First Day of Summer

So, it has been awhile since I sat down to write straight off the top of my head, or out of my ass, as it were. But today I resume my habit of totally improper and unplanned writing in honor of the first day of summer, 2010.

It's scorching hot already. It has been for a few weeks now. After the really cold winter we had, most of us were expecting a mild summer, with minimal bugs (all frozen solid last winter) and fewer weeds (also frozen solid.) Boy were we all wrong! The bugs are everywhere, including in the house, crawling right through the trails of toxic chemicals I've sprayed around to keep them at bay, and the weeds are growing faster than we can rip them out. I tilled a section of garden at the request of Mrs. Memphis and urged her to quickly plant whatever she intended for that spot. She ignored me, as usual, and left the turned soil untended. It is now a solid patch of creeping shit and fuzzy vines that are all a major pain to get rid of.

And the poison ivy, oh my God, it is growing like a fucking alien in some lousy science fiction movie, like you can almost see it moving through the trees and strangling them, reaching out and grabbing wayward squirrels as they scream "help me! help me!" and setting traps for small children. I have always been lucky enough to be immune to this shit, but Mrs Memphis is deathly allergic to it. So imagine my joy and surprise when this year, for the first time ever, I emerged from my battles with the toxic plants with a reaction that took me 2 full weeks to identify.

Hey, all I knew was that my calf was periodically bugging the crap out of me with itching, but it seemed like no big deal. Then I showed it to Mrs Memphis and she screamed, "you've got poison ivy! Get away from me!" I looked it up on the internet, which said it would not spread and would only last for 2 weeks. So I informed Mrs Memphis that the 2 weeks were up and it should go away any minute now.

"Like hell," she screamed. "It'll spread through your bloodstream and break out in other places that never touched the stuff and you'll have it at least a month."

So, going on the fourth week now, I seem to be clearing up a little. I have random itching at various places on my body, but no one spot in particular that needs attention.


Thumpin' tunes
Anyway, I had a lovely new stereo installed in my 4x4 a few weeks ago. With all of the miles I do back and forth to Memphis I figured I needed some decent tunes instead of simply relying on random radio DJs to offer me worthwhile choices, so I had something put in. It was great for 3 weeks. Then I went to drive myself to Memphis, only to discover that the truck is totally dead. No electricity. It seems something has drained the battery all the way down, and when I try to put it on a battery charger, the charger flashes at me and won't charge. Something is fucked up. Oh joyous day in the morning, it's 100 degrees outside and not much cooler in the garage. I really don't want to be bothered with this crap right now. But, of course, now is precisely the time I should be expecting failures like this. Sure as hell, if anything is going to die on a vehicle, it is going to die at the worst possible time, and/or in the worst possible weather. I'm hopeful that all I need is a new battery, but I apparently won't know until I remove the battery, with sweat pouring down my face, haul it to some autoparts store for them to test, and then shell out the big bucks for another one, which I will then install, with sweat pouring down my face again, and try out.

It's still early morning and it is already 85 degrees with 60 percent humidity, making it feel like 90 degrees. It's expected to reach 98 today once the sun is high overhead. Combined with the humidity it will feel closer to 105. That's Fahrenheit. I think that's 45 or something in Celsius. I could look it up, but honestly, I don't want to.


"Father's Day is a day for hating"

So, it was Father's Day this past weekend. Our espized President Obama took the opportunity of a day celebrating the importance of fathers and fatherhood to make a speech. In his speech he bashed fathers in the same tired old way that he does every single year, and much as all politicians in general do whenever they want to kiss up to the misandric feminists, which is pretty much all the time.

Yes, President Barack Obama, a bastard child who was raised not by his mother, but by his grandparents, celebrated Father's Day by bashing fathers as a group.

And then he went back to playing golf with his buddies, leaving his wife and children behind.


Oil leak? What oil leak?

Meanwhile, the CEO of British Petroleum, having been removed from all responsibilities relating to the Gulf Oil Spill, went yachting. The CEO of BP has since taken a beating in The Press over his yachting weekend, while our President, the man who removed the BP CEO from responsibility for the spill and declared that "we will not rest" until this crisis in the Gulf has been dealt with, was playing golf and bashing on fatherhood. President Obama somehow escaped any criticisms for his golfing and soccer-watching and father-bashing while the Gulf is puking up oil, despite his promises that he would not rest until the puking is stopped.

The next day, on Fox News' O'Reilly Report, the infamously grouchy and perpetually interrupting Bill O'Reilly himself mentioned the speech, playing the part in which Barack Obama bashes on fathers and fatherhood. And then Bill O'Reilly said, "hear, hear!" and applauded the father-bashing. Bill O'Reilly is a spineless weasel when it comes to any issue relating to men, kissing the ass of every female guest shamelessly before resuming his rude interrupting of them. The President, meanwhile, is a Chicago cunt of epic proportions in general, but especially on Fathers Day.


Eat it, Bill

I received a package all the way from Australia this past weekend. It seems that an ongoing conversation about price differences between the United States and Australia inspired a package containing newspaper ads and a few bonuses from one Utegirl.


Merry Aussiemas - from Ute

Thank you, Ute, for sending this to me! I fully intend to suck hot chocolate through every single one of those Tim Tams, with the help of my hot chocolate-loving wife, of course. And then I will suck down the Vegemite on crackers until it's all gone, 'cause I actually like the stuff. While I'm eating the Tim Tams and Vegemite (separately, of course), I will flip through the Aussie ads and try to convince Mrs Memphis that there is no such thing as poison ivy in Australia and should we move there we would never have to worry with it again.


Not just another pretty plant