Sasha + socks= luv

Malka Katt cordially invites you to the marriage of her brother

SNÅSA WHITBARD

to

WHITE TUBE SOCKS

Pastor Greenleaf will officiate. Purple Towel will be best man, with Clothespin and Pencil serving as Maids of Honor. Transparent Curtain Panel will be ringbearer. Entertainment will be provided by Newspaper.

I recently documented Snåsa's a ménage-a-trois with the tube socks and the curtain. He seems to think he is invisible when the curtain covers his head. Since we moved, he has staked out a Top-Secret Headquarters between the futon and the wall. This is his favorite place to hide from the big, loud, stinky men (such as the odiforous handyman from our last rental house, who wiped his hands on his shirt and referred to a 401K as a "four-okay") who are the bane of his existence. Snåsa also adopted the nickname Sasha, given by our former neighbor who could not pronounce "SNOW-suh."


Witness the come-hither look...
















































Time for a post-coital smoke?

Looking handsome and majestic.

Mary Fallin licks the crack

Just when I think I can deal, at least temporarily, with living in Oklahoma, something like this happens: Mary "God Hates Fags" Fallin wins the Republican nomination for the upcoming gubernatorial election. Of course she's the perfect candidate because, lesse...

• Sarah Palin endorsement? Check.
• Skanky-beauty-pageant-looking daughter? Check.
• Astrologer on speed dial? Check. (Hellooooo, Nancy Reagan!)
• Desire to waste taxpayer $$ on a frivolous and futile lawsuit to attempt to ban universal healthcare? Check.
• Hypocritical "family values" agenda? Check. (Hellooooo, affair with an OK state trooper!)
• Belief that "pre-born" people (?) deserve more rights than people who are actually living? Check. (She declared 2010 "Year of the Pro-Life Woman." Barf.)
  
• Wacko Christian politics? Double check! Separation of church and state is just a suggestion, of course! Fallin stated in April, “We believe in prayeras a nation.” Um, who is this fictive we?

If Jari Askins doesn't prevail over Fallin in November, I will be tempted to quit academia and run for my life.

A recent two-day trip to visit in-laws in Colorado left me seriously depressed. People riding bikes! Sidewalks! Hybrid cars! Locally owned restaurants! Signage devoid of spelling and grammar errors! Farmer's markets with ponytailed gay guys and compost bins! Actually seeing other people running while I was going for a run! To say nothing of clean air, no bugs, and practically non-existent humidity! When, oh when, can I live in a place like this again?

The minute we exited the plane in Tulsa, it was right back to fat people smoking and some fool attempting to steal a 24-pack of Keystone from the Food Pyramid. My wonderful spouse deserves a Husband of the Year award for accompanying me to this godforsaken place.

Spring evaluations

"Best English teacher I ever had."

"She is the shit!!!"

"It was AWESOMEEEEE. This is the best teacher EVERRRR. 5-star class. Ivy league recommended. She's the fecal matter at what she does."

"Best class ever!"


Thanks, I think:

"She works harder than hardworking."

"Different from every other professor in the English department. Expects more."


In the You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself category:

"It can be difficult to remember to check the syllabus for assignments."

She's a shoe!

Eric and I have a Facebook friend in Davis (Raychel?) to thank for introducing us to Shit My Dad Says. If you're not familiar, a guy in his late 20s who lives with his 70-something dad has been Tweeting his father's hilarious and profane random observations, and now he apparently has a book.

My own father does not say shit quite like this, but he did make a few memorable remarks during our visit to Connecticut. The first was when I called to report that traffic on Route 9 would make us late to meet my parents for dinner at O'Rourke's Diner. My father instructed me to get off Route 9 at "the crazy place" and take back roads to O'Rourke's. At first I thought "the crazy place" meant Oddfellows Playhouse, where I performed in zany teen theater when I was in high school. Then I realized "the crazy place" referred to Connecticut Valley Hospital, a psychiatric care facility built in the 1860s. Okay.

Even better was my dad's commentary on Sex and the City 2. Eric unfortunately missed this, but I was sitting with my parents in their living room while they were waiting for an estimate on new windows for their house. I showed my mother the Hartford Courant's review of the film and asked her if she'd ever gotten into the show. I did not expect my father to launch into an anti-SJP diatribe. According to my dad, SJP -- whom he referred to as simply "Jessica Parker," there was no Sarah involved -- looks like a shoe. His exact words: "She's a shoe!" I laughed so hard I was unable to obtain clarification on exactly why she resembles (or is) a shoe.

What kind of shoe? Is it her nose?

We venture to civilization

Here are some of the photos from our trip to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York to see friends and family and get some culture. The photo of me & E is at Grand Central Station in NYC; in the bottom photo, I'm pretending to get into a bathtub filled with gumballs at Dylan's Candy Bar. The pastry is a rum cake at Modern Pastry on Franklin Avenue in Hartford, CT (can you believe I ate two of those? not in one sitting) and the righteous pizza is at Modern Apizza on State Street in New Haven. I used to dine there about once a week!

Wild onions!

Wild onions are a local phenomenon; they grow in open fields, constitute a staple of the traditional Cherokee diet, and are the namesake of at least one basketball team. I did not know anything about them until moving here, when Shirley at the rec center asked if Eric and I have ever eaten "wiiiiiild UNyins." I wasn't sure what she was saying at first, but eventually I figured it out. Sherman Alexie has said he is puzzled by native people with Southern accents, and I still haven't gotten used to it. I guess I could have just gone out foraging for wild onions but I wasn't exactly sure what to look for, so I jumped at the chance to buy a few bunches at a fruit stand in Muskogee. They look more like ramps than scallions, but they are smaller.

I used one bunch in a Greek omelet last week. It was amazing. They have a fresher, more delicate flavor than regular onions or even scallions. Here is said omelet, which also contains spinach, Kalamata olives, and feta, along with a side of zucchini sauteed in a quick garlicky tomato sauce.

I used the other bunch of wild onions yesterday in a quinoa tabbouli inspired by the Mediterranean plate appetizer at the Greenhouse Grille in Fayetteville. Said appetizer comes with pita, hummus, feta, olives, tzatziki sauce, falafel, and quinoa tabbouli. I have never been a huge tabbouli fan, but this stuff was good. Improvised a recipe using 1 cup of quinoa, 1 cup water, and 1 cup of broth, which I tossed with a lemon juice-olive oil dressing. Threw in traditional and non-traditional ingredients including cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, parsley (not enough to turn the tabbouli green) and, of course, wild onions.

Speaking of hummus, the local grocery store can't spell it. Check out my receipt for HUMMAS. Not going to say anything about the unnecessary apostrophe in Athenos. Oh wait, I just did.

Next week is the last week of class. Can you believe the drop deadline was ten days ago? Giving students up to week 13 to drop a course is something I will never understand about this school. And a lot of them wait until the deadline to drop. So many lower-division students begged me to give them a "W" after the deadline passed last semester -- which I do not have the power to do -- that I tried to be proactive this time and e-mailed reminders to each class about the impending drop deadline. And I still had students asking for a "W" after the deadline passed. In week 14! With only a week and a half of class left! Le sigh. This semester wasn't as rough as fall, but I fear I somehow managed to be less productive. Hopefully summer will offer more opportunity for research and writing.

In other news, I am taking bets on whether or not my fingernail will fall off. Where do you stand on this pressing issue? I dropped a dumbbell on it in January and it has been growing out slowly. I thought all was well until about a month ago, when I noticed a horizontal ridge in the center of the nail right above the bruise. Don't worry, it doesn't hurt.

Woo pig sooie

Eric and I went to Fayetteville last weekend and experienced University of Arkansas fans doing "Woo pig sooie" at a Razorbacks baseball game. This must be seen to be believed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsx7OC8Xazg

This tree branch is higher up than it looks, but the weather was great. Eric even found some Kosher macaroons at the Co-op. Last Sunday we joined the rabbi-less congregation in Muskogee for our second seder this Passover -- the first was at the home of the only Jewish family in our town. Malka and Snåsa are enjoying the sunshine. Our clothes dryer appears to have died, so we're hanging laundry on the line in the muddy backyard and will continue doing so until we move out of Home, Sweet Hovel and into a better location. This is the gas dryer that our landlord bought used at a flea market instead of repairing the outlet for our brand-new electric dyer which we have never used. Oh well, at least we'll save on gas. I asked a colleague to observe my American lit survey today and that went reasonably well. I taught "Bartleby, the Scrivener" for the first time and used Eric's stonewashed denim Guess? jacket with leather epaulets from 1986 (you know the one I'm talking about) to illustrate commodity fetishism. I got hooked up with Sustainable Tahlequah this week and hope to get involved in the community garden, where some local folks are putting in raised beds. I also started worm composting again thanks to a nice lady from the synagogue who gave me a bucket of red wigglers.