Posted on February 22, 2010 - by Hubba

With Talent On Loan From God/ The Magic Of WD 40

I thought I’d do a double header today, partly because it’s been a day or two, and partly because two things really made me laugh today.

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When I was a kid, I got to listening to Rush Limbaugh because Dad listened to Rush Limbaugh.  We were very politically active and aware, and Rush Limbaugh seemed to agree with our point of view, or maybe we agreed with his.

But later, and about the same time now that I think about it, Rush went the way of the fishsticks in our family.  I don’t remember why dad quit listening to him, but us kids probably realized we could listen to some cool tunes instead of a fat guy who rustled papers into his microphone.

Fast forward ten or fifteen years, and the “cool tunes” don’t seem so cool anymore.  There are still cool tunes, they just don’t play them on midwestern top 40 radio stations.  This becomes especially obvious when you spend all winter in say, a feeding tractor with a radio.

So I got to fishing around on talk radio and NPR, and eventually found my old friend Rush, who hasn’t changed a bit.

I really don’t disagree with Rush Limbaugh on anything except his completely ignorant insistence that the Grand Old Party, unencumbered by the Grand Other Party, could fix everything.  Which paradoxically is the same as disagreeing with everything Rush says.

Whether or not I agree with him, he is still free entertainment, and pretty entertaining at that.  The unapologetic confidence, the unvarnished social truths, that bitchin’ bassline from the Pretenders.  I find it comforting somehow knowing that Rush is still on the Golden Microphone ruffling feathers.

Today I was in my pickup doing the radio station shuffle and finally settled on Rush midway through a segment.  Rush was discussing some piece of legislation that I was too late too catch.  But he was saying, and I’m probably paraphrasing a bit-

“This bill has to be aborted.  I have always been pro-choice, I believe everything should be given life, but for the first time, I am saying that something needs to be aborted.  It was conceived by the most unhappy parents in the world…”

No matter what you think of Rush Limbaugh, no matter if you’re a conservative or a liberal, no matter if you even know what the hell he was talking about, that was a brilliant piece of off-the-cuff satire.

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Frank Timmons is getting a load of cattle feed tomorrow, so we trotted out the swing-out auger in preparation.  The hopper was full of ice and old crumbled pellets.  We went and got the propane torch, and I started heating the mess so that we could open the trap door on the bottom of the hopper.

After a while it became clear that although there was still a big frozen mess in the hopper, it was not to blame for the failure of the trap door.  I finally decided that maybe the hinges on the trapdoor were rusted shut, so I walked to the shop and got the WD 40 and a hammer.  I came back, sprayed WD 40 all over the hinges, tapped on them with a hammer, and went to the other side of the hopper with my crowbar.

I never believe that WD 40 is actually going to work.  I am always sure that this will be the time that the liberal application of the stuff will be a waste.  And so I am always almost stunned when it works again.

Sure enough, the door that I had been twisting with my crowbar before, groaned grudgingly for a half inch or so.

I have no idea what they put in that stuff, dioxymethyzonepolysorbate 4 1/3, atomic waste water, angel pee, I don’t know.  But it sure works.