"Life is like a box of chocolates, you'll never know what you're gonna get."
- Forrest Gump

"A little nonsense, now and then, is relished by the wisest men."
- Willy Wonka

(THE STORIES AND CONVERSATIONS BELOW ARE MORE OR LESS TRUE. WITH THE EXCEPTION OF MY WIFE, THE NAMES HAVE BEEN OMITTED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT (ALBEIT WEIRD))

March 14th, 2005

Life is absurdity. I have witnesses to prove this.

The other day I was in a former manager's office and we were discussing the topic of snake proof boots. Truth to tell, I'd never heard of the concept before and I found it facinating. What's more is that as a QA tester I wondered how did the manufacturer prove that the boots were, indeed, "snake proof". Can you see this scene playing out in the ACME snake proof boot plant?

"Hey Bob! Can you help me out for a minute?"

"Sure, Tim, What's up?"

"R&D just sent me the new X-52 line of snake proof boots. Marketing wants to go with the handle, "The Fangsplitter", but I don't know if it's going to fly."

"Yeah, that's Jim Burke for ya. Always with a flair for the dramatic."

"Anyhoo, I need you to help me test these. Do ya mind?"

"Um... I don't know."

"C'mon, it'll only take a minute or so."

"Well, okay. What do you want me to do?"

"Okay, this is easy. Put on the boots. You see? They come right up to your calves, right? That's right, slip em right on. Got em on? Good! Now, I just need you to put your foot down in this snake pit here. Okay."

"ARRRRRRGGGHHH!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! DOES THAT HURT!!!!! IT'S LIKE A HOT SPIKE IN MY LEG!!! WHY DOES IT BURN LIKE THAT??!!!! MOMMEEEEE!!!"

"That's just the cobra's necrotoxin. Hmmmmmm..... There seems to be a design defect in the ankle. Better write that down and get it back to R&D on the double. Awwww C'mon now! It's not so bad. Don't be such a baby. We'll get someone from medical right up here to suck that poison right out for you. Quit your whining!.... Bob?... Bob?!!!"

 

And they wonder why a good pair of Fangsplitters cost so much to make.

Well, life is like this. There are times you'll find yourself talking to a friend and you'll come up with a concept so absurd and insane that you can't help but be amazed that you arrived at that topic to begin with. For example, just the other day, I had a conversation with my wife that made me doubt my own sanity. I had just picked up the DVD of Forrest Gump and was reading the back of the jacket. On the back of the jacket is the famous quote from the movie, "Life's like a box of chocolates, you'll never know what you're gonna get."

My wife began what will forever be in my mind as the conversation that wasted 30 minutes of my life and brainpower with...

"That is just stupid! What's that supposed to mean? I can never figure that out!"

"What's to figure out? It seems pretty straight forward."

"'You never know what you're gonna get.' I always know what I'm gonna get when I eat those things. There are directions right at the top of the box with a map of what's what."

"Well, what if you don't have the map?"

"You do what my aunt did and stick your finger through it and you'll see what's on the inside. Then you know whether you want to eat it or not."

"Huh?"

"Sure, if you don't like it from what you see, then you don't eat it."

"And your aunt did this horrible thing?"

"It's not horrible."

"But what if you wanted to eat one of the ones she stuck her dirty fingers in? I mean doesn't it strike you as kind of rude to spoil a bunch of candies you don't want to eat for other people? Not to mention the waste of candies that won't be eaten by anyone?"

"Well, no one really liked my aunt too much."

"The point being is that she didn't know what she was going to get. But then again, maybe she was just a nasty evil person who liked sticking her fingers in other people's food."

"Well, maybe you do what me and my friends do."

"What's that?" I shivered.

"You bite half of the chocolate and if you don't like it you give the other half to someone else who might want it."

"Are you telling me that you'd offer someone else an already bitten piece of candy that's already had evidence of your teeth marks?"

"They don't mind. But it rarely happens when you have the map. Besides, once you memorize the map at the top you can figure out logically that square ones are hard peanutty, and the round ones are soft with caramel and nougat you already know what you're gonna get."

"You memorize the map of chocolates?"

"Yes. Don't you?"

"NO! I DON'T!! I KNOW THAT MY BRAIN RAM POWER HAS A LOT OF OTHER THINGS THAT CAN BETTER BE SERVED WITH ITS MEMORY SPACE THAN TO MEMORIZE THE DIRECTIONS OF A CANDY BOX!!!" (Deep breath.) "That's a huge committment for a box of chocolates."

"Well, what do you do when you eat a chocolate you don't like?"

"I finish it. It's the luck of the draw. I screwed up. I chose poorly. And now I have to face my candy eating foolishness by eating the other bite full of a chocolate that I don't want. That's the penalty according to Willy Wonka! That's the way things work in the slam bang 'live on the razor's edge' world of mystery chocolate candy eating."

 

We both, then, spent five more minutes contemplating the phrase "Til death do us part." Ahhh, yes, another day of wedded bliss.

As I said, "nonsense". Life is like this. These are the little marshmallows in the cup of hot cocoa I like to call "life experience". Most times it makes no sense other than to educate yourself with the people you like to call family and friends.

One friend of mine started a bizarre conversation after I was talking about why I haven't been reading as much which lead to my portable DVD player. I said it was a Godsend on the bus. This lead to....

"It's a shame, really. I have so many books to go through just stacked up in my study - waiting to be read."

"Why haven't you been reading?"

"Well, my portable DVD player has been a Godsend on the bus. Now I watch the old Star Trek episodes and whatever I can rent at Blockbuster."

"Yeah, but what if you wanted to watch porn on it?"

"I don't know. I'm sure I'd get a lot of weird looks on the bus. It's also not something you can just fast forward through as it looks even weirder when things go flopping around like that at high speed."

"That reminds me of a buddy of mine. He got caught watching porn in his minivan* in a parking lot when a mother and a child were passing by and they reported him to the cops."

"There's an argument for tinted windows."

"Well, that's not as bad as another guy I know. Check this out! I was cruising the web at www.sexoffender.com, just to see how many we have in Jersey City..."

"How many?"

"Believe it or not, not as many as you'd think. Maybe 15 or 20. So just for sh*ts and giggles, I decided to check out my home state of Florida and there were pages and pages of offenders."

"I'm not surprised. I'm sure if you checked out the rural areas of New Jersey, you'd find a whole bunch as well.**"

"Yeah, so, I'm checking out my county in Florida and not only do I find pages and pages of offenders, I know the guy at the top of the list. So, one of the last times I went down to visit my parents, I asked one of my friends about this guy. He said, 'You are not going to believe this sh*t! He's driving along, minding his own business, when he has to take a leak. So he pulls his car over to the side of the road and start pissing away. While he's taking a leak, another car passes by with a kid in the car. The kid sees his willy and the guy gets arrested as a sex offender.'"

"I'm hoping he fought it."

"It doesn't matter. Once you get on that list, you're screwed! I mean no one will hire you. No matter where you go you'll be tracked. Hell! If it were me, I'd go for the 'life of crime'. But I'm not sure how'd I'd make a living."

"What about E-Bay?"

"Sure! Rob a house, bludgeon whoever is in the house, steal the stuff and sell it on E-Bay. Of course, I'd have to burn down the house to make sure that there was no evidence left from the crime."

"Of course."

"Or better yet, blackmail some other guy to do it for me and then kill the blackmailer after you get the stuff... THEN sell it on E-Bay."

"I'm not sure which is scarier. The fact that you were able to think of two probable perfect crimes involving murder, robbery, and arson OR the speed you came up with the ideas. Have you been planning this a while?"

"Well, you never know."

 

I'm proud of the fact that I hang with a colorful crew and, remember, this started with my conversation about my deliquent reading list.

You meet people everyday from every walk of life. It's a good sign, psychologically, that a person can slip the proverbial veneer from their professional, uptight, lives and come around on the bizarre side of things. It's the people who don't cut loose every once in a while that you later see on the news with the end tag line - "film at 11:PM".

My experience of what judges normalcy, if there is such a thing, is how abnormal you can be and when you are going to show that bit of yourself. Most people will only show this side when they've been consuming massive quantities of alcohol, others when they've been smoking weed or doing something more illegal. In any event, I believe that it's healthy to show that you are NOT perfect rather than try to live a life pretending that you are.

There is no such thing as a perfect person. Remember, To err is human. Those of us who pride ourselves on not being pious and know that people who are; are not people you'd want to know in the first place. Garth Brooks sings about his "friends in low places", and we all have them. Well, maybe not all of us. The guy who is at the lowest place really doesn't have anyone to turn to to say that. But, then again, he would be the only person alive to say, "everyone I know is really a mover and a shaker."

And I guess that's something to be proud of.

*- Not as uncommon as you'd think.
**- I checked it out. Just for laughs. More in my neck of the woods than I'd want to believe. I won't sleep well.