The Tyranny of Two
Current mood: tired
Category: Writing and Poetry

One for one my job is done
Replacement secure for what unsure.
On a salmon road to drop a load
Oh that roe I hoed doing the two backed toad!
Now I reap what I sowed.

This tyranny of TWO.

Let currents drift let molecules sift
To the bottom mud me
Away from my running hooting howling jumping bumping lobotomy…

 

He he
He he he he!

Sh-sh-she..
She's awake!

 

Oh me.

"NO NO NO DADDY NO!
THERE'S NOTHING THAT YOU KNOW!

YOU'RE OLD AND SLOW
AND CAN'T COUNT MY TOES I DON'T SUPPOSE!


 
Now GO daddy, GO!!!!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
That NO I know..

Did I say it too often?
Above a crib to soften
The gentle infant coos
Of a cataloging brain that learned that refrain
I hear even when I snooze?
Those NO's I know as well as my nose?

Don't get me wrong as I sing my song
Of woes that are no's.
I wouldn't trade them for a million yeses in frilly dresses
I guesses… 'course I could be wrong..
 
She's cute as a button
My little mutton


A button on an atom bomb.



~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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The Olive Garden of Good & Evil
Current mood: confused
Category: Life

I can't pronounce Gnocchi.

 
"Hand ova da GahNockeez ya mug!"

    "n'yeaaaaah… what he sed!"

 

"Poor man. He must be such a burden on his family.
I hope I die before I get like that…"
  
"Wait. I'm too pretty to die."

"LOL! It are a poTAtoe!"

Currently reading : How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar By William Safire

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The Perfect MySpace Blog
Current mood: evil
Category: MySpace

The conservative bishop leaped out of bed leaving his liberal catamite to clean up the mess left behind by their vigorous sex so that he might log on to MySpace to refresh his morning blog about top bloggers.

ZOMG!

So, how did you start YOUR day?

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The Merchant Seaman Who Fell Out of Grace With The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Current mood: Arrrgh! Matey!
Category: Arrrgh! Matey! Life

I've decided to take a short divergence from my war against the machines series for a Tale of Arthur, the Wayward Seaman who was featured in my last Machines blog. If you need the back story you can find it in my last War Against the Machines installment HERE.

Otherwise, I think this story stands on it's own - - so it's not like episodes II and III of the Star Wars saga where no one really knew what was going on - - other than some bratty teenager eventually turns into Darth Vader.

This is not so much a prequel as a spin off like Frasier was to Cheers or that crappy show Joey was to that crappy show Friends.

----
The Merchant Seaman Who Fell Out of Grace With The Commonwealth of Massachusetts


"Hiyo! Here man, let me get the door for you," the kid said.

"Thanks," I said as I wrestled the 4' X 8' metal sign through the narrow doorway - my arm still bandaged up and in a sling from the refrigerator incident.

I'd made a truce with the stoop kids. A few weeks back I'd helped some drunken lady home, delivering her to her doorstep from the Columbia Point train stop. Turns out it was one of the stoop kid's old lady coming home from her bi-weekly bender up in Charlestown. This act of benevolence, delivering his mom home with most of her clothes still on, had moved me up from "possible police informant" to "local oddity."

The giant metal map of the Boston train system left big gouges in the plaster as I banged my way up the stairs to my apartment. A souvenir to cover up the hole in my bedroom wall that looked suspiciously like it was made by a bullet. The matching hole on the opposite wall kind of confirmed my suspicions. Whatever. I'm not a ballistics expert.

I got it through the door – coast clear – Arty wasn't home thankfully so I could store my ready explanations for future use.

You never know.

Arty's screwdriver and pliers went back into his O.C.D. organized tool box in what I hoped were the right spots. He got freaky when I moved his shit around. Oh he'd let me use his stuff no problem but God forbid if I put something back in the wrong spot.

I grabbed a beer out of the new new refrigerator next to the old new refrigerator. The cold made my tooth ache. I'd have to take care of that soon – I could feel an abscess the size of a walnut growing under my jaw line. My program of self medicating with Irish whiskey and aspirin was failing despite repeated increases in dosage.

Living with Arty in the Dorchester apartment was going along OK after a few weeks there. Understandings were reached, boundaries defined in civilized late night discussions where Arty would threaten me with dismemberment and shallow graves if I didn't tone it down.

Not that I really felt threatened by Arty. I knew that the claw hammer he used to reinforce his wild gesticulating and spittle flecked tirades were just his way.  Like a kindly* old professor** gesturing with his smoking pipe*** or bi-focals**** to punctuate his sentences.*****

 

Yo ho ho me hardies!

Right. So Arty came back for the rest of the sailors a few minutes later - - only this time he had no sailors with him in the cab. He was challenged by a young lady ranger at the gate and told he couldn't enter without someone authorizing him to be there.



Meanwhile Arty is telling her that the group of sailors standing under an awning out of the rain 50 feet behind her is the group waiting for him to pick them up.

Unfortunately the group is drunk and French so there is a communication problem. They're all singing Frère Jacques or what ever drunk French sailors sing in the rain and he's trying to tell them to just jump into the cab. The lady Ranger is standing there in her rain gear leaning into the cab, giving Arty a hard time, water sluicing off the brim of her ranger hat into Arty's lap when he says fuck it. Actually he tells the lady ranger "fuuuuuuuuuuck yew!" and slams the cab into reverse and leaves to find easier fares elsewhere.

What Arty didn't see as he was leaving was the lady ranger stepping backwards, tripping over her own two doc martin's and landing on her ass in a rather large mud puddle.

And THAT was Arty's assault on a federal officer. An hour later, he was surrounded by a dozen police cars while sitting in line at the cab stand by Faneuil Hall and taken into custody by the Parks Department.

The Parks Department very rarely arrests people, at least not in the middle of big cities, so they really didn't have any place to put him which was why he was being transferred to a maximum security state prison to await an administrative hearing.

Niiiiiice.

The two park rangers signaled it was time to go and escorted Arty onto the elevator. My last sight of him was as he stood there, a scrawny little guy in handcuffs between two towering park rangers in crisp pressed olive drab uniforms and wide brimmed hats.

There were a couple of civilians on the elevator already who moved to get as far away as the cramped space of the elevator allowed. Arty turned to them with an evil grin. As the elevator doors closed I heard him shout.

"I KILLED SMOKEY THE BEAR!"

-----------------------------------------



A week later I got a call from Walpole State Prison telling me to come and get Arty. All the charges had been dropped. The young rangerette had recanted her tale of vehicular assault and admitted it was only her pride and her uniform that had suffered. After it was all over Arty sought out the young ranger and apologized to her for cursing at her and told her no hard feeling. I suspect prison life felt like going home again for Arty. He seemed cheerful for weeks afterwards.

A pint of Black Bushmills Whiskey packed to quell the ache in my jaw for the trip out to get Arty and I was ready to go.

I was in luck.



According to my wall there was a train station within walking distance of the prison.
 

Currently listening : Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys By Various Artists Release date: 2006-08-22

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The Wacky MySpace Time Machine - destination 2006
Current mood: repetitive
Category: repetitive Jobs, Work, Careers

While I'm recovering from my hard drive crash I thought I'd repost this blog from wayback as filler. No one read it then so I thought.... why not give it another chance to not be read by a whole new crop of people who won't read it?

Yes, I know some of you read it and thanks for putting up with me.


Here.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Probe Me Deadly, My Love.

Starring Dr. Nathan Greenspan, Proctologist to the Stars

"A guy without a conscience!"

"A dame without a heart!"

"A story as explosive as a breakfast burrito!"

"How far would he go to get a laugh?"

SPONSORED BY

Chapter 1 - Kiss of the South American Barking Spider

The rain came down in buckets washing the grime away from my office window in mucky rivulets. Daylight barely. Prying one eye open, I could see the old Chinese woman across the alley dumping out a pot. The rumble of heavy machinery permeated the air. Something stuck to my face from where it had been pressed into my desk. A paperclip. I looked up at the complimentary Glaxosmithkline Visible Digestive Tract Clock on my desk. Could it be 9AM already? My mouth tasted like the bottom of a birdcage from too much whiskey and too little roughage. And it all came rushing back.

Who killed Morty and why? How did a successful procky go from martinis at the marina to face down in a back alley wearing his colon for a necktie? I kept asking myself over and over. The answer came up the same. Maybe I didn't know my partner as well as I should have.

When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. My tired bones ached.

I thought I'd seen it all working the graveyard shift at the emergency room. Celebrities. They'd all come in eventually, nothing fresh except the regrets. Oscars, Emmys, Peoples Choice Awards; I don't even want to think about that nasty glass bastard The Cable Ace Award. They stopped handing that one out after one got lodged in David Caruso's butt.

The Golden Globe was a real nasty customer. Sure. They fill you full of hooey about the credibility of the thing but they don't tell you it has really sharp edges or how it hurts coming out. Foreign Press Association. What do they know? The lame-brains made Jerry Lewis an icon. He must have fifty of 'em up there by now. Fat bastard rattles like an L train when he moves.

This town is full of assholes. They get off the bus fresh from the cornfields, gastrointestinal tracts pink and hopeful. Then if they're lucky they get a break. A bit part with no lines in an indie film. Before you know it it's hello asshole.

You can only work a job like this so long before you burn yourself up. Before you start seeing assholes everywhere you look. That guy on the grocery line ahead of you talking into his cell phone - people parking diagonally across two parking spaces - Hummer drivers - People who use hawt or kewl or uber or mega as a modifier. Before you know it you're taking on Congressional jobs. A head-up-the-ass-daisy-chain downward spiral that finally lands you in the gutter. A gutter just like this one. Treating ordinary assholes for peanuts.

Fame and power turns people into assholes. My business is assholes and business is good. Too good. Now one of those assholes had killed Morty and I didn't know who.

I unlocked the bottom drawer on my desk and pulled out a stack of files. My Special Sphincter files. The missing piece to the puzzle had to be in there somewhere.

The details flash by as in a dream - each one colliding into the next in a chain reaction of memory. Sometimes you don't know where the asshole ends and the man begins.

The good, the bad and the ugly assholes of this world.

There are assholes of every race creed and color.

Incurable assholes.

There are assholes that seem to bask in the glow of their own assholishness.

Some are born assholes

Others claim to be reformed assholes.

My glove might not fit but I don't acquit. It's just a matter of time with these guys before they end up back here, feet up in the stirrups, wondering what went wrong and biting back the screams.

Some are weird assholes that crawl up their own butts and never come back down.

.

Assholes breed assholes.

There are products and services exclusively for assholes and places where only an asshole would shop.

"Scream all you like buddy." I told him as I shoved the last four feet of hose up his guts. "Nobody can hear you now."

The right to be an asshole is part of the cultural identity of millions.

Sometimes it seems like the whole world is becoming a private club for powerful assholes that only lets other assholes join the club.

The culture worships assholes and encourages them to flourish. Violence, greed, ignorance are the norm. Game shows and reality TV reward the biggest assholes with money and trips and life time supplies of Turtle Wax. When the meek inherit the earth it'll need to be fumigated.

It made me weary looking at all those assholes again. I closed the file drawer. I was no closer to finding the asshole who killed Morty than before I started.

The buzz of the intercom broke my reverie like a hot needle on an impacted 'roid.

"You awake in there sport?"

My secretary cum personal confessor, Doris Puniemanny. Must've come in while I was out cold. Her voice could peal paint and the shellac on my brain just lost two coats. I hunted for the right button on the intercom with fingers thick as kielbasa.

"What is it Doris."

"Uh Doc, Mr. Crowe called he's cancelling again..."

Goddamn it. I stabbed at the intercom button.

"You call Russy-boy back tell him to keep his goddamned appointments or he'll never sit down in this town again."

The bigger the marquis letters, the bigger the asshole.

"What else you got for me Doris?"

"There's a dame here to see you."

I rubbed my tired face. All I needed now was some irregular old battle-axe whining about a missed movement.

"Tell her to get herself a shot of bran and prune juice and send her away."

"You're gonna want to see this one chief. She's a looker."

Oh well, no rest for the wicked. Time to go to work.

"Send 'er in, Doris."

And in she walked.

"Hello Nate."

"Hello Nikki."

Nikki DeGlamore... Thats Nikki Dee GLAMOUR-AY, accent at the end and pronounced with a growl; a rich socialite big with the MySpace crowd where the assholes abound - anonymous, unreachable and untreatable.  She played at being a hardcase online but could never quite pull it off.  She sat down and crossed a set of gams that would make a priest weep or a blind prophet see visions.

We met in Pamplona after the war. She was burning through daddy's trust fund on the Costa del Sol and I was studying fingering technique with Segovia. She taught me to play the oboe and I showed her the lighter side of proctology.

.

When it was over she tossed me aside like a broken doll.

I'll never forget Pamplona.

I knew her. Oh yeah, I knew her all right.

"Nate, I..."

"Can it." I waved off her conscience. "What's past is past. Just tell me what I can do for you now."

She looked at me with those big goo goo eyes of hers. I wasn't buying what she had to sell. I learned a long time ago not to mix business with pleasure. Leonardo Di Caprio once asked for a cuddle after a job. In the end, he wanted more than I could give. I had to cut him loose.

I'd learned my lessons the hard way. Proctology is a harsh mistress. I never cheat on her.

"Nate I need your help."

"You?"

"Oh, not for me... I keep up with my fiber, avoid coffee and chocolate. You did teach me a thing or two."

"Uh huh." Still too early in the AM for this.

"Where do I start..."

"The beginning is the customary place."

"It was in Florida back in 2000... the swamps... the heat... old people... I dont know... It's all so confused now." She sobbed.

"There there... take it easy sister. Slow down." I handed her a witch hazel wipe. "What old people?"

"There could be trouble Nate."

"I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble."

"They... they, voted for him... or maybe they didn't... and, and... I don't know its all gone so badly since then."

Voting. A pucker of dread hit me where it counts and I knew what was coming next.

"Nate. I've got a White House job for you."

The spasms were coming hard and fast now. I needed fruit.

"It's the President, Nate... his head...  it's all the way up his ass."

"Look kid it could be anywhere."

"No. It's in there. All the way."

She reached into her pocketbook pulled out a photo and then slid it over the desk toward me.

All the Preparation H in the world hadn't prepared me for this.

George W. Bush, the Everest, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Carlsbad Cavern of assholes. I'd been chasing this Holy Grail all my life and now here he was dumped in my lap. A proctologist's wet dream. The Flying Dutchman story told in whispered voices in the back rooms of proctologist bars. I thought it was all so much cock-and-bull until she showed me that photo.

Of all the proctologists' offices in all the mini-malls in all the world, she had to walk into mine. I had to turn my head and cough.

I patted the bulge in my overcoat looking for reassurance from the trusty .45 caliber Becton-Dickinson proctoscope tucked in its holster underneath. My baby.

We proctologists have a code. It's not written down anywhere you could find it but its ironclad with no loopholes. If we see an asshole we have to treat it. It was that red cape waving in front of me now, beckoning me onward.

My guess might be excellent or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Greenspan didn't raise any children dippy enough to make guesses when their noses could sniff out the answer. The stink coming from the oval office couldn't be blamed on a whole kennel full of pooches. The country was being run by a pack of assholes and no one was stepping up to give a courtesy flush. When I got through with Georgie, he'd have to use my puppets to tell the story.

This one was for Nikki and Morty and all the other poor saps too dumb to just lay down and quit. The country needed an assholectomy and the job was mine. Me, Nate Greenspan, PI.

"Nikki. Where I'm going you can't follow. What I've got to do you can't be any part of. Georgie boy is going to get on that table."

"If he doesn't, we'll regret. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of our lives."

"I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of little people don't amount to a bowl of pork and beans in this crazy world."

"Now, now here's to looking at doo-doo, kid."

"We'll always have Pamplona."

I left her there. I'll always remember that look in her eyes that asked the question I was too afraid to ask myself, 'What the fuck was I doing?' I grabbed the cage of my new partner, Mr. Scampers, off the shelf and headed out the door.

"Scampers, old pal, something tells me this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Strains of La Marseillaise fade in and out of the morning air as Mr. Scampers and I walk off into the fog, hand in paw.

- - - - -

Next Chapter - Mission Accomplished?

Would you like to learn more about the exciting world of proctology? Then you can READ MORE ABOUT IT  at

Rectal Foreign Bodies

Find out things not to do with a frozen fish. The life you save might be your own.

12:40 AM - 49 Comments - 40 Kudos - Add Comment

My War With Machines: Part VII – Refrigeration
Current mood: used
Category: Life

As promised, a story for you, another installment in my War With Machines series.


I warn you. These tales are not linear. They jump back and forth through time detailing my often disastrous and always futile struggle with technology - both simple and complex. Stories full of evil portents and doom that I hope will both enlighten and uplift.

The thematic message that struggling against ones fate is futile should be obvious.

It was not so obvious to the protagonist: me.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


My War With Machines: Part VII – Refrigeration

I had some time to ponder my fate as I swung back and forth, suspended by one ankle. The color of the sky, the way the sun glinted off a cellophane wrapper caught in the rusty chain link fence directly below me. The clothes line attaching me to the third story porch rail gave just a bit then stopped, giving me the hope that it might hold just long enough for help to arrive.

Some might get philosophical in such a situation; contemplating the multi-fold path of life, the improbable chain of events necessary to bring one to arrive at just such a moment. The many choices made or avoided inexorably leading one to the point where you're suspended head down twenty feet above the ground with only a frayed clothesline staving off certain mangulation.

It was just my rotten fucking luck that I was sober for what came next.

Sure. We've all heard tales where people in similar fixes have that moment of peace as their end approaches, where they become calm and reflective. Maybe they see lost loved ones beckoning them from tranquil green shores and a feeling of peace envelopes them in its warm embrace.

I spent the last few moments before the rope snapped gibbering like a baby.

If my luck held true, there would be a pit bull lurking in the corner of the garbage strewn yard below.

Waiting.

*****

The ad in The Boston Phoenix read:

Two things hit me right away. An over powering odor of cat urine - like the cat died trying to pass a kidney stone, and a TV blasting at an incredible volume somewhere inside. Garbage was piled on the stairs and in the hallway like snow drifts.

The apartment was on the third floor. As I passed the open doorway of the lone second floor apartment I found the source of the TV noise. An obese couple sitting in their underwear watching Dynasty glared at me from a natty couch. It was hard to tell where they began and the couch ended. The gamma rays from the boob tube must've melted them into the pleather cushions.

Someone with any sense would have turned around right there. But you know what? To my twisted way of thinking, these were all good portents. If I moved in I knew I'd feel like the lord of fucking creation every time I left the apartment. Like a daily affirmation that I hadn't hit rock bottom on the food chain.

 

I waved hello at the TV couple and left them to fret over the troubles of the Carringtons.

Jesus. Dynasty! It was 1985 and a lot of pop culture escaped me. It still escapes me today and most of the drugs have worn off.

Arthur answered the door. My first impression of Arthur was that he looked like a cross between the Frito Bandito and Charles Bronson.

spooky

He invited me in to sit on a worn floral patterned couch for the interview in the "parlor."

The stuff inside the apartment was old and worn but otherwise the place was immaculate. Definitely no palace but it was neat and orderly. I was almost disappointed. The air smelled of malicious pine cleaner. It could have been masking the stench of a rotting roommate corpse. A boy can dream can't he?

Arty went over the usual roommate stuff – timely payments of rent and whatnot, no dead hookers, keep the noise down and esoterica like "if you touch snacks clearly marked as mine – you die."  Arty was a Boston Cab driver so he kept odd hours working mostly nights. I'd have to be quiet and not disturb him during the day. Not a problem since I too liked to sleep during daylight hours.

He gave me a quick tour. The common room or parlor, which I'd already seen. Then there was his room which I was only allowed a peak inside. Stacked books and a cot on the floor.  Next, the one other roommates room; a guy named Joel who wasn't there at the moment, full of audio equipment and a bass guitar leaned up in the corner. Apparently Joel had no say in the governance of roommate decisions.

The pealing paint in the bathroom looked like hieroglyphics, more scrape than paint. No shower just a rusty old claw foot tub with a spray attachment. Well there was always the Y or the Pine Street Men's Mission I thought. The sagging back porch I'd seen from outside was packed with crap. Old bikes, garbage bags, soggy cardboard boxes hiding what looked like nests. So the secret of the clean apartment was that all the garbage ended up on the porch.

My room would be the one right over Dorchester Avenue… and a Boston Globe distribution center as I found out later, 3AM one Sunday morning to be exact. Small and garret like it fit right in with my tortured artist delusions.

Oh the tortured part was real enough.

Arthur probably wasn't any more impressed with me with my spiked purple hair and leather jacket - I did mentioned this was in 1985 right? - than I was with him or the apartment. But he seemed anxious to get me in there paying rent ASAP and I need a place to sleep that provided marginal protection from the elements. The place was ridiculously cheap so we agreed I'd move in as soon as I could get my stuff over there.

Was that the sickly sweet smell of decomposition underneath the Formula 409?

I'm not now and was not then the most observant person but I did have one question for Arthur before I moved in. Something I'd noticed about the kitchen on our whirlwind tour.

The kitchen was as spotless at the rest of the interior of the apartment. There wasn't so much as a dirty spoon in the sink. But right there in the middle of the floor where a kitchen table should have been were three refrigerators.

Yes, three large old refrigerators, refrigerators of the "kid killer" variety. You know, the kind you hear about in news stories. Kids playing hide-and-go-seek end up stuck in one only to be discovered years later, a dried up husk clutching a perfectly preserved and still edible Twinkie.




Arthur told me that none of them worked. There was no working refrigeration in the apartment. He wanted to get a new one but there wasn't enough room for four refrigerators. It hadn't occurred to him to throw out the broken ones. Probably because of the three flights of rickety stairs he'd have to lug them down to get them to the curb.

Normally something like this wouldn't bother me. Most of my food came out of cans like Popeye. But some of those cans of food would be beer and that my friends would be a deal breaker. Warm beer. What am I, fucking English? Warm beer is downright unpatriotic.

It took me all of a week living with Arthur till I'd had enough of squeezing through those menacing behemoths to get to the sink. One of them caught me one night on a rusty projection as I tried to pass by giving me a nice gash in my side. The fridges drew first blood in the first skirmish. I was determined to even the score.

At night I'd lay awake imagining them coming to life. Sentient refrigerators oozing rancid drip-pan juice haunted my dreams. Their interiors covered in grey green mold, giving off an evil swamp gas light, waiting to devour me in my sleep.

Maybe there were already kids in there. Zombie kids.

So I formulated a plan. I'd disassemble them and then cart them down to the curb while Arthur slept and no one needed to be any the wiser. I had a pair of pliers and a screw driver in my dufflebag already, kept there in case I saw a street sign or something I wanted that was anchored to something else.

Progress was slow. It took me nearly a full day to get the door off of one of them. I had to stop in the middle to wrap my hand in a dish towel to staunch a bit of minor arterial spurtage. I don't know if it was my cursing that woke Arthur or if, like a vampire, he sensed a mortal invading his territory. And the blood.

At first he cursed me out for waking him. Then when he saw what I was doing he got excited and readily agreed to help me kill the refrigerators. He even knew where we could pick up a working fridge for forty bucks. Turns out he was just waiting for someone dumb enough to help him carry it up three flights of stairs. Our other roommate Joel had held out on Arthur ever since moving in a year prior.

Joel knew something about Arthur I didn't.

After a week living in the same apartment, I thought I had a sense of Arty. He was basically an OK guy if a bit on the wrapped too tight side. Back then, I thought anyone who didn't party the way I did was wrapped too tight because I was an idiot. Arthur didn't drink at all so to my mind he had to be some kind of ticking time bomb. The real reason he didn't drink was because he was even less successful at it than I was.

See. He'd been in the merchant marines for a few years and had got his ass thrown in jail every time he went ashore.

Every time.

Florida chain gangs, Gulf Coast jail cells, eating baloney sandwiches and drinking red Kool-aid under the hot Texas sun for stealing a cowboy hat on a drunken dare. The guy was the veritable Obi Wan of stupid.

The saying goes that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I became his padwan*

*Star Wars reference, not jailhouse lingo for prison punk.

The watery blue tattoos on his forearms he'd picked up in Prison in Sardinia. I had to look in an atlas to find out where the fuck Sardinia was.

Arty took control immediately. As the senior roommate, the one whose name was on the lease and being a former merchant marine, he had rank which he pulled.
Arty's scheme involved moving the refrigerators to the back porch and then lowering them down to the street below using ropes and pulleys. Work smarter, not harder, right? He assured me that he knew what he was doing. Being a former sailor he knew all about knots and shit. We'd take it slow and everything would be OK.

Uh huh.

Arthur found an old clothes line and lashed it around a fridge. He looped the line around one of the roof support posts twice for safety. Up the fridge went up onto the porch rail balanced there by Arty as I held the rope wrapped around my hand to lower it, one foot stepping on the rope to keep the line taut.

For one golden moment we felt the thrill of accomplishment.

It's still blurry. There was a zipping sound. The sound of a rope opening up a furrow across my palm and then a jerk at my feet then a loud crash… like… uh… an old refrigerator dropping from three stories up.

Some sounds ARE unique. Trust me.

So there I was dangling from the rope attached to the porch. The other end wrapped around my ankle. Then the rope snapped. My plummet was slowed slightly by a rusty nail that caught in my jeans and then in the flesh of my thigh. Just long enough for me to grab a hold of the support beam for the porch right below ours. Just long enough for gravity to swing me right side up and then help me to do a face plant into the building to slide down like in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

.
.
.

When we got back from the emergency room the other two refrigerators were still there to mock me.

Fuck them. Fuuuuuck them. I convinced Arty that we should just shove the fucking things over the rail. It kinda worked once so why not again? No ropes. Let them crash. No one called the cops on us the last time.

I went down into the street below to act as a spotter and warn off any toddlers. The next fridge hit the street with a satisfying crunch landing perfectly at the curb. Didn't even need to move it. It could be collect right from where it landed.

No one so much as poked their head out their door to see what was up. It was THAT kind of neighborhood.

Excellent. One more to go.

The coast was clear so I gave Arty thumbs up for mission go. Greg Louganis couldn't have performed a more intricate dive. It spun and pirouetted on its way down then hit the edge of the curb and the fucker bounced five feet in the air before landing on the back of a Datsun parked there. The car bounced on its springs and ended up with its ass end out in the street.

As we stood there wondering what to do, a man came out of his house across the road, calmly got behind the wheel of the Datsun and moved it across the street. I started to wave an apology (hampered by the sling on my arm) but the guy ignored me. He locked his car and then went back inside his house without a word. I guess he didn't have any questions for the bruised punk who looked like he'd been hit by a bus dropping refrigerators on his car. Pretty self explanatory.

I still wonder about that poor schmo, maybe he just lost his job at the aluminum siding factory, looking out his window and seeing a refrigerator drop onto his car…. The one he'd just made his last loan payment on. Then going back to sit in his breakfast nook, bury his nose in the morning paper and ponder what fresh shit sandwich life might serve up next.

We went and got the new fridge later that day and paid one of the stoop kids five bucks to help us carry it up the stairs.

6:45 AM - 86 Comments - 78 Kudos - Add Comment

Where was I? Oh yeah. @!*?%!@!!!
Current mood: animated
Category: Life

The noise coming from under the hood sounded like gravel being shot out of a canon at a steel drum. Now I'm no mechanic but I suspected trouble.

Mmhmm.

Xanax jello shooters and the calming dulcet tones of Windham Hill ambient jazz music would have been a good choice. I had coffee and the Sex Pistols.

Ratchet it up to eleven. Johnny Rotten almost drowned out the tortured Honda metal sounds.

That hissing whine underneath Johnny Rotten's anti-melody could be the sound of a bank account suddenly deflating.

God hates me.

There is no God.

There is a God and her name is Kali.
 


My fault. I exceeded the manufacturer's recommended ceiling of 35mph on my shitbox.


Add it to the list. Over the past few weeks the machines wars have heated up again. The  laptop went kablooey - oh holy hell, save the porn!!! And um, yeah, precious family photos and tax documents too. Sure. sure. - the clothes dryer doesn't anymore, the water heater turned into a big wacky sprinkler, the dishwasher gave the refrigerator herpes and half a dozen small appliances joined the majors revolting in machine solidarity.

Again.

Seems like old times.

Could be karmic payback for throwing Canadian money into the Salvation Army stew pot thingie at Christmas; fucking paramilitary churchies threw a hex back on me. And what's the deal with Canadian money. Can you buy anything with it?

...or 0.34 Cents American

 

8:15 AM -