(a)musing 305 - Skin Failure. January 5, 2003

First things first, get over there and give Ms. Amy some love. By the time most of you will be reading this it will be her birthday. Give her lots o love, wouldya? Last year resulted in a party where many lipsticks died horrible deaths. Hard to believe a year has passed!!! This year -- lock up your cosmetics, Taunia!

Onward... and hopefully this will make you laugh as much as it does me. Somewhere in this snowpile, see picture at left... the snowpile in front of my house, there is buried an avocado toilet. Don't strain your eyes, you can't see it. But it's in there and you heard me right.

Yes. An avocado toilet.

Here's the story: My neighbor was plowing his driveway, and we were waiting for our tenant to come back with his snow plow to move the 18+ inches of snow we got overnight Friday into Saturday. Steve (said neighbor) came over with his plow and his bobcat and plowed out the right side of the parking area in front of our house. Quite sweet of him considering he'd just worked a 12 hour plowing detail down in Beverly.

A little while later I went out to thank him. He and his wife Candy (the one who got me drunk on a Friday afternoon a month or so ago) and I were chatting when suddenly she stops, a perplexed look on her face.

"Steve," she yells to him, "Where's the fuckin' toilet?"

"What toilet?" he looks confused.

"The green toilet sitting at the end of our fucking driveway with the Christmas tree, the one the trash guys didn't take away this week. Where'd it go?"

"Well, I saw the Christmas tree and I moved it out into the back yard out in the woods but I didn't see a toilet. Are you sure it was there?"

Candy and I both answered that it was. I remembered seeing it on Friday and wondering if she knew there was no way the trash guys would take that, even if she left it out for a second week.

So Steve points to the snow, all piled up in front of my house and says "I guess it's up in there. I pushed all the snow from over here in front of the fence to over there." I start laughing. The snow ridge is a mountain. It's at least six feet high. I can't see the truck on the other side of it. It's a kid's wonderland and it'll provide months of fun for the family, and once it thaws there will be a commode inside. Sort of like the secret surprise in the middle of Monty Python's Crunchy Frog -- it's not what you'd expect it to be!

Steve offered to take the bobcat and whack the snow down and get it out of there but I told him not to bother. We'll wait until mother nature reveals the ancient shitter of green, and have archaeologists come study it. We'll get a write up in National Geographic. Perhaps a commercial deal, special half time appearance at the Super Bowl. We'll ride the 15 minutes of crapper-fame to its fullest.

Pictures? Forthcoming. Once the heap melts. I hope to find it upright. I'll go sit on it and make it look like... I'm goin'. That's a classy image, eh? Barf.

So, in other news the Green Bay Packers lost yesterday, so they're out of the running. Last week the Patriots won but the stupid Jets had to go and win too, which eliminated the Patriots outright. Sadly. I hate the Jets.

But the best news ever is that the Steelers won today by the skin of their collective teethies, and gave me skin failure and a stomach ache. I left to go to the market at halftime and they were losing 14-7 or something. I got back and they were losing 33-22 or ... something.

Then, miraculously, the win becomes theirs, with seconds to spare. I thought I'd puke. Good thing I didn't either, because Doug made a wicked good split pea and ham soup today with our left over ham bone (from the Christmas feast) and I would be off split pea and ham for life had I horked it.

So the football season stays meaningful for me. The one team I want to see win is the Steelers -- and don't nobody want to prevent that from happening. You hear?

Chris Kelly has a nice little article about women and football which he ran in the Scranton Times. I can see his wife screaming at the TV in unladylike but very Steelersfan-esque fashion. Click here to read. I think it's funny how he mentions the facial hair thing, what with me being the bearded wonder.

My aortal this week is Hosemonster, AKA Chris W., who you may recall inspired me yesterday when he triggered a memory of toilet papering. I've been going through his archives, and he's pretty funny. Most especially notable are his discussions with toilets. Very good and funny stuff. Be sure to swing by Hosemonster and check his blog out. He's even got a picture of H-Dog from The Onion on his page, and I'm all about the H-Dog, yo. He's the shizit!. Nobody fucks with him and his posse at Midstate Office Supply, 'specially them IT computa bitchez! Word.

I love The Onion. Damn.

And while still on the topic of hosemonster, I had misplaced his URL, so I did a google search on hosemonster and found some rather peculiar websites, including a troubleshooting guide for psycho hosemonster DSP/Dual PRI problems, whatever that means; info on bungee jumping products from hosemonster, a chatroom for guys obsessed with pantyhose called cyber legs (with pictures, ewww!) and firefighting equipment. Not sure what context the blog owner wishes to be identified with as the Hosemonster, we'll leave that to him to explain.

On that note. More eventually. Go Steelers. It's gonna be a long week. I'm very anxious and can't wait for the next game! Bleurgh!