Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Matt, you hate bugs.” And even though I never said that and you just assumed it because I’m a giant gay pansy with absolutely no backbone, you are absolutely right. I hate bugs. I think they’re gross and ungodly and responsible for billions of dollars in crop damage annually, and I refuse to support any broad group of the animal kingdom that plays even the smallest part in limiting my access to potatoes. But listen. Duty calls. And when duty requires that you spend an entire night of your precious teenage years making and studying flash cards to identify which of the twenty-nine taxonomic orders of insects a butterfly belongs to, you fucking do it. (It’s Lepidoptera, by the way, you moron.) I stayed up all night studying those flash cards, until I could classify a bumblebee with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back, and I walked into the Chicago South Suburban Science Invitational Insect Identification Contest like a mounted knight enters his field of battle. Twenty minutes later, I walked out a christened insect king. First place. In fact, I would’ve gotten a perfect score if the exam proctor had conceded that what he believed was a true bug (order: Hemiptera) was obviously just an unconvincing beetle (order: Coleoptera). But that man was an idiot and a coward. And guess who walked out of there with a first place blue ribbon and twenty-five-dollar Applebee’s gift card? Not him.

By now you understand quite well that my nerdiness had gotten out of control. I had become merciless. I was an Almighty Nerd, my identity unquestioned. Anybody who stood in my way was subject to my wrath. Alonso. The preppy West Lafayette Institute kids. The insect man. They were all just people in my way.

So I understand now why teenagers are assholes. They know who they are. And we’re just in their way.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like them.

ON MY FIRST 100 DAYS AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Nobody likes a complainer who doesn’t put forth solutions. Or at least that’s what people like to say when they get tired of listening to someone complain. The reality is, some things don’t have solutions. That’s why we’re complaining about them. If I could fix half the shit I rant about, maybe I’d be a happier person and the world would be a better place. But like those old English guys said in that song that one time, “You don’t always get what you want, so shut the fuck up, and stop complaining about people complaining.” Or something like that. I don’t really remember.