Guide to New Year's Eve

Probably the most arbitrary and overrated holiday ever.

Let’s take a day of the year and decide that it’s the day where we say it’s next year, then let’s celebrate our ability to divide time up into units, and let’s all get drunk and kiss each other, and let’s agree that it’s pathetic to spend the night at home watching Dick Clark with your dog and actively fighting off the urge to masturbate so that you orgasm exactly when the countdown is over (because you’re so bored, not because you’re turned on by your dog or Dick Clark).

But getting drunk and kissing people is fun, so if you have the means to do that instead of yanking it while Dick Clark counts backwards from ten, you should. You will find the experience to be overrated and arbitrary, though. Really, the best thing to do on New Year’s Eve is work. Preferably in some sort of service job where drunk people who never usually go out are tipping you to do something they could easily do themselves. I once made like 300 bucks working coat check at some swanky party. All I had to do was sit there drinking free champagne and get people their coats for like 4 hours. It was the best New Year’s Eve ever.

Well, I guess there was also that other one where it was a huge party in a loft somewhere and a couple of great bands played and somebody I don’t even know gave me a whole unopened bottle of bubbly, and I was drinking straight out of it and dancing to some great old soul 45s that the DJ was playing and I was kissing a bunch of good-looking people and all of my friends were there. But failing that, you could do a lot worse than 300 bucks for huddling yourself against a space heater for 4 hours. Sometimes you’ve got to do a different kind of aiming high.

You know what kills a party? Expectations. Expectations kill a party dead. You know when you hear about a party, and you're out with some buddies and you’re like “I heard about a party” and they’re bored so they’re like “let’s go” and it’s like you’re re-auditioning for their friendship by hopefully knowing about a super fun party? And then you get there and it’s like five dudes milling around and two drunk girls are loudly cackling about how dirty the host’s bathroom towel is, like “Pete! Pete! Is this you towel? [Cackle cackle!] Pete! Look how dirty your towel is! [Paroxysms of derisive laughter.]” And then you check the living room and there’s some stoned guy with a beard petting a cat. Well, of course you’re going to have one of those “oh no” moments where you’re worried about the rest of your night and whether or not your friends will ever like you again. But you don’t have any other plans and you brought a twelve pack of High Life and you might as well make the most of it. If you get into the right zone, those girls actually are hilarious, and that cat guy has some really awesome theories about Jesus. Once you let go of your expectations, there’s no reason why that can’t be a great party.

New Year’s Eve is laden with expectations. If you went to a New Year’s Eve party and it was those towel cacklers and the cat dude, you would be pissed. You’d even tell yourself that you have every right to be pissed, because New Year’s Eve is supposed to be about evening gowns and champagne and kissing people and ballroom dancing and just generally going wild with a bunch of friends that you’re happy to be around. Well. No it’s not. It’s not supposed to be anything. That kind of thinking is what makes people decide that maybe it’d be best to just stay at home with their farting dog and eat a whole bag of Ore Ida fries while noncommittally diddling their balls. Pretty much everything is better than that. More importantly, if you’ve got the right mindset about things, nothing is better than that.

Have you noticed how if a New Year’s Eve party is only medium fun, there’s this frantic desperation about making it more fun? You can smell it. It’s kind of like the difference between that regular high octave noise and the crazy “I’m blowing too hard” noise coming out of a noisemaker. If you’re blowing that thing that hard, it’s like you’re announcing, “I don’t want to be here, but I want to want to be here! Happy New Year! I’m going to keep drinking until I like this!” Sure, you could follow that desperation down whatever road it takes you, and tomorrow you’ll end up with one of those “am I pukey because my head hurts, or does my head hurt because I’m so pukey?” hangovers, and you’ll be in somebody else’s bed and you’ll have to take the train home with your suit still on, and it’s bad but not the worst because at least you don’t have to work, and there’s a quiet air of victory about it because at least you really did something one hundred percent all the way and who cares if it was stupid. Of course you could just go home. It’s not always fun to party with a bunch of frantic desperados, and it’s only midnight. You’ve still got plenty of time for that whole bag of Ore Ida.

Guide to Starting a Fight and then Losing That Fight

Punk rock is a vanishing ethos.

I just wrote “Punk rock is a vanishing ethos.” So you know I’m overdue for an asskicking. I do want to talk about punk rock a little, though. I’m sorry. I’ll work back to the subject of getting your ass kicked. I promise.

We live in a time where expressing oneself is overencouraged. It’s hard to get your ass kicked these days. It used to be as easy as wearing a leather jacket and going to a Black Flag show. And then we had Tipper Gore overreacting to NWA, and after the riots it became apparent that loud music was the least of America’s worries, and the PC era set in, and gradually we got to the point where inner city community centers encouraged upstart teenage punk rock bands and gangsta rap groups because any kind of music is better than the alternative of just regular gang violence.

And then on a national level, the last big “these musicians are out of control!” controversy I can remember (there have probably been other ones) is the whole Eminem uses the word “faggot” thing, and that got solved when Elton John’s crazy opportunistic ass showed up and said “who cares” at the Grammys. It was like “oh yeah, who cares.” And it was the Grammys. Steely Dan swept them in 2000 anyway, and for me that's when the Grammys officially went into "we have no clue what's going on" mode. Nothing truly interesting has happened at the Grammys since the Meat Bomb guy. So since Eminem and Elton John sang that shitty song and Eminem basically announced that he would be disappearing soon in order to not become the most overrated person in the history of the world, we’re just about fresh out of music-inspired national outrage.

So where does that leave us on the whole “punk rock” thing? Well, punk rock is in the shitter. It’s not dead, because it’s an idea and ideas can’t die, but it’s on life support, rotting in some subcultural hospital bed that nobody cares about anymore. The nation has shrugged, the “follow your dreams” rhetoric from the PC era has continued and spawned a million watered down music groups, the hype cycle for those bands has shortened and intensified to “this is the best thing I’ve ever heard” for ten seconds followed by a swift and furious “no, it’s totally overrated” rebuke after any one song is leaked onto the internet, and all we have in the way of maintaining some degree of connection to the cultural heritage of doing loud crazy outrageous shit is “punk rock” bars where punk rock behavior of any kind is actively discouraged. They’re basically museums. It no longer takes balls of any kind to consider yourself “punk rock” (witness: Avril Lavigne), and now it’s really difficult to get a rise out of anybody to the point where you’re enjoying the many benefits of a well-deserved self-destructive punk rock ass kicking. It’s a shame. Everybody should get their ass kicked once in a while.

But maybe that’s just how it seems to me. I was raised Unitarian. And from my frame of reference, punk rock is definitely a vanishing ethos.

If you want me to expound on why it’s a good idea for every person to get their ass kicked at least once in their lifetime, it’s pretty simple: because you deserve it. But there’s also a spiritual side. A well-deserved ass kicking is how American 22 year olds who like loud rock music achieve a zen experience. In Eastern philosophy you’d meditate for hours until you learned to let go of your self. It doesn’t work. When you’re 22, you can’t meditate for hours to get rid of yourself. You're up your own butt one hudred percent of the time when you're 22. The whole reason why you’re even meditating in the first place is to impress some girl you’re trying to get with. Plus it only really works for like 15 seconds when you get to the ego-release part before you start thinking about how hungry you are for 7-11 nachos. And the experience is too boring, what with the new agey music and incense. No thank you. It’s easier and way more fun to aim for a ridiculous night of complete self-destruction. If you’re an American 22 year old who likes loud rock music, that’s what you need most in the world. Because you don’t know your limits yet. And sometimes to remind you that you have limits, you need some big burly dude to pound his limits right into your face. Then you’ll be able to meditate until the cows come home.

Also: it is crazy and a little bit fun in a weird punk rock way where you drink a whole gallon of Old Granddad’s and run your mouth and turn into the party villain and somebody flattens you and everybody applauds and it’s dramatic and fun and funny and even the people there who weren’t involved in the ass kicking at least had an eventful night. I recommend it heartily.

Here’s how to do it:

First of all, you’re going to want to consume a gallon or so of Old Granddad’s. Ten High or Old Crow will also suffice. Jack Daniels is for pussies. That’s strictly top shelf. If you can afford it, great, but really you’re looking for one of those “huge amounts of booze for less than 10 bucks” whiskeys. It’s kind of part of the experience. Plus if you’re completely drunk the punches don’t hurt so bad. You don’t even really feel them until the next day, where the punch pain melts into the hangover pain. By then it doesn’t matter. You were going to have a shitty day anyway.

The next thing you want to do is attend an event of some kind. And here’s where it gets tricky, because punk rock is a vanishing ethos, and getting into a fight and losing that fight is a decidedly punk rock action. There’s really a sliver of opportunity there for it to be a good idea. This is mostly because it’s patently not a good idea. But: the only places punk rock stuff like a deserved ass kicking still acceptably happen are the dingy little art lofts and basement rock parties where true punk rock still exists. So to get this done you pretty much have to start hanging out with some art school students. Maybe even start your own band. It will be worth it for this ass kicking. You should not put this plan into effect anywhere that has sufficient lighting or any kind of license for putting on a rock show. You’re looking for an event that’s strictly BYOB and in danger of being busted by the police without a fight even occurring.

Then, once you’re at this place where a bunch of shitty shitty band bands are playing, and it’s apparent that if there’s not going to be an asskicking or some sort of eventful occurrence, then the 12 sweaty people who gathered there will have completely wasted their 5 dollar cover charge if not their entire evening, then you’ve got to pick your target. This will happen instinctually, because remember you’ve already drank a gallon of Old Granddad’s and you have your whole self-destructive persona going at full blaze. But you want to pick some dude who is a lot bigger and stronger and meaner than you, somebody who’s hopefully older, if not old enough to remember an era where fights could and did happen in the context of rock music.

Then you want to antagonize and escalate. If he backs down, call him a pussy. If he gets all youth groupy on you and tries to talk to you about your feelings, pick another target. You’re goading a dude who will not fight. The good news is, the more of a jackass you act like, the more likely it is that your perfect target will find you. Hopefully, in the course of antagonizing and escalating, you’ll do something in the name of making the party interesting that also counts as an unforgiveable and punchout-worthy sin. Like it’s still fun and games if you and this angry meathead kick each other in the balls while you knock over a wok to escape from him in the kitchen. That’s still acceptable drunken lout behavior and it’s all in the name of a party. But let’s say his wife comes in and criticizes you for being “such boys.” Kick her in the balls. Congratulations, you are getting your ass kicked. Because “I will beat up any scrawny drunk kid who kicks you in the crotch” is an implied wedding vow.

This fight might not happen for sure at this point, though. People hate fighting these days. You have to see this through to the end. To do this, you are going to have to wander off alone in a vocal and visible way. Make an announcement, like “for my next act, I will go piss in the alley! When I come back, you’re all getting your dicks kicked! And that goes for you too!” (point at a pretty girl that everybody likes who hasn't even said anything yet). Then wander off alone. Do not be shocked if the guy whose wife’s crotch you kicked is there to meet you when you come back. He will have some choice words for you.

It’s possible that he’ll offer you an out. Like “hey man, I don’t know if you’re joking, but you’re pretty far out of line here. If you’re joking, that’s cool, you should just get the fuck out of here and we’ll continue on with our night and let bygones be bygones.” Do not take it. You are not joking. You are dead serious. You’re going to come back to the party and kick some dicks. And then you’re taking his wife home with you because you’re a real man. Tell him this. And then raise your fist like you’re going to swing it at him.

When you get up off of the floor, it’s likely that whoever brought you will show up soon and get you out of there. There may be some babysitteresque recriminations. Don't respond to them. Let them ruminate for a few minutes. Then when you’re safely in a cab with your buddies, it’s ok to start laughing hysterically.

Congratulations on your stupid punk rock rite of passage. You’re basically the Dalai Lama at this point.

And. And you get the added bonus of reviving punk rock for a night. Thank God it’s not completely gone for good. If you really want to go full force with it, take my instructions and repeat as often as possible until famous and/or dead. For most people, though, one night every 6 years or so will be more than enough.

Guide to Totaling Your Girlfriend’s Brand New Car

First of all, are you ok? Is everybody ok? That’s the important thing. That everybody is ok.

This is one hundred percent true, and if everybody is ok, that’s what you’ll be hearing a lot from the people in your life who care about you, and whose brand new cars you did not just wreck. It will not make you feel any better. It’s like saying “at least you didn’t just total your girlfriend’s brand new car” to somebody else who’s busy complaining about their problems. It doesn’t make their problems go away, all it does is annoy them about how you’re not listening as they continue their story about how long they had to wait for the bus. But it’s still true. At least everybody is ok.

But… Let’s say everybody is not ok. Let’s say somebody got pretty hurt. Let’s say you get pretty hurt. Or even just a little bit hurt. That’s going to make things worse from a logistical standpoint because you’ll have to deal with a hospital and a police report and auto insurance stuff and what to do with the car and a girlfriend who is going nuts and figuring what you’re going to do now and how you’re going to get to work on Monday when all the rental car places are sold out because it’s Christmas, plus the severe emotional and financial trauma of having to deal with all of that stuff at once. It’s still pretty bad if you’re not in the hospital.

So if you’re in the hospital, you can console yourself with this: at least nobody’s expecting you to be the point person for that whole nightmare. You get to lay down in a hospital bed and have Vicodin pumped directly into your veins while everybody else runs around like maniacs trying to solve all your problems for you, and instead of yelling at you, they're asking you if you want a soda. It’s maybe a little better that way. You don’t have to be a hero. And why should you? You deserve the rest.

I’m saying this as a person who emerged without a scratch from wrecking his girlfriend’s car. Of course she’s going to be more worried about you than her car, but the car is a close fucking second. Just know that if you call after the accident and say “before you ask, everybody’s ok,” and then she immediately starts screaming at you, I think that’s normal. If I had it to do over again, and I hate that I’m thinking this way about it, I would have let her worry about me for at least like a second or two before I volunteered to tell her that I was ok. If she was more worried about me than the car for a second or two, I would probably have had less screaming and strife to deal with by virtue of the fact that her initial reaction involved a certain amount of relief. Maybe I could have said “I’m a little banged up, but I think I’ll be ok,” and then had one of my brothers whack me really hard in the chest with a tennis racquet so that later I could at least be like, “oh, my poor bruised chest!” It seems juvenile and stupid, but trust me, it’s better than the alternative. The fact of the matter is you very well could have had a legitimately bruised chest. It was an ordeal for you, too. And she’s not going to have much empathy for your side of the situation unless you manufacture a little.

If she was in the car with you, it’s either better or worse, depending. Maybe better if the accident wasn’t even remotely your fault and there was nothing you could have done, and in fact you did a great job just making sure it wasn’t any worse than it had to be. Maybe that earns you points. I don’t know. Probably not until later unless you have one of those super reasonable girlfriends that I’m not sure exist. If that sounds like a description of your girlfriend, hold onto her one hundred percent forever. For all more normal girlfriend circumstances, having her at the scene will involve a lot of freaking out. A LOT of freaking out. Judging by the amount of freaking out I’ve experienced with a girlfriend who was not even in the same state as the accident, I’m thinking it would be pretty much a freakout apocalypse if she was there at the time. Maybe her knowledge of what’s going on makes her less furious at you and more mad at the other guy. Or just plain sad about the car, which is fine. But who knows? I wouldn’t try it if you can avoid it. Remember: freakout apocalypse.

Of course if the accident is your fault, whatever freakouts happen are justifiable. But take solace in knowing that the freakouts would have happened anyway even if it wasn’t remotely your fault. What’s great about totaling your girlfriend’s car is that it’s an auto accident, a logistical nightmare, possibly a life-altering traumatic experience, a sudden and enormous financial burden, and, as if that all weren’t enough, a big huge fucking relationship warfare fight that you don’t want to have. All rolled into one. And regardless of whether the accident is completely your fault or not, you’ll have to do some real quick thinking about how much you value this relationship. Like all fights where you’re suddenly talking about your relationship instead of just watching football like you thought you were going to, this is going to suck. But unlike those normal football fights where she’s just talking and it’s your job to sit there and pretend that all you want to do is listen to her instead of watching football until you’ve told her she’s right about whatever it is enough that she’ll hopefully (probably not) allow you to continue watching football, with a wrecked car scenario you can kind of decide how much it’s going to suck depending on how much you care. Because going back to watching football is out of the question. The football game is totaled.

The good news is how much you care will be apparent right away. Like you’ll either think “I do not want to deal with this any more than I have to,” or “I’m going to have to work my ass off to make sure she doesn’t hate me forever.” These thoughts will likely occur to you in some form in that impossibly small but slow amount of time it takes between knowing you’re going to be in an accident and actually colliding with whatever it is. That is a weird second. But you’ll know if this girlfriend of yours is worth “I will absorb every insult you hurl at me without lashing back, and I will handle all of the police report and insurance stuff, and I will make sure you get a rental car as soon as possible, and I will do anything you want to make sure this is right, and it’s going to be one of the worst days in my life because I won’t know until you calm down a bit later that you even care for me anymore because you left me twelve voicemails after my phone died about how you’re breaking up with me and how I’m a piece of shit.” You kind of know you love her if you’re willing to put up with that.

Otherwise, maybe it’s best to use this accident as an excuse to start a new life. Maybe assume a new identity. That would probably be a good idea, because if your commitment to this relationship is anything short of the above scenario, you’re going to have an ugly breakup and possibly even a lawsuit on your hands. If she’s just a rebound person or somebody you’re fooling around with because you’re bored, you should complain of severe neck pain, sneak out of the hospital, and make a run for Mexico. Give yourself a running start. Not really. But you can maybe be a little more hard line on “I’ll do everything I can to make this right” because technically she has insurance for that and technically it’s her fault for letting you drive her car. Technically. That’s the way she should be thinking if you’re a total douchebag.

This reminds me. Totaling your girlfriend’s brand new car is a douchebaggy activity to be sure, but handling the aftermath with aplomb is a prime example of coming through in a pinch. You pretty much have to handle it well in order to justify all of your regular day-to-day douchebag behavior. The idea of living like a douchebag is that you’re a good guy deep down, you just don’t feel the need to take other people’s feelings into consideration when you’re doing something simple like jaywalking across a street. It’s a fine way to be, but it only works if you A. don’t get too bent out of shape when some jaywalker takes his sweet time to cross in front of you while you’re the driver, and B. actually are a good guy deep down. The former requires a certain amount of patience, and the latter involves coming through in a pinch. You’ll need both skill sets in healthy doses to deal with the nightmare of totaling your girlfriend’s brand new car.

Also I didn’t mention this, but if somebody is dead as a result of this accident, then you don’t need a guide to totaling your girlfriend’s brand new car. You need a guide to dealing with a fatal car accident.

If somebody’s dead and your fucking girlfriend is still freaking out at you about how her brand new car is wrecked, you have to break up with her. Just as a matter of principle.

And if your girlfriend is freaking out as much as mine did, you might end up killing somebody later just so you can finally get some peace and quiet in a jail cell. But before then, you’ll handle this car thing as well as you possibly can because you don’t want dudes in jail to think you’re a total unredeemable douchebag. Just like a medium one would be fine.

Guide to Christmas

Sorry, other holidays. Christmas is the winner. It’s the undisputed heavyweight king shit of holidays. This is kind of a bummer, because not everybody celebrates it. In fact, most people don’t. But it’s still the undisputed heavyweight king shit of all holidays. Just like America is the undisputed heavyweight king shit of all countries.

America is not technically the best country. It’s not technically the most democratic country, or the most fair country, or the most populous country, or the country with the best food or the best health care system or the best schools or the best standard of living or the best… Well you get the idea. America is not the best at anything that’s really important. We’re the best at spending money on ridiculous shit we don’t need and owning guns and worshipping celebrities and making large tractors and jingoistic Rock n’ Roll and having billionaires and maybe we’re also the best at television. That’s about it.

Oh yeah, we’re also the best at being the best. Because we’re the undisputed heavyweight king shit of countries, and if you don’t like it, we’ve got an army of billionaires who will shoot with guns and run you over with an enormous wheat combine, playing “Sweet Home Alabama” at full blast on their way to buy a Segway because they saw on a reality TV show that Tom Selleck has one. We’re not going to apologize and we’re damn sure not going to learn how to speak your language, and this is a truth so defiantly inescapable we don’t even have to say it, we’ll just make sure you understand by marching en masse into your town and making you instantly dependant on all the money we’re spending there even if you hate us. And we’re bringing our fannypacks.

That’s America. And Christmas is like the America of holidays. Try to run. Try to hide. But if it’s Christmas, you’re damn well going to know about it. This isn’t one of those “Aw man, why the fuck is the post office closed on my day off?” holidays. It’s Christmas. King shit.

So like all holidays, it’s overrated. Holidays are overrated. All of them.

The real religious ones are also pretty overrated, but at least they’re trying pretty hard not to be. Rosh Hashanah, for example, is difficult to classify as “overrated.” If you’re not Jewish, you get the day off without quite knowing exactly why, and if you are Jewish, you pray a lot and blow a shofar in anticipation of the New Year to come. I think. Wikipedia told me you do that. Anyway, it’s tough to call this “overrated,” because it’s one of the most important Jewish religious holidays, and it’s also nice to get a day off from work without quite knowing why. Rosh Hashanah may be the only non-overrated holiday. There’s probably not a “Sorry I Missed Rosh Hashanah” chimpanzee with its hand over its face card available at Hallmark. So Rosh Hashanah gets a break.

But, in general, there’s a sort of abstract overratedness to any holiday, because days are days and only so much is possible within them. A day doesn’t know it’s supposed to be special. It can decide to be, like, really cloudy if it wants. Days don’t care.

Since Christmas is the king shit, you might think it’s the most overrated holiday. But it’s not, unless you don’t celebrate Christmas, in which case it’s the most overrated thing since the moon. If you do celebrate Christmas, and you get to spend it with your family, and you like your family, it’s only medium overrated. That’s a lot of ifs, actually. Christmas is pretty overrated.

But there are some undeniable plusses to it. Like if you get to spend it with your family and you like your family, then it’s pretty great. You get to walk around and buy presents and it’s cold and dark and miserable outside, but there’s a certain surprising kernel of unmisery to it because you have “Here Comes Santa Claus” stuck in your head and that song is retarded, and you can actually get away with just singing it out loud for a few bars in public, which is kind of great because how many times do you have “Sweet Jane” stuck in your head on a nice day and you want to sing it but don’t because it’s a faux pas for some reason? At least five times. But on Christmas you can do impromptu karaoke. And you can get an overpriced Christmas-flavored warm eggnog enema latte and wait for it in a huge Christmas-sized line full of a bunch of other people who are dickheads, but at least for now they’re Christmas dickheads. It’s nice-ish.

And then once you get to the parts that don’t involve being in public, you get to horse around and sneakily drink bourbon with your teenaged cousin and laugh as your gambling addict uncle-in-law gets accidentally punched in the balls by your three year old surprise change-of-life aunt. If you’re Catholic. If you’re Protestant, you get to do all the same stuff, except there’s no surprise change-of-life aunt and your ex-uncle-in-law is not invited and you’re not supposed to talk about him, so nobody gets hit in the balls, and you’re sneaking scotch instead of bourbon and your teenaged cousin doesn’t like the taste of it yet. But you’re still horsing around either way, and you’ve got at least the pleasant illusion of family being “the most important thing.”

So this means that for Christmas, to do things right, you’ve got to A. spend it with your family, and B. like your family, or at least pretend to long enough to get the right kind of family-liking drunk going.

If you can’t spend it with your own family, then try to spend it with somebody else’s family. It’s going to be weird if you do this. Just get ready for weirdness. Another family’s Christmas traditions will seem odd and arcane to you, and they will be less comfortable because of your presence, so their traditions will maybe even seem weird to them in that “exposure to outside observation” way. It’s like brushing your teeth left handed. It takes a lot more effort, produces an inferior result, and gives you a headache in the process. But at least your teeth won’t rot out of your head like they will if you don’t brush your teeth. Just so we’re clear, I’m talking about Christmas and families.

You should also floss.

Gifts are tricky. It’s nice to give a thoughtful gift, something the person didn’t know they wanted but now they know instantaneously that they’ll never live without it. But if you shoot for one of those gifts, you’re going to risk disaster. There’s nothing more humiliating than picking out the perfect gift for your Dad for an hour and a half and then seeing it still shrink-wrapped in his closet three years after you bought it for him. Sometimes it’s just better to get the unthoughtful gift that takes less time to figure out because you know they want it.

If you’re going to aim for potentially thoughtful, though, go for impractical too. There’s no sense in hedging your bets with an electric toothbrush. You don’t know what to get your Dad? Get him a platypus Beenie Baby and a box of ‘Nilla Wafers (he likes ‘Nilla Wafers) and a nonfiction book about spies. None of that shit is useful, but he’ll like it more than he’ll like that gum massager from Sharper Image. Nobody wants to massage their gums. All it does is remind you that one day you’re going to die.

If you’ve got a girlfriend, buy her a gift or gifts that total 10 dollars in value for every week you’ve been together until you’ve been together for 10 weeks, and then hold it at 100 bucks, and add 50 more for every year you’re together after that. Hope against hope that this will equal or surpass what she pays for your gift. If it doesn’t, you should surprise her with something by the end of the day, like an internet receipt for plane tickets to go somewhere. If you don’t feel like doing this, you should break up with her. If you want to do this but you don’t have the money, she should break up with you. If you’d estimate her gift to you to double your gift to her in value, pre-internet receipt for plane tickets, then you have to either break up with her or marry her before the next Christmas. It’s like a fun game that makes you want to die.

If under these rules you’re going to break up with her, you have to wait until after Valentine’s Day. Say mid-March. Sorry. But you shouldn’t be involved in a relationship if you can’t see it lasting past the Christmas-Valentines holiday date gamut. Plus, you have to wait until mid-March so you won’t technically be stealing her gift. By then you can tie it into a “burdened by gratitude” this-is-why-this-is-a-bad-relationship-for-me argument. But if you play that card, you have to be willing to give it back if she calls your bluff.

Your Mom just wants something that will keep her feet warm. Moms have cold feet.

Siblings get one gift you want them to have because you like it and you want them to be awesome like you are, and one gift you know they’ll like but you don’t like.

Grandmothers get something that smells nice or that involves an old person thing she uses everyday. Like a tissue box cozy or something like that.

Granddads get DVD’s of Westerns and old war movies. Maybe you can get them a book that reflects their outspoken political viewpoints if you’ve got that kind of Granddad. It may feel a little wrong to buy a Rush Limbaugh book, but think of how exasperated it’ll make your parents the next time they visit the guy and he’s freshly armed with all kinds of infuriating erroneous factoids that support his xenophobia, and when they ask him where the hell he came up with them, he says, “I read it in the book your own son bought me for Christmas.” And you get to just shrug and quietly giggle into the potato chip bowl. That’s entertainment!

Aunts and Uncles get Robin Williams movies. They’ve always liked Robin Williams for some reason that has to do with being an aunt or an uncle. It’s his unfunny uncle-y charisma.

Other Christmas rules:

-No decorations until after Thanksgiving.
-No voluntary Christmas music playing. It’s atmospheric. You’ll hear enough of it. Maybe if you’re drunk and/or wrapping presents you can play some Bing Crosby or that Phil Spector Christmas album. For non-Christmas months, there is a one song “get it, it’s not Christmas” gag limit.
-Christmas dress-up for work parties is funny and great. Thrift store yourself a super gay cable-knit/turtleneck sweater. It’s worth it for sillies, and it makes you feel less toxic over the fact that Barb is “really going all out this year” on the whole reindeer/elf front.
-Around this time of year, always tell people “YOU have a Scrooge up your butt” if they’re grumpy. I’m trying to get this started instead of “bah humbug.”
-Say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” People should be smart enough to know you’re not trying to get them to renounce their religion just because yours invented the king shit of all holidays.
-No pushing it on the mistletoe. You’re either getting a kiss or not.
-Christmas novelty things are pretty much a bad idea, unless they’re like the old/weird kind of Chinese robot Santas that are accidentally terrifying and you line up a bunch of them and it looks like some kind of pop culture apocalypse art installation. Otherwise just stick with solid color clothes and white lights and winter things.
-You only get to open one present on Christmas Eve, and it’s your Christmas Eve pajamas. The other presents you have to wait until Christmas morning to open or else you’ll turn into a communist.

Now you’re ready for Christmas.

Guide to Threesomes

Group sex is one of those things where you’re either into it or you aren’t. You might think to yourself “yeah, I’m totally into that, dude, fuckin’ A,” but you don’t really know if you’re into it or not until you take a wrong turn at some girl’s underwear party and there’s a full blown orgy in development in somebody’s bedroom, and they’re gesturing for you to come and join in.

You’re either into it or you aren’t, and there’s certainly no shame in not being into it. It’s pretty spooky. I flinched. I was on the precipice of an orgy and I flinched. No biggie.

Threesomes, though, are a little different. Almost every straight dude in the world has at least considered being with two women at the same time. I don’t know what women think about being with two dudes or a dude and a girl or whatever, and nobody ever will because that’s one of their mysterious secrets that they can’t ever reveal because it’s not one thing. But I know about the two women at once thing. Every dude wants that, at least somewhere in their heart of penises.

So let’s say when I’m talking about threesomes, I mean “two girls and a dude,” because that’s a more common straight dude thought than “I would not find it at all uncomfortable to be in a situation where I might accidentally touch penises with another dude while pleasuring a beautiful woman.”

That’s in the realm of group sex that you’re either into or not and you don’t know until it happens and you want to jump out of your own skin and then burn it.

Anyway, yeah. Threesomes.

1. Whoa, guy.

Threesomes have to be the single most overrated thing in the entire universe. The entire universe. Threesomes are more overrated than, I don’t know, gravity or something. That’s how universally overrated threesomes are.

I’m saying this not because it’s totally true, but because it’s a helpful way to think. Threesomes are a tricky thing to rig. Either you do it the right way with your wonderful girlfriend who’s also curious about it and there are all these preliminary meetings and discussions about “emotional boundaries” and “safe words” and all kinds of unfun unsexy bullshit like that that you have to go through to have any reasonable shot at an enjoyable threesome, or you can do it the wrong way by going home with a couple of trashy drunks whose breath smells like corn. Either way, regardless of how much fun the threesome is, it’s going to involve you doing things that you’re not totally sure you want to do.

Let’s face it, you’re not Kanye West. You don’t get to have threesomes with two ridiculously hot supermodels who you just met and it all happens on a whim just because it’s Tuesday and maybe this time it won’t be boring like it was the last time three days ago. You’re going to have to make a few compromises to get there.

So it’s important to think to yourself that “threesomes are overrated” because that way you won’t get so excited about having a threesome that you make a compromise you don’t want to make. I’ve made those compromises. They’re the kind that make you wonder who you are after you wake up and your head feels like it collapsed and you’re naked and wearing clown makeup and you’re too ashamed to look at yourself in the mirror until you call an exorcist or something. That’s the sort of compromise that guys end up making when they get overzealous about having a threesome. So watch yourself.

Remember, they’re overrated. You don’t have to have a threesome before you die. That’s a lie. They’re overrated.

2. The setup.

So as I hinted about before, there are two ways to do this. Technically they’re the right way and the wrong way, but there’s a right and a wrong way to do both of them. That sounds complicated, and it is. Unnecessarily complicated. So there are four ways, if you’re keeping score. Shutup about it or I’ll turn it into nine.

Here are the four ways you can set up a threesome:

The Right Right Way.

You have a girlfriend who’s so cool you can’t believe it, and the only thing stopping you from marrying her is the fact that you don’t have a solid career or even, technically, a job. Maybe you just really like her a lot, I don’t know. All of this is a pretty fucking big “if” at any costs, because it involves having a girlfriend who is super into the idea of having a threesome with you and a friend of hers. Like it’s almost as much her idea as it is yours, and you’re both really into it and her friend is really into it too, and you’ve talked about it a little, like assurances are made that this won’t turn into a nightmare love triangle thing and you’re going to be adult about it, but the conversation was more of a formality because that’s how you both actually feel anyway. But that’s The Right Right Way to do it, when you’re already in a relationship of two people and you both really want to try it with somebody you can trust who wants to do it with you guys.

But of course this is like saying that the right right way to get rich is finding a briefcase full of money in your pantry.

The Wrong Right Way.

You have a girlfriend who you don’t really like a lot but you’re in the relationship because she’s the type of person who’d do a threesome just to keep you in her crazy hotsex clutches. Technically, you might as well do the threesome with her, because that’s what your priority levels are set at and you might as well go all the way with it, but just know you’re headed for a nuclear explosion of a breakup, and there’s a solid chance that the entire next year of your life is going to be horrible if you get involved with a woman like this. Not worth it.

Or you have a girlfriend who’s really awesome but who isn’t too into the idea of a threesome but you’re going to convince her to do it by, I don’t know, taking ballroom dancing classes or doing something else she wants you to do but you don’t want to do. First of all, you should just do the ballroom classes anyway, because they’re probably going to be more fun than you think and your girlfriend will have a good time. Second, if she’s not into the idea of a threesome, it’s not going to be a fun threesome. And a threesome is sex, remember, and sex is a bummer when people aren’t into it. In fact, it’s maybe the biggest bummer of all time.

So when it’s sexy what’s your fantasy talk time, just say, “I’d like a threesome, but no biggie, I’d also like to own a football team. I’ll settle for a blowjob.” Then maybe that way there’s a little idea of a threesome in the back of her head (right here I’m going to avoid a terrible joke which references the previous sentence) that she can’t shake and maybe she’ll get excited about it and you can do things the Right Right Way. But you don’t want to be pushy. If that little threesome bird never comes back to your window, then you have to let it go. It’s out there, flying free. No “please please pleases” or promises to do the dishes every night forever. Be a man. It’s over.

The Right Wrong Way.

This is the version of threesome where “it just happened.” Like you were hanging out with some people and you got drunk and then crazily there was like a near-threesome situation happening, and then you were like “fuck it, let’s do this,” and you had a threesome.

The problem with it is there’s almost no way to predict or control the situation. It just happens, so how do you set it up? Well, you don’t. You can’t. All you can do is be vigilant for the opportunity.

You have probably been involved in social situations which could have turned into threesomes and not known it. Just put that thought into your head, and the next time you find yourself in an extended conversation with two people over drinks, allow yourself to think “could this ever conceivably turn into a threesome, and if so would I be even mildly interested in that?”

It’s a fun game to play. Thoughts are free. You’re allowed to have as many of them as you want, even if that means talking to somebody about tort reform while imagining a threesome with them and their Dad. Nobody has to know you thought about it, and don’t worry, it doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a funny person.

Plus, if you’re in a situation where you think to yourself, “Yes, this could be a threesome, and yes, I want in,” you can act accordingly, which just means being equally friendly to both parties. That’s a nice way to be anyway. Nobody likes to feel left out. They don’t have to know you’re thinking “threesome threesome threesome.”

Then you just continue to flirt openly with both parties and gauge whether or not they mind, and if they don’t you get more aggressive and see if they mind, and so on until a threesome either “just happens” or doesn’t. But you never want to be like a drill sergeant about it, like “threesome at 0300 hours.” In fact, you never want to say the word “threesome.” You just go with the flow, and if the flow towards Threesomeville gets cut off, you’re cool with it. No biggie. You enjoyed the conversation.

Oh yeah: you should make sure you actually enjoy the conversation, otherwise you’re going to end up doing things The Wrong Wrong Way.

The Wrong Wrong Way.

This is where you meet two skanks at a bar and you’re lonely and bored and depressed and you think one of them is medium hot, like let’s say a 7, but she’s got a grating uptalky voice where everything sounds like a question, and the other one is slightly smarter but she’s got a really weak chin and she’s overweight in an uncute way, and these two for whatever reason have their entire sense of self staked on the notion that they’re “two crazy bitches,” as if that’s a good thing.

You see where this is going, right? You didn’t leave the house that morning expecting to have a threesome, and all of a sudden here’s one staring at you in the face, and it’s being about as subtle as the showgirl’s makeup it’s wearing on its eyes.

I’m not here to judge. Maybe you go for it. I’ve done worse things in my life. I just know that this is the type of threesome scenario that is A. more common than the Right Wrong Way or the Right Right Way, and B. the reason why “threesomes are overrated.” The smart play is to not hang out with people who you’re only hanging out with because of the possibility of a threesome. That’s not a great “only redeeming quality” to have. You’re better than that. But of course you have your penis to consider too. And you’re the only one who knows whether or not your penis is better than that.

3. Logistics.

Technically speaking, a threesome only really works if all three people are attracted to each other to the point where they’d go at it with just the two of them.

Otherwise it’d be a situation where two people are so attracted to one person that they don’t care what happens so long as they get to be there fucking that person. And you’re not going to be involved in one of those ever because you don’t have spooky Bill Clinton presidential sex charisma. I shook his hand once and I might have had sex with him. I don’t know. He was so charismatic I blacked out. I’m not even lying. It was like a crazy voodoo trick from the movies where the hero suddenly realizes he’s been drugged. Anyway, that’s not you.

So you’re looking to create a threesome situation where everybody wants to fuck everybody. Think of it as one thing. Instead of doing twice the “work,” (I hate to call it “work” when I’m talking about sex, because it’s not work, but let’s face it, sometimes it’s work, like it tires you out because you’re working really hard at fucking somebody) think of yourself of doing one third of the “work” of this whole event. It’s not about you. It’s about the three of you doing this together. Otherwise it’s going to get super boring the second you blow your load.

Yeah. That’s what I was getting at.

Real life threesomes have nothing whatsoever to do with porn threesomes, where two fake-titted weirdos bounce up and down on a roid rage boner and then it spews all over them and everybody’s happy, like “taadaa!” No. In a real life threesome your orgasm is just a minor landmark on the roadside. Or at least it should be if everybody’s enjoying themselves. Remember that women aren’t as goal-oriented as dudes. They do things like eat meals slowly in order to savor the experience, even when they’re really hungry. It doesn’t really make sense until you see it in action in a threesome.

That’s just how women are made. They’re totally insatiable because they enjoy everything too much.

So you have to keep doing something to continue the festivities even if you’ve just blown a load. Sorry, but them’s the rules. Otherwise you’re being selfish and making the whole thing about you. Actually, that’s a good idea even if we’re not talking about threesomes. But we are. Remember, even though you’ve totally had a big porno-style orgasm, there are still two people who are also having sex with each other, and if you can help them with that, you should. Otherwise they’ll forget you’re even there because they’re women and women are insatiable. You don’t want that. You want them to be as excited as you are when you’re ready to go again.

If that seems exhausting to you, great, you get points for being perceptive. It should be a crazy exhausting all nighter. Man up. You only get so many chances at this sort of thing.

As for the general tone of the proceedings, you want to go with a fun slumber party vibe for the initial stuff, like the removal of clothes and the making out and stuff. Then when stuff gets more serious, like when something’s happening that feels really really good to any one person, there will be a certain “we’re really serious about this?” hush, which you want to treat delicately. Don’t break that silence. Here’s one of those classic dude saying the wrong thing at the wrong time blunder opportunities. You’ve got a real chance to be about as sexy as the guy in the bow tie at the salad bar who really wants to talk in depth about the weather if you say the wrong thing during this silence. Just keep your mouth shut and be a cool customer. Quiet confidence.

Then when it’s clear that things are getting really really serious, like you’re next in line for an orgasm and you’ve got everybody’s attention, that’s when you’re allowed to start talking a little. Then once everybody’s had an orgasm you can go back to slumber party mode and things will be a little more relaxed.

But you’ve got to be careful in that initial sacred “we’re really doing this” moment. Think of yourself as a plaything, like the angel from Barbarella, or that Bjork song “Venus As a Boy” or, really, just think of Bjork. “Bjork Bjork Bjork. I really like Bjork’s music.” That’s the kind of dude you want to be in the initial proceedings. Then you can get a little more ballsy later once you’ve earned it.

Of course all of this is theoretical, right?

I mean, you’ve never had a threesome. If you have, you don’t really need this. You’re already living it.

Guide to Breaking Up With Somebody Who Might Be Crazy

The reason why there’s such a thing as dating is because you don’t want to marry just anybody. Even in countries where they don’t even let anybody look at a woman, there’s a kind of dating where people’s families get together and decide whether or not the dude and the girl are right for each other. They don’t just run around all crazy getting married. It’s a nice setup. Takes the pressure off.

But here in the modern world we’ve liberated ourselves from things being easy by introducing advances like crazy girls who fuck on the first date and then follow you everywhere and then when you try to tell them to leave you alone they cry and tell you about how they’ve been raped and how they love you because you’re different.

It’s a brave new world. And it kind of sucks.

My point is this: if you’re just a regular dude trying to mind your own business and occasionally get laid in the process, you are going to end up with a crazy person on your hands. At least once. Because crazy people are pretty good at hiding the fact that they’re crazy for like two weeks, during which you’ll have a little devil on your shoulder saying, “See if she’ll have sex in an abandoned construction site. See if she’ll have sex on a hotel balcony. See if she’ll have sex in the supply closet at Toys R’ Us. Good God I love her boobs,” even while your brain’s thinking things like “that thing where she had to stack her ravioli was a little weird.”

That little devil is putting you in a cage made of shit, and you’re in for a facefull of crazy.

And yeah, “crazy,” is a lazy term for somebody who’s working through some pretty intense shit and has no idea how different they are from normal because they’re so deep inside of their personal crisis they don’t even know that it’s never ok to break into somebody’s house in order to sleep next to them. “Crazy” is a word us people who are in better places in our lives use to get away from those types of people, because you can only do so much to help somebody when crazy sex is your only reward. You’re a boyfriend, not a therapist.

So you can get off your own back for using the word “crazy” as a way of dismissing somebody. Sometimes these people need to be serially dismissed before they can even begin to figure out what the hell is wrong with themselves. Sometimes you just don't want a girlfriend, and you'll think a perfectly good person is crazy when really they're just a woman, and all women are crazy, and you only think it's too much to put up with if you don't really want a grilfriend all that much. It's really hard to tell the difference, and what makes it even worse is there's essentially no difference between a crazy person and a normal person you just don't feel like getting involved with.

Another thing that sometimes will happen is that you’ll be in a relationship with somebody you only kind of like, but who really really really likes you a lot and doesn’t mind doing little things that make your life better like driving you to work and buying you toothpaste. You get more involved than you’d ordinarily want to pretty fast because you have this little devil on your shoulder saying, “Settle for this, she’ll buy you toothpaste and she has nice boobs. Settle for this. You’re just afraid of commitment, that’s all. So what if you don’t have anything in common and you find the sound of her voice grating? She’s nice. Settle for this.”

That little devil is an asshole and he’s eventually going to hurt this poor girl’s feelings.

No matter what little devil you’ve been listening to, there may come a time when you’ve got three voicemails you don’t have the energy to return, and you realize that your body is sabotaging the relationship because it knows more than you do, like that one summer where you just could not bring yourself to finish painting that rich guy’s house because your body was telling you to quit the house painting job, and you’ll have the thought “Ok, serisouly, I have to break up with this person. Nice boobs or not, I’m not into this.”

Well, welcome to hell, motherfucker. You’re about to have to break up with somebody who’s either totally crazy or, worse, just really nice, and it’s going to fuck up your whole life for like a year. That’s what you get for listening to that little devil. Fuck that guy.

So pretty soon after you have your big “fuck this” talk with yourself, you’re going to have to have it with the person you’re dating. If it’s one of those things where your body has sabotaged the relationship, it’s likely she’s going to want to talk to you too. About those three voicemails you haven’t returned and the fact that she almost went to the hospital because she couldn’t breathe but her brother talked her out of it, but still, a talk is a talk.

Remember: you have to do this. This little relationship bandaid you put over your hurt little heart has to be ripped off. There’s no way around it. Don’t pull it off slowly. It’ll just take longer and hurt twice as much.

The rules are:

1. You do it in person.

The fact that you’re here is your fault. You were listening to that little devil instead of using your brain, and you let old Mr. Penis tell you how to live your life. That’s not her fault. So you’ve got to be a man and do this in person. Unless your brain is actually being smart for once and telling old Mr. Penis to take a hike after you’ve only been on a couple of dates and you still haven’t had any sex. Then you can do a phone “this is no good for me” or even a no thanks walkaway notalk thing. But if you’ve succumbed to the voice of the little devil and taken old Mr. Penis along for the ride more than once, then you’re breaking up in person. It’s the man’s way.

2. You don’t need to be cruel. Try to avoid it.

How a break up goes is actually a great test of a person’s mettle. Like if they take it well and say “this is going to make me sad, but I don’t want to be with somebody who’s not into the relationship,” then you’re going to be like “oh fuck, this person’s great. I’m stupid for not wanting to be with her,” and it’s going to be a rough few months for you.

And that’s the best case scenario for a breakup. Like for the actual breakup itself, not for how you feel afterwards.

The worst case scenario is when you’re breaking up with somebody crazy and they won’t let you out of their car until you undump them. Which is ridiculous. You can’t argue your way out of “I don’t want to be with you anymore.” But they don’t know that because they’re crazy and they have to stack their raviolis before they eat them.

Here’s where you’ll be tempted to be cruel, if just to get the fuck out of that car and into a normal life that doesn’t involve this person who is now making it apparent that their one goal in life is to destroy you. Don’t. You’re better than that. Explain how you feel without resorting to exaggerations and “I feel like I’m in a cage made of shit that’s sinking in quicksand, and you’re stomping on my head while I’m asking you for a rope” imagery, even if that is how you actually feel. Just state the truth of not wanting to be in the relationship anymore, and how that’s not going to change, and how it’s bad for her to be in a relationship with somebody who feels that way, and that she deserves better.

Repeat yourself if you need to. You will need to. You can even say, “I can’t say it any more plainly and I don’t want to be cruel about it. I want to be an adult about it. Please let me out of this car.” But don’t raise your voice and don’t compare her to a cage made of shit. The worst that can happen is she’ll kidnap you and you’ll never see your family again, which probably won’t happen because she’s going to have to come to her senses eventually. Keep repeating yourself rationally until she either lets you out of the car or goes to the bathroom and you’ll have a chance to tap S.O.S. into the radiator with the chair she tied you to. Maybe you could also dial 911 with your nose. But you don’t want to be cruel because she might go totally apeshit Kathy Bates on you if you do.

3. Do it near her house.

This is one I’ve learned about the hard way a couple of times. It’s just poor form to make her drive home while crying. I’d like to take this chance to publicly apologize to the people who have had to drive themselves home after I broke up with them. Seriously, my bad, guys. I’m glad you didn’t plow into a Puerto Rican family at a bus stop. You’re a better person than me, and you're better off without me. See? I told you, you'd be better off without me. Please don't call my Dad anymore.

You might be tempted to do this breakup thing near your own house because that way you can run into it and lock them out, but that’s chickenshit. You’re a man. Be a man.

4. Clichés.

Breakup language is full of clichés. There’s “it’s not you, it’s me,” and all that kind of stuff. That’s a bad one. Some of them are ok. Breakup clichés are designed to protect a person’s feelings while getting the point across. So they’re kind of chickenshit. You can describe your feelings without saying “it’s not you, it’s me.”

5. Get off your own back.

I know I said it’s your fault that you’re here. And it is. But there’s no reason to super duper beat yourself up over it for her benefit. You’re going to have a rough couple of months here anyway, because breakups are the worst. There’s no reason to pull a nose hair and give the old fake cry because I let you down thing. You should admit guilt, yes, absolutely, but don’t make the whole thing about how much of a shithead you are. They’re going to think you’re a shithead anyway because you broke up with them. Don’t worry about driving the point home.

This is good advice for your mental state after the breakup too.

The big thing you did wrong here was you told a white lie somewhere along the way, like when she asked you something you’d have to be a monster to tell the truth for, like “when did you know you wanted to be with me?” (or some other fucking tricky voodoo question full of assumptions and trap doors) and you can’t say “never” or even “I’m still working on it” because you just had sex for like two hours. And then once you told that one white lie to spare her feelings, you kept telling more and hoping they’d come true. So all these white lies became like snow building on top of a mountain, and the breakup is the avalanche that happens when the maiden who lives in the cottage in the valley won’t stop yodeling even though she can see all the snow building on the mountaintop.

Nobody wants to be crushed by a million tons of ice, but you can’t always totally blame the mountain. Sometimes snow happens. She’ll claw her way out and go find another mountain to yodel at. Hopefully a less dangerous one with less snow on it. It’ll be good for both of you, eventually. So there’s no reason for dramatic self-flagellation. You can always save yourself with convoluted metaphoric alpine imagery.

Now you're free and clear. A good way to know you did the right thing is you'll feel like dancing, or leaping into the sky and yelling "I'm freeeeeee!"

Also: you should only date people that you're physically capable of outrunning. That's a good rule of thumb.

Guide to Holiday Gift-Giving

Not to be all Bah Humbug on Christmas, but the gift-giving part of the Holiday season has become a little ridiculous. It’s basically a war of misplaced thoughtfulness and false thanking. If somebody gets you something amazing, you feel burdened by gratitude and anxious about what you got them. If they get you something that sucks, you have to pretend you love it, and then you get pissed off about the time and effort you’ve spent on their gift.

To accomplish all of this, you’ve got to go to retail stores which are designed specifically to make dudes uncomfortable. You wander around these places and you can’t figure out why they don’t just have a place to sit anywhere, and why you feel so unnaturally exhausted while your girlfriend is seemingly enjoying herself so much. It’s because they want you gone. Retail establishments pump a very specific Y-chromosome targeting poison into their air ducts. It makes you so tired and stupid that, in the absence of available chairs, all you want in the world is to wait in the car and listen to oldies radio. I’m convinced of this.

If boyfriends didn’t exist, there would be chairs everywhere in these places. But as things are, they have to ward off dudes, because that eyeroll you give your girlfriend when she asks if you think something is cute is killing skirt sales. They put the skirts right there in front for a reason, and it’s so girlfriends will want to spend six months in Target deliberating over and eventually buying skirts they think are cute instead of just going to get the fucking Taboo game you’re there for, paying for it, and leaving in 20 minutes so you can go home and watch TNT like you want to. My girlfriend sometimes drags me along with her to go to places just so she won’t spend as much money or time. Like on purpose. Also I think she gets some amount of pleasure out of torturing me.

I hate it. The whole thing. You spend your whole life fighting against the stereotype of “women love to shop, hoo boy!” And then you get a girlfriend, and she’s great but she really loves to shop, and you’re like, “Ok, I guess it’s a cliche because it’s true. Here I am standing in the women’s wear section, holding a purse and a coat, while another shopping zombie man like me awkwardly describes sweater colors into his cell phone, which clearly has a very impatient wife on the other end. I’m overhearing every agonizing word, and from what I can tell, he wishes he was dead. I would too. I also have no idea what the difference is between salmon and coral. I can’t believe I’m feeling relieved that all I have to do is hold a coat and a purse while standing in the women’s wear section for 45 minutes while my girlfriend tries on cute skirts. I thought I was living inside of a nightmare, but it turns out my life right now is a petty humiliation and inconvenience compared to salmon vs. coral guy. And yet I still hate this with all of my heart. Goddamn, I’m tired. I want so badly just to go sit in the car and listen to the fucking Moody Blues until this horrible day is over. And I hate the Moody Blues.” Later you will catch yourself humming “Nights in White Satin” and wonder what the fuck happened to your life.

That is, more or less, the magic of shopping. And Christmas is a holiday that requires shopping. Sometimes girls say, “You hate Christmas,” or, “I love Christmas,” when they really mean “You hate shopping,” or, “I love shopping.” This is unfair. Dudes don’t hate Christmas. Dudes hate shopping, traffic, and cheap sentiment. Unfortunately, Christmas is 90% shopping, traffic, and cheap sentiment. It’s not our fault. We still like Christmas. We like Bing Crosby, getting drunk on egg nog, sharing blankets with our shopaholic girlfriends and drinking cocoa with rum in it while watching It’s a Wonderful Life, ice skating, Christmas lights, holiday parties, and futzing around with toys. We only hate shopping and traffic. And cheap sentiment. Ok, some cheap sentiment is fine. It’s Christmas. But still bullsh on traffic and shopping, and especially traffic you have to fight through to get to a shopping place. That’s the worst.

But of course you have to get gifts for people, because those people are getting gifts for you, and if your gift sucks you will feel awful.

I buy everything online. I recommend it to every dude in the world. It’s the best. First of all, you get to do it at work while you’re getting paid to do something else that you’re not doing. This is a very efficient way to do things. Second of all, you get to… actually, there is no second of all. It’s just exactly like shopping, only you’re in a chair. That’s really all dudes want, is to sit. And if you do it at home, you can listen to the fucking Moody Blues at the same time if you want.

It’s the best.

But what do you get for people?

Ask. Then get stuff they want. If they’re evasive about what they want, dudes get Westerns and/or World War II movies on DVD and ladies get things that make them warm, like fuzzy socks and pajama bottoms and slippers. Grandmothers get things that make them smell like Grandmothers, or things they can eat with their delicate little Grandmother teeth, like a jelly sampler. People from the office get nothing. Maybe a card. Unless you’re the president of your office or you’ve got a staff of people who work for you, and then you can get them something nice, like a gift certificate to Amazon.com (that your employees can use to do their holiday shopping instead of working) or a pair of Dan Marino Isotoner gloves.

For girlfriends, you have to be careful. First of all, these are the people who are out there shopping for things for you with the same process of endlessly careful deliberation they use to decide on things for themselves. They claim that this makes whatever they get you a thoughtful gift, because it is a gift that for them is literally full of their thoughts. Believe it or not, she fretted over that windbreaker for nearly an hour, including conversations about color choice, size, price, and style with a clerk, two strangers, and her mother via cell phone. Yes. That windbreaker. The one that you can tell you’re only going to wear three times. It is the result of a mountain of effort, and you had better repay in kind.

Ask. It doesn’t hurt to ask. The other thing you can do is notice things she likes while she’s dragging you shopping, and then go back and get them later. It will likely be a cute skirt of some kind that you talked her out of. This is the one silver lining to going shopping with your girlfriend. When you talk her out of something because she doesn’t need it, and then you go back and buy that thing for her, it’s like a magic trick where all of a sudden she thinks you like shopping as much as she does, and you really get her, and even more interestingly, she thinks you agonized over this cute skirt as much as she did. Even though you didn’t. You just let her do all the work for you. And you don’t "get" her. And you still hate shopping as much as ever because you just had to go to the same place twice and there was nowhere to sit, and you didn’t know what size she is so you had to call her mother while some weird dude holding a purse and a coat looked at you funny while humming "Nights in White Satin." And now you probably also have to get your girlfriend's mother something. Shit.

Anyway, yeah. Go online. Sit down. Listen to the Moody Blues, and buy your girlfriend’s Mom a gourmet cheese sampler. The good news is you’ll be done with it soon enough. And there’s a Rocky marathon on TNT.

Guide to Waking Up Next to Someone Who's Currently Pissing In Their Sleep

Look, I'm not here to judge, ok? You might need this guide. I don't care if you do or not, but you might. You won't know you need it until you really really need it, though.

First thing's first, and this is just a good life idea that has nothing to do with people peeing in the bed you fell asleep in, but you should always have an alternate emergency sleeping option. There's always the floor, which is a good place to sleep if you want to turn the whole thing into a "get this" story. But in general, there should be a couch somewhere nearby. If you want to turn this thing into a truly crazy story for later, you can go for the "booty call doorstep at somebody else's house" route, but that's just for daredevil points. Let's face it, you don't need to grab that particular brass ring. It's 4:30am and you've got somebody else's piss on your abdomen. It's at least giggleworthy. Maybe just some paper towels and a cat there making a weird face at you, and you've got an all time story for later anyway.

To start with, insensitivity is a bad reaction. You're kind of complicit in this thing. I mean, first of all, if somebody's pissing uncontrollably in their sleep while you're there, then there's like a 100% chance that you borked (or at least tried to bork) a drunkie. Odds are, and common funloving decency dictates, that you're pretty drunk yourself, and therefore you don't have to worry too hard about the whole "blackout rape" angle, unless you did actually rape somebody, in which case the polite thing to do is to quietly remove yourself from the premises and then blast your face off with a shotgun. Anyway, you were a part of the problem at least somewhere in the evening's events if you've now ended up next to somebody who is pissing in their sleep. I don't know how, but you were, simply by virtue of allowing this predicament to have ever been a possibility. So use the requisite amount of "my bad" tact when it becomes apparent that you're lying in a pee bath.

You might think it will take the quiet dignity of Gandhi not to start screaming, "WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE? You're peeing on me!" And swat at the person like their torso is on fire. You'd be surprised. At first you're stone cold asleep, so there's a period of panic where you don't know what the fuck is going on.

It's like this:

1. I'm awake.
2. I'm wet.
3. Why am I wet?
4. It's warm.
5. Am I peeing?

pause

6. No, she is peeing.

Steps one through five will prepare you to deal with this situation in a civil manner. You can't get all that mad when there was a solid agonizing second and a half when you suspected yourself to be peeing. In that weird postsleep logic, it might have been you and you just woke up too late, even though everything about you is dry except one buttcheek. People are idiots when they just wake up, but they're idiots who are more in touch with the spiritual truth of the matter because they're still halfway in their subconscious, so the logic works in this case. You are complicit. That pee is at least partially your pee. Maybe not physically, but ethically.

When you arrive at thought 6, if you think it's ongoing and there's a good chance of stopping the damage, you can attempt to wake them up. Give a good nudge. This nudge should be enough for the person to wake up all at once, like, "Holy moley I am peeing right now!" If it's not, it won't be worth the effort to keep nudging. That's a lost cause, my friend.

You have to think in the long term, here. Do you want to deal with waking up a piss zombie and putting her in the shower or whatever and cleaning things up and getting new sheets, or, if it's your house and you're a true bachelor fuckhead, washing the one pair of sheets you own that she's currently pissing in? Or do you want to go sleep on the couch and let her wake up feeling all guilty about it so you can work on it together the next day while she sheepishly asks you if you had sex last night? They're both shitty options, but #2 is better by a factor of like a million.

So, here's what you do, according to whether you're home or away:

If you're home - don't panic. Just get up and move to a dry place and sleep there. Do not think about all the work you will be doing tomorrow as a result of this whole pee in your bed thing. Do not get angry. Do not be afraid. Pee is sterile. You cannot get AIDS from drunken slut piss. Walk gently in your dream state and take your pillow to the couch and pass out there. You will work on this together in the morning, which is only fair because you're complicit.

She will feel suuuuper guilty and offer to do more than her share of the work anyway. You should let her if she offers, but only after telling her not to worry about it twice. I mean, the truth of the matter is, she peed in your fucking bed. Don't take that tone about it, though. You both know what happened. She got over the top drunk and you took advantage of that and now here you are with pee in your sheets. If she just bolts right away without offering to clean anything up, then you're in trouble. Either she's mortified and one of those self-conscious types, or she's mortified and one of those "I will fully go to a police station and claim something horrible happened in order to preserve some sense of self-respect" types. So it's touchy. Be gracious. Err on the side of Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years.

The idea here is you should prove yourself worthy of sex under non so-drunk-I-piss-in-your-bed conditions. If you're not even remotely interested in ever having sex with this person again, then that means you're a rapist. So fucking find a way, dude. Give it the old razzle dazzle.

If you're away, things are a little trickier, and you go by feel.

Ask yourself three questions:

1. Where am I right now?
2. Who is this peeing person next to me?
3. How did I end up here, in this bed, with this person who is quietly pissing all over herself?

If the answer to any of these questions is "I don't know," then you stay there (maybe not there there, in the bed there, but in the apartment) and you find the fuck out in the morning. That's a rule. You're not in any shape for travelling anyway. When you wake up on that couch or floor or whatever it is, don't leave until you know the answer to all of those questions. Hopefully you can figure all this out through remembering and other clues without having a conversation of any kind with anybody. But if you have to bite the bullet and go face to face with it, then at least you can be assured that you didn't do anything too bad, because you were too drunk to and clearly (because, you know, she peed and you didn't) so was she. Once you know the answers to these questions three, you get out of there. Leave her alone with her embarrassment.

If you wake up and you feel pee and you immediately know the answers to all three of those questions, then it's your call what to do next. If you know who the person is and you're in that person's house, then you know how to get in touch with that person, so it's ok to leave. If you're super tired and pretty drunk and it would be easier and better for your life to stay on the couch until the bus starts running again, you do that.

Away is much better for a number of reasons. There's the obvious one of nobody peed in your bed, but then there's also the one of "Wait, did I basically drag a drunk person home and then bone her? What am I? This is pretty fucking egregious, even for me." Really the only way a home-invasion style bedwetting is acceptable is if it's postparty or a roommate situation. But that can happen, so it's good there's a guide for this.

Oh yeah. One more thing. The endgame. So if you've spent the night with somebody who peed the bed, whether or not you ever want to again is a fairly logical question to ask yourself. There's a sort of "fool me once, shame on you..." quality to it. Hey, that's fine. I wouldn't. Unless. Unless there's just enough of a guilt twinge about the circumstances of super drunken lowly lonely blackout rape sex to keep the candle burning for another go around. And maybe it's an aberration, you don't know. Maybe the love of your life just peed in your bed the one time right away and that's how you knew you'd be together forever, because she peed in your bed and you didn't mind and then there's Disney rainbows shooting out of your ass. But probably not. Anyway, you can end things right away after the second time she does it. That's a pretty clear signal of "if you want to deal with me, you're getting pissed on."

Oh, I should add that you should leave your contact info or at least some clue of how to get in touch with you in the person's apartment. Just in case you made her pregnant or something. It's a nice touch.

Welcome Douchebags!

Douchebags are everywhere.

In fact, it’s highly likely that you are one. I’m one. I’m a little more repentant about it than I used to be, but let’s face it, that’s what I am. Under a liberal enough definition, pretty much everybody is a douchebag. Douchebags are people who are concerned primarily with themselves. If your age is two digits and starts with a number 1 or 2, you have very nearly a 100% chance of being a douchebag. That percentage drops as you age, but never to zero. You can be a douchebag for the rest of your life. I’ve seen it. Even if you’re a non-douchebag, you’re going to have your moments. I’d wager to say that even Mother Theresa had douchbag days. Maybe just like a douchebag minute or two every once in a while when the orphanage ran out of blankets. But still. Mother Theresa? Huge douchebag. At least once, probably.

So what? So we’re all douchebags? If it’s universal, what difference does it make? Well, none. But: if you’re going to be a douchebag (and rest assured, you are) there are ways to go about it that aren’t quite as douchebaggy as they could be. Or there are ways to go about it that are douchebaggy to the max, which has its own sort of divine, self-defeating beauty (kind of like Gene Simmons). It's also possible to try so hard not to be a douchebag that you end up accidentally being kind of a douchebag (kind of like Terry Gross). Sometimes the best way to not be a douchebag is to learn how to be a total douchebag, try it and find out the hard way that it’s not really for you. It’s like your Dad forcing you to smoke an entire carton of cigarettes after he caught you behind the garage awkwardly not inhaling one of Doug Duncan’s Salems back in the seventh grade. Either you never touch another cigarette for the rest of your life or you find out you love smoking, which, let’s face it, if you were hanging around Doug Duncan, was going to happen anyway. Might as well cut to the chase.

“Cut to the chase” is more or less the mantra of the effective douchebag, by the way. Actually, “effective” is the mantra of the douchebag, and “cut to the chase” is a colloquial way of saying that. People tend not to mind when you’re a douchebag if you’re at least effective about it. That means you know what you want to accomplish, and then you accomplish it as effectively as possible without screwing everything up for everybody else. If you pull it off with enough style, nobody will be mad at you. Well, maybe a few people will be mad at you, but those people are pussies. By and large, though, if you pull something off with perfect douchebag style, people will be more impressed than anything.

I’m speaking in generalities here. I realize that. But let’s say that you want to accomplish a threesome. There are ways to do it that are effective enough to make the “ew yuck, you’re a dude who wants to have a threesome more than he wants to do anything else right now” factor disappear, or at least augment those “yucky” knee-jerks into more of an “oh, you crazy rascal!” kind of thing. I’ll add a guide to threesomes later, just so you know, but trust me, there are ways. I have theories.

And of course I’m not just going to be talking about threesomes and sex things here. There are all manner of things to be discussed. Stuff like how to have fun for a weekend in New York without spending money, how to talk to a cop, and how to fight a bike messenger at a party. Most of them are completely idle fantasies and crackpot theories that will never go into practice, but you never know. You might need these guides. At the very least you can read them for like 20 minutes instead of doing actual work at your shitty job that you hate. I will probably also later write a guide to shitty jobs that you hate.

For now, I just want to get out some sort of organizing mission statement in the form of a rambling blog post. Life is a hustle, more or less. There’s the “taking care of the stuff you need to take care of to survive” hustle, the “learning from your mistakes” hustle, and the “being happy” hustle. They’re all hustles, more or less. That’s the way things are. I won’t get into all the pseudo-intellectual “commodification of desire in the modern age” philosophical claptrap that backs this up. You’re either being hustled or you’re hustling at any given time in any of the above-mentioned areas. Of course there’s also the “why bother trying so hard?” angle to things, but that doesn’t work too well for douchebags. Douchebags can cause too much collateral damage to be all loosey goosey like that. Good ones do, at least.

So, welcome douchebag!

Your guide to life is finally here.