Michael Kindt's Blog, page 104

So Pat Mental of Mental Melons gave me some free cantaloupes today because their webbing "left something to be desired."

The above sentence is absolutely perfect and absolutely true.

Cantaloupe webbing gives the fruit a rough surface and is a good sign. Smoothness in a cantaloupe is a sign of prolonged immaturity, which is kind of weird because the exact opposite is true of humans. I once had a friend who had a smooth cantaloupe. He listened to rap, played video games, and even watched Cartoon Network, all while being in his late 30s. At the insistence of his wife, he went to a clinic and had the smooth cantaloupe removed. Almost overnight, he became a normal person.

Pat Mental is a lunatic, which is par for the course among melon farmers. You out there in internet land probably don’t know any melon farmers, but in my line of work (I’m a writer), I know several. They’re all wackier than spring-loaded baskets full of rubber transmission fluid. It takes a special kind of crazy to be a melon farmer, let me tell you.

Pat is the wackiest of all the melon farmers I know, so he is my favorite. He’s in his mid-50s, has an 80 year old wife he calls “Grandmaw”, and dies his hair end-of-the-word black with Just For Men. Pat only talks about four things: melons, pheasant hunting, Supertramp, and  more melons.

As the owner and operator of Mental Melons, Pat talking melons is no big surprise. Melons are his life.

“Melons are my life,” says Pat often.

He will go on and on about how there’s too much rain or not enough rain. Melon farmers need a perfect, ever elusive among of rain. They like it hot, too. This summer has been cool and rainy and Pat has bitched and bitched about it.

“Where’s this goddamn global warming they’re always talking about?”

“It’s called climate change now, Pat,” I informed him.

“Oh, well, that’s just about a meaningless phrase, ain’t it? Come December and we’ll have quite a changed climate, won’t we?”

“I suppose so, Pat.”

“Climate change,” Pat snorted. “That’s like saying the day/night cycle is caused by the planet spinning on its axis.”

“It is caused by that, Pat.”

“Exactly!”

I look forward to Pat showing up with a load. I don’t look forward to doing any work, mind you, but I do look forward to listening Pat. That’s the real problem with melon farmers: they have a lot of melons, and they need to be unloaded. Pat will get in there, though, right in the middle of his melons and work like a son of a bitch, mid-50s and all. Me, I try to do as little as possible. Actually, I’m not being fair to myself. I try to do as much as I can while still keeping my hands in my pockets. After all, I have melons of my own that need to be “unloaded”, if you know what I mean.

While he works amid the melons, Pat always sings Supertramp: “When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical…”

In the melon truck it’s always hot, no matter the climate change outside. It’s hot and stuffy and the aroma of melons will actually get you kind of high, so intense is it. You’ve probably never seen, much less smelled a pile of 1,000 Woonsocket muskmelon, but it is not exactly pleasant. Your head swoons, your vision blurs, and that’s a terrifying number of melons. They never look quite stable, either, so you worry about avalanches. You worry about Pat. Will you have to take your hands out of your pockets and dig him out?

“Won’t you pleeeease, please tell me what we’ve learned,” Pat sings away. “I know it sounds absurd…”

The light is dim in the melon truck, coming only from the open door, and since Pat is always late, it’s always late afternoon, early evening when we’re doing this. Today’s delivery, for example, was supposed to be here noon yesterday. Thirty hours off is actually pretty decent for Pat.

Invariably, when the melons are all unloaded and squared away, and the bill is settled and filed away, Pat will try and get me to “come out East River and do some pheasant hunting.”

“I don’t hunt, Pat. I’ve told you a dozen times.”

“It’ll be fun. Me and Grandmaw will pick up the house. You can stay with us. Why pay twenty bucks for a motel room?”

“Motel rooms are only twenty bucks?”

“Well, it is Woonsocket, South Dakota. Come on, I’ll bring the whiskey.”

“Pat, I don’t hunt.”

“I thought you owned a shotgun? Didn’t you tell me one time you owned a shotgun?”

“I own two of them, but they aren’t for animals.” I winked at him.

Pat’s eyes twinkled. “I hear that. Well, next time around.”

“Next time around, Pat.”

Maybe we’re all a little crazy, but ain’t it nice to have company?

One of the weird things about life is money

When I made $12,000 a year, that wasn’t enough. I was always scrimping and saving, trying to make rent.

Later, I made $20,000 a year. And, yep, I was scrimping and saving, trying to make a different, higher rent.

A friend of mine owns his own house and makes almost $70,000 a year. And guess what? He doesn’t have quite enough money.

How is it that $12,000 a year is not enough, but neither is $20,000 or $70,000?

We always bitch about the “economy” and how everything is so “expensive” now.

Are you sure we’re not just a bunch of dipshits?

Northern Black Hills, August 2015.This storm didn’t...

Northern Black Hills, August 2015.

This storm didn’t produce any tornadoes, but it sure as shit looked like it was gonna.

Other interesting things in the Code of Hammurabi:

Slavery. If you were a slave, your master was required to provide food, shelter, and clothing, and fairly decent food, clothing, and shelter, to boot. He couldn’t just stick you out in a shed with a single potato and a bag around your body.

As a slave, you had the right to hold a job on the side and earn money. You could acquire your own property (including slaves of your own!). If you saved enough, you could buy your title (slaves had titles, much like cars), and set yourself free.

These were privately owned slaves, however. If you were a foreign soldier captured in battle against Babylon, you were pretty much fucked. You were a slave of the government and they were going to delightfully work your ass to death.

Do not take up arms against Babylon!

I just read the Code of Hammurabi.

The punishment for just about everything was death. The Babylonians did not fuck around with your criminal ass. Haha.

The code also contains a minimum wage law, which is very cool. Over 3,500 hundred years ago and there was a minimum wage. Guess what happened if you didn’t pay it?

They fucking killed your ass.

Babylon \M/

ceeesaw said about ORDINATION: i’m looking to get ordained to marry done friends in december –...

ceeesaw said about ORDINATION: i’m looking to get ordained to marry done friends in december – what church did you go with?

+++++

^ those are crosses, get it?

I went with American Fellowship Church. The only requirement for ordination is a desire to be ordained and a small fee. I have renewed 3 times now and have been asked to marry someone probably an equal amount. I always refuse, knowing my ordination is sham. I don’t know. Once the rubber meets the road, I get skittish. I guess I still have a lingering 1950s respect for marriage.

It’s totally a hoot going around ordained, though (as long as I don’t have to do anything actually religious–which I can’t in good conscience do).

:)

Howlin’ Pelle marries a couple, Mia and Stephan, this past...

Howlin’ Pelle marries a couple, Mia and Stephan, this past weekend in Stockholm probably. Apparently, like me, he is an ordained minister.

Howlin’ Pelle is the singer of the second greatest rock and roll band to ever come out of Sweden, the Hives. The greatest is ABBA, but a very good argument could be made that ABBA is not rock and roll at all.

Whatever. I’m going by numbers and personal preference here. I love ABBA. If you wanna see me dance, put Fernando on and get the hell out of the way. If you wanna see me grit my teeth, ball my fists, and smash out a window, put the Hives on. Either way I’m good.

Sweden: something for every mood.

The Hives’ biggest hit, back in the single digit days of the 21st Century, if’n yer interested. Pure rock and roll: CLICK 

"We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each..."

“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”

- Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Pot can cure cancer, diabetus, and retard the aging process to the point where you're actually going backwards in time as you smoke it.

It can give you back your appetite, your lust for life, and your reason for being.

It can cure depression, repression, compression, and oppression, all in one bowl.

Are you sexually dysfunctional? Smoke enough pot and you won’t give two shits. I know I didn’t.

If you smoke pot, you will become the healthiest, most well-adjusted person on the planet.

Who cares where your keys are. You don’t have to go and do anything anyway because, duh, you’re a fucking pothead.

Somebody order a pizza and put in the Star Trek DVD. 

This is fucking medicinal!

Bob has 36 candy bars.

He eats 28.

What does he have now?

Answer: a weight problem he blames on the media for forcing him to eat those 28 candy bars.

‘Murica.