And to hell with you, too, Life magazine

Life Magazine used to be something special, a bastion of excellant photojournalism, and a place of employment for photographers not sufficiently intrepid to climb mountains and stuff for National Geographic.  Then it died and was reincarnated in a pathetic, downsized version they give away with the Friday edition of my daily paper.  I guess it’s free, which means it is worth what I pay for it.  Mostly, the best I can say is that it is inoffensive–it has little celebrity blurbs, ads for new movies disguised as reviews, that sort of stuff.  But now they have gone too far, and I could cheerfully strangle one Audrey Lee, an ink-stained wretch who perpetrated a little thing called “Flea Markets Made Easy.”  Um, as if going to a flea market is difficult?

Anyway, some of her advice is sound, if simple-minded. Like get there early.  And bring a flashlight if you’re going to be shopping before dawn. (Duh!)  But what has drawn my ire is the following advice — “Ask ‘What’s your best price?’  Then counter by knocking 25 to 30 percent off the quoted amount.”  What’s wrong with this picture?  For one thing, any schmuck who pulls this is basically calling the dealer a liar.  At best, this is grossly disingenuous.  Someone asks my best price, they get my BEST price.  Anyone who pulled this shitty tactic with me would (at best) get a really cold look, glare or stare, along with “What part of BEST PRICE did you fail to comprehend?”

Good grief, as if running a little flea market stand isn’t hard enough, I have some  nitwit in a national publication telling people how to make my business life harder.  And  Audrey–stay the hell away from my stand.

Three Alaska Mysteries

Case the first:  At 3:10 am Saturday, Nicolette L. Anderson, 21, is stopped for erratic driving and busted for driving drunk.  The troopers put her in the back seat of their cruiser, whereupon she expresses her displeasure by kicking out the rear window.  Feisty little lady, that.  The shower of glass sent one trooper to Valley Hospital for some Band-Aids and a lollipop.  Little Nicky was charged with resisting arrest, assault, and criminal mischief in addition to the DUI.

The mystery:  What the hell was she thinking?

Case the second:  Early Saturday afternoon, Matthew Haar, 17, is driving along eastbound on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway with a couch in the bed of his Chevy Avalanche.  The couch makea a desperate attempt to escape, ends up in westbound traffic.  Thump.

John Hunter, 53, slams on the brakes of his Avalanche to avoid hitting the couch (screech!), gets rear-ended by Allison Barkhurst, 40, who is driving a Chevy utility truck. (crash! tinkle, tinkle)

Then Vincent Cramer, 29, slams into the back of Barkhurst’s truck (another crash, etc), and spins her around and she ends up off the highway altogether.

Haar was busted for having an unsecured load, Barkhurst was taken to Valley Hospital, and the couch refused to comment.

Mystery:  What was the couch doing in the Avalanche in the first place?  Was Haaar moving?  Did he have a hot date that night and couldn’t afford a motel?  Did he just feel sorry for the couch, maybe thought it was getting cabin fever, needed some air?  Had he stolen the couch?  We may never know.

Case the third:  Near mnidnight on Thursday, Palmer police showed up at a disturbance–Kevin M. Stock, 46, had beaten the snot out of someone, striking him repeatedly with  a “metal and plastic boot cast.”  He really whaled on the vic– who sustained two serious head lacerations, plus numerous cuts, abrasions, and bruises to his upper body.  Not to mention the sheer humiliation.  Stock was arrested for assault and also busted on an old outstanding DUI charge (no surprise there).

Mystery:  So was Stock wearing the cast or what? Did he sort of knock down the vic and stomp him, or did he wield the cast like some clumsy club?   And why did he not use a more efficient weapon? Oh well. . . .when casts are outlawed, only outlaws will have casts. . . . .

Stay tuned for more tales from the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Curse the Vermin!

And not little pissy Anglo-Saxon oaths, either.  I want big fat nasty Gypsy curses, curses to bring on mysterious illnesses and devastating financial losses, eye of newt and tongue of frog and hair of dog curses, curses  that would last down the generations, curses that would  detroy their estates utterly, and sow salt among the ashes.  There!  I feel better already.  What has me in such a royal snit, you might ask?  I am incensed because some heinous perpetrators poisoned my sweety, that’s why.  I would call them fucking morons, but to do so would insult fucking and morons alike.  But I digress.

I had a frustrating day yesterday–business had been rained out all weekend, but the comp weather said “zero percent” chance of precipitation.  Well, I had zero precipitattion all over my van and my tables and knives and stuff yesterday, so I was miffed.  Not homicidally so, but fairly pissed off nonetheless, and I was hoping that Kathy had had a better day.  Things often seem to work that way with us.  Sort of part of the Alaska boom and bust syndrome, partly because of the way our natal charts resonate.  Anyway, I called her last night and heard the news.  It was bad.

There has been a bit of a mosquito epidemic up the valley of late.  This is annoying, but hardly life-threatening–it’s not like they carry malaria or anything, and the effects of  their bites (unlike those of the really awful East Coast US salt marsh skeeters, which can last a day or more) subside in a few minutes.  Kathy had been looking forward rather keenly to the first hatch of the dragonflies, oneof the main skeeter predators.  Besides, it is a lot of fun to watch them.  (Yeah, we watch bugs.  You don’t have cable, you do shit like that.)

Anyway, yesterday afternnon, Kathy is minding her own business, and suddenly she smells this awful chemical odor.  Then her sense of smell shut down.  Then she started showing other neurological symptoms–muscle tremors, weakness, sudden-onset visual problems.  Turns out that some ignorant human vermin sprayed some sort of chemical poison all over the neighborhood in an effort to reduce the mosquito population.  This is stupid for so many reasons it seems pointless to list them all, but. . . .One, the effect doesn’t last very long anyway.  Two, it just improves the breed, tends to make future generations of mosquitoes more poison-resistant.  Three, it fucks up the environment, kills off beneficial bugs and birds and all.  Four, it poisons PEOPLE.

Shortly after the spraying, things got real quiet outside.  Before that, there was a lot of critter-noise–frogs doing froggie noises, birds chirping, other bugs buzzing.  But  then it got, well, deathly quiet.  The critters that had not been killed outright fled the scene.  Kathy had to stay and ingest the toxin, however.  That was when she started crying, realizing that so many critters had been killed or at least traumatized.  And when we spoke about it last night , I made the mistake of mentioning that it probably killed the dragonfly larvae that would have hatched soon.  Then she started  crying again.

I would love to have some quality  time alone with the perps.  I would show them the error of their ways.  I would use reason, logic, and a blackjack..  They would probably  never poison the environment again.  At any rate, they would never WALK again.

A KittenTale: Not for the Squeamish

Of late, I have been getting little wiffs and wafts of litterbox smell when I’m in bed at night in bed–not unusual, being that the litter box is like three feet away from my bed.  Heck, in my 10×12 cabin, almost everything is three feet away.  Anyway, the scent seemed to be getting more pervasive and intrusive, so this morning, fortified by two cups of MJB European Roast, I decided to investigate.  I was planning on getting a showe later today anyway.

So I get down on hands and knees and check things out. Preliminary results are encouraging–I find 83 cents in cash–American, no less– and my good tweezers.  This is  kind of a big deal–I don’t own a razor of any sort and am not much good with scissors, so I use a pair of tweezers to for facial foliage maintenance.  When a beard hair gets out of line, I say “Pluck it!”, and I do.  But I digress.

Digging farther under the bed, I made a horrifying discovery.  I had this flat full of really primo pyrite crystal clusters, maybe $200-300 worth.  The kittens had been using it for alitter box.  Okay, fine–who could blame’em?  It LOOKS like a litter box. . . .

So I continue and drag out a big box full of hematite necklaces and carnelian pendants.  It was shitty, too.  Went still farther back, pulled out a box full of mostly NA literature, topped with a ream or so of printer paper.  You guessed it–more poopo del kitteno.  Rats!  Going farther back, I found a loose rock, a really nice bit of silver-rich chalcopyrite.  This was not good–why wasn’t it in the box, with the selenite crystal clusters and the peridot crystal clusters?  Well, because the little darlings had shredded the damn box and used IT for their powder room, too.  At this point, I was waxing wroth.

Not wishing to actually squirm all the way  under the bed, I got my trusty dumpster-diving aid, a home-made three-pronged garden implement maybe three feet long. Reached under the bed, pulled out a knife catalog replete with various feline gore–evidently, Frankie had given birth on it–near it, anyway.  Pulled out my camo t-shirt–whew, just kitten hair on it. Pulled out my really neat 1995 Iditarod t-shirt–it was clean.   Then I fished out one of my faves, a souvenir t-shirt from the Quiet Riot 1991 Alaska tour–it was shitty.  The shirt, not the tour.  Okay, out on the porch to air and dry it went –along with the shittiest boxes of rocks. Finally, out came another shirt, a long-sleeved Eddie Bauer number that was thoroughly urine-soaked–out it goes to dry, maybe out in the trash.  I’ll triage  this stuff later.  But the end is in sight.

I got the broom and dustpan off the porch, swept up the stuff and bagged it up, where it joined the other two bags of nasty trash that are destined for the dumpster.

Then I taped up the remaining boxes and sprayed them with cat-be-gone, this bitter apple essence that sort of repels them, and shoved them back under the bed.

Finally, I sternly lectured the two miscreants–Ginger and Peachy–and reminded them that the under-bed storage area is not, repeat not, a litter box, and that any further infractions will be dealt with sternly.  Like  as in turning them into little orange hats.  Or tiny orange mittens.

They seemed suitably impressed if unrepentant.  Time will tell.

Stay tuned.