Random Ways I’m Just Moving Stones from One Pocket to the Next

–I realized I have a nervous habit which ought to amuse you gun nuts.  You’ll remember many weeks ago when I shot a gun?  Well, I picked up one of the outer thingies… a case, I guess… and put it in my jacket pocket meaning to bring it home and stick it on my altar.  I haven’t yet managed to get it out of my pocket.  And lately I realized that when I put my jacket on, the first thing I do is check for my keys and the second thing I do is check to make sure I still have that.  When I’m stressed, I like to roll it around in my hand.  Y’all have clearly fucked with my head.

–Making meatballs in the crock pot led to an unforeseen consequence.  The meatballs, after having cooked all day, were so tender you could barely get them out of the pot in one piece.  And they weren’t as good as Mom’s.  I don’t think I added enough brown sugar.  Mom claims it’s because I left out the rolled oats.  I refuse to believe there are rolled oats in her meatballs, but maybe that’s her secret ingredient.

–I’ve been thinking about the term “ally” as in “People of color and their allies” and “transfolks and their allies” and “feminists and their allies” and I think I just have to say, I’m not your ally.  I’m not even sure, for sure, what it means.  But it feels to me a little like a trap, both for you and for me, because it seems to promise some level of “getting it” that I don’t have, some level of safety that I can’t actually promise.  “Ally” feels like a shorthand way of bridging distances that maybe should be respected.  I don’t know, maybe it’s all the time I’ve spent (mis)reading the German philosophers, but it seems to me that the truth is both that people are the same–that people are people–and that people are ultimately, very different from each other.  And the truth is that that’s both a cop-out and profound.  See what I’m getting at?  It’s in that tension where… Oh fuck me… this is unclear and I sound like a stoned college student.

–The TCP afghan is coming along a lot slower now that I’m not just sitting around with my dad all day.

–I  want to ponder more about the weirdness that is that country music from my youth tendency to pair gruff sounding men with backup singers that sound so slick and tight you could about use them as a raincoat.  But I don’t really have any more to say about it than that.

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Nashville is Drunkenly Rambling?

What the heck is going on with Nashville is Talking?  It’s flooding my RSS feed with stuff and I look over there and it looks good, but there are just words, words, words and I can’t make heads nor tails of them.  It’s like a handsome, drunken Frankenstein’s monster.

It’s Just a Different World

So, today I had to go to Vanderbilt’s Law School and wait on the elevator to come and there was a bulletin board full of “buy this bike,” “become a cheerleader,” and “rent this apartment.”

I want to talk about the “Rent this apartment” sign.  It said, “Perfect for students.”  A one bedroom apartment in the brand new Adelicia building, which is just a block from the school, true enough. Two thousand dollars a month.

The cost of going to Vanderbilt’s law school is roughly sixty thousand dollars a year.

I’m assuming that, if you have twenty-four thousand dollars to pay for rent a year, you’re probably also paying the full sixty thousand dollars to go to law school.

Who are these people who can afford to spend eighty four thousand dollars a year without having a job?

I mean, honestly, for exactly how many students is that place “perfect” for?

Eh, well, I guess they only need one.

Put Brown Sugar in It! That Makes it Pennsylvania Dutch!

As you may recall, I have some rogues in my family tree and I’m not sure that settling in Pennsylvania only long enough for the neighboring farmers to decide that their kids looked more like you than them and then hightailing it out to Michigan means your descendants (the ones who know they’re your descendants) get to make pronouncements about what constitutes Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.

But, of course, that doesn’t stop my dad.

And, as I may have mentioned before, he believes that adding brown sugar to anything makes it Pennsylvania Dutch.

Pennsylvania Dutch ham?  Throw some brown sugar on that puppy.

Pennsylvania Dutch beef and noodles?  Toss a little brown sugar in there.

Pennsylvania Dutch lasagna?  Hey, just add brown sugar.

Pennsylvania Dutch fried rice?  Well, you get the idea.

So, I’m about to set some “Pennsylvania Dutch” meatballs in the crock pot and I thought I’d share with you the recipe.

One package of meat (in our younger days, beef; in our healthier days, turkey*)

A good amount of black pepper

About half a row of crushed saltines

About a cup of diced onions

About a half a cup of brown sugar

Mash that all together and make roughly ping-pong sized balls.  If you’re cooking in the oven, brown those fuckers in a little oil in the fry pan, and then deposit them in a 9×13 pan.

Cover in two cans of mushroom soup with a can of water or milk.

Cook at 350 for about 30 minutes or until the meatballs are cooked all the way through.

If you don’t fry them first, obviously, you’re going to have to cook them a little longer.

Anyway, I’m trying that in the crock pot today.  We’ll see how it goes.  And when I get home from work, I will make some rice in my rice cooker to have with the meatballs.

*Though, I’ve got to tell you, the turkey I got at the store contains 30% of the cholesterol you need in a day.  Is other meat higher or is this fake turkey?