TMI Thursday: Payback's a Bitch

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!

You might remember that story I told a couple of weeks ago prior to the TMI hiatus about how I dated a girl named Margaret once. Oh, what a wonderful night she and I had together which culminated in me nearly puking on her while swooping in for a kiss. Oh, what gay and glorious days were those!

The universe, it seems, has a grand sense of humor. It seems that things like nearly puking on your date the first time you're together kind of evens out over time. Yes, that's right. I have another story of puking and dating.

For this one, we go back to that magical year before I started grad school, but after I had graduated from St. Joe. The Ex- was still living near me, and one night I went over to her house after work so I could eat something, get drunk, and fuck her lights out.

She met me at the door, hair disheveled, glasses on, bathrobe wrapped around her body, and, to top it off, the tip of her nose was pink and she was holding a wadded up tissue. I could tell right then that my plans after "eat something, get drunk" were not going to go quite as swimmingly as I had expected.

"I'm sick," she groaned, her voice dropped an octave by the combination of a sore throat and sinuses packed full of mucus. As if I wouldn't believe her, she sniffed. Hard and loud. I could hear snot moving inside her pretty little skull while she inhaled. *snuck*

"You sounded alright over the phone when I called during my break," I offered weakly, hoping that this was some kind of ruse but knowing that it wasn't.

"I had a sduvvy node earlier," she offered, stepping back and letting me into her den of pestilence. Fuzzy slippers missing the backs completed her ensemble. Her microwave beeped as I entered, signaling that the hot water for her tea was ready (Brits, please overlook the breach of protocol here). "Afder I god off de phone wid you, id god worse."

We moved into the house and went to the kitchen. "I have dum eggs-dra soop, if you wand id," she said as I began to prepare to eat. "Id's really gud."

"Is there anything I can do for you?" I asked her, ignoring her offer of sickness soup, pulling my dinner out of the bag. I lifted down a plate and set out my food while she made herself some tea.

"Feel sorry for me," she said, shuffling from the kitchen into the den, which also served as a dining room. I sat down on the couch and she sat next to me, sipping her tea and leaning against me. I turned on some basketball. She sipped her tea.

"You cood give me some fries," she offered pitifully. I let her pick at my food, figuring I was as good as infected. Though I wanted to run screaming from the hazy cloud of disease emanating from her body, I knew that that would be considered a dating faux pas in most circles. So, she sipped her tea and leaned against me and picked through my food with her disease-ridden fingers. Inside, I cried.

I finished up and sat back and let her lean into me fully. I slipped an arm around her. Now, I'm a man what appreciates his personal space, and sitting like this was a nuisance, to say the least, but she was sick and, well, I did want to have sex at some point in the future, so I figured if I sat there, cuddling her and her viruses, it would pay off. Eventually.

As we both sat there, watching whatever game was on (I think I remember it being North Carolina versus some sacrificial lamb...*sigh*), the future began to get rosier. Without prompting, she moved her hand over my jeans and unzipped them. She then apologized for being sick, and I told her not to worry about it. She then insisted that she needed to worry about it because we had plans and blah blah blah, I forget the rest because she pulled my dick out.

And, well, at that age, when dick is in sexy girl's hand, you get an insta-chub. I told her--half-heartedly, admittedly--that she didn't need to do that. It was okay. I'd survive. She insisted.

Well, one thing led to another and, after a brief handjob, she went down on me. Disease and all. But, you know what, I didn't fucking care at this point. I was in blissful, blow job heaven.

Things were progressing nicely when she decided to slip off of the couch and, despite the fact that she was sick, she dropped the bathrobe. She was naked underneath it. Oh dear me! This really was a ruse, wasn't it? Some kind of sexual game! I'm hip! I want to play, too! So, I take off my pants and now I'm naked from the waist down. She kneels on the floor in front of me and we resume.

Then she stops and turns her head. A funny look comes over her face for a second.

"Are you okay?" I asked her. She still grasped me with one hand.

"I'll be fine," she said and resumed. A few seconds later, she did it again, but as I was in the throes of pre-orgasm, I tried to ask if she was okay, but I only managed some garbled, gurgled, groaning noise. She made a coughing sound, but then turned back to finish me off. Which she did. It was grand and glorious. I glowed radiantly.

She glowed, sickly and greenly.

But then...apparently, when I fired off into the back of her throat...it triggered a chain reaction. One that could not be stopped.

There was no real warning. There was a gagging cough, and then there was a torrent of partially-digested chicken noodle soup, tea, french fries, and semen. It landed on the couch. Unfortunately, I was on the couch.

Being that I loved her, I didn't immediately jack her in the throat and ask what the fuck was wrong with her. In fact, I had this strange sort of mixture of pity, hysterical laughter, and "oh my God, she threw up on my dick." I tried to let the pity shine through, which was a difficult task, to say the least.

She started crying. "I'm doe dorry!" she wailed, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I don't know wad happened!"

"I think...it was probably a bit much for you...is all," I offered, cleaning myself up as best I could with the napkins from my dinner. I grabbed her robe and put it back around her, and then I hurried off to the bathroom for some towels to clean up. I race, because, the whole time I'm away, I keep thinking her goddamned dogs are going to eat that if I don't get it cleaned up quick enough, because, you know, they're dogs. Fortunately, I returned before the dogs had their dibs, and I cleaned up. She's still crying and apologizing.

After getting her calmed down, I took her back to her room and tucked her in her bed. Then I put on some clothes to wash because, guess who's pants got puked on! Mine! Hooray!!!

While the pants and towels were washing, I brought her some medicine and some more tea. Because I'm a sinner like that, I had spent the night at her house a few times and I had some spare undergarments, so I was able to pull on some drawers. She fell asleep. I watched more basketball and tried to clean the stains up from the couch and carpet. Eventually, the smell chased me from the room, so I took a shower to wash off the last vestiges of disease and puke, then I curled up next to her in the bed and spent the night.

Three days later, I got sick.

Where the Wild Things Are II: The Return of Max

Max put on his wolf costume and stomped around the house.

"I'm the King of the Wild Things!" he roared.

"Keep it quiet in there," his mother called from the other room, "I have a migraine."

"The King of the Wild Things answers to no one!" Max roared, leaping from the couch like some sort of wolfskin-cloaked ninja.

"I'm warning you," said his mother, an edge of threat creeping into her voice.

"No, I'm warning you!" Max shouted. "The King of the Wild Things will eat. you. UP!" Max roared in triumph.

"I don't need this shit right now," said Max's mother. "Just go to your room until the pizza guy gets here."

So Max went to his room and sat plaintively on his bed. He folded his arms across his chest. He sneered at the door. The King of the Wild Things pouted.

"She's so mean," he said to the wall. "She doesn't appreciate me." A look of wonder crept into his eyes. "Not like...they do!"

So Max climbed into his boat and sailed across the sea, in and out of a year, until he came to where the Wild Things lived. He quickly climbed the beach and up over the hills of sand until he came to where the Wild Things were.

He saw them, huddled and shivering around a wan fire. They were quiet and despondent. Max positioned himself strategically upon a little knoll, so that he could overlook all of them and they could see him.

"Your King has returned!" he announced loudly. Suddenly, all eyes were focused on him. Max was happy. He growled in an attempt to reassert himself as the alpha wolf.

"Let the wild rumpus begin!" he shouted and began to dance there upon his knoll of return and victory.

"Wild rumpus?" said the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail-like legs. "We don't have time for a wild rumpus!"

Max stopped dancing. He stared out over the Wild Things, who all stared at him with their huge, golden eyes. Shadows from the flames flickered and danced across their features.

"Where the hell have you been?" demanded the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs. "Things went to shit after you left. The economy has completely collapsed. Unemployment is hovering around 45%, inflation is running rampant, and a bunch of barons have started holing themselves up, fighting petty squabbles over small tracts of land to increase their meager hegemony and inflate their massive egos while the rest of us starve out here. We've been dealing with a drought for the past five years, and a famine for the last three. And just this year, we've been hit with a severe case of the Wild Thing Flu. People are dropping like flies. And without a king to protect us, barbarians have become emboldened and are now crossing our goddamned borders. And the best you can offer us is a wild rumpus? Get your scrawny ass back to the castle and start leading us, oh King of the Wild Things."

"Wild...rumpus?" offered Max weakly. He knew not what else to say.

"Didn't you hear a word I just said?" crowed the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs. "Listen, you scrawny little French bastard, we are not in the mood for a wild rumpus. What we need now is more leadership, less rumpassing. Oh, you know what? Screw this and screw you. We don't need a king anyway."

"But...the wild rumpus..." Max said. An unshed tear stood in his eye.

"Come on, guys," the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs said. "Let's get out of here."

"What should we do with the king?" asked the Wild Thing that looked suspiciously like Sweetums the Muppet, but with horns.

"Let's eat him!" said the Wild Thing with the eagle's head inexplicably mounted on the mammal's body.

"Yeah, let's eat him!" consented the rest of the Wild Things.

And so they did.

"You know," said the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs, "he wasn't so bad for a king. I mean, he did focus a little too much on his own desires to lead a wild rumpus, but after that he was kind of nice. He wasn't too cruel." He leaned back against a log, crossing one leg over his knee and picking at his teeth with a twig. At this side, the Wild Thing that looked suspiciously like Sweetums the Muppet, but with horns, played a harmonica.

"So, now what should we do?" asked the Wild Thing with a goat's head and the human's body.

"I dunno," said the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs, "all this feasting has kind of killed my desire to be part of an angry mob."

There was a rabble of general consensus around the fire.

"Tastes like chicken," said the Wild Thing with the eagle's head mounted inexplicably on a mammal's body as it worried that last bits of food from a bone.

"Dude," said the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs, "that's just wrong on so many levels."

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Pumpkin Chunkin'

I might have misled you all a little bit last week. See, while that pumpkin terrified the living hell out of the four-year-old version of me, thus removing the pall over my eyes and allowing me to see pumpkins as demonic, orange globes that they truly are, this time of year isn't hell for me. Mostly because I don't live in a pumpkin patch. If I did, however, I think I'd probably be a touch more anti-pumpkin than I already am. At this point, I don't fear the pumpkins so much as I did when I was younger; I'm bigger than they are (mostly). The thing I dislike most about pumpkins? Scooping their innards out while carving them. But, I do it, because of paternal mandates and parental instinct to make happy holiday memories.

Plus, pumpkins make an excellent pie. And cookies. And, I'm not opposed to a little pumpkin-pie-flavored creamer for in my coffee. And, as Tennyson ee Hemingway pointed out a couple of weeks ago, they make excellent soup. Thanks for the sharp reminder, my antipodean friend.

They also make excellent projectiles.

As Del-V mentioned last week, there's an annual event in the wilds of Delaware centered around throwing, heaving, launching and shooting pumpkins as far as humanly possible. Being that I'm both a man and easily amused, this event really excites me--perhaps the two are intertwined, I dunno, kind of like a caduceus or something similar. I have vowed that, someday, I will attend the Annual Punkin Chunkin event live and in person. I mean, a place like Millsboro, Delaware can't be too tough to find, right?

My attention was brought to the Pumpkin Chunkin contest through a special I saw on Discovery Channel one Christmas. I think it was my first Christmas after moving to North Carolina, and while everyone was getting the midday meal ready, my brother-in-law and I sat and watched this show about how a bunch of people design and build their own machines to hurl pumpkins as far as humanly possible. It involved trebuchets and mangonels and onagers, so you know I was hooked. We actually got yelled at for holding up the meal because we wanted to see if some guy with a massive trebuchet could set a new world record. Since no man stands between my father-in-law and his holiday meals, we had to miss the final throw and eat delicious, homemade food. Oh, the agony.

As an aside...how fucking cool would it be to just own a trebuchet?

Anyway, I thought that, since we've just been through the pumpkin's greatest month when not in pie form, we could step away from blowing them up and just watch them get thrown toward the horizon.

Here's a nice little example of some of the contraptions used to punish our favorite orange gourds. It's taken from the 2004 competition.

I realize that there's nothing, technically, being blown up, but it's still effing cool, right?

Because I like to go that extra effort to try and bring you guys the good stuff, I read through the rules for the competition. Well, I can safely say this isn't some Mickey Mouse Horseshit Dog and Pony Show (as my grandfather used to say). You've got to actually know what the hell you're doing to be out there firing off your trebuchet and hurling your pumpkins into the distance.

Have I mentioned how cool it would be to have your own trebuchet? I have? Okay, then let's move this along.

Anyway, there's seven adult divisions in the Punkin Chunkin contest: air cannons, centrifugal, catapults, trebuchets, human power, human power centrifugal, and torsion catapult. I won't get into the specifics of each kind, but obviously air cannons use compressed air, trebuchets are catapults with huge counterweights on them, and centrifugals are machines that spin, generating enough force and energy to convert the pumpkins into tiny dots and craters.

In case you're wondering, there are also youth divisions for competition, broken into 11-17 year old teams and under-10s. In a word, that's effing awesome.


And, when you're done watching the pumpkins flying off into the wild blue yonder, you can head down the road and drink yourself stupid at the Dogfish Head Brewery and maybe make some girls feel really uncomfortable on the boardwalk at Rehobath Beach. Oh, Delaware, with your teeny, tiny landmass, your fighting blue hens, your three counties, and your abundance of cities that start with the letters "Mil" (Milton, Milford, Millsboro...), who knew that you held so many wondrous and delicious creations?

By the way...Delaware Board of Tourism...I'm totally available to whore myself out for your state. Just say the words and sign the checks. I even promise to talk about something other than your duty-free liquor stores.

National Novel Writing Month

Being that I fancy myself a writing type--an author, as of this writing, of no repute--I tend to read some other blogs that are heavily slanted toward the writing universe, as well. Never forget, this whole thing started out as a way to keep track of my last work-in-progress and, while I've strayed from my roots vastly (TMI Thursdays, I'm looking lovingly at you...), I am still, at the core, a would-be author bitching about not being published yet (and whining about why no one likes his favorite sports teams...if you remember the original tagline of the blog).

You can imagine, then, my amazement when I came across several writing blogs where the authors of said blogs were surprised by this whole National Novel Writing Month "contest", or NaNoWriMo for short. For those who are (yet) unenlightened, let me boil this down for you: starting on November 1, take an original concept, beat on the keys of your keyboard, crank out 50,000 words revolving around your original concept on or before November 30th. That's it. The novel doesn't have to be complete (for instance, DAW books doesn't consider a book a novel unless it's at least 80,000 words...which is my low-water mark and the goal to which I shoot upon each new project), but it does have to be 50,000 words long.

Sounds nice, right? Well, there's a problem. See, I could finish a 50,000 word novel in a day. Since people are full of themselves, there are plenty of folks who voice concerns along the lines of "How do I know that your software isn't going to steal my beautifully-crafted story that I just vomited onto the screen in less than a month and sell it and make yourself rich off of it?" The answer comes in two parts: One, you're a shitty writer. Two, instead of actually counting the words you wrote, the program converts the words you submit to the counter into some unintelligible garbage. In other words, something like "To be or not to be, that is the question" turns into "Forks must be a difficult place for you to live." This little switcheroo protects the author from having his or her work stolen while validating that they did, actually, get to at least 50,000 words.

My patented method for achieving NaNoWriMo success? Write the word "blah". Copy. Paste. Repeat. Run the word count software until you hit 50,001. Save. Submit. Rub everyone else's noses in the fact that you wrote a 50,000 word novel in about thirty minutes. Post the award on your site. Masturbate over how fucking awesome you are.

Yes, I've done NaNoWriMo two and a half times. Twice, I succeeded in achieving the mystical 50,000 word plateau (actually, one year it was 57,000, another, 65,000). The third year I was doing it, I got to 29,000 words and said to myself, "What the fuck am I doing? I hate this story, I hate the idea that I have to write this shit, and for what? A stupid little picture of a squirrel (or whatever it was) to put on my geocities site? What a waste of time." Instead, I took my time and wrote a very good story filled with likable characters and a compelling plotline that I enjoyed writing. Clearly, NaNoWriMo is not for me, at least not now. If you'll allow me a bit of self-indulgence...NaNoWriMo was beneficial when I wasn't as good a writer. I've matured past that, though. Validation isn't a .pdf of a writing award or a button I can hang on the sidebar of my site. Validation is people telling me that they liked my story, of coming back and reading it again, of maybe getting that coveted writing contract.

I'm not going to do NaNoWriMo ever again. However, I am going to write 50,000 words this month in my current work. This is mostly just a way of forcing me to get my act together, shut down the Civ III for a while, and actually put some meaningful work into my current manuscript. Instead of logging into a site and recording my progress there, I'll do it here (the NaNoWriMo word count bar is pretty fucking fabulous, I will say). And, when I get to 50,000 words, I'll finally tell you what the story is about other than hinting at it being a story set in Ancient Greece.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go masturbate over how fucking awesome I am.

Whoops

I guess I kind of fucked up that whole "I'm going to post every day for the rest of the year" thing I was attempting to do when I dropped the ball yesterday. If you're the excusing kind of person that I hope you are, then you'll realize it wasn't my fault. I was frustrated because yesterday morning, rain that nobody called for moved in and soaked the yard, thus keeping me from mowing the lawn and trimming the front bushes like I wanted to in the morning. I ended up then with a bout of cleaning Tourrette's, and I cleaned and mopped the kitchen and directed the children to clean up the living room so that I could sweep it. This ended up being that I mostly cleaned up the living room and they jumped off the furniture until I sent them to their rooms. I love how modern parenting methods dictate I can't duct tape them to a wall for punishment.

Frustrations aside, I finally got everything together and cleaned in time for me to go get some pizzas for dinner and then get everyone ready to go out Trick or Treating. Again, the weather man and I almost had a falling out. "Oh don't worry," they said, "the rain will hold off until after Trick or Treating hours are over," they said. "Nothing to worry about at all," they promised. You know what comes next.

Predictably, about halfway through our route, it started to sprinkle. A few seconds later, it started to rain harder.

Oh, fuck! thought I. What the fuckity fuck fuck am I going to do now?

Fortunately, we were under a particularly tree-lined stretch of neighborhood so that, five minutes later, when the rain stopped, we weren't too wet. The only problem was that now it was really humid and my kids started whining about being too sweaty. Hey, guys, you're getting bag loads of candy. Maybe it's a good idea to sweat some calories off prior to attempting to make the varsity Third Level of Hell team.

The rain held off so that we could make it through our usual route. We made it home safe, sound and dry. More importantly, my timing was excellent in that we went on our usual tour (minus a couple of houses without lights on this year) and made it back by a quarter till eight, which was important because that was about the point that Notre Dame kicked off. All-in-all, it was a night filled with candy, ghost hunting, slutty cow girls, and football. Win-win-win-and-win.

I did, however, have one of those parenting faux pas last night. We were all watching Ghost Hunters on SyFy (even typing that causes me to shudder) and they were showing the top five most haunted places they had been. The one where they were in the lighthouse in Florida--where the ghost leans out over the railing to look at them--was on. This scared the little boy (he's five) and so he climbed up onto my lap and curled up into a little ball. I patted his little legs and he eventually began to drift off to sleep.

However, Golden Tate ran a touchdown in for Notre Dame and I said, loudly, "Touchdown!" which startled him awake. And then I felt bad. So I patted his little legs some more and he fell asleep on my lap until halftime, where I carried him up to his bed, read him a little story, and tucked him in for the night.

My daughter, however, was enthralled with the ghost hunting and was sitting with my wife, poring over the live-feed cameras that they had set up in this old, abandoned hospital in New Jersey. Eventually (around 10 o'clock), we had to pry her from the computer and television and force her into bed.

So, overall, it was a pretty good Halloween around these parts. I realize I'm a touch belated, but, Happy Halloween, everybody! I hope yours was as good as mine.

Now, I'm going to go do some more laundry and not watch Sports Voldemort square off against Dumbledore (the Packers) in the basement of the Ministry of Magic (Lambeau). We have more important things to watch down here in the Carolinas, like seeing just how many interceptions Jake DelHomme can throw to the Arizona Cardinals in one game this time. I'm putting the over/under at three and taking the over.