[228] Screed City
[228]
02/07/2023 Tuesday. Kitchen Microwave. Beaver Haus. Lower Granville, Vermont.
Well, it's Tuesday. I don't know why I switched to writing these things on Tuesday, yet here I am, writing on Tuesday. You see, being a renaissance man like me, you can never tell if I am coming or going, when do I even sleep? I just bought Twitter even, on a lark. Aint us billionaires so intriguing? Just joking, I am having a very hard time with the computer at the moment, and as much as my tiny little petty heart would love to go on a rant about how awful things have become that I have started watching math tutorials on youtube and was thoroughly entertained by the Chinese spy balloon, I will spare you the details. But part of my problem is that Junior Mint is at the mechanics getting a new muffler, new emergency brake pads, an oil change and like a ball bearing replaced or something, I mean, it is pretty rough being in Vermont in the Winter without a car. Like intolerable. And sure I have snow shoes and I should probably go out for a walk in them, but I also need to clean the house, and that is proving very difficult, especially since getting to the Garbage Room is actually detrimental to my physical health. The mounds of snow with layers of ice underneath, I mean, the other night, before I took my car in, I was walking from the driveway to the house and I thought I had a stroke or something because I couldn't walk right and it was only the snow and ice, I mean, just that treacherous.
But the car. I think I will be out about $750 dollars in the end. parts and labor. Is it worth it? Maybe. I need the car, but at this point I have probably spent more money on upkeep than we paid for the car in the first place. At the very least I should be looking for a new one, but I like the old rusty dog, the couch on wheels. And I trust JD about what needs fixing. I mean, I think he is too lazy and dumb to be a fraud. And I do remember seeing something on the computer that explained the noises I have been hearing that last little while being related to a ball bearing or something. I wonder if I should call him tomorrow and ask to have him replace the motor mount I bought like a year ago. I think it is in the trunk. Either that, or it is still in the Garbage Room. If only I could get out there to check.
I had to leave Portland early. On Friday. I panicked. The cold snap was something else. The last time I left Portland, I had to leave early because the snow storm of a lifetime was hitting. And for some reason these weather events always happen on Fridays. Last year it was the same thing. I feel like every time I was coming back to Vermont there was Winter storm warning. And then I would be stuck inside for days and days, with intermittent power and a sour disposition. But I am glad I came back early. The boiler nearly broke. The pipes under the kitchen sink froze. I had to run a heater on them. Luckily they didn't burst. But had I not been around who the hell knows. The house could only get up to 50F with the boiler running the whole time. I slept in long johns and socks and a long sleeved shirt. Five blankets, and I still had to keep my head under the covers to keep my hair warm. I mean, it was deadly. But I made it through. And I did get most of the work done. I built the wall, but I wasn't able to finish the wall because it was so cold, all the personnel from the Brewery's Tasting Room were huddled in my work site, meaning I couldn't be sanding on top of them. So it wasn't exactly my fault I couldn't finish. But it made a liar out of me when I said I would finish everything before I left. In my defense I did work 55 hours over four and 1/2 days, so it's not like I was gold bricking, but still. I mean, one cool thing happened in the end, I got approved to use the work van. Which is going to make my life much easier there now. Although I need to remember I am driving a work van with the company name on the side of it. Not that I am an asshole driver, it's just, you know, sometimes things happen. And it is best to behave in certain circumstances.
Another thing, I came back to 9 bottles of Ticklers kubloowied!!! Like exploded 2 liter bottles. That is 4.5 gallons of sugar yeast water. If it wasn't for the plastic containers, I mean, I did quite a bit of mopping since last Saturday, and there would have been quite a bit more had I not used the prophylactic. That's what she said. I ordered some relief valves. I guess I am going to retrofit some lids and see if I can't solve my issues. 60 lb psi PRVs. I only have eight bottles right now still fermenting, and I am about to leave town for eight days, and I know the valves won't come in time for me to save those, so I don't know, I can put them in the basement and cool their jets as the bridesmaids say. Or I can burp the hell out of them until Monday morning and hope for the best. It is a risk either way. If I stall the ferment, that won't be good, but if they explode, then they will be useless anyway. I mean, who thought starting your own brewing company would be this complicated and dangerous? But in good news on that front, I have discovered, or more precisely, Scott mentioned that I should use seltzer bottles instead of soda bottles, because they are the same bottles, and the seltzer ones have seltzer, which is just water and CO2, so my carbon footprint has gone down. And they cost the same. $1.29 per 2 liter bottle. And I can drink the water if I want, or not, instead of having to just dump destructive Capitalism down the drain. I mean, it is a different scam than the other scam, but it is a less guilty scam than the regular scam.
Mimi gave me a stand mixer for Christmas! Just arrived. Although they have been trying to deliver it for weeks, but there was a signature requirement, which was kind of funny for Vermont, I mean, read the room Amazon or Fed Ex or whatever. Having a signature requirement around here is insane. Half the time the mailman just drop kicks packages from the mailbox to the front door. I mean, considering how treacherous the walkways are. But I made pita bread. And, in my infinite quest to make a decent flour tortilla, this recipe has come the closest to what I would desire as far as the outcome is concerned. I mean, sure, that is probably sac-relidge as the teenagers say, but still, nobody can give me an honest and repeatable flour tortilla recipe that actually works. They just don't work. Never. Not once. And the pita bread is thing is interesting. I mean, it doesn't make actual pita bread, that is something different, but whatever this cool trick that doctors are furious about, it works. It is basically 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of Greek yogurt, salt and baking soda. And the tortillas puff up like they are supposed to when you cook them. And using the stand mixer means you don't have to add too much extra flour because the mixer can do things your hands can't do, like transferring heat, or, your hands transfer heat and the stand mixer does not. Oh! the recipe also calls for oil, but not a lot, like typical flour tortilla recipes call for, so, I mean, I don't know. Maybe I should go back and try the other flour tortilla recipes in the stand mixer. Maybe I can get in front of my own problems that way. I mean, maybe I just have a hot hand? I mean, I was known as Hot Hand Joe in high school. The ladies loved it.
I also made General Tso's chicken the other day. I suppose I need more practice, but the chicken itself turned out great. The trick is corn starch. Lots and lots of corn starch. And double frying. But I didn't have soy sauce. Can you believe it? Who the hell doesn't have soy sauce? I have fish sauce, Worchester sauce, sweet and sour sauce, all sorts of ketchup and mustard and mayonnaises, but no soy sauce, not even in little packets. And in a hilarious turn of events I went onto the computer and found quite a few recipes for making your own soy sauces, and oh boy, what a wild scam that was. Soy sauce is very specific and very complex. You think it is just dark salty water, but it is not. It is like pretending you can make whiskey out of beer and old wine. Spoiler alert, you can't. I mean, the main recipes have you caramelize a cup of sugar and then add water and vinegar and corn starch and salt. And what you end up with, because I did, in fact try to make this, is, burnt sugar salt liquid that tastes like crap. And why the hell would you even need to make a soy sauce replacement? Because it is soy? Like gluten free or something? I mean, it was one of those very odd interactions with the computer where you know something is terribly wrong, but somehow very niche. That people thought there was a market for something creative and insular, but was really just idiots getting a brain trust together to make something that didn't make any sense at all, and like an idiot I fell into their trap. But no, I did not make a soy sauce substitute. I ended up using fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce. And the high ends with the one sauce and the fishy ends of the other sauce created some sort of gross Suicide-style unpleasantness that kind of ruined the dish. So in the future I will be buying some soy sauce and trying everything again. And because I had a bunch of fried chicken left over, I put it in the freezer for Ron. Later Ron.
I had a dream last night that G was doing some teenager challenge where they drank a concoction of seven bananas and as a parent I was very concerned about their well-being. Then I dreamt that the Genie lift I was using for work failed twice and fell over. And I said; In all my years of doing this shit, that has never happened, not once! And I woke up at the end of the dream like it was the ending of some sitcom, and I was supposed to take some lesson away from it all. But I don't know what any of it means. But what to do with teenagers and work, I mean, they are both nothing but trouble. I mean, in the dream Dirty Dyer was there, hoping to get the job done so he could get a job at the university which paid well and had good benefits, so that is a clue. But at the same time I was not agreeing with his philosophy, because I don't want to get a full-time job. But who knows? Maybe I should get a job at a university teaching students how to live in the real world. As a working class artist. That no matter what you do, it will suck. And really, spend your 20's and 30's just fucking around while you are young, because nothing will change when you get older and at least you will have tried. And then when you are in your 40's you can be used to working in a field that is so removed from your art that you won't even notice whether or not you are doing good thins, but because you have become so disciplined by working all day and arting all night that you may actually make good things that the version of yourself, decades ago, would actually respect, even though no matter what you do, you will remain in the working class and it is okay because fuck society, man! You can't have it both ways. And really, you were here the whole time anyway, why not be a witness to how fucked up it is? And then one day there will be a balance in your own universe that will make everything alright and you can get down to the actual work you want to do, and sure, you won't be young and pretty anymore, but you will have the skills to make the things you want to make in a way you want to make them, and then the students will think you are a loser for giving up and what the hell do you know and they will do whatever the hell it is that kids do and life will be the exact same as it was when you were that young and bucking the system in the same way. And because none of it really matters, you can go home and write your hilarious takes about the nature of society and eventually all of your views will become outdated and you will slowly drift away into the ether, never making the actual point that you had intended to make in the first place, which was that life is unfair and being a working class artist is double work and gets exactly zero respect because nobody wants to hear about how much the poor suffer in this world, they only want know when billionaires have the time to get some sleep. Because somehow this system we have where people with money are somehow more interesting than the people without any money, even though they have the most boring, aggravating lives, I mean, my problem right now is that I am all over the place, one day I am in NYC, the next in Pittsburgh, then Portland, Maine, then Vermont, then next week Berlin, but so what? I find it exhausting, I don't really want it. I would prefer to be in the City. With a studio and a way to make money, but I can't have it. My work doesn't work that way. But then my doppelganger, Leo the Perv, who is now dating a 19 year old, I mean, that fucker is the same age as I am, I mean, it would be like dating one of my child's fucking classmates, it is beyond gross, but if you think that I couldn't introduce a gun like that in the first act of this writing, what is it? Chekov's gun or whatever, that I wouldn't come back to the computer rant, I mean, those pictures with the shit eating grin that dude has, I mean, I dropped out of high school when I was 17, then I spent quite a few years going around being pretty fucked up, but imagine doing that famous? And having a man-baby with millions of dollars and insane fame trying to touch your private parts? Flying around on private jets? I mean, maybe it is interesting, in the sense that is really fucked up, I mean, I don't find these people interesting, but I certainly get a lot of information about their lives somehow. And I guess I must look for it, because it comes to me, but the Chinese spy balloon, why is that different? Why can't all things be global instead of local? I particularly love that the insane Right can't hold onto a single criticism about it. Not because I want them to fail, which I do, they are racist, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, anti-poor, anti-American, Christian Nationalist Fascists, but so what, that is what they are, but their hair on fire response to this very odd and serious thing is so insane that it is very entertaining. There is no figurehead that can make it okay. It somehow transcends the politics. To go from; Why didn't he shoot it down, to; How come he shot it down, to; Why didn't he scoop it up? Like you could just grab a jet liner out of the air somehow? Or that it would be okay to crash land a jetliner on American soil, like into some suburban enclave just to stick it the Kung Flu Commies? I mean, I was lamenting to Professor Curly just yesterday that it was unfortunate that we were born in the interstitial time between having the internet and not having the internet. That we sadly had the memory of what things were like before. That we couldn't just live in a world where the computer was a thing, because we remembered when it wasn't a thing. But this thing, this balloon thing, it really takes me back to a different time. Back when the Tea Party was in full swing, and people like Sarah Palin were out there being folksy about how bat-shit crazy all these fuckers were. And because of the computer everything has become normalized, and who knows what that means for the future, but maybe we can all remember this moment in time. The moment I am about to make reference to. I mean, I had to do quite a bit a research to find this video. Because it didn't just show up when I typed; Where are the weapons of mass destruction into google. Or youtube. It is a song lost to history, but back then, back in what? 2004, I mean, moral panic, moral panic, moral panic. Sam Smith wearing devil horns at the Grammys? They are calling for his head! His head! If you don't think the Right has become Christian Fundamentalists by now, you are a fool. They have lost their minds about everything. And it is only going to get worse.
[Insert Weapons of Mass Destruction]