He'd been training for this moment his entire life.
Literally his entire life.
The training had kicked up a notch about ten years ago. When he thinks about it, though he rarely does, that's when the training truly began in earnest.
But still...his entire life.
He sat there. Every muscle in his body flexed. Strained. His legs shook from the effort. His face quickly turned pink, then red, as his gaze slowly unfocused, fixed somewhere in the half distance. Sweat dripped from his unkempt hair. His vision grayed around the edges. The veins in his forehead throbbed visibly.
Despite all his training, he'd forgotten to breathe. Breathe, damnit! He shouted inside his head. Breathe! A whimper escaped his throat, a surprised little squeak of a whimper, then he pursed his lips tightly and a long, shaky exhale slowly escaped.
He reversed flow and inhaled through his mouth. It sounded like the air rushing through an open window while driving down the interstate at speed.
When he focused on his breathing he lost focus on everything else. "Come...on," he hissed through gritted teeth. "Concentrate!"
In his attempt to concentrate on the task at hand, he stopped breathing once more. Shortly thereafter he collapsed off the toilet, passed out from exertion and lack of oxygen.
His body immediately relaxed. He began to breathe normally. The thing he'd been training to do his whole life happened. His bowels loosened. Out came a foul-smelling stream of solid and liquid waste smelling of rum, coke, bar pickles, and mayo.
Hours later when he sobered up enough, his body awoke. He discovered himself on the floor covered in his own filth. Everything ached the acute pain of a kidney stone passing through a ureter. He wiped the side of his face he'd been lying on with his hand and managed only to smear the filth around, getting some in his mouth.
It was okay. He could neither taste nor smell anything.
Huh. Chunky. He thought.
He got to his knees, rested his forearms on the toilet lid, and dry heaved a coupe of times. It was there, cozied up intimately to the porcelain toilet, that he finally had his eureka moment: When drinking to the point of debilitating intoxication and constipation, make sure you've had so much that you pass out! The body wants to defecate! Get out of its way so it can do its thing!
It's so simple, he thought to himself as he pulled himself up by the grab bars in the handicapped stall of the women's bathroom at The Sloppy Penguin. Why didn't I think of it before? He struggled to pull up his underwear, finally remembered he wasn't wearing any, then pulled up his pants. A decade of heavy drinking and I'm just now figuring out I should pass out to defecate. It's so simple!
He stumbled out the bathroom, into the bar, and out the front door where the sun was just starting to lighten the eastern sky. He squinted with pain at the pastel colors, then turned toward the wall of the bar where he saw the hose. He staggered to it, turned on the water, and hosed himself off as best he could.
The cold water will help me sober up for the drive home, he thought to himself.
He dropped the hose, water still running, limped to his car, then turned back to look up at the sign on the roof of the bar - it was orange neon and showed a penguin waddling then falling over after getting hit by a flying beer bottle. Yeah, he thought to himself. I can do this. He opened his car door, hopped in, started it, threw it in drive, and pulled out of the parking lot, weaving erratically across both lanes of the county road.
He was very much looking forward to a test run of his new approach to drunken defecation tonight. He smiled, chunky brown bits gleaming on his teeth, as he drove toward the promise of a new day in the rising sun.
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Two enormous HVAC units sit on pallets outside the library. They'll be installed on the roof tomorrow. Two maintenance workers roll a large cart filled with HVAC parts around the library, looking for a place to stash it for tomorrow's installation.
"Why don't we just put it in there?" asks the first maintenance worker, nodding toward the study rooms. "We'll ask if it's okay."
The second maintenenace worker glances at the study room and hesitates.
The first maintenance worker asks, "Afraid it'll be stolen?"
The second maintenance worker looks to the first maintenance worker and says, "I'm afraid someone will pee on it or something."
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Cure hiccups by getting a glass of water and a pen or pencil. Place the pen or pencil inside your mouth and lightly bite down on it. Drink the glass of water.
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Researchers used artificial intelligence to spot patterns in recordings of the marine mammals' vocalizations, uncovering the "building blocks of whale language"
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Former Ann Arbor resident reflects on saving man from beating at KKK rally
Some moments have a way of defining us, Keshia Thomas said, whether we're ready for them or not. Thomas' moment came under unexpected circumstances - crouched over a white supremacist sympathizer, providing a human shield from anti-Ku Klux Klan protesters who began attacking him at a rally 20 years ago.
The image of Thomas, then an 18-year-old black teenager living in Ann Arbor, protecting the man decked in a confederate flag shirt and sporting an SS tattoo, has become an iconic symbol of peace and altruistic virtue for many over the past two decades.
"We all have a conscience and it was my responsibility to do what I felt was right," Thomas said in a phone interview on June 23, the day after the 20-year anniversary of the incident.
Thomas, who now resides in Houston, learned McKeel Jr. died a couple of months ago when McKeel's son called to inform her, putting his 12-year-old sister on the line to tell her she might not be alive if it hadn't been for Thomas' actions that day. "When I heard that, I thought this was the future and the past of what peace has created," Thomas said. "The real accomplishment of all this to me is to know that his son and daughter don't share the same views. History didn't repeat itself. That's what gives me hope that the world can get better from generation to generation."
"I think of my actions the same way I felt about them 20 years ago," she said. "You don't want to grow older and be bitter and more cynical. You want to keep those child-like ideals of innocence and justice. I still maintain those same views and I'm not jaded by the way things are now."
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Two widowed penguins comfort one another in Australia.
St Kilda Pier in Melbourne has a colony of around 1,400 fairy penguins, the smallest penguin species with an average height of just 33cm (13 inches). The colony is monitored by volunteers.
"A volunteer approached me and told me that the white one was an elderly lady who had lost her partner and apparently so did the younger male to the left," Mr Baumgaertner wrote on Instagram.
"Since then they meet regularly, comforting each other and standing together for hours watching the dancing lights of the nearby city."
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Frolic.
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Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch's triptych, Garden of Earthly Delights (Museo del Prado site here. NTR site here.) is "probably the most famous scene of the underworld in all Western art". Amelia Hamrick has transcribed the demonic derriere ditty:
Luke and I were looking at Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and discovered, much to our amusement, music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting which is intended to represent Hell. I decided to transcribe it into modern notation, assuming the second line of the staff is C, as is common for chants of this era.
so yes this is LITERALLY the 600-years-old butt song from hell
Hear Amelia's rendition on her site. Hear a Gregorian chant version from wellmanicuredman. Hear Jim Spalink's rendition on the lute, harp, and hurdy-gurdy here.
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Pee Wee Herman Crack Cocaine PSA.
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Marsupial friend.
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Vid taken from a future Cthulhu detached-head aerial attack on the Oregon Coast.
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How fast is she walking?
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Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey promises to ban no-knock warrants, then promises to restrict them, then Minneapolis police murder Amir Locke using a no-knock warrant. (archive)
Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey calls people who work from home losers (archive), then claims it was a joke.
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I'd just woken up, so I went to go do the first thing I do every morning: blearily make my way to the railing at the top of the stairs to yell, "Love!" to my wife. This particular morning, as I rested my hands on the railing, I felt my right hand brush something off of it. I was still more asleep than awake and barely registered it except to think, wouldn't it be funny if that was a spider.
I yelled, "Love!" My wife yelled, "Love!" back.
With my day started properly I shuffled off to the bathroom to do bathroom-type things. As I sat down on the porcelain throne, I noticed a black blur out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head to see a mouse spider crawl under the door and into the bathroom. It stopped, turned toward me, and ran.
"Bro!" I said.
It stopped and said, "Sup!"
I said, "You did not just crawl under the bathroom door to come at me!"
It replied, "You did not just knock me off that railing!"
"Bruh," I insisted. "I was asleep! I didn't know you were there!"
"Well that makes it all okay then doesn't it," it sassed, slowly crawling toward me.
"Bruh!" I reiterated.
"Bruv!" It replied, stopping again. "You done fucked around now you're gonna find out!" It ran toward me again.
"Not cool!" I replied. "I got my drawers down over here trying to take a dump!"
"Like a bitchass chump," it said, still coming at me.
"Stop!" I yelled, standing up. "Don't start nuthin, won't be nuthin!"
"Big talk," it said, then stopped right in front of me. It focused all eight of its eyes on my private parts and continued, "for a little man."
"You little fucker!" I said as he closed the gap between us.
"Is that what your wife calls it?"
I grabbed the box of tissues from the top of the toilet tank behind me and brought it down right on top of it. I lifted the box and saw the the spider's legs begin to curl up. It's eyes focused on me briefly, so I said, "Bitch, please," then saw eight points of light fade into darkness.
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According to The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, I live in only one of four counties in Oregon with no Bigfoot sightings.
Bummer.
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Hummingbird playing in the spray. (Hard to see, look for a quick darting movmement in the center of the video.)
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The Shakopee Mdewakanton are the wealthiest Native American tribe, going by the individual's personal wealth. There are 480 members, and each member gets around $84,000 per month, as disclosed by a tribe member going through a divorce.
- The 10 Richest Native American Tribes In 2023
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The "guano mania" of the 1850s led to high prices in an oligopolistic market, government attempts to control prices, fear of resource exhaustion, and eventually the enactment of the Guano Islands Act of 1856 in August 1856.
The Act authorizes U.S. citizens to take possession of unclaimed islands containing guano for the U.S., empowered the President to protect such claims with military intervention, and established jurisdiction of criminal offenses under the laws of the United States within the territories thus claimed.
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How most library staff would like to go.
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Two dragonfly friends.
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We need to start loving.
- Elizabeth Thomas, Alabama Is Generating Billions by Trapping People in Prison
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Sometimes I Wonder if it's really even worth the rewatch of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
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The Mighty 860: a Christmas transit tale
It was a sober but happy group that got off at the Everett Park-n-Ride. I thanked the driver before heading to my car, and said she’d probably sleep well tonight after all the effort. Her reply? She wouldn’t rest anytime soon because she was making another run to campus. “There’s kids depending on me to get them home.” With that the door swung shut.
caveat lector