The Explosive Diarrhea Situation

 

It has been an intentionally quiet summer.  I found myself at the end of the long study period of the MW exam not tired like one would be after extended exercise but more exhausted like one would be after conducting a continuous task like assembly line work.  I am filled with an unmoored tiredness that has left me without drive or ambition, something that I find unusual as I have spent seemingly the last 40 years or so engaged in a race to complete ambiguous deadlines that are almost solely creations of my own mind.  Thus, not only haven't I been writing much but I haven't been filled with the need to write like I have been in the past.  

A few things have been on my mind though.  For one, it is the outbreak of cases of "explosive diarrhea".  Every once in awhile we have had these outbreaks in our industrial food chain.  They are almost always from some leafy vegetable where some agricultural outfit has sprayed fecal filled water all over some crop and infected a kazillion people.  It seems like this outbreak took longer to nail down than most of them.  I don't know if this is because of the demonstrable incompetence and zealous destruction of institutional safety from the monsters in the Trump Administration or if that's just the perception created by the unchecked monsters in the tech industry that have weaseled their way into our brains.  Regardless, what I find interesting is that every single news related report on the subject uses the term "explosive diarrhea".  

"Explosive diarrhea" is a VERY descriptive term which I take to mean a frightening  and violent expulsion of liquidy shit from the body that is awe inspiring in both speed leaving the body and massive force behind it.  I think of a giant industrial can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew which has been carbonated with 6 bars of pressure, almost like that of a Coca-Cola which has a handful of Mentos dropped into it, and then shot out of the afflicted person's ass with almost no warning whatsoever.  I find it very unusual that all news sources just continue to run with "explosive diarrhea" in all headlines as if it was a way to somehow point out how significant this episode of diarrhea is, well above what could be called "violent diarrhea" for example (which I have never seen used as a description).  "Explosive" diarrhea suggests to me an episode well beyond any diarrhea that the afflicted has ever experienced, something so powerful that we as a society feel the need to categorize it almost like a hurricane or tornado with a word to offer gradation.   

Krusty told me that a local TV news affiliate in Vegas began to use the word "profound" in association with the diarrhea outbreak, but I think this is a completely different type of diarrhea.  The word "profound" suggests something noteworthy in its event but having a serious and even life changing impact on the afflicted person.  A "profound diarrhea" might be something which would leave the person with a lasting impression that created the need to have extended reflection on the event, something almost religious or sacred in the way it had occurred.  A "profound" episode of diarrhea to me is a stand alone event, something so special that it would be always remembered to the person which had it, perhaps even remembering the day like one would the birth of a child or death of a loved one.  "Yes, it was a Thursday in July.  I remember it well fore it changed me completely.  The diarrhea was so profound that I found myself weeping afterwards, unable to reassemble meaning from what I thought life itself was or could be and I struggled to face myself in a mirror for fear of what I might see in that reflection."   

An "explosive diarrhea" is something which has many individual incidents, bowel movements so powerful and forceful that anyone in the immediate vicinity is aware of what has happened and feels the need to check on the person impacted.  Someone with explosive diarrhea might hear a pensive knock on the bathroom door as the episode is drawing to a conclusion with a shaky voice asking, "Is everything OK in there?'.  In the case of explosive diarrhea, this would only be a calm before the next storm where yet another violent and massive outburst would soon strike with little warning leaving the person in the toilet no other option but to try and ride it out like they were on an untamable bronco or steer.  Meanwhile, someone with "profound diarrhea" would emerge from that bathroom with wisdom to impart.  It's clearly two distinct different conditions.  I'd like to see more accurate reporting on the specifics of this experience on the victims.   

The other thing on my mind are these electric scooters that are the biggest fad for kids right now.  My community is filled to the brim with little stick figure 8-year-olds with helmets awkwardly flying around roadways on scooters.  I know I am going to run over one of these kids.  It's not a question of "if" but "when".  Thanks to my overzealous local police force, I can't go faster than 25 mph on the main road which approaches my neighborhood.  I will consistently be overtaken on the right by some kid that weighs about 55 pounds looking blankly at me as he cuts across my sightline.  Look, I am going to feel bad about it when I hear the crunch of the tires on his helmet like a walnut opening, but it won't be my fault.  Well, legally I guess it will, but no one expects to get passed on the right by a fucking kid on a scooter.  The outcry for hanging my pelt on the flagpole by City Hall will be deafening.  I will likely have to hole up in my house with a small garrison of semi automatic weapons I order from Amazon and homemade molatov cocktails.  I'll burn through most of my money with an army of defense lawyers that will somehow wrestle an unsatisfying outcome that keeps me out of prison.  I'll have to move as I won't be able to walk my dogs next to the crash site with the little wreath emblazoned with "Tristan" or "Dylan" on it without people hissing when I walk past "It's HIM!".  The whole situation makes me anxious.

I know those kids are on borrowed time.  Here in the suburbs there are two main factions which are heading towards a massive collision.  Faction #1 is the "safety faction".  These are the people that are pretending to be very concerned about the safety of the kids.  Their top priority is removing these scooters from these kids, or creating a network of rules that would castrate any potential fun that the kids can have on the scooters by requiring them to only be ridden in a tiny park between the hours of 3p-5p within a fenced in bland "park" of blacktop.  They don't really care about the kids.  They are mostly concerned about these kids having demonstrable fun that has no adult oversight which is casting a shadow onto their own drab lives.  They aren't trying to protect the kids.  They want to close that loophole that is allowing the kids to have this public fun right in front of their faces.

Faction #2 is the powerful parental groups that look upon their child rearing years as a way to create the perfect childhood that they themselves did not achieve.  They are attempting to create some sort of Utopian childhood where every whim, toy and experience is available to the child without even asking.  These are the parents that want to pour tax dollars into school drama, sports complexes, and skateboard parks as opposed to fixing potholes or snow removal equipment.  They understand their children's contentment to be the entire community's focus and anyone that even suggests that their kids should not have any resource which aids in their temporary happiness to be some sort of monster.  These are the parents that happily buy electric scooters that can hit 40 mph and hand them over to a 10 year old.  "I wish my Dad would have bought me one of those when I was ten!  Goddamn am I a good parent!".  

Meanwhile I'm out here just trying to steer to the back of my cul-de-sac without running over one of these motherfuckers that dart out between parked monster SUVs like caffeinated squirrels.  I don't really care if the kid has the thing or not, but I think if Faction #2 (the "good" parents) can write off any unintended manslaughter or vehicular homicide charge I might rack up, I'll toss my lot behind them.  However, if I even catch a whiff of "you need to be more careful because the road belongs to Devin's scooter", then I might have to throw my allegiance behind the grumbling Faction #1.  This is perhaps the biggest political storm brewing out here which seems odd as I write this from an orange hellscape of wildfire smoke, heat waves, and explosive diarrhea.  If I become stricken with a case of "profound diarrhea" I will probably know what to do, but for now I'm at a real loss.