SFW: Colon Health, Existential Hairstyling, and the Insurance Racket

Welcome, ladies and germs, to the latest installment of our sorta-regular series, Scenes From Waco. In this very special Waco Drive Edition, we explore the surreal landscape within a 1-wood of our humble home.

Let's start with a blast, and Waco's infamously misleading "Colon Massage" establishment (also recently featured at Micah-Circuitry). Whizzing by at 40 mph, most drivers' gut reaction is that the place offers some sort of bowel manipulation service. But closer "scoping" reveals an elusive ampersand, conjoining two very different therapeutic activities. The Health Center's proprietor is Rev. Rufus Stephen, B.S. No kidding, the fellow who makes his living shooting hot water into nether orifices bills himself not only as a member of the clergy but also as the proud recipient of a bachelors degree. Not to knock the old baccalaureate--I've only got a B.A. myself--but it can't be good for the colon business to tell folks up front you're not some kind doctor or chiropractor. And the whole "Rev." thing doesn't really help. Are you some kind of sphincter priest? Every potential answer just raises more disturbing questions. I'm not even going to touch the "B.S." thing, because you know I don't have to.

Few people know that after Egypt got over the whole boils, frogs, and rivers of blood deal, a wrathful God visited upon the world a plague of lawyers. Our own Jerusalem-on-the-Brazos still suffers from a glut of licenciados of varying quality. I don't know anything about Mr. Afton J. Izen, Esq. or his professional chops, but I do know that A) $79.50 is a pretty good price for a quickie divorce, B) no one should pay an attorney for services his sign confesses are not performed by an attorney, and C) acrostics are a terrible way to be taken seriously or convey information to passing motorists.

Now we jump across the street to "Salon Dada," a beauty parlor I'm not even sure exists. I mean there's a sign and building and everything, and people go in there, but these dadaists are the same folks who put a urinal on a pedestal and called it art. I think the stylists are using their scissors to cut up magazines and make collages, rather than doing hair. Maybe this is where the crazy runway model hairdos come from. But if you ask me, ceci n'est pas une salon (I couldn't help making a Magritte reference, even though he wasn't really a dadaist).

Finally, we head down the street to RICO Insurance. Insurance is one of those businesses I comprehend but don't fully understand the complexities of. However, I am pretty sure that a firm in such a universally hated and mistrusted industry shouldn't name itself after a federal anti-racketeering statute. Just my two cents. A quick google of "RICO Insurance" yields not this business' phone number or website, but an article on "protection" schemes. Has the mob sunk this low, to set up shop in Waco with a blue jay as their mascot? You have to admit, it's a more believable story than Godfather III.