Can you dig it, baby?

I really hate mowing the lawn, but what could I do? The crabgrass out back was as high as my shin (and I’m 6’3”) and it was wiser to tackle the project on a relatively mild day than to get stuck having to do it under less auspicious temperatures and levels of relative humidity. It’s still a major hassle to get done even in the best of circumstances, though.

Suburban Lawns – Anything (from Suburban Lawns, 1981) – Our house is located on the slope of a largish hill, and our backyard topography includes multiple steep inclines that make controlling the lawnmower a backbreaking endeavor. If I’m not trying to keep the damn thing from rolling backwards over my toes, I’m straining against gravity’s mischievous efforts to send the mower rolling off down the hillside without me.

Trouser Press was lukewarm about the material on the Suburban Lawns LP, calling it “highly ordinary” and “tiresome.” I think the album is as fresh sounding today as it was twenty-five years ago, and an excellent example of “new wave” as open-ended push against musical boundaries (as opposed to “new wave” as “punk/postpunk with commercial aspirations”).

Dead Kennedys – A Child and His Lawnmower (from Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, 1987) – Jello Biafra has a point about the trigger-happy nature of American society here, but I, too, have thought about inflicting violence upon my lawn mower on several occasions. It’s not that machine is a useless piece of shit. Quite the contrary, it’s a pricey Toro model my father-in-law gave us as a housewarming present. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but it’s not really suited for me personally as user.

My father-in-law has retained his prodigious upper body strength into his mid-seventies, and I’m sure the machine felt light as a feather when he tried it out at the store. I, on the other hand, am built like a stick figure with an eating disorder, and I break into a sweat simply wheeling the thing out of the garage, much less playing suburban Sisyphus with it.

(I’m not too proud to admit I leave most of the household heavy lifting to Maura. I acknowledge my limitations, and accept that I rolled two 2’s and a 1 for my Strength score. I wasn’t planning on playing a Fighter anyhow.)

Friends of Distinction – Grazing in the Grass (from The Best of the Friends of Distinction, 1996) – It’s a gas, baby! Can you dig it? Just be sure to avoid tossing your picnic blanket down by Dog Shit Alley (the strip of land between the raspberry brambles and the swing set), because I’ve been a little lax with the raking lately. Oh, and watch out for the clusters of nettle plants we’ve been fighting a war of attrition with for the past three years. Also, Maura will kill you if you trample on (or run the mower over) the place where she’s been trying to grow lavender since 2005.