blogging about blogging

Blogging about blogging...ya see, that just how pathetic I've become! Yikes! What's next? Recipes? (Actually, having just prepared a pot of my signature chili...I'm freakin' tempted!)

Truth is: I've got nothing to say.

That's a strange state for the Yanq but it's true. The juice has just all drained out of it for at least the moment.

Maybe it's the winter doldrums. Maybe it's the impending "5 Year Wall" that all expats/immigrants hit. Maybe it's the state of the old country ("Sittin' in a park in Paris, France / readin' the news and sho' looks bad") that makes everything I talk about and hear seem just so ridiculously trivial. Maybe it's unrequited williamsburroughs-ism setting-in.

Who knows.

There's lots of things to say, of course, about life here in the Paris of the Palmtrees. Not a day goes by that I don't thank God that I live here. The Retiro neighborhood that I inherited is still the one I would pick today, the cows are still fat and happy and we are still blessed with sufficient pasture although there has been no rain forever, the food is still delicious and remains varied and challenging with a little shopping in Chinatown and other nooks, I can sit back and laugh at the USD due to some strangely good (for me) decisions made upon our arrival, there are still splendid friends although I've been ignoring them along with family, I'll be registering with a terrific agricultural school tomorrow and my hard-won castellano will propel me to expertdom in pastures and grasses.

There you go! There's a hundred blogposts in there somewhere.

Perhaps it's simply hibernation. Maybe nothing more than something cyclical that I just don't feel like overcoming right now. I've been thinking that I'd like to see where it takes me but I've probably just caught the wrong bus.

Fear not (that's for me...not you)! With this little post I'll probably roar out of the starting gate once again.

My thankfulness to you.

I probably just need to look up Slats Johnson and tie on a good cathartic.

I don't think they can be stopped

Ahhh... call me a dope. I knew that all that feedlot beef had to go someplace. But what a surprise to put a chunk into my mouth after all these years! It brought back memories...just not good ones.

I've mentioned before the feedlots that have sprung up along the sides of some highways heading deep into the province in the last 3 years. I lamented their appearance. I hoped that they would fail with the rising cost of grain and always too expensive imported anti-biotics and growth hormones.

But the cattle always looked bad and standing or lying in their own shit cramped up with hundreds of others... they didn't look like any competition for even the cows across the same road let alone the magnificent black beasts that pranced around our car as we pulled in our maingate. "All is well," I would tell myself as we circled down the drive to the big house through the green pastures past cows and calves.

"What do they DO with that beef?" I asked my wife one time. She didn't know; feedlots didn't exist four years ago. I've been afraid that feedlot beef would supplant traditional grass-fed here.

Just recently I asked her if she would recognize a feedlot steak if she ate one. She said she wasn't sure. She never ate a steak while we lived in Chicago.

Not two months ago, she asked the supermarket butcher/meat-clerk if any of the beef was from feedlots. "Oh, no, señora! That kind of beef is good for only sausages, hamburger and hotdogs!" She was told that there would be no possible way that she could mistake a feedlot steak for a grain-fed steak.

Well, she got fooled tonight... but I didn't.

On her way home tonight, my darling stopped at the big Supermercado Disco and picked up two "Bife Angosto", a short loin or strip loin in English. She ate one right away but I wasn't hungry until later. When I began to make a side of pasta I was surprised to find the lid stuck to the pot I intended to use for my mostaccholes. What's more, there was a pool of fat inside the pot.

I asked her if she had used the pot to cook something. She told me no but then added that she had used the lid as a splatter-guard to cover the skillet in which she had cooked her steak, something she often does.

I'd never seen such fat before from simply pan-frying a steak. I didn't think anything more of it. I cooked my dinner and sat down to enjoy. Bife Angosto is a step below my usual filet mignon or strip but is known for it's great flavor if a bit chewy.

This steak did not exhibit any of the chewiness that all Argentine steaks are famous for. This steak was very oddly tender throughout. Perhaps tender is not the right word... it was mushy. And it was noticeably greasy.

I did not finish it and, even now as I write, I feel kind of queasy. I suppose it is the amount of fat. A grass-fed steak here has about 1/3 the fat of the normal US steak. I usually eat a steak and feel good! I also remember when I first arrived that it was remarkable how I could eat a much larger steak than I could back in the old country. I would definitely attribute that, now, to the lower fat content.

Fat is one thing... I know what fat is and I can choose to eat less. But the drug and hormone addled, bacteria laden life these animals lead is something that I would like to know about before I buy or eat a steak.

The local beef shortage a few months ago may have given feedlots an entre into the prime-cut segment of the market. Argentines hungry for what disappeared from the shelves for a short while might simply be happy enough to have the supply back... and not having ever eaten a feedlot steak may not suspect anything.

It's hard to believe that Argentina would cast off its birthright to great grass-fed beef but it looks like it could go easier than I thought. It can't be long before tourists are served this stuff; they don't know the difference... and it will still be at the same great Buenos Aires price.

Happy 4th of July

It's strange to take a graphic from the former colonial power to highlight this year's yanqui Independence Day... but I'm not much in the mood to wave something star-spangled with events such as they are.

However! What really makes the patriotic sap start to rise in the Yanq is the memory of those days of yore when we actually fought the fascists. The above is a detail from a poster that was discovered by a used-books store in Northumberland England, Barter's.

It was folded in a consignment of dusty tomes from someone's attic. It's from WWII about the time of the Blitz when the original scud missiles, the Nazi V1 and V2, were dropping silently and randomly and destructively over England.

It had been so long since I'd felt that sensation of our governments trying to take away our fears instead of cravenly inciting them and capitalizing on them... that my jaw actually dropped upon seeing this poster.

Have a good day, yanquicitos. Try not to let the bastards get to you.

...take these chains away.

dark night of soul and body sweats and chills and visions of new police forces and spousal sharing of the throne long trips and cold nights and roads that pass through mountains of sweet grain awaiting germination birth death rebirth foamy emptiness

thoughts of good air the mad ones the ones who are mad to live mad to talk mad to be saved and the club of love my Rapanui attorney bringing rolls of paper from the carnecero for the trusty remington and hazy sightings of her transcribing into the ether to you from me suntans in reservation dining rooms pale miners in their lantern rays

days días days to remember the ancianos of international cooperation of magazine editors of The Reader of waltzing log drivers and blackflies of the business manager of of of requests for asian and black women from the north to demonstrate television implements old white women to demonstrate lujo dead cat live oak visions of Cody recuerdos del City of St. Jhon y diários del rón

perverse resistance to security and predictability deliberate disregard for propriety cookies missed

sleep antibiotics rest healing soon come mon soon come