Quaint Vignettes From My Charming Rural Idyll

This year, because of the mild conditions, the farmers around here have yet to harvest the feed corn. I guess the upside of that is that I haven't had to put up with the truly godhorrid stench of silage being trucked around-and I have no idea what that shits about either; it seems like they make it, and then they drive it around the county for a couple of weeks for no good reason that I can figure out. Maybe it likes to go on car rides. Maybe driving it around for a couple of hours is necessary to the whole silage process. What I do know is that the stuff smells absolutely disgusting. Worse than pig shit, worse than rotted liquid pig manure even, worse than whatever that Parmesan-foot-ass stuff is that they spray on the fields in July. And if anyone could identify just exactly what that stuff is for me I would appreciate it. But anyway....

The smell of silage defies description. It smells worse than the dump. Really. You know how if you spend enough time at the dump you eventually stop smelling it? Not so with silage. Its one of those smells that you can taste, and if you get a strong enough whiff of it you gag-not even as a disgust response either; you don't get the chance to register disgust. Its involuntary. You're driving along having a nice chat with your buddy and then a truck goes paHEURGK! HUAAARP! *BURP* ...yeah. Men dig that.

Around here a kid can drive farm equipment on the street. I suppose there's a special permit involved or something; all I know is that I envy these kids. Maybe the Fates conspired to keep me out from behind the wheel of large equipment, though, given what I was like when I was younger (i.e. EVIL) and Lord only knows what I would have got up to with a corn auger under my command. Actually I know what I'd have done; I'd have headed straight toward my grade school. Drove that mother right through the parking lot; grind through all those Datsun subcompacts and Toyotas RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRkshhhhCRUNCKCRACKGADOON! SSSSSSBOOM! SCREEECHcrunchmangledestroy! Then hammer down straight toward the main office, locked on target, lasers charged and ready; and bury that bitch full speed right up to the rear wheels. Hop out of the cab at the last minute, of course, before it goes up in a huge ball of flames FOOM! with all them big freakyass pointed things flying off and then aw fuck, man, here they come all twirling down back out of the sky eeeeeeeEEEEEWOOOOOOOOOOM!
Right through the main boiler! DIRECT HIT!
Meanwhile I would stand across the street and watch it all go stern skyward...take a majestic half turn...and then silently sink beneath the chill dark seas. And I would laugh a grim and icy laugh- heh heh heh heh heh!-light a panatella, turn, and ride my horse off into the desert.
AYIAYIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! wa wa waaaa...
(that's The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly music. keep up.)

So yeah. Better off that I don't get a corn auger for Christmas this year.

I keep trying to talk my husband into getting me one of those little mini backhoes like landscapers use? But he says that all I'd do is go around digging holes. Well, duh, yeah, that's what they're for.
"In the middle of the night. At random," he adds.
But here again; duh, that's what they're for. If you had a mini backhoe, wouldn't you? Who'd complain? Someone wakes up because their dog is barking and you're out in their front yard in your mini backhoe digging a hole, what? Like they're going to even call 911? "Yes, hello, 911? It's 3:am and there's a native American in a mini backhoe digging up my landscaping?" Please. No way. Especially if it was modified so that flames shot out from underneath it, and had big telescoping spider legs that would unfold out of the sides with pinchers on the end that had black poison dripping off them that would hit the ground and stuff would dissolve into glick and smoke would come up? See, no. You'd have to be pretty stupid to try.