It’s easy to conceive of socks as being members of a pair, since we have two feet and each sock is its own separate entity. Meanwhile, I can’t say I’ve ever encountered an underpant as detached from its pair. I’m not even sure what underpants are supposed to be pairs of. Are you seriously telling me a single underpant would just be one leg hole? I’m not even going to attempt to visualize such a retarded garment.

As a rule of thumb, if you can’t separate something, it’s not a pair. I don’t really care how many sides of your ass it covers. Like we don’t call a hat a “pair of hats” just because it’s placed above both your ears. Nor should we should call a pair of underpants anything but an underpant. From now on, if you say you’re wearing a pair of underpants, you’re wearing two separate underpants, one over the other, like a little baby afraid of making an accident. Also, if you say you’re wearing a pair of hats, you’re only wearing one hat. I’m pleased to announce that hats will now be called pairs of hats.

I haven’t figured out what the animal cracker industry is hoping to accomplish by claiming to make crackers, but they’re obviously up to something. All I know is that molding crispy sugar cookies into the shapes of zoo animals doesn’t magically transform them into crackers. And even if it did, how about those animal crackers coated in pink icing? Still going to claim those are crackers, are you? OK, then I guess I’ll just sit here spreading Brie over this fucking icing-drenched kangaroo. Don’t insult my intelligence, Nabisco.

The only viable explanation is that “animal cracker” is just a pejorative way to describe their tan coloring. When I eat animal cookies I like to say, “Get your cracker ass over here. You think I’m going to let you stay in that menagerie all day? Animal cracker, please.”

Just because the face of a clock is oriented so that 12 is the start of a new day doesn’t mean 12pm has the right to follow 11am. Where I come from, you don’t count up a series of something and then randomly switch units. If one begins a sequence of AM hours in a base-12 numbering scheme, one would eventually expect to arrive at 12am. But you get to 12 and all of a sudden PM bursts in all like, “Who wants lunch, bitches?” Where the fuck did you come from? What have you done with 1pm through 11pm? Oh, you mean to tell me we’re going to count through those hours now? After we’ve just put up with 12pm’s childish antics? Go fuck yourself, time.

The other weekend I watched San Francisco’s Chinese New Year parade. It was a cold and rainy night, but a little freezing drizzle is fitting initiation for the year of the rat, who is a creature of the sewer.

My camera was accidentally set on “make everything look blurry and shitty” mode, so the following snapshots come courtesy of my friend Anders’s iPhone. That might also explain why some of the photos seem to convey a false sense of superiority.

(Continued)

Cabbage Patch Kids were marketed as being available for adoption, but I don’t think adoption had anything to do with it. Putting a baby up for adoption is an agonizing process, often the end result of an unplanned pregnancy. It has nothing to do with growing fields of cabbage children. I’m not sure what the fuck you’d call that, but it’s not adoption.

The real question is, why are you planting so many crops of babies if you can’t take care of them? Here’s a solution to your baby surplus problem: stop farming fields of babies. Try growing corn or potatoes or something halfway normal. Our world is overpopulated enough without your plantation of hybrid vegetable babies. Or maybe you’re claiming these children grow naturally in the wild. Fine—then leave them there. You’re not meant to adopt wild animals. You’re meant to hunt them down.

I used to think it was outrageous that two people saying something simultaneously should be grounds for a jinx. Whenever somebody jinxed me, I would be all, “What the hell, man? We said the same thing because we’re on the same page here. Why am I being punished with a fucking curse?”

I now realize that jinxing was invented because we need a game to break the tension inherent in this situation. Imagine saying “I’m thirsty!” in unison with your friend, except neither of you has the power to jinx. You would both just kind of stand there and awkwardly laugh due to how stupid your lives have suddenly become. There’s actually no graceful way out of this situation. Jinxing may sound childish, but it’s a choice between that or the two of you spontaneously making out.

Where I draw the line is the idea that now I somehow owe my friend a Coke, because I don’t. It’s like, “You’ve just pinched me and poked me—I’ve been publicly humiliated for absolutely no reason. Under no circumstances am I going to take you out for Cokes.” It’s such an insane ritual, too, because nobody in the history of jinxes has actually collected on their Coke. I probably owe about $3,000 worth of Cokes right now, and there’s no need for it. How in the hell did Coke even become involved with this bullshit?

Researching frivolous subjects on Wikipedia is a hobby of mine, so I consulted their (largely retarded) jinxing article. I didn’t find anything close to resembling an answer, but I did come across the following intriguing excerpt:

A variation experienced in Southern Massachusetts in the 1960s may not be strictly considered a “jinx,” but when two people say the same thing in unison (unplanned!), they must hook little fingers and say the following dialog: “What goes up the chimney?” “Smoke.” “May your wish and my wish never be broke!”

That’s probably the cutest thing I’ve ever read. I imagine two grown men hooking their pinkies together and excitedly breaking into this little exchange. To me this is way more positive than demanding a Coke from your friend and beating the shit out of him. It’s a chance to share a wish! The next time an acquaintance and I speak in unison, I’m going to begin reciting this routine, because it’s the perfect way to avoid any lingering awkwardness. Hopefully all my acquaintances are familiar with proper jinxing protocol from 1960s Southern Massachusetts, or else I’m going to look like a real asshole.

One of my top dreams would be to travel across the United States and write a travelogue, which is a publishable written record of one’s travel observations. I would traipse around the US with a little bag like a modern day Felix the Cat and I would have very famous adventures. In a very special way, during the course of my journey I’d probably even discover my true spiritual identity. The problem is, if you’ve ever read a travelogue you’d notice most of them have some sort of distinguishing premise. You can’t just amble about willy-nilly—your travelogue needs a clever selling point or else nobody’s going to publish it. For many months I’ve been trying to think of an idea, but so far these are the best I’ve come up with:

• Navigating America’s Highways Without Using MapQuest

• 50 States, 50 Silly Hats

• Visiting North America’s 5,629 Walgreens

• Sled, White, & Blue: A Pilgrimage to the Finest Sledding Slopes in the United States

• My Routine Flight to Hartord, Connecticut

• Let’s Just See What Happens If I Travel Completely Naked

Most of my college notebooks are filled with pages upon pages of incoherent text and doodles—markings which were not only irrelevant to the subject matter of my classes, but often irrelevant to anything that has occurred in the past 12,000 years of civilization. Today I’ll present to you a perfect example: my famous series of so-called “Postmodern Mazes.”

Postmodern Mazes are some of the most challenging mazes ever created. They are so difficult, in fact, that I’ve had to barricade them behind a jump. If you are under 18 years of age, do not attempt these mazes. If you have a heart condition, for the love of god do not attempt these mazes. If you are currently pregnant, please don’t even look at these mazes. Pregnant mothers exposed to Postmodern Mazes may give birth to an agent of darkness. Everyone else, continue along:

(Continued)

The phrase “it’s my Friday” is thrown around a lot of times it shouldn’t be—which is any day that isn’t actually Friday. For example, oftentimes when a person has Friday off from work, on Thursday he’ll announce, “Today’s my Friday! Yayyy!” No, sir, it’s your Thursday. It’s everybody’s Thursday. The days of the week don’t slide around to satisfy your personal schedule. We would all like to stroll into work on a Tuesday morning sipping a gin and tonic and shouting, “It’s my Saturday night, motherfuckers!” But those of us who’re grounded by a little thing called the calendar know to keep our bottles of gin discreetly tucked away in our desks.

When I become elderly, I’m going to be one of the top elderly people around. That’s because I’ve carefully plotted out which hobbies and behaviors I’m going to adopt, what clothes I’m going to wear, and even what crazy unintelligible things I’m going to mutter. When most people become elderly, they don’t have any kind of game plan. They’ve spent decades preparing for retirement financially, but they’re incapable of assuming a proper elderly disposition. I’m going to avoid this trap by adhering to a very specific chronology:

Age 66: It’s time to start bird watching. If I so much as think I hear a tweet, I’m going to drop what I’m doing and find the corresponding bird, and then I’m going to stand around watching him until dark. I’ll even have a little notebook to keep track of the birds I’ve seen, a list which is going to become gradually more improbable as I descend into senility. I will claim to have spotted extremely rare birds, then birds which are extinct, then fictional species from my favorite movies, then some dinosaurs, and then finally varieties of birds which exist only in my imagination.

Age 70: On my 70th birthday, I’m going to take up bridge in a big way. It’s a complex game, but what the other elderly people around me won’t realize is that I’ll have been secretly reading up on bridge since I was like 40. I’m going to waltz over to the card table and me and my partner are going to absolutely demolish everyone while employing an insane amount of trash talk.

Age 78: You won’t believe how ornate my cane is going to be. It’ll be bejeweled, obviously, and shaped like a dragon’s head at the handle. But where my cane will really stand out will be its rosewood body, which is going to be carved with amazing battle scenes and secret messages and other cryptic flourishes. There’s also going to be a switchblade that flips out from the bottom which I’ll use to stab my detractors.

Age 82: Now it’s time to begin openly cheating at bridge. Actually, I’m going to begin cheating at everything, including board games, bocce ball, dominos, and even jigsaw puzzles. The best elderly people have elements of connivery in their personalties, because to the elderly, everything is a matter of life and death. Young people don’t understand that society’s unspoken rules don’t apply to elderly people, and neither do traffic ordinances or public intoxication laws.

Age 87: I will officially make the switch from giving out candy on Halloween to giving out handfuls of pennies. Some elderly people make the mistake of giving out pennies when they’re 84 or 85, but I think that’s a bit early. At 87, it’s impossible for others to question this sort of bizarre, erratic behavior.

Age 93: As my mobility becomes limited, I’m going to begin collecting postage stamps—massive shitloads of stamps, probably the biggest collection of all time. What’s ironic is that although the stamp is a symbol of communication, I’m going to have begun secluding myself in the attic of my house (which will be filled to the ceiling with garbage). The binoculars from my bird watching days are now going to be used to spy on my neighbors, who will have begun circulating mythical legends about my personal history—legends I’ve been secretly disseminating over the years. Gradually I will become a pariah, spoken of only in hushed tones, feared by children and adults alike—gradually I will become one of the greatest elderly people of all time.