it's a rant!

According to Yahoo, searches for "Osama bin Laden" went up by nearly 100% after U.S president Obama announced that he had been found and killed. Those numbers weren't really surprising. It was sort of 'duuh' information, really. More disturbing, the fifth most popular search was "who is Osama bin Laden?"

66% of the latter searchers were young teens. 34% didn't even have that feeble excuse. I suppose it's possible that this was a logical way to find out more about the guy, beyond 9/11. At least I hope so.

If you happen to be one of those people who conducted that last search, and what I just mentioned was not the reason for it, then I regret to inform you that you are stupid. Actually, stupid might be too mild a word. You are the poster child for birth control. No, that's also too mild... You are the nr1 reason why someone should invent a time machine. That way they could travel to the past and neuter both your parents before you were born. If I was going to say this to anyone else, I would probably have some minuscule concern of hurting their feeling. I'm relieved by the thought that you're most likely to dumb to get the insult.

Seriously, just when you think you've seen the absolute bottom of human stupidity, there's a whole stupid underground garage.

Mr Immaculate Driveway

One of the things that I like about living here, is the lack of neighbours. There are only four houses on our street. That and a really big field. I pretty much went off neighbours the past year before I moved here. There were very spesific reasons for this.

For example, there was the Big Orange. For those of you who are new around here, the Big Orange was my landlord who had some… issues. To put it gently. After I pretty much escaped from my apartment (due to Big Orange being crazy and all), I ended up living across the street from Mr Immaculate Driveway.

Just like Big Orange needed his lawn mowed at the exact same time every Wednesday, Mr Immaculate Driveway needed his driveway CLEAN. Every single morning, afternoon and evening he would hose it down thoroughly. This would take from 20 minutes up to an hour and gawd only knows how much water. The black concrete would glisten. He also wanted to have walls of pretty masonry lining it. This is why he decided to hire a small army of pollacks to make his dream come true. That’s what people do in the ol’ country when they want carpeting or such done cheaply; they hire pollacks. Summer is high season for these things. Usually they get what they pay for.

The Pollack army arrived at the same time as summer vacation. I don’t think there’s anything quite as grinding as the sound of masonry. After a while, those buzz-saws start to feel as if they’re physically cutting into your brain. It certainly took all the fun out of sitting out in the sun. The enormous cloud of dust that they generated also did it’s part to spoil the mood. For the first couple of weeks, they would start working at 8am and keep going until 9pm, Monday through Saturday.

At some point during the hiring process, Mr Immaculate Driveway should have asked his new staff a question along the lines of: “would any of you happen to be masons?”

The answer would have been: “Not so much.”

Mistakes were made. Lots of them. That lead to the workers to keep working until past ten in the evening. This lasted for five weeks. I’m amazed that nobody tried to kill the guy. He would have come second to Hitler in a popularity contest.

Mr Immaculate Driveway had bigger concerns. His property was covered in stone dust. His beloved driveway rapidly turned a dirty sort of grey, despite a vigorous hosing routine. At first he tried to hose it down regularly, while the pollacks were working. That didn’t work, so as soon as the lads knocked off for the evening, he resorted to giving it a cleaning unlike anything it had ever seen before. He would put the hose away once it started to get dark.

The only time during those five weeks that we had a quiet day (other than Sunday), was that Saturday when it rained. I stood in the window, hugging my cup of coffee, watching Mr I.D. He was out in the rain with an enormous red and yellow umbrella, hosing down the driveway.

Can’t say I miss him.

Picture: "hosing down" by Ellabll for deviantart.

The Big Orange

As you may or may not know, I recently moved into a maniacs garage. I should maybe point out that it's a garage apartment. I'm not about to bunk down on top of a pile of powertools.

The maniac is a big orange fellow. His hair and enormous beard are orange, his skin is orange, his house is orange, the garage is orange and down the road he has a great, big orange mailbox. He also drives an orange truck. If his shrill, shaky voice was a color, that would be orange too.

Since moving in two months ago, I have been out of town twice. Both times Big Orange locked himself into my flat and had a good snoop around. Seeing how this bloke was clearly...uhm...unbalanced - not to mention annoying like a hemorrhoid - from the start, I never intended to live there for very long. Therefore I have been living out of boxes.

I should also mention that Big Orange is more than a little bit of a neat freak. He will spend all day chopping firewood in the field below the house because every log has to be the exact same size. He mows the lawn every Wednesday at the exact same time. Last Wednesday he did it in the rain.

Needless to say, he found my boxes absolutely shocking. I mean, if you're using a large cardboard box as a dresser, then clearly the world is headed towards a state of dangerous anarchy and you will be sent to the burning pits of hell when you go 'join the choir invisible' as it were.

I'm sure there are choirs in hell. Or Simon Cowell will start one up when he passes on.

But I digress. My point was that Big Orange locked himself into my flat and confrontation followed.

Nobody is going to tell me whether or not I'm allowed to own cardboard boxes, so I kept up business as usual. This weekend I went out of town again and yet again curiosity got the better of Big Orange.

I read somewhere that it takes a certain bodysize in order for any creature to develop intelligence. If the body is too small, your nervous system is also too small and too simple to enable learning. No ability to learn, no intelligence. Big Red is proof that there is always an exception to every rule: sometimes really huge creatures don't have the ability to learn, either.

Not only did I still have all my boxes, plus a couple of new ones (I went amok at a flee market) but I had also cleaned some towels and then just draped them over the rack in stead of hanging them properly. He immediately tracked down my mothers adress and went over there to inform her that I was now evicted from the apartment. Which I had no objections to at all. I mean, there is only so much relaxing you can do with a crazy psycho buzzing around in your yard.

I should be settled into my new place by this weekend, and then Big Orange can explain to the police how the tenants act doesn't apply in his magical kingdom.

Napoleon or whatever

Added: And then, once I woke up properly, I realized that I've written Haiti half of the time and then Tahiti the other half. See, this is why I don't get up early. Sometimes I kinda feel like I should. It's a bit like having breakfast - I don't want to, really, but I feel obligated to from time to time because that's what society seems to expect. But I don't like it and it makes me do strange things. But hey, if Tahiti ever has an earthquake or makes a deal with the devil (whatever happens first), I'll just change it back to Tahiti and re-post. And I promise to never again wake up at 5am, think to myself: "Oh my, I can't sleep. What shall I do? I know! I'll blog some!" Anyways, do read. It should be perfectly safe now.

I was determined NOT to write anything about Haiti, because that’s what everyone’s been doing lately, and I want to be unique, dammit.

But I can’t seem to restrain myself any longer. By now we all know how reverend Pat Robertson has been buzzing around in the media, talking about how Haiti brought this earthquake upon themselves because back in the day they had all gotten together and made a deal with the devil. See, they wanted to get out from under the heel of the French (“Napoleon the third, or whatever.”) They all all got together and asked Satan to get the French off their backs and Satan said “Yeah, okay.” Then the Haitians revolted and kicked the French out, all because Satan believed in them.

I’m curious, though… How did they all “get together,” exactly? I mean, it’s hard enough to set up a lunch appointment with the girls. Our boss has been trying to arrange a staff meeting for weeks, with no luck what so ever. And we’re only five people working there. There’s around 200000 people in Haiti. Not sure how many they were under French occupation, but I’m pretty sure there were more then five. Did they have unusually large football stadiums back then? How did they plan this extraordinary meeting? It’s not like they could fire off a txt message to everyone saying: “Meeting with that Satan dude at the freakishly big football stadium at 8:00pm, Tuesday. Be there or be a Frenchman's pony!”

I believe in keeping an open mind when it comes to philosophy and religion and mathematics and stuff, but not to the point where your brain falls out of your head and goes rolling down the street. Just sayin’

Curse of the plastic bags. Or whatever.

Today I had an adventure. Grocery shopping does qualify as an adventure when judged by The Hellholian Scale of Excitement. Besides, when you’re living with Pooch, who has a habit of licking things that should not be licked and developing farts that smell just like the circus, a change of air might not be such a bad idea.

There I was, puttering around between the isles, my little, blue plastic shopping basket in one hand and my shopping list in the other. Ten minutes later, I had worked up quite an impressive selection of items, some of which I needed but most of which I simply wanted. And deserved, dammit.

“Would you like a bag?” the cashiere with the dead eyes asked me, after she’d finished the laborious task of ringing up all my groceries.

“No, hidden inside the dark bowels of my coat, I have more arms than an army of octopuses and would have no problem carrying a million things home,” I thought. I didn’t say that, of course, because I am a polite and civilized sort of person. In stead I simply smiled and said “yes, please.”

So the woman yanked out a plastic bag from underneath the registery, where it lived with its family and friends inside a little cardboard box, dumped it on top of my small mountain of groceries and then she quickly got up and disappeared through the plastic doors in the back of the store, labelled “staff only!!!”

That’s right: three exclamation marks.

I’m not entirely sure what sort of math went on inside her head to make her think that said mountain was going to fit inside a single plastic bag. It is, after all, exactly as big on the inside as it appears to be from the outside. It’s a typical, run-of-the-mill plastic bag – not the bloody starship Enterprise.

The thing is, they always give you one -1- plastic bag, regardless of how much crap you’re hauling with you. If you want more, you have to specifically ask and carefully outline how many you think you’ll need. I momentarily forgot this, and ended up standing there with 80 bucks worth of groceries, a tiny plastic bag and the distinct feeling of just having screwed myself over.   

I bet they all just sit in their little staff-only area, stuffing their faces with chips and watching the little surveillance screens to see how the customers try to work out this little equation. Well, I wasn’t going to be their lunch entertainment. I stole a plastic bag, I did. Hell, I stole TWO.

Thus my life of crime has started. You gonna do something about it, mate? I have a pooch with flatulence and I’m not afraid to use it.

 

Eggbert and The Styrostinkers!

A week ago the unthinkable happened: I turned on my computer to find that the screen was black as pitch. Then a little, blue square appeared and in it were the words “no signal detected!” With an exclamation mark, as if this failure to detect a signal was very especially panic-inducing. I tried turning the machine off and then on again. And off and on. And off and on. Off. On.

“No signal detected!”

Something was very wrong, so I made a decision. I would call customer service. Even though that meant making a long-distance phone call with my cell phone, something which most students on a budget tighter than Boy George’s pants in the 80s, would be reluctant to do.

Two minutes later, there I was, sitting on the kitchen chair, staring at my blackened monitor and listening to Shakira sing how fortunate it is that her boobs are tiny so that they’re not mistaken for mountains, occasionally interrupted by a man’s voice saying: “thank you for holding. You will be serviced soon.”

I had a friend once who claimed to have dumped her boyfriend for saying that.

While we waited, Bergerac (my brain) and I started to conjure up images of me pushing setting Shakira’s hair on fire, and just as we were getting really good at creating scenarios, we were interrupted by Bob.

“Hello, this is Bob. How may I help you?”

I explained my problem to Bob and pictured him sitting in his office chair behind a desk with his headset, while nodding solemnly as he listened to me speak.

“I see,” he said after I was done. “Is the computer plugged in?”

The idea that the computer would, in fact, not be plugged in, was so far from my mind, that Bergerac needed some time to mull the question over before I could say yes.

“Are you sure?” asked Bob. I noticed that the tone of his voice never changed. Again I pictured him sitting there, behind his desk, but this time he was Data from Star Trek. And I was standing behind him, arms raised above my head, ready to beat him to death with a mallet.

“No, I’m a dribbling idiot. Of course it’s plugged in,” I said.

“Very well. Please turn the computer off and on and blah, blah, blah.” Said Bob in his ever-unchanging tone of voice.

He didn’t actually say that last bit, but that was what I heard. After much back and forth and blah, blah, blah, it was agreed upon that the computer would go to the computer hospital in Big City.


This immediately brought about another problem: Eggbert (my computer) needed something to travel in. Since I’d thrown out the packaging that the computer originally came in, I needed new stuff. I hadn’t thought that would be too much of a problem, but I completely forgot that everything is a bit complicated when you’re living in Big Hellhole, Hickville. After three hours of wandering the streets, hitting one store after another, I had to admit that it was a lost cause. I would have had an easier time striking gold.

Bob, of course, had secretly scurried down here and abducted all the cardboard boxes and Styrofoam, at the same time erasing people’s memories of them ever being there to begin with. He was being a very naughty little android.

What’s that? Ridiculous? It most certainly is not. However, the idea of living in a town where there is no cardboard or Styrofoam truly is. Now what? Paranoid? How dare you?!?

Moving right along…

Just as I was about to give up, I did manage to get a hold a sack of little marbles-like balls made of Styrofoam, each about the size of 1/2 ping-pong ball. They were crunchy with old age and smelled funny, kinda like Pooch smells when she’s tired. Pooch has smells for everything. But I digress.

I wrapped the ailing Eggbert up in generous amounts of bubble wrap and put him in a cardboard box that I found in the back of my closet. Then I filled it up with ping-pong stink-balls. Finally I closed the lid.

It didn’t fit. Eggbert was too tall, causing an odd looking bump on top of the package. But I didn’t have another box and waiting for Eggbert to shrink or the box to grow seemed like a futile idea. I also noticed that the box itself wasn’t in the very best of shape. It was time for lots and lots of tape. Soon I was whizzing around the box, Styrofoam stinkies flying everywhere and the tape making swooshing noises. When I was somewhat satisfied that the computer would stay put and the box wouldn’t fall apart, the package consisted mostly of tape. I used the whole roll.

Only then did it occur to me that there was no way in hell anyone would be able to get it open again without using some sort of saw. After which they’d be attacked by stinkies loaded full of statical electricity and a merciless taste for technical engineers. But it was too late to turn back now, so I got on my cellphone again and called a cab to take me down to the post office.

There I put Eggbert on the rattling conveyor belt and as he slowly floated down past the black plastic curtains, I hoped that he would be okay and that he’d be home soon to distract me from school work and household chores. Until then I’ll be working on my thesis and picking styrostinkers out of my hair.

There are a lot of things in this world that I just don’t understand. Stuff that truly boggles the mind. For instance, what would possess Pamela Anderson to say she envied flat-chested girls because they looked so slim? Why would someone invent a motorized picnic table? But the greatest mystery of them all, is why so many people don’t have the sense to eat.

A girl I once worked with was a devoted follower of most insane diets. “Last night I forgot to eat, all together,” she told me once, while munching away at a lettuce leaf. “I just had a piece of toast for breakfast and a bowl of cereal before bed.”

But if your brain is so numb it actually forgets that you should eat, wouldn’t your stomach remind you? My stomach is so full of suggestions, reminders and demands, it is practically an entity upon itself. If it gets any more pushy, I will have to name it. I can’t even go to the frozen food section without it giving a lengthy speech about how any ice cream with the word “pie” or “cheese cake” in its name, has a natural place in our freezer.

Still, a great many people don’t seem to be on speaking terms with their middle bits. I’ve hardly ever been to a class, meeting or any gathering of people, where at least one persons stomach didn’t make noises that you’d normally only hear deep in the woods at night.

So why don’t intelligent (supposedly) adults just frikkin eat, already?

Can someone please tell me that?

pic by proscilas for http://www.flickr.com/

CHESS. It’s a well-known board-game, a phone company, a book AND it was a youth club in Little Hellhole, back when I was a kid. It’s quite remarkable that Little Hellhole could have had a youth club, considering that - with a few exceptions - I was the only youth living there. Then again, it did end up having a shorter lifespan than your average boyband.

Chess was more or less run by the three queens of our junior high school and their ladies-in-waiting. Every school has them: the picture perfect, trendy – and vicious – girls who seemingly sold their souls to the devil to make themselves irresistible to every guy and hated, yet idolised, by every girl around. This might also account for the clubs sudden death: 15 year olds don’t make good businesspeople. Especially the ones with no social skills. Go figure.

But I digress.

The Trio of Hairspray kept court once a week and spent the other six babbling about how much fun they had the last time. Tami was on top of the food chain, with an endless string of boyfriends and emotional issues. I suppose I should feel bad for her, for all the crap she put herself through, but in my head her name is still synonymous with the term “raving bitch.” Second and third to the throne were Helen and Mindy, respectively. Both did their very best to push Tami off said throne. When she wasn’t around to see what they were up to, that is.

The reason why I bring this up is because I recently ran into Tami again. I recognised her immediately, since neither her hair nor outfit seemed to have changed since junior high. Since then, a large, white spot of crusty baby spit-up had been added to her jacket and she had gained enough weight to make my week and then some. She didn’t recognise me. Nobody does. That might be just as well, really.

On my way home, I walked past where Chess had used to be, in the basement of a grocery store. The black and white linoleum floor from where it had derived its name, visible through the large glass windows, seemed terribly small. I’m very glad that I’m not 15 anymore.

And I’m very glad that Those Girls are now fat and earning minimum vague.

Ever since then, I have walked around with a bounce in my high-heeled steps. I am cheerful, yes I am.

Aliens, those darn indjuns, rectal examinations, my bike, laboratories and boredom

Hello people. Sorry about the long absence. I was kidnapped by aliens and then them darn indjuns ate my homework. Or maybe it was the other way around. It’s all a bit fussy.

I fear that I may be becoming boring. “Noooo,” you say. “Not you,” you say. “You have a fascinating life and an overwhelming intellect,” you say. And yes, most of that has been true up until the last month or so, but lately I’m starting to feel… well… dull.

Right now, for example, I am not out chasing down terrorists like those people on TV (just being able to fight crime and keep their teeth –that- white makes them interesting). I am not being worshipped by anyone other than The Pooch. Money is something that I mostly see on television. In stead of, say, learning a new language I am stuffing my face full of almonds, whilst inwardly whining about how I will now have to brush my teeth all over again. In fact, the most exciting thing I did this week was to have my bike repaired.

Outside of the bikeshop, near the garage across the street, a man was arguing with a mechanic about repairs that had been done on his car which he’d never asked for. I’m assuming that he did ask for some sort of repairs at some point. I don’t think they actually kidnapped his car from his driveway. He was like an alzheimer patient at a brothel: shocked that he’d been screwed and refusing to pay for it…

That’s not true. Not really. I did get to do some work in the laboratory all by my lonesome, with nobody to supervise me. If I had decided that I wanted to smear disease all over the walls, there would be no one there to stop me. Although the only disease-producing germ I have access to at the moment, is the kind that gives you explosive diarrhoea. My lab chores took less than an hour, though, so I was back home in time to watch Oprah closely followed by Dr Phil. Which brings us back to me being boring.

I did have a rather colourful murder fantasy while I tried to ignore the sounds of one of the upstairspeople shticking it to his girlfriend again, though. They started out as a light pain in my ass and have now blossomed into a three-fingered rectal examination.


I will go out and observe something screwy to tell you about later. And if I don’t, I will lie and make something up. It might even be coherrent. No promises, though.

True joy and all that crap

My internet connection is gone. Vanished. I don’t know where it went. Maybe it’s off skiing in the mountains along with all the good, little Hellholians. It’s what people do around here. I’ve never been able to understand why.

Anyways, I am now hoping for a little man to come fix my connection. I’m just not sure on when he plans on showing up. Then yesterday morning, the doorbell rang. I knew immediately that it couldn’t be the upstairs-people. They’ve never figured out the intricate workings of my doorbell. It’s complicated. A button on a wall. Oooh. The upstairs-people just knock. Which I figure is a good reason to pretend I don’t hear them.

But I digress.

The doorbell rang, and I thought it had to be the internet-fixer-man. Who else could it be? So I hurried to answer the door, completely forgetting that I had make-up on only one – 1 – eye. That eye did look damn good, but still…

As the door swung open, I expected to see your standard, run-of-the-mill handyman type of a person standing outside. Instead I found myself staring straigt at the latest issue of The Watchtower. An overly cheery woman with a strangely far-away look in her eyes was peeking out from behind it. “Would you like to learn the path to true joy?” the lady asked.

“No, not really,” I said and closed the door in her face. I know the path to true joy already. It’s for me to get my internet connection back and waste some time surfing.

Meet Dr. Smiley!

Years and years ago, I went to see a doctor. I can’t really remember why, just that I wasn’t feeling well and the visit to the local clinic was my mother’s idea.

The doctor was a young woman, very smiley, with big, curly hair. I sat in a blue chair with brown stains, prepared for the usual how-are-we-feeling-today-questions, which seems to be the first thin they teach you in medical school. The question was delivered and I went on to list my symptoms - whatever the were - like a good little patient, while I tried no to wonder whether or not those brown stains were left behind by other good, little patients.

Dr. Giggles smile didn’t fade for a second. Every so often she would nod her head and the curls would hop up and down around her face, trying to poke her eyes out.

“So what do you think is wrong with you?” asked Smiley.

That threw me for a bit of a loop. Granted, I did walk past one of those medical schools places once, but I don’t really think that qualifies me for giving diagnoses. Not even to myself. Had I by accident (or divine intervention) wandered into a psychiatrist’s office?

“Uhm… Aren’t you supposed to figure that out?” I asked.

“Usually patients have a great feel for these things.”

I thought to myself that Dr. Smiley had clearly never met my great aunt, who was convinced she had cancer every time she stubbed her toe, and who eventually died of a stroke (possibly brought on by all the worrying about cancer). Neither had Old Man Henry, who was convinced that his haemorrhoids were caused by alien probes, crossed the threshold into her office. But I didn’t say any of these things.

“Could it be… the flu?” I suggested.

“Sounds okay,” said Giggles, and gave me a prescription for something to bring down my temperature, which she’d never checked.

It’s a good thing I didn’t mention cancer. My great aunt sure would have.



By the way, I won an award, and now I'm going to spread the joy - and the award - to some deserving people. It's that big E up in the corner, there. I'm pointing right at it. I'm supposed to name ten nominees, but it seems most people that I stalk online already have one. Although that doesn't make ME any less special.

And the award goes to.......*drumroll*

SWINE http://swine.wordpress.com/
JAY http://saintvodkaofthemartini.blogspot.com/
Miss Doxie http://www.missdoxie.com/
TOM http://tomshideaway.blogspot.com/
TICKNART http://ticknart.blogspot.com/index.html

ARGH!

Today I have been lucky enough to spend loads of time with someone who makes me want to commit murder. The kind involving axes and/or bathtubs filled with toasters.

Murder is the slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of murder: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether they fell by one kind or another – the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers. If I kill this person, I’m sure it’ll be either excusable or justifiable. If someone else does it for me, it’ll be praiseworthy. It will be to me, anyways. There’s a hint in there somewhere, you know.

I’d even get you a lawyer. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

Stinky munchkins of doom

Every so often, I put on my new boots and totter off to the grocery store to purchase all those things that keep me from starving to death. I say totter, not because I in any way resemble an infant in the way I walk, but because it is hard to move like a graceful adult on roads which consist mainly of ice.

When I woke up on this morning, stomach growling and Bergerac (my mind) telling me that there was nothing particularly tempting in the fridge, I knew it was tottering-time once more, so off I went.

I like walking to the store – not that I, in my drivers-licence-free state, have any choice – because then I get to philosophise over what sort of foodstuff I would like to buy. It’s strange how much of the time is spent thinking about cookies. Things such as carrots and beats never come up. Go figure.

Very pleased with having made it to the mall without getting my luvely footwear wet, I pulled one of those little blue plastic baskets out of its stack with a graceful swish. Rather, it would have been graceful if I hadn’t almost knocked over a display of Christmassy nuts.

I quickly pulled out my shopping list from my coat pocket, pretending that the Christmas-display- murder-by-plastic-basket had never taken place. I always write a list. If I don’t, I always forget something and end up buying soap in stead. The process of how that happens is a mystery probably best not dwelt upon. Let’s just say that if you’re ever out of soap, I’m your gal.

Right on top of my list, scribbled with a bright red pen, was the word “Milk”, and so I started the exciting journey towards the dairy isle. After having picked out a fine looking carton specimen, I reached out my hand to grab it. At that very moment someone shouted something which sounded like “Gerfuch vivong!” The next thing I knew, two tiny women hopped past me, placed themselves in between myself and my chosen carton of milk, and then proceeded to ravage the poor dairy isle. Yoghurt, milk and butter was literally thrown from their comfortable homes and into the tiny women’s cart. Any objections on my account were effectively muffled by the thick fog of cheap perfume which hung around them, leaving poor Bergerac unable to function properly.

Then they disappeared as soon as they had appeared. Somewhat disoriented, I placed the milk carton into my basket and moved towards the second item on my list: bread.

Once again, I carefully considered my options before I selected a plump looking bread, reached out my little arm towards it, and…. “Yoshyou schepflunk!”

Then there were little, blonde heads in front of me for a second time, accompanied by groceries flying through the air and the overwhelming haze of Eau De Brothel.

I eventually escaped the store with all my groceries and my life intact, but I’m not entirely sure whether or not the clown that I saw on my way home was real, or some hallucination brought on by perfume poisoning.



Photo by Ryker Beck for www.Flickr.com

To go deaf or not to go deaf

Since I am going down the coast for a couple of weeks, this will be the last fascinating and terribly intelligent thing I'm going to share with you until I get back. Enjoy!

That's an order.

People can be divided into many categories. Two such categories are mumblers and non-mumblers. For some inexplicable reason, a great deal of the people that I hang out with here in Bigger Hellhole, are members of the first category. Over the past three weeks, this fact had me seriously wondering whether or not my hearing might be going.

I had started to become a bit worried, actually, always asking people to repeat what they’d just said. I thought I might need to get myself a hearing aid. I would cringe when I thought of the ones the old folks at the home, where I worked last summer, would wear. The kind that would slither around the back of their ears like some waxy leech. Half the time, the apparatus would make a high-pitched noise that everyone but the owner would hear. I pictured myself wearing one of those, and I didn’t like the idea. Besides, they’re all either grey or beige, both of which are colours that make my complexion look like death warmed over. Which is so not the look I usually go for.

Then luck intervened, and threw a couple of non-mumbler in my path last week. Rarely have I felt so relieved. In the future I am going to have to become friends with more typical non-mumblers, so that I can seek them out if I ever start to doubt my abilities to hear properly again.

How does a mumbler become a mumbler, though? Hasn’t anyone ever told these people to speak up? And shouldn’t it be a hint to maybe turn up the volume just a little, when the most common reply you get whenever you speak to someone is “huh?” I have noticed something interesting, though – A mumbler never seems to have any trouble deciphering what another of his/her kind is saying. This leads me to think that these creatures have hearing like bats, and might not be entirely human.

This time of the year, people also start wearing gigantic scarves, which aggravate an already difficult situation. Trendy, fun and colourful as a scarf may be, the already miniscule voice of a mumbler finds it very hard to fight its way through such a large, woolly barrier. This leaves perfectly normal people, such as myself, to wonder if they’re going deaf.

There should be a law against these things. And violators should be forced to take a course in how to speak so that non-batpeople can hear stuff that comes out of your mouth. All in favour, say AI!

To poop or not to poop

There’s an understanding between myself and The Pooch: I walk her and she might just choose to take a nap when we get home, rather than try to sit on my lap while I’m working. Other times she’ll forego on the nap, run to fetch her ball and proceed to throw it at me, convinced that this will make the thought of playing with it completely irresistible. After all, it usually works when I do it to her.

We were halfway through our Sunday walk, when all of a sudden, an elderly woman comes running towards us. Her arms were waving in the air, determined to get my attention.

“You know, it’s perfectly alright for you to walk your dog,” she says when she catches up to us. “But it’s very, very important that you pick up its poop after it.”

I thought that she could not have noticed the big, black, shit-stuffed doggie bag in my hand, nor the seven empty bags sticking out of my pocket, so I held the warm, swelling back up in the air and informed her, in a slightly cool tone of voice, that I always picked up after Pooch.

I assumed that she would back the hell off. No such luck.

In stead she goes on and on about how important it is to pick up those previously mentioned poops because people stepped in them, and so on and so forth. There was a small river running along the road where we stood. I studied the river, and then I looked at the lady while I contemplated whether or not I had the energy to throw her in. Probably not. Sick of listening to the sad tale of innocent shoes being thrust into piles of dung left behind by other dogs and their irresponsible owners, I pulled a fistful of empty bags out of my pocket and held them in front of the meddlesome woman’s face.

It had a rather peculiar effect. Granted, she turned around and started back towards her house, but she kept on talking about poops and shoes and whatnot, while looking back at me. Perhaps she’d been inhaling them, or something.

I looked at Pooch. Pooch was looking at her ass, as if it was a foreign object that she’d only just discovered.

Next time I’ll throw that woman in the river. Definitely.