Venom & Eternity

The Lehigh Maneuver

2011-09-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

Way back when I was an undergraduate in college, I used to frequent these things called parties ... semi-often. (Those that know me: stop rolling your eyes.) I couldn't help it I went to a supremely dodgy, astoundingly cruel institution for my learnings; it was just the culture to drink, drink, drink (the infamous chant of "Drink that drink" still keeps me up at night). So on Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday or whatever other day something was going on, I'd be there, Solo cup in hand, standing or sitting around, watching the inanities unfold. There was drinking, there were retarded beer games, there was blaring, awful music, there were my classmates fighting against time and the call of adulthood.

One friend of mine, "Derek" - name changed because he's now a professor of philosophy at a prestigious university in the South - was one person who used to (sometimes) accompany me to these 'festive gatherings.' You see, these 'gatherings' used to, in the best (or worst) of cases, get supremely out-of-hand. Like, violent and ridiculously out-of-hand. Not always, mind you: sometimes they would fade out and die peacefully and everyone would stumble on their merry way. But in the case of the Bad Ones, alternative measures needed to be in place.

Derek and I got trapped a few times in some bad situations, enough so that simply talking our way out of whatever shitstorm brewed was becoming stressful and there were certain 'locations' and individuals we learned to steer away from. We've seen girls "pushed" off balconies, guys thrown off balconies, people vomiting blood, people tossed in pits of chocolate (and, as it turns out, feces), sparkling wine dumped in Jacuzzis (not a good idea), bricks thrown through car windows, bottles thrown at locals and other things it's best to keep repressed. Now, I never got hit by any objects (... intentionally) or tossed anywhere or gotten slammed with a bar stool (I know someone who did) and the worst things I ever got involved in were shouting matches with strangers (some of whom went on to become half-decent acquaintances ... and investment brokers) and a precious few tasteless shenanigans. The reason why neither Derek nor I got into any major trouble is that we learned how to figure out when That Precise Moment was going to take place in which things were going to take a turn for the worse and it was time to Run ... Like Hell.

You see, That Precise Moment is the Exact Time in the evening when The Mood changes from fun and pleasant to something more dark, ominous and potentially hazardous (or, conversely, crushingly mundane). Don't get me wrong, danger in small doses is quite thrilling. But there are those (cough, cough, my father) where the level of danger is simply never high enough: the threat of physical harm, police intervention or a messy brawl with neighborhood thugs, for them, is where True Bliss is at. For those of you that delight in anarchy, God Bless. But for Derek and myself (not to mention a few other people we knew), that became tiring and, frankly, stupid.

Derek was an obnoxious Philosophy major and I was an obnoxious Psychology major, and together we thought we had it figured out. See, parties generally don't just start off batty (and for those that do, do a 180 and find someplace else to go). It's the environmental factors that play into it: what kind of people are at the party? Who will eventually show up at the party (invited or uninvited, it doesn't matter)? Did two (or more) people enter the party already arguing? Is there some sociopath at the party who has a history of stirring the pot and causing problems? Exactly how much alcohol is there? What kind of drugs are there? What time of year is it? Is it cold outside? Is it warm outside? Is it exam week? Is there a serious rivalry underway between two fraternities or sororities? Is the school cracking down? Are the police out and about? Are the locals/neighbors pacing around outside with nothing to do?

Factoring all these elements in, Derek postulated The Lehigh Maneuver. It's based on intuition and experience, and can technically be applied to any number of situations. The Lehigh Maneuver basically states: when the official Mood of the Vicinity changes, it's best to find the nearest exit and excuse yourself from the place because once The Mood Changes, the Maximum Potential for Pure Fun diminishes when compared to the Maximum Potential of Ugliness (or, in select situations, Deadening Malaise). You think things will get "way more fucking cool" when they most likely will not. A night ended talking to the police or dragging a friend to the hospital or seeing a half-naked young lady run from a room and claim she was raped puts a damper on things.

Now, I learned ... and this was reinforced in other ways a little later in my life ... about always being aware of the exits in any location you are ever in. You walk into, say, a house, and there's a garage, a back door, a front door. There are windows. There may be a raised balcony/patio with steps. In an apartment, there's a main door but there's also (usually) a fire escape. In a fraternity, there's the pig chute (if you don't know, don't ask). Some bathrooms have windows you can squeeze out of depending on your size. Once you're aware of the exits, you will know which ones to get to should you need to.

I can tell what you're thinking. "Matt, you putz, why worry about ways to get out? It's a party! Sometimes things get out of hand, and that's all right! If you leave early, you might miss out on good stuff! Leaving is rude!" To this I say: I'm sorry you went to a liberal arts school. I hope you enjoyed your strawberry daiquiris and potluck and Carole King albums. And you apparently haven't been where either Derek or I have been. If you're afraid of missing something, you will find out about it later. People chatter. If you screwed up when you were there and feel compelled to just Get Out, time will pass and tempers will subside and the alcohol poisoning in the people you offended/irritated will have gone away and they will be in a much more civil mood. Derek, being the philosopher, always applied Bentham's rule: it's about maximizing enjoyment and minimizing drama and conflict and unhappiness.

Someone shows up high and carrying a crate full of pellet guns? Unless you feel like getting shot at (and you very well might), get out. Someone opens the front door and chucks in a (cheap) bottle of whiskey that smashes on the nearest wall and the ladies present yelp? Get out. You're bored as all get out and you can't stand talking to the same people about the same dumb crap over and over again? Pure Fun is over: excuse yourself to the bathroom and then make a hasty retreat. Someone outside crashes into a neighboring car and everyone inside runs out and starts yelling? Get out (or view the proceedings from a safe distance). Some pathetic drunk girl is leaning on you and burping uncontrollably and worried about the small-time issues in her life? Lean her against something else because she's a Fun Exterminator. The campus police arrive? Who cares if you're over 21, get out.

This maneuvering has led me to being something of an oracle nowadays to my (somewhat younger) friends, who are always amazed whenever I, out of the blue, say, "I'm leaving." Or just leave without saying anything. I can't tell you how many times, after I bid a hasty exit, they say to me the day after, "Oh man, you won't believe what happened after you left! It was ... awful. So-and-so got into a fist-fight with so-and-so over [Something Moronic]." Many, many, many times.

So if I'm at a dinner party I'm sickened with (for lack of Pure Fun and mandated Pleasant, Fake Interaction), I know when to leave. If I'm at a wilder gathering with caustic substances and a stressed and irked idiots, I know when to leave. Make yourself seen, then make yourself un-seen; maximize Enjoyment and leave when that Enjoyment is under threat by outside sources. Maneuver your ass out any available door. "But how do you know when to go?" I've been pressed. I just do. If you pay close enough attention to The Mood, you will too.

Nobody Gives a Shit About Your Band

2011-07-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

So please stop talking about it. And making posters for it. And making t-shirts for it. And creating various websites promoting it. And asking people to pay for hard copies of your albums. And turning every conversation we have into the music you're making. What is it with almost every new and upcoming "band" or "solo artist" that took one course in marketing and another course in composition and turning into a virtual one-trick, one-dimensional droning pony? I don't know what it was like in the music scene of the '60s and '70s - because I was still in the process of being re-incarnated from my former life as an SS Officer - but the United States couldn't have humanly been flooded with this many poseurs.

Let's get a few things straight: you can't sing, you have great trouble playing an instrument and you own an iMac loaded up with pirated music software. You live in a town so small that a tree falling not only makes a sound, it kills 3/4 of the local population. Your Mom has kicked you out of the basement and the attic and your bedroom and moved you and your asshat friends to the shed, where you keep tripping over the lawnmower to get to your pedals. Your bassist can't remember any of the chords, can't remember to shower and thinks weed is a profession. The drummer you found on Craigslist is middle-aged and not allowed around children or the elderly.

So what are you going to do? Well, if your genre is some kind of rock, you're going to scream like there's a bamboo shoot being rammed into your pee hole. You're going to turn the amps up and make everyone forget you have no idea what you're going on about. You're going to make up a lot of the words because you left the Post-It note you scribbled the lyrics out on in your used Volvo. For the ten of your incredibly supportive friends that you robbed of $8 to watch you "perform" (when they were just hanging out with you hours before), you're going to shake and sweat. Somewhere in your twenty-minute set, you're going to play a shitty cover of some decent song from a reputable band but put your own "spin" on it by making it "ironic," i.e., making it completely unrecognizable. Someone in your band will be wearing plastic-rimmed sunglasses. Another will probably be in drag. It doesn't matter: it's gonna be loud. And loud is good, right?

Or, instead of the obnoxious, you can take the mellow road. You can brood. Oh, Christ, you can brood. Tired, disheveled, wearing soiled corduroys and a bracelet you stole from your dead Grandfather's casket, you can sing about hurt. The beard you sport makes the hurt look worse. And you can play your odes on an acoustic guitar you stole from a thrift shop while your former drummer shakes a tambourine and your former bassist holds your Pabst and nods along. Everyone in the slim audience will be waiting for your next deep proclamation, waiting for you to say the words that everyone thinks they experienced but really haven't because they still have their parents drive them to softball practice. You can talk about love. And remorse. But keep it Hallmark card simple. A C chord and a line like "you have the simplest head of hair / like a macaw ascending toward hope" will cause everyone to disintegrate emotionally. The ladies will swoon. The guys will swoon. The doorman will swoon. The girl at the service counter will be playing on her cell phone.

If the mellow road isn't for you, and you consider yourself more danceable and techno-friendly, you (and your pals) can do what Richard James and Daft Punk and the Fuck Buttons dudes did: gather as much equipment as possible and hook all that gizmo-y gadget shit together. There's a plug? Find a hole. See a hole? Find a plug. Just shove everything together. Hide behind it if need be. And then, after you've taken three and a half hours to set-up, start playing pre-recorded loops. Keep pressing buttons because that really gets people jumping. It doesn't matter if the loops and sound-effects are in sequence. It doesn't. But make sure it's loud. Add in an electronic drum-beat. Girls love a drum beat. And it doesn't matter if any of the sound clips go together musically: the few people in the crowd will be so loaded up on pills and grinding their teeth so hard it won't make a difference. Also, don't forget strobing. God yes, strobing. Strobing is God's way of keeping epileptics away from concerts. Remember that the strobes and the beats and the sound effects don't have to be timed together or anything like that. If people collapse from exhaustion, that means you're good.

Once you've decided what kind of musical hack you're going to be, you're going to have to remember to always play the part of the hack. And in being an expert hack, you have to advertise yourself with the aforementioned swag and handouts and flyers and websites. You need to pump up your band to such an extreme degree your friends will want to set your shed on fire and delete your number from their phones. The talentless are generally full of braggadocio; the meek are the ones you wouldn't know ever conceived of a song. For example, arguably the most thoughtful actual musician I know personally is currently huddled in his room wearing a cardboard box mask and a lab coat. He has Styrofoam shoved against the walls to keep out the "hum from the refrigerator." He doesn't perform in public, because that would involve leaving his bedroom. He doesn't record anything, because the very act of recording "murders the shape of the notes." When I inquired as to what he was working on just last week, he shook a piece of ripped crepe paper in front of my face and asked me if I thought it properly simulated the sound of a man with polio shuffling through a wheat field. He won't tell you he's in a band. He won't give himself an alias. He'll tell you about the celestial rhythm of millions of human breaths exhaling in divine harmony. Then he'll take his medication and sleep for fourteen hours.

In other words, all of you "musicians" need to start fazing yourselves out and you definitely need to delete SoundForge and Cakewalk and ProTools off your hard drives. Asthmatic Kitty and Warp and Matador aren't going to sign you. You need to recognize you don't have a voice (literally and figuratively), you can't just mash on buttons or chords and make something lasting and nobody wants a black size XL tee with your face silk-screened on it. You know what I really want to hear about? I want to hear about people doing the old-fashion-y kind of art that requires time and dedication. Tell me about your pottery wheel. Talk to me about ceramics. Making mosaics and tribal masks? Kitsch, but I'll take a peek. Video art? I'll view it (just please don't ask me to review it). Don't hand me a CD-R or a glow stick or a cup of hot tea to absorb my sorrows, hand me a hand-made ashtray decorated with a decal of a rotting lung. Or you can paint a picture. Get some goddamn watercolors and remind me what a fucking sunset looks like.

For the record, just make sure you keep your art in the shed.

Pinsky & Me, An Adventure Waiting to Happen

2011-02-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

I have this strange, surreal connection to arguably the most important American poet currently working and writing, Robert Pinsky. People unfamiliar with his work most likely know him best as That Guy who was on The Simpsons in the one episode where obnoxious goody-goody Lisa Simpson pretends she's a college student and attends one of his readings. Animated Pinsky, all yellow and austere, spouts off some of his work and the audience swoons. His public persona doesn't even stop with his guest appearance on The Simpsons (itself a high honor): he's been on the Stephen Colbert show, he's worked for Salon.com, he's done tons of radio interviews and seminars on poetry and he's a professor of creative writing at some bullshit school in the most lame Metropolitan Area in America, Boston (don't worry Miami, you're still #2). He's even the former Poet Laureate of the United States, which may or may not be impressive since this country hates anything complex or intricate or full of big words. Our current Poet Laureate apparently doesn't wash himself and is legally married to his sister ... but he's never been on an animated program so he's not relevant to anyone.

Mr. Pinsky and I have had two noted near run-ins within this past year alone, and should there be a third, he can fully expect to be physically tackled by me and forced to go on a weekend-long bender (and no, I'm not above tackling seventy-year-olds). Sure, the man can channel the soul of Bashō and name drop über-obscure Fulke Greville, but what about a massive borderline illegal descent into madness and excess?

My fascination with Pinsky's body of work started, of all times, when my father - not exactly big on anything poetic written after Tennyson ("a real man's man," quoth Dad) - gave me a scribbled copy of "Samurai Song" on notebook paper (that he copied when he was in Barnes and Noble) back in 2001 and instructed me to "retype it and print it out so I could paste it into my locker at work." Before I even turned on my computer, I made a special point to really and truly examine the piece he was handing me. Normally my father only makes me type up complaint letters to Green Giant grousing about the "shit-awful broccoli" in their frozen veggie packs, but this poem - surely one of the great poems of the 21st century (mark it, historians!) - is so beautiful and simple it made me get choked up inside. It says so very much about self-sufficiency and independence, about dealing with loss and making the most out of a situation. It is, in its own way, infuriatingly perfect and beautiful. In awe, I decided to track down all of Pinsky's collected works and tore through them. Few of his works match the directness of "Samurai Song" and most are more heady-intellectualism than deep-feeling poetry (i.e., they're the product of years spent sheltered in academic circles instead of years of yearning and suffering and starving hysterically naked), but the man's still produced an impressive collection over his years on Earth.

Cut to this past year, when I was ready and prepared to take filmmaking classes at the aforementioned bullshit school in the most lame Metropolitan Area in America. My main goal, within the first couple of days there, was to find Pinsky and shake his hand and thank him profusely for his poems ... but specifically, "Samurai Song." Alas, he was unavailable. I trolled through the building they house him in, and asked around as to his whereabouts. He wasn't in an office, he wasn't in class, he probably wasn't even in town. To be Pinsky means to be in high demand. I requested the dummy undergraduates doing work study (read: sitting on their hands) to help me find him. They made phone calls, shrugged a lot and told me to return the next day. And when I returned the next day, they still couldn't locate him and told me to try back the following week. Due to issues with the horrifically inept financial aid office I booked out of the school as quickly as possible, belongings in hand, and never did stop back to claw at his (closed, locked) office door.

As luck would have it, I enrolled in a creative writing program at yet another school a few months after this debacle and was told (who'd have thunk it!) that none other than Prof. Pinsky would be there to do a presentation of his poems. Egad, I thought: here he is again! I had both my video camera and my still camera ready and on my person: who knew I'd have yet another opportunity to at least 'see' (if not necessarily meet) this slippery poet. But the following day - a Saturday - I was told by one of the heads of the creative writing 'program' - a man who looks like Oddjob from Goldfinger and who has more of a passion for popcorn chicken than prose - that Pinsky wouldn't be making it; he canceled because of either (a.) weather concerns (it was snowing like a mother wherever the poet was at) or (b.) he found out I was there and didn't want my foul, critical spirit infecting his innocuous cloud of postmodern splendor. Hopes dashed and dreams shattered, I started feeling resentful. Pinsky 2, Matt 0. He was dodging me. I don't like being dodged.

I sent Mr. Pinsky an e-mail explaining our near-encounters and how I just wanted to thank him for writing such a goddamn beautiful poem and how I, like wide-eyed Lisa Simpson, desperately needed to hear him lecture on something ... anything. He could talk about getting a grease-and-oil change for his car or how he dislikes wool sweaters. How he once bought a microwave from Wal-Mart. Anything. But a week later, I received no written e-mail response. Mr. Pinsky could not even acknowledge my adoration with a quick text response. Not a "ROFL" or "TTYL." I would have even accepted a copy-and-pasted canned response along the lines of "Sorry I can't write you a personal note, but I'm a genius and you're a dipshit."

So that's it, I told myself, I'm going to create a super-deluxe plan for our (eventual) third encounter. There will be no three strikes against me by the same artist ... I simply will not have it. I started planning the Dream Weekend I will spend with R.P. ... a weekend to knock the preening pretentiousness from his psyche, to shake the academia out of him. So here's what I came up with so far: I'll sneak up to the Pinsky on his way to work one Friday morning and I will kidnap his lanky ass and drive him way the hell back to my neighborhood. On the long drive home, I will have an experienced hypnotist put Pinsky into a trance to allow Pinsky to follow my orders without question (brainwashing never hurt anybody, really).

After a nice, casual dinner of sushi (and more brainwashing), the festivities will begin: we'll drive to a dive bar in the seedier part of the doldrums I live in and we'll both spend several hours there, shaking off the local prostitutes and pimps to drink 18 straight whiskeys ... the same number that did in Dylan Thomas. While drinking the whiskeys, we can empty pack after pack of Nat Sherman MCDs, which I will charge to Pinsky's expense account. The bartender, who knows me by name, will ask me who the glazed-over stiff I'm hanging out with is, and I'll tell the bartender he's my new friend, and he's a carpet salesman (because that's a lot more honorable and realistic). I'll nudge the Pinsk-ster to go along.

Following the whiskeys, we will then go shooting. Nothing sobers one up like heavy artillery. Pinsky was never in the military, and neither was I, but Heinrich von Kleist was. We'll show Kleist a thing or two about aggression by firing off several semi-automatic shotgun rounds in the woods, hoping we knock out a couple of deer and/or the windows of houses. The whiskeys, still running through our blood streams, will empower us as Americans ... and being an American means having a love affair with guns. Unlike Kleist and Madame Vogel, however, Pinsky and I will not shoot each other: the bullets are strictly reserved for objects that need exploding. When the police show up (as they inevitably do), we will bolt for the car and then drive to a safe-haven for a few hours. Hopefully the cops won't have identified my car or license plate (no doubt both on file already).

After hiding away for a while until the coast is clear, Pinsky and I will get a heavy breakfast somewhere to help sober up. We'll share several pots of coffee and, on the back of the place mat, scribble out revolutionary poems together - the kind of incendiary, heavily-political tomes that Brecht would smile upon ... the kind if, when published, would cause people to riot in the streets. We'll leave the restaurant once fully sobered up and then head to our next location: the boxing gym.

Nothing brings real men together like a little fisticuffs. Surely this would please Papa Hemingway and Ezra Pound: Pinsky and I will put on the gloves and start wailing on each other. I'll take a few swings at his temples solely to knock out the preening austerity found so often in The Want Bone, and maybe get a gut shot in there for his denouncing Shakespeare's sonnets as "over-rated." "The Bard will still be read in one thousand years, you ass," I'll shout, "but Gulf Music will have long since been turned to ash." And then I'll make sure to get a few swings in at his writing arm, so the black and blues ache when he raises his Cross pen to write anything. Pinsky needs to be consistently reminded about physical agony.

A little fun needs to follow our strenuous boxing match. We'll swallow several dozen pain pills (in honor of Lord Byron) and then go to Chuck E. Cheese or Bounce U (the good professor can choose) and intentionally crash a children's birthday party. Pinsky, a little weary but still cogent, can sneak us into the place with a soothing ode to Hart Crane and/or a parable about finding one's way through life with the aid of meditation. There, we will be on a mission not only to see who can make the most number of children cry in terror by both screaming lines from Artaud at them and mashing birthday cake in their faces: first one of us to get into an actual fist-fight with an irate parent wins the game! As we run out of the building, I imagine a thrilled and fevered Pinsky kissing one of the staff workers on the cheek, telling the worker that fortune will be his means.

We will cap off that night with more drinks and more cigarettes, and I will probably try to slip some sort of opium derivative in Pinsky's beverage, which is what Coleridge would have done to himself. We will flip a coin and let the fates decide what next to do: heads, rob a liquor store (in honor of Bukowski) or tails, steal a car (to remind Pinsky of Rimbaud's lament that every poet is a thief). Should we rob a liquor store (and successfully escape), I will make sure to drink my winnings; if we steal a car, I will aim to nab a Mercedes Benz.

Regardless of what the coin decides, I promise to get Mr. Pinsky back to his home in good time and relatively good health, even though he may be frothing at the mouth and/or nearly-ruined by fear and madness. When the poet sobers up at his house (after I throw him into his front yard) and the hypnosis and all those chemicals he ingested eventually wear off and he can finally, finally return to his actual office he's rarely ever inside of in the first place, I know - just know - that his own writings and his own teaching style will be greatly affected - for the better! - by our Weekend Adventure. The almost constant brushes with the police, the physical beatings and the cruel Soviet-style brainwashing will only heighten his already impressive talents. Audacity will become his roof. And I hope - no, I pray, to the heavens, to the celestial night - that he will be cautious to never, ever - in the future - dodge adoring fans either consciously or unconsciously again.

You Are Not a Psychiatrist

2010-12-18T14:48:00.000-08:00

... so please stop diagnosing yourself.

I've met entirely too many people with middling to pissy GPAs and/or degrees in nonsense (Medieval History?!) who are fond of placing labels on themselves based on a five minute search on the Internet (or a hasty flip through a psychology manual) and then telling me about their great personal discovery in laborious detail. This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to cocktail parties, soirees, Bar Mitzvahs or community college graduations. It seems to happen to me, personally, more often than I'd care to admit: when I'm at a bar pretending I'm Hemingway, when I'm resting at a Stop sign after an emotionally liberating sprint through the neighborhood, when I'm trying to eat my low-fat, low-sodium, high-sugar lunch in the faculty room and some other teacher decides to have a breakdown in front of my very eyes. I can be inserting money into a soda machine at a bus station and someone will inevitably come up to me, ask me for change and tell me he/she gets turned on by fire drills and once had to have a dime surgically removed from his/her rectum. "I like Mountain Dew too," I might respond, and then I would smile and run the hell away.

The truth is that a little bit of information can go a long way, and that honest face you think I have is judging your weak-minded ass up and down the block. I remember I had to take a rather shady prescription years ago for acne called Accutane. I had heard all about the side effects: the "suicidal ideation," the swelling of the brain, the hair loss, the melting skin. Frankly, the facts of what the drug can do should scare anyone with even a moderate concern for self-preservation. But when I raised my concerns with my dermatologist, he told me quite firmly, "Don't read anything else about this pill, ever. If something bad is happening to you, I'll be the one to tell you." This was actually sagely advice, and not only was I not suicidal, but I was elated by how Accutane cleared up my skin. My doctor was an expert, he told me he was an expert, he told me to shut the fuck up and quit whining like a waifish cunt ... and by damned I did.

Other people are not so, how do you say? Reasonable. They don't seek experts, they skim forums of WebMD or other people's web journals for comparison. A little depression? "I have that every other Tuesday and sometimes on Saturdays!" A smidge of anxiety? "Sure, after a Red Bull and some uppers!" Impulsive behavior? "Three years ago I stole a lighter from Walmart and one time I kicked over a mailbox!" Aggression? "I fantasize about my family being stomped to death by cattle!" Paranoia? "I just know someone's e-stalking me and I know all those Status Updates from my 1,500 friends on Facebook are about me ... that's a sign of schizophrenia! But wait, I also have this weird thing where I use lint remover on my corduroy pants after each and every time I wear them! Whoa, I have schizophrenia and OCD! And once I was at a party and took the candy from the bearded man no one invited over or knew the name of and I woke up in a tent in New Jersey with a dead badger, an empty bottle of Old English in my hand and my panties wrapped around my neck! I'm a nymphomaniac, Mom! This is all your fault!"

No, actually, it's no one's fault except your own (and your wacky, twisted logic). I pity your poor mother for having to squeeze you out of her delicates. Your armchair diagnosis isn't fooling anyone except maybe you. "I can't help that I robbed the elderly couple with a fork! It's my disorder." No, you're an idiot. "I can't help that I didn't score high enough on the aptitude test. I studied, but they didn't write the test for someone with my unique mental abilities. If they wrote the test specifically for me and whatever learning problems I invented for myself a week ago, they'd realize I'm a genius." You are not a genius. You had difficulty with English in Junior High and your score on the SAT was a frowny face. "I cause trouble by starting fights among people ... then I wonder why they all come back and hate me! I only do this to avoid truly examining my own vacant life and confronting personal demons that are obvious to everyone but me!" Frankly, my dear, you're a mess. Crawl out of the cave you shiver inside of, walk in front of a mirror and really take a long, hard look at what you think you are.

"But Matt," you say, sipping your Chardonnay out of a plastic cup, "you need to show a little understanding and patience! Sure, some people are delusional and outright crazy and should seek out serious therapy and stop pretending they're fine, but a lot of people over-exaggerate for the sake of drama! There's nothing wrong with a little drama! And so what if some people self-diagnose! They just like thinking they're special and unique and full of deep inner turmoil, when they're actually as shallow as a puddle. Leave them to their delusions." Maybe it's the cheap wine talking, because some of these are really good points, but you seem to forget I have neither patience nor understanding. There's a fine line between having a pitiable problem and another about flaunting the problem like it's a Cub Scout badge. In other words, there's a fine line between the Private and the Public, and some people are unclear about that distinction. If you cut your finger badly, you don't pour gasoline on it. If you are truly depressed, or truly manic, seek a professional's guidance, not your co-worker at Arby's. Your personal issues aren't something to be ashamed of, but they also aren't trophies you place on your mantle. And if an expert tells you you're a deeply troubled person, your duty and obligation to those that care about you and know you isn't to hurt them ... it's to heal yourself.

Now pour me some of that wine before you pass out and let me show you where that tent is again.

My Sole Good Deed of the Year

2010-09-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Every year, I try to do at least one good thing for one single person. The idea came to me based on an agonizing "conversation" I had with a blonde retard years ago about Buddhism or some such business. She was yammering on about karma and helping the world and being the change you wish to see and all I was thinking about was tying her to a tree and hurling rocks at her limbs. But this little verbal encounter resonated days later when I was punishing my liver with a cruddy microbrew or three: maybe the tart was onto something. Why not perform some positive acts to counteract all the bad ones I inevitably end up doing? That way when I'm at the pearly gates I can barter with whoever the hell is judging me: okay, it's true that I threw that bucket of cholera down the well and poisoned the town's drinking water for a hundred years, but remember how I gave those urchins begging for money some Canadian coins after I spit on them? Remember how I jump started that car for that old broad when I could have very easily driven off and given her the finger? Remember the lost child that begged for my help in finding his lost parents and how I couldn't find his parents after a five minute search so I gave him to some nice tattooed carnie folk? Heaven will understand.

The way I see it, the One Good Deed Per Year Plan is a sure-fire way for me to get those 72 virgins in the sky without blowing myself up at a farmer's market. And my chance to perform a good deed came a little while ago when a Japanese undergrad who goes by the nickname 'Cherry' - because her real name is like Chang Chong Bing Bong - was clearly Up Against It. She was basically squatting in a third-floor apartment I was (at the time) living in, eating the food I bought and drinking my (delicious, expensive) alcohol without asking. She's friends with one of my (then) roommates, and apparently she guilted my (then) roommate into letting her just hang around the place, only taking the time to leave when she had classes to attend and other people to harass.

A few Fridays ago, I was in-between my nightly ritual of washing down stomach medication with Rolling Rock and swatting at bed bugs with a cardboard tube, when I heard several not-very-kawaii yelps coming from the back patio. Annoyed by this noise, I trudged onto the patio with the cardboard tube in hand in order to swat and kill the creator of the offending sound ... it turns out it was Cherry, covered in a blanket and laying on the deck, crying. All around her were fragments of broken glass that originated from our (then) upstairs neighbor, an undergrad alcoholic whose idea of fun is tossing empty beer bottles out his window (throwing bottles : college students :: Apples 2 Apples : children). I noticed bits of glass were stuck in the bare soles of Cherry's feet and there were other bits dangerously close to her face. Annoyed (and a little dizzy), I decided to console her by screaming at her face.

Below is a rough idea of how our conversation went:

ME: What are you doing out here?
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]
ME: GET THE HELL OFF THE FLOOR.
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]
ME: GET THE HELL OFF THE FLOOR.
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]

Realizing this was a waste of time, I told her I don't understand gibberish and went inside to sit down and watch SportsCenter. Needing an ear, she followed me in with her slightly cut up feet and sat down across from me. She quelled the crying long enough to tell me The Saga of Cherry and the Reasons for Her Sadness, which I didn't ask to hear. Her biological father died when she was nine or so. Her mother's an alcoholic. Her brother's in jail for stealing horses. She missed being home. She liked this one guy in her engineering class and took to chasing him around for a year but he wanted nothing to do with her. She didn't get along with her dorm-mate because, she claimed, she was "weird" and "always watching what I'm doing." She was running out of money for frivolous crap and couldn't ask her mother to send more. It was enough to make a golem crumble from worry.

ME: It's only going to get worse from now on.
CHERRY: [back to crying]
ME: You should probably kill yourself.
CHERRY: [still crying]

I figured out that my attempts to empathize and sympathize were meeting resistance. So I got a lot firmer and a lot louder. I explained how much of a useless bag she was. I told her her father probably killed himself out of disgust with her and her mother. I told her her mother was drinking out of shame and that alcoholism is inherited. I told her her brother was probably stealing the horses in order to rape them. I told her her engineering love interest was chain fucking the entire Korean Club. I told her she was a financial drain on her family and an emotional drain on her friends. I told her she was wasting my precious Xanax / Vicodin / whiskey / SportsCenter time.

CHERRY: You don't understand.
ME: I understand completely.
CHERRY: I don't know what to do.
ME: You should jump off the balcony.

She stopped talking and stopped crying. She got up and went to use the bathroom and hopefully wash the glass out of her size 2 feet. When she came back she told me she was going out. I told her that was a good choice and that she should never return. I figured she was going to buy strychnine or razor blades.

Hours passed, and at this point more people funneled into the apartment, including two Harvard Professors and their Bags of Special Blend Magic. I sat out back with them, smoked and bitched about Harvard ("the comparative literature department is weak compared to The University of Chicago"), the intricacies of the Persian language ("there's no 'she' because women don't exist to us, har har"), America's lack of culture ("oh, Godard, you grouch") and somehow that conversation segued into Brecht, Polish cinema and Cortázar's story about a man who vomits rabbits. Around 3 AM there was a tap on the patio window, startling us. It was Cherry, unfortunately alive and for some reason able to get back into the apartment even though, to my knowledge, no one ever gave her a key. She came over to me and asked me to step inside. I said no. She asked again, guaranteeing it would only be for a minute. I relented.

Once inside, Cherry placed her hand on my arm (uninvited) and thanked me profusely for helping her through a hard time. She was impossibly, incredibly intoxicated. I told her she had no right to ever touch me and that she needed to leave immediately. She said people just don't want to listen nowadays, and that it's refreshing to get some positive advice from someone's who's Been There. I told her she was very welcome and all but pushed her out of the apartment. She thanked me again and told me she owed me, so I closed the door on her. But immediately after I shut the door, hopefully to never see her again or maybe only have to glance at her obituary, I became suddenly alarmed by the power of my own wisdom and guidance. I was reminded that I have the power and ability to help someone when he/she is at his/her worst. It's about caring, and being there, and aiding one's fellow human in a Time of Need. I then locked the door and went back on the patio to re-light.

In other words, 2010's good deed is finished. And, no, I have no idea who set that dumpster on fire. Or who stole that unopened package from Amazon.com sitting in the hallway (seriously, who the hell buys workout videos?). Or who sent the male stripper to the Assistant Dean's office.

(Heaven, you paying attention?)

Tobacco Is Some Goddamn Delicious

2010-05-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

(A Follow-up to Raw Oysters Are Some Goddamn Scrumptious)

They always take the best things from us: the right to play grab ass and tell filthy jokes in the work place, the right to refuse women the right to vote, the right to beat our own children in public, the right to murder innocent people because there's nothing else fun to do in town. Recently, the right to sit in a packed restaurant and light up a delicious cigarette and blow the smoke into the faces of our fellow diners was unfortunately stolen from us as well, and now the Powers That Be are taxing the motherfucking shit out of our beloved sin sticks, ostracizing we 'unholy' smokers by encouraging us to quit and using the tax from those $8 packs of wrapped, "filtered" goodness to ... fund universal health care (also known as the first step to kissing Karl Marx right on his Santa Claus beard).

In other words, they're using the smoker's desire for the Sweet Release of Death to try to heal those among us that are actually trying to ... live.

It's appalling.

We speak, as a Nation, so lovingly of the Great Farmer, with mud and cow dung beneath his or her fingernails, the baggy overalls covering his or her unkempt frame, the John Deere hat adorning his or her graying head. When driving through the Great Farm Country, we as Americans roll down the windows of our gas-guzzling monster machines to take deep breaths of relief, nodding to ourselves that the beauteous methane consistently emitted from the anuses of those American cows is, indeed, the True Air of America. It's not the fragrance of hot apple pie, raw denim, a freshly mowed lawn or even tacos smuggled in by robbers and cowards. It is there, in the fields, with Ma and Pa Kettle.

By taxing cigarettes and reallocating the funds to help people with horrible afflictions like acne or scabies, this country is encouraging - nay, coercing - people to actually ... stop smoking. And they're not just raising the prices and hurting the farmers who specialize in tobacco, they're putting warning labels on packs, they're putting scare commercials on television from those obnoxious goody-goodies from TheTruth.com and they're protesting - yes, protesting! - the use of charming cartoon figures and other clever marketing ploys to sell our Great National Product to dumb teenagers. Don't they realize that dumb teenagers have anxiety issues, and not only are cigarettes perfect for curing anxiety issues but - and here's a bonus! - the 11 minutes removed from their lives from each and every cigarette they inhale will actually prevent them from becoming boring, useless senior citizens?

If people in America stopped smoking, what would happen to the farmers in Virginia? Who would plow the fields and bring us that sweet, burnable, God-given glory that so many of us cherish? Why, lungs would be free of contaminates! Cancer would start making frowny faces and pouting (and my word does Cancer like to pout)! We've turned smokers into lepers, keeping them locked far away from the rest of mankind! Of course, we've encouraged people to stop eating so much and no one really listened - the American Waistline has been expanding like the cosmos - and yet the smoking thing has actually been a little effective.

It's troubling and terrifying.

Why, some years ago I traveled to Europe and while I was there I reveled in the amount of smoking done by our Brethren Across the Pond. Sure, their government people and medical folk tried all the anti-smoking tricks, but many over there brazenly resist advice that will improve their physical well-being. In the Frankfurt Airport, there are kiosks where smokers are permitted to just sit around and exhale and relight and inhale and relight and exhale! I'm pretty sure it's illegal to not smoke in France if you're under the age of 75. Cuban kids indulge in perfectly rolled cigars when they're not starving. In Amsterdam, if you aren't smoking something, people wonder what is wrong with you and immediately fill your personal space with their exhaust - it's enough to give you a headache, but what a glorious headache it truly is! I was told by an Italian guy that in the Middle East some parents give their kids hookahs as presents. I was told by an Irish dude that his father gave him a pipe for his 18th birthday and the two of them would have long, silent conversations whilst struggling to keep their bowls lit. Smoking is about family and togetherness. And yellowing teeth and bad breath ... but we have cures for those things, thank you Crest.

We, as a World, lose so very much in trying to keep people from enjoying the products of the earth. You don't see people trying to quit peaches do you? Or mint tea? What's next, taking salt out of our over-salted foods or removing factory-made corn syrup from food stuff that has no real need for factory-made corn syrup? The next thing you're going to tell me is that it's possible to disarm the world and effectively promote peace and harmony, free from prejudice and fear! Poppycock, you knave! So just deal with it: go to your local drug store, pick up your overpriced asthma medications, and then wheeze your way over to the front counter and nab some Parliaments for the road.

Your culture is counting on you.

The Strip Club Paradox, or How I Lost an Argument

2009-11-14T09:26:00.000-08:00

There are many things one can do on a Saturday night. Take out a nice, sweet girl to dinner and movie. Go to a sporting event. Absorb some culture in an art museum. Drive to a crush's house, throw eggs at her bedroom window and then drive off to a dark alley to weep. There are also some things one should probably avoid doing on a Saturday night, like taking several rowdy, unbearably loud friends to a strip club. And going there with the goal of spending the entirety of your weekly paycheck. And arriving so completely drunk you don't realize you're wearing two different shoes. And not realizing you're the designated driver.

I know what you're thinking. "For the love of God, Matt, does this ever end with you? Is everything debauchery and darkness? Where's the levity? Where's the sunshine?" Well, I wouldn't know about sunshine because I'm typing this from inside a fortified bunker. And besides, there's a full confession I'd like to make: I loathe strip clubs. With a passion. They're dank, they're soul-crushing, they're degrading to the women who participate and to the men who watch them. They're degrading to the owner and even the DJ. They take the purity of the human body and human sensuality and coat it with deliciously nasty oil and rub it down until its toes tingle. They take good taste and slap it repeatedly with a pastie-covered boob. They support drug addicts and ne'er-do-wells. I dread going.

But I'm always the one to suggest going.

There's something to be said about exposing oneself to things one hates. It's like force-feeding yourself a food object you can't stand repeatedly in order to learn to stand it. Remember that first sip of Jack Daniel's your father gave you when you were a toddler? I do, and it tasted horrible. But damn it, I fought that initial distaste and now my liver is turning multiple shades of puce. Same thing with smoking cigarettes: it burns the first time you try it, as if your respiratory system is foolishly trying to keep you from harming it, but you train your body to tolerate the toxins, to reject the need to breathe freely and before you know it you're up to three packs a day and want to sue Philip Morris. Going to a strip club is a personal test: if I go in alone, pay for several lap dances from a variety of girls from a variety of racial backgrounds, pay for a couple quick one dollar couch dances, toss a couple of bills to a favorite dancer of mine (Candice) as she twirls around center stage, tip the bartender and doorman and bouncer ... if I can do all that, experience all that, leave five hours later, get into my car and feel nauseous and bad and displeased with myself, well, then I know I'm still okay. That means I'm on the right track.

I'd be on the wrong track if I enjoyed myself and was glad I went.

Shared self-loathing is, naturally, better than self-loathing sustained by yourself. Getting good and liquored up ahead of time with several wild and crazy compadres and convincing them to accompany you is a brilliant tactic. If everyone has a great time and you feel like crud, you can accept the accolades from your peers and celebrate a night deviously wasted (while still maintaining that inner disgust). If everyone feels ugly and blames you for taking them, play the defensive card: insist that you were more than willing to go by yourself, that no one was dragged against their will, that you had fun. Point out how attractive that one girl was. Blame them and their lack of an imagination, or make a comment about how prudish they're being.

Something to watch out for is the aftermath of the strip club experience: sometimes some of the people that will accompany you will be in committed relationships and have wives, girlfriends and fiancées. Some of these females might find this particular Saturday activity revolting (and they will be correct in that assessment). They will want answers as to whose idea it was to go in the first place. This is where everyone will start to point fingers, and based on personal experience, those fingers end up in my general direction. This is where denial is essential. Tell them how disgusting you find it. Tell them about how everyone ran out of better time-wasting alternatives. Blame the tequila shots everyone did ahead of time. Get into the part about how you were wearing two different shoes and unfit to be designated driver. Explain how you were there to do research for a role in a movie you haven't been cast for. Whine about how you spent your paycheck in a few hours and can't make rent. Plead for sympathy. Insist you're weak inside and need help.

Pray someone believes you.

Obama Is Correct Roughly 71-82% of the Time

2009-09-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

Why was it that about a year ago, whenever Obama said virtually anything remotely intelligent ("Broccoli is good for your health," "War is expensive") you needed a Hazmat team to clean up the collective spooge caking up on the Internet and flowing freely through the streets (it was like the orgy at the end of that movie Perfume that only me and a guy from Cyprus I know bothered watching). Back then, Obama told you to brush your teeth and your gums started bleeding in anticipation. Obama told you to buy a Blackberry and Verizon immediately hired new slaves and trained them to rape you on your service plan. Obama said he liked cookies and you went into diabetic shock. Now, he's still making sense - all right, maybe 7-9% less, but you get the idea - and yet something changed in you. You're acting like Cornel West at a Klan rally or Frank Rich at a high school musical. The indignation is choking the oxygen out of you.

Well, get in that Iron Lung because baby, you've lost it again and we need you back. After eight years of America's first dictator you appeared to be prepped for a new Sheriff, but when Change, Hope and the Horsemen of the 21st Century moseyed up to the ranch you got all like, "Whoa, whoa, what about that color-coded alert thing that told me stuff was Orange and that meant I should report suspicious people at Whole Foods who weren't wearing baseball hats" and "Mr. President, you're using the intelligent words from those books we should have burned and me and Pa and Ma and the dogs are confused as all get out." A few months ago I could have accepted your skepticism: you're used to the guy who squinted and told you about bad guys and gettin' those bad guys and bombing rock formations and accomplishing missions and that waveboarding thing that makes the terror guys spill their guts. But it's been more than a few months and you're already reaching for the adult Pampers, the tin foil hats and running back to your bunkers.

Europe likes us? You're skeptical. Health care needs changing? You're skeptical. Infrastructure needs fixing? You're skeptical. The environment needs saving? You're skeptical. Gotta stop occupying foreign lands because it's dangerous and counterproductive? You're skeptical. Milk is a good source of calcium? You're skeptical. Closing Gitmo? You're not skeptical, you're hysterical. Get real, fellow peons: you don't have a job anymore because it got sent to Sri Lanka, you can't afford your medication and you don't even have a clunker to cash in. If you get really sick, no one is going to take care of you: the hospital orderlies are going to drive your ass to the seediest part of town and throw you in a gutter (seriously, they do that in Los Angeles). Will you be yelling, "This is America not Canada, fuck yeah!" when a derelict is urinating on you and it still feels like someone parked their Ford F-150 right on top of your chest?

Then, not only is CEO Barack - who some of you still think is from Kenya or someplace in Africa you couldn't find using Google Earth - trying to make sure everyone has some kind of health insurance and trying to keep people from dying and suffering - which is humane, you hicks - but then he comes out and says something else quite clear: that as a parents you're morons and your children are thug gangsters getting trounced intellectually on the world stage. He's right. "Don't post pictures of you and your friends robbing a liquor store on Facebook." Clear as day. "Reading books isn't always fun but it's how you learn." Okay. "Respect your teachers because they know more than you do." Nice reasoning. Nothing heretical in there, like those crazy ideas that homosexual couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples or that the Earth is actually a sphere or that it's a natural phenomenon called gravity that keeps my Hyundai from floating into space.

I'm not saying you have to buy what the man is selling you right away, and I'll never say don't question the status quo, but give this some time. No, things aren't ironed out yet. It took God more than one day to build this shithole planet and even he screwed up royally. So take a deep breath in, a deep breath out, a deep breath in, a deep breath out, then stick your face in that brown bag you sprayed with paint and inhale sharply. Repeat until you love everyone and everything.

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

2009-03-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-12-19T14:32:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-10T23:12:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

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

2007-09-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Regarding Matters of Sun and Skin

2007-07-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

You need a license to drive a car. You need a license to sell alcohol. You need a license to fish. You need a license to hunt. You need a license to have your house renovated. You need a license to set up a shop and sell goods. You need a license to practice medicine. So the question that remains is this: if you need a license for all of these very important and essential aspects of life, why don't you, if you are in fact a born female, need a license to wear a bikini?

I know what you're thinking. "Matt, you misogynist fuck, not with this again. Just because you look like you stepped out of a concentration camp and onto a treadmill doesn't mean that's the case with everyone else. Look, we live in one of the richest countries of the world and we've horded the food from all the other countries just for ourselves. Those starving children? We've got their pork chops. The antibiotics in the cows? We get the privilege of eating the cows and drinking those tasty chemicals in the milk. Our tap water? Kinda tainted. Our soda? It's rotting our teeth. Isn't that sweet and shit? Aren't we fortunate?"

My answer is this: please die in a fire. That's not the direction I was going. See, I just came back from a cruise in the Caribbean. Yes, it was awesome, and yes I smuggled some hash pipes back from Mexico and yes I did drink champagne and almost run over a rooster with an All Terrain Vehicle and yes I did sneak past customs some Cuban tobacco products and go over the U.S.-allowed limit with the purchase of bottles and bottles of Duty Free liquor. But while on that cruise ship I saw something more vile than any river in any 3rd world country or any bowl of rotting meat in Spain: I saw chubby girls in bikinis.

The day on the cruise ship would start off innocently. I would enjoy a nice breakfast of fruit and cereal and tea. Then, I would take my beach towel, iPod and sunglasses and sit along either the port or starboard side of the boat eager to stare at ass all afternoon or until I felt the need for more champagne. And then in front of me would traipse what I can only describe as buckets of tan slime wrapped in sparse pieces of lycra. I mean, my hearing's not the best, but I could have sworn the lycra was making squealing noises ... the kind animals make when they're in the process of dying.

And one by one they passed by my deck chair, and one by one it appeared like a motley circus. Being raised Catholic, I couldn't help but think of Noah's Ark: here I am on a boat in a sea, and here are various animals on parade. But Noah would have limited the boat to two hippos. Because Noah had some standards.

If you're fat or large or obese, yes, yes I know it's your genes or whatever bullshit you've been force-fed. That's perfectly acceptable. But what's not acceptable is exposing all of that largeness to an unsuspecting populace looking for tight ass in stretchy material. Like me. I want to be entertained, not repulsed. So you've got a little extra. Don't wear a bikini. So you like Oreos. I actually like Oreos too. Don't wear a bikini. Over 50? Don't wear a bikini. My skinniness and paleness aren't exactly going to set womanhood back fifty years, so I keep my clothes on.

But, if you're eighteen or over (looks around suspiciously) and you look damn good naked, wrap that nakedness with something sexy as hell and strut around the boat. Maybe you might want to ... get into the pool and dry off by walking. Walking a lot. Walking this way, walking that way - looking over the edge of the boat into the water. You can drink something. But drink it slowly. Order a beer. In a bottle. And drink it slowly. And don't mind my camera clicking. And don't mind my video camcorder. That's right. And don't mind my binoculars. Oooh, yeah, that's it. That's right. And don't mind my telescope. God, yes, yes, that's it. And don't mind my jeweler's loupe. Mmmmm, yessss ... so dirty, so raw ... mmmmmm ...

...

...

...

... wait, where was I going with this again?

A King for a Lifetime

2007-04-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I went to the King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and it was full of stupid children and obnoxious mothers, but the artifacts were nice to look at. But I kept wondering, why does anybody care about this guy, anyway? He died at 19. He didn't accomplish much.

Then after some digging and dissecting, I realized something: by the time he was 14, he had a harem. Let me repeat this with bold and italics and caps: BY THE TIME HE WAS 14, HE HAD A HAREM. Of chicks! Some did that thing with their hips that he liked. Some did that thing with their mouths that he liked. Hell, all of them did whatever he demanded any time all the time. If he wanted some Ovaltine, one poured the milk and the other stirred with the spoon. When he wanted the TV channel changed, he didn't have to use a friggin' clicker, oh no. He clapped his hands. Bitch get me a salad, bitch blend me a strawberry daiquiri, bitch I'm out of CD-Rs go run to Staples I don't care if the Chariot is broken walk goddamn it. It's sandy and hot outside? No shit, we're in fucking Egypt.

In a way, this is a little disheartening. I'm bunches older than he ever was and never had a harem. I mean, what am I doing with my time, anyway? If I did have a harem, I'll guarantee you this: they'll most certainly have an exhibit about me in 400 years or so. They'll worship me with candles and big ass murals. Smelly kids and their cunt mothers will pay good money to see the Matt Exhibit.

I have to do a few things first, of course. I have to convince my Grammy to make space for them in the cellar. Then I'll have to ask Mom and Dad for permission to convert our home into a brothel. They freaked when I wanted to bring home a pet cat, imagine five to ten young women of various sexual abilities sitting around the house, looking bored. I'm sure my whores will be using up all my bandwidth with their laptops and AIM and iTunes, and eating all my whole grain foods and drinking all of my Diet Coke. I'm not sure when I'll get into the bathroom to take a shower. I'll never be able to use my car, since they'll always need to go to the mall to buy pants. Forget about using the phone, because they'll be hogging the land line while running up the cell phone minutes I'll no doubt be paying for. They won't like the music I listen to, and probably pawn all my CDs and DVDs for whatever pop twaddle whores listen and swing on the poles to. They'll never let me watch ice hockey or the Cartoon Network or CNN, because they'll tell me that "crap" is for "fags and retards."

... sigh. I give up. It won't work. It was a different age ... a different time. King Tut, I look to you with awe. You wouldn't let your harem take over. You'd whip those hoes with coat hangers until they didn't know any better. Those that didn't listen would have gotten sold for useful things, like rope or cocaine or camels. That's why I paid $40 to see your necklaces and gold daggers and the containers where they kept your internal organs. Because your rotting liver is ten times the man I'll ever be.

History. I'm learnings it somethings good.

The Feast of St. Onan

2007-02-13T21:50:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is so goddamn commercial and pretentious and gimmicky that the temptation to fight against it - regardless of pressing commitments and nonsense of that nature - is strong in the observant and defiant. And nonconformist. And me.

So if you are intolerant of materialism and social pressures and forced l'amour, turn the 14th of February completely on its head. Instead of directing that l'amour outwardly - towards the individual who puts up with your endless bullshit, listens to your boring stories and never stops calling you at odd hours to complain about how her life is being ruined by some other bitch - redirect it inwardly: turn Valentine's Day into the Feast of St. Onan, and let that love dribble all over your carpet.

For the Feast of St. Onan, I'm treating myself to a delicious dinner of bread and tea, because I know my body, and my body abhors extraneous fat. I'm going to put on Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss, an album that most expresses my views on humanity, while simultaneously surfing for material that NetNanny wouldn't just block, but actually report me to the local psychiatric ward. Then comes the hot shower with some Bath & Body Works scented soap shit that I didn't buy made of what could be monkey piss or coconut rain, who the hell knows any more. After lathering up with that and singing all of U2's "One" over and over while crying - or at least until the hot water runs out - comes the scented candles and velvet bathrobe and my screening of Cannibal Holocaust, a film about insensitivity in the less civilized parts of the world.

Before I decide to sleep the remnants of the night away, I'll make sure to do about four shots of Jack Daniel's, put on an overcoat and cut the tires of my next door neighbors' cars or smash their mailboxes - depending on how angry I am with them after the shots - just so when they wake up in the morning they're guaranteed to have a pleasant day.

In other words, we need to learn from Wise Onan and his selfish ways. Forget others, remember thyself and save the money you were going to spend on pendants or charms or chocolate or frying pans or flowers to use in more personal and creative ways (night vision goggles, frivolous vacations, imported beer).

Flippant Reflections on College (Part Two)

2006-10-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

Complaints 1-10 came early, now 11-20 follow. I could probably go on forever, so I'm going to stop here for the time being. Feel free to start your own complaint list! Pass it around! Nail it to the dept. chair's door! Whine until you get that 4.0!

COMPLAINT ELEVEN: The Walk of Shame is a Shame
Dudes, these girls were kind enough to let you ejaculate on, in or near them, and here they have to walk home by themselves? Be gentlemen for once in your unfortunate lives and make these ladies breakfast and drive them home. They did you a favor, now do them a favor.

COMPLAINT TWELVE: Here We Are Now, Entertain Us
Everyone drinks constantly because there's nothing else to do. I went to one of the biggest party schools on the planet, so I know. Most on-campus entertainment sucks. I don't care about jugglers with one arm or Stalinist piano players. I don't want to hear the guy who wrote a book of poetry about the Darfur Massacre on Friday night ... and I actually give a shit about politics and poetry. Your Fun Committee's idea of a good time is not my idea of a good time ... and my idea of a good time involves yuppie fucks getting arrested and smashed in the face. Your Fun Committee needs to experiment with cocaine, hire a circus and go batshit insane. Then I will start paying attention.

COMPLAINT THIRTEEN: Tuition Hell
I'm trying to figure out what I'm paying for. I do all the work, someone tells me I'm right (or wrong), and then I get a paper saying I'm right (or wrong). At least when I give a stripper in the Las Vegas $50 and she sticks her glittered-up tits in my face, she does all the work and I'm always right.

COMPLAINT FOURTEEN: Achtung, Amazon Women
Ladies, come on. I know pants and shirts cover it up, but we're going to be grownups here, and I'm going to tell you that your legs shouldn't be hairier than mine. High school girls want to look like porn stars and college girls want to look like street trash. Street trash with Lexuses and thousand dollar handbags.

COMPLAINT FIFTEEN: Major Nothing
The number of things you can major in at some universities is bewildering. If you offer Wine Making or Do-Rag Wearing, people are going to take them. I mean it. Video Game Design? Every high school male wants to go for this with dreams of making Halo. Um, are you Hideo Kojima? Do you even know who he is? Did you even pass Geometry? A student I couldn't pick out of a line-up told me she's planning on majoring in equestrianism. Like, uh, ponies? Sure, I've bet on a few, but that's not a career, Slutbiscuit. Neither is Medieval Literature or Greek Philosophy. Wake up and smell your parents' basement.

COMPLAINT SIXTEEN: Dorm Showers Kill May Flowers
The shower curtain is to keep the water from getting on the floor, not for wiping your ass with. Thank you.

COMPLAINT SEVENTEEN: Dope Haze
Apologies to friends who partake, but the characters played by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Rory Cochrane in Dazed & Confused are comic relief. That means, you're supposed to look at them and go, "What assholes!" Blockbuster Video doesn't need more like you ... really. And no, for the thousandth time, I don't want any. While you're smoking, I'm the one stealing money from your wallet.

COMPLAINT EIGHTEEN: Taste is Relative
Party People: the beers you like are trash. Coors Light, Bud Light, Keystone anything, Lord Chesterfield ... my god. Yes, I agree we all need to get wasted, so why not cut right to the quick and get some grain in this motherfuck? And turn that bass up because I can almost feel my blackness coming on.

COMPLAINT NINETEEN: Dr. Oh No
Please Professor Talks-A-Lot, help me to find the string that winds you up so I can cut it off and whip you Jesus Style. Also, I know we're all "adults" but making one night "mandatory" for the class to come over your house and eat with you and your haggard wife isn't fun: it's creepy. The 70's are long gone, hippie. Thank the Heavens something called "Tenure" exists, or else you'd be with me, teaching 17-year-olds how to count change so they can work at Wendy's and sneeze in the Frosty Machine.

COMPLAINT TWENTY: Greed
Wait, as Alumni I'm going to be hounded by you jokers for more money until my dying day? Do what I did: mail it back to them. Just mark the material (unopened) "Return to Sender." If anyone asks where you got this delightful idea, you never heard of me.

Twenty-one through one-hundred-and-fifty to come over the course of the next several decades. I came, I saw, I came again, I saw something, I need to find a Diet Coke ASAP.

Flippant Reflections on College (Part One)

2006-09-14T13:53:00.000-07:00

I've said many times I didn't really care for "college" (the whole package) - I liked the classes but not the people (it depends on the school you go to, I believe) - so now that I'm back doing graduate studies (after years of real world experience, whatever the heck that means nowadays), it forces me to reflect on what is so terribly wrong with college ... and I was right all along: it's mostly the other people.

COMPLAINT ONE: Group Work Is a Cop-Out
Take it from someone who knows. The teacher gets out of teaching, leaving the class to ultimately teach itself. And what happens within the groups? The work is never spread out equally (there's always a slacker or three), the students argue over the work, there's never a set 'leader' and the final project is almost always sloppy. The actual class presentation is so dull and droning I want to take everyone in the group and light their Birkenstocks on fire to entertain myself.

COMPLAINT TWO: Girls In Class Look Like Shit
No make-up, track pants, wet hair and a stinky t-shirt? Not acceptable. Get a few quarters and wash things. I'm trying to fantasize about you spread eagle on my bed coated in butterscotch being choked by a necktie and the bags under your eyes are a distraction.

COMPLAINT THREE: Grow a Personality
College kids are only funny when they're drunk. Beer in plastic cups should not make you a comedian. Every day is not a trial - chances are your parents are paying for this joy ride you call a Bachelor's Degree. If you can't sleep, try a sleeping pill. If one doesn't work, swallow the whole box. In the morning, drink coffee, shoot up bug juice, masturbate to Animal Planet, whatever floats your tug boat. Smile. Because it gets worse a little later on.

COMPLAINT FOUR: Stop Faking Suicide
I interviewed for a job at the campus Psych clinic and I can't believe how pathetically emo a lot of these kids are. Stop making a scene. You should have sorted that shit out in high school, drama queen. Maybe that guy doesn't like you because you actually do have a head shaped like a banana. Maybe that girl doesn't like you because you don't wear the right clothes. Maybe you like eating pillows and get turned on by cigarette burns on your nipples. Remember those commercials with the butterfly or the teardrop and the magical happy pills? Those pills are begging to float inside your brains. Don't take them with grapefruit juice.

COMPLAINT FIVE: Hang Up
Why is it that after every class everyone whips out their cell phones to notify their friends they're getting out of class? Your campus is five feet long, can't you just use your meaty thighs and WALK to the other person? No wonder there's such a thing called the Freshman 15. Your ass shouldn't suck canal water: do something about the blubber. Also Verizon called back: they don't need any more of your parents' money.

COMPLAINT SIX: Greek Bullshit
ATTENTION: You are paying for your friends. Just because you live in a filth trap with twenty-six people who dress and act just like you doesn't mean you're important. It means I'm stepping in pools of beer sludge every three feet and smelling dog poop in the kitchen. If you want to live like a wino, save everyone a little time, grab a cardboard box, some MD 20/20 and piss on yourself. There! Alpha Gamma Epsilon Omega Weapon!

COMPLAINT SEVEN: The School Newspaper Is Crap
You people write like the idiots who are employed by trashpapers like the Morning Call, i.e. like people trying to earn a paycheck before going to a bar and doing twelve shots of Jim Beam. Also, the cartoon looks like it was drawn by someone with Parkinson's - you are not Charles Schultz, you are not subversive and nobody understand you. Stick to doodling the AC/DC logo in the back of your notebooks.

COMPLAINT EIGHT: You are the Fat Chick
Please stop getting in the way of everyone trying to talk to the Hot Chick. Maxim told you this a thousand times, now Matt's telling you. Just focus on graduating in five years, then getting a job, then marrying a banker, then getting lipo. Done.

COMPLAINT NINE: Superminds
This is to those who don't do any class work, don't turn in papers on time, don't go to class and get better grades than me: I don't know who you have incriminating photos of (or what's in that mind of yours), but gimme gimme gimme a clue. Please?

COMPLAINT TEN: T.A.s Are Horny
Stop trying to fuck every 18-year-old in class and pay attention when I tell you I'm present because you keep marking me absent. Oh, and please remind me of this if I ever become a T.A.

More complaints will follow whenever I dig myself out of this mass of literature that threatens to smother me in my sleep.

Receiving Gifts From Marlon Brando

2006-08-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

Normally I don't try to think too much about my dreams - there are usually a lot of people getting massacred and bleeding sores and midgets - but just last night I had a dream in which a female postal employee came up to my front door and handed me a box of Mallomars and told me Marlon Brando sent them. The instant I looked up, she vanished. After taking the Mallomars I decided to go on a Ferris Wheel ride because that's what happened to be planted in my living room. I don't remember what happens next, but it probably had something to do with waves of violence and misery.

Upon awaking, all I could think about were Mallomars. I have never eaten a Mallomar or anything resembling a Mallomar in my life, so I decided my Mission For The Day was to purchase a box. I mean, when Marlon fucking Brando mails your subconscious a box of treats, that means something. I think it means Marlon Brando wants to clog my arteries with lard.

Today, after searching several poorly-stocked grocery stores, I failed to unearth a single box of Mallomars. Apparently Brando has gone from Ghost Form to Human Form and is ravaging the local stores for their chocolate and marshmallow and graham cracker treats. The stores were not out of butter, however, which happens to be what he asks the busty Maria Schneider to smear inside a certain orifice in Last Tango in Paris, but that's undoubtedly another dream for another night.

The Perks of Being Completely Broke and Homeless

2006-07-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, having no money and being homeless isn't as bad as you might imagine. Consider the following:

1. Pity sex. There are homeless dudes, right? But there are also homeless chicks ... right? And homeless chicks need dudes sometimes. Are you following me? There ain't much to do outside, either. Watching squirrels fuck only gives you dirty ideas.

2. Free food. Wasteful Americans throw out good quality food all the time. Hell, I throw out chunks of filet mignon regularly. So instead of paying high prices for delicious food, why not rifle through a garbage pail? You're destitute, not a caveman: use fire and cook that shit. Leftovers? Yummertime.

3. Nobody blames you for anything. Global warming? Not your deal. Terrible education for children? Your kids disowned you. Kim Jong-Il firing rockets into an L.A. Starbucks? Who's this King Wong Dill you speak of ... and isn't he in the Wu-Tang Clan?

4. Nobody expects anything from you. If a woman has a heart attack in front of you, you can't be expected to call 9-1-1 because you don't have a cell phone plan because you don't have money. Watch her die while eating the burnt filet mignon I talked about earlier.

5. Everyone's trying to help you. The government talks about how it needs to give money and jobs to the homeless. People win Nobel Prizes trying build you homes. God-fearing Christians pretend to love you so long as you don't stink up their living room. Weirdo filmmakers want you to fight other bums and sell the DVDs. The world is full of possibilities.

6. You get to hone your street-corner musician skills. Always wanted to be Dylan but didn't have the songwriting ability? Now all you need is an acoustic guitar with all its strings, a few licks and you'll be getting change in no time! Hell, that douche bag Jewel lived in a van and she acts like she survived in the Amazon for six years - and she sucks as a poet - so you have to be able to write *something* about your bum experience. The pavement hurts / my toes have warts / I just dookied in my shorts. There. I got you started.

7. You get to hone your street-corner madman skills. Composure and elegance are SO 17th Century. Vomiting on things, smoking the remains of cigarettes people have just spit out of their mouths, pissing in garbage cans and screaming incoherently are just the beginning. If you get really good, hitchhike to Hollywood, make sure you wear your Bum Attire and claim you're "Method." Or start painting and call yourself an "Outsider Artist." Très avant-garde!

8. No bands on MySpace try to add you. (This is self-explanatory.)

9. God talks to you. He doesn't talk to the Pope, Priests, Cardinals, lawyers, doctors, Michael
Landon, Roma Downey, Osama bin Laden (they play phone tag), televangelists, politicians or scientists. It's just you and President Bush. What's that Lord? Do a whole lot of cocaine and send 18-year-olds to die in a war for the profits of oil companies? Fuck, dude, that message is for Dubya! (Click.)

10. Drinking wine every day at 10 in the morning and bathing in a river are expected. You're drunk at 2 PM and talking to a chipmunk? No one cares. You're exposing yourself to the elderly and feeble while nude in the creek? You won't be arrested. A man's gotta wash his bits sometime: why not right now in broad daylight?I'm sure there are other things I can't think of, but I am only one person, and to be honest, top ten lists are all the rage. Now if you don't mind me I have to get back to my glass of Glenlivet on the rocks, fondue and megs after megs of smut I just swiped off of the Internet. Thank you for your respect and consideration, et. al.

The Summer '06 Declaration

2006-06-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

I have now decided that I'm going to dedicate my Summer of 2006 to doing absolutely, positively nothing, because this is an area in which I have already shown excellence, grace and form. And technique. I am going to lay on my back porch and let the sun cook my pasty American skin a healthy Iranian brown while periodically moving my head to utilize the straw that is connected to a barrel of Bellini mix, with actual champagne and peach puree, because I go all out and you know it. I'd think sexual thoughts about dancing, singing and mostly naked Italian girls feeding me melon and ham while saying "Prego" in an endless loop, but that would involve mental work, and I am against work in any form be it physical, mental and/or spiritual. Plus, chewing that meat and fruit would also be an effort, therefore all nutrients must be in liquid form, or if the Italian girls would be willing to chew it up like momma birds and place it into my slightly agape beak, that would be swell.

I'd recommend the same for you, but I don't like inflicting my philosophies on others. To quote Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Give me health, wealth and liberty, oh no wait scratch that dude grab me a Blue Raspberry Slurpee from 7-11. What? You're not going to 7-11? Jesus fucking Christ why must everything in this world be a chore I mean really."

Observations Regarding the Mating Rituals of Poison Dart Frogs

2006-04-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

I was at the Baltimore Aquarium the other day when I should have been working. I was taking in the sights and smells of thousands of varieties of fish, frogs and aquatic life. But only one creature was going to satisfy my curiosity: the Poison Dart Frog.

As soon as I found the Poison Dart Frog display, I was in ecstasy. There's something so very amusing about a creature that, if eaten, gets the last laugh by poisoning the predator that consumed it. Of course, there are those bright colors on its froggy back that signal danger, but nature is nature and sometimes a motherfucker gets hungry.

I stared at the bright orange Poison Dart Frogs, which are about the size of a half dollar (tiny, in other words) for what felt like an eternity. And lo, I noticed something in the lower corner of the container: one of the male Poison Dart Frogs had mounted one of the female Poison Dart Frogs. Yes, it is true: there is only so much time in the cage and only so many leafy branches to crawl on. A Poison Dart Frog needs love, too.

The mounting did not last long, alas - the Poison Dart Frog was no stud, no superstar - but during the twenty-second bump and shuffle, I believe I exclaimed, much to the amusement of the twenty or so people huddled around the same display, "Holy shit, they're doing it!" My Traveling Companions squinted to see what I was getting at and also noticed the Frog Copulation. I had Spotted Something, like people on those nature shows ... and what I spotted was hot like burning asphalt.

Eventually, the Female Poison Dart Frog wriggled out of the male's grasp and moved onwards to paint her nails or wax her upper lip or something. I didn't stay around long enough to check. But for the Male Poison Dart Frog, it was twenty seconds of an attempt at pleasure. Afterwards, I can guarantee, over pints of Poison Dart Guinness, he relayed the story with exaggeration and gusto to his friends, about how he rode the ride for an easy two to three minutes, about how he was King for a moment, and about how he was going again the next day and the next day and the next day. And before he would know it, he would be drunk and throwing up in the alley next to the pub, because that pathetic bastard can't hold his liquor.

Nature is complicated.

I Love and Hate Atlantic City

2006-01-01T21:02:00.000-08:00

I almost won $80 at craps in Atlantic City, but this Korean fucker rolled a 10 twice. I was having such a good day too: it was freezing cold outside, I had like 2 gin martinis and a watery beer inside my head and was feeling lucky.

I broke out even for the day, which means (or so I'm told) that I "kissed my sister." Being an only child I do not have a sister to kiss and compare feelings. That made me sad for approximately forty-five minutes.