bad sandwich chronicles

Chances are, I don’t know you. However, one thing I know about you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that you’re gonna die. That’s pretty much it, in terms of certainties. They say “nothing’s for sure except death and taxes” but there are people out there who never pay taxes. No one gets out of here alive. Everyone dies, and yet we spend a lot of time not thinking about death. OR, conversely, we obsess over it. Both methods are pretty understandable.

That dude from Brand New sings a line that I think is pretty good: “Jesus Christ, I’m not scared to die. I’m a little bit scared of what comes after.” It’s evocative of the weird uncertain relationship humanity has with death, but I think it’s wrong. Being dead is a breeze. We’ve all already done it before. Begin at the moment you were born and go backwards to the beginning of time. How long is that? If you answered anything other than “an infinite amount of time” then god bless your foolish heart. You’ve already not existed for eternity and you’re fine right now, right? So being dead is literally something you’ve already done, and in fact, you’ve already done it for the same amount of time that you’re gonna do it for again. It’s the dying that’s the bitch.

Getting eaten by flies, or falling off a bridge or getting pummeled by a bunch of soccer hooligans or whatever…that’s the part that seems scary to me, guy from Brand New. Anyway, no one can write with any authority about the best and worst ways to die, since no one who can still write has any experience in dying. However, I’m doing it anyway. Here, without any further ado, is the definitive list of ways to die and how good or shitty they are. Ready? Okay, go:

Cancer

We’re all pretty much gonna die of cancer, so let’s get this one out of the way first. Cancer comes in many forms and kills you in myriad ways. Sometimes you go through aggressive radiation treatments and just die from that. That’s terrible. I have a friend of a friend who was dying of cancer and he also had a highly contagious flesh-eating virus, so no one could even touch him. As he died he couldn’t even hug his kids goodbye. As far as deaths go, that’s the worst one I’ve ever heard of. Cancer stinks, and dying of cancer (or cancer related complications) sounds like it stinks. Sucks to be us, right?  God. This one’s depressing. Let’s move on.

Drug overdose

This one could go either way. The way most people die of drug overdoses is that they take too much Tylenol (because they’re trying to kill themselves by OD’ing on some opiate pill, like vicodin). That causes their liver to shut down. Lots of times, people come to, not dead, and decide they still want to live. Ha! Joke’s on you, newly-in-love-with-life-doomed-individual! Your liver is now broken beyond repair and you’re fucked. It’s just gonna take a few days. This sounds pretty bad. However, taking a lot of heroin or coke or something and then just being like “whoa man! I’m waaaaaay too high!” And then just passing out or exploding or whatever…that could probably be okay. Beats the shit out of the liver failure option, at least.

While Fucking

People are really into this one. “I wanna die fucking” is something that drunk dudes in their 20’s say a lot. Here’s the thing though, bro: that’s gross. Your dead dick is still in a living person if you die while fucking. It’s a real dirty sanchez of an exit. I guess if you’re a total asshole, dying while fucking is okay. If you’re a woman and you die mid-fuck, most guys will probably finish before they make sure you’re alive. I’m not saying it’s cool. I’m just telling it like it is. Sorry.

In sleep (old age)

Who doesn’t like this option? You’re old…your body just peacefully decides that it’s had enough and it slips out quietly and unobtrusively, like a silent fart or wipeless turd. Of course, if this is how you die, chances are very good your life was boring, so I’m not sure that it’s totally worth it. So you saw your grandkids graduate highschool and never got hit by a train. Bully for you. I drank some nameless liquor in japan with a snake in the fucking bottle. Just saying. Cool death, bro.

AIDS

I saw this one go down firsthand and it was not fun. There’s lots of great treatments for HIV+ folks out there, and thank god, because AIDS is a massive, massive bummer. When I watched it go down, it was back when the whole disease was still shrouded in secrecy and shame and mystery and shit. Now that we know what we know, it seems like it’s pretty preventable, and you really shouldn’t be getting AIDS. You’re gonna be really, really bummed if you do.  Sure, condoms suck. AIDS? Waaaaay worse than condoms.

Plane Crash

Ugh. Who wants this shit to happen to them? No one. That’s who. You’re up there, and at a certain point, you’re like “Ah, fuck. In just a few seconds I’m gonna be inside a fire, getting pummeled by the earth.” I hate the idea of a death that you can see coming, but in the great scheme of those deaths, this one is at least pretty fast. That being said, it’s undignified to die on a plane, with your teeny plastic cup of ginger ale, in a tube full of shitheads. Besides, if there’s even one baby on that plane, no one cares about you at all. Thumbs down, but not way down, to dying on a plane.

Drowning

Fuuuuuuuuck drowning. Holding your breath til your lungs burn and knowing that once you have to take that reflexive gasp, that you’re just gonna choke and you’re gonna feel so much pain and then boom: lights out? No thanks. Give me anything else at all please.

Burning

Oh, right. Never mind. I’ll take drowning over burning. Recently I had a thing removed from my hand. It was some kind of cyst. The doctor went in with a blowtorch and burned out a few of the more stubborn bits, and it stunk. The smell of human flesh burning is not pleasant. Nor is the smell of burning hair. And lemme tell you, if you’re being burned alive, the smells are the least of your worries. Ever put your hand on the stove? Spill coffee on yourself? I’m guessing burning alive is worse. Also, at some point you PROBABLY start to smell delicious, which is so disturbing I can’t even stand it.

Starving to death

Oh good. I’m glad we got to all the fun ones at once. Starving to death is quite possibly the worst way to go. There are all sorts of stories about people eating handfuls of dirt or swallowing rocks to just kill hunger pains when shit gets real grim. People will eat other people and even attempt to eat themselves. The dying-of-starvation method also lasts a long time. I don’t like the sound of this at all. Fun fact: Lots of dummies like to hop trains because they think it’s punk or whatever. Firstly, you’re gonna meet a lot of real cool (read: creepy) folks doing that. Secondly, sometimes those boxcar doors just randomly close and latch due to wind or hills or whatever, and if you’re in there, you’ll notice there’s no way to open em from the inside. Often, those empty boxcars just get left in trainyards for months at a time at the end of a journey, and there you are, stuck. What a cool way to die! Starving to death in an unlit box surrounded by piles of your own shit just because you wanted to impress Tim Barry.

Skydiving

You jump. Shit opens wrong. You die. The point where you think “Man, this is so fucking STUPID! Why did I DO this?” is probably pretty galactic in terms of shitty realizations of why shit that’s death-defying is called “death-defying,” but at the end of the day, you smack the ground, someone picks pieces of your skull out of nearby trees and it’s over. Not that bad, overall.

Serial Killer shit

Bad. This is bad every time. No serial killer is humane. That’s right there in the bylaws of being a serial killer. They want your death to be bad. And there’s that ‘face of my executioner’ thing that’s just gotta be a real drag. Nah, I’ll pass on being killed by a serial killer. Also, these dudes just may fuck your corpse and/or eat your dead genitals, so there’s that.

Hit By Car/Car Accident

This sucks. You probably won’t die right away, and sitting in a coma/hospital bed dying of massive trauma? Nah. No thanks. That sounds very painful and sad. It’s also not even cool. When people hear that you got hit by a car, or were in a car accident and died, it’s like “Oh. Bummer.” At least when you starve people say shit like “that’s so HORRIBLE!” ‘Hit by a car’ is the McDonalds cheeseburger of deaths. Big fucking whoop.

Shot

I’ve been bitten by a dog. It feels like someone hitting you with a hammer as hard as they can. People say being shot is like that with a lot more heat. Some people say they don’t even notice getting shot at first, though, so who knows with this one? I’m saying if you get shot in, say, the back of the head and you die right away, okay, not that bad. If you get shot in the stomach and you Mr. Orange your way through the last few hours of your life leaking blood out your asshole and face and gasping and shit, nah. Sounds like a drag. Next.

Beaten to death

Ooooh. Bad way to go. Real bad. Don’t like this at all. A bit of a mix of ‘car accident’ and ‘serial killer shit,’ beaten to death gets a big thumbs down. I mean, I’ve seen people beaten badly who didn’t even die and been like “DAAAAAAAAAAMN!” so I gotta imagine finishing the job: significantly worse than that.

Bombed

This is fine. You turn into water. No problem. You’re probably terrified and hugging your kids though, and that part is awful. Also awful: if you just die because something falls on you or because the impact blows you into a whirring steel mill or something. Okay, The equation here is closer you are to where the bomb is, the less death-by-bomb sucks.

Heart attack

This seems okay, actually. You feel funny, you have a moment of panic, and then boom. You die. My grandma died of a heart attack and legend has it she knew she was gonna die, and called my grandfather in to tell him she loved him and that she was dying. That’s the Martha Stewart way to go, right? Everything nice and tidy. Plus, if you beat cancer, this is, statistically the other way you’re gonna die, so may as well look on the bright side.

Okay, so there you have it. Ways to die. All ranked. If you’ve got another way to die, try it out and let me know how it goes. JK, don’t die. I Love you guys. xoxoxoxo

I don’t really think that I’m out of line when I say that a bunch of grown men pulling a kid into a room and injecting him with a drug that will cause him to get a boner and then taking pictures of said boner is a fucked up, terrible thing. Yet that’s exactly what seems to be on the verge of happening in Manassas, VA as retribution for a 17 year old guy texting a picture of his boner to his 15 year old then-girlfriend during a sexy text exchange. The girl seems to have texted pictures of herself to the boy as well, but it was the girl’s mom who found the boner on her daughter’s phone and after a little good old fashioned parental freaking out, the cops got involved. The cops decided that the most effective route to justice would be to charge the boy for manufacturing child porn (his picture of his own dick) and distributing child porn (sending said dick to his gal). The girl would not be charged. The problem, though, is that even though the cops have the pic of the boner and can clearly see that it came from this boy’s phone, they can’t prove the boner in question is the boy’s 17 year old boner. SO, they brought him to the police station and took pictures of his dick, but since it was presumably terrified, it didn’t look enough like the dick in the picture to be considered a positive ID. SO, the cops have decided, as I mentioned at the beginning, that they’re gonna bring this kid back, inject him with bonermaker and take pictures of his hard on, all so they can charge him with manufacturing and distributing kiddie porn (a life ruining charge) because he sent a dick to a chick in exchange for some tits. The kid’s guardian has said he has no plans to facilitate this weirdness, and the cops have replied with a ‘fuck you. We’re doing this, by force if necessary.’ I hope this is horrifying to you. Can you imagine if this exact situation were reversed and the cops decided they needed a photograph of a 17 year old girl’s aroused, moist vagina and they were going to use force to get said photo if the girl and her family wouldn’t acquiesce to said violation? It’s fucking outrageous. I’m not trying to invoke some sort of ‘poor men’ argument here, I’m just trying to wrap my head around how insane this whole thing actually is. In order to ostensibly prevent sexy texting, cops are charging children with child porn charges and producing their own child porn to facilitate said railroading?!??!?! It boggles the mind. There is literally never a time when a bunch of men injecting a minor to get them aroused and then photographing their genitals is okay. It’s just not. I don’t think this is a particularly controversial statement. I just can’t believe that this is the course of action adults are taking, and that a court actually upheld this crazy idea as the way to best proceed. There are a lot of dark things that go on every day. There’s unreported rapes and children starving and corrupt pigs and all sorts of terror in this world. I understand why it’s easy to just want to ignore it all and keep your head down. For whatever reason, this one hits home to me. I was lucky enough to have been a teen when there were no cel phones. If there had been cel phones, y’all would have pictures of my dick. That’s for sure. This is just such a gross, disgusting, vile thing perpetrated by a very dirty, warped nanny state, violating children in the name of protecting them. Tweet at the Manassas PD and let them know what you think of their methodology or call the Commonwealth attorney’s office where the mastermind of this idea, Claiborne Richardson works here: The Commonwealth’s Attorneys Office is located in the Judicial Center at 9311 Lee Avenue, Suite 200, Manassas, VA 20110; Phone: 703-792-6050; Fax: 703-792-7081; email: cwoffice@pwcgov.org.   Cool. Thanks! Send me pictures of your dicks. 18 and older pls.

UPDATE: Apparently this kind of thing is frowned upon and the cops have decided not to go through with the boner photo (yay!). They’re still charging the kid with the same crimes though (boo).