Never has a penguin been an emblem of joy, quickness, and majesty to me as much as last week at SeaWorld. They made the vacation worthwhile. They made so many things worthwhile, including the 17-year old goon that feeds them. As I rolled past them on the human conveyer belt (the best ride by far at SeaWorld), a single bead of sweat emitted from my brow as my sensory stimuli told me I was eating pork barbecue and hearing Johnny Cash live and my eyes told me I was watching penguins.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but the majestic penguin can free your mind. Have no fear of atomic energy, cause none of them can tell time. How long shall they play so gracefully while we stand aside and look? Some say it’s just a part of it, we got to fulfill the book. So won’t you help to sing…

Last week the stroller (as in, baby carriage) ratio was like 10 to 9. Several times strollers zipped by with no human chasing after it. No doubt those babies want to see the penguins. Wait in line, you silly kids. To your parents chagrin, I’ve made the first low-quality video that doesn’t feature your infantile gurgling and inane batting of the air.

Things were cruising along normally last week when life screached to a halt with a simple email received from a buddy of mine we’ll call Landon. Landon has done a lot of stupid shit in the past like pissing himself and throwing up on a chair in MY hotel room. But he introduced me to the Barquito from Schwans, so he can’t be all that bad. Anyway, back to the email. It wall started with an email that simply read, “Want to hear a funny ass story?” Now I took the “ass” in that line to mean that the story was not only funny, but extra funny. But as you’ll soon see, it really is a funny ASS story. And whenever someone has to ask you if you want to hear a funny story, in can be pretty much assumed that they didn’t something stupid, or embarrassing to themselves. So here it is, unedited from the next email I received from Landon:

“so there is apparently a leak in the water line to our toilet that is going into the bathroom in the apartment below us. Our landlord shut off our water to the toilet so it doesn’t flush and just told us to pour a pitcher of water in there when we wanted to flush it… fair enough. So this morning when I wake up, I have to poop a little, but was just going to hold it until I got to the office. At some point when i get out of the shower and have my towel on, i realized this wasn’t going to happen, so I go to the kitchen to fill up a big ass bowl with water. The thought of pooping soon was making me have to poop worse and I felt it coming, but still easily manageable. The bowl fills up, I start to slowly carry the bowl from the kitchen to the bathroom, when I sneeze. At this point, the poop falls out my ass onto the tile floor at the door of the bathroom, but I didn’t drop a splash of water. So now, i hurry to set the water down and get the rest of it into the toilet, which was pretty pointless cause the mass on the floor was pretty impressive. To top it all off, we were out of TP, so now I’m wiping the dirtiest my ass has ever been with paper towels while staring at this pile of shit on the floor. it was gross. this goes without saying that you don’t share this with anyone.”

So, am I a bad friend for ignoring the last line of the story? Probably, but at least I didn’t shit all over my house.