Starlink surprised us tonight

So today was a rough one for Cookie.  Lots of worries about things I can't change and that became a worry unto itself.

This tonight, at 8:45 the husband took the dogs out and went out onto the deck, I followed and he told me to look skyward.

And up in the dark, I saw something that kind of restored my faith in mankind. 

Elon Musk's Starlink, 6, and 7 were up in the night sky.  Satellites, one after another, zooming from the northwest to southeast over our house in a perfect line, each spaced a perfect amount from the next, traveling from Westminister to the Eastern Shore.  The whole show took about a minute.  Simply unexpected and amazing.

Now the video is something from the UK.  And it certainly doesn't even hint at the beauty of these see on a clear night with your own eyes.

Yes, I know that someone people will say its space junk, but it reminded me that the world is far bigger than I.  I needed that.

Check below to see when you might see it!

https://findstarlink.com/

Eating Raoul.

Cookie has become food-obsessed in this time of shrinking food selection.  It keeps me up at night.  And it keeps me from eating, and not in a good way.

Baltimore is a horrible region for supermarkets compared to Columbus.  Columbus is a traditional test market city and a variety of stores, and the bounty was always better stocked, with more variety than you could shake a stick at.   Compared to Columbus, Baltimore is a food desert even under the best of circumstances. 

Part of the reason is that the number one chain, Giant Food is so horribly run.  We have three Wegmans, which are nice, but all are half an hour away.  There is Shop Rite, which was on life support, before, then there are the boutique markets.  Add in a smattering of Safeways, and that's about all we have.  We have no Kroger, we have no Giant Eagle, we have no Publix.  There are a couple Harris Teeter, but not many.   And there is no Piggly to get Wiggly about.

And then there is the Trader Joes with the mile-long lines.  A neighbor said that her husband trudged out to one, had been standing in line for an hour, when a woman in a battered Chevy Cavalier filled with trash drove by and start screaming at people to take off their masks, which was a sign of the devil, and repent to be saved by the blood of Jesus.  "So now I go to Trader Joes because he is over the experience."

We all have to be flexible, because we are all in this together, right?

So we have food.  But it's not the food we want.  It's the food we can find.  We no longer live in a nation where we have enjoyed the unlimited freedom of choice at the stores.  We are careening toward a world where hardtack biscuits will be gourmet.   So I look at what we have, and I think, can we afford to eat that can of corned beef hash?  Do I dare open that jar of jelly?  What if we need it - I mean really need it in a month or six?

What we can get at the stores around us is either stuff that you cannot live on, or stuff that no one else wants.

The food crisis started the day after White House addressed.  THEN the hoarding started because people heard him and thought "He's going to kill us all."

So know when you go to the store you see not what you want to find, but what others will not eat.  Campbell's soups are wiped out.  No tomato, no tomato with rice, no "tomato and stars".  In uniform fashion, the only Campbell's soups that one can find are the unloved ones.  Split pea, cream of celery, cream of chicken, cream of cheddar cheese, and bean with bacon.

Pasta sauce?  It all Vodka Sauce, Four Cheese, Meat Flavored, and Ricotta.  Pasta?  Good luck with that.  The Hershey brands of pasta (San Giorio, Creamette, Muellers) no longer exist.  Everything is Barilla, and even then its either just spaghetti or elbow macaroni. 

Even in produce, the potatoes look like they have been stored way too long.

And then, Cookie had an idea. "Let's try that store over by the you know what.  Yeah, the one that never has anyone in it."

It's an off-brand store, way off-brand.  But we trudged over looking for something, hoping they had it. 

They didn't, but oh the bounty we found!

Campbell's tomato soup!  Low sodium, but I can work with that.  Paper towels!  Oh thank god!  Name brand toilet paper!  Hosannah!  Prego!  We bought one each!  And they had Raoul's salsa!

The husband wanted to tell our neighbor, but I stopped him!  "You fool!  They'll know where to go and they'll take my precious away from us."

And I came to.

Tell them.  Ugh.

So today I will eat something for lunch. In celebration of yesterday's finds.  Then I will return to looking at trees and wondering if we'll wondering how to eat a maple, at the bushes wondering if push comes to shove how to cook and azalea. 

How long this social distancing thing will last is unknown.  But I continue to fret about starving.  About that point when things get really dire, I'll break open Raoul's salsa and some long stale chips, knowing that tomorrow there will be mud pies.

Answers people. We need answers.

Cookie has questions about this picture.

I suspect you do too.

Like, who are these people?  Why is there all this food?  And why is the cat in the picture?

They are covered with a shearling blanket, but the rear ends are probably on that sisal mat.  Ouch!

And the food.

I would call it a daring combination.  Cauliflower, puddin', escargot, and everything else.

The giant gingerbread men?

But the cat just takes it over the top into a dangerous place.

And are they waiting for other pairs of lovers to join them in the feast?

Will these other people find the cat as offputting as Cookie?

Answers people, we need answers.

I dare you: BE the Carleen Fredrick you need to be.

Every now and then I come across Carleen Fredrick's picture and I am reminded that we have to gotta do what we gotta do in order to get the day done.

So today, you need to cop the Carleen attitude.  Be leggy, kicky, and a high energy Las Vegas show performer that sings the songs of your audiences' lives your way.

That's right, high kicks and make this Friday yours.

Puffy shirt sold separately.

Love has many faces

One of Cookie's favorite trash movies is Love Has Many Faces.  It stars Lana Turner as a fading beauty with a big bank account. And we all know where this goes.  Fabulous resorts in places far enough away that no one gets to see her crepelike skin.  Lana looks good and plays a woman involved with gigolos and beach bums out to make a few women happy while being paid handsomely for it. 

The movie also stars Cliff Robertson as Lana's minute man of the minute, Ruth Roman as a woman on the prowl and a bearly clothed Hugh O'Brien looking like the hot daddy on the suburban cul de sac.   Hugh was too tan, and parades around in a white bathing suit, all hot, oily and hairy.

Here's Hugh with just enough moose knuckle...

Even Ruth wants her claws into him...

Of course, there is a questionable death - one of Lana's previous luv bunnies - otherwise it would be fading stars and daddy bodies and regret.  Lots of regret.  

I asked a friend who is a film buff why this doesn't get more airplay and she said "It's because's the men are the sex toys, while the women really can't carry the movie.  It should be a cult classic, but audiences simply didn't embrace it.  Go figure."

If you get a chance to see this trifle, do.  And bring along a bottle of banana boat suntan lotions to snort on whenever Hugh or Cliff saunters onto the screen. 

You can't do that with raisins...well, you could, but why?

Back in 1986, Cookie was first exposed to the genius of Billi Gordon and her cookbook, You've Had Worse Things in Your Mouth Cookbook. It was a transformative moment.

In the book, which includes a section on "Revenge Cooking" filled with such dishes, well that polite people don't discuss.  Gay men and queens?  Yes. Because everything is on the table in theory.

But this vintage recipe an ad in a 1970s women's magazine from the California Raisin Advisory Board, aka CRAB?  Raisin Celery Sauce.

This is not a Billi Gordon original.  But, the CRAB? These people were serious.

It was mainstream, honey.  No camp here.

Now, who would do this to Cream of celery soup?  Cream of celery is the milquetoast of the soup world.  It's an excuse to sell something thick, whitish, and tastes like glue as the basis from "Casserole Culture".  No one ever says, "would you like to join me in a bowl of cream of celery," for a reason.   Cream of celery is the food equivalent to the nerd in your sixth-grade class who still wears mitten clips and eats paste.

Cream of celery has its own problems so why add raisins to its misery, right?

Now Cookie is going to tell you that when some promote something as "Taste Surprising" you have to ask yourself, does "it" taste surprising?  Or do they mean "be surprised" by what you are tasting?  Dare I say that anything that looks white, runny with black lumps in it that - that right there is surprising and its a reason either protest and say that you are on a diet and would love to indulge but... Or, more crassly, if you see that after sex, you to call your doctor for a shot of penicillin.

Ah well, the best of intentions, gone horribly wrong, are still very wrong.

I do give credit to someone in the group where I found this who girded her loins and decided to try this. So she made it according to the recipe, fixed herself some Stove Top dressing and went for it.  And did she taste surprising?

"Sweet Jesus Christ!  HORK!"

As I do with every raisin post, thus comes Dorothy Parker's comment "This wasn't just bad.  This was terrible bad.  This was bad with raisins in it," to remind us of the possibilities and certainties of the flexibility of raisins.

But, it's a no win situation

Let's be clear about something. 

Cookie does not have all the answers.

Cookie has opinions.

If you ask, I will give you an opinion.  If you ask, you have an opinion that you need to take and think about. 

Don't argue it. 

If you don't want to follow it, then don't it's that simple. No harm, no foul.

But asking a professional opinion in which Cookie has education and experience is a different matter.  If you ask and are given a reasonable answer, there you go: the advice you were given, consider it. If you don't follow that opinion and something goes wrong, don't come to Cookie "boo hoo'ing" about how something went wrong. 

I mean I am willing to help, to a point.  But if I tell you not to stick a metal knife into an outlet because you'll get shocked, don't do it and then come back on me after the squad resuscitates you for saying "give it try."

Because I am not a "give it a try" advice kind of guy.

Not on hair color, buying a vintage Pucci dress, or getting cats when you are allergic to them.

And as an adult, don't we all owe it to what should be our innate sense of common sense to think before we act?  I mean some people can't help themselves.  "Should I jump off the cliff?" will always get a "No, don't do it."

That "No" should be my, y'all, and all y'all's indication to STOP and think about this before acting. 

"Should I stick my little finger in the pencil sharpener?"

NO!

"Should I marry Jack, even though he's been married six times before?"

NO!

"Should I paint my house lavender even though the owners association says I can't?"

NO!

"Should I try heroin?"

Oh, fuck NO!

See how easy that is?

But it seems like an awful lot of people ask these questions "Should I..." or "You know, now that we can..." don't want advice.  They want you to validate their cockamamy ideas.   And if you won't they want to argue it. 

Case in point, a friend who has made a series of bad financial decisions came to Cookie with a proposition.

"Now that we are old enough to access our retirement funds, should I drain the accounts and pay off my house?"

Cookie's response was "No.  I wouldn't do that until you speak to a professional in the money management field."

"But that costs money," they respond.

 And that is my (and yours, as well,) cue that what this person wants, isn't logical advice, they want VALIDATION of their plan.  They want you to see the genius of their idea, even when it isn't.

Here's the thing, past behavior is a pretty good indicator of future behaviors.  Be it the President or a friend that you have known for decades.  If they have developed a life pattern of making bad calls, it's an uphill battle to save them from themselves.

It's easy to give advice, but many people don't want it.  They want VALIDATION, and that means they want reassurance, even when you know that they will hurt themselves. 

The best course of action is to give, sound logical, fact-based advice, and then not argue it.  Because once they start arguing it, they are going to do what they are going to do.  And you are in a no-win situation.

Our taxes are paid. So is the grocery bill.

Well, thanks to the President, and despite revving up our paycheck deductions, we owe Uncle Sam.  So for the third year in a row, the government has grabbed us by the ankles and has shaken every last kopeck out of our bank account. 

So. Much. Winning.

And the tax thing has hit my cousins hard as well, the successful and the not so successful.

Said my cousin Louise: "It looks like a fish stick and Spam year ahead again, if I could find Spam or the Gorton's of Glouchester Fisherman, anywhere.

Louise has a point.  Not even the depression or WWII have American grocer stores been this depleted.

Oh, you can find stale Circus Peanuts, or jarred Escargot.  But who eats that stuff daily or even on rare occasions? 

Still, we keep a stiff upper lip.  The Brits have their "Keep Calm & Carry On". 

The American way is to stop needless noise and keep the nation calm. 

But I am wondering if we should start raising our voices and having them heard before it really is too late.

  

I'm flattered, but just no.

So I received a message from an acquaintance.   She wanted my mailing address.  Said she wanted to send me something to help me through the isolation period that we are all trapped in.

That was my first mistake.

My second was opening the package.

My third was pulling it out of the package.

The gift?

A facemask made from one of her bra cups.

"For when you go to the grocery store," the enclosed note said.

Maybe, if I shopped at Walmart.  But I don't.

"Does she understand that you're married to a man?" asked my husband.

I think so, I said.

It was nice that she thought of me. 

No, I did not try it it on, but I did shriek when it dawned on me what it was.

Do I send a thank you note?  What is the social convention for this kind of unsolicited gift?

Do I send her a mask in return made from a jockstrap?

So if you are thinking of sending me something for a while?  Don't. I'm not opening it. 

When in Garden Grove in the 1970s...

And it's only one a half miles south of Disneyland.

In addition to appearing at the Playgirl Club, according to a board post by someone identifying as "Leo Medina" Dale "owned it."  Now, whether Dale had an ownership stake in the club, or he "owned it" in the sense that his presence commanded the room is unknown to Cookie.

But Dick is in the ad.

Little Fires Everywhere?

NOTE: I had to edit this to remove the video window.  Evidently CBS is simply too aggressively in launching its videos. 

Celeste Ng uses Shaker Heights as the backdrop for her story, and you gets some good views of the city in the CBS interview that aired Sunday morning.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/little-fires-everywhere-writer-celeste-ng/


But the HULU Miniseries wasn't filmed in Shaker Heights because of a protest by Reese Witherspoon over medical rights for women in Ohio.  And that was the right thing to do.

Babs

Just wait until you meet our alligator wrestler.