Playing with Poo? Funny.

This entry stems from yet another conversation with that perpetual source of good ideas, my husband Bob.  He's full of them.

 

Our neighbour on one side is the greatest guy in the world.  Remember Wilson, the neighbour in Home Improvement?  The guy whose face you never see, but he's full of wisdom and advice?  Maybe you don't remember him because I got his name wrong.  But imagine, if you will, an older gentleman who will help you out whenever you need it.  Wayne, our neighbour, is incredibly nice, generous, and gets up at the crack of dawn to beat us to the shoveling even though he is twice our age.

 "I gotta level with you Tim...it's weird that you grunt so much."

On the other side is the crazy house of crazy sisters.  It used to be the crazy house of some old guy, but then he passed away and left his insane-o house to his children, of which there are five.  His son steers clear of the whole scene, while the four sisters battle it out to see who can emerge victorious in the looney-tunes crazython.

 This one is the front-runner.

Bob treads the line between "hilarious neighbour" and "that guy" pretty perilously.  We have this apple tree in the backyard that produces FAR too many apples.  One day, some kids are in the alley, and they stop by the tree (which droops down, it is so abundant with fruit) and say "Mmmm apples" and go to pick some.  To eat, I'm sure, not to throw at puppies and babies.  Bob notices this horrendous act of thievery and hollers, in his oldest of men voice, "HEY YOU DAMN KIDS STAY AWAY FROM MY APPLES!!!".  The next day our friends were over and Bob offered them as many apples as they were willing to take (which, unfortunately, was none), because "We have too many damned apples".

 Not ONE of these will be consumed by children, so help me God.

His dealings with the four Salem sisters is similar in the level of crotchety he brings to the table.  They've been trying to sell their stupid house forever (they asked for WAY more than it was worth...because of reasons that include "It was architect designed" and "We are insane") and people would come to view it, and sometimes park on our lawn instead of on their driveway.  This does not sit well with Old Man Bob, who strategically placed jagged bricks on the property line to mark his territory.  This is also important because occasionally they will mow "their" lawn- but they have their mower set on "Bic".  We went out one day to find that our grass between the houses had been cut down to dirt.  So clearly defined boundaries are a good thing.  Today, Bob discovered that his bricks had been moved.  He put them back immediately, and banged on their door a bit, but they didn't answer.  He came back in the house and had a bit of a rage-fest about how the crazy sisters better keep their hands off his bricks, and we had a little memory montage of some of the sisters' finer moments.

C'mon friends, let's go for a stroll.

The fattest sister is a smoker and used to chuck her butts into our mulch.  This is stupid, because she could burn our house down, and because it's obvious who did it.  So Bob picked them all up and lined them up on her doorstep.  I think they may have been arranged to spell "F U".

 That'll teach you, witch!

There was also a time when they had their mother's dog living in the house, which they would allow out front to poop on our lawn.  Our dog is really small, and has really small poos, which are contained to the backyard and walks.  We are well aware of where our dog's poo is.  So we knew it wasn't from Pax, but we also witnessed the pooing on more than one occasion, by grace of the giant windows we have on the front of the house. 

 

...through the wonders of glass!

Bob went out one day to find yet another poo from that stupid dog, and he went out to gather it up and maybe push it through their mail slot, but he thought of a better plan- throw it up on their roof.  When I realized what he was up to, I banged on the window and made him stop, but we laughed about what it would have been like had he gone through with it...

"Hey, you guys, I'm really sorry about my dog pooing on your lawn the other day.  I'll try to be more careful."
"Your dog?  Nah, he didn't poo on my lawn.  But I saw him pooing on your roof."
"...what?"
"Yeah, check it out, he took a big shit right up there.  Well, see you later."

 

NAILED IT!

As it turns out, the witch sisters will be leaving as someone has purchased the house.  But have no fear- we have a neighbour two doors down on the same side who has taken up the responsibility of sending their dog to poo on our lawn.  It's a stupid little rat dog who yaps all the time and runs around like a jerk on the road.  They have two kids too, who I kind of want to call stupid and who also run around on the road, but I'll try to be more charitable.  I watched that little bastard relieve himself right outside the window, narrowly missing an opportunity to have me boot him across the yard before he ran back home.  I collected his donation and brought it back to his house, waving it around while I asked those jerks to keep their dog and his poo to themselves.  I'm fairly certain that they won't be sending us Christmas baking anytime soon.  Not just because it's not really near Christmas, either.

Hmmph!  How dare she ask me to control my animal?  She's not getting any rum balls this year!

I figure, if that little rat comes over again and poos on our property, Bob should make good on the roof-poo.  Maybe the roof of their car so they can see it right away.

This has nothing to do with anything...other than it is the first picture that comes up in the Google images search "Poo on the Roof".  Adorable.

Later, we were watching a show where some jerk buys a house somewhere.  They were looking at the washroom and the toilet seat and toilet seat cover were this weird pattern of green and brown, like a forest or something.  Basically it looked like someone had wiped their butt all over both the seat and the cover.  It was gross.

Imagine this...with blobs of poo all over it.

Bob emerged from this experience with a remarkable revelation though- we need a new toilet seat cover.  It will have to be custom, but it will be worth the effort.  He wants to take a picture of a poo floating in the toilet and then put it on the cover, so even when the toilet is closed, it appears open and occupied.

As it turns out, this could be Bob's million dollar idea.  No one has manufactured a poo-design toilet seat cover.  I looked it up.  I also looked up the alternative for this image, which was "Poo floating".  I couldn't select a picture of some stranger's poo without vomiting in my mouth, so I stopped looking fairly quickly.  No picture for you!

Hilarious, right???  People won't know what to think.

Or maybe they will...they'll think "Old Man Bob's up to his old tricks".

Moral of this story: Keep your shit to yourselves or so help me, I'm siccing my husband on you.

Furthering your education? Funny.

Bob and I often get lost on internet research tangents after some benign comment about something random.

For example, the other night, we were laughing about people picking their nose and eating it.  We have a theory that pretty much everyone picks their nose, but only honest folk will admit it.  Everyone has boogers.  They are crusty and annoying in everyone's noses.  Our path of logic leads us to the conclusion that everyone possessing at least one finger picks those things.  But why eat them?

Is that Brittney going in for a nose dive??

My thinking was that the booger-eating is a result of not having anywhere to put the booger once it is harvested.  It's sort of by default that it ends up in the mouth.  Little kids have been told not to wipe their hands all over everything, so...nom nom nom.

 

Bob was thinking that it's just a habit formed when growing up.  Little kids are gross.  They eat boogers.  Somewhere along the way, the behavior is ingrained, and the result is booger-eating adults.

Then we surmised that perhaps there is some biological reason for eating boogers.  You know how some dogs will eat their own poo, or horse poo, or deer poo, or rabbit poo...stop me if I've lost you...maybe all this poo-eating is only done by dogs that I or my parents have owned.  In which case, I guess I just keep company with dogs of little taste.  But I always thought that dogs would do that because there is some nutritional reason for it, or some evolutionary reason.  Maybe if you eat all the poo of other dogs in the area, they won't have a chance to breed or something.  Maybe female dogs dig poo breath.

 

Or maybe they are doing us a favor.

 

It's sort of like how meth addicts will eat their scabs to get the most out of their meth.  Like recycling.  Those methheads, they are doing what they can to reduce waste.  Good work.

The pictures I found for this are too gross...and not funny.  Back to boogers.

 

So anyway, we looked it up.  I guessed that if I started typing "Why do people eat..." into google, it would come up first.

It does.

"Why do people eat boogers?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_mucus

...that's right, there is a wiki page on it.  And this wiki page doesn't even have one of those disclaimers at the beginning that basically warns you that all the "information" you are about to read is total crap.  Nope, this one appears to be legit.  In our quest for knowledge, I read several webpages on the topic, and many of them reference a study that was done about booger-eating, along with a doctor who advocates the practice.

The study was performed by Sidney Tarachow of the State University of New York.  Sounds like a real person at a real place.  It reported that people who ate their boogers found them "tasty".

HAHAHAAHAHAHHA is this a band named Tasty???  HAHAHAHHAAAAA

The doctor who is all for these tasty snacks is named Friedrich Bischinger, from Austria, and his reasoning includes that boogers act sort of like vaccinations against bacteria and disease.

So Bob and I became virtual experts on this topic in a matter of about 20 minutes of laughter-fueled reading.  But I also started thinking about these people who have done these studies on the benefits or reasons behind booger-eating.

Which leads me to my next thought.

Sidney Tarachow is probably a graduate student in psychology or biology or medicine or something.  He (or she) conducted University-funded research, with a panel of volunteers, to find out why people eat boogers.  His/her conclusions?  "They are tasty".

BAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAAA

Can you imagine the doctoral defense?  Can you imagine the initial proposal of this study???  Hilarious!  I love it.  I think everyone I know who is currently engaged in or is thinking about going into a master's or doctoral program needs to stop everything and re-think their theses. I have some ideas that I think are definitely worth a few years of your time...

"Why do boys enjoy the smell of their own farts?"

"Why is it so satisfying to squeeze a pimple?"

"Why is it disappointing to remove a q-tip from one's ear and find that it is not covered in crud?"

...and so forth.

I have to think that Sidney was having a bit of a laugh at the University's expense throughout that whole process.  And to that I say: kudos, Sidney, you are a master- or perhaps doctor- of the funny follow-through.  Well done.

"You are WELCOME." -Sidney

Moral of this story: Just because some jerk says eating your boogers is good for you, doesn't mean you should start doing it.  Especially in front of me.