Clang the Clangers! It’s Contest Time Again!

by Roger White

 

Either I’m having a patella-buckling, spleen-expanding, koala-slapping case of déjà vu, or I’ve written all this before and am now simply too addled to recognize it, but here goes: You know how sometimes the gods smile upon you. Yah? True, sometimes they do. This is when things somehow turn out OK despite your astounding lack of common sense. Sometimes, however, they just grin and chuckle, leaving you to fend for yourself. They are amused at your puny efforts.

And yet other times, the gods smirk or give you that blank stare like you really screwed things up.

My advice for these times is just to act like you truly intended the outcome, no matter how calamitous. This gives the gods pause, and that brief delay in the Great Spinning Wheel of Fate (GSWoF) often provides that slim window of time in which you have a certain measure of self-determination. Like that time you were second string on the seventh-grade football team, and the coach was trying to decide whether to let you in the game just before halftime and in your excitement you simply ran out onto the field and got to play two whole plays before coach yelled at you to sit down and quit acting foolish.

Kinda like that.

This is to say that I believe the big guys are smiling at present, because just in time for the Third Biennial Oldspouse Familiar Phrase Contest (OFPhC) I have received another supply of premium glossy bumper stickers as prizes, you lucky ducks. That’s ducks, with a “d.”

For those too young, old, sensible, or hirsute to remember, the OFPhC involves a pile of phrases, quotes, movie lines, book titles, common sayings, utterances, and/or bodily function noises that I’ve rendered in a somewhat obscure manner. Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to come up with the more common version of said utterances. For example, say I give you “A Male Homosapiens For All Periods of the Year.” You say—… oh, come on. You say, “A Man For All Seasons.” Bingo! See how easy?

First three humans (I will accept cats, too) to respond at roger.white@tasb.org with the correct answers each wins a premium glossy bumper sticker (sorry, the “Ronald Reagan for Governor” ones are all gone—you get “Jesus is Coming. Hide the Bong”). And you get your name in the Gazette! Pseudonyms are fine.

Exciting, huh? OK, ready and. Go. What are the more well-known versions of these sayings:

1. She steers me to imbibe.
2. There is a lollipop spawned each 60-second interval.
3. Expired males don’t do any storytelling.
4. Feline Atop a Heated Metal Canopy.
5. A Few Prefer It Scorching.
6. Do not allow the insects in your bunk to munch on you.
7. A countenance only one’s female parent would really like.
8. Leave snoozing pups to recline.
9. Chance, Manifest Yourself as a Woman This Evening.
10. At the rear of each guy who’s accomplished something one will find a female.
11. Idiot’s precious metal.
12. Traversing the brook and through the forest, to my mother’s mother’s abode we travel.
13. The Era of the Water-Bearer.
14. A Story of a Couple of Towns.
15. Mothers, do not allow your offspring to aspire to be ranch hands.
16. Stay Upright Near Your Male.
17. Lucifer persuaded me to act as I did.
18. If I’ve informed you 16 divided by 16 times, I’ve informed you 250 times 4 times.
19. This is the manner in which the small, rounded pastry disintegrates.
20. The third planet from the sun is your bivalve mollusk.

 

Roger White is a freelance bivalve mollusk living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely female spouse, two precocious offspring units, a very obese dachshund, and a cat with Epstein-Barr. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com. Or not.

There’s Gold in Them Thar Stools

by Roger White

 

You quasi-regular followers of Ye Olde Mouse—all four of you—know that you can depend on me to deliver to you faithfully and regularly, rain or shine, your place or mine, the straight poop. Or sometimes maybe just the noun, sans the adjective. This, alas, is one of those times.

For you see, in my incessant and exhaustive search for all things existential and/or extraordinary, I recently came across some astounding reading material while, appropriately enough, in the reading room. Ready for this? Your poo is worth a lot of money.

Oui. C’est true. It seems that researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey, apparently either desperate to find new sources of income or just phenomenally bored, have discovered that one can, um, squeeze precious metals out of human waste. Yeppirs. Call it caca cash. Brown gold. Texas—all right, I’ll stop.

Follow along, if you will. Latex gloves and surgical masks recommended. The USGS has found, in a lengthy research study that surely cost us taxpayers loads (no pun intended), that approximately 7 million tons of human biosolids are left over annually after treatment at some 16,500 municipal wastewater plants around our fair land. About half of that is carted to landfills or burned away in incinerators; the other half is processed into fertilizer. I could have sworn that some of it was being delivered to Congress from the aroma of things going on in our capital city, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, one of the USGS muckity mucks has put forth that these biosolids are just chock full of tiny little bits of gold and silver and other valuable particles—not to mention all those stubborn peanuts and corn kernels.* (*If I’ve gone too far with the previous sentence, please understand that I’ve been watching a Family Guy Marathon on TV of late and my sense of proper decorum is a tad skewed. My sincere apologies to those I may have offended. I’m a good boy, Ma, really.)

“If you can get rid of some of the metals that currently limit how much of these biosolids we can use on fields and forests, and at the same time recover valuable metals and other elements, that’s a win-win,” explained USGS Stool Study Science Lady Kathleen Smith.

Aha. We could call it a poo-poo win-win.

Smith backed up her findings by noting that USGS researchers in Colorado detected significant concentrations of platinum, gold, and silver in poo samples they looked at through scanning electron microscopes. Smith also mentioned that a great many scanning electron microscopes are now on sale cheap at the Colorado office of the U.S. Geological Survey.

And get this: Apparently, female excreta (their words, not mine) may have a higher concentration of valuable minerals. This groundbreaking USGS study de stool revealed that much of the metals found in biosolids comes from beauty products, detergents, hair care items, perfumes, and other traditionally feminine-type trimmings. This being the case, I would imagine that circus clowns and Jimmy Johnson would also produce a higher level of, uh, precious poo.

Now, just how they’re going to go about extracting all the shiny goodness from these great mountains of BM is beyond me. I envision miners in old ’49er garb with picks, shovels, and plungers, or perhaps home versions of mineral recovery by way of sifters attached to individual toilets.

“What are ya doing in there, honey? You’ve been in there for almost an hour!”

“I’m sifting, dear. I’m sifting!”

I’m certain it’s gotta be more high-tech than this, however.

Poo poo this notion if you like, but the USGS guys estimated that the waste from a million Americans contains about $13 million worth of precious metals. Wow, that is really putting your money where your… oh, forget it.

 

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a cat with Epstein-Barr. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.