For my next trick, I will make you understand me.

You’re looking at everything I need to build a bomb. I wake up very early during the week, and on days when it’s tough to do, I make Vietnamese iced coffee. It’s strong enough to curl your hair, and if your hair is already curly then it will give you cancer. Do Vietnamese people drink actually this stuff habitually? I don’t know why they aren’t all screaming forever.

After using Cafe Du Monde and a coffee press as you normally would (I haven’t found an actual Vietnamese coffee press yet), you pour the coffee into a cup and stir in condensed milk until the spoon stands up straight. Then throw ice in and drink it until your feet tingle. You’re doing it correctly when your left arm goes numb and you feel angels tapdancing in your brain.

My coffee habit is indicative of a larger issue: I love shitty food. Do I need to remind you about the bacon-wrapped hot dog with sour cream? If it’s fried, battered, sugared, and oily, I want to roll around in it and absorb it through my pores, which is the same way I imagine Paula Deen eats.

I drink a lot of soda too. So much that my mom emailed me a link to a web page titled “3 Surprising Reasons to Give Up Soda,” The reasons (and my rebuttal to each):

1. Soda causes invisible fat buildup around your organs.
The fat buildup around my organs isn’t invisible. It’s quite visible, so soda’s not to blame.

2. Some sodas contain toxic flame retardants.
If I drink enough, I’ll become fireproof. Talk about win-win.

3. Most sodas are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, and the long-term effects impacts are unknown.
I’m already a registered organ donor. Now you know I’m willing to put my body even more on the line in pursuit of the delicious.

In all seriousness, I need to cut back on everything. I’d start tomorrow, but I just noticed how late it was. Tomorrow will be a rough morning and that means I’ll be pouring Vietnamese coffee down my throat for at least one more day.

This is what I looked like doing standup comedy on Friday night. Decked out in my finest flannel? Check. Weird black shapes to my bottom-left? Check. This particular booking came about by happy accident. The show usually puts up a band in between two comedians, but the band jumped ship without letting anyone know. Everyone threw their name in a hat to see who would take the band’s spot and mine came up. No talent required to get the spot, just being present and having the dumb luck of the draw was enough. Just like real show business!

The jokes went over well. If only they could have been that well-received during happy hour with coworkers yesterday night. I seem to have a very binary superpower – I can either make a group of people laugh and feel at ease or make them look at their shoes and feel very uncomfortable.

We have a small San Francisco office and they’ve been in town for a few days. I sized them up obsessively and arrived at the following conclusion – the West Coasters looks better than us. They’re tanned, better dressed, still have hope in their eyes. And in my imagination they’re physically stronger. Maybe it has something to do with sunshine. Maybe I should start taking Vitamin D supplements.

What kind of day did I have today? I had artisanal hotdogs for lunch, if that gives you any idea. Eating my feelings never tasted so good.

The hot dog on the left is covered with cream cheese, scallions, and the seeds from an everything bagel. The delicious bastard on the right is topped with avocado and sour cream, and then to make it ridiculous, the hot dog is wrapped in bacon.

God bless New York, where you can get anything you want. Like more meat on your meat.