Hilbama

Just Say No

This “NO” is countersunk in the sidewalk, before Auto Row on Broadway. Did God-da put it there? It’s way too neat, organized complicated for the City of Oakland. “No” to what? A new car? Alta Bates, located up the hill. The crosswalk? Pigeons? Or maybe it’s something like, “I’m the ‘No’ from the Fat Mary side of your brain. Fear me, my child because I say NO more MacDonald’s Fish Sandwiches, Strawberry Flavored Orange Crush or Kettle Corn popped at the Farmers’ Market.” I look around. Fat Mary better put a cork in her flabby lips before I spork the saggy part of her underarm.

Dog Poo

I look at the dog poo when I pick it. Call me weird or call it years of living on a farm and listening to my father ask me, “Does the dog have worms?” Farm dogs are notorious for gobbling up all sorts of dead rotting animals, ingesting parasites and setting up host incubators in their own gizzards. Sometimes I would reply, “Yeah, Dad, the dog’s dragging its butt across the back forty, and I saw a wiggler dancing in the poo.” Dad vetted our own animals most of the time. Why not? He was a doctor. The only vet services he refrained from performing were the yearly vaccinations and the really complex surgeries. He did a C-section on a cow one day. Poor thing. She was down and out and had apparently been in labor for a while before we found her. It made me sick. Her breath was heavy as her tongue lolled out of her swollen mouth. She couldn’t get up. She was a goner, but he saved the calf.

The day our Blue Heeler got run over by the garbage man I knew it was coming. Aussie was an insane dog by anyone’s standards. The day we got the pup, the dog chased the cows into a fence corner and a mad one kicked Aussie in the head and knocked him out. Dad always said Aussie couldn’t think straight because of that blow, but I felt it was contributory to the already festering mental unbalance. Aussie hated the garbage man. On that, I have no clue. Aussie determined that dislike on his own accord just like his dislike of the cows. The garbage man wasn’t a coward about the whole situation until the day Aussie sprang out a bush and bit him on the butt. That tore it. The garbage told us he was no longer going to pick our cans up in the back of the house. We had to drive the third of a mile down the farm road and put the cans closer to the highway and away from the house…and supposedly the dog. Still, Aussie didn’t care for the new rules. He wandered down by the garbage cans’ new location and waited on the garbage man. So, the garbage man ran over the dog. Backed over him to be exact, crushing his pelvis in a way that was deemed unrepairable by the grinning man who must have done the act before.

Aussie was in a good deal of pain by the time I saw him. He could turn his body upward and look, but his eyes told me he didn’t understand. Dad carefully loaded the dog into the truck and they were gone, flying down the driveway and country roads, only to be turned away at the vets. The vet told my father, it was useless. The dog was suffering. Too much damage. Put him down. I wasn’t at the vets, so I don’t know what actually happened. I heard about it third hand later from a variety of sources ranging from the receptionist to neighbors. Some say my Dad was arrogant about the whole deal. Some say he was sad. All say he jerked the dog up and brought him home. He called an orthopedic surgeon who lived in the hoity toity section of town and frankly was not that good of friends with my father. Dad demanded the surgeon come to our house for a surgical procedure. There was a long silence. He was telling my father no and the reason was because some specialist from Chili was there, visiting, observing.

As it turns out, the specialist was a pelvis guy or something. Yeah. Like those two surgeons ever stood a chance against the will of my father. Aussie got his surgery on our back porch. After a couple of weeks, his limb began to atrophy, while he was dragging his paw. My father built a sling for him and strung the whole animal up off the ground in the area where we had been keeping the garbage cans. Dad turned the place into a dog rehabilitation unit. I was the physical therapist that summer. I would exercise the dog’s hip and paw about 5 times a day. It was a dodgy situation. The dog was tad crazy, in a bit of pain, wanting to run around, and used to wrestling with me. It sounded like Tazmanian Devil warfare in the former garbage corral that summer, but Aussie walked again – in fact, ran. The bad leg had a tendency to shake when he got really excited. We never figured that one out. It was like an overload of adrenalin, but Aussie didn’t care. He wasn’t as fast as he was before his entanglement with the garbage man. He could run 35mph before the accident and afterward, well…out of respect we didn’t reclock him.

Dad went on his merry vetting way, proud of his greatest success until one day he came staggering back from the barn. He was weaving and bobbing, slurring his speech. He was trying to vet some cow. She bucked, and he popped a shot full of black foot preventative into his own hand. I tried not to laugh. I tried really hard.

Diet Coke/Mentos Experiments

IKEA Kitchen Rhythm Entry

An Engineer's Guide to Cats

When Will Our Time Come

The graffiti on this park bench around Lake Merritt reads, “When will our time come.” I wanted to scribble back, “Soon enough” or draw a moustache on the graffiti Incan or maybe write something bizarre like “when I say so.” Instead, I just kept circling the lake. I saw a bloodhound today trotting along side his human. The dog looked out of place, like he needed to be searching for something. I asked the human where he got the bloodhound. He told me a bloodhound rescue. I asked if he bayed. He said only in the car. I laughed. The guy didn’t understand, but I had a quick mental image of a sad faced bloodhound hanging his floppy face out a car window, baying like a police siren all the way to Lake Merritt and back. “Baouuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.”

Limousine Driver Fanetiks

Help wanted ad from Craigslist:
Apply only if knowelable, relyable,hard worker,for fulltime or parttime posision contact mark must have proff of DMV report no accendts or traffic volations

Sweet Nothings

These were in front of the checkout at my local drugstore. The individual packaging reads, “Viking Size Cinnamon Bun.” Maybe at one time, but by the time I saw ‘em, I was pretty sure a dictionary salesman had rested his wares on their faces and turned the pastries into sail dough, something a kin to snack Frisbees. They were flat - I mean really flat. I was fairly certain if I needed to sneak one under the crack of a shut door, I could.

Me: I’m testing a theory.

Mr. Corndog lies in bed at night reading his book: (He looks over his Magoo glasses as I close the door. I take the flatty patty once-a-sweetroll-now-a-frisbee-dough and start poking it under the door from my side.)

Me: See anything? (yelled through closed door)

Mr. Corndog: Uh, yeah. Something that someone has stepped on, but it looks like it’s coming under.

Then I thought, I’m being petty. There was an accident at the retailer with a dictionary. Happens all the time. I went to the cinnamon bun web site. I found this. I can hear the graphic designers in their workroom, programming the site.

Graphic Designer 1: He looks good. Virile. Like a Viking. Like the motto.

Graphic Designer 2: Dude, the picture is a woman.

GD 1: Oooooh.

GD 2: Yeah.

GD 1: Now what?

GD 2: Gimme a minute to think.

GD 1: How ‘bout we burn a little red into her cheeks with Photoshop? You know, soften her up a bit.

GD 2: And…and…and horizontal blind transitions on the home page.

GD 1: Like Star Wars. (They high five each other.)

I Am CAT U R Not

Singing to the Fire Truck

It Just Didn’t Work

The what-cha-ma-call-it blew straight into the 45-degree flange. The machine ground to halt with a noise like a vacuum cleaner sucking up your mother’s church wig. Was the flange granite or resin? Was it real or Memorex? What’s the difference? It just didn’t work.

I opened the mini-fridge and pulled out my last Meister Brau. $2.69 a six-pack. Blue Laws. That just didn’t work either on a Sunday morning at 10:45am.

The basement was dimly lit. Manson, the Myer’s yellow tabby with one eye and half a tail, strutted by the window. The basement window was over my head, covered with grit and grim from years of rooming with the coal furnace.

I looked at my machine – all copper and resin, PVC and stolen sink handles. The salvage yard knew me by my first name. Whispers followed me like ocean ebbs as I perused their junk. “Whas he building? Got any idea?” I’d tell them but they couldn’t comprehend with their Blue Law minds.

I took the last gulp of brew and kicked the cracked toilet lid attached to the fly by. Manson one-eyed me from the other side of the window as if I was a green dime store parakeet trapped in a cheap wire cage. “It’s a time machine, Manson,“ I yelled. “And yes. It works. Sometimes.”

This 'N That

I saw a dachshund wearing a pair of doggy jeans and a pink Tshirt. He seemed to like his pants, but when I remarked to his human about the dog’s fondness for clothing, she said “Oh he hates this get up.”

The meeting with the doctor at the headache clinic went well. He has a plan, a really good plan, for a whole year. If the plan fails, he has a back up plan. If that plan fails, he has another back up plan. His plan is already in motion. Phase I. Launched. So far, so good. I have some headache meds he gave me too after advising me how to take them. Apparently, I made matters worse the way I was taking the other painkillers. I scored some scary language on his report. “History of Medication overuse: Offending medication: Darvoset.” Could have been worse, I suppose. At least he didn’t write “drug abuse.” I noticed he didn’t give me any Darvosets either.

I like to play Russian Roulette with the bus system. I’ll be waiting at a stop. The bus will pull up, but I’ll refuse to get on. Sometimes I don’t like the looks of the bus or the driver or the riders. Sometimes the bus is too crowded. Sometimes the bus lurches into the curb, and I consider it bad form. Yesterday, I went up to the bus stop to catch a ride. For whatever reason, I decided the stop was offensive, and I took off walking down the street to another bus stop. The 57 roared by. I reached the next stop in time to climb aboard an NL. We took off and in a couple of blocks caught up to the 57. It has been slammed in the ass by 3 cars. We didn’t even slow down. People were just getting out of their vehicles as we approached. I pressed my hands on the windows, as if that would help the passengers in the crippled 57. We roared by without so much as a radio call to central advising them of the situation.

Yesterday, we had a car alarm go off for three hours. The car belongs to the sister of one of the neighbors. She dumps her car occasionally with her brother when she goes out of town or partying. I’ve had words with the brother several times. The other neighbors have spoken to him. Finally, I told him, “Stop the alarm or I’m calling the police.” That, he understood.

Yesterday, the car was back blaring away. I called the police with the horn wailing in the background. They came out promptly. The dude was in his freakin’ house the whole time the alarm was shouting out. He comes out of his house and pulls the “I can’t speak English” routine on the officer. I had left a note on the offending car. The officer was reading it to Brother. The officer turned to me and said, “His English is limited.” Been there. Done that with this idiot. I gave the police officer the history, then turned to Brother and told him I called the police because I had warned him about this noise before.

In perfect English he said, “Are you sure it’s my car’s alarm that is going off?” Yeah. The officer didn’t like being made a fool of. She told him to cut the alarm off or she was writing him a ticket or she was towing it. It’s been silent since. The big shut up slap down.

This I really don’t get. We have a nice back yard with grass. We have a dog door. The little dog loves to hold it until she can run out the front door and crap in some obscene place in the front yard. Why? I talk to my dogs. I’m standing out there today when the postal lady walks up as I say, “Why do you have to crap in the front yard? I don’t get it. What is wrong with the back yard?” Location. Location. Location.

Tea Infusers Haiku

The Great Pyramids
Wonders of our kitchen world
No passport required.

Liberty (and sign waving) for All

And you thought Ms. Liberty was on Ellis Island. Wrong-o. She’s a sign waver in Oakland with a full beard. God bless America and her 50% off.