Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 7/15/22

Dog Days of Summer Edition

This is the time of year that everyone here at the bunker dreads; the so-called “Dog Days of Summer,” falling this year from July 3rd to August 11th. Named by the Romans who thought when Sirius, the dog star, aligned with the sun and rose and set at the same time that it added to the heat of the sun, making the days longer, the temperatures more volcanic. That is not the case. The Earth’s axis tilts during this time to allow the sun to shine more directly, less at an angle, onto our collective craniums.  

The takeaway? The Romans weren’t as smart as everyone thinks they were, and it’s still too damn hot to do anything other than lay, as naked as you can, spread-eagle on tile or concrete floor, suck on ice chips, eat cold salads and idly wonder if there is a corollary between all of the great historical spree killings and homicides and the months of July and August.

The dog days have, without a doubt, crept into Bunker Life as we know it. This heat makes you a little crazy. So crazy, in fact, that you may be tempted to do something you’d never, ever, in a million years, otherwise do. Like, say, buy a pint of ice cream made with Grey Poupon mustard.

I have so many questions. All of the questions, in fact. Every single question.

I will not walk you through the thought process that led Janice to buy this. I’m just going to offer up, “It’s the Dog Days of Summer,” and you can readily cipher out how that all went down.

What I am going to do is save you all from running out, into the night, thinking that you must purchase this product, because of some misguided idea that you have to put every weird product ever made into your food-hole and talk about it online. Imma take that hit for you with a recreation of what went down last night, in three bites.

Bite #1: Oh, wow, it’s really got mustard in it. And you can taste it, too, right up front. It’s not subtle, not anything other than…mustard. In vanilla ice cream.

Bite #2: Okay, maybe if I get a little of the caramel and a piece of pretzel, that’ll somehow temper the—nope, still a lot of mustard coming through. Only now I’m tasting it with the caramel. It’s not helping either flavor.

Bite #3: Surely that’s not all there is, right? Maybe just one more…yeah, I can only taste the mustard now. This would be the perfect thing to prank someone with.

Aaaaand…Scene.

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Pupdate, Week 3

The back leg injury is taking its toll on both the bunker mascot and the entire bunker staff, all of whom have been tasked with carrying the dog up and down the stairs twice a day for bathroom breaks and light exercise. This is something the dog desperately wants to do, but physically cannot accomplish by herself. I know how she feels.

I’ve been nursing a pulled and strained lower back because last Saturday, I carried her up the stairs myself, all sixty-five pounds of her, up forty feet of steep concrete steps, hanging off of my shoulder and under my arm like a wounded infantryman being air-lifted to a M.A.S.H. unit. The dog gets this weird, resigned look on her face as whoever drew the short straw tries to go upstairs as fast as possible before both knees give out.

The dog is no help. She collapses onto the floor, panting, as if she did all of the heavy lifting, looking at you like, “No, you go on without me! Live your life! Leave me! I’ll only slow you down!” This lasts about ten minutes, until she decides she needs a drink, at which point, she’ll skooch around until she can stand up, hobble over, get a drink, maybe a bite to eat, and then hobble back to the very place she was laying on and resume the pitiful looks.

Update from the Agency of Health and Wellness

That pulled and strained lower back hasn’t done anyone any favors. I’ve not had back problems in years, and it sucks all the more now because I’m in better shape than I’ve been in probably a decade. And then I think, “Oh, yeah, I’m 52. Dammit.”

It’s not even a good back injury, either. It’s one of those garden-variety ones where you bend straight over and down to pick something up, or to, say, hold your dog’s ass up so your fiancée can fasten a carrying sling around their torso, and you feel that tearing sensation in your lower back like someone just yanked down on the window shades and they have zoomed back up into the housing at the top of the window treatment and your mom is yelling at you from the other room to “quit playing with the danged-old winder blinds because you’ll break ‘em if you don’t and she ain’t paying for new ones,” and then you try to stand up and the only way to do that is if you lean your torso forward at a thirty degree angle and that makes your ass stick way out, but at least the pain has subsided.

Now that’s how you are going through life, walking like a high school track coach, crunching ibuprofen by the handful, like Sweetarts, and worried about sneezing too hard and destroying your upper back, too.

At least you and the dog can share meds, now.

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They tell you not to play with your food. But if I can make a volcanic island out of my mashed cauliflower, and fill it with the veggie chili from Ideal Protein, then shouldn’t I? Only thing missing were a few dinosaurs.

Behold! I am Liquid Death! I bring dooms upon your Cauliflower Island!