I HATE DANDELIONS! I know, I know, everyone does, unless you’re one of those twee morons who says things like, “But what is a weed, anyway, man?” or you’re an UBERFORAGER and you make underpants out of bark, or, most likely, you’ve never been forced to keep up a rental yard that the owner just won’t up and pave/gravel/whatever. A thing I hate even more than dandelions themselves is a landlord’s dandelions. It is a trial, like hanging out in a whale.

When I was in middle school my mother ran away from home for the third time and we ended up in middle of the city that was adjacent to the village I grew up in. There were actual city things there, like crosswalks and stores, and more than just bar, bar, church, bar.

Right down the street from our temporary robber’s cave was a big, decaying house that served as a media junk shop. It cemented my love of two things: Nixon political memorabilia, and science fiction and fantasy books. I would beg my mother for money or for the chance to do paid chores so I could buy deliciously stinky, shredding pulp novels by CJ Cherryh, Robert Asprin, or Terry Brooks.

I read EVERYTHING. All kinds of trash. Really good stuff that made me cry, like The Golden Apples of the Sun. I was completely non-discriminating in that way that kids are. Mostly I would dive into the sci fi/fantasy section, and pick things by cover and blurb. If I liked something, I would try to buy all of the books there by an author.

One day I picked up a book that had something very weird on the cover. It was a painting of a sexy dandelion, with boobs and feminized humanlike features under where the yellow flower part was. I cannot, for the life of me, remember what it was called or who wrote it, but I know it involved a time or space traveler who found himself in a world with lower tech and a bunch of political drama that could be solved in two minutes if anyone understood how to make a gun or how pregnancy worked. The part where the traveler was consulting with the sentient, lurid weed seemed tacked on, as if the editor said, “This is okay, but the painting for this book is already done. Your story needs a fuckable giant flower with tigol bitties that issue some kind of mind control sap.”

?? !!

I think this was my first encounter with any kind of interspecies sexytimes (though it was not the last, to both my delight and dismay), but this one broke the seal and made an impression. Every time I am out weeding, I think of this horrible book. I’m actually a little squicked by the larger ones that get away from you with the huge roots…just argh. I cannot knowingly eat any part of them.

That’s kind of generally insulting anyway. “Here, I found this crap at the side of the road that is kind of bitter and annoying and I made you a salad with it.” And yet I like wild mushrooms and berries and drugs I find on the ground. I DUNNO MAN. I am still a mystery to you.

My point being, dear diary, today I weeded my disaster of a front yard because I could not stand to look outside and see dandelions. And I planted sunflowers (acceptable yellow flower). The WORST flowers are ALWAYS yellow. It’s just a fact.

Acceptable yellow flowers: sunflowers, forsythia

Marginally acceptable yellow flowers that are ok but look cheap even if they’re not: lilies, roses, carnations

Unacceptable yellow flowers: marigolds (YUK), dandelions, everything else

IN OTHER NEWS

I love bags that are PSAs:

Here is your Zen riddle for today: if I had common sense, I would not have the contents of this bag. GOOOOOOONG!!! Goodbye.