Category: Wyatt’s Words

I wasn’t planning on watching the State of the Union this evening but every year I always do in the same way I don’t plan on drinking 3 sakebombs in a row on my birthday and then wonder how I woke up on the bathroom floor of the sushi bar.

The entire event is theatre. What was intended to be a written address to Congress outlining detailed policy proposals turned into a grand televised and streamed spectacle where you walk in and shake selected hands, the audience rises and falls depending on if they agree, and you’re allowed to bring a few people to point to in the audience next to your wife for maximum political impact. I mean, come on, what other speech could possibly be so important that if a bomb hits the building they leave someone out of the audience on purpose to keep the country going?

yes folks, we left this guy behind tonight.  the President’s got some huge, brass balls

The State of the Union is a speech that’s written for everyone to agree with. As a result, it’s meaningless. It’s not an instruction to Congress—it’s just a note saying “the kids are all right”. And it’s stupid they release it beforehand. If I was President, I’d spring it on people in real time. No teleprompter, one hand-written copy.

Ok maybe typed. I can’t read my own handwriting and I don’t want to embarrass myself on national TV (any more than I already would).

Hmm.

That’s a novel idea.

What’s stopping me from giving a State of the Union address someday?

Why don’t I just get elected President?

Such a speech would probably go just like this:

Good evening America and assembled Congress.

I am proud to report that our country is stable and healthy. While others around the world rise and fall, America remains eternally vibrant and strong.

The fact that we are not in consistent agreement on every matter is a good thing. I won’t take your time tonight to express platitudes that placate. If I wanted to be liked, I’d do stand-up.

Enough about me. This speech is not about me or what I would do. It’s about you. It’s about you contacting your member of Congress and advising them on how this country should run. No matter what happens, the power of this nation resides amongst its people.

I speak to a country that’s at a crossroads tonight.

Many issues face our nation. I’ll begin on the external front.

Our military is stationed around the world to act as a force of good amongst a troubled and dangerous globe. They perform a difficult task—the highest task—and we hold them in the highest gratitude for our service. As we begin to draw down current engagements, we must remind ourselves to engage in the interest of America, our interests, and our allies. And we must ensure our veterans are taken care of upon returning home. I ask that Congress fully funds the appropriate measures to revamp our system of veteran healthcare and transition into civilian life—so no hero is forgotten.

There exist governments around the world on nearly every continent that are in the business of systematically oppressing their people. North Korea. Iran. Venezuela. Zimbabwe. These governments have held onto power for too long. They have blood of innocents on their hands—and they insist on threatening America, our allies, our interests, and their neighbors.

Tonight, I’m announcing that the United States will support any and all legitimate efforts within our interests to begin the process of regime change in these countries. We will not allow countries in the 21st century to deny their citizens the basic rights that we enjoy—as humans and as Americans. To any evil empire that continues to denigrate its people: your days are numbered.

I ask Congress to fund appropriate measures to evaluate the democratic health of the aforementioned countries and any other nation that similarly violates human rights and dignity.

Terrorism is still a real global threat. From Chechnya to Gaza, Nairobi to New Delhi, Islamic extremists and evincers of the worst of humanity continue to wreak havoc and threaten global stability. We cannot—we will not—allow any individual or group—rogue or regime-supported—to snuff out innocent life.

I ask Congress to use all reasonable resource and collaboration to supporting the capture and elimination of these groups. We found and eliminated Osama bin Laden to the benefit of the world. It is not beyond the capability of us or our allies to snuff out any similar harbingers of evil.

The global economy is still reeling from the after-effects of recent events. We have all learned the lesson that we cannot spend money where none exists, borrow money to cover our losses, live outside of our reasonable means, and use government power to enrich corporate wealth. Charity begins at home.

I ask Congress to review the spending of each and every government agency—beginning with congressional and executive staff. I also ask Congress to begin a comprehensive review of every future liability and mandate—starting with Social Security. In a final request on this topic, I ask Congress to support the transition of Social Security and retirement programs for the next generation into private accounts tied directly to individual contribution. There is no reason why Americans should not be allowed to determine the course of their retirement. We cannot tax future generations—our children and grandchildren—into oblivion to fund our current generation. Our young generation should not be a bank—they should be our investment. I will address more reforms for the next generation later in this message. Acts like Medicare and Social Security designed in context decades in the past have run well beyond their intended means—to the point where they now burden and ignore those they are intended to help most.

One of these outdated ideas that has grown well beyond its means or intent is our tax code. Americans—families, small businesses, students, retirees—should be able to prepare their own taxes without outside assistance. We must create a new system of taxation—not based upon penalty, but based upon contribution.

Tonight, I ask Congress to eliminate the existing tax code, deductions included and replace it with a flat tax of 15% for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. Not only will our country receive record revenues, our businesses will be able to operate freely. We can foster a new generation of entrepreneurship, cementing America as the place to take innovative ideas and make them into reality.

Healthcare is a major struggle for many Americans. Our current system provides high-quality care—but at a premium many Americans cannot afford. Many young people don’t want healthcare and won’t pay for it as a result. They especially don’t want to pay for expensive plans that are forced to include conditions that either don’t affect them or they don’t need. Here’s how to lower healthcare costs: instead of restricting a young Californian to the choice of purchasing from just 5 providers in their state—allow them to purchase from across state lines. Knock down state barriers on healthcare and let companies compete. Let insurance providers offer a plan for a 30 year old (catastrophe coverage and yearly physicals), not a 70 year old (hospice care, gout, and dialysis). Give American universities an incentive to develop new, cost-effective treatments to replace expensive, increasingly-common ones.

I ask Congress to eliminate restrictions for all non-military government employees to obtain private insurance. I also ask Congress to allow Americans to purchase a la carte health insurance from the provider of their choice.

Returning to young Americans—we have an education system that is not hitting the mark. It is not the fault of our teachers or our students—it is the fault of onerous requirements and bureaucracy that our education system is not the force it once was. It is not too late. I ask Congress to encourage the Department of Education to decentralize and focus on a state-based education system—eliminating all federal curriculum requirements. We have 50 states in our great Union—50 laboratories for innovation. We want to inspire young people and teach them logic and values—not burden them with tests and reduce them to headcounts. We want to empower good teachers who love to teach—not reward incompetent administrators. Most importantly of all—we shouldn’t allow the government to make educational decisions for our families and young people. I ask Congress to empower families to choose the source of their child’s education—so we can create an educational system that becomes the envy of the world.

We are a nation of immigrants. We are also a nation of law-abiding citizens. We want to encourage the immigration of global citizens who bring hard work, values, and a love for our country to the table. We do not want to empower criminals, terrorists, lawbreakers, or those with a disdain for our country to enter. We also want to ensure that those being persecuted in their homeland have a safe shelter from tyrannical governments.

Therefore, I ask Congress to secure our borders and to overhaul our immigration system—to encourage innovators and the aspirational to come to America and stay—weaving another fiber into our rich American tapestry. I also ask Congress to ensure that those who have attempted to enter and become a part of our country legally take precedence over those who have not. Our modern-day Ellis Island immigrant is not a huddling mass, it is a highly-educated person who wishes to further their education at an American university. Let us not turn these people away from Liberty’s door.

As our hardworking immigrants show, America is a beacon of hope to a turbulent and troubled world. Our two-hundred-thirty-eight-year-old experiment in creating a representative government of the people, by the people, and for the people, ensuring the God-given rights of humanity, has succeeded. It is both humbling and awe-inspiring—and countries around the world continue to look towards our Constitution and system of government as inspiration.

Our strength lies not in the ability of our government to coerce or our physical might. It lies in a family that comes together every evening to share a meal. It lies in a young person taking care of his disabled sibling. It lies in a WWII veteran who travels each year to visit the memorials of his fallen comrades. It lies in a parent praying with their child before bed. It lies in our ability as Americans to meet every challenge, survive every obstacle, and persevere through every hardship.

May God bless you—and may God bless America.

I have to thank President Obama and the nice Republican lady with all the kids for speaking so poorly that they made me take notes on how to make my future State of the Union address that much better.

And time’s running out.  I only have 15 years to practice.

I don’t go down easy.

(Ahem…LADIES.)

By that I mean, I don’t get sick that often, and thankfully *knocks on wood table so hard I break knuckle* my bones and everything are unbroken and unscathed.

But this Monday has me rethinking all that.

First, I was driving up to a 6-way stop sign.

City planners who just read this collectively felt a twinge of angina.

the widowmaker

It’s literally the worst idea ever. 4-way stop signs are tough enough as it is, making sure that each side goes in-turn and evenly.

Humans weren’t at all meant to meet at an intersection shaped like an asterisk.

You just kind of have to go when the person next to you goes. Oh yeah, btw, it’s 4 lanes on each side and there’s no defined lane markers (added thrill!)

I didn’t have a buddy vehicle to cross this enormous hexagon with, so I waited until it was my turn and the person across went, checking copiously around me to make sure everyone else stayed put. A pickup truck was ahead of me and had a huge wooden plank coming out of the bed, and the thought of that thing flying through my windshield if I got too close flashed through my head as I anticipated how  I’d have to duck. I normally don’t think about Final-Destination-type of scenarios and got creeped out so I let them go way ahead and kept my distance.

Nearing halfway through what felt like the Atacama Desert, I spot a new BMW 6 speeding at me, leaving its companion vehicle at the intersection. The car was probably going at least 45-50 mph and clearly didn’t stop at the sign whatsoever.

At this point your brain goes into a weird mode of fight or flight. Do I try to speed through and hope that physics saves me? Or do I hit the brakes and hope to GAWD they do too?

I opted for the latter and I was 90% positive we would hit. Things flew off my seats and out of consoles and I mashed my shoe onto the brake pedal. The convertible driver was not slowing down NEARLY fast enough. Despite the speed reduction the front of their car would be destroyed and I’d have severe tire and suspension damage from being hit at a diagonal.

By some miracle, we didn’t hit.

I stared directly at the other driver, some crazy woman in a weave, who just stared. No apology, no sheepish grin, no wave, just a mugshot stare.

I yelled as I laid on the horn but at least there was comfort in knowing I lived to see another day.

It took at least another mile and a half for my blood pressure to return to normal as my chest was pained from whatever chemicals flooded through it to brace for impact.

YOLO comes to mind. I won YOLO because I was still living and wasn’t wheeled away from that intersection in a stretcher.

I hate that YOLO has been appropriated from “taking advantage of every day, getting the most out of it, having more appreciation for friends and family around you because this may be the last time you see them” to “let’s get fucked UPPPPPP”.

In fact, the more often someone says YOLO the less they act like they actually live once. Endangering your life by getting crossfaded on the daily is not living—it’s acting like you live twice or thrice or whatever the title of that James Bond movie was.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing that stuff though. Drink, smoke, do whatever—but don’t spend more of your life in an altered state than not.

The second dice roll today came in the form of dinner.

I walked into Whole Foods craving salmon. I was in a brain food mood and dammit, salmon’s the best.

Unfortunately they were out, so I opted for a pre-made turkey/avocado/bacon/spinach sandwich. If you haven’t tried it, it tastes absolutely freakin’ amazing and I don’t understand how anyone could enjoy a plain ol BLT after having this.

I bought it, starvingly tore it open and began to om-nom as I walked out.

Something didn’t taste right.

It tasted—old. Stale. Musty.

I looked down and noticed the avocado and the turkey had both turned black and splotchy.

GREAT, I thought. I survived a near-accident today only to get severe food poisoning.

Luckily I was close to UCLA Medical so I could crawl there if necessary, vomiting and shitting my way in (which I think is how Mischa Barton gets into clubs these days).

I went back in and they quickly and kindly replaced it with a fresh one.

I wondered: we gamble with our lives so much every day. Getting out of bed. Getting in the shower. Walking out the front door.

But before I descend into an agoraphobic’s fevered anxiety wet dream—it’s worth noticing that yes, anything could happen at any time and we or the people around us could be gone in the blink of a lazy eye (faster than a normal blink!)

We can’t let that concept cripple us. We can only let it empower us.

Yes, you only live once.

So make the most of it. Don’t wait to reconnect with someone tomorrow because they might not have a tomorrow. Don’t wait to apologize to someone later because there might not be a later.

YOLO means “get off your ass and do it now—before it’s too late”.

Start your book. Call your mother. Text your ex-friend. Save for your vacation. Lift a weight.

Or, just sit on your ass and get hammered/stoned/whatever.

Just know you’re not living once.

You’re not living at all.

Being a young, handsome member of a stuffy body full of saggy old farts isn’t easy.

Take Aaron Schock (R-IL) for example. The kid was elected to Congress at 28, making him the youngest member of that august legislature.

And since the day he was elected, he has gotten a metric shitton of shit. He’s been called stupid, inexperienced, and gay, despite the fact that he started his own IRA at 14, graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in just two years, was elected to school board president and the Illinois legislature at 23–the youngest to do both.

And as far as the 3rd charge is concerned: nobody has come forward with any proof that Aaron Schock is gay. None.

Every single public photo of the man has been analyzed more than the Zapruder film.

Exhibit A: The Preppy Luncheon

Schock is pictured here wearing not one, but *two* pastel colors.

The gays are up in arms. These people–the only people who have kept Fashion Police on the air, mind you–have crucified this man and hung him by his turquoise belt for good measure solely because of this outfit. Memo to the homos: pull up to a country club on a Saturday morning and I’ll bet you can count more men dressed like this than you’ve screwed through Grindr in the past week.

Exhibit B: The Workout Photos

Schock was profiled in Men’s Health because nobody gives a shit about Teddy Kennedy’s workout.

just scotch for me, the lady prefers hers on the rocks with a splash of water

The photos are your typical Men’s Health fare: a dude with a six pack working out:

 

i’ll pause and let my female and gay readers catch up 

There’s something cool about America that we can have a member of Congress who isn’t shaped like a potato.

Unfortunately, these provided more fodder for the grist mill, serving as fapping/bitching materiél for our more estrogen-fueled compadres.

Exhibit C: The Plaid Pants

This one’s a more recent entry posted on Schock’s FB page after meeting with a supporter.  If plaid pants are gay, then your grandpa is probably gay.

Exhibit D: The Pic That Started It All

The first in the canon of Schock photography, this was the photo that sent the homos humping away at the gates like a Westboro Baptist Church rendition of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Idk how laying back in a woman’s breasts while wearing swim trunks and a lascivious grin is proof of Schock being gay.

But, as the conspiracy is feverishly explained, he put this picture out there so you DON’T think he’s gay.

Aha!

Here’s an idea: why don’t we take these conspiracy theorists and put them at Ground Zero with the World Trade Center conspiracy theorists and cover them with a thick layer of steel.  Then let’s crash a *flaming* jet fuel-soaked wrecking ball into the steel (let’s get Miley ON this people…) and see if it melts.

If it doesn’t melt–they were right!

If it does melt–they were wrong.

Either way, they will form a fine bouillabaisse of useless individuals that tend to make everyone’s lives and society as a whole a little worse.

And the final bit of evidence as the defense in this ridiculous case:

No amount of hush-money could be paid off to someone that has evidence of a gay hookup with a straight Republican congressman that couldn’t be matched or exceeded by TMZ, the Enquirer, the Democratic National Committee, or any other rich asshole.

Five years since the man took the oath of office and this is the best that the lynch mob can come up with:

here’s a hypothetical: what if you know a certain GOP congressman, let’s just say from Illinois, is gay… and you know this because one of your friends, a journalist for a reputable network, told you in no uncertain terms that he caught that GOP congressman and his male roommate in the shower… together. now they could have been good friends just trying to conserve water. but there’s more. what if this congressman has also been caught by tmz cameras trolling gay bars.

Here’s a hypothetical: what if you know a group of catty gay journalists, livid at the fact that Schock is a handsome, successful, young rising Republican star who isn’t in favor of same-sex marriage and voted against ending DADT, decide to “out” him based on the evidence that…a “friend” saw him in the shower with a dude and “tmz cameras” caught him “trolling gay bars” despite the fact that TMZ has published no evidence of this and would make it a blaring headline feature in a Chicago minute if they even got a long-range-lens 8-bit Polaroid of him within 2 acres of a gay establishment?

Let me be perfectly clear: hounding a figure public or private about their sexuality is nearly as homophobic as physically assaulting a gay person.

That’s right folks: gay people can be homophobic.

The same people who’d be up in arms over Mathew Shepard’s murder and Alan Turing’s homosexuality conviction are perfectly fine harassing individuals that either A) disagree with them B) they want to fuck C) A and B.

Schock falls in the unfortunate position of C.  If he is gay, then the “anti-bullying” campaigners bullying him should be ashamed of themselves for forcing a man deeper into the closet–completely unaware that they too were likely once in the same position they’ve put him in.  If he isn’t gay, then the “anti-bullying” campaigners bullying him should be ashamed of themselves for  judging a man based on his choice of dress and personal characteristics–completely unaware that they too were likely once in the same position they’ve put him in.

Don’t believe me?  Check out what the founder of the celebrity-studded “It Gets Better” anti-bullying project had to say:

1. Get elected attacking gay people and support brutally homophobic policies once elected while also behaving in stereotypically gay ways?

2. Prepare to be hoisted by your own homophobic petard, asshole. No sympathy for those victimized by the homophobia they work to advance.

For those of you at home: Rep. Schock has not committed a single homophobic act.  Voting against same-sex marriage or DADT is not “brutally homophobic”–it’s what his constituency wants (in a state where civil unions equal to marriage is the law).

Physically threatening a sitting congressman who is private about his sexuality?

That’s brutally homophobic, asshole.

Referring back to the Sodom (named after sodomy) & Gomorrah (named after an even weirder move) story from earlier: allow me to be Lot.  Take my wife, please.  

And leave Aaron Schock alone.

Goodfellas is one of my favorite movies of all time. Casino is top ten. The scenes, the looks, the cars, the women, the drugs, the Italians, the DeNiro, the Pesci—they’re all top-notch. You don’t get bored watching these movies. You can’t.

it even made chopping garlic exciting

Each scene is a masterpiece.  Lorraine Bracco tucking a gun into her granny panties after hastily flushing coke down the toilet.  Frankie Valli singing to the lovestruck couple on their first date.  The dead body in the meat freezer.  Sharon Stone whacked out of her mind in her white fur coat.  Don Rickles getting his head bashed in by Joe Pesci holding a phone.  Every scene is subtly graphic and sublime and came from the wild and wonderful mind of Scorsese.

I didn’t come into Wolf of Wall Street with these expectations.

In fact, I didn’t even plan on seeing it. Leonardo DiCaprio is a middling actor, and it’s hard to envision him as anything but the smartass kid in The Quick and the Dead.

For better or for worse, I’m part of that oh-so-vital target demographic for Wolf of Wall Street, lesbian handicapped woman of color ‘assertive, up-and-coming single male age 18-31’ and it didn’t interest me.  Around noon on a holiday, my friend informed me that she bought three tickets and we were going, and I really had no excuse to not say yes.

It’s hard to turn down free. In fact, if someone put a discount sign on getting punched in the nuts, I’d have to consider it.

Then there’s that whole part about how it’s three hours long.

Three hours.

I think of everything I could get done in the time it takes to watch a movie and it makes me extremely uncomfortable about taking a chunk out of my day to go see a movie (and emerge from the theatre post-daylight).

I could get two hours of work done and still have time for a 60 minute massage.  Or do an hour and a half of work and get a 90 minute massage.  Or get three 60 minute massages back to back to back, have shift changes in between, and stimulate our flagging economy (while increasing carpal tunnel healthcare costs to rise sharply amongst the ‘age 18-31 female Asian massage therapist’ demographic.  If only there was a healthcare law that offered easy-to-order, affordable, efficient care for our nation’s struggling masseuses.  THANKS OBAMA)

Three hours.

I can’t sit still that long.  I don’t go and see Harry Potter and the Fellowship of the Hunger Games for precisely that reason.

STFU BRIAN WILLIAMS YOU DONT KNOW BOUT MY LIFE

We slid in right as the previews finished and I was prepared to see—well, a movie. I had no expectations, good or bad, and read no reviews beforehand.

What immediately followed is what I can easily characterize as three hours from hell.

Let me clarify: Wolf of Wall Street is not a bad movie.

It’s not an awful movie.

It’s the worst movie I’ve seen in my life.

Imagine a 20-yr-old film student and his douchebag bros set out to make their version of Goodfellas without Italians, the mob, good actors, Lincolns, Cadillacs, humor, or purpose.

Then imagine they film it on a Flip camera they placed in their shirt pocket and brought to the bad strip club by the airport (the oft-maligned Peppermint Wildebeest) every night for a week.

It’s a film with no redeeming character or quality.  That was pardoned and later went on to commit first-degree murder.

Talented, enjoyable actors like Jean Dujardin and Joanna Lumley were lost in this messy, poorly-acted (if the characters were any more one dimensional, they’d be invisible on a subatomic level) hackneyed, shittily-written, self-aggrandizing, masturbatory hellhole.

Imagine a porno with worse dialogue and camera work brought to you by a toddler who just mainlined a bag of Pop Rocks.

Never have I wanted every single character to die in the end of a movie—until this.  At the very least, I was hoping they all came down with a vicious case of piles.

This movie made me a desperate man in the course of three hours.

It’s brainwrackingly predictable and embarrassingly humorless, from paper-thin dialogue to ADHD scene transitions. A blind, deaf, and dumb QVC psychic could’ve seen what was coming next.

things Miss Cleo didn’t predict: 9/11

Everytime something interesting was introduced–FBI stuff! Legal twists! Prison time!–it was immediately shooed off the stage to make room for the fat lady–Jonah Hill in a wig–still singing her greasy guts out.

I’d rather pay one of the movie’s cheap hookers to film herself doing the ping pong ball trick for Justin Bieber than see this movie again.

In the end, the result would be better-filmed, more coherent, and more entertaining.

The worst part?

People will have one of two reactions from this movie:

(1) they’ll want to emulate the leads and become classless amoral slutty drug-addled playboys who drive our economy and country into the ground out of their own vanity…

OR

(2) they’ll become staunch moralists who leave the theatre anti-sex, anti-business, anti-everything.

This movie encourages the wrong kind of people (beta males who frame their self-worth in being able to make money and get bitches to make up for being a loser–as if the kid who gave you a noogie 15 years ago gives a damn that you do blow off the navels of cheap escorts) to be even worse people. This is their Citizen Kane.

If you thought this was the greatest movie you’ve ever seen, you should be forcibly castrated. Not only do I not want you reproducing, I don’t even want you fucking.

In a scene towards the end, a drugged-up DiCaprio straps his toddler daughter in the front seat of an SL and powers into reverse out of the garage in a desperate attempt to kidnap her away from his wife, crashing into a brick barrier.

The look of confused, helpless terror and loss on her face is how I felt walking out of this assault on the senses.

0/5 stars, two thumbs and every other thumb hacked off by strict Muslim governments down.

Why can’t every day be like New Year’s Day? There’s no traffic, parking is free, everyone’s optimistic and relaxed, there’s football on TV, and that gentle morning tummy grumble from champagne and snacks.

My resolution this year?

To make all of you better people.

And to start: New Year’s is stupid and so are you.

Why choose one day out of the year to make resolutions to lose weight/save more money/stop killing prostitutes…

…according to an arbitrary calendar?

Every day should be an opportunity to wake up and start fresh. September 18th is no different from January 1 (and in fact, it’s likely a little warmer, so your resolution to shuffle your chub in too-tight shorts to lose a few lbs will be easier).

Every day is an opportunity to start going to the gym.

Or lose weight.

Or reconnect with your parents.

Or be more complimentary.

Or be less negative.

Or start a new hobby.

Or be open to a relationship.

Because you know why?

Every day is one less day you get.

One less day of health.

One less day of family.

One less day of friends.

One less day of a job.

One less day in a home.

One less day of freedom.

Tomorrow could change your life forever.

So why don’t you beat it to the punch?

Why can’t every day be like New Year’s Day? There’s no traffic, parking is free, everyone’s optimistic and relaxed, there’s football on TV, and that gentle morning tummy grumble from champagne and snacks.

My resolution this year?

To make all of you better people.

And to start: New Year’s is stupid and so are you.

Why choose one day out of the year to make resolutions to lose weight/save more money/stop killing prostitutes…

…according to an arbitrary calendar?

Every day should be an opportunity to wake up and start fresh. September 18th is no different from January 1 (and in fact, it’s likely a little warmer, so your resolution to shuffle your chub in too-tight shorts to lose a few lbs will be easier).

Every day is an opportunity to start going to the gym.

Or lose weight.

Or reconnect with your parents.

Or be more complimentary.

Or be less negative.

Or start a new hobby.

Or be open to a relationship.

Because you know why?

Every day is one less day you get.

One less day of health.

One less day of family.

One less day of friends.

One less day of a job.

One less day in a home.

One less day of freedom.

Tomorrow could change your life forever.

So why don’t you beat it to the punch?

Sometimes, you just need one thing you can’t find anywhere else.

Today, this one thing was a zipper.

It’s very simple. I had a zipper that broke off in my hand. Literally, the metal separated and it crumbled apart like a week-old cookie.

“I can fix this!” I thought to myself, the beginning of every horrid imbroglio I get myself into.

I looked up zipper repair kits online. Expensive, hard to find, and the shipping alone cost 176x than the value of this little eyelet of metal.

*shakes fist* damn you YKK and your evil monopoly!

People complain all the time about Big Oil or Big pHARMa (which is supposed to be cute because it has “harm” in it and the whole point of medicine is “do no harm” but some people are too stupid to understand that medicine must operate with a profit motive in order to work in any modern economy so instead they automatically level blame on drug companies who make lifesaving medicines because being stupid and conspiratorial is apparently far easier than even brushing with the truth) and seemingly neglect Big Zipper.

They’ve got us by the teeth.

I sighed heavily as I realized what this meant.

I have to go to a store to get this.

I’m not averse to going to a store to buy something. I prefer it to online shopping because I get to feel it in person and make sure it’s the right one and actually take it home so I can check the box on my list instead of ordering something, sitting around for 2 days, pacing my hallway, cleaning my kitchen for the 3rd time, biting all my nails off, watching Golden Girls reruns, and finally greeting the poor USPS lady at the door in my skivvies to tear apart the enormous box that my tiny item will arrive in and find out it’s the wrong thing.

That having been said, I like going to a store to buy things when I have to buy a LOT of things. There’s nothing sadder than the single, desperate purchase, because who needs to constantly be reminded of their ex?

So, I fired up the family truckster and barreled out the door in search of zipperdom.

First stop was Walgreen’s. They carry multiple sizes of tampons, sewing kits, and clothes that nobody should wear even if they have a gaping wound that requires a tourniquet. But a zipper repair kit they did not have.

Next stop was Home Depot. If you’ve ever been to Home Depot at 9AM on a Saturday morning, you’ll know the feeling of having to avoid playing Plinko with the day laborers physically crowding around every driveway in and out of the place. I happen to be darker than half of them anyway, so they never approach my car in search of brief employment. It’s simultaneously a relief and a disappointment—like finally hooking up with a microwaved bagel.

I like to consolidate my errands, so I thought I’d pick up a plant I was looking for on the same trip.

This turned out to be a grave mistake.

First of all, the garden section was manned by a woman who didn’t know where anything was. I asked where the vines were and she didn’t understand. I pointed at a small one sitting down and mouthed out the word again: “creeping fig”. She told me to find someone else.

Look Svetlana, I know that you’re cozy in your retail job and this capitalist paycheck is the best thing to happen since your home Slavic country Balkanized, but for chrissakes, can they at least give you a basic map of the garden section instead of you telling customers to basically piss off?

I wandered back to where the plants started looking like the ones I was looking for and it was a ghost town. I stood there, alone, on this gray Fall day in this cold, desolate, cement plain surrounded by dying foliage.

Help came in the form of a cropped-gray-hair miniature lesbian (SO much cuter than the full-sized ones!) pushing enough palm trees to rebuild Dubai.

“Excuse me? I’m looking for something,” I patiently asked.

The know-nothing woman up front looked at me from across the yard and gestured wildly towards kd-lang-divided-by-2. “There! There’s help!”

I didn’t think that looking for a vine (not the brief video kind) would turn into something that resembled a Somali rescue mission. I leaned over and asked for help again, a little more loudly and forcefully.

It harumphed at me. I took that as a good sign and that I wasn’t confusing it with a wildly unattractive garden gnome.

I walked back to the vines and asked what would grow and climb up a trellis the fastest.

“It’s winter. Nothing’s gonna grow,” was the incredibly enlightening response I got from the ewok.

This is not the answer I needed.

“So, will bougainvillea or creeping fig work better for this purpose?” I asked, hoping to lead at least to some sort of response.

“Bougainvillea won’t climb,” was the response, meaning that this woman A) didn’t know shit about plants and B) this was yet another fruitless endeavor on L’Affaire d’Zipper.

bitches don’t know bout my bougainvillea

I shrugged my shoulders and walked inside, only to find that no, this was not a place where zippers were sold, that I should go to Michael’s since it’s a craft store.

At this point I realized that I couldn’t just give up now. This ceased being a shopping trip.

This was now a quest.

I drove myself across town to Michael’s, where I was at this point absolutely certain I would find my glorious zipper and cease this seemingly endless journey.

They say LA is a car town, and “they” are full of crap. I pulled into the Michael’s underground garage and found that not a few, but all the spots were Compact. And not the ones they mark as “Compact” yet you could still back an F350 dualie into—I mean “I feel bad for people parked on either side of me because I will have to climb over their cars like a ball pit to escape my vehicle” compact.

With some crossed fingers and careful maneuvering, I lubed myself into the spot and up the escalator to a BRAND NEW Michael’s, which excited me about as much as finding out there was a natural disaster in Bangladesh.

As I walked in, I was immediately taken aback by this gawdawful array of crafting supplies. It’s nauseating to be surrounded by 10ft-high piles of vajazzling rhinestones.

I finally located help in the frame department to ask where the zipper repair material were. I can clearly sew myself a wardrobe here, so this should not be difficult to find.

“We don’t carry zippers,” she flatly said.

What the hell kind of craft store doesn’t carry zippers? Do people not zip anymore? If a jacket zipper breaks, are they supposed to safety pin themselves together like an aspiring hobo?

I asked her where they do have zippers. She offered Joann’s Fabrics, which I thought was the same damn type of store as this, but apparently I’m not in-the-know with the esoteric habits of the crafting community.

“Where is JoAnn’s?” I asked.

“Porter Ranch. Oh, and Riverside!”

To those of you in LA: I’m at the Studio City Michael’s (B). Porter Ranch (A) is a half-hour away. Riverside (C) is an hour and a half away.

If this bitch thinks I’m going to drive that far to get a damned zipper then I may as well squeeze my body between the two cars I parked by and hope my lungs collapse.

I Yelped a Joann’s Fabric a mile away (stupid bitch) and exhaustedly parked my car and trudged in, shoulders slumped.

I looked left and right upon entering. Fabric. Fabricfabricfabric. Reams and rolls and spools of suffocating patterned ugly horrible fabric that isn’t fit to be used as a serial killer’s choking method of choice lined the walls of this coffinous dystopia.

I located a saleslady to ask where they had the zippers. She gestured vaguely behind her and grunted, like a bear warning you it just excreted putrefied salmon bones out of its furry behind.

Finally—this was the Valhalla I was waiting for—ZIPPERLAND!

Relief combined with cold sweat combined with relief combined with confusion over this Byzantine naming and sorting system overcame me like a Filipino tsunami, causing me to unsteadily crouch and hold onto the zipper rack like the last Titanic lifevest. I ran my fingers over the variety of zippers, slightly disgusted that they make this many options for something as simple as a damn zipper.

Behind me, I heard a voice. Not the voice of an angel, more like the voice of an angel’s mother-in-law, hastily explaining to some poor bastard on the other end of a cellphone the need to make sweaters for her dogs immediately otherwise they wouldn’t be ready for Christmas and they don’t want to leave “Pumpkin” out this year because they’re going to “Mom’s House” and I’m just hoping, praying this woman is an assassin calling out a hit and using code words and not seriously planning her day around fondling spools of chartreuse fabric and pondering the right time to sew clothing for canines.

But even the wails of this post-menopausal could not drown out my sheer delight at finally finding a zipper. I decided to buy two, because 1) they were $2.50 (which was helpfully discovered after a solid 20 minutes of trying to decode the pricing system with the correlating code names and numbers, because apparently the Voynich Manuscript isn’t difficult enough) and 2) there was no chance in hell I was ever coming back to this place ever again, even if it was my best friend’s dying wish to (in which case I’d just go ahead and pinch the IV off).

This place is officially my personal hell. Women who sound and look like my evil lunch monitor of childhood (IM ONTO YOU LIZ) milling around decorative buttons, isolating me as the sole testosterone-producer in this island of misfit women whose kids and likely husband have left the nest, leaving them bereft of direction in life and in search of happiness and meaning amongst this leaky-ceilinged, yarn-webbed coven.

I had to get the hell out of here before what’s left of my hormones was sucked out of me, leaving me as nothing more than a dessicated shell caught somewhere between aisles 6 and 7 to be memorialized in taffeta and puff paint.

I threw myself towards the front of the store. Victory was a credit card slot away.

It was also 7 people in front of me away, because having two slow cashiers with tremors was the cherry on this dookie sundae that had been served so graciously to me.

Say what you want about JoAnn’s—they know their target audience well. This checkout line was stocked to the brim with all kinds of candy and chocolates, in quantities enough to give Willy Wonka a coronary—a veritable Diabetic’s Delight (Paula Deen’s new cookbook!)

Nothing could deter the end of my quest. There’s never a story where the hero comes back to fame and fortune after completing the journey and gets hit by a truck along the way, so I’ll be damned if anything will stop me from my promised land of milf’n’honey.

The cashier asks if I have a JoAnn’s card, which qualifies them to be more of a comic relief than any character Eddie Murphy has ever played in a movie.

The last of our interaction was whether or not I wanted a bag. I didn’t know what was more humiliating—being caught walking out of a JoAnn’s Fabrics or being caught walking out of a JoAnn’s Fabrics with a souvenir. I opted for the latter—after all, I have to keep the paparazzi guessing whether or not I got myself a dazzling fall skein of Vanna White yarn or a hot glue gun so I could try laminating my breathing passages shut.

The zipper was gloriously installed after ditching the stupid pliers method and just cutting into each side of the teeth and sliding it on.

Dante said the lowest, most central circle of hell was frozen—making it more terrifying than all others. Clearly, he never visited a JoAnn’s Fabrics.

experience the sheer terror

^even the world’s most beautiful woman can’t escape weave damage

I don’t like getting haircuts because I don’t like having to wait a week for it to look its best and then watch it slowly decline til it resembles the yard of a Hoarder castmember.

It’s a universal part of the first-world human condition to get a bad haircut from time to time. And it’s not like it’s a surprise when it happens. You can detect that “oh…shit” point in the middle of your haircut where you know they’ve just hacked off the wrong thing.

Also–I don’t know about you, but I’m uncomfortable paying someone more than, say, $8 to cut my hair. Before graduation, I spent $60 and damn near keeled over at the front register–which would have made my diploma-accepting experience the next day a bit more of a Weekend-at-Bernie’s affair.

There’s nothing sadder than having to bid a trusted haircutter adieu because they’ve drifted into the dreaded “comfort zone”–where no matter what you request, how many pictures of Brad Pitt you take with you and feverishly point at, they’ll always give you the same haircut they’ve given you since 1998. You feel like you’re locked in some Faustian bargain with them where you’re compelled to visit them forever. And that you’ve cheated on them if you go to someone else (it doesn’t help when I return a few months later and you ask “where ya been?” with a fake-casual tone).

That feeling after a haircut when your head feels 30 lbs lighter is disturbing. Hair only weighs as much as a curvy Nicole Richie–so why does it feel as if you’ve removed a local river rock distributor from the top of your head?

There’s no stranger feeling than that lightheaded (the good kind) relief and the devil’s itchiness afterwards because little pieces of hair are dusted across your neck and other strange places (how the hell did it travel down to my lower back?) There’s no remedy for this. You could get a haircut in a burka and a wind tunnel and yet still feel like chiggers are doing the Texas two-step across your décolletage.

You know a haircut is good when it looks good two months afterwards and it didn’t have to “grow out” for it to be socially acceptable. My last one is like that and I’ve been hemming and hawing for weeks over shearing it.

Down to brass tacks tho: who wore their weave better?

^even the world’s most beautiful woman can’t escape weave damage

I don’t like getting haircuts because I don’t like having to wait a week for it to look its best and then watch it slowly decline til it resembles the yard of a Hoarder castmember.

It’s a universal part of the first-world human condition to get a bad haircut from time to time. And it’s not like it’s a surprise when it happens. You can detect that “oh…shit” point in the middle of your haircut where you know they’ve just hacked off the wrong thing.

Also–I don’t know about you, but I’m uncomfortable paying someone more than, say, $8 to cut my hair. Before graduation, I spent $60 and damn near keeled over at the front register–which would have made my diploma-accepting experience the next day a bit more of a Weekend-at-Bernie’s affair.

There’s nothing sadder than having to bid a trusted haircutter adieu because they’ve drifted into the dreaded “comfort zone”–where no matter what you request, how many pictures of Brad Pitt you take with you and feverishly point at, they’ll always give you the same haircut they’ve given you since 1998. You feel like you’re locked in some Faustian bargain with them where you’re compelled to visit them forever. And that you’ve cheated on them if you go to someone else (it doesn’t help when I return a few months later and you ask “where ya been?” with a fake-casual tone).

That feeling after a haircut when your head feels 30 lbs lighter is disturbing. Hair only weighs as much as a curvy Nicole Richie–so why does it feel as if you’ve removed a local river rock distributor from the top of your head?

There’s no stranger feeling than that lightheaded (the good kind) relief and the devil’s itchiness afterwards because little pieces of hair are dusted across your neck and other strange places (how the hell did it travel down to my lower back?) There’s no remedy for this. You could get a haircut in a burka and a wind tunnel and yet still feel like chiggers are doing the Texas two-step across your décolletage.

You know a haircut is good when it looks good two months afterwards and it didn’t have to “grow out” for it to be socially acceptable. My last one is like that and I’ve been hemming and hawing for weeks over shearing it.

Down to brass tacks tho: who wore their weave better?

Is this what Rick Ross had in mind?

Or this?

Rap is hard.