3 Cups of Pee

I've always been slightly critical of people who can't hold their liquid.

I don't mean liquor. I can get pleasantly buzzed and ready to sing ABBA medleys after one beer, and consider this a great talent. I mean liquids, as in the kind that come gushing out of you after you've had enough alcohol to consider ABBA medleys a good idea.

I have the ability to hold it through the unabridged editions of Lord of the Rings and consider it a lack of personal will when others are always getting up and tripping over my legs because nature has called with the frequency of an underquota telemarketer.

My steel bladder is the result of intensive training dating back to kindergarten. I was mortally afraid of the school bathroom stalls because someone, probably an overzealous PTA member, thought it would  be a great idea to make the stalls in the child bathroom child-sized. I'm not sure what I was more afraid of: someone looking over and seeing me do my business, or, being on the tall side even then, that I might inadvertently witness some little girl in my class taking a number two.

The thought of this was so traumatic that I refused to go in the school bathrooms and ended up wetting myself in the classroom. But, and this is important, no one could see my hoo-ha, so this was still less mortifying than the alternative.

Yes, I thought that having been in training all these years I was invincible to the common prodding of the bladder suffered by ordinary people, until last Wednesday when I nearly crashed my car to relieve the agony of an angry urethra.

I blame my boss, the editor-in-chief of a green magazine, who believes in saving the earth by never turning on the heat in the house where we work. At lunch I sipped own several cups of hot tea to try and regain some feeling in my extremities, then proceeded to drive the 30 minutes from Boulder to Denver. I had to pee as soon as I left the restaurant, but unwisely trusted my steely digestive system to remain dormant until I arrived home.



10 minutes on the road and I started getting bladder cramps. 15 minutes and my jeans were unzipped. 20 minutes and I was recounting the scene from Major Payne (where the Major says "You want me to show you a little trick to take your mind off that pain? then breaks the guy's finger) and biting my hands. I whipped into a parking spot in front of my house, too blinded by pain to notice that I parked illegally, and too in agony to care if I had, and then was faced with a dilemma.

I am a stubborn one-tripper. I take everything into the house in one trip. When unloading groceries I will saddle my arms with ten bags, tucking the laundry detergent and milk under my armpits, rather than come back outside for a second venture. My one-tripping policy is deeply rooted, even when I should clearly make exceptions. For instance when my bladder is seconds from explosion.

I reached down to grab my backpack and suddenly realized I couldn't lift it. Lifting the bag required ab muscles, which were currently busy spasming uncontrollably. I sat there a moment, paralyzed by indecision and a lack of core mobility. Leaving the backpack behind violated my one-trip conviction. I managed to roll slightly to the side and hooked my arm under the strap, then roll back upright.

I triumphantly got the bag and still had a few seconds before my ticking time-bomb of a bladder went off. Then I tried to get out of the van. Apparently exiting vehicles also requires the use of abdominal muscles. I was stuck. I did not have to time to think of the irony of making it all the way home only to wet myself in the car outside. I could only think.

NOOOO!!! ARRGGGHHH!!! I AM NOT GOING DOWN LIKE THIS!

I half-slid, half-rolled out of the car, slammed the door and sprinted in short, waddling steps to the house. I threw my bag, phone and keys to the ground, and raced to the bathroom, praying that no one was inside.

I sat down, half-crying from relief, as the 3 cups of tea turned to 3 cups of pee and thought to myself that I was sure glad no one could peek over the edge of a stall and see me now.

Sound Off: Nobel Prizes+Mother Teresa+Steve Jobs+Ginger the Prostitute

The Nobel Peace Prize was recently announced and I'm proud to say it was given to a humanitarian this year instead of a politician. When did we decide that it was okay to give prizes to politicians? The only prize I want to give a politician is a purple heart because this means they've been battle-wounded in some way and then I might be able to muster up some respect for them.

First we had Al Gore, who won a peace  prize for making a movie. What climate change has to do with peace I still haven't figured out. Then Obama won it for being black. To be fair he was the first black president, while Al Gore was the first to make a startling documentary. Oh wait...
I'm surprised Michael Moore wasn't this year's recipient.

I can only imagine that Mother Teresa, who recieved her award after thirty years of patching up the rotten limbs of lepers, is patiently waiting in Heaven to bitch slap Al Gore when he sanctimoniously arrives spouting off about global warming.

What happened to the days when the Nobel Peace Prize was about people who do good works in order to atone for some inner shame? Like Alfred Nobel, the founder of the prize, who established it to make up for the fact that he invented dynamite.

Mother Teresa must have murdered a prostitute before entering the convent. It's the only rational way to explain that level of self-sacrifice. Every time she was nauseated at the site of a few bloody stumps in place of a hands, she would have drawn on the guilt of strangling Ginger in that Motel 8, and powered through.

I can  only thank Jesus that the award cannot be given posthumously. Otherwise, Steve Jobs would almost certainly be given one for the invention of the iControlYourLife. Probably there are already crazed Apple fanatics using their petition-writing app to convince the award committee to bend the rules for the late virtual virtuoso.

Jobs is like the white Obama, except that he died before people had a chance to sour on him.  

So keep up the good work do-gooders and get your eye on the nobel prize. If the $1.5 million dollar cash prize doesn't tempt you, always remember: Jesus loves a winner.

Sound Off: Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian is getting a divorce (surprise, surprise) after spending around 10 million dollars for the wedding, none of which she actually had to pay for, and earning 17 million by selling exclusive rights. Stunts like this are the reason Mexico City Officials are considering giving couples temporary two year marriage licences and making them reapply after this probationary period.

Personally, I think it should be the opposite. There should be two year minimum licences. Kim, if you can put up with a two-year cell phone contract then you can be married for that long. Maybe then people would reconsider wantonly getting hitched. I mean if Britney Spears hadn’t divorced Jason Alexander after 55 hours of marriage she could have avoided the humiliation of getting with Kevin Federline. And who wouldn’t have enjoyed two years of watching Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman argue over who looks better in a dress? Instead we only got 9 days. That’s just unacceptable.

I mean there are some obvious exceptions-cheating, abuse, attempting to name your children things like Apple or Couch or Blake, eating the last of the ice cream while your wife is PMSing. Actually no, that last one is not grounds for divorce, but a justifiable defense in the subsequent homicide trial.

Marriage isn’t something to take lightly people, unlike Mormonism and those commercials for Don'tShakeABaby.com

Oh that reminds me of a joke I heard. What’s worse than getting a papercut?

The Holocaust.

You see what I did there? I was so offensive that I made the idea of mandatory two year marriages seem reasonable, which it is. I mean, I can understand why Kim’s husband wanted to flee faster than my dad ran from the room when I referred to my boobs as my lady-handles. It must have been quite a shock for Kris Humphries to realize Kim is actually an outer-space alien. Tina Fey claims Kim “was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes,” but I disagree. I think she’s what an alien race would perceive as the perfect woman by American standards: gorgeous, materialistic, and a reality tv star. Which, making her a reality tv persona was brilliant because any outlandish behavior can be blamed on sweeps week. They truly are the superior race.

To conclude this rant: Mawage. Mawage is what bwings us togever today.

Digital Danger Zone

About a week ago my boyfriend, Phil, and I went to Gamestop to bum around for a while. Phil is a gamer and likes to geek out over the latest games, and since I also enjoy playing we tooled around a bit until we stumbled across Fable 2 in the used section. Fable is a fantasy game where your character changes as you play. If you do mean things your character gets evil points and grows horns. If you're nice you get a halo. Etc. We played for a while that night, then about a week later Phil made a confession to me.

"I've been playing without you," he said.
"Oh ya? How's your character doing?" I asked.
"I made her look like you," he said. This aroused my curiousity.
"Show me." I said.

Phil booted up the game and beamed proudly.

"Isn't she awesome? Look at that sick axe I got you!" He said. I sat in stunned disbelief.
"Are you serious right now? That's the character who looks like me?"
"Ya!"
"She's fat!"
"What? No she's not."
"She's three hundred pounds! She has cankles! Why would you make me fat?" I demanded.
"She's not fat. She's muscular. I had to upgrade your strength so you could beat the trolls."
"Haven't you ever heard of lean muscle? And why is she wearing that stupid hat? She looks like an obese pirate."
"What's wrong with the hat?"
"Nothing if I was the captain of the Flying Dutchman. I can't believe you did that to me."
"She's not fat. She's strong, like you."
"She has thunder thighs," I said.
"Well...the thighs that derby built," Phil said, poking me in the leg.
"Oh no you did not!"
"I'm just kidding."

I raced upstairs where some friends of ours were chatting.

"Phil made a game character of me and she's a fat pirate!" I shouted. Several people hustled down to weigh-in (pun win!). My friend Mij started laughing.

"She's huge!" she said. Phil took a long look at Helga The Gargantuan and finally admitted she was a bit rotund.
"I think she grew since last time I logged on," he protested.

"Mmmhmmm. Sure," I said. "She magically gained two hundred pounds." 

"Well maybe she needs them to swing that giant ax. Did you ever think of that? Would you rather be slaughtered by trolls?" 

Take a look at the picture and you tell me.

My Look-a-like

Corporate Juice Pimps

I've been doing some temp work the past week for a family friend, and she mentioned to me her fear that I would blog about how it was the worst job ever. While filing for 8 hours is certainly tedious it's not the worst job I've ever had. I get to put my head phones in and not have to talk to anyone. It's practically heaven compared to some service jobs I've had. I worked at a country club where we'd get barraged with orders from socialites. They added it to their tab, which they accessed by giving us their name and one woman came in every day and without so much as a hello said:

"Fucarino. F. U." It took everything in my power not to say "F.U. too lady". She taunted me like that every single day.

But by far the worst job I ever had was for the corporate juice pimps of Jamba Juice. I worked at the Jamba Juice on campus and every day we had a line twenty people deep at any given time. About eight of us were crammed into a tiny space and given absurd instructions.

"Greet every customer" was one of our mandates. Ya. All eight of us. My manager expected eight people to say hello to every single customer out of the hundreds we saw each day. If I walked into a restaurant and eight people shouted hello at once I think I'd slowly back away and get the hello out of there.

On my first day, as I was furiously shoveling fruit into a blender and trying to learn the recipes, my manager Cody sauntered over and to do some real managerial inspiration type stuff.

"You are doing great, but...I need you to have more energy," Cody said.
"Excuse me?"
"You're not making that smoothie with enough energy. I need more."
"Um...Okay." I replied, a bit confused as to how I was supposed to accomplish this.
"I mean look at Justin. He just started here and he's already invented a song for when he makes a perfect smoothie."

Justin whipped around from his where he was cavorting at the pour station, gelled hair sticking out from beneath his black Jamba visor.

"I adapted an old slave spiritual I learned in my folk music class," he explained.
"Does anyone else see the irony in that?"
"JAAHAHAMMMBA!" Justin belted out the first line of a call and response.
"Anybody?"
"Then you all shout 'JUICE' in a kind of tribal chant." Justin said, his eyes glowing like a Razzamatazz with whey protein powder.
"Anybody at all?"
"That's great! I think we should all practice that," Cody said.
"Excuse me, I need to go stick my hand into this blender now."



The day I quit I went straight to Tribal Rites and got my eyebrow pierced in what I deemed my "Jamba Liberation Piercing" since any kind of tattoo, piercing, individuality, soul was forbidden there. To this day I can't drink a smoothie without hearing that haunting melody in the background.