BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

If you’ve been around Facebook lately, you’ve probably seen my “Note” about being busier than a one-legged cat in a paper kicking contest… wait… that’s… hmmm… Dammit. Someone must have spilled my metaphors and just tossed ’em all back into the box all willy-nilly and they’re mixed up…

(SIGH)

Well, no use spilling my tail over chasing a cry.

So, anyway… I’m full boated. Just way too much going on in one place, at one time. Therefore, today’s blog is more or less one of those CBS Sunday Morning, “We’ll leave you with…” sort of interludes. If you don’t watch CBS Sunday Morning, basically their sign-off for the show is that tag line, followed by some video of something, usually serene.

In my case, however, I’m going to leave you with some pictures of my Friday, a few captions, and an advertisement at the end. (Hey, THEY always go directly into a commercial, why can’t I?)

Jack-hammering out the section of walkway alongside Hell House. The sewer pipe for the West end of the house comes out right around the middle of the window, about 5 feet below ground.

Concrete pad gone. Pictured here is one of the two holes in the ground that were revealed beneath it. Because of the pressure on the pipe and the fact that it washed out, it literally sluiced away earth and clay, creating these two chasms that went all the way down to the broken pipe. We dubbed them The Grand Canyon and The Mariana Trench.

Don’t let appearances deceive you. That clay pipe only looks intact. The sweep (turn) is broken at both ends, the 2 foot section near the bottom of the picture is shattered underneath, and where Scuba Steve is standing there’s another two foot section of pipe. However, it is another 8 to 10 inches down because The Grand Canyon had washed out beneath it, so it had broken off at each end and simply dropped to the floor of said canyon. This, of course, resulted in the poo, etc, pouring out of the cast iron pipe to fill the void. It was, to say the least, a might stinky. Good thing it was cold (38 and windy) that day. If it had been July, August, or even September we probably would have needed respirators.

We had a piece of the high grade PVC on hand from installing the drainage system at Hell House a little over a year ago. A trip to the commercial plumbing supplier garnered us a “boot” to go from Cast Iron to PVC, and then another “boot” designed to connect PVC to Clay pipe. Here we have Scuba Steve inspecting his handiwork in search of leaks while we were doing a pressure test. Once it passed, we back filled with pea gravel and all of the dirt. A replacement concrete pad will have to wait until spring or summer next year.

There you have my Friday. The joys of maintaining inherited rental property. All I can say is, DON’T DO IT! Have rental property, that is. The headaches aren’t worth it, in my opinion.

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That’s it from Merp Central for now. I have a ton of stuff yet to do, not the least of which is finish a writing project that is due soon! :-O

More to come…

Murv

I am old enough to remember when “Mister President” wasn’t just an honorific from days long past for Jimmy Carter. What I mean by that is I was not only alive, but I was also functioning and capable of rational thought that went beyond strained green beans and pooping. In fact, I was in high school,  so I was more interested in irrational thought about the “little red haired girl” in the second row of my 5th hour creative writing class. Or was she a blonde? Brunette?

Well… We just won’t go there…

The thing is, I remember Jimmy Carter’s presidency, and oddly enough this blog has next to nothing to do with that. Then why mention it, you ask? Well, I said “next to nothing” not “absolutely nothing.” Confused yet?

You see, back when the smooth talking peanut farmer from Georgia was in office, lusting in his heart after beautiful women; and trying his damndest to get his brother to stop taking a leak on the tarmac at the airport in plain view of TV cameras – (after drinking two cases of his self-named signature beer, of course); and making concessions to save hostages, but that would undoubtedly guarantee him being only a 1 term president; and touring a nuclear facility that narrowly avoided a core meltdown; and having the White House mail room re-package and send back the red, white, and blue chainsaw a company had shipped to his daughter because she wanted one for Christmas…

Well, I think you get the point. As is usually the case with anyone occupying the oval office, the man couldn’t sneeze without it being on the evening news – and, on Saturday Night Live. Of course, this was back in the day when SNL was worth looking at, and Aykroyd did a great Carter.

So, where am I going with this?

Simple. Dave Barry.

Now you’re REALLY confused, right? Good…

You see, Dave Barry wrote a great column about having a colonoscopy. He took a somewhat gross topic and made it funny. I know, I know, you are still reeling and trying to figure out what this has to do with Jimmy Carter. Well, I’m not going to talk about a colonscopy. I’m still a year or so off before the insurance company will pay for my alien anal probe, so stop hurting yourself trying to make the connection. I am, however, going to talk about hemorrhoids. President Carter had himself a nasty case of them while in office and the news media jumped all over it. Of course, that simply led to SNL bending it over the desk and getting to know it in the biblical sense.

Thus far, my ‘roids have not made it to the news. Nor has any improvisational comedy troupe performed a skit around said affliction as it relates to a mid-list suspense-thriller author living in Saint Louis. I did, however, make an innocuous and roundabout comment about them on Facebook – the gist of that being that I needed something stronger than Preparation H.  No graphic details or descriptions. Not even a mention of the word “hemorrhoid”… Just, I need some Preparation I or J ’cause H ain’t cuttin’ it…

What did that get me? A whole lot of “TMI, DUDE!” comments.

Well, I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I’m a bit inflamed by this. I mean, it pretty much tells me that people don’t believe my ass is anywhere near as funny as Jimmy Carter’s, and that’s just constipated thinking. It also says that my ass isn’t as funny as Dave Barry’s, which sort of  pains me. Now, while I am willing to concede that Dave’s ass is pretty damned funny, my blog has actually been compared to his – and his column – so I would think my ass should be bleedin’ funny too. Trust me, I don’t have a swollen head about this. It just burns me a little. I know that it’s uncomfortable to sit here and talk about this, but as you can tell I’m itching to say something. Yes, I suppose a story like this is bothersome, but don’t shrink away from it and leave me dangling. That’s not soothing in the least.

You know, maybe it’s all just a matter of marketing. I think I’ll have my publicist contact the media when I schedule my hemorrhoid-ectomy. Maybe The Early Show will want to broadcast it live on TV, just like they did for Harry Smith’s colonoscopy…

I just hope the cameras don’t make my ass look too big.

More to come…

Murv