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Month: March 2022

It’s Not All Magic When You’re A Less Famous Mouse

6 Min Read

If you’re lucky, a cat or mouse will only scratch you.

If you’re unlucky, they might just scar you for life…


“Mommy, Mommy! Where is the other half of Whiskers1Not the cat’s real name, but not because I’m trying to protect that dumb-asses’ privacy, but because I just can’t remember it.?!?”

I can still vividly remember a time when shutting the car door all by myself was an achievement worth celebrating. Especially because back then our family vehicle was this ugly green, late 1970’s certifiable land yacht. I don’t recall the exact make and model–probably an Oldsmobile or Buick, no doubt–but the body of this mechanical beast had to have been made out of pure, solid iron.

For all practical purposes, there was very little that separated the front passenger door from it’s close cousin, the bank vault door. So, yeah, getting my little body to muster up the muscular strength of a 10-year-old (or two 5-year-olds, or ten 1-year-olds), and getting that door shut was something that was very much pat-myself-on-the-back-worthy.

However, when that big day finally arrived when my wildest dreams came to fruition, things didn’t play out exactly as I had imagined they would. Did I get a ticker-tape parade for being such a Big Boy? Was there confetti streaming down from the car’s rafters to enhance this magical moment? Was there any patting-on-the-back, whether by my own hand or that of another?

Let’s see…”no,” “nope,” and “negatory.” Does that answer my2I really wanted to type “your questions” here, but let’s be honest: you weren’t the one asking them. questions? Yes, it does.

Yet, I remember that milestone so clearly.

For all the wrong reasons, of course.

After a couple of really good tugs, I had finally overcome the friction on the door hinges, and to my sheer delight, the door quickly gained momentum and swung solidly shut. Well, almost solidly shut…

To my horror, in that split second between getting over the frictional energy barrier and the door latching in place, our idiot cat Whiskers–or whatever his name was–decided he wanted to come on our trip with us and, like a half-drunk motorist trying to race a train across a railroad crossing, he gambled when the odds were not “ever in his favor.”3I almost instantly regreted including a reference from The Hunger Games here… That little dipshit actually thought he could make it into the car before the door shut all the way.

To his credit though, it turns out he was half right.

The door started swinging shut, Whiskers appeared out of nowhere and prepared to launch, and all I could do was be awash in a feeling of helplessness as I had just enough time to not only realize what was about to happen, but to also realize that there was no way I could stop that door once I got it moving.

“NOOOOOOOOoooooooooo…!”

KER-CHUNK!

Next thing I knew, with my little eyes I was spying exactly one half of a cat inside the car–the front half, rib cage to nose, to be exact. And thus leaving only one logical conclusion as to where the other half of Whiskers was–outside the car.

Holy. Sh*t. Batman.

Had I just guillotined our precious feline friend right in two4TOOL reference!?!? Hello, instant childhood PTSD!

While I sat there, dazed and traumatized, Mom acted quick on her feet, leaning over and opening the door back up lickety-split (fun fact: it’s much easier to get those doors to budge when you’re a grown-ass woman).

…And just like a classic magic trick, voilà! The hind quarters and tail of ol’ Whiskers reappeared!

By some miracle, I had not, in fact, severed his spine. And apparently all his other internal organs got safely smushed to either inside or outside the car upon impact, and had slid right back into place once the door was re-opened. So, in the end, that lucky little bastard turned out just fine and no worse for the wear.

I, on the other hand, not so much. Verily, with a mere 4 years of worldly experience under my belt, I could put my hand over my little heart and swear to you, “I was in no way emotionally prepared for this…”


“Professor A., I think you are ready to learn how to run one of our scientific studies end-to-end. First things first, though: specimen preparation.”

It was halfway through my first year of working in a small-animal MRI lab, and my boss, Four-Quart Willie,5Not his real name, but if you can figure out what this real (professional) name is, and why I use this moniker for him, I think you would chuckle lightly to yourself as much as I do every time I type it. loved to feed the ego of those of us freshly off the PhD assembly line by referring to us “Professors.”

Indeed, it was a very effective way to convince me to move away from my expertise in image and data processing and/or wrangling, and to start getting my hands dirty directly dealing with the rodents his lab loved to study so much: mice.

Now, I had exactly zero interest in the whole proposal, but how could I resist someone who esteemed me at the level of professor? Amiright?

At this point, it is critical to understand that the bread-and-butter of our scientific endeavors is what is called ex vivo MRI scans. Instead of gently sedating a mouse or rat and scanning them while they are alive and breathing (that would be in vivo), we yada yada ya…and scan only their extracted skull and brain.

To get an idea of why this is preferred, here are comparative examples of in vivo (left) and ex vivo (right) MRI images of a mouse brain:

Figure 1: An axial MRI slice of a mouse brain, in vivo, aka “alive” (Left); and ex vivo aka “not so alive” (Right).

Take a gander at those two pics, and you tell me whether a scientist such as myself would prefer those little rascals dead or alive? Yeah, the choice is pretty clear: those mice are better off dead to us.

Anyways, the very next week I had the privilege of being trained in the ways of “specimen preparation”: the aforementioned yada yada ya that encompasses whatever happens in between “mouse starts day like every other day with a snack and a good poo” and “mouse’s skull and brain end up floating in a tiny sealed tube, ready to be scanned.”

I should also mention another very important thing to know about this business, and that is that animal comfort and safety is taken very seriously. There are like, a million-thousand rules and regulations about handling animals involved in experiments, especially when it comes to what we in the biz call “sacrificing” them–aka killing them until they are dead. We have to follow strict procedures to minimize any suffering they might endure in the process.

With such humane guardrails in place, I hadn’t given much thought to that whole part of the process when I walked into our surgery room for training that particular morning. I had no doubt in my mind that Step One would involve something similar to, say, putting them in a small box and, oh, I don’t know, maybe pumping it full of carbon dioxide, followed up with a barely noticeable shot in the tail that would dreamily send them off to never-never land.

Or, as I like to call it, “gently leading them into the dark.” Sounds almost…romantic, doesn’t it?6Probably because it hearkens memories of that Death Cab For Cutie song, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark.”

Well…at least I got the first sub-step half right. You know, the part about the mild sedation to initially knock them out.

After that? Oh boy…how do I put this?

Yada yada ya…and the next thing I know, I’m staring at a very much still-living mouse laying on its back, all 4 paws pinned back in what appeared to be some sort of sacrilegious attempt to accurately recreate a murine version of the whole Jesus-on-the-cross scene.

And how did I know it was still alive, you might be wondering? Did I feel for its pulse? Did I hold a mirror up to its tiny nose and look for it to fog up?

Nope. Nothing that subtle.

No, all I had to do was look at its heart, and…yup, still pounding away. Oh, did I mention that its chest cavity was split wide ----- open? Yeah, rib cages pinned to the side and everything.

I was in complete shock at the sight of its little lungs still rapidly expanding and contracting, its heart furiously pumping, and the rest of all its innards, just hanging out doing their thang, on display for the whole ----- world to see.

I kinda blacked out most of what happened after that, but I’m pretty sure once it was all said and done, I went and found a secluded spot outside and sobbed gently for a good 5 minutes.

I mean, what the ----- did I just witness???

It was, as we say in the business, a real mind- ----- .

Of course, when I went home that evening to The Boss Lady and she asked me how my day went, I had to relive the horror all over again.

Verily, with a mere 34 years of worldly experience under my belt, I had to put my blood-stained hand over my little heart and swear to her, “Oh Sweet Baby Jesus, I was in no way emotionally prepared for this…”


Content created on: 25/26/27 March 2022 (Fri/Sat/Sun)

Footnotes & References:[+]

To Florida, Kids! The Land Of A Little Dirty Imagination…

6 Min Read

The problem with not knowing the truth is that your imagination might run wild.

You know, like “Girls Gone Wild” wild…


It was like a moment straight from the Oprah Winfrey show: “You get a car! You get a car! And you get a car–everybody gets a car!!!”

You remember that, right? Here, let me refresh your memory:

Yeah, except, instead of “cars” everyone in Rolla High School’s Sophomore1…or was it my Freshman year? Computer/Typing class was getting letters from their very own pen pal. But not from any old boring place like Kansas, though—we got hooked up with a sister class from Apopka High School–that’s in Apopka, Florida, my friends!

And, instead of “Oprah Winfrey”, it was good ol’ Mrs. Hansen handing them out. You remember Mrs. Hansen right? The teacher who once accused me of “murdering a baked potato“? Yeah. Her.

And, instead of “everybody” it was “everybody…except you.” As you might have guessed, that “you” here was spoken directly at me. Yeah. Me.

“Oh, boy!” I thought, “Maybe I’m so special that I get to have two pen pals!”

“So…I’m not getting a letter because I’m getting a couple of letters, right, Mrs. H.?” That was simply the only logical explanation.

“Uh…no. Well, I actually have a letter for you…”

I could tell she was searching for the right way to let me down gently.

“…I just can’t…um…give you the letter.”

I took a moment to try to figure out what in the tarnation2That’s Kansas for “the f*ck”. she was going on about.

Taking my blank stare and trembling lower lip as her cue, Mrs. H pressed forward.

“Your pen pal? Well, she wrote some inappropriate stuff…”

Hmmph. That was odd. What could this person that I didn’t even know have to say that was too much for a 15-year-old to handle?

“Surely you could give me a censored version, right? No need to leave me out in the cold here.”

“No…It was bad. Like, real bad.”

“Seriously, I don’t mind a redacted version. I’ve been so looking forward to having a pen pal–it’s been a childhood dream of mine.”

In the Five Stages of Grief, I was squarely in the Bargaining Stage. I couldn’t let this dream die so easily.

“That’s physically impossible…there would be nothing left after censorship…”

“Just a tiny hint? Please oh–“

“I SAID I CAN’T.”

Whoa. Mrs. H. wasn’t messing around.

“Please oh please?” I whispered meekly with a tear forming in my eye.

“Look, I hate to use foul language in the classroom, but I can’t seem to get my point across to you: she straight-up wrote some nasty sh*t.3Okay, I don’t think she actually said ‘sh*t’ in the classroom. But I very distinctly remember her using the term ‘nasty’. There. I said it. Now end of discussion…”


“The Great Nasty Sh*t Mystery of 1996.” To this very day it haunts me, taunting me even unto my deathbed, forever depriving me of true closure in this lifetime.

WHAT DID SHE WRITE?!? Mrs. H. was so steadfast in “protecting” me–or whatever favor she thought she was doing me–that I was I never able to get even the slightest of clues out of her.

But instead of protecting me, she only left me with an unsolvable puzzle that would go on to slowly eat away at my sanity well into adulthood and beyond. And this is all on top of adding to my long history of childhood trauma in which I was left out yet again (that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms entirely, and beyond the scope of this text, though).

Why would she do that to me? Now I’m left to forever wonder: “I may never know the exact details of that Nasty Sh*t, nay and alas, I’ll never even know the broad nature of those loathsome and despicable words sent slowly in my general direction through the old-fashioned snail mail.”

So my first assumption was that my pen pal was just foul-mouthed–you know, kinda like me, sprinkling an NC-17 word in here or there to liven things up a little and more fully express one’s self. Nothing like an occasional f-bomb to drive your point home, amiright?

I wouldn’t even minded it if she had called me a “melon-farmer“, as we all know that can also be used as a term of endearment.

But the main problem with this theory is it seems like there would have been at least some redeemable text that could have survived the censors and been passed on to me…pitiful ol’ little me…

Then there’s the idea that she was just being hateful and rude. You know, insulting my mom’s weight, farting in my general direction, calling me a cousin-loving hillbilly, telling me to kill myself. Stuff like that. Uncalled for, yes, but unimaginable? No, that is very well within the capabilities of a 15 or 16 year old girl (one with a whole litany issues, admittedly).

At the time, I had one other idea of what she might have written, and I’ll get to that in a second. First, though, I confess that only within the last year or two another possibility crossed my mind: absolute and unabashed racism.

I was (am) just a honky from Kansas after all. She? She was from the cosmopolitan metropolis of the Greater Central Florida area. If she was perhaps, say, a young woman of color, it is very possible that she had experienced enough racial trauma in her young life that she could have seen me as an anonymous outlet for her righteous anger at a very broken system that favors “people like me” at the expense of people like her.

“You cracker-ass mother ----- , putting ghosts to shame with your whiteness! Where’s my reparations, you patriarchal boot-licking he- ----- ?!?”

Ya know, your standard Caucasian-based racial slurs, combined with historic-grievance-based justified rage. Run-of-the-mill stuff, actaully.

The other hypothesis that I came up with back then was that, given that my pen pal was a she/her, perhaps…perhaps it was nasty in a, uh…”sensual context”. I mean, she was from Florida, the birthplace and world capital of erotic 1-900 phone numbers in the 90’s…it’s not that outlandish of an idea.

This is both one of my favorite and most feared scenarios I was able to fathom at the time. On one hand, can you imagine being the one to discover it?

Editor’s note: Mom, you might want to skip this next paragraph.

I chuckled very heartily at the thought of Mrs. H. getting blindsided when reading such classic lines as: “Then I’ll slide off my panties…the panties my mother laid out for me,4 “Boy, Ima suck your ----- so ----- hard your brains gonna come out my nostrils,” and “Oooh, baby, just your fist? Honey, no. You ain’t stopping until you’re elbows-deep…”

You know, standard naughty-talk.

On the other hand…you can imagine how tortuous it would have been for a 15-year-old hormone-driven youth such as myself to know–or at least suspect–that such a letter existed, literally with my name on it, and to know that I would never be able to see it.

There’s only way to express my hypothetical suffering and woe:

Indeed, folks, the true tragedy here is not an exploding hydrogen-filled floating sea mammal, but that I–no, we–we will never know what was in that letter. We’ll never know what warranted a public school teacher to say, aloud, in class, to a student, “…that was some nasty-ass sh*t…”


“Oh, can you just imagine the look on our girls’ faces when we tell them ‘We’re going to Disney World!’???”

“Pffttt! No way, Jose! Disney is for suckers who like to be parted with their monies. The only reason we even went to Disney Land last time was because, on account of my cleverness and shear will to not accept the status quo, we were able to do it for 10% the price of what it would cost your everyday chump.”

“…plus, I hear the Disney World–you know, the one in Florida–is way better than California’s Disney Land…”

Something the Boss Lady just said snapped me back to full attention:

“Wait…Florida you say?”

*checks map*

*Double-checks map*

Sweet, sweet resolution might be only 27 minutes away…

“Wait, what are you doing in the middle of our conv–“

“LAY OFF ME, I’M BOOKING OUR PLANE TICKETS!”


The point of the story is, before you go and drop a sizable sum of money on a Disney World vacation because you’re using it as an excuse to hunt down4Auntie Amelia, this is how this post relates to the Spanish laptop post, otherwise you’ll be wondering where part 2 was until the day you die. a retired teacher of your long-lost foul-mouthed pen pal, you might want to step back and think this one through.

Young Grasshopper, the Knowledge You Seek isn’t to be found in some far-off exotic swampland called “Florida”. Nay the Knowledge may actually lie closer to home…

*Ahem*

Mrs. Hanson, if you’re reading this, I’m begging you PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE–tell me what my penpal wrote to me. I’m a grown-ass adult now. I swear I can handle the truth. No matter how nasty it may be…


Content created on: 17 March 2022 (Thursday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Have You Or Someone You Love Been Taken For A Fool?

5 Min Read

You’ve always dreamed of being part of an international heist.

You should have been a bit more specific…


“You’re going to send how much via Western Union???”

“Only $800. This is a great deal on a laptop–I can’t pass it up!”

“…and you’re sending it to Spain?”

“Yeah, duh! That’s where the laptop is.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yup.”

“Okie-dokie, Artichokie…”

*Turns to Western Union Teller*

“I would like to send $800 to Spain.”

“Are you sure about that…?”


That particular conversation transpired in a Dillon’s grocery store back in 2002 between myself and one Tiffany Chestnut1Not her real name…it’s actually her proverbial “Pornstar Name”, and I must say, I have never seen the pornstar-name-generating-algorithm work so ----- well in my life as it did in her case.–my forever friend-girl and occasional girlfriend back during my college days.2Side note: I had expected to have regaled you with many more tales about her and our relationship by now, but surprisingly, I think there is only one other reference to her, which you can read about in The Olde Timey Wheelchair.

Now, I’m not going to say which one of us was getting a sweet deal on an Iberian laptop, and which one of us was just along for the ride–that wouldn’t be fair to one of us. Nor am I going to disclose which one of us was contacted directly by an eBay electronics-monger moments after losing out on an auction–remember when that’s all eBay did?–for a laptop.

Should I specify which one of us thought, “Hey, I thought $1200 for a laptop with these specs is a steal, but now I can’t believe my good luck–I have the opportunity to get it for the low, low price of $800 (USD)!”

No. No I shouldn’t, as that could be considered to be in poor taste.

And you can already guess what my answer will be when you ask, “Well, which one of you felt totally cool with pulling $800 out an ATM before scampering over to Western Union?”

That’s going to be hard “negatory.” I don’t want to embarrass her. Or him. Or maybe her after all? I’ll never tell.

Hey, let me just stop you right there and pre-empt you by sharing this short list of three other questions that will forever remain Unsolved Mysteries:

  • “Which one of you was too busy congratulating themselves on scoring such a great bargain that they didn’t pick up on the not-so-subtle skeptical vibe the Western Union teller was putting out?”
  • “Who, oh who, was brimming with confidence that they would have some portable computing power in their hands in no time, after they received a confirmation email from FedEx International with a tracking number and the status that a ‘Shipping Label Has Been Created’?”
  • “Which one of you two characters was slowly drained of all hope and joy as they realized that, after two weeks, the package status remained stuck at ‘Shipping Label Created’?”

As a proxy for one or both of us, I do believe I have the authority to plead the Fifth on all 3 counts.

But this I can tell you for sure, that one of us would definitely like to pass this very important message on to you, Dear Reader:

“The point of the story is that one should really learn how do some basic risk/reward analysis. For example, let’s say the odds of this unnamed person losing their $800 in a classic online scam are 50/50 (which is being generous, given the many, many red flags). At the same time, they stand to save $400 since the laptop was going for $800. The expectation value of the monetary result of this transaction is thus calculated: $400*0.5 + (-$800)*0.5 = $200 – $400 = -$200. So, if the deal is 50/50 suspect, then on average, he/she/they can expect to lose $200.

In fact, with these numbers, it would need to be 66.7% likely that this dude hawking hardware outside the terms of eBay is legit, and only 33.3% chance that he’s blowing smoke up your naive ass before you would ever expect to break even: $400*0.667 + (-$800)*0.333 = $266.67 – $266.67 = $0.

So, in your better judgement, would you take 2-to-1 odds that this deal is for real? Hmmm?

And this risk/reward analysis isn’t that hard to handle: a probability estimate that one can easily intuit plus some basic quantum-physics-style math, and voilà! Pretty much anybody can make a wise, informed decision.

Practically anybody.

Anyways…

Oh, and more importantly, the other point of the story is you really need to trust your gut when it screams a whisper in your ear: ‘Everybody knows not to send large sums of cash to strangers–much less those in a foreign country–via Western Union, you ----- moron!'”


While I may be a little coy about who-did-what and what-not, I do have a question for you that I will gladly answer:

“Which one of you was actually going to Spain in a few months to study abroad, and thusly made some rather stern threats to the scammer? Oh…and has two thumbs?”3This is a reference to last week’s story where alcohol ruined the punchline of that tried and true comedic trope.

The answer, my friend, is “This guy!”

*Proudly points my two thumbs at myself.*

The money was sent to Salamanca, Spain. I was going to be living Ronda, Spain for 5 months. Hmmm…Google Maps, could you please help out us folks who aren’t so familiar with Spanish provincial geography?

Figure 1: The short, short route from Ronda to Ass-Whoopin’, Spain.

Well, looky what we have here. This phallus-face was only going to be a mere 592km from me. You better believe I was openly indignant to this guy’s (or gal’s) face. Well, not to their face, but yeah I definitely sent them several strongly-worded emails, letting them know they better be looking over their shoulder and sleeping with one eye open for a while.

In fact, thanks to my very specific skill set, I was able to hunt down a dramatic preenactment of how that conversation went down:

“If you return the $800, I will not look for you…”

Even though, Taken wouldn’t be released until several years later, I kid you not, my email was dang-near verbatim:

“I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you. Or at least recovery the $800 you stole, you prick.”4For the record, I never followed up on those threats. I mean, hey, 592 km may not be Trans-Atlantic, but it’s still a long ----- ways, especially when you’re relying on public transportation in a foreign country.

Now, I imagine you have one last question for me:

“Well, were you being a valiant knight defending the honor of the vulnerable maiden under your charge? Or were you merely a ----- moron trying to defend his own besmirched honor?”

Hah. I knew you’d ask that.

You’ll never know for sure…but you can always do your own expectation value calculation and take you’re own scientific wild-ass guess….


Content created on: 11/12 March 2022 (Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Juice Love, Pizza Lust, And A Great Melon-Farming Job

7 Min Read

Like they say: “Food before beer–never fear!

Beer before food, though? You’re screwed, dude…”


“Hey, don’t lie to me–I really like all you melon farmers so don’t ruin it by lying to me about who’s married to who around here!”

Uggh…as soon as I said it, I almost immediately regretted it. I mean, who goes around calling people–people they’ve barely known for 24 hours, nonetheless– ‘melon farmers’? And of course you know that by ‘melon farmers‘ I mean that I was dropping the mother of all nuclear bombs on them, the F-Bomb to ruin them all: mother f***ers.

But, hey, it’s not like I’d ever see these people again…right?


Earlier that morning, I had just nailed my presentation during what was perhaps the most important business trip of my life, and now it was time to chillax like…well, like a melon farmer, with my hosts. A gang of youthful co-workers about my age were getting together at a local bar that evening, and they had kindly invited me to tag along. Heck yes, I’m accepting that invitation!

Seeing as how I didn’t have my own transportation, one of the older, more mature guys in the bunch–whom we’ll call “Jackie” for reasons that wouldn’t be racist even in the slightest–volunteered to pick me up from my hotel around 7. Sure enough, right on time, the ever-responsible and reliable Jackie rolled up to take me off to an evening of adult drinks and light socializing. As far as I was concerned, everything was going perfectly as planned.

“A varied sampling of high-gravity beverages?!? Can this night get any better?!?”

If you know me at all, then you will no doubt understand the utter delight I experienced when we showed up at the bar and discovered that not only was Jackie covering my drinks that evening, but the featured potent potables of the evening would be beers featuring higher-than-average alcohol content.

“And free pizza?!?”

I wouldn’t even have to buy dinner. At that point my head was essentially exploding on account of the streak of good fortune I was experiencing.

“Slap that wrist band on me, and let’s get this party started…”


“EXCUSE ME! OVER HERE! Dang it, it’s like she can’t even see us, even when she’s looking right at us!”

If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought some Sixth Sense shenanigans was going on, and that I was pretty much a ghost to the person doling out the pizza. Or was it, yunno…more intentional…more nefarious? Like this:

It was funny, though, you know? For some reason I didn’t have any problem at all getting my tiny servings of boozy goodness–one could say that it was literally flowing my way–but when it came to getting any sustenance to moderate and mitigate my intoxicating intake? My pizza-obtaining efforts were almost down-right comical.

Admittedly, in the beginning it was sort of my fault, focusing more on the ‘drink’ aspect than the whole ‘food’ part. But 45 minutes and 4 micro-doses of beer in, I started getting pretty dang hungry.

But any time I tried to get my hands on a slice of the ‘za only ended in heartache and disappointment. The first couple of attempts, wouldn’t you know it, the pizza person–despite heading right towards us–was intercepted by another group of hungry patrons and gave them the last few slices instead.

For convenience, we can just call those “Milton Moments:”1A reference to the 1999 Mike Judge cult-comedy, Office Space.

Then there was the time when I tried to intercept somebody else’s pizza. But as you can imagine as it might go in a dark, crowded bar, that quickly devolved into a Kramer-esque fiasco:

Taking the matter into my own hands, and actually talking to someone about getting some pizza to us didn’t help either:

“Oh, so sorry about that, um…yeah, it seems that we’re out of pizza right now, and we’ll have to wait another 25 minutes for the kitchen to get a fresh batch out,” was the very unhelpful reply I got.

“You got to be ----- kidding me…oh well, might as well sample some more brew in the meantime…”

Three “samples” later, I finally spotted the fresh pizza coming out–and right towards me! Here’s a traumatic–er, I mean “dramatic”–reenactment of what should have been a glorious and triumphant moment:

You could say that I got “Elained” real good, i.e. the pizza person swerved slightly at the last second and walked within inches of me…but didn’t even bother to stop when I very obviously reached out my expectant fingers to grab a slice.

*Sigh*

Eventually, after serving pretty much every other ----- person in the pub, ye ol’ pizza prick finally circled back around to where I was, and–miracle of all miracles!–two slices remained! And they were all mine!

Yup, all of 1/32 of a pizza, to offset at least 32/1 oz of 10% ABV (or higher) liquid that was sloshing around my system by that point. Even after all the comedy-drama I had to endure just to get to this point, the Universe thought it would be hilarious that when I finally got my much sought-after prize, that it would be a great punchline if the slices were tiny af, similar to the one seen here:

Enlarged to show texture.

Though small, here’s yet another reenactment of how it felt to eat them, on account of my inebriation, and all…


“Who wants some Chinese food?!?”

I didn’t know who suggested it, nor did I care; I was unintentionally drunk af and even hungrier. Plus, I needed to get some food in me, because I had big plans to go snorkeling in the morning, and I sure as heck didn’t want to do that hungover.

“This melon farmer does!” I pointed at myself with two thumbs, completely forgetting the rest of the joke about “Who’s got two thumbs and…” and what-not (And of course, I might note here, it’s not so bad to call yourself a melon farmer. Just gonna throw that out there.)

We gathered up the gang and all staggered off together in a gaggle towards some acclaimed Chinese restaurant a few blocks away.

And dang, they all must have experienced the same cruddy pizza-luck that I had, because we were ordering up a glorious spread like there was no tomorrow, hearkening to mind yet another Seinfeldian moment:

It was somewhere in the midst of feasting on all that food, that I, feeling real good and perhaps about to comfortable with these people I hardly knew, that–as you know already–I expressed my burgeoning affection for them by calling them all melon farmers.

Great job, me!

Alas, though, that wasn’t the moment that I rue the most from that evening. No, the nadir of my night showed up with the check–you, know, that piece of paper that lists all the things your party ordered, and how much you owe for said items. Yeah, that thing.

Well, there were two things about which I lacked foresight: 1) even though I was their guest, I shouldn’t have assumed that they were going to cover all my expenses; & 2) despite being on a business trip, it didn’t occur to me to have any cash on me.

So, there we were, everyone pulling cash out of their wallets and such, throwing it into the communal pot in the middle of table. Except for me, sitting there like a besotted asshat, with that panicked look in my eyes that said “Wait…I’m going to have to pay for my own food?” Followed by:

…except you need to replace “Hope you don’t mind I pay you in change,” with a good 20 seconds of awkward silence. Fortunately, Jackie–ever reliable Jackie–finally offered to cover my share, because why not? He had already paid for my beer and pizza and was my personal chauffeur for the evening. Sure! Just throw another $25 worth of Chinese food my tab!

Ugh. I couldn’t wait to finally get back to my hotel room, where I could die of embarrassment and regret peacefully in my sleep…


The points of the story are, first: if you ain’t yet ate the pizza-pie, don’t slam that whiskey & rye.

Second: if you’re the type of wino that uses ‘melon farmer’ as a term of endearment, maybe not bust it out the first time you go a-drinking with someone.

Third: always carry at least $40 in cash on you at all times (bonus tip: always offer to pay for at least yourself, dummy).

Follow these 3 handy tips, and perhaps you can avoid suffering the same fate as yours truly. You see, unlike Twinkies, the farcical free pizza fiasco wasn’t enough to disqualify me from landing my dream job as an MRI researcher in Hawai’i2#HumbleBrag…meaning that for 5 days a week for the next two years, this Freeloader In Paradise had to show his face to those melon farmers…


Content created on: 4/5 March 2022 (Fri/Sat)

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