Archive for May, 2007

A friend of mine stops by yesterday evening needing some come-alongs. He said that he and some others had been fourwheelin’ and one of the trucks was stuck up. He grabbed the come-alongs, I grabbed some logging chains, changed clothes, gave the wife a kiss and told her I would be back soon. I jumped on my arctic cat ATV and headed out to the mud hole they were in. I knew where it was, and it is one of the nastiest mud holes in our area.

My buddy (I’ll call him “S”) snapped the cable on the come-alongs. I think it was a pretty weak cable. S and yours truly hop back on the fourwheeler and head out to civilization. It’s about a 15 minute ride over the hills and through the woods. We get home and manage to round up another set of come-alongs. These things are massive. They probably weigh 20 pounds, and the cable is as big around and my thumb. We head back to the stuck truck.

We get the come-alongs rigged up and S’s father (I’ll call him big “S”) and I begin working them. They got pretty tight, and truck wasn’t budging. We continue to work the come-alongs and they get so tight that we are having trouble with them. The two of us are about as big and strong as a couple of oxen, so when I say they are tight, I mean they are tight. We begin to put pressure on the come-alongs again….we push with all our might….something has got to give. I’m worried about the cable breaking and slicing us in half. The cable doesn’t break, but the come-alongs do. Big “S” was pulling on the handle as I was pushing on it. I dug my feet in, and gave it a mighty push just as the come-alongs failed. My legs propelled me forward just quick enough to allow me to land face first in the mud without being able to get my hands out in front of me.

If your counting, that is two pair of heavy duty come-alongs broken. We have no choice but to head out and find some more help. We find two friends, each with a truck, that volunteer to try and pull him out of the mud. I take “S” back to the mud hole and drop him off. I manage to snap one photo in the twilight. I head back for my house to get some rest, because I have to get up early for work.

I drove by my buddies house this morning before work and I didn’t see the truck sitting in his driveway. I assume that it is still in the mud hole. If he hasn’t got it out by this evening, I will go take some more pictures to share.

I was sitting around and wondering about what google adwords keywords generate the most revenue. After a lot of searching and using the Google Keyword Tool I found out that one of top paying google keywords is Mesothelioma.

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$77 CPC… that is unreal!

That got me wondering, what is Mesothelioma? A quick search turned up the answer:

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by previous exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body’s internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos, or by home renovation using asbestos cement products. Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking.

Now I know, and so do you.

Now, I know that there is a lot of embellishment that occurs on the internet, and I am aware that a small number of things are perhaps sheer fabrication but I have a story to tell that is the absolute truth.

Funniest darn thing that has ever happened to me.

A couple of weeks ago we decided to cruise out to Ryan’s Steakhouse for dinner. It was a Wednesday night which means that macaroni and beef was on the hot bar, indeed the only night of the week that it is served. Wednesday night is also kid’s night at Ryan’s, complete with Dizzy the Clown wandering from table to table entertaining the little bastards. It may seem that the events about to be told have little connection to those two circumstances, but all will be clear in a moment.

We went through the line and placed our orders for the all-you-can-eat hot bar then sat down as far away from the front of the restaurant as possible in order to keep the density of kids down a bit. Then I started my move to the hot bar. Plate after plate of macaroni and beef were consumed that evening, I tell you — in all, four heaping plates of the pseudo-Italian ambrosia were shoved into my belly. I was sated. Perhaps a bit too much, however.

I had not really been feeling well all day, what with a bit of gas and such. By the time I had eaten four overwhelmed plates of food, I was in real trouble. There was so much pressure on my diaphragm that I was having trouble breathing. At the same time, the downward pressure was building. At first, I thought it was only gas which could have been passed in batches right at the table without to much concern. Unfortunately, that was not to be. After a minute or so it was clear that I was dealing with explosive diarrhea. It’s amazing how grease can make its way through your intestines far faster than the food which spawned the grease to begin with, but I digress…

I got up from the table and made my way to the bathroom. Upon entering, I saw two sinks immediately inside the door, two urinals just to the right of the sinks, and two toilet stalls against the back wall. One of them was a handicapped bathroom. Now, normally I would have gone to the handicapped stall since I like to stretch out a bit when I take a good shat, but in this case, the door lock was broken and the only thing I hate worse than my wife telling me to stop cutting my toenails with a pair of diagonal wire cutters is having someone walk in on me while I am taking a shat. I went to the normal stall.

In retrospect, I probably should have gone to the large, handicapped stall even though the door would not lock because that bit of time lost in making the stall switch proved to be a bit too long under the circumstances. By the time I had walked into the regular stall, the pressure on my arse was reaching Biblical proportions.

I began “The Move.”

For those women who may be reading this, let me take a moment to explain 11The Move.” Men know exactly what their bowels are up to at any given second. And when the time comes to empty the cache, a sequence of physiological events occur that can not be stopped under any circumstances. There is a move men make that involves simultaneously approaching the toilet, beginning the body turn to position ones arse toward said toilet, hooking ones fingers into ones waistline, and pulling down the pants while beginning the squat at the same time. It is a very fluid motion that, when performed properly, results in the flawless expulsion of shat at the exact same second that ones arse is properly placed on the toilet seat. Done properly, it even assures that the choad is properly inserted into the front rim of the toilet in the event that the pee stream lets loose at the same time; it is truly a picture of coordination rivaling that of a skilled ballet dancer.

I was about halfway into “The Move” when I looked down at the floor and saw a pile of vomit that had been previously expelled by one of those little bastards attending kids night; it was mounded up in the corner so I did not notice it when I had first walked into the stall.

Normally, I would not have been bothered by such a thing, but I had eaten so much and the pressure upward was so intense, that I hit a rarely experienced gag reflex. And once that reflex started, combined with the intense pressure upward caused by the bloated stomach, four plates of macaroni and beef started coming up for a rematch. What happened next was so quick that the exact sequence of events are a bit fuzzy, but I will try to reconstruct them as best I can.

In that moment of impending projectile vomiting, my attention was diverted from the goings-on at the other end. To put a freeze frame on the situation, I was half crouched down to the toilet, pants pulled down to my knees, with a load of vomit coming up my esophagus. Now, most of you know that vomiting takes precedence over shat no matter what is about to come slamming out of your arse. It is apparently an evolutionary thing since shatting will not kill you, but vomiting takes a presence of mind to accomplish so that you do not aspirate any food into the bronchial tubes and perhaps choke to death. My attention was thus diverted.

At that very split second, my arse exploded in what can only be described as a wake…you know, as in a newspaper headline along the lines of “30,000 Killed In Wake of Typhoon Fifi” or something similar. In what seemed to be most suitably measured in cubic feet, an enormous plug of shat the consistency of thick mud with embedded pockets of greasy liquid came flying out of my arse. But remember, I was only halfway down on the toilet at that moment. The shat wave was of such force and of just such an angle in relation to the back curve of the toilet seat that it ricocheted off the back of the seat and slammed into the wall at an angle of incidence equal to the angle at which it initially hit the toilet seat. Then I sat down.

Recall that when that event occurred, I was already halfway to sitting anyway and had actually reached the point of no return.I have always considered myself as relatively stable gravitationally, but when you get beyond a certain point, you’re going down no matter how limber you may be. Needless to say, the shat wave, though of considerable force, was not so sufficient so as to completely glance off the toilet seat and deposit itself on the walls, unlike what you would see when hitting a puddle with a high-pressure water hose; even though you throw water at the puddle, the puddle gets moved and no water is left to re-form a puddle. There was a significant amount of shat remaining on about one-third of the seat rim which I had now just collapsed upon.

Now, back to the vomit…

While all the shatting was going on, the vomit was still on its way up. By the time I had actually collapsed on the toilet, my mouth had filled up with a goodly portion of the macaroni and beef I had just consumed. OK, so what does the human body instinctively do when vomiting? One bends over. So I bent over.I was still sitting on the toilet, though. Therefore, bending over resulted in me placing my head above my now slightly-opened legs, positioned in between my knees and waist. Also directly above my pants which were now pulled down to a point just midway between my knees and my ankles. Oh, did I mention that I was wearing not just pants, but sweat pants with elastic on the ankles.

In one mighty push, some three pounds of macaroni and beef, two or three Cokes, and a couple of Big, Fat Yeast Rolls were deposited in my pants.. .on the inside…with no ready exit at the bottom down by my feet.

In the next several seconds, there were a handful of farts, a couple of turds, and the event ended, yet I was now sitting there with my pants full of vomit, my back covered in shat that had bounced off the toilet, spattered on three ceramic-tiled walls to a height of about five feet, and still had enough force to come back at me, covering the back of my shirt with droplets of liquid shat. All while thick shat was spread all over my arse in a ring curiously in the shape of a toilet seat.

And there was no *!$%^&* toilet paper!

What could I do but laugh. I must have sounded like a complete maniac to the guy who then wandered into the bathroom. He actually asked if I was OK since I was laughing so hard I must have sounded like I was crying hysterically. I calmed down just enough to ask him if he would get the manager. And told him to have the manager bring some toilet paper. When the manager walked in, he brought the toilet paper with him, but in no way was prepared for what happened next.I simply told him that there was no way I was going to explain what was happening in the stall, but that I needed several wet towels and I needed him to go ask my wife to come help me. I told him where we were sitting and he left. At that point, I think he was probably assuming that I had peed just a bit in my pants or something similarly benign.

About two minutes later, my wife came into the bathroom not knowing what was wrong and with a certain amount of worry in her voice.I explained to her (still laughing and having trouble getting out words) that I had a slight accident and needed her help. Knowing that I had experienced some close calls in the past, she probably assumed that I had laid down a small turd or something and just needed to bring the car around so we could bolt immediately. Until I asked her, I’m sure she had no idea that she was about to go across the street and purchase me new underwear, new socks, new pants, a new shirt, and (by that time due to considerable leakage around the elastic ankles thingies) new sneakers. And she then started to laugh herself
since I was still laughing. She began to ask for an explanation as to what had happened when I promised her that I would tell her later, but that I just needed to handle damage control for the time being. She left.

The manager then came back in with a half-dozen wet towels and a few dry ones.I asked him to also bring a mop and bucket upon which he assured me that they would clean up anything that needed to be cleaned. Without giving him specific details, I explained that what was going on in that stall that night was far in excess of what I would expect anyone to deal with, what with most of the folks working at Ryan’s making minimum wage or just slightly above. At that moment, I think it dawned on him exactly the gravity of the situation. Then that manager went so far above the call of duty that I will be eternally grateful for his actions. He hooked up a hose.

Fortunately, commercial bathrooms are constructed with tile walls and tile floors and have a drain in the middle of the room in order to make clean up easy. Fortunately, I was in a commercial bathroom. He hooked up the hose to the spigot located under the sink as I began cleaning myself up with the wet towels. Just as I was finishing, my wife got back with the new clothes and passed them into the stall, whereupon I stuffed the previously worn clothing into the plastic bag that came from the store, handing the bag to my wife.I finished cleaning myself off and carefully put on my new clothes, still stuck in the stall since I figured that it would be in bad taste to go out of the stall to get redressed in the event I happened to be standing there naked and some little bastard kid walked in. At that point, I had only made a mess; I had not yet committed a felony and intended to keep it that way.

When I finished getting dressed, I picked up the hose and cleaned up the entire stall, washing down the remains toward the drain in the center of the room.I put down the hose and walked out of the bathroom.I had intended to go to the manager and thank him for all he had done, but when I walked out, three of the management staff were there to greet me with a standing ovation.I started laughing so hard that I thought I was going to throw up again, but managed to scurry out to the car where my wife was now waiting to pick me up by the front door.

The upshot of all this is that I strongly recommend eating dinner at Ryan’s Steak House. They have, by far, the nicest management staff of any restaurant in which I have eaten/shat/puked.

Next time, I think I should just increase my hoodia.