Pat Reynolds: A Journey Into Reason. "Patently Ridiculous" (Patreon)

[Pat Reynolds has rebooted his blog, A Journey Into Reason, here on the Achewood Patreon. Enjoy the following tale from his recent encounter with old friend Ray Smuckles. —CTO]

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Well, that may be the last time I ever allow Ray over. I am STEAMING after the stunt he just pulled. And the worst part is, by the very nature of his visit I have no legal recourse. I could tear a turtle in half the hard way. 

If you’re going to have any chance of understanding what happened, I need to go back a little ways. So read the rest of this very carefully. I’m not going to answer any questions in the comments: my doctor says it’s bad for my carpal tunnel. A calling to defend truth against the ceaseless tide of Stupid is the curse of the uncommon man. 

Several months ago Ray mentioned an interest in LASIK, so I loaned him my prized coffee table book The Honest History of Eye Surgery. Of course the damn fool was too scared to open it—even though I had specifically instructed him to read and re-read the chapter on John Taylor’s blinding of Brahms—and brought it over this morning while I was solving a maddening product development puzzle that had been tormenting me for weeks. 

A knock on the door, and there he stood, the oversized volume zipped into a couch cushion cover so there would be, “no risk of accidentally seein’ a cornea all open like you could dip a Frito into.” 

“Ray, I am in no mood for any—” I started. 

“Doggie, ain’t no thing but a chicken’s wing!” he replied, handing over the parcel. (This is not verbatim, but similar to the usual fluff he talks. I never listen very closely until I can sense it’s getting specific.) 

“Seriously,” I continued. “I’m concentrating on a problem I need to solve. A vast fortune is at stake. Go.” 

I shouldn’t have said this, because naturally his ears perked, like a marijuana fanatic at the ding of a microwave. 

“Seems cosmic I just showed, ol’ boom-cackalacka!” 

“Don’t call me that any more. I’ve told you several times.” 

“Sorry, hoss! It just comes natural when I see you. What’s this I’m hearin’ ’bout a sitch?”

As he said this, a Lesser Schebringer’s Dowse-Pot chirped in the side yard. 

“Oooh! That an egret?” he asked excitedly. 

“No, it was a Lesser Schebringer’s Dowse-Pot. Since when do you care about birds?”

“I got my microphone on, it’s built into these sick Meta glasses they made for me,” he said, tapping the arm of what looked like his usual glasses, only slightly thicker. “I’m tryin’ to record an egret call, so I can play it and summon one, and that way I can say the joke, ‘I met an egret, but I got no regret!’” 

“That isn’t really a rhyme. Or a joke, technically.” 

“Close enough for jazz trombone,” he replied, pointing at his groin. 

This tricked me into looking there. I winced. 

“Childish. Go. Now is not the time.” 

“Aperçus up this problem ’a yours! You know a sitch is my jam.” 

“Aperçus isn’t a verb. Please scrutinize your word-of-the-day calendar with greater assiduity.” 

“It ain’t a calendar any more! It’s just a little pill I take each morning!” he said, beaming, mouth held slightly open while he awaited a laugh that would never arrive. 

In truth, I’d been struggling with an invention I had hurried to market, and I needed a solution fast, before I took a total loss on it and the retailers eliminated my hard-won shelf space.  

The invention itself is brilliant enough to make my fortune: an elective, easy-on nighttime catheter for men who have fought their way near to sleep for so long that they need to pee again, but don’t want to walk all the way to the bathroom and wake themselves up. Unfortunately, in my haste to get the product to market, I made an error in the design, which I formalized into the patent, and I cannot afford to file another, amended patent at the moment. 

The error? The tubing diameter is too narrow, and too long, to allow for air exchange with the liquid, and so the free end of the tube must be sucked on in order to create enough siphon pressure to get the urine flowing. Naturally, as this product is used in the dark, this leaves customers with a, “bad taste in the mouth.” And, more importantly, it leaves me with nearly a 100% product return rate. (Walgreens: why would I want these used units shipped back to me?!?)

Such was my frustration that I allowed myself to share the details of my predicament with Ray. 

Immediately upon the conclusion of my recap, he made a single, cocky clicking sound with his mouth. He then winked at me, and placed a call using speakerphone. 

“I gotchu,” he said, before the other line picked up. I was foolish enough to allow myself to feel a smidgen of relief. 

“Ben Minicucci,” came a tired voice at the other end of the line. 

“Yo Cooch!” Ray exclaimed. “How’s the A to B racket? Oil at one-twenty pretty fun for business?” 

“Ray. Ray. Rayyy Smuckles, boy are you a sound for sore ears.” 

“Man, you in the rough, Cooch! I hear it in your voice, doggie! Get yo’ ass down to Sawgrass, stat!” 

“Haha. Look, what’s up Ray. I have an earnings call in five and I’d rather wax my nuts in January.” 

Ray covered the microphone and whispered, “CEO of Alaska Airlines.” 

I nodded, unsure of what this had to do with my catheter conundrum, but momentarily impressed by the ease with which he had gotten an executive of this stature on the phone.

“Yo! ’Member how you’re always stayin’ up late, wrackin’ your brain ’bout how to squeeze more seats in the cabin?” 

“I’m listening.” 

“Catheter!” 

“Like my dad has?” 

“How should I know, man! I ain’t ’bout your daddy’s shorts! But what I’m sayin’ is, you got a passenger needs to take a leak, you just have ’em buy a catheter off the stewardess. Boom! Tear the bathrooms out, add three more rows.” 

There was silence from the other end of the line. I waited for a blistering shutdown of Ray’s brainless gag. 

“So, like the disposable earbuds.” 

“Yeah! But instead ’a free, you go five bucks a throw.” 

“Nineteen. Earpieces are a discretionary spend, bladder relief isn’t. More than twenty, these roaches will just piss on the carpet. Frontier spends a fortune on biohazard fines. Cheaper than enzymes, but still a lot of paperwork.” 

At this point, I allowed myself to feel actual hope. Ray was negotiating a major contract with a billion dollar carrier! And I would own it all! 

“Genius, Cooch. No wonder they gave you the big spinny seat.” 

“What about shitting? Our customers are constantly shitting.” 

“Maybe a no shittin’ on flights policy? I mean, shittin’ on a plane’s barbaric, dogg. All dry-bowl deucin’ one foot from a family eatin’ cheese and cold pork, all the odor of the pit toilet at a community park, all no apple spray.”  

“But what about emergencies. Sometimes your bowels can’t hold ’til Dallas.” 

“I dunno. Bodysuit, like those asbestos remover dudes wear?”

“I’m listening. Keep riffing.” 

“Who’s that Apollo guy messed his shorts? Scott Glenn? We call the suit the Scott Shot. The DumpJumper? SkyDiaper? Ooh, maybe a luxe fashion collab, like…Bodyshart by Kardashian.” 

“How about, ‘The DeuceGoose,’” Cooch suggested. “Little Howard Hughes nod. The proud American history of aviation, that kind of thing.”   

“A touch of shame AND love of the game in the name, good one. Twenty-five bucks from the stewardess, dispose of it off-property after landing.” 

“Fifty bucks. Spirit is getting eighty-five for a checked bag, we can go fifty for a two-dollar suit and a biohazard we don’t have to manage.” 

“Nice, nice. Aight Cooch, you riff now.” 

Cooch thought for a second.  

“The bodysuit has wings printed on the back, and above them it says, ‘I’m A DeuceGoose.’ Kind of fun vintage lettering, throwback to the Pan Am glory days of air travel.” 

“Dude! Yess! Riff hard, my brother!”

“And there’s a panel at the rear made of heat-darkening thermal paper, like that inkless receipt paper.” 

Ray and I exchanged confused glances at this one, but said nothing. 

“Lets you know it’s been used. And, real tight elastic at the knees,” Cooch finished.

“That’s a solid A-minus, but now I want you to crank those old Cooch thumbscrews, son.” 

“Ah. Right. Why even have it be a suit? Why not just a large pouch that Doritos McCheeseburger gets in? Drawstring hole for the head? It’s kind of wide at the base, so they can swing their feet enough to emulate walking. That has to be way cheaper to manufacture.” 

“Boom. Bundle it with the catheter, ’cause there ain’t no number two without number one. You just added eighteen seats per flight, plus expanded margin on the gear.” 

“Ray, I love it. Thanks for the free ideas. Always good jamming with you.” 

“Free my ass, Cooch,” Ray said, winking at me again. “I got the patent on the Reynolds Self-Catheterization System before I called, straight USPTO timestamp. Read ’em and weep.” 

“Oh, there’s always a way around that.” 

“Plus I got this whole call recorded, fool,” Ray said, tapping his frames again. 

“Fucker. Alright, Smuckles. Send the licensing docs over, attention Customer Innovations, and we’ll get you a number.” 

“Sweet. Say, cool if I borrow the Gulfstream next week? I’m curious about Antibes. Heard the chicks were medium-decent this time of year.” 

“I need my jet next week.” 

“Why ain’t you fly Alaska?” 

They both had a good chuckle at this, then concluded the call. 

-

“What’s going to happen once he finds out that my catheters don’t actually work?” I asked Ray.   

“Dude, these airline guys run such a chaos rig, the writeoff he’ll take on your loser patent will just get lost in the angry customer sandwich-voucher rounding errors. You'll be whole by the time they patent their own version.”  

“And what about the tyvek suits for passengers to defecate in? I don’t have a patent on anything like that.” 

“Oh, sure, draw somethin’ up if you want. I’ll cut you in for ten percent ’a the whole kadoodle, catheters and all, since we go back to pool times.” 

“Hold on a damn second!” I cried. “You think you’re taking ninety percent of this deal?! I must not be hearing you right!”    

Ray paused. He turned to look at the horizon, shook his head, then turned back to me.  

“Player, were we on the same call? ’Cause it sounded to me like you were the odds-on favorite to lose your shirt and your biz credit, so I stepped in to keep your ass off the Dun & Bradstreet.”

“I let you in on this! Reverse that ratio and maybe I’ll—” 

“Maybe you’ll what? Have no leverage? Get sued outta' house and home by Cooch? Dude, you got a ticket to Apex Player Supper, but you’re countin’ fries at Arby’s.” 

“So I should be GRATEFUL to you? For watching you rip me off?! You son of a bitch!” I made a strangling motion with my hands.

“Hey, burn it down if you want, but you ain't never gettin' whole that way. And if you weren’t bein’ such a brain-radius Scrooge, I’d bring you along on other deals, get you started in the game, Pat! But the hell I want cheapskate Van Heusen on my six! I’d be stuck runnin’ arbitrage on Forever stamps!” 

“You’d better sleep with one eye open! None of this will stand up in court! I'LL HAVE MY DAY!”

At this, Ray tapped his frames again, reminding me he had footage of the entire negotiation, including my threats of intent to murder. It had indeed been him who created the whole deal, and I was furious with myself for not having stepped in and masterminded the call with Cooch from the get-go. If I’d had even ten seconds’ warning before Ray dialed, you can bet your ass that’s exactly how it would have gone down! 

“Go!” I yelled, pointing down the sidewalk. My nostrils were the size of quarters. 

Go he did, except that when he got to the foot of my driveway, what should alight on the pavement before him but an egret. 

It made its low, dry, guttural retch of a call, at which he recoiled slightly, frowned, and muttered to himself, “Huh! I actually regret this!” 

Imbecile! Asshole. Oh, you will regret this indeed, Ray Smuckles!