Good Neighbors
June 24, 2013 Jen and I live in a... diverse neighborhood. Lots of families, a few older folks, the occasional renter and/or drug dealer. Your basic American street. But my favorite has to be the family that lives a few doors down and entertains us each night at the top of their lungs. So today, I give you:
Things I hear while taking out the trash at two in the morning
(I put all the dialogue in extra large bold font to help you really appreciate the experience.)
"Put a diaper on that girl, Jimmie!"
;)
"BILL! BILL!!! IF WE DON'T LEAVE BY 3AM ALL THE FISH WILL BE GONE!!! BILLLLLL!!!"
;)
"PRECIOUS! PREEEE-CIOOOOUS! COME INSIDE. HERE BOY. C'MERE. C'MON. C'MERE. C'MERE, BOY." (Stepping just out of the door and raising voice even more) "PRECIOUS! GET IN HERE NOW!"
;)
"You want Cheez-Whiz on your hotdog?"
;)
"So I says to her, hey, for two hundred bucks it had gosh durn BETTER be real yak hair."
;)
"GOSH DANGIT, MONTU GOT DOWN THE DRAIN AGAIN. CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, BILL!"
;)
"NOPE, NEVERMIND; SHE'S JUST OUT IN THE YARD. MONTU, BABY! COME BACK! NO, DON'T GO IN THE NEIGHBOR'S WINDOW! BAD BOA! BAD!!"
;)
Thanks to Elena P., Jill T., Lawanda J., Rahman C., Colleen M., Pamela S., & Hannah C. for being neighborly.
Reader Comments (81)
I guess the real question is, why are you taking the trash out at 2 in the morning?
[Editor's note- Our 2 in the morning is like your 8 at night. And I'm very quiet. Like a mouse. A mouse who takes out the trash at 2 in the morning. -john (thoJ)]
Sung to the theme from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood
It's an audible night in the neighborhood
An audible time for neighbors
Cover her right.
Use baby wipes.
Insomniac fish feed your neighbors? Good.
Their Precious dog needs some protein.
Cheez Whiz delight
Yak Hair. DAMN RIGHT!
You have always wanted the firemen to visit you
Especially during those nocturnal visits from Montu.
So just make the most of their audible ways.
You've got strong locks so you might as well stay...
Go have some wine.
Montu is fine.
Can't you hear your neighbors?
Is Jessie giving birth to... nuts? What happened to her face? Poor Jessie!
Yak hair? that is EXACTLY the look on my face as I try to figure out what the gol'dun'gerhelp they need real yak hair fer. And that first cake? measles? I'm trying to be nice...
If you weren't in Florida and I wasn't in Illinois, I'd swear we were in the same neighborhood. I know I've heard "Put a diaper on that girl, Jimmie" more than once...from a house with no children.
My ex's co-worker had a dog named Sax. They lived in a trailer park. You can imagine the hilarity that would ensue when a young woman in a nightgown would open her door and stand on her front steps shouting "SAX! SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAX!!! COME ON! SAX!"
OK, maybe it's just me.
And don't whiz on my hot dog.
Any connection between those two ideas is thoroughly not my fault.
Reminds me of a phone call I made to the parent of one of my students long ago. After every 10 or 20 words she would stop and scream at someone about various activities going on in her home. My favorite interuption consisted of this warning:
"Don't drink that orange juice! That orange juice has been sitting on the counter all week!! Do you wan't to get sick? Touch that orange juice and I'm going to kill you!!"
That student is now working for the NYC Department of Health as a restaurant insepector. So the next time you're in NY and you choose a restaurant based on the A,B or C rating in the window, you can thank my student's mom (or take the rating with a grain of salt.)
Is that one cake an owl or a Muppet? I just, I really just don't even know.
Cake #5 - Yyyyyyipp yip yip yip yip yip yip...uh-huh uh-huh
OMG!!! The yak comment made me laugh so hard. (This is def a topic that should be on here once a month. Esp when some of the wrecks make the overheard comments even funnier!!!)
Sharyn...now I have that song in my head and w half your words and half the real ones. Lol!
I think Precious might have been hit by the fire truck as it attempted to find the snake hidden on that last cake.
Wow, it's probably a good thing that you don't live right next door to these people, or you'd have to brush up on your snake wrangling skills when you got a visit from Montu!
I am eternally grateful that I do not live next door to the house with Montu. Or any of the rest of that clan, for that matter! I do live next to a house that has had people evicted at midnight, across from the house with the sofa in the front yard and frequent yard fights. At least I haven't seen any cakes about them...
1: Forget the diaper; put a freaking manhole cover on "that girl"...
2: Sheeesh...is the "08-08-08" thing *CODE* for "Oh, WAIT, Oh, WAIT, Oh, WAIT"?
3: Okay, if you SAY so..."Precious" it is.
4: Hell, I don't even want a HOT DOG on my hot dog!
5: I've seen expressions like that on real people. Whatever it conveys, it's never good.
6: "Montu" JOINED the fired department?
7: "oopsie...!"
=^e.e^=
EXCELLENT!!
@Sharyn: Well done!
@Sharyn: Oh, I totally *heard* that, in Mr.R.'s *actual voice* (in my actual head) and just about ****myself when I got to "DAMN", because I imagined an alter-ego, "Mr.Sregor" who is nasty and swears.
=^~.~^=
Don't y'all have snake leash laws in your neighborhood?
Still trying to figure out that first cake. I'm assuming someone was trying to make one of those face-down, baby-butt-in-the-air kind of cakes but lives in Flatland so couldn't figure out how three dimensions would work.
The last cake is so inexplicable I can only guess it's made with real snakes and . . . snake eggs at the bottom?
It'll take an awful lot of yak hair for me to get over these cakes . . .
Wow, I did't know you lived in my neighborhood!
Having made several fire truck cakes myself that CCC fire truck is painful to look at!
As someone who has taken out the trash at 2 a.m. on numerous occasions (and I mean waste disposal, not a comment on my personal life), I've never been 'blessed' with more than the occasional opossum or raccoon sighting. That, and the driver who bowled over my trash cans and drove into the neighbor's front porch.
Jessi, what the... I don't... even Sir Mix-A-Lot is going "now that's just way too much."
Poor Precious wouldn't be too bad if she hadn't been flattened.
Really, who eats hot dogs (with or without Cheez-Whiz) at 2 a.m.????
Elmo must have seen Jessi's cake
Cake Art
1) Portrait of An Anonymous Man With Severe Hydrocele
2) A Fish That Will Never Be 8
3) Flat Dog Immobilized by Choice Between Two Bones
4) Wieners and Yarnburgers
5) Hey Frosty, I Got Your Nose
6) Hose In Repose
7) Boa vs. Blender: Round One
best monday morning post EVER!!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
Im still wiping the tears outta my eyes from laughing so hard!!
#5 looks like an Alot. Alot of cake.
Reference, in case anyone needs it: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
Ok, I know this is totally nit-picky, but is anyone else bothered by the way two of the hotdogs are levitating there BETWEEN the grill wires? (Not that repositioning them would de-wreck the cake or anything.)
Elmo's World gets real.
And who the hell names his or her son "Precious"? I wouldn't answer to that, either. =^~.-^=
I'm still puzzling over how the fire engine cake (and I use the term veeeeeeeeery loosely) can be described on the label as a "chocolate... layer cake" when it is clearly a CCC and the cup cakes are either vanilla or pink.
And I can't tell you what that "hose" makes me think of, on a family-friendly site.
New Samuel Jackson movie: "Snakes on a Cake".
Catchy quote: "There are too many (bleepbleepbleepBLEEP) snakes on this (bleepBLEEPbleepbleep) cake!!!!"
Yep - sounds like our neighborhood - in that we have one house across the street that always seems to attract tenants that attract the cops.
However as a renter of the nice kind, you do sorta, just a teensy bit, disparage all renters with your and/or drug dealer comment. Not all of us are drug dealers and/or insane.
On tv in the UK tonight, a BodyShock special, The Man With The 10 Stone Testicles (I kid you not!) - thanks for the preview!
@Drockbox;
You're not being logical. John would've HAD to be out there at 2 a.m., or he wouldn't have been able to record today's posting.
=^-.-^=
Oh, Orlando suburbs. Come here and let me hug you, you over-run, yak-hair-infested, mashed potato dog thing, you.
Reminds me of the night I was awakened at 3 am by strange noises outside. There had been a rash of vandalism where hooligans would scratch up cars with keys, causing lots of damage. So I called the police. I stayed up about 30 minutes but didn't see anyone come over, so went back to bed.
The next day I called the police to see what had happened. As it turned out, the new neighbors were moving in. At 3 a.m. Really.
At least they didn't have a boa that escaped. Because if I lived anywhere NEAR that, I'd be fleeing for my life!
Wow, that sure is a chocolate decorated layer cake and not a cupcake cake at all.
Also, I take the trash out at 2 or so. This is because, while the garbage truck doesn't usually come as early as 6 or 7, sometimes it does, and I don't want to have to keep trash for multiple weeks if I can help it. On the other hand, I've had experience with animals deciding that some of our trash would make them a tasty morsel, so they rip it open and strew trash to get to it. I want to provide as small a window of opportunity for them to do that without staying up too late.
I just barely noticed the crane/stork thing on the first cake, and I'm sort of almost pretty sure that their legs don't bend that way. Poor thing. =^e.e^=
This brings up a question I've asked myself many times. Why do people who consistently lose their dogs always name them Precious?
This doesn't have anything to do with the cakes but
@Nyperold, if you put just a tiny bit of ammonia in your trash before you take it out, it discourages most animals from investigating.
PSA from Robert Frost - Good fences make good neighbours.
Good, strong, snake-proof fences.
Sharyn bwahahaha :D those cakes D:
@john~ Not to even mention that a mouse who has to take out trash would have to make manymanymanymany teeny little trips. SO, he'd HAVE to get up early, really.Unless the trash guy comes late. Not that I care one way or the other. Leave me out of it. =^u.u^= (heehee)
From a fireman with a giant wang to a fire engine with a giant wang....
What next? Please find a fire station with a wang cake for the full set.
@sendingtheclowns, I have a Precious about once a year in my classes. Different ones, too. It's not uncommon in my region as an African-American girl's name.
They usually go by a middle name.
I'm pretty sure my step children live in your neighborhood. O.O
Who puts a dead fish on a cake? Really??? Gross gross gross!!! (and yes, I'm aware that it's probably a dead "cake" fish but that's not the point!)
That hotdog cake has a whole lotta black frosting O.O Yikes!
@The Midnight Writer :-) So will these be in an art gallery near me? Just so I know which one to avoid ;-) Well done!
@Sharyn ~ Perfect song choice! Nicely done my friend. I am completely in awe of your talent!
#1 For some reason, I suddenly want ribs. Get it? Baby back ribs. [chirp]
#2 Aren't the traditional choices of what to do with a fish cooking it OR mounting it on a plaque?
#3 To me, 'Precious' conjures up two disturbing visions: that insufferable Internet meme and the dog from 'Silence of the Lambs'. Now there's a third. Par-tay.
#4 Who grills whole wheat spaghetti?
#5 Yak hair and cake is a juxtaposition that needs to be eliminated from the universe yesterday, if not sooner.
#6 I'm guessing that's 1/2 inch of red frosting on that CCC, folks. Like certain others (who know who they are), I consider cupcakes to be a frosting delivery system, but I must draw the line about a mile before this.
#7 Montu should have listened. By the way, John's narration will do nicely for the back story -- I have a strange lack of curiosity regarding the real explanation for this. Though I am currently listening to Jethro Tull's 'Bungle in the Jungle' on the mental radio. I should be rid of it sometime next week. Thanks, awfully.
Oh dear, that last cake is horrifyingly awful.
And I think it has a snake on it, too.
Love the reader's comments on this one, come on sax! I am laughing so hard I am cryin'! My first thought on the firetruck cake was what is Montu doing on top of the truck and why is Godzilla sized!
@Haiku Joy: No,no!- I was talking about it as a BOY's name! See way up there ^ where JOHN is referencing it as a boy's name ("Precious!Here, boy!" ETC.)? Of course, it's a boy DOG, but still...
Y'know, this is getting old fast. What's in a name? I heard a long time ago that Jimmy Stewart had a horse named Pie. I think that's adorable! =^~.~^=
@Craig: Gee, I probably could have gone all day w/o thinking about 'Silence of the Lambs'....
But now I want to watch "Woodstock"!
=^@.@^=
Sorry! I saw "his or her son" and misread the concept as "son or daughter."
This is why I'm not writing haiku, folks. I'm zygomatic process-deep in Anatomy and Physiology right now, among other projects. Now I've lost the ability to understand even personal possessive pronouns, but I can tell you about Merkel cells. They Merk a lot.
[Editor's note- Now worries, Joy! Everyone knows you're awesome and we all miss your haikus. Also, Sending? Be nice to Joy or I'll pull this car over, so help me. -john (thoJ)]
i flat out refuse to go to the dumpster after dark. A racoon, a possum, and a baby skunk cured me of that nonsense.