I Can't Cry Anymore

Dear President Bam-Bam:

Just to let you know? If I'd wanted a rock star in the White House, I would have voted for:

and if I'd wanted a messiah:

and if I'd wanted a spanking when I was a bad, bad girl:

or my nose wiped when I had a cold and tucked snuggly into bed at night when I was feeling blue:

and if I'd REALLY wanted to be pushed around:

But what I wanted and, indeed, the only thing you should be, is someone who executes the law as written by Congress in accordance with the Constitution of the United States. But I don't see a heck of a lot of THAT going on lately.

Moi's Obsessions Part Deaux

I've always loved CAKE. The band. Lately, though, my love has turned into an obsession. I think they very well may be the greatest band in the universe at the moment.





What band can you not get out of your iPod these days?

A Chicken in Moi's Pot

My latest obsession: Polish Crested Chickens.

It's always been there, albeit lying dormant, revealing itself only in September when I troop over to the New Mexico State Fair for my annual communion with championship livestock. I can hang with the chickens all day. Last year, I spent a full fifteen minutes chatting up these dudes, but, given they're the super models of the poultry world, they were all, talk to the hand, lady, talk to the hand. Plus, S.B. thought I was a leetle bit C R A Z Y, having a full blown convo with what is, essentially, Sunday Dinner.

But having spent three point six seven days in the company of K9 who is kookoo for her chickies, my obsession is now renewed. Now, the only trick is, how to get Ivan on board.

"Mmmm . . . tastes like chicken."

What's your latest obsession?

Right, Said Fred

Just back from the Great PNW Blog Summit of Spring 2009 and am happy to report that each of my homies revealed themselves to be exactly as absolutely fabulous as I knew they would be.

Lessons learned:

1. While waiting in line at Pike Place Fish Market and half a salmon suddenly goes flying over your head? Duck.


2. If you think there's a limit to how many times you can laugh at a joke involving Halibut(t) cheeks . . . you'd be wrong.

3. I have walked many a great city's streets in pursuit of happiness of one sort or another. Now, I can add the entire length of Seattle, one end to the other, up and down fifty gazillion steep-ass side streets, and then doubling back another forty gazillion, to my list. (Boxer: "Huh. I could have sworn Top Pot was around here somewhere.") Never fear. It eventually was.


4. Despite K9's oh-so-valiant and terribly erudite effort to esplain to Moi why-oh-why Jackson Pollack is, indeed, a most Important Painter, alas, I still think he sucks ass. But the Seattle Museum of Art has other works to recommend it, most notably "the rat" and a suit of armor perfect for K9 when she takes over the universe as Supreme Commander of Us All. Don't mess with her. She feisty.



5. I was so inundated by the head-spinning sensory gloriousness that is Seattle as a whole that I was somehow able to walk right on by both Nordstrom's AND a Sephora without incident. Well, Shamu helped. By dragging me away. And into Sur la Table instead.

6. The words "bangin'" and "smokin' hot" can equally be applied to just about everything totally awesome that crossed our paths. Except this season's crop of dumb-ass palazzo pants. "Pee U" was the universal, across-the-board pronouncement made by all the Summit Homies. Word.


6. When life hands you the opportunity to grow big friendships out of little kernels, don't ask questions. Just grab that opportunity with gusto and clutch it to your full and happy heart.

I Flew All the Way to Seattle and all I Got Were These Clogged Arteries

All I have to say at this point in the trip?

Mmmmmmmm . . .  donuts. 

Out on the Winding, Windy Moors, We'd Roll and Fall in Green

The last time I visited the Pacific Northwest, I was a child, first grade age, and we took a family trip up the coast and over into Portland from our home in Eugene, Oregon. Okay, so, I lived there as well, but my memories are vague.

I remember cramped, military barracks-style university housing whose walls wept moisture. I remember earthworms gathering by the handfuls in the puddles in our front yard, their flesh an irresistible, luminous pink. I remember learning to swim at the local YMCA, where, for graduation, I spent an hour atop the high dive until I mustered enough courage to jump down. This was a week or so after my first encounter with the ocean, when my father hoisted me off his shoulders to dip my virgin, heretofore earthbound feet into the teaming mass of surf that was the mighty Pacific and I felt the powerful tug of that massive body of water so strongly, I promptly screamed my head off.

Since then, I have learned to manage my fear of water, enough to have swam in the ocean, snorkeled the Caribbean, fished the Bitterroot, and paddled the Missouri. But I remain ever wary, ever respectful, of the power of water. I know when I'm outmatched. My feet seek terra firma whenever possible.

Today, the Pacific Northwest has evolved into a mythical spot in my imagination, a place shrouded in mist and curtained by ancient forests, like a scene in some Gothic novel where the hero and heroine meet up at midnight to vanquish a common foe, only she's driving a Prius and he's wearing mandals.

Tomorrow, I revisit in person this place of my imagination, along with three bloggie gal pals who many months ago suggested that, for grins and giggles, we should plan a meet up. Where we'll discuss such weighty matters as the Influence of Blogging on Sociological Structures in a Technologically Accelerated World, and then go do some shots and talk about American Idol. We'll also visit the Space Needle and eat some donuts. Mmmmmm . . . donuts.


Yes, I have to get on an airplane to do this. Y'all know how I feel about that. But like my fear of water, I keep this particular neurosis tamped down, too. After all, every hour is cocktail hour in the sky.

Photo Choppy Magic

I'm a dork when it comes to PhotoShop. Although I've spent plenty of time sticky noting graphic designers to remove power lines or make the water bluer or wipe that dirt off the child's face, about the only thing I can do myself is add text to a photo. I can't even do that anymore because when I switched over to my rockin' new Mac and operating system a little over a year ago, said operating system ate Moi's pirated Photo Choppy software. Boo.

But, lookie what Pam in OKC did with my photo of Madrid, New Mexico's historic church!

Photo I took:

Photo as cleaned up by Pam:

Wowee. Nice job. Thanks, Pam!

Now, I wonder, you think she can PhotoShop these onto Moi's feet?

Mute Monday: Love

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." – Benjamin Franklin

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Mommy, why are they banning Peter Rabbit?

and why am I naked?

Sweets For My Sweets

Come on over to the Undaunted Baker for a yummy Valentine's Day treat. Bake 'em up and eat 'em up. Before they become illegal.

Something Wicked This Way Still Comes

"President Obama, sir, that leg's gotta come off, but I don't have any more copies of Federal Form 345-B authorizing me the use of the bansaw, so all I can do is wrap it in some gauze and hope it holds until he makes it home. So, um . . . am I gonna get sued for this?"

You know, I've always wanted a reason to try my luck in South America. Looks like Tom Daschle is about to give me one.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs

According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Furthermore, according to Daschle, under his proposed "universal" health care system, sure, the elderly will suffer from lack of access to state-of-the-art care but that's okay. It's about time the old farts "learned" to just accept the aches and pains and other ailments that come along with the aging process.

Fucking old people, man. Who needs 'em?

Except, ya think Daschle and all his big wig buddies in Washington are going to "accept" getting old and go ahead and do the "natural" thing and DIE on us already (you listening, Ted Kennedy)?

Nah. You can bet they'll jet themselves off to whatever clinic in whatever's left of the free world that is still smart enough to practice "autonomous" medicine.

Look, Party People, this isn't rocket science. The only way to ensure that everyone – you, me, our children, our parents, the poor and the indigent – have easy access to high quality medical care is to return medicine to the free market. Listen to me now or suffer later: Insurance companies and the government do not provide care. Doctors – highly trained, competent, and with an incentive to succeed – do.

Nature's Mood of Mockery

If you think the weather where you live is as fickle as a co-ed cruising on roofies and a half pint of Smirnoff, you should spend some time in the Land of Enchantment. Waiting five minutes is for amateurs. Try five milliseconds.

See this?

That happened in just an hour this morning. A two-week slate of sunny skies, still air, and 60 degree temps wiped clean by a storm blown in from God-only-knows-where-Alaska, churning the wind and dumping buckets of snow like some stage hand during a cheap community theater production of the Christmas Carol.

Hard to believe that just last week I was in a tee shirt and jeans, scouting out historical churches along the Turquoise Trail for a magazine article.


That’s not me; that’s the photographer. I like her because she’s prepared to do anything for a shot, including ignoring No Trespassing Signs with the impunity that comes from the belief that the perfect photo trumps everything.

Not me. I’m just the writer. Which means I don’t get paid enough to risk getting shot by some lard-brained rent-a-cop with a breakfast burrito in one hand and a Smith & Wesson in the other.

But I did donate a five spot to the cause. Just in case Baby Jesus was watching and decided the whole event necessitated a mark in my Hell No You Won’t Go To Heaven column.


The Turquoise Trail sure is pretty. I sure wish I'd taken more photos so you could see just how much.




I love exploring ruins, silently pondering how people long passed lived out their lives when everything was perfect and new.

This is Cerrillos, a tucked-away-on-the-radar town that for the most part looks the same today as it did when Billy the Kid blew in yesterday.




Still, it is the way of a carpetbagging state like New Mexico that some places can't escape gentrification. Most usually by artists from New York City who offered a family who's been in the area since the beginning of time a few pesos for their place and, voila, another adobe mansion with Sub Zero appliances and Italian marbled floors is born.


Which is not to say I wouldn't do the same thing, were I flush with cash. But if I ever did make enough money to build my own Casa de la Grande Moi, I'd paint a tribute to Our Lady on one of the walls. Isn't she beautiful?


And I would also make sure to pick my way across the gravelly streets regardless of my Manolos every Sunday morning to further give thanks for my good fortune in this church:

I so dislike modern churches. They are too scrubbed-bright and hopeful, more appropriate for housing dentistry conventions or Up With People concerts than sermons or the reverent contemplation of the mysteries of the universe. Or your own sinful ways.

God, I would like to believe, still prefers to kick it Old School,
like this:

Or this:

Oh, and one final thing: when I die, if my heirs don't see fit to follow my instructions to load my body in a boat, light me on fire, and float me down the Rio Grande to Mexico, then I'll settle for a burial in a New Mexican cemetery. What a fabulous way to house oneself for all of eternity.

Mute Monday: Addiction

But Can I Get to Heaven on Only $500K?

Aw, crap. If I'd known the gooberment was also going to become the Almighty Arbiters of Good Taste, maybe I ought not have spent my bonus on these:




What's next por Moi? A salary cap? A reassessment of my closet? Confiscation of my Fresca of the Month Club membership?

I Don't Do the Dishes, I Throw Them in the Crib

I have so far refrained from commenting on the woman who just gave birth to eight children. You know, the one who already has six others at home. Who is, according to media reports, young, unmarried, and living with her parents.

But after I just heard a news report in which this young woman's mother admits her daughter is obsessed with having babies? Well, I can no longer hold back from writing what the Pirate calls one of my Offend Everybody Posts.

I really have only one question: if we the people are so yippy skippy to legislate every little thing in the universe, why the heck fire do we la, la, la, la, la ourselves when it comes to the fertility industry? Oh, riiiiiiiiiiiiight, because God says go forth and and multiply. And get rich doing it.

This isn't a miracle. It's madness.

Mute Monday: Creatures

And the truly scary, totally underrated, completely brilliant

(despite the fact that it's a vampire movie):

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