Syllabus #96

Shortly after this post is scheduled to go live, I should be receiving my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.  In between doses, I've been using a dental dam when I lick subway poles, but after tomorrow all bets are off, baby!

In other news, Charlie met a marsupial this week.  It was a big deal.  

I let Charlie out to pee in our fully-fenced postage stamp of a backyard every morning around 6.  I just open the door and let him do his thing.  Reliably, he pops a squat and runs back inside for his breakfast.  Thursday, I open the door and my dude bursts out like he was fired from a cannon, barking and snarling at something.

I go out there in my bathrobe and slippers, ready to tell Charlie to pipe the hell down about a load of nothing, when I see it.  Charlie and the possum.  Circling one another like an interspecies cock fight that people would pay good money not to watch.  The possum bearing its fangs and hissing.  Charlie growling like someone just peed in is kibble.  

Charlie lunges at the possum and gets his mouth on it for a brief, horrifying moment, but then the sucker squirms free.  I'm just standing on the back step, ineffectively saying "Charlie, leave it.  Leave it.  Charlie, leave it the fuck alone," in an exaggerated stage whisper.  I'm not about to insert myself in this conflict, for fear the possum and/or Charlie would bite me and I'd end up on the news as a "look at this redneck" sort of human interest piece.  East Nashville woman dressed in nothing but bathrobe attacked by own dog and random possum, being treated for rabies and puncture wounds.  And people would be like, East Nashville, yea that checks out.  

So Charlie backs the possum into a corner.  I grab the lid from a storage tub and drop it between Charlie and the marsupial intruder, then grab the dog by the collar and drag him inside.  An hour later, the possum is still just chilling in his makeshift lean-to between the lid and the fence.  

I thought that sumbitch was going to claim adverse possession of my yard, unpack his banjo and his call all his buddies to start a jug band, but shortly thereafter he took off and we haven't seen him since.  A real anticlimax, but such is life.

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Well add this to the list of things Joe Biden and I have in common:  We love trains, we make people uncomfortable sometimes a lot of the time, and we have problematic shelter dogs.

Oprah and Terry Gross should face off for the title of World Champion Interviewer.  Both of those queens could extract a compelling narrative from anyone, even that guy in the office who is so nondescript he makes everyone secretly Google "do I have face blindness" because they can never remember meeting him.

"You need to worry more about the right thing because your reputation is what everybody thinks they know about you, but your integrity is what you know about yourself."  Wow, some version of that is exactly what I say to kids who complain that little Chad said something fucked up about them or little Karen told the teacher they did some bullshit that never actually happened.  I feel validated.  

What would you tell your March 2020 self?  I'd tell her that she's about to experience the cruel irony that she will stop wearing makeup because she has nowhere to go/makeup under a mask is gross, and thus her skin will look better than it has since she was 12 years old, but for all the same reasons, no one will ever know.

Cocaine is a hell of a drug. See also:  Cokey the Bear says only you can make the forest lit AF.

Hate Watching:

Marriage or Mortgage on Netflix.  Oh god I just hated it so much.  I hated every goddamn thing about it.  I hated the people and what it says about our society.  Honestly, we only watched it to see the Nashville real estate.  It was like a bastardization of Love It or List It, only instead of renovating your current home or moving elsewhere, the choices are, "Hello there, grown adult engaged couple.  Would you like to blow your life savings on one frivolous party and have nothing to show for it but photographs, or would you like to invest in your future and have shelter which is a literal requirement for staying alive?"  And those pricks chose the party!

We watched one ~40 minute episode Friday night and it took over an hour for us to finish it because we kept pausing and SCREAMING at these insufferable fucking morons.  

Analog Reading:

Finished Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo.  She's not wrong!  About any of it!

Just starting Memorial by Bryan Washington and Winter Pasture by Li Juan.