a kitty’s tale…

My wife’s sister and fiancée arrived yesterday, via plane, from Louisiana. Today they will leave New York, in my car, headed South, with our two cats. They will stop in Baltimore and Atlanta, where our heavily sedated cats will proceed to pee all over several Motel 6’s. Then they will continue on to Baton Rouge, where they will be locked in a 10’ by 10’ room in one of my sister-in-law’s restored slum-houses that she repairs and rents out. After a week or so, they will be driven to Alabama to our lovely new house, where they will be so traumatized that they will more than likely completely destroy our brand new carpet, room-by-room.

All this to save a couple hundred bucks!

Actually, I like to imagine the journey will be much more Disneyesque. Somewhere in New Jersey, they will escape from their captors and flee into the woods. There they will befriend a crafty raccoon, who will teach them how to fend for themselves in the untamed wilderness of the Garden State. Gradually, their wanderings will take them southwards – through Maryland, where they will briefly stow away on a crabbing boat, down to the Carolinas where they will help rescue a bear cub from a brush fire. In Georgia, they will be taken in by a kindly old hobo, who will feed them sardines from a can. The kitties will tag along when the hobo hops aboard a train to New Orleans. Weeks later, our family will be vacationing when we just happen to spot them aboard a Mardi Gras float. There will be a tearful, purry reunion and we will take them home to Alabama. After their hard year’s journey, the kitties will be more appreciative of their comfortable, domestic life. And yet, very so often we will catch them gazing wistfully out of the window, perhaps yearning to return to their Life on the Road…

I’m sorry… what was I talking about before?

Oh… yeah… I guess I should go clean out the litterbox and pack it in the trunk. They’d better not piss in my fucking car, that’s all I can say.

  (posted by Dave at 7:44 AM || )

  shark attack victim, no doubt...

I'm sitting here on the computer, and the Litttle Guy is watching The Wiggles and I'm not really paying much attention when this song comes on that I've never heard about having a barbeque at the beach but since they're Australian they say a "barbie" at the beach and because of the accent and my divided attention I find myself hearing the Wiggles singing...

"Tell your friends there's a body on the beach
Tell your friends there's a body on the beach
Tell your friends there's a body on the beach
Tell your friends there's a body on the beach..."

What? You mean, like... washed up on the beach?

Somebody call Chief Brody.

  (posted by Dave at 6:41 AM || )

  dave don’t like bugs…

embellished snippets of a conversation from today’s yard sale after Dave got bitten by a weird stripey flying insect….

Dave: I just got bitten by a really weird bug, and it’s tingling.
Jenn: Hmmm… what kid of bug?
Dave: I have no idea. It was too big to be a mosquito and too small to be a bee and too skinny to be a fly. And I’m not sure if it bit me or sucked me or stung me, but now the spot is tingling… isn’t that weird?
Jenn: Maybe you should go run some water on it.
Dave: I think it may have been a tse-tse fly.
Jenn: I don’t think it was a tse-tse fly.
Dave: You don’t know.
Jenn: So, what, now you’re going to get malaria or something?
Dave: Malaria my ass!! We’re talking about fucking African Sleeping Sickness here!
Jenn: Well, I’m pretty sure the tse-tse fly is not indigenous to Long Island.
Dave: Yeah, well… when I drop unconscious in about an hour and a half, we’ll see.
Jenn: Mmm-hmmm...

(pause)

Dave: Did I tell you I saw a deadly brown recluse spider in the shed today?





  (posted by Dave at 9:40 PM || )

  the egotistical whack-job formerly known as madonna…

So, have you heard that Madonna now wants to be known as “Ethel” or “Esther” or some such Old Testament bullshit, in celebration of her trendy devotion to Kabbalah? Yeah… apparently she didn’t get the memo from Prince that people will only put up with a certain amount of stupid crap like that, no matter how freaking famous you are.
  (posted by Dave at 3:38 PM || )

  posting with my stump...

I put my iBook in a box for pickup today.

I swear to fuck it's like I've just shipped my right arm off in an Airborne Express truck. I'm completely incapacitated.

And is it a bad sign for Apple that the Airborne Express guy not only recognizes the Apple return boxes, but KNOWS what the typical turnaround time is for an Apple repair?? How many of these things does he pick up in a day??

Dammit.

  (posted by Dave at 11:30 AM || )

  "this is the best party we've had in 7-10 years...!"

Looks like the White Trash Neighbors are having a big noisy cookout today with lots and lots of guests...

I wonder who got out of prison?

  (posted by Dave at 3:17 PM || )

  supposed readers...

My wife informs me that people have told her they like my weblog, but I don't believe her, because nobody has EVER left me a note/comment thingy.

So the new rule is... readers of my weblog MUST leave notes, so that I know somebody BESIDES my wife is reading this. Because let's face it... she's heard all these rants already.


  (posted by Dave at 2:04 PM || )

  it's all about the reagans...

Ronald Reagan isn't even in the ground yet, and already Republicans are buzzing around looking for things to name after him. I heard yesterday that some want to rename the Pentagon - "The Ronald Reagan National Defense Center". That really rolls off the tongue, huh? There is also apparently a contingent that for a long while has been proposing that he be added to Mount Rushmore! Hey... why not just rename the whole country "Reaganopia" and be done with it??

The best proposal I've heard this week is that his face be added to US Currency. Some were suggesting dimes, but there were also people who wanted to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20. (Because what we really need is the FOURTH redesign of the twenty dollar bill in five years.)

If you want to put Reagan's face on a piece of currency, I suggest the $10,000 bill. That way, poor people would never get to see any of the money - just like when he was president.   (posted by Dave at 2:23 PM || )

  revenge of the swedes...

Today... a return trip to Ikea, this time without the kids to buy a chair that wouldn't fit in the car with carseats in the back.

Price of chair - $99

Total spent at Ikea today - $450

HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!

Damn you Swedes and your cute little home furnishings!!

  (posted by Dave at 5:47 PM || )

  harry potter and the prisoner of continuity...

Mom is here for the week – ostensibly to help watch the kids while the wife and I put the house into boxes... we’ll see how much gets done. Last night after the kids were in bed, Jenn and I went to see Harry Potter. It was beautifully directed, but it had plot-holes big enough to fly a hippogriff through. And I’m not talking about tiny omissions or run of the mill deviations from the book.... I’m talking about great gaping lapses in exposition that threaten to leave the viewer completely bewildered. So much of the dénouement was left unexplained that I can’t imagine there aren’t Very Important Facts that will need to be patched up in later films.

Oh well.... at least the 3 kids can kinda act now. And the new Dumbledore didn’t suck.

I’ll refrain from a full-out rant about the Asshole Down the Aisle Who Had 8 Separate Conversations on His Fucking Cell Phone, but really... Jesus Christ... I paid $12.50 for this movie ticket, buddy... SHUT THE FUCK UP!!

  (posted by Dave at 7:03 AM || )

  yeah.... it's the americans who are crazy...

I went to Borders this morning to sit and work on my play. I got maybe a page and a half written, so it was kind of a waste of time. But I did have a fascinating conversation with and old, foreign, suburban-homeless guy.

OFSHG: "Are yoo American? Yoo loook American. Mebbee yoo can tell mee soomtheen abowt America...eh?"

Dave: "..."

OFSHG: "What ees superma', eh?"

Dave : What?

OFSHG: "Superma', eh? Yoo know? What ees superma", eh? Americans are CRAZY"

Now at this point I felt sure it was my duty to defend myself as an American, but because of the guy's accent I wasn't sure if I should be defending America's love for supermarkets or Superman. Either way, I didn't feel quite up to it...

Dave: (shrugs)"I don't know what to tell you, buddy..."

OFSHG: "Wherre ees the money, in America, eh? Becuss, I loook arount, and I dun see any money"

Dave: (not out loud) "Well, I spent MY money on this nice fancy iPod, which I'm going to put on right now so I don't have to listen to YOUR crazy ass any longer."

Do I have a sign on my back that says "Crazy People... Come Talk to ME!"...?






  (posted by Dave at 8:32 PM || )

  i got your “flightless bird”, right here...

We went to the aquarium at Coney Island yesterday... big disappointment... small, dirty... all the tanks had more algae than the White Trash Neighbors’ swimming pool. Anyway, at one point Ian and I were separated from Jennifer and Katie, and on the way back to find them, we passed a big tank marked Jackass Penguins which, as far as I could tell, appeared to be empty. When I got back to Jenn I said...

Dave: “So, did you see any jackass penguins?”
Jenn: “No.”
Dave: ”Really? I did... And when I saw him, he said - Hey! What the fuck are YOU lookin’ at??”

Unfortunately, nobody around here appreciates my comic genius.

  (posted by Dave at 7:14 PM || )