For godsake, will somebody tell me what is going on with the KOMBUCHA?!? Are they trying to KILL US or WHAT?!
You non-Kombucha-drinkers are probably wondering what I am fussing about. Well, the #1 maker of commercial Kombucha in the USA, Synergy, is AWOL. Not exactly a recall, but no other shipments are currently forthcoming. The shelves in every city are empty, and I know someone who actually drove to Charlotte to get some. (Yes, she was kind enough to share!) The Kombucha junkies of America are jonesing; we are all suffering from major Theanine withdrawal. (Most of us drank it every day.)
Apparently, the actual fermentation in Synergy could be out of sync with the trace amounts of alcohol promised on the label (this explains plenty!)... I guess some people were complaining, or maybe somebody somewhere actually got drunk on it? (I found the amount comparable to mouthwash, with very little variation.)
And now, as a result, there is NO Synergy! :(
Pathetic Kombucha junkies prowl the streets, ransacking every possibly-healthy store in the land, settling for cheaper impersonations and attempting to make their own (which I am told is fairly easy to do, if you have adequate space, which I don't). It's a sorry state of affairs. Simply put, all Kombucha is not the same, and Synergy is the best there is.
Synergy-guru GT Dave has posted this on the company website:
TO OUR BELOVED FANS:
In order to improve product quality, label integrity and to comply with the highest standards, we at GT's Synergy Kombucha have temporarily removed our products from store shelves. Excellence is our motto, and we remain committed to bringing you the freshest, purest, and most potent Kombucha available. We miss you already. Watch for us to return SOON. For more updates, please visit us on Facebook.
-GT Dave
(((screams))) We are dying out here, Dave! Please hurry and tweak the formula, or whatever it is you've been doing for the past month.
The Facebook page doesn't have much more to say, except that they are promising a deadline of LATE AUGUST.
Um, this IS late August, and I want my Kombucha, Dave!
Kombucha-brethren, stay strong! We will prevail!
~*~
Other random stuff:
:: I used up all my vacation time going to Texas, so I didn't go to Medicines from the Earth, the yearly herbalist conference I wrote about a couple of years ago. Ditto, the Southeast Women's Herbal Conference, but linking here in case anyone else wants to sign up!
:: If you can't find any Kombucha to sustain you, try to locate some 'Coconut Milk Beverage' by So Delicious. This isn't plain, raw coconut milk; it has been tinkered with to make it palatable... my new favorite thing!
Driving down Woodruff Road this morning, I got a new round of nasty honked-horns, merely because I took a few extra seconds to turn left. I am WELL AWARE of the reason for this, since it never used to happen. And you know what? Even if I *am* personally pissed off at our president, I'll be goddamned if I let some redneck [1] bullies force me into taking my ANOTHER MAMA FOR OBAMA bumper sticker off my car. I recently added a Lone Star flag sticker, which I hope makes them think I'm packing (since everybody in Texas is)... MAYBE I'll get some fucking peace.
This has been making me more and more angry.
It has happened maybe a dozen times now. I don't know when, but at some point, I am gonna lose my shit and we will have a full-fledged road-rage incident on our hands. Your mild-mannered, humble narrator will morph into an insane Irish yankee bitch, right before their surprised eyes; I'll leap madly out of my tiny, plucky Saturn and get all up in their face. Then, the Obama-haters (who probably *are* packing) will shoot me and it will all be on Court TV.[2] The lawyers will produce my bumper stickers and blog as evidence of dangerous radical activity, and (this being the Palmetto State!) the accused will have all charges dismissed immediately (and will possibly even be canonized by Nikki Haley!)... In fact, the defendants will probably be offered a reality-TV show: Death to the libs! ...in which they drive randomly about the land, shooting people with the wrong (liberal) bumper stickers. It will be a BIG HIT.
I probably exaggerate. Probably. Maybe.
~*~
While driving, I was listening to classic country on WOLT-FM. And it struck me that the hopped-up young turks honking derisively at me are probably listening to evil, unAmerican, urban hip-hop, and wouldn't know good redneck music if it bit them in the ass. But isn't it interesting that these upwardly-mobile young people borrow the styles, cars, attitude, entertainments and music of the urban liberal classes, yet retain such backward politics? What's up with that? (More about this in an upcoming post I am working on, about the tea party and gay marriage.)
And right before the redneck honking commenced, I was listening to Jim Reeves, dubbed Gentleman Jim for whatever reason, whom my mother never liked. She didn't think "crooning" belonged in country music. Me neither, but when I hear his records now, I feel as old as God (in a good way) and can't turn them off. It's a particular type of music that has totally passed on, like Tin Pan Alley, British Invasion, Big Band... (sigh)
And this brings me to the end of my eventful journey today! I was going to... ugh... the doctor.
~*~
Mandatory yearly TMI segment, with gory medical details.
It's been awhile since we discussed gruesome medical procedures here at DEAD AIR. (Probably because I haven't been to the dentist since my horrific gum surgery.) Alas, just like our cars, bodily MAINTENANCE is often required, and today (TMI, turn back now) I had a sebaceous cyst removed by an earnest, young, bright-eyed dermatologist who duly outlined my "options" in cyst removal.
I wanted to tell him, dude, back in the day, doctors didn't bother to tell us squat, and just started to work. (And if you asked questions, they might even tell you to shut up until they were done.) Not these days... they have gotten the memo, and the bright-eyed young physicians want you to know things. They tell you all about your cysts. When I asked to look at it, he showed it to me. It looked like a large kernel of corn (exact shape of one!), but all bloody red. (It looked to have it's own blood supply, which is pretty Cronenbergian.) The procedure was called a PUNCH BIOPSY... you know, like a HOLE PUNCH on your job? Saints preserve us.
Do I really need to tell you WHERE this awful thing was located on my body? Yes, the worst place. Buried in cellulite, I am surprised he could find it at all. Lucky for me, it was all swelled up and BIG, so it probably called right out to him: HERE I AM, DOC! And he punched a hole, right in my ass.
Thinking idly about this, whilst the good doctor worked on my derriere, I thought of the movie line, "The Bailey family's been a boil on my neck long enough!"--growled out by the immortal Lionel Barrymore in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Barrymore delivers the line perfectly, in his fabulous rumbling baritone, but I've often thought it could have been much improved if the word was ASS... The Bailey family's been a boil on my ass long enough!--but that was 1946, and you weren't allowed to jazz up a script in such a fashion. [3] But I would loved to have heard old Lionel snarl out that line instead.
And so, here I am, waiting for the butt-novacaine to wear off, at which time I likely WON'T be sitting on a hard chair. ;) I bought a Mocha Frappuccino to cheer me up while I wait!
Trying to finish a number of posts in the meantime. The great thing about finally having low blog stats again? I can write anything I want and nobody is reading... and I can add some classic country too!
Enjoy, you crazy kidz!
~*~
NOTES:
[1] As a redneck, I can use this word, but you can't.
[2] I know, I know, we are supposed to call it truTV now, but that sounds dorky and stupid, and I hereby refuse.
I always wonder who got paid (and how much?) to come up with something as thoroughly dopey as "truTV"? (Which tells you exactly nothing about the court system or what type of legal programming the network specializes in!)
I hope the people at (the former) Court TV, understand that they was had.
[3] I often think about old movies that bore such language restrictions, when the situation and characters cry out for some limited but pointed cussing. For instance, Jeffrey Hunter and John Wayne should have cussed each other out a bunch of times in THE SEARCHERS, but of course, that was 54 years ago and simply not done.
I find it fascinating that a profusion of nasty words like "half-breed" and other racial insults *were* allowable, while simply calling someone a self-absorbed asshole was not.
~*~
You younguns will recognize this song as the inspiration for the amusing HBO show, Eastbound and Down, but older folks still associate it with the 70s movie, Smokey and the Bandit. (And it's where we get today's blog post title.)
Eastbound and Down - Jerry Reed
~*~
I grew up with this song, since every country and western band, including my mother's, was required to learn it. Truck-drivers considered it THEIRS and requested it every night. I love how it illustrates a whole mythology/culture around truck-driving.
Recorded back in 1963, you'd never hear "I'm taking little white pills and my eyes are open wide" in a country song ever again...
Six Days on the Road - Dave Dudley
~*~
She's Got You - Patsy Cline
~*~
Before I'm Over You - Loretta Lynn
~*~
You MUST HEAR Loretta belt out "Mississippi MAAAAAAN" in this song. Legendarily-amazing pipes!
Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man - Loretta Lynn And Conway Twitty
My mother died in July of 2006, but I could not get back up to Ohio until the second week of August, near the Feast of the Assumption (which is tomorrow, the 15th).
And on that day, I scattered her ashes into the Tuscarawas River, in Massillon, Ohio, a few scant feet from where my stepfather (her beloved) had been employed during our 3-year residence there. It was in this location, she said, that she had been the happiest in her lifetime. It was in this location that she was markedly different; she was finally in a country-and-western band that respected her and valued her input. She lived with the man she loved and during the days, briefly attempted the fantasy-sitcom stay-at-home mom role, so valued by the middle-class. She made curtains, she drew sketches in pencil, she put bouquets of flowers on the table. She practiced endlessly, leaving the identifiable bass-lines of various 60s pop-songs in my head forever. She smiled at me.
She was herself there, more than she was anywhere else... before or after.
In the tumultuous years that followed, I often thought of my "Massillon mama"--and wanted her back.
So, I returned her there.
~*~
The Borders
To say that she came into me,
from another world, is not true.
Nothing comes into the universe
and nothing leaves it.
My mother—I mean my daughter did not
enter me. She began to exist
inside me—she appeared within me.
And my mother did not enter me.
When she lay down, to pray, on me,
she was always ferociously courteous,
fastidious with Puritan fastidiousness,
but the barrier of my skin failed, the barrier of my
body fell, the barrier of my spirit.
She aroused and magnetized my skin, I wanted
ardently to please her, I would say to her
what she wanted to hear, as if I were hers.
I served her willingly, and then
became very much like her, fiercely
out for myself.
When my daughter was in me, I felt I had
a soul in me. But it was born with her.
But when she cried, one night, such pure crying,
I said I will take care of you, I will
put you first. I will not ever
have a daughter the way she had me,
I will not ever swim in you
the way my mother swam in me and I
felt myself swum in. I will never know anyone
again the way I knew my mother,
the gates of the human fallen.
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley said she wants to eliminate corporate income taxes to boost jobs.
The GOP candidate began a tour of businesses Wednesday with a visit to a marketing and printing firm in Columbia.
Haley insists the way to help businesses hire employees and bring down the jobless rate is to cut red tape and business taxes.
In June, the state's unemployment rate was 10.7 percent.
Earlier this year, the state House passed a bill to eliminate corporate income taxes over 10 years. But the Senate removed that provision, saying the economy was too uncertain to further reduce state tax collections.
The state's 5 percent corporate tax rate is the third largest source of state revenue behind sales and individual income taxes.
Haley faces Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen in the November election.
...but no, it was only a giant moth! I knew if I didn't take a picture of him, nobody would believe me.
He is a giant silk moth; Antheraea polyphemus is his name, and the wing span was easily 7 inches. (He is a he since he has the bushy antennae.) Although I have never seen one before, they are common in the Midwest.
Snooping around, I find plenty of symbolism for large black and white moths, but precious few listings for brown ones. I am choosing to see him as a good omen!
For godsake, will somebody tell me what is going on with the KOMBUCHA?!? Are they trying to KILL US or WHAT?!
:: I used up all my vacation time going to Texas, so I didn't go to Medicines from the Earth, the yearly herbalist conference I wrote about a couple of years ago. Ditto, the Southeast Women's Herbal Conference, but linking here in case anyone else wants to sign up! 
