Random writing prompt:

Write a story about
the quiet
moose
that went
into the cellar.

Thx anyway. Although, cellar.
It’s been damp, so the cellar doors are really hard to open. It got easier after I figured out my wife locked them before she left with the kids.
They come back tomorrow. I was supposed to go with them, but I have to do some entirely inane work at the office tomorrow, for an hour, that I am not good at and which someone else could easily do, so bye 3-day weekend, catch you later.
I did some house cleaning today to kill time. I trimmed some bushes yesterday, until I got scared of ticks and stopped. Now I have a pile of foliage I had planned to run through the shredder today but then it rained and, it being an electric shredder, I put it off, especially in view of my recent spate of technical difficulties.
The car broke down again, a few days ago, but I was driving around today and it ran okay.
I was researching hobos today.
They were invented in the Civil War, for example.
And they have laws they came up with in the late 1800s.
Also, this is the difference between hobos, tramps and bums: hobos travel around, and will work. Tramps just travel around, and bums are too slack to even travel.
Also, there may or may not be a hobo mafia, depending on whom you ask.
It’s time for a hobo FBI.

I took a taxi to the mechanic after work yesterday to pick up my car.
“I’m here to pick up my car,” I said.
“Okay, here,” the man said, and handed me the key.

No signature, no nothing.

I got in and drove to my next appointment.

They had looked at my car, he told me, and found nothing, which is among the things still covered under my guarantee.

Driving home on the freeway, though, I found myself sticking to the right lane, and keeping an eye out for emergency turn-outs etc.

My car just broke down on my way to bring my broken iBook to an Apple dealer.

Go out to the woodpile.

Continue reading →

My blog has been acting up lately, maybe you noticed. I am trying to fix it.

Please to help prioritize symptoms in order of worseness from bad to good:

• iBook screen is not just going to sleep, it is narcoleptic

• iBook turns on, but hangs while booting up, and displays only blinking file icon
• iBook is refusing to shut off
• iBook is shutting off, but refusing to turn on again
• iBook is finally turning on, but screen only flickrs and then remains black
• iBook does nothing but make crazy fan noise
• iBook does crazy fan noise, plus mechanical grinding noise

When you are little we pay attention to whether you laugh or cry. If you cry we feed you until you start to vomit a little, or we change your diapers, or make sure you’re warm, or tell the clown to go bother someone else. If you laugh, everything’s A-okay.

Then you learn to talk, and it’s interesting neologisms for a while, and stories about your past lives (“I drowned right over there”) and shared dreams (“Tiger eat papa”) and, generally, fun conversation.

Then, all of a sudden, you’re a fully formed human with interests of your own and it gets hard. This is around the age of nine or ten. You are who you are, nothing’s going to change for the rest of your life, nothing big. You’re what, eleven now, you know what I mean. People think you’re a little kid, but there’s a lot less difference between you and a 49 year old than there is between you and a one year old.

You’re basically your adult self, right here, in a little kid’s pyjamas.

My dad drifted out of our lives at about that age. Once we had formed. I used to think it was because of some character flaw of his, but I no longer think so. Now, instead, I think, basically, dude, it’s really hard to pay attention to what the hell you’re talking about. You talk so fast, and it’s making sense now, and you really have to pay attention.

Little kids, you can get away with saying, whatever.

Now, though.

And it keeps getting harder. You drift further and further away the older you get. You get other interests, I get less heroic, the conversations grow awkward.

I could never get a conversation started with my dad, not really, at the end. We both tried. We lacked the time, mostly, I guess.

So don’t be freaked out if you notice me paying more attention to you.

Also, who would’ve thought my spirit guide would be a hobo spider?

It’s like, you know, Don Juan going, Here, Mig, forget that peyote, I got someone here I’d like you to meet.

A bite to the Achilles tendon.

Even after the swelling went down, and the blister healed, the immediate symptoms lasted two weeks: disorientation, clumsiness, blurred vision, headaches, thicker beard growth, libido way up, and weird ideas.

Like, ideas for houses: tree houses. Or, a hill with a shack on the top, only the entire hill is also a huge house underneath. Benefits of this: you can have goats and sheep on the outside of your house, man.

Or: RVs will soon be cheap used. Nearly free, as gasoline prices climb. Buy them cheap, stack them one atop the other, as high as you need: alternative skyscrapers.

So not a pengine (“Slide!”) and not a weasel.

MW described my spirit guide in a comment here earlier. I quote:

I can see it in my mind’s eye & it’s looking just like an old Max Fleischer cartoon