But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘Humor’ Category

Don’t Know Much About Geology

In which I try to teach the greyhound geology.

The lesson is precipitated by our new granite countertops and because I have nothing better to do (other than laundry, yard work, writing, taxes, etc.).

I’m in the kitchen, having a healthy snack of baby carrots and the greyhound is watching in that bright-eyed, super intelligent way that dogs have been watching humans with food since the dawn of time. I crunch a carrot, chew, swallow and consider the hound.

“See this?” I point at a reddish smudge on the counter. The greyhound, a very tall dog, shoves his skinny nose where I’m pointing. “That’s garnet. My birthstone. Can you say, ‘garnet?'”

Finding no food where I’ve indicated, he flares his ears out like a bat and stares at me in a way that says, “Carrot!”

“No, not ‘carrot.’ ‘Garnet.'”

“Carrot?”

I try again, finger on a black streak. “This here is biotite, a mica. Can you say, ‘biotite?'” ‘Mica?'”

“Carrot!”

Because I’m stupid that way, I try with feldspar and quartz. I go back to garnet, because it sounds like carrot.

“Carrot?”

I give the hound the damned carrot.

 

Horse Eats Hound

Yes, the vacuum is running.

And, no, the greyhound isn’t budging from his spot on the carpet.

In fact, his head is up is because he saw me with the camera and wondered what was going on.  In the absence of the camera, the end result would have been a roughly greyhound-shaped dirty spot on the carpet.

He also does this with the lawn mower, so he isn’t allowed outside when I’m cutting the grass.

On the other hand, he’s wary to wet-himself-afraid of nearly everything with a heartbeat. Even rabbits, yes rabbits.

Of course, Wonder Horse was quick to exploit the hound’s neurosis.

Once upon a time, before heading out for a mid-afternoon walk, the hound and I would stop by the barn to visit the horse. I’d bring along carrots for both critters. We’d meet the horse at the gate and there I’d give a carrot to the equine and one to the canine, then another to the equine, and so on.  The greyhound would eye the horse very warily, but tempted by the carrots, stay at my side.

Then one day, the horse, in one of his Professor Snottypants moods, banged his hoof on the metal gate, making a delightful racket. The hound leaped back, startled. At this point, you could see the wheels turning in the Wonder Horse’s brain. After a pause, he banged again. Dog leaped in the air, and strained on his leash, trying to get as far from the horse as possible. Horse smirked and banged again. And thus was the demise of carrot sharing at the gate.

To this day, when the horse sees the hound approaching, he lifts a foot, poised to start hammering on the gate. I have to drag the hound, his long legs braced and feet sliding through the sand, to get anywhere near the barn.

The hound, the predator, is deathly afraid of the horse, the prey animal.

Things that Go Beep in the Night

It all started with a beep.

At 3 AM in the morning.

Remember that episode of Friends where Phoebe’s fire alarm keeps beeping? She unplugs it, takes out its battery, beats it with a shoe, and then throws it in the trash, but it keeps beeping.

Yeah, it was like that.

Beep! Then blessed silence. Just as I start to doze off again, “Beep!” Like the flipping Roadrunner, but without Wile. E. Coyote and his army of ACME toys. (Roadrunners, btw, don’t beep; they don’t eat seed–they eat cute little bunnies; and coyotes don’t fuck with them because they’re mean.)

After about a half hour of this, my husband growls and staggers out of bed and into the living room. He returns a minute later and flops back in bed. On the floor, the greyhound stretches his long legs, claws scratching on the bed, sighs and goes back to sleep.

Beep!

“Fucking alarms,” says my husband after the fifth beep. He gets up again and turns on a fan to block the noise.

Beep!

“I hate the (more…)

Slaughterhouse Kirby

Saturday morning at Casa de Kirby. At the obscenely early hour of 6:30, the greyhound hops up from his pile of bedding on my husband’s side of the bed and starts making slobbery snorting noises. A few minutes later, my husband crawls out of bed and feeds the early morning chow hound.

I stay in bed until around seven, when it becomes impossible to ignore the sound of the shrieking Wonder Horse. (If I could understand horse, I’m sure his ranting would be R-rated.) Get up; put on whatever’s on the floor and head out to the barn to feed the horse and clean up his paddock. The day has begun.

While I’m doing the morning garden chores, my husband walks the greyhound. They’ve returned by the time I come back in the house.

“What’s that?” I say, bending down over a red streak on the (more…)

The Curious Case of the Dead Lagomorph

Rewind, several years ago, on another hot summer day….

I get home from work and trudge out to the barn to visit the Wonder Horse. Heat is pouring down like scalding rain and splashing off the pavement and sand. A roadrunner sits on a fence pole, beak open, panting like a dog. Nothing else is moving, even the little gray lizards have gone to ground in the midday sun.

The Wonder Horse, tough Arabian horse of the desert, is under his shady porch. I hear the clomp of hooves on rubber stall mats as he stamps at flies. Seeing me, he whickers, leaves the shade and comes to the gate to greet me.

It’s too hot to do anything that expends more than a thimble-full of calories, so I grab the halter and a brush. Lovely, occasionally (more…)

Monday, Hulk Style

Monday? Again? Seriously?

We just had one last week. Here I am, minding my own business: not getting up at the ass crack of dawn to shuffle off to a job that makes watching paint dry seem like a high intensity spectator sport, and…SMASH!…it’s Monday.

Spent part of the morning seriously considering calling one of those “Make Money at Home” adverts in the back of magazines. Of course they’re a scam, but they probably won’t be any more expensive a fantasy than a daily lottery ticket. Speaking of which, every week, my husband checks his tickets. Every week, he comes up empty. Well, not empty. There was the amazing payoff of 2012 (last week), when he won…two bucks.

Every time hubby and I think we see the light at the end of the tunnel, some financial crisis comes along and further binds us into unholy servitude to a suck-ass job. Last month, the septic leach system failed. I’ll spare the details and simply say, we’re now working to pay off the “luxury” of flush toilets. Yay, us!

My beloved thinks the road to riches is paved in cults. I.e., start a cult and part the gullible from their money in exchange for enlightenment. So long as there is an audience for Jersey Shore and whatever the hell the Kardashians do, there will be no shortage of brain-addled sheep to fleece.

Maybe, L. Ron Hubbard-style, I could based my teachings on my books. Side bonus: sell more books! I’ll wrap my theology around the premise that Breas Montrose, my favorite obnoxious vampire, is an avatar for the Elder God Botox, his teachings on immortality available here and here.

Happy Monday, if that’s possible.

But It’s a Dry Heat

My Little Pony Goes Crazy

The sign says it all.

Horses are big dangerous and destructive animals. Why girls go horse crazy is beyond me. (Ahem. There’s a joke in there about men…moving on….)

This is the Wonder Horse’s second liability sign. The first, made of plastic, was destroyed in a few weeks, reduced to a collection of white shards in the sand. The best he can manage with this metal version is to bend it. Metal, you see, makes the most delightful racket when struck with hooves. Especially, at two in the morning. Oy.

Friday morning: I’m fumbling with the faucet in the shower. Outside, a horse neighs, the sound coming through the skylight in the bathroom. The Wonder Horse has heard activity in Chez Kirby. “The two legs are up. Time to feed the horse.” He neighs again.

“You’re not the boss of me,” I mutter and get in the shower.

Forty minutes later, I’m out the door and headed for the paddock. A thick pall of dusty tan hangs in the air, sand kicked up by hooves. The Wonder Horse has worked himself up into a right lather. He sproinging around the paddock in that big bouncy deer-like trot that’s beauty in motion but is absolutely impossible to ride.

I go back in the house to get the camera and he shrieks equine obscenities at me. Back outside, I stop and take a picture of my loony horse. Recognizing the black thing and its significance–“she’s going to fiddle with the fucking thing and not feed me!”–he comes unglued.

He gallops back and forth, skidding to a stop at the gate, spraying sand in all directions. When that doesn’t work, he lets out a couple more angry neighs and throws a tantrum. He’s a whirling dervish,  leaping in the air, bucking and spinning. The long black tail lashes with a snap, he kicks a hind leg, and tosses his head. All this punctuated by rumbling horsy mutters and snorts.

Finally, I relent and head for the barn. Hooves clop angrily under the little porch; the metal feeders rattle as he shoves them with his nose. “Empty! Fix! Now!” I take my time, and he lets out a long, ratting snort. He’s like that really rude customer in a restaurant who expects the food to arrive the instant it’s ordered. Well, except that once the food arrives, he’s happy. He’d never, ever send it back.

I still, however, wouldn’t expect a tip.

Click images for larger version.

But It’s a Dry Heat

They Hang Horse Thieves, Don’t They?

An interesting side effect of being a heathen employed by a church, is that I probably read more scripture than many so-called Christians. Certain scriptures, those associated with Lent/Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, for instance, get replayed yearly.

Every single time I read this scripture (below), I think, “Dude, Jesus totally stole that donkey.”

Mark 11:1-6 (ESV)

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’” 4 And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. 5 And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go.

Yeah, I know. If you do more than skim it, you’ll note that in verse 3, it’s implied that Jesus will return said long-eared critter, but I still argue that Jesus had a rather loose definition of property rights. I mean, the attitude reads as pretty much, “I’m borrowing this here donkey; deal with it.”

Religious folk, of course, might argue that since Jesus is also god, creator of the heavens, firmaments, and beasties great and small, the donkey is his by default.  Well, no. Not unless Dodge can roll up onto my doorstep and appropriate my Ram truck for a few hours, whenever Dodge chooses.

Today’s heresy is brought to you by the upcoming Palm Sunday and my muse who says I don’t have time to write a review of the action flick we watched two nights ago (Ronin). (Pictured: Two of five, of my neighbors’ donkeys, Sora and Clyde. Aren’t they cute?)

But It’s a Dry Heat

And the Dental Plan Sucks Too

Still busy writing; muse is kicking my ass.

Today’s sketchbook dump is one of several silly variations of “Most dangerous jobs in Middle Earth” that’s been kicking around my head. The most dangerous, of course, being Frodo’s gardener. The plan was to spit this one out in an hour–because wargs and orcs, how hard can they be to draw? Ended up taking at least a couple of hours, plus time in Photoshop to try and hide the fact that it was drawn on the back of an old manuscript. (You could see where the some of the text got scanned too.)

As always, click image for larger (readable) version.

Bet Your eBook Can’t Do This!

I’m utterly obsessed with my current WIP. Writing anything else when these damn pushy characters keep demanding time is about impossible. They did let me take a break and do some sketching….

I was thinking about my earlier post regarding my new Kindle and how much I like reading on it. (I do. In fact, I think I would have bailed on the book I’m currently reading–‘nother Twilight clone–if it were in print.) It’s just easier to skim slog through a really bad book on my Kindle.

But then I started thinking about the many uses of print books. Several immediately came to mind, but given my limited drawing skills, I went with four. It’s getting easier to draw people, but it still took at least 30-minutes to draw the ‘toons with people, vs. two-minutes to draw the greyhound.

Middle panel features Regan O’Connell smacking Breas Montrose (The Music of Chaos). I assure you, he deserved it.

Click the image for a full-sized view!