The Filthy World Almanac

B

Breweries- These ever-popular hangout spots range in décor and theme from bubbly, vivacious, and decidedly kid-friendly, to metal, satanic, and solitary confinement chic. Somewhere in the middle of this spectrum you’ll find a standard brewery. You’ll be able to tell this is a typical brewery by simply looking for a $20 smashburger on the menu with “house sauce”. There’s always a “house sauce”, but it never quite feels like a ‘home’ sauce. Once the smashburger has been located, you can settle down into your backless, repurposed bourbon-barrel seat and decide which one of the 20 hazy New England IPAs you will attempt to put down without grimacing. Revealing any display of negative emotion will mean the charade is up—your years-long masquerade as an IPA enthusiast will be seen for what it really is—one juicy, bitter lie. You decide to go for the Guava Unicorn Piss, which is big, bold, juicy, and bursting with tropical fruit flavor, as opposed to the Mango Nectar from a Centaurs’ Balls, which is big, bold, juicy, hazy, and bursting with tropical fruit flavor. Your friend Gerald orders a lager. You scoff and make a mental note never to hang out with Gerald ever again. You try to bond with the bartender over Gerald’s childish palate, saying, “Can you believe this guy? A lager? Uh, yes, sir, one bud light coming up for the beer-drinker!” to which the bartender replies, “Lagers are actually back in fashion, IPAs are kind of out, man” which causes you to excuse yourself to the bathroom, where you cry a little bit into the hollowed-out keg urinal. That night’s trivia MC who is taking a piss at the neighboring keg urinal puts his arm around your shoulder and tells you that it’ll be okay, that you and your buddy should participate in the Disco Fever 80s trivia game starting in half an hour in the taproom. You begin to cry even harder, thinking about how pathetic you must seem if the trivia MC, the guy whose claim to fame is being able to recite the scripts of every Star Wars film from heart, even feels bad for you. You burst out of the bathroom and see Gerald has somehow talked his way into a behind the scenes tour of the brew room with the head brew master. You spot them through a window peering into the canning area and yell, “No! He knows nothing about hops! That should be me! That should be meeeee!!!” Just then the brewmaster hands Gerald an unreleased can of a triple dry-hopped quadruple IPA version of Cow-Jesus Teet Serum to keep. Defeated, you return to your stiff, wooden seat and order the smashburger with extra house sauce and an $11 side order of truffle parm fries.

E

Eagle Scouts- Congratulations, loser, you now know how to tie every single knot in existence! Also, if you somehow get stuck in the woods overnight, you’ll be able to build a lean-to that’ll keep you a little bit warmer while you’re being mauled to death by a grizzly bear. This badge of honor might as well read, “survivor of sexual abuse!”. Eagle scouts must complete a final service project before ascending to this patriotic, avian rank. While other high schoolers are drinking beers in garages and smashing mailboxes with baseball bats, eagle scouts are busy spending time by themselves in the woods hammering together planks of wood to build little bridges over streams, desperately trying not to think about what happened in the tent on that 3-day hike up Mount Washington a few summers prior.

L

Landlords- A distinct breed of human who values money over any semblance of human decency or compassion. Landlords tend to be enmeshed in your lives in the most personally invasive ways possible. Often you will find yourself shaving your back in the bathroom when suddenly, in the corner of your mirror, there will appear a rat-like man bent down underneath the kitchen sink working on unclogging some pipe. This ill-timed appliance work is never agreed upon beforehand. Landlords can’t even give you an hours’ heads up before sending in sketchy contractors into your place of residence, but you bet your ass they’ll be on your case about not getting that rent check into their mailbox when the clock strikes midnight on the first of the month. Their communication speed goes from messenger pigeon to solar panel telemarketer when the subject matter concerns the transfer of money. If a landlord walks into your unit and doesn’t immediately lose feeling in his extremities, he will complain about the temperature being set too high. If a landlord walks into your unit and feels comfortably warm, he will clutch his forehead and feign heat stroke, extend out a breach-of-lease notice to you, and claim that the only way to prevent him from burning alive from the inside-out is to pay double your rent for the month. If a landlord walks into your unit and notices a fleck of dirt on the wallpaper, you can kiss your security deposit goodbye. If a landlord walks into your unit and sees a scratch on the hardwood flooring, he will have your car repossessed and then conspire with a covert online agent to hack into and drain your savings portfolio. “Well, I know you must be feeling down since your kids’ college funds mysteriously vanished, but look on the bright side, there’s always trade school or the military—I hear Kuwait is quite nice in the summertime!”