Try Not To Touch Your Genitals Or Eyes

Today is/was the shortest day of the year. I hope you celebrated as I did; by shaking your fist at the sun and calling it a coward.

In observance of this day, here's a grab bag of random musings that never quite made it to the 'post' button.
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I. Fucking. Knew. It. Seriously. This news comes as a shock only to morons.
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Bobby Bare Jr. is just one of the many fine reasons I need to schedule a trip to Austin for SXSW within the next few years.
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After owning a cell phone for almost an entire year, I remain nonplussed with the technology. Not that I don't think it's great that the technology works in ways we could have only dreamed about even a mere fifteen years ago, or that people around the world are finding it easier to communicate. But somehow this human achievement seems like building the Taj Mahal, only to fill it level-full with excrement. Millions and millions of people, all chattering away like magpies on crack, but never really doing much other than recycling information to each other. 56 channels and nothing on.

And I feel as if I'm just left with another damn thing I have to cram into my pocket every morning.

And don't even get me started about texting.


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I'm still unimpressed with Facebook. So unimpressed that it seems the only time I'm ever there is to verify the occasional friend request. Apparently there are community groups and games and applications for the site. But since I can't get into the virtual fun of farm mafias, nor milk a sense of community from the glowing, rectangular chunk of plastic I call a monitor, those cherries don't hold much flavor. But I suppose it's just as useful of a social tool for not giving a shit about people as my current one. Although, I could argue that my current method of not giving a shit requires no electricity and has zero carbon footprint. That's right, my ambivalence has gone green.
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And while I'm on the topic of flash-in-the-pan trends of the moment, I finally had a funny idea for Twitter account that wasn't already taken and then ruined. So now my penis has a twitter page. I know ultimately, it will prove to be too exciting for you to ignore.

FOLLOW MY COCK!


I would make an impassioned plea for y'all to please stop using Twitter. That plea would include points like Twitter is not for mature, grown adults; it's for vacuous tween girls. I would argue that it's for people who would rather stare droolingly at their phones like lobotomized apes than actually notice (much less interact with) the world immediately in front of them.
I would even point out that mutha-humpin' RETAIL OUTLETS now post updates on the service, and yet no one in their right mind would ever ask Sears to CALL them every time they updated a sale in their lawn care center:
"Hi! This is Skip over at A.V. & S. phone services, and I just wanted to let you know that we're having a 35% off sale on everything in our store for the next twelve minutes!"
"How did you get this number, Skip?!? And why do you keep calling every half hour?"
"Mention this phone call and get an additional 5% off any purchase over $57.00"
"What? Stop calling me! I only wanted to know about that one sale on wireless headsets ONCE, like three years ago, but you still call incessantly! I hate you Skip!"
"A.V. & S. wants to make this a Christmas to remember."
"Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh......." [self-inflicted gunshot sounds]

But I can't argue any of that, because twitter is now finally home to the musings of my penis, in all of it's vascular and single-minded glory.

Do yourself a favor. Take a look at the last five tweets that you received. Was it worth it? Did it make your life any more precious or memorable? Is your life fuller as a result?

The answer can only be "yes" if one (or more) of those five tweets came from my johnson.
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In case you'd forgotten, Van Morrison still rules.
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So, when a primate goes mam-grabbing, everything's cool. Smile-for-the-camera-style cool. But god forbid if I should try something that bold, suddenly I'm testing the effectiveness of pepper spray. Lousy chimp/human double standards.
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I'm getting to be quite the artist with this stuff. Although I sometimes still "color" outside the lines...
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I was cooking dinner for some friends a few evenings past, and as I cooked, I learned some new things.

It was an Asian curry dish that required coconut milk, an ingredient I had never used before. In addition to being incredibly unhealthy, it turns out that coconut milk is also overpriced and hard to locate in the grocery store (ie. not in the 'bachelor' heat-and-eat section). Yet in spite of all that, it still tastes totally amazing. I want to breathe coconut milk instead of oxygen.

Like most other "milks", coconut milk is rather bland. This is only problematic because I like my curry to have some kick. So in an effort to crank up the heat, I began slicing peppers that a friend had grown and given away. The peppers sliced and seeds removed, I stirred them into the dish, and then went back to prepping other ingredients while talking with my friends.

Five to ten minutes later, as I'm drying my hands after rinsing them off, I notice they still feel as if warm water is running over them. Twenty minutes later I'm wondering if I didn't accidentally scald myself. An hour later, I've realized why many people advise you to wear gloves when cutting and handling peppers: their oils can cause an intense burning sensation to any skin exposed to them.

Once I realized the cause of my problem, my cousin immediately began scouring the internet for any suggested remedies. I'm not a super-scientist, but I could tell as soon as she began listing off homemade cures that they were all half-baked:
"Soak it in milk." : "My hand is not a veal cutlet."
"Soak it in vinegar" : "Balsamic or red wine vinegar?"
"Soak it in gasoline" : "Absolutely not. No. Just no."

It was painfully obvious that the only tried and true remedy was time. Wait while the burning sensation abates. Wait and wait and grind your teeth and wait. And no other choice but to just wait.

So I called a friend for one last shot at a miracle cure.
"Sup?"
"Hey man, I just sliced up some chili peppers, and my hand is burning pretty bad."
"Tough."
"Yeah. I remember you said something similar happened to you, so I thought you might have some pointers or ideas."
"Here's a pointer: Don't touch your penis or your eyes."
"Yeah, that's why I remembered your story. Any particular reason you mentioned penis before eyes? "
"Last time I checked, unlike the eye, the penis is not self-flushing. Also, and this is from experience mind you, pepper oils on the cock hurt more and lingered longer than in the eyes."
"So how long can I expect this hand-fire pleasure cruise to last?"
"When does it stop? Sometimes, in the cold lonely hours just before dawn, I think I can still feel it burning..."

My hand quit hurting after about three hours.
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According to this article from BBC, for maximum matrimonial satisfaction, I should be shopping for a younger woman. Like I really needed the Fogbreather Broadcast Service to tell me that...
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Maybe It's Maybelline...
...but it's probably not.
I wouldn't think a major cosmetics retailer like Maybelline would be foolish enough to get caught up in the Peruvian human fat trade. But come to think of it, that's similar to what I said about Circuit City getting mixed up with tampering with the guinea pig genome, and look what happend there.

In case you're too lazy busy to read the above article, I'll give you a quick executive summary: Gangs in Peru are killing humans, draining their body fat, and selling it as a cosmetic that reduces wrinkles. Anyhow, I was most troubled when I read that Hilario Cudena, the group's leader, had "been killing to extract fluid for more than three decades". THREE. DECADES. Now, I don't live in Peru, so I'm not totally clear about what constitutes a criminal act in that country. But I would think murder would be on that list somewhere. Somewhere near the top. Further I would suspect that authorities would want round up anyone suspected of murder rather quickly, instead of, say for example, waiting three decades. But maybe law enforcement in that region displays an uncanny resemblance to Larry, Moe, and Curly (or Racket, Graft, and Lazy).

Or maybe instead, motive for the crime plays a part in a criminal's pursuit and prosecution. Killing for vengeance? 15-years-to-life. Killing to produce homemade Oil Of Olay? Seventy-five dollar fine and time served.

According to Hilario Cudena, this easily becomes a lifetime supply of Noxzema.

Anyhow, it might be wise to avoid unique boutique "bath & body" products for a while...
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Weird With A Beard
... http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/index.html ...
The national beard championships came and went again without me garnering any recognition for my growing the world's second mangiest beard.
Maybe next year.
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