Attitude. Sold Separately.

Batteries sold separately.

Perhaps those words bring back memories of Christmas mornings from days gone by—memories so miserable that they can only be compared to the tingling in your chest that accompanies a nearly-regurgitated dinner, or a bad heartburn. Memories of opening your long-awaited remote-control car or flashing spaceship or talking robot, only to find that it was as exhausted and powerless as your parents, who had spent all night wrapping it. Memories of excitedly dragging your exhausted parents into the cold Christmas morning to find an open gas station that carried batteries.

That is the joy of childhood. Things were so simple back then. Now you are the bleary-eyed grownup driving around in the cold to find batteries, and now your metabolism has deteriorated to the point that your Christmas dinner comes back up as fast as those miserable memories. Nature is paying you back, you see, for what you put your parents through. (Actually, nature is the only one in America that still pays anything back to anybody.)

Attitude sold separately.

Those words are definitely more welcome. If they sold kids with those words printed on their foreheads, I'd have a lot of kids by now. Of course, nature would never stand for that kind of thing. (It would be too easy on parents.) Instead, I found the label on a Mountain Dew bottle: "Attitude sold separately."

Also on the label was an 800 number. I called it and got a young lady with an attractive voice. (Use your imagination.) The conversation went something like this:

"Hello, how can I help you?"

"Hi, I have a question about my bottle of Mountain Dew."

"Sure, go right ahead."

"It says 'Attitude sold separately.' Do you know where I can get the attitude?"

"Excuse me, what do you want?"

"I'd like some attitude. Do you know where I can get the attitude?"

"Oh, that's just a slogan. We don't sell any."

"What? How can you disappoint me like this? I need attitude!"

"Believe me sir, you don't need any more of that."

"Oh you know it."

Happiness Sold Separately

This is the title of a novel. It is true—there is no way the book will ever make you happy by itself. Real happiness is the last piece of the puzzle—the one that's always missing. The one that's sold separately.

Pop Quiz #5

It's Saturday and you know what that means: great time for a pop quiz. You didn't expect a weekend pop quiz did you? Did you study over the weekend? No? Neither did we, but we are administering the test so we don't have to be accountable for our poor study habits. Never mind that the last four pop quizzes have been on Thursday or Friday, Saturday is as good a day as any to try the patience of the faithful few.

Put away your notes, tuck your backpacks under your desk, close all the windows on your computer (except this one, bien sûr!) and prepare yourself for the rigor of a difficult pop quiz. Matthew, stop looking at You Can Call Me Batman's work. This is an individual assignment. If you and YCCMB want to work on the quiz together we can divide both your final grades by two to reflect the assistance. You'll have to get YCCMB's approval though. No? I thought not.

Pick the best answer to each question and then scroll down to the bottom to see the answers. Hyperlinks contained in the question will lead you to the answer, but no fair clicking on those until you grade yourself.

NOTE: Check out the post tag Pop Quiz for previous tests.

1) Which alcoholic beverage did Ron Artest admit to drinking during the halftime of his NBA games?

a) Schnapps
b) Brandy
c) Beer
d) Cognac
e) Port

Answer.

2) Which of the following women is not alleged to have slept with Tiger Woods?

a) Elin Nordegren
b) Rachel Maddow
c) Rachel Uchitel
d) Jaimee Grubbs
e) Kalika Moquin

Answer.

3) Which of the following states did NOT cast its electoral votes for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Election?

a) West Virginia
b) Colorado
c) Nevada
d) Pennsylvania
e) Ohio

Answer.

4) Who came up with the idea of daylight savings time?

a) Elin Nordegren
b) John Ott
c) George Vernon Hudson
d) Benjamin Franklin
e) Thomas Jefferson

Answer.

5) Which is largest?

a) 1 billion
b) 1 nonillion
c) 1 novemdecillion
d) 1 sextillion
e) 12,000,000,000,000,000

Answer.

6) Who is listed as weighing more?

a) Ben Roethlisberger
b) Mike Tyson
c) Kevin Garnett
d) Warren Sapp
e) Glen Davis

7) How many consecutive losses had the New Jersey Nets lost to start this year's NBA season before last night?

a) 15
b) 16
c) 18
d) 20
e) 22

Answer.

8) If the Florida Gators win the SEC championship tomorrow, how many consecutive wins will the program have recorded?

a) 15
b) 16
c) 18
d) 20
e) 22

Answer.

Key: 1) d, 2) b, 3) a, 4) c, 5) c, 6) d, 7) c, 8) e.

Each right answer is worth 12.5%. Brag about your score in the comments.

48 Hours of Thanksgiving

How did you prepare yourself for the Thanksgiving holiday?

Studies consistently demonstrate that Americans under-prepare for the Thanksgiving festivities. While they devote significant energy toward preparation for the other major holidays, especially Christmas, Thanksgiving is relegated to the back-burner.

Thanksgiving is a culinary anomaly and it would behoove us to treat it as such. You wouldn't run a marathon without training. You wouldn't buy a car without checking the Car Facts report. I hope you wouldn't approach the Feast of Feasts without first preparing your GI tract.

Proper preparation for Thanksgiving begins 48 hours before the Feast and continues through the end of the munchie bonanza. You will want to make sure you don't have any significant social obligations before Thanksgiving and that you can devote the menu at every repast toward making the Thanksgiving Feast a successful experience.

48 Hours Before the Feast

INSTRUCTIONS: The key to the Feast diet is to enlarge your stomach while keeping it empty at the appointed time. This requires meal plans that enlarge the gut but allow for quick digestion. This means you want to be eating a lot of simple sugars. And you want to eat them quickly so that your stomach feels the need to expand. The day two days before Thanksgiving, eat two times. Eat a large meal around noon and eat an even larger one just before you go to bed. You will feel sick and probably won't sleep very well. Put these temporal pains aside by thinking about the wonderful Feast you will enjoy.

MY EXPERIENCE: It worked pretty much as explained. I had a plate of dough-nuts for the first meal and several plates of pasta for dinner. It felt as if someone had surgically inserted a bowling ball into my gut and my anti-bodies had been programmed not to reject it. But I slept okay and was ready for day two.

24 Hours Before the Feast:

INSTRUCTIONS: Eat a very small first meal. Starve yourself until dinner, then bomb your stomach with as much food as it will hold. Allow it to stretch some and bomb it again with second and third courses.

The purpose of this diet is to allow your stomach to empty (starvation) and then ensure that you keep it nicely enlarged for the Feast tomorrow (bombing).

MY EXPERIENCE: I attended a basketball game the day before Thanksgiving so I bombed my gut with three concession stand personal pizzas and two tubs of nachos. It was expensive, but worth it, until I noticed a teenage girl texting her boyfriend in front of me at the game. She had the gangly appearance of a Miley Cyrus fan who desperately wanted to be allowed to go to a Lady GaGa concert. She looked to be somewhere in vicinity of 16, but wore accessories and makeup to look older. I wasn't fooled: Her textgility revealed her youth. The correspondence went something like this:

Boyfriend: Yeah... [evidently referring to something previously texted]
Teenage girl: Why do u hav to be so short? Are u mad at me? Gosh, ur stressing me
BF: [after a pause] No. Chill.
TG: See? ur treating me like **** u havee no respek. im srsly worried about us
BF: Babe...w're coo. ur stressing me now.
TG: I think were done.

Et cetera.

I was watching this exchange with awe. I may have been witnessing this girl's first breakup. Over text no less! Although, in all probability, she had done this a thousand times and whoever "Travis" was on the other end of her conversation was just another innocent victim.

Anyway, watching the breakup reminded me of my own failings at love and took away my appetite. So I didn't go back for a fourth mini pizza.

Before the Feast

INSTRUCTIONS: Do not eat before the Feast.

MY EXPERIENCE: Easy enough. I used the time to recover from my concession stand food hangover.

During the Feast

INSTRUCTIONS: Go to town. Remember that every forkful of stuffing is three forkfuls of something else you can't eat.

MY EXPERIENCE: I liked the diet. I think I will avoid drama with teenage girls next year (always a good idea) and maybe see about what I can do 72 hours before the Feast...

Creeper 101

I try not to text in class. Except on days that end in "y".

This particular day, I got a facebook message that I read on my phone in the form of a text. To give a little background for the story, a guy sent me a facebook friend request in the first month of this semester. Since I didn't recognize him, I ignored it. I didn't think about it again... this happens pretty often. One day I got 2 friend requests from guys I don't know, one in Ghana, the other in Romania. Apparently I get around.

Yesterday he friend requested me again, and when I saw his picture I recognized who he was. I didn't remember ignoring him a few months ago. I accepted.


Ok, so I read the facebook message. And since I was bored (Chemistry at 8am tends to cause those feelings), I replied. The following story is an epic example of how NOT to get a girl's attention. So for all of you desperate bachelors out there, it might help you to grab a pen and paper and take some notes. Here's how the conversation shaped up:

Creeper: hey, what made you change your mind? Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly okay with the fact that you did, I'm just curious.

Me: well, I get friend requests from guys I don't know fairly often, so if I don't recognize them I ignore them. but I recognized you this time. I think you're in my Psychology class and my brother dorm group. right?

Creeper: No its just the Psych class...unless you haven't been showing up to any of the brother/sister events. You're in Crawford hall, right?

Me: Nah, I'm in Bailey hall.

Creeper: dang it! honestly I couldn't remember which it was....I stalked you via the student database to get your last name and I had just forgotten if it was Crawford or Bailey. :-)

(Note: If a guy shamelessly admits to stalking a girl, normally we do NOT think this is cute. Multiple alarms go off in our head and we run for the hills faster than the Von Trapp family. At this point, I sent a text to ChaCha to ask "how do I deal with a stalker?" ChaCha replied: "The best way to deal with a stalker is to save any threatening messages or emails sent to you and present them to the police." That seems a little harsh.)

Me: why go to so much trouble for a friend request?

Creeper: wouldn't you like to know. it wasn't that much trouble. honestly for some reason you just stick out in our psych class so that was the reason i requested the first time and this time.

(Note: If a guy says a girl sticks out, that phrase had better be followed with a sincere compliment of explanation. It should not be left hanging like John Brown. I texted ChaCha again to ask, "How do you deal with a creeper?" ChaCha replied: "Call the cops and get a restraining order ASAP!!!!!! Be careful and Good Luck!!")

Me: I'm hoping I stick out in a good way, not simply cause I'm weird

Creeper: no, its totally because you are weird! all the way...lol jk, No its in a good way defiantly.

My roommate wants me to de-friend him. Unfortunately I think he actually is in my brother dorm so I'm supposed to be nice to him. But that's only if he can find me. I plan to do my best to blend in for a couple weeks until I don't stick out anymore.

EPA Bans Water

In a recent ruling underlining the Obama administration's determination to stamp out rampant environmental devastation, the EPA ruled to ban water near cities, suburban areas, and within three hundred feet of schools.

"After classifying CO2 as a pollutant, we knew we were ready to go all the way with this thing," said EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "It's time to take a stand against pollution, no matter how widespread it is."

Jackson pointed to numerous red flags suggested a ban, including water's dubious legacy as a chemical used by farmers to promote plant growth and the high concentrations found in acid rain. "If we're willing to ban a bunch of trace gases causing global warming, we may as well hit the problem where it really hurts."

The human body produces approximately 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day, but that's nothing compared to the rampancy of water. "It was the devastation of Hurricane Katrina that really pushed me over the edge," Jackson added. The EPA will submit reccomentations to Congress within the next few weeks on ways to reduce water emissions by evil industrial corporations.

Water has become so widespread in recent years due to reckless human behavior that it now covers 71% of the earth's surface and looms in ominous clouds over most of the planet. Agency officials unanimously agreed that the only way to put an end to the vicious water cycle (evapotranspiration, precipitation, and runoff) was to "nip this thing in the bud."

Said Jackson: "Think of the children." The coming weeks will show us just exactly what that means.