Too many words, not enough pictures edition

Item #1 - DISEASE, real and fabricated

So, the swine flu scare has fizzled out, but pork induced panic was the daily dish there for awhile, n'est-ce pas, my faithful reader? At my work the outbreak coincided with the state assessment test that qualifies us for federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act, so we were faced with quite the dilemma: do we risk infecting our students and faculty to a pandemic virus with as-of -yet unknown capacities, and force sneezing, snivelling, drooling kids to sit for whole days in poorly ventilated, crowded rooms, to take long, arduous, boring tests in complete silence under psychologically manipulative jail-like conditions, or do we allow the ill and infirm to seek medical help or heal in their own time, as nature intends it? Being the district that we are, we chose the former, rounding up kids at home and dragging them from their sickbeds to make sure we had enough bodies to meet our quota and get our money. We put them in a "quarantine room" and got a teacher "who didn't have kids" to monitor them, lest he take the porcine pestilence home with him to his family. I don't know if we had any swine flu cases, but we sure did have a lot of sick kids. For some reason, we had an outbreak of pink-eye, which can look like pig-eye, but I don't think they were related. When I was a kid, I loved pink-eye. It was the second best excuse to stay home from school ever, because it's highly contagious, can be gone in a day or two (three if your mom was preoccupied), and the doctor could just "prescribe" your "medicine" over the phone - no doctor's note necessary. In other words, you could just say you had pink-eye, and nobody was the wiser, unless they looked, which they wouldn't, because you were nowhere to be found, just a'skippin down that road of truancy, like Dorothy on Yellow Brick! Sweet! The first best excuse only worked with male teachers, but all you really needed was one nervous, young teacher to fall for it, and you could leave early for lunch, split campus, and come back in time to go home. Just two words, delivered with a look of sincere shame and horror was your ticket to freedom without penalty of a full day's absence:"Lady problems." If you looked uncomfortable enough, it was a no-questions-do-what-you-gotta-do-seeya-when-I-seeya free ride extravaganza. Those were the good old days. As I got older I relied on the more outlandish stories, but they required a lot more effort to come up with and remember. The more unbelievable the story, the more acceptable. I guess college professors and employers don't understand the depths I have had to stoop to in order to shirk those responsibilities for which I am simply not adapted. I used a form of "the explosive toilet" a record 6 times in my illustrious college career, called in "too high" when I worked at a bar, and have twice this year claimed I was trapped in my garage and therefore unable to make it on time.

Item # 2 - CONFUSIOn
I am confused often. I walk the wrong way, I lose food while I am eating it, I forget what day it is, time slips out of my awareness like sperm through a hole in a condom. Sometimes I say things like, "They were just two ships, flying in the sky." I think I get this from my mother. Lately, I've had a touch of the in-som-nye-yay, so the sleep deprivation has made me even more confused than normal, though, like I said, I am prone to it. One time while watching one of those "In Memoriam" segments that they do on TV at the end of the year, I was touched by a black and white photo of Fay Wray, so small and blond and perfect in the strong, rubbery, black hand of the beast. "Oh, how sad, " I moaned. "I didn't know that King Kong died!" You get the picture.

One thing I do try vigilantly to remember is to be a good steward of the earth. I try to save everything; water (got a bucket in the shower), gas (freeze all winter, but sometimes it's just because I forget I have a thermostat), electricity (I look better in the dark, anyway), face; you name it, I try to save it. So I was drying my clothes out on the line the other day, but I forgot that it has been raining in my city for about a month straight, and my clothes kept getting soaked. I finally remembered to take my jeans in and let them air-dry in the kitchen. I put them on for casual Friday and went to work, happy as a clam and proud of my ecoconscious ways. However, my mood changed to one of alarm when I noticed that my car was stinking badly. This has happened before. Once it was because I had left groceries in the trunk for three weeks, and another time it was because death crawled under my hood and festered undisturbed, because I was afraid to look it in the eye. This particular smell, however, clung, and followed me into school. It was gross and clammy, like a cast after it's been worn for a goodly while. Eww. I went to the john to suss out the situation, for that is where I do some of my best thinking. I pulled down my pants and sat in the pose of the famous Rodin sculpture, for that is how one should look when faced with a ponderous problem. Damned if my serious meditation wasn't shattered by the stench in triplicate, stronger, more powerful than ever before! So gross! So pungent! And then, in a flash, I knew what it was! My vagina had mildewed! I was a shocked as you, delicate reader! I am a clean, pristine, fighting machine (except on weekends, when I occasionally forgo bathing in order to pursue a rigorous schedule of lounging), and besides, who knew that such a thing could even happen? I mean mildew is like some outdated condition like mange, that people now days simply don't get...muff mange! Can you imagine?! EWWWWW! Understandably, I was horrified, and rushed to the school nurse -as if she would know what to do!- when it occurred to me to smell my pants. Apparently, on rainy days, it is ok to use one's dryer. Lesson learned.

Item #3 - PIRATE JOKE

So, this pirate walks into a bar, and immediately, the bartender notices he has a steering wheel embedded in his groin.

"Dude!" he exclaimed. "You have a steering wheel stuck in your crotch!"

"Aarrrgghh, and it's drivin' me nuts, " said the pirate.

Get it?

SURPRISE BONUS- 2 horse eye pictures: