Process of elimination

Posted on by

Another Friday the 13th, and it may have you feeling a little stressed out. It’s your lucky day! I’m here to lay some time-honored stress reducers on you. These techniques require no special equipment, mood altering drugs, or appreciable common sense.

Disclaimer: Results may vary. The use of this program will not tone your abs, get you a promotion at work, make you irresistible to women, or cure that rash on your butt. (You should probably have that looked at.)

An oldie but a goodie: call in sick and go fishing. Around here, that means avoiding alligators, snakes, leeches, and fire ants. You’ll want to stay hydrated in the blistering heat and unspeakable humidity, so beer is a must. Downside: beer can slow down your reaction time, so you may be picking any number of the above critters off what remains of your foot.

If you can’t get the time off work, you can still use the process of elimination. This includes pooping, peeing, and rubbing one off in the shower. This is science, people. It’s all about the release of endorphins. Naturally, if you want to maintain any street creds and avoid jail time, this is best done in the privacy of your own home. Again, beer can impair your judgment and leave you with the embarrassing situation of having to explain that floater in the neighbor’s pool. Don’t be that guy.

Laughter has been proven to reduce stress. There are, however, a few situations where this is not the case. Laughing at IRS agents, law enforcement, or members of the drug cartel, can ruin your day faster than you can say, “It’s Miller Time.”

My personal favorite stress reducer is sofa snuggles. For this, you will need a sofa, a pet, and something really inane playing on TV. Colt and I especially like re-runs of America’s Next Top Model. Small children and the elderly should avoid this exercise if the pet in question is a 200+ pound Great Dane. I can guarantee that when one of those is climbing into your lap, your stress levels will flat-line. Paramedics are standing by.

I think we can all agree that I mentioned beer several times in this post. While drinking beer will certainly relax you, it has the unfortunate side effect of making you stupid. Please don’t blame the calendar if your bad luck today involves two six packs, a bungee cord, and your garage roof. This can never end well.

Well, I’m off to de-stress in the bathroom. Please rest assured that I am going nowhere near the neighbor’s pool.

10 thoughts on “Process of elimination”

  1. Came across the link to your blog after reading about the surfing goats on San Onofre Beach. The article made no mention of the huge nuclear reactor set right on the sand, but anyway, the neighbor’s pool might be a safer place for everyone these days. Thanks for the smiles!

    • OK, I had to go look at the goats. Disturbing to think that these goats are de-stressing in the ocean.

  2. By floater, I’m guessing you are Not talking about a Baby Ruth candy bar (seen that in a movie some time in the past. I think).
    De-stressing for me involves one or more of the things you mentioned, but not necessarily in that order, context, or gross-out level. It may involve the rubbing off of something, though. Or scrubbing off. I’m in the “cleaning” mood today. Just sayin..

  3. I’ll have to keep this one clean by just saying… perfect destresser= a cat’s purr.

  4. Going to a massage therapist is a way to deal with stress when there isn’t a lot of time for decompressing. However I have noticed that this kind of help will prevent a serious crash and burn stress scenario, but may enable a person to stay in a really bad and scary job when finding another might be a good idea.

    • I wouldn’t wish a job hunt on anyone in this economy, but a toxic workplace is its own kind of hell.

  7. I just finished de-stressing in the lav, and I thank you for the reminder. I’m now going to further destress with a Corona Extra. Maybe two. Yeah, definitely two. Cuz I have some bungee cords I wanna try out.

Comments are closed.