

What I Think of Various Places and People

### Rodney Ohebsion

Copyright 2018 Rodney Ohebsion

All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by copyright law.

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Second Edition

# Introduction

Okay. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "I have opinions. You have opinions. My cousin Joe has opinions. And my ear, nose, and throat doctor has opinions. But among the four of us, you're the only one arrogant enough to put your opinions in a book. Do you have the nerve to think that your opinions are more book-worthy than everyone else's opinions? Who the hell are you?"

Here's my answer: Who the hell am _I_? Who the hell are _you_? You can't be coming at me at the beginning of my book, and giving me this whole speech about book-worthiness and the opinions of you and your cousin Joe.

Also, let me answer your other question and say this: Yes, I believe my opinions are extremely book-worthy. Let me tell you something about myself. I'm a professional opinion-haver. My opinions are of the highest quality. Let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean. One time I worked at an office where I had this boss named Gary. Now, me and my ten coworkers, we all had a certain opinion of Gary. And that opinion was, "Gary is a piece of garbage. I can't stand him. Someone should elbow him in the face." Now, here's what made my opinion superior to that of my coworkers. Of the 11 of us, I'm the only one who actually went ahead and elbowed Gary in the face. Furthermore, before I elbowed him, I distributed a 28 page memo throughout the office, in which I provided a thorough and detailed analysis of Gary's personality and work habits, and I used such terms as "power-tripping," "compulsive complainer," "head up his rear end," "extremely dependable when it comes being immature and aggravating," and "is just like a carton of orange juice that was refilled three weeks ago with tap water that came out of a dirty hose."

The point is, I am in fact a professional opinion-haver. Most pundits and experts and analysts on TV—those people are amateurs compared to me. They've never elbowed Gary in the face. I'm more than qualified to write a book where I tell you what's what about various places and people. This is that book.

# Places

## Different Amounts of Formality

America is a vast and diverse country. I know. I've seen the country, and I've heard the songs. And here's what I've learned. In the US of A, we have spacious skies and purple mountain majesties. We got the Redwood Forest and the gulf stream waters. There's Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge. We have drive thrus and corner cafes. We got a range, where the deer and the antelope play. We have all sorts of stuff, from sea to shining sea.

Now, let me ask you this. What's the most informal place in all of America? As in, what place is really not into a system of formalities and things of that nature? Pick one.

  1. Venice Beach

  2. Your divorced Uncle Barry's apartment living room, which contains two hammocks and a margarita dispenser, as well as 28 individual tube socks on the floor

  3. A monster truck rally in Georgia

  4. A dorm room at Arizona State University

  5. Walmart

The correct answer is e. Walmart. There are 3552 Walmarts in this country—and every single Walmart location is the most informal place in America.

Here's the best way to describe the ambiance at Walmart. This should sum it up quite nicely. Nobody feels compelled to take a shower before going to Walmart. They do the opposite. They go through a multi-stage deshoweritization process. Because as we all know, it's socially unacceptable to go to Walmart, unless you look like a complete mess. Some 17 year old girl tells her mother, "Okay, mom. I'm going to Walmart." And the mother says, "Not dressed like that! A clean blouse and blue jeans is not an appropriate outfit for Walmart. If you want to go to Walmart, what you need to do is smoke seven unfiltered cigarettes, roll around in dirt for five minutes, and then go into the hamper and grab an outfit that consists of a pair of daisy dukes and a yellow bikini top."

That's how you prepare for Walmart. And you also do some stretching, in order to get ready for the fight that you're probably gonna have with the person standing next to you in the cookies and crackers aisle. Those are the social dynamics present in that store. I know. I'm basically a sociologist. And here's Superstore Sociology 101: "If one person at Walmart stands close to another person at Walmart for an extended period of time, it's only natural that the two people will get into a heated argument and lay the smack down on each other."

Here's a good question. Is it better to shop at Walmart or Costco? Pick a society to be part of. Do you want to be a Walmartian or a Costcorean? That's a tough one. On one hand, Costco presents you with a much friendlier and more civilized atmosphere. On the other hand, Costco has this thing known as a four hour minimum. You can't shop at Costco for less than four hours. I mean, that's not an official policy enforced by the store. But it's an unofficial policy that you yourself enforce for absolutely no legitimate reason. All Costco shoppers refuse to exit the store until they put in their 240 minutes.

When you walk into a Costco, that's the start of a Homeric shopping odyssey in which you explore every nook and cranny of the store, you buy enough stuff to fill up your car trunk and your backseat and your front passenger seat and your glove compartment and your cupholder—and then later when you unload your various purchases at home, the other members of your household look at you like you're out of your damn mind, and your family and friends start up a group text where they plan an intervention whose main objective is to make you do all your shopping at your local Piggly Wiggly and Dick's Sporting Goods. Just those two places.

I'm a former member of Costco. I cancelled my membership a while ago. I've been Costco sober for the past eight years. But, I still have a relationship with Costco. What I do is, I hang out in the Costco parking lot, and I watch people pushing their carts out of the store. It's quite an experience. Some guy enters the place, and he thinks, "Oh, I'll just go in, I'll get some batteries for my clicker, and I'll also eat a few hundred calories of free samples. And maybe I'll buy a thing or two that tickles my fancy." And then four hours later, that guy is walking out of the store with a cart containing 48 batteries, 4000 toothpicks, a humidifier, a dehumidifier, a rehumidifier, two karaoke machines, two pounds of green Jolly Ranchers, three bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, two gazebos, three dozen roses, a Kirkland Signature African dashiki and Japanese sashimono, 30 pounds of Kibbles 'n Bits, an engagement ring, eight bottles of Flintstone vitamins, 24 ping pong paddles, two elephants, two Goodyear tires, one Goodyear blimp, and a machine that simultaneously makes beef jerky and espresso.

The people who buy stuff at Costco are not shoppers. They don't shop in the proper sense. They get high off of purchasing quality merchandise at low prices. These are individuals who, when they buy a dashiki for $15, there's a marked increase in their brain's dopaminergic activity. I'm not 100% sure what that means. But I do know this. When people do drugs, there's a marked increase in their brain's dopaminergic activity. Check the brain scans. I'm not making this up. It's a chemical and neurobiological fact. Scientifically, Costcoreans are not shoppers so much as they are a large group of highly addicted individuals who wander through unlabeled aisles and fill up an average of 27.4 cubic feet of shopping cart space per session. They're there to get high, and that's pretty much it. The Costco business model is based on the business of models of predecessors in the field, like Pablo Escobar and Tony Montana.

This next example should really illustrate what type of so-called shopping takes place at Costco. I was hanging out in a Costco parking lot the other day, and within a span of two hours, I saw three people walking out of the store with two liters of Preparation H in their shopping cart. I asked each one of them, "What do you do for a living?" And only one said, "I'm a proctologist." That proctologist is the only one who needs massive quantities of Preparation H. As for the typical Costco shopper, he's some schmuck who brings home a discount liter of hemorrhoid cream, along with various breakfast foods and karaoke machines and elephants. You ask him, "How are you gonna squeeze those elephants through the doorway of your 1100 square foot apartment?" And he tells you, "Simple. I'm gonna lubricate the elephants with the Preparation H."

Here's a picture I drew of a Costco shopper leading an elephant into his apartment.

Superstore shoppers come in three main categories. You got the aforementioned Costcoreans and Walmartians. And then you got the Targeoisie—as in, people who shop at Target.

Have you been to this place Target? Holy mackerel! Target stores are incredibly upscale. Very organized. Very well maintained. Very clean. It smells really fantastic in there. There's nothing like it. I go to Target mainly for the smell. I don't even bother spending time outdoors anymore. I'm not interested in fresh air. I want my lungs to take in pure Target all day.

Target is great for your lungs. That being said, it might not be so good for your personality. And here's what I mean by that. Nothing makes you snobbier than shopping at Target. When you're there, you think, "I am a Target customer. In other words, I'm not one of those Philistine savages who 'shop 'n' fight' at Walmart, and I'm not one of those Kirkland Signature addicts who pay $55 a year for the right to buy gazebos and dashikis at Costco."

Target is pure snobbery. Any time I'm driving to or from Target and I need to stop and get gas, you know what I do? I fill up my car with 91 octane. That's a tremendous amount of octane, considering how I drive a Honda Civic. I go with upper echelon octane. Because that's the Target lifestyle. Luxury all the way. Do you think I eat Chicken McNuggets on the same day that I shop at Target? Forget about it. At the bare minimum, I go to Ruby Tuesday's and I order the Crispy Popcorn Shrimp for $13.59.

Shopping at Target gives a real boost to your ego. Then there's this other place where, if you shop there, it can be quite degrading. I'm talking about the 99 Cent Store. Over there, they're busy offering discounts that you don't even want. Even if you're a bargain hunter, you are not hunting for bargains of that magnitude. You're in there one day, and you see a five pound sack of potatoes for 99 cents. Then the next week, you go back in there, and the store is like, "Good news. We now have a ten pound sack of potatoes for 99 cents. We upped the ante to ten pounds." What exactly is the point of that price change? It's not like when they were selling the five pound sacks for 99 cents, people thought, "I like the concept of eating potatoes—but this price is a little too rich for my blood." 99% of shoppers never even thought of buying potatoes for less than 99 cents per five pounds. But the 99 Cent Store—their whole angle has got to be something like, "You know, we're not particularly interested in our customers and the prices they will and won't pay. In fact, we don't give a flying monkey about none of that! Our pricing objective is simple. We just want to make it so that we sell potatoes for less than the price of dirt and manure. We're not competing against Walmart and the Piggly Wiggly. We're competing against Home Depot. If they sell ten pounds of manure for $1.00, we sell ten pounds of potatoes for 99 cents."

Yeah. They sell ten pounds of potatoes for 99 cents. What's next? "We've got packets of magic beans, 3 for 99 cents. When you plant one packet of the beans, they grow into 24 three-liter bottles of Shasta Strawberry Soda. You can yield 72 liters of soft drink for 33 cents."

Do you know what's really fun? Going to the 99 Cent Store, and doing the opposite of bargain hunting. As in, you shop within the four walls of that store, and in doing so, you find a way to be a snob. This can be accomplished. Just go about your 99 cent business in an aristocratic manner. I do that every once in a while. I go into the store, and I get the medium bottle of California red wine for 99 cents. I also go for the can of salmon for 99 cents. One time some guy saw those two things in my basket, and he remarked, "Listen, bro. If you're trying to get drunk and eat seafood, this isn't the cheapest way to do it. Don't buy a can of salmon for 99 cents, and a medium bottle of California red wine for 99 cents. What you need to do is buy four cans of tuna for 99 cents, and a big bottle of North Dakota blue wine for 99 cents." And then I told him, "I am the great grandson of John D. Rockefeller! And our family tradition is, when we shop at the 99 Cent Store, we do it in a way that demonstrates our superior social standing."

Here's a picture of me wearing a top hat and holding a cane as I shop at the 99 Cent Store with a bottle of wine and can of salmon in my basket.

## The American Media's Misrepresentation of America

Here's a good experiment for learning what this country is like. Go to the South and track down some guy who won the lottery. Ask him what he bought with his lottery winnings. How do you think he'll respond? Will he say, "Well. I've built myself quite a portfolio. I've invested $20 million in real estate. And $20 million in stocks and bonds. And I've got $10 million in fine art, including three Van Goghs and four Cezannes. I'm also planning to take a trip to Europe. I hear Croatia is quite breathtaking this time of year."

Will a Southern lottery winner say that kind of stuff? Heck no! Here's what he'll say. "I bought a white F150, and I also bought a grey Silverado, and a blue F150, and a red F150, and I bought a black F150 for my brother Billy, and a green Dodge Ram for my cousin Bobby, and a blue F150 for my grandma Billie Jean, and a grey F150 for my other grandma Bobbie Joe." Then ask him, "Did you also buy a house?" And he'll tell you, "Right now I'm homeless, and I got 700 pickup trucks parked on Flatbush Avenue. And most of those trucks is F150s."

There you go. That statement says a lot about what America is like culturally. If you want to know what this country is, don't turn on your TV and watch _Good Morning America_ , _Modern Family_ , _60 Minutes_ , _Friends_ , _Grey's Anatomy_ , _The Big Bang Theory_ , and _SNL_. Those shows combined represent 1% of the country. As for that lottery winner who won't stop buying pickup trucks, he represents 37% of the country. That guy is America. Granted, America is a diverse country of 50 states and 330 million people. America is a lot of things. But if you were to make a one word summary of the entire country, that word would have to be F150.

By and large, we have an F150 culture in this country. The majority of US cities feature that culture quite a bit. You go to those cities, and you see plenty of people driving F150s, or you observe people doing or saying things that make you think, "This person probably drives an F150, and he has little to nothing in common with Ross, Monica, Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, and especially Chandler."

That's what you come across in most of the United States. F150 culture. Now let me ask you this. When you turn on your TV, what do you see? Do you see a plethora of pickup trucks? Not at all! There's the opposite of a plethora. Go to your thesaurus, and look up the antonym of plethora. That word is a good description of how many pickup trucks are on TV.

The American media presents you with almost no pickup trucks, and plenty of people like Chandler Bing.

And let me just add this. George Clooney, Rob Lowe, Ryan Seacrest. They're from Kentucky, Virginia, and Georgia. But do they act like a trio of good ol' boys? Absolutely not. I mean, if George, Rob, and Ryan were to move in next door to you, would you think, "Well, I guess the hillbillies have arrived. It's only a matter of time before this entire neighborhood starts smelling like fried chicken and Funyuns." You definitely wouldn't think that. After all—those three "Southerners" have the personalities and voices of three city slickers who are from New York or Los Angeles. The media wants that. You can't be on TV or in movies if you don't seem like you're from New York or LA. There are only three exceptions to that rule. Miley Cyrus, Steve Harvey, and Britney Spears. You look at everyone else on TV and in the movies, and you think, "This person is an F150-phobe."

This media of ours, they really want to filter out 99% of America. In fact, they don't even give you New York and Los Angeles, so much as they give you one minor segment of those two cities. The real New York and LA are hardly anything like the ones the media presents to you.

Let me tell you something about the real New York City. It's basically a city in Puerto Rico. And when I say Puerto Rico, I don't mean Pore-tuh Rico. I mean Pwehrrrto Rrrico! Say it with me, amigo. Pwehrrrto Rrrico! You gotta roll those r's and get in that ultra Hispanic "pweh."

New York is authentic Puerto Rican territory. It's true. If you don't believe me, go conduct this experiment. Go to New York, approach 100 random men there, and ask each one the following question: "Is your name Luis Rivera?" The survey says, 11 of the 100 men are in fact Luis Rivera. Luis Rivera is the most popular full name in New York. And do you know what other name is in the top ten? No—not John Smith. Jennifer Lopez. You might have to dig around in order to find a John Smith in New York. But there's a Jennifer Lopez on every block. New York has plenty of women with that exact name. On any given weekend in New York, you can find a Puerto Rican wedding where a man named Luis Rivera is marrying a woman named Jennifer Lopez.

That says a lot about New York. It's a city where white people are not a majority. They're the antonym of a majority. And by the way, you don't have to consult with your thesaurus and look up the antonym of majority. I'll give you that antonym right here. The antonym of majority is... wait for it... minority. In New York, white people are a minority. The city is mostly Puerto Rican, black, Jewish, and Chinese.

Now, let me ask you this very relevant question. On the show _Friends_ , how many people know more than five words of Spanish? The show is set in New York City—but nobody on that show hablos a damn thing in espanol. And keep in mind that I'm not just referring to the six primary characters—who, by the way, are friends, but are definitely not amigos. I'm also referring to the extras in the coffee shop, and the extras on the street, and all of the friends' coworkers and boyfriends and girlfriends and whoever. Everyone on that show is a non-Spanish speaker to a very extreme degree. Nobody does any habloing, except for the time Rachel utters the expression "Tu madre es loca."

_Friends_ ran for 236 episodes, and only one episode has a Puerto Rican guy. Season 10, Episode 3 - "The One with Ross's Tan." That's the episode where Ross comes across a dark skinned Puerto Rican man, and he mistakenly thinks that the man has a spray on tan. I am not making that up.

So, here's the moral of the story. If you want to know what America is like, don't watch _Friends_. And if you want to know what New York is like, don't watch _Friends_. Also, don't refer to the city as "New York." If you want to give the city an accurate name, you should call it "La Ciudad de Los Puertorriqueños."

## Los Angeles and Memphis

I live in Los Angeles. It's a great city. And it's quite diverse. I used to live in a part of LA where within a half mile radius, you can find three black barbershops, eight Hassidic Jewish private schools, two comic book shops, an Apple Store, a 99 Cent Store, three sushi restaurants, a Kmart, four marijuana dispensaries, two drug rehab centers, and a park where 100 homosexual men play kickball every Sunday as part of some organization that literally identifies itself as the "Varsity Gay League." That's my old neighborhood. And now I live in a part of LA where if you walk on the sidewalk for ten minutes, you will come across almost every single ethnicity there is on planet earth.

Los Angeles. Lots of diversity. That being said, LA is distinctly un-diverse in a few ways. The other day, I wandered around the city looking for F150s and Puerto Ricans. It took me eight hours to find one. Benicio del Toro. He's the only Puerto Rican I came across. And he wasn't even doing anything stereotypically Puerto Rican, like playing dominoes or reciting the lyrics to his favorite Fat Joe song.

The point is, there aren't enough F150 drivers and Puerto Ricans in LA. And here's something there's too much of: people who are very consumed with the goal of being thin. The culture in LA is excessively diet and exercise oriented.

Let me explain how things work at a buffet in Los Angeles. If you eat a plate of food, and then you go back to the buffet and try to fill up another plate, here's what'll happen. A yoga instructor will emerge from the potato salad and she'll force you to do a half hour of sun salutations.

And then there's this other city in the US, and it's known as Memphis. It's a city where every supermarket checkout stands says "15 Items or More." You have to buy at least 15 items, and at least 2 of those items have to be a pound of butter or a tub of lard.

As you might imagine, Michelle Obama is not allowed in those supermarkets. After all—she goes against everything that Memphis stands for. I mean, she's a person who has the audacity to cook her vegetables in something that isn't pure fat. She uses water. The folks in Memphis aren't into that kind of chemistry. They don't believe in H2O, unless it's outnumbered by plenty of C27H46O or C12H22O11.

If you're trying to be thin, stay away from Memphis. Or at the bare minimum, don't go to a Memphis buffet. At a Memphis buffet, if you eat fewer than three plates of food, that's a misdemeanor. And if you ask for any drink other than sweet tea, that's a felony. By the way—the Memphis version of sweet tea is a beverage that contains enough sugar to kill the typical person who lives in Los Angeles.

## Elat Market

Let's say you want to explore a city and know about all the social diversity that the city offers. Here's a good way to do that. Shop at a lot of places in that city.

I live in Los Angeles. And I like diversity. I'm basically a sociologist who specializes in social diversity. So, I shop at over 100 different places. Including a certain supermarket / mental asylum known as Elat Market. Technically, the place is a supermarket. But if you go in there with the mindset of a sociologist, and you observe the numerous Persian people present, you will notice that those people conduct themselves in a distinctly non-supermarkety manner.

I mean, for starters, the place is violent—and unlike Walmart violence, Elat Market violence is not preceded by an argument. Elat Market is not about arguments leading to fights. It's about treating people like garbage, right off the bat. Elat Market is a place where an 82 year old woman named Forouzan will punch you in the liver for no particularly good reason. And just so we're clear, when I say "liver," I don't mean the beef liver in your shopping cart. I mean the liver in your body. You're shopping in a so-called supermarket, you're in Forouzan's way, she's trying to get to the lemons, and there you go. Liver punch.

Sometimes I go to Elat Market wearing a striped black and white t-shirt, I have a whistle in my pocket, and I attempt to referee the mayhem. It's fun. I spot something, I blow a whistle, and I say, "Unnecessary roughness. Illegal chop block to the back. 15 yard penalty." I instruct one of the shoppers to take 15 steps away from the produce section. And she responds by running into me with her shopping cart and exclaiming, "Khok tooh sahret!"

That's the basic, day-to-day experience at good ol' Elat Market. Sort of.

The thing about Elat Market is, even in the midst of all the punching and pushing and elbowing and tackling, you also see plenty of people engaged in some extremely friendly conversations. Because Elat Market is a four-in-one place. It's a grocery store, it's a sanitarium, it's a warzone—and to some extent, it's also the Persian version of town square in Mayberry. It's a social center where the friendliness is so extreme, that you constantly see acquaintances greeting each other like they've been best friends for the past 45 years. And then they turn around and punch someone in the kidney. Which makes sense, considering how the Persian people in Los Angeles are culturally multifaceted. Here's how it works with them. They have a tendency to be the nicest people in the world, and they also have a tendency to be the biggest assholes and lunatics in the world. They cover all bases. It's very multifaceted. If you ever visit the Greater Los Angeles region as a tourist or as a sociologist, I highly recommend that you head on down to Elat Market and take in the multifacitation.

## Maryland and Montana

"Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum!"

I did not compose that line myself. I took it from another source. Guess which one:

  1. The rap lyrics of Cardi B

  2. A commercial for Papa John's Pizza

  3. A tattoo on Angelina Jolie's leg

  4. The state anthem of Maryland.

It's d. "Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum!" is a line in Maryland's state anthem. In other words, when the people of Maryland want to express their state pride, they exclaim huzza, and they emphatically identify Northerners as "scum." That's part of Maryland's song. And by the way—that song was declared the state's official anthem in 1939. That seems a little inappropriate. I mean, here's the only appropriate time to make that song your state's anthem. In the middle of the Civil War. In other words, if you live below the Mason-Dixon line, and you want your state anthem to talk about those scummy Northerners, you gotta do it in the 1860s. Not 1939. Maryland made that the state anthem in 1939. And they haven't changed it. Not only have they retained the part about how Northerners are scum, they've also kept in the word huzza, even though that word hasn't been popular since 1804. Apparently, the people of Maryland don't care. They're like, 'We still use huzza, and we still insult them damn Yankees who are busy hollering and galivanting and philandering up there in the Union! Here in our Confederate state, we're all about huzza, and spurning the Northern scum! That's our attitude in Maryland, regardless of whether it's 1804, 1861, 1939, 2018, or 3753. We're in this for the long haul!"

So that does it for Maryland. Now let's move on to Montana. I haven't looked at their state anthem. But I have checked their weather. So I'll talk about that.

The weather in Montana has one main theme. Range. Montana weather has some very impressive range. In Montana, they can do four seasons in one season. In fact, they can do four seasons in eight hours. That's how weather works in Montana. There are days where the high is 90 and the low is 20. Does the Montana Board of Tourism mention that in their promotional material? They can tell you something like, "Are you very eager to combine sunburns and frostbite? Well, you can't do that in Florida—I'll tell you that right now. In Florida, all they got down there is oranges and Cuban people and beaches. If you want to have a good time, you gotta head on up to Montana, where we will subject you to a wide variety of extreme weather conditions on a daily basis."

What I want to know is, how do you pack for a summer trip to Montana? You start putting stuff in your suitcase, and you say, "Okay. I got my pink Speedos, and I got my 15 layer insulated gore-tex Moosejaw jacket. I'm gonna need both of those pieces of apparel. I also got my Siberian rabbit-fur winter skullcap, and my Mexican lightweight sombrero." Your friend Hank is in the room with you. He says, "Oh. Are you packing for a trip where you go to Death Valley and then afterwards you head on over to Antarctica?" And you tell him, "Guess again, Hank! I'm going to one place, and one place only: Fort Benton, Montana! It's the most meteorologically ludicrous city in the world. Why don't you go there with me, so you can get your fill of sunburns and frostbite?" And then Hank says, "No dice, buddy. I already got a summer vacation planned. I'm going to Maryland, so I can sing freely about spurning the Northern scum! Huzza!"

## Disneyland

Here are the two main pieces of advice I give everyone. Number one: Don't hit yourself in the head repeatedly with a hammer or an iPhone 8. And number two: Don't go to Disneyland on a summer weekend.

I think the first piece of advice is pretty self-explanatory. So, let me give you some more info on the second one.

If you go to Disneyland on a summer weekend, do you know what you'll see plenty of? People.

Now, let me break down my view on people. I like people. However, I only like people given two conditions. Number one: the people are not game show hosts. (more on that later in this book) And number two: the quantity of people is appropriate for a particular place.

And that brings us back to Disneyland. It's a place where the appropriate quantity of people is 5,000, and the actual quantity of people is 104,327. That's Disneyland on a summer weekend. It's just an immense number of people, 90% of whom are wearing tacky clothing, and 93% of whom are standing in lines. The number one activity in that place is standing in line. And by the way—as soon as you get to the front of one line, you're in the back of another line. That's the scam Disneyland has going on summer weekends. There are no rides in between the lines. There's no room for rides when there are over 100,000 people in the park.

I went to Disneyland five years ago on a Saturday in July. Like a complete moron, I stood there wearing my $17 Mickey ears and holding my $5 churro and $4 Diet Coke, I waited in seven or eight back-to-back lines—and the last one took me out of Disneyland and to the Taco Bell across the street. Someone told me, "May I take your order?" And I was like, "I want to ride the flying elephant."

The point is, Disneyland should have a max capacity of 5,000 people. And regardless of how many people are in the park, there should be no lines. Instead of having lines, have a bunch of waiting rooms. Yeah. Someone had to say it. I'm that someone. I was waiting for President Trump to say it—but he has yet to chime in on this topic. He's talked about pretty much everything else, from aardvarks to zebras, and from Alec Baldwin to Zooey Deschanel. But he hasn't mentioned lines. So I'm gonna get into the line thing.

I'm not an advocate of the line system. After all—it's a system that involves you staring at the back of some guy's head for an extended period of time. That's why I favor waiting rooms. You go in one and say, "I have an appointment to ride Space Mountain." And they tell you, "Okay. It'll be about 45 minutes." You sit down next to some other people. You read a few issues of _US Weekly_ , and you learn a lot about Kylie Jenner and how she keeps her elbows looking so moist. And then you hear your name. "Albert Johnson. You're up. Space Mountain."

What a fantastic system. I should be running things at Disneyland, instead of Mickey Mouse. Mickey is the head honcho right now—and this mouse is out of control. Not only does he let 100,000 people in, he also charges $100 a ticket! Do you know how much it would cost the Brady Bunch to go to Disneyland these days? $800. And that's without Alice. If you want to bring Alice, that's another $100. And knowing Mickey, he'll charge Alice double. Just because he feels like it. That should tell you a lot about how much Mickey loves money.

President Trump should tweet about this. He should tell us, "Crooked Mickey charges way too much for admission to his highly overrated amusement park. Also, the ride 'It's a Small World' is chock full of illegal immigrants."

## Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble is a company that marches to the beat of its own deranged drummer. Nobody runs a business the Barnes & Noble way. Not even Crooked Mickey is as audacious as Mr. Barnes and Mr. Noble. I mean, Disneyland charges a lot—but at least they have something unique to offer. Barnes & Noble is in a different category. Here's the sales pitch that the company basically presents to you. "In our stores, we might not have as many books as Amazon.com. But here's what we _do_ have. _Higher prices_ than Amazon.com. We're so good at selling books, that we have higher prices than Amazon.com, and we also have higher prices than barnesandnoble.com, even though we own and operate barnesandnoble.com. We set the prices on our website, we set the prices in our stores—and those prices have nothing to do with each other! That's our brilliant strategy for competing with Amazon. We can beat them! We're gonna put those rat-soup eating, insecure, junkyard jive turkeys out of business!"

Barnes & Noble has a pricing strategy that involves making their stores more expensive than their website. And if you spend a few hours hanging out at a Barnes & Noble store, you'll come across some customer who argues against the company's pricing strategy. Are you familiar with this person? He tells the employee, "This book is $39.99 here, but it's only $31.35 at your website. Can't I just buy it here for $31.35?" The employee says, "Sorry—we don't do that. We don't price match items with our website." And then the customer tells him, "Why not?" At that point, that customer should be escorted away from all the bookshelves, and he should be thrown right through a glass window.

No one should be allowed to go into a Barnes & Noble and argue about how their pricing policy is illogical. Yes—we all know it's illogical. But guess what? The company has had that exact same policy for the past two decades! The Barnes & Noble corporation is not gonna change a twenty year long policy, just because some guy walked into a store and presented a compelling argument to an employee named Aldo who gets paid $8.97 an hour. The policy is the policy. You gotta have some ego on you to think that you can change the policy just by talking to Aldo. There's only one way to change the policy—and it involves purchasing enough Barnes & Noble stock to own 50.1% of the company. If you happen to have a quarter billion dollars lying around, then go ahead and buy those shares. And then you can walk into a Barnes & Noble and start arguing with Aldo. As soon as he says, "We don't price match," you can tell him, "We do now! I'm the new sheriff in town, Aldo! I just bought a majority interest in this company, all in an effort to make you give me a 23% discount on one book."

## French Restaurants

Before I talk about French restaurants, let me talk about KFC.

Here's how KFC dining works. You go there, you order chicken and biscuits, and then you get the chicken and biscuits, and then you eat the chicken and biscuits and occasionally lick your fingers. The process of ordering, waiting, and eating takes about 12 minutes and costs about $5.

Now, here's how fine French dining works. You put on nice clothes, you go to an expensive French restaurant, you sit at a table, every 20 minutes someone brings you a new plate with a quarter ounce of food, and then five hours later you get a bill for $433.

Your meal contains 15 courses. And at the beginning of that meal, you're not allowed to tell your waiter, "Listen, Pierre. I'm in a bit of a rush. I need to be in and out of here in an hour and a half. How about you combine 10 of the 15 courses into some sort of a pu pu platter?"

Now, I'm not an expert on France. But here's one thing I know about French culture. The French do not believe in pu pu platter style consolidation. They believe that you should sit there and wait for courses—and before each one, a waiter should give you a description of the course. In other words, you get the food version of food, and you also get the audiobook version. A waiter tells you stuff like, "The pate contains red truffles in a light creme du bulleaux sauce prepared with something that is extremely expensive and extremely Frenchitty French." You hear the sound of your waiter talking more often than you hear the sound of yourself eating.

And by the way—one of the courses you eat is escargot. Do you know what the recipe is for escargot? Here's the ingredient list: salt, pepper, and snails. I love the first two ingredients—but I don't really care for the third one. As an American, here's what you should do when you order food at a French restaurant. Tell them, "Give me one order of escargot, hold the snails, and add two cheeseburgers." That's the American version of escargot.

I don't even get why restaurants in this country are allowed to serve escargot. I think it's because escargot is French, and people are too open-minded when it comes to French food. If you serve French escargot, that's legal. But if you serve American snails, your restaurant will be shut down by a health inspector. He'll say, "This place has 200 snails in the kitchen! And the snails aren't French! They're from New Jersey!"

## Finland

Before I start talking about Finland, let me just give you some of my views on Spanish. I know Spanish doesn't really seem to have much of a relation to Finland. But my Spanish analysis will lead to my views on Finland. It might take me a few sentences, a few paragraphs, or maybe even a few pages to get there. But I'll get there.

So, here we go. Spanish.

Did you know that in Spanish, salad is "ensalada?" I know it's ensalada. I Googled it. And I also confirmed my Googlation by approaching an Ecuadorian woman at Target and asking her for information on the matter. Google and the Ecuadorian woman (Christina Aguilera) both told me the same thing. They told me that salad in Spanish is ensalada.

Ensalada is a truly fantastic word. You know why? It makes salad sound exciting. Very exciting. The word ensalada is so exciting, that it makes me really get into Hispanic culture. I work diligently to enhance the Hispanicness of my day-to-day cultural proceedings. I really go at it. It's very impressive just how committed I am to my Hispanic aspirations. Just the other day, I said, "Before I eat this arroz con costra, I shall partake in this ensalada! But first, let me do some flamenco dancing."

That's the ensalada lifestyle. It's passionate. As opposed to the non-Hispanic approach to salad. Let me describe that approach. I can sum it up with two words. Not passionate. Have you ever witnessed a non-Hispanic man and his non-Hispanic wife distributing salad at their kitchen table? Here's how it goes, in all its glorious boringness. "Honey. Can you pass the salad?" "Yes. I'll pass the salad. Here's the salad." "Okay. I got the salad. Now I'm eating the salad. My life is meaningless."

That's the non-Hispanic salad experience. Right now you're probably thinking, "Okay. I get your point. Your point is, I should throw away the salad and eat la ensalada." Actually, that's not my point. My overall point is not about salad or about language. It's about culture in general.

Here's one of the key components of a thriving society. Cultural imports. All cultures should learn from other cultures—whether we're talking about non-Hispanic cultures learning from Hispanic cultures, or Utahans learning from Nigerians, or South American countries learning from East Asian countries, or Finnish people learning from someone other than Finnish people.

The thing is, I've never seen that last one. And that brings us to the part of this chapter where I start talking about Finland. I told you I would give my views on Finland at some point. This is that point. So, here we go.

Finnish people are so full of themselves and so xenophobic, that they do less cultural importing than every other country in the world. They believe in pure, unadulterated Finnishness.

Right now, I'm gonna do my award-winning impersonation of a Finnish person. "My name is Gustav, I live in Finland, and I hate all things that are not Finnish. I spend 24 hours a day spitting on non-Finnish things with my Finnish saliva. Even when I am asleep, I drool. I drool on my pillowcase—and my pillowcase contains a list of every country other than Finland."

Most Finnish people have extreme disdain for all things they regard as foreign. As opposed to Americans, who are way more open to foreign stuff.

Let me give you some examples of American cultural imports.

Back in the 80s, all American children spent at least two months acting like Japanese ninjas. Remember that? If you were a kid in the 80s, at some point you came across a ninja on TV, and you said, "Yes. There we go. I'm gonna devote myself to that. From now on, I'm gonna hide behind walls and assassinate a wide variety of people."

Us Americans, we emulate non-Americans quite a bit. As a kid, you do the ninja thing. Then later, you're in your college years, you're watching TV, you come across a Canadian guy, and he's drinking an extremely impressive amount of beer. And you say, "Yes. There we go. I'm gonna devote myself to that. From now on, I'm gonna get drunk the way Canadians get drunk."

American culture integrates many components of foreign cultures. Over the years, Americans have demonstrated an extreme interest in Japanese ninjutsu, Canadian drunkenness, Indian yoga, Mexican pinatas, and Chinese feng shui.

As for Finnish people, they're vehemently opposed to every item on that list. In Finland, if some kid starts engaging in ninja activities, some adult named Gustav will tell him, "This is not appropriate Finnish behavior. Instead of doing ninja things, you should go outside and count the snow. Quantify the volume of snow. This is what we do in Finland."

I'm pretty sure that's how things go down in Finland. Although I guess you could say that I'm not talking about Finnish people specifically, so much as I'm talking about Nordic people in general. When I think of a Finnish person, I just think of a Nordic person. I don't go the extra mile in distinguishing between people from different Nordic countries like Finland, Norway, and Sweden. I don't go the extra mile—and I don't even go the first mile. Check my odometer when it comes to this. My Nordic distinction odometer says 0.0 miles. To me, Nordic is Nordic, end of story.

Which brings up an interesting and relevant topic.

Do you ever talk to someone who's not from America, and then he starts getting annoyed when he finds out that you're not thoroughly familiar with his country? He says, "I am from Finland." You tell him, "Right. Yeah. Finland. The country where everyone's busy making watches and chocolate." And this guy, he becomes outraged. He says, "No! That is Switzerland! That is not Finland, you jerk! How dare you associate me with those damn Swedes! You should learn about the differences between my fantastic country and their stupid country!" So then you reply, "Calm down, bro. You don't have to throw a Finnish hissy fit just because I think all Scandinavian countries are the same." And then he flips out again. He says, "Finland is not a Scandinavian country, you American asshole! Scandinavia consists of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark! Finland is vastly different from all three of those countries. Educate yourself!"

That Finnish guy's got a lot of nerve. He's insisting that you start loading up your American brain with information about the individual nations of the Nordic region. He's demanding that you, as an American, should know the differences between one Nordic country and another. Do you know the mathematical audacity of that demand? I'm talking about math. I can use numbers to show just how audacious these Finnish people really are with all that "You should know something about my country" Nordic jazz that comes out of their mouth.

Let me break down the math for you. Switzerland has 8 million people. Finland has 5 million people. Do you know what other places have the same numbers? East Pennsylvania and West Pennsylvania. East Pennsylvania—8 million people, West Pennsylvania—5 million people.

So, here's what I'm saying. You knowing the difference between Switzerland and Finland would be like some Nordic guy knowing the difference between East Pennsylvania and West Pennsylvania. Imagine that. Imagine over in Finland, there's some Finnish Peugeot salesman named Gustav, and he knows that East Pennsylvanians drink Pepsi mixed with Jim Beam, while West Pennsylvanians have a strong preference for RC Cola mixed with Seagram's. It would be ridiculous for Gustav Johansson of Finland to possess that knowledge. He doesn't possess it. Mr. Johansson is busy selling Peugeots and counting snow and eating high magnesium barley. He's never made any distinction between East and West Pennsylvania. And yet, he demands that all Americans make a thousand distinctions between Finland and Switzerland. Gustav more or less comes to your home and knocks on the door, you open it, and he says, "Listen and learn, you ignorant American! Listen to me talking for seven hours about the differences between Finland and Switzerland!" And that's when you tell him, "Or better yet, listen to me spending 20 seconds kicking your Finnish ass."

## What Place Has the Most Educational Value?

There are many different places in this world. And each place has a certain amount of educational value. Now, let me ask you this? What place has the most educational value?

  1. Princeton

  2. The Guggenheim

  3. The coach section on a Spirit airlines plane

The correct answer is c. Because when you fly coach on Spirit airlines, you really learn a lot about people. I mean, I guess any airline will do. But Spirit is best for educational purposes. The point is, get on a plane. When you're on a plane, you learn plenty of nifty things about people.

For instance, you learn how some people think that their personal beverage preference is a very significant matter. I mean, you're on a plane, the flight attendant rolls her cart up to your section, and she asks the gentleman sitting next to you what he wants to drink. He says, "Can I have a Coke?" She replies, "We have Pepsi." And then this guy, he doesn't take that too well. He acts like he asked for a glass of slightly chilled 1953 Dom Perignon, and the flight attendant offered him a popsicle made from the urine of two dirty donkeys and three pregnant rhinoceroses. In other words, this man is very pro-Coke and anti-Pepsi. Excessively so. He makes too much of a distinction between those two colas. He tells the flight attendant, "Hm. You have Pepsi instead of Coke. Very interesting. I'm just wondering—is this airline unaware that Coke is a delicious and refreshing beverage? I've been drinking Coke for 28 years straight. As opposed to that concoction known as Pepsi, which I tried 28 years ago, and it had the aftertaste of Windex. That's not really the type of flavor I want to line my mouth with. It's the type of flavor I want to wash my glass with."

When you're on a plane, you don't just hear safety announcements from the flight attendants. You also hear intricate beverage preference announcements from passengers. And then you got these other people, they make announcements concerning their nut allergies. As soon as the flight attendants start handing out peanut bags, one of the passengers tells you and the other people nearby, "Everyone. I just want you to know that if you open a peanut bag and the peanut residue gets in the air, the palmitoyloleoylphosphatidylethanolamine from the peanut's surface will ungregariously intermingle with the califragilistic in my lungs and the ashketchum in my spleen, and the way my allergy works is, when I inhale peanut dust, it makes my elbows itch profusely, and it also makes me turn into a vampire who has a tendency to assault Asian people and suck their blood."

So you're sitting on the plane, you got the Coca Cola aficionado to your right, you got the peanut allergy vampire across the aisle.

And then there's this other guy sitting next to you on your left, and he lives according to a certain motto. And the motto is not Carnegie-Mellon University's "My Heart Is In The Work," or Apple's "Think Different," or Dunedin's "Following in the Footsteps of Our Forefathers," or the Marine Corps's "Always Faithful," or the FFA's "Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve," or Will Smith's "Gotta Get Jiggy With It." This passenger sitting next to you, his motto is not like any of those. His motto is, "I have absolutely no standards for appropriate public behavior. I believe in pure, unadulterated mayhem. When I'm in public, I just do whatever, and I amplify that whatever by a hundred." Shortly after takeoff, this person unties his shoelaces, he takes off his Timberland boots, he takes off his Lacoste socks, and he uses his toes to play the game "this little piggy."

Then there's this other person sitting behind you, and he seems to think he's next to a bodhi tree. In other words, he sits lotus style on the plane, and he meditates. He's a devoted and serious meditator. He does the meditation that involves chanting the same word over and over again for 45 minutes straight. And you tell him, "Excuse me, sir. I know that 'popalum chuffney' is a fantastic term to use for transcendental meditation. And I'm sure you're currently on the gung ho path to stage five nirvanic namaste enlightenment. But let me just contribute this one remark to the process, if I may. Allow me to get this one statement into your ears for a second. And here it is. If you don't stop repeating 'popalum chuffney' right now, I'm gonna take all ten little piggies of the guy next to me, and they're not gonna go to the market. I'm gonna shove them right in your freaking mouth!"

People really behave inappropriately on a plane. What about those two 50 year old women in front of you who have a somewhat high volume private conversation about their sons' fiancés? They just go ahead and say anything and everything including the kitchen sink, and they do it right there in the middle of a Boeing 757, within ears' distance of you and numerous other strangers. One woman says, "I don't know what it is. For some reason, Alec is intent on marrying his gold digging, tight dress wearing, tramp stamp having, thigh gap flaunting, posey flosey of a girlfriend." And then the other woman replies, "Your son's gold digger is no match for my son's gold digger. My son is dating an Instagram model who's pure trash. I might hire a hitman to kill her." At that point I tell her, "I might hire a hitman to kill _you_."

So, yeah. On every plane, there are plenty of people doing and saying some outrageous things. And then there are these other people, and they're observing all of it, and they're constantly rolling their eyes and chuffing and nonverbally scoffing and harrumphing at everything. These guys are the ones who piss me off the most. At some point during their eye rolling marathon, I interrupt them and remark, "Hey buddy! We're halfway into a 22 hour flight to Sydney, Australia. You've spent 11 straight hours being annoyed by the other passengers, and expressing your outrage through your facial expressions and various exhalations. Maybe at this point in the flight, you should find another hobby to occupy yourself with. Have you ever heard of sudoku? Numbers and boxes. Put some numbers in the boxes, and stop rolling your damn eyes."

I say that. Although to be honest, you know who else pisses me off on a plane? The people who spend too much time working on sudoku puzzles. Are you familiar with these individuals? You got this guy, he's just sitting there staring at those boxes and numbers, he keeps that up for hours and hours, his eyes start getting extremely red and watery, and he absolutely, positively refuses to look away from that puzzle for even half a second. At that point, what I do is, I pick up my bag of peanuts, and I launch it at that guy's face. I hit him smack dab on the forehead. And I tell him, "Yeah. I'm not allowed to open my bag of peanuts, on account of the peanut allergy guy. So I made good use of the peanut bag, and I threw it at your face to get you to take a break from those damn numbers and boxes!"

# People

##  Family

If you just sit around and observe your family members, you can easily build an argument that all of them are nutcases. I'm not saying they _are_ nutcases. But there are certain things they do that clearly point in that direction.

So, let's say you live at home with your mother, father, brother, and sister. You observe them, and you think, "Look at that dad character. He's been arguing all day with Verizon over a $5 fee. He's the same guy who makes $140 an hour working as an anger management therapist—but he's more than willing to spend his free time waging a three hour war over $5 in phone charges. And for some reason, his argument keeps on mentioning Alexander Graham Bell and Watson holding two paper cups and a string. That's my father. And then there's that mom person. She's making way too much potato salad. She has two jars of Hellman's out and active, and she's in the process of making several gallons of this food known as potato salad. I guess she's doing that just in case an impromptu 50 person picnic breaks out in our backyard. And then there's my brother—the guy who's developed a slight Cuban accent, because he watches the movie _Scarface_ three times a day. He works at TJ Maxx, but he acts like he deals in yayo. And then there's my sister. She's got about 500 different creams in the bathroom, spanning every brand and every category of product there is. Aveeno, Elta MD, Erno Laszlo, Pure Biology, NYX, Neutrogena; controlling lotion, skin supplement sleep mask, marble treatment repair balm, exfoliating skin serum cleansing oil, detoxifying monopolizing foaming moisturizer, antioxidizing hypothesizing non-foaming remoisturizer. How could one woman possibly require that much maintenance? The Empire State Building doesn't need that much maintenance."

In your day-today life, you learn about your parents and siblings. And then you got your other relatives. You learn about them mainly on one day every year. There's a deluxe cornucopia of learning opportunities on that day. The opportunities for learning about your family are fantastically cornocopiant on the fourth Thursday of November, a.k.a. Thanksgiving. You really pick up a lot of good info about your family. Because of three elements. 1—alcohol, 2—tryptophan, and 3—Thanksgivingholidayness. People drink the first element, they eat the second one, and they inhale the third one. Those three elements combine to really alter people's state of consciousness, thereby generating absurdly low levels of viscosity, and amazingly high levels of looseness and unfilteration.

Do you want to know what Uncle Bernie thinks of Uncle Stu? Just go ahead and ask him on Thanksgiving. Just say, "Uncle Bernie. I want to know your opinion of Uncle Stu." And then Uncle Bernie will reply, "Let me tell you something about that jackscallion rat bastard you call Uncle Stu. Every time I get divorced, this Uncle Stu character immediately tries to sleep with my new ex-wife."

Those are some of the illuminating and emphatic statements delivered to you by Uncle Bernie on Thanksgiving. Then an hour later, another person with low viscosity starts discussing a different theme with you. I mean, you're having a fairly casual and benign conversation with your second cousin's husband—some guy you hardly even know—and just out of nowhere, he starts telling you his detailed plan of how he's gonna rob a Wells Fargo next Tuesday. He's like, "Wow. That turkey was delicious. And cranberry sauce. Good tartness. Let me ask you something. If hypothetically, you were to rob a bank on Fairfax and 4th Street, what route would you take during the getaway? I'm talking about on a Tuesday at 12:35, while I'm in the passenger seat, and my friend Murray the Butcher is driving a Subaru WRX with a fake license plate."

What about those people in your family that you don't see on Thanksgiving, and you don't even meet until later in life? You make discoveries when you're well past the stage of childhood and adolescence. Isn't that fun? Your parents just casually throw in some info on these people.

You're 23, you and your mom are talking about planting stuff in the backyard—and then she says, "You know, we should ask your great grandmother about this. She knows a lot about this kind of stuff." You reply, "I have a great grandmother?" "Yeah. My grandmother. You've never met her before. She lives about an hour from here, in Glendale. She's the Guinness World Record holder for bonsai trees. She's planted over 20,000 of them." "Bonsai trees?" "Mm Hm. By the way—she's from Japan, and you're one-eighth Japanese." And then you say, "Well. Thanks for that info, mom. What should I do now? How about I crack open a bottle of Asahi, and I declare allegiance to Emperor Akihito?"

Then five years later, you discover someone new on your father's side of the family—a side that's not Japanese at all, and is extremely redneck. You're at a large family barbecue, and your father introduces you to a mustached man with a Confederate flag tattoo on his stomach. "This is your second cousin, Jasper." And then you tell Jasper, "That is a fantastic tattoo. You know, it's a good thing you're not wearing a shirt. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to see full visual and artistic evidence of your love for Jefferson Davis." Then you have a conversation with your newly discovered second cousin. You ask him, "So, what do you do for a living, Jasper?" And he says, "Well. Right now, I'm trying to restart the Confederacy." "Oh really? And how do you go about restarting a Confederacy?" "I watch _The Dukes of Hazzard_. That's step one. And step two is, I become the governor of Alabama, I get a tattoo on my neck that says 'The South Will Rise Again,' and then I go on World Wrestling Television and I challenge the Yankee President of America to a steel cage match."

By the way—if you want to meet all of your cousins, here's the best way to do it. Play the lottery, and win the Mega Millions or Powerball jackpot. The day after you do, a new cousin will show up at your door every hour. At 6:30, some guy wearing a cape and yoga pants will ring your doorbell and say, "Hey, buddy. I was just in the neighborhood. I thought I'd drop by, and maybe play some Chutes and Ladders with you." You'll tell him, "Uh. Who are you?" "I'm your cousin, Gargalax. Gargalax Agajainian the Third. Most people call me CW." "How am I related to you?" "We have the same great great great great great great grandparents. We're fourth cousins. By the way—can I borrow $200,000? I need to buy a hamburger. I'll pay you back tomorrow." "Are you gonna pay me back _before_ you kill me, or _after_?" "After."

## My Three Groups of Friends

I mentioned earlier in this book that I'm the kind of person who likes diversity. I really go out of my way to come across it. Most people don't.

Let me ask you something. Which one of these statements applies best to you?

  1. I make new friends primarily through my existing friends.

  2. I make new friends primarily by talking to strangers on the street.

If you said "a," you're not maximizing your diversity. You rely on the referral system—and that system is not especially conducive to diversity.

As for me, I go for an approach that's VCD—Very Conducive to Diversity. I don't rely on referrals. I rely 100% on non-referrals.

Here's a good example of how I run my ship when it comes to social circles and the potential acquisition of new friends. If my friend Taylor Swift introduces me to her friend Katy Perry, do you know what I do? I kick Katy Perry in the stomach. And then I immediately start talking to a stranger on the street. Because who the hell is this Katy Perry person that I'm all of a sudden supposed to know, just because the two of us are both friends with Taylor Swift?

Actually, that's not the best example. Let me give you another one. If my friend Phil introduces me to his friend Peyton, do you know what I do? I kick Peyton in the stomach. And then I immediately start talking to a stranger on the street. Because who the hell is this Peyton guy that I'm all of a sudden supposed to know, just because the two of us are both friends with Phil? I don't want to know Phil's friend Peyton. If I start befriending all of Phil's friends, you know what that means? That means I live in Philville. And by the way—let's keep in mind that Phil is a freaking moron. You think I want Phil filtering my social circle? Phil's a fun guy and all—but Philville is a place to visit, and not live.

If you want diversity in your life, here's a good way to achieve that. Don't meet so many people through Phil.

And here's another diversity tip. Don't just have one group of friends. Have a few completely different groups of friends. Have those different groups, and don't mix them at all. I have groups A, B, and C. And I go out of my way to not introduce people from one group to people from any other group.

One time I was out on the street with group C, and I saw two guys from group B walking towards me. You know what I did? I got the hideehoheck right out of dodge. As in, I told the group I was with, "You know what? I just realized that I'm 14 pounds overweight. I'm gonna go for a jog." And I just started running. I ran the bajonkers out of there. That was really my only option. Because otherwise, I would've had to say hi to the members of group B and then introduce them to group C. And by the way—group C consists mostly of people who have master's and doctorate degrees, and group B consists mostly of people who kill other people for fun. I'm friends with both of those groups, and I don't mix them.

As you can tell, I'm very dedicated to making diversity my dominant social theme. Here's how dedicated I am to that goal. I financially diversify my friendship portfolio. As in, my different groups of friends are on completely different income levels.

I have one friend who spent $15,000 on the flowers at his wedding. I have another friend who spent _$150_ on his _entire_ wedding.

Have you ever been to a $150 wedding? They're fascinating on multiple levels. Here's the best way to describe my friend's $150 wedding. You've heard of a ghetto wedding? Well, my friend's wedding was not quite up to the ghetto standard. This wedding didn't really have enough sophistication in order to be classified as "ghetto." If Oscar the Grouch had been invited to my friend's wedding, he would've gone there, taken one look at the environment and proceedings, and said, "Hell no! This wedding is too trashy—even for me. I prefer the inside of an actual trash bin."

Let me describe my friend's wedding in greater detail.

First of all, the wedding was held in the groom's parents' backyard—and in that backyard, there were various items of semi-wet clothing hanging on a clothesline. Moist laundry was in attendance right there at a summer wedding. I turned to my friend the groom, and I told him, "You know how they say, 'Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue?' Well—those items are supposed to be on the bride. They're not supposed to be on a clothesline ten feet away from the bride."

There was an active clothesline at the wedding. And there was also an official photographer. That job was handled by none other than the groom's drunk 16 year old nephew. And by drunk, I mean _violently_ drunk. When someone didn't smile for the pictures he was taking, he didn't react with an attitude of, "How delightful. Some people smile, and some people don't. Vive la différence." The photographer didn't really have that kind of attitude. Instead, he forced people to smile. At one point he told someone, "Hey! I want to see some jubilance on your face, asshole! This is a wedding. Let's see some jubilation! If you don't jubilate, I'm gonna choke you with something borrowed, and I'm gonna turn your face into something blue!"

Yes. As you might imagine, the event was quite jubilant. The photographer saw to it that it was. The event was jubilant. And it was also adequately hydrated, thanks to the open bar. This bar consisted of six very large metal buckets filled with two drinks. One drink was Bud Light, which apparently the photographer drank about a half gallon of. And the other drink was a truly delectable beverage by the name of "Great Value Dr. Thunder."

Now, I don't know too much about this particular soda—but I will say this. I don't think it got its doctorate degree at a prestigious university. I mean, I'll give the soda some credit. It is a great value—make no mistake about that. It lives up to the Great Value title. But I'm a little dubious when it comes to the Doctor title. I don't think it's a graduate of an accredited institution, like Harvard Medical Soda School.

I guess the organizers of the wedding didn't want to spend an extra seven cents per can on a name brand medically-themed soft drink, like Dr. Pepper. If I asked them for their views on the matter, they would've told me, "Dr. Pepper is what you serve at one of those big budget affairs, like when my cousin Joe had a wedding, and there was no clothesline in the backyard. That was a $375 wedding. This is a $150 wedding. Which means you gotta go with Walmart exclusive products that say the word 'value' on them."

At my friend's wedding, the beverages were very low budget. And the minister was even lower budget. He didn't do that expensive "dearly beloved" thing, with all the bells and whistles. Instead, he just mozied on over to the bride and groom and said, "Marriage. Yes or no?" The groom replied, "Yes." The bride also said, "Yes." And then the minister told them, "Okay. You're married. I'm gonna go now—'cause you broke bastards are only paying me $12 and a six pack of Great Value Dr. Thunder."

And here's what happened after the ceremony. They served us a meal. We each got two slices of Wonder Bread, one slice of Great Value Dr. Lightning Monterey Jack cheese, and two packets of ketchup stolen from a Fatburger restaurant. And there were no napkins. Everyone just wiped their hands on the bride's dress. It was made of paper towels. She was wrapped in it, like a mummy.

Okay. I exaggerated a little bit in those last two paragraphs. But everything else in here is true.

## Stereotypical Poor People and Rich People

Being that I have different groups of friends on different income levels, I know a little something about the differences between rich people and poor people. Here's the main one.

Rich people are very star-oriented. And no, I don't mean they use telescopes and study astronomy. I mean they're very concerned with how many stars a hotel has. If you suggest to a rich guy that he should stay at a two and a half star hotel, he'll act like you just slapped his mother in the face two and a half times. Rich people don't give much leeway when it comes to matters pertaining to hotel selection. They feel like if they stay at a Holiday Inn, their social status will be lowered to "common peasant who subsists on a diet of taters and Twinkies." If you so much as mention Holiday Inn to a rich guy, he'll say, "Do I look like a tater eater to you?! I'll have you know that I only stay at five star hotels, and I only eat five star food, and I only attend five star concerts, and my dog is a five star Yorkshire Terrier, and I clean up after him using five star pooper scoopers."

My point is, rich people major in a subject I refer to as "MSG." And no, I don't mean Madison Square Garden, nor am I referring to monosodium glutamate. I'm talking about Maximization of Stars, especially while Gallivanting.

As for poor people, they eat copious amounts of monosodium glutamate. Furthermore, when they gallivant, they don't maximize stars. For poor people, any stars will do. Five stars, three stars, half a star. They act like a Holiday Inn is basically the Waldorf Astoria. "This is very glamorous! After all, we're out of the house, and there's a loud ice machine located ten feet from our room!"

Poor people and rich people have much different vacation standards and protocols. And furthermore, for some reason, poor people usually have a better time at the Holiday Inn than rich people do at the Waldorf Astoria. Poor people have a freaking ball on their low budget vacation. Watch them. They do the double Dougie dance with frosting, they drink Popov vodka and Malort, and they have fascinating conversations with fascinating insane people that they just encountered. They will literally just pull in some person right off of the street, pour cheap liquor on his head, and then form a Soul Train line with that guy. A poor person's vacation is loaded with extremely boisterous activities like that, one right after the other. Poor people are into MBG: Maximization of Boisterousness, especially while Gallivanting." They have plenty of boisterousness going on when they're on vacation—and they do pretty much the same thing when they're not on vacation.

Poor people are generally very good at knowing how to have fun. As opposed to rich people, most of whom are awful at that.

When a rich person is on vacation, he spends most of his time watching cable news in his hotel room, or sitting in a restaurant and eating a $174 plate of West Australian baroque wild oyster marrow, engulfed in a wagyu scruyu Arctic Ocean daguerreo that was licked carefully by a schizophrenic bluefin tuna and coated and menstruated by a Pythagorean tri-truffle ostrich kidney beluga squid ink fois gras brioche el chapeaulin coloradeux.

And here's a very popular activity for rich people when they're not on vacation. Let me ask you this. Have you ever seen a rich person sitting in his home? He spends hours just staring at his living room furniture. He's formulating plans. Plans on how to upgrade the furniture, so he can make his home look more upscale.

Do you think poor people participate in such an activity? Poor people are not exactly focused on their furniture's level of elegance and luxury. A poor person will keep the same sofa in his living room for 25 years—and every few months, he'll take a piss on it. And then he'll do the Dougie dance.

The moral of the story is, rich people seldom really have a particularly good time doing anything.

Now, that being said, there's one rich guy who generally has a fantastic time being rich. We all know this man. We've seen this man in action quite a bit. And his name is Jack Nicholson.

So, here's the other moral of the story. A lot of people are good at getting rich—but Jack Nicholson is one of the few people who are good at _being_ rich.

I really support Jack Nicholson's wealthy lifestyle. I enjoy watching him be rich almost as much as he enjoys being rich. You know what? I'm gonna become a version of Robin Hood who redistributes wealth in a manner that fits the theme of this chapter. In other words, I'm gonna steal from the rich and the poor, and give everything to Jack Nicholson.

## And the Award for Best Actor Goes To...

Who's the greatest actor of all time?

  1. Jack Nicholson

  2. Al Pacino

  3. Denzel Washington

  4. Tom Hanks

  5. Marlon Brando

  6. Clint Eastwood

  7. Robert De Niro

  8. someone else

To me, it's h—someone else. Don't get me wrong. All those other guys are great actors. But I want to nominate someone who usually isn't in the discussion. And I think my opinion warrants some major attention and consideration. After all—I really appreciate great acting. I'm an acting connoisseur of the highest caliber. When I connoisseu acting, my connoisseuance has a peerless level of connoisseuancy. If I nominate someone for best actor, you can take it to the bank that the nominated person is a phenomenal actor. So here we go. Let me give you my brilliant nomination.

I think the greatest actor of all time is the one who played Fred on _I Love Lucy_. He was a truly incredible actor. For two reasons. One—he wore his pants 20 inches above his waist. And two—he managed to make Fred likable to the audience. What other actor could make Fred a likable character? I mean, let's consider what kind of behavior Fred brings to the table. In the typical episode of _I Love Lucy_ , here's what Fred does. He plays cards, he calls Ethel fat, he does a song and dance number from the year 1873, he smokes cigarettes, he gets into an altercation with Ricky and calls him a loudmouthed Latin lunatic, he buys a discount pair of pants for three nickels, he puts on the pants, and he basically pulls up the pants to infinity and beyond.

And the entire time you're watching the episode, you like Fred! It's because of the genius of that actor. Could any other actor pull that off? Of course not! Forget about it! Put anyone else on the planet in that role, whether it's Hanks or De Niro or Nicholson or Eastwood—and once you see that actor insulting people and fighting foreigners and doing a vaudevillian song and dance, you'll think, "What's with this freaking guy Fred?! Not only is he an insufferable asshole, he's also mentally ill. I'm gonna change the channel and watch Andy Griffith." That's what would happen with any other actor in that role. But the guy who played Fred—he made it all work perfectly. His acting was really good. It was _too_ good. Back when the show ran, people called up CBS all the time, and they said, "Change the name of the show! Change it from _I Love Lucy_ to _I Love Fred_!"

## Who Are Three Game Show Hosts Who've Never Been in My Kitchen?

6,427. That's how many episodes of Wheel of Fortune Pat Sajak has hosted. Which begs the following question. What would compel a man to host 6,427 episodes of Wheel of Fortune? Which one of the following do you think it is?

  1. a very intense love for selling vowels

  2. boredom

  3. free Chiquita bananas in the dressing room

  4. a salary of $15 million a year

I'm pretty sure it's d.

Here's how I would start a Wikipedia article about Pat Sajak. "Pat Sajak (born Patrick Leonard Sajdak; October 26, 1946) makes $15 million a year, he's been hosting the same game show for four decades, and his life is completely meaningless."

Let me put it this way. It's common knowledge that if someone has been hosting Wheel of Fortune for more than 1,000 episodes, that means he has the most meaningless life in the world. Therefore, Pat Sajak has the most meaningless life in the world. He's in a tie with Vanna White—the person whose only function on Wheel of Fortune is to be adequately blonde and adequately braindead. "Vanna White (born Vanna Marie Rosich; February 18, 1957) makes $8 million a year, she's been working at the same game show for three and a half decades, and her only function on that show is to be adequately blonde and adequately braindead."

I wouldn't last too long as the host of Wheel of Fortune. I don't think I would. Two episodes into it, I'd say, "Okay. I have an idea. How about me, Vanna, the contestants, and our audience—we all head on down to the Jeopardy studio, and we beat the living hell out of everyone there? I'll take on Alex—and Vanna, you can go after Johnny. You can finally make yourself useful, Vanna. Take off your high heels, and use them to hit Johnny in the head."

This Johnny person is a fascinating character. You know Johnny, right? He's the guy whose job is to say, "This is Jeopardy!" That's pretty much it. He says "This is Jeopardy," he introduces the contestants and Alex Trebek, and then he probably takes off his shirt and spends the rest of the episode rubbing coconut oil all over his luscious body.

Johnny is the MVP of Jeopardy. If Johnny doesn't do the announcing and they bring in a backup announcer, the TV ratings will go down 98%. As soon as some other guy announces, "This is Jeopardy!" millions of viewers will say, "This is horsecrap! Forget Jeopardy. I'm gonna watch The Weather Channel."

Johnny is really something. As for Alex Trebek, he's basically a scumbag. He is. He needs to spend a few hours with the Dalai Lama in order to gain some new perspective in life. He could use a heavy dose of Tibetan tranquility. And if he doesn't go to Tibet, he should at least take a couple of American chill pills. The point is, this person needs a better attitude.

I mean, have you watched the way Alex Trebek behaves on Jeopardy? When a contestant gets something wrong, Alex basically strikes down upon him with great vengeance and furious anger, as if the show is directed by Quentin Tarantino. Alex unloads on the contestant in an extremely condescending manner. He says something like, "No. That's incorrect, Ken. The French King who invented French fries was not Louis the Eleventh, you moron. He was Charles the Seventh. You got the name and number wrong. Both."

Calm down, Alex. Not everyone can be an expert on French Kings. You're not even an expert on French Kings. You're just some guy who has all of Jeopardy's questions and answers handed to him by the show's writers.

Alex Trebek doesn't exactly possess 5000 gigabytes of encyclopedic data in his brain—okay? Welcome to Hollywood. Alex is Canadian—but he's a Canadian who works in Hollywood and sticks to the script. It's like Shakespeare so brilliantly pointed out: "All of Hollywood's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players, including and especially Alex Trebek, who's just an actor on a TV show, and he's there to create the illusion of his omniscience, when in fact, he doesn't know didley squat, nor does he know doodly squet. He has neither didley nor doodly covered." That's a direct quote from Sonnet 73. Shakespeare was so adamant about making that point, that he didn't even write it in iambic pentameter.

The point is, the TV Alex Trebek is significantly more knowledgeable than the non-TV Alex Trebek. I was watching TMZ one time, and they showed Alex at an Outback Steakhouse, trying to calculate a 15% tip on a $110 bill. He spent two minutes counting on his fingers—and he ended up with the answer $3.323. And he paid that tip in Canadian currency, even though the restaurant was miles away from Ottawa, in an extremely non-Canadian city known as Malibu.

(photo by Anders Krusberg)

Alright. You know what I think of Pat Sajak and Alex Trebek. Now let's get down to a topic that's way more significant. My stance on Steve Harvey. Here's that stance in a nutshell: Steve Harvey needs to be stopped, and possibly imprisoned, and definitely executed. I want to go on record as stating that I fully support any plan that involves a state government legally killing Steve Harvey. Every week I email the governors of California and Georgia, and I request an execution warrant for one Stephen Broderick Harvey. You should do the same thing. Explore any and all of the proper legal channels related to this fantastic goal of ours.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike Steve Harvey. And here's the main one. He changed the premise of _Family Feud_. He changed it! It used to be "family versus family." But during the Harvey administration, the show's primary objective is not to have the family versus family thing going on while banjo music plays in the background. The modern _Family Feud_ theme song is 99% less banjoey than the original version. And here's the new objective of the show. It's to have five black people stand on one side on the room while their five white opponents stand on the other side. That's not "family versus family." That's clearly "race versus race."

I'm on to this Steve Harvey guy. I know what his ambitions are. Is he trying to entertain America? Certainly not. That's just a cover. What he's really trying to do is create an America that is the exact opposite of what Martin Luther King envisioned. Dr. King talked about white and black people sitting together at the table of brotherhood. Dr. King definitely did not say, "I have a dream that every day, you'll be able to turn on channel five at 6:30, and see some loudmouthed idiot hosting a competition where it's the whites versus the blacks for $20,000 cash. My dream is for that, and for the host to overreact to everything the contestants do."

That sums it up for Steve Harvey. He's a chronic overreactor—and more importantly, he's a segregationist and a race war baiter. He should be replaced with someone who's demonstrated time and time again that he's 100% against segregation. You probably know who I'm talking about. Kanye West.

Kanye is a man who's definitely in favor of interracial relations. Love him or hate him—you have to acknowledge he's done a lot to bring the races together. I mean, he's married to an Armenian woman named Kim Kardashian, he's recorded rap songs with a Jewish guy named Drake, he's been an honorary political advisor for a white guy named Trump, he's celebrated birthdays with a person / metal object named 2 Chainz, he's discussed fashion with an Italian man named Valentino, and he's been voluntarily abducted by aliens from a wide variety of galaxies. That's Kanye's interracial resume, and it tells you how devoted he is to integration and multiculturalism.

So, here's the moral of the story. When you get onto a bus and you see white people sitting amongst black people, you're seeing what Martin Luther King worked to create. When you walk down the street and you see a black man affectionately holding hands with a white woman, you're seeing what Kanye West worked to create. When you walk into a Walmart and you see a black guy named Deontavius fighting a white guy named Billy Bob, you're seeing what Steve Harvey worked to create.

## Scrabblers

Watch two people playing Scrabble. Any two people. What is it about Scrabble that makes everyone develop a Michaeljordanesque level of intensity? Three minutes into a Scrabble game, the players are staring intently at all the letters, they're drenched in sweat, they're guzzling Gatorade and Mylanta, they're popping Adderall pills, and they're demonstrating a narrow and not-so-healthy obsession with spelling Q Z and X words like quizzify and oxyphenbutazone.

One player draws some letters out of that gray bag. And he takes a look at the letters. And he gets this angry facial expression that says, "I got two A's from the bag, and I already had two A's, and I had three E's, so now I have four A's and three E's, and I gotta spell the word aeaeaea!" A couple of rounds later, that player uses three E's to spell geese, he draws some more letters, and he gets a bunch of A's again. Now he's got five A's, one M, and one H. And at that point, he's consumed with the goal of spelling maharaja. He thinks, "As soon as I get a J, I'm gonna use that R on the board, and then maharaja my way to victory." Then his opponent spells yoga, and he challenges it. He says, "No way, bro! I hereby issue a challenge, on the grounds that yoga is a foreign word!" This guy believes that yoga is a foreign word, but maharaja isn't. As if to say, "Yoga is an Indian word. As opposed to maharaja, which is pure English. In fact, it says in the Constitution that when the pilgrims were on the Mayflower, they used the word maharaja 173 times."

How come people get so excited whenever they challenge their opponent's word in Scrabble? They feel very righteous about the whole thing. Like they're putting a stop to a very serious transgression. They act like they're boycotting buses in Montgomery, Alabama. They look at their opponent, and they basically say, "Shame on you! You think you're gonna get away with this?! Me and Dr. King and Rosa Parks will see to it that you don't. How dare you try to get 78 points off of the so-called word selfielicious!"

If you're over 35 and you play Scrabble against someone who's under 25, they actually might try to sneak in a word like selfielicious. As soon as they put down a word like that and you raise an eyebrow, they tell you, "If you want to challenge selfielicious, then go ahead and be my guest, you old goat. We'll Google selfielicious, and you'll see how every person my age says that word ten times a day." And you're sitting there drinking Mylanta and thinking, "Is this kid serious, or is he trying to pull a fast one on me?"

That's what Scrabble is like when you play against some young person. Now let's talk about what Scrabble is like when you play against an expert Scrabbler. Are you familiar with these people? Here's how it works with them. When you play Scrabble and you're sitting across from an expert player, keep in mind that this psychopath knows 123,000 different two letter words. As for you, you know 41 different two letter words—as in, the ones that people actually use. But in some horsepucky publication known as the _Oxford English Dictionary_ , there are thousands upon thousands of other two letter words. And they sound like complete and utter nonsense to all non Scrabble experts. I'm talking about words like ut, mu, and oy. Those are in the dictionary—and this opponent of yours, he has every intention of taking full advantage of that fact. He's well versed in two and three letter words that sound 100% gibberistic to you. He'll find a spot amidst all the hustle and bustle of the Scrabble board where pieces are congregated together, and he'll smugly place his letters in the middle of a bunch of other letters. And by doing so, he'll simultaneously spell one word vertically and seven different words horizontally! And then he'll say, "There we go. I spelled quothed, qat, oy, mu, jut, lum, ut, and ahi. That's 987 points." And you tell him, "What jungle language are you speaking right now? Don't be Scrabbling them kind of words at me, unless you want to step outside and settle this like men."

So this Scrabble expert, his move is to go with the classic combo of quothed qat oy mu jut lum ut ahi. And as for you, you spend most of the game salivating over the possibility of using all seven of your tiles in one word and reaching the triple word score bonus. You see "tank" on the board, you see a triple word square to the left of tank, you notice the C your possession, and you think, "Alright. I'm not here to put 2 and 2 together. I'm here to do some advanced algebraic linguistic trigonometry—as in, I'm gonna take that tank, and I'm gonna convert it to the word cantankerous!" That's your first thought. But then you stare some more at your letters. And you think, "Well. I guess I can't do cantankerous. I don't have the letter arsenal it takes to spell that word." So instead of going with the word cantankerous, you go with the word "at." And then later in the game, you get a little more sophisticated, and you spell the word "it." And then 20 minutes into the game, you spell "ox" on a double letter score. And you feel like you've really accomplished something notable. You tell your opponent, "Yeah! I just scored a ten pointer! In your face!"

## Amazon Shoppers

I am a member of an exclusive and prestigious club. Amazon Prime. I'm not some plebeian who doesn't have Prime, and is all like, "I gotta put more items in my Amazon cart in order to qualify for free shipping—and then after I do, I gotta sit around in a dirty t-shirt and flip flops for five days as I stare vacantly at my mailbox."

If you're a Prime member like me, you don't go about your online shopping in such a common, peasantlike manner. Absolutely not. You don't stare vacantly at a mailbox, nor do you go with footwear that falls under the category of "flip-flop." With Prime, your online shopping approach is Brunomaglian in nature. It's refined, advanced, high end, and sophisticated. When you go to Amazon and you have Prime status, you're armed with one click shopping and two day shipping. You go about your Amazonian business in a Prime manner. You're on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As soon as you so much as think of an item, you immediately go buy it on Amazon. You're eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast one morning, and you think, "You know what? I'm gonna order a kayak." So you go to Amazon, and you have them send you over a kayak. Even though you live in Las Vegas. For some reason, you think that a kayak has plenty of use in the desert. Then two days later, the kayak arrives. You put it in your living room. And then the next morning, you're sitting in your kayak while you're eating a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. And you think, "You know what? I'm gonna order a polo mallet and a suit of armor. Just in case I feel like getting on a horse and playing polo while I'm dressed like a medieval knight."

That's how you shop as an Amazon Prime member. You have easy access to 500 million different products—so you just start buying all those products. Every single one. But before you do, Amazon floods you with some truly barbaric and deranged reading material known as Amazon customer reviews. You know how that works? When you shop at Amazon, you're one click away from making any purchase. But before you make that one click, you gotta wade through a ton of reviews, and spend four hours figuring out which model of kayak is the most aquadynamic, or which brand of dental floss is coated with wax that's GMO-free and high in antioxidants.

And keep in mind that the customer reviews don't properly educate you on Amazon's products. Those reviews have a certain amount of educational value—and that amount is zero. Nobody's really learning anything from customer reviews. You know why? Because for some reason, all Amazon customer reviews are written by people who are mentally unstable. I know. Because I've read the reviews. And I've also written some of them. And here's the deal with those things. Whenever you write reviews at Amazon, you get the sensation that your veins are full of Red Bull and Hennessey. You're in an altered state of consciousness, and you start typing one ludicrous thing after another. I've done it, and so has everyone else on that site.

Here's an Amazon review for Dixon-Ticonderoga pencils. "I'm a teacher, and so I know first hand the important quality difference between good pencils (like Ticonderoga) and cheap knock-offs. Although the graphic on this page shows actual Ticonderoga pencils, THAT IS NOT WHAT THEY SENT. What I received was a box of 144 #2 Dixon pencils—not TICONDEROGA."

What on earth is that person talking about? He's emphasizing the distinction between Dixon and Ticonderoga! Have you ever heard anyone emphasize that distinction? Have you ever heard anyone _make_ that distinction? No! The company is Dixon-Ticonderoga. End of story. Distinguishing between Dixon and Ticonderoga would be like distinguishing between Abercrombie and Fitch, or Louis and Vuitton, or Mountain and Dew, or Black and Decker, or Ben and Jerry. As in, you leave a review for Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, and you say, "I tried one spoonful of this, and I immediately spit it out and washed my mouth with industrial strength Listerine. I mean, as soon as I tasted the ice cream, I could tell that it was Ben's, but not Jerry's. I don't trust that Ben character to concoct any of my frozen treats. I'm all about Jerry. Jerry is an ice cream grandmaster. Ben is a goofball nitwit who thinks ice cream is made out of ketchup and mustard."

That's the kind of stuff you read at Amazon. And you also read tons of reviews where some guy makes it abundantly clear that even though he's giving an item one star, his actual intention is to give it zero stars. There are literally over one million Amazon reviews that carry that central theme. They say something like, "If I could give this book zero stars, I would. If I could put six steak knives through the author's liver, I would. If I could open the passenger door of the author's Maserati and urinate in the glove compartment, I would. If I could play Duck Duck Goose with the author's sister and put her in the mosh pit and taze her with 53,000 volts of electricity, I would."

What a fantastic review.

You know what? I'm done with Amazon. Online shopping? Bah humbug! From now on, if I want to buy something, I'm gonna get it at a mom and pop shop located 20 miles from me. As opposed to doing "convenient" online shopping, which involves purchasing a kayak right after reading 153 customer reviews, five of which mention tazing someone's sister.

## Trump Supporters and Trump Non-Supporters

I follow politics. On an advanced level. I don't follow politics the way you do. I used to. But I found a better way.

Here's my protocol. I avoid all political news on TV, the internet, radio, newspapers, and magazines. All that stuff is for amateurs. I'm a professional. I don't bother with the media. Here's what I do instead. I just start talking to people, and I have them tell me the news. That's my advanced approach for getting political news.

Let me explain how it works. You talk to one person, and he tells you something like, "This nutbar wackjob hooligan Donald Trump, this rambunctiously racist warmonger, this undemocratic dumb-dumb ding dong dictator, this foul mouthed attention addicted gluten eating glutton, this phony baloney chicken picking purveyor of propaganda, did you hear what this philandering fascist tyrant tyrannosaurus had the nerve to say yesterday?" Then that person gives you a two sentence summary of what Trump said, and he adds 38 sentences of his own commentary, including 15 swear words and one call to impeach and electrocute Mr. Trump.

Then a few hours later, you're talking to someone else, and he tells you, "President Trump, wow, he really loves his country, this hardworking straight-shooting filter-free patriot, this gung ho gallantly streaming star spangling fiscal genius, this relentless deporter of immigrants both illegal and legal, this Einstein-caliber intellectual powerhouse, did you hear the insightful, enlightening, 100% American statements that came out of his mouth yesterday?" Then he gives you his two sentence summary of what Trump said, and he adds 38 sentences of commentary, including a wide variety of insulting statements about a wide variety of CNN political pundits and their mothers.

So, there you go. Political news. A Trump supporter and a Trump non-supporter tell you what's what about what Trump said yesterday. Now that's what I call fair & balanced. You get both sides.

I love politics so much, that I insist on getting news and commentary that way. And then the following day, I request additional commentary from both of those people. Here's how I do it. This is the correct technique. I take the first person, and I take the second person, I put them together in one room, I give each of them a pair of gloves, I sit down, and I have the two people fight 12 rounds while I smoke a Nicaraguan cigar and I drink a glass of pink lemonade. Because, again, when it comes to politics, you gotta get both sides.

By the way—did you know that you can bring up President Trump in all sorts of situations, even if he has no relevance to anything? I do that all day. I don't bother making so much as a half-hearted attempt to segue into the topic. Trump is a topic that does not need a segue. I mean, here's my basic policy when it comes to segues. "When you want to bring up your favorite Hello Kitty item, you need a segue. You can't just bring the topic up out of nowhere. You can't just interrupt a conversation about LeBron James versus Michael Jordan, and say, 'I really like the tokidoki kiss lock purse. That's my favorite thing in the Hello Kitty store.' You need a segue when introducing anything Hello Kitty themed. However, you do not need a segue when it comes to Trump. You can in fact bring that topic up out of nowhere."

That's my official segue policy. So as you might imagine, here's how I do things. I'm at a dinner party, we're seated at the dinner table, one guy says, "Can you pass the potatoes?" and then I tell him, "Let's talk about President Trump! I wonder if you or anyone else at this dinner table has any opinion on what Trump said yesterday." And then of course, there's a lively debate, followed by an even livelier food fight. By the way—when I have people over for dinner, I don't serve mashed potatoes. I serve whole potatoes, all of which are undercooked so they won't be too soft. I serve semi-raw potatoes and I bring up Trump. And you know who I don't bring up? Lincoln. Because people have this tendency to agree when it comes to Lincoln. Have you noticed this? I mean, think about it. If one guy says, "I like how Lincoln freed the slaves," another guy probably isn't gonna reply, "You must be out of your damn mind! I'll have you know that I support slavery 100%, you dirty, no good, sleazeball abolitionist!"

## 306, 232, 0

Here's the main question we all have regarding politics. We've all asked this question, and no one has really answered it satisfactorily. But right now, I'm gonna give it a go. I'm gonna answer the one political question that's on the mind of everyone in America. And that one question is, "Who exactly is this Gary Johnson guy, and why does he keep on running for President?"

Here's my theory. Gary is someone who's really into the "top three" concept. He's a presidential candidate who's a little too happy about the fact that he keeps on finishing in the top three. I saw an interview of him after the 2016 election. He more or less said something like, "Yeah. It was a great race between the three of us. In fact, it was one of the greatest presidential races in US political history. It was me and Trump and Hillary, we came down the stretch, and we were basically neck-and-neck-and-neck until that photo finish at the end where Donald Trump won."

What photo finish are you talking about, Gary? You mean the one where Trump got 306 electoral votes, Clinton got 232, and you got 0? Yeah. That was a great race. Listen, Gary. You've participated in these supposedly neck-and-neck-and-neck races where your neck is not even in the same zip code as the other two necks. Now here's what you need to do. Get on your horse, and ride it right out of America. There's a country that's a much better fit for you. And it's called Canada.

Canadians are the type of people who will appreciate Gary's fantastic brand of completely illogical perseverance. They'll see him riding his horse through Saskatchewan, and they'll say to each other, "That's Gary Johnson, eh? He's a great man. After all—he runs for President, and he does it for no particularly good reason. We should put his picture on our money, right under the maple leaf, and right between the moose and Wayne Gretzky."

By the way—I've never actually examined Canadian currency, but I'm pretty sure every Canadian bill has pictures of a maple leaf, a moose, and a hockey player.

As you can tell, I don't know everything there is to know about Canadian currency. But I do know a little something about US politics. And here's the main thing I know. When it comes to presidential elections, the US has a two party system. As in, the winning candidate will be a member of party one or party two—end of story.

Now, if you live in a country with a two party system, and you run for President as a third party candidate, the only thing that could mean is that you have "third party personality disorder." The whole thing is detailed in the _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_. Not the version that most people know about. I'm talking about the version that I wrote. My _DSM_ is much more thorough than the other one. It gets into all sorts of topics. On page 14,253, it says, "Third party personality disorder (3PPD) is marked by a tendency to participate in lengthy presidential campaigns, even though you have as much a chance of becoming President as Napoleon Dynamite's Uncle Rico. If you're a third party candidate, your campaign advisors should give you one piece of advice, and one piece of advice only: 'Quit politics, and go sell tupperware out of an orange 1975 Dodge Santana. Get in the van, Gary.'"

I really want to host a Gary Johnson fundraising event for the 2020 Election. I'll let everyone there know what's going on. I'll say, "Yeah. Gary's running for President. Again. And we're raising funds. Again. And let me tell you the good thing about donating money to Gary Johnson's campaign. If you donate money to Gary Johnson's campaign, it'll really give Gary Johnson a good reason to get out of the house. And we all want that for Gary—don't we? Let's have him run for President again. Or, as an alternative, we can encourage him to sell food storage products door-to-door. I'd buy plenty of tupperware from Gary Johnson. Wouldn't you? As a tupperware salesman, Gary Johnson's specialty is selling the 24 piece set. As a presidential candidate, Gary Johnson's specialty is losing the election. He's very good at getting 0 electoral votes. Nobody can do it the way he does. Just look at Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. She loses the election, too. But she's not a _professional_ loser, the way Gary is. The Libertarian Party rules! The Green Party is for second-rate losers!"

## US Presidents, Some of Whom Are Less Filtered Than Others

Let's see how much you know about the 44 people who have been President of America.

Here are three quotes. Tell me which quote belongs to which President.

"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."

"After eight years as President, my only regret is that I didn't hang John C. Calhoun."

"If you have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say Kool Whip on the side, you might be a redneck."

The first quote is by John F. Kennedy.

"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind." John F. Kennedy

The second quote is by Andrew Jackson.

"After eight years as President, my only regret is that I didn't hang John C. Calhoun." Andrew Jackson

And the third quote is by Jeff Foxworthy.

(photo by Midwest Communications)

"If you have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say Kool Whip on the side, you might be a redneck." Jeff Foxworthy

Jeff Foxworthy has never been President—but I figured I'd throw his quote in the mix, just to keep you on your toes.

Anyways, here are three more quotes by Presidents. See if you can figure out which quote belongs to which President.

"Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory."

"President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!"

"President Obama, when he became president, he didn't know anything. This guy didn't know a thing. And honestly, today he knows less. Today, he knows less. He has done a terrible job."

Believe it or not, all three of those quotes are by the same President. And no, I don't mean Dwight D. Eisenhower. I mean Donald J. Trump.

Trump is very unfiltered. He's the second most unfiltered President in US history. Number one is Andrew Jackson. Let's talk about how unfiltered that man was. He's the one who said, "After eight years as President, my only regret is that I didn't hang John C. Calhoun." Apparently, Andrew Jackson was successful as a President, but unsuccessful in his quest to kill John C. Calhoun. When I first read that quote, I figured John C. Calhoun was a 19th century terrorist who was hiding in a cave in Afghanistan. But then I did some research on Wikipedia. And it turns out that John C. Calhoun was not a Middle Eastern terrorist. He was Andrew Jackson's Vice President.

So, there you go. That should give you an indication of how Andrew Jackson was more unfiltered than Donald Trump. Jackson was 100% unfiltered. Trump is only 99% unfiltered. Trump has never actually stated that he wants to hang other US politicians. He _implies_ that three or four times a day—but he's never actually said it.

Trump filters himself. But Andrew Jackson didn't believe in filters at all. I wonder what Andrew Jackson's State of the Union Addresses were like. I'll bet he said stuff like, "The economy is good. But that's not what I want to focus on right now. Let me ask you this. You see that sleazebucket politician sitting right next to me? I'm currently pushing for legislation that will give me the legal right to hang him. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, 'He's the Vice President. Why do you want to hang the Vice President?' Well. I got two reasons. One—I'm _hoping_ for a new Vice President. And two—I want to _change_ this one. Hope. Change. I'm Andrew Jackson, and I believe in Hope and Change. We can kill Vice President Calhoun. Yes we can!"

I really like Andrew Jackson's version of Hope and Change and Yes We Can. Nowadays, whenever I vote, I vote for Andrew Jackson. 100% of the time. I don't even care what I'm voting for. President. Andrew Jackson. Governor. Andrew Jackson. Prop 24. Andrew Jackson. Dancing with the Stars. Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson is a fantastic fit for Dancing with the Stars. The host says, "Andrew. The judges gave you a 27 for your cha cha. You think that was the right score?" And then Andrew replies, "Well. All I can say is that I'm satisfied with my cha cha performance. My only regret is that I didn't murder Julianne Hough with a steak knife."

## Her Imperial Majesty Empress Kim Kardashian and Mr. Barack Obama

Kim Kardashian is a girl who has a job. And the primary requirements of that job are to wear shoes and wear clothes and go to clubs and say hi to people and take selfies and occasionally invent a new variation of poses like the duck face or the fish gape or the Pennsylvanian yak tongue.

By the way—Kim has a family, in case you didn't know that. Most people _do_ know that. In fact, 200 million Americans are thoroughly familiar with Kim's family—and 70 million of them can thoroughly describe the history of Kylie Jenner's waist and lips and chest and hips.

The point is, Kim Kardashian is so famous, that she's made every member of her family famous by extension. Kim is bona fide royalty. Unlike our nation's current and former Presidents. They don't have the kind of fame that Kim does. They don't have fame that extends so much to their family members. That's reserved for royalty like Kim, as opposed to mere leaders of the free world. And I have the data to back up my theory. Khloe Kardashian is an A-list celebrity. Kylie Jenner is an A-list celebrity. Kris Jenner is an A-list celebrity. Tiffany Trump is a C-list celebrity. Sasha Obama is a C-list celebrity. Roger Clinton is a D-list celebrity. And Barack Obama's brother is a D-list baggage handler. Nobody even knows his name. Whenever a paparazzi photographer sees him, the photographer says, "Get out of the way! I'm trying to take 300 pictures of Kim Kardashian's second cousin, Jehoshaphat Kardashian." Then Obama's brother tells the photographer, "But I am Barack Obama's brother." "Good! After I'm done snapping these shots of Jehoshaphat, remind me to kick your ass for being a worthless nobody! Go back to Kenya before we take you down to the E! Network studios and waterboard you!"

I think we should put Obama's brother on an episode of that Kardashian reality show. He needs the money. Let's make him part of the Kardashian economy. It's an economy that's thriving in an extremely robust manner. Did you know that the average Kardashian sister makes $61.3 million a year? That means the starting five of the Kardashians makes more money than the starting five of the Golden State Warriors. What a team those Kardashian girls make. I can just hear Chick Hearn announcing, "Kourtney gets the rebound, she passes the ball to Kendall, Kendall dribbles across the court and dishes the ball to Khloe, Khloe tosses it behind the back to Kylie, Kylie alley-oops it to Kim—and slam dunk, Kim Kardashian! Unbelievable! She's 5'3" and wearing a tight dress—and she managed to fly right over Kevin Durant."

So you got these five sisters, and they're making big money, and they're plastered all over TV and the rest of the media. Now, here's how I run my life when it comes to them. I limit myself to knowing about Kim, and that's it. I don't accumulate knowledge on the other four. I don't go to Twitter and find out what flavor bubble gum Kylie chewed today. I don't know anything about Kylie, or her non-Kim sisters. You know why? Because the Buddha taught me about the concept of moderation. The Buddha said, "Follow the path of moderation. Eat the correct amount of food. Drink the correct amount of water. Follow the correct number of Kardashians. As in, one. You pick one Kardashian, and you call it a day. As for the other four, you should hardly know the difference between them."

I agree with the Buddha. And let me also say this. The more you know about the difference between Kendall and Kylie or Khloe and Kourtney, the more your mind is controlled by the Illuminati. That's how it works, boys and girls. If you can thoroughly distinguish between all five Kardashian sisters, that's a clear sign that you need to remove yourself from Illuminati influences, and spend three months growing sorghum in Oklahoma. A season of Oklahoman sorghum farming is the exact opposite of browsing through Kylie's Twitter and Kendall's Instagram.

## Jeff Bezos

Some people like to watch races where some guy runs, and some other guys run, and all the guys see who runs faster. I like those races. But here's what I like even more. Those competitions where some guy makes money, and some other guys make money, and all the guys see who makes more money.

That's one of the most common activities out there. It's considerably more common than the 200 meter dash. Tyson Gay, Usain Bolt, and several thousand other people have devoted themselves year in and year out to the 200 meter dash. But billions of people devote themselves year in and year out to making more money than other people.

Richness races attract massive numbers of participants. Including Jeff Bezos. He's the richest person in the world. He surpassed Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, and he told them, "Eat my dust, losers!"

I'm assuming he said that to them. I don't know, though. Maybe he just sent them a greeting card. Does Hallmark make cards in that category? They should. When you go to the Hallmark Store and you're right between the Birthday and Anniversary cards, there should be a section labelled "Cards For When You Want To Tell Someone, 'You Used To Be Richer Than Me, But Now I'm Richer Than You, So How About You Put That In Your Damn Pipe and Smoke It, Buddy?'"

That Hallmark section would be great for Jeff Bezos. He's worth $140 billion. He's a very impressive man—no doubt about that. But you know what? Now that I think about it, Bill Gates might actually be more impressive. This Gates feller has a certain type of financial efficiency that no one is even close to matching. Let me break it down for you. Jeff Bezos is worth $140 billion, and he works 75 hours a week for Amazon. Meanwhile, Bill Gates is worth $90 billion, and he works two and a half hours a week for Microsoft. In other words, these days, Gates is a low effort multibillionaire. He's been semi-retired since 2008. He spends most of his time running his charitable foundation, adjusting his glasses, and prank calling the Apple Store and telling them that his iMac is saying it's time for an upgrade to Windows 10. Bill Gates has been more or less retired for quite some time now—and yet, his wealth keeps on increasing, and he's in second place on the net worth list, ahead of billions of people who work full time. That would be like Usain Bolt sitting by the pool all day, eating Quarter Pounders with cheese, chain smoking Cohiba Esplendidos, and getting up every few hours to do five jumping jacks—and then once every four years, he goes to the Olympics and wins the silver medal.

The point is, some people are effectively rich. If you're rich and you do it in an effective manner, here's the main way you make money: you properly hold your assets. You're an expert when it comes to skilled asset-holding. Once you got that down pat, the rest is not really a big deal. It might not even matter what your 9 to 5 or even your 7 to 11 pm activity is like. Do you get what I'm saying? I'm saying that Bill Gates can put on a yellow wife-beater and Old Navy cargo shorts, set up a lawn chair in a Chipotle parking lot, and sit around reading _Where's Waldo?_ for 16 hours a day, 365 days straight—and then on December 31st, his accountant will call him and say, "Congratulations, Bill. You made $11.3 billion this year."

It's all about having your assets make you money. In other words, it's about being effectively rich. By the way, there's no way to be effectively poor. The first law of fiscaldynamics says that money can make you money. The second law of fiscaldynamics says that brokeness cannot make you money. If you're broke and you read _Where's Waldo?_ in a Chipotle parking lot full time for 365 days straight, an accountant won't call you and say, "You made $11.3 billion this year." Instead, your ex-wife will call you and say, "You owe me alimony, asshole. How about instead of looking for Waldo all day, you look for a job at Chipotle? Make yourself useful and assemble some burritos."

But like I was saying, Jeff Bezos is richer than Bill Gates. I observed Bezos as he was closing in on Gates in 2016 and 2017. He was in second place for most of that time. Now, here's the weird thing about being the second richest person in the world. If you're the second richest person in the world, you're not really allowed to have any goal in life, aside from either (a) donating money to charity, or (b) making more money and becoming the richest person in the world. It's one or the other. You can't say, "My name is Jeff Bezos, I'm worth $87 billion, Bill Gates is worth $88 billion—and these days, I'm really focused in on learning how to ride a unicycle! And after I learn that, I'm gonna learn how to juggle. And if I really apply myself to my goals and I'm properly motivated by Tony Robbins, then maybe I'll get to a point where I can juggle three hacky sacks _while_ I'm on a unicycle. Imagine how great that would be." People will not think too highly of you if you make remarks like that. If Bezos had made that juggling-themed announcement a few years ago, people would've said, "This guy is the second richest person in the world—and he's also the number one schmuck on the planet. I think he's been smoking too much of that Amazon wacky tobacky." Then they would've gone up to Bezos and told him, "Listen, Jeffie boy. You need to put down the Prime marijuana and the hacky sacks, and devote yourself to making more money than Bill Gates, and stop hanging out with Cheech and Chong."

## Jews and Christians

You've seen a full moon. You've seen a blue moon. You've seen flip flops. You've seen moccasins. But do you know what you've never seen? A rabbi on a motorcycle. No one's ever come across a rabbi on a motorcycle. You'd think you would at some point. After all—rabbis are sometimes looking to go from one place to another. And motorcycles are an effective mode of transportation. Based on that, you'd think that a rabbi on a Kawasaki would be very common. But here's the thing about rabbis. Personalitywise, rabbis are not motorcycle people.

One time I came across a rabbi walking on the street with his wife. And near him, there was this guy getting on a Harley Davidson. The guy revved up the engine and drove away. Here's how the rabbi reacted. He turned to his wife and said, "My goodness. What a loud and hostile vehicle. You know what? I'm feeling the urge to comb my hair for ten minutes, and then purchase a nice, dependable sedan ranked at least 4 and a half stars by Consumer Reports." I mean, he didn't actually say that stuff. But I could read it all in his facial expression and body language. After seeing the Harley, he seemed very intent on purchasing a dependable sedan.

Most rabbis are like that. Christian preachers, on the other hand, tend to have a different attitude. If you give a Christian preacher a dependable sedan, he'll trade it for a Harley, a horse, and a bull.

Preachers love motorcycles and wild animals. Do you know how many rodeos Joel Osteen has been involved in? If you study the demeanor and attitude and joke telling style and belt buckle of this man, you can tell that he's an avid bullrider, and he's also a farmer who spends the majority of his farm time wrestling his most ornery hogs.

The point is, Christian preachers are lively and charismatic and rocky road, while Jewish rabbis are bookish and nerdy and vanilla.

As you can tell, I'm an expert on the differences between Jewish and Christian culture. I have a thorough and extensive knowledge of most of those differences. Here's another good example.

If you tell a Christian person that you want to convert to Christianity, here's what he'll do. He'll invite you into his home, he'll feed you oatmeal raisin cookies with Alta Dena whole milk, he'll give you a sweater and a sweatervest, and he'll introduce you to every member of his family and his church and the cast of _Leave It to Beaver_.

Meanwhile, if you tell a Jew that you want to convert to Judaism, he'll say, "So? So what? What's your point? You want to be a Jew? I want to be an astronaut. This discussion is getting us nowhere."

Christians and Jews have different attitudes towards converts. But here's the one area where the two groups diverge the most. Holiday movies.

When Christmastime comes around, Christians watch Christmas movies that feature snow and tomfoolery and cheesy sentimentality, and star actors like Macaulay Culkin and Arnold Schwarzenegger. As in, _Home Alone_ , _Jingle All the Way_ , etc.

But on Passover, what do Jews watch? They watch a movie that is set entirely in the desert, runs for 3 hours and 40 minutes, and stars Academy Award winners Yul Brynner and Charlton Heston. Do you know what movie I'm talking about? No—not _Jingle All the Matzah_. I'm talking about _The Ten Commandments._

So, here's my point. Passover films are more scripturally accurate than Christmas films. Go watch _Jingle All the Way_. Schwarzenegger's performance in that movie is quite entertaining—no doubt about that. It's gonna entertain you. But here's what it's not gonna do. It's not gonna make you more religious. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the right guy for that job. He's been in a hundred bodybuilding competitions and fifty movies, and he's never had any kind of religious effect on anyone. Arnold doesn't inspire religiosity. He inspires you to drink a protein shake, oil up your body, and make delightfully charming remarks like, "It's not a toomah!"

Jewish people are not looking to feature a lunatic like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jewish-themed cinema. You're never gonna see a Passover movie where Arnold comes down from a mountain holding two tablets, and he tells the Israelites, "Everyone—come here so I can teach you about Judaism. You see, I was in Egypt, and I looked at the Pharaoh, with his underdeveloped pectoral muscles, and I said to him, I said, 'Hasta la vista, Pharaoh.' So us Jewish people, as in me and Aaron and Joshua and Seinfeld and the other Jews, we all left Egypt with the matzah and I also brought along some whey protein, and then I climbed this mountain, I really worked my quads and my calves, I got to the top of the mountain, and now I have these tablets, and they tell you all about what thou shalt do and thou shalt not do—like, there is commandment three, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and commandment four, 'Thou shalt not kill,' and commandment five, 'Thou shalt get to the choppa!'"

## "Jack"

How is it that some people get on the nerves of everyone they come across? We all know someone who fits that description. He has a knack for aggravating everyone. And he loves it. He loves doing that.

I know someone who falls in that category 100%. Let's call him Jack. (Even though his name is Adam James Morris, and he lives at 427 Oak Street, 90853.) Let me tell you something about "Jack" (real name Adam). Jack is the type of guy who'll offend you within two minutes. Guaranteed. Or your pizza is free. I mean it. If he doesn't offend you, I will personally hand you a meat lover's pizza and a side of buffalo wings.

I know 50 people who know Jack. 37 of those people have told me that they would kill him if they had the legal right to. Two of those people are nuns.

I think you know where I'm headed with this. We need to change voting laws. Right now, you go to a polling place, and you vote for the person you want to be President. Which is fine. But you should also follow that up by voting for another thing. You should vote for the one person in the country whose ass you really want kicked. Then later you'll be watching election coverage on TV, they'll be talking about the presidential election—and you'll say, "Who cares? Who cares about the President thing? Get to the good part. I want to know whose ass is gonna get kicked. I'm rooting for 'Jack,' a.k.a. Adam James Morris."

I have the voting system worked out in detail. Here's the full procedure. Whoever gets the most votes will be put in a ring with Mike Tyson for 90 seconds. Yes, I know Tyson isn't in good shape anymore. But he's in good enough shape to fight for 90 seconds. He's still the best fighter in the world as long as the fight is scheduled for one half of one round. So, put Tyson in against the top vote getter.

By the way—the fight will be televised. But not on pay-per-view. After all—this is a governmental matter that we voted on. Which means by law, it must be televised on CSPAN. Or CSPAN2. Put it on CSPAN2, right after the show BookTV. What a programming lineup that'll be. On Saturday, CSPAN2 will start off with its usual 22 consecutive hours of BookTV—and then at 10:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, they'll show Mike Tyson attacking the person we voted for.

I drew a picture of how I think the fight will turn out. By the way—Tyson is the guy on the left who's not lying on the canvas.

## Nigerians, Englishmen, and Americans

One time I worked at a company where two of my coworkers were from Nigeria. Which, by the way, is an English speaking country—only in Nigeria, they have a whole different approach to the English language.

Let me ask you this. Have you ever tried to have a casual conversation with a Nigerian? Don't bother. Nigerian English is 100% incompatible with conversational casualness. Nigerians have no concept of what a casual conversation is.

One day I mentioned the weather to one of my Nigerian coworkers, just as casual chit chat. And he didn't exactly respond with casual chit chat. Instead, he told me, "Yes. The weather we have been experiencing lately has had a tremendously invigorating effect on my physical as well as spiritual being—for as it is said proverbially in my native country of Nigeria, a harmonious admixture of sunlight and cool breezes creates a special chemistry, a chemistry that can be analogically likened to that which results from the union of a man and woman who, when in the presence of one another, experience such a profound and meaningful effect, that they can truly be said to fall under the category of soul mates."

After he said all of that, I told him, "Buddy. Let me explain American culture to you. In America, we have casual conversations about the weather, and we make remarks like, 'This weather is good.' We don't use a high concentration of three and four syllable words, and launch into some allegory about soul mates and the profoundness of true love."

That's what I told my Nigerian coworker. I will say this, though. I have some appreciation for the Nigerian style of English. It's nice for a change of pace.

But then there's this other type of English that I'm not so fond of. It's a type of English spoken by British people. Are you familiar with British people? They speak a language called British English.

Several years ago, I worked for a company where I had a British coworker. He was very British—as in, he was new to the US, and he dressed like Mr. Bean, and he spent a substantial portion of each workday listening to BBC radio programs with commercials for kippers and Worcestershire sauce.

As you might imagine, there was a major language barrier between me and this British feller I was working with. One time he mentioned how he ordered a new dustbin. And I said, "What the hell are you talking about? What's a dustbin?" "As in, a bin for containing rubbish." "Speak American." "Dustbin. I believe you Yanks refer to it as a 'garbage can.'" "Yeah. Us Yanks have this peculiar habit of using the right words—as in, garbage can instead of dustbin." "Oh, tish tosh! Dustbin is a fantastic term. As opposed to garbage can, which is barbaric sounding."

Yeah. He had the audacity to tish tosh me and not accept the validity of my argument that American English makes sense and British English belongs in a garbage can. Then he gave me the rundown on why Englishmen say dustbin instead of adopting the American term garbage can. This is more or less what he said. I don't remember it exactly—but this is basically how it went. He told me, "It's quite simple, really. Samuel Johnson had a meeting with her majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace, and the two of them deemed the term 'garbage can' to be unpalatable to the linguistic sensibilities and terminological sanctity of any self-respecting Englishman. And thereupon, the two of them sent a royal messenger over to the Vocabular Bishop of Warwickshire, and informed him that the term 'dustbin' shall be retained without modification, in order to preserve the regal elegance and incomparable grace of the legitimate English language, which must remain entirely free of any impure foreign elements, particularly the ones originating from those American ruffians who are in the habit of shoving Big Mac hamburgers down their throats prior to going home and watching an absurd television program which showcases a bastardized variation of football that requires the athletes to abandon all sense of decency and propriety as they attempt to viciously maul one another in an effort to achieve some absurd objective that for various illogical American reasons is identified as a 'touchdown.'"

My British coworker had the nerve to say all that British nonsense into my American ears. Now, if you're a real American like me, you know what to do in those situations. You counter some guy's Britishness with massive amounts of good ol' Americanness.

That's exactly what I did. I told him, "Now you just wait a dang second buster, and hold your horses and hush your harky mouth—'cuz I'm fixing to set you straight and serve you up a bowl of verbal American buttery grits, so as you can stop talking that runny Manchester porridge dialect where more than half of the words that come out your mouth is completely out of kilter. I don't know nor do I give a rat's bootylicious patoot how y'all cricket and snooker playing British folk be running your language out there in that Parliamentary prancing European neck of the woods that you call England, but I reckon your King George's bluster is too big for his British britches, and his wife is more ornery than an alfalfa-eating wet mongoose in the middle of December. You see, over here in the Bill-of-Rights-having beer-drinking belly-belching cornbread-eating outhouse-pissing US of freaking A, we ain't too fond of hearing all that British dustbin talk, which is about as intelligible as a dented can of pinto beans on a caddywonked donkey. Now if you'll kindly refrain from flapping your lips and jibber jabbing with all your idiotic Monty Python rigamarole, maybe you can go ahead and just say what in the hell you mean by using American words that was invented by dudes who know how to speak straight and put on their pants one leg at a time and take a bunch of British teabags and crumpets and throw them suckers right into the Boston Harbor."

## Interest Promoters

"My interests should interest everyone." Some people live according to that idea. They constantly try to force you to be interested in whatever interests them. Notice how I said "force." I did not say "encourage" or "persuade" or some other category B verb that implies the person is not single-mindedly dedicated to his mission of spreading his interest. I'm talking about people who go category A all the time. They won't take no for an answer. They persevere in promoting what they're into, even if they have to annoy the hell out of you. They want you to join up with them in their interest, so the two of you can basically be blood brothers in that interest. They're a little too intent on having that kind of relationship with you and everyone else that they come into contact with.

My friend Spencer is like that. The other day, Spencer was raving about some Abraham Lincoln biography. And he offered to lend it to me. I said, "No thanks"—but I knew damn well that Spencer would follow that up with a sales pitch, and try to close the deal within two and a half hours. As soon as "no thanks" came out of my mouth, Spencer launched into his promotional spiel aimed at making me embark on a journey of Lincoln learning. He said, "I'm telling you—this is the book to read. _The New York Times_ says it's the best Lincoln biography ever. Abraham Lincoln is the most influential and important person in US history. He abolished slavery, and he wore a top hat. Everyone should read Lincoln biographies, instead of reading what Kim Kardashian tweets. Lincoln is on the five dollar bill and the penny. Kim Kardashian is not on any US currency. She's probably on the Armenian ten dollar bill. You gotta read this book..."

For fifteen minutes straight, this maniac insisted that I read an 873 page biography of Abraham Lincoln. Now, when you're in that kind of situation, what do you do? You either (a) let Spencer keep on talking about Lincoln, or (b) try to change the subject. Those two options fall under the category of "tactful approach." As for me, I don't believe in tact. Tact? What is it good for? Something. And that something is not something that I particularly care for. Tact is for people like Dale Carnegie. He's busy running around trying to win friends and influence people. As for me, I'm trying to let people know that they should slow their role and not tell me what to be interested in. So, when I was talking to Spencer, I didn't go with some delightfully tactful approach where I have Spencer continue the Lincoln spiel, or I bring in a non-Lincoln topic. I mean, here's my policy. If Spencer wants to discuss Lincoln, I'll discuss Lincoln. But I'll do it my way. Not his way. Also, before I do that, I'll throw some condescension into the equation. After all—I really don't want to win friends and influence people.

So, here's what I told Spencer. I said, "You know what? That book—it sounds like a great book. For you. But not for me. Because first of all, 873 pages is a little lightweight by my intellectual standards. I prefer books that are over 1400 pages. But that's not the central issue. It's not the page count. It's the biographical subject. Abraham Lincoln. He isn't really one of my top ten favorite presidents. He's not even in my top 30. He's number 31. He's right behind Grover Cleveland and Millard Fillmore. I don't really like Abraham Lincoln."

Yeah. I played the anti-Lincoln card. As I pointed out earlier in this book, the anti-Lincoln card is not a card that's in common use. Which makes sense. It's not really such a versatile tool. But you know what? In one specific context, it's a fantastic card. It's a fantastic card when some guy won't stop telling you to read 873 pages about Abraham Lincoln.

So I played the card. I laid it down there. And then it was Spencer's turn to put down his own card. You know which card he went with? The gasket reaction card. Yeah. Spencer almost blew a gasket in reaction to my declaration that I'm not a Lincoln fan.

He told me, "How could you not like Abraham Lincoln!?"

At that point, I delivered what I felt was my pièce de résistance. And no, my pièce de résistance did not consist of me taking up some kind of pro-slavery angle. Calm down, buddy. I'm not trying to repeal the Thirteenth Amendment. Slavery is not the basis for my anti-Lincolnness. I have a much different reason to be against Abraham Lincoln.

I told Spencer, "Here's what I have against this Lincoln character. I don't like the way he expressed himself numerically. He was all like, 'Forget about 87! When I want to refer to that quantity, I don't say 87. I say four score and seven.'"

That's what I told this Lincoln fanatic Spencer. And this man did not relent. No way. And I gotta admit, he presented a pretty darn good counter. I didn't think he would have it in his arsenal. But he did. He countered my anti-score angle with his own pro-score angle. He pro-scored me! He said, "After you read this book, you're gonna appreciate score. You're gonna appreciate score more than a Ricky Ricardo fan appreciates Babalu. Score is a fantastic number system. When I go to Tim Horton's, do you think I order a dozen donuts? Heck no! I order a score of donuts."

It was a brilliant counter. I had to concede defeat. I went ahead and accepted his offer to borrow the book. I'm currently reading it. That being said, I haven't gotten that far. I've read two score and 11 pages.

## Floyd Mayweather

Boxer Floyd Mayweather fought twice in 2015, and once in 2017. And he made $600 million. He made $600 million in three nights. By the way—here's how much Jeff Bezos makes in three nights. $32 million. If Bezos wants to make money more quickly, he should say, "Today, I'm not going to my office over at Amazon headquarters! Screw that. What I really need to do is get into a fight with Floyd Mayweather."

Okay. Now let's do some math. Do you like math? Some people don't like math. The thing is, the math we're about to do isn't some garden variety numbers and numbers math—as in the type where you start with plain old numbers, and you end with plain old numbers. To quote Jeff Bezos, "Screw that." Instead of doing numbers and numbers math, we're gonna do some money math. That's the type of math that has wider appeal. When you say, "Let's talk about 115,000 times 1.43," most people reply, "Let's talk about you shutting your damn mouth." But when you say, "Let's talk about taking your $115,000 and getting a 43% return," people reply, "Keep talking, buddy. I love money. I love money so much, that it somehow makes math appeal to me."

So, yeah. Here's some math. Math that might be interesting to you, since it pertains to money. It's not about your money—but still. It's about money. So I think it might interest you. After all—you love money. Everyone does. Everyone loves money, except for the Dalai Lama. And I don't think that that particular person is reading my book. So I can go ahead and say that you, the reader, are not the Dalai Lama, and you love money. This money math is gonna interest you. Here it is.

Floyd Mayweather threw 1170 punches in his three fights, and he made $600 million. If you do the division, it equals $512,820.51 per punch. Floyd Mayweather made more than half a million dollars per punch. And that includes the punches he missed completely.

So, here's the verdict on Floyd Mayweather. He's a great fighter. And he's also a guy who definitely can't lecture his kids about money. He can't be the way Scrooge McDuck is with his nephews Huey, Duey, and Luey. Scrooge McDuck always lets them know the value of money, and how you have to be willing to kill someone for as little as ten cents. Floyd Mayweather can't do anything like that. If Floyd's son asks for a raise in his allowance, Floyd can't tell him something like, "What did you say?! You want me to raise your allowance to $10,000?!? Are you crazy? Do you know how much work it takes for me to make $10,000? In order to make $10,000, I'd have to move my fist one half of one inch. That's 2% of a punch." Then his son says, "Well, if I can't have $10,000 a week, can I at least have two Lamborghinis?" And Floyd replies, "Are you kidding me?! To pay for two Lamborghinis, I'd have to throw an entire punch at a Filipino man's head, and miss."

## Barnett Newman

I've talked about a lot of people so far in this book. By now, you probably want to ask me, "What's your opinion of the abstract expressionist artist Barnett Newman?" Good question. Here's my opinion of Barnett Newman. He's the smartest and dumbest man I've ever heard of. He was dumb enough to paint a blue background and a white line, and categorize the whole thing as art. And he was smart enough to convince other people that a white line over a blue background should be categorized as art. Is it art? Well, whatever it is, someone bought it for $43.8 million.

$43.8 million. For the following elements. Canvas. Blue background. White line.

Also, Newman gave the painting a title. If you're an abstract expressionist artist, you have to give titles to your paintings. Otherwise, it's hard to market yourself as an abstract expressionist artist. If there's no title for your painting, people might say, "The guy who painted this isn't an abstract expressionist artist. He's just a scumbag who paints a white line over a blue background, and has the audacity to try and sell what he painted for more than 98 cents."

Newman was not looking to sell his painting for 98 cents. So, he gave the painting a title. Onement VI. And yes—Onement VI is part of a series of Onements. Newman didn't just make one Onement and call it a day. No siree Bob. There are six different Onements. And by "different," I mean "not that different." As in, all six Onements are nothing but a background that's one color and a line that's another color. For instance, there's Onement V. It has a blue background and a green line. It sold for $22.4 million.

That's Barnett Newman, ladies and gentlemen. He's even dumber and smarter than I thought. The smartness lies in his ability to pull the exact same scam on six different occasions.

I once read about some con artist who sold the Eiffel Tower three times. That's an impressive feat for a con man. But on the other hand, that man only made his phony transaction three times, and each transaction was private. Barnett Newman's charlatanism was on a whole different level altogether. Newman did the Onement scam on six different occasions—and he did it all out in the open, with art shows and media coverage. He even put a number on each round of his dupery. It's almost like he told art buyers, "Alright. I already sold the first five Onements to five complete dumbasses. Now I'm looking to sell number six to someone who's even more of a dumbass than the first five. Who's interested?"

The Eiffel Tower con artist never did anything that brash and arrogant. He didn't tell someone, "Last year, I sold the Eiffel Tower to Jacques Pasteur for $22.4 million. But right now I'm gonna sell it to you for $43.8 million."

Barnett Newman's scam was truly next level. He repeated it six times. And he was so slick, that he made the art buying public demand it. They got a look at the first Onement, and they wanted a sequel. And that process repeated a few times. People said things like, "I hear Newman's working on another Onement. I'm really looking forward to it. I mean, I artistically relish the first three Onements. I can't wait to see what the next Onement is going to be like." Then they got a look at the new painting. "Holy Toledo! It's a background behind a line! And it's called Onement IV. Honey—bring me my checkbook. I need to spend absurd amounts of money on this artistic masterpiece that consists of a one color background and a one color line!"

So there you go. That's the history of Newman and his six Onements. I should point out, however, that I've kind of misrepresented the whole thing so far. I've made it seem like Newman himself sold the paintings for millions. What really happened was, he painted the Onements in the 1940s and 1950s, he sold them for a very high price—and then the dumbasses who bought those paintings ended up reselling them for way, way more. So I guess they're not dumbasses at all. They're geniuses. They saw the economic potential of those Onements. You gotta be a real genius to see the economic potential of something like a white line and a blue background. I want to meet the people who've made a profit off of those paintings. I want to meet the guy who bought Onement VI for $300,000 and then sold it for $7 million. And I really want to meet the guy who bought it for $7 million and sold it for $43.8 million. It takes a special kind of intelligence to buy a piece of garbage for $7 million and then make a $36.8 million profit off of it. I don't know what to call that intelligence. It's not IQ. It's AEFQ. It's your Abstract Expressionist Financial Quotient.

There are people out there who have an AEFQ of 250, and they end up making millions off of Onements. As for me, I have an AEFQ of about 3.

The Wikipedia article on Newman has one part that says, "After Newman had an artistic breakthrough in 1948, he and his wife decided that he should devote all his energy to his art." A guy with a high AEFQ reads that, and he thinks, "Yeah. Newman had his artistic breakthrough in 1948." But when I read the same part of the Wikipedia article, I think, "Artistic breakthrough? Did someone actually use the words 'artistic breakthrough' to describe the art of Barnett Newman? That's not the Barnett Newman I know! I'm more familiar with the airhead nutcase who paints blue backgrounds and white lines."

Here's what I want to know. What was Newman's art like before he had his breakthrough? Maybe one day he told his wife, "Honey. I had an artistic breakthrough today. You know how I usually walk into the art store, stare blankly at a trash can, and then go home and play with myself in front of a yellow wall? Well today, after I stared at the trash can, I bought some art supplies and I painted some stuff. You know what that is? That's an artistic breakthrough." And then she said, "Yeah. That _is_ an artistic breakthrough. And now that you've had your artistic breakthrough, you should devote all your energy to your art." "Well, how about I devote half of my energy to my art, and half of my energy to playing with myself in front of yellow walls?" "I don't think so, Barnett. The yellow wall procedure isn't the type of activity that properly utilizes your high AEFQ. You're an abstract expressionist genius, i.e. a non-abstract moron. You need to use your intelligence to make us a lot of money."

## Mary Kate Olsen and Christian Louboutin

Mary Kate Olsen is this person who played Michelle on _Full House_ , and then changed careers and became a fashion designer. And, I'm not making this up, she sells expensive clothes that are designed to make you look homeless. She promotes the so-called "homeless look"—and if you want to wear Ms. Olsen's designer homeless clothing, it's gonna cost you some serious money. In other words, there are certain people on this planet willing to pay thousands of dollars to have Michelle from _Full House_ make them look like bums. As for Jaleel White a.k.a. Steve Urkel, he has this job where you pay him $100, and he teaches you how to take the plastic off of cheese before you eat it.

So, here's my opinion of Mary Kate Olsen's career as a fashion designer. I don't have an opinion. I already told you—my AEFQ is 3. And I'm pretty sure in order to understand upscale homeless style fashion, you need to have an AEFQ of over 125. I'm not on that level. I'm still trying to increase my AEFQ from 3 to 10.

I'm really working on increasing my AEFQ. I'm not at a point where I can understand the $43.8 million Onement VI or the $2,000 homeless look. But maybe I can at least sort of understand basic upscale fashion. Let's see. Let's start with those fashion shows where a gay European man (or a straight American man who acts gay and European) designs clothing, and then he has a bunch of 5' 11" 108 pound women wear the clothes and walk up and down a runway. I haven't really been able to make heads or tails of those events. I have three main questions regarding them. Why does the designer have to be gay and European, why do the models have to be tall and underweight, and how do those fashion events increase the perceived value of the clothing on display? I'm not sure. I do know this, though. The value of the clothes will go down significantly if the designer does not go along with the protocol. He can't go up on stage and say, "Well howdee! My name's Puggy Texaco, I'm from Austin, and now y'all are gonna take a gander at some of the clothes I done made. Don't nobody make dresses and shoes as good as I do. I make women's clothing, and I also make honey hickory barbecue sauce. And after the show, y'all can come to my place, and we're gonna eat some baby back ribs."

That's not how prestigious fashion designers do things. They take a much different approach. I know. The other day, I did some studying on this topic. I watched 20/20 or 60 Minutes, and they showed an interview of Christian Louboutin. You know him? He's basically the opposite of Floyd from The Andy Griffith Show. In other words, he's a French shoe designer who specializes in making $1,100 high heels. And he sells a jillion of them. Also, he's French. I know I already mentioned that—but it deserves repeating, being that he has a French accent, and he has an ample amount of French arrogance.

Anyways, I was watching this interview. And here's what Louboutin said. I don't remember it word for word, but it was basically like this. "A good shoe is like a good wine. Look at the feet of Victoria Beckham. You know what is on her feet? My shoes. If you are a woman and you do not wear my shoes, it means you are garbage. Victoria Beckham wears my shoes, and she enjoys the experience very much. If you want to know how great I am and how great my shoes are, then you need to associate me and my shoes with Victoria and her feet. Have you seen her pinky toes? Have you seen my shoes? One of my shoes is worth more than most people's entire lives."

He said something like that. Then later, the interviewer asked him about a lawsuit of his. You see, this man Christian Louboutin, he established himself as the designer whose shoes have red soles. And then one time, some other shoe manufacturer made shoes with red soles. And Louboutin sued that company. Because according to Louboutin, red is his creative property.

The beginning of Louboutin's Wikipedia article says, "Christian Louboutin (born 7 January 1964) is a French fashion designer whose high-end stiletto footwear incorporates shiny, red-lacquered soles that have become his signature." I should change that to, "Christian Louboutin (born 7 January 1964) is an asshole who thinks he owns the color red. He's all like, 'Red. The color. Before me, no one thought of using that color, except for in tomato sauce. But then I had the brilliant idea of using red on the bottom of a shoe. This is a very creative idea. It is my creative property, and if you use it, I will sue you, because, after all, suing people over the color red is part of my job as a professional shoe designer and a professional asshole.'"

## Instagrammers, Facebookers, and Tweeters

Let me explain to you how a lot of social media works. I'll give you a two paragraph breakdown. The first paragraph will focus on the typical procedure involved for a person when they post material on social media. And the next paragraph will get into the typical reaction of someone who comes across the material that the first person posted. So, yeah. Two paragraphs. We're gonna have a dandy time with this. Here's my guide to how a lot of social media works. Here's a good description of the process.

There's a woman armed with an iPhone and an obsession with herself, she takes 622 selfies over the course of a week, she basically has a quadruple master's degree in makeup and clothes and lighting and angles, she accumulates her 622 carefully crafted selfies, she slides her finger and goes through all of those photos, and she deems one as being worthy of release to her adoring public, all of whom are eagerly anticipating her next Instagram post.

So, she posts one photo that week. And it goes out to her supposedly adoring public. The thing is, they're not that adoring. I've observed women looking at the Instagram photos of their "friends." Most of the time, their reaction is like this. A woman sees another woman's selfie on Instagram, and then the first woman rolls her eyes, and she's like, "Who in the hell does this bitch even think she is, posting this picture and acting like she's all that, like she's the queen bee, I mean, seriously, look at this skinny uberhoochie, she's got massive quantities of hoochieness emanating from the very depths of her being, and of course, she accentuates that hoochieness by constantly showcasing her stage four thigh gap, this woman, she's on that diet where you spend most of the day eating rutabaga skin and shooting heroin, and whenever she's not eating vegetable skin or doing opioids or stepping on a scale to confirm that she weighs a buck and a nickel, she's busy doing her hair and her makeup and planning these photos where she gets the angles and lighting right, 'cause she thinks she's some sort of celebrity like Kendall Jenner, I mean, really, who does this woman think she's fooling, I know for a fact she's dating some guy who's an assistant manager at IHOP, because, I mean, I was there for breakfast last Sunday, I ordered a Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity, and there was the boyfriend of this Kendall Jenner wannabe woman, this boyfriend of hers, he was assistant managing the IHOP, and he was handling the quality control, and making sure that the Rooty Tooties were in fact Fresh 'N Fruity."

So, there you go. I hope you got quite a bit out of those last two paragraphs. I gave you a good, thorough, accurate description of one of the primary activities that take place on this fantastic invention we call "social media." It's a medium through which one person says, "Look at me," and another person thinks, "Who does this bitch even think she is?"

And here's another prominent activity on social media. Some people use social media to go the Thomas Paine route. As in, they formulate and distribute their own version of _Common Sense_. And they do it with considerably more intensity than Paine did it. After all—Mr. Paine only put out a couple of political pamphlets. But these modern day Thomas Paines—they post their ideas for political reform every single day on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram. Also keep in mind that Paine had some moderate political views. Unlike the people on social media. These are people who strive to maximize H&H: Hostility and Hyperbole. If someone is a Facebook liberal, CNN and MSNBC will not have enough H&H for his taste. If someone is a Facebook conservative, Fox News will not have enough H&H for his taste. In other words, these Facebook pundits—even when they watch the network that favors their own party, they're not really feeling it. They think, "These views are for political pansies! This freaking channel—it doesn't have enough righteous indignation, and it doesn't constantly beat you over the head with the idea that the other party promotes legislation aimed at turning America into a 3.8 million square mile manure factory."

You go on social media, and these H&H specialists constantly assault you with their extreme political positions. They do it every day. And then every once in a while, they go non-political for a post. They show a picture where they're hugging a cat or dog. And the caption is, "I love my kitty cat, he's so precious, yes he is, look at the way he licks himself." And then the following day, they make a post where they're all like, "This lunatic President of ours, if he says one more thing that I don't like, then me and my cat are gonna pack some clothes and some Meow Mix, and we're moving to Canada!"

We've got a bunch of people making political posts like that on social media. And as an added bonus, we have the President himself constantly saying who-knows-what on Twitter. The President of the United States of America, the leader of the free world, is a tenth degree black belt H&H specialist. And he's the most prolific trash-talker on all of social media. His Twitter is mostly him trashing people—and then sometimes for a change of pace, he throws in a legitimate presidential statement, or a narcissistic remark, or something about lowering taxes.

If you read three days' worth of Trump's tweets, you'll get something like this: "Screw this guy, screw this other guy, make America great again, merry Christmas, I can't stand that lowlife degenerate asshole scumbag on CNN, I'm a very smart guy & my IQ is approaching four digits, I enjoy lowering taxes, I don't enjoy movies that star Mediocre Meryl Streep, Obama's presidency was an abysmal failure economically and a tremendous success Islamically i.e. Hussein is a Muslim spy who tapped my phones, Sloppy Steve Bannon tried to sell me a bag of drugs, Psycho Joe Scarborough tried to sell me a thermos full of urine, I just had a tremendous meeting with the President of Austro-Hungary, I just stuck my tremendous middle finger up at Sneaky Dianne and Crooked Hillary, I'm a really fantastic President, all of my critics are lightweights and losers, screw this guy, screw this other guy, look at how great the economy is, don't listen to fake news."

Should people really be reading that kind of stuff? I would say no. When you read Trump's Twitter, it creates a chemical imbalance in your brain, i.e. it makes you mentally ill. I mean, regardless of whether you support Trump's political stances 100% or you oppose them 100%, you have to realize if you read Trump's numerous insult-filled and self-congratulatory tweets, that's not gonna contribute to your psychological health. No way. Do not read Trump's Twitter, unless you have a bottle of Zoloft in your pocket and a skilled psychiatrist standing right next to you.

##  Persian Jewish American Businessmen

Let's start this chapter with a little history. Two sentences of history. "In 1979, Iran underwent a revolution that was very Islamic-themed. By the way--at the time, there was a small minority of Jewish people living in Iran."

Okay. Now I'm gonna analyze that history. Let me start by saying this. Islamic-themed revolutions are not particularly appealing to Jewish people. Whenever a Jew comes across an Islamic revolution, he thinks, "This does not appeal to me." 100% of Jews have that reaction. At no point has a Jew ever encountered an Islamic-themed revolution and been all like, "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay! My, oh, my, what a wonderful Islamic revolution."

Alright. Now let's do some more history. Two more sentences. "Starting in 1979, most of the Jews in Iran left the country and headed to various less Islamically revolutionized places, including the US. Nowadays, there are about 75,000 Persian Jews in America."

So, there you go. I've given you four sentences of history. I think that's enough. After all—this is not a history book. If you want 10,000 sentences of history, don't read a book called " _What I Think of Various Places and People_ by Rodney Ohebsion." Read a booked called " _History_ by Nerdy Historian Guy." I'm not a nerdy historian guy. I'm a lunatic who's letting you know what I think of various places and people.

So, like I was saying. There are about 75,000 Persian Jews in America. Do you know what these people do for a living? Business. They are VEB. Very Effective Businessmen. As in, they're the type of businessmen who, if you drop them off shirtless and penniless in the middle of Wyoming, they will find their way to Beverly Hills, and within five years they'll own half of the city.

So, to reiterate, we're talking about some VEB: Very Effective Businessmen. By now you might be wondering: "How are they so effective at business?" The answer is AAW. And no, I'm not talking about All-American Wrestling or the American Association of Woodturners. I'm talking about Aggression, Acumen, and Workaholism.

Let me break it down for you.

First of all, if you owe rent money to a Persian man and you're one day past due, he won't give you a phone call. He will come to your door and have a confrontation, and he'll seem like the kind of guy who just stepped out of the jungle after strangling a bunch of zebras and gazelles. He'll be ready, willing, and able to fight you to the death and then eat your esophagus as a snack. That'll be his attitude, even if he's a billionaire and you owe him the whopping sum of $850. He'll still go after you.

That's how Persians do business. Through aggression. And also through business acumen. As in, there's this guy named Manuchehr or Parviz or Kamran or Jamshid or Hamid or Abbas, a few years ago he bought a garbage dump in foreclosure for $82,517, and he made some changes to it, and now it's a building with 150 luxury condominiums, and Ariana Grande is moving in, and there's a Whole Foods Market and a Tesla dealership that just opened nearby, and George Clooney is shopping for a car that runs on half electricity and half sunflower seeds, and you're looking at all of this, and you're like, "What exactly happened to this neighborhood? Three years ago, it was chock full of poor people urinating on every street corner."

So, yeah. Persian businessmen are smart. They're also knowledgeable. Sort of. The thing is, some of them are knowledgeable in general, and others are knowledgeable just when it comes to business. The ones in the second group are actually the most impressive to me. There's a Persian guy, he doesn't know how to use a computer, he hasn't read a book since the 1979 Revolution, he doesn't know which one is the Pacific Ocean and which one is the Atlantic Ocean, he cannot beat a second grader in a game of Trivial Pursuit, he only knows 25 pieces of information total—and he uses those 25 pieces of information to make more money in one year than a Harvard professor makes in seven decades.

This is not a fictional example. I know this Persian man. I've talked to this man. I've also talked to a Harvard professor. Some guy who knows way too much information relative to how much money he makes. He's the kind of person who accumulates 100 pieces of knowledge for every post tax nickel that goes into his pocket. One time, this professor started educating me on the topic of Shakespearean allegorical devices and their influence on 19th century American poetry. So I told the professor to shut his educated mouth. I said, "Listening to you is costing me money. You don't have the millionaire mindset. If I want to have that mindset, I need to be as ignorant as a Persian businessman who's worth $153 million."

By the way—all Persian Jewish men are businessmen. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Well, I know this Persian Jewish guy, and he's a doctor." No he's not. He's a doctor and a businessman. He works as a doctor, but he's also involved in the business of jewelry, textiles, or especially real estate. All Persian Jewish men are involved in real estate.

In Persian Jewish society, if you're a doctor, you also do real estate. And you integrate career A into career B. As in, you have this patient named Faramarz, you tell him to relax as you take his blood pressure, he tells you about an apartment building that he's thinking of buying, you give him a prescription for Lisinopril, he gives you the apartment building's address, the two of you go look at the building, you bring your cousin Mehrdad into the deal, your patient brings his cousin Baback into the deal, and then the four of you call your broker and tell him to put in a $4.7 million offer.

The point is, on Persian Jewish career day, people are presented with three options: (a) businessman, (b) doctor / businessman, and (c) lawyer / businessman.

Those are the three options. As opposed to (d) Starbucks assistant manager. That's not a viable Persian Jewish career option. If you pursue that path, you might as well convert from Persian Jew to Anglo-Saxon Jehovah's Witness, and change your name from Pedram Moussa Pouldardanesh to Petey Mason Peterson.

Persian Jews don't work 40 hours a week at Starbucks. They don't work at Starbucks, and they sure as hell don't work 40 hours a week. Like I mentioned earlier, AAW—and the W stands for workaholism. As in, you take the 40 hour number, and double it, and then double it again. And you take the 60 hour a week sleep habit, and then reduce the figure by 50%, and then reduce it by another 50%. That's the magic Persian work/sleep formula that yields the numbers you should live by.

And here's another relevant number. $3,000. If you're a high ranking member of Persian Jewish society, that's your home's monthly water bill. It takes that kind of water bill to maintain all the wonderful plants located throughout one's majestic multimillion dollar estate. And in order to enhance the majesticness, at some point you'll remodel your home by breaking down a wall, adding a wall, raising the ceiling, adding another wall, breaking down another wall, buying your neighbor's home, breaking down some more walls, combining your neighbor's home with your home, and then raising the ceiling again. And if the city says you don't have the right to make those changes, you call your lawyer and say, "This is Pedram Moussa Pouldardanesh, and I want to sue!" "Who do you want to sue?" "I don't care! If I have to sue my own brother, I will! I'm Persian! I'll sue anybody!"

## Extremely Status-Oriented Persian Jewish Women

20% of Persian Jewish American women are extremely status oriented. Let's talk about the similarities between those women and Mongolian people.

If a young Mongolian person does not have a suitable horse, do you know what that Mongolian person will eagerly seek to acquire? A suitable horse. If a young, status-seeking Persian woman does not have a wealthy or soon-to-be wealthy man, do you know what that woman will eagerly seek to acquire? A wealthy or soon-to-be wealthy man.

And both of these people—the Persian woman and the Mongolian—will do the same type of scouting as they attempt to identify the right man or horse. In other words, the Persian woman examines men in a manner similar to how the Mongolian examines horses. As in, you look at attributes like endurance, energy, industriousness, trainability, strength, toughness, intelligence, and cunning. That's how to identify a useful horse or a status-elevating Persian man. The horse has to take you to places like a watering hole in Bayankhongor. The Persian man has to take you to places like Tiffany's and a Bentley dealership.

As a woman, you can't have elite status in the Persian Jewish American community unless you have luxury vehicles in your garage, and highly coveted items of jewelry on your person, and a $3,000 water bill in your mailbox, and a 11024 or 90210 or 10065 zip code in which your mailbox is located, and a multimillion dollar home that accompanies the water bill and the mailbox and the zip code. You gotta go for that, as opposed to the Persian version of low budget living, which involves driving some $63,000 jalopy to a rinky dink 1800 square foot apartment that's in a semi-luxury building located a whopping 3.7 miles away from the most expensive, upscale block in the country.

You gotta live in the most expensive square mile of Great Neck or Beverly Hills or New York, and have an assortment of other notable status symbols that make it clear you can afford to hire an army of people to kiss your ass full time.

With that in place, your next step is to develop and refine a certain habit. I'm talking about the habit of frequently looking other Persian women up and down, identifying their dress, purse, shoes, and jewelry, and appraising the value of those items in 4.2 seconds. And if a particular woman's total bill is not high enough, the correct reaction is to look at that woman disdainfully for a half a second, and then ignore her existence altogether until she upgrades everything.

You need to do that. And for some reason, if you live in Beverly Hills, you also need to regularly make appearances at 8730 Pico Blvd, Los Angeles—a.k.a. Elat Market. Remember Elat Market—the high derangement supermarket and Persian social capital I mentioned earlier in this book? Over there, the prices are somewhat modest. As in, you can buy lemons for four cents apiece. It's basically a deep discount retailer. But for some reason, as a status conscious Persian woman, it's socially acceptable to shop at this particular discount grocery store. Not only is it socially acceptable, it's expected. You gotta go there and see all your friends and acquaintances and relatives and rivals. A Persian woman will drive her $237,000 Bentley, she'll get out of that car wearing her $2,500 Gucci shoes and her $38,000 BVLGARI watch and her $9,000 Hermes handbag, she'll walk into Elat Market, she'll say hi to her sister-in-law, she'll shoot a quick death look at some woman she has a feud with, and she'll also purchase a variety of items, including some of the lowest priced lemons north of Chimalhuacan, Mexico. It's true. Chimalhuacan is the only place that sells lemons for less. And by the way—most of the grocery shoppers in Chimalhuacan don't drive a $237,000 Bentley.

## People Who Read Original Documents in Their Entirety

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station

That was the first half of the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence. I'm guessing you lost all interest somewhere around the tenth word. You got to "dissolve," and you thought, "Boooooring. This isn't as good as _Family Guy_. I've already seen every episode of that show—and now I'm gonna see every episode again."

No offense—but what kind of an American are you?! You're the kind who tosses aside the Declaration of Independence in order to binge watch buffoonery-filled cartoons. Listen, buddy. If you want to be a true patriot, you gotta tell your Tivo to stop recording this _Family Guy_ garbage. Stop listening to babies and deviants with names like Stewie and Quagmire, and start listening to wig-wearing, Coors-guzzling, flag-waving Founding Fathers with names like Jefferson and Washington.

I shouldn't be one to talk, though. After all, I'm not exactly well versed in original American documents. The other day, I made an earnest attempt to read the Declaration of Independence. And I couldn't quite pull it off. Even with my earnestness, I didn't reach the finish line. I made it to the part that states, "...unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable..." and then at that point, I drank a six pack and I took a nap. And in case you're wondering, the six pack was Modelo Especial. Not exactly the most American beverage in the world. I can't picture George Washington loosening his wig and kicking back with a few cans of Modelo. Because the thing is, Modelo makes you very patriotic—but for the wrong country. You wake up from your nap and you exclaim, "Que viva Mexico!"

Anyways, let's try this again.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station

Did you read it that time? I'll bet $10,000 you didn't.

Most people have never actually read the first half of the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Because, here's the thing about original documents like the Declaration of Independence. Reading them is an intellectually demanding process that requires dedication, patience, and the ability to deal with extreme amounts of boredom. After all—original documents aren't exactly written to be riveting.

Let me put it this way. You turn on your TV, and everything on it is made to be riveting or at least entertaining. There's this 350 pound football player trying to chase down Tom Brady, and then on another channel Maury Povich is about to reveal the results of a paternity test, and then you go to another channel and Indiana Jones is simultaneously fighting an Egyptian man and a grizzly bear, and then you flip over to the news and they give you a teaser about the controversial thing President Trump said today, and then you head on over to channel 75 and Ricky is telling Lucy, "Mira que tiene cosa la mujer esta!"

You can watch that kind of content on TV. Or you can turn off your TV, pick up the Constitution, and read something like this:

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

Now let me ask you this. What kind of a person reads that passage and thinks, "That was riveting!" It takes a truly unique mind to be riveted by Constitutional matters regarding a quorum and adjournments. Imagine you get married, you go on your honeymoon, you're sitting by the beach, and your new spouse is intently reading something on his or her iPhone. You ask, "What are you reading?" And your spouse says, "The Constitution. I'm just getting some clarification on what specific procedures are used by the House of Representatives. It's one of the many parts of the Constitution that I find quite riveting." At that point, how would you reply? Would you say something like, "That's great, honey. After you finish the Constitution and you're thoroughly riveted, how about we go back up to our hotel room and knock some boots? That's how we do things as a couple. That's our procedure. It's starts with you getting riveted by the Constitution, and it ends with us getting busy in the bedroom." I don't think you'd say that to your new spouse. I'm pretty sure instead of saying that, you'd throw a bottle of Banana Boat SPF 40 at your spouse's head, and then you'd run away and call the FBI. And you'd tell them, "I just identified a future serial killer. The Constitutionally Riveted Assassin."

## Bill of Rights Users and KFC Dieters

I haven't read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. But I have read the Bill of Rights. I managed to get through all 475 words of it. I was motivated. You feel motivated to read the Bill of Rights. After all—this is a section of the Constitution that you can use personally. There's something in the whole deal for you. If in your quest to read original documents, you come in thinking "what's in it for me?," you feel more compelled to read the Bill of Rights than you do to read the rest of the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration doesn't offer much for you, aside from one vague statement about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The rest is basically about government 'n' stuff. Same goes for the seven articles of the Constitution. The primary theme is government 'n' stuff. The only part that's about you is the one that pretty much insults you. As in, Article I of the Constitution tells you something like, "Congratulations, US Citizen. Every once in a while, we have elections—and you get to have one vote in those elections. There are millions and millions of votes total. You get one. One vote. Isn't that dandy? You basically have no real say in who becomes a Congressman or President. No election is gonna be decided by one vote."

When you read the seven articles of the Constitution, you do so knowing that it isn't really a "what's in it for me?" kind of thing. So, if you're like most people, you don't read the seven articles. You read ten words, or maybe a hundred words if you're really up to the task, and then you quit.

But that's not what you do with the Bill of Rights. After all—the Bill of Rights sings a much different tune. It ain't like Articles I through VII. No siree Bob. The Bill of Rights is all like, "You're the boss. These 475 words are devoted to letting you know how you get to run things. Like, if you want to tell someone off, then go for it, bro! There's an amendment for that. As in, there's an amendment whose main theme is that you can say whatever to anyone. You can tell someone off, or you can talk about how much you like the movie _Weekend at Bernie's_ , or you can criticize LeBron James's defense, or you can stage a protest where you insist that Candyland should be a US state. You can say anything. That's an amendment. It's one of the amendments. There are ten amendments total in here! Keep reading!"

So you read the Bill of Rights. You read the first one, and you think, "Yeah. Hell yeah. This is good stuff." But the thing is, the next nine amendments, they don't really live up to that first one. They don't have that much versatility and day-to-day applicability, the way the first one does. You read those nine amendments, but you don't feel particularly exhilarated about the prospect of using them. You don't really even know what to do with most of those amendments. I know I don't. I mean, I'm definitely into the idea of using all ten amendments. I like the concept of that. But the thing is, first of all, I don't have a gun, nor do I have any people that I want to shoot or threaten to shoot. So I can't really use the second amendment. It's also hard for me to use the third amendment, being that I don't really come across soldiers attempting to quarter in a home that I own. I always check for that. Whenever I see people standing around near my apartment building, I ask them, "Do you gentleman have any intentions of militarily quartering in that apartment, in unit 201? Because if so, I will not hesitate to use the Constitution and prevent said quartering within those premises which I own. I am a purist when it comes to all matters pertaining to the Constitution, and I always make an ardent attempt to handle all matters in a manner that is completely in accord with the principles and spirit developed and promoted in 18th century Colonial America. Therefore, I say huzza to the third amendment, and I say pshaw to any unconstitutional attempts at quartering." And then they tell me, "Buddy. We're not trying to quarter. We're just standing on this sidewalk, trying to sell some molly and ecstasy." So I say, "Well. In that case, proceed with your activities, gentlemen. Furthermore, I shall purchase two bags of assorted drugs."

The point is, on most days, it's tough to really get much use out of all ten amendments. That being said, as an American, you gotta feel compelled to get in a lot of Bill of Rights related activity in per day. I mean, we're talking about the part of the Constitution that applies to you personally, as opposed to those other parts of the Constitution that detail a bunch of governmental proceedings that don't mean jack to you unless you sit around all day watching CSPAN.

The Bill of Rights is about you. Also, the more you use the Bill of Rights, the more patriotic that makes you. If you want to be a real American, you can't just look at the Bill of Rights and then yawn and say, "Whatever. I skimmed through this stuff, but I ain't gonna _do_ this stuff. Not that much of it. I'll do maybe three or four minutes a day. I mean, it's just the Bill of Rights. Whoop-di-freaking-do. Who cares?" If you want to do Americanness the right way, you can't have that cavalier attitude. The Bill of Rights is not about yawning. It's about doing. I believe that every day, you gotta put in about ten or fifteen hours worth of Bill of Rights activity. And that usually means you have to concentrate on the First Amendment. That's what I do. I use that amendment. It's great. Here's a good example.

I was at a KFC last week, and I saw a guy there who removed the skin from his fried chicken. As in, he sat down at a table, he ate his chicken—but he did not eat the chicken skin. That was his nutritional strategy. So I went up to him and I used the First Amendment. I told him, "I'm very impressed with how committed you are to leading a healthy lifestyle. KFC fried chicken with no skin. Good for you. You're a very restrictive eater—just like Mahatma Gandhi. If you keep this up, it'll really boost your health, and it'll help India continue to remain independent from the British Empire."

Yeah. I use the First Amendment. I use it to make sarcastic comments, primarily to the people at KFC. There are plenty of opportunities to do that. At KFC, there are lots of people who take the skin off of fried chicken. What school of nutrition do these idiots come from? They think, "I'm interested in doing the following two things simultaneously. I want to (a) eat the Colonel's fried chicken, and (b) practice good nutrition. I'm gonna head down to KFC and combine A and B, i.e. I'm gonna take off the chicken skin." It's like they think that if the skin is removed, the rest of the chicken is some kind of health food. As in, "I'm proud to say that I stick to a Spartan-like health regimen where I eat nothing but skinless KFC. This diet has enabled me to maintain a cholesterol level of 327. I also take a Flintstone vitamin every day—and I supplement it with a half gallon of KFC gravy."

Let me tell you my philosophy as it pertains to KFC. Let me put it this way. KFC is essentially a crackhouse. You wouldn't go to a crackhouse and say, "I'm here to exfoliate my calves, drink some mountain spring water, purchase a few Armani suits, and maybe find a nice Jewish girl to marry." That's not the purpose of a crackhouse. And good nutrition is not the purpose of a KFC.

If I were the manager of a KFC, I would force everyone there to eat the skin. I would consider that to be the primary requirement of my job. I'd actually describe my job like that. You ask me, "What do you do for a living?" and my reply is, "I put on a KFC uniform every morning, I go to my local KFC, and I force people to eat fried chicken skin. The manual says I'm supposed to do that." "What manual?" "The chicken procedural manual that was recited to me last night by Colonel Sanders, right after I guzzled two pints of Kentucky moonshine."

## Early Halloween Shoppers

It's July 5th, you walk into a Kroger or Target or CVS or 99 Cent Store, and they have at least one aisle's worth of Halloween products on the shelves and ready for purchase. Now, let me ask you something. Is it there for no reason? Or is it there for a reason? It's the latter, kimosabe. There is a reason. When a store goes with a merchandising strategy, they're doing so in order to give customers what they want. In other words, there are people who want to see Halloween merchandise well before the holiday actually rolls around. In other words, some people are looking to get an early July start on their Halloween shopping. They're very enthusiastic about this particular holiday. In fact, they're so enthusiastic, that they simply cannot wait another week or two to get things moving along. It's July 5th, they pop out of bed, and say, "Let's do this! It's July 5th—which means I gotta get ready for October 31st! Let's do it right now! Let's get that candy corn!"

(photo by Evan Amos)

Whenever I'm in someone's home in July, I perform an investigation. I snoop around to see if he's one of the lunatics who bought Halloween supplies months in advance of the holiday. That's the type of information you need to know about someone. And you also need to put it into the context of everything else the person does.

Because the thing is, some people do their Halloween shopping three and a half months early, and they also get to an airport eight hours early, and they sit down in a movie theater way before the previews start, and they fill up their gas tank as soon as it's half empty. They do everything early.

But then you got this other group of people, they do their Halloween shopping early, but they do everything else late. There's some guy who stocks up on candy corn in July—and then the next day, he casually strolls into an 11 o'clock job interview at 11:27. And when the interviewer says, "It's 11:27," the applicant replies, "Yeah. That should show you how committed I am to getting this job. I usually don't even wake up before noon—but today, here I am at the crack of 11:27. I'm tired, bro. I spent all day yesterday shopping for Halloween."

## My Philosophy

I'm gonna use this last chapter to do some philosophizing. Let me share my philosophy with you. It's a philosophy that can be summed up pretty quickly. I don't have an intricate and largely unintelligible 8000 page body of philosophical works a la some German man with a name like Hegel or Heidegger or Heifenfleitz or Hegenheifel. No siree Bob. I'm not some neo-Kantian or some ontological hermeneutic phenomenologist who takes a fortnight and a half to say something that no one in their right mind understands. In fact, my basic philosophy is one sentence long, and you can figure out what it means as soon as you read it. So, without further ado, here is my basic philosophy:

"If you go into a supermarket and you buy packs of instant ramen for 29 cents apiece, that's basically a declaration that you have no self-respect at all."

Yeah. My philosophy focuses a lot on instant ramen. I just gave you the main part of the philosophy. And here's some parerga und paralipomena to supplement my primary philosophy.

Instant ramen is not something you should buy and eat. It's something you should look at when you're in a supermarket, and then immediately knock right off of the shelves. I recommend the karate chop technique. Walk down the aisle and start chopping away. The supermarket employees won't even do anything about it. They'll look at each other and say, "Eh—whatever. It's not like he's attacking our Pringles or our Honey Bunches of Oats. He's just exercising his First Amendment right to use jeet-kune-do on packs of instant ramen."

That's what you should do with ramen. Use kung fu to attack ramen. As opposed to buying it for 29 cents, and then taking it home and eating it.

Do you know how much disodium guanylate is in instant ramen? A lot. And guess what? No one knows what disodium guanylate is. It's just some mystery ingredient that some mad scientist named Stanley invented in his mother's basement in April of 1944. He was trying to invent a fax machine—but he quit partway into the process, he took the materials from the unfinished fax machine, and he used them to invent disodium guanylate. That's the main ingredient in ramen.

Ramen is so unnutritious, that the back of the package says, "Do not eat more than eight packages of ramen a day. Otherwise, you'll get scurvy." In 2012, my friend Charlie was at the doctor's office, and his doctor examined his blood test results and told him, "You've got scurvy. Which means one of two things. Either you're the type of guy who eats more than eight packs of ramen a day, or you're the type of guy who says 'avast ye matey' and participates in illegal naval voyages with people named Captain Bartholomew and Buccaneer Billy."

Here's the prescription that the doctor wrote.

In case you can't read the ludicrous scribble of Charlie's doctor, I'll spell it out for you. It says "eat less ramen." Note how it doesn't say "eat more citrus." Vitamin C is normally an effective treatment for scurvy. But it's not powerful enough to do the job against ramen-induced scurvy. Disodium guanylate cannot be defeated by grapefruit.

The point is, there's no legitimate reason to buy and eat ramen. Same goes for SPAM. Here's how SPAM was invented. The guy in charge of making the recipe—he got a bowl, he put some pork in the bowl, he added a dash of a few other ingredients, and then he unscrewed the top of a salt shaker, and he poured obscene amounts of salt onto everything. He mixed the ingredients together and cooked them—and then he asked his wife to try this new food. She ate one spoonful. And then she drank four glasses of water. And her husband said, "So, what do you think of SPAM?" She told him, "Well. It's good, I guess. Except, it tastes more like salt than it tastes like ham." "So?" "So, shouldn't it taste more like ham than it tastes likes salt?" Then he said, "You know what? I'm gonna add more salt. Because that's how you invent SPAM. What you do is, you saltificate the ham with salt, and then you saltificate the salt with more salt. That way, the product will have a shelf life of at least 8000 years. I'm talking about non-perishable meat! As in, if you buy SPAM right now in 1937, and then you eat it in the year 2000 or 3000, it'll taste the exact same way it did on day one. SPAM is the ideal food to put in a basement for an extended period of time, and then eat as soon as there's a hurricane."

A can of SPAM contains 4740 milligrams of sodium. But for some reason, people are still willing to purchase and eat this product. By the way—each can sells for $2.79! Do the math, people. That's nine and a half times the price of ramen!

When I come across a 29 cent ramen buyer, I think, "Well. Here's a person who might not have his head on straight when it comes to most things." But when I come across a $2.79 SPAM buyer, my reaction is a little different. If I see a can of SPAM in someone's kitchen, do you know what I do? I climb right out of the damn window and I get the hell out of that house! Because I'm pretty sure there's a strong overlap between people who eat SPAM, and people who murder you after they watch _Judge Judy_. That's their routine. "I eat SPAM, I watch _Judge Judy_ , I murder people. And then I watch _Dr. Phil_. My goal in life is to eat SPAM with Dr. Phil, and then kill him."

