Triple Clicking

Whenever people read webpages over my shoulder, I  compulsively highlight text while I wait for them to read and catch up. I’m like an addict, double-clicking words all over the place. Sometimes I will highlight words in circular patterns. I leave one word untouched while I doubleclick all the words around it. Or maybe I will moving my mouse in figure-eights, faster and faster, I can’t get enough of it.

So today I realized two things:
1) Triple-clicking will highlight an entire paragraph! Try it– it’s amazing!
2) My life is devoid of meaning.

Keychain Memo Recorders

I need to go buy one of those keychain memo recorders, but I keep forgetting.

Where’s Waldo? In My Trunk

WHERE’S WALDO? IN MY TRUNK

I pulled over deep in the woods, the lights of the city far behind me, popped the trunk and stared down at his body. Fitting, I thought, to bury him in that goddamn striped sweater; he loved that thing–almost as much as he loved pleasuring my wife on our ironing board, as I found out three hours earlier. I tugged down his striped hat over his glasses, grabbed his feet, and set about the grisly task of making him disappear forever. No one, including the state police, would find Waldo anytime soon.

The Great Waldo Search began that Sunday morning. Signs popped up all over the city: “Where’s Waldo?” and “Find Waldo Now!” Police scoured the town, the beach, the ski slopes, the campsite. They stopped trains at the railway station, boarded planes at the airport, questioned fans at the sports stadium, searched high and low at the museum, the department store, the sea, even the goddamn safari park.

What I didn’t count on was the children, the goddamn kids from four to twelve years old, the Waldo-watchers. They just wouldn’t give up; kids couldn’t get enough of looking for Waldo. They spotted ghosts of him everywhere, a ghoulish specter of my guilt, but it was never actually Waldo–just a sports fan in a striped shirt, a pirate wearing a knit cap, a skier with thick glasses, a lady flashing her breasts at the beach.

Still, the police had no leads, no body, no crime, and after two weeks they downgraded the Great Waldo Search And Rescue to the Great Waldo Recovery, and then two weeks later they called it off entirely.

I still think about him sometimes, when I’m listening to my wife snore in bed next to me, or when I’m ironing my pants on our defiled ironing board. Sometimes I think I should write a children’s book about his disappearance, with colorful pictures and everything, and I’d call it, “Where’s Waldo, that son of a bitch who ruined my marriage?”

Spider in the Shower

It’s hard to enjoy your shower when there’s a spider on the wall. You want to get rid of it but the nozzle spray doesn’t quite reach it. You could cup water in your hands and try to knock it down that way, but if you lose sight of it during the splash you’ll never be sure it went down the drain. It might have gone in your belly button to lay eggs. So now it’s a staring contest: man vs. arachnid. Ten legs enter, two legs leave (eight, if the spider is victorious).

Spider: “Pick up the soap.”

Nick: [stoic silence]

Spider: “Go ahead, pick up the soap.”

Nick: “If I look away and pick up that soap, you’ll jump in my belly button and lay eggs.”

Spider: “Pick it up.”

Nick: “Listen, Mister. I just came in here to splash some water on myself, get refreshed, and wash up before my big date. I don’t want any trouble.”

Spider: “PICK UP THE SOAP!!!!“

On Popeyes’ Free Dipping Sauce Policy

Popeyes makes delicious chicken strips. Tender white meat in a flaky crust? We all agree– a masterpiece in the quickserve industry. So what’s not to love? Their devastating dipping sauce policy, that’s what. They have a strict “three chicken fingers = one dipping sauce” limit. If I want to mix each bite in a delicious blend of barbeque and sweet-and-sour, I have to pay extra for two sauces. Damn you, Popeyes! Now you’ve made me dip my strips in the sauce of my tears.

I called Popeyes’ corporate office to inquire about my local franchise’s stinginess, but they confirmed a nationwide policy where three strips yields one free sauce. But you can get two free sauces if you order six chicken strips. Thank you, Popeyes, for that confirmation of your heartless greed.

But here’s where things get a little wonky. If you order nine chicken strips, Popeyes promises to give you four free dipping sauces, not three. Apparently the Popeyes sauce formula eschews the expected linear relationship in favor of more daring exponential growth. Many sensible members of society would presuppose that the amount of sauce per unit chicken stays constant as chicken approaches infinity. Not Popeyes. Popeyes’ headquarters is in an alternate universe where sauce consumption increases according to sauce=2^{(chicken/3)-1}

Popeyes, are you aware that a family meal of twelve strips now affords the customer eight free sauces? Do you understand how ugly things get around the 30 strip mark, where according to the very sauce policy you so royally fucked me with, you now have to offer me 512 free dipping sauces?

My point is, next time you go to Popeyes and you’re feeling sad because you ordered three strips and only got one free sauce, I say stick it to the man. Spend $130 and order 100 strips, then bankrupt your local Popeyes franchise by pulling out a calculator and demanding they give you 5.41×10⁹ dipping sauces.

Monkeys

It’s awful to be paralyzed by indecision, and I have a huge dilemma on my mind. I can’t decide which is funnier: ten monkeys laughing, or one monkey crying.

Let’s be honest, here. Ten monkeys laughing has a lot going for it. They’re probably smoking cigars, guffawing, and slapping their cute monkey knees with their creepy humanoid hands (thumbs, bitches!). Maybe one of the monkeys just told a good monkey joke, like the classic “why did the monkey cross the road? To masturbate in front of children at the zoo!” (if you find yourself only mildly amused, please remember this joke is much funnier for monkeys than people. Their sense of humor is based on poopoo and peepee and masturbation, unlike people humor which involves those same things, but also puns).

On the other hand, there is a certain tragic hilarious charm about one monkey crying. What tragilarious fortune hath befallen thee, O sad monkey? Probably something banana-related, but that is only a guess. O sad monkey, I do not mean to belittle your tears if you cry about something serious, like a broken monkey heart or the loneliness of saudade (the Portuguese emotion of “longing for something which is now lost and may never return, and may never have existed in the first place.”)

In conclusion, it is funny whenever monkeys emote.

Advice for Haiku Writers

Writing a haiku?

The last line had better be

pentasyllabic.

Trivial Pursuit

My friends like to play Trivial Pursuit. I know that game makes me hate everyone but I play it anyway. If you’re on the edge of the board and you ask me if I’m having fun, “no” is the answer that gets you a pie slice. From my middle finger.