Hannukah Bites

Waiting inside the mall at Columbus circle for a friend whose last name used to be something along the lines of Schtupnicker, or Rabinowitz, I couldn't help but feel like I was missing out. Grand Christmas compositions filled the chamber, songs synchronized to a light show of dazzling white, blue and golden. The building shook with Christmas glory. in excelsis Deo.

This makes it very clear to me why there are more Mormons on the planet than Jews.

vs.

The solstice holiday during the darkest days of the year functions to warm and enliven the masses. Christmas celebrates the birthday of the Christ child, the embodiment of God on earth, who died for the sins of humanity, lifting the affliction of original sin. Hanukkah celebrates some antagonistic Jews having enough oil to last eight days, so they didn’t have to go out and buy more.

Christmas marks the miracle of the birth of messiah conceived immaculately.* For Jews, the eight days of oil for a one day's worth is the miracle. And, c'mon on, that really does count as a miraculous savings-- I mean eight days for one! The savings!

The songs that celebrate the birth of Christ are moving, uplifting, and haunting. Carols such as 'Silent Night,' 'Do You Hear What I Here' ‘Angels We Have Heard On High.' Truly beautiful, inspired works of music requiring a technicality of the voice only a gentile could produce.

What do Jews have? /Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel/ I made you out of clay/ When you're dry and ready, dreidels we will play/ There's not even a second verse. Maybe you could make a dreidel out of schmaltz instead. But schmaltz doesn't even rhyme with anything! That's it. Three lyrics to the most popular song. The only other big hit harps back ‘on the miracle of the oil,’ touting the deliciousness of latkes, which aren’t even as good as hash browns, and are sure to inspire indigestion, setting off a truly invigorating bout of kvetching. At least with the complaining, there will be something to talk besides the savings.

Christians eat and drink marvelous things for Christmas: mulled wine, apple cider, fruit cake, chocolate logs! On Hannukah, breaking out a traditional Jewish drink, Manishewitz, actually qualifies as a punishment.

On Christmas you can make out with people under mistletoe, wait for Santa Claus to come down your chimney-- truly a greater miracle than the oil savings-- watch It's A Wonder Life or Alfie shoot his eye out. On Hannukah, you’re back to your driedel, where the point of the game is winning gelt symbolic Jew gold) by shiesting your friends and family. The quality of chocolate in the gelt is akin to eating Hershey’s syrup on cardboard cutouts so heavily wrapped in foil, you'd imagine someone is trying to save a little money.

And what could be more Christmas than the centerpiece tree itself: the vestigial pagan phallus, celebrating fertility and life near the winter solstice, perfect for placing gifts around, bejeweling it in splendid adornments, angels, and fake snow to match the piney refreshment. On Hannukah, Jews break the menorah out, crusted in decades of wax and the accumulated dirt, so that we can relive the savings our ancestors enjoyed two thousand years ago. And where Jews take solace and warmth in the final light of their eight candles, Christians stream their homes in decorative luminescence, outlining their abodes in color and festivity! The institution of Christmas lights has been boon for college kids for centuries, though Jews probably innovated the blue ones.

Ah, Christmas, what a wonderful holiday.

You'd have to nail me to a cross to get me to convert, but until the mob carries me away, I'll be singing 'Rudolph the Red-nosed Reinder', a song all Semites can relate to.

*Immaculate conception: When Mary got knocked up by God, it was so clean she didn’t have to waddle off to the bathroom for a jizz rag to clean herself up. Amirite guys?

Boogers: I Totally Saw You Do That! (Re-proofed while high Edit)

There are sensations that demand response. Itches that call for a scratch. Tightness that require a quick adjustment. The body fills the day with these impulses.

However, circumstance requires control of such pressures.

When my testicles feel like they should be shifted a bit over to the left in those tight jeans in my creative writing seminar with five other students and one very bitchy grad student instructor who hates typos, I can't very well put my hands down my denims to deftly readjust the family jewels: the girl sitting across from me is going to see me grabbing my junk.

That girl is cute and she can see me. She can see me doing that.

By the very same virtue, when homie in my econ class reaches into his right nostril with his index finger, grubs up a big green booger, and sticks it into his mouth and chews on it, I can see that. I can see you doing that, dude! I totally saw that!

After about the age of five (nine if you went to a Montesorri school) you figure out that other people have the ability to observe what you're doing. Just because you're hiding under a table and you can't see your kindergarten teacher, doesn't mean she can't see you masturbating. She sees you and she is going to have to have a very awkward conversation with mommy when she comes to pick you (me) up.

I don't care how craftily you do it. Maybe you try to play it off like you're scratching your nose. . .

BUSTED.



I understand: you wanted to reposition your nostril. You weren't going to get a big brown nugget of dried up mucus.

Dude, BUSTED. You are so BUSTED.

Don't even try to play it off all stealth and shit like you had an a little something on your filtrum you had to get, then proceed to roll it all around in your fingers and THEN throw it in your mouth.

Man, c'mon, you are not only double busted, you have insulted my intelligence. And that is something I have writ-fuckin-large.

Very intelligent.

Have you noticed it's really only guys who do this sort of thing?

I mean chicks never stoop to that and they are fucking having menstrual rot fall out their vages for days on end. I mean, really rude behavior, but you so rarely see them getting in their noses.

Listen. I understand the necessity to grab a lil' boogie. That need is medical. Dried nasal mucus and negatively affects your health. It can block the natural flow of air, leading to breathing problems, like sleep apnea, and collect disease causing bacteria within your sinus. I don't know if that's true. But it does make you feel better.

However, there is NO medical rational to put that little snot snack on your mouth. None. Do you think that one is going to taste any different from the last eight thousands you've yummied down on? Or is it going to be like the very first one you ever chomped on at the age of three? Yeah, it's going to be just like that one.

I understand that drive to pick something off your body and then stick it back in. I get that; your body has produced protein, chains of amino acids, fats, juices, that will go otherwise go to waste unless you re-ingest it. That big brown scab: if it falls off in the swimming pool, you are not going to be able to recoup the loss of the work your body did. That's a shame. You had better scrape that sucker off before it gets lost and chew it up, maintaining bodily homeostatis.

I CANNOT advocate the ingestion of every bodily product and byproduct. That morsel you just plucked from your nose? It died fighting infection in your body. White blood cells died on top of that bacterial infection and now you are sitting six feet away from me licking it down at 9:45 in the morning. I mean, do you think I'm blind? Do you think I'm a damn chimpanzee that would condone chomping on God knows what? No, I am a man. I may not be real man yet, but I am not a damn dirty ape like you.

I don't even particularly mind if the compulsion to just get in there and get it overtakes you. It has to be done. I don't even mind if you want to roll it around in your fingers and go "Jeez, look at the size of that one. . " and then wipe it under your desk for the next asshole who sits there. I take that back. I do mind. But sir, you cross that line when you go "Ahh, I am breathing so much better with that out of the way. Oh, what we have here? Hehehe! Lunch time!"

Because if you do that again, I'm going to violate my probation.

I'm not on probation.

The Way Nature Meant it: Why The Shower Is Truly Golden

If I had a Twitter my posts would be something like this:

The sink in my apartment is so low and so close to my toilet, that when I take a leak, I splash the hotness all over it.

But I do not have a Twitter; I have a literary blog and instead I am going to discuss pissing in my shower.


Civilization and the technology that it furnishes has led to many great advances: decreased infant mortality, longer and healthier lives, really fucking fast cars, houses that hypothetically warm at the flick of a switch, and bicycles.

The same tools that enable us to lead modern lives also constrain us. The cinderblock walls of my home disconnects me from the nature that existed outside. The rug in my room necessitates that I do not take a piss on it. Man can no longer relieve himself in the midst of the wild grass, for his neighbor would call to him, "Hey buddy, the fuck are you doing, stop shitting on my grass! I am calling the cops on you, you pervy fuck!"

This dissonance between the lives we led, harmonizing with the cycles of the year and the softness of the Indian Toilet Paper plant have ceased, breeding discontent, ennui and frustration.

Luckily, the modern home brings modern humanity a facsimile of the freedom we had without the restrictions of our softwood floors that would suck up a tinkle like a tampon in an elephant. And down comforters can never really be cleaned; don't piss on that. I mean, I fucking tried to clean that thing, and all that happened was that it became aromatic of mildew.

The shower-bathtub combination provides us with the amenity that returns us to our natural state. A perfectly unfettered, unleashing of body water.

One needn't even wear clothes, truly reconciled to the time before Original Sin. Indeed one would be a fool to wear clothes in the shower, unless of course Blue Moon occurrence you have puked all over yourself.

In the shower, you need not worry where the stream goes at all. Sure your arc may goatop your roommates bottle of St. Ives Apricot Facial Scrub or dear mother's loofa, but that's what the shower is for. The water will clean it off. No need to get mad at me, ma.

In there, it's just the open air, without any hands, letting it all go, without even the need for a shake off.

The technology of the tub enables the return to a purer time.

Oh, yeeeah.

I wish things were always so simple.

But the truth is the bathtub may backfire. The water does not always drain. The uncareful urinator may find himself ankle-deep in his own dross and dreck. When the landlord comes to snake the tub, he may complain. "Who the fuck has been pissing in the shower!"

At wish point, I will remind him of the inherent human right, stipulated in the lease, that his must facilitate such behaviors.

I have never had a full security deposit returned to me.

In such instances of clogging, one must act ever so quickly, making sure to get to it before it gets to you, and in the case the bather forgets that his roommates have neglected once again to remove their hairs from drain for the third time this week, he will stand amid his own stagnation.

And your roommates will come to you and say, "Max, how did our toothbrushes fall into the shower?"

And you will say, "Flossing is better for your teeth anyway."

Let no man deprive you of the euphoria of the unbounded water making the way nature meant it to be . .