In which things get really fucking petty and more than a little creepy.

The last twenty four hours have been filled with a ridiculous amount of horseshit, but two things stand out as particularly effulgent beacons of fuckery that just must be shared, both of which revolve around Signore Flailing Retard and his wonderful fiancée leaving for the weekend to go to another fucking LARP.

The two of them left last afternoon at around 2 o'clock or so; I remember the time pretty clearly because I was working upstairs in my little Anne Frank Apartment at 1 when that chucklehead stuck his head through the door and bellowed that they were getting ready to go, and I was still banging away on my work assignment when his cock holster girlfriend did the same thing approximately an hour later. Normally the event of them leaving for a weekend is met with much rejoicing, even though we have to watch their two coprophagic little flea buffets, but there's already so much shit going on with me thanks to relatives coming out of god damned nowhere that it was just one more thing to do.

Still, the two of them are gone, and everyone seems to breathe a little easier. My relative shows up at about 3 and I give him a quick tour of the filthy locale before heading out for some free food, and on the way out I notice the Benefactor (Who Simply Does Not Give a Shit) seated not at his usual computer station but at his daughter's. I file it away in the part of my brain that isn't salivating at the prospect of food I don't have to pay for and don't give it a thought until my return later that evening.

The house is empty; as usual on a weekend any time after 5 PM, the Great White Beast of a pickup truck is parked, probably across three spaces, at the nearest bar. Knowing that the dogs have been in their little crate for a few hours, preparations are made for releasing them and letting them careen down the stairs, probably shitting the whole way, and I pass by Little Miss Tripping Balls' computer screen.

There I find the web browser open to a hardcore porn site, complete with bare asses and tits and giant sloppy cunts.

Now I know that Little Miss Tripping Balls isn't getting her rocks off from Signore Flailing Retard, since they're about as passionate a couple as a pair of dead god damned squirrels, but I highly doubted that she would take the morning and schlick her way to happy times in the middle of the day with her father 10 feet away from him. This means that Daddy's probably been cutting his coke with Occam's razor and decided to plop himself down in the chair his daughter was sitting in only a few hours prior, pull out his fucking dongle, and rub one out while amidst the accumulated garbage on the desk in front of him, which I know for a fact includes several pieces of mail where his daughter's name is prominently displayed.

So yes. 58 year old man sitting at his daughter's desk and chair and masturbating while ostensibly looking at porn but also his daughter's full name.

I can think of only one possible reaction:

The other thing, well, it seems absolutely paltry in comparison. Maybe because it doesn't involve implied incest. It does involve some direct bullshit from both cuntwrangling douchenozzles, however, in that I got a call this morning from a mutual friend. It turns out that Signore Flailing Retard had called this friend, who I will code-name The Mexican, and bitched to him about inviting myself and Third Party to dinner without inviting himself and Little Miss Tripping Balls along.

Really.

The Mexican and his wife, two awesome people with something like 14 children each, have been trying to make tentative plans with both myself and Third Party for a few months now. They've come out to Chucklehead Estate many times over the summer, their brood in tow, to use the pool, hang out, and unfortunately be pressed into slave labor from time to time by Signore Flailing Retard (they were noticeably absent until the late evening at the recent party, most likely to avoid that fate). They're pleasant, down-to-earth people, excellent cooks, and in general just a blast to be around. It helps that the Mexican's wife has some nice god damned tits, too.

We all met this summer, and Third Party and myself hit it off with them pretty damn well, beginning to develop a friendship between the four of us. Recently they invited us out to where they live, just across the border in the wilds of New Jersey, for an overnight stay, and we've been either postponing or rescheduling for a few weeks now, between having no reliable transportation and no money and a myriad of things that just make life fucking complicated, like trying to keep two dogs in a bathtub. Or two testicles in an asshole.

Apparently Third Party mentioned these plans to Little Miss Tripping Balls in passing, stating that it would be rather difficult for us to watch their little bastard dogs overnight if we go out to Mr. and Mrs. Mexican's hacienda sometime in the future. It got back to Signore Flailing Retard, and he placed a call directly to the Mexican to complain that both he and his lovely "girl"friend weren't invited as well.

I was informed of this earlier today by a puzzled phone call placed to Chucklehead Estate, informing me of the new development. The Mexican related the news to me, and I could envision him scratching his head in wry confusion. I simply informed him that our mutual friends were jealous about missing the opportunity for a free meal.

In which a massive amount of douchebaggery is distilled down to a few hundred words.

Once again it has been several days between now and my last update. Once again, I am thoroughly unapologetic; I've had other shit that needed dealing with. Some quick highlights from the past two weeks have been:

• preparing for, attending, and then cleaning up from Little Miss Tripping Balls' birthday party
• battling a flea infestation brought on by two neglected dogs and one neglected cat, neither of which belong to Our Hero
• extended caring for said dogs and cat in light of the fact that Little Miss Tripping Balls, Signore Flailing Retard, and Our Glorious and Illustrious Benefactor (May His Blood Alcohol Level Never Exceed the Legal Limit) have all been out of the house for extended periods of time

Let's break these down, shall we? The day of my last post was the Monday after a middling-large social gathering to commemorate the eventful day when Little Miss Tripping Balls slid down her mother's vaginal chute into a pile of drugs and money, of which one or the other has she been steadily consuming since that date. There were several key players in attendance, along with several more who just couldn't be bothered to come all the way out to the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania for the privilege of having a shitty time. The farm was in relatively good shape, thanks to the ministrations of Our Hero and Third Party, who had been steadily maintaining the work done on the side patio in addition to the backyard pool and deck areas (despite the giant dogshit landmines everywhere).

Additionally there was a flurry of cleaning and preparation that had taken place that previous Friday when, after an indefinite amount of prompting and and encouragement from outside sources, both SFR and LMTB actually got off their fucking asses and cleaned their shit up and out of the first floor. Of course, their version of "clean" is rather laughable; all the loose pieces of personal property were trundled upstairs and deposited into their dumping ground on the second floor, a dog-shit encrusted room that used to also be their bedroom until they actually moved their bed to a smaller, adjoining room in some asinine bid for World's Most Stupid Couple. I think they're still in the running.

So the pool room was cleansed of all their ridiculous mess, and the shared living room and kitchen space was given a once-over as well. There was some work done outside in addition, such as the vile, reeking cooler hosed out and disinfected before being filled with cheap, evil-smelling beer and the pool cleaned within an inch of its life, but alas they cannot take credit for all of these things themselves; as people began arriving early for the party, they were actually put to work on these tasks. Can you fucking imagine? Later I discover this is why so many people arrived either later in the evening or not at all, as this kind of behavior has occurred several times in the past.

Another reason some people were reticent to come is because their two hosts would routinely, in addition to making their guests clean their filthy house and environs for them, also neglect to purchase adequate amounts of food and drink to actually entertain their guests. Well, in a stroke of altruism and goodwill that is surely forgotten by now, both Third Party and myself got together, pooled our resources in regards to food and drink easily purchased with government aided funds, and went food shopping for the party. We were determined to at least be able to offer some sort of recompense for all the poor assholes that got suckered into coming over for this noxious celebration, and since Signore Flailing Retard and Little Miss Tripping Balls now have no money since Il Benefattore (Lui Che Non Parla Italiano) took his credit card back from the clutches of his vapid little daughter. Hell, TP and I were even the ones who paid for her fucking birthday cake.

But that's neither here nor there; the actions weren't taken for her or her vile fiancé but for their guests, several of which are friends or at least people that don't deserve a slow, painful death. So we did a mitzvah, so what? No expectation of gratitude. Which was not really all that forthcoming.

Behavior displayed during the party was of the head-scratching variety, of course. The general demographics of the party broke down in two ways: close friends of approximately the same age, or newer, younger people known through some retarded LARP game both the Birthday Girl and her remora of a fiancé frequent once a month. The two of them spent the majority of their time with the teenagers over on one side of the house, while the adults were all gathered on the other side, as far away as possible from the kids. There was little to no overlap, save a frightened little boy or girl scurrying outside to grab something from the cooler (which was luckily placed in our demense). Occasionally our Host and Guest of Honor would grace us with their single or combined presence, but we were mostly left to our own devices. From all accounts, it was more preferable that way.

After the weekend was over and everyone had gone home, things went back to normal, of course; this means that the place was slightly rumpled and in need of being policed for empty cans, bottles, and cigarette butts. I personally had to rescue any perishable items from the cooler while there was still some ice left in there keeping it cold, as I wasn't about to let a full gallon of orange juice go bad. I knew that if I didn't pull it out of there and stick it in the fridge, we'd be buried in rot and filth by October when it's opened again for the next ridiculous party.

So as soon as that was done and taken care of, the next week and a half have been a constant struggle to contain and eliminate a massive flea infestation brought upon us by neglect: the decision was made to bring an absolutely wonderful indoor-outdoor cat upstairs and away from the dogs because both I and Third Party would continually find that he had terrible scratches and scabs from when the dogs would play with him much too roughly. As the cat weighs about 10 pounds and the dogs weigh around 35 pounds each, it was an easy decision on our part.

Unfortunately both he and the two dogs were teeming with fleas, which spread to not only any other animals in the area but also any human beings. This resulted in a massive expenditure of funds and effort in such things as two kinds of flea medication for cats, thoroughly vacuuming, cleaning, and linen-washing the contents the entire attic from top to bottom, and giving a bath to four cats.

Think about that. Four cats. Not all at once, thank God - that would have been absolute Bedlam - but one at a time, right after the other. It was a miserable experience, and not just for the cats. Only now have things started to show improvements; last night was the first time in two weeks where I hadn't woken up with my legs teeming with flea bites.

All of this effort could have been avoided by the owners of these God damned pets actually taking care of them, of course. The cat has unofficially been adopted by me and Third Party, so we're comfortable in seeing to his needs, even though he's not fixed yet and we'll have to figure out a way to pay for his neutering, but there's no way in Hell we can take responsibility for two very rambunctious growing dogs. We have been reassured time and again by their owners that the dogs have been given all sorts of preventative flea medications, and while that may be true, unless someone actively cleans the locations where the dogs frequently inhabit indoors, they can become re-infested and start the cycle all over again.

Guess who hasn't taken any efforts to clean the living room, where the dogs are constantly whenever they're not outside, looking for delicious chunks of their own shit to eat? That's right, Little Miss Tripping Balls and Signore Flailing Retard. I'm doubly sure that they haven't cleaned their living space on the second floor as well. This means that even sitting on the couch downstairs to watch television is an impossibility when you constantly feel fleas swarming out at you from the seat cushions.

The only solution would be to not go downstairs unless when absolutely necessary, of course, but not only does that make this little room up here into a prison, it's just not practical, especially since once again the dogs' "owners" have left for the weekend, leaving it to other people to care for the little abused bastards.

And I do mean abused; I had taken them outside Friday night so that they could urinate and defecate outside for a pleasant change when I noticed the fur had all been chewed and scratched off one dog's hindquarters, leaving large patches of exposed skin. Of course this was brought to my attention when he squatted down to expel his foul excrement all over the patio I had just scoured within an inch of its life, but I praised him for shitting outside, like a normal dog, and began to walk towards him to reach the long-handled shit scooper nearby.

He jumped up fearfully, his sphincter still clutching a half-deposited doggie log, and scrambled out of reach of me. He then squatted back down and released his putrescent load, all the while watching me warily, like I was going to rush him and beat him severely for shitting all over the place.

Like it had happened before or something.

It's times like these that make me wonder why I don't drink.

In which positive news is relayed and passive-aggressive hijinks are praised.

I had a "business call" this morning at 9:30 with the UK banking guy. I feel my skin crawl at the sheer prospect of attempting to communicate in a cogent manner prior to 11 AM, so it was only by a supreme harnessing of my willpower did I not degenerate to pre-verbal grunts and other strange lizard brain rumblings; the Green Lantern ain't got shit on me.

The meeting was to discuss the possibilities of taking on more work for my intrepid internet marketing compadre across the pond; he wants me to increase the number of articles I re-write a week to around 25, bringing my haul to a lofty $100 weekly. Considering how the most time-consuming part of the job is finding articles of sufficient length to swallow, partially digest, and then regurgitate, I readily agreed. In addition he was interested if I would write email autoresponder campaigns, about one a month, for around $100 a pop as well. So apparently I'll be earning about $500 a month from this yahoo, which is more than double what I was earning currently.

Combined with my transcription proofreading gig, which could be as much as $250 a week if my handler would just quit jerking me around and send me pure proofing jobs, I could potentially earn around $1500 a month before taxes. Of course I'd have to withhold a portion of my own pay for Uncle Sam at the end of the year, but it's better than being out of work completely. Hell, making that kind of scratch, I could easily afford some shitbox used car in a couple of months maybe. Just in time to visit the more miserable members of my family circle that still reside in the great state of New York. Maybe for the holidays; there's nothing like a dose of passive-aggressive bullshit to teach you the merits of family members that don't live around the corner.

Not that passive-aggressive bullshit can't be highly entertaining. A story was related to me earlier today by A Third Party, whose name, gender, height, weight, eye color, hair color, skin color, ethnicity, religious affiliation, shoe size, sexual proclivities, and whether or not they were a member of the Communist Party will remain confidential in order to protect their identity.

Third Party was venturing outside to get the mail this afternoon when they encountered Our Benefactor (He Whose Name Must Be Said Reverently and with at least Half an Erection) outside. He had asked Third Party if Little Miss Tripping Balls had spoken to TP. TP said no; in fact Little Miss Tripping Balls seemed particularly frigid this morning (judging from the collection of sexual enhancement herbal supplements strewn about the living quarters of her and her fiancé, I'm not surprised).

TP made mention of this, and was graced with the following story: late last night after everyone had gone to bed, The Great Benefactor (Whom Even Chuck Norris Would Not Fuck With), in an inebriated stroke of genius, broke off from his current project (transforming a whole sockeye salmon into approximately 10 pounds of homemade lox) and ventured into the adjacent room to the kitchen.

This room, known colloquially as the Pool Room due to the full-size Billiards table that is typically covered with a mountain of detritus, is also known as Where Dog Shit Goes to Die. Prior to their current little shit machines, Little Miss Tripping Balls and Signore Flailing Retard were in possession of an incredibly old, sickly, bitchy little American Eskimo dog with dingy yellowed fur. The dog was old five years ago; it would constantly lose control of its bowels and proceed to shit absolutely everywhere. His favorite spot was the Pool Room.

The dog died in March. There was dog shit still in the Pool Room as of about 1 AM last morning.

I used the past tense there for a reason: apparently Our Magnificent Benefactor (Who Sparkles Even Though He's Not a Vampire) decided to gather up each piece of fossilized canine excrement he could locate and proceeded to tie a neat bow around each one with baker's twine. He then laid them lovingly upon the chair in which Signore Flailing Retard sits while he's using his computer as a tribute to the man's recently deceased pet.

"For some reason I don't think he was very appreciative," he then told Third Party, feigning hurt and bemusement. "I thought it would be a fitting memorial."

"Well," Third Party replied, completely deadpan, "that may be why your daughter seems a trifle upset this morning."

Sometimes I think I can really come to love that man.

In which a week's worth of catch-up is played; the merits of Lynchburg Lemonade are touted; and plans are formulated to steal someone's inheritance.

Since last I pounded my thoughts into form down through my callused fingertips, through this high school computer lab-era keyboard, and out into the cloud of lemon-scented bullshit that is the Internet, there have been several events which may be
categorised
categorized (Jesus Christ I've been re-writing too many UK news articles) as "news," a word I find particularly vile and distasteful, like a mouthful of dogshit wrapped in an orange peel.

I am a certified run-on sentence specialist, licensed and bonded by fifteen states and three territories. Do not attempt this at home.

I needed time to recover after transcribing a five-hour deposition over the weekend. It completely destroyed whatever semblance of a social life that I possess, which consists mainly of trolling the Trade chat channel in World of Warcraft and looking for poisonous mushrooms in the backyard to eat. Throughout the entire process, all I could think of was the two-and-a-half years I spent, miserably, as a part-time law student. In a way I have my cancer diagnosis to thank for getting me off the hook in finishing that abortion of an educational experience, though truth be told I was so miserable and unmotivated that I wasn't long for that world, I'm sure: my grades were going down faster than Lindsey Lohan's cellmate.

But I object on the grounds that the anecdote is irrelevant to the matter at hand. I spent much of last week trying to return my mind and body to some level of equilibrium, just working steadily and trying to get some sleep. I patently refused to do any more transcription for that chucklehead that sent me that massive audio file; I told him it was just too damn long for me to do so and keep my sanity, so he sent me a batch of twenty 15-minute files, a collection of recorded prison inmate calls. I did one and immediately decided that I would rather lovingly place my junk in a box filled with rabid, starving wolverines with fetal alcohol syndrome instead of working on the other 19. So I sent them back and forbade the bastard from sending me any work besides proofing.

Still, I made about $300 over the past week and a half out of the deal, which will go a long way in paying off some back rent to the Benefactor (May His Penis Always Drag Along the Ground). His lovely daughter and her fiancé were gone again this weekend, which was rather pleasant despite the fact that the responsibilities of caring for their two rambunctious puppies was left squarely in the laps of those remaining behind at the farmhouse. As a result there was a disproportionately high amount of canine excrement and excretion sanitation being conducted on premises over the past 48 hours.

The upside of this was of course some time spent with the Benefactor (He Who Farts Raw Sunshine) sans the cooling influence of Little Miss Tripping Balls and the Flailing Retard. He's a rather remarkable man, though I find it hard to bring myself to trust him (or anyone for that matter, but that's a different therapy session). Still, I'll gladly be entertained by his inebriated rambling stories and anecdotes. In addition he can be quite an accomplished cook, even if he did burn the holy everliving fuck out of the french fries last night.

Still, the man is a connoisseur when it comes to alcoholic beverages despite his hyposmia (look it up). I sampled a concoction last night that I wouldn't normally have the courage to try; it was only in looking at the rascal's liquor cabinet and discovering such esoteric liquids such as "Triple Sec," whatever the shit that is, that I decided to try my hand at mixing drinks. Having some freshly-purchased lemonade in the refrigerator (which had just been cleaned by Those Left Behind this past weekend after deciding that Little Miss Tripping Balls and her lovely fiancé the Flailing Retard had left the god damned thing about as filthy as it could get before being declared a national health emergency), I pulled together the ingredients for a quite delicious cocktail known by drunks far and wide as the Lynchburg Lemonade. While I was at first reticent to drink anything that alludes to the act of stringing people up by their necks for the crime of being a darker shade of skin pigmentation than the local populace, it was worth the guilt. Perhaps the drink should be called the White Man's Burden.

So upon the conviviality fostered by good food and drink this weekend, the Benefactor (The Man Who is More Classic than Coke Classic) shared some stories of his past. The most riveting tale was in relation to the dissolution of his marriage between himself and the mother of Little Miss Tripping Balls. Apparently Mommy Dearest was unhappy living in a 250-year-old stone farmhouse situated on 20 acres of beautifully manicured property and had proceeded to open her vagina wider than the Grand Coulee Dam to the inhabitants of this fair town. She then felt so guilty about the fact that she had had more semen inside her than a nuclear submarine and decided to take it out on her puzzled husband by flinging a kitchen knife as hard as she could at him.

Thankfully she was so exhausted by the constant penis-pounding she had been receiving that the knife landed hilt-first, bouncing off her husband's chest and falling harmlessly to the kitchen floor. Suffice it to say that a divorce was pursued by both sides shortly thereafter. And I thought my last ex-girlfriend was crazy. Well, she was, but not so batshit insane as to attempt to murder me with a kitchen knife (she couldn't cook worth a damn).

So while there was no outside activity on the grounds this weekend on account of the National Weather Service warning that stepping out from under the shade of the porch would result in your face melting like Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark, plenty of time was spent inside. That led to the camaraderie of cleaning out a vile, squamous refrigerator, which led to the simple joys of a shared meal and freely-flowing alcohol. I have the distinct impression that Our Great and Immortal Benefactor (May His Bedroom Be Always Clear of Dog Shit) is in need of friends and allies in his constant struggles against the forces of his daughter and her shithead boyfriend. And at the risk of appearing like a vulture slowly circling over the dying gazelle that is his love for his daughter, I'm wondering how easy it would be to displace someone in a certain person's Last Will and Testament.

Just, you know, as a hypothetical thought experiment.

Really.

In which before and after shots of landscaping handiwork are showcased.

I'll be doing something a bit different this evening in that I'll be incorporating the dreaded Visual Aids into my post. This is usually the last resort of those who simply cannot think of something to write, but that isn't the case today; I simply feel that in order to fully understand this evening's discussion, the class simply needs to have the benefit of some slides on the overhead projector. I will also simply continue to split infinitives and commit other acts of violence against grammar and good draftsmanship at my leisure, so hold off on the hate mail and let's simply begin.

Over the past several weeks I have been participating in a landscaping project in an effort to placate the Benefactor (May His Soda Water Be Forever Effervescent). The following images are evidence of the progress the project has made.

These first two pictures are, believe it or not, after several days of initial brush clearing. Unfortunately the soil here is incredibly fertile, so leaving a brick patio unmolested for two weeks will result in the grass, that had been painstakingly pulled out of in between each and every vile clay rectangle, growing back. This will result in your handiwork being completely obliterated by all to see, much as it appears below.

This is, of course, bad for my blood pressure. What you are looking at is the brick patio just to the side of the farmhouse; the stone building in the background of each shot is what is apparently called a "summer kitchen." The two-floor structure consists of a large downstairs kitchen, complete with: massive stone fireplace; wood-burning stove; a non-functional weed whacker; defunct props left over from when Signore Flailing Retard and his beautiful fiancée Little Miss Tripping Balls ran their own live-action role playing game; two mountain bikes with deflated tires that belong to Signore Flailing Retard and his beautiful fiancée Little Miss Tripping Balls; several kittens; and weeds. Growing inside. In the shade. Inside.

The second floor consists of a Great Depression-era bedroom, complete with Lil' Orphan Annie bed and a pair of men's dress shoes that must be three times older than myself.

The following shots are from this morning, before work started. The state of the patio at that time was after another thorough cleaning and some deep weeding along the side of the summer kitchen, as is plainly visible.

Continuing around the patio to the right will reveal a concrete slab that had been completely overgrown with English Ivy and other vines, which I had broken my back removing the last time any serious work had been done. This is evidenced in the following pictorial spread.

And finally, directly across from the concrete slab, is the view back towards the main house, with the summer kitchen just out of frame to the left. To the right is overgrowth. The large white oblong in the background is a cooler that Signore Flailing Retard and his beautiful fiancée Little Miss Tripping Balls had neglected to empty out and clean the last time they had a major social event at the farm, for which I was in attendance.

That social event occurred this past January.

Now for The Reveal, as they call the final segment in Ghost Hunters. After the work was completed this late afternoon, the results are the following.

What's this? Is there a planter underneath all that overgrowth?

This is madness!

Madness? This is Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Here is the concrete slab behind the summer kitchen. Apparently it goes all the way back. It's still not quite clear yet.

And now one final shot of the overall look of the patio.

It's amazing what people can accomplish with the motivation of the abject fear of eviction at any moment.

In which the Emergency Undergarments are utilized.

It's laundry day.

More accurately it's I-should-have-done-laundry-two-weeks-ago day. What this means is that I've had it with needing to peel my vile, sweaty undergarments off of my stinking corpus and changed to my last clean pair.

These undergarments are the equivalent of Defcon One: if you go down any farther, we're all fucked. They're a pair of Christmas-themed red boxer shorts with a Bettie Page look-alike wearing a revealing Santa outfit and posing in a comically oversized martini glass. They also have a horrendous split down the front left leg from fly to inseam, and since I routinely seem to list to the left when it comes to my genitals, this means my nibbly bits just go flopping about, with no protection from the elements.

The rest of the garment is blessedly intact, however, including the seat of the pants. This is of importance because, in addition to resorting to my Emergency Undergarments, I have also had to resort to my Emergency Pantaloons, a pair of brown corduroy pants that have a terrible rip right at the back door entry. In addition, they're about five inches too large in the waist. This is because I've been losing weight since going on the Work For Your Rent Or You're Out On Your Ass diet.

The best part of this? My belt has become too large as well. Which means that unless I walk about the place with two handfuls of corduroy in my hands at all times, my pants will fall down. This will then expose my aforementioned nibbly bits to passersby. Considering how Little Miss Tripping Balls is about as sexually attractive to me as the idea of putting my johnson in a wood chipper, I'll be doing a lot of white-knuckle clutching. Or sitting. Sitting is swell.

Speaking of the LSD Queen, she had her charge card taken away by The Great and Powerful Benefactor (He Who Instructs You to Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain). This made for an incredible display of waterworks last night on her part as she moped and cried, which was accompanied by an absolutely masterful demonstration of my acting ability on my part as I pretended to give a cunting fuck. There was musical accompaniment by the Go Eat A Bowl of Dick Orchestra, featuring a complete contingent of the world's smallest violins.

This means of course now she may need to get a job to support her life of leisure. I hear that she's an excellent seamstress; perhaps she'd like to sew up a few holes in some undergarments for me?

In which six full grown people and a full can of gasoline cannot start a fire.

Late last night, Our Glorious Benefactor (Peace Be Upon Him) decided that, after slaloming home from the bar in his gargantuan white beast of a pick-up truck, he would enjoy it if we gathered up some loose cardboard moldering on the back porch and take it over to the fire pit where he burns tree clippings and other brush, as there was already a sizable haystack of the garbage waiting to be torched.

The healthy soaking we had received earlier that morning made this endeavor an exercise in futility. We studded the sodden pile of wilted leaves and branches with pizza boxes and other detritus until the whole mess loomed over us like some ominous fruitcake. This horrid abortion of wood pulp and chlorophyll was then doused with gasoline that had been sitting in its can since the Carter administration. We attempted to set the sad little pile alight, which resulted in singed eyebrows, a few spots on the nearby grass where some errant drops of gas had been splashed, and a complete lack of sustainable fire despite the massive quantities of accelerant.

These festivities went down at approximately 2 in the morning. Prior to that we had been drinking cans of beer (cans, for the love of a just and loving God, cans!) which had a decidedly salty taste to them. This was due to the actions of the future son-in-law of Our Great and Esteemed Benefactor (Upon Whom Be Peace), which for the sake of brevity we will code-name Flailing Retard. Signore Retard (let's be at least formal here), a college-educated adult male, decided to add approximately 14 metric tons of salt into the cooler where the beer cans were being kept on ice. His theory was that the application of salt to ice would melt it, dropping the temperature of the beer significantly faster than just letting the cans sit in ice alone.

The problem with this is that he added the salt while the beer was already in the cooler. Which means the majority of the salt landed on the god damned tops of the cans where the pull tabs are installed. Therefore anyone who wanted to sample the simple, backwoods pleasures of sitting down on the porch with their hand wrapped lovingly around the redneck's favorite use for aluminum had to first find some way to cleanse the top of his still-sealed beverage of all the crystals of sodium chloride that had become encrusted therein.

After chipping away the middle-school science experiment that had grown to seal the top of my chosen beverage, I reluctantly "popped the top," as those rustic folk with less teeth than sense say. I took my first sip of not-quite-cold beer and was immediately struck by the unique flavor having been imparted from a Morton's Sea Salt marinade. When it rains, it pours indeed.

For the love of all that is holy, drink your beer from bottles like a civilized folk. We didn't crawl out from under the oppressive weight of the Dark Ages to drink from unfashionable little slugs of aluminum. There's a reason the game is called "spin the bottle." Have you ever tried spinning an empty beer can in order to play some asinine reindeer game? Of course not, because you're not a Cro-Magnon. Show some class! As far as I'm concerned (and let this be the last word) you should never imbibe your alcohol from a container that you can't easily insert in someone else's anus. It's just not good form.

In which I am soggy but unbowed.

There was a massive dose of precipitation this morning. My air conditioner leaks badly in humid weather so I've had to put a makeshift pan underneath it to catch its coppery tears. At 4 AM this morning it was half full, and I neglected to empty it. When I was awakened earlier by a phone call (a wrong number, of course), I found it nearly overflowing. I'd give you a guess at how lizard-like one's movements are when one is half-asleep with cats underfoot whilst transporting a full tray of reeking water to the bathroom, but there's no prize for getting it right.

At least the rain finally cut this beastly heat a bit, and while there is still some rain falling it seems like the worst is over. Would that were true with more serious matters. I did get a bite in my email this morning concerning a part-time job however. At $60 a week before taxes it is very part-time. But it's re-writing news articles from home over the Internet so I can't complain too much.

I'm hoping I get this job. Even though the $240 a month I'd be bringing in wouldn't quite cover rent at least I'd be able to give Our Glorious Benefactor something (see what I did there? Shades of Dickens. I told you I was over-educated).

I found him last night downstairs in the living room. He had his shirt off and he was perched at the kitchen counter like a gargoyle, clutching a precious glass of some sort of alcohol and blinking owlishly at everything. "Three sheets to the wind" was about three hours previous to my discovery of him keeping the counter top from floating away.

He was absolutely morose, like a man who has seen the end coming but knows he can't do anything to change Fate. Normally he's pretty jocular but more and more recently he's been in a terrible funk over what to do about his daughter. She--and her fiancé--have been milking him out of money and lodging for years without doing so much as the dishes in return (I learn this from him as I do the dishes). He's torn between throwing them out and burying their bodies somewhere on the property, and I can only think what depths of madness he's been driven to by them both that he would rather see his own flesh and blood out on the street than deal with her a moment longer.

I've been to some dark, ichor-stained places within my own mind. I've entertained conscious thoughts such as "if I can only figure out a way to drive off this overpass and end up crippled for life." But I can't even contemplate the Hell that Mr. Benefactor is going through right now.

It would make me feel terrible for him even if I didn't owe him any money.