Here at the Happy Gland Ranch, things are getting interesting in the compost pile. We’ve been feeding chickens obscenely disgusting (or exceedingly delicious, depending upon whose perspective we’re dealing with) maggots from the compost pile. We draw them out with halves of (sadly) rotten melons (yes, we’ve had more than one of those, recently, sigh), which we think are obscenely disgusting, but the maggots think are exceedingly delicious. Then it’s a simple process of scooping the intensely wriggling, obscenely disgusting, exceedingly delicious maggot-melon-pile out of the metal cage in which the compost lives, at which time the chickens attack each maggot with extreme precision.
I like to sit and imagine their chicken bellies filled with almost-wriggling maggots, don’t you?
Here’s something really cool. If you stick your face next to the compost pile in the dark, quiet evening time, you can hear the delightful wettish wrigglings of about a bajillion quadrillion grubby creatures sliming through dead leaves, our rotten food and their own shit. What a life, what a life.
In other news, I spent the better part of the day, a few days ago, slaving over a hot music box. Something that occurred to me only after said music box arrived in the mail was that I had signed myself up for an extremely tedious task. You gotta take this really long strip of cardstock and punch about a gajillion holes in it, paying attention to the grid printed on the card, knowing about notes (which are, of course, written on the card as being a fifth above the note you actually hear—because of infallible reasons, I am sure), being aware of the meter, and just generally being on top of things, which is sometimes a problem for me.
I used approximately a mile of tape to cover holes that I wish I hadn’t punched. This is interesting because once you apply a certain amount of shiny tape to this cardstock, it won’t feed though the box nicely. It can’t get enough traction. There are also the teensiest tiniest circles of cardstock all over the floor and the piano, and tiny scotch tape circles stuck to my hands. What a life, what a life.
A word to the wise: start off with a song that maybe isn’t in a blues shuffle. Or, know what measures and notes are and how they might appear on the cardstock before you begin. Oh, and definitely do this rather than washing the dishes or investigating that suspicious odor emanating from the fridge.
Thankfully, I found that there is, in fact, an app to cure almost all of my box-related woes. Hurrah! Though I can’t say for certain that this eliminates the need for scotch tape, I wlil say that it makes the experimentation phase much less messy.
In other, other news, we have recently invited yet another creature to reside with us here at the Happy Gland Ranch. This is an exceptionally snuggly four year old cat who has spent some of his time here digging with unabashed exuberance in the kitty litter (provided for his use in a thrift-store baking pan with slighty-too-low sides, sigh). Last evening he went for to explore our vast (aka, teensy) front yard through the window Jared had opened in order to listen in on an exciting argument a couple of our charming neighbors were engaged in. But, really, the cat has spent the majority of his first week here sleeping inside our futon. I believe it is very secluded and cozy in there.
And, in closing, let me share with you something completely different: a way to make phunky musak online, my friends. Yes, it’s everything you’ve been waiting for. An online keyboard you can play with your keyboard. It’s very intuitive to people who actually play the piano. Wait. It’s actually really not intuitive to people who play the piano. I spent an inordinate amount of time the other night composing a story, and by extension, a pretty badass (bad? assinine?) atonal creation.
It made me feel really artsy.