I’m just sitting here at my desk, pretending to be happy and analyzing life and the horse it rode in on, and listening to my favorite song on the radio — the Kars for Kids Ad Jingle:
1-877 Kars for Kids
K-A-R-S, Kars for Kids
Donate Your Car Today
God, I love that song. The little tyke sings the first verse and then the gruff lovable guy with the deep voice repeats the verse. And then they both sing the verse a third time to just yank the aorta right out of your heart.
If I had a car to give them I would. Kind of feel bad that I sold my last one on eBay and stiffed the kids. And bought useless things I didn’t need with the money. What can I say?
Anyway, back to analyzing life. I went to the Santa Anita Mall the other day (no, not to eat lunch with mall cop Paul Blart but to buy a pair of shoes). And as I was walking around the mall, I started actually noticing all the stores. Yeah, noticing exactly what all the stores were.
Everybody is saying we are in an economic depression right now and everything is so damn bad. We have to dial that kind of scaredy-cat talk down a few notches. No, I was not around during the real Great Depression, back in the ’30s, but I’ve seen pictures of people in breadlines and soup lines and dust was blowing all over the place. It looked pretty bad to me.
But today, walking in a mall is incredible. There are so many specialty shops, it almost makes the free enterprise system seem, I hate to say it, frivolous. I used to be an entrepreneur myself, but jeez — I saw a store specializing in chocolate. All kinds of chocolate. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate, chocolate with nuts, chocolate with fruit, Asian chocolate, Obama chocolate.
Another shop was just selling soap. Scented soap, powdered soap, bubble bath soap, frilly soap, girly soap, soap tied in little bundles with bows, different colored soap nuggets, non-global-warming soap, soap for acne, soap for lumberjacks. I asked a very clean sales clerk if I could buy a regular old three-pack of white, anti-sweat Dial because my armpits were winning. She said I could go to OSH.
I continued walking around for a while. I walked past a pretzel store. Sold just pretzels. Past a popcorn store. Just popcorn. A candy-apple store. A nut store. A tea store. And a coffee store. If we are in such a horrible depression, will someone tell me why is there a Starbucks on every corner in America? Is there a new caffeine zoning law I missed? Did them commie environmentalists slip one by me?
The other day at a Starbucks I was drinking my wonderful beverage made with ergonomic coffee beans grown by vegetarian Ethiopians or Brazilian pacifists, I looked across the street and there was another Starbucks. Dueling Starbucks! I almost spilled $4.95 on three laptops. Not only that, there was another coffee place two doors down. No kidding.
Anyway, as you astute readers must be wondering, “Did you ever buy the shoes you went to the mall for?” Well, after walking past the food court and being torn between getting the two-pound baked potato filled with shrimp and bacon and olives and cashews and sour cream and guacamole and cheese, or the Korean sandwich that was still barking. I kept walking and looking.
I was looking for what I refer to as “sneakers.” I know that dates me. I just needed a damn pair of tennis shoes. So I look up and I see a Walking Shoes store. I’m about to go in when I notice a Running Shoes store. I think to myself, I probably should get the walking shoes because I walk 98 percent of the time, but I didn’t want to exclude the possibility of ever running again. So I kept walking, not running, to see what other options I had.
I went into a Sports Chalet, I think. And I walked to the shoe section, which was just a little smaller than the hangar they used to house the Spruce Goose in, and on the wall I saw the following signs: Walking Shoes, Running Shoes, Hiking Shoes, Court Shoes, Tennis Shoes, Racquetball Shoes, Basketball Shoes, Training Shoes, Men’s Shoes, Women’s Shoes, Boy’s Shoes, Girl’s Shoes, Youth’s Shoes, Toddler’s Shoes and Embryo’s Shoes.
As a sales guy was running/walking/or hiking towards me, I ran/walked/or hiked out of there, baby, and went directly to Nordstrom hoping the piano player would hug me. I bought the first pair of tennis shoes I could find in the discount bin. I asked the clerk if these sneakers would make me play like Michael Jordan. He said, “Yes. Yes, they will.” That was good enough for me.
And when the clerk was ringing up my shoes, he asked me if I would like to buy a Bruce Springsteen CD. I looked down on the counter. There were CDs for sale.
I said, “No, I don’t think I’ll buy a CD here in a shoe store. I think I’ll go get my CD at Starbucks. They have a much better selection.”
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Getting off to a Complaining New Year (Cigar Smoke 1-15-09)
Well, here we are in 2009. I thought I’d start the year off right by complaining my butt off. My butt could use a little off.
I had a terrific holiday season. We had a houseful of people I love over and one uncle who maybe I didn’t love quite as much as the others, and I accidentally put a few laxative tablets in his eggnog. I never knew that old sucker could dance like that.
As much as I enjoyed everything and everybody, I was ready for a little post-Christmas combat R&R. So when everybody left, I sighed and sat down on the end of the couch, and closed my eyes, and as my left-wing friends would say, my mind, too. But when I opened my eyes, I found something I usually don’t see. Clutter.
I pride myself on being anally retentive. It’s something I’ve worked hard at, and have annoyed people with for years. In fact, I’m not sure if “anally retentive” should only have one L in it or a hyphen. I feel uneasy right now just thinking about it, but I’m going with the damn spellchecker.
Anyway, the living room is full of guided rocket missiles that maybe could have been guided a little better, and video game cases, and the TV is turned sideways because the grandkids had to hook up their Play Stations, and there are a few orphan toy box lids around, and a some gnarly drink glasses were lying on their sides behind various pieces of furniture. And our neighbors’ cat was tied to the pool table by its tail. I told you we had a nice holiday.
So, the little lady asked me if I would mind helping her pick up some stuff because “isn’t it about time you got off your lazy, lanky, marshmallow-Santa-filled ass?” So, I helped her. And when I got through, I sank back down on the couch, and she appeared again like a genie, and said, “could you come into the kitchen and help me un-stick these plates.” Women can’t even pry a couple of plates apart. You’d think five-day-old gravy was epoxy.
So I do that, too. Cheerfully. Isn’t cheerfulness next to godliness? Oh no, that’s cleanliness —
I wasted a fake cheerful act for nothing.
Then I quietly, on little elf feet, tiptoe into another room and close the door and sit down where I think Marge will never find me. I hear a knock on the door. “Are you in there, honey?” I don’t answer. She says, “I know you are in there. I can smell your cigar reek.” So I said, “Yes, dear, me and my reek are in here. And I have a migraine. And maybe something worse if you don’t buy that. Could you come back in March?”
She laughs her Stalin laugh, and says “You know, we should take down the tree before Valentine’s Day.” The sarcasm peeled the paint off the door. “Sure, honey. I’ll hop right on it, as soon as this pounding in my head levels off.”
So, even though my left knee is feeling horrible from my recent arthroscopic surgery, and from the constant getting up and down from the couch, I say to Marge, “As the surgeon said to the amputee, you don’t have a leg to stand on.” She says, “What?” I said, “Never mind, just a little attempt at one-legged humor.”
I finished taking down the tree and I put away all the wrapping paper and name tags and bows and Christmas bags and I said, “I’m all finished, Dumpling Face.” And she said, “What?” I said, “Dumpling Face, Sir!”
I asked if there was anything else. She said there wasn’t. And paused for three seconds. And said, “Except.” (Except. Boy, that’s a killer word, isn’t it? Comes in second place, right after “you want me to do what?”) She finishes her “except” sentence, “for the guest room.” She requested nicely that “to save our marriage” it might be a good idea if I took off all the sheets and pillowcases from the beds in the guest room and put them in the washer. I sighed a really loud sigh, and said, “I don’t remember signing up for all these things when I said ‘I do’.” She said, “I do.”
I come out of the laundry room, and I pick up my car keys, and I’m walking towards the front door, and I yell to Marge, “See you in a bit. I gotta go help some charities do something.” She says, “You know, as long as you’re out, would you mind returning these shoes that Ryan didn’t want, and then stopping by the UPS store to send that espresso machine back to Amazon. It shouldn’t be too hard to wrap.”
Knowing that spousal abuse is not accepted in our culture, I said to Marge, in a soft unintelligible voice not much louder than a whisper — in a voice she could not hear — “You shouldn’t be too hard to rap, either.”
Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
I had a terrific holiday season. We had a houseful of people I love over and one uncle who maybe I didn’t love quite as much as the others, and I accidentally put a few laxative tablets in his eggnog. I never knew that old sucker could dance like that.
As much as I enjoyed everything and everybody, I was ready for a little post-Christmas combat R&R. So when everybody left, I sighed and sat down on the end of the couch, and closed my eyes, and as my left-wing friends would say, my mind, too. But when I opened my eyes, I found something I usually don’t see. Clutter.
I pride myself on being anally retentive. It’s something I’ve worked hard at, and have annoyed people with for years. In fact, I’m not sure if “anally retentive” should only have one L in it or a hyphen. I feel uneasy right now just thinking about it, but I’m going with the damn spellchecker.
Anyway, the living room is full of guided rocket missiles that maybe could have been guided a little better, and video game cases, and the TV is turned sideways because the grandkids had to hook up their Play Stations, and there are a few orphan toy box lids around, and a some gnarly drink glasses were lying on their sides behind various pieces of furniture. And our neighbors’ cat was tied to the pool table by its tail. I told you we had a nice holiday.
So, the little lady asked me if I would mind helping her pick up some stuff because “isn’t it about time you got off your lazy, lanky, marshmallow-Santa-filled ass?” So, I helped her. And when I got through, I sank back down on the couch, and she appeared again like a genie, and said, “could you come into the kitchen and help me un-stick these plates.” Women can’t even pry a couple of plates apart. You’d think five-day-old gravy was epoxy.
So I do that, too. Cheerfully. Isn’t cheerfulness next to godliness? Oh no, that’s cleanliness —
I wasted a fake cheerful act for nothing.
Then I quietly, on little elf feet, tiptoe into another room and close the door and sit down where I think Marge will never find me. I hear a knock on the door. “Are you in there, honey?” I don’t answer. She says, “I know you are in there. I can smell your cigar reek.” So I said, “Yes, dear, me and my reek are in here. And I have a migraine. And maybe something worse if you don’t buy that. Could you come back in March?”
She laughs her Stalin laugh, and says “You know, we should take down the tree before Valentine’s Day.” The sarcasm peeled the paint off the door. “Sure, honey. I’ll hop right on it, as soon as this pounding in my head levels off.”
So, even though my left knee is feeling horrible from my recent arthroscopic surgery, and from the constant getting up and down from the couch, I say to Marge, “As the surgeon said to the amputee, you don’t have a leg to stand on.” She says, “What?” I said, “Never mind, just a little attempt at one-legged humor.”
I finished taking down the tree and I put away all the wrapping paper and name tags and bows and Christmas bags and I said, “I’m all finished, Dumpling Face.” And she said, “What?” I said, “Dumpling Face, Sir!”
I asked if there was anything else. She said there wasn’t. And paused for three seconds. And said, “Except.” (Except. Boy, that’s a killer word, isn’t it? Comes in second place, right after “you want me to do what?”) She finishes her “except” sentence, “for the guest room.” She requested nicely that “to save our marriage” it might be a good idea if I took off all the sheets and pillowcases from the beds in the guest room and put them in the washer. I sighed a really loud sigh, and said, “I don’t remember signing up for all these things when I said ‘I do’.” She said, “I do.”
I come out of the laundry room, and I pick up my car keys, and I’m walking towards the front door, and I yell to Marge, “See you in a bit. I gotta go help some charities do something.” She says, “You know, as long as you’re out, would you mind returning these shoes that Ryan didn’t want, and then stopping by the UPS store to send that espresso machine back to Amazon. It shouldn’t be too hard to wrap.”
Knowing that spousal abuse is not accepted in our culture, I said to Marge, in a soft unintelligible voice not much louder than a whisper — in a voice she could not hear — “You shouldn’t be too hard to rap, either.”
Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Sometimes I'm Almost Happy (Cigar Smoke 12-25-08)
You know, it’s funny but I seem to have a reputation for not being a happy guy. I really don’t know why that is. I think of myself as a happy person. Yes, occasionally I might get a bit cynical, but not enough to put out the torch of my shining happiness. OK, maybe there’s a little pessimism thrown in there. And yes, a dash of fatalism and a few over-the-top sighs now and then. But dammit, does that make me an unhappy person?
No, it does not. What it does make me is a thinking person who – if he thought things through and saw things as they really were and acted like it was not like that – he would be lying to himself and his fake pretend happiness would be seen by his family and friends as false and ugly and downright dishonest and they would all yell at him, “Aha! You are not only unhappy but you are a lying sack of disgusting cowardly pretend happiness that none of us likes or even grudgingly would admire.”
Hey, re-read that last paragraph. There’s a lot of truth in there and I want you to be as happy as I think I am. And if you can’t figure it out, don’t tell me you can just to make me happy. Trust me, it won’t make me happy. It’ll make me think of you as everyone thinks of me. I’ll know you are just a miserable, unhappy glob of chromosomes walking around faking it.
Usually my well-disguised happiness shows up bright and bubbly at the breakfast table. I’ll just be stirring my coffee and asking Margie-Wargie how my little Muffie-Wuffie slept last night, and I’ll look down at the Los Angeles Times and I’ll read about how the drug lords down in Tijuana just killed 39 people and beheaded nine of them, and I’ll make some sort of exclamation like, “Holy crap, who does that? What kind of world do we live in?” And Marge will say “That’s a record. Took you only five seconds to get pissed off.”
Technically, of course, she may be right. Yes, I am yelling and I am loud and the skin on my forehead is tighter than Nancy Pelosi’s face. But does just getting mad make someone unhappy? I don’t think it does. It just makes me aware that I’m living in a semi-sick world and that horrible things will happen, and I will hate those horrible things and I will express my hatred of those horrible things with very audible anger. I can still pet puppies and eat hot fudge sundaes at hockey games after reading that stuff. I still have a shot at being happy. You know I’m right. Admit it — it might make me happy.
Another example of people thinking I’m not happy occurred the other night. I’m watching the tube and Deepak Chopra comes on and old Dipstick says in his freaky spiritual precious pseudo-intellectual subdued way that he thinks it’s our fault that the terrorists blew up the hotels and killed all those people in India. The learned man thinks we caused it. Chop Face doesn’t say one damn word about the actual 300 people who were slaughtered or about the fact that the murderers were Islamic terrorists. No, he just jumps right in on how bad we are here in the US and in the West. And how we need to work with these maggots.
I was so mad I threw a magazine and screamed some non-spiritual words at the TV and scared my poor old dog silly, and I was truly ticked off. Hell, I’m still mad at Sixpak and his bullshit. But, I do not think that makes me un-frigging-happy. I still think I’m a pretty happy guy trying to survive in a pretty messed-up world. Just because I get mega-pissed at the Dipstick Sixpaks of the world does not mean I am unhappy. Nope, I’m damn happy. Wanna fight?
Anyway, I finally calm down and I am happier than a lark dating a clam. That’s pretty happy. And then a few days later I’m watching “CSI: Las Vegas” and one story is about some homeowner getting harassed by some punk kids driving around with baseball bats and playing Mailbox Baseball. These punks had smashed four of his previous mailboxes, so Mr. Homeowner decides to give them a little surprise and fills the mailbox with cement.
The guy riding shotgun takes a swing at the mailbox, and indeed gets a surprise. He breaks his arm and shoulder, and the driver loses control of the car and they crash into a tree and are both killed. The mailbox and the gene pool high-five each other. But the CSI cops arrest the homeowner for negligent homicide.
There was no outrage at the four previous crimes, no being upset about trespassing and the car being on private property, and no concern that the bat swingers were driving drunk. Nope. I guess they just got on their cell phone and called DeepAss ChopSix and he told them it was the homeowner’s fault for buying his home in the first place.
OK, you finally got me. I was not happy about this one.
Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
No, it does not. What it does make me is a thinking person who – if he thought things through and saw things as they really were and acted like it was not like that – he would be lying to himself and his fake pretend happiness would be seen by his family and friends as false and ugly and downright dishonest and they would all yell at him, “Aha! You are not only unhappy but you are a lying sack of disgusting cowardly pretend happiness that none of us likes or even grudgingly would admire.”
Hey, re-read that last paragraph. There’s a lot of truth in there and I want you to be as happy as I think I am. And if you can’t figure it out, don’t tell me you can just to make me happy. Trust me, it won’t make me happy. It’ll make me think of you as everyone thinks of me. I’ll know you are just a miserable, unhappy glob of chromosomes walking around faking it.
Usually my well-disguised happiness shows up bright and bubbly at the breakfast table. I’ll just be stirring my coffee and asking Margie-Wargie how my little Muffie-Wuffie slept last night, and I’ll look down at the Los Angeles Times and I’ll read about how the drug lords down in Tijuana just killed 39 people and beheaded nine of them, and I’ll make some sort of exclamation like, “Holy crap, who does that? What kind of world do we live in?” And Marge will say “That’s a record. Took you only five seconds to get pissed off.”
Technically, of course, she may be right. Yes, I am yelling and I am loud and the skin on my forehead is tighter than Nancy Pelosi’s face. But does just getting mad make someone unhappy? I don’t think it does. It just makes me aware that I’m living in a semi-sick world and that horrible things will happen, and I will hate those horrible things and I will express my hatred of those horrible things with very audible anger. I can still pet puppies and eat hot fudge sundaes at hockey games after reading that stuff. I still have a shot at being happy. You know I’m right. Admit it — it might make me happy.
Another example of people thinking I’m not happy occurred the other night. I’m watching the tube and Deepak Chopra comes on and old Dipstick says in his freaky spiritual precious pseudo-intellectual subdued way that he thinks it’s our fault that the terrorists blew up the hotels and killed all those people in India. The learned man thinks we caused it. Chop Face doesn’t say one damn word about the actual 300 people who were slaughtered or about the fact that the murderers were Islamic terrorists. No, he just jumps right in on how bad we are here in the US and in the West. And how we need to work with these maggots.
I was so mad I threw a magazine and screamed some non-spiritual words at the TV and scared my poor old dog silly, and I was truly ticked off. Hell, I’m still mad at Sixpak and his bullshit. But, I do not think that makes me un-frigging-happy. I still think I’m a pretty happy guy trying to survive in a pretty messed-up world. Just because I get mega-pissed at the Dipstick Sixpaks of the world does not mean I am unhappy. Nope, I’m damn happy. Wanna fight?
Anyway, I finally calm down and I am happier than a lark dating a clam. That’s pretty happy. And then a few days later I’m watching “CSI: Las Vegas” and one story is about some homeowner getting harassed by some punk kids driving around with baseball bats and playing Mailbox Baseball. These punks had smashed four of his previous mailboxes, so Mr. Homeowner decides to give them a little surprise and fills the mailbox with cement.
The guy riding shotgun takes a swing at the mailbox, and indeed gets a surprise. He breaks his arm and shoulder, and the driver loses control of the car and they crash into a tree and are both killed. The mailbox and the gene pool high-five each other. But the CSI cops arrest the homeowner for negligent homicide.
There was no outrage at the four previous crimes, no being upset about trespassing and the car being on private property, and no concern that the bat swingers were driving drunk. Nope. I guess they just got on their cell phone and called DeepAss ChopSix and he told them it was the homeowner’s fault for buying his home in the first place.
OK, you finally got me. I was not happy about this one.
Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The Gift That Keeps on Taking (Cigar Smoke 12-18-08)
Well, as most of you who aren’t Islamic terrorists know, we’re right in the middle of the holiday season, and Marge and I are sitting on our dueling couches trying to get into the Christmas spirit. She’s reading her Kindle and I’m on my laptop looking around E-bay for something I don’t need. Nothing says Christmas like electronics.
So I casually mention that some guy in Minnesota is selling a Sirius satellite-ready radio. Not looking up from her Kindle, Marge said, “Yeah. So?” And I said, “Well, I was just wondering if he was serious about selling his Sirius.” Marge puts her Kindle down and is about to say something just south of profound and I say, “You know, I’d kind of like to have a Sirius radio for my car.” She said, “You would?” I said, “I’m serious about getting a Sirius. Seriously.” (Humor doesn’t take a vacation just because it’s joyous right now.)
Marge asked me how much it was. I said it cost $278. She said, “Why don’t I get it for you for Christmas?” I told her that would be great, and she said go ahead and buy it on E-bay, and she would reimburse me later. So I clicked the Buy It Now button and paid for it on PayPal, and life was good.
The radio came in a few days, and it was in good shape. No problems. So I went down to Al and Ed’s over by Circuit City and I spoke to Al (I don’t like Ed) and he told me that I needed a special receiver to make the radio work. I said I thought the radio was satellite-ready. He said that was kind of like thinking the girl in the massage ad is the one who’s actually going to come over to your hotel room.
I said, “Al, you are one happening dude, man. Way more happening than Ed.” Then I told him to go ahead and put the receiver in. He told me he’d like to, but he couldn’t, because you could only get this specific receiver through the dealer. So I hopped in my Durango and went over to the Dodge dealer in Glendale. I went into the parts department and I had the radio and I asked him if they had a Sirius satellite receiver he could sell me. He said he did. I said I want it. He said he’ll have it for me in a week. I said I thought you said you had it? He said I do have it. Just not here. I said, “Are you serious?”
So a week goes by and I’m smiling at Frosty the Snowman and grabbing Santa’s Sack (which I found out later was a felony) and the Dodge guy calls me to come and pick up my Sirius receiver. I drive back to Glendale, pay the nice parts gentleman $239 and think to myself that Marge must really love me for this much money and I take the radio and the receiver over to Al and Ed’s again.
I have the radio and the receiver in my arms and I try to open the door. It is locked. Nobody is there. It’s a Tuesday around 11 a.m. So I look at the hours posted on the door and it says 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. I knock real loud. Nothing. Then I get a fantasy that the store employees are being held hostage by punks and that I will have to sneak around back and kill them and save the hostages and I’ll be featured in the Los Angeles Times — if it is still here.
Just as I’m about to start sneaking, Al pokes his head around the corner and says, “Can I help you?” I was pretty disappointed to not carry out my hostage freedom raid, but I told Al that I now had the receiver and could he install the radio? He looked at it. Cocked his head a couple of times, and said, “Where are the cables?” I, of course, said “What cables?” He said the cables that the dealer should have given you. I said, “Are you adjective Sirius?!”
So I drove back to the dealer’s and he apologized and said they forgot to include the installation kit. “How much is that?” I asked. He said, “$189.” I said “$189 plus the $239 I already spent on the receiver?” He said, “Yup.” I said “Is there anything else?” He said “No. No more parts.” I sighed. He went on, “Except the labor for the installation will run you about $400.” He was serious. Dead serious. I was just dead Sirius.
I said, with savage disbelief, “You mean it will cost me $278 for the radio + $239 for the receiver + $189 for the installation kit and then $400 to install it? That’s over eleven hundred bucks!” I paused to whimper. Then I said, “Hell, you could hire a homeless guy to sit in your front seat for a year and hum “Yankee Doodle” for that much.
My wife could buy a new husband for that.”
He laughed. I guess he wasn’t serious. Then I told him to refund me my $239 for the receiver and I would just have to get by without any satellite radio and just keep my damn ordinary, friends-in-low-places, cheap-ass, commercial-packed AM-FM.
I went home and thanked Marge for the gift that kept on taking. She said she was sorry about the radio, but I was right in assuming I wasn’t worth over 1,100 bucks for a gift, and by the way, could I help her assemble the new fake tree she got at Home Depot. Merry Christmas!
Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
So I casually mention that some guy in Minnesota is selling a Sirius satellite-ready radio. Not looking up from her Kindle, Marge said, “Yeah. So?” And I said, “Well, I was just wondering if he was serious about selling his Sirius.” Marge puts her Kindle down and is about to say something just south of profound and I say, “You know, I’d kind of like to have a Sirius radio for my car.” She said, “You would?” I said, “I’m serious about getting a Sirius. Seriously.” (Humor doesn’t take a vacation just because it’s joyous right now.)
Marge asked me how much it was. I said it cost $278. She said, “Why don’t I get it for you for Christmas?” I told her that would be great, and she said go ahead and buy it on E-bay, and she would reimburse me later. So I clicked the Buy It Now button and paid for it on PayPal, and life was good.
The radio came in a few days, and it was in good shape. No problems. So I went down to Al and Ed’s over by Circuit City and I spoke to Al (I don’t like Ed) and he told me that I needed a special receiver to make the radio work. I said I thought the radio was satellite-ready. He said that was kind of like thinking the girl in the massage ad is the one who’s actually going to come over to your hotel room.
I said, “Al, you are one happening dude, man. Way more happening than Ed.” Then I told him to go ahead and put the receiver in. He told me he’d like to, but he couldn’t, because you could only get this specific receiver through the dealer. So I hopped in my Durango and went over to the Dodge dealer in Glendale. I went into the parts department and I had the radio and I asked him if they had a Sirius satellite receiver he could sell me. He said he did. I said I want it. He said he’ll have it for me in a week. I said I thought you said you had it? He said I do have it. Just not here. I said, “Are you serious?”
So a week goes by and I’m smiling at Frosty the Snowman and grabbing Santa’s Sack (which I found out later was a felony) and the Dodge guy calls me to come and pick up my Sirius receiver. I drive back to Glendale, pay the nice parts gentleman $239 and think to myself that Marge must really love me for this much money and I take the radio and the receiver over to Al and Ed’s again.
I have the radio and the receiver in my arms and I try to open the door. It is locked. Nobody is there. It’s a Tuesday around 11 a.m. So I look at the hours posted on the door and it says 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. I knock real loud. Nothing. Then I get a fantasy that the store employees are being held hostage by punks and that I will have to sneak around back and kill them and save the hostages and I’ll be featured in the Los Angeles Times — if it is still here.
Just as I’m about to start sneaking, Al pokes his head around the corner and says, “Can I help you?” I was pretty disappointed to not carry out my hostage freedom raid, but I told Al that I now had the receiver and could he install the radio? He looked at it. Cocked his head a couple of times, and said, “Where are the cables?” I, of course, said “What cables?” He said the cables that the dealer should have given you. I said, “Are you adjective Sirius?!”
So I drove back to the dealer’s and he apologized and said they forgot to include the installation kit. “How much is that?” I asked. He said, “$189.” I said “$189 plus the $239 I already spent on the receiver?” He said, “Yup.” I said “Is there anything else?” He said “No. No more parts.” I sighed. He went on, “Except the labor for the installation will run you about $400.” He was serious. Dead serious. I was just dead Sirius.
I said, with savage disbelief, “You mean it will cost me $278 for the radio + $239 for the receiver + $189 for the installation kit and then $400 to install it? That’s over eleven hundred bucks!” I paused to whimper. Then I said, “Hell, you could hire a homeless guy to sit in your front seat for a year and hum “Yankee Doodle” for that much.
My wife could buy a new husband for that.”
He laughed. I guess he wasn’t serious. Then I told him to refund me my $239 for the receiver and I would just have to get by without any satellite radio and just keep my damn ordinary, friends-in-low-places, cheap-ass, commercial-packed AM-FM.
I went home and thanked Marge for the gift that kept on taking. She said she was sorry about the radio, but I was right in assuming I wasn’t worth over 1,100 bucks for a gift, and by the way, could I help her assemble the new fake tree she got at Home Depot. Merry Christmas!
Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving (Cigar Smoke 12-4-08)
I’ve always enjoyed Thanksgiving. I think it’s the best holiday of the year. You gather with your family and friends and the women do all the work and you just eat and watch football and rough up the kids a little and complain about getting fat. It’s perfect.
This year it was a little more perfect than usual. We all decided to chip in and bring various dishes so the little hostess woman of the house wouldn’t break down and cry at the end of the day. Somebody brought a great salad and this nifty bean dish with nuts and sliced almonds, and somebody else brought an incredible yam dish with three — count ’em, three — different color yams. I’m not kidding. Regular orange yams, and then white yams and purple yams. Three layers of colored yams topped off with a layer of oven-toasted marshmallows. And someone else brought an eggnog/pumpkin pie. You could hear the calories. And because I am what? I am a health addict. I brought the box of See’s Candy.
All in all, we had 12 people in the house. Plus three dogs. Our good dog, Hadley, and two rat-yappy dogs. They got along pretty well. The two yappers literally did vertical jumps right onto unsuspecting laps. They were like Air Force test planes taking off with no runway. Just straight up into the wild blue lap yonder. And Hadley, the good dog, was so tired from all the damn fun that he collapsed right in the pathway from the kitchen to the family room, and he just laid there like a canine corpse and we used him as an obstacle course all day.
Because we weren’t sure if we would get enough to eat, we started out with a few appetizers. Had some greasy salt-plastered garlic potato chips for the men, and had these Whole Foods chips made out of recycled whole-grain blue-flour tortillas from some adobe hut in some village in Guatemala for the women, and we dipped those gender- specific babies into some unisex humus. Some good eatin’ there.
Nobody got stomach cramps so we had some pistachio nuts in a giant bowl where we would just throw the empty shells back into the same bowl because some unnamed member of the family thought that the search for the next pistachio nut was “more challenging and thus more rewarding” than just picking out a pistachio from a non-shelled bowl. That person may be finding out soon what the singles scene is like.
Then somebody (probably a commie from my wife’s side of the family) brought out a platter of vegetables. Carrots and broccoli and cucumbers and celery sticks all arranged around some white loser glob of congealed crud that the humus just laughed at. All the guys tried to make the kids eat this stuff. Because we were good parents and good grandparents and because healthy children were our lives — and because some of the kids had come dangerously close to reaching into our garlic chip bag.
Then it was time to carve the turkey. And as you might expect, I am the official turkey carver for the Laris-Wood clan. I have been carving the turkey for approximately 47 years now. I think I do a pretty damn good job of it, especially now that I don’t use a live turkey. Some of those turkey screams in past years were heartbreaking.
We had a great meal! It would have made the Pilgrims proud that they had lied to the Indians and stolen their land. It was that good. Just a fantastic meal. All the regular stuff — turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, the three-layered yam-marshmallow deal, green beans, homemade cranberry sauce, flakey-ass rolls, salad and something I’m forgetting. Oh yeah, the gravy. It was almost liquid this year. That spread could have fed Haiti for maybe a week.
So, after feeling guilty for a minute or two, we went back into the family room to watch our third lousy football game of the day. Detroit got wiped out in the morning, Dallas made fun of whatever a Seahawk is in the afternoon and Texas pretty much horn-hooked Texas A&M until they agreed not to use abbreviations for their school name. It was ugly. Three really bad football games for the men of America. If Bush was still president, I know this wouldn’t have happened.
With no more football to watch, we helped each other up from the sofas and waddled out to the kitchen counter for some pie. Because of the bad economy, we only had four kinds of pie to choose from — apple, pumpkin, pecan and eggnog/pumpkin. And I think they would have been pretty good to eat, too. If the “incident” hadn’t occurred.
OK, maybe I had a little too much to drink. It’s hazy, but I think I recall somebody giving me one of those pissy little energy drinks and maybe I added a little Johnny Walker energy of my own to it. And yes, maybe this happened more than once.
Anyway, all I can remember is one of my sons having this panicked look on his face, and loudly saying, “Dad, put down the automatic knife. You don’t carve pie!” And then everything went dark.
Can’t wait until Christmas.
Jim Laris is the former owner and publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com
This year it was a little more perfect than usual. We all decided to chip in and bring various dishes so the little hostess woman of the house wouldn’t break down and cry at the end of the day. Somebody brought a great salad and this nifty bean dish with nuts and sliced almonds, and somebody else brought an incredible yam dish with three — count ’em, three — different color yams. I’m not kidding. Regular orange yams, and then white yams and purple yams. Three layers of colored yams topped off with a layer of oven-toasted marshmallows. And someone else brought an eggnog/pumpkin pie. You could hear the calories. And because I am what? I am a health addict. I brought the box of See’s Candy.
All in all, we had 12 people in the house. Plus three dogs. Our good dog, Hadley, and two rat-yappy dogs. They got along pretty well. The two yappers literally did vertical jumps right onto unsuspecting laps. They were like Air Force test planes taking off with no runway. Just straight up into the wild blue lap yonder. And Hadley, the good dog, was so tired from all the damn fun that he collapsed right in the pathway from the kitchen to the family room, and he just laid there like a canine corpse and we used him as an obstacle course all day.
Because we weren’t sure if we would get enough to eat, we started out with a few appetizers. Had some greasy salt-plastered garlic potato chips for the men, and had these Whole Foods chips made out of recycled whole-grain blue-flour tortillas from some adobe hut in some village in Guatemala for the women, and we dipped those gender- specific babies into some unisex humus. Some good eatin’ there.
Nobody got stomach cramps so we had some pistachio nuts in a giant bowl where we would just throw the empty shells back into the same bowl because some unnamed member of the family thought that the search for the next pistachio nut was “more challenging and thus more rewarding” than just picking out a pistachio from a non-shelled bowl. That person may be finding out soon what the singles scene is like.
Then somebody (probably a commie from my wife’s side of the family) brought out a platter of vegetables. Carrots and broccoli and cucumbers and celery sticks all arranged around some white loser glob of congealed crud that the humus just laughed at. All the guys tried to make the kids eat this stuff. Because we were good parents and good grandparents and because healthy children were our lives — and because some of the kids had come dangerously close to reaching into our garlic chip bag.
Then it was time to carve the turkey. And as you might expect, I am the official turkey carver for the Laris-Wood clan. I have been carving the turkey for approximately 47 years now. I think I do a pretty damn good job of it, especially now that I don’t use a live turkey. Some of those turkey screams in past years were heartbreaking.
We had a great meal! It would have made the Pilgrims proud that they had lied to the Indians and stolen their land. It was that good. Just a fantastic meal. All the regular stuff — turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, the three-layered yam-marshmallow deal, green beans, homemade cranberry sauce, flakey-ass rolls, salad and something I’m forgetting. Oh yeah, the gravy. It was almost liquid this year. That spread could have fed Haiti for maybe a week.
So, after feeling guilty for a minute or two, we went back into the family room to watch our third lousy football game of the day. Detroit got wiped out in the morning, Dallas made fun of whatever a Seahawk is in the afternoon and Texas pretty much horn-hooked Texas A&M until they agreed not to use abbreviations for their school name. It was ugly. Three really bad football games for the men of America. If Bush was still president, I know this wouldn’t have happened.
With no more football to watch, we helped each other up from the sofas and waddled out to the kitchen counter for some pie. Because of the bad economy, we only had four kinds of pie to choose from — apple, pumpkin, pecan and eggnog/pumpkin. And I think they would have been pretty good to eat, too. If the “incident” hadn’t occurred.
OK, maybe I had a little too much to drink. It’s hazy, but I think I recall somebody giving me one of those pissy little energy drinks and maybe I added a little Johnny Walker energy of my own to it. And yes, maybe this happened more than once.
Anyway, all I can remember is one of my sons having this panicked look on his face, and loudly saying, “Dad, put down the automatic knife. You don’t carve pie!” And then everything went dark.
Can’t wait until Christmas.
Jim Laris is the former owner and publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Land Hunting with Jim and Lennie (Cigar Smoke 11-27-08)
For maybe the past 30 years I have had a dream of owning a little piece of land. Nothing spectacular or expensive — maybe a few acres in the country, or a spot next to a lake. Just a place of my own.
I feel like that big, thick-thinking guy Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” Lennie is always asking George, his conflicted buddy, to tell him about how they’ll find their own little piece of land someday. George always soothes Lennie with the story, but (spoiler alert) they never get there.
Oh, I have owned a regular house before, but that’s always felt more like owning a little piece of a mortgage. I want something special. Something unique. Even something funky. I’ll know it when I see it. Maybe a piece of pornography by a stream.
Everywhere I go, I’m always looking in newspapers to find just the right spot. Whenever I get to some town in Montana or Idaho or Oregon or Alaska, I immediately turn to the classifieds and start dreaming. But I never seem to find just the exact right spot — basically, because I’m cheap and don’t have the guts to act. If it weren’t for those two factors, Lennie and I would be sitting on the porch right now spitting sunflower seeds to the squirrels.
One time this real estate agent took me out to a cottage on a lake in Michigan. She asked me if I would like to make an offer. I said, “How does $40,000 sound?” She said, “It sounds like $240,000 less than the asking price.”
Another time I found this perfect, funky double-wide trailer up in some isolated town in Washington state. In the damn forest, right next to a river. And it was only $20,000. So what does your gutless land-dreaming columnist do? I’ll tell you what your favorite spineless excuse for a little-piece-of-land-dreaming, coward-ass dork does: He says he will “think it over” for a while. And he thinks it over for two weeks, and when he finally calls to buy it, the owner tells him he has sold it to a guy who didn’t think it over. For $15,000!
I would have killed myself, but luckily I had to think that over first.
I’ve been searching for something for three decades now. (Some might say I’m looking for something other than a little piece of land, like maybe a friggin’ clue.) I still search the classifieds for that idyllic place. But now, because I am what? Because I am modern, I now search the Web and have become addicted to Craigslist.
Every morning, every afternoon, every evening, I pop onto Craigslist and hunt for that perfect place. I’ve got keyboard bruises on the tips of my fingers. And I have now physically gone out on three searches that my Web-surfing fingers have pointed me to.
A couple of weeks ago, I’m on Craigslist and I hit the California button. It takes me to a screen with all the counties on it. I go to the Humboldt County button, and damned if right off the finger-searching bat I don’t find a funky place for sale out on the Samoa Peninsula, next to Arcata, where I went to school at Humboldt State.
And I mean funky. It’s a manufactured home right on the bay. The agent and I go out there, and it is so foggy we can barely read the tsunami warning area signs. I’m not making that up, dammit! My dream home was in a tsunami danger zone. Pretty cool, huh?
Because it looked so promising, we wanted to go inside, but something stopped us. The urine stench. We opened the door, and that smell rushed out like an escaped convict, baby. We took a whiff, and then we took a hike. The last thing that smelled that bad had police tape around it.
My damn dream has been jolted again. But I don’t give up. I go up the coast to Crescent City and I find this really cool house right next to the ocean at the mouth of a rushing river. It’s beautiful. Ocean waves pounding, otters and seals lounging on the sand spits and rugged rocks, and redwoods on the hills behind the house. And best of all was that my new address would be 12544 Mouth of the Smith River. Wow! Can you believe that for an address!
So did I buy my dream house? Well, the price is a little higher than I wanted, and I guess I’ll have to think it over for a while. So, I’m still getting my mail at some loser address in Altadena.
I guess you all know that in the end, George had to shoot poor Lennie. It was very sad. While he was telling Lennie the story about the little piece of land for one last time, George put a bullet in Lennie’s head.
And just before Lennie died, he turned to George and said, “Would you check Craigslist for me in the morning?”
I feel like that big, thick-thinking guy Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” Lennie is always asking George, his conflicted buddy, to tell him about how they’ll find their own little piece of land someday. George always soothes Lennie with the story, but (spoiler alert) they never get there.
Oh, I have owned a regular house before, but that’s always felt more like owning a little piece of a mortgage. I want something special. Something unique. Even something funky. I’ll know it when I see it. Maybe a piece of pornography by a stream.
Everywhere I go, I’m always looking in newspapers to find just the right spot. Whenever I get to some town in Montana or Idaho or Oregon or Alaska, I immediately turn to the classifieds and start dreaming. But I never seem to find just the exact right spot — basically, because I’m cheap and don’t have the guts to act. If it weren’t for those two factors, Lennie and I would be sitting on the porch right now spitting sunflower seeds to the squirrels.
One time this real estate agent took me out to a cottage on a lake in Michigan. She asked me if I would like to make an offer. I said, “How does $40,000 sound?” She said, “It sounds like $240,000 less than the asking price.”
Another time I found this perfect, funky double-wide trailer up in some isolated town in Washington state. In the damn forest, right next to a river. And it was only $20,000. So what does your gutless land-dreaming columnist do? I’ll tell you what your favorite spineless excuse for a little-piece-of-land-dreaming, coward-ass dork does: He says he will “think it over” for a while. And he thinks it over for two weeks, and when he finally calls to buy it, the owner tells him he has sold it to a guy who didn’t think it over. For $15,000!
I would have killed myself, but luckily I had to think that over first.
I’ve been searching for something for three decades now. (Some might say I’m looking for something other than a little piece of land, like maybe a friggin’ clue.) I still search the classifieds for that idyllic place. But now, because I am what? Because I am modern, I now search the Web and have become addicted to Craigslist.
Every morning, every afternoon, every evening, I pop onto Craigslist and hunt for that perfect place. I’ve got keyboard bruises on the tips of my fingers. And I have now physically gone out on three searches that my Web-surfing fingers have pointed me to.
A couple of weeks ago, I’m on Craigslist and I hit the California button. It takes me to a screen with all the counties on it. I go to the Humboldt County button, and damned if right off the finger-searching bat I don’t find a funky place for sale out on the Samoa Peninsula, next to Arcata, where I went to school at Humboldt State.
And I mean funky. It’s a manufactured home right on the bay. The agent and I go out there, and it is so foggy we can barely read the tsunami warning area signs. I’m not making that up, dammit! My dream home was in a tsunami danger zone. Pretty cool, huh?
Because it looked so promising, we wanted to go inside, but something stopped us. The urine stench. We opened the door, and that smell rushed out like an escaped convict, baby. We took a whiff, and then we took a hike. The last thing that smelled that bad had police tape around it.
My damn dream has been jolted again. But I don’t give up. I go up the coast to Crescent City and I find this really cool house right next to the ocean at the mouth of a rushing river. It’s beautiful. Ocean waves pounding, otters and seals lounging on the sand spits and rugged rocks, and redwoods on the hills behind the house. And best of all was that my new address would be 12544 Mouth of the Smith River. Wow! Can you believe that for an address!
So did I buy my dream house? Well, the price is a little higher than I wanted, and I guess I’ll have to think it over for a while. So, I’m still getting my mail at some loser address in Altadena.
I guess you all know that in the end, George had to shoot poor Lennie. It was very sad. While he was telling Lennie the story about the little piece of land for one last time, George put a bullet in Lennie’s head.
And just before Lennie died, he turned to George and said, “Would you check Craigslist for me in the morning?”
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Tuesdays With Hadley (Cigar Smoke 11-20-08)
My dog, Hadley, is getting pretty old. He’s about 12 now, and the lifespan for Airedales is between 11 and 14 years. So, because he’s a very smart dog, and because he uses a really big calculator with extra large paw buttons, he knows he’s pretty much a fellow single-digit traveler, much like his single-digit (in expectancy and IQ) owner.
Old Airedale Face has a few medical problems. He was born blind in his right eye, but except for the occasional clunking of his head on an unseen fence post to his right, it’s never really bothered him much. And he did break a hip when he was younger and it never healed right. But up until about six months ago, all in all, he was hanging in there pretty well.
Then things took a more negative turn. He’s got severe arthritis in his back legs and he can barely get up now. He just struggles and struggles and it’s painful to watch. I still take him on hobbles every morning, but he can’t walk far. His legs are unstable and he stops a lot. Reminds me of someone I know.
For the past few months he has not been able to control his bowel movements. He leaves us little “Easter eggs” every day now. He has his doggie bed in our bedroom and every morning we get up and expect to find more Easter eggs. And in keeping with the holiday spirit, Hadley usually gives us something to find.
And it’s not just at bedtime. Marge and I will be watching “Mad Men” on TV and one of us will smell something, and then we’ll look around and see Hadley over in the corner whistling and cocking his long head to the side, and we know it’s time to get out the Easter Basket.
A lot of times he doesn’t even know he’s going. He can be lying down, and almost defy the laws of physics. One time I was sitting on the couch and petting him, and he was licking my face from the front end and depositing on my toes from the back end. I think there’s a message there.
And sometimes he’ll just be walking along without a care in his canine world, and he will be leaving a trail of non-omelet eggs. Marge or I will be running right behind him, yelling tender love yells, and suggesting that he wait for another five seconds and do it outside. But Hadley is his own Peter Rabbit, and he defecates to a different drummer.
Well, after about a half a year of this, and after a number of carpet cleaning bills, and after a general exhaustion of our obscenity options, and after Hadley had laughed at the doggie diapers we got him, we made the decision to at least control him overnight. So we made a little dog segregation area in one of our bathrooms, and we put his bed in there, and we put in a metal gate thing to block him from doing his fecal fun on the carpet. We figured it would be easier to just pick up the eggs from the bathroom tile floor.
We figured wrong. Because Hadley’s legs were so bad, he couldn’t get any traction on the slick tile and he couldn’t get up, and because there was no lack of eggs on the said tile, well, many of the eggs became accessories to Hadley’s fur, paws, side, back, butt, stomach, haunches, toes, tail, and teeth. And maybe even worse, Hadley hated it in there.
So I did something a Republican has never done before — I went to a Home Depot. I had two custom pieces of outdoor carpet cut into the exact sizes I needed. And I bought a carpet cutter tool just to be manly. And, yes, as long as I was there, I ate one of those healthy Home Depot hot dogs.
I bring all the stuff home and here’s what I do: I put Hadley’s bed back in our bedroom so he will love us. I put the two sections of outdoor carpet over our good carpet in an L-shaped area going from his bed around our bed. I close the bedroom door, and I put up the metal gate thing on the other end of the L-shaped carpet section. We now have an Easter egg acceptance area that rocks with both canine consideration and fecal utility. It was Easter-egg-proof. Not a square inch of good carpet to be even aimed at, let alone targeted successfully.
The perfect solution — Hadley loves it, Marge loves it. I love it because I thought of it.
So last night was the first night we used it. Everything went great. Hadley did not whimper. Marge was not fumbling around with the divorce papers. Me and my snore machine were sleeping. It was beautiful.
And then we noticed that the closet door was slightly nudged in. And we gently pushed back the door. And there, lying on the only exposed six-inch area of beautiful, formerly fecal-free carpet was, shall we say, an egg of a different color. The only six inches in the entire room, and Hadley had butt-nudged the closet door to expose it. It was incredible.
Yes, Virginia, there is an Easter Bunny.
Old Airedale Face has a few medical problems. He was born blind in his right eye, but except for the occasional clunking of his head on an unseen fence post to his right, it’s never really bothered him much. And he did break a hip when he was younger and it never healed right. But up until about six months ago, all in all, he was hanging in there pretty well.
Then things took a more negative turn. He’s got severe arthritis in his back legs and he can barely get up now. He just struggles and struggles and it’s painful to watch. I still take him on hobbles every morning, but he can’t walk far. His legs are unstable and he stops a lot. Reminds me of someone I know.
For the past few months he has not been able to control his bowel movements. He leaves us little “Easter eggs” every day now. He has his doggie bed in our bedroom and every morning we get up and expect to find more Easter eggs. And in keeping with the holiday spirit, Hadley usually gives us something to find.
And it’s not just at bedtime. Marge and I will be watching “Mad Men” on TV and one of us will smell something, and then we’ll look around and see Hadley over in the corner whistling and cocking his long head to the side, and we know it’s time to get out the Easter Basket.
A lot of times he doesn’t even know he’s going. He can be lying down, and almost defy the laws of physics. One time I was sitting on the couch and petting him, and he was licking my face from the front end and depositing on my toes from the back end. I think there’s a message there.
And sometimes he’ll just be walking along without a care in his canine world, and he will be leaving a trail of non-omelet eggs. Marge or I will be running right behind him, yelling tender love yells, and suggesting that he wait for another five seconds and do it outside. But Hadley is his own Peter Rabbit, and he defecates to a different drummer.
Well, after about a half a year of this, and after a number of carpet cleaning bills, and after a general exhaustion of our obscenity options, and after Hadley had laughed at the doggie diapers we got him, we made the decision to at least control him overnight. So we made a little dog segregation area in one of our bathrooms, and we put his bed in there, and we put in a metal gate thing to block him from doing his fecal fun on the carpet. We figured it would be easier to just pick up the eggs from the bathroom tile floor.
We figured wrong. Because Hadley’s legs were so bad, he couldn’t get any traction on the slick tile and he couldn’t get up, and because there was no lack of eggs on the said tile, well, many of the eggs became accessories to Hadley’s fur, paws, side, back, butt, stomach, haunches, toes, tail, and teeth. And maybe even worse, Hadley hated it in there.
So I did something a Republican has never done before — I went to a Home Depot. I had two custom pieces of outdoor carpet cut into the exact sizes I needed. And I bought a carpet cutter tool just to be manly. And, yes, as long as I was there, I ate one of those healthy Home Depot hot dogs.
I bring all the stuff home and here’s what I do: I put Hadley’s bed back in our bedroom so he will love us. I put the two sections of outdoor carpet over our good carpet in an L-shaped area going from his bed around our bed. I close the bedroom door, and I put up the metal gate thing on the other end of the L-shaped carpet section. We now have an Easter egg acceptance area that rocks with both canine consideration and fecal utility. It was Easter-egg-proof. Not a square inch of good carpet to be even aimed at, let alone targeted successfully.
The perfect solution — Hadley loves it, Marge loves it. I love it because I thought of it.
So last night was the first night we used it. Everything went great. Hadley did not whimper. Marge was not fumbling around with the divorce papers. Me and my snore machine were sleeping. It was beautiful.
And then we noticed that the closet door was slightly nudged in. And we gently pushed back the door. And there, lying on the only exposed six-inch area of beautiful, formerly fecal-free carpet was, shall we say, an egg of a different color. The only six inches in the entire room, and Hadley had butt-nudged the closet door to expose it. It was incredible.
Yes, Virginia, there is an Easter Bunny.
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