who's manly?

wayne morris.
wayne F*n' morris.
that's right.
my homeboy;
up-here pioneer,
rural loremaster,
and all around handy man.
he's got some talents in the homeowner's basic skills department.
that dude descended into my basement,
climbed over the crumbling granite battlements,
crawled through the native american burial grounds under my floorboards;
(the infamous and nefarious crawlspace.
that's exactly the right term for it, too.)
was he looking for a way to end a curse?
is there buried treasure under there?
did he flush his wedding ring into the underground plumbing-works?
nope.
none of those things is accurate.
he came over and helped me insure a warm, safe winter.
because he is a good friend.
and,
it was a chance to show off some of his manly skills, too.
yeah.
furnace, flue, and duct work.
imagine for a moment,
your favorite woodsly warrior poet
all into some sheet metal screwing, air duct pipe-fitting, burly home repair.
then,
imagine the amount of help i actually was,
while two bigger, burlier barbarians bore the brunt.
phase one:
furnace flue vent cleaning.
thirty feet of rusty tetanus, emphysema powder, and claustrophobic caverns.

i see uncle steven is wisely wearing his mask.
there's pure cancer-powder waiting to wonder-twin activate
the asbestos, radon, creosote, dust, and rust down there.
but where's wayne?
he's IN the creepy dry hole.
my camera ate it, hard,
well before i could capture him in his full filthy glory.
he crawled under there a few times,
and left my house looking like a full-figured indiana jones adventure.
word up, ya'll.
i'm sayin',
that duder works.

does that look like a three foot high dirty ledge,

full of archaic metal and wire?

yeah!

we put the power to it.

(again, mostly wayne)

and then headed upstairs to deal with the other other stovepipe.

in case you were wondering;
this old house's previous owners,

the ones who let the place languish into busted old bustedness,

instead of old busted hottness,
must've not shared my affinity for victorian chimbleymen.
how could i tell?
because we santa claus-type hard-styled that stuffed-stocking site.

cleaning my pipes, ya'll.
we brushed that baby-b!tch with my new steel sweeper,

and dislodged a truly heinous heap of hellish hardened hunkage.

disgusting?

uh-huh.
wayne, already filthy from his furnace furiousness down delow decks,
climbed up and at 'em on the dangerously wet roof,
and hollered down the hole,
as we tugged and tussled with a long, hard, dirty reaming.
(that IS what she said)

he topped to my bottom,

and i got covered in slag.

i was blacker than a moonless night an' that.

soot is really as black as they say.

and it really does look like a cartoon cloud exploding in your house,

when the stormswept thunderbrush blows it's way in.

i definitely had some big, bad, huffin', and puffin' werewolfen

brick house blowin' going on.

i wore a mask, and goggles, and put up barriers,

and still i've somehow got black boogers this morning.

the well-earned, well-appreciated rewards?

first off,

we three worthy workers each enjoyed

nine inches of fourth-year cedar aged brazilian stank-stick.

and after our smoke-screened tour of the fortress grounds,

and expounding on the virtues of rural woodsly goodness,

we stoked up the verrrry sexy woodsly goodstove.

what could rock it more than a mutha-flippin',

roasty-toasty, damp-destroying,

fresh, freaky doo-doo blaze?

nothin'.

recognize.

the first one we've had in the pad,

and it was just what i needed.

blistery, blustery, haunted graveyard of a day that it was,

a cozy, comforting, intimate, inviting incendiary oven hit it up proper.

nice, kid, nice....

oh, yeah;

after dark, me and uncle s. hit up the fair for some supper.

three more utha-flippin' falafels,

directly down my gullet.

it hurts so good.

but, seriously, it really hurts;

never quiet, never soft.....