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Read a lot and watched Scary Movie 4. Negative five out of five.
Almost another off day. Then the sun went down.
We were in the middle of Stealth, the fan was blowing in the room.
Then I realized it was actually sort of cold. Wind was picking up.
Then it went black. All the auntie’s yelled brown out. Crazy world we live in: black people are brown and brown outs are black. (Was that racist?)
Earlier in the day, I saw a goat get slaughtered. And I only watched the beginning. I watched them drown it with vinegar and up to the part where they hang it up and blowtorch the hair off it. Slightly disturbing. Later, peering through a window, I saw a goat head on a table. I’m no
Sherlock, but I think they cut it up at some point. And in the
afternoon my auntie announced that the crickets were ready. She asked
my uncle, her husband, to confirm that they were crickets. He said
locusts. I said no thanks.
All of us were standing under a metal roof next to a swimming pool.
All I could think of was the equation used to determine how much time
until fibrillation occurs when electrocuted. Or not think of, because I force-forgot it probably 2 minutes after my final. It was pitch black save
for a few candles. Lightning was racing between the clouds. It
looked like God was taking pictures. Kind
of scary. Locusts, goats being slaughtered, black clouds, and violent
lightning. Four horsemen coming right up.
Then rain started coming down. Seattle rain is nothing to complain
about. It’s disconcerting to hear water beating on a steel roof with
thunder in between. Normally this is worth freaking out, but a few
dozen people were around and they hardly shrugged their shoulders.
The aunties just brought out food and we feasted.
Trying to avoid the uncles from tricking me into eating goat and fear
factor platters, I went inside and ate with some of the older aunties.
You know how they always really want you to eat? Well, it worked out
this time because I really wanted to eat. Crab, shrimp, and lots of
it. Dozens of crabs on serving plates around and outside
the house. “Prawn” and “shrimp” mean different things in various
places, but “big” translates easily. These were big. The kind they
charge something like $17 a pound for at Albertson’s. I imagine we didn’t pay as
much here.
This will probably be one of the more memorable meals of my life.
It was the kind of no-frills meal that Anthony Bourdain waxes poetic about. Good food, lightning, no electricity, and a bunch of aunties and
grandmas talking and happy to see me eat as long as I didn’t waste the shrimp
heads. Cholesterol came up as a topic, but they all pretty much
agreed – – right now, who cares?