Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 204
Featured commentary
Springtime and the floating john
I
don’t know about you, but for
me, there is something very
down-home comforting about
living in a town where a new
floating restroom is front-page news
— as it was this past Wednesday,
regarding the replacement john for
our Castaic Lake.
It just makes you feel all warm
and fuzzy, and harkens back to the
small-town, good old days of ...
oh, I don’t know … Mayberry.
I mean, I can picture Barney
Fife in a leaky rowboat, handling
security at the restroom’s ribboncutting — while Mayor Pike
pontificates overlong to a seasick
contingent of local dignitaries.
It also makes you feel all warm
and fuzzy to know our budgetchallenged state government has
the heart to shell out precious cash
for our new floating john.
Obviously, our local boaters
will be greatly “relieved.”
I mean, one can only imagine
what happens when a 12-year-old
floating restroom goes bad, right?
Remember “Caddyshack”?
to laugh every time I hear of miles back north in spring.
Jim thatI have
one.
And no single individual makes
with that as a stepping
WALKER offSo,point,
let’s consider some
DON’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY
But the thing that tickles me the
most is the concept of a floating
john. It just seems counterintuitive
— and asking for trouble.
And then there is also the
association of the story with
spring. Maybe you didn’t make
the connection, but I woke up
Wednesday with a springtime
buzz going, thinking of flowers
bursting forth and such …
“Spring has sprung,
The grass has riz,
I wonder where the birdies is.”
… and I read, in my Signal,
about the coming of a new
floating outhouse.
I mean, the association just
cracked me up, and brought to
mind Dean Wormer’s famous line
from the “Animal House” movie:
“Every spring, the toilets
explode.”
other odd associations and weird
happenings of spring:
In parts of Bavaria, country
folk still practice the annual rite
each spring of tying small baskets
of wild strawberries to the horns
of their cattle as an offering to
elves. They believe that the elves,
who are passionately fond of
strawberries, will help to produce
healthy calves and an abundance
of milk in return.
Along those same,
superstitious, lines, in the weeks
preceding April 15, many people
in the U.S. actually send money to
unseen “elves,” who they believe
control their lives and, who they
hope, will return this tribute in
the forms of care for the elderly,
good harvests and the fixing of
potholes.
Monarch butterflies travel
thousands of miles south in late
summer and those same thousands
the entire journey. The generation
born along the way completes the
cycle.
Similarly, in the U.S., student
financial aid planning is begun
in the spring, with parents soon
taking on huge education debts for
their children, and thus allowing
their children to complete their life
cycle unencumbered — all while
the parents hope to die before they
have to pay the loans back.
Flatworms in the ocean have
both male and female sexual
organs, and during springtime
mating they get in genital stabbing
matches to see who will lose and
be forced to birth the children.
Similarly, in spring, U.S.
husbands and wives get in
stabbing matches, with the loser
having to take on the arduous task
of filling out the aforementioned
financial aid forms.
In the spring, the mating of
the red-sided garter snake is a
tourist attraction because each
female attracts hundreds of males,
who rush her and create a large,
squirming “mating ball.”
With humans, this
phenomenon is called “Spring
Break.”
After they are born, male
straw itch mites hang around
their mom, sucking out her body
fluids. They are also born sexually
mature, and will immediately grab
and mate with their sisters.
The exact same things occur
in many U.S. trailer parks.
And, finally …
When male bees mate with
their queen, their genitals explode
and snap off inside the queen.
When humans mate for life,
the males’ genitals are removed
more slowly — and the females’
heads explode.
I’m just sayin’ it’s springtime,
folks. Let’s be careful out there.
And, gentlemen, allow the ladies
to use the floating john first.
Comment at jwalker@thesignal.com or at http://Twitter.
com/DontSeriously.
