Welcome to another
Indigo Kalliope diary,
which always reminds me of
ulookarmless,
also known as CJ Campbell,
now deceased.
I think he wrote this intro;
correct me if I'm wrong:
Join us every Tuesday afternoon at the Daily Kos community political poetry club.
Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments.
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional.
The keyboard is mightier than the sword.
And remember,
other regulars
at Indigo Kalliope
really expect different folks
to write the host diaries,
so if you feel the poetry in you,
and you all have it in you,
volunteer for a Tuesday,
write it in a comment to this diary,
or send a message
to the Readers & Book Lovers group administrators,
and we'll get you set up,
and I can schedule your diary for a Tuesday
at 4 PM,
instead of mine.
12/18 open
12/25 Hey! Write a moody or funny Christmas verse or two!
1/1 Hey! Write a New Year's Day looking back/looking forward diary,
such as, looking back, I've been through shit, looking forward, maybe it'll be
better?
1/8 open
1/15 open
And so on,
and so forth.
I gotta get this off my chest,
before I go any further;
I work at a Walmart store,
(I know, evil sweatshop garment factory
in Bangladesh,
recent diary here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
My friends at Anti Capitalist Meet Up
posted that.
My whole world,
nearly everyone I know
in my face to face world
shops at Walmart
and similar places.
We are the working poor.
We're trapped,
not as badly as the workers in Bangladesh,
but we're trapped.)
Anyway,
as I was walking past the electronics department,
I saw a big display box
full of movies,
and the big poster on the side
showed me the title,
and the faces and names of the stars.
The title is,
The Expendables 2,
and the stars are:
Sylvester Stallone
Jason Statham
Jet Li
Dolph Lundgren
Chuck Norris
Terry Crews
Randy Couture
Liam Hemsworth
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Bruce Willis
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Wow.
I once had an idea for a movie like that,
get all the action heroes in one movie,
but make it a cop show,
and have all the very famous actors' characters
killed off,
one by one,
by some clever bad guy.
Then,
a rookie cop,
portrayed by an up-and-coming actor,
gets lucky and kills the bad guy.
Anyway.
Let's continue this
below the squiggly.
My last two diaries
had very few readers.
Maybe it was the title,
or bad luck.
Or,
maybe some folks read it quickly,
and didn't like it.
I've had my best response
when I write slice-of-life diaries.
So,
aside from the movie,
which has to be a joke,
with old action heroes,
in their sixties,
aside from that,
it's cold,
here in
Wichita,
Kansas:
http://www.accuweather.com/...
18° 20° 26° 32° 36° 41° 45° 48°
RealFeel® 16° 19° 26° 32° 36° 40° 44° 44°
That's the hour-by-hour forecast
for Tuesday in Wichita,
from the morning low at sunrise,
to the afternoon high.
I'm living in a house
that doesn't have central heat;
my wife and I have space heaters in our room.
I'm sitting next to an oil filled heater;
it works well,
if I put a thin blanket over it,
and my legs,
trapping the heat for my legs.
My wife,
Tonia,
is doing likewise,
using an old, torn
flannel sheet,
putting her head through the torn hole,
and draping the sheet over her whole body,
and the other heater,
on her side of the room,
where she's slaughtering zombies,
in Call of Duty,
Black Ops,
with a Blue Tooth in her ear,
so she can freely converse
with her fellow gamers,
as they revive each other,
when one is down,
and nearly dead.
Just as Tonia revived me,
when I was depressed,
depressed cuz I was getting tired
of working so hard
to take care of just me,
for three years,
after my first wife,
Pam,
died.
I feel so much better,
with Tonia and I,
taking care of each other,
using the heaters,
and taking care of three small dogs,
putting them outside on tie-out cables,
giving them food and water,
checking on them,
and bringing them in,
when it gets too cold.
I made a stew today;
it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped,
but it sounds good,
so let me describe it:
I started with about a half pound of bacon,
that we bought almost two months ago,
I thought it was starting to smell funny,
when I took it out of the meat drawer in the fridge,
but I let Tonia inspect it,
and she said it was okay.
It was bacon ends and pieces,
which is the only bacon I buy,
because it's the only bacon I can afford:
about six dollars for three pounds,
at my Walmart workplace.
(Is the bacon packed in sweatshops
that catch fire,
and kill workers?
Probably lots of injuries,
with all the sharp knives in the meat packing industry.)
Anyway,
wearing my winter coat and hat,
because there's no heater in the living room,
where I was cooking,
I fried the bacon,
simmered it,
really,
in a 12 inch stainless steel skillet,
on a hot plate,
on a card table,
in the living room,
and pulled out the well fried bacon
with my slotted turner,
and put it on a paper plate.
I then washed out,
in the bathtub,
since we have no working kitchen,
my sixteen quart stock pot,
and put the big pot on the hotplate,
and poured all the bacon grease in it.
Here is the kind of hat I wear:
http://www.google.com/...
But I put the ear flaps down.
To the big pot,
I added about two pounds
of link smoked sausage,
the cheapest Walmart kind,
angle sliced.
So now the sausage is simmering in the bacon fat.
I found a can of government commodity
canned beef,
and opened it,
and tasted it;
it seemed pretty good;
I dumped that in the pot.
I added two large cans of seasoned greens,
mustard greens,
and mixed greens.
Then I added two onions
and six potatoes,
each onion and each potato
cut up into thirty-seconds.
That's cut in half,
then each half face down,
three cuts lengthwise,
and three cuts crosswise.
I let it simmer til the potatoes were done.
I was not impressed;
it needed more salt and fat,
but it'll taste better
on the second and third day,
if it lasts that long.
We're sharing it with Uncle Randall.
He brought us eight fried chicken breasts,
from the deli
of a different supermarket,
not Walmart,
half price,
just before they were to be thrown out.
Uncle Randal was proud of his bargain.
Eight chicken breasts
for less than five dollars.
To bring the whole picture together,
and get to the chicken coops,
and don't freeze your ducks,
have a little patience.
Our room,
where Tonia and I live,
an added on room,
added on to the back of a big house,
has no ceiling,
and it never had any
pink panther insulation.
Tomorrow,
we may dip into savings,
and buy some sheet rock,
and pink panther insulation,
and fix our room.
It should hold heat much better after that.
Then,
in the spring,
we intend to build a chicken coop,
and get a duckling,
and raise the duck,
so we can eat the duck eggs.
The duck eggs might taste better,
and will be easier to cook,
than that big batch of stew.
But we need to be sure,
that the duck doesn't freeze,
just as we take care of each other
and the three small dogs.
And the whole idea
behind building the chicken coop
is to demonstrate,
in some small way,
the idea of feeding ourselves,
rather than hoping
that big capitalist agriculture companies
will always take care of us.
Their motive is profit,
not the secure and steady supply
of food to working class people.
And an article I read recently
http://www.aljazeera.com/...
Nowhere in the world is the rising number of annual natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.
With its latest study “Severe weather in North America," Munich Re provides comprehensive analyses on how loss figures are impacted by changing exposures and behaviour, by natural climate swings and by man-made climate change.
»View contents and Executive Summary or obtain a copy
Right here in Wichita,
in the middle of the breadbasket of the world,
this is where the biggest impact
of climate change
is now taking place.
I can feel it in my bones,
since this cold front
that hit us so hard
is exactly the kind of thing
that is getting worse
as the years go by.
So,
we need to get ready
to keep ourselves from freezing,
and our dogs,
and our duck,
when we get her.
But what will the farmers do
to rescue the corn
when the droughts and the days
of 105 degrees F
burn it up?
For many decades,
this country
has produced way more food
than any other.
But if the population of our planet
keeps going up,
and the droughts and storms
kill the crops and livestock,
more so in this country
than any other,
what will happen then?
Thanks for reading.