Fanfare from the Common Wombat

Is this thing on?

2007-05-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

When my good friend Karla said that she wouldn't blog again until I posted something, I thought "Sweet. Mission accomplished." In fact, if preventing Karla from ever blogging again was the only good thing I ever did in life, I think that in terms of karma, that would be enough. Preventing her from procreating would probably have been better, but I kind of missed the boat on that one. Besides, given her vast and ever growing number of sexual partners (by which I mean people she drugs and ties up) I'm not really sure how putting a stop to her gene pool is even possible.

I was all ready to celebrate my accomplishment. I had put up pinatas all over my house, commissioned the creation of a Boston creme donut the size of an armchair, and printed up 3 dozen T-shirts reading "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead: RIP Karlababble." Then, in a moment of clarity the likes of which I have not had since God himself came down from heaven on a white donkey to tell me to stop murdering immigrants, I realized something.

Without Karla's blog, this guy would have nothing to do. In fact, I imagine that Karlababble is the only thing that keeps him sitting in his mom's basement, drooling all over his keyboard, and not out there on the streets, killing puppies and molesting old women. As much as I love the thought of silencing Karla forever. I cannot and will not do it at the expense of all the puppies and old women in Dyckerson's home town.

And so, though it pains me to do so, I have given in to Karla's lame little trick and resumed posting again. This will be great news to the 2 of you that read this blog. (As near as I can tell, one of you is Karla, and the other person is an NSA agent assigned to keep tabs on my activities.) I will make it my mission for the remainder of this year to change this blog from "the finest source of shit and fart stories on the net" to "a place where like-minded individuals can come together as one huge virtual community and hate Karla."

We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, Karla, I have posted. That means it's your turn. Drag that bloated incubator you call a body out of bed, turn off the 36-hour "Gene Simmons Family Values" marathon and get back to writing about how you hate everyone and love pickle juice. Or whatever it is you write about. I wouldn't know. I skip the posts that aren't about me.

The ball's in your court, Miss Babble.

2006 Year In Review

2007-01-10T22:46:00.000-05:00

I made 17 resolutions on New Years Eve. Most of them involved stuffing (or rather, not stuffing) various objects up my ass, but one of them was blog-related. I resolved to blog more often, once a week if possible. As you can see by the fact that it is 2 weeks into January and this is my first post of the new year, I'm already doing a bang-up job.

I promise I'll blog more this year, and I promise that you will continue to wish I hadn't. To get that ball rolling, and to set the tone for the horror that will follow, here is my 2006 Year In Review. Also known as 26 pictures I took of myself shitting in various public restrooms.

Here's to an even more productive 2007!

Muchos Grouchy-Ass!!!

2006-11-22T14:32:00.000-05:00

The first thing I do after I dismount the toilet is to turn around and have a post-grump stool inspection.

I lead with that sentence so that you all (and by "you all" I mean the 6 people that still read this blog) will know without a shadow of a doubt that we are once again careening headlong into the dark recesses of my ass. I'm aware that this surprises none of you. It does, however, surprise me, because about a month ago I was introduced by a fellow Baltimore blogger as "the writer of the best shit and fart stories on the net."

Now I'll take a compliment wherever I can get it, and having no shame at all, I have no problem with being known as the "shit and fart guy," but I decided that I would show you all that I have a little more range than that. "I resolve here and now," I said to myself (not out loud, because that would be crazy,) "that the next 6 blog posts I write will not in any way involve farts, shits or my ass." Then I killed a virgin and made a shrine to the shrimp-god Slippygoop out of her bones, because that's how we seal a deal where I come from.

I had every intention of sticking to this resolution, if for no other reason than you really don't want to incur the wrath of Slippygoop. Not unless you like being gnawed to death by millions of sea monkeys. It's not a good way to go. It kind of tickles, and it takes days. but I meant to stick to my guns on this, and I would have, if not for the fact that I recently had a post-grump stool inspection that turned up something weird. Something that I absolutely had to share with you all.

Before we get to that, though, I feel I should explain the whole post-grump stool inspection.

I don't indulge in an inspection of my stools because I'm obsessed with feces. I mean, I am obsessed with feces, but really only the talking about feces. Looking at feces really does nothing for me. See also: Smelling feces, eating feces, juggling feces. My post-grump stool inspection is simply a quick look in the bowl to see how things are stacking up in there. Are we wet? Are we dry? In clumps or one long tube? Sinkers or floaters? These things can tell you a lot about the health of your butt. Most doctors (and by "most," I mean "the crazy ones") will tell you that it's a good idea to examine your stools before you flush them down.

So the post-grump stool inspection is really just another part of the Wombat Commitment to Quality I wrote about a while back. I mean, if I'm going to spend all this digital real estate writing about my shits, shouldn't I do what I can to ensure that they are the best shits I have to offer? See the lengths I go through for you people?

Anyway, on this particular day in question, the standard inspection yielded something kind of new. And it worried me. "Okay, we have 6-8 sinkers... That's normal... 1-2 inches... Some clumping... Also normal... The usual green color... wait. Green?"

Green poops.

GREEN.

Now, in my 34 years on planet Earth I've seen some crazy shit come out of my ass, but green stools was a completely new one for me. I'm not talking about greenish-brown either. I know that's what you are picturing. (or rather, what you are trying desperately not to picture.) I'm not talking about this:

I'm talking about this:

That's not a color you should ever see in the toilet. I'm not kidding and I'm not exaggerating. Full-on green. Imagine standing up after a hairy grump and seeing this staring back at you from the toilet:

I tell you, I was in fear for my life. I'm pretty sure that Oscar The Grouch Craps are the first sign of a brain tumor in your ass. I think it goes Grouch-craps, then the palpitations and the vapors, then your ass falls right off onto the floor and you die. So I did what anyone would do. I ran around the bathroom in circles screaming. I may have cried a little. I remember thinking that if I died right there in the bathroom, I would never again see Karla face-to-face, and despite this silver lining, I still didn't want to die.

What causes green poops? I mean, other than the brain tumor in your ass? Parasites? Viruses? Herpes contracted in a 30-man all-pirate gang-bang? It could have been anything. I knew I should have made those pirates wash their Jolly Rogers!

After about 30 minutes of weeping I booted up my computer, because nothing feeds a panic like the internet. Turns out that the #1 cause of green poops in people over 1 year old is food coloring. (the #1 cause in people under 1 year old is that babies asses are strange and mysterious places.) A careful examination of the things I had eaten in the past 24 hours yielded only one likely culprit:

These things used to be red. Now they're multi-colored. They're multi-colored little bombs of tasty poop stainer. I never knew about the fact that they cause green poops because I hadn't had them in 10 years or so. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Cap'n Crunch treated my ass like his own personal garbage can. I mean, the guy's not even a real captain. "Cap'n" is some sort of honorary title at best. He's no more qualified to steer a pirate ship than Dr. pepper is to perform bariatric surgery. (boy did I learn that lesson the hard way.)

Anyway, that's the story of my green poops. There's no real lesson to be learned here unless it's "never trust a dude who wears his eyebrows on his hat." (Seriously! Look at that box again!) But the second this happened I knew I had to blog about it, because, let's face it - My ass is the star of this blog, and when it learns a new trick, I'd be remiss if I didn't put it on display. Besides, you know you're all heading out to the store tonight for some Cap'n Crunch to see if it happens to you.

PS: Karla made the comment to me that because I hadn't posted in so long, my blog had become boring. Well Karla, I hope this serves as proof that it can be boring even when I do post something.

How I spent my fall vacation

2006-11-06T18:40:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I had the chance this weekend to spend some time with one of my very favorite people on Earth. Instead, I visited Karla and the small group of trained actors she refers to as her "family." I've met Karla before, but that was only for a few hours. This time I actually spent an entire weekend locked up with her, and let me tell you, it was an educational experience. Let me share with you some of the things I learned:

1) Karla does not fit in a toy car.

I don't know why she felt that she needed to get into the toy car in the first place. Karla is very child-like, and by "child-like," I mean "retarded." It's not like she had anywhere to go, as the device strapped to her ankle starts beeping the minute she steps out the front door... (If she makes it as far as the edge of her lawn she is immediately set upon by 3 Dallas SWAT members and a posse of attack dogs. Boy do I wish I'd gotten pictures of that. Go figure that the one time this weekend she decided to violate the terms of her house arrest and make a break for it, I had "accidentally" left my camera phone hidden behind a few carefully placed washcloths in her shower. Damn.)

Anyway, as you can see here, while there are many things that Karla does fit into, (such as a jail cell, the trunk of a '72 Ford LTD and a series of small plastic coolers - Some dissasembly required for that last one...) she does not really fit into a child's toy car. Also, once she was in there she found that she could not get out. She was still wedged in the car when I left. For all I know, she's still in there now, which is bound to make her pilates class interesting.

2) Karla posesses a working uterus.

I haven't actually got any personal knowledge of her uterus, nor do I have any pictures of it, (stop looking so dissapointed!) but I have seen, first-hand, what comes out of it. No, I'm not talking about the bloody discharge, although there certainly was plenty of that smeared all over her house. I'm refering to her son Jake, who I can now confirm is a living breathing person and not an elaborate photoshop-generated ruse.

I have nothing bad to say about Jake. He is sweet, wonderful and adorable. Which makes it all the more bizzare that he should come from Karla, who posesses none of those qualities. I enjoyed Jake so much that several times during my visit I found myself wishing Brian and Karla would just leave so I could enjoy some time with the only articulate and interesting person in the house. Also, Jake poops in his pants, which makes you okay in my book any day.

3) Karla is a master of photoshop.

You've all seen the pictures of her that she spends all day judiciously plastering all over the internet, and you've all had the same thought that I had: "What a pretty girl."

While I can still neither confirm or deny Karla's gender, I can say one thing without a doubt. All of those photos are heavily doctored. Karla (or someone in her employ) must posess an unbelievable degree of mastery in Photoshop, because when I say the pictures are doctored, I don't mean they are touched-up a little bit. I've been working in Photoshop for 10 years and I don't think I could pull off this kind of photo manipulation. Karla looks absolutely nothing like the pictures you have seen on her blog. She must spend hours upon hours working on these photos to make sure that no trace of her real face ever makes it out to the public eye. The effort is, quite frankly, astonishing. Even the picture above, with her in the baby car, turned out doctored. All I can guess is that she stole my camera phone when I wasn't looking and altered the pictures.

What she doesn't know is that I was able to get away with one photo that she didn't know about, and now present to you, the internet public, the only known completely un-doctored picture of Karla in existance. (Kids, look away now!)

Sorry, Internet, but the truth had to be told.

Flying The Slippery Skies

2006-09-14T23:19:00.000-04:00

Early tomorrow morning Sal and I are getting on a plane and heading out for parts unknown. Actually now that I think about it, I hope we are heading to parts known. I hope that I know the parts we are heading to, and I really hope the pilot knows the parts we are heading to. I mean, he's the only one on the plane with a freaking forward-facing window, so I kind of expect him to be the guy who's responsible for getting us where we need to go.

As an aside, one of my greatest pet peeves involves air travel. Whenever I am about to fly somewhere, someone always says "have a safe flight!" Like I get any say at all in whether the fight is safe or not. My hands are tied back in coach. They don't give you a steering wheel back there. Tell it to the guys up front who can actually, you know, fly the plane. When I get on, I like to stick my head into the cockpit and say "My mom said have a safe flight, and I know you boys don't want to let my mom down, so whaddaya say we keep it in the air all the way to Chicago, eh?"

At any rate, being fully aware you can apparently bring down a plane with Gatorade now, I figured I'd better check the TSA's website and familiarize myself with what I will and will not be allowed to bring on the plane. I'm thoughtful like that. I'll do just about anything to avoid a cavity search.

So as we all know, you can no longer board the plane with a bottle of water, hand sanitizer, or lotion. They've pretty much put the kibosh on any liquid or gel. Except those gel inserts for your shoes. If you are gellin' like a felon, You are still welcome on board. But if you sit next to me and insist on tellin' me how gellin' you are, I'll make you eat those fucking insoles.

The list of approved and disapproved items does take a few turns into the bizarre, though. I may not be able to bring a bottle of Aquafina, but I am allowed up to 4 ounces of personal lubricant. I'm not sure exactly what situation may arise on an airplane that would require me to be packing KY, (well, I can think of one, actually. Heh.) but it's good to know that on a long flight, one's throat may be parched, but one's vagina will be damper than an acre of rain forest. I guess the mile high club lobbied hard to get that one included.

I know this will come as a shock to most of you, but you are no longer allowed to bring bug repellent on the aircraft. Looks like passengers will now be utterly defenseless against all the chiggers, gnats and mosquitoes that live in the modern 747. Talk about roughing it... At least you can still wear bells around your ankles to ward off the bears.

You can still bring "toy transformer robots" onto the plane. They went out of their way to mention that specifically for some reason. They also allow toy weapons, as long as they are not "realistic." I'd advise parents to err on the side of caution with this one. If your kid has a toy gun that isn't bright pink and looks wonky like something that fell out of Dr. Seuss' ass, leave it at home. A sure sign that your child's toy weapon was too realistic is your child bleeding out from multiple gunshot wounds on the cold tile of an airport floor.

You can apparently bring drills and other power tools, as long as they are used for the attachment and removal of prosthetic devices. My job occasionally requires me to travel with tools, which I usually pack in the checked luggage, but fuck that! From now on I'm just hiring an amputee to come along and act as cover. "No officer, I need that band saw to take off my buddy's false elbows and prosthetic nipples. It's medical."

Sharp items that are specifically prohibited include: knives (okay), box cutters (I can see the sense in that) , ice axes, meat cleavers and sabres. A serious blow to all of the globe-trotting climbers, butchers and Arabian princes who can no longer practice their trade in flight.

Other prohibited items on the "Damn, I was going to bring one of those" list include: spear guns, cattle prods, starter pistols, nunchakus, throwing stars and hand grenades.

Hand grenades.

I did not need the TSA to tell me that hand grenades are not appropriate on a flight. Well, maybe a long flight with crying babies, but otherwise I was assuming I should leave my hand grenades at home.

Who exactly (with the exception of Steven Segal) is getting on a domestic flight armed for unexpected guerilla combat? Did they get a lot of ninjas in the days before 9/11?

I know 2 things:

1) The world is definitely getting crazier.

2) My carry on tomorrow will hold nothing but my iPod, a book, and possibly some trail mix.

And my allotted 4 ounces of lube.

Thirty-Four Years

2006-09-11T17:50:00.000-04:00

Fuck all this "five years" bullshit that's going on today. The real day of infamy was thirty four years ago when Lil' Wombat was lifted from the belly of his sainted mother and hurled into the world like an obscenity-spewing cannonball. My own personal conspiracy theory is that the terrorists picked my birthday to throw planes at buildings as some sort of warning to me. Because if there's one thing the terrorists hate more than freedom, It's poop stories and fart jokes. Nothing spoils a jihad like bun-music.

I waited all day for Katie Couric to show up and interview me, or for the President to publicly condemn me, but both of them were complete no-shows. I also scoured the newspaper for "where were you when Wombat was born" stories, but I found nothing. The blogosphere was similarly devoid of stories about me. Everyone's busy going on and on about the other horrible thing that happened on 9/11. Let's get some perspective here, people!

Yes, the terrorist attacks 5 years ago were horrible. Truly, utterly horrible. But I'd like to think that this blog is even more horrible. And if you think reading me makes you want to throw yourself from a bridge, just imagine talking to me. And I've been spreading my unique brand of stink around the country for way longer than 5 years. So I ask you: Who, really, is the greater threat to our way of life? Osama Bin laden, or yours truly, the Sphincter of Mass Distruction?

How long have I been trying to get the government to institute a color-coded warning system (shades of brown, of course) based on the flatulence levels in my pants? I mean, I'm thinking of the public safety here. But no one in the White House would return my calls. Now every Tom Dick and Achmed with a dirty bomb or a thermos full of anthrax gets a color-coded warning. What a world. I was unleashing toxic gas on the masses way before it was cool.

What is astonishing to me as I look back over my life this far, is how similar I am now to the Lil' Wombat that entered the world all those years ago. He was a whining crying shit-machine with no hair, a tiny penis, and a strong desire to put nipples in his mouth. Today? Well... I cry a little less. Otherwise, pretty much the same dude. Amazing how I can take so long to make such little progress.

At any rate, enjoy your day of rememberance. Have a moment of silence for those 2973 poor souls who died 5 years ago. But when you're done doing that, take a moment to recall the original "dirty bomb," introduced to a cringing America on this day in 1972.

Poopslinger

2006-07-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

I have terrible aim. This is something that you might as well know about me. Terrible, horrible aim.

It's true when I'm throwing a wad of paper at a trash can, It's true when I'm throwing my skidmarked undies at the hamper, and as Sally will gladly tell you (while kneeling on the bathroom floor and employing a large variety of cleaning products), It's true when I'm aiming my wizzle-stick at the toilet. Lousy, lousy aim. Don't even get me started on my inability to play darts. If I'm holding a dart, the safest place in the world to stand is directly in front of me, because that's the one place that dart ain't ever going.

So fact "a" that you should be keeping in your head, for it is germane to the story I am about to tell you, is that I have lousy aim. Fact "b" for you to hold onto is that I live in a row house, which is an end unit on a corner, and that I have, sticking off the side of the rear of my house, a little tiny useless garage.

"Useless" is probably a bit of an overstatement. It has plenty of uses. It's just that none of those uses includes parking (or for that matter fitting) an actual automobile inside of it. Given that the definition of "garage" is "an outbuilding (or part of a building) for housing automobiles," I'd say that the little room on the back of my house with the cool roll-up door fails utterly to be a garage. Maybe it was built years ago, in a bygone age when cars were, oh... 5 feet wide. If you drove a Mini you could probably get it into my garage, but you certainly couldn't open the doors. You'd have to climb out the windows, "Duke-boy" style, if you ever wanted to actually come inside for an iced tea or something.

We have no idea what possessed one of the previous owners to build a tiny garage. We have no idea if it was at one time functional or if it is some sort of elaborate practical joke. We use it mostly as a junk room, and a place to keep the garbage until garbage day, at which time, I roll up the door and plop the trash cans out on the sidewalk.

Anyway, to recap, the things you should now know are:

a) Lousy aim
b) Tiny, stupid "garbage room" garage

Okay. On with the (by now completely un-thrilling and anticlimactic) story.

This morning around 11, I arrive home from running a few errands. You may imagine that by "errands" I mean eating scones off the naked back of an armless asian woman with some of Baltimore's intelectual elite or possibly arranging a series of diabolical prison breaks that will soon have this city on its knees, begging for mercy. I don't actually mean either of those things, but you may imagine that I do. I pull in behind a very shiny and obviously brand new blue Mustang. It's quite a pretty car, somewhat out of place in my neighborhood, and someone has gone to great lengths to really make it sparkle. It's one of these here:

(Common Wombat in no way is affiliated with, nor does he endorse, the Ford Motor Company. Unless they'd like to send him a free car. Then he'll endorse whatever they want him to, because Common Wombat is a big fat whore.)

I am distracted from my admiration for the pretty, pretty car, by the sight of something lying on the lid of one of my trash cans. I know what it is the second I see it. It's a little plastic sandwich bag filled with shit.

(Common Wombat is also in no way affiliated with, nor does he endorse, little plastic sandwich bags filled with shit.)

I keep my trash cans inside of my little tiny garage. They only sit outside for a few hours twice a week on garbage day, but in that short window of time between when the garbage men empty them, and when I take them back inside, they always manage to acquire a few bags of dog shit. It's irritating to have to house someone else's crap for a few days, but honestly I'm just glad they are actually picking up their turds instead of leaving them scattered around my kitchen door like a fly-encrusted mine-field. That's assuming that the pooch-poo comes in the standard approved package of an intact plastic shopping bag, tied off securely and placed inside my trash can. Double-bagged is even better. If I see you double-bagging, I'll come outside and kiss you.

This wasn't a trash bag, it wasn't tied off, and it wasn't actually in the can. This was a pile of fresh soft steamers in an open sandwich bag, lying on the lid of the can. That's just bad neighborship in my book, and it caused me to make the following face:

I'm a generally loving and kind guy. But there's only so much of dealing with someone else's smelly turd bombs that I can take before I snap a little. Besides, it's been a hard few weeks, you know?

So, full of righteous anger, I went over to the trash can (still making the face) and picked up the bag of shit by one corner. I summoned up all of my intense hatred for the dog walkers of America who don't practice neighborly shit-scooping practices, and with a mighty swipe of my bear-like paw, I flung the offending poo-pouch across the street.

Or at least, that's how it happened in my head. In reality the mighty swipe of my paw was more of a feeble flap of my flipper, and the little turd-sack wound up sailing sort of diagonally about 15 feet away...

...And right smack onto the trunk of the shiny new Mustang, where it promptly unloaded all of its little brown passengers to play all over the back of the car. Immediately my face of righteous rage morphed into my face of "holy shit I'm a gigantic asshole."

What does a good neighbor do after he has plastered the back of your expensive and spit-shined new car with fresh dog shit?

I wouldn't know. I hid in my kitchen.

I'm Back And I'm Black!

2006-07-21T00:55:00.000-04:00

Some of you are thinking, "He's not black... what is he talking about?" This is the internet, people. I'm blogging from behind an iron veil of secrecy and anonymity... You don't know who I really am or what I look like. I could very well be a black man. Hell, I could be a black woman! I could be a female black midget!

Some others of you are thinking, "No... I've met you face to face, and you're a tubby white dude. You sir, are not black. Or a midget, for that matter." Um... crap. So much for my veil of secrecy.

At any rate, the question of my blackness aside, I am, in fact, back. I'm back and I'm white.

Thanks to all of you who commented or sent me emails expressing concern. It's good to know so many of you are caring, loving individuals, in addition to being depraved little fuckers who scour the internet for poop stories. I admit that some life issues had me on the ropes and reeling for a few days there, and at the time, I really wasn't seeing the funny come back in the near future. Hanging there on the ropes does that kind of shit to your perspective. On the ropes, all you see is the mat and the gloves of the guy slugging you.

But then, if you're me, you remember that you're a hell of a lot stronger than the guy hitting you, and you get the fuck off the ropes and start throwing punches again. So that's what I did. And lo and behold the funny came back. Along with the funny also came the need to drive stupid boxing metaphors into the ground, so it seems.

Anyway, things here at Wombat HQ are okay... Nobody died. Well, my grandmother actually did die, (peacefully and surrounded by family, which seems to me to be the best possible way to go...) but that wasn't what had me on the ropes. Sally did not die, (I know some of you were thinking it!) or even lose a limb. Look, here she is with me in Shenandoah National Park this weekend, hale and healthy.

I just realized that you can see none of her limbs in that picture. You'll just have to take my word for it - they're all there and functional. Ain't my wife a cutie though? That, by the way, is the face she makes when I pinch her butt. Or when I drop a KFC-scented trouser bomb. It's the same face for both things.

Hmm... I just noticed that we both have trees growing out of our heads in that picture. In the "cool head trees" battle, sally wins, because hers looks like a badass Ronald McDonald wig. Mine looks like I have an elephant knee jutting out of my skull. Next time I'm paying more attention to where I stand and getting the cool head-tree.

Shenandoah was terribly cool. It may be because my job frequenly requires me to spend a lot of time in the shopping malls of the world, but I had completely forgotten that there were great sections of our country that have yet to be paved over. This is a bad thing if you're looking to park your car or get a pickup basketball game going, but if you're looking to relax and explore, I highly recommend spending some time in the non-paved areas. Sal and I hiked down into the woods to see a 70-foot waterfall hidden back there, and once I was done frantically looking for the jumbotron monitors and trying to order peanuts from every deer in the area, I was really awestruck by the beauty of nature. I don't spend enough time outdoors. Something I shall rectify.

Anyway, as I said before, I'm back. And yes, officially, white. Just in case you were wondering. You can't keep a good wombat down. And I am a very good wombat.

Thanks again for all the support guys.

Nothing is funny anymore...

2006-07-11T08:53:00.000-04:00

...and probably won't be for a long time. No more blogging. Maybe someday. Sorry.

Where the fuck have I been for TWO MONTHS???

2006-06-07T00:59:00.000-04:00

Don't get all excited, this post will not be the gigantic teetering mountain of funny you're hoping it will be. If you were expecting a triumphant return to form with some great and horrifying story of my latest rectal-mishap, prepare to be dissapointed. I don't have any good ass or poop stories, and even if I did, I don't really have the time to tell them right now. But I've been getting some concerned emails from some of you (which is a nice change to the "please for the love of Christ stop blogging" emails I usually get), so I wanted to explain my absence.

You see, a little over a month ago, I was thinking of some ways I could improve the blog, and I began the Common Wombat Commitment to Quality. I solemnly vowed (because I've found that laughingly vowing things just doesn't carry the same weight) that I would only blog the finest, funniest, abso-fucking-lutely best quality stories I could possibly write. And if I couldn't muster up some quality blogging, I would write nothing at all.

Well, we all see where that got me. So fuck the Common Wombat Commitment to Quality. What a crap idea that was.

I now hereby present to you the Common Wombat Commitment to Talentless and Unfunny Blogging.

Phew! What a weight off my shoulders!

Seriously though, I have been (and continue to be) very busy. But fear not, Blog-buddies. I haven't forgotten you. I'll be back very very soon to make you regret ever buying a computer and logging on to the interweb. Just you wait.

In the meantime, you can amuse yourselves by reading this little story, which I posted before I started picking up readers, and many of you may have missed. It's a heartwarming tale of love, honor, and me shitting my pants in a public building.

I'll be back! You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll retch a little!

But enough about Sally, let's talk about me.

2006-04-20T22:30:00.000-04:00

The worst part of this story, the part that will make all of you once and for all write me off as some kind of degenerate genetic experiment gone wrong, isn't that it exposes me as a monumental klutz, or that it involves me injuring myself while buck-ass naked.

No, those things are just the buttercream icing on the warm chocolate cake of my perpetual slide into full jackassitude. The worst part of the story, as you can probably guess by now, involves my ass.

It was the morning after Christmas, 2001. Sally had already left for work, but I was enjoying a nice lie-in, because I worked for Santa. The great jolly fucker in red may be a slave-driver on Easter and President's day and Yom Kippur, but when Christmas rolls around, you by god get time off, because that is his fucking holiday.

The two things you need to know about the moment that I woke up are as follows:

1) I was buck naked. This is not (as some of you may have thought) because my bedroom was invaded in the middle of the night by a squad of gay Turkish jugglers who stripped me nude and ravaged me with bowling pins and live puppies, but because I sleep in the nude. I've mentioned that fact before, and as then, I will say again now, don't try to picture it. You'll only hurt yourself. The next time you see Sally, just give her a sympathetic hug and whisper in her ear "The horror... the horror..." She'll know what you mean. And probably start crying.

2) I had a desperate need to shit.

That's maybe my least favorite way to wake up. No wait a minute. The thing I wrote earlier? About being ravaged by jugglers? That would be my least favorite way to wake up, followed by "being eaten by a walrus" and "realizing I'm on fire." But the point is that waking up at T-minus 50 seconds 'till the skidmark apocalypse is definitely one of my least favorite ways to wake up. And so, not really wanting to paint the bed, I got up.

So there I was, about 15 seconds into the morning after Christmas, defensively clenching as I waddled down the hallway on still sleep-numb legs, my tiny man-junk utterly failing to dangle between my legs and a crust of half-dried drool on my left cheek.

I'll interrupt the narrative for just a second here to tell you that, when I started this blog a few years ago, I distinctly said to myself "I don't ever want to be one of those bloggers who is constantly trying to make themselves seem cool and impressive..." I'd say mission a-fucking-complished.

At the top of the steps, I made a fateful mistake. Instead of turning left, into the bathroom, I turned right, onto the landing at the top of the stairs. You see, the morning before (Christmas, for those of you who are only skimming this story looking for poop-references and retaining no real information) Sally had given me a book about Legos, and as faithful blog-buddies should know by now, I like to read while I shit. The book in question was still downstairs, under the tree, thus the right-hand turn onto the stairs.

So I went downstairs, got the book, and returned upstairs to the bathroom, where I enjoyed a nice leisurely morning grump while reading about Legos.

Or at least, that was the plan.

The part of the plan that involved going down the stairs went just fine, except that I did it on my ass with my legs sticking straight up in the air, while clawing at the brick wall and making monkey noises. And I did it a lot faster than I had intended too.

And so, there I was, not quite a minute into this new morning, buck naked in a tubby heap at the foot of the stairs, arms and legs splayed about, tiny man-junk still quite tiny, and in quite a lot of pain.

I'm a big guy, and when suddenly not supported by my legs, or, oh, anything else, I come crashing to the ground pretty fucking hard. So as I lay there nude on my living room floor, my first concern was determining if I had broken my legs. I figured I'd need them intact if I was going to crawl to a phone for help, or at least into the TV room so that I could die in front of the television. Much to my relief, the legs were intact and functional. Ironic, considering that they were somewhat less than functional a few seconds before when I had needed them to walk me down the fucking stairs.

Ok. Legs working. Arms working. Good so far. My head hurt because I'm pretty sure it had hit a few stairs on the way down, but as I lay there and took inventory, it seemed the only part of me absolutely screaming in pain was...

Oh go ahead, guess.

Yep. My ass.

My poor ass took a fucking beating, as I was basically sliding unhindered down the stairs on it. My stairs are hardwood. My floor too. This means no rug-burns (yay) but it also means my stairs are hard as hell, and there are some splinters (boo). Still, I'll take a banged up ass over broken legs any day.

At this point, through the buzzy haze of the adrenaline rush, I realize something important:

I still reeeeeeeeally have to shit.

There's a small half-bath on the first floor of my house, so I haul myself off the floor, and limp my throbbing ass over to get the Lego book. Even in the midst of a crisis, it's important to prioritize. After going through all of that, I by God was going to read that fucking book on the toilet.

And so I did.

The end result (pun intended) of my trip down the stairs was a bunch of scrapes and bruises, but nothing broken or otherwise seriously injured. Except my pride, which, since I clearly have none, wasn't much of a loss.

So of course when Sally came home at the end of the day, I told her the whole story of my gravity-assisted nude gymnastics, and showed her my black and blue ass. The she inspected the stairs and called me over, asking "Did you bleed on the steps here?"

I assured her that, while scraped up, I didn't really have any open wounds from my fall, and I seriously doubted that I'd actually bled on anything. I looked where she pointed though, and sure enough there was a small stain on the last step.

A small brown stain.

On the last step, where I had landed after falling down the stairs on my ass while reeeeeeeeeealy needing to shit.

Yeah, you guessed it. It should come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog. I shit on the stairs. Not a big shit, not a log or a nugget, more like a little brown kiss, but still... I shit on the stairs.

Go ahead and say it. I won't argue with you. Utterly unfit for human society.

Sally, for her part, was very supportive. First, by laughing at me and the skidmarked step for 3 hours, and then by referring to me as "Scrapey Butt" for the next 2 months. She's better than a band aid, I tell you.

More reasons why the woman I married should be locked up.

2006-04-06T18:26:00.000-04:00

Since I've already outed her as an obsessive penny-scrubber, I figured I'd just keep the "Weird Wife" train a-rolling along and give you a few more reasons why Sally, love her as I do, is just plain the strangest woman walking the planet. She's stranger than most of the wheelchair-bound women out there rolling the planet as well.

Here are a few reasons why, in no particular order.

1) She laughs for 40 minutes straight.

You might not think that this is strange at first glance, so let me be more specific. When I say "she laughs" I don't mean "she titters," or "she sniffles," or "she giggles a little." I mean she sends small animals running for cover by making a sound something like a jet engine humping a pack of hyenas to death. (Those of you who have heard Sally laugh know what I'm talking about. She could raise the dead with her laugh. She could shred wallpaper at 100 yards.) If you're picturing a sound (how do you picture a sound?) that is in any way irritating, you're on the wrong track. Despite the fact that it sends your skeleton shooting straight out of your body, people absolutely love Sal's laugh, because it is such an expression of unbridled and unashamed joy. It's a terrible and awesome thing, and may just be one of my very favorite things about her. One of these days I'll capture it and post it here on the internet for you all to experience.

Also, when I say "she laughs for 40 minutes," I mean "she laughs at the same single thing." And it's usually something stupid, like a fart joke. For 40 minutes.

For example, the other night we were watching some show on the Food Network, and they were giving us an in depth look into a crouton factory. (yep, every night is a slow news night at the Food Network.) At one point the announcer made the grave mistake of referring to the croutons as "crusty chunks." Instantly the cats bolted from the room at the sound of a hundred moose being shredded in a wood chipper. Sal squealed and hooted at "crusty chunks" for the remainder of the program. At one point she even commandeered the Tivo remote to back the show up and hear the guy say "crusty chunks" five more times. I can't tell you how often this happens. the worst part is that after a good 20 minutes of honking and squealing, there will be a few minutes of perfect silence and stillness, and you'll think the fit has finally ended. Wrong! She's just lulling you into a false sense of security! Just when you are sure she's settled down, and are about to say something sweet and loving to her, that's when the hooting starts up again. She will squeal on and off again at the very same stupid thing for the rest of the night if you let her.

I happen to love the sound of her laughter. So of course, I let her.

2) She plays with the cats.

Again, it takes some specification to make it clear why this is strange. When I say "plays," I mean "engages in bizarre torture rituals that would make Joseph Mengele proud." One of her favorite games to play with the cats is the "My Little Pony" game. This game consists of Sally suddenly enveloping the entire face of one of our cats in her palm and yelling "My Little Pony!!!" If I had a million years I couldn't explain to you why she does this or what it means. Another thing she likes to do is pick up one of the cats and flip it around on her lap until it is sitting upright with its legs stuck out, like a person would. Then she grabs its paws and pretends it is driving a car. She forces these poor cats to steer, honk the horn, roll down the window (apparently our cats have never heard of power windows) and adjust the mirrors.

She likes to take Einstein, or biggest, fattest, fluffiest cat and dry-mop the kitchen floor with him. She hangs clothespins on Booger, the youngest. She pulls on their whiskers and tails. She likes to grab their back paws and squeal while they try to run away.

In case all this sounds like cruelty, you should know that the cats love it. I swear they do. Purring galore. This is proof that a) my wife is crazy, and b) so are my cats.

3) She is a 12-year-old boy.

Fortunately for me and my ongoing campaign to not go to jail, she is not really a 12-year-old boy. At least, not on the outside. She has the requisite boobies and appropriate genitalia that distinguish her as a fully grown adult woman. (I've checked.) However, if you were to have her conduct an interview over the phone with a psychologist, and you were to disguise her voice like they do on Dateline when they interview convicted rapists, I promise you the psychologist would walk away convinced he or she had been speaking to a 12-year-old boy.

Why, you ask? Well, her sense of humor is (fortunately for me) somewhat unrefined. I remember years ago we watched the very first episode of South Park together. For 12 minutes, she sat there stone-faced, emitting not a single laugh. She turned to me and said "I don't think this show is very funny." Then fire erupted from Cartman's ass and she rolled around the apartment screaming and clutching her belly for the rest of the night.

Biting brilliant satire? Lost on her.

Fire out of the ass? Priceless.

This is the woman who still laughs every time I fart. And since I am, as Karla pointed out, "an anally obsessed fartbag," I fart a lot. Her favorite words are "booger," "turds" and "taint." One time at the supermarket we came across a knife labeled "6 inch boner" and she fell over laughing and was inconsolable for 12 minutes.

Of course, so was I. I mean, "6-inch boner" is pretty fucking funny.

She's perfect for a disgusting guy like me, though... Here's an actual Googletalk conversation we had:

Me: twatfingers
Sally: thickened stump
Me: fudgenuckles
Sally: feces-cano
Me: Mt. St. Fistula
Sally: pus-filled labia
Me: nose pringles
Sally: dong jerky
Me: trouser bubbles
Sally: velcro boogers
Me: uterine drip
Sally: drippy jello squirts
Me: riding the hershey hurricane
Sally: poo-chunk hairball dingles
Me: fork-tender bun-biscuits
Sally: bubbly loaf of yeast infection
Me: WOW. Holy shit you win.

I stand in complete and utter awe of this woman.

And for those of you imagining her as a cursing, feces throwing cavewoman, yes, she's completely capable of behaving normally in polite society. Um... unlike me.

Once again, more about my shitting habits than you ever wanted to know.

2006-03-27T23:16:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the prose flows as if from a hose, or falls like snows on Himalayan floes. Other times I have the no-prose woes. The muse just goes, my frustration grows, my synapses close as I pick my nose and consider leaving the writing to the pros.

All of which is my way of saying "this is my third blog entry in a month??? I suck."

And so, in the interest of not sucking quite so much, I now present you with what passes for a blog entry when the muse departs: A couple of unrelated things from my brain.

Unrelated thing from my brain #1:

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator will always be a very special book in my life. For those of you who don't know, it is the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's a pretty good book if you are in that "smart middle-school kid with no friends and no prospects of dating in the next 7 years" demographic. In fact I'll go as far as to say it's a better book than the one that precedes it. But that's not why it's special to me. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator will forever be enshrined in the Wombat Hall of Fame because it is (so far) the only book I have ever read cover to cover in one sitting on the toilet.

Ever since I was a wee lad I understood that rule #3 of being a guy is "No shitting shall occur without the presence of reading materials." (For those of you who are curious, Rule #1 is "If you shake it more than twice, you're playing with it," and Rule #2 is "By all means, shake it more than twice. As often as possible.") I know that a few of you out there are speed-shitters. You crap like it's some sort of timed Olympic event. If you take an extra half a second on the wipe or the dismount, it's like you've let your whole country down. You probably spend hours sitting at your desks, obsessing over how sphincter control training could shave seconds off your TEBV (Total Elapsed Bathroom Visit).

I'm exactly the opposite. I approach the bathroom like it's a sunlit clearing in a peaceful forest. I look around, admire the view, find the most ideal spot and set up my tent. Barring a few exceptions (like a last minute grump on a crashing airplane), when I sit on the toilet, I plan on camping out a while. And yes, I always bring a book. I don't mean to imply that it takes me a long time to shit. I imagine that my actual "pushin' one out" time is about as long as anyone's. A couple of minutes (sometimes less) and the actual bathroom work is pretty much over. But the beauty of the bathroom (once you get over the smell) is that by and large you get left alone in there. I grew up with my mother and my sister in a pretty small house, and if one of them wasn't yapping at me about chewing the knees off her Barbies, the other was asking how my day was, or trying to get me to clean my room. (I'll leave it to you to guess which was which.) My room was no escape from them. The walls were thin, and a closed door was no hindrance to either of them. But I learned pretty quickly that if I went to the bathroom and commenced with the grumpitude, suddenly I was left to myself. Nobody wanted any part of that action. The bathroom became my sanctuary, my place unto myself, and (as I got the book bug from my Mom) my reading room.

The amount of time I spent in there as a kid was legendary. It actually was a running joke with my friends and family. One Saturday my buddy Dave called up to see if I wanted to hang out. My Mom answered the phone: (By the way, I swear to the Great Chocolate Monkey that this story is 100% true.)

Dave: Hey Mrs. Baker, is John there?
Mom: Hi Dave. Well, he's here, but he's in the bathroom, and we know what that means.
Dave: Ha ha ha! Okay, I'd better call back in a few hours then. Ha ha ha!
Mom: Ha ha ha! Yeah you'd better do that. Ha ha ha!

Three hours pass. The phone rings again.

Dave: Hey Mrs. Baker, is he out yet? Ha ha ha!
Mom: You know... Um... I don't know if... Um... I haven't seen him in a while. I think he's still in there. Good lord...
Dave: You gotta be kidding me.

What can I say? If the book was a good one, I could really camp out. My legs would actually go numb, and I'd just keep reading. I'd have ring-around the butt that would last for days. I like to think that this is all proof of my intense love of reading, but you all probably just see this as yet another reason I'm utterly unfit for integration into human society. You may be right.

I'm much better now. I don't spend hours in there anymore, but I do still take a book every time, and I will admit that 45 minutes on the grumper isn't unheard of around here. At least I'm well read.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, though, is still a feat which has not been duplicated. It's not a huge book though. 176 pages. Also, I was like, 12. I could do better. And if I do, you know you'll hear about it here.

Unrelated thing from my brain #2:

You know how some people (and by "some people" I mean fundamentalists and Mormons... And fundamentalist Mormons. Fundamormons.) like to say "The Lord moves in mysterious ways?" It just now occurred to me that maybe they mean he actually moves weird. Like all the angels and saints just float around Heaven in the normal way, but God sort of hop-shuffles sideways, like an epileptic crab.

No, come to think of it, God lurching about Heaven in a strange manner doesn't really cut it. They don't say he moves in odd ways, they say mysterious. However it is that God is humping all over Paradise, it has to be so weird as to actually qualify as mysterious. New entrants into the kingdom must see God go by, half rolling, half doing jumping jacks, With a fresh donut stuck on each finger and a live lion on his head, all the while making horrible noises through his nostrils like a broken threshing machine. They must see this, and turn to the nearest Seraphim and say "Was that God? Why the fuck does he do that???" And the Seraphim must reply, "No one knows. It is the great holy mystery."

Heaven must be a truly weird place.

Unrelated thing from my brain #3:

Do you think blind people go crazy if they try to read a sheet of bubble wrap? I'm just wondering.

Unrelated thing from my brain #4:

There are several reasons why the woman that I married is absolutely batshit crazy. Here's the latest:

Just now, after writing Thing #3 above, I wandered downstairs to see what my beloved was up to. I found her in the kitchen, cleaning things. And when I say "things" in this case, I mean pennies.

Yes, for some reason, my wonderful wife looked in her wallet and decided that her pennies were just too grungy for everyday use. So she got out the Barkeepers Friend (which, for those of you who don't stay obsessively up-to-date on cleaning supplies, is some crazy powerful shit) and scrubbed all of her pennies to a glowing sheen. I kid you not. Look:

Now you tell me, Blog-Buddies, am I wrong in thinking that cleaning your pennies is a free pass into the nearest padded cell? Do all of you occasionally dip into your pockets, pull out a handful of shoddy loose change, and think "These can be a lot cleaner?"

It's not like they de-value if you let them get dull. That pile in the photo above was worth exactly 17 cents when Sal started scrubbing, and they're worth exactly 17 cents now that she's finished. It boggles the mind.

Look at how happy she is!

What's crazier? That my wife obsessively cleans her coins, or that I probably love her more for doing it? I mean, she's a crazy lady, but she's my crazy lady, ya know?

Okay, that's all I got for tonight. Don't bother writing to ask if she'll clean your money. We ain't running a laundromat here.

Lazy Fucker / Spidey-Sodomy / Bear Cock

2006-03-17T00:53:00.000-05:00

If I had to list four things about myself, three of them would be the fact that I am incredibly lazy. I wouldn't even list the fourth thing. That's how lazy I am.

I am so lazy, in fact, that I can't even be arsed to muster a good excuse as to why I haven't blogged in two whole weeks. I'm sure I could lay out some twisted tale for you about how a sudden and previously unknown rectal malady had me laid up in the New Irving J. Rosenthal Anal-horror Wing of Johns Hopkins Hospital. (I'm sure you'd believe it too, because let's face it, at this point you're probably willing to believe just about anything I say about my butt. If I said my butt was issuing valid Macy's gift cards, you'd all line up to get one.)

Anyway, for those of you keeping score, I wasn't laid up in the hospital, nor was I overseas on some humanitarian mission to sew prosthetic bungholes on the poor assless children of Serbia. I was also not (as some rumors would have you believe) touring Europe with Night Ranger, Hiding out in the witness protection program prior to testifying in a high-stakes rubber-nipple racket trial, or fingering the Pope.

Okay, I fingered the Pope once.

Tell no one.

At any rate, I've heaved myself keyboard-ward this evening because I want you to know, as I stated above, That I am incredibly fucking lazy. Thank god typing in this blog only requires movement from the wrists down. All the parts of me located behind the wrists are actually sleeping right now. Sleeping, snoring and drooling.

...

Those three dots right there? I took a nap. Lazy!

I could continue describing my incredible laziness to you, but it would take too much effort. Instead I think I'll show you my all time favorite picture of Spiderman being anally sodomized. This comes from back when Paul and I both worked at Santa, Inc. together. Often, instead of helping to create wonderful holiday displays to delight the children of the world, we would do this instead:

No, I don't mean we would do the act depicted above... We'd never do that on company time... I mean that we'd spend hours (and I do mean hours) posing our action figures in obscene positions and taking pictures of them.

Man, if there ever was a sentence to get me into the Horrible Nerd Loser Hall Of Fame, it's that last one above. Jesus. Even I want to beat me up and steal my lunch money...

Anyway, I posted that picture partly because I think it's funny (Spidey looks so ashamed!!!), and party because I'm dying to know how many Google searches are going to end up at this blog now that I've typed the phrase "Anal-Rape Spidey" a few times. You just know ACW Google searches that exact phrase on a nightly basis...

Hmmm... Looking at that pic, it seems to me now that it's missing something... Here we go:

Feel free to spread that around the internet.

While I'm waxing nostalgic about my time at Santa, Inc., I'll relate one more brief story. We had a creative director there who I'll call "Mort." Mort was a nice dude, a born-again Christian who (while outspoken) was never ever pushy or preachy with his faith. He was usually upbeat and energetic, and he had a very positive outlook about his job. I liked Mort. He had the tendency that many high-enthusiasm people have to be a little irritating, but I always felt that he was well-intentioned.

One day we were doing a holiday presentation for the Celestial Seasonings Tea Company, and we were brainstorming different concepts for decorating their corporate headquarters. Mort's idea involved large teddy bears in PJs (the Celestial Seasonings packages always have art of teddy bears) hanging from the overhead with giant "tea-related" props. It was an okay idea, I guess, and things were going great until he brought out the drawing of the Honey-dripper bear.

To this day, he refuses to understand why we all fell on the floor laughing.

(waaaaait for it...)

Mort was so insistent that the display was not (let's just call it like we see it) a giant flying bear with a huge dripping dong, that he refused to change it and it went up at Celestial Seasonings just as you see it here. I can only imagine what people thought when they entered that huge atrium and looked around at the display we hung for them. Oh, the joy!!! Oh, the wonder!!!

Because nothing, my friends, nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a giant bear waving his cock at you.

Son of a tassel-humper!

2006-03-02T03:31:00.000-05:00

I love how lately this blog has been bouncing back and forth between tales of disgusting horror and little glimpses into what a huge softie I am. Since the last entry involved a detailed journey into the inner workings of my rectum, it's a safe bet that today I'm going to go all mushy on you again.

Early in the morning on March 1, my good friends Ray and Maria welcomed their first child, Nicolas, into the world. (When I say "first," I don't mean to imply "first of many." I mean, they're my friends and all, but I really have no insider info as to their future procreative plans. Nicolas may be the first of 18, or he could be the first of... um... one. I'm betting against 18 though. That seems like excessive baby-making to me.)

I'm lucky in my life to know many truly good people who are wonderful parents to their kids, (and one or two total whack-jobs who should probably have their wombs confiscated) and Ray and Maria are no exception. I know they're going to be great parents and I just wanted to take a moment to come down firmly on the side of "I wholeheartedly approve of their successful procreation."

Here's an adorable photo of the new mom and her son:

And, since the proud father couldn't be in that picture, here's a nice shot of him humping a giant tassel:

Hmmmm. Well, I'm sure Maria will be a great parent, anyway.

Now, if I'm staying true to form, my next post will be so gross as to actually shrivel you to midget-size. After that... probably pictures of kittens.

Anal Fistula.

2006-02-23T21:22:00.000-05:00

Many of you have observed, repeatedly and vocally, that I seem to be obsessed with my own ass.

I'm not denying it. The ass (and more specifically, my ass) holds a position of great importance in my life. You could say that all philosophy comes from the brain, or that all poetry comes from the heart... I have a feeling that all comedy comes, ultimately, from the ass. And that's a great thing. So, okay, I've become known far and wide as something of an ass expert. An asspert. I'm okay with that.

I have realized, however, that those who live by the ass, die by the ass.

Karma dictates that if I was the sort of person who went around kicking people, then I would be laid up with a foot injury. Or if I used to steal lollipops from little children, I might develop tooth decay. Well I Don't generally kick people, and I never took a lollipop. What I do, is talk about the ass all day long, so of course a few years ago karma reached its long pointy finger down from the heavens and smote me with what the medical profession calls an "Anal Fistula."

Now I'm no doctor (not that I let that stop me from handing out prescriptions on the street corner), so I won't try to go into a lengthy medical description of what an anal fistula is exactly. Let's just call it a "little fucking horrible tunnel in your butthole," and leave it at that.

Here's a nice picture I stole from some fancy "Maladies of the butt" website:

Get the picture?

I know what you people are probably thinking. "He got that fistula from all the sex with monkeys." Well, I assure you that all my sexmonkeys are thoroughly screened for diseases and are 100% clean. My sexmonkeys are the healthiest monkeys on the planet, right up to the point where I shave and de-bone them, and then... Er... Re-bone them.

The fistula is just one of those things that just happen. I did not get it from rough prison sex, and I most definitely did not get it (because I know some of you are dying to rub this one in my face) from failing to wash my hands after peeing. I just got it, okay?

Let me tell you, because I can hear you squirming with intellectual curiosity, just what having a fistula is like. First of all, it's a tear in your body, so it hurts like any tear in your skin would. It stings. Like a paper-cut. On your asshole.

Secondly, take a good look at that little picture above. See the tiny brown drop coming out of the mouth of the fistula? That ain't artistic license, my friends. The fuckers leak. Yep. they dribble. I may be a generally gross human being, but I draw the line at persistent anal leaking. Not acceptable.

Okay, stop shuddering long enough for me to tell you the third, and decidedly worst, thing about having a fistula. When you fart (something I do often) 85% of the fart comes out in the normal fashion. But about 15% of your fart shoots out of that little painful tunnel. And it hurts and kind of itches. It's like having a tiny kazoo installed in your ass that delivers electric shocks when you use it. Un. Fucking. Pleasant.

So anyway, it sucked ass (no pun intended). It took me a few months to get it cleared up, and there were enemas and suppositories and check-ups and all manner of ass-centric horror. It eventually ended with some minor surgery which fixed the damn thing once and for all. In the process of dealing with the fistula, I became so unbelievably familiar with the workings of my own asshole it boggles the mind. You know, in a strange way, I think it brought me and my ass closer together.

But in truth, I didn't actually spring blogward tonight to disgust you with a detailed description of the bloody tunnel in my anus. (Disgusting you was just a nice bonus.) I actually wanted to tell you a related story.

In the process of having the whole fistula thing taken care of, I had to see a colon-rectal specialist. (Who, I discovered, have absolutely no sense of humor if you refer to your rectum as "my heiney-hole" or tell them "it itches when I toot.") One of the symptoms I had was some bleeding (remember how those fuckers leak?) and whenever you have rectal bleeding they automatically check you for cancer.

By "check you for cancer," I mean to say "drive an entire television station up your ass." The technical term is a "flexible sigmoidoscopy," which is a lot like a colonoscopy, for those of you playing along at home. It's a big old camera up your ass. It's uncomfortable, and it made me decide that under no circumstances is anything ever going up there again. If I wasn't firmly "exit-only" before, I am now.

So on the day of the sigmoidoscopy, I show up at the doctor's, and I'm understandably nervous, you know, on account of the huge camera up my ass and all. This nice older black nurse takes me to the exam room, and gives me a gown and takes my vitals, and she's being really sweet and calming, which I appreciate. As we get closer and closer to the "invasion," she suddenly looks me square in the eye and says one of the strangest things anyone has ever said to me.

"Why you have a girl face!!!" This she said in the exact tone of voice a little girl would have if she has just looked into a bird cage and exclaimed "Why what a pretty birdie!!!"

I don't remember my exact words, but they were probably something like "wha???"

"You have a girl face," she continued to joyously proclaim, "You look like a woman!!! Has anyone ever told you that you look female??? It's remarkable!!!" All of this, still in that insanely excited voice...

I am stunned. I am agog. I have no idea how to respond to this woman who is happier than a child on Christmas morning to discover that I apparently look like a girl. I, who am usually very articulate, am reduced to "sputter sputter stammer huh?"

I'm still stammering 3 minutes later when the entire Action 7 News Team drives their big white van up my ass.

A girl face?

I know I'm not the manliest guy in the world, but I ask you in all honesty... Funny lookin', sure, but:

The mind (and the ass) boggles. You'd tell me if I was the spitting image of Jane Seymour, right?

I Heart Sally.

2006-02-14T11:14:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to say that. Not because today is Valentines Day, But because 11 years ago today Sally and I started dating.

Like any relationship, there were times when it was hard, and there were a few times it was very hard, but somehow the sum of all the pieces always adds up to "wonderful." I couldn't ask for a better partner, for a more perfect best friend, and for a funnier, smarter, more beautiful person to share my life with. And I just wanted to say that publicly once more. Because I believe you can never say it enough. I love you Sal. Thank you for these 11 years. I don't deserve you, but I'm so happy that I somehow got you.

Okay everybody, quit your barfing. We'll be back to the poop stories tomorrow, I'm sure.

Calm the fuck down and get the shovels.

2006-02-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

It's just frozen water, folks. Let's get a grip here.

Yes, the eastern seaboard was indeed hit by what the Weather Channel calls a "Nor'easter," and what the rest of us call "snow." And as is par for the course, the sight of a little frozen precipitation is enough to throw the fine citizens of Maryland into an unbridled orgy of jackassitude.

It starts with the local newscasters, who begin 4 days before the actual snowfall by liberally sprinkling the newscast with phrases like "the end of life as we know it," "buried alive beneath tons of ice," and "most likely resort to eating our young to survive." Okay, they may not be using those exact words, but something is causing all my neighbors to beat each other to death over the last roll of TP at the Safeway.

As I've said before, the funny thing about Baltimore, is that we're far enough north that we get a decent amount of snow every year, and we're far enough south that we act like complete jackasses every time it happens.

This may not mean much to those of you who live in places like Texas (where it is generally warmer) or California (where the entire concept of weather is alien and confusing to you) but for my blog-buddies over here on the eastern seaboard I'd like to offer some help. So here we go with Wombat's handy guide to surviving the snowy apocalypse:

Tip #1: Buy your groceries like a normal human being.

Barring the kind of horrible city-burying snowstorm we only see in the movies, I sincerely doubt you will be trapped in your house for a month. Every time there is impending snow, I see people at the grocery store buying 48 gallons of water, 27 loaves of bread and 800 rolls of TP. What kind of endless siege are these people planning for? The Battle of Stalingrad? The longest I've ever been trapped in my house because of snow was a day. How much eating, drinking and shitting are you planning to do? Even if you started crapping the second the snow started falling, and stopped 5 days later, you couldn't possibly use all the TP you've bought. Believe me, I've tried.

By all means, be prepared. Buy one package of TP. Get a loaf of bread. Get some pasta sauce. You people act like the fucking Germans are rolling in with tanks.

Besides, even if it does snow for a year, if there's one thing the movies have taught us, it's that Dennis Quaid will come for you. Have a little faith.

Tip #2: You can drive in this shit.

The minute the first snowflake drops into view, most people I know become convinced that to drive in the snow is to ensure their own untimely demise, stuck waist deep in a snowbank off I-95. Listen to your buddy Wombat. You can drive in the show and not wind up a frozen corpse if you remember one simple rule: Go slower, dickface. The road is icy. I have every confidence that if you don't try to race around like the caffeinated tool you usually are, that even a clearly deficient nutsack like you can make it to work alive. Just use your fucking brain.

This is especially true for the people who fly around in giant SUVs, as if the snow is a personal challenge to their manhood. For those of you who drive big SUVs, my advice remains the same. Slow the fuck down. 4-wheel drive and traction control may make you somewhat safer, but it doesn't make you Mighty Zeus.

Tip #3: Throw a fucking snowball.

If you go outside to shovel your walk or brush off your car, and you don't at least toss one snowball, then I have no use for you. You clearly have no soul. Go inside, put on Dr. Phil and wait for death to claim you. It may take a while, because even the Grim Reaper knows to go play in the fucking snow.

The Church of Chocolate Monkey Love

2006-02-09T13:56:00.000-05:00

Kendra and I started a church, and it is awesome. Go there henceforth and be merry.

Yes, there was significant shrinkage. But I was pretty small to begin with.

2006-02-02T16:04:00.000-05:00

The Polar Plunge was a week ago, and I utterly failed to post about it. This is because I'm a huge jackass. I think you all were sufficiently warned about this. Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than 2 months and hasn't figured out that I'm a huge jackass, please submit yourself for the nearest gang of roving hooligans for a severe beating.

Anyway, some of you donated your hard earned money to the good cause (The Special Olympics of Maryland), and some of you were strapped at the moment, and would have donated if you'd had the cash. You're good people, and I feel like I at least owe you a little re-cap of the event.

Some of you did not dig into your pockets despite having cash to spare. Some of you clearly don't care about the special-needs children, and would probably run over someone in a wheelchair if the opportunity arose. You people are clearly the re-animated dead, having neither hearts or souls. Under no circumstances should you read about the Plunge, since you did not contribute to it. Please go here immediately, and spend 20 minutes reading about how to make valentine decorations from common household items. You've earned it.

Okay, now that we've disposed of the freeloaders... Let me start with some relevant numbers. Thanks you all of you, I raised almost 400 bucks for the Special Olympics. Sal raised Just over 400. In total, the Plunge netted a million bucks. Let me say that again, because I want you all to feel good about donating your cash. We raised a million dollars. That's a lot of dough. So feel good about yourselves.

The crew this year consisted of: (L to R) Kate, Chris, Sal, Me, Jeri (Chris' wife) and Paul.

The Paul in the picture above is not the Paul I mention so often here in the blog. He's a different Paul entirely. I know far too many Pauls. My Paul (and I mean that in an utterly platonic, "no way are we banging each other" way) would never willingly throw himself into freezing water, because he's a huge wuss. He did volunteer to come along and take the photos though, so I have to give him credit for that. Here he is, in a silly hat:

A few thousand people showed up to plunge, and the law of averages assures us that for every few hundred normal people who just want to help out, there will be a handful of total jabbering freaks who take advantage of the event to showcase their bizarre costume fetishes. Like this guy:

I'm so glad he brought his daughter with him. It's probably good that she knows that daddy is a biker ballerina early in her development. More time to plan her escape.

Oh yeah, and apropos of absolutely nothing, look who else showed up:

Yep, thank god the stormtroopers came to the Plunge. I suppose they were there to quash any signs of rebellion against the empire, because I'm sure they didn't actually get in the water dressed like that. I mean, cool outfits and all, but what exactly about the Polar Bear Plunge says "Hey guys, break the nerd costumes out!"

Anyway, there were plenty more loonies like Biker Ballerina and the Trooper Brigade, but did Paul take pictures of them? No, because Paul was too busy taking stealth pictures of all the hairy shirtless men who were not dressed like ballerinas. I won't show you those pictures, but be assured, there were a lot of them. It's a miracle we got any shots of the actual plunge at all.

Here's one good-looking dude though:

Yeah, keep your lunches down. What can I say, Paul points the camera at you and you just feel like you need to bring the sexy, you know?

How many of you did I lose with that pic? Oh, who am I kidding? If you can handle the last lengthy discussion of urine-soaked hands and bathroom germs, you can handle me and my pasty flabby man-boobs. You all are clearly gluttons for punishment.

At this point I should admit that the day of the Plunge was ungodly warm. I feel a little guilty for this, because it certainly detracts from the manly toughness aspect of the plunge. I mean, here on the east coast we're in the middle of what seems to be the warmest winter in the history of the planet. It nearly hit 60 by the time we went into the water. I'd love nothing more than to convince you that I toughed out the blistering winter in nothing but my swim trunks, but it was practically balmy. Nothing I could do about it. I blame God.

Eventually the time came to actually jump into the bay, and this where you really get your money's worth, because even though it was May up on the beach, it was freaking January in the water. Something like 35 degrees. Running straight into water like that doesn't even feel cold. It feels like "holy fucking shit something's gone horribly wrong with my life." You don't even have time to register the cold before your brain just decides you've clearly gone insane and shuts you out of the decision making process entirely. Everybody in my group were troopers though. (Not stormtroopers.) We all decided to not only get in the water, and not only completely submerge, but that it didn't count unless you actually swam. We established that you must adhere to a strict two-stroke minimum before you began your screaming, panicked, wide-eyed flight back out of the water.

That flight back up the beach is really the part of the event where the whole thing falls apart on you. Running in requires only momentum. You just point yourself at the water, step on the gas, and barrel in as far as you can go. No problem. At some point about 3 seconds later though, you become this frightened animal that just wants to get out of the frozen horror that is clearly killing you, and you spin around and suddenly realize that you have a huge problem. This is because what you see when you spin around is 2500 people all running down the beach toward you.

As you can imagine, there is some cursing and swinging of the fists. I may have trampled a 9-year-old.

Here we all are, safely out of the water. Sure, we're smiling, but I promise you, that's the stupid uncomprehending smile you make when your brain has stopped working.

Some of you may notice that in the picture above, we gained an extra person. This was apparently a friend of Chris who showed up at the last second. None of the rest of us knew that, however, and at the time, all of us were thinking "Who the fuck is this dude horning in on our picture?"

See? Check out my face in this one:

I'm going, "Holy Jesus that was cold I can't feel my - Who the hell is that???" Now look at Sally's face in this one:

Priceless. At any rate, he turned out to be a nice dude.

After we were all dried off and somewhat warm, I made the terrible error of turning to Sal and jokingly saying, "That wasn't so bad... Let's go back in!" I forgot that my wife is a certifiable nutbag. And I mean that in the most loving way possible. She grabbed my hand and said "Let's go!"

Never doubt that I love my wife with all my heart, because I followed her into that freezing death a second time. That's either proof of love or proof of brain damage. Probably both. Anyway, the water hadn't gotten any warmer in the 5 minutes between plunges. I'm pretty sure I have permanent testicle damage now. That's okay though because Sal's womb has got to be like a slushee machine after two dunks in the bay. Two people who don't have the sense to stay out of the freezing water have no business reproducing anyway.

I should wrap this up. The bottom line was that it was a lot of fun, and thanks to you wonderful people, we raised a lot of money for a good cause. I expect all of you to show up for the next one.

I'll leave you with this picture of me and Sal, just because I think she's the cutest thing in the world, despite the obvious brain damage.

A Few Ground Rules...

2006-01-27T00:56:00.000-05:00

When I say "Ground rules" I mean it in the sense of "Basic procedures of conduct," not in the sense of "here are some rules, which I have ground up." Just so we're clear.

Wombat's 3 Rules of comedy:

1: Anything coming out of an ass is funny. This one should be no surprise to anyone who has read this blog before, but it's true. For some reason any object or substance or noise coming from an ass is instantly imbued with an extra dose of funny. The same does not hold true for things going in an ass. Some of those things are funny, but some are not. In the case of ass-entry, it really depends on the object. But ass-exit? Always funny.

2: If they're laughing at you, they're still laughing. I'm a big believer in the idea that the laugh is something you should willingly sacrifice yourself for. Who cares if they're laughing with you because you're so fucking hilarious, or at you because you're so fucking stupid. You're still making them laugh, and that is a service to humanity. Good news for all of you dumb motherfuckers out there.

3: Never insult someone directly unless you're pretty sure they can take it. This may come as a shock to insult comedians everywhere, but I just don't think attacking people is funny. Making fun of people who don't know you're making fun of them is one thing, but I'd never walk up to someone and shred them to their face because I just don't think it's funny to make someone feel bad. If you get off on that then you are a waste of skin. However, if the person in question is a bud, and you know that they get that you are just busting their balls, then have at it. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that people who can take getting shredded and dish it back out are my favorite people in the world.

Note: Some of you who've known me for a while may notice that the monkey rule is gone. Monkeys are cliche. I was wrong about the monkeys. Monkeys are no longer funny. Unless they're coming out of your ass. (see rule #1)

Wombat's Spoon Rule:

There is a strict heirarchy when it comes to the use of spoons. Spoons meant for eating and not for mixing generally come in three sizes: The large "soup" spoon, the small "tea" spoon, and the tiny spoon you sometimes see in fancy restaurants. Pay attention.

- Ice cream should always be eaten with the tea spoon. You do not want to eat ice cream in giant "soup spoon" bites. You want to take your time and enjoy the ice cream. Unless you take so much time that your ice cream melts. If this happens either your spoon is too small or you are retarded. Yogurt? Same rule applies.

- Soup should always be eaten with (no surprise here) the soup spoon. The same applies to cereal. When your job is basically to fish little tiny floating corn flakes out of a sea of milk, you need a wide net. Anyone eating cereal with a teaspoon should have their head examined. And by "examined," I mean "run over by a truck."

- If you find yourself eating with one of those tiny spoons, immediately stick it up your ass. That's the only thing I can think of that the tiny spoon is good for. This would also be one of the instances where something going in your ass is funny. When the spoon comes back out? priceless.

- There is only one food item you are allowed to eat with a mixing spoon: Mashed Potatoes.

Wombat's Straw Rule:

If you are drinking a milkshake, or even better, chocolate milk, (or even better, chocolate malted milk!) You must use a bendy straw. I keep a box of bendy straws around for exactly these occasions. If at all possible, the bendy straw in question should be the kind with the red and blue stripes running up its length. A solid-color bendy straw may be used only if no striped bendy straw is available. Non-bendy straws are out of the question. Why? If you are going to drink a kid's drink, then drink it like a kid, for fuck's sake. And don't give me that crap about your milkshake being too thick to drink through a straw. Quit being a huge pussy and put some effort into it.

Wombat's Movie Food Rule:

Just because the modern movie megaplex now sells nachos and hot dogs and seven-course French meals, it doesn't mean you have to order them. Eat dinner before the film, or eat dinner after the film. Do not subject the people around you to the horrifying stink of your batter-dipped hot dogs or your tub of melted cheese. The movie theater is like a giant elevator: We are all trapped in here together until the ride's over. Smelly food has no place in a theater. The one exception is popcorn, which, while admittedly smelly, has kind of become part of the theater experience. It's tradition. You expect to smell popcorn. You don't expect to smell rib dinner and falafel.

A good rule of thumb is, if your order requires one of those red plastic trays, eat it in the lobby.

Wombat's American Apostrophe Wake-up rule:

Listen up, America: You have exactly one year to learn how to use the apostrophe correctly. That should be enough time for everyone to get the hang of what's a contraction, what's possessive and what's plural. After one year, I am hereby allowed to beat you to death with an 18" green rubber dildo if you write that you are serving "pear's" on your menu.

The single exception to this rule is when using the word "it." I know proper time to apostrophize "it," and you should too, but I'll admit that shit can confuse you. Because it runs (not run's) counter to the usual way of doing a possessive. If you use "it's" incorrectly, you get a pass. No dildo-beating.

Wombat's Washing Your Hands After Peeing Rule:

Here comes the one where I alienate all the women and half of the men. Guys, you do not have to wash your hands after you pee, provided you have not peed on your hands.

I tried to explain to Sal that there is no need for washing if your hands are not actually urine-soaked, and her response was "yeah, but you touched your penis." Ladies, some of you seem to be laboring under the false premise that our penises are these horrid, feces-caked garbage sticks. I'd like to go on record as stating that I wash myself regularly, and that when I wash myself, I wash my penis right along with the rest of me. I then place my penis safely inside some nice clean underwear. The underwear then goes inside of some pants. There my penis spends the large majority of the day, riding around inside layers of cotton and denim, fully separated from the horrors of the outside world. My penis is probably the cleanest part of my body. If anything, when I pee, my penis should be upset that my filthy hands have touched it.

So gentlemen, as long as you don't have terrible aim, or don't understand how to properly use your equipment, you do not need to wash your hands. If you take a dump, then by all means, please wash them, but not when you pee.

Ladies, I have no rule for when you pee, because whatever it is that goes on inside of the ladies bathroom is a divine and unknowable mystery to me. There may be flocks of angels. Maybe they wash your hands. I'm in the dark on this one.

Don't get all excited... This post goes nowhere and takes quite a while doing it.

2006-01-21T00:04:00.000-05:00

"Where," you may be asking yourself if you are a really really lonely person with nothing to do but sit in the dark staring at this blog on your monitor and pressing the "refresh" button over and over again in the hopes that I may have posted while you were picking your nose, "Where could Wombat possibly be all this time?"

Truth is, I was writing that opening sentence. I mean, look at that thing. To call that a "run-on" sentence just doesn't do it justice. That sentence ran on and is still running. It was last Tuesday when I first sat down here at Wombat World HQ and typed the word "Where." By Friday I had gotten to the part about the refresh button. I hit a snag at the "picking your nose" bit, and that laid me up for a couple of days, trying out various other body parts you could have been picking. I had settled on "that gap between your first and second toe" for two whole days before scrapping the idea.

Anyway, here we are nearly two weeks later, and you can see for yourself the fruits of my extraordinarily laborious... um.. labor. That one, big-ass sentence.

Okay, that's a lie. I didn't spend the last two weeks working on that one sentence. And no, I wasn't curing cancer or completing the complex ritual required to bring Julia Child back from the dead. I just didn't have anything to say.

The more astute readers of this blog may now be thinking "But, you never have anything to say... We don't come here for your biting insight, we come here for poop jokes."

Well, blog-buddies, I have no poop jokes for you tonight. In fact, I have no idea what I sprung blog-ward this evening to say. I just know that Miss Kendra demanded a post, and what Kendra wants, my friends, Kendra gets. This girl took on a car crash to save some kittens. No way am I getting her mad at me.

So, back to the two-week absence, All I can say is that I hit a dry patch. It happens to the best of us. Well, not Karla, who apparently posted 17 entries while I was away. Remember the cop in Terminator 2? The one who was a robot from the future made of liquid metal who could not be stopped? No matter what you did, or how fast you ran, he was always 10 feet behind you, running full-tilt and never slowing, never once looking away from his desire to rip the intestines from your still-warm body? Well, Karla is just like that. Only instead of ripping out your intestines, she flings some funny at you.

Then she rips out your intestines.

Anyway, I'm not Karla, and I just ran out of funny for a little while there. Not in my personal life. I was still plenty funny to the people I dealt with on a day-to-day basis. Believe you me, had you been here, in Wombat World HQ, instead of there, in the pile of empty Fritos bags you call your life, you would have been well entertained. The mouth part of me remained as funny, if not funnier, than it was two weeks ago. It's just the fingers part of me that sort of ran out of juice. It's not like I didn't try. I flung them at the keyboard a couple of times, but to no avail. There was not a drop of funny in them. Well, one time they produced a funny diphthong, but that was it. Otherwise, speaking in terms of keyboard-related shenanigans, it's been a quiet few weeks here on my end, at least until Kendra started with the threats.

And now, at last, I have been shaken awake from my long period of unfunny silence. And as you can see, the result is... um... unfunny wordiness.

Oh well. Be careful what you wish for, Kendra.

I will say two things, before I quit for the evening:

1) Thanks to everyone who pledged money to sponsor me in the upcoming Polar Plunge. I have just about hit my goal, all thanks to you excellent and awesome people. I thank you, the Special Olympics thanks you, and Stacy Keach thanks you. (That's a lie. I do not speak for Stacy Keach. Well... not anymore... But that's a story for another time...) It's one week to the plunge, and anyone that still wants to sponsor me can go here and enter my name, John Baker. There will be a big-old recap of the whole event next week, complete with embarrassing pictures of yours truly in a shameless and honestly unnecessary display of near-nudity. Be sure to tune in.

2) Apropos of nothing, I have to confess here in front of God, the blogging public, and okay not God because I believe he may not exist (or may... or may not... whatever...) That I, Wombat, have some form of Saran Wrap dyslexia.

Yes, you read that right. I have seen you people time and time again with your plastic wrap, pulling a long glossy sheet from out of the box. And I have seen you, with one swift movement, tear that sheet cleanly and neatly from the roll, with no ragged edges or clinging back upon itself. And all the while, you are smiling, as if you're having the time of your life, wrapping this, covering that... I have studied you as you have done this, and I have tried, oh how I've tried, to emulate you.

But no. I seem to be the only person in America, nay, the world, for whom Saran Wrap isn't the high-point in helpful domestic invention, but rather a long thin box of evil mocking laughter, spilling forth in the form of clump after clump of useless, balled up clingy plastic.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. Hey, remember when I wasn't posting? Come on, admit it, it was better that way.

I'm about to do something STUPID.

2006-01-09T15:07:00.000-05:00

I did something incredibly stupid this time last year, and I enjoyed it so much that I'm about to do it again.

"What is this stupid thing you did," I can hear all of you (okay, two of you) asking. "Did you get an unfortunate tattoo in a hard to cover spot on your body?" No... "Did you sign a pact with the devil, promising him your first-born child in exchange for rock-hard abs?" Um... no... "Did you ride 500 miles on a bald pony over sharp rocks and broken glass to the disheveled hut of a mad old crone, in the hopes of finding therein a magic potion that could make you a god among men, only to be tricked by the evil witch and left a broken wart-covered shell of a human being?" Jesus, no... What's wrong with you people?

What I did in fact do, was run nearly-nude from the relative safety of a beach into the icy arms of the frozen bay. And I'm doing it again. And so, my friends, are you.

Well, in a manner of speaking.

What I'm talking about is the tenth annual Polar Bear Plunge. This is that thing you all hear about on the news where a few thousand people run into the freezing water to raise money for charity. The charity here in my home state is the Special Olympics Of Maryland. My buddy Chris (amazing nature photographer... check him out) talked me into doing it last year, and it was awesome. Except, replace "awesome" with "kind of horrible and freezing, but afterwards leaving a warm feeling in my heart."

Here, just so none of you think I'm full of shit, is my account of last year's plunge:

Everybody believe me now? Good. Now try to scrub the image of tubby Wombat in his swim trunks from your minds long enough for me to explain the part where you come in.

I don't just do this because I love freezing my balls off, people, I do this to raise some dough for a good cause. I need you fine internet citizens to sponsor me. I'm not asking for a lot of dough here. Just look deep into your heart and ask yourselves "how much would I be willing to pay for even more photographic evidence of Wombat making a complete ass of himself?" 10 dollars? 20 dollars? more? Let me up the ante a bit. This year I have convinced Sally to run into the glacier-water with me. That's twice the bang for your buck!

Um, no, we're not going to actually... um... bang. At least, not while the cameras are snapping away. That was a figure of speech.

Okay, here's the deal. The Plunge is in about three weeks, on Jan 28. If I have moved any of you to get involved, all you have to do is click this link right here. You'll go to the Polar Plunge's website. There, click on the "sponsor plunger" button, and enter my name, (my real name) John Baker. If there's more than one of me, I'm the one from Baltimore, MD. You can sponsor me from the warmth and comfort of your own office chair, using a credit card or paypal. For those of you who would rather support Sal, enter her name, Sally Kervin.

I'm going to thank any of you who decide to donate in advance. It's a really worthy cause. Any of you balti-bloggers should come out to watch the plunge. It's a lot of fun. I'll be posting pictures of the whole thing on here at the end of the month for everyone to enjoy, but suffice it to say that those who donate will be able to enjoy the pics a little more, not having all that crushing guilt to fight through.

Gay Sex While Pooping

2005-12-29T02:22:00.000-05:00

A few posts ago, I made the offhand remark that Sal and Paul and I once had a conversation regarding gay sex while pooping. Wait - I mean that we had a conversation, the topic of which was "gay sex while pooping." I do not mean that, while pooping, we had a conversation about gay sex. Although, if we had been pooping and talking about sex at the same time, I probably would have blogged about that as well. You know me.

Anyway, I figured what better way to ring in the new year than to squeeze in one more story that will probably horrify and nauseate most of you. (Not ACW.)

Now I know some of you are easily grossed out, and I know some of you are incredibly stupid. I also know that it stands to reason that there are a few of you who fall squarely in both of those categories. It is for those people that I now make the following announcement: I am about to tell a story about gay sex and pooping. Just in case you skipped the title of this post and sailed through the first few paragraphs, pretending to read but were instead daydreaming about pink bunnies hopping through a green sunlit field in a world where there is no violence and nothing bad ever happens, let me say it again in no uncertain terms:

Gay sex and pooping. If you are offended by either of those things, or if you are okay with those things separately, but do not like the thought of having them combined, for the love of all that's holy stop reading this blog. In fact, turn off your computer and place a bag over your head. Think of puppies. Hum some comforting tunes.

Okay. For the rest of you, consider yourselves more than warned. I don't want to see a bunch of comments about how I caught you off guard with all the gay sex and pooping. I know how you people operate. Sheesh.

This story is, to the best of my knowledge, 100% true. The hero (so to speak) of the story is someone Paul used to know, and he confided this tale to Paul. I should make it perfectly clear (because I will never hear the end of it if I don't) that I'm not making some sort of cute euphemism to cover the fact that Paul is actually the person in the story. This story is not not not about Paul.

Unless it is.

But it's not. I promise. It's about some other guy.

Unless it isn't.

That sound you hear is steam shooting out of Paul's ears. Okay, really, it isn't Paul.

(heh heh heh...)

Anyway, our hero, we'll call him Friend Of Paul, (FOP) was, at the time of this story, a young gay man living in New York City. FOP was a nice guy, and not unattractive, but not an Abercrombie & Fitch model either. He was what you might call squarely average looking. Or averagely square looking. Either one gets the point across. He wasn't what you'd call "a looker." Which was why he was surprised, one night out on the town, to have caught the attention of a Greek god.

No, not a real Greek God. (calm down, Zeus-o-philes...) I don't even know if the guy was Greek. I just mean he was way out of FOP's league. Picture the supermodel or celebrity you would most like to throw a bang at. It was like that. No way in a million years could a guy like FOP bag a dude like Apollo, and yet, here they were, chatting and dancing and doing whatever else young gay men do whilst clubbing, and it was all going great. This night was shaping up to be the high point in FOP's life.

Eventually, after drinks and laughs and a few kisses, FOP found himself leading Apollo back to his apartment. I'm sure FOP kept expecting Apollo to come to his senses and beg off for the night, but it never happened. Now he had a god in his bedroom, and...

And this is the part of the story where you can imagine all the gay sex you want. I'm not going to describe it for you. Not because I have any kind of a problem with the gay sex but because this ain't no porno blog. (Amazing, I know, since I have no problem littering this blog with any other forms of depravity...) Click over to the Nifty Stories archive if you want to read about some gay sex, and then come back here for the end. I'll wait.

Suffice it to say that it was wonderful and magical and everything FOP had ever hoped sex with a Greek God would be. Right up until the big finish. That was when Apollo suddenly pinned FOP to the bed, sat on top of him and took a giant steaming dump on his chest. While... um... climaxing.

No warning. No mention at any point earlier in the evening that a thick Cleveland Steamer might just be in the works. No sign at all that this was what Apollo had in mind. Just "wham, bam, KER-PLOP."

I suppose you can't blame Apollo. I mean, you can absolutely blame him for the horrible drive-by dumping, but I think I can understand the surprise element. If Naomi Watts were to offer me a night of unbridled passion the likes of which I have not experienced in my lifetime, followed immediately by her grumping all over me, I believe I'd have to turn that offer down. And I like me some Naomi Watts. The grumping however, would be dealbreaker. I'll blog about poop all night long, but I really don't want to ever wear it. I think if you're Apollo, you know the only way you're getting the grumping in there is to throw it in at the last second.

So you can imagine FOP's utter disbelief and horror at his evening suddenly taking a u-turn from "hot-god-sex-fantasy" to "non-consensual shitrape." When FOP expressed his displeasure in what I can only imagine sounded like "WHATTHEFUCKHEYWHATTHEFUCK?!?!?!?!?" Apollo leapt from the bed and bolted. Fop was left lying naked on his bed, covered in Thor-dump, and feeling like he had just been hit by a truck.

If there is a moral to this story, it's probably this: Trust no one. Everyone you know is just waiting to pin you down and shit on you.

Or, I don't know... Maybe the moral is something more upbeat, like: Be grateful for every day that the person in your life doesn't pin you down and shit on you.

Or: Beware Greek gods in loaded shorts.

I don't know. I suck at this "morals" part. Just be careful out there tonight as you all ring in the new year. If you wind up going home with someone you don't know, at the very least wrap your chest in a protective layer of Saran Wrap or something.

Happy New Year, freaks!

Merry Whatever

2005-12-24T10:49:00.000-05:00

Well it's the day of the night before Christmas and/or Hanukkah, and I hope all of you are getting ready to spend some quality time with your family and loved ones. Or, if you hate your family and love no one, go to the library. Read a book. But read a book about happy people for Christmukkah is a happy day.

Each year, when it comes time for the annual holiday card bum-rush, I make a little cartoon of Sal and I to adorn our cards with. Since I find many of you bloggers quite likeable (and a few of you downright fucking creepy) I would love to send each of you a card. (Not you creepy fuckers. You know who you are...) However, fate has dealt me the one-two punch of 1) not knowing your addresses and 2) really being far too lazy to actually write out cards to all of you.

So consider this the next best thing. Here is this year's holiday cartoon, along with my sincere warm wishes to all of you for a wonderful holiday. It's been a pleasure meeting all of you through this blog, and I truly look forward to further disgusting each of you in the new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah and Joyous Whatever the fuck weird holiday you celebrate, from Wombat and Sal.