Thinking about expensive houses

I had an experience today; I was sitting on my porch, which I do for long parts of the day to smoke and watch the thousands of birds we have in our area. Anyway, I’m on the porch and two women in what must be termed summer dresses walk by. Not only did they have tea party dresses on, they wore hats. In my usual way I said hey…”Good afternoon, ladies” and one of they women turned to me in her pastel blue hat and suit and said “we’re just walking along looking at all of these adorable tiny houses!” She was pretty excited. And I was thinking, okay – we moved from a big (4,000 sq ft) house that was just too big to a smaller home (about 2200 sq ft) but in my experience that’s not necessarily a little house. It is however cute as hell.

But all this made me think about the time I went to a Parade of Homes in a very exclusive neighborhood in the San Antonio area and was wandering into the master bedroom suite… we had a guide who was talking like we were actually interested in buying a $2M home… they had this wonderful bathroom with a little commode room like many homes have.. it had great wallpaper, an upscale (I guess) toilet, and a towel rack. So I axed the guide..” what’s the towel rack for?”. She looked at me like an idiot (okay, I am an idiot, but still…) and said “it’s for a towel to dry your hands”. So I tracked this bit of insanity a little further. “After you wash them where, exactly?” She looked at me and thought for a minute then said “no one has ever axed me that before”. Because I’m thinking that if anyone washes their hands in my toilet I really, really don’t want them using my towels. Just thinking.

Sometimes You Just Gotta Be An Idiot

My good friend and neighbor, West, got teased unmercifully by his wife and me yesterday for doing something that I do all the time.. he was speaking to a Hispanic gentleman about some construction work and although he was speaking English, he did so with a Hispanic accent.

Kendra laughed at him, and I jumped right in…”Heyyyyzuss amigo, chu peek up my air-condichtener??” To which the other guy says in (objectively, Texan) unaccented English “Why yes, I happened by this morning and took possession as agreed.” West has the delightful ability to laugh at himself, so we all enjoyed it to varying degrees.

I’ve lived in a lot of countries, and I find myself not only trying to make locals understand me by speaking English to them with their accent, but speaking their language with the accent of wherever I was last. I can speak pretty good German with an Italian accent. I speak Thai, with a Lao accent. I speak Italian with an idiots accent that even as I speak it I wonder what the hell I’m doing that for.

It’s like my brain works against itself – the language kernel takes over and does what it wants to, while my logic and embarrassment kernels complain.. “that is not proper enunciation!  And it is mortifying personally!” The language kernel apparently resides in that brain community shaped and trained to be a senior NCO, because it says “Shut your pie-hole, college boy” and does whatever it wishes. One’s only possible defense is to laugh at yourself, because you be one verifiable idiot of the first rank. This position is one I’m so used to that I guess we should just give me the sobriquet of “Planet Idiot”, as opposed to lesser ranks.

Sarge's Non-Diner

My neighbor, West, forgot his lunch cooler yesterday when he was at my house, so I did the good neighbor thing and froze his freezer-pack thingies, made him a sandwich, and even threw in some grapes and an apple fritter. When he came by to thank me of course the wiseass put in his order for tomorrow. I grinned but after he left I wrote up the menu below and taped it to his door.


Sarge's Non-Diner and Book Emporium

Special Lunch MENU

Mon. Smoked Air (Come stand by our beautiful, rustic porch! Breathe in that second-hand smoke! America like it used to be! Don’t come on the porch, it pisses Bob off.)
$8.00

Tue. Air Sandwich (in which one mimes the eating of a sandwich which ain’t there)
$11,00

Wed. Crumble-bum onna stick (Ask Bob for some crumbs, and he’ll come after you with a stick, shouting “Crumble-bum! Crumble-bum!”
$3.00

Thu. Thursdays we got nothin’. Don’ bother me
$3.00

Fri. Pig-inna-blanket Memories (just lean back and remember the gas you got from pigs-inna-blanket you got down the street)
$6.50

Sat. Ice Cube
$2.25

Sun. Sunday Buffet – you just buffet your skinny ass offa my proppity.

Open 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m. Closed every third week, plus the odd and even weeks in between.

Thoughts of May 8th

!!  You know, smart and strong women are incredibly sexy. Good looks get invisible sooner or later, but the smart-strong combo never fades.

!!  I don’t like politicians. I sincerely believe that politicians of every affiliation would happily sell or ‘leak’ data critically important to the common good if they were assured a 2% increase in votes. I believe that. So stay away from my daughters and my granddaughter, you sumbitches.

!!  Here’s a thought. People who cannot possibly hunt or forage for their families will and should always vote for a government which will do that for them. Them what can, won’t.

!!  People ask me if Alaska is as weird as that old TV show ‘Northern Exposure’…… actually those people would be considered pretty normal in Homer.

!!  What if every 8 blocks on a street had to select a resident for Congress (I spelled it with a small “c” at first, then laughed at myself) for every annual Congress? Betcha it would work out better. Oh, and fuck a bunch of Senators.

!!  I just chatted with my friend JT.. he retired last Thursday, but I didn’t call him until Monday ‘cause I figured he’d be drunk. He swore he wasn’t, but he didn’t remember all that much about the last few days.
There ain’t much better feeling in the world than wandering out in your robe on your second day of retirement with a cup of coffee and watching all of the non-retired folks streaming out of the subdivision to work. I lifted my cup and grinned at each of them, but I think that was a little weak… I encouraged JT to wave his wienie at them, but he prob’ly won’t.

Excuses for my absence

It has been a truly weak month for blogging. But I wasn’t totally idle. Wrote a book for my granddaughter, and this time in my style. Then I gave in to crass commercialism and prepped the whole thing for sale – new parents or grandparents can submit their pictures and names and an anecdote or two and I’ll turn them out a handmade, hand-bound custom book for only a gazillion dollars (actually, $299 for the really nice one, and $400 for the leather bound super-duty paper, drool-proof (yet to be tested) instant heirloom). Got the website construction started (sofiabook.com) and should be ready for production by June 1. By the way, learning to do a web page is super simple. Learning to do a website with interactivity, credit forms, database synchronicity, and a small blinky thing that hovers about 8” over my desk has been intellectually…what’s the phrase… a booger.

Here’s the deal. I wrote a 30 page book, which has some graphics on every page, is mildly funny, no big deal right? I fretted and worried and rewrote and sniveled (yea, sniveled – it shames me to my core) until finally I said “Brisk this book, I declare it done”. It took me 4 full days of writing and many more webbing and graphic-ing and Aunt-ing and Uncle-ing. Good story, what’s your point?

So now I have even more respect for good writers, except for those whom I am sure are idiot savant’s.