Well,  I’m an idiot. Went off to do the weekly video on today’s election, only to learn that there wasn’t any. Not in Minneapolis. I suppose I should have known the signs, since the phone wasn’t ringing six times a day with hectoring pre-recorded calls (although the Superintendent of the schools did call yesterday to announce some sort of meeting; the call was so dull and lifeless I hung up after a minute) and there weren’t the usual crop of lawn signs begging me to vote this way or that way or this way or that way, Ach du lieber Augustine. So I should have known. But I got some posts out of it anyway.

The bleak cast of the day gave me a certain amount of mubblefubbles, to use a jocose word for mild wrist-slittery – I wonder who coined it. It sounds like some Sid and Marty Kroft character. (Fun fact I learned the other day: one of the writers and script editors on “Land of the Lost” was the guy who wrote the “Tribbles” episode, David Gerrold. In fact I think I have his Star Trek book in the Closet of Mysteries . . . hold on. . . .yes indeed. Why, is another question. I read it in high school during the great Trek Drought, when it seemed we would never have anything else except books and grainy fanzines. It’s not even the book he wrote about “The Trouble With Tribbles”  - it’s the book about the history of Star Trek. I must have tossed the Tribble book long ago. [Or beamed it into the Klingon’s engine room! Ha ha ha!]  Memory is the damndest thing, too – I remember the name of the guy who did the illustrations [Tim Kirk?} and the phrase “crib girls,” which mystified me until I figured it out. 

Hold on, googling  . . . well.   You can get the book here, free, in pdf form. The link game from Gerrold’s own site, which doesn’t seem to have been updated in years, even though a movie based on one of his books – starring John Cusack – will be coming out any day now. Searching the text for “Crib girls” . . . page 180. As for Tim Kirk: well, holy crow. ) Anyway, my mubblefubbles. Let me show them to you. Or not.

Let us google that word. God help me if I come up in the first ten results.

Nope. In fact it seems a rare word, and I can understand why; it completely fails to communicate its meaning. It’s like using, oh, “Klinky-minky” to indicate mad homidical desire, or “borformoughry” to mean wild, unrestrained glee.

It’s probably pre-publication let-down. It happens.

Buy the book! Make me happier! See that little book-buying button at the bottom? It instantly releases borfomoughry chemicals into my bloodstream. Anyway, the book concerns BAD FOOD a la the Gallery of Regrettable Food, and here are some outtakes. Or rather things I didn’t have when I wrote the book. From the people who brought you 500 Tasty Desserts presents 500 Tasty Desserts: 250 ways to prepare meat brings you 250 Ways to Prepare Meats! Or, in this case, mud-stuffed boxing glove:

And what meats they are, too. Nothing “beats” an actual browned circulatory organ. Use decoractive vegetables to put the “art” in “artery”!

Standards of “real treat” have changed appreciatively since the book was published in 1940. Here’s another war-time classic: Neck.

The empty bone-holes are your first clue: Momma made marrow flan for dessert.