Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--
Yesterday, when Toney got home from work, she opened the front door and
ran it across a mound of dog vomit. As the door moved, it smeared the
puke in a large swooping arc, and she apparently didn't care for this.
The second pool of upchuck in the living room didn't help matters,
either.
I was sitting at work, listening to Clive Bull, when my phone rang:
Me: Hello, it's Jeff!
Toney: I'm going to take this goddamn dog to a taxidermist.
Me: Who is this?
Toney: I'm not kidding, I'm going to have them render him decorative.
Me: What happened?
Toney: The kids like him, so we'll have him stuffed and mounted to a
base, and we can just move him from room to room....
It took a long time for me to finally drag the story out of her, and to
get her to let go of the idea of rendering our beloved family pet
"decorative" (something she obviously finds intriguing). And
all I can say is Black Lips Houlihan had better shoot for a puke-free
day today. Because I can't really tell if Toney's joking or not.
She told me she was going to the grocery store a few minutes ago, but I
have a nagging feeling that she's really out shopping for dog bases
somewhere.
Shit!
-- We have a gas fireplace in our living room that's never really worked
properly. When we first moved here I tried to light it on several
occasions, and couldn't get the pilot light to stay on. And when my
parents were visiting once my Dad worked with it and finally got it
going, but it put off a horrible stink that made us nervous. I was
afraid they'd find all of us dead of carbon monoxide poisoning, sitting
in chairs and staring straight ahead. Like Weird Al's parents.
Yeah, I know carbon monoxide is colorless and odorless, but that thing
was doing all sorts of strange things. How was I to know it wasn't pumping
out a death gas as well? So we never used it again. Why risk it?
Poisonings and catastrophic explosions can cast a gloom over an
otherwise fine day, I've heard.
Fast
forward to a couple of weeks ago, when the temperatures started dipping,
and Bourbon Season kicked into high gear. We started thinking about that
fireplace, and how nice it would be if we could get it to work.
I shrugged and told Toney to call the man. Meaning: no way I'm
monkeying around with it. I knew a guy in Atlanta who attempted to do
some DIY repairs on his furnace, and after years of skin grafts he was
almost back to normal. Except his pubes were reportedly gone forever....
And I can't have that.
So she called the gas company, who offer a service where they come out
and look over your gas appliances, and inspect them for safety, etc.
Earlier this week a man showed up, sporting abundant facial hair
straight out of the 1880s. After a fifteen minute inspection, he gave us
his professional opinion on why our fireplace wouldn't work properly
It was absolutely filthy.
He said there was so much dust in the works of the thing a safety was
being triggered, causing the pilot light to turn itself off. And the
horrible funk? Burning dust. Boy did I feel douchey. He assured us it's
a common problem though, possibly out of sympathy. Ol' Nineteenth
Century seemed like good people.
But in our defense, who dusts inside their fireplace? Obviously not us,
or the people who lived here before us, either. That crap was shutting
down on the first week we moved in, so it must've been dirty from the
get-go. And the stench.... I was convinced it was soaking into our
furniture, drapes and clothes. Nasty-ass.
The guy rolled in some sort of R2-D2 industrial vacuum and commenced to
sucking. Then he did several tests for carbon monoxide and told us
everything was fine. It was worth the price of the service call just for
that, if nothing else. He suggested we let it burn for several hours
"to get rid of the stink," then we should be in good shape.
So this weekend we'll have ourselves a cozy fire to go along with the
Kentucky sippin' whiskey. And I guess I'll drag myself in there every
once in a while and polish the nozzle, so to speak. I'm confident
I'll be able to devise a workable method.
-- I'm listening to this CD right now, one of my all-time favorites. I
had a copy on vinyl back in the day, and played the grooves off the
thing. Toney hates it, she says it sounds like "a bunch of British
fags who smile when they sing," but I think it's genius.
When we were in Atlanta one of our co-workers announced, months in
advance, that she was planning a trip to London. And we heard about it
almost daily, for a long long time. Before she left I wrote down the
name of the band and the album, and asked if she could try to find it
for me on her vacation. This was the pre-internet days, and a person had
to go to great lengths to feed his addiction, especially when it came to
ultra-obscure groups like the Monochrome
Set.
I didn't really believe anything would come of it, though. The chick was
flaky personified, and I was certain she'd forget me, or would simply
disregard the request. But to my surprise, she returned with the CD, and
I was actually holding it in my hands.... I nearly wept.
Yeah, she told me I owed her $25, which was almost certainly a price
gouge, but I didn't care. Hell, I even gave her a pass on all the
cringe-inducing British phrases she suddenly began incorporating into
her speech ("Oooh, we had a lovely holiday!"). Under
normal circumstances I would've said, "Aren't you from Reno,
Nevada? What's with all the pretentiousness? What are you, Natalie
Merchant now?" But I let it drop, because she'd provided me with
the hook-up.
Do any of your albums or CDs have a "history," some sort of
story attached to them? I know this one's a stretch, but it's the best I
can do today. Work with me people....
--
Yesterday, when Toney got home from work, she opened the front door and
ran it across a mound of dog vomit. As the door moved, it smeared the
puke in a large swooping arc, and she apparently didn't care for this.
The second pool of upchuck in the living room didn't help matters,
either.