Broken thermostats and filthy lies

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please give me another last chance

I had someone come up to me at the Rantoul show and say, “I love your filthy lies. They crack me up.”

A normal person would probably be incensed by this, but I was tickled to hear it, mostly because I still can’t believe anyone reads what I write, and when they talk about something as specific as my filthy lies, I know they really do read it.

Filthy lies abound in the world today. You hear one about every five and a half seconds on Fox News, but unlike myself, Fox News doesn’t qualify theirs with a disclaimer. At least my filthy lies are fairly evident, and I don’t hesitate to call them what they are. In this day and age, there are so many self-absorbed people with Internet connections and keyboards, you really have to set aside outrageous statements, or before you know it there’s a group of self-righteous do-gooders marching around your website, slandering the heck out of you and initiating a GoFundMe page to pay for a lawyer to sue you and possibly ban you for life from the interwebs altogether. It’s scary.

So before I go on, I’d like to state unequivocally that some of the following information may indeed be a filthy lie.

Here’s one thing that’s the absolute truth: It is hotter than hell in Kansas City this summer. So hot, in fact, that I believe my internal thermostat has been functionally damaged and I will be seeking restitution from the State of Missouri henceforth for forcing me to melt into a puddle in their fair state. I’ve set up a GoFundMe page at www.whineyandbroke.com to cover the exorbitant cost of litigation, with a corresponding website at www.thisisafilthylie.com. (See what I did there?)

Anyway, I may or may not have driven George a little crazy with the “comfort zone” in KC. I don’t know if it was because part of my brain was inadvertently sun-roasted and heat-stroked, or because I’m old and kind of fat, but I could not get comfortable.

“Ahmagad, can you puh-leeze turn on the AC? I’m dying over here.”

“The AC is on, babe.”

“Can you turn it to 11?”

He dutifully cranked it to high, and in four minutes, I was freezing.

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“Ahmagad, my nose is running, can you turn it down a little?”

This is when the vein in his forehead started to become more pronounced, and began throbbing along with the beat of the radio. He turned the air back down and waited a few minutes.

“Is Princess comfortable now?”

“Well, if we’re basing comfort levels on the former residents of Pompeii, then yes.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means it feels like a volcano erupted in here.”

The forehead vein twerked, and he turned up the air again.

I knew better than to say anything when I was freezing to death six seconds later, so I just wrapped myself in the sheet from the bunk, which happens to be printed with the likeness of Homer Simpson and has “Please, give me another last chance!” written on it. The forehead vein began performing a full Broadway show, complete with stage and lights. He reached over and turned the air down again and gave me a warning look.

“I promise I won’t say anything else about the AC. I’ll just take the sheet off when I’m hot again.”

Broadway vein actually leaped off of his head and slapped me at this point. Honestly, I wanted to slap myself, and could totally understand the ill will it had against me. George just continued to drive stoically, resigned to the fact that his wife has a broken thermostat and will likely cause him a stroke one day.

“I’m taking you to the shop when we get home.”

“I agree. We should definitely have the AC looked at.”

“I wasn’t talking about the truck, babe.”

Sometimes, staying comfortable on the road is hard.