You are Bill Gates, and you are trying to solve the world’s problems one at a time. What’s the first thing you are going to tackle? Why?

Of note, the book providing this prompt was published in 2011, which I think was before Bill Gates was at the center of weird conspiracies about vaccines and how providing them to kids in other countries was probably a way to inject people with microchips, which people were very against, a fact they posted about a lot on Facebook, which is 100% transparent about the fact that it’s tracking them, from their smart devices, which are also 100% tracking them at all times. Christ, at least the Bill Gates chips would theoretically cure diseases. Facebook ain’t cured shit.

2011 was probably when “Bill Gates” was a stand-in for “money is no object.” Seek, kids, 2011 was before you could get super rich by doing things like promising to build a train and then just not doing it and instead wasting a lot of time owning a social media platform and ruining it comprehensively.

Do we remember when Twitter was fun? I remember when Twitter was fun.

This is tough territory for me because, okay, whenever I do hypotheticals like this with my wife, Poonmaster Flexxx, I like to use a rule called the “No World Peace Rule.” Because when you have hypothetical genie wishes, hypothetical billions, whatever, the easy, boring answer is world peace.

Because, like, if world peace is an option, you either answer world peace or don’t, and the only discussion that comes from it is like, “Why not world peace, you monster?” And then I have to say, “Because I think the fingernail coloring tech from Total Recall 2 or whatever it’s called is super cool, okay?

No, I don’t color my fingernails, and no, this would not prompt me to, but…whatever! Isn’t that more fun to talk about than the fact that we can’t stop blowing up countries?

Point being, let’s take super serious, world changing shit off the board because while it’d make the world much better, it’d make this newsletter very boring.

If you REALLY insist that world peace stay in there as an option, here you go: World Peace. I desire world peace. We could live in an amazing world, we could probably make incredible progress, everything would be great.

The End.

For the rest of you, let’s do this.

I recently watched the movie Roofman, a movie where Channing Tatum plays this guy who escaped prison and then lived behind a bike enclosure in a Toys R Us, having full run of the store during the night, sleeping during the day, and somehow parlaying this life situation into a relationship with Kirsten Dunst.

This is always an issue I take with Hollywood. I mean, on one hand, when a guy is being awfully cloak and dagger about where he lives, and when he claims to be an undercover agent in what appears to be a smallish town in North Carolina, but at the same time seems to have no problem immediately telling you he’s an undercover secret agent — how does this person end up with Kirsten Dunst? How does that make sense?

At the same time, it makes TOTAL sense because the person in question, in the movie, is Channing Tatum.

Which, you know, I get it. Is he probably scamming me and taking advantage of a situation? Yes, seems entirely possible. But it’s worth the risk.

Something I discovered while watching this movie, I love the idea of having a secret little living space. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s from childhood when I always wanted to build a fort or a treehouse or to read comics on the goddamn roof. I guess I just wanted to have a little under-the-radar spot to call my own.

Breaking Bad had this with its laundry lab. And to a lesser extent, in that moving truck the guy used to secretly transport Walter White, the one with the hollowed out space or whatever.

Breaking Bad seemed to like these sorts of things almost as much as I did. No wonder that show was such a success, who DOESN’T love a little hidey hole?

Roofman is based on a true story about a guy named Jeffrey, who really did live inside a Toys R Us and later expanded his hideout into an adjacent Circuit City, a project that’s the antidote to every HGTV remodel if I’ve ever heard of one. “Well, it’s open concept, and over here is a bottle that I can pee into!”

Jeffrey was eventually caught, and one of the keys to identifying him was that he left a fingerprint on a DVD found in his hole. The DVD was Catch Me If You Can, which a lot of people have made hay about because it’s kind of an ironic movie to provide evidence of a crime, but at the same time, it’s probably better than, I don’t know, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. At least it’s a real movie and doesn’t bring up questions about…creepiness. Imagining a guy watching Catch Me If You Can inside the walls of a toy store, seems like an intelligent criminal killing time, kind of living the way most of us do, just rent free in the walls somewhere instead of rent-ful in a space slightly bigger than the space between the walls. So maybe not like most of us, but a lot like the ghost of a Victorian child in any number of haunted house movies (I assume that very few readers of this are Victorian ghost children, but if you are out there, love the Angus Young outfits).

Imagining that same guy watching Superbabies? Eew.

There’s a lot to be said about Jeffrey’s portrayal in the movie. To some extent, they make him out to be a good guy, or maybe a not-bad guy. He starts robbing McDonalds restaurants because he can’t afford a bike for his bitchy daughter who turns her nose up at an Erector set, which is a GREAT toy! I had one. It was fun, it’s like Lego except it uses nuts and bolts and also tends to have sharp pieces that can REALLY cut you up, plus you get to say “erector” a whole bunch with impunity, a true thrill for any child.

But, like, let’s not get away from the fact that Jeffrey was robbing people at gunpoint. Not just people, people working the opening shift at McDonald’s, a thing I’ve done during my lifetime.

In fairness to Jeffrey, if a robber came, locked us in the freezer, then called the cops to let us out as soon as he left with all the money, I’d probably have been okay with it provided we could have the rest of the day off. However, I don’t actually think we would’ve gotten the day off, or at least we wouldn’t have gotten paid for the day. Being held up at gunpoint during the beginning of a McDonald’s shift is only slightly less traumatizing than having moms scream at you because you don’t have the last Happy Meal toy from the set that pieces together to form Inspector Gadget, something that is kind of bullshit, but that definitely isn’t the fault of the 15 year-old register jockey.

I looked online, and all I really found is that Jeffrey “mostly” didn’t harm anyone during his robberies. Which isn’t totally insignificant. I mean, “mostly” is a useful word when we talk about how I “mostly” put a bunch of things on a spreadsheet correctly, or “mostly” managed to not look at pictures of Kirsten Dunst online for several hours to confirm she’s still a babe, but “mostly” avoiding committing assault isn’t all that great. It’s like coming out of the bathroom after having diarrhea and saying you got it “mostly” in the toilet.

Is Jeffrey a monster? I say Yes, and I say Yes because he did make life tough for some people who really had it tough already, but I mostly say Yes because he left a fingerprint on the bottom of a DVD.

What is with this? I check out DVDs and CDs from the library all the time, and it’s RARE to get one without a fingerprint on the bottom. Which I expect when I check out something like Superbabies, discs that are likely touched by children or adults who have lube-covered hands, but when I check out Inside Llewyn Davis? A non-horror A24 picture?

So, here’s what I would do with all that Bill Gates money:

I would develop a coating for discs that, when touched, makes your hand smell like absolute shit for 2 weeks. The slightest grazing of the data side of a disc would doom you to a stench that made everyone sure you hadn’t washed your hands after taking the most heinous shit of your life. I’m talking about, you’re in bed, your stink hand under the pillow that your head is on top of, and the smell permeates through the pillow, even if you have some fancy memory foam pillow that weighs like 15 lbs.

You might wonder why I would do it this way instead of developing a fingerprint-resistant coating. And that’s an excellent question with an even excellent-er answer:

Stopping the fingerprints moving forward would be a good thing, but it wouldn’t punish all the people who’ve put their stupid greasy fingers all over every disc up to now.

Diabolical? A little. Vengeful? You bet.

And that, friends, is why you should make sure to subscribe to this newsletter on a paid tier. If I make a comfortable living, I’ll never pursue a lavish living. I’ll be very content to cruise through life, writing dumb bullshit instead of really applying myself and making the world an objectively worse place, if in no other way than on an olfactory level.

I hate introducing this concept, probably because this feels like me doing a writing exercise in public, and as we all know, exercising in public is fuckin’ embarrassing.

On the other hand, my last newsletter featured prominently, in the title in fact, that I’m leaking from my rectum, so WHAT PRIDE DO I HAVE LEFT!? WHAT DIGNITY AM I TRYING TO PRESERVE HERE? It’s like I got a pizza and have become super protective of the leftovers which consist only of one crust and most of a congealed cup of garlic dippin’ butter.

With all that said, here’s today’s thing:

Write a “Dear John” letter, breaking up with your high-school sweetheart who’s in the army.

Dear John,

Did I blow it by starting the letter this way? Are you supposed to address a breakup letter with “Dear John” even if the person’s name isn’t John, that way they have context going in? I mean, it’s not like a letter should work the way a novel does where some of the joy is in the discovery of the world and its characters. It should probably minimize the mystery and make with the point-stery.

Well, let me dawdle just a bit and start off by saying that I’m very proud of you for joining the army. In this post-9/11 era, it’s the right thing to do, for sure, and I’m betting we’ll find those weapons of mass destruction in no time with smart, capable people like you on the case. I considered joining myself, but I decided against it because I guess I wanted to continue to be alive and have all my limbs, and not joining the army seemed like a good way to make those outcomes more likely. Not that I think any of those bad things will happen to you, just, you know, if there are two paths, one army and one not-army, and if you really like having life and limbs, one of those two paths is probably better-suited to getting what you want.

For now, I do still want to be alive. Maybe that’ll change when I’m, I don’t know, 42 or so, but, hey, maybe we’ll also elect a real bonkerz prezident and then they’ll raise the enlistment age to 42 and I’ll still have my shot at pursuing a premature death. That seems like too much of a coincidence though, right? That I’d be the exact upper age and also maybe not doing so hot emotionally at the same time? But that’s a problem for future me, let’s focus on a problem for current me, which is our relationship.

I thought it might be kind of fun to have a girlfriend in the army. I thought, I don’t know, you’d get ripped like GI Jane, and you’d look pretty smokin’ with a shaved head, like GI Jane, and you’d come in and out of my life every so often, like my thoughts of GI Jane.

I did wonder if I’d get made fun of for having a “butch” girlfriend, but that didn’t bother me because I could take it in stride, especially because when you came home on leave, you could beat the shit out of all the guys who made fun of me. Which would kind of prove their point, but I think I’d still win the MORAL victory in that case. That’s what moral victories are like, right?

What I didn’t anticipate is that people would make fun of me for having “a girlfriend, but she’s not here right now, she’s in the army,” sort of like the classic, “I have a girlfriend, she goes to a different school. In Canada. A FRENCH-speaking school in Canada, so you can’t even try to look it up online unless you know French." But trust me, je suis very much in love!”

Nobody believes I have a girlfriend. And nobody believes I have a girlfriend who’s going to take the exploding stuff out of a missile and write a love note on it and then shoot the missile into my backyard. Which is something I kind of said you’d do, I meant to talk to you about that…of course, you don’t have to do that now that we’re breaking up. I mean, you COULD, to be a pal, but I can no longer force you to by withholding my excellent dry humping skills.

I’m afraid we’ll have to break up so that I can pursue a relationship that I can shove in other peoples’ faces.

In conclusion (by the way, thank you for tutoring me in English and telling me to end essays and stuff with “In Conclusion!), thank you for being my girlfriend for lo these past 4 months. It felt like forever, in a good way.

And we’ll always have Austin Powers. Whenever you’re feeling sad and probably tears are dropping on this letter, just remember me saying, in an Austin Powers voice, “Oh, behave!”

-Pete

About 6 weeks ago, I had a hemorrhoidectomy.

I’m told that in medical circles, this is sometimes referred to as “The Devil’s Surgery” because it’s so goddamn painful.

Did you know that your butthole is one of the most nerve-heavy parts of your body? I found this out! Through experience!

But enough about me and my butthole. How are you? [please only respond if you’re a paid subscriber]

I did want to to take this moment to apologize to loyal readers, by which I mean paid subscribers. I let you down these past 6 weeks or so, and I know it’s tough to not hear from me for so long. I deeply and sincerely apologize, and I hope to get back into the swing and have more consistent newsletters in the future.

To slightly-less-loyal readers, those of you who have paid at one point or another and are not paying currently, I apologize to a reasonable extent. I’m not going to grovel at your feet (while taking sneaky pictures of said feet to post online with this

which is a tiny, cute lil camera I thought would be fun to carry around instead of my phone, and which my wife immediately dubbed a “pervo camera” because she assumed it was the kind of thing people would use to take upskirts or whatever. I countered that if I was going to do that, I would just use my phone, nobody questions if you hold your phone out in front of you, look like you’re texting, and have activated the front facing camera. This argument not only didn’t change the way my wife saw my Kodak Charmera cute lil camera, it made her suspicious of me in a way I’d never anticipated and felt was a little unfair. I mean, c’mon, just because I never have done pervo photography doesn’t mean I’d be totally inept at it! And being bad at something doesn’t mean you’re not suspect!).

To people who are subscribers and actually read these newsletters but have never paid, well, you’ve gotten more than what you paid for, and for the last 6 weeks, you’ve gotten exactly what you paid for. And you’re welcome.

To the true termites, the scumlords who read this occasionally but are not subscribed and don’t give me money anywhere, on any of my ventures, no matter how ridiculous, I say you probably still kinda owe ME at this point. I mean, what are you going to do? It’s like taking your grandma to court after she sent you $20 bucks every week and then paused for 6 weeks while a surgeon cut a string of flesh that began outside her asshole and went into her rectum, then she resumed sending you $20 bucks every week. But you, you prick, you want that back pay! And it’s your GRANDMOTHER. I AM YOUR GRANDMOTHER.

Well, I think we’ve reached our weekly level of unhinged that signals a successful, complete newsletter. Tune in next week for something even more better-er (unless you’re one of the termites, in which case, do whatever you want with your life, nobody cares).

The bulb doesn’t turn on, not in the traditional sense, which is the only sense in which you want bulbs to turn on.

Instead of illuminating when I hit the light switch, while the other 3 bulbsturn on, the 4th remains dark. BUT, when I turn the light switch off, the 3 working bulbs go dark, and the 4th glows and slowly fades into darkness.

This is incredibly weird, and I went as far into experimenting with it as to swap its place with one other bulb in the ceiling fan, saw it do the same thing, and then just was like, “Well, I guess this is my life.”

It kind of works out. When you turn off the light to get into bed, you have a good 15 seconds of low-level light to help you not smash your shin on something, smash your face on something, or step on any number of things you left on the floor, figuring that you would remember where they were located (you will not).

This is how life is sometimes. Things don’t work right, so you have to trick yourself into thinking it’s BETTER that it’s janky as hell. “It’s better that this car doesn’t have A/C because I’m really experiencing the seasons!”

But then a second bulb started acting funny, flickering quite a bit.

After establishing that the flickering wasn’t due to a child trapped in another dimension trying to make contact with me, I got the box of lightbulbs out of the closet and replaced both the flickering bulb and the one that was reverse fading.

The first thing I noticed from the bulb box was that these bulbs WERE “dimmable.” The box doesn’t specify the mechanism by which they are dimmable, so I guess I’ve learned that “dimmable by curse at factory which will cause them to not really work except when turned off” is a form of dimmability.

Then I saw that these bulbs have a 13 year life, which, wow! Wow, right! Long time. Geez, 8 bulbs, 13 years, this box of bulbs will probably outlast me, illuminating my corpse from a bedside lamp as I breathe my last, surrounded by loved ones. Well, maybe not surrounded, but “in the presence of a few” for sure.

Oh, wait, sorry. These bulbs don’t have a 13 year life. It’s a 13 year life*.

And what that little puckered butthole will tell you is that, “Some fixtures may reduce bulb life.”

Some? Some. Does “Some” mean “All but a very specific fixture we’ve set up in a laboratory under perfect conditions, one that is regularly dusted, was wired by the finest electrician in the land, and no one ever considers putting their penis into it because, c’mon, it’s the exact right shape, corkscrew threading and everything!?”

But let’s move beyond the marketing, we all know that’s bullshit, and let’s take a look at the back of the box, which nearly made my head explode.

Light has the ability to do more than just light a room - it can influence the mood and atmosphere of the surround-
ing space, and it can affect how we work and live. High definition light is tailored for every room to match the right light to the right space.

I’m going to point out that these are “Relax” bulbs, and this text has made me quite the opposite of relaxed.

Let’s start with this:

Light has the ability to do more than just light a room

Why would you use the word “light” as a noun and a verb so close together? Why? Couldn’t you say, “Light has the ability to do more than just brighten a room”?

Combs have a way of doing more than just combing.

Tractors have a way of doing more than just tractoring.

Stupid.

And then there’s the hyphen instead of em dash, which is a pet peeve of mine. Yeah, I know, we all hate em dashes now because we decided it means something was written by AI, but that’s stupid, guys. You know why AI uses em dashes? Because it was trained on human writing, and human writing uses em dashes.

We shouldn’t surrender our em dashes to Sam Altman. He’s already going to destroy our jobs and confuse the doddering elderly with AI-generated images, let’s at least hold onto our punctuation.

Then we have the word “surrounding” going onto the next line. Which, what the fuck.

Let’s just fix this all at once:

There, done. It took like five seconds.

This all reminds me of a thing, of depression, to be specific. Because when you’re depressed, MOST things remind you of depression.

It reminds me of this:

Someone, somewhere, designed this package, and they invented Ripply, the lil’ mascot who isn’t just claiming the status of spokescandy, he’s THE INVENTOR of the candy. Take that Tony the Tiger. You think you’re so fuckin’ great because you eat Frosted Flakes? Try inventing a cereal, you jock asshole.

When I saw Ripply, I was instantly depressed. Because I thought, “Man, someone made this lil guy, he’s pretty cute, and whoever made this, it’ll probably be their most-seen contribution to the world of art. Just a made up lil guy meant to sell strips of sour watermelon goo hardened into strips.”

I mean, what speaks to the futility of life more than that? This lil guy that most people will probably never even notice?

On the OTHER hand, I found it depressing, but in a different way, to consider that perhaps the person who designed Ripply is happy with the work, and in fact may enjoy making stuff like this. Maybe they feel really fulfilled by making Ripplys and the like, and maybe they’re pumped to see him whenever they’re in a grocery store, Target, or, I don’t know, candy emporium run by an eccentric weirdo who is harming children, but in a more Rube Goldberg contraption kind of way as opposed to the other way we see a lot more in the news.

Our lives really are so very small and inconsequential.

I ask you, reader, what’s more depressing? The light bulb box that clearly no one gave a fuck about, the candy bag that someone poured their heart and soul into, or me, the person laid low by retail packaging?

Make up a Peanuts character. Write a scene in which your character interacts with the other Peanuts characters.

Before we get into the plot, let’s talk about the visuals, which are a slam dunk.

See, a few years back, I discovered that the easy way to make a Peanuts character look funny is to space their eyes further apart. Observe:

From left to right, a clear progression from pretty funny to maniacal and hilarious. God has made all of us unique, and we should thank him for all the laughs. People are different from me, and that’s endlessly amusing.

So we start with the Charlie Brown canvas and then make sure them eyes are spread about as far out as they’ll go.

Next, let’s do something about that dopey grin. What do you have to smile about, Charlie Brown? Nothing. Nothing and nobody. Maybe you’re smiling through the pain, although I don’t see your life as one of acute pain, I see it as a slow, grinding pain that is really more the territory of someone 30 years older.

By the way, everyone: Don’t tell me it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown. Sorry, sorry if I’m too strong for you and you find that intimidating.

Next, let's stretch his head out a little. I feel like a longer head really makes these characters less cherubic, more, how to say, ugly?

Oh, and the hair. Hair is a key Peanuts component. I’m thinking something that says, “I actually started cutting my own hair before the pandemic, but now I just tell people I started in 2020 and have kept doing it because it’s easier than explaining that I just don’t think a haircut is going to improve my appearance, and when you’re displeased with your appearance, one of the worst things you can do is spend $35 dollars to look yourself in a giant mirror for an hour while someone asks you what you do for a living and you resist the urge to be like, “Can we just not talk at all? It’s fine if you want to monologue or talk to someone else, I just can’t stand describing my job to one more person.”

While we’re on hair, remember, just because the eyes are far apart doesn’t mean the brows can’t grow together. Eyebrows are amazing that way, they can cover almost any gap imaginable. We really should learn to be more like eyebrows, reaching out to each other, even when the distance appears enormous.

Almost done, I think we just need an outfit change.

There we are!

Just to walk you through a couple things, those are hike-y pants that our character feels he’s getting away with at work because they look kinda sorta like “business pants,” as he calls them. It’s not visible because he’s not wearing shorts as shorts are for children, but our character is wearing no-show socks because fuck you, gen z.

And, yes, he is aware of the irony of saying shorts are for children while wearing a shirt with a manga character that was purchased from Hot Topic online. Are you aware of the irony of shut up?

…what does it mean that I decided to make a shitty character, and in order to do that, I made myself? What’s the opposite of a Mary Sue? What’s it called when someone inserts themselves into a story to really crap it up because their presence would destroy the magic of any world they entered?

Oh, well. Here we go.

You know what? I’m tired of calling these “prompts.”

It makes it feel like I’m just jerking off in these newsletters, like this is a writing exercise for me that you’re all being subjected to as opposed to a serious, planned, thoughtful endeavor to entertain and sell books. Of which I have many!

In fact, I have…like 5 or 6 books that were packaged and ready to go out, but it turns out I didn’t need to send them.

See, the story goes…no, again, let’s stop right there. This isn’t an interesting story at all, so instead, just know that I have a small stack of books that I can mail out to those interested. DM me your address. The first 5 or 6 (or however many I have, can’t be bothered to check) will receive a free copy of The Heist-est Heist Ever Heisted: Special Editor’s Edition.

Nutrition Facts: Serving Size is 1 book. Because it’s short! Mercifully short!

Oh, and because I’ve recently learned this is important with a giveaway: Offer ends whenever I feel like it, so if it’s like…mid-April of 2026 or later, don’t DM me your address. Unless that’s your kink, sending people your address for contests that are long over, in which case, I guess go nuts? I don’t need details about your whole “thing,” but I don’t mind, as long as I don’t know I’m being used that way.

Oh, and also, this doesn’t apply to people outside the U.S. Unless you really super promise to read the book and give it five stars on Amazon and Goodreads and GREATreads and Storygraph and ReadOrgy and whatever other services are out there, and you should probably also write a review of it on all those sites, and maybe you should even pay someone to tweet about it, maybe buy a Cameo from…let’s say Wayne Knight?

Jesus, $329.99? That’s pricey. For that, I could have like 10 Dennis Nedry action figures.

Or like 1.5 Dennis Nedry action figures made years later when someone was like, “…when did Neumann have a flamethrower?”

Rapper Kanye East is only $25 bucks. That seems a lot more reasonable, more on my level.

And you have to respect the hustle. That’s what that means, right? “Respect the hustle” means paying someone $25 dollars because they came up with a joke that begins and ends with a name?

Alright, back to the beginning: What can we call these things instead of “prompts.”

“Writing Exercises?” No, too casual. And it turns off people who don’t like exercise. Which is everyone. Well, most people. The other day, someone told me, “You know, I never see runners smiling. They always look like they’re suffering.” Which is true, but I also don’t think most peoples’ O-face is a smile, right? What would that even be like? Maybe a little something like this! [take it away, Hajime Isayama!]

I could open with “Today’s Topic.” Although I don’t like the word “topic.” Sounds like high school debate class. Probably also sounds like college debate class, which I’m guessing exists.

I’m no jock by any means (no, stop it! You’re just flattering me now!), but I do think it’s a little weird that you can get a varsity letter for being smart that’s the same one you get for throwing a ball good. Or maybe not even good, just better than most of the other 16 year-olds in your particular school. I don’t know how you work this out so that these two activities earn people different letters that are equal, just different, but someone should get on that. Probably one of the people in speech and debate class. I don’t think those football players are having lots of great ideas from within the confines of a concussion tent.

Geez, for an NFL tent, this thing looks kinda shitty. It doesn’t even have a floor!

Although I guess maybe they don’t want to make the tent a big thing. Hell, it’s probably blue so that they can just key it out and it doesn’t show up on live broadcasts.

Concussion tent? What concussion tent? Are you seeing a concussion tent right now? You should probably get checked out for a head injury, possibly inside of some sort of enclosed space where it’s a little darker and quieter and less stimulating and where we can hide you from view of the general public because, let’s face it, the more people actually think about football causing brain damage, the less money we can make from this goddamn thing.

Sigh.

I don’t think I’m going to come up with something better than “Today’s prompt.” But on the plus, I’ve spent so much time screwing around here that I don’t even have to burn a prompt on today! I can just save it for next time.

No, TEASE it for next time!

Make up a Peanuts character. Write a scene in which your character interacts with the other Peanuts characters.

Five ideas for a novel you’ll never write.

I’ll do you one better, five ideas for FIVE novels I’ll never write!

Is that one better or one worse?

Hey, I’m a writer of sorts, I sit down and clack the keyboards here and there, which is a thing us writers totally say. Of course I’ve got many, many ideas for novels I’ll never write. Probably more ideas for novels I’ll never write than novels I WILL write.

Here are five of them, five I’ve handpicked because they’re terrible, so if I put them out online and someone else does it, eh. I don’t mean “eh” in a non-copyright-enforceable way, just in an emotional way.

Oh, and trust me, I have many, many other excellent novels in mind, so when you see a new one from me come out, it’s a banger. Don’t take these bad ideas as an indication that the well is dry. It’s not. Probably. Hopefully. I mean, can you imagine? If I ran out of stuff to write, how else would I get to spend an extra 15 minutes on my taxes because I need to claim $34 dollars of income from Amazon?

1. The Explorers

Just know this is a tentative title, and, yes, I’m aware of the Joe Dante movie by the same name, and this has nothing to do with that movie. I think. I guess maybe it does, I’ve never actually seen the movie, but if Joe’s movie and my unwritten novel are similar, the film’s art did a horrendous job capturing the general thrust of the movie:

In PETE’S The Explorers, we have a hapless fellow who has fallen in with a crowd of Lewis and Clark types and is headed west into a country that is unexplored by man. Well, white man.

This is problem one with this book: How do you write about unexplored country when we all know, today, that there were shitloads of people living all over the place? I mean, I think the answer is that you just have the book be diary entries, and each entry ends with a section of “Things Not To Include in Official Accounts Because It Makes Us Sound Less Heroic:” and then you’d have stuff like, “We met a bunch of people who actually gave us food and, whew, helped us out quite a bit!”

Our explorer, let’s call him Joe Dante just to make it confusing, is not an enthusiastic explorer. He doesn’t even like camping. He’s very inept. He’s like that one person you see on every season of Survivor who’s like, “I never even learned how to make a fire, lol!”

Comedy ensues once our explorer learns that he get paid regardless of whether or not the exploration achieves its goal of getting to the ocean in the west, so he tries to derail the trip and end it prematurely multiple times.

Chances I’ll Actually Write It: Very low. I feel like I’d have to learn a bunch of stuff about exploration of the western United States, and, eh, I don’t want to learn in order to write something super stupid.

2. Walking Diary

There’s something very funny to me in the idea of a guy who takes up walking and journaling for mindfulness, and he finds he fucking hates mindfulness. Like, mindfulness is stupid sometimes, because I think there are situations where we really DON’T want to be aware of what’s happening. Do you want to be mindful at the dentist, or do you just sort of want the time to fly by while they scrape your teeth with a metal tool, a sensation that is wildly unpleasant and how have they not invented a better way yet? Where are the goddamn nanobots already!?

The book would be a series of diary entries written by a character, let’s call him Dante Joe, and it’d become immediately apparent that walking and mindfulness are not for him, and in fact they’re making him more grouchy, maybe even cantankerous.

Chances I’ll Actually Write It: Slim. I think the major problem with this one is sustaining it for like 200 pages. I feel like you’ll get the joke right away, and it’ll overstay it’s welcome, like 85% of SNL sketches. I feel like it already has overstayed its welcome just by me describing it.

3. A is for Hole

A series of really stupid mysteries titled in a complete ripoff of homage to Sue Grafton, beginning of course with A Is For Hole.

Chances I’ll Actually Write It: Approaching zero. I have nothing for this except the title of the first book. I do love it, but a joke title is probably not enough to base a whole book on. Probably. Though I hear Crime and Punishment started as just a title, so maybe there’s hope.

4. Another Batman Book

In this book, I write out, over thousands of pages, a scenario in which you’re all right, Bruce Wayne really could do more with his billions than Batman can do with his fists.

We start out with a young Bruce learning about privilege, then get very John Irving as Bruce attends a fine prep school and learns to wrestle, both on the mat and with the responsibility of spending a fortune in ways that benefit humanity.

Blahblahblah, ultimately this one is intended to be super boring and to kill the idea that people float every so often about why Batman shouldn’t punch things, which is dumb, Batman should definitely punch things.

Chances I’ll Actually Write It: None, none chances. It’d have to be a super long, super thorough book about something I don’t care about, just to make a point, and while I AM that petty, I’m NOT that hard working.

5. A Vampire Book

Vampire books are always hot, or, when they’re not hot, they’re just in hibernation, waiting for their next moment to glitter in the sun.

My vampire book is a bunch of short vignettes in the life of Dracula. The major problem is that I only have two vignette ideas.

Vignette 1: Dracula is called before a town council because he’s constantly biting hot busty babes, and the town council is approaching him cautiously and asking him if he’d consider not always feeding on the most attractive woman in town. Things devolve when they accuse him of only picking women with huge racks, which turns out to be accurate, but still, controversial.

Vignette 2: Dracula complains that he can’t see glamouring people with these stupid modern names. “How am I supposed to say, ‘KVIIIlyn, come to me. Be…my victim!’?”

By the way, that’s “Caitlin” using the Roman “8” for the middle sound. Which isn’t annoying for Dracula to say, but he can’t escape the knowledge of how it’s spelled.

Chances I’ll Actually Write It: Very low, but higher than the others. TWO ideas have come to mind just by letting this simmer on the backburner, so maybe there’s hope. Thank god I use brainpower to think about this as opposed to thinking about my credit score or whatever.

Why your boss should give you a raise.

Listen, boss, I’m gonna make this very simple:

I don’t deserve a raise. You know it, I know it.

I stink at my job, and I make the workplace stink even more. I bet you pondered why, during the period most people were working from home, nobody was dropping mondo dukes in the staff bathroom. And I bet you only pondered that for a short period before you realized it was because I was dropping those same mondo dukes at home. My toilet was now doing the work previously spread across several different toilets, and I will be writing off the cost of a new toilet on my taxes this year, believe you me. It’s not a full-on home office, but it’s in the neighborhood.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve broken 4 Keurig machines in as many years. Yes, I had plausible excuses at the beginning, “I took a tumble and grabbed onto the nearest thing I could see in a moment of panic,” degraded into, “I accidentally knocked it off the counter while I was…cleaning?,” which settled into, “I don’t know, it just broke,” to finally, “That thing makes crap coffee anyway, buy a new one, please, bitch.”

Maybe you’ve seen a decline in my joie de work. Very astute of you. What was the giveaway? Me coming in more disheveled all the time, wearing the same pair of khakis for weeks at a time?

Well, if it was that, you’ve grossly misinterpreted the situation because I haven’t washed these khakis in over 17 months. I mean, sure, that qualifies as “weeks at a time” if we’re accurately talking about 69(!) weeks and counting, like we’re talking about my filthy clothes the way people talk about a baby, week by week, because they’re trapped at home with a newborn and have nothing better to do other than to tell everyone about the miracle of life and how THERE REALLY IS significant development week to week, I swear, and I’m happy with this choice I made to have children, I promise.

Maybe it wasn’t the khakis, maybe it was me screaming at random intervals during the day that I can’t take it anymore? It’s a less subtle hint, but I’ve never been interested in subtlety. Or talking about my various grievances with life at a reasonable volume.

I’ll be real with you, I know that giving me a raise in light of all this, in light of who and what I am, might not seem like the easiest thing in the world. But here’s the pitch:

If you give me a raise, and you continue to do your job as you have been, which is, let’s be real, EXTREMELY half-assed, just quieter than the way I’ve been failing—if you keep up your current level of productivity, my salary will all of a sudden be much, much too close to yours to make any sense, and this gives you some good leverage for a raise of your own.

Imagine it. You go into your boss’ office, ask for a raise. He says No because of course he’s going to say No, every goddamn boss treats company money like it’s the funding for lifesaving medicine for his only child. But after he says No, you point to me in my cubicle, which I’ve created a plywood ceiling and door for and which has a pretty alarming amount of fog emerging from it due to me installing a fog machine and saying that a decreased “draw distance” helps me concentrate, you point to my pay stub and say, “Look, this is what HE’S making. You can’t tell me we should be that close together in salary.”

You’re welcome. You’re welcome for giving me a raise. Maybe you could use some of your new wealth to buy a new Keurig for the office. I hear rumblings, mostly in my own mind, about how the latest one is strutting around the office like it owns the place and needs to be taken down a notch.

You’re in the interview stage of the Miss America pageant. Besides your desire for world peace, what will you tell the judges?

You know, I was in a pageant once. Not as a contestant, but as an escort for a contestant.

“Escort” in this case involves the more classical definition of escorting, doing that thing where you hold your arm out to the side and a lady grabs it and walks with you, as though she’s absorbing the power of your mighty bicep and that gives her the courage to walk a very short distance.

I’m really only familiar with “escorting” being used in three ways:

1. This pageant thing

2. Sex work with a fancied up name

3. The worst missions in video games where you have to take a clueless piece of shit human and basically keep them alive, which involves not only fighting off baddies, but also keeping the escortee from killing themselves.

Why do they do this to us? And why call it an “escort mission.” It sounds like I’m going to be seducing someone, which sounds a lot more fun than shooting a bunch of guys who are trying to shoot some lady who is like the slowest computer hacker of all time. C’mon, James Bond, I know you picked Natalia because of her amazing ass,

but couldn’t you find someone who’s a better keyboardist next time?

Anyway, yes, I was a pageant escort.

This involved putting on a suit and walking about 5 feet onto a stage, then the lady I was escorting broke away and walked much, much further down the stage, stopped, and came back to where I waited and then escorted her off the stage. I got very little stage time, and frankly I felt like this was a waste of putting on suit time. My rule is that you should be wearing the suit for longer than it takes to put the suit on, a pretty simple rule that I probably only violated in this one instance.

I was going to say how stupid all of this was, and I was going to say, “It’s all just a bunch of,” and then realized the next word was going to be “pageantry,” and decided, yeah, actually, I guess it makes sense that there’s pageantry at a pageant. That’s really all there is at a pageant, and I can’t argue that it’s not the appropriate place for it.

My experience of pageants is that they’re dumb and a huge scam.

The pageant involved spending a lot of money on stupid bullshit. Everyone in the pageant had to buy matching outfits, a shirt and some shorts, cheap shit that would probably fall apart if you washed it once, to wear during a coordinated dance number. The pageant cost a bunch of money to enter. You kind of HAD to stay at the hotel where the pageant was taking place. All of this so someone could tell you what every teenage girl already suspects and sometimes takes drastic, unhealthy action to address: You’re not the prettiest girl in the world.

I guess the one positive thing I’d say is that this particular pageant made no bones about being anything BUT a beauty pageant. It was 100% a beauty pageant, no questions about world peace or whatever. Which I kind of respected because, let’s face it, there’s really no reason to ask beauty pageant contestants what they think about things other than beauty contests. Why would being good at doing hair and makeup make you a geopolitical savant? Maybe today pageant contestants listen to the BBC Global News Podcast while they glue fake eyelashes to their eyelids?

But, in this scenario, I’m on the spot, so what do I talk about, other than world peace?

Well, I’d probably start by saying I’m not even going to bother, world peace shouldn’t be on the table. If decades of bimbos like me requesting it, looking as good as we do, hasn’t made it happen, then I don’t know what will! I mean, I’m using the tools I have available, and they ain’t working, so world peace is up to someone else. If I’m using my one tool, hotness, and it’s not working, some of these uggos need to reach into their toolbags and see what works. I think that’s fair to say at this point, right? That us pageant-ers have tried our best, we’ve put it out there several times, and you all just don’t seem up for it. I don’t think many of us are responsible for the state of the world, not directly, at least.

Maybe my move is to win, get some time with the President, and then substitute in someone else, some mule-faced genius who can try to convince him that blowing up whole countries is probably not a job for a guy whose primary familiarity with the term “escort” comes from the number 2 bullet point above.

Next, I’d probably tell the judges which fast-casual restaurants I felt had the best fries. Trivial? Sure. But it’s potentially useful information. What if they’ve never even tried the fries at Popeye’s? When a place has good enough fries that you’ll eat fries AND a biscuit, more starch than you’ll find in my deeply Republican father’s fuckin’ stupid blue button-up shirt with the white collar and cuffs? C’mon, it’s worth a try. Hey, maybe that talk doesn’t win me Miss America, but, like, at least someone will not go much deeper into life eating delicious fries. I feel this is a useful service I can provide.

Maybe then I’d try and flip the script, say something about, “You know, you ask a lot of questions, but when’s the last time someone asked YOU what your thoughts are? I bet it’s got to feel kinda shitty to ask all these questions all the time and never get asked anything back. Does that feel shitty?”

Of course, I don’t care about these jackholes who’ve chosen to judge pageants for a living. I probably care about their ideas on evolution being taught in schools EVEN LESS than I care about the opinions of beauty pageant contestants, which makes it a VERY low bar.

Finally, I’d close with the following hypothetical from Chuck Klosterman:

You have won a prize. The prize has two options, and you can choose either (but not both). The first option is a year in Europe with a monthly stipend of $2,000. The second option is ten minutes on the moon. Which option do you select?

And then spend 20 minutes railing about why The Moon is the right choice, yet nobody picks it.

Guys, fuckheads, you CAN make a year in Europe happen. Is it easy? No. But $2,000 dollars a month? That’s only $24,000 dollars. You can save that, or, at the very least, find a credit card willing to make a $24,000 dollar bad decision.

The Moon you cannot have at any price. There is no amount of scrimping and saving that will get you to The Moon, no amount of personal sacrifice, assuming you’re already above the age to train to be an astronaut and have the misfortune of having many, many health ailments that would render you a terrible spaceman.

And what are you going to do in Europe anyway? Look at old bullshit? It’s called Google Image Search, bitch.

Okay, a year off would be nice, but you could probably make $24,000 dollars doing speaking engagements as you’d be only person who’s been to the moon in the last 40 years. Hell, there are only 4 people besides you who’ve been there who are alive! Give them another couple years, you’ll probably be the only living person who’s been to The Moon. Buzz Aldrin is fucking 96, which is great, I love that for him, but, c’mon, don’t you think people would want to hear about the Moon?

Who’s going to pay you to talk about your trip to Europe where you faffed about and tell everyone how great it is because you can travel everywhere by train. No shit!?

And The Moon is clearly the…

Your worst experience in a gym class.

Let’s just get the actual worst experience out of the way first. That’s the prompt, right, what you came here for?

When I was in junior high, we’d try out various sports in gym class. I guess the coaches thought that in order to be well-rounded, we definitely needed to shoot a bow and arrow at least once in our lives, climb a cargo net, basically do the sorts of things Jason Statham does in most of his movies.

Or, I mean, Deliverance came out in 1972, so I’m sure almost all my gym coaches had seen it, and maybe they felt they were doing us a favor in the event that we had to kill some hillbillies who were raping our fat friend.

One of the sports we tried was lacrosse, a sport that wasn’t deadly to hillbillies in the strict sense, but which seems to be popular at ivy league schools, so it does kind of give their enemies, rich, educated east coasters, further avenues to networking with people who inevitably convince hillbillies that coal mining is a great idea.

Lacrosse is the sport where you have that stick with the net on the end and…well, I don’t actually remember what else you do in that one other than throw the ball around and try and catch it in your stick net, which seems fucking impossible.

Lacrosse kind of seems like a bullshit sport someone made up, like some guy cut the nets off his pool table and then taped them to sticks and decided to throw around a cue ball because he was THAT drunk.

As a non-sports person, it’s a mystery to me why, say lacrosse is a sport people play in college, or field hockey, whatever the fuck that is, but colleges don’t have pro wrestling leagues. Why not? At leas someone might actually want to watch that! You could team up with drama departments for costumes. It’d be a spectacle, and isn’t that what we’re all looking for?

Anyway, we were playing lacrosse, or the closest approximation of lacrosse available to kids who have never touched a lacrosse stick before and have zero desire to do so, and I’m in the field, standing in the way of another player, and he just decided to go with an unorthodox play and launch the ball straight at me as hard as he could. Which, in fairness, wasn’t a terrible strategy. I mean, after a quick Google, it’d seem that this isn’t allowed in lacrosse, it’s sort of like hitting a baseball player in the head with a baseball while he’s trying to steal a base (which I argue would add some serious stakes to the game). But, again, it’s not like we had a large toolset in terms of lacrosse maneuvers.

The ball, which is a solid rubber ball, hit me right in the chest, and it left me with a hybrid wound between a bruise and a burn somehow that lasted for weeks.

Definitely my worst experience in a gym class, which isn’t so bad considering the urban legend I heard about kids getting into a towel fight in the showers after a gym class, and one kid whipped another kid in the nuts so ferociously that the kid’s nutsack split open and his testicle fell out onto the shower floor.

This seems almost impossible, maybe a folktale designed to make us all think it’s not so bad to get hit in the chest by a hard rubber ball.

Presidential Fitness Test

There were some other things about gym class that sucked.

I was a victim/participant in the Presidential Fitness Test where you had to do various tasks to a certain level in order to…I don’t know, have the President think you’re hot shit? Is the President actually concerned with whether or not I can do a pullup? If he is, maybe he should find something else to do. There are many, many middle eastern countries that I’ve never even heard of to bomb! Akrotiri and Dhekelia? Wha!?

One of the events was the sit and reach, which has a very descriptive name, so me telling you that it involved sitting flat, legs straight, and reaching forward as far as possible seems like a waste of everyone’s time. And yet, I did it. Guess that shows how much I care about our relationship.

I sucked butts at the sit and reach, which seemed unfair. Like, push-ups, you can kind of push (up) through the pain. Or running the mile, you could gut it out. But sit and reach? It’s just how far your body goes, bro.

Plus, I don’t remember American heroes, like Rambo or John Matrix, showing us how flexible they were. That shit is for Belgians, who were probably commie scum, right? With their flexibility and untearable nutsacks.

In my later school years, they altered the test so that instead of meeting a standard set up in some spreadsheet, all you had to do was try the events the first time, then, later in the semester, you were supposed to beat your previous records.

This worked when I was in 8th grade because you’d try and do a good job, then find out you had to beat it next time. In 9th grade, however, hip to the scheme, you’d just half-ass it completely on the first time, then 3/4 ass it the second time, and so you’d still have a full quarter of ass left in the tank for eating Doritos as a lunch, which is a thing I did as often as possible.

Step 2 The Test

We used to do a couple diabolical cardio activities in gym class, too.

The 1.5 miler isn’t like an insane feat, but what was ridiculous about it is that it’s not like gym class trained us up to run 1.5 miles using any sort of plotted out method. You just showed up for gym class one day, waited to see if the coach was going to put a basketball or a lacrosse stick or a goddamn arrow in your hands, and instead he was like, “Well, we’re going to run 1.5 miles today as fast as you can.”

This is not something I would suggest even to a moderately fit person untrained in distance running. I mean, okay, it’s kids, and for some reason, kids can kind of handle anything, even stuff that’d make adults sore for like 9 days. You know how you can tell you’re aging? You run 1.5 miles as hard as you can, and you’re not even sore the next day, but the day after that, you’re like, “I wish I was dead. I wish I’d always been dead.”

There was some kind of time standard, I can’t remember how it worked exactly, but I do remember that the slacker strategy was to walk until the last minute, then sprint through the last lap or so in order to make it in time.

This is a super stupid plan because in order to be fit enough to pull that off, you’d have to be fit enough to just easily jog 1.5 miles in a reasonable timeframe. It’s like having to deadlift a total of 1,000 pounds, and because you’re totally out of shape, being like, “Instead of lifting 100 lbs 10 times, I’ll just load up the bar with 1,000 and do it once. What kind of sucker is doing this ten times?”

But the worst event in the same vein was the Step Test.

The Step Test was an “event” where you would line up along the gym bleachers, step up onto them, then step back down, and you’d do this as many times as you possibly could for some arbitrary amount of time, like 4 minutes.

Some dipshit classmate was supposed to count your steps, and they never, ever did it right. Because who can pay attention to something that boring for 4 minutes? Watching a kid go up and down the same step? Jesus christ.

The indoor bleachers weren’t just regular steps, they were extra tall, I guess because doing this on the sorts of steps we might actually encounter in real life would be silly.

It was exhausting, painful, and my only hope is that it was an activity gym coaches did when they were hungover and didn’t want to have to work very hard, and then they’d realize the cacophonous stomping of 30 kids up and down wooden steps was just about the worst punishment imaginable for their sin of having a life outside of school.

Cage Ball

I hear that kids today maybe don’t play dodgeball in gym class. And that seems fine to me. Whatever, I don’t really care if kids are tougher than I was or not. I’ve never really understood why old people get all upset about generations of people being softer and softer.

A) I don’t think getting slapped in the face with a red rubber ball really seems to have done a whole lot to improve the character of my generation, seems like plenty of them are still assholes, and

B) I WANT younger generations to be softer. That way, even though I’ll be old and kind of frail, they may still fear me on some level and not make fun of my shoes, hair, and whether or not my socks show.

Cage Ball was a dodgeball variation. Coaches came up with a fuckton of dodgeball variations. As a kid, I kind of always assumed that’s what coaches did at night, lay in bed awake, dreaming up new structures that facilitated kids whipping red gym balls at each other. I figured this was probably the main thing they did in college, learn how to come up with games that were pretty much like the ones we always played, but slightly varied so that it seemed necessary to have some guy employed by the school who was also allowed to wear shorts all the time.

Cage Ball was really only like dodgeball in that the goal was to not get hit by a ball. Other than that, it was pretty unusual as dodgeball games go. You could run anywhere in the gym, and only two designated people could actually use the balls to hit other people.

The catch was, the balls to dodge were big-ass yoga balls.

The two designated ball handlers (this is edging towards grossness) were one boy and one girl.

The boy had to throw the yoga ball, and the girl could kick the yoga ball. This was, in theory, a way to make it so that there was some fairness, girls being weak stupid babies, boys being strong as fuck.

However, this entire setup collapsed thanks to Chris Hiller, a girl who was strong as fuck and kicked like a coked-up mule in a kicking contest with a grand prize of a big pile of carrots. Or whatever the fuck would motivate a mule to kick really super hard and debilitate a human 9th grader.

I have a distinct memory of Chris kicking this yoga ball around the gym, sending kids fucking flying. I saw this kid, Brandon, a super skinny kid, get completely cleaned off his feet by a Chris kick.

I’m running around, sweating my ass off. It was like one of those war movies, like the beginning of Saving Private Ryan where it’s just chaos and running around, and you’re fighting for your life, and I turn and see the coach.

He’s off to the side, and as Chris fucking cannonballed some kid, the coach is stifling a laugh, barely, not really, behind his fist. His face red. Just having a goddamn ball. A Cage Ball.

Today, we worry about kids going to a school that has a library in it, and in that library, there may be a book where two boys make out.

In my day, our gym teachers were definitional sadists.

You are Luke Skywalker. Write three different opening paragraphs for your autobiography, trying out different styles.

Let me start with a Star Wars rant because I feel like that’s required when anyone talks about Star Wars today: I never, ever believe someone when they tell me that, as a child, they wanted to be Han Solo. That HAS to be retconning the past, right?

I mean, yeah, as an adult, I can see Luke Skywalker is kinda bitchy at first. He doesn’t get the girl, which turns out to be a REALLY good thing, although I do sometimes wonder if the taboo about family members jerking each other off is universal across species. I mean, dogs have puppies with their siblings all the time, so why wouldn’t, I don’t know, a Ponda Baba?

But I just don’t buy that any kid is like, “Oh, I want to be the jerk who is only heroic at the last possible second instead of the guy with a laser sword and magic powers who saves the whole universe a couple times.”

Adults, sure, that makes sense. I think the only adult who didn’t want to be Han Solo was Harrison Ford.

And here’s the other thing I don’t get about Star Wars: If there’s this thing, the force, and if you’ve seen someone make shit fly across the room with their mind, why would you spend the rest of your life doing anything other than trying to make this happen?

I tried to use the force as a child, even though I knew it wasn’t real. I thought, I don’t know, I was a dumb kid, and while some kids think magic is real or that they’ll grow up to be happy and successful and content and loved (oh, you poor fools!), I thought maybe the force would work, it’s just that nobody had tried hard enough yet.

But if I’d seen it? If I’d seen someone gesture at a thing, and then that thing moved, and I could tell, for sure, that this wasn’t some bullshit string antics or mirrors or whatever? I’d devote the rest of my life trying to do this thing.

I guess we learned a little about it later, midichlorians and shit, so that sort of explains it away, but why wasn’t Han Solo like, “Holy shit, teach me how to do that!”?

Anyway, let me get in the mind of Luke Skywalker. Power convertors…my dad is space Hitler…I keep trying to forget about Slave Leia and can’t…okay, here we go.

Skywalk With Me

When I pitched this book to my agent, he was like, “Luke-y, baby, why would YOU write a self-help book? You don’t seem like you have any problems at all!”

Boy was he wrong.

Sure, I may look like I have it together, but between a very humble past, being raised by strict relatives who refused to let me have one of those Jedi rat tails, having a dad who is probably responsible for more murders than any other living creature, and some major issues with ongoing attraction to my sister—hey, sometimes things aren’t as rosy as they appear on the outside. Or, as Selabbian Rosy as they appear on the outside. Because a Selabbian Rose is a Star Wars flower, and this is a Star Wars thing.

Plus, I need the money, and self-help is where the money’s at. Everyone is fucked up, and everyone is looking for an answer, a quick fix to make everything right again. And I have it.

Over the next couple hundred pages, which are generously illustrated and in size 16 font, a font I believe is called something like Rebo Sans, I’ll give you all the keys to overcoming some of life’s stickiest situations.

You and me, we’ll escape the Rancor Pit of depression together, which is really going to upset that one fatso who kept your depression like a pet.

And maybe, just maybe…you’ll find out that the fatso who nurtured your depression…is you.

Luke Skywalker: My Wacky Adventures

I never thought the humor columns I wrote for The Nabooian Picayune would get put together in a book like this, but then again, I never thought I’d be wildly attracted to a woman only to find out she was my full-blood sister.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Like all good autobiographies, this one starts from the beginning. Which is also how all bad autobiographies start. Did you guys read that one by Kyle Katarn, Dark Forces, Shining Lights? Bantha poodoo if you ask me…

Anyway, my wacky adventures began when my mom died in childbirth and I was hidden from my dad, Darth Vader, on a desert planet.

Huh. Kinda just told you all the juicy parts up top here, didn’t I? Shit. Can I control how many preview pages people see on Space Amazon? Can we cut the preview before that last paragraph? No?

Jedi Nights

Steam rose from the sewers on Giermos, a planet where the aliens shit hot and the nights are even hotter. Except this particular night, hence the steam from the poo, pee, and poo/pee mixtures steaming.

I was tailing a mark, someone that some Jedi boss guy wanted to see dealt with in the sort of way only I can.

“Maybe rough him up with the force, and then tell him you’re Luke Skywalker, and then use your metal hand to like squeeze his balls and stuff,” he told me.

Like I said, the sort of thing only I can do.

As I rounded the corner, I realized that the mark was no man, it was a dame! A dame with an ass that wouldn’t quit. Which is good, you really don’t want your ass to just give up on you, pooping and sitting, you do that stuff even more than you might think.

I found myself instantly attracted, which meant this was, for sure, at least a half-sister of mine, perhaps a cousin, but we were definitely related.

I called in to the boss. “Sorry, mack, but you’re going to have to find some other sap for this job.” Then I lit a space cigarette and coughed a whole lot because it was the first time I’d ever had a space cigarette, and, goddamn it, I burned a hole in my jacket sleeve.

Elvis Costello said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Discuss.

Before I got too deep into this, I decided to look up the quote and see when it was said. Which matters because writing about music in, say, 1995 was kind of a different thing.

When you worked at Spin or Rolling Stone or Circus or 7ball or Cheetah or HuH or Raygun or Sluggo! or Wonka Vision — any number of real music magazines that actually used those names and existed before the prevalence of downloadable and streaming music — music criticism served an economic purpose.

A young Pete would go to Hastings, a record/book/movie store that was the first place I drove to solo when I got my license, and also a place where they seemed to have a serial pooper who kept taking dumps on the floor. This wide-eyed and cautiously narrow-nostril-ed youngster would usually have several different CDs he wanted to buy, but he definitely did not have the money to buy them all. So he had to make a choice, and sometimes that choice was informed by a number of different factors, and these factors were often discussed in music journalism.

I remember Weezer’s green album was lambasted for coming in at a total run time of 28:23, which is admittedly a shorty.

I COULD buy a 28-minute album, but it cost the same as a copy of reLoad by Metallica, which came in at a heftier 76 minutes and 3 seconds, almost three times as long.

But on the OTHER hand, maybe reLoad would be like an all-you-can-eat buffet: sure, there’s a lot of it, but does that make for a better dinner than eating something that’s smaller, less satisfying in terms of quantity, but perhaps more to your taste?

This is also why I suspect you see a lot of Greatest Hits albums in thrift stores today. The way people access music today, the concept of a Greatest Hits album doesn’t really make sense. You can just cobble together a KISS playlist instead of buying their latest Greatest Hits album. By the by, did you know KISS Greatest Hits compilations outnumber their studio albums?

But back in the day, a young Pete might go ahead and buy a Greatest Hits album because, dollars in to enjoyment out, it was the best deal.

Today, a band might put out a greatest hits if they perhaps have a good number of albums out and want to create a good jumping-on point for new fans. Ghost has done this a couple times, although I don’t believe these albums are for sale, they just live on streaming platforms.

So I would argue with the quote, if it was an old one, because I think writing about music is like dancing about architecture if the dance is an interpretive one that explains changes required to make the building LEED certified.

It turns out, the quote is not only old, but it may be older than Elvis Costello himself.

See, the saying has its own Wikipedia page, and it’s been attributed to William S. Burroughs, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Frank Zappa, George Carlin, Martin Mull, Lester Bangs, David Byrne, Steve Martin, Elvis Costello, and Laurie Anderson.

And in the entry’s opening, we can read:

The quote’s origin is unknown. It is most commonly misattributed to musicians Laurie Anderson and Elvis Costello. Others, including Costello himself, credit the remark to comedian Martin Mull, although a variation (”talking about music is like singing about economics”) has appeared in print since as early as 1918.

Now Martin Mull is a name you might recognize, but you probably don’t know from where. He’s a member of the “Oh, yeah, that guy!” club.

Here’s a picture of him:

Well, a 1/4 profile, anyway. He was on The Geena Davis Show, a confusing sitcom where Geena Davis didn’t play herself, but the show was named like she did. I’m sure you can find a better picture of Mr. Mull out there, I’m just admittedly more interested in 90s Geena Davis than I am in 90s Martin Mull, even if he did say a clever thing.

Elvis Costello’s quote came from an interview in 1983, and it was a response to someone asked about how he felt he’d been treated by the music press. Here’s the more accurate quote:

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture—it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

I guess this would imply that his feelings about his treatment by the music press could be summarized as, “Not great.” I mean, if I wrote songs instead of these dumb newsletters, and if everyone said those songs were excellent, I probably wouldn’t react by saying I thought they were all really stupid for writing about my work.

ALSO, I found that there is a ballet called Skyscrapers from 1926, which is, basically, dancing about architecture. Now, I can excuse Mr. Costello for not knowing about it because, I mean, who knows anything about ballet? Maybe if it didn’t insist on that Frenchy silent “T” on the end, we could all see our way to appreciating it, but until that day comes, Ballet? No way.

Mr. Costello, I guess I disagree with you, mostly because this newsletter is proof that you can write about anything. And, yes, it’s pointless. Sure, it’s stupid. It’s a stupid thing to want to do.

But we all have to make a living.

Which means we also have to find other activities that balance out the making a living part of life. Because, man, work sucks.

I thought I might answer some self-publishing questions for people out there who are completely unfamiliar with publishing and writing and crying yourself to sleep at night because you’ll never get paid to do what you enjoy, so you’ll just have to go into work tomorrow, so here you are, a middle-aged man, weeping both that your life has passed you by AND weeping that your life hasn’t passed you by enough that the suffering is almost over.

Today’s question to tackle: Why Don’t You Hire a Graphic Designer to Do Your Covers?

Short answer: Because self-publishing is a money LOSING endeavor.

Self-publishing isn’t about making a tidy little income, it’s not, as some will claim, “passive income” that you can live off of. It’s not even passive income that a goldfish could live off of, even if you had a regular-ass, low maintenance goldfish that eats those flakes that smell horrendous and are probably made of other dead fish.

Okay, yep, I just looked it up. They have fish meal AND fish oil. Fish meal is in a fish’s meal. Huh.

Self-publishing is a hobby, and to a large extent, and with hobbies, the goal is to LOSE as little money as possible.

Maybe a Good Cover Pays Off?

It’s possible that a well-designed cover would mean you’d get more buyers, make a little more money, some scratch, some dough, a little of the ol’ papier-mâché, and it’d kind of pay for itself.

Wanna hear an old man tip for getting all those accents in there? Just look up the word, then copy and paste it. Boom. ALWAYS faster than remembering how to make one of these: â. I was an English major, and I have no fucking idea what it’s called. I suspect it’s proper name is “That one mark from over the ‘a’ in ‘papier-mâché.’”

I think the economics of a good cover paying off are questionable, though. And here’s the question I’m thinking of in particular: A self-published book might get more attention with a nice-looking cover, but HOW much more?

You can find someone to make a cover for you, and to get someone who is going to do more than slopping a prompt into a chatbot, you’ll have to pay $250-$1500 dollars.

I don’t think ANY of my books have made $250 dollars in profits.

Maybe a Nice Cover Helps Your Book Get Attention

Today, the problem of a self-published author is not in getting people to choose your book over another, a situation in which cover design might help. The problem is getting someone, somewhere, to see your book at all.

In the vast sea of books, and especially in the giardia-infested, stagnant waters of self-publishing, getting eyes on your book is very, very difficult.

Consider: in the 90s, everyone had a CD wallet, a big Trapper Keeper full of music. This seemed like a treasure trove, and it was awesome when you got to flip through someone else’s CD wallet and check out what they were into, maybe find that one hilarious CD that you could be like, “Seriously? Lou Bega? Mambo No. 5? C’mon, this sucks!”

Huh, this is my first time realizing that you could put the album art in behind the disc. That’s genius. And only 30 years too late. I’ll have to put that on my to-do list for if I ever get time-traveled back to the 90s. That and going to the grand opening of Hulk Hogan’s Pastamania in the Mall of America.

I’d guess the average teen in the late 90s might have something like 50 CDs.

Today, there really is no concept of being limited in the amount or variety of music you can listen to. There’s so much out there, so much of it available free, that you could probably spool up Spotify and never listen to the same album twice in your entire life, and that’s only if you wanted to cover 80s metal.

Books, being media, are kind of in the same situation. The pool is jam-packed to an extent that there’s really no use in trying to make the most out of someone seeing your book, because chances are nobody will see it at all.

Maybe A Nice Cover is a Useful Ruse?

Maybe the nice cover thing is also kind of predicated on the idea that I might be able to trick people into thinking one of my books is a “real” or “trad published.”

But that’s never going to happen because there is a list of about 5 big publishers, and the rest may as well be self-published as far as 99% of readers are concerned.

Plus, when you insist on calling your book The Heist-est Heist Ever Heisted: A Heist Story of a Heist: Special Editor’s Edition, there is an approximately zero chance that anyone is going to be fooled into thinking it’s a real book.

Limiting Factors

In weightlifting, for example, we might talk about grip strength as a limiting factor in your deadlift. Once you get up above 300 lbs., it can be challenging for most people to maintain a tight grip on the bar, so while their entire body can handle the weight, the weak link in the chain is the grip. So then you use chalk, switch to a hook grip, and maybe use straps. Because while those things won’t improve your grip, you don’t want your deadlift to be, overall, limited by your grip strength.

The limiting factor, the thing holding my books back, is not their covers, it’s being self-published.

A cover has never prevented me from being reviewed in Booklist. This isn’t what’s keeping me out of New York Times Review of Books. It’s being self-published that keeps me out. And writing about things like the Contra dudes jerking each other off. There are many limiting factors here.

I should start something like Patreon, but for pity. Pitreon. Instead of money, you can subscribe with pity. Some pity gets you a certain tier of extras, heavy pity gets you even more, and pitying me more than you pity the dead really gets you a great deal, probably like a brand new Kia with a Me-themed vehicle wrap or something.

Speaking of the dead, today’s prompt is all about ME. Well, a version of me that kills people. Or collects killed people? How does Death work?

The prompt:

You are the Grim Reaper. Write three different opening paragraphs for your autobiography, trying out very different styles.

Ah, Death. We’ve all heard various stories about Death, seen different versions. Like that version from Sandman where Death is a cool goth chick:

Or alt chick? What’s the difference between a goth chick and an alt chick? That sounds like the opening to a great joke with a very narrow audience.

And then of course there’s this one:

Which I honestly enjoyed, but also had to, HAD to wonder if it was taking me for a ride. Like, is this real, or are we getting a Percival Everett situation here?

Me, though, I’d make a pretty different Death. Or THREE different Deaths in this case.

Death Memoir, Opening Paragraphs v. 1:

It’s pronounced “sigh-th,” okay? Let’s just get that out of the way right off because I’m sick of you all calling it a “sith” or a “sky-th.” “Sigh-th.” Got it?

Yeah, it’s old-timey, but, like, how is it my fault that you all are so out of touch with your roots that you don’t even know what a scythe is and how it works? It’s a pretty straightforward metaphor, people! A scythe cuts down huge swaths of grass or things like wheat or oats with just a little effort. It represents the nature of Death, who is me, by showing—

Aw, fuck it. You don’t care about this, right? Shouldn’t death be an escape from pedantic jerkoffs correcting your pronunciation of words, if nothing else? Shouldn’t the silence be a little scary, but in at least some small way, a bit of a relief because you’ll never again be berated for saying a word incorrectly, a faux pas (NOT PRONOUNCED “fowx paz”) that really seems unimportant at the moment of passing?

Death Memoir, Opening Paragraphs v. 2:

My dark story begins somewhere around the time of the Black Plague, a time when so many of you died that you decided to conjure up a figure to represent death. Which is sort of a weird thing to do because you don’t have like a guy who represents, I don’t know, fender benders in parking lots, and those happen all the time.

When did humans get so lazy and stop making a guy to represent everything that happens? You all used to be very up for making up a guy to explain how the Sun works, then a separate guy who operates the Moon with like magic powers or a bunch of levers or something.

What happened to all your guys? You have more stuff than ever, yet fewer fun little guys to explain all of it. You’ve really backslid as a people. It’s sad.

You should probably make up a guy for proper hydration. Definitely one for diabetes. Maybe also a guy for nose hair trimmers, a trickster character who designs these trimmers that kinda work, but also kinda don’t, and sometimes they make the problem way worse somehow.

Death Memoir, Opening Paragraphs v. 3:

Okay, this is serious Death this time, SCARY Death.

That’s right, bitch, I’m coming for you. Run all you like, scream all that your neighbors will tolerate before calling the cops, do whatever you want, I’m still going to get you.

They say the only sure things are me and taxes, but unlike the government, you can’t leverage your wealth to hire some dingus to fool me into thinking that, actually, it’s NOT your time to die, and in fact I owe YOU some portion of a lifetime. Nice try, bitch. I don’t care how good your guy is at mashing together Quickbooks and ChatGPT, you’re not getting out of this.

Mean Death REALLY likes saying “Bitch” a lot, a little thing I learned from a close friend, Frederick Kruger! Perhaps you’ve heard of him!?

Fred taught me an important lesson: You can do your job AND have fun with it, so long as your job is killing and you are kind of a sick fuck who was also a child molester, which is sort of a crazy backstory.

Fred also taught me that being reasonable isn’t a prerequisite for being a supernatural force. I mean, he assaulted and murdered children, then when their parents came and killed him, HE got all indignant and started killing their other kids or something? Like, I feel the parents giving Fred some mob justice was not unwarranted, but he’s like, “Fuck that, eye for an eye, and then after that happens, I take ANOTHER eye!”

Anyway, I bet you thought I was going to be like some hot emo chick who was going to welcome you lovingly and with understanding into the afterlife, some babe who’d say things that could be turned into My Chemical Romance lyrics. HA! Hardly!

Do you have any idea how busy I am and how few people are actually happy to see me? In fact, it’d be weird if I was all sunshine-y and shit. It’d be like going to the DMV and having the lady there be all peachy and nice and being like, “Oh, you know what? That license photo we just took is going to be something you show people for the next several years, and I think we can do a little better, let’s give it another shot.”

Never going to happen. If they caught a pimple erupting mid-photo, they’d react by checking their watch and being disappointed both that it’s only been 35 minutes since their last break AND by the fact that the day isn’t passing more quickly, stacking another completed day on the pile, bringing them closer to my embrace.

An embrace where I hug them with my skeleton arms, then whisper in their ear, “Welcome to die, bitch!”

A houseplant is dying. Tell it why it needs to live.

I’ve never been a big plant guy, and I don’t think most guys are big plant guys until they are introduced, somewhat by force, to plants.

I wrote a poem a while back, it’s one my wife actually likes quite a bit…here, let me dig it up:

Women Be Planting

Women love houseplants.
If there were no women
whole sections of hardware stores
would close tomorrow.

I rent a home
designed specifically
to separate me
from nature.

Because nature has
bad boundaries.

With nature,
it’s like you’re throwing
a house party
all the time,
and it’s getting out of hand,
and randos are just walking in,

bugs you don’t even know
who are all like
”Dude, it’s cool
”I know the houseplant.”

This is why
I believe in
global warming.

Not like I believe it’s real.

I believe in global warming
as the right thing to do.

Man versus nature
is finally tilting
in our favor
and you just wanna give up?

Or, look at bees.
Bees were stinging us
all the time
without mercy.
And now they’re on the ropes
and we’re backing down?
We’ve finally got
the upper hand,
and now we’re going to be
the bigger person?

Not me, baby.
I’ll take 10 plastic straws in my water
in every refill.

It’s odd to me that my wife likes that poem because I’m talking about her almost exactly. Maybe she knows it? Maybe she feels gently mocked in a “Well, it’s true!” kind of way? I mean, I guess that’s a reasonable reaction, it’s not like I’m accusing women of being worth only 80 cents on the dollar in terms of labor. I took those stanzas OUT, thank you very much. Women are like 60% of poetry readers, okay? How am I supposed to keep buying new keyboards to wear out writing stupid shit about plants and bug parties if I can’t sell to 60% of the potential audience?

Writing poems is funny. Because what makes that a poem as opposed to just a bunch of sentences?

You might say, “line breaks,” and I’d probably agree with you.

But I’d say, more than anything, what makes a poem a poem is the writer having the guts to call it a poem.

I know a lot of us fancy ourselves brave, but tell someone you put out a book of poetry, with a straight face, without hemming and hawing or doing something stupid like calling your poems “poem-ish type stuff” on the cover of the book, and that’s when you’ll find out how brave you really are.

Unless you already knew you were a coward, like I did, in which case you don’t find out much of anything, but let me tell you all, confirmation of what you suspected were some of your worst qualities, that’s pretty potent stuff, too. It’s not brand new information levels of excitement, but it’ll get you where you need to go, which is in bed at 7:45 pm because staying up any longer really only increases the possibility of something else bad happening on a given day. It’s just math.

I’ve been thinking about working on some more poems. I don’t know, they’re fun. It’s like writing jokes or something, you get to concentrate on these little bits instead of a 300-page manuscript that you’ll never tame.

Maybe that’s why I call them “poems,” though, or what makes a poem a poem for me.

Really, they’re jokes, and if nobody laughs at a joke, that shit hurts, and it means your joke was useless.

But if no one laughs at your poems? That’s fine! Who ever read a book of poems and was like, “Ah, jesus christ, my stomach hurts from laughing so hard!”?

By calling these poems to joke-lovers, I don’t have to feel bad when nobody laughs.

By calling these jokes to poem-lovers, I don’t have to feel bad when nobody has deep thoughts or feelings after reading them.

Not feeling bad: This is a win in my book. My NEW poetry book, coming someday from a publisher who works the giant book copy machine at an Amazon warehouse.

Pick your favorite movie. Now switch the sex of the lead. Adjust the plot accordingly.

Notes for Demolition Woman

Tough-as-nails, and not fingernails, THE BUILDING KIND of nails, cop Jan Spartan is known throughout the department as The Demolition Woman.

She’ll be played by Sandy Bullock because that’s kinda fun, taking her from Demolition Man and putting her in the lead in Demolition Woman. But we’ll have to get her a little, you know, roided up. A little scary. Like, remember how in Gravity it was like, “Huh, yep, Sandy B. can still get it”?

Well, I want to do that AGAIN for Sandy, but this time, part of the reason she can get it is because if she asked to get it, you’d think, “Well, I’ve never been thrown through the drywall by a woman as part of sex play before, sure what the hell?”

In the opening sequence, DW is storming a building where Wesley Snipes is holding a bunch of people hostage. What with Wesley’s problems with the tax man, we can probably get him pretty cheap. Especially if the hostages are IRS agents. That’d probably appeal to him.

Of course, early on, the police chief screams at Sandy, “I’m tired of this Demolition Woman shit,” because that’s what we’re doing here, and I don’t want to make anyone wait until after the opening credits for that.

Through some weird mechanism, the hostages are all killed when the building explodes, and somehow everyone thinks this is DW’s fault. Which is exactly what happened in the first movie, but, like, nobody really understood that the first time around, so we can do it again. Maybe the second time it’ll make more sense, but if it doesn’t, we’ll blame homage, not our own laziness.

Also, really? A hero cop goes into a building to stop a maniac, and when that maniac kills a bunch of people, everyone is like, “Oh, it’s the cop’s fault”? Like this ONE cop?

You guys don’t know how hard it is to be a cop. Thin blue line baby, that’s what I’m — No, Pete, stick to the story. No politics here.

And so, because she tried to save the day too hard, DW is put into cryoprison.

Now, you might remember that in the original movie, we got some sidebutt shots of Stallone’s toned tuchus.

We’ll be replicating this, but instead of tasteful-ish butt shots, Sandy’s open vagina.

Some might say this is grotesque, and they’re correct, it’s a…choice. However, what I’ll say when questioned about it is, “Oh, what’s the matter, is it because she’s in her 60s? You want to deny older women their sexuality? You know, lots of women reach their sexual prime in their later years. In a cruel, cruel joke perpetrated by god, men are in their sexual prime in their teens, women at 55, and there are only so many dryers for milfs to get stuck in so that these two age groups can connect.”

Look, this movie needs SOMETHING, okay? A reason to go to the theater. Movie theaters are going down the tubes fast. I think America’s Sweetheart can save them, but it’s going to take an act of extreme bravery. On my part. To suggest this. I’m the hero here. Demolitioning the bounds of taste. There’s no distance he won’t go to make sure his son can get that live-saving face surgery, even if it means trainwrecking his career by saying what we’re all thinking in regards to our shared interest in Sandra Bullock’s anatomy. That’ll be the news headline, even though I don’t have a son, and if I did, I wouldn’t get him a life-saving surgery. Are you kidding? I lucked into having an exit from the drudgery of fatherhood, and I’m just going to turn hard left and avoid the offramp?

Of course, Wesley Snipes gets unfrozen, so they have to unfreeze DW to catch him.

Some highlights:

Remember that part where some lady calls Stallone on the video phone, apparently dialing the wrong number, and she’s topless? What an amazing way to just get some boobs in a movie real quick. Of course, we know today that dialing the wrong number isn’t really a thing except when someone invites you for a BBQ and claims to think you’re some guy named John, but then when you explain they have the wrong number, they’re like, “Wow, you’re so nice. Thank you! Also, what’s your social security number? I just like to collect nice peoples’ social security numbers, cute little quirk I have, lol.”

You might think we can’t do that exact same wrong number topless thing, but we’re going to do the exact same thing. We’ll use digital technology to replace Stallone with Sandy, and everything else will be identical. Finally, a use of digital actor replacement that has a purpose.

Oh, and remember how they go to Taco Bell because that’s the fanciest restaurant after “The Franchise Wars?” Well, here’s where we get our Stallone cameo, reprising his role as Judge Dredd in a brief flashback inspired by the Judge Dredd Cursed Earth arc:

And, what the hell, we’ll have Rob Schneider show up as the Hamburglar, who very quickly gets killed in a super undignified way. Let’s say…he’s closing his garage door and jumping into his beater Hamburglar Minivan, and he presses the button inside the garage with the intention of running out before the door closes, but he slips in dogshit that’s in his garage for some reason, and then he gets crushed by the garage door.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, we’ll have a full line of Demolition Woman merchandise!

Remember Demolition Man trading cards?

Featuring shit like the Cadillac Voyage, which is in the movie, apparently?

Or, what collector didn’t thrill at having a picture of producer Joel Silver in their collection? Wowee!

And how about the action figures? Like this one from the scene where Stallone(?) was trapped in that claw machine thing for like 4 seconds? And when he wore this getup? And had his signature sandy brown hair he’s known for?

I couldn’t find any Sandra Bullock action figures, which is unfortunate, BUUUUUT there was a resin statue you could build yourself based on her character from Demolition Man:

Why the seller chose to place the head atop the ass in one of the photos, I do not know. Scale? Is this like a scale model thing? Everyone knows a good model should have this head-to-ass length ratio?

And that should do it. I think we have ourselves a movie.

Nay. A film.

Fin.

I don’t know if I’ve had what I would call a transcendent experience with ice cream. Maybe because I don’t know if I’ve had a transcendent experience, period.

A transcendent experience with ice cream, that sounds, to me, like an experience on the level of the first time I jerked off or something.

If you’ve had any experience with ice cream that you would say is as good as jerking off, I’m very jealous of you. Because that means you can have an experience that’s as good as jerking off anytime, anywhere. It’s not exactly easy to eat a double scoop cone while you drive or whatever, but you could just be sitting on a park bench in an adults-only park (because let’s pretend that’s a thing that exists and not get this newsletter banned), and your experience of ice cream on that bench could be on the level of a sexual awakening.

I kind of think, as a depressive, the only experience that I see on the horizon that I would call “transcendent” is death. I mean, and I guess that’s pretty literal.

Maybe the problem is I have I’m putting too high a bar on the word “transcendent.”

Maybe I need to think about this in restaurant reviewer terms. You know, where you kind of run out of words to talk about, I don’t know, pizza. And you have to call something transcendent, even though it’s really not transcendent, just really super good.

I’ve had a great hot dog, but not so great that it felt like I was floating above my own body or something.

All that said, I do have an ice cream story. That is somewhat relevant. Transcendent, probably not, but REVELATORY, sure! Gripping, kind of. Worthy of paid subscription to a newsletter, you betcha!

When I was a kid, we used to walk with my mom to Baskin-Robbins: 31 Flavors.

I don’t know how Baskin-Robbins: 31 Flavors is punctuated, but I feel like if I’ve done it differently than the ice cream store does, they should consider MY version. That colon has gravitas, baby.

Avengers: Endgame.

Ice Cream: A Bunch of Kinds.

There were two ice cream places in town, and they were across the street from each other, but somehow this was fine. Probably because the Dairy Queen had a drive-thru, and Baskin had 31 flavors, so they could split the difference. One was for lazy fatsos, the other for lazy fatsos who loved options so much that it’d overcome some of their laziness.

There was also a froyo place, but at that time, something about the idea of frozen yogurt seemed disgusting to me. I mean, now I don’t know that I could identify a froyo versus a an ice cream, but when I was a kid, the idea of froyo was absolutely vile to me. If someone said, “Why don’t we get froyo instead of ice cream?” I was like, “Why not just shoot myself in the face instead of eating ice cream? If we’re just asking questions about different activities that range from awesome to fucking awful? Or I could just take a dump in the bath tub and then, you know, smooth it out into the spaces between bathroom tiles like caulk, maybe with a four-in-one caulking tool recommended by the New York Times. Because if there’s anyone I trust to give me good info about a caulking tool, it’s a 2000 word article in the New York Times.

Come on, New York Times. We all know what your lanes are, and that this ain’t one of them.

Anyway.

I’m not sure why we always went to Baskin Robbins when a Dairy Queen run would mean not crossing a busy street. But, hey, I’m not a parent. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that parents think people without kids shouldn’t telling parents how to parent their kids, even if those kids is me. Also, they think that people WITH kids shouldn’t tell them how to parent.

Parents seem to dislike anyone telling them how to parent, even when their parenting is…pretty questionable.

Alternate headline: Man who believes majority of humans are garbage tired of being treated the way he treats all others.

I don’t know how 31 became the number of flavors Baskin or Robbins or whoever decided on, but 31 is too many flavors. This is probably a sign that you’ve become an old grouch. Instead of, “Oh yeah, 31 flavors. So many choices, the future’s so wide open and I get to make a decision!,” you’re annoyed by the number of flavors.

When you’re a kid, you crave power, even the little power of picking from an asinine number of flavors.

Kids’ relationship to power is a little disturbing. They’re almost like Bond villains or, you know, COBRA from G.I. Joe. COBRA wanted to take over the world, but I don’t know that it was ever clear why. Like, what were they going to do once they were in control? What was their idea for how the world should work? I guess the last few years have made me open to the possibility that while COBRA would probably torture and murder all the GI Joe guys, their ideas might not be the worst. Besides, you KNOW Sgt. Slaughter is anti-vax.

31 flavors, I guarantee you there’s 21 crap flavors in there. And you know that there’s some, like, novelty bullshit, like rainbow sherbet. Give me a break. Nobody wants that. Everyone wants to look at it. Fun to look at, but eating it is not tasting the rainbow. Unless that’s what rainbows actually do taste like. I mean, it’s been a successful Skittles slogan for decades now, but in reality, a rainbow may taste pretty shitty.

But as a kid, you get fooled by those novelty things, right? When the ice cream truck came, I often got the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…thing. I would call it an ice cream bar on a stick, but I don’t think it was ice cream, it’s some kind of iced milk or something, and it was shaped like a Ninja turtle head and had two gumballs for eyes. RED gumballs that looked deep into your soul, possibly because they were eyeballs you were about to consume in order to gain the power and wisdom of their original owner.

These treats are NOT good. Yet I remember eating them and being like, yeah, they stink, but I’m a stupid kid, and maybe somehow this ice cream bar will imbue me with the powers of a ninja turtle. Specifically, a machine expert, or a surly, rude adolescent. Or maybe I’d develop leadership qualities, or perhaps become the party dude that every kid sort of wants to be.

It really did seem like, as Ninja Turtles go, Leonardo and Donatello are the ones you want your kids to emulate. Leaders and nerd tinkerers who could whip up an invention that would secure your retirement?

But kids want to be rude assholes like Raphael or Hawaiian-shirt-wearing party dudes who were not at all particular about what was on their pizza.

Which is probably the most unrealistic or unrealistic part of the whole narrative where mutant turtles learn ninjutsu. Because if you know anything about kids, you know they care deeply about what is on top of their pizza, often to the extent that the only thing they want on pizza is “nothing.”

There’s some kind of riddle in there, right? “I am what kids want on pizza, and if you eat only me, you’ll starve.”

So we go to 31 Flavors and, feeling like a party, dude, I guess, I insist on getting the flavor of ice cream that was pink and had little bits of gum in it. Bubble gum? I think the flavor was probably just called Bubble Gum. But I don’t remember it tasting like bubble gum.

Now, I remember my mom saying specifically that I should get something else, that the bubble gum flavor wasn’t very good.

I don’t know how hard she tried to convince me. Probably not that hard. But it was definitely one of those situations where the parent knows what they’re talking about and the child is making a dumb decision.

I knew someone once who had a nephew, and every time they drove through McDonald’s with that nephew, he’d say he wanted a cheeseburger. But what he really wanted to eat was nuggets.

Every time, he would vehemently insist, “No, I want a cheeseburger.” And then, basically the second he got it, he would be like, “JK, I want nuggets.”

You’d think the parenting move here would be to just order him the nuggets, not even ask what he wanted. But if you did that, he would refuse to eat the nuggets. So you basically had to buy this kid two meals to get him to eat one.

I don’t know what was going on there psychologically, but it is one of the weirder power plays I’ve ever seen a kid pull.

And I sympathize with the parents in that situation, because what the fuck do you do? I mean, I’d just order both because fuck it, and then I’d eat the cheeseburger myself, figuring that A) This is worth it to get the kid to eat, and B) the extra grease would probably shorten my life slightly, so I wouldn’t have to live in a world where this sort of thing is something I have to deal with for quite as long.

I turned down my mom’s plea to sanity and ordered a scoop of the bubblegum ice cream on a cone.

I took one lick, and knew I fucked up. It just wasn’t good.

I don’t know why I thought it’d be good. Maybe it’s because I always got the pink cookie at the grocery store, and I liked the pink cookie, even though I was a child of the 80s and 90s and enjoying the pink cookie meant, indisputably, that I was gay.

But if it required marching in a parade to eat what was objectively the best cookie in the rack. Sign me up. Hand me a baton.

The ice cream was not nearly as fabulous as that pink cookie, though. It tasted like shit. And the bubblegum probably made it worse. The whole eating experience, it was kind of like chewing gum and drinking milk at the same time. Which isn’t so much an analogy as it is an accurate description of the various components.

So. I knew I’d fucked up. I was enough of a Michelangelo to order bubblegum ice cream. And also enough of a Leonardo to realize that I probably wasn’t just going to get a different ice cream cone because the one my mom warned me would taste like shit ended up, in fact, tasting like shit.

So I engineered a clever way to get out of this pickle, Pickle probably being another flavor Baskin Robbins has, a way to get a new cone, a new flavor, without admitting I’d made a terrible error in judgment.

As I mentioned, to get to Baskin Robbins, we had to cross a pretty busy street with no stoplight.

We left the store, and as we crossed, I made sure I was slightly behind my mom and my brother, and I picked up the ice cream scoop off the cone and threw it on the ground.

I also have a vague memory that it was actually pretty difficult to remove the scoop from the cone and throw it on the ground. It was in there pretty good, welded in by whatever ice cream magic. While I don’t appreciate all of Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors, I have to credit them with the structural integrity of their offerings being solid.

When we got to the other side of the street, I said something like, “Oh no, my ice cream fell off.”

And here we find transcendence: I stepped into the street on one side a child, and I emerged on the other side a deceitful adult.

I don’t know how good or bad my acting might have been. My guess is not great.

But here’s where I REALLY fucked up, if I hadn’t already.

We go back inside Baskin Robbins, and, you know, I’m ordering a cone again. And I say, “Well, this time I’m going to get a different flavor because the bubblegum one didn’t really stay on the cone very good.”

And to me, as a kid, that seemed like the perfect crime. The perfect reasoning. I thought I was being a Donatello, but I was definitely being a dopey Michelangelo attempting to do a Donatello move.

On one hand, not a great execution of the plan, but on the other hand, for a child, overall, pretty diabolical.

There you go, that’s my transcendent ice cream experience. I transcended from being a little shitboy to being a little extra shitboy.

Sorry for missing last week, everyone! To make up for it, here’s a comic strip I made. Perhaps the creators of Hagar the Horrible will let me take the reins for a bit?

Describe an electronic device in the future that you won’t know how to operate.

This is pretty easy for me because I need to drive somewhere this evening, and I don’t know how to operate my car. This evening is in the future. We didn’t specify the distant future.

I mean, I do know how to use the car inasmuch as vroom vroom, turn the wheel where you want to go, that kind of shit, but how do I turn on the feature that keeps me from sideswiping someone in my blindspot without also turning on the feature that nearly caused me to sideswipe a cyclist? “Lane guidance” I believe this was called. I guess this was programmed by someone who’s like, “Make sure not to damage a car, and also, bikes are for poor people.”

Is this one of those situations where they programmed it using the brain patterns of a murderer, and it was trying to get me to kill, to spill fresh blood and realize I have a taste for it?

I will DEFINITELY lose my ability to navigate the internet as I age. I’m already starting to, not because I can’t do it, but because whenever I do it in front of someone else, they’re always like, “You know, instead of highlighting text and hitting CTRL+C, you can just highlight it, click and drag it into the address bar.”

By the way, fuck all of you. Seriously. Do you think it speeds up the process, you telling me all that, me making a fumbling first attempt, and meanwhile we could’ve been wherever we were headed for, like, several seconds already? And then I’m always dealing with the guilt of doing it wrong until I relent and start to learn the new way, by which time it’s no longer the new way, there’s a better, newer way, and my god how long have I had these brown spots all over my bald head?

Navigating the internet in front of other people is just generally embarrassing. It’s like having someone who is an expert in jacking off tell you that you’re doing it wrong, critiquing your form. And it’s like, sure, maybe this isn’t the most efficient, best way, but it’s what I’m used to, man! Decades of repetition have given me a comfort zone, narrowed that comfort zone, and maybe finishing in a Pez dispenser isn’t the objectively “best” way to do it, but it’s MY way and it works and leave me alone!

Many years from now, I’ll be so ashamed at the way I navigate the internet that I’ll never do it in front of anyone, will never learn anything new, and eventually I’ll just have to say old guy shit like, “I have all the internet I need right here,” while I tap a finger against my head pretty hard, ALARMINGLY hard.

“This is the original search engine!” I’ll say as I miss my forehead and jam my finger deep into my eye socket.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be completely incapable of navigating the airport, whatever technological gizmos that requires. I’m halfway there. I already always print out a paper ticket because, I don’t know, tickets on the phone? What if I run out of battery? Paper tickets never run out of battery!

How’s THAT for shit old guys say?

The airport just seems like the place where humanity and technology collide in a way that’s actively aggressive against old people. Flying is a young man’s game. Flying and Twister. And probably Mousetrap because that game blows, but it’s really just a toy, not a game, and it only tricks kids with its bright candy colors and diving man who hits the barrel about once out of every 9 tries.

I don’t know what kind of airport gadget will confound me the most. Probably some kind of Attitude Scanner they invent as a deterrent for terrorists, like a gizmo that can detect if you’re actively hostile or not. It’d be functionally useless in an airport situation, I think, you’d have to calibrate it to a pretty high threshold for “normal,” but I just can’t possibly pass the kind of screening that flags a person for being pissed off that someone in front of them seems confounded by a 20 year-old rule that says you can’t bring a gallon of your own diarrhea on the plane (if you were higher on the Bristol Stool Chart, you could probably make it work, but NO LIQUIDS!).

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the technology I’ll struggle with the most will be the Suicide Booths.

I mean, it’d be fitting. I’ll be cutoff from the internet, unable to drive, can’t fly anywhere, and my stools will remain at a (not) solid 6, where they will have been for decades already. I’ll be ready to make my Final Exit.

But these goddamn buttons…why is the writing on these things so small!?

Open your medicine cabinet. Catalog every pill, ointment, and product. What conditions do they treat and how does the whole lot add up to a statement about your mortality?

I feel this one flirts with AI or phishing scammers or whatever getting to know a little bit about me and ripping me off somehow, like what’s the next prompt, “Write an acrostic poem where each line begins with a number from your social security number?”

But…I’ll be honest, if someone runs a scam that purports to have a better solution than Preparation H suppositories, I’m falling for that scam. I don’t care. I know it’s a scam, I’m going in eyes open, I know the chances it’s legit are basically zero, but it’s a chance you have to take. It’s like when a terminally ill patient who’s tried everything says, “Yeah, fuck it, I’ll eat that weird powder that’s just in a ziploc sandwich baggie, not even a medical one, like one with Iron Man on it.”

Anyway, here we go!

Overabundance of Contact Lenses: I don’t change these as often as I should, something my eye doctor seems aware of somehow. In 2020, I ordered extras because, well, I thought if the world was going to collapse completely…I guess I wanted to be able to see everything crumble in full HD? When some maniac, who is perhaps just a product of the apocalypse, caved in my friend’s head with a baseball bat, I didn’t want to miss a thing.

Retainer Cases: I am in my 40s, unless an AI is scraping this for data and wasn’t clued into that fact by AN AEROSMITH REFERENCE, and I still wear a retainer because I got adult braces and paid for them myself. I recommend this practice, getting braces later in life, because you can really appreciate the cost, plus it definitely contributes to getting through your “Everything I do to improve myself is painting a burning house” phase of aging and into the phase that’s like, “I can’t put out the fire, so I might as well paint a little just for something to do while it all burns down.”

Glasses Cases (2): I own TWO pairs of glasses, one that I keep in a travel bag, one that I wear in the evening. I don’t mind glasses as far as looks or whatever, but I’m a greasy boy, always have been, so glasses will never, ever stay on my face the way they will stay on your face if you’re someone with a normal amount of oil content. I don’t necessarily want someone to cannibalize me when I die, but I would find it acceptable if someone wanted to wring oil from my skin and use it for cooking, just to maybe dip a toe in the cannibal waters, see if it’s hyped accurately or not. I’m fairly certain I’m oily enough to fill like one of those fancy olive oil bottles that influencers sell because, sure, they know about making edible products.

Nose Trimmers (2): Yes, two. My non-beard face hairs decided at some point that there was no appropriate maximum length, and they were just going for it. Which means my nose hairs reach EASILY outside my nose (my eyebrow hairs have also behaved this way for a long time, growing up to about 2” at times, making a fella question whether tis nobler to trim eyebrows or just get pomade and shellac them down. I’m told there’s a trend called “lamination” for eyebrows, and I think my laminated eyebrows would be so powerful as to destroy that trend utterly). This would be slightly less bothersome if I was also able to grow killer mustaches and so on, but the only hairs that don’t really have the oomph to grow to a good length are my facial hairs, like the facial hairs that should grow longer. I have no sideburns and several hairs that grow from my earlobes. This is my lot in life.

Weird Nasal Dilator Thingies: These are supposed to hold your nose holes open so you can more easily breathe through your nose, which is something I can’t do very well, stupid genetics or possibly head injuries. I should’ve known they don’t really work simply because there’s a baggie of like a thousand of them for a dollar, and nothing that cheap and abundant actually works. Also, they are impregnated, knocked up I should say, with some kind of smell that I think is supposed to be a sort of Lavender, but reminds me of what a lavender laughing gas would probably smell like. It’s supposed to help calm you down, but it just riles me up because I don’t understand why people can’t get these things right, and I especially don’t understand why nobody makes one of these that smells like french fries. Or garlic bread! We all like the smell of garlic bread! C’mon, assholes!

Various Pain Pills: Of note, the bottle on the far left has the Arthritis Open Cap. I did not purchase this because I have arthritis, but because it’s just a regular-ass cap that doesn’t require replicating the finger positions for the 7 deadly pressure points on the human body to open. Not having arthritis is a point in the “Not old man” category, but complaining about pill jars being hard to open is a point in the “old man” category. I just wish there was versions of everything for people like me who don’t have kids, and if kids ever came to visit and got into my pill cabinet, I’d just be like, “Well, that kid should’ve thought of that before breaking into my house,” because I would NEVER allow a child to be in my home. It’d absolutely be a reverse Home Alone situation, and I figure that if a kid breaks into my house after my wife leaves me behind before a big European vacation “on accident,” I can set traps and be legally above board. A kid has to be pretty easy to trap, right? Just mix in Advils with M&Ms in a big bowl, done and done.

Vaseline: Ah, the king’s lip moisturizer. Look, I know it doesn’t have delicious flavors like Dr. Pepper or this Shrek lip balm that’s onion-shaped but raspberry flavored, which is an abomination because you should never open an onion and find raspberry flavoring inside, but it works:

I know people are like, “PETROLEUM jelly? No thanks!” but did you know the inventor of Vaseline, Robert Chesebrough, in addition to having a name that sounds like the name of someone who invented Vaseline, ate a spoonful of this shit EVERY DAY and lived to be 96? He once allegedly overcame a bout of pleurisy by having a nurse cover his body in Vaseline. I can’t vouch for whether or not that works because I don’t know what pleurisy is or how you’d go about curing it, but if “pleurisy” is the old-timey term for “blue balls” and the nurse was a “comely lass” as they’d say back then, I think, I could see the merits of this course of treatment.

Industrial Toenail Clipper: This is a product I bought because at one point, I crushed my toe, split the nail, and I needed a way to delicately trim things as the nail grew back in. Guys, this is a pretty good thing to buy for your toenails. I recommend it. It’s much easier to use than the typical clipper that wings nails off in all directions. I’m whatever age I am and STILL don’t know how to prevent that from happening. I know there has to be a way, but I haven’t discovered it on my own and apparently haven’t devoted a single moment to looking it up. Sure, I’ve got time to watch a 3-hour video about a videogame I will never play, but simplifying this task that I have to do all the time? No thanks! The only thing for it is to get inside a big cardboard box, painted all black inside, and then clip my nails. The walls of the box prevent the nails from going too far away, and the black makes the nails stick out from their background. I really am a problem solver. A problem solver with a big cardboard box that smells like spray paint and old feet.

Body Glide Product: I discovered that on very long walks, a little lubrication of the grundle goes a long way towards making things a lot less painful. You’d think that with the amount of oil on my face, my body would at least do me the courtesy of ALSO making a lot of oil elsewhere, creating its own natural lubricant. Haha, oh, you naive, stupid fuck. Why would something as disadvantageous as having the complexion of a teen who’s been working at Pizza Hut and has been pranked into believing that covering his face in pepperonis while he sleeps—why would you think that would come with a balancing advantage?

Pronamel Toothpaste: The last time I went to the dentist, something like 200 dentist trips into my life, was the first time anyone told me that toothpastes can be too abrasive and that I should buy less abrasive options. Typically, when the topic of abrasiveness comes up in my life, it’s someone discussing my demeanor on the phone, even with loved ones. But how is it that I’m only hearing about this NOW!?

So I bought a less abrasive paste, I think.

Did you know there’s a whole secondary market for things like toothpastes that have gone out of production?

You can buy Mentadent! That toothpaste that came in the insanely large plastic pump and that had two sort of extrusion slots, which I guess kept the two separate elements apart until it was time to brush? I don’t know if a two-part chemical seems like a good thing to put in your mouth. I’m mostly familiar with that system for glues and bondo and shit like that.

I can still taste this, though…I don’t know that it’s worth $300 dollars to taste it again. But I COULD buy it and make low payments of $26.93/month! That seems like a totally reasonable thing to put a payment plan on!

eBay, my guy, I think you should only make payments plans available for things that are…not this. NOBODY needs this, nobody should really even have this. I mean, if you’ve got the cash and this will fill a hole in your life, go for it, but if you don’t have the money yet? This really feels like a “Save up until you can afford it” kind of thing, no?

Also, we need to factor in the value of, during my next dentist visit, when they ask what I’m brushing with, I can say, “40 year-old Real Ghostbusters Slimer Mint Gel that I bought on eBay for $274 dollars. I negotiated him down from $300!”

Preparation H Suppositories: Yes, these are greasy little bullets that you cram into your butthole.

Cramming medicine in my butthole is something that was not easy for me at first because, well, I AIN’T GAY!

Okay, not true. I mean, I AM straight, but that’s not why it was difficult to—boy, I’ve really written myself into a weird corner here with that joke. See, it started as a joke, not about being gay, but about the kind of person who thinks using a medicine could be construed as “gay.” And…ah, fuck it. You know what I mean.

I have to imagine that this whole suppository business isn’t easy for anyone.

Maybe if I’d been a little more adventurous, a little more into the ladies throwing a digit up there now and again, I’d be more acquainted with the layout of everything back there, but on the other hand, I’d always question whether it was the monster dildo jammed up there that CAUSED my hemorrhoids in the first place. Yes, I know there’s a difference between a lady’s index finger and a monster sex toy, but we all know how these things escalate.

These lil Preppy H guys are probably the ultimate example that proves that when the ailment is worse than the cure, people will use the cure. When you’re in enough discomfort, you’ll happily cram a finger up the ol’ browneye a couple times a day. You’ll look forward to it!

You know you’re not in a good place when the highlight of a day is moderate relief from the symptoms of hemorrhoids.

I guess these things are mostly made of Witch Hazel, which makes me feel like I’m weirdly using a very Medical Science sort of thing, these coming in a heavily-branded box and each suppository being sheathed in a metallic skin that you peel back like some kind of cyberbanana, and at the same time, being a natural medicine AND having the word “witch” in it makes me feel like I’m being very in touch with the Earth and shit, like I’m pretty much Wiccan at this point. Because I put medicine in my butt.

And I guess that’s where this entry ends. With you imagining me hunched over a counter, my finger up my butt, waiting for the odd sensation when you cram that greasy little bullet far enough in that your butthole sort of pulls it away.

It always reminds me of a spaceship undocking from another in a sci-fi movie, this gentle, delicate moment where two objects lose contact.

Fly, brave butt pill! Fly!

Ten headlines you’d like to see in the New York Times today and why.

~

Top 10 lists were such a big thing when I first got into the online writing game in a more serious way (by which I mean that I was paid to write incredibly stupid things instead of just doing it for the amusement of about 4 people). Many a LitReactor article was retitled in the style of “Top X Things That Do Y Controversial Thing.”

And, you know, the editor over there was right to do it. This was the Buzzfeed era, the time before TikTok when we wanted information broken up into bite-sized bits, but we didn’t have a fun social media platform that could do it naturally while also propelling a small group of Mormon women to a level of fame that I find baffling.

If I was in congress, I would’ve railed against TikTok simply out of revenge for it facilitating the existence of this program and the fact that I’ve seen a couple episodes of it: “I mean, sure, some of them are babes or babe-adjacent, and some of their chosen partners make me feel like I have a chance with a babe, but, c’mon, people, attainable babes discussing their group doing little dances in their kitchens, which make no economic sense, how is everyone in Provo fucking rich—this is what passes for entertainment?! And that one chick’s claim to fame is that she’s non-blood-related to the husk of a man formerly called ‘Ben Affleck?’”

A Top 10 list is always so appealing at first. “TEN things that will make my desk setup more efficient? Well, probably not all of this will work, but surely, out of 10, SOMETHING will be good, right!?”

And then you look into it, and it’s always a let down. “Oh, a lamp. Never thought of THAT. Riveting.”

A Top 10 list that you haven’t actually viewed yet, it’s so full of possibility. But what we actually love is the IDEA of the Top 10 list, of the abundance, of the variety, and the reality of it can never live up to those expectations.

Which is a great way to segue into this newsletter’s specific flavor of disappointment.

Although before I make with the headlines, a couple caveats:

• I’ve removed things like, “World Peace Declared” or “End to All Disease” because I always disallow those sorts of things in hypotheticals like, “What if a genie gave you three wishes.” Yes, if that actually happened, World Peace is an objectively correct answer. However, this isn’t actually happening, so practical, reasonable answers aren’t useful for anyone. The point of a hypothetical like this is not to see if you’ve ever thought, even for a brief moment, about what any sane person would do. The point of a hypothetical is to have a fun or interesting conversation, which you can only do if you answer the genie question with something like, “All lifted pickup trucks vanish overnight and are replaced with sparkling pink Smartcars that vent bottled farts into the cab constantly while driving, and every time the drivers fill up with gasoline, they also have to PAY for farts to fill up their fart reservoir tank as well.”

• Some of these, I won’t be answering the “and why” part because I think they’re self-explanatory. Over-explaining the joke ruins the joke. I’m told. When I over-explain jokes. Which I do so often and to such a degree that it’s become its own form of joke and circled around to being funny again (in my opinion and no one else’s).

And now, the headlines:

1. We Apologize for Yesterday’s Connections, That Was Pretty Bullshit, Even for Us

2. RFK Jr. Transformed into the Bad Guy from the Original Fallout Game After Host of Diseases Combine with Raw Milk, Testosterone Supplements, and Corpse of Brain Worm to Create a BioStew

   

3. Flip To Page 4 To Find a Scholastic Book Fair Order Form for Adults In Our New Supplement Titled, “Yes, Fucking Finally, Giving the People What They Crave!”

4. Every Precocious Child Who Has Given a TED Talk and Tells Adults How To Live, Even Though This Kid Has No Idea How Crushing and Impossible Life is, Prosecuted To Fullest Extent of the Law for Being a Little Shitboy

5. Spider-Man Powers a Real Thing, Available at Your Local Pharmacy

6. It Turns Out That One Article You Read About Japanese Scientists Figuring Out How to Make Humans Regrow Lost Teeth Was Real and Legit and Your Dentist Knows How to Do It and is Great At It Already

7. For most of us, art is supposed to do something more than simply mirror the confusions of the world. This, I don’t know what the fuck this is— Michiko Kakutani reviews The Heist-est Heist Ever Heisted

8. Op-Ed: I’m Katy Perry, and I Deserved to Go to Space Because I Have Nice Cans and Have Shared Them With the World, and That’s AS Impactful as Being Good at Math, in a Way

9. Science Makes Contact with the Afterlife: Representatives from Beyond Refuse to Communicate with Anyone but Zak Bagans

   

10. Pamela Legault, This Lady Who Once Backed Into A Guy’s Car and Then Cancelled The Check Meant to Pay for the Damages, Afflicted With Novel Disease Where She Shits Out of Her Mouth. Only Known Cure is a Written Apology for Denting Man’s Car Oh So Many Years Ago.