dovate

Since I’ve got nothing to say today, I’m digging through the archives of my phony product reviews. In days past, I had a bad habit of writing fake product reviews for odd items I found on epinions.com. Here’s one I wrote for something called the “Rectal Fever Thermometer.”

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I am constantly probing my anus for any signs of rectal fever. Rectal fever is most easily distinguished by an abnormally hot rectum. There is only one truly accurate way to diagnose rectal fever and that is with products like the Rectal Fever Thermometer. Sometimes people will walk up to you, grab the fatty tissue of your left buttock and exclaim:

“Feels like you’ve got a case of rectal fever.”

This method of diagnosis is highly inaccurate. The feel method may distinguish a hot ass from a normal one, but full-blown rectal fever is a condition entirely different. The feel method is wholly unscientific for a number of reasons.

First of all, unless you’re butt naked or you are Prince, the feel method is obstructed by the layers of clothing covering the ass. In my case the feel method is usually impeded by the presence of tight stone washed jeans or Lycra booty shorts. Even with full-blown rectal fever, you can’t feel the heat through denim. Sometimes also, my pants conduct their own heat thus promoting mixed results. Secondly, the feel diagnosis of rectal fever can be skewed by bias of the feeler. Remember personal bias can lead to misdiagnosis of rectal fever. I thought one girl that I know had rectal fever for years, although later I found that I was just hot for her. Her rectum was warm, even hot, but not feverish. My bias led to misdiagnosis.

To diagnose true rectal fever, you’ve gotta get in there with some technology. The Greeks often diagnosed rectal fever in their young servants with the single finger method. If you’ve ever seen the movie Caligula, you know that techniques varied between the Greeks and the Romans. These days our instruments are far more accurate.

The Rectal Fever Thermometer is the cutting edge of rectal fever probes. Soft, gentle and easy to assemble, the Rectal Fever Thermometer is a must buy. At less than 5 dollars, you’d be cheating yourself if you didn’t purchase this product and stick it deep into your anus. Everyone should know if they’ve got the rectal fever. The readout is quick and accurate. You’ll know in minutes just how hot your rectum truly is.

This is also the thermometer advertised as the one that doctors use most. I know my doctor diagnosed his own case of rectal fever with this very thermometer. I was there the night he did it. But that’s a separate story.

I am proud to say that I’ve got the fever. In fact, I’ve got a wicked fierce case of it. Sometimes it is a burden, but usually the benefits outweigh the detriments. My doctor tells me it will go away by the time I’m 40, so for now I’m living it up. Buy this thermometer and see if you’ve got the fever too.

On October 25 of the year 2000 I wrote this product review for the “Ouija Board” for epinions.com:

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If the dead want to talk, let them come to YOU
Oct 25 ’00

Pros
good for contacting the dead

Cons
the dead will bore you to death

It’s about time for my favorite holiday, Halloween. I figured I should review something a little freaky. What’s better than the good old fashioned Ouija board?

The first time I used the Ouija board, it was me, my girlfriend and my uncle Teddy. I was about 15 at the time. These days Teddy’s upstate for boinking kids on a Cambodian vacation, but back then he lived in Burlington County NJ. All in all, he was the creepiest part of the night. Dimming the lights and lighting some candles, Teddy broke out the Army of Darkness edition of the Necronomicon and asked to speak with some dead people. Sure enough, some spirit began moving around the little pointer thing. We were all pretty excited, talking to the dead and all. Uncle Teddy had gotten us pretty liquored up with some Southern Comfort. We asked the name of the dead person and he said “Todd.”

That’s when we knew it was going to be a boring night. “Todd” went on and on about how he used to be alive. It took him forever to write out anything. He couldn’t even spell worth a damn. Turns out Todd was a single, shoe salesman who hung himself at age of 32 right in my bedroom! That was sort of interesting, but the fascination soon faded. Todd went on to spell out the words “died a verjan.” We supposed he meant “virgin.” My girlfriend told him she wasn’t surprised and Todd got angry. He tried to blow out the candles, but they just sort of flickered. We laughed and taunted him a while and eventually he left. It was an all around disappointment.

A few years later, me and some friends were bored. I had since moved out of the “Todd” house. It was 3 in the morning and all the bars were closed. We’d been drinking Southern Comfort again, (weird) and smoking opium. After a confused conversation, my friends and I decided that we were sharing hallucinations. All of us kept seeing little men running around under the recliner. Curious as to the nature of these little people, we decided to initiate contact via the Ouija board. We had no luck. The little men weren’t interested in us. Either that or we were just imagining them. We decided to go another route. We got one of my cats and put him near the recliner. Since cats are mystical creatures, we thought he could guide us. But the cat just licked himself and wandered over to the water dish.

At that point we decided we were just imagining things. In a last ditch effort my friend Stephan picked up the Ouija board and folded it up. Creeping over to the recliner he smacked the board down, right on top of one of the little men. He was all squashed and bloody, but you could see his little man hat and his little man pants. He looked like a tiny garden gnome. His little man beard was all stained with blood. My friend felt so bad for killing the little man that he started to cry, asking the other little men for forgiveness. But the other little men had already fled in fear. The next day, the corpse of the little man had turned into a dead cockroach. I gave it to my cat and he ate it.

Recently I took out the Ouija board again. I figured it had to be good for some entertainment. Again I was with friends and again we were drinking Southern Comfort, (I swear to you all, I never drink the stuff. It’s just one of those weird coincidences.) One of my friends got up to vomit in the bathroom. He came back white as a ghost. I asked if he was all right and he said that he was. He told us that he saw a fat woman lying face down in the bathtub. When he walked in he said she turned to look at him. Just as she turned, the SoCo made it’s return to the world and he hunched over to vomit. By the time he finished, the woman was gone.

“Weird.” The rest of us said in unison.

Incited and intrigued, we decided to get to the bottom of it. We took the Ouija board into the bathroom, wiped up the spatterings of sweet peach vomit with some balled up toilet paper and sat in a circle by the tub. We asked to speak with the woman. I’ll spare you the details of this encounter, but the woman was even more boring than Todd. She spent her earthly days watching daytime television and collecting disability. Then she asked us for plot updates on the Young and the Restless. Eventually we discovered that she had drowned in the tub after slipping on a bar of soap. The drain – clogged with matted balls of hair – had pooled around her feet and she died in 3 inches of dirty, oily water. This had been right before I moved in. I remembered pulling clumps of hair from the drain and shuddered in disgust.

The Ouija board is a good tool to contact the dead. But do you really want to? The dead are rarely more fascinating than the living. And on top of that, they usually haven’t talked to anyone for a very long time. They go on and on, trapping you with their stupid, irrelevant stories. The novelty of talking to a dead person wears off real quick.