More fun things about being a security guard

1. Working with a crew who prefers to use nicknames rather than real names. My co-workers:

Big Bill
Little Bill
Big John
Little John
Striker
No-Ass
Brain
Stan-the-Man
Killer
Frodo
Alphabet
Baloo

2. Conversations with clever teenagers, like this:

"How many did you give out today?"

"How many what?"

"Tickets."

"I don't give out tickets."

"You don't give out parking tickets?"

"Nope."

"But you're security. What are you doing out here, then?"

"I'm making sure everyone is having a safe and happy day."

"Well - I'm not happy!"

"Okay. I'll put that in my report."

3. Attacks by the Phantom Dumper

Squad Leader was eating her salad while we followed the intruder via surveillance camera when the intruder suddenly dropped his pants, squatted on the sidewalk and... did... his... business.

The remaining salad went uneaten.

Please enjoy this totally unrelated complimentary photo of melted chocolate ice cream:

Tales from the loo

Attention all buffoons of the world!

Particularly male buffoons.


I offer you a tip on how to be somewhat less a buffoon. It is this:


Upon entering a public bathroom, urinating and either washing your hands or not (preferably the former), do not - I say DO NOT - turn the bloody light off on your way out the door unless you first bend over - down, way way down - and peer under the stall partitions to ensure there are no shoes resting on the floor. For the presence of shoes is a clear indicator of the presence of feet - and by extension, all the other bits and pieces of a human being who just might be using the commode at that moment and who just might even be a poet of sorts and who just might be jotting in his notebook the foundations of a profound work of literature!


And he just might not be a magical elf or a coal miner or a bat or otherwise be equipped with infra vision or a mining helmet or fucking sonar!


I can't write in the dark, people!


This is the second time in just a few months this has happened.


Bloody buffoons.



FWG

More stories from the loo

No, not the Louvre. The loo.

As our lacrosse game in St Catharines is an early one this week, I will visit the I.S. afterwards. Therefore car-pooling arrangements with teammate Porn King are altered. We meet not at his Burlington house but at a parking lot on Centennial Road, just off the highway at the Hamilton - Stoney Creek border.

At this large, relatively dead plaza there’s a Golden Griddle Restaurant – haven of extremely bland food. It’s a great place to go though, at six in the morning on the tail of a vicious bender where wine with dinner migrated seamlessly into double scotches at a noisy dance bar then quadruple scotches at an after-hours party and then stunned disbelief at the rising sun, a wildly spinning environment and the realization that you’ve devolved into a four-legged beast. A place where you can pound back eight cups of coffee and six breakfasts and begin the slow agonizing recovery into being human again.

Not that I would ever do anything like that.

Ever again.

It’s also a great place to duck into on a hot afternoon to make use of their bathroom and change out of your office clothes and into shorts and T-shirt. And that is my intention.

But the bathroom is small – with just one cubicle and it’s in use. So I wait. I hear voices inside it.

“I don’t think this poo will drop,” says a voice - a very young one.

“Sure it will,” says a parental one.

Groaning... grunting…

“There it goes! Weeeeeeeee! Sploosh!”

“Weeeeeee! Sploosh!” sings dad and thus begins the father-and-son turd-dropping song in two part harmony.

I'm forced to leave. It’s that or crumple to the floor in hysterics. I get changed in the truck.

I can conceive of the idea of having a child. It’s not entirely unimaginable. But taking part in the poo-dropping song?

Sorry. No can do. I can only assume that having children must do something weird and magical to your brain.

FWG

Letter to Proctor & Gamble

I'm sending this letter today:

P&G Canada
P.O. Box 355, Station A
Toronto, Ontario M5W 1C5

Dear sir or madam:

I’m concerned about the lid for the deodorant I purchased recently called Gillette Right Guard Sport Active Deodorant with NEW! Fresh Scent!

The lid is designed to fit perfectly flush with the rest of the apparatus forming a simple unified shape. It’s my observation that it has long been the convention in the deodorant world for products of this shape to be designed with such a lid fitting very snugly. Thus when customers reach for the product they need not take caution to pick up the unit by the bottom portion necessarily and need not take care to hold it upright lest the lid fall off. Such casual use of the product would seem encouraged by the manufacturers as the design does not make the body and lid particularly distinguishable.

However the lid of my new Right Guard Sport Active Deodorant with NEW! Fresh Scent! fits very loosely.

This morning I picked up the unit by the lid and the container portion immediately fell away. As I was in the motion of pulling it away from the shelf, the momentum carried the unit roughly three and a half feet west of the cabinet on its path to the floor.

Alas – it did not hit the floor. Do you know what obstacle lies on my bathroom floor roughly three and a half feet west of the cabinet? I think you can guess.

The shot was a perfect one. Swish. No rim.

To your credit, I’m pleased to say that your product floats very nicely and was thus easily retrieved.

However I fear that future enjoyment of your NEW! Fresh Scent! will be hampered by the constant knowledge of the environment this product has visited however briefly – a place not in any way conducive to fresh scents.

It’s my hope that you will share some thought on this matter.

Sincerely,
Fantasy Writer Guy

FWG's nugget o' wisdom #80

Concerning lingering leftovers in the fridge:

A meal consisting of three-day-old pork chops and 4-day-old iced coffee is a sure-fire formula for an evening spent too often in the bathroom where idle observation can lead to reckless comparisons involving substances in soap dispensers and other such meanderings perhaps deemed good blogging material at the time but which is actually nothing more than embarrassing.

Fresh food, people. You can’t go wrong with fresh food.

This has been an original nugget o' wisdom from the brain of Fantasy Writer Guy. Do not use nuggets o' wisdom if you are pregnant or may be pregnant. Do not take orally. Do not take within 60 minutes prior to swimming in deep water. Do not take them within 72 hours of going out with a gun to shoot random people. FWG doesn't want to take any heat for that kind of shit. There's nothing subliminal here. KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL...

FWG's nugget o' wisdom #79

Upon the emptying of a jug of white hand soap and the breaching of a new bottle of clear hand soap, one should not mix the two together in a hand soap dispenser of transparent structure, for the resulting cloudy, milky mixture, resembling precisely that dread substance having legitimate business only in acts concerning procreation, will lead your houseguests into believing you an outrageous pervert and leaving your bathroom with unwashed hands.

And thus we understand the words of the great poets who say:

‘Combineth not the soaps of different ilk lest ye destroyeth thy good name’
- ancient anonymous philosopher

[Editor’s note: That last bit was a load of malarkey.]

This has been an original nugget o' wisdom from the brain of Fantasy Writer Guy. Do not use nuggets o' wisdom if you are pregnant or may be pregnant. Do not take orally. Do not take them with a spoon. Do not take them on the moon. Do not take them on a boat. Do not take them with a goat.

FWG's nugget o' wisdom #27b

Or in it, for that matter.

This has been an original nugget o' wisdom from the brain of Fantasy Writer Guy. Do not use nuggets o' wisdom without advice from a physician. Do not take orally unless served warm and with a nice plum sauce on the side.

FWG's nugget o' wisdom #27

The Five Second Rule does not apply when you've dropped your sandwich behind the toilet.

This has been an original nugget o' wisdom from the brain of Fantasy Writer Guy. Do not use nuggets o' wisdom without advice from a physician. Do not take orally.

A Ficus in the Bathroom

After our writer's group meeting I entered the men's room and discovered a ficus standing there beside the toilet.

'Hmm," I said aloud. "There's a ficus in the bathroom."

And thus this poem (for better or worse) was born.


A Ficus in the Bathroom

There's a Ficus in the bathroom
There is butter on my bread
There's a hound dog in the bedroom
There are voices in my head

There are kittens in the hallway
On a carpet gold and red
There's a moose head on the wall
And he's well and truly dead

There's a Ficus in the bathroom
And the hound dog’s on the bed
There's a kitten in the bedroom
Where the others fear to tread

There's a Ficus in the bathroom
And my mind is filled with dread
There's a rifle in the basement
Say the voices in my head

Now the kitten's on the pillow
And the hound dog's on the spread
There's a Ficus in the bathroom
So I use the sink instead

There is honey on my butter
There's a shotgun in the shed
There's a Ficus in the bathroom
There's a fracas on the bed

Now the cat wails like a banshee
And the hound dog's seeing red
And the fur is just a flying
Round the mounted moose's head

There's a Ficus in the bathroom
There is thunder in my head
There's meowing in the kitchen
Where the kittens all have fled

There's a cat up on the counter
And he's nibbling on my bread
There's a Ficus in the bathroom
But I've pumped it full of lead


FWG

Fantastik Fresh Brush!

I hadn't intended to review products on this blog but I think this device deserves special mention. Besides, nothing about this blog has gone as I intended. It was supposed to be an exercise in noble philosophy and a new enlightened spirituality. A celebration of literature. A guide to finding the good and unspoiled elements within an otherwise corrupt society. That was the plan. It turned out to be a whole lot of bitching and four-letter-words. What can I say? Sorry.

So Steve-o arrives home this evening. He's been doing some shopping.

"Hey, I noticed our toilet bowls are looking like the entire Guatemalan army have used them," he says. "They're looking kinda brown."

"Yes, I've been meaning to make a purchase to that end. Some kind of brush or something."

"Well come and see this. It's a Fantastik Fresh Brush!"

I join him in the kitchen where he's ripping open a package. The kind with a clear plastic bubble on one side and a sheet of glossy boxboard on the other. He pulls out two white plastic wands and a white pouch.

I read the package.

Fantastik Fresh Brush

Fushable! New scrubby pad!

Cleans 2X better than ordinary brushes!

Kit contains 1 handle and 4 flushable pads

Best New Product Award 2005 (voted by consumers)

From SC Johnson - a family company

I'm impressed. Steve-o has pulled a flushable pad from the pouch.

"God - I love the smell of this thing!" He gives it a good sniff. It's the coating of water-activated soap substance that does it for him. "The pouch is re-sealable," he states and proceeds to zip up the remaining three flushable pads. We both raise our eyebrows and nod our approval.

He takes the two white wands and attaches them to make one long dangerous looking device with a button-activated clamp on the curved extremity - perfect for gripping a new-and-improved flushable pad. He tests the clamp device by using the extended wand to grab various kitchen trinkets and to open and close cupboard doors. I instinctively fold my arms across my chest thus guarding my nipples - lest he get any silly ideas.

"Time to clean up after them Guatemalans."

We proceed to bathroom number one. Steve-o removes the tank cover. I'm confused. I thought this was for cleaning the bowl. He produces a sleek hook-and-clip device that straddles the side rim of the tank so you can hang the fantasticfreshbrush discreetly on the side of the toilet. Those family folk at SC Johnson think of everything.

He replaces the tank lid, pops up the other lid and dips the wand - pad now attached - into the water. He starts scrubbing the bowl. The curvature of the wand is perfect for getting under the rim!

"Oh yeah! I can really smell it now!" Steve-o exclaims. The water is turning an enchanting shade of blue. "Can you believe this is the most exciting thing I've done all day!" he says and then begins to sing at the top of his lungs:

"I'm cleaning the toilet! I'm CLEANING THE TOILET!"

I'm very pleased with that of course. I like it that all our neighbors now know that we clean our toilets. I wouldn't want them to believe otherwise.

Enough beating around the bush. He goes for the jugular. The epicenter. Ground zero. The engineering of this device is superb. It slips easily into previously inaccessible depths.

"Look at that!" he gasps.

"It's going where no man has gone before," I offer.

"Where only Guatemalan ass residue has gone before!"

Needless to say - we're both pleased with our Fantastic Fresh Brush. I score this product as follows:

Engineering: A+
Clarity of instructions: A
Pricing B
Environmental friendliness: C+
Entertainment value: A
Overall: A-

Steve-o gives it an A+ for smell. That's all he cares about.

FWG

You are now fondling a baby-changing station

I was sitting in the cubicle at Tim Hortons. Yes, Tim Hortons - the finest purveyors of public washrooms in Canada (as long as you avoid the supplementary coffee and donut products that they offer at a significant extra charge). I was just sitting there minding my business when my eyes fell upon the diaper changing station mounted to the wall.

I found it curious that there was a large panel of Braille text embossed upon it. I found the mental image of a blind man changing a baby's diaper somewhat disconcerting. In my mind's eye the blind man was rather covered in poop. Now, as one who's never changed a baby diaper I can only theorize so let me ask those of you who have the experience:

Is it possible to change a diaper with your eyes closed and not get poop all over yourself?

I know I shouldn't dismiss the physically challenged but I'm just finding this whole scenario difficult to swallow.

Perhaps I've got this all wrong. Perhaps the Braille text merely reads:

This is a baby-changing station! The toilet is 3 feet behind you. The urinal is 4 feet beyond the cubicle door to your right. Please do not crap or piss on this baby-changing station. Thank you. The Management.

Beware the wild buffalo!

So I was down in St. Catharines last night and my buddy wanted to stop at Wendy’s for dinner. I hadn’t been in quite a long time. I saw that the menu had changed a bit. The old chicken nuggets - once marginalized by the new chicken strips have now made a come-back I see.

They’re now called “New crispy chicken nuggets.” I saw there are new sauces as well. I ordered the born again nuggets and a new sauce called Wild buffalo sauce.

“Whooh!” my buddy exclaimed. “I tried that stuff once. Hot going in -- and hot going out!”

“I’ll take a regular barbecue sauce with that too please,” I then instructed the counter-boy. He was happy to comply. The little counter-boys are very agreeable at this particular location. They’d probably empty the till into a sack for you if you asked nicely.

Well ee-gads! The wild buffalo sauce was indeed on the wild side. Quite the kick. Tasted like Buffalo style chicken wings (go figure). Problem is that chicken nuggets are far too bland to stand up to this sauce. You taste the sauce and nothing else. The compliment factor is right out of the equation.

Actually - that’s not the problem. The problem is… This stuff tore me apart. I mean - tore me to pieces. On the way home from St. Catharines to Caledon I stopped at every Tim Hortons on the way - to use the bathrooms. For those who aren’t familiar with Ontario geography or the obscene prevalence of Tim Hortons donut shops - that is a whole lot o’ stops. And of course I had to buy a bunch of small crappy decafs along the way because I’m terribly self-conscious about using restaurant bathrooms without demonstrating I’m a customer.

Insane I tell you. I’m still a little woozy. Probably the dehydration.

Tim Hortons - by the way - is American owned. I just like to remind people that because it’s such an irritating goddamned Canadian icon. I’m not nationalistic about this. I support free trade. It’s just the irony of it. Probably half of middle class Canadian families spend 4 figures a year on the world’s shittiest donuts and coffee - the coffee mostly - and they’re of course paying for the name on the store. The products are dirt cheap to make which I suppose is why they taste like dirt in the first place.

Tim Hortons advertises all these sweet little drippy Canadian iconic vignettes on TV as if to say Tim Hortons = Canada. Plain and simple. I think I’m the only sonofabitch not buying into it.

Oh my god! I just realized! Tim Hortons and Wendy’s are the same company! Now I get it. The whole wild buffalo thing is a conspiracy! A cross-branding initiative!

“Come to Wendy’s for the wild buffalos. Go to Tim Hortons for the toilets!”

Bastards. And it’s probably all designed to get me. Me! The last hold-out from a kinder gentler civilization where coffee tasted good and a donut filled your whole hand. Gosh. This is exciting. I feel like the hero from Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or George Orwell’s 1984.
Wow. I’m on the lam.

FWG