Birthday card insurance

So, your elderly grandparent or Aunt Whomever has died. Sad, yes. But it also means no more holiday check with some mild-ass cash amount in check form included; 35 bucks springs to mind.

Well, shouldn't grandma be able to buy insurance that guarantees that her designees continue receiving these sweet pittances in peretuity?

BETTER! Wait, wait! Shouldn't you be able to just buy the insurance yourself, so that when whoever cools off, you can ensure that the dough flows, regardless as to whether the former payee set up with the system or not? Because surely explaining this ingenious plan would only baffle an oldster. "Do what now?"

Yeah, so, you can pay in like a hundred dollars a year to your insurance guy (me?) and I can assure you I will send you thirty-five bucks at Christmas!

WE ALL WIN!

Someone's hopes for millions rest on this

Number charms! Shout it!

What are they? Well, pardner, sit back and I will show you.

It's a charm that can be affixed to your house number!

Like, if you want to show everyone you're some hippie/burning man kind of asshole, you can let that mail man/bill collector/guy who's there to change your locks KNOW IT with this:

A miscellany of posts that will not appear

1.) That air force commercial I see during the NFL, where some sort of hovercraft swoops into a disaster, all CGI/Cloud City-like, and the implication is that this is what it's like right now, not eleventy-three years in some future we won't live to see.





2.) The girl I saw last week in a tee shirt that said "THERE'S NOTHIN' LIKE A CLOGGIN' GIRL!" There probably isn't, actually. While I'm at it, the APT FOR RENT sign around the corner I will likely not have time to get a picture of that says the place is "CLEAN - QUITE."


I want to be generous and think it's some UK emigre doing the renting and that they are trying to impress just how clean it is.



3.) Manure tea! Have been excited about this and have failed to share. If you have insufficient nitrogen in your soil, fill a burlap sack with manure and put it in your water barrel. The nutrients will steep in the water, making a "tea" that can then be poured in a garden bed and enrich the meagre dirt. Rock!



4.) skip bombing



5.) the mighty How to Cook Everything cookbook

6.) Pulp Hits

7.) "Oh, that was an accident, but nobody got hurt." - Duvall in The Godfather

The wit and wisdom of Miles

Perhaps apocryphal, but as I have it:

Miles is tired of Coltrane blowing too many notes all over the place. Coltrane says he just has so many ideas, that they all have to come out, that he has to try them all.

Miles replies:

"Have you tried taking the motherf--cker out of your mouth?"

[do your best Miles in the retelling - payoff galore!]

Is there THAT much of a market for Liam Gallagher lookalikes?

???

Winter pigs and an arm

Poor Annie

I don't know, I'm not like some huge Eurythmics enthusiast, although "I Saved the World Today" is probably in my top 20 tunes ever - but there's just something terribly sad about Annie Lennox having to enter the ghetto of Christmas albums.

Speed kills

Scrounged this picture of my folks; had thought it was from about 1960 or so (from the beatnik vibe of these costumes), but my brother said it was later in the 60's, because he remembered this happening. So I guess they are screwing up a hippie look, as opposed to being spot-on with the "Washington Square '58." Either way - INSANE!

Hey! Our box of STUPID arrived from Amazon!

Crops - still coming in!

Some of these are transplants from our big community garden, but as of this writing all this stuff is still thriving under our little ersatz hoop house in the back yard!

This is with the cover off to water and reaffix.

"Sheriff - what sort of amazing trees do you have growing around here?"

Hallmark Hall of Fame: The Choice

This one had something going for it:

But then it was noticed that there was a big swathe of nothing through the middle section!

Ultimately, this was the winner who stood tall and firm:

Bewildered, yet proud, we stood fast

Lynn, on the hunt

What you fools have to understand is the woman is serious about picking out a tree and she will get away from you in her quest for pine perfection!

At one point, she stood in the little 4-way intersection between lanes of trees, looked back and forth, then actually sniffed at the wind a little, like a mother bear coming out of hibernation.

Looked left; looked right.

"That way!" came the command, and we headed east.

It's like a gift for dowsing, I think.

Anyway, WE WERE GETTING CLOSE.

The Lynn Show: Christmas!

My friend Kyle's mom has a rep as quite the character - yelling "WE SIT ALL THE WAY DOWN!" at guests, eg. So I did not want to miss a chance to see this force of nature picking out a Christmas tree!

The last time I had seen her, previous to Saturday, was in March or so of 1987, when I was at Kyle's house with my spanking-new 45 of "Shoplifters of the World Unite" from Renaissance Music Media. I seem to remember, when the needle found its way to Mr. Marr's "stacked guitar break," Lynn sneering "Hmmf. Sounds like Triumph" and wandering out of the room. I seem to.

Off we went to Young's Tree Farm ("get over about a couple of lanes!"). I didn't remember ever going to cut down a tree at the time, but then remembered that in 1990 I went with girlfriend Amy (not the Bride, she would have been ten) to their trad family tree chopdown field in the wilds around Kansas City. No, I did not see Len Dawson.

Andy Rourke died for this?*

* and, no, Andy Rourke is not really dead, but you get my point

Weekend

One day in D_____

On a brighter note -

I won the football pool this week! Amazing. I can take some dough away and have some left in an envelope at the Game Mistress's to pay for the rest of the season.

Ugh

Was amazingly, graphically ill on Monday night/Tuesday morning - like, Delillo-descriptive. Virus? Better today, have only had some Seven-Up and a soft pretzel in the last 36 hours and lost six pounds, so all in all a win. Sort of. Was not fun, though.

PSB Thing # 2

Chris Lowe sighted at D_____ Forever 21!

PSB thing # 1

Sure, I can understand how some of you would be too shy to join as followers of the blog, despite the fact that the tentative praise I can infer is the only thing keeping me alive.

And, yes, it would be beyond pointless to think I could make money with my random nonsensical droppings, either on the off-chance someone were to read this organ and say "Hey! This guy's like Lester Bangs and Moss Hart had a baby!" and hire me to write pithy product descriptions, or by simply monetizing.

So, what can YOU do to banish these midnight thoughts that hover around the periphery of my conscience?

WELL, you can contact all your friends and break into your parents' houses and cut parking meter heads off all Cool Hand Luke-style, pool your ill-gotten fundage, and get me this little handwritten leather book wherein Neil Tennant has written lyrics to "It's a Sin," "Being Boring" and "Your Funny Uncle" [sigh!]. It's being auctioned for the Teenage Cancer Trust (probably my next band name), which, as we know, is the cause that got Suede back together.

The best part is, I don't really even WANT it, all that much.

I just think it's time you all showed your devotion.

?

Your chance to ask the girl from Bats for Lashes what Thom Yorke is REALLY like

Plymouth RAWK!

Gabe 'n' Caitlyn had a 'friends Thanksgiving' last night...was nervous it was going to a Friends Thanksgiving, with printed out scripts from old Friends episodes that we would be forced to re-enact. Not the case! Most of the attendees were likely too young to even remember Friends [it was amazing, a bunch of the girls recognized the Noisettes song on my 3 hour, 24 minute song mix I made for the party from it being on an in-store play doodad at the retail store where they do time; and when Vince G "Christmas Time is Here" came on, I partially overheard a discussion about "Ooh, I like this..." but not having ever seen Charlie Brown Christmas {!}- and so the past slips from our fingers, etc] Food was amazing, met people we had heard of but had not met, such as May-may and Ryan. Fun!

But...Squanto died for this?

20 beds - a fait accompli

Here they are!

This is the not quite done version - after this picture was taken, more dirt was spread and beds were topped off.

Lumberton USA

Mike from Metroparks was gracious enough to bring a trailer Friday to the St Vincent Deconstruction Depot to help me move the way-too-long-for-our-truck beams for which I had already paid!

I then spent the balance of the afternoon cutting boards to size! Manly shit, I grant you. Lots of splinters as well. TOUGH!

"Dude! You're gonna miss Dream Theater!"

Weekend

How's YOUR apocalypse going?

Technology also sucks because:

I love my Droid, I really do - but what genius made the keyboard so that the instant smiley emoticon is next to and twice the size of the period?

I seriously spend ten hours a day deleting erroneously-made "smileys" from texts.

Meanwhile, back in Ludditeville

Someone explain to me: why all the hubbub about the Beatles and iTunes? Everyone should get excited to pay for the Beatles songs for the nth time? Is this great news for the divorced 55 year olds who can't fathom how to, y'know, drag tracks into iTunes? Will there be talk of "you really have to hear 'The Inner Light' in iTunes format...the tablas are amazing..."?

I'm quite serious. I do not understand WHY THIS MATTERS. If it's some bullshit about "lossless" quality or some other nebbish gibberish, maybe that makes sense. But right now, in my external hard drive, I have all the Beatles I could want/need.

WHAT IS THE POINT?

"WHAT swasti-...? Oh, that..."

Overheard:

"That's up there with drownding and burning."

Well played, E.B.

"One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy."

This blog's gestalt, finally

I think the whole thing can be summed up by the news that Taco Bell has brought back green sauce. If you're not excited by this -- phoning relatives, losing sleep like a 6 year-old on Xmas eve -- this blog just may not be for you.

"Lissenin to some Suede over here, boss..."

So, after all the Herculean labor, you would think I would have gone home to watch that Oklahoma State/Texas Tech game or at least steal a Scissor Sisters album off the world wide web...yes, there was a time when the second would have been true, but duty called as I helped Kyle re-side the back of his house! Tongue and groove, nails, me on a table saw cutting off pieces of wood from Menards' at interesting lengths like "102"!" and "Need one cut to 46"!"

Amazing!

Garden Clean-up and Bed Build 2010, Week 1, Part 4

Even lovely Luci from Metroparks came by and checked out the shenanigans! We're FAMOUS!

(Hello, Mark! [also pictured])

Garden Clean-up and Bed Build 2010, Week 1, Part 3

Here is the hard working team that made all this fun happen (minus Kyle and Josie):

Next up for this crew: Lufthansa heist!

Garden Clean-up and Bed Build 2010, Week 1, Part 2

Look! New beds!

We got five built, but it happened that Wood Guy Matt called and told me that he had about thirty just-arrived 2" x 8" 's and, while they are paid for, we didn't have time to cut them and build them. That means next week at this time, you can be bored into anguish by further garden updates! YES!

So, we got five newies built and loaded with their lasagna-bed fixin's:

Here they are in context to the existing seven beds that you have previously know and loved/loathed:

Garden Clean-up and Bed Build 2010, Week 1, Part 1

Yes! Turn off the PC and take a nap, because I have pics from our gardening weekend! Stay and be bored!

Here is the main bin, early a.m. on Saturday:

Rear view, neighbors have kindly brought tons o' leaves for the cause:

And just like in Rear Window where James Stewart realizes the flowers have lowered themselves, here is a time lapse of later in the day, where scattered skids have been used to make the whole bin longer, and the levels of leaves, compost and manure have sunk: