So, it’s officially the 16th and, boy, am I happy! I really wanted to buy gas yesterday, but sound economic theory was at work during the good ole “American Gas-Out.”

Anyway, I drove down to the nearest gas station to see what gas prices were like now that we bankrupted the oil industry. Gas was 15 cents a gallon! I was filling my tank up with delicious refined petroleum and some bum came up and started cleaning my windows and begging for change. It was an oil executive! Turns out he lost his job after the Exxon-Mobil corporate headquarters collapsed due to the coherent arguments and economic reasoning of high school facebook users across America.

After I filled my tank, I went in to get a Mountain Dew and I got a free quart of oil with it, because apparently the stuff is free now. I’m sure glad the free market works like that. I mean, come on, like do the math and stuff.

10,000,000 people x 1 car x $75 x 2 gas stations x 85,000 facebook groups = Chapter 7 Bankruptcy for the evil oil industry

Geez. It doesn’t take an economistry class to do simple math.

Never underestimate the power of large numbers of stupid people with a “share button” to accomplish absolutely nothing with flawed methods and logical fallacies. By the way, before you click “share” on anything, check Snopes.com first.

Has a romance novel ever been set in an office supply store? One totally should be.

The parking lot was empty. Almost. He could tell she had been waiting for him. Her not-so-recently-died blonde and gray hair lay scattered on the dash as she drooled asleep against the steering wheel. “What brings her to this place so early?” Cody wondered. The headlights of his rugged 4×4 monster truck S-10 beamed in her direction, causing her to stir and begin to pretend that she had been looking for something instead of slobbering. After a stifled yawn, she offered a weak greeting. “G’mornin.”

The building was empty. It always was at this hour, but there was still work to be done. Before she could delegate a task, Cody gently pressed his index finger to her lips and mouthed a faint “shhhh.” “Say not what you want me to do, for I can sense the task you require of me with every step you take.” Cody performed a slow about face and started toward the rear of the store where mountains of freight longed for their shelven home. As he weaved through the jungle of furniture, he pondered how a person’s walk could possibly say “put freight on the shelves.” He dismissed the thought as he began the seemingly endless task at hand.

The cash registers were empty. Within minutes they would receive their respective tills marking the beginning of another day of retail paradise. Cody prided himself on his focus throughout his workday, yet there was always one thing that never ceased to distract him. The opening of the store meant the arrival of his deepest passion. Bethany, a young cashier with a heart of gold, stood at five and a half feet with strawberry blonde hair that rested in perfect layers midway down her back. As she clocked in, he saw her steal a glimpse of him, smile quickly, and blush slightly. Either she fancied Cody or 12 digit, solar-powered pocket calculators. “Who doesn’t?” mused Cody as he tried to shake her figure from his mind and regain focus. Cody soon found this to be a deed easier conceived than completed. The minutes whiled away and Cody’s work was soon consumed with errors. As he finished placing an entire case of ink pens inside of a laser printer, he knew what had to be done.

I’m going to be so freaking rich.

It all started when I wanted to take a martial arts class (not to be confused with marital arts which is something completely different). I asked around here and there, and I was eventually directed to Gold’s Gym, where it was believed that there were weekly martial arts classes. “Great! That’s near where I work!” I thought. I scheduled a tour of the facilities and promised myself that I would not purchase a gym membership. In fact, I was so serious about this, I had several friends text me throughout the day to affirm that resolution. After all, I didn’t want a gym membership. Treadmills, ellipticals, and spinning classes are fine I guess, but I didn’t want any of that. I want a mat on the floor and Asian writing on the walls.

Was that too much to ask? Yes, it was.

The tour starts off with a sit down discussion about your personal goals, habits, etc. Be careful as you are answering these questions; this information will come back to haunt you. After telling my guide how many Mountain Dews I drink and how often I ate at McDonalds, we started the tour. The first stop was the room where group fitness classes were taught. This stop lasted 12 seconds. After that, I was told everything I never wanted to know about spinning (riding a stationary bicycle). Sounds riveting, doesn’t it? Then my guide wowed me by telling me that a certain piece of equipment cost $75,000. Like I care. Anyway, we ended up where we started and I told him that I would not be interested in purchasing a membership.

“Well what if I take away your processing fee and drop your first month down to $4? How does that sound?”

“Okay, okay. What if I can give you your first month absolutely free??”

“If you cut the number of times you ate out by just three or four times a week, you could easily pay for your membership.”

These were just a few of the lines I heard before I finally escaped. In fact, I was such a resistant prospect, that he actually had to retrieve his boss to come and try to pry my wallet open. If this guy put up a fight, his boss put up an even smaller one. Her tactic was to ask as many personal questions as possible to try and guilt trip me into realizing that I was frittering my money away on trite luxuries such as electricity and water. When she started asking how much each of my individual bills were, I cut her off. I kindly explained to her that I had a written budget in my possession that, at the current time, did not allow for a $50 gym membership. Great deals left and right would not be able to change my financial situation. Admitting defeat and looking a little more than PO’d at the waste of her time that I was, she skulked away.

Had I signed up for a gym membership that day, I’m sure I would be using it. I may even be getting my money’s worth, but that’s not the point. I wanted to take a karate class. Don’t try to corner a natural salesman with lame, coercive recruiting tactics and expect anything but a full-force retaliation. For example, don’t tell someone that drinking Mountain Dew costs too much, and then show me your smoothie bar complete with $4 sugar-free, high-protein white grape fruit juice drinks. That doesn’t help your credibility.

To my friends that have memberships at Gold’s, I salute you. You probably went there looking for a gym, and lo and behold, you found one. I, however, was looking for Asian writing and a floormat. I’m still looking in fact. My life won’t be complete until my quest is complete.

Someone with whom to split the utilities. It’s quite simple: I’m looking for someone to pay half. You don’t get to use the utilities, and you don’t get to live with me. You do, however, get to enjoy the fact that you are making my world a happier place in which to live. Please email me directly regarding the position.

Growing up, I hated vegetables with a passion. I have no idea why, I just didn’t enjoy their taste. Pretty much the only veggies I would eat were corn and potatoes. My parents were in love with this nasty gruel called “California Blend” that was chock full of nasty broccoli and cauliflower and other garbage. If you couldn’t tell, I still am not very fond of certain vegetables.

I still cannot stand the thought of eating broccoli, cauliflower, canned spinach, peas, squash, and various others. I didn’t have sweet potatoes until I was like 15, but they would never have appeared on my “hated foods” list had I discovered them sooner. I used to hate them just by association, which I know was mean of me.

My parents tried everything to get me to eat my vegetables. They tried the “you can’t get up from the table until your plate is clean” bit. They tried the “refrigerate what’s left and you can have it for breakfast tomorrow” routine. Nothing worked. Why? Because I was a champion. I never backed down. No parent is going to watch their child suffer in malnutrition over some dumb vegetables. To me, hunger was better than molesting my palate with the grotesque smelling and tasting garbage on my plate.

I have to admit, they almost had me once. My dad told me about something called “reverse digestion”. This was a process to cure malnurishment (from lack of veggies, of course) whereby a doctor inserted a string into your mouth and waited for it to pass through your GI tract. Once it “exited,” he would then attach food to it and pull it back through the body into the stomach. Not having a firm grasp on the complexities of the duodenum and small intestine at the age of 7, I somewhat bought it. I had my doubts, and rightfully so. They had tried every trick in the book. Luckily, I knew better because I had seen most of them in action on Full House and Webster. What tipped the scales in my parent’s favor was a program on PBS one night. My dad called me down from my room to show me a procedure being performed on TV. I watched in horror as a doctor inserted a tube down a man’s throat while he was still conscious. The look in that man’s eyes said it all: EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that my dad broke down and told me that I had seen an endoscopy. Had there been a show about colonoscopies on that night, I would probably still be in therapy.

Today I wrote only the second resignation letter of my life… and it wasn’t even for me. The person for whom I wrote it was both unable to manage her time properly enough to include part time employment, but too clueless to write a proper resignation letter. Here is a sample from her intended resignation letter:

Dear ****, I’ve really liked working here, but I can’t any more because school is just too much for me. Thanks for all the great times!

-*******

I wish I had made that up, but alas, I did not. With my superior linguistic skills and my excessive compassion for those less fortunate, I stepped up to the position of Resignation Letter Ghost Writer. I made sure that she-who-is-too-ashamed-to-be-named looked over my shoulder while I wrote so that she may some day leave a job with dignity instead of weird looks and suppressed snickers.

So many things were wrong with her typed diarrhea that I almost had a hard time getting started with a decent letter. Almost. Following is The Complete Moron’s Guide to Resignation Letter Writing Don’ts.

Don’t start off with “I’ve really liked working here”. In fact, don’t use it at all. It is acceptable to show interest in the position you are leaving, but if you really liked working there so much, you wouldn’t be leaving. A more appropriate statement would be “I’ve enjoyed my time as a part-time t-shirt folder, however … (we’ll get to this later)” or “During my time as Chief Animal Cage Sanitation Engineer, I have grown considerably in my field”. Keep it short and simple. A resignation letter isn’t a resume.

Do not admit that influences in your life are “too much” for you. Never admit weakness in a resignation letter; or anytime for that matter. The last thing you want is for an employer to regret having hired you in the first place. Keep in mind that this person may be in a position to recommend you during future employment searches, and you don’t want them to refer to you as someone with zero time management skills or a poor work-life balance.

“Thanks for all the great times” should never appear in any correspondence to a superior. Not only is it inappropriate for the tone of the document you are composing, it sounds like you are patting your boss on the back for a history of great nights in the sack. Save the nostalgia for company picnics and AA meetings.

Make your resignation letter longer than two lines. Do I really need to explain this? I will assume a few nods, so I’ll divulge. As I said before, this boss may or may not recommend you for future jobs based on your last impression. If you want that last impression to be the same length as an excerpt from Frog & Toad, then by all means, go ahead. For those with a little more ambition, you might want to make it at least one paragraph long.

Dear Readers, I’d love to continue writing, but life is just too hard for me (and my wrists hurt.) It’s been swell! -Corey