But It's a Dry Heat

Fifi, Is That You?

This is clearly a case of what happens when you give a dog access to the Internet.

To ‘Your Retail Store’:

Today I went into your store, and I was appalled and disgusted that you blasphemed Almighty God Jesus Christ and His Most Holy Nativity Christmas by selling from your store shelves a filthy pornographic lamp that said “Christmas” Story on it. REMOVE THAT PIECE OF FILTHY, PORNOGRAPHIC BLASPHEMY FROM YOUR STORESHELVES AT ONCE!

The blasphemous object in question being a lamp shaped like a leg. Yep.  A lamp.

My mom once had a dog who like to hump the throw cushions on the couch.  That dog never developed a lust for legs, but if it had, I imagine this lamp would’ve been well loved.

Hot Tacos Sing Dick Cheney

Need proof of evolution?  Look no further than spam. (The virtual version, as the exact taxonomic classification for the edible kind remains a mystery to science.) For every innovation in spam filters, spammers evolve and adapt ways to get around said filters.  Since the majority of filters rely on subject lines, the result is a bizarre array of nonsensical verbiage in the subject line.

Without further ado, I bring you today’s subject lines from my spam box…

“my pic for you”

Neato. Now I have something to throw darts at.

“need to findout more about you”

I’m an evil genius with plans to take over the Universe. What else is there to know?

“The new resume is attached”

Ah, I see you are applying for the position of “minion.” I trust you do windows and vacuum?

“Speaker John Boehner?”

Oh, another advert for erectile dysfunction.

“get a hug when you give her a gift from Tiffany’s”

Just a hug? For some Tiffany’s swag, I expect to get laid.

“Bigger is definitely better.”

Not if we’re talking cockroaches or asses.

“I like you”

Really? You like me? You really like me? [Does best impression of Sally Field.]

“Man gets kicked in teeth by horse”

I.e., the state of dentistry in America.

“It makes gentlemen’s tool wooden”

Ouch! Splinters!

And finally, the old reliable…

“Hi.”

Oh, come on! You’re not even trying. Put some effort into it.

Do You Really Want to Say That?

The greyhound, after a long night of hookers and booze

I’m queen of “speak first, consult brain later” conversation. But eventually, my brain does catch up with my mouth, I realize I sound like a blithering idjit, and I shut up.

But some people have an amazing capacity to spew stupidity without an ounce of self-awareness. Most of these people are in politics, but ordinary folks aren’t immune to stupid.

One particular encounter with stupid revolves around a stray dog. The setting being the morning dog walk, a few days ago.

The greyhound is extremely shy. As far as he’s concerned, there are only two trustworthy beings in the universe. Me and my husband. Everyone else, including his fellow canines, is suspect.

The last thing he wants is to meet and greet pushy stray dogs, even if they are “friendly.” If pushed too hard, he’s likely to get snappish. In my experience, even “friendly” dogs can get nasty when provoked, so my standard stray/off-leash dog procedure is to keep the loose dog away from the hound.

When we were approached that morning by a big, black, lab/shepherd mix, I did what I always do. I stood my ground, glared at the dog, waved my walking stick menacingly, and said, in a deep, growly voice, “No!”

This dog, who I suspect was quite sweet, was also dumber than a bag of hammers. And he just kept coming. So I scooped up a handful of gravel and chucked it at him, repeating the “No!” And he marched toward us, gravel bouncing off his coat, unfazed.

The hound was already at the end of his leash, near panic. When the black dog got within whacking range, I gave him a firm tap with the stick. This deterred him for about a second, at which point,…lather, rinse repeat.

This unfortunate beast was clearly the kind of canine genius who would come home with a snout full of porcupine quills, day after day, after day.

Anyway, as this is going on, a guy from a nearby property peered over his fence and said, “Whose dog is that?”

“I don’t know,” I said and whacked the poor, nit-witted dog again.

“What?” said the guy. At which point, I gave him an exasperated shrug. He started to babble about who he thought owned the dog. I, having pushed the stray far enough away, continued on, ignoring whatever the man was saying.

I’m not good at thinking on my feet. But what I should have said was, “This dog? He’s mine. It’s a game we play. I take him for a walk, let him go, and then throw rocks at him and beat him with a stick. He loves it!”

Oy.

The Well-Adjusted Vampire

Coming at the end of October January 2011…The Music of Chaos, my urban fantasy novel, from Decadent Publishing. With all the usual urban fantasy elements–ass-kicking heroine, magic, snappy dialogue, and cheese enchiladas–and absolutely no whiny, schmopey, mopey vampires.

My vampires like being vampires. No “Woe is me, I’m a beautiful immortal with superpowers on an all-liquid diet. I haaate myself” nonsense.

My eyebrows crawled upward. “You realize you just made a movie reference. I am rubbing off on you.”

“Yeah. Like ringworm.”

~Regan O’Connell, the protagonist, and Breas Montrose, vampire, having a warm fuzzy moment.

The Panty Pest

I’ve got him in my sights, corrosive revolver loaded and ready to fire. “The only good Crimson Lance soldier is a dead one,” I mutter. My finger twitches on the XBox controller.

And then my view is obstructed. By a moth. A smallish moth, who nonetheless, chose now as the perfect time to land on the television screen.

“Ugh. Stupid, stupid panty pest,” I say, with impotent rage. Squishing the moth is out of the question, since the little shit will then be smeared over the screen. So I wait until the Lance soldier moves out from under the bug, before unleashing caustic hell. (Side note: Borderland’s baddies, when shot with caustic and incendiary weapons, melt, dying in a theatrical display of screaming and hand waving. It doth amuse.)

“Panty pest” is code for “flour moth” in our household. You know, those nasty moths and their worms, that feed on foodstuff flour, cookies, etc.? At Casa de Kirby, their prime habitat is birdseed, which is stored in the garage. But periodically, there is a huge population explosion, and some get in the house.

The solution is a little paper trap, loaded with pheromones. The moths, thinking they are about to meet the love of their lives, fly into the trap and are stuck on the sticky sides. The end result, moths embedded in tar-like goo, twitching pitifully, is perversely satisfying.

Once, a few years ago, I scribbled “pantry pest traps” on on the dry erase board in the kitchen.

Soon after, we had company and someone, my sister-in-law maybe, noticed, rather gleefully, that what I had written was: “PANTY PEST TRAPS.”

This, of course, set off a lively discussion as to the nature of a panty pest, and whether this was actually a reference to my husband.

To this day, flour moths are synonymous with “panty pests.”

That Home Time Religion

Wednesday night. Under a gray sky, a mass of fat rainclouds rolled over the house. So low you could almost touch them, but opaque and thick like dark gray cotton balls, not misty, like fog. They moved fast. Lifelike spooky, leviathans that hurried east across the valley where they collided with the Sandia Mountains, and broke apart as rain.

Husband critter and I watched, delighted by the first rainfall in months.  Outside, rain collected in puddles on the brick pathways.

After a few minutes we looked at each other and said, “The roof!”  We made for the master bathroom.  (“Master bathroom” being such an incongruous term for a room the size of a closet.)  Once there, we studied a section of ceiling near the ventilation fan.

See, the homebuilder didn’t bother to hook the bathroom fan vents to the exterior vents (Tiffany/Collatz Builders, I’m lookin’ at you).  So for nearly a decade, the ventilation fan had been pumping humid air into the gap between the drywall and roof.  Ruining the roof, insulation and some of the roof framing.

Husband critter and his parents repaired most of the damage.  But that section of roof still leaks on the rare occasion of a real rainfall.

Fortunately, the roof held on Wednesday night.  So scratch “roof-tar-goopy-stuff” off the weekly Home Depot/Lowe’s list. Nevertheless, we both surveyed the bathroom, silently cataloging a litany of dreams.  A new vanity.  Fresh paint.  And did the mold just move?

Our household doesn’t just shop at Home Depot. We tithe there weekly.

Go, Team Scorpion

“Clash of the Titans” is delightful. Delightfully bad. Having recently suffered through the critically acclaimed, but mind-rapingly dull, “No Country for Old Men,” husband-critter and I decided to dip into the shallower side of the cinematic gene pool. Clash of the Titans is the perfect vehicle for some major Mystery Science Theater 3000 style snarking.  Oh, boy. We haven’t had this much fun since the equally vile “10,000 BC.”

It’s like a story recited by your eight-year-old nephew. One event leading to another with no apparent connection, told to you in a breathless rush. It doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Other than the trailer, shown before this newer, more CG-y version of the tale, I’ve never seen the original version of Clash. But this is hardly an improvement. It fiddles with the story from original–Andromeda isn’t Perseus’ love interest this time around–and replaces a wooden Harry Hamlin with a buff, and apparently bored Sam Worthington (who seems to be wishing he’d found something else to do while waiting to shoot the sequel to Avatar).

The absence of a love story with Andromeda, in this case, is a good thing. Andromeda is a saccharin, old-time Disney Princess. She suffers, suffers, I tell you, for the plight of the poor, and feeds bread to starving children. (I dunno. Maybe it was enriched, Wonder Bread?) I’m surprised the filmmakers didn’t throw in cute little bunnies and other woodland animals to gaze at her adoringly. Anyway, she’s a dud.

Liam Neeson, as Zeus, is shiny like a lightbulb, and oozes misery (or maybe he’s just plotting the murder of his agent). Ralph Fiennes as Hades seems to be suffering from a Botox overdose, as he never moves his mouth while speaking. The rest of the cast is so unmemorable, I can’t even remember their names.

Mostly, the film is guilty of larceny. While watching, phrases like, “‘300’ called; they want their wardrobe back” and “Lookee, it’s the Scorpion King!” come to mind.  (Unlike “300,” Clash of the Titans suffers from a profound lack of man candy. It’s like casting went out of their way to find homely men. And wardrobe/makeup worked their butts off making the few good looking chaps hideous.)

And yeah, I was rooting for the giant scorpions.

Good Thing He’s Cute

After spending the morning staring at the computer screen at work, wondering, “What the hell is it I do I here?” I’m back home.  And staring at the computer screen.

My faithful greyhound enters the office, walking carefully over the saltillo tiles.   He makes it to the area rug, sighs in relief, and plops down next to my chair.

“Now this is nice,” I think.  “Exactly why I have a dog.  Companionship.”

A few seconds later he starts farting.  Big dog.  Big, fetid, meaty farts.

I grab a sketchpad and wave it around to clear the air every time he lets one fly.  After about a dozen repetitions of this, Mr. Sensitive gets offended and leaves.

He doesn’t, however, have the good grace to takes the stench with him.

Greyhounds are better seen than smelled.

Like a Dog, But Bigger

It’s six-thirty am and my horse is bugling at the house. I, the antithesis of a morning person, am thinking dark thoughts about glue factories and horse steaks.

Bleary-eyed, I tromp out to to the barn, where the Wonder Horse awaits, stamping, snorting, and registering his displeasure over a marginally late breakfast. I fumble around in the barn, find his fly mask and enter the paddock. Just as I finish dressing him for another fly-ridden day, I notice something black and disheveled by the fence.

He follows, clearly pleased with himself, as I go investigate. The lump turns out to be the remains of a roll of landscape fabric. My neighbor had left it by the fence, and the WH yanked it through and shredded it like tissue paper.

Wonder Horse, now bored, flits off, tail in the air, toward his feeder. Hint, hint, hint. I stuff the remains back under the fence and head off to get the beast his breakfast.  Hey.  It’s not my problem.  The neighbor should know better than to leave anything within WH’s reach.

Non-horse people tend to think of horses as big, dull-witted, docile creatures that stand in fields, placidly munching hay. In truth, they are a lot more like destructive dogs. Twelve-hundred pound, destructive dogs.

Whot I Lurnt at Pubic Shool

‎”Who was Stephen F Austin??? Why are shool is named after him”

That’s the title of a posting at my high school’s reunion page over at Facebook. It’s just a cavalcade of sad. A little misspelled monument to the inadequacy of a Texas public school education. See? Ah canz spel “school.”

Although I’ve professed a disinterest in these people, I nevertheless “liked” the reunion page, engaging in a combination of Schadenfreude and bewilderment. I really don’t remember any of these people. And most of the postings and comments left there contain more typos than, uh, my spam box has ads for cheap Rolexes and male enhancement meds. “Typo” is generous, since most of the errors are probably unintentionally intentional.

Given the quality of discourse at the site, I’d say I’m sticking by my plan not to attend.  As I noted before, my money is better spent on my favorite charity.  Like, say, my Oreo Blizzards for Me fund.