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Here’s What I Learned From My Centaur Research
I was watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this past weekend. As a herd of centaurs galloped across the screen, my gaze wandered down. The junction of horse and human occurs just above where the groin of the man would be and fuses into the area near the horse-half’s front shoulders.
I got confused. Where are the genitals on these things? Roving scientific interest—my desktop wallpaper is definitely not a picture of a centaur—anymore—filled a time slot I had open on Saturday afternoon. Do the mythical beast’s reproductive organs rest where they would on the anatomy of the human, or near the back, like a horse?
I had to take into account that the film is PG-13, so there was a chance that if any private areas were in fact located near the front, the filmmakers might have opted not to bump up to an R, or even NC-17 rating by having the turgid penis of a made-up animal flopping around on the big screen, thereby outlawing a sizeable chunk of the ticket-buying demographic from gaining access to theaters.
I took it to Googolplex. This website, authored by a German doctor, is the centaur equivalent of Gray’s Anatomy, and even brought up another interesting point—how does the spinal system work, being that the bodily fusion creates a 90-degree angle? I couldn’t be bothered with that, though—it wasn’t what I came for, and I feared I would be sucked further into an already dubious rabbit hole.
Then this came up:
Not only did I find the genitals, it looks as though we’ve been using the wrong phrase all this time—horses are hung like centaurs. This interpretation may prove unreliable, though. The issue of the spinal cord, for instance—it appears to curve into the lung cavity, and disappear, which would render the entire back half of this man-horse paralyzed. There may be better drawings out there, but please understand that while I do have the time to find a better one, I don’t want to. Googling centaur penis has more than likely already landed me on a ‘person of interest’ list somewhere, and next time I move I’m going to have to go around and tell all my new neighbors ‘hey, could you sign this thing saying that I told you I’m a pervert, blah blah blah, it’s just a formality, yada yada, I’ve changed my ways, bing bang boom.’
So I’ll just believe what this drawing says.
How I Almost Became A Pill Smurf
As was recently discussed, I quit my job, and got a different one. I can’t describe how joyous this was. Yes, the robotic management was one reason, but also, this: I almost became a pill smurf*. I was on the verge of throwing out my back, running in front of a forklift, or starting a fight with an immigrant, all on purpose, for profit.
Why?
Reason number one was to get time off work.
Reason # two(2)—>When many of your coworkers are addicted to a spread of pharm productions—uppers, downers, screamers, laughers—is there a better way to make extra money, a LOT of extra money, while dealing with the trivialities of something so minor as vertebral subluxation, forklift tire-marks on your flattened leg, or a shattered eye socket from a staged fight with good ol’ Magdaleno (Mags, for short)?
A skullet.
Answer: there is no better way. These guys are paying top dollar per ‘milly’ (milligram) for all the big names in painkilling. Let’s say I plant the warehouse manager’s skullet-comb in Magdaleno’s car and tell him he’s going to be fired for stealing. So he punches my lights out in front of the coffee machine. My face hurts. I go to the doctor. I score a Vicodin prescription. When the doctor gives me that slip of paper, he might as well be dropping a bar of gold in my lap.
That bottle of pills would have been a winning Powerball ticket in there. A month or two ago, a guy broke his leg. If he’s willing to deal with the fractured femur drug-free, and manages the sudden influx of cash responsibly, he might never have to go back to work.
If only I had the balls to do something hardcore like that, I could have auctioned those V pills off, and they would have sold like toilet paper at a butt party. Butt (pun) I didn’t. I stayed healthy, like a sucker.
Well, I’ve been screwed again, this time by my own conscience.
*I heard Jesse Pinkman say he had ‘smurfs’ buying Sudafed for him in Breaking Bad. I don’t even know if the term applies to what I’m talking about here.
Maybe I’m Growing Up
I don’t tell people this, but before we were branded here as ‘The Philosophunculist,’ the alternate name was to be ‘The 420 Boner Fart Blog.’ How did such a fork erupt?
Some internal force is telling me to mature. It’s telling me to settle down, have a child. I’ve been told it’s the greatest feeling in the world, and I can imagine it—sitting down with my son, buying him his first cigarette. Teaching him that yes, everyone is equal, we are all human. Except those in the service industry—you must never make eye contact with them. And people who have to sell plasma to make ends meet. Also, anyone with more or less than one total job. If you don’t have one, you are society’s burden, if you have more than one, why are you taking up all the jobs? The general guideline, I guess, is this: don’t look at anyone with less money than you. These are the people who are technically ‘equal,’ but not really.
But then I asked myself, why should I have to buy my son his first cigarette? Go get a job as a busboy and buy your own, kid. Of course, then all eye contact would be banished between us. Life isn’t fair.
Once I stop looking at my own son, I’m assuming it would develop one of those pill problems that you get from all the head doctors out there. The pharmaceuticals, coupled with the strife of my shunning, would then serve as the fuel that drives him to write a bestselling novel or Grammy-winning album. So now the son is making more money than me and hogging all the cigarettes. But the joke’s on him—I don’t need cigarettes! And I can look at him again, but he can’t look at me. I now have a rich, estranged son who smokes. Dangerous combo there. He’s headed for an early, watery grave (He always loved canoeing. And popping pills. At the same time.).
Guess who’s number one on the inheritance list? Me.
But I thought the kid hated you. He did. Yet because he made so much money from his book or album or reality show he literally had no one to look at, and mine was the only name he could remember. Chaaaaaaaaa-ching!
Reading back over this, the wise course of action would be to get a vasectomy. And change the title bar to the 420 Boner Fart Blog.
Resignation Letter, Or, ‘The World’
I just quit my job. Weeks before I knew I was going to quit, I wrote this resignation letter. Then, in the excitement of finally being able to quit, I forgot to bring it with me when I actually did quit. Balls. Not a big deal, though: it was purposely designed to confound, flummox, and bring about the general idea that I was somewhat unstable, thus making my hasty departure a point of concern rather than indignation.
The highfalutin verbiage and esoteric references would have been lost on the audience anyway. I mean, the one guy has had the same handlebar moustache for at least two decades. And last year, he didn’t even tell us when one of our coworkers was murdered by his girlfriend (Sadly, I didn’t make that up. She ran him over with her car. Management said not one word about it, to avoid giving people a day off for the funeral. Again, I can’t stress this enough: I didn’t make that up.).
Having said that, I now realize he would have thrown the letter in the garbage after he read the first line anyways. Here’s what I had:
The World*, or, My Resignation
Dearest Bob:
If you’re reading this, that means I’m already dead.
Or not. Anyhoo. Where to begin. At the beginning, I reckon.
Some 900 odd days ago, under Libra’s balanced gaze, a new cycle began, I playing The Fool. As time shifted I slowly toed my way through the major arcana, in both work and private life, ultimately culminating in this letter, which as you see above, I have entitled ‘The World.’
To come at it from another angle—the Moirai may now weave my tale. Read:
In that September of 2011, Clotho, Spinner of Life, dealt my thread. Her sister, Lachesis, drew her rod and measured it. Now, this night, governed by the fish Pisces, Atropos The Unturning, eldest of the three sisters, must now brandish her abhorred shears, and make her calculated cut.
Main point being, in the Menippean satire that this job, and consequently my life, has become, the ultimate communication of this letter is that I am quitting, if you didn’t get that already.
Now, by this time you may have noticed that I have left this communique with the front office and vanished, while the traditional two weeks of notice have not yet passed. None of us need worry about this. In the vast scope of geological time, after Armageddon has come and gone, whatever form it chooses to take, be it Ragnarok, The Four Horsemen, The Karmatic Wheel coming to a stop, Nuclear Winter—I can assure you that my swift exit from this company will not matter in the least.
At that time, when aliens, remaining humans, cockroaches—whatever is left, really—pick through the rubble where once stood this office/warehouse compound, I can assure you that my failure to give the traditional fourteen days forewarning will not be mentioned, nor will it even be relevant.
As Elton John once sang, we are nothing more than a candle in the wind. Or Kenny Wayne Shepherd: cold on ice, joker on jack, tears on a river, whisper on a scream. It doesn’t mean a thing.
And thus, as mysteriously as I arrived, I now dissipate, into the nether regions of the working world. May dementors eat my soul should we cross paths again.
Love,
Guy that don’t work here no more
*In Tarot readings, The World card can represent a cycle completed.
Well, I’ve Been Screwed Again
Many years ago, while enrolled in a prestigious technical college, I concocted a brew during my downtime between classes.
The Brew:
Part cappuccino, part energy drink. Named it ‘Enerchino.’ Tasted like liquid garbage, due to the experimental environment it was mixed in. Corporate funding, i.e. that of your Monster, Red Bull, etc., could have improved test versions. So I sent the recipe to a patent company. Never heard back.
Now, next time you’re in a gas station, take a stroll back to the beverage aisle, and a myriad of java-energy fusion drinks you will find. These conveniently achieved popularity about a year after I submitted my idea to that patent company.
There went my first million.
More recently, this past summer, I tried a new avenue of life-improving technology. You see, while still enrolled at the prestigious technical university mentioned above, I overheard fellow students discussing a mechanism called a ‘doob tube.’ It was simple: stuff an old toilet paper roll full of dryer sheets, then when marijuana drug smoke is blown through it, the scent is masked.
The New Invention:
Using dryer sheets and my own underpants, I attempted to create a garment that would cloak the aroma of flatulence, utilizing the same concept as the doob tube. It was impossible to fail. The one-person test group informed me that the odor of my wind was still very much noticeable. A request for the sheets to be sewn directly into the boxer shorts was denied, and the project was shelved. I knew I was on to something though.
A real picture from the Shreddies website.
A few weeks or days or months later, I see somebody post this on Facebook. That’s a link to a product called Shreddies. Shreddies. What kind of name is that. Guess what their product does. They make underwear that filters flatulence.
There goes another million.
So now, back at the drawing board, I sit here drinking a nearly undrinkable beverage that I just made, called CoffTea. It’s coffee and tea mixed together, and it’s revolting.
The Philosophunculist 
