Dear diary,
We have a bumpy driveway, and our trashcan has wheels on its bottom so that you can roll it easily out into the street. And garbage day is Wednesday. So that means that on Tuesday night, it’s our responsibility as citizens of the United States of America to wheel our trashcan to the curb, in preparation for the garbage truck that will come like a thief in the night:
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but the trash collector only. But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the garbage truck be. For as in the days that were before Noah’s flood the U.S. citizens were eating & drinking, marrying gayly & giving in gay-marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; & the people knew not until the snow-thaw & early spring rains came, which caused a worldwide flood & seepage of water into the basements of homeowners everywhere, & took them all away, & wasted their time, & killed their spirit, & gave them bad attitudes — so also shall the coming of the trash collector be.
In those days shall two trashcans be in the street; the one shall be taken, and the other left. (For the latter was either filled with recyclables and thus will be picked up a little later, when the recycling truck stops by; or else that particular household forgot to pay its bill.)
Indeed, tho two women shall be grinding in matrimony, & the one’s trash shall be taken & her partner’s left. (This is because the women are neighbors on the Isle of Lesbos who own their own individual mansions, and one of them forgot to pay her trash bill; she’s probably the same one who’s garbage didn’t get picked up in the above example. I’m quoting all this from Matthew 24:36-51, by the way. So these two hotties decided to gay-marry while maintaining their own separate residences on Lesbos. They live in a cul-de-sac. It gives you more personal freedom to live this way — I mean, keeping your own individual houses, even tho you’re gay-married. This way, you each have your own garage, your own snooker room & planetarium, where you can compose blog posts in the dark hours of the morning without disturbing your beloved — unless, of course, she’s decided to spend the night at your place & y’all be grindin’.)
Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your garbage collector doth come.
But know this, that if the goodwoman of the house had known in what hour the truck would come, she would have watched, and would not have suffered her trash to go uncollected. She remembers the days of the garbage strike in New York. That was hell on earth. Trash everywhere: stinking and ruining the view of the cityscape. She also remembers the time when the bankers went on strike; but nothing happened, because bankers perform no needed task for society: they’re merely parasites; whereas garbage collectors should be among the highest-paid professions.
Therefore be ye also ready: for, in such an hour as ye think not, the trash collector cometh.
Who then is a faithful and wise maidservant, whom her lady hath made ruler over her household, to wheel the trash to the curb on a Tuesday evening? Blessed is that maidservant, whom her lady prior to the trash truck’s arrival shall find so doing. But if long after the truck has left, THEN she decides to place the can in the street, it shall remain, as I said, stinking & offensive to passersby. Therefore beware.
Verily I say unto you, That if that evil maidservant shall say in her heart, “My garbage collection truck delayeth its coming”; and shall therefore begin to slack off with her fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; and grind with hot strangers; yet then the trash collector of her lady shall come during an instant when she looketh not for him, and in an hour that she is not aware of, and shall pick up only the trash on one side of the street, and leave the other side’s trash un-picked-up. And if the lady whom she gay-married happens to be a world-savior hell-bent on vengeance, she might cut her asunder, & appoint the dame her portion with the Christians: there shall be weeping & gnashing of teeth.
I didn’t mean to quote so much gospel truth; this has nothing to do with the title of my entry; I just got carried away.
What actually happened is that on Tuesday night my sweetheart came home from work & said: “I took the garbage out.”
& I said: “Really? I didn’t hear a thing!”
& she said: “Yeah, that’s because, instead of dragging the can down our bumpy driveway, I wheeled it thru the grass along the side, so it was quiet.”
Then I rose from my throne, mine eyes ablaze with fire, & in a loud voice, I said:
“I don’t like all this mousy behavior. We have just as much a right to live and breathe, and take our garbage out to the street, as any of our neighbors have. I don’t think it’s too rude of us to allow ourselves to push the trashcan down the length of our bumpy driveway, even if it’s a little noisy. That’s a normal sound, whose cause everyone will understand. So let’s not use the grass for a trash-path anymore. I’m not saying we need to increase the natural commotion, but we should allow whatever din that accompanies our responsible actions to remain henceforward unmuffled. In fact, let us even try to enjoy the racket that we make when we position our trashcan at curbside. Let us savor the vibrations that tickle our arms as we push the receptacle over our uneven driveway; let us lose ourselves in the ecstasy of all that clattering of tinfoil on fiberboard (withincan), and (withoutcan) plastic on gravel.” For our trash receptacle’s tires are plastic not rubber.
Also I’m stressed and sad cuz I’ve had to begin the final half of all the house-repair projects that I’ve, until now, left unfinished. So the first thing I did yesterday was weld a screw-fastener to an iron rod. Do I mean that I joined together these metal pieces by heating their surfaces to the point of melting using a blowtorch or electric arc and then uniting them by repeatedly pressing & hammering upon them? No, I mean that I bought this package that contained two tiny tubes whose contents, when mixed together, are supposed to form a very strong bond. The tubes look like they might contain toothpaste, but here’s the difference: toothpaste usually smells minty fresh, but this welding mix smelled like seaweed.
Officer De Luca: “Is that your joint that smells like fish?”
Officer Duke: “No.”—dialogue from the film Wrong Cops (2013)
The product is called a “two-part epoxy adhesive”. At first I didn’t understand the word “epoxy”, so I looked it up in the dictionary: it turns out that it refers to any of a class of adhesives that are polymers of epoxides. Another word that I learned yesterday was “abbotoir”, which is apparently just the British term for “slaughterhouse”. (An abattoir is a facility where animals are slaughtered, most often—though not always—to provide food for humans. Meat that is supplied by an abattoir becomes the responsibility of a packaging facility.) I encountered this word while reading the comments section of an online video whose subject was “Humane Capitalism or Fascism and War”. One commenter wrote (I presume sarcastically):
Capitalism can be humane, in exactly the same way as an abbotoir.
But back to the epoxy-weld. Here’s a quote from the encyclopedia: “the product is contained in 2 separate tubes: the red ‘hardener’ and the black ‘steel’. Equal amounts are squeezed from both tubes and mixed.” So I squeezed equal amounts from the two tubes and mixed them. I squeezed them onto a large piece of cardboard & mushed them around with a plastic spoon. Then I gooped the stuff onto the end of mine iron rod, which I attempted to connect to a threaded screw-fastener. My goal was to lengthen the rod so that it could be employed to operate the drain plug in the sink that I’m trying to install. The iron rod has a plastic ball at one end, which rests in the drain pipe of the sink, & the rod is supposed to extend back and fit thru a hole in the plastic [insert here the term for the thing] that hangs from the bottom of the plunging mechanism. Well the sink that I bought is so awkwardly shaped that the original iron rod can’t reach the plastic [term needed for thing]; so my idea is to be able to thread a 3-inch screw thru the back of the fastener that I welded to the iron-plastic rod-ball. My problem is that I’m not a detail-oriented engineer — no, I’m much more of a drip painter — so my “welding” job, I fear, will turn out sloppy. The mixture was applied haphazardly by my spoon, and it’ll have hardened to preserve the frills that I left in the mix when it was still pliable: and it was sorta sticky and sorta runny, so when I dabbed the material between the rod and the fastener, I left a whole bunch of ruffles and flounces, ruffs, furbelows, jabots, peplums, one huge flute up the side, a few gathers and tucks, much ruching, and a collection of fringes; even a purfle, distinctly, right in the place were it counts. So when the thing dries & hardens stronger than steel, its permanent appearance will resemble something that’s having a bad-hair day. (Just look at all those chi-chis and folderols!) Yet perhaps future critics of botched repair jobs will judge my masterpiece leniently and refer to the work only in terms of endearment (“Such exquisite fallalery!”); thus, subsequent ephebes will yearn to ape my technique, not understanding that it’s rather a lack than a skill; so my position among the greats will remain secure.
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