I had an insane elaborate dream last night. It was one of those dreams where I was the protagonist, but the protagonist was not myself; I had brown hair, a different family, and siblings and shit.

Anyway in the dream I was travelling somwhere with my father and my boyfriend, who for my current purposes will be played by John Astin as Gomez Addams:

Addams family patriarch, Gomez

And JTT:

Former teen hearttrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas

And this is when we met Mr. Pink. And no, it wasn’t Steve Buscemi (he shows up later), the guy looked more like The Penguin as drawn in the Batman comics (as opposed to Danny DeVito) but fatter and without the monocle.

Artist's Conception

Mr. Pink is horrifying. Mr. Pink is the kind of boogeyman with nightmarish child-rules that must be followed exactly to avoid utter destruction. Mr. Pink also does not ever stop chasing you. HOWEVER, Mr. Pink can only get you if you do somthing he asks—”take this pen,” “would you like a ride,” “would you hold open the door for me young miss” etc, DO NOT DO IT. If you do, he will GRAB YOU WITH HIS GIANT TEETH and DRAG YOU to the Concentration Camp Dimension, which is about a 10 minutes walk from the Florida border, and therefore in either Georgia, Alabama or The Sea. In the Concentration Camp dimension you have to do demanding physical labour, there are cameras in your house, they shoot people for no reason all the time and creepy overseers who look like Steve Buscemi (there he is!) will demand sexual favours from you.

It SUCKS.

In my dream we all got stuck there. My Dad got killed fairly early on, but after I discovered a secret door out of the closet I was able to escape (narrowly) over the Florida border. You see, the police in the Concentration Camp dimension have no jurisdiction in other states. However, my boyfriend was still there, so foolish me I went back, confident that I could repeat my great escape with him in tow. Unfourtunately, JTT is not as swift as me and he was caught by Mr. Pink who dragged both of us back. He then distracted me while the straight up shot my boyfriend in the head.

It SUCKED

Anyway I was eventually able to finally escape by projecting myself as twins and using my spirit-twin to distract pervert Steve Buscemi while I feld across the border again as the corrupt CC dimension police shook their fists at me. Unfourtunately, Mr. Pink has no jursdiction but FEAR and stalked me all over the place in various flimsy disguises. Eventually I ended up in a recently-occupied motel suite full of macaroni with a beagle puppy (aww) that turned out to be my sister (huh)? I was able to turn her back but then it wasn’t my sister, it was a drag queen named Manuel but it turned out it WAS my sister, but her soul had been combined with her boyfriend’s by Mr. Pink using a demonic sandwich press (before turning them into a beagle puppy) and the only way to seperate them out again was to cooperate, because cooperation is apparently the opposite of a sandwich press.

Yeah.

Point is Mr. Pink is a jerk and I am terrified of him.

1) Chubby

2) Teen (but not “teenager,” weirdly)

3) Hairy

4) Old

5) Round

So I work at Halifax’s oldest graveyard. That is important backstory.

One of my favourite graves to point out is that of William Bowie, either the only or the last guy in Nova Scotia to die in a duel (I’ve read both). Bowie was a merchant who made his money reselling goods brought to him by privateers, was well known and liked, and was apparently super fine to boot. He challenged Richard Uniacke Jr, son of the Attorney General (and guy who lent his name to Buck 65’s home town), after he possibly maybe called William Bowie a smuggler during a court case.  Uniacke had to say yes (lol honor), they went out to Lady Hammond Road at four in the morning, and William Bowie got shot though the right side of the chest. Boom. Dead. The ladiez wept.

Flash forward to now: I give tours. I tell stories. I find peanuts on William Bowie’s grave.

Every.

Day.

No one seems to think it is as weird as I think it is, and they all blame it on the birds. Who is giving these birds unshelled peanuts every day then, Professor Sir? Huh? And why do they like Bowie out of all the other identical sandstone slab graves in the area? Riddle me that, smart ass.

Today I gave a tour and there were no peanuts. They I came back around about an hour later and BAM. PEANUTS. They were still shelled, too, which made me feel like I had just interrupted Bowie’s ghost lunch. I brushed them off onto the grass and then felt guilty about ruining his snack and then realized I was thinking like a crazy person and walked away.

I need a motion sensitive camera or something.

Sometimes I can’t help but feel that the lack of positive role models for committed relationships feeds the divorce rate. If nobody you see stays together, who can? If Jon and Kate can’t make it work, what hope is there for us?

I think probably the tackiest way to propose to someone would be switching your relationship status on facebook over to “engaged” without telling them and then sending them a “gift” of a picture of an engagement ring.

Capitalism, Communism and Fascism are nothing but dead words on dead trees. They don’t exist. People live in the cracks between sentences.

David, a 26-year-old investment banker, stands by the window staring out at the street and absently stroking a small, moving lump in his front pocket. Marlene, his girlfriend, enters the door to their apartment, returning home from work.

Marlene: Hey baby, I’m home!

David says nothing. He smiles distantly.

Marlene: Baby?

Marlene circles around him and sees that his hand is in his pocket. She stares at him.

Marlene: …Baby?

David: Oh, shit, hey Marlene.

Marlene: (angry) What’s in your pocket, Dave.

David: I…

Marlene: It’s that fucking sugar glider again, isn’t it Dave?

David takes the sugar glider out of his pocket, and it chirps adorably.

Marlene: Jesus fucking christ Dave.

She walks three paces away from him and stares out the window.

David: Don’t be such a bitch Marlene.

Marlene: Dave… do you still… love me?

David: Oh come on.

Marlene: I’m sick of this, Dave. You love that sugar glider more than me.

David: Fuck Marlene, you know I have to imprint it! If I don’t love it it’ll die!

Marlene: But what about me, Dave! I need your love too! What if I die!

David looks at Marlene, and then back at the sugar glider.

David: Maybe there’s just not enough love to go around.

David storms out of the room. Marlene sinks to the floor.

Marlene: You asshole… you fucking asshole…

She begins to sob.

“This root, no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticised with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisims of peasants and labourers?”
Denis Diderot (1713-1784), L’Encyclopedie (1751-1772)cp

Behold—The Potato.

Infinitely culinarily flexible, chock-full of vitamins and minerals, more calories-per-acre than corn, rice or wheat, and delicious to boot—who on earth could ever take issue with this, the most beloved of root vegetables (accepting, perhaps, the Irish)?

Well, most of Europe, for one, and France especially, where nothing short of underhanded publicity stunts and downright trickery were required before people would even consider a side of mash.

The potato arrived in Europe some time in the 1500s, but up until the late 1700s everyone but the teeming Irish poor considered it fit for nothing but hog feed (the Irish had little choice in this regard). Like other new foodstuffs brought over from the new world, such as the obviously poisonous tomato, it was treated with distrust and accused of all matter of things, like causing leprosy and unbridled lust.

It was on the strength of these accusations that cultivation of potatos in France was outright banned in 1748. Here begins the meat of this tale, and the character of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the potato’s most noble knight.

Parmentier, a French military pharmacist, was captured by the Prussians during the Seven Year’s War, during which time he was forced to eat potatoes and evidently developed a taste for them, as on his return to France he became a passionate potato advocate. Spuds were legalized in 1772, and in 1773 Parmentier won a contest on the vegetable’s behalf which saw them introduced as food for sufferers of dysentery.

But La Belle France was not convinced. Parmentier’s potato passions even put his job at risk, after he was cut off from his test garden due to religious opposition.

So Parmentier revved it up a notch, kicking off a series of masterful publicity stunts which saw him presenting the King of France (and the lovely Marie Antoinette) with bouquets of potato flowers and serving all-potato dinners to such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin. His best work, however, was planting a patch of potatoes and then putting it under heavy guard, drawing in a crowd who naturally wanted to know what kind of fantastic goods he must be hiding. He would then withdraw the guard at night, leaving the potato patch “vulnerable” to the surrounding populace, who then ransacked the place and likely thought they were making off with the catch of a lifetime as they ran off into the night, aprons full of ill-gotten potatoes.

Parmentier’s tireless efforts for the potato and other food reforms won him a permanent place in the annals of France, with many potato dishes and a Paris subway station named after him. So the next time you start into a heaping mound of French Fries, remember Parmentier, and that without his efforts we’d be frying something else probably less tasty.

“The Adventures of Partheno-Jenny and Her Pal, Neotony”

Are you a recent parent? Are vague references to closets and and the darkness beyond no longer cutting it? Here are some better things to scare the shit out of children with, complete with the first deviant art search hit for illustrative purposes.

A Slavic boogeyman that arises from the soul of an unbaptized baby and wanders around graveyards, hideously calling at passers-by about how it wants to join the church of Christ of some shit. Other than an awesome ghost baby, it also takes the form of a bird, a nondescript demon, some kind of dog-thing and basically anything else parents can come up with. The wikipedia article tantalizingly refers to a related creature called a “Jaud,” which is–wait for it–a vampirized premature baby. Sign me up.

Just a bear. A creepy goblin bear.