sunday in the park with “george”

the funniest thing that happened to me recently:

i take my dog about 4 times a week to a dog park so he can run around and swim. by this point, i’m on a first name basis with many of the other regulars of the dog park.

one guy there all the time has lost the bottom part of one leg from the knee down. we’re not friendly enough for me to ask how he lost part of his leg. but i have seen him enough to say, ‘hey, how are you? how are your dogs doing? nice weather, huh?’ he seemed friendly enough, very chatty.

a couple of weeks ago he was excited because he was getting a new prosthetic leg because as he said ‘the one i have now sucks ass.’ i said, ‘well, that’s nice. good for you.’

i show up at the park a few days ago.

he got his new leg.

he got a designer model.

the plastic part that covers his knee and connects to the metal rod leading to the shoe has a design on it.

the man got an artificial leg completely emblazoned with a confederate flag.

our conversation was something like this:

i said, ‘i see you got your new leg.’

he said, ‘yep, it feels much better than the old one.’

i said, “uh-huh. well…uh… what’s up with the flag on your leg?”

he said, ‘this is the one i liked the best. the other patterns available were weird.’

i said, ‘they didn’t even have beige?’

he said, ‘nope.’

i said, ‘well… i’m kinda scared of you now… i’ll see you later.’

if we were better friends, i’d offer to take him to michael’s to buy modge podge so we could decoupage his leg with pictures of unicorns or butterflies. it may be sexist, but even decoupaging nudie pictures from playboy would seem more reasonable to me.

completely true story!

come on, “george”… just bite the bullet. learn spanish, start buying hip-hop albums and get yourself invited to at least one lesbian commitment ceremony this spring.

you’re bound to enjoy at least of these things.

it’ll get you out of your racist rut.

what’d you say, floyd?

floyd is a service manager at the mercedes dealership in greensboro. he’s originally from waynesville. but i guess the bright lights of the triad lured him away from the mountains. he was fine to work with, except for not even attempting to spell my last name and giving me one of those ‘you ain’t from ’round here, are ya, son?’ looks when i walked in his office.

that happens everyday. so that’s not my point.

i needed my car serviced. i haven’t heard good things about the benz dealership in asheville. i especially didn’t want a trainee here working on the car. my sister lives in greensboro. so i could say ‘hello’ to her and get the car checked in the meantime.

besides the scheduled maintenance, there was only one thing i needed them to check.

when the A/C was set to medium speed, it made a weird noise, kinda like a playing card put against spinning bicycle spokes. but it didn’t make the noise if the A/C was manually set on ‘high’.

i thought a fan blade was loose or a piece of paper that i put in the glove compartment slipped into the A/C vent.

i was wrong.

i got floyd’s interim report about noon. here’s how i remember the conversation:

floyd: well, we found out what was making the sound in your A/C unit.
me: oh, OK, that’s good. what was it?
floyd: uh, well… it seems a rat built its nest in the system and that was interfering with it’s working properly.
me: what’d you say, floyd? (said a la diff’rent strokes’ “what you talkin bout willis?”)
floyd: uh, well… i’ve heard of it happening before. if a car is stored for a long period or kept on a field, small animals can climb-up into the engine compartment to set-up a sweet little den for themselves.
me: what’d you say, floyd?
floyd: uh, well… we know it was a rat because the technician was using pliers to pull-out the nesting material and one of the things he pulled out was the rat’s head.
me: what’d you say, floyd?
floyd: uh, well…we can keep the head for ya if you wanna have a look when you pick up the car. the tech still has it.
me: what’d you say, floyd? …

so it seems that every time i turned on the heater this winter my A/C was slapping a rat in the head, like moe slapped curly in the “three stooges” films.

the moral of this story is to quit smoking.

what?

i smoke. i knew smoking affects the sense of taste. but now i know it affects the sense of smell to the point where i don’t notice the odor of a decaying rat in my car.

wow and yuck.

mommy, i’m scared.

i don’t know why i’ve been on a computer-related writing kick lately.

on that front, this video scared the crap out of me.

in 5 years when that thing has a laser gun and my credit report, i’m a dead man.

nice knowin’ ya.

i’m gonna go hide in the woods for a while.

out.

jeffrey kalinsky can kiss my ass

i left new york for the same reason mrs. jackson likes to shop at the dollar palace.

after a certain age, you just don’t feel like putting on a show for the neighbors.

for example, if you’re not planning on seeing the same people over the next few days, or even a week, let’s say, what’s the point of changing clothes everyday?

a nice pair of scrubs can take you from day to evening and back to day again.

if your bits ‘n pieces don’t stink, why bother?

“Sparkle, Neely! Sparkle!” is a hard lifestyle to maintain.

i don’t fit into any of my ten suits thanks to this newfound respect of drawstrings pants and ingles’ bakery department.

i’m tired; admittedly, not as tired as mrs. jackson, but tired nonetheless.

i just want to sit and have cake.

lil’ TT update

there has been a boatload of emails asking how lil’ TT is doing in her new home.

to be honest, once i handed her over to mrs. e, i didn’t look back.

but my sister doesn’t have the willpower i do. so she had to know how the puppy was doing.

this is her email report to me:

I broke down and called Ms. E today. She seemed fine..neither happy nor sad to hear from me. I told her who I was and said I just wanted to know how it was going. She said, “we have a biting phase we have to get through”.I thought, “ut-oh”.
She said the dog has bit her a few times and has drawn blood.
YIKES.
She said they have a talk everyday about who is really in charge! I said, “I hope you are happy that you got her.” She kept saying, “we have to get through this biting phase”.

She also said that she started “puppy school” last week and that the puppy has already learned how to “Sit”. They are working on “down” now. She said that T.T. was hiding behind her legs the whole time…and finally started to try and play with the other pups once the class was over..she said she was much smaller than the other puppies.

She said that she took her to the vet to get her rabies shot and that it went well…and she now weighs 5 lbs. She said that she tries to bite her other dog Sugar and that Sugar snaps (but doesn’t bite her) and that the puppy will run to hide under the bed…all the while whimpering/crying and when the lady looks under the bed for the puppy she is there holding up her little foot…trying to get attention.

I said she is a little drama queen. She said “yes that is what i call her” and I said, “oh yeah, what is her name now?” and she said, “Muffin” but that her husband calls her “Banana Nut”.

I asked if she likes to cuddle and she said “No” but that she always wants to be around people…she will follow the lady or the husband from room to room but doesn’t want to be picked up and cuddled….the puppy does climb onto the sofa and lay on their laps or lays next to them…but it is more on her terms. She said her other eskies were the same way at times.

At one point I said, “Well I hope you love her”…and she said, “Oh yeah I do…she is so sweet BUT we have to get through this biting phase”. She then went on to say that maybe it is bc she was the runt and the runts always have to fight for what they have.

Ut-OH!!!

I told her good luck and that I hope everything went well and that I hope puppy school would help with her manners.

so the dog went from being ‘letitia’ to ‘muffin’.

i don’t know about you, but i find that hilarious.

banana nut muffin ?!?

hilarious.

good luck, muffin.

the transformation is complete

i moved to asheville in the first week of september 2007.

i didn’t think it would happen so quickly; but today my transformation into an ashevillean is complete.

i can no longer look at this place from an outsider’s perspective when i’ve succumb to so many of the traits that make ashevilleans, ashevilleans.

the latest part of this personal evolution was when i handed over my credit card to pay for a north face jacket at the frugal backpacker today.

fucking north face, for goodness sake.

that wasn’t the only evidence of my quick assimilation into granolaville, the other stuff was:

• i used homeopathic medicine to calm the anxiety of the puppy.
• i went to a radical faerie party.
• i save yoga class schedules.
• i had a 20 minute conversation about the textile art of rural indonesia.
• i drove past a flock of canadian geese feeding on a neighbor’s yard, but didn’t freak out and wreck the car.

at this point, the only thing that could make me more ashevillean is if i have gender reassignment surgery to become a pot-smoking lesbian with 4 cats, a subaru outback, and a student loan for massage therapy school.

it’s obviously too late for me, but save yourselves.

turning ashevillean doesn’t hurt; but knowing it happened is kinda creepy.

namaste, y’all.

free at last, free at last

in the grand of tradition of twisting political speech into a pretzel of half-truths and partisan spin, i present a self-serving excerpt from martin luther king’s ‘i have a dream’ speech:

“…sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank Dog* Almighty, i am free at last!”

why bastardize the words of the civil rights leader on the memorial day of his life’s work?

well… besides being topical, it’s the best way for me to express the relief and joy i feel at having gotten a permanent home for ‘lil TT.

now the only thing biting, snarling and peeing in the house is me.

thanks to ‘mrs. e’ for adopting ‘lil TT.

i’ve been accused of not bonding with ‘lil TT because of my subconscious misogyny.
…i’m not paying for therapy again. so i guess we’ll never know.

what i do know is “free at last, free at last!”

here is my description of TT and i’s last moments together:

i met mrs. e at the vet’s office last night.

she got there before me. the whole fucking receptionist staff was also waiting.
6 mountain women in their puppy-and-kitten print scrubs were waiting to see the blind date between mrs. e and TT.

when mrs. e held TT for the first time, some of those receptionists started to tear up.
no joke.

i think the staff waited for me to get there so they could see this first meeting because 10 minutes after i got there 4 of the receps went home.

these mountain people are extremely sentimental or they got nothing better to do.

bye-bye, TT. i guess i luv ya, but my cold, cold heart won’t let me admit it.

(*as many a lesbian’s bumper sticker has taught me,
‘god spelled backwards is dog’)

out

this is your brain on drugs

(editor’s note: the link below is NSFW. trust. it’s information superhighway roadkill. but i couldn’t look away.)

asheville seems like a popular place for rich hippies to retire.

i gather that from the wide range of people who talk openly about their use of pot. this is an expensive place to live. maybe pot eases the nausea that comes from writing their mortgage payment checks.

i hit high school during the reagan administration. as a result, i was terrified of AIDS and illegal drugs. nancy reagan’s impact on me was huge in that respect. bitch. imposing fear without education.

if the ‘eggs in a frying pan’ metaphor doesn’t stop your descent into drug abuse, the following blog entry should do the trick:

http://keithiskneedeepinmud.blogspot.com/2007/10/crack-is-whack.html

aren’t you dying to know what the guy had in the shopping bags?

out.

my car ate the go-go’s

my first cassette tape purchases for the ipod touch of its time, a sony walkman, were the go-go’s and the talking heads. the go-go’s album, “beauty and the beat“, was my claim to hipdom. 1981, people. 19 fucking 81.

this week reality slapped me in the face. my aging process seems to be speeding up. i couldn’t lift my head off the bed because of a strained back. then the go-go’s tape i’ve had for 26 years popped.

my car is old enough to have come with a factor-installed tape player. after i listened to ‘we got the beat’, i pressed the button to switch to the other side of the tape. nothing, no music for 5 minutes. i hit the eject button and there was no more magnetic tape to be seen in the plastic case.

my car ate the go-go’s.

i solved the back trouble with muscle relaxers… lovely, lovely things, those pills. they address the problem without calories. double plus goodness.

but the cassette-chewing car is a problem i have yet to solve. i’m scared to stick another tape into the player for fear of losing more of my dwindling stockpile.

i hear that kids now burn cd’s for their cars. can one of you, young’uns, explain to me how bit-torrents work?

thanks in advance.

if it doesn’t fit, you must …

 

 

either buddha or sally jesse raphael once said, ‘make each day an opportunity to learn.’

here is what i learned today:

• a dog can eat a medium-sized men’s leather glove.
• a dog cannot digest a medium-sized men’s leather glove.
• a new pair of gloves at target cost $19.99
• asking a vet to remove a glove from inside a dog costs $239.52

here is what i want to learn tomorrow:

• how a family of 4 can afford to live in this bobo paradise called asheville.

   

hot or not ?

quite an eventful weekend; i got to be neighborly.

i am first in line at the light on merrimon and chestnut headed downtown. the light turns green. from the far side of the street, a light blue gran torino pulls out too slowly from the bojangles drive-thru and gets hit by a minivan headed north.

tiny cute versions of me as an angel and a devil popped up on each shoulder. the angel on my right shoulder said ‘be neighborly. pull over and offer your help’. the devil said ‘mind your own business. nobody died. they’re adults. they can take care of themselves. no one asked for your help’.

i stopped.

the accident was completely the gran torino driver’s fault. so i offered my name and cell phone to the minivan driver. then i remembered my camera was in the car. i told the minivan driver he could use the camera and i’d email the pics to him later.

poor baby, he was all flustered. he couldn’t figure out how to use the camera, bless his heart. he held the camera backwards and took a picture of his eyeball. [actual photo above]

so i took over the photo-taking.

while taking the pics, i noticed HIM, one of the firemen… 6ft2, huge guns, and warrior-concentration face… in short, a big hunk of manly man.

now sitting here typing this entry, i reviewed the photos. i too must have been affected by the shock of the accident because he’s not as pretty in the face as i remembered.

because of their job, firemen automatically get 10 extra hotness points compared to a regular guy. but even with that head start, i’m not sure.

you tell me, hot or not?

…a little cro-magnon, right?

decline of the american empire

if emperor nero had a quadcab from which to view the burning of rome, he would have played his fiddle while swinging in one of these.

it’s not gay marriage or the imminent collapse of the social security system; this thing is the absolute proof of america in decline.

y’all had better start studying chinese.

out.

whole heap of love

this cross is on an overpass of highway 240 on riverside dr., asheville.

is this festus related to that ‘gunsmoke’ festus?

or is it related to the modern ‘festivus’ tradition sweeping the country?

at first i thought it might be a memorial for some guy named festus who died during a crystal meth-fueled rampage when his silverado quadcab hit the overpass. (i’m assuming it was a chevy or similar. i’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been a honda ridgeline. those are kinda gay. i don’t see a ‘festus’ driving a girlie truck.) but wouldn’t his mourners put his full name on the cross and the date of death?

so many questions, so few answers.

out

ps

i’ve lived in the mountains for about 2 months now. do you think that’s related to me thinking that gunsmoke’s festus looks kinda cute in that there photo?

sweet potato pie

let’s be clear. i didn’t say my neighbor dismembered his wife. i just wondered what’s up with the digging

i was simply brainstorming.

i’ve decided that it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that the loving couple noticed one of the sweet potatoes in the pantry had started to sprout eyes. so as an interactive learning opportunity, they decided to plant the sweet potato near their child’s playpen so the baby could learn about the beauty of watching food grow.

the majesty of mother nature at work.

i mean from a distance a medium-sized sweet potato can kinda look like a clenched fist.

…that reminds me. who’s looking forward to johnny depp in ’sweeney todd’?

out

french quarter franchise news

here’s another asheville business that is stripping new orleans of its heart and soul.

all the memories of the hairdresser i dated from eclipse new orleans came flooding back when i saw this sign. what’s the point of having moved 700 miles away if the ghost of lost loves can still find me?

pushmi-pullyu

here’s the latest wild menagerie report from my backyard:

vole-holes
the holes in the flower garden are from voles
(please google, if necessary. i had no idea what they were.)

possum eating out of a dog bowl.
(yes, the bowl was outside. i didn’t know no better.)

wild turkeys walking from one side of the city to the other.
(the neighbor says they’re protected by law so traffic has to stop to let them pass. apparently last year there was a convoy of 10 parading down my street.)

owl flies away with a cat
(ok, i personally didn’t see that happen. but another neighbor swears that’s what happened to his wife’s cat. he said some owls have over 3 foot wingspans. it was a runty cat, but still… a cat?)

should these things be happening in 21st century america?

i thought we killed off everything with a combination of ddt, mc donald’s styrofoam containers and aquanet…

…well, except for squirrels, pigeons and roaches.

the only animal i wouldn’t mind seeing in the backyard is a pushimi-puulyu.

‘dr. doolittle’ starring rex harrison, not the lame eddie murphy version, used to come on all the time when i was little. i would watch the beginning, get bored and start flipping channels. so i would almost always miss the part when the pushmi-pullyu showed up.

oh!…and the giant snail. i loved the inside of the giant snail.

BYOT (bring your own towel)

this is a true story from new orleans:

my dog didn’t just dig up something in my mother’s backyard. he caught something in my mother’s backyard.

the day after i gave my sister my old computer, mine stopped working. so i brought mine to best buy to get fixed.

i had to go to my mother’s to use my sister’s computer.

i brought my dog. i put him in the backyard and left the french doors open so he could come back in.

after about 20 minutes i hear the dog running up and down the hallway; he’s sprinting back and forth.

i go see what’s going on.

he’s got something in his mouth.

what does he have?

a dove. a fuckin’ dove.

he caught a dove ?!? my dog killed something ?!?

i make him drop it. the bird is still alive.

there is a dazed and confused dove in my mother’s hallway.

i know i’ve got to get the dove out of the house. but i don’t want to touch it because of bird-flu or rabies or whatever. so i get a towel from the bathroom, drop it over the whole bird, then grab it to take it outside.

the bird cooperates. i set it down in a shaded corner of the backyard. the bird does not immediately fly away.

i think ‘oh, shit. the dog really caught and killed a dove.’

i don’t turn back to check on the bird. i couldn’t deal with the consequences. for all i know, the bird is still there.

no blood on the dog or the hallway. but there were a lot of feathers. hopefully he just shook the bird and got it dizzy. so now the bird is back flying around with its other birdie friends.

i can’t return to my mother’s backyard for fear of finding a dove skeleton.

(btw, it was not the white dove of peace or the catholic holy spirit. it was one of those light brown ones, but definitely not a pigeon. again, listen carefully, my dog did not kill the holy spirit!)

also if you ever go to my mother’s house, bring your own towel. the bird-flu infected one is still there somewhere.

out.

bye-bye, Millie

my sister’s dog passed away today.

Millie was the perfect lap dog.

we took many naps together.
i slept on my stomach.
she slept on my back.

5 pounds of friendship
in animal form.

bye-bye, Millie.

damn! she was a cute dog.

what is part of millie’s legacy for us?

she helps to remind everyone of the power
of a good haircut.

she is older in the photos with the shorter hair,
but looks like a puppy again in her new ‘do.

she was nine, but could have passed for 1.