The Point of the Story

Your #1 Source of Unsolicited Life Advice

Author: BJ (Page 24 of 35)

Now Kids, This Is What A Clingy B*tch Looks Like

11 October 2020 / / 0 Comments
4 Min Read

I knew that doggy yoga position, alright. ‘Twas none other than “Canine Arching Back Skyward In Glorious Defecation”…

Probably the best thing to ever come from the wonderful technology that we know and love as ‘GPS’ would have to be Geocaching.1For more info on geocaching, check out www.geocaching.com.

“What is this ‘geocaching’ of which you speak?” you may be asking with unnaturally correct sentence syntax.

Well, as I like to sell it to my daughters: it’s basically “treasure hunting” with a smartphone (or any other GPS device). Someone will hide a ‘cache’–a stash of trinkets, pen, and a paper log–in some fun location, use their phone to note the precise latitude and longitude, and then post them online for others to go out and find.

If you’re looking for a hobby, I highly recommend it. In addition to feeding the urges of your inner pirate, you typically get to see new and interesting places along the way.

Recently I decided it was time to introduce our 2-year-old, aka The Younger, to this family pastime that the 7-year-old (The Elder) and I have partook in at least once or twice a year since she was 3. So on a beautiful-yet-fateful Saturday morning in early October, I loaded up the girls, some lunches, and a backpack full of unwanted toys, and we headed out on a great adventure.

In addition to a paper log found within cache, each one has a digital cache on the geocaching.com website. This is typically used for leaving a short note of with whom you found the cache, thanking the owner of the cache for hiding it in the first place, and any other random comments/hints for those who may follow in your footsteps.

Usually the contents found therein are pretty run-of-the-mill. For example, see Figure 1.

Figure 1: A Typical Geocache Log

Well…after an experience we had with a certain cache, I felt it necessary to leave a slightly wordier log entry. Indeed, I was divinely called upon to leave a cautionary tale for those who might come after us; prithee, that the same fate that befell us may not befall them…

From My Official Geocaching Log (*Lightly edited for your reading pleasure. Also re-gendered the possibly male, possibly female antagonist in order to squeeze more humor out of the situation.*):

[Didn't find it Didn’t find it] Saturday, 03 October 2020 by f***m******* (20 found)2Proof that I actually spent the time to write such a long-ass cautionary tale for future geocachers can be found here.

Well, this was an interesting one.

Cruising around with my 2 daughters, ages 7 & 2, introducing The Younger to “Treasure Hunting.” She had just fallen asleep, and for unrelated reasons, my phone had died at the previous Randolph-Boundary Hunter (the name of the series of geocaches we were hitting up) cache.

I actually didn’t know this one was here; I was just wandering southwardly, looking out for any county line signs.

Well, what do you know, I see this one and I’m thinking, “Hey, this might be another easy find. Let me try to find a place to pull over and check it out…”

Directly across from this cache, however, is a house. As I started to pull off the side of the road (and approximately in front of this house), I look over, and a kid of about 10 years is approaching our car…pointing a [toy] gun directly at us.

Okaaaaaaay…so maybe we won’t be checking this one out.

As I tried to pull back onto the road, I had to slam on my brakes as a big black lab bolted out in front of me–and I was shocked that I didn’t nail her.

So now my adrenaline level is jacked through the roof. I try to calm myself and scoot on down the road (remember, I still didn’t know where I was going–just knew I wanted to get away from 2A Boy).

Welp, that dog was a tenacious pup, she ’twas indeed. Friendly, but tenacious.

About a half mile down the road, she was still jollily jaunting beside us. Dang it.

I didn’t want to be responsible for this dog ending up in the next county over, so I slowly turned around and tried to “guide” the good little b*tch back towards her home. As I got to a fork in the road near where this whole debacle started, she raced a ways out in front of me so I slowed down and tried a stealthy U-turn.

I could see in the rear-view that she had figured out what was up, but I had a good enough lead on her that I figured I could gun the engine and leave her in the dust.

Nope. NOPE.

She was in front of me, in my blind spot, within 5 seconds flat. This canine had a death wish, but I wanted nothing to do with it.

This went on, back and forth–lead her home, roll down the window, tell her to “Go on, git!” sneak a U-turn, gun it, have her back IN FRONT OF ME in 10 seconds, yada yada ya…

There was a moment where I was like “have I somehow died and am now stuck in the weirdest f*cking form of purgatory?!?”

After about the 5th round trip, I was puttering along at about 10 mph with her beside me, when I noticed her pause and…shorten the length of her body?

Oh, wait.

I knew that doggy yoga position, alright. ‘Twas none other than “Canine Arching Back Skyward In Glorious Defecation.”

Could it be? Was this my serendipitous window of opportunity I had been longing for so desperately and deeply in my loins?

Yes. Yes, it was.

I turned to The Elder and imparted all the fatherly wisdom I had to offer: “A dog can’t chase you while she’s pinching off a turd!”

“Go for it, Daddy!” she hollered in encouragement from the back seat.

Reaching back, I grabbed her hand and slammed my foot on the gas pedal as hard as I could.

In beautiful unison, we did our best William Wallace impression, screaming “FREEEEEEDOM!” while tearing ass the ----- out of there.

via GIPHY

A few minutes down the road, she piped up, “You’re going to write about this in your blog, right?”

Yes, my child. Yes indeed, I shall3Original ending from geocache log, instead of those last two lines: “And The Younger slept through it all…”…

Content created on: 3/4 &10 October 2020 (Sat/Sun/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Great Hair Can’t Have Hair, You Damned Fool!

8 October 2020 / / 0 Comments
2 Min Read

One time in college, I went on a road trip with a random group of acquaintances to a conference in Iowa. To pass the time, we decided to play “20 Questions”–a real road trip classic, right?

This must have been the Fall of 2001, because that was the only period in my life when I was a white boy rocking some dreadlocks. Being my own self-inspiration, I thought that would be an interesting one to do when it came my turn.

Oh, and to be clear, I had chosen “dreadlocks,” not “white boy rocking some dreadlocks”…though in retrospect the latter might have been the more humorous choice.

Anyways, at one point I was asked “Does it have hair?”

*Record scratches*

I’m pretty sure I short-circuited in the face of this unanticipated, yet obvious, question. It was not patently obvious what the correct answer was, and I desperately begged them to choose a different question, as I could foresee both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ only causing more confusion and delay.

Nevertheless, they persisted, and forced me to answer that bedeviling question.

After much agonizing and gnashing of teeth, I went with “No”.

After all, it was hair, and those hairs did not have their own little hairs on them, right?

I wasn’t surprised, though, when the other team ended up running out of questions before guessing what it was.

The guy who had asked the ‘hair’ question was particularly livid when he found out the answer was “dreadlocks”, and was furious that I had answered “No”.

A heated philosophical debate ensued, attempting to answer the question “Can hair ‘have’ hair?”

The result? Let’s just say that someone almost ended up stranded in an Iowan cornfield without a ride home that autumn evening…

Oh, and the two of us never really spoke to each other ever again.

I guess the point of the story is that if you have a mediocre relationship with someone and are looking for a way to discreetly and justifiably cut them out of your life, just play 20 Questions and choose “dreadlocks” as your magic word.

You’re welcome.

Content created on: 24 April 2018 (originally via Twitter) & 8 October 2020 (Tues/Thurs)

No-Shit Sherlock’s Mystery Of The Disappearing Fingers, Act 4

4 October 2020 / / 0 Comments
4 Min Read

I just assumed that there would be at the very least a “turn-your-head-and-cough” moment.

You know, just like in my glory days of high school…

Previously on NSSMOTDF, Act 3: Following In His Footsteps…

“I can’t poop…and I think I’m ----- dying over here.”

Man Most Assuredly dying from Colon Cancer. Or A maybe from A grapefruit-sized Prostate. Or Most Definitely an over-active imagination

Act IV: We Both Know Why I’m Here

Admittedly, I got a little distracted in Act III trying to figure out how to convey to my Dear Readers that I was convinced that I might have a fatal flaw with my plumbing. And it was quite the emotional trip.

It wasn’t so much that my life was flashing before my eyes, as it was a serious conversation with myself. What if I really had prostate cancer or worse? What if I was destined to die before I turned 40? What will I be leaving behind? Will the world have been a better place at all because I was in it? What about my wife and kids?

You get the idea. It’s not a fun exercise, especially when you’re not sure it’s just drill or if it might be the real deal.

Finally I worked up the courage to face the music and scheduled an annual physical at the local urgent care clinic. Annual might be a slightly inaccurate term, though, as I was pretty sure my last physical was so I could be cleared to play football in high school. It would be fair to say that I was a bit overdue for one anyways.

I was a new patient at this place, so I had no rapport with the Doc, a guy on the younger side and close to my age. With things like these, it’s hard to be sure if this is the ideal scenario…or the most awkward one.

Anyways, we go through the routine, you know–blood pressure, blood work, height, weight, yadda yadda ya, and I’m starting to realize that I don’t actually know what all goes into one of these exams. Like, I just assumed that there would be at the very least a “turn-your-head-and-cough” moment, much like in the glory days of high school.

But as we wrapped up all the items on the Doc’s checklist, it occurred to me that maybe I still wasn’t old enough for a complimentary prostate exam. After all, that was the only way we were going to truly get any answers that day.

I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to take advantage of the “Do you have any other concerns?” part of the visit to explicitly discuss my butthole-related concerns.

And so it went. What a conversation to try to have with a straight face! Especially with another man about your age, when you know well and good that the whole time you’re both indubitably trying to repress you inner junior high school boy.

He managed to maintain an air of professionalism as he listened to me lay out my concerns with equal maturity, including the various hypotheses/self-diagnoses that I had come up with.

After I finished sharing my thoughts, he spoke to me with a gravitas that I had previously believed was strictly reserved for telling someone their love one had passed.

“I think we have no other choice. I’ll need to exam your prostate via your rectum.”

Fortunately, this wasn’t my first rodeo. With my pants already halfway down my ankles, I nodded in solemn agreement.

“I came today fully emotionally prepared to have a stranger’s finger probe my anus. I am ready.”1On occasion, I will take small poetic liberties in my story-telling. This is not one of them. Yes, I really did say this out loud to my doctor.

I could almost hear the pensive look on the Doc’s face as he carefully and gently checked me out. “Mmm-hmmm…good, good…yes…I see…well, that’s interesting…what do we have here…JUST KIDDING.”

As he wrapped it up and disposed of his glove, he shared his professional diagnosis: I had a clean butt of health: “Well, everything feels pretty much in shape down there. Perfectly-sized prostate, no colon cancer or other types of tumors, etc. You should be relieved.”

“Okay, then, what the heck do you think is going on? Something isn’t quite functioning right!”

Screw “relieved.” I came here for an explanation, and wasn’t leaving until I had one.

As any good doctor would, he started asking probing–no pun intended–follow-up questions. Particularly, “Has there been any major changes in your diet or daily routine recently?”

Well, as you may know, in fact, yes, I had been doing things differently lately. I had successfully been on my “Half-Ass Keto (TM)” diet for almost 6 months at this point, which was really just a low-carb diet.

Which really was just a high-cheese diet…lightly supplemented with meat, spinach, and kimchi.

You should have seen me try to argue that I ate “plenty of vegetables” and then when pressed for details, realize that a salad a day and 2 servings of Korean pickled cabbage a week really does make for one funked-up Food Pyramid.2What does the USDA know anyways? We all know now that the Food Pyramid is unintentionally(?) racist.

I could tell by the look on the Doc’s face, all the pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together.

“Dammit, son, you just need some fiber in your life.”

He continued, “Also: you’re body needs water. So drink that shiiiiiit.”3This has been a long running family meme between me and the Boss Lady, with some history behind it. For now, you can view the source here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBlsqQAHJyY.

So, no, I was not relieved. I was ----- disappointed.

Here I thought I was dying, but, as would be par for the course, I was just full of shit…

Good god…is my life really nothing more than an overly-complicated series of semi-related stories that culminate in an underwhelming middle school punchline?

The End

Content created on: 30 September & 1 October 2020 (Wed/Thurs)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Watch What Happens When Heavy Metal And Parents Collide

1 October 2020 / / 0 Comments
2 Min Read

“Eat your f*cking gummy vitamin, Kiddo!” I yelled.

Ok, so maybe the part about dropping the F-bomb on a child was a bit of an exaggeration…

A few nights ago The Elder had a sleepover at the grandparents’ house, so I only had to get our 2 y.o. daughter, “The Younger” through her pre-bedtime routine.

I always give the girls a gummy vitamin once they get in the bathtub, before I wash them up and then brush their teeth, and this night was no different.

It was still pretty early, so I was letting her play in the tub for a bit while I casually walked around the house messing around on my bass guitar.

I kept checking in on her, but instead of eating her gummy right away like she usually does, she was playing with it in the tub. So I started telling her sternly “Eat your vitamin, Kid.”

I did this about 4-5 times, each time growing more impatient. After about the 5th time, she had a retort ready and waiting for me.

“Eat your guitar, Daddy!” she shot back.

Thinking nothing of it, I ignored the little smartass and went back to laying down those funky basslines (think: Wild Cherry‘s Top-40 hit, “Play That Funky Music, White Boy”).

Two minutes later, same thing:

“Eat your vitamin, Kid!”

“Eat your guitar, Daddy!”

I was growing tired of going around in circles with her, so I decided to choose my battles.

“Okay, I will!”

So I put my guitar strap over only one shoulder so I could tilt it towards me and pretend to eat one of the big fat, flat metal tuning pegs.

…except as I brought it towards my mouth, the strap closest to the guitar’s neck popped loose, and I ended up slamming the metal peg right into to my front teeth.

Mother. Fuck.

I was pretty certain I had knocked one of them loose, as my head was still ringing from the violent collision.

I tentatively felt around…all teeth in place? Check. And straight? As much as they will ever be without adult braces. Blood? Minimal.

Whew! My dental records appeared to remain unchanged, but I had cut my upper lip on the inside where it had been smashed into my front tooth.

Thank ----- for my luscious-ass lips that normally get me mocked, amiright?

Anyways…what a stupid ----- way to end up at the dentist that would have been.

Content created on: 15 September & 1 October 2020 (Tues/Thurs)

The Earthling’s Guide To Social Gambling

27 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

Oh, man. You’re going to be so ----- rich.

My mom has 11 grandchildren. Of those, the first two cousins missed being born exactly one year apart by less than one day.

Over two decades later, the Boss Lady went into labor with our first daughter (aka “the Elder”) late in the evening two days before the first of these two birthdays. Making the obvious assumption that the Elder would subsequently be delivered within 24 hours, I was all nerding out over the fact that Mom would have grandchildren with birthdays on 3 consecutive days. You know, like some sort of Grandkid Birthday Bingo or what-not.

Well, that rascal took 36 hours to show up, so instead of getting a Bingo, Mom finally got that pair of Birthday Twins she had just missed out on 21 years prior. Oh, right…what are Birthday Twins, you ask? Well, they’re simple two non-twins who share the same birthday.1Typically the birth year is ignored.

I suspect Birthday Twins, like phantom flatulence, must run in our family.2Two of my sisters are for-realz twins, FWIW. When I was in high school in Podunkville, Kansas, there were somewhere between 15-17 of us in my entire class. Yet, somehow within that small group, I was privileged to be a B-Twin myself. Even better, we not only shared the same birth-year (obviously), but we even had the same first name, LOL. What are the odds?!?

Seriously, though: what are the odds?

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll stick with the basic case of celebrating your birthday the same day of the year as someone else. Examining the odds of having the same name and birth-year, as in my case, is, as the academics say, “Beyond the scope of this text.”

I was introduced to this so-called “Birthday Problem”3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem on the first day of my philosophy class in college, and have been infatuated with it every since. This is actually one of the more well-known examples of how, by default, we humans are pretty dang terrible at estimating probabilities and assessing risks. And it all stems from fairly innocent-looking question: “For a group with a certain number of people in it, what are the odds that two people share the same birthday?”

But I say we should, as a shady character might say “make things interesting”–let’s put some hypothetical money on the line.

Say you’re a well-travelled social butterfly with a gambling addiction, living in the times before COVID-19. You attend many parties and gatherings all throughout the year, of all different sizes.

Feeling the irresistible urge to feed your habit, you need to find a sure-fire way to make bets without ending up in the Poor House. Enter the Birthday Problem–which, by the way, is actually a pretty great icebreaker at social gatherings in real life.

You know that since you go to so many parties, you can always put money on two people having the same birthday any time the probability of that being true is at least 50% or above, and bet against it otherwise. Over many parties and many wagers you’re statistically guaranteed to come out on top.

As long as you know roughly how many people are at the party, you can be confident whether those odds are above 50% or not.

Actually, the question that you need to answer is simpler than that: “How many party peoples need there be present to have at least a 50% chance of finding a pair of B-Twins amongst them?”

That’s right: one number. You don’t to memorize any fancy formulas and calculate them in your head in real time. You only need to know one number to guide your foolproof betting scheme.

Oh, man. You’re going to be so ----- rich.

Now, let’s run the numbers…

Bear with me, as I’m doing this from memory, instead of being smart and just googling it. FYI, my probabilities run between 0 (ain’t happening, ever) to 1 (it’s a certified irrefutable fact), which translates to 0%-100% in everyday-speak.

The key to this is asking the right questions. The first questions is: what are the odds 2 people don’t have the same birthday? Then you only need to subtract that number from 1 to get the probability that they do. So:

Pyep(pp) = 1 - Pnope(pp),

where Pyep is the probability that “yep, we got a pair of B-Twins up in heeeer,” while Pnope is the probability that “nope, they all be a bunch of unique snow-flakes in these parts,” and both of these are functions of pp, the number of Party Peoples present.

This one is pretty simple. The first person can lay claim to 1 out of the 365 days in a regular year, leaving 364 days that the other person can have without them making a pair.

So we have:

Pnope = (364/365) ~ 0.99726 (99.726 %), for pp = 2

This puts Pyep at 0.274%–roughly a quarter of 1%.

Now bring in another person. Two days of the year have already been claimed, leaving 363 days for the third person. This probability needs to be multiplied by the probability that the first two people didn’t have the same birthday:

Pnope = (364/365)*(363/365) ~ 0.9918 (99.18 %), for pp = 3

At this point Pyep almost quadruples to 0.82%, so we can see that this isn’t linear. Why is it important that it is not linear? Because linear usually == intuition. Intuitively, humans are pretty good at linear extrapolation: “Oh, housing prices have gone up steadily over the last 5 years; no doubt that will go up by the same amount over the next 5 years!” (Note: this intuition would typically be wrong; see 2008.)

And so it goes: with each new person, the number on top decreases by 1 day, and that fraction is multiplied by the previous Pnope. At this point I’m going to cheat and use a screenshot from Wikipedia4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem to show you the general equation:

Figure 1: A more general formula for what I call Pnope.

It may look kinda scary, but don’t worry: we don’t have to do this by hand or in our head. It’s not that bad if you have a good calculator or math software. To that point, I took the liberty of plotting it for you in MATLAB:

Figure 2: Odds of finding Birthday Twins, as a function of Party Peoples.

TWENTY-THREE PARTY PEOPLES. Not only is that going to be the name of my next band, but it is also the answer to your poverty problems. Twenty-two party peoples or less? Bet against Birthday Twins. Twenty-three party peoples or more? Bet on there being at least 1 pair in the crowd.

That’s all you need to know!

The point of the story is that if you can accept that your intuition might not always be right–and you know how to ask the right questions–you’re going to be rich.

Oh, man, you’re going to be so ----- rich.

Content created on: 10/25 September 2020 (Thurs/Fri)

Footnotes & References:[+]

No-Shit Sherlock’s Mystery Of The Disappearing Fingers, Act 3

24 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
3 Min Read

“This too, shall pass.”

Oh shit, did I just come up with the perfect motivational poster for bathrooms?!?

Previously on NSSMOTDF, Act 2: What’s Up Doc?…

“S’pose I better double-check and make sure that there isn’t anything more serious at play here, like, say, a tumor…”

*snaps glove a bit too enthusiastically*

Doctor about to perform a Thorough Digital Analog exam

Act III: Following In His Footsteps

To put it succinctly, the week around Labor Day 2019 was a rather emotionally intense time for me. Everybody’s Favorite Blog had just gone live, and I was grappling with my impending internet fame (or lack thereof) which is quite a trip when you lean heavy to the introvert side of the social spectrum.

Trying to get my mother on a plane to California for her granddaughter’s once-in-a-lifetime event was such an utter and complete clusterfuck that that fiasco warrants a 3-part series on its own. For today’s purposes, you just need to get the drift that it was pretty ----- stressful.

And then the icing on the cake was that just about everyone in our household caught a fun-times virus that would make you vomit exactly every 30 minutes for exactly 8 non-stop hours. Did I mention we have 2 young children in our household?

But something much deeper than all these “This too, shall pass” type of worries was a’brewing…

Deeper in my bowels, that is!

To spare all y’all the glorious details, suffice it to say that my body must have decided to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original No-Shit Sherlock saga that you recently read about,1Just in case you hadn’t click here for Act 1 and here for Act 2. and I found myself with some seemingly inexplicable digestive “irregularities.”

Typically such [fecal] matters wouldn’t be such a drain on one’s spirit, but I had some reasons to strongly suspect that some non-pooping related organs might be physically interfering with me taking care of normal human business, per se.

To understand the danger this thought posed to my emotional well-being, it is critical to remember that that Labor Day portended the 12th anniversary of my father’s passing.2As I recently alluded to in the Racist Ventriloquist and Dying Rancher posts. While he ultimately succumbed to a combination of pneumonia and lung cancer, the first step towards his relatively early demise had all begun years earlier when he he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

If you’ve lost a close loved one, it is not uncommon to find yourself in an existential funk every year when the season of their passing rolls around on the calendar. Not one to ever be an exception, I was already in that frame of mind before all this shit started happening–or not happening, as the case was.

So, with the inevitable fate faced by every member of humanity already simmering somewhere in the back of my mind, you can only imagine where my train of logic raced off to once the idea popped into my head that I might literally be following in my father’s footsteps towards Death’s door.

Making this all even more intense was that I found myself wrestling with my own mortality all alone, on account of the Boss Lady never really having liked my regular3Yes, that was indeed a bowel movement-themed pun. attempts to discuss my, um…”solid waste management” throughout the course of our marriage. You know, that makes it kinda hard to have a heartfelt conversation when “I can’t poop” is a critical plot point leading up to the denouncement of “I think I might be ----- dying” and all.

You don’t know how many September evenings I just laid next to my dozing-off-to-sleep daughters, hugging them tight with a tear in my eye, wondering if I was destined to haunt them with the smell of my farts.

Oh, you may think I’m joking, but I swear that I’ve smelled the Ghost of Bob J. in the bathroom with me on multiple occasions. I know it’s not the point of the story, but I can’t help but wonder if phantom flatulence runs in the family…

“Well…so did you die or not?” you may be muttering to your computer screen right now. “DON’T LEAVE ME HANGING LIKE A CHAD!” you are indubitably screaming right now, out loud and/or in your head.

Welp, you’re just going to have to tune in next week (or, if you’re from the future, click here) to find out whether or not I’ve actually figured out how to blog from the Great Beyond…

Content created on: 23 September 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Dying Rancher Only Wants To Be Put Out To Pasture

20 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

We’re all going to die.

Some way, somehow, there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to happen to you someday. So we all might as well buck up and try to gain a healthy perspective on it.

Oh, maybe I’m being a bit presumptuous when I just assume you don’t have a tenable relationship with your inevitable demise.

After all, many cultures and religions world wide understand that it’s all part of the Circle of Life (thanks, Disney’s The Lion King!). Nevertheless, in modern Western society, death is all too often bandied about as a weapon of fear. And that’s part of the reason why I am here today.

There are two deaths in particular that stick in the gullet of my memory–one of a distant acquaintance, and the most personal one to me yet, that of my father, the beloved Bob J.

Out of respect for the life of the former, I won’t use his real name, I’ll just call him Superman instead.1Those of you who knew the man in question will get the reference, though it’s not meant to be humorous in the least. Superman was a respected member and leader of a community I was once part of, and was in his 60s with a life full of love and service under his belt.

A few years ago, he tragically went missing on his anniversary, only to be found a few days later in a nearby state park, dead, with his neck…tightened “under his belt.”

Plans for a community-wide memorial service celebrating his life were abruptly cancelled shortly after his body was discovered. It wasn’t long before it became clear why his family would make such an odd choice, given that he was literally loved by just about everyone that was even remotely acquainted with him (present company included).

Him going missing and subsequent passing was a pretty big deal in the local news media, so when his body was found, there was a certain sense of duty to publicly disclose the circumstances of his death. A sad choice, as those details were better left unsaid.

Let’s just say that those circumstances were less than flattering. Suffice it to say, he went behind his family’s back and got himself in a compromising position that went sideways. The result being him suffering an unspeakable death at the hands of another–but with his own belt, no less–and his body left to the wild animals.

I’m leaving out many details partly because they are simply sordid, and were incredibly devastating to his family and other loved ones upon learning. It was probably one of the worst ways to find out about the skeletons in a family member’s closet.

In the end, a worthy and noble life dedicated to loving others was lost in the long shadow cast by the indignity of the death which ended it.

When my dad passed, he not only lost his battle with cancer and pneumonia, but he simultaneously lost his lifelong battle with agriculture. He had spent the majority of his life as a farmer, trying to build something of a future for his family. However, having a bipolar disorder go undiagnosed until he was almost 60 largely undermined his efforts, and he literally “lost the farm” right around the time he should have been thinking about retirement instead.

Though he fought to make a living until the very end, it all eventually caught up to him. In particular, his living circumstances in the few weeks leading up to his final admission to the hospital were in no way a befitting reward for the life full of hard work which he had put in.

In a word, it was heartbreaking.

Shortly after his death, a sibling confidentially related a story to me that opened my eyes to just how humbling his last month on this earth was. The image is so heart-wrenching for me, in fact, that I keep it largely suppressed, and it is notable that I’m even partially acknowledging it here.

All I can really say is that he deserved so much better.

While ultimately he was fortunate enough to be surrounded by a wife and six of his seven kids when he finally ground his teeth one last time and gave up the ghost, the knowledge of how his last days were spent is what has haunted me.

Without going down a complete rabbit-hole, what you need to know is that after much thought I came to an interesting conclusion. When I think of all that a society could be–i.e. “What does my version of Utopia look like?”–I would argue that a fundamental right that would be guaranteed to each citizen is the right to die on their own terms.

What does this look like? Well it could look like a lot of different things.

Some may want to go out, surrounded by their adult kids fighting over a handsome inheritance.2I heard this somewhere, but can’t find who said it. I thought it was Adam Carolla, FWIW.

Others may want their last memory to be of holding the hand of the love of their lifetime.

I can imagine that many would like to leave this earth, knowing the ones they care about are in good hands, spiritually, financially or otherwise.

For my dad, his final request was to go see his cows one last time–he literally wanted to be “put out to pasture” (in the end the doctor denied this request, which, no pun intended–I thought was complete bullshit).

You get the idea, right? The sky is limitless on this one…as is the rabbit-hole is bottomless, so I’ll just leave it up to you what this might look like in your case.

I once heard that there are two particular events that largely dictate how you feel when you think back on a specific period of your life. I looked it up, and as it happens, I was thinking of what’s known as Peak-End Theory. Allow me to allow someone else summarize the essence of this idea for you:3https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-peak-end-theory/

It seems that our memories of positive and negative experiences are dependent upon two things: what we were feeling at the most extreme (peak) point and how the experience ended. 

Karen Doll, Psy.D., L.P., via positivepsychology.com

The point of the story is simply this: the death we die is almost as important as the life we have lived.

This is particularly important to remember as we’re in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. You may hear arguments that COVID-related deaths are not that big of a deal, largely because many of the people who are dying are those who would have probably died from other causes within the next 5 years otherwise (or something to that effect). They have had their turn at a long and fruitful life, so the loss of a year or two in the twilight years should be taken in stride.

And there is some truth to this, as death is an inevitable and natural part of the human experience, especially when you get past a certain age. People dying is simply part of the business of being alive. If I’ve already said this, I’m gonna go ahead and say it again: “We’re all going to die [sometime].”4I should note that people who subscribe to such alternate theories as “The Rapture” and “An Inevitable and Impending Singularity” might disagree with the absolutist nature of this assertion.

But what these sick ----- are conveniently omitting is the fact that so, so many of these people die in complete isolation, deprived of the privilege of spending their final moments with the ones they love. Even the luckier ones are usually stuck with FaceTiming their loved ones there at the end.

Those are moments that neither the living nor the dead will get back.

So if you’re tempted to think that maybe the best course of action is to largely just let COVID run its course through cluster after cluster of our elderly population,5Not to mention the smaller yet still significant non-elderly population that succumbs to it. I mourn for you when it comes for your parent and you’re forced to watch them suffer the loneliest of ways to leave this planet.

Just imagine it was your father, suffering the greatest indignity imaginable for a dying rancher: having to sit through a Zoom meeting…with his cows.6Alternate Ending: “They gave us life; the least we can give them is a death worthy of the best of who they were.” I probably should have stuck with that one…

Oh, the Humanity!7Forgive me for awkwardly trying to lighten the mood here at the end.

Content created on: 18 June & 19 September 2020 (Thurs/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

No-Shit Sherlock’s Mystery Of The Disappearing Fingers, Act 2

17 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
2 Min Read

“Hey doc, whatchya gonna do with that tube of gel?”

Sometimes, you find yourself asking a question that you really wish you didn’t already know the answer to…

Previously on NSSMOTDF, Act I: The Setup…

…and, boy, was my ass tired…

Guy who Accidentally Added A 22-Mile Detour to His 3-mile Bike Ride

Act II: What’s Up Doc?

No, literally, my ass was tired. And real sore. Little did I know that my Tour de Middle of Nowhere was going to cost me the ability to poop for an indefinite amount of time.

I kid you not, I could not give a shit for the life of me. It sounds funny now, 21 years later, but having food go in one end of you but never come out the other end for weeks on end can cause some serious mental distress.

To make things worse, I lived in the dorms, so all my, uh, “efforts” to defecate weren’t exactly private. My futile attempts at producing even the slightest of turds usually only resulted in a staccato of high-pitched poots echoing loudly throughout our common bathroom.

And there was this one guy from Ecuador who found it particularly humorous. On multiple occasions when he would see me come out of the stall (and later in the hall) he would make a comment in between laughs in his slightly imperfect English: “Ha ha. You sound like a machine gun: dat-dat-dat-dat-dat!”

What an asshole.

After 3 weeks of being backed up, I finally caved in and went to the student health clinic, where the doc eventually came to the conclusion that my 3+ hours on my bike seat must have temporally damaged some important pooing-related nerves in my, uh, how you say “undercarriage.” He figured mineral oil would get me back on track and I should be just fine.

But before he let me go, he decided he needed to double check and make sure that there wasn’t anything more serious at play here, like, say, a tumor.

And, yada, yada, ya, that was the first time getting a finger stuck up my ass.

The point of the story is, with proper consent, a finger up the ol’ butthole isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Oh, and always take the time to read your dang map.

Now, if only I had a time machine, I know somebody who desperately needs to hear at least one of those two messages….

“But wait!” you say, “Isn’t this supposed to be the Mystery of the Disappearing Fingers? So far, by my count only one finger has gone missing in somebody’s rectum1…damn near killed ’em!…wait a minute…no, no. No. It can’t be.

Surely you wouldn’t have a Third Act…would you?”

Content created on: 10 September 2020 (Thursday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

The One Weird Trick That Will Make You A Racist Ventriloquist Overnight

13 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
4 Min Read

“Man, your brother’s friend is racist. Like really racist.”

Oh, Douglas, what have you done now?

A few days before Labor Day 2007, I got The Call that everyone dreads. My dad, who had been in the hospital in Kansas with lung cancer and pneumonia, wasn’t expected to pull through; I officially needed to haul ass back ASAP if I wanted to say my goodbyes.

My brother that you’re probably most familiar with, One Skinny J (1SJ), lived about 3 hours from me in Virginia, so we had planned on flying out together from RDU as soon as he could make it down here.

So the day before Labor Day, his buddy Doug drove him down to NC. After crashing at my bachelor pad, Doug took us to the airport bright and early around 4:30 the next morning.

Well, things with Dad and the family took longer than expected,1Yes, that should be interpreted in the saddest and heart-breaking way you can imagine. and 1SJ and I ended up staying in Kansas for 2 1/2 weeks before flying back. Even though it had only been 17 days, as you can imagine it seemed like an eternity since I had been in my own bed.

For the return trip, Doug had come straight down from Virginia, picked up 1SJ, and headed straight back. Though I only saw him for a brief moment at the airport, I made sure to thank him for helping us out in our time of grief. He had been a true friend, indeed–a man of unquestionable character, even! At least in my book…

At the time, I was living with two of my friends from my church. Now, not to brag about my [ill-advised] Race-Relations Resume (TM),2Okay, so this actually two separate references. The (TM) was a well-worn inside joke between me and one of the roommates. The Resume was hinted at in I Am White And Here To Be Incredibly White. but we were so ethnically diverse that I was actually the token white guy. Chicken Dinner,3Obviously not his real name. my best friend/partner in crime at the time, was full-blooded Vietnamese, while “Oliver”–more of Chicken Dinner’s friend than mine–was full-blooded American.

And Black. Oliver was Black.

Anyways, Chicken Dinner and I had a lot of catching up to do, especially the part where while I was gone I had decided to propose to the girl I had been dating4Yes, I indeed speak of the once and future Boss Lady. for a full 6 days before I got on that plane to Kansas.

But before I could get to that, he randomly brings up Doug, who he had spent a whole 15 minutes with when he had stayed the night at our place. And he comes out with the charges of blatant racism full force.

“I think you should know that Doug is like, super-racist.”

Well, this conversation took a rather unexpected turn…

“Really?!?” I was almost flabbergasted at the confidence in his statement.

“I mean, sure, Doug is a bit of a white country boy, but then again, so am I,” I continued. “Seriously, what in the ----- are you talking about?”

“Yeah, he threw Oliver’s toothpaste in the trash that night he stayed here. I mean, it was kind of an odd way to express his racism, but hey, at least he gets points for creativity, trashing the Black man’s toiletries, right?”

Oh. My. ----- This shit absolutely made my day. I howled in laughter for A good 5 minutes, desperately trying to catch my breath.

When I finally composed myself enough to form coherent sentences, I explained to Chicken Dinner that no, Doug had not been busy workshopping new forms of micro-aggressions on our unsuspecting roommate of color–it was me! Poor Doug, getting falsely accused of such a heinous act!

No, what had really happened was almost a plotline straight out of NBC’s hit Nineties sitcom Seinfeld. The morning before we flew out we were running late, so I had been in a real rush to get out the door. In the bathroom we all shared, the toiletry cabinet was situated directly above the toilet, and in an unfortunate series of events, I had managed to bump Oliver’s tube of toothpaste just enough to tip it over.

Well, gravity took it from there, and my reflexes weren’t quite quick enough to catch it before it went splashing into the toilet bowl with a dramatic “PLOP!”

Shit. Neither of the roomies were awake yet, and I was really late, so I had no easy way to warn Oliver of his toothpaste’s questionable history before he would indubitably brush his teeth a few hours later (I didn’t have a cell phone at the time, FYI).

Seriously, I had no other choice but to throw it away and figure out a way to let him know what happened when I got the chance. I simply could not live with myself if I had let him use it after its little trip to the potty.

As you can imagine, I totally forget to let one of them know before it completely slipped my mind. Until this conversation that is…

After hearing my alternate theory of what had happened, Chicken Dinner paused for a moment before busting out laughing.

“What’s so funny now?” I inquired suspiciously.

“You know Oliver wasn’t about to let that toothpaste go to waste, so of course he fished it out of the trash. He’s as been using that shitty toothpaste the whole time you’ve been gone!”

Le ooops.

Content created on: 9 September 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

No-Shit Sherlock’s Mystery Of The Disappearing Fingers, Act 1

10 September 2020 / / 1 Comment
2 Min Read

“Nebraska…I’m pretty sure you didn’t plan on biking to Nebraska when you woke up this morning.”

I was lost, and the last thing I needed was some sass from a road sign…

Act I: The Set-Up

By the time Labor Day 1999 rolled around, I had been a Freshman at Kansas State for a whopping 2 weeks and had made only a handful friends. Of those few friends that I had managed to make, every last one of them returned to their respective hometowns for the long weekend.

Given that my hometown of Rolla is literally the second-furthest Kansan town from Manhattan (KS, where K-State is), driving 11 hours in one weekend to guaranteed boredom never even occurred to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the memo that every other college student was getting the ----- out of Dodge,1Fun fact: yet another town in Kansas. so that Saturday morning I woke up to a ghost town and nothing to do.

At that time I was passionate about two things: dying my hair obscene colors and exploring my new world on my $100 Walmart mountain bike. I decided that my hair was starting to look a bit too natural, so first thing I did was make an appointment to get my hair trimmed and subsequently dyed half bright red and half bright blue.

That took up way less time than I had hoped, so around 2 that afternoon I found myself with plenty of time mercilessly to slaughter. Just a couple of miles outside Manhattan is Tuttle Creek Dam & Reservoir, so I thought why the heck don’t I hop on my bike and go check it out.

I had a general idea of where how to get there, and I figured that there would be more than enough road signage for me to find it without exact directions. I mean, it’s a dam towering over our town–it’s not exactly hidden.

Well, after piddling along for what seemed to be over an hour, I was certain that I should be coming up on a sign saying “Tuttle Creek This Way ->” any moment, so I kept forging ahead. Another good chunk of time passed and still nothing? Then I was starting to suspect that maybe–just maybe–I had missed my turn.

I was rather disappointed when I came to an intersection with another small highway, and in one direction the sign read “Riley, 4 miles” and in the other it said “Nebraska, I’m pretty sure you didn’t plan on biking to Nebraska when you woke up this morning.”

Confused that after all that I still hadn’t seen any signs of Tuttle Creek, I started to realize that the day was waning and since I was probably 5 miles from town, I was going to have to give up and head back from whence I came. I turned around and started to peddle home, when I almost immediately came across the mileage sign: “Manhattan, 13.”

Wait, what? THIRTEEN MILES. Oh, jeez, I had wandered in the wilderness more than I had realized. Welp, it was a good thing I decided to turn back then instead of going even further.

About a mile before I got back to Manhattan, I came across yet another sign, “<-Tuttle Creek Dam, 1 mile this way.”

Oh, ----- a mother. I guess had slightly overshot my destination, wouldn’t you say?

And, boy, was my ass tired…

What? You think this is merely a tale of a missed turn? Oh, just you wait…(until next week, that is!)

Content created on: 10 September 2020 (Thursday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

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