“Visitation”
November 25, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
The following story was published in issue seven of the late, lamented, and local Delmar magazine, back when Bill Clinton was president.
Wow. Was it really that long ago?
Yes. Yes, it was.
On the morning in question:
Rachel pauses before the window of her kitchen door. The window is fogged; she wipes at the condensation with the sleeve of her robe, the better to observe the angel on her back steps. The morning light is grey and uncertain. Brown leaves plaster the concrete walkway and cling to the angel’s soiled coat. Rachel eyes the garment, wondering how it came to be dirtied, noting that it is made of wool. She follows the broad grey curve of fabric, out and away from the angel’s back. Wings, she thinks. They must be kept dry, after all.
Rachel’s grip tightens about the coffee cup that warms her hands. Grey steam curls up and about her face. When the angel glances back at her, his eyes an opaque blue like her own, she neither flinches nor looks away. She sips at her coffee.
•
The angel accepts his coffee with silence and spidery fingers. Rachel studies his face, the way it angles down and into his cup as if the contents will somehow save his life. She cannot guess at his age. Skin crinkles at the corners of his eyes, stretches tight across sharp cheekbones. Rachel thinks of geometry, shifting planes converging in space. A name comes to mind.
“Gabriel,” she asks.
The angel gazes up at her, brows arched into a question. Not Gabriel, she decides, though his fingers seem curved and tentative, as if gracing the keys of a trumpet.
He is not what she would have expected, precisely, had she known to expect anything at all. She glances over wet sneakers and faded jeans — a tear at the left knee, pale skin beneath — but comes to focus on his face. She sees the light brown beard, the heavy brows. His hair is bound up in a thick ponytail: a blue rubber band. Rachel nearly smiles. The idea of him becomes more acceptable.
•
She sits alongside him, gingerly, taking pains to conceal her knees beneath the blue folds of her robe. The planks of the steps are cool and slick under her feet. Rachel tries to think of something to say, something she might ask her visitor, or else ask of him. She imagines that he has come specifically to offer her some celestial boon, to grant a request. She thinks it not entirely unlikely, given what she knows of angels; at least, she believes it is not without precedent. Astonishingly, no request comes to mind. No closely held desire. Nothing at all. Nothing for which she might ask, now that she can. The harder that Rachel tries to name a quality, an object, a man or a woman, anything or anyone she had ever desired for her own, the less certain she becomes. The effort itself leaves her disoriented, lost in unfamiliar terrain, bereft of landmarks that might guide her. The effort leaves her fatigued, nearly short of breath. It leaves her annoyed.
Rachel shifts within her robe, which has grown heavy and clinging about her. She comes to suspect that she may have the matter sadly reversed: that her visitor may have descended to her back porch not to grant anything like a favor, but instead to charge her with some grave responsibility. That prospect is not nearly so appealing as the other, and she scowls into her coffee. When she looks up, she sees the angel watching her intently, and wearing her own frown. In this fashion, they regard one another.
Short rib succulence
November 24, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
A few weeks back, M and I ate dinner out at a couple of favorite restaurants which have been mentioned on this blog - The Pitted Olive and Aya Sofia. Each time, I wound up ordering a special which centered around short ribs; each time, I nearly melted in my seat with satisfaction. So tender, so deeply and richly flavorful. Oy.
As is often the case after positive dining experiences, I wondered if I could manage the same level of deliciousness with such an entree at home. I have indeed prepared short ribs myself in the past; the result was prrrrretty good, but still this side of great. I can do better, I thought, and set about looking for a recipe.
Once again, the good folks at Fine Cooking came to my rescue with a little recipe they like to call “Succulent Braised Short Ribs.” This came from their Comfort Food collection. I am a big fan of comfort food: savory, rich, good for the soul, and perfect for these cooler months.
Sadly, FC does not publish this recipe on the web. I feel the need to restate here my policy about publishing magazine recipes that have not been made publicly available and free-as-in-beer: I don’t like to do that. It bugs me on some quasi-moral level. However, I have found a quasi-loophole: the recipe has already been posted at The Jetsetting Fool Cooks (and Eats!). Like the blog author, I cut the amount of ribs from eight pounds to four, which still results in more than enough for four hungry people. Other ingredients were deployed as prescribed. Unlike the blog author, I did salt the ribs the day before and allowed them to sit overnight per the recipe. If I had it to do over again - as I’m sure I will - I would cut the amount of salt in half. Otherwise, proceed as instructed.
Yeah, buddy. The plated result:
My verdict, and M’s: Very, very good. I think a little less salt would have made the ribs perfect; still, we kept eating them just the same. The sauce described in the recipe really adds something, too, but eating the ribs without sauce is far from a hardship.
The ribs are accompanied by long-cooked green beans with fresh oregano, also from the FC Comfort Food collection, and homemade toasted garlic cheese bread prepared according to Elise Bauer, who is as great a master of cookery as she is of Movable Type.
Let it begin!
November 24, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
CNN: Yes, Rhino the hamster is the reason M and I are going to see “Bolt.”
So who kills Vic Mackey?
November 24, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
I have nothing to add to the excellent reviews and comments I’ve read regarding the next-to-last episode of The Shield, which pretty much blew me away last week. Rather, I’m looking forward to the last episode which airs on Tuesday night. I have but two questions.
One: Who puts Vic Mackey down?
I would love to see the big sociopath somehow elude the fate which he has justly earned, but I think that for the sake of drama (if not justice), Victor Samuel Mackey has to die. How, though? Who will put an end to this ultimate survivor? I’m not going to go through a laundry list of characters, each of whom surely has justification for ending Mackey’s life. Rather, I’ll just name my candidate: Vic’s tortured ex-wife, Corrine. Of all the people trailing in Mackey’s orbit, she is the one with the greatest moral claim to putting a bloody end to Vic. And there’s nothing like mortal fear to motivate someone; when Vic learns, as he must, that he betrayed Ronnie in order to save Corrine from an arrest threat that didn’t even exist - indeed, that she had been working with the police to bring him down - his rage will be incalculable. This conflict and its inevitable resolution is the perfect setup; it is foreshadowed in Corrine’s own furious words to Vic, a couple of episodes ago, after agreeing to help him one last time:
You have to pay some kind of price!
And she will exact it. It’s Corrine. In the living room. With a handgun. You heard it here first.*
Two: How can I keep from hearing about the last ep before I get a chance to watch it?
Unlike most other fans of the program, I have a cheap DISH Network subscription which does not include FX. This season and last, I have relied on iTunes to deliver my required dose of Shield-y goodness. But even armed with an iTunes Season Pass, I won’t get to take delivery of the final episode until about 9:30 on Wednesday morning, about 12 hours after most of America has already seen the show. All I can to is to avoid television and the Internet that night and into the next morning, take the laptop to work, download the episode when it is made available…and watch it immediately.
I’m sure work won’t mind.
*Hmmm…unless Vic kills Corrine, and is in turn killed by their daughter. That’s always possible.
The upstairs cat
November 24, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
M and I gathered our gear and coats and such this morning in preparation for another day of work. We turned off lights, made sure all sources of flame were extinguished, all windows and doors secure. We said goodbye to our feline charges, all six of them. “Have good kitty days,” we said. The last cat we said goodbye to was Jack. “Be a good boy,” we told him. He blinked his one working eye in response. And then we left.
This is the latest big news out of Kitty City: Jack is spending the workday upstairs today - free from incarceration in the basement - as he has for a little while now. It’s a brand new era, and a test for all the mammals at Casa Waveflux, feline and human alike. So far…so good.
It has taken a while to get to this point. Jack had been increasingly unhappy about having to spend long hours locked in the basement while M and I were away at work, or sleeping at night. Miiaaooww, he would complain from behind the locked door. Translated, that meant, I am upstairs kitty now. I belong upstairs. Let me upstairs. A rough translation, yes, but that was the gist of the message. Our reasoning for locking him away during unsupervised hours had to do with inter-kitty relations in general and Jack’s viral payload in particular - his feline immunodeficiency infection. Any testiness between Jack and, say, Scooter (Jack’s self-appointed probation officer) or Baxter (grouchy and vocal opponent of Jack’s existence) could erupt into a full-fledged fight with the biting and the gouging and the HOYVIN-GLAYVIN and the like, allowing for transmission of the FIV virus. Which would be bad. However, the general mood of grudging acceptance which we sensed growing among the cats led us to believe that the time had come to take the next step in Jack’s entry into the general population.
We chose last Labor Day weekend to start the project, allowing Jack to remain upstairs that Friday night. If it was a big deal to Jack, he didn’t show it; he simply settled atop the back of the couch in the front room, curled up, and went to sleep. The next morning, the one-eyed critter was waiting for us when we came downstairs. “Food?” he asked. The other cats were all surprisingly unaffected by Jack’s all-night presence upstairs. Heartened, we repeated the experiment the next night, and things seemed well…until the morning. M got up before me and said that she would feed the animals. Jack had come upstairs to ask about food, and Scooter was already there, shadowing M. As they accompanied M downstairs, the two cats bumped into one another, and the fur began to fly: a rolling, hissing, spitting ball o’cat tumbling down the steps. “Boys!” M cried. “Boys!” The boys weren’t listening. I flung myself out of bed and down the stairs - au naturale, ahem, because that’s just how I roll, but carrying a pillow. I thrust the pillow in between the feline combatants to separate them, and herded Jack behind the basement door.
M and I looked at each other. “Well,” we said.
So Labor Day came and went, and we reset the clock on Jack’s habilitation, watching anxiously his relations with the other cats. Eventually, we felt comfortable enough to allow him to remain upstairs and only lightly monitored while we went about our business during the day - chores outside, or laundry, or grocery shopping, or working at the computer in the attic office. The cats seemed to get along a bit better - no more rolling cat balls of fury. Harsh words spoken occasionally (especially by Baxter, who is still so vocal in his complaints about Jack that we have nicknamed him Barky Cat), and some waving of spiky paws at one another from time to time, but no fighting.
Just over a couple of weeks ago, I decided that we should again try letting Jack stay up overnight. The night and morning passed uneventfully, which was a good thing. We did it again the next night, and the next. With each passing night, Jack felt more comfortable about coming upstairs while we slept. Brief visits full of loud purring and bathing became longer sessions in which he actually slept on the bed. Sometimes, Baxter and Venice, accustomed to being the official bed-sleeping cats, complained and left; sometimes they grumbled but remained.
So just over a week ago, we left Jack outside of the basement when we left the house for work. “Try to be good,” we said. To everybody. We were a little nervous about leaving Jack upstairs, and hoped we would not come home to a blood-spattered scene right out of CSI. Instead, we returned to five hungry but fairly composed cats downstairs (plus poor Leon, still segregated in the TV room on the second floor). Treats for everyone! And that’s how it’s been for a week now.
Scooter still shadows Jack around the house, out of distrust and general jealousy, but the two former alleycats have apparently reached an odd kind of detente. They can often be found roosting mere feet from one another, and really seem like two of a kind. Ike and Mike. Frick and Frack. Scooter and Jack.
Jack still has temper enough to lose when provoked, especially when he has had enough of Baxter’s barking. You can always tell when Jack takes off his little porkpie hat and throws it to the floor, ready to rumble - but he takes longer to come to boil these days. It really does seem as though he is trying to behave like a member of society. It is hard not to be touched by Jack, considering how far he has come in what really is a fairly short time - from a snarling, mistrustful one-eyed monster to a frequently cuddly, always loyal (especially to M, on whom Jack’s sun rises and sets) pet. He is so obviously glad to be here with us that it just makes you want to cry…you know, if you’re the crying type.
So begins the new age at the household. Jack is, officially, an upstairs cat. M and I are hopeful, watchful, all kinds of -ful. But as I said earlier, so far…so good.
Now, of course, we have to find a way to introduce Leon into the population. That will be another story altogether.
PS: Jack says “Miaaoow!” That means, “Hi, Shakers!”
At least the results came in before the inaugural
November 19, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
Associated Press: For anyone who still cares: McCain won Missouri!
Damn Dems
November 18, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
Looks chastened, doesn't he?
To paraphrase Dr. Hawkeye Pierce: I honestly believe that the Senate Democrats can be held up through the mail. Lieberman - who, in the words of Greg Sargent, “endorsed efforts by the GOP to imply that Obama is in league with terrorists, suggested that Obama endangered our troops, and said Obama hasn’t always put the country first” - retains his coveted Homeland Security chair and loses nothing of consequence. Senate Democrats roll over for Joe, voting to look the other way. Furious Dem activists? Bluntly dismissed. Now that’s change you can believe in!
The chyron in this news report screen grab is rather telling:
Again: Sen. Lieberman Comments on Vote to Keep Him in Dem Caucus. Neatly framed, and wholly inaccurate. This was a vote on the committee chairmanships that Lieberman would be allowed to retain; there was no intent to drum him out of the party. It was Lieberman himself who put his staying in the caucus at issue by declaring what judgments he would and would not tolerate. He set the terms, intimating that losing Homeland Security would be “unacceptable” to him - and the Dems gave in. But the media shorthand here is that this was an up or down vote on keeping Lieberman a Dem - as though any consequence for his betrayal of the party would be mere revenge. Thanks for the accurate reporting, media! Joe appreciates it nearly as much as he appreciates spineless party leadership.
Comity rules over all.
As the saying goes: if the Senate Democrats - or President-Elect Obama, who conveniently distanced himself “called the shots” on the this conciliatory approach, according to Howard Dean - can’t deal with Joe Lieberman, how will they deal with Al Qaeda (or insert alternate threat)? With resolutions and strongly worded letters, apparently.
Somewhat more sociable
November 17, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
When last I looked at the concept of social media - in particular, the subject of blog comments, their ownership, the authority of the blogmaster versus that of the commenter - it was with a jaundiced eye and a determination to hold true to the one-way values of traditional media. My blog, my power of life and death of the words of others, my desire to be an island unto myself, so on and so forth. That post, and the earlier one on the whole social thing, were masterpieces of curmudgeonliness which I eventually came to regret. I don’t have many commenters here at Waveflux - two or three, perhaps - but would rather enhance than degrade their experience here at the blog. Once I admitted that to myself, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to give in to the “shared ownership” mode of comment management promoted hither and yon on the innertubes.
Along comes IntenseDebate, one of the three most notable blog comment management systems (along with Disqus and SezWho). Once an independent outfit, ID was acquired a while back by Automattic, makers of WordPress, which powers this very blog. This meant that WP’s rather basic commenting feature would undergo a paradigm shift, transformed by ID’s crossblog capabilities. It was as though the answer to my comment management situation had come to me in a shiny box - or, rather, a shiny new plugin.
Waveflux now employs the IntenseDebate system for its comments. Anyone who has used ID elsewhere, or who has commented on blogs using one of the other big systems, will recognize certain basic features: user profiles, reputation points, uprating or downrating comments, all that good stuff. Threaded comments - the ability to respond directly to an earlier comment - is finally available here. Commenters’ words are now their own, part of their own profile, quite apart from any (rare, I hope) moderation by blogmaster me.
It’s a new arrangement, that of Intense Debate and WordPress, and also that of ID and Waveflux. As a result, there are quirks to be worked out and tweaks to be made. Some functionality previously enjoyed here - the ability to edit comments for a limited period, or to visually style comments - is unavailable…but not forever, I hope. The ID folks are working on ways to get their system and certain plugins to play nicely together. In the meantime, it’s still possible to style comments by using HTML tags. Yes, it’s primitive, I know, but with luck, things will evolve.
If there are any questions about IntenseDebate here at Waveflux, I’ll do my best to answer them. And if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone who does. In the meantime, feel free to play around with it.
My knees are older than the rest of me
November 17, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
A recent and unwelcome development: my knees are aging, and somewhat more quickly than the rest of me. I discovered this while walking downstairs one morning a couple of weeks ago. “Shit,” I said at the first twinge from my right knee. “Fuck,” I said after taking a step with the other leg. And so it went, one step and expletive after another, all the way down to the first floor.
Some of you - perhaps many of you - are probably saying “Welcome to it, pal” right about now. An achy knee is just one of the milestones on the road to oblivion, and even people in better physical shape than me have experienced this. So no, I don’t consider myself special - just especially annoyed.
The ankles are also giving me trouble, I’ve noticed. These joints are most bothersome immediately upon waking, and - like the engine of an old Buick Regal - tend to operate more smoothly after they’ve had a chance to warm up. I could probably go on, but this laundry list is starting to get me down.
There are a couple of possible remedies for this rusty-hinge joint situation. One of them is fish oil. I used to take the supplement on a regular basis, and my knees and ankles seldom complained. Something about reducing inflammation, or something like that. The problem with fish oil is the same general problem I have with medication, supplements, and the like: I often forget to take it, or else can’t be bothered, as though there’s something much better that I could be doing at the time. This behavior goes way back to childhood, when I would rather pocket my One A Day vitamin rather than swallow it. At the end of the week, when laundry day came, my mother would find my pants pockets full of little red tablets. Or yellow tablets, if she had purchased One A Day with Iron that week.
Even now, there are ten or twelve capsules of fish oil in a pill container sitting a foot away from me, waiting for my attention. Eat us, they cry. Eeeeeat us. So plaintive. So very sad.
Another countermeasure available to me is…exercise. (Shudder.) I have had it explained to me by more than one physical therapist that my knees would benefit from exercises that strengthen the surrounding, supporting muscles. I have not been the workout enthusiast I had been a year or two ago. I could blame happenstance, or scheduling conflicts, or absentmindedness, but the sad truth is that I am unforgivably lazy. My knobby knees are now paying the price of my lassitude. That kind of real-world consequence of inaction is an even harder pill to swallow than a One A Day.
This the part of the story where I vow to do better, I guess. Take the damn pills. Bend, stretch, lift a frigging weight now and again. I wonder why I’m so resistant, even now, even after having acknowledged all that?
Actually, when you ask that kind of question aloud, you already know the answer. Best to save that topic for another blog entry, though. Right now, I have to go take these pills.
If only
November 17, 2008 by Phil Barron · Comments
Gawker: Rich loudmouth Mark Cuban? Guilty of insider trading? God doesn’t love me enough for that.
