Chic Sheikh

This is the look I want for the new year. Does anybody out there know where I can buy that shirt? And what would this neck style be called? O-neck? Super crew neck?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – looking good!

The Hobo’s Pencil

An old bum set up a homestead behind one of the old disused railroad bridge pillars in a scruffy area of my town. He has a tent, a shopping cart, and a large assortment of shit he has scavenged during his shopping cart peregrinations through town. You can’t see his encampment from the street, because the crumbling concrete pillars are down a little hill, and the hill is covered with vegetation.

He’s essentially a homeless bum, but we call him a hobo because it sounds cooler, and because of his proximity to the working railroad line next to his ruined bridge. However, we’re pretty sure he doesn’t ride the rails – unless he has figured out how to hop a freight that’s moving at 50mph as it rolls through that part of town.

One day we were checking up on his camp, and as we walked away through the weedy lot, I spied a clean, freshly sharpened pencil on the ground. It looked like it had just been dropped. I knew right away that it was the hobo’s pencil. While me and my friends wouldn’t actively steal from this guy, I pocketed the pencil absentmindedly.

Later I realized it was a magic pencil. I wrote a check to the porn shop for DVDs and the fucking thing bounced. I had written the check with the hobo’s pencil. I was sure there was enough money in the account, and I confirmed with the bank that the porn king hadn’t added a few zeros to my check or rewritten it (after all, I wrote it in pencil, which in hindsight was pretty stupid). There just wasn’t any money in the account anymore. None of the bank bozos could explain it; just gone.

And when I deposited my paycheck, I endorsed it with – you guessed it – that pencil. I was at the ATM, and I couldn’t find a pen to save my life. This douchebag behind me started honking, and frankly, I really had to get home to take a crap. So I wrote my account number and put my Adolf Hitler on the endorsement line with that pencil.

Two days later I checked online to see that the check had cleared, and that my employer hadn’t decided to stop payment as he always threatens to do. No deposited money. The check had cleared, but the money didn’t go into my account.

Oh yeah, and another day I went to the deli and placed some bets on the fake video horse races. I used the hobo’s pencil to fill out the cards. Unbelievably, 3 of my 7 computerized nags actually won their “races.” But when I got to the counter, the Korean said someone had already collected on those bets – that person had the matching tickets. I showed him my penciled-in cards, he said fuck you. I was so mad and violent, it took all eight Koreans, including the grandmother, to throw me out of the place.

Everything I put that hobo’s pencil to, it all turned to shit. And where was all this money going, anyway?

The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed to me that the pencil hadn’t been accidentally lost. It was as if the pencil had been deliberately placed there in plain view on a clear spot on the ground. I decided to confront the hobo about this apparently cursed pencil of his.

So I went down there, but as in the past, I stopped short about 30 feet from his tent. First of all, Camp Hobo smells none too good. Second, his tent’s always closed so you don’t know if he’s in there or not. You feel a little funny walking through and around all this stuff he’s got spread around. Plus who wants some sterno-crazed bum emerging with a bicycle chain or mirror shard or whatever he might be packing. But I wanted to get to the bottom of this. So I cleared my throat and yelled “yo!” a few times. Not home. I turned to go, secretly relieved, when I noticed something a ways off under a big polyethylene sheet. That had not been here the last time. And none of his other stuff was ever covered - sofas, charcoal grills, old TVs, a busted up piano - en plein air, all the time. My curiosity prevailed, and I lifted the sheet. It was a factory fresh Chrysler LeBaron. Leather seats. Custom rims. Vanity tags: SUPRTRAMP. I was astounded. Where had he gotten the cash for this? How the hell had he driven it down there?

I went home. There was a yellow foreclosure notice on the front door. I thought about the checks I had written to the mortgage company with the hobo’s pencil.

So this time I actually marched into his pied a terre, ripped open the tent flap, and found him in there. He had piles of gold jewelry on a card table. I jabbed the pencil in his eye and left him for dead. Now when you go walking, you can’t get anywhere near that bridge – not even the lot, that’s how bad it smells. People must figure a car hit a deer and it’s in the weeds by the side of the road. Actually they must figure it was a whole herd of dead deer. Fucking hobo.

Signs of the Times 1

Photo from sign in the stairwell of a 10 floor office building. Instructions for some kind of chair to evacuate people who can’t walk down the stairs because they’re too old, too fat, or too injured, and the terrorists are hogging the elevator bringing up the WMD.

What’s the first thing you notice about this sign?

That’s right – it goes on forever! Can you imagine actually reading all this shit while your colleague is pumping out on the floor and the sounds of automatic gunfire get closer? These diagrams should depict two stick figures pitching a third down the stairs while flames lick at their heels.

Speech Recognition Disaster

I invested a fair amount of time “training” Microsoft’s speech recognition software to translate what I was saying into a microphone onto a page of word processed text. As long as I’m careful when I speak, use a good quality microphone, and have it positioned just right, and all the planets are in alignment, it usually works pretty well. However, you can get some pretty unusual results if you do things like clear your throat or mumble, laugh, curse, or speak in a weird, halting accent. I tried reading Rudyard Kipling’s “Gunga Din” in a ridiculously poor cockney accent and what I got is reproduced verbatim below. It’s actually a pretty vivacious piece of writing and seems to have meaning of its own. If you know the poem well (although I did recite only selected lines, entirely from memory), you can occasionally catch a phrase or two, but on the whole what shows up below is pretty much a creation of Microsoft Office’s sick computer brain. Also, this text your reading now was also produced with the speech recognition software and only had to be cleaned up for about 2 minutes longer than it took to speak it.

So without further delay, ladies and gentlemen, excerpts from a dramatic reading of “Gunga Din” as told to Microsoft Office Speech Recognition:

You may call a tin NBA unequal was safe area and sent to pay for its in warden
Schulte it the when it comes to see that said you do you all would “and you take
the demand beats it means his goal at that inches Sunday Tom well all used to
spend the time a seven of a mad Steve McQueen of all that that face cramp the
finest men on nail was all regimental beastie gloom to Dean it was deemed didn’t
didn’t you even with a devotee of been you get mana wall to put some join CNN
all merrihew this minute if you didn’t fizzle on it going again all seem that to
owned in the base ways clone way it’s always Bobo drew a new column teen of the
squad on the kells didn’t drink the called themselves us well get this week it
as from: good demand tin tin tan they’ll walk barricades human flights you
bought from different gold that’s major you open a man and Aryan: the DN.

Some of this shit is downright artistic: “spend the time of a seven of a mad Steve McQueen” and “owned in the base ways clone way it’s always Bobo” are phrases of epic poetry that will withstand the test of time. I don’t care how many monkeys you have typing for an eternity, they couldn’t have produced this.

Chapter 1: The Bowling Ball in the Freezer

Installment from "The Bowling Ball in the Freezer and Other Secrets of a Highly Efficient You." Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.

My client Bob is a busy, important man and hates forgetting things he’s supposed to do. And yet he can’t bring himself to use a “PDA” or a “Day Planner” or any other traditional calendar or reminder system. “Fuck that!” he says, making another martini. Bob is what I’d call a “situational” or “action-based” thinker. He needs a process for keeping his life on track that is a part of his life, not some kind of alien fungus that grows on the outside of his life.

Here’s what I did for Bob. One day while I was shadowing him, collecting data by observing Bob being Bob, I had an opportunity to watch him interact with his complex world. He was in a hell of a hurry – he had gotten up late and had only then realized he was a few hours away from a flight and a four day business trip. He did what any rational actor would do in an irrational world: he opened up his suitcase, put it in the middle of the bed, and started to throw shit into it, cursing like a sailor all the while. Bob didn’t do too well on that trip, with eight pairs of socks and no underwear, but it got me thinking.

The dirty suitcase in the middle of the unmade bed stood like a monument: it couldn’t be ignored. It shouted out “I’m here, pack me now! Don’t even think of getting back into bed.” If only he could have put that suitcase on the bed the night before – he would have stumbled into the dark bedroom after the last martini, pitched himself into bed, and been reminded instantly of that trip the next morning.

So here’s the system I crafted for you and Bob: whenever, and wherever you are when something important occurs to you that you need to remember later, don’t write it down on a piece of paper and stick it in your pocket; use the world around you as your “tickler.”

Need to return your neighbor’s bowling ball after dinner? Stick it in the freezer next to the ice cream.

You too can be an action-based thinker now: you’re limited only by your creativity and how much of the world around you can be broken off and duct-taped back on later. Want to remember to take out the trash before you go to work? Leave the toilet unflushed. Must call mother before it gets too late? Used Kleenex on the kitchen counter. Turds equal trash; mucus equals mom. Your house might end up looking like Salvador Dali moved in, but you’ll finally remember to hide the good booze before your alcoholic boss shows up.

Meet Bob and Judy

Installment from "The Bowling Ball in the Freezer and Other Secrets of a Highly Efficient You." Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.

These two are my favorite clients. I’ve worked with them both for a number of years. I’ve helped them achieve professional goals, reach undreamed of emotional fulfillment, and evade the police when necessary.

In this book, I’m going to give you a look inside the heads of these two now-successful Americans. They probably won’t be very happy when they learn I have published straight from their case files, and that’s exactly why I gave them 20 percent off my usual fee for signing a disclosure agreement!

Bob T. This man is a regional manager for a large American conglomerate of consumer retail brands. These are brand names you know. You’ve eaten way too much of their salty snack foods, you’ve wiped your ass with their toilet paper, and you’ve sure gotten a lot of their junk mail. In many ways, Bob, and people just like Bob, have made our economy what it is today. And, yes, Bob’s a sociopath. He’s twice divorced, thank God he doesn’t have any kids, and he has some serious sexual perversions. He suffers artery-bursting bouts of rage from years of workplace abuse. But we need to look on those as creative outbursts, not just paranoid episodes of lethal anger. And I’ve never met so human an animal. Bob is the living, breathing, very real essence of what you and I would be if we took some powerful drug that stripped away our ethical schema, empathy, and impulse control. We can learn a lot from Bob.

Judy G. is one crazy bitch. When she first came to me she was homeless. She’s still homeless, but now she’s rich, too – she doesn’t need a home, she just barges into the Hamptons estates of rich, successful people who are afraid of her, people who would kill for her interfacing ability and leveraging skills. When those acquaintances aren’t home, she hooks up with pretty much any living creature in the vicinity, and sleeps her way to the top of the local food chain. She doesn’t just sponge off rich, interesting people – she steals their ideas, saps their life force, and assumes their identities. When she has consumed or perverted the natural and intellectual resources in a local ecosystem, she moves on. She’s like some kind of horrible parasitic alien life-form that keeps spreading and can’t be stopped, not even with radiation. How does she do it and manage the East Coast’s top-grossing outcall escort service at the same time?

Read on…

Meet Dr. Porker

Installment from "The Bowling Ball in the Freezer and Other Secrets of a Highly Efficient You." Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.

Hi, I’m Dr. Peter Porker! Welcome to my book! You may be resenting that $13.99 you paid for it. But you know what? Surprisingly little of it gets to me. You wouldn’t believe how many people take their cut along the way. And then there’s the garnishment order for the punitive damages from my book on do-it-yourself surgery.

But who am I, really?

My grandfather was Frederick Winslow Porker, a lesser known late 19th century proponent of scientific management, and practitioner of time-and-motion studies. He married this discipline to his interest in cultural anthropology. He attempted to apply efficiency theory to the development of the Gshwindi, a primitive nomadic people living in what is now Uganda. His goal was to create a race of hyperproductive supermen from the basically contented but embarrassingly backward Gshwindi. Unfortunately, this project resulted in the eventual enslavement and extermination of the Gshwindi by what is now the government of Uganda. Most of them were corralled, range-fed, and eaten by Idi Amin.

An amusing family story about F.W. Porker – a friend’s prank resulted in a brief commitment to a hospital for the criminally insane. Before the mistake was realized and his release effectuated, he narrowly escaped a lobotomy. Actually, the lobotomy was conducted, but it was botched.

As my own father’s profession consisted chiefly of periods of incarceration, I chose rather to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps when I began my career in executive consultancy. For a time, I attempted to revive and further my grandfather’s studies by measuring and evaluating human bathroom procedures. My research focused on methods to speed up human excretory and elimination activities: If humankind could save even a tiny fraction of the time we spend on the crapper and apply it instead to solving today’s pressing problems, think of what we could do for humanity! Unfortunately, the necessary observational studies have made me unwelcome at the community recreation center where I pursued my research. I now write, teach, consult, and stay out of the cold at the public library several blocks away.

In addition to efficiency studies, I have tried to apply behavioral psychology, especially the precepts of operant conditioning, to my work with clients. Borrowing from the psychologist B.F. Skinner, I invented the “Porker Box” in which business executives might be trained in appropriate workplace responses by providing pleasant and painful stimuli in response to choices they made while locked inside the enclosure. Before I tried using Porker Boxes on paying clients, I first experimented on infant orphans I obtained from Tijuana, whom I subsequently raised entirely in Porker Boxes. While to my mind it is still an open question whether the results have really contributed all that much to the increasing savagery of the Mexican drug cartels to whom many of my grown test subjects now belong, this claim has been fodder for various international extradition demands, and – you guessed it – more punitive damages.

Perhaps the challenges and setbacks in my professional life may themselves be instructive to you. When you happen to be incarcerated, and when the incarcerated life gives you lemons, what would you do? Do you simply throw the lemons at other inmates who are trying to rape you, or are you the kind of person who makes a mildly corrosive liquid from the juice, which might eventually eat through prison bars, allowing you to escape.

Next, let’s take a closer look at some of life’s lemons.

Foreword: Inefficiency is for Crazy, Evil People

Installment from "The Bowling Ball in the Freezer and Other Secrets of a Highly Efficient You." Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.

Business is life. Life is business. If you want to be happy in your “personal life” and have a justifiable claim to inner peace and mental cleanliness, you have to succeed in business. And you can’t succeed in business unless you’ve got your shit together upstairs. And vice versa. Otherwise, it’s like a snake eating itself. A very hungry and stupid snake. The Mormons know it. The Scientologists know it. And now you know it too.

I work with clients who aren’t satisfied with mediocrity. They won’t stop until they achieve excellence. But they’re not particularly brilliant or talented. Actually, some of them are quite stupid, like our friend the very hungry snake. No, what they have is something that surprisingly few people have – real desire. And flexibility in matters of morality and basic human decency. And money to pay me.

Do you have those things? At least one of them? The money, I’m hoping?

Ten Second Gourmet – Cooking with Wine

From the recipe box of Dr. Porker:

Before you even crack the "Joy of Cooking" to find some outrageously implausible recipe, uncork a cheap but sturdy Beaujolais. You'll find it refreshing and amusing.

While you look at the pictures on how to dress wild game, which has nothing to do with the mac and cheese you are actually going to make, move on to the Costco-sized bottle of 2007 Pinot Noir from the Pennsylvania coast.

Drink directly from the Chardonnay box wine spigot to cool off while grating the cheese.

Always sip tawny port from plastic children's Ronald MacDonald glasses during any kind of sautéing.

As things truly begin to degenerate, decant that old bottle of Claret you were saving to celebrate the promotion you never got. Finding it long gone corky, and with the nose of an old dead whore, splash liberally into the unidentifiable mess in pan to see what nuance that will add.

Declare evening a smashed success.

Self Help 1

It may be apocryphal, but I’m guessing it probably happened: woman in chain bookstore overhears this exchange between clueless shopper and uninterested clerk.

Shopper: “I’m looking for a book by that French guy, you know the one they made a musical out of? ‘Les Miserable’ or something?”

Clerk: “Try Self-Help.”

I can’t remember where I read this; it was years ago, but it has stayed with me because it works on so many levels. First, the mispronunciation. Then, the clerk’s belief that someone might actually write a self-help book entitled “Less Miserable.” Not something like “How to be Very Happy Right Now!” but “How to be Less Miserable Eventually.”

Career Opportunities

So your high school occupational aptitude test said your were best suited to be a toilet bowl brush? Don’t despair, this is the roaring aughties – today’s economy is busting open with entry level opportunity. In China. But check out the following up and coming occupations, to be occupied right here in America’s hottest metropolitan markets, by Americans. The position’s incumbent? You!

Drive-Through Photo Lab Attendant

The machine is down. You look like a dorkwad in your little hut. The nearest bathroom is in the McDonald’s at the other end of the parking lot, and if you close for even five minutes, that will be when the regional jerkwad will come and take away all of your Service Stars for the month. And so what – it’s not like anybody ever drops off a stinking roll of film. Hasn’t this company heard of the Internet??? That’s why this is an excellent turnkey franchise opportunity: your very own drive-through marijuana dealership.

Serial Rapist

Crime pays! But it’s the intense psychosexual gratification that keeps today’s serial rapist on the job. Says Roger S., grandmother-rapist for 24 years (with a six-year sabbatical for an unrelated breaking-and-entering beef): “there’s not as much money in the robbery and carjacking sidelines of serial rape as you might think – it’s in the endorsements, really – and the variable hours can make a rewarding home life difficult. But I wouldn’t trade my stocking mask for a desk job – never!”

Bottle Cap Collector

Dahlia R. is always on the job – and loving every moment! “You can send them in somewhere for cool prizes. And they make good boats.” Dahlia has apprenticed and worked at her trade for nearly a third of her nine year old life. Her personal collection of caps is spread throughout her parents’ home. They can be found in the laundry, under sofa cushions, in the dog food bin. “In some of them, they still smell like Coke. If you’re real hungry or thirsty, and you have enough, you could probably keep alive by licking them until your mom brought you something to eat and drink.”

Focus Group Moderator

Americans love to talk. You can’t get them to shut up! And when it comes to learning how to sell shit to them, American companies will pay to listen. Here’s where you come in: Put 3 to 4 Senior Exec VP’s behind a one-way mirror, put 8 to 12 homemakers in front of that mirror, get them bitches talking fabric softener, and watch the money roll in!