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Barnyard Gravy, it turns out, is vanilla ice cream with peanut butter and chocolate-covered pretzels.  It looked nothing like the way I had it pictured.  I mean, where was the chocolate swirl?  The caramel?  The nut-brownies?

In fact, it was fairly dull.  It was mostly just vanilla, with the goodies spaced too far apart.  The so-called pretzels were little nodules, roughly the size of a peanut, covered in dark chocolate.  I kinda liked ‘em; they were sweet, salty, and crunchy.  But there were only four or five of the things in the entire bowl of ice cream.

And I don’t know where they came up with that name.  It can’t be good for business, can it?  Barnyard Gravy, for godsakes?  Sounds like high-pressure cow diarrhea.

I give it a C.  It wasn’t horrible or gross, or anything.  It was just kinda boring.  I ate it with no problem (of course), but can’t really see myself ordering it again, ever, as long as I live.  That place offers far too much greatness to waste time on such dull-ass fare.

Here’s a picture, taken before I’d had my first bite.  It’s a shame, really.  It probably means one less bowl/cone of Oreo I’ll ingest during my lifetime.  And it’s pissing me off just thinking about it…

The upstairs bathroom is slowly coming together.  Our contractor is taking today off, so something can set (who the hell knows?).  But he should be able to finish it tomorrow, if all goes well.

And what started as a leak in our hallway downstairs has turned into a new bathroom floor, new ceramic tile, all new tile on the walls, a new toilet, and a new sink.  In fact, the only thing that isn’t being replaced, from the floorboards on up, is the bathtub.  It’s a kick straight to the cherry tomatoes, believe me.

But whatever.  We knew there was trouble brewing in there, and didn’t want to acknowledge it.  It was one of those unspoken truths, that nobody dared let out into the open air.  So it’ll be nice not to have all that dread and guilt hanging over our heads.

Plus we’ll have a high-powered toilet designed by the Army Corps of Engineers, or whatever.  I can’t wait to give that baby a test drive.

I’m just glad we had that home warranty (which I’d proclaimed “a rip-off!” multiple times in the past).  Our out-of-pocket expense is probably only about one-third of what it would’ve been under normal circumstances.  The dude is putting in massive hours.

And not that it’s relevant or anything, but here’s a sliver of a conversation I had with our contractor yesterday:

Me:  I’m going to work now, see you on Tuesday.
Him:  You work on Sundays too?
Me:  Yeah, I start on Sunday.
Him:  Where do you work?
I told him.
Him:  Shuffling papers around?
Me:  Pretty much.
Him:  Have a good day.

Remember my recent diatribe against our local Bennigan’s?  Well, guess what?  The place went out of business.  I’m sure it had nothing to do with their bad food, though, or poor service.  Right?  No, they’re obviously just another victim of the bad economy…

Ha!

A big-shot at my old job has reportedly purchased the building (after being laid-off like everybody else), and will be opening a pub/restaurant there.  We’ll see how it goes.  God knows I’ll do my best to see that it succeeds.

On Saturday we went to see Harry Potter and the Fresh Prince, or whatever it’s called.  I thought it was pretty darn good.  In fact, I’d rank it as the best Harry Potter movie I’ve seen so far.  And I’ve watched all but one, I believe.

The place was crowded, of course, and we had to sit way up in the rafters.  We were surrounded by the morbidly obese, carrying popcorn buckets the size of bathroom trashcans, huffing and puffing, and sweating profusely.  Half the crowd was coughing and hacking up a lung, blowing a fine mist of respiratory disease all around the joint.

But I still had a good time.  What are you going to do?

Have you seen the movie yet?  What’s your verdict?  Tell us about it in the comments, won’t you?

I also finished off the most recent season of 24 on Saturday night.  So, let me get this straight…  Jack Bauer is in a coma with only minutes to live, but his daughter has made a last-minute offer to donate her stem cells, for use in an experimental long-shot treatment?  And we know that  Kiefer Sutherland (between savage beatings of clothing designers) is signed through season 8?

Wow, what a cliffhanger!  Wonder how it’s going to turn out??  I’m on the edge of my freaking seat over here.

I was talking to Steve on Saturday, and he told me an interesting story.  He said one of his co-workers is a semi-pro singer/actor, who often volunteers his time by performing at area nursing homes(?!).

Curious, Steve went to see one of the guy’s “shows,” and he said it wasn’t bad at all.  But some of his song choices were kind of curious.  “Don’t Fence Me In,” for instance.  Is that really an appropriate tune for a bunch of World War I veterans warehoused inside a nursing home?

And I’d like to make that the Question of the Day:  What other songs do you think would be highly inappropriate in such a setting?  How about “My Generation?”  “Working for the Weekend?”  “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet?”

Use the comments section below, to give us your thoughts.

And I’ll see you guys tomorrow.

Have a great day!

Now playing in the bunker.

Our upstairs bathroom adventure has taken an ugly turn.  I don’t even want to get into it…  But one thing always leads to another, doesn’t it?  It never fails, right?

I’m 46 years old, and know this to be a fact.  Yet I’m always shocked by it.  Why is that?  Hopeful estimating?  Naivete?  Standard douchery?  I don’t know, and don’t really care at this point.

Will somebody please hold me?

I was having “lunch” (8 pm) at work a few days ago, and a woman mentioned that she and her husband already have their cemetery plots, and headstone.  They bought them about five years ago, she said.

I thought that was a bit odd, since she’s only 40 or 45, and began asking many questions:  the questions everyone else wanted to ask, but didn’t feel comfortable doing so.

Like:  Is the headstone already in place at the boneyard?

And yes, it is.  In fact, she and her husband spent considerable time designing their halves of the thing.  She has a Bible and butterflies on her side, and he has a deer(?!) and birds on his.  Weird, man.

Then I wanted to know if they leave flowers at the grave site, and she said they do.  Ha!

I also found out the cemetery dude warned them not to put their last names on the stone, since they were so young, and divorce rates are so high.  This pissed them off, so they had their last names listed in larger type than normal.

“How about the death dates?  Did you list those, as well?” I wanted to know.  Apparently they left that part blank, though, to be completed later.  And these people call themselves prepared?

Do you think it’s strange, buying your own headstone while you’re still in your late 30s/early 40s?  It’s never crossed my mind, not once.  Of course I’m going the “burn ’em up” route, but still.

What do you think about it?  Tell me in the comments, won’t you?  Also, what kind of eternal clipart would you choose for your headstone?  I think I’d go with the original smoking fish, and possibly the Nabisco logo.  What about you?

Here’s how Harv played it.

And I was having another lunch a few days ago with the younger Secret, at a local diner.  The place has been around for decades, and the walls are covered in all manner of framed photos, many autographed.

You know, something along these lines.

I never really paid attention before, but decided to give it a little extra scrutiny this time.  And it’s a very strange mixture of things.  There’s an amateurish oil painting of Bobby Kennedy (I think), a photograph of Kramer, various unknown old men in golf gear, a few renderings of Jesus (“Thanks for the support!”), an 8×10 of Cary Grant (I think), etc.

There’s no thread or theme, holding any of it together.  It’s just stuff people liked, I guess, over the past forty years or so.  Pretty cool.

In California there are signed celebrity photos in almost every place of business.  Including, I shit you not, Taco Bell.  In the location near my old job, in Burbank, there’s dozens and dozens of the things.  Including, I believe, both of the Coreys – Haim and Feldman.

But my favorite celebrity diner photo of all time was spotted in Cooperstown, NY, down the street from the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It was a promotional 8×10 of Fyvush Finkel, who played Harvey Lipschultz on Boston Legal.  How great is that?  Man, I loved Harvey Lipschultz…

Do you remember seeing any especially remarkable celebrity diner photos?  If so, we need to hear about it.

And if you’ll excuse me now, I’m going to go back upstairs and cry softly into a couch cushion, as yet another section of shitter wall comes down…

I’ll see you guys on Monday.

Now playing in the bunker.

The contractor is here, tearing complete and absolute hell out of our upstairs bathroom.  Plus, he won’t stop asking me questions.  He seems like a nice guy, but likes to talk.  I can feel another half-assed update on the horizon…

I try. I swear I do.

Last night while driving home from my demoralizing job, I was listening to George Noory, and he was doing a full show about the Mothman.

Have you ever heard of this mythical creature?  I knew nothing, and was surprised to learn that the legend is based in a town roughly fifty miles from where I grew up — Point Pleasant, WV.

Supposedly two couples were driving through a wooded area there, back in 1966, and spotted what looked like a 7ft-tall man with wings, stuck in a fence.  When they stopped to check it out, this “moth man” freed himself and flew away(!).

This freaked them out, understandably, so they took off in their car.  And the creature started following them, flying above their vehicle, and making all manner of terrifying noises.

After that, there were regular sightings of the Mothman in the area.  And a year later a well-traveled bridge collapsed, killing dozens of people.  At the time it was one of the worst disasters in the history of the United States.

After the bridge fell, nobody ever saw the Mothman again….  And I just had a full-body shiver.

How could I not know anything about this??  There was a best-selling book about it, as well as a big-budget Hollywood movie.  Point Pleasant even has a Mothman statue in their town square!  Here’s some Wikipedia information about it.  It’s all new information to me….  And I grew up there.

Are there any legends of paranormal activity in your neck of the woods?  Like Bigfoot sightings or UFO crashes, or things like that?  Tell us about it, won’t you?

Also, what do you know about this West Virginia Mothbilly?  Are you familiar with it?  I need to know more.

And I need to go.  Sorry, but I’m always about 2 minutes late at work, and I’m supposed to be setting an example.  Ha!

I’ll leave you now with a video Knucklehead said I could share with you folks.  If you’re a regular in the comments section, you’ll know that Knucklehead (Teri) and her husband will soon be moving to Italy.

Somehow, through a confusing series of events, they were invited to audition for the HGTV series, House Hunters International.

Producers liked their audition video, and told them it was almost a certainty they’d be picked to star in an episode.  Unfortunately, however, they finally decided they’d done enough shows about that particular section of Italy, and the whole thing came crashing down.

Which really makes me sad, because I was going to try to talk Knucklehead into wearing one of the shirts…

In any case, here’s their audition tape.  Pretty cool.

Have you ever been on a TV show?

See you guys tomorrow!

Now playing in the bunker.

Toney called around 11 this morning, and said she’d be home for lunch.  She wanted me to put some hot dogs on the grill, and have ’em ready to go when she got here.

So, doing as I’m told, I went out there and flung a lit match into the gas cloud, and cut open a new package of Ballpark franks.  And roughly a quart of some kind of nasty-ass liquid came rolling out, hit the floor, and splashed halfway up my legs.

I’d taken a shower only moments before, and was now doused in wiener water.  Simply fantastic.

After I got the dogs going, I went into the kitchen and ripped off two or three paper towels, ran a little water over them, and started scrubbing my shins.  One of the Secrets walked in and gave me one of those “What the shit??” looks, and I just grunted at him.

Then I realized:  I very rarely wash my shins; they don’t get much attention at all.  In fact, I can’t ever remember lathering up my shins or ankles, during my entire life.  Is it the most neglected part of the male body?  I bet it is.

Anyway, I think I can still smell it.  I believe I’m still funking of wiener.  Excellent.  Perhaps I should just embrace it all, and dab a little Vienna Sausage jelly behind my ears before leaving for work?  Yeah, maybe I’ll do it.

I forgot to mention it yesterday, but the t-shirts are finally on their way.  Except, of course, for the two that were ordered today.

I even sent one to Clive Bull.  On a whim I emailed him, and told him I’d like to give him a shirt.  And he actually wrote back.  A pleasant surprise.

So, Clive will soon have one of our leaping catfish t-shirts.  I like the idea of it, very much.  Pass the beer nuts.

If you’d like to order one, here’s yer link.  I’ll probably be making another post office run on Friday, so order away!

Metten and I each posted a new Mockable this week, here and here.  Check ’em out.  And don’t forget about our Friday Guest Mock.  Send us your own home-grown venomous rant, and we’ll most likely publish it at the site.

Our email address:  mockable [at] gmail dotcom.

And since I have to cut this one VERY short, I’ll leave you with two Questions I previously asked at Twitter (or was it Facebook?).

First:  Is a York Peppermint Patty the most effeminate of all candy bars?  What do you think?  Also, which one is the manliest?  Tell us about it in the comments.

Second:  Would you ever eat a flavor of ice cream called Barnyard Gravy?  A local shop is offering it, but I can’t bring myself to order it.  I’m sorry, but it brings to mind bovine diarrhea.  What do you think?

If you were to open an ice cream shop, what kind of novelty Ben and Jerry’s-type flavors would you offer?  Anything to do with cow shit?  Help us out, won’t you?

And I’ll post a real update tomorrow.  I promise.

See ya then.

Now playing in the bunker.

We moved into our current house in early 2000, and have had plumbing problems on a semi-regular basis, almost from the start.

In fact, there was a significant hidden issue even before we bought the place.  We had it inspected by a company with a good reputation, and prices to match.  And they let us down, big time.  The pricks.

The upstairs toilet was leaking underneath, inside the flooring, and within a month or so water was dripping through the ceiling downstairs.  When the contractor tore it apart, he said the thing had been leaking for many months.

We had to rebuild the entire floor in that room, replace the tile, and all manner of fantastic fun.  It cost us a lot of money, and we weren’t happy.  We had some cash saved to set up our new home, and a big hunk of it went, almost literally, down the toilet.

We tried to go after the inspection company, we even saw a lawyer about it, but their “guarantee” had more holes in it than our main turd-transport pipe.  It was worded so they were almost completely protected, and didn’t really have to perform much of a service.

Anyway, fast-forward to 2009, and guess what’s happening?  That’s correct, water is leaking through the downstairs ceiling again!  In the exact same place.

On Friday we had a plumbing contractor look at it, and, among other things, he surgically removed the water spot with some kind of saw, and stuck his head up in there.  It’s that toilet again, and all the wood underneath is super-saturated – just like in May 2000.  Grrr…

We’d talked about replacing that crap-catcher, because there was something not-quite-right about it.  But we never got around to it.  Now we’ve got a mess on our hands.

The good news?  When we refinanced our mortgage last time, they talked us into buying a home warranty.  I think it was free for the first ninety days, then they added twelve dollars a month to our payments, or something along those lines.

And they’re actually going to pay for about two-thirds of this fiasco.  I’m shocked, if you want to know the truth.  I was braced for a long list of reasons they wouldn’t “be able” to cover our claim.

So, this time we’re doing it right.  That old Lyndon Johnson toilet is being put out to pasture, and everything’s going to be new.  Everything from the sub-flooring on up.  I’m tired of monkeying around with it.  By this time next week we should have a commercial-grade toilet in there, so powerful it’ll suck the intestines right out of ya.

And it’s not going to cost us a ton of money, either.  We’re going to have to pay for the upgrades, but the main work is covered.  Considering everything we’re having done, we’re getting off easy.

They’re starting on Wednesday morning, and will be blasting out the tile with some sort of air gun, or whatever.  Mildly concerning…

Yesterday we decided on the new fancy-pants flooring, and they’re going to bring three toilets to our house(!), so we can spend a little time with each before making our decision.  Heh.  I’ll be wanting to take all of them for a test-drive; a new toilet is a big deal, and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Yes, it’s already been a memorable experience, and promises to get even better.  Here are a few random notes from My Friday With a Plumber:

When he stuck his head inside the new hole in our downstairs ceiling, he howled in protest and said there was a “bee’s nest” in there.  Inside our house??  What the?

He flicked it a few times, and nothing happened.  So he just casually plucked it out of there, like he was picking an apple.  I nearly dropped a rectal plate.  I’d never seen a person grab a hive like that.

“Bees were living underneath our toilet?” I stammered.

“Apparently,” he answered.  “That’s a new one on me.”

“So, a whole swarm of yellow jackets could’ve flown straight up my ass?”

“Ha, that would’ve been something to see…”

He rigged the toilet so it wouldn’t leak in the short term, but warned me not to allow anyone to sit on it, unless there’s an emergency.  “If someone’s on it, and starts hearing an unusual noise or feels the toilet tilting, they need to abandon ship – right now!”

Gulp.  I guess I’d better stay away from Starbucks for the next few days…?

He told me one of his customers had paid a company to do a complete remodel of her bathroom, and after about two months the toilet started sinking into the floor.  He said the thing was radically unlevel; the people were shitting on a slant.

Baffled, he cut into the floor, and found a piece of plywood and all the usual stuff.  But below it were cardboard boxes.  The builder had cut corners by using cardboard boxes as shim material!

Have you ever heard of such a thing?  I’m having a hard time believing that one…  I mean, seriously.

He also said a “large” woman had a water leak in her living room, but they couldn’t find the source of it.  There were no pipes where the water was coming through the drywall, and they didn’t see any problems in the upstairs bathroom.

He said he and his team spent many hours there, trying to get to the bottom of it.  He wondered if the size of the woman might have something to do with it, and quietly had his biggest helper stand inside the shower.  Nothing.  Nothing was leaking.

Eventually, after several return visits, he met the woman’s boyfriend – also morbidly obese.  Between the two of them, he said, they must’ve weighed 700 pounds.

He went about it delicately, but finally got her to admit that she and her boyfriend like to take showers together.  They were doing it a couple of times per week.  So, he loaded up the shower with three or four people, approximately the same weight as the couple, and the mystery was solved.

The drain started leaking, the water traveled downhill slightly, and exited straight through the living room ceiling.

Yes, the guy’s a hell of a storyteller.  I wouldn’t mind having a few Yuenglings with him someday.  I have a feeling we’ve only scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg here.

So stay tuned.

And since we’re getting ready to drop more than a thousand bucks on this crap, I’ll try to turn it into a Question…

Use the comments link to tell us about the last time you spent more than a grand all at once, for one particular thing.  Was it more exciting than a new toilet that won’t go crashing through the floor following a violent Burrito Supreme blowout?

I seriously doubt it, but who knows?  What did you buy the last time you spent more than a thousand dollars on something?

And I’ll get back to the normal stupidity tomorrow.

See ya then.

Now playing in the bunker.