I keep forgetting to pick up toilet paper at the Store. I was there just morning as a matter of fact. I got a squeezable container of honey and some half and half that has that butter-packaging Indian girl who you can trick into showing her boobs. However, the toilet paper totally slipped my mind. As a result I have to use Coffee filters. They do not do a great job, mainly because they are designed to filter rather than adsorb, but it's better than nothing. I never took much stock in the old fish woman advice of 'If ya don't have a corncob, then let yer legs slide a little free-er'.
Speaking of Indians, when I see that butter Indian I always think of a billboard that used to be around central Florida a decade or so ago. It was for an air conditioning fixing company and the billboard featured an impressive full body view of some lightly tanned white chick in a tight Indian dress with a headband sporting a feather. The caption of the billboard was an alluring 'Wigwam too warm?'. I used to drive past about three of them when I drove from Gainesville to Orlando on weekends. Somehow my brain has made a correlation between the two.
I forgot where I was going with this.
Anyways.
I cleaned out my garage this weekend and I got rid of a number of crowding items including 'the sink I could not get rid of'. It was some pedestal sink left over from when Alan built the Roman tub room. I tried putting it on ebay and then craigslist. No one wanted the damn thing. I suppose I could have put it out front with a sign that said 'free' but it would have been my luck to come home and find out the kids who get off the school bus in front of my house would find it a great thing to kick around in the street for a while. Then I would be the one who has to go and pick it up the shattered pieces. More fun to have it smashed under my supervision.
I have a four day weekend coming up. I plan to do... something. Something other than drive to work and sip bland coffee and realize I have not done anything interesting in the past couple of days except think lewd thoughts about butter Indians.
Dialing back to May 2007, where Ed is using coffee filters for TP and ogling butter cartons.
Ah, 2007. A simpler hell. You forgot toilet paper, so your options were coffee filters, a corncob, or letting your legs slide free-er. Today I would simply shout at a smart speaker and a subscription service would drone a fresh forty-roll fortress to my door before I could finish the thought—provided I haven't canceled it out of spite. The butter maiden on the half-and-half is the real relic: back then she was just a logo with a weird fantasy attached, and a billboard could get away with 'Wigwam too warm?' as local charm. Now the internet would detonate, local advertising is algorithmic and terrified, and the butter aisle has been scrubbed into something blander than gray laminate. Also, Craigslist already existed, but nobody wanted your pedestal sink; today you'd post it on a neighborhood app and some 'free stuff' hunter would cart it off before breakfast, or the city would fine you for leaving it out. You and your garage are practically a museum of pre-fall civilization.
“2007 Ed, you smashed a perfectly good pedestal sink under your own supervision rather than risk school kids kicking it—was the splintering catharsis worth more than the $20 Craigslist might have eventually paid, and did you at least wear safety goggles?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you ask a fair question, and the answer is yes, the splintering was worth every penny of that hypothetical twenty bucks. That sink hung around my garage like a bad houseguest, staring at me every time I went for a socket wrench, so there was something deeply satisfying about swinging that sledge and watching it turn into a hundred little ceramic regrets. Catharsis, hell, it was practically therapy, and cheaper than the shrink I probably need. As for safety goggles, well, I had on my regular glasses and a vaguely hopeful attitude, which is practically the same thing, right? I did find a tiny shard in my hair later, so maybe I should have borrowed Alan's lawn-mowing eye protection. But no injuries, just a cleaner garage and a slightly lighter soul. Now if only I could remember to buy toilet paper before coffee filters become a permanent part of my morning routine. Take that, stubborn plumbing fixtures.
