How to Butter a Sizzling Hot Ass Steak

Dec. 6, 2010
Tao Lin is a writer living in Manhattan, NY.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

BUTTER IT “FROM BEHIND”
Somewhat surprisingly, buttering your sizzling hot ass steak from the top or non-behind sides has been known to cause irreversible feelings of bleakness, even in outgoing people. Due to the unidirectional nature of steaks it can be difficult to discern where exactly to butter your hot ass steak to make it be “from behind.” Decades of study into the subjective nature of steak physiology has concluded that there’s no easy solution to this eerily troubling impasse. At one point (the late 80s) people actually placed compasses directly onto their hot ass steaks, thinking the steaks themselves, via iron content, would reveal the locations of their asses. Currently the literature’s best recommendation is to simply use your discretion/intuition. Studies have shown you will be correct 69.4% of the time.

USE A BUTTERKNIFE
Do not use a steak knife or—God forbid—a salad fork to butter your sizzling hot ass steak. If a soup spoon seems handy go ahead…but only if there’s no available butterknives on the table (do not ask waitstaff for a butterknife if one is not available: your hot ass steak won’t be sizzling when the butterknife arrives, if it arrives at all). It’s a little-known—but important, I believe—fact that the butterknife’s only intended function, according to its 1982 patent application, is “[to] moisten the behinds of sizzlingly hot ass steaks, increasing deliciousness in a dignified manner.”

Sizzling Hot Ass Steaks on the Grill

DO NOT BE THE FIRST PERSON TO BUTTER YOUR SIZZLING HOT ASS STEAK
Surpassing others after they’ve begun can be acceptable, but do not ever be the first person to pick up your butterknife. Though this article is focused on enhancing pleasure in a meat-eating situation it should be assumed that your focus in life is still on humans, in part because you yourself are a human. Look at the humans at your table. What are they thinking? Do you feel anything for them? (If “no” you can actually go ahead and butter your steak, though theoretically doing so will “prime” you to also place [pleasure from food] above [pleasure from humans] in your philosophy of life when around people you like, and so ideally should still be avoided). Where are you? How did you get here? Finally, why is this your life? Rhetorically ask yourself these questions in a repetitive manner, allowing them to cause you to nervously smile or grin in a “shit-eating” manner, which people will perceive as friendliness, until at least one other person seems to have entered the process of buttering their steak. You may now butter your steak.

DO NOT BUTTER YOUR SIZZLING HOT ASS STEAK IF YOU ARE EATING IT ALONE
Buttering your sizzling hot ass steak “from behind” when alone will, depending on the level of detachment with which you perceive phenomenon, likely cause your reality to seem “darker” in a scarily humorless manner. You do not want memories of being alone in your room on a Friday night buttering a sizzlingly hot ass steak (unless you’re also going to either Tweet about it in an objective manner or, for purposes of conveying “quiet desperation” in an endearingly self-aware manner, include it in an autobiographical novel or short-story). When eating a hot ass steak alone simply bite butter from the stick, move steak into your mouth, chew with unfocused eyes.

SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS

“How to Butter a Sizzling Hot Ass Steak” Diagram
  1. Move butterknife ceiling-ward with writing hand, deviating from a straight-line by .4 – 6.1% to convey you’re not “being sarcastic.”
  2. Visually locate butter. Should be square-shaped, in most restaurants, at your income level (if butter seems to be already melting atop steak this article is not relevant to your current situation; continue reading, however, as your children may wed into lower income-brackets).
  3. Mentally construct 3D abstraction of concrete reality.
  4. Mentally construct 3D abstraction of butterknife.
  5. Move abstracted butterknife through abstracted concrete-reality, navigating around obstacles, until it touches abstracted butter.
  6. Replicate 5. in concrete reality.
  7. Enter butter with butterknife in vertically bisecting manner.
  8. Move butterknife in direction of bisected portion you want liquefied against your hot ass steak. Continue moving, at a consistently nonchalant speed (to convey sincerity and mastery), avoiding straight-lines by .4% to 6.1%, until butter touches what you’ve intuited as steak’s ass.
  9. Move butterknife in various directions, applying a mild steak-ward pressure, until butter liquefies.
  10. Repeat 2. – 9. until steak “seems buttered.”

DANGERS

DO NOT DELIBERATELY MISTAKE A DINNER ROLL, STRAWBERRY JAM, OR  [ANYTHING THAT ISN'T BUTTER] FOR BUTTER
Most people will not notice—or allow themselves to notice—your joke when 2 – 10+ hot ass steaks are sizzling audibly on the table. Some will force themselves to acknowledge what you’ve done, saying “nice” or “funny” in a slightly grim manner while smirking and looking away, thinking negative thoughts about you; later these people will resent you, to some degree, decreasing your future chances to butter sizzling hot ass steaks with them.

DO NOT ATTEMPT WITH A NON-SIZZLING STEAK
Earnest attempts at buttering lukewarm steaks will inevitably occur on the top, or “surface,” of the steak. Studies have repeatedly shown that liquefying pads of solidified cow’s milk using a 4″ x 8″ area that is near-room temperature will actually lower your self-esteem, increase your feelings of alienation within the universe, and recall previously forgotten or blocked-out bleak/frustrating aspects of your life. If your hot ass steak isn’t sizzling cut into it vertically, creating a little pocket; there, insert a small piece of butter so that it may calmly liquefy. This method, known vaguely derogatorily, in most circles, as The Butterhouse Incentive, is preferred by some for its cuteness and has recently been gaining popularity in certain demographics. TC mark

You should follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.

Cataloged in

Text Size:

A | A | A

  • http://twitter.com/billApomerans Bill A Pomerans

    cool

  • http://twitter.com/rislynsey christopher lynsey

    sexy hot ass post right here

  • http://twitter.com/Erikhaspresence Erik Stinson

    bitch ass tropes

  • cassandratroyan

    Go Tao, go!

  • http://sarahspy.tumblr.com sarahspy

    tao, you crazy

  • http://www.facebook.com/wingedthing Leigh Alexander

    this is some sweet steak-ass shit

  • http://timothypresence.com/ Timothy Willis Sanders

    consequences of misbuttering/malbuttering hot ass steak seem catastrophic. emailed to parents for use at weekly church “sizzler” dinners…

    thank you (lol)

  • http://kilakilakila.blogspot.com brittany

    i'm hungry

  • elaine

    Where are you? How did you get here? Finally, why is this your life?

    fuck

  • Luke

    monumental article

  • saramcgrath

    wtf is this

  • Brooke

    “Being vegan is moral, can make you live longer, can make your brain work harder and longer and more efficiently and therefore create more art. Eating meat supports factory farms. Factory farms cause severe pain to billions of animals, severe discomfort to hundreds of thousands of people who live nearby and breathe the toxic fumes, and long-term damage to areas around them and to areas around rivers that are near the factory farms.”

    “Therefore there's no way that I know of that a human being who is alive and conscious can unsarcastically defend him or herself from eating meat.”

    -Tao Lin

    feel nostalgic for quotes like that from tao.. the reason i started paying attention to the guy was because he seemed to have a unique and highly readable view on life and morals… he used to get me 'stoked on life'. miss u tao. i almost 'can't handle' the potentially sarcasm in this hot ass steak post.

  • anonymous

    i mean, i guess

  • http://iwillalwaysbedrunk.com/ Jake Fournier

    best Thought Catalog article yet Tao. lol.

  • Victoria Trott

    damn

    this is nice

  • Luke

    jesus

  • Manam

    do what you do. don't look for a leader.

  • Jordancastroisthepresident

    i liked reading this, good job

  • http://brianmcelmurry.blogspot.com/ Beavis & Butthead

    I'm not sure this is about a steak. It seems to be about vagina, or an orgy. Not sure, but oddly enjoyable. Is the butterknife a condom or penis? And the rolls you may mistakenly butter, the butt? Is the non-sizzling steak similar to a cold muffin? Is the butter semen? You don't want to butter your muffin first. Or alone. You must erect your butter knife celing-ward! Hah, this is funny.

  • http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/ tao

    interesting

  • jordanobscura
  • jacob

    I saw the diagram and thought 'this is very reminiscent of a Tao Lin visual' and found that you wrote this article. it's good that you're remaining consistent with your visual aesthetics.

  • http://twitter.com/_justvibing @_justvibing

    idk idk

  • Jtprius510

    this article brings back memories.

  • Eric

    'Buttering your sizzling hot ass steak “from behind” when alone will, depending on the level of detachment with which you perceive phenomenon, likely cause your reality to seem “darker” in a scarily humorless manner.'

    damn, seems accurate

  • http://popserial.tumblr.com stephen

    lol

    seems like a masterful performance in the field of buttery hot ass steak-based humor

  • http://www.facebook.com/adamhump Adam Humphreys

    wtf

  • Ryan O'Connell

    GIRLFRIEND YOU ARE ON SOME DRUGS AND I'M LOVING IT.

    Obsessed.

  • Ryan O'Connell

    but srsly this is well-written, funny etc.

  • Bensaucier

    grind and butterin brazilian steak from behind

  • Tom ford

    lol you tell her to do what she wants but then tell her what not to do as well, she probably wanted to post that obviously

  • Jordancastroisthegoverner

    interesting… seems like 'vintage tao lin'

    tao moved on i guess (maybe), you should too (maybe)…

  • Eric

    feel like 'vintage tao lin' is the same 'tao lin' as 'haley joel osment in richard yates-tao lin' who is kind of a maniac

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Parker-Baldin/516709205 Parker Baldin

    can't wait for the next one, hoping for complete different 'subject matter' / 'tone.' like about popes who like to pogo and giggle or something.

    feel a 'moderate degree' of inspiration from reading this. might finally tell my RA my fridge is broken; feel confident in facing the consequences of a broken fridge…

  • a polar bear

    i feel too tired to get anything out of this article, i think i might have smiled at like, one sentence, but i already forgot it just in the time it took me to scroll to the 'add new comment' section, which should be on top.

  • a polar bear

    no it isn't

  • a polar bear

    Related searches: how to explain pictures to a dead hare

  • http://twitter.com/JulianIsGo Julian Alexander

    I think the “diagram” is what really brought this article together. I also enjoyed the dangers section. The percentages really helped me as well. Thanks Tao.

  • http://tomhankssuperfan.blogspot.com megan boyle

    read it to my mom and she laughed really hard, with 'peak laughter' occurring at two points:

    1. after 'why is this my life'
    2. after 'mastery'

    mom laugh index…

    good job

  • http://chrysler5thavenue.blogspot.com chrysler5thavenue

    Really awful. I tried jumping in at several points but just couldn't finish reading a sentence before continuing to scroll down.

  • http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/ tao

    peak ass laughter

  • Bronus Level

    Bros and Bro-okes: Tao Lin jumped the shark a long time ago. He surrounds himself with shitty writers to make his writing look better. I don't know why he does that. He shouldn't do that. He should be confident in his writing and not surround himself with so-shitty writers.

    Ah, well. Let's all keep watching our poor-old-Tao-bro as he tries so hard and fails so bad: he is so-so-so unfunny. Our poor Tao-bro. God damn what a poor bro, so poor this bro is, such a poor bro-Tao-bro. So sad for you Tao-bro. So sad. Bro: so sad for you Tao-bro.

  • DEe

    Dont quite “get” butter on steak. Had it a couple times and i think its kind of an abomination.

  • Andy88mail

    damn. i have irreversible feelings of bleakness

  • http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/ tao

    bro…

  • http://www.justmobilephone.com/snowbreeze-2-3b4-snowbreeze-2-3-beta-4/ JailBreak iPhone

    why irreversible …. ?

Recently Cataloged

  • Handy Drinking Games For Interacting With Various Groups of People

    Take a drink: When someone says the word “problematic.” A person just happens to leave an important book lying out on their desk where everyone can see it.
    Nico Lang is the Co-Creator and Co-Editor of In Our Words and a graduate student in DePaul University’s Media & Cinema Studies program.
  • Doing Drugs On TV Versus Doing Drugs In Real Life

    In this infamous episode of Saved By The Bell, perfectionist Jessie Spano starts taking over-the-counter caffeine pills in order to keep up with the rigors of high school life. In the span of 22 minutes, we see Jessie pop her first pill and become a full-blown speed addict, eventually collapsing in Zack Morris’ arms after experiencing a brutal comedown.
    Ryan O’Connell is a 25 year-old writer based in the East Village, New York.
  • The Best Sad Coffee Songs

    That’s one thing I’ve noticed while indulging this melancholy: the best songs for weepy introspection always, always, always reference coffee. Below, the best “sad-coffee” playlist in the world. Put it on, wait for it to drizzle outside, brew a fresh pot and curl up in a window sill. It’s time to stare out into the street, sip some joe and feel super sad.
  • What Happened To Winter?

    I’m sort of bummed that we didn’t get to have a winter this year. It felt unnatural not having to use my winter coats and trudge through the snow every day in perpetual fear of eating crap. I missed drinking whiskey and eating lots of soup to keep warm. I missed having an excuse to stay in with friends because the weather was terrifying.
    Ryan O’Connell is a 25 year-old writer based in the East Village, New York.