1. If You’re Preparing For The Apocalypse, I Don’t Want to Come to Your House For Dinner
Chief among the impetus behind my reasoning is the looming fear that I’m going to hear you say the words “Do you wanna know how I made this?” If I wanted to spend a night drinking water filtered from urine and eating a slurry of the green sludge that’s collected on the surface of your shady, indoor pool… I would just go to the Olive Garden. And although I appreciate the effort, I’m not sure that Martha Stewart would approve of individualized gas masks as part of a sensible table setting. To be fair, Party games are always fun, but somehow I think that a full de-lousing before I’m even allowed in your house is really pushing it. I’d much rather just hang out in the front yard and play Trivial Pursuit through the window. I suppose the most pressing reason that I don’t want to have dinner at your place is that if the apocalypse actually happens while I’m there, I’m immediately the most expendable person in your company. I’m either going to get stuck riding the stationary bike that powers the TV all the time or ground into a delicious sausage and eaten with freeze-dried grapefruit for breakfast. I’m, of course, only assuming that I’d make a delicious sausage… I suppose I’ll never really know regardless of how that situation would play out. And I don’t want to feel your pity-vibe all night just because I’m not “prepping” enough, either. If John Cusak can narrowly outrun the apocalypse in a series of vehicles for what seemed like an eternity longer than two hours, why can’t I? I’m affable, I’m a six or seven-out-of-ten, I like Peter Gabriel. The closest I’ve ever come to surviving a global disaster is during college when I was stuck in my dorm room with no power for two days during hurricane season. I ended up eating raw ramen with the flavoring sprinkled on top like a piece of toast in order to get by… and that shit was delicious. I don’t like to use the word “survivor” a lot, but… anyone who was there knows what I’m talking about.
2. You Should not Expect a Helpful Answer When You Ask Your iphone “Where Da Baby Formula At?”
That may not surprise everybody, but it certainly seemed to enrage some dude wearing an “Affliction” tank top at my local Food Lion recently. Food Lion, for the uninitiated, is where people who can’t afford to go to ACME shop, which explains why I was there. And according to my iphone, which is the principal reason that I can’t afford to go to ACME, the baby formula is at Walmart, Target, and some store called Wikipedia. If only we had this kind of technology eleven months ago and he had the foresight to ask his iphone “where the condoms at”… our collective gene pool would be just that much deeper. The baby formula is, of course, located behind the security glass at the customer service counter because people steal that shit like they found some way to make meth out of it. And shaking your phone when Siri doesn’t give you the answer that you’re looking for is not going to help, you should have figured out by now that women don’t respond well to that… but it will shut a crying baby up pretty quickly. A small piece of advice, prefacing a question to your phone by screaming “look, motherfucker” at full volume in public is not a good look, but then again neither is wearing any piece of UFC apparel… even Food Lion has standards, or so I’ve been told.
3. If You Can’t Train a Dog, Don’t Get a Dog… Or Don’t Live In My Apartment Complex, Either Way
Seriously, guy down the hall that I avoid like the plague, if you can’t train your dog… just get a cat. Even the most well behaved cat will make you as miserable as a poorly trained dog and that way, I don’t have to fucking hear about it. Sometimes I wonder if you actually have a nice, plush house somewhere in the suburbs and that you rent this apartment just to have a place to keep your dog where you don’t have to hear him scream for structure and direction at the top of his lungs all night. I also subscribe to the philosophy that if your dog can’t get along with my dog… then your dog is automatically a dick because my dog is awesome. Training a dog is very simple: Dogs like delicious treats, and they hate frownie faces. Good dog, delicious treat… bad dog, frownie face. Repeat until desired outcome is realized. Your dog wants to be a good dog, I know he does. But instead, you took what was once a perfectly normal, adorable little puppy-dog blank canvas and painted “asshole” all over it like Jackson Pollack having a seizure. I feel like the only people more annoying than those that don’t spend enough time with their dogs to train them, are those that spend way too much time with their pets. They take their dogs to the store, to restaurants, to the movies… when does it end? I mean, come on blind people, get a grip already.
4. If you’re going to wake up every day and decide to be a total asshole, you should have to wear a bell or something so that I know not to get in line behind you
What the fuck you mean I can’t get chicken fingers and fries? What she means is, this is a Mexican fast food restaurant and they don’t have chicken fingers or fries. Other things you cannot get at a Mexican restaurant include but are not limited to: A two piece and a side of mashed potatoes, a sausage biscuit and an old-fashioned, and a california roll and a large popcorn. I think there’s probably some people out there who just forget from time to time to not be assholes, but I’m pretty sure that this guy woke up this morning and checked one of two boxes in his journal that I’m almost positive he doesn’t really have. And listen, baggy jeans-shorts, getting the manager involved is not going to help the situation at all. If there’s one guy in here that probably has less to live for than you, it’s him. A job at a fast food restaurant is one thing, a career at a fast food restaurant is a decision you make after a lot of soul searching and seven years at community college. You know what works in any fast food restaurant? Just walk up to the counter and say “number one”… or almost any number, for that matter. What doesn’t work it getting into an argument with the pregnant seventeen year old behind the counter about the philosophy behind what one should and should not serve at any given eatery. There’s got to be an amendment or something, somewhere in the Constitution that guarantees the availability of chicken fingers…. right? Is this a third world country or is this America? What sort of cruel dystopia is this that all manner of meat is not readily available in breaded, fried, cutlet form at all times? What terrible species of false freedom have we wrought for ourselves to wallow in? What twisted and distorted… what… oh shit, I’m sorry… I’ll just have a number one.
5. If you hand me a hip-hop demo of yours during a job interview, I’m probably not going to hire you
It really doesn’t matter how strong your resume is at this point, “Running shit in the streets since Malcolm had beef” and “showing these bitches how the game is gamed” (all actual lyrics from this very real demo that I was really handed during a job interview) are not job requirements here… or anywhere. And a hand-written resume, by the way, is not as charming and indicative of your work ethic as you clearly think it is. By the way, we’re a hundred miles from the beach, it’s raining outside, and you and I are sitting in an office with no windows, so take your goddamn sunglasses off. Yes, for real. Now, this is typically the part when I’d ask you if you have any disabilities or shortcomings that would prevent you from fulfilling the responsibilities of this job but, clearly… the answer to that is a big “yes.” Conversely, if you have to ask at the end of a job interview if you got the position… then answer to that is a big “no.” I really am sorry, I can see that you wore your best pinky ring and everything, but there’s just not a position, here, for you. I thought I was very clear in the ad that we’re looking for people, not caricatures of people. All the best in your future endeavors.
Five things that I think... 