Texts from friends (1 of 2): Bar decision.

I recently came to the decision that my weekly "new bar" quota is going to be 5 bars, rather than 10.

First, it's getting harder and harder to find bars, so it's a much more time-consuming endeavor, because you really have to think in advance and there's never more than like 2-3 in one place anymore.

Second, that means I'm getting closer to my goal (=having a drink at all the bars in the city), so I can slow down without pushing my goal way off into the future or even falling behind, insofar as bar openings don't outpace 5 a week, which I highly doubt they do.

Third, I'm going to have a busy year coming up, so I'd have to set a new pace some time.

Fourth, I wouldn't mind having time for other things, like films and beaches and hanging out with friends or even re-visiting bars I know I like, all of which I've had to sacrifice to some degree for over 3 years now (though it's been worth it).

Fifth, I'm like 3-4 pounds overweight, and it's stubborn, so it's a plus to not to have that many more calories a week in my diet.

Anyhow, I texted my decision to several friends, and my one (Puerto Rican) friend replied -

Old age is a bitch

Everyone's been saying that!

Worse than sharting.

The other morning after an 8-bar night - 5 leisurely drinks, hanging out at a barbecue for several hours while I ate and re-hydrated, then 3 more drinks post-barbecue while club-hopping with a fellow barbecue goer I met - I wasn't that hung over, but was kind of gassy, and was having a leisurely Sunday morning breakfast when I went to go let out a fart, and a small burst of warm apple sauce-consistency shit came out of my ass, and I could feel it between my cheeks and the seat seeping into the cloth of my boxers in the ass area.

So, I kept my asscheeks together and waddled as quickly as I could to the restroom to minimize drip on the floor, took off my boxers as best I could to avoid getting shit wiped off on my legs accidentally, then sat down and just let loose this humongous loose watery shit of a mild brown color, with occasional flecks in it.

Then, I mopped up my ass, put my boxers in the sink and soaped them off, and hopped in the shower to get the shit off me.

Then, like a minute into the shower, I needed to fart again, so I did, and this time a bigger burst of shit came out, even though I thought I had exhausted myself with the humongous shit I had just taken.

So, I just stood there in shock not knowing what to do, and I farted again, but it wasn't fart, but shit, and it just poured out of me since I wasn't trying to consciously keep my sphincter closed and my bowels back.

I could just feel all this watery shirt with flecks pouring out of me into the shower, and I closed my eyes, I was so horrified, but it was mid-process, and there was nothing I could do at that point except maybe close my sphincter again and keep a little of the shit back in me, but by that time it's not like my main problem would have been that much different if I did that.

After it was over, I looked down, and there was a loose, slowly dissolving, very low pile of shit on the shower floor, maybe a half inch at its highest and slowly sinking, and then I turned and shit was like almost ass-level on the wall, it had gushed out of me so much and so far as I had just stood there in the shower.

Surprisingly, the smell wasn't that strong, and it was mostly gone after I directed the showerhead to wash it away for a minute or so.

Post-shower and scrubbing myself, I also got out soap and vinegar and scrubbed down everything, too.

While I was doing that, I figured out what it was that caused my problem.

At the barbecue, not only did I go for sides anyway, but the little rib meat that I ate was fatty, and I opted for a ton of sides, like 2 huge bowls of cole slaw, a bowl of barley salad (!), and 2 veggie shish kebab skewers with a lot of onions.

The amount of fiber I must have been harboring in my stomach that morning was astounding.

I really hope it doesn't fuck with the shower drain, and if it does, I hope I can convincingly lie to my roommate about what caused the plumbing problems.

This is one of those things that no-one should ever find out.

"You know how far left I'm getting...?"

I always joke with my parents that I'm going farther and farther left politically.

Sometimes I tell them, "What did you expect?  From birth I've been red."

(Ha ha ha.)

I also recently caught tofu on sale and have been experimenting cooking with that on and off, so lately when I'm getting off the phone with them after asking them about what they think about stuff like the Hobby Lobby decision or whatever, I'm like, "You know how far left I'm getting?  After this I'm going to go cook some tofu!"

Running gag with roommate: Relationship.

So my roommate has been trying to let down this clueless and awkward friend of a friend of hers who in person and through social media has been asking her out on a date, openly wondering whether she could ever be interested in him, suggesting they go for drinks as friends, etc., even though she's told him "no" many many times and has said she's just not interested.

So, whenever we're both around the apartment, I've been joking with her that we've been friends for years, and maybe that suggests we have a future together since we get along so well, etc. etc. etc.

The other day she had bought a big bag of sour gummi worms and left some out and said I was welcome to them, so I asked her if perhaps she was trying to say something through that gift?

At that, she laughed.

"No, seriously," I was like.  "And remember, they're kind of phallic."

"They're also limp," she was like.  "Think about that."

4th of July follow-up.

Most fireworks I've ever heard:

- some bottle rockets at 8:30am that post-holiday week (! - you can't even see them at that time of day!).

- some the next Saturday night, though not a lot and not late.

The girl at the coffee shop said kids went nuts in the (Mexican) neighborhood a bit north of me, and put heavy-duty firecrackers in the free newspaper boxes all over and were blowing them up.

Otherwise, she thought in her neighborhood to the west of mine everything was same level as always, and hadn't heard anything else.

Murakami - Herodotus.

A friend who's temporary director of a local museum told me like a month ago that I should look into a book of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's for my cults class -

He wrote an entire Studs Terkel-esque book interviewing victims of the sarin gas attack on the Japanese subway system!

I think I'm going to incorporate it in a unit on artistic depictions of cults.

In any case, I've been reading a lot of first person accounts of people who got sarin poisoning - the darkened vision, the sudden physical weakness, the trouble breathing, the runny nose.

The other morning I was prepping Herodotus for a private Greek lesson, and all of a sudden my nose started running uncontrollably.

"Sarin," I immediately thought.

Another jogging site: Soccer game.

The park just south of my house is near an elementary school and has a track going around a soccer field.

The park's very lively, so if I'm jogging, I like to start there with a few times around the track before heading to the quarry park, which is a nice place to end, since it's so scenic.

The last couple times I was at the park just south of my house, like 15-20 Mexicans were playing soccer, the first time more high school through middle aged, but the last time a couple small kids too.

The adults and high schoolers mostly stood back and let the little kids face off against another when they got the ball.

I was jogging past on the track, too, as a little kid was running and kicking the ball.  He went to make a turn and slipped and fell, and then got back up and started kicking the ball again, as if he didn't even notice he fell.