When I was out and about on Tuesday a couple of birds saw fit to crap on Turbo Schlock, my 2003 Beetle. One of them had the usual birdie diet of “stuff that results in runny green-and-white crap,” while the other was apparently getting by on bags of Dr. Andrew Weil’s Holistic High Fiber Trail Mix.
On Thursday I considered washing my car, but I never did get around to it.
This morning it was raining. I drove my 8-year-old son to school, and then back at home I took my car-wash brush and easily brushed away the dried-green-and-white spot. Rain makes a great “pre-soak” setting, after all.
The Doc Weil splotch was stubborn, though. The brush did nothing, and the gentle-yet-scrubby car-wash-sponge with the netting on it only served to, umm… “loosen the stool” a bit around the edges. No problem: I parked the car outside of the garage, and waited. An hour later, just before driving my 10-year-old daughter to school, I took the same sponge, and easily wiped away the soggy guanola.
I’m feeling absurdly pleased with myself. Maybe it’s because I like the rain, and a rainy morning makes me happy. As for the birds, well, as my Dad used to say: “Grrr… they SING for the RICH PEOPLE.”
In completely unrelated news, I’ll be at AutumnCon tomorrow, which (as of this writing anyway) is Saturday, October 29th. I’ll have some originals for sale, but I won’t have time to do commissions. Just pencil-sketches and panel discussions:
12:00pm – Intro to Webcomics (Seminar Theater)
1:00pm (or maybe 2:00pm) – How to be a great GM (TBA)
4:00pm – So you wanna be a webcartoonist (Canyon III)
5:00pm – Putting the Science into Science Fiction (TBA)
If you’re in the area, give this convention a shot. It’s a first year ‘con, so it’ll be fairly small and really enthusiastic.
Remember that one time at the Blank Label Comics: Amsterdam convention when Southworth ended up smoking basil rolled up in banana peel? Man, some things ought to be illegal, even in Holland.
And just what is in that rain that it shifts bird muck that effectively?
Water, the universal solvent.
plus whatever specialist solvents it can leach from the atmosphere…..
“Guanola”! Ha!
There are reasons most sane people don’t choose tame birds as household pets. However, my personal combination of insanity and furry-pet-allergies trumps the daily indoor bird poop cleaning. Just to show she loves me, when I first get home from work and let her out of the cage she always lets out a particularly nuclear one.
AutumnCon was deady dead dead today, but it was fun anyhow. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow, though I probably won’t see much of you. (Stuck in the dealer’s room.)
Well, THAT’S not a good sign. Yeesh.
I’ll be in around 11:00am.
–Howard
Please bear in mind that bird poop eats away modern auto paint, as the newer, nicer-to-the-world-in-general stuff isn’t quite as durable as the old chock-full-of-nasty-solvents formulations. If you don’t clean poop off your car fast enough, you wind up with the splat pattern etched into the paintwork, which is distinctly Not Cool…
Hehe. Nah, rich people just don’t admit they crap.
In completely different news: Howard, how do you not mention to us that you’re doing a day of PvP? My two favorite webcomics in one easy-to-find package (well, sorta)? It’s like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup with an ominous hummmm!