Pre-Politics:CRIME STOPPERS EPISODE #8,939,247 or Life on the Other Side of the Drawbridge

TIMELY REPOST, and remembering how to conduct real political business among real common folk, who rarely hang the day in a coffee shop... and, as I take a breath to fight hypoxia, it is always good to remember Tante Louise.

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As it was a hazy, lazy day and we were in a hazy, lazy frame of mind, La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore organized a hay ride. Sometimes we have to blow this Joint, Manor that it is, and get out amongst the Common Folk.

So Fred gave up dredging the algae bloom that has beset The Moat. The bazillions of pigmented cells have decided to be red, of course, in honor of our politics. We can't, despite the well-worn furrow in our collective brow (Get it? What a rapier wit.), figure how we overnourished this vast body of water. It's not like we have fertilizer run off from "the fields" -- not us! No, we three believe in extending the fallowed nature of The Back Forty to the Entire Property. Honest to God! Hommage to Captain Haddock's Ancestral Holdings Upon Which We Squat! We've not been tossing the phosphorus around all willy-nilly. The Schmitzia hiscockiana, "small, red, and rare," must have an unusual generative source.

As I said, we pulled Fred from the waterworks, and I put aside the last-minute grading from Fall Semester 1992 (Discuss: Lucky and Pozzo, Gay or Gay?). The Feline Four got all doodied-up, which involved straw hats, berets, and breath mints. After much to-do, I was convinced to brush and puff Marmy's tail, curl Uncle Kitty Big Balls' whiskers on the left side of his face (inexplicably, they droop a good 2 inches below the whiskers on the right), trim Sammy's nails -- he suffers from terrible split ends -- and repeatedly reassure Dobby that he would not miss dinner or any substantive snacking.

You've seen nothing until you see The Castafiore decked out in her HayRide Outfit. Think, if you are able, of a sexed-up Little Orphan Annie, although I believe she might have been going for more of a decadent Shirley Temple. Think spandex, think Pepto-Bismol pink. Think ringlets, think peroxide blonde.

Resist the urge to gouge your eyes... it will pass.

We finally made it out to the beautiful, winding country roads in the environs.

We finished the afternoon in town because we needed to pick up a few items at the supermarché, those things that we get in bulk. Having a wagon handy is a rarity. Finally, we are stocked up on my 6.80388 kg containers of lowfat plain yogurt. I like to have at least four of those babies available for midnight-to-4 am snacks, as well as for yogurt emergencies.

Bianca got her bulk mineral make-up supplies:

Matte Mineral Foundation
Mineral Resurfacing Veil (Fred and I chipped in for a few extra vats)
Mineral Eye Shadows (mattes, satins, and pure pigments)
Mineral Blush and Bronzers
Glo Mineral Luminosity Face Powder (Fred and I snuck almost all of it *off* the wagon)
Natural Lip Gloss
Wholesale Kabuki Brushes (to promote that "natural" look she's famed for)

The 12 kegs of Matte Mineral Foundation, alone, tipped the wagon, so we made sure their weight was evenly distributed in a kind of Stone Henge arrangement.

We stopped for ice cream and "parked" in the shade of an elm on a nearby neighborhood road. We were, without doubt, an odd sight, a bit of chaotic rustica mucking up ordered suburbia.

Entertainment happened along within minutes. We would have killed for a video camera. A quick sketch artist, even.

A bedraggled man in his 50s, a fierce look of determination on his face, struggled by us, trying to push a HUGE widescreen television, attached to some kind of -- equally HUGE -- console, down the road. Once upon a time, it must have had tiny, tiny wheels on it.

He stopped in front of a large house, just down from the corner. It dawned on him -- you could see the lightbulb light up over his hatted head -- that he just could not push this thing all the way to wherever he was going. So he left it and went running down the street. He ducked in between two cottages and shortly thereafter he came back with a shopping cart.

Yes, he had the bright idea that he was going to put this HUGE TV/console inside this TINY shopping cart.

We were having hysterics but we also were dividing into camps -- Pro-Dood-Stealing-The-Big-Screen-TV-With-BigAss-Console versus the ever-predictable Anti-Theft Sermonizers. Sympathies shifted back and forth, with each HayRider adopting, however briefly, a fierce law-and-order stance at least once.

The Four Felines are notorious for preferring risky fun to straightlaced behavior. Go figure.

Anyway, it was like watching a cartoon character have a really bad idea -- the coyote ordering Acme products in the vain attempt to blow the roadrunner to smithereens. One cartoon balloon after another popped up over this Dear Dood's head.

By the way, it was over 95 degrees out there on the mean streets of suburban Tête de Hergé. This was one *dedicated* audio-visualphile, working without a net, working without a clue.

Finally, we regained our habitual sobriety and Fred whipped out his cellphone to call the Tête de Hergé version of 911. In Europe, the emergency phone number is often 112. Here, in our very unique area of Tête de Hergé, it often suffices to call up Tante Louise -- who is a story in and of herself.

We could see neighbors begin to peek out their windows , and a couple of people came out for an unobstructed view of the action, iced sweet-tea in hand, watching the man's progress.
This was what passed for free entertainment on that slow, hot day.

While Fred is chatting up Tante Louise, who on her end is directing all the CentDouze law enforcement, I gave a shriek. Our guy, former treasurer of his high school AV Club, manages to tip the mammoth TV over, after failing to get it safely lodged in the cart [surprise!].

He stands under his thought balloon, scratching his itchy head, while the cart slowly gathers steam and proceeds to roll down the hill. I could not calm myself and gave up trying -- hooting and hollering like the Hayride Hayseed that I am.

Apparently, by then, *everyone* in the neighborhood was watching and had called Tante Louise, who promptly put *everyone* on hold and poured herself a finger or two, so as to better survive the Crime Wave.

Back at the epicenter of the action, Our Guy sprints (about 400 meters, a straight shot out of the starting blocks) and recovers the recalcitrant cart. He drags it up the incline, back to its proper position next to the humongous television. {Il prend donc une petite pause} -- and we on the wagon break out the aftermeal mints and diaper wipes. Always bring a bin of diaper wipes on your hayrides. In these days of green, you might consider Seventh Generation's "only non-chlorine bleached cloth baby wipes."

After the short break in the action, during which Bedraggled Dood perched birdlike on the curb, a timely, helpful soul came slowly driving by (just the first of the rubberneckers) and decided to stop and assist AV-Man in the orderly theft of this TV and console. Together, they managed to *balance* the thing across the cart. The Good Samaritan got back in his truck -- in a confused sort of rush -- and drove away, shaking his head, making odd gestures in the air, talking to himself, apparently realizing -- too late -- that Our Guy was not all there and that he, a Good Samaritan, was now complicit as one-half of a crime wave.

He must have noticed the ronronnement of multiple conversations with Tante Louise, the cell phones everywhere, and concluded that exiting the scene before the cops' arrival was the better part of valor.

As previously noted, the street had a pretty serious incline going on.

We watched SumDood as he first began a fast-paced walk, then broke into an uneven trot, and finally was flat out running like a man chasing Usain Bolt. He managed to keep at least a pinky on the shopping cart, which, honoring the laws of momentum, gathered up its mass and velocity and sped downhill.

We were really sad when he finally flew out of sight.

The cops came pretty quickly and the last we heard, they were trying to match up the HUGE now-wrecked TV set with its heartbroken owners.

We turned the wagon around and began the trek back to Marlinspike Hall, not at all anxious to face the worries that doubtless were waiting for us: the red swarm of algae and the many holes left to chink in the medieval wing (and in some outbuildings -- the more ancient of the gazebos, for example).

Audio-Visual Man, wherever you are tonight, God bless.

© 2015 L. Ryan

Love Your Freds

Bodiam castle (as you will remember, Marlinspike Hall will not photograph)

It really has been a quiet day in the neighborhood, here, as you will no doubt recall, in the region west of the Lone Alp, the central geographic point of pride (on the elevated, hoity-toity altitude side of things) in this land of Tête de Hergé.  Older, more faithful readers, also known as The Most Belovèd, will remember that the entire name of my country is Tête de Hergé (très décédée, d'ailleurs).  For those francophone grammarphiles whom I have kept so busy, lo these past five years of blogging, please remember that "décédée" agrees, in gender and number, with Hergé's "tête," and not Hergé, himself.  Yes, I realize that both the "tête" and the tête's owner are dead, and probably at the same time and place, and that while my choice might seem arbitrary, or, God forbid, redundant, I do not agree. Of Hergé, I only have interest in the tête.  It may have sparked a Holy Spark one nanosecond after Hergé's heart's last beat and final flop.  In fact, I'm sure it did.

So, yes, we're in the hilly but essentially flat western plains, but in an area very difficult to chart.  Many a cartographer has given her life in efforts to plot our location so that Map Quest and other tracking devices might narrow down where, precisely, I am currently sipping my cuppa Italian roast.  No one seems to much care, but probably the second most cited point of geographic pride in Tête de Hergé is located on the Haddock family's ancient home - that's right, right here!  I speak, of course, of the lowest altitudinal touristic draw of the land:  our own Marlinspike Hall moat.  Rife with what I call mole holes in the space-time continuum (figuring them to be larger than your average worm hole, y'know?) -- and I make that assessment with the full approbative force of the accredited Seal of Support of Star Trekkers behind me -- our moat serves as the docking port and sporting marina for the world's entire fleet of miniature and super-miniature submarines.  I figure we're kinda like a Deep Space Nine station but on terra firma.  Though I guess terra firma won't fly in this context.  Good luck parsing this post, either for its pristine grammar or its fuzzy logic.

Kirk, making the Vulcan salute: How many fingers do I have up?
Dr. McCoy: That’s not very damn funny.
-Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Yesterday, I can at least be confident in saying, put me on edge, such that I don't much care where you think I am or whether your car's GPS has a clue about whether to go straight, turn right, left, or make a U-turn,  In fact, if we could make the rest of the neighborhood temporarily disappear to some pleasant spot, warm but with a cooling breeze, with beaches on the east and woodlands on the west, and s'mores everywhere there is a hypnotic bonfire, along with wine coolers shaded by tiny paper umbrellas and chunks of chilled fruit speared on toothpicks, with prosciutto-wrapped cantelope taking up a third of every silver tray -- well, that would be nice, too.  I hate to say it, but we've a daring, overly-friendly new neighbor two manors and one castle down the road who appears to be doing a bang-up business dealing drugs.  Or maybe he is the new rarefied gourmet salt door-to-door distributor. Celtic salt, sea salt, kosher salt, sour salt (citric acid), mineral salts, epsom salts, pickling salts. He strolls, cheerful and with deep-breathing good health, up and down the country lanes, phoning and texting and exchanging little baggies of white stuff -- small salt samples -- with random car drivers who impulsively stop to chat with him about the prospects for pork belly futures and which salt is currently number one on the salt list, in exchange for which they stuff sweaty balled-up bills into our smiling neighbor's now empty palm. In between chats with out-of-the-region tourists nervously eyeballing The Manor, the Cistercian monastery, the remains of the organic pig farm (wild and extremely organic hog gangs) and perhaps contemplating a tour of the Animal Husbandry Museum, our new neighbor chats and gives salt samples to the seasonal workers that stream into the area this time of year from Pieds de Hergé, our sister territory.  Thus far, he's not crossed the drawbridge to knock on our bronze replica of the florentian Baptistry doors, which makes sense.  Doesn't it?  What self-respecting medieval-slash-renaissance manor kitchens would be caught cuisining without a dozen varieties of salt readily at hand?

And then, there's my eye.  Specifically, the right one.  My right, not your right.

I have had to patch it again, due to excess tearing and what we will term "fogging." My pressures yesterday were again remarkably good -- 14 in both eyes. I had lost a little acuity in the right eye, but what worried me more was the discomfort, and the weird... I don't know... little slash of light that hits sometimes on the periphery.  Plus it looks like I am weeping and will never stop!  And I am not, I swear.

And yeah, that Saran Wrap over the orb feeling had returned.

So when the tech -- whom I love -- gave me the instructions for the next week, in terms of drops, I was relieved to see that we were "progressing," that the right eye was done with drops and the left was now going to start tapering.

Then the doc came in and did her more in-depth eyeball exam thingy, which included an announcement that " [my] body is doing its thing and having an exagerrated inflammatory response, particularly in the right eye." What is weird to me is the timing.  It did fine the first two weeks only to start this revolution at the end of the third week?  Then the doctor said that she considered "the first operated eye" as providing the road map for what the second will do, so she expects it to flare up in the third week as well.  So I am back to being one-eyed at the moment, but lacking my much beloved pirate patch, as Buddy ate the elastic.  No, not entirely.  Just nibbled it so that it was in three pieces and unusable.  So I am using these flaky stick on bandaid-type affairs.  Fred has drawn something on this one, but I keep forgetting to look in the mirror to see what is making him guffaw every time he looks at me.  It's always something.

So you will please excuse this backslide into "catastrophic thinking," an attribute I love to point out when taking other people's inventory (Sea from Phoctor Dill's website comes immediately to mind).  I am scared that an "exaggerated inflammatory response" will turn into an infection.  You know, of the biofilm variety and all that.

There, I said it.  The same crap that is in my bones/joints/prostheses has found its way into the windows to my soul.

Or is that a little over the top?  It just CANNOT be.  It WILL NOT be.  It couldn't have happened this quickly, one.  And, B) I REFUSE to allow this to happen.

Add to the catastrophic mode of thinking the fact that we stopped the Vigamox -- the freaking antibiotic drops!  I still have the oral antibiotic, which I've never stopped, I don't think, even once, in the last three or four years.  (That's a whole other post, entirely, as I've questioned the wisdom and reasoning behind that decision as well!)

Well, there.  It took me a while, but I spat it out.  Um, a little Windex and a paper towel will probably get that off your screen.  Oops.

[For those of you who are Fred fans... He's having his own version of a bad day, but I hope it's interspersed with moments of light-heartedness... such as drawing goo-goo eyes on my eye patch.  He's also working on another painting, which is fascinating to watch, as he's good as well as thoughtful and with a surprising sense of play.  But it can't be denied -- he's sad.  Fred has his own life, you'll probably not be surprised to learn, and has not the support he deserves, which also will not surprise you.  I long to give it to him and I fall short with remarkable consistency.  I want to envelope him in peace and laughter.  More than anything in the whole damn world, that's what I want.  I, me, me, my.  Sweet Fred...]

Everyone out there, whether you are new to these Tête de Hergé digs or old hands at this Tintin Tribute Land, and hum je ris de me voir dans ce miroir when showering, make sure to love your Freds.

Even if, maybe, your Freds don't love you in an equal commodious return: Love, cherish, your Freds.

Ethiopian Sky

© 2013 L. Ryan

We've Been Found, All Is Lost...

I confess:  I bought laundry and dish detergent online and had it shipped to Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs).  Maybe you think that my purchase is less scandal and more laudable frugality.  That would be nice of you.  However, even though both detergents pass muster as being very green (the Seventh Generation Free and Clear line) and extraordinarily cheap (I found it at a price cheaper than Tide and less expensive than its green cousin, Country Save) -- can I really justify the carbon footprint of having had it mailed to us?

Doesn't that muddy the green to a faded, dingy Chestnut?  Antique Brass?  Beaver? Copper?  Fuzzy Wuzzy?

Oh no.  And oops, too... *

*   The jig is up.  Our world is forever changed.

Fred just rushed in, all excited like.  It turns out that The Manor, the ancestral home of the Haddock Clan, has been successfully plotted on a Google map.  We were under the impression that this was an impossibility -- but hey! This is a new era:  This is the Corporate Age; We are Beta Testers!  In true muddled fashion, I tried to explain as much back in September:

Sensing a looming depression settling over his beloved valley, The Captain recently sent us a team of motivational speakers, the ideal long distance gift from an absentee ManorLord.  During a cold lunch that featured a perfect mound of tuna salad rising from a Botticellian shell of Boston lettuce -- surrounded by pale green, slightly mottled frozen grapes that were, themselves, punctuated with watermelon and sour cream quenelles -- 

During *that*, we listened to our Plenary Session guru, a self-styled Cicero who could sell Ginzu knives and Veg-a-matics to desert ascetics. 

After changing into the Haddock Corporation's new line of  70% bamboo/30% spandex Ye Olde Sea Salt athletic wear, The Manor's indentured-unto-perpetuity Domestic Staff spent the afternoon doing team-building exercises, often blindfolded, sometimes with various legs lashed together.  At one time or another, each employee fell backward -- full of faith -- into the extended arms of their waiting coworkers (relatives, mostly), in whom they already knew *exactly* how much to trust.

Times are tight everywhere, even in Tête de Hergé. We think that's what is fuelling The Captain's new love of all things corporate.  It's not that he doesn't have almost infinite resources -- good Lord, just look around you!  It is more a question of liquidity.  For years, we ran Marlinspike Hall with the proceeds from collectible comic books and byselling off coveted domaine names, snatched up back in the days before Spielberg had his eye on Hergé's Tête.  Shoot, we used to make payroll thanks to a horse stall full of pristine Bengali editions of King Ottokar's Sceptre, carefully packed in hay.  

The bottom line is that we are opening almost the entire Manor and Haddock family land holdings to the public in an effort to make Marlinspike Hall a self-sustaining endeavor.  The Captain wants to be, forgive the pun, a captain of industry, among other things, and so we find ourselves scheduled to host a series of BigSpeak SpeakEasy MiniTraining Camps, sort of an Outward Bound experience for the buttoned-down world.  Not just for at-risk youth, our outdoor adventures!  

It's kind of a test.  That's right, we're beta testers.

Due to a sheath of confidentiality agreements, I can't divulge everything that Corporate Haddock has been doing on the Manor Site, but has terraforming really ever been all that far off a possibility?  We daily praise God that we aren't trapped in some kind of surreal comic-book fiction...

I think our current conundrum -- which, of course, I will clearly lay out for you in a moment -- stems precisely from this corporate urge that Archibald Haddock cannot seem to buck.  We've never been in danger of being found before, of seeing Lone Alp overrun with tourist-types or Tante Louise's delicate early warning system thrown offline by visiting social media moguls.  (Tante Louise and her trusty cell phone constitute the Tête de Hergé version of 911. Reach Tante Louise, reach the world!)

Anyway, yes, we're finally mappable.  Our coordinates have been plotted... not without a few glitches, however.  We are showing up as something odd and I think we are likely in the wrong place.  Aside those issues, it's perfect.

Fred says Marlinspike Hall, its outbuildings (Barn, Petting Zoo, Dairy, etc.), and the manor grounds (from the orchard bordering the Cistercian monastery to the labyrinth) are plotted as titania.  I mosied over to the dictionary as he pontificated, and was appalled to find that  titania meant:

1. The queen of the fairies and wife of Oberon in medieval folklore; or
2. A satellite of Uranus.


Having known me forever, Fred said, without looking up, "No, not the fairy, and no, not another Uranus joke, either." Instead, he explained, "Try titanium dioxide.  Try... rutile."


I've always wanted to be semi-precious (rutilated quartz)!  It does stretch one's credulity, though, to see that Google Maps claims we are situated on the border of Mongolia, but then, maybe we are situated on the border of Mongolia.  Who really knows where these adventures are taking place?  I am still waiting for The Captain's explanation of the wormhole extending from the bottom of Our Algae-Plagued Moat to... well, to wherever the hell he wants to go in his Miniature Pink Submarine.


La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore has been laughing at me all morning.  She just beckoned me to her side with a "come hither" crook of a pudgy finger, only to blast my eardrum with that blasted line from that blasted aria she is forever warbling -- "Ah! Je ris de me voir si belle en ce [blasted] miroir..." -- from Gounod's blasted Faust.  I can't help myself.  I say: "Look, La Castafiore, look!  We've been found, and mapped!  You, Dear Diva, border Mongolia!"