vituperation

Let me just start things off by pissing off a whole group of people at once.

Netscape users: I downloaded the latest release today to check out the site. It looks fine in version 6.22, or whatever that was (can you tell I’m an IE user?) I got. If the site looks "wrong" in your version, I’m sorry. You’ll need to upgrade or live with it. This site uses some of the more modern technologies available to web developers.

You know, you never realize just how much you turn your head in a day until you sleep funny and screw up some little muscle between your shoulder blades that makes it hurt to turn your head.

So you know.

Mad props to Nance for sending me my first referral.

Yes, I obsessively check my stats. I’m lame, what can I say?

So I’m at my insurance carrier’s office earlier this week getting a mini-physical for some life insurance to ensure Robyn can afford a shiny new double-wide trailer should I kick off any time soon. Interesting, these mini-physicals are.

They weigh you (heh), check your blood pressure (112/71), take a couple of vials of blood (and, oh Jesus GOD, use the stickiest hair-pullingest Bandaids on the hole when they’re done), and ask you a shitload of disease-oriented questions (why no, I haven’t ever had unprotected anal intercourse with another man, but thanks for your interest) at a rate of speed that would make an auctioneer proud.

And then they want your pee.

They don’t just give you a little cup to pee in, because that would be FAR too simple. They give you a little cup and two tiny-topped test tubes (say that five times, quickly). So you not only get to do the whole “catch the stream” thing, you get to play Don fucking Herbert with the chemistry set afterwards.

Not one, but two—count ‘em, two—exciting chances to get pee on yourself, yessir. Life just doesn’t get any better than that.

I wedge my way into the bathroom—

Yes, wedge. The bathroom is—no shit—no more than four feet by five feet, total. With a toilet, a full sink and counter, a few signs advertising the business, and ductwork for the air conditioning going from the floor to the ceiling. The door is three feet wide and bangs into the toilet after opening about one third of the way. A three foot door in a four-by-five bathroom?

But of course. So you can get a wheelchair in. Thank you, ADA.

—and close the door behind me. With great care I get the pee from my bladder to the cup without getting any on myself, the toilet, or the floor. I set the cup down on the counter and pick up one of the test tubes to take the top off.

Something rattles in the test tube.

Not sure what to expect, I slowly remove the plastic cap over the end of the tube and peer in. Ther’s a little white pill there, looking back at me.

What’s up with that?

I mean, was I supposed to take the pill before I peed? Probably not, because she didn’t tell me to. Was I supposed to take the pill after I peed, maybe to calm me down had I peed on my hand? Only if they’re the kind of sick bastards who enjoy knowing someone who’d just peed on his hand was now raising it to his lips.

I decide to pour my pee into the test tube, thinking that maybe the pill would make it change color—a nice shade of blue, perhaps—as a sort of prize for having gotten it into the tube in the first place. No such luck; my pee stays the same pale yellow.

When I return to my agent’s room with the warm test tubes in hand, I ask the nurse what the deal with the pee pills is.

“You were supposed to take them,” she says, then adds (because my eyes go all big, I’m sure), “I’m kidding! They’re just there to stabilize the urine.”

Yeah. Like it’s nitroglycerin or something.