Some people get bent out of shape about Catholics confessing their sins to a priest. They say, “Why not just confess them straight to God? Why go through a middleman?” Well, for starters, God forgives all sins, so if it wasn’t for the priests, we’d have no one to make us feel guilty. Sure, God will forgive you if you sleep with that drunk brother from the club, but what’s to keep you from doing it again? Only when you tell the elderly gentleman who baptized you as a baby that you bought a man drinks all night just so he would let you pipe him in an alley while his friends took photos with their phones do you really start to see the error of your ways. Only when your priest excuses himself to barf do you start to understand the destructive power of sin and the visual images of the words “rim job from a blind guy.” If you sin before God, you feel guilty, but that feeling goes away. But if your priest gives you a penance of three rosaries and a visit to the Department of Health, you really do start to walk the straight and narrow. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and at no time is that more evident than when a sixty-five-year-old celibate asks you to explain what you meant when you said “teabag.”
School Daze, or I’ll Have an Honor Roll with Extra Jelly, Please
Girl Scout Cookies
Girl Scout cookies are evil. Not only do they have all the temptation of a regular cookie, they come with the self-satisfying feeling that you’re helping some little girl go to camp. This is like your crack dealer having a scholarship fund.
The names of the cookies are very confusing. This is a carefully designed system devised to make you buy more than one box because every year you forget which ones you like and which ones you hate. Therefore, Girl Scout cookies contribute to America’s growing obesity problem. They’re little fat bullets filled with more chemicals than Artie Lange’s body. Girl Scout cookies are so indestructible they’ll be what the cockroaches eat after World War III.
Gym Class vs. the Fat Kids
Gym class is as hard on the fat kid as math class is on the black kid. Gym class was invented to tire kids out so they wouldn’t be hyper in science class. This isn’t necessary for the fat kids—they get tired standing up for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Now, don’t get me wrong: Gym class is useful for several reasons. First, it’s the only time stupid kids—I mean jocks—get to feel superior in school. Gym also gives football coaches a class they can teach besides study hall and driver’s ed. And it gives football players an A to help their grades.
However, gym class is evil because it is God’s way of punishing kids for being fat. It’s the only possible explanation. First, you are humiliated by wearing shorts specially made to crawl up the crack of your fat ass. Then you spend the next hour being beaten by large rubber balls thrown at your fat gut that your fat little legs are too slow to run from. Then, of course, is the pièce de résistance—the shower. Being fat, you obviously got sweaty, so now you have to choose—stink the rest of the day or have your friends gag at the sight of your stretch marks.
On the upside, though, gym is the first time many students experience lesbianism—even if it is just the girls’ volleyball coach’s haircut.
Homeschooling
Homeschooling is the worst thing you can do to kids short of raping them. School is about learning how to deal with others, not seeing what level the little prick can read at. Who cares how smart you are if you can’t properly interact with others? How is your son going to be prepared for the rigors of corporate America if he is not constantly being beaten up during recess and given swirlies after school? And how do you expect your daughters to ever have healthy relationships as adults if they are not being ridiculed for their appearance in middle school? Unless you want your kid to work at the underground Biosphere, send him to school.
Besides, what can children learn at home that they can’t learn at school? That Mommy likes her Xanax? Sure, you may be able to teach your children math and English better than some burned-out lifer who doesn’t give a shit, but who’s going to teach them about sex and drugs? Those conversations are very awkward in the home and are best handled by kids in the schoolyard.
Some parents keep their kids at home for religious reasons. But you know what they say: Those who don’t believe in evolution haven’t been touched by it. If you don’t send your kids to school, they have to learn about the world from television. I know your local minister/thief may not want you to believe this, but there’s more sex and violence on Jerry Springer than in English class. How long are you going to shelter the kid? Forever? Is he going to work from home making millions stuffing envelopes?
Quite honestly, our entire economic system is based on people succeeding just to stick it up the ass of people who were mean to them in high school. So homeschooling is jeopardizing our entire economy—not to mention creating some weird little fucks.
SATs
SATs are tests given to high school kids designed to ruin their lives, or at least one of their Saturdays. Colleges supposedly use them to judge prospective students, therefore everyone takes these tests way too seriously.
Students who take the SATs are set up to fail from the beginning. First of all, no one performs well on Saturday mornings except Scooby-Doo and horny scout leaders. By the time most students’ hangovers have worn off, the test is over and their scores are so bad they might as well drive right over to the local community college.
Critics say the test is culturally biased against blacks and Latinos, and to that I say, “Of course it is.” Students use number-two pencils to fill in the holes. To make things unbiased, they should let the blacks shoot holes in the tests and let Latinos stab them.
Standardized tests are all a farce. The SAT shows only two things: that students who score well A) know words that make them look like assholes when they use them, and B) know how to solve math problems they’ll never need unless they’re Asian.
If this country really wants to see how well students will do in college, they should get the kids drunk, stoned, and laid and see if they can still show up the next morning for a nine A.M. class without their mom driving them. Now, that’s a test!
Guidance Counselors
Anyone who listens to a guidance counselor is a fool. All guidance counselors want to do is talk you out of your dream because they never achieved theirs. Trust me—every guidance counselor hates his job, because talking to zit-faced seventeen-year-olds has never been anybody’s dream.
Guidance counselors are only guidance counselors because they flunked out of grad school. The only thing your guidance counselor cares about is if he can see down your shirt while you’re filling out his stupid questionnaire.
Counselors love to think the worst of each student. Seriously, they must get kickbacks from DeVry, because that’s where they want to send everyone. Another one of their favorite suggestions is the police academy. Guidance counselors direct so many students to the police academy because they want to know every cop when they get pulled over for drunk driving after they’ve drowned their own career sorrows.
Come to think of it, has there ever been a more worthless position than high school guidance counselor? These people are paid to say things like “If you want to go to college, you better take college prep classes.” No shit. You mean Harvard’s not going to care that I just made a killer spice rack in shop? Here is a quote you will never hear in a presidential inauguration speech: “I would like to thank my high school guidance counselor…because without him, my life would have turned out exactly the same!”
Guidance counselors are essentially human resources people who don’t want to work in the summer. And no one calls them on their bullshit! I mean, who’s going back to high school to tell their counselor off when they have so many burgers to flip? They tell students things like “Nobody makes it in Hollywood.” Hey, if I want that kind of discouragement, I’ll listen to my parents.
People Who Take High School Sports Too Seriously
Is there a bigger bunch of losers out there than people who take high
school sports seriously? Yes! People who take T-ball seriously.
High school students are under enough pressure; sports should not add to it. Kids in high school should be lighting farts and fingerbanging. People who rely on fifteen-year-old athletes to get their rocks off need better cable.
Parents, hear my plea: Don’t be so proud your kid is on the football team. He does drugs too. And townspeople who never made it to college, lighten up! You care way too much because high school was the last time you were cool. The athletes care because they think if they’re good, they’ll get a scholarship to college and do well in life. That ain’t necessarily so: You want to find some famous former high school athletes? Just go to the mall. They’re working as security guards.
In general, everyone involved should remember that winning a high school football game is just that—winning a game. It doesn’t really prove that the other town sucks! And if you really want to bore the shit out of someone, start telling the story of how you scored the winning basket twenty years ago. “Wow! Tell me more! Did you get to boff a cheerleader after?” Nobody cares. And let’s face it—if you had gone to a high school that had black kids, you wouldn’t have made the team to begin with.
Yearbook Signing
Yearbooks and dry humping are the two things nobody wants to think about after high school. Yearbooks are a reminder of either what a geek you were or what a loser you’ve become. The school’s pretty girls got married early, became impregnated, and were left for a younger secretary. Jocks got fat and they’re still stupid. And the math geek who’s now an engineer has hired the jock to mow his lawn. It’s one case of hilarious karmic retribution after another.
The worst part of the yearbook is the photos. Your yearbook photo only comes in handy twice in your adult life—either for your VH1 Behind the Music or E! True Hollywood Story, or when you commit a heinous crime and the yearbook photo is the only one they have to show on the news.
And the sentiments written in yearbooks! They last just about as long as the keg at the graduation party. “Best Friends Forever” lasts until the first week of college when you meet ten girls who are cooler than your high school BFF, who’s now enrolled in beauty school. “Have a great summer” really meant “Don’t sleep with my boyfriend or get pregnant.” And “Never change” meant “I hope to always be better than you.”
I think people shouldn’t sign yearbooks until their twenty-year high school reunion. The sayings would be much more realistic. I’d love to crack open a yearbook and read “You were a lot cockier when you had hair,” “Minivan or miniskirt. You can’t have both,” and “Please don’t tell my husband we had sex.” And of course, my personal favorite: “I wouldn’t have teased you so much if I had known you would someday own Microsoft.”
Part Three: Comedian, Heal Thyself!…Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Denial
Addictions
People think the only bad addictions in life are drugs and alcohol. But people are addicted to almost everything and don’t even know it. They’re hooked on approval, shopping, porn. Porn is definitely a big one. If your favorite computer file contains anything with the words “hot,” “horny,” or “high school,” then you are definitely addicted to porn. And if you’ve ever Googled the words “dirty sanchez” on your work computer, you better seek help. Put it this way: If you’re looking for a job, it’s much better to say you left your last one over money issues as opposed to having an insatiable foot fetish.
Some addictions are harder to identify than others. Is someone a sex addict or is that less a disease and more a subtle way for guys to brag? Some people are blind to their addictions. I once saw a 350-pound man mocking crack addicts. That’s right, sir, they’re weak-minded pieces of shit. Now keep eating pizza and cake until your knees give out or your heart explodes, whichever comes first.
Some people are addicted to TV—of course, it’s never PBS, it’s always the TV equivalent of crack, i.e., soap operas or the news. People addicted to soaps live in a fantasy world. They wait in their trailer for their long-lost stepbrother to make them president of his oil empire. On the other hand, people addicted to news live their lives in fear and shoot the paper-boy when he shows up an hour early. Some people are even addicted to crossword puzzles or Sudoku. For those of you who don’t know, Sudoku is the gook crossword puzzle with numbers. Gooks can’t handle regular crossword puzzles because their culture doesn’t use words, it uses pictures, like a fucked-up game of Concentration.
Some people are addicted to exercise. These people think if they jog far enough, they’ll never die. No, Jim Fixx, it means you’ll probably get hit by a car driven by someone who’s addicted to something a little easier on the knees. The worst addiction of all is religion. It makes you a self-righteous asshole and it might all be for nothing if there’s no God anyway. At least when you’re addicted to food, the Lord is right there stuffed inside a jelly doughnut.
Interventions
Interventions are a great way to lose a friend. That is because people don’t want to hear the truth about themselves. Addicts know they have a problem. Interventions are as bad as telling someone her boyfriend is cheating on her. Let her find out on her own. Remember: They always shoot the messenger.
Interventions are like baby showers—nobody wants to attend them but they’re forced to go. But instead of getting you gifts, your friends and family sit around and tell you what a fuckup you are. If you’re ever tempted to throw an intervention, have some balls and talk to the person in private yourself. If he won’t listen to you personally, fuck ’im. Bringing more people into the mix just spreads the drama, and everybody has enough drama. People only change because they want to or have to, not because someone bought a deli tray.
Most of the time, an intervention happens because someone is a drunk or on drugs, and everyone tells the person how he has hurt them while taking the drugs. If your friends are trying an intervention with you because of drugs or alcohol, my advice would be to deny you have a problem, scream “Fuck you!”, and then leave. It’s really doing them a favor, because they’ll have a much better story to tell their friends. If you just sit there and say, “You know what? You’re right. I need help,” that’s a real snore. Your friends went through the trouble of ganging up on you, and your acquiescence is a real buzzkill for them. Also, when they cart you off to rehab, don’t just go. Go kicking and screaming. Again, it will make your friends feel better about their efforts. After all, your drinking has been a huge pain in their ass—don’t you at least owe them a good story?
I think people should conduct interventions in cases other than drinking or drugging. They should do an intervention if someone is a dick. That’s a great intervention because there’s nothing to blame the guest of honor’s behavior on other than the fact that he’s an asshole. A word of advice, however: If anyone ever does an intervention on you like that, just blame your dad and start crying. You’ll get out of there in fifteen minutes tops. But only do this if your parents aren’t there. Otherwise, you’re in for two hours minimum.
Codependence
Everyone is codependent to a certain degree. Be it on a dog, a talk-show host, or a puppet, everyone is dependent on something. The dog is man’s best friend because some people can only be friends with things with worse breath than them. Cats exist because some people are so lonely, they’ll pretend a cat gives a shit about them.
Psychologists say that codependents are people who care “too much” for someone who depends on them. That is why we codependents prefer fuckups—because they need us. We actually are attracted to the nonfun part of alcoholics. Screw the parties and the socializing. Give me the vomiting and unemployment. If you’re broke and smell like puke, you’re not going to leave me for a younger woman. Essentially, the codependent’s motto is “I would rather be miserable than be alone.” Unless, of course, it’s during sex.
Here are some symptoms of codependents: We are constantly lying for the other person, saying he’s sick instead of saying he�
�s hungover or, even more accurately, at the dry cleaners trying to get the piss stain out of the couch cushion. We make excuses for the person: “He’s not a homo. He’s just too drunk to get it up,” or, as we like to call it, the Liza Minnelli defense. Codependents also have problems with intimacy, but that’s hard to prove since the people we date are usually drunk, stoned, or whacking off to freaky porn.
Some people don’t think codependency is a disease. Those are the same people who cruise AA meetings like they’re singles bars and get pissed off whenever the word “rehab” is brought up. If you’ve ever taken back a boyfriend who has habitually cheated on you because he said he would “die without you,” you are not well and you should seek help. So join me. I know this great AA meeting with a ton of hot single guys.
Love at First Sight vs. Being Friends First
I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I do believe in lust at first sight. Everybody has lust at first sight. Then the hard body talks and you want to suck the juice back up your leg. I see tons of men for the first second and I want to fuck them. But one minute later, I find ten things that turn me off about them, like the fact that they’re wearing sandals or live in Cleveland. I’ll still fuck them, but there’s no love involved. Most love-at-first-sight relationships end in “I’ll kill that son of a bitch the next time I see him.” You see stars going in and you want him to see stars on the way out.
On the other hand, it’s easy to sleep with a friend because there are lots of opportunities to do so: a mutual friend’s party, running into them at the store, you’re drunk and don’t have cab fare. Being friends with someone before you get involved means you may lose their friendship when it’s over, but, hey, I lose friends like stoners lose their keys. Just go for it.
Chocolate, Please Page 21