Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

Evidently there was a mix-up somewhere, and the nation’s plastic wrap wound up with a slogan designated for its jimmy hats.

Which may go a long ways toward clearing up the confusion, and conceptions, engendered by Trojan’s new campaign: “Double-sided with extra-tight cling to seal out air and prevent spoilage.”

Happy Accession Day, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Ireland, and France! I’d trade every so-called “man” in Congress today for you at your worst.

My loving people,

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

- The Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, 1588

I’d a damn sight rather have that than a fucking “State of the Union” any Goddamn day of the week. Compare that to:

“We have learned that more is not necessarily better, that even our great nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems.”

- James Earl Carter, peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia’s inaugural address.

I think we found where the heart and stomach of a weak and feeble woman wound up.

Oh, Lizzie. We’ll always have work for you if you decide to come back.

All I wanted to do was look up how long sparkling white wine stays sparkling once it’s been opened. So I began typing something to that effect in the Google search bar in Firefox, which attempts to save you time by displaying a list of popular searches that begin with what you’ve typed. I got as far as “how long does” when it presented me with this list of options:

- how long does marijuana stay in your system
(Depends.)
- how long does cocaine stay in your system
(Not long enough, considering how much it costs.)
- how long does it take to get a passport
- how long does weed stay in your system
- how long does alcohol stay in your system
(Long enough to make the next morning pretty unpleasant.)
- how long does it take to get pregnant
(Anywhere from 3 seconds for low-income teenagers up to 3 years for financially successful couples in their mid-40s who “waited until they were secure.”)
- how long does implantation bleeding last
(Who cares about a little hemorrhaging? Check out how fantastic your tits look now!)
- how long does pot stay in your system
- how long does marijuana stay in system
- how long does thc stay in your system

Ladies and gentlemen, Kosher Eucharist in conjunction with Google presents to you America’s most pressing concerns: getting stoned, getting high, getting out of the country, getting stoned, getting drunk, getting knocked up, getting new tits, getting stoned, getting stoned and getting stoned.

It also turns out that sparkling wine loses its sparkle pretty fast, so this should be an interesting evening.

I was watching the Godfather tonight, and something struck me. During the scene immediately preceding his ill-fated meeting with Sollozzo and Tattaglia, Luca Brasi walks purposefully through the hallways and into the bar of a building whose subtly-lit interior oozes Art Deco from every panel and molding. And I almost cried because they don’t make buildings, or anything else, like that anymore. We’ll never have another Chrysler Building or American International Building, never another beat Hot Meals-Sandwiches-Pastries-Pies automat (except for this pink piece of kawaii novelty Village shit), never another Chrysler Airflow, never another Ronson Banjo lighter.

What do we get instead? Blocks. Angles. Jagged peaks. Bare walls. The Freedom Tower. Moshe damnmothercuntfucking Safdie.

Chris and I want enough money to build a De Stijl house and an Art Deco bar in which we can cloister ourselves so we never have to suffer a postwar aesthetic again. Goddammit.

You know what I hate? Of course you do, if you read this blog. But you know what I’m gonna articulate my hatred of?

Facebook.

There is nothing good about it. For example:

- For a long time, I had a fake name on my facebook profile: Ferdinand Maximillian Branganza-Hohenzollern. At least three times, a stranger either tried to befriend me to ask if that was my real name, or accuse me of having made it up. These people thought it was their business.

- Because the Hohenzollerns ruled Prussia and later the German Empire, and the Branganzas ruled Portugal, two extremely minor royals friended me, “because we were family.” So I got see a lot of drunk college pictures of Leka II, Crown Prince (in pretence) of Albania, and some random anglicized Habsburg cadet who lives in Miami and is a TV commercial actor. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

- You know how sometimes, you’ll be making out with a guy at a party, and some girl we went to high schol with several years ago will interrupt you to talk about something boring? And you know how she’ll later figure out, somehow, your fake facebook name and friend you, twice, based on the fact that she annoyed you briefly at a party some months ago? What kind of mind thinks that “relationship” should be preserved?

- “Here is the top music in the Tulane network:
1. Jack Johnson
2. James Blunt
3. Pussycat Dolls
4. High School Musical 2 Soundtrack
5. A broken white noise machine that emits a piercing whistle”
Why should I want to know this? Information like this depresses me.

- There are people dumb enough to give Facebook their credit card details, so that they can pay Facebook to put a small picture of a Pina Colada on someone else’s page.

- “You have been invited to become a unicorn mermaid ballerina princess ninja zombie vampire pirate mummy football hooligan eel!” If I wanted to pretend to be a mythical creature, I’d change my name to MistWolf NightRunner and hang out in my mom’s houing project playing D&D with the developmentally disabled. But I don’t, so I won’t, okay?

- Even I think it’s sketchy when people try to get laid from Facebook. However, I find it much more disturbing when people try to make friend on Facebook. And I find it incredibly disturbing when a stranger friends you, “pokes” you a lot, and then drunkenly declares love. Also alarming is the idea that Facebook interaction constitutes a valid relationship, to wit: This guy pulled the “I’ll call you, really, but I’m not gonna” thing, which is fine. It happens. I have done it. But then let’s leave it at that. Let’s not pull a snub in real life but then “poke” someone on Facebook and invite him to lame-ass groups about how you wish you were a viscount.

- Just because we went to the same high school doesn’t mean I care if you live or die. People I never once hung out with in high school would friend me, and I didn’t understand that. There was nothing to preserve or maintain, but because they remembered me, kind of, we were friends?

- No one should be allowed to say what their politics or religious views are in an open space, because they will say dumb shit.

- Ditto sexuality.

- Ditto favorite music, favorite quotes, favorite food, favorite movies, goals, aspirations, fears and joys.

In short, Facebook eventually became a near occasion of sin. I knew, if I looked at it, that it would just turn into a Two Minutes’ Hate, so I got rid of it. What pissed me off is that I couldn’t just do it; there were people I actually liked that I only had touch with through facebook, so I had to nag them to give me their real emails before I could erase it. And erase it I did, to bask in the glow of never, ever again having to read that “Jessalyn Katzenberg is EEEEE!!!! soexxxited 2 b going home.”

me: Oh, are you going to write the “we hate Facebook” post or am I?

Jew: Maybe I should. I don’t have much else going on.

me: You’re a better satirist. (Marginally.) But I probably had more harrowing experiences on it.

Jew: Aww, gosh, thanks.
It’s probably true.
The harrowing experiences.

me: I told you the story about the girl who interrupted me trying to take a guy home facebooked me TWICE.
LIKE SHE HUNTED ME DOWN, HAVING DISCOVERED MY FAKE NAME
Oh also the royalty were pretty funny.

Jew: Maybe you should then.

me: You want to write about the Nobel Peace prize?
One of us should. It is so absurd.

Jew: You tend to do better straight out rants.

me: I do shine when hysterical.

Jew: The Calvin to my Hobbes.

me: It’s true.
LET’S GET MATCHING TATTOOS ON OUR COCKS
I kind of want to post this exchange.

Jew: “Chris and Michael: They stroke each other’s egos.”

Jessalyn Katzenberg
Anthropology 101
Professor Schmidt
10/29/07

The Kanak people of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands carve traditional

Mrs Jessalyn Gylenhall
Mrs Jessalyn Gillenhalle
Mrs Jessalyn Gilenhaalle
Mrs Jessalyn Gyllenhall
Mrs Jessalyn Gillennhalle
Mrs Jessalyn Ledger

Halloween Costume ideas:

a slutty nurse
a slutty secretary
a slutty Baruch Goldstein
a slutty whore
a slutty angel
a slutty Bea Arthur
a slutty Tori Amos
a slutty Commonwealth of Nations
a slutty Kanak native
a slutty cagou
a slutty French colonist
a slutty anthropologist
a slutty Cardinal Richelieu
a slutty Papal states
a slutty Loyalty Island
a slutty Wailing Wall
a slutty Land of Zion
a slutty rebbetzin
a slutty diesel dyke
*a slutty Chi Omega* <- THIS ONE!

genealogy and tribal identifiers recorded in carvings.

I must take issue with your leadership.

A sputtering war effort. A flagging economy. A plummeting dollar. A government rocked by ever more obvious corruption and nepotism, a major city drowned by negligence just as much as water, public schools abandoned, gay rights trampled, Evangelical moralizing enshrined as law, civil liberties gleefully tossed away like offerings at the sooty feet of Osama, a nation in flames.

You have failed as a leader, Mr. President. And like so many before you, it is because in your own manic hubris, and in your preference of stimulant use to book-learning, you have failed to acknowledge history and refused to recognize those common missteps that led to the ruin of many a leader of men.

Had you attended Classics at Yale instead of shotgunning brewskis and hoovering Colombian off the creamy riding-toned midriffs of the female scions of respected blueblood Connecticut dynasties, you might have come into contact with the phrase panem et circenses, which is Latin (think Spanish, but older and less…you know…wet of back) for “bread and circuses.”

The phrase comes from the satiric Roman poet Juvenal - who, as his name would imply, was basically ancient Rome’s version of our Juvenile, except of course Juvenal never so perfectly encapsulated his people’s dominant preoccupation as did his modern equivalent in “Back That Azz Up” - and it implies that the proletariat is more concerned with satisfying its baser urges and gawking at intrigue and bloodsport than it is with the maintenance and safeguarding of its own basic liberties. As long as they were plied with wheat, wine and gladiatorial carnage, Juvenal laments, the public was more than willing to sacrifice the noble ideals upon which the Republic was founded and ignore the machinations of an avaricious and corrupt Senate jockeying for what little power was doled out by their increasingly despotic leader.

Get your hand out of your pants, Mr. President.

The problem with your administration, Mr. President, is that while you have wreaked massive discord and chaos in America and abroad, and have made transparent attempts to increase your own power at the expense of our nation’s founding principles, you, unlike similarly-occupied Roman emperors of old, have failed to provide either panem or circenses. Caesar distracted the public from the barbarians howling at the borders with epic, sanguinary gladiator games; the barbarians howl even louder at our borders today and all we get it is American Idol. Frankly, it’s unfair, Mr. President - you’ve attempted abuses of office that would make any emperor short of Nero blush, yet not a single Guantanamo Bay detainee has ever been forced to battle a lion.

So clearly, if you are to continue on your governmental rampage, we the people need a more visceral form of mass national entertainment. You could, in a pinch, tweak the extant formula a little - perhaps that British cunt could physically, rather than verbally, flay mediocre contestants on the aforementioned Idol, or perhaps the winner could eat the heart of the runner-up on national television in order to gain its power - but I have a better idea. A more effective idea.

You must execute Paris.

Surely you’ve noticed, Mr. President. The recent decision by the saintly and praiseworthy Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer to toss a shrieking, tear-soaked Hilton back into the prison-bound Black Maria has sparked a universal spasm of schadenfreude so pure and intense that it makes the day we scraped Saddam out of that hole look like Pearl Harbor. The California courts have the handle, Paris has the blade, and unified as one nation for the first time since 9/11, America waits breathlessly to see how far the courts will twist it.

You’d be a fool to not see the opportunity lying within this, Mr. President. As long as the most reviled figure in American society is bleeding, whether figuratively or, may the day soon come, literally, you have carte blanche to do whatever you want. Forget about chipping away at the bedrock of American democracy and freedom with your sneaky little signing statements - as long as we are secure in the knowledge that Paris is, as I write this, being subjected to a vaginal cavity search by the cold fingers of justice, you can pick your least favorite Amendment and just get rid of it. Poof. Paris loses her right to Blackberry, we lose our right to free assembly, and nobody will make a peep.

And it could be even better, Mr. President. If Paris was to be killed for her crimes against humanity, such a nationwide euphoria would erupt that you could throw out the Constitution like tea into the harbor.

But the window of opportunity is short. You must do it now, while she is ensconced in the frigid embrace of the Law, her powers weakened by institutional Salisbury steak, her resolve eroded by increasingly verdant gonorrhea discharge. You must do it now, for if she is allowed once more to breathe the smog-tinged air of freedom, she will elude you, Sandman-like, blowing away on the wind and manifesting out of cocaine and Midori wherever strobe lights flash and anonymous dicks cry out for the sweet caress of those inviting, virally-loaded 98.6 degrees. You must do it now, Mr. President.

And not for Paris is a draught from Death’s sodium pentothal martini, nor a rendezvous with His high-voltage Barcalounger - Paris’ end must be public, and it must be violent.

Try to think of a good way to do it, Mr. President. Put an IED in her mini-purse and give her the Baghdad Special. Give Tinkerbell her revenge and drop Paris in a sea of a thousand ravenous chihuahuas. Place her in a room containing only a television camera, speakers playing “Stars Are Blind” at earsplitting volume, and a razor blade and see how long it takes before she succumbs to the urge. Feel free to be creative, Mr. President.

Perform this vital public service, Mr. President, and I will be the first one on my knees to kiss the signet ring of your new imperial office.

For Harley, with love, and abundant cynicism:

If by the end of this mix you have not wholly internalized misogyny, you’ve proven yourself a feminist so steadfast in your conviction and ideological purity that you make Betty Friedan look like Betty Crocker. This mix would make Valerie Solanas reappraise the merits of the X chromosome. This mix would turn Rita Mae Brown into a man-identified woman. Think of it as trial by ordeal.

On to the music! 19 tracks, beginning and ending with the most eloquent of hip-hop’s misogynists, Jeru the Damaja. To give you an idea of the dominant tone, the name “Jezebel” appears in no less than three songs.

Play “Mixogyny” in sequence:

1) Jeru the Damaja - Da Bitchez

Jeru claims in this masterful polemic against the fairer sex that he’s not a misogynist, but true misogynists, sort of like Jews and gays, can effortlessly identify one of their own.

2) Elvis - Hard-Headed Woman

The King doubts the queens.

3) Capleton - Good in Her Clothes

This rousing dancehall number is actually a paean to the virtues of modesty, but as we are all aware, implying that so-called virtuous women are, well, more virtuous than their more exposed sistren is as much an affront to feminism as glass-based architecture.

4) The Soulmates - Pussy Catch A Fire

Maintaining the Jamaican groove, the Soulmates conduct a thorough investigation of the flammability of man’s favorite orifice.

5) Parliament - Handcuffs

Parliament is willing to take drastic steps in the name of love, and they don’t care if they look like a chauvinistic kind of whatever. Quite possibly the sweetest invocation of the threat of chastity belting ever captured on tape.

6) D’Angelo ft. Method Man and Redman - Left & Right

The ever-dependable and ever-stoned dynamic duo, Method Man and Redman, gleefully skewer D’Angelo’s falsetto-wafting loverman act with the crudest come-ons this side of your alma mater’s Pi Kappa Alpha chapter, and also a somewhat inexplicable Happy Days reference.

7) Del tha Funkee Homosapien - Money For Sex

Del, in keeping with a venerable hip-hop tradition, views women’s perfectly natural desire for economic security with considerable ambivalence.

8 ) Niney - Look Pon Pussy

“Wouldja look ‘pon that? Damndest thing I ever saw! Looks…kinda like the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi…”

9) Amy Winehouse - Fuck Me Pumps

Women can be misogynists too (and really, they should know best). Amy validates the patriarchy by affirming that if you, like the news, get pressed every day, you may well be a skag. And really, she should know best.

10) Bob Marley & the Wailers - Adam and Eve

Remember next time you hold up Bob Marley as a revolutionary radical prophet that he once blithely sang “Woman is the root of all evil.” That’s so Peter Tosh of him!

11) Fleetwood Mac - Black Magic Woman

Peter Green, typically, fears the potent magick naturally flowing forth from the yoni of every wommon.

12) Frank Zappa - Jewish Princess

If the Bnai Brith lodged a protest, it must be good.

13) Funkadelic - No Head No Backstage Pass

Funkadelic lays down the debasing LAW.

14) Lauryn Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)

In the drunken, shrieked words of my Papist compatriot, she has a voice like an angel. A motherfucking angel.

15) Dizzee Rascal - Jezebel

It may sound like a cautionary indictment of a certain type of young woman, but it’s really just chauvinist propaganda.

16) Raekwon (ft. Ghostface Killah) - Wisdom Body

When I get a bitch, I got a bitch. I also considered the wonderfully coarse “Ice Cream” off the same album, notable for Ghostface’s use of the rare Biblically-inflected pick-up line: “Your whole shell, baby, is wicked like Nimrod.” Ay yo, peep it, I know you love Sefer Bereishit.

17) Run-D.M.C. - Dumb Girl

Rappers were railing against the scourge of gold-mining women even in the mid-1980s.

18) Vincent Foster - Shine Eye Girl

Reggae artists share the same concerns as their spiritual descendants in hip-hop. Vincent Foster stresses the importance of fiscal responsibility in relationships.

19) Jeru the Damaja - Me or the Papes

And right back to Jeru, who responds to the controversy engendered by “Da Bitchez” with…yet another scathing denunciation of pink-toned materialism. Also featuring DJ Premier production at its finest.

Now isn’t that mix the most compelling argument for misogyny since Oprah’s vanilla-flavored ascendancy? Don’t you just want to run right out and repeal Roe vs. Wade?

Dear stoners:

I know I may have misled you in the past. I know that you comprise a cult whose initiation ritual is “taking a monster hit out of Frodo,” or whatever you’ve named your pipe, but I want no part in your glassy-eyed communions. I do not want to burn incense to your gods, I do not wish to kneel before your spiky-leafed savior. Please do not mistake me as “one of you.”

We share a hobby. This does not make us friends. I bet we also both like puppies, the milk after a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and oxygen. These are not the makings of a friendship. These are not even the makings of a conversation.

I do not want to be your friend. You do not have friends. You have smoking buddies. If you’re having trouble distinguishing, here’s an easy test: Do you know your friends’ last names? No? They’re smoking buddies.

Do not mistake an interest in buying weed for a general interest in weed. I do not want to hear your “high” stories. I do not want to hear about the one time you did crazy rips out of your friend’s vaporizer. I absolutely do not want to hear the name “Amsterdam” escape your lips. You are not a jukebox. You are a vending machine. If I wanted a jukebox, I would make like the Fonz and hit you.

I have no use for your secret codes, and neither should you. It’s not tea, it’s weed. It’s not 1947, and you are not Jack Kerouac. The police are not tapping your cellphone for slinging a few dime bags, Escobar.

I do not want to hear about your nugs, nor their dankness. If your buds are especially sticky, please keep this information to yourself.

Please stop giving your varietals of weed names, especially names inspired by Grateful Dead songs. I am not interested in knowing if the green stuff in the bag is Maui Wowie, Purple Haze or White Widow. There exist only three varietals of marijuana: “bad,” “good,” and “very good.”

While we’re on the subject, “skunky” is in no way an appealing adjective. You smell skunky. The weed smells like marijuana.

If you are a dealer, it is in the very poorest of taste to ask your customers to share some of the product they have just purchased. When I buy a Coke at the corner store, the guy behind the counter doesn’t ask for a sip. You are a dealer. You can get your own fucking weed.

Do not ask me when I come in if I am a cop. Not only is this insulting, it’s pointless. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with police procedure, but generally undercover drug cops are not required by law to reveal their identities when questioned by suspects. If there is an undercover cop in the apartment out of which you sell weed, you have not outwitted him if you demand to know whether he is a cop. If there is an undercover cop in the apartment out of which you sell weed, you are already fucked.

Get it through your cannabis-addled skull: Jerry is dead. Not only is Jerry dead, he is entirely decomposed. No, it would not be awesome to dig him up and smoke him. Take off your bootlegs.

Reggae music is not yours because you smoke weed any more than Tuvan throat singing would be yours if you had a taste for boiled yak.

Enormous tie-dyed sheets imprinted with fanciful grinning creatures and posters where the image is composed entirely of weed leaves do not constitute a consistent aesthetic. They do not constitute an aesthetic at all. Put up a painting.

Not the Dali melting clocks, you burn-out motherfucker.

Your apartment smells like stale weed and armpit. Spray air freshener costs 20 shekels.

And finally, in the consistently relevant words of Redman, your weed got more seeds than ODB.

Fuck you.

—

This post brought to you by:
Ghostface Killah ft. Method Man, Redman and Cappadonna - Buck 50

If there’s only one thing you take away from reading Kosher Eucharist, I want it to be this basic tenet: “Women are not people.” But if you have room for a second nugget of learning, it should be that the day upon which the dead will rise from their graves as hungry, indefatigable consumers of the flesh of the living is not only inevitable, but approaching. And so, gentle readers, in a burst of kindness provoked by gin and the fact that every single person who could give me any work to do is out of the office today - at a planning meeting and bowling outing - I have prepared a guide. These are the cities that are, for whatever reason, most vulnerable to zombie attack:

Wellington, New Zealand: I would NEVER have moved here if I’d known how vulnerable the city is to zombie attack. The Central City is very population dense, and pinned between hills and the harbor. The only three escape routes are through the densely populated Hutt Valley; the road up towards Porirua, which is also fairly well-populated, and the ferry to the South Island. If the zombie infection entered via Auckland or the port at Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, the most likely points of ingress for the North Island, the zombies would move steadily southward, thus reaching the Hutt Valley and Porirua before Wellington and trapping residents of the city. The ports of the northern South Island could be expected to - reasonably - close themselves to North Island boats once the nature of the infection was made known. Furthermore, the surrounding towns, suburbs, and outlying neighborhoods are moderately closed off: by the time we knew the zombies had reached Kilbirnie or Johnsonville, it would be too late. The only reasonable hope would be to get across the Rimutaka ranges into the Wairarapa wine country to the east - and that’s a long shot, since the road out orginates in the Hutt Valley.

Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Red China: It’s hard to imagine a city more vulnerable to the risen dead than Hong Kong. With a population desity high enough to make any misanthrope burst into tears, it’s already cruising for a bruising, but the zombies will be aided by geography. Hong Kong SAR is connected to mainland Commiewood by a relatively narrow strip of land. Beyong that, the majority of the population is on the Kowloon Peninsula or Lantau Island - so, zombie infestation either around the border between the SAR and China or at the head of the Kowloon will block escape. The extensive and regular ferry service between the various islands will probably doom them: none of the islands, nor the Kowloon peninsula itself, can hope to get enough warning to close the wharves in time - and even if they did, they would almost definitely lack the weaponry to turn back a defiant ship.

Mexico City, Mexico: Mexico City is situated in the bowl of a former volcano, atop the ruins of ancient Tenochtitlan. The surrounding mountains that, ideally, made the city a defensible capital trap two very dangerous things in the modern world: air pollution and zombies. Furthermore, the outlying areas of the city are the poorest, forming a ring of shantytowns, blocks of delapidated housing, and areas that are essentially favelas. A zombie infection that started among these poor would move through their neighborhoods rapidly, escaping detection by the authorities, and encircle the rest of Mexico City. In additon to having central Mexico City surrounded and the few exits blocked, the zombies would then also enjoy the advantage of holding the high ground.

Manhattan, New York, United States of America: No, no, a thousand times no. High populatuion density, but this time an island. Connected to the mainland and Staten Island by a number of bridges and tunnels, Manhattan has no hope of quarantine. Sadly, Manhattanites will find that they very pores that let the undead in will all but seal shut when they try to escape. Accidents, zombie swarms, potential government action to quarantine the island, and simple traffic will prbably seal all the bridges within an hour. The Staten Island Ferry will almost undoubtedly stop early too - no public transport employee makes enough money to risk a zombie rescue. This leaves only the tunnels, will will become an immediate death trap. Limited retreats, poor visibility, and various nooks and crannies ensure that most, if not all, of those who take to the tunnels will fall to the zombies.

Mecca, Saudi Arabia: This isn’t just wishful thinking. Mecca is almost certain to experience a zombie attack. With millions of yearly pilgrims - thousands daily - coming to hang out with God-in-a-box-in-the-sand, from a broad swath of the globe, the odds are sharply in favor of one of them bringing the infection with him. The city is apparently centered around the mosque compund, with many of the residents crowded into the old city. Admittedly, escape routes into the desert or to Jeddah or Medina will not and could not be closed as throughly or abruptly as they could in other cities I’ve discussed, but the ability of a couple of zombies to infect a monumental number of people during the hajj warrant a place for Mecca on the list.

Singapore: All the disadvantages of Manhattan; all the perils of Mecca. Singapore is a major transportation hub for Asia and the Pacific, and the amount of travelers both to and through Singapore from so many areas make it a very likely candidate for early infection. A collection of islands, the population is centered on the main one. Remember how Manhattan’s several bridges might be choked off? Singapore has two, and they lead into Malaysia. If the federal Malaysian government or that of Johor state sense a problem in Singapore, they could easily close or destroy the bridges right away as an act of quarantine. The population density of Singapore is, of course, terrifying.

There are others. Delhi is another hub with a high population and areas of slums. Jerusalem is surrounded on three sides by hostile residents of the Balesdinian Derridories, to whom I would frankly prefer the zombies, and has a lot of alleys and tangles in the Old City and madate-era developments. New Orleans is itself. The best plan, really, is to move to Siberia, or the Australian outback, or the American West, or the Yukon. Fortify a homestead, with several lines of defense so a retreat is possible. Secure supplies of food and water. Load your guns. Watch. Wait.

Anal sex is not enough.

Playing cunt-pong is no longer sufficient.

If you’re among the one to ten percent (depending on which rights group to listen to) of the world’s population consigned to an eternity in Hell’s Yankee barbecue, it’s not enough that you throw your deviant, techno-propagating lifestyle in the face of God and decent folk. It’s not enough that you march in the streets festooned with more feathers and sequins than the week before Lent in Bahia. No, if you want to be Gay with a capital G (and a lowercase “ay” in honor of all those who fell in the struggle), you have to be a radical.

Somehow, it has been accepted into Radical Canon that if you’ve had, at any time, some dude’s equipment in your ass, you’ve got more than enough room in there for the War, the Muslims, the Children and the Minorities as well. (”And if you’ll look over here, you’ll see our lovely collection of dild–” “No thanks, I’ve had African poverty lodged in there for a week and I’m full up.”) Radicals cultivate a similar attitude towards Jews, blacks, immigrants, women and anyone whose skin color wasn’t represented in the Crayola rainbow until a series of lawsuits, which is irritating for people in these groups who doesn’t feel that a placard reading “SHAVE BUSH” represents a nuanced expression of their political beliefs.

But back to them queers. Groups like OUT Against the War, and more blogs, websites and random sign-bearing protesters than I can count, carry on as if the blessed union of glans and prostate releases a massive surge of antiwarphins, flooding the brain like foam on the dance floor of a club named after some manner of power tool. And for our lesbian sisters, imagine how many radical political awakenings transpired something like so:

No fingers in: Free guns.
1 finger in: Free market.
2 fingers in: Free education.
3 fingers in: Free health care.
4 fingers in: Free abortions.
The whole damned fist in: FREE PALESTINE!!!!1!!111!

In case anyone was curious, I’ve got three fingers in. Politically.

Ironically enough, this phenomenon of claim-staking mirrors arch-conservative views of the radical community. Arch-conservatives look at a group of radicals and say, “Bunch of fags;” radicals look at a group of fags and say, “Bunch of radicals.” Nobody asks the fags, of course, who would probably tell you that radicals are a bunch of pussies and the arch-conservatives - you guessed it - a bunch of fags.

But the worst part, of course, is that small but vocal group of gay people who ascribe to radical politics and assume that their radicalism isn’t a result of being upper-class and white, but a result of being gay - as if their gay gene read CTAGAGTFUCKBUSHCTAGTA. These are the queer crusaders who insist that anyone with even an aesthetic appreciation for D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” video should be marching on Washington. This is the limp-wristed legion whose cognitive dissonance occasionally leads to the kind of breathtakingly shortsighted statements that make you think that maybe Moses had a key insight with Leviticus 18:22:

Queers for Iran should be coming soon to a rally near you.

—

This post brought to you by:
Funkadelic - Jimmy’s Got a Little Bit of Bitch in Him

Dear Amy,

I heard you’re getting married.

I must admit, Amy, I’m a little dismayed at the news - I know this is normally the time for a chorus of “Mazal tovs” and that insufferable song frummies like to sing about the cities of Judah and streets of Jerusalem, but I have a couple of minor objections. First and most pressing, your fiancé, the similarly ironically-named Blake Fielder-Civil, looks like something a refined person might disgorge after consuming a pint, three White Russians, shrimp scampi and the spunk of someone with a CB callsign by which he insists everyone refer to him. I know what you’re thinking - “Bashert!” - but first listen to my second objection: you should be marrying me.

Hear me out, Amy. Ever since I’ve heard you rake your voice down the back of “Me and Mr. Jones’” horn chart, ever since I’ve heard a young Jewish girl namecheck Ray Charles, Donny Hathaway, Sammy Davis Jr. and Slick Rick all in the space of a few songs, I’ve been hopelessly in love. You’re like Billie with range, or Macy with timbre. You’ve got more sass than an old-fashioned root beer. You complement Ghostface better than RZA does. Your liquor cabinet is much better-stocked than mine, and your stash doubtless more potent. You should be my woman, Amy.

Sure, there are a few difficulties involved, but I’m flexible. I know you have an epic appetite for the hairier sex, and I understand you need fresh lyrical material, so I promise not to get between you and whatever you drag out from under the bar stool after last call. You don’t even have to think about me when you come. I’d prefer you didn’t, actually - mixing affection and orgasms always ends with someone crying.

In fact, our relationship could be entirely non-physical. A careful study of your lyrics has led me to the conclusion that once something has passed the event horizon of your navel, no known force in the universe can keep the singularity ‘twixt your legs from rending it asunder (”Whoa-oh, here she comes, she’s a man-spaghettifier…”). Also, given your apparent propensity for combining semi-anonymous sex with heavy drinking, you’ve probably got more clap than a Barbra farewell concert. I’m far too lethargic, and my micturition far too liquid and painless, to contend with the demands you place on cocks that fall into your orbit.

Really, Amy, all I want to do with you is get sloshed, burn spliffs, listen to Coltrane and render shrieking judgment upon the sober, non-tattooed, Gucci-toting masses whom you so viciously eviscerate. We could make a life together like that, Amy. We could be happy.

Think about it, Amy. And think about how awful “Amy Winehouse-Fielder-Civil” will look on your checks.

—

This post brought to you by:
Amy Winehouse - I Heard Love is Blind

and
Ghostface Killah & Amy Winehouse - You Know I’m No Good

So often, we hear about the health risks of man-on-man love. Social diseases, various “tearings,” and the threat of hellfire are tossed back and forth in the media like large, gloomy beach balls. Few, however, have dared break the story of the scientifically proven health benefits of being a dyed-in-the-wool, Grade A, so-gay-it-hurts five-alarm faggot - to wit:

Bitch drinks are good for you. A University in Thailand, working in conjunction with the USDA, has discovered that slathering fruit - especially antioxidant-rich “brightly colored” fruit - with booze helps preserve the nutrients in the fruit: this in addition to the health benefits of “small” amounts of alcohol as touted by the “one glass of red wine” people. Hear that? Put down your reasonably priced Jack and Coke, your “masculine enough” whiskey sour, and your classy martini. If you want to be healthy and vital long into senesence without resorting to the labor-intensive and increasingly rare blood of virgins, order one of those $20 six-kinds-of-fruit-and-four-drops-of-Malibu-rum panty-removing emasculations in a Collins glass with a “racy” name like “Taking Liberties in the Back of an Automobile.” Your friends will call you “Princess Valentina,” and you’ll go broke and diabetic trying to get drunk enough to Karaoke “Like a Prayer,” but you’ll dance at their funerals.

Secondly - what’s the thing about being gay that makes everyone uncomfortable to talk about? The thing that really puts the sausage in the “As gay as a” picnic basket?

The anal sex with other men. Ignoring the various back-and-forths various commentators have made about “just how explicitly?” various compilations of Holy Writ have condemned the practice, some good news has managed to sneak in the back door. According to “an article my friend Caitlin read a few months ago that we can’t either of us find now but seems to be faintly backed up by Wikipedia,” getting man-banged like a trash can lid can notably reduce the risk of prostate cancer. The idea seems to be - in coarse, layman’s terms - that regularly squeezing/knocking/whatevering the fluids within the prostate out is good for it, for some reason.

So anyway, the next time you’re drinking neat whiskey, scratching your ass in public, or making tender love within the sacred bonds of Holy Matrimony, think about that.

I have a lot of free time down here, what with my limited liquor fund and my not getting laid anymore, so to spice things up a little I joined a gym - a real, honest-to-goodness grown up gymnasium, replete with spandex, grunts, and the ball-sweat of strangers. The humiliation of only being able to bench-press fourteen of something - kilograms, granted, but it’s still a very small number - and the inherent awkwardness of being confronted with other people’s sweaty flesh in an arena other than a Motel Six just over the state line make me desperate for any entertainment or distraction from the thought that other people are watching me and quietly evaluating my fitness.

They’re free to do it quietly, because it’s already been overtly done. When I first joined, I was assigned a little, fit, humorless blond thing to evaluate the attrition 22 years of cream sauces, beer, and a tendency to roll over and go to sleep instead of strive for Round Two had wrought on my body. She pinched various areas of my body with a pair of calipers (”How does that feel?” “Like my back fat is being pinched with a pair of calipers,”) added some numbers, did some shit in metric, and pronounced that my body was 16.7% FAT.

This is apparently “within normal bounds” - a disturbing phrase because of the kinship it implies with the portly, poorly read mass of humanity. I don’t care how normal it is, I am alarmed at the though that nearly one fifth of my body is composed of something you could fry chicken in. Have you been to the grocery store in the South and seen those 25-pound drums of lard? That’s about how much fat is in my body. One drum worth. Seventeen dollars of obesity. Catering size grease.

Then she made me strap something to my torso that looked like an amazingly feeble bandolier, and bade me ride a bicycle as she monitored. Apparently, my oxygen efficiency is barely across the border between the salted fields of “poor” and the rocky but manageable soil of “fair.” There are parts of my extremities that wait, expectantly, for the infrequent Oxygen Train to come to town. Young blood cells in these whistlestop capillaries have heard stories from their elders about oxygenated blood, but have never seen it themselves and are skeptical, sometimes openly scornful, of their grandparents’ pulse-expectant vigil.

Little Blond Gym Lady then wrote me out a schedule of exercises. Some of these are reasonable (get on this machine and pretend to row a boat), some of them are bizarre (get on this bicycle that doesn’t go anywhere and is much, much harder to pedal than areal bicycle), some emasculating (get this giant ball and roll around with it so that you look like you’re reenacting a hard-fought, out-of-scale conception), and some horrifying (go to the area where the large men glisten at each other and allow them to watch you struggle to lift this acorn over your head three times.) I do the ones I can stand to, and that will have to be enough for her. The only one I really enjoy is the rowing machine, because you can play a game on it. How fast you row determines the amount of air in this little fish’s swim bladder, making it float higher or lower in the water. You try to eat the smaller fish and avoid being eaten by the larger ones. It’s a cute, upper-body-toning illustration of Hobbes’ worldview - would that all philosophy had endearing animal mascots.

The Gym People are the standard gym archetypes. There are multiple thin women, in various shades of blond and brown, who run on the treadmill and are then replaced by incredibly similar thin women, who run on the treadmill. It’s reminiscent of one of those endless Escher cycles. Large men gather at one end to be large at each other and occasionally do exercises while making the most awful orgasm sounds imagineable. I don’t even really know why they sound like orgasm sounds to me, because luckily I’ve never slept with anyone who yelled “GGRRRRAAAAAH!” at the moment of truth. There’s this one teenage guy - he’s athletic in a stringy way - who exercises for a few minutes and then admires his muscles in the mirror for a few minutes. I understand doing this, at home, with the door locked and the curtains pulled. I get the urge: this whole week, every time I have gotten my keys out of my pocket I have checked my thigh to see if it’s become a Mighty Oak, rooting me to the earth like peasants of old. (It hasn’t.) But I would never let a stranger - much less a sardonic, judgemental one, although I guess he can’t know that - see me scope myself out, and a person who can do that is beyond my understanding.

There is one aspect of the gym that does scare me - it used to be a bar. It took me a while to realize this, but gradually, like a senile Perry Mason, I figured it out. (’Why is this gym wood-paneled? Why does the sign in front of the shopping center advertise a bar called “The Rose and Crown” when there’s not one here? Why is there a sign in this gym that says “The Rose and Crown?”‘) I fear retribution for this. It is not fitting that a bar should close, ever. A club, sure. Drive the rutting seventeen-year-olds into the street, and have them take the “hip” furniture with them. But a BAR, a real sit-down-and-drink BAR, should never close. It reminds me of an event during the English Reformation (surprise!) Shortly after the War of the Three Kingdoms/British Civil War a fiery Protestant preacheress, Jane Middleton, railed against the idea of holding “reformed” (reformed, heretical, poTAto, poTAHto) church services in formerly Catholic houses of worship, arguing that the land had been set aside for idolatry and it was inappropriate for the “Godly” to worship there. Someone made the counterargument that this would exclude the entire Kingdom of England, because it had been consecrated to Saint George. Middleton is reported to have responded with an outburst of terrifying indignation. But do you see my point? If no bars ever close, eventually, in the fullness of time, every building will be, or at least contain, a bar. And the fact that I exercise in an area that was once a bar and thus indirectly support the supplanting of a bar may mark me for an unspeakable, deserved vengeance.

I guess the whole point of this post was to beg Dionysus for clemency. And to use the phrase “whistlestop capillaries.”