Community News

"A friend received tutelage at the Page residence for 3 weeks." This sounds straight out of a small-community newspaper. Such publications are frugal in budget, the community they report on more frugal yet, on toward austere, in the way of events. "Dale Guptill reports a lot of grasshoppers around his place."

The small newspaper relies on articles from people who write community news. A volunteer from each community calls neighbors and finds out what they've been doing, regurgitating the information in print, without embellishment, garnish, or prose style.

Community news is pure drivel, trivia below the repeat level. Events not worthy of being recorded, devoid of substance. Such dross threatens to lower the reader's biorhythms so low their reptilian brain starts to shut down.

"Jeremy Case spent most of Wednesday getting his cows back in the pasture. The recent snow pushed the fence down and sure enough, the cows found that down place and went right through."

"Bonnie Cecil made brownies for the Legion fundraiser."

I sniff my nose at such rint, but him are the liar that says him don't read the news from each and every community - Vetal, Long Valley, Green Valley, Interior. Even Tuthill, I'm sad to confess.

Aren't these personal writing sites, so-called blogs, just community news with updated technology?

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"A friend received tutelage at the Page residence for 3 weeks." I invited my friend Drizzel Phume here for resume boot camp, 3 weeks of intense, focused work on his resume and how to pursue the elusive job. Common theme last year; I really felt that Phume could land a job even in this turd job market. I worked with him roughly 1 epoch ago at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, CA, and though he is a math major, he does a passable imitation of a software engineer. Believe me, that is better than a lot of the sad sacks in the IT (information technology) industry.

It was grueling. We must have spent close to 7 minutes a day on the getting-job pursuit.

This is what came out of it:

Top 15 accomplishments of the trip:

15. Walk to the store to get bread, eat good chicken parm, walk home
14. Pizza and massage to break out of a persistent dual hangover
13. Toilet kit replacement
12. Colombian hats!
11. African band at the St. Juliens
10. Intro to SQL Server class
9. Haute cuisine on the high plains, home cookin'
8. The Great Fire of Congo Jones' Back Yard
7. Resume update
6. Billiards and hot tub. Billiards and hot tub. Billiards and hot tub.
5. Jonesing on Jones' music
4. Talking to lissome, earthy, appealing young chicks at the St. Julien
3. Drizzel file-sharing his collection of movies. Hard drive!
2. Tet! Unbelievable food, reunion with Tuna, another pool tournament victory.
1. Kansas game.

As to #7, Drizzel got a job. He's been at it for almost 2 months.

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About 4:07 PM at work every day, I get the feelin'. Like a 2.8 Richter-scale rumble.

I don't like making my drop at work. You've got these Larry Craig types who sit in the middle stall, so you're likely to encounter the wide stance, the foot tapping, the absent sounds of crapping.

Who sits in the middle one when 3 are available? Are you that starved for male love? Just ask me out! Damn, you don't have to sit in the middle stall.

One guy uses the sanitary seat covers. I won't kid you, I have scant time for that level of hypochondria.

A sign in the bathroom reads, "Restrooms are for your convenience. Please help to maintain a germ-free environment."

Now we're in a clean room. People, we're going to have to realize something. We're taking a dump. We're washing our hands. We have our hands on our genitalia. Germ-free is a little naive, given the reality of the proliferation of germs.

I find it interesting to call a restroom a convenience. I thought it was something a little bit more than that. If you think about it, a restroom is an expensive attempt at a healthy, disease-free workplace. More than a convenience, I would think. Legally mandated, also. I believe something that is required is above the convenience level. I hate to say it, but I NEED it.

I would gladly take a dump in one of the deserted hallways of the 3rd floor, if the management company chose to remove our conveniences. Buncha clowns down there, playa-hatin' on 4th floor. I'd just as soon leave yesterday's burrito outside the abandoned Countrywide Home Loans office, an utter sham and ripoff of a company, defunct on our taxpayer dime. I should behave like I'm a dog that smells another dog's piss and reflexively lets loose his own sef. Every time, I see the Countrywide logo, I vacate bowel.

I love talking about the human condition. I'm waiting for some university to grant me an honorary Doctor of Scatology award.

Every day at work, right around 4:07, I get the feelin'. I drink water, walk around. I don't want to deal with the Larry Craig types on the 3rd floor or leave my signature of gastrointestinal distress with one of my co-workers in the 4th floor Juancho. The situation is not resolved easily.

Air fresheners are scant help. That air ain't fresh; I just made sure of that.

However, once I'm home, I relax 20 minutes and smile. A different feeling occupies me. "I'm gonna send one on down to Civil."

Less than a half mile away sits the Boulder Wastewater Treatment Plant. That's where our treasure goes. The convenient restrooms in the convenient office buildings end up right over there, lovingly tended to by a civil engineer. All the stuff from my house. My neighbors' houses. Anyone who doesn't battle the late-spring mosquitoes for a sylvan release.

Civils like their jobs. People who work at Checkers and Pep Boys like cars; Civil engineers like _____. This type of question is why I did so well on standardized tests.

In college, one of my classmates was a Civil. He had a textbook for a senior-level class. One day he was carrying it, and I read the spine. "Rates of Solid Waste". Here before me was a trained shit counter. I had never thought much about my dung, and right beside me were people aspiring to count it, handle it, manage it, earn from it.

What a learning experience, college.

Civil engineers are the dung beetles of superfauna. They're waiting on it. Civils loll about aimlessly until the folk upstream do the Bad Burrito Water Slide. Then it's up-and-at-'em, the work has just begun.

I am happy to accommodate them. Is the root of "accommodate" in fact "commode"? I had never thought about that, either.

Now it makes sense, thinking about how Tom Horan used to ogle me lustfully. I always thought he was a major league gaylord, but now I realize he was after something else. He'd always give me a quick once over and gesture with his eyebrows. His thought bubble was:

"Well, how about it? Are you in the mood?"

Quimulus the Devout