Hey guys, ever wonder why you wake up in the morning with a hard-on? No? Well, don't feel too bad, because I think the only two things running through a man's head when he wakes up in morning are "Shit, do I have to get up already?" And "I have to piss."
In fact, you probably equate the fact that you have to piss with having an erection to begin with, hence the phrase "Piss Hard-On". But think about it ... you generally have to urinate at some points during the day and you don't get an erection. Okay, maybe sometimes but it's not an all-the-time occurrence.
Hmm ... It's a real head scratcher.
And it was a real head scratcher to the people at the Journal of Sexual Medicine, who commissioned a study on "night wood" and found out that a human male trait called NPT is the cause.
NPT (nocturnal penile tumescence) occurs when the male is in REM sleep and although he may be dreaming about being chased by a herd of hungry velociraptors instead of sex, his brain sends out some sort of signal that causes an elevation of nitrous oxide in the bloodstream and ... BLAMMO! Instant woody! The study pointed out that the erection doesn't necessarily occur in the morning, but may happen at any time of the night. AND ... not only do adult males experience this effect, but so do teen males, child males, baby males; and even FETUS MALES.
Eww. Wow, no wonder we're so screwed up. We probably had a stiff-o in our mother's womb.
This is all very interesting and I suppose the subject would make for lively conversation at your next cocktail-type gathering. And, if you allowed me sufficient time to get oiled up, I'd probably be the one to initiate it. This may explain why I'm not invited to a lot of parties.
One of the things I thought about while reading the article, was "isn't that JUST LIKE my stupid body to give me a gift like that in the middle of the night ... WHEN THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL that I'd be able to use it".
I can see it now. I'd wake Jan out of a dead sleep with some witty banter like "hey, look at this!" Then I could spend the next hour trying to remove my pillow from my ass.
Actually, after thinking a bit, I did have an epiphany, sort of ... Why risk the embarrassment of going to your doctor with some fake flu symptoms and then ... at the end of the visit, mumble something about "Viagra", or "Cialis", when I can just let my fingers do the walking to the industrial gasses section of the phone book and buy a humongous tank of nitrous oxide!
Brilliant!
October 20, 2010
October 17, 2010
Ten Cents A Dance
On Saturday, Jan and I did our usual share of weekend chores, which included grocery shopping. There was a time that I enjoyed this activity. But for some reason, I've started to put it into the category of mowing the lawn or doing laundry. Tedious, except when I'm hungry, and then only slightly bearable.
Maybe grocery stores are different now than in the past, or maybe I'm just more choosey, but it's a rare event if I can find everything I want at one store. So, we divide our shopping between two, one for staples, and another for produce and certain select items. The clientele at the two stores are different, but strangely the same. The Walmart that I frequent, is usually populated with a large percentage of Northern Illinois hillbillies, who live in old vacation camps west of town. The other, Piggly Wiggly, usually has a large percentage of rapidly aging Eastern Europeans. I still can't figure out where they come from, but I've been told they mostly live in an exotic sounding burg just south of me, named Venitian Village.
Anyway, "The Pig", as most people around here call it, is a fairly decent place to shop. There's a wide variety of ethnic foods, and most of the checkers (male and female) aren't terribly rude and have some interesting jailhouse tattoos. And once or twice a month, they have in-store promotions, that always are semi-cool. Who can resist a real NASCAR auto or the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile on display outside the store's main door? They also have their share of local celebrities, mostly professional football players, signing autographs inside the store, although for some reason they always set them up back in the dairy department, where it's cold as the proverbial witches tit.
So, on this particular Saturday, as we entered the store, we noticed all of the employees wearing Chicago Bears jerseys and I knew that one of the fabled football greats would be there. Who would it be? Jay Cutler? Julius Peppers? "Da Coach" Mike Ditka? We hurried to the back of the store, where we anticipated a line stretching for hundreds of yards, winding up and down the aisles, and saw sitting at a card table ...
Jimbo Covert.
Yeah, I know ... who? Well, for all of you non-Chicagoans under 40 years old, Mr. Covert was a left offensive tackle during the Bears one-and-only Superbowl win in 1985. What's an offensive tackle? Hell, I don't know. I didn't think anybody on the offense was supposed to tackle anybody, otherwise they'd get a penalty. But that just shows how much I know.
Anyway, Jimbo was sitting behind his card table, flanked by two vapidly smiling PR twenty-somethings (who probably didn't know who he was either) with a stack of Miller Lite emblazoned photos and NO ONE lined up in front of him. He looked rather forlorn ... forlorn and slightly pissed-off. All around him, shoppers maneuvered their carts around the table trying to pick up milk and eggs and looking just a little annoyed that their right-of-way was being blocked by this guy. A few stood and gawked at him, no doubt waiting for the Tombstone pizza samples to pop out of the toaster oven that was also inexplicably perched on his table along with the photo glossies. I overheard one elderly gentleman exclaim, to nobody in particular, "Hey, you signing autographs or something?"
How sad. I thought later that it was a shame that once-storied gladiators of the gridiron should have to spend their later life shilling watered down beer to make ends meet.
Later, after we returned home, I looked up Jimbo on the internet to see what misfortunes had led to such a sorry fate. However, I was mildly shocked to learn that Mr. Covert has had quite a successful career since leaving football.
Then I asked myself why someone who obviously is in pretty good shape financially feels the need to sit for four hours in a suburban grocery store to pick up a quick 500 dollars? Walking around money? Needless to say, I didn't feel very sorry for him after the fact.
Maybe it's just my jealous side raising it's ugly head again, but maybe this week I'll make a few moves and finagle myself a card table set-up in the dairy section of The Pig on some future Saturday. I can see it now ... "Come In And Meet ROB; Noted Former Agricultural Mid-Level Managerial Mule ... Sponsored by Boones Farm Strawberry Hill Wine!" All I'll need is a stack of head shots and a felt tip pen.
Crap ... I'll bet I sign more autographs than Jimbo did.
Maybe grocery stores are different now than in the past, or maybe I'm just more choosey, but it's a rare event if I can find everything I want at one store. So, we divide our shopping between two, one for staples, and another for produce and certain select items. The clientele at the two stores are different, but strangely the same. The Walmart that I frequent, is usually populated with a large percentage of Northern Illinois hillbillies, who live in old vacation camps west of town. The other, Piggly Wiggly, usually has a large percentage of rapidly aging Eastern Europeans. I still can't figure out where they come from, but I've been told they mostly live in an exotic sounding burg just south of me, named Venitian Village.
Anyway, "The Pig", as most people around here call it, is a fairly decent place to shop. There's a wide variety of ethnic foods, and most of the checkers (male and female) aren't terribly rude and have some interesting jailhouse tattoos. And once or twice a month, they have in-store promotions, that always are semi-cool. Who can resist a real NASCAR auto or the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile on display outside the store's main door? They also have their share of local celebrities, mostly professional football players, signing autographs inside the store, although for some reason they always set them up back in the dairy department, where it's cold as the proverbial witches tit.
So, on this particular Saturday, as we entered the store, we noticed all of the employees wearing Chicago Bears jerseys and I knew that one of the fabled football greats would be there. Who would it be? Jay Cutler? Julius Peppers? "Da Coach" Mike Ditka? We hurried to the back of the store, where we anticipated a line stretching for hundreds of yards, winding up and down the aisles, and saw sitting at a card table ...
Jimbo Covert.
Yeah, I know ... who? Well, for all of you non-Chicagoans under 40 years old, Mr. Covert was a left offensive tackle during the Bears one-and-only Superbowl win in 1985. What's an offensive tackle? Hell, I don't know. I didn't think anybody on the offense was supposed to tackle anybody, otherwise they'd get a penalty. But that just shows how much I know.
Anyway, Jimbo was sitting behind his card table, flanked by two vapidly smiling PR twenty-somethings (who probably didn't know who he was either) with a stack of Miller Lite emblazoned photos and NO ONE lined up in front of him. He looked rather forlorn ... forlorn and slightly pissed-off. All around him, shoppers maneuvered their carts around the table trying to pick up milk and eggs and looking just a little annoyed that their right-of-way was being blocked by this guy. A few stood and gawked at him, no doubt waiting for the Tombstone pizza samples to pop out of the toaster oven that was also inexplicably perched on his table along with the photo glossies. I overheard one elderly gentleman exclaim, to nobody in particular, "Hey, you signing autographs or something?"
How sad. I thought later that it was a shame that once-storied gladiators of the gridiron should have to spend their later life shilling watered down beer to make ends meet.
Later, after we returned home, I looked up Jimbo on the internet to see what misfortunes had led to such a sorry fate. However, I was mildly shocked to learn that Mr. Covert has had quite a successful career since leaving football.
Then I asked myself why someone who obviously is in pretty good shape financially feels the need to sit for four hours in a suburban grocery store to pick up a quick 500 dollars? Walking around money? Needless to say, I didn't feel very sorry for him after the fact.
Maybe it's just my jealous side raising it's ugly head again, but maybe this week I'll make a few moves and finagle myself a card table set-up in the dairy section of The Pig on some future Saturday. I can see it now ... "Come In And Meet ROB; Noted Former Agricultural Mid-Level Managerial Mule ... Sponsored by Boones Farm Strawberry Hill Wine!" All I'll need is a stack of head shots and a felt tip pen.
Crap ... I'll bet I sign more autographs than Jimbo did.
October 10, 2010
Darwinism
During our road trip out West over a year ago, we took a lot of side trips to National Parks and Monuments. Until you're visiting these places, you have in the back of your mind that these are warm and fuzzy little experiences. Free of all worry and danger. But this mindset couldn't be further from the truth, and the people on the front lines at the parks will be the first ones to tell you.
The subject re-crossed my mind recently after I read a short article shoved away in the travel section of some on-line newspaper about a man from Burbank, California who fell to his death at the Grand Canyon several weeks ago. He was trying to hop from one rock outcrop to another at Pipe Creek Vista on the South Rim (a regular stop on the tourists trail) when he apparently had a brain fart and misjudged the distance and fell 500 feet to another outcropping below.
Our trip was the third one to the Canyon, and of all the places I've visited over the years, this is the place where you see the tourists divided into two distinct camps ... overly cautious and batshit crazy. Jan falls solidly into the first group. In fact, we had to cut our visit short because her fear of heights, combined with the elevation caused her to have a panic attack; something I'd never seen her do. Me ... I'm borderline batshit crazy.
Although there are a lot of guard rails on the South Rim keeping you and the great nothingness separate, there are a hell of lot more places where it's just wide open. One trip, one slip or one moment of not-paying-attention to what you're doing, and you're lunch meat. Sure, there are Park Rangers interspersed along the sightseeing points, but I think they're just there to report the accidents, because no one stops anyone from doing stuff like this ...
The subject re-crossed my mind recently after I read a short article shoved away in the travel section of some on-line newspaper about a man from Burbank, California who fell to his death at the Grand Canyon several weeks ago. He was trying to hop from one rock outcrop to another at Pipe Creek Vista on the South Rim (a regular stop on the tourists trail) when he apparently had a brain fart and misjudged the distance and fell 500 feet to another outcropping below.
Our trip was the third one to the Canyon, and of all the places I've visited over the years, this is the place where you see the tourists divided into two distinct camps ... overly cautious and batshit crazy. Jan falls solidly into the first group. In fact, we had to cut our visit short because her fear of heights, combined with the elevation caused her to have a panic attack; something I'd never seen her do. Me ... I'm borderline batshit crazy.
Although there are a lot of guard rails on the South Rim keeping you and the great nothingness separate, there are a hell of lot more places where it's just wide open. One trip, one slip or one moment of not-paying-attention to what you're doing, and you're lunch meat. Sure, there are Park Rangers interspersed along the sightseeing points, but I think they're just there to report the accidents, because no one stops anyone from doing stuff like this ...
The Batshit Crazy
I caught the above two in a relative moment of quiet. Before I took the picture, they had been frolicking around on the end of that outcropping like a couple of grasshoppers on crack. I tried to make a bet with Jan on how long it would take them to fall, but she couldn't stand looking at them anymore and made me leave.
After a while, even I caught the fever and started to test how close I could get to the edge of the rim. You know, where you stand with in a foot of the edge and then crane your neck over? Like this ...
Literally Nothing But Air Six Inches Behind Me
About 30 seconds after Jan took this picture, she had her panic attack. Probably for the best as I no doubt would have become even more foolish and tried some outcrop jumping myself. It's hard to describe, but there's just a feeling that comes over you and you get this urge to start taking chances.
I did a little quick research and found that since achieving National Park status, over 500 people have died at the Grand Canyon. Surprisingly, just over 50 of them were from stupid pet tricks like the one tried by the gentleman from Burbank several weeks ago. As you would expect, the remainder were the usual heart attacks and strokes from out-of-shape people who took on more walking and climbing than they were built for at the moment.
When I read Jan the article, she wondered what the last thing was that went through the guy's mind when he realized that he had fucked up his ill-thought jump. She thought he said a prayer, and that is soooo Jan.
I guessed, probably correctly, that it was "Aw Shit", as "Motherfucker" would have taken too long.
Anyway, that's what I would have said.
October 09, 2010
October 03, 2010
Worse Than A College Tuition Loan
Even though I cancelled our newspapers a long time ago (print is dead), I still keep up with the news through on-line sources and television. On-line print is the best place to find unusual stories that the big media might not have enough time or interest to bring to the masses.
For example, I was under the impression that World War I, and everything pertaining to it, was over a long time ago. Specifically, 92 years ago in 1918.
Not so ... that is until Sunday, October 3rd. That is the day that Germany will pay the last installment of the reparations imposed on it by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, one year after the war ended. Under the terms of the Treaty, Germany was deemed solely responsible for World War I and was required to pay damages done to the Allied countries and peoples between 1914 and 1918. The total sum owed was determined to be 10.4 billion dollars, an overwhelming shitpot load of money for that era.
There was much debate at that time about what kind of strain the debt would put on the German people, and indeed, Uber-economist John Maynard Keynes bluntly stated that the Germans would not be able to formulate correct policy due to it's inability to finance itself. Prophetically, the Nazi party gained dominance of the German political scene in the late 1920's and 30's, and many historians credit the reparations as the main cause of World War II.
There were attempts to alleviate the strain on the German economy. The Dawes Plan of 1924 and the Young Plan of 1929 granted Berlin loans to meet the reparation payments. But these proved ineffective and when Adolf and his gang took over, all payments stopped. I can't say that I blame him, but it reminds me of an old classmate who skipped out on his college loans by moving and never leaving the government a forwarding address. I never knew if they caught up with him or not.
Of course, it would have been pretty stupid if Hitler had continued to pay the debt, particularly after his occupation of one of his principal payees, France. And his continued payments might have resulted in something like this ...
General Von Rundstadt: Mein Fuhrer! The Allies have just invaded Normandy! We must release the Panzer Corp to drive them back into the sea!
Adolf: What, are you nuts? I just made a 33 million mark reparations payment! Do you know how much petrol those fucking tanks suck down? Gas ain't cheap ya know. We'll be eating Ramen noodles for a month now as it is!
Pretty embarrassing ...
Anyway, after Germany was defeated in World War II, it seemed the Allies had learned their lesson, and instead of charging more reparations, they just divied the country up between themselves, which didn't turn out to be such a good idea either. After the Soviets took their share of the country and went home, it was decided that no more reparations would be paid until Germany was reunified. And sure enough, 20 years ago, the payments picked up again.
So, on October 3rd, the final payment of 94 million dollars will be made, ending the whole mess. I'm sure the veterans of World War I will be glad to hear that ... and there are four of them left, believe it or not.
Amazing.
For example, I was under the impression that World War I, and everything pertaining to it, was over a long time ago. Specifically, 92 years ago in 1918.
Not so ... that is until Sunday, October 3rd. That is the day that Germany will pay the last installment of the reparations imposed on it by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, one year after the war ended. Under the terms of the Treaty, Germany was deemed solely responsible for World War I and was required to pay damages done to the Allied countries and peoples between 1914 and 1918. The total sum owed was determined to be 10.4 billion dollars, an overwhelming shitpot load of money for that era.
There was much debate at that time about what kind of strain the debt would put on the German people, and indeed, Uber-economist John Maynard Keynes bluntly stated that the Germans would not be able to formulate correct policy due to it's inability to finance itself. Prophetically, the Nazi party gained dominance of the German political scene in the late 1920's and 30's, and many historians credit the reparations as the main cause of World War II.
There were attempts to alleviate the strain on the German economy. The Dawes Plan of 1924 and the Young Plan of 1929 granted Berlin loans to meet the reparation payments. But these proved ineffective and when Adolf and his gang took over, all payments stopped. I can't say that I blame him, but it reminds me of an old classmate who skipped out on his college loans by moving and never leaving the government a forwarding address. I never knew if they caught up with him or not.
Of course, it would have been pretty stupid if Hitler had continued to pay the debt, particularly after his occupation of one of his principal payees, France. And his continued payments might have resulted in something like this ...
General Von Rundstadt: Mein Fuhrer! The Allies have just invaded Normandy! We must release the Panzer Corp to drive them back into the sea!
Adolf: What, are you nuts? I just made a 33 million mark reparations payment! Do you know how much petrol those fucking tanks suck down? Gas ain't cheap ya know. We'll be eating Ramen noodles for a month now as it is!
Pretty embarrassing ...
Anyway, after Germany was defeated in World War II, it seemed the Allies had learned their lesson, and instead of charging more reparations, they just divied the country up between themselves, which didn't turn out to be such a good idea either. After the Soviets took their share of the country and went home, it was decided that no more reparations would be paid until Germany was reunified. And sure enough, 20 years ago, the payments picked up again.
So, on October 3rd, the final payment of 94 million dollars will be made, ending the whole mess. I'm sure the veterans of World War I will be glad to hear that ... and there are four of them left, believe it or not.
Amazing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)