Much to the chagrin of my wife, I spent the better part of the weekend landscaping the front yard. Okay, I was working on the boat. But it is among the top five Eyesores of Eastview Court, so if it could be cleaned up just a little, my world would be prettier. Of course, there's no use washing and waxing that thing unless it works.

And guess what? It works! Raise your hand if you've heard me say this before... okay, all of you smart-asses put your hands down. No, really -I fixed it! Well, I think I fixed it. I haven't taken it out on the water yet. And by "fixed" I mean "repaired to functionality", not "immobile, stuck in one place."

I've had the thing in parts and strewn about the garage for months (years) now and I think what finally made me tackle the task was that I needed to clean the garage once and for all. But it's been a challenge, as it seems that every time I piece that boat together and take it out on a test run, I just break another pushrod or overheat the engine from a bad impeller or whathaveyou. But I think I've got it this time. I really do.

The reason for my confidence is that I've been using my new tool: the Compression Gauge. This allows me to test the compression in the cylinders after I fire it up, instead of taking it out on the ocean and blowing a pushrod there in the helpless nowhere. Anyway, The Gauge tells me I now have full compression in all of the cylinders, so yahoo! Of course, that's when everything started to overheat, so there was a certain amount of web searching and part replacement in which I had to engage.

So I've been piecing it together for a few months now. All summer, really. And since the annual insurance bill on the thing came due and we didn't use it but thrice last year, and none this year, Mrs. Ditchman asked me (albeit sarcastically) if we should pony up the cash for next year. Since no one had done us all a favor and stolen it out of my driveway, (I long ago stopped putting the padlock on the trailer) I figured I'd give it another shot.

I consider the internal combustion engine to be one of the modern marvels -so efficient, so compact, and so simple. It really is. It's a beautiful system, and once you get the gist of how it works, there's nothing to it. As well, it gave a lot of unathletic nerds a chance to be men in the past century, as, if you can fix a car, you're in. Unfortunately nowadays, all cars are electronic and computer-controlled, so the nerds are back, and the men have moved on to something else.

The powerboat is just a floating box with a combustion engine in it, and then a drive shaft and a propeller hanging on the back. Fairly simple, really. All you need to do is keep the boat from sinking and the engine running and you have success (!) which I have encountered to varying degrees in my lifetime.

My Dad loved boating and he was pretty good with engines, and in those things we are alike. I remember when I was about ten and we were standing in the garage, looking under the hood of his '56 Austin Healey when he asked me, "Do you know how an engine works?" I shook my head and he explained it to me. It took him about a minute.

As simple of a concept as it is, there are, unfortunately, a few hundred greased and moving parts that all have to work in near-perfect synchronicity in order to contain the endless and rapid succession of explosions created by the oxygen, electricity, and gasoline. It's just a couple of those moving parts that have vexed me for so long, and that one-minute lecture on mechanics my Dad gave me twenty-five years ago was insufficient.

So after a certain amount of reverse-engineering, book-learning, and self-reflection, I think I've zeroed in on the problem, and I'll not bore you with the specifics, but this old boat is nearly twenty years old itself, now, and I've scraped away enough rust in that engine compartment to find that there's no part where a part was supposed to be in some cases. Float a steel engine out in the middle of the water and sooner or later you're scraping rust off it. I think I've replaced just about every part on that engine, and scraped and re-painted every other.

Why do I do it, you ask? Not sure. On some level, it's just what men do. The garage is the cave, which is where men go when the vexing problem of women is insurmountable, and the set of problems that automotive repair presents are the ones that men are capable of solving. Women want to discuss. Men want to solve. The engine either works or it doesn't, no discussion necessary. Men want to be left alone and in charge of their own destiny, and this is why they go out to sea.

Well, it didn't say "Rain" in the forecast yesterday. It said "72 and Sun," which is why I left my tools and sundry others out last night. It started raining around 5AM and bugger! Damned if we didn't get more rain in an hour and a half than we did all last weekend in the projected Storm Of The Century! (Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film.)

I love a good rain, actually. I love the sight of it, the smell of it, the sound of it at night as you lay in bed pondering the events of the day. What I don't love is the rust it leaves on the tools. Oh sure, most of my tools are stainless steel, but there are those few small parts that have just that bit of iron in them that when they get even slightly damp, my vast work environment takes on a burned and bloodsoaked crime-scene look to it by noon. How uninviting.

The weather's been quite nice, however, and I made it through yesterday without drinking 6 liters of Gatorade, but I was crestfallen at the sound of water dripping off the fascia this morning. It got me out of bed, though it didn't shake me awake enough to get outside and put a tarp over everything, unfortunately. I just stood there at the window with my mug of coffee, staring out at the mess in the rain. That's when the sprinklers came on.

Looking at the weather report now, it still says "72 and Sun" but it is reporting "Rain" in Oceanside. Thank you. Of course, it's not actually raining now, no, the sun is peeking through the clouds. I heard on the news the other day that the Water Company was going to start sending out notices to its customers asking them to start cutting back on their water usage. My immediate thought was to increase the sprinkler duration out on the landscape, so a month from now, when I cut it back to normal, my water bill would reflect that I had actually cut back my usage. Then I thought that this would be an unsavory act, so I let it go. Now, it's raining and the sprinklers are on. Well, it's not my fault! I read the weather reports!

I wonder how many unsavory people out here in SoCal actually did increase their water usage at the announcement. I mean, America's Finest City has to keep its lawns green, right? And, I do swear, every time I see announcements like this, I'm driving down the freeway that afternoon and some sprinkler head has broken off up the embankment and it's blasting Old Faithful into the number 2 lane. Does the ice plant really need to be watered, anyway? I understand it's a succulent, thereby lessening the need for water in dry times. I used to live in Arizona. All the freeways out there are lined with rocks, gravel, and cactus, and in some areas it's landscaped rather attractively. Anyway, I'm sure the mayor's house is xeriscaped to the property lines.

Most of my sprinkler heads are broken, anyway. It seems they launch the water into the air and then the stuff evaporates before it hits the grass, which lays there agape, yawning up at the sun begging for a drop. I figured I'd wait until after Christmas to fix it, as the whole landscape needs to be overhauled (or underhauled, as the case may be) and I hate to do a patch job on something I'm just going to tear out anyway. Also, the campaign against the ants continues, and I can stand the dryness more than they can. (I think.)

Speaking of dry, unwatered landscapes, the neighbor house remains unsold and there is not a green thing left around it, thus reducing the property's value all the more. A year ago the sodded owner sodded the whole sodded backyard in an attempt to sell the sodded thing and it looked beautiful from my upstairs bedroom. Now the bank owns it, I suppose, and they're no good at upkeep. Imagine all the foreclosures around SoCal right now, and how all these homes, with no one in them, are just condemning themselves with the slow smokeless burning of decay.

But think of how much water we're saving! (I'll take his.)

P.S. In the previous post I used the term "poofta". Definition follows.

Remember how the series frittered itself away until it came to that lasting image of Lee Majors chasing after Bigfoot in that revolving ice tunnel in Universal Studios?

Just thought I'd mention it.

Tonight we watched Bionic Woman, which is a new show on television which is based on the old show on television which was based on the show before that, The Six Million Dollar Man. It's horrible, of course, but there's nothing else on. There hasn't been anything else on in months! Not since LOST and 24 went off the air until January, anyway. We watch two or three shows here on Eastview Court, depending on how you look at it, and that's it. Anything else is just news, the adult-alternative music station, or AppleTV. And lately there have been spats of kids shows, Elmo and the like, but that's it. And Discovery. We watch the Discovery channel. Nothing else. Sometimes Science channel or Animal Planet. Or the old movie channels. Or Home and Garden Network. Nothing else. Maybe the Travel Channel, if it's not about poker.

No, really. This family watches LOST, 24, and House. And House we're not even a hundred percent committed to yet, for some reason (even though I'm convinced it's the best written show on television.) The woman watches Dancing with the Stars, which makes me queasy from all the pooftas, and I watch Survivorman, which only has a few episodes, so I've seen them all twice. The Mythbusters and Deadliest Catch episodes just seem to repeat unendingly, so it's not like we really sit down and watch those. And Sunrise Earth we're only half awake for anyway, so it doesn't count. But really, there hasn't been anything on in months.

We don't do Netflix, because we can't commit to sitting in one place for over an hour without nodding off, so from time to time there is the errant night where we've had dinner, the kid is asleep, and we're just sitting there and there's nothing on. When this happens, I just pick something at random because I know my wife is just going to nod off in the next few minutes anyway.

And tonight it was Bionic Woman. Wow, what dull, redundant blather. Do you remember the original series? It was originally six million dollars that made the man so bitchin'. Now it's fifty million, due to inflation. What's new and inventive about the series? Nothing. Well, she's hotter than Lindsey Wagner, but that might just be from the tight outfits she favors in every other scene (and often, it's raining.) And, if memory serves, Steve Austin had the bionic eye, and Jaime Somers had the bionic ear. In this one, get this, she has both! No kidding. The write-up in the cable guide said that "after a terrible accident, she is given robotic limbs and then is visited by the original bionic woman" which I understood to mean that Lindsay Wagner was going to be making a guest appearance in the remake pilot! But it was not to be. This new original bionic woman character is like the Terminatrix in Termintor 3, (you remember, of course) and she has an evil streak in her so the two hot bionic women were destined to duke it out in the final scene of tonight's episode. Towards the end, Mrs. Ditchman woke up for two seconds to say, "Oh, cat fight." Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.

So no Lindsay Wagner. This was really the whole reason I committed to the hour, and now I want my hour back. Seriously, I kind of feel sorry for Lindsay Wagner doing those mattress commercials nowadays. She was a superheroine on all the lunchboxes and whatnot, and now it's like she just wants to sleep. Tired from the drudgery of catching bad guys, day in, day out. Who wouldn't be? My job's exhausting and there's no good vs. evil battle all day long. Then again, isn't she bionic? Why would she be so tired? Boggles the mind, really.

So don't watch it. The re-emerged popularity of cliffhanger shows must've really ticked off the fans, as it has affected all of network programming, to the point that entire seasons are halved by sword and delayed for six months in order to avoid a "cliffhanger moment" that lasts longer than a week. So there's nothing on for half a year now!

Actually, this is a good thing.

Dennis Prager defended the Jews again today! He invited people to call in and explain to him why the Jews were so hated in the world and throughout history. Among one of the more common reasons was "They've cornered the diamond market!" to which Dennis replied something like, "Let's discard, for the moment, that De Beers is a Belgian company and that South Africa has a huge corner on the diamond market as well... So the Jews have cornered the diamond market. So what?" which sent the caller into a frenzy: "But every diamond out there was cut by a Jew!" It was an astonishing revelation. Dennis giggled. "The Jews are a tiny group of people, compared to so many other countries and peoples. Why is everyone so obsessed with them?" Dennis is right. The Chinese have the market cornered on the cheap, useless, lead-painted trinkets of the world and nobody hates them for it. Maybe they should.

Then there were the people who called in and claimed that the Jews were hated because they are so powerful. Dennis: "Powerful? So powerful they allowed ONE THIRD of their people to be slaughtered in the holocaust?"

Then someone called in and claimed that the Jews were hated for their Narcissism. Caller: "They're like Paris Hilton! She's so obsessed with herself that everyone becomes obsessed with her!" Dennis: "I don't follow." Caller: "Because they claim to be 'chosen by God', Dennis, they're always calling themselves the Chosen People!" Dennis: "Well, they are the chosen people. That's what the Bible says." Caller: "See! Unbelievable narcissism!" To which Dennis coolly replied, "The Japanese claim to get the sun first in the morning and no one hates them for it. It's tradition. The fact that the Bible says the Jews were chosen only means they were chosen for a task. They weren't chosen for their greatness. As a matter of fact the Bible goes to great lengths explaining what miserable failures they were. More so than any other people in the Bible!"

To which the caller hung up, and we were all the better for it.

Speaking of Jew-haters, the president of Iran says that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Huh. Imagine that. It may be true. I don't know -I'm not gay and I've never been to Iran. But it may be true because they've all been executed, according to this news report. There's a bright side, however, gays are given a choice of four methods of execution: hanging, stoning, halving by sword, or being dropped from the highest perch.

Halving by sword?

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's amazing to me that if you met someone on the street who said these things, you'd discard the guy as a kook. But if you're Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and you say it at Columbia University, well... oh I don't know. He's the duly elected president of Iran, right? You figure it out. Also, the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews, the most documented event in world history, should not be treated as fact, but as theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

It's a crazy, mixed-up world we live in, but as long as we all get our aluminum patio covers, there'll be nothing to worry about.

Yes, if you haven't heard via my better half over at Mundane Details, it is Rocky's birthday. He is eighteen now, which means we either kick him out of the house or continue feeding him and cleaning his litter box. Eighteen amounts to two or three hundred years old in human years (or something) so we'll keep him around for pity's sake. Mind you, the Little Ditchman won't be so lucky.

According to the official papers, Rocky is a purebred Persian and one heated spring morning in 1989 he was sired by "Smokie" and "Duchess", just the right mix of royalty and scoundrel in my mind. Evidently he was originally listed as a female, and Mrs. Ditchman (who acquired him when she was fourteen!) named him "Roxy". It was only later, at a visit with the veterinarian, that a trained professional would point out the truth of his sex and he would be re-named "Rocky", after the popular movie franchise of the time. This sexual confusion no doubt accounts for the perpetual scowl.

He is deaf as a cinder block, and in my mind this contributes to his longevity. When the Little Ditchman was born it was only Rocky who could sleep easy around the house, getting his daily 22 hours worth. He is good-tempered, friendly, and tolerant, never a glutton and rarely territorial. But he has his limits: let his water dish go dry and he will let you know, regardless the hour of night or day.

When I came in to the house I was the third wheel, and I can now say with rock solid confidence that after five years, I still am. Every night, every single night, there is Rocky in bed with my wife, snuggled in against her head, one paw on her shoulder. She will be fast asleep, and Rocky will be there watching me as I walk in and get ready for bed. I'll brush my teeth and so forth, take off my shirt, and just as I pull back the sheet to slide in to the bed, my bed, Rocky will remind me: Meow -as if to say, You may be married to her, pal, but I was here first. And I will always have been here first. And he's right, of course, so what's a guy gonna do?

For his birthday I gave him a shave. He hated every second of it. I was certain to wear my leather work gloves and Mrs. Ditchman held him down whilst donning the oven mitts, as we didn't want a repeat of last month's poor animal handling mishap. His fur had become pretty matted over the summer and there was just no brushing it out this time. In his old age, we let him traipse through the yard in the afternoon and he enjoys the sun and sniffing around the compost pile, but it's murder on his pelt. Anyhow, shame on me for not trimming him down before the heat wave, but he hogs all the spoon time with the wife -so we're even.

Rocky's a good cat. Never too demanding, let's you know what he wants and then goes and lives his life out of the way. There is the occasional poo-dangler from the unkempt hair around the backside, but I think his owners can be blamed for this and they take on the lion's share of the embarrassment at parties, anyhow. He doesn't like ants in his food dish, has never been known to beg, and never gives in to the lusty debauchery of catnip, though he has acquired a hankering for a nice greasy strip of Charro Chicken once in a while, (thanks to me.) And he'll let you know it if you've been away too long. Like a best friend, he lets you do your own thing, but won't stand for neglect.

Here's to Rocky.

A Successful Oktoberfest Is The Only Way To Usher In A Terrific Fall

Welcome to The Fall! My favorite season, if not only for the metaphorical connotations of the season and the word itself, but for all Fall brings. Last week, when it was summer, I was at Lowe's and they were putting up the fake Christmas trees and very real decorations -I kid you not. Spare us, please! Just let me have my Halloween, the holiday where you get to dress like an idiot, demand candy from people, and if they don't pay up, you threaten them with tomfoolery (and all this is encouraged in the kids!) Also, there's Thanksgiving, an excellent American holiday by all means, and then there's that first Fall cold snap and those leaves changing color, and the big clouds in the sky that give it some depth and dimension for once (we just don't get that often enough out here in SoCal.) And what about that week or so of warm, dry Santa Ana winds that whip through town blowing the leaves in an upward spiral and bringing the ghosts dancing out of the brush? When that happens, there will be fires and another heat spell and the professional weathermen will be all worked up "a heat wave in October!" as if they'd never seen it before. This past weekend's Storm of the Century was a no-show, which would have been disappointing if it wasn't so gosh-darned pretty outside, and I don't see why the professional weathermen couldn't have just said, "This weekend is going to be the most beautiful one we've had all summer! You'll be glad you live in Southern California and the mere thought that the bubble has burst in the mortgage industry and that you're paying too much for a square of property on this side of paradise won't even soft-shoe through the back of your mind!" Of course, had they even forecasted such a thing, it probably would've rained a torrent -but then that would have been news! Biggest September rainstorm in twenty years! So it goes.

My favorite season is always kicked off properly with Oktoberfest, a beer-drinker's holiday in the ranks of St. Patrick's Day and the 4th of July (and Christmas, and Labor Day, and well, all of 'em. Though I prefer wine on Thanksgiving.) Unfortunately, I've had my health on the shelf for the past few, so it's been something of a let down. When that happens, I usually just drink Mexican beer with lime, or a nice hefeweizen with a slice of lemon, so I can get the Vitamin C. Anyway, I love beer, and drink a hearty amount. Imagine my pleasure upon seeing that the Construction booth at the Harbor Days Festival last week was just a booth away from the Oceanside Ale Works Beer Garden! Wonderful!

I prefer good wine by any stretch of imagination, but good beer is much easier to come by (read: cheaper) so I stick with being a connoisseur of the latter. I'm always trying out new beers, and when I run out of ideas, I go back to some old favorites to see if they still taste the same. They often don't, as microbreweries tend to adjust their ingredients or water source or whatnot from year to year and it can often have a noticeable impact on the flavor. I read recently about "flavor wandering" in Budweiser (and I mean the perennial American-made Budweiser, not the real German stuff) and they have a beer cellar at the Budweiser headquarters that goes back like 40 years or something, so they can keep track of it. Aged Budweiser! Somehow, it just doesn't sound as good to me as a 40 year old bottle of cab.

Also, I can be bought with a good label (it's only beer, after all.) I noticed that Bass had a nice new label and a canned version, so I got a few of those the other day. Man alive! It was the best beer I've had in a long time. They have perfected the can of beer! This is good news! I guess there is a new technology where they can inject nitrogen into the can without the widget, so you get that perfect pour and creamy head plus the extra sip of beer that the widget once took up! Brilliant! And last week I had a few He'Brew, the Chosen Beer, because it was Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Pomegranate Ale was interesting, not too bad, but their regular old He'Brew had a surprising tang to it that I liked. Also they have some great ads. Check it out. You gotta hand it to those Jews, man. L'Chaim!

Spent Saturday afternoon shaving the cat, but spent Sunday afternoon at a swell suburban Oceanside birthday party. One of the neighbors has a now 4-year-old, and they rented a jumper and had cake and a pinata. The kids ran around on the grass, the women sat at one table, and the men at another, and it was the sweet angel of good living making the rounds again. It's such a pleasure to have friendly folks on your street, folks who like beer. We seem to get together every couple of months or so, these kids have birthdays, and it's a good-humored event. Everyone's friendly and we chat about the goings-on in the hood; what did you do to your house, what's wrong with those guys who live over there, did you hear there was a snake in their kitchen, that sort of thing... The kids run around on the grass and every adult conversation is cut short by one of the parents running off to fetch one of the little ones for this reason or that, and then it's talk about the schools, the cats, and then you walk home. An excellent Sunday afternoon. I tell ya, nothing to complain about is an excellent day.

And Mrs. Ditchman ran eight miles this morning and didn't think twice about it. And she's still sick! What a woman, that Mrs. Ditchman,
W H A T - A - W O M A N !

I'm a lucky man.

Wow, now that's a real grabber of a title, George! I'm sure they're already lining up at the Grauman's Chinese for that one, eh? Puh-leeze... Has it been twenty years yet since the last? I would really have been looking forward to this about ten years ago, but now? Have you seen Harrison Ford lately? (Well, okay, I know you have, Matt.) How about Indiana Jones and the Lost Dentures? Indiana Jones and the Adult Diapers? Indiana Jones and the Convalescent Home of Doom? Indiana Jones and the... -you get the idea.

Comes out May 22, 2008. To be honest, I was kinda hoping for Indiana Jones and the Lost City of Atlantis, but whatever. I'll go see it of course, which gives me liberty to mock it thoroughly. Karen Allen will be returning (she was the fetching lass in Raiders) so that should be worth the price of admission. Anyway, I guess Lucas just can't let anything go as long as there's money to be made. It's funny to me that all these people who run the "LUCAS RAPED MY CHILDHOOD!" web sites (yes, they exist) will still be the first in line on opening night. Well, let's hope Indy dies in this one, that'd be good. I don't see him dying though, I kinda see him spending eternity in that cave in Last Crusade drinking from the Holy Grail with that aged knight ("He chose poorly."). Ford is 65, you know.

And there's this. So let me get this straight: they put a flag at the bottom of the ocean so now it's their territory? Fine then, we get the moon. Of course, there's not ten thousand billion tons of oil buried on the moon, as far as we can tell, so... I guess we'll have to fight them for it.

And another thing. Have you been to http://play.blogger.com/? It's a non-stop running slideshow that shows you every picture that is currently being uploaded to Blogspot. It's really kind of a trip watching it -it's like the whole Internet in all its mundane glory just passing before your eyes! Click on any of the photos and you will be taken instantly to the accompanying blog. Makes me want to Keanu. ("Whoa.") I'm convinced that if you watch it long enough you'll see someone you know. It's hypnotic for a minute or two, and then you kind of switch it off and forget about it and go back to ordinary living. I suppose all those pictures mean something to someone out there. Glad to be a part of it!

Well, it was a beautiful day, and this summer has really burned itself out, hasn't it? Rain is expected tomorrow -biggest September storm in twenty years, they say! Hey, wasn't I just complaining about the heat a few days ago? I actually pulled my slippers out of the closet this morning and put on some pants. Summer left in such haste it took off with my health, too, I was disappointed to discover last night. Feeling it bad in the sinuses, throat, etc. That's the way it goes, I guess. But maybe it'll be a nice wet winter here in SoCal. Enough of this global warming, we deserve it. Oh wait, I understand it's not "global warming" anymore, it's "global climate change", didn't you hear? As opposed to, say, "global climate stagnation"? That's it. I'm canceling my subscription to National Geographic. (They're gonna have to re-draw the maps of the Arctic continental shelf, anyway.)

Late addition: This is why America is going to win the Global War On Terror. Isn't the Internet great?