I'm late, I'm late, for a very important EVERYTHING

Let me tell you why we're always rushing in NYC: we're five minutes late. All eight million of us. Why? Because we just missed a train. So we hurry to catch the next one, knowing how we JUST missed that other one because of the group of slow moving Frenchmen that wouldn't get out of the way. And we're still five minutes late, so we're rushing², and suddenly someone's handing me a baton and there's cheering and oh yeah it's Usain Bolt.

Have you ever turned your oven to 120°, crawled inside, and then pooped? It's a cheap way to simulate the subway platforms here in the summer, what with airfare being the way it is these days. Knowing that's what I have to look forward to, should I miss the train, I'm now rushing³. Still subsonic at that point, but not by much.

Sometimes, trash fires spontaneously erupt on the tracks. Sometimes, a carriage driver can't stomach the idea of staring at a horse's ass for 10 hours and making small talk with tourists, so he'll fake a seizure on the way to work. Sometimes, a dispatcher wants the petty satisfaction of pissing off 2000 people for no good reason. These all stop trains. More specifically, these all stop trains that you've waited on for 20 minutes, because you JUST MISSED the one before. Rushing⁴. Mach 1.2. Ma'am, you really should find a place to finish your phone conversation that isn't the MIDDLE OF THE STEPS TO THE SUBWAY.

This train will be the last southbound train going to my stop. Rushing⁵. Mach 4. Rocket speeds. I just ran over a baby, but the mom doesn't even care because she knows what'll happen if I don't catch this train.

I just remembered how one time a train got taken out of service because it got held back when people wouldn't let the doors close. Rushing^∞. I am super-luminal. As relativity dictates, my mass becomes infinite while time stops completely. I collapse in on myself, forming a singularity that destroys our entire solar system.

This is all your fault, D train.

Economic Security (double the meaning! double the fun!)

Here's why I know the economy is actually fine: there are people who are paid to sit in the lobby of every building I go to, whose only job is to make sure I write my name down when I get there. Maybe I have to record the time. They MIGHT look at my ID. These men are called "security." I believe this derives from the fact that their asses are secured firmly to their stools, or perhaps how securely they feel about always having a place to nap.

Let's entertain a CRAZY scenario. I just got fired from my shitty job*. I don't have many friends**. Also I got touched in funny places as a child***. Obviously, the best thing I can do is go back to my former employers and headbutt them with bullets. But wait, what's this? A man straining the engineering limits of an XXL Dickies workshirt wants me to write my name down! Alas, foiled again! Wait, nope, not at all. Just wrote my name down and I'm in the elevator unpacking my duffel bag of fun, because exit strategies are rarely part of this game.

I know that's a pretty extreme situation. And I get it, fear is the new awake. We need some sense of protection from the brutish apathy of our godless universe. I certainly prefer guys getting paid $20/hour to watch "The Elevator Channel" over every citizen packing iron. Like Detroit. [shudder] But you see, when you live in NYC you are perpetually five minutes late. So the last thing I want when I get to my destination, all sweaty and huffing, is some townie looking at my ID for three minutes trying to figure out if I'm me or, you know, Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il or one of those other adorable dictators. And forget about the fact that I go by my middle name. That is a damn face melter when you try to convince someone of your identity.

So, uh, yeah, we're doing fine? That was my point? Shit, I'm late.

*This clearly does not apply to me because I do not have any job, let alone of the shitty variety.

**Again, not applicable to me. I have a ton of friends. Hi mom!

***This? Totally applicable.†

†Of course it's not really applicable. And I'm sorry. Child abuse is not funny. Unless it happens to really, really shitty kids.

To Be At Peace Is To Prepare For Running Your Ass Off

I ran nine miles yesterday. My body was literally eating itself. I took up running because it's the simplest, cheapest exercise, but holy shit I need to eat food constantly. And it's not like I can just eat whatever I want. What sense is there in running so much just to eat Big Macs and White Castle? As novel as sweating beef fat sounds, just don't. Mmm, tasty, tasty White Castle. Did you know they have sweet potato fries now? Did you know that a White Castle is the closest point of interest to my apartment? Second-closest? Manhattan. There is nothing else in my neighborhood.

People speak of this mythical "runner's high," but I either have yet to experience it or I have experienced it but I know what Ecstasy feels like so blah. No, I run for my general health, the sense of well-being I get from pushing myself towards a goal, and preparedness.

There's a (by now hack) bit about the pointlessness of hard exercise. Why are you lifting weights? So you can lift more weights. Why are you running? So you're better at running, and can run more. While this ignores the obvious reason of looking better, so you can get laid by people who look better and/or lock down the attractive person who's steadily having sex with you, it also ignores the fact that you will be ready when shit goes down.

I have no idea where my constant fear of having to outrun bandits/dogs/kidnappers/bad weather comes from, but my best guess is Reader's Digest. Specifically, the "Drama in Real Life" feature. I was an avid childhood reader of this, and looked forward every month to the new terrifying scenario someone managed (usually) to survive. One woman wrestled control of her moving vehicle from a kidnapper on the interstate. A family was home-invaded. A boy got hit by lightning at school. Pretty sure that one died.

So when it's on the line, I'll be ready. I'll be able to run all night through fields and forests, outstripping my faceless pursuers (why would I ever be chased?). I'll be strong enough to climb things to hide. And when the chase ends and we're face to face, I can use my three years of high school karate.

If it were me, I would've outrun that lightning.

Consequences Will Never Be The Same

Educate yourself if you don't get the title. It's worth it if you have the same masochistic fascination I have with what "the kids" are doing these days.

It's been a while huh? May 27th was the last post. The Fart Blanket bit didn't go over as strongly as I'd hoped, though the Asian comment spammers sure are eating it up. I'm rejecting about a comment a day on that post. Are you aware of this practice? It's apparently a job over there to post completely random comments to any blog you can find, I assume to somehow get people to click to your site. Communism = job creation, people. Nothing wrong with that.

So the point of this post is to tell you to bear with me for a while, as I try to get back into the swing of doing this while changing my MO. Commenting on pop culture fluff can be fun from time to time, but there's only so much I can say about Justin Bieber that a million other bloggers aren't saying. I want to be funny, and I want to be personal, and I want to avoid navel gazing. I have bad enough posture as it is.

I guess I'm trying to find my identity as a blogger, and by god if there's a more indicative phrase of our times I don't want to hear it. What I do want is to kick myself in the teeth for saying it, but it's true. But it's not about blogging. Here's what I do: I'll do something in a creative little spurt, like shoot a webseries or take a class or be in a play. Then I'll go a long time without any of that, to the point that I have no idea why I'm even getting out of bed (because I'm certainly not replacing that time with any sort of money-making practice). Then I start to lose my mind a little, so that I'm forced to engage in something like this. What this really is, is playing it safe and testing the waters for some sort of real comedy. Standup, sketch, probably not improv. Nothing against it, well, maybe a little, but I can only be a geek about so many things.

SO, manifesto finished, let the hilarity begin. Now. No, wait...now.

The World is Amazing! RE: Fart Blanket

Folks, I haven't been this fascinated and disgusted with a TV product since the PedEgg. But this might take the stale cake:

The Official Better Marriage Blanket. Hereafter referred to as the Fart Blanket. Go ahead, check it out. There's a commercial on the site. I'll wait.

Gross right?

So let's say your bowels are such a twisted, blocked maze of rotting meat and Twinkie wrappers that your wife is having a hard time staying close to you. Because it's the truth. Easily avoided when you're at work, scarfing down Indian food and dark beer. But what about the sacred marriage bed?

I'm farting so much right now

In steps the Fart Blanket!

A normal-appearing comforter hides a layer of activated carbon, which is to funky smell molecules what John Wayne Gacy was to little kids. If he was better at hiding bodies, anyway. Come to think of it, he probably could have used some of the stuff. But as the website assures you, this is the material the military uses to protect against chemical weapons.

That's right. You're sitting on a weapon of ass destruction.

The carbon traps the molecules like General Zod in the Forbidden Zone, and has "an almost unlimited capacity for trapping odor" because holy shit you have to stop farting.

Seriously, what is wrong inside of you? Does your diet consist of homeless people and other farts? Have you been to a doctor? Because this product is for people who have just given up completely. It is absolutely a last resort. It clearly states, "I recognize that the smell of Lucifer's taint is being squirted out of me regularly. I can't change that, and plan on continuing indefinitely. This is the best it's going to get."

Well, this is for you then. As the commercial says, you owe it to your marriage. Because farts is the #3 leading cause for divorce in the United States, right behind B.O. and morning cat breath.

I Got Bieber Fever and the Only Cure is a Quick Death

Y'know, I for real did not plan on mentioning Bieber again, at all, when scratching around for a topic. Then the little bastard went and got nominated for a BET AWARD. A BET AWARD. A BET AWARD.

Nope, saying it loudly three times did not make it seem more real.

So he's up for best new artist. The headline I saw was "Justin Bieber, Jay-Z nab BET nominations." You know what else those two nab together? Nothing. Because when you think of J. Bieb and Jay-Z at the same time, somewhere a retarded baby kitty dies. So now it's out. BET hates retarded baby kittens. Apparently I do too. Because I've made you kill at least three by now.

Bieber might nab Jay-Z's shoes for him, to give them a good shine. He might nab his gold chalice, to refill it with a cognac that only rich people know exists. I'll even allow that he might nab a crisp $20 for averting his eyes when Beyonce walks into the room. But they don't nab anything on equal footing. Jay-Z was born in fucking Bed-Stuy. The second line of his bio on Wikipedia is "at age 12, he shot his brother in the shoulder for stealing his jewelry." Bieber was born in Ontario. One time, he shot the girl at Starbucks a dirty look because she put whipped cream on his dark cherry mocha when his mom clearly said no whipped cream.

Look at the kid's picture up there. That carefully tended, windswept hair. Porcelain lesbian face. Polite Canadian manners. Omnipresent sideways peace sign (seriously, find a picture of that joker without one). What seems to be a woman's scarf. And you tell me: how bad do you want him to get in a fistfight with Lil Wayne at the awards?

Lots. The correct answer is lots.

YouTube Child Sensations! Sunday Sunday Sunday!

I've touched on my disdain for child prodigies before (but let the court record show I've never touched a child prodigy). Like it has everything else, the web has made their ability to annoy much faster and simpler. And though I love her, Ellen's not making it any better, with her revolving door of moppets called "The Wonderful Web of Wonderment."

"Paparazzi" kid Greyson Chance. Korean bowl-cut-Susan-Boyle-impersonator Lin Yu Chun (you get bonus views for being foreign and/or hopelessly awkward). Random-pop-song-covering Maddi Jane. Japanese guitar prodigy Yuto Miyazawa*. Mozart.

Let me boil down every reaction you will ever have to any of these kids: "Aw, s/he's so cute! And only x years old!" (where x=the age at which you were burning ants for fun and laughing hysterically at Kimmy Gibbler (so, for me, 27)). And the fact that almost all of these people are singers really makes me think that singing is nothing special. There's a switch inside you; "on," and you can, "off," and you sound like me. These kids clearly have no emotional connection to what they're doing. How could they? And god help them if they do.

So you get a bunch of stage-parent-afflicted kids trying to land record deals by parroting Whitney Houston or Train or some shit, and also every person who's been on American Idol, ever. And they all have just the worst taste in everything.

This phenomenon is also why Justin Bieber's mom is being trampled by horny, horny 12-year old girls. But considering what her loins hath wrought upon this earth, I don't feel too bad about that.

Am I bitter? Of course! I don't do anything that hundreds of other guys around my age, of my general physical description, can't do; I'm just trying to be seen doing that thing instead of them. Of course I'm doing it about 20 years later than these kids, and they've already been seen. Bitterness ensues.

But really, when it comes down to it, for many reasons this kid is the best summary of why I just don't care that your 11-year old can cover Beyonce. Because I see no difference.

*I'm actually going to exempt Yuto from all this, for a few reasons: 1)that guitar is bigger than him, 2)playing guitar like he can is something achieved on a much higher technical plane than singing, and 3)he has excellent taste. Mozart, you're still on notice. Fucking poser.