July 14: Fragrant gloves
I guess it was five years ago in mid-October and I was sitting in the
newspaper publisher's office. It was Wednesday morning so we were
having our story meeting. Someone suggested that in November, all the
men grow mustaches as part of the whole Movember campaign.
"What's that all about?" I asked.
"You're supposed to grow a mustache for November," my boss said. "It's supposed to raise awareness for prostate cancer."
"If we really want to raise awareness for prostate cancer, maybe a better idea would be to spend the whole month wearing rubber gloves."
I still remember the blank stare my publisher gave me. That stare either meant I was being disgusting or I was a comic genius.
Probably both.
-
People who work at Subway have something in common with people who work in doctor's offices - they both go through gloves by the boxload. The Subway people change their gloves everytime they make a different sandwich, probably because if sandwich A has onions on it and sandwich B does not, the onion residue will carry over on to sandwich B unless the gloves are changed between A and B. This is a bad thing about food. If different foods touch each other, they take on each other's flavour. Beets are notoriously bad for this. If you have a litre of mashed potatoes on your plate and you touch those potatoes with one beet, the potatoes all turn purple and they taste like beets.
My dad used to eat beets but I don't see him eat them much anymore. I haven't eaten beets in years.
We turn everything purple
-
Apparently, Orthodox Jews separate all their food items so that the flavours won't intermingle and spoil each other. Come to think of it, that might be why Yahweh demanded that of his people. It was symbolic and it reminded them not to co-mingle with the Philistines, who were bad.
-
The point is that the gloves at Subway and the gloves at the proctologist are both fragrant, before and after they've been used. Before they smell like rubber, which is a clinical good smell. Afterwards they smell like onions and mayonnaise and meatball sauce and the stuff that proctologists are probably intimately familiar with.
-
You know... why do proctologists exist anyway? It's not like there's a whole bunch of little kids out there saying "When I grow up, I want to be a proctologist." How can a proctologist go to a party and tell people what he does without them giggling?
Once I read a news story about some proctologist who had to remove a jar of peanut butter from someone's hindquarters. This took place in a hospital in San Francisco. I'm not sure if that's relevant or not, but it probably is.
But I'm pretty sure the whole gerbilling thing is an urban legend.
-
HOW IN THE WORLD DID I GET ON THIS? I'M SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT FRAGRANT GLOVES!!!
-
I have five gloves at home. They are winter gloves. All of them are for my left hand. For some reason, I keep losing the right glove. That means that every year, I have to buy a new pair of winter gloves.
Leather gloves are pretty cool too. They are fragrant and they smell of leather.
-
Proctologists probably become proctologists because they see a need that has to be filled (that's probably a poor choice of words.) I bet they start out wanting to be doctors and then they decide to specialize in bums when they're well into their 20s and bums aren't as funny as they were when you're five.
-
You know, I think I'll just end this note by telling a true story of an encounter I had in the newspaper office on December 23 of 2003, the day the paper shut down for the Christmas holidays. Outside, there was a blizzard raging and the roads were already covered beneath a blanket of snow. I was 30 (almost 31) and it was 5 p.m. and the only people in the building were me and this 19-year-old journalism student who was doing an internship with us. This kid was super eager and desperately wanted to impress me.
"Hey Steve," the kid said. "I'm not doing anything tonight and I just got an email from the Cornwall hospital and there's something going on there that I can cover if you like."
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's a colorectal cancer screening clinic," he said. "It's running tonight at the Cornwall Hospital. You want me to cover it?"
I looked at this smiling kid who would have happily jumped into his car in a second had I said the word "go."
But I didn't.
"I'm going to say no," I said. "And I'm going to say it for three reasons. The first is that the next issue of the newspaper won't come out until January 6 and by then, the clinic will be old news. The second is that Cornwall is fifty kilometres away and the weather outside is really bad and it's not worth risking a car accident just to cover the clinic. Third, and perhaps most importantly, I have to say I admire your gung-ho attitude but I don't think very many people are going to be too eager to have you snap a picture of them with some doctor's hand up their bunghole."
And then I wished him a Merry Christmas.
"What's that all about?" I asked.
"You're supposed to grow a mustache for November," my boss said. "It's supposed to raise awareness for prostate cancer."
"If we really want to raise awareness for prostate cancer, maybe a better idea would be to spend the whole month wearing rubber gloves."
I still remember the blank stare my publisher gave me. That stare either meant I was being disgusting or I was a comic genius.
Probably both.
-
People who work at Subway have something in common with people who work in doctor's offices - they both go through gloves by the boxload. The Subway people change their gloves everytime they make a different sandwich, probably because if sandwich A has onions on it and sandwich B does not, the onion residue will carry over on to sandwich B unless the gloves are changed between A and B. This is a bad thing about food. If different foods touch each other, they take on each other's flavour. Beets are notoriously bad for this. If you have a litre of mashed potatoes on your plate and you touch those potatoes with one beet, the potatoes all turn purple and they taste like beets.
My dad used to eat beets but I don't see him eat them much anymore. I haven't eaten beets in years.
We turn everything purple-
Apparently, Orthodox Jews separate all their food items so that the flavours won't intermingle and spoil each other. Come to think of it, that might be why Yahweh demanded that of his people. It was symbolic and it reminded them not to co-mingle with the Philistines, who were bad.
-
The point is that the gloves at Subway and the gloves at the proctologist are both fragrant, before and after they've been used. Before they smell like rubber, which is a clinical good smell. Afterwards they smell like onions and mayonnaise and meatball sauce and the stuff that proctologists are probably intimately familiar with.
-
You know... why do proctologists exist anyway? It's not like there's a whole bunch of little kids out there saying "When I grow up, I want to be a proctologist." How can a proctologist go to a party and tell people what he does without them giggling?
Once I read a news story about some proctologist who had to remove a jar of peanut butter from someone's hindquarters. This took place in a hospital in San Francisco. I'm not sure if that's relevant or not, but it probably is.
But I'm pretty sure the whole gerbilling thing is an urban legend.
-
HOW IN THE WORLD DID I GET ON THIS? I'M SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT FRAGRANT GLOVES!!!
-
I have five gloves at home. They are winter gloves. All of them are for my left hand. For some reason, I keep losing the right glove. That means that every year, I have to buy a new pair of winter gloves.
Leather gloves are pretty cool too. They are fragrant and they smell of leather.
-
Proctologists probably become proctologists because they see a need that has to be filled (that's probably a poor choice of words.) I bet they start out wanting to be doctors and then they decide to specialize in bums when they're well into their 20s and bums aren't as funny as they were when you're five.
-
You know, I think I'll just end this note by telling a true story of an encounter I had in the newspaper office on December 23 of 2003, the day the paper shut down for the Christmas holidays. Outside, there was a blizzard raging and the roads were already covered beneath a blanket of snow. I was 30 (almost 31) and it was 5 p.m. and the only people in the building were me and this 19-year-old journalism student who was doing an internship with us. This kid was super eager and desperately wanted to impress me.
"Hey Steve," the kid said. "I'm not doing anything tonight and I just got an email from the Cornwall hospital and there's something going on there that I can cover if you like."
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's a colorectal cancer screening clinic," he said. "It's running tonight at the Cornwall Hospital. You want me to cover it?"
I looked at this smiling kid who would have happily jumped into his car in a second had I said the word "go."
But I didn't.
"I'm going to say no," I said. "And I'm going to say it for three reasons. The first is that the next issue of the newspaper won't come out until January 6 and by then, the clinic will be old news. The second is that Cornwall is fifty kilometres away and the weather outside is really bad and it's not worth risking a car accident just to cover the clinic. Third, and perhaps most importantly, I have to say I admire your gung-ho attitude but I don't think very many people are going to be too eager to have you snap a picture of them with some doctor's hand up their bunghole."
And then I wished him a Merry Christmas.
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