Fubbles

This is stupid.

The date is mid July 2013. So that's what, five years 2 months ago. It was somebody else's birthday at a posh ranch house way up north and I mean w-a-a-a-a-y up north, like Erie Colorado, but strangely I was given a present. And I don't know why. The young man who gave me the present was more excited for me to open it than I was. I tore it open and saw a bubble machine in the shape of a pail. We fired it up. The young man was squeeing all over the place. He's very silly sometimes.  It shot out a few bubbles and we closed it down. The place was too nice, too carefully taken care of to have soap bubbles popping all over the place, messing textiles and everything that is polished. It would be like blowing soap bubbles in the White House.  So I waited until I got home, started it up again and videoed it, then uploaded the video to YouTube. Mostly so the young man can see it.

My videos support posts that I make elsewhere, they have no sense to them whatsoever on their own. They're all over the place, babbling brooks, American sign language, Egyptian hieroglyphs, aquariums, people walking in snow, naked people running by my apartment, I'm surprised anyone follows, there is no point to them, no interest to anyone on their own. Two views here, forty views there, seven here, fifty there, some political ones get a thousand, a Gordon Ramsay video gets several thousand, but I did not make that one. But this stupid video unrelated to anything gets twenty-eight hundred views. Apparently people were thinking of buying one.

It's only been used this one time, to show what it does.

If you choose to watch it, turn down your sound because it makes an annoying noise.

Hey. Do you wanna hear something?

This is incidental to Fubbles.

That party was strange. 

I never go out there. It's too far. Too inconvenient. Too long a drive.

But that year I went twice in two weeks. 

This guy, now dead, inherited a whole lot of money and bought a whole lot of contiguous Colorado prairie land about thirty years ago. He didn't want to do anything with it. He didn't want to use the land for anything. Rather, he wanted to protect the land and keep it for wildlife. 

Hunter-types are like that. 

You might be surprised how conscientious people are who like to shoot birds, and deer and such. They're out in nature all the time and they love it and they want to protect it. He was such a type. 

That interest aligns with the interest of the state. And that meant he could use state resources to develop his land. He would follow state expert advice to terraform this way and that way to channel water to ponds, stock the ponds with turtles and fish, plant specific bushes in vast numbers in just the right places, in just the right numbers to encourage birds of specific types. Provide food for deer and the like. 

One day he told me he was busy planting five thousand trees, and that seemed like an awful lot. He told me all about what they were doing. What the state was doing. How they back-hoed a ditch, laid down a mile of thick plastic, filled the ditch back, planted trees in a row along a road on his land. 

Later I went out there and saw all these young scraggly trees spaced far apart. Some were doing okay while others were dying. 

The year of this party I was taken there again (I get lost when I drive myself so then they made sure someone sensible drives me. That's another story.) And we drove on the road next to that row of trees to get to the house. They are now grown together forming a tree-wall some three trees thick. The windows were down in our vehicle and although we couldn't see any birds, it sounded like there were at least ten thousand birds roosting in there settling in for the night. It was the noisiest bunch of trees that I've ever heard. Seriously noisy squawking for a full mile. 

What the state did to the place in cooperation with my friend was brilliant. And that goes to show you, to show me, that government can work with people, not always against them. The key is to find where your interests align and the state can make your way much easier for you. He had to agree not to farm the land for so many decades. But he never intended to anyway. Too much work. 

So that year I went there twice. 

There I am at an elegant home at an elegant table with elegant/outdoor type people and I'm served the butt-f'k'nest worst most thoughtless salad ever served. Lame-@ss wilted lettuce leaves drowning in vinegar. 

I sat there and pushed around my shriveled lettuce leaves and actually felt sorry for myself. FUCK THIS!

What's wrong with you people ?

I know that they know that we all know that they know better than this. So what's wrong? 

Huh?

Tired of entertaining are you?

Well e-x-c-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-s-e me for being such a burden. 

I didn't expect to be invited back. Clearly entertaining is too much anymore. 

Those days are gone. 

Gone, gone, gone.

And then I'm invited back two weeks later. 

"Sure. I'd love that. Thank you.  But do, let me make the salads."  

My offer was snatched up. 

I am a very good salad maker. 

I loaded a cooler with four iceberg lettuces and whipped up a quart of supreme blu cheese dressing. 

I'd have large chunks of unusual things that you'd think do not go with blue cheese, like watermelon, cantaloupe, huge grapes, large chunks of avocado, mango, pineapple, large chunks of Colorado peaches. 

But nothing regular like cucumber or carrot or tomato or onion. 

Toasted sourdough croutons. 

So a quarter of an iceberg lettuce as a mountain, and globs of blu cheese as snow top on the mountain, and all the rest as scree at the bottom filling the plate, but not touching the blu cheese.

That way each person can have unadulterated watermelon, untouched pineapple, pure grape, peach not messed with, and each person then can push fruit into the blue cheese on their own. Like it's their idea. 

Not mine. 

I did not mix them.

I was not expecting what happened next. 

The guy next to me goes, "Wow." 

He mixed some fruit with blu cheese and discovered an unexpected taste-sensation. 

A woman at the end of the table goes, "Wow," she must have allowed some fruit to touch blu cheese and discovered an unexpected taste sensation. 

Male voice, "Wow." 

Female voice, "Wow." 

Female voice, "Wow."

Male voice, "Wow." 

Male voice, "Wow." 

Individually eventually everyone at the whole table said simply "Wow," and I thought that was it. But then they pushed something else into blu cheese and said, "Wow" again. 

Again and again and again. 

Each person said, "Wow" several times. 

And several times twelve is a lot.

I started laughing because the whole table sounded like this:

"Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, " 

Conversation stopped. Now we only know one word.

"Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow" 

I laughed. Because that shit is funny. 

But I must say. That salad really was good. Everything bright and fresh. Watermelon touched with blu cheese really is a delightful new taste sensation. Followed by grape touched with blu cheese. Then peach touched with blu cheese. It's quite extraordinary, watery taste explosions in your mouth. 

People said they were finished. They were satisfied. Those salads acted like entree and dessert. People were done. 

In a way, I basically ruined the dinner. 

Someone took care of me immediately. But I do not know who.

Because two days later a very small thin but stiff envelope arrived in the mail. It contained a small greeting card that said simply, "thanks for the salad" with two $50.00 gift credit cards to Whole Foods.

That never happened before. I never got a $100 for making salads before. That was a one-time thing. 

But I'd be happy to do it again.