Honestly, the Vaginal Discharge Jokes Write Themselves

It's time for another sinus infection, and having procured yet another batch of prescription medication, I decided that just for fun I would actually read the little insert my pharmacist put into the bag instead of tossing it like I usually do. This, like most things I do, has led to some unusual thoughts. The thing that really got to me was in the section possible side effects.

Seek medical attention right away if any of these SEVERE side effects occur when using Amoxicillin/Clavulanate:

Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); bloody stools; confusion; dark urine; fever, chills, or persistent sore throat; red, swollen, blistered, or peeling skin; seizures; severe diarrhea; stomach pain or cramps; unusual bruising or bleeding; vaginal discharge or irritation; yellowing of the skin or eyes.

These, as you know, are always my favorite part. I love the idea that I would need to be told to seek medical attention for some of this stuff. What say we break that list down?

• Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue)
  Duh


• bloody stools
  Ewwwwww...and "duh"


• confusion
  So I'm supposed to contact my doctor if I'm taking this and I watch Donnie Darko?
  


• dark urine
  What, like color, or prone to writing bad poetry and listening to Bauhaus?


• fever, chills, or persistent sore throat
  Dude, I'm sick - why do you think I'm on this to begin with?


• red, swollen, blistered, or peeling skin
  Okay, so spontaneous combustion is out so long as I'm on this stuff.


• seizures
  Not sure what the police taking my hard drive has to do with anything, but I guess I can tell me doctor. The pictures were of his wife after all.


• severe diarrhea
  Okay, define "severe". I'm not in the habit of rating my diarrhea (cha cha cha). Should I be going with book length, and maybe most Stephen King is okay but The Stand warrants a hospital stay?


• stomach pain or cramps
  Well, alright, but why my doctor wants to know about me eating an entire bag of Habanero Doritos is beyond me. Actually, this might apply to the last item as well.


• unusual bruising or bleeding
  As opposed to the usual stuff.


• vaginal discharge or irritation
  Yes, if I discharge a vagoo I'll let someone know. The other is more difficult, as vaginas are notoriously polite and might not mention it if I irritate them, no matter how much they abhor the term "vagoo".


• yellowing of the skin or eyes
  Hopefully, no one in Springfield will ever have need of this particular medication.
  

Of course I shouldn't mock. This will inevitably lead to me someday perishing from a severe reaction. I'll be left to die a swollen, peeling, confused, bloated, bruised, bleeding wreck of a man, lying in my own filth and mysteriously discharging vaguely irritated vaginas.

It'll make one hell of an obituary though, don't you think?

Also Bad: So, Which One Of You Is the 'Bert'?

I realized today while reading about the Proposition 8 trial going what the real issue with the whole group of people trying to prevent gay marriage is. It's not the "protection of marriage". It's not that allowing gay people to marry will open the doors for similar "civil rights" cases arguing that the love between a man and his Roomba is a natural and beautiful thing and should be protected under the law (seriously, listening to this guy, you'd think that was coming).

It's just that you're probably uncomfortable meeting gay couples.

This stems from a couple of things. People are always uncomfortable with encountering those who lead what they view as a radically different life style as themselves. I get the same reaction when people find out I'm a vegetarian. They get all uncomfortable, often reacting in strange ways. Well, it's the exact same thing, exept instead of eating vegetables, I'd be eating another man.

Wait, that might make me a cannibal. Well, you get the idea anyway. Moving on.

Another thing I hear often is that the idea of two men having sex makes some guys really uncomfortable (I cannot speak to how women feel about this, but if the movies they show late at night on cable are any indicator, it's not as big an issue with them). My advice to these people is that maybe, when you meet a couple of gay men, you should not immediately picture them having sex. I mean, if you automatically do that with every couple you meet, then I guess for the sake of equality go ahead (although it's not a habit I recommend, as it can lead to awkward conversation when meeting neighbors or your spouse's coworkers - "Hi, I'm Roger. Is he as flexible as he looks?"). Either way, eventually, you'll get over it.



Finally, I think the biggest problem is that people get hung up on traditional roles in marriage, and immediately want to figure out who is the husband and who is the wife. This is silly. I think we've come far enough as a civilization that we can acknowledge that these are just titles in a heterosexual marriage. I suppose if it's really an issue, you can ask who has to check on night time noises and kill the spiders in the house, but I'm still not sure what it will get you.

So what is the point of all of this? It's that I think a lot of people who support things like Proposition 8 do so purely on the basis of things that make them uncomfortable. Yes, I know there are religious arguments, but mostly I think it's basic discomfort and xenophobia, both of which can be addressed by simply recognizing that when you encounter someone, anyone, you probably have a whole lot more in common with them than you think, and that the differences are probably things that can be overcome.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've been feeling lonely lately. I'm comforting myself by looking at the newest model Roombas...just look at how it swivels. I swear, I get chills just watching it.

Maximum Mayo Capacity Tester. Worst. Job. Ever.

Today, I noticed that the office food shelf, that area conscripted to contain abandoned comestibles that are now free for the taking, contained a bag of coconut covered marshmallows. Now I do not partake of marshmallows due to their gelatin content (it's a veggie thing), so I wasn't especially excited or anything. I did, however, peruse the bag as I am wont to do and came across the following warning on the side:

Choking Warning - Eat one at a time. For children under 6, cut marshmallows into bite-sized pieces. Children should always be seated and supervised while eating.

Now far be it from me to question the safety concerns of the good people of Kraft. They did after all bring us such fine products as macaroni and cheese that comes in a color typically reserved for pumpkins and traffic cones, and really, what could be more wholesome? Still, does this seem a bit much to anyone else?

I guess what throws me here is that first line - "Eat one at a time". Do I, as an adult, really need to be informed that stuffing my face full of food might lead to choking? Or is there something special about the marshmallow that makes it a particularly onerous choking hazard? Maybe they get bigger when you put them in your mouth or something. (Stop that.)

So now my question becomes not why they're warning me about the marshmallows, but rather why they're not warning me about other foods. How am I supposed to know how much mac & cheese I can fit in my mouth at once? Or now many pickles? Or Chips Ahoy cookies? Or Cool Whip (which now comes in the spray can, begging to be upended directly into one's mouth)? Or scoops of mayonnaise (which also comes in a convenient squeeze bottle that, while not as tempting as the Cool Whip, could be similarly abused)?

Dammit, how am I supposed to stuff my face unless someone does the science to tell me how to do so safely?

Just Between Us, Someone Needs To Check Helena Bonham Carter's Pulse. Just Sayin.

This morning, I saw that one of friends was on Facebook questioning the reasons behind the fashion industry's insistence that a woman is only attractive is she's built like a ten-year-old boy. Well, having briefly worked as an international fashion model (it was a cover), I have a unique insight into the situation, one that I have kept to myself for a long time for fear of my safety. I have now accrued sufficient mana, however, to protect my family and myself from attack, and thus it is my responsibility to come clean about this.

The sad truth is that most of the modern fashion industry as we know it is actually driven by necromancers.



See, sometime in the last millennium, people got wise to the idea that it was mostly better when dead people stayed dead. Thus, a lot of necromancers found themselves without a lot to do. Strangely, it turned out that many the of skills required to raise the dead from their graves were also useful in coming up with new and exciting fashion trends (don't ask me how it works - not my area of expertise). So, they put aside their potions and rituals, taking up fabrics and patterns in their place.

Of course, you can design all day, but if you have no one to model for you it does no good. This is where things got weird. The necromancers, not really adept at people skills, what with their pallid appearance and the fact that they kind of smelled like a mausoleum, didn't work well with the average supermodel. To overcome this, they rolled their own, raising the recently deceased to parade around in their latest creation.

Unfortunately for those of us who find grown women attractive, they were really good at what they did. The fashion industry took notice, mistaking the decrepid corpses for extremely thin, living women, and began to follow suit. This unfortunately started the trends that find us where we are today.



Hopefully, this is just that - a trend. Perhaps one day, the dead will be allowed to rest and real women will no longer be made to feel bad about having hips. Until then, we just have to quietly tolerate it. Eventually, someone's foot is going to fall off on a runway, and that should pretty well tie it all up.

On the bright side of all this, we did get goths, Hot Topic, and some of the best costume designers to ever work with Timothy Burton.

An Open Letter To Whoever Carved "HELP" Into the Bathroom Wall

Dear Sir or Madam,

I will confess that I was taken aback by your plea. What would drive a person to carve the word "help" into a restroom wall at their job is...well it's been on my mind. I can say that much at least. Unfortunately, the vague manner in which you made your request has left me at a loss as to how I may proceed.

See, you left no forwarding information along with your request. In the absence of an email address, phone number, or even a time at which I may expect you to return to the stall in question, I don't know how I can assist you in your request. If you had taken the time to be more complete in your thought, like the person who wrote "working here sucks" (a sentiment I cannot disagree with more, unless by "here" they actually meant that particular stall, in which case I am blissfully unqualified to comment), then perhaps I would have something to go on. Of course, this assumes you had time to spare, and what with the questionable quality of your penmanship, even taking into account the fact that you were carving, one may safely assume you were in some kind of hurry.

So given no more context to work with than a single word, I must assume then that the act itself was what you were seeking assistance with. As such, might I recommend that when defacing a public restroom, one might prefer a medium point Sharpie pen, which provides the permanence of a sharpened instrument while allowing for a more refined finished product. It's the tool of choice amongst the bathroom scribes that I am acquainted with.

Sincerely,
Dangerously Low On Grog

Oh, I'm Sensitive Alright. I'm Sensitive Like a Broad.

Warning: the following post is about potentially offensive slurs, and will thus contain language that some might object to. Nothing really bad like %#@$ or "adjustable rate mortgage", but still, you've been warned.

Driving the kids into school, I made some offhand comment that somehow involved midgets, which unfortunately led to my daughter asking me all sorts of midget-based questions. I did my best to answer them, but had to eventually press home the point that I wasn't sure if the term "midget" is considered offensive to...well, midgets. I recommended shying away from it until I could do more research (presumably involving finding one, calling them a midget, and seeing if they proceed to kick my shins).

I'm uncomfortable with situations like this. I'm rarely the most politically correct person in the room, but I try to be somewhat sensitive to the feelings of others. I almost never say things like "Great googly moogly, what's wrong with your face?" anymore. Still, there are cases where I feel that people go out of their way to be offended by something.

I'll give you an example. I'm a programmer. I like monkeys. Also, I like Fritos and Mountain Dew. Guess what the proper term for an individual such as myself is.

Obviously, "code monkey".



I've been told that I should shy away from this term at my workplace though because someone from another country is offended by it. Apparently, wherever they come from, referring to a person as a monkey is incredibly offensive. Well...okay, but we're not there right now and I'm not using it that way, so I'm thinking maybe it's time to let that one go. Frankly, I don't think much of any place that villainizes monkeys, so I get why they left in the first place.

Insensitive of me? Perhaps, but really, if we gather all of the things everyone ever got offended by and decided not to use those words anymore, we'd be left with a language composed of "the" and "rutabaga". Maybe "noodle", but I wouldn't count on it.

Still, I see the other side of it. I've actually had conversations with people online that are completely convinced that it's not considered offensive to call someone "faggot" so long as it's in the context of an online video game. They told me that the word had been adopted by gamers, who had changed the meaning to "not a good player", so there was no reason for gays to be offended by it.



In my head all I could hear were the words of my son: "Yeah, but no". The word was adopted by gamers for the very reason that one would assume, and any supposed change in meaning is rendered moot by the fact that the word is still constantly used, within our society, as an offensive slur. So long as the that douchebag Rev. Phelps and his ilk are on this planet (and remain closeted - wink wink, nudge nudge), the argument is simply unacceptable.

So what do I take from all of this? I guess that offensiveness of a word is a strangely subjective thing, based on current culture as well as context. Also, people are far more likely to consider a word no longer offensive if they were never part of the offended group to begin with. Still, it doesn't do much for the whole "midget" conundrum, so I should probably use a substitute expression for now.

I guess "Shorty McTinybritches" will do for now.

The Once And Future DLOG

For whatever reason, when the year rolls over, I feel like I should be doing something more...important with this corner of the internet. You know, imparting wisdom or some such nonsense. Unfortunately, my ego only covers my programming abilities and natural good looks, so I find it difficult to make myself believe I have such wisdom to share beyond "If you're not sure where it came from, maybe you shouldn't eat it", and even that has exceptions.

Still, this site could use some changes. I'm working on a face lift, as I haven't restyled this thing in a long time and would like something a little more official looking. I'm also considering not being so strict about forcing a schedule, but rather writing things up that are worth writing up. I'll still make it a weekly thing at least, but I hate it when these things feel forced. It's why I gave up on the need to wear pants every single day, and I'm a better man for it.

So, keep an eye on things, faithful readers (and random yahoos who only land here because they did an image search for monkeys). I promise to at least be as ridiculous as I have so far. Oh, and if I think of anything that falls under the category of wisdom, I'll pass it along. Probably accidentally.

"It is the prerogative of a fool to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the fool is still a fool, and the emperor is still an emperor." Neil Gaiman, Sandman