A sort of lottery

The trim blonde
in the short, blue skirt
stepped out of her black VW Jetta
in the Ralph’s parking lot.

She dropped her keys
as she shut her door,
so
she bent over
to pick them up.

As she did,
her skirt
rose high over her hips.

She wasn’t wearing any underwear,
so
I got to look at the face
of God.

Sometimes you get lucky.

Ook ook

Monkey-wrenching

I answered the call during my drive home from work. It was the MonkeyWife, and I could tell it was trouble because she was speaking in one-word sentences.

Fez Monkey: Hey, MonkeyWife … what’s up?
MonkeyWife: Trouble
FM: Oh? What sort of trouble? Trouble: the house burned down; trouble: we have no beer; trouble: little Timmy O’Toole is stuck down a well?
MW: Sink
FM: Uh oh ... which one?
MW: Bathroom
FM: Is the faucet dripping again? I just changed the entire valve last month.
MW: Clog
FM: Okay, no problem ... I'll get to it after dinner. What is for dinner tonight, by the way?
MW: Food

I was putting a brave front during out talk, but this was going to be worse than I thought. I would be cast in the role of a man, which isn't something I am always good at playing. I'm much better suited for the role of pre-adolescent.

Anyway, when I got home the MonkeyWife was waiting with our snake in her hand. She handed it to me, pointed into the bathroom, and walked away.

The sink was clogged alright, and it smelled. Worse than me, which is saying something (another sad trait of Italians). So, after changing into a tee shirt and some torn shorts, I got to working. Now, running a snake down a drain isn't a big problem. Unless, of course, the drain has a rod running along the diameter. Snakes tend to have a flared head, in order to help grab and shred whatever clog of goo it touches. The flare of the snake was too big to get past this rod. All of this added up to the ugly truth that I would have to go beneath the sink, remove the trap, and run the snake from the slip-point coupling to reach the clog. (Don't be impressed ... I learned these terms online. I call them the curvy pipe and the long straight one).

So, I get our big-ass plumber's wrench - which to this point I have never used other than to wield as a threat against Eggs when his philosophical nonsense becomes too much to take. After much grunting and cursing, I managed to position myself beneath the sink. More grunting and more cursing loosened the top connection of the curvy pipe. How do I know I had loosened it? The flow of icky, smelly water now splattering my hands and hitting the bathroom floor.

Needless to say I didn't anticipate the fact that the water in the sink would have to go somewhere, and so had no bucket or anything to catch the water. Fortunately, MonkeyWife has seen me try and be a man before, and she had one ready. "You might need this," she mentioned once the water began to leak. Yeah, I might at that.

At this point I had a flash of inspiration. There would be no need for me to totally remove the curvy pipe. Since it was below the stopper bar, I could run the snake through it! I felt smarter than Einstein. I bet he never unclogged any sinks. So, in went the snake.

Now, running a snake is a process of starts and stops. You start by feeding the auger line a few inches until you feel resistance, followed by a few shots with the drill (which you connect to the snake to make it do that roto-rooter thing) to rotate it and move it forward, followed by more feeds of the auger line. The thing was, I could only get the snake in about three inches (of course, for some people, three inches is all they can manage, but I digress). Something was wrong, and oddly enough, the damn snake was now stuck. As it turned out, the curvy pipe had rusted through at the bend, and my snake was now poking through it. Yeah, I needed to get a new curvy pipe.

But first thing first. I needed to get at the clog. So, removing the curvy pipe completely, I started the frustrating start-and-stop feeding of the snake, eventually hitting a point where there was some severe resistance, and the drill was laboring to rooter. After a few moments of drilling and back-and-forth snake maeuvering, things finally broke free, and I was doused with a backflush of a considerable amount of icky, smelly water - with chunks of icky, smelly, black goo in in.

I was definitely earning my man-status now.

While I was engaged in this, the MonkeyWife had taken the curvy pipe with her to a local hardware store and bought a replacement. She arrived just in time to hand it to me, as I was using a smelly old dog rag to clean some of the thicker and stickier chunks of icky, smelly black goo from myself.

More grunting and cursing as I installed the new curvy pipe.

Finally, I stood up, my work finished, and turned on the faucet with triumphal theatrics. Water rushed into the sink, there was a small amount of gurgling, followed by the sink rapidly filling with water. The clog was still there.

Whatdidn't make sense was, if the clog was so far along the line (I fed close to 20 feet of snake before I hit paydirt), how could the sink become filled so quickly?

Back under I went, complete with grunts and curses, to once again remove the curvy pipe, only to again be soaked by sink water (at least this time it wasn’t icky and smelly). Yeah, I forgot to put the bucket down.

I removed the cuvy pipe and started to re-snake the line when the MonkeyWife called to me.

MW: Monkey …
FM: (grunting) Yah?
MW: Why are you doing that?
FM: You saw the sink . It’s still clogged. (cussing)
MW: Monkey …
FM: What!!

At this point she tapped me to get my attention. I turned and she showed me the curvy pipe. There was a plastic bag containing instructions and extra connectors shoved inside it.

Hey, I said I wasn’t good at playing the man.

Ook ook

Just an observation ...

I was taking a little walk today
and I saw a squirrel lying dead
in the gutter.

It looked like it was taking a quick nap
but its pelvis and hind legs had been crushed
by the wheels of a car.

In a tree nearby,
a live squirrel was chattering away
energetically.

And it seemed to be saying:
"Better you than me,
Fucker."

Truth In Advertising

So there I was, watching TV (don’t ask the show … I was in a serious bout of vegetating), when a seemingly innocuous commercial ran by grabbing my attention as it did. I know, you are about to ask, “Monkey, if you can’t remember the TV show on account of your vegetating, how can you recall the commercial? You must be a filthy liar!”

Ease back, Poncho, let me finish.

At first the commercial didn’t register, as it was just another blur in an already blurry background. But, a few moments after it passed, some odd subliminal ohrworm awoke, snapping me back into this reality, and causing me to sit up.

The commercial was for Hamburger Helper, and after seeing it for a second time, I know why it caused me to snap into consciousness. It was more chilling than anything I’ve seen on TV in a long while.

No, I don’t mean that the concept of HH is chilling (well, it is, but for different sulfite, sodium, and preservative filled reasons), but the semiotics of the commercial itself caused me to genuflect for protection.

It featured a typical working-class, god-fearing, salt-of-the-earth, patriotic American family. You knew this for several reasons:

• They spoke with a slight, undefined but noticeable accent that can only be described as a vague amalgam of Appalacian, Southern, and Midwest
• They wore the sort of “regular” clothes one stereotypically associates with Red States (think ill-fitting off-brand jeans, frumpy blouse, generic plaid work shirt, and other things you would typically find at a Wal*Mart)
• They were all a few steps past portly, as we all expect Red State Americans to be
• The kids had fucked-up haircuts that can only be described as unprofessional, likely given by mom or some other close relative
• They were white
  

Anyway, the script for the commercial went on about how great HH is, and mentioned that since both mom and dad work (mom on day shift and dad on night shift), and with a passel of hungry boys, dinner was the only time the entire family could spend together. Luckily, HH not only was something they all loved to eat (yum yum, gimme some!), but it was easy as hell to prepare, was ready lickety-split, filled all of their already distended stomachs with a sickly paste of carbohydrates and gristle, and helped stretch their dollar!

Okay, nothing bad there, right? Gross, maybe, but certainly not frightening.

The images for the commercial were the typical montage of a happy family working, playing, and loving really hard. There were shots of mom fiddling around in her tiny kitchen, of dad and junior playing basketball, of dad hard at work in a fiercely industrial setting, and of the entire family smiling the saccharine smiles of ignorant contentment in the belief that they sleep under a blanket of freedom provided by George W Bush, the General Mills corporation, and God (in that order, by the way).

“So,” you ask, “what is so chilling about that?”

Here it comes.

Since it's inception in 1970, HH has remained a viable option as a bargain food-like product for those on the lower rungs of society's ladder. Now in the past they at least tried to put a happy face on the dismal circumstances preciptating the need for HH by featuring otherwise upscale families (the commercials featured large homes, a stay at home mom, a dad who took a briefcase to work, and attractive children wearing nice clothing) in their commercials, who chose HH for reasons beyond it's low-cost. You know, making the poor folk feel better about buying HH since rich folk were too. But the words and pictures of their latest ad paint a picture of contemporary America in which the norm is to have both parents needing to work at dismal jobs, one on the night-shift, and having to eat HH in order to be able to maintain a standard of living consisting of a small home, cheap clothing, obesity, and haircuts that look as if Floyd the Barber used a butter knife after a very long night of binging on moonshine. This was the new, realistic American dream, and these people, with their contented smiles, were happy with their fate. Evidently, nowadays, there doesn’t seem to be a need for even a façade of hope in commercials, as apparently the American public are so beaten down by constantly diminishing expectations and rewards, that they can show a family of semi-literate rednecks living one paycheck away from a double-wide, and portray it as some sort of idealized version of American nirvana.

And that is what is chilling. That this is the face of contemporary American society. Be happy you're working, Cletus ... the alternative is worse. And don't bother to strive for more, because you sure as hell won't ever reach it. Now shut up, eat your HH, and just count the days til your inevitable heart-attack sends you to the local Free Clinic for some aspirin and a pamphlet on planning a bargain funeral.

At this rate, you have to wonder what is next? A retro-commercial showing scenes lifted from Birth of a Nation meant to placate the nation regarding the plight of black people? Or, possibly (in the not too distant future), a new version of this pseudo-food called Soylent Helper. After all, if American corporations aren’t seeing windfall profits from all that oil, maybe they can squeeze a few pennies out of all them dead Iraqis.

Ook ook

Big Mouth, small mind

So, three's this guy who just finished reading a book by the Scottish author Irvine Welsh that he enjoyed very much, and he happens to mention it to me and a casual acquaintance, whose ancestry is Scottish (though he, himself, was born here). The acquaintence proclaims that he thought the book was droll, and that the author was a hack. Fair enough, I think, but offer my feeling that the story was quite engaging, and that I found the author’s previous work to also be worthwhile.

The acquaintance then looks at me, and loudly proclaims that I am wrong, that I was a jackass for expressing an opinion contrary to his, and that I simply was incapable of understanding why since I was not Scottish, and that Welsh is considered to be a traitor to real Scots everywhere anyway.

Now, normally I would simply ignore this sort of nonsense, and give the acquaintance the benefit of the doubt, letting him babble his ignorance until he gets tired, except he has done this before … many times, to many people … and I am just tired of his hollow belligerence. So, I mention this to him, pointing out that his accusations of intolerance and name calling are hypocritical, after which he begins to froth-at-the-mouth about how I could dare react that way. His expletive filled rant continues and grows, focusing on how if I can’t take the criticism I should never have dared to express my opinion, and how I should just grow up and be a man.

Which makes me chuckle because once again the acquaintance has not only entirely missed the point, but is developing a rage embolism over a straw-man issue in order to pound his chest and make himself feel somehow superior. He uses the same insipid insults about pride and guts that boys have been throwing around since 2^nd grade (“You won’t eat that bug cause you are a chicken!”), and basically proclaims himself not only the supreme victor, but also the arbiter of taste because he shouted the loudest, all the while questioning both my heritage and sexuality.

Now, I could have opted to continue to squabble with the acquaintance, I suppose. I mean, I don’t mind a good old fashioned row now and again, but there really would be little point, since the acquaintance is too shit-all stupid to understand the nature of the argument. Somehow it has morphed from his saying I can’t comprehend Welsh because of my lack of Scottishness to my fear of engaging in a shouting match. So, while I would point out that his claim that since my Grandpa didn’t wear a kilt I couldn’t understand Scot literature was one of the most ludicrous and condescending things I’ve heard, he would only hear the blood pounding in his ears, and do something childish and ridiculous … like pose holding a gun (to show his potency or incredible macho-ness -- I really haven't figured that silly thing out). His ability to understand the point has been totally obscured by a rapidly encroaching peripheral blindness caused by an internal eruption of hysteria and anger.

What the acquaintance will never understand is that getting into shouting matches with people just for the sake of shouting is just dumb, and my lack of desire to continue in his infantile name-calling and finger pointing isn’t because I am afraid of him at all, but simply it is not worth my time. I mean, why bother arguing with an idiot? In the end you’ll just be out of breath and the idiot will still be an idiot.

So, in the end, the acquaintance walks off happily, patting himself on the back for teaching me a thing or two about being macho and for having the last word in the matter … even though he has no understanding at all of the nature of the initial dust-up, and he has been in a tirade over yet another of his many straw men. Still, if it makes him happy, I suppose it’s fine. I mean, the acquaintance isn’t the only one to use a barrage of volume and insults to compensate for lack of understanding.

Yes, I know ... this post was very subtle.

Ook ook