Paper Bags for the Groceries, Please. And a Plastic One for the Ecstatic Drool. [Where the Hell Was I?]

« You Sure You Didn't Accidentally Grill Your Shoe Out There? | Main | No, Dammit, How Are You Doing? »

August 15, 2003

Paper Bags for the Groceries, Please. And a Plastic One for the Ecstatic Drool.

This blog is ribbed, for your comfort and her pleasure. And vice versa, if you're into that sort of thing.

Hey, all. Yes, I'm playing the Fun With Timestamps game again tonight. I didn't blog all day, and then plopped down a few words just in the nick of time. No, really -- with mere seconds to spare. Check it out. And then, just to amuse myself, I started another post just a few seconds later, while the clock was still chiming the midnight hour. Boy, if anyone but me cared about such things, I would be so cool. But they don't, so I'm not. Bitches!

Anyway, look on the bright side.

(As if you can call anything about this blog 'bright'.)

Now, you're gonna get two posts in one. First, I'll finish this post, and then I'll get my second wind (or third, or fourth, by then) and spew forth another bunch of nonsense for the second post. I do this not because I have to, you understand. I do it because I care. See, I want to churn out some measure of rubbish around here every single day. For you, of course. Because I know you need this sort of thing, to brighten up your lives and cheer your hearts. (And just because reading this raises your spirits because your life suddenly seems much saner by comparison, I won't hold that against you. Much, anyway. Just send me twenty dollars and we'll call it even.)

Plus, it helps to be on a reasonably regular schedule, if you're planning on writing for any length of time. I think I read that on a cereal box once. Or got it in a fortune cookie, I forget. The point is that you've got to keep those creative juices flowing, or they might dry up and cause an obstruction of some sort. You want to stay 'regular', you eat lots of fiber.

(Or you get enemas, I suppose, if the thought of turning your ass into a waterpark slip 'n' slide wets your whistle. Um, so to speak.)

If you want to stay 'creative' and 'on the verge of insanity', you blog. Now, I don't know what the creative equivalent of acute constipation would be, but I imagine that it looks something like this. Or this. Eek.

(And no, you're right, I don't usually go for the political joke around here. But it's late, so I'm taking the easy way out and picking a few low-hanging fruit tonight. Or vegetables, as the case may be. Deal.)

So, anyway, it's gonna be two-for-one night at the old blog spot tonight. Come one, come all. Twice the boobery, twice the fun. No, not that kind of boobery, ya horny bastard. And no, I don't have twice as many of those as usual, either. Let's try and focus, shall we?

Now, where was I? Oh, right. Just getting started with the first topic of the evening-now-morning. Coming right up.

So, the barbecue is on for tomorrow. Which is the real reason I didn't get a chance to chit-chat with you folks earlier -- I spent the entire day shopping, and painting, and cleaning, and mowing the lawn, and trimming the bushes. My wife got in the act, too, and mopped the floors, and made some food, and straightened up the place. She didn't trim any bushes, though. Um, that I know of. Ya know, it's late. I think I'm just gonna leave that one riiiight where it is, lest I wind up getting myself bitch-slapped tomorrow. Just forget I ever mentioned bushes and trimming and my wife all in the same sentence, okay? Cool.

So, speaking of the barbecue, our test burgers were scrumptious last night. I think we've finally licked this grilling thing.

(Not the grill itself, mind you. Just the grilling 'thing'. You never want to actually lick the grill, of course. Oh, your saliva will save your precious tongue skin for a second or two, but soon enough, your mouthmeat's gonna stick to the grate, and then it's all over, dude. Trust me. I went through the better part of my twenties unable to taste 'sour' because I French kissed a Hibachi on a dare. Sure, I won twenty bucks, but was it really worth the skin grafts and horrific disfigurement and having lemonade taste like 'charred person ade' for several years? Um, well, actually -- it was twenty bucks. And I did use it to buy a case of beer and a sackful of White Castle Slyders. So, yeah, I guess it was. What do you know?

All right, back to our story in progress. So, bottom line, we were busy today scurrying around getting ready for tomorrow's bash. Most of the work was just that -- work -- and not terribly interesting, but I do want to share one experience with you that I found most... titillating. Yeah, I thought that'd get your attention. Perv.

So, I made two runs to the grocery store for this party. On the first -- on Thursday afternoon -- I got all the boring stuff. Veggies and buns and condiments and chips and paper plates and blah and et cetera and snoo-ooze. Just regular, everyday barbecue shit. The staples of everyday living, or perhaps tea on the lawn with the bridge club. Yes, that's exactly it -- we could have cucumber sandwiches and vegetable plates and sip our sodas with our pinkies skyward and have a jolly good show of it, mum. Pip pip. And then we could all strangle ourselves with our daisy chains or use our parasols to hari kari ourselves out of the mind-numbing boredom of it all.

Okay, so maybe that's laying it on a bit thick. But clearly, I saved the good stuff for the second trip. And good stuff it was, folks. Good stuff it was. I returned to our friendly local grocer's establishment this afternoon, and collected the following items:

five packages of hamburger patties
six packages of 'Beer'n Bratwurst' (from Johnsonville, natch)
two packages of chicken parts
one bottle each of tequila, vodka, gin, and vermouth
two bottles of margarita mix
three and a half cases of beer

Now, I don't know how many of you have experienced the sheer hedonistic rapture of going through the checkout line at a supermarket with two hundred dollars' worth of booze and dead animals, but I have to tell you -- it was damned near orgasmic. I thought about adding a carton of smokes and a couple of hookers to the cart, just to complete the picture of a man going straight to hell, and fast, but I decided to go with what I already had.

(Which is for the best, I think. For one thing, I don't smoke. I do like cigars, but there's a whole frickin' procedure to smoking those things that I can never quite get right. I'm always stickin' the wrong end in my mouth, or cutting what I'm supposed to bite off, or chewing when I'm supposed to be sucking. Uh, the cigar, that is. You know, now that I see it put that way, there in black and white, maybe I'm not such a big fan of cigars, after all. I never really thought of it that way before. I see David Letterman in a whole new light now.

Anyway, I was still gonna get the hookers -- they don't have much of a shelf life, but they'd keep until tomorrow. But I got there late, and all the good ones had already been taken. The only ones left to choose from were a kindly old grandmotherly sort who offered to 'gum you long time', a rather plump lass who said she could only help me if my friends were into 'watching' and 'feet' and especially 'watching feet', and two disturbingly hirsute sisters that made Patty and Selma Simpson look like the Barbi twins. So I just squeezed a couple of melons and headed for the checkout line.)

So, that was my trip to the store. Booze and meat, meat and booze. Two great tastes that taste great together. And will offend at least one of your senses the next morning, but that's beside the point. In fact, the point is that the burgers are chillin' in the fridge right now, while the brats are soaking in beer, and the chicken breasts are swimming in this unholy concoction of jerk marinade and hot sauce that I invented just for the occasion. Okay, so I invented it largely because I dropped the bottle of hot sauce and broke the lid, so I had to use it in something, and my wife wouldn't let me pour it into her pasta salad. Or on her T shirt. Or on the dog. Still, that doesn't mean it won't be tasty, 'cause it will. It just means that I'm going to have to find another way to spice up the pasta tomorrow. And the dog, come to think of it, but I'll worry about that later.

For now, I'm off to the next post. It's just about four am now, so it may be short, sweet, and to the point. Or as close as I can manage to get, which is about fourteen paragraphs full of blather. Or blither, maybe -- I'm too tired to tell the difference any more. Plus, I'm kind of distracted by my soaking meat. Um, ew! Okay, that's all I'm gonna say about that. I already ruined cigars for myself in this post; any more of this and I'll turn myself off of barbecues, too.