I’m inventing a new measurement for the exertion one uses to force out a fart.  I’m calling it the grönt.  A fart that slips out on it’s own takes or by mistake takes 0 grönts.  A fart that’s hiding up behind your liver and takes some coaxing may take upwards of 47 to 50 grönts.  Your average bacon and egg omelet fart takes about 15-18 grönts.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that earlier this afternoon I got into a red area with my grönt calculation.  I felt a fart brewing here at work and based on lower intestine location, urgency and confidence that it’s dry, I applied a force of 23 grönts.

Sometimes a molten lava flow can snake it’s way down into the works and throw off the gyros on your lower intestine location to dryness ratio.  That’s exactly what happened today.

Had I gone with 24 grönts we would have had a shart situation.  As we all know, a shart is when you go to fart and a little shit comes out.  Depending on several other factors that I’m sure you could imagine, I’d be left sorting through best/worst case scenereos.  Best case, a turtle head poke, I’m deciding whether or not to throw my underpants away in the local men’s room.  Worse case, spitting mud, I’m tucking both my pant legs into my socks and making a run for the car.

In this case, had I applied just one more grönt, it would have been mud city.  I know this because I immediately walked, no, RAN to the men’s room at the very thought of a hull breach.  I have to give credit to the nerve endings that were on active sphincter duty.  They went from letting out the “Frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt” to battoning down the hatch within milliseconds of the impending flow of boiling Hershey’s syrup.   Thank you my nerve ending friends, thank you.

Aside from the holocaust, is there anything worse than walking to the bathroom with the full expectation of making a poop that only a rino could take for granted, just to have your dreams dashed by a series of sizeable scissor-walk farts that start popping out on their own as you approach the Men’s room?  Litterally letting the wind out of your sails!  This afternoon I went from something that could have clogged a logging river to a tiny poop that didn’t even need a wipe in about eight footsteps.  Hurricane Dennis got downgraded to a low lying fog advisory before I could make it past the coffee machine. All of it out of my control.  How my bowels tease!

Poops are a cunning mistress…..

I hate to poop. I’m just no good at it. Mostly here at work. One of main reasons is that the company chooses to “go green” by using reclaimed water in our company toilets. “Reclaimed Water” is like the regular process used to convert raw sewage into drinking water. Except they skip a couple of the last steps in the purification process. Like the step where they remove the horrid smell. And the one where they make the water clear.

I brought my concerns about using these toilets to a few friends at work and they laugh and say witty things like “it’s not like you’re sticking your weiner down in it. HA HA HA!” They are so funny.

I’ve turned my head and coughed a few times in my life and have never been told by any of the attending physicians that I was particularly gifted in sack size. So I can not fully account for the phenomenon I am about to describe.

When using the toilets here at work, within thirty seconds of my ham hitting the seat - I’ll feel that oh-so-cold tickle of water touching my scrote. It sends a shiver up my spine and makes my lips numb.

It’s not dribble-down, because this happens when I’m just hitting mid-stream.

In my mind, I visualize the root cause to be the capilary action of the just-peed-in water/reclaimed sludge whicking up a dangling scrote hair. The thought that my nut is not actually submerged in the germ stew is of little consolation.

Should I really have to get a Brazillian nut wax as well as use the paper ass-gaskets to keep from getting some sort of herpes whenever I need to take a dump at work?

I tried scooting further back on the seat to get some elevation. This was a mistake. You’ve used a playdough fun factory, right? Imagine putting a knife in front of it, but sideways. This is the visual you need. 1/2 my poop went down in the bowl as it should, the other 1/2 went up the seat and onto the back of the tank leaving an all new “high tide” mark on my butt crack.

We have two seperate toilet paper dispensers in each of our stalls each of which holding two rolls of TP. I STILL had to borrow some from next door.

This diet I’m on doesn’t help things. I’m eating so much fiber that my stomache doesn’t know where one meal ends and the next begins. This is unfortunate because somehow there is some tagging that takes place in the stomache telling your intestines where to insert “ends” on your poops. In my case they have been left out all together.

Ever watch a dog poop? It doesn’t all come out in one long pipe - it comes out in three or four neat little logs. Each log is nicely tapered at the end. That’s why dogs - and any other animal I can think of - don’t have to wipe.

I don’t have nicely tapered ends. I’ve got never-ending pipe. I’ve discovered a set of moves that gets rid of about two thirds of that last poo part - but wiping is no picnic. And at best I’m left with that uncomfortable feeling that the crayon is mighty close to the paper - if you know what I mean.

Travel is real glamorous. I got out of the day’s meetings around 6:30 and returned to the elegant Holiday Inn of Orangeburg NY for some rest and relaxation. Nature had been calling since 2, so I took time to answer. Afterward, I stood up, flushed the throne (it flushes REAL slow) and gave the hands a quick wash. The towels at the HI are hanging just over the toilet. I turned around from the sink and wiped my hands on one of the hand towels and WHOOP! It dropped into the still-flushing toilet. About a million calculations went through my mind as I was deciding whether or not to pick it out. I didn’t want the room to flood - or have to call someone up to pull it out. There was a dry corner of the towel sticking up and out of the toilet. But did I want to touch it? And once I touched it, where was I going to fling the towel? Drop it in the sink? The shower? On the floor that I would have to walk on the remainder of my stay?

I decided to split the difference with the hotel. I grabbed the towel, gave it a pull and flung it under the sink. I collected my toiletries before the toxic water could spread out from the towel - and I got out of the bathroom. I then called the front desk and asked for a new room because mine “smelled like smoke.” They saved the cost of a plumber. I saved a trip to the store to buy Lysol and a mop.

J.W. Marriott, Jr.
Marriott Company
310 West Bearcat Drive
Salt Lake City, UT
84115-2544

J.W.,

I recently stayed at one of your hotels and thought you might like some feedback.

Access to a clean bathroom is normally my first concern at a hotel given that eating out three meals a day gets my stomach squirming. Some hotels boast of having Full Continental Breakfasts. I like your crummy bagels & juice breakfast just fine. As a general rule I avoid breakfast meats when traveling. There is less squirming that way.

I think that your cleaning gals could spend a little less time folding the toilet paper so it comes to a “V” at the bottom and spend a little more time on the ol’ spit and polish. Well, not so much the spit.

Common sense tells me that a lot of vacationers and adulterers use hotel rooms for whoopee. It’s called “whoopee” because right after you yell “Whooo!” you gotta pee. I don’t have to tell you that your aim gets thrown out of whack during the “whoo” and almost always the first stream hits the seat or the floor. Then you calibrate your weapon until you hear a splash. I hope this paints an appropriate picture of why I’d like the floor and commode to be gleaming.

Next comes the shower curtain. It’s like you guys want me to make a mess on the floor. Every time I get in the shower, the curtain is on the outside of the tub. I pull the curtain inside the tub during my morning shower and when I get back that night it’s out again. I once left the curtain un-tucked and there was an inch of standing water on the floor when I was done. I had to pound on the shower wall and alert a neighbor to call down to the front desk for a bunch of towels. No way was I going to set foot into that murky germ bog.

I think your hotels are haunted. When I’m in the shower – and the curtain is placed in the tub where it belongs – the curtain will start to mysteriously creep over toward me. This does not happen at my home. Why the ghosts only attack during the morning shower, I don’t know. Perhaps you could ask that old midget lady from Poltergeist to check into it. As to the spooky curtain - I have to keep poking it back all during the shower. This is disconcerting when I am doing something that requires both hands. When I’m washing my buns I have to keep one eye on that curtain so it doesn’t broad-side me. Tell me that wouldn’t be gross!

The last thing that I’d like to bring to your attention is that not all of your customers are treated equally. My friend and his wife were staying at the Newport Marriott. Pulling back the covers they found a condom between the sheets. When the manager arrived they were immediately upgraded to a suite and received two free nights! Looking for the same treatment in Phoenix, I slipped a condom between the sheets. Your manager gave me a snide look and said, “Sir, it’s still in the wrapper…”

Thanks for hearing me out.

D. Gates

P.S. I think maybe you should use your full first name. “J.W.” makes most people think of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Aren’t you Mormon?

Last Sunday in church my four-year-old Lauren climbed up on my lap for a little break from her coloring book. She sat back and looked directly into my face and said, “Dad, you’ve got a lot of hair coming out of your nose.” I said “Thanks kid” and gave her a pinch. Then she said “how far back does it go?”

Great. That gave me an image of hair sprouting out the front of my brain, traveling down my sinuses and out though my nose. I told her that they start and end in my nose. I know this because I’ve pulled one or two in my day and they aren’t THAT long.

My tried and true way of trimming nose hair is using my big ol’ scissors here at work. When the hair gets long enough for me to grab a significant amount between my thumb and forefinger, I pull the hair into position, take the scissors and give it a whack. I usually get about a quarter inch, and a lot of it is grey. I try to make sure that there is no one around when I do this because you simply can not talk your way out of this one when the scissors are so close to your face and you are pinching a sprout of nosehair.

My wife got me a gizmo to help me with my shnozz grooming. It’s an electronic thing that has a rotating blade in it. You just stick it up there and it is supposed to trim the hair nicely at the root. Great concept. Difficult implementation. When I stuck this little buzzing doodad up my nose with it’s wildly spinning blade, it was like replacing the beaters on a hand-mixer with ostrich feathers, jamming it into my sinuses and pressing PULSE! PULSE! PULSE! Water came squirting out of my eyes, my toes spasmed and urine ran to the very tip of my wee wee. I didn’t know that I had a muscle there to stop it from leaking out, but it didn’t leak out.

I couldn’t walk around with one side of my nose neatly trimmed while the other looked like a Bonzai tree planter so I had to do the other side! I actually sat down on the toilet to do this one. Same exact sensation. So now I use my office scissors.

There are also these rogue hairs that grow out of my eyebrows. They are so long and look like something that would grow out of a mole on a Chinaman.

A few weeks ago I had arrived early for a meeting I was presenting at and started fiddling around with my eyebrows. I came across one of these eyebrow mole hairs. I lifted it up and it reached halfway up my forehead. Not wanting to look like a fool during my presentation I decided to give it a tug. Those things must have some root structure because it would not budge. I didn’t have tweezers – or my office scissors – so I tried pinching the hair between my thumbnail and my pointer-finger tip and giving it a yank. Ten attempts later it was still rooted as firm as a redwood. So I let it go.

My presentation went fine and after shaking hands with everyone I left to use the men’s room. Washing my hands I looked into the mirror and got quite a startle. You know how you can make a ribbon look fancy and curly-qued by pulling it through a scissor blade pressed up against your thumb? Well I had this hair hanging off my eyebrow that looked like a slightly stretched-out spring that you’d get out of a ball point pen. I am smooth!

My dad passed away a few months ago and I think about him a lot. While attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week I got an unsettling vision of where he may be living right now if he didn’t have a reservation with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

At CES, which fills all three main buildings at the Las Vegas Convention Center as well as a few nearby hotel facilities, there must have been no less than two thousand outstandingly crisp High Definition Television sets on display in every size, shape and High Definition Color. Plasma, LCD, CRT’s from 2.2 to 82 inches! Front projection, rear projection; there were even some that approached 3-D without the need for those crazy blue and red glasses! (Please, Please, Please let them re-release Baywatch in 34DD 3-D!!)

Not only was there thousands of dazzling TV displays, there was an amazing array of the most comfortable recliners ever seen. These recliners were geared for watching the tube. All in black leather, most had cup holders. Some had speakers built into the head rest. Some had electronic massaging fingers built into the back. Others had subwoofers built into their bases that actually moved your bowels for you as a helicopter would crash into a gas tanker during a movie.

Now how could all of this technological goodness set my mind to a vision of purgatory for my dear old Dad? Well, I’ll tell ya. For all of the TV’s, for all of the DVD’s, for all of the Satellite dishes and mega-speaker total-emersion surround sound systems, there was not a single remote control to be found in that whole sinful city. No clickers. No thumb-buddies.

It’s not that none of the gear came with remotes, it’s that the pictures on each system had been carefully set and the remotes had been locked away for safe keeping. You can’t have people messing with perfection.
This would have been Hell for my dad. He never met a remote control that he didn’t like. He didn’t meet too many that he fully comprehended, but he liked all of them. Growing up, he manned the remote and had the final word on what would be watched. On a good night – with his trusty remote – he could simultaneously watch two movies and a baseball game without ever using picture-in-picture. And none of the clicking ever came at a logical point in the current program. Something would just trigger in his head that he’d better flip over to see if John Wayne was still in his jeep. None of the rest of the family ever had a chance to know what was going on. Most of us ended up as pretty good readers.

When my parents first flew out to see our new place in California the tour of the home ended abruptly as my dad dropped into my recliner and fired up my home theater to check the latest scores. He proceeded to take a remote in each hand and press a series of buttons that brought up a Kung-Fu movie, enabled the Spanish subtitles and somehow got commentary from C-Span droning out the rear surround speakers. My DVD player doesn’t even have a clock – and yet somehow he got the LED display to flash 12:00:00.

Could you imagine letting this guy loose at CES with a Universal remote? The exhibitors would pray to their higher power that it was set for stun.

A trim blonde with a mouth full of perfect teeth would be standing on stage in a make-shift theater reciting product features to a mesmerized group of nerds in suits who are seeking the latest in front projection technology. She’d be coming to the climax where she lowers the lights to display a scene from Lord of the Rings using the revolutionary Ozmatron projector with three (yes THREE!) independent DLP processors capable of a native 1080P resolution.

The suits begin to wring their hands in sweaty anticipation. The houselights drop, bones begin to vibrate from the 15,000 watt 7.1 surround system and the screen flashes to a crystal clear image of Frodo in the volcano rapt with inner conflict as to whether or not he should drop the ring into the flowing lava below to forever save all of Inner Earth CLICK!! PSHHHHVRRUPT!! “and the rebound is grabbed by Jenkins who passes it down court to Wallace. Wallace has not really been on his game tonight making three for seven from the free-throw line. He dribbles for a few moments while his offense takes position….”

Stunned silence from the crowd as our toothy show-model walks to the center of the stage with her hand shielding her eyes in a squinty sort of salute as she looks out at the audience trying to figure out just what had happened. “Excuse me, does anyone know what’s going on with my demonstration?” she asks. “Just needed to check on my Pistons” says my old man as he looks on with one leg over the side of his recliner. “By the way miss, you make a better door than window.”

My wife bought a huge pumpkin pie from Costco this weekend. Pumpkin is my favorite hands down. I’m pretty friendly with blueberry and apple too, but that’s neither here nor there.

My kids had some pumpkin pie as a snack on Saturday night. They always eat dinner at our main kitchen table, but they like to eat breakfast and lunch at this kid-sized wooden table we got them a while ago.
As I was turning off the downstairs lights that night I saw that their plates were still there and one had the whole bottom part of the crust left on it. Wasting any portion of a pumpkin pie is blasphemy to me, so I took my daughter’s little fork and ate the crust. I put the dishes in the sink and went to bed.

I was woken up Sunday morning by my girls screaming that the dog had thrown up in her pen. Being the cleaner-upper of all things dog, I fumbled downstairs to take care of it. I looked in the pen and there was nothing there. I asked my girls were the dog had thrown up. They said they didn’t know but that there was throw-up on her satellite dish collar. (She scratched her eye on some thistles in our back yard and is now has to wear the big dopey plastic dish around here head for a couple weeks).

I put some water and soap on a paper towel and tracked the dog down. I looked closely at the cone and there was nothing on the inside of the collar, but there was a bunch of brown goo on the outside below her mouth. I started wiping away and a light went off. This brown goo looked an awful lot like pumpkin pie filling. In a fit of horror I asked my girls how much of their pumpkin pie they had eaten last night. Jamie said she finished hers, but Lauren said she only had two bites because her throat was scratchy. Two bites! And all that was left when I got to it was the bottom crust!

Immediately I start running around the house spitting and gagging, feeling very much like Lucy of Charlie Brown fame having been licked by Snoopy and then yelling “Germs! Germs! Dog Germs! I’ve been poisoned!!”
Just thinking of that stupid sneak of a dog waiting for nobody to be looking so she could creep up to the table and cover my children’s snack plates with her pooper-licking whiz-sniffing scourge makes me sick. How many other times have I walked by and grabbed an abandoned pizza-crust from one of their plates only to devour a Petri-dish full of her crotch-sniffing, grass-throwing up, sock chewing drool?

I spent the next hour gargling Listerine and plotting my revenge. But what can you do to gross out a dog whose greatest joy in life is chewing my dirty work socks? I could only imagine playing Fetch with a short-fuse grenade.

There is some sort of illness I get that is a combination between a cold and the flu. It’s more of a “Clue” or a “Flold.” It’s worse than a cold because my throat hurts and I get all achy, but not quite as bad as the flu because I don’t run a high fever or throw up. Much.

I know when I’m getting this illness because I feel that “post-nasal-drip” after drinking something. One of my first experiences with this was while I was sipping away at a diet Coke at the mall. This was back in the pre-NutraSweet days when diet Coke had some chemicals in it that caused lab rats to sell their fur on eBay to pay for bottled water. The initial taste was marginal but the aftertaste had you squinting your eyes, sticking out your bottom lip and wondering who wiped cat poo on your straw. But it was the early 80’s, sugar-free soda was all the rage and now we don’t remember who shot JR.

Why do they call “post-nasal-drip” “post-nasal-drip” and “pre-nasal-drip” a “runny nose”? I tell people that I’ve got a runny nose either way. They say, “I don’t see you blowing.” I say, “Oh, It’s running down the back.” Where does the “drip” part come in? I’ve never heard the drip. There is no “Drip, Drip, Dripping.” Wouldn’t that drive you crazy? The Chinese think so. 18 hours into the Hong Kong Flu and you’ll be confessing to the Lindbergh kidnapping.

The feeling of post-nasal-drip always takes me back to two places. High school metal shop and the couch at my parent’s home. The metal shop memory involves getting a freezing drink out of the water fountain in December and feeling that pain at the back of my sinuses. The metal shop also reminds me of my balding metal shop teacher who used to play the bag pipes and was arrested for lifting his kilt in a public park. To answer the next question - he wasn’t wearing anything under his kilt but his little bag and pipe.

The memory of being home on the couch isn’t great either. I remember vividly sitting on the couch wrapped in an old pink blanket. I was a twelve-year-old latch-key kid and hurting pretty bad. I lifted up one bun-cheek to get a bit of relief whilst passing a little wind and had my very first G&L. For the uninitiated - G&L stands for “Gambled and lost”. I thought it was a fart and it came out mocha slurpee. Today this is better known as a SHART.

There I am, bedridden, soar throat, achy, post-nasal-dripping. I had to; first, get over to the pot to ride out the rest of the squirts. Second, stick the blanket and my tighty-whities in the wash. Third, take a shower - forcing a washcloth to go where no washcloth should ever have to go. Fourth, check the couch. And Fifth, try and think of a story to explain to my parents why my underoos were alone in the washer with the big pink blanket. My dad used the one of the words that make up “SHART” when he got home.

My kids are little soldiers. When they get sick it only slows them down in that they have to wipe their noses every once in a while to keep the snots off their Polly Pockets. At night they’ll ask for some of the pink medicine - but that’s it. You’d never know they were sick.

Me, I’m out cold on the couch from the first sniffle through the last shiver. It’s not natural to sleep that whole time, so some genius came up with Nyquil. I love him. It’s as close to a buzz as a good Mormon can get without having to repent. And with Cherry Nyquil I almost look forward to getting sick. Nyquil: the coughing, sneezing, achy, FEELING GROOVY ALL NIGHT LONG medicine.