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People go through struggles every day. Sometimes a person can’t decide what to wear in the morning, or they have to walk to school without getting stabbed by street toughs, or they struggle internally to keep from strangling their colleagues and co-workers (I have this one fairly often; I am not sure what the score is, but right now I am pitching a shutout). Yesterday I had a struggle against gravity. Specifically, my body and the earth were playing a day-long game of tug-of-war with my pants.

When I got dressed yesterday morning, I forgot to include a belt with my outfit. My pants were fresh out of the dryer, and being freshly laundered, they weren’t as “loose” as they would have been if I had worn them a time or two since their previous washing. I suspect this is why I didn’t think to put on my belt. I pretty much threw my pants and shoes on and headed out the door. It wasn’t until I got to work that I realized there was a problem.

As most of you (who don’t exclusively wear sweatpants) probably know, the longer you wear something, the more it loosens up. Although my pants were a little saggy on me when I got to work, by the end of the day I was honestly concerned that they might fall off at any moment. Not a big deal at work since I just sit at my desk, pinning my pants between the chair and my shapely behind, but I had to go to school after work. I just sit just as hard during class as I do at work, but a fair amount of walking is required to get from my car to my classroom.

As I sat in the parking garage at school, I scanned my car for anything I could use as a makeshift belt. There was a scarf, abandoned when the cold left, and though it was long enough, I would have looked like less of an idiot baby-stepping to class with my pants around my ankles than I would have with that scarf holding my pants up. Plus I’m not sure I could have made it fit through the belt loops in my jeans. That was it.

The only thing I had going for me was the fact that I had put on clean underwear that morning. Hopefully no one would get a chance to see them. I’m all for self-expression, but I’m pretty strongly against the practice of young men wearing their pants in such a fashion that the world sees their boxer shorts. I have no desire to be that guy. And while I’m on the subject, I’d also like to mention my disdain for dudes wearing girls’ jeans, which I keep seeing more and more often (at the mall). Wtf, dudes? But I digress.

I got out of the car and my pants immediately fell to a dangerous level, but seemed like they might stay. Just to be cautious, I took everything other than my wallet out of my pockets and transferred them to my bookbag. You don’t want to load up a pack mule with a gimpy leg.

I took a few steps and knew that no matter how light I made my load, I was going to have issues. I walked slowly and purposely, senses heightened, trying to feel for any sign that my jeans were giving up the fight. I now realize how old people must feel when walking and trying to protect their brittle pelvises. Eventually I stuck my hand in one pocket and tried to hold tight to the material inside without making it to obvious that I was making a fist inside my pants. I don’t know if I got any strange looks, since I think I stared at the ground the entire way.

I made it to class and back to the car without incident, and I now have a much greater appreciation for the value of belts.

Ha ha, no way, dude. You are easily replaceable.

Being the monument to human kindness and decency that I am, I volunteered to babysit for some friends of mine on Friday night so that they could go see a play. When I got to their house to fulfill my duties, everyone was eating dinner and watching The Little Mermaid. I hadn’t seen it in forever, and as I watched, I started wondering about the biology of the merfolk.

What specifically caught my attention was a remark that Poynt Blank made about King Triton’s nipples. And although you never see them because of some carefully-placed seashells, it stands to reason that all of the mermaids have nipples as well. I also noticed that Ariel clearly has a belly button, which would indicate the former presence of an umbilical cord. Both of these are clearly mammalian traits and would indicate that baby merfolk are carried in a uterus.

However, for this to be the case, one would have to assume that they had human sex organs. But since the lower half of any respectable mermaid or merman is that of a fish, and since this is where the aforementioned human sex organs are found, it sort of prevents that from being the case.

Most fish are oviparous, which means they reproduce by laying large numbers of eggs that are fertilized externally by a male, which is sort of gross.

Male fish: OMG, eggs! *fap fap fap*

Given that Triton has so few daughters, and all of them are different ages, this scenario seems to be highly unlikely.

There are, however, some fish (such as some sharks) that reproduce with a viviparous sytem, in which the embryo develops inside the mother and gains nourishment from her body instead of via an egg. There’s an advanced form of vivipary called placental viviparity, which, being closest to mammalian reproduction, seems to be a strong candidate for how the merfolk get things done. It doesn’t explain the nipples, but I think it’s as close as we’re going to get.

I also noticed that you never see a string of excrement hanging off of any of the merfolk the way you do with fish in a tank, but that’s probably for the best.

So I’ve been pretty busy at work in the past week or so, and since work is where I do my blogging, that means no new posts. I could very easily write from home, but after I spend all day here on the computer, getting online and blogging is usually one of the last things I want to do when I get home. I also don’t like doing laundry, but clean undies are a necessity, whereas blog updates are not.

Since work is the reason I have been conspicuously absent, I thought I would regale you all with a couple of tales about how things have been going here in the past few days. When I started the new site, I told myself that I was not going to write about my personal very often, if at all, but these stories are somewhat humorous and/or sad and I feel I play sort of an everyman character in them, so feel free to project yourself into the scenarios.

I am sort of a loner in my office. Not in the cool way, where I would be a mysterious drifter or a guy who refuses to play by society’s rules. Just in the way that I don’t really talk very much to the people in my office. I am sure the majority of my co-workers find me to be odd or kind of a dick. What can you do, right? I thought I was the only one like that, but something happened recently that makes me think otherwise.

One of our project managers (we’ll call him Brad) called in the other day to talk to one of our draftsmen (who shall henceforth be known as Harry). Harry has worked here for about a year; Brad has been here for six or seven months. There are generally no more than a dozen people in the office, so it’s not like I work in some huge complex where you can easily lose track of people.

I go downstairs and to tell Harry about the call and we have the following conversation:

Me: Harry, Brad is on line one for you.
Him: Who?
Me: Brad.
Him: *blank stare*
Me: Gifford.
Him: Who’s that?
Me: Uh… he works here? His office is upstairs.

Awesome. I might not talk to people when I don’t have to, but I definitely know everyone’s name.

Not only is my office in an ugly part of town, but the building is ugly and everything in it is fairly crappy, including the heating and air conditioning system. Last week during our unseasonably warm weather, the rooftop heater apparently decided that spring was here to stay after two days, and promptly stopped working. When temperatures dipped back into highs in the 40s, I suspect the heater just decided that since it was going to be cold no matter whether it made the inside of the building warm for us, it was just going to lie there and not work.

The weather got cold and has stayed that way, and in a show of unflinching complacency, the heater has stayed equally broken. I’ve spent the past four work days with both a sweatshirt and my coat on, huddled over my desk like Bob Cratchit. All I need now is a gimpy little kid with an adorable zeal for Christmas.