While it all falls apart

Sure. If there had been a choice, I absolutely would have chosen actual manna from, you know, heaven. Who wouldn’t? But there wasn’t, and instead I got bird shit – on my head, on my hand, and in an especially embarrassing spot near the center of my pants about three inches south of the belt line.

I mean, this only happens in cartoons, right? Or in Mel Brooks movies. Or, if you’re really, really lucky, during a televised press conference in what used to be the White House Rose Garden. Oh, please, please. Let it happen there. But no. It occurs as I’m chaise-lounging by the pool, nursing a gin and tonic. Or maybe it was a Bordeaux blanc. It probably was both.

And as you might expect, it came out of nowhere. I was just sitting around, entertaining the adults – exercising a talent for faux worldliness that pretty much all my friends tolerate in exchange for free wine – when the muscles surrounding a randomly passing cloaca cut loose and exposed me as someone who desperately needed to clean up his act. Just an arbitrary natural occurrence, right? A bona fide crap shoot.

Or was it? I decided a little research was in order to ascertain whether something else might be at play. Something a little more newsworthy.

As part of my online analysis of the subject (Yes, I spent an inordinate amount of time coming up with that exact word), the experts at naturewithbirds.com assured me that, “while it might feel like bad luck when it happens, data and observational studies suggest that certain factors make these incidents more predictable than random.” I knew it, God damn it. I knew it.

With a little further help from that world-famous intellect Alphonso Imbroglioni (AI), I was able to determine that roughly 5% of Earthlings get splattered by bird crap every year. Granted, that sounds a little iffy, but they’ve got a whole page devoted to the topic and it sounds, well, really professional. Sure. I could spend a little more time looking for actual quotes from birdologists and statistical specialists, but I’m going with it. I don’t give a shit.

Punch in the numbers and you’re left with the conclusion that some 17 million Americans get unexpectedly doused with a special blend of concentrated nitrogen compounds and pure avian ejectamenta over your average 12-month period. By the way, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the look of the stuff depends on what’s been munched for lunch. According again to Nature With Birds, fruit-eaters produce softer, more colorful droppings, while insectivores and seed-eaters tend to manufacture firmer, darker droppings. I’m convinced mine had spent some time at Chipotle.

You have to remember that the exact number of people with targets on their heads is a little hard to pin down because, well … bird poop incidents apparently aren’t important enough to be recorded in official health or environmental databases. As one of 17 million U.S. victims, I think that needs to change.

And it wouldn’t take much, either. Consider this: Now that the current Washington administration has decided clean air and water aren’t THAT important, I imagine there’s probably a lot of vacant office space available where a slew of EPA officials once worked. How hard would it be to fill some of it with a shiny new agency called the Federal Department of Flying Crap?

Hold on. Hold on. We may have to readdress. I think we might already have one of those.

It’s called the White House Office of Communications.

Yes, I misconstrued things from the beginning, but honestly, the BBC made it way too easy to get the wrong idea. World’s Biggest Condom Maker to Raise Prices, the news headline called out, and in purely reptilian response my brain answered: “Geez! Just how big do those things have to be?”

I realize offering such a public glimpse into my private thought processes risks inviting people to conclude that I have no particular need for anything close to the world’s biggest condom, but I’m hoping you’re the sort of readers who won’t make too many, shall we say … short-sighted assumptions. I get along just fine, thank you.

Anyway, that’s not what this little disquisition is all about. The CEO of the company was warning that his firm might have to raise its prices by up to 30% because America’s war with Iran was disrupting the supply of materials used to make its products. If you’re wondering how fossil fuels got mixed up in your sex life, it’s because materials like ammonia (a latex preservative) and silicone-based lubricants are all derived from – you guessed it – oil.

The business executive went on to reveal that demand for the little things – once again, don’t make too many assumptions – had shot up something like 30% this year. Why? “In bad times,” he explained, “the need to use condoms is even more because you’re uncertain with your future.”

Is that it? Really? Uncertainty drives the market for prophylactics? The more bad things that happen to you, the more you need condoms? Cripes. I always thought that equation tilted the other way. In my neighborhood, a bigger collection of condoms usually meant things were going pretty well for you.

But, OK. Let’s take the word of the condom king and make an assumption – just this once – that some kind of socio-economic theory could be fabricated to correlate the number of bad things happening to you with the number of prophylactics in your possession. Yeah, it’s a stretch (here we go), but I’m sure we could find something to fit.

In fact, unable to suppress neither the award-winning economist in me nor a sudden thirst for large amounts of chardonnay, I was fairly quickly able to formulate a condom-based rating system to help me gauge just how poorly my day might be going – starting, as usual, with burned toast.

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely require a couple of warm, perfectly buttered slices of toasted bread to get my day off to the right start. They’re kind of like comfy bedroom slippers, if you know what I mean. If you don’t know what I mean, try putting a pat of salted Land O Lakes™ between each of your toes when you wake up. It won’t come close to describing the satisfaction I get from warm toast and tea, but by God I don’t think I should have to be the only person on the planet who has to wash his feet in the morning.

The important thing to remember is this: If I have to start it with accidentally burned toast, I know right away the day most likely is going to hell and I need to immediately issue myself at least a partial condom. Yes, I understand how dangerous partial condoms can be, but at my age it’s not like I’m actually using them for their originally intended purpose. Just think of it as an obscure financial technique to balance accounts. After all, comparatively speaking, burned toast isn’t that bad, right?  Certainly not as bad as, say, having an uninsured car hit by a truck while it was positioned perfectly between the lines in a grocery store parking lot.

I’m not saying that actually happened to me, but I’m not saying it didn’t, either. All I’m saying is that, on my new sliding condom scale, an incident like that would be worth at least six and a half condoms – a full seven if the shock of seeing your late model Chevy in pieces caused you to drop the food and pharmaceuticals you just bought. By the way, you’d be allowed to credit yourself with a quarter condom if among those pharmaceuticals happened to be a bottle of aspirin you could take to help offset the immense suffering obviously awaiting you as the day progresses.

You can begin to see, then, the logic behind my new “Count Your Condoms” life-style rating system. I used to have a “Count Your Blessings” system, but that went to hell along with my day. Here are just a few other mishap milestones to help you gauge just how many prophylactics you ought to be reasonably accumulating as your day deteriorates:

• Your employer approaches you with a demonic smile and asks you to program everything you do into the company’s new AI software.  (21 condoms)
• The folks at HBO discover you’ve been piggy-backing on your neighbor’s account and shut you down just as the killer is about to be revealed.  (2 condoms)
• You’re on your hands and knees planting lilies in a freshly mulched garden and discover that your landscaper brought in a load contaminated with poison ivy.  (7 condoms)

These, of course, are only meant to serve as generalized examples. One of the nice things about my system is that you have the latitude to customize the condom count in accordance with your individualized pain and annoyance levels, as the moment requires. I would, however, recommend also taking into account psychological and emotional factors such as absurdity and irony.

Consider, for instance, this final, and perhaps most disturbing clue that you’re having a bad day:

• You unexpectedly find yourself in need of a condom and don’t have any.

That, I would suggest, calls for at least a dozen.

“Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.”

– Henry David Thoreau

Face it. Every one of us knows one or two nudniks who fit Henry’s proclamation about acorns. In fact, metaphorically speaking, we’d probably have to own up to dropping a lifetime of leaves ourselves.

But that’s a good thing, right? Standing your ground, I mean. It builds character. Encourages resilience. Teaches you to deal with life’s adversities. And if you happen to live in Florida, it means you can shoot just about anybody who gives you the stink-eye. I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking that may be contributing to the state’s current population decline.

As I was reminded in a recent PBS documentary (Yeah. Ken Burns is at it again),Thoreau was one of the first American writers to zero in on “the quest for a meaningful life,” as well as “the importance of standing up for one’s beliefs in the public square.” Listen, I’m behind both those concepts, especially if the quest involves relaxing in the doorway of a cabin in the Massachusetts woods all day long and dipping your toes in Walden Pond – presuming, of course, that some sort of modern-day plumbing is available.

The series offers an interesting look at how a 19^th-century natural philosopher’s ideas influenced Americans across 165 years of history, and I’d wholeheartedly recommend taking some time to tune in. (Thoreau was all about taking time.) What I’d NOT recommend, however, is doing what I eventually did, which is letting your mind wander into a sordid examination of the tortured similarity between the names Henry David Thoreau and … God help me … Larry David Thoreau.

I don’t know why it happened. It just did. And now I can’t drain my pre-frontal lobes of an imaginary episode that has the Curb Your Enthusiasm star hijacking the words of an otherwise innocent American literary giant to offer his own twisted take on the meaning of life in a bug-infested forest.

Sorry. It can’t be stopped. You might as well buckle up.

                                                                  *        *        *

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.” And that turns out to be what? Mosquitoes and a latrine? Listen. Unless you add a sofa, a 60-inch flat-screen and a pizza, you can get someone else to listen to all that baloney about the good life. Now that I think about it, I’m gonna need some baloney, too.

“It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” Again, all I’m seeing is that great big hole in the ground and an empty refrigerator. Who do we call for take-out?

“Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.” I’d love to. Can you introduce me to the couple who owns that 8,000-square-foot mansion with the swimming pool and wine cellar on the other side of the pond? You know. The one with the four-car garage …

“Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” Unless you count the casino on the outskirts of town. Free drinks, and heat that doesn’t involve sitting so close to a fire that your underwear starts to smolder.

“I make myself rich by making my wants few.” Yeah? Well, it seems pretty clear to me that if I ever want more, I’m gonna have to make myself scarce.

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” Jesus, I feel like I’m dying.

                                                                  *        *        *

OK. That’s enough. I’m Thoreau-ly exhausted.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – [A human resources director] wanted to get away from the war in Iran and rising gas prices and just commune with nature … so she treated herself to a little forest-bathing [at the JC Raulston Arboretum.] Based on the Japanese wellness practice of Shinrin-yoku, the activity (quiet time in the forest) has been known to reduce stress, improve mood, lower blood pressure and boost the immune system.

historyoasis.com – Benjamin Franklin famously practiced “air baths,” which he believed had health benefits. (He) would stand or sit naked in a private room with the windows wide open … (focusing) on contemplative activities while allowing the air to interact with his skin.

*          *          *

    “Uncle Ben?”

“Yes.”

    “Um … what are you doing?”

“Why, taking an air bath, boy.”

    “Right in front of an open window?”

“What better spot for maximum circulation?”

    “But … why?”

“Helps relieve the stress. All that yammering at Independence Hall, you know? It can really do a number on you.

    “What do you mean?”

“Well … take Jefferson, for instance. Seems to need constant editing on that Declaration thing of his. And that Trump fellow from New York … Jesus. It’s exasperating. Insists on putting HIS name on the new Continental Currency. Sets my bowels to churning just thinking about it. Hand me that bottle of laudanum, will you? Say … why don’t you pull up a chair and join me?”

    “Uh, thanks, but I sunburn easily.”

“Yeah, I get it. Got some susceptible spots of my own.”

    “Holy cow. Is that lady waving at you?”

“Oh. That’s just the widow Pultney. Owns the pewter shop. You can actually set your watch by her. Saunters by here every afternoon at three.”

    “Um, I don’t mean to be impertinent, Uncle Ben, but … when exactly did you say you take your daily dip in nothing?”

“Three o’clock.  (pauses and looks down again at the widow, who now is peering through opera glasses)  Oh. I see what you mean.

    “Yeah. And I’m guessing she does, too.”

“Well, you know what Poor Richard says.”

    “What.”

“A successful business woman always takes the long view.”

    “You just made that up …”

“Yup. And it’s going in the Gazette on Saturday.”

    “Honestly. I don’t know how you get away with it.”

“It’s basically doctor’s orders, son. A calming air bath turns out to be not only a delightful natural stress reliever, but – as demonstrated by the pulchritudinous widow Pultney – an effective social lubricant, as well.

    “And …”

“And you don’t even have to dry yourself off. Now, open those curtains a little bit more if you don’t mind.”

It seems like every 12 months now – usually during the first few weeks of January – we’re treated to a literary phenomenon known as The Word of the Year. You know what I’m talking about. Brand-name dictionaries pick a newly popularized word they think got over-used the previous year (often it’s newly minted, too) and add it to the latest edition of their official glossaries.

In 2025, Merriam-Webster chose ‘slop,’ which the company says refers to “digital content of low quality produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”

Not to be out-slopped, the prestigious Oxford University Press got hooked on ‘rage-bait,’ a compound noun rewarded with immediate inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary. It is now forever defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage,” in the hope, of course, that you’ll click on it and send a few ad cents to whoever’s managing the website. A good example might be, “Monetize THIS, you #!>!*\#?/!

If that doesn’t get your gorge rising, I don’t know what will.

Lots of folks have a few nasty words of their own for The Word of the Year, but not me. Language, as they say, is a living thing – even if it sometimes smells like it’s been rotting in the basement for a while – and I’m all for jolting it occasionally to bring it back to life. I do have a pejorative to pick, though, with the process for deciding just who gets to choose the vaunted verb. Or noun. Or adjective. Or adverb. Jesus. Somebody stop me before all those things come together into a full sentence!

In fact, I’m thinking maybe I might be the right person for the job. And to demonstrate my seriously deficient bona fides ( i.e., Oxford and Merriam-Webster shouldn’t let me anywhere near this), I have compiled an extraordinarily insightful collection of gratuitously invented words-of-the-year that say more than you probably want to hear about …

   *      *      *

1955    Antennanitis    A fictitious medical condition afflicting second-grade boys thought to be caused by constantly adjusting TV rabbit ears to get a better picture of Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club.

1962    Fwip   The sound Spiderman’s web makes when it shoots across the room. Also, what someone with a speech impediment does to a pancake.

1974    Dicklip    A reference to Richard Nixon’s flagrant untruths regarding the Watergate break-in, as in “I been dicklipped (lied to),” or “Don’t dicklip me.” For those of you who thought I might be going another way with this, you ought to be ashamed.

1991    Badfry    Purportedly linked to a nationwide recall of fast-food French fries, the verb is meant to suggest a disastrously undesirable outcome, as in, “You might want to find another stall. I been badfried.”

2006    Laundrofrat    A group of college men who band together to save money by doing all their wash at the same time in the same coin-operated machine. The term went viral when a single washing machine packed with 37 separate loads exploded in the college town of Dumbalz, Ohio, and left underwear hanging from telephone lines in a half-mile blast radius.

2013    Snowfaked    A word mashup coined when uncountable households along the Eastern Seaboard spent three days and hundreds of millions of dollars in February preparing for a disastrous Nor’easter, only to watch it turn into a Nor’wester.

2020   Snowf_cked    A word mashup coined when uncountable households along the Eastern Seaboard spent three days in February laughing at what they thought was a winter Nor’wester, only to watch it turn into a Nor’easter.

Don’t worry. That’s the last one.

You have my word.