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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
There’s no such thing as a completely hassle-free day. Not for me, at least.
(This is just another way of saying that I can never be fully idiot-proofed against. If there’s a hassle nearby, it’ll find me. If the hassle’s way back in the far corner, shackled in a locked cabinet under a pile of stuff, it’ll pull some hassle Houdini and spring at me when I least expect it.
If a place has been entirely wiped clean of hassles by trained professionals in hazmat suits wielding rags and swiffers soaked with Lysol-brand Hassle B-Gone spray, then a pain and an annoyance will get together, mate, and squirt a slimy newborn hassle into the middle of my lap. This is what is. I sit powerless in its wake.
And also in a pile of after-hassle-birth goo, apparently. Funny how my analogies always this way.)
I must say that I’m pleased to report that my day at the beer chalet has been mostly hassle-free. It might have been rendered entirely, miraculously hassle-free, but for two niggling details:
1. The current laws of the universe, which attract hassles to me like I’m an electromagnet in a fork factory.
2. The microwave oven.
Not the microwave oven in general as an invention, of course. Without any microwave ovens, my life would no doubt be far more hassle-ful, what with all the burning myself on conventional ovens, and the grease fires I’d be starting, and all the time and money spent popping my instant popcorn with defibrillator paddles. No, me and microwaves as a whole — we tight.
The microwave oven in this particular getaway home, however, is a different beast entirely than the microwaves I’ve known. It’s quite old, for starters. It may well have been the first microwave oven model produced. It’s possible — this is my current working theory, in fact — that this microwave oven was constructed before scientists had actually discovered microwave radiation. I say this because nowhere on, inside underneath or near the device does is say any fricking thing about ‘microwaves’.
This wouldn’t constitute a hassle, if the thing were clearly a microwave oven. You could label it a ‘sock drawer’ for all I care; if it’s got the familiar buttons and door and ‘REDENBACHER TIME!’ setting somewhere, I’ll get the gist.
(And I probably won’t store my socks in there, no matter what it’s called. Tends to make everything taste like my Aunt Jean’s meatloaf.)
But this thing looming ominously over the stove isn’t like that. It looks like a food dispenser from an old Soyuz space station or something. There are buttons — but some of them actually push in. When’s the last time you pushed a button, and it actually depressed? We humans aren’t made for that — our years of touchscreen phones and whisper-soft keyboards have evolved us past this nonsense. I could have broken a metacarpal, for crissakes.
Also, there are an awful lot of instructions on the thing referring to something called ‘The Magic Codes’. Like:
‘Sandwiches, 1 Thick: CODE 25‘
or
‘Simmer: CODE 6‘
Simmer? I’ve never simmered in a microwave. I’ve never dreamed of simmering in a microwave, and I’m not sure it’s entirely legal. Also, not all of the codes are used — there are gaps in the numbers. CODE 8, for instance, is nowhere to be found. What the hell happens if I press in CODE 8? Do I get beef wellington? Does it launch a missle somewhere in Irkutsk? Does June Cleaver crawl out of the thing and bop me with a rolling pin because I didn’t read the damned directions?
I don’t know. I just know I’m sure as hell not pressing in CODE 8.
Look, I’m not a complete idiot. (Give it time.) I could tell the thing is for cooking food — or incinerating it, or materializing it out of spare chicken gravy molecules floating nearby, perhaps — but I couldn’t be sure it was a microwave. It could have been a toaster oven or convection doohickey or some other thing I’m not supposed to use without adult supervision. And even the name of the thing was suspect:
MVP II: Magic Chef
That doesn’t help me at all. I wanted to know that if I put my bag of popcorn inside, I’d get popped popcorn back. From the ‘Magic Chef‘ — who the hell knows? I might set the bag on fire. If I do it just right, I might get ‘simmered popcorn’, apparently. I might find a rabbit in a hat, for all I know. No help.
(Though it does lend credence to my theory that this was invented before they knew anything about microwaves. If I could find the manual, I fully expect it to refer to ‘invisible oven gnomes’ who come through a little door in the back to breathe on your food for the allotted time. That’s the level of sophistication this contraption suggests.
Also, that would explain a lot about Aunt Jean’s meatloaf. Especially if the gnomes eat a lot of garlic. And socks.)
Clearly, this wasn’t meant to happen. So I enjoyed my bag of kernels for lunch, washed it down with a beer, and made an appointment to see a dentist as soon as humanly possible next week. But at least it’s just for cracked molars, rather than Mrs. Cleaver knocking a few loose for railing to ‘RTFM, dear’.
Other than that, it’s a pretty good day. I could really get into this not-skiing thing.
Permalink | No CommentsLater this afternoon, the missus and I are setting off with a few friends on a ski trip.
Only I don’t ski.
Oh, I’ve worn skis, sure. I’ve slapped them onto my feet, taken a chair lift to the top of a gently-inclined bunny slope and let gravity have its way with me. But at no time did any of my falling, flailing, stumbling, tripping, faceplanting, leg wrenching or furious cursing resemble ‘skiing’ in the slightest.
(I believe I may have briefly qualified as a mogul when a pack of eight year olds took turns jumping my flattened carcass splayed on the middle of a hill. But at best, that makes me a ‘ski-ee’, not so much a ski-er’.)
“Taking up snowboarding because you can’t ski is like climbing Everest because you fell off a Stairmaster.”
This wasn’t a one-time deal, mind you. I gave skiing several good shots over the course of a few years, and each time spent more time face-down in snow than on my feet and ‘shushing’. I’ve sucked down more fresh powder than Gary Busey on a weeklong Thai bender. I know when I’m licked. And skiing’s spittle is still dripping off my socks, several winters later. So I’m done. Kaput. Sworn it off.
(In an inexplicable spasm of poor judgment — which is to say, spousal arm twisting — I decided a couple of years ago to try snowboarding instead. Because this is the sort of thing that idiots do.
Taking up snowboarding because you can’t ski is like climbing Everest because you fell off a Stairmaster. I still spent the day making involuntary snow angels, but at a much higher rate of speed, and with my feet basically shackled together. There’s a reason that ‘snowboarding’ and ‘waterboarding’ are such similar words.)
So, it’s a ‘ski trip’ for everyone else. For me, it’s a ‘sleep late, build a fire, booze it up and treat the wounded trip’. Frankly, I like the sound of mine better. Though it might be tougher to get printed on a T-shirt.
I may tinker with some other winter pastimes while I’m there — snowshoeing, flagpole licking, writing my name in the snow, the usual — but I have zero plans to slap overgrown toothpicks on my feet, plummet down a hill, or ride in a scary open one-way ferris wheel car. I’m parking my ass in the ‘beer chalet’ tonight, and staying in close proximity to the suds fridge until it’s time to mosey home on Sunday.
And if that plan ends up with me face down in the snow again… well, at least this time maybe I’ll enjoy the fall a little more. When it comes to skiing, I’d call that progress.
Permalink | 4 CommentsMy dog is constantly finding new ways to embarrass me.
Our new(-ish, now) condo is located on a nice little residential street, with brownstones and apartments and small parks in most directions. To the right, a five-minute walk or so past the small local library, we have easy access to a bustling neighborhood intersection with shops, restaurants and public transportation. That’s also the only direction I’ve found, within a several-block radius, to feature an available public trash can.
So when I’m walking the dog, does she walk toward the right?
No. The dog, recalcitrant hellbeast that she is, wants to walk anywhere out the door that’s not ‘toward the right’. She’s happy to go left. Eager to bound straight across the street and down the avenue beyond. Around the corner, behind the building, up in a balloon, down a mine shaft toward the earth’s molten core — these are all agreeable destinations for the dog, because they can in no way, shape or form be confused with ‘toward the right’. Or the trash can.
Instead, she’s interested in trekking off to the far corners of the neighborhood, sniffing bushes and peeing on hydrants where no dog has sniffed or peed before. And pooping. Lord, the pooping. Something about our daily constitutional limbers up the old canine intestines, because when she’s ready to let fly — look out. And the farther we walk, the more prodigious the poops.
(I understand this, to a degree. I’ve heard — and follow personally — the old advice, “Don’t shit where you sleep.” I’m not arguing that.
But the mutt appears to be on a mission to “don’t shit where you’ve ever slept, might sleep, once yawned, or could drive to on a single tank of gas.” And that’s excessive, in my pooping book.)
So now I’m forced to trudge back to the condo carrying a bag of fresh warm mutt plop. That’s no picnic, in and of itself. Cost of cohabitating a slobbering idiot little fuzzball for reasons that escape me at the moment, I figure.
(And yes, by the way, I do often impose my will on the pooch and insist — nay, compel — that we walk to the right, toward the trash. Much tugging and pulling and dragging and stubborn sitting and glaring ensues. But I get my way and dammit, we walk to the right, when I say so.
“Six miles away, and the dog can fill a Hefty bag with recycled horse meat and cereal filler. In the shadow of a garbage bin — and miffed off at me for interrupting her route? Nary a turdlet.”
Mind you, we never do any actual pooping when we go to the right, out of some sort of scorned puppy spite I haven’t conquered. Six miles away, and the dog can fill a Hefty bag with recycled horse meat and cereal filler. In the shadow of a garbage bin — and miffed off at me for interrupting her route? Nary a turdlet.
And I know she’s just saving them up for the back room. Conniving little bitch knows how to stockpile ammo. Clever girl.)
Hefting the poop bag back home like a satanic Santa’s sack full of scat isn’t the worst part, though. I don’t want that thing in the house — and if it’s been an especially long walk, I’m not entirely sure it’ll fit through the door. So I drop the dog inside and head out — to the right — to deposit the bag in a proper outdoor trash receptacle.
This is invariably where I run into someone in the neighborhood who wants to ‘chat’. Could be an upstairs neighbor, or the lady next door, or some busybody from down the block. Whoever it is, it’s as though there’s a sign strapped around my neck with big neon letters screaming:
“HI! PLEASE TALK TO ME RIGHT NOW, WHILE I’M HOLDING A STEAMING BAG FULL OF POOP! DON’T BE SHY!”
And there’s simply no way you can ‘play off’ walking down the street in your neighborhood, sans pet, and carrying a fresh sack of shit. It can’t be done. Take the exchange I had following an after-work walk last night:
Woman: Hi there! We’re your new neighbors across the street, and wanted to say hello. I’m Amanda; this is my daughter, Zoe.
Me: Hi, great to meet you both — welcome. My name is-
Zoe: Hey, mister! What’s that in your hand?
Me: Uhm… big bag of turds.
Zoe: What kinda turds?
Me: Doggie turds.
Woman: But… there’s no dog with you.
Me: Er… no, ma’am.
Woman: …
Me: …
Woman: Zoe, come stand behind Mommy. We’re going to practice our ‘backing away from wacko strangers’ now, okay? Don’t forget the screaming, pumpkin.
Leave it to the mutt to turn the whole neighborhood against me, before I even have the opportunity to do it myself. These people never even gave me a chance.
On the bright side — if I ever want to get revenge by leaving a flaming bag of something on their porch, I’ll have plenty of ammunition. Especially if they live to the left of us.
Permalink | No CommentsI’ve decided I need a bread delivery service.
It’s not that I eat an exorbitant amount of bread, mind you. I don’t have some pathological ‘bread thing’; You won’t find me sitting naked in the tub packed ass-deep in challah and Parker House rolls, cackling like the Pillsbury Dough Boy on acid.
“I don’t have some pathological ‘bread thing’; You won’t find me sitting naked in the tub packed ass-deep in challah and Parker House rolls, cackling like the Pillsbury Dough Boy on acid.”
(Well, you won’t if I remember to lock the damned bathroom door, anyway. Does nobody knock these days, or what?)
In fact, I’m pretty ambivalent about bread when its available. I’m happy enough to nibble on nan or sample a precocious brioche, but it’s not something I’d write home about. Or write here about. Me and bread, we’re strictly platonic.
Or so I thought.
What I’ve come to realize is that bread is not just the linchpin of my nightly dinner plans, but pretty much the key to my entire evening. It’s that important. But it’s just bread. My mind and various digestive organs boggle at the concept.
(I wouldn’t recommend trying that at home, by the way. Boggling your pancreas, for instance, takes years of practice. Intestinal boggling in particular should only be attempted only under the supervision of a licensed physician.
And ideally near a bathroom. Obviously.)
Here’s the thing about bread — I’m a lazy, lazy human being. Also an occasionally hungry one, and I often wind up fending for myself for dinner. Which leaves me three choices for food:
#1. Go out for dinner.
Not an option. After a hard day of desperate sobbing under the desk in my office, once I’m home, I’m home. You want to get me back out of the house, you’d better bring the jaws of life, a chloroformed rag and a team of Clydesdales, because otherwise — no, sir. Once the volatile elements ‘mycouch-ium’ and ‘myass-ium’ come in contact, they form an unbreakable molecular bond that lasts… well, at least through the Seinfeld reruns after the local news. Sometimes longer.
Technically, I suppose I could pick up dinner on the way home. But that’s asking me to plan ahead, to have money ready, to know what kind of food I want, and to deviate from the beeline home to which my couch-pining hindquarters is accustomed. What am I, Tony Stark? That’s superhero talk there, that is.
#2. Order food online.
I specified ‘online’ because while it’s physically possible for me to order via phone, it’s just not ever going to happen. I mean, phone calling is so passe — who actually talks to other human beings any more? How very twentieth century.
Instead, I log into my favorite local foodie site, send my avatar over to order from some delivery company’s logo, which sends an automated text to the restaurant’s account, where a headless chat client picks it up and tweets it to the kitchen so the robotic arm can bluetooth the microwave to nuke my damned cheeseburger already. It’s all very efficient, and quick, and coldly impersonal in its Rube Goldbergian way.
Of course, ordering out all the time gets expensive, and the food isn’t maybe as healthy as it could be. Also, the automated driverless delivery cars tend to try to run you over if you don’t tip well, which is not so great. But it’s still a helluva lot easier than trying to:
#3. Make my own dinner.
This is where bread is so diabolically crucial. I’m a guy. I’m not all that coordinated, I didn’t grow up in California, and I didn’t go to culinary school. Therefore, I’m only capable of making four dishes. And three of them are sandwiches.
(The fourth is lobster thermidor, due to an odd set of circumstances involving a buddy who worked on the docks, a very special Good Eats episode, and losing a bet to this Francophilic jackass I went to college with.
But making that gets pretty damned expensive, too. And where’s a guy like me gonna find fresh thermidor around here, anyway?)
The point being: if there’s bread in the house, I can be reasonably self-sufficient for dinner. I can whip up a sandwich in no time — which is important, since I’ve sworn off any food that takes longer for me to prepare than to eat — with no problem, and go on my merry couch-bonding way.
But if no bread? Then I’m cooked. I’ve got nothing. There could be groceries and produce and exotic spices from all corners of the globe in the pantry, but they do me no good. I only know how to put them together with bread. Observe:
Tuna fish + bread = sandwich
Sliced turkey + pickles + bread = sandwich
Oregano flakes + frozen waffle + cheese + bread = sandwich
Jalapeno pepper + powdered lemonade + raw turnips + bread = sandwich… + nightmares, and possibly an eventual stomach pump, but still — sandwich
But tuna fish + bread – bread = …what, exactly? Cat food? Fish dandruff? A two-ounce tin can of smelly fail? I’m simply not equipped to solve that kind of equation. My abacus doesn’t go to eleven.
So bread is a must, unless I want to order seventeen pizzas a week for the rest of my natural eating life. And I don’t. I already feel like I owe the delivery guy a Christmas card, as often as he’s over. He doesn’t speak much English, but I’m pretty sure he made me his kid’s godfather last week. It could be a sign to cut back, just a smidge.
My solution is bread delivery. I figure a couple of loaves every week will do it, just to make sure I’ve got sandwich fixings available. I can freeze a couple down, maybe hide one under my pillow for emergencies, and I ought to be just fine. If the alternatives are to learn to cook, to fund the pensions at the local Domino’s, or to starve, then this seems like the only viable option.
Because I don’t want to starve.
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Something That May Have Hatched from Green Eggs, and Spam
Starting with the spam.
I wanted to warn anyone who may want to leave a comment around here — and commenters always welcome! Step right up; no lines, no waiting! — that I did a bit of tinkering on the comment script, to stem the tsunami of spam comments that have been slipping past the goalie.
You see, I left the site hanging out for the better part of two years — with comments turned off for much of that time — while the rest of the interwebs (including the mass marketing weasels) continued to evolve. And I haven’t updated any code since I came back and flipped the lights back on. Which means I’m now blogging with the software equivalent of a pointy stick, scratching on a damp cave wall. On the battlefield of spam management, I’m a cute little bunny rabbit sitting in no man’s land.
“If you should try to comment and receive any message that contains the word ‘bitchslappify‘ — oh, you’ll know the one — please shoot me an email to tell me I’m an idiot.”
(And I don’t mean a vicious Holy Grail bunny, or even a Bugs ‘escape by a whisker’ Bunny.
I’m talking about one of those glassy-eyed inbred pet store rabbits that wouldn’t know its cotton tail from a rattlesnake’s nest in the ground — the kind where you’d put a carrot under a box with a string tied to it and think, ‘this is too cliche; it’s never going to work’, but this bunny would say, ‘OMG CARRUTS LOL!!!1eleventy!’ and hop right in, because it’s just that stupid. That kind of bunny.)
Yesterday, I awoke to 300+ ‘comments’ that bested my Stone Age filters, and another couple thousand that managed to get themselves red-flagged. And sending those bastard ads back to the fiery depths of hell is not the sort of ‘blogging’ that I came back to do. So I tinkered.
And it’s helped — this morning, there was one — just one — measly little spamment lurking in the inbox. So the problem’s not ‘solved’, but at least maybe now I’m working with papyrus, or chipping away at stone blocks. I can work with that.
But the last time I ‘tinkered’, I made an unfortunate typo and basically made it so that no one could comment, anywhere, ever. So please: If you should try to comment and receive any message that contains the word ‘bitchslappify‘ — oh, you’ll know the one — please shoot me an email to tell me I’m an idiot.
Again. And stuck in the stone ages, at least until I can pull in some software released after the Carter administration. Many graciases in advance.
While I’m here, I’ll share a quick snippet that happened to me earlier in the week. I was out at a local watering hole ‘n’ grill where I’ve eaten a few times before, and — without glancing at the menu — asked for the ‘chicken cutlet sandwich’.
(Because that’s what I do. Yesterday, I said bread wasn’t a ‘thing’ with me. Chicken cutlet sandwiches are, evidently. We all have our delicious crosses to bear.)
The waitress — lovely girl, very helpful and patient — then proceeded to describe, in some detail, that what they serve isn’t actually a ‘chicken cutlet’ sandwich, but rather a breaded chicken patty. And point by point, she elucidated the difference and the relative merits of each from both aesthetic and gastronomical viewpoints. It was quite illuminating. When she finished, I nodded and said:
“Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, really. But if I were the kind of person who could appreciate the difference between ‘cutlet’ and ‘patty’, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be ordering here in the first place. Frankly, I’ll be impressed if the thing’s actually made of chicken.”
I had the good sense to leave out my very favorite and oft-repeated advice from Krusty the Clown when considering such matters: ‘Think smaller. More legs.‘ But the waitress seemed taken aback, maybe even a little offended at my characterization of the cuisine.
(For the record, I’m not off base here. Out of line, maybe. But when everything on the menu comes with fries, and the fries are as likely to come intermingled with onion ring batter, skinny fishsticks, ‘chicken’ patty crumbs or what appear to be deep-fried cigarette butts — not off base.)
Anyway, I’m happy to report that the waitress did get back to me with the meal. And my breaded mystery meat, saliva, dishwater and lettuce sandwich — compliments of the chef, don’t you know — was simply delicious.
Even better than my usual chicken cutlet sandwich, even. Hey, maybe that waitress really does know her stuff.
Permalink | 3 CommentsCategories: Awkward Conversations, Bits About Blogging, Foodstuff Fluff
Tags: chicken patty, comedy, comments, fun, funny, humor, sandwich, spam