Curse of the Blowfly

I hate flies. Most don't bite and they don't sting, but I still hate them. They are the personification of filth and putrescence, Beelzebub's vile minions. Blowflies are particularly odious since their favorite foods are shit and decomposing bodies. Rotting meat and foodstuff will suffice though.


About four weeks ago, the Devil Queen started filling up with blowflies. In the few years that Devil Queen has defiled our life, she has experienced a number of infestations and invaders: wasps, king snakes, bats, scorpions, mice, more wasps, moths and even more wasps. Sure, an occasional fly has made it in from time to time, but we've never been overrun with them. What makes it even stranger is that the Devil Queen is sealed up better than she ever has been since we've had her.

It started with a couple of blowflies in the laundry room which I promptly killed. The next day there were a few more which I also killed. This pattern continued for a couple of days. After another orgy of fly crushing, I remember thinking, "wow, this has got to be a bad omen."

The day after that, I came home from work to find all the clocks flashing since the power had briefly gone out. For Russellville, Arkansas, this is not an odd occurrence. I've lived all over the US and traveled around the world, but Russellville (Pope County in general) is the only place I've been where the electrical service was intermittent. No thunderstorms, acts of God, or accidents are required. The power will randomly go off for a few seconds and surge back on with no preamble. This happens at least once every couple of weeks, and it has done so for years. Entergy Arkansas, thank you for the rate hikes and the poor service; you have made my dream of living in a third world county a reality.

One of the great things about these outages, is the power surge that follows when the current returns. Light bulbs, appliances, and other electronics have fallen victim over the years.

I think you probably see where I'm going with this. Later that night, I went to wash some clothes for work, and the washer wouldn't power up. You could hit the power button all you wanted, but nothing happened. That is what everyone wants out of a $650, two-year old machine, right? Yes, the warrantee has expired. We checked.

I also checked the breaker box and the outlet. It was definitely the machine.

After that, the blowflies kept coming and things got worse. The bay window room was randomly swarmed by wasps after a few freakishly warm days. Then the house was broken into and we were robbed.

The flies got even worse after this, but I suspect this was because our front door was standing wide open for at least a few hours. Really, I was probably lucky that pack of coyotes or a mound of hibernating rattle snakes hadn't moved in by the time I got home. Even so, I was getting very tired of killing 10, 15, or 20 blowflies every day. What is even weirder is that they didn't go for any of the stuff you'd think they would. I never saw one anywhere near the cat's liter box or the kitchen trash can. They seem to like the windows in the laundry room, the living room, and the bedrooms.

And now, just over two weeks later, I'm still finding the occasional blowfly, one here, one there.

I'm hoping the curse may be lifting though. Sunday, just for the hell of it, I went and hit the power button on the washing machine. It turned on. I was too suspicious to try it out though. I have visions of it shutting down mid-load with a drum full of water and the door lock, which I suspect is 100% electric, jammed shut. Forever.

I asked Jack, our electronics guru, about it. He said that a lot of new appliances have thermal switches which automatically turn the machine off when they get too hot. His theory is the power surge tripped the switch and it hadn't reset by the time I came home. So far, that sounds good to me. I certainly don't have any answers.

Maybe if the blowflies are all gone by the weekend I'll try running a load.

Or maybe not. I'm not feeling lucky.

Death-Wish Wish Fulfillment

There are wasps in our attic. At first I thought they were living in the trim where the master bathroom joins to the rest of the house. That was wishful thinking. They are in fact in the attic. I deduced this by watching them slowly piling bits of blown insulation from the attic on the porch roof to make room for their horrific love nest.

The freak snow storm we had earlier this week was probably one of the last appearance of winter for the year. Soon, spring will be here. When it arrives, the wasps will come with it. Now is the time for me to strike.

I've done a bit of research and preparation. Bug-bombs are out and Spectracide aerosol wasp spray are in. Now, all I have to do is make my way into the attic on a cold night, find the nest without drawing too much attention to myself, hose it down with poison, make my way back to the attic hatch (50-60 feet back to the rear of the house) without getting stung or falling through the ceiling. I anticipate this being as much fun as swimming around the Great Barrier Reef with a five gallon bucket of chum tied around my neck.

Later, just for kicks, I can climb onto the roof and plug the hole into the attic.

Gonzo, That's What We Do

Apparently, our 2006 Halloween Sabbath was quite a success; we've been informed that we will be having another one this year. Scarlet and I weren't satisfied with the level of fear we were able to achieve last year, so we are trying to think of things we might do to terrorize our friends and acquaintances. Suggestions?

Costumes are concern as well. To further my goal of becoming the Hunter S. Thompson of home improvement, I think I ought to devote some serious time to the full immersion approach to touch my inner Gonzo. Specifically, with Halloween just a few short weeks away, I think that I will become the man himself for the duration of that one hallowed eve.

Really though, houseblogs almost have to be Gonzo, don't they? From the ever dubious source of factual information, Wikipedia:


"The word gonzo was first used to describe a 1970 story written by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style. The term has since been applied in kind to other highly subjective artistic endeavors.
Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered. It disregards the 'polished' edited product favored by newspaper media and strives for the gritty factor. Use of quotes, sarcasm, humor, exaggeration, and even profanity is common. The use of Gonzo journalism portends that journalism can be truthful without striving for objectivity and is loosely equivalent to an editorial."

Fear. Loathing. Barbecue.

Barbecue, blood, bodies, bonfires, bratwursts, chandeliers, chemical warfare, caulk, cracks, gardening, Lowe's, painting, priming, spray-foam insulation, tequila, wasps, wiring, and what-not. Pictures of the carnage will follow over the next few days. What can I say? We had pretty good weekend even if it was hot enough to make you sweat. It was definitely a lot more like late May and not late March this weekend.

One of the sure signs of a good weekend is the house was a total disaster come Sunday night. I guess we were too busy to bother picking up like we should. Actually, it was a might bit disturbing. We'd just finished watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I noticed the bowels of the Devil Queen pretty well look like the last hotel room they trash in the movie, not a pretty sight. All I need is a pair of sunglasses, a cigarette holder jammed between my teeth, substitute the polyurethane and stain for ether and I can become the Hunter S. Thompson of Houseblogs. Would that make this Gonzo Home Improvement?

Sunday (or was it Saturday?), we spent a few frantic hours cloistered in the breakfast nook, drinking pot after pot of coffee, and working on the The Plan. Actually, it is a fairly compact affair. Phase One starts tonight. I will attempt to sent the paint scraping endurance record by systematically dry-scraping every flake of nasty, decrepit paint off the our ceilings. The living room will be first. It will be followed by the hallway, the dining room, the rear hall, and the master bathroom ceiling. While I wait for the cramps and seizures subside, I will try to relax by boiling hardware, shellacking, and other small, must-do tinkering chores. If I am partially successful (that would be finishing the first two or three rooms on the list), will be having a "paining party" two weekends from now. The last one was such a success that we are hoping we can replicate the effect and get all the scraped rooms primed and painted. This will get us very close to meeting our bank deadline.

The spray priming (is this the home improvement equivalent of spray on tanning?) of the Devil Queen is nearing completion. We may soon have to commit to a final color selection for the exterior.

Regarding the paint job, the question of the day is, what do the neighbors think? The answer will probably have zero impact on our course of action, but we are curious folk. Ms. Scarlet and I figure that it is a toss-up between:

1) It's about bloody time they painted that piece of shit. Slackers.
2) Wow, they painted it and it still looks awful. Maybe if we're lucky it will be struck by lightning and burn to the ground.

Anyhow, we continue on our journey across the dark underbelly of the American Dream, what the hell ever that means.