How To Archives
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Recipe for Disaster
You will need: 1 ex-girlfriend; 8 Pabst Blue Ribbons; 1 gambling addiction; 4 cups self-esteem, minced; Dash of profanity ...
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Hockey Terms: The Essential Guide to One of the Top 50 Most Popular Sports in America
Two-line pass: Don't know. Icing: Couldn't tell you. Hat Trick: Heard of it. Line Change: Not sure. Neutral Zone: Who cares.
Are You Conservative or Liberal?
A Slightly Slanted Questionnaire
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How to Write Poetry
Next up is the use of simile and metaphor. These are what car-bombs are to terrorists. Without them, you're nothing more than an angry person with too much religion stewing in their bottom who can't afford a rocket launcher. See how I did that? I compared the terrorist with the poet.
Next up is the use of simile and metaphor. These are what car-bombs are to terrorists. Without them, you're nothing more than an angry person with too much religion stewing in their bottom who can't afford a rocket launcher. See how I did that? I compared the terrorist with the poet.
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How to Win at Pool
Becoming good at pool is a bit like taking a trip to a remote monastery somewhere in northern China. Not only does it take a lot of dedication, but let's face it--you won't be meeting any women for a while. You'll have to get used to the touch of a man's delicate flesh. And what better kind of manflesh is there than my pink, pudgy fingers gliding over this keyboard, typing a strategy out for winning at the ultimate American game?
Becoming good at pool is a bit like taking a trip to a remote monastery somewhere in northern China. Not only does it take a lot of dedication, but let's face it--you won't be meeting any women for a while. You'll have to get used to the touch of a man's delicate flesh. And what better kind of manflesh is there than my pink, pudgy fingers gliding over this keyboard, typing a strategy out for winning at the ultimate American game?
How to Bluff Your Way Through a Heart Bypass
1. Whatever you do, stay calm. If you need to gird yourself with an affirmation, try screaming “STAY CALM” at top volume ...
1. Whatever you do, stay calm. If you need to gird yourself with an affirmation, try screaming “STAY CALM” at top volume ...
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Select Passages from The International Guide for Metric Conversion
Poland -- Fluid Ounces to Milliliters In order to convert fluid ounces to milliliters in Poland--and most of Eastern Europe--the converter must acknowledge the existence of one and only one true form of gauging weights and measures, the Metric System,...
Strategy Guide for Capcom's Lit Fighter II: The Word Warriors
Stephen King King is a fast-moving combatant, capable of unleashing a flurry of pages from his chest-mounted typewriter. A good character to play against newbies, who will be intimidated by King's prolific output. On either side of the battle, remember...
Op-Ed Recipe
The following ingredients make one serving of old-fashioned newspaper opinion column or two shorter helpings of op-ed pieces: Ingredients - three provocative statements (may substitute with clever double entendres) - one main point - subsidiary points (optional) - filler -...
Elaborate and Highly Ineffective Ways to Kill Yourself at Work
1) Slit your wrists with a Post-it. Be sure to use the non-sticky side, you don’t want that strange gummy material re-sealing your wounds 2) Shove permanent markers up your nose, eventually you will pass out from the fumes and...
Money-Making Secrets--Revealed!!!
I made $28,000 with only ONE HOUR of work in my spare time. It was no problem at all to get started, there was absolutely no financial risk to me or my family, and the rest was so easy I...
Quiz: Are You Curious?
As a child, you were naturally inquisitive. You might've shaken your Christmas presents or probed an electric socket with a barrette. As you entered adolescence, maybe you sampled chewing tobacco, tried on the undergarments of an opposite-gendered parent, or ran...
Test Your Sexist, Ageist, and Racist Tendencies
Analogy Problems Designed to Test for Ageism: 1. If an 18-year-old girl is like a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut, then a sexy middle-aged woman is like: a. a cinnamon bun b. mincemeat pie c. year-old ham in the back of...
What's Attacking You?
1. Are you reading The New York Times in a reclined position on a beach, idly sipping a cool, refreshing glass of pink lemonade? Yes -- You are not under attack. You are enjoying a relaxing afternoon at the beach....
Help! Am I Stuck in a Creedence Clearwater Revival Song? -- A Survival Guide
You rise with a startled jerk from your supine position, shivering, body caked in a gelatinous sweat that could only be the product of near-100-percent humidity. An alligator bites your foot from your leg as a steady downpour and fierce...
AAA Gas-Saving Tips: Updated for the Coming Oil Apocalypse
If a master plan is quickly adopted on a global scale, the world can safely cope with a peak in oil production and create a more sustainable and enjoyable economy at the same time. If we ignore these changes and...
Does Your Child Have A.D.H.D.?
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder--commonly called A.D.H.D.--affects an ever-growing amount of today’s children and can be severely debilitating. If you are concerned that your child may have A.D.H.D., the following survey, adapted from the Vanderbilt Assessment Scale and brought to you...
A Field Guide to Selected Western Artists
So it’s been a while since that undergrad art history class where you staggered in hung over and fell asleep after the second slide was shown. Or maybe you managed to forget a little bit too much about that relationship...
How to Win at Cards
Many of you will never have heard of the game daringly named "cards." This may be because you have working-class friends--or for another of a variety of reasons. However, this leads me from the point--that point being that I don’t...
Signs That Internet Dating Is Not Going Well for You
We’ve all been at that point: lonely, desperate, horny as hell. Computers are all around us. Why not pair up the two? Voilà!—Internet dating (well, after you use the computer for something else, that is). Simple, right? But it doesn’t...
Catamount Encounters: Tips on Avoiding Trouble and Defending Yourself in an Attack
Adapted from Don’t Get Eaten: The Dangers of Animals that Charge or Attack by Dave Smith (The Mountaineers Books, $6.95, paperback). Limit your outdoor activities at dawn and dusk. Avoid catamount kill. Catamounts will cover a kill with dirt...
A Style Guide for Blog Parodists
As op-ed columnists have recently announced, something called a “blog” (short for “Web log”) has become very popular on something called the “Internet.” As savvy parodists with an eye for hilarious new trends, you are undoubtedly putting aside your unfinished...
Ars Short Storica: A Guide for Aspiring Writers of Short Fiction
Lesson 1: The Bear at the Front Door It is a common saying among writing instructors that a good short story should begin with, “a bear at the front door.” This is taken by many to mean that a dilemma...
How to Get a New York City Straphanger to Bankroll Your Alternative Lifestyle
So first you’ve got to get on the subway, sporting a tie-dyed T-shirt that warns, “It Ain’t Gonna Lick Itself.”
How to Write a Book
Do absolutely nothing until you can see the whites of your deadline’s eyes.
Selected Tips from Emily Post's Etiquette for Ukrainian Dinner Parties
When choking or strangling, see to it that the victim’s chair is first pulled back six inches from the dinner table, so that his flailing arms and legs do not upset the place setting.
An Excerpt from Bill O’Reilly’s Upcoming Book, How to Have Hot Sex Using a Falafel: For Kids
Now, I know there are some in the liberal élite who frown on incorporating a falafel into hot sex, especially when it comes to teaching kids how to have hot sex with a falafel, but those high-minded intellectuals are so out of touch with today's society that I don't really care what they think.
How to Get a Boyfriend, as Explained to Me by My 11-Year-Old Sister
Wear glitter eye shadow. Ignore that he’s shorter than you by, like, a foot. Practice roller-skating, because that’s what you’ll have to do together, but don’t actually own any roller skates, because that’s just retarded. Don’t say retarded, it’s mean to retarded people.
12 Easy Steps to a Better You
Workaday blues got you down? Sick of your job, spouse, and/or children? Convinced that life is just a long, desperate descent toward oblivion, punctuated by pain, loss, and disappointment? Well, you’re in luck—because we’ve got a dozen simple suggestions that...
Things You Can Accomplish before Conan Takes Over The Tonight Show in 2009
Long-term life projects while you wait to catch the talk-show host one hour earlier.
How to Conduct a Sincere Discussion Group on Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint with a Disruptive Norwegian Forest Cat on the Premises
In the spirit of the novel being discussed, arrange to meet in a hotel room in Washington D.C. Search the Internet for flight and hotel rates while playfully reciting Baker’s muscular dialogue and pretending to shoot your friends with...
How to Make the Most of This Desert Island Experience
How does the savvy shipwreck survivor keep himself busy in these crazy times?
How to Protest the Republican National Convention without Giving Up Your Last Weekend at Your Friend’s Timeshare on Fire Island
Find someone who seems approachable, then, over drinks, inform her that Bush’s tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the wealthy. If she seems responsive, quietly excuse yourself to hook up a Coldplay ballad on the jukebox.
The Shard Phenomenon and Its Potential Application as a Come-On
The next time you’re at a party, instead of asking someone, “What do you do?” (over cocktails) or “What’s your major?” (over the keg nozzle), ask your new acquaintance this: “Did you know a kid who crashed through a glass...
Good Writing
1. Whine. 2. Retreat....
Writing Goodly
Look: Every stupid one of us possesses within his or her bowels a good story. It's lurking somewhere inside, in the guts, in the belly, safely hidden by all that bone and meat. Lurking. What you've got to do is...
How to Write Gouda
Mushrooms, Mushrooms, Mushrooms. All day. How do I write so good, you ask, my little inanimate object into whom I will breathe life? By tripping out of my gourd. Woo hoooo. Beluga, beluga, screamed the painted stick. Focus, Tom, Focus....
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Are You Lonesome Tonight?
If you find yourself without a sweetie this St. Valentine's Day, there are still plenty of ways to cope with the wretched despair of solitude!
Writing Good
The way I see it is, everybody has a Mother. So that's something I make sure is in every story I write: a Mother. Another thing is that everybody is, at some point in his or her life, an only...
How to Wear Battle Dress
Week in, week out, when a problem calls for battle-dress expertise, my buddies come, cap in hand, whining to yours truly. You’d think its something that 21st Century hippolatas would have a handle on by now—some of these things have...
How I Quit Smoking
1. The Lozenge So I’m at work and I realize that I need to have copies of a letter to this client -- deadline yesterday -- for my boss. I go to the copier. Put the paper on the little...
Stunk ’n’ White: New ’n’ Improved!!!
You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. This is The Elements of Style, the classic guide to English rules and usage, now in its fourth . . . ooops, make that fifth edition. The revisions to the new...
Tighter Abs in Six Weeks
Use the Ab Cruncher 3000 Three Times a Week and See a Whole New You! Week 1, Day 1 My Ab Cruncher 3000 came today. Sandy says you're supposed to keep a diary and write down exactly how many...
Urban Dance
WEEK 1: SUBWAY TANGO Hi, I’m Patricio, your instructor for today’s Subway Tango. Just before we start, can I check that everybody has read the introductory leaflet? Yes? Thank you. So . . . for the next four weeks...
Gygantopithecus Blackus, or, The Hunt for "Big Al"
Stalking the elusive "Bigfoot" of North America has been an activity of cryptozoölogists and laymen for centuries. Known by many different names like Sasquatch, Omah, and even "Big Al," could these gigantic, hairy creatures be real or just a figment...
Your Desk Is a Wonderland
Ninety-three percent of America's work force is surfing the Internet on their employers' dime. Of that percentage, nearly half will be reading this very article, (a quarter of whom have landed here unsuccessfully searching for "Bess Meyerson's nipples"). The remaining...
How to Fix Your Canon Copier
It's not an easy decision to come to. No one wants to put their Canon copier through such a traumatic event. But with the Canon copier population spiraling out of control and a shortage of loving homes for the little...
Sally's Guide to Cleansing Your Corporate Soul
I work for a soulless, multinational mega-corporation that specializes in hoodwinking its consumer base into purchasing an inferior product. This corporation has also caused many of its individual investors to lose most or all of their life savings over the...
Ransom-Note Writing Tips
You’ve worked hard perfecting your elaborate plan, keeping tabs on your subject, selecting your tools and accomplices, running practice drills, forging documents . . . but have you forgotten the most important part of your heist or kidnapping scheme? Too...
Lo! Bread of Affliction: How to Flirt with a Guest at the Seder
"I like it flat, hard, and tasteless, if that makes any sense?"
How to Get Rid of a Body Using Ordinary Household Objects
O.K., we can chop him into eight or ten easy-to-manage parts using the kitchen Ginsu knives; we stuff each carryable body part into a pillowcase (dark-colored, so as to not reveal blood seeping through); tie each pillowcase to a broom...
That's Not How You Shave a Bear
God, no, you're doing it all wrong. Give me the can of shaving cream. Why are you so inept? Just give it to me. Look, if we don't get this done soon, the guy is going to come to feed...
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