Month: January 2015

1:20pm STORES ARE OUT OF ESSENTIAL SUPPLIES

Jim Dowd reporting from East Gloucester

Hello readers, I am not certain that my neighborhood better know as “Eglo” is ready for the tribulation to come. First off, no one can find any duck fat anywhere. I am worried about crowds of marauders possibly trying to break into Duckworth’s Bistro in search of it, just their very name is suggestive of its crisping deliciousness.

“Braaaains comfiiiit!”

Second, though like any “Black Swan” event it all seems predictable in retrospect, how were we to know ukeleles did not perform well in the cold? Of course it makes sense NOW, they are obviously a tropical instrument in a temperate climate. Obvioulsy there would be adaptation issues, but who knew they would all go out of tune at the same time? If the power goes out I fear we shall have to switch to the recorder in order to perform the Wilco covers necessary to see us through the dark times ahead.

3:39 STORMTROOPERS ARE ON MOUNT PLEASANT AVE! I REPEAT, THERE ARE STOPRMTROOPERS ON MOUNT……*static*

More useful than those stupid Humvees the cops got, that’s for sure

Picket forces at the third marker near The Last Stop have reported AT-ATs approaching Gloucester! This is likely the vanguard force of the 501st Imperial Legion led by Major General Maximilian Veers. They will head for the power generators first, taking down the turbines at the Blackburn Industrial Center then head toward downtown. The evacuation point is O’Maley where transports will be waiting. And yes, it only takes two X-Wings to escort them because duh, ion cannon.

Good Luck and may the Force be with you.

STORMPOCALYPSE! HISTORIC BLIZZARD! TINY ICE CRYSTALS OF DEATH! CRIPPLING! SOCIETAL COLLAPSE! TAUNTAUN TORSO TERROR!

Like every media outlet your The Clam intends to capitalize on all of our impending collective death by by blizzard to the extent possible until our little blogging hands freeze solid and we are found welded with ice to our laptops thousands of years from now by glacier climbers like that other blogger they found in the Italian Alps.

Poor diet, bad teeth and mysteriously murdered? Yep, he was a blogger all right.

Stay tuned to The Clam for updates on the weather, the people and mostly the madness as the pressure of the storm collapses our fragile psyches like the can containing the last of the Gansett. Should we head out into the snow for more? What choices do we have, really?

I had a conversation with Jim earlier this week during a Clam-related meeting about content and posting schedule. “James!” I lamented, “It appears my input here at the Gloucester Clam (TM) has led to a job writing blog posts and managing social media part time. As that will actually be paying me, and your clientele is also picking up, what shall we do? Six days of blog posts is a lot for the two of us to tackle!” So we came up with “Fuck It Mondays.”

The premise of Fuck It Mondays is this: We see a lot of ridiculous stuff on Facebook and Twitter all week long. Why are we not aggregating the best of it into a blog post and sharing it with you? I’m not talking a direct “ten puppies you won’t believe have no toes!” list, but you know, shit that’s hilarious.

So here we are. Brooke, Jim and myself will team up to bring you some of the best shit we saw all week. You’re welcome.

This video is old as garlic balls, apparently, but here on Island of Moms Who Don’t Leave Gloucester, we have just found it (thanks Amanda Cook).

We spend a lot of time talking about imaginary things. I do, you probably do. It’s sort of weird actually. Last week the two biggest conversations online were:

1. Was a movie about a particular soldier accurate? Not “were the wars he was sent to just?” Nothing about our culpability as citizens of a society that both glorifies war and at the same time is hampered by our profound inability to adjust to the reality of conflict in the 21st century. The discussion even took an absurd twist into the legitimacy of “snipers” who have been around since the invention of firearms. Next time you go to Boston look for the big wooden platforms ¾ of the way up the masts of the USS Constitution. You know who hung out there during a battle? We settled that argument a long time ago.

Hey Michael Moore- who the fuck do you think hung out up here?

1. Something about deflating balls for a football game. This topic created near critical heat-overload  emergencies at server farms last week. No one seemed to come forward with the thoughts: “Who gives a fuck?” or “maybe they can work that out using their internal process” which are completely reasonable reactions to this non-story. Football is a game. It’s imperatives are completely imaginary, they exist solely in our minds.

Ha hahaha. Sorry. Amused myself there. The imaginary, it turns out, is the most important thing. like ever. Take two more facts into account: The gunmen who killed the satirical newspaper folks in Paris had to pretty much drive by an atheist church to get there and Johnny Depp is worth 350 million dollars.

The guy in the pirate suit is worth more than the entire value of the hospital treating the girl he is visiting.

The atheists say that Allah, the god of Islam, does not exist at all. You’d think this would piss off the terrorists more than the depictions of the prophet Muhammad, right? “Hey assholes, you are wasting your time believing in and willing to kill for a complete fantasy and you and everyone you love are wrong about every fundamental fact about the nature of the universe.” That’s worse than, “Your prophet has a bomb in his hat” or whatever, right? Apparently not.

It’s like the arguments that crop up among Star Trek fans. The Next Generation people will just go off on the Deep Space Nine folks, but never on people who don’t like Star Trek at all. Isn’t that odd?

This scene. That is all.

And Johnny Depp. Let’s think long and hard about him for a second. Do we enjoy his movies? Of course we do. The swishy pirate thing is hysterical. Did he get to date Winona Ryder our late ‘80s movie star crush? Yes he did. Is he worth 350 million dollars, and by worth do I mean is the service he provides to society really as valuable as the companies owned by Stephen Wolfram? No. No it is not, Winona notwithstanding.

Me? Jealous? Never.

This is just some food for thought, but I suggest we calibrate our relationship to the imaginary. It has taken on an outsized role in our lives. I’m as guilty as anyone, I can get into hours-long debates about the Lord of the Rings or the existential suckiness of the Star Wars prequels. And most certainly we here at The Clam find plenty of A-grade satire material in pop culture in general. But it serves us all (and I’m pointing the finger at myself as much as anyone) to remember we have real problems and real issues and real relationships and loves and lives that need at least as much attention as any one of is compelled to put toward rehashing Breaking Bad.

Oh. Wait. It’s “Oscar Season.” Never mind.

Although my allegiance lies deeply rooted in Gloucester, it’s necessary to branch out once in awhile and see what some of the other nearby cities are up to. Apparently other cities do cool shit, too (occasionally). Our friend and occasional Clamtributor Josh Turiel, after all, is city councilor down in Salem and is always trying to convince us of its superiority. Do they have a dumpling place and the Greasy Pole? No? Not interested, sir.

But! Today on The Facebooks (TM), I was alerted to the existence of an event so great, so magnificent and brilliant an idea that drool immediately formed in the corners of my mouth and I became Homer-esque in my desire.

Please don’t sue, Matt Groening.

There it was: The Great Salem Mayonnaise Challenge of 2015. Holy crap. That sounds like a party. I mean, okay, at first I will admit I thought it was perhaps one of those challenge diets where you only eat things served in 16 ounce jars and labeled “refrigerate after opening” (my favorite of those being the Grape Jelly challenge). But, no, it’s not that at all (and apparently that’s not a real thing and I just ate a lot of jelly for no reason). Boo hiss.

What it is – a blind taste test featuring the top jarred mayonnaise brands (Cain’s, Hellman’s, Whole Foods) as well as the Ugly Mug‘s homemade and possibly other fresh-made options as well. It’s going on down next Wednesday, January 28th at 6:30 PM at the Ugly Mug diner, which is a fun place to eat and despite our great breakfast joints in G-town, I wish they’d put one up here as well. Maybe just nuke Friendly’s from orbit and take that space. Sorry, Friendly’s.

internet, what are you even giving me here

Judges will taste the mayonnaise plain (yum, what’s better than a big heaping spoonful of nothin’ but emulsion?), on bread, and on bread with meat/cheese (formerly known as “a sandwich”). No lying, I’d totally judge this. I love mayonnaise. I fucking LOOOOVE mayonnaise. LOVE IT. I hope half of you reading this are trying not to vomit silently into your office trash barrel so no one knows you’re goofing off during a conference call. That’s what you get. I love it smeared on Steak and Cheese subs until everything is a disgusting shade of grey. Cheeseburgers.  Potato salad. GOD YES, PASTA SALAD. I don’t want to live in a world without mayonnaise. (My husband grew up in a household where it was smeared on microwaved chicken and jello salad, the poor boy. I have my limit).

I feel those feels, copy machine!

“But KT,” you say, “this is child’s play. Frippery at best. There are so many serious problems in the world, why are you wasting your precious journalism talents on this? It’s mayonnaise!” Oh, but you’d be wrong. I reached out to Josh Turiel, who explained how important this quest was.

 “I’m glad that here in Salem we can conclusively deal with serious questions like this one. Finding the best mayo is the kind of thing that we need to do here before we can move on to bring peace and prosperity to the world.”

See? This is a necessary endeavor for the Ugly Mug and the Salem Food Digest to undertake in the road towards ceasing man’s unrelenting bloodthirst towards his own species, and we must support them.

I’m totally going, especially if I can eat mayonnaise in front of people (somehow there’s probably a rule 34 involving public consumption of plain mayo). Hell yeah.