And Now We Wait...

The deed is done. I have successfully tied the dental floss noose round my armpitty intruder. Mind you, it wasn't fucking easy. You try lassoing a meaty nubbin' with one hand. It was like like attempting to extract a greased Vienna sausage from a tub of tapioca with your toes. Which I have tried, and it's not as easy, or delicious, as it sounds.

Anywhich, now the waiting game is on. I'm kind of afraid to look at it -- I kept catching a glimpse of it when I was getting dressed this morning and it kinda looked furious... like this:



If you don't hear from me in a few days, call the authorities... and a good exterminator.

The Hangman's Noose

So, today is supposed to be the day... the day I tie off my unborn twin. I was ready to do it this morning, actually -- I showered, making sure to lather the ol' skin tag up and loofah-ing it to a high shine. But I haven't been able to pull the trigger yet. Why? Maybe I've grown too attached to it. [beat] I don't know... maybe I'm starting to feel sorry for it. All the good times we've had together. Murder's not as easy as you'd think. Here's the "conversation" I had with "Ol' Flappy" while toweling off...

ME: So, here we are...
SKIN TAG: Yep. Here we--hey, what are you doing with that floss in your hand?
ME: Oh this? Uh... nothing. You just go back to what you were doing...
SKIN TAG: You weren't going to fashion a mini noose out of that and try to tighten it around my meaty stalk, were you?
ME: What?! A noose?! That's crazy! Why would I do that?
SKIN TAG: Oh, I don't know. You sure have been paying a lot of attention to me, lately. Flicking me, prodding me with pencil erasers, measuring me...
ME: Oh, don't mind that. You're just fun to play with.
SKIN TAG: Good. 'Cuz you don't wanna fuck with a skin tag. You fuck with me and, next thing you know, I'm getting all dark-colored and my borders are getting all irregular and shit. You hear what I'm saying?
ME: [silence]
SKIN TAG: PUT DOWN THAT NAIL CLIPPER, MOTHERFUCKER!!!

I'm thinking tonight's the night. I'll attack while it's sleeping.

Unless it attacks first...

Tag! You're It!

So, when you reach your mid-40s, there's a lotta shit going on in, on and around your body that just disgusts the fuck out of you. I try not to look in the mirror too often but when I do, I'm usually greeted with some new bodily atrocity that causes my sphincter to clamp shut and produces an air-barf or two.

The latest heinousness was unearthed recently while innocently applying some deodorant. I lifted my right arm for a couple of swipes of the old pit-stick when I spied a little bit more flesh than I was used to. There, just to the side of my pit-muff, was a pendulous nubbin' of revolting meat-growth: a SKIN-TAG!! And this was not your run-of-the-mill skin-tag, either. It was like an albino raisin hanging by slimmest of skin-threads -- just flapping side-to-side like some horrific, mini beached armpit sea cow.

If I could've ripped my arm off then and there and stuffed it down the kitchen garbage disposal, believe me, it would have been done. But this thing was stuck to me... a hammy hanger-on adhered to me like a flesh-lamprey clinging to its oblivious, meaty host. Just thinking about it now, nestled comfortably within my cozy, hair-lined arm-crotch is making bile spray up my food-hole like some sort of doo-doo geyser.

But I wasn't going to simply sit idly by and let this thing absorb me, Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style. No, I needed a plan. So, while back in Chicago recently visiting the 'rents, I posed a dinner-table question to my doctor brother...

ME: Hey, so skin tags...
DR. BROTHER: Yeah?
ME: Is there a way of getting rid of them without going to a doctor?
DR. BROTHER: Uh, sure. You can come into the office tomorrow, though and--
ME: No, I've gotta do this myself.
DR. BROTHER: Well, you can tie some dental floss or thin thread around its stalk, which will cut off the blood supply. Then it'll eventually turn black and fall off.
ME: Thanks!

First of all... let me acknowledge the utter ghastliness of the fact that this thing has a fucking "stalk." Holy fuck is that gnarly. And B, this might appear to the average reader to be sound doctorly advice if it weren't for the fact that I recall, years ago, my brother telling me about a time when he tried to snip a skin tag off of his neck with a toenail clipper and it proceeded to "bleed for, like, four days." Probably a good idea to get a second opinion but, fuck it, I need this Siamese twin gone, like, yesterday.

So, that brings us up to today. I'm reviving this long dead-and-buried blog to document the exorcism of my nubbin-y nemesis, my plumped-up parasite, my flappy flesh-knob. I'd post pictures but A, no one should have to see such evil and 2, I'm pretty sure the photos would end up on some alt.binaries.nubbinlovers site and I just couldn't live with that. Instead, I'll try to post artist renderings of each step in the process.

I'll start with a rendering of "the culprit" pre-strangulation. Warning: not for the faint-hearted.



UP NEXT: The Hangman's Noose

The Comeback Kid...

Fucking middle school.

So, apparently, there are a coupla jock douche-nozzles who are giving Mr. Z a hard time in one of his classes -- just run-of-the-mill jock harassment, the occasional name-calling and general douche-nozzlery. He seems somewhat annoyed by it but the dude is just way too nice to do anything about it. Although, as crabby-progeny, he is obligated to return their fire. It is the crabby way.

I don't remember how old I was when I realized that being a fucking smart-ass was the antidote to any and all of the turds that life chucked my way. I think I was kind of an easy target for awhile there, too. I blame my parents, of course. They were never cynical enough -- always telling me I could be anything I wanted to be and how much other people had to offer. Liars!

Anywhich, I started to realize that it's nearly impossible to force cynicism on a kid who's not ready for it yet. It's like trying to affix a fake mustache to a dog's muzzle -- ultimately, it's just not gonna stick (no matter how much duct tape you use). So, I'd futilely run through role-playing scenarios where I'd say things like, "All you have to do is say, 'Eat my balls, dickcheese.'" and he's say, "No way! I'm not gonna say that!" Other plans involved attaching a spy camera/microphone to his head, teaching him the Three Stooges eye poke and me going to school dressed in a Mr. Z costume for a week. Needless to say, he indulged none of my scenarios.

Cut to yesterday morning when I had a revelation in the shower. But this revelation didn't involve Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap and a warm washcloth. See, I just had to find a solution that Mr. Z would think was hilarious enough that he'd take ownership of the idea and embrace it. So here's what I proposed at the dinner table last night...

ME: Okay, I think I've got a solution. Here's what you do -- next time this butt-nugget says something to you, say, "Whatever, dipes." Then turn away. Then, when he asks you what "dipes" means, say, "Eh, you kinda smell like diapers."

OLD LADY: [laughs hysterically for about three minutes]

MR. Z: Dipes?! Why dipes?

ME: Why not?! It's perfect. And once the name sticks, you're golden.

MR. Z: What if he says, "Did your dad tell you to call me that?"

ME: A) He'd never say that. 2) Then you say, "No, actually your mom told me to call you that last night, as she was crawling out my bedroom window."

OLD LADY: [instantly stops laughing]

MR. Z: Now that's funny. So how do you spell it? Is it d-i-p-e-s or is it d-i-a-p--

ME: NOT IMPORTANT! Spell it however you want! Look, it's a fool-proof plan! DIPES! It can't lose!

MR. Z: That's pretty good. If he says anything tomorrow, I might try it out. [beat] And maybe later I can start calling him "Dick van Dipes!"

ME: YES! That's my boy!

God, I hope he doesn't get his ass kicked.

=====UPDATE=======

Apparently, today the fuckstain who has been bothering Mr. Z was picking on a special ed kid in class, so Mr. Z said, "Leave him alone, Dipes." The kid asked him why he called him Dipes and Mr. Z said "because you kinda smell like diapers." I guess it got to him because he called Mr. Z a "f*ggot," (stay classy, fuckstain), to which Mr. Z flawlessly replied, "Whatever, Dipes."

And the kicker is, Mr. Z heard around school that the kid has been asking people if he smells like diapers. Yeesssss... it's all going according to plan! I told Mr. Z "Now, all you have to do is call him Dipes whenever your see him and by the end of the year, people won't even remember his real name."

Man, what I'd give for one of those freak electrical storms that turns me into a 12 year old kid again and unleashes me on an unsuspecting middle school! There is that Zoltar machine at the mall...

A Dear Gym Letter...

Dear Mr. Z's 8th grade gym teacher,

Dodge ball? Really? It's 20-fucking-11, some 30 plus years since I used to get an over-inflated red rubber ball catapulted at my 10 year old nutsack by a freakishly overdeveloped Orlando Mazzolini at Kipling elementary school, and the best you can muster "physical education-wise" is fucking dodge ball?!

Your douchebaggery is breathtaking.

I don't know... maybe you were flash-frozen in a 1970s block of ice, only to be thawed out almost half a century later, two states eastward, and then forced to immediately come up with a forty minute activity the very second you were reanimated. Maybe you think that the best way to prepare the next generation of humanity for the inevitable globally-warmed armageddon is to build up their throwin' arms and toughen up their supervirus-vulnerable skin with repeated pummelings. Or maybe you're a fucking clueless shitfuck who is somehow oblivious to the fact that dodge-fucking-ball has become forever linked to lazy, drunken, sadistic, dipshit gym teachers, as illustrated in such classics as "Freaks and Geeks," "The Wonder Years," "Mr. Woodcock," and, oh I don't know, maybe the movie "Dodgeball"?!

What, is your last functioning creatine-fried synapse too fucking overworked to come up with a plan other than "whipping shit at the weak"? Are your polyester sans-a-belt shorts choking off all the oxygen meant to supply your tiny ass-brain? Or are you just pissed that after the University of Moron red-shirted your ass freshman year, you then pulled a hammy doing a kegstand at the Theta Chi house, and killed any future you might have had as a rich and famous fat-ass pro lineman, celebrated for being able to eat big hunks of meats and for growing a giant beard and then dropping dead at age 47 when your over-concussed brain melts into a lumpy custard?

How do you have a fucking job, you pointless nugget of turd? Do you know how many unemployed physical education teachers there are in this bankrupt state who would literally rip your mouth-breathing face off of your flat skull for a chance to actually teach and physically educate? The fact that my tax money (which I gladly hand over, by the way -- you shortsighted, treasonous anti-tax fart-nozzles are next on my list) lines the polyester pockets of a ham-headed, cretinous neanderfuck like you makes me want to punch you in the neck, which would, of course, be impossible because I saw you on parent/teacher conference night and your ham-head rests squarely on your ham-shoulders. You, sir, are neckless.

Why I'm wasting type on you, I know not. I mean, you're forcing middle-schoolers to play dodge ball, for shit's sake -- it's like trying to reason with a goat. And at least goats can yield cheese. I don't know what one could make from your milk. Failure curds? Half and half-wit? Simpleton-gurt?

May a gym class' worth of errant, over-inflated red rubber balls rocket their way to your dessicated, steroid-shrunken prune-bag, you worthless ass spray.

Sincerely,
Crabbydad

UPDATE:
Mr. Z informed me that today was the last day of dodge ball. Of course, he also informed me that he got hit in the face "really hard" as a farewell. Hopefully, that's the last time he'll ever have unwelcomed balls smacking into his face.