Universal Donor

2008-07-21T09:59:00.006-05:00

DISPATCH FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN CHINA
(July 20, Qingdao, China)

The Chinese government has declared martial law in Qingdao. But don't worry, it's only for one day: the day of the Olympic torch relay. This is why we have a pregnant Australian woman sleeping on our sofa. Let's call her Yinky, since that's what her parents apparently christened her, although I still have trouble pronouncing it. She'll probably call her own child Numbat or something. Anyway, she is not allowed to return to her hotel, which is in the Relay Zone, until after the relay is finished. It seems they mistook her for some sort of terrorist.
Her husband is in the Zone, but he is not allowed to leave. Fortunately our apartment is just outside the Zone, so we are still free to shelter terrorists. From the window we have a magnificent view of the Sea Wall protecting the Olympic Marina from algae terrorists. In fact, we can see the algae building up outside the Wall -- but like our Australian friend Yinky, it is unable to enter the Zone. The system works.

* * *

At about five past ten Thursday morning, a charming little student named Reginald* -- who I used to teach every Sunday without incident -- attempted to organize a mutiny in my co-worker Don's class. "I'm the teacher now," said Reginald, rising from his seat with real authority, "I'm taking over the crass."
     There was an immediate chorus of "Shut up, Reginald!" from the Siberians. Seeing that he lacked the support of his fellow children, Reginald did the only thing an unsuccessful mutineer could do: he pulled out a life jacket, proceeded to inflate it, and finally put it on, doubling his already ample girth.
     Rendered speechless for a moment, Don finally asked "Reginald, where did you get this?"
     "This? Oh, my palents give to me."
     Apparently Reginald's Mommy and Daddy, protective of their dysfunctional son as only the Chinese can be, had equipped him for literally any eventuality that might befall him at Summer Camp.
     Fortunately, Reginald's very strength is also his greatest weakness. His Attention Deficit Disorder leaves him vulnerable to the paradoxically calming effects of common stimulants like caffeine and amphetamines. Don happened to have a Starbucks Bottled Frappuccino in his pocket.
     "Remember how you like coffee, Reginald?"
     Within minutes he was slumped, barely conscious, on the floor. And since he was still wearing his life jacket, Don was fairly confident no harm would come to the little scamp. The world is safe again -- until tomorrow.
     That is the news from China.

-- Katie Legs, China Bureau Chief and Engrish Teacher

* Some names have been changed to protect our correspondent's cover. But not "Yinky." That shit is for real. -- UD

2008-06-24T11:06:00.008-05:00

BOREDOM HAS MANY PALLIATIVES, BUT NO CURE

PLOY #1: Autodidacticism
...Or as it appears to the cynical: unfocused, yet obsessive, wikipedia surfing. I admit it's not a conscious ploy, it's just how I scroll, baby. To give you a glimpse into my autopedagogical syllabus, here is a list of the wikipedia pages I visited in the span of three attention-deficient months at work: Bear Witness to My Affliction!

PLOY #2: Wikipedia editing
I burned out on this one REAL FAST. Not a great treatment for boredom.

PLOY #3: Deprivation
I am planning to start -- and then abandon halfway through -- a month of systematic abstention from various foods, activities, or behaviors:
     Week 1: no wheat
     Week 2: no meat
     Week 3: no posting to this blog (ha! kidding!)
     Week 3 for real: no more abstention
     Week 3 goddamnit be serious: no... flensing ?
I don't know, man. I guess I really just wanted to stay away from wheat for a week. Why do I hafta make a big honking deal out of everything? BORED BORED BORED.

PLOY #4: Religion
I took the Belief-O-Matic quiz at beliefnet.com, and it told me what religions I am most likely to jibe with:
     1. Theravada Buddhism (100%)
     2. Unitarian Universalism (96%)
     3. Neo-Pagan (83%)
     4. Secular Humanism (81%)
     5. Liberal Quakers (79%)
I will now accept solicitations from these sects, such as they are. That should be fun!

PLOY #5: Pegging
I was reading an article in the Village Voice's Queer Issue about how many straight men are finding that they enjoy getting fucked in the ass. In 2001 Dan Savage had a contest to coin a term for the act of a woman penetrating a man using a strap-on, and "pegging" won. It's a great term, though when someone first asked me if I knew what it meant, I pictured a sex act involving the namesake (and mascot) of my high school.
     I know the Voice hardly counts as mainstream, but my unerring sense of cultural trends (and this) tells me that pegging is about to tip. You're gonna start seeing it mentioned, explored, and deplored everywhere. You heard it here first: 2008 is the Year of the Peg.
     Well! In looking for ways to help accelerate mainstream awareness of this beautiful, loving practice, I considered many options before reaching the eventual solution. Since Lance Armstrong's wonderful LIVESTRONG project has had a really good run, I called them up about transitioning the yellow-rubber-bracelet brand to a new awareness-promoting cause. After having our lawyers work with theirs, it's official. The yellow bracelet has been rebranded. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: PEGSTRONG!

The purpose of the PEGSTRONG bracelet is to promote awareness of Strapped-On Assfucking. People who love to peg or get pegged can share their affinity through prominent public display of a PEGSTRONG (formerly LIVESTRONG) bracelet. It will be clear to all who see it that you live by the PEGSTRONG motto: "Never be shy -- Let the santorum fly!"
     And now for the best news! You don't even have to buy the PEGSTRONG bracelet -- you may already have one! It will take a while for the official new PEGSTRONG bracelets to be manufactured and distributed to quality retail outlets nationwide. However, due to the special nature of our arrangement with LIVESTRONG, all LIVESTRONG bracelets automatically became PEGSTRONG bracelets as of midnight, June 15, 2008.
     (As you can imagine, the intense legal and administrative work leading up to this event kept me from posting to the blog this last month. And as ever, I appreciate your continued patience.)
     So! When you see someone wearing their LIVESTRONG (now PEGSTRONG) bracelet in public, especially if they are male, remember to congratulate them on their bravery. For a large segment of the straight male population, it's still kind of a big deal to say you take it in the ass -- even if "it" is a rubber or plastic toy worn by a woman. Reward that courage! Call out to them and show your support! Raise your fist and shout with pride: "PEGSTRONG!"

2008-05-14T12:36:00.005-05:00

HEALTH BOOKS BY MY STEPMOTHER
• Attention Deficit Disorder: A Fake Disease For Lazy People Who Won't Try
• Depression? Everyone Gets Sad Sometimes, IT'S NORMAL

CHICKS DIG "CLOSURE"
Or so they say. After a breakup, a girl I know wanted closure. She called and called the boy who broke up with her, unsure of their status, until one day, in a public park, he shouted "I DON'T WANT TO BE WITH YOU ANYMORE." Pow! Closure.
     But was it really closure she was seeking? To just about everyone else, the status of their relationship was clear. I've known a lot of people who chase down seemingly irrational strands of hope far beyond the limits of dignity. Do they really not know it's over? I don't think so. I think they're looking to walk away with a moral victory, albeit a kind of pathetic one.
     What could be worse than a partner who breaks up with you using care, tenderness, love, and grace? THAT'S THE PERFECT PARTNER! Don't say goodbye to me, say hello! Keep saying hello forever! Gah!
     Women recover from breakups by having other women tell them that they were too good for the bastard, anyway. No matter how educated, intelligent, or spiritually advanced a woman is, when she is in pain, she wants to hear this. Madeleine Albright wants to hear this.
     So what do you do with a dude who is kind and loving when he leaves you? Your ladies got no fodder! Well, go make it happen! If you can manipulate him into being a jerk -- or doing something even moderately jerky -- you will gain that precious moral superiority, and you can move on knowing that he had that secret seed of jerkiness inside, and you're glad you found out NOW. Then you can pull that comforter around you a little tighter and sip that Sleepytime Tea in your sweats while your bestest galpals cuddle you in shifts.
     Boys, the "perfect" breakup is a myth. You will always fall short because falling short is what is required. If you are not made into some form of monster, it hurts too much. And if you don't step up and provide sympathy fodder, she'll have to make shit up, cobble something together from old suspicions and petty gripes, and her fabrications will forever taint her moral victory! Is that what you want? If you ever loved her, you will do this. You probably don't have to shout humiliating things at her in public, but give her SOMETHING. Break up with her via text message! Fuck her sister! Slash her tires! Your kindness is KILLING her.

2008-04-23T14:41:00.009-05:00

WHY I LOVE MY NEW DENTIST
I've had bad luck finding a great dentist who still takes my bottom-shelf dental insurance. My old one wasn't great, but he didn't even tell me he had stopped taking my insurance until I got hit with big copays.
Well clouds and linings, my friends, because my new dentist is hilarious. She is constantly joking around, but it's a little nervewracking because a) her "jokes" are very dark, b) she always says them while holding a sharp or high-RPM implement in her hand, and c) she's Russian.
I thought my old dentist was unprofessional because he'd always complain about how expensive his equipment was. I had no idea how unprofessional a dentist could be. Feast your eyes on these pearls from my new dentist, culled from only three magical sessions, and remember to imagine all of these quotes in a THICK Russian accent:

"I am so tired today. I just don't want to work. I don't know why I came in."
After I said her new haircut, with bangs, looked nice: "Oh yes?" (pulls mask down) "Do I look younger? Am I stunningly gorgeous or what?"
"I've been reading a lot of self-help books."
"I think I hate being a dentist. Did you know dentists have the highest suicide rate of any profession?" Her hygienist then quipped back, also in Russian accent: "No, I think it is dental hygienists."
"I had a date last night, and it did not go well. I don't know what's wrong with me. My mother says... (words obscured by drilling)... so I will never be happy."
"I am sore today from surgery, so I will do the procedure standing up. Don't freak out just because you're so high up, okay?" I say something non-probing, like "Okay." She says: "Well I had to have something done in my abdomen, and while they were there, I thought: why not? So I had a little other work done." I ask if there's a lot of pain, still. She says: "YES. It is terrible. But I'm on narcotics, so it's not nearly as bad as it could be." (drill spins up)

COMMUNICATE MY WISHES IF I'M TOO LAZY TO MAKE A WILL
RockemStockem: also, I don't want to be buried
RockemStockem: cremate all the way
Universal Donor: yeah, obviously
Universal Donor: me too
Universal Donor: i don't want to rise up and eat brains
Universal Donor: NO THANK YOU
RockemStockem: tots
RockemStockem: also I want my ashes to be divided up and distributed amoungst my friends
RockemStockem: -- NOT spread or scattered --
RockemStockem: and put into small urns made out of hand painted eggshells
RockemStockem: in order to burden as many people as possible
Universal Donor: haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
RockemStockem: can you just imagine? for the rest of your life,
RockemStockem: everytime you move apts or whatever,
RockemStockem: you have to walk this precious thing
RockemStockem: and totally make sure it doesn't break

BIOLOGY CLASS
RockemStockem: so when you're really pregnant, don't you worry that the baby is just gonna fall out of your vagina?
Universal Donor: Um, not unless you are giving birth to a snakebaby
RockemStockem: OMG! Like on V?
Universal Donor: for example.
RockemStockem: what if I thought I was having a human baby, but instead just as I gave birth it was a snake
RockemStockem: and nobody knew,
RockemStockem: and I was pushing and then an evil snake monster just slithered out of my vagina
Universal Donor: you're making me hungry

BUG UPDATE
On my way into the office bathroom, I see a ghostly skittering presence retreat from the opening door, weirdly ghosting around a corner. It looked like a waterbug, but somehow... different. Mammalian, almost. I rounded the corner to confront this nightmare beast and it was clearly a waterbug, but of a color I had never seen before: greyish, glisteny, mottled. I smashed it with my foot and smeared it around a bit. It is also possible that I yelped a bit in uncontrolled limbic dismay.
     My report to the receptionist goes like this.
     Still shaken, I say: "I just killed the weirdest waterbug. It was like albino sort of, grayish. It was awful."
     "Oh my god, another one?"
     "Yeah."
     "Where was it?" she asks, narrowing her eyes.
     "In the men's room."
     "Hmmmmm..." she says.
     "What?"
     "Yesterday there was one in the women's."
     "Gross. Did you kill it?" I ask.
     "Yeah. We sprayed it with white furniture polish."
     "WHAT?" I gasp. "But... but... but THEN what did you do?"
     "It looked dead." She mews.
     "Did you smash it?"
     "You know I don't like going near bugs."
     "So what, you polished it and hoped for the best?"
     "No! Joe flushed it. He picked it up with a flyswatter and flushed it," she says.
     "So you put the wounded WATERbug back into the lifegiving WATER that is its very element?!?!?! Why didn't you smash it?? YOU MUST SMASH WHILE YOU CAN. What are you, a James Bond movie villain? You'd probably try to drown Popeye in a vat of spinach! Fuck. Well. I killed your zombie bug this time. Please don't ever make me do that again. "

I mean come on now!

2008-04-04T11:26:00.004-05:00

All right, I know it's shitty not to write for almost two months. What if I said there were a LiveJournal-style "friends-only" section of the blog to which you weren't invited, and to which I've been posting weekly, and hilariously? Would you feel better? Or worse?
What if I said I was writing a novel, in exactly the same style as this blog? "How could that possibly work?" you might ask. It would be a source of concern among my editors, I assure you. They would also be concerned with the fact that I am implying that ALL of the advance money was gone even though they have yet to see sample chapters, not even one. "UD," they would whine, "we already let you borrow the jet to go to Monte Carlo for 'baccarat research' and instead you flew back and forth five times from LaGuardia to Newark, just to make the poor airports feel better because you always fly out of JFK and wanted to show that you still cared about the other two. Our accountants don't like it, and it's bad for our corporate carbon footprint. Deliver our sample chapters, and stop prank calling Karl Lagerfeld on the company dime. PLEASE."
See? Pathetic. Just a bunch of words. Consider this an enema. The next post will be fresh and clean, and probably appear sometime in July.

NEWS FLASH
I don't trust men in hats, and neither should you.

I DREAMED THEY ADAPTED NINE INCH NAILS'S "CLOSER" FOR USE ON AMERICAN IDOL
I want to love you like an animal
I want to feel you with my whole heart
I want to love you like an animal!
you've got such humongous paws
I want to wrap you in gauze!

AT A LOSS
I am this close to soliciting pictures of your boobs. This close to suggesting that perhaps what this blog needs, to kickstart it out of slumberation, is a collage consisting of dirty pictures of its readership. For the good of blogkind, you understand. A show of good faith, people! A little upload for years of download!

2008-03-04T10:32:00.005-05:00

Well, there really isn't more to the puking in the airport story. I landed, I moaned and sweated for 15 hours, and it was over.

PROMISES I NEVER MADE
I never promised not to eat at Hooters. But, people: it happened. I wanted chicken wings. And they said, there on St. Thomas, they said: "they have wings at Hooters." And suddenly I was eating there, among the tawdry hot-panted awfulness.
     I did not find it necessary to not utter the phrase "I will never eat at Hooters," because frankly, it was never on my radar as even a remote possibility. Here are some other things I have never promised not to do:
     • I never promised not to stab the moon with Excalibur.
     • I never promised I wouldn't go back in time and hire one of Santa's reindeer to assassinate Pol Pot.

THE CONCIERGE WANTS ME TO KNOW THE DETAILS
     The concierge at the reception desk of UD's office building sees UD walking into the building with a cup of coffee from Au Bon Pain.
CONCIERGE: Hey [UD], how ya doin.
UD: Fine thanks, [Concierge]. You?
CONCIERGE: Good. You ever have coffee from McDonald's?
UD: I guess so, but only on road trips.
     UD steps into the elevator. CONCIERGE holds the door, which tries to close repeatedly, and fails.
UD: (thinks to self) Please tell me what you think of McDonald's coffee and also please the exact circumstances -- spatial, temporal and emotional -- under which you reached that opinion.
CONCIERGE: Yeah. It's pretty good, actually. Today on the way to work I got off the train over near Times Square and you know they got that McDonald's over there, and I figured, ahhh, I'd try it, why not? Sometimes the line at the deli across the street here is long, right? And I was already a little late, and I hadn't had any coffee earlier because I stayed at my girlfriend's house last night
     (smiles and nudges UD without slowing down speech at all)
and so I went in and I got a coffee and you know what? It's pretty good! I drank it on the way over here. Have you ever had it? You should try it. Did you hear that Starbucks closed the other day for a bunch of hours, nationwide, every store? Yeah apparently it was some kind of training but who knows? Maybe they're going out of business, or they're in trouble, huh? Nahhh, probably not Starbucks. You gonna see that movie with the Saber-tooth Tigers?
UD: (blinks)

CAR HORNS ARE STUPID AND HERE'S WHY
     1) They're too cheap. Chris Rock has a classic bit about how, if bullets cost $5,000, people wouldn't get shot accidentally; only people who really deserved it would get shot. Well I feel kinda similarly about car horns. If they cost money to use, then people might not be so fucking jolly about toot-tootling their way through my life, reserving their honkings for emergencies -- which, for what it's worth, is what they're for. Obviously, though, a cash-per-honk policy would discriminate against the poor, with possibly fatal consequences -- but that's a great way to get Republicans to vote for it.
     2) They're too low-bandwidth. The only real way to modulate your honk is by controlling the duration and the number of repetitions. Since you can't modulate the volume or the tone or anything else (including, in crowded places, the intended recipient), a single honk could mean any of the following things:
     • "Oh looky! I see a friend of mine on the street! Hello friend!"
     • "The light has changed to green, sir; perhaps you did not notice!"
     • "Move it you fucking fucktard before I bash your nuts with a bat!"
     • "Your car is spraying gasoline everywhere, get out before it explodes!"
     • "Please get out of my way because my wife is having a baby in the backseat!"
So all you are really able to communicate is "hey! I'm trying to communicate with somebody." But you probably assume that when you honk, people know which message you intend. And even more ridiculously, you probably don't believe that you ever misinterpret the honks of others. You always know which honk you're hearing, right? Ah, the fucking curse of low-bandwidth communication rears its ugly, unnecessary head. Go write your emotionally charged text messages and emails. I can't save you.

2008-02-14T10:21:00.003-05:00

It's not fun to have a fever on an airplane. That much is true. But is it less fun than being healthy on an airplane? I'm not entirely sure. Air travel is so different from normal life, but in such a way that it difficult to pinpoint the exact ways it's different. Just like a slowly-brewing fever, or like waiting for hallucinogens which may or may not be bunk to kick in.
     I got nauseous almost as soon as I got into my cab to the airport, but I chalked that up to the fact that I ate a bowl of yogurt and a brownie for breakfast. In the cab, I had the Phildickian experience of finding a counterfeit $10 bill in my wallet, which had clearly come out of the ATM at my local deli (which is the only ATM I know of that dispenses $10 bills: also weird). It was a pretty good fake, I guess, except that I spotted it immediately: two pieces of color laserprint glued back-to-back on cottony paper. I showed it to the cabbie, who was glad I had not tried to pay him with it, and then I tore it up. Subsequently, two people have expressed exasperation with me for destroying the ersatz cash because they wanted to seeeeee it, but I figured a good time to divest yourself of WILDLY ILLEGAL THINGS is right before you get mandatorily searched by agents of a notoriously humorless federal agency. Blerg.
     Wandering through the sad excuse for a terminal that US Airways operates out of LGA, I thought maybe if I threw some more food on top of my nausea it would go away. I opted for an egg & cheese on a roll made by the surliest family of Indian women I had ever seen making airport breakfast food at 7am. It was not a good idea.
     (Side note: I don't know if I've ever mentioned the foibles of the service industry down here on St. Thomas. One of the amusing quirks of the locals is that they have zero interest in serving you. ZERO. But it's hard to be anything but amazed, because they employ that disinterest so heroically that you are forced to posit the existence of TIME-SLOWING or WORK-DESTROYING devices behind the counter. I have seen two employees of a Subway sandwich shop take twenty minutes to prepare a sub. It was the only thing they were doing, and they never visibly stopped doing it. It was not larger, or more complicated, than a normal North American-made Subway sub. But it took twenty minutes. I know this sounds hyperbolic, but you seriously have to see this. Oh! And it is widely reported by non-locals that if you comment on this phenomenon -- or in any way attempt to counteract it, say by mentioning that you are in a hurry -- the service will slow down even further. As a result of all this, there was much jolly consternation in the non-local community down here when it was announced that a branch of Hooters would open on the island. Since business models based on speed, friendliness, efficiency, etc, cannot seem to run on local power, almost all the staff had to be imported from the mainland U.S.)
     Anyway. My first plane ride was only 1.5 hours of tightly cramped nausea, crushed between the curvature of the plane and a 300lb neighbor. I got off the plane for my hourlong layover, and realized that I would have to puke pretty soon. I wondered where to go. Excuse me, ma'am, I'm going to be violently ill in less than five minutes; do you have some sort of vomit accommodations in this terminal, or shall I just use a bathroom stall? Oh and while I'm here, can I have a seat with legroom?
     So I puked in a stall of a crowded bathroom, with the stalls on either side of me occupied with horrified travelers wishing only to void their bowels in peace and keep their loafers free of acidic spatter. Wow, this got gross fast. I'm gonna stop here, and see if there are a lot of votes for continuation of this narrative. If not, I'll just let it fade away like the memory of a headache.

2008-01-28T15:43:00.000-05:00

I was pawing through my gmail account, because sometimes I get a little irked by the parenthetical reminder in the little menu that says Inbox (552) -- which means, I suppose, that I have over 500 unread messages. Well I can't tackle this problem in one afternoon, can I? No. So here's something I found while browsing old email in search of something to read/delete.

AN EMAIL EXCHANGE WITH A FAN, MARCH 2006

To: UD
From: [redacted],

Hi, i read a part in your site about bugs..and it's obvious you have a fear of them lol. But i noticed in it that you said the only way to really kill a bug is to stomp it..but, did you know that most bugs can actually survive being stomped on? lol if it's still alive, it could come back to bite you for trying to kill it...i mean, that's why it's not a good idea to stomp on a bug anyway. You should try it yourself if you have to one day and you'll see. [everything sic]

Dear [redacted]

It's clear that you are just trying to freak me the fuck out with your little "bugs don't die if you stomp on them" gambit, and it was a nice try. But in the end, your scare tactic lacks credibility.

We may have different definitions of the word "stomp." When I say that a good "stomp" will kill a bug, I am describing an action involving my foot and a bug that results in the death of the bug (usually via a 10-fold increase in the area taken up by the bug, and a drastic (90-100%) reduction in its height.)

What I don't do: Put on a silk slipper, gently stroke my foot over the bug's carapace, and run into another room, hoping for the best.

No, a Universal Donor stomp is usually a multistep process, as follows:
(as an example, we'll use an american cockroach, known in New York as a "waterbug": usually 1" - 1.5" in length and tall enough to cast a visible shadow.)

Use heightened senses to detect a bug from over 20 feet away.
If waterbug is flying, run far away, making another person deal with it.
Otherwise, approach bug with caution but also speed.
Attempt to cut off escape routes.
If a spray bottle of soapy water is around, spray bug with soap just to stun it a bit.
Raise leg to waist height, bring down with all due haste and force. Do not miss.
Once it is clear that bug is under shoe, grind bug into ground with a pivoting motion.
Smear bug around with side-to-side motions.
Carefully check the ground/floor around shoe for signs of buggy trauma: smeared guts, detached antennae or limbs.
If step 9 reveals no evidence of dead bug, repeat steps 7-9.
When it is clear bug is dead, stomp is complete.

smooches,
UD

2008-01-07T13:25:00.000-05:00

I'm a little obsessed with TLC's tattoo-shop reality shows (L.A. Ink, London Ink, Miami Ink). My DVR has started bumping off my old, cherished episodes of 30 Rock and Flight of the Conchords because TLC just ran a marathon of the entire first season of L.A. Ink, and I must watch them all.
Now the staff of L.A. Ink are pretty unbelievable artists, and the show would be fantastic if all they did was show the process and the results. But the producers press the tattooees pretty hard to provide some sort of explanation for their new ink, because they sell the dramatic backstory angle to get me emotionally involved (Whatever, dudes: you had me at tattoo). But sometimes people just get tattoos because they look cool. The main result of this tomfoolery is that I get peeved at a TV show, again.

MY PEEVES ABOUT THE TATTOO SHOWS
(all quotes are pastiche, but realistic)

Bogus tattoo "meanings" - If you push people to justify purely aesthetic choices, you will get some fucktarded answers. Seriously, people just make shit up, like:

"I wanted to get cherry blossoms? Because, like, they're alive? And you have to life one day at a time, but you also you have to live life to the fullest? So that's why I want cherry blossoms."

Non-sequitur "dedications" - Some people are just crazy.

"This is in honor of my mother... She had to struggle though hard times to raise me, and make sacrifices? So I'm getting this image of a wolf eating the brains of a zombie prostitute. Because my mom is so strong."

Tattoo as "gift" - Some people seem to need to justify their selfish desire to get a tattoo by claiming that it's "for someone else." Why, people? What's the big deal about getting a tattoo for your ownself? This just seems unnecessarily delusional. Like:

"This giant dragon ass tattoo is a gift for my newborn son, so that whenever he looks at my ass, he'll know that I love him."

Celebrating Identity - I guess I don't have a beef with tattoos celebrating identity so much as I have a problem with identity itself. "I'm getting a tattoo of the flag of Pbbbpt to celebrate my pride in my Pbbbptian heritage." Flarf. Yeah. That and a metrocard will get you on the subway, punk. I just hate this shit. Identity = the enemy. I guess I should create a separate post about this at some point, but here's my basic drift on the ish: celebrating identity is about celebrating the ways we differentiate ourselves from others, and though diversity leads to much great variety, our perceived -- or rather, meticulously constructed and nurtured -- differences are the source of most of the world's suffering.^{[citation needed]} So identity's pro/con calculation results in a net loss for humankind. MORE LATER.

Jenna Jameson, Entrepreneur -- All right, people. This is just totally disingenuous. Porn star Jenna Jameson comes on the show for a tattoo, and the caption calls her an entrepreneur. What's the deal? I don't think there's anything wrong with being a porn star, and I kinda doubt she does either. So why the weird caption-y grab for respectability? Yes, she owns her own multi-million dollar production company. But it's like calling Donald Trump a "TV Personality" -- true, but not exactly the whole story. Or like calling Bono a "blood donor," or George Bush a "breakfast eater." Right?

2007-12-19T10:30:00.001-05:00

Thanks for all your topic suggestions, people! They were, for the most part, completely useless -- scatological, juvenile, pandering, nonsensical, attention-seeky, whatever! I see now that you were trying to teach me a lesson about taking responsibility for, and pride in, my work. Thank you for that. (Boobs, indeed. As if!)

L.A. VOICE
There is a particular kind of gravelly party-girl voice specific to LA that drives me up the fucking wall. I assume it is caused by dry desert conditions and atmospheric pollution in conjunction with smoking-related cell damage and alcohol-related dehydration; add on top of that a regional accent that encourages speaking with the teeth and lips constantly apart, as if the speaker way too fucking cool, high, or chill to close her mouth, and you get L.A Voice, demonstrated ably in this video by Kat von D. (Which, Kat, if you're reading this -- you know I've got no beef with you personally! Make fun of my regional diction anytime!)

THE MOST POTENT ATTACK IN A NEW YORKER'S ARSENAL
Sometimes people piss me off -- yes, even perennially unflappable UD. Usually it's a stranger, usually on the street, and usually they are not worth the time it would take to explain to them why they are worthless space-wasters whose greatest accomplishment will be their decomposition.
     Sometimes, though, you've just got to let the people know that they are human garbage. So when faced with some monstrous pedestrian idiot, shout the following: "Go back to Jersey, you fuck!"
     The potency of this barb is greatly diminished if the target actually is from New Jersey, because they will just ignore you for the bigot you are. That's okay, they're not your real demographic here.
     Similarly, people from all over the world (other than NY and NJ) know to be offended by the remark, even if they don't know exactly why, so you can use this on Germans or Ugandans with equal effectiveness, but that effect is still just mediocre, provoking nothing more than half-hearted ethnic or regional variations of "fuck you too, buddy!"
     But! The effect on New Yorkers -- especially native New Yorkers -- is atomic. Picture the stuttering red-faced apoplexy of a shackled Bill O'Reilly getting a forced lapdance from a naked Magic Johnson, and you're close. In one stroke, you have robbed any New Yorker victims of the one fact that internally proves their moral superiority, regardless of the outerborough scumpond they hail from: the pedigree that gives them license to lord it over the whole fucking world. Now, if they start to protest that they are from Brooklyn, or Hell's Kitchen, they will just sound like whiny sore losers, especially when you say "yeaaaah whatever, Newark breath! Suck my Seacaucus!"

THE GAME OF SHOULD I DATE THIS PERSON?
You may remember The Game of What You Like from a few months ago, one of the most linked-to posts on the blog, which helped you figure out what qualities you ACTUALLY seek out in a partner vs what you THINK you are looking for.
     So here's the new game, to help you figure out if you should pursue a relationship with the person that you are really really hot for.
     So you've got this prospect, right? And they seem really neat, and you're having a hard time finding their faults -- they seem to be too good to be true! Well that's because they are, twitball. Your horny biological programming (id) wants you to fuck that person, and you are getting flooded with positive hormones and neurotransmitters when you're near them, and your ego starts automatically justifying the idea, because that's what it does. You cannot trust your judgment.
     The solution is difficult to put into practice, but theoretically sound:
     1) ask them to describe in detail why their last 5 relationships ended;
     2) contact each of those exes and ask for their version of the story;
     3) compare the explanations.

WRITER'S STRIKE 101
I heard some businessy douchenozzle on CNBC say something about the writer's strike with a smirking implication that the writers were holding up the global economy with their petulant demands. I've heard other people say "they really picked a bad time to strike." A physical therapist once told me, while gooshing his ham-hands into my musculature, "I don't know about unions; they were important at one time, but I think they've really outgrown their usefulness." And it was all I could do to keep from saying "why don't you stick to what you know, you freaking oaf? Because I know you are just parroting a prepackaged sound-bite you heard somewhere on the AM dial, which had been prepared for people just like you who want to sound like the know what they are talking about when they should be FIXING MY SPINE instead of KILLING ME WITH IGNORANCE."
     I was a little angrier back then.
     How do people not understand strikes? The procedure for determining who is right goes like this: 1) look at the two sides in a strike, 2) management is wrong. THAT'S IT. And since I cannot believe that anyone who reads this blog thinks otherwise, I will not belabor the point.

2007-12-12T15:16:00.001-05:00

IT'S OKAY, BABY. IT HAPPENS TO A LOT OF BLOGGERS...
I have officially run out of ideas for blogging. But don't worry! I don't think it's a permanent condition, and I'm not giving up. I'm just asking for help.
Use the comments section of this post to suggest topics for the next post. Use a format like "TOPIC: _______ " and fill in that blank with anything you like.

2007-11-30T02:20:00.000-05:00

I'M MAKING A DOCUMENTARY
I'm making a documentary about informal food-sharing practices in social groups. Are you gonna eat those fries?

DREAM #1
I had some crazy stupid dreams in St. Thomas. The first was a dream that death was not, as we tend to think of it, a condition universally characterized by the same objective measurements of body function. I recently read about how emotions are largely constructed culturally, and cannot just be understood as collections of physical responses; for example, various cultures have words for, and experience, emotions that simply have no correlates in our culture. Weird!
So in my dream it turns out that death, like so many things, must be considered in its cultural context -- that different cultures have different conditions to pronounce someone dead, and that ours is not, as we might like to think, the pinnacle of reason and truth, but simply one way of looking at it. The upshot being that Maori or Mongolian (or whatever) EMTs would have very different vital-sign checklists from ours, involving... who knows what? Could we even understand their death tests?

DREAM #2
I became convinced in my second dream that it is a perfectly normal, natural, and healthy expression of friendship to watch your friends have sex with each other. People are so weird and repressed, it seemed to me! Why don't they ask to watch their friends fuck more often? It wouldn't be awkward. It's so natural and beautiful! You love your friends, right? Why wouldn't you want to see them love each other? So if you asked a couple you knew if you could watch, it's not like you're trying to fuck them (now that could get weird!), you just want to watch. How could it do anything but strengthen your friendship? It couldn't.

NOTES ON SHARING DREAM STORIES IN REAL LIFE
Sometimes, if you tell someone about a dream you had, you will realize that one of two things has happened. You have either:
1. bored your listener with a rambling narrative involving people they don't know; or
2. confused your listener with something vague and un-picturable.
...Or maybe a combination of the two. So here a few ringers to rescue your boring or confusing story by horrifying your listener with something "unintentionally" revealing. Once you realize you have lost your listener's attention, tack one of the following onto the end of your narrative:
MEN: "And then I slaughtered the evil she-monster with my sword made of penises."
WOMEN: "And then I ate 30 hot dogs and had a cup of cock soda."

REDUX
Re: dream #2 above, it occurs to me that that in any group of friends, there is a couple you would be most likely to approach with a voyeuristic overture. Think of who it is in your group of friends. Imagine yourself asking if you could watch them do it. Now jump ahead and imagine them doing it, and you watching. Imagine they are a little nervous, so you have to tell them what to do; direct them a little. Imagine! I Have a dream!

(Geez? How did this get so dirty? I am clearly in some sort of strange zone; enjoy it while it lasts, because it doesn't happen often. I might delete half of this post in the cold light of day.)

2007-11-16T00:53:00.000-05:00

I know this is dumb, because I never post anyway, but I thought that I would once again supply you with a special (and spacial) reason for my continuing nonparticipation in the consensual hallucination of this blog: I am once again going to St. Thomas, this time until the 28th. There are many fine things about STT, but no one there has invented the internet yet, so there is no way for me to share my up-to-the-minute tropical observations about sand, iguanas, non-aerosol sunscreen, and laid-back Caribbean approaches to infrastructure maintenance. Please continue your patient vigilance.

2007-10-17T12:48:00.000-05:00

BED THEORY
Still working on this, but the idea is:

It takes n days to get used to a bed, for your body to experience it as your "Home Bed."
Once a bed reaches Home Bed status, sleep quality for that bed is optimized.
Every bed/person combination has its own optimal sleep quality rating.
The quality of sleep you initially get on any "Away Bed" is 20-50% lower than Home Bed sleep.
This is true regardless of the softness, plushness, fanciness, etc., of the Away Bed.
So obviously 10 hours on an Away Bed may not feel as restful as 6 on your Home Bed.
The presence of another person in your Home Bed is tantamount to sleeping in an Away Bed, and it may take n days to regain optimal Sleep Quality.

HALLOWEEN COSTUME IDEAS
I dressed as a bee for three of the last six Halloweens. One year I was the Unabomber, and one or two I skipped completely. I am not the biggest fan of Halloween, mostly because I'm scared of what I am capable of when I'm wearing a mask. One time I went to a party as Pol Pot and I liquidated all of the intellectuals present. It was messy.

Christopher Columbus - For this costume I would dress as Christopher in the normal way, adding deaths-head facepaint and skellington gloves. Also, I will have washcloths with biohazard symbols on them to represent smallpox blankets, which I will hand out to anyone dressed as a Native American.

Ninja - I won't go to any parties. Then, when people say "why didn't you come to my kickass Halloween party?" I'll say "Oh I was there," and they'll say "but I didn't see you" and I'll say "that's because I was dressed as a ninja. I'm glad my costume worked." If they express doubt I will put a fucking throwing star in their neck.

Slutty Ninja - Same as above, only slutty.

Myself - I will dress in white from head to toe, with a Polaroid camera and extra packs of film, and perhaps a fanny pack. My white t-shirt will have written on it, in Sharpie: "LATER ON I'M GOING TO ASK IF I CAN TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR BOOBS."

Earlicker - I will wear a shirt that says "Earlicker" on it. If anyone asks me what my costume is, I will say "It's a secret. I have to whisper it. Please, come closer...."

2007-09-24T16:35:00.000-05:00

FASHION BLUNDERS OF 2007
Fashion is a really weird phenomenon to me, because it looks like a competition wherein women try to prove (to other women) their a) individuality (by dressing like everyone else), b) hottness (by wearing things that only other women think are flattering), and c) value (by showing how much money they can spend). Maybe because male attention is so easy to get, some women don't get enough validation from it, and are forced to find validation in self-defeating hierarchies of superficiality. I say it's self-defeating because in the end, superficiality will always lead to misery; even if you "win" in fashion, you lose. If you doubt this, ask Anna Wintour, the happiest woman in the world. Gah, you probably don't need me to tell you this. Hell, I don't even want to think about it anymore. I've been trying to write this paragraph for four days -- I must've deleted five judgmental drafty pages by now. If I go on I'll just sound grumpier.
So: I admire hipster fashion in theory because like punk, it stems from a rejection of classic assumptions of attractiveness (like the notion that clothes should be clean, fit you, and not cause seizures in epileptics). But in practice I find it hard to keep my food down, sometimes.
I will ignore the biblical plague of ass-flattening stretch jeans, because I am too baffled to even talk about them. But here are some other looks cluttering Brooklyn lately that make me want to hide indoors so I won't feel the agony that accompanies being so goddamn judgmental:

Swampfoot�
When I see a girl wearing boots in the summer (especially Uggs, or cowboy boots without apparent socks), I can't think anything but "wow, your feet must be a swampy, stanky mess right now." Calf-hugging boots in the winter: sexy. Thigh-high go-go boots in winter: acceptable, though perhaps trying a little hard. Combat boots (with (cotton) socks): always awesome. But you, Swampfoot, look like you can't take care of yourself. I want to treat you to a spa pedicure, during which I will take your boots and hide them until November.
Hipster Greg Allman
I can't find a good image for this abhorrent look, so send a link if you know of one, but I think the name says it all. Imagine Cisco Adler, except dirtier, with skintight pants, no trucker hat, and wearing Mischa's sunglasses. You might be asking "if you were griping above about women's fashion, why is there a dude here?" Simple: Hipster Greg Allman is almost always some hipster chick's accessory. Ten points if you spot one alone in the wild.
Garbage Bag Dresses
Oh, hi! You look like a bag of garbage. And you know how some of your friends tell you that empire waists are flattering, minimizing of big hips or an ample ass? Do not talk to those friends anymore, because they are trying to make you look bad so that they look better in comparison. The problems with garbage bag dresses: a) they actually don't minimize anything, b) they call attention to the fact that you think your parts need minimizing, and c) you look like you're wearing a Hefty Cinch Sak.
Kicky Little Fedoras
You are wearing a fedora. Read that sentence again. Fedora. Fedora. Fedora. If you have to ask what's wrong with that, YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.*
Big Stupid Sunglasses
All right, ladies. I am sorry to tell you this, but: your treasured giant sunglasses make you look cheap, stupid, like a piece of meat. The other day my pal T told me over the phone that she felt like dudes were being particularly gross: "I'm not wearing slutty clothes or anything unusual today, but men are ogling me like crazy. It's nasty." I asked if she was wearing big dark sunglasses, and she awarded me a prize for awesomeness, saying "how the fuck did you know that?"
Simple: when you shield your eyes from other people, they cannot engage in a visual communication with you. Once their brain has ruled you out as a peer, a human being, they will look at your body. The quickest path to feeling like an object is to disqualify yourself as a subject. Does that make sense? I feel like this is going to need clarification.**

* Okay: I know one person who manages to rock a little pinstriped fedora without looking like an abominable tardbag, but she's so adorable that you could wrap her in a tinfoil sweatsuit and you'd still go "awww...."

** I expect comments about "not wanting to engage with gross dudes" or "feeling safe in sunglasses" or whatever. I'm not saying that you should be making soulful eye contact with every dude on the street. Just that your shades objectify you in a way you might not expect, as opposed to like scoop necks or whale tails, with which you expect and encourage the objectification. Take off the shades and you will feel better. Try it. Try it before you say I'm crazy.
OH AND DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT "SHADING YOUR EYES FROM THE SUN" EITHER. BULLSHIT!

2007-09-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

VARIOUS METALS THAT DOCTORS MADE ME INGEST IN THE LAST MONTH
• Iron Sulfate
• Magnesium citrate
• Barium sulfate
• Sodium chloride
• Sodium bicarbonate
• Potassium chloride
You can't make me bionic by making me eat metals -- you're a doctor and you should know that. I don't care if you call them "salts" or "electrolytes" or whatever. I know what you're up to. QUIT IT.

I HAVE STUPID DREAMS
Five of these are real dreams I had in the last two weeks. Find the fake one.

I dreamed that I made a minor edit to a wikipedia page but rebelliously refused to leave an explanation in the "edit summary" field.
I dreamed that I created an online survey to ask my friends to describe any recent gastrointestinal issues they might have had.
I dreamed I was about to have sex with an improbably hot woman but stopped because I did not have a condom, saying "oh well."
I dreamed I found a very rare book about an animal so unusual that it is the sole member of its own phylum.
I dreamed I forgot to lock the door on the way out of my house and I felt bad because I know my roommate hates that.
I dreamed I had a nice warm bowl of pudding.

I CALL BULLSHIT ON "STAYING TOGETHER FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN"
Unhappy parents who postpone divorce "for the sake of the children" are fearful and selfish. Terrible damage is done to children by being raised by loveless, joyless parents. I am not suggesting that divorce is a once-way ticket to bliss -- just that an unhappy marriage is a bleeding wound, and divorce/separation is often the band-aid that lets healing begin. LET HEALING BEGIN PEOPLE.
     I also hate the idea, implicit in the "stay together" philosophy, that children are too daft to apprehend the misery of their parents just because they can't relate in the most literal sense.
     Here's a nice post from a group blog that illustrates my point in such a poignant way that my alter ego left an uncharacteristically breathless comment in response.

AND CARL EVERETT STILL DOESN'T BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS, EITHER
Televised, high-paid ignorance does not surprise me, even in the extreme form in this clip you might've seen from The View. But I can see that it kind of infuriates Whoopi, Joy, and even Barbara that they are forced to sit at a table with such stampeding, unrepentant stupidity. It seems clear that idiocy is tolerated from certain personalties simply because they look nice on TV and are more well-spoken or friendly than your more mainstream yokels. We reflexively give attractive people the benefit of the doubt, and we hesitate to criticize those who seem genuinely nice. But yokels is yokels, folks, whether pretty, educated, or just fucking bonkers. (Sorry for all the links.)

EVIL THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO
     1. Walk up to a pair of beautiful, high-maintenance women in a fancy NY nightspot and ask the slightly less attractive of the two: "is it hard for your friendship that you're hotter than your friend here?" Watch their faces as they close ranks against you, offended at the suggestion that there is any hottmess differential between them. But then watch the actual hotter one bristle a bit at your misjudgment. Watch the less hot one notice or ignore that. Back away slowly.
     2. Put puppies in a bag and hit it with a mallet until it stops barking/moving.
     3. Throw an empty condom wrapper (of an odd brand) behind the dresser or under the bed of a happily married couple. It may take weeks or years to be discovered, but when it is... show them this post before they get divorced (for the sake of the children) so they will believe it was you. (Also, actual cheaters who get caught can point to this post as the probable source for the condom wrapper you failed to clean up after your real tryst. You're welcome.)

2007-09-05T10:36:00.000-05:00

BUZZKILLARY CLINTON
So I think Hillary '68 looks cute in the pic at the top of this this Times article. Yes, a little serious, perhaps self-important, but I remember feeling the same way in college over a minor censorship incident -- whereas Hill was looking serious in 1968, when shit actually was serious, f'reals.
     I know it's shitty to say of a female presidential candidate "aww, look, how cute," and I definitely wouldn't say it about Fred Thompson, though not because he's a man -- he seriously looked like a 70s-style serial killer in the 70s and now he just looks... like this. With Hillary, I'm not being patriarchically indulgent of her whimsical (and probably menses-induced) executive aspirations; I'm just grasping for signs of a real person under that frosty-coiffed and pantsuited exterior.
     So, searching for signs of humanity, I see this old picture of '68 Hillary and I say she looks cute, but you know what? It really only works when I imagine '68 Hillary doing things that a presidential candidate would never admit to or talk about. Then she seems cute. I will spare you the details here. (For details, send $2 via PayPal; ask for "Late Nite in the Law Library with The Student Body Prez")
     The article says she never used drugs. How did someone AVOID using drugs on campus in 1968? She must have been a serious buzzkill.* Even forty years into the future, I feel judged by her past self. Screw you, Hill! LIGHTEN UP.

THEY'RE ALL GETTING MARRIED
Congrats to my pal Lindsey -- you know you're cool when the news of your wedding is broken by Perez Hilton. Well, either you're cool, or you're in serious trouble.

AND I'M GETTING OLD
I just noticed that I am hairier than I was the last time I noticed how hairy I was. Do girls really like hairy wrists? I'm like Teen Wolf over here. Bristly. What's happening to me?
     My theory: I'm getting older. My teeth have turned into magnets for food particles, I guess, and they are decaying faster than the dentist can bash them out of my jaw. My spleen is in a glass by my bed, my walker needs oiling, and my croup is acting up.
     OMG, JK, SRSLY. I am at the height of my powers. I'm awesome. Your very existence is a fart in the hurricane of my destiny. I destroy galaxies with a thought.

------------

* You know, like that cryptofundamentalist Residence Coordinator down the hall
(CFRC: Hey, gang, what are you up to tonight? Any wild parties going down?
ALL: Fuck off, narc!),
or that girl with who refused to huff even one freaking Whip-It because she had "epilepsy."

2007-08-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

NOTES FROM SAN FRANCISCO
(Preliminary notes: I'm pretty sure that people from San Francisco really hate it when people call their town "Frisco.")

So! I went to Frisco. I went for business. I experienced some pleasure, in the following forms: a movie, a cookie, an omelette, dinner with friends, and a lovely day and night with Fuzzysquid, who let me play with his Wii. It's Frisco, after all.
Being in San Francisco made me realize that no matter how much I hate L.A., I would still rather be there than in Frisco. Why all the hateration?

It is retarded to have four separate public transit systems.
I have never seen so many drug addicts, deep in the throes of their respective addictions, so unabashedly, flamboyantly fucked up on the street. Just walking around, buying groceries, applying informally for my financial assistance, resplendent. And dirty.
In fact, Friscans in general don't seem all that concerned with washing their clothes, or their bodies. This is not actually a complaint, just an observation. I tend to think Americans could stand to be a little less fastidious.
Most importantly: For me, cities are vessels only as valuable as their contents, and the only contents I care about are people. Austin's great you say? Yeah? Who do I know who lives there?
Almost everybody I know (and therefore everybody worth knowing) who used to live in Frisco has since moved to (or back to) New York. Living in Frisco feels like an adolescent phase, something you grow out of, and look back on with mild embarrassment (like fedoras, magic tricks, the debate team, virginity). The stragglers I know in Frisco are like anti-pioneers, afraid of their Northeastern destiny, but they'll figure it out soon enough. Then, all that will remain in Frisco are the real Friscans, who actually belong there. KEEP 'EM.

AND NOW A LITTLE SOMETHING... FOR THE LADIES
So I was in this meeting in the first morning of the conference, and the room was totally freezing. Like ICE cold. Literally. So I left the meeting and went out to buy a jacket. The first five stores, I was like: no way. I went to Macy's, and they told me to go to the segregated "Men's Macy's." Sigh. We Shall Overcome Someday, I guess. Anyway so I looked around and asked a dude named Robert about a jacket, for cheap, and he pointed me towards some that were on sale for like 50% off, and they were perfect. So he was like "that's probably about $50" and I was like "I'll take it." But when he rang it up? THIRTY DOLLARS. "I'll still take it!" I bubbled. I skipped back to the meeting, floating on that transactional high. I'm like a shopping hermaphrodite: the speed and focus of a man combined with the bargain-maximization of a woman. I AM �BERSHOPPER.

SOMETHING NEAT I FIGURED OUT IN FRISCO
Have you ever lost a cell phone charger while traveling? Fear not, dreamwalker, you're not the only one. Your replacement is close at hand, provided you are wily, cheap, and have flexible morals.

Go to a large hotel in the center of town.
Ask someone where to find the house phone.
Use the house phone Housekeeping and ask what floor they are on.
Go there (you may need to find a service elevator).
Tell the hard-working immigrant lady that you left your cell phone charger in room 1512 yesterday, and did they find it?
When she looks sheepish and shrugs, ask to see the box of lost chargers so you can look for yours.
Select a compatible charger from the box of HUNDREDS of lost chargers.
Tip the lady, you tightwad.
Whistle an innocent tune as you walk away.

AND DON'T FORGET THE WINTER VARIANT
Go to a Museum; ask for the lost and found; say "I lost a pair of black gloves;" leave with warm hands.

AND HERE IS THE LEAST FUN GAME EVER CREATED
Guess who has IBD?

2007-08-02T15:10:00.000-05:00

The Times had an article about a study that explored the reasons people had sex. The study did a survey that came up with 237 distinct reasons (examples: It just happened. I was bored. Someone dared me. The person was famous and I wanted to be able to say I had sex with him/her.) WHATEVER.
The scientists who did the study are now doing a study about the reasons people choose to NOT have sex. You can participate here, like I did. Here are a few of my answers to their question:

REASONS I DID NOT HAVE SEX
Please list all the reasons you can think of for why you, or someone you have known, have chosen NOT to engage in sexual intercourse in the past.

I was tired.
I wanted to withhold sex in retaliation for a perceived slight.
I did not have any condoms.
I did not want to deal with the emotional consequences of sex.
The other person was drunk.
The other person was on drugs.
I was on drugs.
I was afraid I smelled bad.
I knew I would never see the person again.
They did this thing with their mouth that really creeped me out.
I didn't want to get a reputation.
I had just had sex with somebody else.
I didn't feel like cleaning up the mess created by her copious female ejaculate again.
There were other people in the room.
The other person had just had sex with somebody else.
The other person appeared too needy.
The other person was too young.
The other person was too gossipy.
The other person was too married.
The other person was emotionally unstable.
The other person had vomit in their hair.
I felt that the other person only wanted to have sex with me to hurt someone else.
Too much mud.
Not enough mud.
I did not like the other person.
I was no longer in love with the other person.
I was planning on breaking up with the person.
I fell asleep.
The other person fell asleep.
My parents were nearby.
The other person's parents were nearby.
I was irritated by the other person�s sense of entitlement.
There were too many people coming in and out of the restroom.
We did not want to make a mess in the car.
There was no suitable place to have sex.
The alley was not as private as we had thought.
We got arrested before we could have sex.
There was not enough time.
It was too hot.
It was too cold.
I had a fever.
My back hurt too much.
The other person smelled like they had bathed in patchouli.
I had had sex too many times that day.
I never wanted to see the person again.
The other person looked like a Muppet.
I found the other person's political views abhorrent.
I was worried it would change the nature of our friendship.
I wanted to preserve sexual tension indefinitely.
I got a phone call from my future self warning me not to.
I chose to sleep with a different person that night.
A friend of mine had a crush on the person.
I wanted to be the only guy who had never tried to have sex with with the other person.
I value platonic friendship.
I don't have sex with hippies.
Just knowing the other person would have sex with me is good enough.
There was a wedding taking place in the church at the time.
Pants too complicated to remove.
The drugs ran out and we needed to get more.
The drugs wore off and sex no longer seemed like such a good idea.
I was running late for a movie.

2007-07-25T14:09:00.001-05:00

WHET THY WHISTLE
I had a sandwich with onions on it for lunch, and didja ever notice how you can't get the smell of onions off your fingers, no matter how much you wash? Same thing with the stench of a hobo's nutsack. Hard to shake. Unlike a loud, attention-seeking baby, which is easy to shake. [Textual appetizer complete. Proceed to entree.]

TAKE A LOOK DEEP INSIDE ME
I had an esophagogastroduodenoscopy last week, which means a doctor put a camera into my belly and recorded the journey for posterity. Before you get all excited and start sending jellybeans, painkillers, or samplers cross-stitched with homilies of wellness, let me hip you to the routine and non-exciting nature of the procedure. (While Acid Reflux is a badass screen name for your futuristic online role-playing game character, it is also a medical condition which, while under control now, might have done some damage to my GI tract during the years it was only nominally controlled by the nonstop ingestion of Tums.) So they took a little look-see, a little fucking peekaboo.
So after the procedure, they handed my sedative-addled, drooling self a sheet of paper and shoved me into traffic. I didn't look at it until today. Turns out it was my "Discharge Instructions" (which: heh), and at the bottom was the following admonition:

If you received any sedative or anesthetic drugs today, you should not drive nor make any major decisions for at least 24 hours.

NOW they tell me. Sheesh. I'm supposed to read instructions while sedated? Well shit. Umm....

MAJOR DECISIONS I MADE WHILE SEDATED
     • Sold all my Google stock; used money to buy lizard chow
     • Started an all Ho-Ho diet
     • Donated 1.5 kidneys (I was already in the hospital, see)
     • Shaved eyebrows, thighs
     • Began living the principle

But the fuckery of the warning continues:

If you have had an anesthetic you may experience drowsiness, difficulty in concentrating, and general uneasiness for the next one or two days.

Dude. Fuck the next one or two days -- you just described my entire fucking life. Whose cute idea was it to smear transdermal sedatives onto my pillowcase since I was like thirteen? I AM LOOKING IN YOUR DIRECTION, FATHER. NOT FUNNY.

2007-07-10T10:24:00.000-05:00

WAYS TO MESS WITH NEW PARENTS
I have this terrible urge building up in my heart, and I must let it out so that I do not act on my urge. A friend of mine just had a baby, and though it's got nothing to do with the friend in particular, here's what I wanted to do. I call it:

THE PROPHECY
The first time you see the baby, get excited and lean in close. Stare intently and slowly let all the mirth leave your face. If you can go pale at will, do it. Let a cup, or a toy, fall dramatically from your hands. Grasp the mother firmly by the upper arms, look in her eyes with a shell-shocked look on your face, and whisper:
     "Listen to me very carefully. Don't EVER tell him this... but your child is going to save the entire human race."
     Then roll your eyes back into your head and fall to the floor. Later, deny any memory of the event. OR you can laugh it off unconvincingly, blaming "bad oysters" or something, and rubbing your tummy like a mime.

2007-06-29T22:23:00.000-05:00

STALKER RECIPE
Some people are just crazy wacked-out freakazoid stalkers out of the womb, but that's rare. Far more commonly, regular people are pushed into stalkery shenanigans by circumstance. Under the right conditions, anyone can be turned into a stalker, so take responsibility for your goddman actions, you heartbreakers, you love-takers! Remember that sometimes, when a monster appears, you just might be the Frankenstein.

Here's a basic recipe for creating a stalker:

Go on a date, or hang out with someone at a social gathering.
Establish rapport through a combination of flirting, physical proximity, and alcohol.
Form a strong bond by demonstrating common interests, values, and experience.
Kiss, make out with, or fuck that person soon after forging the bond.
Reinforce the bond with statements like "that was amazing," "I feel like I've been looking for you my whole life," or "you really get me."
Express sincere and enthusiastic interest in hanging out again, and part with a lingering kiss, underscored by a small moan or a sigh.
Turn off your cell phone for 14 days.

Now, There is much room for improvisation here, so have fun with it, people. You don't have to turn off your phone, you can just block or ignore calls from the subject. Try logging onto MySpace constantly, so they can see the little "online now!" icon.

2007-06-27T15:14:00.000-05:00

Tina Turner asks, in her 1984 chart-topper What's Love Got to Do with It:

What's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love but a second hand emotion?

So. When Tina calls love a "second hand emotion" ...
    a) does she mean "second-hand" as in shabby, used, cheap, pre-owned? If so, does that make any sense?
    b) does she really mean "second-class emotion"?
    c) does she mean "second hand" in the sense of "moment-to-moment"? Like as opposed to a "minute hand" emotion?
    d) does she really mean "Master Blaster runs Bartertown!"

2007-06-18T13:29:00.000-05:00

THE KNIFE-FIGHTING BLURB WAS A RED HERRING YOU FOOLS
I post today out of a sense of bloggy duty, not because I am dripping with ire or oozing insight. In fact, I may be repeating myself a bit. Having disclaimed any responsibility to be original, I grant you permission to read further at your own nauseous risk.

RIGHTNESS
I don't think I'm right about everything. I just tend to think I'm right about the stuff I've thought about; the reason I think I'm right about a lot of things is that I have actually thought about a lot of things. Important things. Whereas you think a lot about things like whether ScarJo gave Pete Wentz a hummer at the VMAs.
     Apart from celebrity gossip, your "beliefs" and "opinions," such as they are, are mostly received wisdom from your parents, teachers, or peers, or perhaps your psychic friend. Don't beat yourself up about this -- that's how everybody starts!
     The good news is that you can replace received wisdom with, like, earned wisdom by just thinking about things. The bad news is that if you may still end up wrong. Figuring out whether this is the fault of your flawed education, shitty role models, inborn stupidity, or inherent badness is possible, but not particularly useful. If you can't seem to earn wisdom no matter how hard you think, don't despair: the shortcut to rightness is to improve the wisdom you receive. How? By listening to ME. Yay! Call for pricing.

DISAGREEMENT
I believe that if someone doesn't agree with me about something, there are two possible explanations:
     1) a miscommunication has occurred, or
     2) we have an irreconcilably fundamental disagreement.
This is why I argue passionately (insistently, obnoxiously): If I don't think there is a fundamental disagreement, I want to find and eradicate the source of the miscommunication. However, if there is a fundamental disagreement, let's locate it, then change the subject and talk about cake instead. Do you like red velvet cake? OMG me too.

IF PUNS ARE THE LOWEST FORM OF HUMOR I MUST HAVE A WORM IN MY HEAD, AND IT SHAT THIS OUT:
Handing the keys to the naked shrimp who was in a hurry, the Hertz agent said: "you may proceed to your car apace." OH BARF KILL ME NOW

THE GAME OF WHAT YOU LIKE
So here's the game I made up yesterday.
     1) Write down all the qualities that you are looking for in a BF/GF/partner/mate or whatever. Did you put humor, talent, good looks, moral character? Stuff like that? A list of traits you respect? FANTASTIC.
     2) Now make a list of your exes, and come up with a really honest list of their attributes.
     3) Circle the traits that most often occur in your exes.
     4) Make a new, clean list of the attributes shared by your exes. Burn the rest of your work festively.
     OKAY SO. You may think you are simply holding proof of the compromises required to navigate the Sargasso of dating until you reach the promised land of coupled bliss. But this unburned list is what you actually seek out, as opposed to what you think you seek out. Maybe you see traits like emotionally unavailable, alcoholic, distracted, unambitious, borderline sociopathic. This list is your history, but it doesn't have to be your destiny.
     If your lists from steps 1 and 4 vary drastically, it seems like you are either lying to yourself about what you want, or your partner-picking instincts are VERY BAD. You may want to change your selection process. Here are a few quick tips that should be helpful for my readership in particular:
     1) Try not to fuck people you have only experienced while intoxicated.
     2) Try not to fuck people within 24 hours of meeting them.
     3) If you can't manage that, then try not to start DATING people just because you've fucked them, while drunk, the night you met them.

2007-05-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

RULES EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY I SAID GODDAMN!

ON YOUR BIRTHDAY, YOU ANSWER YOUR PHONE
I don't care if you "don't like the phone," or you "don't feel like getting into a long conversation," or you're "trapped under a fallen pillar" -- you answer the fucking phone on your birthday. It's one day out of the fuckitysuck year. You people are selfish.
     Why? Because I want to complete this transaction. I went to all this trouble to REMEMBER your SPECIAL DAY. And now I have to sing "Happy Birthday" onto your voicemail? What do I get out of that? I want to hear you squeal with joy at how AWESOME I am. The value of your birthday really lies in how SPECIAL it makes ME look in comparison to the rest of your worthless friends. You're not gonna call me back today, I know that. It would be way lame and desperate to call me back for birthday wishes, like "oh, did you call me earlier, tee hee?" No, you're too busy eating cake or having dirty birthday fucksex in some juke-joint bathroom in the Tenderloin. So I gotta call AGAIN. When I could be having a fucking donut. DON'T FUCK WITH MY DONUT HOUR, PEOPLE. I don't have much left to hold on to, so I will fight like a cornered mongoose to defend it.

DON'T BE ALL SEXY AROUND ME IN THE SPRINGTIME
Oh, you say you can't help it, huh? "I'm just as god made me," you insist. I call bullshit, you hot sexy thing you. Get off my subway! It would be one thing if you were just wearing normal-person clothes like a normal person, but you are wearing some filmy and spare construction of breatheable, meshy hoo-hah. Or you're blinding me with periodic reflections off your glistening clavicle. Or you are absent-mindedly probing your navel while I'm trying to read, over here. Or you have a tattoo somewhere compellingly dewy that begs to be examined. Or you are female, between the ages of 20 and 40, and not completely deformed. NOW I REMEMBER WHY I HATE HAVING A SEX DRIVE OH MY GOD.
     I have a friend who I am pretty sure feels this way all the time, and I have to say: Dude, I had no idea. I am so, so sorry. This explains so much. Your life must be... well, I've only been feeling this way for like three WEEKS and chemical castration is looking like an attractive option.

SELECT YOUR NEW RINGTONE IN THE PRIVACY OF NOT MY FACE
Certain activities are entertaining to those enmeshed in them, but unfailingly irritating to those on the periphery. For example: finger-drumming fancy polyrhythms onto a tabletop along with your iPod is not fun for anyone but you, the drummer. Your little ping that says you've got a new instant message -- over and over again? -- well, HOORAY FOR YOU, YOU HAVE FRIENDS JUST AS LAZY AS YOU, but no one wants to hear it. (Ditto for the blockrocking two-foot penis-compensating bass speakers in your car. Boring AND a cliché.)
     Furthermore, certain sounds are designed to get your attention: sirens, alarms, bells, whistles, and so on through the rattle, buzzer, and klaxon families. Cellphone ringtones, the heirs of this noble ancestry, usually combine the restraint of the paparazzi the the subtlety of a crowbar pimpslap.
     You know what the most annoying thing in the world is? When you try out all your cellphone ringtones in public. I know the variety is a source of mind-hobbling bliss for you, the selector, and I know you are OH SO EAGER to give EVERY POSSIBLE TONE a fair shake before you pick the winner, but everyone and I mean EVERYONE around you -- including that nice old Chinese lady and those Mormon missionaries -- wants to a) scramble your eyeballs with a screwdriver, b) pack feces into your bloody eyesockets, and then c) stomp on your neck real hard. Now, would you like that? DO THAT AT HOME, DOUCHEBAGGUS SUPERMAXIMUS.