A Post About Things Like Making Out and Soup

For all the vast benefits of having a girlfriend, like making out, being able to order more than one thing off the Chinese menu, and opening up your heart to emotions only true love and a great rack can reach, there are still some negatives, like feeling bad for waking her up to make out, having to share the Chinese food, and opening up your heart to emotions only true love and a great rack can reach. But none is worse than the sharing of diseases. No, not like herpes (that’s not “sharing,” that’s “infecting”). I mean like when one person gets a cold, so the other nurses them back to health. Then, just as one gets healthy, the other gets sick. And so on and so forth. Like a Chinese finger trap, this vicious cycle of illness ruins one’s ability to create apt metaphors.

Right now Brooke is on the downside of her cold and I am on the upswing of mine. After five days of being in close proximity to a girl so sick that even as I lay next to her, stroking her hair, consoling her with, “Don’t worry, you’ll feel better tomorrow,” she answered, “You keep saying that and I keep getting worse!” I really believed that, through sheer will power and ingesting so much Airborne that I randomly caught whiffs of oranges, I had avoided the bug. Not so lucky.

Which means that you are subjected to posts like this, and in exchange for your patience and understanding I don’t give a shit because I feel like death. So much so that for lunch today I actually ate soup, if one can call it eating. I’m not sure how the myth got started or propagated so thoroughly that when you are sick you should eat soup (clearly the soup companies are more powerful than we imagine), but why does no one make a bigger deal about this? When Valentine’s Day rolls around everyone carps on how it is nothing but a Hallmark holiday created by the greeting card industry and nurtured at the teat of commercial enterprise, yet when someone gets a runny nose and, like Pavlov’s dog, runs to the nearest soup vendor, no one accuses Campbell’s of profiteering. But they should – because I ate that “soup and half a sandwich” combo today and, like everyone else, I savored every bite of the sandwich, eating it slowly so as to not finish it first and be left with an unsatisfying cup of soup, all the while thinking, “Unless this is Garden Vegetable and Percocet soup, there is no realistic chance of this making me feel better.” And, like predicted, I’m still hungry and still sick. And the soup conglomerate is richer, having taken advantage of a weak, ill man.

Too Tired To Care

GENERAL COMMENTARY

I’m not OK with all these foreigners coming in here and stealing our Oscars. Like basketball or the Olympics, The Academy Awards are an American institution, and just because we have a little international egg on our face right now doesn’t mean that we should be giving all our awards away to people from Mexico. That’s why they added the Foreign Film category in the first place. Now winning Best Foreign Film isn’t special because everyone over at Pan’s Labyrinth is all, “Yeah, but ours are Oscars de America categories.”

Do you want to know why Foreign Films are good? Because no one can understand them. And as with most things we can’t understand, like God or the theory of relativity, instead of saying, “But this makes no sense!” we worship them. No on wants to be the jerk who doesn’t get into heaven.

Well you know what? I’m tired of not being that jerk. If I wanted to read I would go to the library, not the movie theater.

FASHION WRAP-UP

Penelope Cruz looked positively ethnic in her blush colored strapless Atelier Versace gown.

Wearing Olivier Theyskens, Reese Witherspoon looked so cute you just wanted to divorce her.

Rachel Weiss was confused in her Vera Wang and vintage Cartier jewels.

Nicole Kidman was a revelation in her big red Balenciaga while Naomi Watts looked lumpy in Escada.

Helen Mirren was booby in Christian Lacroix.

Anne Hathaway didn’t help her face’s cause with her Valentino faux-pas.

Adriana Barraza tried her best.

All the guys looked the same.

BIG WINNERS
Age before beauty as Alan Arkin beats out Mark Wahlberg for Best Supporting Actor. Wahlberg should have won, and if it was a street fight he would have.

The Departed shocks Babel by winning Best Picture. No one who saw Babel is shocked.

Martin Scorsese wins Best Director for The Departed. Afterwards he commented, “Finally maybe I’ll get some good projects sent my way.”

Forest Whitaker wins a moral victory for people with lazy eyes everywhere. Correction: People from all over with lazy eyes. People with lazy eyes everywhere have no chance at normalcy, let alone an award.

It’s all knotted up at one after the U.S. wins the Revolutionary War and Helen Mirren wins Best Actress for The Queen.

Jennifer Hudson, who is overweight, wins best Supporting Actress award.

BIG LOSERS
Imagine Al Gore’s embarrassment when he wakes up this morning and realizes that Global Warming doesn’t exist. In front of all those people!

ELLEN
Was funny while remaining inoffensive, except to Republicans.

HIGHLIGHTS
The people rolling around behind that white screen making big shadow puppets. But honestly, who the fuck does this for a living? I’m just jealous.

Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly getting all meta on the Oscars.

Clint Eastwood fake-translating Ennio Morricone’s acceptance speech from Italian to English while the whole time Morricone is cursing the Oscars for never recognizing his work before. (What, you speak Italian? You’re going to prove me wrong?)

Jerry Seinfeld ad-libbing “. . . these five incredible depressing films,” during his presentation of Best Documentary.

Me being back in bed in three hours. That has nothing to do with the Academy Awards, but who really cares about the Academy Awards anyway.

Q&A Friday!

Even though I cry at romantic movies, I’m not a big fan of e-cards. I mean, you have to REGISTER and SIGN IN and TYPE THINGS and rarely are emotions worth all that. However I will admit that there are certain times when an animated panda can say things that my heart cannot.

But never did I think that sending an e-card would turn into an act of global defiance. Before Care2 would let me send my dancing panda card, this screen came up:

Normally I send e-cards because I feel guilty, not in order to feel guilty. Unfortunately, I was in a rush. So I didn’t sign it. Now I feel guilty. I’ll send them an e-card.

On to the questions.

My favorite position is doggy-style, and most of the men I've dated have been really pleased by that fact and it has always worked really well...ahm...mechanically. The current boyfriend seems to have trouble with this position: he can't seem to get a rhythm or for that matter a real grip (I don't know if grip is the right word). Is there something I can do to improve this without letting him know I don't think he's great in this particular area?

All the best,
S

How weird, a sex question!

First of all, no, “grip” is not the right word. I would have gone with “handle.” Grip is what villains do in movies when they clutch heroes by their throats. Then again, I don’t know what you’re into in bed.

Here’s my suggestion: Sign up for dance lessons. Tell your boyfriend that when the two of you get married, you don’t want him dancing like a white guy. (You’re white, right?) The fear of marriage and the racial insult will distract him from the fact that the real problem is his performance in bed. Then the dance lessons will teach him the rhythm he lacks, plus how to handle your body.

A less time-consuming and expensive option is to scream, “No, fuck me like this!” and show him what you want. If he still can’t perform after all that, just break up with him. Because seriously, this is like Banging 101. Maybe he’s just not college material.
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Hey Dan -

Here's our issue: Our next door neighbors, who we know just a little (basically their names, what they do for a living, and that their barky assed dogs are called Tiffany and Abby) have been asking us for a weird favor and we don't know what to do about it. They have a preteen son who is occasionally left home alone when school is cancelled. Our neighbors are super paranoid about anyone being in their house. The kid is not allowed to have anyone in the house EVER. So every time he's left home alone, they call us and ask that we keep an "eye" on things, and to call them immediately if there's any suspicious behavior. So of course school was out last week and the Dad calls to make his request. Turns out that the kid had at least five car loads of people over. I kind of minimized it when his Dad called for his report and said something like "there were a couple of strange cars in front of your house (really in the driveway) but I didn't see anyone go inside (really I saw them coming out the door).

Question: Should I tell the Dad that I don't want to be his rat anymore? I don't want bad blood between us, but I'm not comfortable either. I'm also afraid the kid is going to find out that it's me and my tires are going to get slashed or something. Or should I keep covering for the kid? Any other ideas?

Thanks Dan!
Amy

I don’t have any proof, but I suspect that my parents did the same thing when I was growing up. Parents can be tricky. One time they left for a New Years Eve party and just as I was bringing out the beer they came back because they “forgot their tickets.” WHO NEEDS TICKETS FOR A PARTY? Sneaky adults . . .

Anyway, my gut tells me that you shouldn’t be “working” for this kid’s parents. First of all, work should include pay. And gratitude is not pay. Second, though it may take a village to raise a child, who cares if it’s not your child? If I were home on a Saturday night with my girlfriend watching The Notebook and I had to get up every time I heard a car door slam to see if it was someone going into my neighbor’s house . . . well I just wouldn’t. I don’t even get up to get myself more beer, I just wait for my girlfriend to use the bathroom and then as she’s walking back to the couch I say, “Hey honey, grab me a beer while you’re up?” I think I’m getting off topic.

What you need to do is get yourself out of this situation with the least amount of culpability, i.e. get them to “fire” you – just like if you wanted to quit your job but still wanted to collect unemployment. The best way to do this is to mess up. The next time they go out and a car pulls up to their house, call the cops. Report a burglary. When your neighbors are interrupted during their fancy meal to rush home because their house is being robbed, likely they will say something to you like, “What the hell happened!” to which you should reply, “You told me to watch the house! That car looked suspicious!” Continue this process until they get the hint. This is an alternate form of “killing someone with kindness.” Or you could actually kill them.
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1. If you were a squirrel in outer space, and you farted would someone looking at you be able to see it, and would it propel you forwards in a zero gravity atmosphere?

2. How long can you hold a towel up with your penis?

Thanks for your time!
~Shella

I get this question all the time.

Air propulsion is a tricky thing, mostly because I know nothing about it. But consider this: How cute would a squirrel look in a little space suit! With a little helmet and a little oxygen tank! And then he would try to eat his nuts, but he would forget to lift up his little face shield so he would bang it against the glass. That would be so cute!

It depends on the towel. I’m pretty sure I could hold up a hand cloth for at least a year. But one of those heavy spun Egyptian Cotton bath towels? Maybe only 9 months.
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Is it better to surround yourself with people that are better than you, or worse off than you?

Take for example the adage; in the land of blind men, the one-eyed man is king. Similarly, Garfield once said of Odie, "If you want to appear smarter, hang around someone stupider." But on the other hand, Newton (or was it Merton?) once said, "if I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Should we surround ourselves with giants in order to see farther? Or would we see just as far if we were surrounded by really short people who we could see over?

I ask because a friend is considering moving to the edge of a meth-fueled trailer park and we are trying to decide if it makes him white-trash by association, or classy by comparison.

Anonymous

As with most questions in life, there is no real answer here. But let’s bring it back to me:

When I was in college I dated a girl who was, my friends later advised me, trash. Looking back, I guess that was the real reason that I felt so confident when I was with her. It lends a nice dynamic to a relationship when you can fall asleep every night knowing you are better than the other person.

On the flip side, I had to get my first STD test because of her. So there a plusses and there are negatives.

Multiply this scenario by 1000 and you have your friend’s current situation. There are literally hundreds of STD tests waiting to happen, right outside your front door. Would it be nice to walk outside your trailer door every morning, stretch, brush the hypodermic needles off your makeshift porch and pick up your newspaper like a king overlooking his land? It sure would. But science proves it’s only a matter of time before you join everyone else for Friday Night Animal Torching. That’s how all great empires fall – when their king is mistaken for a stray dog by a raging methhead.

(Think you’ve got what it takes to have a question? Email me at redactedblog@gmail.com)

Million Dollar Idea #2

Like I wrote in my first Million Dollar Idea post, money is the best thing ever invented. OK, maybe I didn’t write that, but I was thinking it. But it turns out that, much like sex, money is only awesome if you have it. And while my first venture (an online-profile writing service) was moderately successful*, I quickly realized that if I was going to make it in that line of work I was going to have to interact with other people. And ask anyone who knows me, if there’s one type of person I can’t stand it’s others.

So for my second venture I’ve turned inward. I sat down and thought: “Who would I like to work with?”

I immediately thought, “Food.”

OK, OK . . . what kind of food?

My favorite food, of course. Hamburgers. No, pizza. No wait, hamburgers. Pizza. Hamburgers.

I went on like that for a few minutes before it hit me: What do people love to do besides eat? Fight. (Watch closely, this is a genius entrepreneurial mind at work.) Much like the wildly successful Bum Wars, I would turn two naïve, tender entity against one another. There would be controversy, there would be outrage. There will be a line drawn in the sand, and by the time I am done the world will be divided into two groups: those who, forced to make a choice, would give up either pizza or hamburgers.

I give you, Million Dollar Idea #2: TEAM PIZZA or TEAM HAMBURGER!

The Argument For Pizza: It is the perfect food. I know this because I am eating it right now. With a crust like a blank canvas on which you may impose your hopes and dreams, a pizza can be topped with virtually anything (except, for the sake of this argument, a hamburger). It is portable, it is cheap and nothing in the world goes better with a cold beer than a slice of pizza. Indeed, at the end of a long night of drinking, is there anywhere you would like to be [that doesn’t involve grinding up on someone whose name you never got] other than a pizza parlor? Pizza is, in a word, round and delicious.

The Argument for Hamburgers: It is meat. A hamburger is nothing but a shaped mass of meat. That alone makes it worth every culinary distinction. Like pizza, the toppings are endless (except, for the sake of this argument, a pizza). It is a fact that barbecues would not exist if it were not for hamburgers. That’s a whole substrata of summer parties that would cease to exist were it not for this perfectly charred patty of meat. I met my girlfriend at a barbecue. If it weren’t for the hamburger, we never would have met. (That’s not true, but I’m sure it is for someone.)

There will be TEAM PIZZA and TEAM HAMBURGER t-shirts, visors and knapsack patches available soon. There will also be various rallies, subsidiary functions and underground meetings (think Fight Club). And I will be president of TEAM PIZZA or TEAM HAMBURGER, Co. They say that there is a certain peace that surrounds you when you know you’ve found your calling in life. And you know what? They’re right.

Let the money start rolling in!

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* Success is a relative idea. Like some people equate success with having success, while others find it successful just to be happy with yourself. I consider it a successful venture when it becomes so popular that I have to turn people away. And that’s exactly what I did – turned all three customers away.

Jazzercise In The Face Of Death

Climbers relied on exercise, pep talks

SALEM, Ore. - The three hikers rescued after a fall and an icy night on Mount Hood said Wednesday their survival techniques included exercise and pep talks.

Climber 1: “I’m so thirsty. Do we have any water left?”

Climber 2: “No, we ran out a couple of hours ago.”

Climber 3: “Why don’t you go for a run? That will help.”

Climber 1: “I don’t know, I’m not a very good runner . . .”

Climber 2: “Stop it! You are a terrific runner! I saw you run that one time we were at the beach and you looked great. Now go sweat out all that thirst and insecurity!”

Climber 1: “You got it!”

Ways To Get Fat on Fat Tuesday

1. DON’T EXERCISE

For example, I drop my pen and it rolls under my desk. Instead of bending down to pick it up, I stop working. If someone walks by my office, I will yell, “Hey! Do you have a pen?” If they point out that there is a pen right there on the floor beneath me I will say, “You think you’re better than me?”

2. FREE PANCAKES AT IHOP

Because they are free and they are carbs and they are delicious and they are free. The only drawback here is that you need to move (exercise) to get to an IHOP. I recommend having a friend drive and dropping you off right out front. Stand at the front door until someone opens it for you. Don’t say thank you. Talking burns calories.

3. GET DEPRESSED

Science has proven a lot of things over the years, so I trust them when they say that being depressed makes you fat. (Although one thing they didn’t prove was which came first – the chicken or the egg. So how do they know that people aren’t depressed because they are fat instead of being fat because they are depressed? Hey, it’s working! I’m getting depressed just thinking about it!)

While waiting for your pancakes at IHOP, ponder your mortal existence. Think that your life will last a span of time that, on the grand scale, amounts to an indistinguishable flash of light. And once you are gone, everything will go on without you, and at the moment of your death a child will be playing and laughing somewhere in the distance. Now pour some syrup on those problems and make them go away! Eat them right up!

4. EAT ENTENMANN’S CONFECTIONS

One Rich Chocolate Frosted donut has 19 grams of fat in it. That’s 29% of your recommended daily intake. That means if you eat one donut for dessert after breakfast, lunch and dinner, you will have ingested 87% of your recommended daily intake of fat in donut form. You can’t see this, but I have a tear in my eye as I’m writing this.

(Note: If you read that last paragraph and thought, “Who eats dessert after breakfast?” I’ve got bad news for you. Your life is a sham and your ideals are worthless. Dessert isn’t an indulgence, it is a reward for being a good person. And what more important time of day is there to be rewarded for your greatness than the morning? It gives you a sense of confidence and accomplishment than will carry you through the day, or at least until lunch. Besides, if a short stack of pancakes is enough to fill you up, I think science barely considers you a living organism.)

5. RETAIN WATER

Apparently girls are really good at this, so if you know any ask them how they do it. But from my limited research, I have learned that eating a lot of salt will do the trick. Luckily, potato chips are delicious and pretzels are delicious and chocolate covered pretzels are chocolate covered delicious.

From what I understand, retaining water then leads to “bloating” which can be quite uncomfortable. The good news, though, is that the best remedy for bloating is to sit on the couch and do nothing. There certainly is a rhyme and reason to this whole Fat Day.

(FUN TRIVIA! – The fattiest food I could find was a Dairy Queen Caramel CheeseQuake Blizzard which has 39 grams of saturated fat. That’s 200% of your recommended daily allowance. That’s a coronary in a cup. With a really long spoon.)

Q&A Friday!

I got this email from my friend Matt this morning:

Worst place to be when terrorists take you hostage? Shitter. I think I'd be able to convince them to at least let me wipe a little, but I would first off be uncomfortable wiping in front of them, and God knows they wouldn't let me close the stall door. And secondly, I'm not a 1, 2, 3 wiper. I like to be thorough, so I'm sure at some point the guy with the gun would say "that's enough, that's enough" and make me get up. NOW, not only am I in a hostage situation, but I've got a smelly, uncomfortable butt. Fast forward 20 minutes and the other hostages start smelling something. You can disguise a fart and pawn it off on someone else, but not a shit ass. So people would start thinking I shit myself in fear. I'd have no choice but to stand up to the terrorists to prove myself and probably die.

I think the moral of the story is that sometimes being prepared means thinking outside the box. Just something to think about.

On to the questions.

I'm a 36-year-old straight woman. For six months, I was dating a guy I thought was nice and normal. One way my boyfriend showed he cared, or so I thought, was by massaging my feet after work (I wait tables). Then he confessed that he has a foot fetish. He wasn't rubbing my feet to be sweet or tender or considerate, but for his own selfish reasons. I dumped him. He was very upset and is still begging me to take him back.

We had been talking about marriage, but that's over now. I don't want to be with someone who has a fetish. How can I know if he wants me back or just my feet? Do you think I should continue to date him?

Best,

Emma

This reminds me of the famous biblical story of the wise King Solomon, recounted below from Wikipedia:

Two "harlots" approach Solomon, bringing with them a single baby boy. Each mother presents the same story - She and the other woman live together. One night, soon after the birth of their respective children, the other woman woke to find that she had smothered her own baby in her sleep. In anguish and jealousy, she took her dead son and exchanged it with the other's child. The following morning, the woman discovered the dead baby, and soon realized that it was not her own son, but the other's.

After some deliberation, King Solomon called for a sword to be brought before him. He declared that there is only one fair solution: the live son must be split in two, each woman receiving half of the child. Upon hearing this terrible verdict, the boy's true mother cried out, "Please, My Lord, give her the live child - do not kill him!" However, the liar, in her bitter jealousy, exclaimed, "It shall be neither mine nor yours - divide it!' Solomon instantly gave the baby to the real mother, realizing that the true mother's instincts were to protect her child, while the liar revealed that her only motivation was jealousy.

Clearly what you should do is show up at his house with a sword. Your natural inclination will be to say something dramatic, like “If you wanteth my feet, you shall have them!” However in a situation like this it is always better to be perfectly clear. Tell him that if he loves your feet so much, you will cut them off and then he can rub them whenever he wants. But be sure to remind him that then you will have no feet, which will not only be painful and inconvenient for you, but will also render you hideously deformed, thus unlovable. This is the only way truly to know if it is just your feet or your whole body that he loves. And your personality, whatever.

Short of an act of public amputation, you could always try taking him at his word that he wants you back. Lucky for you if your boyfriend's fetish makes you feel good. My girlfriend has a dinner-cooking fetish and a dick-sucking fetish, and I tip toe around and speak in hushed tones so as not to anger the gods or disrupt my perfect universe. (OK, that's not entirely true. She hates cooking.)

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Do you think Valentine’s Day is an important holiday or just an excuse to sell cards, make single people feel unloved and cause tension in a new relationship?

Suicidal in Sunny South Florida

I think it’s a travesty that a holiday celebrating something so beautiful has been so commercialized. It is a testament to the insidiousness of our modern corpocracy that we can pervert even ideals so pure as love for the sake of a buck.

Indeed, the origins of the holiday suggest a nobility and purity that belie the modern celebrations of chocolates, flowers and flavored massage oils. It is said that during the rule of Roman Emperor Claudius II, young men were ordered to remain single so that Claudius could bolster his armed forces. However, St. Valentine, a Roman priest serving under the emperor, refused to abide by this and performed marriage ceremonies in secret. Eventually, he was caught and sentenced to death by Claudius.

Death in repayment of fighting for love. I can’t believe no one has made a movie out of this yet. It could star Gary Oldman as the ruthless Claudius and Will Smith as the idealistic St. Valentine. This way we could appeal to a mixed race audience. It would open on Valentine’s Day and we would call it Bloody Hearts, because horror movies tend to open much higher than dramas, especially on holidays. This could be huge.

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If you are in an open relationship (sex-wise) with your husband for 8 years (open=honest) and then you:

1) find out he's been writing sickeningly sweet, XOXOXO emails to your best friend for the past year & screwing her for two months even though she's on his "no" list and

2) find out he's been hooking up with *guys* on Craig's List and then lying to you about it

3) tell him he's a moron for screwing up what was, quite possibly, the best arrangement any guy has had EVER

4) tell him to get the fuck out of your house

How long should he wait before considering it polite/appropriate to send you a text message requesting that you be his "safe phone buddy" for his next Craig's list hookup? Is six days a little quick, or, and I just being unreasonable? Also, how long do I have to wait to sleep with him in order to avoid sending him mixed messages?

Of Course I’m From Virginia in Virginia

It’s always tricky when your husband sleeps with the wrong other woman, let alone the wrong other man. Normal grace periods do not apply. But I ran the numbers and this is what I came up with:

1. He should wait 15 days before asking you to be his “safe phone buddy.” A good way to show him that you are unhappy with him for jumping the gun and asking for such a favor after only six days would be to agree to help him, and then turn your cell phone off that day. So when he is being strangled by a psychopathic, well-endowed man and he manages, somehow, against all odds, to grasp for his phone and dial your number, he will know as it goes immediately to voice mail that he has made a huge mistake.

2. You should wait 60 days before sleeping with him again. I know this seems excessive, but given the circumstances you will need at least 60 days for your self-esteem to get just back to the point where having it shattered one more time will take you to depths of self-loathing you previously thought never existed.

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What do you think about the law they're trying to pass so you can't listen to your Ipod while you cross the street?

Amanda

I think that this is typical of a stiff Republican administration. You just know this wouldn’t be happening if everyone were going around with Windows-based music players. What other things will they prevent us from doing while we cross the street: eating French Fries? sacrificing animals in constitutionally sanctioned pagan rituals? abortions? gay sex? I would say we should take our fight to the streets, but for one thing that’s so ironic and for another fighting seems like a lot of hard work. Instead we should all blog about it. That’ll show ‘em!

(Think you’ve got what it takes to have a question? Email me at redactedblog@gmail.com)

I Hate My Job I Hate My Job I Hate My Job I Hate My Job I Hate My Job I Hate My Job: Or I Hate My Job

Work has been particularly soul crushing lately. To counter this I have been trying different methods of reassuring myself that I am happy, fortunate, well-adjusted, etc - basically what some might call “methods of coping,” but which I refer to as “methods of ingesting a ton of substances that may or may not have any considerable effect on my mood.” Because coping just seems hard.

It’s been a couple of weeks now and I am ready to analyze the data. Here it is:

(Disclaimer: None of what follows is intended as medical advice. If you need medical advice, you should go to your doctor. Or to google.com because the internet is a wealth of valuable information. You can even buy pills without a prescription from India. It’s awesome.)

Caffeine

Desired Effect: to be more alert, energized, vibrant
Actual Effect: more hyper in my despondency

Commentary: I stopped drinking caffeine for a stretch of time so I think starting up again at what you might call a ferocious pace might not have been the best idea. Still, I don’t do things half-assed, and coffee is delicious and I think caffeine may possess some physically addictive properties. Anyway, it turns out that caffeine’s most valuable effect may be that taking a break to get yourself another cup of coffee is a nice little interlude during busy stretches of droning labor. Plus trying to concentrate with the incessant tapping of my own foot provides an added difficulty factor to doing work, kind of changing things up.

Alcohol

Desired Effect: to be more carefree, relaxed, sexy
Actual Effect: sad at work while hungover, eating a lot of pizza

Commentary: Since I think it’s still technically frowned upon to drink in the office, I had to get a little creative here. I would drink a lot more than I normally would the night before, hoping that it would carry over into the next day. (You know the feeling, when you wake up and start drinking water and all of a sudden you’re drunk again, like your body is reflexively responding to the motion of your arm bringing the glass to your mouth). It kind of worked, but where I got stuck is that eventually I would get a hangover, and my hangover cure is normally a bloody Mary, which I CAN’T DRINK IN THE OFFICE. This must be what they are referring to when they call alcoholism a “vicious cycle.”

Vitamins/Supplements

Desired Effect: to feel healthier, stronger
Actual Effect: poorer, slight nausea

Commentary: I never knew this, but with most of these supplements (Ginseng, Omega-3, etc.) you have to take anywhere from 6 to 8 pills a day. Once I realized that I had been doing it wrong all these years (taking just one in the morning) I was excited to finally reap the benefits. Instead, by the time I took the final two Ginkgo Biloba, Green Tea extract and Omega-3 capsules at the end of the day I was ready to vomit. On the plus side, the nausea did distract me from the wretchedness of my job as I was more concerned about not throwing up in the middle of the staff meeting than anything that was actually being said at the staff meeting.

Drinks

Desired Effect: to feel healthier, stronger, less thirsty
Actual Effect: unmitigated tremors, bright urine

Commentary: I figured I could fix the problem of having to take 8 pills by getting all the same supplemental goodness from one stiff drink (Arizona Herbal RX). I took one sip and said out loud, “That’s not good.” But as though my body was immediately addicted to the health it offered, I downed it in a matter of minutes. Two things of importance to note: 1. We have come to a tricky place in civilization when we are forcing ourselves to drink things that we dislike in order to feel better about our condition. Vodka tastes good. Beer tastes good. Arizona Herbal RX does not taste good. 2. Despite the very strong desire to do so, it is never acceptable to try to show your pee to another guy in the bathroom because it is so insanely fluorescent. I mean insanely. Like, you almost rationalize that of course he would want to see this, it’s insane. But still, unacceptable.

Cookies

Desired Effect: to drown my sorrows
Actual Effect: minor belly ache, co-worker pointing out chocolate on face

Commentary: While I’m still young and it’s physically impossible for me to get fat, I feel it is my right and privilege to eat a bag of cookies for lunch. Some might argue that if it’s such a right and privilege, why do you keep the bag hidden in your desk drawer so no one will see you shoving them in your face? And to those people I say, “Don’t hate me because you are fat.” Then I go back to work, wiping the tears from my eyes with another cookie and, in an act both symbolic and delicious, take another bite.

Remember To Wear A Condom When You Fuck Valentine’s Day

this site is the most fun thing to happen to Valentine’s Day since my awesome girlfriend.

Unlike Lawrence Fishburne, God Really Does Ask the Tough Questions

This past weekend, a good friend of mine and his fiancée, both Catholic, took part in the church’s traditional marriage preparation course called Pre-Cana. What exactly is Pre-Cana? I’m glad you asked!

Dating back to simpler times, when God actually roamed the earth and all arguments about why we are here? and what it all means? were settled by going straight to the source – though of course no one ever thought to write it down, instead opting for stories about mustard seeds and fig trees (great choice there, guys) – Pre-Cana is derived from the Biblical story of The Marriage at Cana where, according to the gospel of John, one of the more reliable Evangelists, Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine, thus bequeathing his proverbial “nod of approval” on all earthly celebrations of the sacrament of marriage.

One can assume that in its early form, Pre-Cana involved things like harsh admonishments, threats of damnation, the trading of cattle and a looot of kneeling. These days, Pre-Cana is a catered weekend conference, usually held in the church, where couples engaged to be married pay anywhere from $25 to $100 per person (depending on the quality of the food and the degree to which you hope God will approve your union) to be interviewed and counseled by a priest concerning their impending marriage. The priest will discuss things like kids (no), money (yes), sex (yes) and what your partner may expect of you (no). Also, the priest will encourage the couple to ask each other questions they may never have thought to ask before, such as the following:

Have you ever been arrested? (None of your business)
How much debt do you owe? (None of your business)
Have you been married before? (No.)
Have you ever been committed to an institution? (No.)
Do you have a drug problem? (None of your business)

which are, in my opinion, all great things to know. But here’s the thing: If I am getting married, do I really need a special ceremony to find out if my girlfriend has a drug problem? Shouldn’t that be something we have already shared during our three beautiful weeks together? And if it isn’t, is church really the right time?

Me: “Do you have a drug problem?”
Her: “Well I don’t think it’s really a problem.”
Priest: “Go on. God will still love you and help you through.”
Her: “Sometimes I have sex for coke.”
Priest: “Actually, God doesn’t forgive that one. Sorry.”

You see, the church is like an old friend of mine. We grew up together, so I know all about it, and even have some fond memories of it– like in third grade when I went to my first confession and, distrustful of the fact that God forgives everything decided to hedge my bets by making up a few sins and then finishing the list with, “AND I’VE LIED.”

But then the church and I grew up. And the church went on to become very successful and I went on to become very jaded and reasonable. And now we don’t get along so well. Like if we ran into each other in the grocery store, I wouldn’t punch the church in the face, but maybe I would hide behind the Entenmann’s rack to avoid having the awkward conversation:

Church: “Hello, Daniel!”
Me: “Hey, Church.”
Church: “I haven’t seen you in so long!”
Me: “I know, I’ve just been so busy . . .”
Church: “Oh? what are you doing now?”
Me: “You know, the usual. Say, how’s the proselytizing going?”
Church: “Wonderfully! I’m saving people left and right.”
Me: “That’s great.”
Church: “Gosh, really great to see you. You should stop by sometime. We’ll have the body and blood of Christ, it’ll be nice . . .”

The way I see it, if you’re going to go through all the trouble of making people talk to each other, why not at least ask the right questions? I mean, who cares how many kids she wants? Like money, she’ll have as much as you give her, and she’ll be happy with them. I have much more important things I want to know about my future wife, and you should too.

Herewith, the five things you should ask any spouse-to-be. I’ve even broken them down by Church-style category:

EXPECTATIONS
Would you take a bullet for me?

MONEY
If we were offered the same deal as in the movie Indecent Proposal, would we take it?

LIFESTYLE
List the following things in order, from most important to least: fantasy football, traveling, pizza, family, the beach, integrity, health

SEX
Would you still love me if I got fat? lost an arm? went blind?

KIDS
Cool or not cool: Raising a child so that they are perfectly normal, except they lick the palm of their hand before shaking hands with someone?

Correct answers below!

____________________________________
EXPECTATIONS – Yes (said with no hesitation)
MONEY – No
LIFESTYLE – Order is correct
SEX – TRICK QUESTION. Sex has nothing to do with love.
KIDS – Very cool.

Monday Afternoon Sad Story of a Chicken Who Dreamed Too Big

(Courtesy of www.edwardmonkton.com. Edward Monkton is a great man.)

Q&A Friday!

Some may call it insensitive to go on with Q&A Friday in the wake of Anna Nicole Smith’s untimely death. But I assure you, Anna Nicole would have wanted it this way. Indeed, what better tribute to a life so full of questions than to continue to provide answers. My only regret is that I couldn’t have used my wisdom to help Anna Nicole. Also that I didn’t invest in oil futures in the mid 90’s. Then I would be able to write this post without being interrupted every five minutes by emails from my co-workers saying that they can’t work today because it’s too soon after Anna Nicole Smith’s death. What a lame joke.

What is your advice for the following situation: My friend, a 34-year-old married, professional, 5'10", 160 pound, active male has been contacted by a 14-year-old girl via the 'Internet' who wants to have her 'first experience' with him (her words, via him, of course). What should he do? Obviously, a 14-year-old is in a stage where rejection by a successful, attractive male could have devastating, lifelong consequences. Should he agree to meet her in a nearby park in order to tell her in person that she's beautiful and special and will someday find someone who is appropriate for her? I'm thinking after dark so as not to attract too much attention by people who don't understand what it's like to be a soft, androgynously proportioned pre-teen who smells like momma's talcum drawer.

Thanks for any advice.

Anonymous

This is why the ‘Internet’ is so often referred to as “the land of opportunity.” One minute you’re being pre-approved for a mortgage to buy a house for your beautiful wife, and then BAM you’re getting emails from virgins. But as the saying goes, when God closes a door, he opens a window. Unfortunately this window has all these metal bars on it, and none of the guys here seem to like you very much, even though you are so active.

The irony of the whole thing though is that the 14-year old girl is probably really a 40-year old man! Just like the 40-year old man who would rape him in prison! And when he sets up a meeting with this girl, and she turns out to be this 40-year old man, and this 40-year old man, being the angry type, starts raping him, he’ll be thinking, “How doubly ironic – I’m only here because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings! And this really hurts!”
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If your dick was soft and you pulled really hard, could you tie it in a knot?

Signed,
Wondering in Texas

This is a really tough question, primarily because there are so many different types of knots. See the figure below.

Due to my lack of ability to tie anything other than my shoes, I went to a group of professionals who know knots inside and out: Sailors. And while many told me that it is entirely possible using a half-hitch, most replied, “Can you believe how dandy I look in my uniform? Wheee!”
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(Due to my busy schedule of recovering from a night of drinking, I sent the next two questions to Brooke to answer. Don’t worry, she’s just as smart as me, even though everyone calls her “the pretty one.”)

How soon into the dating relationship should people in their 20's expect to start having sex? is there an amount of time that is too soon, or too late?

First, let me start out by saying that I personally believe that sex is a serious commitment and that you should wait until marriage. (Shout out to [Redacted Mother].) But if I was the type to do it (which I'm not), here would be my advice:

Do what you want. Sex is awesome (one of my slutty friends told me). And luckily, thanks to condoms and abortion birth control, you can do it as much as you want with no consequences. Score.

So if you're not invested in the relationship, sleep with the guy the first date if you want. Blow him in the bathroom of that cute Italian restaurant. Why not? If he doesn't call the next day, you won't care. (That's not to say that if you do sleep with a guy on the first date, he won't call – that's a myth perpetrated by ugly women.) What I am saying is that if you take the plunge quickly, make sure you could go to brunch the next day, swig a Bloody Mary, and diagram his penis for your friends, all without checking your cell to see if he's called.

Now, if you care about the guy, wait. Because sex is wrong? No. Because it ups the ante and gives the relationship (and the sex) the significance it deserves. A good rule of thumb: Wait until you could have sex, spend the night, and happily wake up next to him the next morning. Or at the very least, till you could comfortably say, "Yeah, fuck me, fuck me*" without blushing.

*Girls who would talk like that are filthy whores.

Have you ever met a man that complains that his partner never takes time for foreplay?

Good luck and cheers!
Janet

No.
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Why should you never stand under a tree if it's thundering and lightning outside?

Amanda

I did a little research, and here’s what I found out:

Lightning is awesome. Like, seriously. So fucking cool. If I had a nickname, I would want it to be Dan “Lightning” Murphy, because lightning is six time hotter than the sun.

Anyway, the short answer to your question is simple: Because you shouldn’t be outside in a thunder and lightning storm, and trees are outside. The long answer, however, is a little more complicated.

You see, lightning doesn’t just come down from the sky and hit the ground. In fact, in the few milliseconds that the bolt appears in the sky, a complicated process of conduction is taking place wherein the charge comes both down from the sky and up from the ground.

Think of a bolt of lightning as two lovers acting out a romantic scene in a movie where they are reunited after a long time apart. They are on a busy street in Paris and suddenly spot each other through the crowd. The man begins to run through the crowd towards her. He is acting as a “leader” which is a negative discharge that jumps down from the sky looking for a positive discharge from the ground to connect with. The woman represents the negative discharge, but because women are lazy she just stands there for the time being waiting for the man to reach her. As he makes his way through the crowd, he shuffles past many other women, but does not connect with them, because the attraction is so strong from this particular woman (who has probably slept with him already). Finally, when he is closing in on her, she rushes forward to greet him, as though she were making a grand gesture when really she has only moved a few feet. She is a “positive streamer,” and when they finally embrace the circuit is closed and the electricity begins to flow.

So, in this scenario a big huge oak is like the slut. The lightning is attracted to the tree because it is easy. And if you are standing next to the tree, you may absorb a good amount of the electricity that is pumped into the ground. Much like if you were standing too close to the couple as they did it on the street.
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Can guys really piss their name in the snow? And if so is it a big deal? (I'm a girl/woman and kind of wish I could do it. ) *blushes*

Lilly

Yes, we can. They even say that, given enough time and snow, a group of men could eventually pee out Hamlet.

But the important thing to remember is that we can do it and you can’t. You got the vote and the property and your high-paying jobs, but you’ll never be able to etch into a clean sheet of snow “DAN WUZ HFR.” Never.

(Think you’ve got what it takes to have a question? Email me at redactedblog@gmail.com)

Still No Explanation For Beermuffs, Though

In a news story so huge that it took two months to make it to America my blog, bbc.com is reporting the following incredible findings. Remember to read it in a British accent so it sounds smarter:

Scientists believe they have worked out a formula to calculate how "beer goggles" affect a drinker's vision.¹

The drink-fuelled phenomenon is said to transform supposedly "ugly" people into beauties - until the morning after.²

Researchers at Manchester University say while beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder, the amount of alcohol consumed is not the only factor. Additional factors include the level of light in the pub or club³, the drinker's own eyesight and the room's smokiness.

In order to test the formula’s accuracy, I took a random instance of beer goggle-induced eroticism from my past and plugged it into the equation. Then, halfway through the arduous computation, I realized that I was doing math to remember a time when I took an ugly girl home. That’s like burning money to set fire to your house. So I stopped. But it did bring back this precious memory from college.

My friends and I were at the local underage bar, drinking flaming Dr. Pepper shots and looking for girls. My friend Matt points to a girl across the room and says, “Who’s that? She’s cute.”

I reply, “Dude, you don’t want to talk to her.”

“Why not?”

“She’s retarded.”

“No she’s not.”

“Yes, she is. I just walked past her before and she was talking in that voice.”

“What voice?”

“You know, the retarded voice.”

(awkward pause)

“I don’t buy it. I’m going to go talk to her.”

We all watch as Matt approaches the girl and strikes up a conversation. Five minutes later he returns.

“Well?”

“She’s not retarded. She’s British.”

_________________________________
¹ Really? We had to bring science into this? Using science to explain beer goggles is like using science to explain why you got fired for snorting coke off your desk, or why people don’t like it when you throw garbage at them. “But I just don’t understand it! Why shouldn’t I throw garbage at people? Maybe science can help.”

² It’s not magic. It’s not like Cinderella where if everyone around you gets hammered enough you turn into a princess with a gown and a tiara. Objectively, you are still ugly. People have simply lowered their standards.

³ I never tried in science class because I never thought I would use it in the real world. If I had known that saying, “Women look more attractive when you can barely make out their faces in the dark” qualified as a scientific breakthrough, I would have paid more attention.

(Thanks to reader “Meow” for sending me the article. Though she is obviously smart for reading bbc.com, she is neither British, nor retarded.)

WWTD?

Since my office is right across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, security in my building has been pretty tight over the past few years. Everyone has a specially issued ID with their picture on it that must be shown to a security guard upon entering the building. At first, the security guards would inspect the IDs as though we were underage kids trying to get a whiskey sour at Applebee’s. As time passed though, attitudes relaxed and you could flash your ID quickly as you walked past, so long as you smiled and didn’t look suspicious.

While I normally always carry my ID with me, sometimes when I go from my office down to the newsstand in the lobby to buy an iced tea (OK, chocolate milk) I don’t have it on me, since I am not leaving the building. However, you have to walk past the security guards to get to the newsstand, which is in an alcove just inside the front entrance of the building. Usually I never have a problem. I try to make eye contact with the security guards as I walk past to communicate to them, “Look at me, no jacket. Got a dollar bill in my hand. Not going outside. Remember my face, just going to buy some chocolate milk, I mean iced tea.” (It’s a long look.)

This morning, though, there was a security guard there that I didn’t recognize. He seemed shifty and hardnosed in that way that says, “I take my job seriously, despite this purple blazer,” or “Yes, I’ve been to prison.” I tried my usual routine, but he seemed unimpressed. So I bought my beverage and when attempting to walk past him back into the building, he stopped me.

Guard: “ID.”

Me: “I don’t have it on me, I was just going to the store.” (holding up chocolate milk, reluctantly)

Guard: “Still need to see your ID.”

Me: “I was already in the building. I never left.”

Guard: “I don’t know that you were already in the building. I can’t watch everyone who comes through that door.”

Me: “But I don’t even have a coat on.” (still holding up chocolate milk)

Guard: “How do I know what a terrorist would do?”

Me: (slowly lowering chocolate milk)

Lesson learned: President Bush was right when he said Americans need to make sacrifices during these uncertain times. It’s a small price to pay to carry your building ID with you at all times so you don’t have to call a co-worker on your cell phone to have them come down and vouch for you while you stand there holding a carton of chocolate milk.

Lawrence Fishburn Asks Tough Questions

This Yahoo! Answers thing is getting out of control. There’s a reason chat rooms were invented, and it was so that weird people with dumb questions could congregate with other weird people with dumb answers IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR OWN absurdity. For some reason, the geniuses at Yahoo! thought that the general public would like to join in on riveting discussions like, “Why does turkey make you tired?” and “Why does my belt have to match my shoes?” Then they slapped it on their homepage, and, because questions like “I want Garden?” weren’t ridiculous enough, they gave everyone avatars, which, if I understand it correctly, are cartoonish representations of oneself, so that when you go into question answering mode, you can, like a super hero, transform from a boring, ordinary geek into an extraordinarily geekish bore.

(Ed. Note: That last paragraph may make the author seem a bit bitchy. In fact, you couldn’t be more correct. One time a therapist told him that when he remonstrated (his word, dick) like that, what he was really doing was engaging in displacement, or redirecting his anger at a safer target in order to avoid dealing with a . . . The author stopped him there and said, “No, you’re just ugly.”)

But this is too much. Lawrence Fishburn? He of “I speak so much less threateningly than Denzel, I should be white people’s favorite black actor” fame? Here? Posing questions to a mass of anonymous cartoon faces? Well, maybe he’ll at least ask a hard, riveting question:

Lawrence . . . are you kidding me? This is your challenging question? You really don’t know why people don’t talk about it more? How about this: BECAUSE IT’S SAD! Who wants to go around talking about dying children? Why would I wait 20 minutes to get the couch at Starbucks just to sit down and ruin it by saying, “So, about these 10 million dead kids.” It’s just common sense. In fact, I’m tempted to set up an account just so I can log in and answer that question for you. Lucky for you I choose not to. So instead you’ll get answers where people suck up to you. Like

Oh . . . oh snap, Lawrence. She asked for your proof! I’m not saying you should do this, but if it were me I would find out who this Smartypants is and where she lives and I would put a dead kid on her doorstep with a note that says, “Exhibit A.” Then after about 10 seconds of her screaming, have the kid pop up and say, “Nobody messes with the Fish!” and run off. Because that joke seemed a little morbid, even for me.

(Ed. Note: In the interest of full disclosure, the author wants you to know he has an avatar for his Yahoo! account. He uses it for his fantasy football league. He thought the horse was a nice touch.)

The Super Bowl

I won’t even bother talking about the game itself because not only would the majority of my readers not care, but because I didn’t get my bets in on time so even I barely cared. Still, I was all prepared to wake up this morning and write a “best and worst Super Bowl commercials” post. Unfortunately, the word “best” has been commonly used in the English language for some time now (I looked it up) to denote things that are better than good. And I’m not prepared to either change the definition of the word “best” or use it in reference to any of the ads I saw yesterday. So in the alternative, my new list will be called:

O.K. and Worst Super Bowl Commercials (Get excited!)

THE O.K.

CareerBuilder: Office Jungle – I see what they were going for, but I just don’t think they got it right.

Would have been better if: they included outtakes, like a monkey throwing a banana right in an actors’ crotch. Everyone loves monkeys!

GM: Robot – At least everyone in the room was interested and cared when the robot seemingly plunged to its death.

Would have been better if: It was a real person losing its job to a machine. And after he jumped off the bridge, he didn’t wake up. Because it wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare. A real nightmare.

SalesGenie.com – I can’t believe this company had the balls to put that commercial out there. You have to applaud them. It’s like the school nerd asking the prom queen to dance. She still says no and laughs, and he still cries, but you can’t look away because you’re laughing too.

Would have been better if: at the end, they cut to a scene of a conference room where it turns out the CEO was previewing the commercial. As the pitchmen nervously look on, the CEO says, “Well I think it sounds great!” then stands up, grabs his seeing eye dog, and leaves the room, not before knocking over a plant.

Coca-Cola: Grand Theft Auto – For no other reason than the part where the guy puts his jacket on a homeless guy and pushes him into a convertible full of scantily clad girls, prompting a confused look on my friend Matt’s face as he says, “That’s not very nice.”

Would have been better if: there was a follow-up segment where all the girls from the car are sitting in the police station beaten and covered in blankets, and the officer who takes their statements offers them a Coke.

THE WORST

Every other commercial tied for last place. Doritos, Sprint, FedEx, all of them. Especially Bud Light. In fact, I’m never drinking Bud Light again.* I understand that their core demographic is [dumb] 21-35 year old guys, but an auctioneer wedding? Different ways to ask for a Bud Light, depending on what nationality you want to make fun of? It was just brutal. The one ad that seemed it might have promise was the one where the couple picked up the guy with the ax on the side of the road. But even there they didn’t have to guts to make it funny, like have the ax murderer driving the car at the end with a big duffel bag in the back seat, and then he gets pulled over for, what else, DRUNK DRIVING! Get the irony?

The biggest letdown, though, was a commercial that didn’t air. All week I had been telling everyone about this guy who was going to propose to his girlfriend on a commercial during the Superbowl. He had lined up an advertiser to front the $2.5 million and had recorded a 30 spot in which he professed his love and asked her to marry him. Everyone I told seemed legitimately excited about it. Then, come the fourth quarter, everyone started saying, “Dan, why do you lie so much? Why would you make that up?” And there you go – suddenly I’m the bad guy because I believed something I read in Sports Illustrated.

This morning I set out to prove to my friends that while I may lie to them about many other things, this wasn’t one of them. So I did some research, which involved two or three minutes of Googling things and then sitting here at my desk, looking out the window and coming up with various scenarios, both plausible and implausible. Here is what I discovered:

Apparently, this guy’s advertiser backed out on him at the last minute. However, there was already a video made and ready to air, and, at the very least, it was supposed to be uploaded to ifilm.com, along with the rest of the Superbowl ads. What the mystery boyfriend is now saying is that instead of posting it on the internet and ruining the surprise, he is buying ad space himself from his local syndicate of the CW so the commercial will air during his girlfriend’s favorite show, “Veronica Mars.” This way, instead of 100 million people watching him propose to his wife, a few thousand viewers will watch instead.

Now, a few things:

Already there is talk that this was one big hoax perpetrated by CBS to get women to watch the Superbowl. And, indeed, there were more than a few comments at his website from women saying, “The only reason I watched was to see your commercial.” This, however, seems absurdly underhanded for a station like CBS. Likewise, it seems absurdly pointless, considering that I was the only person in the room who had heard about it (so it couldn’t have been prevalent enough to have a discernible impact on the ratings). Also, I may not have this right, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but when they play the Superbowl again next year, it will still be football. So my guess is, advertisers, who can’t even seem to buck the trend of talking primates, won’t buck the popular trend of targeting [dumb] males ages 18-35 with their ads just to include a few women who were tricked into watching sports.

On the other hand (God, is this what “real” writing is like? It takes so long.), you mean to tell me that this guy thinks it will be equally as cool to propose to his girlfriend during “Veronica Mars” as it would be to propose to her during the Superbowl? “Veronica Mars”? That’s not even “The OC,” which would still be lame. Why not just propose to her during “NCIS” or a repeat of “Friends” on TBS? Because when it’s all said and done, if somehow this is all still a big surprise to her, and maybe she is impressed by him asking for her hand in marriage during “Veronica Mars,” he’s still going to have to tell her the story of how he had originally planned on doing it during the Superbowl. Which is like telling her he tried really hard to rent a chateau in the south of France for the honeymoon, but it didn’t work out so instead they’re going to Niagara Falls. I just don’t see all the pieces fitting together on this thing.

If I learn anything more about it, I’ll post the updates. And if anyone knows any more than I do, comment or send me an email. Because I don’t mind my friends thinking I’m a liar, I just don’t want them thinking I’m a liar about such gay things as this.

__________________________
* This proposition of course discounts any scenarios wherein Bud Light is the only option for an alcoholic beverage or where it is being given away for free. Or where it is happy hour and my choices are Budweiser or Bud Light. Or if I am at a party and someone gets two Bud Lights from the refrigerator and the person they got the second one for has gone missing by the time they get back, and I am too lazy to get up from the couch, so I take the second Bud Light.

Q&A Friday!

Welcome to the first [redacted] Q&A Friday. Every week I plan on fielding questions readers have sent in over the course of the previous week. If I haven’t answered your question this time around, don’t worry. There is enough sarcastic, irresponsive nonsense to go around. I plan on getting to them all. So keep on sending in your questions, and I’ll keep on not helping you – one answer at a time.

I think I've forgotten how to give a good blow-job. That, or my boyfriend is unlike any man on earth, and doesn't enjoy them. Can you tell me what you think constitutes a really great blow-job?

Thanks,
S

For this question I assembled a panel of men (my friends) and took an informal survey of their opinions on the matter. After about 20 minutes of “Give me her email address, it’s more something you need to show” jokes, these were the findings:

100% of men polled answered “when she puts her mouth on my penis.” 90% added “or nearby.” Half the group included “when she looks at it, acknowledges it or says the word ‘blow job’ whether directed at me or if it is overheard in a crowd.”

So really, as long as you have the fundamentals down, and your jaw isn’t wired shut, it isn’t so much a question of what you are doing wrong as what’s wrong with your boyfriend? And the answer is everything. No, I’m just kidding. I mean, he’s alive, right? . . . Right?

Another Practical Suggestion: Don’t be ugly.

In David Foster Wallace's novel "Infinite Jest", Joelle the "Prettiest Girl of All Time" (PGOAT) wears a veil because she is supposedly hideously deformed. How can she be the PGOAT if she is hideously deformed? Do you feel that she really is deformed or is she so pretty that she's considered deformed?

Amanda

While I’ve never read anything by David Foster Wallace, probably because his name makes him sound like a boring turn of the century master of pedantic prose, I do know a thing or two about a little thing called irony.

Wikipedia defines irony as “a literary or rhetorical device in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says, and what is generally understood (either at the time, or in the later context of history).” Ironically, I had no idea that’s what irony really meant.

Before I start learning something I really don’t care about, let’s instead turn this discussion to something I am actually familiar with – television.

In a particularly memorable episode of “The Twilight Zone” entitled “Eye of the Beholder,” a woman is seen lying in a hospital bed with her face wrapped completely in bandages. We learn that she has just undergone the latest of numerous surgeries attempting to repair her ugliness. Throughout the episode, we never see the faces of the nurses or doctors working on the woman. Finally, after the woman begs and pleads to have the bandages taken off early, the doctor does so and sadly informs her that the surgery was unsuccessful. However when we see the woman’s unbandaged face, we see that she is actually very beautiful. Then, we finally see the faces of everyone else in the room, and they are hideously deformed. This (I think . . .) is ironic.

So my answer to your questions is: IT DOESN’T MATTER. Pretty, deformed, veiled at the shame of being different in a world where the notion of physical beauty is nothing but a metaphor for sameness and lack of individuality – it just doesn’t matter. As long as she can give a proper blow job.

I was wondering if I am a lesbian because I always like to think of tits and ass (of the female variety) when I am pleasuring myself. I am married (to a man) and love him, and love jumping his bones.

Confused Canuck

Good news, you’re not a lesbian! Bad news, you’re about two years late on the bisexual trend. Then again, in Canada you might be right on time. Have you guys gotten “Saved By The Bell: The College Years” yet? Haha, Canada is so far away!

So let's just say that you were dating someone for a couple of months and then you broke up. A couple of days after the break up the guy you were dating sends you an email saying that he never felt anything for you, and that he is as happy as a pig in shit to be single. Now, what would be the proper response?

a) Terrifying him with the prospect that he might have an STD, for example: "Enjoy the chlamydia, assface."

b) Terrifying him with the prospect that he might have an STD, but keep it a mystery, for example: "Um, there's really no good way to say this, but you should probably get your junk checked out."

c) Just be honest about your feelings about him, for example: "You are 27 years old and you have a sexual dysfunction. Not being able to come from sex makes you less than a man."

What do you think?

Krista

You seem like a nice girl, Krista.

First, let’s rule out option c., because I like to keep honesty as a last resort as often as possible. so if we’re choosing between a. and b., there’s really no contest. First, the battery of tests necessary to check for every sexually transmitted disease must be worse than having to just check for one (I wouldn’t know, I am immune to them all). And second, with option b. you are adding the element of fear of the unknown, which, as anyone who is dying will tell you, can be paralyzing.

In fact, this exact situation happened to me once back in college. I broke up with a girl and the next day she left a long message on my cell phone about how she gave me an STD. I ignored her, because I am a white, middle class male, so these things don’t happen to me. Luckily it turns out I didn’t have an STD at all. This was back in 2000 when cell phones still had spotty reception, so it was all a big misunderstanding. What she really said was that she “detested me.” I was so relieved.

Anyway, this isn’t about people hating me, it’s about people hating you. So of your options, I say go with b. However, if I had to throw one more scenario in the mix, it would be this: Go out and get pregnant ASAP. Then tell him it is his. Because while some penicillin may take care of the clap, there’s no medicine for a lifetime of supporting a child who isn’t even yours.

(Think you’ve got what it takes to have a question? Email me at redactedblog@gmail.com)