Whackin' it

What better way to celebrate our country's independence from those limey bastards some 231 years ago than at Home Depot.

That's where I found myself today. And too my surprise, I wasn't the only dude with a honey-do list. There were plenty of other schmucks with long faces pacing the orange shelves and lacquered concrete paths looking for everything from PVC, to new throne seats (toilet seats to those of you who don't see it as the best seat in the house), to redwood 2-by-4s for those backyard child cells that are popular among first-time parents (lucky for Wife and I, we have a tool shed in the back-40, so when the freeloader decides brussels sprouts in wet dog food tastes like the ass-end of a cat and chucks his/her food back at mommy/daddy we can lock the runt up with the harmful pesticides and the dogs' pooper scooper).

For me, the trek to the work store - that's what me and the ol' man call it because inevitably it leads us to folding our bodies into impossible positions as we grunt and curse and sweat over/under/around what we just bought at said store - led me to purchase my fourth - that's right 4, four, cuatro, quattro - weed whacker in five years. I talked with my hillbilly buddy from Montana who is a manager at a hardware supply store in Butte and he pointed me in the direction of an Echo. Like all salesman, Hillbilly directed me toward the wallet-buster model when I'd be happy with price-reduced model that would crumble in my arms after whacking through a half-dozen dandelions. But maybe that's why I've had four of these suckers already.

I've mentioned before that I have shitty luck with things involving gas, spark plugs and my back yard. And it's taken me a good four months to break down and replace my dead Ryobi whacker. Since I try not to enter the work store, and only do so under protest, I typically wait until the project list is longer than my pecker. So, with our screen door hanging on by a screw and a prayer, I finally sulked into the work store today and figured while there I may as well grab a new whacker that will bite the dust two days after the warranty expires, just like the other tools in my cursed shed. I mean, that little shed must be cursed if I'm going through weed whackers like a stripper goes through pink thongs.

So watch out ants, crickets, ferral cats, javelinas, coyotes, elephants and anything else living in the tangle of grass and weeds holing up next to my chimney and beneath our back windows. There's a new sheriff in town and I plan to weed whack your asses back into the stone age.

And as Thomas Jefferson said in his bitch-out blog post (the Declaration of Independence) to the those limey bastard in 1776: "We have the right to be free - Free of mangy grass, weed and varmints that may very well hinder our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness." That Tommy, he was one hell of a blogger.

Happy 4th, folks.