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Overflow

I was downstairs the other day when I heard this rumbling sound coming from the second floor. As I hopped up the stairs, the sound got louder, and when I made it up, there was a puddle of water growing outward from the bathroom door. I opened the door and the toilet was overflowing. I don’t know how or why it started to overflow right then and there, because I hadn’t used that toilet in a while, but this train of thought only lasted for five seconds, tops, because the more I stood around and thought about it, the more gross toilet water was making its way out of the toilet and into the rest of the house.

My first instinct was to grab the plunger and get right to work, which, with the toilet bowl already filled to the brim with toilet water, with the water cascading down the sides of the bowl, only made things splash around. I tried to position myself standing on my tiptoes, as if I could somehow get to work here without getting wet, but as soon as I started plunging, up and down, there were these mini tidal waves making direct contact with the front of my pants.

It wasn’t working. And that’s when I thought to turn the water off at the source, something I should have done immediately. But I only let myself contemplate my missteps for another second, second and a half, because I was standing there and my shoes were getting wet. I had to bend down to reach for the knob behind the base of the toilet, and I was really afraid that some of the toilet water was going to splash on my face, which somehow it did.

Once the water was off, the sound of rushing water went away, which gave me the false sense that my problem had been solved. This feeling of comfort didn’t last very long, as I realized that I had a huge mess on my hands. My brain was looking for some sort of quick action. Or, if not an immediate fix, at least an immediate plan, something that I could get to work on right away, a series of steps that, once executed, would make my problem go away. But I didn’t know where to start. And the growing pool of water that was escaping the bathroom made its way to the edge of the staircase, so I could hear the water start to trickle down in those little lines of very rapid drops.

There was a towel hanging next to the shower, and without really thinking it out, I just grabbed it and threw it to the ground. But the water was so much that it immediately overwhelmed my puny effort. The towel soaked through, and it hadn’t made any noticeable dent in the water level. And now what was I supposed to do with the towel? I couldn’t pick it up and put it anywhere, it would just drip all over the place. If anything, I’d only added to the mess.

I thought about paper towels, but no, I had to go down to the basement and find a mop. And then I had to mop everything up with a bucket until it was all clean. It took like two hours, total. I was just sitting there, I had other things on my mind besides mopping the floors, and then all of the sudden the toilet went bonkers and totally hijacked my day.

And just as I was going over the floors with a soapy solution, I heard the same rumbling sound coming from downstairs. I went to run, like a real life game of human whack-a-mole, to turn that water off before there was another giant mess to clean up, but the floors were still slippery from me having just mopped everything up, and so I wiped out, my feet flying out forward, the back of my head hitting the lip of the top step before my entire body slid.

And I would’ve fallen the entire flight, but right as my head made contact, my left arm instinctively shot up and grabbed on to the railing. So I was stable for a second, but only a second. With the wind knocked out of me due to the hit to my head, I started panicking, concentrating all of my strength toward my left hand on the railing. It must have been too much weight for the piece of wood bolted to the wall, because something popped out, a piece of hardware, I couldn’t be sure, and when that gave way, that’s when I fell down the rest of the stairs.

My bottom tooth had punctured the inside of my lower lip, and as I opened my eyes after realizing that I wasn’t seriously injured, I felt the dual sensation of the warm blood filling my mouth as well as a coolness at the back of my head. It was a puddle. It was coming from the bathroom. I don’t know how it got to me so quick, or maybe I’d been knocked out for a little while when my body tumbled to the ground floor.

Then there was a loud popping sound, like a burst, like a mini explosion. It was the upstairs bathroom. I definitely turned the water off, but there must have been some sort of pressure behind it, because now there was a strong current of rushing water pouring out of the bathroom, down the stairs. I was getting soaked from above and below. And I tried to twist my body into an upright position, but everything hurt pretty badly, and so I let myself just kind of sit there, the water accumulating under my head, now maybe half an inch deep.

And then I heard the doorknob turn, I realized too late that I was unfortunately positioned right by the front door. I tried to scream out, “Wait!” but she must not have heard me over all of that running water, and when the door opened, it opened right to my head, another slam. Right before I blacked out again, I could hear my wife, screaming, she was just like, “Jesus Christ, Rob, what the fuck?”

It’s playoffs

I was hanging out at my friend Bill’s place last weekend, we were sitting on the couch drinking some beers and watching a baseball game. It had been like half an hour already, and I was getting pretty bored. We hadn’t said anything to each other in a while, we were just kind of sitting there, I was on my phone, but not doing anything, just swiping from app to app, hoping that something interesting would pop up on the screen. Once that got to be unbearable, I tried breaking the silence.

“Since when do you watch baseball?” I asked him.

“I don’t really follow it, but it’s playoffs,” he said.

“Yeah?” I was trying to say, so? Really? But I didn’t want to jump straight to being a jerk. But Bill didn’t get what I was going for, and so he just responded back, “Yep.”

And so we kept sitting there, watching this baseball game. For a while I actually tried to follow along, but it was like reading a textbook. A really big, old, dusty, dry, boring textbook, and the cover has all of this gross film all over it, I’m guessing from years of disuse, and when I open it, I find out that it’s in Finnish. It’s like, back to baseball, I had no foundational knowledge of what was going on, I wasn’t attached to either of the teams playing, so it’s not like I could at least get behind any of that false hometown pride enthusiasm. Maybe ten minutes later, I started prodding Bill again.

“So which team are you rooting for?” I asked him.

“Baltimore,” he told me.

“Oh yeah? Baltimore? Why?”

“What do you mean?” he took his eyes off the screen and gave me a sideways look.

“What do I mean? Why did you pick Baltimore? Why not the other team?”

And there was a pause of maybe a second or two, and then he said, “I don’t know, I just like Baltimore.” Then there was another pause, then he added, “And one of my roommates from college was from Baltimore.” He threw that in there, like clearly he’d been thinking of it, ever since I asked him, why was he rooting for Baltimore? And even though it seemed clearly pretty forced, at least from my end, Bill sounded satisfied that at least he had something. At first he said he didn’t know, but then he took it back, because he did know, and apparently it had something to do with an old roommate.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I’m not really convinced.”

“What aren’t you convinced of?”

“I mean, I’m convinced that you’re rooting for Baltimore. I mean, you said it. I guess I shouldn’t have said convinced. That doesn’t really need much convincing. I guess I should have said that I don’t get it.”

“Well,” Bill said, he wasn’t looking like he was annoyed, and I get that, I would have been totally annoyed if Bill were over my house and I was watching something that he didn’t get, and he kept asking me questions about why I was watching what I was watching, “I don’t understand what’s to get.”

“It’s just that,” even knowing that I was on the verge of needling, I couldn’t stop myself, “you say you’re not into baseball, fine, your old roommate is from Baltimore, that’s great, I just don’t get the appeal of sitting in front of a game that you’re obviously not interested in, largely because of … because of what? Because of a third-hand connection to the city of Baltimore?”

Now he looked like he was getting annoyed. And as soon as I saw that annoyed look on his face, I got a little pissed off at myself. Because I knew it was coming. If I kept questioning him, of course he was going to get even more annoyed. But I kept doing it anyway. It was like I couldn’t help myself. Bill didn’t say anything, so I tried to ease off the gas a little, maybe take back some of what I had said.

“I’m just saying,” I said, “you’re not into baseball, right?”

“Right,” he was still annoyed, “but it’s playoffs, man.”

“And what does that have to do with anything?” I asked, maybe a little more confrontational than I’d have liked.

“It’s playoffs. It’s exciting.”

“Dude,” I said, “we’re sitting here on the couch in silence. I’m not excited, and I’ve seen you excited before, this isn’t it, OK, and this doesn’t feel exciting.”

“Whatever,” he turned back toward the TV, “what do you want to do?”

I said, “Well, do you still have your XBOX Live subscription?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “do you want to play?”

“After the game,” he said.

“OK.”

There were still like five innings left. And every time there was a commercial break, the TV station kept showing the same commercials advertising back-to-back reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond weekdays at seven. There was nothing to do on my phone. After an hour, I yawned and said that I was tired, that I was going to go home.

“All right man,” he said, “I’ll see you around.”

And then I got back to my house and it was even more boring that over at Bill’s. My XBOX was stolen like two years ago, and I’d never bothered to get a new one. And there wasn’t anything on TV. I kept flipping through the channels, just to see if this baseball game would ever end. But it was still on. It went into extra innings. I fell asleep on the couch and woke up sometime in the middle of the night with a huge pain in my neck.

Christopher Columbus: hero or villain?

Every year on Columbus Day we always have to hear stories about “the real” Christopher Columbus, about how he was a total jerk. Yes, he sailed to the new world and, yes, apparently he killed a lot of natives. But that was so long ago, and the history is always evolving. Isn’t it a little shortsighted of us to close the book on Columbus? Maybe he wasn’t the evil villain character so popular with modern historians. Maybe he was a hero.

I’m just saying, what if Columbus sailed to America, and he found the population enslaved by a race of evil aliens? I wasn’t around back then, so I can only rely on my imagination here, but could there have been? Can you definitely say that the new continent wasn’t overrun by alien warlords?

If it was, and just hear me out here, if Christopher Columbus sailed all the way to America, only to find the local inhabitants hopelessly enslaved by a group of otherworldly terrorists, and, lets say that Columbus wasn’t a dick, but was actually a pretty good guy, wouldn’t it make sense that he would totally try to help the American Indians rid themselves of their spacefaring captors?

Sure, we think that the Europeans were a lot more technologically advanced than the peoples of North America. But compared to an alien civilization capable of interplanetary conquest, the explorers must have looked downright primitive. So you can imagine the uphill battle Columbus would have faced in taking on a whole fleet of extraterrestrials, if they were actually there, and if Columbus wasn’t a total jerk.

The ensuing battle would have been a massacre, with tons of casualties on both sides. But what if Columbus and his men were somehow successful? What if they fought bravely enough to drive the aliens back from where came? Columbus and his men would be surrounded by the wreckage of an alien war, dead bodies piled up around them. With the aliens now gone, who would believe their story?

Nobody, and that’s why we’re all blaming it on Columbus. And if the aliens are still out there, don’t you think they’re constantly beaming down misinformation about how the events actually went down? I bet you they’re weaseling their way onto the Internet this very second, spreading lies about how it was Columbus and his men who butchered the Indians.

It’s just a theory, obviously, and a working theory at that. I’m always thinking up new possibilities for how the aliens got here in the first place, what their plans were after they finished conquering the Americas, and how, if any of this is true, the European explorers actually saved the whole planet. But yeah, I don’t have a lot of facts.

But still, the next time you hear someone talking about how Columbus was an asshole, about how he and his men butchered and maimed and raped everyone they came in contact with, just ask yourself, are you sure it wasn’t aliens? Are you really sure? Are positive? Can you prove it wasn’t? No? So stop being so judgmental. Just enjoy your day off. Happy Christopher Columbus Day.

I’d move to Mars

If they ever figure out how to viably populate some sort of a permanent settlement on Mars, I’d totally go. “Pack you bags,” I’d give my wife an ultimatum. “It’s either you come with me to Mars, or we’ll have to say goodbye forever.” And of course she’d say yes, because who wouldn’t want to live on another planet?

And I’m not talking about one of these one-way ticket deals where you have to go and set up your own space colony. No, I want the space colony to be already somewhat established. You know, drinking water, some sort of indoor plumbing situation, obviously food is going to be probably limited, but I’d still prefer a decent enough selection so as to have some variety in my diet. Oh yeah, and there has to be Internet. And I’m not talking just like a Mars Internet. It has to be able to connect to the Earth Internet.

Given all of these modest requirements are met, I’d absolutely go live on Mars. Would I ever be able to come back to Earth for a visit? Well, I’d like the option, but I guess it’s not mandatory. Just like maybe once every three or four years, how about I get to spend a month back home? Are there going to be regular transport ships back and forth? Maybe just some vacation time would be cool.

So I’m in. That would be so awesome. I’m so sick of looking outside and constantly seeing everything in blue and green. I for one would welcome the opportunity to feast my eyes on a landscape of red, orange and brown.

Oh yeah, I don’t know what the Mars colony policy might be regarding flora and fauna, but my dog Steve has to be allowed to come with us. That’s a non-negotiable. Obviously I’ll ask him if he wants to come. I mean, I believe that animals have a right to do whatever they want. But my dog is pretty easy to manipulate. For example, I’ve always had a feeling that if I left the door open, he’d just run away. But I buy these huge meaty dog biscuits at Petco, and any time he tries to escape, I hold one of them out, and he always comes running back. So I don’t think it’ll be too difficult convincing him to come to Mars.

Think of how much more space I’ll have on Mars. In the early stages of colonization anyway, there should be plenty of available land. I don’t see why I wouldn’t be able to be governor of my own Martian territory. And hundreds of years from now, when schoolchildren are learning about the early history of Mars, they won’t have to look back and worry about all of those dirty historical details that we’re confronted with every time we look at our own founding fathers. There aren’t any Indians to massacre, and I promise not to use slave labor to build my otherworldly utopia. On the off chance that I do happen to run into any sort of subterranean extraterrestrial civilization, I promise to be really cool. And if my earthly bacteria accidentally give the aliens a space plague, I pledge to do everything in my power to urge scientists both on Mars and back home to pour all of their resources into finding a cure.

I really want to go live on Mars. So I hope that we see some wild advances in space exploration within the next ten years or so. Because I’m not getting any younger. If developing a working cryogenics program to keep me in stasis until Mars is up and running, I’m OK with that, whatever gets me to Mars.

Drive for five

I’m so pumped. I’m on my way to go see the New York Islanders at their last home opener on Long Island. I have mixed feelings about their move to Brooklyn, but only because I have a nostalgic attachment to the Nassau Coliseum. I’m not even kidding, one of my earliest memories was of my dad taking me to a game, Islanders vs. the St. Louis Blues. I must have been like four years old. I didn’t even have the concept of ice hockey in my head, and yet there I was, my dad explaining to me to root for the guys in the white jerseys.

Overall though, I think the move to Brooklyn is the right one. It’s going to elevate the franchise into such a bigger market. Unlike the Coliseum, the Barclay’s Center is accessible by train, so it won’t be a headache to get to games without a car. And it’s going to attract a lot of attention to the Islanders, much in the same way the Nets’ move from New Jersey seemed to revitalize their team.

This year is going to be a big one. I know that Islanders fans say that every year. It’s definitely become something of a refrain on my end. The Islanders haven’t exactly been a standout team for a while now, and they haven’t won a playoff series since 1993. But this year I’m actually pretty optimistic about their chances. So optimistic, in fact, that I bet my brother-in-law Matt a hundred bucks that the Islanders win the Stanley Cup this year.

The Islanders brought the Cup to Long Island four years in a row, the last being in 1983, the year right before I was born. So It’s like, the Islanders won their last Cup, and then right away I was born. And as soon as I made my appearance on Earth, the Islanders took a huge nosedive, never really recovering. I’ve always felt that, despite my fandom, my very existence has been somewhat of a hex on my hometown heroes.

But this year is the year. It’s totally going to happen. And the Rangers aren’t even going to make the playoffs, because they’re terrible. The Islanders are going to bring the Stanley Cup home to Long Island one last time before bringing it to New York, securing their place as New York City’s hockey team. And the Rangers are going to sink further and further into irrelevance, Henrik Lundqvist is going to let up like fifty goals in the first ten games alone, and so they’re going to have to reshoot that Advil commercial, the one where Henrik is guarding his net from a charging rhino, only instead of turning into a barrage of pucks, the rhino is going to turn into a wave of Flintstone’s gummy vitamins, and then he’s going to retire in disgrace.

Let’s go Islanders.