Chop vegetables like Penelope Cruz in Volver.
Onions, peppers, garlic cloves and olive oil: are there truer friends in times of economic woe? (Besides Top Ramen duh.) Is there any other aspect of women's work so fundamental to the survival of the species? I dunno, I'm just making excuses, I just think it's sexy.

Choose a perfume.
Floral scents, what can I say: I hate them. Yes, toilet water is an overpriced luxury good, but considering all the cash we blow on overpriced luxury goods dedicated to appealing to one's sense of sight and touch, you'd think we wouldn't be so thoughtless when it comes to the ritual of coughing up a hundred bucks to have that whole other sense covered for the next half year. So go: I may never encourage you to spend money again; spend some quality time at Sephora and come out smelling like something more interesting than a boutique hotel.

Tell the truth.
I can't make it tonight. I have a date. I'm interested in your ex-boyfriend. When you cheated on your husband it really disturbed me. You should maybe look into taking responsibility for your actions. "I would like to put a hit out on your therapist." I know, it's not easy. But isn't that kind of sad?

Withhold information.
Gossip is analogous to bacteria; humankind could not survive without it, but it can be deleterious in an unhealthy context. Get into the habit of withholding a certain amount of pointless amusing information just to keep your immune system in shape.

Take nothing personally.
He didn't do it to hurt you, and if he did, that's fucking weird. Humans are self-obsessed, that's the only reason you think this is about you, when it's really about something that has left people much smarter than us befuddled for millennia now, so you might as well focus on what you can control, which leads me to...

Take yourself personally.
Your persistent low self-esteem: how did it get that way? Were you awkward growing up? Not quick or witty enough? Just ugly? Once you gained a shred of confidence, did you blow your wad seeking out companions you knew would make you feel inadequate? Why? Think you're a narcissist? Or just a weak person? Guess what? We're all different. We're all completely individual assemblages of genetic traits and collected experiences. We're all special, which is precisely what makes us so un-special. If you harbor lingering dissatisfaction with yourself, figuring out what it is is a pretty good way to start coming to terms with that.

Apply makeup without a mirror.
You do this every day, right? Have a little faith in your abilities. Be that girl who is capable of leaving the house on three minutes' notice.

Assemble furniture.
Ikea would not sell $20 billion worth of furniture every year if putting it together was really that hard. It's a pain in the ass, sure. Your ancestors got their water from wells.

Get off.
It has never been easier. There are vibrators at CVS. Porn is an ill-advised Google Image Search away. And really, we all need sex. If you masturbate enough, you'll only seek out casual sex for self-affirmation. And knowing you are doing that will make it a lot easier to handle rejection!

Get hit on politely.
Go ahead and smile, make eye contact; he's probably not trying to rape you. The sexual charge will defuse over time and in the interim you can maybe make a friend. Dudes bear an unfair percentage of the responsibility for flirting in this society, just as we bear an unfair percentage of the responsibility for looking pretty. Let's be sympathetic to one another, how about?

Cry.
There's an unlimited number of reasons you should. To do anything about any of that you have to stop crying eventually. You'll know when.

On second thought, laugh!
God, don't we feel lame after all that crying? So lame we actually laughed at that Dane Cook bit on the lameness of crying. Anything will make you laugh when you've finally gotten sick of crying, but hey, that's cool, dudes love it when you laugh at your jokes and that heady mix of "no pride" and "no standards" is the essence of funny jokes and good drunken one-night stands. Try to laugh as much as possible.

Know when you truly cannot do something.
And fuck no I am not talking about living heavy objects or figuring out how to use Excel. I'm talking about making as much money as your sorority friends, or having a child by 35, or marrying your boyfriend, or being anything better than mediocre at something you think is important.

Taxes.
I know, I know; I don't do them either. But someday we should all learn for ourselves how to abuse the loopholes in the tax code, right? It's our patriotic duty.

Talk about astrology.
Geminis and Libras get along; Virgos are neurotic; stay away from Scorpio men. It's what passes for Universal Truths these days, and you know what? It's not starting any wars. Maybe because astrology understands that people are fundamentally different, and in order to coexist with them peacefully you've got to not only try to apply the Golden Rule but try to figure out what motivates them, and how they would like to be treated.

Know why talking about astrology is bullshit.
Duh.

Eat.
Praying and loving are good skills to have, too, but if you can't nourish yourself without experiencing a complex range of guilts and fears and anxieties, you need help.

Be alone.
If you're bored, you may be on some level boring. Of course, we all are. Why do you want to hang out with your boring friends anyway? There are a lot of unboring people who have dedicated their lives to making books and movies and videogames to keep you happy.

Break up with someone before you cheat on them.

Tell someone you're mad before you find yourself getting passive-aggressive.
This was the suggestion of my roommate. Ha.

Better yet, ignore the anger.
It will find more useful targets.

Repress.
It's not denial if you are aware you're doing it!

Invest in the stock market.
The ready access to money represented in the constant trading of the global stock markets is the foundation of our economy. So it's not, you know, like fucking football. Much evidence of late points to the idea that women's relative lack of testosterone give us an advantage, especially in markets as jittery as these, when it comes to making money there. And who among us couldn't think of better things to do with a little chunk of Goldman's $21 billion bonus pool?

Have a sincere intellectual conversation with a fellow female.
Talk about post-structuralism, not in the context of The Hills. Talk about the war with someone you aren't trying to fuck. It's kind of thrilling what happens when two people who are biologically predisposed to listen to one another exchange ideas.

Call your mom.
And if you don't have one, or if you're estranged from her; if it's complicated or she's in a mental institution or dead in a car accident, please feel free to call me and remind me what an asshole I am to have the most awesome mom in the universe that I fucking never remember to call.

Okay, that's all. 25. All we need is 50 more and we'll totally reach parity with those highly-skilled Esquire readers! I know you have ideas.

See, the Vatican purposely dictates from on high that all Catholic school uniform suppliers manufacture their pleated skirts at a preposterously low hemline. (One could make an attempt to alter the hemline, but one's mother would generally invite one to go fuck herself, those pleats are permanent press anyway.) So one is a left with a choice; not whether to roll up the waist, but how many times.

This serves as a constant reminder to all female members of the student population, no matter how modest, that they are all sinners, living life in constant risk of being given a detention whereby Sister Elizabeth could potentially waste the entire afternoon forcing them to copy the biography of St. Francis De Sales — perhaps the least interesting St. Francis, not that one would be absorbing information anyway — because one would be preoccupied plotting the coy request for a ride from whatever Primus listening potsmoking dude who got busted for wearing Vans one happens to be sitting next to.

The prospect of punishment for the rolling up of the kilt also keeps one constantly attuned to the intentions of the potential enforcers of said punishments. The retired Colonel who wearily barks "KILTS DOWN" when one passes — he is waiting to die. The chemistry teacher who insists one kneel on the floor every period so he can personally inspect the length of one's kilt — a pervert. The one or two truly Christlike figures in the building, the gentle-voiced guitar-playing service project-organizing plainclothes priests: who are they to cast detentions? They're closet homos anyway. And homos, like Jesus, love sluts.

Goodbye To The Catholic School Skirt

MEGAN: Whatever we talk about, can we agree that Bittergate is about to be as played-out as Reverend Wright?
MOE: I haven't been watching the news, so I was really confused by that. Like, okay, so...Obama is saying that people cling to religion in times of crisis, and...like hello have we not talked enough about Obama's religion already Jesus Fuck...and Hillary says that's elitist but she won't say when the last time she set foot in church...and the Pope is coming? Peggy Noonan wrote about the Pope coming. I couldn't quite get through the column though. I have always been one of those terrible Catholics who was like, "John Paul II...uh, what's the big deal?"
MEGAN: Nope, it's the new Pope, JPJ bought it a couple years ago. This is the one who used to be a Nazi, loves him the Opus Dei and the Latin masses and hates that you and I have teh sexes.

MOE: Speaking of which, over the weekend, Tracie and our friend Ryan and I went to a gay bar and burst into "On Eagle's Wings" followed by a "Be Not Afraid," "One Bread, One Body" "Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace" medley.
MEGAN: Oh, God, I miss all the fun by being in D.C.
MOE: No I know that there is a new pope DUH. I am just saying, it seems like everyone is comparing him with the old pope, who was so iconic and humanistic and crap; but I never really understood the hype about the old pope, maybe because he presided over an era of officially sanctioned child molestation? I dunno. I'm pondering this now.

MEGAN: I think the hype about the old Pope was that he eschewed the Pope Pius model of appeasing dictators (cough, Hitler, cough) and instead used the power of his office to confront them directly in countries where there were Catholics. Also, it was only once he was infirm and shit that the Church came to a détente with the Chinese about letting the Chinese government decide on Church officials because when JPJ wasn't laid up he mostly told the Chinese to go fuck themselves, but Benedict is fine with it.
MEGAN: Also, I think probably all the eras of the Church involved the sanctioning of inappropriate sexual or ethical behavior. Absolute power corrupts, yadda yadda

MEGAN: Notably, I left the Catholic Church at 16, so I'm not really a "Catholic" so much as an ex-Catholic with major leftover guilt issues.
MOE: Okay, so sure, he's cool. Let's play a game: The Avignon papacy or the Council of Nicea?
MOE: The Gospel of Tom or the Gospel of John?
MOE: Vatican I or Vatican II?
MEGAN: Hmm, was Vatican I the one in the late 19th century that declared that the Pope was infallible?
MOE: Karl Marx or Bill Kristol?

MEGAN: Karl Marx, but I was a German lit major AND a Sociology major. Also, I'd pay significant money to hear/videotape Bill Kristol reading crap in German
MOE: Okay, so Vatican 1 was indeed about papal infallibility. It was a controversial topic since it made Catholics seem like they had some sort of weird foreign allegiance, so everyone did like Barack Obama and didn't show up, then there was the Franco-Prussian war, which is why they had to revisit the issue a hundred years later. Papal infallibility is such a weird idea. How do you come into this world with Original Sin and achieve "infallibility" when you've NEVER EVEN HAD A REAL JOB?

MEGAN: Also, it was retroactive! I love that they went, oh, by the way, the last 1800 years? Those guys were totes infallible too, even the ones who were all Crusade-y and Inquisition-y. And it means that Pius was, like, totes right for making nice-nice with the Nazis and shit.

MOE: John Henry Newman, a fanboy of St. Augustine and the church's famous advocate for not talking about Papal infallibility, just skipping that discussion entirely.
MOE:

But he made no sign of disapproval when the doctrine was defined, and subsequently, in a letter nominally addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on the occasion of Mr William Ewart Gladstone's accusing the Roman Church of having "equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history," Newman affirmed that he had always believed the doctrine, and had only feared the deterrent effect of its definition on conversions on account of acknowledged historical difficulties. In this letter, and especially in the postscript to the second edition of it, Newman finally silenced all cavillers as to his not being really at ease within the Roman Church.

MOE: To me there's something Obamalike about that. Jeremiah Wright or John Henry Newman?
MEGAN: So, like, it's harder to make people convert to Catholicism if you ake shit up 2000 years in to quell dissent? Honey, it's hard to make people stay Catholic when you do that.
MEGAN: Jeremiah Wright. Newman's got, like, centers and shit on campuses everywhere.
MEGAN: Anyway, so, to get back to Bill Kristol, I have definitive evidence that he's either never read any further into his Marx reader than he had to to get that quote, or he's just misinterpreted the entire point of Marxism.

He's disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America.

In response to a question about when life began, Mrs. Clinton replied, "I believe that the potential for life begins at conception."

MOE: IMHO.
MEGAN: Also, apparently the head of PA's Democratic Party is a Hillary surrogate who just said that "she's the most vetted candidate in the Democratic Party's history" and that she's "ready to go to work on Day 1." Can we please, please, please stop hearing that bullshit phrase. You know what happens on Day 1? Everyone parties. There are balls upon balls and everyone gets drunk and then on Day 2 everyone hangover brunches. No President really starts Presidenting until Day 3 anyway.
MEGAN: And I agree with you on Hillary. I don't believe life begins at conception, and I think that abortions should only be as rare as the women who want and need them prefer they be and I think a candidate who thinks that s/he can save the world from abortions is being deliberately disingenuous and courting people I don't agree with.
MOE: Anyway I'd say I'm an agnostic who finds comfort in faith. Because — and speaking of cowards, for every Alberto Gonzales not getting a job, there seem to be a hundred men gangraping children in the name of God, a billion people paying for America's nonsense wastefulness in their stomachs.

MEGAN: Although, isn't it some weird turn of fate that the guy calling for more money to feed the world's poor is a former Bushie?
MOE: That's a good point. Ever the optimist. So...Haiti got sick of eating dirt for breakfast.

MEGAN: Well, that should work out well again. Why does Haiti suck so much worse than anywhere else in the Caribbean?
MOE: Here's the dirt cookies post, which has a decent link to a web page called "Why is Haiti so poor?" The answer is just sort of an orgy of miserable circumstances, the type that lead a person to take comfort and solace in absurdity, which is sort of like my faith. Like, when Jesus comes back he will be an existentialist stand up comedian.
MEGAN: Or Muslim. That would be pretty funny.
MOE: OH my god he will sooooooooo be a Muslim and his middle name will be Hussein. Hey, wanna write a screenplay?
MOE: He'll be a Muslim from Yemen.
MEGAN: Wait, wait, no, a Palestinian!
MOE: Okay but can he escape to Yemen?
MOE: Because that would be absurd.
MEGAN: Yeah, he could "cross the desert" of Saudi Arabia in 40 days to get there.
MOE: OMG and at the end he would marry Ashley Alexandra Dupre.

I am wont to believe him, having read the bestselling works of "Economic Hit Man" John Perkins, who clearly thought up his thesis of the world under the influence of ayahuasca. But what does it all mean?

That the Burning Bush was a hallucination, too? (Yes.) That religion is a fraud? (Duh!) That the moral codes we take for granted, chalking up to an amorphous mix of socialization and/or evolutionary biology and/or something resembling an innate human conscience was concocted under the influence of hallucinogens? THAT RELIGION IS LITERALLY THE OPIATE OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TOO POOR FOR ACTUAL OPIATES???? Why yes! I mean, yeah yeah mood-altering substances bear responsibility for much of the world's bar violence/opportunistic adultery/convenience store theft. But, don't all the truly bad things happen at the hands of sober people and/or people newly off their meds? Yes they do. Is it to early for a drink? No it is not.

Moses Was High On Mt. Sinai [AFP}

Is it all just the selfish pursuit of recycling our genes and keeping the Human Race from going extinct? Readers, I pondered all this and the ethics of throwing a fat man in front of a trolley to save five thin workers — most people wouldn't do it, apparently for biologically-ingrained moral reasons —over the weekend, when I ventured deep into the 90 zillion word philosophical abyss that was the cover story of the New York Times Magazine. I did it so you wouldn't have to, and I probably should have just gotten drunk because all I got for ya:

Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As Anton Chekhov wrote, "Man will become better when you show him what he is like."

The Moral Instinct [NY Times]

Moving on! God. Sooooo I was sitting in church on Sunday to memorialize the tragic suicide of a childhood friend. I was thinking about all the things you're not supposed to think about during mass, but stop feeling guilty about when you realize you have those same thoughts during sex and sex is a whole lot less boring and by the way you have ADHD. Anyway, so I was thinking nonspecifically of sex when I heard the priest say the words "contraception" and "not natural." I'm sure he caught the attention of the man behind me, too, because at that moment that guy prayerfully bowed his head down to the optimal position at which to stare at the package of birth control pills sticking out of my purse. I think he chuckled. I admire this generation of people who bow their heads and pray for God to forgive the priest when he takes his chance to inspire them and shits all over it with a rant informed exclusively by his own life's total lack of mirth, but I am not part of it. I stared at the priest. He had been acting spookily all mass. He had beaten his chest and looked at us creepily. He was a one-man case for going back to the old practice where the priest says the mass with his back to the congregation. Which, by the way, they're bringing back, along with Latin. Unfortunately, this guy was speaking English.

"It's very clear what the Catholic Church says about abortion," he was saying. "And yet you're not listening. Look at how you voted in November."

My grandmother rolled her eyes. "Abortion has never looked so good!" whispered my sister.

He continued with a speech about the breakdown of the family. Um, did he not hear the one about the plummeting divorce rate?

And then: "I would make my homilies 10 minutes shorter if more of you showed up to mass."

LOGICAL.

Then everyone rose to shake one another's hand in the ritual that is still called the "Kiss of Peace" (even though, duh, Catholics aren't actually literally gay like that), a tradition most people think of as one of the church's nicer, more heartening, more worthwhile practices. But the priest didn't want to have anything to do with it. He skipped right past it. When the time came for Communion, he refused to allow the volunteers (this is something women are actually allowed to do in the Catholic Church) to pass it out, and when the time came to bless babies he refused to do that, too. At the end of the mass my mom, who'd organized the thing, approached the priest, shaking slightly, and said, "So Father, what do you have against the Kiss of Peace?"

And he said, "It's an option. You have all week for such superficialities." There was a weird sociopathic look in his eye. Who was this man?

He turned out to be a retired nuclear physicist named Vincent P. Bork. Rumor had it that he was the son of the crazy psychoconservative Robert Bork, which would make sense in the vast right-wing conspiracy sense, though it didn't show up on Wikipedia. Anyway, here's the thing: Christopher Hitchens is right. Something is fucked with organized religion! And it's somehow gotten worse.

God and Jesus and the Ten Commandments and all the stuff that taught us how to act is not worth the sanctimony and hate and warped bile that churches are peddling these days. People are probably just better figuring out this shit for themselves, and forming personal mottoes to inure themselves to the contagious effects of other people's craziness. For instance, I once had dinner with Heidi Fleiss, who, like Jesus, has two personal commandments she repeats to herself to get through life. They happen to be "Men Will Fuck Mud" and "All Men Cheat," and while that might seem like some cynical sex-worker talk to you, to me it's sort of a message of acceptance, forgiveness, and not taking personally the slights (or dalliances) of others. Like what they tell you in AA! Where I am totally not headed.