backalleycoyote

Truly, shit for brains.

Haywire. Musically they might not hit me as deep and profound as say, Bad Religion. But for live show intensity… Fuck, it’s like the 90s again. A sweaty crush of humanity getting their eardrums blown while someone back-flipping off the balcony knocks their teeth out. Fun for all ages!

I’m in a strange boat. My bio mom was young when she got pregnant so I was put up for adoption. My adoptive mother was a cold, cruel woman who was emotionally and physically abusive; adoptive dad just ignored it and told me to not upset her. She did things like withhold medical attention to extract confessions about things I’d done she didn’t know about, destroyed personal objects like toys/clothes/cds, told me she didn’t love me but was legally obligated to take care of me, left me on the side of the road when I was 6 so the coyotes would eat me, stoked fears of a werewolf under my bed so I wouldn’t get out of it after she put me in it (needless to say, I pissed the bed well into elementary school because of that, which I got beaten for).

I had a lot of rage as a youth, though almost exclusively self-harm. Found punk in my teens and channeled the rage for my mother into rage at authority in general, and eventually found productive means of achieving that rather than mindless violence at whatever I think oppresses me. Still, 30yrs later, I love to thrash and be thrashed in a pit and the measure of a good night is “am I bruised and bleeding”.

But, I found my calling in dog rescue and training, a career where cruelty, heavy-handedness, and force are ill-serving. It’s a field a lot of men struggle in (unless they just beat a dog into submission) because the mannerisms and bravado the define how western society tells men they should act will make a scared, under-socialized, untrusting dog reject them. The terrified, the deaf, blind, wheelchair bound dogs are my specialty because I have an inner gentleness the, by social standards, would be called effeminate. I’ve helped hundreds over the years and it is one of the proudest achievements of my life.

I found my birth mother well into adulthood. She’s a hospice nurse and cat rescuer whom I share an uncanny amount of personal quirks with despite zero association aside from genetics. We’ve become wonderful friends and I have integrated into my bio-family after 20yrs of no contact with my adoptive one. I did get one boon in my childhood though. One set of grandparents were the kindest, gentlest, most loving grandparents anyone could hope for and quite likely the reason I didn’t end up a total sociopath or suicide.

I grew up watching that and was stoked when I heard Burton was making a movie version. Alas the film is B-tier at best, around the time Burton/Depp/Helena were getting into a rut of “it’s us, it’s dark, it’s spooky”. Visually it’s fun though, great cast of Burton and horror regulars.

Satan’s a known schemer and needs love too.

Trump has never been much for requiring consent, especially when spreading herpes.

Deliberate, apathetic, myopically optimistic that this can be voted out and things go back to how they were; all of the above? Even among the non-MAGA there’s still a lot of folks who aren’t the direct targets of the regime and unless they speak out against it could live quietly under it’s boot because of their skin color, gender, or sexuality. They’re some of the hardest people to convince to do something because there’s a fear that doing something will draw undue attention or put them at risk when they’d rather resent it but not risk it. And protesting is risky. Trigger happy cops, mass surveillance, opposition members who show up to shoot crowds or drive into them. But to not do anything is to let their scare tactics win. It is true, a million people holding signs doesn’t mean shit to this regime, but making new connections with people in your community, real connections face to face and not just anonymous internet chit chat, that is what makes these worth something.

Trial and error. The lentils always cook faster than the beans and my recipe is 1c lentils and 4c of mixed beans. In my cooker running about 8min longer than the recommended time will leave my beans tender and intact but reduce the lentils to a filler consistency like ground beef. The same method works well for making vegan chili.

Once a month I fill the pressure cooker with a variety of beans, brown and/or red lentils, peppers, onions, jalapeños, garlic, and sometimes kale, mushrooms, whatever is around. I overcook just slightly so the lentils break up and become my “meat”. Then I freeze most and slowly work through it over the month using it at work for lunch burritos, nachos, in ramen, over rice, etc. Cheap and handy and is the staple of my diet.

Having tried to save snowballs in the freezer for a mid-summer snowball fight, I can assure you that that’s just going to be ice and result in head trauma.

Longer than four hours and it should have sought medical treatment.