In between chugs of 7-11 coffee (which may beat Dunkin Donuts as my crack of choice thanks to their cream and syrup station) and grapefruit juice (which is like a kick in the ass!), I’m thinking about the ampersand.

In that people can exhibit douchebaggery, ass-hattery, &/or nutsackery while also being fundamentally good people.

It’s all, like, dialectical & shit.

You can be an ass hat & a non-cretin.

A jello wrestler & a capitalist.

A douche bag & a nice kid. (<– Sort of like my ex “boyfriend”.)

I mean, some of my closest friends I recognize as being not only total scumbags, but also kind-hearted souls. My dad once referred to the business of getting with other people as “messy”. I would take that one step further and suggest that the business of getting with oneself is equally — if not more — messy.

And once that’s taken care of, once you’ve puked out of all the cabs you’re ever going to puke out of, or been caught topless while hunched over on your futon with spittle oozing down your chin, or watched your friend go into the kitchen with someone else’s bra dangling off the back of her shorts, or been the handcuffed guy getting buggered in Thailand while a stone-faced window washer makes his way up to the floor above you…

Once you wipe the messiness that is the process of your finding yourself from off of your chin –

Maybe then –

Maybe that’s when the ass-hat, douchebag, nutsack part of who you backslide yourself into fades into the past, exits stage left. And once you clean yourself up, you let your fundamentals shine.

Fundamentals? Wait, what were you saying? Something about comparables? The NPV of the 3YF discounting for the cost of work clothes without stripes?