This essay originally appeared in The Inner Swine Volume 14, Issue 4.

Just five more minutes of sleep, and then I get my shit together.

Here’s a horrifying scenario: I meet some friends at a local restaurant for drinks. Not a place of my choosing, because despite my best efforts I have not yet been able to bend people to my will simply by focusing my thoughts on them, though research continues. The waitress comes for drink orders and the following exchange occurs:

WAITRESS: What’ll it be, folks?

ME: What whiskeys do you have back there?

WAITRESS: Uh. . .some. . .uh. . .we have. . .er, bottles.

ME: Johnny Walker Black, neat.

I’ve come to recognize the sort of fear and blank-minded panic on the faces of waiters, waitresses, and bartenders when I enquire about their booze selections that indicates they either have no idea what’s back there or that there’s not much back there to begin with. Whenever I spot this sort of panic, I immediately give up my quest for single-malt goodness because it will only end in tears, and fall back on either Johnny Walker or Jack Daniels, because there isn’t a bar in the fucking world that doesn’t have those.

Now, there’s nothing really wrong with Johnny Walker. As blended whiskeys go, it’s a fine dram and I can always get by on it. But it has come to represent defeat to me, because I know there are bars, at least in New York City, where you can stroll in and order just about any decent whiskey you can think of and it will be brought to you, posthaste. Having been in such heavenly places, it is always a difficult transition to regular bars, where most people drink wine or beer or mixed drinks, and if they do go for an unadulterated spirit it’s blended Scotch or American Bourbon.

Again, nothing wrong with good old American Bourbon. I like quite a bit of it. But I feel handcuffed in such situations, because, goddammit, I want what I want.

(more…)

This essay is appearing in the Summer 2013 issue of The Inner Swine.

Okay, so, holy shit, but I actually wanted to purchase something from Ikea. Nothing against Ikea, really, except that everything I’ve ever bought from them has been this weird mix of stylish and the cheapest crap ever made – I mean, furniture you have to assemble yourself should be your first clue that this shit it awful – but like every other person born after 1970 and at some living on their own making a salary that is to laugh, I’d bought my fair share of Ikea crap back in my youth. Now that I am old and wealthy in the sense of not eating Ramen Noodles every night in a desperate attempt to survive one more day, I haven’t bought anything Ikea in a long, long time. Because I have pride.

But, then, there are these weird spaces in life, right? Little alcoves formed by poorly planned construction or renovation and we have to figure out what to do with them. In my house there is a garbage room-cum-storage area under the stairs. Have you ever tried to organize under the stairs? That shit is not easy. So I was tempted back into the Ikea mindframe by the Ekby Riset adjustable shelf bracket. You can put those bad boys on a sloped wall and adjust them until they’ll hold a shelf. It’s not exactly transparent aluminum or the Higgs Boson, but finding shelf brackets for sloped walls ain’t easy. So, we drove out to Ikea.

And holy fuck, what a mistake.

(more…)