âDo you want to fuck them? Do you want to fuck them all? Itâs up to you whether or not you fuck the whole world. But Iâll warn you now: Youâll have to work very hard not to.â
That sounds like the introductory narration to a banned porn parody of Conan the Barbarian. It sounds like the start of a dangerous manifesto posted to a Reddit hatesub by a man whose bodypillow just left him. Thatâs the shoddy translation at the start of Emmanuelle 17: Emmanuelle in Space that launched a million very confused boners in 1987. But no, I just slightly rephrased the introductory paragraph of WikiHowâs âHow To Overcome Lustâ:
âHow to Overcome Lustâ does not know horny like you or I know horny: To its author, every single boner is a biological weapon out to destroy, at the very least, your life. At the very least!
This person has some absolutely insane ideas — not only about how to overcome lust, but about what might cause lust, and certainly about the magnitude of tsunami that will arise if an awkward kid thinks about fucking once near a pool. This author knows one thing for certain: every single person alive is a sexual werewolf, and every ass is a full moon.
So here, you sexual werewolves, letâs learn to defeat the genitals not just in our pants… but in our minds.
Listen, I know this is a religious thing. For a lot of people, sex and shame are all wrapped up together like the grossest Combo, but Iâm telling you this article goes beyond that. Youâre hoping to stay chaste? Simple:
Donât drive on highways, you whore.
Because of the steady vibration, I guess? If youâre driving on rumble strips because Jesus left roadcumming out of The Bible, you are going to have a very hard time explaining to a jury why you killed that cyclist. This is not the widespread societal problem you think it is, author of âHow to Overcome Lust.â Nobodyâs taking Smooth Ave. because itâs just been repaved and they know itâs like the graham cracker of streets now. Housewives do not sit in their CR-Vs dreading a detour onto Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard because they know the city doesnât maintain it and all the potholes are like getting reamed by a pavement golem.
This is your very specific, very insane kink and the fact that you put âdonât fuck highwaysâ at Tip #1 sets the wackiest tone for the rest of this article. If most women orgasmed just from taking the American highway system, I feel like Van Halen would have told me about it by now.
Donât want to have sex for religious reasons? Find a different religion!
This is how a shitty AI would solve the problem of religious abstinence. Itâs assuming so many crazy things about people that anybody who has met people would immediately recognize as untrue. âPeople are very attached to religion, but it doesnât matter which type. Catholicism wonât let you jam? Just switch to The Handlers of the Secret Virgin and it could be your turn to fuck Savior David every third Saturday!â
This author talks about having sex like 12 year olds talk about karate battles. Surely, karate will be everywhere you go. You must be prepared for karate at all times, you must have a karate plan. Lady, if you have to strategize how not to fuck an entire Quiznoâs every time you go out for lunch, proper game theory is not your issue.
If you have a problem with looking at butts too much, try not to look at butts. Solid advice! Phrased in the weirdest, most obscure way I can imagine. âBounce your eyesâ takes more time to say than âlook away,â with the additional factor being that you have to explain what the fuck youâre talking about every time you say it, and while youâre doing that little Jareth has already stuck his dick in the Chuck E. Cheese robot and needs the fire department again.
Thatâs⌠thatâs terrible advice. If you feel yourself being overcome with lust, just make heavy eye contact with the person you want to bang? Thatâs not going to deter anybody, unless youâre being a total creep about i-
Oh, okay. Yeah, if you get unspeakably horny just preemptively ruin all your chances with everyone around you! Thatâs a hot tip. If youâre worried about having sex, just wear a Pennywise mask and loudly quote posts from the Joe Rogan Experience forum. Nobody wants to fuck that except for Joe Rogan, and I hear heâs a surprisingly tender lover.
Or itâs a good way to start an orgy. Didnât the introductory paragraph promise to address not only the concerns of the micro-horny, but also the macro-horny? Telling a crowdfucker to seek out groups is a surefire way to turn this church study group into the subject of Pastor Tedâs next passive aggressive sermon.
Wait, this canât just be me. It looks like those people want to fuck, right? Maybe itâs because the suspension on my station wagon is shot and Iâm all horned up from the grocery run, but those drawings look way more fuckly than the earlier ones. Right?
Not if your grandmother was a nasty freak and hold on, this is the picture for that entry???
There is nothing âfriendlyâ about that image. If they were friends before, theyâre not going to be after the things theyâre doing to one anotherâs holes beneath that Dennyâs table. Theyâll have to leave town. Ordering a Moons Over My Hammy during toe penetration is a shame you donât live down. So Iâve heard. From a friend.
Former friend.
Something fucking crazy is happening with the art in this guide. I think the artist openly rebelled halfway through this stupid article and just drew everybody clearly trying to fuck each other, if not actively fucking each other just out of frame. This is the actual art for âDo Not Touch Them.â I didnât cut any text. I did not photoshop that lollipop into his hand. The lollipop was never mentioned and yet it changes everything.
Are you kidding me? According to every movie ever made about an all-girl school, thatâs where you go to learn how to make a girl cum without alerting a nun. If you canât control your lust, join the military? The military is the single horniest place I can think of. Everybody fucks in the armed forces. People join the military just to bang in different parts of the planet. Half of the reason we have a military is to run a never-ending fuck tour of the globe. Itâs like psychological warfare through drunken boning. On top of upending everything in your life, joining the army in the hopes of never having sex again is like joining the army to help people: Somebody is going to exploit your laughable naivete to fuck you, and it honestly would be your best case scenario if I meant that literally.
When the internet was still in its early days, we had not perfected the fine art of masturbating to nerd shit. The will was always there, but the technology simply hadnât caught up yet. While you waited twenty minutes for a low resolution screenshot of topless Teri Hatcher to download, you might just lose patience and settle for cranking one out to the spandex asses of shows like Black Scorpion.
Black Scorpion aired on the Sci-fi Channel, and IMDB describes it as⌠âA female “BATMAN” with a strong story, intriguing characters, good action pacing… and several opportunities for sex.â
Several opportunities!
It doesnât promise sex, but there are definitely moments sex could have been had if characters were so inclined!
Look, Iâve got another three hours before this zip file of Gillian Anderson BEST Sexy Shots (36) finishes downloading, so let us study…
We are zero seconds in and already I can see Iâve fucked up. You might not know who Roger Corman is, and thatâs difficult to explain. He makes sexy movies, but so badly that youâre always too distracted by his inept framing choices to get off to them. By the time you notice tits are out and get ready, Roger Corman has already moved on to shooting mismatched coverage of a cardboard robot and a man with too much mustache. Roger Corman movies are how Christians imagined pornography in the 1960s. Roger Corman is like a talentless Stephen Sommers if Stephen Sommers liked tits about 87% more than he already does. And Stephen Sommers likes tits! Roger Corman is like if Michael Bay got exactly the amount of respect his talent warranted. Plus this is Roger Corman PRESENTS. This show just has his endorsement. Itâs like Carlâs Jr. recommending a specific racoon to eat. Youâre getting the garbage that garbage likes.
Black Scorpion isn’t based on a comic — itâs not actually based on anything but wild misunderstandings. Hereâs Black Scorpionâs origin story as told by the pre-credit roll:
This is why you always explain the moral to children after the story. Kids are stupid and impressionable and if you donât carefully deconstruct the metaphor youâll wind up with a daughter dressed like a Scorpion, firing Scorpion themed machine guns from her modified Corvette Stingray, which she calls the Scorpion-mobile.
Damn it, you see what I mean? We came here to ogle â90s asses like itâs Tae Bo day at Bally Total Fitness, but Roger Cormanâs influence sucks so much that I havenât even mentioned the protagonist of this show makes her very first appearance dressed as a hooker.
I guess thatâs pretty sexy. I mean, hookers do not typically wear two belts as a shirt — thatâs more of a professional wrestler thing — but weâre not here to nitpick. I will point out that itâs not typically the goal of a sex worker to keep her boobs as tightly bound and far apart as possible, but I have to give Black Scorpion points: This is technically an opportunity for sex. Itâs not a good one, and nobody takes it, but fucking was briefly on the table here.
Black Scorpionâs real name is Darcy Walker, and sheâs supposed to be a serious police officer, but even on duty she only wears the kind of tamely sexy pencil dresses that shoot for femme fatale but wind up more âdate night at a steakhouse.â Although look, there is something to the careful deliberateness of her transformation sequence that speaks of sex work. Itâs like watching a dominatrix clock in for her shift. Her professional disinterest in doing it is definitely doing it for me:
Hold up, letâs pause to explain her powers: There are none. Letâs resume.
That transformation sequence is so clearly magical itâs actually strange that sheâs not spinning and yelling broken english while she does it, but no — the show insists Black Scorpion just has cool technology like Batman. But while Batman uses his tech companies and billions of dollars to create his gadgets, Darcy Walker uses Argyle:
Argyle would be the best if he didnât suck so hard. He owns a run-down mechanic shop, has no money or educational background, and is very casual about inventing Black Scorpionâs technology which ârearranges atomsâ to do âwhatever the fuck.â
Hereâs the exposition for that Black Scorpion transformation sequence above:
Argyle: âHey if I can rearrange the atoms in your car, why not your clothes?â
Darcy: âHow much do I owe you?â
She actually gets out her checkbook to write a personal check for magic.
And his very next line after establishing heâs the single greatest scientist in human history?
Argyle: âHey, no charge, if it wasnât for you busting me Iâd still be in jail with the rest of my gang.â
His gang.
Of 47-year-old eccentric scientists?
Of middle-aged fabric lovers who can twist spacetime to their whims?
What the fucking fuck is that, show? I know this was the â90s and there were two roles for black male actors — âGang Memberâ or âMagic Negroâ — but somehow itâs worse that you chose âboth.â
Black Scorpion has the worst origin story ever written, and a superhero named Black Condor was just “raised by birds.” Black Scorpion did not suffer a curse from a scorpion god, no sting from a radioactive scorpion, no getting struck by lightning while drinking Scorpion brand malt liquor — sheâs just a cop that busted a really smart black guy who could rearrange reality and then forced him to make her a space-warping thong.
Aw man, it happened again. I forgot we were here to smack it like itâs 2001 — which is to say we spend a long time looking for wank material and then give up and settle for an episode of Charmed. Letâs get back to business with another of Darcy Walkerâs sexy outfits:
Every time we see Darcy in her off-time, sheâs dressed in workout gear. But her workout gear consists of baggy trunks and a generous tanktop, complete with sweat towel. And sheâs doing a move I know all too well: The âthis bar stool is an awkward height for leaning, I wish I would have pulled it out from under the counter before cramming myself in this weird gap and just kind of hovering around the conversation looking for safe landing spots for my feet and hands.â
I would laud the show for its realism here — that is exactly how a human would dress for exercise and then behave if you unexpectedly barged in their house while they were exercising — but the way the camera lingers and frames her body in these shots itâs clear weâre supposed to be ogling this. Ogling what, Roger Corman-endorsed director Gwyneth Gibby, whose most notable other works include âBlack Scorpion Returnsâ and âSting of the Black Scorpionâ? That uncomfortably bent knee? That weird wrist position? She doesnât look like she wants to fuck; she looks like she regrets inviting the Cutco salesman in.
Dammit! Somebody set this masturbation to Nightmare Difficulty and here I am trying to solo it flawless. Iâm in over my head. Letâs stop looking for Black Scorpionâs âseveral opportunities for sexâ and throw it all the way back to oldschool Xena rules: Pause the tape during fight scenes hoping for an ass shot that doesnât look like abstract pottery.
Nope.
That ainât it.
Those lines are a stunning example of the Chilean late Art Nouveau movement, but itâs barely a butt.
Pausing is the wrong move. Letâs look at a fight in action:
Itâs clear this is in the neighborhood of sexy. It once let sexy house-sit and now it canât get the smell out of the drapes. Like I recognize the attempt here: lots of needless shots of buns-up climbing, a weird double-clothesline only there to highlight cleavage, followed by an ass somersaulting away, but itâs all too clumsy and disorienting. This isnât Black Widow leg-grappling Scarlet Witch so that for a second it looks like theyâre scissoring — this is like trying to ogle an introductory ballet class: Itâs mostly just people discovering they canât move like that and then falling over.
I give up on Black Scorpion. Maybe she isnât even supposed to be the sexy focal point. Itâs always the villains, right? Whoâs our Harley Quinn?
Great.
Thatâs Firearm. He looks like a cybergoth making fun of football. He looks like a drunk mother forgot about the costume contest so a sad child had to tape a Predator costume together out of hockey gear and lingerie. He stands like heâs been pushed into the frame after saying âno way in shit am I âjust hitting my mark,â Sharon; you promised I could sign off on the costume first.â
Although, Iâve got to say, he moves well.
Iâm not going to pretend this is my first time masturbating to a haphazard Borg cosplayer learning to breakdance. But god damn it, I was hoping Iâd already had my last.
Here, you all need to go now. Iâll let General Stryker see you out.
Things are getting dire in the streaming era. Nearly everyone has their own streaming service. I do. Itâs called Brok and so far I only have the rights to rebroadcast a Slovakian public access documentary about tainted wells and every single episode of Joey. Iâve made eighteen dollars this month from ads assuring my viewers that discount tire companies are here for you during These Uncertain Times. There are too many baskets and not enough dicks, I guess is what Iâm saying here. Thereâs just not enough quality programming out there to fill all the services started by the shitty sons of sketchy Russian millionaires. Even Amazon Prime is having troubles, which I assume from watching their new series, Gary Busey: Pet Judge.
Gary Busey moderates funny pet-related disputes in a mock Reality TV parody of The Peopleâs Court, and if you recognize every part of that description as wildly outdated, well then Iâm sorry you didnât get that job as head of programming for Amazon Prime Video. If you made this show fifteen years ago people would have said âreally? A Peopleâs Court reference? That is so fifteen years ago. Now please get out of the way — I have to ride my pocket bike to a Franz Ferdinand concert and Iâm already late because of that flash mob pillow fight. Poker will never not be cooooool!â
Letâs watch it anyway. Thereâs a plague. The fuck else are you doing?
Gary Busey is, as always, a Greyhound station at 2AM:
And every case is an excuse for aging improv actors to demonstrate why they failed that MADtv audition.
Gary Busey: Pet Judge owes about half of its comedic stylings to Best In Show, and the other half to Tim and Eric — the two properties responsible for more damage to comedy than Borat. Donât get me wrong: Best in Show and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! were both great, but they taught a generation of aspiring comics that anyone can be funny without telling jokes, and then those comedians spent the next decade inventing new ways to prove that wasnât true. Now everyone thatâs not sure where to start with this whole âfunnyâ thing does this:
Dude looks like heâs attending a Halloween party as âMisremembered Napoleon Dynamite Reference.â He is here to be incredibly awkward in a way that you are very prepared for, and he doesnât even get real people to sweat on. He only interacts with other gasping improv comics whose every character is âmyself, but more unlikeable.â
Luckily there is a crazy beating heart in the chest of this desperate premise. Yes, itâs the King of Quirk himself, Gary Busey:
Haha, classic Busey! Always looking like a drunk mop and saying shit that sounds like itâs been translated to Chinese and back. Iâm sure theyâve written some baseline setups for his weirdness, but you cannot get Gary Busey to follow a script unless you tape it to the ghosts he thinks are attacking him. At the very least, you know all of the strange acronyms and endocrine references are pure unmitigated Busey:
Hey thanks! Thatâs really cool. Listen, I do not have a cigarette and Iâm starting to think I missed the last bus to Akron. Iâm just gonna go to the bathr-
Youâre going to follow me to the bathroom, arenât you?
Gary Busey has the mannerisms of a shell-shocked lizard and he talks like he came unstuck from time while having an argument with Bjork. But hey, real quick, do you know why Gary Busey is like that?
If youâre of a certain age, you probably remember that. It was a huge deal. But weâve been making fun of Gary Buseyâs brain damage for so long that a whole generation of young adults have no idea âthe weird dude from reality showsâ actually left every third thing he knew on a California sidewalk back in 1988. Gary Busey is only âquirkyâ because he was in the most ironic type of motorcycle accident:
And has been suffering from long-term degenerative brain damage ever since. In fact, thatâs where those acronyms come from. Heâs not joking about those — they mean the world to him, and they literally started the second he scrambled his brain.
If youâre under 30, Gary Buseyâs just a Hollywood Weirdo best known for being the wild card that derails the Build-A-Bear challenge and gets Team Leader Xzibit sent home. But start at the bottom of his IMDB page and scroll up to watch a man lose his mind in slow motion. If theyâd picked any other host, this series would have only been disappointing. But by anchoring the whole thing on Gary Busey and then staffing it with quirky extras doing Eric Andre impressions, they have effectively made a show where everyone is pretending to have mental problems except for the main character, who is genuinely trying to communicate with other humans through a broken interface.
Iâm not trying to take the moral high ground here. The savvy among you may have noticed I made several Gary Busey jokes, myself, and if you missed them, hereâs another one: Gary Busey is like if Nick Nolte fell into a vat at Ace Chemicals.
I donât even know what the moral high ground is in this situation, because the alternative to paying Gary Busey so you can laugh at his brain damage is not paying him at all. Iâm just saying half of this show is written to be âquirkyâ and âawkwardâ and the other half of this show is trying to cushion Gary Buseyâs forehead as he headbutts holes in the drywall looking for wall gold.
Please note that those improv comicsâ hilarious response to this one was âstunned silence,â followed by âchecking around the set to see if anyone was coming to help.â
Amazon have effectively made a show called âguess which one has genuine mental health problemsâ and it is fucking crazy that premise got greenlit! Itâs literally a comedy show designed around trying to âone-upâ a mental patient as his scattered brain draws faulty conclusions from neuronic connections whose other half is coloring a curb in Culver City.
This format does not function in any other permutation! You canât pair a bunch of young actors pretending to be goth with one thatâs genuinely suicidal and bill it as a comedy. You probably canât set it on a bus and call it Across the Street or Down the Road. You canât start a dating show by mixing a bunch of reality skanks in with one seeking help for a crippling sex addiction. Maybe her name is Penny, but even so, you certainly canât call it Penny For Your Thots. You canât⌠you canât pair a bunch of comedians doing cruel impressions with a guy who actually has Downâs Syndrome and then bring on contestants who have to guess which ones are faking. You canât call it Donât Bring Me Downâs. You canât do it! You should go to jail for thinking it! You canât hire a bunch of improv dropouts and put them in a room with a mental patient and tell them all âeverything he says is your next promptâ and call it Gary Busey: Pet Judge. Oh wait, shit, thatâs the real one!
This article is brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Kenlel Paisley: The Shogun of Slam, the Daimyo of Damn, the Tenno that’s a straight ten, yo.
Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to rescue every monkey that knew how to flip someone off. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. ItâsâŚ
Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to buy a company hovercraft. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. ItâsâŚ
We all want to be more efficient, so I’ve found as many quick, easy methods to streamline your life as I could threaten Google into giving me. And so you’re sure there’s actual merit to all of these practices, I’ll also be testing them out first. Hopefully nothing goes horribly awry here! Why do I hear a violin sting every time I say that?
Day 1:
Most Efficient Way to Sleep
Every night, we bend to Big Slumber’s twisted whims, sacrificing perfectly good video game and pornography time just to lay completely motionless in week-old laundry for eight hours. We must destroy sleep. And for that, we turn to something called polyphasic sleeping. The basic idea is that there are five stages to normal sleep, but only one of those is actually important: the REM phase, where dreaming happens. By cutting out the bullshit sleeps, you can shake down your brain until it gives up and learns to slip directly into REM the second you close your eyes. It’s basically mugging the shit out of your own mind to steal its dreams. Itâs fucking awesome.
There are several types of polyphasic schedules, but for the purposes of this test, I will be using the Uberman system, which consists of sleeping only 20 minutes per session, once every four hours.
Ideally, once you’ve grown accustomed to that schedule, you’ll only need a total of two hours of sleep for every 24-hour period. I started this last night, and it’s working pretty OK so far. I’m a bit tired now, but I find that the naps refresh me just enough to keep going. However, it is supposed to take roughly a week to retrain your brain, so this is more of a passive test. We’ll see how it progresses as time passes.
Day 2:
Most Efficient Way to Stir Liquids
According to the Japanese, everything you’ve done today, you’ve done completely wrong. They are to efficiency what Wade Boggs is to whatever Wade Boggs does — some kind of marsh monster, I’m assuming? Like the secret identity of Swamp Thing? Shit, I don’t know: Sleep deprivation is making it kind of hard to focus.
Anyway, thereâs a Japanese method thatâs about to call into question everything you know about stirring powder into liquids. It’s going to turn the powder-dissolution world on its fucking ear! Are you sitting down? Are you ready for this? The best way to stir a powder into a liquid is actually by using lateral motions, not the conventional circular pattern we all know and love.
For those of us who frequently stir powders into our drinks and the drinks of others, this method could save literally dozens of seconds every month! Hey, speaking of stirring powder into things …
Most Efficient Way to Take Adderall
This sleep schedule is killing me. I just put the milk outside and tried to drink out of the dog. Something must be done. Luckily, the drugs forum (the best forum) has a more efficient way to ingest our recommended daily intake of Vitamin A(dderall): Just take a teaspoon or two of baking soda an hour beforehand. See, the effectiveness of amphetamines depends largely on the pH of the stomach, and alkaline agents like baking soda help speed the initial absorption, as well as decrease the efficiency of the elimination process.
In short: takes effect sooner, lasts longer. Technically, this works on all amphetamines, but of course a quick Google search tells me Adderall is the most widely available legal one, so let’s all just assume that’s the thing I’m stirring into my Grape Flavor-Aid.
Most Efficient Shoe Lace Knot
I don’t know if it’s the polyphasic sleep finally paying off, or just the Ol’ Nippon Swish kick-starting my amphetamine cocktails, but I really feel like I could (and should) fight some kind of snake right now. The closest thing I have to that on my agenda, however, is tying my shoes. Let’s do the SHIT OUT OF THAT!
This is the Ian-knot, so named for the intertwined duality inherent in the many roles of Sir Ian McKellan and holy shit I can type so fast look at this! You can just tell that sentence was fast, right? By reading the words? They read fast as shit, right!?
Hey, OK, task at hand: Begin with a normal starting knot, cross the two laces and tuck one under and through. Then you do th…
… w-what is this, witchcraft? I don’t – Listen, I don’t have time for this. The website says you do this:
“The right (blue) lace is held between the right thumb and forefinger whilst the left (yellow) lace is held around the left thumb and forefinger, using the other fingers of the left hand to hold the lace taut. This move creates two loops, one with the loose end behind, the other with the loose end in front. Use the middle finger of the right hand to push the loose end of the right lace behind, whilst the left hand simply rotates forwards to swing its loop across to the right. This next move crosses the two loops over each other. Use the left thumb to push its loose end over to the right, whilst the right middle finger continues to push its loose end all the way between the left thumb and forefinger to end up inside the left loop. This tricky move requires each hand to use the two fingers inside its own loop to grab the loose end of the other hand’s loop. Use the left thumb and forefinger to grab the loose right end, then the right thumb and middle finger can grab the loose left end. This final step simply completes the knot by pulling the loops tight.“
See, efficiency is already paying off! Copy/pasting those directions was way faster than explaining them. Found the process a little incomprehensible? So what!? You don’t need to understand shit, buddy; you’ve got fucking witch shoes now. Oh, and as a bonus, not only is this the fastest common knot, but it will almost never come undone — even while kicking dozens of furious snakes!
Get off my feet!
GET OFF MY FEET, SNAKES.
Day 3:
The Most Efficient Way to Drink
I have found the Uberman schedule to be astoundingly effective, and if a few of the neighborhood cats want to give me disturbing orders as a side effect, so be it! However I now find myself, if anything, a bit too awake. I can actually see through people’s intentions, and I cannot emotionally deal with the things they truly think about me. Maybe it’s just an adjustment period in the sleep schedule, or maybe I wasn’t supposed to factor this Japanese meth-punch into my new routine, but regardless, I need to dial it back a little. So this is as good a time as any to explore the most efficient way to have a nice relaxing drink or 12 (and without consequences!).
In 2004, a double-blind, placebo controlled crossover trial found that prickly pear extract inhibits the production of inflammatory mediators associated with the symptoms of hangovers, if consumed approximately five hours before drinking alcohol.
Further, most negative effects of alcohol are only caused in the first place by toxins called congeners, which mostly show up in dark liquors like red wine, bourbon, whiskey and tequila. Clear liquors have significantly fewer toxins. So if pear extract counteracts the effects of congeners, and clear liquors have the least to start with, then does pear vodka theoretically cancel itself out? I’m going to assume yes.
I’m going to assume yes forever!
Most Efficient Way to Peel a Potato
For maximum efficiency, I have started Nippon Swishing whatever legal amphetamine I said I was taking right into the pear vodka. Now I want — nay, need — a potato, for reasons that are unclear to me at this time.
As with all things, we must do this as efficiently as possible.
Step 1: Cut a thin slit around the circumference of the potato.
Step 2: Boil until soft.
Step 3: Plunge into a bowl of ice water for 10 seconds.
Step 4: Grasp skin by each end, and pull off.
Step 5: Become the thing you fear.
Day 4:
Most Efficient Way to Move
Walking is proving difficult, and I assume that’s because I’ve become too efficient to do things suboptimally. I have sown the Google, and reaped this: The most efficient way to run is heel-striking. The key is to simply contact the ground with your heel first. This was a little awkward, walking on just my heels, and I ended up kind of stilting around like Jack Skellington.
But eventually I nailed it. (PROPTIP: Think of it less like “walking,” and more like “repeatedly stabbing the Earth with your feet.”)
The most efficient way to move in general is called slipstreaming, and the beauty of it is that it’s beneficial to all parties. When an object travels in the slipstream — a kind of air wake left behind by another object — the rear object requires less power to maintain its speed, while the leading object actually moves faster, because the rear object reduces the low pressure region behind it. Of course, the two objects have to be moving at a pretty fair clip and nearly touching to achieve this effect, but I havenât found that to be a problem: Every single time I disjointedly doll-walk right up behind somebody, they take off like a fucking shot.
BUT I CAN ALWAYS KEEP UP WITH THEM.
THANKS SLIPSTREAMING!
Day 5:
Most Efficient Way to Boil Water
Did you know that a drip brew coffee maker is seven percent more efficient than even a high end electric kettle and I really wanted to put a question mark back there but it’s like I can’t actually catch up to my fingers so I’m trying to trick them into stopping with an exclamation point!
Most Efficient Way to Pack
Roll
everything.
ROLL.
EVERYTHING.
Most Efficient Way to Fold a T-shirt
Hi Japan! I love you so much, you crazy archipelago! Actually I love everything because everything is fantastic and I am riding on a boat of euphoria cresting a wave of endorphins that’s about to crash down and utterly obliterate a coastline of contentment. Hey, what’s this shit about T-shirts? Fuck yes, let’s do whatever this is as hard as possible!
So I set the shirt down flat, front side up. Then I grab this side just off center, pinch the top edge right above that, then I … fold it …
… inside of … itself?
No.
No, that’s not right. It’s wrong. All wrong. Everything is wrong.
Something has turned. Japan just violated my universe and nothing is going to be OK. Nothing is ever going to be OK again.
Day 6:
Most Efficient Way to Think
Thinking is a boulder I can no longer push up this hill. I type now only because somebody (a mad man, perhaps?) told these fingers to start, and now they won’t stop. I pray for the brief moments of respite that periods grant me. They are an oasis of relief in a desert of empty, worthless words. I need some help figuring a way out of this mess, and so I turn to mind-maps: Allegedly, a more efficient way to think.
Mind-maps are diagrams representing words, ideas, and the various ways the DMV is trying to track your emotions. The key to mind-mapping is to intuitively align whatever concepts are in your mind along a series of branching paths, each ending in madness and death (except one that ends in candy, seen here).
And I’ve got to say, this practice really has helped. Before, I was plunging headlong through a thick miasmic fog full of clowns and bastards, each wanting to simultaneously entertain and fuck me. But now I have reached out and grasped the universe just off center, and at the top edge, I pull. I am folding the universe into itself into itself into itself. The center cannot hold, because the center is a pussy. We will not yield — not to bastards, not to clowns — because now that we have a mind-map, we need only follow it to its inevitable, and in retrospect, obvious conclusion.
Most Efficient Way to Kill a Man
The number 9 is the most sinister number. It wants you to think it’s a six, but it can’t quite pull that trick off; even if you flip it upside down there’s something just slightly wrong about its presentation — like the flat deadness you see behind the eyes of every single stewardess. Clearly, if any number knows how to kill a man, it’s 9. Here is a brief list of efficient murder: Mostly temple-blows and neck-smashing. But wait, what’s that down there — the 9th most efficient way to kill a man?
“The Coccyx: A powerful blow to the tail bone. Fatal.“
Yes.
I say again: Yes.
In Conclusion:
I have hopefully just slept for 65 hours. That time is gone, and sleep is the best explanation for its absence. I do not know where I am. I suspect it is a Denny’s, by the sheer volume of palpable sadness and pancakes. I have no idea what all of this was for; I just wanted to tie my shoes faster. That’s all. Just shave a minute or so from my footwear routine. Now I’m looking at like … like some kind of Bizarro map of Candyland tattooed on my chest?
I don’t want to make too many assumptions here. The last … however many days have passed are naught but a series of rapid, disturbing still images, devoid of context or morality — like attending a slideshow where your parents have accidentally mixed up their amateur porn with the vacation photos. But it’s this section here in the upper left that’s really troubling me.
Listen, don’t say anything out loud — never trust a Dennyâs — but if, at some point during my disappearance, the actor Judge Reinhold suddenly died from mysterious ass-related injuries, blink twice.
Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to become immune to human laws. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. ItâsâŚ
There’s a Russian religious text called The Way of The Pilgrim that suggests one can achieve a state of grace by incessantly reciting the Jesus Prayer until it becomes automatic. I thought this was a beautiful idea: It’s like brainwashing your own soul into goodness. I decided to give the concept a shot myself, but I don’t really want to be filled with grace. So instead of the Jesus Prayer, I am incessantly repeating an exchange from Conan the Barbarian. With every heartbeat, I am going to pray:
âConan, what is best in life?â
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
***
I woke up as usual: sticky, frustrated, and unconsciously suckling at a bottle of Beefeaters like it was the sour teat of Bessundra, Sumerian cow-goddess of both fertility and brewing.
I remembered my goal:
“CONAN!” I bellowed. “WHAT IS BEST IN LIFE?”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” came an answer from the living room.
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you,” I continued softly, padding across the blood-stained hallway (ainât a thing; I just do my bleeding in the hallway).
I made the living room, and couldn’t help but notice that Bill Pullman was suspended from my ceiling.
Pretty sure that I didnât have a Bill Pullman chandelier before. I closed my eyes and counted to 10, because Iâm no Freshman to waking nightmares.
Still there. He hung from an elaborate contraption that looked like equal parts examination table and torture rack. He was strapped into it with a pair of Darth Vader’s ski-boots. His face was purple and flushed. A single bead of sweat rolled down his neck and traced the contours of his jawline.
“Bill Pullman?” I ventured.
His eyes snapped open. They were so bloodshot you could actually see the bulge of veins in there.
“PAX. TON.” He screeched, heaving himself to the ceiling. “I’m motherfucking Bill Paxton, you greenish shitsmear.”
He undid the snaps on his boots and flipped to the ground. The blood quickly drained from his head, filtering down through his torso. I could see every single artery filling up, like an intricate network of tiny snakes digesting.
“Why are you on my ceiling, Bill Paxton?” I asked what I thought to be a reasonable question.
“This is how I sleep, dick ooze! The single greatest flaw in the human experience is the horizontal sleeping position. It reduces bloodflow to the brain and starves the cells of oxygen. Every single night that I sleep like this, I get smarter. When last measured, I had an IQ of 735. I fuckin’ invented yogurt, you bag of distended testicles.”
I shrank back, but remembered my new mantra.
“Conan!” I told him matter-of-factly, “what is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
“What are you, some of kind of fuckin’ silica pack eater?â He edged toward the kitchen. âWhy do you keep saying that?”
Easily the best thing in my life was finding Bill Paxton inverted in my living room. I couldnât lose this. I had to internalize my prayer.
âConanwhatisbestinlife,â I thought to myself, even as I reassured Bill Paxton that I was not, in fact, âthe dippest shit in fucktown” as he kept insisting.
I needed a cool lie. I explained that I was part of an experimental prog-rock band that covered movie dialogue instead of songs.
“What’s this merry band of butthole enthusiasts called?” he inquired, seemingly set at ease.
“The… SoundtraXXX?” I regretted it immediately.
“That’s a name stupider than two shits on a single fuck,” he laughed.
Damn, but the man could swear. He saw what I was thinking:
“It’s the inverted sleeping, cockfart. It stimulates the intellect, but also inflames the part of the brain responsible for aggression. I’m so fuckin’ smart I’m like Einstein gaping Teslaâs asshole, but I swear like a syphilitic sailor and I fuckin’ kill dudes like you slap your limp little dick around.”
As if to drive his point home, he suddenly karate-kicked my refrigerator. It rocked gently. The soft jingle of glass bottles clanking together. We stood in silence for a long moment.
“Fucknuckles,” he whispered.
***
I still had to work, and the last time I left Bill Paxton alone in my house he replaced my ceiling fan with a profane genius-swing. We hopped in my weather-beaten Kia and he sung along to Kansas’s Carry on Wayward Son, replacing every single word with some variation of “fuck.”
“Fuckin’ fuck my fucko fuu-uuuck” sang Bill Paxton. “Fuck you fuck fuck motherfuu-uuuck.”
I was oddly serene. I should have been nervous. I should have been confused. But I was having difficulty parsing emotions while repeating my mantra.
LamentationoftheirwomenConanwhatisbest.
The office. Bill Paxton rabbit punched my glove-box as I talked to the security guard.
“He needs no visi-tor pass,” I informed the guard, puffing my chest out. âThis is the Paxton and he goes where he will.”
My speech patterns were getting bizarre. I made a mental note to research potential side-effects of brainwashing, and was surprised to find myself clutching the guard’s necktie and kneeling on his back. I’m not sure when I brought him to the ground, but I remember exactly when I got the erection.
A little fieldmouse of a man refused to hold the elevator for us, so Bill Paxton and I raced up the stairs instead. We were waiting for him when the doors opened on the 7th floor. Bill Paxton took him high with a clothesline, I went low and slide-kicked his knees out. His briefcase exploded. A sheaf of papers, a laptop, a saran-wrapped croissant. Shrapnel from a Business Grenade.
Bill Paxton instantly regretted it. He offered the man a hand up while I held my arms in the air and roared.
“What some call misfortune, others call adventure,” Paxton consoled the mouse. “The Chinese have a word that means both tragedy and opportunity. Suckfuckers fuck sucks.”
The meek one sprinted toward the fire exit, triggering my chase reflex. He survived that day. The hunt is not always successful.
“Come, Paxton. Let us take the office,” I suggested. The edges of my vision were going red, dimmed by a curtain of blood.
Crushyourenemiesandseethemdriven.
“Why do you ride with me, Paxton?” I said.
“Are you asking how we met, shitclot?” He asked. “Saw you last night at the bar — you got so drunk you ate an entire fake plant. Not a small one. Like a fern. I fuckinâ had to follow up on that. For science.â
I pushed open the double glass doors leading to my office. They shattered as they rebounded off the walls.
“Lament, women! Rejoice, men! We ride. WE RIDE!” I roared.
“Ffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-” Paxton hummed under his breath.
***
I was having a hard time concentrating on the PowerPoint Presentation, so I decided to pinch and hiss at the man beside me. I glowered at him, daring him to cry out. He was quietly sobbing when the lights came up.
At some point during the presentation, I had stripped to the waist and drawn primitive runes across my torso with a highlighter. Somewhere along the line I had also lost Bill Paxton. That would probably have repercussions later.
A man I once recognized as my superior was summoning me forward. It seemed that I had some sort of responsibility here — a report to give, an argument to proffer — I had no idea what these petty business concerns entailed, nor did I care. I stood and began tearing at my chair. My coworkers gabbled in confusion. Somewhere, the sound of glass breaking. Somewhere, a muffled shout. The slap of footsteps, growing louder. A distant alarm.
Bestinlifetocrush.
One final wrench and I pulled the steel spine of my chair free. I wrapped the base of it in the shredded cloth of my discarded shirt. I wielded it in both hands, my makeshift broadsword, and charged my boss with a barbaric yawp. We would find out, together, which man was truly superior. Blood asks a question. Blood gives an answer.
The window facing the main room bubbled up like a blistering pustule, and burst in a shower of flames and glass. Looking through the shattered pane, I saw hell.
“BILL PULLMAN JUST BUILT A FLAMETHROWER OUT OF THE COPY MACHINE AND HE’S BURNING EVERYTHING!” Screamed a disheveled woman.
“PAX. FUCKING. TON.” Bill screamed after the woman, as she fled from a burst of fresh flame. “CHRIST ON AN ASS I AM SO BILL PAXTON AS FUCK!”
There was frenzy in The Paxton’s eyes. Sweat poured down his neck as he called with his trigger, and the inferno answered. A manic laugh percolated in my gut, overflowed my chest, poured out from my lips. I mounted the conference table, held my Ikeablade aloft, and rejoiced in the heat of the flames. I roared, because it felt good to roar.
LAMENTATIONOFTHEIRWOMEN.
***
I woke to the comfortingly pedestrian sounds of the morning news. It was all a fever dream, probably brought on by two bottles of Aftershock poured into a vaporizer and inhaled from an embossed foil balloon with the words “Happy Retirement, Martin” written in gold leaf across the front. It just felt like that kind of dream.
I reached for my face and came up short. Pain in my wrist. I was not in my own bed, nor was I alone. My coworkers — bruised, beaten, and burned — were standing over me.
“I just had the weirdest dream,” I laughed, “and you were there! And you were there! And you were there! And hey why am I chained to this radiator?”
“Is he out of it now?” One asked.
“Bill Paxton’s agent said there was some sort of gas leak that caused temporary madness.â
“I guess it’s worn off.â
“Should we let him go?”
“I suppose. Jeremy, get the chains off, would you?”
A little fieldmouse of a man reached down to undo my bindings. I smiled at him benignly.
The lock tumbled to the floor. He leaned close to shake the chains loose.
“Conan,” I whispered in his ear as my blood began to burn. “What is best in life?”
