Of Apologies and Rotten Meat

First of all, allow me to apologize to you, my small, yet dedicated corps of readers (especially you, Mom) for my recent absence. The reasons include hail storms, car trouble, cross-country treks, and sectarian unrest in the Middle East, just to name a few. In any case, I would like to announce my triumphant return.



In case the word has not spread to the outer reaches of the galaxy as yet, myself and the fetching Mrs. Sonnier, have determined to uproot ourselves from our quiet, comfortable lives in the temperate Pacific Northwest to relocate in the muggy, moist and humid climate that bore us: Louisiana. This was not an easy decision, given the multitude of wonderful friends, sweet house, great jobs and smelly hippies at our disposal here in The Rose City, but it was inevitable. Who wants an easy, non-eventful life, anyway? Especially one that could potentially involve a firebrand like Jillian?

So, the house is on the market, the resumes are in the pipeline, and between keeping the house immaculate for potential buyers and stressing about job prospects in a much smaller town, the fetching Mrs. Sonnier is on the verge of mental breakdown, and by extension, so am I.

In case you guys have yet to experience this little slice of hell, selling a house is like selling a child: you can’t imagine how ANYONE could look at it and not fall in love immediately, and if you were to hear anyone say anything less that wonderful about it, you’d be fully prepared to belt them in the mouth. The act of belting a potential buyer in the mouth, however, has been known to have detrimental effects on the ability of a house to sell (or a child, for that matter), so our agent politely requested that we not be home when the house is being viewed by the general, punch-me-in-the-mouth public.

Last Tuesday, the first day Casa de Awesome was available for purchase on the market for an unreasonably low amount of money, our agent hosted what she described as a “broker’s open.” This is an open house intended specifically for other real estate agents in town to get to know the house so that if they have clients that think might be interested, they can bring them by at a later date. I was not allowed to attend, and resigned myself to chew on my fingers as I sat in the office and pretended to work (a skill at which I excel).

The broker’s tour ended at 1:00 PM, and so around 1:30, I made my way over to Kanda’s house to collect our cats from their play date. Once home, I got to work upstairs in my office (where, interestingly enough, I’ve gotten good at pretending to not work). A few minutes later a knock came on the door.

It was an agent named Sandra. She had fully intended on coming to the broker’s open, but had gotten caught up and could she take a look at the house now? Sure, I said, and ushered her into my unnervingly clean home. She ooohed and aaahed at the boxed ceiling and the laminate floors (total bullshit: no one ooohs at leminate floors, no matter how nice they are) and commented on how nice the house was and how appropriately priced as well (sneer). We made our way upstairs and then back down, and then she asked to see the backyard. I opened the door and showed her the fetching Mrs. Sonnier’s painting studio and the excellent fruit trees, and blah blah blah.

Oooh and aaah.

She made her way back toward the house, and, being the perfect gentleman, I stepped forward and opened the back door for her, ushering her back into the house. As I stepped in, I noticed something on the floor that had not been there only minutes earlier. The bigger (and stinkier) of our two cats had dragged a fresh cat turd from the nearby litter box and deposited it directly in front of the back door. To make matters worse, it had a foot print in it.



Oh crap, I thought, too shocked to savor the pun. I checked the bottoms of my Birkenstocks (no, I’m not a hippie) and verified no poop. Oh no, she must have stepped in it! I looked, and she was walking in the kitchen admiring the cabinets, with a wad of fresh cat shit stuck to the bottom of her espadrille (no, I’m not gay).

What do I do?

Shit, think, shit, think.

Do I tell her and clean it off for her, bringing unnecessary attention to the presence of cat shit on my super clean floor, or do I hope that she just doesn’t notice? Of course, in the mean time, here’s this pretentious real estate agent using words like “boxed ceiling” and “crown molding” while tracking cat shit all over my freshly mopped (ooh!) laminate floors.

Before I could decide how to react, she shook my hand, wished me luck, and was gone, a thin brown trail of leavings from the back door all the way to the front, the only evidence of her presence. Truly absurd, I thought as I scrubbed poop off my floor.

It seems that I am surrounded by absurdity. I experience it on a daily basis; the only reprieve is the variance of its severity. This morning on the way to work I saw a crazy man doing a jig around a telephone pole while singing to himself. A guy in my office buys green coffee beans from Vietnam and roasts them at home in a popcorn popper. My boss just got a package from England that was shipped in box labeled “Mr. Brain’s Fresh Faggots.”

I often wonder if I’m simply statistically more prone to experiencing absurdity, or am I simply more keenly aware of its presence.

In that vein, I would like to tell you all about the most absurd story I have ever heard. The story of the exploding whale.



On the morning of November 12, 1970, a cool wind swept across the beach in Florence, OR, a quiet little beach town near Astoria. That wind wasn’t just cool, it smelled really bad. At first, it was assumed that the Vietnam protestors had made their way from Portland, but they soon realized even this smell was too much to be attributed to even those stink-monkies.

The smell was emanating from a very large, and very dead, and very rotten sperm whale that had washed ashore after floating at sea for god knows how long. Weighing in at 8 tons, the small town of Florence was perplexed as to how to get this big, rotten whale carcass off the beach.



At this point in Oregon’s history, one can only assume that the city council of Florence, the management of the Oregon Department of Transportation, and the Governor’s office were all staffed with boys between the ages of 7 and 13. The unanimous vote: Let’s blow that fucker up!

Half a ton of dynamite was packed into the rotting carcass of this huge mammal; one can only imagine the ODOT engineers giggling and elbowing each other like a little boys while stuffing black cats into a dead frog’s mouth. They stepped a safe distance back and....boom.



When the sand settled, the air was still. The whale wasn’t gone, but a huge chunk had been blown out of its mid-section. Oh, well, they must have thought, it must have vaporized the stuff, let’s do it again!

It was then that it started to happen. Splat here, smash there. Plop, plop, plop. Blubber came falling from the sky. Golf ball sized chunks, baseball sized, grapefruits, basketballs and bigger began to pelt the onlookers from the sky. As they ran for safety from the rotten animal fat, they realized they had bigger problems: their town.

As the rancid blubber rained from the sky, like the smiting hand of some angry whale god, it tore through roofs, it smashed through windows, it blocked traffic, it broke windshields, and there’s even a story that one piece of blubber was so large, it literally flattened a Volkswagen beetle.

According to Paul Linman, an eye-witness to the explosion, “the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”

By the time the shower of rotten whale parts stopped, the damage to the town was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to Paul Linman, “The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere."

Everywhere, indeed.

Oregon is a very unique place, and I’ve seen some pretty amazing things here. Met some great people, and met some people I’d like to stab in the face. Above all, I will miss the absurdity that seems so commonplace in Oregon, especially when Jillian’s in town.

If you’d like to learn more about this totally absurd and very true story, and even see the video, check it out here.