How To Suck At Life

The perfect plan is in place. You’ve been working on it for hours. You own the railroads, the utilities, the yellows, AND the greens. Both Get Out of Jail Free cards are sitting in front of you, gleaming like a newly acquired insurance policy. Sure, you’ve recently fallen upon hard times, but now your thimble is positioned ever-so-critically upon the Short Line Railroad. All you need to do is pass Go, and you’ll be in the clear.

You cradle the dice in your sweaty, shaking hands, eying the shiny red hotel atop that infernal blue box. Anything but a four. Anything but a four. What are the odds of rolling a four anyway? you shout at your opponent. Like a billion to one?? You blow into your fists, declare that papa needs a new pair of shoes, and let the little cubes of fate dance onto the table.

They tumble and roll, bouncing across the board like a couple of drunken pigeons. Deftly avoiding the houses you’ve built on Marvin Gardens and prancing delicately past the top hat, they finally come to a rest directly atop the stern face of Uncle Pennybags. Both you and your opponent lean over in anticipation. Staring back at you, with a distinct air of mockery: a one and a three.

Your opponent launches directly into a celebratory song and victory dance, while you continue to sit there, gaping in shock. What did you ever do to deserve this? You paid your school taxes! You took care of those street repairs! You were even elected chairman of the friggin’ board, for Pete’s sake! What the HELL?!

Shock is slowly but surely replaced by rage. You hurl your thimble across the room. You tear up paper money into shards, throwing them into the air, where they rain down upon you like happy confetti. This opposite effect only further infuriates you. You pelt your opponent with houses. You demolish the Bank. You drop-kick the board out the window. Nothing remains but a few scattered Chance cards and a lonely dog.

So if you want to suck at life, land on Boardwalk. You can destroy the game, but only the game can destroy your pride.

That Colonel Sanders is one convincing dude. What with the pointy goatee and the jaunty bowtie and the strains of “Sweet Home Alabama” wafting through the air, how are you to resist the tasty temptation of a bucket of chicken? Sure, “family-style” is meant to be shared by an entire family, but who’s to say you don’t need a whole week’s worth of calories in one sitting?

Ignoring the disapproving looks from the drive-thru employees and the copious amounts of grease dripping from the paper bag, you speed away, cackling and salivating. You pull up next to your favorite lake, claim your favorite picnic table, and lay out your favorite sauces and dips in a pattern that spells out your name, as is your way. You tuck a napkin into your shirt, grab a hunk of fowl carcass, and prepare to savor each and every one of those eleven secret herbs and spices.

Biting into the soft, fleshy meat, you squeal in delight as heaven fills your mouth. How did it come to be that we mere mortals were permitted to experience such bliss? Offering songs of praise to God, honey mustard, and the state of Kentucky, you revel in the culinary orgasm taking place in your food hole. What could possibly ruin this beautiful moment?

Well, so wrapped up you are in this Carnival of Scrumptiousness, you’re about to lose control over your bodily functions. This will spell deeper, smellier trouble down the road, but for now it means only one thing: that tongue of yours has wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time. You chomp down on what you think is a luscious strip of delectable white meat. But, according to your pain receptors, it is clearly not.

You howl in agony, dropping the devil drumstick to the ground. Accursed foodstuff! You dance around the picnic area, frightening small children with your sobs and frenzied thrashing. There’s nothing you can do about it, of course, but that doesn’t stop you from screaming at inanimate objects and waving at your mouth as if it were on fire and a gentle breeze is just the thing to put it out. Spitting out blood, you slump back down onto your bench and begrudgingly resign yourself to a week of pain and lisping.

So if you want to suck at life, forget how to operate your tongue. Sure, you’ve possessed this key piece of anatomy since birth, but as it turns out - practice does not make perfect.

Of course you didn’t mean to stay up until five in the morning watching the I Love the 80’s Marathon. Of course you knew that you had to get up at seven o’clock in order to get to work in time to give your big presentation. And of course, you certainly shouldn’t have been drinking. But, as always, you were powerless against the charming witticisms of Michael Ian Black. You were weak.

So here you are, in bed, wafting gently through a dream featuring Members Only jackets, The Breakfast Club, and Steve Guttenberg. A strident, evil blaring suddenly cuts through a vision of the Gremlins. Your alarm clock dances and sings around your nightstand, thrilled to death that the sun has risen again. Groggily, you blindly grope in its general direction, eventually slapping it across the face and somehow managing to silence its cheerful rings. You look at the clock and yawn, then give strict orders to your body to drag itself out of bed and begin the day.

Which it promptly ignores. Against your will, you drift back down to the mattress and snuggle under the covers, while the lying hemisphere of your brain tries to persuade the other, gullible hemisphere that you’re only resting your eyes for a few more minutes. Of course, this only leads to a prompt loss of consciousness that no amount of thunderstorms, foghorns, or heavy artillery fire can stop.

Forty minutes later, you literally fly out of bed, jumping so high you practically destroy the ceiling fan. How could this possibly have happened? You were UP! You were awake! The alarm clock did its job, and you did yours! How could you have thrown it all away by foolishly submitting to the needs of your desperately sleep-deprived body?? Now you’re ludicrously late, the meeting has already started, and here you are, brushing your teeth and getting dressed all at the same messy time, your delicately crafted powerpoints now useless, mocking and berating you in the form of a colorful pie chart.

So if you want to suck at life, fail to maintain consciousness. Oversleeping is easy; doing it with finesse takes skill.

So you’re at the mall, gabbing away to your friend Sal. And you’re talking about miniature porcelain figurines of children doing adorable things, which is one of your favorite topics. “Did you see ‘Jimmy Breaks The Cookie Jar’?” you exclaim in joy. “I simply can’t wait to get my hot little hands on that priceless treasure!”

You drag Sal over to the mall directory, squealing in delight as you realize that the third floor contains a Hallmark Store. “Precious Moments music box!” you shriek, not feeling the need to put a verb in that sentence. You make a beeline for the escalator, giving nary a thought to people in your way, Sal’s wrist as you practically rip it off, or whatever direction you may be headed.

Which turns out to be quite the mistake, as you and Sal are now barreling towards none other than the down escalator from the floor above. You want to go up, but this particular device does nothing but bring an endless string of pedestrians down to your level, where a sale on discontinued Christmas-scented Yankee Candles is luring hordes of people who sadly possess no olfactory receptors.

But you notice none of this. Sal is screaming for you to stop, but you don’t listen, mostly because you’re still not quite sure whether Sal is a guy or a girl. You drop its wrist and continue prancing towards the mass of steel and rubber handrails, fully prepared to glide on up to your heavenly destination. But that’s not what happens. The moment you set your foot upon the grooved step, you know something is wrong. It’s not whisking you forward in a flurry of momentum and anticipatory-music-box-arm-flailing. It’s stopping you dead in your tracks, refusing to accept you, as if employing some sort of bouncer-like mechanism.

By now you’ve realized your mistake, but your equilibrium doesn’t catch on as quickly. You tilt and wobble and fall over yourself several times, attempting to catch your balance but failing each and every time you take a step - useless steps that only whisk your foot closer to the razor-sharp escalator teeth that your mother always scared you shitless about. They wait there, glowing green, chomping at the bit to devour your helpless feet in a bloody mess of carnage and shoe destruction. You finally dance away to safety, gasping for breath and trying desperately to ignore the shoppers laughing at you as they exit the escalators that only they know how to properly use. Sal’s laughing too. That bitch/dickwad.

So if you want to suck at life, attempt a journey up the down escalator. You may be participating in the mall equivalent of running head first into traffic, but at least the only thing you’ll end up with is a bruised ego. And a plethora of rubber burns.

Finally, your first paycheck has arrived. You drool in anticipation as you rip open the envelope, thrilled beyond belief to be earning $6.50 an hour working as Chief Ball Pit Manager in the PlayPlace over at McDonald’s. It doesn’t provide a life of luxury, but the confused sobs you hear as you rescue children from a suffocating, muffled death really makes it all worth it.

You prance into the bank and grab one of those pens that are attached to the counter with a chain. Resisting the urge to swing it around your head like a lasso and take out everyone standing in line behind you, you calmly bring it to the back of your check and begin to sign your name. Unsurprisingly, however, this pen has been dried up since the Reagan administration. You’ll have to use your own.

You reach into your pocket and procure a writing utensil, gleaming with delight, almost as excited to be participating in fiscal responsibility as you are. You eagerly start to John Hancock that sucker, then stop for a second. Should you use cursive? Or calligraphy? Perhaps a dash of hieroglyphics? While pondering this conundrum, you reflexively put the ticking time bomb into your mouth, and it’s all over from there.

Ink everywhere. Your hand. Your clothes. Your face. Your mouth. Some of it has drifted up into your hair. Frenzied handprints begin to dot the bank counter, illustrating for posterity the journey of a person desperately searching for some form of paper towel or other wiping device. Your face and mouth now resemble that of a swamp monster, grunting and shrieking incomprehensibly, perhaps partaking in some sort of mating call. And your clothes are ruined forever, unless of course you choose to wear them for the purposes of impromptu Rorshach tests.

So if you want to suck at life, explode a pen. You may swallow more ink than recommended, but Poison Control assures you that there will be minimal permanent damage. Unless you value your brain cells, which, let’s face it, there weren’t too many of to begin with.

Maybe it’s suffering from extreme boredom. The thing sits around your house all day, sleeping, licking itself, occasionally getting up to decorate your floor with a hairball or two. It’s not being challenged. It needs some recreation. It needs some mental stimulation.

It needs a cheap plastic toy.

You dangle the colorful device in front of the cat’s uninterested face, making high-pitched noises that would be insulting even to a newborn. You whip the tasseled string around the room, running through the house, dragging it across the floor, attempting to fool the cat into thinking that a flamboyant, sparkly blue mouse is terrorizing the kitchen. The cat stares back as if you’ve lost your damn mind.

Undaunted, you continue to foist amusement upon the indifferent feline, shouting “Jump! JUMP!” in a moronically goofy voice. Such demands go unnoticed by the cat, who sits down and turns whatever small amount of attention it possesses to grooming its crotchal region. This is unacceptable. No one is allowed to devote more time to crotchal grooming than you.

You pick the cat up and set it back into a standing position. The mood in the room has now gone from apathetic ennui to agitated annoyance. You’re unable to detect such a change, however, screeching as loudly as you are and hurling the toy once again into the cat’s now narrowed eyes. It would seem as though your efforts are paying off, though, as it starts to get up on its hind legs. It’s ready! It’s ready to play!

Or, in a more accurate sense, ready to claw your eyes out. A lifetime of concentrated hatred, all culminating in one massive scratchfest. The furry ball of fury strikes so quickly you don’t even see it. All you know is that one minute, you’re calling it a “smoopy wittle cuddle pants”, and the next, you’re bleeding from ten different places.

So if you want to suck at life, patronize a cat. It already knows that it’s better than you. When are you going to get with the program?

You’ve been pestering your buddy about this check all month. You paid full price for that Sweatin’ to the Oldies collection, and you’ve both been sharing custody of it for weeks now, so it’s about time you got back your share of the investment.

So your buddy pulls out the ole checkbook, writes out the amount, and off-handedly asks you what the date is. Now, it should be noted that directly behind you there is a wall calendar (Discovery Channel’s Grisliest Predatory Kills of the Savanna). Directly in front of you, on a desk, is a page-a-day calendar (Anne Geddes’ Babies Are Precious). And you both just so happen to be standing in the post office, where the date is plastered onto every bit of free space that isn’t already covered with commemorative stamps of Britney Spears’ Most Memorable Car Wrecks.

But you don’t look at any of these items. You look at your watch.

And your watch is not one of those massive doohickeys with dates, alarms, calculators, barometers, can openers, and a fully-functioning toaster oven. It’s a plain old watch. A Spongebob Squarepants watch, in fact, that you received/stole from a child at McDonald’s. And it’s not even set to the right time, blinking 12:00 over and over in a digital cry for help.

But it doesn’t matter. You’re sure, positive, for those few brief moments, that a confident glance at your helpful wrist will give you the information you’re looking for. Mayhaps a calendar has evolved into the circuitry since the last time you looked? Who knows? Alas, all you get from that useless hunk of plastic is an overwhelming sense of failure, and a stern look of reproach from Squidward.

So if you want to suck at life, look at your watch when asked for the date. You won’t find the answer there, but you will find a reason to get back on your meds as quickly as possible.

Oh, you saw the black clouds when you woke up this morning. You felt the moisture in the air. You noted the neighbors barricading themselves into their storm cellars. But you paid none of this any mind. You bought some brand new hair gel and you’ll be damned if your beloved coif gets crushed under a hooded jacket.

But your beloved ‘do isn’t destined to survive the day anyway, as the heavens soon burst forth in a deluge rivaling that which turned Noah into an accomplished seaman. As entire city blocks float by and get washed down the sewer, you scramble around like a drowned rat, searching for some semblance of shelter. When you find nothing but an awning heavily defended by a rabid, elderly man, you realize that you have no choice. You must buy an umbrella.

You’d love to get one of those massive, Superdome-like monstrosities that golfers carry about, but unfortunately, such an item is not available to a desperate, soggy person like you. The only thing that you can procure is a flimsy, half-broken, waif of a device, sold to you for fifteen dollars by a man with a very large smile.

You begrudgingly open up your foolish new purchase. It creaks and moans and screams at you to stop prodding it into serving the purpose for which it was created. Fabric is tearing. Plastic is breaking. Large metal rods begin poking out in all directions, causing you to resemble an angry beetle in the throes of an excruciating Raid death. But at least it’s keeping you relatively dry.

For approximately thirty seconds. The minute that one gust of wind swoops in, all is lost. Your worthless piece of crap flings itself inside out, as if trying to escape the very idiot who adopted it. You’re shocked, for some reason, as if completely unaware that such a tragedy could befall the item that cost 5¢ to make somewhere in Cambodia. You attempt to reign it in, but such efforts are futile, and only serve to make you appear more and more ridiculous with every desperate swipe. Drier people are now laughing at you, the poor fool who looks like a bathtub-tortured LOLcat. Eventually the accursed object blows away, down the street, leaving you to stand there, pathetic and drenched, yelling after it “Just go! GO, you accursed HELLFIEND!”

So if you want to suck at life, purchase a cheap umbrella. Sure, yelling at an inanimate object as it happily floats away might be seen as crazy, but it’s not nearly as crazy as emptying out your wallet for a shard of tattered nylon. You’re engendering multiple forms of crazy today. Keep it up, sport.

You don’t know why you can’t fall asleep. You’re not sure why you ate an entire Family Size bag of Cheetos. And you sure as hell can’t explain why you’re slouched in front of the television at approximately 4:05 am and still watching Comedy Central hours after the actual programming went off the air. The last thing you can remember is a funny Jon Stewart quip. Now all you can think about is Ronco Rotisserie Ovens. “Set it and forget it!” you mutter as you drift in and out of consciousness, blindly groping for the telephone that, mysteriously, has already been used several times tonight.

Fast forward six days. The doorbell rings. You shuffle to the door, fling it upon, and proceed to gape as your jaw literally detaches itself from your face and falls to the floor. Dozens of oddly shaped boxes, cartons, bags, and cages are littering your front porch. The poor hapless UPS guy, whose face you never see, sticks his little electronic signy-pad thing through a tiny crack in the packages. You scribble something illegible, which, due to the incredibly poor quality of these devices, could very well resemble the signature of an old, blind wolverine. As the delivery guy flees the neighborhood, never to be seen again, you begin to take stock of your new items.

You’ve done three, maybe four sit-ups in your entire life. So why did you feel the need to purchase a home gym, Thighmaster, AND a Bowflex? And - oh dear Lord - that couldn’t possibly be Tony Little’s Gazelle, is it? How on earth did that creepy pony-tailed android assmonkey convince you to purchase a glorified sidewalk?

But the horror doesn’t end with fitness supplies. In addition to your commitment to becoming an American Gladiator, your insomniac self also decided that that crazy drunken wench Julia Child has nothing on you. You want nothing more than to make the next season of Top Chef, even if the real reason is a fervent desire to tickle Tom Collichio’s shiny head. Rotisserie ovens, Salad Shooters, vacuum sealing bags, pasta makers, Magic Bullets…the kitchen gadgetry is endless. But given that the most complicated meal you’ve constructed for yourself as of late was Mac N’Cheese with Cheez-It crumbles on top, washed down with a spicy lime Ramen, you’re not exactly sure where this Chilean Sea Bass Steamer is quite going to fit in.

You also now own a hypoallergenic cat. WHY do you own a hypoallergenic cat?? It’s sitting upon your new Temperpedic mattress, coughing up the Hoodia pills it just ate and rolling around in a massive tub of Mighty Putty. And you’re out more money than you can ever, ever admit to any of your straight friends.

So if you want to suck at life, buy something from an infomercial. You may have done your Christmas shopping for the next five years, but no one’s getting your Solid Flavor Injector until they pry it from your cold, dead, garlic-infused hands.

Jeez LouISE what a hot new polo shirt! Hip, charming pastels, sturdy collar for maximum poppage, and a bitchin’ crocodile logo. You hear that, restless hordes of untrendy swine? A friggin’ crocodile! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

You swagger down the street with a frightening confidence, high fiving strangers and unabashedly inviting them to feast their eyes upon your stylish threads. “Note the crocodile,” you blare. They stare at you sideways, with the slightest hint of a smirk upon their unwashed faces, but you pay it no mind. They’re probably just jealous. Not everyone can pull this off with such massive amounts of panache.

Following a lengthy string of vigorous thumbs-up, you decide it’s time for a rest from the celebrations. You draw your hands back to your sides, where you suddenly feel an odd fluttering. What could possibly be dangling from the sleeve? Surely in your outrageous excitement to don such a flattering garment you didn’t forget to take off the tag? Such a mistake can only be made by people who aren’t worthy of displaying deadly animals upon their breast!

But, no. There it is, waving in the breeze, mocking both you and your vampire-like collar. You quickly begin to paw at it, tearing and clawing, much to the amusement of the pedestrians around you. Once it becomes clear that the miniscule string of plastic is too strong for your puny little hands, you finally resort to biting, which isn’t easy since the human body isn’t designed to bend that way. You continue to gnaw through the cord like a feral hamster, contorted and bent over in several different yoga positions until finally, at long last, you break it free. By this point, a large crowd has gathered to gape and chuckle at your retarded antics. You burst past them, scowling, still secure in the knowledge that they just don’t understand real fashion.

You keep walking for a few blocks more, once again building up the confidence to show off and accost random passsers-by. But they’re still laughing at you! What in the gosh darn HECK? You wisely pause at a large display window to glance at your reflection, and it is there that your heart sinks. There it is. A large sticker, smack dab in the middle of your torso, screaming “MEDIUM! MEDIUM!” in a gigantic, grotesque, horrendously goofy font. Horrified, you tear it off, flinging it desperately at a nearby trash can, which it misses. You sink to the ground. Your day is ruined. Your shirt is ruined. Your life, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is completely ruined.

So if you want to suck at life, forget to remove a price tag. The documentation of the cost will be out there for all to see, but just remember: you can’t put a price on humiliation.