Once upon a time… There’s stuff I want to talk about that I don’t want to talk about. Car situation, worries about Banshee Studios, the ever-present financial woes, the near-maddening internal debate about what to plant in the front yard come spring, stuff. Just stuff. So here’s me, just writing. Uh, don’t read this if you’re offended by the word “shit.”

P.S. I’m not sure why this is what came out. It was just the worst day I could think of…

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Bad Day.

Whenever I have a bad day, I think of this poor sod that I head about a couple of years ago from a friend of mine at work. He’d already been through the classic three of a really bad day a few weeks ago: his dog died, his truck broke, and his wife left him. Well, he woke up one morning and smelled shit. Not just shit, but oh, shit. His first thought was that the sewers had backed up. He should have been so lucky.

A bear had broken into his house in the middle of the night (ironically enough, the guy lived in Colorado. I lived in Iowa at the time), pulled out all the garbage, and shit in this guy’s hamper, which was in the bathroom. The wife had just left and had left a few things behind. The guy, being a guy, hadn’t washed the laundry since his wife had left, so all their clothes were full of bear poo.

So the guy gets up, digs out some old clothes with holes in them, goes without underwear, puts on his shoes with no socks, washes out the cleanest tie he has, throws everything else that looks nasty outside (again, because he’s a guy), and leaves for work. He’s got some kind of important meeting that day that he can’t miss, whatever. On the way to work his loaner car (not the truck, which is in his garage while he’s working on it) dies. The alternator goes out, and he can’t get any power. And his cel phone isn’t charged. So he’s out there on this semi-country road up in the mountains, getting late and later for work, no phone, and his tie smells like bear shit.

Behind him, he hears the sound of a big engine coming up the grade. As the front end of the vehicle comes over the top, he thinks, “Hey! That looks just like my truck!” As the rest of the vehicle comes into view, he realizes that it is his truck. The guy starts yelling. “Hey! That’s my truck!” He doesn’t know whether to be pissed off or glad to see another human soul on that road. The truck pulls over and the window rolls down.

The bear leans out and says, “Know how to get shit stains out of lingerie? Your wife’s going to kill me…”