Big Beer Bellies, Bellybutton Lint, And The Inexplicableness Of The Rectification

Someone googled “Big Beer Belly” and got my site today. OK. Rub it in. Maybe I deserve it, because I have poked a few Pillsbury Bellies in my day, admiring the deep-socketed bellybutton and how it just consumed my finger up to the second knuckle...

I mean, whoa! Look at that!

(And yes, I have indeed stuck my finger in a fat man’s bellybutton. Many times. I couldn’t help it. It was just something I HAD to do. Like smelling ear wax. Some things are just inexplicable that way. You ever have an inexplicable thing?)

I officially designated January NAFALOMO. There is even a banner up on your left that makes it more official.

(Sort of makes ya wanna wear clothes when you blog, don’t it?)

My goal is twenty pounds by my birthday (Feb. 7th). My beer has been removed, my bread and butter, and I have started on a 20 minute jog per day regimen that is already causing major soreness in my chicken legs (running on legs designed for a 200 pounder, and then adding 67 pounds as a handicap will make sore calves and shins to be sure).

The update is simple. Life sucks without beer, but is survivable. I like running. It makes me feel like a faster person than a walker. Like, three times as fast. So to all you walkers out there, I say-- “phphphphphtttphphpttphtpthh!!” Eat my dust, suckers!

I tie my two dogs up to opposite ends of the same length of rope, and they go with me. We are running on a country road that gets about five cars per twenty minutes. Trouble is, it is a country road, meaning, no cops, and people tend to drive like maniacs when they think they can get away with it.

My Collie thinks the rope is something to play with and barks and bites at it and picks it up and drops it. She does this for the whole run, and stays right with that rope no matter what.

My white Akita/mix wants to please her daddy, so she has her ears back listening for instructions from me. A whistle here and a “Tuti, c’mere!” there, and I keep her right with me. I don’t hold the rope when I run. I let my Collie Wenzel think she is in charge of that. She holds the rope in her mouth and walks herself and her best friend Tuti. I just run along for the company...

I used to have a bellybutton that collected lint in these amazing buttons. That is a truth I wouldn’t admit to if it wasn’t true. They started arriving after I developed hair on my chest and abdomen (like a real guy!) with the hair around my bellybutton evidently allowing lint IN, but blocking its way OUT. The result was that a button the size of a dime and the thickness of a pair of nickels would be ready and available to be “popped” out at the end of the day either in the shower or more likely by some curious bellybutton checker-outter.

And one day I got this idea. I cleaned a large mayonnaise jar and collected the buttons for over two years. Yes. I did. The collection still exists to this day in an attic in Hakuba Japan, if you don’t believe me. And the funniest part of all this was, I TRAVELED with my jar of bellybutton lint buttons the whole time. I went through customs many many times with the jar in my bag. I got searched every time, and every time, came the questions about the jar.

“What is it?”

“A bellybutton lint collection.”

“Is it yours?”

“Yes, my collection, yes.”

“No. Is it your lint?”

“Well, of course it is my lint! What? You think I would carry some other person’s bellybutton lint around with me in a mayonnaise jar?”

“You have a point. Why are you traveling with this jar?”

“I am still collecting lint.”

“You are collecting... huh?”

“I collect the lint from my bellybutton everyday, and then I put it in the jar.”

“You cannot be serious...”

“I am serious! Here, let me show you.”

I would pull up my shirt and pull a lint button out of my bellybutton right then and there, just to show the inspector. Here. Look. A white one.”

The bellybutton lint button would have bits of shed body hair in it and the inspector would not look too keen on handling it.

“Can you open that jar for me?” I would ask. I would balance the button on the tip of one finger and look at it like it was a specimen of rarity and wealth.

The inspector would open my jar. He would sniff the contents (because some things are inexplicable) and then hold it out toward me. I would put the new lint button in the jar, and the inspector would screw back on the lid. He would place it back in my bag and leave the rest of my stuff unsearched. OK, he’d say. You may go...

Now my belly doesn’t get the button. I miss that. Something about having a stretched orifice that precludes lint buttons...

I have yet to figure out all of the physics involved. But when I start making buttons again, I’ll be sure to tell all of ya’ll...

It would mean my belly is back to where it belongs. Just another button-making hole in the universe...