Johnny and his Tomato plant ......

In my last report, I mentioned my pal Johnny's whacky idea of using squirrel, gnawed drool dripping tomatoes in chile.

I failed to mention how such a ne’er-do-well would even get a tomato, unless someone threw it at him for urinating on their lawn.

Now for the rest of the story (with my apologies to Paul Harvey)

One day last spring I was working in my garden, prepping the perfectly laser aligned holes, at their micrometer perfect widths and depths with the perfect mix of bone meal, calcium, dehydrated bat poop, rain water and Miracle Grow, and just a pinch of Diazanon (which I have smuggled in from Mexico) .....

.....when who should come stumbling up the drive, but Johnny.

"Zapppnin bro" he mumbles in his whiskey burnt garble.

"How much, Johnny?" I reply....

"awww man that's harsh.......three bucks....Madd Dogs on sale at Walgreens, today only" "I use it for unhhhh....cooking...yeh cooking"
"cooking for my poor sick mother, who got mugged by a gang of.....uh... Young Republicans, yeah they took everything man!....made her sick,……. gotta cook for her.....really Bert I ain't lyin' "

Experience has taught me that calling Johnny out on these obvious lies will only lead to an endless loop of denials, diversions and general purpose mumbo jumbo.....and it's only three bucks...........

"ok, Johnny but only if you promise me one thing"

"wazzat, Boze.....Bof " (cough, hack hack)... he spits out a piece of liver.(his)

"you will leave right now, never come back, and NOT urinate on my lawn on the way out"

" hey, that's TWO things......no wait ....that's THREE things, ....dam!"

at this point I picked up my 2x4.......

"ok, ok whatever you say, no problemo........hey is that blood......and fur on that board" "gotchu a possum, dincha Barf.....uh Bof.... attaboy "

"NO" I replied "that'......is.......un…. PAINT" "and the fur is from .......... shedding.......yeah, shedding, furry animals do that in yards you know."

at his point Johnny gives me a knowing bloodshot wink and chuckle
"bet he screamed alot , didn't he, hell them things can even scream under water......like squirrels"

.......I assume my best Babe Ruth stance with the 2x4......

"well, gotta dash...shareholders meeting....hey, I noticed that you have like 60 little baby tomato plants and only 12 holes wactha gonna do with them all ?

I quickly explained my theory of seedling loss and replacement.

"kin I have one" he asks "for what" I reply

" I can plant it at home in a coffee can fulla dirt and make my own tomatoes, I wus raised on a farm donchewknow"

By this time I'm thoroughly pissed , he's still here... BUT when an opportunity arises to display my massive knowledge of farmalogical stuff, (I have a Phd in it) I just can't resist.

" a single plant won't produce a thing, Johnny. It takes many plants of the same species and strain in close proximity to pollinate, dumass"

he replies "that's what you think, Mr. Phd, know-it-all, all you gotta do is wait till it blooms and the pollen transfers from one bloom to the other on the same plant....."

"Johnny you are telling a plant to "go fuck itself ! you idiot!"

"no, you do it with a toothbrush, flower to flower, like a bee, one of the guys at home (the shelter) has one (a toothbrush), I'll just borrow it......"

by now it's staring to get dark so I dispense with my lecture on how such severe inbreeding would cause grossly deformed and defective fruits.........(think Royal Family)...........and I give him a plant......and then I force him offa my property (propitty) at 2x4 point.

Well to make a long story short .........(as if) (sigh)

About three months later, I'm in my bountiful masterpiece of a garden, admiring the beauty of all things living, plucking weeds, squishing bugs and fine tuning the 440 volt "Squirrel Final Solution" zapper system that I had installed (my own design btw)( patent pending)

.......heeerrres Johnny !(surprised?).....and this time he's carrying a dirt filled coffee can containing this tomato plant straight out of the movie "Waterworld".

The scrawny thing had the main vine (stalk) and only TWO branches!

"Wow! Johnny you got you a 3-D family tree! " I said.....I don't think he got my joke as he just stood there scratching his head with his third thumb...

"Look Bof ! TOMATOES ! Told ya!"

By golly the damn thing DID have 4 strange looking tomatoes on it 2 per branch.

"Yup, I even named 'em, Jimmy, Billy, William Jefferson and Roger" he said with an ear to ear toothless grin.

"Look Bof, I know I owe you".... ( I'm thinkin' yeh 3 bucks....)

"So I want YOU to have one of these beauties! Pick one !"

in light of my already bountiful crop I respectfully decline..

Besides how do you pick a tomato when it's sitting there, minding it's own business, strumming on a little tiny banjo ?

" I gotta answer the phone, Johnny, if you have to relieve yourself on the way out, just go over there …..by them wires"

Squirrels Beware of Pierre !

I'm a home gardener and I love it. I always do a variety, quite a range of "crops", but tomatoes are my personal favorite. There is absolutely NOTHING that can compare to the taste of a home grown vine ripened tomato, especially the first bite, the first one to ripen.
For the last couple of years I've had a huge problem with squirrels aka/ fuzzytailed flea-infested garden-terrorist rats.....they would eat the seedlings and spit them out just out of spite, dig holes all over the place and then just sit there and taunt me until I got within brick throwing range. Then they scurry up a tree undoubtably hoping I would walk under their branch so they could poop on me. (trick me once, shame on you trick me twice shame on me)

Finally after many replants, much patience and luck, nursing the plants that did make it to fruition the little bastards would come around and take one bite out of a few tomatoes just to get their stinking, slimy little germs on it so I'd have to throw them away. Very wasteful.
I remember telling my pal Johnny about this wasteful problem one night after bailing him out on his 17th D.U.I., he mumbled "hell, just mash 'em up and throw in yer chile (hic) nobody will ever know" , then he puked all over my dashboard, so I kicked him out of the car. (I hope the walk sobered him up).
No way I'm doing that, we could be talkin' rabies or something bubonic here, no way. I decided then and there to just plant extra plants to allow for the waste.
They hate tomatoes these vile rodents and just do this because they are evil.

I was telling my neighbor, Pierre, a liberal, about this problem and asked him if they sold squirrel poison at Home Depot.
He insulted me (I think) in French and told me that that was illegal, so..... I politely asked him if they sold leg or spring traps there or if those big giant mouse traps (rat traps) would have enough force to snap the neck of one of the annoying little monsters.
I asked him in a very polite deadpan manner and assume that he thought I was quite serious. (wellll, I was)

He said, "luke Buster (not my name btw) ze ONLY humane vay to control thees squirrel situatiownn, efe you muust eze veeth life traps, zey are like cages vith doors that spring shut vithout cruching the animals leg or neck or anysing eltze.
"Ze lufly animals are captured veeth no harm ton vatoseffer... merci"
"I sink dey zell zem at your, how you zay, Varm & Vleet."
(pardon my French, I didn't tape it)

I then asked him if he had any squirrel recipes (hey, he's French, doh) and he walked away saying he had to answer his "tay lay fone"......I didn't hear a phone though.

To make a long story short, I did buy a live trap and it worked like a dream.

I baited it with Peter Pan peanut butter, a jar that I got on a huge sale because of the salmonella recall (and the flea market peddler had scratched off the lot numbers) ,.....and waited. Well within a half hour I heard this loud screeching coming from the back yard and lo and behold, I had humanely captured my first squirrel!
These critters obviously hate being confined, he was screeching and clawing and jumping all over the cage trap, what a sight.

I think my neighbor, Pierre is a liar and a sadist because when I dumped the squealing little satan-beast into the bucket of water and held him under with a 2x4 he screamed and writhed even worse! The fight was on, claws flailing, teeth gnashing and the godawful screams......from both of us.
I prevailed in the end, but have learned to respect these little 5 pound bundles of muscle, teeth and claws, at least enough to use a LONG 2x4.
Squirrels can scream under water, seriously, try it.

Humane ? No way, my neighbor lied.

I've decided to forgive Pierre (de Sade) for this sadistic prank.
As a matter of fact I'm making him an afternoon snack, (a peanut butter sandwich and a bowl of chile)

bon appetit french fry

Ok "Milque" won't be back,

I won this joint from him on a Superbowl bet, besides he's too busy washing my car everyday until the next Bears win with his "Rex" jersey. Wait till next year.

Unlike "Milque", I hate "middle of the road", I drive on the right.
My friend "Johnny" is a left winger but always drives in the middle when he's high on rotgut which is nearly always. I hope he gets busted for the safety of all.

I plan to change the name of this place to
I DEMAND THAT YOU LIKE ME,
or
LIKE ME OR I'LL BEAT YOU WITH A BAT

or some other moderate, mellow thing in the touchy-feely vein ( I'm keeping "LIKE", doh)

I'll make the change if and when I feel like it.... I OWN this place.

I love and respect the concept of OWNERSHIP, It is the American Dream even at the free blog level.

I may close the comments feature because I don't have time to deal with jealous shitbrains, but for now, I will leave it open only to registered members.
If you can't figure out how to register, you are probably just a jealous shitbrain ,a Phd poser, a left-wing moonbat or all of the above and too stupid to comment anyway.

some "salutes" (in no particular order)

My (real) friend Biloxi owns an excellent weblog wherin he artistically reports and comments on key issues facing Americans today in a most serious manner. He occasionally has to endure harassment from jealous shitbrains but always manages to handle things in a cool courteous manner.
I urge you to visit "the Repulic" (link on right) regularly for good common sense information and opinion and then stop by here and let me insult your intelligence, or hopefully make you laugh.....or cry.......or hurl whatever.
Crawdaddy, I salute you!

As you may know, my (real) friend Matilda has closed the Headbutters forum for personal reasons (I suspect childish and vulgar harassment by jealous shitheads) and at her own personal expense has allowed members to access the massive archives for an indefinite period of time. Talk about great OWNERS, giving back to the community that she built from scratch, 4 years, gazillions of posts and all on HER dime THANK YOU MATILDA, I salute you!

The closing of Headbutters has produced one silver lining, my (real) friend Malone stepped up while the rest of us twiddled and fretted the announced closing and opened a replacement site Headbutters Continued,(link on right) and in less than a week has the place rocking. It's still in the tweaking & rapid growth stage but all indications are that it will be a mainstay "like a rock" for the community and even a haven for jealous shitheads that use it as a toilet. Malone as a compassionate conservative feels that giving these downtrodden losers an "entitlement" a "charitable handout" is the adult and proper thing to do as the responsible OWNER of the forum. I agree.
For humor, Malone has installed a comics section, yep he has this clown posing as a Phd but writing like an illiterate crackhead replete with contradictions, blatant transparent lies and incoherent babble. Seriously the character has the egghead fop talk down to a Tee and then his punchline for contrast is always some childish jibberish, funnier than anything ever done on SNL or Seinfeld, that's for sure. I won't mention the clown's name just go there wander around a bit, you'll figger it out in no time. I wish Malone would just leave the humor to ME, but this gem of a cartoon character puts my wittiest moments to shame.
Malone, you stood up like a man, took charge and kept the community alive, for that I salute you!
FOUR MORE YEARS! and then some :)

alrighty then, my arm is tired from all the saluting and dinners on the table
I'll be bock

Oh my God!

It's still here!

and I damn well better think up some good excuses for ignoring this "Masterpiece of Internet Perfection" for a year.

Pick one:

a) the dog ate my password

b) I was shacked up with Cindy Sheehan.

c) President Bush sent me on a top secret recon mission to Bejjiiiing to set up the invasion of China (they have WMD)

d) I was donating my liver to Ted Kennedy or my pal "Johnny" whoever needs it first.
I doubt that either will ever actually NEED it though as both have been operating without a brain for years, what good is a liver without a brain.