Ish

I just realized that I’ve got less than 3 days left to this month – Well done February, you short month! Even with leap year extension (which I will try to post on since I find it such an odd day) you still seem like a short month!

And now I’ve doomed myself and the next few days are going to drag.

Since I had nothing to write, and I was trying to think of interesting things to write about on here (I try to keep it as interesting as possible for my future self to read) I wanted to write about my analysis on the most inner workings of my self. My shit. Poop. Excrement. Waste. Admit it, I think everyone does their own study (admiration?) of their daily (or in some cases weekly) BMs.

In some sick, twisted sort of way, I’ve come to learn and almost have a certain pride for my waste at times.

I’ve tried my best to categorize most of them here:

-The reason I came up with this post is because of what occurred to me this evening. It is the “Well, I could’ve just farted and been fine” poop. This evening, while sitting on the couch, I felt like I had the urge to go (it would’ve been my 2^nd of the day - #2 #2 if you will). So I got up, went to the toilet, sat down, let out a semi large fart, and then…nothing. But I could feel something down there. Some sort of blockage. So for 5 minutes I squeezed. And thought about how much it sucked. And a little malformed niglet plopped in to the toilet. Swimming around and laughing at my struggle. There was still more. But I was tired. And I didn’t want to push anymore. And I had already had a successful BM when I got home from work. So after some rocking back and forth on the toilet - sometimes sitting up straight or bending all the way forward – chest to the knees can work some extra out – I decided to secede and shower. Damn. I should’ve just farted and called it a night.

-The next poop is my standard poop. Roughly about 3 logs, all different lengths (but not by much), typically the first one to arrive is the longest. (I don’t know how I know this so don’t ask). Light brown, no squeezing required, all around satisfying and successful. That was the definition of the after work dump I made today.

-The “Holy Shit!” *fist pump* log. Take those 3 logs. Combine them in to one perfectly shaped floating mass. Something to be so proud of that you brag to your wife about it…So perfect that you don’t even have to wipe or wash your hands. That awesome.

-The snake. Per it’s namesake, it hits the bottom of the toilet and starts to coil around the bottom of the bowl…even the top of it looks like a snake’s head. Now if I could just put some eyes on it and maybe a tongue…It would be the brown cobra…

By the way, I am silently smirking to myself (because sometimes smirking includes a noise) and thinking about how really gross this is to be typing it out. It reminds me of the time my friends and I went to the gorge and instead of peeing in a port o potty (which actually this post was partially inspired by – a post on craig’s list) we all peed on a large boulder (women too) in the middle of this field at the Vantage campgrounds. Our final morning at the Gorge, I thought it would be funny to take a dump on it. One successful log later (and no toilet paper! It better have been good) and one old school camera – and I had had a nice laugh to myself.

It was a month later that I received the horrendous phone call about the picture being developed (I had already forgotten about it at this point) and how it had been immediately destroyed as the camera owner felt sick even touching the picture. Hah. Good times.

-The Bloody Wipe Poop. Capitalized for emphasis. You know the ones that come out (well maybe you don’t) where you just think to yourself, “There is no way this is coming out of me. It feels TOO WIDE!” But it just comes out anyway, ripping everything on the way out – kind of like if you stuck Edward Scissorhands inside of an enlarged toilet paper roll, with toilet paper covering both openings…Well not really. But yeah, the poops are much shorter than normal, but they’ve got girth. And you’re angry with them. And you promise yourself not to just eat steak and rice for 2 meals a day and immediately think about eating a salad before every meal from here on out.

-The “Make room for more!” poop. These occur after you’ve eaten at Olive Garden, Mongolian Grill, Chinese Buffet – actually any buffet for that matter, a happy hour that included half off of appetizers so you got quadruple the amount you would normally eat, Thanksgiving and sometimes Christmas dinner…You ate a lot. So now something’s gotta move to make room for the new stuff. And it moves quickly. Like the subway was running behind schedule and is pushing through to make up for lost time. You know it’s one of these when you’re looking for a bathroom (or you are scared and uncomfortable in your car 20 minutes from home) literally minutes after putting your fork down.

-The food poisoning poop…water. I never want to go through this again. Nor will I wish it upon my worst enemies. To lose my ability to fart without fear? It was over! Every fart that I had came with a little gift. Kind of like the extras that they give away at Nordstrom’s after you’ve spent $200, but much less appealing. One night after a rotten hot dog in Vegas (Vegas of all places!) I woke up shivering, and then puked my guts out. After the hurling, I was on the toilet for the rest of the night. Then the rest of that morning. And couldn’t keep anything down. Severely dehydrated and exhausted, I could not control anything for the next 2 days. And every time I sat down to moon the porcelain gods, it was like my #1 and #2 got mixed up and now my #2 was going #1. Tonight I will actually pray that this never happens to me ever ever ever again.

-The morning after poop. Just like everything in the “morning after” this sucks too. Typically I was up late drinking to create one of these. And if I was up late drinking, I was probably eating crappy food too. Shit in, shit out. Go figure. The morning after dump sucks because it’s messy. My theory is that your body has been lying in a horizontal position for so many hours that your doo doo hasn’t had the proper affect of gravity upon it (squishing it in to a solid mass) – therefore spreading it out and making little lumps and lots of splashes. Add in the crappy food and all the liquids you drank the night before? Disaster. This is probably the dump that I take most where I am unhappy with either it, or myself. If it’s on a weekday, it makes me rush for work, so I can’t pay proper attention to it, or if it’s on the weekend, it’s just a shitty (pun) way to start the day. Actually, there’s even times where I have to hold it all the way to work on the weekdays – again squirming in my car - and then be unhappy in a disabled work stall (what, I work early). Thanks a lot morning after poop. You’re worthless in my book.

-The continuation poop. This is 2^nd in satisfaction only to the *fist pump* log. Here’s why it’s so great: You take the standard poop. You’re feeling pretty good. But then out of nowhere you get the urge to go some more, and typically about half to a fourth of the size of the standard poop comes out. Maybe you had a little dessert after dinner last night? Or maybe Mr. Poopy’s children didn’t want to get left behind? Anyway, great feeling, and almost the exact opposite of the “Well, I could’ve just farted and been fine” poop.

And finally, since it’s my most surprising one:

-The discolored poop. It comes out in all colors. Maybe you ate beets? Maybe you drank a lot of red wine? But the most amazing ones I’ve had – and it rarely happens to me – maybe once or twice a year at most – is the solid green poop. I have no idea how it happens. (If I could figure out what I do/eat I would do it more often) I am not a vegetarian, and over the past year I can count on one hand how many meals I’ve had that did not have some form of meat in them. So when this arrives it is truly a miracle. I marvel at the sight for almost three times as long as the *fist pump* poop. Sometimes it’s out of worry for myself, other times it’s just out of pure wonder and amazement. How could I have made that? Part of me is writing this hoping that others will share their experience and that they too have popped out what looked like to be a ball of light green spinach. Because I have. And although I just wrote a post about my different poops, I don’t want to feel alone in this experience.

I am now done making a complete embarrassment of myself. For tonight.

The Worst Chinese Food Experience Ever

On Wednesday night after a disheartening loss in one of my basketball leagues, I get in my car and find my cell phone with 1 missed call and a voicemail attached to it.

It was my dad. “Hey Seth, we’re thinking of going out tonight, not sure where though. It’s 7 o’clock, so give us a call if you can make it and we’ll let you know where we’re going.”

I call my dad.

“Hey, sup.”

“Hey boy! We just got to this Chinese restaurant in Mill Creek. You know the old Imperial Garden?”

“Yeah.”

“Come meet us here.”

“Ok, I just got done with basketball, I’ll be there in 20 minutes. Go ahead and order without me.”

*click*

20 minutes later I arrived at Zen Garden, after getting off the phone with my cousin Nick who was telling me how “Good this place” was. Boy, was that such a nice setup. Thinking about it now, I wonder if he was joking with me? Nawwww…

I sit down, and the place is pretty empty. My family’s got the corner table, meant for 6 people but seating 4 including me.

I noticed something interesting – there weren’t any drinks on the table. Now, with most restaurants, isn’t that the first thing they get you? Something to drink? Even water?

Either way, I asked my parents if they had ordered already and they had said they ordered 10 minutes ago. That was 7:10 pm. Notice the time as I was a bit shocked by how things played out chronologically.

A few minutes later, a waiter arrived and asked if I wanted anything to drink. My dad said he was having a beer, but I declined as I had just been running for the past 30 minutes.

“Water is fine for me, thanks.”

And everything was normal up until that point. They brought me out my water, my mom and sister their cokes and my dad a beer.

At around 7:20 our appetizer arrived. It was wonton soup. My mom beat us all to the punch with the first complaint of the night.

“It’s not even hot.”

I could see from the waitress pouring the soup in to the cups for us that it wasn’t even steaming. I expected it not to be hot. It was about as warm as my typical shower water, and on top of that the wontons weren’t very good either. My dad suggested that we not complain as it would just take us another 15 minutes anyway to get another bowl of soup that was hotter, and by then we’d be eating our main courses. Or so we thought.

We finished with our soup and were still waiting. We were all filling the table with stories from the day, how work is going and reminiscing on my mom’s 50^th birthday party which was absolutely fabulous.

Finally at around 7:35 (I was looking at the clock often since I was hungry) our first entrée arrived. Fried chicken. My dad’s favorite. And that’s all that came. Other than the rice and tea (which was surprisingly hot) a few minutes later. Now for me, I rarely can just eat meat for dinner. But since I was starving I began chomping away at just the chicken.

Lucky for my sister and me, they had fried the chicken in some sort of peanut sauce and within minutes we were both having an allergic reaction. Awesome. Here we were, starving, with chicken that at least looked edible in front of us and we could do nothing but eat some rice and drink our water. What was this? Prison?

At about 7:45 another family came and sat down next to us. We heard them order their food, conversing in Chinese with the waitress who was serving us. At the same time another one of our entrees came out. Just sweet and sour pork. I didn’t know if these people were part of the “slow food” movement, or if they were just trying to piss us off. The unfortunate thing is, when my dad gets pissed (at anyone else but my family) it’s pretty funny. He gets all red in the face and talks under his breath, but loud enough so the people he is angry with can hear him (but in this situation they might not have understood him).

Here’s what got him though: Another few minutes passed, and the waitress brought out a vegetable plate for us. We all looked at it incredulously as we have never seen that kind of veggie plate before. We started to mention something as another waiter came up and told our waitress (in Chinese of course) that that dish was the table next to ours.

So wait, they’ve been here for less than 15 minutes and have already received one of their main courses? How is this possible? Soon after, the table next to ours was in full on eat mode. While we were waiting for our last two entrees. I was slowly eating the sweet and sour pork and devouring what was left of the small bowls of rice they provided us.

At around 8 pm my Dad (furious) was able to pull a waiter aside (not our waitress) and ask where our food was. Here’s what he literally sounded like:

“Wah hah yuuu wha…hmmm…ahhhh…”

That was his answer to my dad’s question of, “Uhh, we also ordered brocooli with beef and chow mein too”.

Our waitress then came over to see what the commotion was about. My dad, now obviously angry with both of them (and my sister and I giggling together) was asking where our other final two entrees were.

She apologized and at 8:10 pm we got our broccoli beef. It was good. Don’t get me wrong. Everything was mediocre up until the broccoli beef. We shoved it down our throats because at that point we were extremely starved and luckily that filled us up. There was no rice left, we never got a refill on our drinks and the only time we were paid and attention was when we said, “Excuse me” to the waiter/waitress.

While we were eating what would be our last entrée there, my mom and dad were doing their typical “terrible service” argument:

Dad: Terrible Service

Mom: Mahal, they can hear you from here

Dad: So?! We put in our orders over an hour ago an…

Mom: Well, let’s just cancel the chow mein and go.

I agreed. My dad told the waitress off and told her to cancel the chow mein and get us our bill.

My sister suggested no tip, or a tip of a few cents. I one upped her and suggested a negative time.

“Yeah, just put -$20 on the tip line dad. And put the final bill of what you would pay after a negative $20 tip.”

More than an hour and a half after sitting down, my dad was now in a rage over the bill. They charged us a dollar a bowl for the rice (all in total probably about 1 cup worth – I eat that on my own – and for added measure $4 could buy you almost 7 lbs of rice from the grocery store) and also charged us $3 for tea.

What

The

Fuck

I have never been charged for rice or tea at a Chinese restaurant. Those are just the complimentary items that come with your meal. They didn’t even ask us if we wanted rice or tea. They just provided it to us and then charged it to us! Nice!

We stood up, walked out (it took some convincing from all of us now to keep my dad quiet – he still got out some “terrible”s as we were walking out) and left as quickly as we could.

I am so surprised at how horrible my dining experience was that I am considering putting this up for everyone to read under the Seattle city search for Chinese restaurants. That would be a bit vicious because I think this could single handedly put them out of business, but with service like that, they deserve it. While I was leaving I looked around the restaurant at the other scattered patrons who all seemed perfectly happy (not all of them looked like they could speak Chinese). Was it a fluke? I’ll never know. Because I’m never going back.

F you Zen Garden.

Smoking Up

I wasn’t sure what else to write about. I’ve been devoid of topics or things that could actually fill space. I call it smoking up because it makes you high. And gives me a euphoric feeling. I guess I should start using "drinking down" then? Hmmm...

During college for about a year and a half I was very much in to the greens. I would almost even consider myself a pot head during that time. I loved the new sensations and the fact that I didn’t have to spend much to have as good of a time as if I had been drinking.

But like everything else, the novelty of it kind of wears off after awhile. At least for me it did. That and I had a few paranoid trips that I never wanted to experience again. That was the problem with me. Is that I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to my brain, and how my body is feeling.

With drinking, in my opinion, I can control how I feel based on how much I have to drink. Usually. Sometimes I just keep drinking due to my lack of judgment. Drinking tends to loosen me up a bit in that regard.

But with the grass it wasn’t the same for me. There were times where I would inhale way too much, and then when I would have a coughing fit is when I knew I was in for it. And smoking to me is like lining up a lot of shots and downing them all at once. At first you don’t really feel it. You feel the early effects. But then WAM it hits you like a wall of bricks and you’re reeling…

I will never forget the one time I had a huge freak out where I thought the lights were changing colors, my feed were bleeding and I was just seeing certain frames of my vision. Like my eyes were taking Polaroid pictures of what they saw, they would print up, and I would see what my eyes were looking at just a split second ago. I freaked out so hard that I was doing pushups to try and focus my mind – trying my best to fight what was happening. After that I basically promised myself that I would never do that much again. Also, I used to lose a lot of feeling in my legs. When driving, I couldn’t feel if my feet my were on the peddles or not, and at night I wouldn’t be able to sleep because I couldn’t feel my legs either (I would get scared and touch them with my hands just to make sure they were there).

Has this become a bitch fest about what sucks about smoking? I guess. Anyway, I used to hate how normal things I would do would now hurt so bad. Almost everything was intensified when I was smoking. When I would itch my eye or my scalp or my arm…or anything, it felt like I was tearing the skin off of myself. If I banged my knee or my shin in to something that stinging pain just wouldn’t go away.

The last time I smoked was for an un-retirement party that I was part of 2 years ago. 2 whole freaking years. Last night was my first time in 2 years.

And it was good. It was controlled. I didn’t have so much that I was gone. Because I was cautious about getting to that point again.

Instead of bitching about the freak outs that I had, I’d like to talk about some of the great things about smoking:

-For those of you that took physics: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Remember right? The first thing I tend to notice when I’ve smoked is that it literally feels like the World, the Earth is pushing up on me. Like for some reason I am no longer exerting as much force on the world as I was when I was sober. The ground is now working with me and pushing me up every step I take. It’s really quite a great feeling.

-Random thoughts I would’ve never thought of pop in to my head. And they are hilarious. I’ll always remember one night in college where I was on the ground crying from laughter as me and my roommate thought about how crazy the first guy to drink milk from a cow was. I mean c’mon…who would’ve thought! Of course now drinking milk is all the rage (heh) but think of the first guy who was under that first cow! What was he doing there! And how did the cow feel about it? Anyway, after smoking I can just sit there on my own and laugh at my own thoughts. And sometimes when I’m with a group of people, we can just be laughing – while every one may be laughing at their own thoughts…and not necessarily what the group is talking about. I wrote that sentence as if I had been smoking tonight. I haven’t been.

-I don’t get sick. When I smoke I don’t hear my heartbeat in my head. I’m not getting naked in my kitchen and leaning up against my fridge because I’m so hot and I want the room to stop spinning. I have only puked once after smoking, and you guessed it, it’s because I was drinking after smoking.

-Music and visual media are amazing. When I first got in to smoking (thank you friends) I also became a huge fan of BT or Brian Transeau: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Transeau There is something that happens to me that I believe heightens the ability of my ears when I’ve been smoking. Like my mind almost focuses more on things happening in the backgrounds of the music I am listening to. Even though I can’t do magic eye, I’m comparing my listening experience to that. When I’m sober, it’s like I’m listening to music and not being able to see the shape or pattern in that magic eye. But after smoking it’s like everything has become clear to me. And the music is so much more enjoyable then. I remember always asking people if they were hearing the same things I was…Last night I was listening to Oscar Peterson’s “So Diana”. The piano part comping in the background of that song wasn’t much to me before last night. I mean, it was pretty good. But last night – and this is what makes the genius of Jazz – you could hear the intricacies of the live recording. Each section of 16 bars was a little bit different than the previous one. And I caught things like the pianist signaling that the sax solo was over by comping a few completely different chords for the change. Then there was the drummer that was telling the rest of the band that it was time to head back to the chorus with a triplet strike on the toms. Notice: I have listened to this song at least 20 times, and last night was the first time I recognized any of these things. Of course from now on, I’ll have a much greater respect for the musicians and more enjoyment for the song.

-I get lost and end up laughing at myself. Last night it took me 30 minutes to take out the trash when it usually takes me 10. Only because I got lost in my own house and continually kept forgetting where I was going or what I was doing. All I could do was stand in the kitchen and chuckle to myself about how much of an idiot I was being. In college it once took us 45 minutes to drive to the local taco bell (8 minutes away) only because we got lots. Speaking of which…

-Food tastes better. This happens when I’ve been drinking also though. Maybe I just love food period. Enough said.

So I think if I can figure out a way to better control my reaction to this, and not be so scared of it, I’ll consider it more in the future. As I was telling people last night, I just wish there was a way I could grow my own. Because I can trust myself. I like to know what goes in to what’s getting put in my lungs. And to those of you out there who haven’t tried it (like the 5 of you) go ahead and give it a shot at least once. I promise it won’t kill you, and your parents won’t be the youngest grandparents in the neighborhood nor will you get an STD. Unless you’re a complete idiot.