Saturday Rant

Maybe I slept in the wrong position or something, I don't remember, but I might have had a bad dream. I spill some ground coffee. I'd turned the radio on, but turned it off almost immediately. I was a debate champ, in high school, and my first plane trips were to speech contests, where I usually won, and had room-service meals in actual hotels, This is where my five years of Latin come back to haunt me, I actually know about debate. Tracking coffee on bare feet in my haste to kill the broadcast, I make a further mess, involving cornmeal mush. Completely pissed at my own inability to control simple problems. I have to sit and gather my wits. Watch another amazing battle between a wasp and the large spider that lives outside a window. The acorns have started falling on the roof of the woodshed, an irregular rhythm, that, after the first few surprises, I enjoy, as an alternative method of keeping time. The bell, ringing to start a new round. The rant was a little ragged, I haven't done them much in the last 15 years, but it's like riding a bike. I seemed to be more upset by some things than I thought I had been. I developed my ranting as a rhetorical device, a helpmeet I used to prepare for a debate. After discovering NPR I'd often have a mock-rant, listening to the radio on Sunday morning. These were often funny, sarcastic or ironic. On the Vineyard I'd built a bleacher overlooking the terminal morraine, to watch the sunset. We made the best home-brew on the island, and we'd often make a party of it, roasted oysters and beer, and I'd usually be asked to summarize the week's events. These were great fun. I've never, before or since, been surrounded by so many extremely bright people. Always two or three, as I don't actually live in a vacuum, But the Vineyard (then) was like Iowa City now. The waitress in a breakfast diner working on her thesis. I cooked Basmati rice, a cup of rice makes either two or three servings for me. Canned crab meat in Kroger, where they have a shelf of discontinued items and dented cans. I'd read all night, windows open to the cicada chorus, and I wanted a crab cake with a soft egg on top. I keep a box of dried mashed potatoes around, because they're a perfect binder, mince some onion and add a scant teaspoon of sweet relish, fried in bacon fat. The rice is for a shrimp fried-rice later as B had alerted me to some very inexpensive shrimp. The rice for this is much better if it's a day old, and I make a rice pudding (an egg, vanilla, blueberries) for either dessert, which I rarely eat, or for breakfast. Preparations complete, I sit back with a dram of single malt and survey my kingdom. First, I have to say, no one would aspire to this; sure, I know a lot about bullfrogs, I can make paper from artichokes, I cure elk hams for Jewish friends, but the thread, through it all, is just a spider web that I maintain, to hold my interest.