Having said all of that, I feel as though I am coming to the end of a long stint of unfettered political ranting. I must do that every so often, or I start abusing the cat and taking shots at the neighbors; very ugly.
But all this cranial spume detracts from other tasks--like writing the next episode of Theophany, for one thing, and the ongoing operations at Peapod for another. Peapod is the little house where I live, and I am slowly removing from it all signs of its former owners, one of whom was a big drunken biker-type nicknamed "Bucky" who has left slip-shod traces of himself throughout the structure.
Hey, look! Someone fished telephone wires through the wall by kicking out the bottom eight inches of sheetrock and paneling over it! Bucky was here. Look! There's a big hole in the bedroom wall about the size of a head, with a little fist-sized one next to it! Bucky was here. Ah! There's a body-sized piece of wallboard missing from the stairwell wall, hidden behind still more paneling! Bucky was here. Huzzah! The upstairs room is walled with roof sheathing instead of wallboard! Bucky was here. Every window frame in the place is rotting and leaks cold air like a 60s-vintage VW minibus! Bucky was here. Wow! The moldings have been torn off of this doorframe, and never replaced! Bucky...was...here. And on, and on, and on. If I ever meet the guy I'm going to tell him that I found the half of his ass that he left when he moved, and that he should take it back.
The plus side of it is that when we're done, it will be a new dwelling, very much ours, and imbued with the satisfaction of a full-assed job well done.
Tomorrow: the frightening tales of the Bedroom Door and the Hallway Of Spackle.
