Nice board/moves, bro.

On this one episode of Miami Ink, this slightly tubby girl gets to live out her “dream” of being tattooed by Chris Nunez, whom she refers to as the sexiest man alive. In attempting to put her best foot forward, she wears her favorite lip ring to her appointment. The ring in question is basically a Christmas ornament, in that it’s a hook with a ball hanging off her lip. It’s one of the most unflattering, fucked up pieces of facial adornment I’ve ever seen (and that’s saying something, since poking holes in your face tends to just make you uglier as a general rule [sorry, but it’s true]) and Chris Nunez, the sexiest man alive, cannot conceal his revulsion in the face of this hideous thing dangling off this woman’s lip. She becomes so self conscious that she eventually removes the thing, thereby finally approximating something resembling a dignified appearance and the show moved on. But I’ve never forgotten that lip ring.

This is a big problem for people, especially young people, namely: doing things that are actively terrible under the mistaken impression that they’re kick ass. I’d like to visit a couple of these moves this afternoon. Now, this list is by no means exhaustive and of course, if you find yourself to be someone that’s doing something on this list, well, oops for you. Let’s begin:

Riding Longboards around Chicago (or any city without hills): Now, I’m not trying to suggest that the longboard isn’t cool. Well, that’s not entirely true. If we’re being really honest, the longboard ISN’T cool, but it’s got its place and that place is carving down hills and generally being kind of under awesome old dudes who are just cruising around, probably somewhere with hills that’s kind of unpopulated. That’s pretty acceptable. However, when you’re some dickneck with flipflops cruising down clark street, you aren’t acceptable at all. You’re a dingus and you’ve got the wrong tools for the job at hand. You can’t do a kickturn on a longboard. You can’t go up and down curbs on a longboard. You look like a dildo on your longboard in Chicago, where there are no hills and you cant really carve due to traffic and narrow bike lanes. Riding the longboard around Chicago is like wearing a helmet to your job as a barista. it’s inappropriate, unnecessary and dumb lookin. unless you’re retarded, in which case, nice one.

Tattoos of tattoos or piercings- This should really kind of go without saying, but structuralist postmodernism doesn’t work everywhere, so your tattoo of the cool dude with the tribal armband, it’s wack, bro. Sorry. Similarly, I know a dude who’s got a full sleeve of tattoos of various piercing barbells. It’s lame. no. it’s worse than lame. it’s icky. aren’t all the piercings you’ve got enough evidence that you’re into “body mod” (nice term, by the way), without getting the drawings of all that shit that’s hanging out of your face on your arm? Now, I would have included massive facial piercings and ear-pussying (or stretching) on this list too, but there are people who legitimately dig this for some crazy reason, and therefore, that would have to be part of another list that I’d call something like “shit that is gross but still inexplicably popular among weirdos” or something like that.

Being a guy and telling girls that you’re into pussy eating as a way of making yourself seem more sexually attractive to them- Have I written about this before? I think I have. This is actually a move that dudes tend to think will work on women though, so this bears repeating: This will NEVER work on a human woman. EVER. I know, there’s this thing in guys where, when a woman talks about how she likes to give head, we find her instantly more attractive. It doesn’t work the other way. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Talking casually about how much you like to eat pussy is up there on the pussy repellant scale with wearing sandals or just kicking it with an open sore on your face. It just is. Sorry.

Telling people to their face what you don’t like about them (unsolicited) because you think it will make you seem ‘real’- Come on. No one likes being insulted. There’s no time when unsolicited criticism is gonna come across as anything other than a dick move, every time. Oh, you don’t like Wayne’s new girlfriend? Well, shut up about it. You think that your buddy’s band sucks? Keep it to yourself (or better yet, talk about it with your friends behind his back). The new sweater your homegirl really likes that makes her look wide? Tell her you love it. Honesty as a relationship strengthener is a myth put forth by movies, similar to the Terminator and Jesus (which would make a great buddy film, actually). In reality, when your roommate cooks for you, you say it’s good. When your friend’s band sucks ass, you go to the shows and you cheer and say nice things. When you catch your wife drooling over christiano Ronaldo and she quickly composes herself and assures you that you’re better looking than he is, you just pretend that you believe her even though her lies are terrible and insulting. Anything else is just tearing away at the tiny little modicum of civilized decency we still have here, folks.

Look, late start today and I gotta go. More on this later.