Archive for April, 2008

36. Look at your watch when asked for the date.

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.

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35. Purchase a cheap umbrella.

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.

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34. Buy something from an infomercial.

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.

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33. Forget to remove a price tag.

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.

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32. Spill hot coffee onto your groin.

You realize that you probably shouldn’t have stayed up late last night to watch the harrowing ending of The Bare Wench Project, but a drinking game in which the only rule is to take a shot whenever an errant boob pops onscreen is an alcohol-related activitiy that you sure as hell aren’t going to miss.

But now, at seven o’clock in the morning, you very closely resemble a constipated zombie as you stagger out the front door, half-dressed and smelling faintly of gouda cheese. A half hour later, you find yourself in the middle of Starbucks, though you have no recollection of how you got there or why you’re clutching a bouquet of begonias. No matter. There’s a hot, steaming mug of pure caffeine perched on your table and you plan on sucking it down faster than a Dyson vacuum cleaner. It never loses suction! Truly a modern miracle!

Gripping the cup with shaky hands, you carefully bring the brim to your arid lips. The anticipation is almost palpable, zipping through the air with — wait, that’s not a metaphor flying around, it’s a fly! There is a fly in the Starbucks. And it’s going to land in your voluminous vessel of salvation if you’re not careful. You delicately place your coffee back onto the table and proceed to wave the insidious insect off with clumsy, spastic arm flailings. The casual observer might be led to believe that you have escaped from the nearest mental facility. But you have a mission, and that is to save your morning from the clutches of a winged, disgusting, disease-ridden menace.

There, you’ve got it right where you want it – in front of you. Nice strategy. Slowly, silently, like a ninja, you reach over and steal the newspaper that the guy next to you is reading. Shushing his cries of outrage, you furtively roll it up, take aim, and swing. The fly deftly evades your poorly-executed death blow, buzzing out the door to go annoy the people at the Starbucks across the street. You, on the other hand, have suffered a much worse fate: the coffee that you had so lovingly composed is now currently searing the skin off in and around your groin.

There’s very little one can do in this type of situation other than hop around like an injured orangutan, scream incomprehensibly, and gesture wildly at the fate that has befallen your new khakis. Others may stare at you with heaping amounts of pity, but pity doesn’t put the scalding coffee back in the cup, now does it? Your panicked screams of anguish and futile fanning motions do little to rectify the situation. And the fabulous absorption powers of your chinos ensure that your crotchal region stays nice and fiery for up to ten minutes, baking away both your self-respect and your ability to conceive children.

So if you want to suck at life, spill hot coffee onto your groin. Not only are you still uncaffeinated and covered in third degree burns, but you now possess a stain that can’t possibly be breached without a plethora of jokes at your expense. Congatulations, Captain Shittypants. It’s going to be a long day.

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31. Trip over the only obstacle within a 100-foot radius.

You’re in a hurry, goddamit. The Land Before Time XXXIV: Please Just Let Us Die goes on sale at precisely 9:00am this morning, and you sure as hell aren’t going to miss a single second of precious dinosaur antics. You throw on a shirt, a shoe, maybe some pants (maybe not), and fly out the door.

You could take the car, but why bother? It’s a beautiful day, the sun is out, and your allergy medication has finally kicked in. No eye-watering, nose-dripping, wheezing fits for you! A little exercise couldn’t hurt, either. You became dangerously exhausted after eating a twenty-piece Chicken McNugget Value Meal with ranch dressing while watching the Boston Marathon, and you’re fairly sure this will not be winning you a Presidential Fitness Award any time soon.

You powerwalk down the street, so blazingly ignorant of anything around you not affiliated with heartwarming animated pterodactyls that you completely miss the potential hazard quickly approaching. Sure, the sidewalk is at least fifteen feet wide, completely clear of pedestrians, and paved to a degree of smoothness rivaled only by bowling lanes and freshly zambonied skating rinks. All except for a daring, rogue brick that has brazenly thrust itself up onto the surface, not unlike The Little Mermaid and her quest to become Part Of Our World.

Alas, also like The Little Mermaid, this brick has a thing or two to learn about not royally fucking up the lives of everyone it encounters. You continue your jaunt, blissfully unaware, and deviating nary a hair’s width from the path you’re on. You take in the sights and sounds around you – hey, there’s Bill the Barber, nicking the ear of Old Hobo EarNick! There’s a woman breastfeeding in public! There’s a man throwing lettuce at her! There’s an oily, naked —

You’re on the ground. You don’t know how you got there, but a brief investigation into the matter reveals the mischievous brick to your now swollen eye. Mocking you with its obviousness, there it stands – proud, noble, and outrageously visible. A mere glance in the direction of the ground would have saved you this crushing indignity, but so confident you were in the nimbleness of your feet, you didn’t feel the need. A mistake you won’t be making again anytime soon.

So if you want to suck at life, trip over the only obstacle within a 100-foot radius. Were you to wander the Sahara with seemingly nothing around for miles except sand dunes, devastating isolation, and comically-positioned skeletons, you would be the one to inevitably stumble and fall over a single solitary camel turd. It’s a gift, really. Cherish it.

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30. Drop your toothbrush in the toilet.

You just got home from the dentist, and you couldn’t possibly be any happier. No cavities, no tooth decay, no plague, not a single solitary cell of bacteria. Your mouth is cleaner than the Pine Sol Lady’s house on the first day of spring, more spotless than an albino dalmation, more immaculate than that guy on the street corner who calls himself the Angel Of Death And Spare Change.

Feeling fresh and minty, you gaze adoringly at your brand new toothbrush. You opened up real wide, you kept real still during the x-rays, you even brought your own bib – all to win the holiest of prizes. A rubber-gripped, fully-contoured, 40 bristle count Tool of Dental Perfection. You behold its curves in awe, proud, amazed, and a little turned on. You delicately place it into the holder, which has already been cleared in anticipation of its arrival, and gaze at it longingly, counting down the hours until you may massage your eager gums with its tender stalks of hygiene.

Oooh…you just can’t wait until bedtime! In a reckless abandonment of any and all self-control, you tear the brush from its new home, slather it up with some Crest Whitening Sensations, and jam it into your mouth. It’s everything you dreamed it would be and more. A veritable symphony of dental health melodizes throughout your oral cavity as you ruthlessly destroy any microorganisms that could possibly have found their way into your mouth on the brief drive home from the dentist. Take THAT, gum disease! And THAT, halitosis! Don’t even THINK about it, acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis!

As you fervently shout vague threats at various inanimate oral disorders, your body slowly drifts away from the sink. Dancing around the bathroom in nothing but the dental bib that you have once again donned for this auspicious occasion, you are no longer aligned with the bathroom counter, and by the time you are able to wrench the brush out of your foamy, sputtering mouth, it’s too late. You place it gingerly upon the countertop, only to watch in horror as it totters ever so slightly, freezes for a nanosecond, then falls to the latrinical depths below.

As it splashes into the gaping maw of the porcelain sea, you scream shrilly and without restraint. One, because your precious dental tool has now become the property of the infamous Toilet Monster your mother always warned you about, and two, you’re going to have to fish that thing out of there using only a plunger and whatever small amount of ingenuity you happen to possess. The plunger only gets you so far; that is, you use it to poke the brush around, ultimately turning the magnificent Oral B Cross-Action Pro-Health into a mini toilet brush. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! you lament. Your once-gorgeous instrument of hygiene is now a foul, lowly poop-scrubber. You should have seen this coming, really. It was too beautiful for this world.

So if you want to suck, drop your toothbrush in the toilet. The moment you finally break down and plunge your hand into the bowl to retrieve it may not be the most glamorous minute of your life, but it will most definitely be followed by a vigorous hand-scouring and disinfection so thorough it’ll put Mr. Clean himself to shame, stalking away as he does to re-buff his mirror-like head.

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29. Become trapped in an article of clothing.

There is simply no reason to believe that your favorite shirt no longer fits. Surely it couldn’t have shrunk over the course of one day. You certainly haven’t put on any weight. And, seeing as how you do not own or workaround any sort of size-altering mechanism á la Wayne Szalinski’s in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, you feel fairly safe from the molecule-altering rays that routinely plague the children of mad scientists.

So why are you now imprisoned inside a poly-cotton blend of pain and confusion?

It started out innocently enough. You came home from work, kicked off your shoes, and proceeded to strip naked. “Pants-optional Friday has begun!” you shout at your dog. You reach up to pull the shirt over your head as you’ve done countless times before, but something is different this time. Your game is off. You’re thrown. Your Finesse-O-Meter is registering somewhere around a paltry 4. (Best money you ever spent.)

Something isn’t stretching in the right way, or you’re feeling a little stiff, or maybe you head has swelled to several times its normal size ever since the Low Ceiling Incident this afternoon. Whatever the case, you just can’t seem to pull that shirt over your noggin. And so the dance commences.

You begin to contort into positions that would make a yoga master blush. You try hunching, arching, and stretching. You start to sway from side to side, perhaps hoping that the constant motion might cause the shirt to simply explode off of your body. Your breathing becomes heavy, labored. Your arms poke comically out of the various shirt orifices, dangling uselessly above your head and groping futilely through the air for some sort of otherwordly assistance from above. You resemble the victim of a terrible automobile accident, provided the automobile in question is a J. Crew truck full of polo shirts.

Now what? Do you rip the shirt? Kill the one article of clothing that hasn’t betrayed you by succumbing to fading, lint, pit stains, or inexplicable odors? Or do you call for help, thereby destroying whatever microscopic particle of self-worth your swaddled body still possesses? The situation is impossible, but one thing is clear: your dog thinks you’re nuts.

So if you want to suck at life, become trapped in an article of clothing. Enjoy the experience of becoming hopelessly tangled, suffocated, and powerless to defend yourself. Should any tickle-happy foes happen to witness your plight, just remember one thing: uncontrollable sobbing and/or urination is nothing to be ashamed of.

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28. Slip ‘n Slide ‘n Skid face first into a tuft of grass.

This is going to be the best pool party EVER. You bought seven different kinds of soda. You’re rockin’ the Doritos, both Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch. You busted out the Fruit Roll-ups. You got a handful of Nerf toys from the bargain bin at Toys R’ Us, along with a smattering of odd looks from a few concerned parents. You even sprung for those massive lawn dart weapons that can kill several people with one poorly aimed toss. This pool party has everything!

Except for a pool, that is.

Oh, so what. You can still have some watery good times! Surely there’s a sprinkler lying around, right? Crap, looks like Dad ran over it with the John Deere again. Well, how about some water balloons? Nope, used them all up in that hilarious Bubonic Plague Halloween costume last fall. Any Super Soakers? Dammit, Crazy Uncle Al stole them all to stockpile for World War VII. He’s just not well.

By now your guests are pelting each other with ice cubes, so desperate they are for anything resembling a water sport. You’ve got to do something. Frantic, you tear open the door to the storage shed, hoping to perhaps find an entire water park within, complete with tube rentals and a lazy river. Alas, all you see is a bunch of rusty rakes, a shovel or two, and Crazy Uncle Al. But what’s that – in the corner? The smallest flash of sunbeam yellow…could it possibly be? It is! Your salvation!

You burst out of the shed, shouting enthusiastically at the disproportionate number of people who seem to be leaving. You swing the rubbery tarp of fun around your head like it’s the Golden Fleece of plastic water toys. You briefly consider fashioning it into a cape, but there’s really no time to be wasted. Slap that puppy down and let the moisture begin!

You unroll it gingerly, as it has not been used in quite some time and it’s doubtful that the years have been kind to the material that began deteriorating immediately after its first use. You pick out the best spot in the lawn (i.e. the stretch of grass deemed worthy enough to turn brown and die for the next week or so), spread it out, and hook it up to the hose. Your friends buzz and twitter in anticipation, so thrilled they are with you and your magical party-saving abilities. Some might call you a hero. You sure would.

You shush the masses, demanding that they watch your inaugural run in an awed, reverent silence. You raise your fists in a triumphant pose, clap your hands together and rub vigorously, assess the wind direction and velocity, and commence running. With long, graceful strides, you launch yourself towards the skinny yellow mat, putting out of your mind the fact that the only thing between you and a week’s worth of painful nipple chafing is a thin, almost negligible skin of water sitting precariously atop a glorified camping tarp.

No matter. You did this when you were ten, there’s certainly no reason to believe that your skills have gotten rusty. You hit the sheet at a frightening speed, dousing your guests with mildewed hose water and thrilling a lucky few with a sneak peak at what lies within your quickly-bunching bathing suit. You continue to hurtle down the length of the plastic, limbs flailing wildly, full of undeserved love and admiration for yourself and your magnificent coasting abilities. But you’re concentrating so hard on keeping both hands in a rigid thumbs-up position that you don’t even realize that your fanciful journey is about to draw to a devastating close.

By the time you can actually feel yourself nearing the brutal end, it’s already far too late to rectify the situation. The utter slickness of the Fluorescent Mat O’ Death casually eliminates all hope for any sort of stoppage or breaking maneuvers. There’s nothing you can do now but close your eyes and pray for the end to be painless and dignified. It is neither. However, it’s fairly swift. Your trip down Slippery Lane ends in an abrupt and jarring face plant into the lawn amidst a spray of grimy, mud-caked sludge. The rest of your body folds up behind you like an accordion, while your nose flattens to a degree previously unseen in human specimens. Dirt flies into your tear ducts. A dandelion jams itself into your retina. Blades of grass wedge between your teeth – you’ll be picking them out for days. Your entire face now resembles The Secret Garden, and all because you couldn’t steer your gangly, uncoordinated oaf of a body down a narrow strip of moldy plastic. For shame.

So if you want to suck, Slip ‘n Slide ‘n skid face first into a tuft of grass. Next time, you might want to think about springing for the Crocodile Mile set with built-in speed bump and splashdown pool. You’ll be the coolest kid on the block, and you won’t end up with a facial burn the size of Wyoming.

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27. Pluralize words that have no business being pluralized.

You think you’re just being cute. Maybe people will find it endearing. Perhaps speaking in the style of a demented eleven-year-old girl is something that others might enjoy. You think it’s charming!

Well, maybe, if your definition of ‘charming’ is ‘ruthlessly and deliberately butchering the last remaining vestiges of the English language in a callous disregard for all things pure and innocent’. In which case you really need to purchase a new dictionary.

In fact, you might just want to forget everything you ever learned about grammar and start anew. Lesson One: Certain words, namely nouns, are words that there can be more than one of. Lesson two: Never end a sentence with a preposition, as illustrated in Lesson One. Lesson Three: Do not expose the flaws of the lesson giver, you little shit. Lesson Four: But you’re clearly unqualified! That college diploma is just a Subway Sandwich Artist Certification! Lesson Five: Arrest that student!

Words that are not nouns should not be pluralized. For example, when saying goodbye to someone, you should say “Bye,” and not “Byes!!”; “Later” and not “Laters!!”; “Fare thee well, mine lady,” and not “Fares thees wells, mines ladies.” When your friend is hit by a car, you should not shout “Oh noes!!”, but rather “Oh no!” or “Call an ambulance!” or “Get your ass off my windshield, you sober pansy!”

Exclamatory remarks are not meant to exist in multiple forms, despite what many humorously captioned cats may have led you to believe. There are other ways to casually end a conversation without resorting to cutesy grammatical errors flanked by an army of smiley faces. If you still choose to engage in such linguistic atrocities, be forewarned: it is the patriotic duty of all red-blooded Americans to dispense a flying kick directly to your face each and every time you do. Check the Constitution. It’s in there. Somewhere near the end, I think.

So if you want to suck, pluralize words that have no business being pluralized. And my God have mercy upon your soul should you ever utter the word “lovies” to your significant other. To the electric chair with you, and then straight to hell, where for all eternity you shall be forced to browse MySpace pages and YouTube comments, 24 hours a day, Clockwork Orange-style. Truly a fate worse than death.

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