I'd like to start this column off by making a clarification. I just want to say that Allison doesn’t have any back acne at all (reference to a quote from last week). It is the potential for it that keeps her up at night. However it is, at this point in her life, a wholly unjustified fear.

The "sell by" date is bullshit. This is, of course, in regard to foodstuffs. Who the fuck cares about the "sell by" date? I care about the expiration date. That is what I need in order to gauge potential consumptability. Sell by=salt of my balls.

I was opening the Val Pak coupon book envelope thing, sorting through my bounty, and as I came across the obligatory "mail away advertisement for stickers with your name on them," I asked my housemate (Megan) if she wanted some stickers with her name on them? She said, "Really? There are stickers in there with my name on them?" I couldn’t stop laughing, even as it came to a one-sided exchange (oxymoron) of fisticuffs over my insuppressible giggles.

Megan had a friend over and we were all having a cigarette and Megan mentioned something about Cat Power and her friend said that she had a Cat Power cover of Wonderwall. So I announce that I have a cover of Malkmus doing Wonderwall. She says "who?" So that is a red flag right there. Then I tell her he's only the lead singer of the greatest band of all time, Pavement. Then she says, "Oh, Pavement. Right. They're just like Tool, right?" To which I felt the extreme urge to ask her to leave my house.

Neverending Math Equation: When you are driving down the highway, road trip style, and you see these gas station/fast food restaurant towns off the freeway, don’t you ever sort of trip at the couple hundred people that live there? Some of these towns have populations into the thousands. Bert and I were trippin on this when we were driving up to Seattle when we realized that even if the percentages are below the national averages, even in these dirt road hick towns, there have to be at least a couple of hot chicks per town. So we reasoned a verbal equation that was something like: For a town of 500 people, 250 are women. While on average there might be as many as 50 hineys out of 250 (LA/NYC averages), even in these little towns there must be at least 10 physically attractive females out of 250 women. And yet it is weird to think that these towns would have 'em, but they must. So if the town had a population of 1000, that means there must be at least 20 attractive females. As we drove, we would look to see the town population sizes so we could calculate how many hineys were in a given town. Good times...

The 3 levels of intimacy: the first is when you can burp in front of your lady. The second is a 2-parter, with the order depending on the guy's comfort-factor: peeing in front of your lady (then, later, on her, a natural progression) and farting in front of your lady (farting on your lady may never go over well--though it is in our nature to try the "tent" move at least once (usually once is all we need to confirm that we shouldn’t do that)). The third part is when you are truly in love, you can show her your poo (when it is an exceptionally noteworthy poo, not to be confused with a daily "check out my poo"). The rules/order may be a bit different in other countries due to cultural differences (e.g., people in England don’t fart at all, it is "rude").

At the risk of having this column snowball into another fartfest, I gotta say that I recently had a conversation with Erin that was motivated by a rather impressive fart of mine. I was talking about how one can control the pitch, tone, and duration of their fart, and she said that she had no idea about that. She said that she has no control over these things in her farts. Is this a boy/girl difference? A matter of--if you will pardon the pun--fine-tuned practice?

Funyuns=vegetable serving?

I didn’t know, before this semester, that the Pink Triangle comes from the patches that the Nazis made homosexuals wear during The Holocaust (in the same way that they made the Jews wear Star of David patches).

If Higgins ever took the Ferrari away from Magnum (as he so often threatened), Magnum would have had to get a part-time job or something and save up to buy a used car.

Have you ever played one of those "agree/disagree" games? Someone reads a statement and all the people in the room move toward the designated side for agreeing or disagreeing based on their personal belief with regard to the statement. So I was thinking, what we should do is make the whole country play the "agree/disagree" game. The Westside would be "agree" and the Eastside would be "disagree." I would read the statement: "Gays and lesbians deserve the right to get married as much as anyone else." Then, after everyone goes to their respective corner, I would build a giant brick wall right down the middle of the country.

Clip art sucks.

Men's Bathroom=Fart Safe Zone. You can't be made to feel uncomfortable for farting in the men's bathroom. I don’t know what kind of rules women have about this, but that's how it works for the dudes.

So normally I rock the Shower Clean scented Degree. But just about every time I go into Walgreens to reup on the deodorant I am always transfixed by the plethora of new and alluring-titled scents available by Degree. So like a total jackass I stand there and open each one, screw it up enough to be able to pop off the "protective plastic cap," and then smell each. Other exciting flavors include Sport (which I pass on cuz it smells like Brut Faberge), Powder Fresh (which smells like baby powder and I do like, but I think is a bit feminine--plus the colorway of Powder Fresh is pink, which tells me that it is indeed a "girlie" deodorant (ew)), Mountain Something (no comment), and Cool Rush and Cool Breeze. Here is where it gets tricky. One of those 2 is okay. The other sucks. I'd have to go down to Walgreens to be able to decipher which is which.

Sometimes I find drunken notes for things that I thought of and wanted to write about. Sometimes when I look at them days later, I have no fucking idea what I was thinking (I mean, I have no idea what the notes mean). Normally I just let them go, but I will throw out the note for this one just cuz it sounds fascinating and I wish I knew what it meant: with or without clothes on.

A little bit of lemon makes restaurant tap water go a long way. That's totally how I would do it at my restaurant. But it is still tap water; you just can't taste the tap (tap=rust and chlorine) as much.

Three Musketeers bars are one of my favorite candy bars. When I eat them, I usually like to nibble at least 2 of the 4 long edges of chocolate off before moving on to eating the remaining portion (lengthwise). I was hanging out with Mikey the other day and I was eating a Three Musketeers in the aforementioned style and he said, "Wow, you eat your Three Musketeers like a carrot." Vegetable confusion=good times.

Prosciutto is so fetch.

So I just met Benzo's new lady, who is from Finland. We were talking and Ben, who had just visited her in Finland, was bragging about how, while there, he had eaten Reindeer (double big deal since Benzo is one of those damn pescatarians). I was like wow dude. He said that his lady made it too (which also helps explain Benzo having eaten Reindeer). I said I'd never heard of Reindeer before and asked her where does one get Reindeer from. She said, "up north." Duh. Where the fuck else would people get Reindeer from? Good times.

by Justin