PRONOUNCING CHILE CORRECTLY

We get it. You’re amazingly well traveled. You speak four languages. You actually write in your diary. You have a serape from Papua New Guinea draped over your couch below masks from Mozambique. You went on semester-at-sea in high school. Your dad is a missionary, but a cool one, not a creepy one. You actually saved a whale once. At some point you'll open a hostel in Costa Rica where you'll teach yoga. You think Eurail passes are for pussies. You’ve developed your immunity so you can drink the water in the Okavango Delta. You made your own sling thing to hold your baby. Your baby is half African. You once wore a Patagonia jacket in Patagonia. 98% of your facebook photos are shots of food you’ve eaten outside the United States. 12% of your facebook friends don’t speak English. You once made it from Portland to Cape Horn on a bike for only $6 a day. You’ve seen Like Water for Chocolate nine times. You've seen Dodgeball zero times. You also think The Amazing Race is for pussies. You don’t have a TV. But if you did, you’d only watch Frontline. We get it. You’re sucking the marrow out of life. And that’s awesome. Just don’t say freakin’ Cheelay. 

THE DAILY RECOMMENDED AMOUNT OF WATER

In order to consume the daily recommended amount of water you’d have to drink a glass every 4 minutes for 24 straight hours. You’d have to make a neck strap for your laptop to do work in front of the toilet. You’d have to buy a really good straw, for snorting Flomax. You’d have to wear a camel back and a camel front. You’d have to trade in your water bottle in for a water bucket. You’d have to sleep with Depends under your wet suit. If just 5% of the world drank the recommended daily amount of water we’d have to melt more polar ice caps. Those are better if read in Bob Hope’s voice.

Checking yourself out in the mirror at the gym

Nothing cheeses me off more than when a guy can't stop eye-banging himself in the mirror while I'm trying to isolate my glutes. Some of us are at the gym to actually work out. To us, the mirror is an important tool, like a jump rope or a stability ball. We need it to focus on our technique in order to prevent injury and maximize our intensity training. To these tools, it's a personal buffet featuring a wide array of themselves for which to feast on. If these guys weren't so huge I'd tell them to get back in their corvettes and head to the local singles bar where they can stare at themselves in the mirror while sipping mojitos. Freakin' posers. It's almost enough to spoil my post-workout smoothie. Theses guys make me sick. I say guys because I'm not sure if women are guilty of the infraction. I'm too busy checking out their expertly sculpted buns.

Aaron Neville's Mullet

DANTE CONDOR'S LIFE DECISIONS

Dear Dante, there’s certainly nothing wrong with being a bathroom janitor. Cleaning up other people’s shit is what most of us do for a living every day. It’s a whole lot more honorable than being a celebrity lawyer or blood diamond merchant or Donald Trump. There’s absolutely no shame in it. Unless your name is Dante Condor. Then it’s time to aim much, much higher. You’re Dante Freakin Condor, man. Just saying your name makes me feel like I could punch through a brick wall with my face. You should be saving defenseless women in dark allies or threatening to fire a missile at the world from SpaceLab Dante IV unless they hand over Fort Knox and Hawaii. Whichever way you want to go, it’s yours for the taking. I’ll even be your sidekick. I could be Andre Falcon or Eagle Steve or something. You’re right, I’m not bad-ass enough. I’ll be your wise butler slash father figure. Who knows, maybe you’re working up to things, filling out your back-story, creating solid alibis. Or maybe you’re leading a double life, but then you wouldn’t use your real name but maybe your real name is even more awesome. Who am I kidding, it can’t get any more awesome. Listen Dante, sorry, Mr. Condor, this is only chapter one. How the remainder of your epic tale unfolds is up to you. That being said, when I have extra time on my hands I sit at home, blast Motorhead and think about what you should be doing instead of cleaning bathrooms. Here are a few:

-Barracuda rancher

-Ballet Dancing Assassin

-The man who finally tracks down and kills Santa

-The man who actually saves the whales through the most human of all tactics, vengeance

-Electrify the fashion world by creating pleated pants that gay men actually want to wear

-Hollywood super-agent who resurrects Steve Guttenberg’s career.

-Sarah Palin’s fluffer

-Parlay your Mr. Universe title into a lucrative action-movie career that helps you meet and marry a beautiful and highly connected TV news personality which propels you to become governor of California where you cripple the state with hilarious policies because you’re focused on a passionate love affair with your maid who has a heart of gold but ain’t too easy on the eyes which you don’t care because she bears you a child named Conan the Condor who goes on to be the fiercest Barracuda Rancher in all the land

-The first black, non-muslim president

-The first Guatemalan to score a basket in professional hoops

-Rhinestone cowboy

-Hard and/or soft-core porn director, writer and actor

Corporate Buzzword: Trousermeat

I’m sure you’ll agree that trousermeat is one of the most annoying corporate buzzwords to come down the pike in a long, long time. People think they’re so smart when they break it out. I can’t help but bight my lip when I hear a colleague say something like, “let’s drill down to the trousermeat” or, “we should embrace a more holistic approach to trousermeat,” or the absolute worst, “let’s just take the trousermeat as it comes.” So lame, right? I realize that moving at the speed of business requires vigorous, free-flowing discourse, but it usually ends up coming off so dry. You certainly don’t want the conversation to peter out before it begins, but why must we always climb on top of the same stiff, unimaginative language? I don’t know, it all gets a little hairy.

Vanity Plates on Children’s Bikes

Who the hell do some kids think they are? Not one kid in history has come even remotely close to earning this magnificent privilege. I know what you’re thinking–Webster–and you’re absolutely correct I forget about Webster. That's my bad. Besides Webster, no kid has done what it takes to rock a sweet, personalized identifier on their bike. And the ones that do have the balls, nay, the audacity to try to pull it off aren't even creative. It's always something super self-indulgent like “Kenneth” or “Amy” or “Dave.” I’m sorry Kenneth, when was it that you were knocking out 100-hour workweeks on Wall Street again? Oh that’s right, NEVER. I didn’t know you were a doctor, Amy. What med school did you go to? One that teaches you how to make crappy art with uncooked pasta and pennies? Never heard of that one. Where’d you do your residency? St. Bieber? Get out of my face. Let me throw a little hypothetical at you, Dr. Amy. My Gam Gam and I are walking down the street when she feels a little pain in her chest. She falls to the ground and you roll by in your little pink Dora the Explorer bike. Thank god, I think to myself, a vanity plate. I run over and ask you to save my sweet Nana and what do you do? You just stare at me like a dumbutt while MeeMaw dies before she’s gotten a chance to tell grandpa she’s been sleeping with the pool man for the past 40 years. So, not only do you kill Bubbe, you send her to hell. Awesome. Thanks. Listen, do us all a favor and lose the pretense until you’ve earned it. That’s all I’m saying. I don't think many of these plates are even registered with their local governments, but let's not get into that.