Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Get off my lawn: fantasy vs. reality

"If we'd known you were sending Poncho Villa over to do the work, we never would've hired you," says the husband.


“What?” asks Mike the Painter.


“Mexicans,” says the wife. “Everybody knows they steal.”


Mike stopped by yesterday afternoon to drop off color samples from when he painted our house two years ago – Jim, who is usually pretty tenacious about this stuff – never wrote them down and we’re painting the shed this weekend.


That’s when Mike told us about our fuck-nut neighbors two doors down, whose house his team painted earlier this summer.


“What did you say? How did you respond?” I asked.


“What could I say? The job was done. And you can’t argue with that kind of ignorance.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

You should know these neighbors already weren't well-liked for a variety of ‘get off my lawn’ type of run-ins over the years. But still, this recent bit of news came as a shock to both of us. It’s one thing to be an asshole. It’s another to be a racist asshole.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that night, we watched Gran Torino – a movie I did not expect to like because of every other Clint Eastwood movie I’ve seen.


But it was good. Very good.


“So why was it kinda funny when Clint Eastwood's character did it but not so funny when it’s our neighbors?”


That was me on the drive to the train this morning.


“Because that’s just how his character was,” says Jim. “He wasn’t really being negative to them, it’s how he was raised.”


“But he called them ‘slope’ and ‘zipperhead’,” I say. “That wasn’t very nice.”


“That’s from being in the war,” says Jim. “And he was old. It’s like my parents calling black people ‘coloreds’, they weren’t being racist, it’s just what they were called then. The bottom line is, our neighbors have no excuse. They’re not that old.”



Or maybe it’s because Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino was infinitely more likable than our fuck-nut neighbors.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Editorial note: Jesus I’m rusty. Not writing every day has taken its toll and this is way more rough than it should be. Still, it’s something.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am listening to: Office sounds

I am reading: Twilight

And I am: Thinking

11 comments:

Dave said...

This comment was going to say something funny about your professed writing rust and the post never changing the noun that fuck modifies.

Then I did a word search for fuck on the blog, expecting to get lots of examples of different nouns for you to use.

I was shocked, shocked to find that you've only used the word fuck in 8 posts, including this one, over the years.

Google won't do a universal search for 4 punctuation marks in a row; but, there's got to be an explanation. You are known for your salty language. Only 8 fucks in 3 years, I'd have never guessed.

molly gras said...

*tee hee*

You got Dave to type 'fuck' four times ...

*tee hee*

Hedy said...

I think it's only for this year - if you do the search, all of the entries with 'fuck' are from 2009. Thanks for the comments, I've really missed this.

Dave said...

I was trying to match Hedy's total but ran out of stuff to say to put around it Molly.

And Hedy, it's not just this year, it goes back to the start of the blog in December 2005 I believe, actually more than 3 1/2 years.

Kvatch said...

Heh...heh! Getting 'Gran Torino' tonight from Netflix. Guess it was a good bet.

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

Dave -- I think you need to do a wildcard search -- like *fuck* or something, because Hedy RARELY says merely "fuck" -- instead it's "fucktard" or "fuckity" or "fuckmonkeys" (one of my favorites, actually).

At least that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

Enter this into a Google search window:

fuck site:http://hedyblog.blogspot.com/

I got 450 hits. I am not sure if that's 450 instances of the word, or if it's 450 pages containing it. Leaning toward the latter.

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

Oh. And about Gran Torino. Liked it. Didn't love it.

A bit heavy handed.

Acting was a bit stiff.

Clint should not sing. Ever. Even if it is just over the closing credits.

Only CLint directed movie I loved? Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Note -- Clint did not direct *himself* in that one.

miss kitty said...

Mother Kitty raised me old school also, so when my path crosses with a black dog, I yell out “Spook!”

Not sure why Mother taught that, but they are just dogs, making me not interested enough to care.

Meow

Dave said...

Pos, I dearly want there to be more than 8 instances of fuck at Hedy's place. I typed in fucktard, nothing (Google spell check wants to know if I want to spell that as buckboard, custard, duckboards or mustard (why is only duckboards plural - there's no such thing as one duckboard? I'm not researching it). I did the asterisk thing and got no results.

Hedy, we are sorry to have taken a left turn here with your sensitive and PC post. Is the shed going to be some sort of mustard color?

Hedy said...

This is hysterical. I was giggling like a fucking fool on the train this morning. Thanks so much.