But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for June, 2012

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…)

Bosque Fire

“It’s a dry heat” is another way of saying, “It’s combustible.”

I started a funny little post about the Wonder Horse’s murderous tendencies, but lost heart when I saw this. Just a mile or two up the road, our Bosque is on fire. At any given time in New Mexico, something is on fire, but until now, our bosque has escaped the summer conflagrations.

Sigh. Not this year, I guess. News helicopters are rattling overhead, but the footage they’re showing is utter worthless. Dear Channel 7 KOAT, you suck, donkey balls. Typical.

Anyway, horsey post to come in a day or so. Provide the fire doesn’t get worse.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I expected to like this movie.

Instead Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy turned out to be a Black Swan, dripping with the slobber of critics who probably didn’t understand the convoluted mess either, but needed to flex their intellectual superiority complex.

I mean, it’s a spy movie set during the Cold War. Given the genre, it’s not unreasonable to expect a taut plotline and measure of suspense. It doesn’t have to be The Bourne Identity with a multitude of explosions and high-speed chases, but a decent thriller should convey the feeling that something is at stake, quite possibly the protagonist’s life.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a lugubrious crawl, like a Galapagos turtle trudging through tar while on lithium.

The movie begins with Control (John Hurt), the elder spy, assigning (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

Plants for the Desert Southwest

This Sunday, June 10, is the Corrales (New Mexico) Garden Tour, which runs from 9 am to 4 pm. Come on out to the historic village for a great opportunity to see what can be grown in our dry desert landscape.

With that in mind, I thought I’d show you a few of the star performers in my little slice of hot, dry hell. Here in the Albuquerque metro area we get less than eight inches of rain a year (much less, lately), the summer temperatures rise into the 90s, with the occasional span of 100s; the winter lows can dip into the single digits (recently going as low as -10), with very little snow. Operative word is “dry.” The added complication in my yard is the soil, which is better described as beach sand.

In my garden, most of the plants below do so well that they are downright invasive, reseeding themselves everywhere. Probably not good plants for fussy gardeners who want crisply maintained beds and well-behaved plants, but great in a more rustic, relaxed setting.

Phlox or sand penstemon (Penstemon ambiguus) is a workhorse in sand. In fact, I’m not (more…)

Some Home Time Religion

Do it yourself (DIY) projects are for people who don’t want weekends. The kind of twisted mofos who might also enjoy a nice evening of waterboarding.

Uh, okay. Hyperbole. But the dining room project is the last big DIY project that’s happening in the history of ever after at Casa de Kirby. Because..gah…never again. The interior work was completed (mostly) a few months ago; but it wasn’t officially done until this weekend.

Once upon a time, on a desert planet far, far away, the dining room was a garage. A small garage; so teeny, you couldn’t park a clown car in it without grease and a shoehorn. For a time, it functioned as an artist’s studio, where (more…)

The Avengers

And once again, I’m glad I live in New Mexico, because we have a complete dearth of crap worth blowing up. Granted, there was the minor dust up in a too-Anglo-to-be-New Mexico town in the movie Thor, but that was just a few buildings. Hell, that alien robot didn’t even bother to mutilate the local livestock. (Even the aliens in Cowboys & Aliens knew that the genre requires the immolation of a few hapless bovines.)

Mostly, though, aliens land in New Mexico, but faced with the absence of tall crash-y buildings, quickly move on, probably afraid we’ll set up another cheesy alien museum, a la Roswell. Because that’s just embarrassing.

If the alien version of urban renewal is too violent for you, then New York city should be low on your list of places to settle. As exemplified by The Avengers, where yet another group of folks who aren’t from around these parts, revel in (more…)