Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Orange On The Head

Like me, you were probably confused by the title of this post when you first saw it. It’s like one of those movies where, for the first few scenes, you have no idea what is going on, and it all gets tied together in the end.

I was tied together in the end once. It was unpleasant, but I’m happy to have experienced it. Something to tell the grandkids about, know what I mean? It’s nothing a few dozen White Castle hamburgers and a case of Stroh’s can’t cure. But, if you are tied in the end too much you may die of copraemia, which is a condition where you are poisoned by your own excrement due to constipation. Although, to be fair to excrement, I guess it’s not considered excrement until it is expelled from your body. So, we’ll call it crement. We all know how nasty it is when a sewer backs up and floods the basement. Well, it’s not so pretty when it happens inside your body. A couple of mops and a bucket of pine cleaner won’t do you much good.

What’s worse is you’ll carry this stigma with you forever. You’ll be the laughing stock of the afterlife. Imagine gathering around the afterlife drinking hole, reminiscing with other dead things:

“Jim here died while saving forty helpless infants in a hospital fire. Marge over there was killed when she jumped on a grenade aimed at the pope. Harriet succumbed to a brain hemorrhage she developed after a woman in a fur coat beat her over the head with a fire extinguisher when she threw goat’s blood on the woman’s coat. So, what’s your story, pal?”

“Er, I, um, I ate a bit too much cheese one night.”

“A bit too much cheese?! Hell, a little cheese never hurt no one!”

“It does if you eat enough to tie your colon into a permanent knot.”

Then the laughter and the finger pointing begin. You look for a way to save face, but realize it is futile when you hear a voice in the ethereal crowd say, “We are going to ostracize you for eternity, Draino!” And they’ll do it, too. And why wouldn’t they?

Speaking of why, most of us have heard the urban legend where the philosophy professor whose final exam had a single question: Why? As legend has it, one clever student handed in the completed test with a simple, “Why not?” and xe received an A+. I have a few issues with that story.

First, who gives a crap about a philosophy class? People only take those classes to satisfy blow-off elective requirements. It’s not like philosophy is a real subject like kinesiology. Urban legends are too important to our society to be wasted on trivial subject matter. Second, that professor was either drunk and forgot to prepare a proper final or xe was being too profound for any of our own goods. It seems to me that a teacher should know the answer to the questions xe sticks on a test. I doubt that xe had a standard correct answer in mind when xe created the test. I demand more effort and competence from our purveyors of higher education. Third, “why not” is a stupid answer and incorrect. That student should have gotten an F and a demerit for contempt of education (which goes on xe’s permanent record, by the way). Ask any kid under the age of twelve and xe’ll tell you the answer is “because”, which is closer to the true answer, which is “Who gives a shit?”

If I was the teacher, and for some departmental reason I was forced to give that one word, one question test, the only person I would give an A to is the one who answered, “Who gives a shit? You suck for asking such a meaningless question and I want my damn tuition back if all you can teach me is to answer one damn question, you drunk, lazy, tenured whore of a professor.” Good answer. I like the way you think. Everybody else would get an F and a note saying, “Take a real class next time. You just wasted your time and get no damn credit for this course. The answer is ‘Who gives a shit?’ which is what you should have said to yourself when your saw this class in the schedule of courses.” My one regret in life is that I never became a philosophy professor.

By now the meaning of the title of this post should be clear to you. It has certainly cleared up for me. In fact, the whole world makes more sense to me now. I’m glad. And a little bound.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who gives a shit?

Anonymous said...

I think Moist might need to shit.

Go eat a burrito, dude.

Anonymous said...

Co-ed: I'm taking Philosophy with Prof. Moist. At least, I do hope that who I get.

Boyfriend: Why?

Co-ed: Who gives a shit?

:-D Moist, you gave me another late night giggle, babe. Blog on ...

Anonymous said...

I am withholding my shit until further notice.

Then watch out!

Anonymous said...

I guess it’s not considered excrement until it is expelled from your body. So, we’ll call it crement.

Why not increment?

I know. Who gives a shit.

“It does if you eat enough to tie your colon into a permanent knot.”

Maybe you should switch to cherry stems. You’ll be a much bigger hit at the afterlife drinking hole…

Anonymous said...

I'm still confused by the title, but who gives a shit?

Anonymous said...

Most of the time when you use the "Speaking of" whatever transition, I wasn't speaking about what you said. So that confuses me.

Anonymous said...

I'm still confused by the title, but who gives a shit?

Del, it’s my guess that Orange on the Head is like Rain on the Brain, but with more head trauma -- Which is not to infer that Moist’s blog suggests that he has head trauma. It’s implied. Though it could just be the toxic dump that he’s transporting. I digress. No, the relative degree of head trauma is merely a matter of physics, as in e=mc2, which, by the way, is a proven fact of science, and not a veiled suggestion that Marty Casey is square (although he has been known to hang out with Moist). Nor does it suggest that he is Einstein. Or Moist, for that matter (meaning that the formula does not suggest that either Marty or Moist is Einstein, not that Marty is not Moist. I’m sure that he is. All that rain, you know…). Anyway, both seem to have things fall on their heads from time to time, but in Moist’s case, we’re talking bigger chunks (falling on the head. Not the other thing. Although…). This time, it appears to be something orange, like an enormous chunk of cheese. Perhaps it’s one those giant wedges of cheddar that xe wears on xe’s head (xe=mr2). Maybe Moist picked one up on a prior trip to Summerfest, and wears it as a thinking cap when writing his blog. I could be wrong. All I know is that, whatever it is, it helps free his mind and open that seemingly random stream of consciousness which will eventually be tidied up with a neat little bow, not unlike the one in his colon, for all to enjoy (the finished blog, not the bow in his colon). Confusing title? Who gives a shit?


Troublemaker.

Anonymous said...

“Jim here died while saving forty helpless infants in a hospital fire. Marge over there was killed when she jumped on a grenade aimed at the pope. Harriet succumbed to a brain hemorrhage she developed after a woman in a fur coat beat her over the head with a fire extinguisher when she threw goat’s blood on the woman’s coat. So, what’s your story, pal?”


Good stuff. And I was forced to give a rat's ass about the philosophy stuff too.