Just like a Chinese food casserole.

Here's something I remember from childhood. We were a Take-Out Family. Sure, some meals were cooked at home, but the meals my brothers and I most looked forward to came in paper boxes and plastic bags from restaurants in the neighborhood (sorry, Mom, Dad, thanks for everything you did for us, etc.). I'll tell you one of our very favorites: Golden Crown. Chinese Food! The greasiest, saltiest, not much at all like actual Chinese food I'm guessing, bloat-you-so-you-can't-wear-shoes-for-a-week kind of take-out.

Never a family for moderation, we'd order: pork fried rice, chicken chow mein, mu shu pork, broccoli beef, eighteen servings of lemon chicken (seemed like), and pot stickers. It was enough to feed an army, but we were only a family of five. SO,

On the weekend, after the leftover Chinese food had spent a few days congealing and stinking up our fridge, my dad would take a break from paying a mountain of bills (how clearly I remember him sitting at the head of the table and working through such a daunting stack of bills! and always in a blue sweatshirt. my mind, it's like a steel trap, I tell you.), and he'd make--Chinese food casserole.

Everything, everything from Golden Crown, in a single pyrex casserole dish. It...wasn't pretty. But, oh my god, it was so delicious. The mashed up, congealed, four-day-old takeout was actually better than when it had been fresh and organized into its appropriate boxes. And, not only is that a metaphor, on some level, for my beautiful leftover-casserole of a family, it is, conveniently, a metaphor for this blog post, which will now consist of some stinky, leftover thoughts that have been congealing in my mind for the past four days.

CASSEROLE:

1. Spring is here! I have a very scientific way of determining when, exactly, spring happens. Here's what I do: I look at my car. If it is covered, covered, in bird shit--I KNOW it's spring. Every window, in at least two distinct locations, must feature a uniquely shaped and colored bird "deposit." When that is the case--as it is now--spring has arrived! If you saw my car, you'd see it's a virtual constellation of bird excrement. So, Happy Spring, everybody.

2. Maybe it's Spring Fever, but lately, I've been really entertained by what I like to call the "Hall of Cyrus." Who is Cyrus? He is apparently the offspring of an instructor here at the college, who is extremely proud of EVERY piece of school work young Cyrus does. So, it gets posted to the wall right outside the women's restroom. And because I'm always going to, or coming from, the restroom, I feel very invested in Cyrus's ongoing academic achievements. Today, may I just offer you Cyrus's spelling test, on which he appears to have done exceptionally well:

I saw a big crater.
A comet is a huge mass of gas.
My brother is lazy.
There is a place called Rapid City in South Dakota.
Bacon is yummy!!!!
I like music.
I am a human.
When it's cold, I shiver.
There is a river near the school.
I am very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very clever.


3. I ate borscht for the first time. Something I really believe, truly, is that when someone asks you, "Do you want to try this food I made?" You SAY YES. So yesterday, when Jeff said, "Hey, I made some borscht today. Do you want some?" I didn't say, "What's borscht, again?" Or, "Do you think I'll like it?" Or even, "I'm not all that hungry because I just loaded up on free food at a reception." I said, "YES." And, as is always the case here where I live, it was really, really good. It was also hot pink (thank you, beets!). Like, exactly the color of a lipstick I have that is called, "Pomposity."

Are you on the Beet Train? People, are you? Get on the beet train! It makes for the best colored food, plus they've got such a satisfyingly soft texture, and they are so pompous. If you're not on board, get on board. Take a ride on the Beet Express. You won't regret it.

4. Here is the best thing that has happened to me this week: KW came to town! She's only one of my oldest friends, who has seen me through my bad perm, my bad braces, those awful tapered jeans with the zippers on the ankle, my crush on Matt Damon, et al. And she was a keynote speaker at a conference. Keynote! AKA, Very Important Person.

What I found out is: there is no better feeling, for me (I don't know how you feel, but you're free to tell me in the comment section of the slog), than watching someone I love do the very thing that they love to do. The thing that they're the very best at. I mean, KW, she had a room full of strangers eating out of her hand. I was eating out of her hand, too. I was so proud, I swelled up with pride the same way I swell up after eating a mountain of sodium in the form of chow mein.

Want to know what she talked about? Check back tomorrow, because it was so interesting I'm going to blog about it after I finish making this casserole!

So, there you have it. My slog casserole. Was it as good for you as it was for me?

Kendall

Honey is what??

Sometimes, I see something and I find it so thought-provoking and surprising, that I get all fidgety and anxious about who I can tell. Then, I remember. The blog! I can tell the blog.

Blog, listen to this: "Honey is bee vomit too."

I know this not only because someone scrawled the message across a sign outside of the arboretum, but because, after seeing the sign above, I did some serious, hard-nosed research. I pulled up my Google task bar and entered, "honey bee vomit."

Turns out, honey is regurgitated by bees after they consume nectar. If you really want to know (and you do, don't you?), bees consume nectar, and then the nectar hangs out in their "honey stomach," which is different from their other stomach. We're supposed to be comforted by that. Also, once the nectar is turned into honey by the enzymes in the honey-stomach, the bee voluntarily regurgitates it. And we're supposed to take comfort in that too--that the regurgitating is voluntary, which somehow distances it from the involuntary vomit that is totally gross.

Why did someone go to the trouble of writing this message on the "Pets Prohibited" sign? To point out how often something lovely (honey) is linked to something profane (puke!)? To remind us that, in life, the lovely and the ugly are interconnected and mixed together, and you can't have one without the other? Want beautiful flowers or big, tasty vegetables? You'll need some crap to make them grow. Want honey for your tea? Well, some bee is going to have to put its finger down its throat to pull some back up for you. Want love? Well, you're going to have to put up with some crap, too. (And this is supposed to be comforting: the crap we encounter and work through is part of the nature of the thing, and it might--if you follow the metaphor far enough--actually prove nourishing.)

Nourishing like bee vomit. Or manure.

Basely yours,
Kendall

PS: Obviously, the person who tagged the sign was protesting the park's apparent objection to dog poop. I'm pretty sure the arboretum was more concerned with maintaining its trails and keeping animals from wrecking their exotic, delicate plants. Still, I'm happy that person took sharpie to sign. I can't tell you how often in the past few days I've thought to myself, "Honey is bee vomit, too." Try it. See if you don't feel comforted.

Weird Science

Wow! Did you miss me?!? It's like I got to Portland, and I was so busy talking to everybody all about my blog, that I forgot to write the stupid blog! But now, I'm back.

If the next few entries look or smell weird, it's because I'm writing them from Portland. It's different here. Portland is weird. I've come home to celebrate Christmas, but mostly to watch hilarious interactions between my mother's cats (the bulimic one versus the one with cacne, "cat acne"); to do a bunch of laundry for free; and to try to eat more than my brothers. It seems only natural that I blogtalk, for a hot minute, about Portland (though, who are we kidding, I live in Beaverton, which is a whole different ballgame. An altogether boring one).

A classic Portland bumper sticker says, "Keep Portland Weird." (This sticker may have originated in Austin TX, then P-town just changed the name of the city to suit our weird needs.) The slogan is meant to call attention to the fact that Portland is proudly, determinedly weird. Just a few examples: there is a velvet painting museum (I think there might actually be two velvet painting museums). Female strippers here get totally, totally naked. It rains all the time but you hardly ever see an umbrella. We've built a whole city for books. There is a forest in the middle of town. Etc, etc.

But what makes one place weirder than any other? One could argue that Moscow is weird. Is it not weird to live in a city that smells like a sewage treatment facility? A city that has cows with glass windows built into their stomachs? And a billboard outside a gun store that reads, "Your wife said it's okay, Buy a new gun today!"?

Still, I've compiled a list of events that have happened to me here in Portland in the past few days, and have never happened in Idaho.

*Hottest Bod in the USA. I met several friends out on Friday, where we drank fancy drinks, talked about online dating (good), online stalkers (bad), the inevitability that we will all accidentally bonk our future, hypothetical babies' heads on things based on our tendency to bonk our own heads on things (we decided they will turn out fine anyway), and of course, discussed who to vote for in the Hottest Bod in the World contest. This is something that happens when your friend is a public relations guru. JLG represents Bodman fragrance (we've all seen the "Hot bod!" commercials, right?), and she told us to tell the world--I was like, I'm bringing it to my blog, so don't worry, the world will know--to vote. Everyone, vote for Jordy! Not convinced, yet? Watch this video--and be warned, not totally SFW, since it features some awesome objectification of the male body. It is important to be an educated voter. But I think we can all agree that Jordy is the hottest bod.

*Singing Christmas Trees, and Progressive Political Carols. Notorious KMW suggested we go to a bar called the Slammer, because, as she said, "They kind of go all out with the Christmas decorations." She was not lying. I didn't get a photo, but it sort of looked like this, except a dive bar:

While we were there, guess who came in? Some progressive political carolers! They sang a song that went something like this (sung to the tune of "12 Days of Christmas"): "In the first year of Presidency, Obama promised me..." then, there were twelve things that included (I can't remember them all, but I think you'll get the gist): closing Gitmo, repealing the Patriot Act, reforming schools, no home foreclosures, and, instead of "a partridge in a pear tree," they sang, "open gays in the military." I said, "Toto, we're not in Idaho anymore."

Then, the owner of the bar gave the carolers twenty dollars, and the head caroler said, "Alright, now let's go to my Dad's!" And they were gone.

All that Christmas activism made me have to go the bathroom, where in the stall, right next to the toilet, I found a singing, gyrating Christmas tree! The song was an obvious one, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," though of course, in the bathroom I had to change the words to "Squattin' Around the Christmas Tree." There was a woman putting on makeup at the sink and I said, "It's weird that this tree is singing to me right now." She said, "Just be thankful you're not really messed up. I was in here last week, and that tree totally freaked me out." I was like, "Keep Portland Weird!"

*Inappropriate karaoke ballads. The progressive political carolers, and the singing Christmas tree in the toilet, got me in the mood to sing, too. So, we went to a karaoke bar where I decided that probably, in honor of Weird Portland, I ought to sing this song to a room full of strangers, with much love and deference paid to Wanya, Nathan, Shawn, and to Michael, above all others:

*POUTINE. Singing that totally seductive karoake ballad made me hungry, and KW said not to worry, that "the carts" were just down the street. I was like, "What are 'the carts'?" And she said, "You know, just a bunch of food carts." I was all, "No, I do not know. Where I live, there is only sometimes a single hot-dog cart that sometimes runs out of hot dogs before you can even place your order." So, we went to The Carts, which was, as she described, a whole wagon train of food carts, circled up, with Christmas lights all around the outside signaling "Come, Eat, Be Merry." So we did.

We ordered poutine from the Potato Champion. Do you know what poutine is? It's french fries, with cheese curds and gravy! It's apparently a French Canadien snack, and it is delicious. To the great dismay of my friends, I took some pictures of the cart, because I think it is the best idea ever that these little food villages are popping up late at night, for people who have gotten really hungry singing all FOUR parts of a Boys II Men song.



Do you notice that the Potato Champion is also the "Department of High Fives"? They were getting high fives right and left (literally, get it, left-handed and right-handed high-fives). I was like, "Weird. Portland is weird."

But synonyms for weird, according to thesaurus.com, include "awe-inspiring," "funky," "kinky," and "magical." Yes, yes, yes and yes.

"Well, they were a bit bitey..."

Confession #....okay, why won't the italics feature turn OFF...I'm pushing the icon for undo italics...my computer is driving me CRAZY (and that word I actually did want in italics, but was forced to CAPS so you would know it was EMPHASIZED). Hold on...

Confession #7: Behold, My Dinner.

What? You got something to say about that? Jealous???

You want to know, Kendall, where is the glass out of which you'll drink the orange juice? Or, Kendall, where is the toast upon which you'll spread that peanut butter?

I'll spare you the suspense. I drank straight from the jug, and I double, triple, and quadruple dipped the spoon. Less dishes. :)

And if you think that's bad, buckle your seat belt because here's confession #8:

My Friday night:

But don't cry for me Argentina, because the truth is I'm pretty excited to tackle that pile of TV scripts (given, graciously, by a professor at the UI--and yes, that is the pilot episode of FREAKS AND GEEKS), find out even more about my parachute, which today I am pretty sure is chartreuse, and of course, I'll be watching some Criminal Minds, because I always watch Criminal Minds. I've got a thing for dreamy Dr. Reid.

(I put the glasses on the top of the pile just for effect. I'm near sighted, so there is no way I'd actually wear them to read. Terrible headache. Which is one of my greatest regrets about my eyeballs. I long for reading glasses, not stupid "be able to see oncoming cars or important traffic signs" glasses. Lame.)

Finally, today's blog title comes from a movie that I loved, but forgot I loved, until I saw it while I was at the gym today (ahem, please note, I went to the gym today): Shaun of the Dead. And you know, it might even be funnier with the subtitles we're required to use with the gym TVs on account of the equipment being from the early 1990s and--blasphemy--not hooked up to the sound from the TVs.

Here:

I never thought I'd say this, but what the world really needs is more romantic comedies. With zombies.

PS: I'm not totally convinced it is the blog's fault, but ever since I started keeping this thing, I've been reading a lot and writing more of my own stuff. Coincidence?