Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Tara over at Hobo Stripper tagged me for the Seven Things You Don’t Need to Know About Me Meme. Consider yourself tagged if you’d really like to do this one.

I’m doing a meme today because: a)it’s a rainy foggy day up here on the mountain; b) I have a short story that is pouring out into the laptop from my brain and I need to get back to it; c) I have about 10 hours of otaku goodness sitting in my mailbox from Netflix that is calling to me; and d) a collection of Murakami Haruki short stories I’m luxuriating in.

I’ve already shared with you such intimate details of my life—like being born with a tail and my Mafia boyfriends. Not sure what else there is to tell you.

1. In a desperate attempt to housebreak Max—I peed outdoors to show him how it was done. It sort of worked. He now pees in the bathroom if I leave the door open.

2. My poverty embarrasses me deeply. I feel great shame about it.

3. I was a vegetarian for over half my life.

4. I find beauty in strange places. You probably already figured that out.

5. When I was a kid, my brother enraged and tormented me by chanting, “Roseate Spoonbill”.

6. I consider my greatest failure in this life to be my inability to find a mate.

7. I so want reincarnation to be real. I honestly believe I’m owed a do-over—next time in a chassis that works and the soul I was supposed to run into for #6 walking the planet.

Since I am forever being tagged with these things, I have decided to come up with my own bit of circulating nuisance nonsense.

I give you:

The Food Porn Meme!



Here are the really simple rules. Answer each of the five questions. Tag five bloggers you would like to pass the meme to. Have them link back to you and to this post as the source meme. You and they can take the graphic from here if they like.

1. What food do you consider the best “date” food? In other words, what meal or food item do you think is sexiest to eat in the company of someone you would like to look sexy around?

2. What well-known person would you like to share a meal with—with or without clothing. (saying whether or not clothes are involved is optional).

3. What does your perfect breakfast-in-bed look like? (Food AND the details, please. Candles? Music? Flowers? Hot tub? Dancing girls?

4. What do you consider the best application of whipped cream to be?

5. Oh-God-No, Biff, the yacht is sinking! You are sent to the galley to retrieve the food. What luxury food items do you snatch first? The champagne? The caviar? Smoked Salmon? Truffles? Chocolate? Or something else?

I will tag the following folks, but if you are dying to do this meme feel free to pick it up and run with it.

1. Erica at Erica’s Blog
2. Belledame at Fetch Me My Axe
3. Hayden at Lyric Flight
4. Kazari at I think I have a recipe for that
5. Anne at The Gods Are Bored
6. Betsy at Glastonbury Farm

Others I’d LOVE to see pick this up in addition to those five(cause I'm curious!) that I’ve already tagged in some way or another this week:

1. Sue at Sue Do-Nim
2. Jbeeky at Karen Road Chronicles

So, I charge you—go forth and spread this naughty food meme about the internet! I dare you!

Missy over at The House of Flying Monkeys gave me the E for Excellence Award on February 20th offering these very kind words:

Excellent writer, talks about upper east Tennessee with a love and respect that the people from there don’t even show. Talented, funny, and crazy, because she left my future retirement home of Hilton Head/Bluffton and moved to Del Rio/Grassy Fork. What can you say but that she’s nuts! OBTW she also introduced me to Caleb and the Newport Plain Talk Police Report… damned funny stuff!

I blush, really. And I do need to do a round-up soon of the Plain Talk Police Reports. They really are something special. I’m not sure if it’s just that Cocke county’s crimes are more interesting than the rest of the world’s or what. I’m sure people are sticking steak in their trousers and assaulting people with vacuum cleaners in other parts of the country, but they don’t have the talented punster Caleb Abramson.

1. Leslie’s Omnibus. Leslie introduced me to The Friday Ark and has a great blog that recognizes other neat blog postings and stuff. Go over there and give her a hug because her heart cat, Miss Marilyn, went on to the bridge yesterday.


2. Tossing Pebbles in the Stream. Phil blogs from the wilderness of Canada where he homesteads. He’s a Unitarian minister, liberal and an all around great guy. He’s got piglets and kittens eating together on his blog.

3. Hidden Haven Homestead. Peggy got my goat(s) and I couldn’t be happier about it! If you want to catch up on all the BossyToes crazyness—that’s where you need to be. She also makes wonderful soaps.

4. Straight White Guy. Eric is a very fine writer blogging out of somewhere south of Knoxville. I tried to get him to join me in the ellipsis 12 step program I recently graduated from, but he’s still hitting the dots pretty hard. I moved on to emdashes—ellipses are evidently a gateway punctuation.

5. Sue Doe-Nim. She’s my buddy. She writes about from LA about Mom stuff and I totally don’t have a dog in that fight but I like to live vicariously.

6. Art in the Garage. Karen has goats—and she’s a really wonderful graphic artist. Karen is a true artist and her graphic visions are thoughtful and harmonious.

7. Appalachian History. The best hard history blog out there for Appalachian issues. I owe him an article.

8. Hillbilly Savants. Wonderful stable of writers that I am unworthily grouped with. Also, owe them more posts.

9. Appalachian Writers. Another amazingly talented stable of writers I am unworthily grouped with. Wonderful stories and poetry dripping with Appalachian goodness.

10. Dew on The Kudzu. Idgie was the first editor to publish my writing. Her Ezine is like kicking back on a porch slider, enjoying a big glass of sweet tea while shelling butter beans.

Bonnie over at Frogma awarded me this on February 16th because she really loved Holiness Cake Lady. I’m a bit confused as to whether or not I’m really entitled to the award. It originates from The Shameless Lions Writers Group.

Shameless says: Those people I've given this award to are encouraged to post it on their own blogs; list three things they believe are necessary for good, powerful writing; and then pass the award on to the five blogs they want to honour, who in turn pass it on to five others, etc etc. Let's send a roar through the blogosphere! The image above can be copied and pasted onto other blogs. Also, a small size of the award for sidebars can be found over at the writing circle site.

Shameless is writer, Seamus Kearney, who also publishes stories on his blog.

I’m honored to beg, borrow or steal it—especially since it came from Bonnie.

Three things I believe are necessary for good, powerful writing:

1. The powerful writer exhibits a good grasp of language that surpasses grammar and usage—powerful writing seduces the reader with active verbs, direct nouns and intense, but sparing metaphors and similes.

2. Like Maupassant, I believe powerful stories have a beginning, middle and end—riveting leads, voluptuous middles and satisfying dénouements. They are a richly textured strata of words.

3. Powerful writing is memorable. There is an aftertaste that hangs in the mind like a sip of dark roast Ethiopian coffee lingers on the back of the throat. Such writing follows you around for a while.

Whether or not I achieve any of this is up for discussion, but that is what I aim for, among other things.

I’d like to pass this on to the following writers who blog/bloggers who write:

1. Buffy Holt. Buffy is an Appalachian blogging from the UK. I actually avoid visiting her too much, because her writing is so amazing that it sometimes triggers me.

2. Humorist and columnist, Leeuna Foster, who has followed my tortuous path from refusing to submit my work to finally submitting to the submission process. She’s been a staunch cheerleader and is a damn fine humorist of the Southern school.

3. Erin at Poetic Overthrow/The Root Cellar. She’s my favorite poet/weaver. I’m sort of famous for my lack of interest in poetry, but her work has always blown me away.

4. Elisson at Blog d’Elisson. He could quit his day job.

5. V-Man at Velociworld. He hates these things. If you can wade through all of the mutant and Tuco weirdness and get to his “Senator” stories—WOW. The man writes with a buck knife. Cuts himself up a lot.

There are so many fine writers on my blogroll, but there’s a start.

Folks have been so nice and giving me all sorts of memes Awards! over the month of February while I've been deep in my moody writer's funk. So--I'm going to spend a few days to a week catching up on who's loving me now!

First up, I'd just like to acknowledge ThreeCollie over at Northview Diary, for being so kind as to plug the Short and Sweet Story Month. She posted on February 8th and helped let people know. And as all you guys know--people should go ahead and read them now, because you never know when I'm going to take them down to throw into edit status. ThreeCollie has a wonderful rural blog coming out of her New York State dairy farm. Lots of great cow and ag stuff.

Colleague Val Gryphyn over at her writing site honored me with a High-Five on February 15th.

The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you’ve admired during the week, so who are YOUR High-Fives? Post them to your blog and then Share the love.

In no particular order:

1. Arse Poetica, sent me over to one of my new favorite places--Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle. When I first went there, he was so nice that he saved his dessert for me. Just now--he mailed me a Valentine! Okay, it's late, but it's the thought that counts.

2. DC Comictician on Star Trekiology is what happens when a fundamentalist religious sect springs up around the worship of DC Comics and the Star Trek franchise. The blog posts have eerie correlations to current events. If you haven't tasted Elvis Drinkmo's coolaid--go on over there and get yourself a big ole dixie cup.

3. If you love my stories--you'll adore The Moonlit Road.

Meme Award! Disclaimer Some people hate these and some people love them. It's always an honor to be remembered by folks and we all appreciate it--and our Technorati rating goes up when we meme Award! people. But--I do not require anyone to participate in these. You are totally free just to lay back and accept the meme Award! love. Usually, I do a huge link cloud, but since I have so many of these to knock out this week, I'm going to follow the rules as best I can on these. If you have been thinking of tagging me with something--this is a good week to do it.

Kazari _lu has tagged me for a meme.

Now, the last time I was tagged, I decided to institute a new tradition...the no-strings meme. Basically what this means is that I'll throw out a gang of links at the end of the post. If you want to participate...fine. If you don't...don't...no comment is necessary...so I don't want to hear about how many times you've already been tagged. Technorati doesn't care. I'm not trying to piss you off...I'm just throwing you some free link love. Get it?

4 jobs I've had

Convention Model for Ian Anderson's(Jethro Tull) Smoked Salmon Company
Phone Book Editor
Professional Psychic /Cold Reader
John Cullum's Personal Makeup Artist

4 places I've lived

Staverton-near-Trowbridge, UK
Atlanta, GA
Dallas, TX
Los Angeles, CA

4 places I've holidayed
(this is hard...I was a traveler...I don't know that I've really ever been on a vacation)
Paris, France
Bayeux, France
New York City
London, UK

4 favourite foods

Thinly sliced beef tongue (yeah...well...I almost did it for food porn but figured you guys would hang me.)
Sushi/Sashimi (favorites are uni, ama-ebi, unagi, hamo, hamachi...I'll try anything though)
Extremely stinky cheeses
I like cake. A lot. And Apricot Flan.

4 places I'd rather be

What in the world are you talking about? Can't I just have the people I'd rather be with sent here?

Here are my random tags. You may participate...or not. There are no strings...just free link love to boost your ranking.

Absence of the Mind and Body
Appalachian Writers
busybusymomma
Cubby Goes Digital
Ducks Mahal
Erica's Blog
Farmgirl Fare
Fetch me my axe
frogma
Fun in Flatland
Glastonbury Farm
greenkrypto
Hidden Haven Homestead
Karen Road Chronicles
Lyric Flight
Mamma Loves...
Mommy on the Floor
Moonmeadow Farm
no school, just learning
Northview Diary
oya baka mama
Ruminations Of A Country Girl
Simply Chumly
Straight White Guy
Sue Doe-Nim
SusieQ's Place
Tennessee Jed
The Gods Are Bored
Rooster Hill Farm
12 Happy Chickens
DC Comictician on Star Trekiology


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Housekeeping

In other news... I've just done a big cleanup on the blog rolls and links. If you notice that you've been removed in error...just drop me a line and I'll put you back. I'm very good usually about reciprocating links but the blogroll is getting to the point where I'm weeding out non-reciprocating links...no matter how fabulous I think their blog is.

I apologize for not getting around and commenting as much as I did this spring. Some of your pages take me five minutes to load on my 24K dialup. So...if you have a very graphical page or very big graphics...or one of the old slow blogger templates, like that antique paper on olive green patterned background, or music...it's going to be hard for me to visit very often. Evidently, the dryness has done something weird to our phone lines. Hopefully, when the weather cools down and the rains begin...connection speeds will improve.

Next week, brace yourself for Appalachian Women's Week on the SMB. I'll be doing lots of ficlets and essays on the women of Appalachia. I've got some new fiction you haven't seen that should be enjoyable. I'm guestblogging on Feministe beginning on Monday and will be running companion pieces to those posts here.

Erica has tagged me for this....despite the fact that my taste in films has nothing whatsoever to do with Appalachia.

This meme is actually a puzzle. And everyone mostly loves puzzles, right? Basically, I will give you the key words for the films as they appear in the IMDb and you get to guess which films I'm referring to.

Here are some of my favorite films...guess which ones they are....

1. Asia / 16th Century / Hope / Katana Sword / Showdown
2. Parallel World / Greed / Buddhist / Bathhouse / Bathing
3. Visually Impaired Person / Blindness / Blind / Police / Deputy
4. Wuxia Fiction / Messiah / Historical / Kung Fu / Martial Arts
5. Charm / Young Woman / Portal / Vanity / Dog
6. Hand Grenade / Pastiche / Eiffel Tower Paris / Very Little Dialogue / Baby Carriage
7. Ants / Controversial / Anti Clericalism / Surreal / Eye Injury
8. China / Wuxia Fiction / Christ Allegory / Visual Poetry / Asia
9. Surreal / Samurai / William Shakespeare / Shakespeare's Macbeth / Jidai Geki
10. Cremation / Gymnastics / Beach / Bombing / Aunt

Hints....
All two of my Asian readers will probably get most of these.
Two of the films are not Asian.
None of the films are ones that my sister or I worked on.
At least two directors are repeated.
Extra pats on the back for including the English and foreign titles.


I will tag...

Pissed Off Housewife (since she is show folk like I used to be)
Betsy the Goat Yoda (since she has deep wisdom beyond goats and I'm curious!)
GoogieBaba (who will soon not have time for this nonsense)
Jbeeky
and
Hayden

I would tag Chris, if he had a blog, since I think he would enjoy this meme very much.

Pick out ten favorite movies, then look them up at IMDb. In the overview at the top of each movie's page, there are "Plot Keywords," usually five of them. (Plus more, if you click the link.) Take the first five, and post them. Then the rest of us get to play movie buff and see if we can guess them.

I have been tagged by both Pissed-Off Housewife (She who must be obeyed) and Leslie's Omnibus for the "Thinking Blogger Award". I should have gotten to this sooner, but it's market week and this is the first slot I had open.

This is basically a meme, but it does come with a nifty little "award" button. And I like it because, unlike other memes, it asks us to look outside of ourselves. This is basically a narcissistic wonderland, The Blogosphere. It's good to step outside of our own little world every now and again.

The Thinking Blogger meme asks us to list five blogs that cause us to think. This is hard for me since all of my links are ones which make me laugh, make me think, or preferably...both.

Here are my nominees...in no particular order.

1. Original Faith

I am tag-teaming with Googiebaba in tagging Paul's stunning examination of spirituality and faith in culture. Paul doesn't only present his viewpoint in his blog, he asks us to think about the issues presented. I always allow extra time when I visit since the issues he examines are so complex and multi-textured. Paul is also a poet, an author, holds masters in divinity and counseling. I think he also may be a little bit saint.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

I've been tagged by Karen.

What are five things that give you physical pleasure?

1. A massage...human physical touch being at a premium for hermit goat farmers.
2. Cake. Loves me some cake. Not bakery or box...scratch.
3. A British brewed oatmeal porter...not too cold.
4. A painless day.
5. A warm wind blowing through my hair before a thunderstorm.

What are five things that make you immediately angry?

1. Hypocrisy
2. Animal cruelty and neglect
3. A flogging rooster...I detest a flogging rooster, I do. I really do.
4. Medical and veterinary quackery
5. Lack of civility

What are five things that make you automatically happy?

1. The moment a goat kid draws breath and looks at you with adoring eyes.
2. The fellowship of dogs
3. Hooking a really big trout on my line and playing him out...then releasing him to catch again someday.
4. Hearing a great story that I can retell.
5. Old people...oh...and cheerleader movies.

What are five things that make you automatically sad?

1. A grieving or emotionally hurt person.
2. The loss of my beloved Aegis.
3. The distance between my best friends, my family and me.
4. Really sad movies about lost love.
5. Being out of coffee

I'm tagging Betsy, Erin, Anne(or the bored god of her choosing), Manerva and jbeeky.

I am tagged by Erica for "The Six Weird Things About Me" meme. I actually nominated myself since it's Sunday and a slow news day in Grassy Fork. You may nominate yourself for tagging if you so desire.

1. I will eat almost anything.

I say almost, since I haven't ever really run into anything that I've turned my nose up at yet, but I reserve the right to do so. Don't believe me? Check out my recipes for Coon de Resistance and Possum Superbe.

This really has more to do with my upbringing than anything else. I grew up in a family of hunters and fishermen. I was a crack shot hunting squirrel by the age of 7. And squirrel remains my favorite game. Mmmmm...squirrels 'n gravy on biscuits. My mother exposed me to a wide range of foodstuffs at a very early age. All sorts of ethnic cuisines and assorted organ meats. And raw oysters were a staple.

So, I ate tripe in Caen, winkle bread in Wales, lardy cake, jellied eels...the list goes on and on. I'm particularly fond of a runny, stinky French cheese that is more pungent than limburger. I'm very envious of the Bizarre foods guy, Andrew Zimmern and wonder if I could have choked down that durian fruit he couldn't stomach. Betcha I could. I might have even enjoyed it. I also have a huge crush on Anthony Bourdain. Damn. That man will eat anything!

2. I'm 45 and an enormous Anime freak.

Yes. It's true. I got suckered into it during a bout of insomnia that lasted a week. I blame the Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. Anyway...that's my guilty pleasure. Samurai Seven is one of my most favorite ones. I'm watching Basilisk right now. Others that I really like are Full Metal Alchemist, Trigun, Samurai Deeper Kyo and Mirage of Blaze. I generally like things with darker and/or more serious historical content and yaoi.

I also love older foreign films, particularly Japanese films and German Expressionism, but anime is what I use for pure entertainment value. The other weird thing about my fascination with anime is I get crushes on my favorite characters.

Scott looks at me oddly and says..."But it's a cartoon!?"

But that's why my Netflix queue isn't on my blog. It's because I'm watching cartoons with a smattering of Kurosawa. Even I'm aware of how weird it is.

3. I talk to my animals...then answer for them.

I just hung out with too many puppeteers when I was younger. Or I'm a frustrated voice-over actor. Talking to one's animals is not in itself "weird". But I make up voices for each of them. When I talk to them, they answer me back in their "voice". I can have lengthy conversations with my animals this way.

4. I've always wanted to be from another nationality or ethnicity.

First, I wanted to be English...but then I lived over there and changed my mind. I married a Brit and that sort of cured me of that little predilection. But I love the French. I'd so love to be French. I so identify with their sense of priorities and I'd love to be as snarky as a Parisian. And I'd love to be Japanese. I'd really love to have glossy black hair and almond-shaped eyes. I'd never be able to hack it in their culture...but I'd love to look like that.

5. I lack a sternum.

No, I don't keep it in a jar by my bed...but I'd have liked to if the choice had been presented to me.

6. I didn't eat popcorn from ages 6 to 19.

This was because I got pneumonia after eating popcorn while watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. My personal experience with the awesome power of magical thinking and misplaced "cause and effect."