[Hogskin]

It’s tax time and it’s pretty miserable around here – long hours, colossal amounts of work, and some very difficult clients…. So we do what we can to make it a little more pleasant for everybody by providing some perks. We bring in lunch a couple times a week, and we have a masseuse come in 1 day a week and anybody that wants one can get a real nice back/shoulder/neck/arm massage. Anyway, today was barbecue day – this is the really good barbecue that I’m always yammering about. Man, I just love this stuff. The problem is that I’ve really tried to change my eating habits since the first of the year and have dramatically cut back on the red meat that I consume. In the past 4 months or so, I’ve maybe had red meat half a dozen times…. And it always does a number on me. So today was barbecue day and I could just hear the hot links calling to me – “Hogskin, we’ll be together at last” and all that and I just couldn’t contain myself. So I fed a couple to my tapeworm and it was good. After about two hours I started getting some major rumblings in the old crap factory. I made a deposit at the reading room and figured I was good for the rest of the day. Let it be known that my future as a clairvoyant is definitely in doubt. About two hours later my time for a massage arrived so I went on in, hopped onto the goofy massage chair, and the gal started grinding away. I was feeling pretty good when all of the sudden I think she knocked one loose. My eyes flew wide open and I just knew it was coming. I had it in a headlock for a good 60 seconds and I thought I was going to get the better of it, but it s-l-o-w-l-y crept out with a muffled “eeeeeeeeekkkk” sound. Now I could immediately tell that my shorts were dry and that there was no lump in it so the major tragedy had been averted. I hoped I could blame it on the squeak of the chair… but then it hit us both like a truck. This one even made my eyes water. I mean it was bad. She was a real trooper and tried to ignore it for a few seconds, but this was the industrial duty stuff. She started hacking and I thought she was going to earl right there on my back. She grabbed her sweater and stuck it up in her face, hoping to mask the smell, but it was no use. Suddenly her eyes grew wide and she started doing the goldfish cheeks and I could tell she was choking it back. She high-tailed it out of there and I made my way to the kitchen looking for anything that would freshen the air. As luck would have it, some carpet cleaner was powerful enough to do the trick. So as I finished up, she returned, not too much worse for the wear. I’ve never felt like such a tool in all my life, but she was a really good sport and laughed it off, said her brothers had the same effect on her as a kid. Anyway, I think my hot link days are over… and I’m not sure I’ll be having any masseuses lining up to take care of me. Man, I hate when stuff like that happens.