#336

Longtime readers will have noticed that after the GREAT HY-AT-USS of 2020, the blog featured considerably fewer walks, which had once been main feature of the site. Man, 2020, though. I, who spent the twenny-teens smoking with pretty fair constancy, smoked triple my usual intake in 2020. If you might die anyway, right? Black Death Pub Moods. Boccaccio all arms folded, sighing--disapproving, yes, no doubt, but not without understanding. We were all smoking the brown paper Nat Shermans from the box, and I recently learned they stopped making them that very year; add that to the list of shit murdered by the SARS Deux. Getting bought by Marlboro is also bad for your chances of continuing to be a good product or releasing good products. I don't like to cast too many baseless aspersions, but the people who own Marlboro and make decisions at Marlboro may be sub-amphibious accretions of cellular waste product.

Anyhow, I walked home from school yesterday, as one of our cars--the one Ezra drives--was in the shop and we decided I would call off the bus job for the day and he'd drop me at adult school school on his way to kid school work. Schools...figure prominently in our lives, and this trend is set to increase. No idea how this happened; many of my younger selves would be positively aghast. Though if they're being honest with themselves, there's a tiny part of them in the back of their minds that knew it would always come to this one way or another.

Anyhow. It was quite a good walk for the most part, though my feet weren't in great shape about it and they formed some blisters, really mostly at the back of the ankle where the shoe regrettably meets bare flesh. Shouldn't have worn ankle socks. In terms of the front end of things, I stepped on a fallen branch with my left foot and the sharp end gashed my right ankle. That hurt pretty good, but I did not break step and the wound coagulated swiftly. Old marching trick? 

Finally, after I got home and was sitting playing Tears of the Kingdom, I felt an itchiness on my inner thigh and seemed to feel a flat roundness on my fingertip when I reached to scratch. Seeing nothing, I nevertheless stripped down, and found a tick tangled in the hairs of my scrotum, millimeters from plunging its beak into my ballsack. 

Into my ballsack, dear readers.

Let me tell you, it's true what they say--you can't kill a tick with just the strength in your fingers. They're apex-level threats. I drowned my would-be companion in a little jar of acid (vinegar), not without regret and admiration. They're so strong, their armor so powerful. If only they weren't wretched goddamn fucking parasites. 

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On a separate but not unrelated note, I've thought this a lot, for many years, but maybe I've never said it: if you are a person who hits possums with your car, through apathy or out of ill intent, I hope one day you too end up coughing blood and dying alone, in fear and great pain, by the side of the road, uncollected, unmourned, food for maggots and vultures. Seriously and honestly fuck you. Fuck you for killing possums, you shitfucking crapfaced vegetable-brained idiot motherfuckers. I hope your teeth and hands turn black and dissolve. May you shit great torrents of razorblades and lemon juice. Fuck you.

--JL