The Point of the Story

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Tag: Dat Ass

C’mon, People, There’s No Need To Be Sniffing Out That Mysterious Toxic Energy

23 June 2024 / / 0 Comments
4 Min Read

Some rooms just have a bad vibe in them, and it’s just a fact.

You need to accept there’s nothing we can do about it, and that’s that…

“Mr. Eiland! Do we have to keep practicing?” my fellow percussionist, Carrie, stuck her head out the door and desperately hollered at our band teacher.

Mr. E. had been contentedly working with the rest of the student-musicians in the main part of the Rolla High School band room, while those of us in the drum section had been sequestered in his office to work out our sh*t on our own.

“No, you can’t come out and join the rest of us just yet,” he hollered back. “Something is, uh, how do I put this? Something is ‘off’ in the rhythm department, and I can’t have it throwing the rest of the band off.”

“Okay, fine, but do we have to do it in your office? Whatever is off is even worse in that confined space,” Carrie protested.

“Yeah!” I said, popping my head out the office door behind Carrie. “The acoustics are terrible in here!”

Carrie looked back at me with one of those looks that say, “What in the ----- are you talking about?”

“What?” I shot back at her. “You accidentally hit an extra beat and it seems to bounce around forever in there.”

“Things do tend to linger uncomfortably long in there…” she said as she shook her dang head.

“What are you two jabbering on about?” Mr. E. chided us, still from across the other side of the band room. “Get back in there and get back to work–and don’t forget to shut the door behind you!”

Carrie and I groaned in unison, knowing that we had failed our other drummers in our quest to get our practice session relocated to a different, preferably more spacious, locale.

“I was really hoping he was going to let us jam out outside,” Carrie sighed nasally as we both trotted back into Mr. E’s office.

“I take it were still stuck in here?” asked Iris–percussionist 3 of 4–as she waltzed1Damn straight was time-signature based pun…ya konw, 3/4…waltz…you get it right? back in after a suspiciously long trip to the water fountain just outside in the hall.

“Dammit, one of us is —-ed up, and it’s not me!” said beater #4, good ol’ Double-B of 21-Trap infamy. He could be a prick sometimes, so his feisty attitude didn’t particular surprise me.

“Don’t you mean ‘is —-ing up’, Double-B?” I interjected.

“I know what I said.” Double-B glared at me.

“Yeah,” I said, wiping some sweat from my brow. “Ah, ’tis a real mystery. It could be any one of us,” my eyes darted around the room furtively. “But we may never know who…”

“Thwack! Thump…thump…thump.” The familiar crack of a pool stick hitting a cue ball was followed by the sound of billiard balls bouncing off the felt sides of the pool table…but conspicuously absent was the satisfying sound of any of them balls actually dropping into the table’s pockets.

My cousin, Rene,2I’m actually fuzzy as to which female cousin this was…it might have been Lisa, or perhaps Jennifer–either way I almost never hung out with them otherwise. sighed in mild exasperation after yet another fruitless turn on my part.

“This game is taking forever,” she muttered.

But it wasn’t like it was all my fault that it was dragging on endlessly; she wasn’t exactly droppin’ balls in pockets either.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I can’t put my finger on it, but for some reason I’m just not on my game today,” I noted.

“Me, too,” Rene agreed. “I’m usually a regular pool shark, but something is amiss around here, and it’s really messing with me.”

“It must be this musty old school building,” I said gesturing around to the repurposed Richfield Grade School classroom which, up until the building had recently been turned into a modest community center, hadn’t been regular used since our mothers were 8th grade students there in the 60’s.

She looked around the otherwise empty room. On this particularly lazy Sunday, we appeared to be the only ones not just in the billiards room, but in the entire building.

“Yeah, something sure is off in here,” she concurred. “What say we just call this game a draw and jam outta here?”

“It is indeed a beautiful spring day outside, and the casual stroll back to Grandma’s house does sound rather pleasant,” I responded.

As we (rather loudly) racked the balls and put away the pool sticks, Rene all of a sudden paused and made a scrunched up face.

“There’s that smell again…” she noted.

“Yeah, let’s go on and get outta this confined space,” I said reinforcing our newly-laid plan.

“I need fresh air–NOW!” she said as she suddenly made a break for the exit.

Once outside, we both drew in two huge lungfuls of the crisp Kansas spring breeze.

With our heads cleared, I couldn’t help but muse aloud.

“That was really odd. I wonder if they have a mold problem that needs remediation…”

Rene just gave me a sideway glance.

“Mold? Here in Southwest Kansas? You know that we are technically in a desert climate, right?”

“Ah, ’tis a real mystery. It could be any one of many endless possibilities, then,” my eyes darted furtively back to the building we had just escaped. “But we may never know what…”

“Hold my beer…” is most definitely what Frito-Lay told Nabisco back in the mid-90’s when they saw the massively successful nonsense the latter had found in their well-intentioned-but-tragically-misguided non-fat Snackwell’s cookies.

With Proctor & Gamble’s recent food-science breakthrough, Olestra, in hand, those wily bastards took nutritionally dubious “healthy” snacking to a whole ‘nother level with the release of their Olean sub-brand of completely fat-free chips. I mean, this was revolutionary. Fat-free, yet they did not compromise the taste or texture of all of Frito-Lay’s greatest hits in the least–they were virtually indistinguishable for all intents and purposes. You see, the miracle lied within the fact that these Olestra oil-substitute would pass completely through one’s GI system without ever being absorbed…

Would this result in explosive diarrhea and unbearably horrific farts in large quantities that were nearly impossible to control?

Would anybody you know be so intent on living an extreme ‘healthy’ low-fat lifestyle that they would continue to regularly consume such a product having experienced such dire consequences after the first go-round?

Is it possible that any human could be so inconsiderate of their fellow man and woman that they would knowingly subject them to such inhumanities, just for their own personal benefit?

Can you conceive of such a self-focused psychopath that would inflict such suffering on others, then proceed to give a whole new meaning to the term ‘gaslighting’ by pretending that if anything was ‘off’ about the experience, that it must be the environment and surely not their own stank ass?

Ah, ’tis a real mystery.

*eyes dart furtively around the room*

But we may never know the answers to such questions…

Content created on: 22/23 June 2024 (Sat/Sun)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Who Wants To Be As Reliable As Old Faithful Anyways?

7 May 2023 / / 0 Comments
4 Min Read

When traveling, being right on schedule is supposed to be a good thing.

Bodily functions, however, are a strong exception to that rule…

“Um…could you pass me my barf bag. I hate to you leave you alone with the baby, but I better try to see if my body wants to do anything before our next flight.”

Last I left you, I had somehow miraculously survived the first leg of my airline adventure from hell, making it from Wichita to Atlanta on my way back to North Carolina. And if you recall from before that, my body was on a pretty regular schedule expelling disgusting fluids from alternating ends of my body.

Now despite being surprised by which end of my digestive system was busy during the most recent mid-air incident–spoiler alert: I pooed when I should have spewed–I still had every reason to believe that something was going to happen after another 2-hour interval. But this time, I was determined to be proactive.

So, as a result, I found myself sitting in the men’s bathroom of the Atlanta airport, trying for at least a solid 25 minutes to make myself yak into my barf bag.

And wouldn’t you know it, despite feeling like I should be yakking, I simply could not make it happen! The worst part was that I knew that something would happen eventually, but for the time being, I had a flight to catch.

“One last time,” I begrudgingly told myself, as a part of me hoped that I was finally done with all this bullcrap. “Let’s see how far down my throat I can get this finger…”

“BWAAAAAAH! SPEEEEEEEW! SPLATTTTTTT!”

“Oh sweet success!” I thought to myself as I began to fill up the bag with nothing more than Sprite and stomach acid–at this point, that’s all I had ‘left in the tank.’

“SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLAAAASH!” the sound transitioned from liquid hitting waxed paper to liquid hitting liquid. Ohhh, the bag was filling up too fast!

“I’ve always fancied myself to be something of a Boy Scout,” I quipped to myself as I deftly opened my backup barf bag with my spare hand and swapped them out during one of the 4-second rest intervals between heaves.

So. Much. Liquid. Like, how had I not vomited earlier, especially with all my intentional efforts to do so???

Honestly, though I didn’t care. I was just thrilled to be yakkity-yakking there in the bathroom instead of out in the terminal or on the plane.

I wrapped up my business and skedaddled back to where I had left my bride and my baby. Later, MBB told me that she had never seen me so white and colorless than when I came back from that bathroom. The funny part about that is that Baby was oblivious to my situation, and just absolutely lit up in delight when she saw me. Touching, I know.

Whew, now only one more flight to survive…

“Ladies and Gentlemen, uh, welcome to Raleigh-Durham. The local time is 12:45 pm, and its wonderful 79 degrees out,” the pilot might as well have been whispering sweet nothings in my ear.

I had survived the flight to RDU–barely. Boy, what miserable mental fortitude I had to conjure up to endure that. Ugh. It wasn’t fun trying to do nothing more than exist for an hour and a half, but I had made it.

“Maaaake way, for Prince Ali!” I maintained a sense of humor as we sped past the security exit to the general area where Popo–my father-in-law–was eagerly awaiting us, totally oblivious to the hell I had just gone through to get there…a hell that I might not necessarily be quite all the way through just yet, in fact.

“You’ll have to excuse him–he hasn’t had the smoothest of flights,” My Beautiful Bride explained to her father as I (seemingly) rudely hobbled past him and into the nearest restroom.

Surprisingly, this trip to the bathroom was notably less dramatic than the last 5 visits, though I wasn’t feeling completely peachy afterwards.

“Just don’t talk to me until we get home,” I meekly requested to my car mates as we loaded up in Popo’s CRV. It looked like I would have another 45 minutes or so of just trying to hang on to existence ahead of me, and I was pretty sure trying to engage in any type of conversation or social interaction would not end well.

So, I just sat there and stared, the only thought I allowed myself to think was “We’re almost home. This is all almost over. We’re almost home…”

When we finally rolled up in to the driveway, I couldn’t get myself into the house soon enough.

Literally.

I took three steps out of the car before unloading what looked like neon-green anti-freeze all over Popo’s newly-planted azalea bush right next to the side-door into the garage. Ah, you gotta love that stomach acid.

Oh. So close. So very close to making it home–two feet, to be exact. A mere twenty-four more inches and I would have been in the garage, and roughly twenty paces and I would have made it to a proper bathroom. Oh, the irony.

Good news is that that turned out to be my, umm, ‘last hurrah’, with no more incidents after that. I just took a shower, drank a Sprite, and then passed out in bed for the next 18 hours.

Dear Lord, I pray that I–or any other member of the human race–ever have to endure anything like that again…

The point of the story is just become a ----- vegan already. Sure, it took me another 5+ years to get the message, but seriously, do you know how many times I’ve had food-related illness since turning the Big V 3-1/2 years ago? Zero. Nada. Nil.

Now, just go ask my Dear Mother or My Beautiful Bride about the consequences of eating suspect meat or dairy. Uh-huh. That’s right. Go ahead. Be prepared to hear about camping out on bathroom and/or ER floors, or perhaps you’ll be regaled with a tale about the worst way to end a Costa Rican vacation–or how about hearing the story of the $13k Emergency Room bills? Oh, you’re gonna get regaled, all right.

So put down that custom Chipotle burrito and set aside your chorizo and eggs, my friend, and come join me on the Green Side.

*ahem* You know, ‘Green’ as in green plants/plant-based diet, etc. etc. It’s funny. Or at least it’s a humorous statement.

I promise you, we vegans are still funny as meat-eaters, though we might be less ironic.

…

…

…

You know…because it’s harder to get the iron your body needs as a vegan…

*sigh*

It’s a humorous statement…

Content created on: 28/29 April & 4 May 2023 (Fri/Sat/Thurs)

What Went Down On The Daring Flight Of Delta 2250

30 April 2023 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

On that day, there was terror in the air.

And every single passenger on that plane knew that it was coming from back there…

“Would the owner of the unattended black Samsonite suitcase please immediately come to the Delta Airlines check-in?” the nervous voice came over the loud speaker.

I, for one, simply had no time for this non-sense at 6:35 am. Maybe I would have exhibited more patience with those brave souls trying to handle a potential terrorist threat if I was merely trying to catch a routine flight back to North Carolina. I possibly might even been cool with it, had I been also just tasked with making sure My Beautiful Bride and our 1-year-old daughter got back safely as well.

But no, not this not-so-fine day.

“Why is that, Beej?” you may be asking me, feeling familiar and comfortable enough with me to use my nickname’s nickname.

Well back in the narrative form of this story, I’ll feel that detail in:

“Fools!” I muttered to myself as I stood in line to check-in for our connecting flight to Atlanta, “I am the one who tocks!”

I paused for a beat before realizing that no one was within earshot to appreciate my rather witty Breaking Bad reference…you know, “I am the one who knocks” and what-not.

No? Nothing? Ok. Whatevs…I had to take a second-stab at being openly witty back then anyways.

“Simple morons, the lot of you!” I tried again, “My stomach is the ticking time bomb you should be worried about!”

And I, sh*t you not, I spoke the truth: if you didn’t read last week’s installment, pop back and catch up real quick why don’tchya? And once you do, you’ll fully understand the dire situation I was in, whence I had been expelling bodily fluids like clockwork since 12 am the night before this most wonderful glorious day of traveling.

Yup, it was misery indeed: almost down to the minute, every 2 hours I could count on either projectile vomiting (12, 4, &–I’m extrapolating here–8 am & 12 pm), or suffering violent diarrhea (2, 6, &–once again, extrapolating–10 am & 2 pm). I knew shouldn’t have had Chipotle for dinner the night before–or was it the chorizo that my dearest step-mother had gifted me earlier in the week and I didn’t eat until the previous morning? Either way, I was pretty sure it was ethnically seasoned meat to blame.

Anyways, as I waited in line to check-in, I was seriously debating sending my beloveds on without me, and seeing if I could catch a later flight when I was less volatile. On one hand, I wanted to be there for My Beautiful Bride, as I knew that traveling alone with a baby can be a real challenge. On the other hand, I was running a real risk of being a public health hazard–can you imagine the devastating consequences if I were to have an ‘episode’ when I didn’t have a way to contain things in a sanitary manner? A perfect example would be desperately needing a toilet during take-off or landing. Or while taxiing. Or while boarding and/or deplaning. Or anywhere not within sight-line of an airport bathroom or airplane lavatory.

You get the drift. There were plenty of ways things could get ugly real quick.

But, being the Noble and Beloved Father that I am, I wasn’t about to give up on my family just yet. Let’s consider the schedule of my body and see how it would line up with our flight schedules.

As I mentioned above, it appeared that my body wanted to get rid of fluids on the even hour, so I could anticipate an incident occurring at 8 am, 10 am, 12 pm, 2 pm, etc. (Central Daylight Time, that is.)

Now our flight from Wichita to Atlanta was set to take off at 7:02 am and land at 10:15 am. After a brief layover, our flight to RDU was scheduled to take off at 11:26 am and land at 12:49 pm.

Adjusting for crossing into Eastern Daylight Time en route to Atlanta, I should set my watch to count down to 9 am: something–probably vomit–was coming out of my body right in the middle of Flight 1, I could almost guarantee it.

But wait! That would be the best-case scenario, barring any unforeseen turbulence that would keep me strapped into my seat. I surmised that I wouldn’t be in any compromising shituations during take-off or landing, and that was about all I could ask for.

Okay, onto the next timepoint, 11 am. That would be roughly in the middle of our layover. While I would have preferred it to be 15 minutes into the layover, if I needed to handle things 25 minutes before departure, I figured I would take what I could get.

Now, where would I be at 1 pm? Hoping for not a moment’s delay in our departure from ATL and praying for some serious tailwind, that’s where I would be up until that time, that’s for sure! If we landed at 12:49 pm or slightly earlier, I probably wouldn’t be feeling too well, but I would at least have a fighting chance to make it to the airport potty before my “1 o’clock appointment”.

Given that it would be a 45 minutes or so drive back to my in-laws’ house (whom we were living with at the time), I should be in comfortably quarters if I still somehow had any gas left in the tank at 3 pm.

“Just check us in and get me through security.” I politely demanded from the Delta check-in agent. “Oh, and by the way, go ahead and just give me any barf bags you have available here and now. Asking for a friend…”

“Okay, I guess I’ll see you when we land…” I tucked my unused barf bag back into the seat in front of me and scurried to the lavatory located at the rear of Delta Flight 2250.

After clutching said barf bag in anticipation of throwing up for the first 20 minutes of the flight, I realized that a plot twist was afoot: I needed a toilet ASAP!

Now normally I find sitting down in an airline lavatory to be grody and icky experience that I will go to great lengths to avoid. And I would also normally find it extremely embarrassing to spend nearly an entire flight camped out in such a location.

Further, under normal circumstances I would rather die than make really, REALLY loud bodily noises for an hour straight for the entire rear half of the plane to hear, only to emerge with all eyes on me.

I would say that that particular day, I didn’t give a single sh*t, but, *ahem* the truth is that it was literally quite the opposite.

I mean, I didn’t care about any of that–I figuratively didn’t give a crap–but as you don’t need or want to be told, that poor lavatory toilet saw a traumatic amount of butt-action during those next, very intense, 60 minutes. (PS: My sincerest apologies to residents in northern Arkansas, NE Mississippi, and northern Alabama.1https://www.flightstats.com/v2/flight-tracker/DL/2073?year=2023&month=4&date=29&flightId=1179267412)

Right about the time the pilot made the announcement that we were beginning our descent into Atlanta, my misery subsided and I came out of hiding just in time to get buckled in before landing.

“What in the world was happening in there?!?” My Beautiful Bride asked as I sat back down.

“Whatever do you mean my dear?”

“You were making, um, alot of noises in there. I think even First Class could hear you.”

“That, my dear, was the sound of an airline disaster being averted…”

“Um…could you pass me my barf bag?”

…and that, in the Atlanta airport, is where I leave you hanging until next time. I know you can only handle so much graphic details of my bodily fluids, so I figured I would give you a seven-day break.

And, uh, spoiler alert: as you may have guessed, I wasn’t quite home-free yet. But would I get stuck in Atlanta? Would I embarrass myself in an epic (or minor) way? Would I make it home that day? Would I be branded a terrorist?!?

Tune in next time to find out questions to these answers and more…

Content created on: 28/29 April 2023 (Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

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:[+]

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:[+]

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:[+]

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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