If You Cut Down a Tree but Don’t Have Your Camera, Can You Still Blog About It?

I wish I could take a picture of the men cutting down the dead pine in my front yard right now and post it to show you, but I burned up all my batteries photographing a certain design feature of my house for the home improvement copywriting job that shall here remain nameless and haven’t gotten around to recharging. It’s really a shame, too, because these tree trimmers are amazing.

Right now, the lead lumberjack is about a zillion feet in the air wielding a chainsaw like there’s no tomorrow–and if I hadn’t hired the same exact crew to cut down the dead pine in the backyard several months ago, and seen the lead lumberjack’s mad skills with a Pullan, I’d say there might not be. A tomorrow, I mean, because that shit they’re doing is terrifying.

But there will be a tomorrow, of course–just minus one dead pine, plus another stump and with a slightly different view out the dining room window.  I suppose you could call that progress.

Coming Soon: Darkness on the Edge of Town

Okay, here’s the scoop . . .

The new online column, Darkness on the Edge of Town, should debut any day now over at the Free Times website. Nobody’s bothered to tell me exactly when the first installment will finally light up cyberspace and catapult me to stardom, but I suspect it will be sometime before the housing market returns. Look for it under the Real Estate banner, somewhere below the — well, I don’t know that you can call it ‘the fold,’ exactly, but you know what I mean. You may have to hunt for it . . .

Twitter & the Monkey Man

Should text vague announcement via tweet but don’t do tweet so this: new FT column a go. No title yet. More soon. Cryptic enough?

Deconstructing the Reconstruction

Out with the old, in with the new...

Nothing lasts forever, not even cynical home improvement columns rife with literary allusion. That’s right, following the December installment, which comes out this morning, Fables of the Reconstruction will be no more. After almost two and a half years and twenty-five columns, the decision was made last month to yank the Abode section altogether, my column included. Or at least that’s what they’re saying downtown. Personally, I suspect marketing finally realized they could sell more ads if they ditched the brainy depressive.

Seriously, though, it has been a fun ride — even when I was crying in my beer at the Bitter Bastard or wringing out my socks after the Limbo Tower flood. Hell, even as I contemplated sticking a garden hose around the tailpipe of my father’s Oldsmobile and starting the ignition, it was still a pleasure putting my misery into words.  There’s something comforting, I guess, about having a monthly outlet for your chronic frustration and personal beefs.

Of course, the FT may be dropping the Fables, but that doesn’t mean I’m similarly finished. On the contrary, there’s still plenty of work to be done on the house, and I plan to write about it here at the Deconstruction, hopefully with a little more frequency than I have up to now. Indeed, if all goes well and I don’t suddenly find work as a consultant, I should be posting at least twice a month.

Also, so you know, I am currently in negotiations with the paper to start a new online column sometime in the new year. I don’t know what such a column would entail, if anything, or even what it would be called. Right now, I’m still trying to convince the editors that they should pay me in double-figures, or at least spring for a new mugshot.

Finally, since we’re talking about big cash advances and imminent fame, I should mention that I’m currently working on a book based on the Fables. Hopefully, it’ll get picked up either by the people who put out the Dummies books or the ones who publish the Idiot’s guides. Failing that, I’d also settle for a mimeographed pamphlet glued together with joint compound.

All that’s still a long ways off, though, and I don’t want to curse myself by making any more grand promises than I can realistically deliver. When I have a better idea what the future might hold — whether that means a new column, a Fables book or just a bunch of blog posts cluttering up cyberspace — I’ll let you know. Until then, thanks for reading.

Monday Morning Dustup

It’s Monday here at the Deconstruction, which means the lawn care crew is next door — combusting internally, blowing deafeningly, emitting profusely and otherwise kicking up dirt. I’ve been trying in vain to get some work done all morning. I’d say something to the goggled workmen but I’m afraid it won’t help, and anyway, they wouldn’t hear me over the racket and through the snug protection of their air traffic control headsets.

No, I am stuck in the here and now, afraid even to open the sliding glass door for fear I might choke on the pulverized oak leaves and gas fumes.

Understand, these aren’t the same neighbors I disparaged in this month’s Fable. These are not the people who threw a table over the fence, took it back and then threw it back once more, a little further down, behind the camellia. Rather, these are the more immediate neighbors, a family I have known since my family moved into this house in the summer of 1977. I disparaged these neighbors way back in the spring.

And yet I don’t hate them. I wish they’d hire a different bunch of lawn care professionals, and that the guys they did hire might not come quite as often as they do or pack so much unnecessary firepower, but I actually like the family. They link me to my past and the past of my house more than any other household in the entire neighborhood. The fact that the same family lives at that same address more than thirty years on reminds me that while nothing is permanent, some things at least aren’t as fleeting as they otherwise seem.

The youngest son and daughter next door were the first friends my brother and I made in the neighborhood, and we stayed friends, and then friendly acquaintances, until every one of us had at last moved out of the house for college and beyond. I was especially close with their youngest son, who introduced me at different times to the music of the Beatles, Choose-Your-Own Adventure books and Playboy magazine. We don’t have a lot in common these days, he and I, but as of sometime last spring, we are friends on Facebook, where every few months we share a quick, impromptu reminiscence before returning to our separate realities.

The parents of these childhood friends — a couple a few years older than my own mother and father — still live next door and remain friendly, if a little reclusive. The mother still teaches piano lessons several days a week, as she did when I was a boy, and sometimes on spring evenings, when we each have our windows open and I’m in the bedroom reading a book, I can hear her tickling the ivories across the narrow alleyway that separates our houses. It is a pleasant, nostalgic sound that can sometimes wipe out thirty years in as few as three notes.

But how different the sound of the leaf blower and the riding mower. I know I’ve gone over this before, and that there is a danger in moaning too long or too loudly, but it really does get to be too much sometimes.

When we were kids we used to rake a labyrinth of bike trails through the leaves each fall and then chase each other through them on our Huffies and Schwinns for a couple weeks before quietly bagging our crudely constructed curbs and medians and setting them by the road, officially signaling the end of fall. Nowadays, regardless of the season,  it seems all I ever hear is the roar of a motor. Meantime, all I ever smell is gasoline and all I ever see is an enormous cloud of dust and smoke and swept-up leaves, reminding me of nothing so much as the passage of time and the erosion of the natural world.

Reconstruction, Deconstruction—What’s the Difference?

It’s Black Friday here at the Deconstruction, barely 6 a.m., and no surprise, I can’t sleep. No, I didn’t drop the Thanksgiving turkey or burn the sweet potatoes or forget to put the carcass in the fridge after the late-night sandwiches. No, I didn’t drink too much or make any embarrassing holiday toasts. And no, I’m not lamenting the return to business as usual after I drop my parents off at the Charlotte airport later today. In fact, while I’m not looking forward to writing any more web copy for a product that shall here remain nameless, I kind of need the money. Indeed, how else will I finance the new doorbuster?

No, best as I can figure it, I’m up because a new Fable hit the street the day before yesterday while I was showing my parents the new bathroom, which they paid for last year but hadn’t seen until this week. They were thrilled by the vanity and delighted with the tile work, so you know, but none of that does my readers any good when they sit down on the pot.

Anyway, you can read the November installment over at Free Times. While you’re there, you can also leave a comment for the editors, email the column to your mother-in-law, print a copy to stick on your fridge or click around looking for evidence of my floundering career as a freelancer. Indeed, do whatever you like over there—just don’t try to come back using the link at the bottom, which points to a site called reconstructionfables not deconstructionfables and which, should you click it, will launch you unceremoniously into my subconscious.

What can I say? The webmaster hates me.

It is fitting, though—this typographical mistake. I won’t call it irony, but there is something, well, apropos about the mix-up. See, the new Fable is about both putting things up and taking things down, i.e. reconstructing and deconstructing, in this case the sort of Frostian fence at the back of my property. The new column is also about throwing garbage into the neighbor’s yard then pretending you don’t know where the property line ends, but that’s more than I should go into here, especially considering the restraining order. You’re better off just reading the column.

~

PS: Speaking of Thanksgiving, if you didn’t get enough to eat yesterday, or your holiday bird somehow didn’t turn out like you’d hoped it would and you want to avoid a repeat disaster come Christmas, check out the latest post from the crack research team over at Very Little Known Facts. Let me tell you, those guy can talk turkey.

Between Business Trips and Boudin

It’s been a busy week here at the Deconstruction. Earlier this month, after a six-month labor strike, I resumed my lucrative career as an uncredited web-based copywriter for a home improvement product which shall here remain nameless. Consequently, I had to drive down to Atlanta Tuesday morning for a daylong meeting with my boss, his wife, our webmaster and a guy from Akron, Ohio who showed up in a jacket and tie to show off product samples and explain the process of powder coating anodized aluminum. I’d tell you more about this fascinating subject, but that might spoil next month’s Fable. It also might get me fired.

I’ve also been out and about a bit more than usual this week. Normally, I try to keep a low profile, but last night, on the recommendation of my Free Times colleague Tad Trencherman, the wife and I headed up I-77 for the grand opening of Smoke, a barbecue and boudin joint masterminded by Columbia provocateur and full-time Plowboy Tom Hall, and Hall’s partner in crime, Dan Huntley. While we were there, chowing down on smoked oysters and hand-processed Cajun sausages — and otherwise swilling ice cold beer by a  burn barrel — the wife and I even got our picture snapped by the local paparazzi.

Of course, I was sort of surprised to see my bearded mug pop up over at the Anne Postic’s Shop Tart blog this morning– partly because I thought I was being more discreet last night, and partly because I don’t read the Shop Tart.

That’s not a knock, by the way. The Shop Tart does what it/she does very well, and if the unconfirmed gossip I’ve heard is true, it/she is about to rack up some well-deserved awards. As blogs go, it’s just not my cup of meat. Ever since Sex and the City went off the air my interest in Manolo Blahniks has waned severely, I guess.

For the record, I was at one time a fairly devoted reader of Mrs. Postic’s other blog, which kept me abreast of parenting trends and otherwise reminded me why I’m glad to be childless. When that blog finally flat-lined back in June, however, so did my interest. I think I speak for a lot of local men when I say I wish that other blog would come back.

But anyway, I digress.

What I really logged on to say was that there’s a brand new Fable out this week. That’s right, between my business trip to the ATL, my brush with boudin madness and my sudden unexpected celebrity, I forgot all about the latest column, which is guaranteed to bring you down for the fall season, or at least remind you of your own mortality. And if you don’t like it, I don’t know . . . go shopping or something.

Life’s Biggest Question

Where can I find the print version of Free Times?

I'm in there somewhere, if you want to click.

Normally, when a reader sends me a question like this I send it directly to the FAQ section, where I either answer it honestly, answer it dishonestly or don’t answer it at all, depending on my mood and whether or not I’ve recently received a freelancer’s check.

This particular question, however, has come in with such baffling frequency that I finally decided I need to address it right here on the homepage, effectively ending the discussion. Since its inception, after all, the FAQ page has consistently averaged the least daily traffic of any page on this site — less, even, than the dreadfully embarrassing collection of bathroom limericks I recently threw in the Dumpster.

So then and again, and without further delay, the question, definitively answered…

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it six-and-a-half times: You can pick up a copy of Free Times at most Columbia area restaurants and bars, or from the large purplish vending machines you see scattered around downtown. Copies appear magically every Wednesday morning and disappear quickly, especially during grilling season and when the local animal shelter needs to reline its litter boxes.

If the current economic situation has made dining out an unaffordable luxury, however – or if social anxiety precludes straying too far from the house in search of a large purplish box – you can also find copies in a range of other locations, many of them so close to home you won’t even need to change out of your dressing gown. For a partial rundown of such locations, click here.

Wherever you finally do decide to pick up your copy, though, make sure you get there before the building manager at Limbo Tower shows up and takes them all back to the building’s boiler room downtown. I can’t prove this, but from what I’ve heard, the super over there soaks the disassembled pages in a solution of all-purpose flour and mop water then uses the resulting paper mâché to patch flood-damaged walls, and otherwise to repair the elevators.

Greetings from Partly Cloudy Northwest Indiana!

Okay, so not really. I’ve actually been back in the Capital City since 1:37 Monday morning, when I tumbled into town on a cloud of paint fumes and roadside coffee — and I’ve been sprawled out from exhaustion ever since.

We painted my parents' basement and rebuilt a wall, but all we got was this lousy postcard.

But I really was in Northwest Indiana this time last week — and it really was partly cloudy, at least by the time the wife and I emerged from the freshly-painted basement.

We were up there doing the job I promised to do in last month’s Fable, and which we grossly underestimated. Not only was painting the basement and kitchen more work than we thought it would be; brushing past my parents while they sipped tempranillo and showed each other slide shows of their recent international travels — meanwhile stepping over a bound copy of my brother’s dissertation while I tried to edge the ceiling without dripping on his blue books — may have inflicted irreversible nerve damage.

For going on three days now I’ve been trying to unclench my fist, which is perhaps permanently twisted around the phantom handle of a putty knife. Meanwhile, the primer that dried under my fingernails may be there until New Years.

In fact, I passed the first half of this week on the Internet, searching out information about painter’s wrist and solvent toxicity, and I’m devoting the remainder of the week to researching the possible link between long-term joint compound exposure and pronounced lethargy.

And yet it’s not all fun and games here at the Deconstruction. This being the last week of the month–and today being Wednesday–I’ve also been trying to come up with a clever new way to herald the publication of the latest Fable, which landed in the recycling bin sometime early this morning. What I finally came up with was the pale blue postcard in the upper left, which like every other postcard I’ve ever purchased didn’t go out until after I was already home.

Sorry about the delay, but I couldn’t find a stamp.

Dog Days and Oldsmobiles

It’s the middle of the night, September 1st, and here at the Deconstruction the windows are open, the removable screens jammed in, the patio door pulled as wide as it will go. The ceiling fans are spinning, of course, but the air, at last, is off. The crickets and cicadas of summer may still be at it, but they won’t be much longer. The heat has finally cracked.

Obviously, it won’t last, this sudden hint of cool weather. Tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, temperatures will soar back into the 90s and the humidity will envelope us once again. It has to. This is South Carolina, after all, and I am a modern-day Job.

Indeed, sometime later this week the sun will likely hurl a blazing hot comet of its own infernal design directly onto the house, incinerating everything in its path and leaving only a wisp of smoke, a pile of ash and the chassis of my father’s rusted-out Oldsmobile, which hasn’t left the driveway in almost a year. Because death would be the easy way out — especially that kind of death, so quick and painless — I’ll somehow crawl from the wreckage with third-degree burns and no eyebrows.

But none of this will happen tonight.

Tonight, as I stretch out on the couch and feel the cool air drifting through the house–as I listen to the last chorus of summer in the trees and tall grass out back, and from the tiny creek at the end of our street where the frogs bellow and groan–I only want to enjoy it. That, of course, and to remember the sunscreen in the morning. I’ve no doubt tomorrow will be a scorcher.