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You bastards. I visited Superior, WI this week, and it was awful. People were acting all weird, smiling at me and talking to me like a real person. They made polite inquiries about my life and engaged me on my interests. When I talked, they actually reacted to what I said instead of changing the subject so they could brag about themselves. It was horrible. I wanted to throw up all over them.

Even the complete strangers in the bars were friendly, and worked to find shared interests so we could have a pleasant conversation. This is completely unacceptable. What the hell is wrong with you people? Don’t you understand that hate and bitterness are like a fine wine to me? Duluth, Superior, Two Goddamn Harbors. The whole lot of you can go to hell with your genuine politeness and generosity. I have to write 850 words EVERY WEEK. I’ve been doing it for 11 YEARS. I need material, damn it! I need real-life douches to write about, and all of you have failed me.

This is why I like living in Los Angeles. Things make sense here. Everyone is self-absorbed and completely full of crap. Material for this column is plentiful. No one drags me through the unpleasantness of describing my own boring life. In fact, if I attempt to talk about myself, they’ll cut me off halfway through my first sentence so they can tell a story about themselves that shows how much cooler they are than me. It’s wonderful. There are enough dirtbags here to pave a highway all the way to Duluth.

It’s nice here. There’s a lot less anxiety in life when you realize the people you’re talking to are never really listening. I can say anything, and people in L.A. will just nod and agree while staring at their phones. I can tell them that I love having sex with vintage ladies’ hats, and they won’t react at all. It’s like an amazing dream where everyone in the world is frozen in place and you can run around messing with them with no consequences.

If I tell someone in the Twin Ports that I wank into vintage lady hats, they’ll probably ruin it by asking me valid questions about it. “Any particular brand of vintage lady hats, Paul? Does there need to be a lady in the hat, or does the hat itself trigger your beastly yearnings? Is it the rich historical depth of the hat that fuels your unconventional erection?” Jeez. It’s just a gag about splooging into a felt hat, man. There’s no need to get all specific about it.

I don’t know why you Northlanders insist on acting like valid human beings. Can’t you just douche it up a little? All I wanted was a horrifically terrible weekend so I could mock all of you from my safe bubble of sarcasm. Yet you all acted like normal, sociable people. HOW DARE YOU.

Normal and sociable is the opposite of who I am. When I wake up each morning, I don’t go looking for other people to converse with. I do the opposite: I sit in bed and go over each conversation that could occur that day, and then meticulously plan out how horribly wrong each of these conversations will go. After ten or fifteen minutes of this, I’m sometimes in a bad mood solely because of the fake argument I imagined. But when the conversations turn out to be considerate and friendly, all that hard work is erased.

For instance, when I met up with the Reader’s Paul Whyte to have a few beers, he opened with “Hey man, what’s up!” This deviated greatly from the fake conversation I predicted in my head, where he opened with “Nice jacket, faggot. Did you get that peacoat from the Queen of England’s niece?” Then the fake conversation devolved into an argument over whether “peacoat” or “petticoat” is the correct term, with me wrongly siding with petticoat and spending the rest of my life being bitter over my foolish mistake until I eventually hung myself with my belt in the closet of a very luxurious hotel room in Thailand on my fifty-third birthday.

I also once imagined former newscaster Dennis Anderson grabbing me by the throat and throwing me into the Grand Canyon. I’m very excited to see how it plays out in real life.

No sir, I don’t think I’ll be coming back to the Twin Ports anytime soon. Sure, there’s cheap beer, good bartenders and girls who will actually talk to me, but at what cost? If I go back again, I’m afraid people may start wanting to be my friend. I already have two friends, thank you very much, and that’s one more than I’m comfortable having. The rest of you can go to hell.

Now somebody hurry up and do something stupid so I can write about how terrible all of you are.