewhat misaligned as well. One by one, I selected features, resized them a bit, and placed them in better alignment with the features in my photo.

In the two samples below, I used a mirror-image of the photo to see how it lined up with the drawing. The drawing, of course, is what I see in the mirror, while a photograph is what others see as they look at me, the opposite. By mirroring the photo, I was able to see how the right side of the drawing face lined up with the same side of my face in the photo, and likewise with the left.

Then I tried reconstructing using both sides of the face, a left and a right, to make a complete face.

Below is the drawing as it appears after the adjustments. I can see that it looks more proportionate than the original sketch, but I can't see that either drawing looks like me.

Out of curiosity, at some point I mirrored the drawing, to see whether it looked any more like the photo. I was stunned when I saw the mirrored version.

This face is totally lopsided! I don't think my actual face is this lopsided, although I know my right eye generally does not open as much as my left.

I think it's really weird that, even though I can see how lopsided the mirrored image is, neither the original image nor the modified image seems particularly lopsided to me.

Returning now to the first pair of images with photo overlays, both the mirrored right and the mirrored left seem to be shaped about right, so maybe I really am lopsided.

Huh... who knew!

Dinner: Ready When the Smoke Alarm Goes Off

Piquant Chickpea Salad

Drain and rinse the contents of:

two 15-oz. cans of chickpeas, a.k.a. garbanzo beans (if you've cooked some yourself, use about 3-4 cups for this recipe)

Put the beans in a bowl and add:

1/3 cup finely chopped onions (green or sweet)

In a shaker or separate bowl, combine:

1/3 cup red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon parsley flakes
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon pepper
salt to taste

Pour over bean & onion mixture. Chill several hours to blend flavors, stirring occasionally so all your beans get a chance to bathe in the glory.

I like to use green onions for the visual appeal. If I use sweet onion, I might add some sliced black olives to add the visual interest.

This is a nice salad to take to a potluck. You can make it the day before. Take it out of the fridge ahead of time and let it come back to room temperature for better flavor.

------------

This recipe is slightly tweaked from the original in one of my favorite cookbooks, Lean and Luscious and Meatless by Bobbie Hinman and Millie Snyder (c. 1992, Prima Publishing, Rocklin, CA).

Before Breakfast

Cream puffs have no meaning either.

LadyBug Asks Big Question in Haiku

Huey got boulder...
so, how come he is hiding
behind that big rock?

The True Purpose of a Brownie

click any walnut to fulfill purpose

(It's the Saco which gives these brownies their unique flavor.)

Looking for Mr. GoodBodhi

Ka-Ching

Cone of Silence

If a tree falls in the forest... well, what if it's just a cone that falls?

In 1987, I had no idea what kind of cone this was. Today I am amazed that I drew it well enough to recognize it in Trees of North America.

Flight: A One-Sentence Memoir

The summer I turned sixteen, he flew me over our neighborhood during the Fourth of July pool party, but that wasn't the time his plane went down.

Hot Water, Milk, Bottle o' Wine, Bottle, Bottle, Bottle

Bottle Chant

Pink plastic, clear contents
Clear plastic, pink contents
Blue crookneck squirtstreamer
Amber squatty pumptop
Golden shapely whiffguster
Green capped misternozzle
Stenchstopper pitroller
Wee trial vial

Pilfersafe snagnail cursevoker
Cc-countcap facepucker syrupsaver
Ol' red rubbersides pluggerstopper hotterglugger
Fingerpresser aerobomb

Waxcolor candledrippy basketsitter
Scarlet sunray sillsitter windowfiller
Narrowneck sugarwater budbloomer
Aquachug bottomneck upender

Old glass summermorning porchdripper winterfreeze crackeruptor
New white polylight marketheavy emptystomper
Wristready nipplesucker
Longnecker bulb

Steakslopper shakedropper
Fatbottom herbglopper
Old glass skinnyneck poundbottom blocker
New poly squeezesides flipcap spurtplopper

Oceanmotion messagebobber
Brown glass balloon
Roundbasket spiritcorker
Tall green sway

photo by Ernest von Rosen (somewhat taller now!)

... glug ...

Pumpkin Patch

Thumbprint Cookies

Mix together

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg yolk (reserve the white)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Sift together, then add

1 cup flour -- sifted
1/4 teaspoon salt

Chill dough, then roll into 1" balls.
Dip them into

1 beaten egg white

Then roll them in

finely chopped walnuts

Place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet.
Bake 5 minutes at 350°F.
Remove from oven and quickly press thumb gently into the top of each cookie.
Fill each thumbprint with about 1/4 teaspoon

strawberry or raspberry jam

Return to oven and bake about 8 minutes longer, until golden.


When I was a kid, my mother used to make these at Christmastime. They were my favorite.

Pomme D'Amour

Tingle: A Visual Windchime

Crimson crosses blaze blue
Zapotec sky,
illuminating shadows.
Cosmic patterns radiate
celestial tunes that soothe the spirit,
heavenly melodies rich with cosmic symbols.
Dusted with stars and swirls,
delicately painted in silver,
interplay of heavenly bodies
eclipse in array of color.
Crescent moon, stars, sun rising above clouds....

Exercise: Create a poem using only phrases taken from a mail-order catalog. (Written about 10 years ago. Obviously the choice of catalog has a great influence on the outcome!)

Who Has Time?

mixed media collage, 8.5" x 11"
click to enlarge

I didn't do the original sketch. Sorry, don't know who the artist was.

Foot-Stompin'

The fog rolls in, a poet once said,
on the soft little feet of a cat.
Clearly he never met Squeaky
or he wouldn't have written that.

Squeaky is not one to tiptoe.
You hear him wherever he goes.
His thumping clodhoppers betray him.
His whereabouts everyone knows.

I see Squeaky now as he's jumping
from sofa to tables to chairs.
If I couldn't, I'd swear he was living
in the apartment upstairs.

written ca. 1992

Grate!

Let 'em eat cake!

Red Beans & Rice Florentine

Saute gently in a large pot:

1 T. olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, sliced

Drain and reserve the liquid from a:

1 lb. can red kidney beans

Add water to make a total of 2 1/2 cups liquid.
Add liquid to the pot and bring to a boil. Then add:

1 c. converted white rice
1/2 t. cumin
1/4 t. turmeric
1/2 t. salt

Cover and simmer over low heat 15 minutes.
Add the red beans without stirring them in.
Simmer another 5 minutes.
Turn off burner and add:

1/4 lb. shredded spinach

Stir the pot, cover, and let stand a few minutes. 4 servings.

D'Zert Tray

Pardon Me!

Under Pressure: A Pantoum for My Mother

I got your letter last week,
and you're wanting to know....
I have not written a pantoum.
Too many demands on my time.

And you're wanting, too! Know
what a busy woman I am?
Too many demands on my time!
My schedule is very full!

What a busy woman I am!
Things are piling up around here.
My schedule is very full.
How could you know?

Things are piling up around here.
I got your letter last week.
How could you?! No!!
I have not written a pantoum!!!

Exercise: Make Mother stop nagging by writing her the pantoum she wants. (Written about 10 years ago.)

Wack's Toy Boat

Leaves on patio,
not on trees. Raining all day.
Too cold for toy boat.

Misunderstanding

You wrote my stories in your journal.
I didn't write them at all. I lived them, twice:
once in the doing, and again
in telling them to you.
Stories, not acts of the flesh,
were our intimacy:
a passion of words clothed in the soft
silky fabric of our kitchen-table afternoons.
You took them with Scotch whiskey.

You wrote my stories in your journal.
Years later you would hand them back to me:
"Remember that guy you went out with...,"
you would say,
describing some night I no longer recall,
a meaningless date over and gone as soon as
I had shared its every detail with you.

You wrote my stories in your journal,
as if they were some text yours to keep
when, for me, they were
slow delicious teasing, like a dance,
a growing drama, a give and take,
a pushing and pulling of narrative until finally
great gasping spasms--denouement and laughter--
and all of it, as with the flesh-bound,
gone after the climax.

You wrote my stories in your journal.
I didn't write yours at all. I ate them whole,
like wads of cotton candy
spun from nothing and air.
They disappeared on my tongue.
A sweet craving lingered.

You wrote my stories in your journal.
In taking notes, you thought
you learned me like geometry.
You defined me with theorems and formulae.
Years later, you tried to name me:
"This is who you are...," you said, and
described someone I never was.
You didn't notice my surprise.

You wrote my stories in your journal,
but you never read my heart.
I am not geometry, and
my stories have changed a thousand times.

Creepy Halloween Leftovers

Picatso

Trick or Treat

Beware
the ones
who look
like hu
man beings.

Coming Soon to the Ardis Theater

(WordCount 75425-75427: exfoliating charmaine shipquay
19457-19461: laurel trapping pied wally carver
19211-19214: bullock preachers cinderella savour
19146-19150: lucid alexandria smouldering vanishing suzie)

[Original photo "Shaving Legs" by Jyn Meyer, stock.xchng,
now somewhat altered by Jess D'Zerts to suit her dark purposes!]

The Ardis Snoop: Front Page, April 29, 1930

The sisters Davies were toodling about the streets of Ardis yesterday when a little April shower rolled into town. An accompanying gust of wind blew out a picket from a collapsed fence (ours). The picket landed in the roadway right in front of the sisters' new Packard. They could not avoid driving over it, and a nail in the picket flatulated their rear tire.

The sisters walked half a block in the rain to the new discount automobile repair shop, Barry Risski Square Deal. Mr. Risski is new in town. Regular readers of The Ardis Snoop may recall the half-page advertizement he ran last week to announce the grand opening of his enterprize.

Mr. Risski advised the sisters Davies that he specializes in repairing Studebakers but in view of the weather and the fact that the sisters were his first customer, he would do his best.

The sisters went next door to Jess D'Zerts Cafe* to sip tea, nibble petit fours, and await the remobilization of their Packard. It was three long hours before Lil Risski, whose errand-running talents cannot be faulted for the delay, popped into the cafe to advise Miss Olive and Miss Desdemona that her father had completed the repairs.

The sisters Davies returned to Barry Risski Square Deal only to find that the repairs were quite unsatisfactory. According to Miss Olive, the shape of the new tire is all wrong. Miss Desdemona added that the new tire lacks a white sidewall and therefore does not match the other tires. For these reasons they informed Mr. Risski that they would not pay the bill, whereupon he gesticulated in a threatening manner and ran to secure the door, locking the sisters Davies in the repair shop and vowing they would not be permitted to leave until they paid for his services.

Fortunately the sisters Davies, whose visual acuity is legendary in these parts, espied the open door of the vehicle bay and quickly escaped, to the great consternation of Mr. Risski. Moments later, the sisters sought refuge here at office of The Ardis Snoop.

"We've had a dreadful encounter with Mr. Risski!" Miss Desdemona exclaimed.

Miss Olive added, "His square deal rubbed me the wrong way!"


*Shameless, I know, but I had to put the sisters somewhere, didn't I?


(WordCount 4216-4220: davies escaped polish discount garage
4826-4828: collapsed fence ours
62339-62340: ardis snoop)

The Ardis Snoop: Page 3, March 1, 1969

At a meeting of the town council Wednesday morning, entrepreneurs Peng Flanker and Apical Strat, up from the city, requested that the town of Ardis grant them a business license and liquor permit for a new drinking and dancing establishment to be located on Pendulum Boulevard. Town fathers seemed inclined to grant the paperwork until town mothers took a stand.

"There will be no Booby Nuggets in Ardis," one mother insisted. "In this town, pasties are something to eat, not something to wear."

As it was almost lunchtime, everyone agreed about the pasties. The meeting was adjourned and reconvened at Jess D'Zerts Cafe.*


*What can I say?


(WordCount 19299-19302 peng flanker apical strat
44145-44146 booby nuggets
62339-40: ardis snoop
18338-39: pendulum boulevard)

And they said we had no sense of humor!

Now don't get all hot and bothered, WordCount fans. I merely played the hand I was dealt. I was on the horns of a dilemma and I did not want to blow it. Yes, today's WordCount sequence is highly inflammatory (you're not missing these hellacious puns, are you?), so I've cleverly thwarted the search engines by embedding the incendiary sequence in my artfully contrived graphic rendering. Oh, no applause necessary... it was a breeze.


(WordCount 4802-4805: Yup, that's them up there, I swear. I am not clever enough to make this stuff up.)

The Ardis Snoop

It's 9:05 a.m., July 13th, 1893, at the busy office of a popular tabloid, The Ardis Snoop, located on Pendulum Boulevard between Mowlam & Tweak, Indignities Graveside (the budget undertakers) and Stay Dead Cemetery. Minnie, a new girl in town, has just recently taken a job in the typing pool at The Ardis Snoop. She's quite the beauty and, while the other typists don't dislike her, so far they've found her somewhat standoffish.

Katarina Tweak (yes, you're right, her husband is the Tweak of Indignities) is the head typist, and the head gossip too, if the truth be told. Gossip is the primary stock in trade of The Ardis Snoop, of course, but through Katarina's connection, the girls in the typing pool have access to some of the juiciest morsels not fit for print in The Ardis Snoop, for, as you might suspect if you think about it, undertaking in a relatively small town can be somewhat periodic. And when there is no corpus mortuus to keep them occupied, Mr. Mowlam and Mr. Tweak are wont to hoist an ale or two and boast of their exploits, as men will.

Being a single man and rather dashing, Mr. Mowlam has quite a few exploits about which to boast, if you care to know, and a pint of ale invariably generates an outpouring of detail so vivid that even Mr. Tweak is made to blush. It's not embarrassment that makes him blush, though, for he's not the least bit conservative about these things. What makes him blush is anticipation, for when he goes home to Mrs. Tweak at the end of the workday, the two of them will enjoy an aperitif, and then a satisfying evening meal, followed by a full-bodied Jerez de la Frontera sherry. And then, as they climb the stairs to the boudoir, Katarina will ask quite innocently (hah! as if!), "And how was Mr. Mowlam today?"

Yes, Katarina has anticipations of her own! By now she knows quite well of Mr. Mowlam's promiscuity. In fact, she and Mr. Tweak have nicknamed Mr. Mowlam--oh, my! I'm almost embarrassed to say it for it's quite bawdy!--they call him The Plunger! Katarina will tease from the lips of Mr. Tweak every juicy detail of The Plunger's shameless exploits. It's become a bedtime ritual for the two of them, and I leave it to your imagination what happens next!

In the morning when Katarina takes her place as head of the typing pool at The Ardis Snoop, she has quite a smug smile on her face, and not just because she has gossip to share! But, of course, the gossip is what the girls in the typing pool are anticipating.

Unfortunately for them, so is their eagle-eyed boss, Mr. Halsbury Mushtaq. Anticipating gossip, I mean. Not that he wants to hear it. He doesn't! In fact, he doesn't allow talking at all among the girls in the typing pool, at least not during the workday, which is as far as his cast-iron authority extends.

But the girls in the typing pool certainly do not want to wait all day for their gossip! Hence the development of another ritual in Katarina's busy day: the passing-around of the business card. Katarina surreptitiously takes one of her husband's business cards from her pocketbook, as she has done just now, and she inscribes the back of the card--as discreetly as possible, of course!--with the day's juiciest morsel of gossip. Today's morsel happens to be extraordinarily juicy, as it is about Mr. Mowlam and the new girl.


(WordCount 62339-40: ardis snoop
18338-39: pendulum boulevard
786-87: stay dead
41136-37: Halsbury Mushtaq
41101-08: mowlam tweak indignities graveside minnies receptacle plumbed plunger)

Archaeologists Unearth 12th Century Business Card

Highly suspicious when tattooed tongue-studded Goth architects brought Roman ideas to the ancient cities of Greece, Greek city fathers hired buttress proctors to keep an eye on the dubitable structures. The practice continued throughout the 12th century.

Buttress proctors were highly regarded in the community. They often were fawned over by local citizens who brought them gifts of feta cheese, olive oil, and sheep.


(WordCount 19372-19375: buttress proctor dp knossos)

Chocolate-Panic Stewart

No one knew his real name. At group, he'd given only his initials, and in the end, it was probably a good thing.

A devotee of neither polyester nor cocktails, C.M., in his neverending quest to gouge another notch into his old brass bedstead, avoided the lounge venue entirely and became a chocolatier lizard instead. What better place to find young ladies with a proclivity for that which is sweet, smooth, and dark?

Only one, in his experience: the 12-step meetings of Cacao Beaners Anonymous, where all the ladies suffering from chocolate delirium tremens gravitated to his sweet, smooth, dark self. But his "needy chocoholic" act had quickly earned him the nickname Chocolate-Panic Stewart, and it didn't take long for his womanizing reputation to spread throughout Cacao Beaners Anonymous groups all over the city.

Thus the local chocolatier, while somewhat less satisfactory for C.M.'s purposes due to the availability of actual chocolate, was nevertheless a reliable source of fresh young ladies who hadn't yet come face-to-face with the spectre of their dark, creamy yearnings.

(WordCount 4203-4206: cm chocolate panic stewart)

A Natural WordCount Poem in the Unleashed-Haiku Tradition

Shouldn'ta Done That

Muir blackbird auctions alleyway.
Consternation!
Deported wistfully overboard.

Nervy little con artist! That'll teach him...


(Word Count 19505-19512: muir blackbird auctions alleyway consternation deported wistfully overboard)

Boston Legal: A Script Preview

Scene: Alan Shore and Denny Crane are standing in Denny's office when a prospective client sashays in. Alan recognizes her immediately. He was married to her briefly, decades ago, when he was young, foolish, and quite a bit slimmer. It ended badly. Oh, so badly.

But she hasn't come to see him. It's the famous Denny Crane she wants to represent her, as she suspects she will soon be charged for a potentially serious crime.

Marissa Welland Shore Ackerman Smythe Bagby Greene Boggs McDougall: Gentlemen, I... er... certainly did not, uh, "murder" my seventh husband and his stupid lover. Why, after an hour in bed with each other, oh, believe me, they... well... they both chose to step in front of my loaded gun, only seconds before it went off... accidentally... twice...

Alan (to Denny, gesturing grandly with his arm): Behold! Hesitantly sarcastic satire, Esquire! She's as guilty of murder as you are of burning that armchair last night with your careless cigar smoking. You really must make an effort to put that thing out before you doze off, Denny.

Denny: Point taken, Alan. (He leans to stage-whisper into Denny's ear.) I think she's hot for me, don't you?



(WordCount 19634-19638: behold hesitantly sarcastic satire esquire)

A Verse!

Sex, The Love Shit God

Yeah, we've all
been there before,
haven't we?

Out of nowhere
Eros rises up.
Feel the heat?

Think about it...
...already breathing
heavy, are we?

Hard to kiss
in that condition.
Breathe through your nose!

Groping, rubbing,
clothing-tugging--
Draw the line there?

Fat chance of that!
We're in it now.
We succumb.

Lose the wardrobe!
Do the deed!
Sweet jesus, feel the heat!

Next thing you know,
you're hooked on it.
It's like a drug!

Eventually you get
--how shall we
say it?--involved.

Did you notice
the anagram?
In love, VD!

An obvious dark side!
But love itself
is a disease!

Look! The "L" word
has slipped in!
You didn't even notice!

Now you're thinking
you have a relationship.
Feel the warmth?

Comfy, isn't it?
Poor little fool!
You're headed for a fall!

Suddenly one day
with warning or not,
everything's changed.

You're left hanging,
broken-hearted.
Feel the burn?

Save yourself the grief!
Beware the love shit god!
Want to feel some heat?

Get an electric blanket!

(QueryCount 1-5: sex the love shit god)

The eyes are the window to...

Featuring:
World's Softest Socks
(each one a good home for your precious sole)

I dreamed I was an ad exec in my Maidenform bra...

You're right. This isn't collage. It's a footnote.

Then I Realized...

(paper collage)

If I live to be 116...

Containment