Saving face

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering.
I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering.

Man, it seems as though every time I turn around, somebody is chiseling away at something around here — soiled tile, spoiled carpet, damp drywall, violated vinyl.

Right now it’s the refrigerator, which has an unspecified “defrost problem.” * Earlier today it was my left cheek, which lost a chunk of what Herself’s dermatologist described as a seborrheic keratosis. Think of it as a mole designed by committee.

The doc didn’t seem to think it was anything special, but she’s shipping it off for analysis, just in case. Maybe they’ll find Amelia Earhart in there, or Jimmy Hoffa. That gram of marching powder I misplaced in the Eighties. All that free time I used to have.

Nah. They’ll probably just find a bunch of money in it. Why else would you go about mining people’s faces, if not for gold?

Meanwhile, I have a bandage the size of a quarter on my cheek, right about where my helmet straps meet, so it looks like I’ll be afoot for a couple days. How novel — for once, a pain in a cheek that isn’t part of my ass.

* Turns out the defrost timer had croaked. The good news is, says the fridge tech, is that at this point he’s replaced pretty much everything in the sonofabitch except the compressor — and when that goes, it’s time for a new fridge.

To everything there is a season

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Y’think Billy Crystal might be God? ‘Cause I can just see Him up there, waiting for the Basement Bozos to finish cleaning up after the Shit Monsoon — which they finally did today, just shy of five months from the actual incident — so He can pitch a change-up at us, just for laughs.

“What, they hung the door? The bathroom door? The one the goyim mis-measured twice? The putzes actually made it fit? Who knew? Oh, I’m tellin’ ya, this is the time to hit ’em from another direction altogether. Forget the basement, I’m thinking kitchen. Let’s croak their refrigerator. Hah? A laugh riot. He just went to the grocery, f’chrissakes. It’ll kill, trust me.”

And you want to know the really funny part? After Herself went to the Safeway for $15 worth of ice and I packed the contents of the ‘fridge into three giant Igloo coolers, the fucking ‘fridge seems to be getting cooler all of a sudden.

Billy Crystal, the shmuck, is God. You heard it here first.

Window of opportunity

~ Patrick O'Grady
The mighty Turk' — a.k.a. Big Pussy, Mighty Whitey, Turkenstein, The Turkinator, et al. — can nap with the best of 'em.
The mighty Turk' — a.k.a. Big Pussy, Mighty Whitey, Turkenstein, The Turkinator, et al. — can nap with the best of 'em.

It’s hot. It’s humid. What’s a cat to do? Take a nap in a kitchen window, of course. You miss one, you’re always one behind, y’know. And there’s nothing like a long night of sleep to wear a cat out.

Alas, this picture of serenity is merely the prelude to the incessant prowling and yowling, “I want to go out, I wish to go out, I will go out!“, which commences shortly after the post-breakfast shuteye.

You ignore this remonstration at your peril — should the Turk’s departure be delayed for more than a few moments, you will find him attached by all four clawed feet to either a closed screen door or one of your all-too-open ankles.

Coming and going

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Herself has returned from an extended visit to the mysterious East (the DeeCee-Maryland clusterplex) and so things are back to what passes for normal around the DogHaus. Rise and shine way too early, prepare breakfast, commit a little journalism, send her off to work. Someone in this family has to earn an honest dollar, and the cats don’t have much in the way of résumés. (“Eat, shit, sleep. References upon request.”)

In other news, I see Ed McMahon has gone to join Johnny Carson at the Big Talk Show In the Sky. Before he spent some 30 years sitting on that couch, laughing at Carson’s gags, he was a Marine fighter pilot who flew 85 combat missions in Korea. Who knew?

According to The New York Times, Big Ed also shined shoes, sold newspapers and peanuts, dug ditches, worked as an usher and as a traveling bingo announcer in New England, sold stainless-steel cookware door to door, and pitched a gadget called the Morris Metric Slicer to tourists on the Atlantic City Boardwalk and in Times Square. His first gigs on TV were as a clown and the host of a cooking show.

Ah, Eddie, we hardly knew ye.

Solstice me arse

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
The 2010 VW California, which is not available there.
The 2010 VW California, which is not available there.

Again with the rain. ‘Tis a fine soft day so, as my people across the water might say. This filthy weather (and the English) is why the smart Micks risked the long coffin-ship trip to America. How much worse could it be? they thought. At least they got a chance to dry out a bit before they croaked. Well, their clothes did, anyway.

What a guy wants on a day like this is a road trip, and wouldn’t you know that the Germans have been hiding my dream vehicle from me. Dan Neil, the only reason I can think of for reading the Los Angeles Times, drove the 2010 VW California during a recent visit to the Black Forest, and the only news more depressing than the price of the updated Westfalia camper (upwards of $50K) is its availability (not in California or anywhere else on this side of the Big Ditch).

Writes Neil:

Did you go to Humboldt State? Did you vote for McGovern twice (once as a write-in candidate)? Did you stop following the Grateful Dead because they became too corporate? Brace yourself. This is the Westy of your dreams: a state-of-the-art camper van with a gas stove, running water, an electrically deployed pop top, a fold-down double bed, rotating front captain’s chairs and a staggering number of reading lights, climate outlets, cabinets, storage bins and convenience features, and all of it executed with the kind of aerospace precision one might associate with Piaggio corporate jets.

For a guy who on the road used to nap under a leaky topper in an ’83 Toyota truck and today drives a Subaru Forester only rarely, this is the Holy Swiss Army Grail of multipurpose vehicles. Small and fuel-efficient enough for a daily driver, capacious enough to live in for short stretches when one’s hometown weather can no longer be borne, the VW California would be my Rocinante — if only its diesel engine met U.S. emissions standards.

Well, there’s Herself to consider, too. I proposed the purchase of an iPhone today and I’m still picking pieces of my piece-of-shit Samsung cell phone out of my left ear.