After the results of the pestilential erection came in I decided to leave our Halloween lights up through Christmas.
It was just my way of saying “Jesus Christ!”
I may leave them up until the results of the next pestilential erection come in. Assuming we have another one, that is.
My little boneheads are considerably brighter than the MAGA dimbulbs, but those low-wattage loudmouths may actually be more illuminating in at least one respect. They provide a daily reminder that we must walk some distance in darkness.
Rather than curse that darkness, I light my candles. They have their joke, and I have mine.
Happy holidays from Herself, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and Your Humble Narrator.
It was a light turnout for Halloween at El Rancho Pendejo. We handed out just half of the candy I bought, and not even the two neighbor girls showed up.
Thursday was our first truly chilly fall morning — Herself and I had to break out the pants, long sleeves, gloves, and caps to go running — and I finally caved and switched the HVAC from “cool” to “heat.”
Adios, October; buenos dias, November.
Across town, the Not-So-Great Pumpkin was said to be trick-or-treating a smallish crowd of boneheads in a hangar near the Sunport. Let’s just dial that back to “tricking,” shall we? What treats he has are not for such as we.
In any event, I wouldn’t take a fat envelope of Benjamins from his short, greasy meathooks with a set of fireplace tongs and welder’s gloves. The Secret Service used to take a deep professional interest in counterfeiting, but I expect they’re too busy making sure his fat ass only has the one hole in it to frisk him for funny money.
And like I said, treats? Fuhgedaboudit. We’re waiting to see how many suckers have fallen for his tricks again.
Why, hello there, October. Nice to see you could finally make it.
Yesterday we enjoyed a chilly eastern breeze, which by evening was expected to pack a bit more of a wallop — say, 30-40 mph with gusts to 55, plus rain — and with any luck at all this seasonal weather will strip our pines of their remaining brown needles.
On Thursday I filled three 39-gallon bags with downed needles from the last blustery day after a friend complained that she needed 4WD to scale our driveway with a load of product for Herself’s eBay sideline. The bags filled our trash bin to overflowing with three days before pickup. I had to pull one back out to shoehorn a sack of kitchen garbage redolent of jambalaya fixins into the sonofabitch. The raccoons will rejoice.
Not so the deer, who have eaten all the class foliage in the back yard. They’ll have to settle for silverleaf nightshade going forward or start mowing the lawn.
But yeah, rain. I can’t remember when last it rained. Mid-September, maybe? That’s the most recent mention I can find in the training log. I described it as “a short, sharp downpour” that I just beat home at the end of a 25-mile ride.
This latest blessing from heaven started coming down around bedtime last night and it hasn’t let up yet. We might see a quarter inch before the second cup of joe, which, yay, etc.
I can almost accept that it’s 45° outside, and that the sun doesn’t show its face until breakfast is a fading memory, and that I may be forced to start wearing pants in the morning.
No, not that. Not yet, goddamnit. It’s not even Halloween, f’chrissakes.
I knew my internal scribe was out walking a picket line with the Writers Guild of America when I considered titling a blog post “Maui wowie.”
Clever? Maybe. Funny? Most definitely not.
It’s been a bit of a rough patch for an old newsie who doesn’t give a fiddler’s fart about Barbie, the Iowa State Fair, Taylor Swift, a fish-slapping dance involving Zuck and Schmuck, Hunter Biden, or the latest freakout over artificial intelligence. (Texting Jesus?Seriously? Dude’s only been Holy Ghosting you people for a couple thousand years.)
We’re just 13 days into August and already I’m being served Halloween-related ads as I shamble around the Internets in search of inspiration.
But I’m having trouble envisioning anything more horrific than getting chased into the ocean by the deadliest American wildfire in more than a century and hearing later that some blogger made a lame joke about it.
Just a sec; gotta block this Jesus dude. He wants to know why the poor sods in Lahaina didn’t just walk to the mainland instead of jumping into the sea.
“That’s what I’da done,” he texts.
“Not with those holes in your feet,” I reply. “You’re not seaworthy anymore, skipper. More leaks than Ginger Hitler’s White House.”
All Hallows’ Eve at El Rancho Pendejo was a total blowout, but not the kind one hopes for.
Some aspect of PNM’s power project in the ’hood unplugged half the cul-de-sac, including our place.
Around midmorning I saw a few trucks pull in and park, disgorging their hard-hatted contents into a neighbor’s yard. And so when a couple minutes later The Compound went dark I trotted out into my yard and spied them beavering away at some task beyond the wall.
“Hey, guys, the power’s out here,” I sez to ’em I sez.
“Oopsie,” they sez to me they sez, or something very much not like that.
Over we go.
Long story short, an autopsy found a transformer had been terminated with extreme prejudice and would not arise in three days or even three years. It would have to be replaced.
In case you were wondering, this is a tad more complicated than swapping in a new fuse after you try to run the box fan and hair dryer simultaneously in the ol’ singlewide.
The defunct transformer was in some impossible cranny in the yard, because of course it was, and the hard hats couldn’t just sherpa a new one in there. Superman was taking a meeting with James Gunn and Peter Safran at Warner Bros-DC, and the Hulk said he wouldn’t work on Halloween.
“This is gonna take some doing,” grumbled one hard hat, giving me the side-eye. Hey, boss, I didn’t hammer a stake topped with a Hillary 2024 placard through your transformer’s heart. I was camped in my office, pounding out the fake news, and free of charge, too.
Or I was until the power went out, anyway.
But I keed, I keed.
What happened next was nothing short of amazing.
We — or at least I — have grown accustomed to the “sucks to be you” school of customer service. “We can pencil you in for between midnight and 4 a.m. on Feb. 31st, if that works for you, or even if it doesn’t.” That sort of thing.
But these dudes got right after it. They disappeared for a while, and I was anticipating a long wait for them to return, perhaps bearing electricity, or more likely, excuses.
Nope. In fairly short order the cul-de-sac was clogged with pickups and flatbeds and a big-ass crane, and before you could say “Thomas Edison” the crane was hoisting a new transformer over the neighbor’s roof and into the yard.
Jack-o-taillights.
As dark fell the hard hats were eating pizza from boxes on the hoods of the trucks, and we were eating jambalaya from bowls, and everyone was watching the crane operator perform his magic.
“That’s something you don’t see every day, hey?” said a hard hat.
For real.
We lit our plastic pumpkin with battery-powered Cygolite tail lights, brightened the front walk with their companion headlights, and used a couple rechargeable lanterns indoors (Biolite and Nite Ize).
But with all the goings-on in the cul-de-sac most of the neighborhood trick-or-treaters decided to give us a pass. Herself handed out some treats to the hard hats, but we have plenty left over. It was easily our worst turnout since the height of the Plague Years.
But the power’s back on, and the hard hats popped round this morning to double-check their work. Well done indeed.
