So Long, Sea Monkeys!
Shh.
Listen. Can you hear it?
“Ding-dong the shit is gone
Which old shit?
Mye neighbors shit
Ding-dong the neighbor’s shit is gone!”
The planets must have been in perfect alignment, or something just as significant has transpired in the cosmos to because the colony of sea-monkeys that live next door finally saw fit to clean up all the shit that has accumulated in their front yard for the past three years and move.
Seriously, it has been like living next to Samford & Son.
And when I say “clean”, I mean they dragged a broken ass rake across the what little remnants of a lawn they have left and collected it all in a few Glad bags and then dragged it to the curb.
Hey, it’s a start!
Within this huge pile of crap they mounded up on the street curb is only about a years worth of dog shit, tattered blankets and tarpaulins, scrap wood, segments of leaky garden hose, broken action figures, rusted bicycle frames, wobbly shopping carts, loose chicken wire, long since deflated basketballs, as well as every other piece of broken, useless shit your mind can conjure up.
The other neighbors were so absolutely ecstatic they were practically dancing in the street. Yep, there was a spontaneous dance celebration to rival the Sharks vs. the Jets. Hell, I can still here them singing their glorious Negro spirituals from the rooftops now.
These sea-monkeys you sea, have been the Bain of all our existences since the time they moved in three summers ago. I know now how Amanda and Hubert Peterson felt when the Addams family moved in next door, or when the Gruesome’s moved in besides the Flintstones…you get the idea. They are the oddest assortment of stinky, plaid-clad trailer trash that one could ever hope to avoid, much less, have live beside them. The smell alone that has permeated the neighborhood from their yard over the last few months has often been enough to warrant a NATO inspection. Nothing buried in the Iraqi desert would ever rival what you might have stumbled across in their yard only a few days ago – believe you me!
Lets look at this cast of carnival freaks for a moment shall we?
Firstly, there is the “head of the household”, Bob.
Bob wears the exact same t-shirt, stained jeans and backwards baseball cap covering up his lobotomy haircut every day; ever the fashion plate if I do say so. For whatever reason, Bob feels the intrinsic need to bring home anything that’s either not chained down or so badly broken that nobody else in his or her right fucking mind would ever want it. It’s like his yard has become a nest that he’s attempting to feather with scrap metal and broken appliances. And it’s not like he can even claim that he broke the stuff himself – it all came home that way and immediately occupied a position of honor on his front lawn to waste away into rust or mould.
I’ve seen clinical pack rats with more discretion than this moron. The guy is total crazypants!
Bob also has a strange habit of beginning tasks that could be considered as something of a “home renovation” nature except that he never finishes them and ultimately just abandons these projects in various stages of incompletion. My favorite is the dilapidated craptacular “dog house” that you could shoot a rifle at and have the bullet pass directly through without ever hitting anything. Now it just stands there like some twisted early contemporary 21st Century lawn ornament.
Bob Vila this guy is not!
Then there’s Hogzilla, his wife (I don’t know her name). Together they have the combined social grace of a box of hamsters.
She never leaves the house, but we know she’s always there based on the tremors we feel rippling through the earth each time she struggles off the couch to the kitchen and back to fetch herself another box of donuts. It’s true, she makes the mother in ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ seem like Farah Fawcett in the movie ’10’.
Every now and again, she will venture out on the front porch to gaze across the ‘ol ranch stead. Of course, she doesn’t venture very far since the porch would likely collapse from the sheer weight of her girth if she ever took more than 2 steps out on it. Instead, she prefers to open the front door, lob the day’s garbage out into the yard and then retire back inside to her Jerry Springer and industrial-sized bags of Oreos.
Last and least, is their devil spawn of a child – Brandon.
Brandon is the quintessential “Problem Child” and about as bright as a sack of rocks. In three years, I have never been known anything other than “Mr. Man”, despite several attempts of getting him to learn my name. Not that I ever have much to do with the kid communication-wise, but who likes being continually referred to as Mr. Man?
I know it’s terrible that I speak about a child in this manner, but after three years, any sympathy or patience I have had for him has been squashed out of existence. I avoid the kid now like I avoid trips to the dentist. In fact, the whole neighborhood seems to avoid him. Whenever the kid is outside, neighbors will avoid walking out to their cars or leave their porches for fear the kid will accost them with endless questions. Whenever one person makes the inevitable bid to leave their porch, the rest of us will seize the opportunity to commando roll out to their own cars and pull away while Brandon is occupied.
So it was a very happy day indeed when we watched the family wagon pull away for the last time. So much so, that it was a few hours before anyone ever officially recognized the fact; no doubt suspicious that it was all an elaborate ruse and they would return at any moment much to our disappointment.
But alas, it was true. The Sea Monkeys are at last gone.
No more random bits of broken garbage to marvel at in the mornings, so more stench of fetid body odor and rotting dog shit, no more screams of “Brandon, git yer lazy ass outside!” in the evenings, no more loud domestic disputes to rival the Nazi Party rallies in pre-war Germany, no more middle of the night visits by the local constabulary.
Nope, it’s absolutely blissful.
Hallelujah!
Listen. Can you hear it?
“Ding-dong the shit is gone
Which old shit?
Mye neighbors shit
Ding-dong the neighbor’s shit is gone!”
The planets must have been in perfect alignment, or something just as significant has transpired in the cosmos to because the colony of sea-monkeys that live next door finally saw fit to clean up all the shit that has accumulated in their front yard for the past three years and move.
Seriously, it has been like living next to Samford & Son.
And when I say “clean”, I mean they dragged a broken ass rake across the what little remnants of a lawn they have left and collected it all in a few Glad bags and then dragged it to the curb.
Hey, it’s a start!
Within this huge pile of crap they mounded up on the street curb is only about a years worth of dog shit, tattered blankets and tarpaulins, scrap wood, segments of leaky garden hose, broken action figures, rusted bicycle frames, wobbly shopping carts, loose chicken wire, long since deflated basketballs, as well as every other piece of broken, useless shit your mind can conjure up.
The other neighbors were so absolutely ecstatic they were practically dancing in the street. Yep, there was a spontaneous dance celebration to rival the Sharks vs. the Jets. Hell, I can still here them singing their glorious Negro spirituals from the rooftops now.
These sea-monkeys you sea, have been the Bain of all our existences since the time they moved in three summers ago. I know now how Amanda and Hubert Peterson felt when the Addams family moved in next door, or when the Gruesome’s moved in besides the Flintstones…you get the idea. They are the oddest assortment of stinky, plaid-clad trailer trash that one could ever hope to avoid, much less, have live beside them. The smell alone that has permeated the neighborhood from their yard over the last few months has often been enough to warrant a NATO inspection. Nothing buried in the Iraqi desert would ever rival what you might have stumbled across in their yard only a few days ago – believe you me!
Lets look at this cast of carnival freaks for a moment shall we?
Firstly, there is the “head of the household”, Bob.
Bob wears the exact same t-shirt, stained jeans and backwards baseball cap covering up his lobotomy haircut every day; ever the fashion plate if I do say so. For whatever reason, Bob feels the intrinsic need to bring home anything that’s either not chained down or so badly broken that nobody else in his or her right fucking mind would ever want it. It’s like his yard has become a nest that he’s attempting to feather with scrap metal and broken appliances. And it’s not like he can even claim that he broke the stuff himself – it all came home that way and immediately occupied a position of honor on his front lawn to waste away into rust or mould.
I’ve seen clinical pack rats with more discretion than this moron. The guy is total crazypants!
Bob also has a strange habit of beginning tasks that could be considered as something of a “home renovation” nature except that he never finishes them and ultimately just abandons these projects in various stages of incompletion. My favorite is the dilapidated craptacular “dog house” that you could shoot a rifle at and have the bullet pass directly through without ever hitting anything. Now it just stands there like some twisted early contemporary 21st Century lawn ornament.
Bob Vila this guy is not!
Then there’s Hogzilla, his wife (I don’t know her name). Together they have the combined social grace of a box of hamsters.
She never leaves the house, but we know she’s always there based on the tremors we feel rippling through the earth each time she struggles off the couch to the kitchen and back to fetch herself another box of donuts. It’s true, she makes the mother in ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ seem like Farah Fawcett in the movie ’10’.
Every now and again, she will venture out on the front porch to gaze across the ‘ol ranch stead. Of course, she doesn’t venture very far since the porch would likely collapse from the sheer weight of her girth if she ever took more than 2 steps out on it. Instead, she prefers to open the front door, lob the day’s garbage out into the yard and then retire back inside to her Jerry Springer and industrial-sized bags of Oreos.
Last and least, is their devil spawn of a child – Brandon.
Brandon is the quintessential “Problem Child” and about as bright as a sack of rocks. In three years, I have never been known anything other than “Mr. Man”, despite several attempts of getting him to learn my name. Not that I ever have much to do with the kid communication-wise, but who likes being continually referred to as Mr. Man?
I know it’s terrible that I speak about a child in this manner, but after three years, any sympathy or patience I have had for him has been squashed out of existence. I avoid the kid now like I avoid trips to the dentist. In fact, the whole neighborhood seems to avoid him. Whenever the kid is outside, neighbors will avoid walking out to their cars or leave their porches for fear the kid will accost them with endless questions. Whenever one person makes the inevitable bid to leave their porch, the rest of us will seize the opportunity to commando roll out to their own cars and pull away while Brandon is occupied.
So it was a very happy day indeed when we watched the family wagon pull away for the last time. So much so, that it was a few hours before anyone ever officially recognized the fact; no doubt suspicious that it was all an elaborate ruse and they would return at any moment much to our disappointment.
But alas, it was true. The Sea Monkeys are at last gone.
No more random bits of broken garbage to marvel at in the mornings, so more stench of fetid body odor and rotting dog shit, no more screams of “Brandon, git yer lazy ass outside!” in the evenings, no more loud domestic disputes to rival the Nazi Party rallies in pre-war Germany, no more middle of the night visits by the local constabulary.
Nope, it’s absolutely blissful.
Hallelujah!
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