It seems like these days you can’t just find a barber shop to go get a haircut at. Nowadays they’re all called beauty shops, and they’re way the hell expensive. I mean, if I was planning on being on the cover of Vogue, or Popular Mechanics, then maybe I’d need to be beautiful, but as it is, all I’m really looking for in a coiffure is something that won’t make me look like an unfrozen caveman historical interpreter. That’s why someone needs to start Less Ugly shop, where you pay half as much and all they do is try and make you look presentable enough to go out in public.
If I was in the Klan, I’d giggle like a Japanese schoolgirl every time I stopped at Sheetz.
You know how in 1984 (the novel, not the actual year) the Ministry of Beating the Crap Out of You would stalk people and learn everything about them so that when they were interrogating you, they’d already know like, the one thing in all the world that would terrify you the most? If I lived in that world, I’d always be acting afraid of ridiculous stuff, and acting like all the stuff that really freaked me out wasn’t a problem. That way, when they finally arrested me for running a subversive blog of liberty, they’d have gotten all of their What Terrifies Ben information wrong, so instead of setting me on fire while playing Marky Mark records or something, they’d hang me by my toes over a giant vat of sour cream with ennui-ridden gerbils paddling around in it in tiny little canoes whilst humming the theme from the Muppet Show backwards. Then the government would probably collapse, and that would pretty sweet.
At the Wawa nearest to my house, there’s this one paper towel dispenser in the bathroom that’s like, seven feet off the ground. And it’s not like it’s right over the sink or something and the mirror’s in the way, it’s just way up there on the wall. As I see it, there are two possible reasons to put it up there: either it was put up there for use by a basketball team (which
The other day I stopped a McDonalds to get a cheeseburger, and when I was on my way back out to my van, I noticed that there was some chewing gum stuck to my tire. But before my brain could formulate a rational thoughts like, “Oh look, chewing gum. I like ham,” it just randomly came out of nowhere with, “Oh crap, there’s gum on my tire! I bet that’s gonna completely mess up my gas mileage unless I get it off of there!” I knew before I had even finished thinking it, that that was the dumbest thing that ever I had thunk, but it was too late, my brain was mostly on other stuff at the time, and I only had enough system resources free to be silently abashed.
If I was a paranoid schizophrenic, and preferred to spend my days having intense and rancorous arguments with all the invisible trolls hovering around me, the first thing I’d do is go out and get one of those hands-free cell phone headsets and wear it all the time; then people on the street would just think I was a business executive with poor fashion sense.
If you ever become a totally lame, bush-league supervillain, know your limits. Like, if you’re a ferret wrangler, and one day a radioactive ferret bites you and you get ferret powers, don’t decide to become evil and then go out and pick a fight with Superman or something. Seriously, rob a few banks, give Aquaman a wedgie, whatever, but don’t think that just because you’ve got ferretvision that you’re gonna take down a guy who can eat lava, cause it’s not gonna happen. Unless you were bitten by a kryptonite ferret, then you might have a chance (Kryptonite Ferret, by the way, would be an awesome for a band).
Family Circus always confuses me, because like, one of the kids in it will say something in a little word balloon, and then the other will answer it in the caption underneath. Like Jeffy will be saying something like, “Grandma says that the metric system is for Commies!” And then down underneath, Billy replies, “Not now, you fool, the hour of Festival is nigh upon us!” Which is cool and all, but I grew up on the Far Side, (not literally, like my neighbors were talking cows or something), so to me, it seems like the caption ought to be a witty or insightful observation on the situation described by the above speech bubble. So for me Family Circus would be so much better if say, Dolly was saying, “PJ, I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, but you have elected the way of pain!” And then at the bottom it would say something like, “Unfortunately for Dolly, PJ was merely a toddler with ahead shaped like a football and an inconvenient affinity for orcs.”
