As a rule, I am a pretty optimistic guy. I like to smile a lot, laugh a lot, and people generally like me. At least, that's how my psychiatrist likes to describe me.
Still, I like to have enjoyable moments. We all do, don't we? I mean, what's life without joy, right?
Well, life without joy is like a stale, dry donut without a cup of coffee to wash it down with. Life without joy is finding yourself in an empty restaurant, alone, on a Saturday night, sitting down to a delicious meal of fried duck, when all of the sudden, after your first delicious bite of food, you find yourself choking on a mystery bone that came out of nowhere, without warning, and without so much as a waiter or a maitre d' in sight to give you a much needed Heimlich. And, as this crucifix-shaped bone slowly chokes the life out of you, as your pathetic existence begins to flicker away like a dying flame on a damp wick in a rainstorm, you think to yourself, "Did I turn the stove off when I left the house?" That is life without joy.
Life without joy is finding yourself in a secluded, commercial storage facility on a hot summer's night, rummaging through the last few belongings you have remaining from the house fire that left you homeless two weeks earlier, all the while having to take a shit so bad that your colon is about to go supernova on your ass; when out of the blue, what with your eye do you spy, but that cute, brass antique spittoon that your mom left you as part of her last will and testament; and, coming to the conclusion that unless you drop trou that instant, squat onto that tiny pot and squeeze out an ass rock the size of Montana, you are gonna die. So, doody calls and you do that doo-doo that you do so well.
Having concluded carefully that you are in the facility by yourself, you drop trou, squat down, look around, and proceed to take a colossal crap into this tiny brass well in hopes that you can make a clean break-away, thus nullifying the need for toilet paper. A few moments pass and, having completed your grunt work for the day, you stand, evaluate the situation, give yourself a huge two-thumbs-up sign, reach down and pull your pants up, zip up, buckle up, turn around, only to find yourself staring directly into the most expensive state-of-the-art security camera system known to man, mounted directly on the wall in front of you. That is life without joy.
Anyway, you get my point. Joy is good. I like joy. Only, when you live on a small disability check from the federal government like I do, your options in life are pretty limited. You have to take pleasure where you find it. Me? I like a good crap. I like it more than sex. It's one of the few instances in life where, provided everything is working as it should, your efforts are immediately rewarded with a prize.
For me, a good butt goblin is a trophy worthy of being mounted on a wall, complete with its own brass nameplate and Certificate of Live Birth. It's evidence of a job well done. And seeing as how I am not working a traditional job right now, you can imagine the pride I take in my "job".
As fate would have it, I do a lot of my best thinking on the toilet. I also do some of my best work. Yet even I was surprised when several months ago I stumbled onto one of the most profound secrets known to man. So profound was my discovery that I am certain most archeologists would be green with envy at the very notion of not having discovered it first. Alas, it was my ass, not theirs, that would accidentally uncover this holy grail of crappery. Here is how it all began.
One day, while doing some of my best work yet, I happened to be thinking about movies. In particular, I was thinking about the movie Deliverance. Particularly, the more suppository scenes (I would have said "expository", but "suppository" is a lot funnier) where Ned Beatty's character, Bobby, is forced to "squeal like a pig" as one of the gross hillbillies has his way with Ned Beatty's rear end.
Now, for the uninitiated, Deliverance is a powerful and superb movie. I wholly recommend it (but not for children). The film follows four city dwellers as they canoe there way through the fictional Cahulawassee River somewhere in Georgia. At one point in the film, two of the characters run into some rather odd hillbilliess who have a particularly strange idea of what constitutes playtime. I won't go into more detail than this. Suffice it to say that it factors into my story. Anyway, back to my story.
As I sat on my throne, thinking about this particular scene, I began to have some fun, play-acting with this one scene, acting it out as I sat there in my bathroom. (I live alone, so this is perfectly normal, right? Just say "yes" and nod your head up and down. It helps me feel OK about myself.)
And so, rather pleased with myself as I sat there alternately squealing like a pig and barking out the order to "Squeal like a pig, boy!", something wonderful happened! My sphincter muscles relaxed, my butthole dilated as if it were a mile-wide sinkhole in the middle of the Mojave Dessert, and I dropped a butt-ball the size of a small toaster oven right there into my toilet.
It all happened so fast that I actually got light-headed and almost passed out.
Suddenly the world seemed so much bigger, my consciousness, like my butthole, having just been expanded light years from where it had once been. My God! Could it be true? Was it possible? Had I actually discovered the secret to having super-sized chocolate squishies every single time you go to the bathroom?
Well, yes and no.
In truth, or at least partly in truth, I had accidentally discovered why the hillbilly was so eager to get Ned Beatty's character to squeal like a pig: easy entry.
This rather unsavory realization was just too much information for me. I didn't like knowing it. Religious convictions aside, I am pure man, and I don't like knowing the motivation behind "squeal like a pig, boy!" The scene itself is unsettling enough. Now I had to deal with the unvarnished truth of biology and what happens to the sphincter muscles when you squeal like a pig. Moreover, the unpleasantness of this discovery was compounded by the fact that if, and only if, this was duplicable, how could I harness this energy when there was so much of an "ewww" factor involved?
In other words, if this worked, and worked every single time, there was the conundrum of how to take advantage of it without having to imagine this one scene from the movie and everything that came with it.
First, I had to do another experiment to determine if indeed this was duplicable. The very next day I would get my chance.
The following day, I awoke early in the morning, eagerly anticipating greater discoveries. As is customary, I had a cup of coffee and a protein bar to get things moving. After a few minutes, I headed to the bathroom. "Would it work?" I asked myself. Only time would tell.
A few minutes passed while I warmed up my ass and vocal chords, getting into character.
At this point, I need to explain something: I am a method actor, and a professional. So getting into character normally does not take me very long. I can even fart on cue. But this was different. I was heading into uncharted territory with eyes wide open.
This scene is brutal. I knew it. My mind could only take so much before I cracked. In fact, tradition has it that Ned Beatty only wanted to do this scene once. Sadly, Bill McKinney (who plays the hillbilly) apparently enjoyed doing the scene so much that he forced Beatty to do it over and over, reportedly doing the scene a total of thirty-three times. Ned Beatty was never the same after that. Nope. This was no trip through the tulips. This was a one-shot deal only. I had to nail the scene, and never revisit it again.
Once on the commode, I stared straight into the wall ahead of me. With furrowed brow and clinched fists, I began to squeal like a pig. Only this time the fact that I knew what to expect somehow interfered with the process. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. "OK, slow down, man, breathe easy, relax. You're forcing it. Let it happen," I said to myself. "OK, squeal like you mean it. You can do this!"
"Squeal, dammit, squeal your ass off!"
And with that, I lost total control. I could not stop it if I had wanted to, not even if my life had depended on it. I dropped not one but two deuces, one right after another, each the size and shape of roughly-hewn bricks. "YES!" I shrieked, like Al Michaels at the 1980 Olympic hockey finals. It worked! I knew I had something. I was in possession of perhaps the most coveted secret in recorded history. It was like discovering plutonium: beautiful, powerful, but in the wrong hands? Dangerous.
So, now that I had proven that this was duplicable, how would I package it? How would I overcome the conundrum of squealing like a pig? The very next few crucial days would be the most important of my life.
Over the course of the next week I took a journal with me to the bathroom. Several experiments failed miserably. Nothing was working like squealing worked. I was desperate. Unless I could find a more palatable way to tap into this amazing power, it was useless. I mean, if all of humanity began to squeal like pigs when they shat? Well, you just cannot fathom the chaos this would cause. Civilization as we know it would cease to exist. No, there had to be a better way. There just had to be.
On the last day of my bathroom journal entries, I put my pen down. It was no use. I was exhausted. I was discouraged. I was constipated. I was about to give up, when suddenly, my training kicked in.
I relaxed. I began to remember the words of an ancient warrior. "BE the ball! Shuh-nuh, nuh, nuhnuh, nuhnuh, nuhnuh, nuhnuh, nuh..." Only I inserted the word "turd" for "ball".
"BE the turd!" I said to myself.
Suddenly, a new movie came to mind: Batman and Robin, from 1997! Sure, it was the suckiest movie that ever sucked before, easily the worst in the franchise, but something about that movie has stuck with me ever sense. The character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger -- Mr. Freeze! Something about the name.
I began to say "freeze" over and over, rhythmically, with a high pitched sort of whine tacked onto the end. "FREEEEEEEEEEEEEZE." When I said "freeze" forcefully, in that way, something happened. Something wonderful. Something beautiful Something familiar. I said it again. And again. Then it happened. Just as before. Nirvana! EUREKA! The Shangri-La of Shitting. Kunta Kinte, I've found you!!!
Life has not been easy for me. It has not changed all that much since that day, either. But on that day I made a discovery that slowly will begin to change the way we poop forever.
Will I get credit for it? No. Not likely. Great men never seek greatness. It either finds them, or it doesn't. But greatness is not what truly great men seek after. No, my friends, the truly great wise men amongst us comfort themselves in knowing but one thing: they make great doody just like everyone else, one doody at a time.
I will let history determine my fate.
