Anthony Bourdain, Chef and Food Critic, Reviews Things About My Life

On the toilet paper available use in the Men’s Room at IBM Rochester, MN: As I slid the dry, scratchy, steel wool-like material that passes for toilet paper at IBM across my rectum, I imagined it gouging my sphincter in the most indelicate of ways. Alas, my suspicions were confirmed, for upon gazing at the offending toilet paper, I noticed not excrement, but the substantial presence of blood, this same blood having been, not seconds ago flowing within my own formerly healthy colon. You couldn’t pass this off as toilet paper in prison.

On my coworkers at IBM: I was forced to labor in this hellish slave-pit for eight hours, enduring the presence of the simian creatures whom God has seen fit to punish for some assuredly heinous crime by forcing them to toil, hour upon hour, in the thankless nest of despair that is IBM. The “humans” who inhabit this environment have become deformed by lack of sunlight and lack of The New York Times Fashion section. The very memory of their hideous faces causes me to become physically ill. You wouldn’t have co-workers this bad in prison.

On my car: I drove this alleged automobile for a mere twenty-five miles, and that was enough to make me pull over to the side of the road and vomit for two hours straight. The insouciant look which had graced my face for the last fifty-one years vanished without a trace upon my entering this laggardly heap of fungus. This rattling heap of spare parts, this collection of debris joined together by some illiterate Mexican alien, might as well have no seatbelts or safety devices whatsoever, for all the good they did me. No fewer than a dozen times during the course of the drive was I certain that my own demise was merely seconds away, and by the end of my ill-advised trip, I actually converted to Christianity merely so I could pray for my own death. If James Dean had driven this car, he wouldn’t have been cool. You couldn’t force prisoners to drive this car.

On my haircut: I once saw a recently-escaped inmate from a mental asylum combating half a dozen guards while foaming at the mouth and screaming biblical verses in Latin to his captors. His hair was better than Adam’s. You couldn’t give this haircut to prisoners.

On my collection of ties: When I was shown these ties, I blacked out for a period of time between one and three hours. When I awoke, I was sure I had been “punk’d.” You couldn’t force prisoners to wear these ties.