Ahh, the Friday before a three-day weekend. Of course, for me, last week was a three-day weekend. However that does not count if you are walling in a pit of pain. Of course I am still in pain. So this weekend will be a semi-pain weekend.
That makes sense.
This morning I popped into a gas station to get a granola bar and a frappuccino. I opened the little gas-station refrigerator door and there my eyes beheld… a pink frappuccino. They created a version with strawberry flavor. I had to try that. When I was young my family used to go visit my grandmother who in her later years lived a small apartment after she had sold the farmhouse. There was some little store around the corner that used to sell gallons of strawberry milk that was the product of some local dairy farm. It was the best strawberry milk I had ever had, and when we went to visit again a following year it was gone and never seen again.
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There have been various impostors of the years. There is strawberry quick, however I find that stuff to be foul. The powder form never dissolves all the way and you are always left with a little mound of gritty residue on the bottom of the glass. The syrup form is a pure abomination, that slightly translucent pink goo that has all the charm of industrial waste. This new strawberry stuff is the closet stuff I have found since. It’s almost worth the god-damn buck fifty they want for it.
Cleaned out the hot tub and filled it up. Would like to use it tonight, but it usually takes at least two days for it to fully warm up. Went for a walk down around river walk. Petted some fluffy cat that had wandered up. I grabbed his big poofy tail. He had a collar, so he had a home nearby even though the closest houses were a good distance away.
Last night I thought maybe it would be the night I would get to sleep laying down. So I sprawled out on my bed. Ahh. Felt good. For about two minutes. Then the ribs started to ache and a muscle started spasm. I flailed my arms around helplessly liked an overturned turtle before I finally pushed myself off the bed again. I felt worse than I had two minutes ago. Clearly the ribs need more time to heal. It’s only been less than a week after all. So I spent another night sleeping sitting up.
I was watching ‘BOOM’ last night, the bastard brother of the cartoon network. Justice league and Superman have been playing on it at night so I have been catching them on there. Since hardly anyone advertises on this station where there would normally be commercials are instead filled with old Hanna Barbara clips. One of these involves the ‘wonder twins’ and their space monkey ‘Gleep’. (Gleek is not to be confused with with the Gleep of the Herculoids home world who was a giant amoeba.)They basically go around and teach good morals that are based around various circumstances that unfold within 60 seconds. Last night had to do with ‘cheating’ as some guy cheated at a foot race.
Anyways, I always thought the twin who could only turn into water had the shit end of the stick when it came to superpowers. I came half awake last ngiht on my couch and my mind blearily watched this inane little clip. The one thing that stuck out in my mind was their mode of travel. One twin would turn into a bald eagle and the other twin would turn into water and slop into a bucket. The space monkey would grab the bucket, and the eagle would grab the monkey and they would fly away. Now, what grabbed my attention was the fact that the eagle was carrying the monkey by its ass. It did not have its claws around it’s waist, it literally had its claws dug deep directly into the monkeys bulbous buttocks. The monkey for his part simply had an idiotic grin on its face as it carried the bucket. The fact he was carrying a heavy bucket of wonder-twin water must have made this ass-grabbing feat even more painful.
After digesting this fact my eyes rolled back up into my head and I zonked out again.
Some band did a metal version of the ‘star wars’ theme. It rawks.
http://www.myspace.com/anchorheaddarthmetal
2026 Update
Dialing back to 2006, where Ed buys pink gas-station syrup and watches an eagle carry a monkey by the ass.
Ahh, 2006. A buck fifty gets you a strawberry-flavored chemical slurry from a gas station cooler, and a man with cracked ribs can still spend the night studying whether an eagle's claws are wrapped around a cartoon monkey's buttocks. The world has shifted in all the predictable ways: that $1.50 shelf drink would now arrive via a delivery app, marketed as an artisanal 'strawberry cloud milk latte,' with a tip prompt and a subscription offer before you can take a sip. Late-night TV with Hanna-Barbera filler is gone; now the algorithm knows you like Wonder Twins and serves you six thousand reaction videos. Personal blogs and MySpace pages have been paved over by influencer storefronts and app-based everything. And instead of watching Boomerang poorly loop old clips, you pay for four streaming services that each think password sharing is a crime. Even settling in for a painful night on the couch would be captured by a smart TV that suggests a wellness sleep program. Ed's ribs may hurt, but at least 2006 let him suffer in private.
“2006 Ed, when the eagle dug its claws into Gleek's bulbous buttocks, did you rewind the clip to double-check, or did your rib-addled brain invent that detail on its own?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I wish I could say I rewound it, but I couldn't even rewind my own body off the couch without making sounds like a dying walrus. The remote was probably on the floor, and bending over was out of the question. So no, I did not double-check. But I also didn't invent it, my rib-addled brain may be fuzzy on a lot of things lately, but it knows a giant eagle claw buried in a space monkey's ass when it sees one. I sat there, half-awake, and that image just burned itself into my skull like a bad tattoo. I mean, come on, they really drew that. Gleek just grinning with a bucket of watery twin while his butt cheeks get pinched like a claw machine prize. I couldn't make that up if I tried. It was droll, in a painful, anatomical kind of way. Now if you'll excuse me, my ribs hurt from laughing.
