New Name Needed, Apply Within » Maine

Autumn

Michael — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:12:46 +0000

Albert Bierstadt, On the Saco (found at Laudator Temporis Acti)

Asian Delights in Maine

Michael — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:13:57 +0000

Quality Asian food staples are not easy to come by here in Downeast Maine. A few stores carrry the wonderful Huy Fong family of sauces, and it’s not much effort to find small bottles of decent soy sauce, mirin, Chinese black vinegar, etc. Anything more exotic involves a trip to one of the cities. If I can’t make it to Boston — which is unfortunately more often than not these days — Portland is a fine backup.

Since the kids and I were driving back home from New Hampshire yesterday, a stop to replenish the pantry seemed in order. My usual Asian market was closed, so we stopped at the flagship Hannaford store off of the Back Cove. I loaded up the cart with sauces, rice sticks, nam pla — whatever I thought I might never get again should the state decide to end all imports of tasty foods and demand its residents stick to the potatoes and sticks that made Maine #1 in rickets and scurvy throughout the country in the early 1900’s. Then, on the way to the registers, I spotted this beauty:

A can of baked squid. Not only “non-fried,” but also “crispy and fun!” I couldn’t resist. $2.09 for 80 grams of “Squid, Sugar, Salt, Chilli, Soybean sauce, MSG (plants), Capsicum Oreoresin (plants), FD&C Yellow No. 5 (synthetic).” But there were warning signs:

The UPC scan did not return a valid item or price. The cashier called for a “price check,” but missed out on the chance of bringing me ultimate joy by fully requesting for a “price check on Mr. Squid baked squid, crispy and fun.”
The manager on duty gave me a quizzical look after seeing the item, like it was destined for a boudoir activity.
Upon opening the can in the car, the eldest boy said “that looks and smells just like the fish food at home.”
The mascot on the can has a polyped head, sunglasses, ten fingers and a tail, which he is waving around in what I can only imagine is a mating ritual focused on the consumer.

We crunched forward, nonetheless. They look almost exactly like Waffeletten without chocolate, and the initial taste is nearly as sweet. The flavor quickly turns fishy and lightly spicy, with a light crunch. And like most odd Asian snacks I come across, I’m hooked.

Posted via web from Michael’s posterous

I Live Here

Michael — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:56:09 +0000

Posted via web from Michael’s posterous

This time of year, coastal Maine is the most beautiful place in the world. It makes up for that in February, though.

I Am A Disenfranchised Voter

Michael — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:49:21 +0000

I showed up to vote at 8:30 Tuesday morning and found that I could not vote. I may be part of a teeny tiny district, but ALL obstructions to our electoral process must be uncovered and the responsible parties punished, regardless of party affiliation. If this happens to you, don’t take it sitting down. Stand up and fight. Record everything you can about the situation: time, names, descriptions of people, and every last word of the confusing legalese they’ll use to keep you from voting, like “polls open at 10:00.”

Certain Things I Said Today About Living In Maine That A Friend Indicated I Should Slap Up Yet I Feel Reluctant About Doing So

Michael — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:57:49 +0000

ON DINNER

“This place is great! Let’s eat some sort of mollusk or crustacean again!”

ON DATING

“Saw old Millie Beals again down at the gas station. She was buying her weekly ration of Riunite and Pabst. For a 50-year-old woman, she looks like a fantastic 90-year-old. I threw it in her anyway, of course.”

ON SURVIVAL

“The water’s out again. I drank my own urine to stay alive because the ground is too frozen to dig a new well.”

ON WILDLIFE

“The goddammed deer are back again. The same doe I shot at with my thirty ought-six last week keeps nosing around the compost bin, even though there hasn’t been anything edible in there for years. I threw it in her anyway, of course.”

Why Is Daddy Swearing So Much?

Michael — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 16:54:17 +0000

It’s not that another tax season just ended, reminding me of my powerlessness against the entitlement programs I fund but will never benefit from.
It’s not that Pedro got lit last night like Ted Kennedy on fire in a room full of flashbulbs.
No, it’s even more sinister than that. It’s what’s falling outside my office window this very moment:

And to the guy I just heard say “At least it’s not sticking”: Shut up. Shut the cow up.
UPDATE: Oh sweet holy God of all that is decent, the Sun has swept clean the sky and is shining warm love upon the face of the island. Um, ignore that other stuff, please.

Sproing

Michael — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 14:15:29 +0000

I stopped by a local pound yesterday to grab a couple of chickens for my fabulous homemade lobster fra diavlo. While I was waiting for them to be plucked from the tank, I took a long whiff from my underarms and realized I hadn’t had a shower in a few days. What luck, says the lobstermonger, there’s hot showers right here at the pound. One-stop shopping for crustaceans and personal hygiene — we truly live in wondrous times.
The shower facilities weren’t in top shape, and $2.00 seemed a little much for five minutes of hot water. But the guy sold me the bugs for boat price, so it only seemed fair to toss a small amount of profit his way. I stripped down, pulled the vinyl curtain shut, and dropped eight quarters down the control chute. Something under the building rumbled like forty lawnmowers starting at once, and a few moments later the spray issued forth from the shower head.
And oh goodness, what a spray it was. This wasn’t water — at least not pure water. No no, this was shower soup, a stream of restorative ingredients that was long overdue. While a gentle abrasive scrubbed away the thick film of bad attitude I developed over this long Maine winter, glucuronolactone seeped through my pores to eliminate the endogenic and exogenic noxae that have clogged my creative channels for so long. A tasty espresso/Antabuse mix cascaded into my mouth, instantly sharpening my concentration while steeling my internals toward temperance; perhaps the New England Heavy Drinking Season was about to come to an end. There was even a rust inhibitor for my undercarriage.
Five minutes later, I sprang from the stall a new man, a changed man. This wasn’t just a new spring in my step, I’d gotten a caseful of Slinkys implanted into my feet. I strutted back into the pound to the dumbstruck looks of customers and proprietors, open-mouthed at the transformation I’d just experienced. I took my lobsters from the shelf and announced my rebirth to all nearby. “Hibernation is over,” I bellowed. “And this bear’s got a lot of hikers to maul!”
Then I noticed I hadn’t gotten dressed. I sure was happy the lobsters had rubber bands on their claws.
Guess what, Winter? Screw you again. Yesterday morning, I thought you’d beaten me for good. All it took, though, was an overly metaphorical shower in an unlikely location to get you off my back again.

Saddam, Pheasant Captured

Michael — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:15:27 +0000

Forget Saddam, feh. This is real news.

Christmas Pheasant

Michael — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 19:08:47 +0000

What have our animals been doing lately? Dominating the local news media, that’s what!
Both island newspapers were consumed with the story of a golden pheasant, unknowingly released upon the community by my two-year-old daughter. Front page news with a color photo, baby. Don’t tell me exciting things never happen up here.
From today’s Bar Harbor Times:

A call came in Saturday morning from a fellow working at the transfer station in Southwest Harbor. He had seen and caught a large, colorful bird on the premises and wanted to see if I would take a look at it. You never know where a call like this may lead, so I loaded my weekly garbage into the truck and headed for the “dump.” The bird that he had caught and placed in his office was definitely a non-native species, and it was extraordinarily beautiful. The plumage on the head was bright yellow, the back of the neck was barred yellow and black, and the front of the neck and chest was crimson red. Patches of yellow also adorned the base of the tail, and the tail itself was about 2 feet long and multicolored. An iridescent quality added to the striking effect of the plumage.
The bird in question turned out to be a male golden pheasant. This species of pheasant is so flashy that early European naturalists discounted its existence. Accurate depictions of it taken to Europe from China were attributed to the work of overly imaginative artists. Many decades passed before Western science actually recognized that this showy bird exists. All 48 species of pheasants, with the one exception of the Congo peacock, are native to Asia. The golden pheasant’s natural home is central China. The golden pheasant, like his relative, the wild turkey, is not a migratory bird and rarely flies more than a few hundred yards at a time. This particular bird obviously had escaped from someone who had been raising it in captivity. Hopefully, pheasant and owner can be reunited in short order.

A scan of the article will appear shortly. A scan of this earth-shakingly important article.

Police Beat IV

Michael — Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:28:47 +0000

A horrifying story to report today: The Maine Chainsaw Massacre.

MOUNT DESERT—Police responded to a complaint about a party in a cottage off Main Street on Aug. 9. The caller told police that the partygoers were not being loud but that he heard what he thought to be a chainsaw started up every few minutes. Police met with some people who said there was no chainsaw. They believed the sound could have been coming from a mixer they were using to make frozen margaritas.

My God: I own a chainsaw and a mixer. What if I get them confused some day? O, the carnage!

Pop Quiz

Michael — Mon, 04 Aug 2003 18:43:20 +0000

The item pictured at right is:
a) More dynamic and exciting than Ben Affleck in Gigli
b) My particular rock off the coast of Maine
c) Microscopic and crawling on you right now
d) What you’re supposed to be neverminding while paying attention to the Sex Pistols
e) Other
As always, answers accepted in the comments.

In Defense of Maine

Michael — Mon, 04 Aug 2003 17:38:50 +0000

I’ll never understand why so many people think Maine is a bizarre backwards state, forever destined to the rear corners of American minds along with Wyoming, Idaho, and the like.
We have modern amenities such as broadband Internet access and hot water (agua caliente for our Spanish-speaking readers — ¡Saludos amigos!). There are places where one can play bocce under pretty trees while enjoying a crisp alcoholic beverage. Our instititutions of higher learning perform groundbreaking research involving putting blueberries into hamburgers. And the artistic and literary acheivements of many residents are…wait a second, putting blueberries into hamburgers?
Forget everything I’ve just said. This place is more backwards than Jim Marshall driving a car in reverse on Opposite Day.

War Is For The Birds

Michael — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 16:33:59 +0000

ROCK OFF COAST OF MAINE (MG) — Tensions remain high along the DMZ as a soldier from the People’s Union of Chicken examines two Republic of Duck sentries leaving their guardhouse. Several skirmishes involving kitchen scraps and feed pellets have exploded over recent weeks.

Kosher Karnage

Michael — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 14:03:19 +0000

What this world really needs is a bagel that’s easily converted into a hand grenade, so that when you are in the middle of eating it on your drive to work and you are cut off by a cell-phone-gabbing lunatic, it’s no trouble to sidle up next to him in the breakdown lane, lob your breakfast ordnance through the open window of his Ford Intrusion, and blissfully speed ahead as an explosion sends the guy to Bad Driving Tourist hell.
No one’s invented this yet, though, so I had to settle for throwing my regular ol’ bagel at the guy.
If anyone sees a large black Ford SUV with Ohio plates in the region, please stop the driver and ask “if he’d like more cream cheese with that.”

American Tourist, Get Away From Me

Michael — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:52:30 +0000

According to the National Park Service, Acadia National Park receives over three million visitors each year.
According to me, most of those visitors are crossing the street directly in front of me anytime I drive through Bar Harbor.
And oh goodness me, what a special brand of tourist I attract to my proximity, like I’m a putrefying elk carcass on wheels driving down the main street of Bottle Fly City. Crowding the street and crossing in unexpected places is fine with me — I came here from Boston, where the cops view you as suspicious if you actually use a crosswalk. But our visiting pedestrians here share the same short attention span as a kitten in an open box of styrofoam packing peanuts, which makes them stop in the middle of the street to decide where they want to go next. Thank God they didn’t make a decision before stepping off the curb!
Maine, lefty pinko liberal state that it is, has passed legislation making it illegal to run down stationary pedestrians — and can’t I call them something else since they’re not moving? Obstructrians, or some such? — so I have to remain red-faced and still while the Rotarians from Muncie, Indiana decide if they feel like having another soft-serve cone, or perhaps buying an oversized stuffed lobster for their 13-year-old nephew who will hate it of course, or they’re feeling a little hot from walking a few blocks so maybe a new T-shirt that says “I Got Scrod In Bar Harbor Maine” that has just enough double meaning but not so much that the folks at church will be offended, but Raymond we’re not moving from this spot in the middle of Main Street until we know for sure where we’re going next because I’d hate to have to cross the street again. Like a newly-introduced bill in Congress, I’m not moving anywhere until a large number of people I don’t know have figured out what unrelated things they want first.
I have often wondered: do certain shops and restaurants reveal themselves only when viewed from the midst of a busy thoroughfare, like some odd back corner of Diagon Alley? Otherwise, if these visitors have enough mental capacity to either find Bar Harbor by car or not fall into the ocean while disembarking the cruise ship, why do they turn into armadillos as soon as they set foot upon our asphalt?
Visitors to my island, I humbly beseech you: ask not what Bar Harbor can do for you, ask what you can do for Bar Harbor. And let me give you the answer while I’m at it: get the holy hell out of the road. You’re wearing out my brakes and my patience, and neither one of those are good things for me to lose when stopping my car is necessary for your very survival.

The Order of the Phoenix

Michael — Tue, 01 Jul 2003 17:25:32 +0000

Welcome to ye newly arrived visitors from this Portland Phoenix article about ~~likely transsexual libertarians~~ people with Internet-type Web thingees in this grand state of Vacationland. Readers of an “alternative” newspaper will be pleased to find that this site also offers an alternative — an alternative to compelling writing.
But you’re here, so why not make the best of it with these classic favorites, as I:

…suffer the effects of my raw animal magnetism!
…age at a horribly accelerated rate!
…sloppily celebrate the arrival of Spring!
…succumb to my obsession with James Carville!
…shamelessly recycle old content!
…point you toward the entire archive in a desperate attempt to stir up traffic!

Like the Phoenix, this site reads like it’s written by twelve-year-olds, so you will not need to adjust your expectations before proceeding.
Thanks to Laura for alerting me to the Phoenix piece.

LL Cool G

Michael — Thu, 08 May 2003 19:41:23 +0000

I drove into town for lunch, windows down, listening to the kind of music that makes you wonder why no one has yet developed a car with a snare drum for a steering wheel. I tapped my fingers along the side of the car, instantly attracting the lusty gazes of the beautiful young women who have come here for the summer in search of good jobs and thirty-two-year-old fathers of four who know what to drop in the CD player on a sunny day.
I’m so used to the attention, I don’t even look their way in acknowledgement anymore — why encourage their pursuit of that which they cannot have? It hurts them, my dismissal does, but they’d never be able to keep up with the jetset lifestyle I’ve cultivated. Better for the attention of the young lovelies to be maintained upon the scraggly boys in their young twenties who would hacky-sack and/or frisbee their way into the female heart.
Some of the more persistent ladies kept after me, though, sprinting after my vehicle as I passed. Women in the heat of unrequited desire can run like cheetahs, and I quickly turned desperate for escape. I pulled a skid U-turn in front of the post office; my rear bumper clipped a postal carrier, sending a cloud of undelivered mail into the air. The pursuers became lost and disoriented in the postal smokescreen, and I continued unmolested to pick up my sandwich.
Ladies: I know you love me, but you’ve forced me to injure a quasi-federal employee just so I can enjoy my lunch without your collective pawing at me. “Control,” as Janet Jackson so eloquently sang, although Janet hasn’t been leaving me alone lately either.
And it’s only going to get worse for me. Soon I will complete publication of a secret project which shall supplant this book as the defining literary work of our time, and the groupies will erupt from the ground like fire ants. By then I’ll have a little less hair, slightly bigger pants, and (if current performance rates are continued) a few extra children, but this will only drive the female legions madder and madder. What will be the cost to mankind when all its women desire only me, me, me?
Maybe it’s better that I’m so remotely located, so that the damage is limited to Maine and the Canadian maritime provinces. For the sake of the species, I promise to never leave.

Grandmaster Flash

Michael — Wed, 09 Apr 2003 20:21:11 +0000

My four-year-old wants to play chess every night before reading bedtime stories. It’s so adorable, I have no choice but to accomodate his wishes.
And I beat him every time!
These punk kids today think they know everything. Let me tell you something, kids: us old folks can do everything better than you. Especially you four-year-olds.
We’re old! We’re bold! Get used to us!

Mice Is Nice

Michael — Tue, 08 Apr 2003 20:25:49 +0000

Like my mini-bio on the left side of this page states, I work for a secret laboratory full of supergeniuses who not only have developed cures for every disease known to man (we like to release them slowly, to keep expectations high), but spend their off-hours breeding mice with advanced musical ability and quantitative reasoning. Today, I thought you would enjoy reading about some of my favorite strains of these Frankenmice:

Strain CBA/CaHN-Btk^xid can deadlift one hundred pounds while singing Vivaldi’s Agitata da due venti.
Strain LT/SvEi-Y^* is listed as a “chromosomal aberration,” due to the fact it can drink ten times its weight in tequila while orating on obscure federal regulations — it’s often referred to as the “Ted Kennedy Strain.”
Saving my favorite for last: Strain BALB/c-Fech^m1Pas, a “chemically-induced mutation,” can only be seen after pounding a six-pack of Bud tall boys. And man, is he worth it. Last time I summoned him from the ethanol aether, I hit twenty straight 7’s on the $25 minimum craps table at Mohegan Sun, and staggered out of the casino with ten extra Ben Franklins folded in my pocket. I passed one to “Fechy,” as I call him, as a grateful tip for his help. Didn’t see him again until the next morning, passed out cold atop a naked cocktail waitress with four blocks of imported Camembert scattered beside him. Hard living, maybe, but he’s genetically bred for it.

Deer Season

Michael — Mon, 17 Mar 2003 19:18:30 +0000

The deer have been outside my office window all day. They know I can’t shoot them — there’s a hunting ban on Mt. Desert Island — so they think nothing of loitering about in plain view. No, let me be more specific: maliciously loitering. Like surly teenagers outside a retirement home, this small pack of ruminant ruffians tromp about — on National Park land, no less, land made for you and me! — and destroy it with their “feeding” and “surviving.” Every few seconds, they flick up their little white tails, providing a horrific glance at the source of the billions of deer pellets that litter the land like cigarette butts.
Cocky sons of bitches, these deer. Next time I watch Bambi, I’m going to cheer during the forest fire scenes.
Even these hoodlum skinny cows can’t keep my mind off the change of season, however. Yesterday was filled with strange rays from a fiery ball in the sky that provided what I’m told is “warmth.” It was a strange, exotic feeling, like the way I felt the first time I dreamed of Margaret Thatcher. What’s even better: mad scientists called “meteorologists” have told me that this warmth thing is actually just starting. I’m not quite sure what spending all day studying meteors has to do with making the cold go away, but I’m sure it has something to do with the same power that makes Scientologists know so much about science (look at the word: “Scient” + “ology” = “the science of science,” and hell people can’t just lie about that, can they?).