The opposite of an AMA, today’s thread is an AHA- Ask Him/Her (and those are all your choices) Anything!
Ask your fellow Gutterballs a question you’ve always wanted to know, like whether they are literally Hitler, whether they are as sexually promiscuous (please use the politically correct terms DTF and GGG) as they seem to be, how many cats they own, or whether you might run into them in a 12-step meeting!
Obviously, no one is obliged to answer, but if you play this card too much, you’re boring and uptight and we don’t like you.
Yes, you can ask me stuff. Please don’t ask me (or anyone) PII (personally-identifying information) like home addresses or other stupid shit you wouldn’t want on the internet if it was about yourself.
The Ungovernable: Do you use comedy in any practical form in real life/are you the kind of guy that is perpetually joking about everything in your normal social discourse?
We just started talking more outside of Substack, really. Partly just for company, partly because Rollins helped edit a report I was putting together so we were on the phone about that. One of those things where both of us like chatting with each other, and frankly these days having anyone to talk to (literally speak) about things is tough. Especially when you move around a lot.
So, that's all. No real exciting back story there. It's not like we are part of some shadowy organization planning world domination while stroking white Persians and using the word "exquisite" a little too often for comfort. Not at all. Why would you say that?
Plus, if I had serious fuck you money and a domination bent, I would be going full on giant death robots while screaming "FOOLS! I'LL SHOW YOU ALL!", not some lame ass Globohomo nonsense. I mean, goddamn, have some style!
There used to be a Girl Genius (great comic by Phil and Kaja Foglio) t-shirt reading "FOOLS! I'LL DESTROY YOU ALL! (ask me how!)" but it looks like the printer they worked with closed and I can't tell if they still get made... kind of a shame that.
I have not published a physical book. I got into flash fiction because a psychic told me to my great sorrow I'd have no success with (all them unfinished) novels but he saw hope in short stories and that was the blinding flash bang that actually got me to write stuff that had beginnings, middles and ends.
And time has now entirely passed me by. I don't believe in the bullshit that we gotta stay in some imaginary lanes and can't put ourselves in any heads or bodies (literarily speaking of course) that we choose to. But then time did a detour and gave me Substack, so if I can stop grieving for the death of a physical book possibility, I might try to finish all them aggravating things waiting for attention on my hard drive.
The small crumbs of cheese I have earned from the fruit of my cyberliteration total $75.00
Was the psychic Ms Cleo? Because I hear she is unreasonably bearish on the book publishing market after the disastrous release of her romance novella about a blind psychic lady of the night who falls for a impotent sailor. Apparently she never saw it coming.
You may laugh, but I got my Substack now, ain't I? Filled with previously published short stories and my name is known globally. By like 2 people in each far-flung place, but still.
I am trying to train my daughters to do that sound when I make a bad pun. Unfortunately they can make the sound but have a hard time recognizing puns. Plus side, they are really good at applying the sad trombone "womp womp" sound.
Oct 6, 2022·edited Oct 6, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
Eh, that'd be when I was 18 I think. Me, my girl at the time and her best friend were on our way home from some party or other - used to be you'd get a bunch of bands together at some abandoned house out in the bush outside Stockholm, hook the set up to a diesel generator, and have a weekend of garage-style trash, speed, punk, oi, ska - that kind of stuff. Drinking beer, moonshine, botanising the local herbs, swapping crabs for the drip and so on.
So we're basically asleep at the back of a bus (public transport) in the middle of the night when some white-bread Adidas-warriors comes aboard and starts hassling us. So I start rattling off something to the tune of "Go felch your dad's cum out your sister's ass" or something like that and for some reason the guy takes offence and jumps me. The utter bloody gall of some oiks I tell you.
Now, remember, this is over 30 years ago (no I'm not 48) and I was drunk. D-U-R-N-K. So I manage to get a grip of the seats on either side of the aisle and kicks him in the face with my Get-a-Grip boots. With both feets. Because I'm drunk. So I ass-plant on the floor of the bus. Meanwhile the girls are (I was told by police later) giving as good as they get - my tiny wisp of a girlfriend, all 45 kilos of her, is using a steel comb to stab at the eyes of a guy and her friend who was built more Hardy than Laurel is throwing haymakers and using her girth to hinder the guys to gang up proper.
So the guy who I kicked returns the favour, spreading my nose across my face as I try to yank his Adam's apple out. This goes on for a thousand years it felt like, kicks and punches and so on in some kind of crawl-fight.
Then the law arrives, doling out ultra-vi on democratic principles. They had the old sticks back then, not the slim light-weight metal ones they use today. Hard wood with a lead core, and a metal stud on the handle. Say about 20 pounds maybe. Neck, head, clavicle, solar plexus, liver - that's were they'd aim. And for swedish police back then they had either the stick or the gun, no other measures, so employing the stick was them being nice. In dad's day they could opt for cavalry sabers instead.
So I wake up in the ER, being prepped for X-ray of my head. No injuries, praise the maker for guarding drunks and idiots. I think that was the worst one, danger-wise, for me personally.
I'll pop back in later, I've got one or two more for you to laugh at.
Oct 7, 2022·edited Oct 7, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
I do have a question for you. What made you decide to start this Substack?
Edit: Should've read your introductory post first; that'll larn me to fail to do my own research.
But still curious about the time management aspect of it. Seems like you've got to be in permanent arrears to the minimum nightly required amount of sleep. An extraordinary amount of good content here.
I became aware of substack by way of EGM, who I became aware of by way of a now (I think) defunct reddit I found while desperately- in early days, this was NOT easy- searching for resources and community for dissent against lockdowns and mandates.
Someone reposted an early EGM post to the reddit (on which I didn't stay forever; reddit began cracking down on genuine COVID dissent very hard, and after vaccines showed up, the community became so scared of being cancelled that they began policing the very dissent that brought me there to the point of making it pointless).
From EGM I found a handful of other stacks to follow, started reading, and taking note of what successful stackers were doing. I began to develop a distinctive voice in the comments sections and an increasing number of people encouraged me to start my own stack.
I originally intended to write the stack exclusively about COVID, and mainly just to get out a series of essays organized around the title "What the COVID pandemic taught me about myself," which was a list of about 10 things I broadly became awakened to about my country, the world, and my own values and biases.
I didn't really have any plan on what to write beyond that. I don't work in any channels where I had access to the data or skillset to offer anything really valuable in the way of statistics, underpublished research, or investigative journalism- I am as I frequently point out in all seriousness, a nobody with no real power in this fight beyond voting until I can't and then shooting until I can't.
My only real goal in those planned essays was to try to give back a sense that people who found themselves here are not isolated, crazy, a minority, or evil, and that I felt I was skilled enough to do.
The stack grew beyond that initial scope almost immediately, even if I didn't/don't have a zillion followers and aren't yet earning a sustainable income solely from it.
COVID is only one (large) piece of a bigger story that still fits into all of the above, and the shape of the community drawn to such a conversation has evolved, so here we are.
I mainly want the Gutter to be a place for philosophical engagement among broadly likeminded souls, therapeutic humor and uncensored community discourse, an outlet for me on topics that have nonzero value to others, and a place to challenge myself to produce high-quality essays and thought pieces beyond the Things that people would consider paying for.
I would consider it a favor from Freyja if the time came where I was able to earn a modest living on paid subscribers such that, combined with my husband's income, it was enough for me to focus on it, the farm, and raising our hopefully future child. But even if it doesn't become that, I want to continue growing and building it in more or less the same direction that it's in now.
As to my time management, the majority of my paid work is as a management consultant, apprenticed to a very successful one who built his own brand over the past thirty years or so, so my schedule is very flexible but sadly not a full 40-hour workweek currently.
COVID thoroughly destroyed a previous job as a corporate and private language instructor for adult professionals and contract work as a marketing copywriter and editor to an agency that purged me partially for my views and principles of what I was willing to say in copy and partially as part of a broader purge of local (American) workers in favor of much-lower paid staff working ad hoc from Latin America who spoke English as a second language while working for an ad agency that worked entirely in English.
Farming stuff can only really get done in the daytime, and about half of it can only really be done when I have Brothermouth available in the middle of the day with another pair of hands.
I do a huge amount of composition in my head while I'm working on the farm or doing housework, so by the time I sit down at the keyboard it's nearly all over but the crying already. I type insanely fast and put myself to deadlines. That said, I am still not as prolific as I would like to be.
Oh, my word, I wish it was something wholesome and organic. She's a ballerina and blasts through stage make up. I just buy junk from Walgreens. Plus, we can't keep the 5 year old away from it no matter where it's hidden. She LOVES make up.
Two of them, they're both doing great as far as I'm able to tell - and I check in all the time.
Semi-bi because nobody can be straight. Wow. I feel like someone took gender, put it into a house of mirrors, and said "look everyone! See how fractal this can become!" The problem is, it's all just a manufactured illusion of reality, not reality itself. And yet seemingly sane adults are just going with it.
That’s kind of the premise of Abigail Shrier’s book Irrversible Damage. Almost all teen girls hate being a teen girl. Doesn’t mean you need to sterilize yourself with cross sex hormones and puberty blockers and mutilate your body. Just gotta power through
Oct 6, 2022·edited Oct 6, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
Sadly, I'd like to know everything about everyone because I'm relentlessly curious and any tiny hints of anything make me want to know more. I might be a relentless talker but I'm always tryin' to get others to talk a lot too.
I want to know more about your experience in Muslim countries. Would you name the country(ies) you spent time in, and if so, what were your experiences? Take aways, good, bad, ugly?
Oct 6, 2022·edited Oct 6, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
The two friends I made in that youth hostel in France were next-door neighbors of each other and one had a Pakistani father, and when most of the family was relocating back there, I said wistfully to the mom that I wished I could go with them and she said "why not?" So I went with them in 1976 and stayed 3 months that first time.
There's a certain quality to the air and the night sky, starting from the Mediterranean coast where Israel begins and identically so in Pakistan that I never felt anywhere else. To me Karachi was no different than Tel Aviv in that sense of "other place" I didn't feel in the same way in the Netherlands or Iceland or the UK. I enjoyed all those places for their unique qualities, but no place ever made me feel I was under the real, actual, true and unfiltered night sky as when I was in Pakistan. I'll always miss it. And most of my time there was spent in the Frontier, either in Peshawar or the horrible place my now unhusband came from (a very conservative city), and visiting often up in a place called Swat which is exceptionally beautiful and that sky, it's just like nowhere else.
As a New York Jew I felt culturally very at home in Pakistan in many ways but one thing foreign travel teaches you is that you are always indelibly the creation of your own culture. I learned how much of an American I am, and getting a lot older taught me to be damn grateful for that. My younger self is ripping her hair out, reading this. People often mock America and Americans, but one thing we have here, the concept of genuine friendships between women--I can't tell you the number of women I knew over there who were unused to the idea that you can speak frankly to a woman friend and she won't use it against you in the great war of social dynamics. Our bluntness and openness are actually traits we should defend against all arch contempt from them older societies.
My first time in Pakistan was just before the end of the Bhutto regime, and people were very paranoid, and I couldn't understand being afraid to speak frankly on the phone or in person. Time has schooled on the idea it couldn't happen here, hasn't it?
Pakistani society has been greatly perverted by the influence of Saudi Arabia over the past 40 or so years. It was possible in the late '70s to observe the fasting month, or not, as one chose (except in the Frontier), but now lighting up a cigarette during the fasting hours of Ramzan will get you beaten to death.
When I recovered from my Great Religious Experience, I still retained a certain feeling that a sensibility had gotten into the marrow of my bones, and again I think that's because Islam and Judaism are essentially identical. The gulf between those ways of thinking, and the ways of thinking of believing Christians, are in many ways unbridgeable despite many commonalities in moral and ethical values.
The most fun part of those first three months was that I got a job working as the secretary to the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, and he began to suspect I was Of the Wrong Faith and kept asking what my religion was, and I said I didn't have one, and he wanted to know if it was written in my passport and I said no.
And he was always trying to get me in compromising positions, and unfortunately too he was a short guy so his eye-level gaze was mostly on my (pretty small) chest.
Anyway one day he tried to corner me and as a Noo Yawkuh I instinctively kneed him, and though I didn't make all that much contact, he backed away in shock and asked if I was trying to kill him and I said "Yes." I was not all that much later gently let go from my position.
The moral of this story is I ain't got no sympathy for women who whine that somebody harassed them at work and they wuz just helpless, helpless to resist. On the other hand of course I tend to have hair-trigger reflexes and the common sense comes afterwards.
There's something to be said for that. I think a lot of bullying relies on the target thinking themselves into complying. There's a lot to be said for the people who are always willing to fight back against injustice; it tends to dissuade those who would make a habit of it, and keeps those who can't or won't fight from having to do it all the time.
You've got the same access to Urban Dictionary as the rest of us.
And, sadly for furry Hitlerians, no. People are routinely surprised by this because I have such a tart personality, but I'm actually really vanilla. I was into some relatively tame stuff in my 20s when I was very active in the goth club scene, but it was mostly to be social. I don't really seem to be wired for kink: it doesn't do anything special for me and gets in the way.
Yeah, I know. I'm a lot more boring than I read as.
I think one of the consequences of having the kind of life where you try everything is that most things lose their mystique and you settle into the stuff you actually like.
I hear ya. Sometimes you add horseradish to your roast beef sandwich until the meat falls out and you hardly notice, and sometimes you run out of horseradish and just don't bother to buy more afterwards.
I've tried all the things and what you say is true. Although now I know what I like better than those who have no idea what they like, so that's a good thing.
Still, I'm always up for new things to both stretch my comfort level and then bring me back to my center.
After the riots began in the Spring of 2020, I watched from my condo as a mall that is a block away from us was raided, ransacked, and robbed wholesale. This is a large, high-end mall that was completely emptied in a matter of hours. Watching the cars circling in a clearly highly coordinated effort while they drained the entire mall. Meanwhile, they were smashing windows, turning cars over, etc.
It permanently radicalized me. Shortly thereafter, I purchased my first firearm and started firearms training.
Damn. Were you in Minneapolis at the time, or another city?
I ask because I was teaching in St Paul then, and one of my students had a similar moment. She said she'd been a life long pacifist and was now getting a license and gun after spending a night sitting in front of her dad's apartment to keep looters and arsonists away. It was quite the shaking few weeks for a lot of my masters students, between the looting and burning and the media coverage of it.
Yea, no doubt. That combination of "Wow, people can be awful" with "The government will not do a goddamned thing if it is politically convenient for them" turned out to be remarkably common. I was pretty glad I lived on the other side of a giant national guard base from the cities. I was very glad I (and my neighbors) would be able to go all roof top Korean in either case.
I had a pretty nice voice through high school and into college; even belonged to some choruses and stuff.
In my mid-20s, I got a polyp cut off the inside of my throat and had some scarring close to the trachea that made it a little scratchy.
I have the same basic pitch as my mom and sang contralto, and the fact that my voice occasionally growls made me insanely self-conscious all through my 20s and into my 30s until I just kind of learned to get over it and leaned into it.
It bothers absolutely no one but me, Husbandmouth included.
It was one of many life lessons about how horrible women are to ourselves about beauty.
At first I was just delighted that Someone else knew what a contralto is! Then I saw your polyp story, and I figured I'd answer a question thst wasn't asked, because past- misery and growth love company...
I was a music major as a young Barbarian. Instrumental and Voice major, Composition minor. All the right stuff, until my voice dropped from Soprano 1, to Alto. My voice coach was livid! How dare I! It didn't matter to her that I'd a 4.5 octave range, nor that I'd been chosen for All State for both Tenor and Alto voice...All Eastern and .All New England too. I could no longer follow in her diva footsteps and she made my next year hell. Well! ...finding out that many in the operatic music genre were like minded...it fid me a huge favor . I turned my back on them and went into Health Physics. Screw primadonnas.
I sang only for myself for years. ( I prefer rock. ) but about 15 years ago I was diagnosed with a weirdvrte disease- acromegaly. It's made my throat thick, my voice a bit furry, my song ...erratic.
It bothered my badly until about 2 years ago. I hated to hear what my voice had become! But now? I sing when I feel like it, no matter who's around.
I'm just happy to be here. It's amazing the perspective you get as you go through and survive.
Thanks for encouraging us to know each other better, and to knit more closely than any other substack I've seen.
Wow, I'm probably the only other person here who knows what acromegaly is!
Yeah, it's a weird kind of pain, a tiny journey compared to other things, but self-hatred can run deep regardless of the size of the hole.
And you're welcome! I started to feel like this stack iss a little closer-knit than most and wanted to try to lean into that, as "bring something distinctive to market" is my usual approach when I encounter an already-overcrowded field and know I'm not a statistician or investigative journalist of the highest imaginable calibre.
You're freaking kidding me. Acromegaly is rare. How the hell did two contraltos meet, *and* you know what Acromegaly is? Today we should buy lottery tickets 🤣
I'm on the outer fringe of Gutterballs, as I'm generally clueless, but yeah....you've done something quite special here.
I knew she was cheating on her husband!! 😂😂... nah, far before your time. But...the sheer height difference between you two would have made me wet myself laughing . She was one of those weirdos with a good command of ' flute voice'.. and a poor command of her over-inflated ego.
We do have a freakish number of things in common...but if you're thinking you await my take on stuff? Stop taking the meds early! They're screwing with your mind. 😂
I don't *think* so. But it's possible I did in my teens. My friends and I were really into anime and read some awful fanfic. One of us even wrote some. No, it wasn't me.
Ok, so as you asked for info on brawls and I offered to mention one or two more, and having had dinner (pork chops simmered in dark ale with roasted root vegetables from the garden and fresh onions, some homemade sauerkraut, homemade pickled cucumbers, and fresh tomatoes marinated in basil, rosemary, garlic and rape oil) here's two shorter stories of fights I was involved in. Let me just say this: I learned two things early on - if there's more of them than you? Run like the wind. One of them will get behind you and drop you and then it's thank you and goodnight. And all that martial arts-stuff? It's really good if you're in the ring or on the mat, not so much on the street where there are no rules at all. You could be a black belt in Chop suey or Yokohama or whatever - and then the guy you're putting in a chokehold jabs a shit-smeared tableknife to your eyes.
Anyways, story time - and yes, it's all true.
Once upon an evening dreary, we were all sitting at our favourite hang out place, the stairs at Sergel Plaza in Stockholm. We meaning me Rikard, Erik, Billy, and a bunch of others. Now me, I was mellowing out on lager, feeling the Big Man since I had a real pretty-pretty on my arm; the kind of girl that has that fae-like beauty and knows how to use it have the boys acting like a pack of dogs for a kind word. Erik and Billy was having an argument over something o other, and them not being sober meant they were very susceptible to the rest of us egging them on with jeers and cheers.
Erik was quite tall, close to 190cm, and Billy (named William by his dad, hence Billy because it sounded cooler than Ville which is the normal swedish short-form for William) was closer to 180 but much heavier, almost rotund.
Anywhoo, Erik finally snaps and kicks Billy on the kneecap with a stelcapped boot. Billy then yanks out a knife and stabs Erik straight in the chest. Erik doubles over an Billy immediatey tries to comfort him while the local police, having watched bemusedly until the knife came out to play, hauls them off to hospital.
When I and a couple of others show up at the hosptial quick as we could get there, Erik and Billy has been dumped off at the nurse's desk by the police. The nurse, not amused in the slightest by the scene, ask "And what seems to be the problem young man?" to which Billy replies: "Well, he's hurt, isn't he?"
"Yes, but how is he hurt?"
"Well, uhm, see, I... here, I'll show you!"
Up until now Erik has been hunched over and wrapped in his "Bomber jacket", just standing there and swaying to and fro. Saying "I'll show you!" Billy tugs the jacket aside like a flasher opening his coat.
Displaying the knife stuck in Erik's sternum.
It hadn't penetrated, just cut the skin and flesh and lodged in the bone.
It's the wife or our son what does the cooking. I'm only allowed to cook for myself when they're not at home.
They hold as true that I can't cook, that they're just better at it and I'm very much a "the less wash up I have to do, the better the food" kind of man.
You know, the kind of man that when he was a bachelor would eat cold ravioli from the can while riding the bus or subway to work, or who fry up mince meat, add chopped onions and chopped green bell peppers, sprinkle white peppers and salt on top while it fries, mix up and heat a tomato, basil, garlic and oregano sauce on the side, and cook rice until half done, the scrape the meat aside in the frying pan, scoop up the rice and ladle into the middle of the pan making a small mound, hollow out the top of the mound and break a couple of eggs in into it, then cover "Mt Ricemore" with the meat, remove the pan from the fire and put a lid on it and wait about ten minutes.
Serve with the tomato sauce, tsatsiki, and plum juice for drink with a snifter of applejack for an appetizer.
Summertime, and the weather is seething. Girls are awesome and my head is swivelling. I'm 16 going on 17, I've moved out from home, I've got a job, I've got friends, I think I look cool and dangerous and like the real deal (shut up inner teen you know we looked like a runaway extra from 'The Warriors'). So I walk with a shit-eating grin and a certain swagger and bounce in my step, deciding to pop in at a burger joint and get a soda before heading for a park I know the gang's supposed to meet up in (this being in the before time, in the long-long ago before car phones, when you put a metal token in a slot in a machine and dialed a number).
And on my way out I bump into a guy going in and spills soda on him and me. And he goes off like a coke addict who sneezed instead of snort. Pow! My eye goes shut from his first punch. Ooof! Second one to the gut. Aow! Third one to the jaw.
All the time I'm backing away. Not really getting what's happening. Guy just started hitting me, no preamble, no chest thumping, no "Do you know who I am?". So starting to panic I lash out blindly with my leg and my shin hits him in the french author.
Gets me 5 seconds to catch my bearings, because it wasn't hard enough to hurt for real. But now the guy is angry for real and kicks me, aiming for the same spot. On reflex I jump back and slam my knees together at the same time, so I accidentally catch his foot between my knees and manage to grab it in both hands.
Guy is furious and bends the leg I'm holding to get close and sort of hits/slaps me across the already hurting eye. And I don't know what he hit because it was like a grenade went off. All I'm seeing, smelling, tasting is blood. The rest of this happened without any conscious input at all from my side:
I grab his ears, one in each hand, and starts headbutting him. Over and over and over again. My forehead slamming into his nose, his teeth, his forehead, at least ten times. At full force, me using both arms and my weight to yank him towards me at the same time I'm headbutting him.
All of a sudden I'm airborne. It's two hefty security guards lifting me off of the poor guy and carrying me away to the side and into a café, commandeering their bathroom where they proceed in helping me clean up. And scrape parts of his ears out of my nails.
They give me a real stern lecture to keep the F*** away from their area for a couple of weeks, or they'll hospitalise me, and then they leave. So do I, discreetly since I could hear sirens approaching. Meaning I did a runner to the nearest subway (no cameras back then).
Obligatory moral: Now, I don't feel like a big bad man for that, but I will admit still feeling some pride in giving as good as I got, and then some. It's a visceral feeling, and very addictive. Triumphing through force and violence is more addictive than heroin I think.
Spicy Renfro - you might have the best name on Substack. Every damn time I see it I chuckle to myself. How did you come up with that wonderful combination of words to describe yourself here?
I don't know if I can hang out with 'you people' as you all sound like nothing but trouble. That and my life has been about as plain as a tin pail, to quote Tommy Lee Jones in 'The Homesman'.
Let me just go ask my valet to look up my numbers in the Folio Room after he finishes parking the Bugatti and makes me a refreshing glass of peasant blood.
Oh for sure, it's mostly why I'm here. Earlier today I read a classic, dismissiveish line you wrote to someone else and I was going to quote it and then say "This. This is why I'm here."
No lie. I think it was you telling someone they have access to Google themselves and can find it (whatever "it" was) on their own.
Your takedown of me in that Meme Contest was tremendous. The only thing missing was hearing it in your voice!
I don't know how much golf history you know, and I've always liked that Trevino line, as well as his life story. Most golf people are surprised to learn he won SIX majors, and three of the four twice each. He beat Nicklaus in four of his six majors, one of them in an 18-hole playoff.
Quite the (underappreciated, underrated IMO) golf stud. And funnyman, too.
My mom was a semi-serious golfer when I was a teenager. I was proud of her because she was already in her fifties and thought it was cool that she picked up something new that required cultivating a skill and discipline.
I was sad when she dropped it about four years later because her terminally poor self esteem convinced her she was hopelessly bad at it and, therefore, not fun.
That is sad. Maybe if only she'd started younger she'd've been easier on herself, with a longer time window to be patient about getting better. Golf is a funny thing. You don't have to be good to enjoy it, you just have to be better than you were before, even if only for a few shots. It's cliche, but every golfer knows how one good shot will bring them back tomorrow, STS.
It *is* hard for us amateurs, and at times not fun when it goes badly. But it's always available for improvement, and that's what drives me more than anything, the potential for self-improvement. I can be competitive by myself, against myself, against the game. I don't need an adversary. I don't mind an adversary (basketball, or even golf tourneys), but unlike perhaps all other sports (even solo sports, like tennis), you can play by, for, and against yourself. At the same time.
Your PERSONAL Mt. Rushmore. If you were on a desert island, and you only had one fresh Maxell audio cassette of 4 songs you could ever listen to again from the 90s, what would they be?
I appreciate the thought you put into this. It's a tough list.
Please tell me you became aware of Waiting For The Miracle because of the Natural Born Killers movie... Regardless, that's a low -key amazing one to include. It's so haunting. Great call.
Jeremy, yes.
Hurt just went on my Halloween Spotify mix last week, but if we're going NIN, and I had to pick, I might have to go with Closer. Just too many great memories for me with that one.
"She's a gutter mouth..." Of course that should be your B side.
I'm sorry to say that radio and club DJs played Closer to death for me and I kind of never need to hear it again. I have probably heard Closer literally 1,000 times.
I did see Natural Born Killers, but I've been in a secret love affair with Leonard Cohen for at least ten lifetimes. In most of them, I am many decades too young for him and we are in an era where that's a problem. In other lifetimes our faiths are irreconcilable (he is always, always Jewish). I have put him to the flame at least once and the bastard smiled all the while. He is often married and sometimes I find that intolerable, other times I have hung for it (the man never hangs) and he has composed songs about my defiant death and followed me into the grave with wine.
I am one of the few people alive who know that Leonard Cohen is actually Old Scratch, perpetually reborn, and that Hell is actually to eternally walk the Earth with unrequited love. His only avenue of revenge is to raise earthly rebellions against his father in song.
When he died this time, I was startled by how incredibly upset I was. I felt like a woman twice my age discovering that her high school sweetheart had died. Leonard Cohen songs would probably occupy several places on a top 20.
I hear you about Closer, it was definitely played out, but still, it got my religiously sexually repressed and awkward 17 year old high school version of myself chicks at parties because it was like an audio aphrodisiac and turned seemingly mild manner girls into animals who wanted to fuck. 🤣
The Ungovernable: Do you use comedy in any practical form in real life/are you the kind of guy that is perpetually joking about everything in your normal social discourse?
Are you taller than GutterHusband?
No, Husbandmouth and Brothermouth are both exactly 1.5" taller than me, and Fathermouth is 3".
Lmao I called him gutterhusband...sorry
It's good. We already have a fun naming convention for this!
Just an insatiable smartass!
MY MAN!
I'll get the ball rolling:
Doc Hammer / Jay Rollins: How do you two know each other IRL, because you've dropped frequent hints that you do?
SCA: Have you ever published a physical book, would you like to reveal what it was, and did you get any cheddar from that shit?
Rikard: What's the most serious brawl you've ever been in?
We just started talking more outside of Substack, really. Partly just for company, partly because Rollins helped edit a report I was putting together so we were on the phone about that. One of those things where both of us like chatting with each other, and frankly these days having anyone to talk to (literally speak) about things is tough. Especially when you move around a lot.
So, that's all. No real exciting back story there. It's not like we are part of some shadowy organization planning world domination while stroking white Persians and using the word "exquisite" a little too often for comfort. Not at all. Why would you say that?
Klaus? Is that you?
Nah, my name just sounds like a pulp villain.
Plus, if I had serious fuck you money and a domination bent, I would be going full on giant death robots while screaming "FOOLS! I'LL SHOW YOU ALL!", not some lame ass Globohomo nonsense. I mean, goddamn, have some style!
I want that on a t-shirt
There used to be a Girl Genius (great comic by Phil and Kaja Foglio) t-shirt reading "FOOLS! I'LL DESTROY YOU ALL! (ask me how!)" but it looks like the printer they worked with closed and I can't tell if they still get made... kind of a shame that.
https://www.redbubble.com/i/hoodie/Fool-I-Will-Destroy-You-All-Ask-Me-How-by-credencem/44393283.VR8OC
I’ve always wanted a tiny little dragon that sat on my shoulder and burned people that pissed me off. Like mask wearers and people named Fauci.
I have not published a physical book. I got into flash fiction because a psychic told me to my great sorrow I'd have no success with (all them unfinished) novels but he saw hope in short stories and that was the blinding flash bang that actually got me to write stuff that had beginnings, middles and ends.
And time has now entirely passed me by. I don't believe in the bullshit that we gotta stay in some imaginary lanes and can't put ourselves in any heads or bodies (literarily speaking of course) that we choose to. But then time did a detour and gave me Substack, so if I can stop grieving for the death of a physical book possibility, I might try to finish all them aggravating things waiting for attention on my hard drive.
The small crumbs of cheese I have earned from the fruit of my cyberliteration total $75.00
Was the psychic Ms Cleo? Because I hear she is unreasonably bearish on the book publishing market after the disastrous release of her romance novella about a blind psychic lady of the night who falls for a impotent sailor. Apparently she never saw it coming.
You may laugh, but I got my Substack now, ain't I? Filled with previously published short stories and my name is known globally. By like 2 people in each far-flung place, but still.
💗
<snare drum, cymbal crash>
I am trying to train my daughters to do that sound when I make a bad pun. Unfortunately they can make the sound but have a hard time recognizing puns. Plus side, they are really good at applying the sad trombone "womp womp" sound.
Dude😂
Eh, that'd be when I was 18 I think. Me, my girl at the time and her best friend were on our way home from some party or other - used to be you'd get a bunch of bands together at some abandoned house out in the bush outside Stockholm, hook the set up to a diesel generator, and have a weekend of garage-style trash, speed, punk, oi, ska - that kind of stuff. Drinking beer, moonshine, botanising the local herbs, swapping crabs for the drip and so on.
So we're basically asleep at the back of a bus (public transport) in the middle of the night when some white-bread Adidas-warriors comes aboard and starts hassling us. So I start rattling off something to the tune of "Go felch your dad's cum out your sister's ass" or something like that and for some reason the guy takes offence and jumps me. The utter bloody gall of some oiks I tell you.
Now, remember, this is over 30 years ago (no I'm not 48) and I was drunk. D-U-R-N-K. So I manage to get a grip of the seats on either side of the aisle and kicks him in the face with my Get-a-Grip boots. With both feets. Because I'm drunk. So I ass-plant on the floor of the bus. Meanwhile the girls are (I was told by police later) giving as good as they get - my tiny wisp of a girlfriend, all 45 kilos of her, is using a steel comb to stab at the eyes of a guy and her friend who was built more Hardy than Laurel is throwing haymakers and using her girth to hinder the guys to gang up proper.
So the guy who I kicked returns the favour, spreading my nose across my face as I try to yank his Adam's apple out. This goes on for a thousand years it felt like, kicks and punches and so on in some kind of crawl-fight.
Then the law arrives, doling out ultra-vi on democratic principles. They had the old sticks back then, not the slim light-weight metal ones they use today. Hard wood with a lead core, and a metal stud on the handle. Say about 20 pounds maybe. Neck, head, clavicle, solar plexus, liver - that's were they'd aim. And for swedish police back then they had either the stick or the gun, no other measures, so employing the stick was them being nice. In dad's day they could opt for cavalry sabers instead.
So I wake up in the ER, being prepped for X-ray of my head. No injuries, praise the maker for guarding drunks and idiots. I think that was the worst one, danger-wise, for me personally.
I'll pop back in later, I've got one or two more for you to laugh at.
I do have a question for you. What made you decide to start this Substack?
Edit: Should've read your introductory post first; that'll larn me to fail to do my own research.
But still curious about the time management aspect of it. Seems like you've got to be in permanent arrears to the minimum nightly required amount of sleep. An extraordinary amount of good content here.
I became aware of substack by way of EGM, who I became aware of by way of a now (I think) defunct reddit I found while desperately- in early days, this was NOT easy- searching for resources and community for dissent against lockdowns and mandates.
Someone reposted an early EGM post to the reddit (on which I didn't stay forever; reddit began cracking down on genuine COVID dissent very hard, and after vaccines showed up, the community became so scared of being cancelled that they began policing the very dissent that brought me there to the point of making it pointless).
From EGM I found a handful of other stacks to follow, started reading, and taking note of what successful stackers were doing. I began to develop a distinctive voice in the comments sections and an increasing number of people encouraged me to start my own stack.
I originally intended to write the stack exclusively about COVID, and mainly just to get out a series of essays organized around the title "What the COVID pandemic taught me about myself," which was a list of about 10 things I broadly became awakened to about my country, the world, and my own values and biases.
I didn't really have any plan on what to write beyond that. I don't work in any channels where I had access to the data or skillset to offer anything really valuable in the way of statistics, underpublished research, or investigative journalism- I am as I frequently point out in all seriousness, a nobody with no real power in this fight beyond voting until I can't and then shooting until I can't.
My only real goal in those planned essays was to try to give back a sense that people who found themselves here are not isolated, crazy, a minority, or evil, and that I felt I was skilled enough to do.
The stack grew beyond that initial scope almost immediately, even if I didn't/don't have a zillion followers and aren't yet earning a sustainable income solely from it.
COVID is only one (large) piece of a bigger story that still fits into all of the above, and the shape of the community drawn to such a conversation has evolved, so here we are.
I mainly want the Gutter to be a place for philosophical engagement among broadly likeminded souls, therapeutic humor and uncensored community discourse, an outlet for me on topics that have nonzero value to others, and a place to challenge myself to produce high-quality essays and thought pieces beyond the Things that people would consider paying for.
I would consider it a favor from Freyja if the time came where I was able to earn a modest living on paid subscribers such that, combined with my husband's income, it was enough for me to focus on it, the farm, and raising our hopefully future child. But even if it doesn't become that, I want to continue growing and building it in more or less the same direction that it's in now.
Can I just but in to say that this is a truly inspiring quote, one you might consider for merchandise:
"voting until I can't and then shooting until I can't."
Wearing something like that here might actually get you arrested for unlawful threats.
Around here these days, probably, too.
I wrote that before you addended your post. :)
As to my time management, the majority of my paid work is as a management consultant, apprenticed to a very successful one who built his own brand over the past thirty years or so, so my schedule is very flexible but sadly not a full 40-hour workweek currently.
COVID thoroughly destroyed a previous job as a corporate and private language instructor for adult professionals and contract work as a marketing copywriter and editor to an agency that purged me partially for my views and principles of what I was willing to say in copy and partially as part of a broader purge of local (American) workers in favor of much-lower paid staff working ad hoc from Latin America who spoke English as a second language while working for an ad agency that worked entirely in English.
Farming stuff can only really get done in the daytime, and about half of it can only really be done when I have Brothermouth available in the middle of the day with another pair of hands.
I do a huge amount of composition in my head while I'm working on the farm or doing housework, so by the time I sit down at the keyboard it's nearly all over but the crying already. I type insanely fast and put myself to deadlines. That said, I am still not as prolific as I would like to be.
My teenager said there's a new term: semi-bi. It means you're straight, but nobody can be straight, so they invented semi-bi.
Anyone else raising teens?
I have a moustache right now because my 5 year old is painting my face with the teen's make up.
Also, I'm just here for the comments.
What makeup brand does your teen use
Oh, my word, I wish it was something wholesome and organic. She's a ballerina and blasts through stage make up. I just buy junk from Walgreens. Plus, we can't keep the 5 year old away from it no matter where it's hidden. She LOVES make up.
Two of them, they're both doing great as far as I'm able to tell - and I check in all the time.
Semi-bi because nobody can be straight. Wow. I feel like someone took gender, put it into a house of mirrors, and said "look everyone! See how fractal this can become!" The problem is, it's all just a manufactured illusion of reality, not reality itself. And yet seemingly sane adults are just going with it.
Leading to the pushing of gender reassignment surgeries. 😭
Bingo. Leading to more psychosis and societal chaos. Planning for the future while also remaking the present. What brilliant overlords we serve.
Yeah, brilliant. 😑
Mine once told me she was asexual. I said, just give yourself some time. :)
That’s kind of the premise of Abigail Shrier’s book Irrversible Damage. Almost all teen girls hate being a teen girl. Doesn’t mean you need to sterilize yourself with cross sex hormones and puberty blockers and mutilate your body. Just gotta power through
You deserve a medal, at least. My teen is a rescued 3 yr old mutt.
No my children are very young I am very grateful I can’t imagine parenting teens right now
Sadly, I'd like to know everything about everyone because I'm relentlessly curious and any tiny hints of anything make me want to know more. I might be a relentless talker but I'm always tryin' to get others to talk a lot too.
I want to know more about your experience in Muslim countries. Would you name the country(ies) you spent time in, and if so, what were your experiences? Take aways, good, bad, ugly?
The two friends I made in that youth hostel in France were next-door neighbors of each other and one had a Pakistani father, and when most of the family was relocating back there, I said wistfully to the mom that I wished I could go with them and she said "why not?" So I went with them in 1976 and stayed 3 months that first time.
There's a certain quality to the air and the night sky, starting from the Mediterranean coast where Israel begins and identically so in Pakistan that I never felt anywhere else. To me Karachi was no different than Tel Aviv in that sense of "other place" I didn't feel in the same way in the Netherlands or Iceland or the UK. I enjoyed all those places for their unique qualities, but no place ever made me feel I was under the real, actual, true and unfiltered night sky as when I was in Pakistan. I'll always miss it. And most of my time there was spent in the Frontier, either in Peshawar or the horrible place my now unhusband came from (a very conservative city), and visiting often up in a place called Swat which is exceptionally beautiful and that sky, it's just like nowhere else.
As a New York Jew I felt culturally very at home in Pakistan in many ways but one thing foreign travel teaches you is that you are always indelibly the creation of your own culture. I learned how much of an American I am, and getting a lot older taught me to be damn grateful for that. My younger self is ripping her hair out, reading this. People often mock America and Americans, but one thing we have here, the concept of genuine friendships between women--I can't tell you the number of women I knew over there who were unused to the idea that you can speak frankly to a woman friend and she won't use it against you in the great war of social dynamics. Our bluntness and openness are actually traits we should defend against all arch contempt from them older societies.
My first time in Pakistan was just before the end of the Bhutto regime, and people were very paranoid, and I couldn't understand being afraid to speak frankly on the phone or in person. Time has schooled on the idea it couldn't happen here, hasn't it?
Pakistani society has been greatly perverted by the influence of Saudi Arabia over the past 40 or so years. It was possible in the late '70s to observe the fasting month, or not, as one chose (except in the Frontier), but now lighting up a cigarette during the fasting hours of Ramzan will get you beaten to death.
When I recovered from my Great Religious Experience, I still retained a certain feeling that a sensibility had gotten into the marrow of my bones, and again I think that's because Islam and Judaism are essentially identical. The gulf between those ways of thinking, and the ways of thinking of believing Christians, are in many ways unbridgeable despite many commonalities in moral and ethical values.
Wow, thank you so much. That's an incredible story.
The most fun part of those first three months was that I got a job working as the secretary to the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, and he began to suspect I was Of the Wrong Faith and kept asking what my religion was, and I said I didn't have one, and he wanted to know if it was written in my passport and I said no.
And he was always trying to get me in compromising positions, and unfortunately too he was a short guy so his eye-level gaze was mostly on my (pretty small) chest.
Anyway one day he tried to corner me and as a Noo Yawkuh I instinctively kneed him, and though I didn't make all that much contact, he backed away in shock and asked if I was trying to kill him and I said "Yes." I was not all that much later gently let go from my position.
The moral of this story is I ain't got no sympathy for women who whine that somebody harassed them at work and they wuz just helpless, helpless to resist. On the other hand of course I tend to have hair-trigger reflexes and the common sense comes afterwards.
There's something to be said for that. I think a lot of bullying relies on the target thinking themselves into complying. There's a lot to be said for the people who are always willing to fight back against injustice; it tends to dissuade those who would make a habit of it, and keeps those who can't or won't fight from having to do it all the time.
Did I tell you about that time the mugger shoved a gun in my side?
Saudi's really think American women are easy and yes you have to beat them off (NOT! that way!) with your fists.
Well, I was easy. But I always picked who to be easy with...
OK, I'll go.
Guttermouth, is it true that you are DTF with guys who dress as cat-faced Hitler?
Also, WHT is GGG?
You've got the same access to Urban Dictionary as the rest of us.
And, sadly for furry Hitlerians, no. People are routinely surprised by this because I have such a tart personality, but I'm actually really vanilla. I was into some relatively tame stuff in my 20s when I was very active in the goth club scene, but it was mostly to be social. I don't really seem to be wired for kink: it doesn't do anything special for me and gets in the way.
I feel sadly disappointed, yet I approve!
Yeah, I know. I'm a lot more boring than I read as.
I think one of the consequences of having the kind of life where you try everything is that most things lose their mystique and you settle into the stuff you actually like.
I hear ya. Sometimes you add horseradish to your roast beef sandwich until the meat falls out and you hardly notice, and sometimes you run out of horseradish and just don't bother to buy more afterwards.
There's always gotta be horseradish, just in case.
Yes!
I've tried all the things and what you say is true. Although now I know what I like better than those who have no idea what they like, so that's a good thing.
Still, I'm always up for new things to both stretch my comfort level and then bring me back to my center.
The Ungovernable...what was your "holy shit, this is going bad, this is going real bad" moment in Covid?
And then, after that moment, how did you change?
After the riots began in the Spring of 2020, I watched from my condo as a mall that is a block away from us was raided, ransacked, and robbed wholesale. This is a large, high-end mall that was completely emptied in a matter of hours. Watching the cars circling in a clearly highly coordinated effort while they drained the entire mall. Meanwhile, they were smashing windows, turning cars over, etc.
It permanently radicalized me. Shortly thereafter, I purchased my first firearm and started firearms training.
Damn. Were you in Minneapolis at the time, or another city?
I ask because I was teaching in St Paul then, and one of my students had a similar moment. She said she'd been a life long pacifist and was now getting a license and gun after spending a night sitting in front of her dad's apartment to keep looters and arsonists away. It was quite the shaking few weeks for a lot of my masters students, between the looting and burning and the media coverage of it.
Nope, not Minneapolis. I don't think my story is unique in any way.
Yea, no doubt. That combination of "Wow, people can be awful" with "The government will not do a goddamned thing if it is politically convenient for them" turned out to be remarkably common. I was pretty glad I lived on the other side of a giant national guard base from the cities. I was very glad I (and my neighbors) would be able to go all roof top Korean in either case.
Yep. The city might as well be called "Everywhere, USA"
Terrifying and polarizing, for sure.
Welcome to the "dark" side. People in general are not "good." Especially, in very large groups.
It's just like DTF, only with more thought for the other person involved. I had to look it up also, because I'd never heard it before, either.
I think it’s a Dan Savageism
Does Guttermouth have a scratchy voice?
Sort of!
My voice is a touchy subject for me.
I had a pretty nice voice through high school and into college; even belonged to some choruses and stuff.
In my mid-20s, I got a polyp cut off the inside of my throat and had some scarring close to the trachea that made it a little scratchy.
I have the same basic pitch as my mom and sang contralto, and the fact that my voice occasionally growls made me insanely self-conscious all through my 20s and into my 30s until I just kind of learned to get over it and leaned into it.
It bothers absolutely no one but me, Husbandmouth included.
It was one of many life lessons about how horrible women are to ourselves about beauty.
That sucks. Sorry
But I have to tell you; one of the hottest things is a confident girl who doesn't take shit with a little scratch in her voice.
Just my opinion
Oh, I don't mind it.
I was a very insecure kid and young adult. It took me a looong time to grow into my skin. I molted a lot. It was really gross.
At first I was just delighted that Someone else knew what a contralto is! Then I saw your polyp story, and I figured I'd answer a question thst wasn't asked, because past- misery and growth love company...
I was a music major as a young Barbarian. Instrumental and Voice major, Composition minor. All the right stuff, until my voice dropped from Soprano 1, to Alto. My voice coach was livid! How dare I! It didn't matter to her that I'd a 4.5 octave range, nor that I'd been chosen for All State for both Tenor and Alto voice...All Eastern and .All New England too. I could no longer follow in her diva footsteps and she made my next year hell. Well! ...finding out that many in the operatic music genre were like minded...it fid me a huge favor . I turned my back on them and went into Health Physics. Screw primadonnas.
I sang only for myself for years. ( I prefer rock. ) but about 15 years ago I was diagnosed with a weirdvrte disease- acromegaly. It's made my throat thick, my voice a bit furry, my song ...erratic.
It bothered my badly until about 2 years ago. I hated to hear what my voice had become! But now? I sing when I feel like it, no matter who's around.
I'm just happy to be here. It's amazing the perspective you get as you go through and survive.
Thanks for encouraging us to know each other better, and to knit more closely than any other substack I've seen.
Wow, I'm probably the only other person here who knows what acromegaly is!
Yeah, it's a weird kind of pain, a tiny journey compared to other things, but self-hatred can run deep regardless of the size of the hole.
And you're welcome! I started to feel like this stack iss a little closer-knit than most and wanted to try to lean into that, as "bring something distinctive to market" is my usual approach when I encounter an already-overcrowded field and know I'm not a statistician or investigative journalist of the highest imaginable calibre.
You're freaking kidding me. Acromegaly is rare. How the hell did two contraltos meet, *and* you know what Acromegaly is? Today we should buy lottery tickets 🤣
I'm on the outer fringe of Gutterballs, as I'm generally clueless, but yeah....you've done something quite special here.
You are NOT outer fringe. You and I have so many unlikely things in common I eagerly await your take on everything I write.
I knew what acromegaly was because I dated an opera singer who was also a voice coach. :)
I knew she was cheating on her husband!! 😂😂... nah, far before your time. But...the sheer height difference between you two would have made me wet myself laughing . She was one of those weirdos with a good command of ' flute voice'.. and a poor command of her over-inflated ego.
We do have a freakish number of things in common...but if you're thinking you await my take on stuff? Stop taking the meds early! They're screwing with your mind. 😂
Guttermouth - Have you ever masturbated to a fictional character (and if several, who's your fave)?
Sorry I missed this somehow.
I don't *think* so. But it's possible I did in my teens. My friends and I were really into anime and read some awful fanfic. One of us even wrote some. No, it wasn't me.
Wow, that was almost embarrassing.
Playing for keeps now. Like your style!
Ok, so as you asked for info on brawls and I offered to mention one or two more, and having had dinner (pork chops simmered in dark ale with roasted root vegetables from the garden and fresh onions, some homemade sauerkraut, homemade pickled cucumbers, and fresh tomatoes marinated in basil, rosemary, garlic and rape oil) here's two shorter stories of fights I was involved in. Let me just say this: I learned two things early on - if there's more of them than you? Run like the wind. One of them will get behind you and drop you and then it's thank you and goodnight. And all that martial arts-stuff? It's really good if you're in the ring or on the mat, not so much on the street where there are no rules at all. You could be a black belt in Chop suey or Yokohama or whatever - and then the guy you're putting in a chokehold jabs a shit-smeared tableknife to your eyes.
Anyways, story time - and yes, it's all true.
Once upon an evening dreary, we were all sitting at our favourite hang out place, the stairs at Sergel Plaza in Stockholm. We meaning me Rikard, Erik, Billy, and a bunch of others. Now me, I was mellowing out on lager, feeling the Big Man since I had a real pretty-pretty on my arm; the kind of girl that has that fae-like beauty and knows how to use it have the boys acting like a pack of dogs for a kind word. Erik and Billy was having an argument over something o other, and them not being sober meant they were very susceptible to the rest of us egging them on with jeers and cheers.
Erik was quite tall, close to 190cm, and Billy (named William by his dad, hence Billy because it sounded cooler than Ville which is the normal swedish short-form for William) was closer to 180 but much heavier, almost rotund.
Anywhoo, Erik finally snaps and kicks Billy on the kneecap with a stelcapped boot. Billy then yanks out a knife and stabs Erik straight in the chest. Erik doubles over an Billy immediatey tries to comfort him while the local police, having watched bemusedly until the knife came out to play, hauls them off to hospital.
When I and a couple of others show up at the hosptial quick as we could get there, Erik and Billy has been dumped off at the nurse's desk by the police. The nurse, not amused in the slightest by the scene, ask "And what seems to be the problem young man?" to which Billy replies: "Well, he's hurt, isn't he?"
"Yes, but how is he hurt?"
"Well, uhm, see, I... here, I'll show you!"
Up until now Erik has been hunched over and wrapped in his "Bomber jacket", just standing there and swaying to and fro. Saying "I'll show you!" Billy tugs the jacket aside like a flasher opening his coat.
Displaying the knife stuck in Erik's sternum.
It hadn't penetrated, just cut the skin and flesh and lodged in the bone.
See, I knew this was the right question to ask.
Wait until I tell the one where a friend accidentally cut off the tip of his middle finger.
Got to go do the dishes now.
I'm more interested in your delicious sounding meal. I was drooling during the description. And damn, will you be my personal chef?
It's the wife or our son what does the cooking. I'm only allowed to cook for myself when they're not at home.
They hold as true that I can't cook, that they're just better at it and I'm very much a "the less wash up I have to do, the better the food" kind of man.
You know, the kind of man that when he was a bachelor would eat cold ravioli from the can while riding the bus or subway to work, or who fry up mince meat, add chopped onions and chopped green bell peppers, sprinkle white peppers and salt on top while it fries, mix up and heat a tomato, basil, garlic and oregano sauce on the side, and cook rice until half done, the scrape the meat aside in the frying pan, scoop up the rice and ladle into the middle of the pan making a small mound, hollow out the top of the mound and break a couple of eggs in into it, then cover "Mt Ricemore" with the meat, remove the pan from the fire and put a lid on it and wait about ten minutes.
Serve with the tomato sauce, tsatsiki, and plum juice for drink with a snifter of applejack for an appetizer.
Enjoy!
One more:
Summertime, and the weather is seething. Girls are awesome and my head is swivelling. I'm 16 going on 17, I've moved out from home, I've got a job, I've got friends, I think I look cool and dangerous and like the real deal (shut up inner teen you know we looked like a runaway extra from 'The Warriors'). So I walk with a shit-eating grin and a certain swagger and bounce in my step, deciding to pop in at a burger joint and get a soda before heading for a park I know the gang's supposed to meet up in (this being in the before time, in the long-long ago before car phones, when you put a metal token in a slot in a machine and dialed a number).
And on my way out I bump into a guy going in and spills soda on him and me. And he goes off like a coke addict who sneezed instead of snort. Pow! My eye goes shut from his first punch. Ooof! Second one to the gut. Aow! Third one to the jaw.
All the time I'm backing away. Not really getting what's happening. Guy just started hitting me, no preamble, no chest thumping, no "Do you know who I am?". So starting to panic I lash out blindly with my leg and my shin hits him in the french author.
Gets me 5 seconds to catch my bearings, because it wasn't hard enough to hurt for real. But now the guy is angry for real and kicks me, aiming for the same spot. On reflex I jump back and slam my knees together at the same time, so I accidentally catch his foot between my knees and manage to grab it in both hands.
Guy is furious and bends the leg I'm holding to get close and sort of hits/slaps me across the already hurting eye. And I don't know what he hit because it was like a grenade went off. All I'm seeing, smelling, tasting is blood. The rest of this happened without any conscious input at all from my side:
I grab his ears, one in each hand, and starts headbutting him. Over and over and over again. My forehead slamming into his nose, his teeth, his forehead, at least ten times. At full force, me using both arms and my weight to yank him towards me at the same time I'm headbutting him.
All of a sudden I'm airborne. It's two hefty security guards lifting me off of the poor guy and carrying me away to the side and into a café, commandeering their bathroom where they proceed in helping me clean up. And scrape parts of his ears out of my nails.
They give me a real stern lecture to keep the F*** away from their area for a couple of weeks, or they'll hospitalise me, and then they leave. So do I, discreetly since I could hear sirens approaching. Meaning I did a runner to the nearest subway (no cameras back then).
Obligatory moral: Now, I don't feel like a big bad man for that, but I will admit still feeling some pride in giving as good as I got, and then some. It's a visceral feeling, and very addictive. Triumphing through force and violence is more addictive than heroin I think.
Spicy Renfro - you might have the best name on Substack. Every damn time I see it I chuckle to myself. How did you come up with that wonderful combination of words to describe yourself here?
Agree and "BradK's" picture on his handle.
Not fair cuz I'm laughing before I read his comment
I don't know if I can hang out with 'you people' as you all sound like nothing but trouble. That and my life has been about as plain as a tin pail, to quote Tommy Lee Jones in 'The Homesman'.
The girls smoking at the back of the bus are extremely intimidating, but it is a portal to a bigger world.
Who among us has the lowest golf handicap index (GHIN)?
Mine's (currently) 7.2.
Let me just go ask my valet to look up my numbers in the Folio Room after he finishes parking the Bugatti and makes me a refreshing glass of peasant blood.
Look up Lee Buck Trevino.
His classic line is (paraphrased): pressure is playing for $5 a hole when you only have $2 in your pocket.
Yeah, I know, I'm just fucking with you and you had to expect some.
Oh for sure, it's mostly why I'm here. Earlier today I read a classic, dismissiveish line you wrote to someone else and I was going to quote it and then say "This. This is why I'm here."
No lie. I think it was you telling someone they have access to Google themselves and can find it (whatever "it" was) on their own.
Your takedown of me in that Meme Contest was tremendous. The only thing missing was hearing it in your voice!
I don't know how much golf history you know, and I've always liked that Trevino line, as well as his life story. Most golf people are surprised to learn he won SIX majors, and three of the four twice each. He beat Nicklaus in four of his six majors, one of them in an 18-hole playoff.
Quite the (underappreciated, underrated IMO) golf stud. And funnyman, too.
My mom was a semi-serious golfer when I was a teenager. I was proud of her because she was already in her fifties and thought it was cool that she picked up something new that required cultivating a skill and discipline.
I was sad when she dropped it about four years later because her terminally poor self esteem convinced her she was hopelessly bad at it and, therefore, not fun.
That is sad. Maybe if only she'd started younger she'd've been easier on herself, with a longer time window to be patient about getting better. Golf is a funny thing. You don't have to be good to enjoy it, you just have to be better than you were before, even if only for a few shots. It's cliche, but every golfer knows how one good shot will bring them back tomorrow, STS.
It *is* hard for us amateurs, and at times not fun when it goes badly. But it's always available for improvement, and that's what drives me more than anything, the potential for self-improvement. I can be competitive by myself, against myself, against the game. I don't need an adversary. I don't mind an adversary (basketball, or even golf tourneys), but unlike perhaps all other sports (even solo sports, like tennis), you can play by, for, and against yourself. At the same time.
I like your handle cuz it's my middle name.
Here's one you might like next time you're playing skins with your buddies:
"I look into their eyes, I shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I am thinking, 'I am going to bury you. ' "
- Seve Ballesteros
Love that one!
“Ninety percent of putts that are short don't go in.”
- Yogi Berra
Tell myself that every time I take a putt.
Don't those just frost you? The ones that are dead-center...but short!
Yes! There's only been 5 really good "die" putters:
- Nicklaus
- Tiger
- Bobby Jones
- Seve
- Tom Watson
Aim for the high side and 18' inches past cup. But you already know that.
Are you sure he was talking about golf?
I am not! I'll have to bone up on my golf history...
Scratch. Dropped it 8 after living in Florida for 2.5 years.
Nice! That's gotta be the lowest here; I can't imagine there's any plus-handicaps in here.
Yeah I've learned to "Shit, Damn and Fuck" my way around a golf course.
Beer helps
Wow, I just scrolled through the other posts. What a pathetic post is mine.
I'd delete it, but I suppose leaving it up is penance.
Guttermouth, what's your Mount Rushmore of 90s songs...
What's my PERSONAL Mount Rushmore, like, MY 90s songs, or what do I think were the "most important" 90s songs?
Your PERSONAL Mt. Rushmore. If you were on a desert island, and you only had one fresh Maxell audio cassette of 4 songs you could ever listen to again from the 90s, what would they be?
I had a lot of time to work on this in the doctor's office.
In no particular order:
Leonard Cohen, "Waiting For the Miracle"
Pearl Jam, "Jeremy"
Nine Inch Nails, "Hurt"
Offspring, "The Kids Aren't Alright"
And, just to keep myself positive being on a desert island, I would sneak one more on the B side:
Bree Sharp, "Guttermouth"
I appreciate the thought you put into this. It's a tough list.
Please tell me you became aware of Waiting For The Miracle because of the Natural Born Killers movie... Regardless, that's a low -key amazing one to include. It's so haunting. Great call.
Jeremy, yes.
Hurt just went on my Halloween Spotify mix last week, but if we're going NIN, and I had to pick, I might have to go with Closer. Just too many great memories for me with that one.
"She's a gutter mouth..." Of course that should be your B side.
I'm sorry to say that radio and club DJs played Closer to death for me and I kind of never need to hear it again. I have probably heard Closer literally 1,000 times.
I did see Natural Born Killers, but I've been in a secret love affair with Leonard Cohen for at least ten lifetimes. In most of them, I am many decades too young for him and we are in an era where that's a problem. In other lifetimes our faiths are irreconcilable (he is always, always Jewish). I have put him to the flame at least once and the bastard smiled all the while. He is often married and sometimes I find that intolerable, other times I have hung for it (the man never hangs) and he has composed songs about my defiant death and followed me into the grave with wine.
I am one of the few people alive who know that Leonard Cohen is actually Old Scratch, perpetually reborn, and that Hell is actually to eternally walk the Earth with unrequited love. His only avenue of revenge is to raise earthly rebellions against his father in song.
When he died this time, I was startled by how incredibly upset I was. I felt like a woman twice my age discovering that her high school sweetheart had died. Leonard Cohen songs would probably occupy several places on a top 20.
Wow Guttermouth, that's actually beautiful.
I hear you about Closer, it was definitely played out, but still, it got my religiously sexually repressed and awkward 17 year old high school version of myself chicks at parties because it was like an audio aphrodisiac and turned seemingly mild manner girls into animals who wanted to fuck. 🤣
PJ - 'Release'
Changed my life.
Give it a spin and come back...jj
Overdue for a re-listen.
Hunger Strike by Temple of the Dog is quality as well.
'Alien' or 'Mayonnaise' by Pumpkins