I Hate Your Charades of Fame

High Society and me don't have much in common. I don't enjoy classical music unless it's playing in the background during a movie murder scene or the rumble scene in "Clockwork Orange," and I don't like an sort of art that looks like it was painted by Muhammad Ali. Opera is too fucking loud and Pâté tastes like ASS. I openly admit this because I don't want anyone to ever confuse me with someone who gives a fuck about country clubs and ballet. The self-cut hair and shrunken polo probably gave me away, but I'd like to think I'm not so obviously mundane.

(uses Sharpie to disguise scratch in $40 shoe)

What I do care about are people who impersonate being hoighty-toighty, fancy-pants, high-class schmoozers, because these people are fifty-times worse than the people who actually enjoy playing squash and eating squid-ink soup.

All of you know someone who claims to flirt with high society. They claim to have friends who are royalty, they claim to have fucked the daughter of a New York debutante, they claim to have eaten Polar Bear meat while on holiday in Oslo. They are the fucking WORST. Listening to these dip-shits makes me want to set my desk on fire and scream, ATTICA! ATTICA! until the NYPD blows my head off with a shotgun. Seriously, it's much better than the alternative, which is sitting quietly as someone recounts their bullshit romps in the South of France.

Why people feel the need to lie, I'll never understand. Mainly because, you know, you're not fooling anybody. You are a flake. Any imbecile who can count to ten without taking off their shoes knows you are full of shit. You have never eaten dinner with Idi Amin. He would have chopped off your head and staked it on a spear in front of his palace. You never ran into Marlon Brando at Elaine's. Marlon Brando would have fucking slapped you in the face. You never shared a joint with Andy Warhol back in the 70's. You may have seen Warhol in a magazine sharing a joint with Liza Minelli, but you are not Liza Minelli. You’re a fucking sham. I even like Liza Minelli more than you, and she makes me want to drink a pitcher full of mercury.

You know what I think? I think these people are so delusional that they truly believe that they are connected to people with more money than God. I think these people think, "Oh boy, last night was INSANE, driving down Sunset Blvd in a stretch Bentley while blowing coke of Lindsay Lohan's ass and Indian Wrestling Prince Harry." But everyone knows they really spent last night eating alone at some stupid trendy bistro where the waiters blow snot rockets in the lobster risotto. Do I think this is sad? No. Sad is a three-legged dog. Sad is a sick kid. Sad is the demise of Al Pacino's career. Sad is not some fucking asshole who wants people to believe he or she is something that he or she is most certainly not.

So here are a few words of advice. Stop. Just stop already. I can't listen to anymore of your bullshit. You're making me feel nostalgic over the days when I had to share a cube wall with a lady who claimed she once cooked Chris Webber a pot of spaghetti*.


*100% true story

I Hate Times Square

I’m not big on site-seeing. It's not really my "thing." Does me not traveling anywhere ever besides Mexico where I blacked-out for seven days straight and drank a lot of warm Coronas play a factor in this opinion? Yes, I’m sure it does. But I’ve never been big on the idea of walking around strange cities, asking bitchy people where the nearest entrance to the fucking tube is, and carrying a fanny pack with cameras and phones and gum and nine packs of cigarettes or whatever other shit Europeans carry in those things. Fuck that. As I’ve said before, give me the beach and some beers and the dishwater green Atlantic to look at and this guy is GOLD. Need a translation book upon arrival? Eh, maybe next year...

But for some reason, people LOVE to come to New York and fuck around in Times Square. And I have one simple question for these people: WHY? Why would you EVER willingly make a trip to Times Square? Hanging out in the canned goods aisle of a supermarket right before a hurricane hits is more fun. Times Square is the waiting room for Hell. It is more congested than Jon Daly’s plaque lacquered arteries. There is nothing to do...wait, let me clarify: there is nothing worth doing. Literally, there isn’t a fucking single fun thing to do in Times Square except stand around and look like a dick or go eat in a chain restaurant that you already have down the street from your house in Skokie, IL. It's a bunch of assholes yelling for you to visit some shitty comedy club, panhandlers who think that they are charming when they are actually vomit-inducing, and a bunch of stupid chairs thrown into the middle of blazing hot pavement that is emitting toxic fumes.

I will never understand the allure of this place, and more importantly, I will NEVER understand the allure of it on Times Square on New Years Eve. It's a meeting of the morons if you ask me.

"Hey everyone, want to buy an overpriced plane ticket to New York City, fly into to JFK after a 75 hour layover in Atlanta, sit in traffic on the Van Wyck for 4 hours in a cab that smells like the bathroom floor of New Orleans brothel, trudge into Times Square in -5 degree weather, and then STAND around for 17 hours, pissing in a Gatorade bottle while waiting for a fucking Light Bright ball to drop and for a bunch of frozen assholes to sing Auld Lang Syne and then call it a night?"

Ummm...FUCK NO I DON’T.

If I was ever forced to do this as a kid, I would have become a Crystal-Meth addict out of spite. Just writing that past paragraph literally made me even more anti-Times Square on New Years Eve, if that's possible. Holy shit, if I’m ever handed a Styrofoam container full of broken glass and an invitation to Times Square on New Years Eve, and I’m forced to choice one, looks like it’s the warm and sweet embrace of Death for me.

I don’t get the Economics of the place, either. How are there 6,985 carts selling I Heart NY t-shirts with cuffs so tight they cut the circulation off from your hands? The math does not work out. Same goes for the 600,000 hot dog and falafel carts. No way those guys are selling enough cans of fucking Pepsi to make a living off of it. I know in Mexico every street vendor was offering me cocaine when I walked by. That was a little disconcerting, to be honest. But seriously, they were yelling "hey, coke? Coke?" like they were offering me Skittles. Not weed. Not pills. COCAINE. You’d see an old man selling empanadas or some shit and say, man that poor old guy is stuck out here peddling, and then all of a sudden he would be like, "Heeeeeey Gringo, want some coke? Coke? You want some (long sniffing sound)? You know, some Cocaeena?"

It made sense in Mexico. And look, I’m not saying that’s the racket the Times Square guys have going on, but would I be shocked? Not a fucking chance, my friend.

I think seeing tourists frequenting the food establishments makes me the most angry. Really, Applebee’s? Really? You are waiting on line with one of those fucking seizure machines for a table at Applebee’s? There are 20,000 places to eat in NYC and you want to get the sizzling shrimp dipped in lard with a side order of bacon fries and a chocolate shake even though your picture is up on the stupid wall of the stupid one in your town back home because you go there every Tuesday night with your bowling team? BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS, ASSHOLE. I am the most vanilla motherfucker on this planet and even I refuse to eat at dumps like Applebee's. Middle-Americans think all true New York City cuisine is poisoned with gayness or something, and they're afraid it's contagious. Well guess what, Hank? It's not.

/ties shirt through collar
//watches "Dear John" of Blu Ray

A few months ago I went to the movies in Times Square. Obviously that was mistake #1. Needless to say, it was like watching movie in a mall food court filled with ADHD riddled 4 year olds, minus the 4 year olds. I wanted to hang myself with my belt in the bathroom within the first 30 seconds, and I would have had I not spent $13 on a motherfucking ticket already. The theater may have been half full, but every fucking person in there was chatting it up. It was like a fucking therapy group or something. I’ve been to movies where there are a few random assholes blabbing away or letting their phone ring away for ten minutes, but the majority of people talking like they're sitting in park? Never seen it before.

Obviously that day was the straw that broke the camel's back. I decided that I never have a reason to go back there, and never will. I will skip Times Square forever. No exceptions...Wait, what's that you say? There's a free open bar in Times Square with Shake Shack providing free food? Steven Seagal is there and he's reenacting scenes and dialogue from “Out for Justice”? Brooklyn Decker and Bar Rafaeli are playing beach volleyball in a portable sand pit? Someone is giving out free heroin? Someone reanimated Jim Morrison's rotting corpse and he's performing a one-time only concert right there underneath the Times building? Well, maybe you didn't hear me well enough before, but I'll reiterate: NO THANKS, PAL. You can take your invitation and give it to that guy over there with the map of greater New York hanging out of his jorts. He’ll enjoy standing chest-to-back with a 380 lb man who emits the smell of German coleslaw just for a peak at a blinking sign and the inside of Dave & Buster's.

I Hate Your Health Benefits

How out of place is the construction worker here? What is he doing with the doctors?? I love this picture, I'm going to frame it and put it on my desk.

I work for a company that has recently been usurped by an even larger company. I believe my job is safe, but you never know, considering I cut my own hair and get spontaneous bloody noses and bleed all over my desk, rug, and garbage can. I'm sure the cleaning lady just ADORES this. Regardless, there is one thing that I am going to have to deal with in the near future that to me is the equivalent of rinsing my eyeballs with bleach and fire: signing up for a new health benefits. It is the fucking WORST. I would rather spend an hour picking the fleas off homeless people with my teeth. You have to be a fucking astrophysicist to even understand the introductory paragraph. Flex spend? What the fuck is that? It sounds like a football audible.

I will never understand my benefits. I get packets in the mail thicker than the phonebook that immediately go into the garbage. Too intimidating for me. I had to read War and Peace in college, and I will never read anything that mirrors the size of that boring piece of shit. Fuck your health benefits manual. And fuck your change to my health benefits. Trying to squeeze another penny out of us again, are you? Trying to raise our co-pay so you can give some executive another $10,000,000 bonus? Die in a fucking forest fire.

Talking about health benefits is all white noise to me. You could sit me in a bare room with a one-on-one coach who's threatening me with a cattle prod, and I would still lose focus within seven seconds and start thinking about what I will eat for dinner, who should set up for Mariano Rivera, and how the internet works. The teacher might as well be speaking Mandarin Chinese because I will NEVER understand any of it. I could ingest a vile of ritalin and not absorb one ounce of relevant information.

I obviously blame much of this on my three-second attention span, but I also blame the complexity of the system. Online sign-up takes seventeen hours. You can be approved for a mortgage quicker than it takes to create a secure password. Use thirteen vowels, seventeen numbers, three smiley faces and thirty four symbols. Welp, already forget that password, fuckface system, looks like I'll be calling the helpline 38 times and politely asking the Indian man to repeat EVERY WORD HE FUCKING SAYS.

When I finally log in, the homepage opens 500,000 extra windows on my computer. Why this happens, I don't know. But I can't stand it. Being borderline OCD, I start sweating and panicking the minute this happens. Then I sign off immediately and abandon my progress and then go outside and get hit by a delivery truck and die because there is a lapse in my benefits coverage. Fuck you, Karma.

And much like the rest of white collar hell, since my company includes health benefits as part of my salary - which is fucking horse shit to begin with, seeing that I never go to the doctor so I basically donate money twice a month to the fucking motherfucking company I already work for - I think they should be responsible with signing me up for the appropriate health benefits. Why should I have to comprehend medical verbiage that ends up depressing me, thus forcing me to abandon hope on mankind and watch depressing-as-fuck movies like "The Deer Hunter"?

How much money could it cost for my HR rep to sit me down, run through a list of ailments, and pick the plan that best suits me? Probably less than my bi-monthly investment into the company, so fuck you guys, help me already! Stop sending me to some fucking seminar run by some asshole who talks to me like I'm fucking seven years old when I ask a basic question. You think I'm dumb, well who fucking hit the tying run in the 9th inning of Game 4 of the 2001 World Series? Who directed "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"?? ARE YOU SARAH CONNER??? Oh you don't know the answers to these questions, wow, what a fucking MORON you are! Hey everyone, this fucking doctor over here doesn't know dick about anything other than deductibles! WHAT AN IDIOT!

/incites riot
//arrested

It's all a bunch of bullshit, anyway, because your company will fire you waaaaaaay before you're old enough to be sick all the time and need tons of benefits. Then you're up Shit's Creek without a paddle, and while the company is busy celebrating the promotion of a healthy 28 year old VP who went to Yale, you're fucking dying in an alley somewhere with whooping cough.

I Hate You, Public iPod Singer

About 1/10,000 of the population in America has a tolerable voice. I'm not talking talented, I'm talking TOLERABLE - ie: "Okay, this guy can sing 'Sweet Child O' Mine' and not make me want to launch my face through a plate glass window, but I still wouldn't pay to listen to him."

The really talented people? They do not sing in a public place not designed to house them and show off their talents. They are too busy writing songs about taking peyote at the Joshua Tree and doing heroin in a studio apartment on the Lower East Side. They don't have time to underwhelmingly sing "Wonderwall" in Union Square and play it acoustically at full blast using seventeen amps and an electric guitar.

My voice, unfortunately, is not tolerable. I sound fucking terrible. I sound like a drunk Joe Cocker who's had his larynx removed and replaced with a hand-held fan. But I accept this, and keep my singing inside the car/shower/brain, or the confines of my house and hope that the wife doesn't get fed up and leave me for someone who isn't retarded.

Never the less, there are many, many people out there who are just as bad at singing as I am, but insist on doing it in public on a regular basis, much to the chagrin of society. Case in point: iPod singers. These people deserve a broken glass milkshake, especially when they decide to sing around me...in the morning...when it's 14 degrees out and raining. Who the fuck told you to that you had a pleasant voice? WHO??? GIVE ME HIS NAME RIGHT NOW SO I CAN BURN HIS HOUSE DOWN.

Seriously, if you're so self-absorbed and you decide that you have the ability (or the apathy for other people's ears) to sing on a subway train, then you deserve it when people call you asshole and tell you to shut the fuck up or throw battery acid into your eyes. I once sat next to a giant fat man singing "Brown Sugar" as loud as he could on a PACKED uptown 2 train. No joke. And he had a lisp. And his body odor smelled like the East River. If he had been sitting there minding his own business, reading a Manga comic or something, I probably would have pitied him and spent the rest of the day wondering why some people get dealt such shitty hands in life. But noooo, the fat man had to open his giant fucking mouth. So instead of feeling sorry for the guy I spent the rest of the ride wondering who would be willing to help hold him down so I could strangle him with my shoe laces.

For some people, singing is just not enough. They need MORE attention. So these people add to their singing nonsense by doing little restrained dances. They nod their head, snap their fingers, wiggle their hips, and strongly agree with whatever that gay-guy-lead-singer of Coldplay is saying to them through their head phones. The weird thing is, these people don't LOOK crazy. It's not like they're wearing a leotard and a Ushanka. They look normal enough. And yet, they are singing. LOUD. And they are sort of dancing. Who the fuck does this? You HAVE to be somewhat crazy to act like this in public. I bet in 1935 no on did this shit. Back in 1935 no one had a goddamn biscuit to eat, let alone a place to sing and dance. People back then ate dirt and garbage and thanked God for the garbage and dirt. Fuck 2010, I want to go back to the 1930's when everyone was poor AND NO ONE HAD AN iPOD!

Let's shift this to another facet of the whole singing in public experience: those people who take karaoke seriously need a reality check, by way of an open hand slap. You are one step removed from this guy. I love karaoke. Karaoke is great. It's designed for people like me to belt out stupid shit and drink too much and then sing even more annoying shit. That's the beauty of karaoke. But you people who think it's an audition "American Idol" need to fucking buck up. Nobody wants to hear you try and hit Falsetto notes. They want to listen to you sing a shitty Mötley Crüe song, spill beer on your slacks, and then unsuccessfully hit on that girl in the corner who would rather chew on hot coals than waste four seconds of her life speaking to you. There are ZERO talent agents lurking in the crowd. Talent agents are too busy doing cocaine and having sex with expensive call girls. They don't want to sign an overweight banker who reeks like stromboli.

But here's some free advice for all you people who do sing in public - JUST STOP ALREADY. Those eyes you feel staring at you, they are not from people that want to hang out with you and bake cookies and sleep over your house and learn different songs and eventually start a band and get a record deal and go on tour and become stars together. They want to punch your fucking face in and go home and eat dinner and ignore that AMEX bill for another night. They are hoping you fall down the subway stairs later and shatter your head like a Lenox vase. And your dance moves, they are interfering with my personal space. I don't want to see that fat ass under your hemp skirt wiggle anymore. I'm going to PUKE. And if I do, it's going to be on you. The subway, the street, the bus, the train, these places are not your personal forum. They are for miserable people like me to zone out and numb myself with tall boys and pretend I love where my career is headed and not wish Manhattan would be hit with a tidal wave simply so I wouldn't have to go to work anymore. I don't want to hear you sing Train. Just shut the fuck up and fall in line, asshole.

I Hate Your Customer Service

I am incapable of rationally dealing with customer service. This inability is ingrained into my DNA. It is tattooed on my soul. When God was molding me from his big bin of Play-Doh, he tossed in a little too much 'impatience for the disembodied voice on the other end of the phone who's really trying to help me but I think is out to get me because I am fucking insane.' So I blame him, and not my impatience issues. I suggest you do the same with any shortcomings. Makes people really respect you at gatherings.

My impatience with customer service really makes life difficult, because I love to order shit from online. I am lazy, and clicking buttons solves the whole getting up off my ass and going to the store problem. I also hate dealing with sales people in stores. I have about 56 people come up to me at Barnes & Nobles, asking me if I need help. Then I feel like they keep bothering me because they think I'm stealing. Then I start to feel guilty even though I haven't done anything wrong. STOP STARING AT ME AND WHISPERING INTO YOUR HEADSET! I look like an asshole who isn't smooth enough to steal free matched, so why don't you worry about the guy lingering in the mystery section, carrying the jumbo-sized North Face backpack, stuffing it full of James Patterson books or some other horseshit.

Ultimately, when I shop online, there will be a problem with my order. And I will have to find the goddamn customer service phone number BURIED somewhere on the website. This pisses me off too. These websites boast supreme customer service, but then they try to make you solve your problem by scrolling through a series of troubleshooting "help" tabs. Well, fuck your tabs. My case is unique, don't you see? I need someone to delicately hold my hand and walk me through each step and explain everything to me, or just do it for me because I can't get past the goddamn log-in page GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!

Calling customer service is equally as bad. Hey automated voice, you think you're so smart, well how do you like it when I hit 0 fifty fucking times in a row? You're sorry, you don't understand, I'M FUCKING SORRY TOO, HOW ABOUT I KEEP HITTING 0, YOU PIECE OF SHIT???

This actually works on occasion, which is nice. I hit 0 until my finger cracks and bleeds or I scream "OPERATOR" into the receiver until the cyborg on the other end gives up and lets me through to a precious customer service agent. I should have a camera crew on me at all times when I call in to customer service. If a psychiatrist watched me, I'd be committed on the spot. I either scream "OPERATOR, OPERATOR, OPERATOR" or "MANAGER, MANAGER, MANAGER" until I'm redirected. Touch-tone options are for fucking peasants. I want the real thing.

And once I get a customer service rep on the phone with real arteries and lungs and eyeballs, I always try to be pleasant. Honestly, I do. Because I know that they want to be doing what they're doing about as much as I want to be speaking with them and trying to find out when I can expect my signed photograph of Johnny Hector to arrive. But occasionally they will get sassy with me. And then I have to return that sass, for fear of losing of street credit with the zero people that give a shit whether or not some dude from Mumbai served me. I never bring that shit to them first, but I do look forward to returning it when one of the agents gets a little coarse when responding to one of my simple questions. You want to fucking dance, Azim? You want to fucking dance with me? Well, you just say when. I'll fucking dance all night, sucka, it's not like I have anything better to do!

I had an agent hang up on me once. No joke, the dude got so angry and frustrated he just clicked the phone down. He was probably trotted into the streets of Delhi and caned because I was being a whiny bitch about something. But did I feel bad? Fuck no. Mess with the bull, you get the horns, my man.

And this is why everyone hates America. But still, you present me with no other options, large company. You force me to speak with either an automated voice or some guy nineteen hours in the future who doesn't think it's funny when I ask him to tell me the outcome of the baseball game I'm watching so I can win a little cash. You're ahead of me in time, get it? Get it? What, you don't find my hysterical jokes funny? THEN PUT ME ON THE PHONE WITH YOUR SUPERVISOR.

I Hate Your Galas

For the most part, formal events are terrible. I think I can say that's a conservative description, an understatement perhaps. Because unless you're the center of attention and you have people catering to you and feeding you grapes right from the vine like you're Julius-fucking-Caesar, being stuck in a monkey suit and forced to surrender money and gifts and watch as some asshole gives a presentation is just awful.

The exception is weddings. Weddings - most weddings - get a pass because of the open bar and the advocacy of binge-drinking. An open bar could make an Iranian stoning fun to attend. Add in a band that has a kickass repertoire and a lead singer that looks like Rod Stewart on heroin, and you have yourself a fucking awesome night. The only downfall to a wedding is if there's a DJ, and the DJ thinks he's the MC of a 8th grade dance. And of course, the real killer: a cash bar. Couples who commission a cash bar at their wedding should be forced on a Spanish Donkey. I once went to a wedding that had a cash bar. It was so depressing. I left to go to the liquor store and bought a liter of Jameson and a bottle of ginger ale. I vomited on a car hood at 11pm.

Stupid, insignificant events, as formal events, are THE WORST. They make me want to dive into the back of a cement mixer. It's Billy's birthday today? And you're not having it at Burger King? Well, then you suck. Oh, you're disappointed with my attitude, are you? Well guess what? I'M FUCKING DISAPPOINTED WITH YOUR ATTITUDE. I'm disappointed that I missed CC Sabathia strikeout 10 and then swallow a lost child, whole, right on the pitcher's mound. And I'm disappointed that I missed Darrelle Revis return an interception 101 yards for the go-ahead touchdown because I was too busy attending Billy's 6th birthday at the Four-fucking-Seasons. He's six years old, for Christ's sake, he still believes in Santa Claus and he still occasionally shits his pants - do you really think a BBQ with a clown and some presents in your backyard would have been a letdown? Well, I don't. In fact, I bet he won't look back on his childhood and wonder why the fuck he never got to eat too many hamburgers and too much Carvel cake and spend the night puking in the toilet. I also bet your friends would be less likely to turn down an invitation to his next birthday if they knew they wouldn't be forced to wear a suit in 115° heat.

It only gets worse as you get older. A 5th wedding anniversary gala? Fuck you. 5 years of marriage isn't SHIT. My parents have been married for 40 years. Yes, FORTY YEARS. Now that's an accomplishment. When you get to 40 years of marriage call me and I'll put on a tuxedo and clap my hands and fake-laugh when one of your dope friends makes unfunny jokes at your expense. But 5 years? Send each other some eCards and shut the fuck up.

And what makes most of the events worse is the mixture of people that attend them. It's never intimate. Oh no, you have to invite EVERYONE you know. I spend half the time trying to avoid your fucking Uncle who thinks making off-color remarks about black people and young girls is as hysterical as his gingivitis death-breath. And I hate the too-drunk-person at an event that is not the forum for people to get drunk at. For some reason I am always near the guy at the Holy Communion when he falls over a cement macadam and splits his forehead open on the concrete and his wife begins screaming at him and then kids start crying and all other types of fun shit follows. The randomness factor of the attendees always adds a little too much anxiety. What if I get stuck at a table with the cousin who is 700 lbs? What then? Am I really expected to not stare in awe as she inhales her prime rib? You can't ask that of me, dammit! Look at her head, it's HUGE!

And formal work events are the apex of awful. There is a bottomless well of booze despite the strictest etiquette expectations. "Oh hi there, did you see our selection of 98 different kinds of beer and vodka and whiskey? Did I mention it's all FREE? Is that an erection I see?" Who doesn't look at the open work event bar and imagine drinking 79 drinks and then doing a shirtless tap-dance to the awe and wonder of all onlookers? But noooooooo, you have to behave yourself, after all, your boss is here. It's okay for him to get drunk and shit all over everyone, but you have to stand there and sip your Amstel Lite and wish yourself off to a land where Boris Yeltsin is your CEO and you get promoted based on the amount of times you pass out on a park bench and have to call in sick due to skull-crushing hangovers.

I think there needs to be less objection to people declining to attend formal events. If I say no, I will not be coming to Steve's retirement party at the Ritz, but here is a token of appreciation on my behalf, NO ONE should get upset. Why do you care if I'm there? Do you really feel like staring at my puss all night? In fact, I bet you won't even notice. I bet you'll be too busy cheering Steve up about not having a purpose in life anymore and also planning your stupid kid's next birthday party at Cipriani's, you jerk.

I Hate Your Vacation Updates on Facebook

A good vacation trumps everything in life. Food, sex, beer, whiskey, heroin, you name it. And I'm talking real vacation, a relaxing vacation, not the kind of vacation that includes hiking up right-angle cliffs just to the peak down the throat of an active volcano, or rafting down level 5 rapids waiting to be spilled overboard so you can crack your head open like a coconut on one of the several thousand jutting rocks, or getting inoculated against malaria and Ebola while safariing through a war-torn African country that's been overthrown by cannibalistic militants with a penchant for beheading fat, white Americans. Fuck that shit. I'm talking my ass sitting in a beach chair, feet buried in the sand, beer in hand, shades resting firmly on the nose like motherfucking Magnum P.I. scoping out a never-ending parade of 1985 Miami tail. That's my kind of vacation. Can't get enough of that shit. That other shit can be left for my alternative life where I do all kinds of cool shit and travel to exotic locales. Alternate me is fucking busy, by the way. He juggles a very high-profile life with the adoration of his family, friends, and colleagues. He knows how to sail. He owns many, many pairs of expensive Paul & Shark shirts and sips Macallan after running the high stakes baccarat tables in Monte Carlo...

(awkward silence)

Anyway...

Do you know what isn't on my mind while I'm sitting at the beach, basking in the hot sun, preparing for my next nonathletic sprint into the crashing waves? Facebook. Couldn't be less interested in who changed their profile pic. Don't give a shit who's relationship just disintegrated into a million pieces of tears and public humiliation. I am only mildly interested in that shit while I'm at work, trying to forget how much I hate working. But not on vacation. I am at the beach. I am staring at one of Mother Nature's fucking masterpieces. I am eating seafood and plowing through a whole box of Flavor-Ice every night and showering outdoors*. I am drinking multiple beers at 12pm and not feeling like an alcoholic. Unless it's to check a box score or the MLB trade block, I don't want to see a fucking keyboard. And I especially do not want to log into to Facebook. I'd rather eat a hamburger covered in mercury.

But there are some people who insist on telling the world just how awesome their vacation is while they're still on it. They actually take time away from their temporary Utopia to make a status update. "Weather is amazing here, 78 and sunny. Just drank a Pina Colada while riding a Dolphin. On my way to eat a 5 lb lobster and then off to an all you can drink luau on a 973 foot yacht with LeBron James and Prince William." Well fuck you, sir, you can go fucking trip and fall into a bonfire. The weather is not beautiful here. It's 100 degrees. I am walking dehydration. You could melt a glacier against my face. I smell like a homeless person. Pulling my sweaty socks off at the end of the day is the equivalent of winning the lottery. And the closest thing to refreshment is holding a luke-warm bottle of water to my head, curling into a ball, and lying under my desk where no one can find me while I weep and fan myself with a manila folder.

But you, oh you NEED to remind me how amazing your vacation is. Oh, you even added a picture to show me how awesome the view is from your $1,500 a night room. Well, I hope you step on a fucking sea urchin and your foot swells up and you look like the fucking Elephant Man. I hope you catch a ride with a local cab driver and he skids off the road while trying to change his Bob Marley "Legend" tape and drives off a cliff. Who the fuck thinks of doing shit like this? "Wow, this place is beautiful, baby! Oh, you want to go to the beach? That sounds great, but first let me take a picture of this sunrise and post it on my Facebook wall. Everyone will fucking adore me after I do this, and not think I'm a self-absorbed cocksucker who can't help but rub good fortune in other people's fucking faces."

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a good vacation album after the fact. If you return from vacation and want to show off where you went, I'm all for it. Ohh wow, look at Billy, he wore a fucking beret! What a fag...

But uploading shit as you tour the south of France? Fuck off.

When you add photos from your still-happening vacation, you remind me just how awful day-to-day life can be. I have meetings to go to. I have to wear this soul-sucking fabric invented to suffocate pores. I have to wade through a crowd of slow-walking, blackberry addicted dickbags. Stop. Do you want to to come over and throw a grenade through your fire escape window? No, of course you don't. SO STOP POSTING PICTURES OF YOUR PRIVATE FUCKING LAP POOL, FUCKFACE!




*Showering outdoors is the best thing ever invented. I could spend 37 hours straight showering in an outdoor shower. I want to install one in my driveway. That cool breeze kissing your feet? The hot water mixing with the salt air? The smell of cedar and soap? I call that Heaven, my friend.