While elegance and good design can be appreciated by all of mankind, the refined of taste among us also shares an appreciation for the truly terrible. Think about the popularity of The Room or Wesley Willis. Our hunger for the hilariously awful is at least as acute as our delight in the well-crafted. I don’t know about you, but to me, this ability to love the poorly made for its own sake truly stands as a hallmark of our development as a species. In this spirit, I bring you a wildly incomplete list of my favorite worst phone apps of all time. Please note, these are (or, at one time were), all absolutely real apps, available through various mobile marketplaces...
Forgive the gap in my ongoing, hard-hitting investigative journalism of the mysterious and vaguely pedophilic "music" company known as Ark Music Factory. I decided to save this piece for the November issue of Exotic, since it deals with one the month’s most notorious and misunderstood holidays—Veterans Day!
I jest, surely.
I am, of course, talking about the other holiday in the winter, where our parents guilt us into spending a lot of money to visit them and sit and listen to them beg for grandchildren, asking why we aren’t exactly the same as we were as kids, while they talk about the merits of whatever cult leader—be they religious or political—has brainwashed them this month...
An oversized coffin stands erect, next to the stage, near the dressing room door. A skeleton rests inside, upright with crossed arms. Cobwebs cover the tableau. The coffin floats in fog and strobe lights. The DJ is a little too generous with the fog, as DJs often are.
A hipster customer sits at the rack with a hard-line part, pint of IPA and a hard-on protruding from skinny jeans. A sexy nurse approaches. She unzips her uniform.
"That coffin is pretty cool," he says.
She says nothing—only smiles with ruby lips and winged eyes...
It’s November—the month where pretty much anyone who got knocked up on Valentine’s Day is going to be birthing their larvae. So, since it’s child havin’ season, everyone should be aware of the consequences of their actions. No, I don’t mean drinking moonshine and smoking meth during pregnancy—though, that carries its own set of issues. I mean, what to name your child. This is one of the the first and most important decisions a parent can make and so many people do it absolutely wrong. Yes, you might deem that, for reasons formulated in your hazy cloud of late-pregnancy whimsy, it’s time to give your new child a completely unique name—one that violates all the unwritten (and, many of the written) laws of human decency. Read this guide, before you curse your child with a name that makes them wince when strangers try to pronounce it (or, makes it seem like you really wanted a dog, not a baby)...
They say a bartender acts as a therapist. So,
I decided to make it official. My only credentials
are listening to hundreds upon hundreds
of people’s problems, over more years
than I can admit. Let me wipe the bar down
for you, put down a fresh coaster, then pour
you a drink. Pull up your stool and tell me all
about it. Remember, I’ve heard it all. If you
have a question, please email DiscountTherapist@
Yahoo.com. You will remain anonymous.
Also, you get what you pay for...
Normally, I don’t like to bring up politics in this column. But, for this particular issue, it is only fair that I state my bias—Oregon Govern-mommy, Kate Brown, is a soulless, power-hungry, poor-people-hating, Zima-drinking, gay-bashing, closeted racist who probably still uses her ex-boyfriend’s Netflix password, so she can watch documentaries about Hitler, while she drinks the blood of kidnapped children.
Are we clear? Good, because "clear" are the only type of vape cartridges (and nicotine liquid) that Oregonians will be able to possibly access, over the course of the next six months. Why? If you haven’t heard, at least THIRTEEN people in the U.S. have died after using cheap, illegal, Chinese vape products infused with Vitamin E oil (which is bad to inhale, especially if you already suffer from a lung disease). Now, when a dozen people die because they can’t R.T.F.M. (talk about "sick clouds," *buh dum chh*), that’s enough for a national emergency. But, a baker’s dozen? We’re talking AIDS, mixed with climate change and some positive news coverage of a Republican-leaning politician—that level of national crisis...
Whether I like it or not, I’m about to turn...umm...let’s say 29. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to get my first real job, settle down with a woman who doesn’t have a stage name and act my age. But, since I don’t have any experience outside of a few small achievements (I can cook steak, I know some basic guitar chords and I have a master’s degree from Portland State University...so, nothing really useful), I’ve been trying to find ways in which I can apply the skills I’ve learned as a strip club DJ, to other areas in my life. Thus far, I’ve wrangled up six life hacks that I’ve learned while working as a dance commander. Hopefully, you can make use of this knowledge without throwing a decade of your life away on free drugs and sexy women...
Mortuary Transport Specialist was generally not the line of work passersby suspected Charlotte to be engaged in. Though, to be fair, most people probably didn’t often think of (or even know that) such a job title existed. Certainly, in some dusty and disparaged dark corner of each person’s mind, is the recognition that someone took care of the remains of their loved ones. Mostly, Charlotte understood that human beings preferred their cognition of the recently deceased to linger in the philosophical plane of the existence of an afterlife, and liked to think of the dead as frolicking through fields of wildflowers and kittens, not tucked betwixt stiff, white sheets, nor benighted by a body bag...
