June 14, 2007

-- Yesterday our mail arrived late (grrr), and I was checking on it every fifteen minutes or so. Hey, it’s one of the highlights of my days at this point…

Sometime after lunch I opened the door and the mail still hadn’t been delivered, and I found two massive jugs of Tide laundry detergent on our front porch instead. WTS?!

I checked ‘em out, without touching anything (what if they’d been full of nitroglycerine??), and it looked like one bottle was half empty. Or half full, whatever you prefer. And some of it was dribbling down the sides. So it was two humongous vessels of somebody else’s already used laundry detergent, on our porch, for no known reason. 

What in the ever-loving crap??

I thought Toney might know something about it, she talks to the neighbors and everything, so I just left the stuff where I found it. And when she got home she was baffled as well. 

“Let me get this straight,” she said, “You thought I went door-to-door asking people for their excess laundry detergent?” There was no call for such hurtful sarcasm, none whatsoever.

We tossed both bottles into the garbage, and still don’t have an explanation. Nobody confessed to leaving it on our porch, and we can’t come up with a logical reason for anyone having done such a thing. It’s a genuine mystery. 

Any ideas? It’s not some kind of bizarre gypsy curse or something, is it? Have we now been marked?  Is it some sort of mysterious Romanian mountain hoodoo known as tiding your enemy?! Shit! 

It’s been nice knowing you guys.

-- Every time I realize I’m talking about the mail, it makes me think of someone I used to work with in Greensboro , a large black man named Lawrence .

When I was preparing to move to Atlanta , some folks from the record store took me out for beers at a local joint called Spring Garden Bar & Grill. Lawrence was in attendance, and after three or four cold drafts he looked around and said:

“Yeah, you can tell this is a white man’s bar. Motherfucker over there talking about his mailman!”

Lawrence was a man of few words, but when he spoke it was almost always hilarious. And also right on the money.

-- I finally mowed the grass yesterday afternoon, and Gino Vanelli walked by and said hey. Gino, of course, is married to High Neck, and they’re next-door neighbors to “Pete Townshend,” a woman whose nose starts in the middle of her forehead. Just thought you should know.

-- I have no scientific evidence of this, but my gut is telling me the most-often told lie of today is, “Sorry I missed your call. My phone was on vibrate.” Am I wrong about this? I don’t think I am.

What are some of the other common modern-day lies?

-- And speaking of that, I came up with a new slogan for a future edition of t-shirt: The West Virginia Surf Report – Our Writers Have Guts!

The only problem is, I’m not sure it’s accurate. I have a gut, but I don’t think Brad does. I had lunch with Buck once, and he’s a big guy, but I don’t remember him having a beer belly or anything. I’ve never met lakrfool or Metten face-to-face, so I don’t know about them.

Hey, maybe I could grow another gut beneath the one I already have (or above it – whatever), and change the slogan to TheWVSR: Run by a man with guts! Two, to be exact.

Yeah, that doesn’t really have the same ring to it. And I’m unsure about the logistics of growing extra guts in specific locations.

…WTF am I talking about?? Let's just call it a day. 

See ya tomorrow.




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Last updated
01/17/12 12:13 PM

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