Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

The best thing about moving (other than the slow tedious process that is unpacking), is getting to know your new neighborhood. Living five miles from town, we have fewer neighbors than we did before, but we do live in a cluster of four or five houses along the state highway between two towns and what we lack in quantity we seem to be making up for in entertainment value.

The first night in our new house, I was sitting in the living room in front of the yet-to-be curtained picture window when I noticed a flashing light coming from across the road. It seemed to be coming from very near but not actually from inside the neighbor's house--it was like a camera flash but it came every second or so. I looked at Hubby and said, "Do you think our new neighbor is communicating with aliens?"

The next morning, all was explained when I noticed a wooden lighthouse sitting in a flower bed next to the house. But as soon as one question was answered, more arose.

The man has ponies--lots of them. Sometimes there are as many as ten or fifteen in the pasture beside his house and sometimes there are only a few and some days there aren't any to be seen. There is a tiny shedlike structure at the top of the hill and a made-from-a-kit round steel building that looks like a giant metal meatloaf, so I assume that's where the "missing" ponies are, but the weirder thing about the ponies is that even though there are so many of them there are only two color patterns--one is a rich brown with a blondish mane and tail and the other is white with chocolate brown spots.

I'm pretty sure my neighbor is cloning ponies in that shed up on the hill.

In fact, I'm so positive that this is what's going on that I no longer even call them ponies--they're clonies.

And that lighthouse? It's beaming the results of his latest cloning efforts to scientists on some other planet.

I'm pretty sure.

All The Ice Cream He Could Eat And Other Musical Commentary

We were playing cards Saturday night while listening to a mixed CD that included Nickelback's "Rock Star." Now one of my favorite lines in the song has always been "I wanna be great like Elvis without the tassels..."

I mean truly, it's one of the greatest lines in any song ever--clever and funny and what better rhyme for "assholes," which, in the uncensored version, appears in the next line? I thought there was no way the line could be improved upon, until I overheard Next-To-Youngest Niece singing it Saturday night:

"I wanna be great like Elvis without the tonsils..."

It doesn't rhyme quite as well, but you gotta give her points for creativity.

In other musical news, Daughter-Only and her friend R and I were in the car when an Angels and Airwaves song came on the radio. D-O says, "I love his voice, but it's really hard to like their music when the entire band is ugly."

I'm sure they've got a place for her on the Reviews page at Rolling Stone.

Oxymorons, Emphasis On Morons

So, I missed the last day of NaBloPoMo--didn't get out of work before the library closed. And the good news is my head didn't explode.

The bad news is that we still didn't have Internet when I got home that night. Because it turns out the phone company is a big, gigantic liar too (just like the cable company)--the DSL signal that I was assured would be coming to my house was not strong enough to reach our house from their local office. I understand, I guess, that they couldn't have known that instantly in the first phone call, but I'm a little baffled as to why no one could be bothered to let me know that I wouldn't be receiving the service they had promised. When I did finally call on Monday morning, they said, "oh, yes, we tried to send the signal to your house, but you're too far out to receive it" and I said, "And why wasn't I notified of that?" She said, and I quote, "sputter, sputter, spit and mutter..." Whatever. I can't get DSL. So she says, "We do offer dial-up, would you like to sign up for that now."

Uh, no. If I'm getting crappy dial-up service then you can bet your sweet, stupid butt I'm not getting it from your company who couldn't even be bothered to call me back to tell me that all you could offer me was crappy dial-up service.

So there it is.

And the oxymoron? We got dial-up--but we got the upgraded "hi-speed dial-up."

Hi-speed dial-up.

Yeah, but we got it for $12.95/month and it was turned on the exact moment the non-moronic customer service representatives told us it would be.