Finally!

After three abortive tries I managed to meet David and Amy Goodman in person. Briefly, yes, but finally it happened!

She's doing a whirlwind book tour, and since KUNM has had Democracy Now! on the air since its inception ten years ago, she stopped in Albuquerque for a big event that drew at least 800 local people.

Went early, stayed late, and got a good email address from her and so help me we *are* bringing DN to public radio in El Paso if it kills me!

Smoking.

I am still smoking.

But I'm doing it in different ways and it has taken on a whole new meaning.

I'm still filling my lungs with smoke on a daily basis.

But these days it's either exquisite Tibetan incense or Jalapenos over an open hickory-wood fire in the Hibachi in my parking space.

Sure beats the hell out of the miserable, reconstituted dregs of the chemical-soaked, stinking tobacco plants, the smoke of which, make no mistake, I still deliberately inhale about one out of every three or four days or so. Make no mistake -- I'm sure there's still plenty of carbon monoxide involved. But there's no nicotene. It's not perfection by a long shot but it is a huge improvement.

Right now I've just replenished the hardwood fire for the third time tonight, and am keeping an eye on it 'til the flames subside. They whip up around the sides of the Thai dumpling steamer I've provisionally converted into a smoker and threaten to melt the plastic handles.

I'm smoking most of the remainder of the jalapenos I got Saturday now to make chiles chipotles. The smoking of the chiles is a necessary step. There's something indescribably beautiful and even almost sacred about it. The flames out there at close to midnight, basically roasting chiles, in a small-batch, strictly local homemade way that's reproduced by all the local produce stores everywhere in this part of the world with their giant gas-fired tumblers, the smell from which draws people in from all around.

The batch last night turned out really well. Way damn well. Way better than I had any right to expect. Which is why I am doing it again. So what if it's a three day process to make one tiny batch? Batch one is good, batch two will be better. I'll manage the balancing of spices and vegetables better, I am sure. The step of smoking the chiles is this most labour-intensive part. I have to watch the flames, and almost constantly. It takes hours, and still they don't smoke to the dryness you can get in smoked japapenos from Juarez.

And yes, when the time comes to boil them with piloncillo and spices I "cheat" and use the gas stove inside my apartment.

This "slow foods movement" thing has got me in its grip! And no, I'm still not "raw" like Don Schrader. I keep an open mind, but in the world of "harm reduction strategies", smoking jalapenos to boil them in piloncillo is still a damn sight better than smoking cigarettes.

Chiles Chipotles.

I'm writing less these days because I don't like where my writing every day takes me.

I have a tendency to overanalyse everything and it makes for bad writing. I have to give myeelf the space to live without reporting faithfully, ever day, whatever happens.

Saturday I got about five pounds of fresh organic local jalapenos at the downtown growers' market.

The same day they were picked, I smoked about a pound of 'em over hickory wood in my $2 Goodwill hibachi.

Today I finished up the first batch of my own chiles chipotles, based on a recipe passed down from mouth to ear for at least four generations now past. Four half-pint mason jars filled with the nectar of the gods are all the proof I need that I did it.

I know preciselty who is getting each and every jar.

And I know that when I get out of work tomorrow, I'm spending the six hours or so after that smoking the next batch of jalapenos, so that the day after that, I can make another tiny batch of the best chiles chipotles this world has ever seen, smelled, or tasted.

Good to be back.

Let's just hope I don't continue to get charged for ads, seeing as I paused them, which will just piss off people clicking on 'em while costing me money.

Not that I'm not glad to pay when that's the best way I can think of to spread the word about a thing with a tight deadline. And if you're disinclined to oppose nuclear weapons because I dislike windows, or hell, because I know Mexican food, then fuck you -- you're clearly worthless "chatter" and "the cost of doing business" and all that to begin with, besides which, based on "stats" alone, I have no doubt someone has commented to NNSA whereas you just bitched at me.

This is *my* space, so please, get used to it.

So back to online life as normal.

Got a microscope yesterday at the indoor flea market. Shouldn't have, but did, and think I did OK. The damn thing's not just built. It's fuckin' *engineered*.

What an amazing piece of work it is, too! It's a 1965 Kyowa trinocular model. I've wanted a microscope for a while but 99% of what you see out there is childrens' toys -- of greater or lesser quality, to be sure, but still basically toys. The remaining 1% tends to be just as unaffordable as buying cameras in camera shops. So when I see one that is clearly not a toy but priced as though it were, I know I'd be a damn fool *not* to buy it.

This thing is clearly a research/lab/industry model -- and since it was priced like it *was* a kid's toy, of course, I got it, knowing I'd regret it later if I didn't. The only thing it was missing was the key to the carrying case, which may mean I should carry it carefully, but won't make it less a fine instrument to begin with.

A word on optical equipment of any ilk whatever in flea markets: it's rare as teats on a boar hog to actually have matching eyepieces come with whatever you get, ever. To have the "covers" for where the eyepieces go in their absence in the main bit of equipment is unheard of. To have both, complete with the carrying cases for the object *and* the eyepieces intact is practically unthinkable. To have all those but still be missing the flat-pressed key for the dovetailed box which keeps it all safely locked in one place is one tiny step short of perfect Nirvana. And for the price that I paid, one step short of perfection was *nothing*.

But let's be honest. Yes, I know, I could have obtained a better microscope if I'd spent oh let's say roughly 20 times what I did. The highest-magnification objective (of four) does seem to be significantly worse for wear, which I don't wonder why, since it seems you have to practically shove the slide right up against the damn thing to see whatever it is you're looking at in three dimensions to begin with. Which is pretty damned amazing seeing as the objective itself scrunches in with a precision-loaded tiny spring whenever you come too close to it, rather than just shattering the slide right off the bat.

Really, it's an amazing piece of super-high precision optical machinery, though yeah, it is a bit dirty after more than forty years being here, there, and wherever, during which it's probably been through at least two or three generations' hands looking at super-tiny stuff.

I took a single drop of rainwater last night from the ristra and looked at it and was amazed and shocked at what showed up under magnification, in colour, from a drop of WATER one chile removed from the sky itself.

Of course I don't know what anything I'm looking at actually *is*. I can only ultimately *guess* that this is just dirt, while that is dust, while that third thing is is some sort of salt, while that fourth thing is probably some sort of sugar, while that fifth thing is absolutely undeniably plastic, though how it got to be that small, I have no clue, blah blah blah blah.

It's kind of scary! Total amateur looking at rainwater beneath a slide, and now he's scared even to drink the rainwater. There was also some almost perfectly circular thing or other that I'd swear from my high school biology class was a living cell. I mean, I *swear* I saw it *moving* and everything, and *not* just because I pressed the cover-slide too close against the objective, either! Too bad for me, I suppose, that I always sucked at science, and thus don't really have the words to describe what I'm looking at.

I want to look at a drop of water from the pestilential puddle of rainwater outside but will wait 'til tomorrow, on the assumption it'll be more interesting (for which, read "more pestilential") to look at *tomorrow* after it's had another 24 hours to fester.

Getting slides for the damn thing was an adventure in itself. This is a standard feature of my buying things in thrift stores and flea markets -- they send me on wild goose chases to this and that whatever specialist type stores that exist wherever, usually on the far reaches of town, and right before they close.

In this case, I got the microscope and looked at a few things under minimal magnification to just the point I figured I could actually learn to use the damn thing, which at this point I want to keep it just for being an absolute marvel of optical and mechanical workmanship on the level of the 70mm movie projectors I've worked with, though sort of going the opposite direction, as it were. I never thought a clear ruler or piece of paper was so insanely complex. Just wait 'til the next time I cut my finger. Of course I'm determined now *not* to cut my finger *just* to look at my own blood cells! Though goodness knows, who could *not* understand, if they saw just how a random cat's hair was actually constructed?

So I start calling up "Microscope" businesses from the yellow pages. One or two get the message loud and clear that I'm no scientist and they kinda blow me off, to which I don't take any great offence, but keep on looking, regardless.

Then the gentleman at McBain Instruments -- peace be upon him, his family, freinds, and companions -- didn't scare the shit outta me when I called. He showed as much a sense of humour as I've ever heard from anyone scientifically inclined, then actually dug out a business card for a place called "AlbuChemist" right outside the Wyoming Boulevard Gate of Sandia National Labs that he said would be willing to sell me "less than a truckload" of microscope slides.

Wow. I never knew SNL (I do not mean "Saturday Night Live") had a gate on Wyoming. So of course I have to drive down just to see the gate.

I thanked him sincerely and saved his phone number.

Guess who I'm calling when I decide the super-tiny optics in my microscope suddenly need cleaning. (And they do.)

I call up AlbuChemist and heh heh the guys in the shop are insane! Mad scientists! Agh!!! I love them!

They want to know what all I'm looking at and wanting to look at while I'm afraid they're judging me because I'm walking in without a white coat. I tell them bluntly I just got it at the flea market and recognize a tool as opposed to a toy and want to look at anything I can. One of 'em says "I got crabs once and looked at one under the microscope and the damn thing was a monster" -- to which I *wanted* to say "yeah, well, I figure I'll just use the thing to keep track of my T-helper lymphocytes" but alas, prudence won out, and my oh-so-clever comeback just went by the wayside. He did suggest looking at spinach -- which goodness knows, I'll be lucky to find at all, now that five people have turned up sick as dogs in the county. On my way out, he says something about "I suspect we'll never see him again", to which I reply something like "I wish, on principle, that I could disagree, but you're probably correct".

Still, of course, I do hope to prove him wrong.

And damn it, if I ever come up with more than 72 things to look at underneath the microscope, I will!

And naturally, I'm open to suggestions. So far, I've looked at chocolate (I never really dreamed it had a surface tension like it does), the leaf of a weed (which didn't work so well as I had hoped it would), dust (which alone is enough to make me want to wear a face mask everywhere), and of course -- rainwater, complete with creepy stuff I never, ever dreamt of.

What's next? Dust from the asbestos floortiles? I honestly don't know. Any and all recommendations are welcome.