Neanderpundit

When you have the right word on the tip of your tongue?
Worse even when you’re dealing with another language.

The truck I was following had a back brake dragging, and as I pulled alongside I watched it burst into actual flames. I honked and the driver rolled down his window.

“You’re on fire!”
“Que?”
“Fire! Fire!”

He smiles and mimes a gun pointed at his cab ceiling- “Bang Bang!”

I’m temporarily at a loss because I can’t remember the Spanish for Fire. “Mucho caliente!” I holler and he mimes wiping his brow. “Si!”

Oy. Finally it comes to me. “Fuego! Fuego!” I point to the back of his truck. he looks in the rearview and screams- his left back is engulfed. He parks the truck and runs to the back with a fire extinguisher the size of a beercan. A cop is pulling up behind him, and the light changes, so I move on. I never did find out what happened but on my way back there wasn’t a big flaming truck, so I assume he got it out.

Summer has come to the Midwest. Jean Sheperd accurately described it as a 500 lb woman on a camp stool; moist and oppressive. I thank the Lord for the work of Mr Carrier, and the men who bring the oil and coal and uranium out of the ground so we can enjoy that cool.

So long as we can, we should be enjoying it.

Chain was used commonly for several reasons: it could be repaired in the field if need be, it was easy to use repair links to make two small chains into one large chain, and if the load let loose, the chain snaps but the individual links bang against one another absorbing a good deal of the stored energy. It can still whip, but will do so less than a wire rope, which if it snaps, is a serious weapon. A poly rope is as well, but it is less likely to murder and more likely to maim.

I’ve been dragging some really impressively sized wood up the hill in the backyard with a combination of chain (to cinch the load) and rope (to attach to the tractor). I await the day the rope snaps and smacks me in the back of the head. it cannot be far off. So I need to beg, buy, borrow some more chains.

meanwhile Father’s day was full of fire, fireworks, food, family, fun, and orphaned rodentia. I did a good deal of the cooking and subsequently didn’t eat very much, but what I did eat included some awesome black forest bacon.

And I dreamed of going to the Stan as a contractor. US servicemen were being rotated out and they were all smuggling home spider eggs in their kit. The effort required to find all this shit and decontaminate it was intense, and they got me to go in and find out the whys and wherefores.

Turns out, the service guys were so homesick for good old American fast food they had hit on these big ass spiders- the bodies about 6″ long and the legspan a couple feet- that had abdomens that were pale tan with spots that looked very much like sesame seeds. they called them Asperger’s spiders. This is the kind of shit I get for reading Allie Brosh
So they were grilling them and eating them. And they had developed such a hankering for them a couple of them wanted to farm and eat them back home.

I shuddered with the creepiness of it all. And no, I didn’t eat one. I woke up waving around saying “keep that creepy shit away from me”. Fortunately the Ogwife can sleep through nuclear holocaust, so I got up, hit my morning constitutional, and tried to forget. I didn’t, of course, and now I’m sharing with you.

Dad, G-d rest his soul, would have been 85 this year. He never got to meet the Ogwife, or the Oglet, but I like to think he’s watching. Thanks, Dad.