Was It Worth It? by Nathan Elliot
I’ve done many things in my life others might find questionable. At the top of that very long list was the time I tried to kiss an ostrich, and I think everyone knows how that story goes. However, DIY may just take the cake like I did at my brother’s wedding. While that ostrich may have broken both my arms, DIY has been far more impactful on my life. It’s done things to me that I never even imagined were possible. I mean, I can’t call the plumber anymore. I’ve tried so hard to do it. I can dial the number and put the phone to my ear, but I just can’t ask Bobbie for help. After all, why would I call him when I could do a better job myself. I definitely know more about pipes and duct tape than someone who’s spent the last twenty-four years of his life fixing sinks. After all, I went to graduate school. For example, the toilet shattered when my son Timmy dropped a firework in it the other day, and before the last shard of that porcelain throne hit the ground, I had already taped that bad boy back together. The only thing Bobbie can do fast is find excuses not to pay me back for that eighth I bought
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him in high school, and that’s a fact. On top of the superiority complex and inhumanely fast reflexes, DIY has made me omnipotent. I know all the things in my house that will break before they do. I foresaw my other son Tommy break his leg because he can’t do a kickflip, so I duct taped his skateboard to the ground. I also prevented my marriage from falling apart by taping Dale the mailman to the front of the church with a list of all the housewives and husbands he slept with. I could have saved Bobbie’s marriage to my cousin Carol, but then I remembered the time they threw a party at my house and didn’t invite me. However, that all pales in comparison to how I fixed the government, which I cannot discuss for legal reasons (Hint: It involved a lot of duct tape, hot glue, and ribbon). In the end, my house was perfect, everyone had the same income, Bobbie was suffering for his sins, and I even fixed my erectile dysfunction with duct tape and a bendy straw. The people of the world called me “The Man Who Fixes” and loved me. However, in my hubris I attempted to use an inferior
tape to display my overwhelming ability to fix. I cast aside my duct tape for something horribly unspeakable: regular Scotch tape. As soon as the tape was in my grasp, my world crumbled. Everything I had ever fixed rebroke, from the toilet to my marriage to the government. No matter how much Scotch tape I used, everything kept getting worse. I eventually tried to fix things too fast and merged with the DIY force. Now, my life is in shambles and I exist only as the abstract concept of DIY. All things considered, it couldn’t have gone much worse. I had everything and now I have joint-custody of Timmy and Tommy. I almost wish another ostrich came along and broke both my arms again so I couldn’t have started DIY in the first place. As an incorporeal being, I don’t even have arms, which makes doing anything requiring arms impossible. That being said, if you see Bobbie around, first tell him he still owes me twenty-five bucks, and that I really need someone with the know-how to fix my toilet.
Your Garage Fucking Sucks by Mark Melchin Hey Ken, You might be surprised to find this in your garage on Olivia’s special special day, but maybe you should be a little more specific when you say “the bathroom is down the hall and to the left.” There were two doors, two options, and I wish the one I had chose was the bathroom, else I wouldn’t have dropped my glass of orange Fanta in sheer horror of what I found. Normally I would just keep criticisms like these in my own head, but my disgust right now needs to be captured in its purity, and you must bear witness. The first thing I want you to know is that you’re a shameless wannabe if you think you’re ever going to do anything with all of the plywood stacked in the corner. You can buy all of the 2x4s you want, it’ll never push you into gear to finally make something of all the junk you’ve been amassing since your first trip to Home Depot a few years ago. Do you really think you’ll ever make anything of substance or structural integrity that your family can enjoy with 50 of the same sized planks? Carpentry isn’t little Timmy playing with legos, Ken. Carpentry is the manifestation of the animal kingdom’s domination over all other forms of life on planet Earth, where we morph the bodies of the strongest vegetations to create structures for ourselves to reside in, all the while taunting the plants, fungus, and single-celled organisms sitting on the outside in quiet admiration. We’re living in a golden age of Carpentry, Ken, where human intuition has reached a point that the tree’s shudder at the smell of my sandpaper, and only a pinheaded-meatball like you would ever believe that Carpentry is some sort of fool’s game that can be learned on the fly. I see you’ve failed to cover both your push-mower AND your snow blower. Do your really take such little pride in
the tools to maintain the sanctity of your own land, Ken? Dust ruins this equipment, Ken, and once it’s ruined you need to replace the fallen soldier with a new one. That’s not some matter that you can just push to the back of your to do list. Who will save us from the walls of snow burying us in our homes and watching through the window as the cold methodically ceases our hearts from beating? Who else will we assist us in the endless fight against grass growing above 7 inches in length. Do you know what hides in the tall grass, Ken? TICKS! Ticks took my little schnauser away from me, Ken, and they’re probably gonna do the same to you. You probably don’t care, as I assume you value living things as much as you do your yard, but I’ll care for you, Ken. Not for you, but for the Machines. They’re the reason my lawn looks like the finely-groomed top of a US Marine’s head. And if you fail to see that, Ken, then you don’t deserve them. I find most appalling your treatment of your rakes, Ken. Stacking them in the corner on top of one another like the corpses of the discarded dead in times of plague. The rake is the groomer of the hairs of the earth, and your disgusting treatment of them shows your lack of honor as an individual. Not only is it unfair to them, but it’s unfair to your family. Would you treat them like this? Why do the rakes deserve any less, Ken? Without them, the dead children of trees would lie in slow decomposition on our beautiful plots of land and we couldn’t stack them neatly in the corner. You may not know this because you’re too busy doing whatever it is that you do in your time, but the way that your hose is just jumbled up in a pile along the back wall is truly amateur and cruel. There is absolutely no display of respect of the hose. How can you be so willing to let the hose choke on its own water and give it permanent folds? The hose is
bringer of life to the dirty patches. The hose allows the lush greens to flourish and flow in the wind. Yet you treat her like some expendable piece of plastic. Shame on you, Ken. Finally, I want to say that the way that your wheel barrel is just thrown in the corner with crates of vinyls just thrown in it like it’s some second-rate U-Haul you rented to move out of your parents’ house. Do you understand the instrument whose honor you wound by storing Hotel California and Sweet Dreams are Made of This (you can bet your ass I went through them; get some taste that expands beyond Easy 99.1’s evening commuter Greatest hits). The wheelbarrow is among the most important inventions in human history, Ken, and the wonder’s it’s done for lawn care and gardening is far greater than anything society will ever remember you by. It has carried the back of landscaping and allowed me and the other friends of the yards to turn what was once a slovenly mess of “natural beauty” into a utopia of lush emerald fields and deep chestnut soil from which the flowers of all colors on the spectrum of human color perception and the vegetation which feeds our families to sprout and flourish from. To see your wheel barrel like that is like seeing my own father’s gravestone tipped over and spray-painted by those teenage vandals who, like you, Ken, held no reverence to the majesty and nuance of home and gardening. I say shame on you. I hope my scorn reaches the pit of what remains of your heart and you atone for your actions against your own equipment and come to realize how much you disrespect . Also thank you for inviting Shannon to Olivia’s 4th birthday party, she seemed to have a great time. I wish I could say the same.
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