cali, also known as the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive, like the mountain man primitive, has been around Skins’s island for years and years, but only ever achieved #13 Top DUmmie in 2008, and again, #13 Top DUmmie in 2009.
It mystifies one as to why, because in addition to her long-time residence on Skins’s island, she’s usually been one of the most-quoted primitives anywhere Skins’s island is notorious—which is practically all over the internet—and she can be decidedly erratic, being repulsive to decent and civilized people one minute, then making sense to decent and civilized people (but not the primitives) the next minute.
One’s really surprised the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive’s never been in the top ten before, but this year she made it, to
#09 Top DUmmie of 2011.
cali is a
femme, circa 65 years old, maybe a couple of years younger, who lives in the woods and hills of northernmost Vermont, having been part of the great hippie migration to that area during the 1960s and 1970s, which of course sullied and despoiled the reputation of that once-remarkable state.
She lives alone; perhaps she was once married, but gives no clue. She does have one son, now an adult. For a while, she worked as a cook for a
hoity-toity tea-and-crumpets place catering to the 1%, but it was obvious she did it only for diversion and a hobby, that she wasn’t serious about it, nor needed whatever money it paid.
A native of Connecticut, it’s rumored that cali’s an aunt of Skins, but one has no idea how much credence to give to that rumor. She’s certainly unbannable, no matter what she says, and cali’s said some rather unprimitive-like things; things that have gotten other primitives thrown off Skins’s island.
cali’s one of these rare primitives one can both loathe and love at the same time.
The bitter old Vermontese cali primitive’s a great artist, her words as her paint, when doing a self-portrait; in real life, she’s probably a cross between Margaret Thatcher (in appearances only) and that one character from a long-ago black-and-white television series, Ma Kettle. A tall, angular woman, formidable, who stands out in the front yard in an old Army great-coat and rubber golashes, feeding her chickens.
There’s a whole Library of Congress of campfires lit, or commented upon, by cali, and if one wants to look them up in “search,†one should use “cali –california†and specify the DUmpster only. But even with that narrowing-down, one’s still going to end up with mountains of reading matter.
No point in giving even a sampling of links; those dealing with two matters should suffice.
-cali gets wallduded, losing her job:
cali (1000+ posts) Sun Jul-24-11 03:24 PM
Original message
It's almost August. I'm sick of the summer people.
The area where I live is a poor, rural but beautiful part of Vermont known as the Northeast Kingdom. The town where I live is most often described as "hardscrabble", but just down the road a couple of miles is beautiful pristine Caspian Lake and a thriving summer enclave of privileged people. William Rehnquist vacationed here for decades. On a brighter note, so did Wallace Stegner.
The place I work is sort of the pet place for summer people, not only from this area of Vermont but from all over the state and NH. (We welcome our neighbors- farmers, loggers, the local GLBT community, and make sure that people who aren't wealthy summer folk feel at home and can afford at least some of what's on the menu, and much of the nursery stock). The summer people are so frickin' entitled- they're always the ones letting their dogs run around unleashed and chasing the chickens and running through the display gardens)
This afternoon a particularly obnoxious, large family group is coming. (D.C. repukes, you'd recognize the name). They always arrive late. They're late now. They're demanding and constantly changing their order and running the waitress/waiter ragged. They invariably demand the screened porch- not the garden where they'd have to share space with the hoi polloi. So... we're telling them that the screened in porch is infested with earwigs. Yesterday we called and told them that if they arrive a minute past four we aren't serving them, and we're not offering them any of the specials or catering to any special dietary requests.
Petty revenge can be sweet.
20 minutes to go. They will show up at 4. We will not let them stay. We're all hoping they never come back.
Here's where I work.
http://perennialpleasures.net/tea-garden-cafe
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,62285.0Okay now, the above doesn’t sound like much, but there was a great deal that happened after our colleague notADUmmie brought this campfire over here; it ended up being one of the longest and most-read threads in the DUmpster as events unfolded.
And there was a lot that unfolded.
If one’s looking for a classic to read, this is a classic worth reading, the whole thing as it happened both on Skins’s island and the DUmpster at the same time.
Now, an illustration of the loathe-detest cali feelings held by decent and civilized people, there was this, in which decent and civilized people oozed nothing but sympathy and care for a human being in pain:
cali (69,734 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
Chronic Pain.
It scares me just to type those words. I'm hoping like hell that I don't have to live with this on and on and on. It's been 3 months now and every day I'm in pain. My heart goes out to those of you who live in pain year after year. In the morning when I get up- and the pain wakes me up early, I just live with it as long as I can, usually for several hours and then I cave and take a ****ing percocet. I hate that shit. I hate the way it makes me feel- just off kilter, but I hate the pain more. It just drives me nuts. I'm not sure if it actually gets worse or just I can't tolerate it after a certain point.
It seems so silly. I broke my leg. All this from a broken leg. Ok, a ****ing very badly segmental and compound fracture of the tibia and a segmental fracture of the fibula that resulted in hours of surgery and the placement of a titanium rod in the middle of the tibia from ankle to knee with all the attendant hardware (4 big honking nails).
three months on the the bones are still in the process of healing.
But the pain and the swelling are frustratingly constant and often startlingly ntense. If I "overdo" one day, I'm incapacitated for 4. Anyway, it's not the broken bones that are the main culprit when it comes to pain; it's the soft tissue and nerve damage.
I feel like a whiner. I keep telling myself to just get over it- and when I have a good day or a good period in a day, I'm so damned happy and relieved. I always think: "I'm turning the corner", but then the comes roaring back or sneaking back and I feel like I'm stuck.
I don't know what else to say and I'm not even sure why I'm posting this beyond complaining, something I don't do much of in real life because what the hell are people supposed to say if they ask you how you are and you tell them you're in horrid pain?
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,67650.0franksolich
Scourge of the Primitives
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The other thing is--and remember, I'm no pal of the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive--trying to get up the stairs to the telephone was probably the last thing she should've tried.
Having had broken legs myself, that sort of movement makes me grimly shudder.
Of course it wasn't too bright that she dragged herself along a country lane (but remember, the trauma causes one to not think clearly), although that was a better alternative. She was outdoors where people might be passing by and see her. Nobody did, but they might have.
If she had stayed inside the house, people might've passed by the house, thinking nothing unusual was going on inside.
I guess I'm intrigued why the telephone is upstairs in her home, rather than on the first floor. I assume there's a good reason for that, but have no idea what it might be.
cali has a problem here. She's anti-social; doesn't like people.
As an older single woman living alone out in the woods of Vermont, she really needs others to check up on her occasionally. But one gets the impression she snarls at people coming to see her.
franksolich lives out in the middle of nowhere, the nearest neighbor six miles away. Until recently, franksolich resisted the loud public clamor that he get a telephone (which has since been gotten, but hey, being deaf, it doesn't do me any good).
It's kind of nice being out here all alone, but it does have its hazards.
And so while I may bitch and moan about people coming here (especially during the middle of the night), on the other hand, I'm grateful that they do.
It seems as if, 24/7/365, there's always at least one person coming here about, say, every four hours of the day--the neighbor, the property caretaker, the neighbor's wife, one of the ranch-hands from across the road, the grumpy old guy, the femme, the rose-gardener from town, Bible and Fuller Brush salesmen, Jehovah's Witnesses, hunters and fishermen, the county sheriff, the ancient elderly couple who own this place, the mailman, the milk-man, Republican party operatives, the senior business partner, state patrolmen, &c., &c., &c.
If I were to break my leg out here again, I'd do just what I'd done the last time.
I'd sit and wait. Inevitably, in four hours or less, someone will come by.
The bitter old Vermontese cali primitive, being an older woman living alone out in the middle of nowhere, needs to become more social, more amenable to human company, so she has the assurance that if something's wrong, help will come soon.
Finally, one’s compelled to put a touch of vanity into an award, because one isn’t sure if the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive ever saw this recent tribute to her:
--cali does Christmas with franksolich
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,67761.0
