Greetings, and welcome to the year 2010.
(And that’s pronounced “Twenty Ten”, OK? None of this “Two thousand and ten” bullshit. Seriously, how do you say 1910, and 1856? There is a precedent here people.)

FIRST THINGS FIRST –

Jebb – Happy birthday dude. For the 29th of December. The whole frikking day I sat there wondering what it was that I was missing. I blame it on the fact that I am no longer on Facebook and actually have to use my brain to do these things.

The Clan – Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Three times I tried calling you lot on the Holy Days, and three times Skype just laughed in my face. Except for the once, when nobody was home. Typical eh?
Hope you lot had an awesome few days, drank a little too much, and sucked mightily at Scrabble.

Right… on with the story then.

So how was your New Years? Ours was WILD over here. Serious stuff. The wife and I sat on the couch with some nasty head-colds watching crappy DVDs. When it got to 12, we exchanged a kiss on the cheek and then went to bed. Let’s here it for being sick on New Years day.

So… I know that the updates have been missing for the last two weeks, but then… almost all of my South African friends were on leave from work for the period too. So… meh.
And what have we been up to over the two week period? Same old same old really. Much like many western countries, Taiwan has turned Christmas into a commercial shitstorm. Unlike many western countries, they’re not hypocritical enough to make it a religious holiday. Which is really the most positive way of looking at the fact that the wife and I worked on Christmas Day. So… we entered into a complete state of denial, and only celebrated the day on Saturday. Our celebrations of course, were deeply spiritual, and involved a fantastically roasted chicken and way too much spent on edibles.
Ah…. Christmas, a time to over-indulge, a time to spoil ourselves and loved ones, and all we really need to justify it all is the phrase “Because it’s Christmas.” And you know, aside from actually working on the day, Christmas was great. Would have been nicer to have been a little bit closer to family… but then again, it was our first Christmas with the dog.

Moving on. So this week, the wife and I did something good. It had the potential to be awesome, but it landed up being merely good. Every evening we walk our dog through a local school. Every evening, he gets walked around their sports fields. Every evening, he enjoys himself. (Every evening, he takes a shit somewhere on their grounds… and almost every evening, it gets picked up by us. I confess now to being a firm advocate of the “Leave it, it’s good for the plants” theory. As you can imagine, the wife is a lot better behaved.) For the last two weeks, we have been kept company by a young looking stray that follows us about the school, and plays with our dog. He looked relatively well fed for a stray, and his coat was in a good condition. Over the long weekends however, he started looking really thin, and we realised that he probably wasn’t being fed by the school kids that would likely share their lunchboxes with him. So we started feeding him. And we started calling him Hobbes. Hobbes and Captain really seemed to hit it off, and well, we started thinking about maybe adopting the little guy, so that they could stay together. However, we live in a rented, fully furnished apartment with leather furniture. Which means that any dog that chews anything in the house costs us our security deposit. Which is not good. So we chatted to BARK. BARK were totally cool about it, and agreed to socialise the dog with their other strays, and to house train him. When HObbes was ready to integrate into our household, we would adopt him formally. Of course, we offered to pay his way as well, so as not to burden their resources.

Catching him was easy… I simply slipped a collar on him and attached the leash. And I took him to BARK with a minimum of fuss. He had already been neutered, so that was not an issue, but he needed vaccinations, and he needed to be tested for heartworm and other tropical nasties. All was going well, with updates from BARK that were all positive. He was socialising well, was basically house-trained, and was being a Good Dog.
I got a call today from BARK. Both of the BARK people were tied up at work, and Hobbes was having an allergic reaction to something. Could I help them out by taking him to the vet? Hell yeah. I intended adopting the dog, had plans to do so, and basically regarded the dog as mine… of COURSE I was willing to help out. Poor bastard was dimpled like a canine golfball when I got there. Skin bumps everywhere. But, he was happy to see me, and still basically a sweet-natured dog. So off to the vet we went. While we were there, I asked the vet to just test and see whether Hobbes had a microchip. This was just because we really needed to check before formal adoption could be started. BARK had said that in all their years of rescuing, NOT ONCE had they found a dog that had been chipped.

Of course. Of FUCKING course…. Hobbes had a chip. The vet called the owner, who mentioned that Hobbes was a year old, and had been missing for FOUR MONTHS. An 8 month pup let loose on the streets… the mind boggles. Anyways… the owner professed to being overjoyed to have the dog back, and vowed to pick him up that evening.

That totally crushed any chances we had of taking the dog. But, we agreed to meet with the owner just to check things out when he picked up the dog. The BARK dude joined us. I think that in reality, all three of us had already bonded a little with the pooch. So. The guys arrives… finally… 35 minutes late. He walks over to the dog, agrees that the dog is indeed his, and confirms that he wanted to keep it. I asked whether he would consider giving the dog to us, and then also exchanged numbers with the guy in the event that things don’t work out and he wants to get rid of the dog. (Honestly, I believe that Hobbes was dumped. He had no collar, and was found like a million miles away from his home. Meh.) The guy is all polite and says that he needs to buy some things from the pet store while he is there. So he walks… with Hobbes walking beside him. No leash. No collar. The BARK dude, the wife and I watch as Hobbes makes a beeline for the door, goes outside, and then proceeds to go straight into traffic and cross the road. I caught up to him as he began a fully-fledged escape plan. Where was the “caring” owner? The Douchebag was miles away inside the pet store completely oblivious to his dog whilst discussing the merits of various leashes with the salesperson.

Bah. Gah. Fuck. So yeah… what could have been an awesome addition to the house turned into BARK’s first stray-owner reunion. And in the end, the good thing is that Hobbes is off the street, and back with a family. Granted, said family will never treat him as well as we would have… but hey… it beats eating garbage and living rough.
That was my week in a nutshell.

I also managed to get to the theatres with PlasticRat, to go and see Avatar. In 3D. Sweet. I normally don’t like 3D movies, my eyes are funny or something, and I never seem to get the full 3D experience. (Actually, you know those eye puzzles that were all the rage about a decade back? Like a riot of colours on a page, and then when you squint in a certain way, a picture swims into focus? Well, I have never gotten any of those either.) But this was actually pretty bloody good. And the movie itself (aside from a rampant “Go Green” philosophy, and a clunky “War against technologically impaired savages is bad” message) was pretty good. MASSIVE CGI budget. MASSIVE. And it was really rather good. Sigourney Weaver managed to get through an entire alien movie without kicking ass…. the big-bad-American-corporate-machine was vilified and manky, and the flora and fauna of the planet (Imaginatively called “Pandora”) was awesome. Really well done.

******

All in all, it hadn’t been a good day. Bad traffic, a malfunctioning computer, incompetent coworkers and a sore back all made me a seething cauldron of rage. But more importantly for this story, it had been over forty-eight hours since I’d last taken a dump. I’d tried to jumpstart the process, beginning my day with a bowl of bowel-cleansing fiber cereal, following it with six cups of coffee at work, and adding a bean-laden lunch at Taco Bell.

As I was returning home from work, my insides let me know with subtle rumbles and the emission of the occasional tiny fart that Big Things would be happening soon. Alas, I had to stop at the mall to go Christmas shopping. I completed this task, and as I was walking past the stores on my way back to the car, I noticed a large sale sign proclaiming, “Everything Must Go!” This was prophetic, for my colon informed me with a sudden violent cramp and a wet, squeaky fart that everything was indeed about to go. I hurried to the mall bathrooms. I surveyed the five stalls, which I have numbered 1 through 5 for your convenience:

1. Occupied.

2. Clean, but Bathroom Protocol forbids its use, as it’s next to the occupied one.

3. Poo on seat.

4. Poo and toilet paper in bowl, unidentifiable liquid splattered on seat.

5. No toilet paper, no stall door, unidentifiable sticky object near base of
toilet.

Clearly, it had to be Stall #2. I trudged back, entered, dropped trousers and
sat down. I’m normally a fairly Shameful Shitter. I wasn’t happy about being
next to the occupied stall, but Big Things were afoot.

I was just getting ready to bear down when all of a sudden the sweet sounds of Beethoven came from next door, followed by a fumbling, and then the sound of a voice answering the ringing phone. As usual for a cell phone conversation, the voice was exactly 8 dB louder than it needed to be. Out of Shameful habit, my sphincter slammed shut.

The inane conversation went on and on. Mr. Shitter was blathering to Mrs. Shitter about the shitty day he had. I sat there, cramping and miserable, waiting for him to finish. As the loud conversation dragged on, I became angrier and angrier, thinking that I, too, had a crappy day, but I was too polite to yak about in public.

My bowels let me know in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t get crapping soon, my day would be getting even crappier.

Finally my anger reached a point that overcame Shamefulness. I no longer cared. I gripped the toilet paper holder with one hand, braced my other hand against the side of the stall, and pushed with all my might. I was rewarded with a fart of colossal magnitude – a cross between the sound of someone ripping a very wet bed sheet in half and of plywood being torn off a wall. The sound gradually transitioned into a heavily modulated low-RPM tone, not unlike someone firing up a Harley. I managed to hit the resonance frequency of the stall, and it shook gently.

Once my ass cheeks stopped flapping in the breeze, three things became apparent:
(1) The next-door conversation had ceased
(2) my colon’s continued seizing indicated that there was more to come
(3) the bathroom was now beset by a horrible, eldritch stench. It was as if a gateway to Hell had been opened. The foul miasma quickly made its way under the stall and began choking my poop-mate. This initial “herald” fart had ended his conversation in mid-sentence.

“Oh my God,” I heard him utter, following it with suppressed sounds of choking, and then, “No, baby, that wasn’t me (cough, gag), you could hear that (gag)??”

Now there was no stopping me. I pushed for all I was worth. I could swear that in the resulting cacophony of rips, squirts, splashes, poots, and blasts, I was actually lifted slightly off the pot. The amount of stuff in me was incredible. It sprayed against the bowl with tremendous force. Later, in surveying the damage, I’d see that liquid poop had actually managed to ricochet out of the bowl and run down the side on to the floor. But for now, all I could do was hang on for the ride.

Next door I could hear him fumbling with the paper dispenser as he desperately tried to finish his task. Little snatches of conversation made themselves heard over my anal symphony: “Gotta go… horrible… throw up…in my mouth… not… make it… tell the kids… love them… oh God…” followed by more sounds of suppressed gagging and retching.

Alas, it is evidently difficult to hold one’s phone and wipe one’s bum at the same time. Just as my high-pressure abuse of the toilet was winding down, I heard a plop and splash from next door, followed by string of swear words and gags. My poop-mate had dropped his phone into the toilet.

There was a lull in my production, and the restroom became deathly quiet. I could envision him standing there, wondering what to do. A final anal announcement came trumpeting from my behind, small chunks plopping noisily into the water. That must have been the last straw. I heard a flush, a fumbling with the lock, and then the stall door was thrown open. I heard him running out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

After a considerable amount of paperwork, I got up and surveyed the damage. I felt bad for the janitor who’d be forced to deal with this, but I knew that flushing was not an option. No toilet in the world could handle that unholy mess. Flushing would only lead to a floor flooded with filth.

As I left, I glanced into the next-door stall. Nothing remained in the bowl. Had he flushed his phone, or had he plucked it out and left the bathroom with nasty unwashed hands? The world will never know.

I exited the bathroom, momentarily proud and Shameless, looking around for a face glaring at me. But I saw no one. I suspect that somehow my supernatural elimination has managed to transfer my Shamefulness to my anonymous poop-mate. I think it’ll be a long time before he can bring himself to poop in public — and I doubt he’ll ever again answer his cell phone in the loo.

And this, my friends, is why you should never talk on your phone in the bathroom.

Most Awesome Video for the Week. (Pay particular attention to the motorcyclist.)

Funniest Thing I saw this week. (Make sure that both videos play simultaneously.)

Musical Find of the Week.

And that is that folks…

Yeti. Out.