Orson Wells had it figured out!

[HRM Resident]

“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and
friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not
alone.”– Orson Welles

--
HRM Resident

[James Warren]

I've never had that illusion. :)

[HRM Resident]

I used to. Sometime around age 8-10, I figured out that I was a
prisoner in my head forever, which put an end to any illusions. However, I
will say love and friendship have an important function in life. Illusion
or not. :-)

--
HRM Resident

[James Warren]

Indeed! :)

[HRM Resident]

Yeah, if we ever meet (highly unlikely) I think we would be friends.
But as for love, as Johnny Lee sang in 1980, you are “Lookin' for love in
all the wrong places!”

Booster shot today for DW and I. If I never post again, it didn’t go
well. Double Pfizer the first two times, then Moderna today. Who knows?
They are both mRNA and I heard a doctor say comparing them is like
comparing Coke and Pepsi. Basically the same.

--
HRM Resident

[James Warren]

On 2021-12-29 11:46 AM, HRM Resident wrote:
> James Warren <jwwar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2021-12-29 10:48 AM, HRM Resident wrote:
>>> James Warren <jwwar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 2021-12-29 8:51 AM, HRM Resident wrote:
>>>>> “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and
>>>>> friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not
>>>>> alone.”– Orson Welles
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I've never had that illusion. :)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> I used to. Sometime around age 8-10, I figured out that I was a
>>> prisoner in my head forever, which put an end to any illusions. However, I
>>> will say love and friendship have an important function in life. Illusion
>>> or not. :-)
>>>
>>
>> Indeed! :)
>>
>>
>
> Yeah, if we ever meet (highly unlikely) I think we would be friends.
> But as for love, as Johnny Lee sang in 1980, you are “Lookin' for love in
> all the wrong places!”

One of those wrong places is definitely USENET!

>
> Booster shot today for DW and I. If I never post again, it didn’t go
> well. Double Pfizer the first two times, then Moderna today. Who knows?
> They are both mRNA and I heard a doctor say comparing them is like
> comparing Coke and Pepsi. Basically the same.
>

We get ours on Monday. It's PMP for us.

[HRM Resident]

Just talked to my last manager before retirement. He had the PMP
sequence and said nothing but a slightly sore arm the following day all
three times. A couple of women I know in Maryland and New Jersey told
me they each and a day in bed caused by fatigue after at least one, but
no pattern. The pharmacist who jabbed us a few hours ago said the same
. . . after giving 1000s and 1000s of shots of various kinds, has no
idea what to tell the patient other than "everyone is slightly different."

Anyhow, no going off the property again until February. So I
bought a cow and two dozen chickens. Keeping them in the basement (glad
I didn't finish it) and as needed, they make a one-way trip to my shed .
. . my father was a meat-man from ~1935-1970 (had a slaughterhouse and a
1/2 ton truck to sell the meat.) Thus I grew up skinning animals and
picking feathers out of dead birds . . . but I figured out by age 10-11
that I didn't want to do that for a living.

However, I can clean and prepare anything from ducks to oxen! Even
a dog or cat in an emergency! :-) Once I cooked a porcupine . . .
tastes like rabbit but the spruce tree flavor is pretty strong. I think
that's all they eat!

--
HRM Resident

[James Warren]

You were a true country boy. I was a fisherman's son. He could gut
fish like a sonofabitch. I remember him skinning rabbits too.
I, however, have no such skills. :)

[Mike Spencer]

HRM Resident <hrm...@gmail.com> writes:


> Once I cooked a porcupine . . . tastes like rabbit but the spruce
> tree flavor is pretty strong. I think that's all they eat!

We've eaten porcupine twice, found it quite satisfactory. Porcupines
also gnaw the bark off of maples and apple trees, eat raspberry canes,
devour brassicas in the garden and eat apple drops. So not always,
maybe not even predominantly, terebinthine. We didn't notice any
turpentine taint.

On one of those occasions, we had a dinner drop-in, a guy who was more
or less making a career of dropping in at one house or another just
before dinner time. On this occasion, he was happily settled in a
comfy chair, awaiting the -- he hoped -- inevitable invitation to join
us at the table when I brought in a freshly dead porcupine, heavy
gloves, Vise Grips and other tools and Peggy commenced drawing and
skinning the animal. It was a bit before he fully realized that this
was not some kind of joke, some kind of rural theater put on for a
transplanted London (England) and Toronto urban home-boy. He took his
pre-dinner leave after tardily recalling that he had a pressing
engagement elsewhere. All good. :-)

The third occasion was one that rather put us off on porcupine. We had
gutted the beast and the entrails were on the kitchen table in a basin
when I noticed that the guts were, yew know, *moving*. Not just
settling into a puddle but kinda, like, *writhing*.

Cutting open the guts revealed hundreds of whitish flat worms perhaps
3 to 4 cm long (although stretchable to much longer) with no
recognizable external features except a kind of ribbed surface
texture. This was before Gwgle and before we had a binocular
dissecting microscope so even rough identification took awhile and
unmagnified dissection revealed nothing interesting. Eventually, we
learned that these guys are endemic to porcupines. Their excreta
leave eggs which are taken up by snails and the porcupines eat the
snails by happenstance as they devour snail-bearing plants.

In any case, that has quite put us off on eating porcupines even
though we're pretty certain that the intestinal parasites don't affect
the well-cooked meat. It has also made us careful to avoid
unintentionally eating little snails that often turn up on salad
material from the garden.


--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

[James Warren]

Always a great yarn. :)

[HRM Resident]

Mike Spencer <m...@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>

>snip<

>
> In any case, that has quite put us off on eating porcupines even
> though we're pretty certain that the intestinal parasites don't affect
> the well-cooked meat. It has also made us careful to avoid
> unintentionally eating little snails that often turn up on salad
> material from the garden.
>
>

Sounds somewhat similar to trichinosis in pork. Which is avoided by
cooking it to well, well, well done! Likely as you said, intestinal
parasites in almost anything, including porcupines, are almost certainly
killed by being well cooked.

I was only 11-12 when I tried mine. The pliers and vice grips sound
familiar, and I think I recall a few quills jabbing my hands. It was a
time consuming task to prepare. All that to get a pot full of what I
remember was mostly spruce flavoured rabbit! It was a one time experiment.
:-)

As James opined, you always have interesting stories! That method of
getting rid of the food moocher was top drawer thinking!

--
HRM Resident

[Mike Spencer]

HRM Resident <hrm...@gmail.com> writes:

> That method of getting rid of the food moocher was top drawer
> thinking!

It was happenstance that the dead porcupine came along just then but
it couldn't have worked better had it been calculated. We're both
still chuckling about it over 40 years later.