The Second Shortest Poem Ever Written (with apologies to the Champ)

Chuck.
Sucks!

Remember how I said last week that his f’ing Republican brakes were squealing and I was pretty sure that it was just one worn out shoe? Well, I was wrong. It was the brakes. All four of them. And all of all of them to boot. George said, when he got his grubbies in there, that we were about ten seconds from dead.

So there’s that.

Jeebers, though! They’d only started squealing on Tuesday – and maybe, yes, in a perfect world I would have brought Chuck (TFKT) into a service garage right off. But in a perfect world we would have money, and we don’t, so we waited until the weekend when our Good Friend George could get the parts for us at wholesale and do the work in our driveway at a just-between-friends rate.

Have I ever sung enough praises about Our Friend George? Could I ever sing enough praises about Our Good Friend George? Not only is he always here for us, but he’s always so soothing to the soul when he arrives. “Yeah, you were about ten seconds from dead,” he says, and the way he says it, all we think is: “Really? Gee.”

Johnny did not get paid on Friday, for reasons I will not get into here, so I had to dip into my secret stash of unclaimed cash to finance Chuck (TFET)’s surgery. The parts alone cost $130, and by the time we paid George for his time my emergency stockpile was wiped out. What can I say? It’s a pretty small cookie jar.

I’m speaking figuratively here, of course. I don’t literally keep hundreds of dollars in a cookie jar. Literally, I keep it in a piggy bank. And it’s not even really all that small.

It’s just usually really, really empty.

And now it’s really, really, really empty. Look:

So you can imagine my joy when I drove out to Worcester yesterday and the water pump exploded.

Okay fine, it did not literally explode. It just figuratively blew. And it’s not like I didn’t know that it was blowing. But – what with the echoing piggy bank, what with Johnny still waiting for last week’s paycheck, and what with the whole lightning-doesn’t-strike-twice theory – we really, really, really hoped it would hold on. And just look how well that strategy worked out for us!

I’m not going to hope for anything else, ever again. No, wait: I hope John McCain wins in November. There.

So I had a big crying fit and scared my Football Buddy just a little, then I kept the whole fiasco a secret from my folks (hi, folks!) because I didn’t want to ruin my father’s birthday party (Happy Birthday, Poppo!). We waited till everybody left, then we called AAA and sent TFBT home at the end of a rope. I wanted to tell the driver that when he arrived at the AssVac he could just come around the corner really fast and fling him right through the side of the house, but I didn’t think he’d take me up on that advice, so I didn't bother. Because he might think I had a screw loose somewhere, and we sure as shinola can't afford any more loosened screws -- as evidenced by the fact that I chose to ride the train back home instead of shotgunning it with the AAA guy.

You know what’s fun in 90-degree heat? Amtrak bathrooms.

And you know what makes for riveting reading on a four-hour commute (car, train, subway, bus, walk) that would have taken an hour and a half in TFAT? New York Times Sunday Magazine – the Architecture Issue.

Gag.

I read every f’ing word. Because staircases are just so four-hour fascinating.

The upside is, however, that I found the place we’ll move to when the inevitable happens and Cuntrywide (a typo, but I’m leaving it) finally wises up and claims the AssVac for its own:

It’s not pretty, but it is in Amsterdam.

Chuck...

Who?