relationship

Communications specialist.

Hello! There are approximately one trillion different ways to greet a person, each one more complex than the last. There’s The Handshake, The Fist Bump, The Chest Bump, The Felony Chest Grab, The Close Proximity Wave, The Evil Villain Slow Clap, The Pie to the Face, The Scream and Run, The Public Boo, The Look-Off and Cross the Street, The Whistle and Cat-Call, The Louder Whistle and Pepper Spray, and The Frightened Elderly Hispanic Woman Hail Mary, to name a few. The problem is that certain greetings are only appropriate in certain scenarios. For those of you who swear by The High Five and have been to a funeral recently, you’ve learned this the hard way. Indeed, there isn’t a more terrible way to start off a conversation or bank robbery than misdiagnosing your acquaintance’s greeting of choice. We all know the feeling: that sting of awkward embarrassment that immediately follows the Greeter going in for The Bear Hug and the Greet-ee sticking their extended hand into their neck. And the confusion and embarrassment and shame only increases as you get older and are required to greet more and more people with The Cheek Kiss, because that is What Polite Adults Do. The odds are stacked against you with this doomed maneuver, from over-shooting the cheek and accidentally kissing ear, to making an over-zealous “kissing sound,” to the ultimate greeting catastrophe: poking eyeball with nose. No wonder adults are so stressed out all the time! They’re in constant fear of seeing the people they love. From now on, I’m greeting people with my lips puckered, my left hand waving, and my right hand giving a thumbs up. Better safe than sorry. Goodbye!

Marital bliss.

Forget everything you’ve ever heard about “communication,” or “respect,” or “loving each other.” When it comes to marriage, the secret to success is [drumroll] separate toilets. Trust me, I know: I’ve been married for three months. Three magical months of matrimony with my lovely wife, who, for purposes of anonymity, shall be heretofore referred to as “Wife.” Anyway, Wife and I have worked out a fantastic system of bathroom-ing that has simultaneously maximized efficiency and streamlined t.p. distribution. And that system is this: GET THE [expletive deleted] OUT OF MY BATHROOM! You see, in this mutually beneficial system, Wife gets to take relaxing bubble baths and store beauty products in a massive cabinet, a.k.a. “The Hurt Locker,” while I get to take showers in a scum-covered linolium stall with zero ventilation and an overhead fan coil heater that could bake chocolate-chip muffins in about fifteen minutes. Then there’s the issue of toilet usage. Let’s see, how do I put this delicately? If Wife and I were professional bull riders, and our respective toilets were bulls, I would get way, way, way, way, way more endorsement deals. This is partially due to the fact that I’m a dude, and science tells us that dudes (D) spend more time (x) per toilet trip (y) than chicks (C) [graph not pictured], but mostly that I recently figured out how to turn my phone into a six-inch wall-mounted HD television by resting it on two light switches in the “ON” position. Sure, my legs go numb, but I want to keep pretending I’m a wealthy rapper who watches Sportscenter on the john!