When you host your own blog, you’re responsible for building and testing lines of defense against email and comments spam. Hosted WordPress does a pretty good job of this–I’m still looking for solutions that work comprehensively. Trying a new plugin today, so if you leave a comment and see a captcha dialog, that’s why. Perhaps next time I view comments, I won’t see 100 spammers telling me how interesting I am, asking where I found that plugin, or recommending juicing and flossing over blogging to help me meet life’s daily challenges.

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“The trick to snaring a Balrog,” Mom said, sliding the maggoty squirrel off the spatula onto the ground inside the wire loop, “is knowing they’re gourmet scavengers.” She scattered leaves haphazardly over the wire loop and cocked spring. “The deader their food, the better. Like a fine cheese.”

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Some women are sexy outside-in. Supermodels, for example. They wear their sexiness like a skin, like makeup, like a new set of clothes. Like a magazine ad. They’re sexy like Photoshop is sexy.

Some women are sexy inside-out. My wife. She’s sexy at the foundation, and it shines out through her eyes (sometimes preternaturally bright), her skin (sometimes preternaturally soft and citrusy), the long smile dimple on her left cheek, her ability to see that sexiness in herself and occasionally flaunt it “oh honey” style, her shameless sense of rhythm, and her shyness at being called sexy in public. (If she reads this, I’m in for it. And that’s all you’re going to get.)

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You are evil and I hope you get lots of awards and have to fly to strange countries where the food tastes like fried balrog.
– Writer’s Curse

When I was 13, my brother and I had to eat fried Balrog every day for a week after my Dad lost his job of 20 years as a machinist when the Boeing plant shut down and Mom had to trap our food in the woods behind our house (big woods, thousands of acres, 20 our’s). Balrog’s not that bad–sort of a gamy cross between grass-fed beef and frog legs–not much fat. The belches were hellfire, though, and were not allowed at dinner (or within 20 feet of the house). It also made our dog Cinder’s eyes (and his piles) glow orange–let’s just say “pissed off” was too lean of an expression to describe Mom when she caught us feeding him from the table.

Dad didn’t believe in Balrog, so Mom told him it was the end of last year’s cow we’d purchased from the aptly named Cowdens cross the road. (Mr. Cowden, a single dad with a glass eye and two kids our age–Theresa (my first crush) and her younger brother David–raised and sold cows for milk and meat to supplement his income from driving dozer at the county dump.) Within six months Dad got a job selling real estate, Mom had taken up with Mr. Cowden, Mom and Dad divorced, and we moved to Portland to live with Dad and my grandma. He told us that he and Mom had completely agreed to the arrangement, but we’d heard him yelling at her that she lived in a fantasy world and until she came back to reality, she wouldn’t be fit to raise our cat. The way she cried we were pretty sure that he hit her for emphasis.

To prove him wrong, she and the cat rented a small house behind a nice Christian family in Beaverton. We saw them every two weeks, or when she remembered. She had a hard time keeping her calendar straight, but she taught us how to drive a car (a classic Willy’s jeep), how to track game in the woods bordering town, how to identify medicinal herbs, and how to drink. Dad taught us how to be responsible. My grandma taught us how to love apple dumplings (she’d never heard of Balrog or pixie apples or fairy honey or sweet dryad tea, but did grow prehistoric-sized rhubarb big enough to hide under and seemed to take delight in telling us how poisonous it was if eaten raw–I do miss her.)

Notes

The Tolkein giant is your basic primeval Balrog. Today’s garden variety Balrog is a burrower with only vestigial wings and otherwise looks like a cross between a fruit bat and an angry beaver and, on all fours, is the size of a pot-bellied pig. Mom used scotch bonnets as bait or, when those were hard to find, spicy Polish sausage (which was also useful in snaring my younger brother).

You have to boil the meat before roasting or it smells horrible–like backfat soaked in gasoline. Otherwise, it’s quite tender and delicious–almost indistinguishable from pulled pork.

It’s also delicious–some would say best–served cold and, when dried, keeps almost forever. When I find it, I’ll pass on Mom’s recipe for Balrog pemmican made with red huckleberries (actually my Grandfather’s recipe he learned as a boy from an old Sioux army scout. Grandpa grew up in Butte, Montana, where his father was a manager for the Montana Mining Company. He said they sometimes found things in those big open pit mines that no one liked to talk about and the Native Americans were hired to handle.)

Song

You Bash the Balrog

Words: Lee Gold
Music: ‘Waltzing Matilda’
Courtesy of my friend Found on Web

Once a jolly Cleric, and a magic-using Elf,
And a mighty Dwarf with a sword plus three
Left their native village, out to get their share of pelf.
You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb a tree.

CHORUS:

You bash the Balrog, you bash the Balrog,
You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb a tree.
(Last 2 lines of verse)

First they met a Goblin, with a fire-breathing Hound.
They bashed, and they smashed, and they scragged him with glee.
Afterwards they searched him, and a magic potion found.
You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb a tree.

CHORUS

The low-wisdom Swordsman picked it up and drank it down.
Changed into a wolf immediately.
No one could dispel it, so they headed back toward town.
You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb the tree.

CHORUS

Then a voice bellowed, “Who has slain the Goblin King?”
Round turned our heroes; what did they see?
Swooping down upon them was a Balrog on the wing.
You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb a tree.

CHORUS

The Balrog fell upon them, and his flame began to rage.
The Wolf whimpered low and he tried to flee.
“Help!” screamed the Cleric. “Ditto!” yelled the Elven Mage.
You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb a tree.

CHORUS

They ran through the forest, seeking for a place to hide,
Pursued by the Balrog so fierce to see.
“Wait,” cried the Elf-mage. “I have got a plan,” he lied.
“You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb the tree.”

CHORUS

Once a mighty Balrog slew a cleric and an elf
And a smallish wolf who had teeth plus three.
Skinned them and tanned their hides and kept them on a closet shelf.
You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb the tree.

CHORUS

(Alternative and much-preferred final verse – clever elves should be rewarded, after all!)
Once a mighty Balrog slew a jolly cleric and
Skinned a smallish wolf who had teeth plus three.
But the Elf got away, and he’s living with a Dryad band.
You bash the Balrog, and I’ll climb the tree.

CHORUS

I think the author of this song should have kept in “billabong”–one of those Australian words of mystery from my childhood. There’s no doubt in my mind, after singing this out loud, that a billabong is the home of the Balrog. (Yes, I know what it really is.)

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This week, jumbled notes and research become chapter two….we’ll see how it progresses. I’d like to reach Wordstock (early Oct) with several chapters of version 2 drafted.

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Symphony #8, with Von Karajan conducting a big rich performance from the Berlin Philharmonic, would move a deaf man. After 20 years, it still lifts the fog from my head and my heart to my throat.

That is all, and plenty.

Followup: The tune serendipitously and, for me, appropriately queued to follow #8 was Joan Osborne singing Hallelujah, her own song (not the great Leonard Cohen epic that gives listeners an emotional hard-on as they envision their own funeral). Joan eased me back to the modern world.

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We have a fairly large and abundant side yard that’s been begging for a shed since we bought our house 8 years ago. The center of our yard is cut into a miniature baseball diamond and filled with thick clover (home to the buzzing bees); edged with dwarf fruit trees (plum, apple, fig), blueberry bushes, grapes (soon), and clumps of rosemary; and bordered by a little urban creek (seasonal camp to a tribe of those thumbnail-sized, cannon-voiced burrowing frogs). I could show you that yard, but for all that, without a shed, this article on sheds–especially the shed on slide 1–is much more interesting.

Author Neil Gaiman also has a shed to envy documented here. Philip Pullman did his best work to date in a shed (I saw a photo of the inside once, but can’t find the URL.) The number of creators who’ve leveraged sheds is long, and most are unsung. The shed is and always has been the urban man’s (or woman’s) quick getaway–whether it’s a “writing hut” or studio or just a place to putter. As kids, we start with the playhouse or a hideout, even the hollow core of a hedge or cleverly camouflaged lean-to of tree trunks, sticks, and branches–someplace private and even defensible that blended into the natural world. As an adult, I don’t want to hide my shed: I want to be seen in it and to stand back and admire it. The shed is a symbol of my success, house of creativity, and a statement of privacy–there works a private person surely creating or puttering up something grand!

What’s keeping me from building a shed? Cost of materials. My brother’s a fine carpenter who would be more than willing to help, but we have too many things to fix or replace first around our late-70′s home; features or structures that–in traditional suburban development style–were never meant to last quite as long as they have.

However, I have hope. In a previous post, I mentioned that my wife Deborah (there was a typo where I wrote “my life” that I should have left in), plans like the ancient Mandarins. She’ll be sympathetic to my shed–it’ll give her more free space in the house–and will help me put a long term financial plan in place to gain it.

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I ran across this young busker with his accordion at lunch time today, on NW 9th between Couch and Davis, just inside the bay door of West End Auto Body. He played well, making the sidewalk tables at the old Fuller’s diner across the street feel like an outdoor French cafe. He looks about the same age as my youngest son, Noah (who is 11).

Photo taken (with my crappy phone camera) and used with permission of the boy and, via nod, one of the shop mechanics. Note his foot planted firmly on his money hat.

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Sozzled by constant lawn care responsibilities? No more scissors for your grass, Judy! Modern lawnsters use the Brin Pulsating Lawn Shaver®, with Touch-n-Go® technology to shave more blades with every stroke. Neighbor ladies will give your man the approving nod when they see his perfect grass, so keep him on a leash! The programmable Pulsonic Edge Guard® accessory keeps your sod a sharp one mm off walks and drives, and creates an invisible fence against pesky intruders. It’s a lawn so perfect it’ll confound a cat!

Reprinted from spring 2008, in recognition of Lawn Care Season.

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Dear Broccoli,

Yes, it’s phat to eat a good breakfast, and recent studies show that breakfast should be the fattest meal of the day (healthy fats!), skinnying down to dinner. My son Noah, 11, would agree. He’s up most mornings by 7, disagreeably cheerful, hugging his mother and I and telling us we’re the best parents in the world before he heads downstairs to whip up some eggs (and recently, egg beaters) and cereal and the occasional toaster waffle (yes, we can live with that).

Sophie, 5, wants nothing to do with breakfast most mornings and, if we’re not attentive, is a basket case by 11 AM, when her mom is able to boost her blood sugar with a little yogurt or peanut butter toast to interest her in lunch. Sophie used to eat a banana for breakfast but now only wants to draw faces on them with markers and use them as puppets (she mimics Banana perfectly). Thanks for that.

We’ll take any advice you might offer, especially with a kid-friendly back beat. I hear the 4 minute timer chiming–time to press the coffee and wrangle my daughter.

Thanks,

Voice of Dad

This was a “Voice of Dad” blog entry written for broccoliandbanana.com. We’re rethinking some of the site’s features, so I’m reposting some of my entries here.

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