Look At Me, Ma –I’m A Googlewhack!

As far as I know, I’m not a Antegooglewhackblatt. I’m pretty sure I’m not a Googlewhackblatt either. But dad gum it, I’m a Googlewhack.

What’s a Googlewhack, you’re asking? I know that’s what you’re doing, because that’s exactly what I was doing when an Irish university student named Ciarin H. sent me a cryptic e-mail that got me scratching my pate: “Did you know you were a Googlewhack?”

“You take that back” is a regular person’s first thought, of course. But I was intrigued. I’m fairly used to hate mail at this point, as I’ve run several internet lemonade stands for some time now, but this didn’t look like any DIAF missive I’ve seen. So I looked it up in Wikipedia:

A Googlewhack is a Google search query consisting of two words–both in Google’s dictionary, and without quotation marks–that returns a single result. A successful Googlewhack returns ‘Results 1-1 of 1’. Googlewhacking is the pastime of seeking such a result. A person attempting to find a Googlewhack is known as a Googlewhacker.

Well, Ciarin H. was assigned Googlewhacking as a university project, and lo and behold, discovered me.

I remember way back when, when I started my first website, I duly registered with dmoz and Yahoo and the Yellow Pages and so forth, and would try Google every day to see if by typing in my exact name you would find me. It tooks months before anything but my entire web address would work. Now I’m all over these here intarnets like a rash. You can type “cottage furniture” into any search engine and see what I mean.

But that’s small beer. I’m a Googlewhack! I’m eternally grateful to Ciarin for alerting me to this, and having the kindness to tell me the two words — but no one else — because you see, being a Googlewhack is like being Praseidimio. Who’s that, you wonder? Why, that’s the Italian version of the old fairytale Rumpelstiltskin. And just like Rumpelstiltskin, if I reveal my Googlewhack to anybody, and they publish it anywhere on the internet, Google will index it, and my Googlewhack status will disappear like Rumpelstiltskin through the floor when he stamps his foot.

A Googlewhack. Me. Napoleon, Alexander, Einstein, Churchill, Lincoln… all pikers compared to me. What are their accomplishments, really, when hoisted up next to mine? It’s like a kind of internet nobility, really; and like real nobility, there’s no effort or merit about it. I just gotta sit still and keep quiet.

By gad, this is like a curse for a yammering fool like me.

Front Yard Foliage

If you walk out my front door and point a camera towards the road, this is what you see. In the winter you can see the headlights passing. In the summer, just the susurrus of the rubber on the pavement, as indistinct as the breeze.

There is a stone bench next to the back door, always in the sun. It needs the sun to warm it now. It is a place to sit and contemplate for an ephemeral moment, your feet on the gravel and your back against the sun-blasted wall. You hear the world whir by. The sun grinds overhead, the meal growing thinner as the calendar passes.

A man’s life is like a bucket of water – or a fistfight. You take a bucket of water, and you dump it on the floor. At first, there is a rush, a deluge; it spreads out in all directions, pushing things before it, soaking, scouring and washing. But it soon runs out of energy, and gathers itself into little rivulets, and then puddles. You must gather it up with the mop, and wring it back into the bucket to begin again. Each time, the floor takes its vigorish, and the bucket has less than the last time. The scouring of the floorboards on the mop makes it fray away slowly, imperceptibly at first, the wear accelerating over time as you work it harder to try to glean the same amount you remember possible anyway. Each time it takes longer to mop it all back into the bucket for the next go. The floor is always dirty.

I never dream any more. I think while I am asleep–maybe. Or I lay there dead. There is nothing fantastic in my head anymore.

Oh yes; the fight.

If it’s not over immediately — one man overmatched and beaten before it starts, really — then the blows rain down in roughly equal measure until you are both near exhaustion. At some point one contender realizes that the other feels exactly as he does, and thinks how easy it would be for he himself to be beaten.

The man who realizes that first about himself, correctly, can beat any man.

Aujourd’hui- Pat Et Stanley

You remember our friends Pat and Stanley, don’t you? Well, they’re back, with more infantile, borderline scatological hijinks. Enjoy.

I Tire Of This, Sport

I’m gonna qualify for Medicaid by the time I finish writing about this, so let’s put a fork in it today, what do you say? Let’s fix the floor:

The bedroom is that rarest of things. It has natural light available from three directions. So we can afford to make the floor dark, to give it a quiet look and a visual weight. That, and there’s no way I’m ever going to drag the 200 pound rental drum sander up the stair to properly sand it before I finish it, and dark covers a multitude of sins. So we play it as it lays, as they say in golf, referring to hitting your ball from the spot you kicked it to when no one was looking.

Lacquer thinner and coarse steel wool will remove the mill stamps identifying the grade and species of wood and the occasional whoopsie my wife made with her warpaint. That’s it for preparation, but what the hell; the purpose of a pine plank floor is to look old and a little rough, so it’ll be kosher right from the get-go. Now for the miracle fluid.

Shellac. Magic stuff. It’s the residue left on a tree from the lac bug, gathered and dissolved in denatured alcohol. It sticks to anything. Anything sticks to it. Dries almost immediately. It dries in low temperatures. No matter how much you thin it, it still makes a coherent film. I root around in my stash of old fashioned but still state of the art liquid aniline dyes, and find Dark Walnut. Yeah baby. 100 drops per quart of shellac, two quarts of shellac will do it, and a big slug of alcohol. The alcohol goes in the shellac, not the shellacker. Never drink while you work. Never. Guys named “Lefty” or “Stumpy Joe” drink while they work.

By the time you reach the end of the plank, the end you started at is dry, so you’ve got to be brave. Stop to wipe your brow, and it’ll splotch. Give it a few minutes, and go back over it with clear low lustre water based polyurethane, and let that dry for an hour or so. And it’s done.

Alright, we finished about a third of the floor, and half the walls and trim on Saturday night. Sunday, we move the furniture onto the floor that’s finished and I begin… to think about the Patriots game. Must go faster!

It’s wide open spaces now, so it’s easier to work. There’s a lot of woodwork, but we’re not moving the furniture twice, so I do it all as we go, more or less. We’re ready to do the remainder of the floor by late afternoon. I shellac the floor, and hey, it’s 6-0 Bengals!

I admit it. I stopped and watched the last two quarters of the Pats game. Take that Cincy!

Back upstairs, and recoat the floor with the polyurethane, and sleep in the den a second night. Monday morning, we put the furniture back, with about half of it removed. Addition by subtraction. Here’s before and after in the front of the house:


Everybody has a built in paneled headboard with integral windows, don’t they?

And my wife’s favorite place now, least favorite place before:


I told you the red chair would work. I even threw in a sale-able piece of furniture, a Shamrock Table, because my wife is swell, and deserves it. That, and I had one.

Well, there you have it. I’ve got to wait for a hard frost to kill the mosquitoes, and then I can take the screens out and paint the window sashes. The closets need painting, and I’ll do it at the same time.

When’s the Patriots’ bye week?

Get Busy

It took too long to make the paint. I have to finish enough of the room on Saturday to put all the assorted flotsam and jetsam in the room in the finished part and press on to the finish line on Sunday. But there’s a limit to just how crummy a job I’m willing to do, no matter what kind of hurry I’m in. So look above to see what we use to prepare for the actual work. Well, that and yeso. And a vacuum cleaner.

What’s yeso you ask? It’s plaster in spanish. Everything comes labeled in Espanol et Francais these days, and yeso is so much more fun to say than plaster, so we go with it.

Here’s the room:
Please note that the floor is not finished either. Now, you pikers were wondering if I could repaint my bedroom in a day and a half. My indifference to your doubts can scarce be measured. If all I had to do was paint it, I’d be drunk by now. I’ve got to finish the floor, too.

You see, my wife and I suffered mightily to get our home. My wife, mostly. And we had to move into our Master Bedroom before it was complete, because the bedroom we had been sleeping in down the hall was promised to another family member, and that’s that. Hell, before we even had that room, the whole upstairs in our house was unfinished; and when we moved into our house at first, me, my wife, two cats, and eventually an infant slept in the room I’m currently typing this essay in. Cozy. So my wife never complained about this floor not being finished, because there was so much more floor than before that she hardly cared.

That’s pine plank flooring, screwed and pegged. Our whole house has it, except for ceramic tile in the bathrooms and kitchens. Many people think it’s extravagant. It cost less than wall to wall carpet, that’s why I did it. There’s a lot of sweat equity in it, though. Anyway, we’re going to finish it too. You people still taking action on the likelihood of me finishing?
Pull all the nails and hooks out of the walls. Remove the electrical cover plates. Lose all the screws. (Just kidding. Put the screws back in the electrical outlets after you remove the plates, or you’re fired) Mix a little yeso powder in water, and when it’s a thick doughy paste, use your putty knife to fill all the nail holes. Don’t listen to morons who tell you to mound it up because it will shrink. Scraping wet plaster off the wall is easy. Sanding is hard. Fill the hole, scrape all excess off, and two minutes later the plaster will be hard and you can fill it again to take care of the shrinkage problem. (Insert George Costanza joke here)

Caulk all the seams where the woodwork meets the plaster. You’ll never get a good looking job without doing this. Fill nailholes in woodwork with Dap 33 putty if necessary. Not many in a repaint. Sand all the woodwork first, and your yeso patches after, with 220 grit sandpaper. Vacuum everything. Now vacuum everything again, you did a lousy job. Now we actually paint something.

What color is the trim going to be? The pinkish tone of the existing woodwork ain’t cutting it. I need something whiter, but not white. Hey, here’s a gallon of Benjamin Moore alkyd satin “White Dove.” White Dove is never called “White Dove” by the female customers. They call it “Dove White,” no matter how many times they hear it said or see it written “White Dove,” and Benjamin Moore should just give up and call it that. Old Ben throws a little earth tone in white, probably raw or burnt umber, and it makes a nice warm pale gray. And I have some. Warren G. Harding’s paint shaker to the rescue!

Use a natural bristle brush in a real paint pot (Never the can. Never.) Cut in (paint in a straight line) the crown moulding, and around the standing (vertical) moulding where it meets the walls. Leave the running (horizontal) moulding till you’ve painted the walls. Paint the baseboard after everything else because it’s dirty down there, no matter how many times you vacuum.

You’re supposed to let that dry overnight. Not bloody likely. Don’t get a lot on the walls, eat dinner, and go back and give the walls two coats of green with a synthetic bristle brush to cut in, and a roller for the field. Get everywhere you can reach now, because that’s where you’ve got to put the furniture tomorrow to get the rest of the room.

And don’t make a mess! The first sentence in the stipulations of any painting contract reads: