**Disclaimer. This post was written while I was on high strength prescription drugs… take it for what it’s worth.**

The doctor says I have the disease that went viral on Twitter before it made its merry way into my asthma plagued lungs.

If there’s one thing I tend to take for granted more than my health, its probably my awesome parents.  I’m glad they live close enough that I can drive home and lay on my bed when I’m sick so my mom can bring me juice and good books to read while my dad works so I can have insurance.

I know it sounds kind of selfish of me to use them like I do, and it probably is, but I love them for allowing me to do so.  I love even more that I know that if I lived far far away, or if I had a friend without a mom, mine would travel to be there by my side, or take care of the child of another as if they were her own.

I know this, because I’ve seen it.

Sometimes I worry about my generation.  Are we fostering that same type of selflessness in our lives? Are we concerned for each other enough to drop things of importance to help the people who are even more important in our lives?

When do we take it upon ourselves to play the roll of good Samaritan? Is it when we have a break between classes, or work, or school, or friend, or  meetings? Or is it whenever we feel the tickle in the back of our mind to call that almost forgotten friend, or bring dinner to someone who had a rough week?

That thought worries me. I hope that there are others out there who understand that they need to be fostering the traits of the good Samaritan role in their lives, because I think it will become more rare as the years pass by. It’s so much easier, after all, to look out for number one.

“The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.”
-Albert Einstein

I honestly think she felt better after talking to me.  I know this because she said, “Thanks for your advice.  It was needed, and confirmed a lot of things… 99 percent of the time you really bug me. but there’s that 1 percent that you say exactly what i need. so i guess i’ll have to keep you around.”

Wow. Thanks. Anytime… Anything for a friend, right? *cough*

Low Blow.

Written by J. Davis.

Step 1) Be noticed. A guy won’t give you a second look if you don’t look like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Men are like fish.  Two things grab their attention: food and pretty shiny things.

• Don’t eat.  Eating makes you fat and men get turned off when a woman is over 100 lbs.
• Wear lots of makeup.  Your natural beauty just doesn’t cut it.  Cover it up with enough blush, eye-liner, lipstick, and mascara that he won’t be able to recognize you after a dip in the pool.
• Speaking of pools.  Spend as much time there as possible in the smallest bikini you can find.  If you’ve got it flaunt it.  If you don’t, go to the pool until you develop a complex motivating enough for you to take step ‘bullet point 1’ seriously.  Also, the pool is the perfect place to meet good, wholesome guys who will respect you for you and not for your body.
• Tan Tan Tan…guys like girls who look like oompa-loompas.  The pool is not just a place to meet guys.  The sun and the tanning beds are your friends.  You should spend more time with them than be at places like school, church, or the library.  Besides, the guys at church are boring and the ones at the library are creepers.  Stay away!!!
• Appropriate apparel.  Don’t be a prude.  Girls who cover their bodies don’t get as much attention as girls who share their gift with others.  Besides, you don’t want to appear self-righteous.  Short skirts, tight and revealing shirts or anything that provokes a man’s desire to be WITH you or a woman’s desire to BE YOU is appropriate apparel.

Step 2) First impressions are VITAL.  Men, like fish, are easily spooked.

• Act brainless.  Men get discouraged when a woman has a brain that she uses intelligently.  Don’t push him away with your talk of the economy, religion, philosophy or your future ambitions.  Just smile a lot, giggle, and flirt uncontrollably.  If this bait doesn’t work, use the following backup plans:
• Damsel in distress.  Men like to be the heroes.  Appear weak and frail.  Create opportunities for men to come to your rescue.
• Be original.  Say things like, “I’m not like other girls.  My only friends are guys.”  Those are the words men love hearing.  They usually imply you are a very loveable person.
• Appear innocent.  No guy wants to date the girl with a past.  Configure your body like it’s a show but be angry at guys who gawk or whistle at your performance.  After all, the low-cut tank top was on sale, your mother bought it for you and it’s the only thing that fits.  You shouldn’t be judged for that.
• Shun commitment.  Phrases like, “I’m not looking for anything serious right now”, or “I just got out of a serious relationship and I’m not looking to settle down quite yet”, are the words men are hoping to hear from a woman.

Step 3) The together part.  You’ve caught him.  Now what?

• Be passive.  Wait for him to do everything.  Men don’t like proactive women.  Sit around your apartment or at the pool.  Read your magazines and fantasy vampire novels.  Watch reality television.  Spend at least five hours on facebook daily.  Men love to know where their women are at all times and they love knowing that their women are learning the newest and most effective weight loss strategies.
• Act out.  When things don’t go your way, cry.  It worked when you were little and it will certainly work now.
• Be emotional.  Nothing says living life to the fullest like getting a haircut, crying because it’s too short, taking it out on your boyfriend and blaming it on your period.  You two will savor the good moments more and you will come out stronger because of this.
• Create drama.  Keep it spicy and make him appreciate you.  Text other guys in front of him.  Hang out with x-boyfriends.  If he can’t trust you to be around other men then he’s not worth keeping around.
• Don’t communicate.  Talking is for couples who aren’t good at kissing.  Besides, if there’s an issue that needs to be resolved just wait till it’s forgotten.  It’s so much easier to ignore an issue like him watching the game too loud, not cleaning his dirty dishes, or having him explain the lipstick stain on his shirt.
• Manipulation.  It’s another gift women are naturally endowed with.  Don’t bury it.  Use it to your advantage.  Test his love by asking him if you look fat in a smaller sized outfit.  If he says yes, dump him.  If he says no, call him a liar and then dump him.

Step 4) The break up.  You’ve caught your fish.  The game is over.  Throw him back.

• Pre-emptive break up.  If you hear a rumor that he’s going to break up with you or you suspect he will soon, beat him to it.  You don’t want to be that person who when asked who broke up with who, you respond that it was “mutual.”  Everyone knows that the person who says it was mutual is the one who got dumped.  People don’t respect the loser in the relationship.  Be a winner, always.
• “Friends” During your break up, dull the pain by claiming you still want to be friends.  Whether your intentions are sincere matters little.  You’ll both cling on to hope, go through the standard six or seven break ups till finally you can’t stand to be around each other anymore.
• Don’t burn your bridges.  You may get lonely or want a shoulder to cry on later down the road.  Or you may want to use him to make a future boyfriend jealous.
• There are plenty of fish in the sea.  Don’t waste your time on this one.  There are always going to be bigger, prettier fish downstream that are wealthier, drive nicer cars and treat their mothers’ right.

Step 5) Repeat step one.

We started off the week with the devastating news regarding sweepstakes giver-awayer and old partner of Jonny Carson, Ed McMahon‘s death.  I guess it was about time, seeing as he was old enough to remember when Moses was a guest on the Tonight Show.  This news was quickly overshadowed by the death of another celebrity.

As many of you know, international sex symbol of the 70′s, Farrah Fawcett died of cancer this week. Fourty-year-old men the world over are mourning the loss of the locker room legend of their youth.  Although we would have loved to commemorate the death of this sex icon in a manner befitting her beautiful life saga, it was not meant to be.

A few hours later Michael Jackson’s heart stopped beating which, in turn, broke the entire internet.  The earth stopped to remember the moonwalk, Thriller, and the little black boy who grew up into the little white (mostly plastic) man.  He did, after all, revolutionize music as we know it.  You may not like him as a person, but no human on the planet has ever had chart-topping songs 5 decades in a row.

Then, the really mind blowing happened. Our worldwas rocked once again as we learned (via Twitter) that Shaq got traded to Cleavland.

WTF NBA draft?! Haven’t we had enough to deal with this week?  Now we have to wait in eager anticipation for another attempt at a Lebron vs. Kobe NBA Final?  I’m on pins and needles, and I don’t think my system can go through any more shock… unless the USA beats Brazil tomorrow.  Then I might just poop my pants.

*The following post is written by Chris Hooley, entrepreneur, marketer and blogger extraordinaire. It is a story about poop. It is also a story about spring break (the real kind of spring break, not the Mormon kind where you go to family reunions and eat jell-o salad while playing charades with your second cousins). Knowing the audience of my blog, I felt it appropriate to give you fair warning in case either topic (or the combination of the two) does not appeal to you.

Being the consummate professional I am, there is no way I could tell this story on my Phoenix SEO company site, or on my personal blog.  So when the BIG BAGS asked me to be a guest blogger, I knew exactly what had to be done.  I had to tell the world about my story of pooping underwater.  In front of tons of hot chicks.  At Spring Break.

3 years ago, I somehow convinced my old employer (a student loan company) that my marketing team needed to attend Spring Break at Lake Havasu to see if we could drum up some student activity (if you know what I mean).  So I got set my budget, had my assistant make the proper out of office replies, told my buddies, er, employees, SnoopBloggyBlog and Iambetterthanu it was time to get packing for Spring Break.

We ordered 500 tee shirts to give away, some shwag, a giant poster, and a double decker pontoon boat to put that giant poster on.  You know, for business reasons.

So we roll up to Havasu, and the first thing we noticed is that hot college girls who go to Lake Havasu needed shirts.  You know, because they often didn’t wear shirts.  It might have been a mistake ordering the white ones (though the fellas from University of Wisconsin probably disagree) but I still felt chivalrous nonetheless.  I was saving barely of age young women from the hot Arizona elements. Like being sprayed with malt liquor and schlitz.  This made me feel good, like a Samaritan or something.

When we got the boat, first thing we realized is that this thing was HUGE.  Two stories of :”WHOOOOO” on three tubular cylinders of pure party power.  Next thing I noticed, it had a water slide.  A frakkin water slide.

Something told me I’m going to have a tough time getting work done.  Especially since SOMEBODY snuck a TON of beer into the coolers.  I was like WTF this is against regulation!  So I did not *choke* dink a drop of liquor,  That would have been inappropriate.

Anyways, we get the boat onto the water, with visions of Girls Gone Wild DVD trailers playing through our heads.  And that’s when it happened.  I realized I needed to take a massive dump.  This was not good.

So we got to the cove, and things start happening really fast.  Since we had the double decker pontoon boat, random college kids all started to infiltrate our space.  Dancing, jumping off the second story into the water, pounding beverages, and getting very friendly with each other.  Everybody seemed so happy.  And there’s me in the corner, grunting and groaning like I was being tortured.  Pasties (we named her that for obvious reasons, she only sported a thong and pasties on her airy olahs) thought I needed some cheering up so she showed me her butt. But that just reminded me more of the trouble a brewin’.

After a few hours of this, I finally decided something had to be done.  Plenty of people where jumping in the water to relive themselves, but not one person had to do a #2 from what  I could tell.  Not one except for me.  But I could not sit in this torture any longer, so I decided to head for the jagged mountain about a quarter mile from the boat to do the deed in private.  But I was gonna have to swim for it.

So I pretended I was like them.  Those crazy kids having fun.  I climbed up to the second story of our pontoon party pod, pounded my chest, and jumped in a fashion that screamed “I am not doing this just to take a dump, I’m doing it because it’s Spring Break and I am not really a 30 year old guy trying to capitalize on all you sexy bitches!”.

But once I hit the water, the coldness made me realize I was not going to be able to swim 1/4 of a mile and climb those jagged rocks before the sea turtle tried to make it’s escape.

And that’s when I saw it.  It was there the whole time, my own private party right in the middle of all the action.  The pontoons under the boat made a long, and perfectly safe and secure tunnel for me to have some alone time.  It was like angels singing and calling me under the boat.  So I swam joyfully, and my rectum began to loosen with the anticipation of the glory that was about to occur.  I was about to drop the kids off at in the pool lake!

Now most of the people relieving themselves did so without even pulling down the trunks.  They would just pee right in their swimsuits, and swim away.  Kinda gross, but it was par for course. If anybody was pulling down their trunks, rest assured it was not to urinate.  I quickly realized this would not work in my situation.  So I pulled down my brand new Fox surf trunks, balanced them around my ankles while using my arms in a circular motion to stay afloat, and popped a virtual squat to insure I did not soil the aforementioned surfwear.

I had a brief moment of anxiety about the turtle wanting to float around with me… But when it happened, all those fears just floated away.  It was like a muddy scud missile. No, a big brown torpedo.  It felt like I was being evacuated of all foodstuffs I had consumed since grade 3.  As the party raged over my head, I had a quiet moment of “God really does love me”.  The stinkers were sinkers, my guts felt better than ever, my mood elevated immediately… that is, until I was so rudely interrupted.

One of my new Wisconsin buddies jumped off the boat and somehow caught a glimpse of me between two pontoons, with a look of pure ecstasy on my face.  He decided it looked like fun, and swam over to join me in my private party.

Now, I would say I almost shit my pants, but my shorts were already around my ankles and the pure poop poundage was already flying out of me at an alarming rate.  Even faster now that my nerves kicked in.  So I frantically tried to wave him off with one arm, but I had no legs to keep me afloat.  I was flipping out, bobbing in the water, waiving one arm, and crapping all at at once. He eventually got the hint when I screamed “Don’t swim over here I am shitting right now!” He swam away laughing his ass off at me.

But who cares.  At least I had my privacy back.

Now here is a little known fact about pool pooping.  That feeling you get with a dry dump, you know, when the potty hit’s the flo: it never happens underwater.  What might have been a ghost poo (you wipe but the TP remains clean, wipe after wipe) felt like it never finished.  I sat confused for a few moments wondering if I was really done, and trying to finish the job.  Back to grunting.

Yep, I’m done.

So my final dilemma in all this: how does one wipe their butt underwater?  Quite simple, one doesn’t.  It’s impossible.  But I did devise a method that I like to think is ingenious.  I did this scooching motion with my legs and one arm so that I inched myself forward to clear myself of the poop path, and used my other hand to powerfully waft a jet stream of fresh water repeatedly at my pooper.  It was a cold sensation that left me feeling cleaner than TP to be honest.  It was in fact, glorious.

Fast forward after 30 seconds of grinning and gloatng… Now was the time for the swim of shame.  I climb back on the boat fully expecting to be bombarded by my buddies.  I was waiting to be picked on, pointed out, and laughed at.

But I instead, was shocked.  I got a heroes solute!  Every guy there was patting me on the back and giving me manly half hugs and noogies for my valiant discovery.  This must be what babies feel like when their mommies congratulate them and give them ice cream for not soiling their shorts.  Pure, acceptance, true happiness.  I pooped and everybody approved.  In fact, I am now a Lake Havasu Spring Break Legend,  The man who invented The PONTOON PARTY POOP!

My good buddy, Nate and his girlfriend also dropped by to say hi to my family (they were at the same conference) and thus were present to help me fulfill my mother’s request.  She was running a little late with party plans and needed us to go pick up the pizza.

As we entered to the local Domino Pizza, Katy (Nate’s girlfriend) asked, “What if they don’t have our pizzas ready?”

“Oh, they’d better have them ready,” I said, “or I’m going to break some legs!”

Just then the gentleman purchasing his pizzas stepped to the side of the register, and just like that picture perfect moment in the movies, the man at the register in a WHEELCHAIR gazes up at me with eyes like death.

Everybody within earshot cringed.

I turned around, found the chair farthest away from the register and curled up in the fetal position to die.

My stupid mouth never fails to get me into trouble.

On a side note, this is a cool video of crippled people dancing:

Yesterday while driving in the car, I heard a radio commercial (yes, I still listen to old-school radio in my car) about getting rid of that extra 10-20 pounds that just seem to linger despite the effort you put into losing them. As you well know, most weight loss commercials are centered around one of three typical things – a miracle pill, a miracle diet or a miracle workout device/routine.  To my surprise, this particular product didn’t focus an any of the above.

Instead, the focus was on flushing the poop that is stuck to your intestines “like spackle” out of your body with this miraculous mixture of colon cleanser crystals and a liquid of your choice.

Ok. Really? There’s ten to twenty pounds of poop spackle stuck to my insides?  I’m slightly disturbed.

I was even more disturbed when I saw the pictures.  Either this stuff is really legit and we are all full of crap that we totally need to expel, or this magic potion does something wiggidy-wack to your turds.  Either way, I’m thinking about trying it, just to find out. Any opinions before I take the plunge?

P.S. If you do look at the pictures, don’t forget to read the testimonials. They’re fantastic.

The doctor surprised me with his news. My headaches were either a result of too much tension, or a brain toumor. It was the best news I’d had all week.

Rather than scheduling a bran scan to determine whether or not there was a cancerous growth inside of my skull that could potentially lead to imminent death, we took the more obvious (less time consuming) procedure and gave me some ibuprofen and sent me to a chiropractor.

I had never been to a chiropractor before. But everyone had great things to say about these dudes, so, to be honest I was a little excited. I showed up early to my appointment expecting to be broken, and rightfully so.

The good doctor began by evaluating my spine and neck, all the while moaning to himself. As he finished, he looked at me and said, “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“Bad news.” I responded.

“You’re a mess,” he said.

“Uh, thanks…” I interrupted.

“But I can fix you,” he concluded.  He then proceeded to ask me to roll back over onto my stomach, because he liked to start his procedures with a deep tissue massage.  Now, don’t worry…  I know there will be someone who reads this who’ll wonder if I was half (or all) naked, face first in this cushiony torture rack. The answer is no. I was fully clothed. And then came the pain.

This dude must have had some pent up anger from his childhood, or maybe I reminded him of someone who owes him money.  Whatever the case was, he was not holding anything back.  He was digging his knuckles into my shoulders, neck and head as if trying to rub through my flesh and into my spine where he could gain access to my central nervous system, thereby sucking out my life force with the help of his alien brothers hiding quietly in the next room.

Half way through the procedure, I noticed the door was open. There were people waiting in the lobby. I asked the good doctor if he always kept the door open. “Yes,” he responded. “It keeps people from yelling.”

“Oh, so rather than yell, they just cry quietly into their face cushion like myself?” I asked.

He just chuckled.

I took that as a yes.

After the torture massage came the contortion exercises and snapping of joints I never knew I had.  Seriously, if you were there, you would have thought I was smuggling a roll of bubble wrap in my neck. I left his office feeling a combination of better and worse.  I thought it was all over until I went home the next day to help my parents prepare for new carpet by tearing up the nasty old stuff.

My mom was standing behind me as I was prying some staples out of the floor when she gasped. “WHAT is WRONG with your NECK?” (My mom emphasizes specific words when she gets impassioned for dramatic effect.) “Does it hurt?”

“Yeah… but the chiropractor said it should when I left, so I didn’t worry about it. Why?”

“It’s covered in BLISTERS!” She announced.

Yup. The chiropractor rubbed my neck and shoulders so hard that the friction caused them to be covered in hundreds of little, white, puss-filled blisters, much like the wretched sunburn I experienced in California last summer. No bueno, my friends. No bueno.

Here’s the kicker though.  When I came home and showed my roommates the grotesque display of nastiness, one announced that he had a magic elixir that would help! I was stoked.  He ran in his room and fetched me a tube of “BikiniZone Anti-Bumps Shave Gel.” Seriously folks. You can’t make this stuff up.

“Why the heck do you have this?” I asked him.

“Oh… uh… well, I waxed my chest last summer, and I thought it would be good to have this handy to avoid any unsightly bumps and irritation.”

“Right… your chest…” I replied.

Needless to say, I am officially worried.  I mean, what deep dark secrets will my roommate unearth about himself next time I go to the chiropractor?

Also, this is for you because I thought it was funny:

The dance club I went to had two floors. One was full of Latinos dancing Salsa. The other was full of Latinos watching other Latinos dance hip hop. As I entered the club, I felt like I was a very naive member of the Jets who had stumbled into the middle of the Sharks family reunion. I got the stink eye from 80% of the people who saw me enter. The other 20% just refused to look at me out of fear the my white boy dance moves might be contagious.  I can’t blame them really.

As the night progressed, I grew more and more tired, which meant that I grew less and less concerned about what I looked like, and less and less control of my bodily movements.  By the time 12:30 am hit, I looked like a 6 foot drunken albino monkey flailing around the room in a fury.

Luckily I was able to avoid any serious conflict with my Latino brothers, although I did get to witness my first dance-off which almost ended in a knife fight. That was trippy to say the least.

I did have one success during the night.  A girl tried to dance with me. It lasted about 3 seconds and she was gone. It was the best 3 seconds of the night, except for when I made it out of the club alive.  That part was good too.

Next time I go dancing, I’m wearing my gold chains, flat brimmed ball cap (with sticker still on it), bandanna, and oversized basketball jersey with pants to match.  I’ll cap it all off with a pair of sketchers and an arm band of some sort. Maybe then the ladies will find that my whiteness has been masked by my coolness and dance with me until the sun comes up… or until it gets to be my bedtime.

The veiws were beautiful, as were the beaches.  The rain, on the other hand, was the bane of my existence.

Day 5 consisted of much paddling both with feet and hands, a 2 mile hike through ankle deep mud followed by more hiking and more paddling.

Today I got laid in church. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I’ve been wanting to say that all day.

I have also realized something during my stay here.  The only naked people on the beach are the incredibly young or the incredibly old.  Neither of these groups of people should be allowed to do so.