Rule #1: Don’t eat the “Deli Ham.”

Rule #2: Stop looking down.

Rule #3: Stop looking down.

Rule #4: Old people in a state of indecision tend to move towards the Black Forest Ham.

Rule #5: Old people who can make a damn decision still tend to move towards the Black Forest Ham.

Rule #5.5: Always cut extra black forest ham.

Rule #6: Squirt Bottles work better than fly swatters.

Rule #7: Health inspectors wear white baseball caps.

Rule #8: If your boss has a boss, you -must- go behind their back to run an honest business.

Rule #9: Half of your pay is for being the customer’s bitch. If you’re not getting paid/are off the clock, even if they want you to, you are not obligated to be the customer’s bitch.

Rule #10: A manager who tells you what to do is your boss. A manager who helps you do these things is your friend.

Rule #11: Paper towels for stuff, real towels for things.

Rule #12: “Party Time” ham isn’t that exciting.

Rule #13: If you are working on refilling something in plain sight, a customer will always ask if you have any left. If you deliberately leave the space empty for a lack of said thing, the customer will simply ask for it.

Rule #14: If someone asks for you to cut something just a “little bit” thicker or thinner, and accompanies the request with a hand gesture similar to the one shown below, they just want it cut fresh, but lack the social confidence to simply ask you to. Don’t be angry. Just feel sorry for them and do it.

Rule #15: Customers will group up (usually near the apples in the produce department) to strategize and coordinate a mass attack on the deli. This usually happens either immediately after one of the two deli clerks goes on break, or after a sandwich is ordered, thus tying up one of the clerks. Often times, both of these criteria are met at the time of the attack with devastating effect.

Rule #16: The medium roast beef will occasionally be redder than the rare. This often results in confusion and infuriation of the customers.

Rule #17: If you’re having a good day, someone is about to call in sick.

Rule #18: The Kitchen has your knives.

Rule #19: The Kitchen has your papers towels.

Rule #20: The Kitchen has your egg slicer.

Rule #21: Label everything with “Deli.”

Rule #22: The Chinese department used your towels to soak up the water leaking from their stove.

Rule #23: The Bakery took your last apron.

Rule #24: Hide your towels and aprons. Be creative!

Rule #25: You will never get your box knife back.

Rule #26: You do not sell fried chicken, bacon, canadian bacon, summer sausage, bratwurst, lamb chops, steaks, or any other freshly-cooked or yet-to-be-cooked meat. The customers believe otherwise.

Rule #27: You do not make fruit trays. You do not make salads. You are not responsible for the upkeep of the salad bar. The customers believe otherwise.

Rule #28: You are not the catering manager. The customers believe otherwise.

Rule #29: You are not the all knowing, all seeing grocery-god, keeper of the Grocerynomicon which lists the exact location of every product, person, and piece of miscellaneous information in the store. The customers believe otherwise.

Rule #30: Relax. They still only own you while you’re on the clock.

by Jason Edwards

A friend of mine had to go the hospital a few days ago. Nothing life threatening, of course, but even if you’re only there for a hangnail, the hospital induces a general anxiety and state of subtle panic in anyone. Since my friend needed emotional support, I hopped in my car and headed in that direction before I remembered how terrifying hospitals can be even for visitors. Maybe it’s all the Latin doctors use.

On the way, I realized I had no idea where to park, or what entrance to take. Parking in Seattle is impossible on a good day, and downright evil when you’re in a rush. I am not making this up: Seattle has been consistently voted one of the worst major cities to drive in. We have one way streets responsible for the establishment of indigenous people, who have given up trying to find their way home, and just established new dynasties between the fire hydrants and the mailboxes.

I finally found a parking garage, and, of course, the slowest driver in the universe was in front of me. He had to stop at every single parking spot to read the sign that confirmed he was not allowed to park there. I would have honked my horn, but I was afraid I’d give him a heart attack—this restraint on my part, though, was not consideration, but desperation, not wanting to be stuck behind some dead guy.

All of those space, those empty space, you see, were reserved for doctors—it was frustrating to see two floors of spaces I couldn’t park in, and then disquieting to realize all these empty space meant that all of those doctors were not in the building that day. Maybe ambulances should just start taking patients to golf courses, so folks are sure to see a doctor at least somewhere.

Once I found a spot, I got out of my car… and promptly got lost looking for the elevator. My wife says I have no sense of direction. This is like saying a bear has no sense of dining with fine China. I can get lost in a bathroom. Lately I’ve been relying on my smartphone’s GPS features, but this has had the unfortunate side effect of making me cocky. And when you’re cocky in a cement tower with no cell reception, you’re just stupid.

Eventually, through a careful application of the left-hand rule, and blind luck, I found the elevators. I went up to the main floor, consulted the maps. I was delighted to find them incomprehensible. That’s not sarcasm. I was expecting the maps to be incomprehensible, and having at least one thing go as expected gave me a kind of bitter satisfaction.

I should point out that the map for this particular hospital campus included a building called “The Health Building.” That’s sort of like going to a university and finding “The Education building.” Or going to a military base and being directed to “The Military Building.”

You know that old saw, about how when you lose something, you only find it in the last place you look? Yeah, goes for hospital emergency room entrances too. I found pretty much every other entrance to the hospital: oncology, spinal cord rehab, chemical dependence rehab, post-stroke rehab… if I get shot and need the emergency room, screw it, I’ll just go to gaping-wound rehab.

When I finally found the emergency entrance on the map, I started to navigate the maze from where I was to get there. And it is a maze. There’s signs everywhere, and since none of the hallway junctions are at right angles, the arrows all go in really weird directions. They’re pointing up and to the right, backwards, with curly-cues on them… one of them was in 3D, and pointed right at me, and said “You are there.”

At one point I saw a sign that says “Emergency is on A floor.” Now, I was in a tiny bit of a panic, so I didn’t catch the capital letter. I started freaking out. Great! Emergency is on a floor! So that means Surgery is on a wall and Osteopathy is on a ceiling? Come on!

And the whole time I’m looking for the emergency room, there’s pages going off. “Paging Dr. Blue. Paging Doctor Green. Paging Doctor Mauve with a Hint of Canary.” What the hell, am I in Rainbow Bright Memorial Hospital?

Actually, I have friends who work in medicine, and they told me nurses use code words so the patients don’t get alarmed. There is no “Doctor Blue,” that’s just a code for when someone’s croaking and they need the defibrillators. Personally, I found it a bit unsettling. I started doing the translations in my head. They said “Paging Doctor Brown, and I heard “Paging Doctor One Of The Psychos Got Loose Again, Dr One Of The Psychos Has A Freakin’ Scalpel, Please Report To The Nurse’s Station.”

Somehow, I found the emergency room desk. It was easy, when I finally figured out that all I had to do was follow the smell of despair and depression. Not the despair of getting one’s hand caught in a pickle jar. No, this would be the despair of realizing you have to wait three hours for a doctor to show up, and the only thing there to entertain you are tattered issues of People magazine from 1994 and a 19 inch TV mounted on the ceiling showing Lawrence Welk reruns.

At the check-in desk, I told them the name of “my cousin,” and they buzzed me right in. This was a bit frustrating. I had an elaborate story prepared, explaining why me and my cousin had radically different last names, nationalities and skin colors. I was even going to throw in some bullcrap about being an advocate and an interpreter. But receptionist didn’t even look at me. I could have been a serial killer looking for bad asthma patients, or something.

So I sat with “my cousin” for a few hours, cracking jokes and stealing as many latex gloves as I could fit in my pocket. Like I said, it wasn’t a life-threatening situation in the least, no big deal at all. I think, actually, during my harrowing trek through the labyrinthine corridors, I was actually the one who had been in the most danger. Everything worked out okay, and “my cousin” was released no worse for wear.

But thank goodness I thought to grab a candy bar from a vending machine before trying to leave. because on my way back to the car, I got lost again.

After listening to as much right-wing talk-radio as I can stand and having endless arguments with hardcore Republicans in person and over the Internet, I have now established what it means to be a REAL American patriot. And boy, have I been totally wrong about what it means to be a good American! Just in case any of my fellow pinko-commie-bleeding-heart liberals have also been confused about what it means to be a REAL American patriot, let me clear things up for you.

Being a REAL patriot means that you get a job and you work your ass off until the day you die. You don’t ever, ever, EVER apply for unemployment or welfare, because that is PURE COMMUNISM. If you’re out of a job for awhile and you lose your house and have to live in your car, you can go wash up at the corner gas station, pull yourself up by your own goddamn bootstraps and start over. This is America, where opportunities are boundless. Doesn’t matter if you’re black, or a woman, or Hispanic or whatever. You just take whatever job you can find and accept whatever measly scraps they pay you, and you don’t complain, even if it’s not enough money to pay your bills or keep your kids. Affirmative Action? Please. That’s for socialists and pansies. Besides, racism and sexism don’t exist in America, so just shut the f*ck up about that stuff already. No one wants to hear it.

Medical insurance, and thus medical treatment, is a privilege, not a right. Big difference. If you don’t have insurance, then that means you are either too stupid or lazy to get the right job.  It does not matter if there are people dropping dead of illnesses in the street. Those people were either too stupid to get the right jobs that provide insurance, or they didn’t put money away in savings for medical expenses. Doesn’t matter if they are being paid minimum wage.  If they’d handle their finances correctly, they’d figure out how to put a little money away for a rainy day. It also does not matter if a few people go bankrupt because of high medical bills. Those weaklings shouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place. Cancer? Cancer is for lazy communists. Insurance being a privilege and not a right also means that if your kid catches TB from another kid in his class whose lazy-ass liberal parents couldn’t get a decent job with decent insurance that’s just too effing bad. You shouldn’t have your kid in public school, anyway. They should be homeschooled, so that they don’t have to learn that brainwashing, PC liberal compassion and Darwinism crap.

Speaking of minimum wage, that’s another pansy-ass thing America definitely does not need. Minimum wage is for communists and whiners. Vacations? Eff that. If your job isn’t giving you vacation, or “gives” you vacation but then doesn’t actually let you have the time off to take it, well that’s your problem. Change jobs if you don’t like it. And family leave for havin’ babies? Hell, if women would stay at home where they belong in the first place, they wouldn’t have to ask for leave, now would they? And dads? Dads never used to take off work when a baby was born. Why the hell do they need to now? That’s just a bunch of PC, touchy-feely bullshit.

Capitalism = Democracy. Being a REAL patriot means that you understand that American business is king. What they say, goes. If that means cutting salaries and benefits to raise profits, so be it. Doesn’t matter if CEOs of mega-corporations are making millions while the little people take home peanuts. The government doesn’t question how I budget my money and it shouldn’t stick its nose into corporate finances, either. Capitalism shows no mercy, and we shouldn’t try to artificially build mercy into it.

Remember: Occasionally, big American business may need a little bailout from Uncle Sam, just when times get tough. This is not socialism. This is just a little safety net to ensure the American way of life. Unless, of course, the president at the time of the bailouts is a democrat. REAL patriots know that commie-pinko democrat presidents who try to control private enterprise with taxpayer dollars are nothing better than treasonous pigs.

Being a REAL patriot means that you don’t question your president, unless he or she is a Democrat. Should the highly unlikely situation occur that a black or woman Democrat is elected, he or she was probably not even born in this country and is therefore ineligible for the presidency. Do everything you can to prove this, because a foreigner in the sacred office of the president is not only unconstitutional, but against God.

Being a REAL patriot means that when your president tells you to go to war, you go to war and you get your ass blown up if that’s what it takes, even if the VA doesn’t have the funds to take care of you very well, because it’s your DUTY as an AMERICAN and a PATRIOT. And if you don’t understand why the blessed United States of America is going to war, or the reasons the administration is giving you to go to war seem fishy or muddled, under no circumstance do you question your president, even if he or she is a Democrat. Serving in war is an automatic gold-plated ticket to heaven and proves your patriotism without a doubt. War is also good for business, and business is good for America.

Being a REAL American patriot means that you speak English, and nothing else. Choose two for Español? When they pry my American flag from my cold, dead patriotic hands.

There’s probably a name for the decorating style used at The Herb Farm. Actually, I’m pretty sure there’s a name for “the name for a decorating style.” But when I was there, yesterday, I had eight glasses of wine. And since the dining was excellent, my brain had to choose memories of delicious food over nomenclature when the alcohol arrived to destroy cells.

At any rate, that style might be called “farm-house sumptuous.” Like what a French aristocrat from the eighteenth century (early eighteenth, before all that Reign of Terror nonsense) would choose if he were transported to this century, got used to it, and was told to live on a farm. I describe it to you this way because I am assuming that if you’re willing to read a review of a men’s room, chances are you don’t have the kind of decorating education that would even recognize the words that a proper fashion review would use.

To get to the men’s rest room, leave the dining area and go into the lobby, then make a left. Walk along the plush blue carpeting, past walls adorned with what I assume are pages from one of those curiously expensive children’s picture books. Something about the alphabet, and animals, and food. “Frog Fixed Flapjacks” and “Hedgehog’s Herbs.” There’s other decoration up there as well, but when you’ve just downed two flutes of champagne, a glass of rose’, and several hardy swallows of sangiovese, you tend to skip the details while the bathroom’s still 25 yards away.

At the end of the blue corridor you go right, through a door into the climate controlled Wine Library. I have to tell you, I really like the idea of calling a wine cellar a “library,” The actual library part of this library is on the left, halfway down, through locked doors; a sign references a bottle worth $14,000. I don’t know if they keep that bottle there or not—personally, anything costing more than seven bucks or so is wasted on me, as evidenced by the way the stuff had been galloping down my throat all night.

Speaking of gallop: don’t, or you’ll crash headlong into the ladies room, which at this point is straight ahead. The men’s is on the left. It doesn’t say “men’s” but features a painting of a little boy. I suppose one could justify, then, calling this “the little boy’s room.” But just writing that makes me feel creepy, nevermind the popular vernacular.

As an aside, I’ll reiterate an irritation I have, usually, with public restrooms that are not clearly marked with the word “Men” and “Women” or equivalent words in the local language. And no, “Caballeros” and “Damisellas” in a Mexican restaurant doesn’t count. I especially hate it when they just use pictures. I was at a restaurant once wherein the restrooms were marked with a frog and a pig. I spent 10 minutes furiously trying to sober up enough to deduce which was which, until finally I decided “frog” meant “bullfrog” which was for the men, and when I went through the door only to be slapped by an enormous woman dressed in pink, her shouting “Pig!” as I fell backwards into the hall again, the irony was entirely lost on me until the next day.

But even inebriated I could tell the lads’ from lasses’ here. Inside the men’s room, finally, you’ll be reminded of that word I used before: sumptuous. Rich. Almost, but not quite, opulent. Well, maybe a little opulent. The sink features a waterspout shaped like a craning goose neck, water gushing from its beak. The light in the wall sconce looks like the torch carried by the Statue of Liberty. There’s an enormous print from some 1960s French fashion magazine, right above an electric shoe-shine.

The room is small but not cramped, with one floor-length urinal and a commode in a little room of its own. Above the urinal is a mirror, and I found myself too embarrassed to make eye contact with the round-faced man I saw in it as I stood there. Back at the sink there is not only liquid soap made on the premises by the Herb Farm owners themselves, but hand lotion as well.

And for me, the true test of a restaurant’s worthiness: cloth towels. If I’m going to pay more for my meal than I would at, say, Red Robin, then by God there’d better be better towels than one would get at Red Robin. I am serious about this. I truly do evaluate whether a restaurant is worth the price by the hand-drying options in the restroom. Let’s face it: dishes over $20 aren’t worth the price, not to someone who’s fine with hot dogs cut up into mac n cheese. No, you pay that much for the experience, for the atmosphere. Not only does the men’s room at the Herb Farm feature cloth towels, in the three visits I made there during the evening, the towels had been replenished twice. You can’t help but notice that, and feel like the restroom, well attended, must therefore be clean.

I’ll be honest—I’m having difficulty writing the conclusion to this review, partly because I’m bad at conclusions in general, partly because I’m sober, and partly because I don’t, at the moment, have to go to the restrooms. Restrooms are hard to think about when you don’t have to go. They tend to be anti-climactic. So I think I’ll just stop writing now—anticlimax seems appropriate.

America is fat. Say it proud! No, really, we as a country have grown to gargantuan proportions. And with test-scores falling at the same time, most of us don’t even know what “gargantuan” means. I’m pretty sure it’s from the Latin for “you jiggle when you walk.” Then again, I went to public school.

Speaking of public school, remember the President’s Council on Physical Fitness? The PCPF (Or Pee-Cup-Off) was started back in the 50s because kids in the US were getting fatter than kids in Europe. This was largely because the smoking age in Europe had been lowered to eight after the big war.

So apparently, we’ve been fat for a long time. In fact, they say that weight gain can be blamed on genetics. Go find out if your mother’s grandfather’s mother had a lot of belly fat. If you find out that the answer is yes, congratulations, you’re a genealogist.

(Genetics, of course, is also responsible for male pattern baldness, halitosis, and an affinity for video games. If you can’t get laid, it’s your parents fault. They should spring for the hookers, is all I’m saying.)

But just because you’re destined to be a porker, doesn’t mean you have to settle for it. Don’t get me wrong: if it’s in your genes, you WILL die of a heart attack, all alone in a steel-reinforced bed, surrounded by empty boxes of Ho-Hos and sticky, moldering Big-Gulp cups. Remember the Puritans, who believed in pre-destination, the doctrine that whether or not you’re going to heaven has been decided before you’re even born? Yeah,. Some of them were real tubs of lard, too.

Some of them weren’t, though. There were some who chose to forge their own destiny. (The other Puritans had a word for this: “blasphemy”). And you can take after them. You can avoid the Big Mac! You can “just say no” to the curly fries! You can eschew the KFC Double Down (seriously, eschew it; the CDC recently declared the KFC Double-Down a level three bio-hazard. A delicious, savory bio-hazard).

That’s step one. I know, it’s not easy. I have spent many a lovely night, wrapped around a box of Oreos, staring at my expanding, sometimes quivering navel, contemplating the universe and my role in it.Not necessarily time wasted– I discovered that when you cry yourself to sleep, the tears wash away the crumbs left on your cheeks. Win-win.

Step two, if course, is exercise. I mentioned before the PCPF. Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger was in charge of that, in the 90s? Makes sense, really, bringing in some European dude to tell us how to get fit. Millions of kids followed Arnold’s footsteps, learning to smoke really fat cigars.

Actually, Americans are joining gyms like never before. In a recent report I just made up, statistics indicate that one in three Americans maintain a membership in a health or fitness club. And almost ten percent of them actually go to the gym they belong to!

Personally, I go to the gym almost every day. Of course I count driving through the parking lot as “going to the gym.” The fact that my gym shares a parking lot with KFC is just a coincidence. A delicious, savory coincidence.

You know, now that I think about it, maybe we’re not really so fat. In many ways, the largest American export, right after iPods and blue jeans, is Celebrity Fame. Everyone in the world knows who Angelina Jolie is, and Jennifer Aniston, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Compared to them, anyone would look fat. Maybe in this country we’ve gotten too hung up on an unrealistic ideal. We see what some people call “normal,” we get depressed, and we seek food for comfort. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy… sort of like that pre-destination thing. Yep, that’s it. Screw the BMI, if we can just get Brad Pitt to start eating a KFC Double-Down now and again, we’ll be fine.

I’m going to the “gym,” now, to practice being just like him.

by Jason Edwards

I used to live by myself, which was an accident. I had a roommate, but then she decided she wanted to “be independent.” She seemed to think that living by herself would reduce the chances of someone “accidentally” walking into the bathroom while she showered. Fine. Then I got another roommate, but she left too—even though the rent was cheap, she claimed she was losing money on mysteriously disappearing underwear. I have no idea how that was happening and I categorically deny even knowing what underwear is. So I was eventually living alone, and like a good bachelor with a good job, I went to Ikea. And all was well. I used primary colors as my color scheme, thinking that if it worked for kindergartens, it would work for me. Decorating was a simple matter of making sure I never had anything pastel, any color that had more than two syllables, came from a foreign language, or also described soup.

Years went by in mass-produced Scandinavian-inspired bliss. It was me and the blue couch and the red chair and the yellow dinner plates. A timeless aesthetic, like Mondrian on quaaludes. You know what’s great about the basics, the colors you get from the smallest box of Crayolas? Wiping Cheetos on the couch cushions doesn’t really look so bad.

But then, I screwed it all up. I met a girl. I tried really hard to “just be friends,” but she ended up being “smart” and “funny” and “sexy enough to bone all night long, or daytimes on Sundays.” (Father-in-law, if you’re reading this, please note that no boning happened before May 19th, 2007. Yes, that’s two days after our wedding- you were there, getting married in front of 400 people is exhausting).

But worse than discovering she was my “soulmate” was discovering that she had “taste.” This was a foreign concept to me—yes, my old roommates had had taste, decorating their bedrooms (which I never entered without permission or unless I was vacuuming or looking for a pencil or to make sure no one’s underwear drawer was on fire). But the rest of the house had been neutral territory. So I was a bit taken aback when my future-wife said ,“when we get married, the blue couch has got to go.”

Go where? Into the man cave? Fellas, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The man cave is a myth. Oh sure, some guys have rooms they call their own, maybe it has a pool table in it, maybe they have a big screen TV in there, maybe they even have a cute little shelf for storing bottles of fine Whiskey. But each of those guys has been presented with a basket of laundry to fold, “since you’re not doing anything else right now except watching a bunch of grown men in tights chase each other over a stupid leather ball.” And that’s when the dream dies.

No, she said, about the blue couch. It has to go away. Put it on Craigslist or something. It won’t fit with our décor.

If you don’t know, “décor” is something people with “taste” create in their homes, by selecting a ménage of complimentary colors, patterns, and textures. Notice the accent above the e in “décor.” And the one above the e in “ménage.” There’s one above the e in “cliché” too. Those French people, they’ve got word for everything.

They don’t play football in France, by the way. Just saying.

So I got rid of Blue, my trusty couch, sweat-stained and Cheeto-stained. It was sort of like losing an old dog. You remember that scene in Old Yeller? You know the one I’m talking about. If you didn’t cry when you saw that, you have no soul. You probably mix stripes with polka dots. Same with my couch. And the red chair. And the yellow plates. By the way, if you are going to shoot your rabid yellow dinnerware with a shotgun, don’t do it in your front yard. Turns out the police get nervous when they see a grown man holding a shotgun, crying, standing over a pile of broken crockery. It’s a funny world.

Me and the wife got hitched, and I moved into her place, and sure, it would have solved more problems than just keeping all my stuff if we had continued to live apart. But she had “ideas” about that too (see above, re: folding clothes while watching football). And that’s when my “education” started.

I learned that the curtains have to match the bedspread.
I learned that the towels in the bathroom have to match each other.
I learned that velvet doesn’t match anything, even if it’s the canvas for a freaking awesome painting of dogs playing poker.
But I also learned that throw pillows can coordinate the colors in any room.

So here we are today, a few years later, in a brand new house, with some new furniture, and old curtains, and you know what means: throw pillows. We need throw pillows. I just now Googled “throw pillows” and I am not making this up: there’s cheap ones, but some of these bad boys are priced at over $150 dollars. Yes, you heard me right. That’s half a Playstation3. And we need more than one. We need, like, 10. And even I can tell, thanks to my “education,” that the ones going for less than 20 bucks just won’t cut it. We’re about to spend more for pillows than I did for my old Ikea couch. What? No, I’m not crying, this computer screen has a bad glare on it, leave me alone.

Oh, and before I go, let me just warn some of you pending-husbands out there. I don’t care what kind of self-defense training you’ve taken. I don’t care if you’re a Navy SEAL, a hybrid ninja-samurai-sumo wrestler. If you get Cheetos on your wife’s new throw pillows, you are a dead man.

I was not aware of this, but it seems that men don’t read. I am a man, and I read. I haven’t always read—last year I read maybe one book. Maybe two. This year I am making a concerted effort to read, with a goal of one book per week, average. So I read. But read this article on Huffingtonpost: Why Men Don’t Read: How Publishing is Alienating Half the Population.

The author, Jason Pinter, insists that men do read. And I believe him, and respect what he’s saying. So why is it that there’s this pervading idea that men don’t read? Probably because it works, as an idea. It’s not true, or not based in truth. But if publisher can keep making money by assuming it’s true, well then, it’s as good as true, right?

I mean, we’re not facing some awful, moral dilemma here (or are we?). Humanity as a whole won’t be made better by a big-time publisher deciding to sacrifice profits for truth. Men Don’t Read isn’t a declaration, but more of a business philosophy.

But there are people who are men who do read, and lots of them, so what’s the take away? Well, what do these so called “men,” in fact, read? Sci fi? Those aren’t men, they’re nerds. Sports memoirs? Those aren’t men, they’re jocks. Who Moved My Cheese was a big seller. But not bought by men—bought by businessmen.

Starting to see the trend here? Men have the luxury of shedding their gender, when it’s convenient, and can define themselves in some other way. And the reason this is a luxury is because they can always assert that gender again later, if need’s be. A nerd, a jock, a businessman doesn’t risk losing his gender identity by reading a book that isn’t specifically written for men in general.

So no books are written for men in general. Because Men Don’t Read.

Well so what. Here’s what: little incentive for men to read books written by women. I’ve been complaining about this for years. If books are being written for women, why would a man want to read them?

And it does a disservice to women, too, because a woman CAN’T shed her gender and be a nerd, a jock, or a businesswoman, without being judged for her lack of femininity. And if she succumbs to the pressures of maintaining her gender, she’s a nerd with boobs. A she-jock. A bitch.

I’m no anthropologist, no sociologist, so I’m probably missing some larger point, some deeper phenomena. I’m just a white middle-class male who avoids huge sections of the bookstore because I know those books are written in a language I don’t understand. I might be totally wrong about all of this; it just seems to me that the atmosphere of Men Don’t Read does more of a disservice to women than it does to men. If it must change, as Pinter says it must, I agree, if only to further the idea that a person who is a woman is a person first, an individual with interests and tastes that are not necessarily impacted by or impactful on her gender.

Men Don’t Read. Well, Women Shouldn’t Read, too. I don’t even want to admit that People Read. But a person does read, so let’s publish books for that individual to choose.

by Ambertolina

Recently, at the recommendation of our dentist, it became necessary to take the daughter to the orthodontist. This did not surprise me, since the child is virtually my clone and I had to have extensive orthodontia work done. What did surprise me is how orthodontia has come along in the last twenty years.

It looks even more invasive and uncomfortable than when I was a kid.

herbst appliance

Right off the bat, the orthodontist recommended a herbst appliance and a rapid palatal expander. Now the herbst appliance didn’t look too horribly bad—just a couple of weird hinges in the back of the mouth to force my kid’s too-small jaw to grow forward. (Ah, the sweet horrors of youth.)

But the rapid palatal expander? That goddamned thing looks like some sort of bizarre medieval torture device. And, I was

rapid palatal expander

told, it will be MY responsibility (or her father’s of course) to get her to lay still, open her mouth, put a key into said device which is located in the roof of her mouth, and give the key a half turn every day for two weeks so that her palate will … expand.

Shudder.

It was explained to me that the reason that this is possible is that because she’s so young, the bones in the roof of her mouth haven’t fused yet.

Shudder.

Though she was nervous at first, by the time we left her first appointment, she was disappointed that they didn’t actually install any equipment into her mouth, which they had shown us on a cool set of disembodied model teeth.

You see, my little girl isn’t in to princesses and Polly Pockets like her friends. She likes ancient Egypt, and mummies and skeletons and other oddities, which I secretly think is WONDERFUL.

On the way home from the orthodontic appointment, she informed me that in addition to braces, she’d like to also get glasses. I’m pretty sure she wants them only because I have them, and she’s still at that age where she worships me.

“Oh, Honey,” I said. “You don’t want glasses.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t,” I insisted.

“Why not?”

“Because … because by the time you’re a teenager, people think it’s kind of … nerdy … to have glasses.”

“So?” she said. “I’m kind of a nerd anyway. Anyway, I’m smart enough to be a nerd. I want to be a nerd.”

“You do?” Even I was caught off guard by what she said next:

“Yes. I want to wear black stretch pants, with a blue shirt and a black tie, and glasses and braces.”

I am so proud.

by Ambertolina

I was quick to agree with my writing colleague’s assessment of the hipster scene, which, in the eyes of a 40-something year old person is A) contrived, B) silly, and perhaps most importantly C) no longer hip.

Then I thought about this band I went to see with friends recently. A couple of friends and I, all in our 40-or-so-ness glory, went to THE hipster bar in Lawrence, Kansas—the Replay Lounge—to hear the Two Man Gentleman Band. We were the oldest “ladies” in the bar and received more than a few curious glances.

William Howard Taft

Now, the Two Man Gentlemen Band consists of two dudes, who I *think* are in their late 20s (maybe early 30s), who play old-time Americana music. They wear old fashioned clothes and play banjo and bass violin. What makes them fun is that they mix their old-timey shtick with funny on-stage banter and clever lyrics. Some of their songs are Me, I Get High on Reefer, Fancy Beer and William Howard Taft.

Now, it would be easy for me to sit on my pasty dough-like ass and criticize the Two Man Gentlemen Band for trying too hard to be “ironic” and cool. (Really, hipsters don’t even understand the definition of ironic, which really bugs the shit out of me.)

But here’s the thing: they kick ass. I find them to be genuinely funny, clever and talented. (Even though it was highly annoying that they were SUPPOSED to take the stage at 10 p.m. and didn’t bother to start playing until 11:30. This is hard on us old farts.) We’re not talking about a couple of guys who wear funny clothes and use funny language just to be “ironic”—though that’s part of it—I mean, these guys have gone the whole nine yards. They play instruments really well, write great songs with snappy melodies and funny lyrics and just generally put on a good show.

Since I’m on the subject, I’d also like to plug Kansas City’s own Kansas City Bear Fighters, who opened for the Two Man Gentlemen band. These are three guys who are even younger than the Gentlemen, but once again, play Americana music, featuring guitar, mandolin and bass violin, with the bass player tapping a tambourine that’s duct-taped to his shoe. Though their music has an old-time sound, most of their songs deal with subjects like zombies, apocalypse and illness.Their lead singer called me “ma’am” and said something else to me which I didn’t catch. I was so proud.

My favorite song of theirs is That Wound Will Fester, but here’s the music video for their song Sun is Gone.

The Sun is Gone

by Jason Edwards

I’m sick of word Nazis. I just finished reading an article in my local paper, a letter to the editor, in which the writer complains about the use of the word “infatuated.” In a previous article, the paper called the murderer of a local teacher “infatuated.” The reader who wrote the letter provided a dictionary definition of the word, and called the paper to task, saying it should choose its words more carefully, lest it diminish the repercussion of the killer’s actions.

Bullshit. There’s a word for you.

No matter what reason a person has for killing someone, unless it’s war or self defense, we the people are going to be appalled. We may be jaded, inured by constant reports of violence, but we do not dismiss someone’s murder just because someone claims the killer was merely “infatuated.” I’ll go you one better. The poor “sap” had a “crush” on the teacher and simply found it “difficult to deal with rejection.” There you go. Then he gunned her down in cold blood.

Words are powerful, sure, when they’re used well to describe emotion or opinion in a poetic manner that evokes a response in the reader he might not otherwise realized he was capable of feeling. But facts are powerful too. A man shot a defenseless woman. I don’t care what words gets used to describe him, or her. It’s awful what happened- and if anything diminishes what happened, it’s harping on a perceived misuse of a word, backed up by a dictionary reference.

Newsflash: dictionaries are not authoritative. They’re records of use, not lawbooks dictating right and wrong. Same with books on grammar, while we’re on the subject, and those hoary little so-called “style guides.”

On the other hand, maybe I’m focusing this ire at the wrong parties. I should put Grammar Nazis in the same boat as psychopaths and tornadoes: forces of nature that can’t be reasoned with, merely survived. I imagine the newspaper gets letters from folks all the time saying “you used that word wrong” (or even worse: “that’s not a word!” Oh don’t get me started). Indeed, the idiot who wrote to the editor to complain about “infatuated” has probably written in before. Why give them a voice? Why take up inches when you could be writing about, I don’t know, loganberries or something. I have no idea what loganberries are.

Please stop wasting my time with fools who want to foist their fractures sense of world order on me. Please give me facts. Start with loganberries. Do they make a good jam?