Statistical Hypocrisy

When I went to my best friend’s house to drag him outside for a bit of fresh air, ice cream and gossip about pretty girls, little did I know that I was moments away from having my life turned upside down.

There was no answer when I hammered on the door with a subtle fist, but I was used to that. I walked in through the unlocked entrance, calling out my friend’s name and shouting juicy promises as I made my way to his bedroom.

“Come on out. You know who is doing you know what, and you have to see because you would be absolutely shook!”

The house was deathly silent. I shut up when I saw the glow of a computer screen reflected in my friend’s face eerily, as he sat statue still, engrossed in reading what looked like comments on Facebook.

I sighed loudly knowing that if my hollering at the top of my voice had no effect, my sighing wouldn’t. It was more for me than for him, because I knew what was happening here.

“Are you arguing with people on Facebook again?” I reached the statue in two long strides and smacked it on its back, and out burst a human being that turned to look at me. His eyes were aflame with naked passion.

“Do you see? Do you see?” He whispered urgently, waving a confused hand in the direction of his computer screen.

“What new crusade are you on, my friend? Whatever it is, I don’t care. I just wanted to drag you out to get ice cream and talk about girls. Because that’s what normal people do.”

My friend completely ignored most of what I said, but not everything.

“Crusade is exactly right, “ he said with terrifying enthusiasm. “Go on. See.”

“Am I supposed to be looking at a comment thread on a New York Times article about a pancake recipe?”

“Yes.”

“And…?”

“Take a look at that comment. John Smith. The same people…”

I saw it.

The same people who complained that New York Times only does salads and other dreadful tasting non-food recipes are now complaining that pancakes are unhealthy and should not be promoted. 

My friend’s eyes glinted menacingly. “You see it, don’t you? I see this argument everywhere. Literally EVERYWHERE! And it’s broken. How does John Smith - pff John Smith - know that the very same people who complained about salads are now complaining about pancakes? He doesn’t!”

“He’s wrong. WRONG. WRONG!” He screamed at the flickering screen, and it seemed to flicker more rapidly for a second as if in terror.

I responded with a wordy, “Er…”

My friend, the crusader, turned, gripped my shoulders painfully hard, and stared unblinking into my eyes for so long that I began to squirm, and melt.

“You see, “ he said. “I call this The Statistical Hypocrisy Fallacy. Just because some group of people somewhere on the Internet said they don’t like X does not mean that when some other group of people say they like X, that there is some kind of hypocrisy at play.”

I nodded because that seemed to be what was expected. He released his death grip, and beckoned me over to see another window on his screen.

The same people who complained that it was fat shaming to use fat people in exercise bike ads are now complaining that using a thin woman is not targeting the right audience.

The same players who complained that the tennis season was too long are now playing a million exhibitions.

“But how do they know that it’s the same..” I started off, before I stopped myself. The conversion was already happening, it was too late. My friend smiled at me, validated.

“I tried reasoning with one of them, you know, “ pointing at a four screens long Twitter thread. “I asked, in the most polite way I could, if this man had actually gone door to door, to people’s homes, with printed screenshots of their utterings on the Internet - time and date affixed of course - and verified that yes, these very people had changed their tunes now? But he didn't engage. Clearly, this man was a buffoon and a simpleton.”

I saw the final response from the buffoon. “TROLL!! GO AWAY!!!!111” with miscellaneous colourful phraseology inserted that I am skipping without loss of semantic content.

The same people who said DC was too dark are now complaining that Marvel has too many  quips.

Something in me snapped. That made no sense at all! How does he know it’s the same people? It was such a vacuous statement that was all the more dangerous because it had a vague ring of truth to it. But it was wrong. WRONG! Comment threads and colours whizzed by as I opened window after window - it was the same everywhere, as my friend had said. From travel to relationships to music to economics to porn, there was a John Smith in every comment thread.

A heavy weight settled in the pit of my stomach as the scale of the problem we were faced with struck me with stark clarity. 

“We need more people, “ I muttered under my breath. But my friend had gone back to fixing the world one comment thread at a time. He typed: 

The Internet, despite appearances, is not made of just one person.

Truth! I pulled a chair for myself, pulled up the comic book thread, and sat down to do God’s work.

The Forgivable Sin

So there I found myself, standing all alone in front of a group of people with hate in their eyes, and twitching fingers eager to condemn me to eternal damnation.

How did I get here? It was hard to construct a story, butterfly effect style, that began at the beginning when I was two months old and follow its twists and turns to the now. No, it was impossible. Because, no matter how I tried to spin it, I had been a good person until moments before I did the unthinkable. 

I had been a loving father, a loving husband, a careful employee who knew when to work hard and when to pretend really hard, a dutiful citizen who paid as little tax as he could get away with, and a moderately annoying neighbour.

Harsh raps from the judge’s gavel snapped me out my what-ifs. He was saying something, but it was hard to focus. I could see the hint of a curly wig, but everything else was blurry, like reality itself was fading into memory. Instead, I turned my attention to the jury, whose burning eyes were turned towards the judge.

That young woman in the hoodie, with the restlessly tapping left leg, she would be the first to drop the guillotine. Not because she hated me personally, but because she really didn’t want to be there in the courtroom with all the senile old fools. One of the several men in business suits turned to look at me, and smirked. I sensed there was a hint of curiosity behind that slappable smirk, but who cared. I hated them all, my to-be executioners.

Presently, the judge stopped speaking. I didn’t really notice, but the burning eyes of the jury were back on me, boring holes, so it was clear I had to do something. I cleared my throat laboriously.

“We don’t have all day,” the judge droned. “And considering you refused the right to counsel, it’s clear you don’t really care. Even so, this is your last chance to mount a defence before the jury makes its decision.” The judge tried to work the leather on his face into a kindly smile, but it didn’t work. I looked down at my ten year old torn Converse shoes. I looked around to try and spot my wife, but she wasn’t here.

I exhaled noisily, as I considered my options. Maybe I had done it because I had a secret drug habit, and drug addiction was a disease, not a crime, and this particular drug caused fits of uncontrollable rage. Maybe I had done it, because I had just found out about my wife’s five year long affair. I’d hate to throw her under the bus like this, but she would understand. Maybe, I had found out about my cancer diagnosis. Maybe…

Someone in the jury coughed pointedly. I looked up to see a middle aged woman scowling furiously in my approximate direction. Clearly short sighted, but too vain for spectacles, and also equally clearly, a god fearing executor of medieval justice. She only needed access to a javelin and immunity from prosecution. I giggled internally at the doubly meaningful use of ‘short sighted’. Somewhere, a butterfly flapped its wings furiously to fight off a cyclone.

The sore throated woman’s distraction was more than just that. I knew then that nothing but the truth would do. Were I in the place of one of the suits on the bench, would I forgive myself? Bear in mind that I was someone who had absolutely no issues with cognitive dissonance. I lived and breathed ‘do as I say, not as I do’. And yet, I knew that I would condemn me in a heartbeat. So, the truth then.

“So, this is why I killed that man.”

Gasps from the jury accompanied that pronouncement like thunder to lightning. Come on, there were like thirty five witnesses to the act, and probably a few others who hadn’t been there but would back up the story for giggles. 

“It started from the moment he joined the company. I had never before met such a self absorbed human being, and coming from me, that’s saying something. This man strutted around like we were all privileged just to breathe the same air as him, but this isn’t about that at all. I’ve met a few pompous pricks in my time, it’s not worth killing over.”

I paused for breath, but dared not look at the jury for fear my heartfelt confession would derail in its tracks.

“No, the reason I did it was because this man - this abhorrent creature - deemed it his life’s purpose to tell everyone he met that their jokes weren’t funny.”

A wave of hushed whispers rippled through the crowd. I still continued looking at my battered shoes, but a tremulous voice piped up.

“But but, was this.. man... funny.. himself?”

The judge smacked his desk with as much force as he could muster. It was one of those cases of the effort being far more impressive than the result. Nonetheless, the voices stilled.

“This is most improper, young lady, interrupting a defence while on the panel.” A moment later, he added: “However, I’d like to know the answer to this too, so I’ll let this pass. Don’t speak out of turn again!”

I turned to see that it was the young woman in the hoodie who had asked the question. It wasn’t quite hate in her eyes now, but something… Different. Not daring to scan the woman’s neighbours for their expressions, I forged on.

“No, NO, NO, NO. NO!” I thundered like a trapped god. 

“This man couldn’t make a joke to save his newborn infant’s life. All he did, all he ever did, was strut around, and tell people that their jokes weren’t funny.”

“One day, everything came to a head. I was by the watercooler chatting with colleagues, and we were all laughing at something someone said. It must have been some joke, because if we had even sensed this guy’s presence, we would have walked right away, without the smallest nod to social etiquette.”

“There he was, looking us in our collective eye, and he said with complete and unshakeable self belief: ‘That joke was not funny’.”

“I went into autopilot. Like some kind of miniature Hercules, I picked up the huge flatscreen TV by the coffee machine, picked it right over my head and smashed it… smashed it into…”

My voice choked up with emotion, and I could say no more. When my sobbing stopped, I was surprised to hear a strange sound coming from the direction of the jury. My eyes immediately snapped up to see the medieval executioner lady crying. She was crying! The expression that took over my face then could best be described as confusion.

You may now disagree with my assessment of this story’s climax, but I’m sticking to it and calling it a happy ending.

The judge had his answer within moments of the end of my performance.

“I have worked this job for a long time, and very little I see everyday surprises me but today’s events definitely qualify.”

“If there can ever be something called a forgivable sin, this is it.”

“The jury would like to especially thank you for ridding this world of one of the most loathsome pests I have ever seen, a humourless dunce who unironically appointed himself as joke critic, and nibbled away at countless souls with uninvited, fun-killing barbs.”

The Key To Everlasting Happiness

This is best illustrated with an example. 

You have a house. Your house is dustier than the streets of Delhi. You are super annoyed about it, but just can’t bring yourself to get around to fix it. For reasons; and since I’m chock full of empathy, I’m not going to attack you personally by insinuating that you’re lazy. Instead, I’m going to offer a solution that doesn’t involve giving up on your most cherished ideals.

What if you hunted through your fridge instead for the smelliest carton of milk, took it out, and carefully and liberally spilt it all over the floor? Making sure, of course, that you picked spots that were likely to leave behind the hardest to remove stains, until you eventually found the energy to get up to clean them off. 

What’s this got to do with the dusty house, you wonder? Therein lies the rub. While you were busy worrying about how on Earth you would get rid of that big splotch of milk in the middle of your drawing room, you forgot all about the dusty house.

Even better, the sweet kick of endorphins after you solved the spilt milk problem made the dusty house a little more tolerable, chipping away at your frustration one floor stain at a time, until some day, you won’t care about dusty houses any more. Problem solved.

This is a variation of the Acupuncture Principle™, of course, and can be paraphrased as:

To solve a problem, make yourself a bigger problem.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel like I’ve discovered the key to happiness itself. And like all great sages of yesteryear, I’m willing to share my wisdom for no charge at all. (Here’s my Patreon.)

To start things off, here’s a list of what I have cleverly named The Acupunctuals: a list of fallback solutions that will help you get over any problem in life. Just pick one and off you go.

1.Shoot a neighbour.
2. Set your house on fire.
3. Contract Ebola.
4. Go to work naked.

Unemployed and anxious about it? Go shoot a neighbour! You’ll no longer have to worry about being unemployed and anxious. And so on.

Sometimes though, you might not need car-sized hammers like these for your tiny nails. Fret not, my vast expertise transcends generalities.

If you find yourself anxious about those unfolded post-laundry clothes lying in a terrifying heap on your sofa, start chucking soiled clothes on the floor, one at a time, every day. Before you know it you’ll find yourself no longer fretting. About the unfolded post laundry clothes.

If the idea of writing daily status reports at work is boring you to tears - and if it isn’t, please feel free to check in your homo sapiens card when you leave the building, there’s a long waiting list - go ahead, and break that super important, super critical client facing system. No more status reports, and your manager will thank you in secret. Or openly, if post-work beers are your thing.

If you’re tired, get yourself a cold. 

If you have a cold, get yourself a full blown upper respiratory tract infection.

If you have an upper respiratory tract infection already, break a leg. 

If you have a broken leg, break another leg.

If you have two broken legs - have you considered buying lottery tickets? - cut off a limb. 

If you’re there already, sorry I’m out of ideas. May I point you to the list of Acupunctuals?

If you’re happy, and you’re a masochist, treat yourself to a day of hedonistic decadence involving copious amounts of alcohol. You’ll be happier, and you’ll forget the little joys that caused you such pain the day before.

Sometimes though, the key to successful application of the Acupuncture Principle is tangentiality, not degree. The uninformed might call it procrastination, but I say: tomatoes, tomatoes.

Do you have a homework assignment to do? Pretend to think about beginning work on that novel that’s going to make you rich and famous. 

When you’re ready to actually write down the first line of your novel, you’ll always have the homework assignment to do. 

There. Thank me later for only just dropping the key to everlasting happiness in your lap.

Glass Half Full

(Have you ever felt that you live in a world built for cynical people, and it is oh so exhausting? Normally, I'd laugh you out the door, but I'm in that sort of mood where I look at a quarter full glass and shout from the rooftops that I have a glass that's half full. Sharing is caring, right?

Well, in that spirit, I've decided to pluck some of the gnarliest proverbs I could find, and smoothe them into messages of hope and upliftment. Who needs all that negativity?)

• When you're down in the dumps, and all hope seems gone, your friends will all.. be there for you and support you, because that's what friends do.
• A chain is only as strong as #teamlinks because #oneteam, #noblamegame, #together.
• Actions speak louder than words (when you're at a metal concert, otherwise words do fine. Actions are fine too - I love Die Hard just like you - whatever floats your boat).
• A fool and his money are soon parted. Sure, but a thief and his money are soon parted as well. If not, that's OK, because he has mouths to feed, right?
• A leopard won't change its spots because it's spotty and proud as it should be.
• All good things come to an end, because great things are around the corner.
• An empty vessel makes much noise. That’s alright because you’re like a drummer playing the drums, and everybody loves drummers.
• Appearances can be deceptive, but they usually aren't. Yellow taxis are yellow taxis most of the time.
• Bite off more than you can chew, because how else would you know how much you can chew?  
• Blow your own trumpet, because it’s better than a vuvuzela!
• Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile. Yes, but if that’s your partner planning your surprise birthday party, more power to them, right?
• Cry away over that spilt milk, because let it all out, detox, and milk’s as good a thing to rue as any.
• Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open, your mom says? Well, mama don't know all when it comes to kissing well.
• Go ahead. Run before you walk because in a world full of escalators, walking is overrated.
• Man proposes, and man implements, and man is happy, because who does that sky deity think He is, disposing of other people’s stuff?
• You take your horse to the river, and she drinks through a straw, because they're still around.
• My old dog just learnt that she can run from one end of the room to the other with her eyes shut. That’s a pretty darn neat trick eh?
• What's wrong with me, you wonder? Nothing, because whatever you are, you are golden. 

Laws of Hiking

Once upon a time, Lord Murphy - the one True God - decided to take a break from his insufferable meddling in all of human existence and go on a hike. Surely, an already tortuous activity of repeatedly going up and down piles of rock only attracted a crowd of the masochistic variety, shall we say, that did not really need to hear his Message? He realized soon enough that he was wrong, and that he did have some preaching to do to the choir, so he sat down and formulated these nuggets of existential wisdom.

The Law of Relativity I

If you feel like it’s been an hour, it’s been twenty minutes.

The Law of Relativity II

If you’re absolutely certain deep within your bones that it’s been one hour, it’s been forty five minutes at best.

Dunning-Kruger Syndrome As Applied To Applied Mathematics

If, based on your current rate of progress you compute that it’ll take three hours to reach your destination, it will take at least four. 

The Law Of Mosquitoes, Rightful Inheritors of the Earth

Insect repellents don’t work.

The Theory of Pharmacology of Natural Drugs

The sound of rushing water is an addictive drug that fools you into believing you’re having fun. That gentle breeze pleasantly wafting into your face is a close second.

These natural drugs often also have hallucinogenic effects because when you really stop and look, you'll find that there isn't a water source nearby, and the air is stiller than in an underground crypt.

The Law of Mountain Meterology

After you spend ages carefully pitching your tunnel tent in the direction of the prevailing wind, it changes.

Observation On The Wellspring Of Creativity

If you've deluded yourself into constructing this fantasy that the long hours of solitude that go with hiking will strike at the wellspring of all creativity, and that you'll compose that perfect poem that'll rock the very soul of a generation, rid yourself of your childishness.

All that you will think about every waking second of every long day of tortured trudging is that painful next step, a step that is inevitable as it is meaningless, for it seems to get you no closer to your destination that is far, far beyond the horizon. If you're feeling expansive - perhaps triggered by an imaginary gust of cool air - you might even think about your next meal, or sitting down and taking a swig of crystal clear mountain water, or a soft bed, a soft, white, inviting bed.

The Law Of Associativity

If you take your favourite food along with you, it becomes your least favourite food by the end.

Corollary to The Law of Associativity

This also applies to shoes, clothes, books, lipstick, water bottles, toilet paper and quite possibly your own face. Avoid mirrors.

Murphy's Kindness

As he chuckled to himself in admiration at his own depraved genius, Murphy paused and reflected. In a moment of weakness, he realized that it wasn't all bad. Perhaps there was a silver lining, and it was that hiking could teach you the most important life lesson there is to learn.

That, yes, it is possible to grow tired of perfect beauty. For, you know, when you begin to consider if you should actually marry an Israeli supermodel for endless happiness.

The Interview

"F*@#!"
Despite Employee 322's best efforts to smother that outburst, clearly somebody had heard him, because right away he heard a chair creak in his direction. He waited.

Employee 343's face appeared around the corner in slow motion. He had to be careful, of course, so he tried his best to appear lost in thought, while accidentally happening to just spot him whilst doing so. To Employee 322, he just looked constipated. 

Employee 322 looked at Employee 343 without really looking at him. The latter raised an eyebrow the teeniest millimetre. In response, one corner of Employee 322's lips turned upwards the teeniest millimetre. With that exchange, the two of them were practically hugging. Employee 343 was putting everything on the line with that overwhelming show of emotion. And it was all because they were best friends in a workplace where friends were frowned upon, let alone best anything. Employee 343 was risking his job sympathizing with Employee 322; he could lose it to a program any time. Employee 322 smiled an internal smile of gratitude and walked off before he could get his friend into further trouble.

"All work is charity." The unwanted voice of his Hitlerian father banged on his mind's door. Indeed, papa, indeed. Sighing, he trudged at the slowest possible pace he could without setting off slacker alarms, to the basement where the room lay. Why oh why did it have to be his turn today? He sighed again, and entered the room.

It was pitch dark. Fumbling around for a switch, he stubbed his toe against a raised cable and cursed loudly. An idea cut through the pain: what if he complained to the top brass about the room being biased against able bodied people? Short of being a bat-human hybrid, there was no way groping for a light in a dark room was safe. But he knew that keeping the lights always on would have the environmental ethics guys swarming all over the office in no time. The fines would be steep, perhaps impossible to pay. 

He chuckled. Let them squirm trying to choose between the rock and the hard place. Personally though, he preferred hard places. A rock was a rock was a rock. But a hard place could be anything. Perhaps it could even be something nice. Naturally, his mind drifted to sexual innuendo. The predictability of his thoughts alarmed him; maybe he was due to be roboted out after all.

Click.

Warm yellow light flooded the room. It was bare except for what looked like a towering vending machine to one side. The Questioner, Employee 322 called it. He fancied the name had a vaguely menacing air to it that fit perfectly. 

Apparently, the buttons on the machine had text on them once. Employee 13, that know-it-all SOB had deigned to confide in him. Voice lowered to a whisper, but head still tilted towards the ceiling to make no doubt of his superior status, he had told him:

"Clearly, knowing what each button does would bias you in some way. You'd pick whatever test sounded nice to you in that moment in time. I mean, I would achieve the closest thing to randomness that the human brain possibly can, but you, " a waggling eyebrow had dismissed Employee 322's worth for all eternity, ".. you would probably pick the biggest sounding word."

"No offence, " he added offensively.

"Also, and you wouldn't have caught this, I'm sure, just writing something like 'click this' on each button wouldn't work either. That would bias the interviewer for or against the language of the button text."

When Employee 322 had not responded with a suitable degree of awe and admiration, Employee 13 had stopped talking to him. All's well that begins well. 

All the buttons looked the same, grey - that'd change to a lighter grey when the LED was snapped on, except for the green button that started the interview. Employee 322 let out the most heartfelt of sighs and hit the green button. The Questioned hummed and purred into life.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the adjoining wall, was a man. Candidate 5872. He was surrounded by a circular wall of smooth, featureless white. He had absolutely no reason to be nervous, but apparently his trembling fingers hadn't received the memo. He shoved them into one of his sweatshirt's numerous pockets.

Sweatshirts. His grandmother had caught a glimpse of him getting ready to attend the interview, and she'd asked him:
"Are you prepared?"

He'd laughed heartily at that question. Would you prepare for winning the lottery? Then she'd turned a critical eye over his interview costume. A grey sweatshirt covered with possible food stains, a hoodie and a decade old jeans didn't make the best impression. But she had turned away without a word because even she knew how it worked.

When interview standardization had first become a fad, beauty - and attractiveness and presentability if you will - had been the first to go. It was a well known confounding variable; candidates who were more beautiful, or presented themselves more attractively were much more likely to be hired, all other things being equal. The solution: the interviewer would never see the interviewee, and vice versa. 

Employee 322 watched a 3D hologram of his first high school crush shimmer into existence. It was awkward because he hadn't seen her since high school, so the 3D hologram was of a fifteen year school girl in uniform. He told the schoolgirl:

"Alright, Candidate 5872. Before we start with standardized testing, you have one minute so summarize your skills and experience."

The schoolgirl figure nodded and waved. Employee 322 snorted in disgust. They'd still not got it right. Yes, the interviewer shouldn't be able to see the interviewee, but speaking to a wall didn't make for the best interviews. Humans needed visual feedback - they'd need a human figure for the interviewer to address, but this human figure would have to be completely neutral in the interviewer's eyes. If seeing the figure made any part of an EEG light up, it wasn't right. Neural tech hadn't however progressed to the point that somebody could just plug in a chip into a brain and spit out a neutral hologram. So, the brass did the next best thing: surveys.

Just for giggles, Employee 322 had described his high school crush in his neutral hologram survey. A decision he now ranked among the three best of his life because it made things so much more entertaining. Some days he hated the girl, and some days he loved her, but she was always entertaining.

A sound suddenly enveloped Candidate 5872. It was a voice; a voice neither male nor female, a voice neither cruel nor compassionate, a voice neither loud nor soft, a voice neither friendly nor cold, a voice without direction. Obviously, it was designed to be completely unprejudiced - it would neither soothe a candidate's nerves, nor boost a candidate's confidence, it would do nothing but convey the meaning of the words it spoke.

"You. Have. One. Minute. To. Speak. About. Your. Skills. And. Experience."

Taking a deep breath, the candidate marched into a vigorous self-eulogy. 

"I have worked for years and years in C# and have mastered it to the point that I can design a better language with all its strengths but none of its weaknesses."

"I work with the leading titans in the field to deliver cutting edge top of the line frameworks that are future proof, robust and self un-attenuating."

This wasn't what Employee 322 heard at all. The Questioner was designed to compensate for articulatory privilege. What if the poor sap being interviewed was great at his job but poor at speaking about it? Totally unfair right? That's what the brass had felt at least, and now the Questioner compensated for it.

The schoolgirl only said: 

"C#... Skill... Networking..." 

Then she giggled and fell silent, an action eerily reminiscent of the whir of an old desktop computer that was just going into hibernation.

Employee 322 ticked a box and turned to the grid of grey buttons in front of him. Which one should he press today?

Meanwhile, Candidate 5872's mind was racing. What would his test be like? It would be completely random of course, and possibly something never asked before, but speculation was fun. Would he have to take off his clothes and put them on again, like this neighbour's nephew's son he knew? Or would have to make four and a half circuits of the interview chamber without pause?

Suddenly he recalled the tragic story of a man who'd tried to game the Questioner. Everybody knew that the Questioner compensated for known handicaps. So this man had deliberately broken his foot and slipped a disc before the interview, hoping that this would narrow down the kinds of tests he could be asked to perform.

Wrong, he was so wrong.

A neither male nor female voice had asked him to sit down on the ground. It had then coolly and crisply instructed him as to the right way of doing so without further injuring himself. And then it had asked him to count the blinking lights behind his back without turning around or getting up. Since he could hardly do either of those things, he had failed the test. Some people believed the Questioner was a demonic instrument with supernatural powers. Candidate 5872 wasn't among those people, but he shuddered.

The omnipresent Voice spoke again. (Was it ever silent?)

"Take. Your. Shoes. Off. Chuck. Them. Across. The Room. Pick. Them. Up. Wear Them. Then. Repeat. Process. 14. Times."

Candidate 5872 smiled; he had heard weirder. But something was wrong. He was caught up in a moment of regret. As a child, he'd often taken his slippers off and tossed them through the window into his cranky neighbour's balcony. The neighbour's dog would hear the slap of rubber on concrete and would come yapping to see. Every time, without fail, to his everlasting hilarity. He'd become something of an expert at taking footwear off and chucking aforementioned footwear, all in one motion and at rapid velocity. When had he stopped doing this? Why had he stopped doing this? Man, oh, man, oh man. It had been years! His footwear chucking skills would have become rusty.

He took a deep breath and forcefully recalled the holy tenet of standardized interviewing: Practice Makes Imperfect. If it's a skill that has been improved with practice by a significant fraction of candidates, then it's a skill that cannot be tested on. Everything would be fine. He knelt to take off his shoes.


Employee 322 watched the schoolgirl sway her hips from side to side. He noted the amplitude and frequency of the swing into a tablet computer. Another sigh, a particularly vicious one, escaped his lips. It was always the same. He was not to know exactly what the interviewee was being tested on, because that would break the other holy tenet of standardized interviewing: The Double Blind Principle, so he would see a normalized version of the interviewee's performance. The schoolgirl's hips swayed hypnotically. He wondered what hologram Employee 343 saw.

Insanity

(Learning to sketch on my tablet. Be kind. :) )

(As always blogspot doesn't like large images much, so if you're on the desktop and can't read the text, right click -> open image in new tab and then magnify. On mobile, just tap the image and pinch zoom.)

Love At First Sight: A Tall Yarn

(Every line in this story is made up of idioms. Enjoy!)

A doubting Thomas was at the crossroads,

Wondering how to pop the question.

Should he run with it, or will the winds change?

He had miles to go before he could sleep,

Rat-races to run, ladders to climb.

Palms to grease, noses to brown,

Balls to hit out of the park.

So he didn’t want to jump the gun,

This was a bell that couldn’t be unrung.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place,

He killed time, waiting for the penny to drop.

But time and tide wait for no man,

So no longer did he sit on the fence,

He jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

“I can be your knight in shining armour,”

“I can be your friend in need indeed,”

“I can take you to seventh heaven,”

“Or cloud nine if that’s your cup of tea.”

The woman’s breath was taken away,

This twist of fate left her all at sea.

All hands to the pump, she steadied her ship.

“Oh, I’m but a black sheep and an ugly duckling.”

“But beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.”

“They say love makes you blind”

“By pulling the wool over your eyes.”

“So, before I fall, head over heels,”

“Let’s get down to brass tacks.”

“Can you do more than make ends meet?”

“Can you keep the wolves from the door?”

“You fit the bill, if you foot the bill.”

“Will you stick with me through thick or thin?”

“Hang on, come hell or high water?”

This googly gave him food for thought.

“I’ve burnt the candle at both ends”

“To keep my head above water.”

“But then I hit pay dirt and rode the gravy train,”

“Until I could laugh all the way to the bank.”

“However, no man is an island.”

“All work and no play made Jack a dull boy.”

“So I began to keep my eyes peeled,”

“Saw the apple of my eye, and fell in love.”

Still she was at sixes and sevens,

So he threw caution to the winds.

He would pull no punches,

Let the chips fall as they may.

“I am the best thing since sliced bread.”

“Because castles in the air and moonshots,”

“Pies in the sky and pipe dreams,”

“Will not just be figments of imagination,”

“But take shape and see the light of day.”

“So will you be my better half?”

Greenhorn she wasn’t, dollars to doughnuts;

She knew which side her bread was buttered.

“I promise to be your other half”

“Let us cut the cord, and tie the knot.”

“Learn the ropes on the fly.”

“As one, we jump into the deep end,”

“And swim with the sharks.”

“When familiarity begins to breed contempt,”

“We won’t break up, but kiss and make up.”

“When we go through a rough patch,”

“We’ll pause for breath, and take stock,”

“Count our blessings, and carry on.”

“For life’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

“But let’s not count our chickens before they hatch.”

“For now, we make hay while the sun shines.”

“Let me strike while my iron is hot.”

“I have eyes and hots only for you.”

So they sealed with a kiss, a life joined at the hip,

Until one or the other runs out of steam,

And is dead as a dodo, or a doornail if you prefer;

They will love each other to bits, and to death,

Which is the only thing that does them apart.