“If movies get any more lowbrow than this, they’ll just be porn,” the critics said. “This is the lowest that comedies can fall. Semen jokes, penises in pies, people banging each other’s moms. We have now reached a unique moment in cinematic history where films cannot get any worse.”

Here I sit, 14 years later, on the verge of proving them wrong. Movies can’t get worse? I can make them worse. I can make them so much worse. I’m on the verge of a new breakthrough formula for comedy films that will become the next level of decay for a once respected art form.

Remember the movie “Wedding Crashers”? It was hilarious in the beginning when they were sloppy drunks who tricked people and mooched free booze. But there were fewer laughs in the second half of the film. They fell in love. They stopped crashing weddings. They became slightly better people. There were still laughs, but not as many as when they were drunken asswipes.

How much better would that movie have been if they were just drunken asswipes the entire time? Why not make the whole movie hilarious instead of just half of it? Get rid of the plot. Get rid of the love stories and lesson learning. The internet has made our attention spans so weak that none of us can follow a plot for more than ten seconds anyway. I can’t even watch a good movie anymore without surfing the internet and texting people through half of it. Most of you are probably skimming this column instead of reading it. That’s why I print swear words every other sentence. It’s the only thing that gets people to stop and read an entire paragraph.

It’s time for someone to update the standard comedy film formula. Do you know how much of the movie “Old School” I usually watch? The first half. They spend most of the second half becoming better people, so I get bored and turn it off. Guess how much of “Billy Madison” I watch? The first half. Office Space? The first half. Happy Gilmore? Super Troopers? Tommy Boy? Only the first few scenes. Half Baked? I watch all of it, because Harland Williams is a goddamn treasure.

Imagine how much better all these movies would have been if the second halves were as funny as the first halves? Why stop the fun just to shoehorn some predictable plot into the film? Why force some boring love story that makes everyone roll their eyes? It’s like Nabisco trying to sell us bags of Oreo cookies when what we really want is a bag of just the creme centers. Why do they even include the cookie part? Just give me the good stuff. All hilariousness, no lesson learning. All desserts, no dinner. All orgasms, with none of that tedious thrusting beforehand. All filler, no buzz killers.

Why have a mullet haircut that’s business in the front and party in the back when your hair can have a party in the back and the front? People at your work can see the party in the back of your hair. They walk behind you sometimes. They know about the party. Just give it to them everywhere. Don’t make them walk around to the back of your hair. What are you, an egotistical monster?

I’ve spent the last few weeks developing a comedy film formula that will allow me to create a movie with no plot, exposition or character development whatsoever. The general stories will remain the same. All the characters will be drunken failures who vaguely remind you of some guy from your college who’s probably in jail for rape now. They will all live carefree lives where they screw off all day yet somehow still live in a really spacious apartment. At some point, an elderly woman will be run over by an animal driving a golf cart.

The tricky part is the ending. How do you put on the brakes after 90 minutes of dumptrucking dong jokes into a script? Just have the main character look into the camera and say, “Drinking and golf cart murders: They’re the best!” and then the credits start rolling? I still need to figure it out. All I know for sure is when the movie’s finished, everyone will continue to be terrible people who should probably be executed, and no one will have improved themselves or changed in any possible way. Granted, the old woman who got run over by the golf cart will be dead, which is technically a change, but I promise her death will not have caused her to learn any lessons.

I’m this close, guys. I’m almost there. Soon you’ll never have to turn off a movie halfway through again. If it doesn’t work out, I can always go with my backup plan of starting a movie rental service where I edit the awkward pauses out of Paul Thomas Anderson movies, shortening them from three hours down to roughly 40 minutes. So either way, I’m going to be rich soon. The line to ride my coattails begins here.

Paul: Good lord, no. Why would I want that? I’m by myself.

McD’s Worker: Sorry, they’ll fire me if I don’t offer the poorest possible health choices to every customer.

Paul: I’ll just get a cheeseburger and small fries.

McD’s Worker: A double quarter pounder with cheese and super size fries?

Paul: No, just a regular cheeseburger and small fries.

McD’s Worker: We don’t have small anymore. Small is now “children’s size”.

Paul: I’m pretty sure the children’s size is the recommended amount for a grown adult. You know you’re not supposed to eat a pound of potatoes in one serving, right?

McD’s Worker: At least we still hide the ketchup from everyone. That’s unintentionally healthy.

Paul: You do make it borderline impossible for people to get more than two ketchup packets without throwing a tantrum first. Can I just get the cheeseburger, child fries and a cup of water?

McD’s Worker: We don’t have non-premium water anymore. We removed the option from our fountain drink dispenser so people will buy bottled water.

Paul: Bottled water seems like a huge waste of plastic for someone who’s eating in the restaurant.

McD’s Worker: Dasani paid us to do it. They want everyone to recognize their bottles in stores.

Paul: Is there a recycling bin for the plastic bottles?

McD’s Worker: No, that would cost us an extra twelve cents per week, so we just let people throw them in the trash.

Paul: Sigh. All right. Just give me one of those McFlurry things.

McD’s Worker: Would you like regular or pussy size?

Paul: Um . . . pussy size, I guess?

McD’s Worker: Sorry, I meant child’s size. What used to be regular size is now child’s size, while our new regular size has been upgraded to roughly a half carton of ice cream.

Paul: Jesus.

McD’s Worker: Would you like to supersize your meal?

Paul: No. I just spent 20 minutes picking the sizes of everything.

McD’s Worker: Yes, but now you get one more chance to make a poor life choice!

Paul: No.

McD’s Worker: Would you like me to Iron Man your order?

Paul: What?

McD’s Worker: It’s a heavy glazing of sugar we coat over your entire order, like Crispy Creme donuts.

Paul: No!

McD’s Worker: It’s sponsored by Iron Man 3, out in theaters now! You get an Iron Man paper hat with it. Can I Iron Man you, sir?

Paul: A paper hat? That’s kinda cool . . . wait, no! No, you can’t! And it’s “may”, not “can”.

McD’s Worker: May I Iron Man you, sir?

Paul: No!

McD’s Worker: Would you like a hot apple pie added to your order?

Paul: No! I’m already getting ice cream!

McD’s Worker: Can I supersize your order?

Paul: No!

McD’s Worker: Can I Iron Man you?

Paul: No!

McD’s Worker: May I Iron Man you?

Paul: No, goddamn it!

McD’s Worker: May I grease you up so you can use the Playland slide?

Paul: No! I . . . wait, yes. That one sounds fun.

McD’s Worker: Great! Here’s your receipt. We’ll have that for you in 5-10 minutes.

Paul: Isn’t this supposed to be fast food?

McD’s Worker: Yes, but our cashiers are too busy upselling sadness to give people their orders in a timely fashion.

Paul: That makes sense.

McD’s Worker: While you wait, please enjoy our McDonald’s Entertainment Network, where we repeat the same four inane clips of former NFL star Michael Strahan’s morning talk show until you want to stab yourself in both eyes with a fork. We’ve plastered it on six different TV sets throughout this small restaurant, and turned up the sound really loud so it’s impossible to ignore.

Paul: Can you turn it down?

McD’s Worker: CBS requires it to be that loud, to ensure their advertising works. Also, it helps drown out the incessant beeping of our fry machines, which our cooks never turn off because they’re too stoned.

Paul: That sounds like a lot of extra work to fix a very simple problem.

McD’s Worker: We only fix problems if the solution increases our revenue.

Paul: Can I get some extra ketchup packets?

McD’s Worker: Not until Heinz pays us to hand out giant tubs of ketchup way larger than any rational person needs.

Paul: I always heard you have to ask for ketchup packets because hobos use them to make soup.

McD’s Worker: We just made up that rumor to shame people into not using ketchup. I mean, soup? Really? Why wouldn’t they just eat the ketchup directly?

Paul: Well played. I’m impressed.

McD’s Worker: May I Iron Man you now, sir?

Paul: No. Go fuck yourself.

The proof is in the pudding, my friends. I’m sitting next to a complete waste of time right now. I’m on the bus, and the guy next to me seems to be riding only because it provides him a captive audience so he can preach about Jesus. If his mother had beat him more often, or less often, or the same amount but also taught him what the word “douchebag” means, we could have avoided this awful incident in which I had to smother him to death myself on the floor of the bus.

Don’t get me wrong; I like Jesus. He’s a philanthropist, he has a fantastic beard, and he’s agreed to wait until after I’m dead to imprison me in a fiery pit of hell. He’s a heck of a nice guy, so I can understand why people would want to spread the word about him. However, this guy on the bus smells like a dog’s butt, and appears to have confused gay people with zombies. Gays are contagious? How many buckets of cocaine does a mother have to ingest during pregnancy to produce a kid dumb enough to confuse gay people with sneezes? Gays aren’t contagious, they’re just trending really hard right now.

Thanks for making sure I didn’t turn out that dumb, mom. Much appreciated.

Another example showed itself this morning. I was walking to the train station and a driver got tired of waiting for pedestrians to finish using the crosswalk. Rather than slowly inching his car through the crowd, he slammed on the gas and nearly ran us all over. Being the good citizen I am (thanks to a mother who taught me well), I instantly knew the right thing to do. I turned and gave him the finger. He saw it in his rear-view mirror, slammed on the brakes, and leaned out of his car window and screamed, “Do you want a piece of me?!”

Naturally, I ran like hell. Don’t judge. I weigh 150 pounds. Sometimes the wind knocks me over. The point is that this guy was an asshole, and he wasn’t born that way. He was likely sculpted into an asshole by his uncaring mother’s neglect. I’m sure he’ll drive to her house this Sunday, running over a baker’s dozen worth of pedestrians along the way, and then lay on the horn, lean out his car window and shout “Happy Mother’s Day, bitch!” before driving back home and spending the rest of the day cleaning bloody hair out of the grill of his car.

Some people may note that everyone is a jerk occasionally. I couldn’t agree more. We all have our moments. I once stabbed a little girl with a sword. But I’m pretty sure people who attempt vehicular homicide and then angrily shriek at the victim for not liking it don’t fall into that category. Thanks mom, for teaching me not to shout death threats at strangers whom I nearly murdered on purpose five seconds earlier. Much appreciated. If I had a gold star, I’d give it to you.

Our mothers are great, but in the interest of journalistic fairness, let’s take some time to also list ways in which our mothers could improve. First, they should send us more money. I know I’m 34 years old, but I live a very extravagant lifestyle. Second, they should stop leaving the toilet seat down. It’s bad feng shui. Finally, they should stop leaving incredibly upbeat comments on every one of our Facebook status updates. You’re scaring away all the hot babes, mom.

Fortunately, these flaws are a small price to pay for being sculpted into the brilliant, perfect citizen that I have become. Unlike my landlord, who in the two weeks since I’ve moved in has thought up at least five new types of deposits that he “forgot to tell me to pay”. His mother’s vagina must have been like a waterslide full of poison.

Make sure to thank your own mother this weekend for not making you a psychopath. I know there aren’t a lot of cards at the 99-cent store that express those exact feelings, but just give her a call and say, “Hey mom, thanks for not being a douchebag.” Then quickly hang up the phone before she realizes it’s your voice on the answering machine and tries to pick up the phone to talk to you.

I’ve been writing this detestable column for nearly 11 years, and I can’t count the number of people I’ve offended. I’ve gleefully responded to so many angry letters to the editor that almost every easily offended person in this region has completely given up on writing them. The only angry letters I get these days are from summertime tourists, and even those are few and far between.

The reason I’m given a free pass isn’t because I’ve toned down the content over the years or provided something of value along with the filth. Quite the opposite. I take great care to make sure my writing contains no discernible value, and I post curse words like “shit” and “fuck” more than ever these days. My columns also provide a horrific amount of graphic sexual descriptions. Have you ever seen an elderly woman with three penises in her mouth? You have now, because I just made you imagine that scene in your head. Her skin is so wrinkly!

The reason no one writes angry letters to me anymore is because it’s no fun picking on someone who enjoys the negative attention. That’s the key to offensive humor. The easy part is offending people. The tough part is calmly standing behind your humor when the angry mob comes with their pitchforks.

Last week the Star Tribune – ever desperate for a “controversial” story to keep people from forgetting they exist – published an article about a satirical map of Minneapolis that caused a minor stir online. This map labeled neighborhoods in the metro region based on stereotypes. Neighborhoods in North Minneapolis were marked as “Compton of the North” and “Too scary to investigate”.

Apparently, that’s offensive and worthy of an article in a major metropolitan newspaper. Yet this column you’re reading right now, in which I describe a dog fellating itself to completion on the hood of a bright red 1987 Trans-Am, will receive no such treatment. I’m a grown man, so it wouldn’t be right for me to don a whiny voice and claim it’s not fair, but for the record, it’s totally not fair.

To its credit, the map of offensive stereotypes quickly worked its magic, spreading feverishly on Facebook and getting a lot of squares riled up. But then the author of the map ruined everything with a few simple words. From the Star Tribune article: “The local mapmaker said in a phone interview that her intent was not to offend, but to show how people stereotype unfamiliar neighborhoods.”

Oh, come now. You don’t think anyone’s buying that, do you? I haven’t seen a pile of shit that deep since some kid lit fireworks near a horse at the city’s Fourth of July parade. The author created the map because she thought it was funny. And it was mildly funny until she gave the naysayers every bit of ammo in the world by backing down and pretending she was creating some sort of educational conversation starter. The haters ended up winning, and the author looked like a doofus.

The correct response to the reporter would have been this: “I created it because I felt it was funny. Humor is subjective, but there’s little harm in it. If people were concerned about spreading stereotypes, then turning it into a mainstream news story wasn’t the best approach.”

There. Done. The small group of very loud naysayers would have continued to make a fuss, but not many people would have been listening to them anymore. Nothing kills a news story like a little bit of rationality.

Alternatively, if the author enjoys negative attention like I do, she also could have responded to the reporter with this: “I created it because it’s funny. The people claiming this harmed their neighborhood or way of life need to find a job or hobby. Being angry on the internet doesn’t count as either.”

This would have riled up the haters even more, but who cares? How hard is it to ignore internet commenters? Within a week, the angry mob would have gotten bored of the lack of responses from the author and found some new holy crusade to give them a boner.

The key to battling stereotypes, much like the key to battling irrationally angry internet people, is to laugh it off. If you don’t get upset by stereotypes, people are much less likely to believe them. They’ll see you as a mature, educated person who doesn’t fit the stereotype. But if you get upset and throw a fit, they’ll think to themselves, “Jesus, it must be true if that guy’s getting so worked up about it.”

For instance, the other day I heard someone say that white people all smell like mayonnaise. That’s a fantastic stereotype. If I wanted to get rid of it (which I don’t – it’s great! ), then throwing a fit wouldn’t help. Perhaps those upset by North Minneapolis stereotypes should take similar advice.

Or they could just start a race riot and loot their own neighborhood. Please send your angry letters care of:

Reader Weekly
P.O. Box 16122
Duluth, MN 55816

Step 2: Lug the couch up to the fourth floor of your building, cracking a few of your vertebrae in the process. If you don’t hurt yourself, you’re doing it wrong and should probably start over.

Step 3: Once you get to your floor, think of how fun it would be to push the couch down the stairs while riding on top of it. It would be really fun, wouldn’t it? Try it out, then repeat step 2.

Step 4: Use super glue to repair all four legs of the couch, which broke when you crash landed into the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

Step 4b (optional): Visit the emergency room and have yourself checked for a concussion. Save valuable time by having them pop your dislocated shoulder back into its socket in the same visit.

Step 5: While the super glue on the couch legs is drying, drink seven or eight beers.

Step 6: For the first time ever, measure the width of your door and the width of your couch. Obviously, it will not fit. Curse loudly.

Step 7: Remove the feet from the couch and measure again. Obviously, it still won’t fit. Shout angrily at the couch, as if it has feelings.

Step 8: Take out a screwdriver and attempt to remove your apartment door from its hinges.

Step 9: After ten seconds, announce out loud to no one in particular how boring this task is, and then discard your screwdriver and get another beer.

Step 10: Drunkenly forget where you put the screwdriver, and instead try to undo the screws with your apartment key.

Step 11: Congratulations! All the screwheads are now completely stripped and impossible to remove! Use a saw to cut off the door hinges instead.

Step 12: Measure the door again. Realize the couch still won’t fit, even with the door removed from its hinges. Curse loudly.

Step 13: Take a break and watch reruns of The Golden Girls for two hours. After all that hard work, you’ve earned it!

Step 14: It’s now three in the morning, so it’s time to get back to work. Search the internet for tips on how to remove your door frame, because that’s a thing, right? Yeah, I’ll bet that’s totally a thing someone did once to make a couch fit.

Step 15: Since you don’t have a drywall knife, use your apartment key to pry off the door frame.

Step 16: Shout angrily as you break off the end of your apartment key.

Step 17: Super glue your apartment key back together. Drink six more beers.

Step 18: Knock on your elderly next door neighbor’s door and proudly show her how you super glued your key back together. She doesn’t speak much English and seems very angry that a drunken honkey woke her up at 4am, but don’t let that dampen your enthusiasm.

Step 19: Test out your poorly-glued apartment key in the door you removed earlier. Curse loudly as the end of the key breaks off in the lock.

Step 20: After 20 minutes of trying to get the end of the key out, accept that the excess super glue has hardened inside the door lock forever, and realize that it doesn’t really matter anyway since you sawed the door off its hinges.

Step 21: Take a break and watch reruns of Saved by the Bell for two hours. After all that hard work, you’ve earned it!

Step 22: It’s now six in the morning, so you should probably drink another case of beer to keep your energy up.

Step 23: Duct tape all your credit cards together and use them to force the rest of the door frame out of the wall. Don’t worry about little details like how terrible it looks, how impossible it will be to put back in or how little skill you have in remodeling such an important part of your residence.

Step 24: Wave casually to your landlord as she passes, leaning against the door in a manner that hides the horrible, lease-violating damage you’ve caused.

Step 25: Measure the gaping hole where your door used to be, and then measure the couch.

Step 26: Curse loudly as you realize the goddamn thing is still three inches short of fitting into the apartment.

Step 27: Take a break and vomit ferociously onto your building’s fire escape.

Step 28: Take a break from vomiting and watch reruns of Hollywood Squares. After all that hard work, you’ve earned it!

Step 29: When a stoned guy from down the hall starts asking inane questions, invite him inside. Spend the next 12 hours watching TV and getting high. Completely forget that you have no door or door frame in your apartment, and are completely exposed to anyone who would like to steal your belongings or rape you.

Step 30: Wake up at 3pm and immediately pass out again after seeing the gaping hole where your front door used to be.

Step 31: Wake up at 4pm to find that someone much smarter and less alcoholic than you has stolen your couch from the hallway. Problem solved! The couch is now “moved”. Where it has moved is still a mystery, but it’s close enough.

Step 32: Visit Home Depot’s parking lot and hire illegal immigrants to fix your door frame.

Step 33: Realize that the price illegal immigrants charge is almost as expensive as paying a licensed contractor to do the same job. In retaliation, refuse to buy your illegal workers lunch. Watch as they revolt, damaging your apartment even worse and stealing your other furniture.

Step 34: Stealthily move out of your apartment in the middle of the night before your landlord notices the damage. Change your legal name to “Thad Swivensbee” to avoid being taken to court.

Congratulations! Your new couch is now installed . . . somewhere. Whatever. It’s close enough. Right? Totally. Mission accomplished, or something.

I don’t know what you did, but nature sucks balls now. I hope you’re happy, because I’m not buying you a new planet or celebrating your failures with a pretend holiday. If Earth Day celebrations involved more liquor, I’d consider celebrating your failures. Hell, I celebrate mine every year on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s great! But Earth Day? There would have to be some blue ribbon ladies there.

Hold up, reader. I’m hearing reports that an employee at the zoo french kissed a penguin. That shit has consequences, so you might be off the hook. I need to investigate. If I could ask everyone to please stay perfectly motionless for the next few weeks, it will help me rule out other possibilities and see if tonguing a penguin causes snow in April.

Okay, one of you moved. I’m going to ask again that everyone please stay frozen in place until I figure out this penguin makeout shit. It shouldn’t be hard to stay frozen in place. It’s cold as balls outside.

Yes, I know this isn’t the first time we’ve seen snow in April, but has it ever snowed this much? I’m pretty stoned right now, so I’m far too dazed to look it up on a computer. There’s too many keys. It’s very intimidating. All I know is everything is backwards, and one of you fat bastards is to blame. I don’t even live in Minnesota anymore, so you can’t pin this on me. Man up, reader.

This late snowstorm – tentatively caused by readers of this column and/or anonymous penguin fuckers – is even affecting me all the way across the country. For Christ’s sake, it was 57 degrees here in California today. In April! I had to wear a light jacket. In April! Also, the wind messed up my hair and I just didn’t feel like myself the rest of the day. Shit’s rough out here, reader.

I say we all start launching babies into the atmosphere to plug up the hole in the ozone layer. Would that work? No? Even though their souls are pure? Well, shit. What about bananas? They’re not natural to our climate, and their presence may be causing mystical disruptions. Better safe than sorry. Throw them all out. Also, if you order pineapple as a topping on your pizza, cut it the hell out. You’re pissing off the Earth. Pineapples grow in strategic locations for a reason, asshole.

No, I don’t think the legalization of gay marriage is causing the weather changes. Covering us with a thick layer of wet white stuff seems a little too “on the nose” for Mother Nature. Most punishments from her tend to be a bit more subtle.

Greenhouse gases? An overabundance of carbon monoxide? Deforestation? I guess these things might be causing snow in April, but I really enjoy wasting gasoline, eating fast food and killing trees so I can print my asinine opinions on the hardened skin of their corpses, so let’s ignore these possibilities for now.

Also, please note that we’re not killing these trees just to print my cleverly arranged curse words. This newspaper is also an excellent way for people to find out when Keystone Light will be on sale.

We need a plan, reader. My first suggestion is to turn Earth Day into Universe Day. Instead of environmentalists, we’ll become universalists. That way we can continue to trash the hell out of this planet and still feel like we’re holding up most of the deal. When people point to our endless landfills and toxic waste dumps, we can say, “Yeah man, but check out Jupiter. That shit is clean.”

My second suggestion is to stay positive and pretend everything is normal. This plan has been field tested for years and is proven to work wonderfully. The polar ice caps are melting? Call up the bottled water companies. The world’s panda bears are dying? Sounds delicious. Open a restaurant. Children are developing asthma at an alarming rate? That’s natural selection. Kids are evolving so parents will always know where they are from the wheezing sound.

My final suggestion is to get off our asses and actually change the way we live. Nobody likes this option, so let’s just skip it. If it means not buying Pop Tarts because they have two forms of packaging – a cardboard box and foil wrappers – then you can all go to hell. Also, that bread with the cinnamon swirls in it that has double plastic wrapping? That shit is way more important than my grandchildren’s future.

Problem solved? Problem solved.

I believe Chuck Taylor All-Stars are purposely designed to be uncomfortable so only cool young people can wear them.

I don’t believe Michael Ian Black drinks Sierra Mist. A fourth kind of watered down ginger ale? C’mon Michael, you’re not fooling anyone.

I believe that all birds are jerks, and most of them are bigots.

When I ask employees at Carl’s Jr if they’re aware that their restaurants are called Hardee’s in the Midwest, and they tell me that they know, I believe they’re lying and just don’t want to continue an obviously boring conversation with me.

I believe blondes have less fun. In my experience, they put out a lot less than brunettes.

I believe 99 percent of the world’s problems occur because poor people aren’t willing to stand up for themselves. They’re able, just not willing.

I believe Peter Dinklage is actually quite tall, and the whole “little people” thing is just an Andy Kaufman style gag.

I don’t believe panda bears actually exist. Every time I see pandas at the zoo, they look fake.

I believe that the moment I find a way to be truly content in life, I’ll be able to enjoy it for 30 seconds before I’m mauled by a velociraptor.

I believe The Beatles were lying when they said “all you need is love”. You also need a TV to fill in the awkward silences.

I believe deodorant and cologne/perfume should be the same product. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told a girl that she smells nice, only to get the reply, “I’m not wearing perfume. Maybe it’s my deodorant?” It’s very awkward. I usually just leave the building whenever it happens.

There sure are a lot of conspiracies about deodorant in this column. I believe that may be a conspiracy as well.

I don’t believe all world governments are controlled by lizard people, but I do believe lizard people would do a much better job than us.

I don’t believe members of Skull and Bones – the secretive fraternity at Yale University – join so they can someday control the world. I’m pretty sure they join for the same reason poor people join a fraternity: Because they’re ugly and need extra help to get laid.

I believe that Disney CEO Robert Iger keeps Annette Funicello’s boobs preserved in a glass display case in his house. The maid is not allowed to clean them. He prefers to polish them himself.

I believe car washes use a special kind of soap that looks terrible 48 hours later so you’ll come back and wash it again.

I believe that 99 percent of over the counter medications are placebos. I also believe that 97 percent of over the counter medications are made from ground-up dog penises. A homeless man told me that last one, and I choose to believe him.

I believe that every time I undergo anesthesia at the dentist’s office, a minimum of 12 people will touch my penis without permission.

I believe baseball is purposely slow moving to weed out annoying people who come to sporting events with their face/chest painted. It seems to be working so far, and I’m grateful for it.

I believe the color pink was invented just to annoy me.

I believe graffiti and this column are the last forms of commentary that are free from corporate meddling. Well, that and AOL! Everyone should give AOL all their moneys and personal informations!

I believe that people who wish other people “good morning” are just assholes who say things for the sake of saying things.

I believe Paul Ryan’s Ramblings columns are a collection of clever lies and exaggerations to get people to think he’s more exciting than he is in real life. I don’t believe it’s working.

You’re now $300 short of the amount you’ll need to pay the deposit on your new apartment. You can’t sell stuff online, because Paypal takes 3-5 days to deposit money into your account, and the apartment will be rented by someone else by then. You can’t ask your friends for a loan, because nobody you’ve ever met in person particularly likes you. You can’t beg your parents for a loan because they live in Minnesota, and a check from them would take 2-4 days to arrive by mail.

Also, we’re pretty sure your parents don’t like you, either. You’re 33 years old, unmarried, and have a large collection of toy figurines. It’s clear that they merely tolerate you.

There is only one path to success, Agent Ryan. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be a douche. An impossible douche. A Mission: Impossible douche. Douche it up, and you shall get the apartment you desire. Play it honest, and you’ll instead find yourself drinking pee in the back of a camper that’s parked in the middle of the ghetto.

Some might argue that living in Koreatown is pretty much the same as drinking pee in the back of a camper, but we digress.

Our intel has informed us that your current landlord is a lazy twat, and has not yet cashed your last month’s rent check. So that money is still in your account. She usually cashes checks on Friday afternoon. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take out a money order for the new apartment’s deposit before your old landlord cashes your rent check. The $300 of overdraft charges from that rent check will then go onto your overdraft credit card with a mere $15 fee.

What? You already accepted the mission when I mentioned it two paragraphs ago? Well that seems rather hasty. What if your mission had been to eat poop? What if I had pooped in an ice cream cone and handed it to you? I don’t make these long, explanatory recordings for fun, Agent Ryan. You’re supposed to choose them because you like them. This isn’t a Pakistani wedding, damn it.

Look, I’m not going to argue with you, sweetheart. You do whatever you want. Just don’t blame me when you end up walking through Compton dressed in a poorly constructed Aunt Jemima costume, or punching a toddler to death in a Korean How I Met Your Mother themed amusement park. I’m just looking out for you here.

Back to the mission. This will not be an easy task, Agent Ryan. Mainly because you’re lazy and forgetful, and will probably walk around all day like an asshole saying “Wasn’t there something I was supposed to do today?” Then at 4pm, you’ll remember and it will be too late. Do you remember Patrice’s birthday, Agent Ryan? Do you?! She was a wonderful dog, and you didn’t buy her any gifts.

What were we talking about again? Ah yes, the mission. Which mission again? I make a lot of these tapes. An unreasonable number of them, actually. We have hundreds of agents working every day, so I pretty much just spend my entire life in this little room recording tapes. And the tapes always self-destruct at the end. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother, to be honest.

Yes, it does get lonely down here sometimes. I once used a red marker to draw a pair of lips on my hand, and then I . . . well, it’s not important. Have you ever attempted to make love to a mini fridge, Agent Ryan? No, you’re right. That’s probably not an appropriate question to ask an agent. By the way, are you in a relationship? Do you have a picture of your girlfriend that I could keep?

Hey Lenny, what’s the score of the Louisville game? 6-2? Well, I guess I asked a little too early then. Keep me updated, Agent CBS.

What’s that, Agent Ryan? The mission? Yes, the mission! Let’s finish that. Just a question first: Why does taking out a money order from your own bank account need to involve the spy agency? Is this mission really using our resources well? Next are we going to spend millions of dollars on a mission where an agent is asked to check his own e-mail or flush the toilet after using it?

All right, fine. No one wants advice from ol’ Clarence. I’ll just sit here making tapes by myself. Maybe the next one will have a deep cut from John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band on it. Carry on. This message – which I have lovingly crafted despite the appreciation of no one at this spy agency – will self destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Agent Ryan.

The tape self destructs as the song “Higher Ground” plays.

“Hello, Satan’s Dildo Emporium. How may I help you? I’m just kidding, it’s Jesus! Hello? Anyone there? Really, I’m Jesus Christ. It was just a gag. Hello? Ma’am? Oh boy. I’m probably gonna get an earful about that one later.”

Jesus hangs up. The phone immediately rings again. Jesus answers.

“Hello, Jesus speaking. How may I help you? Yes, I placed the Craigslist ad selling a futon. No, I’m not really interested in ‘unique trades’. Why the hell would I want to trade my futon for another futon? Sir, while I appreciate that your futon comes with your ‘whorish wife’, I’m going to have to pass. Make it your teenage daughter and I might reconsider. Thanks anyway.”

Jesus hangs up. The phone immediately rings again. Jesus answers.

“Hello, Jesus speaking. How may I help you? No, I can’t force more people to ride bicycles instead of driving. Well, have you ever driven a car? They’re friggin’ awesome. I can play Foghat 8-tracks in my car. Can I play them on your bicycle? I can’t, can I? Answer me, goddamn it! I asked you a question! Yeah, that’s right, you can’t play Foghat 8-tracks on a bike. Yeah. Enjoy being all sweaty when you get to work each morning. Yeah, bye dickface.”

Jesus hangs up. The phone immediately rings again. Jesus answers.

“Hello, Jesus speaking. How may I help you? No, we don’t have KIVA bars. I mean, I have some, but they’re for me. I think you meant to call the marijuana dispensary. It’s one number off from this number. Who am I? I’m Jesus Christ, your Lord and savior. Yes, I’m completely serious. Yes, I imagine this is quite embarrassing for you. No worries, though. I see everything you do anyway. All right. Yep, snootchie bootchies to you too.”

Jesus hangs up. The phone immediately rings again. Jesus answers.

“Hello, Jesus speaking. How may I help you? Yes, I’m aware of the screen freezing problem with Skyrim. There’s nothing I can really do about it. It’s Bethesda’s video game, so they have to fix it. I know. Yes, I know. No, I don’t know how to get past the waterfall level in Contra. I think it’s pretty much impossible. I know, right? The damn screen keeps moving, so you can’t even stop for a second. I gave up after my hands got tired from trying so many times. Yeah, well wish into one hand and crap into the other. All right, bye.”

Jesus hangs up. The phone immediately rings again. Jesus answers.

“Hello, Jesus speaking. How may I help you? You want winter to go away? Last fall you were praying for snow. You begged me for snow, Billy. You wanted to go sledding and build a snowman. You wanted a foot of snow so you wouldn’t have to go to elementary school the next day. Now you want the opposite? Well, fuck you Billy. Jesus is tired and it’s 4:30pm, so you can go to hell. No, not literally. It’s just a thing people say. All right, I’ll give Billy Graham a high-five . . . though it’s kinda tough since he’s in hell. What? Nothing. Never mind. Gotta go.”

Jesus hangs up. The phone immediately rings again. Jesus answers.

“Hello, Jesus speaking. How may I help you? All right, I’ve had enough with this college basketball crap. If I get one more call about Final Four teams, I’ll make Gonzaga lose to a #9 seed as punishment. Oh, you think I can’t do that? I can do that. I’m God, I can do anything. Sigh. No, I can’t get past the waterfall level in Contra either. I was talking to this other guy about it, and we think it’s pretty much impossible. I know, right?! The damn screen just keeps moving! It’s terrible. It’s just awful. Not as bad as Battletoads, but close. All right, well good luck.”

Jesus hangs up. The phone immediately rings again. Jesus answers.

“Hello, Jesus speaking. How may I help you? All right. Just this once. Try 43, 17, 23, 37, 51 and 2. Keep in mind, that’s just off the top of my head, so it might not win the full Powerball, but you’ll at least get a few hundred out of it. And don’t spread this around, okay? I’m just doing it for you because I like Asian people best. That’s why I made so many of them. No problem.”

Jesus hangs up. The phone immediately rings again. Jesus answers.

“Hello, Jesus speaking. How may I help you? Yes, I’m aware of Paul Ryan’s recent column about me. Yes, I’m aware that he’s blasphemous and breaks at least seven of the ten commandments on an hourly basis. That’s why I made him diabetic and impotent. He will eventually drown in a puddle of his own tears, or possibly from eating a cookie. However, there are ways you could use his vulgarities for good. For instance, why not write a long, rambling letter to the editor – longer than the very column you’re addressing – in which you quote seventeen paragraphs of scripture that will make people instantly stop reading? That would show him a thing or two, and would certainly keep him from writing another column mocking me. Great, thanks! Can’t wait to see it.”

That said, the one benefit of having everything in your life be a horrible, horrible mistake is that you can provide excellent advice on how not to do things. With that in mind, may I present Paul Ryan’s guide to finding a new apartment.

Step one: Drink heavily
Finding a new apartment is like getting laid: You have to drastically lower your expectations if you want to actually be happy with the options that are in your league. So grab a bottle of whiskey and don’t stop drinking until that 200 square foot studio apartment in the middle of the ghetto looks sexy.

Step two: Murder all of your current roommates
If you’re between the ages of 1 and 120, you’re officially too old to have a roommate. However, people are cheap, so your friends will likely try their hardest to join in on your apartment hunt. This is unacceptable. Life is difficult enough without other people eating your food, drinking your soda and contaminating your heroin syringes with various letter-graded forms of hepatitis. Tell them to go to hell. This is your apartment, and you can’t have other people mucking it up. Since you’ve already gotten yourself liquored up, this awkward confrontation should be much easier than usual.

Step three: Stumble drunkenly around a neighborhood where you’d like to live.
Sure, you could find an apartment through Craigslist or paid websites, but everyone does that. And with your horrible credit rating, you really can’t afford the competition. But do you know what no one does? Gets drunk and stumbles around a neighborhood searching for listings that are off the grid. A 2012 study I made up found that nearly 89 percent of landlords are illiterate baboons who refuse to acknowledge that the internet exists. Take advantage of that.

Not only will these landlords put up with your increasingly worrisome drinking problem, they’ll probably put up with lots of other things, like the large collection of bottles you’ll leave strewn around the hallways of the building, often times with you passed out and still holding them. Such a landlord will also likely put up with the angry booing that comes from your apartment when you see a celebrity on TV that you dislike, or the loud arguments that occur when your girlfriend realizes you rented an apartment that is infested with bedbugs.

Step four: Drink heavily
All that walking around probably sobered you up. That’s no way to go through life, son. Get back on that horse.

Step five: Check for bedbugs
You can tell an apartment has bedbugs by the black streaks on the floor, left by the previous tenant’s sneakers when he sprinted out of the unit while tearing up his lease. You can also tell because your immigrant neighbors will often shout “Los diablo de insectos!” as the landlord is showing you the place.

If you find yourself in a bedbug infested apartment, the most effective way of getting rid of them is to strip naked, set the entire building on fire with all your possessions in it, and then sprint to the nearest car wash and run through it backwards. In fact, that’s pretty much the only way to get rid of them. They’re the reason everyone hates New Yorkers.

Step six: Drink heavily
What started as a clever scheme to lower your inhibitions and find you a slutty apartment have now turned into a legitimate substance abuse problem. USA! USA! USA!

Step seven: Depressed and defeated, have a nervous breakdown and sign a lease for an overpriced dump so you can move on with your terrible life
Who gives a shit? Who cares if it sucks! I’m tired of this running around bullshit! If I have to view one more apartment where the pictures posted were completely fake and the rent jumped up $200 because two people applied for it, then I’m gonna start cutting myself. Just give me whatever’s available that doesn’t have a mountain of drama attached to it. I don’t care where it’s located or how many people in the building listen to rap music, just move my stuff in so I can live my damn life again.

Step eight: Drink until you’re dead
God knows you’ve earned it.