But first, I'd like to mention that this is my 100th posting on this blog, and for that reason, I knew that I had to make it a good one. That is why this is a really, really long story: for the 100th posting, I needed something that was not just good, but damn good. I think the fates realized that, too, because they conspired to make me do something last night that is at once bafflingly stupid, absolutely without foresight, and startlingly without logic. I realize that this story will make me seem quite dumb at best, and at worst too dim-witted to be allowed to mix safely with modern society. The story is also totally embarrassing. However, at Sitzblog, we aim to entertain, and despite the fact that I come off like an utter dipshit in this story, it’s still a pretty funny one that I feel ought to be told. Maybe it’s because I’m merely (once again!) misinterpreting the Foucauldian notion of the “Urge To Confession” that is supposedly inherent in all people, but for some reason I decided to tell this story. Allow me, please, to tell you what I did last night.
I believe that the trouble started early yesterday morning, when I was getting something out of a bag where I keep my toiletries, accoutrements, and other crap for use in the bathroom. In the bag, I noticed a little box of band-aids that I bought months ago. “Hmm,” I thought, “That sucks; I’ve not even used one of those stupid things yet.” I realize now that that cruel bitch Fate must have perked up her ears at my statement.
In any case, later yesterday, in the evening, I decided I needed a haircut, as it was starting to get rather shaggy around the ears.
I have the good fortune to possess a Remington or Norelco or something-or-other Brand beard trimmer, and it has saved me a great deal of money on haircuts in the past, especially since a poorly-trained monkey could cut my hair (although my simian ass has made a fair number of haircutting mistakes and missteps in the past). Anyhow, the trimmer had--notice the use of the past tense; that's called foreshadowing, son--a sliding guard with different numbers on it, so that you could set it to trim different parts of a beard to different lengths. I just extrapolated the system to work for the rest of my head: a 6 on the top, a 5 everywhere else, and a 3 for that shit at the bottom of the back of my neck that never seems to get cut quite right.
So, in order to save time and clean-up effort, I decided to stand in my shower while cutting my hair. That way, I could just pick up and flush the bulk of the trimmings down the toilet, and the rest would eventually just wash down the shower drain into the open gutters of Stunning San Ramón.
That was a good idea in general, but at one point, I was leaning over (naturally, so the hair wouldn’t fall onto my shoulders after being cut), and when I stood up, I slammed my head into the faucet. “Poop!” I yelled, or something fairly close to that. No major harm done, though, so I leaned over and continued cutting.
I continued my fairly uneventful haircut, and eventually brought my hair in line with something that might be reasonably acceptable, socially-speaking. When looking in the mirror, though, I noticed about three or four red, rash-like spots on my chest, each about the size of an Oreo cookie. These were not entirely unfamiliar to me, and they seemed to come around especially when there was hot or humid weather. I’ve never quite figured out what they are, but I decided last night that I ought to do something about them.
At this point, my reasoning begins to become questionable, and by the end of the story I’ve pretty much completely thrown logic out the window.
Basically, I decided to trim the hair on my chest. I wish I could say I was drunk when I was coming up with this plan, but alas, I wasn’t. Anyhow, I think my thought process was something like:
1. I don’t have health care, so I have to be like a vigilante doctor and take matters into my own hands.
2. I’ve got these clippers in my own hands. I can use them to make the hair shorter on my chest. That will make things cooler (after all, having a hairy chest is like wearing a fur coat under a T-shirt), plus, it’ll allow me more area to apply some sunscreen—the only lotion-y thing I had--which should clear that rash right up.
3. So, let’s set this baby to 3 and get cuttin’!
It seemed like a good idea, and indeed, I managed to trim my whole chest. At that point, I remembered that I had also seen two of the larger spots on my thighs, as well as some smaller little red dots that seem to be there pretty much all the time. I thought, “What the hell; I’ll trim the hair on my thighs, too. It can’t hurt, and I might finally be able to get rid of those fucking little red dots.”
So, I commenced to trim the hair on my thighs. I know, this is embarrassing, but remember: Dudes that swim shave their legs.
Anyhow, I had just begun trimming the hair, when all of a sudden the damn clippers fell out of my hand and landed on the shower floor. They bounced nicely, and a little piece of plastic flew out of the numbered trimmer attachment. That didn’t seem good, and indeed, things proved to be going pretty shitty pretty quickly: the little piece that had shot out had been the piece that allowed the numbered trimmer to function, and without the part, which was irreparably broken (and lost), the clippers didn’t work.
Not the end of the world, though: I still had a moustache trimmer attachment. God bless Remington or Norelco or whatever! The only problem with the moustache trimmer was that it didn’t have a variable length setting. No 3’s, 5’s, or 6’s here; just “very short.”
“Fuck it,” I thought, “I’ve come this far, so I might as well just trim it really short. And it still might work.”
So, as I continued trimming the hair, I noticed that the areas that were trimmed were looking fine, but the areas that weren’t trimmed were looking stranger by the second. My thighs were beginning to look sort of like an aerial view of rectangle-shaped swaths of the rainforest being lost to slash-and-burn agriculture.
I believe the thought, “Wow, this sucks!” officially passed through my mind at this point.
But, as bad as things can get, they can always get worse. When I had resigned myself to just buzzing the upper half of each of my legs, the clippers quickly begin to run out of battery power, and within 20 seconds they were stone dead.
Generally, those things usually take two hours or so to charge, and with my little side projects, my supposedly quick haircut had already escorted me past the 1 a.m. mark (and on a school night, at that!) Even though taking matters into my own hands--quite literally speaking--had thus far proven to be about the worst thing I could have done, I decided to stay the course and continue the trimming. I plugged in the trimmer, hoping to later get a charge long enough to give me at least another 20 seconds of power. In the meantime (lack of logic alert!), I decided I’d keep on keeping on by using a pair of scissors. Unfortunately, the only pair of scissors I have seem to have been designed for a Kindergartner or an elf, because they are very small (Kindergartner), they only have room for one finger in each hole (Kindergartner), and, as I was about to learn, they were really fucking sharp (elf).
A brief interjection: when I was very young, my grandparents once got some new white carpet in their living room. The only thing they said to me and my sister Diana was: “The carpet is new; make sure you don’t spill your Coke on it.” Of course, even though I’d never spilled a Coke in my young memory, sure enough, I spilled that Coke within about four minutes. In the same manner, last night, the only thing I could think was: “These scissors are sharp and unwieldy; make sure you don’t cut yourself with them.”
We all know where this is going. Within about one minute of trying to trim the hair on the back of my thigh, I heard a metallic click, as if a pair of scissors has just cut through something that gives a bit more resistance than a few pieces of hair.
But there was no pain. So I thought I was in the clear. But then, when I twisted around to look behind me, I saw it: I had managed to literally cut off a piece of my own ass! Granted, it wasn’t a big piece; only about the size of two Tic-Tacs (it’s hard to come up with a good universal mental image that describes this).
In any case, I found myself with the following predicaments:
1. My hair trimmer was still out of battery power;
2. It was about 1:30 in the morning;
3. I had two legs that looked as though an albino was wearing a pair of hooker boots made out of hair;
4. I had literally cut off a piece of my own body…and a piece of my ass, no less.
Things weren’t looking too good.
At this point, I went into panic, any-plan-will-do mode, and decided that I should just shave the damn legs with a razor and get to bed before I amputated something else. I figured that would be quick and easy, since the hair on my legs wasn’t nearly as thick or tough as the hair on my face. The Mach 3 should make short work of it.
If you’ve ever tried to shave a large area of 1-inch-long hair with a razor, you know damn well that I was wrong about that idea, too. I finally got to bed around 2:30.
So, speaking to you today, I have learned a few things:
1. You should leave well enough alone, and “bad” is still better than “worse”
2. For example, running with scissors is bad, but cutting your ass with them is worse.
3. You should always have a spare beard trimmer on hand if you’re a moron.
4. The feeling of a nicely shaved leg in a pair of light cotton slacks is, frankly, quite delightful.
365: Picture a Day Project 365 Leftovers All My Pictures Sitzbook
