Hey! Look at the kid in the shit-boxers!

I wrote this awhile ago, it's quite comical. It's a quick look into personal hygeine from the eyes of me, Jordan B. Elfers.

Ironic part is that I wrote this at the beginning of January. Since, everything has gotten a lot more agreeable except my feet.


I shower daily. When I say I shower daily, I mean I scrub, exfoliate, sing, dance, and rinse daily. Most people can't cross off one of those list-ridden verbs daily. I shower daily for many reasons, but the biggest one is that I can't seem to get as clean as the general college-age populous unless I scrub the shit out of myself for what I project to be three full days. Two days of not showering means my undergarments will be either burned or wrapped in plastic and thrown in the wastebasket. Everyone else can hit a few days, pop them in the washer, and be set for another bout of bad hygiene.

Maybe my body just exudes waste faster than yours. My face collects grease and clogs my pores, my hair tends to look like a rat in an oil can, and my boxer-breifs or boxers...we won't even touch that subject. I want to be diagnosed with a hygiene disorder. Quick-dirty-itis, something along those lines. Maybe I'm just out of shape which makes me sweat and shit more, but that wouldn't make any sense because I know guys who drink two pounds of protein mix a day and can shit me under the table. My feet even begin to stink daily now, however I blame that on walking more and wearing leather shoes a majority of the time.

I once lived with a guy who could go a week or more without showering, he'd just wash his hair and face and shave his beard. I guess if I had thicker hair and a wicked beard I'd be able to cover up the upper deck stench better, but what about the rest of his body? He doesn't really sweat, rarely farts, and even more rarely does the man take a shit. That's what I call a super not irritable bowel syndrome, something any aspiring clean person prays for on the norm. I suppose it could be my eating habits that result in my extreme focus of glandular expulsion.

I suppose I don't eat any differently than the rest of you, as of late especially. Normally my diet consists of two full meals a day (due to my wonderfully timed sleeping schedule). After I wake up sometime between 11 a.m and 1 p.m. I hit the computer, TV, or respective novel for thirty minutes to an hour, I have a cigarette, and the proceed to cook or throw together a decently well-rounded meal. For instance, if I eat two hot dogs I make sure to put cheese on there for the milk group (it's hard for me to drink a hearty glass, seeing as I'm quite stricken with Lactose Intolerance), I also throw ketchup on there just in case there isn't any greenery set aside for my trap to chomp down. Since my recent move there've been more greens so I've tried to stray away from condiments. In the rightful case I'm hitting every food group except for fruit, but when was the last time I had fruit that wasn't involved with alcohol or some concentrated fruit drink? That was probably years ago. If I don't choke down the dual hot dogs with greens on the side add cheese and water, it will probably be the other OscarMeyer delight, a sandwich (sangwich as I lovingly dub it). Toasted bread (probably white because I'm a cheapskate), one slice of OscarMeyer Chopped Ham (I think 80% of it is not, in fact, ham), one slice of Kraft cheese, topped with a slice of OscarMeyer Lean Bologna, two Claussen Sandwich Stacker Pickles, and one Vlasic Pickled Pepperoncini (Or Peppers! as Vlasic proudly describes them). As you can see, on the day-to-day my food vocabulary is very limited. Every now and again I will throw out something insane that I've been planning on cooking for a long time such as some broccoli and beef or some noodle suprise. I've gotten pretty good at cooking, but never utilize my culinary skills on the daily. Once at work I order whatever everyone else is ordering, which usually results in something extremely high in protein, fat, and calories. Not that I really monitor those things, but as I write this I'm starting to realize more and more why I sweat so much.

Strike shoes, sleep schedule, lack of exercise, and horrible diet off of the list and what are we left with? Drinking habits and general laziness. I drink far too often. And when I do drink it normally consists of beer, on occasion I'll go crazy and get some hard booze, some gin, whiskey, what have you, but on the whole it's beer. This, I know, does not help my hygienic stature. Most people wake up after a long night of drinking smelling like a bar. I, however, wake up smelling like a steamy load of shit dropped in a tobacco shack that once doubled as a feedlot. Maybe that's just Gods way of telling me I shouldn't drink anymore. But what does he really know about me? He didn't help me when I had gun pulled on me or when some crackhead stole my friends GameCube from my house. Alas, drinking is a giant addition to my hygiene problem. It's always been my opinion that alcohol can literally exude from your pores after excessive drinking, but I think in my case it actually stays in my body and forces out all of my waste in the fashion of a bullet traveling from the gun shaft. I'll stick to drinking, because when I don't I feel too creative.

The last available answer is overall laziness. It's to the point now that I'd rather sleep for three extra hours and feel like shit for oversleeping than get out of my bed to take a piss. That, my friends, is laziness. When given the chance to leave early from work, where I do next to nothing anyway, I leave early even if I have t walk home, which should technically cancel out my laziness, right? Wrong, the whole walk home I'll be bitching about walking and kicking myself for not convincing a friend to pick me up. My physical activity is limited now, it normally consists of walks up and down the stairs to shower, sleep, or use the bathroom. I also walk outside frequently to smoke. If smoking were a university, it would be my alma mater. I believe smoking cancels out all the bad shit I put in my body by speeding up my metabolism. I don't care if it's a myth, if it is I hope they don't put it on Myth Busters, because my life will then be ruined. I have a small net of walking distance downtown when my bus stops. It consists of 12th and Q to 14th and O to 17th and P to 14th and N. Those locations hold my job, Subway, Jake's smoke shop, the bookstore, the coffee house, Kabredlo's, Wells Fargo, and the public library. Strewn about that region are random eateries, and not too far off are my favorites: Amigos and Arby's. That is the extent of my physical experience aside from walking to the bus stop which is hardly a block away. I also walk from cars to other houses only to repeat the same process involving only the bathroom, the fridge, and the porch.

In retrospect, my hygiene is the way it is due to my lifestyle. If I were an olympic swimmer I would consistently smell like roses or whatever million dollar cologne I felt like wearing that day, but I would also have to work out. It's a double-edged sword in my fair opinion. I can take the time to shower every single day with one unattainable goal in mind, or I can actually work for it and save time not showering. Why should I care, I lose wither way. I either shower and feel clean and live to my standards, or I fix my shape and don't shower and don't feel clean. If you want good hygiene, reverse the way I live, but keep the daily showers. Show this to your fucking children and save them the burden of finding out on their own that they're going to end up this dirty without my advice.