Oh my God. I had an absurdly good meal at 8 Oz. Burger Bar this evening. I’ll post the pictures and describe the tastes later, I’m still full and haven’t found quite the right words to describe it yet. Then I came home and found out one of the restaurant’s co-owners was recently arrested on charges that he may have intentionally caused a woman to have a miscarriage by “placing an unspecified powder in the pregnant woman’s vaginal area.” So he killed a fetus. If you told me right now that the hamburger I ate tonight was actually a fetus, I wouldn’t bat an eye. It was that good.
Alas, as my dear friend Z likes to say, “you write about food too much.” Well, fuck you, Z. I’m sorry I haven’t liked a new band since college, so I’ve adapted to write about other things. I still make top ten lists every week, though. Or at least I try to. Speaking of which, today is Friday. In honor of it being the day of the week when I always post a new original top ten list, here’s a new original top ten list for you to enjoy.
The Top Ten Ways To Enjoy Boredom
10. Set something on fire – Say you’ve come home after a long day of work, and you have nothing to do. You’ve checked your mail, you’ve microwaved an unhealthy dinner, and you don’t have television or Internet service at the moment because some hoodrat down the street shot up a rival gang member’s car and it took out a power line. In all likelihood, you’ll be bored pretty soon. Remember how when you first walked in and you kicked your shoes off? What do you think they’d look like if you set them on fire? How about that old radio receiver you’ve been planning on fixing for months now? Do you think all the wires, inductors and capacitors you could burn! Maybe you’ll smell some new smells and hear some new sounds! If you can find something in your apartment, odds are you can set it on fire, too.
09. Write a pornographic movie script – Everyone always jokes about just how bad the dialog in porno films really is. Why don’t you do something about it then, Mankiewicz? Let’s see you write the dialog that is intelligent enough to bring two complete strangers together to fuck each other’s brains out. Let’s see you create a story arc that successfully weaves itself through one scene where a black guy is hate-fucking a white bitch in her ass, and another where a barely legal whore takes two dicks in her pussy!
08. Create a card game – Poker, War, Blackjack, Hearts, Solitaire…they’ve been around forever. Sure you could be content to sit alone with your miserable life playing the same stale card games that have been around since the dawn of man…but what if you started a new game. We all saw how in the major motion picture BASEketball two guys with no skills and no intelligence created a game that became more popular than America’s sporting pastimes, so why can’t you rouse yourself from boredom by creating an entirely new game out of a deck of 52 playing cards. Bonus points if you find a use for both Jokers and any of those extra cards that give instructions or ordering information for more decks of playing cards.
07. Start your own self-help clinic – Much like writing a pornographic screenplay, you always hear people commend themselves for being really good listeners as well as great advice-givers. Why don’t you put your skills to the test. Take out an ad in a local magazine or newspaper and build yourself up as a crisis counselor or self-help expert. Then sit around waiting for people to call you with their problems, and see if you can actually fix them. Or, do the opposite. Be the guy who wants to send a person to their doom. It’s your service, you can be the one to decide whether you want to help or hurt people. Flip a coin for all I care, either way it would probably be a really great way to spend hours being alone and bored.
06. See how long you can hold your breath – Supposedly the world record for holding one’s breath is in the vicinity of 20 minutes. If you want to make a name for yourself, you will beat that record. Oprah will have you on her television program. You can carry a gun with you, kidnap her and demand a huge ransom, because Oprah controls 80% of the entire world’s wealth. Start by holding your breath for thirty seconds and work your way up to 20 minutes. If you accidentally pass out, you’ll probably just wake up a few minutes later and have a good laugh. I doubt you can seriously hurt yourself by trying to hold your breath. Variations on this theme include: see how long you can go without peeing, see how long you can go without speaking, see how long you can go without thinking, see how long you can go without thinking about sex, see how long you can go without scratching an itch.
05. Try to mate various insects you find around the house – What if you found a housefly in your kitchen, and put it in a confined space with a cricket or a centipede. And what if you found a way to spray some insect pheromones into the space. Do you think you could breed hybrid insects? I don’t know how their DNA works, so I can’t say for certain that it’s possible to mate bees and spiders, but if you could find a way to make it work, I’ll bet you could make a lot of money. Especially when you consider how many people there are in the world who are afraid of bees and spiders. Selling beeders (or spees, or spides, or spies!) to their friends would probably net you a hell of a lot of money.
04. Write a song for your celebrity crush – When I was in high school I recorded an entire album of songs for my celebrity crushes. The cassette was called “Songs For Girls I Want To Fuck,” and goddamn if I can’t find that thing. The most popular tune I wrote was called “Amy Smart,” and it actually reached a respectable chart position on the old MP3.com website back when I was 16. The lyrics went like, “You made that Dawson’s Creek kid look pretty dumb / His southern accent sucked, he fooled almost no one / You played a straight-A whiz at a school called Cornwall / In Outside Providence…at least it wasn’t football.” Other tracks were called, “Jennifer Connelly,” “Kirsten Dunst” and “Denise Richards.” If I were to write a song about Kiki Dunst now, it’d probably be about her pebble teeth and her clammy, pale complexion. Also, if I wrote about sexy young actresses these days and how much I wanted to sleep with them, I might end up with some new restraining orders to add to my collection. Instead, its your turn!
03. Steal something – You don’t have to stay at home when you’re bored. You can walk out the door and pretty much go anywhere you want. A mystery drive isn’t by definition something that you do when you’re bored, so I can’t really include that in the list, for it is something we do when we are compelled by forces greater than ourselves. How about you try to steal something. Lots of us are scared to walk down to the corner store and steal a croissant, because it’s morally wrong and also there could be legal issues if you get caught. I’m not telling you to go out and steal something, I’m just suggesting you might want to test yourself if you’re bored to see if you have the mental fortitude and spryness necessary for stealing something. Whether it’s a Slim Jim from your local 711, or a flat panel LCD television from the home of a wealthy neighbor…make your boredom a little more productive and take an object that doesn’t belong to you.
02. Draw all your exes’ genitals from memory – I can’t believe it took me eight ideas to think of this one. This is a superior idea. One of the best I’ve ever had. I’m going to play this game the next time I get bored. I’m going to go down the list of every vagina I’ve encountered, and then try to draw them from memory. It will undoubtedly lead to uncontrollable laughter, because I possess no drawing talent and I have a horrible memory. I’ll be sure to share all my drawings with you once they’re done. Holy shit, I’m actually excited about the next time I’m bored. I hope it happens soon, I’ve got vaginas to draw!
01. Start a blog – It’s what I did one day when I was in college and I didn’t have any more painkillers to take. Now, almost five years later, I’m still going strong. Had I thought at the time that I would still be updating this page almost every day nearly five years after graduating from college, I would have tried a few more numbers to try and get more painkillers, because blogging is seriously hard work. I have to worry about writing really fresh and interesting stories, I have to make sure I don’t recycle too many one-liners and zingers, and most importantly I have to stay abreast of what is popular in music and television and movies so that I can pretend that I want all those people to die in fiery plane crashes with impacts so deafening and violent they actually reincarnate the souls of dead artists who actually possessed more than just a modicum of talent.
Emeralds – Geode
The Residents – My Second Wife
Sister Roseetta Tharpe – How About You?
