PUT IT ALL ON RED

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.

If you buy a pork pie hat, try to get one that is not made of pork pie. Otherwise it is worth investing in a fly swatter and some sort of anti-seagull measure.