I'd bet that Mickey Mouse would make a funny drunk. But this stoner is no Mickey Mouse. Is his men's room portraiture funny or just gross? It's a tough call.
The line between funny and gross is a fine one. Take a joke too far, and it might degenerate into something that's just plain gross. Whether the line crossed is fine or blurry, I think I know it when I see it. Example: Sitting in a chair and farting is funny; blaming the dog, even funnier; but crapping your pants is just plain gross.
Every once in a while, though, something gross can evolve into something funny, as the aforementioned stoner reminded me. A while back, I was standing before a urinal, looking at a wooden rail about eye level, that was half-covered with boogers all the way across. Nasty ones, with roots and stuff. Gross.
So, then, this clearly underaged drunk, who cannot handle his beer, stumbles up to the urinal beside me. Using peripheral vision, I notice this guy wobbling and then leaning his forehead up against the rail. Luckily, I heard no squishing sound, or I would have barfed.
But that fellow was not as stupid or disgusting as that Cambodian man who cut off his penis this week after four hungry spirits appeared in a dream demanding food. To borrow a phrase from a lawyer I recently argued against before the Fourth District Court of Appeal, "I...I don't know where to begin."
Local police say Soun Ney initially told the spirits to go away and "waved his penis at them in defiance."
That was mistake number one. You want to wave something in defiance? Start with a gun. No gun? Try some other weapon, a knife or stick maybe. None of those? Go with the fist. The penis is the weapon of last resort. There is a reason it is a cliché to say that someone left you "holding nothing but your dick in your hand," and that reason is not because the dick scares evil spirits off the property.
"Devils, I don't have any chicken or duck for you," he reportedly announced, "if you want to eat anything, you can eat my penis."
Those were mistakes two and three. He should have lied. "Devils, I have some delicious chickens out back. Take them." That would have been much smarter. But even if he didn't want to lie, he should have first offered a somewhat less useful body part. Maybe the appendix. Do spirits know how to take an appendix out safely? If so, let them have it. Failing that, offer a finger or two from the hand you don't use to write. Or maybe a toe, or even a couple of toes. But not the penis.
After the spirits agreed to eat his penis, Ney cut it off with a butcher's knife.
That was mistake number four. Cambodian schools teach (or so I would hope) that, after the demons in your dreams accept your offer of an edible penis, but before you actually remove the penis, you should always demand some verification that they are real and will still be there when you are awake. Better yet, you should ask for a demonstration of their power.
What if all they could do is howl at you and make chills run up your spine? That's not worth losing a penis, is it? If it was me, I'd put on a jacket and tell them to howl away.
No sooner do I start thinking that Cambodians must be much more stupid than us brilliant Americans, than I learn that American Airlines Flight 1304 from Ft. Myers to Dallas was canceled last Friday, due to delays caused by a bomb-sniffing dog search prompted by a tip from a psychic. A psychic? They're kidding, right? It's April Fool's Day, isn't it? The purported psychic's call was "unusual," conceded Doug Perkins, local administrator for the TSA, "but in these times, we can't ignore anything. We want to take the appropriate measures."
The next thing you know, the Feds will be flying to San Antonio, searching the basement of the Alamo for WMDs.
Why do people ever believe psychics? Has there ever been a psychic who offered useful information in advance? (And I'm not impressed by anyone who "predicted" that Saddam would hire French attorneys) If so, who? I didn't see any video footage of psychics warning people to stay out of New York on September 11. Did you? Where the hell was John Edward on September 10? The answer, of course, is "off somewhere thinking up complete bullshit."
But I am not one to judge. I can't afford to judge.
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