So, do you wipe twice?

Because after 12 years of public schooling I’ve run the gamut of things to talk about, I was discussing with my carpool the merits of bidets this morning as we drove to school.

Now, because I’ve grown up in Clearwater as a member of this family and I’ve lived a relatively simple life thus far, I’ve never used one. I’ve never even seen one. I’ve heard about them and seen them on the Internet, but I’ve never actually seen one. So, they might not actually exist.

But my friend Angus says that they are real and that he’s used one. I have trouble believing that anyone from Beckley, West Virginia named Angus has actually used one; but I have no reason not to believe that he experimented with the one in his New York hotel room, so I’m reasonably convinced.

So, now that I know these things actually exist, I’m kind of curious as to how you would go about using one. I asked Angus, but his recollection of the bidet adventure was just fuzzy enough to facilitate his delivery of an overly ambiguous explanation that made about as much sense as a sneaker in a toaster. So, I asked everyone I saw before school today.

Apparently, such topics of conversation are not popular among my friends, especially those of the female persuasion.

So, I was left in the dark all day. And I’m still out of the know. All because my friends are uptight squares who don’t like to talk about their pooping habits. Lame.

Ode to Gravity

Just when you think nothing can look up, things fall down. Perhaps I’m being a bit too cryptic.

Today, as I took a jolly jaunt around the neighborhood with the dog, I got to thinking as each of my feet hit the ground. I thought about lots of stuff, but mostly how thankful I am for gravity’s perfect attendance record.

Sure, you can overlook it as easily as one takes breathing or meiosis for granted. But once you take into consideration the fact that in billions of years, gravity hasn’t taken one sick day, governmental holiday, or weekend in its timeshare in Southern San Bernardino. Gravity doesn’t even go home: it spends day after day cooped up in its little office, ordering in Chinese food on the company’s budget.

And how are we beneficiaries of gravity’s undaunted work ethic? Everything we hold dear, gravity, too, holds near. However, gravity is not so developed as a workaholic tot he point of overbearing dominance upon the surface of the earth. That is, gravity is like a cool babysitter that holds its children close but allows a certain degree of independence. While we are held to the globe like a fly on spherical sticky paper, gravity allows us to lift our feet to move.

For its unceasing respect for the terrestrial responsibility to which it has been ascribed, for the dominant execution of its duty, and for its flexibility that correlates with our human desire for controlled independence, I commend Gravity and owe to her much of my good fortune.

NYC in a Nutshell

I’ll spare you every last detail of my voyage to the Big Apple by including a brief recap of everything I can remember:

Tampa. La Guardia. Super Shuttle. Milford Plaza Hotel. Carmines. Hotel. Subway. No one smiled. CSPA at Columbia University. Nacho Grill. Guggenheim. Contemplated killing self. Escaped. Hotel. Smiles remain nonexistent. Some deli with big pastrami sandwiches. Hotel. Shower broken. Columbia. Skipped class. Starbucks. Some Asian deli. Times Square. Virgin Records. Saw Whoopie Goldberg. Some pizza joint. Empire State Building. Cold. No smiles. Hotel. Shower still broken. Starbucks. Columbia. Skipped class. Starbucks. Carnegie Deli. Western Omelet. Rockefeller Center. Hotel. Lost on Subway, ended up in Brooklyn. Late for show. Saw 30 minutes of Blue Man Group. Stardust Diner. Sang Hopelessly Devoted to You. Hotel. Shower never to be fixed again. Starbucks. Subway. Smiles? Staten Island Ferry. Thought up theme. Ground Zero. Chinatown. Haggle. Had to pee. Hotel. The Producers. Richard Kind. Alan Ruck. Euro Diner. Western Omelet. Hotel. Euro Pan. Subway. Museum of Natural History. Dinosaurs. Planets. Subway. La Guardia. Tampa. End.

All in all, it was a good trip. I can take or leave New York City, though. It’s such a desolate and lonesome place: 17 million people and not one person has it in them to smile in the subway or talk to one another. That ambiance, my friends, is not the sort I would like to immerse myself in.

Epiphany

I know things now that I didn’t know before, and quite honestly, I liked it better that way.

The Great Flip

I think that since those ancient folks separated time into fixed passages known as days, weeks and months, the intrinsic human mind has managed to separate other reified entities against the ever-present intangible backdrop of the passage of time.

Take, for example, our mental plus and delta chart of the events of the present: our proverbial tally marks seem to clump up in a sole column as any specific and predefined amount of time passes us by. Likewise, when the sun ducks underneath the horizon or when we’re forced to flip up a page in our calendars, so too do we flip up the pages of the mind and of the heart. After the Great Flip, we are faced with so much environmental newness that in order to be distracted by the follies of the present that are seared into meticulousness, we shift position until it is just different enough to invoke new feelings yet just similar enough to sneak its way into our boxes.

It happens to everyone all the time, but each individual’s schedule is different because if everyone were to make the Great Flip at the same time, the world would suck even more than Dr. Y tells us we say it does. I flipped when the clock struck 12:00AM Monday morning. I can only hope that the interim until my next flip is exceedingly short lived; I am so not used to this that I had to take the nail out of the wall to make the change because its head was too big for my largely unperturbed perforation.

I guess what I’m trying to say with this long, drawn out narrative is that this week sucks, but come Monday, it’ll be alright.

The last straw

What classifies being a man? Is it chopping down trees with one swift swing of an axe? Or could it have something to do with killing a man with your bare hands? Or should it be mandated that in order for you to be considered a real man, you slap one of those bumper stickers on the back of your pickup telling the whole world of your prayer habits?

While all of these qualities are indeed conducive to existing as a man, the evolution into that state of being is wholly different.

Here’s a tip from the manliest of them all: Don’t use straws.

Yeah, I said it. Radical, is it not? Picture this: You sit down at a table, order your drink (which, at this point in my life cannot be legally alcoholic), and in a few minutes the servestress (or whomever) returns with a mug of frosty Coca Cola and a little plastic tube wrapped oh-so-sanitarily in paper. By tossing the straw to the side and swigging from the glass with your bare lips, you are exposing yourself to a world of potential infection from prior uses. But in essence by merely chugging from that glass you’ve said to that viral disease, “I’m not afraid of you, because a real man shouldn’t be.”

Because exams are over, this is all I have to think of.

Memory Monster

The elbows are the dirtiest places on my body. The only rationale behind this assertion is that, because the skin on the elbow is continually stretched and constricted with arm movement, the skin forms little pockets of dirt that cannot be washed off without some pretty extensive lathering.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been telling myself, “Self, you must wash your elbows!”

I remind myself of this only when I am high and dry. It seems that whenever I step into the shower, I enter a realm of the supernatural. The only logical hypothesis is that some memory-draining, awareness consuming monster must live in the shower pit and is kept in its blue and white cage with only a thin sheet of plastic hanging from a rusty aluminum rod.

I’ve failed to remind myself to pay special attention to these spots every day for the better part of a month. My ‘bows have gotten so grungy, fellow classmates in Spanish class could today see the brown spots and took no hesitation in pointing them out to me. Thanks for the reminder, folks.

I’m hoping that consciously explaining my situation will raise public awareness (and lessen notions of my ill-hygiene) while at the same time wedging into my subconscious a command to abscond from the memory monster in my bathroom.

Say yes to crack

Some people are down-pushers. Others are yankers. Me? I’m a side-cracker.

If ever I realize that I indeed have feet, and protruding from their central mass are these little appendages called toes, I have the urge to do it. First, though, one must tenderize the muscle by way of backward stretching against a hard floor. Then, to get the little buggers in the mood, one has to massage the mutual skin shared in the trenches between each individual podiatric battlefield. Only then, my friends, can the cracking commence.

Granted, it can’t be done too regularly. And most of the time I don’t manage to even consider it. But when the urge comes and I am in a position inclined to crackage, it remains one of the few joys left in this world for me.

Therefore, like the radicals that have cultivated the human paradigm in the past, I propose that all persons wishing to live happy, healthy lives crack their toes. By whatever means possible, if people hear the joyous little snap of the socket a few times per week, I believe that the human experience in this world can be made more bearable, if not enjoyable for those in dire, crackless states.

My spoon is too big

In pondering what the greatest eating utensil is (barring the spork, which isn’t a true instrument of consumption in that it is a hybrid first created in a laboratory), I’ve considered them all. I thought about forks, knives, and chop sticks; but I’ve decided that the MVP of the dinner table is most decidedly the spoon.

They’re useful for most any purpose under the sun: scooping, stirring, and even the occasional cutting of especially tender delights.

Most mashed and soft foods that I consider to be in the “mounded” category are perfect for the spoon. From ice cream to mashed potatoes, the spoon shows them who’s boss by shoveling them from their temporary housing on the good china to the acidic realm of your mouth.

Lemonade and iced tea which lack the cavity fuel necessary to make our human bodies go can be stirred with a healthy dosage of sugar by the spoon. There are even spoons with long handles for that sort of thing. How thoughtful of the spoon manufacturers to make such entities as to not force moist stirring hands.

And when spoons can be use din unconventional ways, they truly show their necessity. Cheesecake is no match for the edge of a spoon, which can act as a replacement knife if it was accidentally taken away with your entree plate. Spoons can oft times be used in the place of forks, as well. When there is no fork readily available, the spoon comes to the rescue and, while not poking to grasp (which, by the way, can be an impediment to retaining the natural juice and flavor in some meats), the spoon shovels the food to the warm recesses of within your pie hole. Yes, spoons truly shine when given seemingly impossible eating situations that otherwise would not be achieved without them.

In conclusion, I salute you, spoon. You are this year’s recipient of the Most Valuable Eating Utensil Award. May your days from now on be long and prosperous, and may you keep up the good work concerning all things food. Thank you.

Unlisted Numbers

And now, I present to the masses a list of unrelated thoughts to compensate for my week of debloggification:

1. Sometimes I forget to turn the knob before walking through doors. I understand that without such a crucial action, the whole process is doomed; I just have other things on my mind when walking through doors. I can only assume it’s because I like to think about what I will do when I get to the other side of the door and force the inner monologue of actually getting out to the back burner of my mind.

2. Frozen pizza is better than hot pizza. I think that when I’m old and living in a Miamian condominium, I’ll just order an extra large pie and refrigerate it for lunch every day of the ensuing week. Then I can save my money for more important things, like my senior’s coffee at McDonald’s for 65 cents.

3. I should probably start my Higher Level History paper comparing and contrasting the Mexican Independence Movement and the Haitian Revolution. Or perhaps I could hire a Mexican to write it for me. Either that or a Haitian. If they cooperated, I’d have an outstandingly accurate paper – what better primary source than an immigrant who’s Great Grandpappy Randolfo actually participated in the bloodshed? Either way, it has to be in Burton’s hand in a little over two weeks.

4. Whoever decided to paint the school while classes are in session should be severely punished. I’ve seen many a damsel in distress with paint on her because of unmarked wet paint. It’s like a severely misapplied case of the Scarlet Letter. Except it’s paint, not scarlet. And more of a blob of blue than a letter. And to receive this letter, you don’t have to be as kinky. On second thought, it’s nothing like the Scarlet Letter.

5. I met these two girls in the courtyard during lunch the other day. From afar, I spotted one of them accidentally drop some spare change. So I sprung into action and dashed the forty feet to their midst and dove to pick up the coins for them, as they had their hands full and were wearing garb that would not be flattering to bend over in. I retrieved the three coins and gave them to one of the young ladies saying, “Here’s your sixty cents,” and ran away again, out of sight. That’s the last I’ve seen of them.

6. Potato turbate would be more appetizing if they changed the name. No one wants to eat turbate.