Kakahead

There are times in this universe when I get so inoculated that I am motivated to write a very short, yet silly story

Here goes:  Once upon a time… THE END.

There.  A very short story.    If you took too long to read it, you should really enlist in the Merchant Marinara Sauce Brigade Platoon for Wayward Wives and Stepfathers.  There you will be shown how to involve very small dirt particles in happy games that require colorful shirts and rooster licking.  Of all the meetings I’ve never attended, I enjoyed the weekend of the 33rd of Octember.  Now that was a cranberry stomping episode I’ll never forget!!  It’s almost as if the Chiclets were let out of their cages thirteen minutes earlier than last year.  Santagoopa certainly knew that all the clock fizzlers would be found guilty of lentil crushing.  But that could only have resulted in electric shaving incidents.

Seriously, can someone please tell me why I have to brush my tooth with fossil strings every weekend??  I’m sorry, but I fail to see the winking radioactive clouds that bring this custom to KalamaKazoo.  The residents of Abracadabra don’t even have any slots for the rusty washers that all clowns pay for parking with… how could these gentle jelly citizens of Okeefenokee be expected to change lanes in a soup throwing contest?

On the other hand, you have doable.  Some people actually use that as a word… they say, “DO-able.”  Well I’m sorry, they are wrong.  Doable.  Since it’s spelled with oa in the middle, that would be pronounced “oh” kinda like boat or toad.  So doable, as it is spelled, looks to me like it should rhyme with “noble.”

Sometimes politics and corporate shenanigans make me want to barf on the floor and find an elf in the pajama closet.  Too many people sniffing bricks and licking stop signs, if you know what I mean.  Their opossum doesn’t have enough cheese to make the baloney go to the top of the elevator sandwich.  They are just a few bottles of cellophane short of a complete truckload.    The toilet mechanism is just waiting for your approval.  Do you get my wind?  Do you understand where I’m arriving from?  Have you gotten the clue of my talk noises yet?  Listen carefully:  do you smell something??  I CAN’T SEE IN HERE WITH ALL THIS NOISE!!!  If you carefully touch all the bugs you see in one day, you will probably want to live with them.  You might even be able to train them to sing worm songs.  You just never know.

Well, one of the twelve or perhaps twenty five things I know for sure is this:  if anyone gives me a lot of money and expects absolutely nothing in return, I will be greatly amused and toasted inside with a blue sugary coating of genuine American Cheese flavored bicycle tire pumping rituals.  In other words, I’ll drive as quickly as I can straight to the nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken Laxative Emporium and set all those poor coleslaws free so they can find their way back into the wilderness.  I will also find special homes for the mashed potatoes and gravel.

Well my fiends, I must leave you all with this important symbol:  which of course represents the true tolerance and love our Creator designed us to have.  The symbol also represents what happens when you smash a pair of binoculars to yank the prisms out and then you put them in your windowsill and force the sunlight to make ha ha rainbows on your walls.  This is the way of refraction.

Be well, and may all your coleslaw be free and may your mashed potato gravel be found only under the sink with all the other cleaning agents.  Enjoy life and love your fellow humans and other animals, for you never know when an aardvark will be your boss.  Tell Frinkle I said hello.  Eat marshmallows.  It’s fun!!

I’m really getting sick up and fed with all this job stuff. I try to stay grateful to be working, but Holy Mahlooka it gets on my nerves sometimes. May I be retired now please with zero debt and lots of spare cash?? OK, thank you, that’s very kind.

I have the privilege of joining my two offspring at a They Might Be Giants concert this coming Sunday. That will be very good medicine in the realm of stress relief. I try to make my job as much fun as theirs seems to be. It’s all in the mind you know.

Vacation can be very addictive.  I’m really grateful I have a job so I can actually have vacation; but I did something rather foolish last month.  I took a whole week off.  In conjunction with the Labor Day holiday, that meant a total of 10 days away from work.

We loved it. 

Didn’t do anything special, just our annual trek to Pennsylvania to see my Aunt and cousins.  This visit was to be quite different than previous years, however, as my poor Tante (Norwegian for Aunt) was in the hospital with a broken pelvis.  My cousin, God bless him, has stepped in to take care of her.  She really can’t be left alone anymore.  He definitely has some challenges in store for him.

Since he moved my Tante from her house to his, he offered to put us up at his home during our stay.  Very kind indeed.  Then some stormy lady named Irene blasted past his house, and the wind knocked down a bunch of trees.  The result:  no power at Cousin Pete’s house.  

No big deal right?  We stayed there anyway… hey we’re from the sticks and understand how to rough it for a few days.  We’ve lost power ourselves a few times in the past, and actually broke down and bought our first ever generator this year.   When you raise a big garden and freeze lots of veggies, it’s very disheartening to try to find a friend who has both electricity and enough freezer space to help us out.  So we took the plunge this year.

Thankfully Cousin Pete introduced us to his wonderful friends Steve and Lisa who opened their home to us so we could shower up.  Pete used their kitchen and cooked us all up some fabulous spaghetti and meatballs with a nice salad. 

We borrowed Pete’s GPS and went to see Tante in the hospital while he was cooking.  First experience with a newfangled thing like that.  I work in computer support but I shun away from such toys.  I have a small compass on my car’s dashboard and that’s my GPS… also known as a General Pointing System.  Call me stubborn but I prefer to read maps over listening to the voice of C3PO navigating aloud and then shrieking with delight, “congratulations!!  You’ve reached  your destination!!”   Well OK, I have to admit the silly thing was quite handy.  I actually managed to navigate backwards and get us back to the delicious dinner at Steve and Lisa’s house. 

My lovely girlfriend and I commiserated during the drive back that we felt powerless over my Tante’s predicament in the hospital.  We consider ourselves pretty young, but we’re approaching 60 and we know that our turn will come eventually.  Unfortunately I can’t seem to find my magic wand so I could wave it over my Aunt and fix her up so she could be self reliant again.   Life doesn’t work that way… all we can do is pray, try to accept, and be cheerful when we visit. 

We left Pennsylvania in a powerless state also… we saw trucks driving about that appeared to be working on electric things but still now power when we left.  Still had a nice visit though… very kind people made all the adversity pretty easily tolerated.

Off we went through Canada on the way home, just because.  Didn’t do anything special… stayed overnight in Brantford, Ontario and ate at Moose Winooski’s.  We both ordered what we now consider “naughty” food:  ribs.  Oh my they were good.  Got about 10 pounds of potatoes with the meal though… I got mashed and she got fries.  Gravy with both.  Delicious and deadly.  Then we stopped in Sarnia, Ontario and went to our favorite Salvation Army thrift store and spent our $15 in Canadian bills (started out with $20 I got from an ATM in Brantford) and found some “treasures.”  Doesn’t take much to please us…  Didn’t even get any Tim Hortons until we got back into Michigan!

Ah well, home again, home again, jiggety jig.  Home a couple days, then WHAM!!  It was our turn to get a big storm and lose power for a couple days.  Powerless again!!  Let’s hear it for the generator!!

So… vacation didn’t go exactly as we had planned.  Whenever I experience that kind of scenario, I’m reminded of what a good friend of mine once told me:  “hey, you wanna make God laugh??  Tell him you have plans!!”  Ten days off in a row gave us a good sense of what retirement might be like.  I’m thinking that could be a really nice thing to wake up to each morning. 

Only 8 ½ years to go!!  That is, of course, if everything goes according to plan…
 
We drove again, and these guys seem to be as thankful as we were to get home safely.
 

Another marvelous vacation… but as Dorothy repeated at the end of her stay in the merry old land of Oz, “there’s no place like home.” 

Needless to say, I’m a bit fried from all the driving.  However, I’ve certainly changed my ways as I’ve gotten older and (I hope) a little wiser.  When I was in my 20s and 30s I actually believed I could drive for 24 hours straight safely.   Such denial I nurtured!!  Worked pretty hard to convince myself and others that I could actually drive ridiculous distances with no rest. 

Thank God I didn’t kill anyone!!

We still were in the car pretty much all day yesterday and today.  Or at least, it seems like it.  A little over 700 miles from our house to Cousin Pete’s.  In the “good old days” I would have gotten up way too early and drove the whole thing, stopping only briefly for food and fuel, etc.  These days my lovely girlfriend and I stop more often, and one of those stops is an overnight stay somewhere.  This year the Hampton Inn of choice was in Youngstown, Ohio.  Kind of a halfway point.  We love Hampton Inn!!.  Just makes much more sense to travel during daylight, and to get a good night’s rest and some hot breakfast before resuming the journey. 

Same thing on the way back, but rather than slog through on I-80 again we like to take advantage of our passport ownership and swing up through Canada (eh) for the fun of it.  After checking in to the hotel in Ontario, we asked what local eateries we should look for.  Ended up at Moose Winooski’s… very nice ribs with a side of way too many potatoes. 

Anyway, nice to be home, and really nice to be OUT OF THE CAR!!  So forgive me for being brief, but I’m going to close with:  again, holy cow it’s nice to be  home!!  And dig up a video for your enjoyment. 

Did I mention that it’s really nice to be home?
Now this video has nothing to do with traveling… or does it??

Well here we go on vacation again.  A long drive to see Aunt Nancy, Cousin Peter, and of course Cousin Rocco.   And yes we really do have a Cousin Rocco…

“Ken,” my boss will say,  “some people are beginning to drive me a little crazy.”

Of course,  I ask him with my best Long Island accent:  “you want I should cawl my Cuzzin Rocco??”

We’re a bit smarter than when we were “kids” in our 20s or 30s… we don’t travel the whole 700 plus miles in one day.  We take our time, spend the night about half way, wake up refreshed and continue on.  Gonna stop at IKEA along the way this time, but that will still give us time to relax at the hotel in Youngstown.

The radio can get boring… the news gets depressing and the music is often the same old stuff.  Of course you can find some neat things on the dial but there are times when you’d just like to pop in a CD and enjoy the ride.  So as I write this I’m burning some discs to keep us entertained. 

Keep in mind, I’m a dinosaur.  I was born millions of years ago when radios and televisions had tubes inside them and you had to wait for them to warm up.  I consider myself privileged in this regard, though.  When I was growing up, entertainers like Abbott and Costello, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Red Skelton, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy (to name a few) were not only appearing in old movies on TV, they were still alive.

So, my lovely wife and I still love to hear the old shows every now and again.  Fast forward to the internet, where free copies of many of these old shows are available for download.  No cursing, no explicit sexual innuendos, just good clean fun. 

Because I’ve got much to do to get ready for the trip; I’m going to make this Happy Friday!!! short and sweet… but here are a few samples of what the masters did in “the good old days.”

Did you know that 7 x 13 = 28? Lou Costello proved it!



I remember being smitten by the remarkable Carmen Miranda at a very young age…

Thirteen Thousand, Eight Hundred And Seventy Days.

Four Hundred And Fifty Six Months.

Thirty Eight Years.

Thirty eight years???  Holy Moly time flies when you’re having fun.  I mean jeez, it seems like it was just a couple years ago when the Beatles first came to America on the Mayflower (or something like that).

As of Sunday, August 21, I will have the privilege of being married to the Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe for 38 years.  Now if there are any other Beautiful Women reading this, please do not despair.  Here’s why:  although it is impossible for you to compete with my Lovely Girlfriend for the title of Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe; please be very aware that all the other women in the universe are the Second Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe.  So even though you cannot be the Most Beautiful in my universe, you are now and always will be the Second Most Beautiful.

That is my professional opinion.  If you don’t believe me, just ask me some time.

For us, being married is finally getting easier.  Almost as natural as breathing, really.  However we still have a few (very few) times when it feels like we are breathing in a few bugs and they get stuck in our throats.  But after a few pittoooeys or boohoos or maybe a grunt or two, it’s all better and time to kiss and make out.  In other words, life is not always peaches and root beer.  We do disagree, but we can finally disagree without being disagreeable.  Most of the time.

Here’s a nice bonus:   SHE LETS ME KISS HER!!  Now that’s really nice, ya know??

Sometimes we are asked how we’ve managed to pull this marriage thing off.  Well here are some observations and / or suggestions I’d like to offer for your reading enjoyment:

1)  We were very good friends for several months before we started wondering what was hidden under each other’s clothing.

Q)  When we realized it was true, we made sure to tell each other “I Love You” at least once a day.

27)  Before we got married, we made verbal contracts.  Things like: “we must always tell the truth no matter what;” and “if we have kids, we can’t have just one, and no more than two.” 

B)  We go on dates.  Movies, concerts, picnics, vacations.  Sometimes it’s something simple like renting a video and taking the phone off the hook.  Or maybe even just taking the phone off the hook…

V3)  We say “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome.”

#)  We hold hands often.  One of my favorite stories about this:  Our daughter’s best friend Andrea said “Look at those cute old people going into the store holding hands,” to which our daughter Jessica replied, “that’s my PARENTS!!”

8F)  I tell her she’s beautiful.  And of course, I mean it.

And last but not least,

K!)  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  Never assume.  Talk stuff over.  Big stuff, little stuff.  And be nice about it all.  God knows we live in a crazy world, there’s no need to fling fire at each other at home.

I could go on and on… suffice it to say that we’ve learned how to treat each other as if we were best friends.  That’s probably because we ARE best friends.  Hasn’t always been easy, but definitely worth it. 

Life is good.  We have enough to eat, a nice home, beautiful offspring.  Yes, the verbal contract stated two kids  They aren’t kids anymore, but they’re ours so we’ll call them “the kids” whether they like it or not.  Except to their faces… then we let them know that they are simply beautiful people.  And we tell them “I Love You” whenever we see or talk to them.

And the coolest thing is, we’re in love.  Did I mention I have the privilege of being married to the Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe?? 

These days, George’s song flows through my mind and often out of my vocal chords…
 

It’s August outside, which means the annual cosmic light show is presented by the Great Cosmic Rock Throwers of the Universe.  This of course means that everyone must run for cover so they don’t get vaporized by the falling cosmic debris that will be flying around.  Be especially vigilant on August 12 and 13 when the peak activity is supposed to be happening.

Please do not be frightened, for what I am about to relate is merely cosmic truth that has occurred annually for at least 12 and maybe even 47,000.  I just don’t know.  But it’s true and that’s all there is to it.  OK??  So don’t bother me about this ever again or I’ll start up that dead bug over there.  You see that dead bug?  Well, to the untrained eye, that bug is dead.  But all I need to do is insert these tiny little electrodes in his vinkabules and he’ll be making zucchini bread in no time.  And it will be on your conscience. I hope you’re happy now.

 Now sit back and relax, and just be aware that everything you hold dear is in danger of exploding and being zoofled to smithereens.  “Of course,” some of you are probably yelling, “he’s talking about the Perseid meteor showers!!”  Many of you who are probably  saying, “what’s the deal with this guy… has he been eating Legos or something??”  Well, for those of you who are saying that, the answer is yes, and although plastic is very chewy and not very nourishing, Legos are still one of my favorite toys.  OH WAIT, they’re TOYS!!  Not for eating!?!?!  Whoops…  

 Ok.  Back to this horrible cosmic truth I’ve been ranting about.  The Perseid meteor shower is an annual occurrence, this year the best times to look for shooting stars is after midnight on August 11 through 13.  Sure, there may be some meteorites coming in on the 10th and 14th, but the peak viewing will be on the 12th, after midnight local time.  And look for them to come out of the northeastern sky.  This year’s show may be obscured a bit by the moon because it will be lighting up the sky in a big way.  But you still may see as many as two per minute, depending on how many Burger Kings or other light pollution sources you have in your neighborhood.  You could always ask the light polluters to turn the lights off, but they may not care about any stinking shooting stars.  Gotta waste energy to make money, you know.  Gotta get that global warming furnace stoked up so my next pair of sneakers burst into flames when I walk on the superheated concrete.  Thank you very much Mr. Businessman Energy Wasting Guy Who Leaves His Lights On All Stinking Night Long.

Alright, I’m sorry.  I digress.  Something I normally never do (ya, right) …

Anyway I must take this time to please ask you to protect yourselves during the meteor showers.  Always, always wear a fireproof bathrobe while you’re outside viewing meteor showers.  You may also want to flip on the force field to protect your house from the snap, crackle, KABOOM always never happens when an 85 ton meteorite lands on your chimney.  What??  You don’t have a force field???  AH HAH!  You sold it at the flea market didn’t you??  Have you no science brains?  You won’t catch me out there with no fireproof clothing… And although we don’t have a force field, I have this aluminum bat right here.  Yup, I’m gonna be up on the roof with my modified 55 gallon steel drum overalls, bat in hand, always at the ready.  When one of those fireballs puts a bead on my house, I’m gonna take that bat and smack it into Who Knows Where.  I may also keep my stainless steel umbrella handy so I don’t get clunked by a hot meteorite. 

     I also have a heat resistant meteorite gauge mounted on the fence, right next to my rain gauge.  I want to make sure I know exactly how many inches of meteors we got during the meteor showers.  Actually the meteorite gauge is there for a selfish motive… my Honey Pie didn’t want me to get a force field because she says it’s too expensive.   Once I show her a bucket full of smoking hot meteorites she’ll change her tune by golly!!

Well, hopefully you will all be able to get to clear skies and be able to see one of nature’s wonders.  There have been some years when the Perseids have been a very awesome show.  At any rate, I’ll be up on the roof, aluminum bat in hand, hoping to God that we don’t have any lightning.  

Perhaps I’ve exaggerated a bit about the danger.  But then, if you go out unprotected and get vaporized by a 729 ton meteorite, don’t come crying to me.

I hear some of the larger meteorites carry mechanical monsters from space!! Help us, Superman!!

I’ve been taking work Way Too Seriously Again Lately.  Some of the things that go on there and around the world in general make absolutely no sense.

Therefore, in an effort to make even less sense, I offer this profound yet utterly nonsensical invitation to escape your inner knives and harbor no further garages against your fellow mange.

As none of you have heard frequently, Toyden Amookalobbnis of Quality Infusions, Inc. will be arriving soon to inspect the cambernackles.   Please ensure that all edible click wrapper standards are well concealed and thoroughly hyphenated before Toyden’s infestation.  

During this exercise, please note that cambernackles will be inspected on the 3rd Tuesday of each week, twice monthly, with liberty and justice for all.  That information may be shared freely with any and all individuals whose names rhyme with “lumberjack,” as they would appear when divided by the pertinent day of the month.  

For example:  on the 1st Tuesday of 2019, the week begins with the letter R.  Therefore, you may share this with people like:

Reek Cumberjack

Rum Cambersnack

Rink Snanderjunk

And of course Roopy Wofflenick.  

Note that the inverse modification standard never applies.

If you have any questions regarding this modulation, please insert two nickles and eleven dimes.  After all, your toaster is probably orange with chrome bide flenders.

I’m sure none of you are wondering by now whether the sky has been removed from the Ionized Bugle Machines (IBM).  There’s probably a good chance that someday I can divulge the particulars of that molecular substation, but this is no time for soaking baby toys in cups of sesame oil.

I ate a bug the other day.  It had very little flavor, and really was not as pleasant as one might surmise.   This required minimal effort:  I opened my mouth, a small insect flew in, and I closed my mouth again.  I tried to pitoo, then kerchack, but when I said “orgkkk” the swallowing mechanism switched on and down the hatch it went as I Bit My Tongue (IBMT). Possibly there was some struggle on the part of the poor bug, as I am somewhat sure I felt griggling actions as the very small Insect Bit The Dust On The Way Down My Esophagus (IBTDOTWDME).

Now of course we must discuss this business of intermediate tree watering schedules.   Please do not go there with me ever again.  Why would you insist on watering the trees with that Jell-O dispenser I shall never understand.   Don’t you know that pressurized prune skins can injure cats and other flying rodents?  We really need to talk about your compulsion to slide wildly through the Baked Apple / Rhubarb Fritters (BA/RF).

OK.  I really must go to the store now.  They have metal objects on sale, and one can never have too many metal objects.

Thank you for not licking my car.  Unless you did.   In which case I will stop.  Writing in incomplete sentences.  Which cannot be sentences at all.  Since they are incomplete.  So therefore they must.  Be sentence fragments.  So there.

Thank you,

Norvis Pimpleburger

Supervisor,

Feline Antler Inspection Dept.

“If you want something done, don’t remove the cat’s antlers.” – Milton Wildpockets
 
“And now for something completely different,” as Mr. Cleese of Monty Python would say… Never heard of Flip the Frog before but here he is from 1933.
 

In our woods of the neck, school will soon kick into high gear.  In fact, the local high school marching band is already practicing.  I could actually hear the drum line while I was working in the garden this evening!!  Brings back fond memories of marching band season, when both Mom and I were busier than cats covering up kaka on a tile floor.  This, of course, meant that time was precious and money was tight, so we didn’t always have the luxury of eating out or buying ready made meals.  If you have no kids, you have no clue about all this. Don’t worry about that though, because God loves you anyway!! If you do have kids however, my sympathies are with you and your pocketbook. Thirty-nine cents an hour just doesn’t go as far as it used to!!

Speaking of school, I’m going to grammar jail for that last sentence. That’s because “to” is a preposition, and a preposition is a word one should never end a sentence WITH.

Ha ha, I did it again!

So. Now we come to the inevitable truth… we must not only clothe these young monsters, we are actually expected to FEED THEM as well! What a lousy rip, huh?? But that’s ok.  They are tomorrow’s workforce, and I wanted to make darn sure they got really good nutrition so they can support me when I’m old and moldy. Therefore, this installment of Happy Friday is dedicated to a meal that is not only wholesome, but cheap and easy to prepare. Those of you who don’t have kids, please don’t despair. You may feel free to use this recipe for yourself, kids or no. Before I continue, let me say this: this is an ACTUAL MEAL I make with MY OWN FINGERS AND KITCHEN COOKING DOOHICKEYS. And if you don’t believe me, just ask me. Some of you may remember reading references to this very dish in previous Happy Fridays. Ok. Here we go. Hold your noses and close your eyes, you’re all in for a big surprise…

* CHICKEN COCKAMAMIE *

1 ½ cups of brown rice

WAIT!! What the HECK is brown rice??? You burn it?? You put dye in it?? Whummana heck? Ok, I’ll tell you: it’s rice that has not been raped. And no, a bad person is not out there forcing rice to have sex, so just get that out of your brain.  But white rice is not only politically incorrect, all the goodies have been stripped off to make it “pretty.” You know, like white bread. Brown rice is usually found in the store with that OTHER (white) rice, but is much more nutritious. I mean, I HATE when this rice raping happens, ya know?? Farmers spend all their waking hours growing perfectly good food, and then “modern science” goes and “refines” the perfectly good food so it looks nice and pretty and has little nutritional value, which FORCES me to write run on sentences and then scoff at those “experts” who wonder why the cancer rates are going up in the sky. Ya know what I mean???

Sorry. I get carried away. Ok, we try again…

* CHICKEN COCKAMAMIE * (pronounced KAH-kuh-MAY-mee)

1 ½ cups of brown rice                  1 cup frozen peas
2 globs of butter                            1/2 green pepper, diced
2 stalks of celery, chopped            1 bowl of cooked meat from a dead chicken
1 large onion, diced                       4 cloves of diced fresh garlic

1 bottle Kikkoman Lite soy sauce (for sprinkling… DON’T USE THE WHOLE BOTTLE FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD!!)

Ok, now for the cooking…   Get a large saucepan (I use our 4 quart Reverware pot) and heave one of the globs of butter in there.  A glob is about 1 tablespoon. I use butter because I read the ingredients on margarine and cried in the grocery store.  Then I rolled in the aisles, foaming at the mouth, clutching the margarine and mumbling, “oh no, oleo.” Well maybe not.  Butter is natural stuff. No hydrogenated oils to stick to your gall bladder, and if you use it sparingly you won’t get fat. Plus, the flavor is much better for your face and hands. Butter is made by squeezing cows. Next time you see someone squeezing a cow, do not be alarmed, it’s just time to harvest the moo juice to make butter. If someone is squeezing a bull, however, tell them to get marriage counseling. That simply is NOT natural. Unless you’re a cow.

So, you take the butter and melt it in the saucepan.  Take it off the heat and chuck the rice in there. Now cover the rice with about 12 feet of water, or maybe only 3 inches if that is more to your liking. Slam the pot back on the stove and give it the hot stuff. High heat. Make boil.  When boiling is big, reduce heat, cover and simmer until the rice is yummy and you can eat it without breaking your teeth bones. Put some Devo on the CD player and bop around until it gets to this delectable state.

Drain the rice, but leave just a little of the liquid in there. The steam will make your eyebrows happy. For why did I urge you to use butter in the pan, you wonder? Well, it prevents rice bricks. My mom made rice (white rice, I’m sad to say) and you always had to have a trowel to get it out of the pan. A dab of butter makes nice flaky rice. A dab of oil works too, but then there’s the flavor thing. Use the butter. Trust me.

Ok. Now the rice is drained and very warm.  Throw the bowlful of cooked dead chicken meat in the rice from a distance of 14 feet (or less if you are hungry and want all the meat in the rice). You may well ask, “how much is in a bowl?” Well hey, it’s YOUR BOWL, you tell me!! Just a cereal bowl full. Use as much as you like. So, throw the meat in the pot. Mix it up.  Add the diced fresh garlic (or sprinkle lots of garlic powder on it), then slosh a few glugs of  soy sauce on there. Mix it up some more. I use Kikkoman soy sauce because I believe it’s the best kind on the grocery shelves.  Only a smattering of preservatives, and the rest is all natural stuff.  I use the Lite kind because I have the high blood pressure and have to watch my sodium intake.  I’d recommend using the Lite anyhow, because nobody needs the 83 pounds of salt in the regular soy sauce.

Now get a big skillet and slam it on a burner. If you’ve had a bad day, slam it several times. NOT REALLY!!!  Melt the other butter glob in the skillet. Swirl it all around the bottom and sides, then throw in the pepper, onion, celery, peas, and miscellaneous veggies. Miscellaneous veggies are just what the name implies, and around this time of year it means whatever is still growing in the garden. Except perhaps gladioluses. I never eat those. Anymore.

Ok. Bring up the heat till you hear those delicious veggies sizzle, and stir fry them for a little while. Please don’t overcook the veggies. If they’re not a bit crisp when done, you’ve killed lots of goodies and the nutritional value of the veggies will be diminished.  Besides, mushy vegetables are kinda like wet popcorn. It just ain’t right. At least, this is my professional opinion.

Finally, dump the veggies in the rice mixture and stir one more time. Season with more soy sauce and garlic if you wish. Maybe some pepper.  There’s only one way to find out what it “needs,” and that’s the age-old custom of snitching.

Well, folks, there you have it:  Chicken Cockamamie.  With this mixture, you should have enough for four with some left over so you can pack a lunch for work. Variations include Beef or Pork Cockamamie, or you could even do Shrimp Cockamamie. And of course you can play with other types of veggies.  You may also want to sprinkle in some herbs like thyme or oregano.  Maybe even some curry!  But keep the garlic in there. As Grandma Loftus used to say, “It’s good for what ails ya. And if nothin’ ails ya, it’s good for that, too!”

Don’t like the sounds of that stuff? Perhaps you might like Chicken A La King instead. Like this kind from 1937 maybe…

Summer is in full bloom here in Michigan Land, and with warm (and lately wet) weather comes:  BUGS!!! RAARRRGGHH!!  GET THE GUN! GET THE GUN!

No no, no guns.  Sure, I’ve often been tempted to carry a shotgun on a walk with me and blast a hole in one of those big mosquito swarms that follows me around.  But that might not be practical, and I doubt that the neighbors would appreciate it.  And if you use a gun inside, well that makes holes in your home that are unsightly and drafty in the winter.  Oh yes, and people can get hurt too (duh).

Sure, I hate mosquitoes and other such nasty insects, but I keep telling myself that Mom Nature has a plan for the stupid things.  We rarely use poison to kill bugs… sprays and foggers are often worse than the bugs you are using them on.  I very rarely use bug repellents like OFF or whatever.   I’m sorry, but I’d rather suffer than put poison on my body.  And in the case of those outdoor foggers, unfortunately they also kill many GOOD bugs.  The same goes for in the garden, and because we don’t spray, we get lots of beneficial insects like praying mantis, lacewings, ladybugs and the like.

Other friendly bugs are spiders.  Wait a minute… SPIDERS!! ARRRGGHH! GET THE GUN! GET THE GUN! Oh wait, no guns.  So ok, we don’t really freak out quite that badly.   In fact, spiders actually get a fair trial at our place. I’ve actually learned to appreciate the beauty in those little eight-legged alien beings. Being the organic gardeners that we are, the family has learned to respect beneficial bugs as a valuable resource. Yeah, I know. Spiders aren’t technically bugs. Tell that to your six year old and see how far you get!

Anyhow, spiders don’t strike terror in our hearts these days (ya, right). That statement is pretty much true, especially if :

A) WE KNOW WHERE THE SPIDER IS, AND

12) IT’S THERE WHEN IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE.

To explain item 12) above, I really need to come clean and admit that many spiders have been killed execution style simply by showing up near one of us by surprise.  But we really do try to save them if we can and I’ve even grown to the point where I can pick them up…sometimes. But when those rascals are crawling on me unannounced, I have been known to do one of two things, either greet them with a sudden KERSMOOSH, or I do  a most unusual running dance. I also chant while run-dancing:  “OGodHolyCowYoySpiderBig!!!” Or something like that.  As I said, spiders will normally get a fair trial at our house. When discovered, they are captured and released in the garden. Spider sightings cause the family to summon me with big voices. If Mr. or Mrs. Spider (How do you tell, anyway? Don’t EVEN ask me to inspect their private parts!) isn’t too large, I’ll scoop it into my palm and carefully encage it in my hand. I set them free behind the compost pile, or someplace where they can find cover. The big ones, however, are strictly jar material.

An excellent critter catching device can be built with a jelly jar and one of those ejector type cards from a magazine.  You know, the ones that fall out of a fresh-out-of-the-mailbox magazine when you’re on the potty.  They’re easily identified by their large bold print that goes something like:   “YES! Send me 956 weeks of Dirteaters Digest for only $34.67, $50 less than newsstand price!“ If you don’t have a jelly jar, a drinking glass is also a good bug holder. Such a device is also useful for wasps, which are also beneficial critters. Woe unto the spider or wasp who is in the wrong place at the wrong time, though. Those guys get the old El-Kabong treatment. Know what you have then? Bug guts!  Ooo, ocky, yicky. Paper towel, please.

Sometimes rain has fostered a population boom of a garden pest that rhymes with bugs, SLUGS. Man, I hate those things.  I remember being totally intrigued by them when I was a kid:  “Wow!! A snail with no shell!!  Cool!!”    Now it’s:  “HEY!!  These *&%$ things are eating my plants!!  GET THE GUN! GET THE GUN!“  Oh right… no guns.  Anyway, sticking to my organic ways, I won’t buy slug poison.  We saw some in the store and I wanted it badly.  Very badly. But I figure there’s enough poison on our planet without me spreading more.

I heard years ago that beer will kill them.  You pour it into a shallow pan and put it on the ground, and the slugs are attracted and drown in it.  I reluctantly bought some last year.  I say “reluctantly,” because before I learned my lesson, I’d already bought enough for one lifetime and I very nearly “drowned” in it… if you get my drift.  At first, I tried to collect slugs.  What a wonderful task… you get free slime for your fingers which is a bear to get off, but I can’t help but admit the strange satisfaction I get out of killing those doggone things.  One year I had so many that I was getting very frantic, so just for the heck of it I took the salt shaker out to the garden with me at night.  A few sprinkles of salt on a very big slug is a very disgusting thing to watch.  They melt.  Salt melts slugs.  Like right now.  And it is very gross.  This year I mixed a bunch of salt with about a gallon of water in a 5 gallon pail, and when I go slug hunting, they are dunked into the execution tank.  But that is way too labor intensive.  If I put a little bowl of beer down near the plant I want to protect, the slugs go for the suds much more readily than they go for the veggies.  They are hopeless alcoholics… they drink themselves to death, and don’t seem to care that the bodies of their friends-and-neighbors type slugs are already drowned in the brew.  Might be a message there…

Anyway, sure, this organic gardening can be frustrating at times.  However, if you plan your garden carefully and encourage natural predators (beneficial insects and spiders), it is also very rewarding to grow food that you know is safe to eat.  And yes, of course I realize that slugs may rhyme with bugs, but they are not bugs at all, they’re gastropod mollusks.  As far as I know, slugs have no natural enemies.

Well, maybe they have one:  ME.

As those of you who read this silly Happy Friday!!! stuff know, I love looking back at the entertainment of yesteryear. Here’s one in “3-D Animation” about a famous spider.

So… there I was, 10,000 feet in the air, no plane, no parachute, minding my own business, when a friend at work asked me, “can I get the recipe for your oats thing?  I had it in the message you sent me but I lost it.”  OK maybe I wasn’t up in the air with no plane or parachute… but she really did ask me for the recipe.

Call me silly but when my doctor told me to lower my cholesterol a few years ago, I wanted medication to be the last resort.  I figured that since my lovely girlfriend and I know how to eat a pretty healthy diet, I should be able to put some of that long learned diet knowledge to work.  So I switched my breakfasts at work to healthier fare.  I had only two requirements:  1)  it needed to be something that would be at least cholesterol neutral (not increase it), and J) it simply had to taste good.

I knew that fancy processed breakfast bars were a bit too pricey to eat on a regular basis.  Besides, with all that packaging and weird ingredients they can tout “good health” all they want.  The makers of so-called healthy breakfast bars have only one thing in mind:  getting my money.   We hear that oats reduce cholesterol, but after many years of that sticky glop when I was a kid, I’ve promised myself never to eat cooked oatmeal again.  At least, not as a breakfast cereal.  Oatmeal cookies, rhubarb oat crumble… stuff like that is a different story.  I experimented with putting oats into my diet by just having some home made “granola,”  oats, raisins, walnuts and some honey in a bowl with milk.  Not too bad, but a bit too chewy.

Then I had a thought.  I jumped up on top of the stove, pointed my finger skyward, and shouted, “EUREKA!!”  No one was home at the time so the gesture was a bit anticlimactic.   Oh OK maybe I didn’t do that at all.  But I did have a thought.  Maybe if I let the oats soak overnight in some milk… and YES!!  They are not mooshy but not difficult to chew.  Very tasty.  Added some other goodies and I now have it for breakfast on a regular basis.  I borrowed one of Dr. Seuss’s terms for the stuff… although it had a rather negative connotation in his book The Lorax.   So, without further ado, here’s my recipe for:

Gluppity Glup:

1/2 cup uncooked thick rolled oats

1/2 cup fat free yogurt

The rest I don’t measure:

approx. 1 tbsp honey  (maybe a little more… I like it a tiny bit sweet)

handful of blueberries (any fruit is fine… sometimes I use raisins or cut up strawberries)

handful of walnuts (approx. 1 oz)

approx. 1/2 cup fat free milk (maybe more)

Instructions:

Put all the ingredients in a 16 oz. glass jar (I use a Meijer Naturals Peanut Butter jar ) (oh and yes it’s empty when I start…) and fill the balance with milk.

I usually put the oats in first, then the yogurt, honey, berries, and walnuts.

Then I add the milk, sometimes I need to take a butter knife and “drill” through the yogurt so the milk makes the oats moist.

Fill the rest of the way with milk, put the cap on and shake to mix.

Variations depending on container are obvious… but there’s the gist of it.

I make this before I go to bed and put it in the fridge… oats are ready to eat by morning.

I have a morning ritual of stuffing my face and reading e-mails, etc. before zooming out into the plant to go fix things.  I find that a breakfast like this keeps me satisfied well through the morning.  Hope you get a chance to try it some time.

Now those of you who follow this know that I like to post a video at the end of each “Happy Friday!!!”   I try to find something that ties in with the subject matter, and when I go video hunting I find some interesting stuff.  Never would have dreamed to find this “commercial” from 1939…