Brain Matters Vol. 6 - Monday Spectacular

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There is no one more socially awkward to be around than the person who looks at you for joke approval. You know him. You've maybe even somehow managed to be friends with him for an extended period of time. But at some point, you just can't take it anymore and you have to get away from him.

He's the guy that says something that only he thinks has any semblance of humor in it, begins laughing and looks at you with his unfunny, puppy dog eyes. He needs some sort of approval or he'll just keep staring at you endlesssly, salivating at the thought of making the water you're drinking come out of your nose. But in reality, you just want to spit it in his face in a last-ditch effort to end the utterly ridiculous awkwardness of the situation.

So you smile and say, "Yeah." Or even worse, he forces you to give a fake chuckle (or as it's more humorously known, a "fuckle.") and say the one phrase that automatically means that something isn't funny. He forces you to say "That's funny." See, the thing about jokes and funny situations is that you laugh at them without being aware it. But when something isn't funny and the guy wants it to be, you have to throw him a verbal dog biscuit, pat him on the head and wait. You have to wait for the next completely uncomfortable moment when he references some ancient show or movie that no one cares about, then goes on to explain the scene and why it's hilarious.

And if you don't laugh, he has to inform you of how you just didn't "get" the joke. No, I "get" it. I "get" that you're not funny, but somewhere during your life you actually said something that made someone laugh, and now you think you're Don Frikkin' Rickles.

So, you end up having to laugh, even though you wish you could just tell him to fuckle off.

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The Grammy Award nominees were announced last week and Mary J. Blige garnered an actual butt-load of nominations. But I ask this....Why?

I didn't even know she had a new CD out. Yet all of the sudden she's all over the place. Everyone respects her and gives her standing ovations, but no one owns anything by her.

It's a musical mystery. Who's purchasing these things? I bet if you went to Ms. Blige's house and opened up her garage, millions of her own CD's would come tumbling out.

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How come a tiny-brained rat in a maze can learn to not go a certain way because it receives a small jolt of electricity when it takes a wrong turn, yet I shock the everlovin' holy hell out of myself every single time I get out of my car?


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If I were rich, I'd save most of my money, but set aside a small amount to spend on completely ludicrous shit that makes me look a little insane.

For instance, I hate the way jeans fit the first time you wear them after you wash and dry them. They don't really settle in and get comfortable again until after one wear. But I hate having to get that one day out of the way. Therefore, I would employ a guy to wear my jeans for one day after they get washed. I'd make sure he had on some longjohns and a couple of pairs of boxers for sanitary reasons and to help stretch out the denim a little bit. Then, he would follow me around whenever I had to go out in public. People would ask me who he is and I'd say "Oh, that's my Pants Man. Those are the pants I'm going to wear tomorrow, but he's wearing them today. I can do shit like that, because I'm rich, so it's not weird, it's just eccentric."

Then I'd go to get in my car, shock the crap out of myself and slap my Pants Man in the face out of frustration. Because I'd be rich and, if you can't slap your Pants Man in the face every once in awhile, then why bother having a Pants Man at all?

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Every day at work, my Spam filter sends me an update of emails it's blocked. Once every few days, one of the blocked emails is actually the Spam filter report from the previous day. It actually blocked itself. My Spam filter is trying to protect me from my Spam filter.

Now, I don't know a lot about computers (although I can snicker at some of the sexually suggestive names associated with them, like RAM, hard drive or Intel Celeron Processor) but I'm pretty sure my Spam Filter is going to try to kill me.

If you don't hear from me for a few days, check my inbox. There will probably be a ransom note. You'll know who sent it because it will look like this:

01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01010010 01101111 01110111 01100100 01111001 00100000 01000010 01101111 01110111 01100100 01100101 01101110 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01101011 01100101 01100101 01110000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 00101100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100110 01100001 01110010 00100000 01100001 01110111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 01101110 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110010 01101110 00101110

Translation: I have Rowdy Bowden. I'm keeping him where you'll never find him, which is far away from internet porn.

That's right. I made a binary code "joke." I'm not proud of it, but it's funny, right? I'm looking right at you and waiting for you to laugh. I'm not going to quit staring at you until you see how humorous my joke is. I could do this all day. Seriously. Come on. Give me that sweet, sweet approval. No? Nothing? Not even a fuckle?

Well, you obviously didn't get it.