Mulled Vine

1. Sing the Batman theme incessantly.

2. In the memo field of all your checks, write “for sensual massage.”

3. Specify that your drive-through order is “to go.”

4. Learn Morse code, and have conversations with friends in public consisting entirely of “Beeeep Bip Bip Beeep Bip…”

5. If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.

6. Amuse yourself for endless hours by hooking a camcorder to your TV and then pointing it at the screen. <

7. Speak only in a “robot” voice.

8. Push all the flat Lego pieces together tightly.

9. Start each meal by conspicuously licking all your food, and announce that this is so no one will “swipe your grub”.

10. Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 98 copies.

11. Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.

12. Sniffle incessantly.

13. Leave your turn signal on for fifty miles.

14. Name your dog “Dog.”

15. Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions “to keep them tuned up.”

16. Reply to everything someone says with “that’s what YOU think.”

17. Claim that you must always wear a bicycle helmet as part of your “astronaut training.”

18. Declare your apartment an independent nation, and sue your neighbors upstairs for “violating your airspace”.

19. Forget the punchline to a long joke, but assure the listener it was a “real hoot.”

20. Follow a few paces behind someone, spraying everything they touch with Lysol.

21. Practice making fax and modem noises.

22. Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and “cc:” them to your boss.

23. Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.

24. Invent nonsense computer jargon in conversations, and see if people play along to avoid the appearance of ignorance.

25. Erect an elaborate network of ropes in your backyard, and tell the neighbors you are a “spider person.”

26. Finish all your sentences with the words “in accordance with the prophesy.”

27. Wear a special hip holster for your
remote control.

28. Do not add any inflection to the end of your sentences, producing awkward silences with the impression that you’ll be saying more any moment.

29. Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears.

30. Disassemble your pen and “accidentally” flip the ink cartridge across the room.

31. Give a play-by-play account of a persons every action in a nasal Howard Cosell voice.

32. Holler random numbers while someone is counting.

33. Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you “like it that way.”

34. Drum on every available surface.

35. Staple papers in the middle of the page.

36. Ask 1-800 operators for dates.

37. Produce a rental video consisting entirely of dire FBI copyright warnings.

38. Sew anti-theft detector strips
into peoples backpacks.

39. Hide dairy products in inaccessible places.

40. Write the surprise ending to a novel on its first page.

41. Set alarms for random times.

42. Order a side of pork rinds with your filet mignon.

43. Instead of Gallo, serve Night Train next Thanksgiving.

44. Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a “croaking” noise.

45. Honk and wave to strangers.

46. Dress only in clothes colored Hunters Orange.

47. Change channels five minutes before the end of every show.

48. Tape pieces of “Sweating to the Oldies” over climactic parts of rental movies.

49. Wear your pants backwards.

50. Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints by the cash register.

51. Begin all your sentences with “ooh la la!”

52. ONLY TYPE IN UPPERCASE.

53. only type in lowercase.

54. dont use any punctuation either

55. Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole streets.

56. Pay for your dinner with pennies.

57. Tie jingle bells to all your clothes.

58. Repeat everything someone says, as a question.

59. Write “X – BURIED TREASURE” in random spots on all of someone’s roadmaps.

60. Inform everyone you meet of your personal Kennedy assassination/UFO/ O.J Simpson conspiracy theories.

61. Repeat the following conversation a dozen times: “Do you hear that?” “What?” “Never mind, its gone now.”

62. Light road flares on a birthday cake.

63. Wander around a restaurant, asking other diners for their parsley.

64. Leave tips in Bolivian currency.

65. Demand that everyone address you as “Conquistador.”

66. At the laundromat, use one dryer for each of your socks.

67. When Christmas caroling, sing “Jingle Bells, Batman smells” until physically restrained.

68. Wear a cape that says “Magnificent One.”

69. As much as possible, skip rather than walk.

70. Stand over someone’s shoulder, mumbling, as they read.

71. Pretend your computer’s mouse is a CB radio, and talk to it.

72. Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce “no, wait, I messed it up,” and repeat.

73. Drive half a block.

74. Inform others that they exist only in your imagination.

75. Ask people what gender they are.

76. Lick the filling out of all the Oreos, and place the cookie parts back.

77. Cultivate a Norwegian accent. If Norwegian, affect a Southern drawl.

78. Routinely handcuff yourself to furniture, informing the curious that you don’t want to fall off “in case the big one comes”.

79. Deliberately hum songs that will remain lodged in co-workers brains, such as “Feliz Navidad”, the Archies “Sugar” or the Mr. Rogers theme song.

80. While making presentations, occasionally bob your head. like a parakeet.

81. Lie obviously about trivial things such as the time of day.

82. Leave your Christmas lights up and lit until September.

83. Change your name to “AaJohn Aaaaasmith” for the great glory of being first in the phone book. Claim it’s a Hawaiian name, and demand that people pronounce each “a.”

84. Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.

85. Chew on pens that you’ve borrowed.

86. Wear a LOT of cologne.

87. Listen to 33rpm records at 45rpm speed, and claim the faster speed is necessary because of your “superior mental processing.”

88. Sing along at the opera.

89. Mow your lawn with scissors.

90. At a golf tournament, chant “swing-batabatabata-suhWING-batter!”

91. Ask the waitress for an extra seat for your “imaginary friend.”

92. Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn’t rhyme.

93. Ask your co-workers mysterious questions, and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something
about “psychological profiles.”

94. Stare at static on the TV and claim you can see a “magic picture.”

95. Select the same song on the jukebox fifty times.

96. Never make eye contact.

97. Never break eye contact.

98. Construct elaborate “crop circles” in your front lawn.

99. Construct your own pretend “tricorder,” and “scan” people with it, announcing the results.

100. Make appointments for the 31st of September.

101. Invite lots of people to other people’s parties.

Yep, they’re doing it again, causing us London commuters misery beyond description.

While the rest of us are losing jobs, glad to have work, and waiting for the storm to end, on planet RMT they are demanding pay rises and guarantees that there will be no redundancies.

And holding us to ransom until they get it…

I’ve been pondering how morality would work if there was no absolute reference point like a god-ordained set of laws.

Morality essentially is about how we behave, either personally or towards others. Those who don’t believe in god-ordained laws would say (I presume) that the personal aspect of morality is irrelevant as long as it does not harm the community.

So there is actually an absolute moral law here: the law of community preservation, and in an evolutionary sense this law is an extention of the self-preservation law. In other words, our prime drive is to survive, but we need community to do that long term, so we have to balance personal survival with community survival.

I have a slight philosophical issue with this survival of the fittest law. If there is no god, no eternal purpose outside this universe, then what we are just IS, and if we all implode into nothing tomorrow, then that also just IS. Neither surviving nor not surviving is to be preferred. The answer to this of course is that the law just IS, so we can’t question it. I find that a little convenient.

But I digress.

So in the absence of god-laws we have a morality based on maximising the survival of the individual, and the society that supports that individual.

Unfortunately we have different societies, with different views on what is “right”, i.e. what benefits the society and the individual. This means that one group has no right to judge another group’s views. So Hitler’s acts just ARE, neither good nor bad. Ok, our society might differ in opinion, but that’s all it is: a different view. The fact that the Allies went to war reflected on (i) how strongly they believed their view, and (ii) their ability to go to war, i.e. their might as a “fitter” group. If the Allies had lost then the “right” view would have been Hitler’s.

Its also wrong to think that the LATEST society is the also the most successful. Think of evolution like a maze: there are many possible branches and cul-de-sacs and even if you are happily walking along a long passage with no end in site, you don’t know until you’ve reached the end whether your route is a dead-end or not. And even if you did last the longest, is that because you were successful or just lucky?

All of this is just my opinion, right?

One learns early in life that things are not fair, that we enter this world under different circumstances, with varying degrees of talent or handicap. Yet despite this we have this innate sense of justice that requires us to view all men as created equal. We raise our children to be kind, gentle and fair, contrary to their basic instincts of self-preservation which, unrestrained, would yield selfish brutes that take advantage of every competitive edge over each other. The irony is that we prepare them inadequately for a world where fairness does not exist, where it is the strong, the loud, the networked who get somewhere, while the kind and the gentle wait for justice … a very long time.

An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent,

I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.

Love, Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Pop,

Don’t dig up that garden. That’s where the bodies are buried.

Love, Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left.

That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Pop,

Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.

Love you,

Vinnie

I am mostly mad. It has always been like this, usually starting as a slight knot in my gut, then a spreading irritation, till it fills my whole body with red flame and I explode.

My family and friends are used to this and don’t seem to mind my frequent anger outbursts, but when I meet new people I like to warn them: “Hi, I’m Andy Wokswizme, and I am mostly mad” – that way there are no surprises later on and new relationships in general have worked out well.

So imagine my consternation and outrage when I introduced myself thus at Heathrow passport control, and instead of letting me enter the UK and take a well deserved rest at the Holiday Inn, the British immigration officer looked at me queerly and pressed a red button calling men in white coats to take me away to a padded cell.

Its quite a nice padded cell, actually, and I love how the nearly 30256 squares interlock so neatly, forming pretty patterns that help me to sleep, that is when the voices let me. I like the voices, and I think the like me, probably because I was careful to tell them up front that I am mostly mad.

I have wanted to be a terrorist ever since I was small and my uncle Abdul blew himself up in London and got his picture on the black and white television in our lounge. I asked my mother where one could learn how to be a terrorist but she just slapped me and told me to finish my homework; my father was not much help either, preferring to stare dreamily at me with unseeing eyes as he sat under the dead cypress tree. So I ran away from home and headed towards Kabul by bus where I met some more informed people who told me the way to terrorist school, and took all my money since they reckoned Allah would provide enough reward in the Paradise, and many virgins besides (though I wasn’t sure what those were).

So there we stood, a rag tag group of youngsters with a common purpose – to die in glory (or on television) – filled with the thrill of Jihad as we braved the piercing sun and stared intently at our instructor who was wrapped up in dynamite, thumb poised on the detonator.

“Ok, listen up, you worms”, he said (I think he liked American movies), “and watch carefully because I’m only going to do this once.”

The guard stood to attention, rifle his side, bayonet glinting in the summer sun, clad in smart black trousers, bright red gold-buttoned tunic and black bear skin hat. He hadn’t moved all day, despite the efforts of countless tourists. He took pride in his work and despised these spotty, camera touting vermin who posed with him to show their vile friends back home.

The shadows grew longer and his stint was almost done as two lone youths approached him, mischief in their eyes. For a while he resisted their feeble attempts at getting him to move, but drew the line at having his groin groped by a couple of diseased faggots.

The evening silence was shattered by two primal screams – he would have to clean his bayonet tonight.

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me for the path is narrow. In fact, just piss off and leave me alone.

2. Sex is like air. It’s not important unless you aren’t getting any.

3. No one is listening until you fart.

4. Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else.

5. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

6. If you think nobody cares whether you’re alive or dead, try missing a couple of mortgage payments.

7. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.

8. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.

9. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

10. If you lend someone £20 and never see that person again, it was probably well worth it.

11. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

12. Some days you are the bug; some days you are the windscreen.

13. Don’t worry; it only seems kinky the first time.

14. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and most of that comes from bad judgment.

15. A closed mouth gathers no foot..

16. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.

17. Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your lips are moving.

18. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

19. We are born naked, wet and hungry, and get slapped on our bum … then things just get worse.

20. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.