A couple of quick questions for you. Are you moderately attractive? Do you make people laugh? Are you friendly? If you answered "yes"� to all three of these - and, come on, who wouldn't - you might be a Baxter. A Baxter, as the new movie by the same name explains, is the other guy in a romantic comedy: the safe bet, the sure thing, the guy that the attractive leading lady always leaves to be with the passionate, risk-taking hero of the film. A Baxter is, in short, the nice guy who always loses.

Many of you already know about the Friend Zone, that unfortunate state which men often find themselves in with their attractive female friends. Well, the Baxter is the personification of the friend zone: liked by all, but laid by none. I am a Baxter. I've been one all my life. I've had girlfriends but most have left me for someone who doesn't adhere to a rigorous coffee-shit-shower-shave morning routine. I can tell you this, being a Baxter is no fun at all.

Like kamikaze pilot, I have sacrificed myself. I have lived as a Baxter, done all the research and am now offering my services to you. I am humiliated to present: Ten Signs You Are A Baxter.

1. You've pretended to be an attractive friend's boyfriend so a guy would stop hitting on her.

2. Your attractive female friend has said any of the following things to you.

A. "I can change in front of you because, like, it doesn't matter."�
B."Can you come over? My boyfriend and I just got in a fight and I need to talk to someone."�
C. "I just took the biggest shit."�
D. "You're like my brother."�
E. "Oooh, can you help me pick out an outfit for tonight?"�

3. You have been described as "stable"� or "reliable"� to a prospective date.

4. You get more kisses on the cheek than anyone you know.

5. If you're angry and yell at someone, you immediately apologize for losing control.

6. You spend more time with your attractive female friend than her boyfriend does.

7. When it comes time to hit the bars, your attractive female friend asks if you're "coming out with me and the girls?"�.

8. You consider jigsaw puzzles a suitable form of entertainment.

9. "˜Your colors' are muted brown and light denim.

10. When you look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you'll never have that edgy attitude women are drawn to or be able to state your true feelings to a girl for fear of "ruining the friendship,"� you cry.

That's it. If you found yourself saying "hey, I think he's talking about me,"� or just silently sobbing to yourself, you're probably a Baxter. Maybe you and I can get together and help some pretty girls work out their guy troubles by genuinely listening to what they say. Maybe we'll even get to hug them after? Who knows? The future is looking depressingly, heartbreakingly friendly.

Anyway, to find out more about people like myself, go see The Baxter- starring Michael Showalter and Michelle Williams. Opening this Friday. And try taking a girl from your friend zone.

Dog Days

I love dogs, I really do. They're my favorite animal. I love how my dog is always excited to see me and always wants to play catch. I love when I visit my parent's house and he comes tearing through the yard with a ratty tennis ball in his mouth. I love how crazy he gets before he is fed in the morning and how he sits on one leg while folding the other underneath him. Yes, I really do love my dog, which is why it's so strange that I want to drown my neighbor's dog in the bathtub.

My apartment is small and my building is crowded. Personal space and being considerate take on an all new importance when you live practically on top of your neighbors. I consider myself a pretty good neighbor: I rarely make noise or have many guests over. Therefore, I feel that I am entitled to the same amount of respect from my neighbors, but alas, it is not so.

Emma is the beast's name. She is a small white puff of an animal and, goddamn, does she like to bark. Wait, "˜bark' is not the right word for it; yip, she likes to yip. Imagine, if you can, a pig's squeal; that high-pitched, eager whine. Now, imagine someone cutting that pig' throat mid-squeal so that it has a staccato, sharp quality to it. Now, imagine that sound as if it were fired out of a machine gun so that it is loud and rapidly repeating. Or, if that is too hard to do, I can put it another way. Emma is what Fran Drescher would sound like if she were a dog and someone gave her a ton of cocaine. This manic, deafening yip is what I return home to everyday and everyday I dream up a new way to kill that evil little dog.

Worse still is that Emma doesn't just bark at me, she barks at anyone walking down the hall. There must be about forty people who live on my floor and every single one of them gets the same treatment. This amounts to almost constant annoyance and, I can assume, everyone who lives on my hall wouldn't be saddened to see the dog lying dead in the garbage room with a BB in its skull. Being that I share a wall with Emma's owner's apartment, I get the privilege of hearing that screeching white rat-dog in surround sound. I have never hated an animal so much in my entire life.

So, what to do about this? I live about 300 feet above street level and I'm pretty sure no dog could survive that drop. I can see it now; Emma a pulpy mess on the sidewalk below and myself, dancing and laughing in pure vengeful ecstasy. However, I would feel awful if she hit someone on the way down, so that's out. I suppose I could call animal control and say that Emma bit me in a rabid rage. Then she'll be taken away and put to sleep, poison seeping through her veins until her little hyper heart stops beating. But that death would be too good for her. No, she needs to suffer slow and painfully for waking me up at all hours of the night. The kind of death I want Emma to experience is one that will make other dead dogs feel lucky they got hit by the mailman.

Reading over that, it sounds pretty sick. Of course, I would never have the nerve to kill a dog no matter how easy it would be. I can't even summon the courage to knock on her owner's door and complain, so actually killing the dog is far beyond my level of courage. I will, however, do what I am best at: whining. I will whine louder than that asshole of a dog's yip. I will shout things through the wall and laugh when my roommate hurls his shoe at the front door in a futile protest to shut the dog up. I will write about Emma in my column and deny I wrote this if her owners find it. I may even go so far as to lodge a complaint with the my doorman, but that's about it. Mostly I just want Emma to meet a painful demise at someone else's hands. Maybe one of my neighbors will have the total lack of social conscience needed to murder a small dog. Come to think of it, I did see the guy in 2231 masturbating to pictures of dead cattle the other day"¦maybe I'll go see him about this"¦

Baby on Board

Everything these days is about size. Besides genitals, plenty of other things are judged good or bad according to their sizes: cell phones, TVs, computers and cars, just to name a few. Even the natural world is getting in on the size game with Hogzilla a few years ago and, more recently, a rash of seriously massive catfish being caught in Asia. But is there a point when this fascination with size intersects America's tendency to be total goddamned morons? Yes, yes there is, and I've found it.

I call them Baby Tanks, but most of you probably know them as strollers. They are wheeled vehicles used to transport children too young to walk. I'm sure you've seen them before, if not ridden in one yourself at some point. Of course, when I was in one the scene was a little different. I can't say I grew up roughing it, but the 80's were far less about the comfort of your child and more about the cost effectiveness of your child himself. That being said, my stroller wasn't so much an aid to my mobility as it was a rusty, tattered piece of shit that cut my meaty legs and occasionally helped my parents push my urine-soaked self around the grocery store. Those days, sadly, are gone.

Now, when I walk down the street I practically have to dive for cover to avoid being flattened by massive baby strollers. They have tires - I repeat, tires - instead of wheels just in case mommy wants to take her little precious on a three day trek through the Appalachians. They're made of materials I can't even pronounce, let alone describe. They have sun screens, heat shields, shocks, leg straps, mesh cushioning systems, rust-resistant braking, mirrors, horns and, obviously, reflectors. These machines - and that's exactly what they are - are far more advanced than any appliance or piece of technology I own...and I have a foam bed developed by NASA, so that's saying something.

More than anything else, though, it's the sheer size of these obnoxious vehicles that angers me. Some I have seen are at least five feet wide, requiring everyone else on the sidewalk to move so Junior can pass safely in his temperature-controlled obnoxi-pod. I can't even count the number of times I've had to actually leave the safety of the sidewalk for the terrifying New York street just to let some goddamned new mom rush her dear little bastard by. What can I do? I can't yell at her, can I? "Hey lady, why don't you and your defenseless newborn baby stop being such assholes and get a smaller goddamned stroller?!" No, even in New York, that wouldn't work. I must suffer this injustice in silence.

It's so typical that these behemoth monstrosities would be invented in this era. We, simply put, live in an era of undying and total devotion to the selfish comfort of our offspring. I wasn't complaining about it when I was getting my ass cleaned with scented baby wipes, but I'm complaining about it now. It isn't even about the kids for these obnoxious, pretentious, bitchy urban moms, it's about their image. A massive, expensive stroller says to all the other moms, "Well, looks like MY husbands doing pretty well, wouldn't you say?" If any of these hyper-bitches would take a moment to think - I know, it's difficult - they would realize that kids really don't care what they're being wheeled around in. They also don't care about what they wear, what they play with or what they eat. So take that damn 'Baby on Board' sticker off the nine-foot-wide stroller because, honestly, nobody really cares.

I WILL take the sidewalk back from you and your spoiled, comfortable, bastard spawn. Why should they get to ride like a prince in India while I walk around sweating like a greasy pig? Bitchy moms with the big strollers, your time is coming to an end. You've been warned.