Some Correctives Regarding Internet Usage and Social Networking in an Age of Dumbassery

These are bound to change over time, but after several years of 'studying' the Internet and the behavior of its denizens, here are a few humble requests, observations and concerns. The web sites will change in time but human nature does not change:

01a. You don't need to post hundreds of photos of yourself if you are only capable of making one facial expression. You also don't have to post hundreds of photos of yourself at parties holding oversized Solo cups. It makes me and everyone else think you have a drinking problem or are running away from your demons.

01b. Likewise, it is unnecessary for you to always pose in photos with your significant other of the moment kissing. What this says is that you need outside validation that the relationship is real. People in relationships that last don't even stay in the same room together for more than a few hours if they aren't sleeping. Unless you and your partner are literally surgically attached, you can just have a simple image of yourself, some place, doing something as an autonomous being.

01c. Every single moronic post doesn't have to be about your significant other, as if that other person is your entire world ("I like honey in my tea and so does Jared!! We were meant to be together until our ashes co-mingle!!!!1"). While you're being clingy, he's thinking about fingering your best friend.

02. If you are over 40, you should not have a Facebook or MySpace account. It's like spending a Sunday afternoon alone walking around Toys 'R Us with a cup of coffee in your hand and without a shopping cart. It's freaking everyone out.

03. If you have a neurological disorder, an emotional disorder, a speech disorder or some combination of the above you do not need your own YouTube channel with daily updates. The Internet is not your Therapy Room or your Diary, it is a Hall of Mirrors, the true manifestation of the human subconscious. De Sade should have only lived so long.

04. Your art is terrible. Stop uploading it. The one drawing you did looks like Raggedy Ann getting sodomized by a Christmas Tree. The other piece you made out of lipstick, fingernail clippings and your brother's pubic hair is only slightly better.

05a. I know it's difficult to say this, but would it kill you to go to the movies once in a while? I know some people who never leave their house: they just download everything. I'm not asking to stop downloading altogether - that would be like asking Christians to be sane - but spending $7 to support a small indie theater (or even $9 for a multiplex) once in a while is good for everybody. And when you're there, shut your fucking mouth because Keira Knightley is talking.

05b. Same thing applies to downloading albums: if the musician(s) you like come(s) to town, show up, buy a T-shirt, drink a beer, talk to someone. You support the band, the venue and the Beer Gods who brew Guinness. And for you pervy types - of which I cannot be included - crowded concerts often mean accidentally brushing up against pretty girls who are dancing in front of you and are too drunk to care that they are using your skinny, denim-clad leg as a makeshift sybian. But again, this does not pertain to me. I also do not cry myself to sleep every night.

06. No one needs to see videos of your hemorrhoid surgery. Or gall bladder surgery. Or your fetish for shoving breakable glass jars up your rectum. I've seen so many medical horrors I didn't even have to go to Medical School: Johns Hopkins just faxed me a diploma. Strangers come up to me with their rashes and I can tell them whether it's psoriasis or eczema. I know treatment options for all STDs. I've assisted with two live births.

07a. Stop treating your newborn children like trophies and posting pictures of them on Facebook, MySpace, etc. They are not prizes. The sole reason you, as an animal, exist is to reproduce. You might as well post pictures of yourself eating breakfast or eliminating waste or sleeping, because they are also basic human functions.

07b. Stop using your child's photo as your avatar on blogs, chat rooms or message boards, unless your child is actually punching out the messages. It gives further evidence that the things you post carry with them the intellectual weight of a 4-year-old.

07c. Further, your newborn does not need an e-mail account or a cell phone or his/her own live video feed. Stop trying to convince everyone that it's adorable. It isn't. It looks just like you.

08a. Stop telling everyone you have problems cutting yourself and then posting pictures of your flayed limbs for pity. If you can still operate a digital camera, the cuts aren't deep enough. Google "Stihl +arm +pain".

08b. If you murder your girlfriend and saw off her limbs and head, don't use your iPhone to photograph it. You might as well handcuff yourself, read yourself your rights and throw yourself into the back of a random squad car.

08c. If you kill your newborn child and throw it in a field, do not include MapQuest directions with your accompanying Twitter post. ("Whew, those babysitters were expensive.")

09. Teachers: Stop adding your students as 'friends' on Facebook, MySpace, etc. while they are still your students. You don't need to know what fifteen-year-olds are doing on Friday nights, and they don't need to know that you like dabbling in cocaine and once had a three-way with two tiny Koreans as an undergrad at Penn State. And you wonder why they're building more jails for you.

10. Teenage Girls: Stop taking pictures and/or making videos of yourselves stripping or masturbating. I know all of you are proud of your bodies (despite evidence that many of you need to use a goddamn treadmill), and all of you probably intended the photos/videos to be seen by only one other person, but none of you seem able to grasp how the Internet functions - those pictures and videos are going to end up everywhere: the hard drives of priests, your closest friends, those dorks in school you wouldn't give the wrong time of day, your father's buddies, your school principal, complete strangers, your future employers, the authorities. Unless you want to have an awkward talk with your Mom about why all the hair brushes in the house smell like a combination of blood and trout, please heed my advice.

11. If you have an e-Spouse, that's Darwin's way of telling you that you will die alone.

12a. I never want to hear about your concerns for privacy and the government taking an interest in your meaningless life if you list the following on any social networking website: your birth date, the high school you attended, your height and weight, your home address, your home phone number, your private cell phone number, your AIM handle, your personal web sites, your blood type, the jobs you've held, the college(s) you've attended and the clubs you were an active member of, your hobbies, hang-out spots, who you've made out with in the last six months, your yearly salary, your credit score, the year and model of the car you drive and your current GPS coordinates. Your major concern isn't Uncle Sam, but the Son of Sam.

12b. There has never been a better time to be a stalker.

Have Yourself a Zero-Sum Christmas

We can all admit it: the Christmas holidays make everyone bonkers, make everyone's credit card bills skyrocket and clutter our highways and roads and malls with rabid shoppers who only rise from their dank homes once a year to purchase that gold-plated can opener for that relative they hate. We're spending too much time and money on others, trying to guess what they want for Christmas - and inevitably purchasing things they either own and don't want or don't own and don't want or don't need and want to return to the store - instead of spending the right amount of time and money on ourselves, knowing exactly what we need and want.

So what is more appropriate in a year of economic turmoil but to borrow a term from that Economics text book you never cracked (and probably paid some student-from-an-Asian-country to take the class for you) to set the holiday right: we need to start practicing a Zero-Sum Christmas. Here's how it works. Everyone collectively agrees we don't get the shit we really want. We collectively agree everyone else has crap taste and wouldn't know what a nice sweater looked (and fit) like if Marc Jacobs, forty virginal Italian seamstresses and a herd of golden sheep walked into their house and knit them one. We collectively agree that we aren't drinking nearly enough as we should and need to stay out of our cars and off the road and in front of the stove with a bottle of scotch, aged exactly 15 years (because as we all know, anything older than 15 years is already over-ripe). We collectively agree that the Malls are full of children and ugly women and germs and tone deaf people wearing red aprons who ring a bell to make us feel guilty about the poor, which doesn't work because we are Americans and incapable of feeling guilty about anything or anyone.

Let me give you a personal example. Take me and a "friend" of mine, who I will give the fake name of "William Russell Thomas, Esquire." He wants a pair of hockey skates for Christmas that costs $500. I want a hooker for Christmas that costs $500 (she spends the night, washes the bed sheets and makes a wicked tomato omelet). Now, I don't know that he wants those ice skates (he and I don't talk because he's a raging asshole) and he probably figures I want a hooker but isn't sure what variety I'm going with this time around (he doesn't know I'm in a Chinese-American mood this month). So instead of me buying him a gift he doesn't need, like a lawnmower, and him buying me a gift I don't need, like a three-month stay in a rehab clinic, he buys himself the skates, I phone up my "escort," we mentally tell ourselves that these gifts came - in a spiritual sense - from each other … and we're both happy as clams on December 25th. We have the same amount of debt because we both spent the same amount of money, but we got what we wanted. We both win. And because we both win, neither of us has to put our gifts in the attic (though I should probably get a blood test in a few weeks).

This is really the way to go for everyone, whether everyone is too fucking dense to figure it out or not. Disappointments will be a thing of the past. No one will be bitter with each other during the opening of presents, and that way we can spend the day in peace and harmony, not worrying about travelling from relative's house to relative's house. We will still be burdened with massive debt and helping the economy and fighting terrorism. "But wait, Matt," you counter, "what about the children, those precious beams of light shot down from outer space from the eyeballs of the Almighty Lord and Savior Upon High? They don't have any money so they can't buy themselves anything! They'll be left out! Do you have an answer for that?" I say screw those virus-tainted turds. They can't buy us adults anything anyway. They should be grateful they weren't forcibly removed from their mothers' wombs with rusted tools or squat-thrusted into an old sock. When they see their elders picking themselves off the floor from the liquor they bought themselves or notice their older brothers and sisters awake from their night of smoking weed they scored for themselves, that will only make them that much eager to grow up, behave themselves, earn a decent income and stop believing in those fat men in red suits who give them toys for free and only want to be paid in cookies. They really want to be paid in blood. And once more Christmas will be for the working types, and those depressed enough to realize they need a satisfying Christmas more than greedy eight-year-olds.

Happy Holidays to All! (* but especially to those who let me sleep until noon)

The Freefall Solution and Why It Is Merciful

It started in the Summer. Gas prices, gas prices, gas prices: it's all I ever friggin' heard about from you people. "But we started a war with the Cloaked Jedi who have oil," you said, "so why isn't this exploitation working out in my favor? As a white American I am the center of the universe and demand everything be cheap for my frivolous needs." Well, wake up and smell the frankincense: you are behind this. You voted That Guy in, then you kept Him in, then you voted for Those Other Guys who kissed his ass, then they gave major corporations massive duffle bags of cash, and now you are the ones suffering. And while those duffle bags of cash were changing hands, you were busy staring at some YouTube video about a cat peeing in its own mouth to actually keep up with the news and find out what's really going on outside your house. "But the Lord wanted me to vote that way," you insist, "and so did those precious unborn fetuses! I voted to defend the fetuses of the whores!" Well now that your dollar is worth less than Brawny paper towels, liquefy it and shove it in your gas tank along with some kitchen grease. Let's see if that gets you to Wal-Mart for more Tupperware and socks.

Along with rising gas prices, this past Summer affected virtually everyone in another way: it magically - and I mean this in a Jungian sense - made everyone horrible drivers. Drivers so atrocious that Chinese women in Cadillacs suddenly seem like Junior Johnson. The speed limit became something to divide by three. If it reads forty, you now struggle to keep it under fifteen. Touching the gas pedal has become the equivalent of putting your boot on the throat of a crying newborn. Police officers are now given less work to do and more time to arrest minorities for playing music too loud. Even high school kids have gotten into the slow-motion game, emulating senior citizens in their parents' cars and slowly, slowly, slowly driving to that Saturday night party for a few cans of Natty Lite, some Guitar Hero and maybe a little fingering. In the Collective Dreams of the Masses, everyone got it into their thick, fat, profoundly ignorant and factually challenged animal brains that going a third of the speed limit will somehow help save hundreds if not thousands of dollars. The logic is that the more you coast, the less fuel you use up. This means that driving two miles to work now takes me approximately twenty minutes. Kids on bicycles whiz past, thinking the Creatine they stirred into their morning latte is making their legs stronger. No one realizes that it's basically a wash, as the slower you go, the more time you spend on the road. The problem with any form of Logic is that it isn't taught in the New Testament or Bible Camp so many people don't recognize its necessity.

But it gets better. As if the bulbous and moronic didn't know how to save and spend before, the banks made it easier for them to be frivolous with money. "You mean to tell me," John Q. Public mused, sometime ago, "that even though I have a part-time job at Fuddruckers and maxed out three credit cards and my wife is in jail for armed robbery I can get a loan for a mini-mansion for me and my four illegitimate kids, two dogs, a cat, a pot-bellied pig and four pick-up trucks? Hot diggity!" Predictably, this did not turn out well, and all those John Q. Publics did not get that long-deserved promotion they've been praying for (oooh, Assistant Manager!) and their classy counterparts, Jane Q. Publics, are still in the pen knitting quilts and hating men. Did I mention that John Q. Public's credit cards are still maxed out and now he can't afford the monthly payments for his Hemi-powered pickup trucks? And that John Q. Public is technically unemployable because he has a drinking problem? And that those banks that gave out the loans don't have their money and the credit card companies don't have their money and the auto dealerships don't have their money? At least Pete Coors has his money.

Now, how do we fix this? There are two schools of thought: some government people voted to "bail out" these criminals and make every single one of us citizens - just trying to get by, to watch some football, to go to the beach - pay for it. The other school of thought is what a teenager told me would totally fix "all this stupid shit": "They should just print more bills, son." Both suggestions are equally worthless, with the teenager being slightly more intelligent. And yet there is a third plan I came up with that I think should be given some consideration: The Freefall Solution.

The Freefall Solution is easy. Anyone that had anything to do with this must take the elevator to the top of the highest building in Manhattan and jump. That's about it. White collar guy who could care less about a hard working citizen's pension? Jump. Number cruncher crunching numbers for that half-a-mil beach house in the Maldives? Jump. Middle-aged mother of three who drives her burgundy mini-van like it's an M-1 Abrams tank? Eh, you jump too. Onto the street, the pavement, face first, doing a back flip, go for style points. If you complain about the gas all day and work for pennies and then vote against your own interests, the sky really is the limit my friends. It's the merciful thing to do, and maybe with all this jumping and not so much hot air oozing out of your gaping maws we can also get rid of global warming and Al Gore can finally stop sweating.

And don't worry about the corpse clean-up on the ground level: I've got plenty of Brawny.

Women Only Like Me When They're Drunk

Sunday I was in Atlantic City with my parents. Whenever we go there - about three to four times a year - my Mom and my Grandmother usually go their own direction (to quickly rid themselves of their hard-earned money on the slot machines) while Dad and I do what we affectionately call the Atlantic City Crawl: we start at one end of the Boardwalk (usually the Tropicana) and work our way down, drinking and eating, eating and drinking, walking walking walking. Since we start early (10 AM-ish), we can't let yourselves get sick by 1 PM, so we regulate the heavy doses of regular coffee, beer, whiskey and different kinds of food (sweets, chicken sandwiches, soup, seafood) with the walking we have to do. We figure we'd rather buy things with our money we can enjoy instead of dumping it all in a slot machine/Skinner Box or rolling ourselves broke at a craps table, so we save the gambling for the very end of the day (because by then we won't give a shit about how much we lose).

One of our stops - around noon or so - was at the Liquid Bar in the Trump Plaza. He and I sat at the one (nearly) vacant end of the bar - across the way was an Elvis Impersonator drinking a beer (I can't make this up). Ordered a Yuengling Lager and so did Dad; I was watching the Phillies/Reds game on the big screen TV while Dad was clearly fascinated with the Elvis guy.

Before I knew it, a young woman in her early thirties (maybe even late 20's - it was hard to tell) came in the place stumbling and planted herself next to me (when there were clearly other seats available), orders something I can't make out, the bartender nods and gets to it (I assume at that point she's a regular). After ordering she tosses her handbag next to her, stretches both arms out and lays her left cheek on the bar, so she's looking right at me.

Like every other drunk person in the world, she felt like talking. To me.

"How much did you win?" she asked me, spacing out her words with care.

"Nothing," I replied. I was telling the truth, because I didn't start gambling yet.

"I got 1200. Nickels. Never happened before." The bartender brought her drink over and then immediately walked away. My Dad didn't say anything either and - though I neglected to check - was probably snickering at me behind my back (like he always does).

"What are you going to do with the money?" I asked. I had to respond - I was kind of trapped and had to say something.

"Spend it," she said.

"On?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

At this point she had made me thoroughly uncomfortable, although to be fair I was uncomfortable from the moment she sat down. "Shoes," I said. "Buy a few pairs."

"Naahhh."

"Buy more booze, then!" I said, pointing to the bottles of vodka behind the bar. (I was making fun of her, but she didn't seem to notice.)

"YEAH!" she yelled, loud enough for anyone to hear if anyone cared at all. Meanwhile, I heard her handbag vibrating. She lifted her sleepy, dazed head slowly and reached in her purse. She checked the device. She put it back in her purse and put her face back down on the bar. She looked at me. She didn't say anything.

I took a few swigs of my beer and said something to Dad, who was switching his attention between the Elvis Impersonator and the TV. I turned back to the young woman and she was still looking at me. I didn't say anything (I maybe nodded, I don't remember). I went back to my beer. I fiddled with the napkin. I looked back. She was still looking at me.

"Are you tired?" I asked.

She didn't even respond. The drink she had in front of her had mysteriously disappeared, as if there was a hidden straw under her cheek that looped under the bar that she was using. I don't recall seeing her take a swallow. I quickly finished my beer and nudged Dad to finish his. "Do you want to go?" I asked him.

He and I got up and put our coats on and she asked me where I was going. I told her we were walking to the Hard Rock Cafe, which was a lie (we were actually going to Caesar's Palace).

"Stay," she said. "Have another."

"No, no, no, we have to go," I told her, already pushing my chair in.

"Is that your Dad?" she asked, smiling like she figured out some great mystery.

Dad didn't say anything, so I had to answer. "Yeah, that's my Dad," I admitted.

"Awwww!" she exclaimed.

"Have a good evening," I said and walked out in front of a very slow-moving Dad, who was probably relishing my chance encounter with Ms. Stolichnaya.

Upon walking out into the rain, neither of us spoke for a few minutes. Then, being Fatherly, he said to me, "If you wanted to stay there with her I could have just met up with you later." He smirked.

I laughed, because no other response was fitting. I was once again reminded of the disturbing fact - and it's happened a lot - that Women in general only talk to me when they're fucking plastered. A fast-food whore in a dive bar? Talk to Matt. A fatty on a cruise ship who drank too many Mai Tais when her boyfriend wasn't around? Talk to Matt. An older, beat-up looking woman with a fetish for emaciated poets? Talk to Matt. Taciturn librarians from New York? Bi-polar sorority girls from California? Devoted Catholics who are saving themselves for marriage? There's Matt. Do a shot. Talk to Matt. Do another shot. Bother Matt. Do another shot. Yell in Matt's face.

Sober, it's all a different story. Sober, I'm a pylon that you have to drive your truck around. What's that noise I heard? I think I ran over someone. That was Matt. Who's that guy I bumped into and never said excuse me? That was Matt. I spilled my coffee on this guy's shoes ... who was that dweeb? That was Matt. Did someone just ask me something? Oh, that was Matt ... but because I'm a brain-dead twat with a hearing problem I'm going to ask him to repeat whatever he asked me over and over and over again until he gives up asking and I can devote more time to thinking about why men have nipples and why Rico Chico the Banana Baron got voted off the Big Survivor Brother Island of the Stars.

As a result of all this, I'm starting to think I only look presentable if and when everyone's over the legal limit to drive. Maybe I am the ugly girl at the party. You know, the one you 'settle for' and wake up regretting? Instead of "Awww, dude, I did the fat girl!" it's "Awww, shit, I did the Matt!" Getting thyself to a nunnery is the next logical step.

Your Cell Phone Is a Marvelous Prop

Groucho Marx had his cigar. Charlie Chaplin had his cane and hat. Carrot Top has his trunk full of shit. Demetri Martin has a pad of paper. But people nowadays have their own prop, and it's used constantly in the Theater of Life: the cell phone. They come in different forms from different companies and do different things: some have extra features, like cameras to photograph your underage girlfriend's tits, cameras to photograph your own underage tits, songs stolen off the Internet, games involving plumbers and princesses and flowers spitting fire, chat software so you can keep in constant touch with your dealer who works middle shift at Best Buy. But they're all basically cell phones.

Cell phones and their usage make us look important. Like, so important, people can't turn them off to order a burger or get their super complicated ultra skim latte mocha-fuckachino at $tarbucks. There's nothing 'cooler' than standing around, looking bored and flicking away on your phone, sending a text to someone else at some other location letting everyone around you aware that you're just too frickin' awesome to care about what's going on in that room at that time, that you got some connection, some place, somewhere else you're always ready to go to with a flick of a button. Your half-dead, rotting corpse may be in one area, but your mind is elsewhere. Always had a problem what to do with your hands in an awkward situation? Press buttons! Don't like talking? Press buttons! Driving's boring as hell? Let go of the steering wheel, you're about to get a high score on "Snake!"

Actually, the constant calling and texting make your evenings look a Samuel Beckett play. Let me give you a typical Friday night: People message or call each other to get together and meet somewhere. They meet somewhere and then don't know where to go from there, so they text other people to meet them somewhere else, and so they go there next. And when they're there, they text more people, come up with another plan, maybe do that, maybe not, maybe fracture off into sub-groups. Those sub-groups go in different directions to different locales, and while at those locales they text those same fucking people they just left to tell them where they are and what they're doing. Eventually, the night hours run out, everyone gets tired and goes home to rape each other silly, get arrested or go to bed. The next day, the same thing happens again.

What in the crap is wrong with you people? Basic conversations with people in real life have become a struggle. All I see are glowing devices emitting signals killing bees. (And without the bees, what will birds fuck? ... cuz that's what happens, right?) What's happening is people aren't living in the moment, things are just drifting by them. If any of you knew who Thich Nhat Hanh is, which most you probably don't, you'd know that he (a.) isn't dead, (b.) isn't a hip-hop producer and (c.) thinks that your mindlessness is actually wounding your soul. Your soul! No, you clod, I'm not talking about the music of John Legend. I'm taking about that entity that lives inside you that... wait, what? You gotta take this one? Okay, fine. I'll ... just ... count the change in my pocket ...

... don't mind me.

(whistles)

The Joy of Hating and/or Ignoring People You Know

As you get older, you come to find some of the more enjoyable things in life are not exactly what you thought was enjoyable when you were a teen. For example, you develop a taste for cognac, fine cigars, expensive clothing, classic art museums, haute cuisine, English poetry. In other words, you become a raging bore worthy of a bullet to the forehead. But with aging you can properly cultivate the one grand luxury unfeasible when you're younger (and one of the nastiest legal pleasures known to mankind): the delicate art of learning how to be intolerably rude to former classmates/old friends when you see them in public.

This isn't something you can delight in when you're just out of school - it's a treat for the older, more refined, more experienced person. You can't very well pretend to not know someone just a year after you left high school or college (unless you're a major stoner, in which case your stupidity will be chalked up to your addiction, thereby negating the proper reaction). So give it a few years after the fact. Let gravity draw everyone's faces to the ground. Let overeating and a slower metabolism make them look bloated. Let their early, miserable marriage and 2.4 kids (by the age of 23!) be something to mock and mock and mock. Let yourself come to the realization that you never liked any of those people to begin with.

Let me give you one example. I was out to dinner with someone, and the waiter who served our table was someone I went to high school with. Now, I never liked this guy - he was cocky, he played football, etc. When he saw me - and I saw him - we recognized each other, but he never said, "Hey, man, how are you" or something like that. I never said anything in return. I ordered and was polite, continuing the trend of ignorance. We ate and I took the bill. It was about $32. I told the person I was with that I would cover the tab. And I did ... except, you see, I left $30. Only $30. Not the thirty two, mind you ... because I deduced the $2 and the tip for the (a.) lack of recognition and (b.) for the spittle that was probably in my dish. When asked by my Dining Companion what that was all about, I told her that the waiter "was a loathsome fuck" and that "he should eat my shit." She tried to be diplomatic: "What if he genuinely didn't remember you? Why didn't you say hello first?" This kind of diplomacy isn't needed in these parts: mentally, I run a Stalinist regime. My explanation was adequate. My dining companion was liquidated.

Allow me another example. I was at the Mall (!) with my Mom (!) and ran into a former classmate's Mom. My Mom and her Mom knew each other from way back to the old PTA days together. Now, I'm already in an odd situation: I'm at the Mall (!) with my Mom (!) ... nothing wrong with that in most parts of the world where family is vital, but we live in the mad-cap, suicide-friendly, homicide-ready United States where parents are people you immediately need to run away from at 16 and never talk to again ... so you get what I'm saying. So this woman spends the whole time bragging about her daughter, who just got married (Mom and I always thought she was a lesbian, but that's another thing), who has a high paying job and who just bought a mansion, who drives a Ferrari, who makes U.N. members drink her piss out of champagne glasses, etc. She went through this litany and My Mom and I just nodded, nodded, nodded. Eventually her verbal masturbation ran out of steam and she asked me what I was doing and I just shrugged my shoulders. "Digging ditches" I volunteered. "It pays the bills!" We laughed. She then changed course again, continuing her praise of her daughter, how she collects "priceless" antiques with her husband, how her boss just gave her a raise for being Incredible and Invaluable, how she's up for some award and work, etc. etc. and Mom and I just kept listening. When we got a moment to speak, I told this woman the following: "Look, Mrs. _____, I wish [your daughter] the best of success in the future, but quite frankly, I couldn't stand her when we were in school together. She was kind of stuck-up, and if I never see or hear her name again the rest of my days I will be very happy." The woman glared at me, told my Mom it was nice seeing her and huffed off. My Mom was embarrassed, but I felt so good I needed a cigarette.

It goes on. A young woman I went to college with runs in my neighborhood with her dogs - I've tried numerous times to just say hello to her but she's always snubbed me so I now actively try to run over her dogs with my car. I've searched the alumni database of former college colleagues and had their e-mail accounts bombed so bad it made the U.S. attack on Baghdad look like a water balloon fight. In my various places of employment, I've worked with several people I went to high school and college with ... and routinely pretended like they didn't exist. I sent a former professor a giant dildo (because she needs to get fucked ... hard) and a lot of free boxes courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service (they deliver ... for you). Sometimes a friend will say, "Man, you remember _______? She was asking how you were doing" and I'll respond "Who?" even though I know exactly who the hell it is. "Tell her I'm working as a river boat captain in Belize with my Nigerian wife Nbutu," I'll reply and then move onto another topic of conversation, like why the room is not spinning and why I am not face down in an ad-mixture of drool and spilled beer.

The voices of reason are sure to object. "Matt, you're a nut! I love all these people! They're my History!" Stop right there Chuckles. This message is not for you. If you want to pretend people you played kickball with at recess are people you still want to talk to at age 35, go right ahead. If you think 3rd grade is something you'd like to remember forever, go crazy on Facebook and talk about that day the retarded girl puked on the floor. Send Christmas Cards and photos of your fugly children with snot in their hair and half-chewed cereal on their clothes. But if you're like me, the best route is to move out of town after the age of 18 and go live with some 40-year-old pervert in Michigan. Or join the Marines and hide in a hill of sand, shooting at 10-year-olds armed with Russian rocket launchers. Change your name to "Cougar" or "Geech" or "Melody" or something like that. Go to Mexico and run for Governor; make "DONKEY SHOW!" your official slogan (and don't worry, you don't need to translate it). But please, please, leave the town you were raised in. And if you can't, either get good at lying or slam your head really hard against a brick wall until the lights go out. Because Amnesia - either real or pretend - is a joyful way to jaunt through life and aggravate those foolish enough to try to remember you.

My First Experience with Pleasure

I was young, too young perhaps. It was the year 1989. I had a keen interest in playing in the fields, staring at the clouds, eating candy like they were about to close the Sugar Factory, dreaming of a future filled with joy and wonderment and bicycles and hi-fives and Kool-Aid for breakfast. But those dreams crashed one afternoon, and that crashing came courtesy of a Keds sneaker crushing my genitalia.

For the purpose of this little autobiographical piece, let's call the young lady that introduced me to this Realm of New Sensations "Kalista Kladams." Kalista was a girl in my Fifth Grade class, she was cute and pert, she liked Garfield comics, she had that kinky hair that made the boys shoot milk out of their noses. Kalista sat next to me in class, and I had a crush on her. We would tease each other: I would steal her pencil. She would draw on my arm. I would steal her backpack. She would rat me out to the teacher for doodling ninjas in my notebook. I would steal her lunchbox and throw it in the hall. In the end, however, it was she who stole my innocence.

Later in our complex relationship, I moved on to telling stories about her, defacing her belongings and throwing the ball at her face in gym class. (I was quite the charmer.) She had a fiery temper, and would throw the ball right back at me. But this 'playfulness' of ours got progressively darker. In Phonics class should started slapping me in the back for calling her Mother a "retarded bitch." She stomped on my feet. She confiscated my copies of GamePro. She poked me in the ribs with her My Little Pony pencil set. I didn't know it then, but this love was getting out of hand.

One day, it reached its apex. We were standing in line for the bus and she was in front of me. Being the upstanding gentleman I am, I stepped in front of her, claiming that men sit in the front of the bus while the inferior women sat in the back. This was too much for Kalista, and she stepped back, raised her white sneaker (with pom-poms, oh God I remember the pom-poms) and did a front snap kick right into my testicles. I fell like an old man on a skating rink filled with banana peels. It was a sensation I wasn't used to. My hands covered my special place, and my special place throbbed. In my eyes I saw the stars of the Universe, the rivers of Africa, the wallabies of Australia. I saw Christ himself, and he was giving me the thumbs-up. My body trembled and my knees felt weak. My forehead dripped sweat. What was this ... new feeling? Panicked, Kalista tried to pick me up from the ground, but I told that snatch to keep her hands off me. I needed to relish the moment.

I staggered home and iced my privates in the bathtub with a single ice cube. I ate an entire box of candy cigarettes, exhaling sugar dust. I didn't tell my parents what happened. It was like the soldiers coming back from World War II. How do I adapt to life now that I felt ... this? What would I say? My dream of those halcyon days of splendor in the grass were over. I discovered what real joy was, and it was my balls being slammed into by the shoe of a female.

The following day Kalista, realizing she made a mistake, apologized. I nodded, but didn't know what to say. She was really remorseful, too, because nothing else I could do to her could get her to kick me again. I prodded and poked, I mocked her in-bred heritage. No kicking. I made comments like, "I dare you to kick me there again!" But she wouldn't! I turned a sinner into a saint! Tired of this lack of cooperation, I had to look elsewhere, to other girls with attitude problems and a penchant for aggressiveness.

I basically broke up my relationship with Kalista when our desks got moved. We were three feet away from each other, but it could have been the universe. I would stare at her kinky hair and dream of damage done to my reproductive system. I was now seated next to Peter, who ate his own snot.

My quest for rare ecstasy of this kind continued. In Sixth Grade, I started taking karate and refused to wear an Athletic Supporter. I used to verbally goad in the girls in my karate class by telling them that all American females were bred to do was bleed monthly and bake custard pies. I used to try to step ever so carefully into their thrusting kicks, attempting to time it just so that their feet would meet my mid-section in just the right way. At home, I tried to slide down the railing hoping for the same kind of experience, and it hurt like a bastard, but it wasn't the same. Ultimately, I gave up the dream. There was only one girl like Kalista. She broke me in the best way she knew how.

And I never had the chance to thank her.