Well, Shart

Men are, by all accounts, less concerned with gas than women. It's a fact of life, brought on through a cycle of encouragement from our elder men that we then pass on to our own offspring. More often than not, when faced with a painful bubble and alone, or perhaps as a passive form of spousal abuse, or more commonly in an effort to amuse those of the same sex that surround us (they were brought up in the same cycle), men will let freedom ring.

Now this is no small matter. There are the obvious repercussions that effect all within olfactory range. But there are risks to the perpetrator as well. While slight, there is always the chance that it isn't gas, desperate to get out. Now these occurrences are rare, and typically easy to detect. But there are those rare times, perhaps early in the morning, or after a long night of drinking, when our judgement (as well as feeling in our extremities) just isn't what it should be. Thus the shart is born.

It's an unfortunate word, as it is married to a word I typically withhold from my usual dialogues. But to change it to the more kid-friendly "poop", and we are left with "part", which can easily cause a great deal of confusion.

"Mommy, I parted!"
"You farted?"
-whinier-"No Mommy, I parted!"
"You parted what? The Red Sea?"
"I parted in my pants!"

Mom starts breaking out the needle and thread, and Junior worries that the punishment for this offense is far greater than he anticipated.

Now for those of you who have never experienced or even witnessed such an event taking place, let me set the scene for you. Imagine, if you will, that you have just realized something so profound, so ominous, that your entire demeanor changes. You immediately leap to your feet, like a person possessed. But instead of rushing off to accomplish some newly realized life-goal, you very slowly, while at the same time very quickly, make your way to the restroom.

For any of you who have been witness to such events, you know what a special category they fall into. It is without a doubt, one of the most instantly recognizable and incredibly entertaining things anyone has ever seen. It has all the necessary elements of comedy. It's spontaneous and unexpected (and how), it is something unfortunate befalling someone else, and it involves poop. That's the trifecta.

Suffice to say the reason for this fecal-filled post is due to my own sad occurrence. Yes, you read right. I parted in my pants. I'm not afraid to say it. Especially since this is a completely anonymous blog. And now forever will be. Worse yet, I was only a couple of hours into my day. So I'm sitting at my desk, happily typing along, when I felt the urge. I had low expectations, so I let what I thought was a little gas slip out. Oh how wrong I was.

I of course, immediately rushed (sort of) to the bathroom, all the while hoping to minimize the catastrophe. So what ensued turned into a sort of leaning-back-and-squeezing-in-while holding-my-pants-out-without-looking-like-there-was-anything-wrong run/walk. Luckily I'm just a few dozen steps from the facilities.

Now all the while, some small part of me held out hope. Hope that I was mistaken. Hope that the results of all this effort would not be in vain. So I get into the room and almost start taking down my pants before I got into the stall. Now that would have been bad, since there were other people at the urinals. Worse yet, I knew one of them. So I casually made it look like I was adjusting myself and went into the stall.

Well, I won't go into too many details (HA HA HA HA HA) but suffice to say while there had been an accident, we did not have full penetration. Of course this left me with yet another dilemma. Do I clean up as best I can and soldier on, or do I remove the offending (offended?) garment and join the ranks of the commandos?

Well, I attempted the first option, with little success. So on to plan B. Well, the problem was, everyone and there brother (almost said mother, that would have been confusing) decided that moment was the best possible time to crowd into the stalls around me. Now, I don't know about you, but I think I would be able to tell what was going on if the guy next to me started taking off clothes.

So I waited. And waited. Things were starting to get sore. Eventually there was enough of a gap that I could make my move. But then it hit me. What do I do with it while I'm washing my hands and exiting? I can't exactly leave it sitting on the counter. So I come up with what I still consider a brilliant solution. I removed one shoe and one pant leg, got my leg out, and left the other leg in. I made sure the offense wasn't pressing against anything, and got the heck out of dodge, with a slight bulge around my upper leg. No one was the wiser.

Of course, when I got back to my desk, I had to struggle to get it out of my pant leg. That would have been an interesting discussion if my boss had come around the corner.

Me:"Have you seen that movie Zoolander?"
Boss:"No, I'm straight."

For some reason, I had a Ziploc bag sitting on my desk, which is now being used to seal in the freshness. I resisted the urge to suck out the air as I closed the bag.

Economy sucks

Pretty much everything to do with economy of any kind sucks. Maybe I'm preconditioned as an American to think less is in no way more, but the fact remains that anything to do with economy, economics, and any other word that gets it's root from the Greek oikonomiā sucks.

For starters, our economy sucks. And not just because of greedy bankers and incompetent politicians, but because nobody involved has the first clue what they are talking about. Not to say I am some kind of expert on the subject, but I've been around the block enough times to know when I'm being mushroomed*. This whole system is waaaaaayy to complicated to explain with a single theory to incorporate Life, the Universe and Everything. But yet those darn humorists economists just keep on trying.

It's so funny to see things like this, where a group of "experts" will take all known data and throw together a hypothesis based on that data. The only problem is that they only have about 10% of the data. What results is akin to several overweight, middle-aged men chasing after a chicken. If you don't know what it looks like for someone to chase a chicken, watch the movie Rocky, and then instead of Sylvester Stallone picture the old guys.

Every time one new facet of the problem gets discovered, there's a flurry of activity to
a.) Incorporate that new aspect into their already loosely formulated idea
b.) Debunk the new fact since it doesn't fit
c.) Be the first to come up with a whole new all-inclusive solution, regardless of how ridiculous.

The economy also sucks because there's so much activity about it and so much discussion that it has become a mandatory course in college. I am now taking said course. There are many reasons this is not fun. One, I am not college-age. I blame the military. But because I am not college-age, the text is not geared toward me, but to the budding, hopeful youths of tomorrow who surround me, idealistically believing that in just a few short years they'll complete their degree and go out and really make a difference.

Since I know better, I feel confident that this (along with 95% of the rest of the courses I have to take) are a waste of my time. I mean, for crying out loud, I'm going for a business degree. How hard is it to run a business? Balance input with output to make a profit. Duuuuuuhhhh. They have all these classes on leadership and other such nonsense. What are they going to tell me that I haven't already experienced by having a job? It's not like there's some super secret managerial technique that they can teach me that will make me the best supervisor in the world.

"All you have to do is play this ultra-high frequency tone three times a day and your employees will increase their efficiency 20%." Every business is different, every job is different, and nothing I learn in those classes will help me be a better leader. Either I'm a good boss and listen to my employees (when possible) or I'm a jerk and do whatever I can to get ahead.

But I digress. The economy class is the epitome of such stupidity. "If you want to sell something, first you have to make it. If you want to make something, first you have to figure out how." Holy Hannah! Are there people in our higher educational systems today that sit in these classes and say, "Huh, so you can't lay everyone off and still make money? Who knew?" It's so painful, and it's only made worse by the self-righteous instructor who just knows that what he's teaching could one day save your life.

And it all boils down to economy sucks because I don't have any money. Stupid $140.00 books. What a load of bull.

*Mushroomed-to be kept in the dark and shoveled a bunch of horse manure.

Bucking the System

So I found out today I have the Loudest Lunchbox Zipper In the World. It's probably the loudest zipper period, but if I just put "loudest zipper in the world" some minds will go straight to the crotch. Unfortunately I made this discovery at the start of my day in my ultra-quiet cubicle. To put you in the proper mind frame, imagine trying to open and eat a bag of potato chips at the library. You slowly tear open the top, the screeching plastic ripping apart, only slightly masked by the half-hearted cough you let out to try and cover it. Then take the chips, and one by one put them in your mouth. Of course you have to struggle to get your lips closed so the crunching sound will be somewhat muffled. All the while everyone around you knows exactly what your doing and the only thing you've accomplished with this charade is to make yourself look both like a jerk and an idiot.

So that was a great way to start my day. You may be asking why I, a grown man of...some age would be bringing a lunchbox to work. Well I'll tell you. While 99% of the blogs I have read have decided they are going against the norm and not starting a diet this year (FYI, 99% would probably be considered the norm, I don't know where ya'll got your math skills), I've decided to fight this trend by going with the other supposedly more prevalent trend of starting a diet.

Yeah, that's right. I'm a guy, and I'm dieting. After all, swimsuit season is just around the corner. But seriously, I'm fat. Fattie McGee ain't got nothin' on me. There are things that jiggle on me long after the ride has stopped. After serving this country by living in a tropical paradise for a few years, I got out to a life of decadence and sedentariness (it's a word, I looked it up). It has slowly been catching up to me over the years, until finally I breathlessly arrived at my desk one day to realize that walk up the single flight of stairs was hard.

So no more soda or fast food for me. And since everything here at work more or less falls into one of those two categories, I have been relegated to ranks of schollchildren everywhere, with a pretty new red lunchbox with an incredibly loud zipper. Well, it's actually 2 zippers, but I only use one of them and open my lunchbox halfway, which forces me to try and shimmie several oddly shaped lunch-type objects out throughout the day. Oh, I forgot that part. Part of my diet is to eat several small meals a day. So I'm not just ripping into this sucker around noon. Oh no. This goes on all day long. I feel such pity for those who sit around me.