Category Archives: Humor

Little Dragon in Her Nest

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Where do baby dragons come from, anyway? Clearly every dragon mom needs to find a welcoming, inspiring environment that moves her to nestle in and protect her offspring from their hatching to their fledgling flights. Or a cozy place to knock them out of when she  gets fed up with their caterwauling and biting and she can retreat to her peaceful hangout and sip nectar in blissful, scaly solitude again.

So I made this little lady a nest. Full of tiny collected treasures, ’cause I think that might be something a small dragon would like. I mean, I would, and I can be kind of a dragon-lady occasionally. Though I have no intention of laying any dragon eggs or anything like that, in case you were wondering. I doubt I’d be a good enough mother for ’em anyway, being too inattentive for that when I’m already so busy collecting shiny objects and tiny treasures to make fanciful dragons’ nests.

Ah, the complicated life of a fantasist.Found-object sculpture: Little Dragon's Nest

Hanging around with Dead People

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My fondness for cemeteries is always heightened by admiration for their artful and natural beauties in the wonderful array of stonework and iron, stained glass and sculpture that intermingle with splendid displays of wild or planted flowers, trees, grasses, and moss that may be meticulously designed and tended or equally lovely in their rampant and neglected states. I love, too, a cemetery’s history and mystery; the stories both told and untold that rise up from every grave fill me with awestruck wonder as I perambulate and read, rest and imagine. The silence, punctuated by bird sounds, by wind and rain, and sometimes by the talk of others wandering through, gives me room for my thoughts to roam while my eyes are distracted and enchanted by the views.

And though I don’t necessarily wish to keep them company in a permanent way anytime soon, I find the dead in a cemetery very accepting, even friendly, company, so I am rarely melancholy in a graveyard, mostly meditative. And occasionally, amused. I especially like the headstones and monuments that have either their own sense of humor or have in one way or another become more entertaining than they were originally intended to be. I have even devised an artistic category for the rare few sculptures and markers that are evidently the work of good-hearted but slightly under-talented designers and artists, whom some might charitably name folk artists but whose misbegotten and unintentionally horrifying or hilarious (horlairifying?) tributes I dub not so much Folk Art as WTFolk Art.

Photo: Poor Little Homely Charlie

I hope beyond words that little Charlie’s guardian cherub was a whole lot less unhandsome when the headstone was first made for their poor youngster, and not yet so weather-beaten. Me, I’d wake up in the grave with nightmares with that weird little blob hovering overhead!

Whether it’s my irreverence in the face of death’s inevitability or the inspiration of such kindhearted awfulness, I do find that sometimes I can’t help writing epitaphs, myself. Even my own epitaph, or variations thereon, because no one’s better equipped to deride my quaint and odd-acious self than I am, after all. Plus, if they’re terrible verses, I won’t be around to be annoyed by them once I’m dead. Sorry, the rest of you.

How about one for the Sparks family vault?

Here lies Richard in the dark

For having died, he’s lost his Spark,

And yet with Kathryn still he’s yoked,

Even when buried, for she croaked.

But wait! There’s more…a little something just for me:

Who lies below tucked in this bed

With hollow bones and empty head

Could not have left us fast enough;

Perhaps a diamond in the rough,

But her potential, though so pretty,

Stayed all unmet, and more’s the pity.

Photo: Roswell

Hey, isn’t this where the aliens are buried? Lemme in!

Dangerous Romance

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Love & Homicide in the Wings

A mere moth should never marry A too-pretty Fritillary:

Ay, anterior, posterior, She’ll always act superior,

And opt, yea, to co-opt her an Obnoxious Lepidopteran

To ransom her; by chance some’re Both fancier and handsomer.

Tears will roll like many pennies When he uses his antennae

So he really realizes Not all butterflies are prizes;

Though he scarcely found it scary Marrying a Fritillary,

Someday soon he surely will, her Arrogance the caterpillar

Of his innocent devotion Kill; its wings will know no motion.

Down the alleys ghastly, ill-lit, Flits, forlorn, the moth; to kill it

Is a mercy of the fires On his thwarted old desires—

Clasp a gaslamp, doomed Cecropia! Love you once believed Utopia

Ne’er loved you, never trusted That you weren’t just maladjusted.

Ah! Madame, your Butterfly, alack, will only stab you in the back;

The price of your hubristic pride Could well become Cecropicide.Digital illo: Another Moth Myth

Foodie Tuesday: Holidays on Ice

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As lazy as I am when being an ‘everyday’ entertainer, that attitude of mine only multiplies and intensifies when it comes to special occasions. I have no interest in hosting a party if everyone is having fun except me. So it’s especially important to me when I’m thinking of any event, particularly a festive one like a holiday (and I’ll embrace any holiday that’ll have me, if it means an excuse for celebrations with friends and loved ones), that I do as much of the heavy lifting as I can ahead of the day. Being a piggy with a sweet tooth, and not opposed to alcohol in moderation, that means I am known on occasion to haul out the Fix It-Douse-It-Forget-It recipes. You know, the ones that you put booze in or pour it over, seal up like little yummy mummies, and tuck away in a safe spot to age until party time. Keep ’em on ice, so to speak.

One of my favorites for this used to be Christmas Pudding, usually using a classic recipe like the lovely one given to me by a friend in London the very first time I visited there nearly thirty-five years ago. I have since become even lazier; it’s a million-ingredient extravaganza with real fresh suet and tons of over-the-top fat and sugary delights, and requires fussy prep and long, carefully monitored steaming in (for those of us who lack a real pudding steamer) a low-tech contraption cobbled together from whatever substitutes one can find for the pudding tin, before one can even attend to the artful draping in layers of liquor-soaked cheesecloth and plastic wrap and tinfoil. Heavens! I’m salivating just thinking of the glory that emerged from those efforts when long weeks or months had passed and it was time for the great unveiling. A large spoonful of that miraculous stuff, re-warmed and blanketed in equally boozy hard sauce and washed down with a good stiff tot of port, and I was undoubtedly well enough pickled to last several months on a dark cupboard shelf myself. But it was a bit too much, not only the excess of caloric craziness and vaporous intake, but also in the immense labors it took to accomplish it all.

Nowadays I am (literally, to be honest) inclined toward greater ease. But I still enjoy some indulgences for the same special occasions, even holidays that might have little personal resonance if it weren’t for the permission they give me to indulge so. Now that we’re rumbling into the high holiday season as America immerses in it (and let’s just start with tomorrow, which according to my quick research, is Nevada Day—who but a handful of devoted Nevadans knew!), there will be no shortage of reasons for partying. Now that I think about it, my birthday is the feast day of La Guadalupana, and since I have without even having previously made that connection been decanting a homemade rose liqueur (from dried Mexican rosebuds, no less) that I think would be highly appropriate to her story, I might have to find excuses to tuck that event in as well. Guess that just confirms my longstanding belief that my own birthday is a major holiday.

But meanwhile, there are all kinds of seasonal treat regarded as something like a serious requirement in this country if one is to celebrate the holidays properly. Anything and everything pumpkin flavored, of course, with warming spices, the occasional fall fruits (apple, pear, quince) and maple syrup and various nutmeats thrown in—these are all high on the list, some of them with an emphasis on High. Oh, and eggnog. Never forget the eggnog. So I, being fairly easily led to hankering for food-and-drink-related things that are being touted and offered nearly everywhere I look, follow the resultant trail of salivation, if not salvation, right to the sources.

Today I felt moved to put together some of these seasonal treats, some to pop in the refrigerator for fairly immediate consumption (though intended to last for a few days in the chiller, at least), and a bit to wait for their starring moments. The former includes a Fall dessert combination of pumpkin, apple, and pecans, and the latter is this year’s take on eggnog. Because sipping champagne-and-roses (as I intend to do with a nice sparkling Rosé spiked with the aforementioned rose liqueur) is probably not enough.

Photo: Pumpkin-Apple Dessert Makes a Good Breakfast

Pumpkin-Apple Dessert makes a good breakfast, don’t you think?

Pumpkin-Apple Dessert

Not pie, but close…to pumpkin pie, apple pie, and pecan pie, all in one big ridiculously happy dish. Or served separately, if that’s your happy wish. See that? I made a little rhyme, too, all for the sake of my sweet tooth. The measurements in all of these are approximate and to taste, as are any cooking times and temperatures. You know me.

Pumpkin Pudding

1 large tin of pure pumpkin puree (29 oz), 3 eggs, 1/2 cup dark maple syrup, 1/4 cup coconut oil, 1 Tbsp vanilla, a hefty pinch of salt, 2 tsp cinnamon, 3/4 tsp allspice. Blend together thoroughly, pour into a greased covered pan, and bake or microwave (on high for about 5 minutes) until the eggs have thickened it slightly. Refrigerate.

You will probably not be shocked to know that I amped my pumpkin pudding up with the addition of a couple of scoops of vanilla whey protein powder, because I will be having some for breakfast once or twice before it’s gone.

Apple Pie Sauce

1 each Granny Smith (or other bright-flavored) and Fuji (sweet) apples, peeled and cored and diced, 2 Tbsp clarified browned butter, 3 Tbsp minced candied ginger, and a pinch of salt, all cooked down into a still-chunky bright applesauce with a quarter- to half-cup of gold rum.

Bacon-Maple Pecans

Pecan halves, bacon fat, and dark maple syrup. Melt and heat them together until the nuts grow faintly toasty and the fat and syrup caramelize, and you have candied pecans made in hog heaven. Yeah, you can use any sort of favored fat you like, so don’t cry if you’re vegan! Goodness is still within reach!

Photo: Pumpkin-Apple Dessert after Dinner

Pumpkin-Apple Dessert after dinner is good, too.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

And in honor of a couple of fabulous Puerto Rican ladies (Natalia and Fabiana) I happen to know and greatly admire, my take on the PR version of eggnog, or Coquito.

[Note: Just to be on the safe side and to take advantage of the slight thickening that heat brings out of eggs, I have made this in custard-fashion, cooking it slightly, but aside from the usual caveats regarding at-risk persons (i.e., the pregnant, the very young, the very old, and those with compromised immune systems) and raw eggs or alcohol, the combination of the two has been scientifically proven to kill, rather than foster, salmonella. Just so’s you know. Salud!]

Coquito Loco Rico

1 cup coconut butter, 54 oz coconut milk, 6 egg yolks, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 2 Tablespoon vanilla, 1 cup packed light brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg, and 1 tsp ground cardamom, all blended together and cooked, stirring constantly, until slightly thickened. Pour into a container that can be tightly closed (I used a 3 quart pitcher with a tight lid), add a pint of gold rum (I used PR-produced Bacardi), stir, seal, and stash in the depths of the fridge for as long as you can stand waiting The large proportion of alcohol keeps the eggs from spoiling. Serve cold or hot, straight up (high-octane!) or mixed with additional nonalcoholic coquito, eggnog, cream, or milk of any kind, and preferably in good company.

Because you may need the comfort, since this stuff can be so good it’s scary. Happy Halloween, everybody. Even if you don’t care to dress up for it or recognize it as any kind of meaningful event for you, it can be well worth your while to gather some friends and loved ones to celebrate something with a flavor-packed dessert or a rollicking drink.

Transitional Style

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Digital illo: Wilbert & Wallinda had Hoped for the Bright Lights of BroadwayWe’re in the process of selling our house, my spouse and I. It’s something we’d considered for a couple of years, downsizing to an apartment closer to a size appropriate for two adults, but we hadn’t made any serious motions because we’d not found anyplace that met our wishes for location, price, condition, and covered parking. (Texas-sized hailstorms, anyone?) When we found such a place, it was when we weren’t really looking anymore, of course.

We’d been out on a Sunday expedition and were heading home when we saw a sign for an ‘upcoming’ listing, called the owner, and discovered that he had something different and probably even better suited to our wishes. Three weeks later, we’re close to closing with buyers. Crazy. What’s fascinating to me, in addition to the oddity of the situation itself,  is being reintroduced to the world of Real Estate and its intriguingly arcane, euphemistic, and otherwise idiosyncratic processes and language. Like all other legal and commercial ventures, it’s wondrously weird. Sometimes aggravating, often amusing, and especially entertaining to me when it comes to the times when one party or another is trying very hard to find a word to describe something that is—well—basically indescribable.

I was reminded that both buildings and their furnishings, for example, that are neither clearly classic nor modern can be called Transitional, and that this nondescript term has been so often used in this way that it has become a recognizable style itself, but still lacks many distinct characteristics. It’s more about what it isn’t than what it is. There are long lists of words and phrases and concepts that are equally vague and yet relatively easy to interpret by those of us who have read enough Real Estate-speak and seen the reality of the properties and objects being described to begin to recognize the connections, as tenuous as they may sometimes be, between the word and the actuality.

So when I read “park-like setting,” I am more inclined to think a place is going to require massive injections of cash and labor to sustain its massively over-groomed acreage. “Designer’s dream” usually means someone with far more money than taste hired a person only marginally more skillful to make everything in the building match too well and fit trends so perfectly that they’ll never be wholly in style after their current popularity fades—or, conversely, that some self-declared Artiste so personalized the joint that no one in her right mind would think it anything but a gut job as a purchase. One of the best is always, of course, “starter home” or “DIYer’s delight,” either of which can only mean that the home’s toilet is an open hole in the middle of the living room floor and the last time the roof was repaired it was done with a bright blue tarp.

It’s not so different from the brain shift required of a viewer expecting obviousness and objectivity from abstract images. What looks like neon lights in bokeh, perhaps, or a wallpaper pattern of whimsical orangey bubbles can certainly represent nothing more than a blurry photo of a vintage neon sign or a repeating design made from imagined circles. But it could also be that both images were created, however indirectly, by beginning with the very same photo of a small handful of earthworms drowned in rain, beached on a concrete slab, and desiccated into interesting squiggly shapes in varying shades of brown. Which is what these two happened to be. A DIYer’s delight, if you’re an artist with a post-rainstorm messy patio. A transitional sort of place, I guess, for the worms and for my eye for images, both.
 Digital illo: I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

Don’t Make Me *Think*—Make Me *Happy*

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Shallow as a one-sided gnat’s freckle, that’s me.

If asked what movie I’d prefer to watch, book to read, music to hear, I’m almost never the person in the crowd who says “challenge me!” I’m the one who wants to be effortlessly  and palatably entertained, and that rarely includes any sort of idea or activity that involves my working, learning, evolving, or—banish the thought! (literally)—thinking.

I have always known that I’m not fond of experiencing anything that makes me feel the slightest bit out of my comfort zone, and while I don’t think it admirable or something I find brag-worthy, I don’t think it’s shameful, either. Even the people that I know who crave the New and different and are energized by being amid the exotic, the confrontational, or the controversial mostly seem to find that very pleasurable rather than frightening, and so, choose it because being uneasy or even frightened is in its way pleasant to them. True adrenaline junkies are not alone in this: the great explorers among us, whether those of intellectual or physical, artistic or scientific realms, thrive on the jagged edge of the known and the safe.

So, as I was wandering around the interwebs this morning and looking through a certain high-end vintage auction house’s catalogue of art, I was struck by how many works I could admire for their originality, their technical facility, their wit, and/or their power, but how many I could also truthfully say I was attracted to, myself? Not so many. Some there were that I thought incredibly impressive and deeply respect-worthy for numerous reasons, but few among them would I ever consider hanging in my own house or office or want to look at long term.  I do like mysteries and scary stories, and there are plenty of artworks and concepts and images that amuse and delight me for the very reason that I find them ugly or appalling, even to the point of painful laughter, but unless these things meet my own criteria for what I’d like to enjoy at length, it’s all for naught.

And of course, as a visual artist myself, and one who’s never made any particular headway with building a paying audience for anything I do, I am always intrigued to snoop around at such sites’ pricing of artworks. I marvel at what is listed as unsold, seeing artworks of phenomenal skill and complexity offered for what I think pretty reasonable prices (though I certainly couldn’t afford them, not least because of my aforementioned lack of success as an art entrepreneur); at what has sold that I couldn’t imagine living happily with; at what astronomical prices are being asked for things that in my opinion don’t even come close in material costs, labor time, or skill level to what I’ve sold of my own work in the past for comparative pennies. This kind of perusal is highly educational, occasionally frustrating, sometimes encouraging, and most often, just a great source of inspiring ideas and images that make me want to head back to my own drawing board again. Worth all of it, if only for that last.

On reflection, I do remember that I have made many images and told many stories myself that I didn’t want to hang on my own walls, and even a few times have destroyed ones that I knew someone else liked because I didn’t think it represented my ideals anyhow. That’s the strangeness and the delight of the arts, isn’t it. One person’s trash is another’s pleasure. Crazy. Wonderful.Digital illo from a painting: O Happy Day

The Shape of Things to Come is Squiggly & Crumpled

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Photo: The Shape of Things to ComeMy inability to foretell the future seems to become more pronounced as I get older. Is this because I’m more aware of the potential diversions and distractions, thanks to my ever-increasing wisdom? Because I’m more attuned to Other Worlds as I sneak ever closer to the time when I’ll dwell in them, and lose focus on this realm? Is it because I’ve already forgotten what I was talking about at the beginning of this paragraph and have no room for pursuing any larger thoughts than sentence-chasing?

More likely, it’s just that the forces in this universe are much wilier than I am and outfox me at every turn, and as I age it only becomes more apparent to me, and to everyone around me. I’m okay with that. In fact, I learn, with every revolution of the solar system, more of how much adventure and delight can lie in the unexpected places that life takes, leads, or pushes me. All the prescience in the world wouldn’t necessarily have better prepared me for what lay ahead, and being clairvoyant couldn’t possibly have convinced me that the many fabulous extravaganzas of mysterious tangential journeying sprung on me were the right path or worth the risks. Yet it’s all gotten me Here. A twisting, bumbling, contorted tour, yes, but one with a lot of happy happenings along the way.

What tomorrow will bring is anybody’s guess. Anybody’s but mine, that is.

When the Dust Settles

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Digital illo: Doom is So Depressing!People of all kinds of philosophical leanings readily resort to apocalyptic talk nowadays. We like hyperbole, to be sure. If it isn’t some version of some religion or other’s end times, it’s anything from worldwide economic collapse to irreparable ecological disaster. And, of course, any and every one of the dire predictions could prove true.

But focusing on that sort of stuff, let alone organizing one’s life around it, is my idea of a lousy substitute for real living. The largely Pollyanna flavor of my credo doesn’t preclude my being at least passably realistic about the world and its tribulations, and there are some things about which I am as pessimistic and removed from sanguine comforts as can be, but since I can’t change them, I know that they either will or won’t end at least my world, my life; if that’s the case, it won’t matter one iota to me, now, will it? And if I survive, well then, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

That’s the concern I think worth entertaining: What comes after the End of All Things? If I exist after what I thought was going to end all of my joys and riches, my struggles and concerns, either by destroying every atom of them or by killing me, then that would seem to be the plan, the attitude worth cultivating. I may have little to offer my fellow survivors beyond a sheepish high-five of shared amazement at our not being wiped out along with all other matter, but perhaps if there is more than one of us still standing after the firestorm or implosion or celestial sneezing fit that has massacred everything and everyone else, we can pool our resources and find other surprising pleasantries besides that we just plain aren’t dead yet. I’m betting on that particular scenario, given the relative utility of such thinking in comparison with stocking up plots and devices for scrabbling to continue to exist in a smoking hole of what was once a world. That one I’ll happily leave to darker and less benevolent thinkers, as I can only imagine living among them would kill me quickly enough anyhow. And I do think you know what I mean.

See you on the other side!Digital illo: After the Apocalypse, I'll be an Artist

Braggadocio

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Digital illo: Clever Bird!Crowing

Let me never be so craven as to be hubristic, crass,

Boastful as my cousin Raven, who (though he’s a silly ass)

Calls himself the Wise, the Clever, poses as a sage and wit—

I should hope that I would never be so wildly full of it—

All my fellows know my talents and my intellect and skill

Well enough that, on the balance, bragging would be overkill.

I prefer a steady diet of humility and style,

Being modest, cool, and quiet, and yet brilliant all the while.

Nah! Just kidding! I’m as happy as ol’ Raven is to brag;

I’m as boisterous a chappie, yelling out from crag to crag,

Tree to tree, tunnel to tower; I’ll announce my greatness, too;

Any reason, any hour, tell you I’m better than you!

Don’t assume because I’m smaller I’m less dazzling or less proud—

I’ll be glad to give a holler, shout my excellence out loud!

Speeding Along

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Here I am, moving along at speed again. Feels kind of like we’ve all been sucked into the vortex of time and will get spat out who-knows-when and who-knows-where, and in the meantime it’s one heck of a wild ride. But you know, it isn’t boring! I’m just glad I have such good company for the journey among my friends and loved ones. If you do happen to know where I’m headed, please just give me a little nudge in the right direction so my lack of a compass doesn’t get me in too much trouble. Thanks!

Photo: Life Rushes Onward

Life rushes onward. Am I on the bus or in front of it?