Slightly Revised Travel Plans

If you’re a fan of my blog: Fear not. I will continue to provide infrequent updates while away. My absence may be a good time to visit the archives.

If you’re a hurricane about to devastate the Eastern seaboard: Please hold off until after my flight departs. Please be gentle, and if you do destroy my apartment, please notify my office that I will be trapped in Ireland for the foreseeable future with no way to communicate or get home. Please also notify them that despite my being unable to work, I would appreciate the continuation of my direct deposit program.

If you’re a robber: I bolted the door. So you should suck it.

If you’re someone who gave me advice on things to do in Ireland: You should ignore my blog for the time being. I’ll probably only do one of the things you suggested, and someone else suggested the same thing.

If you’re an asshole: Be forewarned that some of my best drawings are conceptualized at airports and on flights with no wifi.

If you’re the Euro: Please decline in value.

If you’re pregnant and running a pool that I entered regarding the birth date of your child: Please stay strong until September 2nd.

If you’re my dad: Call me every day, because you’ve already forgotten that I’m going on vacation.

If you’re still reading this: I love you. Thanks for reading.

Tide Stain Stick

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Rob Pollak

Tide Stain Stick smells 65% more like vomit than it should.
If I’m going to put up with the vomit smell, then the stain should be less apparent than this:
30% of the time I smell or see vomit, I also vomit.
.65 * .30 = .195
This means that one out of every five times I use Tide Stain Stick, I will vomit.
I’ve now used Tide Stain Stick two times.
If I vomit on my shirt, and then use Tide Stain Stick to try and remove the vomit stain, will the two vomit scents cancel each other out? An equilibrium of vomits?
This is unnecessarily disgusting. As someone who is repulsed by all things vomit, I know that I would be appalled if I were reading this somewhere else. Unfortunately, the Tide Stain Stick vomit smell has become so fierce that I have no choice but to acknowledge it. I can literally see the smell of vomit wafting off my shirt at this point. Literally.

My top four lifetime vomits:

The Black Point Inn (Maine) – Sat in the sun for 22 hours straight without sun screen while trying to complete my summer reading three days before school started. In hindsight, I should have read A Separate Peace (204 pages, large font) instead of Black Boy (448 pages, micro font). Needless to say, after a dinner of one piece of bread, my skin started flaking off and I stumbled back to the room to pass out. I only made it ten steps out of the front door of the dining area before I unleashed a fire hose stream of liquid vomit across the parking lot of the five star inn. I went to the room and shivered for hours while some poor soul hosed down the lot.
Company Bathroom (Boston) – After an hour long meeting with my new management team, it became clear to me that they had preconceived notions of hating me. For years, I blamed this vomit on drinking too much tea. In hindsight, it was certainly stress induced vomit. Unlike the Black Point Inn vomit, this was timid and did not include much substance. Rather, the only substance that I upchucked in that office bathroom was the hopes and dreams that I had been harboring about a long illustrious career with this company. In other words, purely a dry heave.
Tide Stain Stick Debacle of 2011 – (Details Pending)
Club La Vela (Panama City Florida) – Spring Break, March 2000. Discretely vomited into my hand after drinking something that, looking back, was almost certainly warm Tide Stain Stick. Discovered a goldmine of Big Red gum and cologne in the men’s room. Remaining details are hazy.