douglaskoke.com

Directions:
Open box. Peel back film. Sigh dejectedly.
Place in microwave. Take a shot of Jameson's to steady yourself against the encroaching lonliness.
Got it together, champ? Okay... we're gonna make it through this..
Now, normally, somewhere on the box, we'd typically include directions for the stove, but who are we kidding, slugger? To tell you the truth, we'd be shocked if you were able to turn the knob, given your beggarly, alcohol-induced shaking. Not to mention the fact that your hand has most likely curled with permanent palsy from your endless, marathon bouts of chronic masturbation. So here's what you're gonna do, sport-- stick a pen, Bob Dole-like into that hideous misshapen claw of yours and push the "cook" button. Think you can manage that? Good.

Now, with that same gruesome extremity, disfigured though it may be from hours and hours of shameful self-abuse, enter the number "30" -- y'know, the same number of cats that will doubtlessly be licking your withered, shut-in corpse when authorities finally enter your dingy studio apartment to discover your partially-decomposed, and fully single, body.

Close microwave door. Push "start".
Sit back, relax. Stare absently into the middle-distance.
Enjoy the gaping, immutable silence of your loveless domicile, listening up through the depthless nothingingness, rising up to the deathly still of the rooms above, damned with that sprawling, too-big bed that awaits you every night like a lonesome sarcophagous.

Ding!

Remove container. Peel back film. Stir beans. Lean over counter, flavoring Spanish rice to taste with the briny, acrid waste of your own salt tears. Replace film.

With your horrid club-fist, press 2-- ... oh, does it really even matter? Fuck it. Press whatever number you like. It isn't going to change anything. In the time it takes you to shuffle back to your fetid hive of depression on the couch, grab your High School yearbook, and sob over the faded, all-but vanished glory of your misbegotten youth, your "burrito fiesta" will be ready.

Remove from microwave. Slump, defeated, onto kitchen floor.
Slowly, robotically, raise fork to your lips.
You will feel nothing. Sense nothing.
It will be a bland, tasteless paste in your mouth.
Cold.
And bitter.

Be sure to try our newest offering: Escalloped Chicken & Noodles!

"Men talk of killing time, but rarely mention being stabbed in the face with a sundial."

"Anything difficult to do should be complained about, loudly."

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the incessant public ball-licking."

"Love and friendship need no words -- but I bet Helen Keller still put-out to compensate."

"Marriage is an adventure. So is swallowing a thumb-tack."

"Neither a borrower, nor a lender be. Apply for a grant."

"That which is won by strife and struggle makes great material for bragging. 'Cause God knows you couldn't hack it, Dave, you friggin' pussy."

"A penny saved is worth losing in a fading jump shot towards visible cleavage. (Or plumber's crack. Both are hilarious)"

"A watched kettle never boils. But it'll scald the fuck out of a burglar." 

"It is of no consequence where a man lives; it will never be far enough from his critical, withholding, shrew of a mother."

"Canines have masters. Felines have staff. ... Big deal, they still shit in a box."

"Say what you will about politicians, they're good for anonymous sex in bathrooms."

Now captured and imprisoned, former Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein is reported to pass time during his
captivity by writing poetry. The following pieces
display the brutal dictator's surprising fondness
for limericks.

There once was a man from Kirkuk,
Whose boisterous laughter had shook
The figs from the trees,
Like the autumn's spent leaves,
So I splayed out his entrails for
razor-beaked vultures.

---

A boy skipped along the Euphrates,
Admiring all of the ladies.
Imagine his shock,
As we cut short his walk,
And flung him beneath the treads of a
Soviet-made personnel carrier.

---

The boy was precocious and brave,
But he ought to have learned to behave.
The lad was too naughty
And now his young body
Stinks among the ziggurat of bones in my
torture stadium.

---

A cleric should mind what he preaches.
How I begged him to stop giving speeches.
He left me no choice
But to silence his voice
and use his carrion larynx as a hookah.

---

A Baath Party defector ran
From Tikrif to the edge of Sudan,
He gleefully thought
He would never be caught,
And now his skull collects
cigar butts in my reading room.