Your Memory is Full

I take a lot of crappy cell phone pictures. Because I take so many, I am constantly maxing out the phone's internal memory, necessitating a purge of the old and infirm. It seems unfair, but such is life. Better to learn the tough lessons when you're still young and can store 'em deep within your rubbery, toddler bones.



Pictures that I have already used (usually to drive up page views/make art) get the boot. Everything else stays. Even if I can't tell what the picture is of, or for what purpose it was taken, I keep it. You never know when months later you'll have an A-HA! moment and realize that the reason you kept this picture around for so long was because the subject -- a pretzel with mustard on it -- sort of looks like an old man with a five o'clock shadow and a big nose complaining about the lack of fresh tomatoes this time of year

Today, while performing one of the ritualistic cleansing ceremonies necessary to make room for newer, blurrier sources of pixilated joy, I decided to work some photoshop magic on a picture that had baffled me for quite some time. It was practically black, but I knew, for some reason, that there was something hidden beneath its seemingly opaque surface worth holding onto. My brain didn't bother to store the information of what it was, it just tagged it as, "possibly pretty great." Good enough for me. I trust my brain in situations like these. In order to make it readable I had to turn it into something of an Olde Timey Photographe, but don't be fooled, this is 100% contemporary and 100% legit:

You might still have trouble reading it (I don't know how this will look on every single monitor configuration) so let me help you out. It says, in large lettering across the top of a windowed storefront, "Bubble Builders," and underneath that it reads, "Your Neighborhood Contractor."

Oh, to have a pristine memory capable of remembering the context of this photo!

I'm fairly certain that this is not a joke, because, to the best of my knowledge, I have not been on any television or internet video sets recently. I freely admit that I have only retained about 4% of the memory of the circumstances surrounding the taking of this photograph, but my brain tells me that it's quite sure I walked by this on the street, possibly in Park Slope that one time my girlfriend and I trekked over there (a full 5 subway stops) to go to a Korean place that has bomb-ass bibimbap. Again, good enough for me. If my brain says it's real, it's real.

But I need to know more. Is this a piece of performance art? Is it an accidental picture of one of my dreams? Is it something Charlie Kauffman thought of for half a second while he was on the toilet, appearing suddenly and inexplicably during the taking of a mental inventory of items he needed to purchase from the super market, weaving its way through the realization that he was out of shallots like a needle and thread intermittently breaching the surface of a massive tropical fish costume being sewn for the chronically shy child of a domestically oriented/overprotective mother, only vaguely and fleetingly being acknowledged by its ostensible creator?

I want to know. I want you to tell me.



Won't you help me? Won't you help me understand?



How come I remember so much about the bimimbap that may or may not have been consumed on the night this picture was taken, but I remember so little about the picture itself?

It doesn't seem fair.

Seriously though, if you ever have a chance to eat bibimbap out of one of those cast iron bowls that they make table-side guacomole in, take it. It keeps the dish hot the whole time and crustifies the bottom layer of rice fantastically. Have you ever had really crispy rice? It's a true delight.

And oh yeah, here's a picture of a cat that stands silently at the end of the hallway where my apartment is located. I call him/her (I haven't ascertained its gender... yet) Kubrick Kat.

Reasons I Hate You if You're Currently Getting Your Sandwich Toasted at Subway

1.You're getting your sandwich toasted at Subway. Can we just get the fuck out of here already?

2.You're getting your sandwich toasted at Subway. Can we just get the fuck out of here already?

3.You're getting your sandwich toasted at Subway. Can we just get the fuck out of here already?

4.You're getting your sandwich toasted at Subway. Can we just get the fuck out of here already?

5.You're getting your sandwich toasted at Subway. Can we just get the fuck out of here already?

Then and Now

17-Year-Old Me

One large nug for me.

One large nug for you.

One medium nug for me.

One medium nug for you.

A little bit of shake for me.

A little bit of shake for you.

Now that we've got that eighth split, let's roll this dutch. First, lick the outer layer until moist. Then, carefully peal it off, starting at the tapered end. Once the leaf has been removed, look for the seam on the inside layer. Run a finger nail down the seam to split the paper in half, then empty out the...

[5 minutes later]

Blunt? Check. The W bumping in my 5-year-old, 2-door, champagne colored Chevy Cavalier? Check.

Let's spark that shit and get wild.

27-Year-Old Me

One large shitake for tonight's dinner.

One large shitake for tomorrow's dinner.

One medium shitake for tonight's dinner.

One medium shitake for tomorrow's dinner.

Loose stems go in the garbage

Now that I've got that 3.5 oz package of mushrooms split, let's make this omelet. First, heat some extra virgin olive oil in a pan on medium flame. Then, add mushrooms and diced shallots and season with freshly ground organic sea salt and pepper. Add splash of cooking wine, then simmer until mushrooms begin to brown, roughly...

[20 minutes later]

Omelet? Check. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Part II bumping on the 9-year-old Harman Kardon computer speakers from college? Check.

Let's take one hit off of the remainder of last night's half-smoked bowl and enjoy dinner.

Skittle in the Traaaaaaay

I Think We've All Been There

The Science of Sleep

Attempting to sleep while high:

This warm, fuzzy, all-over body high is really quite lovely. Did I remember to set my alarm?

Zzzzzz.

[No dreams]

Attempting to sleep while sober:

Sleeping is so fucking weird. I'm really just gonna lie here for the next eight hours doing nothing? That's way too close to being dead. Holy shit I REALLY don't want to die. How does anybody keep their shit together knowing they're going to cease to exist at some point? It's a goddamn miracle everyone hasn't gone fucking crazy just thinking about it.

What if they're right and we really can figure out a way to live indefinitely by uploading our brains into indestructible robo-bodies? How could billions of people have been allowed to die just because they happened to be born at the wrong time in history? How is that fair? There has to be some sort of afterlife. It's obviously not stereotypical heaven or whatever, but there's definitely something about the human soul that's eternal.

Am I still afraid to go to sleep? Is that what's going on here? What am I, six years old? How have I not gotten over this? I do it every night, don't I? How could I objectively love sleep yet still have this deep-seated fear of it. Fuck, I wish I had weed.

I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death.

What a fucking shame that Nas never equaled the dizzying heights of Illmatic. That's got to suck, to put out your masterpiece when you're 20, then never come close to approaching that level of greatness again. I guess he did make a fucking masterpiece. Rich motherfucker.

Damn, that clock ticks loud. Fucking studio apartment.

Remember when you were a kid and you tried to give yourself good dreams by thinking about really awesome shit?

Two woman blow job. Two woman blow job. Two woman blow job. Two woman blow job...

Zzzzzz.

[Nightmare about crashing car, being unable to sell it/pay off credit card debt]

Don't Look, Kids!

My mom likes to shout Watch! whenever a pedestrian crosses the street at an absurdly safe distance in front of the car I am currently driving. No matter how improbable an accident might seem, she is at the ready with a blood-curdling, coronary-inducing Watch!, invariably sending me into a panic as I struggle to reconcile reality as I know it with the reality being experienced in the passenger seat. Every time I hear this shockingly earnest cry I am tempted to jerk the car to the left or right, assuming there must be a deaf toddler just inches away from meeting his grizzly end. Thus, with one haphazardly placed exclamation, a perfectly safe situation has been transformed into a potentially dangerous one.

Luckily, there is a positive flip side to this stress-inducing habit of hers. Every so often, at intervals that are impossible to predict, my mom's futile quest to protect the entire world from itself will lead to transcendent moments of unparalleled glory. One such moment occurred when I was ten years old as my older sister, my mother, and I were leaving the local library on a summer afternoon.

We had just finished returning a towering stack of books, and were heading home with an equally enormous pile. As part of a summer reading initiative, my siblings and I were frantically making our way through young adult fiction in order to earn stamps on a glorified time sheet disguised as a whimsical, winding map. For every book you read, you earned a stamp farther down the map, and at certain milestones you earned prizes. 25 books got you an eraser. 50 books entitled you to a plastic finger monster. At some point, probably after 300 books or so, you would reach the end of the dragon-laden road and earn a prize that could not be purchased at the five and dime.

As we exited the library, walking across the front lawn toward the parking lot where our red Dodge Caravan waited to safely and economically whisk us away, my sister and I heard our mother shout, "Don't look, kids!" Not seeing anything out of the ordinary directly in front of us, our curiosity piqued, we spun around to find out what inappropriate sight had elicited the panicked warning.

And there he was, the man with Down syndrome who was always at the library, hunched over, vomiting in the middle of the lawn. Though aimed directly at the ground, the vomit was clearly of the projectile variety. It was also voluminous, streaming out of his perfectly O-shaped mouth in a dense, orange column, like a well-formed log emerging from the Play-Doh Fun Factory. But it wasn't Play-Doh. It was puke. And it was rocketing out of the esophagus of a mentally retarded, shockingly tall, middle-aged man doubled over on the front lawn of the library in broad daylight.

We would have never known he was there had my mom not said anything, but her Salinger-esque obsession with maintaining the purity of her children's souls wouldn't allow her to keep her mouth shut. Never mind the fact that in third grade I was sent home for telling a classmate that she should, "suck [her] mom's dick." I was innocent and I needed protection.

Was one magnificent, vomiting, handicapped man enough cosmic payback for a lifetime of Watch!es? That's a difficult question to answer, but eighteen years later my sister and I still occasionally say Don't look, kids! to each other when we see something nasty, gruesome, or foul going down, and it never stops being anything less than painfully, ecstatically funny.

Marketing Facts

Marketing Fact #262: Nothing instills more confidence in the consumer than seeing one of the product's unique selling points placed in quotation marks.

In isolation:

PATENTED STAINLESS STEEL/

CERAMIC MILLING MECHANISM

"WILL NEVER WEAR OUT"

When Life Gives You Lemons...

Well, I suppose you could do that, too:

Brian Posehn Looks Like a Baby Elephant

One From the Vault

I was going through some old papers the other day when I came across what was probably my first attempt at comedy writing. I say probably because, to be honest, I don't remember writing it. If I wrote this particular story yet have no memory of it, I very well could have written something similar at an earlier date. There's no way to know for sure.

It's credited to three authors -- Funky Fry, Zelo, and Whippy -- but I suspect the attribution might be an elaborate ruse. I know that FunkyFry was my first AOL screen name, circa 7th grade, so this is definitely at least partially my work, but Zelo and Whippy just don't ring a bell. My gut instinct tells me that they were noms de plume created to throw the authorities off my scent. No doubt they would have been interested in speaking with the young man who wrote such subversive prose.

While I do think that I am most likely the sole author, there is some compelling evidence to suggest that it was in fact a collaborative piece. Mainly, the fact that this thing is old. Like I said, FunkyFry was a screen name from 7th grade, but this work clearly predates that. I'm guessing it was penned in either 5th or 6th grade, as I don't think I could write more than a few sentences in 4th grade, and in 7th grade I was thirteen, surely old enough to remember such a creation. In addition, it was printed on a dot matrix printer.

So, if it was in fact written in 5th or 6th grade, that would place it somewhere between 1993 and 1995, early enough that the novelty of the futuristic ability to PRINT YOUR OWN MEDIA! would have enticed me and a few bros to take a crack at publishing our own humor mag (length: 2 pages). Also, preteen to teenage me would have never shared creative control with anyone. What if they didn't think that Billy Madison was the apex of comedy? I wouldn't want such a person's fingerprints all over my otherwise spotless work of genius.

I know what you're thinking. Isn't having three authors listed enough to prove that three people wrote it? Normally, yes, but...

A) None of the names are real
B) As you'll see in the piece below, I clearly reveled in toying with conventions.

Now, it's a little rough around the edges, but I obviously thought this was an important document (after all, I placed it in a plastic binder sleeve), so please treat it with respect.

I have transcribed the document below, trying to preserve as much of the original typesetting, grammar, and punctuation as possible. In addition, consider the entire thing sic'd, though I must say that there is an impressive lack of spelling errors for something from the Pre-Spell Check era.

In any case, I present to you, without any further ado, the spiritual predecessor to Good Behaviors Days:

THE

MEETING

BY

FUNKY FRY

ZELO AND WHIPPY

Once upon a day there was a loud rumble in the clouds that literally brought us to our knees. It came from the big planet of BUTTOCKS. It had a colossal stench too. But who cares about that, we're here to tell you about food people. This is the story of their MEETING.

Once upon another day Yolonda Stripsearch was walking down the street with a big bag of groceries in her arms. When suddenly a thunderous shaking made her think she had to sacrifice her bag to the sidewalk god. The sidewalk god was happy and let her keep her life.

When the bag hit the ground a lasagna and pizza T.V. dinner and a can of insta-cheese fell out of the bag and into mutagent goo in the sewer that just happened to be there. Then the current pulled them each a certain different directions. And so begins our story, again.

The first food person to form was cheeseman. Suddenly, the can began to shake and a foul stench filled the air. Then he burst out of the can and yelled a mournfull yell "CHEESEMAN". So, he began a new life.

The next food person to form was the LASAGNA KID. All of a sudden the T.V. dinner started to bubble as a loud beep echoed through the sewer as the plastic wrap exploded and the LASAGNA KID emerged from the scorching sauce.

The last but not worst foodman to form was PIZZA MAN. His arms were strong and six pack was mighty. You could always tell he was near by his mighty pizza essence.

Exactly one year and twelve days later each one had a strong yearning to visit the forest of IT, except for PIZZA MAN who was burping COME TO ME!!! But he disregarded it as one of his illusions from his drinking days. Then from each side of him emerged two food people. It was CHEESEMAN and the LASAGNA KID. They lived in harmony for the rest of their days, I think.

The End

...or is it?

So there you have it, my very first post. It even foreshadowed some of the major themes of my work on this site: farts, pop culture references, alcohol, random capitalization. Maybe I was meant to do this after all.

 

Fuck, Marry, Kill...Discuss Life and its Complexities With?

Flee With the Lottery, Possibly They Spotted Me (Alternate Title: The American Dream)

Spotted buying lottery tickets in the most expensive zip code in Manhattan, 10013.

Tidings of Belated, Murderous Joy

I grew up in a school district keen on imparting a vague understanding and shallow appreciation of various cultural practices from around the globe to its mostly white, mostly upper middle class students. One year, in either first or second grade, we were given a worksheet on Ramadan that included coloring activities.

I don't have a problem with this, necessarily. Yes, it was funny that Mrs. Vincent, a 60-something white woman with a beehive and bright red lipstick, was the one pegged to teach us the ins-and-outs of Kwanzaa. No, I'm not sure this was the most effective way to bring about the post-racial society everyone's been talking about. But it's fair to say that everyone's heart was in the right place, and it's all in the (upper middle class New Jersey) game.

What I do have a problem with is that holiday season after holiday season, district-mandated cultural sensitivity training after district-mandated cultural sensitivity training, the powers that be never once deemed it necessary to teach us about MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS!

Now I know that a Christmas post in January isn't exactly "timely" or "relevant" or "something you want to read," but I couldn't wait another year to share with you the joy I felt upon discovering the existence of MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS!

Well, I suppose I could wait to share the joy with you, considering I discovered MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS! about a week before Christmas, but ever since I cleaned out my cell phone pictures the other day and came across the picture you see at the top of this post (again, taken about a week before Christmas), I couldn't stop thinking about MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS!

How could the people whom my parents trusted to educate their children have kept this from me? How could my parents have kept this from me? How could society, or at least The Simpsons, have kept this from me? It doesn't seem fair. Hell, it doesn't seem logical. If you're trying to get little kids amped about other cultures, what better way than exposing them to MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS‽ Are you telling me that children across this great nation of ours wouldn't leap at the chance to beat their presents out of papier mache wise men?

I also find it hard to believe that I never learned about this in Spanish class. I took something like 5 or 6 years of Spanish (my memory is not so bueno in this regard -- AHYUK). Over the course of those 5 or 6 years there were plenty of opportunities to impart cultural knowledge. Most Spanish textbooks, in fact, try to sprinkle in cultural lessons from time to time, usually in the form of small, darkly-colored boxes at the end of each unit.

These small, darkly-colored boxes at the end of each unit taught me a great many things. For instance, I learned that in Latin America even the grandmothers stay out until 6 in tha mornin, soaking in the rich familial and social interactions typical Latin American fiestas have to offer. This is no doubt possible due to the prevalence of siestas in Latin America. Just look at the similarity of the words.

I also learned about mestizos, and where they fit in on the food pyramid.

                                                                  Getty Images

(This is Egyptian, not Latin American, but you get the point.)

I learned all these things, but I never learned about MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS!

Is it possible that I somehow forgot that MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS! existed? How could I have repressed such a beautiful memory? What good is memory if it fails to store something so plainly magnificent?

Perhaps most importantly, could I have been unwrapping presents by savagely beating them out of papier mache donkeys for the past 27 years? How much untold joy have I lost?

There are so many ways to utilize a Christmas pinata, I feel born anew in the possibilities. Sure, these possibilities may not exactly be tradicional, but is not America nothing more than the transformation of the tradicional into something more frankenstonian and frenetic? Is not America a place where all kinds of ravenously greedy heathens become Unum? A rampaging, blindly joyous Unum that beats its Christmas presents out of massive MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS‽

The way I see it, first you'd have a stocking piñata filled with all the knick knacks that typically go in a traditional stocking (cologne, candy, razor blades, garlic paste, nut crackers, chocolate, etc.). But then you'd also have a different piñata for each present. Could you imagine the visual? Instead of coming downstairs to a stack of boxes bound by the tyrannical law of gravity, you would enter a world of untold splendor. Brightly colored presents float around you, pulsing with life, aching with anticipation, poised for the moment when your parents blindfold you, spin you around in circles, then hand you a broom handle with which to begin what will surely be looked back upon as the finest moment of your This American Life.

Of course, if you wanted to put electronics in the piñatas (or something else fra-geel-lay), you'd have to have some sort of apparatus in place to break the fall. Might I suggest a foam pit like the ones that eXtreme athletes use when honing their craft? Or perhaps you would prefer a giant inflatable tarp that stunt people shoot themselves onto out of cannons. Unfortunately, these apparati may tip your hand, revealing to your children what they already know due to their inability to refrain from peaking under the massive, quilt-covered stack of presents in the back of your closet: they're getting a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. I suppose you could roll out the stunt tarp every year, making it difficult for your children to guess when the fancy shit is coming. But you must consider that a decoy tarp would serve as a harsh reminder of glory years during leaner times when all you've got to stuff the piñatas with are watercolor paints and a klutz book about tying knots. But what are you gonna do? The kid's gotta learn how to deal with disappointment at some point, doesn't he?

Alternatively, you could instill a little bit of thug in your seeds and have them fight for whatever comes out of the MOTHERFUCKING CHRISTMAS PIÑATAS!, OG piñata style. This strikes me, however, as a little crass, like employing a Christmas-themed rape stand designed to help you breed the most efficient, calculating capitalists old money can buy.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is this: I feel robbed of one of life's most pivotal experiences, and so should you.

Basically, what else I'm trying to say is also this: my children will not suffer the same fate as I. Oh no. I will rectify this tragic injustice, and I suggest you do the same.

Feliz Navidad, readers. Feliz Na'vi-motherfucking-dad.

I'd Rather Not. Thanks for Asking, Though.

Nah, Nah, Nah, That's Bullshit. That's Bullshit.

What they should really do is make one of those Mister Rogers episodes where they go to a factory and see how that shit's made, right? Only in this episode, they take your ass inside a match factory.

I'm tellin' you, son. That shit'd be dope.

Nah, Nah, Nah. I'm tellin you. That shit'd be way better than that crayon episode.

First they gotta make all those tiny little sticks, right? But you know that shit don't grow on trees, son. All perfect and square and uniform and shit. You gotta chop that shit up. So first of all you've got some massive fucking buzz saw in there. Or even better, some fuckin ridiculous contraption that's got like a million teeth in it that just spits out fuckin matches by the ass load. Just fuckin huge wooden boards flying into that shit like zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! ZZZZZZZZZZ! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!And the workers probably have some stupid fuckin  nickname for it like Jaws or The Widow Maker, right?

So now you've got like a million fuckin matches flying down some conveyor belt like, twisting and turning and shit, making their way to the other end of the factory where they gotta get dried out, right? Why you gotta dry em out? Is you fuckin stupid, son? You ain't never seen that American Chopper shit? When you got a huge fuckin saw like that you gotta pour water on it constantly or that shit'll burst into flames. You gotta make sure you don't light those fuckin' matches on fire, son. That's their product right there. Besides, that'd be some shit, wouldn't it? A fucking match factory goin down in flames? Anyway, I bet they gotta dry off all those wet matches with some big ass fan or something. Maybe they even put em in some industrial sized oven with huge fucking flames and shit.

But the best part -- I'm tellin you son -- the best part would be when they get the red shit on the tips. How the fuck do they get that red shit on the tips? That's the shit I really wanna see. Do they dip the matches in some huge fucking vat of liquefied red shit? Do they pour liquefied red shit all over em, like when they dribble chocolate sauce on cookies in a factory? You never seen that episode of Sesame Street where they go to a cookie factory? I bet these match making assholes convert old cookie factories into match factories cause they know they can just switch the icing machine up real easy. Just fill that shit up with red shit and bam, you're fuckin set. It's like when a Chinese place closes, you know the next place that opens is just gonna be another fuckin Chinese place. You can only make Chinese food in a special Chinese kitchen, so it's just one Chinese place after another, all in the same location. They've got like extra-wide stoves for their woks and shit.

Or maybe they put the matches in like, little ice trays filled with the red shit then freeze em?

Oh oh oh! Or maybe the tips come pre made, and then they stick em on the matches somehow. I didn't even think of that shit. That shit'd be crazy.

And I bet you they make matches with different colored tips in the same place. Economy of scale, you know? You don't know what economy of scale is, you ignorant motherfucker? It means the more shit you sell the more money you make. You need to go to class, you dumb bastard.

Anyway, I'm tellin' you they definitely make all those matches in one place. The kitchen matches and the matchbooks and the funny colored ones you get in restaurants or whatever. So you'd see all the red and blue and green matches flyin' all around the conveyor belts. Just like whooooooosh. Huge fucking rainbow of matches flying right by your fucking face. I'm tellin you, shit'd be just like that crayon factory episode, only doper, cause crayons aren't fuckin dangerous.

Then at the end of the episode you'd see a bunch of funny looking midwestern geriatric motherfuckers wearing those thick-ass canvas gloves, stuffing all those matches in boxes at the end of the line and shit.

That shit'd be dope, son.

Yeah, I'd watch that shit..

We Fly High, No Lie, You Know This

Happy Wu Year