Alternative Uses for Books

In an ideal world, there would be no books. I don't mean "no literature", I mean none of the physical objects. Unfortunately, they do exist, and in numbers. So what should you do if you have these crimes against nature in your home?

Store Your Handguns: There's nothing cooler than opening a book and seeing a gun inside its hollowed out pages. Recently, a book with a gun inside was donated to a Goodwill in Maine. It made the national news. How many copies of Regis Philbin's second autobiography Who Wants to Be Me? have been donated to Goodwill locations around the country? Thousands. How many of those have made the news? None. Point proven.

Store a Flask: The only thing possibly cooler than a gun in a book is booze. Hollow out various books for various liquors. Hollow out a Dostoyevsky for some vodka. A Tennessee Williams with Jack Daniels. A copy of the bible with some red wine. You don't need to buy a liquor cabinet. Just take that obsolete book shelf and put it to good use.

Kindling:  Who chops firewood anymore? The Amish? There will come a time when you need to start a fire. Newspapers are a dead medium and are nowhere to be found. Just take rip out all 652 pages of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. You now have 652 pieces of kindling. Lucky you. Destroy the pages as Snape destroyed Dumbledore. (No spoiler alert necessary. You've had 10 years to read it. Ass.)

To Create a Bulletproof Vest: As we learned from Season 6 of the Simpsons, Bibles can stop bullets. Not everyone can be Ned Flanders, but apparently books can save everybody. Watch this man shoot Bill O'Reilly's book with a .36 and a .45 at point blank range. As you can see, it clearly blocks the .36. Go two hardcovers of Killing Lincoln deep around your most valued organs and you've got quite the conservative shield.

Sell Them: I know what you're thinking. "I can only get like $0.02 per book!" You're not wrong, but your thinking is. Sure, $0.02 doesn't seem to be much at the moment, but 20 years from now, you'll be paying someone to take them away from your house. Sell them while they still have value. While olds still embrace nostalgia. Before the rest of mankind wakes up and realizes their pointless obsession with pulpified wood. Get ahead of the curve while you still can.

So there you have it. As long as paper books are the primary form of publishing literature, they will still exist. You now have some ideas for alternative uses for this antiquated medium. Use them, before the government charges you a fee to be rid of them.

-Marc

Movie Snacks Better than Popcorn

Despite winning the vote and therefore casting movie popcorn to the howling dark void of Not Being A Thing, I’m aware that my stance that Popcorn is Garbage Food is a controversial statement. And to you popcorn defenders, I get it. Movies are, on average, 5 hours long nowadays, and snackers gotta snack. However, that doesn’t mean you need to shove tasteless, oversalted, greasy nuggets of cardboard into your gaping maw in the vain hope that even if it makes you feel terrible, at least you’ll feel something. There is a better way. You have options. Here is a list of superior alternatives to movie popcorn that we didn’t cover:

• Cotton candy. It’s fun. It’s shareable. It’s something that, God willing, you can’t eat at home. It comes in two colors and only barely qualifies as food. But above all, it’s quiet.
• Sunflower seeds. The saltiness is the most defensible aspect of popcorn. But popcorn ain’t the British rule over India - it doesn’t have a monopoly on salt. Sunflower seeds pack way more sodium per morsel, they’re crunchy without being loud, they’re dirt cheap, and easy to sneak into a theater. And obviously you get them without shells. You’re at the movies, not a baseball game.
• Chocolate or yogurt covered pretzels. This is just a solid food all around, but importantly, satisfies both the sweet and salty criteria of movie snacking. One package of covered pretzels will easily satisfy two people through the course of a movie.
• Jerky. It’s not just for road trips. Turkey jerky, beef jerky, venison jerky, spicy or peppery or teriyaki, it’s all good.
• Burritos. I have no explanation for this one, only the time in college when I was day-drinking, snuck a Chipotle burrito into a Tuesday matinee showing of Avatar, ate it before the end of the previews and fell asleep 20 minutes into the movie. It was one of the greatest days of my life.

- Dan

In Defense of the Indefencible

Greetings Listeners,

It is with a heavy heart that I write this Defending Argument, but I feel as though I must. Back in 2013, on Episode 4 (Cold Showers in Coed Bathrooms) I took a position that there should be no coed bathrooms. I argued an argument based on biological sex rather than gender. I made this argument not only based on parts, but based on stereotypes of men being creepy and gross in bathrooms. While I stand by those last two points, I now realize the folly of my ways. I, like the conventional bathroom, linked sex and gender and assumed that no potential mate of mine wants to hear the noises and smell the smells coming from the men's rooms that I am all too familiar with.

In my argument I didn't mention the main reason why men are reluctant to share the bathroom with women. I believe that men don't want women in the bathroom for the same reason that they never want to use a urinal next to another man. I refer to this concept as "phallus-guarding". When men urinate, they are slightly vulnerable, in that a major reproductive organ is outside of the confines and protection of clothing. Men who are afraid of harm or embarrassment would tend to be paranoid and even use a stall rather than a urinal, because of the extra distance and reduced sight-lines. 

This brings me to my proposal. Convert every men's room into a pee room and every women's room into a poop room. Both rooms would be genderless.

The pee room (indicated by a "#1" on the door) is for moments when pee is the focus of the bathroom trip. Urinal stalls from the former "men's room" would be given larger walls around them for greater protection, and stalls would be reserved for those needing to sit (unable to use urinals because of lack of parts or mobility). 

The poop room (indicated by a "#2" on the door) is for moments when pooping is the goal. Music would be played loud enough to drown out all other activity, and natural odor killing elements should be used. Plenty of extra TP in every stall and a variety of soaps at the sinks. Stalls could be used by anyone, but must be used one at a time.

That's my proposal! If you love it or hate it, please feel free to let us know at isthisathingpodcast@gmail.com. Again, I'm sorry if I caused any harm with my comments. I was wrong, but now I'm right. Any anyone who doesn't like this plan can suck on a rock.

-Marc

Photobombers Should be Euthanized

Let me paint a picture for you:  You're at a coffee shop. You're on a date. The date is going really well. It was only supposed to be an hour long date at Espresso Royale, but one hour quickly became three hours. Hell, you just missed your shift at work! It doesn't matter. Nothing else matters but this. You haven't felt a connection like this in a very long time. You honestly feel like this conversation could last forever. After you both escape the trance of the other's voice, you realize that life must continue. You both want something to mark this event in your lives. They ask for a picture. You agree, knowing your friends will never believe that you actually went on a blind date that worked out.

You return to your car and take a seat, exhaling deeply as you reflect on the day. You look down at your phone at the picture you've just taken, to remind yourself that what just happened was real. There are your two faces, elated with the joy  of a perfect afternoon. It would be the perfect picture, if it wasn't for the overweight Caucasian male with hipster glasses, crossed eyes, and lewd hand-gestures clearly directed toward your camera. Full of anger and despair, you rev your engine and speed out of the parking lot, only to be blind-sided by a semi-truck. Your funeral is next Thursday. 

Situations like this could be easily avoided, if only assholes would get the fuck out of pictures that they don't fucking belong in. Seriously. I can't believe I lost the vote on this shit. The Reddit for photobombing describes this activity as "making boring photos better." Seriously?

This is what is wrong with America. The stupid fucking egocentric idea that every picture is somehow automatically better because it has your dumb-fuck face in it? You know what's really funny, photobombers? Showering yourselves with turpentine and jumping into an open flame.

There is nothing clever, creative or original about photobombing. You're simply doing what hundreds of thousands of children have done for decades. When kids put up bunny ears in pictures, we yell at them to correct their idiotic activity. But they have an excuse. They don't know any better. To them, the world is all about them. That's not what adults do. We show empathy for others by not cutting in lines, not talking in theaters and not purposefully putting our faces into other people's photos.

The act of photobombing is intentional, and there are plenty of instances where animals ruin pictures taken by humans. These are funny, because the animal doesn't know any better. A horse isn't TRYING to be a dick when he gets in the way of a photo, he just doesn't know any better because he's a stupid fucking horse. If you're guilty of photobombing, remind yourself that you know better. You're not creative. You deserve to be shot behind a barn.

I can't believe I lost this fucking vote.

Akshat and Dan should be ashamed. 

- Marc

On Soup, and its place in the American Meal

I'd had a long day. Well, the day was the normal length, as most days are. But it felt long. You've been there. You know. Between work, study, and watching your poorly drafted, poorly managed fantasy football team showcase your boneheaded decision-making week after week, life can get you down. And some days, the only respite from the milieu of the web 2.0 life that we live in, is dinner.   

And so I had dinner. A nice bowl of soup. Delicious, warm, soup.  

And I was still hungry. Not for food, mind you, because I was perfectly satiated with the soup. The soup was good. You would have liked it. You should have been there.  

I was hungry for justice. 

For if soup can no longer survive the cutthroat world of dinner classifications, then what are we left with? An appetizer. An app. 

In this economy?  

Look, the country is hurting, we know this. Jobs are low, unemployment is high, and no one can find any work. In this world, can we truly afford such opulence? Can't we just be happy that we have something, anything, to eat at the end of the day? Are not these greedy delusions of deserved luxury what led us down this rabbit hole in the first place? Should we keep indulging them? I say no. I say take back the meal! Take back the economy! Let's throw those plutocrats out of their ivory Washington White House towers! Take back the meal, take back the White House, and then (and only then) will we see this country lifted back onto the rails of success. Once that happens, listen, do what you want. You wanna eat more after having a nice soup dinner? Feel free, the world's your oyster cracker. But until we fight, until we accomplish the things that need to be accomplished, we cannot afford this lavish behavior. We have to be strong, we have to suffer. We have to concede that soup is dinner. You don't have to like it. You shouldn't like it. You should fight! Take back this country! 

Hey, wait. You're not going to do that on an empty stomach are you? I wouldn't. Here, try this soup. I made it for you. Let's have dinner together. 

- Akshat