Spicy Smoked Snacks

A little shoutout to Slim Jims, makers of those fine sticks of spicy hyperprocessed....beef? Not only have they been going strong since I was a child and was encouraged by many large WWF wrestlers to "snap into" one (it's a policy of mine to heed advice from people with 4x my body mass, regardless of the quality), but their business savvy cornered them the elusive market of drunk people and/or truck drivers. But the real reason is that I looked at the nutritional information on the back of my latest five-pack of Jims*, and the company considers one "serving" of Slim Jim to be...the entire box. As in, a quantity that might be eaten by a normal human being to eat. As in, you could conceivably stop after a few and just be like "No, thanks, I couldn't possibly have another 2/5ths." As in, feet of meat.

Kudos.

*Bad idea.

Least photogenic occupations. Or "Jobs that Ugly Guys Always Seem to Have".

Opera singer

This is one of those occupations where being fat is sort of unavoidable- if your job was to live in Italy and work only a few hours a day, during which you remained stationary, you'd feel a little zaftig, too. I'm no connoisseur, but I wouldn't trust a thin opera singer with my aria further than I could throw them, if that makes any sense.*

Also, assuming that there's a certain amount of occupational incest going on-a dipping of pens in Metropolitan Opera Company ink, if you will- well, if I were an eager-to-please mezzo-soprano and I had to be pinned beneath 300 pounds of sweating, thrusting Pavarotti, I'd want all the cushioning I could get.

*It doesn't.

Radio DJ

There's no real reason why a radio disc jockey would have to be attractive, other than to avoid the open-mouth gazes of others who behold their hideous faces, but statistically speaking, it just seems like there would at least be one DJ of note who wasn't completely busted. Perhaps there's some sort of social psych thing going on here, where society's taunts and judgments cause on to develop an outgoing, charismatic personality to compensate for lack of physical acceptance. Or maybe DJs really just don't give a shit about their appearance.

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Magazine writer

Not typically the girls, who keep themselves well-preserved through the use of a myriad of health and beauty products passed onto them by PR flacks (also, by starvation), but the men leave something to be desired, namely, other men. They don't call it a "face for magazines" for nothing.

*Not at any of the magazines where I freelance, of course.

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Whatever it is that this guy does

Because he's really ugly.

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Lead singer of the Pogues

OK, granted, Joe Strummer is a hotbed of sex, so he doesn't count, but if 2/3 of the people that had held your job were considered to be amongst the most unsavory people on the planet, you'd definitely start to question the job responsibilities. I mean, I know there's a reputation to be upheld, but considering that this is one of the few lead vocal jobs where you don't actually have to be able to carry a tune, you'd think some of those energies could be channeled elsewhere, say, into a toothbrush or razor.

Garbage men

Some might say this is a class bias (those not trying to live off my salary), but there are plenty of traditional hard laborering positions who would be considered sexy as a whole. Construction workers? Yes. Electricians? Yep. UPS men? Hell yeah. And yet, not one girl has ever confessed to a blue collar crush on the garbage man. This isn't because their day-to-day work isn't glamorous, or because they're covered in the juices of a thousand peoples' waste. It's simply because they're unattractive. Like Radio DJs, this might be a chicken-or-egg deal. I mean, there's only so many roadkill carcasses you can slog before the hair product starts to seem a little futile.

Landlord

No one's ever had a hot landlord. No one's ever even had a passably average landlord. I haven't. You haven't. Think about it.

..

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Also, why the hell is this movie available on DVD? I probably could have run the numbers for you on that one, 20th Century Fox.

Backwoods country store cashier

You'd think being the town's sole hub for purchasing food, medicine, and ammo would make you take a little pride in your appearance, but nope. Why? I'm guessing it's because ythey're the town's sole hub for purchasing food, medicine, and ammo, and they just don't need to. A little-known evil of a capitalist society/inbreeding.

In Which I Anthropomorphize Things In and Around My Apartment

This is a dead cockroach, found on the steps just inside the entrance to my building. It has been there for over a week now, because every single person in my 26-apt building is putting their finger on their nose in terms of being the person to actually get rid of the thing, and because the misnomered "super", a Russian man with a fondness for the fashions of 1992, won't do anything about it. Even though the corpse is only about 8 feet from the door, and quite obviously dead, not one of us is willing to suck it up and deal with it, mainly because it's the largest insect I have ever seen. When you step inside the door, you actually feel a gravitational pull towards it. For perspective:

The cockroach, the Collossus at Rhodes

Ignoring the fact that the first time I came face to face with this cockroach (I climb up stairs on all fours, Homo Habilis-style), I essentially shat both myself and my neighbor across the hall, I've found myself growing to respect this roach. He just looks so peaceful. This isn't a roach that left the world fighting, this is a roach that accepted the inevitability of death and its role in the circle of life, and decided to recline and just let go, albeit on the grungy, unwashed step of my East Village walkup. This roach didn't meet his maker at the business end of a rolled up newspaper, he didn't keel over after ingesting a bad batch of trap poison, and he definitely didn't starve to death, having apparently been feeding on thick, juicy steaks, and, I would imagine, radioactive waste. It was not a bad life, so it follows that it was not a bad death. Would that we all could shed our mortal coil with such dignity.

This is an old lamp that has resided in the hallway of my building's second floor (that is actually considered a hallway. No one in my building has more than two dimensions). It just popped up one day out of nowhere. At first, I thought there was some sort of poetic symbolism behind it, in a Petit Prince kind of way, but a month later, I realize that it's probably just broken and nobody wants to carry it outside to the trash, least of all the aforementioned super, whose tapered jeans don't allow for the navigation of stairs. I'm guessing it's a remnant from the recent death of an Old Person in my building, when I witnessed the disposal of about a million cookbooks and one of those potty chair contraptions that allows you to turn any sort of container into a toilet. Anyway, I wish someone would throw this out, but again, finger on nose.

This is the side tiling of my shower. As you can see, the front tiling has already fallen off, but I had thought this corner piece was pretty soild, at least, until I gently brushed up against it with my fuzzy slipper, sending it crashing to the floor. Upon looking down, I saw dozens of species of bugs scurrying around, searching for dark moist places, much like when you would turn over a big rock or log as a kid. For those of you that grew up in NYC, this is what a rock and log look like:

Scissors felt left out.

It seems my shower tile has been playing Anne Frank house to hundreds of creatures while I lathered up mere inches above. My first thought was "They're just as scared of you as you are of them", followed by "Holy fuck shit shit Jesus Christ", but in the end, the proper course of action was to replace the tile, admonish it, and pretend that it never happened.

This is my shoe.

# of times worn- 1

# of cockroaches killed- 3

It's my stomping shoe. Good grippable front, separate heel, no give. If the roach is especially large, then I'll combine the shoe with a few sprays of 409, to stun (and clean) the bug, followed by a swift stomping, girlish squeals, and wine. I have no intention of ever wearing this shoe again, as I wouldn't want to confuse it about its job. I even keep its matching shoe so it will have someone to go home to at the end of a day, and remind it why it keeps working. It's an unconventional career path.

This is my air conditioner. I would fuck it if only it were physically possible. I would put on a cowboy hat, cover myself in oil, and tell it to just lie back and let me do all of the work- it can just watch the game. However, being that appliance/human love is of the forbidden type, we have to settle for a few stolen kisses and some tender handholding. Such is the closemindedness of our society.

Things I Do When I Come Home Drunk, Because I Can't Just Go to Bed Like a Normal Person

Respond to ex-boyfriend's email in what I think is incredibly subtle, superior way, but is, in fact, glaringly obvious and kind of nonsensical.

Scrub my toilet (vomiting provides a unique POV from which to view the detrimental effects of splashback)

Buy scratchoff lotto tickets (Cashword variety). Win. Rejoice. Go to sleep and forget about it. Wake up, win again. Rejoice again.

Watch TV shows that I have DVRed, erase them. Go to sleep, forget what I watched. Wake up, regret.

Vow to write a seminal play/book/article, make mark on the world, enter annals of history. Go to sleep. Wake up. Don't write seminal play/book/article, make mark on the world, enter annals of history.

Dance "sexily" in front of mirror. Marvel at the picture of grace and elegance that is me.

Eat Slim Jims by, like, the gross.

Spill shit everywhere.

Listen to Stevie Winwood's greatest hits, feel great love for the world and all of the little quirks that we call life, soar on cloud of possibility. Go to sleep and forget about it. Wake up, scratch self, face another bleak day of quiet desperation and indecision.

Starfucking 101. Or, Spreading 'Em for a Story.

My friends and I play a game (when drunk, natch) called "Rock Stars You Would Sleep With". The point of this game is not to fantasize about banging Bono, because 1. Everyone would bang Bono and 2. He wouldn't touch you with his ten foot dick. The point is to discover just how far into the depths of shame you'd plummet in order to allow your naughty parts to rub up against greatness. A fun addendum is to determine the Rock Star sons and daughters that you'd similarly fuck, to even be one degree away from the genitalia of greatness (these are usually hypothetical sons and daughters of legal age). Some think it's sad; I'm just happy to have some extra time to think about whether I'm really willing to let Art Garfunkel's son stick it in me in order to get closer to the man who played bass harmonica on "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

Guess which one he is.

Anyway, it's a good game for discovering new things about yourself, and for discovering just how big of liars your friends really are. Any man that claims he'd kick Madonna out of bed for any reason other than abject fear is telling tales. Usually you have to start off easy, to lure in the friends and the coworkers still holding on to vestiges of their innocence, the kind that still insist they only sleep with people they care about:

Bruce Springsteen
Kurt Cobain
1999 Britney
Beyonce
Rufus Wainwright (for the queens)

Then, as the whiskey starts flowing and people are reminded that sex is fun, you can step it up a notch, and start throwing out a few outliers- I'm not talking Iggy Pop or anything, but maybe a couple musicians who did a little experimentation with wigs and eyeliner in the 70s. You know, get a feel for who's got the potential to be dirty:

Gene Simmons
Mick Jagger
Debbie Harry
Pat Benatar
David Bowie (for the queens)

By this point, people should be feeling pretty comfortable, both with each other and the fact that they're no better than prostitutes, just poorer. I usually find this happens about four whiskeys or one Motley Crue member in. Now, it's time to truly separate the men and women from the starfuckers:

Axl Rose
Billy Joel
Enya
Janis Joplin

I'd do her just to hear what moans sound like in Elfish.

Once you've weeded through your "fun" friends, you can move onto "story sex", in which there's no real debate about the utter lack of sex appeal of the musician in question, it's just a matter of whether one is willing to drop trou just to be able to say he/she did. If you have any friends that tend to play along the border of sluttiness (ie- they're insisting they'll only bone Pete Townshend if he buys them dinner), you can throw in a little qualifier or two, such as, they have to sing their hit song during the act itself.

Any of the Barenaked Ladies
The Fat Guy in Tenacious D
Shane McGowan
Cece Peniston
Nina Simone (if she'll sing Sugar in My Bowl during)
Andrew Lloyd Webber (if he'll compose "Music of the Night" during )

Now that several of your more tenuous friendships have resolved themselves (suddenly, and, most likely, self-righteously), there's one final step. It may seem like you can judge the relative looseness of one's legs based purely upon numbers, but the best way to tell who's truly a little whore is not quantity of legends fucked, but degrees of proximity to legend fucked:

Moby's Sound Mixer
The Guy Who Rescuscitates Keith Richards
U2's Merch Guy
The Woman in Arrested Development Who Yells
Yoko Ono

This is Bob Dylan's electric toothbrush. Do with it what you will.

Make sure to write down everyone's answers so you can use them against them in the future. Also, if you've got any fuckbuddies in the crowd, it's a good idea to start double bagging it.

Size Queen

Things that Are More Appealing in Miniature Sizes
1. Liquor bottles
2. Cats
3. Playing cards
4. Tumors
5. Skirts
6. Volkswagens
7. Golf
8. Nintendo


Things that Aren't More Appealing in Miniature Sizes
1. Humans
2. Tapas
3. Muppets
4. KFC Snackers
5. Vans
6. Wads of money
7. Roller coasters
8. Genitals