Cleaning up the community one wipe at a time

Look to your left. Look to your right. These kinds of people live among you:

Here is how I cured a hag from having the Poodle defecate on my yard in Idaho. One Saturday, maybe after a beer or so, I watched for the witch. Sure enough, here she came late afternoon and the dog made it's deposit. I went out the front door with some Charmin in my hand and told her to squat as it was her turn. The hag never walked the dog on my side of the street again. It may be the same here in AZ, but you can have people arrested for assault and battery even if they never lay a hand on you. So if these turkeys give you a bad time about walking their dog on your lawn, do it.

I opened my e-mail to that "letter to the editor" this morning. First thing - 5:30 a.m. Wham! Letter talking about doody. Hello, copy editor, how about you read this little diddy about me wiping my neighbor's ass. This is editorial page gold. You'll snag awards for this letter.

Believe it or not, this pales in comparison to one letter writer (who very well may be the same nut job who thinks the blue hairs in the community like to read about dog shit - it always makes my day, a little dogshit letter and maybe some Penthouse Forum letters later on) who wrote two full, handwritten pages - front and back - about how a woman dumped a snotty Kleenex in his new trash can soiling it's cleanliness (it's a TRASH CAN ass wiper!). Later in this same letter, the writer explains that he has white surgical gloves which he uses to remove the sticky, snot-drenched Kleenex from the bottom of the can. And the only reason he has these gloves is because he must "express" his dog's anal glands (If you have to express the anal glands on Fido, it may be time to express the family pooch to the vet for the $65 shot. Let's see the Dog Whisperer deal with that one). I can't make this shit up. There are more nuts out here than in a gay porno.

Do the old fogies think our newspaper is missing letters about poop and ass wiping? I'll admit, we run a lot of crap sometimes, but it's always implied crap.

So there I am, coffee in one hand, bottom jaw in the other, shocked to shit to find this in my inbox and waiting to be slapped inside today's paper. And I think, dammit, who am I to curb someone's freedom of speech. That's the president's job. If this guy wants the community to know he's a crazy, drunk kook who likes to stranger's wipe asses, I shouldn't stop him. In fact, I should applaud the freak show for coming forward and imparting such wisdom upon the six or seven suckers who subscribe to our rag. I typically run letters in the order I receive them or queue some that are relevant to a current topic. I bump all those for weird, ass-wiping dude because nothing sells papers like sex, violence and poop.

"Poodle poop can draw PoPo" is the headline I give Shakespeare's piece and give it prime placement, under the political cartoon that depicts - ironically enough - President Bush farting and calling his ass a weapon of mass destruction (that's right, we're a progressive newspaper catering to seniors). I put it in a light-colored box on the page to catch the readers' eyes and bump the headline to 75 point so even the most myopic blue hair can spot this riveting piece of advice. The only way to make this letter stand out more is to make it a popup (and don't think I didn't want to add a pull tab that released a square of toilet paper).

I hand my future award-winning page to our top blind copy editor who green lights it, offering to buy me a soda for such good work. I take him up on it because that's the closest to a raise I'll see and prop my feet up on my desk, basking in the glory created by one crazy schmuck in my community.

It's a spinoff waiting to happen. "Kids say the darndest things" followed by "Seniors write the craziest things."