“Please! Let go of my foot! I have kids waiting at home!!”

“I have no clue what that is.”

That’s not something you want your doctor to say. Especially when he’s digging around your buttkus. It’s my annual check up 2 years too late. A couple months back, I got a lump down there which I thought was a second “man pooter grape” growing slowly in the soil that is my constant sitting job.

He’s got me over the paper bench and asks me to hold my cheeks apart. I refrain from the old Jim Carrey talking ass joke. He pokes. He prods. He hits it like a punching bag and gauges my reaction. He calls in the receptionist and the janitor and asks their opinion. Negative.

He sends me to the Rudd Clinic of colon probing fun. I kid you not. Rudd. I have a 40 day wait to see a doctor.

In that time every so often the words “cancer!” or “wart!” or even “herpes!” flash across my thoughts like some black and white, 40’s war movie montage. I didn’t sleep well these last few days.

Into the clinic I go. To my astonishment, there’s about 25-30 people in the waiting room and about 7 receptionists. Are bum-clinics always this busy? I’m given a clipboard with about 10000 questions on it regarding where the “problem” is located, complete with small simple anal illustrations where you were to mark an X as to where the Specialists should be looking. I wanted to draw a smiley face. Or a dotted line to a treasure map “X”. I look over stealthily at my neighbour to see where her ails are. She catches me looking over and covers her sheet like it’s grade 9 French class. I return the sheet and settle in with a Toronto Fashion magazine from 2003. I look around the waiting room and the average age is about 65, evenly male and female. There is one other guy about my age and he looks like he’s going to puke. I assume he’s straight and nervous as hell about what was going to happen to him. Thankfully my years of gay anal sex has steeled me to the fact that in a few moments, a stranger will be rooting around my nether-parts. Sort of like a night at the Black Eagle. Ba-zing!

After an hour wait, I am ushered into a room with a plesant East Indian doctor and Rubenesque assistant. And the dreaded paper bench. Trousers off. Face down. Butt up. With me in a Superman position across the bench, it’s raised up to chest height as the two joke about the Doctor’s ability to correctly operate the raising pedals.

In they go.

“Oh yeah,” says the assistant.

“You see?” The specialist says.

“Yup.”

Suddenly a rubberized finger zips so fast into me it brings back memories of my first date.

“Guh!” I grunt.

“Oh sorry. Just inserting a probe to see if you have any more hemmeroids,” the specialist says. Dig dig dig.

“Want me to get rid of that hemmeroid?”

“Will it hurt?” I ask, childlike.

“No.”

“Go for it!”

“I’m done!” he announces after a few seconds of nothing. “I froze it. It will fall off in a few days.”

“And the other…” I prompt.

“Skin tag. Removing that will hurt. Needle, cutting and no stitches. At this point, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Yay.” I croak as the table is levelled. The scary 40’s film montage fades to my bright smiling face with sunbeams behind my head.

I wander out of the clinic whistling Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with that grainy film of Bigfoot looking back at the camera as he (she?) trundled off into the woods.

Now you too can keep a sharp eye out for him! (via BoingBoing) The camera cycles through three spots somewhere in Northern California. I want to go hiking up there to stand in front of one of the cameras wearing a X-file Grey alien costume, reading Martha Stewart Living.

…are up for your shits and giggles in City As Blog!

Sharkboy and I are going on a cruise and I’m scoping out hotels at work and decide to go to one of those “discount” hotel sites and plug in my info:

One night, two occupants, mid-November.

I get this result:

A two and a half star hotel near the airport for one night is around $1500?! I guess I better sell that kidney. Oh wait, I can’t. It’s fused together.

I failed to mention in my previous camping posts about seeing some fireflies for the first time since I was 13 yrs old or so. It really brought me back.

This weekend we saw:

• a real bunny by the side of the road, floppy ears and all
• a dead bunny by the side of the road, all of his body was floppy
• a mole (like…what? Who sees a “mole” these days?)
• a whole mess of mini-toads. Thousands of them. Like fireflies, I haven’t seen these little cuties since my childhood
• the most amount of Daddylonglegs I have ever seen in one spot. It was like our tent was Tom Cruise and we were in Minority Report

I am truly a city boy when these little animals amaze me.

Expect pictures soon. I need to edit heavy because I did some of the “Survivor” contest in the buff.

Two of my coworkers have confirmed the exsistance of a brand spaking new Toronto Icon:

I give you Zanta!

Unfortunately no pictures of Zanta are available…yet! You will know Zanta by his big, muscular shirtless frame, pec tattoo and jaunty Santa cap (“Look Mommy! Santa!” “NO! Not Santa! I’m Zanta with a ZEE!”). Zanta likes to produce flowing rants of personal freedoms and will demand that you watch Speakers Corner for his 60 seconds of informative fame.

One co-worker tells me of Zanta’s run in with the man during one of the performances that took place during the Eglinton street festival this weekend. Zanta was “Hulk-Hoganning” during a busker’s show which angered many a good folk, causing the police to show up brandishing batons of pain. Zanta was hustled away to a safe area and the show continued uninterrupted, thankfully!

The other co-worker speaks of his usual stomping ground at Queen and John, where he usually informs beautiful women that they are “princesses” and they should be aware of his free speech.

We WELCOME ZANTA to Toronto!’

UPDATE: Well don’t I feel out of the loop. Even CityTV’s forums have whispers of Zanta. That’s the last time I ramble off without Googling it. And my one co-worker was wrong, no chest tatt.

My 40th is coming up. I will gladly wear this out to dinner.

Of course, the Japanese are waaay ahead of their bulky American counterparts. Have a look at The Land Walker: the world’s first 340cm bipedal exoskeleton. And the efficient bio-suit soon to be dragging helpess humans around by their spines by 2006.

CRUSH!! KILL!! DESTROY!!

Wake up! Breakfast Television isn’t the paragon of morning TV but it’s the only show good enough to have on in the background while Sharkboy and I drag our asses around as we wake up (I know Hamtaro is usually on but I usually sleep through it).

(For our non-Toronto readers, its our city’s only stock “kooky” morningtainment news/info/live eye show with your typically mismatched pair of the blonde beauty, Liza, and the perpetually suspender-wearing Kevin. I’d link to their site but it’s scary.)

This morning Sharkboy and I were at seperate apartments (someone has to do my laundry) and I had the show on out of habit. Today’s email topic was “Bad summer fashions” and since I was up and at my computer I fired off this:

Bad summer fashions? Easy: capri pants on a man. Okay for women, creepy for guys.

And Liza, you would rock so hard if you could say “HI SHARKBOY” for me.

Sharkboy and I have had a running debate on how men in capri pants may or may not be flattering. I think that if a man wants to look like a 1960’s version of Betty Cooper then go right ahead. Expect me to be snickering though.

Despite all my badmouthing about the show, she read my email and to my suprise, Kevin agreed that he wasn’t comfortable with capris on a man. Then she said, “Because I never miss an opportunity to Rock Hard: HI SHARKBOY!”

EEEE!!! She did it! I wait. No phone ringing. I call and wake up Sharkboy. Damn it! The one time he sleeps in past 7am and he misses it.

I’ve spent waaay too much time on writing about this.

Owch. Slamming two toes into the leg of my couch this morning, I could hear the crunch of bone and sinew. “That’s going to hurt,” my animal brain said, nanoseconds before the pain arrived. It’s funny how we have these moments of clarity before the flood of pain comes to our brain like a late party guest.

Wiggle. I am totally macking (as you kids say these days) on Firefox Mouse Gestures. Its like magic! However, I have lost pages due to lazy dragging. If you’re like me and spend hours looking at pages, I suggest it. It’s like short hand for the internet.

Worry. Stupid, I know but I rode the subway this morning dreading a terrorist attack, despite the armed police they had on the platform. Actually I think it was them who triggered my angst. In the last 48 hours Canada’s media has been reporting that we should be ready for an attack because of our involvement with the “liberation” of Afghanistan. How the foosh do you prepare for something like that without becoming some paranoid freak or worse, fanatical, like the terrorists?

Trumped. My brother got my Da set up on high speed internet for his new iMac Mini with –shudder– Sympatico when I was days away from getting him a mid-range Rogers account. Without this turning into a big Rogers Vs Bell argument, I have never had any kind of satisfactory customer service with Bell, the company that when I was with them, could not produce a Mac tech support guy whenever I called in. Rogers isn’t much better but at least they seem to have their poop together when it comes to the technical aspect of the web. I think I’m upset because my Bro stepped on my toes. I mean, I would never supply anyone in my family with audio/entertainment equipment advice so why would he do so for Da and the internet when he knows thats my backyard!! Just kidding. But from now on, any technical support questions from Da will be routed to Ottawa…

Finally. There are new pictures up in the Camping gallery. None of them are work safe and if you’re family reading this, there are one or two of me nude. You are warned.

Squishy the rat died today
A horror I can’t stop replay
So to ease the pain in my mind
I just happen to have a great new find
She’s tall, she’s thin, she’s delicate
And no my friend, she’s not a rat
Squishy is dead, Squishy has died
Squishy the orchid lives, I have not lied

–Sharkboy, 2005

Long Live Squishy!!