The first amongst these is a mashup using the “2008 Angel Datebook” that my Granma Gen sent up from Florida. She is very religious, and loves things like macaroni that resemble a crucifixion, I imagine. In the face of the angel pictured on the left, she saw the unmistakable resemblance of my sister. Granma Gen then mailed the “Angel Datebook” up to the Northeast, and I started mashing up. You decide: do you see the resemblance?

Bonus! Special Angel Datebook Quote: “You can’t see Nature’s breath, Nor the sweet angels that care, But like the invisible wind, You know the angels are there,” by Stacy Smith. By the way, my sister is a scientist. Oh sweet baby angels… The next picture is of my main man Joey Daytona dressed up as the jolly fella from the North Pole. Heeeeeereeeee’s… Joey Santona!

Next up we have my good friend, father, drummer, Legend… Uncle Johnny, wearing his Christmas day outfit. The teeshirt says it all. The man not only cooked excellent braised pork and stuffed shells, but he hooked up yours truly with a mean T and T as soon as we arrived at their house Xmas day. Big ups!

Happy holidays everybody! I hope everyone had a good one. I have to conclude this post with a picture of myself, because thats how I roll on this blog, in case you haven’t noticed. Its me with my favorite Christmas present, my Auntie Lynn’s mashed potatoes. I consumed at least 2LBs of these buttery, whipped tubers. Delicious!

Swingers celebrating their New Year early stopped by the Raw Bar tonight, adorned in balloon trivialities, some suggesting genitalia. Of course, I got into the act, with a little help from Chef’s eggnog, and Jimmy behind me swinging the samurai sword:

Spotted earlier this week in Inman Square was this death machine, a beat up gray station wagon emblazoned with Confederate stickers. Other stickers on the vehicle advertised tourism in deep South states such as Mississippi and Alabama. The car was parked right outside the East Coast Grill, causing many employees outside before the shift to comment. We were bewildered, some of us angry. I was HEATED that some Confederate loser would still be alive in this new millennium and I talked quite a lot of shit about kicking dude’s ass.

The shitting talking was quite over as everyone went inside to work, and I was left alone on the sidewalk. As I watched, a monster standing over seven feet tall, arms like tree trunks, with human bones in his long gray beard and clothes made of animal pelts, came walking towards the restaurant… and I ran inside like a little girl. Even the mighty Union needed an army. Beware the rednecks; when they finally do leave the lonely woods for the comforts of civilization, its usually because they’re thirsty for blood, and willing to knock heads to get it. Or maybe the guy just had to use the Post Office.

Today I bit the bullet and headed into a doctor’s office so that I don’t end up dead of a foot virus like Bob Marley. Thats how Bob Marley died; one day he was playing soccer and the next he was bedridden with a horrible virus of the foot that eventually swamped his central nervous system and killed him. The only way to die that seems less desirable than that would be death from that killer amoeba that eats human brains. Maybe murderous amoebas just don’t like reggae music.

I went to the Union Square Family Health Center, where I’d made an appointment. The doctor that I finally saw after much waiting asked me to take off my socks, and when I complied she gave me the stink eye. Hey, I didn’t cause the snowy icy corroded sidewalks that soaked my socks on the walk over thereby infecting said socks with foot-funk; but I am sure my socks stank. I just like my feet to get touched. I whipped those socks off in a frenzy so she could gingerly apply pressure to my metatarsals.

Nothing was figured out by the quiet groping of my feet, so I got an appointment scheduled with a podiatrist, and the doctor sent me off to Cambridge Hospital for X-rays, and more foot touching. This time it was a black male nurse, so I was super-psyched. He had me lie on table with a protective cover over the corps of my body, as he positioned my foot at different angles for the X-ray imaging. In my helpless position I nevertheless lobbied for the right to take cellphone photos of the x-rays. That request was declined, but I was proud to retain my street attorney posture even when on my back in a hospital.

The nurse’s at the front desk were nice enough to furnish me with a CD-ROM of the X-ray images, which is even better than high quality cameraphone images. That is what you are looking at here. Please feel free to click on the images and zoom in to search for hairline fractures: I am positive that my bones are riddled with them, but I can’t seem to find them on my own. Perhaps if some reader of 3rdarm.biz has medical expertise they can look at these images and tell me whats going on. If not, I’ll just be waiting for the telephone to ring with my doctor on the other end, initiating the next round of sweet, sweet foot touching.

I went to Joann’s Fabrics today. Not that I wasn’t busy anyways, what with chauffeuring my temporarily one-eyed aunt to the doctor to have her pirate patch removed following yesterday’s conclusive cataract surgery. After that morning visit to the doctor my aunt and I went shopping together and she bought me a Christmas present of an amazing Coogi track jacket in silky material of many colors. I was a bit surprised that the double XL fit on me, to say the least, but then only big boys rock Coogi anyways. I also purchased for myself a conservative green sweater for my hosting shifts. After shopping we went to Lenny and Joe’s and she had the crab roll and I had fried shrimp and scallops. Both came with fries and slaw.

Therefore it wasn’t until later in the afternoon, on a separate solo mission while my one-eyed aunty napped, that I moseyed down I-95 to Joann’s Fabrics to pick up crafting supplies. By the way, what a fucking clusterfuck Joann’s Fabrics is on a Friday afternoon when only two employees are holding down the whole store. Old ladies running amuck amidst aisles of crafting supplies and obviously, fabrics. There was also the disturbing presence of many smelly, yelling children. Or should I say it was my presence causing the disturbance. One mother saw me limping through the store and yelled at her kids to stay close by, “Because its not safe in the store.” Just cause I’m of hoodlum age and have a limp leg and dogfur ghetto jacket doesn’t mean I can’t craft, too.

In the end, I was able to purchase the supplies needed to make all my holiday gifts. You see, I had this brainstorm shortly after I cut my hair that I would take the saved hair, which I’ve kept in a brown paper sack in the garage, and glue tufts of it to popsickle sticks for use as bookmarks. It seemed like a fast, effective way to spread my seed around… in the hope that hundreds of years in the future I may be cloned from the DNA found in hair follicles on a silly popsickle stick bookmark. At the very least, it would creep everyone out who got one. Or maybe not: hopefully, people would be excited to get some of my previously luscious locks on a stick. Did I mention that I shampooed and conditioned with Worthington right before I lopped it all off?

This blog post, in addition to letting you readers who have stuck around for the hectic holiday month of December in on what I’ve been up to other than blogging (mainly creepy stuff), is also intended to build massive demand amongst my close friends for these hair stick bookmarks. If you want one, and you’re reading this, you’re probably going to get two. I’ve already made a bunch. But if, from me for the holiday gift, you want a personalized popsickle stick bookmark, my hair attached, with a particular saying of mine, or with a drawing of your favorite animal, like a pony, please leave me a comment and tell me how you’d like it. If you need me to, I’ll mail it along in a letter. Just let me know, I’ll have the supplies up at my house in Somerville.

Also, in the future, if you suck all the hair off your bookmark, I promise to replace the hair… Just mail it back to me with a self-addressed envelope, and you will get a re-haired bookmark. If I run out of hair in my paper sack, I’ll simply shave the thick black hairs off of my massive birthmark and use those. Season’s greetings.

Nature red in tooth and claw… I have been out of the update loop lately because of dealing with my foot problem, the holidays, working six days straight then straight to be with family. I want to make holiday cookies on 3rdarm.biz, I really do. Say hello to my little friend, spied lying dead in the cold outside a Whitey Bulger auto dealership on the Somerville line, recently seized by the government. Who squashed this government cheese?

Rose: Blanche, quick, call the police! There’s a big ugly man with a limp outside and he’s wearing Dorothy’s coat! (she looks and sees Dorothy sitting on the bed) Of course, it was dark, and I tend to overdramatize.

After I wrote in my blog yesterday, I looked up “foot” on wikipedia and discovered that there are only something like twenty bones in the foot. This cast into doubt my theory that I was afflicted with a broken bone in my bad foot: that my foot was bad to the bone. It seems to me that if in fact a bone was broken in my foot, and there’s only slightly more than a baker’s dozen bones in said foot to begin with, that it should hurt tremendously. That kicked off my next wave of research, street attorney style.

Blanche: (annoyed by Rose’s incessant dancing) Knock it off, Rose.
Rose: It’s just that I’ve always dreamed about learning to tap dance, and I guess I get too gung-ho about things. When I was a child, I used to get overexcited and pet the cat too hard.

The website for the clog shop that I bought my Sanita’s from has a section titled, “Problems With Your Feet?” and thats where I started because yes, I do have problems. Specifically with the bad foot. In that section, I read the name of a condition called, “neuroma,” or as it is titled when specifically dealing with the foot, “Morton’s neuroma.” Reading about this condition, I realized that I definitely have it. My foot pain is located between the third and fourth metatarsal heads, exactly like it was for Morton.

(Dorothy is presented with medical release forms.)
Dorothy: I’m having a simple operation. How could I possibly die?
Doctor: Oh it’s possible. Believe me.

But not just for Morton; this condition also afflicted Dorothy during a tap dancing class in an episode of the Golden Girls called, “The Operation,” dating back to the very first season. Although online medical advice says that the condition can be treated by wearing properly fitting shoes with a comfortable width at the toes, Dorothy had her neuroma surgically removed, presumably to resume aforementioned tap dance. Not only that, but there were hijinks in the hospital involving Sophia, Rose, and Blanche. Needless to say, I was much relieved to be not alone in the world with my pain. Thank you Golden Girls!

(After Dorothy sneaks back from the hospital and refuses to go back for surgery)
Sophia: Fine, it’s settled, we’ll do it here! Blanche, boil some water and get me a pillow. Rose, go sharpen my ginsu knife. Dorothy, pick out a shoe you’d like to bite on.
Dorothy: Ma, you’re not serious.
Sophia: Of course not, I’m just acting as stupid as you!

As promised, I would like to update everyone on the condition of my right foot. Also known as, “the bad foot,” this is the limb that began aching about two weeks ago. In the beginning, I considered it a temporary problem. My original diagnosis was that the problem must be a sudden onset of a strange and formidable gout that could only be cured, perversely, by a strong combination of beef and booze. And so last Friday night I downed two pint glass dark and stormy’s, a drink made by floating Gosling’s dark rum on top of Jamaican ginger beer, and wolfed down a sandwich of fried beef brisket.

That diagnosis proved to be horribly wrong, and the peak of my pain was last weekend. Sunday morning, it was all I could do during brunch to hobble around and sling eggs and hash. I must have looked like some kind of wounded warrior back from a terrific battle with an all beef army, and I got plenty of pity tips. But that brunch also became my turning point. I consulted with experts, namely Jason Lord the sous-chef who took care of my face when I ran head first into a rake at the 4th of July party, and from his sound medical advice it dawned on me that I had probably broken a small bone in that bad foot.

The identification of the problem was the first step, so to speak. Addressing said problem, and understanding the underlying cause, involved me taking off my Rockport work shoe in front of a section crowded with customers and bending it with both hands. While they, the honored Sunday guests, inhaled forkfuls of pork and runny eggs jogged down their jowls, I appraised my bendable work shoe made by Rockport and came to a stunning realization; it was not a work shoe at all. No, this shoe was a loafer. A loafer with no support that I could easily bend with my hands.

Certainly a phalange was broken; a small phalange, yes, but a phalange crucial to my hoof nonetheless. The lack of support not only caused the breakage deep in my appendage; it exasperated it. With a solution to the underlying problem in mind, after work last Sunday my coworkers took me to Vintage, a clog shop in Porter’s Square. I got a discount for working in a restaurant, and paid about $108. for a pair of black Sanitas. By the end of the day, not only was I not limping, I was positively strutting in my clogs. Standing a couple inches taller than usual, I felt like a fabulous drag queen and paraded around with a clippity-clop down the cobblestones of Harvard Square.

Now, roughly a week since I first tried to treat my supposed bout of the freak gout with fried brisket and rum, I wear a pair of bonafide European clogs. My foot still aches when I step on the bad pad, but the support given by the rest of my foot in those heavenly clogs greatly assuages it. I’m going back to work tomorrow with my head held high, or at least two inches higher than before, and with great support. Perhaps I will even break out a purple feather boa and some glamorous make up. The dogs stopped barking.

This is our cocker spaniel, Hannah, all tuckered out from a long day of exquisite doggy laziness, regal in the midst of the Xmas decorations I put up today, with her tongue out. I believe she is unconscious.

Bruce Barcott has written an excellent article in this week’s NYT Magazine about the threat that feral cats pose to endangered birds. I will have to write an update about whats happened to my foot in the past week tomorrow: today I want to put out some of my favorite quotes from the article. This is what happens when I spend an entire morning reading about birds, bears, and cats…

This interesting section covers what happened on Cat Island… “Several years ago, Fern Duvall, a wildlife biologist with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, compared two Hawaiian islands: one with a high feral-cat population, the other without any cats at all. He looked at fledging rates of seabirds, which measures the percentage of chicks that successfully leave the nest. On the cat island, only 13 percent of the chicks made it out alive. On the cat-free island, 83 percent survived.

Cats aren’t the only bird killers in Hawaii. Mongooses prey on birds, too. The difference, Duvall says, is that mongooses tend to take one or two birds and be satisfied. Cats can go postal. “We’ve had as many as 123 wedgetail shearwaters in one colony killed by a single cat,” he said. “Adult shearwaters are clumsy on the ground, and cats will come in at night and rip the skulls off the shearwater chicks. When you come upon the aftermath in the morning, it’s pretty horrendous.””

Cat hunter Jim Stevenson talking about drops in the number of local birds… “We’ve lost 40 percent of our migrant songbirds in the last 25 years — a lot of this is why,” he said, peering out at dozens of new vacation condominiums going up along the shore. “We’ve taken away their food source and their habitat. Double whammy. Then they get here, and those migrants, man, they’re beat. For the cats, it’s easy pickings. They’re popping birds like they were M & M’s.”

Karen Munday, an urban wildlife specialist, details the deadliness of cat bites… “This one’s got a wing abrasion and puncture wounds,” she said. That’s likely a fatal diagnosis. A cat’s teeth and gums contain enough bacteria to overwhelm a bird’s immune system. “What usually kills the bird isn’t the puncture; it’s the infection,” Munday explained. “A bird is more likely to survive a gunshot than a cat bite.”

My personal favorite, Jim Stevenson’s reasoning behind his decision to shoot feral cats with a shotgun…“The cat was chasing an endangered species,” he told me. “I’d tried for years to get people to do something about those cats. So I decided that I needed to take that cat out.”

The best paragraph of the article, hands down: “Up on the bridge, a tollbooth attendant named John Newland heard the shot. Newland, a quiet man in his 60s, often fed the cats under the bridge. He called them his babies. Newland bolted out of his tollbooth and saw Stevenson’s van. “I got you!” Newland screamed. “You quit shooting my cats!””