Harvest Pr0n: Happy Thanksgiving!

Mad peaches in August.




Late summer came the big heirlooms.























Pumpkins and pie from the school garden.

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Butch is the New Black

I had a few minutes before my ass needed to land at the reception desk chair and the sandwich I'd brought was mostly bread and cheese, so I went to buy a V8. (At the donut shop--this act of purity always fills me with pride.)

Two guys were set to cross 17th at Franklin alongside me (but don't worry, this won't be a harassment story). One was in a wheelchair. The light was on red hand, but the walking guy's feet were getting antsy and creeping streetward. The sitting one reprimanded: You can't jaywalk! Now that you're elected it would be like a scandal. I did a double take and realized that the walking guy wasn't a guy at all. It was the Town's new city councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan!

If Janet Napolitano comes in as Homeland Security Secretary, it will be an unprecedented national vindication of butchness, parallel to Kaplan's local victory. When Tina Fey declared in her famous "bitch is the new black" diatribe last spring that "bitches get stuff done," surely this is what she had in mind. Not that dithering, needy Hillary Clinton.

In a shining example of butches get stuff done, Napolitano rode her horse across the Arizona/Mexico border to better understand the immigration issue. Incidentally, I have a newfound affinity for horse people, a category that includes author Jane Smiley, my aunt in Texas and that other lovable Southwest guv and rumored Obama cabinetman Bill Richardson.

My affinity for lesbians I hope is assumed. (Not that Napolitano is gay or anything. She's just butchy and "single." You know, like Missy Elliot.) Because that's what we need in the pro-gay movement. It's easy enough for gals like me to buddy up to gay guys; we'll always have one big thing in common. And straight men do love them some lesbian. But we're only going to get to the land of equality and understanding if we learn to reach across the aisle. So get to know someone who enjoys the opposite body parts you do, today!

By the way, did you catch Tracy Morgan's delicious rejoinder on the heels of Fey's BITNB riff? After ample reassurances of I love you Tina you know you my girl, he said:

"Bitch may be the new black. But black is the new president, bitch."

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Ximena: Love, Loss and Cheek Feathers

By Ximena the Hen

Guest Plogger

Not long ago, I was in an egg. I broke out, let my feathers dry and joined a swirl of other chicks in claustrophobic spaces. I ended up in the gentle hands of a lady human. She called me Ximena and put me on a postal scale and recorded that I weighed 1.5 ounces. I spent my chickhood in a plush box with my broodermate, Winona, who had no cheek feathers.

It was a simple time. I was content to peck at the feed, sip water and swallow it with my head back, careen across the brooder box, and then collapse in a nap. But Winona often treated me unkindly. Once I became sick and in my weakness Winona threatened to peck me to death. And she would have, had not the lady human erected a six-inch fence of hardware cloth between us. I lived through my illness, grew stronger and came to see Winona as fundamentally good-hearted, if awfully pushy. It was just the two of us in a twenty-inch square box, so we became very close. Together we grew our first feathers; they poked awkwardly through our fluffy chick down.

At two weeks old, we were permitted a trip outside. It was glorious. How to describe that first ray of warm sun on my back? The green blades of grass in my beak, the freedom to run--how bright and beautiful it all was! In the backyard we met Camilla. She was a towering figure, a red hen ten times our size. When she came near, we were confined to a wire cage for our safety.

Right away, I admired her. I began to dream of being a big, brassy hen myself one day. On later occasions, Camilla would cluck with me a little, telling her secrets. She too had grown up in a box indoors, with a broodermate named Hennessy. Camilla said she had been tiny just like me! But after two years of squawking and laying eggs and attacking the garden together, Hennessy had become ill and recently died. Camilla believed that we little ones were supposed to bring the coop new life after this loss. I could not really understand this. Also puzzling was the fact that Camilla was just as eager to peck and chase us as initiate us into the world of grown hens.

In time, Winona and I moved out of our box in the human house into a small hutch in the backyard. We were still too small for the coop; Camilla wouldn't have it. Still, we got to see a lot of the big red hen. I think Camilla took a real shine to me. She taught me hen things, like eating bits of bread or tomato out of the hand of the lady human. We called her "Comes Bearing Treats," which I thought was funny. Winona was still full of sass and when we all three roamed the patio in the evenings, she would try to challenge Camilla. This always made me laugh because Camilla was twice her size. But pound for pound, Winona was the scrappiest chicken in town.

Winona started a fun tradition when we lived in the hutch. The hutch was elevated a few feet off the ground and it had a little wooden walkway from the door to the patio below. Whenever Comes Bearing Treats opened the door, we ignored that walkway and flew halfway across the yard! We were wild!

There were certain things about myself I had to learn to accept as I feathered out. Well, mainly one thing: my cheek feathers. You see, I'm an Araucana, an "exotic" South American breed. I look very different in the face from other chickens. Winona called me Mutton Chops and The Bearded Lady, which hurt my feelings. I am also unable to see much of anything in my peripheral field. But Comes Bearing Treats told me my cheek feathers were adorable and my chickie godmother, Comes Bearing Snails, agreed.

One night, a terrible thing happened. I heard sneaking sounds on the hutch roof and then squawks and screams from the coop. Winona and I pressed close to each other, shivering with fear. The light of day found Camilla's body lying on the coop floor, ravaged by a brutal beast. A hungry raccoon had broken in like a thief in the night. For a few days after that, we had to live inside the human house again.

I was so sad for Camilla. She had just lost her friend when she lost her own life too. More tragic still, she had fallen gravely ill and made a stunning recovery just before the raccoon attack. I was also afraid. I could have been killed too.

That was the first harsh blow of my young life, but it would not be the last. Soon after Camilla died, we were allowed to move into the coop (which now had safety retrofits) and Winona began acting strange. She had grown to be much larger than me as we neared henhood, and she seemed meaner even than usual. Every morning, she would lift her head and unleash an awful sound, nothing like the earthy clucks and squawks I'd heard from Camilla and had begun practicing myself. Something in my nascent hen soul told me to fear my old broodermate.

Comes Bearing Treats seemed to be of the same mind. I was fond of my human. When CBT sat in her lounger, I hopped onto her lap or perched on the chair's arm and we sunned together. Now she seemed to know something about Winona that I didn't. She stopped saying "Winona" and said "Wyclef" instead. Only now can I understand what Winona was and always would be: a rooster.

Not long after the morning noises began, Comes Bearing Treats and The Other One took us on a terrible journey. I remember little of it because I was angry and confused. For a moment, I was on a farm faraway and heard the calls of many chickens: roosters, baby chicks and young pullets like myself. I went there in a cage with my old broodermate, but I came home with strangers. One of them was a White Rock pullet, smaller than me, but fiesty. The other was a pipsqueak Maran, and I'm sorry to say, I took my anger out on this little one. I pecked her. I chased her. I regret that now.

I got along just fine with Betsy, the White Rock. She was a no-frills, sensible sort of bird, and I could appreciate that. I was ready to be "No Drama Ximena." With Marianne, it was more complicated. She made a godawful racket when we went to roost. Peeping without ceasing. Betsy always had to come squeeze between us to keep me from pecking Mari. My despair was still raw. Winona had been my flock. I had a lot of big feelings I didn't know what to do with at that time, and poor Marianne bore the brunt.

In time, Marianne matured and Betsy helped me come around and we became a flock, roaming the patio as one. Betsy and Mari joined the proud tradition of going airborne out of the coop when the door was open. That reminds me of Winona. And I taught the new girls to eat bits of bread and tomatoes from the hands of Comes Bearing Treats. I felt comfortable around CBT, who (I now understood) had raised me from a ball of fluff to the proud hen I was becoming.

But the new girls feared her! They ran in terror when she tried to pick them up. I felt bad for them, because they must have come from a place very different from the backyard. They had never known any human like I knew Comes Bearing Treats and Comes Bearing Snails and The Other One. I try to show them the way by flying up onto CBT's lap. Betsy and Marianne are learning to come nearer and sit with us sometimes. When I encourage the others, CBT calls me her "hen cosigner." Whatever that means!

Hearing my story, do you believe that six months ago, I was in an egg? I have seen so much of the world since I broke that shell, its beauty and its pain. But there is one thing I have yet to do. It is my fondest ambition: to lay an egg. .

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And having said that last, I must give equal time to the related First Lady Got Back story line. An excerpt from the Salon article:

"Try as Michelle might to cover it with those Mamie Eisenhower skirts and sheath dresses meant to reassure mainstream voters, the butt would not be denied. As America fretted about Obama's exoticism and he sought to calm the waters with speeches about unity and common experience, Michelle's body was sending a different message: To hell with biracialism! Compromise, bipartisanship? Don't think so."

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The Palin Effect

Others will have their definitions. Mine is as follows:

An altered self-perception on days when I'm too lazy to put in my contacts or do my hair.

The glasses-and-updo result is now Caribou Barbie hot/pr0n secretarial. I hope it lasts.

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hol.o.gram

It is customary for me to make fun of will.i.am. And so it will be today. But his instantly-churned Obama celebration song, "It's a New Day" and the accompanying video are irresistible. The song was released Wednesday the 5th, because of course everything in the modern age must happen mega-instantaneously to be worth anything. And just to up the ante on techno-neato-rifics, i.am appeared on CNN on election night in: hologram form. (Him and Anderson Cooper trying to act all breezy like they just felt hologram would be the most sensible way to do the interview was hilarious. Just the two of them together was God's gift to Cleb.)




So, watch the video. Download the song. Feel warm. When i.am says it'll be "You/ And me/Together," I'm not gonna go all brat on him like, no, I'm not coming.

But: a catty aside. Obviously will.i. is not expressing pure feelings from the 5th ("Woke up this morning/feeling all right") since the song was produced way before. So that's a blemish on his artistic integrity, although surely--snicker--the first. And then there's this curious lyric: "I've been fighting for tomorrow/All my life." Was he fighting for tomorrow when he made all those ho anthems for Fergie? Just saying. I don't like how he plays this pimpy-trashy/political-hopey split and gets away with it.

Okay now I'm nice again. It really has felt like a new day. I'm glad there's a smiling video with Kyra Sedgwick and Aisha Tyler cameos to keep reminding me.

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Four Paws Marching

It's been a nonstop party at our place. Crim's spinning "Signed Sealed Delivered," the chickens are squawking over the passage of Prop 2 and I'm formatting everyday chitchat into Obamaspeak. (On finally pruning the lemon trees: They said this day would never come.)

But one member of the household is in post-election doldrums. After his long journey from Log Cabin Republicanism to full-purr embrace of Obama, the big victory Tuesday was marred for poor Paulie Walnuts by that indignity called Prop 8.

A few days ago, he looked up at me and heartbreakingly asked:

How long would it take to walk to West Hollywood?

For a pudgy kitty with a lingering limp from two broken legs, a long time indeed. But he wanted to march. All his Facebook friends from down south were going to be there. He started working on a little sign: 'Tomcats 4 Tomcats: Don't Dog Our Love.' (He's never been in a serious relationship, but this was hardly the time to point that out.)

What about to the Castro?

It would still be too much, I told him. He just recently used up one of his lives, I reminded. Still, I understood his hunger for a pilgrimage. (He also declared himself hungry for tooney, but I wasn't going to let him get away with leveraging his oppression in a bid to be spoiled.)

We talked about it. I told him I understood his pain and was proud of his passion. But I urged him not to feel beaten down. The inevitable march of progress is on your side, Walnuts.

This seemed to help and he decided to take a nap by the front window, beside his new sign: 'HONK if I'm CUTE enough to deserve CIVIL RIGHTS.' It was a frequently disrupted snooze.

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In the End, It Wasn't Close

Amid the skeptical, naysaying horde, one man got it right. That man was Crimmie Crim. Months ago, he started saying, out of nowhere, into the clear, cold night:

In the end, it wasn't close...

It was freaking me out when he would say this. But in the end, he was right. Even Nebraska has a little blue freckle.

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Narratives That Proved Ridonkulous

Of course he can't win. He's not even fighting for it! Because he's a wussilicious Obambi. And anyway the DemDream candidate loses to the machine Dembot. Or, if one sneaks past the nominating process, he's headed for cautionary tale status via a Republican creaming. Only lame Southern DLCers can win.

His only appeal is to suckers for gauze. Serious lefty people see him for the bland centrist he is. John Edwards is the true progressive candidate, keeping it real with his grit, morals, affinity for the common man and marital fidelity.

Chris Matthews squandered all credibility with his JFK comparisons and the thrill up his leg.

He's too black. He's not black. Black people reject him because he's fake black. Also white people secretly hate him but they don't want you to know. Also Latinos kinda don't like black people, so count them out. He's like way too weird and complicated and Americans need a bland story in red, white and blue tacked to their candidates. And don't count on those *young people* who'll be like oops I was fucking around online and I totally forgot to vote.

Caucuses are undemocratic. They don't count. Also small states. Don't count. He can't win big states like New York and California. He can't compete in crucial battlegrounds like Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania. He can't close the deal. Superdelegates, that's the thing. Superdelegates!

You have to be fucking kidding me. Just in general.

The Rust Belt is the realness. You can't expect to get anywhere with all these fakey rainbow Americans. The Rusty people will be bitter over "bitter." The pantsuit posse will defect. And I mean, I'm not racist, but I'm just saying, like, some people are. You know what I mean.

Fifty-state whategy? Please. Cut it out. Perhaps you've heard of a certain looooser named Howard Dean. Oh yeah, he'll win in the South. Sure. Why not. The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and blue paint will spill across this great nation. You just try that. McCain has scars and experience. You can't put this flimsy hoper up against that.

He should be more tough and less celebry and more wonkish and less wonkish and stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Oh shit, Sarah Palin! That's it. It's over. Sarah Palin and her magic. Biden? Gaffe factory. Sure to ruin shit. And BO-ring. Sarah's got that spark.

And too you know we're a center-right nation, betcha. Those for-reals Americans they don't like the taxing and the socialisting and you know he's not, I'm trying to be nice about this but he's not one of us. I'm not even sure in what way, but he's just not, somehow or other.

He might be ahead because of the financial crisis, but McCain will sweep in and fix that. He might be ahead in the polls, but that doesn't mean...you might not know this, but there's a thing called the Bradley effect. You also might not know about the Republican 36-hour get-out-the-vote machine.

Also, he can't close the deal.

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Oakland for Obama II: In Which We Lose Our Shit

*DOUBLE UPDATED*

In the end, it wasn't close.

I hope I'll find the words soon. This was all we could do last night. (Don't miss the video clips.)

Written up here.

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Oakland for Obama

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