DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

The Chron reports on an explosion in the wild turkey population in Marin and Sonoma counties. I can attest to that; the driveway between my front door and the compost heap is a minefield of fecalbombs.

After reading my previous post about shooting at turkeys with a cheap slingshot, a friend bought me a nice hunting slingshot for Christmas. In a nod to my preference for biodegradable ammunition, he gave me a 10lb sack of frozen Brussels sprouts. These have proved to be much more aerodynamic than my previous ammo (roasted almonds); they fly true, except when they unwrap.

I’ve managed to hit one turkey. The resultant squawkfest was enough to scare all the birds away, for a short time anyway. (Note: turkeys are, practically speaking, armored. Unless I manage to hit one square in the head, I won’t actually hurt them. Unfortunately.)

In related news, my co-workers frequent a deli near the office that I dislike because it assumes all its patrons are dying for a heap food-flesh — the sandwich menu contains two dozen preparations of meat, yet only one veggie item. On a recent visit I asked if the vegetable soup was vegetarian. “No, it’s made with turkey stock,” said the counter clerk in a defiant tone, “and of you don’t like it, get your tofo-eating vegan ass the hell out of my restaurant!”

A few weeks later, one of my co-workers noted (having heard my soup lament) that the cafe now offers vegetarian vegetable soup. In response I said something that still makes me laugh, even though at the time I got no love:

“I’ll bet they made it with Tofurkey stock.”

The studio blog I promised, like the process it would have documented, is running behind schedule. But it’s nothing that a few weeks’ worth of backdated entries won’t cure.

The initial idea was suggested earlier this year by ex-JAR bassist Andrew when he realized that the other two surviving* members of the band would be in the Bay Area at Thanksgiving for a mutual friend’s wedding. He had been working on a solo CD for three years and saw this as an opportunity to record some new material.

I loved the idea and committed on the spot to hosting the session. It would mean executing a plan I’d had for years already: to acquire sufficient gear to make professional recordings of my drum kit. It has never been hard for me to spend money, but for a change this seemed like a particularly good reason (although I said the same thing when I bought a plasma TV.)

Initially we decided to write two songs apiece. This would be a bigger challenge for me than the other guys, as I don’t play a melodic instrument. Even so, I managed to write one song (chronicled elsewhere), and for my second I pulled a previously-unreleased JAR tune out of the archives (a song called Bleed).

Steve, the guitarist, submitted one new tune plus one from his previous solo CD. Andrew submitted one new tune plus one from his in-progress solo CD (which I’d recorded drums for a couple years ago).

So, the final set list is:

1. Bleed (JAR)
2. Ode to Soup (matt)
3. Cincinnati Summer (Steve)
4. Best in Me (Steve)
5. Not Fair (aka “Bb Pop”) (Andrew)
6. Groove95 (Andrew)

“Groove95” is a working title. I believe Andrew named the song this because I’d taken to calling his previously submitted untitled instrumental “Ballerina Girl.”

My task list as of October 1 looked like this:

• buy a pile of recording gear
• re-learn the drum parts for Bleed and Ode to Soup
• write drum parts for Cincinnati Summer, Best in Me, and Groove95
• record drum parts for all five songs
• re-record the dulcimer part for Ode to Soup
• manage a 2-day recording session, allowing Steve to track guitar for six songs and vocals for four

(This story might continue…)

*The horn section died in a bizarre gardening accident.

This month’s UCS newsletter features a story on recycling consumer electronics such as cell phones and computers. (See also the list of cellphone charities published previously in this space.)

Wandering around this year’s Green Festival exhibition, I was impressed by how healthy everybody looked. In contrast, take as an example MacWorld Expo, at which many of the attendees are overweight, overdressed, hurried, harried, and ill. I see a lot more armpit stains (an indicator of stress) at MacWorld.

The Green Festival is all about improving one’s health. Litter in the nearest parking lot indicated that the neighborhood residents were partaking of healthy supplements this weekend too.

Vendors hawked high-potency foods, air and water treatments, pesticide-free clothing, recycled building products, solar energy systems, and biodiesel fuel. No wonder I felt at home. At both expos I’m surrounded by nutballs, but only at the Green Fest are the nutballs organic.

Miracle foods were a dominant meme at this year’s festival. I sampled Maca, “the Inca superfood,” although I have to wonder how super this particular food is given that the Inca civilization is extinct. I ate raw cocoa nuts and numerous organic chocolate elixirs. I tasted hemp nuts, Goji and agauaymanto berries. I skipped the soy jerkey and the $5 Sambazon smoothies, made from açaí, a purple palm berry from the Amazon basin that has been scientifically proven to be mispronounced by even more people than jicama.

The vendors of these superfoods, to which all manner of magical properties have been ascribed, appeared to be hydrated, energized, and outrageously healthy. Their collective glow made for a compelling pitch. In general, I think it’s a bad idea to buy food products from people who look like they’re about three more corndogs away from the grave, but I admit that I may be alone in making such a judgement, as evidenced by the crowds around the food-sample stations at Costco on weekends.

The visible good health may have been from an abundance of negative ions winging around the space, both from high-end beeswax candles and this so-called filterless air cleaner (about which some controversy exists). Negative ions notwithstanding, we were certainly awash in positive vibes.

A few other healthy-planet products caught my attention: tree-free inkjet paper (my samples are en route; watch for a review soon), magnet-powered unbreakable LED flashlights, and elegant recycled stemware and tumblers. If nothing else, this Green Festival helped fill out my upcoming holiday gift guide.

I had a lunchtime conversation today about the correct pronounciation of jicama. I have to conclude that I had never heard the word before, at least not from anybody who speaks Nahuatl.

Fortunately for my ego, which bruises about as easily as a bland starchy tuber, I got to school someone later on the correct pronounciation of quinoa. And I was ready to go head-to-head if anyone asked me about haricots.