Friday Morning Latin Lesson: Volume XXXVII

Well, this week marked the dreaded back to school time for most kids. Mine have been back for a month or so, but then, they're doing the year-round thing, which will definitely be nice around Christmas when they have three weeks off rather than the shortened Christmas break that they're handing out now for the traditional schools.

Of course, along with the new school year comes a whole host of other problems: new friends, new classes, new books and, of course, homework.

Now, I was usually good for getting my homework done. Surprise! Yeah, I was just that geeky that I always had it and it was usually right (I think I've shown you enough dumb-assery around here to prove that I wasn't quite a merit scholar or anything). The biggest problem I had was other people not handing in their homework.

I realize you're probably scratching your head right now, wondering just what in the Jiminy Fuck I'm talking about, but I'll explain. See, my first-year French teacher, Ilene Thurman, had a bit of a short temper when it came to people not taking her class quite serious enough. Also, Ilene had one breast amazingly larger--and saggier--than the other. She also wore a shirt that was scandalously see-through, thus proving that, yes, the one of the left was grossly more robust than the right one. We called her Ilene To-The-Left. Unfortunately, I think her gossamer navy blue shirt was her favorite, because she wore it at least once a week. And during one's formative years, that is not exactly what you think of when you spring from the bed every morning proclaiming "I hope I see some boobies today!"

Did I get off-track? Sorry about that.

Anyway, Ilene To-The-Left handed down a proclamation about halfway through the semester that anyone who didn't have their homework done would get a mark against them. The first mark was a warning shot across the bow; the second mark and every mark thereafter netted the offender a detention. And, at the time, the exchange rate for my school was 5 detentions = 1 Saturday school.

One day, late in the semester, I had forgotten my homework in my locker. She was not one to let a student go to retrieve their work. Come prepared, or don't come at all might have suited her perfectly as a maxim. So, that was my first mark. I was certain to bring my homework from then on.

Fast forward a few months. It's a new semester. The very first day of the new semester. And guess who left their French homework at home? Yeah, yours truly. But, hey, I'm good, right? I mean, I forgot my homework one other time several months prior. Again, it was done, but it was not in my hand. And, it was a brand new semester! Clean slate, right?

Not quite. Ilene To-The-Left was not amused, nor did she accept any of my apologies nor explanations nor excuses. Detention for me. *sigh* Just think about what kind of apple-polishing do-gooder I could have been had I not suffered that injustice! It boggles the mind.

To that end, I'm here to offer up a little help to the school children of the world who might suffer a similar fate. Though it might be impossible to plead your case, perhaps you can wow your teacher by pleading your case in Latin. Should you leave your assignment behind, try talking your way out of trouble with this handy little phrase:

"Canis meus id comedit."
Pronounced: "Con-eese may-oose id cohm-aid-eet."


Translation in the hovertext. And, while I never tried this explanation, I did have a dog that looked like this.

As far as I can remember, that was my only detention. Not the only mark to go down on my permanent record, but still, it was my only detention.

TMI Thursday: It Tastes Like...Victory!

If this does not sate your thirst for awesome TMI stories, then check out all the other glorious tales of things we probably shouldn't tell at LiLu's home for the staunchy raunchy, TMI Thursdays!

When I was in grad school, my chemist buddies and I tended to hang out with the physics guys a lot. It made some sort of sense, really, since the physics department was in the building adjacent to the chemistry building. In fact, our library was in their building, so we'd see them a lot in the halls.

It was this passing in the hallways that got us invited to their parties. And you know what? This is going to be counter-intuitive, but the physics guys threw some good parties. I guess they had to. If there's one department in the graduate school that has a worse male:female ratio than chemistry, it's physics. I know, shocking, huh? Anyway, in order to lower that male:female ratio, the physics guys would invite pretty much every warm-blooded, breathing female they could find to their parties. And then they'd ply everyone with alcohol. So, yes, physics is exactly like a douchebag frat. And they would have parties all the fucking time! I guess when your life revolves around numbers and Greek letters, all you have to look forward to is the sweet relief that booze offers.

This particular story takes place at a physics party.

There was this cat named Doran who was a physics grad student at the same time I was there for chemistry. Doran was older, with a real stocky, husky build and salt-and-pepper hair that trended more toward salt than pepper. Rumor had it that he had once been a physics teacher for a high school, but he got fired or retired or something. The details were a little fuzzy, but he was at ND to get a higher degree so that he could teach college or something.

More than anything in the world, I think Doran just wanted a friend. Well, and he wanted to get laid. Doran had this dating policy that we called "Flood the Market." He would ask out every female he met. And his pick up lines, while not extraordinarily lame, were pretty white bread: "Hi, my name is Doran. Would you like to go out Friday night." I guess it worked because he eventually got someone to say yes. How that panned out, I'll never know.

Anyway, Doran would also wander around the student center, asking everyone at a table if they'd like some company for lunch. And finally some poor sap would agree and Doran would sit down and chat this guy up like they were the oldest buddies. It was odd, and slightly creepy, and somewhat desperate, but he seemed happy. Except for that whole not getting laid part, which is pretty much how I knew him throughout most of my ND experience.

So, anyway, we're at a physics party, and there's Doran over in the corner, looking as shady as ever. The apartment wasn't exceedingly large, and there was one bathroom near the kitchen/laundry room that pretty much everyone used. So, I was standing there chatting with the ringleader of the physics parties, this guy named Hoop. We were discussing something male-oriented--Tia Carrere admitting in an interview to Maxim that she was hairless from the neckline down--when Doran passed by to use the bathroom.

I know you're having your doubts, but the events of that five minutes are pretty much indelibly chiseled across my memory for eternity. Plus, at the time, I thought Tia Carrere was pretty hot.

Anyway, Doran finishes up in the restroom, comes out, nods to us, picks up his half-finished beer and heads back to whatever corner he had crawled from in order to Flood the Market some more. That's when this other guy, whose name was Mark, walked into the restroom.

"Ah, Jesus!" Mark yelled. "Who pissed all over the floor?"

Hoop and I knew exactly who had been in there. Hoop (the owner of the apartment and the host of the party) called Doran on it immediately.

"Doran, you asshole, you pissed all over the floor!" Hoop yells.

"No, I didn't!" Doran exclaims.

"Look, there's piss all over the floor. It wasn't there a minute ago, and you're the only one who has been in there! You pissed all over my floor!"

"That's not piss. It's probably from where I washed my hands!" Doran saunters back across the apartment, steps into the bathroom, and looks down at the puddle on the floor beside the toilet.

That's when he set his beer on the vanity and knelt down on one knee as if he was about to propose to the toilet. He dipped a finger in the puddle...and then he tasted it.

...

Still with me?

"Yep! That's piss, alright!" Doran exclaimed. He got back up, picked up his beer, went and got a handful of paper towels, and cleaned it up. He flushed and was back in the corner.

The whole time, I stood there with a look of Oh my fucking God, he just tasted pissed off the floor written on my face, as did Hoop and Mark. And pretty much everyone else in the apartment.

And then it dawned on me.

I turned to Hoop and said, "In order for him to know that that was piss--"

"He would have to have tasted piss before!" Hoop finished my thought.

Then we shared an audible shudder.

"Jesus," I said, "Let's hope his next trick isn't to drop a turd on the ground."

"Regardless," Hoop offered, "I think this is the last party I invite Doran to."

As far as I know, it was.

Seven Awe-Sum Ways to Die

A while ago, Cora gifted me with this Awesome Award and told me to tell her seven awesome things. Well, actually, she told me to tell her seven times I've crapped by drawers, so here goes:

Monday.

Well, that was effing boring.


In lieu of yarns spun about self-defecation, I thought I'd put up something even better: Seven Awesome Ways I'm Terrified of Dying.

As a mortal, I think about death. I can't help it. What will I see when I'm going down that long, dark tube with the light at the end? A thousand Carl Carlson's, beckoning to me with open arms? I certainly hope so. Hopefully he'll have boxes of Nutty Bars waiting for me. Mmmmmm. I love you, Carl.

To that end, let me present the Seven Awesome Ways For Me to Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil:

7. Being Crushed by an Animal Carcass While Driving on the Interstate: Right away, I can hear you laughing, but I know a guy who knows a guy who knows someone who was killed this way. It's frightening to think that you can be sailing down the road, rocking out to some P!nk cranked WAY up in your car, when suddenly--BAM--a dead deer comes flying down out of the sky and crushes your widdle skull and it's all over. I guarantee you're not going to want all the free jerky you can eat in the hereafter if that's the way it ends for you. And, apparently, this happens somewhat often, when a semi or a large truck of some kind collides with an animal and throws the carcass into the air and it lands on a car going in the opposite direction. Now you're going to be watching the road AND the sky while you're driving along, aren't you?


6. Death by Cosmic Rays: Again, here's something that happens all the time, but no amount of defensive driving will save your soul. More frightening than an asteroid or comet impact--only because something will most likely survive after that--a burst of cosmic rays from some where else in the universe could be hurtling toward us right now. And nothing, not even Galactus, will stop them. These things occur when stars or masses of stars or whole galaxies just suddenly decide they no longer wish to live and they...explode...sending out all manner of high energy rays that would reduce the Earth to one bigass charcoal briquette. Good news for the environmentalists: the heat will be enough that it will burn off the atmosphere and all those pesky greenhouse gasses, and after heating up to a million degrees, the Earth can only cool down afterwards. Hooray for silver linings.


5. Being Gored to Death by Some Animal: Again, I'm looking at deer for this one, since I have ten thousand of them living in my yard and the woods adjacent to it. I figure it'd be my luck that I'll take the trash out some night, blundering along in my typically oblivious fashion, and I'll inadvertently disturb some horny buck in mid-coitus. I would totally understand it if he were to go all Pamplona on my ass and eviscerate me as payback for interrupting his special time with the Mrs. I'd do the same. Being that my ribs will be crushed from the impact, thus puncturing my lungs, I'll lay there in the grass, gasping for breath to call for help, but I won't be able to form the words. To add insult to injury, I'm sure a squirrel will bite my testicles off, just for spite. If not a deer, then there's a chance it could be a wild boar. If that happens, please refer to me only as King Baratheon at my wake.


4. Septic Anal Fissure: As much time as I spend on the toilet, I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. Or something close to it. Although, anal fissures usually are a side effect of straining too hard to push the poo out through the poop chute (I swear to you, I did get an A in Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy). Being that this occurs where poop is constantly sliding out, the crack can get infected with all sorts of nasties, which can then run rampant through your body, eating things they shouldn't...like my liver and my soul. The thing is, the lower GI tract is filled to bursting with these little beasties that can seriously fuck you up if they escape from the intestines and get into your body. Coupled with what Mike Perry told me about how lots and lots of people die on the toilet, and this all adds up to be rather worrisome. I can see the coroner's report, too: Cause of Death: Infected lesion in the ass.


3. Poisonous Spider Bite...While Asleep: You know how, statistically, the Average American eats five spiders a year while they sleep? Fuck you, I don't care if it's an internet rumor and urban legend. Five of the little bastards go crawling over our faces and fall into our mouths, being swallowed down to oblivion. Well, in North By God Carolina, we have both of the poisonous types of spiders. It would be my luck that one of them would decide to strike his revenge on the way down my windpipe, taking me with him to the big old web in the sky. You can bet your sweet ass that I'll be writing Some Pig in that thing...and then the next week I'll write Some Bacon in the web.


2. While Doing the Nasty: I've always joked that it would awesome to die during sex, that way I could cum and go at the same time! Tiddy-boom! Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal. But, seriously. I can't imagine the ignoble notoriety that I would garner for firing off some sweet release and then giving up the ghost. Now, I won't lie; I'm a man of ample proportions, and I can only imagine that it would do my partner no good to suddenly have my bulk crushing down on top of her. Not only that, but I like to drink a lot of coffee and eat a lot of bacon, so you can imagine what ELSE would come shooting out of me shortly after I began sleeping the sleep of eternity. Yeah, no one's going to forget--or forgive--that, should it happen. Although, it would be awesome to go all rigor mortis with a stiffie. Maybe if this does happen, they can prop me up in a public restroom somewhere and flick off the lights.


1. Being struck in the head by a meteorite: You might think it's a freak thing that a chunk of space rock makes it all the way to the ground. Most of them burn up in the upper atmosphere, leaving dust trails glowing across the sky and causing people to ooh and aah over their majestic beauty. However, some 10,000 to 20,000 meteorites actually make to the surface each year! Most of these land in the oceans and we never see them again, but sometimes, they will hurtle through a house, punching a hole in the roof, stairs, chairs, beds, and curious bystanders wondering "What the hell is that racket?" If this happens to me, I will, of course, be sitting at my computer, and most likely will be doing something lascivious. The coroner will come and find me, and there on the screen with be Teutonic Beauties wearing See-Through Nipple-less Lederhosen and spanking each other with wooden paddles in a tub of whipped cream. Naturally, I'll be sitting there, without pants, dick in hand, a beatific smile on my face, and a meteor lodged in my skull.


So there you have it, my Seven Awesome, Irrational Fears about how I'm going to die. I hope this satisfies your curiosity, Cora, and makes up for the fact that I only crapped myself once in those seven.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Peeps Saga

I knew, last week, when I was telling everyone about how much I loved me some peeps, that a lot of you weren't Peeps fans. And while I will never understand this, I fully accept the fact that you are marshmallowphobic. Frankly, I embrace it. I mean, if you're not eating the Peeps, then that saves more for me, right? Win win, baby.

And while the movie I showed last week was cool and all--you know, the one where they had the Peeps and it looked like they were various types of fireworks and whatnot--it wasn't really blowing shit up. So, why not blow some Peeps up this week?

You know that it pains me to watch Peeps ruined in such a way, but I'm doing it for you, the people who loves them some splosions and such. Don't say I'm not a giver, because I'm willing to sacrifice some of my favorite disgustingly sugary treats for you readers. It's like a written hug or something.

The key to this expansion thing is that marshmallow, for all it's sugary goodness, has a lot of air whipped into it. When you microwave the Peeps, the air gets hot and expands. Okay, let me rephrase that. Water vapor in the air within the Peeps gets excited when you microwave it, which causes those hydrogen-oxygen bonds to wiggle back and forth a lot more, which causes heat. As the bonds wiggle more and more, more heat is produced. As the heat is produced, something needs to absorb it, so the air heats up. As the air heats up, it expands. Since it's trapped in a somewhat solid matrix of sugar, the air pushes out on the soft marshmallow, which causes it to expand like that. The heat also helps to melt the marshmallow, giving the added blobby effect.

The heat that melts the marshmallow, though, is probably caused by the vibrations of the hydrogen-oxygen bonds in the sugar itself, but that would also contribute to the overall heating, expansion and melting effect seen above. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It's the polarizability of the -OH bonds that causes the microwave to have any efficacy at all.

The same thing (minus the melting) happens to a marshmallow when you put it in a vacuum. Except, here the air is expanding because it is being pulled out of the marshmallow instead of expansion through heating. Put a marshmallow in a Bell jar and evacuate it, and it swells up huge before collapsing upon itself.

While all of that is cool, it's not really blowing anything up, per se, is it? No, it's not. It's expanding due to heat and pressure changes, but not a true explosion.

So, what happens when you shove a firecracker up a Peeps' ass and light it?



That was so much more satisfying.

EDIT: I had to pop the word verification back up yesterday. I had some asshole dillweed Chinese fucktard spamming my comments. I'll probably drop it again in a few days. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Concerning 102

Did you hear? I hit 100 Followers last week! Oh, right, I dedicated two posts to it. I guess you have heard.

Anyway, I acknowledged number 101, which was Jeney, last week. However, I've kind of neglected number 102. Well, I mean, aside from making fun of him some. See, I can do that. I know him.

Number 102 is my cousin, Napoleon. We first met Napoleon back when I told you about my made up girlfriend, Sarah Klein. He's the one who told my mom that my made-up girlfriend and I were going to be having the sex, and I got in trouble for it. He certainly made my childhood interesting.

So, a couple of weeks ago, Napoleon sent me an email detailing about how he was preparing for a tour of duty in Iraq. He's part of the Indiana National Guard, and he's already spent a year in Afghanistan. In the email, he added a link to his blog where he was detailing his latest adventures in the Middle East. However, the link in the email was broken.

Feeling like a dutiful person, I reported back to him that it was broken. He said he'd look into it, and then I told him that he might want to use Blogspot or Wordpress (I think he was using blog.com or something). I was pretty happy to see that he was writing a blog because that would keep me in touch with him, plus, since he's dyslexic, I thought that writing could only be a good thing for him.

A couple of days later, I got an email from him saying he now used Blogspot. A couple of days after that, and I picked up my 102nd follower.

Now, you know I can't leave the story off there, right?

One fine summer day, while we were at The Lake, my cousin Napoleon and I were hanging out on our shaded lot along with our friend Tammy. We were probably around twelve or so at the time. Napoleon had gotten himself a big bag of M&Ms from somewhere, and since he has a heart of gold, he was sharing his M&Ms with us. Tammy and I, however, kind of decided to play a bit of a prank on Napoleon.

You know how, when you're about that age, you titter and tee-hee about how eating green M&Ms will make you horny? Well, we shared this information with Napoleon, and just sort of rolled his eyes. That's when we decided to append the different colors of M&Ms to different afflictions. We told him the red ones would make him mad, and that the orange ones would make him shy and cause him to blush. We then told him that the yellow ones would make him pee a lot, and that the brown ones would give him terrible diarrhea. He scoffed at our childish attempts at humor, took his M&Ms, and went home.

Fast forward by one day, and my father is walking by the bathroom window down at the other cottage. We didn't have air conditioning at our lake cottages, and so the windows had to be open all the time. My father hears Napoleon in the bathroom, moaning in pain.

"Napoleon!" my father calls through the window, "What's wrong?"

"I've got diarrhea," he moaned. "Badly."

"You okay?" my father asks.

"Yeah," Napoleon yelled back, "I just need to stop eating the brown M&Ms!"

"Eating the brown M&Ms? Where the hell did you get a silly notion like that?"

"Matt and Tammy told me yesterday when I was eating all my M&Ms. And today I have diarrhea."

Behold, the power of suggestion.

Afflicted by the Plague

I was going to write something here yesterday, but I didn't. Nothing like understating the blatantly obvious, I realize, but that's me. The reason for my lack of writing is that I've been taken down by the smallest of foes: the nefarious summer cold virus.

I'm not sure how this little bastard snuck into my body. Actually, I do. My wife has been fighting the nefarious summer cold for days now. At night, when reclining in bed together, she's been breathing her noxious, infectious miasma upon me. Thus it is that the aforementioned nasty little bugger has entered into the temple that is my body and has rendered me eloquently exhausted, which is truly unfortunate for one who refers to himself as "indefatigable."

I mean, I've been afflicted with much worse maladies. At the beginning of the summer, I was struck down by the flu, and it might have even been the most vile and worrisome Swine Flu! Take to the streets, screaming and running now. At the time, our buddy H1N1 was running rampant upon his pale horse through the streets of my little swath of North By God Carolina. And yet, I got up everyday, took the kids to school, and I shuffled off to work where I reformed matter to satisfy my desire. I hardly batted an eye in the face of that most terrible and horrendous affliction! Ha ha! Do your worst! I laugh in your piggy little porcine eyes.

But this? This little sniffle has grabbed me by the lapels and dragged me down into the very depths of wanton despair and lassitude. It's nothing more than a stuffed up head--though, my head is filled with a most heinous and syrupy mass of vibrant green pudding--and a bit of a sore throat, but the true nature of this beast is one that has rendered me...dare I say it...fatigued!

This isn't any typical exhaustion. It's a kind of languor that seems to accumulate in my limbs, making my hands and feet feel as if they weigh a hundred pounds apiece. It's difficult to drag them from one place to another, and while my dear friend--the Target brand knock-off of Dayquil--does help me to feel better, it's a temporary thing. As the four hour time period begins to wind down, the heaviness returns to my hands and feet and--worst of all--my eyelids.

So, if you'll forgive me, I'm not going to be blogging yesterday, as I'm trying to recover from this vile and unctuous pathosis. In fact, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go take a nap, so that I can return to normal blogging activities in the near future.

Friday Morning Latin Lesson: XXXVI

Defici epicus, my friends![1] Last Friday, as Elliot reminded us, was the 32nd anniversary of the day Elvis died. Instead of showing you what a dirty old man Ovid was, I should have been talking about the death of the King of Rock 'n Roll. That, my friends, is a failure of an epic proportion.

The reason this is important to me isn't so much because of the King himself. No, my love for Elvis comes from an Elvis Impersonator. Oh, no, wait. An Elvis Tribute Artist, and arguably one of the finest in all the land. His name is Keith Henderson, and he's a propane man by day and an Elvis tribute artist in the evenings and weekends. I say "the best" because he has won awards declaring him as such.

When I first moved down to North Carolina, I tried to tutor chemistry as much as possible in order to help pay the bills and offset the meager restitution offered by the biotech I worked for. My very first job was tutoring this lovely young lady in high school chemistry, and so every Tuesday night I'd head down to her house and we'd work through some problems and worksheets and such and that would be it. I, of course, met her parents and her dogs, and then one night I was in the kitchen and noticed a room that was filled with Elvis memorabilia. And then, one night, Keith walked through carrying a blue jumpsuit with rhinestones sewn onto it, and it was then that I knew what was going on.

And I loved it. This was one of the greatest jobs I ever had. I got to hang out with a lovely family for an hour a week, talk chemistry, and one of the members of the household was a Elvis tribute artist. What wasn't to love? So, when her brother (who was away at college) needed help with college-level organic chemistry the following summer, I jumped at the opportunity to help him, too. I did such a good job helping them both that I was given some tickets to one of Keith's shows. My wife and I were so excited to go. And we went. People, I even forsook the second half of the Notre Dame/Michigan game that year (which Notre Dame won, thankyouverymuch) to see this.

To say I loved it is an understatement. It was hilariously good fun, mostly because Keith does a great job and pours a lot of energy into the role, but also because he doesn't take himself too seriously, which just helps with the fun. We've actually seen him twice. We're kind of Keith Henderson groupies. And that's not something I am ashamed to admit.

So, if ever you get a chance to see Keith Henderson and his band the Illusions, do it. If for nothing more than the chance to say you did. And, if you get to meet him after the show, tell him I sent you. Also, tell him this:

Credo Elvem vivere!
Pronounced: "Cray-doh El-waim wee-ware-aye!"

Translation in the hovertext. Also, THAT'S the blue jumpsuit! And his daughter that I tutored is on the right side of the picture.

The reason I like this little Latin phrase is because it's simple and teaches quite a bit about not only the language but also the grammar. So, I'll do a quick dissection here:

Credo is the first principal part of of the verb credere, which means "to believe (that)". It's the first person singular form and translates as "I believe," and it is from where we derive words such as "creed", "credence" and "credit."

Elvem is a Latinized form of the name Elvis, and since it ends in -is it takes what is called the "third declension". Declensions are ways of changing the ending to nouns depending on how they're used in the sentence, i.e. subject, direct object, object of a preposition, etc. The -em ending is in the accusative case because it is the subject of the indirect statement.

vivere is the verb "to live", and a word-for-word translation would be "I believe Elvis to be living", which is kind of...meh...so cleaning up the translation leaves us with "I believe that Elvis lives".

And there you have it: an actual Latin lesson. Have a good weekend, everyone.

[1] "I have failed epically!"

TMI Thursday: I Can Feel It, Coming in the Air at Night. Oh No.

If this does not sate your thirst for awesome TMI stories, then check out all the other glorious tales of things we probably shouldn't tell at LiLu's home for the staunchy raunchy, TMI Thursdays!

Did you see how long that shit yesterday was? Heh. I say that to my wife nearly every day. She still hasn't cracked a smile.

Anyway, that was a long post that took me several days to compose. Sorry that there were a few typos. By the time I was finished, my frontal lobe felt like grape jelly and my eyes were threatening to turn themselves inside out. But, hey, a few of you felt nice, and that was the idea.

Since yesterday's post was so long, I decided I'll give you a short one today. Sorry. I suck, I know. But it's still plenty juicy.

Despite my girthy girthiness, I do eat, from time to time, something other than cake and bacon. In fact, one of my favorite treats of all time is those dried apricot things. Jesus, I love them. I think most of the charm is that they have the size and consistency akin to a small child's ear. They're chewy and sweet and--dammit, if the kids weren't in bed while I'm writing this, I'd head on down to the store and get a box.

Here's another gory secret from my life: sometimes, there actually is trouble in paradise around the old Jenks Household. Sometimes, I get mad at my wife and we do things like raise our voices and stare daggers at one another and talk sarcastically in a tone mockingly imitative of the other. It's true. The ugly side of paradise.

Being as how I'm not one of the wife-beatin' types (despite living in North Carolina, you know, the Fun Carolina), I have to exact my revenge in certain different ways.

This is where the apricots come in.

Have you ever read the package? Do you see what they are preserved with? Sulfur dioxide. It's a nice little preservative; it keeps the apricots good and stale and elasticy, kind of like eating peach rubber bands. However, the true glory of the preservative is that it turns to hydrogen sulfide in your stomach. This gives a beautiful rotten eggs smell.

So, sometimes, when I'm mad at my wife, I'll go to the store and buy a package of the apricots, especially if I know she's going to be working that night. I'll come home and pound a few of them. Unfortunately, the effects usually don't happen the same night that I eat the apricots, so a couple of days after the fight, I'll finally settle in and be good and ripe. Those are the nights when I go to bed before she comes home, and I'll pull the covers up real tight around my body and keep still. I'll read a book or watch tv or something. All the while, I'm turning the atmosphere green beneath the covers. Not only that, but the foulness just sits down there and ferments. After a couple of hours, it's positively toxic.

Coincidentally, that's about the time she'll come home with a big smile on her face because she's so happy to see me and happy that we're no longer fighting. She'll bounce into the room, strip down, get her pajamas on, and then throw back the covers on the bed...only to be punched in the face with the smell of some infernal alchemical brew that will cause her eyes to water and her throat to seal shut so that it doesn't have to take that besmirched air into her body.

Click on the cartoon to make it bigger.
As she's standing there, retching and gagging, trying desperately to draw clean, fresh air into her lungs before she passes out, I'll look over, innocent as a child, and say, "How was your night, honey?"

Oh sure, I've delayed the make-up sex by a couple of days...but don't they always say revenge is a dish best served cold? Or two days later amidst a foul-smelling miasma of death and destruction? I thought so.

Pop the Champagne! It's Celebration Time!

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