Subject: weekend update

Date: 23 Feb 1998 00:00:00 GMT

From: snorts@noodle.com (RevLurch)

Reply-To: ah, fuck it

Organization: or lack of same

Newsgroups: alt.foot.fat-free

Another nasty looking morning (weather-wise) here in the south. Woke

up to news reports of trailers being tossed around like ten-pins and

lotsa people kilt in central Fla., and I had been sort of expecting

something of the sort, because around here last night we had such

severe, door-jamb rattling thunder and impressive, sustained periods

of artificial electrical daylight that both of our still-extant dogs

tried to crawl into bed with us, even though I'm sure they knew full

well what they were risking by waking up my grouchy ass. They caught a

break this time. I let them stay. Pussies. Anyway. Seems odd to me

that no one is too upset that we are having summer weather in

February, at least unless it actually knocks something down and

smushes somebody, but hell, nothing we can do about what's causing it,

so I guess we MIGHT as WELL keep jerking off about El Nino.

Not much went on here this weekend. Saturday the wife wanted to do

something in town, and had the brilliant idea to go have some lunch

and go to the Botanical Gardens (or BO-tannikal Gardens, as they are

known locally). Well, the lunch idea was okay. We went to this new

little hole in the wall place where they have New Orleans type crap,

and I had some Creole shrimp stuff that was supposed to be hot as hell

but wasn't really hot at all, so I had to send the waitress shagging

for everything in bottles that was red, and after a few dozen shots of

this and that it was suitably semi-lethal and lip-numbing. Wife got

some shrimp, too (but she doesn't like them hot) and a Ceasar salad

that weren't really a Ceasar salad because the owners of the place

(like just about all restauranteers) are skeered of putting raw egg on

anything anymore because of the one in ten million gillion chance that

someone will get salmonella and hire a shyster and leave them without

a spare pair of shorts.

Anyway. It didn't dawn on me until we got the the gardens that is was

still wintertime, and I grumbled a bit about forking over six bucks

apiece to look at a lot of plant labels on sticks with no plants

behind them, but the wife insisted there was plenty to see in the

conservatory, where they had a buncha cactus and orchids and even some

traveling carnivorous plants display featuring stuff like the

endangered Botswannian Mouse-Swallowing Krokus and the Manure Bog

Horsefly Trumpet and extremely rare Flatulent Goose Cabbages. "Them

things stink to high heaven." I said. "They all fulla rotten bugs."

She said: "I bet they don't. Anyway, who cares." So I said: "yah,

yah, yah, okay," like I always do, and forked over the 12 bucks.

Anyway, the conservatory WAS pretty nice. There was a lot of tropical

plants, eight zillion kinds of orchids, and a lot of rain forest

birds flying around loose, chattering and crapping on people. One of

them was one of those rare Hawaiiaan birds with the bent beak for bent

flower sucking, and I recognized another as a Royal Starling (african

black bird with a phosphorescent red butt) from some PBS program I had

suffered through, but there was no one around to tell me what the

others were. I know. I looked.

Anyway. We looked at the stuff for what was about five bucks worth of

time, I guess, then moved onto the cactus room, which wasn't muggy

like the one we left. Only interesting thing in there was some African

spiky thing that lives somewhere where the only critters available to

do pollinating are flies, so when it needs it's spew moved around it

produces chemicals (sort of like putrescene and cadavarine, I think)

that duplicate the smell of rotting meat. Said on the little card that

in the spring it fills the entire place with an absolutely nauseating

stench for the better part of two weeks, and we were both terribily

disappointed that bad timing had precluded our having a chance to

verify this.

We checked out all the carnivorous plants next, in a room where these

misting nozzles were constantly going off and doing hilarious things

to the hair of some fellow plant enthusiasts, but I was semi-bummed to

find out the various pitchers and scoops were bereft of decomposing

insect parts. Apparently they feed them with some sort of inoffensive

solution, and they didn't smell at all, just like the wife said they

wouldn't. We tried to spend about a dollar's worth of time looking at

them (some of them were huge and had pitchers you could have hidden a

beer can in), talked about how we'd like to get some of them and put

them in the bog back behind the pond and stink that place up good,

then blew it off and went home.

Sunday we did nothing much. Wife went off with her sister, and I

cleaned up the house a little and farted around on the computer. She

got home around three. We had an appointment at five in town with two

women (leasing reps for a shopping mall chain) who were attending a

conference at the Hyatt. So we drove into the city (takes an hour)

through a horrendous rainstorm to sit down for exactly 15 minutes and

accomplish absolutely nothing that couldn't have been handled in the

same amount of time on the phone. Ah well. At least they were both

fine examples of sort of decorative front-office fixturing that retail

industry bigwigs almost always fill their people-facing personnel

positions with. The little blond was especially distracting, but for

the sake of nothing but brevity, I'll spare those reading this one of

my typically snouty descriptions of her attire and assets, except to

say that that was one of them, and ette would be an innappropriate

suffix.

Anyway. That was about it. Or at least all that is fit for dispersal.

Har. As if the rest was. Anyway, it's already done, and I never

underestimate the importance of that. So here it is. Or there it was.

I din't check it for typos. If there are any in it, I left 'em on

purpose for comic effect. hornk.

anyway. That's it

lurch