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Thin skin not recommended. A horned stand-up comic with a cigar is about to tell you the truth, and she swears like it's her job. Because it is.

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Diabla Unfiltered

The Daily Rant ·

A sermon from the wrong pulpit

The quote that passed

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Said by Mark Twain, in Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

LaDiabla with red horns, Catrina face paint, marigolds in her hair and a black lace dress, lighting a cigar at a Day of the Dead altar: papel picado overhead, candles, sugar skulls, a bottle of mezcal, a vintage mic, a red stiletto, a worn-down red lipstick, an empty perfume bottle, an $847 bar tab, tarot cards with the Devil face up, and a sign that says SHE NEVER USED HER CHURCH VOICE.

Today, half of Latin America builds little altars for their dead: candles, marigolds, photos, and the stuff that person loved most. Grandpa gets his tequila and his cigarettes. Abuela gets her mole and her telenovela. It's beautiful as fuck. Now picture your altar, right now, honestly. A phone charger. A half-finished protein shake. The TV remote and a Netflix login nobody else knows. That's not a life, that's a fucking lost-and-found box.

And before you put on the sugar-skull makeup for your Instagram, know who you're dressing up as. La Catrina started as a roast. Around 1910, José Guadalupe Posada drew a skeleton in a fancy European hat to mock the social climbers pretending to be better than everybody else. Her whole message: rich, poor, pretentious or broke, we all end up the same bag of bones. She's the original bullshit detector, and she's been grinning at your fake-ass life for over 100 years.

Your altar is your résumé for the afterlife, and right now you're applying for "guy who almost did shit." Nobody's putting your fucking inbox on a shrine. The dead get remembered for the mezcal, the music, the stupid road trip, the night they laughed so hard they pissed their pants. The rest of that bullshit gets thrown out with the expired coupons.

Me? Mine's already planned: mezcal, red lipstick worn down to the nub, an empty perfume bottle, a red stiletto with a broken heel, an $847 bar tab I never paid, a tarot deck with only the Devil card face up, a cracked mic, and one fat cigar burning, so whoever walks by smells me and knows I'm still talking shit from the other side. I'm not leaving behind a calendar full of goddamn meetings. I'm leaving a smell, a reputation, and a few people who still can't tell my stories with a straight fucking face.

Your move

So here's the plan. Tonight, write down the 5 things you'd want on your altar, the real ones, not the crap you think you're supposed to love. Then go earn 1 of them before Sunday: a plane ticket stub from the fucking trip you keep "pricing out," the soaking-wet underwear from skinny-dipping somewhere you got yelled at, a Polaroid of the tattoo you chickened out of for 10 years, a wristband from the concert you were "too old" for. Do 1 thing worth putting on your altar this week, because the dead get one night a year and you get every single one left.