I guess there’s just two kinds of people, Miss Sandstone, my kind of people, and assholes. It’s rather obvious which category you fit into.
—-Connie Marble, Pink Flamingos
The Cedars, Dallas, Texas
Two Kinds of People
Monthly Archives: October 2017
My 1986 Cannondale and Fergie
“Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
― Woody Allen
My 30 year old touring bike in The Cedars, Dallas, Texas
On the hidden art bicycle tour, everyone else was looking at a mural behind a building, but I found this ad for a new album. Art is where you find it.
My Quest for Banana Ketchup
“Shake and shake the catsup bottle. None will come, and then a lot’ll.”
― Richard Armour
Banana Ketchup/Sauce on the shelves at H Mart, Plano, Texas
I’m not sure where, but as I was wasting my precious life surfing the web, I came across a recommendation and link for a condiment I had never heard of before, Sinclair’s Hot Banana Ketchup. I wanted some. I am always up for a new condiment. I like Hot. I like Bananas.
It’s a gourmet craft condiment from the UK, so I was pretty sure I was not going to find any near me. Before ordering any online I did some research and discovered that Banana Ketchup is a thing. It is popular in the Philippines and the story is that it was developed just prior to the second world war due to a shortage of tomatoes.
Oh hell yes… I had to have me some banana ketchup and I had to actually buy it in a store. Because. I was on a quest.
There is a plethora of various ethnic grocery stores in my ‘hood and I set out on my bicycle on a route that included as many as I could. I was sure I would be returning with some Jufram Banana Ketchup in my pannier.
My commuter/cargo bike along the Duck Creek Trail. Taking a break while riding a circuit of grocery stores, looking for Banana Ketchup.
I was shocked when my search came up empty. Internet searching showed there was Kabayan – a Filipino grocery store – in the metroplex. It would have what I wanted, surely, but it is in Lewisville, which is a bit of a drive from me and too far for a casual bike ride. I’ll figure out a reason to visit that part of town, but in the meantime there was one more place I wanted to check.
H-Mart, in Plano, is a fantastic cornucopia of an Asian Grocery Store. It is strongest in Korean fare, but of such a size that it has a lot of different food. I stopped by and, after a bit of a search, found a selection of various Banana Ketchup varieties – at least three brands and a handful of different flavors. I chose two brands of “spicy” – Jufran Hot & Spicy Banana Sauce, and UFC Tamis Anghang Banana Sauce… also tagged Hot & Spicy.
So how does it taste?
I’m afraid it doesn’t taste much different that regular American Tomato Ketchup. Maybe a little sweeter, but not much. Sugar and vinegar are the key taste in ketchup anyway…. The two I bought are definitely Hot and Spicy – next time I’ll try some of the regular style. The only difference really, is that the banana version is more thixotropic even than traditional. It can really vary from thick to watery depending on how much you shake it. It is laden with red food coloring, so it doesn’t look like bananas. One other good thing – it’s cheap.
All in all, it’s good, if not anything special. When I finish what I have I’ll pick up some other flavors, for the hell of it. Oh, and then – maybe I’ll make some of my own.
I’ll leave out the red food coloring.
Robots on the Walls
“You mean old books?”
“Stories written before space travel but about space travel.”
“How could there have been stories about space travel before –”
“The writers,” Pris said, “made it up.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Hickory and Trunk Streets, Dallas, Texas
On our Hidden Art Bicycle Ride today we came across a building with robots painted on it. A very large building, but one on a street you don’t drive on very often. I had been there before, many times, on a bicycle, but the robots weren’t there. It was cool to see.
Making Life More Bearable
“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country
Artwork in window, Waxahachie, Texas
I think I recognize the white glove-things in the photo I took. I watch too much television – and I watch too much “How It’s Made.”
One episode showed how they made latex surgical gloves. These ceramic hand-molds are dipped in a latex solution on a long assembly line. The solution dries on the ceramic hands and the gloves are then blown off with a jet of air. The scene of hundreds of hands moving along the manufacturing process was odd and hypnotic.
I think those things in the window, in front of the painting, are ceramic latex glove-molds.
Maybe.
Specimen of Indecorous Womanhood
“Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence.
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun
Antique Store Window, Waxahachie, Texas
Escape
“It isn’t running away they’re afraid of. We wouldn’t get far. It’s those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
The best advice… the only advice you really need, is to find the light first.
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping
“Your dreams are your spirit, your soul and without them you are dead. You must guard your dreams always. Always. Lest someone steal them away from you. I know what it is to have your dreams stolen. I know what it is to be dead. Guard your dreams. Always guard your dreams.”
― Brom, Krampus: The Yule Lord
Scary Santa
Waxahachie, Texas
Water in Waxahachie
Fountain in Waxahachie
Photo taken on a Photowalk. At a child’s waterpark, a new splash pad, near downtown Waxahachie, Texas… you push a button and the various water things come to life, designed to sprinkle youngsters on hot Texas summer days. Here, two streams cunningly combine to form a disk of water, suspended in air, ephemeral as water can be.
Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.
—-Water, by Pablo Neruda
Fallout Shelter
[Strangelove’s plan for post-nuclear war survival involves living underground with a 10:1 female-to-male ratio]
General “Buck” Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor
—-Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
You don’t see very many of these anymore.
Waxahachie, Texas
The Federal Government is moving forward to bring into operation fallout shelter space for large groups of people under very austere conditions. Many homeowners, communities and business firms can and will provide more adequate and better located shelter space for their own needs. The Federal Government is backing this effort with a massive dissemination of technical information. In addition, we will inform those who cannot afford costly structures on low-cost methods of improvising shielding against fallout radiation. The people of this country will be urged, by me, by the Governors and by other leaders to do what is within their means.
…
I look forward to the closest cooperation between all levels of government in the United States to move rapidly towards this goal. Your committee is making a major contribution in stimulating participation by the state governments in the nationwide civil defense effort.
Sincerely,
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Letter to the Members of the Committee on Civil Defense of the Governors’ Conference. October 6, 1961
Someone younger than me would find it very hard to imagine how ubiquitous the “Fallout Shelter” sign was during the time of my youth. They were everywhere.
This was the time of “Duck and Cover” films being shown in school. Even at that young age I remember looking down at a puddle of sweat on the floor where it had dripped off my forehead as I crouched under my school desk in an air raid drill and thinking, “What the Hell? We are all going to roast!” I had recurring nightmares of Russian nuclear strikes, air raid sirens, and the end of mankind.
But times have changed… if not improved, and I haven’t seen a Fallout Shelter sign in decades. Until we stumbled across one on a photowalk in downtown Waxahachie.
So, if “Rocket Man” fires off his missiles in anger and insanity I guess you better get in your car and haul ass to Waxahachie, Texas, and hope there is room in their fallout shelter. It’s right off the town square, across from the statue of the Confederate Soldier. There should be plenty of room.
I won’t be there.
Major T. J. “King” Kong: Survival kit contents check. In them you’ll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days’ concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
—-Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Bill Chance 