1  There is something so soul crushing about having to pay for guacamole at Chipotle.  You’re crafting the perfect burrito: red stuff, meat, white stuff, cheese, black beans (pinto beans are for plebes). Then the barista slides the tray towards the guacamole container.  He looks up, the words “that’s going to be an extra dollar fifty” waiting in his throat, expectedly, like a horse at the starting gate. 

    You try to imagine your perfect burrito, sans the guacamole.  It’s like imagining Bonnie without Clyde, or the movie Bonnie and Clyde without Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, or Fay Dunaway and Warren Beatty eating burritos at Chipotle without guacamole.  Burritos and guacamole belong together, and everyone knows it.  To separate the two is to separate the body from the soul. 

    So you look up, slightly ashamed at your pathetic attempt defy what every part of you is so desperately crying out for.  You don’t even have to say a word; the barista knows.  He takes that scooper and plops and nice fat dollop onto your burrito.  Balance has been restored to the universe.  You point to the sour cream, pay for your meal, and sit in a corner, nuzzling your creation, feeling satisfied, but cheated.

    You need that green stuff, and the bigwigs at the Chipotle headquarters know it.  They laugh at you as you try to resist. They bath themselves in guacamole; they use it as toothpaste.  They hire artists to paint murals of guacamole, using guacamole as paint.  And you can’t do a damn thing about it.  Chipotle might as well spike the salsa with laxatives and then charge extra for toilet paper.

    If I was rich I would free the world from paying an extra $1.50 for something that should be a fundamental right, not a paid privilege.  I would first hire the most renowned guacamole chefs, supply them with the freshest avocados and cilantro money could buy, and have them produce the most exquisite green stuff humanity has ever tasted.  I would then assemble a team of “guac ninjas,” station them in every urban populace with a Chipotle, and have them distribute free guacamole to Chipotle patrons.  No one should have to pay for guacamole, and anyone who says otherwise should be forced to eat a burrito without it.  A more horrible punishment I can think of not.

Before we grew old enough to determine whether we were attractive or hideous, smart or dimwitted, charismatic or socially moronic, we were all the same drooling, slightly chubby punks who ruined any of our parent’s chances at happiness.  Part of our shared childhood experience was pillow forts.  We gathered as many pillows as we could in order to construct fluffy castles and cozy spaceships.  Sometimes we would take refuge in our pillow fort when daddy was fighting with mommy, or when the Bindermans were over and icky sticky Theresa wanted you to play patty cake.

I never really outgrew pillow forts, I just became bored with the pillow fort’s lack of ambition.  It was like the kid in high school who started working at Pizza Hut and never left.  You can do better pillow fort. You have so much potential. There could be pillow fort theme parks, pillow fort islands, even pillow fort countries.

If I was rich I would build the world’s largest pillow fort.  Since there is no established record of the largest pillow fort, I will set my own goal: a 5,000 square foot pillow fort, complete with a pillow fort hotel, pillow fort rec center, pillow fort library, and pillow fort university.

This would be a dangerous undertaking.  At any moment the fort could collapse, leaving hundreds recovering from static electricity injuries.  Patrons of the pillow fort may pass out from an extreme nostalgia overdose.  And with everything being made out of pillows, differentiating between your bed’s pillows and the bed made out of pillows would render sleeping somewhat confusing.

But these issues are unimportant when considering the magical wonder this pillow fort would offer.  You wouldn’t have to worry about troublesome things such as rough surfaces or sharp edges.  You would never be sad in the pillow fort.  You would never be lonely in the pillow fort.  The pillow fort would never judge you.  The pillow fort would love you, and you would love the pillow fort, and you would finally be home.

Mankind has its priorities backward.  For whatever reason, our leather chaired studies get all the books and our bathrooms are literary wastelands.  But when is it more important to have engrossing reading material within arm’s reach than in the midst of a lengthy bowel growl? 

We get bored while hunkered down over our own stool (do you ever just pause and think to yourself, “I’ve literally been sitting mere inches above my own shit for like twenty minutes)? You’ll look in the drawers under the sink. You’ll try not to think about the 1 in 500 chance that someone’s discarded pet snake is making its way through your plumbing, heading straight towards your poor innocent butt hole.  And of course, you’ll peruse the back of the shampoo bottles. 

How many times can you read “wet hair, massage into scalp, rinse” before it gets predictable?  Dove Shine Therapy shampoo contains Sodium laureth sulfate?!  Well now I can leave the bathroom a more knowledgeable pooper. 

There’s nothing interesting on the backs of shampoo bottles; nothing remotely stimulating enough to distract you from the civil war being so gallantly fought inside your anus.  And thus, I bring you Shit Lit: a line of shampoos and other bathroom products that forgoes the obligatory (and probably state-mandated) directions, warnings, and ingredients, and instead provides you with entertaining prose, word games, and more.  Short stories on the back of shampoo bottles, poetry conditioner, crossword body wash, trivia shaving cream.    

I actually have an uncle in the shampoo business (I’ve always wanted to say that) who could probably draw up a decent business plan.  All I need now is the capital. 

[Alternate names for the company]

Shiterature

ToiLiterature

Dungditioner

Shampoop

I can only think of one practical reason to clone yourself; using your clone to play a younger version of yourself in a movie.  Chances are good that one day I will star in a massively successful blockbuster, and to prepare for this inevitability, I will need a young clone to play a believable young me in the obligatory flashback.

When I’m watching a movie, I prefer total immersion.  I want to fully believe that Alexander Skarsgard is a bookish computer hacker, or that Connecticut is being attacked by zombie dinosaurs.  But there are certain cinematic tropes which tend to illuminate a film’s artifice.  I’m taken out of a film if, for instance, two characters are engaged in coitus while still wearing underwear, or if Jude Law tries to feign an American accent. But nothing breaks the fourth wall more than bad kid casting.

Here’s a few examples:

This asshole playing a young Jon Hamm in Mad Men.

The resemblance is laughable. The kid just isn’t impossibly handsome enough.

____________________

Shia LeBouf playing a young Robert Downey Jr. in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.

@_@   The hair thickness is all wrong!!

____________________

Zac Efron playing a young Mathew Perry in 17 again.

Could their physical appearances BE anymore different? (Yeah, I watched Friends, and so did you).

None of these kid casting choices resemble their older selves in the least.  Watching Zac Efron turning into Mathew Perry is like watching a caterpillar turn into a block of cheese.  I simply won’t allow this travesty to occur when my character needs a younger actor.  Thus, cloning myself seems to be the most reasonable action.

I will be most eligible for a leading role at age 33, when I’ll have just enough of a gut, and yet still possess the strong jaw line required to play an attractive yet relatable character, who you root for despite his many flaws (womanizing, neglecting his children, having perfect stubble).  My character will probably have a flashback to his childhood revealing some sort of lingering inner turmoil, most likely involving an abusive step-father or a microwave that never seems to heat the center of hot-pockets.  I’d put the flashback at age 10 or 11, so I’d need to start the cloning process immediately in order for my clone to be the desired age. Time to make that money honey. 

My superior mind enjoys playing with units of language like they’re Lego pieces; mixing and attaching roots and suffixes to form new and stimulating words, and then accidentally stepping on those words while barefoot - cursing the colorful bastards for their deviousness.  But sadly, my linguistic creations have no means of world-wide dissemination.  I assume the surest way to bring a new word into the global lexicon is for it to be published in the dictionary, and this only happens if the word is already prevalent throughout society (think “googled” or “sexting”).  But if I was rich enough, I could bypass the seemingly impossible task of getting my word out to the masses, and go right to the source.

I want to be so exceedingly rich that if the folks at Merriam-Webster got one whiff of my bank statement, they wouldn’t hesitate to publish the word “penisyogurtlulz” if I requested it.  If I was rich, these are the new terms you’d find in next year’s dictionary.

Nasterbate  |næstɜrbeIt|

verb

A shameful, vulgar, and sob-filled masturbation session, usually to revolting pornographic material and/or violent thoughts about penguins.

PHRASE

After being fired for inappropriate Pop-Tart consumption in the office, Lars returned home and nasterbated to a CCTV camera feed of a nearby Crate and Barrel.

_______________________________________________

Effart  | ɛfɑrt|

noun

A difficult to produce, yet ultimately worthwhile fart.

PHRASE

Clenching his fists and tensing his buttocks, Fredrick managed to produce an effart worthy of legend.

_______________________________________________

Hippocrifeat |HIp ɑkrIfit|

noun

A victory in a debate accomplished by using the opponent’s hypocrisy to effectively destroy his/her own argument.

PHRASE

Agnes attained a stunning hippocrifeat against Julian, who, while wearing a scarf made from the tattered skins of innocent baby pandas, claimed Agnes’s consumption of bacon-wrapped-Tater Tots was immoral.

_______________________________________________

Fondueicide |FɒnduːIsaId|

noun

The act of utilizing fondue’s extremely high temperature to kill one’s self.

PHRASE

Realizing that eating at a fondue restaurant was the classiest thing they could ever accomplish, the Jenson family committed mass fondueicide, forgetting to tip their waiter.