Okay, whose ass can use shards?

Maybe you'd use the meat of the coconut? And then the milk to wash up? I dunno.

Dammit, this is going to be bugging me all day now.

I know. You'd find someone else and say, "I'll give you this coconut if you wipe my ass for me."

I've always thought personal hygiene issues like that would be a way bigger barrier to enjoying life in some romanticized former era than missing things like the internet or modern transportation.

I do remember hearing something about corncobs and the Pilgrims ...

When I was about four or five, I found a novelty "corncob with an electrical cord" in the bathroom of a relative's house. It freaked me out.

I found a novelty "corncob with an electrical cord" in the bathroom of a relative's house. It freaked me out

My mind is supposed to go where my mind is going, right? Right?

My mother, who grew up before Kleenex, pads and tampons, views paper products as the greatest inventions of the century.

From Wait Wait Don't Tell Me:

SAGAL: For your last innovation, please listen to this advertisement from 1935, read for you by Carl.

KASELL: Guaranteed 100 percent free from splinters.

SAGAL: What product was finally offered squeezably soft and splinter-free?

Ms. DAVIDSON: A hint?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. DAVIDSON: Please.

SAGAL: Mr. Whipple got splinters in his fingers.

Mr. ROCCA: Oh my god, wait, oh my gosh.

Ms. DAVIDSON: Oh, it's the sponge. No, wait.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. DAVIDSON: Oh, toilet paper.

SAGAL: Toilet paper, yes, of course, toilet paper.

(Soundbite of bell)

Ms. DAVIDSON: Oh, what else.

Mr. BODETT: It took until 1935?

SAGAL: Amazingly.

Mr. ROCCA: Geez, what my grandparents went through.

SAGAL: Yeah, exactly. The next time some television commenter starts telling you that things are just as bad now as the Great Depression, don't you believe it.

My mind is supposed to go where my mind is going, right? Right?

Yeah. Unless your mind went to "vibrator," because it wasn't one.

The electrical cord didn't actually do anything. I forget what it was called, but I think "Hillbilly" was somewhere in the name of the thing (it was still in its box).

Coconut husk fibers, maybe? Still pretty scratchy, but better than a whole coconut.

I want to go hug the Charmin bears.

I think I'd rather use a rock, or even snow, than a corncob!

ION, I am cranky-pants at work today.

First, someone at headquarters was forwarded one of my personal tracking spreadsheets, and she wants me to change a bunch of the data in it. I really want to send a snarky email back, saying "why should I do that?" Instead I shall pretend I never got her email. Seriously: I prepared the spreadsheet for my immediate bosses and my clients in the field, to let them know what we're working on and what our priorities are. It's not for headquarters, especially not that office, where they seem to spend all their time issuing stupid directives and not actually helping us get anything done. Bah.

Second, I got an email from someone in another organization asking why I haven't responded to him about something he sent me in March. And the reason is because I sent the request to My Nemesis, who insists on doing all that specific kind of stuff. And she's not done anything with it in two months. So now I look like an incompetent. And no, reporting My Nemesis has no effect: she doesn't answer to my boss, and the person she does answer to thinks the sun shines out her ass. She never tells me what she's working on (even when it's my projects), she rarely does my work anyway (and when she does, she doesn't tell me about it, so I look uninformed and incompetent--yes, this is on purpose on her part), and I am not allowed to give the work to any of the other specialists. RAGE.