Archive for May, 2008

41. Forget how to operate your tongue.

May 8, 2008 at 10:48 am · Filed under Food & Drink

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.

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40. Fail to maintain consciousness.

May 7, 2008 at 12:11 pm · Filed under Temporary Insanity

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.

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39. Attempt a journey up the down escalator.

May 6, 2008 at 11:17 am · Filed under Adventure

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.

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38. Explode a pen.

May 5, 2008 at 11:39 am · Filed under The Written Word

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.

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37. Patronize a cat.

May 1, 2008 at 10:53 am · Filed under Animals

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?

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