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Toilet Troubles, Food Poisoning, and Yurtathon 2010

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Our upstairs toilet is sealed-off tighter than the USS Skipjack fighter sub. We’re going on Day Three, I believe, and can’t break through whatever is plugging it up. We’ve plunged and prodded, and even poured hot water into the bowl. But nothing can penetrate the turd wall.

One of our boys was the last to use it, of course. Whenever a toilet overflows in this house, it has their fingerprints all over it… so to speak. I don’t know what it is about teenagers, but they can apparently unleash eliminations like something out of the ham case at Wegmans. Good god! Have a glass of water every once in a while…

Anyway, I’m about ready to give up and call a plumber. The upstairs catcher has been out of commission since Friday, I think, and we’re not able to fix the problem.

We even went out and bought a ludicrous “eel,” equipped with a crank and shit auger. Yeah, and what a waste of money that turned out to be… We also purchased some idiotic-looking super-plunger. Ha! Might as well flush those twelve dollars down the… ah hell, I can’t even do that! Man, I’m starting to get whipped-up over here!!

I know some of you will advise me to remove the entire toilet, go out and buy a Watson 257-E something or other, perform the double-flowback procedure, etc. etc. And that ain’t gonna happen. I mean, seriously. I have trouble changing the ink cartridges in my printer.

No, I’m gonna have to call the man. We wanted to avoid it, because he charges $75.00 just to walk through the front door, then starts adding from there. And right now is not the time to be throwing money around. Sheesh. It never stops.

Hey, wonder if I could have an industrial paper shredder customized and attached below the seat of the toilet, so it would act almost like a wood-chipper and cut down on the trauma being loosed on our plumbing system every day? Is that feasible? Please let me know your thoughts.

And since we’re on the subject, kinda sorta, I know a guy who went to TGI Friday’s on Friday night, ordered boneless chicken wings, tossed the leftovers into the backseat of his car… and ate them while driving to work yesterday.

“They were warm from the sun,” he said. “I didn’t even have to heat them up!”

Heh. Predictably, he spent the rest of the night near or atop a toilet. It’s a wonder they didn’t have to LifeFlight his ass to the Warren G. Harding Food Poisoning Clinic. Crazy.

I know I’m probably jinxing myself, big time, but I’ve never had food poisoning. Even after eating roughly a million restaurant meals during my life… Apparently I’ve been lucky, because almost everybody I know has a horror story or two.

Toney, for instance, had shrimp at a restaurant in Valencia years ago (a place called Sisley), and was sick for a week. It was around the time Princess Diana died, and she still groans when she sees footage of the funeral.

And I know this one is kinda short, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. For a Question, predictably enough, please tell us your personal stories about food poisoning, as well as any stopped-up, overflowing toilet tales you might know. Use the comments link below.

And finally, to get all PBS ‘n’ shit with ya, I’m going to occasionally update you guys on the progress of Yurtathon 2010. I’m going to need to raise a certain amount of money (not all that much, actually), to go back to the yurt village and finish my book, sometime in September. And every shirt sale, and beer contribution, will go toward that goal.

And right now we’re at 10% of the target. So, please buy yourself a shirt or three, and help me get back to the ridiculous roundhouse in the woods.

Thanks for your continued support!

I’ll see you again tomorrow.

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Inside the Library, and Very Ugly People

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

I spent Thursday, Friday, and a big part of Saturday at the library. And it’s starting to take its toll. I’m getting kinda… loopy. Now it’s time to return to work and submerge myself in another brand of tedium, in the middle of the night. I’m gonna end up fully crazy before it’s all over, I just know it.

The good news: I made some decent progress over the past few days. I’m happy with my efforts, but am concerned about meeting the final deadline. I might have to return to the yurt colony to pull it off. I need two full days inside an internetless roundhouse in the middle of the woods, with a coffee maker and a crate o’ Little Debbies. That would do it, I think.

So, look for me to start pushing the Evil Twin shirts even harder than normal in the near future. I’m gonna need some yurt money… I haven’t checked with the CEO, but I’m almost certain there’s no room for another such adventure in the general fund. Toney doesn’t work during August, and that’ll flat-out smash a man’s yurtly dreams.

Anyway… I notice some interesting things while sequestered inside the public library. It might seem kinda dull on the surface, but there’s actually quite a bit going on in there.

For instance, there are almost always one or two old ladies learning how to use the internet from a teenage nerd. Never men, only women. At first I wondered why, and then I imagined myself as an old man, after being pitched the idea. And here’s what I heard, inside my head:

Are you kidding me? I fought in Korea, and now you expect me to sit down with some doughy mama’s boy and learn how to shop for shoes on an electronic faggot box? I don’t think so, liver lips. I’m a man.

Yeah, that sounds about right… But I find it interesting to eavesdrop on the ladies’ training sessions. It’s amazing to me, that there are still people out there who don’t know ANYTHING about the internet. Nothing, whatsoever.

They get a tutorial on how to operate a mouse, and where to type a URL (they always insist on using the www. at the beginning of every address), and the usefulness of Google… And many of the women are amazed and almost giddy with excitement.

It’s kinda cool.

There’s also a lot of math tutoring that goes on in there. It’s usually some fat kid (once again) trying to break through a wall constructed entirely of disinterest and dumb. The tutor usually gets exasperated near the end, and it’s fun to listen in on their conversations.

And, of course, it’s shockingly noisy in the library. In fact, they have a “quiet room,” where you can go to read, or whatever. When I was a kid, the whole library was a quiet room, but not anymore. It’s more of a community center at this point. And I’m not a fan of all the loud talking, and discussions of replacement hips, etc. Sheesh. Some of us are trying to write a mean-spirited novel in here!

A woman sitting in front of me yesterday had a laptop computer that looked like an open pizza box, with an electric cord straight off a 1947 vacuum cleaner. She had it plugged into a big ol’ international adapter, so I’m assuming she was European or somesuch.

She continuously sighed because of the noise, all the kids crying and people playing YouTube videos right out in the open air, and finally snapped. She stood up, dramatically unplugged her euro-box, and marched out of there. And boy, will she have a few things to say about our little town when she gets back to Helsinki…

Tomorrow I’ll try to get back into the real world. I have a few non-library items in my notebook, believe it or not. So, I’ll see you then.

In the meantime, I’d like to know what you think about, when I ask, “Who is the ugliest person you’ve ever met?” Maybe I’m unusual, but I can answer that question without hesitation: a guy I used to work with in Atlanta. Hands down: ugliest. The man could scare varnish off a door.

And there’s a woman who lives near us with a gigantic lantern jaw, but all her features are at the top of her face. Lots and lots of wasted real estate…

What about you? Can you answer that question? If so, please do. And describe the guy or gal. What made ‘em so ugly? Use the comments link below.

And I’ll see you again tomorrow.

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