Clam excitement

After a headache that ran from Wednesday through Friday with little abatement and encroaching stress from work (mostly from the perilous position newspapers hold in our society and the means through which the industry, including what appears to be my somewhat protected cove in said ocean, is retrenching. Holy cats, people. It is bad out there. If you've ever thought it would serve your local paper right to go down in flames, well, be prepared to rue that statement, because way more people are going to see that happen in the next few years is my prediction. And if you think your paper's coverage sucks now, well, wait until staffs are truly cut to the bone. It is coming, people. Get used to it. Or buy a paper), and Ray's annual stress-out festival, we really needed a clam dig. And the WDFW provided, like a bolt from the sky!

The clamming was fantastic. Ray's brow actually lost its peaked-ness for a few minutes there, going after the wily bivalves in the sunny, warmish weather. I actually broke a major sweat under my neoprene waders. We picked up wine at the Westport Winery, and it was rocking. There was music, fresh-popped popcorn and a ton of people, proving that come the Depression, imbibables are probably a good bet. Craigslist can't infringe on that sort of profit.

Oh, Callie, you're such a downer, you say. Well! Is your food distribution center, which serves something like 11 counties, being forced to think about laying off its director, making her a client, most likely? No? Consider yourself lucky. (The interesting thing about the director is that she was once a client, and worked her way out of it and is on the Hoquiam city council and everything. Social services being stressed in a time of great stress. Agh. I can't take it. I'm Linusing out.)

We ground up the clams in the maiden usage of our Kitchen Aid and its meat grinder attachment, which I messed up a little in installing, causing clams to squeeze against the grind plate and excrete translucent pinky-gray water, but not to break up into chunks. So I fixed it. And the ground clams turned into fritters. And all was good.

And Ray and I watched "Get Smart," which was funny but had the unforgivable scene of Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway kissing. In the plot, she had recently had her face changed, so she requested she be deoldified and was really closer to his age, which was, I suppose, a fictional way to try to make us viewers not all feel kind of gross about the romantic subplot. Did he not feel like a sex offender kissing her? Did this not prompt a sudden and deep reevaluation of how women's looks, ageism and men's sexual entitlement are given gross leeway in our mass media images? Did nobody THINK OF THE CHILDREN????

I guess not.

We also played duets with banjo and clarinet. We are officially the dorkiest couple in the world. And all we need is someone to document it in video and I'll put it on the blog for the world to see us share our sick sad love in the key of B flat.

I recently finished "The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For," and I heartily recommend it, with the reservations that there are graphic depictions of dyketude in cartoon format, and if that freaks you out don't read it. If it turns you on, well, that's kind of funny. It is a lot healthier depiction of sexuality than most Manga, from what I've read. (If you click any of those links you are on your own buddy, I have not vetted them at all.) Alison Bechdel also wrote "Fun Home," and it is just fabulous.

So I can't access DTWOF from Techline, which Ray has taken to calling "Teakline," in which "teak" is Kris and Ray speak for spaz, or tweak, if you will. Someone can be "teaking out," and this was a slang word Kris made up back in the 80s, before there were tweakers who sometimes were tweaking out. I can't download my NPR most emailed podcasts. I'm almost salivatory in anger. I can't get the WaPo, either. Teakline, what is the matter with you?

Praying for an internet intervention.