My valuable advice

The next time you’re looking to abandon your professional responsibilities and go to Paraguay to join a young gaucho and a few llamas in an illicit, cocaine-and-yerba-maté-fueled orgy, follow my advice. I can help you keep your job despite your massive delinquency.

Okay, so first, tell people you’re going on something chaste sounding, like a mini-sabbatical on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or you’re making soup for Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you’re married, this is good. If you’re Southern, this is even gooder. Then, when you get found out, (and you will) cut your vacation short (sorry, it’s necessary), but be sure to kiss the gaucho goodbye. Who knows when you’ll see him again?

When you get back, call a press conference. I don’t care if you work at McDonalds, just do it. Talk about how you’re surprised anyone even noticed you were gone, it’s not like those fries can’t dump themselves into bubbling hot beef-infused oil.

Then talk about how you cried for several days in Paraguay. SAY THIS WITHOUT A TRACE OF IRONY. If you can get past that, then you’re onto the fun and games. Talk about the gaucho in lavish terms. Call him your soulmate, your honey-dipped luchador, your South American twink. Then the hammer: release some e-mails. Make sure these e-mails are written in the style of a low-rent bodice-ripper. Talk about the way the gaucho’s eyes would twinkle every time you said “alpaca.” Talk about the musky scent of his underarms. Talk about the special parts of him that he held in the moonlight. Okay, I guess that last one is too unbelievable.

The goal is to get people to puke themselves blind.

Your horribly personal and terribly written personal revelations that you shat out into the stark light of day will achieve that goal. Also, if you have a betrayed spouse that can help you set up a story of personal redemption for all the traditional media outlets to birddog? All the better.

Don’t worry; the personal stuff is the only stuff people will focus on. I mean, you fucked a gaucho, right?

But your job that you blew off, leaving all those fries to fend for themselves? Meh, you can keep that.