THE CONDOM PURCHASE

WHY IS the act of buying condoms so incredibly embarrassing? Is it just me? Because honestly, it's pretty mortifying.

It should be a jubilant act! A cause for celebration! Presumably, you (the purchaser) are going to (probably) have sex soon! And, you're going to be mature and responsible about it; you don't want your gentleman's parts to blacken and fall off post-coitus, and you don't want your ladyfriend to squeeze out a baby. Condom-purchasing should not be embarrassing; it should instead prompt other shoppers to give you high-fives and fist-bumps. Sadly, this is not the case.

So, recently, I decided to buy some. This was prior to the Las Vegas adventure, and while I'd been informed that "what happens" there "stays" there, I felt fairly sure that this did not include sexual diseases and unborn fetuses. So I went to the ghetto Fry's with prophylactics on my mind.

Step one: find several nondescript items to buy, so a large box of condoms isn't the only thing in the shopping cart. A cantaloupe? Sure, why not. A gallon of juice that I probably won't be able to finish? Yeah, totally.

Step two: think of clever things to say if a fellow shopper or cashier decides to comment on the condom purchase. I came up with the following:

-"They're for the kids!" (This one works on so many levels.)

-"Oh, these? Well, they were plum out of water balloons, so I felt like these would do in a pinch!"

-"I run a Home for Troubled Teens."

Step three: obtain condoms, and discreetly head for the self-checkout. But totally hit a snag when I realized that in the backwards world of ghetto Fry's, condoms are kept under lock and key in a large glass case.

What in the everloving fuck? Where is the logic in this? If I were the owner of ghetto Fry's, I would not be worried about people stealing condoms. In fact, judging from the sheer number of single teenage mothers I saw wandering the store with their dead, glassy eyes, I would blatantly encourage people to steal condoms. I would fire condoms at single mothers and teenagers with an air-powered cannon. I would discreetly hide condoms inside of shopping bags and baby strollers, under windshield wipers, and even amongst the swaddling clothes of currently existing babies to prevent future mistakes. Wal-Mart sadly has a much better system in place: I'm told that the condoms are kept suspiciously close to the Mexican Culture section. Seriously.

"Excuse me," I politely said to the pharmacist. "Could I please get the key?"

"What key?" he asked.

"The um...the key for the cabinet over there?" I was attempting to be casual and discreet, seeing as there was a sizable line of people behind me.

"The key for which cabinet?" he replied.

Goddamn it, I thought. There's only one fucking cabinet that requires a key, but he's going to make me say it.

"The key for the...condom cabinet."

"Excuse me?" he said. "You'll have to speak up, I can't hear you." His grin widened, and I wanted to disappear.

"The condom cabinet, dude! There, are you happy?! The cabinet with condoms inside of it. I'm going to buy condoms, and I'm not going to use them as water balloons or give them to troubled teens, I'm going to use them, while having sex, so deal with it, but please give me the goddamn key."

He relinquished the key, and it was a minor victory.

LAS VEGAS: A STATELY PLEASURE-DOME DECREED

So, I went to Las Vegas for the first time this weekend.

Much of my time was spent wandering up and down The Strip, because goddamn, every last inch of it is total seizure-inducing eyecandy. Every architectural style is stitched together into a single hulking bastardization of all world culture: the Eiffel Tower protrudes from the ground directly across the street from a modernized Grecian Garden and an Egyptian pyramid casts a shadow over a Pizza Hut as a fifty-story likeness of Donny and Marie look on, eternally smiling. I constantly found myself wishing I could time-travel back to pre-revolutionary America, grab a founding father, bring him to present day Las Vegas, and scream, "this is what will eventually become of your democratically idealistic young country!" Then, said founding father and I could have gone to a buffet together and eaten lots of snow crab.

I saw three just-married couples. I saw a street performer/homeless man dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow feel up some young girl. I saw an overweight man in a motorized wheelchair (who was dressed in a sequined Santa Claus outfit, by the way) writhe obscenely. I saw scantily-clad women dancing, walking, and falling down drunk in the street. I got drunk, and then got subsequently lost. I suffered through an increasingly horrible piano bar, and felt compelled to leave when the piano player (after taking a request) loudly and happily exclaimed, "looks like Mr. Twenty Dollars wants to hear a little bitta Nickleback!" I ate Eggs Benedict, which is horrible, and quickly made a "Benedict Arnold" quip; it was not well received. I was served many, many vodka redbulls by a bartender who resembled a young Liam Niesen. I lost five dollars, made twenty five dollars, and then lost thirty dollars (not in that order). I went to a buffet, and ate sushi, mashed potatoes, tilapia, crab, spring rolls, french toast, watermelon, and spiral ham at the same time.

And I got to see Kids in the Hall live.

It was great. I was worried that they'd be old, that they'd be cashing in on former fame. This was only moderately true; many of the sketches dealt with their age, skewering their image a bit, but the overall quality of the show hadn't declined at all. They did an hour and a half of mostly new material, combining videos with stage sketches, punctuated by occasional monologues. It was unexpectedly awesome to watch new, topical sketches from the group, as well as call-backs and character sketches. And man, watching them break onstage and make each other laugh, I felt like the previous fourteen-year-old version of myself that would rush home from school each day to be able to watch Kids in the Hall reruns on Comedy Central.

Near the end of the trip, I watched the Bellagio fountains from afar. The fountains sprayed and danced to "Luck Be A Lady", punctuating each note with dizzying backlit columns of water, and in a twisted Las Vegas way, it was oddly beautiful. Thunderous arcs fired into the sky, dwarfing even the hotel beyond it, and fell to earth in shimmering waves. And just when I was feeling oddly moved by this, a sign-truck drove by on the strip, obscuring my view, and the sign advertised "FREE 24 HOUR SEX SHOWS", accompanied by a sun-bleached image of a stripper spread-eagled on her back. It totally ruined whatever personal moment I was having. I laughed and walked away.

"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

100TH POST BLOGSTRAVAGANZA

This is the 100th post of Hot Garbage! With that in mind, I'd like to thank a few people who've made it all possible.

I'd like to thank the dozens of writers, copy editors, page designers, layout managers, storyboard artists, stuntmen, caterers, and professional sexologists that have worked on/contributed to the blog over the last sixteen years. You guys are the best crew I could have hoped for. I'd like to extend a shout-out to the late Russ Davenport, an assistant intern who lost his life during the making of Post #20 ("CUBA GOODING JR,; PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE"). May God grant you the peace you never found in life, dood!

I'd like to thank our sponsors: Pringles™, "Last Call with Carson Daly", and Subway™, along with a series of generous donations from Diddy (donations mostly consisting of office supplies, seashells, interesting stories, and copies of the debut album of "Da Band").

I'd like to thank all the great modern contemporary authors who've inspired me to pursue the craft of writing. Tom Clancy. Dean Koontz. The guy that wrote Tales of the Bounty Hunters. Anne Rice. The guy that writes the nutrition facts on the labels of all the food that I eat. In the immortal words of a great mind (probably the guy that wrote Tales of the Bounty Hunters),"if I have seen further, it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants."

But mostly (and most honestly), I'd like to thank you for reading. I'd especially like to thank those of you who also write blogs of your own. I enjoy reading them very much. This whole blogging thing is nerdy and a bit pretentious, but it can also be sincere and involving and quite lovely. Keep doing what you're doing, I'll keep doing what I'm doing, and one day we're both going to be so so famous.

Also, a couple of changes are in order. I'm going to attempt to post more regularly. Also, I'm looking to avoid posting so many pictures/videos (because it's cheap and lazy), and instead try to create more original material (hopefully some longer, non-fiction essays, some comedy, and some visual art). If you have any suggestions regarding what you'd like to see more or less of, post them all up in my comments, Cajun-style.

And now I'll leave you with the first thing you'll be seeing more of over the next hundred posts: sexualized pictures of werewolves. Thanks again for reading.

"BUSH SUCKING DEMOCRACY DRY"

When famed comic book artist Alex Ross isn't painting Superman's crotch or a very shiny Captain America, he paints things like this.

Yes, please.

"WHEN DID YOU BECOME A ROBOCOP?"

Kanye's new album 808's & Heartbreak drops in a couple of weeks, and man, am I excited.

I was underwhelmed by Graduation. It felt inferior to Late Registration: some of the production was a bit lazy, Kanye's verses were (as always) a bit uninspired, and the "college theme" seemed pretty played out to me. Luckily, Kanye's gone pretty crazy since then. I'll let one of his blog posts (regarding criticism of his Bonnaroo set) prove my point nicely:

"I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Macbook Air! Call me any name you want... arrogant, conceited, narcissistic, racist, metro, fag whatever you can think of... BUT NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL!"

Y'know, dude, if you're just going to go around breaking Macbook Airs all willy-nilly, you don't deserve to own one, and should give yours to me. Only conceited narcissistic racist metro fags break expensive computers "just because".

These frequent meltdowns combined with the unfortunate passing of his mother (and his breakup with some ridiculously attractive supermodel he probably purchased from a Japanese mail-order catalogue) could indicate that Kanye's new album will be insightful and emotional, exploring yet-unseen depth and newly-acquired maturity.

One thing's for sure, though: the album is going to be really fucking weird. Here are the facts I've gathered thus far:

• There's little to no rapping on the album. Seriously. I'm told it's all singing, or, at least, "Auto-Tune singing". Yuck.
• Not only is there a track titled "Robocop", but said track is being sent to France in order to be mixed by Herbie Fucking Hancock. (!!!)
• Every song has an 808 drumbeat.
• The track "Coldest Winter" incorporates parts of a Tears for Fears song. (!!!)
• In an MTV News article, album producer Mike Dean not only reveals that Lil Wayne sings on the album, but also claims that he "sounds a lot like Axl Rose." Is this a good thing?

I've listened to rough versions of a few of the songs and so far, I'm digging them. The synthesizers sound like they belong in a cheesy horror movie from the mid-eighties and the drum patterns are window-rattling. Rad.

The album drops on November 25th. Until then, enjoy this clip of Kanye doing his thing on Ellen(which is totally the television program I'd appear on to promote my forthcoming album).

HEY, REMEMBER THAT TIME WHEN BATMAN BEAT THE PENGUIN? THAT WAS NEAT.