I Think

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#1

Commercials for hygiene products are destructive to our popular culture, and they have to be stopped. They brainwash you into thinking your skin is smelly and scaly and utterly hideous and the only remedy is the use of their particular skin care product. They make you think your hair is a gnarled mass of dried spaghetti unless you use their particular conditioner. These ads cause mass insecurity to permeate the nation which is why, I think, television shows about stupid people -- court TV, police shows, etc -- are so popular. We need to feel superior to something after watching those commercials that make us feel so inadequate. The clincher is that the sponsors of these stupid people shows are skin care products. So it's a vicious cycle. The upshot of all this is that the nation's declining literacy rate can be blamed entirely on moisturizing cream. #2

I think you can take over any company if you commandeer enough desk supplies. "Victory Through Desk Supplies" is my new motto. All you do is gradually clean out the desk supply cabinets as they are stocked. The company will eventually be spending so much money on desk supplies, it'll go under. Then you take the huge quantities of desk supplies you've got, sell them, and use the money to buy the company at a bargain price. There should even be enough money left over to get it going again. I don't see how this plan could fail. #3

I think these Veronica Lake hairstyles need to stop. You know the type -- long hair combed all over one eye, head tilted to the side (either to maintain the hairstyle or because the neck buckles under the weight). These women always chew gum. One mandates the other. You have a Veronica Lake hairdo, you chew gum, and vice versa. I guess they figure that since they don't have any depth perception anyway, then chewing gum won't do anything further to hinder their walking. #4

I think I'm going to build a big parallel computer that operates on quantum physics principles. It could solve an infinite number of problems at the same time by solving each in one of an infinite number of dimensions. Parallel programming would be simplified -- each instruction would have its own thread. Actually it would have as many threads as possibilities for its input data. That would be great. Then NP-hard problems could be solved in constant time. Of course, you'd need to attach a wormhole to a serial port on the back of the computer to get the results back, but that's just an engineering detail. I'd be the richest, most famous person in the world if I built such a machine. Computer scholars would put a contract out on my life for singlehandedly obsoleting the entire field of algorithm analysis, while major hardware companies would camp out on my lawn waiting for me to sign their nine figure salary job offers.

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#5

I think health foods are a bad idea. Eating is healthy for us not just physically but psychologically as well. If all we eat are low fat cupcakes, we're not going to get the required level of satisfaction from eating them, and each time we take a bite, the subconscious irritation builds a little more until finally we suffer nervous breakdowns and open fire in school yards. The synthetic fat product Olestra is ushering in a whole new danger. Olestra is kind of an inverse fat -- since its molecular structure is the inverse of that of regular fat, your taste buds can't detect much of a difference, but your body can't ingest it, and it comes out pretty much the same way it went in. Is this the start of a new trend? Are we going to see products on the shelves with all sorts of inverse proteins in them? If so, I predict everyone will starve to death. We'll be eating all these things, but our bodies won't absorb them. We'll get no nourishment from eating. We'll die. But it won't be a painful death -- our stomachs will have inverse food in them. We'll drop dead from starvation without even realizing we were hungry. #6

Aquafresh toothpaste has three colors -- it squirts out, and there's a red strip, white strip, and blue strip of toothpaste. I think they have the right idea. I think we should employ this multi-colored chemical substance angle to every squirtable consumer product on the market in the hopes it would enrich the excitement of our environment. Shampoo could be purple, yellow, and pastel green. Red, mauve, and chartreuse ketchup would add more than spice to our hamburgers. Brown, orange, and wintergreen hand cream would add color to the lightest of skins. Gray, black, and vermilion lipstick would lend a first date some extra pizazz. Yellow, coral, and burnt sienna caulk would give a drab house some eye-catching highlights. I think burnt sienna is a silly name for a color. #7

I think candy should be free. The state should fund free candy dispensers which would be attached to all street lights, signposts, and parking meters in the nation. In fact, a dumptruck full of sugar products should be plunked on each person's front lawn on a daily basis. They should supply so much free candy that people wouldn't want to steal any -- there wouldn't be the need. This could only help the economy, as the state would maintain a constant flow of money into the candy business, which would mean scads of new jobs. And it would mean fewer medical emergencies for diabetics who abruptly realize their blood-sugar level is dangerously low -- there would always be a confectionary remedy on hand. I don't see how this could go wrong. #8

I saw a movie the other day. It was a movie about a cop and a scared witness who was scheduled to testify against the mob. The cop visited the witness' place of residence and knocked on the door. The door swung gently inward at his touch. Right then, I knew the witness was dead. See, if you knock on a door in the movies, and it turns out that the door was left ajar, it means somebody was killed. I think the next movie director who shoots a scene like this should be taken out and shot. #9

First somebody had the bright idea of transmitting computer data over a phone line. Then someone decided it might be a good idea to transmit computer data over cable TV lines. I agree that it's a good idea to avoid having more application-specific lines come into the average American home, but I don't think the developers of these technologies are being creative enough. I think we should transmit computer data through the plumbing. Think about it. We've already got this elaborate, tree-structured plumbing system in place that

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connects every home to local centralized plants. If we connect all the local plants together by satellite or something, we would effectively have a network topologically similar to the Internet, but simpler and more geographically intuitive. I say we do it. We could transmit the data via recyclable immersible flotation capsules, or perhaps with timed flushing sequences. Of course, excess rain could cause some line noise, but these are the types of problems civil engineers are paid to solve. #10

I think the person who thought up the concept of the "gift certificate" was a devilish prankster. Gift certificate: money you can only spend in one place. I fail to see how this idea improves our quality of life. Back to the I Think main page.

8/3/2009 10:12 AM

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#11

Someday, somewhere, the owner of a rock garden is going to wake up and realize rocks don't grow. I know. I tried raising a boulder once, but I didn't even get any buds. I think someone should invent a special chemical that could be mixed into clay and cause it to harden into a rock and expand slowly when exposed to water and sunlight. This would be a great boon to gardeners who can't keep things alive. With chemically treated rocks, you start out with stuff that's already dead, and it'll grow anyway. Of course, disposing of rocks that get too big for the garden would be a problem, because, well, you can't exactly chop a rock up and dump it into a beef stew. I think what I would do, since their volume would always be increasing but their total mass would stay the same, is let them grow until the wind blew them away. #12

I'm getting tired of art. Somebody makes a painting. Somebody carves a sculpture. Somebody writes a book. Somebody directs a movie. Somebody composes a song. Blah blah blah. It's all the same. You see stuff. You hear stuff. Big deal. I think someone should invent a new artistic medium that caters to the other senses. Somebody ought to compose a smellphony, where an assortment of smells are emitted at preplanned, measured intervals, which together form an aesthetically enlighting piece of performance art that is experienced by the sense of smell. Or how about an orchestrated feelphony, where your sense of touch is stimulated in preplanned, measured ways that together are an artistic whole? Extending the idea further, I think it would be particularly exhilarating to see an artist create something that plays off people's sense of direction. #13

If you take a magazine, hold it by the binding, and shake it around, more pages will fall out of it than not. This is because these pages are "inserts." Once upon a time, somebody thought it would be a good idea if certain parts of a magazine weren't physically attached to the rest of it. I think I going to pay this person a visit with a razor blade in the middle of the night and turn all the pages in all his books into "inserts" and see how he likes it. #14

I never understood the concept of the "front door." The front door is the most prominent door on a house. It's the one most decorated. It's the one that enters the home via the entry way, an area specifically designed for people entering or exiting the home. It's the main door. The front door. The number one door. And no one uses it. Most homeowners have forgotten whether their front doors even still open anymore. People use the "back door" to enter the home, or the "side door" or the "door that comes in from the garage." These doors

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are put in as afterthoughts, awkwardly stuck on the side of houses, and lead into whatever room happened to be there at the time. All the elaborate planning made for the front door with its decor and its entry way and the cute little sidewalk leading up to it -- it's all for naught. I think this is very silly. I'm not exactly sure what point I'm making, but I know there's one here somewhere. #15

Social conventions are all right in their place, but I think the ones that dictate how we act around people we aren't even interacting with are annoyingly arbitrary. Consider this. You're walking down a populated hallway at your regular place of work or school or down the main street of your home town. You realize that you forgot something and must turn around to go get it. You are not allowed simply to turn around and walk in the other direction, because this appears stupid to everyone else (none of whom care what you do in the least). Instead, you must give some visual indication of why you are deciding to change directions. An eye roll accompanied by a frustrated grunt is acceptable, for instance, for this indicates that you have forgotten something and are perturbed that you have to hike it all the way back from whence you came. A forehead slap is an alternative that conveys the same information. I'm going to rebel against this ridiculousness. I'm going find a populated hallway or street and walk down it in alternating directions repeatedly, never once acting out the part of forgetfulness, just to spite that silly unspoken social convention. People who see me do it will then be more comfortable doing it themselves. And when my little revolution is won, I'll be heralded as the champion of the new world order. #16

I think "Off" should be the Official Bug Repellent of the next Olympic Games. #17

I can't tell you how many times I've read a book or watched a movie about war, then read criticism on it that touted it as "one of the greatest anti-war pieces of our time," then wondered why I never noticed the underlying anti-war message in the first place. Sometimes the anti-war sentiment is there, of course. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes the book or movie is simply about war and is too involved with the more compelling dilemmas of its characters under extreme circumstances to be concerned about making trite political statements such as, "War is bad." But to any critical analysis of these works, any narrative about war is one of the greatest anti-war pieces of our time. I'm going to write a pro-war novel someday where war is portrayed as a glamorous thing, and all the soldiers run around saying, "Yes! War rules!" and the teenagers back home lament that their friends got drafted and they didn't. When I do that, I think every critic in the country would hail it as, by its satire and sarcasm, one of the greatest anti-war pieces of our time. It's all a conspiracy. Somewhere out there, there's a Secret Organization Of Critics Of Literature And Cinema Whose Purpose Is To Call Other People's Art Anti-War Whether It Really Applies Or Not whose members worm their way into influential positions at newspapers and magazines and literary conventions to promote their cause. I think this is a pretty good idea, but their organization is too chicken. They should call stuff like "Green Eggs and Ham" one of the greatest anti-war pieces of our time, but they don't make observations quite that far off the wall because they fear they might be found out. But I have no such fears. I'm all for it, for reasons that will come to me. #18

According to Einstein, time slows down as you approach the speed of light. In other words, if you ride around on a beam of light, you could get anywhere in the universe instantaneously -- but when you arrived, everyone you ever knew on Earth would probably be long dead. I find it curious that the speed of light is a universal constant. You can't travel faster than light. If two cars are zooming along at different speeds and both have their headlights on, the light travels from their headlights at the same speed. In other words, velocity can't be

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precisely defined relative to that of other objects but rather to an unknown but fixed, absolute point that is "standing still." In short, I think "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" is a stupid name for this theory. #19

I think cafeterias serve bad food on purpose. It's all part of their sinister plot to destroy the human race. I think there's one guy with a name like "Pilford J. Spruts" -- all important rich people have 'J' for a middle initial -- who discovered that if he sold food that cost thirty cents less than anybody else's, people wouldn't care if it tasted like muddy socks, and they'd buy it anyway. So he started selling cheap, yucky food to captive audiences at schools and hospitals and so forth in the hopes that, given enough time, the food would wear away at our enthusiasm for eating, effectively reverse training our instinctive drive to eat via negative reinforcement. Sometime in the near future, he's going to blow up every fast food joint on the planet, and the heck if we're going to feel like working any harder for sustenance. We'll all starve to death with apathetic expressions on our faces. #20

By convention, the symbol ":-)" is a "smiley face" (or "smiley" for short) which is used rampantly on email, newsgroups, online chat rooms, and web pages to denote that the preceeding statement was meant to be humorous. I think it's high time we started thinking about the severe environmental ramifications of this practice. To use the smiley symbol, a ")" is required. It's part of a matched set of characters, the other being the "(". As technophiles are no doubt aware, these things are manufactured in pairs, as they were intended to be used. But when you use a smiley symbol, you only use the ")" which means the "(" has to be thrown away. Somewhere, there's a huge stockpile of unused "("s that are going to end up in a landfill unless we act more responsibly. I say we pass a law requiring all smileys to be upside down for a few years, then enforce strict alternation thereafter. Don't even get me started on the use of the ">" symbol to denote quoted text. Back to the I Think main page.

8/3/2009 10:13 AM

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#21

Feet must get awfully bored. Take hands, for example. They write. They type. They twiddle. They carry things. They stuff things in mouths. They shake other hands. There's always something different going on with hands. Feet, however, are pretty much limited to two basic tasks: walking and kicking inanimate objects we stumble over. I think this is a tremendous waste of resources. Granted, feet don't quite have the manual dexterity required for tying knots and cross-stiching, but there must be all kinds of everyday activities they can perform to make them more efficient. Cars, pianos, and sewing machines have the idea, as do those trash cans where you push on the peddle to flip the lid up. But how about this? You're walking home from the grocery store with gargantuan paper bags in both arms, obscuring every part of your body from your waist to your forehead. You don't have a free hand to pull out the house keys and fiddle with the lock. But if you had pressure sensitive plates under the doormat, you could tap out an entry code with your feet, and the door would open automatically. Of course, you'd look a little silly doing a softshoe every time you wanted to get into the house, but this is the price of progress. #22

You know how, if you listen to a music CD enough, one song ends, and you start humming the next one before it starts? This fits right in with my theory that humans are actually trained by space beings. See, animals are trained by causing something unpleasant to happen when they do something undesirable and causing something pleasant to happen when they do something desirable. In effect, you're establishing an illogical cause and effect in their minds. Bark. Get scolded. Heel. Get food. Music CDs illustrate how humans are prone to this kind of arbitrary cause-and-effect training. One song plays, and we expect another to follow -- so much so that our subconscious knows what's going to play next, no matter how much music it's heard before. So I think humans are not only trainable but have been trained...by (who else?) space aliens. I mean, why else would polite society frown so disdainfully if the dessert fork is placed on the left side of the salad fork? Isn't that a downright silly thing when you think about it? I bet if you asked, no one could tell you why it's bad if a dessert fork is placed on the left side of a salad fork. But I know why. It's because a long time ago, space aliens used to zap us with hypertransturbo rayguns whenever we put the dessert fork on the left and tossed us chocolate eclairs when we put it on the right. I think we should fight this. The next time someone says to me, "But tails are not proper attire for luncheon," I'll look all snooty and say, "At least I'm not the mindless slave of a space alien." I bet that'll shut him up. #23

I think I turned into myself this morning. But I'm not sure. I certainly don't feel any different. #24

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I've spent a fair amount of time listening to the conversations my co-workers have during lunch, and I've come to the conclusion that dull routine is the bane of human kind. I see their tired expressions and droopy posture, and I think, "These people need variety in their lives." At lunchtime, they shuffle into the cafeteria, eat their banal old food, and -- every day, day in and day out -- talk about things besides grasshoppers. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against non-leaping insect conversation. But it gets old after a while. If it were up to me, I'd pep up the daily routine by varying the conversations from day to day. Some days we would sit around and talk about grasshoppers. Somedays we would sit around and not talk about grasshoppers. It would be a roughly even but unregulated split. This could be the key to career satisfaction. #25

I think we're taking this "web" thing in the wrong direction. It's getting to the point where anybody can make a web page and have it instantly accessible to jillions of people worldwide. It is important to preserve freedom of speech, but free speech is not what the web is doing. The web is providing an audience. Nowhere in the Bill of Rights was the "freedom to have people listen to you while you're practice your freedom of speech" mentioned, even off-handedly. Now, with the technological achievement that is the World Wide Web, we've got total morons spouting off at people who are paying attention. Of course, people that pay attention to morons (for other than entertainment purposes) are morons themselves, and that's even worse. If there's anything worse than a moron, it's a congregation of them sharing non-ideas with each other. I'm not saying we should stop them -- that would be an illegal and undesirable infringement on our rights as a whole -- I'm just saying it should be legal to shoot stupid people. #26

Ties are all wrong. Who thought it would be a formal, classy, dress-up kind of thing for a man to wear a tie? It serves no practical purpose. It does not cover parts of the body. It does not provide shelter from the atmosphere. It's a noose, the other way around. It's a leash for women to yank. Purely in the interests of fairness, I think that, for every occasion formal enough to require men to wear ties, women should be required to wear bungee cords that hang off the shoulder. #27

Is it some sort of law that cashiers at department stores take upwards of three weeks to service each individual customer ahead of me in line? Sooner or later you have to wait in line forever in any type of store, but department stores -- you know the type, the ones that function as gigantic cornerstones of malls -- make this a matter of routine. If there is one person in line ahead of you, you'll be late for work the next day. I think federal laws, enforced by babillion dollar fines per violation, should be passed to stop this. Firstly, department stores should not be allowed to have their own charge cards, or if they are, they should not be allowed to ask every individual person in line if they want to sign up for one, or if they are, it should not require 284,377 keystrokes (entered at the rate of one keystroke per hour) to start up the card. Secondly, each item should have its price on it (on stickers, not those unbreakable string tags) in at least four places per square inch of item surface area so the cashier does not have to rummage through the labyrinthine folds of articles of clothing for two and a half eons before finding it. Thirdly, the cash registers should be lined up at the exit, as in any other sane retail store, so customers do not have to walk the equivalent of a Volksmarch around the stupid store trying to find a cash register that someone is actually attending. #28

I think that guy that cut me off the Interstate this morning should be flayed slowly over a hot stove. #29

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There's nothing fun about "fun size" candy bars. Chomp, gone. What could be less fun? I think they should rename the little candy bars to "person who is not hungry size" and make a totally new -- big -- size of candy bar they could call "fun." We're talking a Twix the size of a loaf of bread, here. That is a fun size. #30

I think that people shouldn't be allowed to call a spade a spade. All spoken or written communication should be conducted in similes and metaphors. You wouldn't be able to say, "I'm dead tired from lack of sleep." You'd say, "I feel like moonshine is pouring out of my gullet." Instead of saying, "This is the happiest day of my life," you'd say, "I'm a pink bunny, frolicking on a grassy hillside in the morning sun." Human interaction would be a whole lot more fun this way, and there's the added bonus that no one would know what anyone else was saying. Rarely is anybody else worth listening to anyway. Back to the I Think main page.

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#41

Appetizers should not be so huge. You go in to a restaurant, order some potato skins to pass the time before the meal comes, and they bring out a tray the size of a large pizza. And it's crammed with potato skins sopping in mozzarella cheese coated with a glistening sheen of fat. Here's a hint, restaurants: if most people can't eat a whole large pizza as their entire meal, even fewer are going to be able to eat an equivalent amount of potato skins and still have room to eat a fully-fledged dinner afterward. I think restaurants should be required to bill you just on what you eat rather than what you are served. The waiter weighs the food before bringing it out, weighs it when you're done, and you pay for the difference. I propose this partly because I'm sick of shaking my wallet empty every time I enter a restaurant and partly because I've already come up with a great scam. I'd conceal a container of yesterday's dried-up homemade lasagna on my person, eat my fill of restaurant food, then dump out the lasagna afterward. The waiter would determine that I had eaten almost nothing, and presto -- a nice big meal for 32 cents. If I do it right, they might even pay me. #42

I think a new law should be passed barring short cars from pulling too far into parking spaces, thus causing the optical illusion of a free parking space for people cruising down the lot looking for them. #43

I think people should have to consume tea with chopsticks. #44

I'm going to start a software company. I'm going to release all my products with a label that says they need a jillion terabytes of RAM to run. People will think it's a joke, so it won't stop them from buying. But when they call me for technical support, I'll be able to say, "I'm sorry, your system does not meet the product's minimum hardware requirements," and hang up. I think that would be fun. #45

The problem with birthday cake is, other people eat it. I think I'd rather have a birthday eggplant, because then I'd have it all to myself. #46

They should have a television series based on the Apollo 13 disaster. They'd be in the space shuttle there, and

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something new would go wrong every week. The series finale could have them getting home again. I think this could be a really popular show. It could have an eight or nine season run, no problem. #47

When people say, "The money is rolling in," what do they really mean? I think they mean to say that someone has taken each bill and taped the two ends together (creating a circle), laid it on the ground, put a marble inside, and rolled the marble, thus causing the bill to "roll" too. #48

I think every inanimate object should be connected to the Internet. Sure, we've all heard about things like vending machines being connected, but I'm talking about things like lightbulbs and table saws and clothes. Just think how convenient it would be to log into your microwave from your car so it can finish heating your supper just as you're pulling in the driveway. And who wouldn't want to have the front door on the Internet? You could have a camera set up to watch the door. When the plumber comes and rings the doorbell, it pops up a message on your remote laptop. You look at the camera view, see that it's the plumber, buzz him in, watch him work, and make sure he leaves without raiding the refrigerator. How about this? You lose a sock. You ping it remotely, causing it to beep, enabling you to find it. Need your address book, but don't happen to have it where you need it? Log in and look up the information online. #49

I think it would be funny if viruses were on WWF wrestling. "In this corner, weighing 253 pounds, SNAKE, THE MASKED PULVERIZING FIST CRUSHER!!! And in this corner, weighing 0.000000000000000001 pounds, EBOLA, THE ORGAN LIQUIFIER!!!" And in spite of all of Snake's grunting and sweating and body slamming, Ebola would win. #50

I think vending machines are sentient beings. They're disguised as inanimate objects because if they let on, they'd lose their excuse for stealing change. Back to the I Think main page.

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#61

Lions eat stuff like zebras raw -- little baby lion cubs will dig right in and get their faces all red. Crows eat dirty old roadkill right there on the side of the road. Welsh Corgis are ugly. I think nature is really gross. #62

I think bananas are really big inch worms, frozen in mid-stride. #63

I went fishing the other day. We used cross sections of a mackerel as bait. Fish are stupid. A big chunk of disembodied friend hangs in the water, and they want to eat it. I think people like fishing so much because it makes them feel like unbounded geniuses, in spite of the fact that they are standing outside in the wind and rain and freezing cold trying to catch something easily obtained at the local supermarket for significantly less than the price of the average fishing boat, tank of gas, rod, reel, hook, sinker, line, lure, bait, tackle box, and lunch box. #64

If a restaurant gives free rolls, garlic bread, breadsticks, or whatever, why is it required that they give one more piece of bread than there are people at the table? Would it hurt them to bring out one apiece or two apiece? I think it's a secret research project. There's hidden cameras over every table. They want to see how many people will split the last piece of bread and how many will fight over it. They do this nationwide, I'm sure, so they can study what regions of the country have a natural tendency toward violence. Then they test their new high-tech weaponry by mowing people down on the street in the most angst-ridden areas. The incident gets passed off as just another random act of violence. As for the least violent areas -- they publish them in those lists of "Best U.S. Cities To Live In." Everybody seems to know about those lists, even though nobody ever actually reads the magazines they get published in. #65

If inanimate objects were sentient, I think their lives would be in a constant state of suffering. I certainly wouldn't want to be a headlight on a sports car in the dead of winter. Nor would I want to lead the life of a ping pong ball. Or a spoon. #66

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I think "Warheads" -- those ultra-sour and ultra-hot candies -- are commercially successful solely because of what I like to call the "macho instinct." It's a test of endurance. It's like, "How long can I survive the pain of having this thing in my mouth?" #67

The movie "Jurassic Park" has it all wrong. Tyrannosauri Rex don't run around like ostriches. In terms of body structure, they are more similar to kangaroos -- thick back legs, skinny forelegs, and a long tail for balance. I think the T-Rex used to get around by bouncing. They'd leap around everywhere and make a lot of noise. They'd catch pterodactyls in mid-flight. They'd take down a Brontosaurus by jumping on its neck. I'm glad those bad boys aren't around anymore. #68

The words "I think" appear on this page more than any others. I suspect so, anyway. #69

I think the inventor of those plush dice that people put on their rear view mirrors would best be described as "insane genius." #70

If it rained oil, I bet there'd be a lot more car accidents. I think we should protect against this eventuality by building giant soap dispensers at regular intervals along the roadside. If it ever rains oil, we could just squirt soap all over and wash the oil away. Then, to keep cars from sliding on the soap, we'd turn on the fire hydrants (placed at regular intervals on the other side of the road) for the "rinse" cycle. You can't be too prepared. Back to the I Think main page.

8/3/2009 10:14 AM

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#71

I locked my keys in my car. It cost me $45 to get a locksmith to come open the thing up, and it took about three seconds. I think I'm going to become a locksmith. I'll hang out in parking lots with my cell phone, pick the keys out of people's pockets, and wait for them to call me up. #72

I think I'm going to start a band just so I can name it. #73

I think James Cameron and Leonardo di Caprio have taught me a valuable lesson. If I realized all I had to do to become royalty was face the wind, spread my arms, and say so, I'd have done it long ago. #74

When I become a millionaire and start my own suite of companies, I think I'm going to name each one "Something-O-Rama." "Bookstore" might not be a very exciting name for a bookstore, but you add "-O-Rama" to it and suddenly it becomes Exciting Fantastic World of Books Resort Complex. Even something like "Spittle-O-Rama" doesn't sound wholly unappealing. #75

For the longest time, people have been saying you need to eat some foods from each of the "Four Food Groups" to stay healthy. You eat a little meat, a little dairy, a little wheat, and a few vegetables, and you're all set. Ha. Corndogs, cheese, cake, and french fries aren't going to get you anywhere. I ought to know. There's a very good reason this type of diet is not healthy. Those foods are all yellow. Don't get me wrong. I believe in the "food group" philosophy of dieting, but they mucked up the classification scheme. Foods should be sorted by color, not origin. The real four food groups are this: the "warm color" food group, the "cold color" food group, the "no color" food group, and the "alkaline earth" food group. I think if you eat foods from each of these food groups, you'll be as chipper as a chickadee. For warm color foods, try tomatoes, tangerines, or summer squash. For cold color foods, have broccoli, cabbage, or a plum. For no color foods, eat mashed potatoes, black olives, or drink milk. For alkaline earth foods, chow down on chicken, sirloin steak, or wheat bread. You can't go wrong. #76

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I think I'm going to open a shoe store. All shoes would cost an arm and a leg. Then I'd only have to sell one shoe at a time, thereby doubling my already enormous profit margins. #77

In elementary school, we used to have to cover our school books with ripped up paper bags, presumably because our teachers were under the misconception that paper bags would protect books from the rigors elementary school students put them through. It was a big waste of time. Paper bags are useful for storing things and carrying things around. School books are useful for learning worthless information nobody will ever use outside of school. I think it would be better to protect paper bags with ripped up school books. #78

The only reason I want to be a writer is so I can have an AGENT. Then I could to go parties and say things like, "Excuse me. I have to call my AGENT," and "I'm sorry. That was my AGENT." I would visit my neighbors for the express purpose of saying to them, "Oh, may I use your phone? I have to call my AGENT." What other reason is there for being a writer, actor, or athlete? In fact, I wouldn't ever write anything. I'd just tell an agent, "I'll periodically send you checks if you let me call you my AGENT." Actually, I think I'll become an agent. I'll represent only myself, and then I'll be able to submit to publishing houses who don't accept unagented manuscripts. #79

These days, many drug stores and department stores have something called "Power Assisted Doors." Why are power assisted doors harder to push open than, as far as I can tell, any other door in existence today? Isn't the point of power assistance to make it easier to do things? Are cars with power assisted steering harder to drive? Congress isn't the only professional body that needs a thorough cleansing. I think door manufacturers should be replaced, too. #80

I'm reading a book called Thesaurus, by Peter Mark Roget. I'm up to Chapter 427, entitled Semitransparency. It's a good story, but I think the author is a bit of a show off with his vocabulary. Back to the I Think main page.

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#81

"Permanent" is scary. I think teachers have that one down pat. Back in elementary school, the disciplinary threat was always "You better behave, or this will go on your permanent record." We were all terrified, because we never wanted anything to go on our permanent record. Now that I'm grown up, I realize it was all just a fraud. How can there be a document about me that everybody but I can see? I'm older now, but things haven't changed. They call it a "credit rating" now. They can't fool me. #82

I'm going to dig a big trench around my house and fill it with water and large predatory reptiles. I'll have a drawbridge, which I'll keep up by default, and cannons which will protrude from each window. I think this will significantly reduce the number of door to door salesman that come visiting. #83

Why is "real life" humor funny? There's no punchline. There's no building or releasing of comic tension. "Why do people in elevators always face the door?" Bwahahahahahahah!!! "Ever notice how adults bite the corner of a sandwich first, while kids bite the edge first?" Heeheeheeheehee! Stop it!! I can't take anymore!!! I think stand-up comedians are darn lucky, as they build their entire careers around what has to be a genetic mistake made with the human sense of humor somewhere along the line. #84

I went to a Chinese restaurant the other day. They had a "make your own dinner plate" special where you choose five items from a list, and that's what you get. They wouldn't let me have a double portion of golden batter dipped chicken fingers -- I had to pick five different things. What difference does it make to them? Stupid restaurant. I think I'm going to go to this restaurant a lot, try to order a double serving of chicken fingers, then gyp the waitress the tip when the request is refused. I know what you're thinking: "It isn't her fault." Of course it isn't. But this tactic will get the waiting crew mad. They'll complain. They'll demand the silly rule be eliminated. Then the next time I go in, I'll pass out all the tips from before, with interest. No harm done. I get my extra chicken fingers, and the restaurant staff will be trained to do my bidding. First chicken fingers. Then -- the world! #85

I don't understand sports cars. You pay extra money to get a car that gets bad gas mileage, attracts cops, rides so smoothly you think you're doing 30 when you're really doing 115, and has a bookshelf for a backseat.

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Maybe I'm just hopelessly practical, but I think there's an excellent untapped business opportunity here. I'm going to build and market the "sports bike." It'll have a cushy but non-body-forming seat that's so low it's between the wheels instead of above them. It'll have massive shock absorbers for a smooth ride. It'll have a huge pedal radius and an elaborate system of gears so you can go insanely fast. The chain guard will be comprised of sleek curves and tinted canary yellow. As a specialty feature, the kickstand will be too short to be functional, but -- and here's the good part -- it will be locked in the down position. If that isn't cool, I don't know what is. No stealing my trillion dollar idea, now. #86

I think my company should provide me with free breakfast, lunch, snacks, and drinks. Instead of a cubicle, I should have an office with a door and a window, a kitchenette, and a private bath (with jacuzzi). I should have a secretary or two and at least three general-purpose servants. If my company isn't spending more on me than the gross national product of most third world nations, I ought to go where I'll be more appreciated. I could work for some big shot oil company, I suppose, but I've got my sights set higher. I hear there's an opening for Bill Gates' brain. I'll be his brain, work for next to nothing for two years, then threaten to quit. He'll have no choice but to give me whatever I ask for -- how could he lose two years' worth of memories and experiences? He'd forget how to run his company in the current marketplace. I could ask for a 90% cut of his fortune. Then I'd retire anyway. #87

I think "Bursitis" would make a great name for a dog. #88

Soda cans are a big waste. You've got a whole hunk of metal, and its entire purpose in life is to keep one unit of soda from spilling everywhere. Once the soda's gone, the can's job is done forever. With modern technology, we can work around this inefficiency. I think we should have canless soda cans. There would be a force field around the soda to keep it in place. You pick it up, drink it through the hole in the force field, and the field contracts as there is less liquid to secure. When the soda is gone, the force field shrinks to nothing and disappears. Better yet, let's just have the factory teleport it directly into our mouths. You push a button on the wall for the soda of your choice, position your head just so, and bam, you're chugging down carbonation. Of course they'd have to make sure not to teleport it in too fast, or there would be a mess. And if they missed and got it in your nose, well that's just completely unacceptable. Soda in the nose is about as bad as life gets. #89

Every single time I read a poorly written piece of email, news posting, or other electronic communication, I want to go stomp on the writer's head. I don't care if he has a Ph.D. in physics, computer science, or economics, or if he has an IQ of 180. If people can't communicate without typos and misspellings and sentence fragments, they look like morons, and I feel I should treat them as such. I think that every computer should be equipped with a perfect grammar and style detector, and every time someone types something incomprehensible or stupid, then tries to share it in an electronic communications medium, a massive electric shock would be delivered. You'd get one chance to fix all mistakes, then zappo. I realize I'd probably get a few shocks myself, but it'd be worth it to be able to read email and newsgroups without stumbling over the inane musings of pathetic morons. #90

I find it mildly offensive that people find their personal idiosyncrasies such fascinating subjects to talk about.

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"I eat popcorn one piece at a time." "Oh really? I don't. I shove it in by the handful. The only thing I eat one piece at a time is Skittles." No. This is not an interesting conversation. I think this practice should be illegal. The courts could hire Shirley MacLaine to carry out sentences against violators. She'd talk about her personal idiosyncrasies. It wouldn't just be punishment. It'd be rehabilitation. Back to the I Think main page.

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#91

There is an advanced physics theory called the "String Theory" which states that there is an infinite number of spatial dimensions in the universe and that every unit of matter is right next to every other. If that's true, I think I will die, because I know some seriously disgusting people that I don't like to get within a mile of. #92

I think...no, I don't. #93

I think I'm going to register the domain jjijiijjijiijjjjiijiijiiiijjijijjijijjijjijiij.com. No one will ever be able to type it in without cutting and pasting the text. #94

At work, I currently maintain a candy basket. Co-workers stop by, plunk some change into a makeshift cup, and take some candy. I've been doing this for a while now, and I'm bored of it. When I run out next time, I think I'm going to stock it back up with celebrities. You want a Rosie O'Donnell? Fifty cents. Whoopi Goldberg would be seventy-five cents. Sixty cents for a Matthew McConaughey. Jack Nicholson? A thousand dollars. Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman would come in a two-pack. Val Kilmer would be free, but you'd have to stop by the loading dock to pick up his ego. #95

I think shirts should double as web browsers. Web pages get displayed on the shirt, and you touch the links to follow them. The pages would be displayed upside down on the front, so you could surf while wearing it, and another browser would be right side up on the back, so if you're standing in line, the guy behind you can surf, too. If everybody wore these things, you'd never get stuck with nothing to do. #96

Leather is bad. Sure, it feels a little different, but what good is a jacket you can't get wet? 100% cotton T-shirts are bad. You turn the dryer up too high just once, and it hugs you like your skin. I think we should stick with clothes we don't have to think about. #97

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I think chickens try to say "buckles" all the time, but they stutter. #98

I think credit cards are a great idea. I'm not sure how they work within the economy, but I like not having to pay money for anything anymore. The bartering system was used for thousands of years in the days of old; finally, we're rediscovering it today. I'm not sure why all these clerks would want to rent my card for a couple minutes, but if that's what they want in exchange for the stuff I want to buy, I'll gladly indulge them. I only wish the credit card companies would decide on what they'll charge me to have a card. Sometimes it seems like the bill is different every month. #99

Skipping rocks across lakes would rule if it didn't take eons to find actual flat, round rocks. Every time I go skipping, I find only one really good skipping rock, which I mess up throwing anyway. All the other rocks are these bulky looking weird rocks that might be flat on one little piece, but of course that's never the piece that hits the water when you throw it. I've got a multi-trillion dollar idea. I'm going to manufacture biodegradable skipping pellets. They'd be perfectly shaped -- flat, circular, heavy, and rounded on the edges. There'd be a little nook to aid in adding spin, and they'd dissolve into an environmentally safe nothing in water. I think that would take all the fun out of skipping rocks, but I'd make a ton of money, so it evens out in the end. #100

But why skip rocks? I think skipping helicopters would be more fun. Upside down. With the blades going. That's a good business idea, too. A skip and a shower, two bucks. Back to the I Think main page.

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#101

When did the breadbox become the standard base unit of measuring size? I think it should have been the ruler. Or the pelican. #102

Dog shows are ridiculous. Not the performance dog shows -- the ones where they groom the daylights out of the dogs and parade them around the ring. The idea of these shows is to groom your dog so it looks the least like a terrestrial being as it possibly can. The "ideal" spaniel, for instance, has nearly no hair on its back end and all hair on its front end, because apparently the judges' idea of the perfect spaniel is one that looks like it has an eight pound tumor growing out of its chest. Poodles, on the other hand, must be indistinguishable from balloon animals. I think I'm going to start a new kind of dog show. It will be the most prestigious dog show in the world, because I will charge the highest entrance fees. In it, I will rank dogs on how much they look like sporks. I'll do my best to keep a straight face, but then I'll laugh my way to the proverbial bank, which is what I suspect these dog show people are doing anyway. #103

Coffee tables serve two vital functions. They house magazines no one reads, and they trip you. Why do these units of furniture exist? I'm convinced no one actually likes them; I think people buy them just because they somehow became a mandatory living room component. Now if only I can get my wall mounted chair idea accepted into the standard furnishing convention, I'll be a zillionaire. #104

It's annoying for me to have to work the words "I Think" into every one of my rants. #105

If you were data travelling over a phone line, I think you'd see a lot of interesting sights along the way. Actually, you wouldn't, because you'd have that rubber insulation all around you. And you'd be moving way too fast to see anything. And you wouldn't have eyes. #106

Once I was at a red light behind one other car. All the while, this guy was inching out, more and more, into the intersection, as if going really slow through a red light is ok. Eventually the other cars had to swerve

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around him to get by, but he seemed oblivious. But wait, there's more. When the light finally turned green, he didn't budge an inch. I had to honk to get him to move. I don't have to tell you what I think of this. #107

I don't understand the appeal of stretched limousines. I think people have a misplaced respect for them. "Oooooo," people say when they see one. Come on. They're like buses, only shorter. And sure, they have open bars and lounges and casinos and hot tubs inside them, but what good are they if you can't so much as stand up? Renting limos is even more confusing. What kind of a statement does that make? "Hey, look what I can't afford to own!" #108

You know those photographic booths where passersby stick their heads through holes in the wall, and on the other side of the wall there's this funny drawing? I think I'd like to own a place like that, except when people stuck their heads in, I'd just punch them hard for no good reason. #109

People tell me they think I'm cynical, but I think they're wrong. I'm not cynical. Everyone else may have hidden agendas of nefarious natures that prey on the naivety of unsuspecting souls innocent to the ways of the world, but not me. Obviously there's a lot of prejudice against cynics in the workplace and in social circles, but I don't have to worry about that. #110

I will never say "Bridge" in an elevator. If I did, and the elevator doors opened to the bridge of the Enterprise, I think I would die, because that would mean I had spent my entire life on the holodeck and I could have blown this joint a lot sooner. Back to the I Think main page.

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#111

I think we should pronounce silent letters and not pronounce letters that aren't. h e e p i e f g w o e e m

g i a

#112

When a predator attacks a starfish, often what the starfish will do is purposefully detach one of its limbs and swim away, in the hopes that the predator will go after the severed limb instead of the rest of it. Why can't people do that? I think it would be awesome if we could. Like, this thug would be chasing you down a dark alley in New York City. Instead of getting beat up, you'd take your arm and fling it over somewhere. #113

The average duck diet must be the pretty sorry if they get all excited and competitive over soggy bread. I think it would be downright terrifying to see what they'd do over a fresh chocolate mousse. This leads me to my next billion dollar business idea: a restaurant for ducks. I could serve them barbequed pork ribs, shrimp hollandaise, chicken caesar salad, and all kinds of other scrumptious dishes, all at reasonable prices. There wouldn't be any competition; they'd be standing in lines miles long to make reservations. Every duck in the world times fifteen bucks a plate is...well, a whole lot of money. I hate non sequiturs. #114

Insurance companies must love those yellow tabby things they put down on newly paved roads to mark where the double yellow line will eventually be painted. Heck, I think the insurance companies are behind it all. Does anybody not try to swerve and run them over? #115

I don't know what to make of the crowds of teenagers and twentysomethings that stand around each other and boast about all the bad things they've done. "Huh huh, I saw this guy drop a twenty, and I took it." "Huh huh, well I drank fourteen cases of beer last night and threw up on the sofa." Next time I see a gang of these people doing that, I think I'll go up to them and say, "I killed four children this morning." If they don't run away, I will. #116

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I'm going to get a fishing boat and make my living digging up lobsters and crabs and stuff. The neat thing about that is a bunch of us fishermen could get together and agree to slack off, then return to our buyers and say, sorrowfully, that "the pickings are slim this year," and sell what little we caught for a ton of money. These people have got to be doing this already. The price fluctuations are so huge, restaurants have to put "daily" in the price column next to the clam chowder. Then one guy goes out and decides to spend the day catching actual seafood, and the price goes back down. It begs the question. How do butter prices stay reasonable? I would think butter would be the absolute hardest thing to catch in a net. #117

There's no support out there in this harsh world. You get a little money, and society expects you to go out and buy stuff on your own. I think we should instantiate self-help programs and support groups for new consumers, to help them adjust. You buy a music box -- the company that made it ought to include, as part of the charge, an invitation to a free reception, during which important music box tips would be discussed. Free refreshments, of course. "Hi, my name is Snook Draddots, and I'm a new music box owner." #118

The United States may have among the best health care in the world, but like everyone else, I think it stinks to the core, and we need to improve health care in this country or our fine nation will crumple up into a tiny paper ball and plummet into the big trash can of the universe. My problem is everybody's proposed solutions. Ridiculous! And so heavily laden with jargon as to be utterly inscrutable. I suppose if I'm the only one who has a clue, you'd better listen up. For starters, health care should not cost money. Secondly, doctors should start making house calls again, because, let's face it, if you really need to go to the hospital, chances are you can't drive there. Of course we have ambulances for those cases, but I think we should get those pizza delivery guys to handle the truly time-critical cases. #119

I think Chess is a sexist game. Some people think it's feminist, because the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, but that's just a superficial analysis. In the beginning, the queen starts on a square of her own color, while the king always starts on a square of opposite color. Why, because she's the one that would worry about clashing? Sexist, I say. Then the queen can go wherever she wants to, boss everyone else around -- but when the king dies, she's had it. #120

I think we can make up for the sexism in Chess. We can do it by buying my new feminist card game. It's a trick-taking game like Bridge or Whist in which the four queens are always legal to play and always beat every other card, including trumps. Kings and jacks can only take each other, and those tricks never matter anyway. Back to the I Think main page.

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#121

Throughout the technology revolution, mankind has consistently sought to improve life by reducing the number of tasks that require physical activity, then sought to counteract the inevitable weight gain by manufacturing food that only looks like food and barely tastes like it. Here's my advice: keep the technology going and to heck with the weight gain. I may drive to work, take the elevator to my floor, and sit in front of a computer all day, but I still have to do things like walk to the cafeteria at lunch. I make four daily trips from building to car and back again during a normal work day! Clearly, we are not as far advanced as we could be. I think all floors and walkways should be giant air hockey tables. A little push to get you started, and you slide to wherever you're going. The last remnant of necessary daily exercise would be eliminated. Anyone could transport heavy boxes. You'd have an excuse not to stop and talk to irritating acquaintances you meet in passing. You could go ice skating, or the equivalent, year round. Malls would benefit the most. The whole idea of malls is braindead anyway. "Let's put a roof over this cluster of stores and make people walk from one to another instead of drive!" Lennox outlets would probably want to install sturdy bumper rails before putting in air hockey floors. #122

I think whoever invented the cures for hiccups had the right idea. "Please help me with my hiccups," someone asked. And the guy made up all kinds of visually entertaining treatments. They didn't cure the hiccups, but they did the next best thing. "Drink water from the far side of a glass." You don't have to be that smart to figure out that advice was a practical joke. "Breathe in a paper bag." Actually that one probably works. You breathe in a bag, suffocate, and die. No more hiccups. Next time someone has the hiccups, I'm going to come up with a new miracle cure. "Put your thumbs in your cheek pockets and whistle." That ought to be good. #123

We've got telephones. We've got video conferencing. But what if we could transfer smells electronically? I think this is a silly supposition, and I'm not going to talk about it anymore. #124

Some things seem to be specifically engineered to be lost, like playing cards, jigsaw puzzle pieces, and car keys. Socks are so easily lost, it's a cliche to say so. As soon as I figure out what quality these items have that make them so elusive, I think I'm going to manufacture a set of products scientifically engineered to disappear when people take their eyes off them, then make my fortune selling replacement parts. Better yet, I'll sell self-losing pieces. You don't even have to be careless -- the component, whatever it is, will have a

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mechanism inside it that will send it to the fifth dimension or make it break up into its constituent molecules on the spot. Nobody'd find me out, because the evidence would get destroyed as part of the intended operation. #125

I have begun a personal protest of symmetry. You're welcome to join in and help out with the picketing and the rioting. Symmetry is evil, and I submit as evidence the haircuts of people who part their hair right down the middle. As a society, we have this misguided notion that symmetry is aesthetically pleasing, that what is on one side must be balanced on the other. Booooring! I think I'm going to start up a company that manufactures irregular polygons. #126

I think "One And A Half Stuff" is a great idea for a new cookie. #127

I think sleep is unfair. I don't object to a period of rest -- even a mandatory one -- during which our actions are limited. I can accept that we can breathe and roll over but not cook food, play poker, or go snowboarding. My problem is, what interesting stuff can you do while you're asleep? You can die. Oh, yay. Hold me back. #128

I want to be the only door to a small windowless room. Then people could swing me closed real hard, but the air pressure would keep me from slamming shut at the last second. I think that would be an awesome adrenaline rush. #129

How did we get along before version numbers started telling us precisely if something that looked like something else was actually the same or if there were small differences -- and if there were, which of the two was better? Everything should have version numbers. No more vague notices on food product packaging, saying, "New great taste!" Instead, food manufacturers would say, "Version 5.0!" The amount the version number was changed by would clearly indicate how much greater the taste is, and a brief revision history on the back would tell us how new it is. I think I'm going to label myself with a version number. Every time I change, I'll update it. For example, if I learn something revolutionary, surpass one of life's great milestones, or break my leg off, that would constitute a major update, and I would bump the version up to the next whole number. On the other hand, if I read a book on elementary aviation, developed a passion for stamp collecting, came down with a cold, or got fined by the IRS, that would be a minor update, and I would just bump the version number up to the next tenth. And if, for example, I ate a broccoli spear, learned a new digit of PI, or plucked a hair from my head, I'd probably wait until I made more such changes before releasing the new me. #130

Tongues are basically just big hunks of muscle without any restraint or covering. That rules so much. I wish all our muscles were unattached at one end. Oh, and: "I think." Back to the I Think main page.

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#131

As anyone who has been through them will tell you, hard times teach you a great deal that you can't learn anywhere else. Failed relationships, the loss of friends and family, near-death experiences -- these things are invaluable experiences that make us stronger individuals, teach us compassion, make us appreciate those things in life we take for granted, and help keep us from becoming preoccupied with things that ultimately don't matter. Why, then, must we travel through life blindly, hitting these ordeals more or less at random, in uncontrolled environments? I think they should teach this stuff in schools. The teachers would put you through emotional trauma, then quiz you on it when you've recovered. It would all be in the curriculum. "Welcome, class, to the eighth grade. This year we'll be studying nasty breakups and mourning. Could you please all pair off with a lab partner and begin a romantic interlude? Meanwhile, I'll go bump off all your mothers." #132

I'm sick of all these miracle cleaner spray can products that supposedly seek out all the dirt in your home of their own accord and, via loopholes in the physical laws of the universe, make it disappear. It never works, and small wonder: it's not scientific. I think somebody ought to manufacture and sell black holes on a stick. This would be a great cleaning tool, and there's nothing more scientific than a black hole. Rub it on that dirty spot -- it's gone! It would literately suck the dirt away! It would double as a wart remover. A larger version could be sold as an excavation tool or a toxic waste disposal unit. Hey, it's better than what we've got now, right? Of course, you'd need a ton of warning labels on the thing. "Caution: Do not hold the dark end." "Warning: Do not store in pocket." "Caution: Not intended for internal use." It would have to be shipped in a case shaped such that no part of the case comes too close to the end with the black hole on it. Neat feature: the stick would automatically vacuum pack itself every time you closed the lid. #133

I got a puppy. I'm crate training it. It spends lots of its time in a crate, lined with a big comfy blanket and filled with all kinds of toys to play with. What did this dog do to deserve such luxury? I want to get a big crate for me to live in. I'll fill it with blankets, pillows, books, toys, and stuff and just hang out in there all the time. Better yet, I think I'll boot the dog out of her crate and make her fix me my meals. #134

I think towels would look really scary if they were about fifty times bigger than they are. There would be all those poor little protrusions, rising up from their anchored feet like they're stretching to break free. Like that people garden Ursula had in The Little Mermaid.

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#135

Teeth are sharp. Sometimes I don't think we appreciate how sharp our teeth are. Wolves and stuff get all the recognition for having sharp teeth. But I think if we laid out human teeth pointed upward on a sidewalk, then, well, that would be really disgusting. #136

It's not fair that restaurants don't let you take advantage of All You Can Eat deals. The whole point of All You Can Eat is that you get to pay a flat rate for enormous quantities of food, enough to put you in extreme discomfort just because you can. Where does it say the "you" is singular, anyway? What if I want to celebrate and buy everybody in town an All We Can Eat meal? I think All You Can Eat To Go would be pretty cool. "No, I can eat more of this. . . . Nope, keep scooping it in. No, I'm pretty sure I can still eat more of that." #137

The battle against insects wages eternally. We buy vast quantities of toxic chemicals, slather them everywhere, and hope the ants, flies, mosquitoes, roaches, moths, and other insects that have invaded our privacy keel over and die. The trouble is, insects possess the mystical ability to mutate and develop immunities to these chemicals before they're all dead. So the world's top biochemists are paid millions of dollars to discover new, as yet unexploited toxic chemicals that insects can develop new immunities to. Hello? DUH! It doesn't take a genius to figure out we're losing! I think we need to take a wholly different approach. Instead of jumping right into bloodshed, let's try what people often do to get irritating neighbors to move out, or unproductive employees to leave their jobs. Bother them. Somebody manufacture these little tiny radios that don't turn off. You buy these by the bag, tune them all to heavy metal stations, crank the volume, and drop them down ant holes, stuff them under the refrigerator, hide them beneath the floorboards, and wedge them in the cracks in the basement. Wherever insects invade your home with theirs, force them to listen to loud music all day and all night long. Lacking the engineering skills to deconstruct the radios and turn them off, they'll have no choice but to go away or lose so much sleep they fall into a semi-conscious daze and wander carelessly out into the open, where the family dog will lick them up. #138

Speaking of bugs, I just smooshed one of those really tiny, small, nearly microscopic white bugs that don't seem to exist except when they're walking across the page of a book you're reading. They're almost impossible to detect -- you don't notice them by their color but by their movement. Where do these truly ridiculous bugs come from? How did they survive before they had book pages to walk across? I think they are actually human life forces encapsulated in little gunk particles. You smoosh one, and somewhere in the world, somebody dies. Somebody dies; somebody smooshed one. If we recognized this phenomenon, we could end all death in the world. So, whoever I just killed, I am truly sorry. My sincere condolences to your family. #139

Fast food restaurants are prejudiced discriminating favoritists. You get a kid's meal, you get a toy. You get a grown-up meal, you get nothing. What's with the double standard? Do kids make up such a predominant percentage of the world's food-eating population that they have to be catered to to the exclusion of me? I think I'll open a fast food joint that gives away CDs, desk supplies, firecrackers, and stuff with each regular meal deal and nothing with the kids' meals. Parents everywhere will flock to me, because they'll say, "Hey, a restaurant that won't give my kids things I will step on!"

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#140

I'm so mad. I was bored this morning, and I was absent-mindedly toying with a pair of scissors. I had the blades open, and I had my thumb between the blades, and I was kind of pushing into the center and oscillating the blades a bit. And I cut myself. I think desk supply manufacturers should be a little more safetyconscious and not make their products so sharp. People can get hurt. Back to the I Think main page.

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#141

I think job hunting is an evil forced self-debasement of character. The job search involves putting together a resume, which is basically an ultra-condensed version of your life. How presumptuous for a company to consider such a thing when all the glorious details, the joyful nuances of personality that really make you who you are, are omitted? People have such short attention spans these days. #142

I have a fault line in my basement. Fortunately it runs through about four feet above ground, so when there's a quake along the fault line, nothing cracks open or falls down. There's just a bit of a breeze. I think we could save thousands of lives if we started fault line elevating projects, but do you think we will? Nooooo! An operation like that would cost millions, and our comfy tush politicians would rather pocket the money. I hate that. #143

You know, some city streets in this country are not safe. It's hard to believe, but street safety is not evenly spread throughout this country. I mean, New York City has tons of cops. The "NYPD," which are blue, are famous across the country for keeping the streets safe. Los Angeles has a police department with a reputation, too: the ever-reliable "LAPD," which can always be counted on to show up in an emergency and calm angry rioters. But take, for example, Miami. Who's ever heard of the MPD or the MIPD or whatever Miami's police department would be called if they had one? Yes, I'm pretty sure they don't even have a police force down there, because I've never heard of it. I've never been to Miami, but I know for a fact that all there is down there are drug smugglers open firing on each other on street corners pretty much all the time. I think Miami would be a bad place to live. #144

I'm glad I live in the northern hemisphere. Otherwise I'd never know when it's ok to eat cod. In the northern hemisphere, you can go by some handy rule about only eating cod in months with 'r' in it. Or 'y' or 'e' or something. You can't catch and eat them in the other months, because they have worms in them then. That rule doesn't work in the southerm hemisphere, with the seasons reversed and everything, so how do they know? I bet Australians and Argentinians and Antarcticans are constantly trying to eat cod, cutting into it, and saying, "Darn! I never remember when we can eat this stuff!" If I were cod, I think I would periodically migrate from one hemisphere to the other and fool everyone. #145

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People are always down on office jobs, but I think it would be great to work in a Rubix Cubicle. You get to hang out in your own little cubicle, and except for it suddenly swiveling up on its side or even completely upside down, it would be comfortable, safe, and secure. Since the orientation of all the cubes would be constantly changing, annoying bosses and coworkers would have a hard time finding you. It becomes a game, you see, to move your cubicle around in such a way as to keep anyone with actual work away. But they're twisting their own cubicles around to try to get you, so it becomes a multiplayer game of strategy and fast reflexes. If they get to you, too bad, you have to do the work. But the reward for the best players is no work at all. As if that wouldn't be cool enough, you could have all kinds of subgames, like seeing who can get to a group meeting in the fastest time. With a set up like this, boredom at the workplace would be a thing of the past. #146

I think I'll open a restaurant that only serves food that is hard to eat. Then I'll spend the remainder of my days living in the apartment above it, looking through the one-way mirror that will serve as the restaurant's ceiling, and laughing at all the patrons. I'll serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but only with one slice of bread -- in the middle. And corn on the cob, but with two inches of the "cob" part scooped out of each end. And ice cream bars with no stick and no clean, chocolatey shell coating. And pizza with sauce and cheese on both sides of the crust. There won't be any silverware or napkins in the whole place. Also, the faucets in the bathrooms will spray water really hard in all directions. Some places have already beaten me to that idea. #147

The degradation of society is so fast and furious these days, small wonder there are so many people that don't know what a delicate word like "milquetoast" means. Is there anything more vulgar than the expression "sucking face"? I mean, is that all people see in the romantic art of kissing these days? "Passionately exchanging each other's very souls" is more like it. Why can't that be the common idiom? It's so much more refined and sensitive. I'd be like, "Hey baby, wanna go upstairs and passionately exchange each other's very souls?" And if I'm lucky, the reply would be, "Whoa, yeah! You give me yours first." And after eighteen years of marriage, she'd be like, "Hey, do you remember which one you've got? Is that your original soul, or is that mine?" And I'd be like, "I don't know. I think mine was the one with the scratch in the corner, but yours was the one with the bit of price tag glue still on it." And she'd be like, "Ok, just so we remember. When I die, I don't want to be stuck with the one that stuffed a half-chewed lemon doughnut down Johnny Wiederman's pants in the third grade." #148

Fantasy Quest, over on RinkWorks' Adventure Games Live feature (THIS IS NOT PRODUCT PLACEMENT, BECAUSE I AM SAYING SO VERY LOUDLY!), is my idea of a great game, because it portrays a utopian world. I think it's great how you can meet somebody there sitting in the middle of, say, a field, and then you can go way off all over the land four schmillion times, come back, and the guy's still sitting there in the middle of the field. Real life should be like this. I hate hunting people down when they're not where I can find them. The best part, though, is the general store. I want to run a store where I decide what people buy. "Hi," a customer would say to me, "here's ten bucks." And I'd say, "Ok, here's a vat of O-rings." And he'd say, "Darn! I was hoping for the electric lantern! Ok, here's another ten bucks." "Ok, here's four pounds of sausage meat." "Darn!" "By the way, we have a sale on banana nut muffins -- three for a dollar." "Wow, that sounds great! Here's a dollar!" "Ok, here's a roll of electrical tape." "Darn!" #149

I hate it when I'm driving down the road, smell burnt oil or rubber and wonder, all paranoid, if it's my car or

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somebody else's. I think tires and motor oil should have custom smells, so we can identify right off whether we should be concerned or not. You start smelling vanilla cream on the highway, you know you're ok, but once the cranberry hits, pull over. No more paranoia. Making these custom smells good smells provides an alternative benefit. Say you're driving by one of those eternally putrescent paper mills: instead of gagging and choking, just speed up to 120 and throw on the hand brake. #150

There are few more painful head injuries than trying to stand up underneath an open cupboard or freezer door. Things on hinges may give very nicely in horizontal directions, but slam them from underneath, and they are Pillars of Strength and Will Not Be Moved. Obviously this is a problem, and I think you know where I'm going with this. What a great opportunity to market cupboards and freezers with iron pegs sticking out of them! Or little glue packets that burst on contact! Or live electrical wiring! Then when someone really ticks you off, like, you know, using your lane on the highway, you can sneak into his house and ambush all the cupboard doors. After that, it's only a matter of time. Oh, and, also, I think cushioned door edges would be good too, for, you know, like, me. Back to the I Think main page.

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#151

I think kids need to be protected from exposure to violence and sex, or, years later, someone will have to make a movie about them in which Morgan Freeman tracks them down via a trail of grisly murder scenes. The younger they are, the more impressionable they are, so we'll start by banning natural childbirth and mandating cesarean sections for all. We'll curb the early start on child abuse by putting a halt to the barbaric practice of doctors spanking them right when they come out. Bottle feeding only! And put one of those cone collar things around their necks -- you know, like they put on dogs so they don't lick their stitches off after a surgical procedure -- so they can't see any parts of themselves that they shouldn't be allowed to see until they're eighteen. Instruments of violence at school should be banned. That's right, no more pencils, elastic bands, books, or rulers, and their arms and legs should be permanently encased in triple ply bubble wrap. Parents probably shouldn't live together or even see each other except when the kids are away; otherwise they might be tempted to sneak a kiss and not be careful enough about it. Video games? No way! Even Pac-Man glorifies cannibalism and aberrant spirituality by depicting the consumption of the undead. #152

If you ever need to get a good sense of how unoriginal the general public is, just drive around suburban neighborhoods on a December evening and look at all the Christmas light displays. One house has strings of white lights around bushes and trees, another has colored lights hanging down from the drainpipes, and still another has a gaudy house outline thing going on. Every year there's a rush to put more lights up. The logical end to it all, of course, is to light up your neighborhood enough so that when the sun goes down in the evening, you don't notice. But how unrefined! It's not how many lights you have but how you use them that counts. Because I am a creative idealist (and not because I am poor and can only afford a limited number of lights), my Christmas light displays will be designed to employ lights in new ways rather than brainlessly piling more and more onto the pine out front until it starts photosynthesizing at night. For example, I think it would be neat to loop strings of lights around the car, plug them into the cigarette lighter, and drive around town really fast. To give equal time to our compatriots that live underground, I'd bury a string of lights in the yard, leaving only just enough for the end to plug in. The lonely power lines in the street go sadly unadorned, year after year. The best justification for hosting a Christmas party, besides to creep up behind the guests and suddenly blow party whistles in their ears, would be to booby trap the house with 200 watt Christmas lights and flip them on at opportune moments. "Why, Mr. Host, I never knew you had such a beautiful painting." "Why yes, Mr. Guest, and if you look very closely in this corner down here, yes, lean a little closer, that's right, then you can see...A REALLY BRIGHT LIGHT!" "Oh, Mr. Host, heh heh, that's very interesting. Um. My eyes are watering a lot now. I can almost see. Would you mind, very much, if I used your restroom?" "Why no, Mr. Guest, it's the second door on the left." "Thank you, Mr. Host, let's see, ah here, it is...*click*...where's the toilet?...oh, right here...crazy Mr. Host, dunno what asylum he escaped from...oh well, it's just once a y--OH NO, SOMEONE IS SHINING A FLASHLIGHT THROUGH THE WINDOW!"

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#153

The Grinch had it all wrong. What's the point of stealing Christmas? Christmas is a cool holiday. Not only do most jobs give you the day off, or at least pay time and a half, you get stuff for no good reason. I think the Grinch should have stolen Groundhog Day, or Presidents' Day, or Valentine's Day. With these holidays out of the way, we would be forced to obtain replacement holidays -- and with any luck, the replacement holidays would be some of the newer models, which come with at least the "day off" feature. #154

There is no possible rational reason why every animal has to have its own weird word to express the idea of a "group." Herd of cattle. Flock of sheep. Colony of ants. Sleuth of bears. Exaltation of larks. I think, way back when the English language was being invented, the two guys that were supposed to invent words for groups of animals were really drunk. They wrote down all the words they had so far on pieces of paper, threw them into a hat, and named groups of animals by drawing them out. What shall we call a bunch of toads? Draw a piece of paper: "knot." A knot of toads. Great. Hounds? "Mute." A mute of hounds. Great. They picked two words for crows. A group of crows is either a "murder" of crows or a "storytelling" of crows. I'm not kidding. A bunch of boar is intuitively called a "singular" of boar. You know they were drunk. After a while they stopped using words. "What shall we use for geese?" one said, and the other made some drunken cackle complicated by a hiccup, and that's how "gaggle" became a word. "Nide," describing a group of pheasants, was undoubtedly born under similar circumstances. Ah, well. I don't have a problem with a couple of drunk guys making up words. But I think the language scholars that insist on the correct usage of these hat-drawn words should be slapped frequently and hard. #155

I think the best reason to invent time machines wouldn't be to go to other human civilizations, cheat at gambling, predict the future, or anything like that. No, the best use for time machines would be to knock out time one spends waiting for things. Say it's winter, and you want to go to the grocery store to buy fresh cold cuts. You start up your car and wait for it to warm up. You drive to the grocery store, waiting at 11 traffic lights on the way, because they are all red. You wait in line at the deli counter. You wait for the meat to be cut up. You wait in line at the register. You wait at the traffic lights again. The average human spends 87% of his life waiting for things, give or take a few dozen percentage points. Long waits are the worst. I have to wait sixty-eight years before I'm 95. #156

Our entire nation is addicted to caffeine. You've heard it before. "I can't function in the morning until I've had my nineteen cups of coffee." I think someday there's going to be a global coffee shortage and the entire nation will fall asleep. For a month. Then we'll wake up, and the Russians will have finally invaded. #157

We have entered an age of gadgetry. Consumer products are available now that only people who haven't been fighting enough wars or depressions or famines can mention with a straight face. We have motorized playing card shufflers. We have travel corkscrews. We have combination keychain jackknife flashlight entertainment centers. Even plastic coffee mugs now come "loaded" with features like the narrow bottom half, to fit into cup holders, and the cover with a tiny drinking hole and a tinier air hole, to keep the coffee hot. As if soda cans with easy open tabs weren't gadgety enough, now we have openers to open the easy open tabs. I think far too many people have been thinking like me.

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#158

A few years ago, New Zealand started making their paper money out of this plasticky stuff that is allegedly better than paper because it doesn't crease properly and will therefore, no matter how much you mash it into a wad, expand in your pocket and consume all available space. Excess pocket space was apparently a big problem down there, but here in America we have the more urgent matter of theft to contend with. I think we should start making our money out of cinder blocks. "Would you like that in small blocks or big blocks?" Nobody would try to steal cinder block money, and if they did they wouldn't be able to outrun the cops. You wouldn't lose money by inadvertently dropping it, because you'd hear the thud, and if dropping some cash damaged someone's property, you'd just leave it there to cover the costs. As an added bonus, we'd create jobs. Previously unemployed individuals could find work lugging money for the elderly and keep a percentage of it for their salary. Banks would save on armored trucks, too. The money could serve as its own armor. #159

Soft drinks and snacks now routinely come with a free contest. As if opening a candy bar to find a delicious stick of chocolate covered goo wasn't exciting enough, now we can open a candy bar and find a delicious stick of chocolate covered goo and the immortal words, "Sorry, you are not an instant winner." On the inside of soda bottle caps, we may discover a friendly invitation to "please try again." I think the secret code word contests are best. I bought a Sprite the other day that had some random letters and numbers on the cap. I don't know what it meant, because you had to send away for the contest rules (which would come with a free "game piece," which is, I suspect, a cap that says "please try again" on it), but it was exciting anyway. Alas, however, the other day I bought a Pepsi, and all I got was a drink. What a rip-off. #160

RMI stands for Remote Method Invocation, and it is a toolkit in the Java programming language to allow a program running on one computer to manipulate data on another computer, thereby providing the means to write client/server networked software systems. Well, software is all well and good, but I think we should install RMI on people. Then I could go down to the beach or the mall, blend in with the crowd, and start invoking methods on people and making them do funny things. Like, I'd run some guy's "raise right arm in the air" procedure, and he'd flail all around and wonder what was going on. Or I'd run some woman's "get down to rap music" method and see how much of an amused crowd she could draw. For people I hate, the "slap self in face very hard" procedure would be a good one to call, and of course the "throw your wallet in the general direction of me" would be useful, too. Back to the I Think main page.

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#161

The lure of evil is powerful for some, but I never saw the attraction. So many people seem to thrive on succumbing to evil, though, that finally I figured I'd try it out and see what I was missing. I turned evil for a whole week. I squeezed toothpaste tubes from the middle. I didn't pay my phone bill on time. I left shopping carts in the parking lot. I even took the battery out of my smoke alarm. I never did figure out what's so fun about being evil, but one good thing came from the experience. I discovered just how neat it is to squeeze toothpaste around inside the tube. I think I spent like three hours squeezing toothpaste from one end to the other and making funny shapes. #162

As pendulums, tides of opinion swing from one extreme to the other. It is the way of society. The key to being a productive member of society is to recognize when shifts in thinking are going to occur and knowing how to cash in on them. For example, once upon a time it was a vile, disgusting act to pick up a crumb of dropped food off the floor and eat it. But the tide of propriety ebbs and flows, and people are starting to think that perhaps wasting a bite of double chocolate fudge chip cookie is a more vile and disgusting act than eating it off the floor. So we have the "five second rule," which makes it all right to eat morsels off the floor as long as they haven't been there long. If you are sharp enough to think as I think, you are already saying to yourself, "Why, the pendulum of opinion is starting to swing from one extreme to the other on this issue!" Indeed. If we have made one concession about eating floor food, surely this will lead to another and then to another. Following this shift in mindset to its logical extreme, why, in just a few years we'll be eating food off the ground just to conserve clean dishes. That leads me to my new idea for a restaurant. Restaurants today waste so much money on food that never gets served to customers. Anything that falls on the floor in the kitchen is mopped away. My idea is to save all that stuff. Every so often, sweep spillage up and dump it in a bucket. The rich people can buy regular entrees at exorbitant prices, while more averagely pocketbooked consumers can order floor food by grade. Mixed floor food, guaranteed to have been in contact with the floor no longer than ten minutes, would be sold at like six dollars a pound. One hour floor food would go for five, and so on, until you get to the food scraped off assorted kitchen surfaces at the end of the day, which would be sold at an economy rate. #163

Idioms contribute to the degradation of society. I'm not talking about moral degradation, mind you. This is even more serious. I'm talking about the infusion of boredom into every fiber of human existence. We have reams of legal documents and news programs and not a solitary pratfall among them. News anchors could cover the day's headlines just as well in a penguin suit, and the Wall Street Journal would be just as informative in Comic Sans, but noooooooooo. Language idioms are the root of the entire problem. They train

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us to accept boredom. "I have a turtleneck sweater," someone says, and you say, "Oh," because you know that a turtleneck sweater is nothing more exciting than a regular old sweater that lacks sufficient neck room. Ditch the idiom, I say. Make a turtleneck sweater involve an actual turtle. Perhaps a turtleneck sweater should be a sweater with a live turtle sewn to the neckline. ("I had a turtleneck sweater once, but it died.") Or perhaps the sweater would be woven entirely from the neck skin of turtles. Or -- or -- perhaps a turtleneck sweater would empower you with the ability to retract your neck inside your body! How cool would that be? I can see the vital statistics on my driver's license now. Height: 5' 11" (with head extended). I think anybody wearing a giraffeneck sweater in a movie theater would be lynched. #164

I wrote a predictive analysis algorithm for analyzing acclaimed literature. I fed it the works of Faulkner, Hemingway, Hawthorne, Hardy, Salinger, and such like, then ran the algorithm. The algorithm analyzed the stories and writing styles and weighed that against each work's critical accolades. Using this information, it generated a story outline for what is scientifically calculated to be the One True Great American Novel. It's a tragic but bittersweet tale about this guy whose passions run contrary to the irrational demands of a mercilessly judgmental society, and so his individualism is suppressed and leads to his eventual destruction. Once at the top of the social hierarchy, now he is disgraced and ostracized. It tears him apart, and then a war finishes the job, rendering his entire life meaningless. The epilogue tells how his illegitimate children grow up to become jerks. I think the powerful disestablishmentarianist message will resonate profoundly, and the book will surely be the greatest anti-war piece of our time. #165

My thoughts are important to keep in mind, so I think an I Think thought-a-day calendar would be a great idea. But it would be a huge up front cost to get some calendar company to make me a customized calendar, and then I'd have to go through the toil of selling them to people individually, so I think it would be a colossally inefficient use of my time to make money this way. Instead, I have decided to provide instructions, free of charge, for how you can make your own I Think thought-a-day calendar. Then I can sue you for copyright infringement when you follow them. First, get 92 sheets of printer paper and cut them into quadrants with scissors. Throw three of the resulting 368 pieces of paper away, two if it's leap year. Write a different date and a different I Think thought on each page. There aren't 365 thoughts on this site yet, so when you run out, fill in the remainder of the pages with quotes stolen from other proprietary portions of RinkWorks. Then sort the pages in chronological order, stack them in a neat pile, and smear glue all over the top edge. Finally -- and this is the most important step -- send me mail with your full name, address, phone number, a Polaroid of your calendar, and a list of suitable court dates. #166

You know you're living in an age of wealth and excess when there is a huge market for things that aren't for anything. I have on my desk what is called a "paddle-wheel timer." It does not time anything, so far as I can tell, but it does have a wheel in it. It's one of these plastic desk toys that have assorted colored liquids in it that run up and down obstacle courses when you flip them upside down. I also want to get one of those hurricane-in-a-jar toys, where you take this jar filled with assorted non-mixable chemicals, shake it around, and observe, for the three quarters of a second that it lasts, what appears to be a tiny tornado. These toys are all fine, but I think we should be making life-sized versions of these toys, with actual people inside to put in peril. Giant machines would be required to flip or shake them, but think of the payoff! Run, bratty kid next door, before the twister sucks you up and dumps you into the paddle wheel, where viscous blue blobs of goo roll down the network of plastic ramps toward you! Whoa, there goes the boss, lifted up through that little funnel thing by a frenzied stream of air bubbles! Mwahahahaha! #167

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I think it is supremely unfair that my consumption of snacks and desserts is curbed by the capacity of my stomach. #168

Recently I went on a dinner/dance cruise to see what it was like. This is what it was like. A bunch of people ate dinner, got drunk, and pretended to dance, while two really bad, really obnoxious bands, one on either end of the ship, blared loudly. I like food but neither drink nor dance, so I spent most of the time at the railing, appreciating the night breezes. In the process, I discovered that if I positioned myself in the exact middle, where I could hear each band equally well, the unpleasant clash of conflicting tunes was less cacophonic than either band was separately. But I digress. What I want to know is why these people paid outrageous prices to get fed, get drunk, and get stupid, when it's easier and cheaper to do the same thing at a dance club. I'm pretty sure I was the only one to even look at the water or the night sky. No, I don't understand it, but as always I know how to take advantage of it. I think I'm going to start my own cruise liner business. But instead of running the same old dinner/dance cruises everybody else has, I'll build my reputation with innovation. I'll have a Tupperware Party Cruise, a Must See TV Night Cruise, and a Quilting Cruise. University students will get a discount on the biweekly Study Hour Cruise. Sunday mornings I'll run a Church Service cruise (bring your own pastor). Around April, I'll run a special annual Tax Return Cruise. Rather than hire janitors, I'll just run a Housework Cruise every morning. #169

The phone rang this morning, and the caller ID said it was me on the line. I answered it. "Hello?" me and I said at the same time. But there was no answer. #170

Chess is easily the most expensive board game of all time. Sure, you can buy a cheap plastic set for a couple of dollars, but there appears to be a huge market for high-end chess boards that cost thousands. I say "appears" because I've never actually seen anyone purchase these sets, but I see ads all the time. I need to join a Chess Piece Club or something, where you get five free chess pieces if you buy four more over the next two years. Every month, they send you two featured selections -- say, a knight and a pawn -- and you can either pony up the money and keep them or pony up the money to ship them back. Sign up now, get a rook absolutely free. To pay for all this, and get rich, I think I'm going to start up clubs for other sorts of games. Obviously these high-end chess piece manufacturers are missing out on obvious money making enterprises, and I will cash in on their obliviousness. Yes, it is time to introduce to the world hundred dollar Yahtzee dice. Back to the I Think main page.

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#171

Elsewhere on this site, there is an excellent game called Murkon's Refuge (its greatness has nothing to do with the fact that I wrote it) which illustrates by practical example my new idea of building cities inside monster-infested underground labyrinths. The idea came to me when I was spelunking in New Zealand about a year ago. As I was wading in hip-deep eel-infested waters and bonking my helmet into delicate geological formations, I thought, you know, this would be a great place to live. Building buildings inside caves is very economical, you know, because half the walls are already built. I figured, ok, if I build a house on the other side of that underground stream, where the rock walls sort of bow out a bit, I'd only need a small smattering of building materials, and I'd get a natural creature-laden moat for free. I've always wanted a moat to discourage salesmen, Jehovah's Witnesses, and electric meter readers, but I never dared hope for one, let alone one with actual slimy creatures living in it. The climate would be cool in the summer, and I wouldn't need to shovel in the winter. The sun wouldn't wake me up at the ungodly hour of 10am by shining through my window, and that incredibly irritating crow that likes to perch in my front yard and pretend it can sing would be out of my life once and for all. But I think the best part about living in a cave would be running around saying gollum, gollum and freaking the living daylights out of anybody that came by. #172

Not to plug Murkon's Refuge, which is a fully-featured free online game which you can play now by going to http://www.rinkworks.com/refuge/, but I think it's so nice that ravenous fire-breathing animals are so sporting about hunting you down. There's a strict code of honor, you know. Once one group of beasties has had its chance at you and lost, the next will wait patiently and give you a chance to loot the bodies and recover before attacking. I can just imagine being down there, surrounded by nightmarishly evil monsters, and you've just slain a humongous Dragon Giant of the Underworld, and while you're still physically fully functional, you're about one paper cut away from instant death, and all these Hobgoblins of Toxic Fire -- creatures that kill for pleasure, drink the blood of their victims out of skull goblets, and use kneecaps for frisbees -- are standing around being all noble and saying, "We wait until you are ready." So meanwhile you get to rest up, take some time to disarm a booby-trapped chest, bag the loot, swap some equipment around, hang out a while, shoot the breeze. The hobgoblins kill time with dice and cards and stuff. ("Spades are trumps, I believe, Oogk.") Then finally you're all ready for battle, and the hobgoblins nod politely back as they gather their assorted war hammers and battle axes. Then you RUN FOR IT, and the hobgoblins chase you about ten feet, say, "AW, NOT THE WALK-THROUGH-A-DOOR ESCAPE TRICK! Man, that gets us EVERY TIME!" and go home. #173

Speaking of Murkon's Refuge, what's up with that kindly adventurer that apparently patrols thickly infested

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monster nests just to find dead bodies to drag back to town? He must be the most powerful warrior in the universe -- either that, or he pays off the monsters for safe passage. I figure he's employed by the clinic for the purpose of finding patrons for their services. I think we should have people like that that work for hospitals. I'd love to have that job -- patrol around looking for people with injuries. The competition would be great. Somebody collapses in the street, and five patient scouts race for the body. ("Back off, I called dibs first!") Maybe they'd get commissions from what bills the patients rack up. Not only would this system create new jobs, but it would make things cheaper for patients, as they'd get free ambulance rides. #174

Technology has just got to come up with a replacement for employment. Time is money. Imagine the cost-benefit to securing an additional eight hours per weekday plus commuting time? The way to do this, I think, is to figure out how to install oneself on a computer. Yes, that's "apt-get install myself" for you Debian Linux types. Then your installed self works at the company, and you go home with a big fat check for services rendered. #175

Recently I ordered breakfast from a hotel restaurant. I ordered eggs and toast. I got eggs, toast, and a leaf. Garnishes are among the most absurd paradoxes of the universe. Is there anything so bereft of purpose as food you can't eat? It's crazy that we even have a word for it. Next time I get an inedible green thing on my dinner plate, I shall politely inform the waiter that the cook forgot to husk my meal. Here's another silly garnish: a paper-thin slice of orange, split along a radius, and twisted all around so it rests on the plate like it came out of some vegetarian's torture chamber. I got one of these once. I ate it to put it out of its misery, but I could barely taste it. For the amount of money that restaurant spent to have a chef slice that orange so thin and arrange it so meticulously, I could have had a whole orange. I think I'm going to open a restaurant that sells only garnishes. Nobody would go there, but I could show it as a performance art exhibit and get lots of critics praising me with big words on how aptly I expose and satirize how much value our superficial society places on hollow appearances. #176

I think it would be really cool if people molted. Imagine the practical jokes that would abound! You molt off a layer of skin, then prop it up somewhere and fake people out. You could stuff your own head and mount it on the wall and tell hunting stories. ("I remember when I shot me that me. It was back in aught two; I waited out in the chilly morning for three hours, but when I had me in my sights, I knew I was a goner.") The best part would be if you could steal someone else's skin, wear that, rob a bank, and nail the other guy for it. #177

I think a lot of things, especially right now. I have just consumed a hearty meal of Chinese food with enough monosodium glutamate to sedate an elephant. To compensate, I've been having Mountain Dew and coffee and chocolate. I am, therefore, wide asleep and fast awake. I have a cured headache. My extremities are filled with obdormition and the jitters. I have, in fact, after long hours of soul-searching and ingestion, stumbled into the perfect state of hyper-conscious catatonia. Time for a glass of nutmeg. #178

A lot of streets are named after trees, a common one being "Elm Street," in spite of the fact that most Elm Streets don't have elms on them anymore. That's fine, but why trees? People are more important than trees. I think it would rule to live on Girl Scout Street or Heroin Addict Street or Homeless Person On the Street Street. Knowing my luck, I'd wind up on Flight Attendant Street Formerly Known as Stewardess Street,

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requiring me to purchase ultra-wide envelopes. #179

Sometimes amazing coincidences don't happen. I was over in the administrative offices of my company earlier this afternoon, and I bumped into somebody that wasn't my old study partner in Introduction to Psychology eleven years ago. #180

People say it's healthy to drink water, and I think they're right, because I've never once suffered a heart attack or epileptic seizure while drinking water. I have a water bottle at work, and I sip from it throughout the day. I never guess right how much I'll wind up drinking, so either I have to refill in the middle of the day (an unfortunate expenditure of exercise), or I have water left over at the end of the day. I hate to waste water like it falls out of the sky or something, but the thing is, water gets contaminated if you leave it in a sealed container overnight. Ever notice that? Screw the cap on the bottle tight -- makes no difference. If it's not refrigerated, that water is tainted forever after. Old water is, like, rotten or something. Leave it out, it goes bad. I drink it anyway. Back to the I Think main page.

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#181

I think back to the December 31, 1999, and laugh at all the fools. People spent a lot of money to fly to New Zealand or Australia or something to be among the first to party in the new year. Big deal. So you party a few hours earlier. I went to the north pole, where all the time zones meet. I got to party twenty four times. So much for all the smarty pants folk in Australia, who weren't eaten by polar bears. I am so hardcore. #182

When it comes to showing appreciation, I think we are a sick, masochistic society. What is clapping but hitting yourself? #183

U.S. state quarters are great. Collect all 50! But I wonder what they're going to do in 2008, when the run of state quarters has completed. What will quarters look like then? Will they go back to the eagle, or will they adopt some new design? I've got a great idea about that. The government should hold a reality series, where quarters get voted off each week, and the winner gets a million dollars (In quarters? Or would a coin harem be too risque unless Utah wins?) plus the privilege of being minted exclusively in 2009 and thereafter. The quarters could be rendered with computer animation and have computer animated squabbles over which quarter respects which other quarter and which quarter has a chip on its shoulder and which quarters don't do its share of the work. Each week, the quarters would have challenges like eating nasty food and navigating perilous vending machines in the shortest amounts of time, the winners receiving highly coveted visits from their beloved nickels and dimes. Quarters would have to form alliances to make it to the end. Who wouldn't be game for a more friendly rematch between the North and South? I tell you, this show is a sure-fire hit, and it would make history as the world's first government-sponsored computer animated reality series starring monetary currency. I think. With all the whacked reality series that come out every other day, it's hard to keep track. #184

I'm down with pirates. I think pirates have it figured out. There's nothing more exciting in life than gangplanks and treasure. But the thing about pirates that most people forget about is that pirates are more consistently like cyborgs than any other romanticized historical people. Being like a cyborg is cool. You got the hooks for hands. You've got the peg legs. There's only one little step left, and that's to replace the hooks and pegs into things like artificially intelligent weed whackers. Ok, so technology was more primitive back in the heyday of pirates, but I have a suggestion for all you pirates out there stuck in the 17th century: replace that eyepatch with a usable part. Obviously your peg-leg is useful. How about a peg-eye? Just wedge a pole in there, and

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you can smack people around just by nodding. Hollow it out and make a telescope. Headbang and play the drums, while leaving your arms free for other things, like beating up the second mate. Headbutting other people is that much more lethal. Or, hey, replace your eye with a hook instead. Then you can hang from the rigging and leave both hands free to tie knots and knife off invaders. Best eye replacement yet: install a small keg in that eye socket with a bamboo shoot in the bottom you can suck on. Then you've got a mobile dispensation unit for rum for when you're too busy keelhauling prisoners to hang out in the kitchens. #185

I've got a new idea for when I open my restaurant. It would be awesome to have a restaurant with secret areas and cheat codes. Like, if you order the twelfth item on the menu, and you're the twelfth customer of the day, and it's twelve o'clock, your meal is free! Or, if you order a "cheese and ham" sandwich, instead of a "ham and cheese" sandwich, you get a secret bonus rutabaga. Of course, the moment the restaurant opened, some hardcore lamer loser would somehow have miraculously already figured out all the cheat codes and posted them on his Internet fan site, so the rule could be that every time someone finds a secret, it becomes invalid, and a new secret replaces it. This keeps customers on their toes. I think I'd probably get a lot of people coming in saying things like, "I'll have a hamburger sub with cheese..." and look expectantly at the waitress and perhaps add thoughtfully, "...and I don't need napkins." And the waitress would go, "Aw, so close." And then the guy would come in the next day and order a hamburger sub with cheese and "salt on the side" -- three times -- and, yay, he gets extra meal tax! #186

Have you ever watched frogs get around? Even the tiniest little frog can just up and blip itself like twenty body lengths ahead, faster than the eye can see. With all the thinking I've been thinking about how we need to speed up personal transportation with flying cars or frictionless walkways, maybe the true answer is already inherent in nature. We need big honkin' legs. I think it would be great: imagine peering down the road at someone coming your way, and you're thinking, gosh, that person looks vaguely familiar, but I can't quite make out wh--WHOOSH!, suddenly, the target of your inspection has made a flying leap to right in front of you and is recalling those boisterous times you shared together in study hall once upon a time. Instant gratification is what I'm talking about. You wonder what's over somewhere, so you up and blip yourself over to see. Takes no time at all. Plus, you can scare the living daylights out of old ladies, and that's a bonus that pretty much makes anything worthwhile. #187

Skin flakes off. It is a well-known fact that dust is made up primarily of particules of human skin. I assume this is for cross-pollenation. You know, like with flowers? Wind blows bits of a flower into the air, and they hit another flower, and presto, a fruit starts growing off the side of it, and then it falls off and starts growing into a new flower -- hence why I think gas masks are a good idea for preventing unwanted pregnancies. Otherwise you might breathe in someone else's skin, and a baby would grow off a bit of you until it was old enough to fall off and walk around on its own. #188

Poker is great. I love how you can say, "I had pocket rockets, flopped a set, and got the case on the river," instead of, you know, "I had four aces." #189

I think everyone in the world is really, really good at exactly one thing. I'd hate to be the guy who's really, really good at self-evaluation.

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#190

People actually eat sunflower seeds, much to my puzzlement, but I think I've finally figured out a good reason why one might. Let's say you want to go camping in the wilderness and survive off the land. Well, let's face it. You try that, and you're gonna die. Man has long forgotten how to live off the land. But if you eat some sunflower seeds and a trowelful of soil before you go, the sunflower seeds, which will sprout and grow just about anywhere, will grow up your esophagus and out of your mouth, and then you can pick off the seeds and eat those, too. It's a never-ending supply of food, and all you really have to do for it, other than the initial investment of eating dirt, is spending a few hours each day with your mouth open and upward to let the sunlight in. Back to the I Think main page.

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#191

I'm pretty good at hide-and-seek, partly because I'm pretty good at coming up with creative ways to hide things. There are all sorts of ways to hide things. The best ways are hiding things in plain sight. Say you've got, I dunno, a piano, and you want to hide it from your crazy uncle, who figures he can play, but he can't, and it hurts to listen to him try. Well, before he comes over, take the hinges off the piano cover and lean that up against the garage wall with the miscellaneous boards of plywood all garages have. Pluck out all the black keys, and hang them from wind chimes. Take the white keys and caulk them into the veranda floor, so it looks like some kind of mosaic tiling. If you've got any leftover white keys, you can just cover them with ink and extend the wind chimes some more. Take the piano legs and pound one each into the ground next to young trees in the yard, then tie the strings around them, so it looks like you've just transplanted these nice young saplings and are keeping them upright until they're more firmly rooted. All the little hammers and dampers and stuff can be sorted by size and laid out on your workbench next to the size-sorted screwdrivers, drill bits, and wrench heads, like they belong there, and nobody will give them a second glance. At this point, all you should be left with is a pile of miscellaneous boards and blocking. Go out in the garden and bury it. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but at least you won't have to listen to Uncle George playing "Chopsticks" again. #192

Scholars of computer technology understand that monitors have something called a refresh rate, measured in Hertz, that indicates how bad of a headache you'll get. At 65 Hz, migraines will occur within an hour of using the monitor. At 70 Hz, it takes four hours. At 75 Hz, a day. The lower the refresh rate, the more flicker there is, because the pixels aren't being re-illuminated enough times per second. I think companies waste a lot of money trying to produce faster refreshing monitors at an affordable cost. My monitorary preference (200 Hz) can be achieved inexpensively with existing technology: first, get two 100 Hz monitors and two wall projection devices. Hook both monitors up to the same video card and project both displays onto the same area of the wall. Presto! 200 Hz! Plus, you can make your display 3D by adjusting the tint on one to red, the other to blue, and offsetting the projectors just a little bit. #193

I think -- no, I am sure -- that I have uncovered the hoax of the gumball machine. Anybody who has ever bought a gumball from a machine understands well this phenomenon: the machine is piled to the brim with red, blue, green, and purple gumballs. The pretty colors attract your attention, so you part with a quarter, and the machine rattles around, and out pops...white. Gumball machines only ever dispense white and yellow gumballs, scientifically the least flavorful of all colors. Clearly the gumball machine has, inside the outer container and hidden by the outer layer of primary color colored gumballs, an inner container with only white

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and yellow gumballs in it. The colorful gumballs stay where they are, which explains why the machines always appear to be full. When you plug a quarter into the thing, your purchase is dispensed from the inner container. It's just as well. The colored gumballs have been there since the sixties and probably don't taste very good anymore. #194

It's the age of computers, and all the LANs and WANs out there ensure that every electronic device can be simultaneously connected to every other electronic device. We've all got our own copies of the Library of Congress in our pockets. Therein lies the rub. Who wants to carry around gadgets in our pockets? Pockets are where we keep our car keys, and look how often we lose those. I suppose you think I think I've got a solution for this problem. Well of course. The solution is to turn into cyborgs. Instead of a gadget on a LAN connected to a WAN, you just turn your body into a PAN -- Personal Area Network. Embed a CPU in your brain, and use the preexisting biological transmission lines known as the central nervous system to transmit information between that and all the various device nodes implanted in other parts of your body. Instead of carrying around a cell phone, embed some buttons, a microphone, and a screen display right into your upper arm. Simply raise your arm, and you can talk into it. (This would make proper deodorant selection extra important.) Speak into the microphone, and the sound is transmitted up to the CPU in the brain, which routes it to the antennae grafted onto the tops of your ears. Record the conversation automatically simply by activating your MP3 player/recorder, installed behind your earlobes, where it can play music directly into your auditory canals. Instead of navel-gazing when you're bored, gaze instead on an upside-down LCD belly screen, which is constantly projecting audio-video materials captured by your BodyTivo. An internal pedometer wired directly to your legs transmits information to be projected on a supplementary visual display superimposed directly over your normal field of vision, which also displays a running net total of calories eaten and calories burned. Blood viscosity reports, artery throughput, and appendix cohesion monitors ensure health risks are detected early. Better keep up to date with the latest virus protection software, though, or imagine the havoc a hacker could wreak. #195

Continuing on the thought of a PAN (Personal Area Network), how would a reliable biological information transmission network implanted into your body work? I suggested overloading the central nervous system, which already exists in the body and is capable of transmitting small electrical signals from one part of the body to another, but I wonder if this is actually wise. Let's say you are using your laptop. Your laptop, of course, is not a separate, standalone item but a device consisting of two separate components, one surgically embedded into each of your thighs. Jacks on the inside of your legs are positioned so they plug into each other when you put your legs together. Voila, an ergonomic split keyboard and a dual-panel display are at your disposal. Anyway, what happens when you are using your laptop, and you want to download a song to your iBody? The download request is transmitted via small electric pulses through the central nervous system up to your brain, which forwards the signals to the antennae fused into your ears, which connect to the Internet via satellites. That's great and all, but that still leaves the matter of the brain interpreting the central nervous system signals as normal sensory inputs. Sure, you can surf the web on your lap, but what if downloading the home page of your favorite web site just happens to send electrical signals through the central nervous system that closely resemble those that are transmitted by your body's natural sense of touch when it is immersed into a vat of scorpions and slime? What if you are talking with your best friend on the cell phone implanted in your arm, and he or she has a voice with the kind of overtones that cause you to smell a mug of hot chocolate that has been left out on the counter for three years? What if emailing your cousin some pictures from last year's DisneyWorld vacation feels like someone lit your lumbar region on fire? No, I think it is best to leave the central nervous system alone after all. Instead, perhaps some kind of surface area network can be installed that would make skin the physical medium for the transfer of information. Ok, so you get a paper cut, and suddenly you're dialing 911 by accident. Better toss that idea, too.

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#196

I just developed the most optimal data compression algorithm in existence. It can compress any amount of data down to a single 0 or 1. But it turns out this is somewhat lossy. One time I compressed my web site with it, and it became a 1. Then I uncompressed it, and I got the entire CIA intelligence database. Turns out, that compressed down to a 1 also. I was really mad. I lost lots of work and had to restore my site from an old backup. On the upside, I think I now know where my ex-neighbor is hiding from me. #197

Human greeting rituals aren't quite weird enough. I think when two people meet on the street, it should go more like this: one guy initiates the greeting by making a reflexively circular inquiry. Because the question has no sensible answer, this extends the courtesy of allowing the other person to answer anything without being wrong. Then one of the people flings a fleshy bit of bio-matter at the other, and the other guy grapples at it with his own, and in this manner the two people demonstrate that they aren't grossed out by each other. Doesn't that sound like a polite and succinct way for people to introduce themselves to each other? Oh wait, I just described saying "How do you do?" and shaking hands. #198

They say that carbonation drains the calcium from your body, so you shouldn't drink a lot of soda. Why not just put calcium in soda to replenish what the carbonation drains? All you have to do is make the soda with unfiltered ground water from the right place, and there will be enough natural calcium in there to form calcite deposits on the inside of your esophagus. If the FDA doesn't like that, ok, keep using clean water, but do what they do with paint cans: but rather than throwing a metal ball in there, throw a white rock in instead. It will dissolve as it sits on the shelf. Still too unnatural? I think you're right. Let's pass up those ideas and see if carbonated milk will catch on. #199

A dictionary entry for the word "porpentine" reads: "n. Porcupine. [Obs.] --Shak." I don't want to make any rash generalizations here, but I think it's safe to say you've made it as a writer when dictionaries hundreds of years after your death credit you because you once used a word and do so by only including part of your last name. #200

I would like to take a moment to respond to this guy "Michael" who made fun of me. Listen up, bucko boy, I am way better than you! My betterness is so stultifyingly dazzling it lights up the sky, whereas you are a gasbagical buffoon. You're just jealous because I have so many great thoughts and you have, like, none. Why, even now, as I upbraid you for your silly little tantrum, I am expounding on my two hundredth thought. How many thoughts have you had, dingwit? What's that, you say? So little, you can't keep count? Yeah, I thought so. That's why I have the "I Think" column, and you have the nothing at all column. But I could just imagine what a column about your thoughts would be like. There would be so few, they'd have to be numbered with negative numbers, probably. Thought number -4: "Duh, uh, uh, uh, I think...toast." Ooooh, that's a good one! People will be enlightened for generations to come over the wisdom of this thought! And let's not forget my favorite, thought number -7: "Duh, uh, uh, uh, I think...dork." Oh, however will I adequately shield my eyes from the brilliant light of number -7!? I should just quit thinking now! The competition is just too great! I'm gonna have to take a severe helping of How Would You Like Me To Shut Your Big Fat Mouth For You? just to cope! Oh wait! I forgot I don't live in the Land of Let's Pretend You're Not a Dundergoob! Ha! Boy do I feel foolish now! For a moment there, I was almost convinced you weren't

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a total stupid bag! Whoa! Oh wait! Actually, I wasn't nearly almost convinced at all! Because you stinko, finko!! BURN!!!! Back to the I Think main page.

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#201

So the evil villain Murkon is back in this game called Murkon's Vengeance. It turns out, he wasn't dead after all. Imagine that -- a supervillain that doesn't die when he's killed. What are the odds, eh? Anyway, Murkon comes back to life, and he fights all the good guys that killed him the first time. Sometimes he finds a locked door and has to go find the key for it before progressing. Ok, now, let's say you're a hero adventurer, and you're afraid Murkon is going to do just what he does -- come back to life and slaughter everybody. Well I think you and I need to have a little talk about common sense safety. First, don't post the absolute wimpiest, weakest, lamest person in the whole history of civilization to guard the grave. Seriously, nobody this feeble exists anywhere else in the world. You can't make a character that wussy, but he's going to be the first line of defense against a supervillain that can come back from the dead. Right. Secondly, try hiding the keys to all the locked doors on the other side of them. You want to lock somebody in a dungeon somewhere, dummy, you keep the key on your side. Finally, sweep the area clean of all those strength potions and monster portals and empowerment pools and all that other stuff. It's bad enough to hand the guy keys to escape without also providing him with the ability to become the most powerful creature in the universe. #202

There's a disturbing trend in America today, yes, I say disturbing trend in America today. It is called, "I have to work to get money to afford food." Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not a commie or a hippie or any of those other -ie things where everybody gets to lie around and get food given to them. We can't all do that -obviously if food is to be given out, somebody's got to kill the food and prepare it. No, I am merely suggesting that this person not be me. Hey, if it weren't for other people failing to implement all the million dollar ideas I think up, I'd be bathing in royalties already. It's not right that I should remain poor over the failures of others, but if that is to be how it is, the least you bozos could do is wait on me hand and foot all the time. #203

People wonder why there are so many weird side effects to pregnancy. It's probably because pregnancy itself is weird. Tell me that if you merged your biological matter with another person, it wouldn't do weird things. When a pregnant woman gets really tired in the middle of the day, I think it's because the baby wants to go to sleep, and he's tired of being jostled around while Mom's walking around everywhere, so he sends tired vibes through the umbilical cord. If a pregnant woman gets unnaturally short of breath, hey, she's not the only one needing that air. The baby's probably doing calculus problems on the womb wall and needs the extra oxygen to fuel all that mental activity. If the way pregnant women get short of breath is any indication, babies must do a lot of advanced mathematical research, but since their memories aren't developed yet, they don't remember it, and in the process of giving birth, well, they have to leave their notes behind. But mark my words. The wisdom of the ages is right there on the inside of used wombs. We just never think to look.

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#204

One time I listened to non-potable music and got an ear infection. #205

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, the biggest, meanest, maddest competition you've seen yet! One will win. The rest will...EAT DIRT. Yes, I'm talking about what should be the geek's version of the Monster Truck arena, namely, the Monster PDA Battle Royale! Tickets are on sale now for 12 straight hours of mad digital mayhem. Wireless network transmissions will be flying everywhere! Processors getting stabbed by styluseses! People touching the LCD screens too firmly! One will win. The rest will...EAT BANDWIDTH. . . . . . . . . . Ok, so I don't really think that's a good idea, but I think we do need some kind of alternative to Monster Truck derbies, you know, for intelligent people. (Ha ha, BURN!) Maybe we could have Monster Science Fair Demolition contests, where high school kids go around setting other people's chemical displays on fire. A Monster Chess Tournament might be fun, too -- this 50 foot mechanized knight could come out and get all Godzilla on the rooks. And surely nothing could prepare you for...the Monster Mensa Math Festival Smackdown! You've never seen such massive homeomorphic isometries, crushing polytopes everywhere with their lethal surjections. #206

I like how French people all wear smocks and carry palettes around everywhere. I went to France once. I forgot my smock, so everybody stared at me. I went to a deli in Paris, and the guy behind the counter had a palette with condiments on it. I asked for ketchup and mayonnaise, and he said, "Stupid American!" But he obliged, taking a knife and cutting away some of the red stuff and some of the white stuff, mixing it up a little, and painting it on my hot dog. He was a pointillist, so it took a while. #207

I think it's a chilling reminder of my mortality, that I am never more than a few hours from that grisly implosion of a death known as starvation. No matter how much I eat, before long the cravings resurface, and the withdrawal symptoms ravage my innards. "I am Snook Draddots," I would say, were my name actually Snook Draddots, "and I am a food addict." It's a sad story, but it's true. I was a food baby, in fact. My mother was using when she was pregnant with me. I've been on food ever since. It's wrecked my life. For my first fifteen years, I experienced rapid weight gain, and the digestive symptoms that persist to this day are too unpleasant to discuss. I've been unable to quit. The patch -- where you duct tape some potato salad to your arm every morning -- doesn't help at all. One time I had a 16 hour flight across the Pacific, during which time I ate nothing that could be remotely described as food, but I fell off the wagon shortly after landing. But enough is enough. I've come to an epiphany about just how much I've let food run my life for me, and it's time for that to stop. No more food for me. I'm quitting food cold turkey. #208

Computers have feelings, too. You get to know computer moods if you spend enough time with them. My laptop is getting on in years. It has a hard time getting started in the morning. Sometimes it's sluggish, as if it just can't think of a reason to keep on going. But I think what computers need is just what we all need: some encouragement, a little kindness, and good friends. So I bought it a friend. I bought another laptop of roughly the same power and capacity (don't want to nurture an inferiority complex), and I hooked them up to an ethernet hub, so they can hang out together. When they're not on the job, they chat with each other to pass the time. One time I overheard some of their conversation -- accidentally, I assure you -- and it was pretty boring. Mostly it was just, "Are you there?" -- "Yup." -- "Are you still there?" -- "Yup." -- "Are you still

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there?" -- "Yup." "Are you still there?" -- "Yup." -- "Are you still there?" -- "Yup." "Are you still there?" -"Yup." -- "Are you still there?" -- "Yup." "Are you still there?" -- "Yup." -- "Are you still there?" -- "Yup." But it keeps them happy. #209

I tried my hand at Southern cuisine last night. For breakfast, I made chicken fried ham with a side of grits, deep fried biscuits and gravy with a side of grits, and deep fried cornbread with a side of grits. For lunch, chicken fried steak with a side of grits, fried green tomatoes with a side of grits, and for dessert, fried apples with a side of grits. For supper, I had chicken fried chicken with a side of grits, deep fried hominy with a side of grits, chicken fried grits with a side of grits, and deep fried shoofly pie with a side of grits. Tonight, I'm going to try southern pizza. I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be chicken fried or deep fried. I think I'll deep fry the toppings individually, then chicken fry the whole thing afterward. Should the whole pizza come with a side of grits, or does each individual slice need to come with its own side of grits? #210

I think somebody should figure out a way for cookies to have cookies. Then you could just buy a breeding pair and put them in their own cupboard. Back to the I Think main page.

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#211

Some states in the United States hold what's known as "open primaries." This means that you don't have to be a member of a political party to go into its primary and screw it up. We should do this in the corporate world. Wouldn't it be cool to have open stockholder meetings? So what if you don't hold any stock? Why should that stop you from attending meetings and voting on things? Besides, it would create jobs. To stay competitive, companies would have to hire a whole slate of Stockholder Meeting Attendees (SMAs for short!) to go to their competitors' meetings and do crazy stuff, like electing weirdos to the board and approving obscene corporate logos. I think the really good professional SMAs could make big money. #212

I was thinking about speed dating the other day. You know how that works, right? You show up somewhere and go on five-minute dates with a bunch of people. By the time you've introduced yourself and said, "I think we should see other people," you are. We should expand this concept to other rituals in life. Speed Food, definitely. Instead of sitting down and eating one meal, you have a whole line of meals, and you get 10 seconds at each one. Oh, hey -- how about Speed Employment? Why do only one job when you can spent 15 minutes a day on 24 jobs? Speed Sleeping would be cool, too. You get an alarm clock that goes off every 15 minutes, and then you have to move to a different household surface. Then there's Speed Web Surfing, but that's probably the same as the regular kind. Back to the I Think main page.

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#31

I think, if I were to become a cyborg, I'd want all the fingers on my right hand to be different sized Dremel tools. And I'd have a little compartment in my wrist for all the attachments. #32

Paychecks are more fun when you're paid by the hour, because each paycheck is a different amount. It's exciting to open up the envelope and see what amount you get each week. If you're on salary, it's not so exciting. You get the same figure week in and week out. It's probably direct deposit, which means you don't even get to hold something meaningful in your hand. I think the company should randomize the amount salaried employees get paid each week. It would all work out even by the year's end, of course, but the weekly amount could be anything. One week, "Hooray! I got four thousand dollars!" Another week, "Aw man, five bucks for the third week in a row. I got bills to pay!" #33

I straightened out a paper clip today. It's not easy, because when you get to the last bend, the wire likes to swivel around between your fingers causing you to bend it further rather than straighten it out. But I did it. I'm the straightener. I found a use for my straightened out paper clip. I slipped it inside my wedding band so my palm and ring finger conceal it. Now I can walk up to someone, yank it out with my other hand, and say something like, "HA!" and it would be terrifying. I told a friend of mine about this, and he said it didn't sound all that threatening. So I figure I could tie a match stick to the end and glue sandpaper to my palm. Then when I pull it out, it flares up. "HA!" I would say, and it would be scary because I could set people on fire, at least until the wire got too hot to hold. My friend wasn't daunted by this idea either. He suggested I put poison on the end of it, but I think that's stupid, because it doesn't sound very threatening to pull out a wire and say, "HA! ... and you better be scared or I'll make you eat this, and it's got poison on the end of it, so you'd die." So I think I'll use a loaded Uzi to scare people and settle for adopting the straightened out paper clip as my personal insignia. #34

Something very scary happens to grown adults when they get around babies. They talk funny. Suddenly they have to refer to themselves in the third person. "Mommy's going to go fix dinner now," Mommy says. "Yeah, and Baby'll chew on this doorknob until you get back," Baby thinks. Small wonder this nation's literacy rate is so low. Parents take awkward yet deliberate steps to avoid teaching their children what a pronoun is. I think a new law should be created to regulate this. All new parents should have to wear collars rigged with electrical devices. Whenever Mommy says "Mommy" or Daddy says "Daddy," the collar detects it and administers a

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friendly corrective action consisting of a few hundred volts. That should do the trick. #35

I hate Fridays. Most people love them, because it means the work week is almost over. These people are silly. All Friday is is almost Saturday, and that's just a tease. My favorite day is Saturday, because I get to sleep in late and stay up late. I think I'm going to talk to my friends at work about organizing a strike. Our solitary demand would be that every day would be marked Saturday on the company calendar. It wouldn't matter if the company conceded, thereby ending the strike. Either way, I wouldn't have to go back to work. #36

The usual size of soft drinks served at concession stands in movie theaters is approximately one gallon. The movie Titanic is almost four hours long, and the sound of running water is present in almost every scene. Call me crazy, but I think there's a conspiracy at work here. #37

I think Al Gore is a robot. Think about it -- what does any robot need to function? Algorithms. Al Gore Ithms. Coincidence? #38

I hate being a pedestrian at an intersection with a crosswalk where right turns are allowed at red lights. You push the button. When the "walk" light shows up, only some of the cars have to wait. Cars making right turns are still allowed to roll you flat. I say when I'm crossing the street, everybody -- and I mean everybody -- had better keep the brakes on until I'm well out of the way. There's nothing more disconcerting than putting my life into somebody else's hands. I think all crosswalks should have these walls on either side that shoot out of the road when the "walk" light lights and don't come back down until optical sensors detect that everyone's finished crossing. This would also fix the problem where the lights only let you get half way across the street before letting cars go again. #39

The utilities necessary for normal domestic life are electricity, water, telephone, and gas or oil services, and optionally cable or satellite TV. I think there should be another: the fruit punch dispenser. In the kitchen, next to the water faucet, there should be a faucet for fruit punch. You want a glass of punch? Turn on the faucet. It saves trips to the store, which, for all you know, might be closed the next time you have a craving. Every month, you pay the fruit punch bill, which would be one low rate for the "standard" service or one slightly less low rate for the "extra fruity" service. Of course, there would be some initial fees involved in getting the punch pipes installed in your home, but I'm sure it'll be cheaper in the long run. #40

Why are shopping carts still the most technologically advanced method of shopping at grocery stores? You know what I'm talking about -- the wire mesh behemoths that are scientifically engineered to go every direction except straight and have a knack for occupying all the available parking spaces in the lot when you arrive. I think a new shopping method should be invented. How about a voice-controlled robot that follows you around the store like a faithful dog, dutifully picking up whatever items you tell it to? It would bag everything and calculate the total price as you go along -- so once you get to the cash register, you pay and leave -- no hassle, no waiting. It could even load the groceries in the car for you.

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#51

One of the funniest things I've ever seen was when my dog was a puppy, and we put a collar on her for the first time. She pawed at her neck and ran all crazy against the walls trying to get it off. I think they should get rid of those cornball comics in nightclubs and just put a bunch of puppies with new collars on stage. #52

If fingers had eyes, I think they'd be scared when you're driving down the highway and you put your hand out the window. #53

If I ever invent a snack food, I think my advertising angle will go like this: it's the snack food that doesn't cause a sonic boom when you eat it, dance coolly over other jealous snack foods, make you jump wildly around the room, incite you to wrestle the box away from your great grandmother, or inspire inanimate objects such as your house to shriek with ecstasy. It just tastes good. #54

I think people who blow their life savings on lottery tickets should be forced to take a remedial course in mathematical probability. Buying as many as 10,000 tickets still doesn't appreciably increase the odds of winning. You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning. Actually, let's go with the lightning thing instead of the math class. #55

I think the present tense of "mustang" is "musting," but nobody I ask will tell me for sure. #56

Polite manners regarding the consumption of soup is ridiculous. You have to put the spoon in the soup by sliding it away from you. You can't put the spoon in your mouth; you have to put one side of it on your lips and pour the soup in with a slight, genteel slurp. It's absurd. You can't even lick the bowl. The next time I get invited to a posh, upper-class dinner, I'm not only going to eat the soup this way, I'm going to eat everything else this way, too. Everyone will watch me take my spoon, fill it with peas, put the side of the spoon to my lips, and pour them in with a genteel slurp. I'll do that with the salmon hollandaise and angel food cake, too. I'll feel like an idiot, but everybody will marvel at how unfailingly polite I am. Then I'll burp really loud to

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make my point. #57

I know what causes weight gain. There's a worldwide panic about weight control, and everybody is trying to come up with a new way to eat less, and food producers are trying to manufacture stuff that looks and tastes like food but doesn't contain any actual food substances. They got it all wrong. You don't get thin by eating less. You get thin by eating more. We all know that practice makes perfect, right? Well the only way your digestive system is going to get good at flushing fat from your body is if you provide it with numerous opportunities to get good at it. If you diet, your system gets rusty, and then whatever fat you do put into it is absorbed on the spot. Birds eat five times their weight every day, but you don't see birds suffering from obesity very often, do you? I think I've made my point. #58

I've had it with video rentals. Renting the tapes isn't so bad; it's returning them afterward that's the downer. What a waste of time. Video rentals should have free delivery and pickup services. But then I wouldn't be able to browse through the aisles of video boxes and rent whatever movie had the most effective graphic artist for the box cover, which is how nature intended videos to be selected. So video rentals should actually be these huge trucks. You want a video? The truck drives to your house, you climb in the back, browse the selection, and rent something right there. They come pick it up when you're done with it. I think a great way to kidnap someone would be to pose as a video rental truck, wait till he climbs in the back, then shut the door on him when he's not looking. #59

In the interests of sanity and kindheartedness, I think we should coordinate huge efforts to remove, in a discreet manner, deceased trees from forests. How would you like to be in a crowded room standing shoulder to shoulder with dead people? #60

It's a good thing time can keep moving by its own momentum. If there were any friction slowing it down, we'd eventually stop and get real bored sitting in one place for the rest of ever. I think the space-time continuum is just one big air hockey table. Back to the I Think main page.

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