#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

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

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.