Floral Wallpaper (Was: Talk like a pirate day)

[ssk7882]

Amy Z. wrote:

> I need some help from an articulate, curmudgeonly social critic, 
> here.  Elkins, where are you?  Don't leave me hanging out to dry!

What?  Huh?  Did I just hear my name?

Oh.  Where am I, you ask?  You want to know where I am?

An excellent question.  I'm not altogether sure where I 
am myself, to tell you the truth.  Somewhere in the 
No Internet Archipelago, where I'm likely to be spending 
most of my time for the next few weeks, actually.  This 
is a very brief foray to the mainland: I probably won't
really have the opportunity to check computer stuff 
until sometime in October.

While I'm here visiting, though, I'll happily tell 
you *what* I've been doing.  

I've been spending approximately 12 hours a day in a 
creepy, echoing, empty New House, attempting to remove 
the ghastliest imaginable floral wallpaper from every 
last room of a building large enough to house a 
7-person commune.  That's what I've been doing.

If this sounds like fun, then I am not describing it 
properly.

I have blisters rising on both hands. I can't move my 
neck.  And I have sticky wallpaper paste coating every 
last inch of my body.  It is plastered all over my 
clothing.  It is matted in my *hair.*  

So, uh, if I've not been around much lately?  Now
you know why.

But since I'm taking the time to post, I would like 
you all to imagine, if you will, a large house in 
which every last room was papered in a different
floral wallpaper, each one more hideous than the 
last.  And I do mean hideous.  These aren't quaint
florals.  They aren't country florals.  They aren't 
your grandmother's florals.  They aren't nice-old-
lady-with-a-budgie florals.  They're just plain 
ugly florals.  Think Umbridge, right, but with 
flowers instead of kitties.

You with me here?  Good.  Okay.  Now imagine that 
each one of these rooms also has floral carpeting.  
Again, no two of them alike.  Again, all of them 
unspeakably hideous.  And each one actually *clashing* 
with its companion wallpaper.

Still with me?  Okay, so now try to imagine that in 
addition to the wallpaper and the carpeting, each 
room also has very heavy floral curtains.  Again, no 
two alike.  And each set managing to clash with both 
the floral wallpaper *and* the floral carpeting.

Oh, yes.  And there are also these little...*ruffs*
along the ceiling line of each room.  Made out of 
wallpaper.  Wallpaper which was lovingly (if not 
terribly precisely) cut with scissors to form 
scallop shapes.  And then pasted onto the underlying 
wallpaper not only with the usual glue, but also with 
what appears to be smears of spackle or grouting or 
something of that sort.

<despairing look>

Should any of you ever need to remove vast quantities
of over-glued wallpaper, by the way, a word of advice.
Don't bother with renting a steamer.  Steamers don't 
work.  The only thing that *does* work is a magical 
solvent which goes by the trade-name of "Dif," very 
warm water, metal scrapers, scrubby sponges, and 
elbow grease.  Lots of elbow grease.  Sufficient 
quantities of elbow grease, in fact, that earlier 
this evening I found myself saying out loud, "You 
know, maybe that lilac one -- or are those supposed 
to be wisteria? -- well, whatever, anyway, that one 
in the dining room...I mean, maybe that one isn't 
really all *that* bad..." and then had to be held 
down by my housemates and *slapped* until I recovered 
my senses.

So forgive me, Amy.  I just have no curmudgeonly 
social criticism in me this week.  All that I can 
really think to say right now about the recent 
plethora of films based on video games, amusement 
park rides, and so forth is: 

"That social trend, like, totally sux, dude.  I mean, 
it sux even worse than scraping floral wallpaper."

Which I somehow suspect isn't terribly articulate.  
But which is about all I can muster right now, I'm 
afraid.  

Must be off to bed now, so I can get up bright and 
early and return to the No Internet Archipelago. 

Wishing everyone who was hit by Isabel well,

Elkins