The Solitaire Effect

The innocuous-looking GENT-L-KARE plastic specimen container's volume is 4 ounces.

The quantity of the average human's ejaculate is between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. By nautical comparison, the Southern Right Whale unleashes approximately five gallons of seminal fluid in a single mating session. Fortunately, whales do not often need to ejaculate into little plastic specimen containers.

Unfortunately, tomorrow, I do.

Yes, kids, it's another infertility post. If that's not your thing, there's lots of good porn out there that I can't masturbate to until tomorrow morning at approximately 6:30am.

Then, I will race the semen over to the lab (it has to get there in one hour-- I'll be driving like those crazy Gift of Life people with their coolers full of kidneys) and try to make it to work on-time. I've already asked for permission from my supervisor to come in half-an-hour later and work a half-an-hour later.

"Why?" she asked.

"Um, I have an... appointment?" She furrowed her brow at me.

"That early in the morning?"

I hesitated.

"Yes?"

She regarded me quizically. She probably thinks I'm on drugs. Unfortunately, I'm not.

Of course, because I am not medicated, I am obsessing about the details of this little... process.

"I'm scared I'm going to get it everywhere," I complained to my wife, who has already endured several invasive procedures/tests, and was probably the wrong person to complain to.

"Look, you pussy," she said to me, "just as you're about to jit, tilt downward and put the cup right over your dick."

I stared at her.

"Excuse me, are you attempting to give me points on masturbation? That's like Rick Moranis trying to give Kobe Bryant lessons on basketball, or sex with hot chicks."

"Right, sorry," Mrs. Apron said, "I forgot that you invented jerking off."

"No," I replied, "I just minored in it in college."

The funny thing is, because you have to eliminate the sample (whoa-- I sound like Hitler) within an hour of getting it to the lab, I'll be doing this while normal people are getting dressed and ready for work. Maybe they'll be sitting down to a bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran or Raisin Balls or something, and I'll be cruising the net for porn. Sure, I could involve Mrs. Apron in this endeavor (she volunteered to "help") but, for some reason, I'm opting to do this the old fashioned way. Call it the Solitaire Effect, but this is something I'd prefer to do alone.

Don't ask me why. Anybody who'd give up real, live play from one's cute-n-pert life-mate in favor of masturbation clearly needs psych meds.

I know me, though-- I'm going to be way too nervous and freaked to be any fun, way too disorganized and trembling to involve another person in this madness. I'm scared I'm going to miss the container entirely, forget to close the window shade in the office, spooge on my trousers, not be able to get it up (um, that one's probably irrational) and that I'll crash the car on the way to the lab, that I'll get stopped by the police for speeding and they'll test the contents of the container on the passenger seat next to me thinking it's some kind of new fangled liquid crack.

Of course, the thing I'm most afraid of is that they'll find my semen are all broken, or that they wear funny little moustaches, or that they are deformed, or that they only speak Korean.

My silly little semen. Never called upon to do anything particularly consequential in life except for reduce that nagging, dull heaviness in my ballsack, they will now face the most important splonk of their life: they will be examined, put through the ringer, tested and prodded, and will they measure up?

I don't know. And I'm scared.

But only after placing them inside the sterile GENT-L-KARE container, UPN#00605863492803, will we know the gloopy, gloppity, slippery, slimey truth.

Keep your testes crossed for me, kids.

Tricky Dick

(Don't worry, this isn't another post about my dick. In fact, that's the only time in this post that I'll say those words together.)

There isn't a President of the United States that people love to hate more than Richard Milhous Nixon.

First of all, he's an ugly cuss, so that makes tearing him up a lot easier, and I can respect that on some basic level. We respond to peoples' physical traits a lot more than we might like to admit. If Adolf Hitler looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, my family tree might never have gotten planted.

I wouldn't dare go on record claiming that Richard Nixon didn't do shitty things-- he did, and I think most of us can agree on that. He did some very shitty things, at a very shitty time in our country's history.

We should all probably hate the thoroughly corrupt and endlessly contemptible Warren G. Harding just as much, if not more, than we hate Richard Nixon, but we don't. Presumably, this is because Warren Harding did shitty things a long time ago, and, let's face it, he was more handsome than Richard Nixon, so it's kind of harder to hate him.

See? Pretty-like.

Don't you want him to be your grammpaw?

In spite of his immaculate suit, thoughtful demeanor and his distinguished eyebrows, you've got to admit that he does look infinitely capable of some seriously dirty deeds, no?

Every now and then, new Oval Office audio tapes are released from the Nixon era that reignite the nation's obsession with getting a serious hate-on for Dick Nix. On Friday, they released tapes of Nixon going off about blacks and Jews. If you don't know by now that Richard Nixon was a happily profane bigot, then you need to go back to 7th grade, immediately. If you're already in 7th grade, I feel a little wrong about your reading this blog. Stop it.

Here's a few of the choice items from the new tapes about Jews:

* “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”

* “I don’t want any Jew at that dinner [with then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir] who didn’t support us in that campaign. Is that clear? No Jew who did not support us.”

* “Most Jewish people are insecure. And that’s why they have to prove things.”

Nixon also implied that most Jews avoided the draft in Vietnam.

* “I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don’t know how the hell they avoid it. If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters.”

There wasn't much about African-Americans that was especially juicy on these latest tapes-- there's been good (well, bad) stuff before. This time, he stated that he thought blacks could improve and strengthen our country "in terms of 500 years. I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it."

Nice, yeah?

Oh, and it sure doesn't help that he looked like this:

"One of these days, Alice... straight TO THE MOON!"

Anyway, as an insecure Jew who is the son of an aggressive, abrasive, obnoxious Jew, I just want to say that, Dick, I don't hate you. You were human. You were mortal. You were an ignorant, ill-informed, uncultured yabbo from the dusty shitstorms of Yorba Linda, California and your mother was whacked out and you lost your brother early on in life and your power went to your head and, brother, you were one fucked up cookie.

And it's okay. Because I'd be willing to bet that, if there were cameras and bugs on every one of us, we'd all hear ourselves and our loved ones say stuff that would turn our skin green and curl our toenails.

I know WikiLeaks sounds like big news now, but nothing ever changes. Nothing is new. We're all quite awful sometimes. The only thing that saves us is that, usually, nobody's listening.