The Seasoning of Life

The new Grand Fiend trifle is up, The Seasoning of Life. http://www.linguisticerosion.com/2012/11/conversations-with-grand-fiend.html\

For most of them, I got my inspiration from my collection of monster drawings (yeah I know, kind of goofy just even writing that) but this came from a small book by the food writer MFK Fisher, A Cordial Water. This is a neat little book about all the foods and herbs meant to cure people. She is a fine writer and its more engaging than it might sound at first, with that said, I haven't finished the book, I just gotta sit down and go through it.

The first chapter talks about a gray little girl she went to school with who stank "She wore around her neck a bag of assafeddity. It had a bitterness to it, rather rancid, and when I discussed this casually with my mother, she laughed in a vague remembering way and said to see if my new friend did not wear a little cloth bag hanging under her dress around her neck. And she did. During recess went down to the dim toilets together, and quietly she showed it to me, gray, gray, even her skin in that light was he color of her wool dress, her underwear, the soft little bag like a dead field mouse on a string. It would keep fevers away, she whispered gently to me."

Two paragraphs later the little girl dies and the family moves away. Strong stuff this thing called belief. And of course it inspired nonsense from me.