How Did It Happen to Me?

I know I'm young. I know I'm young and getting older. The lines around my eyes are increasing and deepening. I can dig it-- I'm looking wizened, like I've done a lot of really great partying. My stomach grows more sensitive, snarling, grinding, and gassing away-- I expected it. My zits have by and large disappeared. As much as I enjoyed looking like I was reaching higher karmic forms with sporadic third eyes and the thrills of popping bloody whiteheads onto the shared mirror in the bathroom, I'm OK with their departure.




But that hair on my back. . This has gone too far.

Really body? Really?

I know it comes with the territory, and by territory I mean Gaza and the West Bank.

Rocks are to tanks what tweezers are to. . .

Why a desert people ever had to develop swarths of hair is beyond me, and conversely how my skin became as white and lustrous a full moon also defies my imagination, because who could believe anyone would ever convert? Jews have a good sense of humor; it's not that good.

And it's not exactly that I have back hair: it's that it;'s shoulder hair, a fine quilty of blond hair that fluffs off my blades like the hair tufting from a babies scalp. So smooth, yet so unattractive. Fucken babies.

Look, I'm no girly man. If the Taliban can wear thick kohl around their eyes, so can I. And if one of the Pet Shop Boys isn't out of the closet, then I can certainly go on loving disco. I am a man's man, but why a monkey man?


I recall the first time I encountered shoulder hair. Mother Dear and I were spending a quality family moment watch 'Keenan and Kel' in the early part of the mid 90s. In the sketch, Kel, a coach modeled after a drill sergeant, screamed at Keenan to lose weight. Mother Dear found particular lulz in the shoulder hair glued on to Keenan's shoulders.

Disco! Eyeliner! Glamour Shots!

Would you laugh now, ma? Would you laugh at your only boy? Your only monkey child?

When I had my mullet, it tickled me so playfully, it blew in the air. I felt like a playful Pekingese running about with my mully kite flying in the wind. Like a majestic chinese dragon.

My shoulder hair does not play. It does not flirt with my neck. Not a caress.

They say the best best about having sex with a sixteen year old in the shower is that she looks like she's twelve. When I come out of the shower, I look like a muskrat. No younger, no older. Just a muskrat.

Soon the hairs will become ingrown, then I'll be popping' em off my shoulders onto our shared mirror. Fuck you roommates! This life is COLD. A man with shoulder hair has no time to wear eyeliner. No time to dance to disco.

Or will I? Will I be like that hairy Iranian in the club? Hirsute and potbellied, my shirt with far too many buttons undone, shaking orientally to euro-house beats? My thick aromas wooing women across the dance floor. Will they tug on my tufts as they hate fuck me, finding I have no money after all? Not a cent? Not a centime of oil wealth? If I'm lucky?

Like a very hair Jake Gylenhaal to me/ Iranians and Armenians look the same to me

No.



All I'll have left is Klingon opera and effete children, horrified by their shaggy sperm donor in a society that praises the svelte, and never men who love disco.

This life is too cruel!

I have examined my friends, given massages to them at the beach, working sun cream into their hard male flesh. As I looked, carefully, only to find that I am alone this life. The indignity!

What fresh humiliations will I have to face in a world that made a handsome man so hairy?

Will I have to pop zits off my ass tomorrow?


How can I face these realities. Will I have to retain a Korean aesthetician who mocks me, calls me a neanderthar as she waxes away? Showing me the clumps of pelage, as she snickers, but inwardly crying wishing she were with men like Asashōryū. Will she shear strands from an otherwise fine specimen, despite the acne scars on my ass, despite the athletes foot, despite the moles that must be photographed and checked for melanoma, despite a Roman nose that looks not quite Roman?

Asashōryū, yokozuna, described as a Sex God by Mother Dear

When we all know I'd be better off getting my ass waxed.

Where The Fuck Do You Get Off?

I'm a nice guy. Maybe I'm too nice. Certainly I've weirded a few people out. Perhaps made a few people think I had less than pure intentions. Perhaps gone over the top. I understand that coming over cooing, clucking, and doing baby talk weirds some people out, but fuck you, and fuck your dog.

If your dog does not so much as return a bit of my attention, you have made a sorry mistake in raising him. Really. A golden retriever who will not so much as turn his head to me and smile after I follow you two with my eyes for a quarter block grinning, beckoning, calling him over with my eyes, to say hello so I can give his haunches a good, solid petting, is fucked. That's like a retard who isn't interested in public masturbation. It's unnatural. It's ungodly.

I get it if your schnauzer has his head too far up his own fucking ass, so high on grass induced rosy turds to give me the time of day, the satisfaction of running my abnormally large hands against his firm yet curly pelage, to give me the RESPECT I DESERVE, but a golden retriever, no sir–– that animal needs to be taken away from you.

And you act like you don't see me laying eagerly in wait for you and yours. I fucking love a Pekingese. I'll love that bitch to death, and for your dog, the Emperor's own! to treat me like I'm some Chinese rice farming peasant who should be averting his eyes as you and Mindy pass by me on the sidewalk after I have been standing there warbling 'Oooooh, I love him! I love hiiiiim! I looooooooove hiiiiiim!' for thirty seconds and to not even get a sidelong glance my direction, let alone the petting time I deserve, leaves me sorely insulted.

I will not abide.

You wanna go Chinese feudal state on me? you reactionary dog rearing fuck, won't give the commoner the time of day to shake Mindy around, loving on her long floppy ears, playing games with her flat face, fawning over her, I feel like I should go straight up, balls to the wall, Mao Zedong doggy cultural reeducation on your ass. Oh yeah. I'm gonna give a fucker so many Milkbones Biscuits it's gonna be shitting Cheesebone Biscuits until I have operationally conditioned glee at the very sight of my ass. I mean, not my ass, but generally. I mean I don't want your dog looking at my ass. I've had tapeworms. I needn't be reminded of what dogs can do to the old system, but,

And don't you pull your lead away from me when I'm playing with your Cocker Spaniel! No stranger has loved your dog like I have for the last 15 seconds. Not one. None. Not ever. Your dog loves me back. I am the fucking Mike Tyson of getting dogs to love me back. I am. I swear it. We're speaking to each other in Wookie. We are conversing. Hulloooo, we're talking here!

Tonight. . . you. . .

Sure I've done some things to pooches I'm not proud of. Yes, I've tried to kidnap two dogs in my day. Understand, the first one, that was a case of ransom and revenge. The second, that was the coolest fucking dog I'd ever seen! So smart! So smart it wouldn't get in the trunk. Little smug smart ass. And there was that accident that one time with the not swerving or braking, but c'mon, my passengers know: I took my foot of the gas. I also made sure it was dead. And it was old! I could tell. If you don't want your dog getting runned over, don't let her out of the house!

And that time my family's Jack Russell fell off my bunk bed. If it hadn't voluntarily gone up there in the first place, it never would have jumped down like that. You can't blame me. Those are animal instincts!

Is Max Spaghetti funnier than Rampage? Call me Spaghetti!

Despite these less then shining moments, never doubt for one second that I did not have a sincere and deep appreciation for little darlings. I love all the time I spend with them. I love animals so much, I don't even eat them! I won't even own them. That's imperialism. Matter a fact, you leave me alone with 'em, I might even free a few of them. You're trying to tell me your pug doesn't want to wander around Brooklyn? Haven't you seen Milo & Otis? Dogs love to adventure. And freedom is the very heart of adventure. Sure is.

So the next time you think you and your gorgeous white German shepherd, looking so much like Alf, can just waltz right on by me after I've told you to stop, slow down mister, blocking your way on the sidewalk, without so much as letting me shake his hand, smell his breath, and rub him down like some big fat Chinese Buddha, both of you are going to the country for some serious reeducating.

Gow raow.

To Pee Or Not To Pee: That's Not The Only Question

The old adage says a boy's should be like his father's. With homogeneity questions about difference should be less frequent.

Daddy, why does mine have a little turtle neck and yours doesn't?

Because your mother is a godless bitch who's hung up on her first goy boyfriend, that's why!

No one wants to have that discussion. Rather, I want to have that conversation, but maybe some people don't. Perhaps some should.

In high school one of my friend's didn't know if he'd been cut, saying yes, his tentacle had been chopped off. Another brave friend to stepped forward to inform the questioner that he was indeed circumcised. This was actually common knowledge, as So-and-so was well-endowed and had a proclivity for popping out of his fly while we were hanging out in our knickers.



Which leads to today's topic of conversation.

My father goes over the fence, as a result for more than twenty years, más o ménos, I went over the fence too. I don't recall when he showed me how to urinate standing up without exposing myself to the neighbor, your mother, the school janitor, that dude in the bathroom who wants to talk to you, a peg legged pirate and his puritanical parrot, like some men in airports do, and only in airports, but I'm sure he did, because it's easier for my peace of mind to imagine that my father demonstrated and my mother did not, Dearest Darling Mother that she is.

OK, now spread your legs, You're doing great!

Conjecturedly, this decision may stem from the universal childhood experience of wearing tighty whities, a garment designed for containment, not easy access, and for revealing speed stains. In this confining clothing, going over the fence is easier than unpacking through the fly.

I got a ton of the other kind if you'd rather.

By the time male adolescents have transitioned to boxer's it may be too late to have this conversation with pops.

Boy, I wanna tell you. It's time to pee outta yer fly. And we need to put Yeller down.

Yeller, is he playing with it or shaking? Yeller? Yeller, NOOOOOO!

A certain bipolarity arises though. Cut or uncut? Republican or Democrat? Over the fence or through the gate? Chunky or smooth?

If you eat chunky, you're an idiot. It's called peanut BUTTER. You wanna eat chunky milk butter? NO! It'll kill you! It'll kill you anyway! You're lactose intolerant! Don't eat chunky peanut butter!

Excuse me, and this ritual practice takes on other dimensions.

I'd watch my friends make use of their flies at the pissoir and would think 'How gay!' Not as in lighthearted and carefree, but more literally Gay.

The act of going over the fence seems to connote domination. An item is hefted over a barrier. Bulk must be felt, it's a masculine weight. It drops down, as if to say 'Here, I am." It's brutal, evident, never coy.

And conversely going through the gate marks a sly act. It does not call any attention to itself. Only a bit of the apparatus is exposed, compared to going over the gate, an act that openly demonstrate the masculinity in its entirety. This abashed male act takes on a resulting feminine or emasculating qualities, as the nature of the penis as a protrusion is not subtle, and nuanced, unlike it's female counterpart, the armpit. Thus the fly is like a widdle penis hijab, mostly concealing it away. The condom, a chadoor, that belongs to your roommate that you've poked a hole through, for the lulz.

Isn't Islam easy?

That's what I used to think of the little girly men going through the boxers.

But as I've discussed before, the machinery of my body has slowed. I used to be able to just rely on the power of my prostate to expel the urine and a shakey shakey to do the job.

Another proverb says if you shake it more than twice you're playing with it.

Clearly, someone's girlfriend made that bullshit up. Twice? Twice? C'mon two strokes, you're hardly even getting to know the prick. 53r10u51y! You're only playing with it if it's tumescent or that's the intent; otherwise, you may be fiddling, adjusting, tinkering, examining, or comforting yourself. There, there, my sweet meats, I feel your pain too. You're certainly not playing with it because you can't play when you're crying.

However, there comes a point when you can only shake it so many times before people interpret such thrash/thrash/thrash as having more than a utilitarian in function. I could try to rationalize such thrashing, but after 15 times, I no longer felt comfortable using public bathrooms.

In lieu of the violent panning of the river of its old gold, I allowed physics and experimentation to open new opportunities for me.

I've created some handy though crude diagrams (no double entendre intended) to illustrate my point.



As shown here, the boxers are holding the ol' menitalia up against gravity. (the boxers are not rendered in this diagram: just use your imagination.) Truly, what could be more manly than going against gravity? Conversely, what could be less manly then peeing in your dress slacks at your sister's bat miztvah in a borrowed suit because you were thinking about your hair and not meticulousness? Hmm? Childbirth? Menstruation? Poor control of emotion? C-section scars?

Perhaps.

It's called a trouser snake for a reason. Probably for several reasons, including for letting it slip out of the old snake hole. The latter diagram using the fly allows for a more natural albeit furtive maneuver, that allows for greater efficacy and less spillage.



Until I was tall enough to see over the urinal divider, I didn't think the fly was for peeing at all but instead strictly for better access to play with the old pocket tiger, leaving me without an alibi when Mummy Dear asked me why I had cut a slit into my pajamas, and all I could say was that it hadn't been the one to make it, but my babysitter.

I liked that baby sitter.

Until the next,


M. Rampage.

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 . .

An Examination of Google Analytics: A Look at the Underbelly of the Internet

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