Thursday, March 28, 2024

Ingredients for my Pasta Fazul

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Have you ever gone to the fridge and decided to mix spices and other ingredients into a leftover worthy of same? It’s my version of pasta fazul (kind of an Italian goulash). The recipe is a lot like life, a lot like Forrest Gumps’ box of chocolates calling for answers to: To caraway or not to caraway? Fish, the final frontier. Was my lambchop killed in a nice way? 
In reality, I believe in recycle, reuse and repurpose, but in this case, it is my memories I am mixing, remixing, boiling to a froth and then adding flour to bring the gravy some thickness it otherwise would lack. Here is one week in the life of ...
• A typical government form asked what race I was …. I said the 200 yard dash.
• A bunch of us yelled at Collin K. for kneeling on the sacred turf of pigskin antics, yet Mississippi has just voted to remove the Stars and Bars from its state flag after 100+ years. Can an entire state be guilty of treasonous behavior? Would anyway hire Mr. K if he at least cut his “fro.”
• What kind of battery is used to attach to your ears in a Probate Court proceeding? Intestate. It is the best method for the lawyers to make sure you properly feel your pain while watching their bank accounts rise like a Franklin on Viagra as they contest the validity of the Will.
• When watching one of those Naked & Afraid shows, I wonder why the commercials are all about burning fat with Marie Osmond. Well, she did survive the ‘60s. Or is it they don’t allow fat folks on the show and are trying to guilt normal people watching to look like Tarzan sans Cheeta or Raqeul Welch in micro bear-fur shorts one million years B.C.?
• I used to run with a bunch of anti-government, right wingers in Northeastern Nevada, who always claimed they were their own “sovereign state” and that the United States government therefore had no right to impinge on their rights to manage their own affairs. These were cattle ranchers who wanted to graze their “doggies” for free on federal land. 
During part of the following dialog, I told the fellow that even a Black (BLM) janitor in NYC owned part of those grazing lands because he, at least, paid his taxes. I was pushing his buttons on inherent racism, which for some Westerners, manifests itself as arrogance.
I asked this notorious rancher with thousands of acres near the Ruby Mountains and a pending lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), “Would you no longer accept your Social Security check? He laughed. I then asked, “do you ever drive on the interstates?” Again no answer. What about your mail, do you refuse to accept it from those federal employees?
Mum’s the word. What about the airports? Don’t you fly a lot and depend on the Federal Aviation Administration to guide your plane? No answer. 
Finally I said, “What army are you going to call on to stop the Chinese or Russians from killing you and eating your cows?” He actually answered this one. “That’s why I support the Second Amendment!” he stated emphatically. “The government will never take my guns!” he practically screamed at me. 
I knew I hit a sore spot. With his blood in the water, I lunged for his jugular and asked, “Does the Second Amendment actually exist without the Constitution, a document invented by the government, or do you have your own set of bureaucratic rules agreed to by a group of quasi-anarchists masquerading as freedom fighters, when in fact they are just amateur moochers?”
I could tell he was furious, so I ran away to discuss another day. Glad I was carrying my .357 Magnum and he was a bit slow on the draw. His ‘horse” at the time was a Kia SUV. So much for buy American, eh?
• Finally, remember to use your “puppy eyes” when you explain to the 17-year-old supermarket clerk that you want the computer coupon, but don’t have a printer. I enjoy acting out as the dumb old grandpa and flowing guilt towards her in order to save 50-cents. Back in the day, that was my weekly allowance. I know this clerk, who is now checking my age so I can buy beer, is focused not on me, but on the latest FaceBook post. She wonders how I escaped the nursing home. Let her wonder, it opens the brain.


 

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