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February 15, 2005

Suggestions for Reading and Enjoying Yankee Pot Roast

1. Kick off your shoes. Your dogs need some air. Go ahead, wiggle them toes. You feel more relaxed already, right? Good. Do not underestimate the power of comfort.
2. Go pour yourself a nice, tall glass of Sierra Mist. Ah, refreshing!
3. If you have a dimmer on your light switch, adjust it to a hazy, yet stimulating setting.
4. Pour some Stoli in that Sierra Mist. Ah, now we're talking.
5. Push your face up really, really close to your computer monitor. Closer. Feel the warmth. Hear the hum. Smell the electrons firing behind the glass. How the heck does a computer monitor work, anyway? Magic, probably. Ponder this for a brief moment. Are you still up close? If so, stick out your tongue and gently lick the screen. Tingly! Now pull back ever so slightly and gaze in awe at the rainbow swirl of refraction left on the screen. You have the immeasurable might and powers of a prism in your very own mouth. Return your head to a normal, comfortable distance and try not to freak out about the massive dose of radiation you just soaked in like a sponge. Refill that Stoli.
6. Take off your socks now. Put the left sock in your right shoe, and your right sock down your pants. You feel manlier, no? (Ladies: do not attempt.)
7. Hostess cupcakes are mass-produced and cream-filled for your pleasure. Perhaps one would go nicely alongside your Sierra Mist.
8. If you need to belch, flatulate, scratch your posterior, adjust your genitalia, or spelunk your nostril, now is a good time to do so. Y.P.R. does not judge. We are all human.
9. Don't go clicking all willy-nilly anytime you see a hyperlink. Some doors lead to dark, dark places, my friend. Alternate dimensions and bizarre, nightmarish parallel universes, like that freaky, electric blue, swirly zone in Poltergeist, and then you'll have to call that creepy old shrew-woman to save you, and she's scarier than anything that might lurk in that other dimension. You don't want creepy shrew-woman to come, do you? Do you? It's good to toss a lassoed brick in first, and see what happens. Or at least let your mouse hover over mysterious imagery, such as logos and crockpots, behind which anything might lie. That probably is a safe bet.
10. Is that shirt still buttoned and/or tucked in? Not anymore.
11. If you have any Dave Brubeck lying around, put that on. Studies show that a Brubeck soundtrack enhances this site, yet science cannot pinpoint exactly why that is. Y.P.R.'s speculation? A Zionist plot. Other sensory stimulations that enhance Y.P.R. include:
    
    • One red contact, one blue one, thereby turning the whole world into 3-D
    
    
    • The scent of white Mike 'n' Ikes
    
    
    • The touch, the feel of cotton -- the fabric of our lives
      
    • Coca-Cola sipped through a makeshift straw fashioned from a cherry Twizzler with each end bitten off
    
    
12. Take a little break and go visit some of our kindred spirits. They're good folk. Y.P.R. will wait, patiently, for your return. You will return.
13. Pants: off.
14. Let out a primal scream. But if it's not going to be really primal, don't even bother. Noise is pollution too, you know.
15. Hey, remember that girl/boy you had a crush on in junior high? The one you've fantasized about all these years? Take a moment to Google her/him. Go ahead. If you find out that she/he is up to something nifty these days, maybe you should e-mail her/him. And while you're at it, shoot an e-mail to Y.P.R. and report what you've found out, you creepy, snooping cyber-stalker, you. Look at you, sitting with your pants off, you sick, sick pervert.
16. And that's that. Enjoy.

Previously: « A Recipe for Yankee Pot Roast
Afterward: Robert Birnbaum »