One program note before I begin: my last update was actually a two-parter; click on the hyperlink in this sentence, and you'll be whisked to part one. Embedded within the first paragraph of part one is a web address that's been s t r e t c h e d out (or elongated, if you will); simply type that address into your search bar without touching your space bar and soon enough you'll be viewing part two. Really, it's as easy as pie.
Also beside the point is the travesty I witnessed partway through running errands for Acme when I suddenly found myself AFSM (away from the salt mine) with an errant half hour. So I grabbed a cuppa at some yuppie brew shoppe (plasma TV on the wall, cushy La Z Boys in their oddly minimalistic lounge) and caught part of a spin-off. Heard about Rachel Ray branching out, happy for her at first, but then her new (and possibly high) studio audience started going crazy over... garlic (?) Then they applauded--feverishly--because fresh uncooked leaves of spinach had been added... to a... salad (??) I thought, OMG, whose tentacle suckers are wrapped around the throat and upper torso of sweet wholesome quirky Rachel Ray and causing her to turn red from all the squeezing? And then the credits rolled.
Harpo.
Don't despair, though, RR fans, for there is a ray of hope: during many pans of the audience, I spied mouths crinkling at the edges--the beginnings of sneers really--amid their frenetic and obviously forced ovations. (Note to Oprah: your "Applause!" sign is flashing a little often, snoogums.)
pour some EVOO on this
Now, not that this entire update is gonna consist of one program note after another, but I do have one more li'l piece of business. I swear this is it, then I'll get right into today's update.
And it begins with an excerpt.
"...(W)oke at two am, put on my old New Mexico Power jumpsuit (I labored for them before Dawn and I moved to this state), tip-toed to our garage, and started driving south. 22 miles later I parked one block over from salsa guy's house. Jumped two fences and discovered his tarps did indeed cover chunks of broken-up concrete... and more: a deep pit and a mound of freshly unearthed topsoil.
This pit threw me. The shape of it did. It started out approximately three feet in diameter, then tapered down to maybe two feet in diameter near the bottom. Depth? Between eight and nine feet.
It doesn't look like your typical grave.
But perhaps someone had been buried in it standing up. And now? Where's the body? Disinterred?...."
The above originally appeared here, posted October 28th, 2006.
Fair enough. But then an emailer alerted me to the below encounter (excerpted from here), which was originally posted earlier that same year, January 16th, 2006:
"...Ventured over to Wal~Mart yesterday and ran into an ex-girlfriend
(Shelly). She was with her new man (Nick), though I should be quick to
point out that Nick is not the guy who stole her from me. Had it been the
"other man," well, that young buck and I mighta had to have words.
Some harsh words. He slapped her around on his way outta town and now he's
three states over; he (Jimmy) doesn't know just how fortunate he is to be so...
distant.
Be that as it may, Shelly and I "moved on," though in a truly awesome twist, we're still friends. She's quite the sweetie and in a way I can't blame her for falling for that Slurpee-sucking snake-oil salesman.
But that's all beside the point. Her latest beau seems to be a straight shooter. Yep, I think she's doing pretty well for herself. The three of us chatted amicably about our jobs and her kids and my girlfriend while idling our carts in the aisle between the shoes and the bras.
And then we parted ways...."
My emailer, after requesting anonymity, asked if Dawn and I moved to this area, then broke up, then I hooked up with Shelly, then this "other man" stole Shelly from me, and then, finally, Dawn and I got back together.
"Or were you hopping back and forth between beds somewhere in there?" insinuated my friendly anonymous emailer. (Who, though she doesn't deserve it, will remain anonymous... because my word is my handshake, and I'm a gentleman.)
The answer is found in the clause "...asked if Dawn and I moved to this area...."
We did.
But not together.
What happened was--long before I ever laid eyes on her--a co-worker friend of mine at Acme knew Dawn from an Alaskan cruise they had taken together.* She found out we both hailed from the Taos area, and that we'd moved here during the same summer; she thought we might know each other (we didn't), and so for some strange reason she arranged a blind date. I was still "luffing around the lake," not really distraught over losing Shelly... just taking it easy for a while. Though not in the mood to start dating again, I didn't have anything pressing that Sunday, so I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and grabbed my car keys. Right away I felt like it was a set-up: watching a shark movie in the middle of the afternoon with a woman I'd never met before? During a tense scene, waves churning and legs pumping both rhythmic and desperate, I lunged at Dawn's thigh. She told me to refrain from such activity as we'd just met.
"If this were a zombie movie you'd bite my neck?" she asked, Edvard Munchian striations playing across her face in the shadowy theatre.
I apologized and promised to refrain from any further aggressions. "Where were my manners?" I said. She was so clinical about it, too. I honestly wasn't sure if she were flirting back or not.
Later, while lingering near her minivan in the darkening parking lot of a local Cajun joint--our gumbo and red beans and rice grumbling, the mall traffic thinning and thinning some more--we cleaned off each other's tonsils. After a while some four-wheelers roared by, mud caked on their cracked windshield, and one of them opined, loudly, that it was perhaps time for us to "Get a room!" Eventually we did. (Note: this is the condensed version; not all of this foolishness took place during the course of one steamy day in August.)
Munch's The Scream, reprinted here with permission from the artist
Speak of the devil, the Dawnster just informed me through the door that this was "...no time for cucumber sandwiches and noodle salads!" That she--we--had an actual "situation on our hands. Hello? Get out here and help me."
Which I just now returned from. The above non-problem, that is. I'm telling you, it's like the Weather Channel around here sometimes: one category-5-on-the-Fujita-scale catastrophe after another. Sheesh.
Then there's CBS: they won't even call it foul "trouble" anymore; nope, their graphic now reads "Foul Situation." I mean if you have four fouls, it's a problem. One more whistle and you're on the bench. That's not a problem? What we need is more clarity, more commitment. We need more guts. People need to say what's on their minds, and quit with all this mealy-mouthed hedging. If George Orwell could see what we're doing to each other, he'd be on a rotisserie, spinning ever so swiftly in his grave. Or... wait a minute: actually he'd be yawning, saying, "I told you so."
Yeah. The latter.
Meanwhile, I've now been totally thrown off my game. I never even got to the beginning of today's update.
Oh well.
FORWARD to what happened next
BACK to where this whole Wal~Mart situation began
OVER to HerbNation HOMEPAGE
SEND the herb an email here
* During which they had became fast friends, found out they were practically next door neighbors, and had stayed friends after their cruise.