Let’s see, what am I doing…. um… processing books for Ka-Blam, writing the next Afterdead, doing hously things….

Tomorrow is the first page of The Desert Peach #6, “A Day like any Other.” With Nearest initiating a long run of terrible race- based jokes. Yes, we do everything here. The Peach is as appalled as you will be.

Fallen behind on the blogs, again. Day before yesterday, had to head out and get some mushroom shots for the local paper. While there, picked some more, came home, traded for fresh salmon, raw tuna from neighbors, and some milk and yogurt at the co-op. So of course, yesterday, I spent the whole day fighting this !#!$!! pinched nerve I’ve had all my life and that kicks in when I so much as talk bad to it.

Some people I have to do business with cannot understand why I cannot work with any systems that are not automatic, that is, such systems as Lulu and Ka-Blam’s Indyplanet and the upcoming distributor, Comics Monkey.

It’s very simple; I’m going to be dead someday. Nobody is going to be running these printing and payment systems. Systems like Ka-Blam and Lulu are automatic; the customer orders books, the payments flow in, the author is not involved. But with Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Diamond — I would still have to be alive.  I can’t ship books when I’m dead.

The problem with my writing now is that Rommel, WWII, etc., doesn’t interest me any more. I’ve already got the warning out there, and it’s had its effect, so it’s no longer relevant.

Living in a rural area — which, because of refusal to educate, is mostly Republican — really gives me some insight into the minds of the right.

When the left says the right’s leaders are “like Hitler,” we mean the mendacity, the big lies, the secrecy, the underhanded brutality.

The right thinks we mean the Holocaust. Which, for them, means some vague Jews they don’t know. I’m part Jew and Rom; you should see they little eyeballs jiggle when I introduce that. Nearest is 1/16th Wyandotte — and out here, even the white folks can see the Injun in him.

You know about White Folks and that fraction-of-blood thang… Jeeters.

Poking slowly at an AFTERDEAD story. I have a weird form of writer’s block right now: I’m tearing apart the idea of what it is I’m doing.

My real problem is too many options. Once I get all my life’s work up at Ka-Blam, then I can go back to writing.

Maybe.

Slowly putting my creative life into slides, onto the internet, in the San Diego Collection. (Links change: search San Diego Infodome and Special Collections, if this link no longer works).

So much of my original work was photographed instead of scanned, and so some of it is really blurry. I’ll be putting the best of it up in a gallery at Gather.

Two links with lots to do in a blog. I figure that will take up enough of a readers’ time today….

Going through the usual cat spats with Jim. I’M the big cat; nobody fights around me. Today’s blog is about MUSHROOMS. Par’m me for using links to speed up the process. If you go there, control your cookies. But I make $ if you go read it. And you can learn how to find chanterelles.

My voodoo on the bad cat people must be working. You can always tell; when you call in the Eaters, they chew on you a bit.

After the wine-bottles blew up, I got a nasty cut in my right hand. It’s healing, but I’m a bit dizzy, or dizzier than usual.

Anyway, as I’ve said, if you’re going to do Black Magic, be prepared for some sticky spirits. Not the fermenting sugary blackberry wine kind, either.

Jim’s story: the assholes who asked us to feed him went and MOVED without telling anyone.

The whole street down there is pissed off at them for that one.

So now we have a sad cat, crying at the window, wondering why his people won’t come to get him. When he does get a bit of a a walk, he wonders why they aren’t at his home, and why they’ve left him no food.

Oh, they left him food all right — in an open bag that was getting so damp we had to take it before it went moldy.

The guy in the couple was a Neah Bay school teacher. He doesn’t work there any more.

This is what we get teaching the kids…. some value base, huh?

I went and voodoo’d their front driveway. And it wasn’t to make their hair fall out or anything minor. If anything happens is that 1st degree? I don’t think voodoo judgments count anywhere but Louisiana and Haiti.

When making wine:

1. Don’t overmeasure the yeast.

2. Don’t put the top on too hard.

3. Don’t store it in a crowded area in the kitchen.

4. Make sure you know where ALL the glass is before cleaning up.

5. Know how to make a butterfly-stitch bandage with medical tape, and have lots and lots of Vitamin C on hand.

6. Remind self to get some MSM if this kind of nonsense keeps up.

The count so far this summer:

a. Cut finger sharpening ulu knife backwards (WTF?).

b. Cut hand getting fancy with a bow saw.

c. Cut hand with glass stuck in wall.

Maybe I was never meant to do the farmy thang….

Since people have asked how to make wine, here’s my neighbor’s wine recipe. She lives up the Hoko river on a cranberry and horse farm, where they’re restoring the ecosystem with the resources of the county.

Hi Donna: It’s time to make blackberry wine.  I picked yesterday and today and will pick again in the morning.  In the afternoon I’ll make four gallons of blackberry wine.  I use one-gallon glass jugs:       4 lbs. blackberries
4 cups sugar
yeast (.6 tsp./gal.)

Dissolve sugar in about one quart of water for each gallon.  Cool.  First put sugar in one-gallon jug; then yeast; then juice.  Add more water for the wine to be about three inches from the top.

I juice the blackberries with my Juiceman to remove the seeds.  If you don’t have a juicer I’ve seen Wanda use a hanging cheesecloth bag—–drip, drip drip.  Dissolve the yeast in a couple tbsp. of water and let stand 15 minutes without stirring.  Then stir to suspend all the yeast.

Bottle the wine two weeks after the bubbling stops.  (I use stoppers from the winemaking store.)

I made cranberry wine in May and June, and it’s still bubbling.  The raspberry is about ready to bottle.  Blackberry wine won’t take as long as cranberry either.  Oooooh, I can’t wait!

I hope all is well.     Love, Joanna”