The lack of a couch on the porch has really crimped my style.

I have to get right to the point here: I think the lack of a couch on my front porch -- well actually it's kind of a deck -- regardless, I'm sans outdoor couch activity --

Fuck.

Look, the lack of a couch on my front porch has really crimped my style.

I'm not saying I need a couch on the front porch to kick it eXtreme, but it sure helps. I was standing on the porch tonight drinking beer and listening to Nirvana, and I was like, man, it sure would kick ass if I had a couch out here. I found a chair on the curb that I dragged up to the porch last summer, but it's not the same.

I need a couch on the porch.

My first house in college had a couch on the porch. I got ripped off on that fucking couch. Twenty bucks for a spider-infested piece of shit with half the cushions missing. But hot damn if it didn't get the job done, so I guess I can't complain. And who knows, the spiders may even have come with the porch and not the couch. Not to mention the fact that the dude I bought it from, a recently released ex-con selling furniture on his lawn at one in the morning, helped me move the couch home for the paltry sum of one burrito and a Big Gulp.

This couch served me well during the summer that I sublet my room, which was the same summer that I stuck around my house because my big plans "fell through" (i.e., I fucked up).

The next fall, though, things took a turn for the worse, couch-wise. The fascist assholes who rented out our house conducted "periodic property drive-bys" (and not the cool ack-ack-ack type of drive-by) determined that our sweet couch placement constituted lease-violating furniture modality. Well fuck 'em if they haven't ever needed a cushy place to swill a cold one.

When the notice came in the mail, I put the couch in the garage for a couple of months, long enough for them to drive by and observe that the issue was resolved, and then I dragged that awesome fucking couch right back to my porch. Certainly the rental agency personnel must have driven by once more after that, but we never heard from them.

"Clearly," they must have thought upon seeing the couch mysteriously reappear "these tenants are much too crafty for our wack form letters. Best to leave sleeping couches lie, yo."

Once I graduated from college I got a job, a different house, and a new (slightly used) couch. We decked this house out in a nautical theme, but it never had a good porch couch. We had some patio furniture on the porch, which was OK, but not mind-blowing. We did have a sweet couch in the garage, and that worked out swimmingly. In fact, I would venture to say that with practice, a garage couch could supplant a porch couch.

Eventually the nautical theme wore out and it was time to get a new house. I moved into a new place with a great big porch, and the garage couch was plopped on the porch for maximum relaxational continuity.

I chilled long and hard on that porch.

So from 2000 to 2005 I had basically adequate couch technology. In 2006, I met Lady Shihady and moved on up to Seattle. While it has been cool to live in Grunge Rock City, USA, I didn't bother to move my porch couch up here.

What can I say? Should have brought that couch with me. I haven't kicked it nearly enough on the porch. This has resulted in the following ill effects:

(1) I have watched an insufficient amount of traffic cruise by
(2) I have kicked my feet up on the porch banister an insufficient number of times
(3) I haven't thrown enough crap off the porch onto the lawn.

Now some folks would take a look at this situation and take the chickenshit way out. Well, in spite of my prediliction for drastic measures, suicide isn't for me. Instead, I'm moving to Iowa, a state with ample natural porch resources, and plenty of awesome crap to throw off those porches.

Speaking of awesome crap in Iowa, some of the great shit they have there includes discarded Xmas trees, which you can seriously burn the shit out of after the holiday season. Those things go up like a gasoline-soaked Viking funeral pyre. Anyway. Word.

I'm movin' out cornside, and the Shihadys are gonna be setting up shop in the heartland. I look forward to establishing residence in an are with sufficient porch/garage space to house a truly sweet custom couch. I am talking about a sweet fucking couch.

We're moving to Iowa at the end of February. It's looming large and fast, but I'm pumped up and completely psyched.

And you know what? That new couch is just the tip of the iceberg. Goddamn I love fucking Iowa.

-Mike

ps: It would appear that I'm down to a once-a-month update schedule on this blog. Son of a gun. Not sure how that happened, but it did. Let's face it: Blotto Grotto had its day in the sun as my pet project for most of last year. In 2007, you can look forward to updates on an approximately whenever-the-hell-I-feel-like-it basis, which will oscillate wildly between weekly, monthly, rarely, and never. Peace out and keep it real.