Here Lies Sarah Brumble

After adventuring to Diergaarde Blijdorp for the afternoon, a few details stick with me. One is that I can never pass up a zoo, despite knowing that tickling my sense of wonder comes at a price: deep sadness.

Before agreeing to visit the zoo, it appeared to me as an apparition in the night as we biked home half-drunk from a four course meal topped off by sampling the chef’s grandmother’s limoncello recipe. We barreled around a corner and were met by its old-timey guilt gates lit up by neon Dutch script and line drawings of two giraffe heads. The conversation went something like:

“What the hell is that?!”
“The zoo! It gave my neighborhood its name.”
“Is it depressing?”
“No.”
“I have to go to that.”
“You should.”

Gust to clarify: ‘Depressing’ is relative. And, as luck would have it, I saw the two most antiquated displays first (lions and bush wallabies). This had the effect of immediately ramping up my sadness and acuity for improper treatment, higher than it probably would have been otherwise. Nonetheless, the following thoughts linger:

• If one must see the electric fences, it is best if one cannot also hear the clicking of the power coursing through their wires.
• Why put an animal with incredibly sensitive hearing–a fact touted by the placard on display, explaining its hunting habits and disproportionate ears–nearest to the rails leading to Rotterdam Centraal that bisect the park?
• Children should be banned from zoos.
• The distance between animals and visitors is markedly more slim here than in the States. This means that one of the prairie dogs had become so accustomed to human presence that I witnessed no fewer than three adults scratching it on the forehead while it ate within arm’s reach.
• Perhaps since the Netherlands requires a permit for everything else on Earth (e.g., the lengthy lessons and exams process required to get a golf permit), it should also demand an education and permit scheme for even adult attendees (see previous bullet point).

Also, to be fair, I always feel this way when I leave a zoo. I can’t stay away, but it’s not good for my psyche to actually go. I genuinely care, and I’ve long said I prefer animals to people… maybe one day I’ll learn my lesson.

On the bright side, today I learned that a giraffe has a tongue long enough to pick their noses with! You eliminate that middle-man, giraffes! And there’s not much that compares to watching a grown man locked in a staring contest with a gigantic African gorilla, only to lose to the “beast.”

Those, I suppose, are exactly why I still go to the zoo as an enthusiastic yet disheartened grown-up.

I have just received an email from my father as a follow-up to a conversation we had during our Christmas day phone call.

One of the things I did was to google “plum pudding” (once upon a time, it may have had plums, but really all that’s called for is fruit…dried in the old days) and a bunch of spices…and the recipe (if there ever was “a” recipe in the first place) seems to have changed repeatedly over the millenium so that today I gather the preferred term is a more generic “Christmas pudding.” The plum pudding that Suzie makes looks absolutely nothing like the pictures offered in Wikipedia.

And I am further corrected. The verse from “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” deals with something called “figgy pudding” (rather than plum pudding). So, of course, good researcher that I am, I looked up figgy pudding. Wikipedia says that it probably ought to be lumped into “Christmas pudding” because, in essence, it’s the same KIND of thing, though it apparently has figs just like plum pudding has plums. But wait a minute! Plum pudding doesn’t (necessarily) have plums, so I guess that must mean that figgy pudding doesn’t have to have figs. Does this culinary mystery, via linguistic albegra, thus mean that figgy pudding and plum pudding can really be, in essence, identical?

These are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night, tossing and turning. I’ll probably die of a severe case of aggravated ulcers.

See where I get it?

• That dog on the cover of “Odelay“
• A wampa 
• A fuzzy Klanswoman
• Cousin It’s albino cousin
• The saddest sheep in the world

As a senior in high school, I was able to matriculate in pretty much any classes that struck my fancy. Math went rightthefuck out the window. Instead, I doubled up on Spanish, art, and English classes. I filled the one remaining spot with an anatomy class taught by a hilarious Bosnian doctor-turned-science tech. Entire periods were lost to Tanja laughing in her tie-dyed lab coat and cat-eye glasses while telling us jokes that very much did not translate.

While Tanja herself was a huge incentive for kids to take the class, usually it was the semester-long project of cat dissection that would separate the wheat from the chaff. Despite my love for the fuzzies, I was not to be deterred.

It was during this time I discovered that, at least as far as I can tell, there is actually only one way to skin a cat. Granted, you can skin a cat in more than one direction, but that hardly counts as skinning a cat in a different manner all together. The paws are the hardest to flay…

Anyway, if anyone cares to argue with me about the multitudinous methods of skinning cats, I expect you to come with your own experiences well in-hand. Until then, i’m waiting.

In the past 48 hours I did the following:

• After closing at work the previous evening, I biked downtown at 10:15am to see an optometrist (prescription’s gotten worse! go figure!).
• Biked home to find that the corpse flower was in bloom. In the two hours I had available, I found Friend 1/a partner in crime, biked to Seward, picked up a Friend 2′s car, drove to Como Park, saw their corpse flower, took lots of pictures, rode the carousel, took lots of pictures, drove back to Seward, biked back home in time to…
• Make it to coffee with Friend 3 whom it’d been too long since I’d last seen. We jump-hugged upon reuniting, which earned us three compliments/expressions of jealousy from strangers that their friends weren’t as cool. Yeah.
• Biked to a Friend 4′s house with the cutest freaking puppy on the planet, which we then walked to another Friend 5′s house where I may have successfully persuaded Friend 5 to adopt the dog, thereby letting me occasionally play with but not actually own it!
• Biked home, got ready for work at lightning speed, biked to work where I served tables until 2am.
• Biked to a long-procrastinated doctor’s appointment at 9:30am that provided several solutions to sleeping/allergies/skin, etc. Productive but not fun.
• Biked home, picked up glasses prescription, biked to Uptown where I purchased the coolest goddamn eye glasses on the planet.
• Biked to the new Muddy Waters for lunch with Friends 1, 6, 7, and 8. Yucca went in my belly, as did a tasty bibb salad with dates, all of which was washed down by a Campari soda.
• Biked to Hidden Beach, ran into friends 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. Sunned. Swam. Shot the shit. Judged people’s tattoos. (You know who you are, Rasputin.)
• Biked home, stopping on the way at Sebastian Joe’s for a scoop of strawberry black pepper sorbet, where I took an accidental nap buck naked in front of a fan while sitting up (home, not the ice cream parlor).
• Awoke to a text from Friend 1 that Friend 14′s comedy show/competition was starting in a half hour, leaving me approximately 10 minutes total to shower and get out the door before biking downtown to the Acme Comedy Club in time to see him take first place.
• Biked to work, checked my schedule, ate a cheeseburger and tater tots, partook in a celebratory drink with victorious Friend 14, and called it a night.
• Slept for 10 hours. And it wasn’t enough.

Dear friends and strangers,

You may have stumbled here on accident, or perhaps you’ve stalked me to the ends of the Internet. If the latter, I’m flattered!

On the “About” and “Portfolio” pages, you will find examples of my writing and other helpful tidbits pertaining to my writing. Beyond that, please excuse the mess. I’m working out some kinks while generally learning-by-doing in this here new (WordPress) frontier.

Thank you kindly for your patience.

-SKB