The Dope on SOAP!

Hey I know I don’t bathe twice a day like some of you clean-freaks, but that does not mean I avoid a good soaping up whenever a public fountain or truck wash presents a golden, shower opportunity. I actually like to be clean but for some odd reason my mother starting ducking her Head n’ Shoulders and shirking her Q-tip & Brillo duties when I turned the ripe age of 40.

Since I don’t want to blacken our catfish or the bathtub they swim in, these days I have to fend for myself perched on a bowl out in the North 40 (feet) of the back yard. It’s not so bad except for those cheeky beaky birds and their ‘shell-fish’ need to lord over the Irish Spring. The truth is I am not all that sure which soaps do what anymore? When I was younger we didn’t have a thousand cleaning choices like now; we just had Lava bar soap packed with pumice or a can of chlorinated Comet. They both did a great job of degreasing my dark parts and the only thing that could take the dirt (and skin) off faster was a potato peeler and a big bag of lyme – would I LYE?

These days, while I totally approve of a laundry detergent which can do it ALL, I am not completely comfortable with a soap that will make me smell like a DOVE. At Target, there are literally aisles of specialized hair cleansers for oiled, soiled, dry, fly, & flaky follicles - or now I wonder if I was staring at the cans of tuna fish? So what happens if my body pollutions require an all-of-the-above solution or advanced ablutions to get squeaky clean? Does that mean the cleansing potions I should only pursue are a slew of the new shampoos, or do I use a few, of the older tried and true goos too?

Yes I am beginning to babble because my knitted-wit is obviously confused over a current conundrum uncovered from this Cascade of cleaners. By my age, you would hope I had learned to cope with all the dope on soap and know how to use each product to its maximum benefit. But alas, my ol’ ego has egg-o all over its ID, because today I saw a news story of teens who seem clean, but surely must be even DIRTIER down south than me? You see - by sucking spigots of over-the-counter antiseptic hand cleaner, these ‘dumb-sters’ run a 120 proof alcohol jelly-belt down their gullets to clean-out all those nasty G.I. tract germs! Now why didn’t I think of that? Make bath-time FUN with a body wash, rocket fuel, and a martini all in one. Obviously I need to play in the sprinklers more often … and maybe buy some of those olives impaled with the little umbrella toothpicks!

SUCK IT UP!

Hey just because I hide out stalking the dump and have only the finest things at my disposal, I’ll bet you think I lead a plush and whiney, Wonder-bread kind of life? Oh sure my GLUTEens are a bit bigger, softy white, and definitely more airy than yours from leisurely lounging and constantly eating carbs. But what you don’t know is it still takes some determination, and a lot of sweat to pound back buckets of hillbilly fried food and 180 proof Mountain Dew every day.

While it’s true that being raised with chupacabra and silent but deadly lambs near mountains of recycled cans buys a lot of creature comforts and wiry hair products, I have trials in my life just like every other inmate out there. For example, I am not good with straws or other stuff that sucks. I can never get the paper off straws so regardless of my choice of beverage, I get chunks of unsavory wrapping paper ‘Boba’ in my craw too. Since straws stick up so far out of the drinks, I will rarely remember this fact and begin my advance to the rim for a swig and get poked in the eye. While that is painful in the direct sense, it is far less of a concern than the fact that before this violation, I was just poked up the SCHNOZZ too!

Generally I revel in the labor saving jiggles and gyrating gymnastics of my bountiful bevy of hovel-hold appliances. However, vacuums and I are mortal enemies. Like those pesky escargot, they leave tracks all over my carpets and do unspeakable things to rugs, bugs, and dental floss. I can’t tell you how many bags of cobweb flotsam I have had to swim through to find an earring, penny, or flavorful Starburst candy. I know these ‘dust cup’ British vacs are all the rage now because apparently bag vacs cost too much and suck way less. Well I don’t know about you but honestly I'm not convinced - after all,when is the last time anything GOOD ever came out of a hot and sweaty Brit’s junk-cup?

So you see I’m not really a ‘high-liver’ and DO have significant problems like everyone else which are just as important as weighty politics and Angelina Jolie’s marital status. No, life behind padded white walls and a kink-free leather mask is not as perfect as you might think. Truly every day is a real challenge to decide between the sweet green bean pudding or pureed fruit cup for dessert. Like butterflies that are free however, I have learned to keep my proboscis clean and simply ‘suck it up’ when it comes to adversity and life’s bad nectar. Unless there is a real straw that’s involved of course – just my luck; ‘yup’ those fava beans abruptly get stuck when I snuff 'em up -YUUUCK!

Chair-man ON a board

Despite the rather ample fat pad that’s already glued to my caboose all of the time, I am at a loss to find a truly comfortable chair. I’m not sure if I am just big (vestigial) boned or if the wood (in my head) is getting harder but something has got to change with these chairs. Even when I try to make padding out of random packing materials like cardboard or those Styrofoam peanuts, they still feel lumpy, itchy and uncomfortable inside my pants.

Anyway, sitting and I are not great friends even though I have trained intensively to do it pretty well. The only kind of sitting surface I haven’t broken is an ancient hunk of craggy granite in a National park, though my wife swears I cracked that too. It’s a rare chair indeed that hasn’t succumbed to my beguiling bulk, weighty wiles, and corpulent charms, because as a giant slug I’ve left a long sad trail of splinters, screws, and sticky wood glue.

Yes I should be forever known as the Von Richthofen of furniture flattening. Like that nose art emblazoned on fighter planes, I need to pridefully start marking off how many chairs my big ACE has killed off and turned into matchsticks and toothpicks. After my long caREAR , obviously not only is my ‘Baron’ very Red but by now I’ve should have earned the BLUE gluteus MAXimus medal.

Ok ok, so I see your point – with a track record like mine it’s clear that I never ran a track in my life, and it’s no wonder why no one manufactures chattel for the ‘PRATTel’ that’s supple to my ’RUMPle’. Soft furniture simply won’t suffice anymore since so many hefty folk are packing on the pounds and they must build every hard board sofa for the ‘loaf-a’ of an ‘oaf-a’ like me! Still, I can someday wish for pillow-puff downy-dreams down below can’t I? Maybe if I am lucky, somebody will eventually come up with a truly effective STOOL softener!

FOWLed up for life!

Believe it or not the high-point of my circus-world life was when I was a mascot for a Fortune 50 firm. I know the whole concept of being a ‘professional’ mascot is akin to that of being a ‘pro’ wrestler except that in my case the blood, sweat and TERRORS were REAL. In truth, I wanted to be the best ten foot hunk of flaccid flannel in a stove pipe hat that I could truly be. That way I could show the youth that their dreams too, could be crushed, wrinkled and stink before they ever began just like mine.

I was an easy choice as a last minute balding eagle fill-in for a formal dinner event since I am already classed by zoologists as a sweaty Yeti with a bird-brain, receding hairline, and dimly lit wits. I knew I was in trouble though when the four foot head had a built-in water collar, battery pack and MUFFIN fan devoid of even a single blueberry. Who voluntarily commits themselves to being ‘birdied’ alive in an eagle cocoon without baked goods or at least a bag of field mouse jerky for sustenance?

Except for my diaper, typically I can get into all of my regular clothes without help as long as the ventilation mechanics of said garments are zippy and below the beltline. However this hulking bag of feathers required a strap-on ice vest around my torso just so I wouldn’t overheat, topple and turn that elegant eagle into a deadly duck. The ZOOt-suit was so unwieldy that an attendant was always supposed to be in tow to prevent me from crushing small children, tripping, or flicking my unfettered feathered girth into someone’s face in haste for a taste.

As with all enlightened plans this one soon turned towards the dark side as well. After frightening an already lost, small child into hysterics, I shoved my bulbous downy carcass away from the unpopulated hallway through a very convenient unlocked door. While my helper searched for the whiny kid’s parents, I marveled at my rather smooth and unobtrusive James Bond get-away, particularly since I was in gargantuan eagle drag. Unfortunately that door however, led right into the main dining room with dozens of too-tightly spaced round tables brimming with hungry guests eating their fancy feast – at least temporarily.

Like any freshly bagged big bird, I whirled, wedged, whisked and spun in hopes of an easy escape. As sweat quickly blurred my already limited eagle vision, I had no idea where I was going as I bumped blindly through that maze of chair legs, fancy hair, and faces full of food. Other than my own grunts of confused exasperation, it seemed as if the only noise in the room was the BACK HALF of me leaving eagle droppings behind in a wake of collateral damage. Needless to say, two escorts each quickly grabbed a wing and showed me the way back to my nest to get undressed. Hmmm… what a FOWLed up life! I not only didn’t make Eagle Scout, but oddly I never again was asked to reprise my role as an eagle mascot either.

The BUSHy league

Hey I know that it must be Spring because my HAIR is blooming. Yeah that’s right, I am the spawn of a rye grass mix and a barn owl, because as soon as it gets warm, it seems I’ve got funny fuzzy stuff growing out of my eyebrows, ears and whiffer sniffer. Usually I have enough sense to cut all this stuff off but as I have gotten fatter, I notice that crew cuts and close shaves make my shrunken head look a lot like a small potato sitting atop a pair of Playskool blue boots.

Mr. Potato Head is a fun toy I guess, but it is a lot less fun when weird furry decorations are sticking out of all its holey orifices. What concerns me most is not my main mane which I CAN see, but the tangled mass of random follicles that I can’t. Who knows what kind of evil plot of land is lurking behind my back at this very moment? For all I know beyond that dark mysterious canyon back there, my hind-spine has probably grown a shaggy Amazon jungle, replete with rare species of wooly ‘Man-moths’ and bushy bearded dragoons.

Oh sure I could always shave my unruly split-strands but then there would be more medulla in the margarine than the already obligatory toasty crumbs I preserve there. I’ve never waxed-on poetically but the next time I celebrate my hatch-day, I’ll enlighten my downy dome by burying it between two score and eleven lighted candlesticks. Of course if that doesn’t work there is always plucking, but then again I don’t know about you but even if the sky isn’t falling, I already know that I’m a little CHICKEN!

Hmmm... I might just be missing the boat by resisting this hairy opportunity before me? Hey I’m TUFT, maybe it really is my time to join the bush league and start teasin’ the weaves with a higher goal? Yes, it might be better to shake n’ bake in the sun to tan my tawny hide so I can sell my pigtailed pelt or at least flip a wig. Oh well no worries, since all this fiber is apparently growing on me, I’ll just let nature take its course and tame my tresses the same way old dogs do - by shamelessly shedding all over the place and rolling in the fresh cut DOOey grass.