Wednesday, November 14, 2007

villains

i think i’m a cursed vegan. all my favorite treat-foods get discontinued—first morningstar farms “tuno,” then fantastic foods “tofu scramble” (which was actually more of a staple than a treat food for me)…and now UNTURKEY. the delicious faux-meat i look forward to all year is no more; now & zen (makers of the unturkey) disappeared—took down their website, no notice, no apologies, no nothing.

unturkey was the greatest faux-meat ever made. the crispy “skin” made of yuba, the delightful stuffing and mouthwatering gravy, the very meat-like taste and texture of the unbird—it was unbeatable. and for those of us who haven’t tasted meat in almost six years but still crave it like mad, it was an annual maintenance dose.

i’m not alone in suffering this great loss—there’s a group of angry veggies who have started unturkey.org, a ranty blog with recipes for unturkey from the cookbook of the woman who started now & zen. as they so aptly stated on their site, “you just don’t fuck with people’s holiday traditions.” you certainly don’t. there is an unturkey movement afoot, i can feel it.

the recipe for unturkey is really intense, and i don’t think i have the skills or equipment required. it’s actually five separate recipes. the one for the “great gluten turkey” takes 10 pounds of whole wheat flour and 14 cups of water—where would i even find a bowl big enough to mix all that? and i’d have to buy one of those hugenormous whisks like the cool cooks use. granted it would be pretty badass to own one of those, but then i’d have to buy a big white hat, and grow a snidely whiplash moustache, and start talking like swedish chef from the muppets…it’s a slippery slope, and potentially far too much commitment.

the unturkey would be less awesome without its yuba skin, so i’d probably have to go to an asian market to get that. i’m afraid of asian markets. the only one i’ve ever been to smelled like a hamster cage and there were dead things everywhere. enough to turn me off of asian markets permanently.

i got an email from peta announcing a new faux-turkey that sounds rather delicious, but whole foods is the only place that carries it. tofurkey is easily available but not even an option—it’s like gnawing on rubber. it’s hard to say why i’m even putting this much effort into a dinner that only i am going to eat, to celebrate a holiday i don’t recognize, to carry on a tradition i detest. must be some combination of conditioning, consumerism and masochism. some irresistible, scrumptious combination. mmm…patriotism…

Sunday, November 11, 2007

you're brakeing up ("is seriousness an artifice?")

it is fun times scrolling through the t9 dictionary on my phone. it takes all the words i send in text messages that the phone’s dictionary doesn’t recognize and stores them for a while. so i typed out a list of them, in order of appearance, then took out a few, combined multiple phrases into single lines, added space breaks, etc…but i never messed with the order. and i think the result is pretty neat-o:

bamboodist aargh birdie bitch
collaborate…fun anniversary…maybe
bowie brody
asshole bullshit bumblebee cunt
but…probably cutest
away…anyway
aww…kitten…just
decapitated foods…send enslin fruity
fucking 4.3
g’night
haha halloween
he’s
get-up
goddamn

it’s
guacamole
hugenormous
guy’s kalimba
lemme li’l liby’s low-pitched
mantis

maybe…i
nevermind

nighty nikki ninja
ooh
oogly
mmm
oooh
motherfucking
mucus

7? sacs
scariest panda sammich
sara’s seahorse seasoning…ymmm

regurgitating selflessness
semester…i sexing shiftiest shifty shit
similar…the
pissing skanks snatchers
smell…perhaps
someday…we
sorry…i
soulmates
psh

stardust puke punkin
taco tattooed terms…i
though
unhatched
we’re
wearable

whew
ymmm

it would seem that cell phone dictionaries do not come equipped with sufficient vulgarities. my favorites are “asshole bullshit bumblebee cunt,” the “nighty nikki ninja” stanza, “regurgitating selflessness,” and “though/unhatched/we’re/wearable.” it’s kind of like magnetic poetry, but the words are mine. i like it.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

godzilla spider

i don’t know what kind of spider this is, but i’ve been running into them quite a bit lately. they’re the strongest spiders i’ve ever encountered, and their eyes look like godzilla’s. also, they have an odd way of defending themselves that’s pretty unusual for a spider. normally, in my experience, roaming spiders (as opposed to web-spinning spiders…i’m sure there are more scientific names for these categories) will back off, hide or run/jump away if you threaten them. but these guys totally stand their ground; they don’t move an inch, no matter how close you get or how much opportunity they have to move away. if you move an object too close to them they’ll grab on to it, with their immensely strong legs, and bite.

there’s one of these living in my bathroom right now, only about 1/3 the size of the one pictured above. it’s sort of become a little friend. i always see her—sometimes she’s on the wall, or the door, or the ceiling, or the floor; never observably moving but always in a different place—and for the last two nights i’ve been trying to hand-feed her. lucky for godzilla there have been a lot of mosquitoes inside the house lately, and i don’t feel too guilty about killing them if i know they’re going to be eaten by a cute little spitty spider. so tonight i successfully hand-fed ‘zilla a nice juicy mosquito. last night she dropped the one i gave her, but tonight she held on to it, and last time i checked was still sucking on it. so awesome.

an awful picture, but here she is in all her mosquito-devouring glory:


Sunday, November 4, 2007

freak alley gallery = pageless poetry?

there are so many different ways to approach the “pageless poem” task, it’s kinda been blowing my mind since it was assigned. i don’t even know if i should be writing on here about this, so i’ll watch my step a little…i probably don’t even need to mention the sort of questions that i’ve been thinking about, as to what constitutes pagelessness, because we’re probably all on the same (non-)page already, in that general sense. but then it also makes you wonder, what constitutes a poem? what a fucked-up question to think about. i mean, say i was to screen-print words onto fabric, or knit words into a scarf, or something like that—any kind of material can be considered a “page” when it has poetry on it. so if words have the power to transform any material into a “page,” how then can a poem exist without one? unless it was simply an audio recording or recitation of a poem, but that’s besides the point. or it’s a different point. anyway, i’m distracting myself from the point i was going for: can there be poetry without words?

i think there can be. part of me even thinks it’s a ridiculous question, because of course there can be—but still, i have reservations. and besides, i’m taking this on a very literal and physical level, and try as i might i can’t quite escape the box at this time, for whatever reason. maybe the box is interesting enough. at any rate, it’s all much too much to think about right now. MUCH too much, when i have another few hundred pages to read tonight, a presentation to put together for my monday night class, a test to study for, and a batch of seacolts to hatch on tuesday. why am i even posting right now? because i’ve been reading allgoddamnday, and i need a break—a brief reversal of the word-absorption process, a mini-catharsis, because it just so happens that i’m an english student who in most cases doesn’t particularly like to read. there! i said it, i’m out of the closet. freakshow, right? at least i’m honest.


Saturday, November 3, 2007

wizzle squizzle: redux

this is the fattest squirrel i have ever met. also a little slow, and extraordinarily friendly. i wasn’t sure about feeding her at first, for those reasons, but then i noticed it looks like she’s nursing, and with that on top of getting ready for winter i figure she needs the extra baggage. so she received peanuts; many, many peanuts—she even ate them out of my hand, and i got to feel her soft little slobbery squirrel-nose on my palm. it was freaking adorable.