No man is an island. Most are archipelagos. And there’s a dude in southwest Missouri who’s a land bridge.

$50 can go a long way. Especially if you fold it properly.

Sometimes, laughter is the best medicine. Other times, efavirenz, lamivudine and zidovudine in combination are a much better option.

Some men are born great. Others make themselves great. And then there are some that act like they were born great, but they’re just very cocky babies.

No news is good news. Except if you’re worried there might have been an apocalypse.

Porter

I would also not allow any penguins in my igloo. If you have an adorable pet penguin, and you’re visiting me, feel free to bring him. But he won’t be allowed in the igloo. If we want to go look at him, we can bundle up and go outside. But although penguins are cute, they are very dirty, and can often be very loud as well.

And there would be no food made of whale or seal meat in my igloo. I understand those sorts of things are traditional fare in areas where igloos are popular, and you might pick some up along the way on a lark, but I just can’t stomach eating any sea mammals. I did research projects on various sea mammals while in elementary school, and they really hold a special place in my heart. In addition, the briny smell of dried seal meat attracts penguins like rats.

No complaining about the cold either, or making little jokes about how cold it is. Yes, it’s a little cold inside igloos. Yes, I get it. And I’ll probably have heard it all at that point. You came all this way to see how I’m surviving out here, so can’t we talk about anything besides your inane comments about the temperature? Believe me, it’s a helluva lot warmer inside an igloo than outside in the bitter arctic wind, if you catch my drift.

Oh, and Jesus Christ, do not ask me if you can charge your cell phone and iPod. I won’t have plugs, you idiot! It’s an igloo! Do you often see power lines draped across the tundra? Do ya? Or, hey, maybe that was just another one of your hilarious jokes! Well done, Milton freakin’ Berle! I’m in stitches! Somebody call George Burns!

You know, come to think of it, I just don’t think I’d want you in my igloo at all, OK, Jack Benny? No, no, I’m sorry, I just think you couldn’t really handle it, and I’d rather not go through the God damn hassle. You can take your filthy boots and your flightless waterfowl and your narwhal jerky, and you can just beat it, Sid Caesar! You had the chance of a lifetime, but you ruined it, so think about that on your seven hour flight back, Ernie Kovacs!

Anyway, it probably doesn’t matter because I don’t think I’m going to ever live in an igloo. Winter jackets make me look fat.

Porter

Chan Chan went through a lot in his life. His birth itself was controversial, as his parents’ love was starcrossed and physically challenging. His mother gave birth to him and his four siblings in a cardboard box on the back porch of a small two-story house nestled in a quaint cul de sac just outside of Nashville.

His mother’s owners decided to keep only one of the puppies; they didn’t have to room or time to care for more. Chan Chan had irregular, unattractive features and was never in the running to be the chosen one. He spent the next year of his life in a no-kill animal shelter being cared for by a woman named Sarah who once worked as a roadie for The Band. She cared deeply for her animals, but was a drunk, and a mean one. She never struck Chan Chan, yet verbal threats were commonplace. He spent many a night shivering in his crate, tail between his legs, tuning out Sarah’s garbled screams while “Music from Big Pink” blared noisily on the shelter’s stereo system.

He got away from Sarah one day on a trip to the vet, and wandered aimlessly around the Nashville city parks system for several months. His intention was to search for his mother, but had little sensory memory of her. Chan Chan survived on the kindness and litter of strangers, mainly eating the unwanted bags of Baked Lays that came with Subway meal deals.

In the summer of 2000, he befriended a trucker named Grayson outside of a 50’s themed diner. Desperate for company, the man brought Chan Chan along on his route. The dog rode up front until a dispute over a missing bag of turkey jerky prompted Grayson to banish him to the back with the shipment of unvarnished furntiture he was hauling. On the second day of the trip, Chan Chan fell asleep in a chest of drawers and woke up at 4am in the apartment of young married couple in Des Moines. He raided the pantry, gorged himself on dry vermicelli noodles, and let himself out the screen door.

Chan Chan wandered and sniffed, slept and searched. He worked briefly on a soybean farm in Eagle Grove, spent time in a pound in Kalona, and hitched a ride on a freight train to western North Carolina.

Chased out of the station by a cleaning woman, he ran due North for a half-mile and, when he stopped, found himself in the middle of a pine forest. Every direction looked and smelled the same. He was hungry. He found pine needles and pine cones and the occasional wild stramberry.

Chan Chan never made it back to his mother. He lived out the rest of his days in the forest, living peacefully, chasing birds, and avoiding campers. He didn’t bother anyone, did his best to live in harmony with those around him, and even went out of his way to help the smaller animals in the forest.

And yet despite all this, when Chan Chan died, he went to Hell. He spent the rest of eternity being stuck in the ass with pointy glass shards while lava dripped incessantly on his very sensitive nose. Every morning, his belly was sliced open, and lye-covered fire ants feasted on his convulsing intestines. Such was Chan Chan’s lot.

So you see, all dogs don’t go to Heaven.

What a bullshit series of movies that was.

Fuck you, Don Bluth.

Porter

Which is too bad, becuase Love works in the cubicle right next to this girl who has an amazing rack and a really nice ass.

Porter

And if you can’t afford new jeans, get a higher paying job. And if you can’t get a higher paying job, go back to school and get a better degree.

And if you can’t get into the school you want, take a writing class at the local community college to improve your entrance essays. And if you don’t live in a place that has a strong community college system, move to a place that values education more. And if you can’t move because you’re tied into a restrictive lease, get a real estate lawyer to help you finagle out of it.

And, God damn it, if you can’t find a real estate lawyer, then you look in the yellow pages. And if you can’t find the yellow pages, look under the sink behind where you stash all those plastic bags from the grocery store. And if you don’t have a sink, call a plumber to install one. And so help me, if the plumber comes and his jeans are too tight and reveal his asscrack when he bends over, you tell him to get new jeans.

Or, you and the plumber could work out once in a while, fatass. Whichever’s easier.

Porter

The bartender says, “We don’t have any beer, but I’ve got whiskey. How about two whiskeys on the rocks?”

The Polish guys say, “Well, I don’t usually drink liquor, but OK.” The Italian girl says, “You go ahead, but I think I’ll just have water.”

The bartender brings the whiskey and the water and says, “That’ll be $6.” The Polish guy takes out his wallet, and pays the $6, then leaves $2 for a tip.

The Polish guy and the Italian girl get up from the bar and sit in a corner booth with their drinks. The Polish guy takes a sip of his drink and says, “Hey! This tastes like water!” The Italian girl takes a sip of her drink and says, “Hey! This water tastes like beer!”

The Polish guy turns to the bartender and says, “Hey bartender, this whiskey I ordered is actually water, while this water my girl ordered tastes like beer! What gives?”

The bartender says, “Right, didn’t you say you wanted–”

“Actually, it’s fine, bartender,” says the Italian girl. “Could you leave us alone for a few minutes?” The bartender says, “Of course.”

The Italian girl then proceeds to tell the Polish guy that she doesn’t love him like she used to when they first met. She doesn’t know why, but it just doesn’t feel right anymore.

“What are you saying? You just want to end it? We can work on this,” says the Polish guy. The Italian girl sobs, and through her tears says, “We’ve been working on it. We’ve been working on it, and I can’t do it anymore. I don’t know what to do.”

“Is it something I’m doing wrong? What’s wrong? We can work on this,” says the Polish guy helplessly. “It’s nothing you’ve done. You’re perfect. I’ve never met anyone like you. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know,” says the Italian girl.

“No, I don’t… this was it. This was it. This can’t end. This is it,” says the Polish guy, whitefaced and tearless. “I don’t know. I don’t know. You’re so wonderful. You deserve someone better. Someone who can give you everything you want. I just don’t know,” says the Italian girl.

“But this… this was it. Is there someone else? Did you meet someone?” says the Polish guy, reaching for something tangible to get upset at. “There’s no one else. I love you. I just… I don’t know,” says the Italian girl. “It’s not working. I don’t know. I’m so sorry.”

The Italian girl hugs the Polish guy, who hangs limp in her arms. She leaves the booth and the bar and his life, and the Polish guy sits without blinking for several minutes. A classic rock song blares on the cable radio.

The bartender walks over to the Polish guy and says, “So… do you want to know about the whiskey being water and water being beer?”

“No. No thanks,” says the Polish guy. “I’m not in the mood for jokes.” He then gets up and walks around his neighborhood until the sun comes up.

Porter

We must make an effort to discover what truly makes us happy, what truly helps us be valuable citizens of the world. We all have our niche, and we must lodge ourselves into that niche with great energy and gusto, like a well-fitted cog in a glorious machine. We are all pieces in a complex, beautiful puzzle, and only when each of us takes our rightful place in this grand scheme, when we stand in locked arms, united as a universe, will the nature of all truth and existence be revealed.

I am happy to announce that I have discovered my niche, which is to waste copious amounts of time and money collecting and watching as many DVDs of Friends and Mystery Science Theater 3000 as possible.

And I’m well on my way to shoving myself inescapably into said niche! Celebrate and rejoice!

Ah. It feels good to know I’m really contributing something to the world.

Godspeed to each of you on your own individual spiritual journeys.

Porter

You can’t tell me what to do. I’ve worked here for twenty-two years. I’ve got an office. An office with a window. A window with a view straight down Lexington Avenue. I know the books of Brantley and Sentson Accounting inside and out. I single-handedly saved us from tax evasion charges two years ago. Charges that would’ve sunk my company like concrete in flan.

So don’t you stand there, in front of God and everyone, and tell me I can’t substitute the beet salad with the turkey club lunch special.

I can have that salad. I will have that salad. And you, you can either make it happen for me, or I can go talk to your manager, or your maitre’d, or whoever the hell tells you which side your bread is buttered on, and I’ll have you out on the street so quick you won’t remember if your whole career as a waiter was real or just some pathetic, glorious American dream.

I need a beet salad, right now, my friend. I need the beets. Beets make my eyes work better. Do you want kind of strain my eyes are under? I stare at a rectangular screen all day that’s constantly shooting tiny beams of red, green, and blue light directly at my corneas. I have Excel worksheets and Outlook calendars burned directly into the tips of my optic nerves. My nerves need beets. They need them.

Look, and I need an ice tea. Need the caffeine. I know it doesn’t come free with the special. I know I get coffee or soda, but coffee’s got too much caffeine and soda rots your insides. Rots them. I need a cool, soothing iced tea that will perk me up during my afternoon slouch and simultaneously calm me. Keep my hand steady as I type an email outlining my recommendations for our third quarter budget.

I need beets and tea, and you can just cancel the club altogether. I want to pay for the club, but I don’t want the club. You take the club. I can’t fathom having a turkey club at this moment in my life. I want a cheesesteak. I know you don’t make them, and I know I’m not supposed to have them, and I know and I know. But I want one. You don’t have to bring one, but that’s what I want to order.

So please. Just bring me the turkey club special. But I don’t want chips, I want beets. I don’t want coffee, I want iced tea. And I don’t want turkey, I want a cheesesteak. So you just write that down, in your little book, and pull it off that little pad, and you give it to the kitchen, and tell them that’s what I ordered. And then tell them they don’t have to make any of it, but they have to acknowledge I ordered it.

And then I’ll have the check, please.

Porter

We shared, for a brief moment, a mind, a consciousness. For one and a half seconds, every decision we made was inextricably linked. We shared a glance; our eyes met; we shared a life, a love. And then you shrugged your shoulders, raised your eyebrows, flashed a stifled smile, and passed me. On my left. And I, in time, went on my way as well.

But my mind remains consumed with our brief connection, our shared experience, how my entire soul was, for a single flash, open and vulnerable and unabridged, layed out for you to do with as you would. And you took it all in, and weighed all my virtues and faults, all my highs and lows, and decided, “No. No, you don’t get what you want. You don’t get to walk by on my right.” And you passed me. On my left.

Oh, how I wish I could meet you again! Stand in front of you, face that face once more, and ask you to reconsider. To judge me again, to breathe deep my being, and find that I am not the fool you first found me to be. I wish you could see that I am a man, like any other, like even you. I wish for all the world that I had just one more chance, one more second and a half, to lay my life at your feet, and hope that you’d see the brighter side of me, the glass half full, the silver lining.

Also, you dropped your pen, so I’d like to give that back to you.

(But it’s a pretty nice pen, and if I don’t see you in the next three days, it’s mine, dude.)

Porter

You have little in the way of manners and less in the way of good looks.

Your clothing leaves much to be desired. Your shoes are scuffed; your necktie wrinkled. Your left pant leg is tattered and stained and hangs one full inch lower than the left.

Your hair is mussed, and it hangs low on your face, obscuring both your eyes and your dignity. Your face is unshaven: three days unshaven. The worst kind of unshaven.

You’re not well-spoken. You stumble over words and phrases like they were exposed tree roots in the forest. Your high-pitched whine of a voice is at once piercing and forgettable.

Your skin: scaly. Your breath: ungodly. Your nose: long, bumpy, and often dripping with goo.

You, my friend, are no prize.

Now. All that said, let’s go on.

Linda. Do you take this shlub to be your lawfully wedded husband?

Take your time answering.

Porter