Category Archives: Farce

May 16, 2024 · 23:37

Coco

She hates me. It’s her nature.

Coco is a tiny dog, some sort of mutt with a lot of poodle or terrier if I had to guess. She belongs to our neighbors on the north side and Coco’s job is to defend our wonderful, kind, friendly neighbors from all sorts of evil terrors. ***I*** am the evil terror, just in case I was being too subtle.

There’s a 6′ chain link fence between our yards, covered in vines (I’m sure you can catch glimpses of it in any one of hundreds of photos from the past six years) so I don’t see Coco well and she doesn’t see me, but that doesn’t matter. She’s sound activated. Any sound from me and she is sounding the alarm.

Me taking the trash out is the absolute bane of her existence. The trash barrel is over along that fence and when I open the lid on the trash can or recycling bin it often bangs into the fence and rattles it. She’s often barking at me long before I get there, set off by my footsteps, but the sound of the trash bin being opened and closed is like throwing gasoline on a fire.

Even when I just go out to walk around the yard and stretch my legs, it’s anathama to Coco. This aggression will not stand. man!

I hear my neighbors trying to shush Coco, but she will not be silenced. She has a job to do and she’s going to do it!

I do not taunt her, ever. I don’t call her name. I don’t stand on my side of the fence and bark back at her. I don’t scream, “COME AT ME, COCO! GIVE ME YOUR BEST SHOT! LEAP THAT FENCE, COME OVER HERE AND GO FOR MY THROAT! TAKE ME DOWN AND PROVE YOUR DOMINANCE! SHOW ME WHO’S THE ALPHA CRITTER!!!” I don’t do any of that. I think about it… But I’ve been good.

So I understand my role, my part in this particular drama. I go outside, quietly, often with trash, minding my own business, and Coco goes berserk to make sure everyone knows I’m outside in the yard without supervision, footloose and fancy free, an obvious threat to the future of Western Civilization.

What kills me are the squirrels. We’ve got many of them (plus all of those birds!) and I’ve never once in six years heard Coco barking at the squirrels. Those little rat bastards scamper all over the yard and up one side of the tree and back down the other, along the top of the fence, in and out of all of the vines, and Coco ignores them completely. Isn’t THAT the EXACT sort of thing that terriers were originally bred for? Not for Coco, whose noble ancestors might be spinning in their graves at what their proud lineage has become. But god forbid that I should go out in my own yard with a camera to take pictures of a hawk.

A hawk…

Gee, it would be a pity if our juvenile red-shouldered hawk got a bit bigger and stronger and more capable and saw Coco as prey. Poor, poor, edible little Coco.

Time to start training and befriending hawks!

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Dogs, Farce

March 19, 2024 · 23:40

68 With A Stick

It’s a really excellent stick. Ausgezeichnet, so to speak.

First of all, today is my birthday, I’m now 68.

But why the stick? (Despite the fact that it’s an excellent stick!)

A few days ago I scanned past a post on some social media site or the other and saw a picture of a guy with a stick. It was a nice stick, a very nice stick. He had been out for a walk, had found the stick along the way, and had picked it up and was taking it home because when he was a little kid, if he was out playing and he found a very nice stick, he would pick it up to play with and take home. And he was betting that all of us would have done the same. AND HE WAS RIGHT!

The bigger point was that we had changed as adults, and not necessarily for the better. We had lost the ability to be playful, to find joy in simple things, to just pick up that stick and play with it and take it home just because it was COOL! He was reclaiming that childhood wonder. He was going to play with the stick! It was his! He found it, fair and square! He was going to take it home!

I was impressed. And inspired.

And then, that very afternoon, I found an excellent stick in our front yard. (It’s been windy.) And while contemplating my advancing age and impending natal day celebration, I realized that this was a *SIGN*.

So here I am, 68, with my stick. What kind of stick? A really excellent stick. (Pay attention. Work with me here. It’s probably either a midlife crisis or a stroke.)

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Filed under Farce, Paul, Photography

February 28, 2024 · 23:23

Who Is In Charge Of Emojis?

Every now and then I see that there are new emojis being released and upgrades to the existing emojis. For example, a couple years ago all of the emojis showing hands or faces were upgraded so they could be black, white, brown, yellow, etc for different ethnic backgrounds. 👍🏻

Who’s in charge of this? Who approves the new emojis to be added? I need them to give me a call ASAP.

We need an emoji for “a can of worms.” In fact, we need three of them, small, medium, and large, just like the thumbs up with the different skin tones.

We can start text messages to our bosses and supervisors with the “small can of worms” emoji when they need to be aware of something, but we’re handling it, it’s probably going to be just fine, but just in case it comes back around and we don’t want them to be surprised or blindsided, we’re going to give them a couple of details.

Messages that start with the “medium can of worms” would indicate that they probably need to pay attention and you need some help. You might be playing outside of your weight class on this one and could use some immediate help.

Then there’s the “large can of worms” emoji. This would be for when the IRS or police are at the office door with some unpleasant paperwork, or the pregnant woman from accounting took a tumble on a wet floor and went ass over tea kettle down a flight of stairs. This emoji might need a sound effect to go along with it, perhaps something of a siren or the Robot from “Lost In Space” shouting, “Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!” (Okay, how many of you read that in the Robot’s voice and flailed your arms up and down while doing so?)

I guess the level beyond that could be an emoji for a single huge sandworm from “Dune,” which could be a great tie in to the movie that opens this weekend. (Yes, I have tickets already.) For a sound effect you could have a legion of Fremen shouting, “Shai Halud!” It would be up to your boss to figure if the proper response would be to get out the hooks and ropes and mount up, or run like a bat out of hell for a rock outcropping.

Can someone get on that? And while they’re at it, maybe add an emoji for “a barrel of monkeys.” Memos to your boss shouldn’t ALL be bad news!

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Filed under Farce, Silly Shit

January 11, 2024 · 23:23

Sticker Shock

Here in the US everything has a bar code so that it can be electronically scanned, tracked, inventoried, sold, returned, and consumed. Even fruits and vegetables started having these little stickers with barcodes attached to them about ten or fifteen years ago.

I was eating this pear’s twin this afternoon (the pear’s pair, as it were) and I was distracted. I was eating over the sink to minimize the mess since it was an excellent, tasty, and juicy pear. I was staring out the kitchen window into the back yard, watching a couple of squirrels clean up the leftover bird seed from the morning’s feeding. In my hunger and distraction, I may have bitten in and eaten that little sticker.

It made me pause. Then the questions started. (My brain does that…)

Was I in danger? Probably not I figured. I guess the biggest danger would be that it would lodge someplace and not digest or move on, blocking the natural flow of things, if you know what I mean. (You know what I mean!) But it was small, thin, and lightweight, so it wasn’t like when little kids eat quarters or dogs eat the squeaky thing out of toys that they got by ripping the “indestructable” toy apart in thirty seconds. I didn’t see any surgical interventions in my future.

As some philosopher said, “This too shall pass.”

Would it poison me or degrade into something toxic? It’s not even really paper, more like some kind of thin plastic, or Tyvek. Late-stage capitalism might be encouraging that sort of thing, especially if it actually costs money to use materials that not only don’t kill the consumer but are tested in advance to prove that. But still, there’s also the healthy fear of being sued for $50,000,000,000,000 by my heirs (and not a penny less!) so let’s assume that I’m okay there.

Just in case, should I try to make myself vomit it back up? First of all, ewwwww! Secondly, as stated above, it was an excellent, tasty, and juicy pear. Why ruin that experience with a backwash of gastric fluids? And thirdly, if there was any danger from this sticker going down, having it coming back up with some velocity behind it would have to be more dangerous. Right?

So should I go to urgent care? The emergency room? Um, no. Those places are full of sick people! These days with the flu, the seventh (or is it the eighth? ninth?) COVID wave in full swing, and god knows what other contagious bits flying about, I’m far, FAR safer here at home and taking my chances with the natural passage of the sticker through my GI tract.

Great! I have nothing to worry about! Enjoy the rest of the pear! (I did.)

Except…

It occured to me later that, with the government at all levels having abandoned us to COVID, the best and often only measure for tracking it is the wastewater monitoring. And by “wastewater,” in case you haven’t thought this through, we mean “raw sewage.” And now in about 36 to 48 hours that wastewater is going to have this sticker and its barcode sailing through the system. The testing is all automated, which means computers. The wastewater testing setup probably has various optical and biological testing equipment hooked up to a big computer and it’s running a lot of specialized algorithms to run a lot of specialized sensors and equipment. Which is all well and good, except that that ultra specialized software’s 17th cousin twice removed on its mother’s side is the scanning software from the self checkout line at Piggly Wiggly.

It may be looking for parts per billion of COVID in my sewage, but it’s gonna see that bar code and go off the charts. Or it’s going to launch our ICBMs. Or it’s going to call the aliens hiding in the asteroid belt and tell them to abandon us because we’re neither intelligent or civilized. (If the alien overlords are watching Fox News, this will not be news to them.)

Whatever happens – it might be my fault. Or the squirrels’.

 

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Farce, Health, Photography

November 12, 2023 · 23:25

Not NaNoWriMo, 11/12/2023

On the one hand, I guess it’s a good thing that “succeeding” or “winning” at NaNoWriMo wasn’t a priority for me this year, but more of a “throw something against the wall and see what sticks while knowing well in advance that I really, REALLY don’t have the time for it” thing. On the other hand, that also explains why I’m not pushing harder to keep up. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I won’t be beating myself up over it too much. I have plenty of higher priority and more critical things to fit that bill if I need it. In addition, a bit more self awareness and self care is on the menu as I reach a certain age, or maybe even acquire a tiny bit of wisdom.

The Catholic school nuns living in the back of my head with their Puritan work ethic and guilt by the metric ton are getting a bit quieter. Or, more accurately, they’re being told where to shove it more often, sometimes with physiologically improbable instructions added in for fun.

Meanwhile…

I recently got a couple of these pill cases to use to organize my daily meds. Nothing fancy.

Something on the order of $1.99?

On the packaging were the following instructions.

“This product is neither child resistant…” That part I get. This product can and probably IS used to hold something that could harm children if taken improperly. That’s exactly why I wanted it – there are no children in the house and I needed this to replace old ones I have which were becoming a royal pain in the ass to use because they were child resistant.

But, “nor is it a toy”?

How pathetic is your childhood, how barren, how joyless, where THIS would be considered a toy?

My brain thinks these thoughts, asks these questions. Sorry!

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Filed under Farce, Photography

March 8, 2023 · 23:36

Not Hitting On All Cylinders

The last few weeks have been… “intense” would be a good word. “Good” intense, as it were, goals to be met, dragons to be slain, sleep to be lost, but still.

This morning, scraping my sorry ass out of bed and preparing to meet the day, I froze at one point in my routine.

Something was off. I was fuzzy, couldn’t put my finger on it quite yet, but something was definitely off.

Hey, Siri! Tell me about dissociative disorders!

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Farce, Photography

October 18, 2022 · 21:41

Countdown To Christmas

The Hallmark Channel on cable has a little promo icon in the lower left corner that’s constantly telling me today that it’s “Three Days to the Countdown to Christmas!”

Okay…

Can I start putting up Christmas lights on Friday?

Normally, of course, being a sane and reasonable person (shut up! I heard that!), I wouldn’t start putting up lights until the Friday after Thanksgiving. And normally, if I broke that rule and jumped the gun for some reason, a few of my neighbors might politely inquire what the hell I was thinking.

But, hey! A multi-billion dollar, multinational megacorp says that it’s okay! We’re gonna blow straight by not just Halloween, but Thanksgiving as well! It’s time to start pushing those trees, ornaments, inflatable 12′ skeletons, cards, presents, gift cards, and inedible fruitcakes!

Who am I, a simple pawn in the game of life who happens to have a garage full of Christmas lights, to argue with that kind of authority?

Where’s my ladder?

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Farce

October 9, 2022 · 22:02

Why Do I Have These Apps On My Phone?

There were some updates downloading on my phone today and I saw a couple there that I had forgotten that I had.

Maybe it’s just me, but…

Granted, this state is voluntary, but nonetheless, that ship might have sailed.

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Filed under Farce, Paul, Photography

September 18, 2022 · 23:57

And A New Week Is Upon Us

My usual Monday phrase at work for every informal email or text is “Happy Monday!”

I’ve made it quite clear to everyone else on the team that this is 1% a “fake it ’til you make it” philosophy and 99% utter sarcasm. If they ever detect even one part per billion of sincerity in there I am to be immediately institutionalized and given a full course of rabies shots.

It is what it is.

Here, have a random picture of some plants in my back yard as I was dropping my phone while out futzing and getting soaked in the middle of the night tonight.

Happy Monday Eve!

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Filed under Farce, Photography

September 14, 2022 · 21:27

Sometimes The Lyrics Just Click

If you’ve listened to any country music in the past twenty years or so, you’ve heard Toby Keith’s “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This” a time or seventy-three. A cute enough love song, I guess, with a video that’s a bit on the creepy side for my tastes.

Anyway, today it came up on my playlist while my brain was busy doing some routine work and suddenly all of the words clicked. But it’s not love that Keith’s talking about!

“Something shot right through me, my heart skipped a beat in time…”

That’s not love, or even lust.

That’s a PVC, or Premature Ventricular Contraction. I’ve had them for years, even to the point of wearing a Holter monitor for a day to make sure they weren’t something more serious. Mostly harmless – unlike what the cougar in the video is going to do to that young stud muffin.

“I even think I saw a flash of light…”

Again – not passion, or a bolt of metaphysical, super psychic energy impacting your cranium from the great beyond.

Nope, that’s a PVD, Posterior Vitreous Detatchment. I had that about a year ago. Lots of floaters and spots and at night and in dark spaces I get flashes of light sometimes, especially when I blink. You get used to it. It can be serious and an indication of something much worse going on, but monitoring it with an exam every six months or so seems to be working fine.

So, much like the cold, harsh reality of the ending of the video, we see that the romantic, gushy, sappy love song is just a sign that we’re all getting old, falling apart, and soon to die. Probably painfully.

(I may be Captain Buzzkill now, but I’m bucking for Admiral Buzzkill!)

 

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Filed under Farce, Music