Master of Karate and Posters for Everyone

The Department of Awesomeness really came through today. Witness, if you will, the full set of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia minimalists posters.

You'll remember that someone did a similar thing with Lost, where they conjured up a poster with an iconic image from each and every episode.

And if you want iconic, ridiculous images from TV shows, Sunny is the Bluebeard's Treasure Trove of the medium. Couple those images with the stark awesomeness of the episode titles themselves and you get fantastic posters like "Charlie Got Molested." Or "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters." Or "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire." Or "Mac is a Serial Killer." Or "The Gang Dances Their Asses Off." Or, of course, the epic "Who Pooped the Bed?" I could honestly go on forever.

Sometimes I really wonder what the hell we did before the internet. Oh, and I should warn you. The "Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittons" involves a certain towel, and it is Absolutely Not Safe For Work.

The Lost Carlton of Z

The fact that Lost is no longer on television and will never again return to grace our screens makes me sad all day. Often I shake. I become slathered in cold sweats. I get chills. I'll find that I have been quietly weeping for hours without noticing.

Perhaps I exaggerate the symptoms of my withdrawal. But as much as I miss the show, I daresay that Carlton Cuse, one of its producers, misses it more.

It's a nice, droll little piece about how you are completely, totally, up-to-your-neck immersed in a project for a long time, and then suddenly it's gone from your grasp in one fell swoop. And you find yourself either quietly going crazy as you sit in your chair at home or loudly going crazy as you look for something else to do.

I'll follow these guys to whatever their next project ends up being. As the essay mentions, this sadly won't be an adaptation of Under the Dome, Stephen King's latest novel. When I read it, I couldn't help but notice that its characters were basically stand-ins for most of the Lost characters. Which, of course, would have been perfect for Cuse and Damon. Alas, this particular sideways world is not to be.

But like I said, they accumulated enough capital and goodwill with Lost -- there really isn't another show anything like it, not even on DVD -- that whatever their next project is deserves a long, sustained look. Even if it is, as he describes, "a show about a hot dolphin trainer and her dolphins who work at an aquarium by day but perform secret missions for the government by night."

Perhaps fortunately, that is not his next project. But I'd still watch it.

Slim Gym

Today, the NYT laments the state of today's gym. Specifically, they curse today's slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am culture and pine for the days when people at the gym would work out in groups and hit on each other.

I've never quite understood the idea of gyms as pick-up spots. Sure, I'd love to hit on the certain blonde Red Sox reporter who occasionally frequents my gym. But I firmly believe in the canonic advice of Do's and Dont's of Approaching women. Specifically, Rule #76, otherwise known as the Please Don't Approach Me While I'm Disgusting and Sweaty command.

Look, if you're having a conversation with a woman when she's sweaty and out of breath, you should either a) congratulate yourself on a mission well accomplished or b) stop chasing her. As your attorney, I would advise you to comply with the latter suggestion immediately.

The industrial gymnasium complex connects the decline in sales to a decline in socializing, blaming "the gym’s now-ubiquitous flat-screen TVs and the fact that iPods are de rigueur."

But I ask these people to understand that if I unplug myself from my iPod, I'm forced to listen to Staci from Long Island's telephone conversations about which woman on The Bachelor has degraded herself the most before she seamlessly segues into the details of her application video for the show's next iteration. Somehow, I think my workout experience is much more pleasant and efficient if I listen to MGMT instead.

The article also paints those who just pop into the gym, work out quietly, and then leave as some sort of puppy killers. Somehow, the ones who put their head down, mind their own business and move on are the biggest problem that gyms face. You can almost hear the guy sobbing when he says, “It’s merely four walls to come in, work out and leave.”

Well. Yes. That's exactly what a gym is. That's the service it provides. It's like being angry with a sandwich because it's just ham and cheese between two slices of bread.

Or saying a movie theater is doing it wrong because it's only four walls to come in, watch a movie, and leave.

Look, the bells and whistles are nice, and may keep the ADD Generation coming back. But all I'm trying to at the gym do is temper the beer belly, beat up on my muscular system, and give my upper dorsamus the love and attention it deserves.

Running Down a Dream

Occasionally, I'll be out for a walk and I'll see some jogger nearly get flattened by a speeding bus. Normally, I don't care. But sometimes, the jogger is a cute girl and then I spend the remainder of my walk cursing myself for not being quick enough to grab her by the ponytail, yank her back, save her life, and have her fall over herself in gratitude for my actions.

And now it seems I'll never have the chance to be a hero.

Lawmakers in NY and other states are conspiring to put an end to people using earphones on the street, claiming that the symphony in their ears distracts them from the symphony of car horns and screeching tires that came so close to meeting them head-first.

Under the new laws, you'd draw fines for attempting to cross the street with your earphones on. The NYT begins succintly:

Many joggers don earbuds and listen to music to distract themselves from the rigors of running. But might the Black Eyed Peas or Rihanna distract them so much that they jog into traffic?

This lede is misleading. If someone gets hit by a car while they're listening to the Black Eyed Peas, my first thought is not that they got hit because they were distracted, but rather that they sadly hurled themselves into oncoming traffic to achieve sweet, silent oblivion.

But I digress. These laws, as Ron Swanson would say, are just another example of legislators attempting to save people from themselves. It belongs in the same category of other ordinances, like forcing bicyclists to wear helmets, drivers to secure their seatbelts, and couples to use condoms.

(Wait ... what? ... it's not actually a law ... really? ... OH SCORE)

Still, if laws like this staunch the flood of idiots into both hospital emergency rooms and the pages of the Darwin Awards, then why not forge ahead. When people won't do the smart thing willingly, threatening them with fines is an effective alternative to get your point across.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to lobby my Congressman to pass a law against stopping abruptly while on the sidewalk.

Crunch-Lies Supreme

In my ongoing war against Taco Bell, the powers that be have granted me a weapon of untold power.

Taco Bell is reportedly being sued for claiming that its meat is Beef, even though it is only actually 35 percent beef and 65 percent other stuff.

I have never heard a more preposterous argument in my life. One look at this slop should be enough to communicate to any rational being that nowhere in this miasma of barely edible substances is there anything that even remotely resembles beef.

I might be bending the Assumption of Risk doctrine a little bit here, but shouldn't you get what's coming to you if you choose to poison yourself with the abominations served at Taco Bell? People surprised that it is not in fact beef are the same people who hit on a woman with large hands and an adam's apple and feel tricked when they later find the surprise.

So I have to admit the lawsuit will go nowhere (I'd actually sue them for impersonating an outstanding cuisine and attempting to kill it). However -- and here is where the weapon comes in -- the existence of this frivolous lawsuit did force the company to reveal to the mainstream media the ingredients it uses in what it optimistically calls "meat."

Even though Taco Bell had apparently already listed this information on its website before this lawsuit, the current rash of stories about the pending litigation has put this list out there, for which I'm eternally grateful.

Why? Because now every time somebody tried to convince others to go to a Taco Bell, I can be the guy who goes, "Actually, 65 percent of the food there consists of 'water, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent and modified corn starch.'"

Yeah, I know. If I said that to my friends, I'd want to punch myself in the face too.

But at least that's better than eating Taco F$%@ing Bell.

Get Rid Of Slimy republicanS

Every news outlet and their mother covering tomorrow's State of the Union Address is running with the "OMG Legislators have to pick dates! LOLZ" conceit. While it conveniently touches on some truths (The media has all but called the Prom Queen race for Sen. Holly Flax Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand), I feel like the analogy to a high school prom is lazy and a bit inaccurate.

In my eyes, the pairing off between congresspeople tomorrow is not like a high school prom. Rather, it is like a third grade dance.

Bear with me for a second.

The year was 1994. I was in either second or third grade, a time when fear-mongering about cooties was at an all-time high and meetings of G.R.O.S.S. were held every second Tuesday of the month.

And then, for some reason, the school held a dance. So imagine, if you will, this big hall. And colored lights are flashing. And either Right Said Fred or Will Smith in his Fresh Prince incarnation were blaring from the speakers.

And, as you might expect, in accordance with proper third grade protocol, all the boys were on one side of the room and all the girls were on the other, and never the twain shall meet.

Except the powers that be, damn them, had other ideas in mind. They bided their time. They plied us with fruit punch. They let us get good and hungry. They made us wait forever.

And, then, finally, there it was. Borne by teachers like the spoils of a war fought in distant lands, the most enormous cookie tray you've ever seen in your life.

At the sight of this bounty of food, we all lost our collective mind (it's nice to see some things don't change, even in old age). And when the person nearest the tray notified to the rest of us in a scream that these were not just cookies, but chocolate-chip cookies, the roof blew off the building and we advanced upon the food table like the starving, desperate animals we were.

But wait.

Directly in our path was an impenetrable barrier of teachers. We tried to get around them, but to no avail. This was less a Maginot Line than it was a Berlin Wall.

And then the teachers, damn them all, informed us in calm and clear voices that, in order to foster cooperation between the sexes, we would not be allowed to eat the cookies unless we paired up with a girl.

Gasp.

You would think that this set off a blitzkrieg of angry protests and that howls of revulsion filled the air. Consorting with girls? Those prim, clean, overachieving creatures who used thirteen different color pens to take notes and drooled over the New Kids on the Block? Them?

But no. What we did was simple. We shrugged, turned around, and made a beeline for the girls.

Then, exhibiting a confidence and a self-assuredness that, almost twenty years later, I am yet to replicate, I asked the nearest girl if she would get a cookie with me. She said yes, I grabbed her hand, hauled her off to the cookie tray, and claimed my prize.

And then, after I had piled my plate with roughly three pounds of cookies, I turned to the girl who, in retrospect, was my first date, thanked her for her time, and went back to the boys' side of the room, where I could maul my plate of cookies in the appropriate fashion.

Although I will acknowledge that this whole thing almost sound like a euphemistic fable about my first one-night stand, this actually happened. At that age, boys and girls were sworn enemies. The promise of cookies could bring us together for one fleeting, largely symbolic moment. But after that moment was past, we each retreated to our respective enclaves where we ate and plotted about how to make the rest of the school year as miserable as humanly possible for the opposing sex.

Now. I'm not saying that Congress, after they get their cookie tomorrow at the State of the Union, is going to go back to putting thumbtacks on chairs and throwing rocks at each other and tattling to the teacher and spreading rumors about how Johnny leaves skidmarks on his underwear.

In reality, it will probably will be much worse.

Twenty-Two Short Films About Pawnee

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the return of Parks and Recreation, the funniest show on television, to our silver screens.

Parks and Rec is easily the most underrated show currently being shown. NBC, who you might remember from past fiascoes such as "Let's put Jay Leno on at 10!" and "We should keep airing Heroes!" bumped it for the first half of the season in favor of the horrid Outsourced, in a move that one commentator likened to the time when Thurgood Marshall was replaced by Clarence Thomas. I would go even farther and ask you to imagine a world where Harriet Miers replaced Earl Warren.

Simply put, Parks and Rec is brilliant. Perhaps the best thing you can say about an ensemble comedy is that you are unable to pick a favorite character. And this show has an embarrassment of wealth. From Andy Dwyer throwing himself into the pit, to Tom "I tell other people to take the high road so there will be more room for me on the low road" Haverford, to the magnificent Ron F%$&ing Swanson (whose Pyramid of Greatness should be in every dorm room in America), no other show has a "family" this consistently hilarious since the Bluths burned down the banana stand.

You know how The Office kind of started to hit the skids somewhere in Season 4? This just happened to coincide with the departure of Michael Schur -- otherwise known as Ken Tremendous, founding partner of the brilliant Fire Joe Morgan troupe -- who left to create Parks and Rec. And ever since then, you can make a line graph of laughter accrued while watching The Office and superimpose that on one of laughter accrued while watching Parks and Rec, and you'd get a perfectly formed X.

In short, if you haven't given Parks and Rec a try, do so at your earliest convenience. I am not exaggerating when I call it the funniest show on television, and that is over more conventional picks like Modern Family or 30 Rock or Community.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to some MouseRat on my DJ Roomba while I carve a whiskey harp.

Random Video of the Day LXXXIII

The honest grad school ad. As always, it's funny because it's true. Especially the part where the guy says, "I don't even want to be a lawyer! I'm in a bluegrass band!"

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Hangover, New Hampshire

The greatest minds in the world have finally come to a consensus on what was, until today, the most vexing issue facing humans today:

How to cure a hangover.

According to the scientists, the best cure for one is coffee and aspirin.

But allow me, if you will, to quibble.

When I was a young whippersnapper in college, I enjoyed going out nearly every day. I would take the occasional Sunday off, of course. I'm not an animal. But you could find me on pretty much every night between Monday and Saturday at a bar somewhere, drinking straight from those wonderful $5 pitchers.

Don't look at me like that. It was college.

Anyway, I almost never contracted a hangover. Every once in a while, the Kamikaze things they gave out at Dunbar's during group therapy would engender a mild headache the following morning, but I could handle those. Despite my daily drinking schedule, I always got up early and energized, went to class, worked at the paper, and still made it to the bar so I could apologize for the prior night.

My college incarnation spit in the face of hangovers and laughed at their weakness.

But then I graduated. And I went to law school.

And as I grew older and discovered that my body was changing, I began to notice a distressing set of symptoms. My head would hurt. My stomach would ache. I would fall into murderous rages, even more so than the usual. Hangovers started to assault me, and I was powerless to stop them.

Today, hangovers immobilize me. It feels like devils use my head as a sort of air hockey table. I lie in a fetal position, close my eyes, and pray for a death that won't come. They are murder, of the John Wayne Gacy variety.

My theory is that this is like what happens to athletes after they retire. During college, I was at the peak of my abilities. Because I exercised those abilities every day, I could stand up to their stress and rigors, and reaped no consequences.

But then I graduated, and that was like retiring. I no longer played every day, and it showed. Rust settled in. Muscles that had begun to atrophy screamed when they were called forth into action again. Sure, I could still hit the occasional grand slams and stand-up triples. But my glory days were over, and forcing my body to relive those days was not without its victims.

This despite the "cures." And believe me, I've tried them all.

The following things have not worked:

1. I've chugged full glasses of water before I went to sleep and after I woke up.
2. I've set out a bowl of aspirin, poured milk on them, and ate them with a spoon.
3. I've thrown every greasy thing in my fridge into a pan full of oil and used bread as utensils.
4. I've forced myself to drink the remaining beer in my fridge. (This one got me drunk again, but I still felt like a minor God was going to town on his anvil inside my brain).
5. I've prayed.

No "cure" works. They just don't. The only thing that works for me is time. Given enough of it, the poison finally leaves my system. And then and only then can I get up and go poison it again.

But that's my cure. Others swear by Bloody Marys. Others take Alka-Seltzer. Others call on Uncle Ralph.

That's because each person has a different constitution, and need a cure tailored to their own specificity. The only magic pill that I know that is a fool-proof way to prevent hangovers is to not drink at all. But where's the fun in that?

It takes trial and error to find out what your cure is, and I am happy to help each one of you discover what that is. Especially this one, ladies.

So. Who's first?

This Is How You're Fat

I'd be remiss if I let the day come to a close without mentioning a terrific new Tumblr entitled This is How You're Fat.

This new site is not to be confused by the nauseating This is Why You're Fat -- which remains to this day the single greatest motivator to get to the gym as fast as your chubby little legs can carry you. In fact, I'd recommend that you not click through to the link, as science has proved that merely looking at the photographs there is enough to kickstart deep vein thrombosis along with early onset diabetes at the same time.

Instead, This is How You're Fat imagines what would happen if celebrities, both living and dead, had themselves a bad day and took but one or two bites from the aforementioned food stuffs.

It is quite effective nightmare fuel, as evinced by Fatgelina, Fat Gaga, and Biggie Smalls Fat Kanye. It's a blog that is not afraid to consider a world where Gandhi found an alternate means of protest. But how can it be afraid, when it has Fat Walken on its side? A Walken that neither drowned in the bucket or cream nor churned it into butter, but that drank that entire bucket until it was all gone.

Sadly, these are not real pictures, but merely confections using some sort of warping technology that finally answers the question, Does the camera really add ten pounds?

In this case, the answer is No. It adds fifty. At least.

Back to the Future IV: The College Years

So I walk into the supermarket today to replenish my fridge. And it's a war zone. The supermarket, not the fridge ... although I guess you could argue both ways.

The supermarket was a wreck. For a second, I thought that maybe Obama had declared war on Canada or some such similar foe with the ability to execute a ground war on American soil. And that everyone overreacted -- yes, overreacted, because even if Canada did attempt to invade America, how far do you think they could get? I'm putting the over/under at 10.5 feet into Maine and suggest you take the under -- and had raided their local food purveyors in order to hoard supplies, lock and load their shotguns, and wait for the tides of war to wash over them.

But no, it was worse than war.

It was the undergrads, coming back to school after their winter break.

I don't know why I'm so hostile to undergraduates now. I actually feel like a bit of a hypocrite, since I readily acknowledge that I would gladly cut off two toes on one foot and three on the other to get to be a college student again.

In fact -- and this is true -- I have discussed with others whether the powers that be at Cornell would allow me to come back as a student. I would get another BA in some major completely unrelated to mine (this wouldn't be hard because there are tons of useful majors like mathematics or enology), and, in turn, the administration would let me be a freshman again and put me in a dorm on North Campus (Donlon looks like it would be fun) and let me do the whole college thing again.

Of course, there would be problems -- explaining to the other freshmen why I get a five-o'clock shadow at 10 a.m. would be the least of my concerns. In fact, for this to work I would have to pull a Don Draper and and create a whole new identity for myself. But I do this every other week at the bars, so I would just have to keep the long con going for four years. This seems doable to me.

In any case, I am not even half kidding about this yearning to be a student again, and yet when I see large groups of undergraduates, the rage that builds up deep in my heart of darkness is so strong that only cathartic visions of what I could do with a shovel, the element of surprise, and diplomatic immunity can calm me down.

I guess I can explain it this way. To (finally) get back to my initial point about the supermarket: The ravaged supermarket was nearly cleaned out. Chicken, milk, frozen pizzas and individual slices of cheese were all completely absent from the shelves. The only cartons of orange juice left were the ones with calcium, which always taste like they've been strained through a fisherman's net. The place was completely cleaned out of everything except for canned vegetables.

Heck, even the Magnums -- which hilariously always sit alone and unbought in the condom section -- were gone.

And if hell was standing in endless lines listening to South Shore girls yammer on forever about their winter vacations, God would be a concept too cruel to fathom.

I wish that you would forgive Old Man Charlie for shaking his fist at these miscreants who happily take over bars and order alternating shots of SoCo and Jager. Or at the ruffians who pack onto the T like a flock of lost donkeys, yelling at each other about which stop is theirs only to get off at the wrong one. Or, of course, at those goddamned kids with their goddamned skateboards.

So forgive Old Man Charlie because, deep in his heart, he wants nothing more than to go back and be like them.

Signed, Sealed, Beleaguered

After thousands of years, astronomers and astrologers buried the hatchet and came together to announce that the Earth tends to move in one way and the stars tend to move in another way. The resulting issue is that the stars yesterday are not quite in exactly the same position as they are now. Extrapolate this over hundreds of years and you come to the conclusion that the Zodiac isn't quite what it used to be.

Apparently, almost everyone's astrological sign has now changed. Which makes sense, because my horoscope was always wrong.

As someone who made all decisions based on his horoscope, this is particularly devastating. Every morning I would open my newspaper to consider what astrological scientists had to say regarding whether or not I should leave the house, whether I should go to school, whether I should talk to that girl, whether I should bet against the spread, and a dozen other life-changing questions like that.

You can take your logic and your reason, empiricists. Me, I'm happy with Miss Cleo.

Perhaps worst of all is what this means for compatibility issues. For years I based my love life on the astrological compatibility tables, believing that this was the one and only path to true love.

When I was asking girls whether they were American, this was also a way for me to subtly inquire about when they were born.

Yes, you might look like what happened if Megan Fox's body also included Tina Fey's brain, but if you were a Gemini, then there's nothing we can do together. After all, my critical nature and penchant for self-organization would clash fatally with your desire for introspection and tendency towards flakiness.

And the girl of my dreams is a Libra, but it doesn't matter that she's desperately in love with me because we only rank a 2 out of 5 in the compatibility scales. This love can never be.

Now that I know that I have been living a lie for years, I am lost and angry and confused. How many times have I made the wrong decision or destroyed a healthy relationship because of predictions couched in vague language and generalized abstractions? How many times?

What am I to do? How am I to proceed?

To the horoscope, the one constant in my life!

"Your mood and attitude is conciliatory, and your need for love and approval heightened. Social gatherings and personal relationships are favored."

Oh my God, that makes so much sense.

Friends in Lost Places

Today I was friended by someone who, from the looks of it, has just become a brand new resident of Facebookistan. As you might imagine, his friend count is a bit meager.

But fear not, gentle citizens! Facebook, that meddling dutiful bastard, has made it its life mission to correct this.

See, this person now appears in the column to the right of my news feed. You know, the one with the ads nobody looks at and the questions nobody answers and the suggested friends that nobody actually friends because maybe they're your friend's girlfriends, or, worse, your friend's ex-girlfriends, or -- God forbid -- your own ex-girlfriends, whose friending will open up a whole new can of worms better left sealed shut in some mausoleum at the center of Earth's deepest, darkest pit.

Anyway. In this column, a photo of my new Facebook friend appears. The photo is under the heading "Help a friend." And then right under that there is a little text box that says, "Help [Milton] find his friends."

"Help [Milton] find his friends?!"

Good Lord, Facebook! Really? That's how you guys chose to put it? Help him find his friends?

Like he's some dog in an interactive pop-up book for children who looks sad and lonely, and then you have to pull the tabs behind bushes and hydrants and fences until you have collected the whole animal kingdom and now Fido is happy and looks at you with big, sloppy eyes full of wonderful gratitude because you helped him find his friends, you generous and magnificent bastard you.

Help him find his friends.

I feel like I'm watching Dora the Explorer, and Dora just walked into this really crowded bar, which is just hopping, and she's getting jostled and bumped into, and, oh no, here come the Butabi brothers! And then there's this really awkward pause where everyone stage freezes and some ghostly voiceover says, "Quick, explorers! Help Dora find her friends!" And then there's the screaming of thousands of children, who all jump up at the same time and rush to the TV an plant one grubby, disgusting finger covered in mud and ice cream on a corner on the screen and scream, "THERETHEYAREYAYAYAYAYYYYY."

Help him find his friends.

Facebook, whoever writes copy for your site, just . . . just . . . I don't know. Take away his Firefox and Chrome privileges and force him to work with Explorer. I don't know how nerds punish each other, but that sounds pretty bad to me.

Help him find his friends.

Jesus the jumping Mexican bean, that's awful.

Snowmaggedon 2: The Return of the Snow

I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder. That's weird, I thought. Isn't it January?

And then I remembered where I lived. So I got out of bed and walked to my window and opened the blinds and stood there staring at the end of the world.

The northeast now finds itself buried by the most overrated weather feature ever to bury God's green earth. The thunder I heard in the morning was actual thunder -- it is a feature of thundersnow, which is what I would call cocaine if I was marketing it to the NASCAR crowd.

Faithful readers know full well my feelings about snow, which have been chronicled in this blog in excruciating detail.

These feelings have not changed, and will likely stay the same forever. Snow is a menace whose existence only serves to destroy convenience at every possible juncture. Sure, it's pretty now, but we're looking at a week of rescheduling travel plans, slipping on ice, searching for safe routes on the sidewalk, and praying that the next step will be onto something solid and not into muddy slush deep enough to eat your foot and ruin your socks and shoes.

So if you do choose to take advantage of your snow day by wrapping yourself in gore-tex so you can hurl yourself headlong into freezing water, be my guest. I myself will pour three fingers of Scotch into a glass, pull a good book from my shelf, and remain warm, dry, and feeling all sorts of toasty inside.

Can You Hear Me Now?

As a proud iPhone owner over the last three years, I believe I can give a fair assessment of its qualities. In the end, it's a fantastic device for playing Angry Birds that occasionally makes spotty phone calls.

So the news that the magic phone is soon to be available to what's widely considered the best network in America should be well-received indeed. After all, this means that those of us who love bright and shiny things need no longer be tethered to a carrier that is often undersold as, "The BCS of cell phone companies."

But before we leap into unfounded conclusions, let's weigh the pros and cons of ditching AT&T and hooking up with Verizon.

Cons. The danger that the news will cause everyone to stampede and then overwhelm Verizon, much like opening a new cashier line at the supermarket somehow turns out to be worse for everyone involved.

Cons. I have seen prenups that are less onerous than the AT&T Contract. The Early Termination Clause should be renamed the Heather Mills Memorial Clause.

Cons. There will be a new iPhone in the summer. This is the 21st-century equivalent of buying a horse right before cars arrive on the market.

On the other hand ...

Pros. The phone will have the ability to make phone calls.

You would say that three to one is a no-brainer, but that's the issue with pros and cons lists. They assume that all pros and cons are created equal, and that they should be weighed in the same fashion. This is pure hogwash. Some cons are huge cons and some pros are tiny pros and when you evaluate every single one of them this way, you're right back where you started.

And so it comes to this. Do I stay with the horrible, ugly, useless wife with the iron-clad prenup and remain sad forever, cuckolding her every time I need to make a phone call by using a friend's phone? Or do I jump ship with the hot new girl and hope she won't be overwhelmed by the attention to the point where it's no fun to hang out with her anymore?

So which is it -- the lady or the tiger?

Never Let Me Go

I was unaware that the New York Times was in the business of publishing scary stories. But then I opened up the paper on Sunday and, much to my horror, discovered how incredibly wrong I had been.

There, in full gore-splattered 3D horror-vision, was a feature-length article detailing just how those of us who chose to take the path down law school way would be slaughtered in the end.

The article casually throws around phrases like, "a generation of J.D.’s face the grimmest job market in decades," "recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated" and "some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished." The article details the awful job market for new attorneys with a sadistic excess for gore not seen since the heady days of the Hostel and Saw movies.

The most interesting thing about the whole thing is how law schools are presented as the monster who enjoys throwing kids into the grinder. To keep with the horror movie metaphor -- if law students are the airheaded camp counselors who make up the film's body count, law school is the crazy psycho who lured us all to its idyllic shores in order to satisfy its own blood lust.

Perhaps my favorite detail about the whole mess is how law schools manipulate the numbers in order to stay afloat in the rankings. They do so by offering low-paying temp jobs to some of their graduates in positions designed to last until the statistics are counted. The deadline for reporting what percentage of the alumni are employed 9 months after graduation passes, the school happily reports its artificially inflated 97% employment rate, and everyone moves on.

For instance, right now I work part-time for what is basically the minimum wage doing research for a professor. My commission, if you will, conveniently expires on February 24th, which the calendar tells me is just about nine months from graduation. After that, I'll be fully unemployed and have to figure something else out.

Am I bitter about this?

No.

I fully subscribe to this fiction. Why? Because the fact that the school participates in this mild charade only helps me and my fellow graduates. I provide the school with labor they don't really need that much (isn't research what 1Ls are for?). In return, I get spending money. And then we both become the beneficiaries of the inflated rankings. The school maintains its high rank and keeps charging money as a top school. Meanwhile, the value of my diploma increases because -- whether we like it or not -- the law school rankings correlate directly with how people in the community asses the quality of our education.

Imagine a world where the school didn't provide these "jobs" for me and dozens of others. Here, the school would have to report real employment rates closer to the hair-raising truth (who knows what they are? 65 percent? 70 percent? Is that too optimistic?). These numbers would make the school's rank go down, which would make our diplomas less valuable when compared to those of other schools. And while I know that a school's ranking is not an accurate representation of the quality of its education, you have to be pretty naive to think that admission and hiring decisions are not influenced by those damned lists. Everything is sacrificed at their altar, and there's not one thing anyone can do about it.

So we all happily participate in the conspiracy. And I do mean all -- quick research indicates that at least a dozen other law schools have similar programs. There's no other choice -- not for the school and not for us -- if anybody wants to stay relevant and employable.

And so we find ourselves here, in a very different kind of scary story. This is no longer the gory slasher film that the opening scenes suggested.

Instead, this mass delusion and happy participation in the lie is what lies at the heart of more dystopian horror narratives, such as Brave New World and 1984. Now we have to deal with a world where the whole damn system is a sham. And that, I think, is way more horrifying than one lone nut.

Shiny Orange People

I have a rather embarrassing confession to make.

Many months ago, I was coerced by friends into watching an episode of Jersey Shore, whose continued popularity is the leading cause of dead birds flooding God's country and other such signs of the apocalypse.

And, as much as the admission makes me hang my head in shame as I turn the shower to scalding, I kind of enjoyed it.

So last night I happened to stay in and NBC wasn't there with its only worthwhile shows and FX wasn't there with something like Sunny or The League and so it came to be that my remote made an unscheduled stop on Channel 40, home to MTV, which is otherwise known as the worst channel this side of Lifetime.

And there it was -- the Jersey Shore in all its overwhelming orange splendor, haunting me again.

A marathon, I guess, preceded the 3rd season (they're at three already!), whose main narrative seems to be the triumphant return of the crew to their hallowed spawning grounds in New Jersey.

And so I watched it. Maybe three or four hours of it. And as much as it horrifies me to say it, I was wildly, wildly entertained.

And the thing is, the show is not good. In fact, it's heinous. It's awful. The idea that these screeching orange morons can coexist in the same medium that gives us the excellent Mad Men or the magnificent Breaking Bad is beyond my powers of comprehension. If something like The Sopranos is the Moby Dick of TV, Jersey Shore is those awful romance "novels" with an orange Fabio on the cover.

And here's why my narcissistic Northeastern elitism -- which only reads Stephen King books at home, choosing to save Joyce and Bellow for the subway -- gets kicked right in the sprouts, because despite my best efforts to dismiss the show as the contrived exploitation of the lowest common denominator, I have to say that I really enjoyed the spectacle.

I'm not really sure what it is. Pauly D is hilarious. So is the Situation (or is it The Situation?), who plays the greatest sociopath on TV since Dennis Reynolds. And Snooki. Watching Snooki is like trying to watch a drunk baby grabbing at shiny things, if that baby looked like a penguin had sex with an Oompa Loompa and sounded like a version of Alvin and the Chipmunks that grew up on Long Island. Plus, the SNOOKI WANT SMUSH-SMUSH parody on South Park was spot-effing-on.

Perhaps my favorite, for rather obvious reasons, is J-Woww. Or is it Jenni? This question is part of my fascination with her. On the one hand, there is that impulse to call her by her Christian name, as in, "Wow, Jenni, those are terrific breasts." On the other hand, the first and only thing that comes to my head whenever she takes her shirt off is "WOW."

And I'm aware of how much of a dirty old man this makes me. But J-Woww is a prime example of what I call the "Staci Rule." Staci, as you no doubt remember, is the Blake Lively character on The Town. On the one hand, she's a crack ho. On the other hand, she looks like Blake Lively. Do you see the inherent conflict? This "trashy hot girl dilemma" is exactly what J-Woww personifies, and I have no defense for it. The Staci Rule states that of course you would hook up with this girl, but only if you did it in the shower. Or if a shower was nearby.

So I'm afraid I have surrendered to the phenomenon that is the Jersey Shore. Late as always to the party (remember Lost and Mad Men?), I grudgingly concede that I will watch this show, which so often sounds like what happens if you trapped pigs and cats in heat and rabid pigeons in a small coffin together, on a regular basis for the foreseeable future. I'm not proud of it, but there you have it. Cast the first stone at will.

Dear Stranger

Howdy,

Today, the Wall Street Journal took its eyes off the Congressional Government 101:The Constitution and You class and instead focused its reporting on a far more pressing concern:

How to choose greetings in emails.

Long a vexing problem for anybody who has ever communicated through a computer, the choice of what salutation to use when kicking off an email is almost as important, if not more, than the content of the message itself.

The article makes the case that usage of the word "Dear" as in "Dear Rolf," is antiquated and implies a intimacy that most people would be uncomfortable with. In other words, it is as archaic as standing up when a woman arrives at or leaves the table. Or calling women "Pumpkin" or "Muffin." Or, my personal favorite, "Cupcake."

Apparently, we are not to start letters with "Dear" anymore. So what are we to use?

One option is to open with the text of the email. This, however, can come off as abrupt and curt. As commissioner of a fantasy baseball league (that's right, ladies. Commissioner), I once got an email that just said "I just won the league. Where's my money?" Maybe if the guy had said hello before he demanded his winnings, I would have felt guilty about embezzling the pot.

Or you can use the word "Hey" or "Hi," which are basically what we use for starting conversations anyway. However, these can be a tad too informal. Imagine the following: "Hi Judge! Sorry to bother you, but I need a continuance for tomorrow's trial. You see, a sorority is having its annual reunion at my favorite bar tonight and I desperately need to 'just happen to be there.' Cool? Cool. Thanks!" Although if the judge somehow goes for that, congratulations! You've basically won your case.

The article suggests other words, but they are even worse: "Greetings," for instance, is the two-handed handshake of letter writing, best left to old Italian men who have not yet mastered the language. "Yo" is easy, and should be reserved only for frat brothers, as science has proved that the minute you start greeting a girl with it is the minute that she forever drops you as a potential future sexual partner. And, of course, there's "Salutations," which is the leading cause of email deletion on the internet today.

In fact, I would argue that a more pressing concern for email writers would lie in the valediction. I myself use "cheers," which is nice and vaguely British and connotes both that I wish the recipient happiness and that I am currently drinking, two events which are usually true. If it is the first email in an important or formal message, I use "Best." And, of course, the pronouny ones: "Sincerely," "Cordially," "Warmly," etc.

And those are about the only acceptable ones. "Kind regards," makes you sound like someone who everybody, including his friends, calls "Uncle Milton." Even Prince Charles wouldn't ever use "Toodles." And please, if you're a guy, never, ever, ever use "xoxo." Ever. Please. At the risk of sounding misogynistic, it's honestly just plain weird. If you wouldn't say it, don't use it.

That also applies to winky faces. Good God, what do those even mean?

Cordially,
Charlie

Blotto Lotto

It is with great sadness that I acknowledge that I did not win the lottery last night.

Like millions of others, the thought of $350,000,000+ made me lose my mind a little bit. It's a staggering sum of money. If you were the sort of person who believed that inflation was a myth, you could give each person in the United States one million dollars.

And after you threw away your money like that, you could keep going and give each and every person in, say, Colombia or Sudan their own million dollar check. I would guess that upon which country you choose to bestow your largess depends entirely on your drug of choice.*

I have never before bought a lottery ticket, believing it a waste of money. But when I heard the sum, I stepped away from the casino table and thought to myself, why not?

So I went to my local sketchy gas station and plunked down a ten dollar bill and willed myself to visualize the winning numbers. Unfortunately, I have spent 26 years consuming popular culture and am thus found wanting in the area of imagination.

I briefly considered picking the numbers from Lost that Hurley used to win the lottery. 4,8,15,16,23,42. I thought to myself, "The odds that my numbers get picked are awful. The odds that the Lost numbers get picked are awful. Two awfuls always cancel each other out. Ergo, I win. QED."

But right as I was going to actualize my flawless logic, reality hit me smack in the face. Did I really think I was the only idiot in the world who would choose the Lost numbers? Of course not. All across America, I pictured millions of people picking those numbers and then going to a fried chicken joint. Those people would all win and then we would have to split the pot. And whoever said sharing was caring was full of crap.

So, unless I wanted to end up with pennies, I had to choose new numbers. This I did, and I picked my numbers and went home.

Then, when 11:24 came, I was ready. I had my tickets in my hand. I tuned the TV to the right channel and stood there, making sure to angle myself in such a way that when I won and fainted, I would fall onto my coffee table, destroying it but at the same time creating an awesome anecdote that I could use at the press conference the following morning.

Of course you know what happened next.

I did not win. Two other people did. And yes, tons of people used the Lost numbers, but wouldn't you know it, not that many numbers matched so that each one of those people still won $150. On a $1 ticket.

So I sat down and I wept and I said goodbye to my condos in Boston and NYC and the beach houses in Santa Barbara and Lake Cuomo and the Mayan Rivera and the dozen bespoke suits from Savile Row and the 30 Hermes ties and the collection of Bruno Magli shoes and the 30-year old bottles of Scotch and the sports cars and the 80'' TV and the private jet and the penthouses at the Four Seasons and the American Express Centurion card and the happiness that only hundreds of millions of dollars can buy.

Sigh.

"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

*I was told there would be no math.

The New "Fit"

Someone made a good point yesterday that the first few days after the New Year turn gyms into unbearably crowded prisons of sweat and fat people. Resolutioners who need to meet their four-days-a-year-every-year quota show up in throngs, looking much like the crowds demanding a free Burrito whenever a Chipotle opens. There is, of course, a 90 percent overlap between these two groups.

In the past two days that I've gone to the gym I've accumulated some grievances which I would like to air here in a post that the aggrieving parties will never read.

1. These are weights. They are not menu items. Don't contemplate them the same way you would contemplate which Value Meal you want at McDonald's. This isn't a "Do I feel like a McFish today?" scenario. This is a "How much can I lift?" situation. Go to the weights. Pick up a big one. Can you lift it? No? Move down one. Can you lift that one? Yes? Awesome! Now move.

2. If you insist on using the cardio machines, please take a break from texting your pot dealer and actually use them. And I understand that Troga is a thing now, because of Modern Family, but there is a time and place for it and overcrowded hours are not the time and jamming your hand in my face is not the place.

3. Dude, when you're lifting weights, PUT DOWN YOUR GODDAMNED IPOD VIDEO! Dude! Come on! Are you really trying to lift one weight in one hand and then use the other one to hold your iPod so you watch an old Two and Half Men episode? Really? It really can't wait? Also, you have terrible taste in entertainment.

4. Yes, we shouldn't be judging you, but in our defense, you shouldn't be wearing jeans to the gym.

5. While I admire your ambition, I don't think a treadmill is the best place to both make phone calls and read a broadhseet newspaper. And I just really hope that whatever is in your thermos isn't coffee.

Yes, all of these things happened and they all involved 4 different people. I really can't wait for next week.

The Icebox got Iced

Just in time for the New Year, my refrigerator decided to up and quit.

I know, right? Imagine my horror at waking up this morning and finding that the beer was warm.

NOBODY DRINK THE BEER! THE BEER HAS GONE WARM.

And then I remembered that it was 7.30 on a Monday morning and that there was nobody else in my house and that I was yelling at nothing but the figments of my imagination.

There is a special irony in having a fridge that does not work when the temperature outside is markedly below the industrial standards necessary for refrigeration.

I had brief flashbacks to the good old days at the Sun office, when we would be too lazy to schlep the beer all the way up the stairs to where the fridge was. So instead we would open the door and nestle the cases of beer outside amongst the snow drifts. Then, of course, we would need to set a timer, for if we left the beer out in the cold wasteland tundra of Ithaca for more than 20 minutes, the beer would freeze. And this would create frozen beer chips, which sounds awesome in theory, but anyone who has attempted to drink a beer with frozen beer chips in it can tell you that they are highly inconvenient, like the fatty parts in a steak.

Anyhow, the fact that technology has failed would not be a big deal if I could just put all my perishables outside in the snow. However, I live on a sixth floor. Dropping my beer on the snow here sounds somewhat dangerous when you consider it's a 50-odd foot drop, hopefully not on the head of some unfortunate pedestrian. While it seems like an easy fix, I have learned the hard way that tossing things out of windows occasionally has consequences.

And going down the elevator and setting them down gently would solve that problem, but then who, I ask you, who would keep vigilance over my unattended food items? I suppose I could, but it's cold outside.

Because people would eat them. Oh, trust me on this one, absolutely people would eat them. If you were walking down the street and chanced upon a nice little stack of beer and black forest ham, wouldn't you stop and have yourself a spontaneous picnic? F$%* and Yes you would.

So here I sit, slowly eating what seems like 4 pounds of ham. Why do I have so much ham? Well, I like my sandwiches to be roughly the width of a hypothetical Double Big Mac. And since I like to buy at least one week's supply of the stuff, necessity requires that I purchase it wholesale, in bulk. If I couldn't fashion a full-sized pig out of the available items in my refrigerator at any point in time, I'm due for a grocery run.

My landlord has informed me that I should be getting a new, working refrigerator sometime today, which should end this sudden and unplanned excursion into our past. I can't say I have learned much in the past few hours of being a hunter and gatherer, except that trying to hunt the ducks in the Boston Common is frowned upon by both children and the authorities.