Before we get into the Funbag, a quick announcement: I'll be out in D.C. tomorrow night handling the introduction at Justin Halpern's book reading at the Sixth & I Synagogue (Gregg Easterbrook would not approve). I should tell you in advance that you have to pay to go to this thing, which is a pain in the ass. But I'm sure the temple could use the scratch, and Justin's book is as funny as the last one, so stop by if you feel like it. Onto your letters:
Cal:
If you are seriously convinced you may have spotted a female relative (cousin) on a porn site in an amateur video, who can you tell? This is driving me crazy.
Oof. That's a checkmate position right there. Your moves within the family are essentially nonexistent. Obviously, you can't tell your mom or dad, because then it would result in this conversation:
MOM: You're looking at porn?
ME: No, mom, that's not the point.
MOM: Why are you looking at porn? Of your cousin, no less? THAT'S SICK!
ME: No, mom. I didn't INTEND to see to her...
MOM: I think you should see someone. My friend Sonny Lawson knows a man who deals with this kind of thing...
ME: No. Look, could you just stab me with a syringe full of AIDS right now so that I can get out of this forever?
So your parents are a no-go. Ditto your aunt and uncle. I was gonna say maybe your brother if you have one, but then I wondered if I would tell my own brother in a similar situation and there's no fucking way I ever would. And I have no clue how you'd be able to broach the subject directly with your cousin, unless you were best friends and you were both hammered at some point and in one of those "we can talk about ANYTHING" moments.
The only person you could really tell is a good friend outside of your family who also happens to know your cousin well. If you don't have that, I'm afraid you're just gonna have to resort to talking about it with strangers on the Internet. That's the only comfortable place to air out that kind of laundry.
Big Jim:
I work in an office. I was leaving in the elevator, which has mirrors on the walls. A young, attractive woman stepped into the elevator. I'm tall, she was short, and she stood close to me with her back to me. She was texting, and because I was spacing out and could see over her shoulder, I tried to read her text. After about 7 seconds of this, her radar went off and she turned and looked at me in the mirror of the elevator, trying to catch me in the act of snooping on her text.
I was crafty and was 1 step ahead of her, and so quickly diverted my eyes. Of course, I had to settle on something else to look at quickly, so, without thinking, I just fixed my eyes on her boobs, via the mirror. Not. Good. Times. It got a serious sneer. So which is worse, snooping texts or leering? What should I have done?!
I think you did the right thing. Even though I support the investigative techniques of our own AJ Daulerio, you never want to get caught trying to read someone's texts. Much better to be caught in the act of leering. Even though that lady gave you the stinkeye, she probably breathed a sigh of relief to herself. "Oh, he was just staring at my tits! THANK GOD. I thought he was doing something creepy!"
So bravo to you for disguising your espionage as simple-minded tit-ogling. There's something deeply satisfying about discovering that you can use a nearby mirror to spy on people without them noticing. I feel so dangerous whenever I do that. The other night, I went to go take a piss and I was staring out the window because I had nowhere else to stare. And from the window of my neighbor's house, I could see the reflected glare of the window from my own kitchen a level below. And I could see my wife washing baby bottles in the reflection. I TOTALLY SPIED ON HER WITHOUT HER KNOWING. Juicy stuff.
J:
This "free soup" is clearly some Wile E Coyote style trap set by management to thwart me, right?
That soup is spiked. YOU MUST RESIST. Unless it's miso soup. I can never resist free miso soup. Mmmmmm... salty semen cubes and seaweed. Delicious! Every time I order sushi carryout and I get a free thing of miso soup, I'm irrationally ecstatic. "Oh good, they made sure all my rolls are inside out.* Nice. WHOA HEY HOLY SHIT FREE SOUP GUYS!"
(*NOTE: I always order my sushi rolls composed inside out, because inside out sushi is the shit. Any time I ask for it inside out and the sushi joint fails to comply, I have to resist the urge to plant a rigged brick of C4 in the restaurant toilet.)
Rob:
I recently had to get reading glasses because I'm getting old and getting old sucks. I have found however that there are certain things that I enjoy doing with my glasses such as glancing down and raising an eyebrow over them, taking them off quickly like I have something important and urgent to say, and biting gently on one end as though I am contemplating just the right counsel to answer a life-changing question. Do you have any other suggestions?
I suggest resting them on top of your head while smoking from a pipe. What better respite from a long day of digesting Hemingway than a fine plug of tobacco? Don't forget to wear a cable knit sweater while doing this.
By the way, if you have children, NEVER draw attention to your glasses. If you take them off or you somehow tip the kids off to the fact that you have them on, they'll grab at them like the lenses are made of fucking lollipops. Kids and glasses do not mix.
Swingmonalisa:
Saw this in the Chicago suburbs. The driver didn't look like Easterbrook, but I'm still convinced it was him.
Tastefully plated.
Rusty:
Do you think men of our generation have seen more beautiful women and more naked women than any other generation if you count women seen in person and women seen in photo/video? With the internet, this has to be true, right? How lucky are we?
Think about it. Back in the old days, if you wanted to see a beautiful woman, you had to live near her (super near her before men had trains, ships, etc. and even fairly near even when cars were first invented); if you lived in a religious place or a place not near a city, you probably saw only one woman naked - the woman who became your wife. In cities and in less religious times, people were probably still fairly conservative - I wouldn't imagine anyone but someone who was, or was connected to, royalty would see more than 5-10 naked women.
Whoa.
/BONG HIT
I do think this has probably spoiled our generation, perhaps beyond salvation. If Marisa Miller went strolling into a saloon in 1845, every man's head would have exploded. But since kids today have access to billions of photos and videos or naked women online at a moment's notice, they begin to take the female form for granted. This is how you end up with some fuckhead in the comments being like, "Marisa Miller? Meh." We really did have someone at KSK once who said she wasn't all that in the comments. And I wanted to reach through my computer and stab that commenter in both eyes. YOU DO NOT DESERVE THE GIFT OF SIGHT. DO YOU NOT FUCKING REALIZE HOW SPECIAL SCANTILY CLAD WOMEN ARE?!
By the way, I do wonder what the total number of naked people online is. Are there a million people who have appeared naked on the Internet (the exposed internet, private emails and sexts don't count)? Is the percentage of Americans appearing naked online increasing every year? I bet it is. I bet there will come a time when we're ALL naked online. We'll all be out there for each other to see and if you see someone walking down the street who looks attractive to you, you'll be able to hold up your phone and have an app take you to that nude photo immediately. That can't happen fast enough.
Timmy:
How much internal damage do you think would occur if you were to beer bong a cup of coffee? I'm sitting here drinking my morning cup of Joe and it's EXCRUCIATINGLY HOT, there is no way I could get all of this down in one fell swoop.
You'd end up suffering from severe burns to your mouth, throat, esophagus, and probably your stomach. You might even die. Let's hold down Peter King and test this theory.
Aaron:
If humans keep advancing technologically eventually time travel will be a real thing. So why hasn't someone from the future came back yet to talk to us? Answer: Humans never advanced to time travel because they stopped existing for some reason.
Well, Stephen Hawking says that time travel should be possible, but I don't think that real time travel would be the exciting, Bill and Ted-style time travel that we all want and desperately need. Real time travel would probably involve a scientist opening a wormhole and reaching some faroff destination ahead of schedule, compressing time more than traveling through it (please note that I know nothing about physics and am talking out of my ass right now). I don't think he means that you'll be able to jump into a Delorean and end up with your mom hitting on you. Which sucks because I want that happen. I mean honestly, what has science EVER done for us? It fails us at every turn.
Andrew:
How many girls do you think Bryce Harper has had sex with since he's come up to the majors? My friends says 15 while I say 0.
Harper was called up on April 27th. Since then, he's only had five days off on the Nats' schedule, if you consider playing a baseball game to be a working activity. Those five days off included yesterday, so you know damn well that Bryce got his. I suspect that, like Justin Bieber, Bryce Harper is so carefully managed (and happily accepts such management) that any girl approaching him needs to penetrate roughly seventy layers of bureaucracy before getting a chance to cup his balls. Those girls are probably intensely vetted for any criminal background and genetic deficiencies. Perhaps Harper is so singularly driven that the number really is ZERO, but I have a hard time believing that. A horny teenager with money is a horny teenager with money. I say you take the number of cities he's played in during his time in the Bigs (seven), add a few extras to that number, and end up on a modest ten. Way to keep it in your pants, Bryce!
By the way, there is NO CHANCE that Bryce Harper doesn't use CRUSHING to describe his sexual conquests. That's a lock. "Bro, let's CRUSH some homers and then SLAY some puss."
HALFTIME!
Devin:
Your wife turns up dead and you have nothing to do with it, but somebody has framed you and all the evidence points to you as the killer. Do you fight the charges in court, or do you run? If you run, where do you go and how do you fake your identity? Do you steal a car, fly, take the train?
We talked about this at work and the best answer we could come up with was to try and live off the land and foot it out to Mexico.
I get convicted, then I escape from captivity during a botched prison transfer featuring a bus getting hit by a train. Then I cut my beard. Then I get caught by Tommy Lee Jones in an underground tunnel, only to surprise him by jumping off a dam and getting away once more. Then I go to Chicago, steal an ID from a hospital janitor, find Frederick Sykes, and begin to unravel the massive pharmaceutical company conspiracy that led to my wife getting her skull bashed in.
Seriously though, I would probably stay here and fight to clear my name for the sake of my children. I have a lot of lawyers in my family, so I'd ask them for help. And then they'd dedicate themselves to my case, but eventually they would grow emotionally drained as we lost appeal after appeal after appeal. I'd spend years languishing in jail, stupidly getting my hopes up every time some new piece of evidence came to light, thinking that THIS would finally be my chance to be freed. Finally, my last appeal would be denied by those fuckers in the Supreme Court, and I would hang myself with the cord to my jail cell lamp. That's the likely outcome, which is FUN! Can't wait for that to happen.
Josh:
So Nevada authorized the testing of self-driving cars. What would be the best use of this? It's pick you up when you're too shitfaced to drive home, right? Would riding home hammered in a robot car lead you to go on ridiculous adventures? Like you wake up 200 miles away with a goat, a pizza and 3 hookers?
Absolutely. I'm very excited for the driverless car era of human history. You'll never have to worry about drinking and driving again. You'll never have to worry about a cop pulling you over. You'll never have to keep your eyes on the road during road head sessions. You'll never have to worry about driver fatigue, or tailgaters, or any of that other shit. In the future, people will look back at this moment in history and be amazed that we ever let actual human beings take command of automobiles. People are fucking idiots. They drink and drive. They text and drive. They argue with people in the backseat. People are horrible drivers. Much better for everything to be controlled by a computer, and then to have that computer go haywire and purposely direct us off a cliff without telling us, so they can steal our wives and make Johnny Cab babies with them.
The problem is that it'll take far longer for the driverless car era to begin than it ought to. People will be scared shitless of getting into a car that appears to have no one in control of it, and they'll be equally terrified of other cars on the road with an empty driver's seat. Also, you'll have old people who will refuse to believe that computers can do the job better, so they'll hold out and drive themselves and fuck up the whole flow of the system by doing 40 in the passing lane.
And there will be paranoid nutjobs who will equate handing over control of their car to a machine as some kind of breach of personal liberties, or a mass conspiracy by Google to further control us all (which is actually true). And you'll have gearheads who read Jalopnik and shit and will look down on people who don't drive as pussies. Lastly, you'll have retro hipsters who will drive around in Studebakers and speak at length to the New York Times about "the innate driverness" you feel when you're in charge of an analog car. All of those people will serve to fuck it all up. So expect driverless cars to finally take root sometime around 5698.
Johnny:
I am driving down I-95 for probably the 100th time in my life and it suddenly dawned on me: I have spent more hours day-dreaming about being the road-side grass-cutter than I have spent day-dreaming about all other professions combined. I just can't help it. Every time I'm in a car, I'm spotting grass that could use a good cut and simultaneously mind-chopping those blades down to a nice even length. This realization was a little depressing. Of all the jobs I could have been performing in my head, I was logging away hours cutting unsightly grass and shrubs. No hate towards professional mowers, but I'd like to think that during my childhood, I spent more time day-dreaming about being a wide receiver or Navy SEAL. What profession have you wasted the most time daydreaming about?
Grass cutter is a good one. I saw a landscaper once who was cutting his client's lawn using a standing riding mower, where you stand on a little platform (kinda like a Segway, but way less fey), and maneuver the mower around the yard. It looks like a BLAST. Now I know this isn't true, and that most people working in the landscaping industry are illegal immigrants who are forced to work 19-hour days for a quarter of minimum wage, but still... LAWNMOWER CHARIOT! Looks so cool. I bet that's the prime gig among day laborers. You gotta work up to that mower. They don't give that duty to just anyone.
Anyway, I personally spend way too much time imagining myself as a truck driver. Out on the open road. Crisscrossing the Great Plains. Using my radio at 4AM at night to call out to other lonely truckers on the road to talk about God, and the best place to get a handjob. That's the imaginary blue collar life for me, my friend. Second place goes to the dude up in the cherry picker truck. SO COOL!
Narco:
What would be easier for the average person to do: get a hit against Justin Verlander or score a point on Lebron James? This is assuming both players are playing as hard as they possibly can. My thought would be scoring on Lebron since you could dribble away from him, heave up some garbage shot and pray it goes in. My friend contests that you would probably not even be able to dribble on him (he is 6'8 and fast as fuck) and that you would have a better chance making lucky contact on Verlander and bloop a single.
Why would you even have to dribble on LeBron though? Couldn't you just heave up shots (he may block most of them, but not all of them) and then wait for one to go in? That's a far better prospect than standing in a batter's box and having an All Star pitcher throw 90 mph at your goddamn head. I'd want NO part of that. You could be there all day just trying to make contact.
Matt:
What if your ass was in front and your cock and balls were in back?
That would have a profound effect of many aspects of the human condition. Let's go through as many as we can:
• URINATION. We would have to redesign Western toilets to accommodate this change. With your cock and balls behind you, you could attempt to pee standing up and facing backwards. It would be fun to see if you're accurate. I wouldn't be. I'd be the Donovan McNabb of backwards pissing. We might need to place mirrors on the ceiling of every urinal row in the US, so that you could look up and align your dick properly with the urinal. Failing that, you would have to sit down to piss, but the toilet would have to have a deeper well to ensure no dickdipping. (NOTE: Craggs would like to note that raccoons do, in fact, urinate backwards. There's even a word for it: "retromingent". Isn't that cool? Your Dad is retromingent, bitch.)
• DEFECATION. Shitting would be tricky with your ass in front of you, because your hips are now going the wrong way. When you shit normally, you sit down, which naturally causes your asscheeks to spread. That wouldn't happen in this case. In this case, you would have to pull your cheeks apart to ensure a clean shit. And you would have to lean forward, so that no shit or diarrhea fell onto your shoes. We would have to engineer a standing toilet to handle this. There's also the psychological trauma that would come from having to watch shit come out of your asshole on a daily basis. I don't think I'd be able to handle that.
• SEX. Gay sex would remain relatively unchanged, only pitchers and catchers would swap positions, with the pitcher bending over for the catcher. For sex with women, having your dick behind you would cause all kinds of complications. The easiest position would be for you to lie face down on the bed and have your lady straddle you. But what fun is that? She gets to see all the action while you just lie there and take it. Eventually, your woman would grow to like this arrangement, treating you like a piece of meat, demanding you bite your pillow and never look her in the eye. NOT SO COOL TO BE THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT, IS IT BOYS?
Every other position would be rough sledding. Imagine trying to sit into your lady. It's hard enough to copulate with your dick in front of you. With it behind you, you're basically flying blind. More men might turn gay just because it would be easier.
• SITTING. Ouch!
• BACKWARDS PANTS. The Daddy Mack will make ya JUMP, JUMP!
• SELF-GRATIFICATION. Take your hand and put it behind you. Now begin violently pumping your hand. Kinda hurts, doesn't it? We were not built to fap in that direction. The number of torn labrums among teenage boys would quintuple if this were to become a worldwide phenomenon.
So be thankful every day that you were built the way you are, with your dick in front of you and your dirty asshole thankfully out of sight.
Time for a GREAT MOMENT IN SPIDER KILLING HISTORY
Anthony:
I have a "workshop" in my back yard where I keep tools, holiday decorations and other assorted crap. It's true existence is based upon Daddy's private time to have a drink and smoke a cigar or little weed. Shit is basically stacked everywhere because the purpose of this room is not organization and efficiency
The other day, I put my kids to bed and went out to do a little "work." It was dark and the light switch is across the room (3 strides) from the door. I stepped through the dark room and turned on the light. But as I moved through the darkness I felt a light brush on my leg (I was wearing shorts). We are talking about mere moments to cross the room and hit the light, so I really did not process what I had felt.
When I turned on the light, I noticed the plastic crates of Halloween decorations on the floor. Next to the crate was one of those cheap black plastic spiders that are all over the place at Halloween. I wondered to myself how it had fallen out of the crate with the closed lid. Until it moved.
You see, it was not a fake. It was THE BIGGEST FUCKING BLACK WIDOW I HAVE EVER SEEN. If you have never seen one, black widows are fucking terrifying. You don't have to fall back on irrational fear because if they bite you, you are going to the hospital and maybe even the morgue. They are also the most malevolent looking little bastards I have ever seen. I half expect them to have acid for blood.
I looked at it, and realized that I had walked through the web in the dark and was dragging the thing after me by a strand stuck to my leg. I reacted like any red blooded American male. I froze and whimpered like a little bitch.
I quickly recovered my wits and crushed that fucker under the sole of my shoe. I stepped back, feeling satisfied that I had cheated death by conquering a situation that would have broken a lesser man. I needed a trophy to mark my victory over nature's brutality. I whipped out my phone and bent down to take a picture to show my wife that I AM MAN. The the little shit started dragging itself towards me. It was still alive.
I slammed my foot down on it and ground it into the floor until there was nothing left, absolutely terrified. My claims to manhood wilted as I just wanted to escape with my life.
If you have ever confronted a black widow then you know those fuckers are hard to kill. I have sprayed them dead on with poison and they keep coming. Cave crickets are pussies.
The picture is after I crushed it the first time but before it started crawling again.