INDEX

Fire, Fire, Heh-heh, Fire!

One night as I was going to my mother's apartment in NYC the block two streets down was burning. Smoke blanketing the street and everything: cops, fire trucks (of course), and the obligatory spectators. It's disturbing by what people will be amused. The same people who vegitate in front of the TV strobe-flipping through a hundred channels of 24-hour programming because nothing's interesting, will stand mesmerized for 4 hours by the sight of a grocery store on fire. That's the thinking behind my idea for a new cable channel: the Fire and Natural Disaster Channel. Just things on fire, floods, and tornadoes from around the nation. Insensitive? Distasteful? A cheap ratings grab exploiting the misfortune of others in their darkest moments? Perhaps, but guess what?: "Cops"! And some other guesses: "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol", "The Real World", "The People's Court" (in fact the entire bulk of the programming on Court TV), and of course "America's Funniest Home Videos".
 

Decimalization of the Week

I propose that we decimalize the week. That is abolish the current 7-day Week system and implement my new Decimal Week. Instead of 5 weekdays and two weekend days, I propose 7 weekdays and three weekend days--a 10-day week! It would make figuring dates so much easier! Also We would get more time off! Observe: In 70 days--10 weeks by the current system, there are 50 weekdays and 20 weekend days. Under my new deci-week system in 70 days (7 weeks) there would be 49 weekdays and 21 weekend days. An extra weekend day! I'm Brilliant!
And while we're at it how about decimalizing the octave, and hours and minutes, and that damned Imperial system of weights and measures! Why is America the only country that still uses the English system? I'm by no means an authority on American History, but I seem to recall a very popular war being fought over breaking from the English system.
 

Beautiful people.

Do you have any ugly friends? I know only a very few ugly people and they are either really funny or really friendly; compensating--it would appear--for their physical shortcomings. I like to be around beautiful people; it's a rarely admitted fact that people in general do prefer the company of attactive specimins over f'ugly trolls. I think physical attractiveness is a quality equally valid as any on which you would base an acquaintenceship. Perhaps not as valid as, say, loyalty, aimiability, dependability, or pity, but valid all the same, don't you agree?

An Adaptation of the Leary Theory of the Existence of Vacuums.

Most people will tell you life sucks and then you die. I on the other hand disagree. I think life sucks, then you get encephalitis. Which erases your long term memory. You can't remember who you are, where you are, what you did... all you know is there're these jargon-talkin' white coats flashing pictures of dogs and and thermostats and cans of spackle three inches from you face and analyzing your urine for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. Suddenly your memory returns! You begin to sink back into your life, things are getting back to normal... then all of a sudden you go to see a Gallagher show and are left paralyzed from the ankles up by and errant melon rind. Then one Tuesday afternoon you roll into a McDonald's on 93th and Columbus and eat a bullet form a armed postal worker on his way out the door and then you die... maybe...

Hair.

In my spare time I think about things like the meaning of the term "bad hair day". I maintain that this term is greatly misused. The term itself, to me, implies "day" in the same sense as holiday, day of mourning, rainy day, etc. It has a universal, comprehensive quality about it, meaning therefore that it is a day of general bad hair. Consequentially, then, in order for one to be a Bad Hair Day everyone's (or at least the majority's) hair would have to be bad. The popular usage: to describe a day in which one's own hair is bad, is wrong by this rationale and therefore a misuse. If you in particular have bad hair on a particular day, but everyone else's is fine then it is a Good or, Average Hair Day and you just have bad hair. In addition to being logically erroneous, it is narcissitic and egocentric to label a day a Bad Hair Day if yours is the only hair that is bad.
Of course one could argue semantics with regard to the term "Birthday". True it is a similar term used exclusively in the individual scope. However, note that the term "Birthday" is almost always qualified by a possessive: e.g.: my birthday, Tom's birthday, 0.4% of the population of the world's birthday, etc. No such provision is made for the term "bad hair day". Besides this selective usage, wherein the analogous meaning is that of a day of birth, is technically correct. For sure people are born everyday, and so any ordinary day is infact a day of general birth.
By this token, in order to label a day in which only a day in which your hair is bad a "Bad Hair Day" the preffixative qualifier "my" of the suffixative "for me" would have to be appended. This is, however, an unnatural and awkward construction which, moreover, is never used in colloquium. This may be in part due to the prediction that its employment would have the undesirable side-effect of social ostrication and related consequences. But it is more probable that it is because no one has ever bothered to think about it in such detail. And this here is the true value of college. Do let me know your thoughts. Infact you can let me know but filling out the following questionnaire and returning it to me:

More Hair.

For all you women frustrated by the hassle of shaving, the pain of waxing, and the expense of Electrolysis. I have the solution to all your hair removal problems. Forget Epilady, forget N'air, forget that laser crap. The answer: Chemotherapy.
It is a sad irony that you women relentlessly crusade to rid your bodies of that extra hair, literally flushing it down the drain, when everyday unfortunate men go without the basic follicular requirements to cover their scalps.