earlier this evening, i was sitting in my apartment, pulling the hairs out
of my nose (which is my want of a tuesday night.) i was struggling with
a particularly stubborn bunch of snot-filters and thought to myself
(in rather cliched fashion)

christ, it's like a jungle in there.

suddenly, inspiration struck! if the hair in my nose was like the dense
vegetation of the rain forest, i must attack it with the same fury and,
indeed, the same techniques used against the rain forest itself.

hence began my campaign of nasal slash and burn. the slash
part was pretty easy. admittedly, it got off to a false start with an
ill-advised attempt to mimic the amazonian techniques too
closely(1). fortunately, the latter part of this technique
cauterized all wounds. but, i am getting ahead of myself.

after said false start, i found that a "safety razor"(2) was much more
effective at removing all of the hair, and most of the epidermal tissue
from the inside of my nostrils.

now i was ready for step two: burn. unfortunately, the only lighter
in my apartment is stuck on crack-torch setting. so, after scorching
off my eyelashes, eyebrows, and what little hair is left on my ever
retreating hair-line, i decided that the lighter must be abandoned for
a more targeted flame.

for this, i had to leave the safety of my domicile, but i didn't have
to go far. this may sound like an ill-timed near-topical joke, and in
very poor taste, but my neighbors are in fact afghanis. and there are
quite literally seven of them living in a studio apartment. not
surprisingly, grandpa (who speaks not a word of english, but always
smiles at me with his solitary, rotten front tooth) is always out in
the hallway, escaping the crush of flesh in the apartment. he is
almost always smoking.

he did not disappoint me tonight. as i stepped out of my apartment,
blood streaming down my shirt and hair still smoking from my unwieldy
fire-play, he almost dropped the pal-mal clenched between his wisen
lips. seeing as there was no way for me to explain my intentions,
with the language barrier and the fact that he appeared to be in
shock, i was forced to grab the stick of virginia leaf from is mouth
and shove it up my left nostril.

this truly did the trick. unfortunately, it also put out the
cigarette. this is when the pink plastic crack-lighter truly had its
moment in the sun. after burning of some hair and flesh, the torch
re-lit the bloody pal-mal which i immediately forced into my right
nostril.

i uttered a few abashed words of thanks to my neighbor, and returned
his still-burning tobacco, which he didn't seem very interested in
smoking any more.

i am now writing this letter to you a changed man. free of unsightly
nostril hair, i now feel i have the confidence to face the world with
a smile.

1) despite the flexibility of my nostrils, i was not able to fit a
machete in either of them without causing undue trauma.
2) a safety razor is only safe in comparison with it's predecessor, the
straight razor. or a machete, as the case may be.