March 10, 2010

The Perfect Garage!

I was thinking last night about my garage and how everything in it tells a little story about who I am.  I don’t know if this could be considered a universal truth about all men, but I suspect there are plenty of men out there who would agree with me on this.  Sounds like an essay.  Sounds like a “man” essay. 

I’ll write it from the perspective of standing at my garage door looking in at my stuff and comment on the things that jump out as definitions of my manhood, tied to associated quips of amusing insight into how I came to possess the item or how I use it in manly ways, maybe talk about why it’s manly, and end it with a brief description of how the garage would look or be different if it was just my wife’s garage.  As a widow, of course!

I must first talk about the motorcycles.  Yes, plural – double manly points for owning more than one motorcycle.  Here I’ll discuss how I’m a pack-rat, hanging on to my faded youth by keeping my first new motorcycle, my 1990 Honda Hawk, while buying a second motorcycle.  Or maybe I’ll talk about how men just collect things.  It’s in our nature and our garages become trophy rooms of a sort. 

I’ll also talk about the kayak I have in my garage, which is always manly, along with bicycles and a lawnmower.  Manliness in machine forms.  I’ll carefully dance around the fact that I have TWO minivans in my garage.  Yes, plural – minus one manly point for owning two emasculating minivans, even though one of them has a killer stereo and sunroof! 

I’ll go on to talk about the typical shelf ‘o stuff in the corner of my garage, full of cleaners, chemicals, oil, gasoline, paint and kerosene.  It’s a justifiable fire hazard, but my garage wouldn’t have it any other way!  Then there are the jars of miscellaneous bolt and nuts and other sundry bits of junk I can’t make myself throw out because it might be handy someday. 

Hanging on the wall are my yard implements – two shovels, a rake, a broom, two snow shovels, a couple of old tools that belonged to Grampy that have broken handles but immense sentimental value.  There’s a punching bag in the corner, which is mucho manly!  I also have kid’s bikes and toys, folding chairs, a garage-door opener I installed myself (arugh, arugh!), an oil drain pan and old milk jugs of oil from when I used to change my own oil.

My garage also contains a small toolbox (because my good tools stay in the house where they’re safe!) and an M-16 toy squirt gun that’s battery powered to squirt thirty feet (see Hawk reference about faded youth).  There are a couple recycling bins and only ONE trash can, since recycling is important (and manly!).  I also have a kerosene heater leftover from the Y2K fear and subsequent fiasco, which is still good to have just to keep one sufficiently self-sufficient, as any good man should strive to be!

I have mouse poison and dog food in the garage, but not together!  The dog thinks it a bit strange that his food comes from the garage while my food comes from the fridge.  He sometimes gives me that head tilted sideways look that dogs display when they’re trying to figure out something just beyond their powers of reasoning.  

Hanging from the ceiling in my garage are two tennis balls in front of each van, so we always know where to park in order to keep from running into my motorcycles.  It’s a good idea for helping one’s wife to park, and it’s nice to help yourself to park if you’ve had a few beers before coming home – but never drink-and-drive. 

What’s missing from my garage?  Racing posters or posters of scantily clad women (wife won’t have it, the women, not the racing).  I could always use more room in my garage, but what man couldn’t?  I could also use a workbench, a TV, and a fridge for my beer.  I have a friend who keeps an antique 7-Up vending fridge full of beer in his garage.  I have another friend who has a drill press and 20 gallon air compressor in his garage.  Very manly garages!

What would the perfect garage be like? 

It would look a lot like one I admired at a house we were thinking of buying .  The garage was unattached, so you can be as loud as you want without really rattling the walls of your house, and it was 1200 square feet in size.  It was actually bigger than the house that was for sale!  It had front and rear garage doors, full electric and heat.  

The only thing keeping it from being perfect was a bathroom (with shower), but real men just step out the back door and pee in the grass, right?  Isn’t that what all men really strive for when they’re buying a home – a garage they can live in and a yard they can pee in?

So what would my wife’s garage look like?

She wouldn’t have a garage, because she would take the life insurance cash she received after I died and move to a condo in Florida with a car-port and a community swimming pool!





March 3, 2010

Superman's Sin Box

The Sin Box is where we keep our weaknesses, our guilty pleasures, the things we love and hate because we love them.  The Sin Box is filled with our delightful failures.  

Superman's Sin Box is a box of Kryptonite.  He has it hidden behind a panel in a closet in Clark Kent’s apartment, for safekeeping.  If it’s there then he knows the bad guys don’t have it.  

Every once in a while Superman gets his Sin Box out.  Every once in a while he just wants to feel human, mortal.  So he drags the box out of the closet, turns off the phone, pulls down the blinds, and turns on the TV, muted.  Then Superman puts on his jammies (Batman jammies, ironically enough) and plops down on the couch with his lead-lined Sin Box.  He kicks his feet up on the coffee table, takes a deep breath, and flips the lid open.  

He is drawn in by the emerald beauty of the Kryptonite rock.  

He is absorbed by the way it glitters and glows, by the way it drains the strength from his body like a cold February morning sapping heat from an ungloved hand.  Even more alluring is the fact that the Kryptonite also drains away Superman’s cares and worries.  

It’s a deadly drug, as all drugs can be; deadly by stealing one’s strength while also stealing one’s concern.  Repose replaces concern; apathy replaces repose; ecstasy replaces apathy and then the way is clear, with vacant smile and absent stare, into oblivion.

Superman tests his strength, feeling human, vulnerable, weak.  Normal.  He tries his mettle with that box of Kryptonite.  For a man impervious to bullets and knives, with skin no needle could penetrate, a man immune to earthly chemicals and their possible afflictions and addictions, this box of rock fragments is his drug of choice. 

He holds the box open for as long as he can, feeling the strength ebb away from his arms and legs, seeping out of his chest and shoulders, all of it followed by a cold numbness and a burning sensation, the pain of a billion tiny flames marching across the skin of a man who does not know what physical pain feels like.  

Then the darkness of oblivion quietly closes in around him, clouding everything in his sight until the only thing he sees, the only thing he can focus on, is that glowing green rock sitting in his lap.  His body feels like the lead lining his Sin Box.  His arms and legs are confusingly heavy and lifeless, a sensation unfamiliar to the Man of Steel, a man who cannot remember the last time any earthly physical object was beyond his power to move or destroy. 

But on that dark couch, bathed in the green glow of a long dead planet, Superman feels the puny limits of his muscles and flesh, feels his arms start to tingle, then go numb from his shoulder to his wrist.  It’s getting close, this unknown limit that all living creatures one day cross, never to return.  And he can feel the puny limits of his own will power quickly closing.

He is almost at the point of no return. 

A few seconds more and dead numbness will envelope his hands and he will no longer feel any part of them.  A few seconds more and he will not be able to feel the box.  A few seconds more and he will not be able to close the lid, once more sealing in the vampire glow.  Just a little longer and ecstasy will permanently replace apathy as Superman slips beyond wanting to close the box.  Then he will leave the box open just so the feeling doesn’t go away, that sublime feeling of normalcy, of vulnerability, a sensation that makes him feel warm and cold at the same time. 

Just a few seconds more and it will be complete.  

A few seconds more and Superman will be dead.

The tingling and numbness trickles past his wrists, eases into his palms, creeps past his knuckles towards his fingertips, closer, closer to oblivion and darkness over everything but that emerald glow, cold and silent and beautifully deadly. 

No one will really miss him. 

He deserves this, anyway, after all the times he’s saved this world.  How many thousands and millions and billions of faceless, thankless mortals has this orange-sunned god saved time after time?  He has brought them to a point where they no longer thank him for his help because they expect him to be there, to make everything all right, a red-and-blue caped guardian angel who watches over earth like it was his job, his calling, his vocation.  

That is their weakness – their arrogant expectations.  He is Kryptonian; he has no such weakness here.  

The numbness has swallowed his thumbs and his super vision is only a blanket of gray with a distant emerald twinge, ecstasy unfolding, unwinding, blanketing him.  He deserves this.  This is how he should feel all the time.  He is a god.  Don’t gods deserve to have their desires fulfilled?  Hasn’t he given enough?  Isn’t his job ever finished?  

The emerald tinge is almost gone, the gray blanket over his eyes shifting to the deep black of nighttime, of cold space, absent the twinkling stars of a billion other golden suns and a billion other golden gods with their mortals.  

He is cold.  He is numb.  He tells himself that he is happy this way, that this is good, as close as he will ever get to real happiness, to a real life with Lois, kids and a house in the suburbs.  This could be good, the numbness tells him.

Everything is lifeless now but the weight of the whole world still bears down upon him, crushing through the oblivion that binds him in an icy embrace.  In spite of the darkness his duty is still there.  He is obligated.  His gift obligates him.  He is a god.  

He is Superman.

He twitches his fingers, barely feeling the digits react like dead wood, like his hand was swaddled in thick wool or frozen in ice.  He twitches his fingers again, a slight movement now, almost imperceptible, imagined, nonexistent, extinct.  

It is enough.  

The heavy lead-lined box lid creaks shut with a bang.  The green haze dissolves, the coldness warms, ecstasy vanishes.  The weight of the world shifts and bears down even harder as the familiar feeling of invulnerability returns like an armored plate over his chest, shielding his heart, isolating his soul.

Superman sleeps.





February 24, 2010

Eternity In Snow

You know, rarely – if ever – do you think about rain in terms of individual rain drops.  

You think of the thousands and millions of drops in terms of a shower, a storm, a sheet of rain.  A solid entity.  A wall.  A blanket.  It is practically impossible to even differentiate among individual raindrops in a shower.  But drop the temperature below freezing and add a little whirling wind and your perspective changes.

The snow swirls outside my window in big, fluffy flakes, floating gently then twirling madly on unseen eddies of wind.  It fills the view until there is nothing beyond but the snow.  Only the snow.  

It is easy to pretend this snow is some late April hatch of mayflies swarming along a sleepy backcountry road.  The newly born bugs so languid and thick in the soft night air, coming and going with individualized chaos in my car headlights, that for a second they look like a spring snow squaw.  

The snow takes up the imitation, each flake busying itself around and up and down until you finally lose sight of it in the whole.  Then you pick another flake to follow, it too seemingly alive in its hurry to exist, to fly, to connect and reproduce before suffering an end to the briefest life.

Watching the snow beyond, you find you consider each of these snowflakes as unique individuals, unlike the rain drops, even though they are the same thing at different temperatures.  And, after realizing this, you follow specific snowflakes in their flight until they disappear and blend back in with the rest.  And suddenly you recognize that you are aware of all the distinct flakes making up the entirety, an uncountable collection of chaotic individual bits.

You expand your vision and empty your mind of thought, focusing on a single point out in the blank space.  Peripherally, you see the snow swirl in intricate patterns you could never hope to comprehend independently, millions of discrete flakes all realized at once, the concept so easy to now accept because you are not thinking about anything but everything.  

That is when you barely grasp the concept of eternity, as it whirls dizzyingly before your eyes, infinity made up of millions of finite, individual instants, all swept along in a pattern known only to the Higher Power. 

You try frantically to write it all down, to describe in words the brief glimpse you were given, straining to capture that magic spectacle of the immeasurable secrets of Heaven.  You write furiously, glancing up occasionally to watch the snow fall for another second, trying to keep inspiration fueled, struggling to evoke that instant when you were on the verge of comprehension.

When you finally get to the end of writing you look back up, out the window.  It’s all gone.  The snow has stopped, disappeared, not a single flake evident on the ground.  Everything is normal, untouched.  

You reread the incomprehensible gibberish you have just written and suddenly ask yourself -- 

Was this all just my imagination?





February 17, 2010

A Warning About Snowmen

Snow.  It's always snowing around here.  I've shoveled the snow off my driveway - no small feat, mind you - three times in the last two days.  I just took the trash out and barely survived discovering the hard way that my driveway is now a lovely sheet of ice, suitable for Olympic Men's Figure Skating.

Everyone here at Jackson Acre is going a little stir crazy, a normal yet agitating side-effect of Cabin Fever, which is not really a fever, per say, as its name implies, but is more of a skin and bowel irritation that results in lots of yelling inbetween trips to the bathroom.  

Everyone's got Cabin Fever.  The kids, who are currently enjoying their fourth Snow Day out of school, watch 18 hours of cartoons and "Cake Boss" episodes while snipping and sniping at each other.  The dogs are also suffering, since the snow's too deep and they can't really run around and vent their excess energy.  They've taken to only going outside long enough to poop and pee on the deck.  

The kids are too busy watching TV to play with the dogs, so Ginger spends her excess energy trying to kill Daisy, who, in turn, keeps trying to gnaw the fingers off my right hand.  I've taken to trying to gnaw the fingers off my left hand.  The wife still appears immune, but I'm watching her closely, like one would a person bitten by a zombie, machete in hand.

Cabin Fever is not unique to humans, either.  

Snowmen suffer from a strange derivative of the illness called Exterior Fever.  Symptoms of this illness include extreme aggression, suicidal tendencies, hysteria, and incontinence.  The snowmen here at Jackson Acre are definitely exhibiting the symptoms.  In fact, there was a snowman killing here the other day, as one of the larger snowmen beheaded ("de-headed"?) one of the smaller snowmen out in the back yard.  It was a grisly sight (see below). 

                      

Perhaps the most famous sufferer of Exterior Fever was Frosty the Snowman.  He exhibited a uniquely scary rash of symptoms that produced a heightened sense of paranoia and misanthropy.  His particular case was noteworthy for the kidnapping of hostages that took place in his attempt to escape to the North Pole. Experts feared that Frosty, in his extreme illness, had perverted plans for his hostages with an intent to eat the children rather then set them free.  Thankfully the children escaped Frosty's icy clutches and returned home safe.

Frosty, however, managed to evade authorities and escape to parts unknown.  He is still ranked in the top twenty Most Wanted Snowmen by federal authorities, who have standing orders to kill Frosty on sight.  This is usually accomplished by flamethrowers, the only guaranteed method of dispatching an out-of-control, 700 pound mound of murderous ice and snow.

With more snow and ice in the forecast, the rest of winter still looks cold and perilous, a perfect environment to breed more disturbed and dangerous diseased snowmen.  Remember, it's not the Cabin Fever you have to worry about; there's a shot to clear that up.  It's the mad snowmen with corncob pipes in their mouths that want to stain the pure white snow with our crimson blood.

Stay safe, my friends.       





February 10, 2010

Leaving Well Enough Alone

As some of you may know, I have long wrestled with drainage problems in my yard and sump pit.  Like the swallows to Capistrano, Spring brings floods and a steadily running sump pump.  But this year I reached a quiet truce with my sump pit.  

I raised the water level at which the pump goes off, higher than I ever have, in hopes of reaching equilibrium with the saturated water table that surrounds my house.  And it worked, the pump now only going off every hour versus every minute as in years past.  It has brought a sense of peace to Jackson Acre.

So today I went downstairs to work out and thought I’d check the water level in my sump pit, as I am wont to do during the wet season.  While looking into the pit, I noticed how chilly it was in that corner of the basement, probably due to the cold ground water sitting in an open hole in my basement floor.  Well, I’ll put the cover on, I thought to myself.

So I did, only it didn’t fit right because the pumps were all to one side of the pit.  So I decided to move them into the center so the cover would fit.  I grabbed the pipe to the backup pump and slid it over a few inches.  Then I grabbed the pipe to the main pump, which was now pumping water, and lifted slightly.

W H A M !  

A blast of ice cold water hit me in the face like a fire hose!

I gasped and blinked and sputtered as I backed away.  Completely disoriented, I let loose a string of every swear word of every color in the book.  I sounded like an angry man drowning.  My eyes were blurry and my breath caught in my chest from the shock of the cold water on my shirt and down my pants.  The water sprayed hard against my chest and groin as I tried to escape the icy shower.  I could see a small geyser pluming out of my sump pit, spraying water over everything, drenching me, a table, a trunk, and boxes of garage sale junk sitting nearby.  

I frantically grabbed the pump plug and jerked it out of the electrical socket, a brilliantly stupid move by a soaking wet man standing on a wet floor.  The geyser died away and the air was suddenly filled with the plink, plink, plink of a hundred drops of water dripping off everything around me.  

What the hell happened?

On closer inspection, I realized that when I tried to pick up the heavy main pump by the pipe it pulled loose from the drain pipe that goes out of the house, promptly blasting me with 4,700 gallons of ice cold water per hour!  It seemed like the pump hosed me for a minute, but it was probably only ten seconds.  Do the math – 4,700 gallons per hour divided by 60 minutes equals 78.3 gallons per minute divided by 60 seconds equals 1.3 gallons per second times ten seconds equals 13 gallons of frigid water sprayed all over me and the basement.

It seemed more like 130 gallons.  And it didn’t taste very good.

First order of business – reconnect the pipes.  I knelt in the giant puddle next to the sump pit and started reassembling.  After getting the pipes back together, I plugged the pump back in to make sure it worked right.  Reaching into the water for the switch, my fingertips tingled and a shock surged up my forearm.  I jerked my hand out of the water.  Did I just get electrocuted?  

Like a typical man, I stuck my fingers back in.  Same thing – tingling, shocking sensations.  Hmm, I looked up at the cords and noticed drops of water all over the plugs.  I reached into the water a third time.  This time the shock was sharp, like the worst static shock you’ve ever had, only sustained.  My arm involuntarily pulled back.  

Yeah, I did get electrocuted.  Three times!

I grabbed a handful of old towels and wiped everything off.  Then I started sponging water out of the carpet.  Within a minute I had completely saturated six old beach towels.  I noticed a pack of adult diapers sitting under the desk, a joke gift from my 40^th birthday party.  I ripped the package open, grabbed two diapers, turned them inside-out and slipped them over my shoes like goulashes. I stamped around the squishy carpet. Two minutes and eight diapers later, it looked like the baby changing room at the Octo-Mom’s house.  And the carpet was still soaked.  

I went out to the garage for a box fan.  It’s been blowing over the carpet for six hours now.  I just went downstairs to check on things and stepped on the carpet.  My socks are soaked.  

Always leave well enough alone.





February 3, 2010

Buzzing Madness

I was giddy in the sound of my madness.  

My madness was a constant tone, not overwhelmingly loud, but audible enough to be annoying.  It wasn’t really a buzz so much as it was a long, sustained beeeeeeeeep.  Without the “P” sound at the end.  It reminded me of the sound my 1977 Chevy Malibu made when I left my keys in the ignition and opened the car door, back in the days before cars made pleasant chime noises to delicately remind you that you were an idiot and had left your lights on or your keys in the ignition.

The buzzing started as we sat down for our weekly staff meeting, all of us politely attentive to the project manager’s presentation.  The sound came from the other side of the door across the room from me, maybe ten feet away.  At least, that’s where it seemed to come from.  

And no one else seemed to hear the buzz.  Or maybe it was just that no one else decided to react to the buzz as they continued being politely attentive.  I’m not typically politely attentive.  More like rudely inattentive.

But that was the weird part – the fact that no one else seemed to hear the buzz.  Just me.  And maybe it was only me.  Maybe I’d finally cracked.  Maybe my mind had finally decided to let loose, subjecting me to an annoying buzzing noise as it drove me slowly and steadily towards madness.  Maybe it was my mind’s way of reminding me that I was an idiot and had left both my lights on and my keys in the ignition.

I tried to ignore it.  

I tried to focus on the manager speaking.  I tried to concentrate on the notes I was taking.  I tried to hum "The Hamster Song".  The buzz maintained, sustained, drilling into the space behind my eyes.  I glanced around the table – everyone else still seemed normal and unperturbed.

I wondered if it was only in my right ear, since the sound was coming from off to my right.  I tried turning my head slightly.  The sound remained.  Then I heard it in my left ear.  God, I thought, this is it.  This is the beginning of the end.  I really have cracked.  I’m losing it.  And this is how it starts: small, like an annoying mosquito buzzing in my ear that won’t go away.  

I supposed I’d get used to it, like people who suffer from tinnitus and live with a constant ringing in their ears.  They say it's like living in a virtual bell tower, church bells gonging constantly.  I’d be happy with church bells.  It would be a pleasant change from the “Fasten Your Seatbelt, Idiot” buzz I was now hearing.

And the worst part?  Knowing I was the only one who heard it.

The buzzing continued, the meeting droned on, and I stared at my coffee mug.  Printed on my coffee mug was an explanation of what my problem was, the reason why my brain was buzzing out of my ears.

“Do what you like.  Like what you do,” the mug said to me.  

Actually, my mug didn't really talk to me.  Even if I was crazy I knew coffee mugs couldn't talk.  Except, of course, that one in Disney's "Beauty And The Beast".  I think his name was Chip.  And he even sang!

Wisdom from a coffee cup, a declaration on everything that was wrong in my career.  I’m not doing what I like.  I don’t like what I do.  And it took my coffee mug to show me my problem.  

But maybe the buzzing in my ears was because I drank too much coffee.  Maybe I was too caffeinated.  Maybe my brain was bouncing around my skull like an angry hornet trying to escape.  Maybe I’m not mad, just ultra-hyped.  Wired.  Something very closely resembling madness.  

Then it stopped.

And I heard a car door slam in the garage bay on the other side of the door across from me.

Yeah, some idiot had left their keys in the ignition with the car door open.  




January 27, 2010

Beating Misanthropy!    

I woke up feeling very Misanthropic the other day.  

For no particular reason, mind you.  Just opened my eyes and felt a general hatred for most people, especially the plethora of idiots on the morning rush hour drive.  It quickly devolved into a nagging feeling that there are just too damn many of us on this rock and it’s time to thin the herd.  More space between bodies, that’s all I’m thinking.  And I’m not talking about just moving West.

Now I don’t dislike anyone in particular; at least not to the point that I would name them here in front of God and everyone.  Well, there was that idiot from Ebay, but besides him there’s no one else I’m looking to throw under the bus.  Unless the bus thing is really an option, then I could probably kick out a quick short list.  

Is 103 names a short list?

Misanthropy makes it hard for Misanthropists to overlook the flaws of other people.  I can normally overlook a lot and I consider myself laid back enough that I get along with just about everyone.  But that requires a certain level of patience in overlooking certain annoying faults in others.  I normally have this patience.  

But on Misanthropic Day I do NOT.

The person who says “Um” every fourth word in every conversation – needs to be culled.  The person who never seems to accomplish ANYTHING at work, yet somehow stays gainfully employed AND gets raises when I don’t – needs to be culled.  That idiot who cut me off in traffic – definitely needs to be culled.  If I could just mount machine guns to my car.

But those are a few singular examples.  Contrary to what you are now thinking, I do not really have a long list of people I’d like to see dead.  I’m not that hateful.  I just think there are too many people.  Period.  

Natural Selection is no longer a force in human population regulation, so we now have strange and exotic diseases that Mother Nature has concocted in an effort to kill some of us off.  Think H1N1.  And malaria is a particularly old disease that Mother Nature cooked up eons ago, but it’s still a crowd pleaser in Third World countries.

But Misanthropy is a misunderstood mental ailment, much like it’s hairier cousin Lycanthropy.  And because Misanthropes typically hate or mistrust mankind, which includes doctors, few of them are ever truly diagnosed and treated.  

In extreme cases, some Misanthropes also contracted Lycanthropy, which generally resulted in fur shedding and multiple murders on moonlit nights.  Misanthropy’s bad enough: throw Lycanthropy on top of it and you’ve got one angry hairy person with sharp fangs and sharper claws.  Let the masses beware.

In today’s society drugs are the ultimate solution for all our problems, the prescription for happier life.  Just look at those smiling middle-aged guys in the Viagra commercials.  Or the smiling middle-aged folks using Abilify.  Or the couples sitting in bathtubs in the middle of a field.  They're definitely on drugs!  

So now we have Prozac and Zoloft and Crestor and Levitra and Cialis and Plavix and Lipitor and Singulair.  There’s a drug for just about everything that ails you.  And now there’s a cure for Misanthropy.  It’s called Introversalis.  It’s the fix for what ails those who hate people.  

Except true Misanthropes hate doctors, pharmacies, and generally being around other people, so they'll never get the prescription anyway.




January 20, 2010

Last of the TP!

The last of the toilet paper pet-peeve.

Being the only toilet-using male in the house, I often get stuck replacing the toilet paper roll, as the last user somehow made due with the one and a half small squares of scrap to complete whatever bodily function they were performing.  So I’ve learned to review the toilet paper situation before I begin and sure enough, eight times out of ten, the TP needs replaced.  

So I hurriedly shuffle over to the hall closet where we usually keep four extra packs of TP, pressure beginning to bear down hard, and, sure enough, seven times out of ten there’s only an empty four-pack wrapper lying discarded on the closet floor.

Now I’m frantic as pressure builds and I rush downstairs to where the bulk supply of TP should be stored, hoping to find at least one more four-pack for upstairs.  Since this is a household with – technically – five females (two of which do not use toilet paper, but their female-ness still counts) we tend to buy TP in the large bulk sizes and store it in the basement washroom.  From here an overly complicated distribution method unreliably metes out TP on an emergency, as-remembered basis within our household.  

And if the bulk TP storage is empty?  

Then I raid the other bathroom for whatever is there, facial tissues and washcloths not out of the question.

This same basic human nature gets played out day after miserable day in our workplaces, at the printers instead of the toilets.  The black-and-white printer is empty, so somebody steals a few sheets of paper from the color printer to print their stuff, leaving the color printer empty, much like the empty TP roll next to the toilet in the girl’s bathroom.

So here I sit, listening to a coworker grumble and grouse as their color print job doesn't print.  And the black-and-white printer is still empty.  And they were probably trying to print something for a meeting with the director, too.  

But at least I got my Dilbert cartoons printed.  My bottom's clean!




January 13, 2010

The Importance of Good Dic-tion!

What to talk about?

It's a question I ask myself constantly as I try to mine the minute comings and goings of life for humorous gems to share with you.  It ain't easy, let me tell you.  But inspiration often finds me a subject to talk about, with nary a plot line or linear topic to discuss.

Like today.  

I was listening to the news on public radio as I drove home and the radio host was interviewing some Englishman about an annual skating competition between England and Finland.  This year it was finally cold enough for the fens in England to freeze over, so the English were hosting the competition.

What struck me about the interview was the radio host's voice.  Pretty much all newscasters on the radio have to be well-spoken, but this lady spoke with marked enunciation and clarity.  And what I clearly heard in her voice was her smile, obviously brought on by something humorous in the interview.  It was distinct and clear and audibly shiny.

So this got me thinking about the sound of a smile.  

Yes, smiles have sound.  You can clearly hear someone smile when they speak.  It changes the pitch of their voice, softens and warms it, makes it more inviting.  And I was pondering all of this when I sat down to dinner with my family.

That's when it all went to crap.  Literally.  Again.  Yes, this week's discussion is teetering towards the toilet bowl, the topic of defecation threatening to poke it's ugly head out.  

You see, somebody farted at the dinner table, which is supposed to be a fart-free zone during dinner.  It was my youngest daughter, Hannah, this time.  The oldest daughter and usual suspect was away from the table and the wife just doesn't fart.  If it was mine, I would've laughed.  The dogs fart often and always act surprised when they do it, but it wasn't either of them.  Perhaps I should try that myself - acting surprised.

After the long-winded toot quietly echoed off into the distance, I commented that Hannah might want to consider going to the bathroom, to relieve her load.  She smarmily replied that she'd already been to the bathroom and she had left quote a load.

"What?" I asked, surprised by Hannah's witty potty humor retort.

Now it is here where I must inform you that Hannah has a tendency to stutter sometimes.  It's like her brain gets too far ahead of her mouth, so her mouth forgets what it was supposed to say as it tries to say something.

"I left a surface shi-, a surface shi- ..."  Hannah's head bobbed slightly as she concentrated on what she was trying to say.  The wife and I exchanged startled glances across the kitchen table, eyebrows raised.  What was she trying to say?

"I left a surface shi-, a surface ship!" she finally blurted out.  "You know, like those big long boats in the ocean that float on top of the water.  It was pretty long."

"A surface ship," I echoed, clearly enunciating the crisp -p sound at the end of the word "ship".  "A surface ship, huh?  So it floated."  

"Yeah, a surface ship."  Hannah smiled at her poop joke as she got up from the table.  The wife and I smiled at each other for another reason.  Once Hannah got the -p sound out it was very clear what she was trying to say, but for a second there we weren't too sure. 

Yes, good articulation and diction is important!  Especially when you're a fifth grader discussing poo at the dinner table and saying "surface ship".  Always remember to clearly enunciate the crisp -p sound at the end!  




January 6, 2010

Redacted Anonymous Pooping!    

Originally this piece was going to be a fairly open and frank discussion on pooping.  Or more specifically, my personal take on the world of defecation based on my own observations and peculiarly warped sense of humor.

Then I realized it was probably going to be too much for most of you.

What do I mean by too much, you ask?

I mean it would be partially crossing the line, giving up (part of) my secret identity, relaying systemic vulnerabilities, selling Cold War secrets to the Soviets, exposing too much skin.  In a word, too personal.

Sure, I've already shared with you my peculiarities regarding urination and some of the socially stunting issues I've had to deal with in that act ("Let go, urethra!  Let Go!" from December 2008 Jackson Press Journal).  But pooping is different.  The act of taking a dump, in opposition to the act of peeing, is a more exposed and defenseless action.  In more ways than one.

Consider this: 

When urinating, if a man were attacked he could still fairly easily defend himself, although he would more than likely have a giant wet stain on the front of his trousers.  Still, he would already be standing upright, hands free to grapple with his foe or grab a weapon (no euphemisms for male genitalia here) and defend his life and honor (euphemisms for male genitalia here).  The male act of urinating is, by nature, a fairly open, almost aggressive action.  Male dogs pee on objects to mark their territory.  So do some male humans.  It's the male's way of saying "Here I am!  This is mine!"

Defecation, however, is another thing entirely. 

While defecating, one is naturally in a seated position.  At least one should be.  And defending oneself while seated is a rather difficult action unless you are holding a firearm.  Most people I know do not hold a firearm while defecating (no euphemisms for male genitalia here).  So to be attacked whilst pooping almost guarantees death, dismemberment, or capture.  And were one able to rise up from the act of defecating to defend oneself there's still the matter of clean-up.  Pooping is a messier process than peeing.  And usually smellier, which in and of itself could be a suitable defense for some people I know.  But to fight off attackers while in the midst of freeing one's bowels takes more manliness than I am capable of, without a firearm, suitable time, or toilet paper.

Pooing leaves one vulnerable, whether dog or bear or man.  And one sometimes has to strain to eliminate the waste, thus absorbing one's level of concentration to the point that situational awareness becomes minimalized.  Pooing is the act of opening up a hole within oneself from which the darkest things inside one's body pour out.  That openness is a personal vulnerability on many, many levels. 

And once I realized this I knew I could not so openly share those dark things with you, my faithful reader and friend.  It would be too much for you to handle and I do not wish to strain our relationship with the weight of all those dark things within my person (pooping puns intended!).

So I present to you the Redacted Anonymous Pooping essay.  Rest easy in the comfort that I am looking out for you and you are relatively safe from the darkest things I keep inside.  Unless, of course, you're sitting in the bathroom stall next to me.  

Sitting in a public toilet.

I'm trying to snatch a few minutes of quiet solitude.  But then someone in the stall next to me, who I did not realize was there, suddenly tinkles in their bowl.  I suspect they are asleep and their bladder is unfettered by REM sleep activity, a blaring indicator that they are too relaxed and in danger of toppling off the toilet!

That’s when you know you’re in trouble – when you sneak into the bathroom for a little cat-nap and fall so deeply asleep that you topple forward off the john and right out the stall door, which we all know never fastens as securely as one would like.  I can see the internet video now, me toppling out of my stall, pants around my ankles, a blurred spot over my crotch as I tumble to the floor and wake up with a screaming start!

Now someone just left the stall two down from mine.  Again, I was unaware that anyone else was in here with me.  I usually do a good job of picking up on the fact someone else is here.  The farting and peeing noises are a good indicator.  But these guys (we’re in a men’s room, so they pretty much have to be a guys) are very stealthy, like ninjas taking a poo, silent and deadly!  They leave no noticeable trace, no smell, no noise.  It wasn’t until the second guy quickly wiped (one pull of toilet paper only) and departed that I was even aware of his presence.  Never heard him even breath, much less fart!  

Then suddenly there is a flurry of activity in the men’s room, with multiple folks coming in and out, entering stalls and flushing toilets.  It’s almost as if everyone ate from the same box of donuts that were laced with a laxative like some lame prank from a 1980’s-era Hollywood B movie.  And now it becomes a waiting game as I wait for my neighbors on the left and right to finish their business, or wake up from their cat naps, wipe their bums, and get the hell out!  

I believe we all should leave individually, to help protect our secret poop identities.  I call the concept "Anonymous Pooping".  

I suppose since I was here first the others are waiting on me to leave.  It's kinda like the rules at a four-way stop when everyone stops at the same time: you defer to the person on your right.  Otherwise it’s first come, first go.  But if we all arrived at the same time, to which person's right do we start?  That's when you hope for someone to cede the right-of-way and wave you on through.  And today I am that guy, at the four-way stop, just sitting there waving others on by.  Don't ask why, just wave thank-you and go!

So I sit here safely anonymous as others come and go, waiting for a suitable break in traffic to safely cross that metaphoric intersection!




January 1, 2010

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from all of us here at Jackson Press!