A Funny Thing Happened During the Rape Scene in the Theater

Sometimes my mom and I go on dates. She likes it because she enjoys spending time with her daughter. I like it because I enjoy spending [some] time with my mom. And also so I have someone to blame my farts on. 

Recently we dated at America's second-favorite mass-shooting locale, the movie theater, where we saw a lot of black people lose their back meat in "Twelve Years a Slave." Is it wrong to say Brad Pitt was looking good in his Canadian workman linen after saying "a lot of people lose their back meat"? In any case, it's what you'd expect from a slave narrative inspired by real live human beings -- lots of hate, lots of self-righteousness, lots of characters who probably run for Senate in later years. 

And there was this scene where, in the dark of night, one of the masters enters the slave shack and quietly violates a young slave. There is no music. There is no dialogue. It's just this silent, awful scene, which carries on (as rape scenes tend to). Everyone in the fully white audience is already clenching their pasty butt cheeks together with a sort of unexplained shame when, at the end of my row of seats, someone's cellphone erupts with the ring that people who don't know how to use cellphones choose. And it's on the volume setting that people who don't know how to use cellphones choose. And, because of this, and because they have nowhere to go but into the vortex of empathetic embarrassment and non-empathetic hate, everyone's pasty white butt cheeks are now being sucked up inside of themselves -- it's like we're all starring in our very own drug-smuggling drama.

The cellphone offender plunged into her purse to smother the thing, but it was certainly too late. And all of a sudden we all want to tie this lady to a wooden pillar and whip the flesh off of her back like she's Jesus and hasn't picked enough cotton. And that's the moral, I think -- don't be all white like Jesus (and Megyn Kelly) if you're going to let your cellphone ring during the rape of a black slave.

Why I don't want kids

I don't dislike all kids, and I don't think you should dislike all kids. Some kids are wonderful and bring an abundance of joy to the world. And some kids need to be spun on a tire swing until they throw up the macaroni and cheese that they, earlier in the day, complained about having to eat. All I'm saying is that, right now, a few years before the time in my life when, if I were to decide to get pregnant, I'm pretty much guaranteed a baby with far-apart eyes, I still don't want a baby. But I could always adopt. And I still don't think I would want kids. Because I have way too much vintage Blacktron Lego that I don't wanna share.

First of all, I'm pretty sure that the kids I don't like are the fault of their parents, whom I probably like even less. So I'm not blaming kids on kids altogether. But I am blaming them a little. Here's a brief bit of an infinite list of reasons why I do and don't like kids:

I don't like kids for putting on the Macho Man costume they screamed and cried and oozed all over the Target aisle for until they got it.

I do like kids for choosing the Macho Man costume. And for tying up everyone around them with their neon orange Macho Man fringe.

I don't like kids because they're not dogs. [I've always wanted dogs, which I think are a nice alternative to being a parent to a human. You can't have a conversation with dogs, and you can't teach dogs how to do long division (barf anyway), but you can love a dog, and it will love you back. This is one of the things many parents enjoy. It makes a lot of sense. Being loved back is a nice thing. But why must we be loved back by something that requires absolutely every bit of us? I can throw a sock for my dog while I read a book. It's a little annoying, but it can be done. You can't throw a sock for a kid and still get something done because a kid wants to have your undivided attention (worst case scenario, the kid is helpless enough that it requires all of your attention and without it will die) -- it knows when you're not paying full attention to it, and it alone. And when it doesn't get all of the attention, it will make horrible noises. And if the noises don't work, it will shit its pants. And there goes whatever it was you were doing, especially if you were eating a hot peanut butter sandwich.  Also, unless you're doing things all wrong, a dog will never rip your vagina.]

I don't like kids because they're sometimes allowed to be so helpless. [This could be a cultural problem. For instance, a four-year-old living in the United States isn't expected to do more than chew up the pre-cut cheese cubes from its plastic tubby and spit them at the wall, while a four-year-old living in many other parts of the world is dabbing its own chapped ass with bag balm after a long day of splitting wood. The same bag balm it used earlier in the day on the udder of the family cow. I'll accept that children are important, but only if we're teaching them that they're not that important. Ah, a Zen moment. If you have kids, that probably hasn't happened to you in a while.]

I do like kids because sometimes they'll stop the world to tell you that they think panda bears are their favorite animal instead of regular bears. But I guess that's also a reason why I don't like kids.

If I did want a kid, I'd think real hard about adopting one. Why must we play the "If They Mated" game in real life? If most adults who wanted children were adopting them, the issue of children would be so much different because then we'd be attempting to solve problems that already exist instead of creating beings that will develop a hundred thousand new problems. Adopting is a great way to get a heap of bonus points before you even start playing the game. Plus you save a woman in the relationship from gaining a minimum of fifteen pounds of un-losable belly fat (level down), and from either the horror of pushing a watermelon-sized thing out of a grape-sized hole in her body (lose fire flower), or from reenacting the best-known scene in Alien (game over).  

I don't hate kids. And apparently neither does Jesus. In fact, they say Jesus loves all the little children of the world. Well, that's probably because Jesus never raised a kid. He never had to wipe some sweet little child's diarrhea out of its crack, then listen to it scream for hours because its genitals were scratchy from having to lay in donkey hay all day. It's really easy to love kids when you don't have to be around them all day. Even if you're around kids in the morning, then get to go out and raise a guy from the dead, then you come home to kids at night, you're cheating a little. Because that guy's gonna be like, man, I sure could use a drink after raising that guy from the dead. And we all know what kind of a babysitter booze makes. [Side note: maybe Jesus DID have kids, and that's why he was cool with being crucified].

Here is the thing I want to say: right now I don't want kids because I cherish my time, my sanity, and my nice things. But I'm also currently living a life that is quite happy and fulfilling, and introducing a child to an already happy and fulfilling life would be like adding a keytar player to the Beatles. It wouldn't be like adding a new kind of flower to the world. It would be like adding seventeen extra tines to a fork -- it would still work, but you'd spend a lot of extra time getting that thing into your mouth [TWSS]. Bringing a child into my life might add joy, but only in the way that you have a good story to tell after you break your face open while rollerblading naked. I love it when I get home and my dog wags its tail and licks my face and pees on my foot. Sure, while I was away he didn't color me a stupid-looking periwinkle house with dinosaur spikes and a seesaw with a fat guy on it. But he also didn't wear my husband out so hard that he has to go to bed now, leaving me to drink whiskey out of a wee-sized moon boot until I pass out on a Barbie van.

Alright, fine, I was at Chipotle again

I eat at Chipotle maybe three days a week. Five if we've run out of bread, in which case I have to wait until whenever I build up enough motivation (i.e. hunger) to visit a grocery store. Let's just call it six days. 

So I was in the burrito (slash burrito bowl, slash taco, slash quesadilla) line, dutifully relaying my burrito desires to the burrito maids, and the one who sloshes the salsa on says, "What kind of salsa, sir?" I'm used to this kind of thing: I'm six feet tall; I dress like a man; I have a strong nose; I don't wear makeup; I have Hanson hair. I get it. But here's the thing: I also don't get it. Because as much as the choices I make about my physical appearance are generally construed as masculine, I am also, when you look at me, pretty clearly a woman. I don't have boobs bursting out of my v-neck, or a tall hat made out of fruit, but still. And, fair enough, the salsa queen did eventually notice that I was not a man. And her mistake embarrassed her, frazzled her, and caused her to mangle my sofritas burrito. It looked like the bowels of a recently-happy Mexican. It looked like the part of the sewer system where the pinto beans, sour cream, and tomatillo salsa have not yet had a chance to mingle (there's a sign at this point in the sewer system that reads "One mile to Illegal Pete's"). It looked like a serial killer had sliced through the belly of my burrito, then stomped on its chest. So Frazzled Burrito Maid sort of wraps up my "burrito", but doesn't hand it to me. She just leaves it nearest to where she's wrapped it. In my dog fur-covered man jacket, I have to reach across the stuff that will soon be in other peoples' lunch to get my "burrito," which is, at once, bleeding sofritas juice and gender vomit all over the stainless steel counter. This is the "burrito" I ate five minutes later with the help of a spoon and twenty-seven napkins. 

 

I'm not interested in all of the in-between sour cream of this issue right now. I think all I want to say is, maybe look people in the eye. Because the last thing the world needs is a sad-looking burrito.

The Elegance of the Poop Bag

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if humans wore underpants even if they didn't have a groin? Like the Ken doll I had while I was a kid. He had flesh-colored underpants pressed into his plastic, John Boehner-colored flesh, and even as a young girl I knew that that dude didn't have anything going on downstairs. I mean, he had fake underpants going on, and a pair of some pretty gay loafers. But that's not really "going on," that's plain old weiner-shielding, 20th century style (today the wiener-shielding is done by Facebook and the citizens voting for Mayor of New York City). I can't really connect the dots fully right now, as I am, once again, fully plastered, but it seems to me that wearing underpants when you don't have a groin is sort of like filling up a dog poop bag with dog poop, then leaving the dog poop bag full of dog poop on the side of the trail/sidewalk/walking-space. So you make the effort to be a good person, but for what? To be an even worse person than you knew there could be. There is no groin. 

I get angry a lot -- that's why I keep renewing my driver's license -- but this full poop bag-leaving is one of those special anger-inducing instances that makes me want to poop my pants and leave them in the crawlspace of whoever left that bag. Especially if I see one of those loaded bags lying along a path that is purposefully dotted with trash cans every 100 yards or so in order that people don't have to get their stupid little fanny packs all stinky. 

I'll talk about this some other time, but Levi and I chat a lot about what kind of a dictator I would be (it's obvious I would be a dictator). Let's just say there would be a lot of public executions after which bodies would be bagged up neatly, then deposited into the nearest trash can.

Drunk brog, slash I just need to say this one thing, Chipotle

Two beers does a 130-pound (Hooray! I've been 125 pounds since middle school! It must be all of these beers I've been drinking! Or maybe it's just a tumor!) girl in, let me tell you. Or let Levi tell you -- he's the one whose lap I'm writing this from. He's all like "Girl, get your keyboard out of my lap!" And I'm like, "Dude, I just need to type a few more words". Which, I get it. A few more words in drunkspeak is at least 2,419.  And a lot of those words are slurred together, so it's actually like 5,201. Doyouknowwhatimeandrunkdrunkdrunk? So I was in Chipotle today, just like any other day, only today I read that in 2014 Chipotle is planning to raise its prices. So I made a joke about it, which was something along the lines of asking for extra-extra sour cream and cheese. You know, to make Chipotle really PAY for it, and since I already ask for extra sour cream and cheese, I'll have to ask for an embarrassing heap more of it. So today, I'm in Chipotle, ordering my burrito (Which, turns out, is totally out of style, as my burrito was surrounded by ONLY BURRITO BOWLS on the eat-line. What is so uncool about tortillas all of a sudden? That's one of my favorite parts about a burrito. Sometimes I ask the Chipotle person for an EXTRA tortilla. Not ONE FEWER tortilla. Tomorrow I'll ask for a CAPITAL LETTER tortilla.), and, in the midst of feeling uncomfortable like you feel in a too-tight pair of underpants full of pistachio pudding, I notice that there's a misplaced apostrophe on the menu. Two times. Both times in the same word, but still. It's Chipotle. If you're going to sell humanely-raised meat AND raise your prices, you MUST put your apostrophes in the right place. (Chipotle would have put an apostrophe after the letter "e" in "apostrophes" in that last sentence). But, no. At the Cherry Creek Chipotle, there is an apostrophe looking all haggard and bunchy here: "Kid's Menu". At first I thought it was because I was in Cherry Creek, so it was totally possible that there's this one kid who gets this Chipotle to herself. But then I saw THREE kids in line (all in Patagonia puffy jackets just like their female caregiver whose Burberry uterus, I assumed, was their Invitro oven), so I settled on it being an error in apostrophes. So that's annoying. How can I trust my burrito when its kids' menu pardner is not even punctuated correctly? But then I asked for extra, extra sour cream on my burrito (with god-forsaken and now scrutinized tortilla), and all of that sour cream ended up in the bottom fourth of my burrito. The whole way through the eating of my burrito I was thinking I'd ordered extra sour cream, and, Jesus, where is it, then I get to the last fourth of burrito and, yes -- THERE IT ALL IS. Here's what I think. Nobody wants to place the apostrophes in the right places. Fine. I can live with it. But I want something in return, Chipotle. Put the sour cream in ALL of the word.

Either way it's 'Merica

So we've endured our first mass shooting of the week, and I'm starting to think that there's this one thing that maybe both sides of the gun debate aren't considering well enough. And it's not just where did all of the Super Soakers go (wtf?). It's more that, at any moment, any regular-seeming, gun-legal American could become a crazy person. Not just a look, I'm wearing a Mickey leotard and my hair is spiky, and my tongue is out, and I'm naked on a wrecking ball crazy. But an I want to rip you up and feed you to my pigeons crazy. Like, if I had a gun on me right now, I'd pull it out and shoot you and your turn-at-a-no-turn-on-red-intersection ass. The gun nuts (nuts, I think is an appropriate word -- I am nuts about picking my toes, and I would fight good and hard to keep this right, should the right for Americans to pick their toes no matter what ever be made into an Amendment, but the fact remains: I know that how often my toes are bleeding is unacceptable) want all the guns n' stuff, all the time. The Mounds (sometimes you feel like a nut...) would rather limit the guns n' stuff people can have, which, like it or not, would probably result in fewer prematurely dead people. The Mounds would also like to limit who can have these things. And that, really, is the hairy drain: there will be some point[s] in every person's life when said person should not have access to a firearm. There will always be gabiliondy-round magazines, Terminator IV weapons in which to put them, and people who are willing to shoot them at other people. But there will also be people who seem perfectly calm and happy until their team fumbles in the end zone. There will always be people who like the Eagles, and people who don't like the Eagles. There will always be people who start watching "Lost," then finish watching "Lost." There will always be people who live next door to people playing loud oom-pah music. There will always be people who have to wait for other people to write checks at the grocery store. There will always be people who eat other peoples' Cheetos. For the time being, the problem is that there will always be people. So we either get rid of all of the guns ever and live "The Walking Dead" with Whopper-eating zombies, or we watch the fuck out. Either way, we'll have to live our dream in 'Merica.

The Vagina Wikipedialogues

You know how sex scenes tend to make available most of a woman, but hardly ever reveal much of a man? I know it's not always, always, but you know what I'm saying. The female form is generally there, while the male form is somehow humping itself away behind the camera, hopefully against Michael Bay's leg while he records yet another unnecessary tender moment between a sensitive robot and a terrible, WD-40-stained actress. I'm not saying we more often see female genitalia than male genitalia in film -- I think we generally don't see a lot of genitalia in film -- but I do think we see more of Kate Winslet...I mean...of the woman. This argument certainly does not hold true in graffiti and within and on top of the Mead notebooks of males aged 4 and up; I've seen a whole lot of squiggly, smudgy spray-painted and chalk-drawn wieners on electrical boxes and sidewalks, and I've seen a whole lot more ballpoint pen cock etchings repeating in notebooks, as if another cursive character had been added to the alphabet and required practice, practice, practice. On the contrary, how many crudely-drawn vaginas have you seen. And if you have seen a crudely-drawn vagina, are you sure it wasn't a hotdog bun?

So it doesn't seem right, then, that Wikipedia's "Penis" entry first shows us a crude lineup of jarred whale dongs. Was it a happy mistake that the penises of the largest mammal were chosen for the first photo? Where's the photograph of a whale in a Hummer? Then, a bit later down the penis scroll, we get a glimpse of an engorged elephant dick. Which has got to be the second-biggest weiner on the planet. Then, okay, there's the tiny Cheeto of a tallywagger that the mallard apparently has. But still: first biggest penis, second biggest penis, and Cheeto penis averages out to a pretty damned big Jimmy Dean.

So it doesn't seem right, then, that Wikipedia's "Vagina" entry first shows us, straight up, a human vagina, which is not only just there, but also being pried apart by what I assume to be the fingers of the vagina's owner. But it's Wikipedia, after all. Those are probably the fingers of someone whose sources are totally skewed.

Where is the grizzly bear vagina? Or the kangaroo's TRIFECTA of vaginas [Don't try it -- I've just trademarked that name for a really terrible all-girl band I'm starting. There will be three flaming vaginas from whence we will spring and, on the stage, we will allow our flutes to express our personal fits of Wikipedia rage.]? I am demanding more animal vaginas on Wikipedia, and I am demanding them now! I think that's what I'm doing. Or am I demanding more human penises on Wikipedia? Let's say both and call this rant a desperate attempt for genitalial equality. Fat cock of a chance.

Costco: the underside of a big set of hairy balls

If you've never visited the sweaty, unwashed underside of a big set of hairy balls, and wish to, venture to Costco, America's consumptive wonderland, which is not only home of the one hundred and eighty count, twelve-pack pallet of anything you can think of (mayonnaise, toothbrushes, computer printers...), but the place where Americans go to shuck shreds of their ugliest habits, then leave them scattered about the Costco concrete right where it's hardest for you to maneuver your cart around them. Costco is a different sweaty underside of a big set of hairy balls than Walmart, though I fear they may be diesel-belching, basement hostage-hoarding, poop-in-a-bucket-in-a-van cousins who masturbate to the same beaming (well, sort of) magazine cutout of Sarah Palin. Walmart is where you go to see people dressed in old shower curtains (the transparent inside curtain that builds up mold, not the outside one that is sometimes less gross), where you go for new, fleshy metaphors for the Grand Canyon. Costco is where you go to get the stuff that makes the Grand Canyon wider, grimier.

I haven't been to Costco in a few years, probably since the last time I was driving past one and my mom was in the car with me, and she says "Let's go to Costco," and I say "Absolutely not," and she says "I'll buy you something," and I drive perpendicularly across three lanes of traffic to get to the Costco parking lot. The Costco parking lot. It's really something. And we were there at noon on a Wednesday. So thirty minutes later we've parked and walked up the mile-long shopping cart centipede only to be halted by a pod of housewives digging for their membership cards in their purses, as if being at the entrance to Costco is some sort of surprise. That is annoying. Get your card out before you're at the place where you need your card. I know this happens to these people every time they're here. It's the kind of thing you know about people. It's the kind of thing that makes serial killers kill serially. But Mom and I, we're prepared -- she flashes her card to the blank-eyed gatekeeper, for whom I feel very sorry, as he is African American, and he is in the very albino heart, in the thickest clot of the biggest artery of suburbia. Poor fellow just sort of glances at my mom's membership card, then hands us a coupon book, then wonders when he'll get to die.

I like buying things. I like having things. I like having a pillowy backup armory of toilet paper in the garage. I am an American consumer. And I like it. I do see the allure of Costco and its block of cheese that is six times (honestly) bigger than the block of cheese I am used to buying, but only because I've heard of the Duggar family. And, honestly, I think big families should have to suffer Costco and its bottom of the American barrel-ness. The problem is I think most people aren't bothered by the sludge at the bottom. They like it on toast with a genetically mutated over-easy egg on top. Bigger and uglier tastes fine to them. And I am comforted that at least, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, and if Levi and I are able to get out of the house alive with our shotguns, there will probably be lots of good beer for us to drink; the Hummer family will be out scalping for Coors. 

So Mom and I are pushing our cart through the high ocean of pallets. We see a pie that is eighteen inches in diameter (honestly). I don't bother to look at the label because I know it is filled with something from a farm that injects its produce with the sweat and tanning oil that drips off of Hulk Hogan's elbows. Mom thinks I should forklift it into the cart so that Levi will be a happy man after dinner. I refuse, but mostly because I would find it embarrassing to ask a stranger to help me lift a pie. Thankfully the box full of 96 tampons was manageable on my own. 

There's a lot of amazement on my part as we peruse the aisles. You know what Costco is like. There are a lot of products you can't help but like, and they're all in bigger boxes, bags, or bottles. You take some, you leave some, you eat a few meatballs, and you smash a few heads with your quickly-filling cart in the process. 

And then there's the shore of checkout lanes. I found a pretty thin line at number twenty five, but was abruptly cut in front of by an Amazon shrew with a handful of baby clothes. I imagined they were for her fire-breathing infant, which will hopefully someday get backed over by a Range Rover in a Costco parking lot before it can learn its mother's ways. But it will probably live to post the pictures it took of its penis on Subway sandwich bread on its Instagram account. At the very least she was buying the clothes for a baby shower, which she will have to suffer through. In any case, she cut in front of me. I looked at my mom and gave her the pouty face I used to give her when we ran out of dessert. She shrugged, communicating to me that we would not be going spider monkey on this bitch, so I just threw our box of 36 Izze beverages sort of on top of her baby clothes and gave her some slivery eyes before a sickly thin, sickly tan, sickly strident cashier barked at me Gestapo style. I accidentally tried handing our coupons to her  and was gently reminded that she would please need my Costco card first (i.e. "COSTCO CARD!"). I gave her the Costco salute, then marched to the end of the checkout stand and shyly waited for Mom to pay. We cleared checkpoint one, rolled past Costco's weird and uncomfortably low-priced food distribution center (three hot dogs with chili on top and a set of four tires on the side for $1.99), then we cleared checkpoint two where an old man armed with nothing but two-day old whiskers wiped a highlighter down our receipt, and we were, save the Navy Seal exercise across the parking lot, home free. 

I did not like the experience. I am a wider, grimier Grand Canyon for it. And that's somehow okay. And that is absolutely the worst part.

Will Work For More Cardboard

Been a long time since I rapped at 'cha. But I am forced to, as I now regularly see a bum in Capitol Hill who has actual B.U.M. Equipment from 1985, and there's no not blogging about that. He's got the super cool backpack, the very chillin' letterman jacket, AND the most awesome beard with flies. I never give him money or food or anything, as I am currently of the asshole persuasion, but I do use my iPhone camera to steal his soul every now and then for the benefit of my untended blog. So this is for you, B.U.M. Equipment bum -- waste not, want fifty cents not. 

(B.U.M. jacket, B.U.M. backpack, bum beard-with-flies)

While I'm on the bums, what the fuck does this guy think he's doing? 

He is clearly very hungry for cellphone minutes. I would appreciate it if he were a tad more honest and just wrote that last part on his sign: HUNGRY FOR CELLPHONE MINUTES. I would possibly throw a dime sort of hard at that kind of candor. I would definitely throw a dime at this:

Not just because it's me and I'm totally in love with myself, but because it's clever, it's not asking for anything, and it took only slightly more effort than the favored 50 CENTS HELPS sign, which is ridiculous -- if you're going to beg, there's no asking for quantities. Unless it's twenty below and your sign says "TWO MITTENS HELP." So the bum lessons are: 

1. If you're a bum wearing B.U.M., you will be blogged about.

2. If you're a "bum" on a cellphone, you don't deserve to live.

3. If you're a "bum" on a cellphone, you make me make this face, but without the middle school teacher hair, without the viciously deep v neck, and without the obviously terrible fiction.

Groupon: crime scene Red Bull

Everyone knows about Groupon. It's that magical coupon kingdom where, for just thirty dollars, you can buy approximately sixty dollars' worth of bullshit. Which is what I did as a gift for Levi. And on Sunday we used those bullshit coupons for a bullshit "cheese making" class. "Cheese making" is in quotation marks because we only sort of made cheese, and I think that the person who taught the class was being punny -- during this two hour class she made "cheese," i.e. cold hard cash, while we, her students, made "cheese," i.e. shitty cheese. Hahahahaha.

"Expert gourmand supplies all materials for a two-hour cheese-making class that produces approximately 1.5 pounds to nibble."

For starters, our "expert gourmand" was a middle-aged woman in an oversized Patriots jersey and severely holey jeans. Or Swiss jeans, if you want the technical cheese gourmand term. I don't know -- I guess when I buy tickets to a food-making class, I figure the person in charge is at least nearly as refined as her craft. But I'll forgive the homeless person loungewear, not that your couch doesn't deserve better than that. What I won't forgive is that the mozzarella we made started off as a gallon jug of milk from Seven Eleven, which she admitted was a last minute buy, but not as an apology. More of as a point of pride. Like, I didn't have time to go to the Albertson's I usually go to (which is not a real grocery store either), so I used my problem-solving skills to buy this gas station "milk". Come on. You're a gourmand, yeah? Then you don't get within a hundred yards of a Seven Eleven unless you're bound and gagged and the guy who stuffed you into the back of his van is stopping in for some crime scene Red Bull.

"While absorbing knowledge of cheese production, students can opt to take turns grabbing hold of butane burners, pots, and thermometers to learn how to make fresh, handmade batches of mozzarella and ricotta cheese."

This part, the part aside from the "while absorbing knowledge of cheese production," I must have missed in the Groupon explanation, as it is exactly what happened. It was like chemistry lab for a paraplegic kid -- just sit over there, Susi, while we take turns grabbing hold of this butane burner. WTF, Gourmand?! You grab hold of the butane burner. I'll hold the fucking pot. And that other guy can hold the thermometer. And that's what we'll do while you tell us about your failed cheese shop, which, upon some Google investigation, turns out was maybe something of a whim on your quest for a new profession -- "I don't honestly know why I chose artisan cheeses[,] but I have no regrets." I'm not going to make a list of things you should do before you open your own cheese shop, but...okay, I am:

Things you should do before you open your own cheese shop:

1. Have a passion for cheese.

So the five of us are sitting around the table taking turns holding the thermometer, and our gourmand blathers on about friends of hers who make cheese, and a fight she got into with a famous cheese guy, and why he won't talk to her anymore, and the man who bought a fence from her on Craigslist who asked her how she pleasures herself, and blah blah blah, and once in awhile one of us would ask her a question about cheese, and it turns out she's never really made any cheese other than mozzarella or ricotta (the production of both of these cheeses, as it turns out, is like boiling pasta), so she'd point to this cheese-making book on the table and ask us to turn the butane burner up or down. And eventually, yes, we did end up with a fuckton of mozzarella, but let us not forget the Seven Eleven, or the Patriots jersey, or the fact that Gourmand has never made any cheese south, north, east, or west of Easy. As in Easy Cheese. Except that's probably a lot harder to make. And, really, less gross.