Daily Archives: September 9, 2011

A few extra observations for the weekend, because I’m getting paid by the pithy comment. (Go ahead and laugh. Eating fresh grass cuttings and bowls of hot bluejean soup on the front porch of a refrigerator box builds character.)

Firstly, I’m an involuntary teetotaler: I can’t drink, but I’m fascinated by many of the aspects of the history and production of wine and spirits. This scares my family at times, as the filthiest four-letter words that could ever be uttered within range of a Riddell for the last 500 years are “last call”. It really scares my youngest brother, as his appreciation for and consumption of various forms of alcohol is generally exceeded only by the likes of Keith Richards. A few years back, he and I got into a conversation about whether sherry or port barrels should be used for scotch whisky aging, and I thought he was going to have a seizure when he realized I knew more about the meaning behind the term “the angel’s share” than he did. All I know was that milk came out his nose when he choked, and it was 20-year single-malt before it spewed out his nostrils. It should also be noted that I was wearing this shirt at the time, so I caused more damage to the lad than I’d considered.

It’s with that boy-in-the-plastic-bubble attitude that I peruse the commentary of Dr. Vino, and I discovered that he and I have common ground after all. Namely, to deal with the winter doldroms in Chicago, he’s become an enthusiast of moss gardens in rose bottles. I have only two things to add: number one, I’m going to have to do a post on purchased and constructed terrarium tools just for this sort of circumstance, because I know exactly how to fix his schmutz problem. Number two, when I do this, I prefer Jack Daniels bottles for one good reason: they’re square, so they can be set on their sides without worrying about their rolling. Other than that, we’ll have him growing merlot cuttings before you know it.

And the other installment involves the never-ending garden gnome/garden flamingo war, which now involves the police. Specifically, we now have garden gnomes in police custody for their own protection. Custody for their own protection, instead of cries of “KILL IT WITH FIRE!” as sane individuals are wont to do. I mean, c’mon. We have mooning gnomes. We have zombie gnomes. We have gnomes with guns. When are we going to back off and let the flamingos fight this out with saturation nuclear bombardment, before the gnomes get us all?