Guide to Lying

Everybody lies. Sorry, but it’s true. I don’t care if you’re Johnny Upright, and you’re one hundred percent honest all the time or else you don’t even say anything. At some point somebody is going to force you to lie to them.

They will say, with their eyes, “I am a sad person and I’m taking this bullshit thing very seriously. Please please tell me you agree with me on this. I need you to agree with me on this for some reason. I know deep in my heart whatever I need you to say is not true. I just need you to help me lie to myself about it so I can move on with my crazy delusional life. Just lie to me about this one thing and I will leave you alone, I promise. Even just a side lie, where I ask you what you honestly think and you say, ‘It’s not really my thing;’ can you muster that? At least just feign ignorance, for my sake. Just a tiny lie. I’ve had a rough couple of months/years/entire life and I need to hear a lie or two right now. That’s not so hard, is it?” Of course they’re saying all of this with their eyes. What they’re saying with their mouths is something along the lines of, “isn’t [some thing] just… the best?”

Of course you’re gonna break down and lie in that situation. There are degrees of lying, and the utility of telling somebody you barely know that you like their pencil drawing of a fetus in order to end the conversation and more quickly not have to talk to them ever again is just too high to ignore. But: it’s still a lie. Forced or not. And lying is trouble.

Technically the better thing to do is say that you don’t like it, in fact you very much don’t like it, and you can’t figure out why they did it, and more importantly you can’t figure out why they would do such a thing if a stranger’s opinion about it is going to be so important later that they’d want to pressure that stranger into lying about it. And, oddly, isn’t a publicly displayed pencil drawing of a fetus supposed to be kind of a “fuck you?” Am I even supposed to like it? Honestly, I don’t like it as either a thing or as a “fuck you.” It’s an incredibly clumsy “fuck you.” I’m not impressed by it in any way. Let me be clear about this: whichever response will mean less conversation with you about art, or really anything, that’s what I’m looking to give you. This fetus drawing is fantastically mediocre. It provokes no particular response, other than a desire to laugh at it briefly through my nose and then move on forever. I cannot believe I have thought about it for this long. Goodbye.

Technically that’s better. Because that’s honest.

But in a way the more honest thing to do is to say “it’s really good,” and then avoid eye contact and get the Hell out of there. Because that’s at least emotionally honest. That’s a between-the-lines way of saying, “Hey, I’m a nice guy and I don’t want to get into it with you about this pencil-drawing fetus. I just want to go to dinner and laugh about it with my girlfriend for like 4 seconds until we start talking about something else.”

The real lie going on there is the original lie. The lie of the artist to himself about whether or not he’s pulling it off with this pencil-drawing-of-a-fetus stuff.

Art is weird. It’s almost completely subjective to say what’s good and what’s not. You can describe some qualities that most people would objectively consider to be general qualities of good art. “Provocative” is one of those qualities. But of course “provocative” is just a word. It gets used so much in so many different ways that it doesn’t really describe anything until you add more words to it. And you’ve got a lot of weird people doing art, some of whom won’t understand that making something that’s “provocative” isn’t the same thing as making good art, because you can’t make good anything if that thing only has one value and that value is as flimsy as “provocative.” Some of these people don’t even understand what they’re “provoking” when they’re being intentionally “provocative.” They’re probably not aiming for strong, resolute, and immediate indifference as a provoked response. But they don’t understand that, some of these weird people who would have you think they “do art.”

And one of those people is currently standing next to a pencil drawing of a fetus, glaring at you like they know something you don’t when in fact it’s the other way around. You know their fetus drawing isn’t good by any measure. And to that end, you also know that irony can only get you so far before you have to get out and walk. Like out of the gallery and, thankfully, on to the next thing in your life that’s not a pencil drawing of a fetus.

Of course if you’re 19, you might not know that about irony yet. You might laugh in that guy’s face about his fetus drawing and tell him that you love it, and then realize that you hurt his feelings a little by assuming he’s in on the joke, and then laugh at the fact that he was serious, and then go over to the wine table and steal a bottle of Trader Joe’s Merlot, and then continue your party of a life through a never ending series of laughing at things you think are dumb and doing stupid shit until you realize life is pretty long and at the end of it, one day, you’re going to die. And then, usually somewhere around age 24-26, you’ll know that irony can only get you so far before you have to get out and walk. Sometimes, though, it gets you pretty far. It’s not totally worthless, thank God.

Anyhow, lying is trouble. But if you’re going to use the above example, the worst lie you can tell is a lie to yourself that you believe. Lies of this nature include, “Yeah man, people don’t know how to handle my fetus drawing art, I’m great.” And, “Oh man, I’m so great I get to laugh at the fetus drawing guy’s face because I did a few things that are better than a fetus drawing.” Neither one of those self-lies really hurt anybody but the person they’re an issue for, but unless that person tries to get rid of them, they’re just going to stay there and reverberate through the years until they grow into the lie-based assumptions for genuine neuroses. In both of these cases we’d be talking about narcissism. But there are other common self-lies that turn into other things, like how “I know what I’m doing” can turn into OCD after a while, or “I can do anything I want” can turn into a dude who does anything he wants, like hard drugs and homemade porn even though he’s got kids. You’ve got to nip those self-lies in the bud.

I’ve got a few. There’s “I’m interesting.” “I’m special.” “I’m talented at some things.” “I’m smart.” “I’m funny.” “I know what I’m doing.” “I can do anything I want.” “I deserve to be happy.” “I can just do whatever’s easiest and skate by on that.” “I’m meant for better things than sitting in an office all day and/or ever doing the dishes when I’m home.” “I can laugh at that guy’s fetus drawing because I’ve done things that are objectively better than a fetus drawing.” “I could probably pull off a fetus drawing.” “I kind of want to make a t-shirt that says ‘I heart fetus drawings.’”

Most of those I know I’ve got to nip in the bud, because if I don’t it will eventually be a mountain of trouble collapsing on you instead of a kind of pain in the ass thing you should probably deal with. It’s kind of like smoking. Oh yeah, “I can smoke without ever dying because of it.” That’s a good self-lie. And it’s a good demonstration of what self-lies do. It’s like smoking all your life and then when you get cancer being like, “Oshitoshitoshit! I quit! I’m out!” Not happening, Jack. Not happening. That cancer was coming for you for your whole life. You started it. And you failed to stop it in time.

Take the “I can just do whatever’s easiest and skate by on that lie” I tell myself. You know where that ends up? That ends up at a reception desk for a company that brokers the sale of self-storage properties, and convincing yourself you actually like being there. It’s voluntarily hanging out with a bunch of dudes who want nothing in the world more than to make some deals happen in the self-storage industry because to them it is an exciting and complex marketplace full of unique challenges. Did you know that self-storage is a retail business model within an industrial zoning plan? You will. Eventually you will if you just do whatever’s easiest. And you’ll find that doing whatever’s easiest eventually leads you to the hardest fucking thing you’ve ever done in your life, which is feigning interest in the self-storage industry.

Maybe it turns out to be so easy that you are tempted to take classes that will make you know more about the self-storage industry so that you can continue to take even more money from doing things with it. Maybe you will also put a down payment on a condo and move into it with your girlfriend. And you’ll write articles for self-storage industry trade magazines and convince yourself that it’s somehow creatively fulfilling to you. And you’ll raise a family, and you will enjoy that family, and you will feed that family by making a bunch of deals in the self storage industry, and it will all be incredibly easy until one day you realize that what you really want to do is anything else, and you have some ridiculous midlife crisis that involves going to tantric sex workshops with some spaced out idiot half-your-age yoga instructor with a Daddy complex. Which is not the real you either, so much as an overreaction to a lifetime of self-storage dealmaking.

Not that self-storage is an inherently bad way to make a living. It’s just not for everyone. Oddly enough, “it’s not for everyone” does not seem to be a prevalent assumption among practitioners in the self-storage industry. They’re more the type of crowd that’s like, “Of course you’d want to make a killing in self-storage, isn’t that what everybody wants?” That’s one of the things that makes it so easy. They’re just shy of chanting “join us” like Sirens on the rocks. Hideous, hideous Sirens. That want you to lie to yourself about everything.

Yes, self-lies are the worst kind of lie there is. I don’t want to get all Randian about it, but let’s look out for those. They’re the kind of lies that you can lose control over pretty easily. So be on the lookout for them. Also be on the lookout for dudes who want you to tell them how much you like their fetus drawing. It’s not technically lying if you get the fuck out of there before they can get a word in. Sprinting in the opposite direction is an acceptable honest reaction.

Guide to Figuring Out Everything That Is Wrong With You on Wikipedia

So slate.com has a piece on Narcissistic Personality Disorder this week, and reading it has thrown me down a wormhole of self-doubt. The good news is the fact that I can even feel self-doubt excludes me from the rolls of the clinically narcissistic. The bad news is the more links you follow on Wikipedia about personality disorder, the more likely you are to find out that you’re nothing but a diagnosable series of symptoms with very direct causes and very predictable effects. The whole rubric of your life and, indeed, all of human experience, is reductive to a linked series of community-edited theorems of varying credibility.

I hate Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia, it turns out that I have qualities that could reasonably qualify me, on a bad day, for five out of a possible ten diagnosable personality disorders. Basically the ones where you don’t like or understand people or the bullshit rules they make and follow. I’m not too worried about myself falling prey to the disorders where you make too many rules and/or are afraid of everything all the time.

Mostly I’m worried that my whole life is based on one of these “fixed fantasies” that they’re talking about on Wikipedia, which is probably accurate. I don’t know. I mean, I put up a pretty strong front here, but who knows? I don’t really buy it. Plus, part of these personality disorders is you can’t qualify for them if it’s a result of being drunk, and I think that’s why I get drunk so often. I’d rather qualify for alcoholism if it means the fact that I got really shitfaced and molested some dude’s balls as a joke that one time is not anything to worry too much about. I don’t typically ballmolest sober. And I get more of a comedy kick out of it than a sexual kick anyway. I’m not to blame here. That much I’m certain of.

Oh shit.

I just slid back into Narcissism again. This thing is a real tightrope walk. Wikipedia won’t even let you be a little bit weird. I tried to look up “a little bit weird” in Wikipedia and nothing came up. Fuck you, Wikipedia. I’m just a little bit weird. I forgive myself for it, and I try to rein it in. I’m a normal redblooded American weird dude who is probably not even all that weird.

Also: who is Wikipedia to tell me I’m Narcissistic or Histrionic or anything else? Wikipedia is a bunch of people who get a kick out of writing down what they know into a viewable database and then obsessively policing that database. I hereby diagnose Wikipedia with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, which Wikipedia, I assume, is correct in distinguishing from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is the one where you count everybody’s syllables or you have to touch things five times or you’re super afraid of germs and have to shower for 2 hours a day and scrub until you bleed because you “did it wrong” the first time.

Point is, Wikipedia itself is borderline batshit crazy, so I’m not going to rely on it for information as to whether or not I’m batshit crazy. I refuse to accept that. I’m not batshit crazy. I’m just regular crazy, hold the batshit.

I guess I could go on further refuting the Slate article by asserting that Narcissism is an appropriate response to the meteoric rise in our culture of the primacy of the individual spurred by exponential increases in the illusion of choice (the old “500 channels and nothing on” saw) and increasingly targeted demographic research which seeks to flatter every individual consumer as a master of their own specific subset of preferences. But that would be Narcissistic. Actually, that would be normal, because everybody’s a baby these days. This is just my blog.

Guide to Skinny Jeans.

Skinny jeans are idiotic. So are big jeans, though. Also idiotic: low-rise jeans. And: high-waisted jeans. Plus: boot-cut. And: straight-leg. And also: tapered. Also pretty bad: pleated, creased, acid-washed, pre-stressed, torn, old, new, dark blue, light blue, non-blue, and perfect. All jeans are pretty dumb, except for that one pair of your Dad’s that you wore every day of 11^th grade. Right? Those were the best, and all others before and since are imitators. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page as far as jeans go.

But: I can understand the need for skinny jeans. I can.

I developed a very simple and still unbreakable men’s fashion theory in my early 20’s giveashits. It states: the best way to look is like a male equivalent of the kind of girl you’d most want to have sex with.

Say what you will, but it is ironclad. You figure out who your targets are, and then you look like them and it encourages them to talk and/or be comfortable around you. So if you like super put-together ladies, you’ve got to wear nice suits. If you like sarcastic tomboys who like smoking weed, wear a lot of ironic/vintage stuff. If you want an art-damaged fashion maven who knows where all the best parties are, wear clothes that were prominent 15-18 years ago (I’m thinking this means jackets with an elastic waist cinch-due everywhere in 2014) and get some kind of extremely unemployable hairdo. If you want a tough girl who’s a total softie on the inside, get a neck tattoo. If you want one of those beerdrinking dependable semioutdoorsy women who never changes, wear a Michigan State sweatshirt, peacoat, corduroys, and chucks and call it a decade (also: you should have some kind of a retrieving dog).

And then when the girl equivalent of what you look like will be more apt to talk to you, whether you have your shit together enough to talk to her or not. That’s a whole different issue. But at least you can meet her halfway with your clothing signals. It makes your job easier.

Anyway: the rule is ironclad. Your clothes say who you want to have sex with.

And I think skinny jeans are stupid because I have no interest in having sex with 19 year old skate punks or self-important Vice Magazine art opening divas in garish costume jewelry. Maybe that’s harsh. I have some interest in having sex with those types. Let’s be honest. But not so much that I want to go overboard and look like them. I don’t have the time or the money for that. Actually: that’s why I don’t really want to have sex with them all that much. I don’t have the time or the money for that. And also: they’re usually boring. To me. I find them to be that way. Most times.

Anyhow, I’m not mad at you if you’re so into this one type of lady that you don’t mind prancing around like Count Peter Pan of Faggotton in your skinny jeans. We all do stupid shit to get laid sometimes. The fact that I consider skinny jeans to be “stupid shit” shouldn’t stop you from wearing them if you’re really looking to get busy over at the International Academy of Art and Design. It’s not your fault you’re not a grown up yet.

Skinny jeans are what made me realize I’ve become a grown up in the thingwearing category. I needed a pair of pants recently, and I went into American Apparel and tried on a pair of their tiny little jeans. Looking down at myself in the stretch-denim sausage casings they call pants, I said, “Nope. This is where I get off of this crazy rollercoaster. If this is looking good, I want to look bad. Get me out of this overpriced Pedophile’s Wetdream Store. I’d rather shop at the Docker’s Outlet. At least they’re honest about their aspirations over there. I’m no longer interested in paying this much money for in-joke clothes that make fun of the idea of wearing clothes.” And then I went to The Gap Outlet and bought some cheap jeans that I’m comfortable in even though they’re probably “so 2005.” 2005 was a decent enough year. I don’t mind being frozen there if it means having enough room between my legs and my pants to be able to wear underwear in July.

But that just indicates that my taste in women is changing. Now I’m more into the type of girl who looks nice but doesn’t give too much of a fuck about me noticing her. That’s why I got rid of all my dayglo sweaters and vintage tracksuit jackets, and why all my collared shirts have buttons on the collar now, and why I wear those collared shirts because I like them and not because I have to, and why I don’t buy sneakers anymore unless they’re a color that occurs in nature. I just don’t have the mustard for skinny jeans and high tops and t-shirts with some kind of word-design on them that I know are going to look stupid in two months when the new trend is something else. Sorry. It’s the clothing equivalent of sipping the expensive stuff instead of guzzling the cheap stuff.

But if that’s not you, by all means wear your skinny jeans. Something skinny-jeans like is coming for you, though. I just want to get you ready for it. In 2013 there will be a new thing that you’ll think is just too far to go, like, I don’t know, jackets with side zippers or something. And you’ll find yourself in some dressing room thinking about whether or not you’re actually going to spend $150 on this fucking thing, and you’ll look in the mirror and decide that, no, you are not going to buy this fucking thing. Not for $150 and probably not even for free. Nor will you buy anything else like it that ever comes along. Because it will no longer be worth it to you to send the “I’m not sure what I want, but this looks good” signal to potential mates. It’s part of being a grown up.

That’s what your Dad did, and that’s why you loved his jeans so much in the 11^th grade. They were a little oasis of don’tgiveafuck in a desert of 11^th grade needingitbad.

Guide to Sexual Demands.

Guys can get pretty greedy. Greedy is maybe not the word. Greed itself is a symptom of some other guy thing that guys can get a lot of. Juvenile, maybe. Petulant. Something like that. Guys can get pretty self-indulgent. I guess girls can, too, in their different way.

One of the ways guys can get most… like that… is with sex. I hate it when people reduce some kind of a point they’re making about gender differences to some cock-eyed basis in evolution, but: there’s a basis for this in evolution.

It’s caveman times. Cavedudes want sex. Cavegirls want to prevent sex from happening unless it’s from a caveguy who is likely to help with the resultant cavekids. The cavewomen sit around and say “I want a sensitive caveman who will help with the cavekids and not just bother me for sex all the time, and also he is not afraid to cry or watch ‘The Notebook’ with me.” And sometimes they get one. And sometimes a stronger, less sensitive caveman comes along and hits the sensitive caveman on the head with a rock. Sometimes that gets the cavewoman all turned on because by now she’s bored of hearing about the sensitive caveman’s neurotic struggles with his own expectations all the time. So she has sex with the stronger, meaner caveman.

After the pregnant cavegirl has a cavebaby, the strong mean caveman gets mad because the cavegirl doesn’t want to have sex with him anymore because she’s got this new cavebaby to take care of. But there's really nothing he can do about it except for rape and that's not because A. it's not as much fun as notrape sex, and B. the cavewoman might get mad and hit him in the head with a rock in his sleep. So he either turns into a sensitive cavedude and stays or he leaves and hits some other sensitive cavedude on the head with a rock. If he leaves, the cavegirl is more or less fine with that because they’re better off not having kids with a dude who’s gonna be a leaver anyway, but not having a cavedude around makes life harder because cavedudes are pretty good at killing mastodons and fixing the hot water heater. So in order to calm down their strong, mean cavedudes and make them stick around and kill mastodons and fix the hot water heater, the caveladies capitulate and invent blowjobs. And that takes us to present day.

The idea that people invented blowjobs in the 50’s is astounding to me. No way. Cavemen and cavewomen invented blowjobs as a last-ditch form of mediation to prevent cavedudes from leaving cavegirls and cavebabies right before winter hit. Dudes have been annoyingly pressing their sexual agenda ever since. I don’t know this, I’m just guessing like anybody else. But: historically, and as a result of millions of years of evolution, dudes are whiney little bitches when it comes to sex. Based on no facts. Based on me just saying it.

Of course you don’t have to be a whiney little bitch when it comes to your sexual needs. You can just repress them one hundred percent forever since childhood until your sexual needs turn into some kind of a weird diaper-wearing thing. Or you can be a rapist. Let me be clear: I don’t advocate either one of these scenarios. I actually advocate being a whiney little bitch about your sexual needs. It’s better than the alternatives.

Once you realize you've got no choice but to be a whiney little bitch about things (i.e. talking them out instead of just running around with a boner and some "really great" sex ideas), you've got to learn how to express and address your sexual needs honestly without being passive aggressive. Like you’ll say, “Hey, cavelady, I think you’re great and all, but I will tell you right now that I’m going to need at least monthly bj’s and some minimal degree of playfulness or else this is eventually not going to work. In exchange I will gladly do whatever it is you want me to do, including just leaving you alone whenever you want.” If you just say the first part, you’re being a dickhead. If you just say the second part, it’s implied that you’re some closeted diaper-wearer who just wants to be dominated, which is fine, but you should probably mention that too, like "I will gladly do whatever it is you want me to do, including just leaving you alone whenever you want, because that's what I get off on. Also: please please please ask me to hold your purse in public.”

You've got to say what you need (sexual and otherwise) and assure that you're going to make sure to meet her needs (sexual and otherwise), and you've got to really mean both of those things. And then you follow through. That's how you earn whatever it is you’re demanding. In general terms. It's a pain in the ass but it's better than sitting around with a huge boner hoping she'll read your mind about what incredibly specific thing (hints: peanut butter, spatula, ceiling fan) you want done to it, and then getting all pissy when it doesn't happen exactly right.

But that's the tricky part. Sometimes you don't know you want something until it pops in there. Like, “Tonight is the night I really really want to fuck over by the kitchen sink for some reason, and I’ve just been thinking about it a ton, and that’s what I want to do tonight. A lot. I am just feeling super kitchen sinky right now. Maybe this idea also involves an apron. I’m not sure yet. I just want to try something with the kitchen sink. Right now. Tonight.”

That’s bullshit, of course. There’s no way in hell you’re going to get kitchen sink sex the second the thought pops into your head. Unless you have talked and talked and talked about how important it is to you to be in an "extremely accepting of my immediate sexual urges without exception or any need for discussion" relationship, which I'm not sure exists. What are you, a baby? It can wait.

Just try and spring that kitchen sink scenario on somebody unannounced and see what happens. Nothing good. No, what you get is a, “What? Leave me alone, dude. I have my own sexual fantasy and it’s you listening to my description of what happened to me today at work and then inferring from that information that I’m not in the mood for impromptu fucking on or near the kitchen sick. And I’m damn sure not wearing an apron.”

So you kind of have to leave those urges on the caveroom floor sometimes. Which sucks, because it’s disappointing when you feel like you’ve done a really good job with killing mastodons and fixing the hot water heater recently, and really you just want this one thing and it doesn’t seem like too much to ask, especially considering it’s supposed to be fun. But: she's pretty much constantly denying her urges to slap your entire face off over the dumb things you say and your constant unrepentant farting, so it balances out.

That nagging disappointment is shitty, but it's the result of your failure to mention that this is the type of thing you need. Not in a “we’ve got to have sex on or near the kitchen sink once a week or else I’m out of here” kind of a way, unless you’re so super into kitchen sink sex that you really feel that way, but you have to be like, “I need spontaneity and maybe a little bit of weirdness, for example: sex on or near the kitchen sink, perhaps with an apron being involved, sex in the vestibule while we’re still wearing our coats, that type of thing, etc.”

A good time to mention these things is right after you’ve just had sex, and then that way you won’t be too forceful about how much you’d like it because your penis is incapable of bossing you around for those 20 minutes, and she’ll be receptive to the idea because women usually get really horny after sex because they are relentless and because that’s when they think the real intimacy happens (we think intimacy happens in the “I will agree to wear this stupid fucking apron and have uncomfortable sex on or near the kitchen sink” portion of the evening).

But even if you’re a super adulty communicator about it and you set up all kinds of parameters of trust and you talk the thing half to death before you even get a chance to try it, there’s no guarantee that she’ll go for it. There could be a lengthy debate about how that’s degrading and misogynistic. That debate is good. That’s a lot better than “No way, end of discussion.” Have the debate. Talk about why that idea turns you on. Cite Wikipedia or something. Most of all, assure the person that you really care about them and you wouldn’t mention this fantasy to them in the first place if you didn’t trust them completely. That’s a good one to use, the trust card. It’s good to use because it’s true.

If it’s not true and you don’t really give a shit about this person, and you just want to fuck them over a sink because you actually are a misogynist who wants to degrade random women, you should probably check yourself into some therapy and deal with that. And also you should cut this one loose and go find a woman who wants to be actually degraded instead of fake pretend fantasy degraded. They exist, and they're super weird (but also kind of great for a while until you realize that's not actually what you want).

In either case, you should definitely go back to the drawing board and think about why you like this fantasy so much. Just in general. Even if she’s totally into it. It’s good to know why you’re into this specific thing.

If she’s not feelin’ it after a long adulty discussion over it, then you have to decide if that’s a big deal or not. It probably is. I’m just saying, once you drop one of these things, it’s not going to stop. You will have to drop others. If that’s ok with you, by all means continue on the course you’re on, which is begging and pleading for a blowjob and kissing ass and crossing your fingers that she’ll get your subliminal mental signals. Don’t get me wrong, a little of that is fine, even necessary, but keep in mind there’s no guarantee that there won’t be a stronger, meaner caveman out there with a rock who will totally undo all the work you did. So it’s best to bend without breaking. Or at least, in any case, it’s best to be honest about them if you have certain blowjob/kitchensex requirements.

You might get on your own back a little bit like, “What have I done to deserve these blowjobs and kitchen fuckings? It’s not like I’m rich or famous or something.” But if you genuinely need a certain amount of blowjobs and kitchenfucks to be happy, then you deserve them because everybody deserves to be happy. That’s really the whole thing behind being a douchebag. Everybody deserves to be happy. Helping other people and being honest with other people makes you happy, and so does helping yourself and being honest with yourself. Kum Bah Yah, M’Lord. Amen.

Now could you please just put on the stupid apron and at least pretend to be into this? PLEASE? I don’t want to have to leave the cavebabies, but I will. I swear to God, I will.

Guide to Couples Doing Couple Things

People get twice as stupid when you put them together and send them out into the world.

I have no information to back this up, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. That’s why huge mobs of people are so stupid. They’ve had their intelligence halved by a factor of however many people there are and now they’re dumb enough to stand in the rain in order to see a big screen version of Kanye West singing his robot songs (the real Kanye West is too far away to see). One person is usually smart enough to know that it’s better to sit somewhere that’s not raining and not watch anything that involves Kanye West.

So couples out doing couple things maybe aren’t all that stupid in the scheme of things, but they certainly are half as stupid as just a dude.

Think about how you do things when you’re alone. Let’s say you’re going for a walk. You walk and you stop to look at things that you find interesting, and you see a street you’ve never been down before and you choose to take a turn and go down it, and then maybe you get hungry and decide to go get something to eat, and then you get tired and go home. All of those decisions just happened in your brain. You didn’t have to run them by this whole other person. When you’re walking alone, it’s easy.

When you’re with somebody else it’s, “hey doyouwanna go forawalk? Hey lookatthat. Nevermind. I thoughtit wasabird butit’snot. What? Yeah, yeah that ad on thebus does lookphotoshopped. Ohyeah totally. Jennifer Anniston is way tooskinny. Hey you wanna go downthisway? I dunno, just never been downthatway. No? Okcool, yeah I’m hungrytoo. Whaddya want? Sultan’s? No? Sushi? You want sushi? Ok, I guess we can get sushi. Hey can I just go into this comicbookstore real quick? I’ll be real quick. I promise I’ll be real quick. I will take as little time as I possibly can hanging out in this comicbookstore even though I really just want to hang out in this comicbookstore for like an hour. Uh… yeah. No. No thanks. I mean, why don’t you go over to the shoestore and I’ll stay here in this comicbookstore, and then when one of us is done, we’ll go get the other one because I want to hang out in the shoestore about as much as you want to hang out in the comicbookstore, which is to say zero minutes ever.”

You get half as much done, it takes twice as much work, and you were only really happy when you finally get left alone in the comic book store. And it’s a walk. You had no goals for this walk. And yet all of your walk-based interesting thingdoing opportunities have been thwarted. All except one: to spend time with this person. So in that way, it’s a successful walk. It’s even more successful if by the end of it you’re not feeling totally bitchy about how you didn’t get to walk down that one street or how you paid like 15 bucks for sushi instead of a 4 dollar falafel at Sultan’s and you ended up hanging out at the shoestore for like 30 minutes because the comicbookstore really didn’t take you that long because you blew your potential comicbookstore budget on sushi you didn’t really want even though it was pretty good. And she’s probably too tired and dehydrated from all that shoe shopping and Miso soup to have sex with you. But still: quality time.

If it sounds like I’m resentful of this, I’m not. Sushi and a little shoe shopping is a fine way to spend a day. Especially if it’s with somebody you like being around. So it’s actually a positive. A huge positive. And also: you're so precious that you have to get what you want all the time? Really? You can just go for a self-walk later when you feel like walking down a new street to get to Sultan's and then read some comic books without a girlfriend in sight (there's a defacto "no girlfriends allowed" policy at the comicbookstore). A couplewalk is great too for different reasons. There was probably some good joking and goofaroonie time in there, some nice affection, and even if she is exhausted from the shoe shopping, at the end of your walk you still have a better chance of having sex than you would have if you were just out walking alone. That’s a nice day.

But: stupid. Right? I mean look at the amount of discussion you have to partake in just to walk around casually and eat sushi and look at shoes in some place that’s playing downtempo house. Look at the number of opinions you’re sharing, and notice how little you care about those opinions. Watch in horror as the simple problem of “I’m hungry” turns into what seems to you to be a logistical nightmare. Observe yourself groping for discussion topics over sushi instead of just reading a newspaper. See how careful you are to take her feelings into account when working your way around such existential quandaries as “should we get ice cream,” when she probably doesn’t give a shit either (except she sometimes does seem to get really emotional about ice cream—so you can’t be too careful, maybe it really is the powderkeg you think it is). Yes, it’s true: you’re behaving like a stupid person. And so is she, probably. Because: there are two of you.

Take this and multiply whenever there’s a couple-y gathering. Double dates are fine, but once you add that third couple in, it turns into a freeforall. I think there’s some mathematical rule that says three or more of any one gender in one place makes it hard for members of the other gender to enjoy themselves. That’s why you sit around for an awkward half hour as the girlfriends talk to each other with increasing fervor, and the dudes gradually get fewer words in edgewise due to not caring about what’s being discussed enough to want to, until some dude mentions he’s got a sports thing to show you and you and the other dudes, and you get out of there and talk about the sports thing or else just stand around the grill drinking beers and goofing around while the ladies excitedly talk about Michelle Obama, and you’re like “how’d I end up in 1958?”

That’s what couple-y gatherings always feel like to me. It’s like some agreed upon level of banality which gradually relaxes away enough to allow for gender stereotypes to affirm themselves, and the whole pattern resets itself and the banality becomes gender-based until you run out of dude things to talk about, and then you wait out the rest of it by moving from the cooler to the buffet to the bathroom to the couch to wherever your girlfriend is, and along the way you get to drink beer and eat somebody’s homemade cole slaw that your girlfriend wants the recipe to. And then in the card ride home you have to agree to the rundown of who’s doing what and who’s got a lot of nerve, and you agree that you should probably try something like that yoga class that Wendy and Steve are doing (fuck off, Steve, I can’t believe you caved on that yoga thing, now I’ve got to do it). Call me Johnny Nofun, but I’d rather stay home and watch History channel. Except it’s good to get out of the house every once in a while, if only to reaffirm why you never feel like leaving it in the first place.

Oh: also there’s babies. It’s always spooky when your girlfriend is excited about babies.

Again, I’m sounding more harsh than I want to about this. Couple-y gatherings (as opposed to just a regular “party”—which is always more fun because nobody’s trying to be too adult about things and it’s ok to puke) are good because they show you what being in a relationship essentially means as far as your interactions with the world at large. You’re essentially saying to the rest of the world, “I’m good. I’ve got this person to hang out with. So, you know, that’s what I’m up to these days.” Right? And good for you, by the way. You’ve found the person you like hanging out with so much you don’t mind being stupid about where to eat or standing around a grill awkwardly discussing sports with some dudes you don’t know all that well. I think it’s a good thing. Congratulations.

If you're single and things get couple-y, then you should shove as much food and booze into your mouth as you possibly can without seeming like you're being a dickhead about it, and get out of there. You've got other, better things to do with your time than share banalities while holding a baby, like reading comicbooks alone and partying until you puke. Hell, even if you've got a girlfriend you can still take yourself out for a self-date and do those things if you want. They're always available. Make sure you do that stuff enough that you're actually relieved when it's time to be adult-y "just two microbrews and a conversation about the stimulus package" about social gatherings. They're designed to be painless. The avoidance of pain is the main motivating factor of a healthy(?) relationship. I don't know this for a fact, but I feel its truth whenever I find myself complimenting a stranger on their endive hors d'oeuvres.

Guide to Bullshit Theories About How To Do Things That Can Get You Killed (pt. 1).

Part 1: Guide to Riding a Bike in The City.

Anybody with a passing familiarity with me and my life knows I’m a huge proponent of being stubborn, pigheaded, and wrong as often as possible. I love it. It makes my life so easy.

Do you want your life to be easy? All you have to do is constantly interrupt everybody who speaks to you and relate either a boring irrelevant anecdote that takes too long or a totally uninformed half-cocked opinion about something. Keep this up for long enough and eventually people will leave you alone. Easy.

I was reading about Ronald Reagan today, and that’s pretty much what he did, and now everybody’s in agreement that he was some kind of genius. I don’t know a bunch about the guy, but based on my aforementioned proclivity for ignorant defiance of good sense, I will tell you all about my opinions of him anyway. I think he was not a genius. But I do think he was America’s greatest Presidential douchebag. He really did very little that he didn’t feel like doing. That whole grandfatherly “I can’t hear your probative questions about urban decay and the widening class gap because I’m an old man and I’m standing near a helicopter” act he ran with the press? That was great douchebag stuff. That’s as great of a trick as pretending you left your wallet in the car to either A. ensure that you’ll get a couple of free drinks out of your boss, or B. escape from having a few drinks with your boss, depending on what you’d prefer. It’s the same scam, but when you’re President you get to use a real helicopter instead of a pretend wallet.

This is not, coming from me, damning praise. It’s just regular praise. He gets credit both for doing the things he did (great warrior who put America’s defense first, assuring that the American economy is based on the principles of free market) AND doing the opposite of the things he did (reducing the size of government--even though he increased defense spending a bajillion times, created a huge budget deficit, bailed out Chrysler, was forced to spend billions to correct the problems spurred on by the collapse of the Savings and Loan industry that he deregulated). What a fantastic douchebag. That dude was Teflon.

You see?

I just told you about Ronald Reagan for two whole paragraphs, and really the only basis I had for my opinions were a couple of articles in Slate.com and Vanity Fair that I read today, plus a few other pieces of flotsam I have floating around in my brain, probably from my childhood, which heavily involved my mother screaming about Republicans.

You’re probably not even reading anymore, which is great for me because I need internet computer friends even less than I need regular friends (which is to say some, sometimes). You see how easy my life is? People tend to leave me alone because I am annoying and I say things about Reagan that are probably wrong. And what’s worse, I don’t even care that I’m wrong. I even kind of like it. How do you deal with a person like that?

And my opinions about Reagan are almost totally off the cuff. Imagine how idiotic I could sound if I really thought about what I was saying. I could invent crackpot theories about a couple of specific real-life situations that sound convincing while being totally wrong and even dangerous. In fact, I already have. I bet you can’t wait to hear about them, either. I’ll buy you a drink. Nevermind your wallet. Your wallet can wait.

Guide to Riding a Bike in The City.

If, like me, you live in a city and are a broke loser who insists on keeping his options for future failure open by never fully committing to anything, jobwise or anythingelsewise, you’ve probably realized by now that a bicycle is the best way to get around. It’s pretty much free except for occasional incredibly inconvenient but cheap maintenance, you never have to look for parking, and you don’t have to waste extra money on a gym membership if it’s your only means of conveyance. Often it’s the fastest way to get somewhere, too, depending on how good you are at planning your day and/or how sweaty you’d prefer to be when you arrive.

Oh, I should mention that this Guide does not apply to Los Angeles. But if you live in Los Angeles, you’re probably not reading this because you can’t read.

(Don’t tell anybody in Los Angeles I that I said they can’t read. On the off chance they ask about it, just tell them I’m still talking about Ronald Reagan and that my ideas so far are not “pitchable” or “zazzy” enough. This will work because everybody in Los Angeles is involved in the entertainment industry. Close one, everybody.)

((I’m kidding. Of course Los Angeles residents can read. That was just another of my wrongheaded theories come to life. Another quick one: Leprosy is no big deal.))

Back to bike riding:

People worry about how safe it is to ride your bike around in a city. They’re right to. It is unsafe. No amount of safety gear or precautionary maneuvering can possibly save you from meeting your imminent demise. If you ride a bike in the city, you will be crushed by a bread truck. Immediately. Within minutes. I recommend not doing it ever.

This is not true, but being a city bike rider I prefer to weed out any potential weenies out there who don’t do anything but get in my way. As far as riding your bike goes, how safe you are is in direct proportion to how much you’re probably in my way. Evidence of such safety-seeking and hence inconvenient behavior include: excessive reflective tape, visible coloring on clothing and accessories, sufficient lighting, upright bicycles that allow for correct posture, rearview mirrors on handlebars or helmets, helmets, stopping for any reason (even a good one), slowing down while negotiating hairpin turns, and not charging blindly at full speed into vanishing narrow spaces between merging dump trucks. These are all a huge pain in my ass.

Of course I have a theory to justify the monumental amount of disappointment I feel whenever these safe behaviors are observed. It is a stupid theory and it could very well get me killed one day. I suggest you follow it.

Here goes:

1. Your number one bike-riding-in-the-city danger is invisibility. You can correct this by wearing a gigantic fluorescent green parka and stopping at every stop sign and jingling a little bike bell like some jolly sidekick from a creepy 70’s children’s show, which is dangerous because it will make motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians want to hit you. Or you can embrace your invisibility and just behave accordingly.

Just ride like nobody can see you. When you roll through a stop sign, swerve behind the car to your right that has the right of way. And if you're in a position where you need somebody to see you, do something highly visible and aggressive, like swerve in front of them in an obvious way that makes them freak out a little bit. It’s actually more safe than cautiously puttering your way down the bike lane in a hazmat suit, because people will be more likely to get into accidents while they’re distantly distracted by something imperceptibly annoying in their peripheral vision (such as you in a hazmat suit) than they will be when they’re stopping short and yelling, “WHOA DUDE LOOK AT THIS FAST-RIDING BADASS WHO CAME FROM SEEMINGLY OUT OF NOWHERE AND CUT ME OFF SO HE COULD SWERVE AROUND THIS CONSTRUCTION CREW AND TURN RIGHT WHILE DIPPING UNDER THE BACKHOE AT 30 MPH!”

The second option seems more dangerous, but at least it involves a motorist who's hitting the brakes. I guess the point here is: it's better to deal with a guy who sees you than a guy who doesn’t, regardless of where they’re coming from or where they’re going. That means don’t worry about swerving into oncoming traffic if that oncoming traffic sees you and is worried about the possibility of you swerving into it. When in doubt, make them see you.

2. Lodged in the subtext here is a secret to bike riding invisibility: the faster you’re going, the less visible you’ll be until you're right in front of somebody's face. This is fine, since you're assuming that nobody can see you anyway. So if you want to get where you’re going in a timely manner, you might as well go fast and deal with being be a little more invisible. You can only go the supersafe route if you’re planning on riding like a la-di-dah millionaire with nowhere pressing to be or a weekend bikeriding tourist who just thinks it’s nice outside. And that’s not going to work if you’re supposed to be at dude’s house in like ten minutes or else you won’t get that free weed he promised, and then after that you’ve got to go pick up a teapot for your girlfriends’ parents, and you don’t want to be late or else you’ll have to lie to your girlfriend about the teapot being on backorder (she will see through this obvious lie) instead of just having the free weed and the teapot being on time.

3. Pretend everybody is a jerk that wants to do the wrong thing all the time. It’s a little bit tricky to picture, but when you’re out riding, pretend that every car on the road can’t wait to come senselessly careening towards you to end your life like there’s a billion dollar prize on your head. If this situation sounds daunting to you rather than a fun hypothetical that you’d enjoy pretending that you’re escaping from every time you go to the grocery store, then maybe city bike riding isn’t for you.

You should be as aware as humanly possible of what could happen. After a while you’ll start to trust things a little more, because cars have a kind of hidden body language where you know they’re going to turn even if there’s no turn signal or brake lights, and you’ll be like, “That dude wants to spill my face skin all over his hood in about two seconds,” and you’ll avoid that. For a while you’re going to be wrong a lot about whether or not a dude wants to spill your face skin, but it’s a good way to think.

4. There are two kinds of rules: the fake ones from the book about “No Turn On Red” and “don’t cut through that gas station” and “yield to pedestrians in crosswalk,” and there’s the real ones from “the street” and from common sense inside of yourself, like “Always Turn On Red, Right Or Left Or Even Straight If Nobody’s Coming,” and “cut through that gas station, onto the sidewalk for ten feet, and around the back of the Meineke into the alley if it gets you there faster, who gives a fuck?” and “you can slap a pedestrian in the face as you ride by if he’s being a drunk idiot.”

People who complain about how nobody pays attention to the book rules are pansies who don’t know how to have fun. And ten bucks says they’re driving over the speed limit, so they’re also hypocrites. You’re on a bike. It’s your job to look out for yourself. The cops aren’t out there protecting you, and if you’re the one out of line, they probably aren’t even going to pull you over. If they do it’s fine because you can still ride a bike even without a license. Don’t tell them that, though. Be respectful. Also don’t mention how drunk you are.

5. It’s ok to be a little drunk and/or high and/or listen to your iPod. Not when you’re downtown in the middle of rush hour, but in general, it’s ok because you’re not going to kill anybody but yourself. Stick to side streets. And go for a train or bus/bike combo or couch crash scenario if you’re too far gone. For me, too far gone means either “already puked” or “it’s too far and I just don’t feel like it.” I’m getting less heroic as I get older, and it’s not a bad thing. The more you ride your bike, the more you can save up for emergency cab rides.

Could following these rules end your life? Yes. Yes it could. But: so could crossing the street. You never know. And alsobut: these are just theories and guidelines I’ve come up with for myself. They are probably dangerous and they are probably wrong, and I'm fine with that, and I’m just getting warmed up. "Sometimes it's a good idea to pedal really fast into oncoming traffic" is not even the most dangerous general-life theory I have. I’ll go over that one in Part 2, but for now let’s get some more quick idiot theories out of the way:

- It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a travel-sized tube of toothpaste, just put your regular sized toothpaste in your pocket and walk through airport security anyway. Even if they stop you for it, they probably won’t strip search you, and once they check it to see that it’s toothpaste, you’ll probably get to keep it. That “3.2oz or less” rule is to keep them from “having to check each individual substance.” Really it’s a conspiracy by the toiletries industry. Gillette is in bed with the TSA, and they bought that provision into the Patriot Act to force everybody to buy tiny cans of shaving cream. It’s not a security risk. Nobody’s going to make a shaving cream bomb in the bathroom during a flight, and if they do, it’s going to be another “Let’s Roll” situation (except without the secret F-14s gunning you down) before they even make it to the cockpit. Don’t fall for it. Put the toothpaste in your pocket. You won’t get caught. And if you do, who cares if you’re holding up the line? You don’t. You’re at the front of it already.

- If you don’t have much money for food and you’re in a hurry, go to Subway and get a sandwich with as many condiments on it as possible. It’s like extra nutrients for free.

- Do not worry about that parking ticket you got on an out-of-state rental car two weeks before leaving the country for a six month span. It will not bite you in the ass.

…Part 2 soon.

Guide to Having Sex on Everybody’s Coats.

College is a very stupid time for a human being to be alive. A very stupid time. This is why people always bore you with “college” stories. This is why I always bore you with college stories. College kids are stupid. You make stupid choices and everything seems like it’s important at the time when it’s happening, so it seems like it’s a good story when it’s really not a good story.

Like, “One time me and my buddies got really bored and we drove out into a hayfield with a pony keg and started this huge bonfire, but this guy got mad and shot at us with a shotgun, and we had to sleep in the woods because our one buddy freaked out and left us out there, but really it wasn’t even a farmer, it was just this one dude’s buddy and the two of them just stole our beer for a party they were having.”

Maybe that’s a good story, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Nobody really comes out ahead in it. I do know that. You’re either bragging about being duped, or you’re bragging about how you duped somebody, and either way you’re bragging about how important beer was to you and how funny it is to steal the car of and/or have your car stolen by somebody you kind of know. It’s really a lose lose lose lose scenario. Full of stupidity.

I have college stories of my own, and they suck just as much as that one, and they’re full of just as much of the central controlling theme in all college stories as that one in the hayfield I just made up (it probably really happened like 470 times), namely: we were young and stupid and we did something stupid that we wouldn’t do now, but wasn’t it great that we were that young and that stupid at one point in our lives?

Well, yes and no. Yes it’s great to be young and stupid. No, it’s not great that you’re not that stupid anymore. You can and should be just as stupid now as you were in college. I am. I do stupid things all the time. Yesterday I played Dynasty Warriors 6 for ten straight hours. It was very stupid. By the time I was done, my eyeballs felt like they’d been licked by a dehydrated house cat, and I was seeing little life meters above strangers’ heads. But that’s not adequate to report to anybody as if it’s a story. It’s just a stupid thing I did.

It’s not even the stupidest thing I’ve done in the last 48 hours, either. That would have to be not doing laundry. I have continued to not do laundry for a very long time now, and it’s stupid. I’m down to the comparative-smelling phase of getting myself dressed in the morning. Why didn’t I do laundry? Because I had ten consecutive hours of Dynasty Warriors 6 to play. That’s why.

One time in college I had sex in the coat room of a party on top of everybody’s coats.

I had no idea it was going to be sex until it was sex, though. So it’s not like I walked into the coat room and said, “Hey baby, let’s do it on these coats.” But after a little while of making out that’s exactly what ended up happening on those coats. When you’re in college, that’s how sex works sometimes. If you’re good at making out, sometimes it just turns into sex kind of by accident. Kissing and having sex are two points on the same continuum, and nobody’s discovered the rules of where one should turn into another because everybody’s only had sex like 4 times ever. So it’s possible and even vaguely likely that you could accidentally have sex on everybody’s coats.

At one point we had to stop and stay perfectly still as somebody searched around for their coat in the dark. I’m not sure if that person noticed that there were two people having sex on their coat. Then when that one person left, we continued to have sex on the coats.

I realize that this is a gross thing to do to somebody’s coat. I would not particularly want strange people I don’t know to have sex on my coat. Probably. I would have to see the people with my own eyes first. I definitely wouldn’t want to discover any kind of sex-related stain on my coat without knowing where it came from. It’s hard to say how I’d react to it, though. I have no moral high ground here. I’ve had sex on peoples’ coats. Once you do that, the cat is kind of out of the bag as far as hypothetical reactions to a person having sex on your coat. Mostly I think it’s permissible as “a stupid thing that happened in college,” whether you’re talking about having sex on coats or having coats under sex.

And technically it was the coats that were intruding. They were on her bed.

I know one thing for sure about my hypothetical reaction to a couple of people having sex on my coat: it would involve astonishment. That’s because since having sex on the coatroom bed that one time in college I have never ever put my coat on a bed at a party. You just never know what’s going to happen. I prefer to put my coat somewhere I can be reasonably sure it won’t be sexed-upon. Like hanging in a closet or under the bed or up on top of the photo booth or wedged behind the refrigerator. The more obscure and unsex-like place I can put my coat when I’m at a party, the happier I am.

There are other practical reasons for obscure party coat placement besides avoiding other people’s sexual discharges. For one, if you spend 20 second wedging your coat behind the fridge, chances are good that no matter what happens at the party, you’ll remember where you put your coat. You won’t have to search for it. Behind the fridge is not especially valuable coat real estate. It won’t shift or get lost in a sea of other coats. Nobody’s going to walk off with it by accident because it looks like their coat. It’s just going to be there behind the fridge where you lodged it when you came in.

I also believe that this strategy is a good theft deterrent. I just feel in my bones that my coat won’t get stolen or broken into if it’s behind the fridge. You’d have to really be casing me to even know it’s back there. And if you wanted to rifle through it, you’d really have to draw a lot of attention to yourself. So later if I get my coat out from behind the fridge and my iPod’s missing, I can say, “Did anybody see a guy pulling this coat out from behind the fridge and rifling through it and stealing my iPod and then shoving it back behind the fridge in the exact position I left it in?” And then I’d probably find out about that dude and go do… something.

Another great thing about shoving your coat behind a fridge is it draws attention to you when you’re just entering the party. It’s a great icebreaker. If somebody asks why you are shoving your coat behind the fridge, you can say something funny, like, “safety first,” or “I don’t want anybody to have sex on it.” And then you’re the party weirdo, which is fine because having a party weirdo around at least gives everybody something to talk about, like asking, “Who’s the guy drinking whiskey out of an old jelly jar?” And responding with, “I don’t know; I saw him shove his coat behind the fridge earlier. He told me not to have sex on it.” That guy is always good for a party, and the party is always good to that guy. Parties are about building up mystery points until you get people daring other people to talk to you. It’s way easier to shove your coat behind a fridge than it is to walk up to a stranger and just say hello out of the blue.

The weirdguy effect is also cumulative, like a week later when people ask you what that stain or weird burn mark is on your coat, you can answer, “Oh, I shoved it behind the fridge at a party last week.” Potential girlfriends love this, because you’re like a project they can work on. They can imagine showing you all about how to put your coat on a hanger in a closet.

And that’s great because you can imagine telling them, “But what if this happens?”

And then you put your coat on the ground and start making out on top of it.

Who knows what’s going to happen then. Maybe sex. You can’t plan for these things.