Arjewtino

I thought I would come back. I really did.

I thought I would just take a few weeks off, regroup, and come back to this blog to tell everyone about my latest attempts at being awesome but failing miserably.

But a funny thing happened on my comeback tour. I realized I was done. I realized that instead of missing blogging, I felt relieved not having to write something everyday. I realized that I just didn’t have it in me to be “Arjewtino” anymore.

So this is my final blog post. I’m retiring Arjewtino.com.

I started blogging in July 2006 after finding my friend Shiftless Badger’s blog cited in The Express newspaper. I thought, “I can do that!” So I did.

During a night of drinking the Champagne of Beers (I wonder what the beer of champagnes is?), my friend Baby Bien came up with the name Arjewtino and my blog was launched.

I told people I started blogging because I wanted to “express my creative side”. But that wasn’t entirely true. Bloggers may be creative but we’re also narcissists. The good ones are just unapologetic about it.

So I kept blogging and after several months, moved from blogspot to my own domain. I started getting more involved in the “DC blogging scene” and I met some amazing people, many of whom I consider true friends. Hell, I even (indirectly) got a job because of my blog.

For the most part, and at the risk of sounding melodramatic about a blog (even the word sounds derisive when drawn out), this little online experience has been one of the most memorable of my life. I became what one friend called “famous” but for reasons I never quite understood. Famous for blogging? That’s like being famous for complaining, which I suppose has become a sort of creepy cottage industry.

It took me so long to post this because I didn’t really know how to retire. But now that I’m here, with just a few words left (and one last Washingtonian interview), I feel like making some grand sweeping observation that will sum up not only Arjewtino but blogging as a whole.

Unfortunately, there really is no way of encapsulating the act of blogging without sounding like a pompous ass, a characteristic I have nearly perfected while drinking. Seriously, want some unsolicited advice? Get me a beer or two and stand back.

Instead, I’ll just end this by saying thank you. Thank you to my friends who read my blog and to all you bloggers who have been so consistently awesome. To all of my readers and commenters and lurkers (this might be as good a time to delurk as any, by the way). Thank you to all my fans and visitors and even the haters–some of your emails have cracked me up.

And one final thank you to The Princess, who with good humor earned a tongue-in-cheek nickname and who should probably have been named The Saint for putting up with all my shenanigans. I got “Why can’t you be normal?” a lot.

My one regret from retiring this blog now, aside from all the never-to-be-written blog post ideas rattling around in my head, is that I never got to hold a contest giveaway I had planned to do for my 10,000th comment.

I currently have 8,634 comments and while I don’t think I’ll get 1,366 comments for this post (my highest is 70), stranger things have happened.

So I’ll hold myself to that promise. The 10,000th commenter, if there is one, will receive the official Argentina World Cup jersey I wore while watching the games in 2006.

Don’t worry. It’s been washed.

Chau,
Arjewtino

P.S. One last thing. Anonymity is a wonderful thing on the Internet. If you don’t agree, find out what cache is and then get back to me. Still, I can’t end this without one final reveal.

My name is Iván. Good to meet you.

As you may have noticed from the past couple of weeks, I have not been blogging much.

No, I’m not retiring and, no, I am not trapped under anything heavy (though give it time, I still haven’t put together the second filing cabinet).

I just need to unplug.

Lately, I haven’t really been feeling it. Blogging, that is.

Like Chris wrote me recently, “Sometimes it gets to be too much and you end up thinking, “‘Uh, what the hell am I doing this for again?’”

I’ll be back, maybe in a couple of weeks. I have plenty of blog post ideas I still want to write. These ideas have to be expressed somewhere or I’ll end up writing them down on cocktail napkins and begging homeless people to read them.

So don’t delete me from your blogrolls or RSS feeds. I’ll keep reading your blogs and maybe commenting once in awhile.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll write a book with my time off.

Or at least read one.

Last week, I watched a YouTube video of some dude who made a $100 bet with his friends that he could eat $25 worth of McDonald’s food in one sitting without hurling.

The video shows him going to a McDonald’s, ordering 5-piece Chicken Selects, 10-piece McNuggets, one Big Mac, one Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, one Double Cheeseburger, four large fries, and four medium Cokes, and then eating all of it in 68 minutes.

Being a man who thinks he can Do Anything if he puts his mind (and stomach) to it, my first comment upon watching the video was: “I can do that.”

My friend INPY, who showed me the video, immediately questioned my ability.

“Do you have any idea how much food that is?” he asked me as I started plotting a strategy.

“Yeah,” I said, “and I could totally do it. If I wanted to.”

“I’ll bet you $100 you can’t.”

“I’ll bet you I can.”

So we started setting the rules of the bet. I would eat the exact amount of food the YouTube dude did and would have to finish it in 68 minutes. If I were unable to eat all the food or if I vomited during the binge, I would lose the bet.

Then I thought of something pretty obvious: what the fuck was I doing?

The easiest way to to become famous in this country is to eat or not eat something to the extreme.

Morgan Spurlock became famous in 2004 for his documentary Super Size Me, where he ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month. More recently, this San Diego couple became “Internet famous” for surviving on just $1 a day of food.

This country is fascinated by feats of Super Eating. Or Super Not Eating.

I could declare tomorrow I’m eating only Matzo balls for a month and I’d probably land a book deal.

Actually, what would happen if I only ate Matzo balls for a month? Those little suckers are pretty awesome but what health effect would it have on me if I ate them for 30 days?

Let’s analyze this. For the most part, matzo balls are nothing more than protein and carbs. They are made primarily of eggs, matzo meal, and salt. Lots and lots of salt.

So, assuming conservatively that I ate six of them per day (one for breakfast; two for lunch; three for dinner), that would be 180 matzo balls in a month.

Yeah, I could do that. In fact, the only thing holding me back would be having to actually cook all these portions.

But what would be the point?

Spurlock tried to prove the obvious hypothesis that eating too much fast food is bad for you. The $1/day couple tried to make a sociopolitical statement about food economics. Or maybe they’re just cheap.

But I don’t know what eating Matzo balls for a month would validate. There’s no nutritional argument to be made nor any political purpose.

Unless it somehow solved the Middle East crisis, all I would get out of the experience would be a boring diet and high blood pressure.

In the end, INPY and I discussed the McDonald’s wager for a long time but didn’t actually make the bet. Even his plea that I “could blog about it” wasn’t enough to sway me.

But I totally could have done it.

Blogger Happy Hour

Thanks to all who came out to the “Invite Your Blog Crush” DC Bloggers Happy Hour on Friday and braved a very cold outdoor patio at Marvin. It was great seeing familiar faces and meeting so many new ones.

My favorite moment of the night happened when I met Franco Beans:

Arjewtino: “Haven’t we met before? Didn’t we meet at the Bloggerational Ball last month and you were wearing that velvet jacket?

Lemmonex: “Not all black people look the same, asshole.”

Arjewtino: “They don’t?”

Franco Beans: “No, no, he’s right, we do.”

When planning a blogger happy hour, I am usually inundated with a variety of questions:

• When is it?
• Are DC bloggers nice?
• Will people know who I am?
• Why’d you pick that bar, asshole?

But one question I rarely get asked is: How do you actually plan these blogger happy hours?

Let me tell you, Person Who Did Not Ask Me That Question But Which I am Choosing to Answer Anyway, it’s not easy. There is a lot more to it than you may realize.

We have to consider so many elements, like venues, themes, dates, vibes, bloggers’ sensitive feelings, and whether Virgle Kent will want to bring his midget porn to the bar.

It can be daunting. So let me pull the curtain back and show you behind the scenes of what it is like to plan these DC Bloggers Happy Hours, the next one of which I am once again co-hosting with Lemmonex and Roosh and will be held:

Step 1: Pick a Date

Easy, right? Wrong. What do you think we do, flip through a calendar and point to the a random date?

First, the happy hour has to be on a Friday. Second, it can’t be close to a holiday. Third, all three of us have to be free. And fourth, there has to be enough time between the last happy hour and the next one so people don’t get sick of them.

We do everything short of check weather forecasts to determine if it might rain that night.

But no matter what, no matter how perfect the date is, I receive comments and emails from bloggers pissed at me for choosing a day when they’ll be out of town or already have plans.

The day I can see every single person’s mental/online calendar will be the day we perfect this step.

Step 2: Choose a Bar

Near the metro. Cool environment. Cheap drinks. No Jews.

There are so many facets to picking the right bar to host these things. I usually participate the least in this step because (1) I don’t care and (2) I’m happy hanging out anywhere that doesn’t require me to dance to house music.

For this happy hour, we chose Roosh’s nomination Marvin, which is on U Street and has a relatively large area for a group. I think Roosh liked it because he scored there last time we went. And I liked it because I don’t remember being there, which means I had a good time.

Step 3: Come up with a Theme

This is the optional part of the planning, since not every happy hour needs a theme. I mean, come on, it’s just a bar and bloggers, it’s not rocket surgery.

But for this one, Lemmonex emailed us and asked, “Are we doing a theme to this one or just ‘come and get fucked up’?”

Past themes have included Back to School, Season Finale, and Summer Love.

This theme is a rehash of the now-famous “Invite Your Blog Crush” happy hour, where many bloggers were molested and restraining orders were issued. But deciding on what to call it wasn’t easy.

Lemmonex wanted to call it “Invite Your Blogger Crush Redux”. Roosh, worried about losing “street cred” with a “feminine” term like “redux”, preferred to call it “Intimate” Blogger Happy Hour.

I didn’t like it. “‘Redux’ practically has testicles compared to the word ‘intimate’,” I told him.

Step 4: Design the Image

The true test of the credibility of a blogger happy hour is whether the image we use is a an effective one. I know bloggers who attended one based solely on how pretty it was.

But for the “Invite Your Blog Crush” theme, we were all at a loss for what to do. Roosh didn’t care what it was and Lemmonex wanted a picture of “a throbbing member”.

I suggested using this image and calling it the “I Want to Finger Your Blog” Blogger Happy Hour:

Maybe I went too far.

One of our outside consultants, LivitLuvit, said, “Wow, that’s a bit much — I cannot imagine saying that to someone…and it wont bring out the shyer people”.

As Lemmonex pointed out, LivitLuvit “May be the only person I know who can be more inappropriate than me…if she thinks it is too much….”

Come on. Who wouldn’t attend that kind of happy hour? I’ll just keep it in my back pocket for the next one.

Step 5: Promote It

That’s what this post is all about.

So come out next Friday, February 20, starting at 8pm, to the “Invite Your Blog Crush” DC Bloggers Happy Hour. ALL bloggers, commenters, lurkers, fans, and friends are welcome.

And, as the title of this happy hour suggests, invite the blog or blogger you’re crushing on to attend as well. It’s flattering to get invited and you may get lucky.

Just don’t bring your midget porn.

Comment of the Week

This week’s COW goes to The Maiden Metallurgist, for her comment on my post about taking nude photos last week.

Remember when the Washingtonian magazine interviewed me?

So read it. And happy fucking (early) Valentine’s:

Valentine’s Day can be a source of intense pressure on men. We tend to get overwhelmed with questions about what to do. Should I buy her an expensive gift? Should I take her to a nice restaurant? Should I raise the possibility of threesomes?

But the day is much easier than we think it is. That is, if you follow my three-step plan.

I didn’t learn these techniques through easy experience. Rather, I culled them from years of being called “inconsiderate,” “thoughtless,” and “objectively obnoxious.” You, too, can learn these easy steps.

Step One: Don’t wait until the last minute.

I once bought a girlfriend a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. This act wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t bought the box of chocolates on the night of February 14. While on my way to meet her. From a CVS convenience store. The chocolates were disgusting, and I’m lucky I got laid.

Next time, think ahead. There’s probably a chocolate store near your house. Or leftover candy from Christmas in your office for you to steal. Broaden your search.

Step Two: Be creative.

During another Valentine’s Day in my college years, I had to work late at a pizza shop where I was a delivery boy. My inability to get someone to cover my shift disappointed my girlfriend immensely. Because I hadn’t yet learned the lesson from step one, I had nothing to give her when my shift ended. So I made her a pizza.

It wasn’t just any pizza but a heart-shaped one that I made myself with her favorite toppings. When I delivered it to her dorm in my pizza-boy uniform, all was forgiven.

Step Three: Make an effort.

Women don’t just want jewelry or a high-end meal or a unicorn for Valentine’s Day (though if you can get your hands on a unicorn, go for it). What they really want is to see that you made an effort. Because this “effort,” I’ve been told, shows that you care, which women like for some strange reason.

I once took my girlfriend to a Valentine’s dinner at the top of the Kennedy Center. She didn’t care that we got to dress up or that I shelled out $200 for dinner. She liked that I had just thought to do it. Plus, there was a beautiful view of DC up there. If there’s anything that makes women swoon more than a unicorn, it’s a beautiful view.

So guys, just remember this: Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be so hard for you.

Then again, maybe it will be.

Iam a Very Important Person at the office. This means that I get to pick out my own office furniture.

So when my HR chick recently asked me if she should order me a couple of new filing cabinets, I said of course. I went online, picked them out, and she ordered them.

But when they arrived a few days later, they didn’t look anything like they did in the picture (on the left).

That is, they didn’t arrive “pre-assembled”.

Instead, they came in separate pieces in two giant cardboard boxes.

“What’s this?” I asked HR Chick.

“Your new filing cabinets,” she said.

“Who’s putting them together?”

“With my hands?”

Because I’m, apparently, Not a Very Important Person.

So on Monday after my lunch, I got to work building the cabinets. You can totally do this, I thought to myself. You were the number 1 ranked player in Little League when you were 15, you can certainly put together a couple of filing cabinets.

Little did I know that I had no idea what I was doing.

My dad taught me a long time ago that to start building something, you need to separate the pieces and look at the user manual.

OK, Dad, maybe for a moron.

So what did I do? The complete opposite. I dumped out all the contents of the box and tried to figure it out on my own.

FAIL.

After a few minutes of staring at the mess, I realized that a quick glance at the manual wouldn’t hurt.

“You know, I think I might need some tools,” I told my friend and co-worker INPY.

“You think?” he said. He’s very sarcastic.

So I grabbed a screwdriver and something called an amplifier probe from the utility closet and got to work.

Sure enough, I had some trouble. I cut myself on boards, used the wrong screws at least 18 times (did you know they come in different sizes?), and found myself utterly confused by the manual.

The entire time, INPY watched with smarmy glee, nearly laughing at my incompetence. “Thank you for this, I needed it today,” he informed me while I wondered whether a wire stripper would help me.

He also took photos (first with his crappy phone and then with my awesome iPhone) of the building process.

As you can see above, I was having some trouble knowing what went where and how. Here I am looking at the instructions and and trying to stick a lock lever INTO a panel for some reason.

Arjewtino: “Can’t we just hire a [day laborer] to do this?” (I’m allowed to say that because I’m Latino.)

INPY: “You are a [day laborer].”

Arjewtino: “So where’s my cerveza?”

I eventually started to figure things out. Screw this, tighten that, etc.

Still, even an hour into the ordeal, I looked like someone who might audit your tax return. And after getting grease on my hands trying to attach the lock levers, I got whiny.

Arjewtino: “Ewwww,” I’m getting grease on my hands.”

INPY: “And your vagina is squeaky.”

I also cut myself many times.

Arjewtino: “Am I covered under OSHA if I get hurt?”

INPY: “No, you’re not legal.”

Arjewtino: “Hey, I get paid in pesos just like everybody else.”

The further I got into the project, the easier it got. Sure, to the untrained eye, it looks here like I fell into one of the newly constructed drawers.

But what I was actually doing was a sort of calibration so difficult for you novices to understand that I just can’t explain it.

OK, OK, I actually constructed the drawer backwards and had to figure out how to fix it.

Arjewtino: “Ohhhhhh, I had to flip this over.”

INPY: “If I ever see you under the hood of my car, I’ll punch you.”

The day didn’t end well, unfortunately. If it had, you would have been reading about this yesterday.

I stayed as late as possible but got stuck and too tired to keep going. So instead, I left it like this and went home.

But when I returned yesterday morning…

SUCCESS!

After a 6am morning run, a fresh cup of coffee, and a perfect morning poop on my favorite porcelain couch, I finished everything when I got into the office. This is my Patented Look of Self-Satisfaction.

I finally got to use the filing cabinet for its intended purpose: to prop up my feet and make me feel again like a Very Important Person.

I only had one screw leftover, too. But all of these things come with extra parts, right?

One cabinet down. One to go.

When I was 16 and working my first job at Sears in the hardware department (“What the hell is a ratchet?” I asked on the first day), a customer with a shock of white hair and an equally snow-white beard came up to me at the register.

“How can I help you?” I asked him courteously. I didn’t become the youngest Employee of the Month in that Sears’ history without knowing how to talk to people.

The man looked at me like I was his long-lost son.

“When I was your age,” he said, “my hair looked exactly like yours.”

He then pointed his thumb at his own head and said, “NOW look at it.”

Indeed, the dude’s hair was pure white. So I did what any other 16-year-old Sears employee would do when confronted by a man eager to compare hair color.

I laughed awkwardly and asked if he was interested in our fine line of Craftsman wrenches.

I have never forgotten that exchange. And this past weekend, while looking in the mirror and seeing more and more white hairs sprouting among my once oil-black beard and mane, I realized something.

I’m turning into Ernest Fucking Hemingway.

Now, when you consider the history of great American authors, looking like the bad-ass that Hemingway was is not exactly a bad thing.

The guy traveled the world as a reporter, started a literary movement, and wrote some of the most beautiful short stories and novels ever produced. He even wanted to fight in a war so bad that when he was rejected from the U.S. Army for his poor vision, he worked World War I as an ambulance driver.

That is, before he blew his brains out.

Hemingway was my favorite author when I was a teenager. His news and feature stories that he wrote as a reporter were what made me want to become a journalist.

And, when in college and I barely even had enough money to eat, I still managed to buy his books.

Have you ever read “Hills Like White Elephants”? “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”? His six-word short story? Hemingway was a genius.

Seeing my hair follicles slowly lose their ability to produce melanin is a strange phenomenon.

My hair is still, for the most part, really black. So black, in fact, that even my barbers have asked me if I dye it.

I’m not even that bothered by the aging of my hair. If I were, I would have started dying my beard and hair a long time ago.

If anything, it has given me a certain look of wisdom that counteracts my natural inclination toward complete immaturity.

More importantly, the ladies like it.

So although I will probably never win the Nobel Prize in Literature or be the spark of a literary generation, I am happy to know my someday-to-be white hair will make me look like one of my heroes.

I suppose it could be worse.

At least I won’t ever look like that candy-ass F. Scott Fitzgerald.

When Crissy won Hottest Mommy Blogger award last year and followed through with her promise to publish a nude photo of herself on her blog, her husband Ken took the photo.

The result was a fan-fucking-tastic photo showing Crissy wearing nothing more than silver heels and earrings and holding a champagne glass.

But while everyone was complimenting Crissy’s self-described “ta-ta’s” and commending her for having the balls ovaries to pose nude, I was thinking of something else.

How did Ken take such a beautiful photo?

I was impressed with everything. The lighting, the shadows, the setting, the composition of the photo — everything that made it a great shot.

So when an opportunity arose last Friday evening to take nude photos (not of Crissy) myself, I asked myself, WWKD? And I did it.

It was part of a workshop being held by a new photography gallery in DC. My friend Beth had learned about the gallery a few weeks ago when it was accepting submissions from Inauguration Day and invited me to join.

The “figurative” workshop — or “nude” for you non-photo people — was the first time I would be shooting in a studio. Since I had never shot anything in a studio, I was eager to learn how to set up lights, use reflectors, work with backdrops, etc.

The fact that there would be a naked woman standing mere feet away from me was icing on the cake.

Waiting to get started (I’m the fourth one from the left).

I was the first one to arrive to the studio. Of course. The other photographers — four in total — arrived and then the model, a tall Russian woman named Katya.

The photographers all varied in our respective expertise. As an amateur who only did this as a hobby, I was the least experienced, especially with the technical aspects of photography.

“What kind of equipment do you shoot with?” one of the photogs asked me after we met.

“My iPhone, ha ha”, I responded.

He didn’t laugh. Tough room.

Paulo, the studio head started the workshop by handing out a syllabus and going over how to find a nude model (Craigslist), how to talk and approach them (don’t be creepy), and to have a plan for what kind of photos you wanted to take (naked ones?).

He introduced Katya, who had moved to the U.S. a year ago with her husband and daughter. She told us that “there are many crazies out there” and that making a prospective model feel comfortable, from beginning to end, should always be our priority.

Paulo then put on some Cat Stevens on the radio and asked Katya to drop the robe.

After all, I know I love getting naked to “Wild World”.

I expected the first few minutes to be awkward but they were much more comfortable than I thought they would be. We were all there to take photos so it wasn’t like we were trying to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

Rather, we all looked at this naked woman and figured out how to best take her photo.

We went through a variety of “scenes”, shooting Katya at different angles, using a variety of lighting and shadow techniques and trying different backdrops (white, gray, black).

Paulo had given me a wireless flash thing-a-ma-bob (I believe that’s the technical term for it), which would engage the lights whenever I snapped a shot. I took my first shot on my Canon Xti and looked at the result in the viewfinder.

“Wow,” I said as I looked at what was the clearest photo I had ever taken on my camera.

Katya was great and obviously experienced, manipulating her body into different poses and listening to us when we asked her to move her hand a certain way or to place her feet in a particular place or to look directly or away from the lens.

The shoot lasted three hours and I took only 113 photos, far less I’m sure than the other guys. Probably because I was the most tentative.

Still, I have some decent shots and am planning to use them to launch a more professional photography site sometime in the future.

And though Katya signed the required model release form, I’m still not 100% sure about the legalities of displaying the photos here on this blog.

But I will show one.

My favorite photo happened during a lull in between shots. Ironically, it wasn’t even a “nude” shot.

We were nearly done with the shoot but Paulo wanted to create one last, very specific scene.

While he was setting up the lights, Katya sat demurely on the black velvet-covered pillow she had been lying on. I snapped a photo at the very moment that she looked up at Paulo, who was giving her instructions.

This was the result (totally SFW):

Hmmm…maybe I’ll make a career out of this.

Why would a company with one of the most widely recognized names in the world spend millions of dollars to rebrand its name to merely a letter?

Because it’s brilliant, that’s why.

In a bold move that many in the media are decrying as “stupid” and “huh?”, Gatorade abandoned its decades-old, globally recognized brand and reimagined itself to “G”.

Yup. Just “G”.

As expected when a company becomes a letter, a lot of people with too much time on their hands are getting upset. Even the family of the sports drink’s inventor is pissed.

I, however, commend Gatorade, er… G.

According to Business Week’s top 100 brands, G’s parent company PepsiCo is number 27. It’s behind brands like Coca-Cola (#1) and Google (#11) but ahead of ones like Kellogg’s (#40) and Starbucks (#86).

Additionally, the name change will be a huge time-saver. Do you have any idea how long it takes to sound out three whole syllables. Over the course of my lifetime, do you have any idea how much time I will save?

According to my advanced calculator that can solve othogonal elliptic vectors as well as determine why men like chicks in knee-high boots, 43.7 years.

Wait, that can’t be right. Shit, I’m using an Etch-a-Sketch. Nevermind.

Still, whatever the savings is, it’s a long time. Gay…tor…ade. Phew, that took forever. I could have eaten three cupcakes during that time.

And since I’m someone who likes to “follow trends” like some kind of suicidal lemming, I’m taking a cue from G and changing my blog brand to…

That’s right, I will no longer be known as the cumbersome four-syllable moniker Arjewtino. I will be known only as A.

Believe me, I know what I’m doing. I once applied for and didn’t get a job in the branding industry, but I learned a lot during the interviews, so I know how this shit works.

First of all, A is the first letter of the alphabet, which places me at the top of all my friends’ blogrolls. Boo-yah.

Secondly, A is a monosyllabic brand that hasn’t been taken. There’s X (for “ectasy”), H (for “heroin”), and WTF (for “what the fuck?”). No one has dibs on A, so it’s mine now. Hell, even A.com hasn’t been purchased yet.

And thirdly, I have faith that webbertudes will read a blog called A. Sure, A doesn’t communicate any information nor does it explain its own brand, but neither did G and that company’s doing just fine.

I know some of you may not be happy about this name change. I appreciate your loyalty to the “Arjewtino.com” brand. But even though I believe this rebranding will keep me relevant in the online marketplace, I still want to make my readers happy.

So you may lodge any complaints to a@gmail.com.

Comment of the Fortnight

Since there was no Comment of the Week last week, I considered all comments from the past two weeks. This fortnight’s COF goes to I-66 for his comment on yesterday’s post about pooping euphemisms, which made me LOL and ROTF and whatever else you kids call it:

Call it what you will.

Taking care of business. Making a deuce. Dropping the kids off at the pool. Doing the crossword puzzle. Stylin’. Seeing a man about a horse.

Or, my personal favorite, clearing some cap space*.

But no matter what euphemism you use to describe it, and no matter how much Lemmonex wishes bloggers would stop writing about it, pooping is just plain funny.

Combine that with the fact that I suffer from Reactance Bias and must disobey even passive sign posts, then this happens:

To answer your anticipated questions:

• This was taken during my trip from Los Angeles to San Jose last weekend.
• It’s somewhere along Route 46, near Cambria.
• We stopped because I wanted to take pictures of the beautiful view.
• My dad took it with my camera.
• It might have been his idea.
• Now you see where I get my sense of humor from.
• No, I am not actually pooping.

If I truly had decided to clear some cap space on this spot, it would have only been ranked 3rd in my “Top Most Embarrassing Places I’ve Pooped” list.

Don’t worry. I’ll never write about my Top 2.

*(c) Baby Bien 2009