OK. So I write a funny diary called "How to Argue and Win Every Time" tonight and, of course, it's both hilarious and somewhat, alright totally, ignored. But what gets me is the accusation that I am plagiarizing Dave Barry who, I admit, is funny in his own way. But let's face it, the guy is no Batfish. And I should point out that I once shot a plagiarist in Reno just to watch him say, "Et tu, Brute". I don't need to steal other people's crap; I make my own crap. And in that general spirit, here is yet another offering that I guarantee did not come from Dave "Fucking" Barry!
People often remark that I seem to have my shit together, and I am never sure how to respond. Clearly, it is widely considered important to have your own shit together; getting other people’s shit together is never mentioned. You can tell someone to get their shit together, but you can’t do it for them. I should just come right out and admit that I only seem to have my shit together; I actually don’t. And that seems OK. No one actually ever asks if they can inspect your shit in order to confirm that it is all in one place, and that got me to thinking. I don’t want to get into sordid personal details here, although we may have crossed that line already, but let’s assume that in reality I had carefully – and we are just talking about my adult life because I don’t think a teenager or child has ever been expected to even remotely have their shit together – collected all my solid waste into a single pile. I am now 56. If I had started this daily obsessive task when I turned 21, then I would have – and I am being conservative – have amassed a pile of my own crap of around 6 tons. In other words, about the size of a Hummer. Now, as you can appreciate, curating such a vast amount of material presents logistical, organization, ethical, and hygiene issues of some considerable magnitude.
So here’s what I am thinking. Assuming that crap is mostly water, a 6-ton archive would occupy around 200 cubic feet, and that is easily accommodated by an average storage locker of around 960 cubic feet. The plan would be to seal each movement in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag, date and time-stamped, bar-coded too if you like, and then placed in order on a wall-rack system in a rented storage locker. No refrigeration or special storage would be required because it’s not like it’s going to go bad or something!
Now, you may be thinking as I did after a while that it’s all very well to consider this as broadly feasible. It’s all very well to talk about sealing shit in little plastic tombs to be stored away in some fecal mausoleum for the rest of your life. But this completely begs the question of how one manages to take a crap into a plastic bag with anything approaching grace. Astronauts do it, and that may in fact be one reason why spaceflight has never really become popular. But ordinary people like you and me (well you really) are not set up for this. Our bathrooms, toilets if you will, are set up for launching solid waste into a little pond as if we were some kind of evolved bipedal beaver. Clearly a whole different kind of receptacle is needed. I have a few preliminary drawings, just rough sketches, and I may file a patent or two. But let me tell you, it would have to be pretty high tech, yet surprisingly affordable. The normal toilet routine would still apply with the added feature of shrink-wrapping below. This, of course, will make some people nervous. But believe me, no one more than I wants to avoid any protruding sharp edges in that kind of setting. But the bottom line, and I use the term advisedly, is that any design has to be as tasteful as crapping into a storage device can possibly be, antiseptic, quiet, and somewhat odorless. Our civilization is built on the fiction that we don’t really shit at all, and that’s the way most people would prefer to keep it, huge storage locker full of your embalmed shit aside.
This may all seem like an unhealthy obsession, but I want you to consider for one minute the immense personal confidence you will enjoy by knowing for certain that, not only do you appear to have your shit together, you in fact do have your shit together. And if anyone asks you at any time whether you have your shit together or not, you would just look at them in a pitying way, and reply, “why yes, I do”. Then you could pull out a photo wallet describing your GYST® (Get Your Shit Together) system in detail and just soak up the admiration coming your way as the people around you realize that you alone have your shit together in an unprecedented manner. You may be asked to run for President.