Just The Night Then Day!

Let's say last night you held something in your arms that made you think you'd never held anything in your arms before in your life. No books, no cats, no grocery bags or laundry sacks. Last night was the night you learned what your arms were always meant to do. They were meant to hold something that's naked.

Today you're going to try to find out whether you can hold it again for as long as you can stand, for as long as you can keep from having to go to the bathroom. The answer might of course be "yes, of course" because of course you both know that's as the answer should be. Or the answer might be "no, not right now, not a very good time for me because I'm packing all my things and moving away to Washington State." Or the answer might be -silence-. And some waiting. And forgetting.

How to react:

yes, of course
Wash up, get on a train. Hurry fatso.


no, not right now, not a very good time for me because I'm packing all my things and moving away to Washington State
Say, "Just the night then." Hear, "Just the night then."


-silence-
Wait. A little longer. Say (to empty room), "Just the night then." Wait. Say (to empty room), "Just the night then." Wait. Say (to empty room), "Just the night then." Forget.

Happy Just The Night Then Day!

Where The Fuck Is My Dagger? said the man in the cloak Day!

Leonid Brasche was a Moscow plumber for most of his 20's and 30's. His position called for him to wear a cloak to protect his clothing from sewage should a clogged drain suddenly expel its contents without warning. And he liked to carry a dagger on his person at all times, firstly because it was handy for scraping congealed grime from the inside of drain pipes, and second, because when Leonid was 12 his father was murdered by a man to whom he'd lent some money. Stabbed he was, in the throat, out on the crowded Sunday street right in front of Leonid. His father had just bought bread and cream for that night's dinner. The food was on the ground in the snow. Dark dark blood surged from his father's neck into the white. The bread grew soggy with blood. Leonid stayed by his father until his breathing stopped. Then he ran home to fetch his mother. Not long after, dreams of revenge made him buy himself a second-hand dagger and carry it on his person at all times. He still has the same dagger.

When Brasche entered the spy game, he kept the old cloak because he saw no need to start spending just because he'd gotten a slight boost in pay. Plus, the cloak was helpful for spending nights in shadow. And though he had no real practical use for the dagger (he carried a gun, and he had no clogged pipes to deal with) he continued to keep it somewhere in his pockets. But Brasche was a forgetful man, often making himself late rummaging under seat cushions and into the bottom of desk drawers to locate the misplaced dagger. And many in the office would hear him bellow out his frustration with a "Where the fuck is my fucking dagger godammit!" Heads would turn and they'd see the man in the cloak behind his glass office walls tossing pillows in the air and lifting up chairs before eventually sliding his hand into one last unchecked pocket and retrieving the dagger with a shake of the head. This happened so often that when Brasche showed up to work in the morning, more than one person would shout out a jovial "Eh, cloak n' dagger! How they hangin'?"

And thus the words "cloak and dagger" would forever call to mind the world of international super-spies.

Happy Where The Fuck Is My Dagger? said the man in the cloak Day!

God Is So Into You Right Now Day!

God hasn't been able to take his eyes off of you all night long. Did you see how when that guy shot that arrow straight at your face God real clumsily intervened to make sure it killed the guy you've been sleeping with? And I swear, as soon as you complained of having forgotten to bring a sweater with you on such a chilly night, God made it like ten degrees warmer out. And how about when your mom called to say your grandmom just got up and started walking around her hospital bed, cleaning things. All because you got a little drunk and started crying about how you're scared your grandma might die soon. And you told me yesterday you just wish she would finally die so that you don't have to go visit her no more. You just wanted to cry about something in front of everybody again, didn't you? But God must not have known that because as soon as he saw a tear glint in your eye he made your grandma all better. He's a really chivalrous lover, God. He can't stand to see the girl he loves in the slightest distress. But he's also real jealous I think because he never would have made your grandma all better if he heard us talking the other day. I think God only pays attention to you when you're talking to other guys.

Anyway, you're lucky and I think you should give God some. I'd go crazy to have a boyfriend so into me that he'd, like, alter destiny and shit. I mean, people talk about considering the grand scheme of things. But as long as you have God pining after you, the grand scheme of things is gonna change every time you scrunch your brow.

Just don't play games. If you and God make it work, you're gonna be rich.

Happy God Is So Into You Right Now Day!

Reinvent The Wheel Day!

The wheel we have right now sucks. Reinvent it, goddammit, and this time give it the capacity to love. It's 2003!

Happy Reinvent The Wheel Day!

Waste Away The Day (Like You Have A Choice In The Matter?) Day!

Today, because you really couldn't imagine ever living your life in any other way, you should spend the day doing nothing at all productive and just sort of lay there. After a while, talk to your walls. Say something like, "Hello walls." If the walls say, "What up, ya'll?" or something, congratulations, your life has devolved to such a vague, insignificant existence that your walls perceive you as just another inanimate piece of furniture and so they think it's okay to shoot the shit with you.

Happy Waste Away The Day (Like You Have A Choice In The Matter?) Day!

Young Man, Pollute Me Day!

You like the dirty boy, he smells like laundry and he has a scratch of dried mustard streaking out from the corner of his mouth. He's younger than you, he's not as smart as you, and he doesn't really think he's going to amount to much. Fuck him tonight. Grab him by his belt when everyone else has left the table to smoke and say, "Young man, pollute me."

He won't be very good in bed, but you will feel full with a little boy's late evening filth, the filth that gathers after a day of playing outside, the filth that mothers ask little boys to wash from their hands before sitting down for dinner. You'll get what you want, you'll get to sit across from him next week and look at his raggedy form and think to yourself, "I have his grime inside of me."

He'll complain of hunger early tomorrow morning. Send him out with your key and he will bring you back some bagels. He is obedient. And if he gets coffee for himself or you, he will carry the coffee cup in the bag with the bagels, not caring that his pace will spill the coffee from the little airhole in the lid. And when he pulls the bagels from the bag, the bagels and their wax paper wrappers and the large pile of napkins will all be damp with a large black two sugars.

Happy Young Man, Pollute Me Day!

Your Supervisor Suffers From Pyromania Day!

It hits her every day around 3:30, when everyone else is getting ready for a group yawn. She slams her door shut, draws all the blinds, and then you see her phone line light up. You thought she was just making plans to see whoever she's cheating on her husband with. But she's not, she's very faithful, she's just calling her sponsor.

"I can see the flames flicker Harold. I can see them, Harold. They're just so motherfucking beautiful, Harold."

"Breathe."

Around 4:05 her phone line blinks off. And at 4:15, she comes back out and asks you to retype the memo you typed up earlier in the day. She's very calm then.

"Do you have any corrections?"

"It was fine I just....must have misplaced it."

You can sometimes smell the smoke underneath the sudden gust of air freshener wafting from her office.

While you fetch the memo from your hard drive, she goes to the window and takes sleek breaths, like she's smoking an imaginary cigarette.

She stays at the window until five, when you ask her if she needs anything else, and she dismisses you with a shake of the back of her head. As far as you know, she stays there all night. She did once.

Some nights, she stays until as late as nine or ten, when she's certain everyone has gone and the cleaners have finished their shift. She moves a copier from its spot on the floor and builds a small pile of documents and cardboard paper clip boxes and plastic report covers and a scarf or glove or some other item she might have worn to work that day and she lights a tiny blaze, tall enough get her blood into her ears, but small enough to stamp out after just a few moments before the smoke detectors sound. Then she sweeps the remains and the ash into a small trash bag that she'll toss into a dumpster on her walk home, and she'll slide the copier back overtop the scarred carpet. And the next day she'll know what's under there.

Wreckage. She did that.

Happy Your Supervisor Suffers From Pyromania Day!

If You Lay Down Long Enough, Someone Will Come By And Make Some Tea Day!

Hopeless? Sure! But that doesn't mean you're all alone. You've been staying in bed for a few days because it feels like no one cares if you ever get up and put some clothes on again, but that's right where you should be if you wanna get to the good stuff.

A lot of people don't know this because they get out of bed too soon. They either didn't crash hard enough or they felt guilty about people starving in far off lands so they say "ah fuck it you little baby" and they get out of bed and go to work and try to blend back into society (even though inside they just keep stabbing their own eyes out over and over again).

But you seem like you're in for the long haul. There'll be no get-up-and-go for you because you know for a fact that your pain, though caused by no identifiable occurrance, is the most horrible and sorrowful pain ever felt by anyone ever. A pain more palpable even than that felt by a Dad whose six-year-old just died. You're really sad and you ain't gonna budge.

That's why it's probably gonna happen today. You've stuck it out long enough, and sometime near evening there'll be a knock on your door. Obviously, you won't answer. So the door will just creak open and instead of it being your roommate asking if he can borrow your roll-on deodorant again, you'll see poke through the doorway the face of a mother.

Not your mother, mind you. The mother will look like either Vanessa Redgrave or Brenda Blethyn in Lovely And Amazing. The mother will shine her smile down upon you and say, "Are your dreams so entertaining that you'll not be coming down for dinner again tonight?"

You'll stay put (don't give up now), and you'll stay there on your side with your back to the mother who is opening up the blinds over the windows. You can't see her, but when there's a silence in the room, you can be certain she is standing in the middle of the floor with her head tilted to her right shoulder, offering the most sympathetic pout for her little baby. Then she stoops by your bed, kisses you on the back of the head, and she whispers to your hair, "I'll make us some tea. I haven't seen you in a while kiddo."

YES!

You pulled it off. In a few minutes you're going to be sitting up against your pillows and listening to the mother tell an inspiring story about how when her deceased husband (not your father, he looked like either Brendan Gleeson or a really old, fat Robert Sean Leonard) first met her, he was an awkward rude GI looking for a bed in her father's (not your grandfather, he looked like either Max Von Sydow or Jason Robards before he died) hotel in Holland. And he ate three dinners with the family before he asked her father if her could take his daughter back to the United States and make her his wife. He promised her father that she would never have an unhappy day for as long as she stood by his side, and he kept that promise.

When the mother finishes her story and her tea, she'll leave your apartment. That's your cue to get out of bed and try to find out where folks might be drinkin tonight.

Happy If You Lay Down Long Enough, Someone Will Come By And Make Some Tea Day!

The Blind Can Love Day!

Blind man walks into a park with a tap tap tap of one of those long plastic things. Blind man smells angry pant of breath from big dog mixed with especially hearty dollop of feminine perfume applied by a blind woman (blind women do that with their perfume) and concludes that said blind woman in same park is about to be attacked by big dog. Blind man on the scent, ya'll.

Tap tap tap goes the blind man into the middle of a jungle jim. The wind is heavy for mid-summer and he got thrown off the scent. But with a vigilant whiff he's back on track and he heads to the Five Corners just off Dog Run where he's certain that not a few feet away from him are a big dog and a blind lady sporting an odor that could only be concocted in the house of Claibourne.

The blind man dives into the airspace where he is certain the big dog is about to take flight straight for the blind lady's neck. He hears a guy say, "the fuck?" just before he thumps to the concrete and immediately lunges into the air from his spot on the ground to bearhug the big dog mid-flight before it can open the poor blind lady's neck.

The blind man grabs only damp summer air and falls back down again.

Tap tap tap goes the blind woman to where she heard the plop of person to concrete and she asks, "Did someone fall?" Blind man shouts, "The dog! The dog!"

Blind man and blind woman hear man say, "He's leashed. Settle down."

After enough seconds pass for a blush to fill a cheek and then fade, the blind man starts to giggle from his spot on the ground and the blind woman joins him with that laugh that only blind people can share, a laugh that says, "Holy shit does does living in a world of pitch black darkness suck or what?"

The laughter subsides and the blind woman gives a tap tap tap of her long plastic thing to the blind man's tummy and she says, "Hey hero. Buy you a beer?"

The blind man and the blind woman have a beer together and they fall in love and stay together for fifty thousand years never for one single second not loving each other with every inch of their long plastic things, and then the blind man dies and the blind woman waits to die for a while, happy that she got to love the blind man for all that time.

Happy The Blind Can Love Day!

The Raven Day!

The raven has been doing nothing but farting and fucking in that tree outside for the past nineteen years you lived in this house and every time you take a broom to the branch it just hops up one branch higher and continues about its business like it's perfectly natural for a raven in a tree to screw in plain sight of your kids and ailing mother-in-law. Shoot it. Blow the little omen-gone-gassy into a big burst of jet black down. And while you're at it, the azaleas haven't exactly been "churchly" of late.

Make all of nature pay.

Happy The Raven Day!

The Counterculture Day!

Today, the counterculture is feeling sleeeeeeeepy. Very sleeeeeeeepy. The counterculture can feeeeel itself falling asleeeeeeep with every word it heeeeears. And when the counterculture hears a snap of the fingers, the counterculture will believe that it is a chicken.

SNAP!

Happy The Counterculture Day!

A Cooperative Former Lover Day!

You slept together a few times, it was neither fantastic nor regrettable, but some words were said afterwards and you both decided it'd be best to cease all contact. Until today. You need his help.

No one knows safecracking better than your former lover. And you need the best. You've got the crew, you can get in and out of the basement no problem. But you need the magic key. You need a safecracker who can open that vault as if the combination was his baby daughter's birthdate. You need that guy you used to fuck for a little while to help you steal an amulet.

When he sees you standing there behind his screen door, that grin will flash across his face, that one that says "Well look who's back for another taste." In one split second, you can tell that there is about a 5% chance of the two of you fucking again before this job's done, and the only way that would occur is if the weather is pretty the night you all pull into the interstate motel you'll be using as your headquarters for the final leg of the job. That's the only night you can foresee having a few hours off. "I've got a job for you," say.

He'll get cocky with something along the lines of, you're offering me an opportunity? You need my help is what it is. I want 20%. You'll counter with 15. Then for the rest of the job, your crew will watch the two of you dance around the barely lukewarm haze billowing between you and think to themselves, "Those two might screw, but would it matter?"

Happy A Cooperative Former Lover Day!

Just Two Young Folks Thinkin Bout The Same Old Thing Day!

That's all. That's why he'll call. Just thinkin bout that thought in your head, the one that takes place with you in his bed. That's all. That's why he'll call. Just thinkin bout you thinkin bout laying down for a while. The only touch between you: your forearm across his belly.

It wasn't him who thunk it. All he was thinkin bout was you thinkin bout him and his smell. The way he chews ice cream. And the way his eyes look when they're only two inches away from yours. That's all. That's why he'll call. "Hello?" "Get your mind out of the gutter and get on a train and bring a lot of beer. We might be in for a while."

Happy Just Two Young Folks Thinkin Bout The Same Old Thing Day!

Cheese And Cigarettes Day!

Today you must only eat cheese and smoke cigarettes until midnight. You may not drink liquid, and you may not put the cheese in between slices of bread to form a "sandwich." You may eat the cheese sliced, or nibble from a large hunk, but by midnight you mustn't have let pass a thirty minute period without having both eaten some cheese and smoked at least one cigarette. If you choose to disobey, Girls Are Pretty has your wife and child and Girls Are Pretty will not hesitate to execute them. Be smart.

Now eat the cheese and smoke the cigarettes.

Happy Cheese And Cigarettes Day!

"Need To Get Out Of City ASAP. Please Help!" Day!

She can't be more than seventeen and she's covered in piercings. She's sitting with her back up against the wall of a bank, her face is in her knees and the sign is propped up against her boots. Just in front of the sign is a coffee cup containing maybe three dollars in change. Go to her.

"Are you in danger?"

No, she'll say.

"Do you have a funeral to get to?"

No, she'll say.

"A wedding?"

No, she'll say.

"The humidity getting to you?"

No, she'll say. Well, kind of, she'll say. But that's not it, she'll say.

"Then what is it? Why do you have to get out of the city so bad?"

Because I just can't take it anymore, she'll say. Please help me, she'll say.

Hold her. Tell her not to cry, that things are going to get better, and explain that you don't give money to panhandlers. You prefer to help the needy via legitimate charitable organizations. Then go to dinner.

Happy "Need To Get Out Of City ASAP. Please Help!" Day!

Dead Birds In The Corporate Plaza Fountain Day!

Get up a couple hours early, go up to your roof and kill five pidgeons with a baseball bat. Bag their carcasses, then go back down to your apartment and change out of your pajamas to get ready for work.

You should get to the office early enough that only a few people might be walking in with you, but not so early as to arouse suspicion from the guards. When you cross the plaza, ready the bag of dead pidgeons so that when you get to the fountain, you can casually walk nearly 200 degrees around the edge, every ten paces tossing a pidgeon into the water with just a flick of your wrist behind your back. When the bag is empty, stuff it into your briefcase and stroll on up to work.

You'll be taking a long lunch today. Leaving early enough to get some food and to secure the bench on the plaza with just that perfect view. And returning late enough to not miss a thing. Just sit back and watch as the secretaries and the middle managers set down on the ledge of the fountain for a nice meal of office gossip and panini, then stand back up when someone notices a bludgeoned pidgeon floating past them. The people a few seats down will wonder what the folks around the bend are looking at, but they won't have to when they spy their very own dead pidgeon swaying past like a elderly person on an innertube. Soon, the ledge will be empty and you'll hear murmurings of "Must be using some chemicals in the water" and "THOSE AREN'T CHEMICALS, THESE PIDGEONS WERE BLUDGEONED TO DEATH! DEAR FUCKING CHRIST ALMIGHTY!" Then work will close early so everyone can group into a pipe weilding mob and band out into the streets to find the motherfucker responsible. Don't join them. Go home and nap some.

Happy Dead Birds In The Corporate Plaza Fountain Day!

Happy As A Schoolgirl Day!

Today, something will come to pass that will make you feel just as giddy and lighthearted as a pretty little, ruddy-faced schoolgirl who shoplifts because she doesn't talk to that many people at school except to say "shut up" when they call her "Lesbionic," and who has been making a habit of downing the wine left in her parents' glasses when she clears the table every night, and who has been coming home later and later from school because she enjoys walking underneath the freeway ramps downtown, where the noise wrings out everything she's made of and fills her up with a steady static machine-made moan, and who didn't eat anything yesterday, and who daydreams about saving all of her classmates' lives when the terrorists bomb the school but just when she thinks everyone's safe and half the school is burning down, someone shouts "Look!" and pounding against the inside of a locked second floor bathroom window is Darrell, the possibly mildly retarded but oh so adorable boy who likes to spit on the schoolgirl's schoolbag when she passes where he and his friends smoke cigarettes after three. And so the schoolgirl scales the drain pipe up to the awning beneath the bathroom window, pulls her scrunchie out of her hair to wrap it around her fist for protection when she punches through the pane of glass and unlocks the lock that Darren didn't think to search for. And the schoolgirl swings over to the side and pulls Darren out and hands him down to the teachers waiting to catch him below. And the schoolgirl kicks herself out away from the building just one second too late when a cloud of fire gasps out to shatter the expanse of windows, and a hero ablaze and cut with shards she tumbles unconscious to the concrete below. When she awakens she is in a hospital bed in the center of her gymnasium and her eyes shiver open to see a 20 foot banner that reads "Three Cheers For Our Hero The Schoolgirl" and everyone starts shouting hip hip hooray and lining up to apologize for being mean to her in the past and to ask her out on dates. Some of the boys get into a fight over her.

Happy Happy As A Schoolgirl Day!

Kissing On The Lips Day!

Kissing someone on the lips is a really fucking stupid idea and you could get your goddamn head blown off for doing it, especially if when you first start to kiss you only have one hand touching the person's hip and you worry that it might seem like you're about to put your hand on the person's ass so you move it further up to just above the waste, and then you realize that the person you're kissing isn't going to back down and you're thinking, "Well fuck if I'm gonna be the one to pussy out of this," even though you are in fact really frightened. But you keep on kissing and then you end up putting your other hand on the person's other side, but after a few seconds you slide that hand slowly down to the person's hip as if to say, "Ass: Mine!" And the person you're kissing is like, "Think I give a shit?" And all of a sudden the two hands that were just on your shoulders are wrapped around the back of your neck and since you're both too stupid to think about your future, SLAM, your bodies squish up against each other in this big huge moomphal of flesh barely protected by dresses and dress pants and you just stand there wriggling and kissing and until you both are like, "Let's stop. We're getting our faces all wet." And so you pull apart just in time to take a nice long lingering gaze down the pitch black barrel of a motherfucking gun. Way to go, dickheads.

Happy Kissing On The Lips Day!

She's A Faker Day!

She's only saying whatever it takes to get you to pull her head to your chest. She's a faker, a cheat, and she'll swindle you into falling for her then she'll look downstage and take a bow. She'll blink her eyes and suck in her lips and start to sing a song to herself as if she forgot that you were around. And she'll call to say she had fun last night but she didn't, she can't, she's a faker.

She's a faker but she can't really be blamed all that much because she never ever felt anything real. She says what people in the movies say and she only cries when someone's around to watch. She's not trying to make money, this isn't a scam, and she doesn't have an ex-husband she needs you to kill. She just wants to walk, talk, laugh, cry, fuck, fight, sing, scream, leave, stay, go, stay please stay for just one more night, just like the people in the movies always do. She's a faker.

Around 10,000 Hours Day!

Today, if you can look back on a time in your life and shudder at the memory or pine for the loss or wonder what he or she is doing right now, that part of your life lasted for around 10,000 hours. Whether it was a marriage, a telemarketing job you couldn't quit, a first date gone perfect or wrong, a shit, or the night's sleep that followed an episode of absolutely and in every way correct sex, it took up around 10,000 hours that you'll never get back again. And all you can do is remember it and either shudder or pine.

Remember, it wasn't twelve years or eight months or "blind since birth," it was around 10,000 hours long. That's all.

Happy Around 10,000 Hours Day!

It's The Girls Are Pretty "Prettygirl Digs Booze" Thursday And Friday!

Prettygirl got way wasted tonight. Jealous? You're jealous.

Friday, July 11, 2003

Plants And/Or Figurines Day!

They were what you focused on whilst getting fucked up the ass. Either two dead plants that you imagined to be having a conversation about whether the war with Iraq was enough of a message, or the nineteen porcelain ballerina figurines surrounding one miniature porcelain world-weary farmer holding a rake. The farmer's shoulders were slumped and he was looking at the sky. And the ballerinas were his forewomen, commanding him to bring life to his scalp-dry soil but no matter how they swayed, how they bounced how they swayed he couldn't. He just couldn't. But the farmer wouldn't cry. Not while he was surrounded by the ballerinas. You knew he wanted nothing more, but his grizzled eyes wouldn't let shine even the sleekest glint of a tear. Not whilst you were getting fucked up the ass. The two plants and all the figurines were on the windowsill. There was a tree outside, but it got cut down because it was sick last fall.

Happy Plants And/Or Figurines Day!

Thursday, July 10, 2003

Perfect Milk-White Skin And A Tan Boyfriend Day!

You really and honestly can't see any reason why you should not take your life tonight because tonight you have absolutely and undeniably perfect milk-white skin. It's all over your body, not the slightest most miniscule flaw from your bottom lip to your anklet. But your boyfriend is tanned (how do some boys tan the way they do?), he is tan and he has a blemish near his ear. And you've spent three months, two days, and the large portion of a beautiful cool summer nighttime pretending it doesn't matter that he has a blemish near his ear but everyone on the commuter transit knows you are quite plainly furious.

Take your life. Forget the months, the nights, the days. The two hours tonight on commuter transit by his side was enough to conclude that the large part of the best of your life has been wasted with his hand on your thigh. Take your life.

Happy Perfect Milk-White Skin And A Tan Boyfriend Day!

Go To Your Roof And Watch The Girls In Their Party Dresses Wait For Their Taxis On The Street Down Below Day!

You thought the new nightclub up the block would bring a bad element to the neighborhood. Namely, an element that is found frequently in nightclubs. Granted, walking home at 11 PM past a lineup of blonde tipped men in open black tops can make you feel sad about being alive sometimes. But then there's 3 AM.

3 AM. When the Girls in the party dresses have decided to get out and get home alone in bed before they have that one last drink that might let them wake up someplace they don't recognize. The pretty Girls in black and white lycra scatter into twos, ones and threes along the block, all furiously hailing down taxis to get off the sidewalk before the drunk boys with the blonde tips start to bellow.

It's the ones in groups of one you watch from your rooftop. The ones whose friends all paired off away from them. The ones who just couldn't say yes tonight. Who smiled at all the hamhanded attempts and handed out the phone numbers, some real, some fake, she can't remember which one's which anymore. The ones who get on their cell phones to cry to their girlfriends or proposition ex-boyfriends or call the sitters to say they're on their way home.

Like that one, in the lime green spaghetti strap mini dress you swear you've seen before. "You must've wore that last week," you say out loud with an exhale of cigarette smoke. She's on the phone dialing the one she's going to think about during her cab ride. You always fell for a girl with something you can't quite place on her mind. And you swear you've seen that lime green spaghetti strap mini-dress before. Then your cell phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Guess who!"

"Oh my God. Are you back in town?"

"I am."

"Are you wearing your lime green spaghetti strap mini-dress?"

"I am. Can you see me?"

"Um...What do mean? Where are you?"

"I'm right outside your building. On 108th and Amsterdam! I'm waving up at your window. Do you wanna let me up?"

"Um...I moved. To...um...to Jersey actually."

So you watch her stop waving then you move inside the stairwell so the two of you can catch up without the risk of hearing the same passing police siren coming through each other's phones. Nice to hear from her but she's still pretty out there. Good thing you "moved."

Happy Go To Your Roof And Watch The Girls In Their Party Dresses Wait For Their Taxis On The Street Down Below Day!

Immerse Yourself And Your Girlfriend In The Christian Faith Day!

Things have pretty much cooled down between you and your girlfriend, and now you're certain that it's only a matter of time and circumstance before she starts cheating on you. But what can you do about it? Girlfriends cheat on boyfriends, they've done it ever since 1996.

But there is a special kind of girlfriend who won't cheat on her boyfriend. She's a christian! And she's been taught that if her skirt ever hits the floorboards of an unknown apartment, she's going to rot in hell when she dies. That'd keep me from handing out my pussy to any pair of khakis with enough spare change to pay for my Michelobe Ultra, lemme tell you Kenneth. Jesus saves.

Christianity will also cut down on your girlfriend's stealing. And I'm not just talking about shoplifting. She'll even believe that taking twenties out of your pants while you're asleep will sentence her to an eternity trying to get a good night's sleep on a bed of hottest hellfire.

But if you really want this to work, you're going to have to pretend that you're way into Christ yourself. A lot of lazy boyfriends have tried to avoid the whole going to church and studying for conifirmation quizzes thing by just saying to their girlfriends, "I sure wish I could honey. But Christianity is a women's religion." Eventually your girlfriend will remember her grandfather saying grace at Thanksgiving or something and she'll know she's been punk'd.

Happy Immerse Yourself And Your Girlfriend In The Christian Faith Day!

Rip It To Pieces! To Pieces I said Day!

You've finished Atonement by Ian McEwan and found it to be quite enjoyable, often moving. Now rip it to pieces! To pieces I said! I said to pieces!

When you're finished ripping Atonement by Ian McEwan to pieces, phone friends to tell them that you've just finished Atonement by Ian McEwan amd found it to be quite enjoyable, often moving.

If a friend says, "I loved that book!" Say, "Mm," and hang up so you can call another friend. If a friend says, "Hey, you think I could borrow it?" Say, "No." If your friend says, "Why not?" Say, "Because I ripped it to pieces! To pieces I said! I said to pieces!"

Happy Rip It To Pieces! To Pieces I said Day!

A Gardenhose Aimed At Your Big Sister Day!

Walking home from the movie your big sister takes you to tonight, you're going to pass some boys in the grade above you who are frightening. When they catch sight of the two of you, the boy who actually lives at the house, having agreed to the dare of "Dude _____ Clemens is wearing a white tee shirt go turn on your garden hose and I bet we'll see nipple yo," will run across the lawn to unravel his father's garden hose, loosen the spigot, and then run for the edge of the lawn and unleash a barrage of water upon your sister's upper frame. True to form, your sister, dripping wet and in fact showing nipple, will march across the lawn to the gathering of boys, and she will bark a great deal, including the following excerpts:

fucking faggot cocksuck

get a good look so you can suck each other's dicks later when you

knew your older brother Reesey and if I told him about this

should fucking...lick yourselves faggots

my little brother

nothing to say? Of course not you little tiny lacrosse

The boys will say nothing, though two of them will look directly at you as you and your sister continue down the sidewalk. The exchange will raise your sister on high in your esteem, and it will leave you terrified of being pummelled for the next two years of high school, though you will in fact graduate unharmed. High school fistfights happen much more rarely than one would imagine. Over 17,000 die every year in grad school fistfights gone wrong, however.

Happy A Gardenhose Aimed At Your Big Sister Day!

Already Been In Love Day!

You remember it seemed like all the booze was free. You remember there was brown hair for as far as the eye could see. And you remember there were always more cats, no matter how many died there were always more cats that the two of you could find in the classified pages. Things were nice.

But it's good you got it out of the way. If you were still in love, or if you fell in love again, you'd probably never get around to refastening the shelves that fell off the bathroom wall last winter you'd be so happy. And you might not be taking the steps you're currently taking in an effort to become as famous as God. Also, you would be able to pretty much kiss your teeth bleaching regimen goodbye. Everything would be headed straight into the shitter.

Lot's of people think that true love only comes around once in a lifetime. It does. You don't have to worry about that anymore. Now go buy a television!

Happy Already Been In Love Day!

Where You're From Day!

Today, you were born on an intercontinetal flight, halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. Your mother was being deported back to Brussels after your father was secretly executed by the NSA. In the dimmer hallways of American National Security, it was understood that the death of your father meant life for the status quo of misinformation. But your mother made a stink as to his disappearance, and she made headlines. The issue of your father's little girl and her inevitable vengeance against her father's assassins was something no one wanted to chance. But murdering your mother before you were born was considered far too high profile a disappearance. The louder she screamed, the more her name appeared in the papers. If she went silent, there would certainly be an inquiry.

So they decided to make it harder on you by forging some documents to get your mother's citizenship called into question. You were not to be born on American soil. But your mother, a clever woman, bore down a thousand miles offshore, which is why your manifesto, issued from whatever bunker has been harboring you and published by an underground and now-defunct publisher, is titled "I Have No Country."

Tomorrow, you're from Dayton again.

Happy Where You're From Day!

Elevator Action Day!

When you finally arrive at the 21st floor, the doors to the elevator will spread and the gunman will immediately open fire. So right now, you should climb up through the emergency hatch in the ceiling of the elevator. Do it now.

Do you have stable footing on the roof of the car? Great! Get yourself as close to the wall of the shaft as you can without getting snagged on anything jutting out from the wall as the car rises. Once you come to a stop, wait for the gunman to let loose with his barrage of bullets, then waste no time climbing up onto the foot-ledge of the exit to the floor just above you. Once he stops shooting, he'll realize the only way you could have escaped is through the hatch, so he will first shoot up at the ceiling of the car, which is why it is important for you to get on that foot-ledge. That is too tough an angle for him to hit you. And, it will give you a positioning advantage when he climbs up through the shaft after you so you can jump down and snap his neck before he even sees where you were hidden.

Okay, did the gunman open fire? What do you mean, No? He had to have.

You're on the ledge of the exit to the 22nd floor right? Where's the car now? It went back down to the first floor? Oh fuck. And the gunman never opened fire?

Wait, are you at 30 Penn Plaza or 30 Penn Place? OH shit. No no no. You're wife's being held on the 21st floor of 30 Penn Place. 30 Penn Plaza is about to blow. Sorry, yo. Abbreviations.

Okay, you have 30 seconds to get out of the building. Wait for someone to ride the elevator up to the 21st floor and hop back onto the roof, climb into the car and ride back down.

Has the car moved from the lobby yet? No? How about now?

You now have nine seconds to wait for someone to ride the elevator up to the 21st floor, hop onto the roof, climb into the car and ride back down. Has the car moved from the lobby yet?

Mm... Well, I'm out of ideas.

Happy Elevator Action Day!

Dandelion Day!

You had a girlfriend when you were sixteen and her name was Ellen. When Ellen moved to Florida with her parents, she asked you whether you thought the two of you would stay in love forever, even though she was moving far away. You said to her only, "When you're thirty-six, mail me a dandelion."

Ellen has been thirty-six for eight months now and you've been checking your mailbox every day with a swiftly growing dread. No dandelions.

She could never have forgotten. Something, or someone, is keeping her from contacting you.

"She could be dead," your father suggested.

"The dead have executors to carry out their wishes posthumously," you say. "No. I think she's being held captive by someone or she's trapped under something. What if she's hungry?"

"Find her," your mother said.

"But my administrative assistant position. I could be fired if I take off from work for too long."

"Oh yeah," your mother said.

You have a three-day weekend starting tomorrow, and you often get let out early on the day before a three-day weekend. Find her. But first, get a search running.

Happy Dandelion Day!

Forget The Words Day!

If tonight, when you sing for your sold-out crowd, you appear to have forgotten the words, stranger will look to stranger to shake their heads like synchronized swimmers. And from the stage you will hear them say "Bun bwah bun bwah bun bwah bun bwah."

Translation: "Our beautiful one is gone. Another idol has fallen. Word will soon spread that the magic has died, and we were here to see it. I have never been so glad to have spent 65 dollars."

But give a stern flap to your glttery cape, shout "Oh the hell with it" and launch back into the chorus, forcing your band to chase time, and your sold-out crowd will rise to their feet in celebration of your soldierly spirit. And stranger will look to stranger to compare their knowing smiles and from the stage you will hear them say, "Lo heen lo hem lo heen lo hem lo heen lo hem lo hem."

Translation: "I knew our hero would come back for us. So brave. Such a survivor. She would never leave her flock behind, and I love this song more than ever now. And I love this song more than you do."

You've been at it too long, everyone knows the songs, you have to give them a reason to have shown up tonight.

Happy Forget The Words Day! Now see if you can make the strangers do it!