If I Were a Girl

"Don't think so much" is advice I hear frequently.

It's always unsolicited. I've never been in conversation with someone, friend, family-member, coworker, supervisor, car wash attendant, postal official, etc and, in the course of said conversation asked, "Hey, do you think I think too much?"

I've never asked that. And yet, I'm often told, "Don't think so much." Which is kind of funny because, most of the time, I feel like I make pretty serious decisions without spending more than three minutes deliberating the consequences. Yet, popular opinion, which is never wrong-- just like Wikipedia-- seems to firmly believe that I think too much.

Today, I think I probably spent too much time thinking about what I would be like if I were a girl. Don't worry-- I'm not going in for a slit-job, but I was thinking about it. I don't know how or when it started. Maybe this morning while I was peeing.

See, oftentimes, I pee sitting down-- especially for the first pee of the day. Why? The reasons are severalfold. This interests you, right?

1.) When I first wake up and stumble to the bathroom, I am too tired/lazy to lift up the seat.

2.) If I pee standing up with the seat down, I'm very likely to spray. This is due to the occurance of "urethral split" which happens to gentlemen, causing pee to stream in the correct direction (i.e., into the bowl) and a totally different stream to go in any number of incorrect directions (i.e., my pajama bottoms, the ceiling, my right foot and so on). The most common victim of the urethral split is invariably the toilet seat, which I then have to spend the next five minutes cleaning up-- very hard to do without my glasses, which I never put on before rising out of bed to take the inaugural pee. If you're having trouble visualizing what a urethral split is like, it's like your dick having projectile lazy eye.

3.) Again, because I don't put my glasses on first thing when I wake up, it's very difficult for me to visualize exactly where this stream is going, even if it is a singular stream, unimpeded (haha-- that's funny) by a urethral split.

4.) Sometimes, I'm just too goddamn lazy to stand up. Doesn't that say a lot about yours truly?

So, this feminine way of thinking might very well have started in the bathroom, where all of my great thoughts begin, and usually end.

A side-note: you know what's interesting? If you Google the word "feminine," Google suggests that you might be searching for, in the following order:

feminine mystique

feminine tattoos

feminine boutique west chester

feminine odor

feminine itching

feminine rhyme

feminine hygiene

feminie itch

feminine hygiene products

and, last, but not least,

feminine wiles

I, of course, would have thought that "itch" would have been number one on the list of suggestions, but I guess Google Search doesn't work in quite the same manner as does my lurid, problematic brain. This is probably a good thing.

Seeing this list, though, got me wondering even more about being a female. If I were a female, would I have so-called "feminine mystique?" Probably not. When I picture women in my head who may very well have feminine mystique, I think of sleek, slick ladies with endless legs gliding through the streets of metropolitania in flowing, suggestive sundresses, looking coyly over their right shoulders and throwing a coquettish wink, their mouths everso slightly agape.

If I were a girl and I tried that, I would probably catch my shoe in a manhole cover, trip, shatter my elbow, and end up with a fire hydrant up my vag.

This most likely would mean that "feminine wiles" would be out of my league, too. I would probably have about as much feminine wiles as Peter Sellers in a wig and push-up bra.

One thing I would most likely have is feminine itch. I say that not to be gross, but because I'm regrettably suceptible to fungus and stuff. You should see my toenails. They look like gorgonzola crumbles.

If I Were a Girl:

* I would probably have small breasts.

I would obsess over this, decry God's unfairness and listen to Deirdre Flint's song "The Boob Fairy" every single day in my car, probably while hot tears would flow down my cheeks. I wouldn't wear push-up bras, not because they're deceptive, but because they're expensive.

* I would have a great fucking body.

Assuming my current proportions would carry over, more or less, to femaledom, I would probably be pretty smokin', bodywise. 6'0" and 136 pounds? Yummy! My legs are svelte, firm, bronze, go on for miles and, shaven, would probably be enviable by most runway sluts. My face, though, would still be totally Jewish with a nose the size of an airplane hangar, and may only qualify for hook-ups with Yeshiva students, stooped-over, elderly Kosher butchers, and balding, sack-gutted Brandeis University grads living in their parent's basements.

* I wouldn't wear make-up.

I've always disliked it when girls wear make-up, especially girls my own age. I see no reason why women in their twenties with taut, firm, naturally beautiful skin feel the need to cake it up with foul-smelling emolients and expensive garbage that does more damage than benefit. I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of catty comments about this, but I don't care, because...

* I would be called a "bitch." A lot.

What's snarky and funny when you're a guy automatically turns bitchy when you're a girl. Is it fair? No. But neither is the fact that, sometimes, I pee on the ceiling.

* I would have facial hair issues.

Being half-Israeli, and having a sister who, in high school, constantly Nair'd her upper lip, I know that I would have to do battle with an aggressively burgeoning 'stache. Still-- I'd have those runway legs.

* I would probably crack up a lot during sex.

The idea of some hulking moron on top of me, puffing away like Thomas the Train, having absolutely no interest in the location and/or function of my clitoris, smashing his pelvis into mine and thinking that this is giving me pleasure, while rolling his eyes around in his head and trying to think about baseball would probably make someone like me laugh in his face. I'd probably fart a lot during sex, too. And then I'd never stop laughing.

* I would be a blogger.

Well, duh.

* I would have been an English major.

Isn't it a law that every introspective, sensitive, awkward-looking, mildly-talented female in America has to become an English major?

And then a blogger?

I want to follow the law.

* I would deliberately walk past construction sites and firehouses in a tank-top and shorts on warm summer days to see if I would get sexually harrassed.

If I didn't, I would go home and cry.

If I did, I would scream, "THAT'S SEXUAL HARRASSMENT, YOU DICKLESS MOTHERFUCKERS!"

Of course, one thing is for absolute certain: if I were a girl, I would absolutely, definitely think too much.

Da Finga

I'm far too civilized.

I wouldn't say "classy," or "mature," because I do acknowledge and appreciate the humor inherent in the fact that the word "fart" is almost in the phrase "far too" but for that tiny little space. Just call me the thin Peter Griffin...

But I'm definitely too civilized.

I was looking at someone's Facebook album that contained old pictures from my days in college. Eight-year-old photographs. That had to be digitally scanned in order for them to be uploaded onto Facebook. That's how old I am. Fucking scannable.

Anyway, in one of the pictures, a group of schmucks I know, maybe thirty or forty of them, were all assembled in front of the camera and all of them were giving the camera (and, presumably, the camera operator) the finger.

With both hands. That's nearly eighty middle fingers, if my math is correct. And it probably isn't. Why should today be any different?

And, as I looked at this picture, I thought to myself, "I've never given anybody the finger."

That's a disappointing thing to realize.

Sure, I've given it to people in jest, and I've given it in photographs, too, but never out of anger. Never in the heat of the moment. Never behind the wheel of my car. Well, I do, but it's always hidden under the dashboard. Never extended through an open window or a sunroof. I've never had such a heated argument with another person where I've found it necessary to resort to one finger, thrust upwards, to underline or underscore a point I was making. I don't even think I've ever told another person to go fuck him/herself out of real anger.

And don't say, "Well, maybe you just don't get angry," because, trust me, I do.

When I get angry, though, I'm more likely to well up with tears. And I don't know if that makes me sensitive or if it makes me a pussy or if it makes me a prime candidate for therapy, but it's the truth.

If I yelled at someone, out of real, true, hot anger, my voice would start to quaver and break. My hands would start to tremble, and it's very difficult to muster up the fortitude necessary to shout, "FUCK YOU, YOU GODDAMNED ASSHOLE!" when you're about to start to cry. I doubt giving the finger has much impact when your hand is shaking worse than Katie Hepburn's head.

Not only that, but my middle finger looks, well, funny.

It's too long. And too skinny. Too bony. It looks ridiculous when it's fully extended. If I really gave someone the finger, they'd probably fall on the floor laughing. My middle finger looks like John Cleese's leg. And John Cleese's legs are funny. They're much funnier, I suspect, than Henry Kissinger's or Danny Aiello's.

In the movie "Fletch," Chevy Chase gives the finger to his newspaper editor in an unusual way, I noticed when I first saw the film at age 11. The knuckles of his index and ring finger protrude out past his extended middle digit. I tried this in the mirror of my bedroom and found that sticking out knuckles 1 & 3 somewhat ameliorated the effects of my absurdly long and skinny middle finger. I resolved that, were I ever to give someone the finger in a pressure-cooker situation, that I would give it like that, so that they wouldn't laugh at me.

But I haven't had to do that to anybody yet. Or, at least, I haven't done it to anybody yet.

I don't get into fights very often. I'm very non-confrontational. I suspect that this arises from my fear of getting shot in the face, or even punched in the face. For someone as dubious-looking as I am, I'm very protective of my face. I don't want any of its components enlarged or rearranged. I have enough holes in my face-- I don't want another one. People shoot each other all the time and I have no reason to suspect that someone wouldn't shoot me in the face for giving them the middle finger.

Back in high school, during our production of "Pygmalion," the kid who played Colonel Pickering said that he's always wanted to go out for his curtain call and give the audience the finger. Obviously, he wouldn't do that, he told me, so, instead, he comes out with his hands in his pockets, bows, and gives the audience the finger through his trouser pockets. The double deuce.

"Huh," I said, backstage, "that's an interesting idea."

And, one night, I tried it. There they were, hundreds of audience members, clapping like mad after our probably seven-hour bollocksing of George Bernard Shaw's theatrical masterpiece. I stepped out and took center stage, after having thoroughly exhausted the cockney out of myself playing Alfred Doolittle, drunken chimney sweep extraordinaire. I stopped and listened briefly to their applause, my hands in my pockets. And I bowed.

Too fucking civilized.

Call the Coroner: The Coroner's Dead

Ah, let the dead munchkin jokes begin.

"And he's not only merely dead,
He's really most sincerely dead."

They'll probably carve that on Meinhardt Raabe's fucking tombstone, the poor bastard. The Coroner of Munchkinland died on Friday at the Penney Retirement Community, where lots of old bastards go to die, presumably. And Meinhardt Raabe was certainly old-- 94.

It's like the last of the Titanic survivors dying-- kind of. Or the last of the WWI vets dying-- kind of. Or the Holocaust survivors-- kind of. But not. I suspect this is the way I'll feel when all of the Golden Girls die. I mean, I was pretty bummed when Bea Arthur died. Now those "Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Bea?" t-shirts just don't seem quite as funny to me anymore.

Anyway, getting back to Meinhardt Raabe, he's dead. And it's funny, because he was the coroner. I wonder if Raabe, who lived a hell of a long time, ever entertained notions that he might somehow be immortal or otherwise invincible because he was perhaps the most famous celebrity coroner of all times, that he would somehow be given a free pass by the Almighty.

I mean-- that hat: n'yah mean? Special.

Death must come as rather a surprise to some morticians and coroners. I mean, it must be rather like being a dog trainer and then coming home to seeing your dog throwing up on itself whilst hate-fucking your throw pillows. Like-- they're thinking to themselves: that's not supposed to happen to me!

But I think Meinhardt Raabe knew the void was coming for him. He seemed like he was a pretty sharp guy, according to his obituary, which I read in the New York Times because I'm so fucking smart. Raabe was smart too: a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin, M.B.A. from Drexel University, and a World War II veteran, serving in the Civil Air Patrol.

I'll bet his tiny old uniform would sell for a bitchload on Ebay.

He also served for 30 years as a spokesmidget for Oscar Mayer pigdicks, tooling around in the Weinermobile, hocking stronguls (don't you love it when books & articles italicize foreign-looking words, but never define them? Me too.) to the innard-loving American populous. Was there anything this dude didn't do? He sure packed a lot of living into that little body.

Actually, it wasn't even that little. He was one of the tallest shorties in the film. At his tallest (in his early thirties) he was 4'7". That's a pretty big deal for someone with dwarfism.

Obviously, at 94, he'd probably shrunk quite a bit. Is it wrong of me to wonder (and write about wondering) whether his descendants bought him a kid's coffin? It's probably cheaper. I've got to say, if my dad was a dwarf-- I'd do it.

If you're a human being who's alive today, The Wizard of Oz had a profound effect on you-- and don't even try to comment on here and tell me it didn't, because I can smell bullshit as clearly as I can feel an Oscar Mayer weiner being shoved up my cornhole. My oldest sister was born in 1967, and her favorite movie, to this day, is The Wizard of Oz. If I told her that Meinhardt Raabe was dead, or if she read either The New York Times or my blog (I think, if you consistently read both, you are automatically eligible to participate in any number of medical experiments at local teaching hospitals) she would probably lock herself in her room and not come out for a week.

In 7th grade, she played The Tin Man in her school's production of The Wizard of Oz. She can't sing for shit, so maybe they had her voice dubbed. Meinhardt Raabe claimed, in his autobiography that his voice was dubbed, so anything's possible.

I remember, years ago, for my sister's birthdays, I got her a special, commemorative release of "The Wizard of Oz". It came with this huge booklet of information about the film, and it revealed that many of the munchkins were of German descent, and that a good number of them had a soft-spot for alcohol. I can imagine that someone who stands at under four foot tall might not hold their liqour particularly well, and this suspicion was confirmed by the informational packet that said some of the munchkins took to screaming drunken profanities at the director, and that one of them fell headfirst into a toilet.

It's hard to imagine the dignified, blue-robed, goateed coroner toddling around all beschmoigied on Schnapps, goose-stepping his sloshed way into a shitbowl but, again, I guess anything's possible.

I wonder what Meinhardt Raabe said when he found out that Judy Garland had died. He was seven years older than Judy Garland, and yet he outlived her by 41 years. I wonder if he just couldn't resist saying,

"As coroner,
I must aver,
I thoroughly examined her,
And she's not only merely dead,
She's really most sincerely dead!"

I'll bet he said that-- to somebody at least, maybe his wife. I'm sure he thought it, at least.

What I'm Reading

You care about what I'm reading, don't you?

Just like, if you're my pally-wal on Facebook, you care about where I've been.

Right?

Because that's information that just plows you through the day.

And you definitely care about the mundane wordvom that pours forth from my psychologically-unattended brain every single day of the year, because, well, you're here.

Hi! Want a Swedish fish? We've got plenty.

I don't actually believe that you care very much about what I'm reading, but I'm going to pretend, for the sake of this blog entry, that you do. Maybe just a squidgey-widge. I suppose, if I wanted to yammer on about a book, I would do something rash like commandeer a local college's radio station, knock the chunky black glasses-wearing, prematurely-balding, skinny bearded loser in the "Sega Genesis" t-shirt on the head with a piece of pipe and take my inane book reviews to the airwaves.

Or join a book-club. But those are for middle-aged women who hate their husbands.

And then I thought to myself-- shit, I don't need to do any of that stuff-- because that all requires leaving my computer. I can just as easily just sit here and blog about what I'm reading because, in this modern society, I can blithely pretend that you care about such banal things as what I'm reading, what I had for breakfast (you know there are photography blogs simply devoted to pictures of the blogger's each and every meal? Kill me.) where I'm going this weekend (antiquing-- gay!) and what I think about teeth whitening products.

And you can reinforce that belief by reading, following, and commenting. Thanks for participating in the enhancement of my delusions.

Sidenote: Couldn't you just picture me as part of a book club? I'd love to do it-- just for s's & g's, and just for a day. I mean, I would never be invited back, so it would obviously just have to be for a day. I can't decide whether or not I'd show up in drag.

Anyway, I'm currently reading "Target Blue: An Insider's View of the N.Y.P.D." written by Robert Daley.

It's 562 pages and, according to Amazon.com, it's 2.2 pounds. That's rather a lot of bookage.

I love this book. I've read it several times since I first purchased it from ebay (my first ebay purchase, actually) in 1998, when I was a freshman in college. It was this book that inspired me to write my own law enforcement-related book. Daley was a civilian who was intimately involved with the police, and it was a subject that forever remained in his heart-- and, well, so was I.

My book was a lot shorter, and lighter, than his.

Robert Daley was a reporter in 1971 when he was assigned to interview Patrick V. Murphy, the new police commissioner of the New York City Police Department-- the most fabled, famed, scrutinized, influential and possibly important metropolitan police department in the country.

They spent a day together, Daley following him like a puppy or a shadow, or a shadow of a puppy, asking questions, scribbling in a notebook, paying attention. At the end of the day, Murphy asked Daley for his resume. Daley thanked the Commissioner and promptly forgot about the exchange-- he had no intention of becoming a cop.

A little while later, after another day-long follow-up interview, Murphy asked, "I thought you were going to send me a resume."

And so Daley banged out 3/4ths of a page on his typewriter and sent it off. A couple months later, he was summoned to police headquarters and was offered the position of Deputy Commissioner of the N.Y.P.D. He would be one of six Deputy Commissioners-- three of which were civilians-- usually lawyers. Daley accepted, and was sworn in and given a badge and a .38 revolver.

His mission: win back the public for the police department.

It's amazing to me to know that this is the way things were done back in the good old days-- or were they the bad old days? It's hard to tell, really. I was sitting in the living room with my mother yesterday and she made some passing comment about the 1970s.

"Ah, a marvelous time to be alive," I mused-- talking, as usual, directly out my ass because, obviously, I wasn't alive then.

"No," she said, "it wasn't so great."

Perhaps Robert Daley, given a shield and a gun and what back then was a very respectable salary, after a couple days of interviewing might have disagreed with my mother. Or maybe not. After all, in the very short time during which he was D.C. of the N.Y.P.D., he would attend a record number of Inspector's funerals, the ceremony-laden, full-dress send-off given to patrolmen who are murdered in the line of duty, he would witness (and even be caught in the middle of one) riot after riot in the streets of Harlem, he would have his life threatened, he would be alternately ignored, abused and praised according to the whim of the political winds that blew capriciously around One Police Plaza, and he would witness the very department he had come to love be brought to its knees in front of the Knapp Commission, set up to root out the rampant police corruption of the day.

During those Knapp Commission hearings, a young police officer would take the stand and, in front of television cameras and microphones, shout "VIVA LA POLICIA!" Afterwards, he would break down and weep. Ashamed and overwhelmed, that young police officer bolted from the room, and stunned spectators and reporters applauded the empty chair where he had sat.

That police officer's name was David Durk.

David Durk was one of the reasons why, one of the big reasons why I wanted to become a cop, way back when-- when I was twenty-two.

He was Jewish, like me. And he was college-educated, like me. Of course, David Durk was more intelligent, and more handsome, but we don't have to quibble about that. Like me, Durk always insisted on looking his best, and frequently wore sharp suits and ties.

"He looked like a lawyer," Daley said about him. His friend and fellow anti-corruption zealot, Frank Serpico, Daley mused, "looked like a pirate."

Together, the lawyer and the pirate, banded together to confront corruption, greed, graft and the other insidious poisons that threatened to infect and demolish the reputations of the then-33,000 member police department. They went to the New York Times, and the various stories, some small, some huge, about corrupt cops broke. Back in the 1970s, when this was all happening, Serpico was furious that Durk was getting all the credit and the attention.

Then, two things happened:

1.) Frank Serpico got shot in the face.

and

2.) Hollywood made "SERPICO," and Al Pacino got the role.

Now, the tides have changed. Guess who has a Wikipedia page, and a personal webpage and guess who has neither?

Life's pretty funny that way, I think. I've seen "Serpico" and, of course, it's a great cop movie-- hell, it's just a great movie altogether-- but David Durk barely exists in the film. Blink, fart twice, and go to the fridge for a slice of chocolate cake and you will miss him entirely. I suppose Hollywood felt that the wounded, homeless-looking, piratey Frank Serpico made better film material than the clean-shaven Jewish college boy.

The nice thing about "Target Blue" (what I'm reading!) is that it gives both men the credit for their part in headbutting corruption in the N.Y.P.D. It is a much more detailed, even, and reliable account of history, I feel, and maybe that's because it's 2.2 pounds.

Everybody loves asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. Lots of kids answer, "A policeman!" before they even know what the fuck they're talking about. If you had asked me, when I was in my early twenties, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I would have answered, without a breath, "A police officer." If you had asked me, "Who do you want to be like when you grow up?" I would have answered, immediately, "David Durk."

Durk was someone who got under people's skin, crawled up their asses, talked long after the meeting was set to end, was passionate, earnest, single-minded and revolutionary in his thoughts about what policing in America should be. Young, idealistic college graduates who wanted the job for its promise of authority, integrity, justice and fairness-- not for the paycheck or the ability to shoot people. Too many take the police entrance exam because it's just in their family, or they don't know what else to do with their lives, or because they're action junkies or meatheads, or because they've got a score to settle. Durk joined, I think, because of the ideal behind the badge-- for the surge of your pulse when you pin that badge on your shirt.

For the right reasons, and there are right reasons.

Of course, Durk was repaid for his honesty and integrity with scorn, contempt and hot jealousy that dripped from the top on down-- but, if he noticed at all, it didn't deter him from his mission: winning back the police department for the police. I wonder sometimes if David Durk expected the N.Y.P.D. to love him back the way he in which he loved it. If he did, he was crazier than anybody gave him credit for, and plenty of people gave him ample credit for being crazy. If he wasn't foolish, or crazy, he must have at least been disappointed. And he wasn't alone in that. As a former officer once said, "The New York City Police Department is the king of disappointing people."

I wanted what Durk wanted, and what Daley wanted, too. I wanted to bring back respectability and honor back to the profession. I wanted to be the person people in the community would look at and say to themselves, "God, I'm glad he's patrolling my neighborhood-- I'm glad that guy is a cop. I'm proud that we have policemen like that here."

But, it was just not meant to be.

"That's not for you," my mother would say to me when I wanted to watch an inappropriate movie or television show when I was a boy. And that's what she said to me about policing on the day I quit the police academy after I couldn't lift 93% of my own body-weight over my head.

And I guess she was right. But you have to admit; it would have been a hell of a career, though, if I'd lived.

Well, Give Me a Kiss and Bust Up My Chifferobe: It's... DEAR APRON!

Yes, this blog space might might be better utilized decrying the social injustice of seal clubbing, or exploring the root causes of babies having babies... But, hey, it's Friday and nobody's perfect-- least of all me. So let's let down our asshair and have a taunt-fest directed at the misguided, inept ozone-heads who write to Dear Abby to validate their unhappy lives.

The letters are real. The answers are, um, well... there are answers.

It's called: Dear Apron.

DEAR APRON:

My brother is 9 and still walks around naked. I have asked "Josh" repeatedly to put on some clothes, but he blows me off and flaunts himself around the house.

My mother is no help. When I ask her to talk to him, she laughs and says, "Boys will be boys." Apron, I'm 13 and it is starting to freak me out. Am I being paranoid, or am I right to want him to put on a pair of boxers or something? -- OLDER SISTER IN MCALLEN, TEXAS

DEAR OLDER SISTER:

I'm always baffled when a thirteen-year-old child writes in to an advice column written by an elderly woman whose hair still looks like it was done utilizing a Flowbee.

Anyway, dear, your younger brother is obviously sending signals that he wants to sleep with you. As most siblings in McAllen, Texas are already doing this, I wouldn't feel too awkward or "freaked out." It's natural in that part of the world, and I would say just roll with it. Your mother's probably already doing it.

DEAR APRON:

My ex-mother-in-law died unexpectedly three weeks ago. We were very close, and I handled most of the arrangements. She left no will, so my ex-husband and I did our best to provide what we thought she would have wanted.

We chose to have Mom cremated, but decided to have a short open viewing at the funeral home for her grandchildren's benefit. We wanted them to realize Grandma was no longer in her body.

This morning I was shocked to receive a phone call from the funeral parlor saying they have received a letter from one of Mom's co-workers, expressing that she felt the viewing was disrespectful and in bad taste. Apron, we chose to display her body on a table with blankets. We didn't think spending hundreds of dollars for a coffin for the four-hour viewing was justified, nor did we think Mom would have wanted us to do that. Was it inappropriate? -- SLAPPED IN THE FACE IN MONTANA

DEAR SLAPPED:

Inappropriate? Certainly not! I think dumping your mother's corpse onto some table underneath a dowdy, moth-eaten afghan is entirely appropriate. After all, she was dead, right? As long as the table didn't resemble a dining room table too closely, I think you probably did the right thing. Obviously, if the table looked like a dining room table, mourners might have gotten the impression that, following the viewing, close family members would draw the blinds, put on lobster bibs and eat the bitch.

You didn't... eat the bitch. Did you?

DEAR APRON:

I work for a nonprofit organization, and once a month we convene early in the morning for a staff meeting. To make up for the fact that we are meeting earlier than usual, departments take turns providing breakfast. This has turned into a contest to see who can bring the most elaborate breakfast.

Frankly, it's all I can do to get breakfast on the table for my own family without the added pressure of having to provide something for my "work family." The one-upmanship and back-stabbing is bad enough without having to become Martha Stewart in the process. Please comment. -- EGGS-ASPERATED IN NEW YORK

DEAR EGGS-ASPERATED:

Your pun is not funny and you and your eggs can go fuck yourself. I don't know if you're aware of this, but some people have actual problems in their lives. Like the cannibal family and the chick with the nurkid brother.

DEAR APRON:

I am at my wits' end and feel my life is over. I just want to get my life back the way it was 10 years ago. In the past eight years I have lost two jobs. I am currently unemployed and in financial ruin. I see no way out. Every job I apply for wants to do a credit check, so there goes any good job I might have. I have no resources for a counselor since I have no health insurance and nobody for a sounding board. Please help me see the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel virtually alone. -- TROUBLED IN VIRGINIA

DEAR TROUBLED:

Well, that was uplifting! Nothing like ending Dear Apron on an upswing. Thanks to you, I'll probably lose at least 30% of my followers to suicide.

Look on the bright side, Troubs, you may be unemployed, uninsured, totally friendless and alone in a cruel, dispassionate, unkind world, but, if you managed to write to me, you obviously have a computer with internet access. Before you make up your mind to kill yourself, you should really do a thorough exploration of the world of online pornography. I think, after around seven-or-so hours of that, you'll find that, in this modern age, there's really rather a lot to live for.

Whoagie

I bought a hoagie yesterday.

I know what you're thinking, "Oh, Jesus-- this is exactly why I always vow to STOP reading blogs, because they're just inane blather about everyday vomitus written by frustrated English majors (Theatre, thank you) about their banal, boring, petty and pointless existences on the planet that would most likely be inherently better off without them and their miserable, lousy blogs.

But, seriously, listen to my hoagie story. It's so awesome-- you'll be quoting it to all your balding, sexually-frustrated coworkers.

I went to a hoagie shop called "Primos." I don't know if they have "Primos" everywhere, because I don't travel much and, when I do, I generally don't go hoagie-hopping.

Anyway, I was dying for a Primos hoagie. When I used to work as an optician, I would sometimes get a Primos hoagie, and it was a practically sexual experience. My boss used to make me eat it, way in the back of the shop, and I was only allowed to eat it while the very loud lens grinder was running, because the noises I would make during consumption of said hoagie would be, well, inappropriate. And bad for business.

But that was ten years ago, and that's hard to believe and swallow. So, yesterday, I made up my mind: as a big FUCK YOU TO PASSOVER I was going to celebrate the end of all the unleavened madness and get myself a Primos hoagie.

I got a Suprimo. It's aged capiacola, fresh buffalo mozzerella, roasted red peppers, all the yummy spices and, well, that's it.

Now, at Primos, which I had forgotten, there are three sizes-- the short size, which is intended to intimidate heterosexual men into ordering the next larger size, the larger size, called "The Primo," and the largest, which is simply called "Whole."

Well, I'm very heterosexual, I said to myself, in spite of my necktie with the dozens of carrots and one hungry bunny on it, and so I ordered the "whole." After all, it wouldn't be a very big FUCK YOU TO PASSOVER if it wasn't whole.

I waited and I waited and I waited. This sandwich was taking an awfully long time to prepare. What are they, pulling the mozzerella out of the buffalo's ass, I thought, displaying a relatively incoherent comprehension of the overall cheese-making process. Maybe I should have gone on that public school field trip to the farm after all.

Anyway, after around fifteen minutes, I was presented with a tautly-wrapped package, cylindrical in shape and stretching approximately the length of my torso-and-neck. Maybe two-and-a-half feet, though I'm notoriously bad with measurements-- this thing was absurdly long.

I stared at it.

"Um..." I said, not really to the cashier-- to nobody really. Three unshaven township groundskeepers eyed me suspiciously, waiting to see whether I would accept this mammoth log, like a man, or reject it, like a non-man.

"$19.71," the cashier said, with a deadpan expression on his face.

My jaw released and my eyes closed.

Nineteen-seventy-one, kids.

I said the only thing I could think of to say:

"Do you take debit?"

My wife likes to point out that I don't pay attention. And, in the immortal words of the irrepressible "Homie the Clown": "I'm so poor, I can't even pay attention." Of course we know that the dearth of waddage in my wallet has no bearing on my wandering mind, but it's catchy.

I've bought wildly inappropriate things at the supermarket before because I did not read pertinent information contained on the box or the bag. I look, primarily, at pictures. I love pictures, especially of food. I know food in pictures is slathered in varish and that the milk in pictures of cereal is really Elmer's glue, but I don't care. Pictures seduce me all the time, and they turn my higher education diplomae into dust.

I'm not a very detail-oriented person. I've been wearing the same pair of trousers since Monday. I can't be bothered to learn what a "grande" or a "venti" means at Starbucks. I still order a medium, or large if I'm feeling frisky or decidedly un-frisky. And I don't do it because I'm counterculture or because I'm too cool for school, I do it because I just don't give a shit, and I'm too impatient and overloaded to learn.

And I suppose that's why I ordered a sandwich that cost almost twenty bucks. I ate it for lunch yesterday, and dinner. And, pretty soon, I'm going to have more of it for lunch. I might polish it off now, even though I haven't yet eaten half of it, because I'm scared of the episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer gets an outrageously-sized hoagie and eats it over the course of days if not weeks, until it is purple and furry.

Is this what I am to become? Is this my destiny? To be done in by a fucking sandwich?

Thank God there's no mayo.

Put Me In a Forever Bag

Recently, my wife went on an outing to the local Christmas Tree Shop. And by "local" I mean "over-an-hour's-drive-away," but, for my wife, it's like a pligrimage of sorts.

See, the Christmas Tree Shops are in her genetic makeup, they're in her blood. They're crack. My mother-in-law knows the I-95 exit, precise topography and geographical coordinates of every Christmas Tree Shop from Maine to Maryland.

Really.

The store's slogan is, "Don't You Just Love a Bargain?" And I really do love bargains, don't get me wrong-- I'm just longing for a store to give me bargains on things that I actually want. This is not to say that, at some point in my life I won't want a Seagrass Roman window shade for $16.99, or a beaded wire wall decor lobster for $2.99, or a goddamn garden gnome for $5.99. There may come a time in my life where I might want any number of these things in a non-ironic way. Now, if I bought all three of these items, I would proudly display the garden gnome on my front lawn with the beaded lobster shoved up its ass and the window shade cord wrapped around its neck.

Won't you be my neighbor?

My wife came back from the Christmas Tree Shop with news of a product called "Forever Cheese" bags. They're exactly what you think they are: bags that, apparently, keep cheese fresh forever. Because you're absolute horn-dogs for eye-candy, here's the pic:

Now, I could go in a lot of different directions here... false advertising, ludicrous and unsubstantiated claims (I mean, forever hasn't happened yet, has it?), or just plain wrongness. I mean, even if cheese could theoretically last "forever," can you really picture yourself in the year 2032 opening the refrigerator and being remotely interested in eating a piece of cheese that was placed in one of these bags in 2010?

For the sandwich-minded among us, there's also "Forever Bread" bags. Wanna ogle?

Mmmmmmm! That there's some good forever-food, grammaw! I can't wait to be the first one in the record books to consume a 74 year old cheese sandwich!

I suppose, if I had a sense of humor this early in the morning before coffee I could find these types of products harmless and maybe even slightly funny, but I'm not sure that I do. I mean, I kind of do. It's all a big joke-- keeping perishable food "fresh" or at least "edible" forever, or at least "for a very long time." We've jack up most of our food with preservatives-- Christ, our clementines are coated with shellac, for fuck's sake. That's supposed to be used in wood shops, kids. Wood shops. We're living in a culture, I think, where nothing's supposed to break, decay, or *gasp!* die.

Look at cars. In the 1970s, you were lucky if you got four years out of the average shitbox rolling off the line in Detroit-- maybe six if the car was a Japanese import. Back in the day, car companies wouldn't dream of offering you a warranty on a brand new car that was more than 2 years. Now, all of a sudden, when cars are more complex and computer-centered than ever, prone to all kinds of electronic malfunctions, we expect our cars to last forever. Kia is offering a 10 year, 100,000 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty.

Kia.

In this era, even though we know that material goods are from China and are made like shit, we are constantly befuddled and astounded when things break. OMG, you guys, like, the screen on my iPhone won't turn on! Well, holy shit, Paris, that's totally fucked up. We expect these items of electronica to be ever-reliant, never failing us, even though we tire of them within eight months and are lustily searching after the next big thing.

We want, of course, to live forever, too. And, how do we do that?

Drugs.

Creams.

Lotions.

Potions.

Clinque.

Pristiq.

Surgery.

Perjury.

Shellac.

Oh, and antimicrobial nanotechnology. That's, apparently, what keeps the bread fresh "forever."

Hungry?