This will be my last post until. . . well. . . until I can track down an Internet Cafe in Kona, Hawaii and access Blogger, I guess. Look for me, maybe, on the day after Christmas or so. Who knows? Vacation, you know.
So, yeah, orange alert, with particular scrutiny on the airlines. And I'm willingly going to plop my tush on an airplane seat during this heightened alert? On Christmas Day, no less? Absolutely. Is it a little disconcerting? Maybe a little, but I look at it this way: what better time to fly then when the entire airline industry is on eggshell alert?
Hell, I'd be more scared if we were on green alert, with Osama bin Laden's head stuck on a pike on the White House lawn. THAT'S when terrorists would be more apt to strike: when we're complacent and drunk on victory. As it is, I'll probably be patted down with extra exploratory hands, and my fingernails will be filed down so they're no longer lethal, and then I'll board a plane that is full of passengers who have generally been given the same treatment. Everyone would be appropriately de-fanged and de-clawed, except for that one unknown air marshall packing a Desert Eagle and a steely-eyed gaze.
They may not be the friendly skies they once were, but they're probably pretty safe.
Oh, and if a terrorist does happen to sneak on board with a fingernail clippers intent on hijacking my plane, he should know that a shaved-headed young man with a black belt will be leading the charge to subdue him, and that I like to kick at the nuts. He's been so warned.
Melissa, of course, is giddy with anticipation. You know that, when a woman gets a Brazillian wax to prepare for something, she's probably giddy with anticipation. This all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii is pretty much the biggest thing to happen to her since, well, her Brazillian wax, I guess.
So, yeah, Merry Christmas to all you readers out there, and for you Google searchers who keep coming here looking for "exposed+thongs" "whale+sperm+gallons" and "Britney+Spears+butt+sex." If I fly over your state, I'll be sure to flush the toilet a couple of times.
Oh, and if you could, pause for a moment and reflect on this.
'I Want To Believe,' Says Presidential Hopeful
BURLINGTON, VT (Rhodes Media Services) -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, speaking from his campaign headquarters in Burlington, today announced that he would be running an unprecedented "X-Files" campaign based on the popular Fox drama.
Dean said his new campaign will eagerly embrace all manner of conspiracy theories regarding the Bush administration and he will devote long hours and money to holding up unsubstantiated claims as established fact. Dean floated a trial balloon for the new campaign direction earlier in the month in an interview with Diane Rehm by suggesting the Bush administration knew well ahead of time about the impending 9/11 attacks, but did nothing to stop them. Campaign advisers said they liked the response.
Dean, who now openly refers to himself as "Spooky" Dean, said that he "wants to believe" that everything the Bush team does is a conspiracy but, lacking any real proof, he's fine with just making grandiose claims to assuage his adoring fans who also really wish Mulder and Scully would have romantically gotten together way earlier in the television series.
"You know," said Dean while chumming it up with reporters. "There's an interesting theory out there that suggests President Bush maintains a ranch on Mars and that he visits it on a monthly basis. Well, nobody's seen the ranch, so how can we be sure it does or does not exist? Until I see evidence that it's not on the Martian surface, I want to know why Bush is spending so much money on maintaining it and keeping such technological space travel and colonization innovations from the American public."
Among those to endorse the new "X-Files" direction were Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash) who said the capture of Saddam Hussein was staged for political gain, and former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, who "wondered aloud" whether the Bush administration is actually currently holding Usama bin Laden and plans to unveil him closer to the 2004 election.
(Warning: toilet Talk Ahead. You've Been Warned)
As far as I know, there are two common reactions to food poisoning.
On the one hand, there's the stomach-clenching, fever inducing cavalcade of vomit and dementia common to, say, uncooked chicken that has sat on the counter for three hours.
On the other hand, there's the food poisoning that leaves your mental capacity in perfect functioning order, and doesn't require puking, but manifests itself in a stream of diarrhea so urgent and unrelenting, you wonder if you're going to shrivel up into a dehydrated raisin while still crapping and crapping and crapping.
This weekend involved food poisoning of the latter persuasion.
Friday night, Melissa and I ate at a local Mexican restaurant, where I satiated my desire for seafood by ordering a crab and shrimp chimichanga. It wasn't the greatest culinary masterpiece ever created, but it filled the hunger hole. We hurriedly ate, and then dashed off to watch the interminable cinematic chunder-fest known as "Mona Lisa Smile."
QUICK MOVIE REVIEW ASIDE: If you want a formulaic splash of saliva thrown in your face, complete with stereotypical characters practically drawn from a book entitled "Make Your Own Predicable Movie Characters In One Easy Step," this is the movie for you. The flick had a string of great actors called upon to play roles that could be realistically portrayed by pretty much anyone.
Although the movie was definitely excrement-worthy, I'm fairly certain it was the Mexican meal ingested previously that led to the defecatory nightmare I endured the following day.
Melissa had her family Christmas on Saturday, an event that started with Christmas dinner at Applebees (weird, I know, but you have to know her family to fully understand). I regarded the meal in front of me with growing revulsion, and I had no idea why. Something inside me was saying, "wait, man, don't put anything else down here. We're still working on something from last night." I picked half-heartedly at the riblets in front of me, and asked for a doggie bag.
>From Applebees, we journeyed to Melissa's mom's house for a gift exchange. By that time, I was feeling particularly crummy. I tried laying on the floor in the hopes of settling my roiling stomach that sounded more and more like a busy steel mill with each passing minute.
The exact time of the first anal delivery was 4:38 p.m. I know this because I was staring at my watch when it arrived. I knew, with absolutely no doubt in my mind, that I wanted to be in the safety of my own place to deposit that which had deposited in my colon. It's just one of those things you intuitively understand. So, with some hurried pressure on Melissa to leave, we hightailed it home, where I ran to the bathroom and let loose with an deluge not seen since Noah sailed his Ark.
What transpired after that was an evening of diarrhetic torture. Every five to ten minutes, I had to shuffle to the bathroom to spritz out a couple cups or so of butt liquid at a time. I was running a slight fever, too, and I found it almost impossible to stay warm. But, it was the constant crapping that was, by far, the worst. Sometimes, I would think I was all done for that round, and I would stand up and start to leave the bathroom, only to do an about-face and scamper to the bowl yet again.
Seriously, I would rather have been doing the vomit thing. At least with vomiting, there's a feeling of accomplishment afterward. With vomiting, you can kind of gauge when the next bout will hit. You usually have a half-hour or so in which to nap and recover between hurls.
Not so with explosive diarrhea. There's no schedule to unrestrained trots. It sets its own schedule, and the time between poops is usually "NOW! RIGHT NOW! OH, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S PURE AND HOLY, RIGHT NOW, NOW, NOW!"
I dared not sleep until I was reasonably certain the craps had left me behind, and it wasn't until 2:30 a.m. that I finally felt confident enough to risk sleep and possible bowel relaxation. In my feverish slumber, however, even then I dreamt I was sitting on the can.
By 10 a.m., the ordeal was finally over, and I slept luxuriously until 12:30 p.m. confident that I would not, in fact, shit in my bed.
And I was more thirsty than at any time in my existence. I'm swearing off Mexican seafood dishes for life. What a shitty experience.
