Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

-Aw shit, more stuff about plants? Because I know you're going to write more shit about your fucking garden and really, please Nations, enough already. I mean Jesus Christ on a red bicycle please stop with the goddamn gardening posts. Nobody cares. Most of us live in town. We think vegetables come from small steel cylinders, like Martians, and take over small towns in New Jersey. We like to sit on the copy machine at work and take pictures of our butts. That was fun until the glass broke. Then we got fired. But it's OK now, we have another job, and the buzzing sound in our heads is almost indistinguishable from the screaming of the gulls here at the county dump.

-Oh fine. Here. I hope you're happy now. Bitch, bitch bitch.

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My husband has made it known that he won't be buying me a motorcycle anytime soon. Hell no, not after this incident.

Now here is the reason I love this man: Despite my ongoing love affair with excessive speed and disaster, apparently he sees no problem with buying me another utility.

The last time I had one of these vehicles I did STUPID shit in it. I broke the law. More accurately I stomped on it and set it on fire and buried it and then dug it up and set it on fire again. I think they actually made some new laws to cover the shit I got away with. How did I get away with it? For the simple reason that I looked like a nice little housewife (ramping over intervening watercourses Dukes of Hazzard stylee while lobbing Molotov cocktails out the side window) and the cops couldn't believe what they were seeing until it was too late to do anything about. That's my theory anyway.

Here's the deal: A utility vehicle is less a small truck than it is essentially half a car, so it's very, very light.
There is no weight on the rear axles to speak of. Even with an average engine it takes very little pressure on the gas from a standing stop to chirp the tires.

Now remove all the extraneous equipment and give that same vehicle a very LARGE engine and it's no longer a question of chirping the tires, it's giving the gas a little rap and sending a tsunami of gravel and chunks of pavement shotgunning out from beneath your smoking rear tires as little fragments of soot float around and the entire car torques 20 degrees out of true and people come out of their houses and

*ahem*

For the same reason the Utility Vehicle is unusually well suited to doing donuts.
Slow vehicles on the highway, like gravel trucks and police officers, are no longer an impediment. The concept of 'time' and 'distance' becomes real fluid. Drifting corners becomes possible. As does getting airborne. On rail crossings. Like the one down near Cherry Point.

And see, you'd think with a little extra weight in the car (say about 70 pounds...about the same as a grade school-aged kid yelling " Do that AGAIN, mom!!!" ) that this shit would be more difficult, but you'd be wrong.

My husband sold my Ranchero to a man who shipped it to Germany. This may have been connected to certain unsubstantiated rumors concerning my driving habits having been passed along by the aforementioned grade school-aged kid.
In any event, he made sure that once it was gone, it was REALLY gone.

I miss it. It was an awesome car. It was flat black and dechromed; had a rubber rake of about 3 1/2 or 4 inches, black tuck and roll upholstery, a tiny little handcuff steering wheel and an accelerator pedal shaped like a foot.
It had an El Toro gas cap.
It had red steels with chrome baby moons.

I still have that accelerator pedal, and I still have that steering wheel.
And now they'll have a new home.

Stay off the roads, folks. Trust me on this one.

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We rolled into Bobs for their Sunday brunch last week and found there ahead of us about 15 Canadian HOG (Harley Owners Group) members, all decked out in their brand-new shiny leather, wearing their HOG rockers, strutting around like banty roosters.

It was...sad.

This is what I continually fail to comprehend:

See, there is nothing particularly 'cool' about being an outlaw biker. Being a biker in general; yes, ok, that's cool. But in general I don't see why, if you are genuinely bad-and I mean, righteous now, not evil- you still feel the overwhelming need to maintain all that constant advertising? "OO, See all my wings? See my spiderweb tattoo? Aren't I scary? Aren't I mean? See my 1% patch? See my pins? See my outlaw rocker? I'm bad, y'all, I mean it. Bad, bad bad. Really really bad. I am. "
Whenever I run onto that I am reminded of those people you see driving cars with about a thousand bumper stickers plastered all over them.
Someone needs a hug.

As far as needing to belong to a club goes; that, I do not get at all. I know plenty of genuinely bad people who did NOT agree to spend two years undergoing various types of ritualized**humiliation, only to earn the 'privilege' of living under someone elses' rules, wearing a brand, and answering to yet another leader in your free time. Do you really need that much supervision?
I mean yeah; I know I do...but I don't fucking volunteer for it.

Anyway, here we were monopolizing the hollandaise sauce looking over at this group of people who are probably the furthest thing from 'outlaw bikers' that one could imagine...happy, functioning Caucasian cogs in the system, all sporting these imitation outlaw patches and wearing leather and none of them with the vaguest clue as to what 'outlaw' means. They obviously think that they are automatically 'bad' because they're wearing this costume they've purchased, though, and this mistaken assumption is causing them to act like total morons.

It dawned on me what this was, finally... the direct, middle-class equivalent of 'Juggalo' . Not only were they not cool, they were trying desperately to be cool by imitating something that's not cool....only to come off even MORE uncool than they were originally.

Anyway, we calmly ate our brunch while they strutted and guffawed.

Then we got on our Victory and did 90 miles like maniacs with no religion.

_______________________



*I have personally experienced 'Red shift'.

**Some of it more than a little abusively homoerotic. I mean come on... jizzing for distance? yeah, that's really....um...outlaw. and you claim you're all straight men, huh? Straight, middle aged men all standing around...seeing how far you...yeah. OK then.

(not that i find anything wrong with that.)


(at all.)



(seriously. i mean it.)





(like, ok if you're one of those really hairy burly type guys, and particularly if you smoke a cigar, right? and you have a lot of friends who are also really hairy burly cigar smokers who wear leather and ride motorcycles, particularly if they have really BIG arms, and say they were all really sweaty because it was a hot day out and they all had to take off their shirts, and maybe even their pants? and one thing lead to another like how it does, and a chalk line got drawn on the pool table....I promise you i would be the LAST PERSON ON EARTH to judge you.)

17 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:17 AM

    I think you're being unnecessarily mean to those bad boys. First of all, how would anyone know to not mess with them if they didn't have all their pals to back them up? Secondly, where's the fun in rebelling if you don't do it in the company of a load of other people - I mean, what if no one noticed you were a rebel? Or, even worse, you were doing some kind of really uncool rebelling, and people were secretly sniggering at you behind your back? Wouldn't that be awful?

    (One of my friends used to be married to one of those naughty bad boys. When they had a party to celebrate some anniversary of their chapter, their mothers made the cakes and canapès. C'mon, you have to love them, really)

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  2. Awww bless em.
    I like the teenagers that all dress the same 'to be different and rebel against whatever' which usualy soon vapourises when Mummy and Daddy stop paying the bills.
    Its the quiet unobtrusive one you gotta watch :-)

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  3. so this post was about being bad? or "being baa-ad.." either way, if one needs to suit up to act like a jackass then let them. at least they let the rest of the world know they are who they are... some of the toughest, meanest bikers/people i know are the most soft spoken polite individuals. anyway, i was really looking forward to some more gardening posts and wheres that picture of your toilet planter mj keeps raving about?

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  4. I progress in a dignified manner in my Jagwaaaar/Daimler, whisking past lesser mortals in their pathetic fuel efficient euro boxes.

    Idiots with mohican haircuts and 'PUNK'S NOT DEAD' t shirts amuse me, as do gloomy Goths and emos. Only the well dressed are truly vicious.

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  5. No toilet planter?

    Nothing to see here, then.

    *shuffles off to find someone with a proper gardening blog*

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  6. Can I interest Miss MJ in a toppiary dolphin jumping thru a hoop ???
    See I have real gardening class
    ***re arranges garden gnomes and other amusing garden ornaments****

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  7. Beast: I’d prefer a topiary willie.

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  8. Anonymous2:43 PM

    Um. I like the gardening posts. Not that this one wasn't also massively entertaining - it was - but when you write about gardening I'm taking little notes for when I have a garden in Utrecht next year.

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  9. Oh god, mj's posting links. I'm afraid to click.


    I went back and re-read your crash story. Christ that never stops being funny. I love the bit where the real estate falls out your bra. Classic.

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  10. I remember accidentally going out with a biker once who was into all that macho club bullshit - I was a greenie hippie vegetarian at the time so you can see it was accidental on both sides of the coin.

    I scared the crap out of him once when we had to stop for food so he insisted on McD and there was a whole group of the meanest looking wankers there, and I asked some innocuous questions about the "culture".

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  11. z: they just make me tired. all the genuinely bad people I know are folks you'd walk past on the street without glancing at them twice. my husband has been asked to prospect by two clubs since we've been married, and it's just like...no. high school is over. grow the fuck up already assholes.

    beast: eggzackly. to this day i look back on all the 'extreme' types that i knew that caved as soon as the reality of adult life smacked them upside the head.

    voices: we know the same people, then. Yayas!
    THERE IS NO GODDAMN TOILET PLANTER DAMMIT NO NO NO NO NO.

    garfy: that was well damn said, son.

    mj: yo MOMMA has a toilet planter.

    beast: show her your 'solar glow boobs'.

    mj: how about a clitoria ternatea? its leguminous!!

    alala: well then. really, honestly, though..you DON'T want to encourage this sickness. or maybe you do. in any event have no fear, there'll DEFINITELY be more gardening stuff!

    chaucers ITCH?: wtf? not that it's not cute; chaucer scrabbling away at his 'nads and all. still. back away from the cranberry and rum, lady.

    jeannie: welcome welcome! see, that perfectly describes me and my husband of 22 years. when we met i was a lil' hippie chile and he was a pistol whipping, harley riding sonofabitch. come to think of it we haven't changed much.

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  12. Three Hells Angels walk into a diner. Before they sit down they see the World Champ on the counter and decide to pick a fight by spitting in his food. The Champ says nothing and gets up, pays his bill and leaves. One of the Angels comments to the waitress: "That guy sure is a chicken s**t coward!" To which the waitress, looking out the window, replies: "Yea, his beard just had sex with your wives."

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  13. Can't remember the last time I saw a Hells Angel. I must admit the initiations seem very bizarre, the weeing on each other etc.

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  14. Miss FN I just bought another set of 4 solar glow boobs (end of line sale :-) ) , I will be littering them about the garden , it is going to be sooooooooooooo cool

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  15. mom, you're a weirdo. OF COURSE I narc'd on you to dad, I felt like you were always doing that to me. That and you drive scary. It was more of a plea...please, Dad, I'll take the bus, just NEVER AGAIN...

    nice boykissyboy rant there ma. way to ruin your presidential future!

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  16. CHAMP! you're here! your beard is here! your lycra clad ass is here! ITS THE WHOLE STEVE NEAL EXPERIENCE!!! *faints from excessive release of estrogen*

    frobi: i know...on one hand they're making the poor probie drink a beer they've all dipped their dicks in-and watching- and yet they all pride themselves on being really conservative and straight. weird shit. it is a mystery.

    beast: SO WHERE ARE THE PICTURES??

    ssa: well I know that and you know that but for the sake of the piece i had to write it. sheesh.//YOU MEAN...THE WHITE HOUSE IS NO LONGER AN ATTAINABLE GOAL? BUT THEY TOLD ME I COULD BE ANYTHING WHEN I GREW UP!!!!*runs off sobbing in her tutu*

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  17. It makes me sad that you no longer have that car, it was a beaut'.

    You know, you should get a bidet bird bath to go with the toilet planter. THEN it will be a proper garden. ;-)

    And as one of those quiet, unobtrusive and well dressed ones, I can truly say that we are the ones who are none to be trifled with.

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