How to Butter a Sizzling Hot Ass Steak
By Tao Lin
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.”
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
- Move butterknife ceiling-ward with writing hand, deviating from a straight-line by .4 – 6.1% to convey you’re not “being sarcastic.”
- 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).
- Mentally construct 3D abstraction of concrete reality.
- Mentally construct 3D abstraction of butterknife.
- Move abstracted butterknife through abstracted concrete-reality, navigating around obstacles, until it touches abstracted butter.
- Replicate 5. in concrete reality.
- Enter butter with butterknife in vertically bisecting manner.
- 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.
- Move butterknife in various directions, applying a mild steak-ward pressure, until butter liquefies.
- 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.