Thong Of The South: Rerun

[Another rerun, but I still hope to be back to new posts yet this week. Regarding this post from last October: I always enjoy rereading it, and usually there is much cackling and rubbing of hands on my part when I do so. Plus I think this might be my favorite title. I hope you enjoy it as well, once you get over some of the graphic descriptions of my ass. -- The Management]

Speaking of underwear....

Prêt-à-Porter

I think thong underwear, like nuclear power and tequila, is one of those inventions that has the potential for either great good or great evil, depending upon the wielder. First, let's make one thing clear – I'm talking about thong underwear on women. Thong underwear on men is not included at all in the afore-mentioned dichotomy; it's just plain evil, and should be shunned by right-thinking people everywhere. On women, however, there is no gray area: thongs either work or they don't. Girls, you know who you are. Me? I happen to think a pair of thong underwear looks especially good on my living room floor in the morning, depending of course on the size of both the waistband and the hangover.

Privates Of The Caribbean

Since it's all about me, I have to confess a dirty little secret. When I was vacationing in Saint Martin with my girlfriend at the time, we went to a nude beach and...

Let me back up. First, this vacation illustrates my much-vaunted ability to understand the feminine mind. I bought my girlfriend and I the tickets to Saint Martin and the all-inclusive resort for Christmas, and made sure the rez was for Valentine's Day. With one stroke of the check-writing pen I got huge romance points for not one, but two Male Days of Obligation. Guys, take note: I got blown for a year for that one.

Also, if you don't know already, the island of Saint Martin is actually divided into two parts (“Saint Martin in duo partes divisa est”). It consists of the French side, where the nude beaches are, and the Dutch side, where the casinos are. This makes perfect sense if you understand the national character of both countries. Iowans often find it confusing, however, so I digress to explain it here.

Also also, it was pretty funny when we checked in at the resort. It had escaped me that my travel agent had convinced me to go the all-inclusive route when I bought the tickets in December, so when the clerk at the desk handed me two cards, I asked him with a blank, peculiarly Midwestern look, “What are these for?” “Everything,” he replied. It actually took me the better part of that day to recall that I had purchased an all-inclusive package. Not that the GF and I didn't take immediate advantage of it, however, mistake or no. They are probably still out of scotch after our visit there.

So – one day we went to a nude beach on the French side. It was a beautiful beach; I was in as good shape as I ever have been; and the girls, while not from Ipanema, were tall and tanned and young and lovely. “What girlfriend?” was my thought balloon. At any rate, I wandered down the beach and eventually stopped in a tent where they sold shit. A woman about my age with the darkest tan I had ever seen was selling swim wear from bins on a table, so I pawed through them, and....

But first, I should tell you that the only thing the tanned swimsuit vendor was wearing was a canvas money belt from which she was making change. I strongly felt at the time, and still do, that such behavior on the part of female shopkeepers should be encouraged without hesitation. As a result of this personal conviction I determined to buy something, anything, from the naked woman. I ended up buying a hideously ugly thong swimsuit for myself.

The pattern of this swimsuit, which I still own by the way, is of some weirdly swirled colors for which there are no names. The cloth looks like it was originally made to approximate paisley on Carnaby Street in the 60's and had been trampled by various large African animals and washed repeatedly in the intervening years. It ain't pretty in and of itself, is what I'm saying.

Add to this the fact that I am somewhat hirsute. That is to say, I have a hairy ass. This is a good thing when you're sitting around reminiscing about bar fights with your male cronies, but it is a less-than-optimal trait to have when you're wearing a thong swimsuit. So I'm told, at least.

Actually, to be honest I have worn the thong in anger only once. My pal Unca Don used to have a hot tub in his place, which happened to be conveniently located a half block from the sports bar we hung out at. Or that was as far as we could stagger, I suppose is a better explanation. As you might suspect, the occasional strumpet found her way over to Don's place for after-hours cocktails and hottubbization. "Cleanliness is next to godliness," we always proclaimed. For most of these impromptu social events the eventual mode of dress was very similar to what the thong vendor wore to work. However, on one particular evening, for some drunken reason lost to history, I decided to break out The Thong.

This proved to be a mistake.

I have never since seen the expression on the woman's face repeated. And if I ever do, I hope I'm not the source. When I entered the hot tub room in my Thong (trying very hard not to mince, incidentally), the poor waif preselected for Hulles looked like someone had sneaked up on her and surprised her with a very thorough cavity search. The expression on her face reflected some odd mixture of appalled horror at the result of me in a thong and repressed glee over how stupid I looked. Schadenfreude is the word we swiped from the Germans to describe this. To give her credit, she tried very hard not to laugh. To no avail, of course.

So that's my only thong experience, lucky for you. Saint Paul has since enacted several local ordinances prohibiting me specifically from wearing my thong swimsuit in places where they serve food or children gather. “Da noive!”, which is Brooklynese for “How dare they!” Oh well. At least it wasn't thong underwear. You can therefore rest assured that, even if I get into a horrible car accident, the fatality count won't instantly double when the EMTs cut my pants off.

- Hulles

They Drive Me Fearful: Rerun

[This post is another of my favorites, not because it is particularly well-written but because I love the subject. When I'm lying in some dismal hospital somewhere with some rare but invariably fatal STD I want the Make-A-Wish people to send me Black Diamond. No need to wrap her. -- The Management]

[And I hope to get back to brand new posts next week. -- The Management]

Several years ago, I was staying in a hotel in Montreal. The hotel provided a complimentary morning newspaper, and somehow magically they knew I was an Anglophone so the paper was the English-language Toronto Globe and Mail. I was reading that rather staid newspaper one morning, and stumbled across this article.

The article is about a woman named Black Diamond and her band of female guerillas in Liberia. Apparently, they are quite vicious and widely feared “by friend and foe alike”. I have to imagine I have at least one ex-girlfriend among them. Regardless, the part I liked best about the article was the following quotation:

"These women have no pity, no sympathy," said Cpl. Thompson W. Dahn of Taylor's Anti-Terrorist Unit militia, who went up against Black Diamond's women earlier this month. "They shoot, they get naked themselves, and they drive me fearful."

Now I really like that last line. A lot. Enough to have remembered it for 3 years, so I could trot it out now for your reading pleasure. Here it is again:

"They shoot, they get naked themselves, and they drive me fearful."

Dang.

Another part of the article that impressed me was attributed to Jacques Klein, the top United Nations official for Liberia:

"Women are always to be feared. Have you been to Florida? It is full of women with blue hair who have killed their husbands."

Smug SOB, isn’t he? I suppose it is too much to hope that Black Diamond got naked and kicked his ass into the next continent after the article was written. No wonder men get a bad rap. If he’s married, I can only imagine that his wife is thinking about moving to Florida soon herself.

At any rate, we men need to ask ourselves what we can learn from this news article. I would suggest that it teaches us a) you can only fuck women over for so long before they kick your ass, and b) if you’re in Tubmanburg, Liberia, you might want to keep your sexist comments to yourself.

As a final note, after re-reading the article for this blog entry, I decided that the next time I go out for cocktails, like Black Diamond I’m going to “celebrate with many mortars” and drink a toast to women everywhere who shoot, get naked themselves, and drive me fearful.

- Hulles

No Need To Be Horny And Alone: Rerun

[This rerun is one of my personal favorites. I still find myself muttering "no need to be horny and alone" to myself occasionally. Make of that what you will. -- The Management]

"Poland’s zloty has been sagging amid the uncertainty." - Economist

As I was deleting my daily crop of spam the other day, one of the email subject lines wedged itself into my consciousness: “No need to be horny and alone”.

The more I think about this statement, the more it interests me. First, for purposes of analysis, let us restate the proposition as “We (the spam senders) can make it so you are not horny and alone.” I think it’s fair to assume from the subject line that the contents of the email are supposed to reveal how to make this dream come true.

So how can the promise of this statement be realized? Since the assertion is a negation of a conjunction, there are three ways to make it true: make you be horny and not alone, make you be alone and not horny, or make you be neither alone nor horny.

Making you be horny and not alone: This is probably what the senders of the email are really promising, with a list of “nymphomaniacs new to your city” or some such scam. At least, I assume it’s a scam. Last I heard, it was only level 3 sex offenders who had to register their addresses, at least in Minnesota. Perhaps other states require nymphomaniacs to register as well, perhaps to safeguard oversexed teenage boys. At any rate, I have never checked this sort of thing out so I confess I’m not completely certain how it works, but that’s okay because this is the condition that interests me the least anyway. As far as you know.

Making you be alone and not horny: I find this one more intriguing. Perhaps the spammers are hawking some sort of anti-horniness kit, “detumescence guaranteed or your money back.” What might the kit include? I suggest a jar of saltpeter, a DVD of the entire Cleveland Indians 2005 baseball season (or any other year for that matter), a picture of my grandmother naked, and any book by Claude Lévi-Strauss. If they are especially generous, they might also include a photo of Claude Lévi-Strauss. I assure you that that alone is enough to make Poland's zloty sag.

Making you be neither alone nor horny: This is an easy one. The spammers send you a marriage license.

- Hulles

O Mio Babbino Caro: Rerun

[This post might be the first one I did specifically to entertain that I thought was funny myself. It's all true, of course. And FYI, yeast cops are the guys who are supposed to be checking the expiration date of yeast packages on grocery shelves and who, sadly, are often less than diligent. -- The Management]

[And be sure to follow the RealPlayer link on the page with the tuba score. I don't know whether to laugh or cry... -- The Management]

Recently, on an “I Have $20, I’m The King of the Fucking World” day, I went to sit in a bar and have a beer and chat with the bartender, a good friend of mine. While she was busy serving customers, I was thinking strangely and humming the aria “O Mio Babbino Caro” under my breath. If you’re not familiar with the aria (and you probably are, if not by name), it is sung by a soprano, and has a very strong high note in one of the first lines. Now, it happens that my vocal range is about one octave, located somewhere in a land between bass and baritone that music forgot, but I hum away as best I can. It is a beautiful aria, at least as Sarah Brightman sings it.

At any rate, as I was so engaged, I caught a woman sitting near to me at the bar glancing my way several times with a sort of half-smile on her face. “Of course she’s thinking about flirting with me, who could resist?” I thought. “I am, after all, the KFW.” Suddenly I realized that, as I was humming the aria to myself, every time I valiantly reached for the strong high note in the first line I had been making this eerie, strangled, quavering noise in my throat out loud. From the woman’s point of view, here was some middle-aged guy sitting in a bar, staring into space and making periodic bleating noises. No wonder she was looking at me; it’s a wonder she didn’t call the yeast cops. Maybe she thought I had downloaded a ringer for my cell phone called “Rat Terriers Being Neutered” and that I was getting lots of calls.

Incidentally, I recently went online to look up the lyrics of the aforementioned aria. In the process, I ran across a web page that was a reproduction of the score for “O Mio Babbino Caro”, arranged for solo tuba or euphonium. I decided then and there that I want to date a woman who thinks that this web page is hilariously funny. I am, however, not expecting the woman at the bar to be applying for the position any time soon. I’m sure she’s still waiting for the yeast cops to show up.

-- Hulles

Danger Girls: Rerun

[I thought I'd air a rerun of this post because my buddy Unca Don just got back from a trip to Basel, among other places. Of course he made a pilgrimage to the Rio Bar. Sadly, he tells me the Café Des Arts is no longer there. -- The Management]

In Basel, Switzerland there is a little public house called the Rio Bar. It’s located on the Barfüsserplatz (which roughly translates as “Barefoot Plaza”) across the street from another bar, the Café Des Arts. The Rio thoughtfully provides a pair of binoculars so you can check out the patrons at the Des Arts.


It was at the Rio Bar that my buddy Unca Don and I met Caroline Haerdi. She was a bartender there at the time. She was blonde, about my height, and looked like she never took any shit from anyone ever. One treasured souvenir I retain from Basel is a Rio cocktail napkin with an imprint of Caroline’s lipstick on it. (I asked her for it, that’s why.)

The bartending gig at the Rio was only a fill-in job, however. She was a professional knife thrower.

Now girls, if you want to be fascinating to a man, tell him you’re a professional knife thrower. I guarantee he’ll perk right up. I did; so did Unca Don. It turned out that Caroline had a nightclub act at the time called “Danger Girls”. You have to love the name. Basically, in the show she threw knives at her partner, another attractive woman. Don and I used to joke that periodically there would be an ad in the local newspaper, “Wanted: female partner for entertainment act. No experience necessary. Hemophiliacs need not apply.” Unfortunately, neither he nor I ever saw “Danger Girls” perform.

Recently, I decided to see if I could find out what Caroline is doing these days. It seems she has a new act called “Steel and Fire”. By all means, visit the web site. It’s pretty cool. Apparently she’s still chucking silverware, though with a male partner this time around. I guess “Danger People” or “Danger Units” didn’t cut it for the name of the new act.

I’m still curious about what I find so attractive about the idea of a female knife thrower. I guess I’ve always liked strong women, strong as in “don’t take no shit”, that is, as opposed to East German weight lifter strong. That’s part of it. I suppose the hint of, well, danger is part of it too. You’re sitting on the couch in Switzerland watching futbol, you yell out “Caroline, bring me a beer!”, and ZZZING, a knife is quivering next to your left earlobe. “Get it yourself, asshole,” you hear from the other room. A man could come to love a woman like that.

- Hulles

The Mailbag

Abner Kornfuehrer of Hastings, Minnesota writes:

I am an avid fan of your blog. Why aren't you posting as many blog entries lately? I miss your wry humorosity and sardonicalness and all that kind of stuff.

Abner, thanks lots. I'm currently working on another writing project called (so far) "The Other Keys," and it's sucking up a lot of the time I normally set aside for blogging. During this temporary time of fewer posts I've been thinking about resurrecting some old blog entries that seem funny to me and reposting them -- in other words, airing reruns. Unfortunately none of the old blog entries seem funny to me. I might still do it anyway.

Lots of people do stuff like "Cute Cat Picture Wednesday." One of the disadvantages of being a curmudgeon crushing the hopes and dreams of young people everywhere is that I can't just jump on board the bandwagon and post an image of my cat Mimi and blow you guys off. It just doesn't look right. I have an iconoclastic image to uphold: I'm the guy who hates emoticons and Holly Hobby and all things cute and cuddly. Dang. Painted myself into a corner with that image, didn't I?

So I'm still trying to figure out how I can keep your interest in my blog while I forge ahead with "The Other Keys."

Maybe I'll start posting nude photographs of myself. Those certainly aren't cute by anyone's standard.

Delores Lochinvar of Bucharest, Romania writes:

I am an avid fan of your blog. Not long ago you wrote about the Metaphor Mixer you got for your 200th blog post. I'm curious -- do you have any other appliances that assist you in writing your blog?

Delores, yes, I have an electric Sarcasm Sprayer that makes my sentences drip with contempt whenever I use it. Thanks for asking.

Marvelosa Puttini of Milan, Italy writes:

I am an avid fan of your blog. I have just a few questions for you. Do American women still wear girdles? Do people in Japan act out Rocky Horror Picture Show in Japanese? Why is Edinburgh pronounced the way it is? Will I gain weight if I swallow?

Marvelosa, I'm glad you're an avid fan, but why the hell are you asking me these questions? The only one I know the answer to is the last one, and it's an emphatic no. The average ejaculation contains Vitamin C and has about 5 calories. It's good for you. P.S. Have your husband/boyfriend/priest send me a check. I also take PayPal. And let me know if you find out the answers to the other questions.

Tot Dickinson of Zabljak, Montenegro writes:

I am an avid fan of your blog. I am considering becoming an amateur dominatrix. Do you have any advice for me? Thanks in advance.

Tot, sure I do, but why am I getting sex advice questions all of a sudden? Ask Leigh Lezark for crying out loud. But just this once I suppose I can shovel some out for an avid fan.

The only real advice I have is to make sure you and your partner(s) agree on a safe word that, when spoken, immediately causes all sexual activity to cease. Personally, I try to pick really hard ones to pronounce, like syzygy or onomatopoeia, so I can finish beating the fuckers first. If I'm really into it I sometimes make them spell the word correctly before I'll stop whipping them. You're welcome.

-- Hulles