A Short Guide to the People Who Still Use the Library, Part 2

Exhibit A: The John Wayne Busey (May Or May Not Wear a Clown Suit)

This terrifying library patron draws teddy bears on the little pieces of scratch paper at the circulation desk and puts hand sanitizer on his face. At some point in your brief but disturbing relationship with him you will find yourself revising his Fairhaven College application essay, in which the full extent of his manifold psychosis is described, denied, and then decorated with teddy bears. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that according to my Encyclopedia of Little Things Lonely People Mistake For Big Things, the casual revision of a personal essay is an instigating factor in 89% of all cases of murder-suicide. A full scale editing job with stylistic suggestions, depending on the color of pen used, can escalate a bipolar schizophrenic from a 'Gary Busey' to a 'John Wayne Gacy,' something known in psychology journals as the Busey-Gacy Vowel Shift. The condition is widely considered irreversible, although it is rumored that Gary Busey himself shifts between the Busey and Gacy phases several times a month, in accordance with the fullness of the moon. Eventually, of course, the John Wayne Busey terrifies one too many students and has to be escorted out of the library by campus police.



Exhibit B: The Traveling Salesman

Sporting a wrinkled trench coat and clinging to a tattered briefcase like a wet rat to a heap of garbage, this library patron calls to mind the hungry-eyed businessmen of the Great Depression. Some say he speaks five languages; some say he once rode a camel bareback through the Mongolian dessert for three elective credits and a bag of potatoes. He comes in on the heels of an autumn wind and departs with the first spring lightning storm, leaving trails of legal size paper and food crumbs in his wake. What's in the briefcase? Monopoly money? Bread? Heroin? Whatever the case, the contents of his briefcase are mere chump change in comparison to the solid Mongolian gold of his soul.



Exhibit C: The Hand Sanitizer Enthusiast

A comic miracle occurs every time this library patron approaches the desk and, unable to resist the bottle of hand sanitizer at the counter, sics himself upon it like a spring pig on a pile of truffles. He gets elbows-deep in the sweet, cool burn of alcoholic soap and seems to say with his eyes, 'If you're just going to do a couple of pumps, you might as well take a bath in your own shit. A real man needs at least ten pumps. If chickens did ten pumps, we wouldn't have bird flue. If we had dipped the 80's in ten pumps, Reagan would still be president.'



In the library, as in life, such tragedies are commonplace.

Personality Profile: Mr. Fancy Socks

"I got up one morning and couldn't find my socks, so I called Information. She said, 'Hello, Information.' I said, 'I can't find my socks.' She said, 'They're behind the couch.' And they were!" - Stephen Wright



It is a widely held notion in academic circles that the psychological prototype for Mr. Fancy Socks developed as a way to assert and maintain social status among rival males, much like the antler-clashes of elk, or the knife-fights of New England lobsters.* In every university library, for instance, there is one male staff member who is taller, better-dressed, and more learned in the fields of pop music and Greek food than any other staff member. He wears his heart on his sleeve, his sleeves unbuttoned, and his glasses on a cloth chain hand-braided by the women of a small Tibetan village. Many of the female university population harbor secret and fantastic crushes on him, and many men jealously believe him to be a homosexual. Clearly, there is only room for one Mr. Fancy Socks in this Library Town; and yet, there is always a corresponding Double in the university faculty, an English or Philosophy professor who is similarly tall and coiffed, an expert on pitas and Proust. Who is the better man? That depends.

Who wears fancier socks?

It begins with harmless show-boating: a pose struck with legs crossed, a second too long spent tying his shoes. If he is feeling saucy, which Mr. Fancy Socks almost always is, he'll click his heels together to let you know about it. He is a cashmere coyote in a pair of road runners. On warm days he wears tennis anklets that whisper passages from 'Lolita' to no one in particular. But what begins as leisure and light soon escalates into full-blown war, until eventually Mr. Fancy Socks is resting a leg on some poor unsuspecting librarian's card catalog and rolling up a pant cuff so that the full length of the sock is revealed ad infinitum, at which point the rival will 9 times out of 10 suffer devastating and irreversible heartbreak. The alpha male will make his victory known by smacking the reference librarian square on her fanny. "Bought 'em off a hobo in Prague for a bottle of mescaline," he'll say, and chuckle to himself. And you won't even bat an eye, because you just know - you just know, just looking at him - that Mr. Fancy Socks did inconceivable amounts of mescaline in Prague. His status assured, the rest of the semester will sail by like a dream inside of another dream, or like a barrel full of mescaline floating down the Vltava river in Prague. For a while, he is King.

These men, though they appear as infallible lions in a savanna of social perfection, are inwardly the most vulnerable of meerkats. According to my Almanac of Statistics on the Use of Fancy Socks as a Psychological Defense, 87% of them have had their sexuality questioned in public, 90% of them have undergone a tempestuous love affair with pesto-flavored mayonnaise, and a whopping 96% of them have had their taste in foreign films and/or ethnic foods insulted at a dinner party.**

So next time you see one of these gentle bohemian beasts lounging book-side, remember the silent language of fancy socks: argyle spells anxious, paisley means divorce, and silk blends spell unresolved sibling rivalry issues, possibly brought about by early childhood trauma. Have compassion. Be kind. Say, "Hey, Mr. Fancy Socks. I see you. I dig your digs. I'm picking up what you're putting down, and I know you're a good man."





*Not true.

**For more on this subject, I suggest 'Barefoot In The Snow: The Souls of the Sockless, Shoeless, and Otherwise Spiritually Fried.'(Vikingman Press, 1998.)


Editor's Note: For information regarding the other type of Sock War, wherein prepubescent boys roll up their socks into balls and hurl them at each other until they physically exhaust themselves, please see "Blood, Bleach, and Masturbation: The Suburban Sock Wars of the 1990s." (Everyman Press, 2002.)

A Petition to Hate the Black Widow Spider Even More Than We Already Do, with notes from the Encyclopedia of Lies Science Told Us

Editor's Note: I wrote this for a friend who asked me to write a short piece on the Black Widow, assuming he meant the terrible, terrible spider. Later he clarified that he was referring to the Bellingham transvestite who goes by the same name - but it was too late.







Ah, the Black Widow! It is difficult to conceive of a thing more instinctively terrifying and repulsive than a Black Widow spider, barring certain names which may leap to mind in the arena of political radio. The spider's name alone is enough to inspire a shiver of disgust in the spine and a compulsive desire to be fed ice cream. It has been turned into legend at Fourth-of-July barbecues for millennia. Its picture is drawn in hieroglyphs. There are sculptures in Rome of fathers re-enacting the time a Black Widow was hiding in the toe of one of his slippers, and sculptures of their wives and children listening in gape-jawed rapture, potato chips tumbling from their mouths. The Black Widow is universally feared and hated, and this is the way it should be.


But we need to step it up.


The Black Widow has not been "misunderstood." She is not "just as afraid of you" as you of her. There is nothing going on inside her staggeringly tiny brain that deserves the misty-eyed adoration of the weird ladies who guard the Arthropod exhibits at zoos like grandmothers drifting through cat emporiums, bestowing upon tarantulas and flesh-eating beetles names like "Sir Laurence" and "Maude." In fact, there is nothing inside the Black Widow at all except a jumble of nerves, a system of glands, and a perfect replica of all the reoccurring nightmares of the entire human race.


Do you know how a black widow eats? I'll tell you how a black widow eats.


The Black Widow eats by thrusting its Nosferatu fangs into the live body of its victim, tightly bound in a straight jacket made of silk, paralyzing and saturating the body in what science magazines politely call "digestive enzymes," but which my Encyclopedia of Lies Science Told Us informs me is actually called Death Acid. The Death Acid partially dissolves the victim, and what can't be liquefied, the spider grinds into meat pudding with its enormous, H.P. Lovecraftian teeth. All of which, mind you, happens while the victim is still alive. That's how a Black Widow eats. She wraps you in cellophane, turns you into a smoothie and drinks you. The only creature that eats in a more horrific way than a Black Widow spider is a starfish - but starfish are redeemed by clinging to rocks in tide pools, being available in pastel colors, and possessing the ability to regrow their own limbs. None of which can be said for the Black Widow!


And do you know what else? The Black Widow doesn't even deserve to be called a widow. The word widow evokes a certain sympathy, a certain painful understanding of the tragedy of outliving a loved one. But how many widows do you know who are widows because they murdered and ate their own husbands after sex? According to my Almanac of Statistics On The Frequency of Post-Coital Homicide, you know almost none. There are only two such widows living in the United States, and both of them are very famous. And you, reader, probably don't know anybody famous at all. You want a widow? Jackie Kennedy. You want a black widow? Coretta Scott King. Those are real widows. And neither of them ate their husbands. Actually, both of their husbands were assassinated, and I wouldn't be surprised if Black Widow spiders were involved.


Perhaps we ought to call it what it really is: a Nazi spider. Because like the Nazis, it tortures and kills its own kind. Like the Nazis, the females are larger and more frightening than the males, and they lay eggs. And like Nazism, it's one of the worst things in history, poisoning whoever it touches and permitted only in the complete absence of a just and loving God. And so what if it kills flies. Who cares? We all kill more flies in our sleep than spiders do in a year - a year which, for humans, is filled with beautiful human things like eating takeout and shopping for sheets, but for a spider is filled with terrible, disgusting, unacceptable spider things, like murdering and eating your sex partners.

Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich at a Sleepover (Starring Nathan Lane as Rush Limbaugh)

Summer, 2006. KARL ROVE's disheveled townhouse living room in Washington, D.C., where a party is dying down into a sleepover. There are the sounds of drunken guests snoring softly, toppled beer can pyramids, etc. KARL ROVE is lumbering around like a grizzly bear in the background, dressed in a bath robe and an over-sized Ross Perot campaign t-shirt, eating chili from the can and scratching himself. RUSH LIMBAUGH and NEWT GINGRICH, in matching pajamas, lie next to each other in a two-person sleeping bag.)




NEWT: If we were outside, I'd be counting stars. But we're not outside. We're inside. For some reason. Even though it's a beautiful summer night and the stars are probably INSANE right now...

KARL (off of NEWT's tone): I told you, I can't be outside at night. Skeeters go crazy for my rich perovian blood. Plus, let's not forget, even though this is a nice neighborhood, there's a gay black family that lives like ten blocks over, and I know I saw them eyein' my flat screen.

RUSH: It is a sweet flat screen.

KARL: I know it's a sweet flat screen.

NEWT: Point is, we're inside. And there are no stars inside. So I'm counting the little dots in the ceiling panels and naming them after people in Congress. I named three after myself, because there are really three versions of The Newt.

RUSH: You mean, like, the real you, and the you who goes on the news, and then the you who just goes crazy and lets it all hang out?

NEWT: Sort of. You know how in like '89 I was really into American flag ties? That was one.

KARL: That was a good Newt.

NEWT: Yeah. I was like, "How has no one thought of this? We're in America. We wear ties. It just makes sense." And then during the Clinton years I was really into the steak-gargonzola alfredo from Olive Garden. And then the third Newt is harder to describe, because it was really more of an inner zen thing, but the best way I can say it is that for a few years I was just on a plain of perfect spiritual and sexual harmony. Everything just matched up. Everything just...aligned.

RUSH (understanding): Mmmmmmm. I love that, when that happens.

NEWT: I remember one day; it was a perfect day. I woke up, and I made beautiful love to my wife, and I played a perfect game of golf, and then I went on CNN and said that awesome volleyball quote.

RUSH (quoting): "A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning..."

KARL (finishing): "No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about." <-----------Editor's Note: actual quote from Newt Gingrich.

RUSH: Some day, I am going to get that tattooed on my calf.

NEWT: It should be on a desk-calendar, that's how good that quote is.

KARL: I think it IS on a desk-calendar. I think I HAVE that desk-calendar. Hang on.

(EXIT KARL.)


RUSH:...Newt?

NEWT: Yeah, Rush?

RUSH: I voted for Clinton.

NEWT (sighing): Rush, you've got to let the Clinton guilt go. It was 1992. It was a dark time.

RUSH: It was a dark time. Really dark. I remember, like you were saying about that perfect good day you had? Well, I had a perfect bad day. I remember, I was sitting like three inches away from the T.V., smoking pills, wearing my clown suit -

NEWT: If you're going to smoke oxycontin, might as well smoke it in a clown suit.

RUSH: Right! And so I'm smoking vicodin in my clown suit, watching T.V. like a regular guy, and there's Clinton doing an interview, with that Boy-Governor babyface, and his voice is getting inside my head and reaching down into my heart and making me feel things. Dark things. Deep things. And I just thought...Bush doesn't play sax! Bush doesn't wear tracksuits! Bush can't hang! And so what if God likes Republicans better? If God wanted me to vote for Bush, why would God let Bush raise taxes? And it was like God was whispering in my ear, "Bush can't hang! Bush can't hang!"

(KARL comes back into the room, holding the desk-calendar. He appears contemplative.)

KARL: Don't you guys hate the way black people talk?

NEWT: Karl - first of all, yes, obviously. But five metric tons of heavy shit just got dropped all over this two-person sleeping bag and now is not the time.

KARL: I mean, I was just thinking while I was upstairs, how with black people it's always like, "Yo" this and "Brother" that and "Motherfucker." Always. Except when they're on the news, but then it's like, you know they're really still thinking that, even if they're not saying it out loud.

NEWT: O.K., yes, Karl, I agree. You're totally right. It's super annoying. But right now we need to focus on Rush, because Rush, as it turns out, is way more messed up than even we thought he was, and he needs our help, and he needs us to listen. Right? Am I right here, Rush?

RUSH: No, it's alright. I said what I...came here to say.

NEWT: No, Rush. You been real sick a real long time, and I didn’t want to say anything because your wife makes that incredible banana pie - Rush, only good thing you ever did was marry a woman knew how to make a banana puddin' pie.

RUSH: The amazing thing is she makes it from those little jello instant pudding mixes.

NEWT: Point is, you been real sick for a long time now and I didn’t want to say anything, partly because of the pie, but partly because you’re the closest thing I’m ever going to have to a friend, a fact which all by itself can make a guy stop and think. And I’m worried about you.

RUSH (frowning): Oh, no, you're not. You're not worried. Nobody is. (getting hysterical) Nobody cares about Rush Limbaugh!

(RUSH collapses into girlish, body-wracking sobs, like Nathan Lane did in 'The Bird Cage.')

KARL: I swear, if I had a nickel for every time a casual sleepover turned into a weird gay cry-a-thon because Rush Limbaugh had a nervous breakdown in a two-person sleeping bag.

NEWT (to KARL): He's got Clinton guilt.

RUSH: Oh, that's right! Excuse me for confiding! Go ahead and tell everybody now! Tell the world! Where's CNN? Where's CNN?! Somebody get CNN on the phone and tell him! "Oh, hey, CNN, it's Rush, just thought you should know I voted for Clinton because I was high off my ass on xanax and banana pudding pie and God talked to me through the T.V."

NEWT: Oh, calm down. It's just Karl. You know Karl's not going to say anything.

KARL: You voted for Clinton? That's cool, man. So did I.

NEWT (stunned): WHAT?

KARL: Yeah! I voted for Clinton. Didn't everybody?

NEWT: YOU'RE WEARING A ROSS PEROT T-SHIRT!

KARL: Um, yeah. Because it's awesome. Have you ever seen anybody else in a Ross Perot t-shirt?! That's how awesome this t-shirt is! Look at it!

(KARL pulls the shirt down and out for dramatic effect.)

RUSH (sniffling): It is a pretty awesome shirt.

KARL: Tell me about it! Liberals, neo-cons, dems, donkeys, 'phants, welfare, whatever! They don't care. They go crazy for the Ross Perot t-shirt.

NEWT: I don't believe this! Am I the only one who isn't living a lie here?! What the fuck. For reals.

(NEWT pulls a cigarette from a pack on a nearby table, lights it, pulls out his blackberry and starts dialing.)

RUSH: NO! NO! NOT ANN! NOT ANN!

(RUSH throws himself at NEWT using the hilarious body-comedy Nathan Lane used in 'Mousehunt', but NEWT wriggles out of reach. RUSH lies on the floor like a dead fish while NEWT smokes and waits for ANN COULTER to pick up.)

NEWT: Hey! Ann! - actually, you know what, hang on. Hang on.

(NEWT puts it on speaker.)

NEWT: Ann! Hey! How's the party?

ANN (chewing gum): Ugh. Lame.

NEWT: Listen, I'm kind of freaking out over here at Karl's place because Rush just told me he voted for Clinton, which was really not that weird all by itself, but then Karl told me HE voted for Clinton, too, and that just totally blew my mind, and now I'm starting to question everything, and I don't even know...I mean, if we could just do like a basic fact check, like...if I could just list a few things and you could tell me if they're good or bad?

ANN: YES! YES. GOD, I love being me.

NEWT: O.K....taxes, gays, abortions, social programs, stand-up comics.

ANN: Bad!

NEWT: Industry, Ayn Rand, candy.

ANN: Good!

NEWT: And the American Tie Flag Thing, did you like that?

ANN: I guess. I don't really like ties.

KARL: You don't really like anything.

ANN: That's not true! I like things!

KARL: Like what? Name me one thing you genuinely like.

(There is a long pause while ANN thinks of something she likes.)

ANN: Those little vests that dogs wear.

NEWT: Listen. Ann. I need you to tell me you voted for Bush in the '92 election. Will you just please tell me that?

ANN: ...I don't think I can do that, Newt.

NEWT: Oh, my God. Not you, too!

ANN: What! He could hang!

(NEWT hangs up on ANN.)

RUSH: What did I tell you! The man can hang!


(There is a long silence, during which an air of peace and contentment falls over RUSH and KARL, and an air of troubled anguish falls over NEWT, who continues to smoke and rock back and forth in the two-person sleeping bag.)

KARL: Hey, buddy. Come on. It's going to be fine.

RUSH: Yeah, Newt. Cheer up! Happy face!

KARL: Tomorrow we'll go play some golf, and then we'll go out to Olive Garden, and we'll smoke some of Rush's mom's morphine, and everything will be back to normal in no time.

RUSH: No time!

NEWT: And I can wear my American Flag Tie?

KARL: Of course.

NEWT: And I can get the steak gargonzola?

KARL: You can get ten steak gargonzolas.

(KARL turns out the light, goes to his sleeping corner, and falls asleep standing up.)

RUSH: G'night, Newt.

NEWT: G'night, Rush.




THE END.

A Short Guide to the People Who Still Use the Library

Exhibit #1: The Bearded Wizard/Wise Old Man Archetype

Tall, bearded, slow-moving and smelling strangely of dirt, this library patron instantly reminds one of an Ent. The rotting pockets of his raincoat are full of life's cutest conspiracy theories. He has 'the shakes' at any given time of day, and wears roofing knee pads. According to my Almanac of the Charming But Useless Persistence of Past Professions In The Old And Dying, there is only a 2% chance he has done any actual roofing work in the past 25 years, but an acquaintance of mine claims to have seen the Ent straddling a roof on a side street in Bellingham. Was he there because he was hired? Was he in some sort of roofing fugue state? Either way, he is an incredible resource for terrible two-liner jokes, all of them clean, most of them having to do with talking dogs.



Exhibit #2: The Retired Community College Professor Who Is Obsessed With His Ex-Wife (May or May Not Wear A Stetson Hat)

He was once a guest professor at the U.W., and his ex-wife was an intolerable whore. These truths, clutched close to his beige-blazered breast, are the sum total of his life's accumulated wisdom, and they divide his perception of the world into two separate but equally good-for-nothin' teams: those who will never be guest professors, and those who are merely whores-in-the-making. He smells lightly of pipe tobacco in the morning, and darkly of bourbon at night.



Exhibit #3: The Happy Immigrant

The man's chronic printer problems are exacerbated by a beautiful, incomprehensible accent that fluctuates between Old World Russian and Truman Capote. Despite this, he is in a seemingly perpetual state of good humor and courtesy, the effect of which is a wild feeling of contagious happiness and a nagging sense of shame for every time you've ever been an asshole. He gestures, fairy-like, and emits a deep trollish laugh when the printer spits out a few more pages of his document. He has a beautiful wife and at least one precocious child that hides behind his wife's legs when they accompany him.



Exhibit #4: The Community Card Holder Who Smells Of Decomposing Meat (May Or May Not Have A Sidekick)

He seems like he is on the brink of death, but never dies. His biggest fan is a mustached woman, often in tow, and the sight of the two of them together presents you with the potentially nauseating possibility that they are romantically involved, but you instantly suppress this option and become certain that she is his sister and that the region of their crotches where sexual organs are normally found is occupied by a simple waste-draining tube - his made by Hasbro with a button you can press to play a machine gun sound-effect, hers made by Lisa Frank and covered in glittery horse stickers.

Postcards From Japan

When my brother was in college he used to send me long letters written on notebook paper. The letters hinted at some larger life being lived and made real the other side of the world between us. I kept them in a pile in the sliding compartment of my bed.

Now he sends postcards, fans, rice paper journals from Japan, with short notes in earthquake handwriting: "clean, nice people, cheap food - the opposite of France." Wisecracks from California, myths from Israel. The evidence in support of the existence of an outside world is slowly growing larger, graduating through years and across cluttered tables, in piles inside piano benches and tucked into books stacked in the window sills to keep them open in the summer.

Once he told me - not in a letter, but in a traffic jam, as I sat beside him in his car - about the kinds of buildings he works in when he's overseas. He told me how the scientists are led through a series of air-locked rooms by pathologically polite guides, stripping and redressing into suits of nylon armor. Once in the lab, they conduct their work like astronauts sifting through the atoms of the moon, in rooms so spotless, so meticulously clean, that there is only one particle of dirt for every hundred thousand particles of air. You have never been in a room that clean, he says. Asian maids in white suits are continuously scrubbing spotless surfaces with invisible cloths, breathing into masks, peering through plastic for the illegal dust. Should one have to cough, because science has not yet found a way to shut this function off before entering the lab, one must hunker down and cough into a floor made of silent vacuums, sucking air down into the belly of the building and expelling it through vents in the exterior walls.

He is glad to be home in Texas, he says, with the elements: with dirt and swelter and exhaust, and a son forever in need of a bath, and a wife with curly hair that catches bits of sun. He confides in me that he sometimes dreams of being a goat farmer on a patch of his father-in-law's land.

Crab Fight Drunk Gumbo Recipe, with notes from the Encyclopedia of Statistics on the More Or Less Permanently Altered Sobriety of World-Class Chefs

Ingredients:

For Crab:

2 live crabs, bagged and angry
1/2 cup sea salt
1 gallon water





For Gumbo:

2 tbsp. highly suspicious butter substitute, expired
4 small red potatoes, poorly halved
1 red onion, poorly chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
A pinch of salt
A dash of pepper
6 cups water


For the soul:

1 album, chef's choice
1 apron, your father's
1 six pack Miller High Life tall boys, room temp





Directions:

1. Drink 3 of the tall boys in rapid succession. 87% of all chefs are at least buzzed, and the other 13% are line-cooks at Wendy's who are having a tempestuous love affair with crystal meth. (Encyclopedia of Statistics on the More Or Less Permanently Altered Sobriety of World-Class Chefs, 1997.) Set remaining tall boys aside in large bowl.

2. Get that apron on. Try it loose, then try it tied. This is the time in your life to experiment.

3. In large pot, heat 1 gallon water and 1/2 cup salt over high heat.

4. The water's boiling! It's time for a crab fight!

5. Release crabs from bag onto kitchen floor. Watch them circle each other. Root for one. From time to time, you might taunt one or both crabs with a butter knife. Be creative. This is why you dropped out of school to become a chef.

6. Put on some mood music and get the chef juices flowing. Have you ever had a meal that tasted like a gray mattress? That is the taste of a meal marinated in cold and stony silence. (A meal that tastes like shit was more than likely cooked while listening to Diana Ross. The Encyclopedia tells us, for example, that during a 1969 Chefs of Manhattan regional competition, Frankie 'Fondue' Fontane received the lowest score ever given in the history of chef's competitions for his 'Stop in the Name of Soup' chicken soup, after which he dropped to his knees in the middle of the street and screamed 'THE SUPREMES ARE NOT SUPREME!' repeatedly until he was hit and killed by a truck. Ironically, the truck-driver didn't have his eyes on the road at the time of the accident because he was looking for a cassette tape of The Marvelettes that had slipped into "that tricky no-man's land between the seat and the center console.")

7. Once bored of the crab fight, pick up crabs by their back legs and drop into boiling water. Imagine the pain of being boiled. Rejoice that you are not a crab. You are a chef. And a damn fine chef at that! Boil them for 20 minutes.

8. In separate pot, combine potatoes, garlic, onion, salt and pepper in enough water to cover the potatoes by about 2 inches. (about 4 cups.) Boil, covered, for 20 minutes.

9. This is where being drunk comes in handy. Drain crab and potato pots, using flimsy lids to barely contain the boiling hot contents as you pour the steaming water off into the sink, which is precariously stacked with all manner of unwashed cookery. If you do feel the occasional burn, think through it by imagining your parents' suffering instead. Don't be shy! 99% of world-class chefs are victims of long-term childhood trauma. (Jacques De Jacques, head chef and owner of Paris's 'Le Petite Garcon' restaurant, was once asked to explain how he came up with his famous meatball-turtle soup. He locked himself in the walk-in fridge for two days and came out with a crayon drawing of his mother's head on a turtle's body.)

10. Return pots to burners on low heat. Add butter to potatoes. There will come a point when you will feel you've added enough butter, but you haven't. Add more. You like your gumbo like you like your women: stuffed in a rusty pot, smothered in butter, and resembling mashed potatoes. <---- Editor's Note: most brilliant thing I've ever written.

11. Find and pay someone to shell and clean the crab.

12. Add crab meat to the potatoes. Drink another beer while it cools.

13. Fall asleep before eating, wake up at 3 in the morning and enjoy!