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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
I give up. This New England weather has finally beaten me into submission.
It snowed today. The fifth freaking day of April, and it snowed in Boston. These weren’t flurries, either. No delicate gentle snowflakes, these. These were the wet, sticky, slappy sort of snowflakes. They thudded audibly against the windshield as I drove to work. They may have dented the hood, even. This precipitation wasn’t screwing around.
“From now on, I’m going to storm onto my porch in the morning, wearing short pants, a parka, and one galosh, and demand, ‘WHAT? WHAT THE HELL’S THE RIGHT ANSWER TODAY?!?‘”
To be honest, the snow itself isn’t the big problem here. I do have an issue, in principle, with seeing the white stuff this late in the year. ‘April showers’ should bring ‘May flowers’ — not ‘snow plowers’, for crissakes. It’s baseball season now, and there’s no blizzards in baseball! So sure, the snow is troublesome.
Worse, though, are the wildly fluctuating temperatures. This weekend, we had ‘seasonal’ weather, in the mid-fifties.* On Monday, it was a warm and sunny seventy. Today — thirty. There’s no one on the planet, besides those equipped with a surname of Kennedy or Marcos, with a wardrobe wide enough to accomodate that sort of climatological claptrap.
I sure as hell don’t, that’s for certain. And I’m fed up with trying to outguess the weather monkeys over what to wear. From now on, I’m going to storm onto my porch in the morning, wearing short pants, a parka, and one galosh, and demand, ‘WHAT? WHAT THE HELL’S THE RIGHT ANSWER TODAY?!?‘
Some might say this week’s wacky weather is simply proof of the old New England adage:
‘If you don’t like the weather now, just wait a bit. It’ll change.‘
Very cute and folksy, no doubt. I can readily imagine Grandpa Massachusetts in his rocker, with a Red Sox Nation shawl around his shoulders, dispensing such nuggets of wisdom to the wee ones gathered at his feet.
Except for one thing: that particular homey bit of fluff is true for ninety percent of the inhabitable land masses on the planet. Certainly, the weather’s not going to change much in Antarctica or sub-Saharan Africa, no matter how long you wait around.
(For that matter, nothing much changes in Southern California weatherwise, either — but there’s no stupid adage in Southern California that starts with, ‘If you don’t like the weather…‘ If you don’t like the weather there, they have you committed. Or ship you to Minnesota. Occasionally both.)
In the rest of the world, the weather changes. That’s what scientists call ‘seasons’. Seeeea-sons. My beef is simply this: if we only get four seasons, we shouldn’t have to deal with three of them in the space of a week. The ‘T-shirt and mittens’ look is just dandy down at the sanitorium, but I’m not sure I should go to work that way.
Weather, you win. I’m putting on knee socks and a muumuu, and going back to bed. Somebody wake me when it’s August, or even December. At least I’ll know what the hell to wear outside.
(* The temperature tallies above are in Fahrenheit, obviously. I apologize to our friends across the pond. I’d convert to Celsius, really — if only because it’s a hell of a lot easier to spell — but the math always ties me in knots.
‘Take five-ninths of the number, add thirty-two, and subtract the barometric pressure expressed in milliliters of mercury on the third moon of Neptune,’ or some such nonsense. I could never get it right. I’d have an easier time converting to Kelvin, and reporting how close we got to absolute zero today.)
Permalink | 8 CommentsI was driving home from work today when another car came speeding up behind me, fast. We were on a large street — two lanes in each direction, and stop signals every so often — but traffic was light at that time of evening.
I was cruising to a stop at a red light as the guy came barrelling toward me. A few dozen yards behind my car, he gunned the motor to outrace a car in the next lane, swerved suddenly around him, and pulled up beside me at the light. Then he iiiiiinched forward, to gain an edge on sliding into my lane in front of me when the light turned green.
“Anyone willing to risk their own life by pushing a thirty-year-old engine that hard on a public street is clearly a camshaft short of a carburetor already.”
Now, I won’t lie to you — I’m a pretty aggressive driver. If you don’t have a bit of bravado while you’re driving the streets of Boston, this city will eat you up and shit you out a tailpipe. But there’s no call for the sort of overzealous, near-miss, ‘damn the torpedoes!‘ style of driving the fellow beside me was displaying. It’s one thing to be aggressive; it’s another to take advantage needlessly.
And it really pisses me off.
So, I started iiiiinching forward myself, planning to match the guy horsepower for horsepower and hold my position in my lane. Why should he be in front of me? He doesn’t own this lane, the cheeky bastard. This is mah house!
(Kids, please don’t try this driving attitude at home. I’m what you call ‘jaded’, from many years’ experience of driving while surrounded by lobotomized drooling assholes.
Also, if you try this sort of thing in Drivers’ Ed, your teacher will likely pimpslap you into the dashboard. Take my word for it — glove compartments sting, dammit.)
I watched as the light for the cross traffic turned yellow, and prepared to defend my lane against the automotive interloper beside me. It was then that I glanced over at the car next to me, and saw something that stopped my twinklytoes mere inches above the accelerator:
The car was a shitbox. A bona fide, rusted-out, hood-dented, bumper-missing, half-painted, ‘My Other Car Is a Porsche bumper sticker-wearing Shitbox. With a capital ‘S’. One hubcap. Garbage bags over the passenger window. ‘WASH ME’ clearly visible on the hood, near the chromed nub of an amputated hood ornament.
That changed everything. You see, the Boston area is chock full of rich, cocky jerkwads. You’ll see them flitting their BMWs and Mercedes — and yes, their Porsches — in and out of traffic, racing stop lights, bending rules, and generally being a gigantic pain in the gas tank. It’s these people that I derive immense satisfaction from by cutting off, driving like a cataracted grandma in front of, and otherwise preventing from annoying the living shit out of the rest of road-travelling society. Call it a ‘public service’, if you will.
(Though, to be fair, I haven’t gotten this much perverse pleasure out of a ‘good deed’ since that old lady I once helped across the street introduced me to her granddaughters, home from college for the summer.
Her twin granddaughters, home from college for the summer. Someone called for a lotion boy?)
Certainly, giving one of those trust fund flapjacks his or her vehicular comeuppance is well worth the effort and gasoline spent. But the shitbox driver — that’s a whole different breed of belligerent. Because the guy or gal driving a late-model 5-series Beemer will, if pressed, back off and grudgingly follow the road rules of polite society. Mustn’t scratch Daddy’s lease investment, must we?
The shitbox driver, though, has nothing to lose. He’s driving an early-80’s compact Toyota Tercel sedan, with no hubcaps, a trunk that won’t close, and a cassette player that works as long as he’s not in third gear. How much worse would his life get, really, if he ran my self-righteous ass into oncoming traffic?
I’m thinking ‘none’ is approximately the answer, so I make it a rule not to screw around with these people. Anyone willing to risk their own life by pushing a thirty-year-old engine that hard on a public street is clearly a camshaft short of a carburetor already. Am I gonna be the one who pushes him to ‘postal’? With my insurance premiums? Masshole, please.
Back on the road, our light turned green, and I had a choice. Let the persnickety asshat have his way and cut in front, or surge forward to try and keep pace with him.
I didn’t surge.
I didn’t keep pace.
I merely moved off the line at a sane, steady speed, and watched as the jackass pedalled his metal, lurched into my lane, and sped far, far ahead. As he smoked and sputtered his way toward the horizon, I thought I saw parts falling randomly from the chassis. A muffler here, a rearview mirror there — who knows how much of the car was left when he actually reached whereever he was in such a hurry to get to?
As for me, I made it safely — albeit quite a bit more slowly — home. And thanked my lucky dipstick that I’d remembered the ‘First Rule of Driving Among Imbeciles’:
“Whatever the sign, the signal, or the traffic laws may say —
The jackass in the rusty shitbox always has the right of way.”
And that’s all you really need to know. Drive safe now, kids.
Permalink | 3 CommentsToday is my second least favorite day of the year. The Monday after ‘Daylight Savings’ kicks in always blows puffin chunks.
It’s not so much about losing an hour in an instant, either. I hate the ‘fall back’ bullshit in the autumn even more — in fact, that’s my very least favorite day of the year. I’ll explain.
Daylight savings time always begins and ends on a weekend. The chinwags in charge of these temporal shenanigans say that’s to give us a non-working day to acclimate to our new time perspective. ‘Take it easy there, tiger — the world’s a whole hour different now. Maybe you should lie down for a bit, just to be safe.‘
Bullshit.
What it really does is give us one more day to ignore the fact that some bunch of legislative layabouts took Ben Franklin’s joke seriously, and decreed that we should fiddle with time as though it were our own.
(But we can’t fiddle with it more than twice a year, or we’re only playing with it.)
“I can nuke a bean burrito or tape three seasons of Buffy with the push of a button, but adding an hour to the time requires an instruction manual and a three-button Vulcan death grip?”
So most people — and especially we fat, lazy Americans — don’t get around to adjusting our time gizmos on Sunday at all. And why would we? Who cares what time it is on Sunday? Especially in the spring — there’s no football scheduled or anything. If you’re sitting on the couch munching cheese doodles at three in the afternoon, would your life really be any different if it were suddenly four PM instead? I think not, doodlelips.
Ergo, nothing changes on Sunday. Maybe, just before bed, you adjust the alarm clock on the nightstand. And if it’s springtime, you curse the wretched beast for planning to ring an hour sooner than usual.
(Of course, if it’s fall, you turn the clock back and say to yourself:
‘Wow, it’s so early now! I can stay up another hour!‘
At which point, you get caught up in a book, a project, or a made-for-TV movie starring Karen Allen as a plucky single mom fighting City Hall or some such nonsense, and end up staying awake for another three hours, instead. Bedtime’s a bitch, yo.)
It’s on Monday when things really get dicey, though. Most of the day is spent determining which clocks need manual adjusting. Wall clocks — yes. Computers — not usually. Digitals — sometimes, but not always. If there are other people living in your house — by invitation or otherwise — then you’ll have the added twist of guessing which clocks they won’t get around to changing before you do.
(This can work to your advantage, of course, if you happen to live with someone marginally responsible. Just wait a day or two, and they’ll get fed up and synchronize all the clocks onto the appropriate schedule for you. They may also spit in your cereal bowls, but it’s a small price to pay for reliable timekeeping.
Be warned, though — if you’re both lazy-assed slackers, then it’s not going to work so well. I tried to wait my roommate back in college out with the clocks one fall, for instance. We didn’t recognize Daylight Savings for two years, because neither of us would give in and reset the clocks. Finally, my chemistry teacher came over and adjusted them, so I’d make it to his eight AM class on time.
Didn’t work. But at least I finally knew when Herman’s Head came on.)
Finding the clocks to be set is the easy part. Actually setting the damned things takes a steady hand, the patience of a saint, and a doctorate in applied clockology. Every one of them has a different mechanism.
On this one, you hold the ‘Time’ button down. On that one, punch the ‘Hour’ key. Over there, depress ‘Snooze’ while jiggling the tuning knob, and sacrifice a live chicken to Kronos, God of the Tardy Slips. Sometimes, you’re better off throwing the stupid things away and buying all new clocks, preset to the new time. Otherwise, the job takes forever.
And that’s why I hate ‘Fall Back’ most of all. In the spring, you’re in the hole already. An hour’s gone; you might as well resign yourself to the hellish nightmare you’re enduring, and update all the clocks. Put on some sackcloth while you’re at it, and would a little self-flaggelation once in a while kill you? Come on, we’re supposed to be miserable here.
But in the fall, we’re supposed to be winning. It’s midnight — no, it’s eleven PM again! Hah hah ha ha — take that, Father Time! We reject your inexorable pull, and spit in your face to the tune of one precious hour. We can relive it, in any way we choose. Like gods, we are!
So what do we do?
We spend that hour, and three of its closest friends, fumbling with our goddamned VCRs and microwave ovens, trying to remember the magical key combination that lets us set the freaking time. I can nuke a bean burrito or tape three seasons of Buffy with the push of a button, but adding an hour to the time requires an instruction manual and a three-button Vulcan death grip? Priorities, people.
Then we crawl into bed at four in the morning, and growl at the Monday morning bastards who beam about how ‘refreshing‘ the extra hour of sleep was. Screw. Them.
At least those same yahoos were droopy-eyed and ass-dragging today, after missing out on an hour’s rest. And that’s the only thing that makes ‘Spring Forward’ nearly tolerable — I may have to stay up all night now, getting my clocks in a row, but at least those chronoweenies weren’t chipper this morning.
Man, I am not looking forward to the fall.
Permalink | 4 CommentsWe lost our dog today.
Oh, it was only for a half hour or so. Don’t be so dramatic. Jeez.
Honestly, it was a little nervewracking. The pooch has gotten away from my wife a time or two during a walk and scampered off, but this time was a little bit different. This time, the dog ran away without us noticing.
Actually, that may not strictly be true. Late this morning — after seeing the dog several times — we noticed that the wind had blown the back door open. So it’s quite possible the dog simply wandered away without us noticing, as opposed to running away, per se. She may have even moseyed away. She’s quite the moseyer, our mutt; you should see her.
“You’d have a lot more credibility for your story of squalor and starvation if you weren’t packing so much kibble in that caboose of yours.”
Usually when the dog disappears, during one of her constitutionals with the missus, we go off scouring the neighborhood for her… and eventually find her back at the house, as though nothing ever happened. She gives us a look, as if to say:
‘What? Three barks clearly means ‘I’ll meet you back home in twenty minutes’. What’s the big frigging deal? Don’t you speak Lassie-ese?‘
It’s an awkward thing, too, roaming around calling for your dog and having her actually show up again. Of course, that’s what you want to happen, but it’s difficult to know how to act. On the one hand, you can’t beat the hell out of the dog for leaving — she just came back! She might think you’re punishing her for trotting home, and decide to stay gone next time.
On the other hand, if you’ve just spent half an hour poking under houses and screaming ‘Snookie sweetums, come home!‘ within earshot of the neighbors, you probably aren’t in the mood for a reunion celebration, either. I’ve found it’s best to remain coldly polite to the mutt for a while after her return, then give her a good random smack on the head a few days later. She won’t know what it’s for, but it’ll make you feel a bit better about the whole ordeal. That’s what the therapists call ‘closure’.
Today, my wife found the dog on a neighbor’s porch. The mutt was probably bad-mouthing us, saying we never feed her or give her treats, and her only drinking water comes from licking the bathtub after our showers. Boo poochie hoo.
(Note to mutt: You’d have a lot more credibility for your story of squalor and starvation if you weren’t packing so much kibble in that caboose of yours. Also, the fresh flecks of Snausage on the muzzle don’t help much, either. Maybe you should shoot for an ’emotional abuse’ sob story instead; remember that time we were too busy to fluff your nap pillows? You must have been traumatized!)
Anyway, we retrieved our cantankerous canine and all’s well now. She spent most of the day curled up in a blanket on the living room carpet, snoring and farting her way through the afternoon, as is her habit.
(Honestly, she’s like a little burrito-eating narcoleptic — and how she sleeps through the noxious odors she produces is beyond me. Unless they’re knocking her completely unconscious; that I could believe. That dog can wilt roses at fifty paces.)
So, it’s good to have the pooch back. She even garnered herself a few treats around dinnertime, and a nice session of rough-housing followed by a bit of tummy-rubbing in the evening. Why she’d ever want to leave all of this, I’ll never know. We’d miss her terribly, though.
Still. She is so getting an ‘accidental’ kick in the ass in a few days. Not hard enough to make her want to leave again, mind you. Just enough to express how happy I am that she’s back.
So freaking happy… ya mutt.
Permalink | 1 CommentWhen I was updating this site a few weeks ago, I added categories to help arrange the content. Originally, I came up with twenty categories. As I scanned through my old posts — yes, every single fricking post, because I’m a masochistic bastard — I created thirteen more. Today, I have a total of thirty-two categories.
The arithmetically-inclined among you may notice — the numbers don’t add up. One category is missing. That’s because when I got around to populating one of my original ideas, the ‘How I Feel About…‘ categories, I realized something.
I’ve only got two posts for it. Pirates and pinatas. And though I’m pretty happy with those, two posts does not a category make.
“There’s no way an animal with an ass that fat should have access to that much roughage. This is precisely why they won’t serve Tom Arnold cabbage any more.”
So here’s a third. It’s still not category-worthy — yet! — but dammit, this type of entry is just so random and independent and context-free, it’s perfect for lazy Saturdays when there’s nothing else to write about. Like today.
You call it ‘cop-out’. I call it ‘needlessly adhering to my daily posting rule’. Po-TAY-to. Po-TAH-to. What’s the difference, really? Read up, soldier.
How I Feel About… Hippos
Hippos are GOOD because the full name, Hippopotamus, from the Greek, is also the proper name of the animals’ genus. So if you get off your lazy ass and say the whole word, you’ll sound like a scientist. See that, you just learned a Greek word. Hippos made you smarter already.
Hippos are BAD because all they seem to do is lie their fat asses in the water all day, chomping up plants and making methane bubbles. There’s no way an animal with an ass that fat should have access to that much roughage. This is precisely why they won’t serve Tom Arnold cabbage any more.
Hippos are GOOD because they secrete a natural sunscreen, often called ‘blood sweat’ for its reddish-brown color. So this summer, if you simply rub your naked self all over the nearest hippo’s ‘blood-sweaty’ body, you won’t get burned. Makes Coppertone look like a big puddle of rhino piss, dunnit?
Hippos are BAD because they caused me quite a lot of confusion when I first heard the word hypocricy. I thought it was ‘hippocracy’, which would of course be a society ruled by a benevolent order of civic-minded hippopotami. And that’s not the same as ‘hypocricy’, at all. It’s more like Jenny Craig.
Hippos are GOOD because the ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos‘ game is based on them. When simply watching you eat is enough to keep small children entertained for hours, you must be doing something right. Just ask John Goodman.
Hippos are BAD because no one would ever compare themselves to a hippo in a good way. You can be ‘healthy as a horse’, ‘crafty like a fox’, and have ‘cat-like reflexes’, but personal hippo analogies will never be positive. The possible exception may be ‘hung like a hippo’, but frankly, I don’t have the inclination to follow up on that. If you want to hang around African oases with a scuba mask and a yardstick, that’s your own business.
Hippos are GOOD because groups of hippos are called ‘pods’. That’s the same thing they call groups of whales, and it’s nice to have a single term for groups of all of the large, hairy, overfed mammals. And it’s a lot shorter than the existing term, ‘Nebraskans’.
Hippos are BAD because they can stay submerged for up to a half an hour without surfacing. If there’s a hippo hiding out in my bathtub, dammit, I want to know before I step in. So I always let the water sit for at least forty minutes before taking a bath, just to be safe. Highly inconvenient, to say the least.
Hippos are GOOD because they look funny in tutus. We’d all look a little funny in tutus, but it’s like hippos were made for that shit. People, on the other hand, were not made to pretend to be hippos in tutus. That’s just wrong. And not in the sexy way.
So hippos are GOOD. And UV-protecting pods of hungry hungry tutu-clad hippopotamuses are even BETTER.
(Tutu hippo picture from Sue Coffee.com. Disturbing hippo costume image from Halloween Plus.)
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