Klingons

Weapons Of Ass Destruction

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

So, this morning I was thinking about toilet paper.  (Never mind what I was doing at the time.)  And it occurred to me that toilet paper is the keystone to civilized behaviour in the western hemisphere.

You know I’m right.  All you have to do is walk into a public washroom that’s out of toilet paper, and you realize how superficial our veneer of civilization really is.

I know lots of countries get along just fine without TP, but I want to be there to see the expression on the first westerner who finds nothing but a pitcher of water in the bathroom instead of a cottony-soft roll.  Or, hell, I’ll settle for seeing their faces while they watch this video.

You know what bothers me most about this?  Water might be “very-very clean”, but it’s also very-very wet.  And there’s nothing to dry off with… except maybe the hand towel… if there is one… not that I’d want to touch it…

Yep, toilet paper rules the modern western world.  All our technological toys are as nothing next to it.  People may profess utter dependence on their electronic devices, but would you rather be caught without your technology or without toilet paper?  I’m thinking that sleek new iPhone isn’t very absorbent.

Centuries ago, people used whatever was at hand.  Apparently wealthy Romans used silk or goose necks.  (I presume the necks were no longer attached to the geese.  I’ve been around geese enough to know you don’t wanna let those suckers anywhere near your tender bits.)

Grass, leaves, and pine cones worked for indigenous people, though I assume their elders passed down critical wisdom like ‘leaves of three, let it be’ and ‘use the pine cone with the direction of the scales unless you need a hemorrhoidectomy’.

In earlier America, corn cobs were a common choice.  Apparently they were quite comfortable when fresh, but after they dried they became weapons of ass destruction.  No wonder everyone heaved a sigh of relief when Sears and Eaton’s started printing their mail-order catalogues.

Today, toilet paper engineers are the unsung heroes of the western world.  These amazing folks create a product that’s strong enough to withstand zealous scrubbing of regions better left undescribed, yet designed to fall to pieces seconds after contacting water so your toilet doesn’t plug.  Soft enough to prevent abrasion, yet not so soft as to leave Klingons circling Uranus.

And it’s not just the engineers who should be lauded.  Then there’s the next step:  convincing consumers to buy.  First the marketing geniuses have to come up with umpteen ways to say ‘our product wipes your ass best’ while avoiding any scatological reference whatsoever.

Then they create ads inexplicably featuring fluffy kittens and cartoon bears.  Those commercials bring out the worst in me.  Every time I see them, I think of the joke about the bear and the bunny taking a dump side by side in the forest.  The bear turns to the bunny and says, “Do you have a problem with shit sticking to your fur?”.  The bunny says, “No”, and the bear says, “Good!”, grabs the bunny and wipes his ass with it.

I can just see the tagline:  “Soft as a bunny, strong as a bear”.

And now you know what it’s like to live inside my brain.

Sorry about that…

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I’m driving 800 miles again today so I won’t be able to respond to comments until tomorrow.  “Talk” to you then! 🙂

What Was IN That Salad?!?

/ Diane Henders / 28 Comments

So, the other night I was gambling in Vegas with James Spader and a couple of Klingon women in 70s-style fun-fur maxi coats.

Then things got weird.

As I noted in I Dream Of Dillweed, I usually don’t remember my dreams unless I’m sick.  Well, physically sick.  Let’s not get into the delicate issue of mental health.

But the other night I had this vivid dream, and James Spader was in it.  I have no idea why; I haven’t watched TV for years, and the last thing I saw him in was Boston Legal.  Also, though he’s a fine actor, if I was going to dream of an actor there are lots of others I’d prefer to meet in my dreams, ifyaknowwhatImean.

The Klingon women made sense… I guess.  I’ve been a Star Trek fan pretty much all my life, but Klingon women aren’t really my type.  Though they could have been Klingon men in drag.  It’s hard to tell with Klingons.  Either way, they weren’t doing it for me.

Also, I was winning in Vegas, which is weird in itself.  I was playing video poker (my game of choice, so that was normal).  But the machine was spitting out real coins, which doesn’t happen anymore.  And I was chortling and stuffing the coins into the capacious pockets of the white painter’s coveralls I wore.

That was all fine until I got the Superhero Distress Call.  I thought my blogging buddy Tom was the only one who has an inner superhero, but apparently I do, too.  Sadly, she seems a little on the incompetent side.

In the first place, I got my cape on backward.  Which actually turned out to be a good thing because I’d forgotten to put on the rest of my superhero suit, so I was running down the sidewalk holding the cape closed over my bare ass.

But that started to make sense when I arrived at Superhero Central a few moments later, and it turned out I had the clumsiest superhero suit ever invented.

All the other superheroes were suited up and leaping into flight, and I was still struggling to pull my suit out of the storage locker.  It was stuck underneath its belt, which consisted of a bunch of heavy diving weights strung together on aircraft cable.

I was still trying to yank it free when the Bad Guy launched himself into the air from a black spiderweb trampoline.  (The Bad Guy was dressed like Robin from the old Batman comics, except he wore black gloves.  That actually makes a bit of sense, because I’ve always thought Robin was disturbing anyway.)

Fortunately, one of the other superheroes realized I was in trouble and came back to rescue me.  And he was a handsome superhero, too, which was nice.  In fact, he looked remarkably the way I picture John Kane, one of the characters in my books – no surprise, since I’ve been writing my fingers to the bone the last couple of weeks.

Problem was, he didn’t do anything useful; he just jammed a Cone Of Silence (anybody remember that from Get Smart?) over our heads.  And then I woke up.

Earlier that evening at the pub I had eaten what they called a “California Salad”:  Mixed greens with Brie, spiced roasted pecans, sliced apples… and laced with much-too-sweet cranberry sauce.  And no, I didn’t dream that, though I kinda wish I had – the cranberry sauce was gross.

But now I wonder what else was in there…