This is an extra warning about the post I just posted. And also to tell you that it’s probably been about a month since it happened. So – that was the old me. This is the new me!
And speaking of the new me – I had a brownie last night, and also 8 pieces of five cent candy. Strangely, I didn’t enjoy the candy as much as I usually do. I wonder why that is.
WARNING: Overshare! Reader Discretion is Advised. This post is extremely graphic and gross and involves real human bodily function–MY real human bodily function–and you may die happy never having read it, especially if you live with me.
You’ve been warned.
For the record, I’m writing this on the day the event happened, but I am not going to post it for, oh at least 7 days. Just to, you know…distance myself from it. Not that it’s going to help any.
So, you know those times when you’re in bed and you have to go to the bathroom but you don’t want to get up because…you’re in bed! And presumably it’s comfy, right? (Yeah, you think you know where this is going already but I don’t think you do).
Cut to the episode where Homer skips Church and he’s in bed all rolled up in his covers and he says “I hope I never have to get up. Uh oh- gotta take a wizz. Think, man, think. Think! Think! Think! Ah, I better get up.”
Well I’m feeling the pressure of having to take a dump. That’s not unusual, I don’t give it too much thought because Chris has just gone into the bathroom so it, quite simply, will just have to wait. In the meantime, I’ll check my email, etc. While my computer is loading up, I eat a banana. The pressure starts to mount.
Pang, n. [Prob. for older prange. Cf. Prong.] A paroxysm of extreme pain or anguish; a sudden and transitory agony; a throe; as, the pangs of death.
I hear Chris start the shower. I’ve been able to hold in shits pretty much indefinitely. It’s starting to hurt but I am confident I can just endure the pain and wait. I go to check my email. When I sit down, it starts to get really uncomfortable, and I start to worry. Ok, Toren, get up and don’t sit down again. That was a bad idea. That’s the secret to weathering this – just don’t sit down again. In fact, I was doing fine before I got up, so I’ll just lie back down in bed. Chris’ showers aren’t usually that long, and when he’s done, he’s out of the bathroom really quickly – like five times as fast as I take.
Now I’m fidgeting about on the bed. Face down, face up, on my side – nope, none of those positions is making me not have to go to the bathroom really really bad. As the pangs become a single, steady pain, it’s finally starting to dawn on me that I might be in legitimate trouble. But what do I do? I’ve never had “it” go this badly before!
If you had told me last night that I would be running around the apartment in my bathrobe trying to find something to shit in this morning I would said – never. No way. Impossible. Well friends, there I was. My first thought was a bowl (actually my first thought was – how much time do I have to consider this?) – one of the many party-type bowls we have in the kitchen shelves. No, that won’t do – we’ll never be able to use it again, I can find something better. I move on. What do dogs shit on? Newspaper – we gotta have some newspaper around here. We do, but it’s covering the kitchen table and it would take way too long to get at it under all the paints etc. We have tons of plastic bags at our disposal – they’re constantly floating around the apartment. I begin to consider this. When I clean the cat litter, I put the nasty business inside about 5-6 layers of the plastic grocery bags we get at Sunshine Market. If I do this, Kodos & I will be part of a very exclusive club. My worry is that the bag will be too thin; that there may be hidden breaches in the thin plastic membrane, but at this point it has come to my attention in a most profound way that the decision has to be made now.
Even as I lay the plastic bag open on the floor, two thoughts come to me: how’s my aim; and what the hell do I wipe with? My mind flashes back to the time we ran out of toilet paper at the Welsh Hall for our gaming convention and I had to run out to a corner store to get some new rolls. We bought two packages – one of which came back home with me after the con. But, are they still in my bedroom with the rest of the gaming stuff, or did I put them in the bathroom? Wonder of wonders – there they are.
Let me tell you something: all the triumphs of poetry and philosophy, all the auspices of art and architectural wonders that elevate your spirit and let you transcend the mundane are fucking out the window when you’re squatting naked in your bedroom, shitting in a plastic bag.
Relief…of a sort.
I don’t think it was any bigger than a regular dump, but when it’s sitting in a bag on your bedroom floor everything seems magnified by the abject horror of it all, and that includes the smell. That dogs can and do eat their own shit is, I decide, a miracle. A horrible, horrible miracle. I am so used to being able to handily forget about my waste, complacent with the idea that I will never have to confront my non-metaphorical demons, that I am legitimately shocked. Take our precious plumbing away, and the world goes topsy turvy.
It seems to take aeons (in reality it’s a split second) for the colossal turd to burn its image in its wrongful place in my memory…. Ah yes, here’s a spot – right between the memory of chipping a tooth on my microphone at a Thickets gig and the memory of Char’s father’s dogs pestering a massive, belligerent june bug caught in a tumbleweed of their own fur. It’s a tight fit.
Once that’s done, I am able to turn to the unpleasant business of disposal. I go back to the kitchen for a platoon of plastic bags. I take it one step at a time. The first step is the hardest: Close the grocery bag and lift it off the floor. Worst fears allayed, I move to step two: lower it into another bag and close. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Each time I allow my fingers to close more tightly around the lip of the bag, ultimately providing the semblance of an airtight seal.
By this time, Chris has finished his shower and has left the bathroom. The garbage in the kitchen is due to be taken out, so I capitalize on that. The poobag’s warmth – the hot hot heat of my former insides now trapped in plastic – seeps through the layers of bag as I plunge the abomination deep into the garbage mothership. I pull the mother out of the can and find other garbage to shove in with – and more importantly on top of – the other refuse, providing layers of garbage strata to forever cloak my secret shame. Then all that was left was to secure the whole thing with some damn-tight knots.
While I was bagging the food baby, I hoped: once I’ve removed the shit from the room, will the smell have gone with it? Of course not. It’s like a fart to the power of ten. No, twenty. There was nothing for it but to open wide the window, strike a match, and wait it out.
The ordeal was over. The ruthless absurdity of it all could settle, and I laughed at it because…well what choice did I have? Time to get on with my day. I was confident enough that my little package was nestled deep in less blatantly offensive waste, insulated from the possibility of exposure, to allow Chris to take the garbage out when he so kindly offered. After all, what possible unsuspicious reason could I give to refuse his request?
First we watched episode #1 of The Prisoner
Then Sheri went home
Then we watched episode #3 of Buffy
Then we watched episode #2 of Look Around You
Then we watched episode #4 of Buffy
Then Dalia went home
Then we watched episode #2 of Black Books
Then James & Marlo went home
Then we watched episode #1 of Look Around You
Then we watched episode #2 of Look Around You (again)
Then Ursula went home
Then we watched Signs (it was not good)
Then Yvonne and Anghold went home
And I got my other drawing done for Sean’s charity project. It’s for feeding hungry people.
I had some errands to do today and it looked overcast out so I dressed slightly warmer than usual. And then when I got to the end of the block I turned around and changed into something cooler. I walked down to Divine Industries our record company where I gave them my only copy of Great Old Ones so that we can reissue the album. Allen was on the phone so I chatted with Laura about Scrabble but then it was back on my feet to go to the Comicshop where I dropped off posters and tickets for H.P. Lovecraft’s Birthday Party. I didn’t plan on buying anything while I was there but I couldn’t resist a few of the open D&D miniatures they had (lemure, ettercap, grick – all monsters all the time), and some discounted DUNGEON magazines (cheap and useful!). I talked with Ryan and Jeremy who work there about the con and this and that – some young kid there was saying that I might not have a steady paycheck from my artwork but at least I’ll have valuable art to hand down to my children. Valuable, valuable words to live by.
From there I walked down to Drexoll Games where I dropped off more tix/posters and while I was there I exchanged the dice that Ursula gave me for my birthday. She saw me ogling dice when we were at the 24-hour game-a-thon and so she got them for me, but she got me the set of 12 six-siders instead of the full nerd set (d4,d6,d8,d10,d12,d20). I was going to keep the d6’s because they could come in handy, but this morning I decided that I had enough d6’s for my needs – but not enough d20’s, so off I went. Ziggy was there so at first I wasn’t sure if he had the authority for exchanges (since I didn’t have the receipt) but it was no problem. The problem arose when I went to find the set I wanted (dark marble royal blue with gold numbers) and I saw the green dark marble and then a kind of neat plasma green that were also very appealing to my artistic sensibilities. There was a girl there talking with Ziggy so I asked her which ones she liked best. She picked the dark green. Then I showed them to Ziggy and he chose the plasma green. My original jones had been for the royal blue so I was back where I started. I decided that I better roll for it! Ziggy got out a d6 and I decided 1-2 = dark green, 3-4=plasma, 5-6= blue. I rolled a 6 so we made the exchange and I was $1.50 up on the deal to boot.
TO BOOT!!!!
Then I walked over to Jolly’s Bistro and I had a veggie roti. The food there is really tasty but about 10% too expensive. I suggest you try it though (it’s just west of the Naam). Marlo and I are on no junk-food diets right now (pretty much since we saw Supersize Me!, although for me it had more to do with the fact that I had a buddy, not because I saw the movie. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a couple months now. The problem (if you can call it that) is that Kelly is a chocolatier and she always brings over decadent treats that are delicious-cubed. I think the hardest thing to do will be to give up chocolate, in fact I don’t think I’m going to do that. I’m just going to cut down. Nixing the chips & pop won’t be much of a problem – nuts/raisins and juice make good alternatives. There’s no alternative to chocolate though.
Now I’m off to draw undead squid for charity….
We had a couple new superheroes to the home WWFJ campaign today – Otter Destruct (super strength and invulnerability) and Drako (Duck with draconic powers) joined Go-Rilla, Bushido Dragon and the Invisible Fink. They saved the lives of several animaloids in a burning building, part of a rash of arson that has been plaguing New Metro City of late. The Invisible Fink arrived late (he heard about it on the news while everyone was on the scene moments after the fire started (by two firebombs in the building, as it turns out). A hippo that Otter D saved told her that he had information about the arsonist, and that he’d meet her at the waterfront subway station at midnight with more info. The heroes arrived (most undercover) later that night to meet with him. The hippo took them across the street into a construction site where he introduced them to his “boss” – a shadowy horse wearing a hood. The horse said “Superheroics are all well and good, but I’m prepared to offer you something more substantial for your abilities” and he cracks open a couple briefcases filled with money. Go-Rilla asks “and if we refuse?” The dark horse snaps his fingers and out of the shadows come Tarmadillo and Rhinosferatu. That’s where we paused for the day.
There’s an exhibit on at the California Science Center called “Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies” that shows real human cadavers. It makes children cry and adults cry out about the “sanctity of the human body.” I raspberry the latter and wish that it would come to Vancouver.
At last I can rule the world, once I get my hands on one of Susumu Tachi’s Invisibility Cloaks!
L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq, in one of his final acts before handing over “sovereignty” to Iraq’s new interim government, decreed that American forces will remain immune from prosecution by Iraqi courts for crimes against Iraqi citizens or destruction of property
And hooray for Fahrenheit 9/11 opening at #1 at the box office. Let’s hope it kills Bush’s chance of being re-elected.
Lastly – here’s a weird story:
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — A Japanese teenager was forced by his teacher to write an apology in blood after dozing in the classroom, the school’s principal said on Monday.
The teacher later went to high school principal Hiroaki Dan and confessed what he had done, Dan told Reuters.
The teacher had apologized to the 17-year-old boy and his parents, Dan said, confirming a local media report of the incident, which happened last Thursday.
He said the boy was taken to the staff room of the school in Fukuoka City, southern Japan, after being caught asleep during a lesson. The 40-year-old male teacher handed the boy a box-cutter and paper and told him to write an apology in blood.
The teacher left the student, who then cut his finger and began to write an apology using his own blood.
It occurs to me that if we had gone to see Supersize Me! at Tinseltown instead of 5th Ave Cinema we would have each saved $2 for a total of $8. And the seats would have been comfier. And bubble tea would have been on hand. Anyway….
3 out of 4
or 4 out of 5
or 8 out of 10.
You pick the rating system you like best.
James got me a rock lord – which I think is my fifth. Then we drove out to Chilliwack and I forgot to give him gas money because I didn’t ride home with him. In a convoluted set of circumstances Stewie needlessly rented a car and went separately from the rest of us, so we actually had a spare seat in James car which if I had known about it earlier I would have dragged Anghold along. Anyway that’s all ducks under the windbridge now. The reason we went to Chilliwack was because we were invited to Sid’s BBQ. I ended up eating a hamburger even after seeing Supersize Me! I saw all the usual Chilliwackian residents like Bob, Garett & Lea, Tara & Jordan, my brother, etc etc. Even Suzanne Bate who I haven’t seen for years. After the food we bandied about ideas for a short to make for the H.P. Lovecraft film festival and I came up with this great idea that would take way too long and would have limited appeal to non-Ghostbusters fans but I still think it’s a great idea and I think that Stewie and I will work on it (covertly – shhhh). Nevermind that we still haven’t gotten our SSZ treatment to Stuart Gordon yet. Then we played Pac-Man, Galaxian, DigDug and 2 other weird retro games for way too long and watched children playing with children, dogs playing with dogs, and children playing with dogs. It was all very culture (as opposed to counter-culture) but quite enjoyable, and hey – free food. It was Linda’s birthday yesterday so there was cake for that too. You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? Don’t worry, now that it’s July it won’t be long before I post an entry that I’m sure we can all relate too.
Also, I phoned my grandparents yesterday. My grandpa actually said “you’re another day older and deeper in debt.” I guess some sayings never get worn out – I know I’ll be telling my czar chasm joke until I’m 85 so fair’s fair.
Somebody called today. They failed the “leave a message” test.
22. Ball Falls on Line
A ball falling on a line is regarded as falling in the Court bounded by that line.
USTA Comment: In a non-officiated match, each player makes the call on any ball hit toward his side of the net. If a player cannot call a ball out with certainty he should regard it as good. In doubles, normally the Receiver’s partner makes the calls with respect to the service line, with the Receiver calling the side and center lines, but either partner may make the call on any ball he clearly sees out.
26. Score in a Game
a. If a player wins his first point, the score is called 15 for that player; on winning his second point, the score is called 30 for that player; on winning his third point, the score is called 40 for that player, and the fourth point won by a player is scored game for that player except as below:-
If both players have won three points, the score is called deuce; and the next point won by a player is scored advantage for that player. If the same player wins the next point, he wins the game; if the other player wins the next point the score is again called deuce; and so on, until a player wins the two points immediately following the score at deuce, when the game is scored for that player.
27. Score in a Set
a. A player (or players) who first wins six games wins a set; except that he must win by a margin of two games over his opponent and where necessary a set is extended until this margin is achieved.
28. Maximum Number of Sets
The maximum number of sets in a match shall be 5, or, where women take part, 3. [what?]
http://tennis101.com/tennis-ball-machines-wilson-prince-lobster/Tennisrules.htm
Marlo arrived about 15 minutes early and I put in episode 1 of Reboot. Then Yvonne showed up and we watched the first episode of The Office. Dalia arrived and it was time for the first two episodes of Buffy. Ursula came as Dalia was leaving, and I popped in the first Black Books episode. Marlo went home and then Anghold arrived and we watched two episodes of Six Feet Under, and I got my hair dyed again (same blue colour as before, nice and dark). Ursula brought me candles and corn – just like that album by Stevie Ray Vaughn – remember? Candles ‘n’ Corn? Ok nevermind.
When I was looking at the bottle of fruit juice that Ang bought, I thought it would be funny if somebody had the name Phillip Shakewell.
