Gelfands Around the World at Work

Movies of 2009

Six Favorites:
The Headless Woman
Summer Hours
Police, Adjective
Mother
The White Ribbon
The Maid

Number Seven:
Still Walking (great movie with absolutely awful ending)

Two Duds:
Paranormal Activity
Mammoth

Still Need to See:
35 Shots of Rum
Beaches of Agnes
Bright Star

(Plus more. This is a living document.)

The Entire Telematic Age Summarized in One Conversation

You: hello
You: i am girl looking to show tits to horny male on sexy cam
Stranger: nice
Stranger: may I see?
You: yes
Stranger: msn?
You: i am russian female
Stranger: nice
Stranger: age?
You: 18
You: do you live in USA
Stranger: no
Stranger: I live in canada
You: i only like to chat with USA boys
You: canada i hear is filled with homosexual
Stranger: I am half american
You: are you half homosexual
Stranger: I am not homo
You: good
Stranger: I am straight
You: nice
You: my brother is homosexual
You: he live in moscow with 30-year-old business man
Stranger: anyway
Stranger: will you show me boobs
You: yes
You: how many girls you meet here show you boos
You: boobs
Stranger: today nobody
Stranger: anyway
Stranger: I dont have time
You: why would girls not show boobs to anonymous stranger on internet?
Stranger: msn or bye
You: give me one good reason
You: then i show you
Stranger: because
Stranger: they I probably horny
Stranger: and
Stranger: they wanna see cock
You: i ask why would they NOT show boobs
You: you fail
You: no boobs for you

Music Releases of 2009

Amesoeurs - Amesoeurs
Cold Cave - Love Comes Close
ES - Kesamaan Lapset
The High Wire - The Sleep Tape
Legion of Two - Riffs
Mountains - Choral
Rustie - Bad Science; Zig Zag
Shogun Kunitoki - Vinonaamakasio
Soror Dolorosa - Severance
Teenage Filmstars - Rocket Charms; Buy Our Record, Support Our Sickness (reissues)
The Voices - Death of a Lover's Song
Zelienople - Give It Up
Dubstep - Lots of it

Alphabet List 8: 26 Drag Queen Names

Anita Mann
Brooke Troutt
Crystal Bullock
DeTeria Rashun
Erin Favour
Farra Longway
Ginger Snapp
Helena Handbasket
Ivana Gimlet
Jo Peeples
KoKo Dusting
Luca Mychesti
Mona Pleasure
Noma Johnson
Oda Schmelling
Precious Johnson
Quinn Tupples
Rita Manuel
Sharon Stories
Tamara Works
Ura Beaver
Vonda Huggins
Wanda Lust
Xaviera Herdovitch
Yolanda Lakes
Zuzu Spettles

Alphabet List 7: 26 Ultrahilarious Names for Bars

Al Kaholic's
Boozy Tuesday's
Cachaca Cha Cha
Drambuie Louie's
Ethan Hall
Frosty Mugshot's
Ginger Schnapp's
Hot Buttered Room
Inn Ebriation
Juice's Wild
Kit and Kaboozle
Liqueur the Irish
Mordechai Beerstein's HeBrewpub
Navajo Nectar
Ouzo on First
Purple Hooters
Quivering Liver
Rum'n'Numerals
Stumble Inn
Three Shots to the Wind
Use Your Infusion
Vino the Score
Wino the Times
X Marks the Sot
Yadda Yadda Colada
Zha Zha GaBordeaux

Alphabet List 6: 26 Specials from the Brainerd Lakes Area Shopper

NOTE: Nineteen of these are actual, verbatim listings. Seven are not. Can you tell which are unreal?











All You Can Eat Spaghetti and Meatballs
Broasted Chicken Night
Chicken Minnesota
Dollar Burgers Every Wednesday
Expanded Meat Raffle
French Dip w/Chips, 5 p.m. Til Gone
German Potato Salad Feed
Hanging Beef Buffet
It's Back! Chicken Chow Mein w/Egg Roll
Jenkins Dog Clinic
King Crab Hoagie Hour
Log Sawing Contest
Mondays: Basket Food at 5 p.m.
New Word: Sorbet
Our Great Mexican Menu
Prime Rib Saturday
Quilt Shop Hop
Rock Shrimp Feast
Salmon Supper
Thirsty Tuesdays
Unlimited Taco Event
Vittles with Linda
Wednesday Pillow Cleaning
Xtra Cheesy Nachos
Yikes! Bikes!
Zorbaz DJ Dance Explosion

Alphabet List 5: 27 Ideas for Hipster Horror Movies

(500) Days of Suffering
Axe Body Spray Assault
Babies with Bazookas
Castration Anxiety 2: Feminization by Force
Death Drive: Let's Get Freudian
Eurotrash Rave Massacre
Frat Boys with Firebombs
Giant Fannypack Orgy: Hungry for Humans
Homophobia: Just When You Thought You Were Finally Comfortable with Your Sexuality
Ironical Incident 3: T-Shirt Wars
King Kong V. M.I.A.: This Time, It's Postcolonial
Little Miss Submachine Gun
Mainstream Cooptation Massacre
Not So OK Computer: Vicious Vaio
Obscurifier: Prepare to Be Out-Referenced
Pitchfork Without Honor or Humanity
Quirky But Deadly
Revenge of the Bros
Stuff St. Vincent in the Incinerator
Tunnel of Disdain
The Unskinnying
Vampire Weeknight
Werewolf Parade
Xiu Xiu V. The Wizard of Autotune
Young, Smug, and Full of Slugs
Zoe Deschanel/Dane Cook Sex Tape

College Tips, Fall 2009 Edition

So you’ve finally graduated from high school. No one thought you could do it, but you did, and some pathetic-ass college accepted your pathetic ass, and you spent a summer drinking beer that tastes like delicious, refreshing water, smoking oregano in parks in Blaine with the bros, engaging in clumsy sexual engagements, and of course, most of all, playing beer pong. And you can and certainly will continue to do all those things at college, minus the Blaine, but this time, your bros won’t be there with a plastic cup in one hand and a digital camera, to capture shirtless images for social networking websites, in the other.

That’s right, peoples. You’ll need to meet some new friends in college, which will be easy because everyone at college is fantastic, smart, classy, elegant, sexually confused, and in a constant social panic driven by a paranoid obsession with garnering approval by their new peers. But just in case you are one of them tards who can’t fucking made friends easily, I’m here to assist you with several exciting tips that will enliven and enquicken your brohunt.

1. EXPOSE

The godless American legal regime flies out the window, not literally unless you’ve consumed very special substances, when you enter a university’s halls of residence. And you know what that means: No worrying about those pesky indecent exposure arrests that plagued your high school cross country team’s annual campfire. What better way to get to know people than to see all of them, all the time, all night all day, all right?

Bare bodies are great conversation-starters. Ask any married man where he met his best friend, his Best Man, his best bud, his best bro, the man who treated him to a thousand dollars worth of lap and bed dances during his bachelor party at Floppy Tatters, and you’ll get the same answer. “I noticed his sick pecs in the dorm.” Well, not exactly. Sometimes it’ll be abs, or lats, or quads, or in the case of European international students, glutes or basket. But it’s variations on the same concept.

Also, nudity facilitates so many other exciting exchanges of all sorts, cultural, physical, beverage, animal, mineral, vegetable, pine cone. You’ll have easy access to parts you want to touch, tweak, or grab. Hookups can be as fast or slow as you want. Most importantly, today’s cultural aversion to body hair will ensure everyone is waxed into preadolescence, and there’s nothing sexier than fantasizing about people with limited or no secondary sex characteristics.

2. EXPLORE

Campus is a big place with lots of fun things to see and people to do, so get orientated. Or actually, reorientated, since during orientation you were probably too excited to take in everything you were supposed to be taking in. Find the library, where the people you’ll never hang out with spend hours becoming pale and withered and pretending they’re so fucking smart. Find the dining facilities, where you’ll soon experience the beloved college ritual of clapping when some idiot drops a tray full of plates, glasses, silverware, and delicious food all over the floor. Find the stadium, where you will, along with everyone who isn’t a fag, cheer on your teams, fueled by alcohol snuck in with stealth devices such as flasks shaped like ultrarealistic binoculars.

Naturally you won’t be spending much time off-campus, especially if your school is a brief public transportation jaunt from one of America’s largest and most vibrant cities. You’re not at college to go into cities, go to concerts and movies you can’t see in your small campus shithole town, have fantastic food, and interact with people who are not only not also in college, but also frequently not white. Unless your dorm does some field trip and then you can go and eat at Planet Hollywood and shit. But otherwise, no.

However, often campuses are surrounded by businesses catering almost exclusively to the campus community, places where you can drink without being ID’d, and in fact could do so even if you were a delightfully hairless preadolescent. Another piece of advice: Always order the buffalo wings. There may also be cafes where the fags go to smoke black cigarettes and pretend to be proud because they made the choice to engage in immoral same-sex cuddling. So avoid those. But don’t avoid the lovely chain restaurants selling large portions of unhealthy food, as you will need this sustenance when you’re sick of the cafeteria or, morel likely, fucked up off your fucking ass.

3. EXTROVERT

That’s what you have to be. Nobody likes a quiet bro. Quiet bros are thinking about bad shit, like Columbine-type shit. Also, frequently they are fags. So embrace your inner gregarious person even if you need to develop it from vestigiality. You’ll find there’s so much to talk about now that you’re living with people who have so many things in common with you. For example, did you know that most people tend to like pizza? Also, you’ll be shocked at the sheer number of people who have been drinking water practically their whole lives!

The key thing to remember is to never share a negative opinion about anything. If your dormmates love music that you hate, like hate to the point you’d rather listen to NPR or some equally gay shit like that, never, ever mention it. It’s important to be approving in all situations, because imagine how you would feel if anyone expressed disapproval of something that you liked. You would kill them, or yourself, or both. Or, at the very least, wind up in therapy for the rest of your life. So be nice, don’t judge, and remember, there’s always pizza. Pizza, pizza, pizza!

The best part of socializing is getting to meet bitches, bitches who will be eager to give you blowjobs and expect nothing in return, bitches who will be there when you’re drunk and need someone to hold your unit, and bitches to, of course, fuck. Unless you’re a homo, you won’t have your whole life to be promiscuous and flaunt monogamy, so take advantage while the snatch is willing, eager, and with a little luck, hairless.

4. EXPERIENCE

Dorm life, that is. Experience dorm life. I’ve already mentioned some of the greatest parts about it, but there’s more! You can put up posters of hot chicks, even ones with nudity, and no one will care. Unless some drunk dude decides to whip it out and jack off in the common room, which trust me, you do not want to walk in on. You can also have a cute little refrigerator filled with beer, beer, beer, beer, and whatever else you need refrigerated. You can watch TV and play video games all day long, and no one will tell you to go outside because it’s a beautiful day and you’re rotting your brain in front of that fucking box.

Many dorms also have fun events, like board game night, which are great because the fags will all go and be away from you and everyone else can let loose. You’ll also have an RA, usually an uptight bitch who just needs a good pounding but is saving it for marriage. Ignore her unless you are interested in pranks, in which case she is the ideal victim. But don’t get caught, because if you lose your keys, which could happen if you eat an entire pot muffin although I’m not speaking from personal experience, but you’d need her to get back in the room.

The only bad part of dorm life is that you have to do your own laundry and cleaning, but if you play your cards right, you can get some bitch or homo to do that for you. Blackmail and sexual quid pro quo are two vehicles to actualize that, although the latter is limited to the bitch category of course.

5. ENJOY

This is a special time of your life. You’re special. You’ll meet special people from special places and do special things to and with them. You’ll make special memories that will remain special for your whole life. You’ll laugh, learn, love, lust, linger, lunge, lactate, lick, and most important, play beer pong. A whole lot of beer pong.

In fact, right now there’s a red cup with your name on it and a keg of Natty Light. Stop reading and start partying!

Your Guide to College Life

DIVERSITY SENSITIVITY TRAINING

Over the next four years, you will have to share intimate spaces and moments with people who come from backgrounds very different from your own. Many of you have never had to deal with black people, fat people, poor people, or Mexicans, and certainly that was a beneficial part of your upbringing, but now it will all have to change. Tonight’s assembly will prepare you for the disgusting freaks you will be interacting with by giving them a few minutes to entertain you with performances guaranteed to make you respect and understand diversity.

First, Houa Choua, a Hmong junior, will perform his funky rap “Eat That Spicy Eggroll.” Over lame beats provided by a cheap synthesizer he traded his refugee cousin for on the black market, this dirty Laotian will rap about his people’s legal troubles, caused by white people’s inability to understand their cultural rituals like shooting white deer hunters and killing their own children when they cannot afford to raise them and have no black market connections. Although Hmong are violent, filthy, do not understand private property, and refuse to assimilate into American culture, they are great rappers and have bigger penises than most other Asian groups. The audience will be invited to participate in the performance with funky clapping, hip shaking, and joining in the chorus of “Go Hmong boy go Hmong boy go!”

Next, the campus association of Mexican, Latino, Xicano, and other Spic students will enter the auditorium in a pimped-out low rider boat with spinning rims, their hoochie bitches riding the bounce like it’s a big uncut spicy Ecuadorian sausage. A group of guys dressed as gang members, with flannel shirts open after the top button, wife-beaters, and jeans with Looney Toons embroidery, will make angry hand gestures while a mariachi band performs for spare change. The hoes will then peruse the audience for johns to take home and infect with crabs. Meanwhile, women in traditional native outfits will serve Oaxacan mole and taquitos. Vegan varieties will be available.

The third group to perform is the ever-popular BLT group, for lesbos, fags, and fucked-up straight people who think homos shouldn’t be discriminated against. A glittering float covered in sequins, feathers, and neon pink triangles will enter the stage while the soundtrack to The Bodyguard plays. While a group of angry lesbians passes out fliers advertising the new Ani DiFranco album, the rest of the group will perform a medley of songs illustrating their unique perspective. A drag queen trio performance of “I’m Coming Out” will meld into a lesbyterian folkstravaganza and straight (or not!) into the whole group singing “Bye Bye Bye” by ‘NSync. Finally, buff leathermen in thongs will run into the audience and shove their overstuffed packages into the faces of sexually awkward Indian students, while on stage militant lesbians will rub slices of baguette up and down their hairy legs, armpits, and snatches and throw them into the crowd.

Finally, the Black Power Unity Experience union will take the stage, putting on a skit about black acceptance. The characters are LaToya, Bobo, Sharmonicka, and Dytaevious. Bobo babymama Sharmonicka done left his blackass for Dytaevious, because he give her the dick in the booty and also pay for her to get a nice weave down at that Angel Baby place on Soufside. LaToya doing the weave and she say “Girl you keep your babydaddy otherwise your baby become molested by faggot like Michael Jackson!” Sharmonicka say “Girl maybe that good idea I never seen weave like this since my mama babymama have that black power fist in her hair and that year ago!” So Sharmonicka go back to Bobo and Dytaevious become a hit rapper and everyone happy and eat fry chicken and watermelon the end.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT SENSITIVITY TRAINING

Now that you’re in college, you will probably be tempted to take girls and boys back to your dorm and do very bad sex-type things to them. It’s natural for a bunch of horny idiots to want to grope and fondle each other day and night, but there are a few guidelines you should follow before you stick your battering ram into the pink cave of love.

1. Safe sex is boring sex: Condoms, sponges, foams, dental dams, and other prophylactic devices make sex boring! Real women and fags want you to ride them bareback, the way God intended. The risk of pregnancy, warts, and painful multicolored discharges makes sex fresh and exciting.

2. Privacy is overrated: The first time you’re at a wild party and you see some girl moaning as her boyfriend for the night tries to get his whole fist inside her cooch is often a strange experience. Sure, you’ll want to whip out your dick and start masturbating into the nearest red plastic cup, but later you’ll think about how exciting public sex is. Your roommate will be fascinated if you have loud and arcane sex—bondage and food sex are good ideas—while they are trying to sleep or do homework. The bottom line is: if you haven’t seen everyone in your dorm’s special places in action by the end of first trimester, you’re living with a bunch of prudes.

3. No means yes: Until recently, most liberal fag colleges spent this time putting on skits to illustrate the dangers of date rape, acquaintance rape, roofie-induced rape, and other less exciting forms of sexual harassment and assault. Luckily, today’s modern woman has shed the ugly skin of antisubordination feminism and is ready to be ravished anytime, anyplace, and anywhere. If you take a girl out to dinner, or get her a drink at a party, or tell her you would like to poke your candy bar inside her popcorn box, you have earned the right to do whatever you want with her! The only rule is: Don’t stop until you’re satisfied.

4. Intoxication makes sex better: Sober people are boring, lame people, and are often judgmental about others’ appearances, genders, acne problems, and other factors that might cause hesitance instead of hot sexual action. There’s an easy solution, though: drugsandalcoholandalcoholanddrugs! Beer, pot, hash, vodka, smack, H, and PCP will help rid you of those horrible inhibitions. You’ll let your hair and pants down and be willing to fuck anything with a hole, and that’s what college is for! So get fucked up and start fucking!

5. Masturbation is never acceptable: You’re in an environment filled with thousands of people who want nothing more than to give you every type of job any time of day or night. There’s nothing more evil and selfish than keeping to yourself what other people want so badly. Sure, the unlimited access to bestiality porn with no parents watching might make you get the urge to play solitaire, but when you’re in the red, remember to let someone else share the fun. One suggestion is to wear very loose pants so you can alert others to your condition without having to say a word. Just point or wait for their eyes to land on your tent, find the nearest jar of baby oil, and voila!

FORBIDDEN ACADEMIC LOVE FANTASY PART I

Once upon a time, at a prestigious American institute of higher education, there was a professor whose attempts to be sexy were not altogether unsuccessful. She wore spike heels, fishnets, short skirts, and other trashy slutgear to academic conventions, and gave talks about Lacan, Foucault, and her vagina. At a particularly enlightening panel discussion analyzing the intersection of autonomasia and images of the female anus in pornography, she inspired a young man named C. so much that he decided to sign up for one her classes the next semester.

Over winter break, C. read many of her books and articles, and tried to imagine what it would be like to shove his highly theorized penis into one or more of her orifices, which must have been practically dripping with intelligence. Every night he fell asleep imaging the two of them slathered in oil, tangled in a slippery heap while playing the Postmodern Theorists version of Twister: “Right testicle on Bataille,” “Left nipple on Teresa de Lauretis,” etc.

Just days before the new semester was to begin, the sexual professor published a new text about pedagogy. Most of the book was a series of long anecdotes tracing the sexual nature of the student-teacher relationship in classes she had taught. One chapter memorably compared a male student’s visit to her office hours to her maintaining a viselike grip on his testicles: the power she had over this young, academically and sexually infatuated, inexperienced boy was the power to simultaneously fondle and crush. C. read this passage over and over, making his hands numb with ice and rubber bands in order to grip his testicles yet feel like they were in the hands of another.

Finally it was time for the first class. C. wore a new pair of destroyed Ezra Fitch jeans splattered with semen-like paint and torn perilously near the crotch, as if someone with sharp claws wanted desperately to dive head-first into his jock. His pink polo shirt was vulnerable yet confident, naïve without being necessarily awkward. And his patent leather Sperry Top-Siders shined like the tautly pulled skin of a freshly shaven, engorged thing.

The students waited in the seminar room for several minutes until finally the door swung open dramatically and the professor emerged, wearing an arctic white suede miniskirt and a purple tubetop with the word “Coochie” written in glittering gold sequins. Her bare legs ended in huge stripper shoes with clear heels and gold straps; with each tap of her feet as she approached her seat, C. felt another measure of blood pump into his penis.

She sat down, surveyed the class skeptically, and said, “This seminar is supposed to be about Lacanian theory, so I want to begin with a similar word: ‘laconic.’ I want to suggest that the effect produced by laconic, coded communication can translate into an explosive yet contradictory mixture of desire and hatred. Is anyone familiar with a classic film Beyond the Forest?”

C. wasn’t sure if this was a test, but, heart and penis pounding, he thrust his hand upwards like a purple-headed warrior and shouted out, “This means little or nothing!”

She smiled, lowered her French-manicured right hand toward her moist triangle, and winked at him. “You and the system,” she said definitively.

Totally lost and moments away from spontaneous orgasm, he wondered what his parents would say if they knew he was spending their credit trust on this kind of academic fantasy experience.

Next time: More sex, more theory, and more violent anger.

PUTTING THE “HIGHER” IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Quotations overheard in the illicit drug-soaked halls of your favorite institution of “higher” learning:

“Dude, it’s like the whole world is like a big fucking egg, and if it cracks, shit will be totally fucked up. What the fuck am I talking about?”

“Red Skittles would be so good right now.”

“I can’t believe you live in my dorm and we both like drinking water and listening to Bright Eyes. I’m so happy to have found real friends already in college. Let’s be friends forever and hang out in my dorm. I have more water there!”

“This potato chip bag HAS TO BE MOVED.”

“I think I’m gonna pass out.”

“One time I was driving in my car and there was like a bag of coke in my wallet and I was totally spun too and I was driving really fast and like the cops pulled me over and they were about to look into my wallet and I was totally freaking out and then it was like they were going to ask me to open it to get my ID and I was thinking I had to do that without showing them the coke and I guess it worked because they just gave me a warning how fucked up is that wait have I ever told you the story about when I tried to drink a banana smoothie but I was still spun and I started gagging it was like early in the morning and usually I can eat at that time but only a banana smoothie . . .”

“I just realized that when people talk to each other, the words come out and float around and things can happen before they get sucked in or whatever. That is fucking trippy.”

“One time I had these drugs, and I had this cat, and I put the drugs in the cat. It was funny.”

“Why the fuck are we making out?”

Alphabet List 4: 26 Words That Belong on Menus with Recipe Ideas

Applicator: Caviar Package with Crème Fraiche Applicator
Burst: Sirloin and Cardamom Burst
Combust: Combusted Gyro Taco Salad
Detonate: Tuna Casserole Detonation Stew
Experience: Steamed Root Vegetable Experience
Fantasy: German Potato Fantasy
Gargle: Gargled Bouillon Cauldron
Hysteria: Snap Pea and Kumquat Hysteria
Incident: Marinated Kale Incident
Jamboree: Seitan Jamboree Packages
Kibble: Sizzling Mussel Kibbles
Lactate: Lactating Sunchoke Puddle
Midnight: Midnight Turkey Smokers
Nuzzler: Egg and Gooseberry Nuzzlers
Outrageous: Outrageous Celery Planks
Puncture: Punctured Plantain Potsticker Pyramid
Quickie: Bratwurst and Sour Cream Quickies
Rinse: Rinsed Chicken Sashimi
Stimulate: Stimulated Pork Fritter Tangle
Tingle: White Chocolate Sausage Tingler
Urgent: Urgent Chamomile Infused Spaetzle
Vaporized: Vaporized Bean Sprout Experiment
Whiplash: Horseradish and Purslane Whiplash
Xtravaganza: Baked Bean Xtravaganza
Youthful: Youthful Tuna Salad Spring Rolls
Zen: Zen Fondue

Artists, Dequirk Yourselves!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2009/07/dear_hollywood_these_things_do.html

My sins:

1. Being followed by an omniscient narrator (hard to avoid in non-first person)
2. Obsessive fear of govt

?: Basic knowledge of science

Wouldn't you assume most non-stupid characters over a certain age possess that? I think it needs to be specified how that translates into irritating quirkiness (which I'm sure it can and does).

Inspiration

Alphabet List 3: 26 Highly Sought-After Fictional Jewels

African Death Opal
Black Emerald of Tunguska
Countess Bathory's Bloodstone
Dark Ruby of Yemen
Eritrean Love Garnet
Forsaken Fire Opal
Gay Peridot
Hellenic Lost Agate
Iroquois Icestone
Japanese Jade Genie
Kangaroo Jewel of Uluru
Lebanese Laughing Lapis
Missouri Moonstone
North Carolina Zirconium
Onyx of Forgiveness
Pacific Peridot
Quito Mountain Ruby
Romanian Aquamarine
San Marino Sandstone
Terror Opal
Umbrian Earthstone
Venutian Goddess Ruby
White Onyx of Calcutta
Xylophone Stone
Yucatan Sapphire
Zuzu's Peridot

Alphabet List 2: 26 Fantasy Video Games

Agronomy Star
Bitch Fight Xtreme
Cockfight 1936
Dust Bowl Derby
Escape from Manzanar
Franz Kafka's The Castle
Gilles de Rais: The Game
Hung Jury
Inland Empire
Joy of Cooking
Killer Workout
LA Riots
Model Army Featuring Naomi Campbell
Narcoleptic Ninjas
Oral Argument
Pasta, Pasta, Pasta!
Quilting Bee 2020
RiverDance Dance Revolution
Sim Breast Reduction Surgery
Tehran Triage Tent
Urban Blight
Voter Fraud
White Chicks
XXX Film Production Simulator
You've Got Mange
Zelda Gives It Up

Alphabet List 1: 26 Names for Housing Developments

Amity Cove
Berkshire Plantation
Covington Crest
Dunwoody Court
Elysian Meadowwoods
Fantasy Place
Gardens of Gary
Homestead Heights
Idyllic Isles
Jardiniere Chateaux
Kensington Kourt
Luscious Meadows
Macintosh Orchard
New Levittown
Organza Falls
Playa Placido
Quality Falls
Rolling Lofts
Santa Bella Dolce Vita Italiano
Tumbling Bungalows
Upper Peninsula
Vidalia Circle
Waterloo Escape
Xanadu Esplanade
Yarmouth Stables
Zone of Affluence

Debateland Has Gotta Die

PART I: INTRODUCTION

Hey, you there! That’s right. I’m talking to you. I’m hailing you. It’s time for me to tell you afew things about dee bait. What? You’d rather us assume a different physical arrangement than this one, this one with me, walking in front of you, facing four ward, walking at a fast pace, with you hot on my trail in your Segway or your Rascal or your Razr scooter or your moped or your Big Wheels or your unicycle? You think it just might be easier to communicate if our comparative stance were somehow to be altered, and you don’t want to impose, but it doesn’t seem like that would be all that difficile at the moment? Let me tell you something right now and you’d best listen if you don’t want your business to be flattened like a pound a pancakes in a quick one two minutes: The physical, spiritual, various and sundry, which is to say all, the conditions of this encounter are completely at the mercy of my whim. I woke up today, ate a craw’s aunt, poured a few ounces of caffeine into my gullet, and decided that there is no more opportune time for me to tell you about the birds and the bees, so to speak.

What? You say your parents already sat you down and explained that ladies have a special part that only ladies have and when a man and a lady love each other very much they decided to do something with that part and the man’s equivalent part, the plug to the lady’s outlet, and nine months later, if they are good god-fearin’ folks and everything goes as it should, a little person pops out of the woman and between eleven and sixteen years later that little person begins to develop secondary sex characteristics and that’s why you need to wear deodorant and wax your entire body and learn how to put this piece of fluorescent pink rubber over a large banana? Is that really what you’re telling me?

You just don’t get it. See, I was not being literal when I used the idiom, the adage, the old saw that you misinterpreted and look at all those memories it evoked. Would you just fucking look at them. Now you don’t know if I’m being literal or not? Well, how should I adapt to your stupidity? Should I assume a South African accent when I’m being figurative and/or sarcastical? Should I roleplay? I’ll assume the position of a white female South African artist with the dream of erecting a statue that is a male version of the Statue of Liberty clad in skinny jeans with lasers shooting from its eye sockets and it will be installed somewhere in Los Angeles. This is someone’s sincere wish, but for me it is nothing more than a communicative tool. Now, watch out, because this is a sharp right turn coming up here and I wouldn’t want you to crash.

You navigated that well. Yes, you’re welcome. I think this exchange of pleasantries has brought our conversation around a corner. How apropos. Just the other day, I was at a high school debate tournament. I was at this tournament, an important one to people who think such a thing capable of being important, and something terrible happened. But let me backtrack just a bit because you need to know one thing about me to understand the narrative that will follow after the next while when I cover the background information I just spoke of. Okay? You’re prepared to make this temporal leap with me? I’ll take your word for it, although frankly I have my doubts.

What you need to know is that I’m a person who sympathizes with the political goals and critical analysis emerging from the field of queer theory. My academic background is quite thorough, but it’s also an issue that has personal importance for me. What’s that look? Do you want to ask me if I’m a gay queer homosexual? Go ahead and ask. I don’t know why people are so afraid to just go and ask such a question, like it’s going to ruin the mood or something? I mean, how hard is it to say, Are you gay? Three syllables. I could name nearly a hundred euphemisms for inebriation, not to mention inebriation itself, all comparatively prolix. Listen, I like competitive figure skating and interior design and I cried when Heath Ledger died, although his death had a personal significance to me you will never understand. So go ahead and ask.

. . .

Spit it out, motherfucker.

. . .

Finally. Aren’t you relieved now? We’ve got it all in the open and finally I can come clean and admit my crippling minority status that has subjected me to a lifetime of intimidation and verbal attacks and constant pressure to dress like a fifteen-your-old. Let me serenade you in my high, girly voice with tales of woe that will make you so happy you would never touch a cock except of course your own which you do frequently thank you very much.

Unfortunately, though, I cannot give you the satisfaction of a simple affirmative answer to your question. You all want things to be simple, a switch, a binary, a dichotomy, two pigeonholes, the happy normal hetero hole, and the significantly—if also potentially ironically—smaller homo hole, where you’ve always imagined I was comfortably nestled. But queer theory teaches us that such a foundational construct is fictive, which isn’t to imply that there is a clear alternative that is itself foundational or factive, but simply that there’s a fluidity, a constructedness, a performativity that underlies our notions of sexuality, and that can be utilized to expose the fallacies of our phallousy thinking. How could that be done, you ask? Well, drag, of course! Drag and writing essays about David Cronenberg films. And so much more, but that’s not the point. The point is, simply, that I know a bushel or two worth of queer theory information, and when given the opportunity, which is sadly infrequently in the debate community but big surprise that is to anyone familiar with the debate community, I happily and proudly flex my queer theory muscle. And now, as I have sufficiently filled you in on the background information I admitted was necessary for the full appreciation of my story involving a recent, important debate tournament, we can travel through time and space to that tournament and get on with the damn thing.

Now we’re going to bear left at this fork in the road, and if you need to take a break and have a drink of water, or some electrolyte-enhancing beverage resembling urine, just let me know. I may seem like a right bitch but I understand how important hydration is to some people. Just let me know. Sure you’re okay for now? Okay? Okay.

Here we were, and now are, not in actuality but in the sense that we imagine being there to give the story an immediacy, a relatability, that might make it easier and more enjoyable to follow, at a really big, important, national debate tournament. Where is this tournament? It’s not important. It could be in a megachurch, or a high school, or a horse farm uncannily recalling the antebellum American South, or a college campus. Imagine a combination of all these places, with plantation architecture and a student center, classrooms with windows overlooking stables, and an auditorium where poorly dressed people are rolling on the ground, speaking in tongues, while a white guy with a toupee and a tan suit avers scientifically questionable utterance into a microphone.

There I am, an educator wearing chaps, boots with spurs, a shirt with an uncanny likeness of the torso portion of the Shroud of Turin silkscreened on it, and a miter with a flashing LED scroll on it. Welcome, it reads, to the 2009 National Tournament of Champions, the most prestigious event in the national circuit high school debate calendar. It has several other sequences programmed for this occasion, including a list of local bars and liquor stores, my favorite music albums of 2008, and quotations from canonized philosophical texts ranging from Boethius to Robert Nozick. I am feeding an oxheart carrot to a particular large stallion, whistling a tune inspired by the idyllically bucolic surroundings. Suddenly, my reverie is crushed by two teenage boys sprinting toward me, an act more difficult for one than the other due to the unnaturally low position of his waistband.

Who are these boys? Are they twin brothers? Homosexual life partners? Tag team wrestlers? Please realize that those options are not mutually exclusive. They are, though, whatever you want them to be, whatever further qualities your active young mind may ascribe to two boys, separated by an inch or two in height, one testudinal in appearance, the other notably ratlike.

As they screech to a halt, an effluvium of masculine toiletries was present in and around the vicinity of the part of my body where the ability to locate such a thing is presumably located. They had something to tell me. They had, they said, something to say. I cocked my right ear archly. I arched my left ear cockily. Do tell, I said.

They told.

After listening attentively to their tale, then ensuring its veracity had been attestified to by a variety of members of the debate community whose trustworthiness is unimpeachable, I reacted to the story. What nerve! What chutzpah! But in the most problematic sense of that word, of course! This person, this idiotic excuse for a participant in an allegedly academic communicative educational activity! This was the argumentative equivalent of spitting in the face of the debate community, or the kindly elderly person at the helm of this particular weekend in the community’s annual schedule. Or perhaps even worse. An act of nonconsensual watersports.

Listen up, I say to my two young informant friends, this imbecile is going to get the reaming of his lifetime right here and right now, and everyone in debate welt is going to find out about it, and I’m going to use my extensive knowledge, my thorough background, in the multi- and/or interdisciplinary discipline (that is (not) one) called queer theory the correct way, to right the wrongs that have been done to its reputation in this here debate monde, so fasten your seatbelts.

No, I said that to them. The quotation is part of my story, not a piece of advice for you here in your vehicle now in the actual present, except of course there is no actual present of spoken language because by the time I’ve said it and then you’ve heard it and processed it the moment of its utterance is gone forever, which may remind you of the works of P.D. Ouspensky, if you’re the kind of person who’s interested in obscure metaphysics and physics from awhile ago, Quaternions, that sort of thing. In fact, if I knew as much about physics as I know about queer theory, and some asshat showed up and had the audacity to present a debate argument based upon physics, I would flex my physics muscle and crush that twerp until it was lying in a pool of sweat and bile and bilgewater and mostly its own bitter tears and then use a freshly washed white V-neck tee shirt to mop up that liquid combination and pour it into a bowl decorated with a plot of the Riemann zeta function along the critical line for real values running from zero to thirty-four and force that pathetic excuse for a member of the mundo del debate to drink it, drink it, take it!

However, my physics muscle is unfortunately grossly underdeveloped, and in fact even if it were not underdeveloped and were buff and worth flexing frequently and very publicly, that would be beside the point because no debater has presented an argument that I would need to crush with my physics muscle if I had such a utile physics muscle. Instead, some worthless piece of trash has gone into a room, whipped out a few sheets of paper, and presented an argument based on a horrific bastardized misinterpretation, inappropriation, of queer theory, and now it is time for me to get to work in preparing a document that will give every other debater at this tournament a surefire way to destroy that so-called queer theory argument, and that is only the first step in several that will, in tandem, work to instill fear and pain and a sense of extreme inferiority onto this debater who is indeed inferior to, most of all, me, but also probably most if not all the other people here amongst the horses and the Christers, and indeed probably a good percentage of the horses and the Christers as well.

The animallike twin sex lovers nodded encouragingly during this explanation, and then left to debate or have sex of perhaps seek sartorial advice from a mysterious young man I have personally seen nearly one hundred times, all coincidentally, in front of a Parisian bus station I enjoy writing about. I waved, not feyly of course, because one must, and even more so when one is wont to be considered a homosexual, one must be careful not to let one’s wrist go limp as is its, the wrist’s, wont upon delivering such a gesture, and for similar reasons was careful not to let my gaze fixate on the nearly obscene position of the taller boy’s pants, which seemed to have crept several centimeters southward during our brief colloquy.

It was time to launch into the first step of the six that would constitute my official reaction to the crime against potentially subversive, destabilizing public praxis of liberatory sexually deviant experiential modes of existence not currently being coopted by the right wing-dominated media and political wings of interpellation comprising late modern American public culture. I installed myself at a nearby bar, ordered a pint of locally brewed pilsner, a hint of skunk but that doesn’t bother me, whipped out my laptop, and began typing out a list of fifty responses designed to be read at lightning speed during a debate round rebuttal to expose the horrific shortcomings of the offending argument and rip it, the argument, a new one. I drained half my beer in one sip, belched loudly and purposefully, and began typing furiously.

Number one: The argument presents a psychological claim with no psychological warrant, and unlike the erudite experts publishing in the academically viable and in fact critically importantly field of queer theory, a stupidass high school student from some podunk Midwestern suburb is not capable of acting as an authority the likes of which can be trusted as an expert on matters of the human psyche. This is independently sufficient to defeat the argument, incidentally.

Number two: The quotation from Judith Butler comes from a publication written nearly ten years ago, one which does therefore not take into account the dynamic changes percolating since within the queer theory diaspora, such as the influence of posthumanism, work on whatever the accepted term for apotemnophilia is today, andsoforth. Even more damagingly, Judy herself has called the piece a polemic and taken, perhaps not literally, but perhaps, steps away from its extremity, and done so in a widely available compilation of essays by like-politically-goaled thinkers that the stupidass debater could certainly have found in the library if it, as it certainly does not, possesses the knowledge of the Library of Congress system used in the library at which the newer, better book would be held.

Number three: Queer theorists have long held near and dear to their physique, which, despite the seeming concreteness of biological reality that makes certain claims about relativity infuriating to some scientists and individuals who have a tendency to think very literally or very little or both, a strong belief that it is the obligation of queer theorists proposing a new argument to list all the sources necessary in the development of that argument. Needless to say, stupidass over there has not done so in its debate argument, so by the contemporary, consensus-accepted beliefs of those who actually matter within the field it is attempting very poorly to represent, the argument fails before its feet even hit the ground.

I ordered another beer and continued hammering out my list, utilizing quotations from both in and near the queer theory experience as well as other disciplines, statistics about the necessity of questioning the methodology and essentializing tendencies oftpresent but not completely unavoidable in the use of statistics, ad hominems relating to the horrific grooming, dressing—in two senses of the word—as well as gustatory habits of stupidass, and so forth, until I had finished my fiftieth argument coterminously as my ninth pint of pilsner and it was time to return to the debate tournament for a lunch break between rounds two and three.

Upon entering the food court, I hurried past a group of Christers saying grace over buckets of KFC and piping hot biscuits, a debate team listening to misogynistic rap music while blotting the grease off slices of pizza from Sbarro, and a posse of ranchers watching two of their more manly specimens armwrestling to determine the recipient of the last piece of an order of popcorn beef puffs from Beef Fantasy, a fast food chain autochthonous to this part of the country. I felt a pang that could have been hunger, although I feared it might instead be arousal, hopefully caused by the grunting, strapping armwrestlers rather than the waifish debater with a silky blonde afro working the straw of his Jamba Juice product like it were something quite different. Several minutes later I realized the physical feeling was more likely a strangely delayed intense need to piss a whole lot, understandable given my consumption of approximately one hundred and fifty ounces of beer between 10 a.m. and noonish. In those interim minutes, though, I carped that slice of the diem and launched part two of my plan.

So doing consisted of presenting, in my outstretched palm, my dongle, for seizure by the coach of a very competitive debate team, one from the Midwest, from the same state as stupidass in fact, not that that necessarily matters to you, but people tend to follow stories when they feature that type of semi-coincidental aside that gives a realism, a humanity, to the story that might not otherwise be there, and I certainly don’t mind sacrificing a bit of my artistic integrity to get butts in the seats, particularly in these economic times, and any artist who tells you otherwise is either pretentious or stupid or both. So there I was, dongle in hand, and it is a red dongle, just another piece of information for you, adding some color to the proceedings, no need to thank me. I explained that I had, stored within my dongle, a document that would be extraordinarily helpful in the violent destruction of this allegedly queer theory argument being run by this tiny, worthless debater. There’s more knowledge of queer theory, I said, in the tip of my little finger, or in fact the tip of this dongle, than it possesses in its entire tiny, antlike body. And isn’t it strange that so many of these debaters look like animals? Actually, the most successful debater on your team looks more like a special needs child than an animal, which is neither necessarily better nor worse, and I guess maybe I shouldn’t have said that right in front of him, but I’ve had a few beers recently. Another effect of the beer consumption I just referred to is, is that I need to go piss like a racehorse, so while you copy the file from my dongle and laugh about my apropos racehorse comment, I’m going to go install myself at a urinal for a short while.

Yes, I guess I have been going on for alongbit now, and I’m sorry that the latest twists of the plot have made you realize that your own bladder is nearly bursting, but I’m almost done, so bear with me for just a few more minutes, and by that time we will have reached a bathroom so you can segue comfortably from the intake of narrative to the outtake of urine.

Speaking of which, I suppose it would be unforgivably rude for me to tell you how satisfying it was to empty my bladder after consuming so much delicious beer, to recreate the sighs of pleasure I emitted so frequently and loudly, to the seeming horror of at least one person in the bathroom who ran out before even taking the time to properly dry his hands. Not only is it rude to boast about lavatory relief in this situation we find ourselves in now, but I’ve always found it rather tasteless to seek pathos in primitive and disgusting shared experiences like joyful bodily excretions of all sorts, for one. Some disagree, and think that such baseness is relatable, humorous, worthy of a hearty laugh and the urge to find the person behind the author function, to think them for their discursive act with a slap on the back and perhaps a firm handshake, depending on the cultural meaning of that act, because a handshake isn’t just a handshake in some world cultures. Me, however, I think real pathos is earned, not found, and toilet raunch, while it has its place, it not a priori brilliant and hilarious. I may dress like a teenager but my sense of humor, like my queer theory muscle, is far more developed compared to even farabove average teenagers.

One of which, and one which is certainly notabove average in any sense, was about to get the lambasting of his life, or at least weekend, because that was step three of six in my master plan. I coolly emerged from the bathroom and strolled toward him. He was watching a video of an obese man screaming profanity for no apparent reason, a fat man who possibly suffered from Tourette’s syndrome which of course there is nothing funny about. Excuse me, I said, I hate to interrupt this probably hilarious although also possibly offensive video offering you are wiling away your lunch break heretoforewith, but you are probably wondering why I was just conspiring with your statemates at the table over yonder.

He said he wasn’t, an obvious lie, but this was not surprising. I took it in stride and continued. You, and I’m not the kind of person who is easily bothered, but you have done something today that bothers me quite a great deal. I’m sure you’ll claim you innocently wrote an argument you thought was good, persuasive, a legitimate representation of your personal readings of various queer theory texts, an academic discipline you are interested in for whatever reason. Perhaps you have found its antiessentialist denaturalization of the sex/gender binary, et cetera, permanently alter your weltanschauung in a liberatory way, that you feel more comfortable with yourself as a person struggling to come to terms with sexuality in a hypermasculine, homophobic society. Perhaps you have never felt such a profound stake in any academic outing, so to speak, and realize you want to devote your life to the study and praxis of matters relating to queer theory. Perhaps your interest in debate has been enhanced by this newfound ability to bring in material you love, both because it’s academically fascinating, but also because it has so much personal significance, and the value of your researching and debating is the highest its ever been. Perhaps you’d think someone like me, who obviously knows a massive amount about queer theory, would be supportive of a newcomer to the discipline, promoting this material that I also feel is incredibly vital to subversive dissentional resistance-focused action in late capitalist Western social culture. Perhaps you’d think I would forgive any minor inaccuracies in your attempt to channel a complex and sometimes internally inconsistent field or even offer my expertise to ensure your interpretations were legitimate.

Obviously you are completely idiotic if you think any of those perhapses are perhaps happening at this time and place. Although I realize I am risking shattering your hopes and dreams and turning you off from something that would make your college and professional careers enjoyable, politically useful, and even exciting, that is a risk I am absolutely happy to accept. It is one I feel is necessary to accept, because you are wrong and you are stupid and you are incredibly wrong and I’m not going to let my queer theory muscle lie dormant when I know someone in the same debate community as me, at the same debate tournament is me, is off in a classroom somewhere with this horribly bastardized bullshit sack of heresy that you are unleashing upon poor unsuspecting children who wouldn’t know better except, thanks to me, now they will.

Now excuse me as I must go distribute a list of argument written by me, the God of queer theory, to everyone at the tournament lest you have the sheer audacity to use your argument again, in which case your opponent will read the document, incanting the language of the God of queer theory, proving you are wrong in a manner so thorough, punishing, intelligent, and decisive that you’ll realize you didn’t even know what wrong means hitherto.

At this point, I had to go to the bathroom again, so I did so before returning to step two and providing every team at the tournament with the argument via my dongle. And now he were are at the restroom, just in time as I have nothing more to say to you today, so go dangle your parts over the toilet or urinal, sigh in relief as loudly as you feel is warranted, then continue on your unique life trajectory until I reappear with another cautionary tale.

Yes, you may ask me a question.

. . .

What? I don’t understand the question.

. . .

What?

. . .

Did I feel like a bully? Why would you ask that? If exploiting my position of authority, my superior knowledge, the power inhering in my role, to try to either scare someone off using an argument they spent insufficient time and intelligence preparing, or to warn them that using the argument would result in a punishing defeat, if that’s bullying. If explicitly telling someone they are wrong and stupid, then laughing at them and sharing that opinion and laughter with the rest of the debate community, if that’s bullying. If grabbing the microphone from the head Christer and telling the Christers, the horse people, and the debaters about this stupidass child who is ruining the integrity of the debate community with its unbelievably ludicrous pieca shit argument that would be an embarrassment if a ten-year-old was the one making it, if that’s bullying.

When I wake up in the morning, I don’t see a bully. I see a man who looks and dresses several years younger than his age, who can attract and has attracted real celebrities to seek time in the conjugal bed with him, whose surprising hypercompetitiveness may not be endearing but it sure makes him run self-importantly at critical moments during debate tournaments, whose academic credentials may not be the best, strictly speaking, but who can more than make up for it in self-confidence and inflated rhetoric. That’s what I see and I’m okay with it. More than that, I’m happy with it.

And you, you should consider yourself lucky to have had the privilege of experiencing this time with me, of me having shared something so personal and valuable with you, imbuing your young mind and body with the sweet nectar of my essence in discursive form. Best of all, although I’m done addressing you personally, for now, this is only the beginning of a series of lessons in which you and so many others will have the opportunity to hear about my thoughts, think about my experiences, and experience, inna weigh, my life in the debate community. Sometime soon, maybe not right after you’re done using the bathroom here but soon enough, you’ll be able to access those lessons I just mentioned in textual form. Isn’t that exciting? I’m excited.

Now go enjoy yourself in the bathroom. I’ve got more teaching to do.

A Note from the Creator of the Creator of The Vibe 2.0

Dear Friends,

The person(s) providing content for this site recently completed a lengthy and unpleasant obligation, and will now have more opportunities to provide content for this site. Such content will consist of, among other things, the conclusion of the Spring Break WoC episode and a six-part story concerning high school debate. The first part of the latter should appear tomorrow.

Please continue to visit this site and encourage others to do the same, unless you have no interest in doing so, which would certainly be understandable.

Thank you.

World of Cox Episode 3: Spring Succeeds (Part One)

SCENE I

Slim and Precious are hanging out with their parents. watching a Discovery Channel documentary on insects.

RAYMOND: I’m sorry you kids are stuck in boring old Minnesota, but in this economy, I didn’t feel confident financing trips to some lovely tropical destination where you could get sloshed on tequila shooters and enjoy casual handjobs under a canopy.

PRECIOUS: Aside from the canopy, that sounds like pretty much every weekend at college.

WIFE: I thought you were a feminist. Can you reconcile that with your slutty habit of jerking boys you barely even know to climax?

PRECIOUS: Of course! I need the perfect technique so I can coerce men, literally have them wrapped inside my hand. Don’t tell me none of you has ever experienced, witnessed, or administered a handjob so powerful it could alter the course of history. Behind every great man is a female hand pulling, tickling, stroking, and tantalizing his strings.

RAYMOND: I haven’t had those experiences you mention since my days at boarding school, but that’s a story for another time. Maybe we should’ve sent Slim to boarding school. I’m afraid he’ll start college with his penis untouched by any hands besides his own.

PRECIOUS: And doctors’. They still do that cough test at physicals, right?

SLIM: Hello, bitches! I’m right here and my fucking ears work!

PRECIOUS: Are you implying this talk about your boy parts is possibly making you uncomfortable?

SLIM: I’m implying that I’m going to stab you in the cunt with an ice pick while you sleep.

PRECIOUS: Ooh. Sharon Stone, your inspiration has transcended the bounds of your intentions.

RAYMOND: Let’s keep the possibility of your mother and I becoming grandparents alive.

PRECIOUS: If they can breed an impregnable watermelon, the Cox name might live on regardless.

SLIM: Okay, fuck you all. I’m going to go upstairs and see if the internet has created a market for whatever is the opposite of Viagra.

WIFE: I think that’s called Rosie O’Donnell.

She and Raymond laugh hysterically.

SLIM (heading upstairs): That’s the funniest thing I’ve encountered since last Sunday’s “Family Circus.”

He goes to his room and slams the door.

WIFE: I hope he isn’t too sore. Teenage boys can be so touchy. . . .

RAYMOND: Based on what I see at my store, boys of all ages can be pretty darn touchy.

WIFE: I meant in the PMS-type sense.

PRECIOUS: I’m sure his ovarian irritation is nothing a shot of dry vermouth and a spirited bout of death-grip masturbation won’t solve.

WIFE: I sure hope so.

RAYMOND: Maybe he’s sad because those brothers he’s always hanging out with went to Mexico. Precious, maybe you can convince him to get out of the house and do something fun. Have a wild Spring Break here in Minneapolis!

PRECIOUS: I think that can be arranged.

SCENE II

Precious, Boobs Carlisle, and Jogs Chignon are having drinks at the Red Dragon, a dive restaurant mainstay with alarmingly large and potent tropical drinks.

PRECIOUS: Remember in high school when all those girls would come back from Spring Break with nuclear orange skin and those microbraids?

BOOBS: And hoarse voices from screeching at Senor Tequila or whatever those clubs that were always on MTV are called.

PRECIOUS: Senor Rohypnol!

JOGS: It’s Senor Itchy's. A lot of my friends were there last week.

PRECIOUS: And I bet some of them had unmemorable—perhaps literally—sex with orange high school girls with microbraids.

BOOBS: Working during the U’s Spring Break is nice because most of the frat boys are gone.

JOGS: Yeah. I was at ladies’ night at Grandma’s last week, and it was actually not a total sausage-fest for once.

PRECIOUS: Well, every night is ladies’ night in Tijuana! Grandma’s can’t exactly compete with that.

The waitress arrives with three very large pink-orange cocktails.

PRECIOUS: Let’s toast to Spring Break, the week after Spring Break, and a temporary douchebag break at the Vu.

They drink.

PRECIOUS: Sweet Jesus, this thing would knock out a sumo wrestler. Or you, Jogs.

JOGS: I’m already sixteen percent finished with my weight loss. When I’m done, you’ll be a third wheel.

BOOBS: Just don’t be jealous if I try out a few dozen grade-A slabs of Midwestern sausage in the meantime.

JOGS: That reminds me: My sister wanted to meet with you.

PRECIOUS: Is she trying to break into the life?

JOGS: No, she’s a legitimate model.

BOOBS: That’s what they all say at first, but then you meet a handsome 35-year-old man named Fernando who says he’ll give you money and a boobjob if you just pose for a few innocent pictures and it all goes well aside from the razor-burn on your snatch and then Fernando and his friends take you to clubs and the next thing you know you’re naked on all fours on top of a pool table and three guys with banana whips and facemasks are smacking you with said whips and their rock-hard cocks and you’re sick of stripping but the cash is good and the drug connections are convenient and you mostly don’t go home with johns and if it was really intolerable you could quit, go back to school, and stay clean whenever you wanted to.

JOGS: I’m not sure if that’s going to cause nightmares or the opposite, but I kind of wish they had pool tables here right now.

PRECIOUS: We can go somewhere and play later, but I really want to stop at Sex World tonight. I have to pick up some porn for this project I’m doing on the subversive potential of generic appropriation for my Performativity seminar.

JOGS: Can’t you just get that from your dad’s store?

PRECIOUS: Maybe, but Sex World’s discount section is hilarious, and I was considering getting some nitrous, which Fantasy Experience doesn’t carry.

BOOBS: Fine with me. I’m in the market for a new pair of crotchless tights anyway. My old ones didn’t survive the last Promise Keepers convention in town.

JOGS: As long as pool is involved at some point, I’m down.

SCENE III

Slim and Chunky are hanging out in Slim’s bedroom. Slim is in front of the computer and Chunky is checking out the photo section in a biography of Roger Waters.

CHUNKY: Dude, last year we had Easter at OCB. That was pretty awesome, but lots of people were there dressed for church, which was kind of random.

SLIM: Great white trash minds think alike, apparently.

CHUNKY: Actually, lots of them were black.

SLIM: Dude, look! Ratso just logged on. Shouldn’t that fucker be paying some Mexican whore to give him the clap or some shit?

CHUNKY: Or watching a donkey show! I heard you can pay money to watch those bitches get fucked by donkeys or burros or whatever. Ask if he’s gonna check that shit out!

SLIM: Haven’t you seen shit like that on the internet?

CHUNKY: Of course, but it would fucking awesome in person.

SLIM (typing): I’m asking if Saggy and Ratso like slathering suntan lotion on each other’s bare torsos.

CHUNKY: Who cares about that shit?

SLIM: Don’t you think that’s really gay?

CHUNKY: What?

SLIM: He says they have new pictures on Facebook already. Dude, why are you updating Facebook and chatting online? You could do that shit here. Their Spring Break is lamer than ours.

CHUNKY: They’ll get fucked up and fucker sooner or later. What are we gonna do? Drink your mom’s fucking wine coolers and go get lap dances again?

SLIM: Can your poor ass afford one?

CHUNKY: My ass may be poor but at least it’s built. That Boobs bitch should be paying me to rub her snatch against it.

SLIM: I don’t think you understand the concept of a lap dance. You make it sound like the guy gets spanked by a chick’s crotch. That would require some motherfucking contortionist-type shit.

CHUNKY: We could check out the Vu or another strip club tonight.

SLIM: What the fuck is this bullshit? That sack-wrangler is wearing a thong. Are they at Spring Break for fags?

CHUNKY: Lemme see.

He goes to the computer.

CHUNKY: Noice. You get less tan lines that way, although I tan naked so my ass looks even better. Plus it’s still buffer.

SLIM: Well, hooray for fuckin’ you! Unfortunately I don’t want to spend Spring Break discussing male asses, so let’s bounce.

CHUNKY: Wait. I want to check out the rest of the new pictures first. . . . Hah, Ratso is doing body shots off some ugly bitch.

SLIM: I wonder if they’ll try to see a fucking “Girls Gone Wild” video shoot.

CHUNKY: Or maybe they’ll try to get in “Guys Gone Wild.”

SLIM: Does that shit even exist? Saggy better watch out.

CHUNKY: Why? Dude, that would be awesome.

SLIM: That’s not the word that pops into my mind.

SCENE IV

Slim and Chunky get out of the latter’s discount-modded El Camino into the Third Street parking lot in downtown Minneapolis and take the stairs down to exit on Second Avenue.

SLIM: We should go somewhere different this time. What sounds good? Dreamgirls? Pole Position?

CHUNKY: Dude, I want to see Boobs, though.

SLIM: You’ll see more than that at any of them.

CHUNKY: No, dumbass, the person Boobs.

SLIM: Oh. She doesn’t want your jock, moron. And I don’t fucking think strippers go to work hoping to meet high school juniors to go out with, like, ever. What, do you think she’ll go to the prom with you?

CHUNKY: Why not? At least I have Tamra to fall back on. You’ll be the first Edina dude since my brother to go to prom with your own right hand.

SLIM: Fuck you! Anyway, I’m pretty sure my sister was hanging out with Boobs tonight, and I don’t think they’d go to the Vu. Although with those bitches, who knows?

Waiting to cross Third Avenue, they see a group of people walking down the opposite side of the street, laughing hysterically.

SLIM: Fucking downtown crowds, drunk idiots stumbling and puking surfers on acid. Downtown Minneapolis should not fucking be Tijuana Part Dos.

CHUNKY: Isn’t that your sister? (Calling out) Precious! Boobs! That guy with the hot sister!

Precious et al wait for Slim and Chunky to catch up to them.

PRECIOUS: Delving into Downtown’s musky crotch? I hear Lickety Split is having a fantastic sale on silicon two-headed dongs this week. You two can play Requiem for a Dream!

BOOBS (to Jogs): You can get hooked on diet pills like that batshit old bitch.

SLIM: Ellen Burstyn was fucking robbed at the Oscars that year! Aronofsky directs the shit out of people and nobody notices.

PRECIOUS: You and your testosterone canon—that’s one “N.” I may be tipsy but I’m not about to start spouting vastly unrealistic phallic platitudes.

SLIM: Fuck you!

CHUNKY: Dude, you guys should totally buy us some beer.

PRECIOUS: That would be wildly immoral. How dare you assume I would ever encourage you to behave like normal high school students? If you want to comport with normalization, don’t look at me to do anything but shed a single Foucauldian tear.

JOGS: We just studied that fag in my sociology class.

BOOBS: Not that again. You two can can it with the smarty bullshit. Are we going to Sex World or what?

PRECIOUS: Yes! I refuse to end the evening without European retro-colonial-historical anal videos, or something equally brilliant.

BOOBS (to Slim and Chunky): Are you coming with us or what?

Slim and Chunky look at each other and shrug.

PRECIOUS: Of course they are.

She puts her arms around them and skips toward the entrance, humming the Thunderpuss 2000 mix of “Sexual” by Amber.

SCENE V

The group has entered Sex World, which occupies three floors of a late nineteenth century warehouse. The upper portion of the vaulted ground level is interspersed with flat-screen televisions, all playing the same scene, which involves a cherry lollipop.

CHUNKY: Dude, internet shit is so much more hardcore than this. It’s like, a bitch sticking a sucker in some other bitch’s cunt and the licking it: big fucking deal. I saw worse shit in fifth grade.

SLIM: That may be due to your brother’s collection of tranny punch-fucking videos.

CHUNKY: True. Or those Russian guys coming in bowls of milk shot out of some bitch’s ass and then they both drink it.

SLIM: What the fuck!?

PRECIOUS: Jesus, I don’t think I’ve felt a hint of prudishness since the Larry Clark retrospective. I sure hope it’s the booze.

BOOBS: I’m gonna go upstairs and look for those tights.

SLIM: Don’t spend your sex paraphernalia dollars here! Come to our store. We have tons of different tights: edible, leopard-print, metallic . . .

BOOBS: Crotchless?

SLIM: Of course!

BOOBS: I don’t want to drive all the way to fucking Richfield when we’re already here, though.

SLIM: But our mall is fucking awesome. You can get Indian food, shit at Dollar Experience, black people fried chicken, checks cashed . . .

PRECIOUS: It’s like Williamsburg without the scruff-core hipsters discussing steampunk over Zywiec served by 60-something Eastern European women dripping with costume jewelry.

CHUNKY (looking at video): Why does every bitch in porn have a pierced clit there days?

JOGS: I know, right? And that weird chunky two-toned hair.

PRECIOUS: I don’t think you’re in a position to decry anything for merely possessing qualities denoted by the adjective “chunky.”

CHUNKY (laughing hysterically): Pwned!

SLIM: Dude, your fucking name is Chunky.

CHUNKY: But it’s illiteral.

PRECIOUS: Literally illiteral, as Sandra Lee might say.

BOOBS: We should get moving it we want to play pool later. I’m going upstairs to check out the clothes.

JOGS: Can I join you?

BOOBS: Sure. At the rate you’re going, you won’t get to hit this for another decade or two, so at least I can give you something for the spank bank.

They leave for the elevator.

SLIM: This place is so much worse than our store. It’s huge and nasty.

PRECIOUS: Yes, Dad’s store never had the overpowering aura of semen that always seems to be lingering here.

SLIM: That’s because we hose down the jackoff booths like a fucking Ebola monkey had been in there.

PRECIOUS: Well, going to those booths is a tremendously exciting experience for some people. They’ve been waiting for days to relieve all this built up—I guess “tension” is one word for it—and anticipating closing the door, sliding a stiff bill into the slot with trembling hands, carefully selecting the channel called “teen” and watching a 23-year-old girl styled to look much younger with plastic butterfly barrettes rub her tight pink hairless pussy through translucent underwear while a man ten years her senior with decent musculature but a paunch expresses his desire to penetrate one or more of her holes with his disproportionately large cock . . .

CHUNKY: What floor are the jackoff booths on?

PRECIOUS: There’s a directory in the elevator.

Chunky hobbles as quickly as he can to the elevator, leaving Precious and Slim alone just outside the “mature” section.

PRECIOUS: So, are you going to help me find discount videos to subversively dub over, or were you in the market for a prostate stimulator or some sort of fucksleeve, or what?

SLIM: Why the fuck are you dubbing porn?

PRECIOUS: It’s for school, of course.

SLIM (sarcastically): Sure.

PRECIOUS: What, you think I’d be embarrassed to buy porn for any other reason? I’m all for embracing the liberatory potential of sex publics in all its messy contingencies. If you like fisting, buy or find a fist. Rimming? Find a disinfected asshole. Edgeplay? I don’t really know what that means, but I’m all for it as long as it’s consensual.

SLIM: I’m surrounded by this shit all the time. . . . I don’t know.

PRECIOUS: Maybe you need to find your niche. Enjoy your fetish. The discount wall has all sorts of shit, possibly including shit itself.

Slim is hesitant. Precious leaves him to contemplate and starts browsing the sale wall.

END OF PART ONE