ezola

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I recently had a long conversation with an activist, and it got me to thinking about some of the really big problems and what I can do to help. I can’t make a meaningful difference with monetary contributions, as I manage to spend my entire paycheck on myself every month, and a little introspection revealed that I won’t be able to provide manpower because I hate bugs, and developing countries always seem to be full of bugs. What I can offer is my Careful Thinking [TM], and so today I dedicated an entire subway ride home from work to this problem, and just when I was approaching my stop and ready to give up, it hit me. We, the philanthropic, have been thinking about world hunger all wrong.

The problem isn’t that there isn’t enough food for everyone, the problem is that the people in developing countries are eating their available food too fast. We need to slow them down, encourage them to chew. The way to do this is put braces on everyone in the third world. Remember how deliberately you ate when you had braces? It took me 30 minutes to get a turkey sandwich down. And braces turn even the smallest spread into The Meal That Keeps On Feeding, as in little bits of lunch from three days ago – like an extended release tablet. Lastly, I find that orthodontists are underappreciated and underpaid at home, and could use a morale boost – in the form of a couple billion new customers.

I even have an inspirational slogan: Brace Yourself.

I first suffered erectile dysfunction seven or eight years ago, and it really freaked me out. I responded to this by telling my friend Eric, who made it clear to me that this was a completely normal part of being a single guy. Emboldened, I started telling everyone else I knew about my erectile dysfunction, only to find that every single one of them had been through it. It was around that time that I developed my open source personality, which is to say that I keep no secrets, and in fact I broadcast my transgressions and insecurities out into the world. In so doing, I

a. confess. so therapeutic! catholicism blows, but this they got right.
b. make anything a potential topic of conversation. nothing says I won’t judge you like an open source personality.
c. have come to appreciate that all of my perversions and inadequacies are out there in numbers, so I don’t feel so bad, which makes it okay to talk about, which gives me access to everyone else’s perversions and inadequacies, which makes me feel not so bad.
d. benefit from the world’s suggestions and improvements to my personality. A living, breathing wikipedia is what I am.

highly recommended. postsecret operates on this principle, except that it’s anonymous, so you don’t benefit from parts b or d. bottom line is that if you haven’t killed or raped, whatever’s lurking in your mind and past that you think is inexcusably horrid or unredeemably pathetic is actually within two standard deviations of the mean. if you’ve killed or raped, that’s fucked up. keep that shit to yourself.

I’m moving my stuff from the washer to the dryer. A girl I’ve never seen before walks in with a laundry basket.

Me: Hi.

Her: Hi. Finished with the washer?

Me: Yes. All yours.

Her: Thanks.

Me: I’m Reuben, how are you.

Her: Lisa. Hi.

Me: Are you a new arrival to our fine apartment building? This is our first laundry encounter.

Her: I moved here not long ago. I live with my boyfriend Tom.

Me: Great, welcome. I also live my boyfriend, who’s also named Tom!

Her: [Smiling, finally] Oh. Um, I don’t really have a boyfriend, I thought you were hitting on me.

Me: [As I walk out with my clothes] I don’t really have a boyfriend either, and I was hitting on you.