Plastic flowers in the tub
So I showed up at Arnie’s house the other day. “House” is a loose term in this context, since Arnie’s “house” hardly resembles anything that anyone in his or her right mind would ever consider actually living in.
Arnie went through a particularly acrimonious divorce a few years ago, and the ex, among other things, was awarded all of the internal furnishing of the house in exchange for him keeping the actual house itself.
He told me, in fact still does, that he soon discovered that those “material comforts” aren’t really necessary anyway. So ever since then his “furniture” has consisted of a web chase lounge with a partially broken frame that he picked up out of a dumpster, a couple of “guest chairs” which have fewer webs than missing ones, two concrete blocks and a 13” TV that once belonged to his sister. He plucked it out of the garbage after she had tossed it (lierally) out because it only worked with the horizontal hold in a semi-flipping state and the colors consist basically of green and gray.
That is it. No bed, he sleeps on the carpeted floor, no dresser, he lives out of boxes – one for “clean stuff” and another for “dirty stuff”. I personally have noticed that it is difficult to determine the clean clothes from the dirty, mainly because he does not mess with what he considers the time wasting concept of folding.
All of this is found in his 1650 square foot three bedroom house. That and lots of newspapers on the carpet to act as either “spots to squat” or coverage of “spots already squatted” by his 2 quite obnoxious and always yapping mongrels of indeterminable breeding. One looks sort of like a cross between a wiener dog and a Chow and is named “Burt” and the other resembles a Poodle in the face but has the body more reminiscent of a healer. He is named Earl. Both are black, gray and brown mottled longhaired creatures that smell as though they have never seen a bath or a brush. Don’t ask about the fleas!
They too were “spoils” from the split, though I am quite certain that Mandy, the ex, got them fully intending to leave Arnie the next week, which she did.
Neither Burt nor Earl come when they are called, but they will bark at any imagined or real noise for hours on end. In fact, until Arnie discovered that they have a hankering for MD 2020, they almost never shut up.
The one other invited occupant in the “home” is Herbie. Herbie is a remarkable goldfish that I have watched grow from your average sized goldfish to one looking like a very large and fat crappie. He got that way because Arnie has discovered that the cricket infestation in his home can be effectively dealt with by placing caught ones into Herbie's bowl.
One night he fed Herbie a cricket that was consumed in a single gulp. A few minutes later Arnie found another, put it in the bowl and again it was consumed in a single gulp. A few minutes after that he captured another, and Herbie attempted to consume it in a single gulp. Except only about half the cricket was ingested and the rear legs, flailing away, stuck out of Herbie’s mouth for a while It was more like a “three gulper”. As soon as it was gone, Arnie was ready with another and Herbie was game. Except this time Herbie tried to swallow it feet first and the cricket stayed in Herbie's mouth with half his body including the front legs sticking out for a good 15 minutes. It is important to note that at this time Herbie was your run of the mill 1 ½ inch long goldfish and had now successfully consumed about 4 inches of cricket!
Herbie is now about 4” long and lives in his small murky bowl (Arnie seems to always be a bit behind on cleaning it and cricket refuse is really messy) but seems to have a permanent smile on his face. He can now consume 10 crickets in a single setting without so much as a burp.
Such are the forms of entertainment at Arnie’s place. If it weren’t for macro-brews it might be sort of a mundane existence, but Arnie has a way of making almost everything interesting.
But the other day I showed up to talk some fishing smack and imbibe in a few barley pops. After consuming a few I got the primordial urge to drain, and in spite of him insisting that it is no big deal to go on the newspaper, I always prefer to use the toilet. Even that is a challenge because if he has left the seat down (yes girls, when he does the big thing he leaves the seat down) it is always debatable whether I should actually risk lifting the seat since it is covered in things that I will simply describe as “green” or to leave it down and try to maintain a narrow, accurate aim.
I decided on the latter approach, which was taking my full concentration so I did not notice the new item in Arnie’s bathroom. In fact, when I finished and was wiping my hands on my pants (no towels are in this bathroom) I nearly jumped a foot, in other words really high up there for me, when I noticed that in the tub was a large bouquet of plastic flowers.
“Arnie, there is a big bouquet of plastic flowers in your tub!” I yelped, like I was providing him some essential news that he couldn’t possibly have known about.
“Yep” replied Arnie. “I got them from the neighbor after they didn’t sell them at their rummage sale”
“Err, OK” I replied. “Very nice. Is there a particular reason you put them in the tub?”
“Oh yeah. I put them there because I am working on becoming a Bassmaster!” he said.
“Huh?”
“Yep, I got the idea when I was looking at that fishin’ show on Public TV.”
“Huh?”
“Well, I noticed them guys are always casting next to “structure”, and lots of times they do it by bouncing the lure off of something like a log. So I figurred I’d set up an indoor course!”
“Huh?”
“Yep. I have been practicing a lot. Wanna see?”
“Huh? Well, sure”
“OK, watch this!” He grabbed a bass rod out of the corner of the living room where it resided with about 220 other rods, all slime and dried egg covered, and sat down in his “Barcolounger” (the webbed chase) and promptly flung a rubber worm covered ½ oz. green jig down the hallway where it bounced into the opening to the bathroom, whacked the mirror with alarming velocity and then sure enough landed in the tub right next to the plastic flowers.
Now I had to admit it was pretty impressive stuff. I walked into the bathroom to observe the actual landing spot when I noticed that the mirror was covered with hundreds of tiny “jig divots”. So were the hallway and the doorway. He had obviously been practicing for quite a while…
“Here, dude, you try it!” he ordered. I am not anything if not game, so I took my spot on the chase and flung the lure, attempting to follow the same line he had. Unfortunately, the rod tip hit the ceiling as I flung it forward, the lure bounced hard off the wall prior to even getting to the hallway and made a direct high velocity beeline path toward the of course already yelpin’ Earl. The jig lodged squarely in Earl’s butt and now he REALLY was complaining. As he charged me with murderous intent in his eyes the line came taut around Burt and the combination of one freight training dog and one stationary dog resulted in a fine hook set as the line snapped. Earl saved an extra dozen decibels or so in his yelp for that moment. And then Burt saw the flo green lure invitingly sticking out of Earl’s derriere and did exactly what one would expect this moronic hairball to do. He bit it.
And when he did, Earl and Burt became a twirling circle of one because, as it turned out, Burt’s tongue was then pierced by the end of the barbed lure that was already pierced through Earl’s butt!
The two dogs were yelping and yipping and flopping. Newspapers were flying, I managed to finish the history of the lounger by flattening the already busted frame due to my lightning quick move of avoidance of Earl trying to bite the hell out of me.
If that wasn’t enough, the dogs soon twirled into the TV stand, knocking not only it over, but also Herbie as well, who resides in his murky goldfish world atop the TV.
I managed to get to Herbie and pick his slimy little body up, then threw him in the kitchen sink and turned on the water. All the while the dogs were yelping like crazy and Earl continued to try to bite me while they were still stuck to the lure and each other.
Fortunately Arnie keeps his tackle box near his rods so I made the way over to it and found a pair of needle nose pliers.
As I got Burt to hold still enough to reach into his mouth – now both of them were biting me like crazy – I finally with bloody and crushed fingers pinched the exposed barb down enough to force the hook out – first out of Burt’s tongue. Burt then spun away from Earl and started biting me on my butt while I forced the hook out of Earl’s.
After a moment or two of kicking wild and crazed dogs off of me, I went back to Herbie’s bowl, refilled it, and put him back in it. He had been floundering like a spawner in shallow water the entire time, as there was no plug for the sink.
As I put the TV back on the block stand and Herbie on top, I came to the realization the while this entire event unfolded, Arnie had played absolutely no part in any of it.
I turned, looked at him, and saw him slowly grin at me and then he said one, and only one, word:
“Missed”
[ 08-10-2003, 07:22 PM: Message edited by: Hogmaster ]
Plastic Flowers in the tub
OceanBlue
Patrick McManus
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