Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

Well, the bad news is that the phone is still not ringing. The good news is that my frantic mind has decided that a little more blogging might help.

I thought I was going to take some time to listen to Anthony Pollina’s “Equal Time” radio show on WDEV but I just got really fucking sleepy after only three minutes of hearing him somnambulantly explain the current milk pricing woes of dairy farmers. Holy shit, he’s boring. I think all that dairy consumption is only making him slower, too. Imagine how bad he’s going to get when he’s wolfing down all those “natural creemies” he’s starting to market. Which reminds me, what in the hell is a “natural creemie”? I mean, Pollina’s already admitted the diary for the creemies isn’t organic. Worse, Pollina’s creemies are “single-shot” creemies that come “individually-packed” in plastic. How’s that for “natural”? Personally, I think the only way you’re going to get a natural creemie is to put a lactating organic cow on ice and start sucking. Of course, there’s a very good chance the PETA crowd will object but, what the fuck, they bitch about everything.

Wow. Now THAT was a tangent. Sorry about that. But, while we’re on tangent highway, let’s keep looking around.

I’ve decided that I’m going to immediately amend my living will as soon as I figure out how to create a living will in the first place. The amendment is going to read like this: To anyone who knows or comes into contact with me and sees that I own more than one lawn mowing machine and/or use that machine more than once every ten days, you hereby have my permission to take me out of my misery by immediately killing me.

I mean, come on, you’ve seen those old fuckers who are seemingly living for one thing only: mowing the goddamn lawn. And mowing. And mowing. And trimming. And edging. And mowing. And blowing. And fertilizing. And mowing. And de-thatching. And mowing.

The house I’m currently calling home – my sister’s – is surrounded by old maniac mowers. While technically she still lives in town, she’s just outside of town enough for the people to adequately pretend they live in the country. In other words, they’ve all got a few acres and, for some fucked up reason, they’ve not only turned the entire acreage into lawn but they’ve decided the lawn should be cut every…single…day so that it looks like the felt on a pool table rather than anything close to natural. Uh-oh, there’s that word again.

I’m not kidding when I tell you that her most immediate neighbor has been on, pushed or carried about six different grass-killing devices in the week that I’ve been here. Worse, other than when it’s raining, he’s at it EVERY DAY. In other words, there is no peace here because this whacked out old bastard is in one constant Sisyphean battle with the grass. And what’s really pissing me off is that I’ve become obsessed with watching him do little more than mow his way through life, meaning that, in the scheme of things, I’m a bigger loser for watching him mow than he is for mowing. And that just sucks. I mean, I’ve been watching him so much that I can see he’s going over the same places two and three times. And I just don’t want to be worrying about that kind of thing right now.

I’ve never really had much to mow. But, whenever I do mow, I hate it. In fact, this is usually what goes through my mind while I’m mowing: “This is stupid.” Let’s face it, it’s loud, it’s smelly, and it’s all about killing nature and looking like a dog chasing its tail around in circles. Worse, it’s a losing battle because the grass always wins.

But these old fuckers seem to get one hell of a kick out of going around and around as loudly and as often as they can. I guess they all retired from some rote job that they gave 30-plus of their lives to and now mowing just seems like a natural extension to the nothingness of it all. And their wives certainly don’t seem to object – they enjoyed all those years of having them out of the house, damn it. So go mow, you fool! And mow some more! And more! How sad.

So, please, do NOT let me enter this stage of my life. You have my full permission to shoot me if some latent mowing gene starts to kick in during my lifetime.

Fuck, I wish the phone would ring. I’ve got way too much time on my hands. Please, someone help me.