June Sweeps - Day 508

Before I left for the cabin today, my thirteen year old nephew told me, "Take pictures of what we caught in the traps."  On Saturday, before I took him fishing, he went out and re-set and re-baited the four metal traps we have around the cabin, and put one of them up on the deck where we'd been painting, sure to catch a varmint in it, even though there hasn't been any poop on there since we started sanding and varnishing there.

I came to the cabin again this afternoon, getting a bit sleepy on the drive, but only once actually closing my eyes, then jerking awake, which isn't like losing a job or getting kicked in the gonads, but is still one of my least-favorite things.  

Three of the four traps had been sprung, and two of them contained ground squirrels.  Unfortunately, the one up on the deck had a lively one in it, and a pile of dung and puddle of pee beneath it, which had stained the wood rather unpleasantly.  I filled up a bucket with water and dumped it on the deck, then swept it over the side, and it literally took the top layer of varnish off with it.  I'm not sure how something like that can happen, but it did.

Rodent 1

Rodent 2

Why didn't my brother tell my nephew not to put a trap on the deck?  And as long as we're talking, why didn't I remember that dead mouse last year (and the disgusting clean-up it entailed), and tell the boy to leave the traps on the ground where they belonged?

Well, it doesn't matter now.  The only thing is, what do I do with the squirrels?  Last week and the week before, I let the captured animals go up by the lake, but my brother told me not to do that anymore, saying that they'll just go burrow in someone else's yard and crap on someone else's deck.  "Best thing to do is shoot 'em," my brother said.  And as I typed those words, I couldn't help but glance up on the cupboard where, behind the paper towels, I know he's left a rifle.

I haven't shot an animal in decades.  The last time I did it, I felt bad enough about it that I never went hunting again (granted, this was the kind of hunting where you kill something, look at it, then find something else to kill, not the kind where you're seeking food or even a trophy, but hey, why split hares?).  That was an intentional pun there.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In June: 2493

One of the last books I checked out from the library was "David Letterman: The Last King of Late Night" by Jason Zinoman.  It was a retrospective of Letterman's life and career, and included interviews with everyone from Letterman's ex-girlfriend to Steve Martin, from Letterman himself to NBC executives, childhood and college buddies, to Dave's mother.  Now, I am a huge Letterman fan, probably introduced to the show (in the early Eighties) by my uncle, so this book really spoke to me, especially the bits about Dave in college (getting fired from broadcasting jobs because of his irreverent attitude, deciding to move to L.A. to try to do television) and the early experiments with "Late Night."

If you're not a fan of the show (or the man) then I can't recommend the book, but it made me laugh and made me cry, and brought back memories I didn't know that I had, and made me feel nostalgic for who I was in those days watching Dave from 11:30 to 12:30 on weeknights (in the market where I grew up, Carson was on at 10:30, instead of 11:30, as he was in the majority of places).  

I finished the book with sadness, because the end of Dave's career was landmarked with less-pleasant stuff like his open-heart surgery, September 11th, his infidelity-with-staffers scandal and attempted blackmail about it, and finally being replaced in relevancy by the younger generation in the years before he retired.  The book was fairly long and quite comprehensive, but I could've done with another hundred pages.

Out of curiosity, I went to Amazon.com to see what else the writer had written (he wrote a similar book about Dave Chappelle, and an overview of the Horror/Slasher boom of the Seventies and Eighties . . . right up my alley), and then scrolled down to see what readers had had to say.  There were the usual reviews that basically sum up the book in the way that a librarian would, with absolutely no personal bias, and then there were, to my surprise, the five star reviews that embraced the book and the one star reviews that rejected it.  

I use the word surprising because the reviewers had gotten completely different impressions from the book: some said that Zinoman made Letterman out to be a broadcasting genius and some kind of cultural prophet, and some said that Zinoman had done a hatchet job on Letterman and clearly didn't like him so they kept shining light on his flaws, in an effort to discredit him.*

I don't think you can do both.  But maybe you can.**

Now, none of this has anything to do with me.  I've never been to New York and I'm not a celebrity (or a success in any way).  But I kept finding parallels in my own life, however tenuous, and now I'm here at the cabin, with plenty of time to blog, and I thought, "I've blogged over five hundred days in a row, written the same number of days, and it's all about to end . . . kind of like when Letterman announced he was retiring."  More specifically, when he announced it was time for him to retire.

Not a lot of people read this blog.  And I can't blame them.  Who am I, really?  And what interesting stuff have I got to share, day to day?  Nobody and not a lot, respectively.

But every person is somebody, with fascinating stories . . . because PEOPLE are interesting, both in the way that they are different from ourselves, and in the way that they're just like us.

I think I'm going to go for a walk now.  After all, I have 140 words, and that's pretty good.  More than I usually do at this point on a cabin trip.

Push-ups Today: 188
Push-ups In June: 2798

When we left here on Saturday, my sister and my mom had gathered together a crazy amount of trash to be disposed of, while the men (and me) varnished the railing (no, that's not a euphemism, though I do have a little experience with "varnishing the railing" myself).  The problem was, the sheer volume of garbage was more than any of us could carry home in our three vehicles, so it was all piled up underneath the deck, and left here (I didn't know this because I had taken the three boys fishing by this point).

So, I was instructed to take my dad's old truck up here instead of my trusty little Toyota, and pack up all the garbage into the truck's bed.  I have to admit that, after an hour or so of driving, my foot no longer wanted to press down on the truck's gas, and I missed Cruise Control more than I ever have in my life.

I went for a walk a couple of hours before sunset, planning to record an Outcast episode, mostly about being a failure and wondering when I should pack it all in.  I got out of the truck, and the wind was blowing so hard, I knew I wouldn't be able to record a thing.

But I wanted to go on my walk regardless, especially since it had gotten so cloudy I didn't think I'd be able to see the sunset tonight, and before I'd even walked a quarter of a mile, it started to rain.  I didn't know if it would be a hard rain or a soft one, but it was cold, so I ducked under some pine trees a little ways from the shore.  I had brought my recorder, so I figured, "Why not record that episode anyway, just from here, standing still instead of on a walk?"

And I started there recorder going . . . and the whole thing shut off.  I don't know what was wrong with the battery, but it did it to me a second time.  Because I had brought my dad's truck, I didn't have any emergency batteries I could use (in my car, the Double-A batteries are in the little slot in the rear driver's side door where you can put a soda can, if you're ever in need of some), so I did the only thing I could think of to do: I recorded the episode using the Voice Memo function of my phone.

The sound quality will be pretty poor, but hey, have you ever listened to the Rish Outcast?  It falls below the quality of the podcast those on the International Space Station record every month.  However, it is better than Corey Doctorow's podcast quality**, so there's that.

Every single day I type "sit-ups today" and "words today" and it's gotten really old.  If I were smart, I'd just copy and paste those six lines in a template for every post.  Of course, I'd have to know how to do that.

Words Today: 564
Words In June: 18,664

*One review complained that the book went on and on about how what an angry and bitter person Letterman is (and except for NBC not giving him "The Tonight Show," I never saw that), and it reminded me of a book I always see at the thrift store, called "The Roots of Obama's Rage."  And I never really understand that.  Obama was the most laid-back, easy-going president of my lifetime.  I mean, he made Jimmy Carter looked like a fudgin' Dragonball-Z character.

**I keep writing these "Lara and the Witch" stories, and constantly vacillate between depicting Lara Demming as a flawed, average girl (with slightly below-average intelligence) and seeing her as a glorious, beautiful, thoroughly decent person who shines brightly in the darkness around her.  And I'm no expert, but I think maybe you can be both . . . just like, for the last twenty years, I have been both skinny and fat.

***From fifteen years ago, mind you.  Man, I got old real quick.