Itinerantdaughter's Blog

My former boss is hosting a goat roast.  Ever received an invite to a goat roast?  Me neither!  Here’s what it looks like:

“As a result of experience I had in European Latin countries, and conversations that D and I have had on the subject of meats that one can grill, we’ve decided jointly to grill and barbeque a goat and organize a dish which the Italians or the Spanish call cabrito.

“We’ve already started some research with specialty butchers and instructional information respecting Latino methodology. We’ve decided for all sorts of culinary reasons not to go the spit method, although it has its charms. We’ve loaded things against ourselves as the route we’re going takes 7 hours to do as perfectly as we have planned.

The date and venue are as follows:

Date: Saturday September 28th with a rain date – only if it looks like it will pour – of Sunday September 29th.

Time: 1:30PM

“There will of course be Hudson Valley imbibements. Right now we’re working on some home brew. Please come and, since we are the most organized of people, let us know pretty damn quick as the goat has to be pre-ordered. We’re planning on a Hudson Valley goat for those interested in these recondite subjects.

“Goat cheese is de rigeur, but not goat’s milk… which would not be kosher! (Neither would goat cheese but we are not an Orthodox group).

“There will be some veg alternatives.

“Any dessert will be gratefully accepted, since D and I, this time, will be too busy for our normal baking specialties (pumpkins not accepted despite the season).

“Partners in any combination and of any description more than okay, with a limit of two per, since xx Something Street was voted the Most Decent Location in the Hudson Valley in the 2012 December Issue of Hudson Valley Magazine (copies available on request).

“Please do let us know.”

My dad’s out of office message for this week:

“I am in Montana on Monday and Tuesday seeking large trout.”

I’ve contributed for about seven years now to an excellent site called Bookslut, and the editor, whom I’ve never met and yet still managed to feel intimidated by, moved last year (?) from Portland, Oregon to Berlin.  She blogged a few days ago about her idea to open a literary colony of sorts in an abandoned hospital in her new hometown.  It sounds like absolute heaven.  I immediately emailed the managing editor and asked for a room (he said yes, of course.)

“I had this crazy idea. Actually, I had it about two years ago when I fell in love with a Berlin building that had a tree growing out of the back of it. In my research about the abandoned building, I discovered that it had originally been built in the 19th century as a mortuary for the nearby hospital. Then the Nazis took it over and used it for storage. Then the East Germans took it over and used it for a bureaucratic office. I decided I had to buy this building and open the Bookslut Literaturhaus of Sex and Death. (Don’t worry, we would burn some sage in there. Maybe bring in a priest.)

“After reading Sarah Schulman’s The Gentrification of the Mind, and watching Berlin turn into Brooklyn, I’ve become more determined to open the Bookslut Literaturhaus of Sex and Death, although Charles, our managing editor, insists it should exist in Chicago so he can go, too. (Maybe we will open Literaturhaus Zwei.) Schulman writes about the need for radical spaces, for the mixing of people from all nationalities and economic backgrounds, for places to perform and fuck up and converse, and not just recreate the socioeconomic climates of our childhoods in our social circles.

“So I’ve decided my demented little building is not big enough, but perhaps the abandoned 19th c. hospital next door would be for what I want. (And really, someone should take it over before it’s turned into luxury condos.) I want: low rent apartments for writers and artists, who can teach or mentor or help rehab the building in exchange for rent. A performance space/reading hall. An extensive library. Classrooms, not for MFA-style workshops but for classes on history, international literature, art, etc. There’d be rooms to stay in for traveling writers and bourgeois people who just want to look in on the action and they would be charged more. There’d be a bar and cafe, of course, because it’s going to be a steady diet of Hungarian rose wine and goulash. And of course a large section will house Bookslut/Spolia offices and inevitably a publishing company/bookstore. I’ll do the tarot readings in the library.

“I will of course live in the mortuary.

“I am five seconds from Kickstarting this fucker, although then all of the money would go to Paypal, and yuck. But rewards would be like, we’ll name a barstool after you. Or, a couple nights for free. From there I can raise my enlightened crones-in-training army, and we can have our little radical space within the workings of capitalism. Who is with me? You’d be a fool not to run away and join our circus.”

“53. The best thing for children is to keep your distance from them, not playing with them too often.  It is best not to pay attention to them at all.”

~Rabbi Nachman’s Wisdom

So just as an FYI to my 10 devoted readers, whom I LOVE (yes, that’s you), this is my 1000TH BLOG POST!  OMG B”H YES I AM GREAT!  So my beloved boyfriend is throwing me a party to celebrate the fact that I am diligent as hell (though a Luddite, and horrendous self-promoter.)  If you are reading this right now, then you are INVITED!  There will be snacks, OTD Hasidim and tears shed over the canceling of Intervention; there will not be people riding bicycles on the sidewalk or celebrities who have been to rehab for “exhaustion.”  Details below.

PLACE: The Brooklyn Inn––148 Hoyt Street @ Bergen

TIME: 7:30, Thursday, June 6th

BRING: Whatever/whomever you want

WHY YOU SHOULD COME: Because I heart you, I might buy you a drink and my parents are coming and if no one else comes they will think I have no friends and I will be embarrassed

UPDATE: I realized I used the word “devoted” twice in the first two sentences.  #thingsthatcausemeshame.

I will take you out for a drink if you can guess who wrote the below.  No Googling, please!  Send answers to Siobhan, itinerantdaughterandson@gmail.com.

“As for minute joys: as I was saying: do you realize the illicit sensuous delight I get from picking my nose?  I always have, ever since I was a child –– there are so many subtle variations of sensation.  A delicate, pointed-nailed fifth finger can catch under dry scabs and flakes of mucous [in the nostril and draw them out to be looked at, crumbled between fingers, and flicked to the floor in minute crusts.  How many desks and chairs have I thus secretly befouled since childhood?  Or something there will be blood mingled with the mucous;  in dry brown scabs, or bright sudden wet red on the finger that scraped too rudely in the nasal membranes.  God, what a sexual satisfaction!  It is absorbing to look with new sudden eyes on the old worn habits: to see a sudden luxurious and pestilential ‘snot-green sea,’ and shiver with a shock of recognition.”

Last night on my plane back from the midwest (don’t want to be more specific lest the man start following me) I was sitting next to a very pretty, very sweet-smelling young lady who was writing in her journal.  Of course I snuck a glance.  The entry opened with the following: “Smoke weed.  Whoever said not to?  They’re mistaken.”

Happy belated 4/20.

Between the shrink-wrapped kohain and the sex-segregated playground in Kiryas Joel, my friends the Hasids are having a WEEK!  Oh, that, and also, a bus they operate almost ran over my boyfriend and destroyed my chance at a happy domestic life middle-age.  Bastards!

Ed note: unclear whether it was a Monsey Tours or a Monsey Trails bus.

                        ML: i want to give you one guessabout which bus companyowned the busthat almost just ran me off the road on my way to schoolID: megaML: nome: bolt?ML: nome: fung wahML: noit’s you-specificID: schwartz busesmonsey trailsML: closefucking monsey tours

me: can you tweet at monsey tours bus company?i wonder if they have twitterML: i called themfiled a complaintand called the copsi hope the cops stop the busbut i doubt they willme: omg!wowyou went on a warpathoh i see, they have a baltimore lineML: i am so fucking angryok i need to workme: ok let me know if you want me to go up to spring valley and crack some skullsML: i’m not kiddingi will never forgive monsey tours for this

From: AW

To: KM, ID

Subject: C Word

You know who seems to be an out of touch contemptuous cunt?  Gwyneth Paltrow.

The end.

This is weird to say in an email with the c word in it but my grandmother died on Monday.