Of Swollen Chickens

Have you ever seen one of those squeezable rubber chickens?

Yeah, you know the one: crushing its frame causes its insides to balloon through its skin and form a clear spherical tumor, stretched grotesquely until the pressure is released and the wart can recede, no trace left.

Well.

Not five minutes ago I found a rubber chicken like this at work, and noticed that it had a tumor that never receded. It hung on its neck like a swollen bubble, the edges visibly irritated.

I squeezed the chicken, and this is what happened:

A second tumor began to swell directly next to the first, but with a shiver-inducing pop it released its load, the stretched rubber pimple ejaculating watery fluid through the air, great spurts arcing and falling and splatting across the tile floor with the wet sound of violent contact. I jumped back, startled, but by the time the glistening visuals travelled to my brain the chicken was already spent, hanging limply in my grip as a drop of juice trickled down my fingers.

This is not a metaphor.

I am traumatized.

4:35 PM on a Tuesday

I watched the brilliant day through the breakroom window, green trees saluting a sharp blue sky.  Grass danced restlessly from the wind.  Sunlight reflected a warm world both blinding and inviting.

"Incredible day," someone said.

I agreed.

I then retreated into a stark hallway, my eyes adjusting to darkness as phantom colors danced across my vision and plotted the course that could have been.

Of voting attempts and church ladies

This morning I voted.

My local polling place is the meeting room of a church, and as such the polls tend to be manned by elderly church goers.

There was one other voter present, just ahead of me with his young son in what technically counted as a line.  He was identified and handed a ballot, the voting-specific transaction thus completed.

One of the eldery pollworkers--a woman--turned to the little kid as I waited in line (technically).  She put on her beaming "talking to children" face and asked, "How old are you?"

"Five," he said.

"Wow!  That's the same age as my grand-nephew!  What's your name?"

"Max."

"Max?" she said, her voice rising in delighted pitch.  "What a great name, Max!"

I didn't want to be rude, but I moved to draw attention to the fact that I was waiting.  Her eyes connected with mine and then turned back to Max.

"Do you know the book Where the Wild Things Are, Max?"

"Yes," Max replied.

"I hear they're turning it into a movie," the father said, his empty ballot tucked under his arm.

"Oh really?" she asked.

I was already late for work.

"I'd like to vote," I said.

Max and his voting dad took the cue and walked away.

The woman held onto her "talking to children face" and addressed me.  "And what is your last name?"

"Salisbury."

She began flipping through her registered voter list while continuing to address children.  "S...E...L..."

"No," I said.  "S..A..L..I..S..B..U..R..Y."

"S...E...L...I..."

"S..A..L..I," I corrected.

"S...A...I..."  she turned from one page to another, having trouble finding the name that is not mine.

"No, S.A.L.I"

She looked up at me, said, "oh," and then turned back to the registered voter list.  "S...A...I..."

The elderly church man sitting next to her interrupted her.  "No, S.A.L.I."

"S...A..." she trailed off.

The man leaned over.  "Top of page two."

She flipped one page, then another.  "Uh..."

"Never mind, I'll do it, " the man said, crossing out my name.

I took the offered ballot and walked to a booth.

Go vote!

The Spiders and the Legend of the Beast

The spiders that live in my basement have a tale that is passed down from generation to generation, a story presented as fact but only in the fashion that all children's stories are.

It is the telling of a massive roaring monster that appears but once every spider eon, a screaming, sucking beast that arrives without warning and massacres everything in its path.  It's long tube-like mouth is unforgiving in its ability to reach even the deepest of spider hiding places, and even the biggest, strongest spider is sucked up with frightening ease.  The beast destroys homes, slaughters families, and gobbles up even children with its bottomless hunger, and it isn't until the previously thriving spider population has been completely decimated that the sated beast finally retreats, lumbering off to god-knows-where to hibernate.  The few survivors who managed to escape the beast's wrath have no choice but to pick up the pieces of their shattered civilization and attempt to rebuild.

Fear can't last forever, of course, and as the spider population begins to recover and generation after generation passes without a return from the beast, the story retreats into legend and transforms from frightening to sexy, something young spiderlings whisper about at slumber parties while shivering under their sleeping bags.

The spiders are mistaken, however, as the beast is real and the passing of time has only strengthened its hunger.

Today is the day the spiders once again learn.

Lunchtime at Target

How do you sell a videogame?

I'll tell you how you sell a videogame.

I held it in my hands, strongly considering a purchase.  The color palette (high contrast black, white, and--get this--red) appealed to me, as did its cartoonishly violent promise.

The clerk looked at me, considered his options, and proceeded to say the following: "You can pick up bad guys and toss them in a deep fat fryer and then they throw up."

Sold!

The State of Dogs On Houses

I haven't written for this blog lately and the reason I haven't written for this blog lately is because I've been writing something that is not this blog.

Exactly.

Since the New Year I have been obsessively chipping away at the manuscript for a project that's been slow cooking for a couple years now.  This is good, as it means I'm making nightly progress and at the end of every week I can look back and count the amount of new pages that have survived the laborious transition from brain to computer.  Tangible progress is being made, to the extent that the finish line is in sight.  Within a month or two I should have a completed manuscript that can be read from start to finish.

The downside to spending one's time writing, however, is that the only thing I then have to write about is this: writing.  Only other writers would be interested in reading about that, and then only non-writing writers desperate to live vicariously through someone who manages to sit and stare at Microsoft Word for three hours a night while clicking on plastic keys.

Sit poorly, might I add.  I hunch like I'm assembling a puzzle that forms a massage therapist ad.

Also: I guess I am lying when I say that things haven't been happening to me beyond writing.  I wanted to write about my crippling guilt over abandoning my '98 Corolla for a shiny '08 Scion TC.  I wanted to write about the overwhelming joy I felt on January 20th, and the ripples of pride I still feel when I hear the words "President Obama."  I wanted to write about the queasy horror of reading about bush fires sliding all over an area of Australia I visited last October.  I want to write a review of the Lonely Island CD. 

I would write about all these things and more, but here's the catch: I am too busy destroying my back and staring at Microsoft Word for three hours a night while clicking on plastic keys.

You can't have everything.

The most accurate epitaph imaginable

Something occurred to me tonight as I scrubbed the carpet again.

Someday I will die and there will be a headstone, and on my headstone should be inscribed this and only this:

C. Bill Salisbury

1975-????

"In his life

there sure was a lot of cat puke"

R.I.P.

While driving this morning

I passed a car abandoned between the two lanes of the highway, its derailment undoubtedly the result of last night's storm.  The lonely vehicle was door handle-deep in snow, and wrapped twice around its metal frame was a strip of yellow DO NOT CROSS police tape.

Perched upon the roof was an orange traffic cone, the car's personal dunce cap.

My Corolla snickered, but only slightly.

There and back again

For awhile, my guitar made a daily trip from my closet door to the bed and back.

It's like this: after a few mishaps, I discovered that the nook where my closed closet door meets the door frame is ideal for leaning my guitar.  Via this method the guitar touched only carpet (down below!) and indented wood (way up top!) so there was no danger of the guitar sliding loose and scratching arcs of black paint into the walls.  Closed closet doors must be opened, of course, so a small daily commuting cycle was born in which I'd move the guitar from the door to my bed each morning when I needed my closet, and then each evening the guitar would make it back to the closet when I needed my bed.

Back and forth, each day.  It's no trip across Europe while on tour with the Stones, but many a guitar has achieved less.

All of which came to a close a few months ago when I decided I didn't really need another sleep-delaying procrastination device in the bedroom.  Down to the basement went my guitar, and the daily commute ended.

Except that now I find that another long, unwieldy device has resumed this daily trip between by bed and closet door.  Yes, the commuting mantle has been passed from my electric guitar to a new item and that new item is this:

A full-size replica of Aragorn's sword.

I purchased it for a Halloween costume, you see.

Right.

Yeah, I'm not exactly comfortable with the direction my life seems to be taking.

Review: Hellboy

Hellboy, Take One:

I finally saw Hellboy, and this is what I thought of it:

Two months ago my car had a rather peculiar electrical issue caused by a faulty headlight trigger that had some bizarre manifestations.

One bizarre manifestation was the dashboard emergency brake light sometimes blinked in time to the left turn signal.

Another bizarre manifestation was the engine wouldn't run unless the headlights were on.

Understandably, two months ago I got this fixed.

Another thing that happened two months ago: my dehumidifier broke. A wave of typical summer weather hit hard and my basement was like a catbox floating down the Amazon.

Understandably, two months ago I also purchased a new dehumidifier.

Cut to two weeks ago, when I noticed the emergency brake light blinking again in time to the left turn signal. Two days later the car wouldn't start reliably unless the headlights were on.

Strike One.

Last week at some point I realized that the new dehumidifier had slid from working quite well to barely working to not remotely working at all. I took the time on Friday night to sit down with the manual and troubleshoot every possible cause, finally settling on kicking it twice and waiting to see if that made any difference.

During this waiting period, I decided to rent and watch Hellboy, so I flipped my headlights on and drove over to the local rental place, brake lights blinking with every turn.

Halfway through Hellboy, my televisions screen went blank, except for the small text indicating that the DVD signal had been interrupted. Thinking the DVD perhaps had a scratch on it, I walked to the DVD player and noticed that its lights weren't on.

I plugged it into a different jack.

The DVD player sat silent and dim.

I removed the DVD player entirely and plugged it into a different outlet entirely.

The DVD player sat silent and dim.

My DVD player was dead.

Strike Two.

I walked back into the basement to check on the dehumidifier and see if my kick had jolted the condenser back into operation.

The bucket was as barren as my faith in appliance reliability.

Strike Three.

Hellboy could have been better.


Hellboy, Take Two:

Watching Hellboy (in its entirety) is a bit like reading a stunningly imaginative and inspired book that has terrible punctuation and sentences arranged in the wrong order.

Considering the general level of competence on display in Pan's Labyrinth, I'm guessing that Hellboy 2 is worth a look.

Boom Blox

Yesterday I purchased a Wii game that involves throwing objects at towers of blocks in an attempt to inflict enough structural damage to cause collapse.

It wasn't until later that I saw the flags at half mast and realized the coincidence.

Well I never need to shop there again

Having searched through local CD stores for the better part of summer, it was with a certain degree of triumph that I extracted the Crystal Castles album yesterday from the racks of B-Side Records, an independent local music store. I had been listening to the disc for months via illegal download, and I was glad to finally be able own a physical copy.

Still, the $14 price tag made me pause momentarily. I wanted to support the band, yes, but I knew I could order the album for a good five dollars cheaper online. Amazon.com has free shipping, after all.

"To hell with that," I sad outloud. "B-Side Records is stocking the album I've been looking for all summer, I'll support the independent local music store."

The clerk/shop owner rang up my purchase and then asked, offhand, "Would you like a bag for that?"

While not a huge fan of unnecessary waste, I recognized I was going to be going in more shops and didn't want to be carrying a loose CD around. "Yes, please."

The clerk continued the paperwork for my purchase and shot me a glance, raising an eyebrow and exhaling with disapproval. Apparently his question had been a trap.

I said, "You disapprove of bags, I take it."

He shook his head as if explaining the obvious. "I just really like trees."

At this point in time he was counting my money and making change, for the record.

I laughed. "I like trees as well but right now I happen to need a bag more than I like trees."

He pursed his lips like a school marm and handed me my purchase. "Well there you go, then"

"Thanks for the bag," I said, leaving.

There is an irony to all this, I mused while departing, and it is this: what's the biggest side product of driving all future music purchases into the hands of Amazon.com?

Lots of tree-shredding packaging.

August

The trees glowed green against the pink-yellow sky tonight, the air heavy and pregnant with tense possibility.

I hope it fucking explodes.

The trouble with cheese balls

One thing my two year old nephew discovered this past weekend is that he really likes cheese balls.

Not actual balls of cheese, mind you. We're talking puffy round crisps of toxic waste that come in a big plastic barrel and were available at a family picnic this past Saturday. Little orange terrors that exist to make room for baby carrots.

My nephew couldn't get enough.

The problem with all this is an afternoon spent eating cheese balls results in an afternoon spent shitting cheese balls and my poor nephew was no exception. By the end of the day his poor butt was so sore from crapping cheese balls that my brother-in-law decided to slather him with vaseline for relief.

A further complication, though, was the cheese ball farts, which descended upon my nephew at that very moment. I heard him giggling like a little boy and then regrettably turned to see what was so funny. There he was, hoisted up by his feet and beaming while he repeatedly farted vaseline out of his anus.

I saw this.

There is an identical plastic barrel of cheese balls three cubicles down at work.

Dram is too tightly

I did something this past weekend that I swore I'd never do.

I've always built my personal computers from parts purchased individually. It was a point of pride, for one, and I also just liked the physical nature of laying one's computer on the operator table and rearranging its guts by hand. I enjoyed taking it apart, putting it back together again, and then finally powering it up.

Which transitions nicely to what i didn't like about assembling computers by hand: troubleshooting why it didn't power up successfully.

Let me relate to you a brief story.

Two years ago I was having problems starting up my computer. It would turn on but then hang before the BIOS options were even available. It would hang for several minutes until the following error message of tortured English appeared: "Dram timing is too tightly so reload timing"

I will never forget those words.

This problem was initially a minor inconvenience as the machine would power up after a false start or two, but eventually the situation got so bad that I once spent the better part of a Sunday evening trying to power up my computer.

As you can image, I was also relentlessly troubleshooting this issue. I did a bit of googling and decided to replace the RAM.

That didn't help.

I decided to replace the power supply.

That seemed to help a bit, but the problem still persisted enough to suggest the power supply to be little more than a red herring.

Running out of options, I decided to replace the motherboard.

This ended up being a multi-step process as it wasn't until I had completely disassembled my computer that I realized the motherboard wasn't compatible with my processor.

I was due for an upgrade anyway, so I replaced my processor.

That didn't help.

What did help, though, was the diagnostics light grid on my new motherboard. As I sat there, utterly dispirited as my computer whirred away while doing nothing, I noticed the lights blinking at me, and looking up the pattern in the manual I realized the motherboard was reporting graphics card problems.

The graphics card, incidentally, being the one part left that I hadn't replaced.

And so I replaced the graphics card.

Which did help.

And so it was--via new RAM, power supply, motherboard, processor, and finally graphics card--that my computer could finally be reliably powered up.

And on that topic: I did something this past weekend that I swore I'd never do.

I bought a Dell.

I'm sorry mama, but tonight I'm cleaning out my *error: joke expired 2002*

It is done.

I have ripped out the old shelving. I have spackled over the various nail holes and plaster rips. I have taped the woodwork and ceiling. I have painted most of a base coat of white, and then made an emergency paint trip to Home Depot so I could finish. I have waited a day and then painted the walls with two coats of dark, shitty brown. I have briefly wondered if perhaps a different color would have been more prudent. I have waited a day and then removed the tape, wondering how paint got there, for the love of god. I have assembled $200 worth of shelving and mounted it all to the walls with carefully drilled holes and plug mounts, a feat which took four times my initial estimation.

I have, in other words, spent every non-working waking hour over the past week struggling to some degree in the non-ventilated endurance test that is my closet, my uniform but a pair of shorts and a thick coat of sweat, dirt, and plaster dust.

It is done. The holes are spackled, the walls are painted, the shelves are mounted, the dust is vacuumed, and the sweat and dirt has been showered.

My closet is so clean, in fact, that I'm now terrified of actually putting anything in it.

The Closet Crisis of 2008

My condo has a problem and the problem is this: a disorganized slob moved in four years ago.

Generally my condo appear to be somewhat clean and neat, but it is but an illusion barely kept in check by the fact that certain doors and drawers can be closed. All one has to do is peek in a closet or enter the basement storage room to realize that items were unpacked and placed with the unmistakable hand of a disorganized slob.

This disorganized slob is me, you see.

Take this evidence into account: a recent search for guest bed sheets in the upstairs hallway closet turned up--no joke--board games, lighter fluid, empty CD cases, colored pencils, mix tapes, network cables, notebooks, broken phones, silverware (clean), comic books (mostly clean), discarded motherboards, one Casio keyboard, one beach towel (clean), one canteen, and a multitude of Tranformers toys purchased amidst hope that the 2007 movie wouldn't be terrible (wrong).

Noticeably absent from the above list: guest sheets.

And so I find myself at the beginning of the epic quest that is going through every last cubic foot of my condo and finding a place for everything I can and getting rid of everything I can't. I decided to start on my bedroom closet, a considerable task since my closet has a severe shelving issue caused by improper mounting. To take care of this issue--and give me lots of practical place in which to put stuff--I now own $200 worth of shelves and drawers and racks and shoe organizers and belt hooks and clothes rods. Every inch of available closet space is ready to be converted into a vast network of utilitarian splendor.

Before I could install this vast network of utilitarian splendor, however, I had to completely empty my closet of four years of accumulated debris, and my bedroom was unfortunately the only logical temporary storage spot.

Before I could vast install this vast network of utilitarian splendor, however, I needed to rip out the old shelving, which revealed architect wall scribbling and many, many holes, some small (from nails) and some large (from chunks of drywall lodged loose when the old shelves started to fail).

In other words, before I could install this vast network of utilitarian splendor and do it right, the closet needed to be spackled and repainted.

More specifically, the closet needs to be spackled an repainted, a project which is realistically going to take through the weekend.

Fair enough, but my bedroom now has a problem and the problem is this:



If I am somewhat remiss in my Dogs On Houses duties it will not be without good reason.

The Battle of Bubble Bobble: May 31, 2008

I had no idea what I was getting into when I bought a Game Boy Advance Bubble Bobble port as a birthday present for my younger sister, Katie.

She sat there, dazed. "This is the worst birthday present I have ever received."

I held my heads in my hands. "Fuck Bubble Bobble."

Rewind twenty years.

The Atari ST version of Bubble Bobble was quite the fixture at the Salisbury family household. Many hours were spent playing co-op with my sister, seeing how far we could get before our lives ran out. Bereft of any sort of documentation, we devised our own names for the various enemies in the game, like "toasters" and "buttkins."

As such, it seemed like the ideal birthday present seventeen years later, when my sister and I were spending a fair amount of time during my visits engaging in GBA multiplayer gaming. Unfortunately, she promptly lost the game cartridge and as such co-op Bubble Bobble remained firmly in our childhood, my few singleplayer attempts accomplishing nostalgia and little else.

And so it went on, year after year, until the forgotten birthday present reared its head a week ago when I received the following loaded text message from Katie:

"found bubble bobble. bring home your gba"

And so is was at 9:00 PM last Saturday night that we finally managed to power up our connected GBAs and engage in multiplayer Bubble Bobble for the first time in over twenty years.

My god, the music alone brought me back, although Katie made it clear that my singing along wasn't necessary. The cute dinosaurs, the various powerups, it all returned me to my childhood in a dizzying rush.

We knocked off the easy intro levels and proceeded into the ones that actually require some skill. We killed toasters, we slaughtered buttkins. We ate giant cakes that fell from the sky. We collected letters that spelled out "EXTEND."

We actually managed to progress well beyond the levels familiar from childhood, as the GBA port allowed us to continue from death by plugging in virtual quarters. "PRESS START!" our little dinosaurs would implore, awarding us with new life and a "THANK YOU!" when we complied. Uncommonly polite for a dinosaur.

One sweaty, eye-straining hour later we had passed level 80.

"How many levels do you think this game has?" Katie asked me.

"I really have no idea. 100, maybe? 150?"

The answer came five levels later when yet another dino death resulted in us both being dumped unceremoniously onto a GAME OVER screen that said we had beat 85 out of 100 levels.

"What the hell?"

The defeat music was taunting in its jauntiness.

I stood up and stretched, a little dazed from staring at a small screen and existing via twitch reflexes for well over an hour.

"Did the game end because we both died at the same time?"

"No idea," she said. "Maybe we ran out of attempts?"

"I kind of doubt it. But at least we know now that there are 100 levels. We almost made it."

"Almost isn't good enough."

"Yeah," I said, arching my back to work out the kinks earned from an hour of hunching.

"No, I mean it. Almost isn't good enough."

I turned to look at her.

"You're not going to want to do this, but it's my birthday, and an hour from now we're going to join the ranks of people who have beaten Bubble bobble.

"Oh god."

"I won't lie to you, it isn't going to be fun."

"Oh god."

"The first few levels are going to be painful."

"Oh god."

"But this is about something bigger than fun. This is about being able to look the world in the face and saying that yes, we conquered Bubble Bobble at 11:30, May 31st."

"Oh god."

"So go and slap a little water on your face or do whatever you have to do, because we're about to beat Bubble Bobble."

"We're about to beat Bubble Bobble," I said.

And so there we were, gritting out teeth and heading back into the cave of monsters at 10:30 on a Saturday night. We didn't want this second session to meet the same abrupt end as the previous one, so we did a bit of testing and determined that the permadeath was caused by both players running out of lives at exactly the same time. We quickly developed a system: when both of us were near our last lives, one of us would commit suicide and restart while the other stayed safe. It served us well, and we found ourselves making good progress.

We cleared level ten.

"Ten town, ninety to go," I said.

"Jesus Christ."

Katie didn't lie, it wasn't fun, although we churned through the levels with a certain workmanlike efficiency. Any power-up that ended the level quickly was pursued at all costs. The level-skipping umbrella was the holy grail, and allowed us to bypass a decent portion of the mid-20's.

There was a hypnotic groove we settled in, the levels flying by in an eyeball-straining blur. Level 36 brought a massive popsicle that gave me a ridiculous amount of points. Katie grabbed a potion somewhere in the 40's that killed all the enemies and filled the screen with collectible music notes.

We knocked off level 50 and I said, "Halfway there."

She grunted.

Nine levels later (59 down, 41 to go) the platform blocks spelled out "BR10."

"I don't even know what that's supposed to mean," I said.

My sister replied, "I'm well past caring."

Somewhere around level 65 I checked my watch. Almost 11:30, we had already been at this for an hour. Somehow it seemed like this journey had already occupied well more than sixty minutes, its true toll not easily measured by time.

Level 72 took us awhile, as just getting out of the starting gates required a certain bubble/jump combination that only I seemed capable of. It took many tries, and several deaths via the time-limit enforcers--dubbed "mousers" by us as children--before I managed to defeat all the enemies.

Level 73 was another tough one that required bubble jumps to even get to the elevated platform where the enemies were. I managed to break through and was on a tear, trapping baddie after baddie in bubbles.

Katie's voice carried a bit of alarm when she said, "Hey, you have to commit suicide!"

I scoffed and popped a bubble, destroying the trapped enemy. "Kicking too much ass to die."

"Okay fine, I'll do it."

And then the buttkin killed me, my dinosaur mirroring the same death spiral currently being performed by Katie's.

Shit.

We both hunched forward, rapidly pressing the Start button, everything hinging on some offset of syncopation in our deaths. We pressed, and pressed, and pressed, the rapid dual clicking of the button the only sound.

The only sound, that is, until the jaunty music of the GAME OVER screen Bubble bobble dumped us to.

We both screamed, Katie slamming her GBA down as I rolled off the couch onto the floor. I covered my face with my hands and either laughed or sobbed uncontrollably.

"I am so angry right now," Katie said.

"Oh my god," I said.

"We had a system," she said.

I just kept laughing and sobbing, my face still covered.

Katie shook her head, her voice deadpan. "You're my brother, and I love you, but right now I want so bad to kill you and carve onto your gravestone the words 'kicking too much ass to die'."

"Oh my god," I repeated. "I never want to see my GBA again."

She sat there, dazed. "This is the worst birthday present I have ever received."

I held my heads in my hands. "Fuck Bubble Bobble."

Revolt of the appliances!

At about 8:00 PM I decided to show a little neighborly mercy and turn down the music that was providing the backdrop to my Memorial Day cookout. I stepped inside and crouched down to the bookshelf stereo, its speakers leaning outward against the window screens.

I turned the dial to the left and watched the digital volume readout increase, from 23 to 24. This wasn't quite what I was looking for so I reversed tactics and rotated the dial clockwise, at which point the volume audibly and visibly increased to 25, 26, and 27.

I paused, and checked the dial. Yes, it was labeled as "Volume."

I turned the dial counter-clockwise again and the volume began to thankfully subside--26, 25, 24--before suddenly doubling back and getting louder, 25, 26, 27, 28.

I rotated the dial back and forth in a desperate attempt to establish some causal relationship, but the volume mocked me and accelerated madly, the number scrolling up illegibly fast--past 30, past 35, past 40--the music now a distorted, predatory roar.

Panicked, I pressed the power button, and after a threatening second--I wasn't aware my stereo could even reach 45--the volume mercifully cut out, the distant sound of outside laughter pouring in to fill the void.

I sat there, staring at the empty readout.

When I pass the stereo now I can feel it watching me.

Off the grid: take 1

I attended the farmer's market on Saturday, this time emboldened by purpose. I was a man of business, immune to the distracting frivolities of the goatee'd guy pushing cheese curds or the lady with the beehive hat.

It was the first step of my plan to start eating locally grown food. I had decided to remove myself from the national factory farm network and reduce the amount of resources my food consumes on its way to my plate.

I figured the resulting smarter-than-thou points would stack nicely with my NPR listening habits and utter disinterest in television.

So there I was, striding (with such purpose!) through the throng of like-minded individualistic sheep. Perusing the wares hawked in each stand revealed a snag in the grand plan, though, as I realized that a lifetime of supermarket shopping had caused a complete personal disconnect from the reality of seasonal crops. I was used to the convenience of buying red peppers and green beans at the drop of a hat, and yet neither were apparently in season.

What is actually in season, evidence suggested, is this:

Asparagus, asparagus, and asparagus.

I hope Madison pees behind closed windows this week.