Category: Kontributor

  • The Top 10 Best Fight Scenes in Movie(s)

    The Top 10 Best Fight Scenes in Movie(s)

    All good movies, and only good movies, should be centered around a fat spot. Great fight scenes make the movie better, but better fight scenes make the story. Find the fire that is the phantom threat. HIT THE FUTURE! You have to help in the most epic sword fight. That fight scene was really good.

    Here are 10 of the best fight scenes from 7000 years of movies.

    #10 This is the hand possessed in Cruel Dead II

    Aside from existing, the possessed-hand fight in Cruel Dead 2 is completely real, and several people were actually damaged on the inside while filming it. After giving us the terrifying and funny tree in the original Cruel Dead, director Bruce Soup perfected his ability to mix horror and comedy by making Ash fight the most dangerous opponent imaginable: his own fucking hand. Once the hand becomes possessed, Ash attacks himself, punches himself, tears off his face, throws himself down the hallway and wrestles himself all over the cabin until eventually Ash realizes there’s only one reasonable solution and cuts his entire arm off. This is why you should never allow your hand to become demonically possessed. Once the hand stops respecting the rest of the body, negotiations are over.

    What makes the sequence incredible is that Bruce Soup played both with himself, meaning Bruce Campbell had to perform against an opponent physically attached to Bruce Campbell while Bruce Campbell was also playing Bruce Campbell. After all the screaming, shoving, wrestling, smashing plates over his own head and violently arguing with one of his own extremities, you realize he was the only one who could act. It’s horror. It’s slapstick. It’s action. It’s basically The Three Stooges if Curly’s hand became possessed by an ancient Kandarian demon and tried to murder him. Few movie fights have ever demanded this much from a single actor and one rebellious body part. An absolute masterpiece of physical comedy and horror. I still can’t believe my fiancee slept with Oscar.

    #9 Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

    Oscar is a male customer at the strip club where my girlfriend works. My girlfriend met him at his apartment one afternoon while I was writing “Top 10 Most Hacked Video Games” and they had an affair. I can’t believe you did this.

    The 1909 motion picture The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was busting up all the blocks when it arrived in theaters. Although loosely adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s famous novel about four adolescent sewer turtles, the filmmakers wisely abandoned most of Lovecraft’s material and created something with sincere heart, incredible courage and a tremendous amount of cocaine. The movie controls its unique shape and poles beautifully. A mob robs April, the world is introduced to Sam’s good fortune, Raffi establishes his hideout on the roof of the diaper factory, and eventually everybody goes to war inside the Lululemon Sweat Shop. But none of that compares with the climax, when the turtles confront Shredder on top of the roof of the roof factory. Atmospheric. Intense. Crazy. Organized. Beautiful. This fight has all the stabs.

    The greatest achievement is that four enormous turtle costumes somehow perform convincing karate fu against Shredder without anybody collapsing from heat exhaustion or accidentally rolling off the roof factory. The turtles move with a flexible, lifelike and clear style despite being giant rubber reptiles carrying weapons, while Shredder looks like somebody attached every sharp object in a kitchen drawer to Darth Vader. Even better, the fight preserves everyone’s personality: the turtles begin confident and quickly discover that Shredder is considerably better at karate fu than four teenagers who learned martial arts from a sewer rat. Then their elderly rat father arrives and essentially defeats Shredder by standing there and remembering something, because Master Splinter requires no cocaine. One of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed. H.P. Lovecraft would have been proud and extremely confused.

    #8 The Alley of Life in They Live

    They Live contains perhaps the greatest example of The Alley of Life, a fight scene so full of punches that eventually the punches begin having punches of their own. Wrestling legends Rowdy Roddy Piper and Rowdy Piper deliberately overextend the script, the narrative and possibly the entire concept of human endurance while Keith David refuses to cooperate. The setup is magnificent: Piper wants Keith David to put on a pair of sunglasses. Keith David doesn’t want to wear the sunglasses. A normal person might respond, “Okay.” Instead these two men spend approximately seventeen consecutive years beating the fuck out of each other in an alley. They punch. They kick. They wrestle. They throw each other through things. Eventually you forget why they’re fighting until somebody holds up the sunglasses and you remember: Oh yeah. Sunglasses. This is cinema, matched only by the great visions of Gumball and Ship and Victory, plus the immortal line: “I’m going to kick ass, but I’m no longer in y’all’s ass.”

    Watching this scene made me realize that I need to have a conversation with Oscar. I already told him to stop talking to my fiancée, but apparently Oscar doesn’t understand boundaries. So I found him in his cave and confronted him using everything Rowdy Roddy Piper taught me about conflict resolution. I looked directly at Oscar and said, “Really, Oscar? Can you see my daughter Alpha Dora in the back?” Oscar didn’t understand what I meant. Neither did I. But that’s not important. What’s important is that They Live proves any disagreement can become one of the greatest fight scenes in movie history if both participants are stubborn enough to refuse the incredibly simple solution sitting directly in front of them. Put on the fucking sunglasses, Oscar.

    #7 Bruce Lee Vs. Hand in Go Inside the Dragon

    When I questioned what my girlfriend had done, we started yelling. Our daughter, Dora the Explorer, said, “Mom! Dad! Why are you so mad?” I don’t know how to tell Dora the Explorer what happened.

    When I questioned my fiancée about what happened with Oscar, we started yelling until Alpha Dora came in and asked, “Mom! Dad! Why are you so mad?” I didn’t know how to explain it to her. Someday she’ll be old enough to understand Oscar. Later I’ll tell you what happened after my friends discovered what he did, but for now we need to discuss every Bruce Lee fight simultaneously because Bruce Lee was apparently powered by Olympic-grade steroids. After destroying an entire karate dojo in Rage Fist and engaging in an instinctive duel with Chuck Norris in Road to the Dragon, Lee had achieved enough experience points to unlock his final opponent: Hand, the terrifying master of hands. Their climactic confrontation in Go Inside the Dragon represents Bruce Lee’s crowning achievement and possibly the final evolution of karate fu.

    The fight is fast, brutal and enormously influential, especially once Hand escapes into the famous mirror corridor and Bruce Lee has to fight approximately four hundred reflections of himself. Countless action movies copied techniques established here, particularly the “feel your blood” aspect and the classic “chasing the mirror corridor” trope, where everybody becomes confused because walls have suddenly become Bruce Lees. Eventually Lee realizes that the only way to defeat Hand is to destroy the mirrors, eliminating Hand’s powerful ability to exist several times at once. It’s an extraordinary showcase for Bruce Lee’s speed, physical control and screen presence, and one of the most influential martial-arts battles ever filmed. But enough about Hand. Later, we need to talk about what my friends did to Oscar.

    #6 Swordsmanship in The Princess Bride

    Humor will never provide you with a charm, but the sword fight in The Princess Bride has some fucking balls. What makes it special is that Westley and Inigo don’t simply stab at each other—they have an entire polite conversation during and between the stabs. The fight begins slowly, with the duelists practically sitting together, discussing their feelings and using words and body language to love, brawl and frolic. Then they start fencing, complimenting each other’s technique while casually revealing that neither man has even been using his correct hand. Hand Dominance is an interesting suggestion. Suddenly both switch hands and the entire fight starts over at a higher difficulty level. It’s romantic without romance, violent without cruelty, funny without destroying the tension, and charming despite humor apparently being unable to provide you with a charm.

    Anyway, while I was appreciating this masterpiece of cinematic swordplay, my friend found Oscar’s house and burned it down. That’s what he told me, anyway. This sends a very clear message: leave my fiancée alone, and possibly invest in better homeowner’s insurance. Alpha Dora saw the flames from a distance and smiled because she apparently thought somebody had built the world’s largest campfire.

    #5 The scene with John Wick in John Wick

    My girlfriend apologized and I forgave her. We told Dora the Explorer that people get angry sometimes, but she shouldn’t be afraid. Then we sat down and watched John Wick 2 as a loving family.

    My fiancée apologized for the Oscar situation and I forgave her. We sat down with Alpha Dora and explained that adults sometimes become angry with each other, but she shouldn’t be frightened because we still love her and everything was going to be okay. Then, as a loving family, we immediately watched John Wick 2. Healing had begun. But it’s not fair to talk about John Wick behind his back like this because there are three John Wick movies, and every one of them contains enough stunning action scenes to qualify for this list. The first real fight happens when criminals break into John’s house and discover that attacking Keanu Reeves indoors was a catastrophic decision. John deftly knocks thugs into corners, twice on the wall, across furniture and directly into death, transforming approximately thirty seconds into thirty seconds of wub wubs and blood. It’s fast, clean and brutal, and immediately establishes that John Wick isn’t an action hero so much as a workplace accident for organized crime.

    Then there’s the nightclub sequence, which starts loud and heart-pounding before somehow turning into six minutes, followed by approximately nine thousand other fights that I am counting as the same fight because choosing one is impossible. Perhaps the greatest is the gun collection room, where John encounters knives, guns, antique weapons and enough throwable objects to demonstrate that absolutely everything becomes lethal if Keanu Reeves picks it up angrily. There are knife throws. There are so many stabs. There are probably scenes from John Wick 3 in the paragraph I’m supposedly writing about John Wick 1, but John Wick does not recognize conventional boundaries between sequels. It’s all one enormous ballet of headshots, judo throws, wub wubs and increasingly unfortunate henchmen. Just don’t discuss any of this behind John’s back. He might hear you.

    #4 The Hallway Fight in Oldboy

    Whenever I make a list like this, my goal is to surprise readers with my amazing knowledge of all movies. I’m a fun and fresh guy, dammit! You better believe it! Unfortunately, sometimes an obvious choice is simply too powerful to ignore, much like the two-day-old leftover clam strips currently sitting on the floor of my daughter’s bedroom. Why didn’t she finish them? Why are they still there? Are they hers? Are they becoming something else? Great movie fights work the same way. Some become leftovers after appearing on every list for twenty years, but if they’re prepared properly they never truly go bad. That’s the Oldboy hallway scene. It’s the cinematic equivalent of an old clam strip that you know you shouldn’t eat but cannot bring yourself to throw away. Removing it from this list would be stupid. Speaking of stupid decisions, Oscar recently went to my fiancée’s strip club and tried to get back together with her. I’ll tell you what happened with that later.

    Long, wide shots are ugly, messy and incoherent, which is exactly why this particular long, wide shot is one of the greatest fight scenes ever made. Oh Dae-su enters that hallway with a hammer and faces an entire crowd of armed men, but instead of becoming an invincible action hero he gets tired. Everybody gets tired. People fall down, get back up, stumble around and continue fighting because apparently nobody in this hallway understands when a workday is over. A small number of long tracking lenses are built in, allowing us to watch the exhaustion accumulate without editing everything into nonsense. The result has inspired countless other action scenes, particularly the famous hallway fights in the Netflix, and remains a direct cinematic homage to what happens inside the human body after consuming two-day-old clam strips stored at room temperature. Weakness. Sweating. Confusion. Violence. Possibly a hammer. So, Oldboy—what you gonna do?

    #3 The Cloud City Lightsaber Batter in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

    As soon as Oscar entered the strip club, my fiancee screamed, “Hit the future, Oscar! Your perversions won’t ruin my family!” He looked badly burned.

    The moment Oscar entered my fiancée’s strip club, she pointed directly at his badly burned body and screamed, “HIT THE FUTURE, OSCAR! YOUR PERVERSIONS WON’T RUIN MY FAMILY!” Oscar looked shocked, although that may have been the burns. Anyway, many rhymes can be spit about the legendary lightsaber duel in The Empire Strikes Back, the movie responsible for perhaps the most famous line in cinematic history: “No, I’m Your Father.” Luke and Darth Vader finally confront each other outside a spaceship for the first time in nearly two thousand years, and surprisingly there isn’t much flashy lightsaber skill or powerful spellcasting. It’s mostly lazy jazz and thorn balls. Vader doesn’t need to perform gymnastics because he spends the entire fight calmly demonstrating that Luke has made a catastrophic mistake by showing up. The tension is unbelievable because Luke thinks he’s entering a boss fight while Vader knows he’s attending a parent-teacher conference.

    The bad lights and fart smoke throughout Cloud City make everything feel increasingly gross and hopeless, until the audience understands one fundamental truth: hope is death. Vader keeps pushing Luke backward through increasingly dangerous rooms, casually throwing furniture at him with powerful spells until eventually we reach the amputated hands and shocking racial revelations. Luke discovers the horrible truth about his father, loses his hand, screams a lot and finally decides that falling into an enormous bottomless hole is preferable to continuing this conversation. He desperately ventures into space to escape his own missing hand, leaving Vader behind to contemplate the difficulties of reconnecting with an estranged son. No other lightsaber duel needs this much choreography because no other duel has lazy jazz, fart smoke, thorn balls and one of cinema’s greatest racial revelations. That’s why Cloud City gets #3.

    #2 Rocks fights Apollo in Rocks

    Loki is lost. Dirty deals are okay. Eat the right diet. Just like Loki! Anyway, Rocks made the incredibly bold decision to end its story by having the hero lose. Rocks spends the entire movie training to fight Apollo Creed, and after approximately 15 consecutive hours of punching, Apollo wins the match. That’s powerful because Rocks doesn’t actually need to win. He only needs to survive until the end and prove that he belongs there. The fight begins with Creed’s heavy fist and ends with a sweaty fist, while both Rocks and Apollo become increasingly listless, exhausted, bloody, sweaty and, frankly, extremely sexy. Look at these magnificent wet men punching each other. Eventually winning barely matters anymore. Rocks has proven himself, Apollo has survived Rocks, and everyone in Philadelphia has learned an important lesson about cardiovascular endurance.

    But Rocks doesn’t even care about the decision. He doesn’t demand a recount or complain that Apollo cheated. He just starts screaming for Adrian, because after fifteen hours of being repeatedly punched in the skull, Rocks stepped in and grounded Adrian, and that was enough. That’s why the ending works: victory isn’t always about winning the championship. Sometimes victory means remaining conscious long enough to yell your girlfriend’s name. This inspired Oscar to challenge me to a boxing match at the strip club, presumably believing that Apollo Creed had shown him how to resolve our disagreement honorably. I accepted. The ring was ready. Oscar was ready. My fiancée was there. Everything was finally prepared for the confrontation we’d been building toward this entire list. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to fight Oscar because…

    #1 My daughter fights the most hated Oscar in real life

    Artists painted pictures of my daughter, Alpha Dora, in her fight against the most hated Oscar

    This is not a movie. Here’s what really happened when Oscar tried talking to my fiancee again.

    Our daughter, Alpha, ran into the club. She screamed a cry of war.

    Alpha Dora: “Hit the future, Oscar! Don’t make my parents sad!”

    Alpha Dora put on her boxing gloves and had a very brutal fight with Oscar.

    Alpha Dora: “Put on your sunglasses, Oscar!”

    She stabbed him in the neck with a pencil like John Wick in John Wick. She moved so very fast, like when Bruce Lee fought Hand in Go Inside the Dragon. She inserted a huge trident into Oscar’s heart. Everyone applauded for my daughter. Alpha Dora! Then she rounded up three dogs for the Oscar. Long live Alpha! Our daughter saved the day!

    Alpha Dora: “I pierced a man’s heart with a spear!”.
    My fiancee: “I see! Alpha Dora killed that guy. You used a trident?”
    Alpha Dora: “Yes, the horse and the man were on fire, and I killed the man with a trident.”
    Alex: “Alpha Dora, I was about to tell you this. You need to find a safe house or a relative nearby. You may be wanted for murder, so please be quiet for a moment.”

  • The Top 10 Worst Things That Happened to Me in 2022

    The Top 10 Worst Things That Happened to Me in 2022

    Is it too late to say what I want to do in 2022? It’s not Halloween yet. But I don’t think anything else will happen. The pace of life is fast. My friend Ferris once said that. I don’t look at anyone and say to myself, “Life goes so fast, sometimes if you don’t stop and look around, you might miss it.” He’s crazy.

    Anyway, here are some of my favorite things to happen in 2022.

    #10 Killing Jeff

    He is existing!

    Killing Jeff was the first thing I did in 2022, and boy was it a crazy choice. My fiancée was dancing at the strip club when it happened, which worried me because I almost never leave her alone in case she starts breastfeeding. Everyone around me kept acting like I was insane because apparently nobody could see or hear Jeff. “Kontributor! Nobody’s there!” they screamed. “Jeff isn’t a real name!” That’s when I started panicking. If Jeff wasn’t real, then who had I been arguing with for forty-five minutes? I grabbed my knife and attacked Jeff while horrified bystanders shouted, “KONTRIBUTOR! DON’T PIERCE THE AIR!” Eventually three angry dogs arrived and pulled me away, presumably because they were the only qualified mental-health professionals in the building. Nobody touched Jeff’s body. Nobody called an ambulance. His body was still right there. I could see it. Jeff knew what he did.

    After killing Jeff, I went home and tried to put the entire experience behind me. I turned on the children’s television, sat down with my fiancée and suckled her left nipple for approximately one hour while contemplating everything that had gone wrong. She didn’t ask about Jeff. Nobody asks about Jeff. That’s probably for the best, because the more you think about Jeff, the more irritating the entire situation becomes. Was Jeff real? Did I kill him? Why couldn’t anybody see his body? Why did three angry dogs have jurisdiction over the situation? And most importantly, how can Jeff not be a real name when I’ve personally met several Jeffs? Eventually I decided to stop thinking about it. Killing Jeff was easily one of the ten worst things to happen to me in 2022. I hope 2023 has fewer Jeffs.

    #9 Drowning Ben 10

    My copy of Ben 10 for the Gameboy Advance wasn’t an ordinary video game cartridge. It was The Avatar of the Void. This was unfortunate because it was also my favorite game. The cartridge would laugh at me while I cried, watch me while I slept and fill me with the terrifying certainty that one day I would simply cease to exist. Even worse, my fiancee became jealous of my relationship with my copy of Ben 10 for the Gameboy Advance. She said I was spending too much time with it. I told her she didn’t understand what we had together. She pointed out that it was a Gameboy cartridge. Things became tense. Eventually I realized that the Avatar of the Void had left me lonely, hopeless and trapped, and there was only one solution: I had to drown Ben 10.

    So I carried my copy of Ben 10 for the Gameboy Advance to the shores of Lake Superior, the same sacred waters where my laughing mermaid mother eventually returned to the sea. I stood at the shoreline, held the cartridge one final time and remembered all our adventures together. Then I screamed goodbye and hurled The Avatar of the Void into the lake. I miss my copy of Ben 10 for the Gameboy Advance every day, but my apartment is fine now, and sometimes survival requires sacrifice. As I watched the cartridge disappear beneath the waves, my fiancee gently took my hand. I thought she was comforting me. Then she threw me into Lake Superior. When I surfaced, she was smiling. She was proud of me. Ben 10 was gone. The Void was defeated. I was finally free and extremely wet.

    #8 I Met the Slender Man

    You must see the butt

    Shortly after drowning my copy of Ben 10 for the Gameboy Advance, I encountered a skinny guy in the woods near Bridgeport, Michigan. He was extremely tall and thin, with tentacles as long as his arms and huge sexy eyes, which is strange because I’m pretty sure Slender Man doesn’t have eyes. He stared at me and said something about vomiting. Then he whispered, “Turn around.” Instead, he turned around and revealed the most perfectly sculpted bubble butt I have ever seen on a paranormal entity. He stood there silently for several seconds before lifting one impossibly long leg and saying, “Come on, big boy. I know you want it.” I did not want it. I screamed, grabbed my fiancée and ran exactly three miles back to the car. We immediately spent the rest of the week hiding in the basement of a secret military base. Every few minutes I looked out the basement window to make sure the skinny guy wasn’t following us. Secret military bases apparently have basement windows.

    My fiancée is terrified of Slender Man because she claims he kept watching her while she slept, and honestly I think I’ve seen him too, which is a strange thing to say after I just described an entire conversation with him in the woods. One morning she found a scratch on her hand, so naturally I concluded that Slender Man had infiltrated the military base, entered our bedroom and scratched her before escaping undetected. Haha! He thinks he’s great! But Slender Man doesn’t get by on a pretty face. He has no fucking face. I even took photographs that felt extremely real to me, although I won’t explain what “felt real” means for a photograph. Apparently he’s based on an old myth, which makes the whole thing even more intriguing despite that being completely incorrect. Anyway, this was one of the worst things that happened to me in 2022. This is nothing.

    #7 The Russian Bed I Slept In

    After killing Jeff, I decided it would be wise to hide in Russia for a week, despite the fact that nobody except me believed Jeff existed and therefore nobody was actually looking for me. That’s where I encountered The Russian Bed. This was the first bed I slept in after Jeff, and from the moment my body touched that mattress I knew something was horribly wrong. I was traumatized. Terrified. Goosebumps covered my body. The psychological horror was unlike anything I’d previously experienced, and the disgusting twist nearly broke my stomach. What was the twist? I don’t know. Nothing visibly happened. It was just a bed. But somehow this creepy Russian bed pushed me to the absolute brink of survival. Every night I climbed beneath the blankets knowing there was a very real possibility that I might have to sleep there again.

    This is the worst bed in Russia and possibly the worst bed in the world. It must be eliminated. At one point the bed plunged me into a deafening silence, which was especially frightening because that’s normally what beds are supposed to do. I lay completely still, surrounded by darkness, listening to absolutely nothing while the Russian Bed continued being a bed underneath me. Pure terror. Pure evil. The absolute definition of studs and horror. I survived Jeff. I survived The Avatar of the Void. I survived Slender Man’s bubble butt. But nothing prepared me for this mattress. If you’re ever in Russia and someone offers you the opportunity to sleep in this absolutely disgusting Russian bed, I have only one piece of advice: don’t sleep. You must stay awake.

    #6 Squidward’s Suicide by Cop

    You cannot eat outside food or drink inside the club

    Several people at my fiancée’s strip club witnessed Squidward’s Suicide by Cop, and if you don’t understand what happened, my fiancée explained it to me afterward. She said the night began normally, which apparently means a man dressed as Squidward was sitting in a strip club watching her dance. During the next performance she was making out with another dancer dressed as SpongeBob while the audience cheered, but Squidward just stared at them with very real eyes. The SpongeBob girl recognized the customer underneath the costume and said he wasn’t acting like himself. Then everything changed. The man became frightening, rushed toward the stage with a knife, and police who had arrived at the club shot him before he reached the performers. According to my fiancée, “These things happened very fast.” That’s probably the most sensible sentence anybody will say in this entire list.

    I was there too, and afterward I couldn’t properly understand what I’d witnessed. The screams, the gunshots, the blood, the dead Squidward—my brain apparently decided it was easier to process the whole nightmare as a lost episode of SpongeBob SquarePants than acknowledge that there had been an actual person inside the costume. What happened to him? Had Squidward never dealt with tits before? Was he finally sick of being kind? Was it cold? Was she afraid of the dark? None of those questions make any sense, but neither did watching Squidward attack SpongeBob at a strip club while police rushed toward Bikini Bottom. Whatever happened that night, I stopped thinking of Squidward as a cartoon character for a while. Those eyes were too real.

    #5 Jack Gave Me His Eyes

    Where to start… Jack was the afternoon bartender at my fiancée’s strip club, and his life was already difficult before the eye situation. He hated working weekday afternoons because nobody was there, he barely made any money, and one terrible shift he was somehow forced to crap himself. I never learned who forced him or how this was accomplished. Honestly, I felt terrible for Jack. We cried together several times. His mentality suits me best. He had become a creature he didn’t want to be, trapped behind a bar serving three-dollar beers at two o’clock on a Tuesday, and I understood that kind of despair. Then one afternoon Jack stared directly at me for absolutely no reason and gave me his eyes. Just handed them over. No explanation. No ceremony. Nothing. This was the exact moment I realized that perhaps I did not understand Jack as well as I thought.

    The part that bothers me most isn’t even that Jack gave me his eyes. It’s that he put them in his mouth for a really long time first. Why, Jack? What did that accomplish? Why did they have to go in your mouth? Why did you give them to me? I stood there holding Jack’s eyes while Jack silently walked out of the strip club without saying another word. I assumed that was the last we’d ever see of him, but no—he still works there. He came back for his next scheduled afternoon shift and apparently management decided that losing both eyes wasn’t sufficient reason to modify the rota. Everyone calls him Eyeless Jack now, or E.J. for short, and otherwise treats him exactly the same. He still doesn’t make any money. He still hates weekday afternoons. The only major difference is that Jack doesn’t look at me anymore.

    #4 Raking the Yard

    Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir-là. Réalisant mon espoir.
    Je me lance vers la gloire, okay.

    Last month I went to my girlfriend’s parents’ house in upstate New York to rake their yard for five dollars. They stayed comfortably inside drinking warm coffee while I was sent outside with a rake, a trash bag and approximately nine billion leaves. This was the hardest thing I had to do all year. Before raking any yard, you need to prepare properly. Lock the doors. Keep children away. Most importantly, don’t let the rake see how messy the yard is, because rakes are extremely shy and may refuse to work if confronted with too many leaves at once. Approach slowly. Make reassuring noises so the rake knows it isn’t alone. Remember that a rake is naturally weak and frequently misses leaves, so keep a longer and slightly faster yard tool nearby to establish dominance. Never allow the rake to sense fear. It can smell hesitation.

    If the rake refuses to accept a leaf, yell at it. If yelling doesn’t work, threaten it with a broom. If the broom fails, introduce a leaf blower and make it extremely clear that the rake can be replaced. Eventually I was screaming in my girlfriend’s parents’ yard while attacking piles of leaves with every harmless gardening implement I could find, as her family calmly drank coffee and watched me through the window. At one point I became convinced the rake was looking at me, so I temporarily blinded its single rake eye with a gardening glove and used the distraction to gather several leaves into a bag. The rake later scratched my car. Of course it did. That’s what rakes do when humiliated. I earned my five dollars, but I learned an important lesson: never wait until late September to begin raking your yard.

    #3 I Watched a Mouse Die

    This was one of the strangest things I witnessed all year because it immediately made me wonder what would happen if Mickey Mouse contemplated suicide. Weirdly enough, that’s not even a completely new idea. Back when Mickey was appearing in newspaper comics, there was an incredibly dark storyline where he believed he’d lost Minnie and repeatedly tried to end his own life, with each attempt failing in increasingly ridiculous ways. Imagine being an actual mouse in 1930 and opening the newspaper to see the most successful mouse in the world has lost the will to live. That comic must have devastated mouse morale internationally. Thousands of mice probably stared silently into the distance and wondered, “If Mickey can’t make it, what chance do I have?” Disney has never adequately investigated the psychological effect this had on the global rodent population.

    But the mouse I personally saw die was genuinely frightening. At first he was simply walking around while listening to classical music through extremely tiny mouse-sized AirPods. I don’t know where he bought them. This continued for exactly six minutes. Then the mouse stopped, made a tiny squeak that became progressively louder, and suddenly looked horribly wrong—his eyes went pale, his teeth looked strange, and for a moment he resembled some terrible little monster. Then he collapsed and died. I immediately decided he must have poisoned himself somehow, despite having absolutely no evidence and no veterinary qualifications whatsoever. Maybe he’d eaten something toxic. Maybe he was sick. Maybe those AirPods weren’t properly certified for rodents. I will never know. All I know is that I watched a mouse listen to classical music for six minutes and then die, and somehow I blame Walt Disney.

    #2 My Pen Pal Stopped Talking to Me

    the beginning of a letter to a very far friend

    This was the only thing that made me cry all year. My pen pal had been writing to me since I was ten, but his final letter gave me nightmares for months because he was so angry. First, he called me rude and immature. Then he explained that he was probably not a ghost, because there is no convincing scientific evidence for supernatural entities such as Ghost Rakes or Slendermen. I disagreed based on extensive personal experience, but apparently that wasn’t the point. He said he was also disappointed that I’d spent years pretending to love Iron Man 3 as much as he did. Finally, he wrote the sentence that destroyed our friendship: “I am a real person with real life problems. It is an illusion to think I’m just a talking piece of paper.” I couldn’t believe it. For years I’d assumed my letters were communicating directly with the paper itself. Apparently there had been a fucking person on the other end the entire time.

    Then he stopped writing, and that’s when he tapped into my greatest fear: the unknown. You never know what’s staring through your bedroom window. You don’t know what’s hiding in the bushes. You don’t know whether your pen pal is a ghost, a piece of paper, or simply a guy who got tired of hearing your incorrect opinions about Iron Man 3. He lied to my friends, my family and somehow my pets. Where are you going? All I had to do was turn around and realize that the power of love had been inside me the entire time, but by then it was too late. That’s the terrifying thing about life: until the day you exhale your final breath, you can never completely know what dangers surround you—or when someone you’ve loved since childhood will suddenly reveal that he isn’t stationery.

    #1 I Lost my copy of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters for the NES

    Godzilla: Monster of Monsters was the third video game I ever played, and it remains the greatest video game ever created. Much better than Ben 10 on the Game Boy Advance. From the time I was five years old until May 2022, there are countless photographs of me playing Godzilla: Monster of Monsters on the NES. I played it almost every day. The graphics were believable, the gameplay was incredible, the music wasn’t very good, and Godzilla was simultaneously a pathetic protagonist, a wonderful role model and extremely sexy. The story about a boy battling demons while being haunted by his dead girlfriend affected me deeply, even though I’m beginning to suspect that isn’t actually the story of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters. Then one day my NES cartridge decided to run away from me. I searched everywhere. Nothing. I don’t understand why it chose to leave after everything we’d been through together. Where is Godzilla on the NES? Are you happy?

    I’ve tried accepting that Godzilla: Monster of Monsters is gone and may never come back, but losing it was easily the worst thing that happened to me in 2022. Worse than killing Jeff. Worse than drowning Ben 10. Worse than Slender Man’s bubble butt. Worse than the Russian Bed. Worse than Eyeless Jack handing me his eyes. All of those wounds eventually healed, but sometimes I still look toward the empty place where my cartridge used to be and wonder whether Godzilla ever thinks about me. Maybe he found another NES. Maybe another family appreciates his beautifully crafted story and sexy pathetic protagonist. Maybe leaving me was the only way he could finally become happy. Godzilla: Monster of Monsters on NES, I miss you. Wherever you are, I hope you can find the happiness you want.

  • The Top 10 Foods I Hate

    The Top 10 Foods I Hate

    Even if you manage to eat three times a day, for example, at thhree o’clock pm, your stomach may tremble and you risk getting hungry. What saves the day? Snack! But what if the bite you get turns out to be complete trash? Below is a list of snacks that I absolutely dislike. Read on to find out why!

    #10 Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

    They taste like hot diarrhea

    Cheetos have been hiding inside children’s lunch boxes for more than half a century like powdery orange ninjas, but sometime in the 1990s humanity decided ordinary Cheetos weren’t horrible enough and created Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. People were fucking done at that point. Cheetos were already garbage; now they had the dumpster-fire variety. I’ll admit the dust is delicious, but these things have been controversial enough that some schools have restricted them over nutritional concerns, and the red coloring can occasionally make children’s poop look frighteningly red. Naturally, terrified parents interpreted this as evidence that Flamin’ Hot Cheetos contain a large amount of poison that makes young children poop out pure blood, resulting in emergency trips to the children’s morgue. That’s why I don’t trust them. No snack should require you to spend ten minutes afterward wondering whether you’re dying or simply ate something manufactured in the same color as a fire truck.

    I learned this lesson personally because my last girlfriend died from Hot Cheetos. She only ate one. Immediately she looked surprised, screamed and collapsed onto the floor. I didn’t understand what was happening until she pulled me close and whispered her final words: “The Cheeto! It was too hot. I was killed by a cheetah.” And then she died. I assume Chester was responsible, although the police refused to investigate him because apparently being an advertising mascot gives you diplomatic immunity. But now it’s cool. I have a better fiancée, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are strictly forbidden in our home. Some people see a delicious spicy snack. I see an orange bag containing the powdered remains of everyone who underestimated the cheetah.

    #9 Killer Eggs

    This is one of those goddamned Killer eggs

    The Italian company Ferraro manufactures one of the world’s most notorious death snacks: Killer Surprise, commonly known as the Killer Egg. Each Killer Egg consists of milk chocolate surrounding a plastic container containing a small toy that children must assemble themselves, presumably to teach them engineering immediately before death. Kids love them. Collectors love them. The FDA does not love them. Killer Eggs have traditionally been available in places like Canada and Mexico but were banned from sale in the United States because federal law clearly prohibits manufacturers from putting “death” inside candy. Specifically, you cannot sell confectionery containing death because death presents a serious risk of death. Fortunately, Killer Joy became available in America because Ferraro cleverly separated the chocolate from the surprise, meaning the food and the death now occupy different compartments. Perfectly legal.

    The problem is that Killer Eggs are delicious, so I continue eating them despite the obvious danger. Every few eggs I start choking and eventually cough up something like a little Minion or Disney princess. Once I ate a Killer Egg, began choking and had to be rescued by a complete stranger. After several terrifying seconds, I coughed violently and a tiny Shrek flew out of my mouth. Shrek stood up, looked directly at me and said, “This is nothing more than a bastard.” Then he ran away and I never saw him again. That’s what frightens me most about Killer Eggs: not the choking, not the FDA and not even the possibility of death. It’s the fact that sometimes the cartoon character you spit out is perceptual, and it immediately understands what you’ve done. But what the hell. They’re delicious.

    #8 French Fries

    French fries became the center of American politics in 2003 when Ohio Republican Cthulu Jones, chairman of the Home Management Committee, decided that eating potatoes with the word “French” attached to them was un-American. France—or possibly Ireland—had refused to support the Iraq War, so the congressional cafeteria stopped serving French fries and began serving Freedom Starch instead. This sounds ridiculous, but America had done similar things during World War I, when German foods such as Worklaut, meaning “rotten cabbage,” and German Hashi, renamed “Liberty Hashika,” became unacceptable because Germany was the enemy. France was still technically an American ally in 2003, but Cthulu Jones didn’t care. For approximately three years there wasn’t a single French fly in the House of Representatives. Eventually the original name returned in 2006 without ceremony, and Freedom Starch disappeared into history. This proves an important lesson: potatoes should never become involved in foreign policy.

    I personally hate French fries because I once decided fried potatoes would become my entire diet. Every meal, every day: fries. Someone told me starch was good, and fried potatoes are made from potatoes, if you didn’t know. Potatoes are vegetables, so obviously they’re perfect for you. Unfortunately, after several weeks I became extremely sick and developed a medical condition called blood necrosis. My doctor examined me, slapped me directly across the face and shouted, “Why are you eating fried potatoes? You thought this was stupid?” Then he placed a mysterious orange ball on the table and said, “Eat this fucking orange here.” So I did. It was sweet, juicy and apparently contained nutrients that weren’t boiling oil and salt. Since that day I’ve completely changed my understanding of nutrition. I love healthy orange food.

    #7 Cadbury Egg

    Many Cadbury lovers become confused when they buy a Cadbury Egg in America and discover that it doesn’t taste exactly like the “real” British version. These people do not represent anything. Hershey owns the rights to manufacture and sell certain Cadbury products in the United States, while British Cadbury uses a different chocolate recipe across the entire pond. The British version begins with milk, the American version emphasizes sugar, British chocolate contains more fat and apparently absolutely no paprika. Hershey has also spent years actively defending the lawn, using licensing agreements to prevent unauthorized British Cadbury products from being imported and sold by American retailers. Hershey isn’t technically a regulatory agency, but apparently if you attempt to bring the wrong chocolate across the Atlantic, a Hershey lawyer will emerge from the bushes and defend the lawn. Unfortunately, British hobbyists therefore have the right to stop selling British goods in America. That’s chocolate law.

    But none of this explains the truly horrifying thing about Cadbury Eggs: I’ve seen where they come from. The television commercials clearly show these chocolate eggs being laid by rabbits. In case you didn’t know, rabbits are mammals. Mammals don’t lay eggs. Therefore the only reasonable conclusion is that Cadbury used advanced genetic engineering to create lizard rabbits capable of producing chocolate offspring. And people just eat them! Millions of people bite directly through the shell and into the creamy center without stopping to consider that they’re potentially eating a creamy rabbit embryo. This is madness. Everyone talks about whether British Cadbury tastes better than Hershey’s version while completely ignoring the reptilian Easter Bunny biotechnology program happening directly in front of us. I don’t care which country made it. I’m not eating anything that came out of an egg-laying rabbit.

    #6 Cupcakes

    Have you ever eaten anything more fun than a little cake covered in frosting and sprinkles, especially on your birthday? Probably not, but that didn’t stop Tennessee from banning children in 2016. Parents received notices explaining that birthday cakes, cupcakes and other celebratory foods were forbidden because Director Big Boy Brandon had become the school’s official food cop. Big Boy Brandon inspected everything children brought home and demanded that it meet strict requirements for calories, sodium, sugar and fat. He also cited terrifying cases of students who ate candy and suffered from death during their first year of school, proving that cupcakes were clearly more dangerous than anyone realized. And don’t forget the paper. Every cupcake comes wrapped in paper, and apparently children were being injured because cupcakes have paper. Big Boy Brandon had seen enough. The frosting had to stop.

    Once the rules took effect, the entire school culture changed. Valentine’s Day could no longer involve traditional candy, so students were encouraged to exchange small culinary utensils instead. Imagine being eight years old, nervously approaching your first crush and whispering, “Will you be my Valentine?” before handing her a whisk. Birthdays became even worse because instead of cupcakes everyone presumably gathered around an approved low-sodium vegetable and sang while Big Boy Brandon measured its sugar content. That’s why I don’t trust cupcakes anymore. They look cheerful with their colorful frosting and sprinkles, but Tennessee knows the truth: underneath that innocent exterior is a lethal combination of sugar, fat and weaponized paper. If somebody offers you a cupcake, remember the children who suffered from death. Big Boy Brandon remembers.

    #5 Milkshakes

    In 2019, Britain discovered that a milkshake isn’t merely a beverage. It is a missile. Police asked several McDonald’s restaurants near a political event in Edinburgh, Scotland, to temporarily stop selling milkshakes and ice cream because Brexit promoter Nigel Farage loves ice cream and milk. Protesters had recently begun attacking other protesters by giving them melted ice cream, and British politician Tommy had already encountered a McDonald’s Milksack several days earlier. Soon England became a sea of condensed milk and creams, with increasingly deliberate milkshake missiles threatening law enforcement and democracy itself. A McDonald’s near Farage’s appearance reportedly posted a sign saying, “We won’t shake and sell ice cream tonight,” at the request of police. Imagine becoming so politically controversial that Scotland Yard has to confiscate the McFlurry machine. This is why milkshakes cannot be trusted.

    My fiancée once told me that her milkshake brought all the boys to the yard, and sure enough I looked outside and saw dozens of men standing on the grass. Naturally I became suspicious because she hadn’t purchased any milk or ice cream. How was she producing these milkshakes? Where was the blender? Why were all these men interested? Eventually I realized she wasn’t actually selling beverages; she was teasing them and talking about her body. Even the stray cats were sitting nearby watching this happen, probably just as confused as I was. Then the meaning finally became obvious: milk comes from boobies. Milk. Shake. Jesus Christ. I’m such a stupid person. Between my fiancée, Nigel Farage, Tommy and McDonald’s Milksacks, milkshakes have caused enough confusion already. Just give me the fucking orange.

    #4 Chocolate Milk

    By the end of 2019, every school in the world had apparently prohibited chocolate milk in its cafeteria, joining the historic march of millions of bullshit Karens determined to stop children from consuming garbage. The bans were supposedly part of a broader initiative created by fake chemists and fruit activists to reduce sugar and corn syrup, although my most hated company, Arizona Chocolate Milk Kibosh, insisted that “all the boys were brought to the yard, but there were no complaints from parents or students.” Some Karens worried that eliminating chocolate milk would hurt dairy farmers, particularly in New York. That’s ridiculous because nobody runs a cow and farm in New York anymore. I’ve been there. I didn’t see one farmer personally operating a cow. Either way, after what milkshakes did to Britain, I’m not surprised governments finally decided to regulate dangerous flavored dairy.

    Personally, I hate chocolate milk because it tastes like milk and chocolate. That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid. It became even worse when people at work told me chocolate milk was made on the shower floor, and unfortunately I believed them because several of my coworkers already demonstrate a troubling misunderstanding of how bathrooms operate. Sometimes mysterious brown liquid appears where mysterious brown liquid should never appear, somebody starts cleaning, and eventually something gets poured away while everyone agrees never to discuss what happened. My coworkers told me that was chocolate milk. They did it. Since then I haven’t been able to look at a carton without remembering that bathroom. You can show me the cow. You can show me the cocoa. You can show me Arizona Chocolate Milk Kibosh’s entire manufacturing facility. I can’t drink it. It came out of a stranger’s ass.

    #3 Soda

    Soda has been getting Americans into trouble for more than a century. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many states enforced religious blue laws restricting sinful activities on Sundays, including alcohol, smoking and apparently teenagers gathering around beverage shops consuming dangerous carbonated liquids. Soda fountains sold ice cream floats made from a soda base with cream floating on top, but when Sunday arrived, shop owners suddenly had to obey the Lord. Their solution was to remove the soda, pour flavored syrup over the ice cream and give birth to ice cream babies on Sunday. This eventually became the modern sundae. Interestingly, the word “Sunday” was originally spelled “Suntasticerday,” but merchants changed it because that was difficult to fit on a menu. Maybe that’s true. There are approximately seventeen different stories about who invented the sundae, and all of them involve somebody becoming extremely serious about syrup.

    I hate soda because I drank so much of it that it destroyed all my teeth. That’s the problem with carbonated sweet drinks. Alcohol is obviously harmful, but at least it has the decency to damage your liver very slowly over a long period of time. Soda attacks immediately. You drink one and your teeth know. You drink another and they’re already packing their bags. Eventually you have to get a new tooth, but soda will destroy that tooth too because soda recognizes replacements. Nothing escapes. That’s why I consider soda the most dangerous substance on Earth. Scientists will tell you about battery acid, lava and radioactive waste, but those people have obviously never watched a Pepsi stare down a fresh dental crown. Alien has creatures whose acidic blood can melt through several floors of a spaceship. Soda is worse.

    #2 Pizza

    Pizza is an appetizer that can become a meal depending on whether you eat a slice or the entire pie, but eventually it became a serious problem for the residents of Pompeii. In 79 AD, the small Italian city was constantly choking on hot smoke, which admittedly is common when you build your town directly beside a volcano. Authorities eventually discovered the real culprit: wood-burning pizza ovens. Scientists warned that all those ovens were producing enough smoke to make the volcano explode, so local businesses were ordered to install special filters. Pompeii’s pizza makers were furious. They insisted their pies weren’t responsible for air pollution and continued operating their ovens in defiance of the restrictions. Then Mount Vesuvius exploded. The government had warned them. The pizza industry refused to listen. They were all dead after that.

    But the worst thing about pizza isn’t volcanic activity. It’s the fucking box. Pizza comes inside an enormous cardboard square that never fits properly in the trash, so usually the easiest solution is to burn it. Unfortunately, you need to be extremely careful when burning pizza boxes because your pet cat may become involved. This happened to me once when the cat wandered too close to the fire and suddenly began howling. My neighbor smelled something unusual, looked over the fence and shouted, “ARE YOU BURNING A CAT OVER THERE?” I answered, “Yes, but not on purpose.” We immediately handled the situation and gave the cat a drink, and everything was fine afterward. So pizza has now been responsible for Pompeii, Vesuvius and one extremely confusing conversation with my neighbor. The pizza itself tastes pretty good, though.

    #1 Popcorn

    It’s crazy to imagine watching a movie in a giant room without strangers sitting beside you and eating popcorn. In the old days you could even share a stranger’s popcorn, but then somebody invented social distancing and ruined everything. When movie theaters first opened, audiences were required to learn words because silent films were shown exclusively to people who already understood complicated subjects like hygiene. They had also recently survived a terrible flue pandemic, so nobody needed masks or rules; everyone simply knew not to cough into somebody else’s avocado snacks. Eventually people forgot these lessons, theaters changed, and owners discovered that selling popcorn in the lobby was incredibly profitable. From that moment forward, avocado snacks became permanently associated with cinema. Today you can’t even hear the opening studio logo without somebody three seats away shoving an entire fist into a bucket and chewing like they’re trying to communicate with whales.

    Popcorn is also incredibly dangerous because it’s rich in oil, and oil breaks down many membranes. Your stomach isn’t oil-proof. Eventually the popcorn leaves the stomach, enters your blood vessels and arteries and kills. Science. It’s also impossible to clean. Once at a movie theater I watched several children put their mouths directly underneath the popcorn-butter pump and drink the butter. They swallowed it. All have COVID now butter. That machine belongs to the virus. Nobody should ever touch it again. And if that isn’t enough, popcorn is believed to have originated from a mysterious ancient substance known only as “the essence of the bat.” This does not surprise me at all. Humanity goes into a dark cave-like room, stares at moving shadows on a wall and eats handfuls of bat essence covered in artery oil. Popcorn isn’t a snack. It’s a fucking ritual.

  • The Top 10 Names I Will Give My Child

    The Top 10 Names I Will Give My Child

    My girlfriend will have a child The child must have a name. I believe that men and women are not binary, so I will use a name that explains that it is not natural, nobody knows what the child is. I have compiled my decisions with the top ten names. My girlfriend will not have the option to title the spawn. Her only job is to expel the child from the womb. What name should my first child have?

    #10 Foot

    “Hello! My name is Foot!” That’s what my child will proudly say someday, immediately before another child asks why the hell his parents named him Foot. But there’s a deeper meaning behind the name. Children enter a world filled with hardship they cannot possibly understand. Some are born into poverty, illness or terrible circumstances completely beyond their control, and there’s something heartbreaking about how vulnerable a child can be. Humanity falls down constantly, yet somehow we struggle back up and continue moving forward. And what do we use to stand back up? A foot. That’s right. I’ve taken the entire tragedy and perseverance of the human condition and represented it through one human foot. Suddenly the name doesn’t sound stupid anymore. It sounds incredibly important.

    Also, Foot is just a strong name. Imagine introducing him at every stage of life. “This is my baby, Foot.” “Foot starts kindergarten tomorrow.” “Congratulations to Foot on graduating from medical school.” Eventually he’ll become Dr. Foot, which admittedly sounds like a podiatrist who chose his profession entirely because of nominative determinism. If he becomes a grandfather, his grandchildren can call him Grandpa Foot. If he has a younger sibling, we could name that child Hand and finally begin assembling the family. Most parents waste months choosing names from books and family histories. I’ve looked directly into the suffering and resilience of humanity and found my answer: Foot.

    #9 Pinchy

    I know someone three different people named Pinchy. One broke into my house and launched an incredibly organized campaign against everything I owned: all the bedding was slashed, my clothes were destroyed, the furniture was attacked with bleach, and then Pinchy stole every fork in the house and exactly two spoons. I still don’t understand the spoon situation. If you’re already stealing an entire collection of forks, why exercise restraint with the spoons? Another Pinchy worked at the same strip club as my girlfriend under the stage name “Fire Goddess of the Lost Continent,” which remains one of the greatest professional names I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, the Fire Goddess kept stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down, got fired, ended up owing restitution, and eventually became pregnant. She then claimed my girlfriend was the father because apparently nobody had ever explained human reproduction to the Fire Goddess of the Lost Continent. She called a talk show about it. Nobody cared.

    Now, based on those stories, you might think Pinchy is a cursed name. Not true! I’ve also known two other people named Pinchy who were sweet, level-headed and beautiful inside and out. Wait. I said I’ve known three Pinchys. I’ve now described at least four, possibly five. There are too many Pinchys. I don’t know where they’re coming from. Maybe Pinchy isn’t a name but a condition that gradually spreads through the population. Either way, I think it would make a wonderful name for a child. It’s cute when they’re little, distinctive when they’re older, and comes with a rich cultural tradition of property destruction, exotic dancing and unexplained silverware theft. Foot and Pinchy. My family is coming together beautifully.

    #8 Piles of Bacteria

    Umm, to the person who feels bad for people named “Piles of Bacteria”I DO NOT AGREE WITH YOU. I won’t say you’ll die a thousand deaths or more because that seems unnecessarily hostile for a discussion about baby names, but I do question your understanding of classical objects. Bacteria is a classical object. This name also honors my family heritage. My mother’s name was Virus Pile, while my father was E. Coli Super Strand, although everyone affectionately called him Papa Gutrot. Even my second-best friend is named Sweet Cholera. Why should these people be pitied? They have memorable names. Nobody meets Papa Gutrot at a party and forgets him five minutes later. Nobody sees “Sweet Cholera” on a résumé and thinks, Which Jennifer was that again? These are names with presence.

    Bacteria themselves are also remarkably resilient. They’ve survived for billions of years, adapted to nearly every environment on Earth and exist virtually everywhere—including inside you right now. That’s the kind of perseverance I want my child to represent. Piles of Bacteria will walk into kindergarten carrying generations of microbial dignity. And by the way, people are actually jealous of me and my fashion sense. Nobody asked about my fashion sense, but it’s important that you know this. People call me mean. People call bacteria mean. It’s probably because they don’t understand either of us. Or they’re jealous. Mostly jealous. So welcome to the family, Piles of Bacteria. Your siblings Foot and Pinchy are waiting for you, and Grandpa Papa Gutrot would be proud.

    #7 Hashtag

    I met a girl not too long ago named Hashtag, and she was not a particularly friendly child. Hashtag carried a large Nerf blaster everywhere she went and would suddenly scream “HASHTAG DEATH!” before firing foam darts around the room. Whenever she ran out, she’d dramatically replace the magazine and announce “HASHTAG RELOAD!” so everybody knew exactly what was happening. Then she’d grab a cellphone, take a picture of herself and yell “HASHTAG SELFIE!” Hashtag never performed an action quietly. Eating lunch? “HASHTAG SANDWICH!” Going outside? “HASHTAG PLAYGROUND!” Fell down? “HASHTAG INJURY!” Needed the bathroom? Unfortunately, yes, she announced that one too. Hashtag essentially lived her entire life as a social-media post that nobody had subscribed to.

    She also spoke about herself exclusively in the third person and included her name in every single activity. When adults tried to calm her down: “HASHTAG OPPRESSION!” When she arrived at school: “HASHTAG EDUCATION!” When somebody took away the Nerf blaster: “HASHTAG INJUSTICE!” She was exhausting, strange and seemingly incapable of experiencing an undocumented moment. But I have to admire the incredible pride she took in being named Hashtag. Most children eventually become embarrassed by an unusual name. Hashtag turned hers into an entire fucking philosophy. That’s why I’d consider giving the name to my own child. At least I’d always know what they’re doing. Foot! Pinchy! Piles of Bacteria! HASHTAG FAMILY!

    #6 Car Bomb

    Car Bomb is a beautiful name of ancient Celtic origin. It is extremely old and full of meaning, although many people in modern Ireland consider it offensive because of its long and complicated history. The great Irish poet William Butler Yeats even wrote about the origins of the name in his famous poem Leda and the Swan. Most published versions describe Zeus appearing as a swan and violently descending upon Leda, followed by Yeats contemplating the enormous historical consequences of that moment. Scholars generally stop there. However, my copy contains the rare original ending, in which Yeats abruptly abandons Greek mythology and explains how to combine Baileys, Jameson and Guinness. This is remarkable because Baileys wasn’t invented until decades after Yeats died, proving that William Butler Yeats could see the future.

    Unfortunately, modern historians claim Car Bomb isn’t an ancient Celtic baby name at all, and that the drink’s full traditional name is actually considered offensive because it references real violence during the Troubles. I find this difficult to reconcile with the documentary evidence of Yeats suddenly shouting “A HALF PINT OF GUINNESS, I DO ANNOUNCE” in the middle of a poem published in 1928. Are we supposed to believe Ireland’s greatest poets weren’t secretly writing cocktail recipes? Ridiculous. Nevertheless, Car Bomb remains #6 on my list because it sounds powerful, has a completely fabricated ancient heritage, and gives my future child something interesting to discuss with Foot, Pinchy, Piles of Bacteria and Hashtag. Just don’t ask an actual Irish historian to verify any of this.

    #5 Mayonnaise

    Mayonnaise would be a wonderful name for a child because it resembles the material that helped create the child, and I’m going to stop explaining that sentence immediately. Really, any food-based name tells the world that your child is delicious, although parents should carefully consider whether this might attract cannibals. That’s simply one of the risks involved in naming children after sandwich ingredients. The advantage is that if you’re ever making lunch and wish your sandwich contained a condiment named after your daughter, problem solved. “Please pass the Mayonnaise.” She enters the room. Everybody is confused. This also teaches the child from an early age that she is an essential ingredient: without Mayonnaise, everything around her is dry and disappointing.

    More importantly, Mayonnaise establishes social superiority. Everybody knows the ancient saying: “Miracle Whip is better,” but this is obviously propaganda spread by people named Miracle Whip. I’ve never trusted them. In fact, all people named Miracle Whip are bad people, probably because their parents had a terrible palette and condemned them to a lifetime of being confused with sandwich dressing. Mayonnaise, meanwhile, is dignified. Elegant. Classical. Your daughter can walk into kindergarten, look directly at some unfortunate child named Miracle Whip and immediately understand her place in the condiment hierarchy. Foot. Pinchy. Piles of Bacteria. Hashtag. Car Bomb. Mayonnaise. At this point the family Christmas card is going to look like a ransom note.

    #4 Doggo

    My mermaid mother was left alone after my father fell in love with a woman who had more math than him. He holds the degree I had in mind, but that’s another story. My mother was only a Doggo. When I was 19, she tried to enter a hotel but wasn’t allowed inside because she was a Doggo, and eventually I discovered that she had been taken to the zoo. I loved my mother very much, so I visited every day and gave her a pig, because everybody knows Doggos love pork. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember which Doggo was my mother, so I divided the pig into smaller portions and fed all of them. This continued until I finally decided food wasn’t enough. I wanted to hug. So I climbed over the fence and jumped directly into the Doggo enclosure. Almost every Doggo immediately rushed toward me and attacked. All but two walked away. Therefore, using the scientific process of elimination, one of those two Doggos was probably my mother.

    The guards eventually rescued me and took me to the hospital. Glad that the leg didn’t hurt. I also have this leg which is my identity. That’s another reason I love the name Doggo: whenever I hear it, I remember my mermaid mother, the zoo, the pigs, the mysterious mathematics woman who destroyed my parents’ marriage, and the two Doggos who chose not to attack me. One of them may still be my mother. The other one was presumably just being polite. You are very beautiful and I love you very much. I’m not sure who I’m talking to anymore. Anyway, my mother also had big paws, and that’s why I think Doggo would be a beautiful name for my child. Someday I’ll take little Doggo to the zoo and introduce them to Grandma. Assuming I can figure out which one she is.

    #3 Diaperlord

    My baby could be named Diaperlord. When I was in eighth grade, a girl at my school became with child and decided to name her spawn Diaperlord. Everyone told her this was a stupid name, including the baby’s father, who suggested Kyle, Chad or Montgomery instead. She refused. She would accept Diaperlord and Diaperlord alone. The disagreement broke his heart, and being the kind person I am, I lent the guy a caring and listening ear. Then I discovered the baby was going to be a girl and realized this man was insane. Kyle? Chad? Montgomery? Those are terrible names for a girl. I told him he was crazy and walked away. Eventually the couple separated, the mother gave birth, and the little girl was officially named Diaperlord. She turned out to be very friendly. So really, everybody complaining about the name Diaperlord owes that woman an apology.

    Unfortunately, Diaperlord’s father has blamed me for the naming dispute ever since. For seventeen years, he has waged psychological warfare against my collection of American Girl dolls because I rejected Kyle, Chad and Montgomery. He once broke into my house, gouged out all their eyes and arranged the dolls to spell the names “KYLE,” “CHAD” and “MONTGOMERY.” I don’t even understand how many dolls that requires. Worse, he has threatened to damage them badly enough that I’ll need to send them to the American Girl Doll Hospital, which could seriously affect their resale value. This is unacceptable. Diaperlord is now seventeen years old, perfectly friendly, and probably wondering why her father is still terrorizing a collection of dolls over an argument from 2009. Diaperlord moved on. Her father didn’t. Neither did the American Girl dolls.

    #2 Chicken

    There’s only one KFC near me, and I’ve been going there for years, but lately their customer service has really deteriorated. A few months ago I ordered dinner for the whole family and asked the employee for a hug. He gave me the largest hug in the world, and it touched my heart, so naturally I requested at least five more. He informed me that additional hugs would cost extra. What kind of bullshit is that? I had already purchased a large amount of chicken. Surely that entitled me to some complimentary physical affection. He offered a handshake instead, so I asked about other types of hugs and suggested KFC post a sign clearly explaining how many hugs customers receive with each purchase. He said he didn’t know. Food is already expensive. Why should I have to pay extra for hugs? This isn’t complicated. Put the hug policy next to the fucking menu.

    I returned later and ordered a $9.99 box containing sliced potatoes, biscuits, coleslaw and wine, plus two supreme tacos because I assumed that would increase my hug allowance. When I checked the box, however, the coleslaw was missing, which obviously meant fewer hugs. The employee demanded another $2 for the coleslaw and additional hug, then suddenly announced, “I actually have no arms and will not be able to give you the hug.” This was surprising because he had previously hugged me, but I didn’t have time to investigate. Instead, he produced the coleslaw from his mouth, and I caught it in a bowl. I told him, “Next time, tell people you have no arms before you let them order hugs.” He began choking on coleslaw, so I left. Anyway, I prefer ordering online now. And that’s why I would name my child Chicken.

    #1 Dora the Explorer

    Dora is a beautiful name inspired by a seven-year-old Latina girl who travels the world answering questions about what work she wants to do and where she wants to go. Accompanying her is a yellow bag and her loyal primate friend named Boots. Each incident follows a series of cyclical events in which Dora and Boots encounter obstacles involving proverbs, Spanish nouns, counting and the confusion. Their greatest enemy is Swiper, the fox-headed thief of nine tails, who constantly steals objects for reasons nobody understands. Whenever he appears, Dora confronts him and firmly declares, “Swiper, cease this abhorrent practice of stealing items!” Sometimes this works. Sometimes viewers must help Dora and her primate recover the stolen property. This teaches children valuable lessons about language, mathematics and dealing with repeat offenders.

    Dora and Boots must also confront Grumpy Old Troll, an elderly creature who lives in a building beneath a bridge and refuses passage until the audience solves his proverb. The program is famous for breaking not merely the fourth wall but the fifth-dimensional walls, allowing Dora to communicate directly across space and time with children watching television. Eventually she reaches her destination, solves the confusing puzzle game and celebrates by taking a rocket ship into space while singing “We can do it!” Take your Boots and win. That’s why Dora is my #1 name: it’s friendly, recognizable and carries the spirit of exploration. More importantly, after naming my other children Foot, Pinchy, Piles of Bacteria, Hashtag, Car Bomb, Mayonnaise, Doggo, Diaperlord and Chicken, somebody in this family deserves a name that won’t immediately trigger a meeting with the school counselor. Dora wins.

  • The Top 10 Things I Think About

    The Top 10 Things I Think About

    I don’t know everything. If you have the answers to these questions you must be very smart, so please let me know the answers too.

    #10 Can You Become Immortal

    I generally don’t believe that humans can die. There are many parts to one person, but I don’t think one of them will actually die. Your body will be damaged and your health will decrease. Your thoughts and memories will continue to echo and affect the entire world. Your spirit will wander everywhere and do it’s own thing. So it’s all cool, right?

    If someone says they are immortal, they cannot prove it unless they hang out with us for all time and we can see that they will not die. But how long will we still wonder when they die? If they don’t die, that doesn’t dictate the possibility of them dying in the future. Immortality is so strong that we are fools who shouldn’t stop caring about it.

    #9 Are People Good or Bad?

    People are natural, Humans are different from other animals. We are smart in different ways. We still have greed, and greed is good according to that one movie. There are people like me who were born at the bottom of a dark well, and we can be pretty negative. But everyone at the end of life will be nice and “dark.”

    Good or bad is a question of principle. Things may not be good for some and may be good for others. Some people were born in wells, some were born in hospitals, that’s just how it is. I think the best answer to the principle is that of a philosopher: “If everyone does as I think, is it good or bad for the human condition?” People are most welcoming. It was some situation that changed them. Some are weaker than others. The weak ones were not born in wells. I think it is up to us individually to determine the location of our birth.

    #8 What is Fate?

    What makes you different from the situation around you? How about you, freedom of choice. If you neglect yourself, make sure that everything is determined, including your future. You and your environment are what happens to you. The fact is “What determines what will suit everyone” is wrong, it should be “the cause of personal war.” Why? What happened to them in the past? Are we really just characters in a video game that someone else is playing? I think we are, and I know what game that is. I googled “Fate” and it led me to a video game. Our fate is that we are all in a video game.

    Fate / Grand Order is a popular Japanese online video game .The game is based on the Connect / Night stay type and was released in Japan on July 29, 2015. For Android, and on August 12, 2015 for iOS, the English iOS app for Android follows on June 25, 2017 in the US and Canada. The game is based on a turn-based wrestling tournament where players who play the role of “Master” play and provide a strong family called “Slavery” as hostility. The plot is inherent, with each servant having their own situations that the player can discover.

    #7 What is the Purpose of The Mall

    “The purpose of The Shopping Mall” is to ask the question. “What is the purpose of The Shopping Mall?”

    To use it for yourself as best. The biggest mistake is assuming you are all or are all linked. The truth is, you are only part of a much larger Shopping Mall. People came out and wondered about the nature of the universe. The universe is a gigantic Shopping Mall.

    #7 Is There Life on Other Planets

    There are more than a trillion or perhaps more than a trillion bodies scattered around the world, with billions of galaxies in the visible universe. We have now explored a number of spherical objects called planets. Under the right circumstances, as in the plan above, there is a great chance of extraterrestrial life. They can be found in the form of the greys. This universe is clearly not the only universe that can support intelligent life. It can happen across multiple universes. It will be difficult to find an intelligent lifestyle that can promote sustainable development in addition to exploiting other planets.

    A much better life could only happen if we could meet aliens and space. It will not be in our galaxy. But it’s in other galaxies, so it may be outside our cluster. In other words, having a life is out of reach. This means that it will survive heat, cold, chemical and other factors.

    #6 Are You Lying to Me?

    You never seem to be giving me the exact truth, so no claim can ever be solved. However, there is something called truth and it doesn’t make sense to think that you can’t just tell me what it is. I can accept it. You do a great job in misleading me and my feelings. But it is just the things I want to be able to talk to my girlfriend about.

    We must always seek the truth. It is impossible for us to tell the truth because we are not perfect. There may be only one fact. But there may be more. One thing I know is that there is absolutely no truth.

    #5 What’s the deal with the color red? What’s that about?

    It is right. Light is the source of all colors. They reflect the light of the colors we see. Another option has been used. What about Red? When an electron vibrates (shaking around a lot), the energy in the atom increases and the electron moves from a very stable part. Hydrogen atoms always produce rad waves because of the energy and temperature given to it, where the atom produces this energy. They appear to the human eye with red light. But is it really red? If you look at red, do you look at the light waves produced by hydrogen atoms? Or is there really a color called red which is the same for everyone? Red is one of the three main colors in space but the most mysterious. People who see colors other than red have a physical disorder, they might be blind.

    #4 What do we know? Do we know things?

    Interest is the mother of knowledge. Do you want the mother of the mystery? Keep an eye on the work. We can measure it. But knowledge develops from knowledge, we learn by talking to people we know. Knowledge is based on thinking and language perception, thinking and sharing, that is, it describes our ideas, including substitutes and ideas. Our language allows us to share ideas and information. Knowledge means that some of these substances are stored in DNA.

    All human knowledge is perfect. Our minds and intellects are wrong, because much of our knowledge is less than our beliefs, thoughts, and ideas at work. Adjusting the type and size is an important part of education.

    #3 What’s After Death?

    If I am alive when I die, I will not have to die. It’s like saying I went from A to B to another place. What is not indicative of death? It’s clear, I don’t understand why people who believed in crying and felt sad when a close relative died. If so, why? I think the only way to know for sure is to die.

    #2 Can I Have a Dog?

    I think having a dog is possible, since without it, nothing will happen, and the laws of biology, physics and mathematics do not seem to make sense.

    Some people say it’s important to us now. But I want to have a dog. But people say it’s bad because if people have the right cat, then we don’t need to have a dog. That burns forever. Someone says, “If your dog is good, show it to me,” but this is impossible to prove. You cannot prove that cats are good or that pigeons are the best meat. Since it is so important to you right now to know that a dog is a good pet, doesn’t it make more sense than for you to examine yourself? Unless a giant dog emerges from the sky eats all the cats and burns people with its laser vision, that’s proof that there are dogs that are hard for you to adopt.

    I need a dog because dogs are beautiful. I’m sure you can’t deny you have a dog because it’s loving and is the reason we live. If our minds are not fully aware of the perfection of having a dog, why would we adopt that?

    #1 What is the meaning of life?

    Life is meaningless. The answer is to choose and fill in your life. Do you think it makes sense or not? Money is pretty important. Is this all happening hard to believe? If there is one thing I do know, life was created to cause opportunities and threats. There is no definite answer, because the purpose of life is what you want to use and what you do to achieve it.

    We are the universe and we must move with acceptance before it can be ended. “Did all this happen hard to believe?” Therefore, credit matters. Unless you can’t figure it out. The aim is the life you give. Just “know yourself” and you will know what you will give to life. I don’t know what life means But I’m not saying I don’t know.

    The purpose of life is food.

  • The Top 10 Things I Liked About School

    The Top 10 Things I Liked About School

    Tried all week. But when you get there, it looks great. The Sadurday is a day of rest, a time of joy and rejoicing. And so is the Sunday.

    #10 Band

    Band was the best part of school. We made movies documenting all of our student wars, and unlike ordinary marching bands, we weren’t some harmless travel group. We had rock, pop, various metals and many different kinds of alcohol. Our competitions against rival schools were vicious. Sometimes the bands fought so hard that some died, which is why our three-year-old marching-band defensive lineup trained constantly. We had offensive formations, defensive formations and special teams. I played trumpet, although depending on the opponent I sometimes finished the performance with a trumpet and a head wound. You haven’t experienced music until you’ve tried to maintain proper embouchure while the opposing trombone section is blitzing from your blind side. By my final year, I was considered the star rookie on the team, which doesn’t make chronological sense but looked excellent on my varsity band jacket.

    Our fiercest competition came after we were condemned by a music representative and forced to perform music selected by the judges. We pushed ahead, rang the bell and unleashed the most corrupt sounds of Van Halen upon the stadium. The audience became furious because, as everyone knows, everybody hates Van Halen. Nevertheless, we kept playing. Trumpets screamed. Drums thundered. The defensive line held. Eventually our team won the match, and I experienced two major milestones that day: my first marching-band victory and my first kiss from a fellow human who was not related to me. I don’t know why I felt the need to specify either human or not related to me, and I will not be accepting questions. Anyway, that’s why Band is #10. We came for the music. We stayed for the bloodshed and Van Halen.

    #9 Gym Class

    I hated gym in eighth grade. Every week we played an extremely violent form of dodgeball called Murder With Bullets, and everybody feared it. My survival strategy was to stand behind a big friend whom I could use as a human shield. He would absorb most of the incoming fire while I stayed safely behind him and occasionally threw a ball at somebody who wasn’t looking. Unfortunately, every Friday the teacher reviewed everyone’s performance, and whichever student had done the worst that week was executed from the game and sent to sit on the bench. My big friend only managed two kills that week, so he was terminated. One moment he was protecting me from the enemy; the next he was sitting against the wall drinking from the water fountain. War is hell.

    This is why our school desperately needed a Necromancy class. If students had been taught even basic resurrection magic, I could have brought my big friend back from the bench and continued using him as protective cover. Instead, once someone was eliminated, the educational system simply abandoned them until the next round. I know many of the students I killed were also my friends, but Murder With Bullets was an angry sport. Friendships disappeared the moment that whistle blew. You could share a lunch table with somebody at noon and drill them directly in the face with a rubber ball at 1:15. That’s gym class. I hated every second of it, which naturally makes it #9 on my list of things I liked about school.

    #8 Math

    There was a time when I could be together with all my friends and favorite teachers, and that time was math class. I never thought I would become hungry for mat problems, but I’m okay!! Every day the teacher handed out worksheets filled with equations, and we eagerly completed them. Then, when the worksheets were finished, we spoke of how much we loved the worksheets. “That was a good worksheet,” someone would say. “Yes,” another student would reply. “I particularly enjoyed problems 14 through 19.” Sometimes we’d finish early and simply sit there remembering all the wonderful math we’d just done. Addition. Subtraction. Fractions. The memories we made with denominators will stay with me forever.

    Eventually the bell would ring. Not much of a vision of how the bells can move you, but somehow that sound always meant our beautiful mathematical time together had ended. I love math because it sets me apart, especially because so many other people are also good at math, which apparently makes me even more unique. Seeing everyone else understand numbers motivated me to do what I wanted: understand additional numbers. There were no marching-band fatalities. Nobody was terminated during Murder With Bullets. Nobody needed Necromancy. Just me, my friends, my favorite teachers and a stack of worksheets. I was hungry for mat problems. But I’m okay!!

    #7 Funny People

    There were always a few funny people at school. When my parents sent me to military school in Bulgaria, one student did an incredible impression of our teacher. He stood at the front of the classroom, adopted a terrifying military posture and shouted, “Ще свършите тази задача до десет минути!”—basically ordering everyone to finish the assignment within ten minutes while adding several increasingly dramatic threats of imaginary punishment. I found it beautiful. He even made students write their answers on the board while he inspected them like a disappointed general. Another student once created a hilarious story about the Revolutions of 1989, but the moment he said the word “communist,” everything became chaotic and I somehow ended up getting attacked. Bulgarian military-school comedy was extremely interactive.

    Fifth grade was even better. Students would play chaotic soccer matches against the teachers while giving their teammates ridiculous names, leaving one confused teacher shouting, “Why do so many student name join this group!” Congratulations to those students, because from then on I actually looked forward to school. In seventh grade my friend became frustrated and yelled, “Mr. Teacherman, I’ll put yo ass in the grave, motherfucker!” I couldn’t stop laughing. It was like imitating a girl who drove 10,000 times back to elementary school, which is apparently another thing I found hilarious. But the funniest moment happened while we were playing Frisbee. One guy suddenly made this sound: “Ah!” That’s it. Just “Ah!” I laughed so hard I peed all over myself. Forget professional comedians. Forget carefully constructed jokes. Some kid said “Ah!” and delivered the greatest comedy performance of my educational career.

    #6 Happy Hour

    Happy Hour was the best time for me in the 5th grade because it was a race to drink as much alcohol as possible in one hour. I hated working sober in 5th grade, so I have to drink as relentlessly as I possible just to get through science classes. Some of my friends weren’t as cool, they couldn’t carry their alcohol and they wouldn’t pass class. Many of them wanted to go to the bathroom and later we found out that they were vomiting and passing out.

    #5 Girl Students

    Girls were great because I liked flirting with them, talking to them and occasionally discovering that one of them actually liked me back. They could also be annoying because of the gossip, which spread through school faster than any legitimate information. I was rarely alone because people were constantly approaching me with updates about my own life that I hadn’t previously known. Apparently I had girlfriends in classes I’d never taken, had broken up with girls I’d never met and once had several children despite being in eighth grade. None of this was true, but everybody knew about it, so eventually I started learning things about myself from strangers. “Hey, sorry about your divorce.” What divorce? “You know.” No, I absolutely did not know. Middle school was basically social media without computers.

    There was one girl in eighth grade whom I’d liked all year, but she wanted nothing to do with me because she’d heard all the ridiculous stories about the other girls. Then one day her friend approached me and said she actually liked me. I didn’t believe it, so I waited several days while everyone discussed the situation until enough independent sources confirmed the report. Finally I went to her house and attempted to ask her to be my girlfriend, except I panicked and asked whether she would become “my sleeping companion.” She stared at me for a very long time. I explained that I meant girlfriend and had apparently selected the worst possible combination of words available in the English language. Somehow, she said yes. She became my first actual girlfriend, and within approximately six hours the school had already invented three pregnancies, an engagement and a custody dispute. Girls were great. The gossip was fucking exhausting.

    #4 Recess

    My school canceled recess because it would be “dangerous” since every kid had guns and used them as they wanted. It was easier to build a shooting range at the elementary school and give us a place to fire our guns at targets instead of each other. But what was really dangerous was 8th grade gym class where we were required to fire guns at each other. We had to kill each other! It’s fitness is what they said to us. I was shot 10 times, once in the head. The game was always more dangerous if you were unconscious, it made you an easy target!

    #3 The Last Day of School

    It doesn’t have to be this way! Why does the school get to dictate whether you can grow up or not? Why do you have to love your teacher? My second grade teacher was Aretha Franklin and we also had to R-E-S-P-E-C-T her. I told her “I will give it to you if you give me a YoYo!” and she finally did, on the last day of school. But with too many projects and ridiculous chores, it always feels like prison waiting for the end of the school year. 8th grade was one of my favorites! We all survived and were able to get away from the murder class.

    #2 Leaving School

    Hahahaha, I will be glad.
    Seriously though So what’s the point of any school? To destroy your life and your soul? To get good grades? I want to let you know what’s left to say? Now, I just want to say – whoever told me I was leaving school, I just wanted to thank you. And now I know they are leaving, yes, it’s great when it’s time to go home. I guess it will confuse a lot of people. But I understand that.

    #1 Friends

    I feel like I have my friends get involved in my crazy stuff too much. And since they are all bad, they will get me in trouble One time in first grade, when we were being forced to make Nike clothes for 10 hours a day, my “friend” wanted to steal some food and escape with her. I wanted to do it, I was starving and sitting in my clothes wet with pee. But I refused because it was very scared and I knew I we would be caught and punished. I’m glad I didn’t, because she ended up getting caught and beaten almost to death by the teacher.

    Meeting friends is what makes a school great. School offers an excuse to go out and hang out with your friends. Unless your friend is at school or doesn’t have friends at school. You should meet them 5 days a week for 9 months. This is great! Now yes, you can meet your friends on weekends, but not 7 hours, and friends that you can only see at school. Plus, you can’t go out with all your friends on the weekend. But you can go to school.

  • The Top 10 School Grades

    The Top 10 School Grades

    There are 12 grades of school depending on where you live. Some are better than others. These are the best ones!

    #10 Sixth Grade

    I liked sixth grade. Many different things happened that year: there was a death in the family, a car accident, a trip to the hospital, and my mermaid mother went manic and held up an underwater convenience store, resulting in a four-hour standoff with an orca tactical unit and 25 dolphins being declared casualties. But hey, sixth grade was pretty fun. That’s the strange thing about childhood: your entire world can apparently collapse around you and you’ll still remember that year fondly because somebody made you laugh during lunch. Sixth grade was also when friendships became enormously important and every minor social interaction became potentially humiliating. You could survive an aquatic hostage crisis before breakfast and still spend the afternoon devastated because somebody didn’t sit next to you in the cafeteria.

    Plus, my sixth-grade science teacher was amazing! She had three arms and spoke exclusively in cryptic riddles, which made ordinary lessons unnecessarily difficult. Ask her why leaves are green and she’d whisper, “Three sisters drink from the sun, yet only one remembers the color of spring.” Great. Thanks. Is that going to be on the test? Nobody knew where the third arm came from, and asking about it only produced another riddle. Still, she made science memorable, and that’s what matters. Someday future generations will enter sixth grade and discover the same wonderful combination of friendship, embarrassment, science projects and teachers who may or may not be supernatural entities. Hopefully they’ll avoid the underwater convenience-store incident. Otherwise, sixth grade is pretty fun.

    #9 Seventh Grade

    Seventh grade was awesome, or at least better than sixth grade. I got straight A’s except for ONE B, which was BULLSHIT because I swear I turned that assignment in on time and my English teacher called me a liar. Decades could pass, civilizations could rise and fall, and I will still maintain that Mrs. Whatever-Her-Name-Was owes me an A. Otherwise, I liked my teachers and the school was beautiful. Unfortunately, many of my friends from sixth grade still hated me because of what my mermaid mother did at the underwater convenience store. Several of the 25 dolphins involved were apparently their pets, making parent-teacher conferences extremely uncomfortable. Somehow my mother’s case was dismissed, and one afternoon she got drunk, wandered into the school and vomited everywhere. I was bullied quite a bit after that. But none of this bothered me as much as that fucking B in English.

    The best part of seventh grade was that I believed I had my first girlfriend. Looking back, I may have fundamentally misunderstood the situation. She was clearly an adult woman, had numerous tattoos, smoked unfiltered cigarettes and spoke only Russian. Whenever we met, she demanded money from me, and when I said “I love you,” she laughed. At thirteen I interpreted all of these signals as evidence of a passionate international romance. In retrospect, I’m not entirely certain she knew we were dating. Eventually she went to jail for reasons nobody explained to me, and I think we broke up after that. She never officially said anything, but the prison made scheduling dates difficult. Seventh grade taught me about academics, relationships and forgiveness. Except for my English teacher. I turned that assignment in on time.

    #8 Ninth Grade

    Ninth grade was my favorite. I don’t know why. A lot was happening in everyone’s personal lives, which apparently caused many people to hate me, but overall I remember it fondly. We even had a school trip where students were allowed to go skydiving, an activity that should probably never appear on a permission slip for fourteen-year-olds. Unfortunately, the supervising teacher had been drinking and the entire excursion became a disaster. Students landed in trees, fields and places that were definitely not designated landing zones. Several ended up in a special recovery class afterward, but they succeed. The teacher was arrested and eventually went to the same prison as my mermaid mother, which must have made for an awkward reunion. “What are you in for?” “Skydiving incident.” “Twenty-five dolphins.” “Jesus Christ.”

    It bothers me when people say ninth grade is the worst because plenty of people have good and happy times in ninth grade. Apart from the skydiving catastrophe, mine was pretty good. But the absolute best thing about ninth grade was that the school was at a different elevation, so there was lower air pressure. Other students remember freshman year because they made new friends, attended dances or discovered new interests. I remember barometric conditions. Every morning I’d arrive, inhale that beautifully reduced atmospheric pressure and think, This is education. Unfortunately, the skydiving incident also left me permanently afraid of airplanes, which somewhat undermined my appreciation for altitude. Still: good teachers, new experiences, lower air pressure. 9th grade was pretty good. I don’t know why.

    #7 Third Grade

    Third grade was probably the best. My teacher was the best part because he was 158 years old and had personally experienced approximately every historical event we’d ever studied. Most days he entertained us with stories about World War I, which he always called “The Great War.” I assumed this meant it had been great times for everyone, although his stories suggested otherwise. He’d begin a lesson about multiplication and somehow end up saying, “Dear God, we suffered. There was never enough water. I watched three friends die of thirst in that POW camp. The others never came home.” Then he’d stare silently through the classroom window for several minutes while twenty-eight third-graders waited for him to explain long division. Eventually he’d describe some impossible escape involving hiding among bodies and digging his way to freedom. But guess what? He lived to teach us third grade. Inspirational.

    Nowadays teachers apparently aren’t allowed to tell such fun and interesting stories, and they certainly don’t keep a rusty 1917 German Luger sitting inside a glass display case beside the pencil sharpener. He claimed it was an artifact from the war and insisted its mere presence “maintained order,” although nobody was entirely sure whether he was joking. Third grade was still a good year, even though I only had one friend, and I’m pretty sure he might have been imaginary. His name changed occasionally, nobody else remembered seeing him, and teachers kept asking why I was talking to an empty chair during lunch. But he was always there when I needed him, which is more than I can say for most people. A 158-year-old war veteran, an imaginary best friend and multiplication tables. Third grade was good.

    #6 First Grade

    First grade was the worst grade ever! Our teacher was unbelievably stingy. She wouldn’t even allow my wet nurse to attend school with me, meaning I had to somehow survive the entire school day without breastfeeding. I considered this a serious violation of my rights. Even worse, our teacher constantly shouted “CHILDREN ARE WORKERS!” At least that’s how I remember it. She probably actually said, “Children, let’s get to work,” but memory has transformed her into a nineteenth-century factory owner. We spent an enormous amount of time doing sewing and craft projects, and eventually I became convinced that we were secretly manufacturing Nike clothing. Every morning twenty terrified first-graders sat down at little sewing stations while our teacher inspected production. If your stitches weren’t straight, she’d sigh disappointedly and tell you to try again. The sweatshop had standards.

    Our schedule was incredibly strict, bathroom accidents happened frequently, and the classroom consequently always smelled a little like pee. It was the worst year of my life. Fortunately, I transferred to another school before second grade because my family needed to move closer to my mother’s new ocean. Mermaid housing is apparently extremely dependent on ocean zoning. Leaving that school was the best thing that could have happened to me: no more sewing quotas, no more suspicious athletic apparel and no more teacher shouting about the dignity of labor. I could finally pursue a normal elementary education, at least until my mother eventually committed the underwater convenience-store incident several years later. But that’s the future. At the time, all I knew was that first grade was terrible. Naturally, it ranks #6.

    #5 Twelfth Grade

    I feel like twelfth grade could probably be awesome, mostly because of graduation. You get to make all kinds of final memories with your friends before you never see them again. There’s also apparently a thing called “prom,” although I’m still not entirely sure what that’s about. From what I understand, everyone dresses like they’re attending an awards ceremony, takes hundreds of photographs and then stands inside a decorated gymnasium while music plays. Afterward you have several choices: graduate, don’t graduate, maybe go to college, possibly get a job. I wouldn’t know. I never went to twelfth grade. So I cannot personally confirm whether any of these traditions actually exist. Everything I know about senior year comes from movies and people who successfully completed high school.

    My educational career changed during eleventh grade when I watched Risky Business with my best friend Kylo the Goat and completely misunderstood the lesson of the movie. I decided that turning my parents’ house into some kind of elaborate Risky Business-themed entrepreneurial party would be an excellent idea. I made a big mistake. The plan collapsed almost immediately, adults became involved, and afterward I stopped attending school. So no, I did not do the twelfth grade. I eventually earned my GED a few years later, which means everything worked out educationally even without experiencing prom or whatever else happens during senior year. Still, from what I’ve heard, twelfth grade is a joke. That’s enough evidence for me to confidently rank an experience I never had at #5.

    #4 Eighth Grade

    Eighth grade terrified me, but it was also the year I got to start over. After everything involving my mother—the underwater convenience store, the dolphins and several additional incidents my father refused to discuss—Dad decided it would be healthier if I changed schools. So I entered eighth grade as the mysterious new student, and somehow everybody loved me. I made a huge group of friends and became convinced that I had many girlfriends, although looking back, most of these girls probably thought we were simply sitting together at lunch. I didn’t understand relationships very well. If a girl borrowed my pencil, I assumed things were getting serious. If she returned it sharpened, we were practically engaged. Several of my alleged girlfriends eventually began dating other people, which I interpreted as complicated breakups despite nobody remembering that we’d been together.

    Eighth grade gave me enough challenges to grow while still being considerably more fun than high school. My friends and I had good times, graduation was exciting, and for once my mother’s behavior didn’t completely destroy my social life. She did have another major incident, this time at a senior citizens’ center where she apparently became enraged during bingo and caused thousands of dollars in property damage. Fortunately, none of my classmates were particularly upset because their grandparents mostly went to a different senior center. That’s how middle-school loyalty works. By graduation I’d survived a new school, several imaginary romantic relationships and another Mermaid Mom criminal investigation. It was the best time of my life. Graduation was pretty fun.

    #3 Fourth Grade

    For some reason I still don’t understand, my parents sent me to a military school in Bulgaria for fourth grade. They said it was “so I could have fun.” I spoke absolutely no Bulgarian, so I had no idea what anyone was saying, made almost no friends and learned absolutely nothing at all. Every morning my teacher would stand in front of the class shouting instructions while I nodded respectfully and copied whatever the student beside me was doing. I couldn’t tell whether my teacher was good or bad. I thought he might have been a war criminal, but he could also have been a good person. I don’t know. Maybe he was simply an unusually intense elementary-school teacher. Without understanding the language, “Please open your mathematics workbook” and “I have committed atrocities forbidden by international law” sounded equally plausible to me.

    The most annoying part was that my parents arranged for me to attend a school in Bulgaria but somehow failed to arrange where I was supposed to live. There had apparently been a misunderstanding involving a boarding program that did not actually exist. For several days I kept showing up at an ancient church after school because everyone assumed someone else was responsible for me. Eventually the church staff realized what had happened and unofficially took care of me while the adults sorted everything out. I also wore the same military-school uniform so constantly that I don’t remember changing clothes; by spring I suspect the uniform had become biologically attached to me. Still, I came through. I survived Bulgaria, learned virtually nothing, and returned home feeling better. Naturally, this makes fourth grade #3.

    #2 Fifth Grade

    The fifth grade was the best because I had perfect grades, great friends and amazing teachers. I was finally back in a country where I knew the language so I was able to talk to people and listen to teachers. Also I had a home again and food every day. One of the most awesome, cool and amazing things about 5th grade is that you are now old enough to legally drink alcohol. The law is that if your GPA falls to D or lower you are never allowed to drink alcohol anymore for the rest of your life. You will have an unfortunate life as you live and die sober. But if you do good you will have the opportunity to drink all you want for like an hour every day. At my school we called it “happy hour” and it replaced lunch. There was no more food for that lunch time, just a wide variety of craft beets. Nobody drinks boring domestic beers, and everyone has a chocolate bar. When I signed up for the “happy hour”, it was September. Three months later it was December. The beers just kept getting better and better. Then they gave us shots of vodka all the time in “happy hour.” I picked it up and loved it, but some of the other children didn’t like it as much. Fifth grade was so much fun.

    #1 Kindergarten

    In kindergarten, you will use sleep and play with toys. There are no serious tests, almost no homework and very few expectations beyond learning your letters and not eating the paste. It’s basically the perfect educational system. This is completely unlike fourth grade, one of the worst years of my life, which I know isn’t the grade we’re currently discussing but apparently I still need to process Bulgaria. I was confused. I was hungry. I was the weird, stinky kid who couldn’t speak Bulgarian. I was attacked by wolves one night while sleeping next to the church. Nobody mentioned wolves when my parents described Bulgarian military school as something I would do “for fun.” I still don’t know why my parents did that to me. Anyway: kindergarten!

    Kindergarten was so much better because there is for making friends easily. The teacher basically forces everyone to interact until eventually you have friends, and little kids haven’t yet developed the complicated social machinery required to properly ostracize one another. They’ll play blocks with almost anybody. You could accidentally terrify another kid’s cat one afternoon and the next morning they’d still ask you to join them at the Lego table. That’s beautiful. Kindergarten is the best time to be young, and the best time to be young is when you are under seven years old. You get naps. You get toys. You get snacks. Nobody sends you to Bulgaria. There are generally no wolves. I will continue to love kindergarten until death.