20 Stories Up Is Really High. Remind Me Not To Come Here When I'm Feeling Blue

I think to welcome the New Year I should probably use this for the forces of good rather than just blather. Boring. I know. but well worth it's weight in gold, which is to say, very little.

Very little gold.

Oompah Loompahs Are Good Eating If You Do Them Just Right.

Dammit dammit dammit all to hell! Soon, I will return triumphantly to this arena, despite the filth and the old cumstained bleachers. I will return. Can't a guy catch a break?

Dig These New Jams! Get Your Ass On the Dance Floor! And Wax It, Monkey Turd.

Wow. So anyone in close proximity of my life is undoubtedly aware of all the crappage that I have been dealing with over the past week and a half. Good crappage, but crappage still the same. In fact, I would call it sweet smelling crappage.

Hiatus begone!!

And to commemorate the day, I give you some of the dumbest shit you can find. It might not be a prime example of people doing innane things (For that I would check out Salt Lake City) but it does represent something that strikes at the heart. I give you...Astronaut pee. Courtesy of the BBC.

How do you 'go' in space?

A tour of a space facility in the US apparently prompted Prince Philip to ask how astronauts deal with "natural functions" in space. So how exactly do they go to the toilet (or should that be the loo)?

It's all to do with air flow. On earth, in the West at least, your standard toilet is a water-flush affair, that takes waste and washes it down a pipe.

THE ANSWER
Space toilets use air flow as water flushes have drawbacks in zero gravity
Adult nappies are used on space walks and during take-off and landing
The lack of gravity on the shuttle and the space station mean a water-flush system is not an option. You don't need a particularly vivid imagination to see the potential problems.

Instead, on the shuttle, urine and faeces are carried away by rapid flow of air.

The unisex toilet resembles a conventional loo, but with straps over the feet and bars over the thighs to make sure that the astronauts don't drift off mid-go. The seat is designed so the astronaut's bottom can be perfectly flush to make a good seal.

The good news for fans of convenience is that, on the shuttle at least, urinating standing up is possible. A funnel-on-a-hose contraption is included so that astronauts - both male and female - can urinate standing up. Or sitting down if they prefer. They just attach it to the toilet using a pivoting bracket.


I would wait for 10 hours and then once back inside get someone to help me off with the suit and rush to the bathroom
British astronaut Piers Sellers to Prince Philip
The system separates solid and liquid waste. Solids are compressed and remain on-board to be unloaded after landing. Liquids are released into space. Nasa hopes one day to recycle waste productively.

Researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada have said such recycling will be key to tackling any future mission to Mars in order to feed the astronauts.

The air used in the space shuttle's toilet system has to be filtered to get rid of the smell and bacteria before it is returned to the living area.

Incinerated waste

On the International Space Station, the fundamental principle is similar. The fan-powered air-flow toilet system stores waste. Urine is sucked up and stored in 20 litre containers which are dumped into the Progress resupply craft. The ship is later ejected into the atmosphere, where it burns up.

A regular feature in the BBC News Magazine - aiming to answer some of the questions behind the headlines
For solid waste, a plastic bag covered in holes is placed inside the toilet. Air is sucked through the holes so everything ends up in the bag. The elasticised top closes and the bag is pushed into a metal container. A new bag is popped in for the next visitor. Again the waste heads off to Progress.

Space toilets have come a long way. In the book The Right Stuff and its film adaptation, an astronaut on an early mission feels the need to urinate during a massively delayed take-off. With no facilities provided - and no adult nappies, as used today during take-off and landing - he is eventually allowed to urinate in his suit, causing his sensors to go haywire.

And Prince Philip is among good company in wondering how astronauts attend to their bodily functions.

A spokesman for Nasa confirms it is a question much asked by children and journalists alike.

Prince Philip wants to know if he can get a girl into space and have her pee on him standing up. This is the BBC.

A long mother fucking article about urination and feces. And I refer you back to the last line of the article. Journalists are children. Not that there is anything wrong with children. Them be tasty eatin'. And not that there is anything wrong with pee. It's sterile and is a natural thing unless you eat a whole lot of asparagus. Then you in trouble. I'll have something better for you later.

My little noggin hurts with a pulse like a monkey I once saw beating off in a zoo. Rapid fire. Noisy. Verging on explosion.

Dude. That Totally Fucking Blows My Mind. I Relate In So Many, Yeah. It's like the 4th Dimension or Something. Time Passes Like...Relatively.

Whoa, this is like total bogus, you know. It's like. damn...can you really? I don't...Wow...yeah totally. Uh huh uh huh, I see what you.. yeah, you're hitting it right on the, yeah uh huh, that's it right. cool cool..I see what you're...no, totally yeah yeah.

Have you ever caught yourself saying something along these lines?

Shame on you.

Swamped. Back in a few.

Uno de Mayo Mayo Mayo Mayo Vinegar and Eggs. Mayo Mayo Clinic. Mayo My-O, My O is Long Since Gone.

It is May. That means spring. My heart feels like spring. Warm and fuzzie like. I was spinning in circles in a giant field. It was magical. And these little peaches with little arms and little legs come dashing through the orchards to rub their fuzzies all over me. We touch cheek to cheek. And dance to the song with a similar name. They look like butts. They might be humping my leg with their fuzzie parts. I eat them. And ignore the little screams escaping their fuzzie lips. And I weep. Blood.

Happy May!

More to follow...eventually.

This Has Taken So Much Time to Type, I'm Leaking a Bit In My Shorts. And I Feel Naughty. In a Good Way.

So, last weekend. A strange weekend where I removed little wooden shards from my body. This week. A strange week where I sit and wait for things to come, so to speak. Think of it what you will.

In celebration of weird shit happening in life, I will share yet another scintillating story. Well, not really scintillating, just tepid at best.

So, at the end of my fateful first year in college, toying with the idea of transferring to another school but thinking, "Fuck, I have to apply all over again." I decided that the best thing to do was to pick up and get the hell out for the summer at the very least.

(To answer your question, I never got around to applying for a transfer. I'm a tightwad. No way those bozos were going to get my $50 application fee. And I'm a lazy fuck. There is that.)

Anyway, I decided to pick up and leave. So this was the plan: leave school for Virginia, paint friend's new house, fly to SF to visit the brother, fly out to Nepal to work on the rice fields and community forests for three months. (And not because of some weird Asian identity fetish. So all of you leeches back off, unless you have money...sucky fucky 20 whole dolla. I highclass goods.)

The day before I leave good old New York for the great state of Virginia, home of Rev Soup, I ship all my packed goods off to Long Island so that I never have to see them again until my return. Never did I think that I would have to ask for them back. I realize, in my packing fervor, I packed the one thing that I would need for my summer adventrure - my animatronic evil cymbal clapping monkey.

Well, my passport. And plane tickets. Make that two things.

Anyway, I call my friend's brother and have him open up a couple boxes and there they are sitting in a box like a couple of egg's under a roosting hens' gigantic ass, waiting to be brought out from the dark.

My friend's dad then drives them an hour and half to my dorm room and I get into a car headed south. Ordeal number one, complete.

I get to Virginia and have a really fun time painting a house and picking paint colors and all that crazy hoo ha shit that really shouldn't be all that fun but when you have free reign to do whatever the fuck you want to a house, you do whatever the fuck you want to that house. You splatter it with rat blood, fill a giant tub with skittles, and go to town. (Those skittles, by the by, are like little dwarves, they burrow on up there and when you get them out, it's like a pretty pretty rainbow.)

Oh yeah, and you light some sage.

However, while I was experiencing some jollies of my own, I realized that my foot was beginning to hurt. I didn't think about it too much, splashed on some arnica and continued on my daily routine. (This becomes important later on.)

A week later, I am on the plane to San Francisco. My foot gets run over by a drink cart and then stepped on by some stewardress in high heels (that's right, the bitch ain't a flight attendant, she a sterwardress.) While seeing stars, I could make out the stewardress hightailing it down the aisle, an image reminiscent of the hen I referred to earlier. (Another hazard of preferring to sit in the aisle is that when in an aircraft taking a nosedive, you are more likely to be knocked unconscious by falling luggage, which for me, going to destinations with high populations of Asians, is really dangerous cause there might a bevy of things flying at your face- a severed dog leg (jerkied), a flatscreen tv, dentures, a toaster, a massive dildo, cuisinart blenders...it's not a good way to go.

Either way, I get off the plane and realize that the pain in my foot has increased tenfold. I get into the airport, hobbling on one leg, take my shoe off and what do I see? A throbbing purple baseball where my left big toe used to be. Hmm. Throbbing and purple balls will never be spoken of or alluded to in this blog ever again. Naturally, I can't really walk, so my brother picks me up and I hobble over to the airport clinic to get help from SF medical students. Now. Let's just set the record straight. I like California. I also don't mind doctors, even student doctors really. When you combine the two? No.

He takes an X ray of my foot and what does he say? It's either a broken bone or gout.
I find out later that I do indeed have a form of gout . And no, I'm not some crazy old lardinous British lady with my stockings hanging around my ankles like a cheap prostitute after she deals with a john that likes it rough. Or like your sister. When we were kids. In the public bathroom. It was a piece of cake. Ye Olde Bloody Cake. Ye Olde Bloody Pudding with a Bangers and a Mash, yea? D'you fancy some spotted' dick? Fer that Blood Pudding, yeah?

Anyway, it sucked shit. So there I am, popping "nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories" to ease the pain and you know what, I find out later that the drugs are just horsepills of Alleve. Fuck. No fun visuals there.

I finally, after a week, hang out with some other friends, spending most of my time high as a kite. I could say that it was to relieve the pain, but then again, why bother?

On my last day on the sunny west coast, I catch a ride back with my friend, still high, walk into my brother's apartment, and he's about to go to the gym. I say cool. He says, I'm not going to bring my phone. I say whatever its fine. He leaves. I go to check on my flight.

It leaves in two hours. You know when they trick you and say that the flight leaves at 12:05 AM on the 1st and you realize that that's technically the same day because you're an idiot? And then you check again cause you're still coming off some residual high? Yeah. yeah...

I panic, run around in circles like a chicken with it's head cut off..or a cymbal clapping monkey, and throw all my shit in a bag. My brother's roommate shows up and he's nice enough to give me a ride to the airport. We hit the road, I leave a frantic message on my brother's phone and it's all a haze.

Miraculously, I get to the aiport 30 minutes before the flight leaves and I get to the gate (This was before 9/11 so it was easy to scale security.)

I'm starting to think that something is telling me not to go.

37 hours of flying later, I arrive in Nepal. They pick me up, I am relieved, I actually made it. I hear explosions in my head, like fireworks lighting up the night sky, celebrating my arrival and my innate ability to overcome any obstacle.



Turns out, the explosions were real. The entire royal family was being shot to shit by the king's nephew with a semi automatic.

Adventures in storytelling!


If you know the significance of the image above, please comment. Otherwise, I can tell you about it later.