Author Archives: Ovid

It Is Very Important To Me That I Not Have To Wear Shoes

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So for a while I was in graduate school. I’m not anymore,  and thank gods for that. If I’d stayed in any longer, I might have become an Artist. We’re talking about a school where you can show up to your writing workshop with a bunch of yarn glued to a sheet of printer paper and have a 2-hour discussion about what it says about gender politics. Which is why I was so shocked by the email I received towards the end of my first month at the school:

[Ovid],

A few security reports have come to my attention here in the Student Affairs office regarding to fact that you often walk in and around the 116 S Michigan Building without shoes.  This email is to request that you come meet with me and [Cruella De Ville], Associate Director Environmental Health and Safety, to discuss this.

I see that this Wednesday you have class in the afternoons so are you available to meet with us in the morning before class?  We are free to meet at 10:00 am or 11:00 am but can certainly arrange it if you need to meet earlier.

Looking forward to hearing from you shortly.
Thank you,
[Baroness von No-Fun]

Yeah, I don’t wear shoes except in winter. It’s not the first time I’ve mentioned it on this stupid website. Yell at me all you want in the comments, I’m used to it. But the POINT is, what the hell were the administrative staff at this ART SCHOOL doing confronting me about my shoelessness? Didn’t they have some misused animal carcass to dispose of, or some student to reprimand for drinking a pitcher of his own urine during his critique? (True story.) I wasn’t going to let these people shoe me with their rules. I had to act, and act decisively.

This was somewhat complicated by the fact that I was under a vow of silence at the time, thanks to the professor of my Lucid Dreaming class. (ART. SCHOOL.) So I essentially had three options.

OPTION ONE: Ignore the email completely and go about my barefoot business.

OPTION TWO: Take the meeting, but postpone it to next week, when I would no longer be under the vow of silence.

OPTION THREE: Fuck it, let’s do Wednesday.

GUESS WHICH ONE I PICKED

So now I had two days to figure out a way to communicate in the meeting without using my voice. Luckily, I could still use my words. I sat down in the graduate computer lab, and composed a letter.

Two days later, I showed up at the office of Student Affairs, barefoot, grinning, and completely speechless. I sat down between the head of Student Affairs and the Associate Director of Environmental Health and Safety, shook their hands, and then produced a letter from my satchel. The head of Student Affairs made a photocopy, and the two women read together in silence.

This is what the letter said:

To Whom it May Concern,

I am grateful that the school cares enough about my well-being to arrange this meeting. The reports are true, as you can see – I do not wear shoes. In consideration of your concern, I feel I owe you an explanation as to why. I do not wear shoes because wearing shoes is against my religion.

I belong to an esoteric Buddhist sect known as Paryayana Buddhism. My religion forbids the eating of meat, the wearing of shoes, and being the first owner of any thing. I am the last living practitioner of this religion, my teacher having passed away four years ago. While I appreciate that the school has certain policies, to begin wearing shoes now would be a disgrace to my teacher’s memory.

Paryayana teaches us that we must adhere to our beliefs, but be reasonable in their application. Thus, I do not intend to remain barefoot when the temperature drops below thirty degrees. I have been walking barefoot for many years, and am prepared to provide a signed note from a podiatrist attesting to its health benefits. I am also more than willing to sign any form of legal release that you require. Only allow me to continue practicing my faith.

Go in peace,

[Ovid]

The two administrators read the letter, then read it again. They looked at each other, then looked at me.

“We’re going to need to take some time to have our legal team look at this,” they said. “But we’re not telling you you have to wear shoes. Just to be clear, that’s not what we’re doing. Just … can we meet again next week?”

I nodded.

Exactly one week later, I was once again sitting in their office, fully able to speak, signing the liability release their legal team had drafted for them. The release granted me permission to be barefoot anywhere on campus, except in the wood and metal shops and in the general vicinity of the laser cutter, all of which seemed, you know, pretty reasonable. After that, I had to show the form to one or two security guards, but most of them knew me already. I got away with so much shit thanks to those security guards.

You see, the school’s administration had fallen victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” but only slight less well-known is this: Never match wits with a writing major, when pride is on the line.

Train Problems

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So one time I was in Italy. I did not have a lot of money when I was in Italy, but I was very excited to be there and I wanted to see as much of it as possible. What I would do is I would ride the trains without buying a ticket. This is ridiculously easy to do in Italy. One thing I would do is I would buy a one-way ticket someplace (say, Florence), ride the train to my destination, spend a day there, and ride back without buying another ticket. When the ticket-taker came through, I would give him my expired one-way ticket. He would squint at the ticket, then ask me,

“Where are you going?”

“To Florence,” I would confidently reply.

“This train is headed for Montevarchi,” the ticket taker would say.

“Oh SHIT” I would cry, snatching the ticket from his hand and running for the doors. “I need to turn around. Thank you so much!”

Then I would get off the train at the next stop and get back on a car that the ticket-taker had already checked.

While I was doing this, I was also running another scam. A group of elementary school children in Arrezzo were enchanted by my juggling, and so I made sure to spend some time with them in the park every day. They would attempt to teach me Italian, and in exchange I would amaze them with my tricks and scare off the older kids who liked to set off fireworks in the park. Then, at night, I would position myself on the city’s main commercial drag, juggling with my collection dish out, and one by one the children would bring their parents by. I have never made so much money juggling as I did in the tiny town of Arrezzo (except for one time in New York City, but that’s a whole other story).

But gradually the children grew bored of me, and my earnings dwindled. Plus I’d been juggling so hard for so many days, my wrists hurt. One night, I finally decided that as soon as I made enough money for a train ticket back to the town where I was staying, I would go.

Not more than two minutes later, two coins dropped into my bowl. One was a euro – the exact amount I was short for a train ticket – and the other was a coin from Denmark, which was totally useless to me. I packed up and headed for the train station.

Of course, I didn’t actually buy a train ticket. Buying train tickets was for other people. In fact, I’m pretty sure I didn’t buy another train ticket until I ended up in Portugal, where underemployment means that every train has two ticket-takers per car. One time, I pulled my get-off-get-on trick with a ticket-taker near the French border, and when she came through the train a second time and found me there, she just shook her head and let me stay. Yes, I was a terrible person in Italy. It does that to you.

But back to the night in question. I had just found my seat, when I noticed a man enter the cabin. I immediately recognized him as the one who had given me my last two coins. He was a short, balding man who wore every one of his fifty or sixty years on his face, plus some uneven gray stubble. We made eye contact, and I waved. He smiled, and took a seat across the aisle from me.

I thanked him for the money, and he thanked me for juggling. He gave me another euro, and I thanked him for that as well. The train was loud and my Italian was terrible, so he moved to the seat across from me. As we spoke he kept putting his hand on my knee, which made me uncomfortable but was obviously just a friendly Italian thing. Obviously.

There was a lull in the conversation while I tried to find Italian words for what I wanted to say. Finally, I settled for,

“I’m scared.”

He straightened up.

“What? Why?”

“Because I don’t have a ticket for this train.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have any money.”

“Do you need money?”

I laughed.

“I always need money.”

“Sexo?” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Sexo?” he said.

“What?” I said, leaning forward in an attempt to hear better.

He leaned in until his mouth was almost touching my ear.

“Sexo?” he said.

“No!” I said, smiling weakly and throwing myself into my seat-back with all my strength. “No, no, grazie, grazie, no, grazie, no, no, no! Grazie!”

He smiled back, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. “Okay,” he said, “You said you needed money.”

“Haha, yes!” I said, “But no! No, grazie.”

“My apartment is in San Giovanni,” he said, putting his hand on my leg again.

“Haha!” I said, “Great! Superb!”

The conductor announced Montevarchi, my stop.

“Hey, that’s me!” I said, “Goodbye!”

“Ciao, bello,” he said, leering.

The conductor had announced my stop, but it was still fifteen minutes away. Fifteen very, extremely long minutes. I stared at the train doors with terrified intensity while my traveling companion eyed me like I was a pork carcass dangling from the metal handrail. Finally the doors opened and I left. I looked over my shoulder to see the man standing at the window, waving at me. I entered an underpass leading out of the station. As soon as I broke line of site with the man, I ran. I ran until I couldn’t anymore.

And even this did not persuade me to start paying for my own train rides.

Maybe the craziest thing about this story is that this is the only time something like this has ever happened to me. If I was a woman, it wouldn’t be unusual if I had a whole gang of stories like this. They wouldn’t seem nearly as unusual. In fact, if I was a woman and I started telling this story, chances are I’d be asked, “Why the fuck were you traveling alone in the first place? Didn’t you know something like this was going to happen?” I hate that. I don’t have anything super insightful to say about it. I just hate it, and wish it would stop. But how do I make it stop if I can’t even afford a train ticket, eh?

Maybe you have some ideas, though. There are more of you than me, and you like my website so you’re probably pretty smart. So work with me here — what can we do to make this story weird for everyone?

One of the Stupidest Things I’ve Ever Done

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They say there is a part of your brain that develops with age that is essentially a safety cover over the “DO STUPID SHIT” button. This story is probably the best scientific evidence I have for the existence of such a brain-part. It involves a post office.

There was a post office about a mile from my house. My goal (for reasons I’d rather not go into) was to figure out a way into the bowels of that post office and somehow mail a letter from inside it. Naturally, step one was reconnaissance. SPOILERS: I never made it past step one.

I emailed the director of the post office, posing as a college student doing a project on the policies of government institutions post-September-11th. They told me it was against policy to give individual tours, but I guess I am a pretty persuasive emailist because they eventually caved in and scheduled a day. In the meantime, I decided to do my own snooping.

You see, I was doing parkour at the time. For those of you without the internet, parkour essentially boils down to skateboarding without a skateboard. You roam around the city, looking for things to jump over and climb up and infiltrate because it’s the closest you can get to being a ninja without being required to actually end lives. The night before my scheduled tour of the post office, I parked my car in front of a grocery store across the street from the building and put my skills to the test.

The building was almost twenty feet tall, which was way higher than I could jump, even as a fucking ninja. But there was a ten-foot wall that branched off from the side of the building where the outdoor generator was housed, and if I could get on top of that wall, I could make it onto the roof.

It turned out that ten feet was also higher than I could jump. I threw myself at the wall over and over, kicking up it at the last second and reaching for the top. And over and over, I missed the lip and fell back to the ground. I lost count of how many times I tried, all the time being watched by a lone man at the bus stop across the street. I wasn’t worried about the guy at the bus stop. I mean, who the hell takes the bus in Los Angeles? He was clearly insane, and his testimony would not be trusted.

But finally, after eleventy-million tries, I caught the lip and pulled myself to the top. I wandered around on the roof for a while, I guess looking for a Mission Impossible-style skylight to lower myself through, before giving up and heading for the parking lot. The builders of the post office had made the best of LA’s rolling hills by digging into the side of one, which meant that the parking lot was a whole story lower than the sidewalk I’d stood on to make my run at the building. To get down to it, I had to drop back off onto the wall I’d come up, climb down into the enclosure with the generator, grab a chainlink fence, scale it across and over another chainlink fence (with barbed-wire all over it), then jump down into the parking lot itself. I did this successfully, because I am a champion.

There was not much to do in the parking lot, as is typical of parking lots. I made for the loading dock, to see if someone had fortuitously left a door unlocked. No such luck. Through the plexiglass windows of the double doors, I noticed an official announcement on salmon-pink paper:

ATTENTION:

BE YOUR PERSONAL BEST

I viewed it as an encouragement.

I turned around, and noticed a suspicious-looking fixture on the ceiling of the loading dock. It appeared to be a security camera. I belatedly pulled my shirt up over my face, and inched closer in an attempt to allay my fears. It turned out to be nothing more than a broken light socket. I uncovered my face, embarassed at being so paranoid. I heard a helicopter in the distance.

“I bet it’s coming for me,” I laughed. And you know what?

IT WAS.

The sound of rotors was suddenly RIGHT UP ON ME, and a spotlight swept the lot like the vengeful eye of Sauron himself. I cowered in a corner of the loading dock, being totally screwed. There was no place to run. The back corner of the loading dock was the only place I could hide. It was only a matter of time before the SWAT team arrived. I should also mention that I had just come from bussing tables at a fancy restaurant, which meant that I had been sneaking onto the property of a government building wearing all black. As I sat there, waiting to be arrested, I felt my life unraveling the way I had when I was six and my mom discovered the pair of underwear I had stuffed behind her toilet instead of taking it the extra ten feet to the laundry hamper. I was caught. I was helpless. I was already being digested by the labyrinthine cloaca of justice.

Then the helicopter went away. Then it came back. Then it went away again, and I waited twenty bladder-taxing minutes to see if it would come back again. As soon as the twenty minutes were up, I ran. But one does not simply run out of the post office. I sprinted across the lot, jumped eight feet up a concrete wall and grabbed the chainlink fence, scaled it up and over the barbed wire, into the generator enclosure, kicked up the ten-foot dividing wall on the first fucking try, and absconded. As I passed the front of the post office, I saw a police car idling out front. Either the police car didn’t see me, or they didn’t find anything suspicious about a dude dressed all in black strolling leisurely down a sidewalk that could only have come from an auto junkyard, a freeway offramp, or the motherfucking post office. I made it to my car, and drove home with my eyes glued to the rear-view mirror.

The next afternoon, I had my scheduled tour of the post office. In case of any security footage of the previous night’s events, I got a haircut for the first time in months. In an hour, I went from this:

main_before59664

To this:

main_vidzandshit18159665

My tour was quite informative. For example, I learned that the US Postal Service has its own police force, called – appropriately enough – the Postal Police. I also learned that the Los Angeles Postal Police headquarters were DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET FROM THAT POST OFFICE. It’s not like it’s hidden either. I took a look after my tour, and there is a bigass sign out front that says “THE MOTHERFUCKING POSTAL POLICE ARE RIGHT FUCKING HERE ASSHOLE WHAT ARE YOU DOING” (the expletives are mine. Also some of the other words.) Some dude could literally have just looked out his office window and seen me doing my thing. Given that little tidbit of information, it’s a god-damned miracle I’m not in Guantanamo to this day.

This story is why I am terrified of teenagers. There is a time in every human’s life where we will basically just do anything we are physically capable of doing, up to and including breaking into the post office. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just The Biggest Idiot In The World, and my magnum opus occurred somewhere back around my 17th birthday. Whatever the truth of the matter, what’s important to remember is that you should NOT ATTEMPT TO SNEAK INTO THE POST OFFICE. They DO have helicopters, and they have NO QUALMS about using them. Which really just makes me wonder why the mail doesn’t come quicker.

Cops, Junkies, and a Rooster

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Thank you all for being so damn cool. I feel like this site attracts a good crowd. You wanna hear about a place that doesn’t attract a good crowd, though? I’m going to interpret your silence as a yes.

There is a park a block from my house. This park is beautiful. It is filled with geese and a pond you can actually fish in. It is bordered on one side by a fieldhouse. I don’t know what a fieldhouse even is, except that this one has a golden dome and looks sweet as hell. This park is also a notorious heroin spot.

FOR EXAMPLE (this isn’t even the real story yet) one Sunday afternoon I was walking across the park on my way home from work. A couple of guys were sitting on folding chairs in the grass. One of them beckoned me over.

“Hey man, come here, lemme talk to you for a second,” he said.
“Okay,” I said.
“No, no, no,” he said, “squat down here next to me, so I can talk to you for a second.”
I did.
“Would you like to buy some heroin?” he said, “Because we sell heroin here. This is where we sell heroin.”
“No thank you,” I said.
“Okay man,” he said, “That’s cool. If you know anybody, let them know we’re selling heroin over here.”
“Will do,” I said.

That’s what this park is like.

So anyway I know a guy who lives in this park. Everybody calls him Cuba, because that’s where he’s from. He’s probably sixty, he doesn’t do any drugs, and he’s been living in a little lean-to in the park for three years. Also he has a rooster.

20131124_163423

I’ll tell you about how I met Cuba some other time. What’s important to know right now is that I go over to Cuba’s house once or twice a week, and there are a lot of junkies who go over there more often than that.

So on this particular day, I’ve come to Cuba’s to bring him a box of candles. One of the disadvantages of living in a cardboard hut built around an enormous dead tree in the middle of a park is that electricity is scarce, which means Cuba uses a lot of candles. I was also going out of town the next day, and wanted to wish him a Merry Christmas. There was one other person there when I arrived – a woman who was working her way through nursing school and also maybe doing a lot of heroin. She was waiting for her boyfriend to come back with some.

I talked to Cuba for a while about my work and his rooster and the worker’s comp settlement he’s been waiting on all these years. Then the boyfriend came back, apologizing rapidly about something I didn’t take the time to listen to, and I used his arrival as an excuse to leave.

I stepped out of the shack and immediately had a gun pointed at me. The gun belonged to the stocky plain-clothes police officer who was creeping down the dirt path towards the shack. He motioned for me not to speak, then asked,

“How many people are in there?”

I knew it didn’t matter if I told him, but I still didn’t want to tell him anything, so I pretended to be too shocked by the gun to speak. This was not a hard thing to pretend. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent hours imagining all the badass things you might say to someone who had a gun pointed at you. What those imaginary scenarios fail to acknowledge is that someone is going to have a fucking GUN pointed at you. There is something uniquely paralyzing about the knowledge that someone has decided that you may need to die in a minute, and has taken the steps necessary to make that a possibility. The gun he had was tiny, barely as big as his hand. But it was the Finger of Death as far as I was concerned, and I was scared, un-manned, and slightly insulted by it.

He told me to put down my backpack, then poked his gun into the shack.
“Get out here,” he yelled, “Police! Get the fuck out here!”

The nursing student and her boyfriend crawled outside. By now the cop’s partner had arrived. He was tall, skinny, and barely older than me. He looked like he would have been right at home among the junkies. The first cop poked his head back inside.

“You too,” he said.

A minute later, Cuba struggled out of the shack. He looked at me, rolled his eyes and smiled.

“Jesus,” said the younger cop, “How many people do you have in there?”
“Just us,” said the boyfriend, “We don’t got anywhere else to go.”
The younger cop peeked into the shack to verify the statement.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, “They’ve got a fucking rooster in there!”
“Whose rooster is that?” barked the older cop. All eyes went to Cuba.
“Is mine,” said Cuba.
“Where the fuck did you get a rooster?” said the cop.
“I, ah …” said Cuba, attempting to form a large egg in the air with his hands, “I … find him. As a bebe.”

Silence, except for the younger cop chuckling.

“How do you guys all know each other?” said the younger cop.
We all started talking at once.
“We have nowhere else to go,” said the boyfriend,
“We’re broke and homeless,” said the nurse,
“I come here to bring candles and soup,” I said
“I live here,” said Cuba.
“Okay, okay,” said the older cop, “Which one of you bought heroin, though.”
“I don’t have anything,” said the boyfriend.
“Don’t lie,” said the older cop, “we followed you back here. Don’t make me search you.”
“Man,” said the boyfriend, “I don’t have anything. I was just walking around the park for thirty minutes trying to meet up with my guy to pick up some dope but I couldn’t find my guy and I couldn’t get any dope! If I had some dope, I’d be fucking high by now! I was just apologizing to my girl about it!”

The cop looked at the four of us. He lifted the flap and looked inside the shack, where Cuba’s rooster scratched at a sleeping bag, looking for crumbs. He looked back at us.

“You know what?” he said, “I don’t even fucking care anymore. Have a good day. Stay out of trouble.”

The cops turned to leave, and Cuba turned to me, beaming. He shook my hand and pulled me into a hug.

“Merry Christmas, Papi,” he said.

Changes

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Hey guys, a bunch of arcane shit happened on my server over the holidays and I just got done putting out all the fires. Sorry I missed an update on Saturday. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.

Except no, fuck that. I’m not sorry. I’m not your dancing monkey. I started this website three years ago because I knew a lot of myths I was really excited about, and I wanted to yell them into the internet. It was fun. It was a fun, dumb thing I was doing on a free blogger site. People started paying attention, including some very influential people, and suddenly I was earning ad revenue and selling t-shirts and owning my own server space. I developed a “web presence.” I even got a book deal through this site, and that has been a phenomenal opportunity. I had a really great time writing that book, and I’ve been humbled and elated by the response to it, especially recently.

The problem, though, is this fucking update schedule. The whole time I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve been reading other people’s blogs and webcomics. I’ve watched creator after talented creator stop making art and start making product, because that’s what the internet demands. I’m not writing anymore, I’m “creating content.” I can’t think of a more efficient way to kill passion.

Many of you have probably noticed that I’ve been kinda reaching recently. Every week, when Saturday looms up, I no longer think “hey, I get to come up with a myth!” I think, “Aww fuck. I’ve gotta read another fucking myth.” That’s shitty. Nobody wins in that situation. I feel like a hack, and you guys get to read hack writing. So I’m making a change.

See, I noticed something when I wrote about my experience at the shop-along. People were excited. It started a discussion. And it was fun to write. Really fun. So fun, in fact, that I want to do more of that stuff.

This site will still update on Saturdays, but it won’t be myths for a while. Instead, I’ll tell you stories from my life. I’ve had a lot of shit happen to me, (like the aforementioned shop along, as well as this and this), and I think you’ll find it amusing. Think of it as another kind of mythology. I’ll still post myths when I come across one I’m really passionate about, so please continue to send me your recommendations. One of my favorite things about having this site is that you all have taken it upon yourselves to educate me, both mythologically and critically. All I ask is that you bear with me while I try something new.

Much Love,
Ovid

Frosty The Snowman’s Bitch Was My Nickname In Junior High

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So some kids are bored
normally this would not be a big deal
but these kids are apparently friends with satan
so they’re like hey satan
we’re bored and it’s winter
give us something cool to play with
and satan is like okay guys
here’s a hat

at first they figure satan is just fucking with them like usual
so they build a snowman
and they put the hat on the snowman
just to get rid of it basically
and the snowman COMES TO LIFE

they suspect that there must be some magic in that old silk hat
and they are right
specifically it is a type of magic known as necromancy
the hat probably belonged to jack the ripper
and probably jack the ripper’s ghost is now inside the snowman
so the snowman is like FUCK YEAH KIDS LET’S RIDE
and he starts thumpity-thumping across the tundra with un-snowman-like agility
and the children are terrified
but they are also not bored
so what the hell
they follow him

now it is a pretty hot day out
and “Frosty” knows that he doesn’t have long to live
so he barrels into town with a psychopathic charcoal grin on his face
and just keeps going
a police officer attempts to stop him
but bullets just pass right through
as does frosty
he passes right through town and keeps going
because now the po po is after him and he is not going back to jail
so he’s like hey kids
uh
i’ll … i’ll be back
some day
trust me
then he leaves and no one ever sees him again
at least no one who’s still alive

so the moral of the story
is that snowmen are really shitty friends

the end.

Let Me Ruin a Christmas Thing for You:

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So there are these animals in a hostile environment
they have wickedly hooked chitonous growths sprouting from their heads
and their feet are edged with a thin rim of razor sharp bone
these animals are called reindeer
and they have basically cornered the market for living in terrible places
I mean polar bears live in terrible places too
but what if a polar bear and a reindeer are living in the same place huh?
obviously the place you are living is significantly more terrible if there is a bear in it
and you are not the bear
REINDEERS WIN THIS DUBIOUS PRIZE

so anyway these animals are just chilling out in winterhell
digging craters into the tundra with their weaponized hooves
so they can slurp the lichen from between sheets of uncaring ice
(terrible places)
when they notice that something is amiss in the herd
because
you see
one of the reindeer
IS DIFFERENT

now what you have to understand
is that reindeer can see much further into the spectrum than humans
The world basically looks like a perpetual blacklight party to them
or maybe a crime scene
bodily fluids all conspicuously spattered over everything
especially places where you like to eat food
reindeer see ultraviolet light is what I’m trying to say
and it appears that one of these reindeer
has a SUSPICIOUS APPENDAGE
this dude’s nose is emitting ultraviolet radiation at a goddamn alarming rate
to the other reindeer this makes the nose appear very, very shiny
one might even say
it glows

This reindeer (let’s call him Rudolph, for convenience) is shunned by his comrades
this is because they do not want fucking skin cancer
and here’s this mutant reindeer with a tiny chernobyl going off inside his face
and he’s wondering about why he doesn’t have any friends
(oh yeah
in this story reindeers have the ability to wonder
there is no research to support this
but this is what is known as narrative convenience)

luckily for Rudolph
a local entrepreneur is looking to take his freight-delivery business global
he is not a very good entrepreneur
seeing as he has set up business at the north pole
and also he carries his packages jumbled together in a huge burlap sack
tenuously secured to an open-topped sled
basically he is hoping that the novelty of his operation will outweigh any disadvantages

anyway what this guy
(let’s call him Santa)
is looking for right now
is a cheap and renewable source of energy to propel his stupid sleds
and he has heard about this reindeer with the carcinogenic nose
so, on the assumption that anything that causes cancer must do something cool
Santa goes and hits rudolph up
he’s like hey man
i hear you are some kind of mutant
can you like
run really fast
or fly or something?
and Rudolph is like hey yeah
I can totally fly
that’s not really that special though
all reindeer can fly apparently
and Santa is like holy shit how did I not know about this
I’m going to be fucking rich

But santa feels like he’s sort of commited to rudolph
so he hires him anyway
and when the other reindeer find out that rudolph has a job and money and shit
they all start trying to be his friends
and he is so starved for affection that he ends up getting them all jobs towing the sled
and they use his freakishly glowing nose as a form of radar or something
and at some point santa starts giving out all his shit for free
which is pretty irresponsible because who knows where that shit came from in the first place
there are a lot of holes in this story to be honest
what’s important to remember
is that everyone died of skin cancer

the end

The Lady or The Tiger???

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So there’s this king
he’s … kind of a barbarian?
at least that’s what the original teller of this tale assures us
I remain unconvinced
his armor does not seem to have any human skulls on it
or even skulls of any kind
over the course of this narrative, not a single raw mutton leg touches his lips
OR his teeth
NOR does he swallow an entire raw leg of mutton whole
at no point does he demonstrate the ability to rage once per day
plus once more per day for every four additional levels
in short
the only barbaric quality possessed by this monarch
is a tendency to do whatever the fuck he wants at all times
which
if you’re only gonna pick one barbarian trait
is a pretty good one
i guess

oh, you need an example of the kind of shit this king gets up to?
well okay
let’s talk about the legal system
this king has heard some vague rumors about the roman empire
and how they have these things called “gladiatorial arenas”
which they use to punish their criminals/amuse themselves
because I guess a fundamental conceit of all these old stories
is that nobody can afford the internet
so king hears about these arenas
and COMPLETELY misses the point
but being as he is a barbarian
missing the point does not stop him from building his own arena

Here’s how this guy’s arena works:
a criminal gets thrown into the arena by himself
there are two doors in the arena
behind one of the doors is a FEARSOME TIGER
totally a thing you might expect to find in arena
behind the other door is A REALLY REALLY HOT BABE
if the dude picks the hot babe, he immediately gets married to the hot babe
like vegas fast
and if he picks the tiger
he gets married to the tiger
in a much more entertaining and permanent way
(it’s worth noting that only dudes seem to commit crimes in this kingdom
although this may be due to the fact that women are so helpless that they can be used as prizes in weird judicial game shows)

This is the entire legal system
it goes on for a long time, and no one can find any problems with it
either because it’s technically fair
(the dude gets to choose his own fate, kind of)
or because anybody who criticizes the system gets put in the arena
either way, matters come to a head suddenly
when a hot and semi-eligible bachelor in the court of the king
is discovered banging the king’s hot and EXTREMELY eligible daughter

Now I know what you’re thinking
you’re thinking “oh this is going to be fucking adorable
the king is going to put the dude in the arena
and behind one door is gonna be a tiger
but behind the other door is gonna be his daughter”
my friends
does the word “barbarian” mean NOTHING to you?
I mean yes, it is a pretty meaningless word in this story
but at the very least it means that the king is not about to pull punches
instead what he pulls is the kingdom’s FIERCEST TIGER
and also the kingdom’s FIERCEST BABE
(OTHER than his daughter)
and puts them behind the doors in the arena
and is like alright, showtime

but here’s the tilt
the princess has used her considerable influence to discover which door is which
she knows!
she is the only one who knows!
and her lover
well
he knows she knows
that’s why he loves her
because she is the only female in the kingdom with any agency
so as he walks into the arena he looks up at her
like “oh fuck, which door do I pick?”
and the princess is presented with a quandary:
WHICH DOOR DOES SHE INDICATE?
Her options are not awesome:
option 1: my true love gets eaten by a tiger
option 2: my true love gets auto-married to a skank I hate
she only has a second to decide
so she pulls herself together
makes up her mind
and indicates the door on the right

but my friends
I am sure you are wondering
WHAT IS BEHIND DOOR NUMBER ONE??
well see the problem is
the guy who wrote this story IS TOO MUCH OF A WUSS TO TELL YOU
He’s like “bluh bluh bluh
moral quandaries are interesting
who am I to say what the lady decided
even though i’ve already decided the fates of every other lady in my narrative”
chill out dude
we all know what you’re really saying
you’re saying you’re too dumb to figure out the only logical solution
so lemme step in and save your ass:

the dude in the gladiator pit goes through this whole dilemma in his head
and immediately realizes that he has no idea what his honey’s motives are
whereas his own motives are exceedingly clear:
NO TIGERS
so he does the only sensible thing
which is to open both doors at once
and then escape while the lady is getting eaten by the tiger
PROBLEM
SOLVED.

The end.

This is Not a Myth. This is Some Real-Ass Shit.

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31

There will be a myth tomorrow, I promise. But something happened to me yesterday and I have to tell you guys about it and this is basically the only website where people come to hear me tell them about shit (other than this website, but that website is for faces only.) So chill out, and let me tell you a story:

(Forgive me if I don’t do the line break thing today.)

There’s this building in Downtown Chicago where I go every week for therapy. It’s a tall building with lots of offices in it. One of those offices belongs to a market research company. I know this because every few weeks I am accosted by the same cheerfully frumpy woman with the same beat-up clipboard, asking me if I want to be paid fifteen dollars to participate in a 30-minute marketing survey.

I desperately want to be paid fifteen dollars to participate in a 30-minute marketing survey.

Wanted, I should say. It’s not that I particularly needed the fifteen dollars. Part of my motivation was that I thought it would be a fun opportunity to lie to some marketers. Mostly, though, I was just insanely curious about what a thirty-minute marketing survey consisted of.

The problem was that I never seemed to be part of the demographic they were looking for. I simply didn’t buy enough things. The lady on the street would ask me a series of screening questions, and time after time I would fail out for not spending enough on shaving products, or not spending enough on cookies, or not being a thirty-one year old female who regularly dyes her hair. I knew what I had to do: Next time I saw the woman and her clipboard, I was just gonna say yes to fucking EVERYTHING.

Yesterday I finally got my chance.

“Wanna make 15 dollars by doing a marketing survey?” she said.
“Shit YEAH I do,” I said.
“How old are you?”
“TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD, BABY.”
“Do you buy any of these products?” she asked, holding out a creased color photograph of a supermarket shelf stocked with salty snack food.
“ALL OF THEM,” I said, “EVERY DAY. ESPECIALLY LAYS BRAND POTATO CHIPS.”
“Perfect,” she said, “Come with me.”

I was in. She lead me to the 8th floor, where her office was marked by a logo on an 8.5/11 sheet of paper:

 

 

and down a corridor into one of about a dozen tiny interview rooms. She asked me more questions, about what specific types of salty snacks I preferred, how often I bought toothpaste, what my average household income was, etc. I lied about half the time. I’m not sure why I told the truth when I did, but when I lied it was because I felt like I had entered a life-or-death game with this cheerfully frumpy woman and her clipboard, a game that was scored based on who walked away with the most information. I was determined to win this survey.

The woman finished her questions and told me to wait in the waiting room for the actual study to begin. I had thought that the questions were the actual study. I was suddenly nervous. Almost immediately a young woman appeared and asked me to follow her. She lead me down a different corridor and into … well it took me a second to figure out where I was.

I was in a supermarket, looking down the hair care aisle. These terrifying people had constructed an exact replica of a bare-bones supermarket, complete with jazzy christmas muzak on the PA, and a little red shopping cart just for me. The woman told me to place items in my cart as I normally would while shopping, and promised to meet me at the exit. I had no choice. I began to shop.

This was complicated by the fact that I had lied about most of my product preferences during the survey, and was now attempting to act natural as I struggled to remember what I had said. Luckily they did not seem to have most of the products I’d claimed to prefer. I put a box of Swanson’s chicken broth in my cart, since it seemed like the type of thing I might actually buy, and in the midst of this weirdness I desperately needed to do something natural. Then I rounded the corner into the salty snack food aisle.

The first thing I saw was a WALL of Lays Brand Potato Chips. Fully a third of the left side of the aisle was full of them, ludicrously more than were necessary. I noticed some salt-and-vinegar chips among them, and immediately grabbed a bag for my cart. I like salt and vinegar chips. This was not a lie. I was not capable of lying. There were too many bags of Lays Brand Potato Chips. As an afterthought, I noticed some bags of pretzel bites on the opposite side of the aisle. I actually stopped to consider which flavor I preferred, forgetting that I was not going to be allowed to taste either.

At the end of the aisle I stopped to consider another product. I don’t remember what it was, because in the middle of my examination I looked up and noticed a video camera pointed down the aisle I’d just navigated. There was no camera on me now. My actions were meaningless.

And yet I STILL PRETENDED TO SHOP THROUGH THE REST OF THE FAKE STORE. I made sure to buy soup and toothpaste, because these were two types of products I had claimed to enjoy.

The young woman met me at the exit, as promised, and lead me back to one of the interrogation rooms. On the way I passed what appeared to be a replica convenience store. The woman sat down at a computer and asked me to recall my experience of the salty snack food aisle.

It was at this point that I realized how much information I was actually giving them. I remembered almost nothing about the salty snack food aisle, other than the wall of Lays Brand Potato Chips and the pretzel bites I had stumbled across accidentally. I had been completely blind to any other food. She showed me pictures of a series of products and asked if I had seen them in the aisle. I answered Yes, No, No, No, No, Yes, No, No… I had seen less than a third of the products she showed me. I asked her whether all of those products had even been in the aisle, and she assured me that yes, they had. She showed me a video of myself in the snack food aisle. In the video I walked confidently to the wall of Lays Brand Potato Chips and jauntily tossed a bag into my cart.

“Why didn’t you hesitate?” she asked.
“Because …” I had no fucking clue.

I told her I liked salt and vinegar potato chips, but she didn’t seem to believe me. I wasn’t sure I believed myself. She asked me a battery of other questions, about how I thought the products in the aisle were organized (by brand), whether I thought the aisle contained a wide variety of products (I assumed so, but I had only seen the Lays Potato Chips), and whether I agreed with the statement “The products in this aisle taste delicious.” (I wanted to explain that I had eaten maybe three of the fifty or so products in the aisle, but somehow I don’t think that was the point of the question.) She asked me if I chose things based on where they were on the shelves, and whether I thought the shelf positions of various items made sense. She showed me different sectors of the aisle, and asked me to rate how logically they were organized. They all seemed more or less the same, and yet I found myself intuitively assigning different number values to each of them. Then she asked me the same battery of questions AGAIN, in a different order, presumably in order to catch me in one of my numerous lies. Luckily, I had all but stopped lying at that point. My will was mud. I didn’t know who I was anymore. Why had I decided to lie before, I wondered? Why some lies and not others? How had I managed to make a series of real decisions in a fake grocery store?

As the interrogation progressed, it became clear that the purpose of this study was to figure out how to effectively market Baked Lays. More and more of the questions began to focus on Baked Chips and why I didn’t seem to like them. I was helpless to answer these questions. It had simply never occurred to me to purchased Baked Lays Potato Chips. Yeah, I’m cynical about their supposed health advantages, but really I just don’t want to buy them and I have no idea why. I would rather eat a bag of snakes. And to me this says that whoever paid these marketing chumps to do this survey are on the right track.

We’ve all heard that food giants fight tooth and nail over their position on grocery store shelves. But until now, I had no concrete proof that they were doing this. THEY ARE FUCKING DOING THIS. This study contained no blind taste test. No electrodes were strapped to my head. They just put me in a people-sized rat maze and STARED.

Today I went grocery shopping. It was harrowing. The food in the aisles was gerrymandered beyond mortal comprehension. Cheese was located in two different sections on opposite ends of the store. All of the tomato puree was grouped together, except for one brand of tomato puree, which was elsewhere. Every time I selected a product, I frantically scoured the aisle to make sure I hadn’t missed a competing brand. I could not bring myself to even enter the salty snack food aisle. As I entered the checkout line, I noticed that I had put a carton of Swanson’s chicken broth in my cart, despite having plenty of chicken broth at home.

I feel as if I will never be able to shop normally again. Then again, they told me I was qualified to participate in another study in ninety days. Maybe that’s how long it takes for the effects to wear off. That’s why I’m writing this. I need to preserve this revelation. We are all rats in mazes, my friends, playthings to trillion-dollar gods who reach out with snaking tendrils to rearrange the products on our grocery store shelves. There is nothing we can do about this. We are stupid in their hands.

Is it like this in other countries? Please tell me it’s not.

Genies are Connoisseurs of Hotness

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So in honor of thanksgiving just having happened
I thought I’d do a little story
from the arabian nights
because fuck you guys I can do what I want

So there’s this dude
Kamar Al Zaman
and Kamar al Zaman is more than just a dude with an awesome name
he’s a dude with an awesome name who is a PRINCE
and Prince Kamar Al Zaman has been doing some reading
and all of his reading has convinced him
that getting married is a sucker’s game
(mainly because Arabian writers of the time had some opinions about women)
but his dad is not on board with this never-getting-married scheme
because of the very real problems inherent in a patrilineal monarchy
so when his son is like NEVER GETTIN MARRIED
the sultan goes to his advisor and is like AHHH WHAT DO I DO
and the advisor is like chill out dude
just ask him again

so the sultan goes and asks his son to get married again
and his son is like DUDE
HAVE YOU EVEN READ THESE BOOKS I AM READING?
WOMEN ARE OBJECTIVELY HORRIBLE
WHY WOULD I WANT TO SIGN A CONTRACT THAT MAKES ME PERMANENTLY HAVE TO BE CLOSE TO ONE
and the king is like son
there is a reason those books are not picture books, is all i’m gonna say
and his son is like WHATEVER DAD YOU DON’T CONTROL ME

so the sultan goes back to his vizier and is like okay dude
what’s the plan
and the vizier is like take it easy dude
all you gotta do is ask him AGAIN
but this time
do it in front of a WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE
then he will be too embarrassed to say no

so that’s what the king does
he invites all his friends over and then he tells his son to come in
and he’s like hey son, any idea when you’re gonna start getting married?
and his son is like GOD, DAD
I ALREADY TOLD YOU:
WOMEN ARE HORRIBLE SOUL-VAMPIRES
PLUS
YOU ALREADY ASKED ME THIS SAME FUCKING QUESTION TWICE
AND I TOLD YOU MY ANSWER TWICE
WHAT ARE YOU, SIMPLE?

so obviously the sultan’s plan to embarrass his son has totally backfired
and he does the only thing he can do in the situation
which is to put his son under house arrest in a tower as punishment
because if your problem is that your son isn’t marrying anybody
the only logical solution is to wall him away in a tower far from ALL WOMEN
unless …
unless the plan is to make him so lonely and horny that he will welcome soul vampirism as an antidote
in which case
nice one, king

whatever the king’s plan is, we don’t get a chance to come out
because this is about when genies start showing up
the prince has cried himself to sleep
and he’s lying in bed
when this genie comes in
just cause genies like breaking into houses and shit
and she’s like WHOAH
HOLY SHIT
THIS HAS GOT TO BE
THE HOTTEST SLAB OF MAN-BACON I HAVE EVER LAID MY MAGICAL EYES ON
IF I HAD A DONG IT WOULD HAVE JUST TAKEN OUT THAT STONE WALL THERE WITH A PROJECTILE ERECTION
I GOTTA GO TELL THE OTHER GENIES

so she’s flying along
while visions of hot dudes dance in her head
when she runs face-first into another genie coming from China
and she’s like HEY GENIE FRED
GENIE FRED
I JUST SAW THE SEXIEST HUMAN IN THE WORLD
and Genie Fred
(not actually his name)
is like no
you did not
because the hottest human in the world is over in china
and you seem to be coming from exactly the wrong direction

so naturally the two genies get into a huge fight over this
and finally the first genie takes the second genie down to the prince’s room
and she’s like eh? eh?
and fred is like yawn
I mean
he’s pretty hot and everything
but I’m not really into dudes
this chick I just saw in china
(who, conveniently, has been locked up by her parents after refusing to marry)
was so bo-damn-dacious
she might just turn you gay
and the female genie is like well I have always wanted to be gay
let’s roll

so they go check out the Chinese princess
whose name is Budur
and opinions are similarly split
so they decide that the only way to settle this
is with a side-by-side comparison

normally this would be a problem
but in this case genies are involved
so they grab the prince
and they bring him to china
and they put him in the princess’s bed with her
and they look at them side by side
but they STILL can’t agree on who’s hotter
but they have an idea:
they’re gonna wake up one of these two hotties at a time
and whoever is more excited about the other’s bod
that’s the one who loses

so they wake up the prince first
and he is naturally very excited to be in bed with a total babe
so he’s all caressing her
and murmuring all manner of sweet nothings into her ear canals
but he keeps himself kind of under control
because he’s a nice dude at heart
and he doesn’t feel right about getting all rapey on the prettiest girl in the universe

but then the genies knock him out
and wake up the princess
and the first genie
well, she’s really hypercompetitive
so what she does is she turns into a flea and bites Budur right on her inner thigh
which Budur apparently mistakes for sexual arousal
and so has none of the rape-related qualms harbored by her male counterpart
she’s all grinding on him
and making out with his asleep face
and putting her signet ring on his finger
IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
until finally the genies are like okay enough go back to sleep

the winner is pretty clear at this point
so having settled that matter
they pick up the prince and take him back to his castle
and the two lovers wake up in the morning like AAAAA WHERE IS MY HOTNESS

I mean, don’t worry
eventually they figure out who each other are
even though they don’t have the internet or anything
and it’s great and heartwarming
but it’s also fucking boring
so let’s just leave it there

because see what’s really important to remember here
is that women find insect bites to be highly arousing
so fellas
maybe don’t wash those filthy bedsheets after all
TRUST ME