getting shit straight

nobody likes a prodigy

today as every day we learn to embrace mediocrity; america wasn't exactly built by geniuses, and is run by idiots, and who are we to say american culture isn't good and perfect? what kind of bigots do you take us for? (but as americans we are sworn to simple principles of liberty, charity, amazing progress through the ages: even bigots deserve a shot at happiness. maybe even moreso, because they've had to overcome a serious handicap to get where they are. and who doesn't love the handicapped?)

comfort is king, people, and nothing's more comforting than the view from the middle of the pack. with that in mind we give you several examples of mediocrity you might emulate in your quest for tremendous happiness. write it down, take it into yourself, american, and know that you're being watched over day and night. it's a little scary what you do on the videotapes. call us if you want those back. please call.

we miss you.

mediocrity ho! look, learn goddamnit:

• billings, MT
• the well-meaning american national soccer team
• latin
• your college roommate who only had intercourse once in school and fell immediately in love with her
• whoever was driving the fucking Titanic
• ann arbor, MI
• why do you still bother playing the guitar?
• buying a box of XXL condoms to leave on your coffee table - that is so weird
• put those condoms away, we're eating
• gateway computers
• everyone who ever watched 'american idol' even once
• the confederacy
• elizabethan playwright thomas kyd
• you're a little old to watch 'sailor moon'
• i want my porn back you thieving pervert
• call and let's talk, i promise to be good

probably it's all clear by now. these negative examples will guide you, ameri-beasts. we know what it is you're thinking when you dry-hump the couch; we're thinking it too.

diving board to despair

the chin: how to keep that shit up?

unsurprisingly, recent advances in science and culture have made it unnecessary - perhaps impossible - to stay unhappy for very long. america isn't just a land of opportunity, it's a country of great optimism and grace, no surprise considering that americans invented modern industry and efficiency nearly eight hundred years ago. and before we go on, let's be clear: don't think for even a second that this shit is limited to whites and asians. other races of the earth have incredible options as well in the global folksonomy/bacchanal.

how does science promise neverending happiness? just because the high-bitrate DIY-warrior world is on average tremendously stylish doesn't mean shit is always easy, especially for the poor, who invariably trail the fashion curve by months, perhaps years. have you ever been to a club party thrown by the poor? embarrassing, difficult to find. but science can help. the deans of american universities and research labs give us complex equations and lab reports, graphs; they traffic in data, but nobody ever got shit straight using a graph. this is the next-generation blogosphere, the semantic web 2.0 device. we trade in practical recommendations. a more palatable you is right around the corner. it starts with the human brain - which science tells us is increasingly important. ours is an information age.

breathing helps. take deep breaths when you wake up in the morning. roll over to your left, off of that slumbering sweet bitch - is that snoring? didn't we have a talk about that, honey? yes but if you wouldn't let the goddamn shar-pei sleep in the bed with us - roll over and take some deep breaths. oxygen, air, other tiny chemicals. closeness to the body is integral and establishes a firm ground for hipness and dexterity. are you unhappy? perhaps the first question to ask yourself is: why am i getting insufficient oxygen right now?

inability to breathe is only one inconvenience that you can avoid through very basic lifehacking procedures. write that term in your moleskine: LIFEHACKING is one of many tools in the american toolbox of happiness. you can lifehack your multiband cellular telephone plastic faceplate, or your kitchen; information; it is definitely possible to lifehack the eateries and newspaper stands in and around your neighborhood. several readers have written in this month with instructions on how to lifehack board games and playing cards for personal reasons. we're saying to you: breathe. this is america. science tells us that the air here is clean, the animals and plants are free and unlikely to carry germs. but if a raccoon gets into the trash or bites the shar-pei it may become necessary to lifehack both of them with a fucking rifle or softball bat - even in the west there are no guarantees. beauregard, why did you let that mean raccoon bite you? we can't afford a vet since we decided to go with the hybrid SUV; why take that risk, beauregard? why throw away our love, you fucking selfish mutt?

other ways in which to improve mental acuity center around eating habits. did you eat a salad today, a handful of raw granola? perhaps some grass. yes to decadence, yes to global freedom, but if you're hitchhiking down today's digital superhighway in the minibus of technology you're going to put on some pounds. do you know how many calories are in that pot you just smoked? you don't find that information on a graph or online. those hips, that ass - are you impressing anyone? a lard-ass with a blog is still a lard-ass; we don't want to get personal but the truth is more important even than this web blog, than the two-way communication street in our digital community.

additional techniques to try in your free time:

• less alcoholism
• sunlight is free of charge in america
• brush up your spanish
• MDMA is still illegal you junkie
• why is there urine in the swimming pool?
• did i swallow some?

anything worth doing is worth doing twice, but try doing it only once first. no sense throwing away your time on bullshit.

mailbag: the corporate elbow

occasionally we get letters asking: how in america can i rise to the top of the pops? how can i be a next-gen digital warrior, a practitioner of the lost arts of email zen, a tremendous achiever? how can i grow? why am i so short? my mother was eight feet tall and used to be an australian man - why won't my hands and feet grow?

america, we hear you, we're embarrassed, we're going to help.

today's email brought us to tears:

hi -

i love your website! i am a temp worker currently assigned to a major corporation in downtown houston. my boss keeps giving me these odd tasks to do, like getting him bagels at 5:30 in the morning, or cleaning out his bible, or filing receipts for moon rocks that he's purchased on the company card. he suggests that i do all these things in a tracksuit. i don't of course - i went to yale for god's sake, i know my rights - but i am starting to wonder: is he in love with me?

plus: he hasn't said anything but between the bagels and the tracksuit i think he's secretly jewish. in texas that's uncommon. i only mention it for full disclosure so you can help me with my problem, but please don't tell anyone. the bible thing is a smokescreen.

your friend,
darren

well darren, we'd love to help you get shit straight. darren, it looks like you're going to have to assert yourself a little bit here. we can't tell whether your boss is in love with you - we're not fucking psychic, you might have confused us with some other website, that's actually very common on the internet - but we can tell you this: tracksuit or no, there's a reckoning coming. you have rights, as you alluded to. america is a land where tremendous liberty and poise are gifts from an omnipotent benevolent patriotic force - now you take some liberties. now you show some poise. the mormons didn't found this country so you could feel shame at your temp job.

time to throw the corporate elbow, darren.

wear the tracksuit to work next monday. YES. it will throw your boss off his game. the more confusion you can sow, the more magical perfection you will reap at 4:45pm when you throw the corporate elbow. because it will be monday, moishe - may we call him moishe? - moishe's going to be hungover, barely functional. angry about some things. did his sweet bitch drink tequila out of his belly button on friday night? did he watch saturday morning cartoons snorting a mountain of what he thought was coke, but turned out to be oregano? what kind of asshole sells you oregano when you want to buy coke? and on the SABBATH. what kind of country is this sometimes? how?

in your tracksuit no one will suspect your cunning and wit. maneuver things such that moishe is in his office at 4:44pm. get in there with him. shut and lock the door. moishe clutches his head and weeps quietly in his chair. the chair costs more than your genetically-engineered miracle dog, harrison. (did you remember to feed your miracle dog? why don't you care what we give you anymore? we sent you to yale you ungrateful little bastard!)

(we paid all that money so you could study WHAT?)

moishe snores a little bit. he's asleep? wake him up. you want this to be sporting. you're a patriot. he looks up bleary-eyed. say something pithy.

pithier than that.

NOW THROW THE CORPORATE MOTHERFUCKING ELBOW, DARREN.

you know how that goes. windup, delivery, follow-through. it's like driving your motorcycle over a line of foreign cars: as you hurtle to earth you swear you can see all the way to the moon. there's a little cash register there. with terrible clarity you look into the cash register and the receipt says 'backorder - Moishe - $4.99 - Rocks.' but no one's going to fill that backorder now, darren.

not now.

not after you get done throwing the corporate elbow.

you wait 'til 4:45pm so that when moishe's bodyguards come to escort you to the city limits, you'll only minimally upset the flow of the workday, american commerce, wellbeing. in your tracksuit, looking back with mingled longing and terror at houston your adopted home, you'll say to yourself, 'darren, you've come a long way.' but there's a long road ahead still.

luckily in that tracksuit you'll have no trouble hitching rides from people.

vital world-traveler hints, tips

keep your mind in shape for when you bring the light of culture to faraway countries: poland, the outback, mars.

remember that to the savages YOU are the foreigner. let's not be reductive here but sweet bitches of all nations really go for that.

remember also that wonderful american money is worth nothing abroad. in a pinch, if you run out of toilet paper on the road - after a long backpacking trip across the whole of asia, say, having exhausted both rolls of TP you brought with you - at that point you can wipe your backside with a $100 bill and savour a feeling thus far limited to the vice president. an ass like that needs the royal treatment.

deodorant is considered unsexy abroad. don't be afraid to embrace your inner wookie or italian.

'go dutch' is not slang for 'smoke marijuana' - if the sweet bitches offer to go dutch with you, don't immediately reach for the honey-squeeze-bottle bong in your designer backpack.

the moleskine is the stupendous notebook of cultured, savvy bourgeois champions the world over. it is available in pretty colors if merely having a thirty dollar notebook the size of a credit card isn't ostentatious enough for you. different colors for different moods. everyone will think you're some kind of genius. let them think that. the truth will only depress everyone.

empathy, understanding

here's how to gain some insight into what the world is like for the 'other half':

get your moleskine from out of your designer courier bag. actually while you're there take a moment to admire its construction and marvelous fashion. did you buy that? is that your little bag? little coochie-coo smoochy woochie yes it is! look at your cute li'l courier baggie yes you DID!

now clean yourself. then open the notebook - we will say it again for clarity's sake, it is a goddamn MOLESKINE, not just pieces of paper stuck together with leftover glue from last night's private 'party' - and on one page list all the sweet bitches you've been with. male, female, it doesn't matter. there was hardly any difference anyway, at the time. that time you drank tequila dripping from a leaky pipe in the ceiling - that was tequila, right? there was a worm in it anyhow. make notes now next to each entry in this list about things like: size, coloration, duration of copulatory exchanges, how much money and time and shame it cost each of you, and so forth. if it helps to jog your memory, draw little diagrams next to the ones that were particularly memorable or grotesque. how does the human body sustain itself when bent into such odd positions? is a penis really supposed to wrap three times around the human arm, like some kind of reticulated cock-python?

WHAT ZOO ON EARTH WOULD HARBOR A COCK-PYTHON?

here's how you learn from today's exercise, the part where we drive home the nature of this good terribly fashionable earth and its seriousness: leave the moleskine around, conveniently bookmarked on the copulation-partner-listing page, where your loved ones and current sex partners are guaranteed to find it. now hide behind the couch or a nearby clump of sagebrush. watch them! they are approaching. he or she looks so curious and well-meaning. this is why you fell in love in the first place. that is not the lesson.

the sweet bitch will open up the moleskine and find your latest entry: your funny-book drawings of the dirty sex acts, names of his or her best friends and coworkers with whom you've 'gotten slurpy' in the executive bathroom or terminal C at the airport, by the pretzel stand - oh you could go for a pretzel couldn't you? pervert.

look at that sweet bitch's face. see that expression? the pain, the confusion? do you see how aesthetically displeasing he/she finds your little cartoons and ideograms?

that awful feeling etched in furrowed brow, those crying eyes: there is a place called darfur, east of here - further east even than brooklyn - and living in darfur is, as near as we can tell, JUST LIKE THAT FEELING. like finding that moleskine and the sex pictures inside, with names named.

there, you see, asshole? you made that sweet bitch so sad just like in darfur.

and yet to get shit straight sometimes you need to be a little dangerous this way. never give up, america.

murder is meat

a career in finance or law enforcement would have been extraordinary, but the physical fitness requirements are so serious, so awful. you could not do the chin-ups and the long journeys on foot, you failed the physical fitness exam offered by the economics department - what is left for you? no one welcomes you into the temple of finance, so from the gutter of despair you call out: what? how? if not now, then why ever?

fortunately you princess or prince of the new century will find happiness. a life of crime awaits. like working in high finance only with sex. here is the simple elegance you crave:

• debts are awkward, unstylish, non-crom.* kill your creditors - the look of freedom on their faces as they pass into the abyss will be worth the long hours of cleanup and hand-wringing over technical details, logistics.
• milk is $0.99 at the corner store but only $0.69 at the korean place two blocks up? fuck it - steal from both. tell each that the other put you up to it. the koreans are used to this kind of routine and will not take you seriously. but at the slightest fucking provocation they'll kill that other guy so hard you'll cry, just because, just to stay razor-sharp. yet another way you stay in the finance game. seriously don't mess with the koreans unless you've got wisdom and dexterity scores of at least 16. anything lower they'll laugh in your face before they tear your kneecaps off and wear them as yarmulkes.
• web 2.0: perfect of its kind, or merely extraordinary and fresh? hipness is a crime and you're the charles manson of your little coffeeklatch. marilyn manson if you're a girl.
• do you know why the phrase 'like taking candy from a baby' is used so often? because taking candy from adults is nowhere near as fucking awesome. it benefits the child in that obviously they're likely to choke to death on hard candies and fruits - please baby casmir don't eat that jolly rancher, you could grow up to be an astronaut if you wanted, we were only kidding baby casmir - and it benefits you in that the feeling of achievement the candy-stealing gives you caps off your long twilight struggle with an orgasmic rush. seriously you're a finance nerd, how likely is it you're going to get or give the bone?

here's an equation for you from the temple of finance:

college degree + determination = ?

if you said 'success' we can't help you, we laugh, it is a horrible day for you, a confused and confusing day. if you looked at that equation and punched your computer monitor, we may be related biologically as well as in spirit. pick the monitor up off the floor, clean yourself. the tears staining your cheeks are honest tears. you punched the computer because of a math problem. your despair is real. the koreans are watching.

* short for 'non-cromulent' which is obviously some kind of television reference.

famous to-do lists in history, industry, america

no more fun for today, goddamnit: time to get intense and go for broke with your to-do lists. the concept of the to-do list is central to any plan to get shit straight. computers are extraordinary tools for organizing shit, hacking, passing along amusing flash animations - we're not going to lie to you they are the future of our nation, there will be a robot president soon - but the infosamurai's high style profile is maintained primarily through a system of pithy to-do lists on multicolored index cards. do we have to repeat ourselves? please do not make that happen. almighty god, let us move past the basics.

to-do lists are like everything else in the planet: they are about style and grace. a bad to-do list is like a polyp or genocide. a good to-do list can score you hours of relaxing entertainment in the form of complimentary dinners, extensive sexual and conversational intercourse, pairs of jeans, markdown prices on real estate and corndogs, promises of amnesty. a good to-do list opens doors.

here is an example of one. can you guess who wrote it? that is your homework assignment. you thought there would be no homework once you graduated from UNC with that degree in marketing. only now is your folly made clear.

to-do: dr tartikoff, proctologist

• call jack, ask about mother, cancer
• finger in ass
• finger in ass
• finger in ass
• awards brunch - cornflower blue tie?
• finger in ass
• online shopping (30% off galactica @ amazon)
• fiber-optic camera in ass
• order new moleskine ←HE IS A CHAMPION WARRIOR
• ??
• finger in ass
• lunch @ donna's
• snort enormous mountain of coke
• entire hand in ass
• sleep for three weeks
• children: conceive? purchase?
• finger in ass
• home for 5:00 news, internet, wife
• pick up milk, eggs at corner KOREAN convenience store
• look for new job

write it down. you know where. learn.

you can't always get what you want,

but if you try sometimes you might find you can rock that body on out, rock that body on out.

fixingyou.com is coming back, so watch the HELL out.

false modesty

if there's one thing in this world that's going to win you loving attention from sweet bitches - and probably we can agree on at least that much - it's false modesty. nobody likes your self-loathing routine, but no one wants to hear about your actual achievements either, because very few people really achieve anything at all. why rub it in? it's like that time you whipped out your ,,,, at the office christmas party. please! it's christmas. oh christ, it is most definitely christmas, and christmas is no time for you to whip your ,,,, out.

so let's talk false modesty. there's a right way and wrong way to do everything. the wrong way sometimes involves hate:

1) wrong: "god, i hate that so many people are stupider than me."

sometimes it involves dog pills for cancer.

2) wrong: "mom, you forgot to give Hopalong his cancer pills and now he's turning purple! god, i hate that so many people are stupider than me."

elton john occasionally figures in.

3) wrong: "this old music is so great but that washed up hag hasn't done anything in ages! i hate that so many english people are stupider than me."

(we are excited by the prospect that elton john, in a state of gin-soaked self-loathing, will go over to david bowie's house, log into the internet, and google for "elton john washed up hag" and end up at this page. hi elton! you've got to admit the old stuff had a verve that "candle in the depressing commercial wind" somehow lacks, old bean.)

so what do you do when you want to get shit straight? how do you maneuver the nightclub sitch such that those sweet bitches out on the dance floor - shaking that thing and doing that other thing - wanna get all on it? maybe several of them at a time. you put siouxsie and the banshees on the stereo, maybe it all works out. but how, HOW?

back to the numbers. first you can try to draw attention from your greatness.

1) right: "you can get herpes from pretty much anyone these days, even from toilet seats and bad air circulation on planes. you shouldn't haul off blaming your sister. and anyway you can always keep that detail to yourself. that...slut."

compare yourself unfavourably to great figures from history.

2) right: "now, a week ago i was your equal here at SpumCo, but now i'm your supervisor, and my first budget-cutting act, by order of my boot-licking boss, is to can your ass with some astounding quickness. i've risen fast, yes, and i don't deserve it. but comfort yourself, dave: at least i don't yet have as much power as hitler. you think about that, ok? have your desk cleared by lunch."

bring history and anthropology - the weight of learning - into the situation.

3) right: "the important thing isn't my curve-breaking A+ average and your measly C-, it's the fact that we've both overcome serious racial handicaps to get to this point."

if you're not getting it yet someone should kick your fat stupid bespectacled ass, because sometimes, in the game of getting shit straight, in the game of fixing what's wrong with you...sometimes it's your ass that needs the attention.

(we're still picturing bowie lifting elton's hands off the keyboard. tears stain bowie's paper skin, mirrored in the weeping queen's own wizened eyes. "you're going to be all right, elton," he whispers. "it's only the internet, luv. it's only the fucking internet." fade to black. A FIXINGYOU.COM PRODUCTION flashes on the screen. cue "rocket man" on the soundtrack.)

random chance

you want to take advantage of the ins and outs of random chance if at all possible. it's not particularly complicated if you're trained professionally in mathematics and science. fortunately for you - and we at gss know you are NOT trained in these things, because you sit around reading blogs all day - WE have spent years in preparation for this moment. here is what we have gleaned in our studies, conducted all over the globe and presented to you with perfect joy and happiness, american-style:

• you can't control fate
• but you can rig the dice
• yes that's a metaphor
• but you can do it with actual dice too
• just not at this table

'american-style' you see? a proud history of genocide and optimism combined into probably the cutest little unordered list you ever did see.

we had more to say about this when we started this post, probably three weeks ago (if it was a day!). right about now we've more or less blown, metaphorically speaking, the ol' wad. you'll have to make do, pilgrim.