TheAmericanMale

Public Toilets and America. 5-31-11

There is a critical but rarely discussed problem in America:  Public toilets.   As a kid, I don’t remember public bathrooms being so deplorable, but now, I’m afraid to use them.  Public toilets were supposed to represent a high point in hygiene and convenience; a mark of civilization, but they have now become the most disgusting places in America.

I believe what is happening to public bathrooms is analogous to what is happening to America.  They let everyone in to do whatever they want without regard for the next person.  People just don’t think about others anymore.  To me, public toilets are a barometer of how we are doing as a republic.

Public toilets were first used in Ancient Babylon and, I would venture, were cleaner than those in America today. In gas stations, Las Vegas casinos, airplanes, McDonalds and most other fast food restaurants for example, I’ve seen all sorts of things dripped and smeared on the seats, bowl, floor, stalls, sinks, walls and ceilings.  It’s almost always an adult version carnival horror show behind the men’s room door.  What incurable disease lurks on those surfaces?  It is rare that I’ll ever find a clean public bathroom.

I’ll do practically anything to avoid going into a public bathroom to poop, because after looking at the toilets, barfing is the first thing that comes to my mind.  Trying not to breathe, disinfecting myself, and hoping that my clothes don’t touch anything are my only thoughts.  Moreover, I’m amazed to see others walk in and sit down right over a uncleaned toilet seat.  Who are these people that this is normal for them?

If I’m out of the house, and I have to go so bad that a public toilet is my only option, I have a protocol for cleaning the seat before I use it that I call “dressing the toilet.”   This cleaning procedure costs me precious painful valuable minutes cleaning the impossible with a packed colon, but it has to be done.  I grab a wet paper towel and clean off the seat and the area of the bowl that the seat doesn’t cover.  Then I dry the seat.  After that I go for the toilet seat covers; hopefully they have them.  I always use two of them.  If not, I have to tear toilet paper and shape it to cover the seat.

By this point my butt is ready to explode.  I don’t have any time left but I still have to struggle with un-perforating the toilet seat cover.  What purpose does the toilet seat cover tongue serve?   Why is this thing perforated?  If I don’t remove the tongue and set the cover down just right, the seat cover slips into the water.  The time it takes to flatten out the folded seat cover tongue often coinsides with the last seconds my sphincter can hold its load.

Once the toilet is ready for me, I carefully roll down my pants, making sure not to let my pants touch the toilet, stall walls, or the floor.  After that, I’m able to use a public bathroom.  When I finish, I make sure to flush.  And I always leave the bathroom cleaner and better than when I got there.

Concepts of Man 5-17-11

There are many things we take for granted in our lives.  Most often we don’t question them, sometimes I do.  I call these concepts of man.

Why do we wear clothing, and should or would people wear clothing if the world was warm all the time?  Do we wear clothing to keep us warm or is it for modesty?  When I was in my 20’s and fit, and sitting in a University lecture hall filled with young women, I used to wonder about the necessity for clothing.   My body was perfect and so were most of the women in my classes;  I had nothing to be ashamed of, so was clothing necessary I asked myself?

In my 20’s clothing probably wasn’t always necessary, but in my 40’s it is.  The question returned to my mind today as I was standing behind an attractive woman in very revealing clothing at the post office.  The question was quickly answered as soon as I pictured myself without clothes.

Supercharging My Yogurt 5-16-11

Avromie Sommers, a well meaning friend,  emailed me a motivational magazine article titled “The World’s Fittest and Richest Guys.” ‎17 of the world’s top CEOs, moguls and millionaires reveal their health and wealth secrets. It was from a men’s health magazine. Each of these guys is strict on his diet and they all appear to be exercise nuts. That’s great for them.

Can I learn anything from this article?  No.  They represent everything I am not.  I’m a regular guy and earn a regular living.  Not only do I enjoy food, I like eating lots of it; especially at all you can eat places like weddings and parties.

Thinking about those guys doesn’t motivate me, it just leaves me wondering how they got lucky.  I can’t explain their luck, but I can get lucky too.  My luck often involves finding something good in the refrigerator.   So I looked for something exciting to show up those lucky fools. I spotted three of my wife’s expensive Trader Joe’s organic yogurts and removed them to my possession.  I figured she’d kill me for eating them all, but I’d worry about that later.

I emptied the strawberry yogurts into a bowl and popped the plastic top of a powdered strawberry Nesquik canister, poured the Nesquik in the bowl and mixed them together.  Strawberry Quick makes the tastiest strawberry milk and I figured it would perform as well or better in my yogurt.  It does.

It felt great being the first human to experience this food combination.  It’s a unique taste and one I am sure that those guys haven’t enjoyed, nor would they.  I thought of those rich and fits with their beautiful women, leisure time and fancy houses.  Let them be the first to orbit the earth in a private spaceship.  They can have all the adventures they want.

I sit quietly at the kitchen table smiling because I had bettered them. I discovered and feasted on strawberry Nesquik supercharged yogurt.

Peeing Sitting Down 5-15-11

Where is it written that men have to pee standing up?   Around a year ago, I started sitting down when I peed at home.  There are a few reasons for this.  First, I can’t stand a dirty home.  One day the sun was shining through my bathroom window at the perfect angle as I was peeing, I saw how much pee splashed out of the toilet and onto my walls and floor using the traditional male pee in the standing position.  I’m the type of person who realizes his toilet walls are coated with urine.  Second, I like comfort and there is always a trade magazine or something to read in my bathroom, and I might get lucky and have to poop also.  Why miss this opportunity?   So, I pee sitting down when I’m at my own house now.

My bathroom is much spiffier now that I sit down to pee.  There are no pee drips on the floor in front of the toilet and the rim is always sparkly clean.  Moreover, the seat is always down.  I should be given an award from the International League of Women.  My wife tells me that I am a superior male specimen.  This is bathroom behavior befitting the perfect man she tells me.  We’ve all overheard women talking about how gross men’ s bathrooms are and men know they are right, but until now there was nothing we could do to help.  Now I consider myself a leader in promoting a new American bathroom hygiene paradigm.

I now feel entitled to encourage my male guests to sit when they pee at my house, but my wife gets livid when she hears this.  She thinks it’s over reaching to tell guests how to behave in my bathroom.  It’s a topic that needs to be discussed though.  Maybe I should start a Facebook page preaching the benefits of sitting down to pee.  I could get a million fans for my page.  Unfortunately, the American male may need more time to evolve, and they’d probably all be women plus me.

Egg Yolks 5-13-11

I dined on runny egg yolks tonight.  With cholesterol scares and being told egg yolks were a heart’s public enemy number one, I haven’t eaten egg yolks for years.  I watched enviously as others ate their yolks and suffered no harm.  I kind of remembered how good they tasted, but not really.  Had I really remembered how good they tasted, I would have had them more often. Well, tonight I decided to live on the wild side.   

My wife was cooking dinner tonight and offered me eggs.  She said she would make them sunny side up with runny yolks.  Boy did she make them.  Now I remember how delicious yolks are.  The taste briefly transported me back to my childhood.  I had a flashback to when I was four years old and was eating my Mom’s perfectly cooked runny eggs.  I enjoyed them then, and I enjoy them now. 

Looks like egg yolks are gonig to be welcome guests in my house again.

Male pattern baldness 5-12-11

One more irrefutable piece of evidence that I am growing older is my receding hairline.  When looking straight at a mirror, I can fool myself that I still have hair.  I still have good hair days but it seems that I have more and more bad hair days. I like to think I still have close to a full head of hair and it is only slightly receding, but it is getting harder to fool myself.

I always want to know the unvarnished truth about myself, but yet, I really don’t.  Well today, I got irrefutable proof of exactly where my hair line is.  I was at a house painting estimate and I saw the top of my head.  Lucky me.

I was at a mansion in Bel Air and I entered the master bathroom as part of the overall house estimate.  It had mirrors on the vaulted part of the ceiling and the flat part of his ceiling is also mirrored. This configuration of mirrors gave me an absolute perfect sighting of the top of my head from the looking down position.  Basically, I got to see the top of my head the way it really is.

It’s not bad enough that I actually see my male pattern baldness, my reality is even more depressing; the top of my head is balding unevenly.  Of all my fantasies that I’m not really balding so quickly, I never thought that I would be balding unevenly.  The right side is balding back further than my left side and the front is really thin too.  Geeze!  I’m not one of those guys who looks good partially bald.   How much longer it will be until I have to shave my head?    Another middle aged milestone I had hoped to avoid has irrefutably arrived.

Heartburn and A Pepcid Mystery 5-11-11

Hey all you 20 somethings, here’s a typical Fat and Sloppy story:  Talk to most middle aged guys and they’ll tell you a variation of what I’m telling you now.  Being an American means you have the right to eat whatever you want whenever you want.  I cherish and often abuse that right.  When I was young, I could eat anything.   But being middle aged, I still eat everything, but eating poorly and rarely exercising is now beginning to take it’s toll on me.  One result of being out of shape is that heartburn is my constant companion.

Instead of changing my eating habits, I prefer to soothe my heartburn with a pill.  Of all the chewable remedies I have used for heart burn, only Pepsid has worked and it tastes great.  My favorite is the berry blend chewable tablet.  I hate the mint flavor tablets because they taste like tooth paste. When I feel the burn, I slide a few berry flavored pills into my mouth.  I happily wait as those flavored wafers silently dissolve in my mouth.  I don’t swallow anything  until they have completely dissolved.  Then, with my mouth loaded with its saliva/spit/Pepcid mixture, I swallow the savory broth.  Yum.

It quickly and gently coats my esophagus and stops the heart burn.   Another tasty fat and sloppy experience I look forward to on a daily basis.

Then something mysterious happened, about four months ago, Pepcid vanished from stores.  Costco didn’t have it, my grocery store didn’t have it, and pharmacies didn’t have them.   No one would say what happened, or would admit to me where the Pepcid had disappeared to.

I pursued the mystery by checking the Internet, blogs, discussion boards and I asked doctors.  Stupidly, I didn’t think to check the Pepcid website which would have been the first logical place to look.  That might have helped me.  Nothing came up though; not a peep about what happened to Pepsid.   It felt like a good friend had suddenly disappeared and no one but me was looking for him.

Happily, about a month ago, Pepcid finally reappeared in stores. According to the Pepcid web site, it came back on March 11, 2011.  It tastes the same, but its not the powerful, soothing friend I used to know.  This Pepcid is weaker.  I can tell because it now takes more wafers and saliva to soothe my heart burn.

I don’t know why it disappeared in the first place, or why Pepcid corporate weakened the wafers, but I do know one thing; no one is talking about this mystery.   And I can’t find anything about it on the Internet.

Man Entertainment: The National Hardware Show 5-2-11

Every year Las Vegas hosts the National Hardware Show.  Every single thing a man going to a hardware store could ever want to buy is displayed at this show.  

It’s pure man entertainment.  A Disneyland for middle aged men.  I get to talk like a tool using big shot.  There is every tool and product offering to discuss with other guys who are total although total strangers share a common chromosome that makes us enjoy talking about tools.  But, as soon as someone at a booth bores me, I’m off to the next interesting booth to talk like a big shot about a different tool or product again. 

I’ve been a tool enjoying man for over 25 years and it just feels good to walk these shows.  More than that, there are visual delights for as far as I can see; free samples, product demonstrations and so many tools to try.  

My inner scavenger loves the last day of the show because the show vendors give away lots of free stuff (screw drivers, duct tape, caulking, house keys, slim jims, elmer’s glue etc.) that they don’t want to pack up and ship back to their offices.

Every year I leave the show with bags of loot. I bring them home to show my wife like I’m a conquering hero.  She quickly looks at my bags but never cares about my triumph, but that never stops me from loading my bags with loot each and every convention. 

The free ticket link is on the following page and is item #4:

http://www.all-about-house-painting.com/Local_and_national_paint_news.php

Overeating again at the Buffet 4-21-11

No matter how many times I tell myself I won’t over eat, if I’m at a buffet, I overeat.  There is an all you can eat buffet at my hotel.  Why do I like buffets so much?

I have no discipline when it comes to eating food that is layed out in front of me.  There has to be some evolutionary explanation for my uncontrolled buffet behavior and I’d like to know it.  I should hire myself out as an expert to hotels on customer over eating at buffets.  I don’t understand why I keep eating long after I am stuffed.  Something primal in me starts when I join the herd of other over eaters swarming around the buffet offerings.

I’m on vacation with my in-laws and have been eating at hotel buffets for the last three weeks.  I ate so much yesterday that I partially lost consciousness.  I had to go pee so badly but I  didn’t want to get up from the table or abandon my food.   Finally my full bladder was so painful, I had to get up and find a bathroom.

I staggered down the hall and found a bathroom.  I noticed there were no urinals and the wallpaper looked kind of fuffy; I thought it was some kind of hip new bathroom decor.  I found a stall and relieved myself.  I must have peed for five minutes.

What a relief!  I had more room to eat and drink again.  As I was washing my hands, I noticed a woman in the bathroom looking at me with a “what the hell are you doing in here” look in her eyes, and I thought it was odd that she went into the men’s bathroom.  She looked at me like I was some kind of idiot.

I walked out back to the dining hall and looked behind me at the sign on the door and yes, I just peed in the woman’s bathroom.

Still waiting to begin my exercise regimen 4-20-11

As I put on my t-shirt this morning, I felt it fitting snugly.  My wife watched me put on the t-shirt and she began laughing.  She said I looked like a ten year old girl about to blossom into puberty.  She blamed me for making her laugh because she said she saw the look on my face as I looked in the mirror.  I’ll give her a pass on this one.  But it doesn’t explain all her other laughing as I get dressed other days.

No matter how many times I promise myself to start exercising, I never follow through.  How and where can I find the secret to motivate myself?  I think I could make a million dollars if I discovered that secret.

I think about what I used to be and what I have become.  I used to do 225 pull ups and 500 push ups every day.  I trained in Jiu Jitsu for three years (four days a week).  I was in shape.  I was cool.  I was athletic and could count on myself to handle anything.

Now, if I do three pull ups, I’m sore for a week.  Luckily, I can still do pull ups and that puts me ahead of many of the fat and sloppys out there, but knowing what I was and what I am now, it is hard to accept the transformation.