DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Last Sunday, we returned to Annadel State Park to find out if we could circle Lake Ilsanjo without getting lost. Upon arrival we were pleased to find that the rangers had set out a stack of updated trail maps, diminishing the possibility of getting lost, although in general one should never underestimate my ability to misread a trail map.

Now that we have a few dozen miles of local park trails behind us, I can pass the following judgement with the authority of experience: some of the trails in Annadel really suck. The route we’ve been using is apparently a favorite destination for regional horse owners; the first hour of the hike requires careful picking through minefields of horse-bombs, by which I mean, crap, shit, dung, feces, excrement, turds, and poop. I didn’t photograph every one — I just ran out of words.

Climbing further into the park, we got away from some of the horses, but faced a new threat: mountain bikers. There has been controversy over trail usage by bikers for years; I never paid attention because the issue seemed petty and remote. But I have an opinion about it now that I’ve nearly been run off the trail by some of them.

We were hiking up a narrow trail that had turned into a slow, muddy stream by recent rains. Two bicyclists rounded a corner a hundred feet ahead. These guys were flying low, heads down, butts up in the air. They yelled out a warning (“hikers up”) to the cyclists behind, but did not slow down.

I was on the right edge of the path, trying to keep my feet out of the muck. I’d paused when I saw the bikes coming so they wouldn’t have to navigate around a moving obstacle. I guess they understood this as permission to zoom past at speed and spray mud at me. So much for standing to one side, I thought — I stepped back onto the path and continued hiking, when a third bicyclist flew past within ten inches. I wasn’t playing “chicken;” I didn’t realize that I was within a foot of having my arm broken by his handlebars. That was enough for me. I spun around and yelled at them, “You’re supposed to fucking yield!” I was ready to shove somebody’s head through their sprockets.

Bicyclists really are supposed to yield to hikers. And to horses. I bet these bike-ninja guys don’t zoom around horses; the risk of getting squashed is too great. I guess I’ll have to start carrying a big walking stick, sideways. Hmm, and if I put a shovel on one end I could solve two problems at once.

On a more positive note, the park offers awesome vistas and pastoral settings. I make no qualification there. It’s even worth the hazards of hiking in to find them.

Old joke:
Q: What’s worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm?
A: Finding half a worm.

Not a joke at all:
Q: What’s more unsettling than opening the bedroom closet and finding a weird proto-lizard?
A: Finding half a weird proto-lizard.

I don’t know what this thing is. Do snakes have legs? I thought maybe this was a baby lizard, like the kind that have the run of the property, but the legs are way too small and the body is too narrow and this has teeth!

Then, too, there’s the question of “what bit this monster in half?”, not to mention, “and is that thing also living in my closet?”

This creature-part is very small, about 1.5'' in overall length. At first I thought it was a toy because the end that’s been chewed off looked too stringy and fibrous to be animal in origin. However, the skin is pure lizard, and the tiny hands are too small to be manmade. So I don’t know what it is. But I am shaking out my clothes before getting dressed in the morning, I assure you. I’m not sure what I fear more — finding the rear legs, or not finding the rear legs.

(It just occurred to me that fear sometimes leads to detachment. This time, it’s more a case of detachment leading to fear.)

This groove was inspired by Carter Beauford’s playing on the song “Kit Kat Jam”, from the Dave Matthews Band album Busted Stuff. It’s an instrumental jam in 3/4, with an unusually driving bass and drum pattern — hear the excerpt below.

What I’ve written is not Beauford’s part, but a sort of counterpoint that could be played against it: for example, Beauford plays the snare on 2, whereas this groove plays an echo on the + of 2. The “Kit Kat” groove is pretty sparse, leaving room for interplay with other instruments.

       main groove--------------|variation---|fill--------|
       
       1 + 2 + 3 + |1 + 2 + 3 + |1 + 2 + 3 + |1 + 2 + 3 + |
3  HH  xxxxxx xxx  |xxxxxx  xx x|xx x xx xx x|
-  SD        o   oo|      oo  o |  o o  o  o |  (whatever)
4  KD  o  oo       |o  oo     o |o    o oo   |

Patronize these links, man:

• MIDI
• MP3 (groove)
• MP3 (variation)
• Kit Kat Jam excerpt

It’s official — I have a heart condition. I called my doctor to report my low heart rate. She said, “I’m sure you’re fine. It’s probably nothing. But why don’t you come in to the office for further testing?” If I’m fine, and it’s nothing, why did she want to strap a dozen electrodes to my body and shoot current from one to the next?

But the EKG wasn’t at all painful, probably because it doesn’t actually shoot electricity through one’s body. It simply measures the electricity that’s already there. The worst part of the procedure was the nurse’s haircut; she had a mullet. And, under the white skirt, I believe I caught a glimpse of acid-wash jeans.

EKG stands for electrocardiogram. You might think the abbreviation for electrocardiogram should be ECG, and in fact you can spell it that way if you like, but “EKG” sounds cooler, so that’s what I call it, because appearances are everything, even when you’re laying topless on an examination table under fluorescent lights while an earnest but poorly-coiffed RN glues metal tabs to your chest, with wires running across the room to an old Medusa of a battery charger/arc-welding rig, except it’s encased in that thick pebble-finish plastic that used to be beige but has yellowed to a sort of unpleasantly mucoid smear that screams out “Medical Surplus, $49.95, conductive paste not included”.

I half expected the nurse to shout “CLEAR!” as megavolts of power coursed through my body while my back arched and I bit through the rubber puck she’d stuck in my mouth, but none of this happened, because I wasn’t being defibrillated. My heart may be slow, but it hasn’t quite stopped. I can tell, because I’m still typing.

Anyway it was refreshingly non-traumatic, a nice change considering my age — it seems every time I turn around some MD wants to stick a finger up my butt. (My prostate has a fan club.) Eyeballing the report, which looks like a seismographic recording of a place where, ahh, they have regular but very small earthquakes, my doctor repeated her earlier diagnosis: “You’re fine; it’s probably nothing; but why don’t you go to the lab for further testing?”

I’d be lying if I said I was no fan of needles. The fact is, the mere prospect of getting jabbed in the vein is enough to give me the screaming willies. But I’d been curious about my thyroid, and in a detached way (which is the only way I can manage to think about my thyroid at all without making grossed-out faces and changing the subject) I looked forward to finding out if it was doing the right thing.

I ought to be able to describe the blood test in grisly detail, but I had my eyes closed.

So, a couple of days later my doctor called. “Your thyroid is fine.” She paused. I waited. Surely there was an MRI or spinal tap in my future… but no. The diagnosis is the same now as when I started out: sinus bradycardia. In the absence of other symptoms, or maybe just in my case?, it’s harmless. This was my suspicion all along, but having information is strongly preferable to having suspicions. Also, medical procedures make for great journal entries.

We eat Thai food nearly every week. There are two Thai restaurants in town, one of which makes good curry, and the other of which makes good money. (It is closer to Main Street, serves smaller portions, and charges a buck more per entree. The curry there isn’t any good, but the dinner crowd is bigger, proving that the commercial real-estate mantra is not “Quality! Quality! Quality!”)

Lately I’ve been playing with Thai curry recipes, to save the expense of eating out so often. (Yeah, I’m bitching about a $6 plate of curry. If it makes you feel better: I usually order an appetizer too.) I’ve tried five recipes. Most of them were pretty good, except for the versions that call for fish sauce, a liquid so vile that a single tablespoon can overwhelm three pounds of vegetables, fresh garlic, chilis, and coconut milk. I don’t know what orifice they squeeze that stuff from, but it is so far beyond disgusting that I’ve just gone out to find a new word to describe it… something unfamiliar and therefore undiminshed by past use (e.g. “you’ll love this new detergent!”), and with a hint of the biblical to support connotations of horror: mephitic. Fish sauce is mephitic. You heard it here first.

Anyway, I digress. I’ve made all these curry recipes, and although most of them were good, none of them were curry. There’s a particular flavor profile that is characteristic of restaurant curry, that I’ve not been able to match at home.

The problem with my curries is the paste. I use an inauthentic substitute, mass-produced for the American market and (apparently) dumbed-down for the American palette: Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste. The resulting dish is vaguely reminiscent of Thai curry, but basically wrong. It’s missing something (don’t say “fish sauce”). Or, it has something extra that isn’t needed, some sort of sodium benzoate or chemically brewed flavoring agent that isn’t quite true.

A reasonable person might ask, “if every time you make curry with that Thai Kitchen stuff, you end up disappointed, why do you keep using it?” Answer: it’s the only curry paste I could find. Also: the jar isn’t empty yet. Finally we remembered, on one of our frequent trips to SF, to visit a Thai grocery store. We found an actual imported curry paste, with actual Thai-language writing on the label. We grabbed a packet each of red, yellow, and green.

The verdict? These packets make a rich, spicy, Thai dish that is… not exactly curry. They’re very good, and I’ll never buy Thai Kitchen brand curry paste again because these are so much better. Yet I’m still searching for the perfect curry recipe. I suspect that no commercial preparation will match what I can get in a restaurant, so I’ve begun experimenting with scratch recipes too. If you happen to have a grandmother from Thailand and access to her secret recipe book, please please please send me her curry recipes.