Epic Fail (The TV Story)

Do you know what the definition of "epic fail" is?

Once, I had a TV that I never used. It was big, heavy, and it took up a lot of room in a tiny apartment. I wanted to be rid of it, but mostly I didn't want to carry it down five flights of stairs. I finally decided to put it on Craigslist for free. Here's the full ad:

Yes, this advertisement is for an honest to God free television set. There are pictures below. The screen is 26" diagonal. The TV is 24" wide, 19" deep, and 22" tall, weighing in at about 60lbs. Here are some questions you may have:

Q1. Does the TV work?

A1. Yes, as does the remote that comes with it. (Two AAA batteries included! It's just like Christmas!)

Q2. It looks old.

A2. First off, this isn't a proper question, but I applaud your powers of observation. Yes, the TV is an older model - it only has a coaxial hook up in the back, as shown in the picture. If you want to hook something up to it, you probably need an adapter of some sort. I repeat, THE TV ONLY HAS A COAXIAL CABLE HOOK UP ON THE BACK. It's also probably not compatible with the evil magic or whatever the government recently did to the cable that made older TVs not work and scared everyone's grandparents.

Q3. Why are you getting rid of it?

A3. Because I have no use for it - I don't have cable, a DVD player, or any game consoles.

Q4. Why does someone like you even have a TV then?

A4. Because my sister and her family own four TVs and they thought I was deprived because I didn't have one.

Q5. Why is it free?

A5. Did anyone ever tell you that thing about gift horses and their mouths? At any rate, it's free because I'm tired of it taking up space and I can't bring myself to throw something perfectly serviceable away. Also, I'm lazy, so having someone else get rid of it for me is appealing.

Here's how it works:

Send me an e-mail, one (just one - if you don't hear back, you didn't get it) that inspires the sort of trust and confidence I need to invite a stranger into my home. I'll pick one of you out and e-mail you back. When I do, I'll give you my exact address. I live in downtown, on the top floor of an old apartment building. There are four flights of stairs leading up here and the ceilings are sloped. To warn you ahead of time, I am not going to help you with the TV in any way. You show up here, I let you in, you grab the TV (if you want, I will plug it in to prove it works), and you carry it down to your vehicle. I may wave bye to it, but this is the limit of the physical effort I'm willing to exert. You will get the TV sometime between 9AM and 8PM, no exceptions for any reason.

This whole TV thing has been a major inconvenience for me and I'm ready for it to be over.

In closing, FREE TV! Woooo!

I got a ton of replies, which I sifted through in due time. I narrowed it down to three, and finally picked a guy named Dale. He wrote a funny message and had a name I recognized; sometimes fortune is arbitrary.

After a few e-mails, we decided he would come by at 10AM to get the TV. I walked to my apartment from work and met him at the front door. He had big forearms and a gut; a hairy chest puffing out of a denim work shirt; and the I'm-going-bald-might-as-well-shave-it haircut. All in all, he looked like a mechanic, or a plumber, or the guy who's doing the drywall at the new Denny's. We walked up to my apartment and I turned the TV on for him to prove it works.

Satisfied, he picked it up and carried it out with a little maneuvering. (It's a tiny apartment, after all.) He made it all the way down the first flight of stairs and dropped it.

I heard the carbon ray tube shatter, and for a moment there was  a noise like a vacuum cleaner. Dale looked up at me with wide eyes and said, without a trace of sarcasm, "That doesn't sound good." When he picked it up again we heard parts shifting around the inside. With hang dog eyes, he said, "Sorry for the noise. I'll go ahead and take it anyway." I said nothing, because nothing I said was going to help.

Life gave him a free TV and he fucking dropped it.

I closed my door and made it a few steps before I laughed so hard I cried.

I imagined him loading the TV into his gold Sienna minivan, not bothering to secure it; driving home with the TV rocking around in the back, the slight rattle of loose plastic like a papercut in his mind; opening the rear hatch, unceremoniously dropping the TV by the curb; going inside, opening a beer, and sitting in his recliner, staring at where he was going to put the TV.

I constructed an entire life for this poor son of a bitch.

When he was seven he wanted a red Schwinn, but his dad couldn't afford it. Instead, he got a blue "Squin" knock off with a front wheel that came flying off two months later.

When he was eighteen he finally got a date with the girl he had a crush on, but she got food poisoning from bad shrimp at the Surf 'n' Turf the night before prom. He had to go alone.

When he was twenty-five his friend had a sweet manager job at the factory lined up for him, but the company went bankrupt a week before he was going to start.

When he was thirty-six he was going to start his own mechanic's shop, but Mr. Goodwrench moved in a block away and took all his future customers.

And now, now he thought, "This is my day. I'm getting me a free TV! After all these years, fortune has finally favored Dale Percy."

Instead, he not only looked the gift horse in the mouth, he punched it there. He punched it there so hard. I'm pretty sure he's the real life version of Charlie Brown, and may God have mercy on his soul.

The Nativity

I tried teaching the children about Gertie, the nativity octopus, but they were resistant. After a little convincing, they were practically begging me to add other marine life.

On the left side you see Mary's best friend, crab, and her other best friends, Manx cat and half cow.

If you turn your attention to the lower right hand corner, you see an animal a little girl described as "half-sheep, half-chicken." Apparently there was gene splicing at the nativity, which no doubt gave rise to the cow with two bodies but only one head. Really, all the cows in the picture have a problem.

Do children secretly hate cows?

As for the starfish, suckling at the reverse brahmin's teat? Blasphemy. (That's the starfish's name - Blasphemy Jones.)

Irrational Fears

There are a lot of fears I have that don't make any sense, that I've nevertheless struggled with since childhood. I mean, I made up a bunch of hilarious, improbable fears that I totally don't have. Ha ha, what'd I say? Let's pretend I said something else.

(Honestly, the truth is somewhere in the middle.)

Here's the list. If anyone else suffers from one of these, please let me know. Together we can get help, or make a suicide pact because life is so hard and some days I just want to be okay.

When I'm the first one in the morning to use the bathroom at the office, there will be a dead body in the stall.

Every new jar of peanut butter will be full of a thousand angry bees.

I go to kiss a girl, her mouth is full of centipedes.

Cat learns to talk, first thing he says: "I poop in your mouth while you sleep."

Qdoba replaced by haggis themed restaurant called The Gilded Enchantress.

Find out "love" as I know it is a product of the Coca-Cola corporation.

Toilets quietly gain sentience, giant barbed tentacles; want revenge.

Phones also gain sentience, have creepy fetish about being rubbed against ears.

Go to hospital for emergency surgery, nurse confuses "syringe" and "catheter".

Dalai Lama announces Justin Bieber is a reincarnated Kurt Cobain.

Parents tell me I was adopted, birth family history has high risk for SPN (spontaneous penile necrosis).

Dairy industry announces every bottle of chocolate milk since 1984 contains trace amounts of whale semen.

Wake up to find the internet is down, ask my roommate about it. Internet? What's that?

Get up to pee in the middle of the night, blood comes out instead. Wait, no, it's raspberry jam.

Captain Planet punches me in the crotch for not recycling.

I trip while walking down stairs and never stop falling.

Wake up in a world where Ghostbusters was never made. Ghosts run amuk.

Ex-girlfriends and unrequited crushes get together to talk about my worst hair days, with pictures.

When Life Hands You Squirrels

(The events below happened on the morning of Monday, February 16th, 2008, between the hours of eight and nine AM. The names of the humans and animals involved have been changed to protect the innocent)

I woke up with the feeling that something bad was going to happen today. Maybe it's because it was Monday, the smelly kid on the bus day of the week; maybe it's because I stayed up too late  reading stupid things on borrowed (stolen?) internets; maybe it's because I had Taco Bell for "dinner" last night. Regardless - although it's probably the last one - misfortune seemed a surety.

When I rolled out of bed, I felt like a contestant on Press Your Luck. No whammies, no whammies, no whammies...stop! As a kid I always cheered for the whammies, both because they reminded me of cartoon Gremlins and because I was already a consumer of human misery.

looooving you / is easy cause you're beautiful
I got ready for work (no whammies), and aside from knocking my new glasses onto the floor, all went well. I was running late and didn't get to make my bed, but my OCD isn't the boss of me on days that aren't prime numbers.

I walked to work, trying to make the best of it. It was unseasonably warm that day; I wondered if there was an expression for it, like Native American winter. The sun shone serenely from behind some clouds (no whammies), and there was a gentle breeze. I smiled.

Then I heard a loud pop and a squirrel fell to the street beside me.

The whammies, cartoonish and red, poured out of the bushes in sunglasses and capes to run a lawnmower over my dreams of a happy day, giggling maniacally. I heard my seven year old self laughing at my twenty four year old self and I wanted to smack him.

look at her face! ahahaha *smack*
I stared at the squirrel, as one must stare at a smoking mammal suddenly fallen from the sky. He was in the process of squirrel convulsions, little arms grabbing at his chest like the old guy on Sanford & Son.

"He's a goner," I thought, "dead before he even hit the ground. He's been forced to do this hideous pantomime by that harsh mistress, electricity."

I preemptively mourned the squirrel, and wondered what unisex bathroom nightmare of a day awaited me after this. However, wonder of all wonders, the squirrel rolled himself to his feet and laid/stood there, whatever the word is for four legged animals.

The squirrel's second chance on life was already running out, however, as I heard tires on the asphalt. looked up nd saw a ar racing down the narrow lanes of Mill St. I stood transfixed, hoping the car wouldn't crush the squirrel, but unwilling to jump into the street like an arboreal Secret Service agent. I thought it's not one of nature's miracles if you survive sudden death only to have even sudden-er death turn you into paste.

I couldn't look away.

The car saw the little guy at the last moment and drifted into the other lane to avoid him. I can't express how happy I was that the universe was finally working like Mr. Rogers told me it was supposed to. I shuddered at the alternative, which would be akin to the Little Engine That Could mustering up the determination to make it over the hill, only to be melted down on the other side to make flusher handles for gas station toilets.

Mr. Squirrel was still in the street, however, and the next car might not be as invested in his welfare - and the resultant lessons about determination - as I was. I had to get him out of the street. Despite growing up in a city, I knew that trying to grab a wild animal that's been injured is like looking down the barrel of a gun to see if it's loaded.

looks fine to me!
I saw some sizable branches nearby, courtesy of the recent ice storm, and I grabbed the longest one I could find. I looked both ways, and proceeded the short distance into the thoroughfare to do my duty.

Armed with my poking stick, I gently prodded the squirrel. For a moment the absurdity of what I was doing struck me, but I resolutely pushed it down into the same mental cellar where I keep most of middle school. I told the squirrel in what I assumed as a reassuring tone, "C'mon buddy, you gotta move."

I readied myself to use the stick in self-defense if he decided I was a threat, though I wasn't pumped about my chances. His little body was rigid, and I foresaw having to use the stick like a plow, his claws digging tiny furrows in the blacktop as I shuffleboarded him to safety.

or I could tow him with a little boat
Thankfully, it only took one more poke for him to slowly walk-hop towards the sidewalk.

The squirrel paused at the base of a tree and regarded me with an almost human expression of confusion, or perhaps gratitude - I'm not experienced with squirrel emotions, and their faces are tiny. He eyed me and my stick warily; the way things were going for him, I was likely to try and beat the shit out of him with it.

He seemed okay - I'm no squirrel doctor - so I left him like that.

As I walked away, I wondered if he was going to make it. He was electrocuted and fell two stories onto the pavement, which couldn't have been kind to his insides. I don't know whether he was the luckiest or unluckiest squirrel in the world, lacking sufficient data about whether there were any squirrels near Chernobyl.

I...I guess there were
The squirrel encounter changed me, however; I think in saving him, I saved myself.

My stride was proud as I entered work, and my noble manner cloaked me as a raiment. I took my coat off and handed it to Sancho Panza, my squire and faithful companion in all adventures; my will was firm, my resolution absolute, and Ice Branch gave me comfort as it rested weightily at my side.

My name is James David, and I am the Squirrel Poker.

not like that oh why don't you listen

Dirty

What have I done?

Sweet Gingerbread God, what have I DONE!?

Sharper Image Has No Shame

Waterproof Rechargeable Vibrating Massager
Really? This is like leaving a baby in the Outback with a shirt that says "Dingoes Stay Away" on it - everyone knows what's going on, but no one's admitting it up front.

That's an actual link to the actual Sharper Image site up there, not something from Saturday Night Live. It's totally safe for work. Here's how they describe it:

It’s quiet, compact and just right for any and every spot on your body. The Waterproof Rechargeable Vibrating Massager is small, but powerful – likely the strongest vibrating massager in its category. Its shape delivers strong vibrations to stimulate blood flow, relaxation and pleasure.

There's nothing I can say that won't sound derivative compared to their own ad copy. I salute you, Sharper Image, for making and marketing the classiest not electric vibrating dong to stuff our stockings with this Christmas season.

How to Handle Phone Calls

Do you work at a job where you have to answer the phone? Are the people always wanting things? Do you feel confused, frightened, or hungry? Do you suffer phone related breakdowns, often soiling yourself in the process?

If so, don't despair!

The constant terror that comprises your waking life is finally over! Here at Blue Sun Consulting, we're developed a list of ten best practices for handling phone calls at health insurance providers, cell phone carriers, every government office ever, and anywhere they have phones. If you simply adopt these practices, we guarantee suicide rates will drop by as much as 5%!*

1.) You do not have what the customer wants, whatever that is. You may tell them your department does not keep those records; that you're too busy with other requests; or that they have been destroyed as part of an archival reclamation process, a unique method of burning all documents as soon as they arrive.

2.) Be effusive about how much you do not have what they want. Use words from the 1920's to express your dismay that some dumb mook would even think such a heap of baloney. Gee golly, what do they think this is?

3.) Do not respond to polite attempts at conversation, or even questions about how you're doing today. The person on the other end of the line just wants this information so they can find you and take your skin.

4.) If you're feeling playful, redirect the caller to departments they've already spoken with. Tell them the people in those departments are liars, and that they sit atop a veritable mountain of the documents the caller needs. Repeat as often as necessary!

5.) Lunch lasts from 11 until 3, and will be known to callers as "working on an important project." During this time, employees are expected to disapparate or become intangible, rendering themselves invisible to all human senses and sensory perception devices, such as radar, sonar, thermal imaging, and S.O.C.K.

6.) As per number five, everyone is away from their desks - always.

7.) As soon as the call is over, it never happened. Anyone that claims to have spoken with you before is misinformed, a liar, or a treacherous man spider from Rydigon VII, which orbits the star beyond seeing.

8.) When communicating with the caller, answer all questions as if you were the only employee, and the office consisted of a dark closet in the Claire's of an abandoned shopping mall.

9.) Most callers will try to give you a seven character ID number, as listed on all our external documents. This is useless, as the actual system is a Byzantine nightmare of encrypted hexadecimals in trinary code, which consists of zeros, ones, and a digit unpronounceable by human tongues.

(Some employees have had their tongues removed to interface with this system, which also renders them unable to answer the phones. The problem is the solution with Blue Sun Consulting!)

10.) Lastly, remember our motto: Obfuscate and Confuse.

If the person on the other end of the line follows all the steps, here's how helpful your conversation can be:

"Hello, this is Steve Wilson calling about a boring, complicated, and/or time consuming thing you don't want to do."

"Hello Steve, this is Helen at the District Court Clerk's Office. You're right, I don't want to do that thing you want me to do."

"Great! So, how soon do you think you can take no action on this whatsoever?"

"We're pretty busy today, but I think I can start ignoring this around 1, maybe 1:30. I have a lot of surreptitious internet browsing to do, and later I was thinking about pretending to go to the bathroom as an excuse to sneak out and walk around the block."

"Okay, I'll let the executive that needs this know I've called and you're going to get back to me."

"I'll make sure not to do that, and when you call back in abject frustration, I will have moved departments, deleted this request, and gone into the witness protection program."

"That's all I can ask for Helen, thanks so much!"

"You're welcome! And I'll only be Helen for another few hours, tee hee hee!"

Inquire today for full size posters of the list to hang around your office, or in-house training conducted by our celebrity coach, Gilbert Gottfried!

* (+/- 10% error ratio)

The Shape of Things to Come

This Christmas season I'll be posting some older stuff. Imma polish it all up, but it'll be more or less the same. If you've read this stuff before, consider what I'm doing a retrospective; if you did not, you're clearly one of the people I despise, and I wish each night for ill to befall you.



like this
(it's an octopus eating a man's face)
This arrangement also gives me time to work on new content, as well as some works of short fiction I've been tinkering with. And - let's be honest - it also gives me time to goof around during the holidays.

There will be some completely new posts, but mainly pictures people have sent. Most are from my friend the dentist, who is also Archmagister of the Wizzardry Training School for Wayward Boys and Girls. Think of it as where the kids who couldn't get into Hogwarts go. Their motto is: Twice the wizzard, 1/2 the co$t!

Keep an eye on the Twitter feed to the right, or just subscribe. I'll be doing my best to describe all the sandwiches I eat, and how the line I'm in at the mall is taking, like, forever.

Thanks to everyone who reads Bad Ideas, including the guy or gal who visited from Egypt a week ago. You made my day, random stranger!

Okay. That's it. Back to your regularly scheduled internets. See you tomorrow!

Guessing Game: Answer

Who's ready for the answer to our guessing game? Yesterday I showed this picture and asked everyone to figure out what it is:

Give up yet?

What you're looking at is a big ole'...nasty...juicy...meniscal tear. Which is a thing in your knee.

What did you think it was?

Read more info here! It's more common than you think, so be kind to your joints. Make sure to stretch before any vigorous activity, no matter what part of the body it involves.

Guessing Game: Question

Okay everybody, time to play a guessing game. Name what's in the following picture!

Answer tomorrow!

New Fear #78: Coulromoichephobia

Bored by the safety of their lives, people all across the world are making up new things to be afraid of. I'm proud to be the cartographer of this new landscape of fear.

Coulromoichephobia: The fear that right now, right this very second, a clown is having sex with your wife. We're not talking about gentle lovemaking, either - they're afraid the clown is really giving her the business. 

They imagine his big shoes are flopping around, there's greasepaint all over the sheets, and the clown's polka dotted jumper is undone over a sweaty chest working like a bellows. Periodically, the adulterous wife reaches up and gives the bulbous nose a tweak, eliciting a muted honk. The clown's face is scrunched with the effort, mouth hanging slightly open, but the paint of his big, red smile stretches ear to ear.

Before you dismiss their fear as ridiculous, just imagine walking in on that. Really put yourself in their shoes and see the clown who's cuckolding you.

He's not an old clown, but he's not a young clown either; he's middle aged, somewhere in the morass of his thirties, and when he's done clowning for the day he gets a pain in his right knee that he worries is growing worse. He wishes he could get it checked out, but he doesn't have health insurance - he's officially an independent contractor with Zing-a-ling Party Solutions, which means they don't have to provide benefits or pay minimum wage.

He hasn't called his parents in years because of the argument they had at Christmas. He can still hear his mother hoarsely shouting, "You're ruining our family!", and the way his father said nothing at all, which was somehow louder. Emily had her baby last week, a girl she named after her grandmother. He's glad she found a way to move forward after the divorce, but he still wakes up in the middle of the night wanting to call her, like a kid asking for a glass of water.

But you know what makes the pain of all the years go away? Giving it to your wife when you're not around.

Ta-da!
A man with this phobia will call his wife over and over each day to make sure she isn't sleeping with a clown. Here's one side of a conversation taped during the case study:

"Hey honey! Just thought I'd call from the office! How's your day go- what the hell is that squeaking noise!? Oh, the dishwasher. Whew. No, I'm not angry. Sorry I haven't fixed it yet. Call a repairman? Sure, I'm really busy at work this week. There's a number in the phonebook, nevermind, don't, NEVERMIND! You might accidentally call one of those party places and order a clown. Ha ha, that'd be horrible. You don't like clowns, right? What do you mean I've asked you that like three times today? No reason. Look sweetie, I've gotta go. Have a good day, I love you! Don't fuck a clown! ... What? The last thing I said? You mean 'I love you'? What did it sound like? Huh. That's weird. Bye!"

His whole life is based around safeguarding his wife's poontang from clowns, and it is exhausting.

He'd like to get therapy, knows he needs therapy, but he's too ashamed. At his most lucid moments he realizes his wife loves him and would never do anything to hurt him. How would she feel if she found out what he thought?

Also, the therapist could be in league with the clown. As soon as he'd lay down on the couch for the hour, the clown would go on the clock too. In fact, he figures there's no end to all the people who are working with the clown.

The guy in front of him in traffic, doing five under the speed limit?
Giving the clown more time to get his rocks off.

The checker in the grocery store who says her machine just went down, and will everyone move to lane thirteen?
Paid off by the clown.

That new guy at work who dumped the J & L account on him, making him work late?
He thinks it's the clown's brother. Didn't new guy say his brother was in entertainment?

And has he actually seen his sister-in-law's new baby? All his wife has shown him are the pictures, and she stayed with her for over a week. Her sister lives three states away, and there's a million pictures of babies on the internet. He thinks the clown took her to the beach...maybe he'd better check all her shoes for sand.

He'd give up on the marriage altogether, but damn it he loves her. The fact that he spent last Tuesday night at the strip club, calling the girl working the pole "Bozo" is just his dues for putting up with his wife's constant, circus related infidelity.

The Saddest Thing in the World

If you look at it long enough, you realize even the shark costume is sad.

A Grocery Trip

"Ma'am, can you tell me where the Asswored plastic cups are?"

"A swirled cups?"

"No, ASS-wored cups. ASSWORED."

"I'm getting my manager."

"Good, maybe your manager knows where the cups are. Nevermind, I found them!"

Jesus wept.

Even My Fantasies Don't Work Out

"Oh no," Allison Mack said, "someone's blocked the door to my house with all these bottles of chocolate milk!"

"Don't worry," I called out, "I'm here to save you!"

"Who are you, mysterious stranger?" she asked, already starting to love me with her eyes.

"I am none other than Future Boyfriend Man, sent here from The Future to take care of you."

"Like in The Terminator?"

"Exactly like that! Our child is destined to be the savior of all mankind."

"Before we make sweet, passionate love that's not afraid to get energetic, tell me - what threat will we face?"

"Umm. It's squid. Giant squid. Land squid!"

"That sounds horrible." She paused, her nose wrinkling. "Wait, how do squid live on land?"

"They're...they're also vampires."

"Oh," she said. She squinted. "That doesn't answer my question."

"Well, uh, vampires don't breathe. So the squid can be on land and not drown. Drown? Is that the right word? 'cause they breathe water, so they can't drown drown, but you know what I mean."

"Suffocate?"

"Yes! That's it. Suffocate."

We stared at each other for a moment.

"That doesn't make any sense," she said. "How do they move around on land? They don't have a skeletal system to support that kind of locomotion. And if they're so big, and they're vampires, how do they hide during the day?"

I rolled my eyes. "You're asking so many little questions that you're missing the big issue. My world is a burning wasteland! Mankind has been reduced to slavery, forced to fight in the arena for our squid overlord's amusement."

"Why did the squid burn everything?"

"Arg! Can you not get past this one thing!? Squid bad. Future ruined. Us baby. What more do you need from me?"

Suddenly, a van drove up and three large orderlies emerged from it.

"We're sorry Ms. Mack," the driver said as he stepped out, "this one got loose again. He's real troubled, but not violent. Says he's a time traveller from the future and he has to have your baby."

"He has to have my baby? You mean he's going to carry it to term?"

"No," the driver said, "he wants to impregnate you, and then you'll have his baby."

"Wouldn't it be our baby?" Allison asked.

The driver's mouth hung open while the orderlies grabbed me. "Is that really important, ma'am?" he finally asked.

I turned to him. "I know, right? You should have heard her earlier. It's 20 questions with this one."

"Look!" she shouted. "Strange men keep showing up in my front yard, and I'm entitled to some answers. Like how the hell did all this chocolate milk get here?"

A milk truck pulled to the curb and hastily parked behind the van. A bespectacled man jumped out, the buttons on his overalls jingling.

"Oh, I knew I had the wrong address," he said when he saw all the milk. He wrung his hands. "I hope it's not all gone bad."

"Why did you deliver the milk to my house?" Allison asked, turning to him

The driver and I rolled our eyes at the same time.

"Me oh my," the milkman said, "I thought it was a six instead of a nine. The Johnsons'll sure be sore when they don't have their morning milk!"

We all chuckled at his folksy speech. Allison stopped laughing and turned to the man.

"How do you confuse a six and a nine without messing up the rest of the numbers? And who needs this much milk for one morning? And what company in this century still delivers milk?"

The milkman's eyes darted left and right before he pulled out a pair of scissors and quickly clipped a lock of Allison's hair. "He ha ho hoooo!" he hollered as he ran to his truck, hair in hand.

One of the orderlies looked at the driver, who nodded. "I'm on it," he said, running after the milkman.

"What do I do with all this milk?" she asked.

The driver sighed. "Lady, I don't care. I'm in the business of apprehending nutjobs, not listening to every damn thought that passes through your pretty blond head."

The other orderly had already subdued the milkman.

"Why is it so hard to find good help these days?" she wondered. The driver stared at her, spit in the yard, and we all turned to go.

I watched her throwing the milk away from a grate in the back of the van.

"I'm just like Sarah Connor!" I shouted as we drove away. "Sarah Connoooooooorrrr..."

Things No One Cares About

Everyday conversation is a burden.

It's not small talk that's the problem, it's when we pierce the veil of custom and attempt to exchange thoughts with another human. It's a frightening prospect, but there are certain traps we fall into that turn it into an unadulterated nightmare. Thankfully, I'm here to help. Together we can make the world of tomorrow a better, less annoying place!

One - Dreams
When you're in a dream it's the coolest thing, like, ever. You're an omnipotent action hero fighting a monster that's part the kid that picked on you in fourth grade and part Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7, all while that girl in legal that won't give you the time of day hangs off your arm, worshiping you with her eyes. Then you wake up and can barely remember it.

We all dream. As weird as your dream is, something equally strange happened to someone else last night, or the night before. Part of the weirdness of dreams is how emotions and feelings manifest fully formed - it can take years to fall in love with someone, but you instantly fell for that guy or girl riding the inflatable hoverboard last night; movie after movie tries to fill you with horror, but none of it can match the bedwetting (possibly literally) terror of the closet door from your childhood room slowly swinging open.

However, since you can't relate those emotions to anyone else, your dreams sound like drug fueled hallucinations directed by a three year old with ADD.

"then dinosaurs attacked and mom said I had to go to school anyway but I didn't have pants so the ninja said it was okay because I could take the dragon bus."
Dreams are likely the only virtual reality many of us will ever experience, our own personal Matrix. We're self centered creatures, and dreams take this to the nth level - it's a whole universe that finds its purpose in us.

In fact, have you ever been bored by someone's dream, only to perk up when they mentioned you were in it? Case in point. So keep the dreams to yourself. If you absolutely have to get the details down, start a dream journal that you never, ever share with anyone else. Here's some Lisa Frank stickers to get you started.

Two - Geneaologies
"Now, he wasn't married to Sheila, because he had the marriage annulled on account of her being barren. And that's what she's only my great uncle's cousin, instead of his second wife."

History is important. Interesting, even. That's why we entrust its care to scholars and anyone with a beard on the Discovery Channel. These people make the great events and personalities of the past come alive.

"Haley's comet was alien sperm. Historically."
You can't.

You're a guy who spends more on ancestry.com than a month than Sumatran families spend on food in a year. You have no formal training in historical criticism or the socio-cultural milieu of the time you're researching.

Most people have no interest in geneaology. They're not particularly concerned with where their parents went to high school, so knowing your great-great-grandpa Josiah touched Abraham Lincoln's shoe or how many candles Grandma Baloney sold at her Ye Olde Ne'erywacks Store does nothing for them.

Here's what I know about my family: they spent seven generations farming the same patch of dirt in a redneck county for 160 years. They were dirt farmers. Is that interesting to you? No. It doesn't matter what you find out about your ancestors, even if they were Aztec astronauts that invented the escalator. No one but you will care.

And if you do discover something - the blood curse of the beast which swells at midsummer - at least they'll have some investment in that info. Me? I'll shoot silver straight in your heart.

Three - Health Problems
"Well, my crippl'ins is acting up, and that medicine they got me on for it causes my downstairs to itch up something fierce. 'course, I cain't even do that cause my joints trouble me if I move so much as a fly's mustache. But you don't want to hear about that, do you dear?"

I'm looking at you, old people.

Back in the 50's, "How are you?" might have well meant, "Tell me in detail what you're feeling right now."

let's get ripped at noon and play Adultery Quest!
In this era it's a standardized American greeting. Acceptable responses include "Doing well", "I'm okay", and the ever popular "Fine." Unacceptable responses are anything that make us visualize you sitting on a doctor's cold table, paper gown swaying in the AC, frowning your jowls as you prepare to be invaded by a camera or a spelunking finger.

Co-workers, I didn't forget about you all. What part of sharing an office with someone communicates that it's okay to share the results of your colonscopy? I'm not talking about overhearing it while you tell your spouse, which is annoying; I'm talking about direct, "Hey, want to know how my intestines are doing?" I once had a coworker tell me, "Well, now I know what the inside of my anus looks like."

There is no universe where it's okay for anyone to tell me that. Ever. In another dimension we're silicon based beings that eat with our noses and shit out our ears, and it's still not okay for that to happen.

"Dude, TMI."
This doesn't mean we don't care about your health, or want you to die; we only want you to extend to us the same bland, polite apathy we do to you. I keep that mole with the weird borders quiet, you don't tell me when and how often your bowels bleed. Deal?

Four - Babies and kids
"Jenny's nursing now, and I'm so exhausted! She keeps me up all night, just chewing at my nipples till they're all stretched out. And little Tim wants to hold his sister, but - did I tell you he's doing t-ball now? The coach says that..."

You reproduced. Congrats. So did the people down the street from you, the ones you don't talk to because the husband lost his job and you're afraid they'll ask for a handout. What would actually be impressive is if, like a horse, your baby was running as soon as he fell out of you.

or if your baby is half horse
To the contrary, most of your stories deal with your kid's inability to do anything well; they're shitting and pissing left and right while babbling like the Insane Clown Posse at a spelling bee. Since we were all children at one point, and most of us had siblings, we've heard these stories before. The fact that your baby is named "Brad" instead of "Stephen" does nothing to keep us interested.

Listen - I like kids, I really do, but secondhand stories of macaroni art make me want to force feed you the teapot/hot air balloon/leprechaun head your kid glued to the page in between surreptitiously eating the paste. Yes, your little princess/slugger eats paste. They call it "art candy."

I'm considerate. I don't tell you about my friends when they're drunk, despite the disturbing similarities to your baby tales. And no matter how hard they chew on my nipples, that's between them, me, and the hypnotherapist I hired to make me forget it all.

pete what are you doing noooo
Five - Commercials
"I laid awake at nights and fantasized about killing my husband with a knife I called Spousereaver. But thanks to the patented lazy spring suspension system, I've buried all those thoughts deep, deep down! Thanks Slumberco!"

Prior to the 70's, when people told one another about commercials, there was an obvious, easily relatable gag. Absurd humor hadn't entered the mainstream yet, so it didn't take much to get people buzzing at the water cooler.

"Then the cat - Harry, listen to this - the cat started talking! Asking for the cat food like he was sitting down at a goddamn table in a restaurant. Maude and me nearly shit ourselves laughing!"
The listener would think, "Wow, that's funny. Talking cats. I gotta check that stuff out."

Commercials are a visual medium, and an ephemeral one at that. They've grown more sophisticated over the years, such that they seem like short films; unfortunately, this only exacerbates the problem. When someone tells me about a commercial, I stare at them blankly. Then they look vaguely ashamed, like they should, and finish "I guess you had to be there." Yeah, I "guess" I did, to see the thing you're trying to tell me about with words.

Infomercials are a different case; they embrace the narrative for all it's worth, telling us a story about how the woman who couldn't peel a carrot without burning her house down is now a happy, vegetable peeling maniac. We believe in the power of the ShamWow guy, and Billy Mays was damn near an uncle to all of us.

The fifteen second spot for Tide with the talking bubbles? Not so much.

And companies, this word of mouth advertising is doing nothing for sales. When a friend gives me his lame ass rehash of what might have been a cool commercial, I judge you for it. No, it's not fair, but maybe you should start working on a way to make people stop. Maybe you can run PSA's, like Wonder Woman used to.

"Now remember, don't drink refrigerator coolant."
I hope this advice has been helpful for you. Keep eating your vegetables, don't tell people about stupid shit, and life will go immeasurably better for you!