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Internet History

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It's a given that no one wants anyone to see their search history, and har har, if I die, make sure it's deleted before my parents come over, and whatever else has been written on T-shirts about it. But when's the last time you stopped to appreciate just how dreadful your search history is? And maybe not even as a result of direct searches for porn. Everyone looks at porn on the Internet; if you judge someone for looking at porn online, it just means you're probably a bad person and maybe no one likes your genitals.

You ever read something and not really understand one part so you Google it and find out that what you were just reading has something to do with ritualistic torture in the 17th century? And you think "Oh, weird" and close the window and move on, and then two days later maybe you're looking at Reddit and you click a link and it opens a pic of a dude who had to have his wang surgically removed from a steel pipe and then you think, "This isn't pleasant at all, I shall away from this terrible place!" Yeah, bang, right there. Someone gets on your computer and you're the guy who looks up ritual torture and pipe fuckers, just like that. Suddenly you're not invited to the family reunion because no one thinks you should be near kids.

The Internet is constantly out to sabotage you, totally by accident. It's not alive, it has no intention or motivation, it's just organized in such a way that wherever you turn, you're going to run face first into something awful. It's a carnival fun house of depravity with stuff jumping out from every corner, and it's not your fault if you get hit by a bus and have to be laid up in the hospital with no way to stop your mom, who's trying to be helpful, from turning on your computer and seeing that your friends from school have emailed you at least 30 separate movie clips of lady boys peeing off of balconies. It's not you! But no one cares. Because that combined with the obviously disgusting state of your mattress indicates that you're a deviant of the highest order.

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Toilet Face

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In 1999, the movie Office Space came out, and since then, everyone has been pretty familiar with the term "O-face." Certainly your mattress is familiar. But while the O-face is the expression you make during an intimate moment of vulnerability/when you have a few minutes free in a 7-Eleven bathroom, I would opine that there is another intimate, oft-unseen face we all have, and unlike the O-face, we want to share this with no other humans at all. Yes, the toilet face.

I am no statistician. I'm not a researcher, I have no lab, I don't conduct studies for a major university. I am basing this entry on nothing more than a strong hunch. My hunch is that, maybe often, maybe only once in your entire life, you had a difficult time going to the bathroom. And as you attempted to exorcise that uncooperative turd with the power of will, the power of Christ, the power of deep breathing and panic, your face contorted into a mask of deeply contemplative terror and anguish. Like those unflattering images of Beyonce's performance at the Super Bowl, so too did you screw up your facial muscles and bear down to give it your all. And rather than a quick Destiny's Child reunion, you gave unto your tiny room a few muttered curse words and maybe a groan like a great bear settling in for the night. And the expression on your face can best be described as "what you look like while trying to shit."

A lot of people take pride in how well they retain their composure. Actors and models are paid to look beautiful in unusual circumstances because we like the idea of a James Bond, who looks cool and handsome even while fighting for his life. But of all the things you'll ever do that can put you out of your element, that can remove you from a situation where you control how others perceive you, you're not likely to find one less glamorous than dropping a deuce. Jennifer Lawrence on the throne is still Jennifer Lawrence on the throne -- the threshold has been crossed, and the toilet face is just there with no mystique or allure to protect it any longer. Your toilet face is your soul's mattress. It is what it is, there's no more layers.

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Your Lazy Place

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Your lazy place is a metaphysical thing. It's not a real place so much as a state of being, a place in which you can be found sometimes, and you never, ever want to let someone fully into your lazy place. If you're in a loving, trusting relationship, you'll happily open the window to your lazy place and let your partner look in. Also if you're a sociopath you'll let your roommate right on in through the front door, but normal people never want to fully immerse another in this zone, because you can never go back. Pandora couldn't shove all that shit back in the box, and neither can you.

What happens in your lazy place? It's where you lift your cheek up and off the couch because you want to fart and you know that if you don't give it some room, it will probably sting. It's where you breathe in sharply and notice that you have something in your nose, but rather than grab a Kleenex, which is all the way across the room, you just dig in to get the invader out. It's where you drop scrambled eggs on your bare chest and just pick them up and eat them with your fingers. That's right, ladies: I'm including you in this and picturing it as well. Mmm, egg cleavage.

Your lazy place is where you walk around in your underwear that has frayed elastic, and maybe sometimes you scratch an itch somewhere south of the border, and because no one else is around, you smell your finger afterward.

Basically your lazy place is the physical manifestation of your apathy. How far do you not care? If you drop some salami on the floor, will you just brush it off and eat it? If there's no toilet paper, will you hop into the shower instead, or maybe just use your underwear and then change?

I'm not suggesting that we all do all of these things; that would be preposterous. For instance, as a highly paid Internet comedy writer, I hired a guy to scratch and sniff for me. His name is Gill and he talks a lot about his ex-wife. You may not engage in all of these lazy-place activities, but I stake my complete lack of reputation on the belief that there's absolutely something, some weird gross thing you've done in private, that you never wanted another person to know about.