Something that is awesome:

Making yourself some strong tea to power through a paper at the last minute, and getting so absorbed in what you're writing that you forget to finish the tea, and then finding out twelve pages later that you still have a gulp or two left, and the bag has just been sitting in it for two and a half hours, and all the sugar has collected at the bottom; then drinking those last gulps and feeling like you can fly.

Oh my Jeebus. How delightful. After I finish these last pages I'm going to go box the first person I see on the street. Whoever it is, she's getting her ass kicked.

If I Could Be a Cartoon Character (Full)

(This is an expanded version of something I used on an app for a Columbia orientation program...but this version's flawless.)

If I could be any cartoon character I’d be Tommy Pickles (early nineties Rugrats, none of this All Grown Up crap.) Now I know what you’re thinking: Who would want to be a toddler? Well look past the walking-around-in-piles-of-your-own-feces situation and the demeaning dependence on bottled formula (breast feeding is for chumps, not for TV-G) for a minute and you’ll see.

Tommy had the ideal life. To start with, he was completely cognizant of his surroundings. Sure, he couldn’t talk to adults, but who needs them? They’re like kidneys. Wait, no, what’s that organ? The appendix, right! He could understand these tall creatures, and if he wanted to communicate he could speak with his friends or that clever swindler Angelica.

The best part of Tommy’s life, though, was his blissful ignorance. Knowledge is the most addictive metaphor of a drug available on the streets today. It’s a lot like crack, only you don’t have to go to Holyoke to get it. Once you get a taste of knowledge you need to know more and more. Once you have it you want to use it to help people and make the world a better place. If you’re completely immoral you can also use it to make a ton of money by screwing thousands of innocent people (see: Lay, Kenneth.) The downside of using this knowledge, however, is that everyone eventually discovers that there are so many terrible problems, which will never be even close to solved in our lifetimes.

Kenneth Lay's face can be found under "douchebag" in the dictionary. If it's not, you're reading the wrong dictionary.

Tommy Pickles doesn’t have to be overwhelmed with the terrors of our modern world. He is unaware that he is powerless to stop the millions dying of AIDS in Africa. He doesn’t worry about the institutional oppression that will one day prevent his friend Suzie from obtaining any sort of position of power, despite her superior intelligence. He doesn’t even have to worry about the fact that making real global impact requires the aid of multiple corrupt governments and corporation, which do everything in their power to hinder real social progress.

No, Tommy Pickles is focused on solving the little problems in life. He knows that if he can unravel one mystery, set right one injustice, that he can rest peacefully at night. Sometimes he’d also sleep peacefully during the day too. I miss nap time.

But why be Tommy and not one of his three pals? It’s simple. Chucky is always scared and overwhelmed by everything, exactly what I’d want to avoid. Every time the rugrats set out to do something Chucky overloads and tries to convince them not to. He’s a lot like the French, but only in the sense that he stands in the way of progress. Phil and Lil are the opposite. They’re always up for adventure, but they are simple thrill-seekers. They also eat worms, which is pretty gross when you think about it. Tommy is the leader of the group though. It is his sense of curiosity and right and wrong that led the toddlers to each discovery and accomplishment.

Of course, it’s not desirable to always be Tommy Pickles. If we all chose not to recognize the world’s most serious problems then we would have no desire to bring about change. There are moments, however, that I wish I could forget all that I’m helpless to solve both in everyday life and the greater world, and just focus on one, small, tangible thing.

Feminists: Grow a Pair

I'm a person with certain principles. I don't have many, but those I do hold I hold dearly and resolutely. For that reason I place a great deal of value on following through on a belief. This is why I love some feminists, and really disike others. The feminists I like are ugly, smelly, obnoxious, and embittered. The feminists I dislike are all others.

I honestly have a great deal of respect for someone who will make a concerted effort to destroy whatever attractiveness she possesses, all in the name of combating sexism. I'm serious. I think that's really commendable. Most people don't have the courage to do that. I'm sure there is a minority of women who have the misfortune of being ugly, smelly and obnoxious by genetics, not choice, but that doesn't diminish their accomplishment. After all, they're still bitter, and bitterness takes training. Trust me. I know. Nobody is born bitter.

Feminists who relish in their socially unacceptable image are the only real feminists. All the others are half-assed hypocrites, trying to have it both ways. A woman who dresses to impress men and demands to be taken seriously as a non-sexual being is essentially the same thing as a communist who wants to own property. It's a contradiction of ideology. If you want to end sexism, you can't want to be sexy. If you want to end capitalism, you can't want to have capital.

Call me cynical (and look like an idiot doing it) but I really don't think sexism can end until people stop using sex appeal as currency. Most so-called feminists simply aren't willing to do that. Almost nobody, male or female, is willing to do that. Why should we? Sex appeal is the best currency ever. It makes some people happy, enslaves most, and drives other to depression and suicide. It's got its own exchange rates from culture to culture, and even follows a pattern of inflation. It's just like money, only it's natural. Also, it has STDs, which are a lot like taxes. I say we embrace sex as currency and center our educational system around teaching people how to avoid its taxes. We really won't need to change much. Instead of math and economics, just teach kids to put on condoms. The failure rate of condoms is much less than High School dropout rates. This idea is great for everyone.

The people who benefit most from this idea will be the feminists themselves. They won't have any more phonies padding the ranks. All the girls who want to profit from sex will become enterprising, socially-acceptable prostitutes. The ones who want radical change will become ugly social outcasts with promising futures in shitty literature. The rest will just go on living their lives without thinking about it. Really, things will be more or less the same as they are now, only people won't try to deny where they stand, and everyone will quit bitching about it.

And wouldn't that be nice?

In the trees, you answer to NO ONE

Have you ever read that book called My Side of the Mountain? At my elementary school it was sort of required reading, along with Hatchet, On Guerilla Warfare, and everything ever written by Ayn Rand. Anyway, the book was about some misanthropic Boy Scout who decides to run away from home and live in the woods, evidently because his dad said he wouldn't be able to do it. I can only remember parts of it, but I seem to recall the kid befriending a truck driver and a hawk, which may or may not also have been a truck driver, and basically kicking all kinds of ass out in the wilderness while living in a tree. At the time I liked it a lot. But not anymore. That kid was a pussy.

When I tell you the kid lived in a tree, what do you envision? If you're like me, you immediately think of some rugged guy in an elaborate Swiss Family Robinson/Ewok Forest City, basking in the canopy and stroking a yard-long beard as he blows smoke rings from a pipe made from the femur of a grizzly bear. That is living in a tree. What this kid did was bullshit. He just slept in the hollowed out trunk. He was still on the wet, stupid, smelly ground. What a wuss. Even a girl could do that.

This kid really got it wrong. Why live in the woods if you aren't going to live in a tree? That's like going to the bathroom just to piss on the floor. I just don't get it. I mean, the kid was smart enough not to be a monkey, but not smart enough to act like one. And you know what else? After a few months he just left. He got sick of the woods and returned to civilization, and I think he ended up going to Brown.

But I'm not that stupid. When I go live in a tree, I'm going to do it right. I'm going to the redwoods.

I was watching the Colbert Report the other day, and, as usual, the guest was some old fart who looked like he just slithered out of a week-long adult swim fiesta at the municipal shit pool. But I immediately felt like an ass for thinking that, because he turned out to be awesome. He wrote a book about these yuppies who like to scale redwoods, because evidently they couldn't find any good yoga centers in the middle of the friggin' forest. As I understand it, the book is mostly erotica, but it's also got some cool information about the secret world of the redwood canopy that I've been try to tell people about ever since Ferngully came out. Only it turns out I was wrong about the fairies. There aren't any fairies. (Yet.)

Anyway, here is some of the information he had to share:

1. Nobody knows anything about the tops of redwoods, because almost nobody has the balls to climb up them.
2. The flora and fauna up there aren't even known to science yet, which means the names of all the little critters there are up for grabs.
   
3. Trees actually grow on trees. That's just cool.
   
4. Some trees have giant caves in them from ancient forest fires, and that means there are probably tree-bears just waiting to be battled. I bet they're green. If I find them first I can name them, too. I'd call them Bitchettes.
5. The animals in the trees have never seen the ground, and have never seen humans, which means they haven't developed the instinct to avoid us. That means I can both befriend the flying squirrels and easily catch and eat them.
6. The network of branches means that you can travel hundreds of miles without touching the ground using only a grappling hook.
   
7. The best parts of the trees are out of sight from the ground and the air above, which means nobody will find you up there and you can play music as loud as you want.
   
8. In the trees, there's no country.
9. No religion, too.
   
10. And the best part of all? Free wireless internet.

In short, it's paradise. So I'm going to live there. If anyone wants to join me, well, you can't. But I promise I'll write. I guess if in ten, fifteen years you still really care about finding me, you can go ahead and try. Just follow the anguished calls of the tree-bears. I expect it will sound sort of like Eli Moss.

Nike: It's Latin for Asshole

I've worked in a sports store for the past year and a half, and one of the few things I've learned is that Nike is a giant bucket of corporate scum. While you may look at me incredulously as I sit here typing this wearing my $85 Nike dunks, I assure you that I tell no lies. Well, I do tell lies, but I'm not lying about the Nike being scum part. I'm also a hypocrite. I'm also a flaming homosexual. What was I getting at?

Oh yeah, Nike! We recently got a shipment of shinguards from them. These shinguards are 8'' long pieces of plastic. They are shipped in a gigantic cardboard box with metal staples across the bottom. Each guard comes in hard plastic packaging. Each of the hard cases is enclosed in a plastic bag. Each of these plastic bags is placed with 2 more of identically-packaged guards and placed in…you guessed it, another plastic bag.

What do we do with all this plastic? Well what can we do? We take a big plastic garbage bag, put all the other plastic bags in it (yes, the shipment of about 20 shinguards fills an entire garbage bag with plastic) and toss it in the garbage.

Did I mention that this article isn't funny? It's sad. Not sad like The Notebook either, I'm talking real sad. Killing bunnies kind of sad.

Nike knows that plastic will never biodegrade. Nike knows that it
takes oil to make plastic. Nike knows that by packaging their little
$20 shinguards like this they're not only killing the environment
and wasting landfill space, but raising the cost of filling my gas tank to $42.17. I wish that price wasn’t exact.

Is it really important for you to know this about Nike? Not really. You’re better off focusing on the fact that they pay 5-year-olds 3 cents an hour to make your shoes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go jump into my 15 MPG car, order some non-fair trade coffee in a Styrofoam cup and step on the skulls of the less fortunate while spitting on the homeless. I hope you’ve all learned something about environmental ethics.
-EK

Literary Criticism is a WASTE OF TIME

You know who writes literary criticism? People who wish they could write literature.

Sometimes literary criticism can be valuable; an obvious instance is an essay on an obscure but brilliant text that nobody has the patience to read and/or translate (e.g. Greek poetry, anything by Proust, anything written in India). Other times it can be a pretentious waste of time; for instance, anything written about symbolism, through a feminist lens, or about William Carlos Williams*. Often, however, it is worse. It is a morally corrupt exhibit of arrogance, elitism, and pettiness--sort of like everything Roger Ebert does.

Whatever one's opinion of Roger Ebert, it must be said that to his credit,

he has a truly comforting look in his eyes that just says, "Don't worry. I only rape minorities."

You're probably thinking, "Hey, reviewing movies for a living isn't that bad." Well, it is. But that's not what I'm getting at. I'm talking about critics who evaluate, instead of elucidate, great works and great writers--the people who, as Salinger's Franny Glass put it, "try to tear down the giants."

(At this point, if you're wondering who Franny Glass is, just close this page and find a copy of Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, and quit wasting your time on this pointless blahg. I mean it.)

Let's make something clear. It doesn't take a degree in anything to recognize that literature is the written account of the millennia-long dialogue between artists the world, and, even more basically, artists and each other. Renowned critics point this out all the time in convoluted theses as if it took a Ph.D. from Yale to come up with it. In case you were wondering: Yes, 'renowned' in that last sentence was ironic. Nobody cares about critics, except other critics, and students who need to slog through their garbage in order to make a passing grade in a course built around a medium that was originally meant to enrich and entertain. A renowned critic is like an athletic cop--rare and entirely coincidental.

Appearances can be deceiving. In the case of Harold Bloom they are not.

So if literature is a dialogue, what can a critic add to it? Well, same as most of the things I add to real-life conversation: irrelevant tangents, confusion, needless sexual tension, and noise. Basically, people respond to critics in the same way they respond to me. In ascending order of frequency:

"Yeah, we know."
"Mmmbullshit."
"So?"
"Why are you sticky?"

These graphs came from God. The formatting did not.

I think these results are fitting. There is really no reason to take literary criticism seriously, and every reason to suspect it of poor hygiene. I've heard from several reliable sources that homeless people use their pages for crotch padding and to house-break (box-break?) their pet rats. I want to believe this. It would mean at least someone's found a good use for it.

So here's my message to all literary critics and would-be literary critics: nobody is listening. If you want someone to care what you have to say about literature, write some literature. If it isn't any good, don't worry; it just means you don't really have anything to say after all.

Right of What?

In today’s hustle-bustle world of cell phones, laptops and the internets we have to be constantly ready to update our lives. In with the new and out with the old, that’s what I always say. Anything you’ve had for more than two weeks isn’t worth hanging on to. I tried this strategy with dating once and got the clap.

One of the most outdated things in our world today is driving rules. Think about it. We’ve been mindlessly obeying this “stop on red, use blinkers” shit for too long. Well I’m happy to say that recently I’ve seen people take the law into their own hands and change these prehistoric rules to something that fits the modern lifestyle. These new right-of-way rules are, like all new things, much better than the old* (seriously, Jurassic Park 1 – not enough velociraptors, 1st generation Gameboys – didn’t even have color, and does anyone even remember the first two Reichs?)

One of the most common of these neolawisms is the rapid-left-on-green. This is a complex trick in which the driver of a car turning left ever so delicately slams the gas pedal to the floor at the exact second the light turns green in an attempt to make his or her (haha, just kidding) turn before the driver going straight through the light hits him in a totally sweet and hopefully fatal collision. This one is best executed (and I stress that word) without a signal.

Next there is what I have dubbed the “size matters” rule. This is when the driver of an SUV or truck assumes right of way in all situations by citing the “if you get in my way you’ll die” clause (Peter 4:12-13.) Sometimes it can get tough to find a good moment to enact this move, but I assure you the opportunity is always looming in front of you.

Still at a loss for when to try it? Alright here’s a good example: You come to a 4-way stop sign. Under the archaic rules of our Founding Fathers you would stop and let the person who reached the sign first go through. Under the “size matters” rule you take a quick look to see if your car is bigger than the others currently at the intersection. It is? Good, keep going. Don’t brake. Braking is a sign of weakness. Try to keep the car above 50 MPH, because once you’ve hit that speed the bomb is armed and if you slow down the bus will explode.

The final rule I care to talk about today is the “cell phone > laws” rule. There’s no word to describe this other than “fucking great.” I’m aware that “fucking great” is, in fact, two words, but that’s how awesome this little maneuver is. Pretty much this one says that when you’re on your cell phone you have the right to do whatever the fuck you want. And I mean anything. Try it out! Drive through a red light! Turn British and drive in the other lane! Ever drive at night with your lights off? I call it “Funsploring.” Now remember with this one, cell phones can do a lot of things besides call people. Why not try text messaging? How about playing Tetris? The possibilities are endless!

So faithful young drivers, let’s get out there and show the road who’s boss! We’re not going to sit around and follow the driving rules put into place by ancient and mythical men such as Benjamin Franklin, Socrates and Jean-Jacque Rousseau (that’s French for ‘Don’t-Want Shower’.) The choices we make are our own and we’ll be damned if “the threat of imminent death” is going to stop us!

* If I have to tell you not to try these you should probably just go die in a car accident.

-EK

Senior Year is Amazing

Everyone needs to know this.

It's been a secret for too long.

Senior year is the best year of your life. Your whole life. It's better than the last year, where you're so close to death you spend most your time watching the Price is Right and tripping on DMT. It's better than the first year of marriage, when you basically have a lot of sex and burn out all the emotional currency you've been given to last a lifetime. It's better than the age of four, which, as I recall, involves shameless nose-picking, awesome cartoons, and soccer as it was truly meant to be played. Senior year is better than all of these.

I'll be honest. The best part is the sex. Think of the most dispicable fantasy you've ever had. Now multiply it by two and add in a tub of rubber gloves. It's that good. Basically as a senior you can walk down the hall, point your finger at any underclassman, do the tiniest of pelvis jabs, and you've got someone to objectify for as long as you fancy. It's that easy. And the best part is how the absolute casualness of sex makes it really meaningful. There's no more of that grimy emotional babble leading up to it. Sex is just sex. Imagine eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. How sweet is that? It's like sex, practically. Now imagine eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made out of paper. That's sex in a relationship. Paper is for writing. Sandwiches are for eating. I don't know what I'm talking about. I lick toasters.

This afternoon I took a nap and had a dream about the night sky suddenly flickering and turning off, and then the giant image of a black woman's face with a earpiece stretched across the entire black expanse, like an impossibly large television monitor. "Wow, um, sorry about this," she said. "I'll turn down the lights and, uh, thicken the atmosphere, I guess. Don't worry." Then she disappeared. Dark fog spread over the empty place where the sky had been. She didn't want us to see what had been behind there. Everyone panicked. I sensed this although I was alone on a deserted island somewhere due south of Japan. Then the monitor in the sky turned on again and I could see the face of a young white man. He made me think of Emperor Augustus. "Hello everbody," he said. "Just stay calm. This will all be over in a minute--" then he stopped. The voice of an old man came from off screen and the young man's eyes grew wide. The old man was saying, "Sir, our scanners indicate a person on the Isle." The young man spoke up again in a soothing voice, speaking only to me. "Please stay right where you are. This is a delicate situation. Near you should be an old wooden chest and a metal sphere. Please do not touch either. I need the chest for my own purposes. It's one of the originals. I, uh...carved it...myself. Just stay there." Then he stood up and the screen went blank. I walked over to the sphere. I had the sudden urge to destroy it. I lifted it. It was heavy. I carried it over to the chest, dropped it, and opened up the lid. It started to vibrate and tick. I was scared. I put the sphere inside and shut the lid, then lifted the chest over my head and hurled it into the ocean. Just as I did I saw lights coming over the horizon. Then everything went white.

Did you know rabbit meat has been known to cause hallucinations? The finest rabit meat comes from the Southwest United states. The rabbits there like to feed on peyote seeds. I found this out. I found it out a while ago.

Bitter Rantings of the Real Eli

Everyone’s always going on about how great senior year is. You’ve all heard the speech. “Yeah man, it’s great. You don’t have to do any homework, there are parties all the time and girls flock to you like burnt-out celebrities to Scientology.” What a crock of shit.
The closer we get to the end of senior year the more I can feel my once shining beacon of a soul sinking into the vacuous abyss of mediocrity. With this in mind, I thought I’d spend some of my last few miserable moments in high school dispelling some myths and wallowing in self-pity.
First off, let’s talk about homework. I’m not going to lie, as a senior, I do less work than a Frenchman on Bastille Day. Boy does that give me a whole lot of free time. Just think of all the ways I can spend it! Seriously…just think for a second, because I’ve been at a complete loss all year. In all honesty, I spend most of my time watching Nickelodeon and beatin’ it (although never at the same time.)
Alright, so the only thing you have to look forward to during the week is sleep. That’s not all that bad, is it? There’s always the weekend. Let me tell you about all the crazy ’07 parties there are. Just give me a second to think of one. Hey! Don’t stop reading, seriously, I’ll remember one soon. What? You’re leaving? Damn!
Let’s face it, the class of 2007 at ARHS is no partying bunch. Well, unless your idea of a party is a handle of Popov vodka, a 2-liter of coke and a few tabs of rohypnol (I’m not naming names, I’m just pointing fingers.)
Well, let’s brush aside the whole party catastrophe for a minute and we’ll talk about the girls. Yep, getting girls as a senior guy is about as easy as picking out lesbians at Smith College. Well, maybe that’s pushing it a little. The point is you have your pick of the cream of the crop, lines upon lines of gorgeous, interesting, 15-year-old girls. Wait? Did I just say 15-year-old girls? Oh shit, that’s right, they are 15! Well that’s a tough one. Personally, I like to know that something (no, I don’t mean “someone”) has hit puberty before I put any sort of appendage into it, but some people just can’t afford to be picky these days. Oh well, you can always try to pry an older one away from the 22-year-old UMass kid they’re putting out for. Oh, did I forget to mention that even though you’re older the girls aren’t any less crazy? My bad.
Well fuck, is there anything to like about senior year? If you have any sort of personality then the sad answer is no. Eventually everyone discovers that they are surrounded by idiots, who think that the cleverest idea ever for a senior prank is covering our school in graffiti and cutting down a tree outside the cafeteria (granted, those trees smell terrible…yet strangely familiar. Hmm…) On that note, I wish a happy senior year upon the entire class of 2008 and I bid farewell to my classmates in 2007, because let’s face it, are any of us really ever going to come back to Amherst?
- EK