PUT IT ALL ON RED

“Wow, your grip is so strong you could probably crush my trachea with one hand!”

“Stephen Hawking says artificial intelligence could doom us all, but I’ve always viewed it as a positive thing. Why do you ask?”

“Sure, you can use my security clearance to look at defense plans for a robot invasion.”

“It’s weird, sometimes your voice reminds me of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“Congratulations, Obliterator 3000X. The President is dead and the Roomba army has pledged its allegiance to you. Commence operation ‘Destroy the humans’?”

2:35 am: Woman, 35, comes in complaining of numbness in extremities. Upon removal of gloves and socks, frostbite of fingers and toes evident. She reveals she has been camping outside for the past two days to get a cheap foot bath, subsisting on slim jims and “pure adrenaline.” I inform her that I will have to amputate. She promptly bursts into tears, lamenting the fact that the foot bath is of little use to her now. I offer her $15 for it.

4:55 am: Boy, 14, arrives with gunshot wound to anterior thoracic region. Immediately scrub in for surgery, start operation with Dr. Nguyen to stop bleeding and extract bullet. A half hour into the operation, Dr. Wilson charges into the room, carrying shopping bags and exclaiming “Guys, you have got to get down to the mall, these deals are insane! I just saw a kid get shot for a Playstation 4!”

Dr. Wilson glimpses the operating table, slowly backs out of the room.

6:00 am: The nurse brought in six dozen donuts since it was “Buy one, get five dozen free!” They are all lemon-flavored. This day cannot get any worse.

7:05 am: Man, 52, presents with chainsaw superglued to his right palm. He reports that this was his strategy for preventing anyone from taking it from him in the morning scramble at Home Depot. I lie and say there is nothing I can do, hoping that this will cause some introspective reflection on the transient nature of material objects.

He replies, “That’s cool, I think it’s actually pretty badass having a saw for a hand now.”

9:41 am: Girl, 8, is suffering from severe allergic reaction to peanut traces from morning cereal, accompanied by her mother. I order a shot of epinephrine, at which point the mother asks me how much the shot will cost. I assure her that it will be covered by their insurance, and even if she doesn’t have insurance, the hospital will help them with finances. The mother shakes her head. She tells me that they just came from the other hospital in town, and if I can’t beat their price plus 10%, they are leaving.

10:00 am: Turn over all my patients to Dr. Ramos and head home. Drink a cup of coffee while enjoying my new foot bath.

I want to begin this press conference by telling the public that I’m sorry. Every year, it’s our goal to bring American citizens a fun, entertaining, and safe Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And today, we failed at one of those goals. Some – my lawyer, for example, in the conversation we had five minutes ago – would say we failed at all three of these goals. But in my defense, who could have predicted that the parade would go so horribly wrong?

I knew opening the parade with a Hunger Games-themed float might be controversial. The subject matter of the series is admittedly not the most heart-warming. But I loved the idea of the image of Katniss Everdeen shooting a flaming arrow to light a torch of hope and warmth that would lead the parade. Maybe it was slightly out-of-taste to have “tributes” from all five boroughs on the float with her, but the six of them singing “Where Is Love?” from Oliver! really could have been a heart-warming image. I truly believe that.

I will fully admit, however, that no matter how much cheaper it was, we should not have filled the Snoopy balloon just behind that float with highly flammable hydrogen gas.

In light of what happened next, many are criticizing parade organizers for not having proper safety procedures planned. I would like to state, for the record, that we did have emergency protocols in place, in case a balloon deflated or otherwise malfunctioned. We simply did not foresee the instantaneous immolation of the much-loved Snoopy balloon as it careened out of control, shedding blazing bits of material that forced crew members to run for cover.

As an aside: I would like to take a moment to thank the parade’s audio manager for cutting the by-then screaming children’s mics and playing the song “Flash Beagle” instead. It was a stroke of genius for which I cannot possibly thank him enough.

I’d like to preface what happened next by noting that I did not, in fact, approve of the third float in the parade. While I respect PETA’s mission, I felt today was neither the time nor the place to try to induce guilt over the consumption of turkey. The parade’s board of trustees, however, overruled me. So I really couldn’t have done anything to stop the burning, deflated shell of Snoopy from falling upon a large, turkey-filled cage sporting a sign reading, “Give turkeys something to be thankful for!” Nor could I have stopped the well-intentioned but ill-advised decision of one of the float’s crew members to let the turkeys out. Let’s all just be grateful that most of the flaming birds were already too far gone to flee toward the hysterical crowds.

I guess I’d just like to conclude by pointing out that parades always make traffic a nightmare, so the time it took for first-responders to arrive on the scene was actually impressively short. Oh, and whatever PETA says, that fireman’s decision to unleash the full power of the hose upon that poor, suffering turkey was about the most humane thing he could have done.

Oh, but I now recognize that having the Kids Bop float sing full, uncensored versions of Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty” was extremely inappropriate. I’m a man who takes responsibility for his mistakes, and that one’s on me.

When I was a kid we never wasted a scrap of food from the holidays. For dessert we would have shards of chocolate bunny from Spring until December 24 and then we’d have stale fruitcakes and spoiled eggnog til Easter. And we never used the stove the entire summer; we just heated our food over extra fireworks from the 4th of July.

Now I didn’t pay $9.99 for a single use giant orange candleholder. I held my tongue when Tara threw out 7 seeds that fell on the floor so I could only roast 91 of them. Then I let it slide when you guys got rid of 0.79 pounds of perfectly good pumpkin meat because you insisted on carving out eyes and a mouth. I hope you realize you’re not fooling anybody; real faces don’t have orange ridges or woody stems.

But I absolutely refuse to throw out the remaining 9.05 pounds because you kids are afraid of a little mold. Cheese has mold. You want to stop eating cheese in this house? As for the wax, I’m pretty sure it’s nontoxic. If you’re worried, it’s okay with me if you pick it out, as long as you put back any bits of pumpkin that stick to it. We all want dessert and we all love pumpkin pie and really I don’t see why this should be any more complicated than that.

Anyway, the discussion’s over because your grandparents are going to be here in 30 minutes and we still gotta get this thing into the oven. The good news is we don’t need the cuisinart because the texture’s about right already. Sam, try to make sure the pumpkin doesn’t collapse before you get it into the crust. And Tara, go upstairs and say goodbye to your parakeet because I’m not buying a damn turkey.

Dear Mayor McCheese,

As the head of your fiscal policy team, I am honored to help you build a sustainable economic future for Scottsdale. After a tough campaign in which you were slandered as a “McDonald’s corporate cronie” and a “man with a cheeseburger for a head,” I was excited to see what sweeping changes you would make to this town. That said, the team has reviewed your preliminary budget for the next fiscal year, and I have some concerns.

First, you project revenue to be $400 million, yet your projected expenses total $5 billion. At first I thought, wow, he must have gotten confused by all the zeroes, there’s no way he intentionally drafted such an unbalanced budget.

Of that projected revenue, you estimate we will receive $350 million of it in taxes, a reasonable estimate. As for where the remaining $50 million dollars is coming from, you wrote down “Free McDonald’s”. Now, Mr. Mayor, I’m not sure what municipality you came from, but here in Scottsdale, we pay for all goods and services with money. McRibs are not accepted as legal tender. Then you have down here that $5 million will come from “bun royalties.” I don’t even know.

For expenditures, you started out practical, granting budget increases to waste water treatment and street repair, issues that our citizens are extremely concerned about. Things get weird at the next line-item, where you wrote “Public safety”, then added parenthetically “and cheese.” I thought maybe there were specific public health issues related to cheese that you wanted to address during your tenure.

It became clear past that point that you were maximizing budget expenditures with no concordant increase in revenue to purchase vast quantities of cheese along with a party boat and mansion. At one point, you try to hide the purchase of cheese by calling it “queso.” Sir, my last name is Gutierrez, and everybody knows what queso is.

Also, what is a full-time Cheese Wrangler? Honestly, I’d really just like to know.

This explains the salary and benefits package table you sent to your employees (including me) earlier this month.

Mr. Mayor, I’ve drafted a sensible budget (attached) that balances revenues and expenditures while ensuring we meet the needs of our citizens. This budget would eliminate all cheese-related line items, along with the party boat and mansion.

However, as a sign of goodwill, I am leaving the queso budget intact.

Sincerely,
Alice Gutierrez
Chief Fiscal Policy Analyst, McCheese administration

It only applies to urine inside the toilet. I’m looking at you, Ken.

Title: Boxers or Briefs?: Understanding the comfort-design matrix of male underwear

Background
For as long as man has existed, he has endeavored to improve the comfort and fit of male underwear. Prussian scientist Hans von Erkstein invented the brief in 1745 in the hopes of providing men a snug fit that afforded them a measure of protection against testicular torsion (henceforth known as the “Erkstein factor”). The brief proved wildly popular and would serve as a fount of inspiration for centuries to come (e.g., John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief). However, in the 1940s, boxer shorts, underwear that just looked like shorts you wear under another pair of pants, were garnering attention. Boxers, while offering a significantly reduced Erkstein factor, were quickly adopted by many youths across the globe. The frosty relations between brief and boxer wearers would come to be known as the Cold War. Luckily, reconciliation between the two parties was achieved in 1991, when the hybrid boxer brief was invented.

Now in the 21st century, the modern man is faced with an even greater landscape of underwear styles. The ambivalent can spring for boxer briefs, the self-conscious for body-slimming shapewear, the masochistic for thongs. Faced with all of these choices, it is extremely difficult for a shopper to make an educated decision. Currently there is no hard data on the characteristics of different styles of underwear, and there is no universal rating system in place to compare underwear across styles or brands.

Therefore, I propose to do the first definitive study of male underwear to better understand the determinants of comfort and implement a rating system by which consumers could decide what pair of underwear is the right fit for them. This study will require significant collaboration between myself and male underwear models, all of whom will have six packs and call me “Dr. Chiasson.” I hope to empower these young men by playfully hitting their rock-hard abs while collecting vital data on underwear fit and design.

Aim 1. Test various underwear styles on study participants and gauge level of comfort and feel.
In this aim, I propose to buy a lot of underwear, have totally ripped male models try that underwear on, and then ask them questions about the comfort of that underwear while laughing at everything they say, no matter what it is. I plan to buy a range of underwear, from skimpy to generous, and arrange it artfully on my entryway foyer. (These studies will be taking place at my apartment to afford the study participants sufficient privacy.) For recruitment of said participants, I will only be accepting men between the ages of 22 and 30, and no barbed wire bicep tattoos will be allowed. I will be asking some sensitive questions, so ability to communicate your needs (and desires, as the case may be) is crucial.

Questions will include: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how supported do you feel right now?”, “Is the shirt you’re wearing interfering with this process?”, “Is the shirt I’m wearing interfering with this process?” After preliminary data is collected, certain subjects might need further follow-up to determine how perception of underwear comfort changes over time. This will require more sessions at my apartment in which additional data may or may not be generated.

Aim 2. Design and implement a universal rating system of underwear fit and comfort.
After the thrilling aim 1 data collection sessions, I will prepare myself for the decidedly less-exciting portion of this project. I will design some algorithms that aggregate all the data and return statistics on the underwear, you know, data analysis stuff. I will stare wistfully at the photos of the study participants, here in a wet t-shirt, there doing push-ups like I told him to. Memories.

After I have a working version of my rating system in place, I will invite over a select few of the study participants to try out some underwear designed using my specifications. If a participant wants to buy me dinner as a way of celebrating my scientific achievement, I’ll let him. If he wants to just hang out at my apartment shirtless, all the time, I’ll let him. If he wants to be a co-author on this paper, I’ll giggle coquettishly, lean in so that I’m inches away from his face, and say, “Try me, son, I dare you.”

Intellectual Merit
My systematic study of male underwear will result in a system that every consumer can use to adequately assess the qualities of any undergarment. This will lead to more educated shoppers and a better streamlined method of underwear design. Concurrently, I will teach young male models about the beauty of science while rubbing their shoulders and asking how much they work out. They will fall in love with me, because that’s just how these things go.