Yo, dawgs, it’s time for another edizzle of “Ask Eric Stuff,” the totally crunk feature where people ask Eric stuff and he answers them, because that’s how he rolls. If you want to ask questions, you can do it here, at this magic Web site. Now crack open a 40 and let’s do this up proper, aight?

Dear Eric: My roommate always leaves the dish sponge in the sink so it gets all gross and stinky. How can I get her to stop? — Wishing for Clean Dishes
Dear Dish Wish: While she is asleep, anesthetize her with a powerful sedative. Then, make an incision in her belly and put the filthy sponge there. Then sew her up. When she develops a deadly infection from the foreign object lodged in her gut, she’ll think twice about leaving the sponge in the sink!

Dear Eric: Would you ever consider a mohawk? — Hairdresser from Hell
Dear Hairy: Sure. I’ve dated an Asian, a Mexican and an African-American, so why not a Mohawk?

Dear Eric: Why doesn’t anyone ever e-mail me back? — Lonesome in Vegas

Dear Eric: Would you rather die in a tsunami, in a car accident, or of starvation? — Morbidly Curious
Dear Morb: I want all three simultaneously.

Dear Eric: What is your favorite article of clothing? — Loves Her Shoes
Dear Love: Your underpants.

Dear Eric: I have a fear of dating. When someone is interested, I run. And when I find someone interesting, it’s usually someone safe. How can an individual get over this kind of fear? — Scared of Dying Alone
Dear Scaredy: The best way to overcome any fear is to face it head-on. So the next time you meet someone who is interested in you, marry that person.

Dear Eric: What’s the best way to be a good dad? — Newbie
Dear Newb: Always get the child support payment to your baby mama on time, and let her know when visiting days are.

Dear Eric: Why do people use cell phones in the library when there are signs telling patrons to turn them off before they come in? — Longing for Silence
Dear Longy: What makes you think people who go to a library can read? Oh, right. Hmm. I don’t know, then.

Dear Eric: I had to take my grandmother to the vet this morning where her beloved “fella” had to be put to sleep. She’s moping around and crying as if she had just lost her own child. I don’t know what to do. It’s just a cat! What can I tell her to comfort her at a time like this? — Lacks Kompassion in Kitty Krises
Dear KKK: You should be comforting your grandmother during this difficult time. Assure her that you will weep just as bitterly when you finally have her put down.

Dear Eric: Why does everyone automatically assume that because I don’t say much at times (being somewhat reserved), I must be rude and arrogant? — Irritated in Indiana
Dear Snob: I don’t know, jerk. Try being less of a jerk and see if people are nicer to you.

Dear Eric: If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? – Globetrotter
Dear Trots: In a Florida hospice. There’s an all-you-can-eat feeding tube buffet, plus all the fame and celebrity you can handle! (P.S. I want pizza in my tube.)

Dear Eric: Whenever the forecast predicts even an inch of snow here, people rush out to the grocery store and buy lots of milk and bread. How come? — Mystified in Maryland
Dear Mysty: They are afraid those items will become difficult to obtain if the storm turns out to be severe. For example, cows cannot give milk in extreme weather, and wherever it is that bread comes from, that place might get snowed in.

Dear Eric: How come in Utah even the store brand bread is as good as homemade but everywhere else you can’t find bread half as good? — Hungry Hungry Helen
Dear HHH: There’s a certain “magic” about Utah. The people here have a special something that makes everything just a little bit better. And that something is meth.

Dear Eric: What’s the best cure for the common cold? — Snifflin’ in Salt Lake
Dear Sniffle: Turning up the common thermostat.

While I was an undergraduate pursuing a degree in journalism, many of my friends in the Communications Department were studying advertising. We had a few courses together, and then we separated, as the remainder of my classes were aimed at teaching us how to dig up the truth, while the advertising sequence focused more on lying. (Journalists don’t learn lying until they reach the workplace.)

As a result of my limited academic study of it, I barely understand advertising. Many ads tout features that I don’t consider worth bragging about, and the things I think would make good selling points never get mentioned. For example, one of the reasons I like Junior Mints is that they are quiet. This is nice when you’re at the movies and you don’t want to disturb the people around you with your loud, crunchy candy. (Peanut M&M eaters, I am looking at you.) (Glaring, actually.) But do the ads for Junior Mints ever point out their silence? No. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an ad for Junior Mints at all. Maybe they don’t know what their best feature is and hence don’t bother saying anything. Well, now they know.

Meanwhile, I see ads for Carl’s Jr. that seem counter-productive. You folks in the eastern part of the U.S. don’t get these, so count your blessings. The fast-food chain seems to think its sandwiches’ strongest feature is not that they taste really good, or that they’re made with fresh ingredients, or that they are available at a reasonable price. No, what they believe to be the greatest asset of a Carl’s Jr. sandwich is that it is horrifically messy and drippy. “If it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face” is their slogan. Well, I can think of lots of things that don’t get all over the place that do, in fact, belong directly in my face. Junior Mints, for example. And bread. Bread is a very neat, well-behaved food, and if I could live by it alone without contradicting the Bible, I would.

So Carl’s Jr. is way off-base there, and sometimes their commercials are so dreadful, with their images of men drooling barbecue sauce from their beefy, unshaven maws, that I wonder if the ads are actually being paid for by Burger King, to get people NOT to eat at Carl’s Jr.

I am also a little confused by the current commercial for the Ford F-150 truck, which has the vehicle being suspended from a crane by its rear bumper, and a man standing underneath it. This is to demonstrate how solidly the truck is built: Even if you dangle it upside-down, it doesn’t fall apart. The commercial is accompanied by this warning: “Do not attempt.”

My first reaction was: Really, Ford? I shouldn’t go outside to my industrial 40-foot crane and lift a truck over my head by its bumper? Then why did I buy the crane, Ford? Why did I buy the crane?!

But then I thought: Why not, Ford? If I have access to a crane and a Ford F-150, why shouldn’t I stand underneath it to prove how sturdy it is? Are you afraid I won’t get the same results? Afraid that if anyone actually attempts this independently, the truck will come crashing down? How many botched takes did you waste shooting that commercial? How many scientists in lab coats were crushed by trucks that fell apart as soon as you lifted them off the ground?

Then I had my final thought, which was: Is that really the most impressive thing about your truck? That it doesn’t fall apart? Not the way it handles, or how much stuff it can carry, but the fact that it was made with bolts? Huh.

Speaking of automobiles, there’s a commercial for Enterprise Rent-a-Car where a doofy-looking guy rents a car and drives it to his high school reunion, where two hot babes immediately sidle up to him and, eyeing his car, say, “Lookin’ good!”

My question is, what happens when the women learn the car is just a rental? Some women may be impressed by a man OWNING a nice car, but I assure you, no woman has ever been wooed by a man’s ability to rent one. Owning a car suggests money and status; renting one only indicates that you are 25 and have a credit card. Only the most desperate of women would claim these as their primary criteria.

Finally, there are the ads that don’t sell anything at all. I have mentioned these before, the billboards that advertise attributes rather than products — the ones for “Dependability,” “Honesty,” “Strength” and so on, always accompanied by a picture of someone who embodies that quality. They’re sponsored by something called Foundation for a Better Life, and I’m not really sure what that organization does, but whatever it is, it rakes in enough money to be able to afford hundreds of billboards. I wouldn’t have guessed more advertisements sullying our nation’s cityscapes would lead to anyone having a better life, but what do I know? I studied journalism.

Anyway, they have a new one that says, “Me, quit? Never.” It’s accompanied by a picture of a one-armed woman in a wetsuit, posing with her surfboard, which has a huge bite mark out of it. We are to gather that while riding the waves one day, she lost her arm and part of her surfboard to a shark. The principle being advertised is: “Rising Above.”

Now, first of all, that’s kind of awkwardly worded. Most of these billboards are for familiar, easily stated principles such as “Integrity,” “Persistence,” “Determination,” etc. “Rising Above” isn’t much of a noun. Try plugging it into a sentence. “I’ll say this for him: He had a lot of rising above.”

But semantics aside, let’s look at the facts. You’re surfing and a shark eats your arm and part of your board. You know what? I think you’re allowed to give up surfing at that point. No one will blame you if you hang up what’s left of your board with what’s left of your arm and never enter the water again. There would be no shame, no being looked down on by others. Being half-eaten by a sea monster is, I think, valid cause for finding a new pastime.

I mean, what are all the people supposed to think who were attacked by sharks and thereupon quite sensibly stayed out of the ocean for the rest of their lives? That they’re a bunch of cowards who lack rising above? I propose a billboard promoting the virtue of “Knowing When to Quit.” It would have a picture of 19th-century president James K. Polk, who in four short years met his every goal and thus sought no second term; or perhaps Kenny Rogers, who always knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Either way, I’m sure the billboard would be a huge hit and make tons of money for the advertisers, or something. I don’t know how these things work.

Fact: Within the Amish culture, children in their mid-teens are permitted to leave the community and get a taste of non-Amish life — as much of a taste as they want, for as long as they want — before returning and committing themselves to a lifetime of good, clean Amish living. This visit to the outside world is called “rumspringa” (literally, “running around”), and Amish parents anxiously await their children’s return from it, perhaps comforted somewhat in knowing they have raised them to have strong consciences and high morals.

May the heavens have mercy! I have just experienced my first day of rumspringa, and it is a far sight more exhausting and bewildering than I had anticipated. How the English live lives so rushed and “hectic” — I believe that is the word; it is uncommon in Amish culture — is beyond me! I am now relaxing in a room at a boarding-house called “Motel 6” in a town known as Ft. Lauderdale, trying to recover from the day’s merry-making and other disturbing developments.

It began early on this warm March morning, when I was awakened by the sound of a commotion in the outer courtyard of the inn. I sprang from my bed and peered through the “curtains” — a worldly luxury with which I was unfamiliar — to see what was going on. It sounded like a barn-raising to me, only with more profanity and fewer sounds of barn-raising. Through the “window” (a marvelous aperture made of glass that enables one to see through a wall!) I saw a squadron of young men and women in various states of undress, so immodestly attired that I could see their umbilical cord scars. They were all moving, with great festivity and jocularity, toward the ocean shore, not half a hectare down the boulevard. Following them were men carrying what I have since determined were photographic cameras, the particularly devilish ones that take not just graven images of the subject, but graven images which move and reproduce sound. They are used for preparing programmes to be broadcast on the televisual box.

Intrigued by this activity, so different from my custom and thus a fine thing to observe, I thought, during my rumspringa, I quickly dressed and hurried after the group. As I reached them, I did my best to incorporate myself into their good graces, displaying a broad smile and tipping my hat to the womenfolk. “It is a most agreeable morning for a pie-baking, is it not, good sister?” I said to one young lady whose chest was barely contained by the odd corset she wore about her upper torso. To another, a gentlemen who apparently had suffered a machinery accident that caused bits of metal to be lodged in his earlobes and bottom lip, I remarked, “Say, friend, which way to the nearest quiltery? My sleeping quarters were fearsome chilled yesternight.” But from both young people — no older than myself, I reckoned, and I am 18 — I received no response other than laughter.

Upon the ocean shore I found many young, nearly naked people already assembled before a stage over which hung a banner reading: “MTV SPRING BREAK 2005.” The only word with which I was unfamiliar was “MTV”; generally a word with its vowels removed is ancient Hebrew, but I saw no other indications of an Hebraic influence on the proceedings.

The young people surrounding me were in a constant state of motion, convulsing in a manner that I believe is what the English call “dancing,” though my only experience with the “devil’s walk,” as we call it, is rudimentary drawings found in the back of a non-approved textbook that cousin Enoch and I once glanced at behind the woodshed. (We were soundly whipped for it, of course.) This “dancing” was to the strains of music unlike anything I had ever heard. For one thing, it involved instruments. For another thing, it was harsh and vulgar, the lyrics making reference to a “candy shop” and some manner of “lollipop” which the singer had evidently purchased there.

As the music blared at a most unacceptable volume, a man approached me and asked my name. “Elijah Guttcott,” I replied, shaking his hand. “And whose acquaintance do I have the honor of making?” He said his name was Kyle and that he was a “production assistant” for “MTV SPRING BREAK 2005” and he wondered if I would consider being a contestant in a game of some kind.

Now, despite common belief, we Amish do play games of all sorts. In the evening hours, after the chores are done and we have finished Bible study, evening prayers, supper devotional and wood-piling, there is often as much as 15 minutes of relaxation time during which we can indulge in games such as “Quote the Bible” and “Pile That Wood.” I state with all due humility that I am frequently the champion of these contests, defeating even the most virile Bible-quoters and wood-pilers in my village.

So I told Kyle I would happily take part in whatever his game was. I have heard that the English play games of a far more scandalous sort than ours — some even involving the throwing of six-sided numbered cubes, I am told! — but I did not see the harm in “living it up,” as they say, as long as it was rumspringa. Certainly Kyle and his “MTV SPRING BREAK 2005” would have nothing in store for me that would violate my honor.

Thirty minutes later, I was standing on the stage clad only in my undergarments, my torso covered in whipped cream as two blindfolded young ladies attempted to find the frankfurter that Kyle had glued to my inner thigh. (The presence of the frankfurter confirmed to me that “MTV” was not a Hebrew word.) The rest of my clothing — my suspenders, trousers, girdle, hat, under-shirt, shirt, over-shirt, over-trousers, socks, shoes and under-shoes — were in a pile behind the stage, where other men in similar disrobe were awaiting their turn to be whipped-creamed and frankfurtered.

The purpose of this game I still did not know — how does any of this promote Christian brotherhood, I ask you — and so I removed myself from the blindfolded vixens and attempted to leave the stage to find Kyle. My honor dictates that I follow through with my commitments, but I wondered if I could fulfill my obligation to “MTV SPRING BREAK 2005” in some other way, perhaps by churning some butter for them, or by fetching the eggs from the local henhouse. But I was thwarted in my efforts to leave the stage by the master of ceremonies, a de-shirted man who carried a stick which, when he spoke into it, amplified the sound of his voice so he could be heard by all in attendance. (How the Lord could have used such a device when He delivered His Sermon on the Mount! I thought, before realizing the talking-stick was probably empowered by the devil.)

“Hold up, dude,” the man said to me with a laugh. “Where ya goin’?!” Then he pointed the talking-stick at me, presumably so that my response could be heard by the congregation. I spoke hesitantly into it, unsure whether merely using the device would put me in league with the devil, or whether I would actually have to hold it for that to occur.

“I am sorry,” I said to the man who called me “dude.” “Ye and your brethren have been fine hosts to me this day, and I am honored to have been accepted into your good graces to the extent that you would view me a worthy participant for your contests. But I cannot continue. Your games, while perhaps common to your daily lives, are alarming and unwholesome to my taste. I am a simple man from a simple village, and I fear I dishonor my principles if I continue to stand here, nearly unclothed and mauled by strange women. I hope you will forgive me, ‘MTV SPRING BREAK 2005.'” And with that I began to exit the stage.

It was then that the unthinkable happened. The man with the talking-stick declared that, unbeknownst to myself, my parents and the parents of all the other participants in this game were on hand to witness the proceedings. Evidently the game customarily includes this surprise, which the gathered audience found delightful indeed but which I found as shameful as when Noah’s son Ham found him naked and inebriated.

My parents then came forward from their hiding place. My mother embraced me awkwardly, getting whipped cream on her in the process, and my father shook my hand, which surprised me, as he is not often that affectionate in public.

“My son!” my mother cried. “Ye have made us proud, but the sort of ‘proud’ that is good, not the bad kind.”

My father added, “We came here afeared that ye would behave wrongly, but lo, ye have lived up to the Christian principles we have taught you. Praise be!”

“But Mater and Pater,” I said as the audience looked on. “You see the state I am in, unclothed and festooned with foodstuffs. How can ye say I have not failed you?”

“Let it not trouble you, son,” my father said. “It was rumspringa, and ye were misled by the devils who run this den of iniquity, this ‘MTV SPRING BREAK 2005.’ To be tempted is not a sin, and what person with blood in his veins would not be tempted by the promise of such earthly pleasures as having pork affixed to his legs? What is important is how ye dealt with the temptation, and it was a right fine speech ye gave when ye realized this place was not for you.”

“Right fine indeed,” my mother agreed.

And so I re-clothed myself, bid the cheering congregation adieu, and left the ocean shore with my parents. “MTV SPRING BREAK 2005” had not provided a horse-and-buggy when they invited my parents to Ft. Lauderdale, so we walked through the town, arm in arm, by the power of our own feet. ‘Twas a pleasant walk indeed.

The chief difference between the O.J. Simpson trial and the Michael Jackson trial is that we hoped O.J. was innocent. We liked the guy, and we didn’t want to think he had stabbed his wife and her acquaintance to death, even though we suspected he had.

Michael Jackson, on the other hand, we know he did it, and we’re glad he did it, because now we finally have a legal reason to hate him. Heretofore, our distrust and antipathy stemmed only from intuition: There was something about him that just wasn’t right. Now we have a name for that “something,”? and it’s a bad enough name that we’re well justified in shunning him forever. It’s a bit of a relief, really. You hate to shun someone forever based solely on a gut feeling.

The most disturbing thing about the Michael Jackson trial, really, is that it forces me to think about Michael Jackson. I have spent most of my life NOT thinking about him, at times quite willfully and conscientiously, and now here is a Trial of the Century (the first of many Trials of the Century, I’m sure), thrusting Michael into my thoughts, with his shrill mannerisms and unsettling elfin behavior. And it’s not just Michael Jackson in my thoughts, but Michael Jackson and his private regions! Sure, in grade school we speculated on the subject of whether or not Michael Jackson even HAD private regions, but believe me, we did not really want an answer. We certainly didn’t want the answer being discussed on CNN, that’s for sure.

Michael doesn’t really do himself any favors, either, does he? Showing up to court in pajamas is fine if you’re going for an insanity defense, or if you are 3 years old. But neither of these applies to Michael. He has no excuse to appear in court in pajama pants, and definitely not pajama pants with SpongeBob on them. In fact, I don’t think Michael Jackson should even be allowed to OWN pajama pants with SpongeBob on them. Doesn’t Wal-Mart monitor who they sell these things to?

We Americans are glad Michael is on trial, because we have a thirst for celebrity justice. We love putting people on pedestals, revering them, honoring them, worshiping them, and then knocking them off the pedestals with baseball bats and setting fire to the pedestals. O.J. evaded us, that slippery devil, but we got Martha Stewart, and now we’re jonesin’ for more. Martha actually did jail time! Do you know what that did just for the careers of people who make lame jokes for a living, people like editorial cartoonists and Jay Leno? The goddess of domesticity in prison — why, the jokes about using pine cones and potpourri to decorate her cell practically write themselves! (In Jay Leno’s case, they actually do write themselves, with the computer program HackComedianPro 4.0.)

And now we are positively salivating over the prospect of Michael Jackson going to prison. We know he’s guilty, and we’re glad he’s guilty, and we cannot wait until he is convicted. If we had a choice between boys not being molested, and boys being molested but a pop superstar going to prison for it, we would choose the latter. We are not generally in favor of that sort of thing, of course, but if a few children have to suffer so that we can see a once-beloved, now-mocked idol go to prison, we are willing to make that sacrifice. We don’t have coliseums (colisea?) in which to feed Christians to lions anymore, so this is the next best thing. Heck, anything to get rid of Michael.

My friend Eddy had flown from New York, where he lives now, to Salt Lake City, where he used to live, and his parents were driving down from Idaho, where he grew up, to collect him for a week’s vacation, though I don’t know if that’s word I would use to describe seven days spent in Idaho.

Eddy’s parents are wonderful salt-of-the-earth types who run a small dairy farm in Preston, Idaho, which you’ll recall was the setting of “Napoleon Dynamite.” (Eddy reports that the film is highly accurate, which I had not doubted, and that he often had to be shushed when he watched it because he kept saying things like, “Hey, that’s my high school!” and “Hey, I’ve been on that street!”) Both of his parents were raised in rural Idaho, too, which perhaps explains Eddy’s mom’s dialect. Upon being introduced to me on the day in question, she declared, “Well, hi, Ereek!,” with the “i” in my name coming out “ee.” Air-reek. I made no comment, for already I liked Eddy’s parents, and already I could see they were about to invite me to lunch.

Sure enough, we found ourselves a few minutes later across the street from my apartment at P.F. Chang’s, a chain restaurant that Eddy’s folks visit whenever they hitch up the wagon and head down to the big city for provisions. Mom thought we should get the lettuce wraps for an appetizer, though she wasn’t sure which vegetable was involved. “Cabbeej? Is it cabbeej?” she asked. Which it wasn’t, of course, not cabbeej, nor even cabbage, but lettuce. But again, I point out these incidents not to mock Eddy’s mother, who I find delightful and who paid for lunch, but merely to observe the quaint humor to be found in everyday life. I’m a lover of mankind’s foibles, as you know.

Not long after the cabbeej incident, I noticed a waiter in another part of the restaurant who looked familiar. Since Eddy and I sometimes traveled in the same circles when he lived here, I asked him if he recognized the fellow, and he said he looked familiar to him, too, but he didn’t know from where. We dropped the matter and went back to discussing Jay Leno, of whom Eddy’s parents are big fans. (“We saw eem the night he had on, oh what’s his name? The guy who wrote ‘Fahrenheit 11’?”)

A few weeks later, I was exiting my apartment building when I saw the P.F. Chang’s waiter leaving another building. So that was it. He lives there, or knows someone who does. Mystery solved, not that it was a very compelling mystery to begin with.

* * *

The next day, I was walking past the Red Rock Brewery a few blocks from my apartment when I saw a wallet on the sidewalk. I examined it and discovered that it contained a $50 bill. Much to my dismay, it also contained a driver’s license, a document that is notorious for featuring its owner’s name and address. This meant I would have to return the wallet, $50 bill and all, to its rightful owner.

I cursed my luck. Why can’t I be one of those people who find wallets with thousands of dollars in them and no identification, where it’s ethically justifiable to just keep the money? Or better yet, a wallet with thousands of dollars AND identification, so you do the right thing by returning it, only to have the owner be so stinking rich he lets you keep the money as a reward for your honesty? That way, you get the bonus points for having integrity, and you also get a ton of money, which is really the best reward for integrity that I can think of.

But no. Only $50, not thousands, and I had to give it back. I trudged home with the accursed wallet in my pocket, noting bitterly that it occupied more space than my own empty wallet did. By the time I got home, I had almost rationalized why it would be OK to keep the $50. Surely if anyone else had found it, he or she would have kept the money, I reasoned. The minute you lose your wallet, you forfeit the right to expect that you’ll get it back intact. That’s just how it is in the modern world. Furthermore, why had the guy lost it in the first place? It was outside Red Rock Brewery, a popular brew-pub restaurant whose food, I have to assume, tastes good when accompanied by alcohol. (I know it’s lousy by itself, anyway.) Had he gotten so drunk at Red Rock that he had carelessly dropped his wallet on the way out? Well, anyone who could afford to get drunk at Red Rock and STILL have $50 in cash left over must be extremely well-off. Surely he wouldn’t miss the $50, if indeed he even remembered having it, what with all the drinking he had done. Why, a man that poisoned by alcoholism practically deserves to have his money stolen. It serves him right!

Oh, I’m good with the rationalizing. But finally I forced myself to do the honest thing by dropping the wallet, complete with a kind note, in an envelope and putting it in the mail. I spent 84 cents on postage, bringing my losses in this incident to a total of $50.84.

* * *

Not long after that, I was at ComedySportz in Provo, where I am tangentially involved. In the audience was the P.F. Chang’s waiter, marking the third time I had seen him in recent weeks, and the third different locale. Clearly he was stalking me, which I found flattering but disturbing, but mostly flattering, and in fact not actually disturbing at all.

* * *

A few days later, I opened my apartment door to find a man standing there, preparing to knock. He asked if I was Eric, and I said I was. He told me his name, and said he was the man whose wallet I had found. His office is nearby, so he wanted to drop off a thank-you card while he was in the neighborhood. Apparently, he was neither wealthy nor alcoholic, but simply a white-collar working man who had dropped his wallet on a sidewalk near where he’d had lunch. He was glad to have it returned, and surprised the $50 was still intact. (See?! I told you he didn’t expect to get it back.)

The thank-you card said this:

“Eric — Thank you so much for returning my wallet. It was an amazing relief to see it again, especially with cash in it. I am so impressed that someone would take the time to return it, and not keep it for themselves. Thanks again. You made my day. I hope you like Chinese food. I appreciate what you’ve done.”

“I hope you like Chinese food”? What does THAT mean?! I was alarmed at what I presumed to be code of some kind. I do like Chinese food, but only in the literal sense, not in whatever sicko metaphorical connotation he meant it.

Oh. Then I saw that he had included with the thank-you card a $25 gift card to P.F. Chang’s. Twenty-five dollars at P.F. Chang’s! I’d still rather have had the $50.84, but hey, $25 was nothing to sneeze at. Rather than being a loathsome burden, honesty had actually paid off!

Don

I used the gift card a few days later when a friend and I went to lunch there. The waiter who had been making cameos in my life was working that day, and it finally dawned on me: He’s in “Napoleon Dynamite.” He plays Don, Summer’s uber-blond jock boyfriend who occasionally torments Napoleon. It was satisfying to have resolution to the whole affair: the wallet, the money, P.F. Chang’s and the waiter. To celebrate, my friend and I had some of those delicious cabeej wraps.

My grandfather, who died March 2 at the age of 84, was a small-framed man with short little legs, saggy britches, and a beer-made belly that extended over his belt. He had a great shock of white hair, which he never did lose, and a bushy white mustache lodged under his large-ish nose. He looked a bit like Maurice, Belle’s crazy old father in “Beauty and the Beast.”

He was something of a “character,” as they say, but not in a wacky way. He was reserved and quiet, a simple man who knew a lot of words but only used a few of them. He was a hillbilly, actually, born in Oklahoma and raised in the mountains of Arkansas in the 1920s and ’30s. His father was a sharecropper; his mother smoked a pipe. I’d heard all my life that he didn’t own a pair of shoes until he was 10, a detail that turns out to be somewhat apocryphal; what he told my dad was that he “always had a hat, but didn’t always have a pair of shoes.” He was a child when the Great Depression struck, though I’m not really sure you could tell the difference in Arkansas.

His life was fairly ordinary from a cultural standpoint. Like many men of his generation, he served in World War II, married a fellow Southerner, then moved with her to California to start a life together. Grandpa worked until he was nearly 70 years old, possibly out of financial necessity, but also possibly because what else was he going to do? He came from a different era, when work ethics were different from what they are now. I’m only 30, and I’m already trying to find ways of never lifting a finger again. But Grandpa kept plugging away well into advanced age.

Oh, and did I mention he was a roofer? Because he was. A guy works until he’s 70 in an office, that’s admirable, but it’s not Herculean. A guy sweats, strains and toils on hot roofs for almost half a century, that deserves recognition. He outlived Grandma by 15 years and didn’t experience any major health problems until recently. Even when he died, it was in his sleep, and he hadn’t felt ill beforehand. If you have to go, that’s the way to do it: after a long life and without any drama.

Grandpa and Grandma moved once during my childhood, from L.A. to the high desert city of Hesperia, Calif. Both houses had a garage, though, and that was pivotal to Grandpa’s success. Like all boys, he needed a fort wherever he lived, and it absolutely could not be indoors. He worked outside, and when he wasn’t working he relaxed outside. As a result, his skin was exceptionally thick, all dark and leathery, like beef jerky. His arms were probably bullet-proof. He allegedly wanted to be cremated when he died, and if that’s true, I wonder if part of the reason was that he was curious to see whether or not he’d burn.

Anyway, his place was always in the garage. The garage door remained open, for ventilation and visibility; he wasn’t trying to hide or anything. He had an easy chair out there, along with a TV tray for holding magazines and drinks, and a black-and-white TV. It didn’t matter that the TV wasn’t color, because his preferred programming was John Wayne movies, which were black-and-white anyway. In fact, I believe John Wayne himself was in black-and-white.

My memories of Grandpa in the garage all include John Wayne movies. He apparently had a magic TV that was patched in directly to the John Wayne Network. The one exception is the time I went out there and he and my dad were cracking up laughing at an ancient “Popeye” cartoon. I believe the cartoon featured the throwing of many pies. Like I said, his tastes were simple.

Grandpa’s fondness for the garage meant that when we’d go to visit him and Grandma, there were two venues. If you got bored with whatever was happening indoors, or if the conversation became too grownup, or if you can only sit in your grandma’s house looking at doilies and knick-knacks for so long before you go stir crazy anyway, then you could go outside and visit Grandpa, who evidently had long ago become permanently fed up with doilies and knick-knacks. In fact, maybe that was part of Grandpa’s appeal. By moving his base of operations outdoors, he represented what all kids aspire to: freedom from grownups. He was a grownup, too, of course, but only chronologically. Most adults were taller than he was, and most adults aren’t doing handstands on the front lawn when they’re 60 years old, either. Most adults keep their teeth, too, and Grandpa’s began to fall out around the same time my baby ones did.

Grandpa’s love of being outside didn’t mean he was anti-social, though. He didn’t initiate many conversations, but he was always keen to talk to you if you started one. When you’d go out to visit him, he was always glad to have company, no matter how riveting the John Wayne movie was. If it was too hot in the garage, he’d move to the little wall surrounding the rose bushes, where he’d whittle and chew tobacco and occasionally lean back too far and get jabbed by thorns. He told jokes and laughed a lot, and greatly enjoyed having his children and grandchildren around. For fun, sometimes we’d punch him in his belly, which made him go, “Oof!,” and then he’d laugh. (I was kind of sad when, about 10 years ago, a doctor warned him about his blood pressure, suggested a better diet, and Grandpa lost his belly.) If there were family activities, he was involved: playing cards around the dining-room table, going miniature golfing, watching Dodger games on TV. He always wore old, comfortable slacks, a white T-shirt and a baseball cap. If he was to be out in public, sometimes he’d put a button-up shirt on over the T-shirt, but he wouldn’t button it. I like to think that’s because he didn’t like The Man telling him what to do, but it was probably because his shirts wouldn’t button over his oddly shaped gut.

I don’t have a single unpleasant or uncomfortable memory of Grandpa. He might seem more flawed if I knew more details about his early life, and it’s with some regret that I realize I don’t. But he was always a fixture in my life, even if I didn’t know all the particulars of his. I can picture him now, sitting in heaven’s garage, watching John Wayne movies. They’re still in black-and-white, of course, but now he gets to watch them with John Wayne.

The Associated Press reported in January that a 2,000-ton pile of cow manure was on fire in Milford, Neb., and had been for three months.

If you are like me, you are wondering why the AP waited until the poo had been ablaze for three months before reporting it. Anytime something weighing 4,000,000 pounds catches on fire, I want to know about it immediately! It’s just another example of the liberal media failing to report the stories that really matter.

The article, which you can read here, says no one knows how the fire started, but the prevailing theory is that heat from the decomposing manure deep within the pile simply ignited of its own accord. I think you will agree that when enormous mounds of dung are spontaneously combusting, it is time for all of us to start making our peace with God.

So my question is this: Why was there a 2,000-ton pile of cow manure sitting around anyway? Was it someone’s job to dispose of the poop every day, and he kept slacking, and the whole project just sort of got away from him? I know I’ve done that with the kitchen garbage before, but never quite to that degree.

Anyway, speaking of flaming piles of crap, Rush Limbaugh was in the news recently. He and fellow right-wing commentator Michael Medved (who used to be an actual movie critic) intentionally ruined the ending of “Million Dollar Baby” for listeners because they feel it promotes a message that they find immoral. Now, since I’m not a jerkwad, I won’t tell you what their specific objection is, as that would ruin the movie for you, too. So I will use a codeword: “muffins.” You may read the rest of this column without having anything spoiled for you.

At the end of the film, a character engages in muffins, which many people consider to be immoral. Some characters in the movie consider it immoral, too, in fact. They actually struggle quite a bit with the idea of muffins before eventually proceeding.

Rush Limbaugh was upset by the film’s depiction of muffinry, saying the movie promotes muffin activities. In fact, the movie does nothing of the kind: It merely includes muffins as something that one of the characters does. The film recognizes the moral conflict inherent in muffinness. In fact, another character realizes he or she will be haunted by the muffins forever — not exactly a ringing endorsement of muffinology.

So why is Rush finding a political message where there is none? His problem (well, among his problems) is that he has to fill four hours of radio time every day with political banter, and sometimes there just isn’t enough political news to be found. His preferred method of killing time — placing the microphone near his rear end and breaking wind for several minutes — only gets him so far. So apparently, when he gets truly desperate, he simply finds a non-political story like “Million Dollar Baby” and politicizes it.

Which, in itself, doesn’t bother me. It’s your show, Rush. Talk about whatever you want. If “Million Dollar Baby” had its muffins in its first half-hour, and if it were generally known to be a movie that contained muffins, then I would absolutely support Rush’s right to rail against its allegedly pro-muffin agenda. He’d still be wrong about that, and he’d still have missed the whole point of the movie, but being wrong and missing the point are not crimes, thank goodness. Heaven knows our prisons are crowded enough already.

But in fact the muffins don’t come into play until late in the film, and the way they are eventually handled marks the film’s climax. Even mentioning that muffin batter gets mixed is bad enough, spoiler-wise, but to reveal that the muffins are then actually baked, too, is downright mean.

Rush’s purpose was to “warn” people about the movie, as the film’s muffin-related material was not in its advertisements, and most critics did a good job of keeping it a secret — not because they wanted to ambush viewers with a hidden political agenda, but because they knew revealing it beforehand would detract from viewers’ enjoyment of the film. So since people didn’t know up front that there were muffins involved — the film is only billed as a boxing movie, not a muffin movie — Rush saw fit to warn them.

Now, I get where he’s coming from. There are certain elements whose presence in a movie should be disclosed beforehand. For example, if a movie is about aliens, I need to know that before I start watching it. Movies whose aliens are a secret are too easy to write, and it makes me angry: There’s some weird stuff, no one can explain it, we’re paying attention to the clues, trying to determine what it all means, trying to figure out which character is responsible, and — oh, it turns out it was aliens who did it, and it was easy for them because aliens can do anything. Mystery solved.

I also feel audiences should be alerted ahead of time if a movie contains Rob Schneider. His starring vehicles are clearly marked, of course, according to government regulations. But what about his cameos? There is currently no system in place to protect viewers from those brief, upsetting appearances.

But far be it from me to ruin a movie for people just because I don’t like it, regardless of my reasons. Now, that doesn’t apply to movies where the ending is obvious from the beginning — most romantic comedies, for example (ending: they get back together), or anything starring Steven Seagal (ending: you demand a refund). Those movies aren’t counting on audiences being surprised. But a film like “Million Dollar Baby,” which halfway through takes a turn in a direction you wouldn’t have foreseen, counts on audiences seeing it unspoiled to get the full, undiminished impact.

It all goes back to what I was saying originally, about the 2,000-ton pile of manure. Sometimes you think you’re dealing with one thing when really, lurking far beneath the surface, there is something else waiting to come along and surprise you, something difficult and thought-provoking just waiting to be ignited. If someone douses it before it starts, well, where’s the fun in that? And I know that’s a bit of a stretch, but how often do I get a chance to talk about Rush Limbaugh and a giant poo fire in the same column?

My alma mater, Brigham Young University, is famous for having a strict Honor Code. It pops up frequently in news stories, as when BYU is suspending its football players for “Honor Code violations,” which means they were drinking and committing sexual felonies. You drink and commit sexual felonies, you’re going to be in violation of the Honor Code, I don’t care how you spin it.

Of course, most universities have honor codes, usually covering the basics of ethical conduct: Don’t cheat on tests, don’t plagiarize, that sort of thing. Even party schools like San Diego State and UNLV have honor codes. (“Students shall refrain from pilfering other guys’ chicks, because dude, that’s not cool.”) But BYU’s is noteworthy for going further than just prohibiting basic dishonest behavior. Since it’s a privately owned religious institution, it can require its students to follow strict guidelines even in their personal, non-academic lives. The BYU Honor Code, therefore, has a lengthy list of things that are forbidden if one is to continue being a student at BYU.

Which brings us to the story of the time I got in trouble for violating the Honor Code.

I will tell you up front that I was guilty of the thing I was accused of. This separates me from most of the students who deal with the Honor Code Office, as they usually insist they are innocent. If you are their friends, you are required to believe them and become indignant that the Honor Code Office is hounding them so relentlessly, and then, when you find out later that your friends actually HAD done what they were accused of and simply didn’t want to admit it to you, you are allowed to be a little cheesed off. Or so I’m told.

Here is what happened to me. Picture it: Provo, 1998. I was in the middle of one of my occasional phases where I lift weights in an attempt to re-shape my body into something more pleasing and less resembling a bag of zucchini. My friend Rob and I were working out three times a week in BYU’s weight-room facilities, each pestering the other into showing up so that neither of us could weasel out of it.

One day, we approached the preacher curl station (though BYU calls them “bishop curls”) only to find a woman occupying it, sort of. She was really just standing near it, working with free weights, and her towel was on the preacher curl bench. We wondered if perhaps she was attempting to be in two places at once, to stand there with her free weights, and also to do preacher curls. Perhaps she meant for her towel to “save” the bench for her, the way coats can save seats at the movies. Perhaps the towel was doing its own exercises. We had seen the woman here before. She was a Cuban gal in her early 40s, out of place among the college-aged caucasians who generally populated the gym, and we later learned that she was the wife of a faculty member. I asked her if the towel was hers, and she said no. So we moved the owner-less towel and began using the preacher curl bench.

Now, in the process, we kind of had to squeeze past the woman, as she was standing very near the bench, not close enough to be using it, just close enough to be in the way. In the process of squeezing past her, Rob said, “Excuse me,” such as a civilized person would say in a situation such as this. Most people, were they in the woman’s shoes, would have thought, “Oh. I am too close to this piece of equipment. I will take one step in the opposite direction so as to give these attractive, sweaty young men more space.”

This evidently did not occur to the woman, whose name we later learned was Betty. Instead, Betty began to harass us about how we had invaded her space. When I, as the spokesman for Rob and myself, tried to explain that we weren’t in her way, and that she would not feel crowded if she would simply move away from the equipment that she was not using, she responded with even more hysterical verbal hectoring. She told us that she was old enough to be our mother, and that we ought to be more respectful, and that we ought to wait until she was done before we started using the equipment (the equipment that she wasn’t using anyway, I am obliged to point out). She flatly refused to take one step backward and thus be away from us; in fact, we had to move the curl bench ourselves so that we could use it, and so that she could continue standing in the area she had designated as Betty’s Spot.

All the while, she kept going on and on, quite angrily. She wouldn’t let us get a word in edge-wise, and edge-wise is usually the way I am best able to get words in. I tried to tell her that we had not been rude, and that Rob had even said “excuse me,” and her response was that he had NOT said “excuse me.” I told her he had; she insisted he hadn’t.

I’m afraid that was my breaking point. I am a great lover of truth and fact and concrete evidence. I suppose an insane Cuban woman could construe our behavior — the polite “excuse me,” the calm responses to her angry badgering, and so forth — to have been rude. Rudeness is subjective. Perhaps in her native land “excuse me” and unemotional conversation are the very height of impudence. I don’t know. But Rob having said “excuse me” was not an issue for debate. He HAD said it, very clearly, and no amount of paranoia or persecution-complex behavior could change that fact.

Seeing that she was going to fight me on this issue — this very black-and-white, clear-cut issue — I became frustrated, knowing now that there would never be an end to her ranting and raving. And so my brain conjured the following message: “Shut up.” Except somewhere between my brain and my mouth, the message was altered so that it came out this way: “Shut the hell up.”

Well. I might just as well have smacked her in the face with an anvil. Shut the hell up she did, let me tell you! Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open, and she dropped her weights to the floor. Now so enraged she could barely speak — a state I was surprised to learn she had the capacity for — she stormed over to the attendant’s booth. She made it clear she wanted to make a federal case of my extremely mild profanity, saying she was going to call the Honor Code and the university police, which she did. Meanwhile, Rob and I continued doing our preacher curls, trying to be as nonchalant as possible, that heightened sense of self-awareness flooding over us the way it does after you’ve been part of a public spectacle. I said to Rob, by way of explanation, “I’m as surprised as you are. I just meant to say ‘Shut up.'”

While waiting for law-enforcement to arrive, Betty stomped back over to me and Rob, demanding to know our names. We declined to reveal this information, as Betty’s temper was hot enough that, for all we knew, she would show up at our apartments and murder us, or at the very least subject us to further haranguing. She stormed away and made some more phone calls, probably to the National Guard.

The situation was now way out of hand, so Rob and I approached her and apologized. I told her I had lost my temper and that I was sorry. (I’m pretty sure I would not do this today, if the person truly needed shutting up the way Betty did. This was long ago, in 1998, when I was meeker.) But Betty said she would not accept our apology unless Rob admitted to and apologized for pushing her — which, I hasten to point out, he had not done. He had brushed past her, perhaps, but he had not pushed her. Heavens, Rob was a strong man. If he had pushed her, she’d have been doing all her shouting from the floor. But since Rob would not apologize for the thing he had not done, Betty would not accept our apology and continued making phone calls to dignitaries and law-enforcement agencies.

The university police eventually arrived, at which point Betty suddenly dropped her claim that Rob had pushed her (which, had it been true, would have been the only semi-crime we’d been guilty of). So the police just sort of talked to us for a minute and left. Rob went on to work for them, and he is now a police officer himself.

But the Honor Code Office was a different story. They deal frequently in things that are not illegal but that are nonetheless morally questionable, things like dressing immodestly, or shoplifting. Since Betty filed a complaint against me with them, they were obligated to follow through on it, to see if any punishment was warranted. Someone from the office called me and set up an appointment, and I ventured into the storied halls of the Honor Code Office.

I met with a slight, bespectacled man who looked like an accountant. I pictured him hunched over his desk, calculating numbers of Honor Code infractions on an adding machine. He read Betty’s complaint to me, and I offered clarifications of her wild exaggerations and outright lies. For example, in her official report, which was replete with revisionist history that made her look sane and us abusive, her reason for not accepting our apology was not because Rob wouldn’t admit to pushing her, but because we wouldn’t tell her our names. (She did not indicate why we didn’t accept HER apology for being a screeching maniac in the first place; it was because she never offered one.) Her version of things also conspicuously omitted how good I looked in my P.E.-issue shorts.

Now, as strict as the BYU Honor Code is, the only thing I had done that was an actual violation of it was the swearing — when I had told her to “shut the hell up.” So the Honor Code man asked me if that part was true. I told him it was. He said, in a tone that suggested he was tired of frivolous complaints made by every self-righteous, easily offended student at BYU, but nonetheless was resigned to dealing with them, “You know that sort of language is inappropriate, right?” I said, “Hell yeah.”

Just kidding. I wish I had said that! Man, that would have been awesome. I actually just said, “Yeah.” He said, “So don’t do it anymore, OK?” I told him I wouldn’t — though I will confess, now that I have safely graduated, that in fact I went on to tell a number of people to shut the H-word up, though few as deserving as Betty was.

Post-script: Betty also filed a report with the P.E. department, and I had to meet with the department chair — well, the guy who occupied it, not just the chair itself — to assure him that such confrontations were not common in my life and that it would not happen again, at least not as far as I was concerned; I couldn’t speak for Betty, who of course had provoked the whole thing in the first place with her screaming, irrational rudeness. Betty also sent a letter to the faculty adviser of BYU’s Daily Universe, where I was a columnist, suggesting that a person of my low moral standing should not be given a position where students might look up to him. The adviser told her that any student looking for guidance from a guy who writes a humor column in a student newspaper probably deserves whatever misdirection he gets. And that, I suppose, probably shut her up again.

I’m not much of a guy. I don’t say “dude,” I can’t build anything, I don’t know what “torque” is, and I’ve never measured anything in horsepower (except, one time, a horse). And so, as an outsider, I’m fascinated and often troubled by the behavior of my fellow men. What motivates them? What drives them? Why do they wear hats?

Take, for example, the subjects of sports and fighting. Most men have engaged in these activities at least once, some of them many times. Both are foreign concepts to me. I mean, I understand how they work, and I sort of get why they happen. In the case of sports, it’s because men are driven to compete, and in the case of fighting, it’s because men are stubborn jerks. But I lack whatever it is that would make me be interested in either of them. The only scenarios I can imagine that result in me engaging in a fistfight involve my defense of a helpless victim, and even then I suspect I would carefully weigh all the options before I actually threw a punch. (For example, could I just push the person down and run away instead?) And I can’t imagine ANY scenarios that result in me playing sports.

These two activities were combined a few months ago at the Pistons/Pacers basketball game when a brawl erupted between players and spectators. I remember it well. I was eating at Squatter’s, minding my own business, when suddenly I was assaulted by images of fisticuffs on the TVs, which were all around me. It was worse than the time I was accidentally watching the Super Bowl and got an eyeful of an aging pop star’s nipple.

Now, already we have something here that I don’t really “get,” and that’s a basketball game. To me basketball is like a vasectomy. I understand how it’s done, and I can appreciate the skill involved, but I have no interest in watching it performed, much less participating. And then we add a fight to the mix, and I’m completely baffled. What is going ON here?

I think it boils down to this. The players are spoiled millionaires, many of them from the streets in the first place and now accustomed to getting anything they want because every Friday, a huge dumptruck pulls up to their houses and drops big piles of money on them. Factor in that a lot of these guys are hotheads anyway, perhaps from years of being teased for being 11 feet tall, and yeah, you’re gonna have a fight or two. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.

It’s interesting that the sport where you see the most bench-clearing brawls is baseball, an otherwise very passive — some might even say boring — sport. I suspect it’s because the players spend most of their time sitting around. You’d have a short fuse, too, if you had to stand in a field next to a fence all day doing nothing. And so when a pitcher does something minor like hit a guy in the head with a baseball, next thing you know all the players are on the field, shoving and cursing. I think they’re just glad to have the exercise.

But back to the fight in Detroit. Several players received major suspensions, but I wonder how much good that’s going to do. Ron Artest was benched earlier in the season already because he asked for time off to go promote his rap album. People this rich and this pampered aren’t like normal people. A slap on the wrist, even one that costs them millions of dollars, isn’t going change their attitudes. I think we need to turn the baseball players loose on them. Then you’d see some fights, my friend.

I often hear radio commercials for auto dealerships where we are told the proprietor has “gone crazy” and is slashing prices right and left, and we should hurry on down before he regains his senses. But to me, suggesting that car salesmen are mentally unstable is not a selling point. Sure, their insanity may be manifesting itself in low, low prices right now. But what if by the time I arrive their insanity has switched to the kind that involves high, high prices and killing people? What if they get tired of slashing prices and begin slashing throats? Where does that leave me? Dead and without a new car, that’s where.

All of which means it is time for another column in which we ask the question: How are we treating our crazy people?

It’s a sensitive subject, as you know, and there is no better place to address sensitive subjects than in this column. Here in Utah, we have had to deal with the matter of craziness a lot lately because Brian David Mitchell, the man who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, is a total loon. He has a tendency to sing hymns and make wild prophecies during his court appearances, rather than, you know, defend himself. This is maddening to Utahns because we fear he will be found incompetent to stand trial, which means he won’t get quite the punishment we want him to get, which would ideally involve electrodes, piranhas, and Mitchell’s groinular region. If he’s nuts (sorry!), he’ll just go to a mental hospital and be watched closely. Being crazy probably has its drawbacks, but here Mitchell has found an advantage.

Craziness was in the news nationally last month when the Vermont Teddy Bear Company introduced its special “Crazy for You” bear, an adorable li’l fellow who arrives in a straitjacket complete with “commitment” papers, meant to show the recipient that the sender is stark raving mad for him/her, and also that the recipient is not particularly sensitive to the sanity-challenged.

The bear was the cause of many panties being gotten into wads, most notably the panties of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which has special panties on reserve just for the purpose of getting them into wads. NAMI gets upset every time insanity is trivialized in public. For example, if you tell the joke about the woman who goes to a psychiatrist and says, “You’ve gotta help me! My husband thinks he’s a refrigerator!,” and the psychiatrist says, “What’s the problem with that?,” and the woman says, “He sleeps with his mouth open, and the little light keeps me awake!,” the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill will get its panties into a wad, and then send you a letter.

I think I might agree with NAMI on the bear, though, at least in part. I’m not sure it’s offensive, but isn’t it just a little creepy? Let’s say you’re a woman who’s been dating a man for several months, and he sends you a teddy bear in a straitjacket. Isn’t the suggestion, even in jest, that you’ve driven your boyfriend over the edge of sanity mildly unsettling? What’s he saying here? That’s he’s no longer responsible for his actions? That he needs to be restrained so that he does not harm himself or others? I think “I’m crazy about you” is one of those figures of speech that is best not to think about literally, like “she broke my heart” or “he beat the crap out of me.”

NAMI was not alone in decrying the “Crazy for You” bear. Vermont Gov. James Douglas also said the toy was insensitive and demeaning. The whole thing got a lot of news coverage. For its part, Vermont Teddy Bear insisted the “Crazy for You” item was simply a humorous Valentine’s Day gift and that no offense to the mentally ill (or “cuckoos,” as they are known) was intended. The company continued to sell the bear until the inventory ran out, which occurred rapidly, perhaps due to, I don’t know, maybe ALL THE EXTRA ATTENTION it got. Thanks, NAMI and Vermont Gov. James Douglas! Vermont Teddy Bear’s profits this month were totally insane!

But all was not well for the teddy bear company. Its CEO, Elisabeth Robert, wound up resigning from her position on the board of Vermont’s largest hospital, saying the “Crazy for You” controversy made it sorta hard for her to be on the board of a hospital that sometimes actually TREATS crazy people. It is exactly like the time I had to resign from the Special Olympics board after I pushed a retarded kid down the stairs.

So yes, the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. got to sell its crazy bears and make a lot of money, but at what cost? Did the bear represent a stain on the dignity of mentally ill people? Or can we make light of something and still take it seriously? More to the point, how long can a crazy guy run an auto dealership before he loses it? Seems like you’d be able to take advantage of him pretty easily. Which, again, is why I wouldn’t include that in the ads if I were them. I’m just sayin’.

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have broken up, and now it looks like Britney Spears and Kevin Federline’s marriage is on the rocks, too. Now, unless your name is among the four I just mentioned, nothing in that sentence should matter to you. It was a test. Did you pass?

For surely we can all agree that there are better things to discuss than the marital status of strangers. The fact that Claire on “Lost” has come back and doesn’t have any memory of the plane crash, for example!!!!!!

Anyway, since it is Valentine’s Day, it seems appropriate that we should discuss matters of love. And where better to start than with the British royal family? It was announced last week that the stork-like Prince Charles will marry his horse-faced girlfriend and adultery partner Camilla Parker-Bowles as soon as he returns from delivering babies and she has finished running the Kentucky Derby. They hope to produce many beaked and hooved children. Charles’ ancient, inbred mother, Queen Elizabeth II, issued a statement indicating her approval of the marriage, then went outside to dance on the grave of Princess Diana, which caused her to fall and break a hip, which caused all of England to weep like little snaggle-toothed girls. It was indeed a sorry spectacle.

Meanwhile, over in the British colony of Australia, a 29-year-old bachelor has gotten fed up with being single and has elected to live in a plastic bubble for five days in the hopes of attracting a mate. Well, not a “mate,” probably, since that just means “friend” over there. He wants a girlfriend. A girlmate.

Anyway, the point is, an Internet dating service set up the stunt, and the AFP has reported it here. The idea is that the man lives in a bubble in a Sydney shopping mall for five days, during which time shoppers can gawk at him and women who think he’s nutty and outrageous can send e-mails begging him to please please please take them out on Valentine’s Day. He is scheduled to emerge today, reeking of five days’ worth of unshowered flatulence, and take the lucky lady on a date. After the date, they will never see each other again, because wacky “how we met” stories never work. I’m just sayin’. But good luck anyway, desperate Sydney man.

Meanwhile, back in England, there comes this report of a woman who is about to get married and whose chief bridesmaid will be a dog. This is not newsworthy, of course; we’ve all been to weddings and seen bridesmaids who were dogs. But I mean this is an ACTUAL dog, with four paws and everything. Her name is Lucy Brown. Welcome to England, where the pets get last names but the royalty do not.

The bride, Sonia Wilde, loves her dog so much that she wants her to be her bridesmaid. How Sonia’s human girlfriends feel about this is not indicated, but you know the old saying: Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, and sometimes not even a bridesmaid, because the bride chose an animal instead.

And now on to the darker side of love. I should warn you that the following report contains the word “testicle,” so please stop reading now if you fear you will be upset by it. The testicle in question gets torn off, if that helps you make your decision.

According to Reuters, a 24-year-old London woman has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail for ripping off her ex-boyfriend’s testicle with her bare hands after he refused to sleep with her.

I’m sure it goes without saying that alcohol was a factor in this incident.

The man, Geoffrey Jones, had already broken up the woman, Amanda Monti, and was now rejecting her further advances. I’m curious, though, how she had access to his naughty bits. If he wasn’t going to sleep with her, why were his pants off? Can a man without pants really be said to be “rejecting” someone’s advances? Not that it would give her the right to go medieval on him if he were leading her on, but still. You can understand why she’d be upset.

The news story says the woman pleaded guilty to “unlawful wounding,” which implies that in England there is such a thing as “lawful wounding.” I suspect things like beating up a mime or stabbing a hippie would fall under that category.

As we see, love — or the lack of it — can make us do crazy things. Whether it’s maiming a loved one, living in a plastic bag, or allowing an animal to do the work of a human, we’ve all been moved to insanity by love at some point in our lives. So insane we would leave Jennifer Aniston if we were Brad Pitt, or vice versa? Yes, even that insane.

Special note: Today is also Mom’s birthday. It’s fitting that she was born on Valentine’s Day, because I don’t know anyone who exemplifies the ideals of love, peace and chocolate-consumption as well as she does. Happy 67th birthday, Mom!

I want every movie to be good. I really do. I always walk into the theater with high hopes, even when all signs point to the likelihood of my hopes being dashed. For while I do get a certain pleasure from seeing bad movies, the same as I enjoy watching those “blooper” shows on TV — it’s fun to watch things go wrong, isn’t it? — I’d much rather see something good. And if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like for it not to star any WB network cast members, OK?

But after so much hope-dashing, you start to become wary of hoping TOO strongly that a movie is going to be good when it’s obvious that it isn’t. There’s hoping, and then there’s being stupid. For example, the other night I went to see “Alone in the Dark,” a sci-fi/horror film that opened last weekend to universally negative reviews. And I do mean universally: Of the 91 reviews tallied at RottenTomatoes.com, only one is positive (and that “positive” review only gave it a C+). Even the dumb people who go around saying, “If the critics all hate it, it’s probably really good!!!!!!!!!” can’t ignore statistics like those.

Furthermore, the film was directed by Uwe Boll, a German filmmaker whose previous work, the zombie movie “House of the Dead,” was fantastically stupid, even for a zombie movie. I believe in the principle of repentance, and I believe that people can change. However, I did not believe that Uwe Boll had seen the light with regard to his moviemaking skills, and so I had little reason to hope that “Alone in the Dark” would be any better.

I had missed the press screening of this movie because I was at the Sundance Film Festival, so it became my lot to watch it after it opened, in the theater, with normal people. I chose a middle-of-the-road stadium-seating multiplex in Salt Lake City, one of those theaters that, despite starting to show its age, still tries to maintain a hip atmosphere by including, next to the standard popcorn and Raisinets, a counter with coffeeshop products like danishes and bagels. I bought a brownie there, and as the teen gave me my change, he said, “Enjoy your movie.” I said OK, but I didn’t really think I was going to. In fact, I was a little offended that he thought he could boss me around like that.

At first it looked like I would be watching “Alone in the Dark” alone in the dark, as I was the only person in the theater. It was 10 p.m., and it was a Wednesday night. You might drag yourself to the movies under those circumstances to see if an Oscar-nominated film is worthy of its buzz, or to catch a movie you’d heard positive things about from friends. But why see “Alone in the Dark” at all, let alone when doing so will keep you out until almost midnight in the middle of the week? Why do that to yourself?

So I sat alone and watched the pre-show entertainment that many theaters have nowadays. It used to just be slides of easy trivia questions and name-the-movie quote games that were projected on the screen. But now there’s sound and motion — little movies up there, trying to amuse us in the idle minutes before the movie starts.

One of the segments was about “Racing Stripes,” which was described as an “upcoming” film despite having been released three weeks ago. Dustin Hoffman, who is the voice of a Shetland pony in the movie, was being interviewed about his character and about the film in general. He said, “There’s a subtle message in this piece,” and I was startled. Did he just refer to “Racing Stripes” as a “piece”? Like it’s art or something? As in: “Last weekend we listened to the symphony perform a piece by Mozart, then we went to the museum to see some exquisite Picasso pieces, then we went to the movies to watch the piece about the talking zebra”? I thought “Racing Stripes” was a “piece,” too, but probably not in the same sense that Hoffman meant it.

Just before “Alone in the Dark” was scheduled to begin, some other audience members began to arrive, first in the form of a married couple who I found fascinating. They were in their 50s, making them approximately 30 years older than the film’s target demographic. The husband, a rotund, white-haired man, sat with an empty seat between him and his wife, apparently because he felt he was too fat to comfortably occupy a seat directly next to another person. There was no discussion first; this was just how they always do things, evidently. They chortled at the excerpts from “Racing Stripes” that were shown before and after Dustin Hoffman’s dissertation, especially at the part where two horseflies sing, “Who let the zebras out? Who? Who? Who? Who?”

Speaking of who, who are these 50-year-old unhip married people who go to the movies at 10 p.m. to watch a horror/sci-fi flick that everyone knows is going to stink? What could possibly attract such people to this particular film? Weren’t they worried they’d miss Leno? Didn’t they have to get up early the next morning so he could get to work at the factory and so she could get to her part-time cashier job at the dollar store?

A few more people arrived in time for the movie, too, most of them young people, although there was also a dumpy-looking couple in their early 30s, he with a mullet, she with bangs arranged in the shape of a claw, who smelled so powerfully of cigarettes that I could smell them even though they sat 10 feet away from me. The movie began, it sucked mightily, and it ended. As we all shuffled out of the theater, no one gave any indication of having enjoyed it. I wondered if I was the only who was not surprised at this. Were these people more hopeful than I had been? Are they still in that innocent, child-like phase of movie-going where you believe that if a movie makes it to the cineplex, it must have been assembled with some degree of competence? How I wish I could return to those carefree days. But I have become jaded. I have seen “Freddy Got Fingered” AND “White Chicks.” It is a wonder that I have any happiness left in my life at all. Were it not for movie-theater brownies, I might not.

The 2005 Sundance Film Festival ended yesterday after 11 days of shmoozing, partying and occasionally watching movies in Park City. Many celebrities were on hand to celebrate the world of independent film and to enjoy Utah’s rustic splendor, at least until their own movies were done screening, at which point they resumed hating middle America and fled back to L.A.

This was my sixth year covering the festival as a writer and critic. This year and last were as a freelancer; the four years before that were for a Provo, Utah, newspaper I worked for called The Daily Herald. Working for that paper was odd in general, but never more so than every January, when Sundance rolled around. Join me now as I stumble down memory lane and recall some key moments in my relationship with the Sundance Film Festival and the Daily Herald.

2000: I had been working full-time as a features writer at the Herald for only seven months when the film festival came around, and I was just beginning to convince my bosses that my capabilities extended beyond writing stories about women who made nativity scenes out of Popsicle sticks and old ladies who were turning 100 yet had never left the town of Payson, Utah.

The Herald had always covered Sundance before, but generally half-heartedly and cluelessly. (To be fair, this was how the paper tackled most other issues, too.) Now that they had someone on staff who was moderately knowledgeable and extremely eager to write about Sundance, the managing editor, Mike, told me to go whole-hog. See as many movies as I could! he said. Write little reviews of them! he said. Give us the whole scoop! I enthusiastically complied with his requests.

However, I was not yet a salaried employee, and when I turned in my time card after a week of pre-festival screenings, it had 20 hours of overtime on it — the result of seeing as many movies as I could, writing little reviews of them, and giving them the whole scoop. On day four of the festival, I received a panicked phone call from Mike urging me to stop seeing movies at once.

The jig was up. Faced with the fact that covering Sundance cost money, my bosses had decided that “covering Sundance” just meant being lazy and watching movies all day. I don’t know what they think it is when sports writers watch football games, but apparently that’s OK, because the Herald was always quick to spend thousands of dollars to send our sports guys to faraway places to watch Brigham Young University lose at some pastime or other. But a world-renowned film festival being held an hour away from our office, that’s frivolous.

2001: Mike was still the boss, but the paper had just launched a new entertainment-specific wing of its Web site and Mike was eager to try it out. He wanted me to cover Sundance again and post reviews each night on the site — same-day reviews and up-to-the-minute reports! What could be more exciting than that?

I was salaried by now, so the millions of hours it would take didn’t matter. I was editor of the features section now, too, but as long as I could get that work done in addition to my Sundance duties, Mike didn’t care how much time I spent in Park City. So I put the section on auto-pilot, ran a bunch of Associated Press stories and local articles about women who knit scarves for homeless dogs, and moved into my friend’s cabin near Park City to live full-time. It was my goal to not even set foot in Provo for the duration of the festival, and I am pleased to say I met that goal.

2002: I had a new boss now. Mike was gone, and the new managing editor was Mike (but a different one). The new Mike, who went by the nickname “the Rev” due to having sent off for a minister’s license one night while drunk and in college, was a congenial, easy-going sort of man, by far my favorite boss I’ve ever had. He let me do whatever I wanted in the features section — movie reviews, theater reviews, whatever — as long as the section maintained a modicum of quality and as long as “Snide Remarks” was funny. He stayed out of my way, I stayed out of his way, and we enjoyed a friendly working relationship.

Nonetheless, he never really “got” the whole movie review thing. He had the disease that a lot of newspaper editors have — not alcoholism (though that too), but the disease where you assume that if YOU aren’t interested in something, neither are the readers. The Rev didn’t go to the movies and thus didn’t read movie reviews, and thus assumed our readers didn’t, either. Conversely, the Rev was a huge sports fan and thus reasoned that the latest wins and losses of the BYU football team should go on the front page (next to the latest arrests and convictions of the BYU football team, an organization that commits rape more often than it commits fumbles).

So it was an uphill battle persuading the Rev to let me “take a week off work” and cover Sundance. Finally I convinced him by offering to write a “Snide Remarks” column every day during the festival, for five days straight. He was a big “Snide Remarks” fan, and the thought of reading one every day for a week softened his big, Scotch-soaked heart.

2003: The Rev was gone now, as were many of his cronies, after a big shake-up. The new managing editor was named Randy, and in order to focus my attention on writing (my strength) as opposed to running the features section (the bane of my existence), I had been made “senior features writer” and a new features editor had been brought in. Her name was Crazy Crazy Jean.

CCJ and I got along swimmingly (up until the time that she got me fired, but that’s another story), and we had one goal in mind: to cover the heck out of Sundance. We wanted her, me and another features writer in Park City full-time. We wanted to give the Salt Lake papers a run for their money in terms of festival coverage.

What we REALLY wanted, of course, was just to GO to the festival, and for the Herald to cover our expenses. But we had to formulate a good pitch to sell Randy on the idea.

We knew it would be tough because we had begun to face a very real problem: People who live in Provo don’t care about Sundance. They don’t go to the festival; they don’t care what movies play there; they aren’t interested in the film industry, or in fine art in general. The word “provincial” comes to mind when I think of Provoans, although that may be an insult to some of the finer provinces I’ve visited.

The point is, Mike and the Rev were right to limit our coverage of the festival. We should address it nominally, of course — it is a news event, after all — and give it some restrained attention. But a writer covering it full-time? For our readers, that was overkill. And THREE writers covering it full-time? Even overkiller (or possibly “more overkiller”).

Crazy Crazy Jean and I knew this but made a pact to ignore it when making our pitch to Randy. Instead, we would convince him that Sundance warranted all the attention we could muster, and that we were just the writers to do the mustering.

Now, you should know something about Randy: He’s insane. His behavior is marked by impulsive decisions and brief bursts of energy, followed by a period of forgetting what he was doing and moving on to something else. He was easily swayed — not by staff members, but by readers. If a reader called him directly and said, for example, “I think the Herald should run a weekly column about trees,” he would burst out of his office as if shot from a cannon, aimed at us — his cockamamie reader-inspired ideas usually fell under the features category — declaring, “Trees! We’re going to do a weekly column about trees! It will start next week! Jean, find a staff member or a freelancer to write the column! Get the graphics department involved so we can run photos of whatever trees we’re writing about every week! Trees! Everyone loves trees!” And we would nod and pretend to agree, knowing that in a day or so he would be distracted by a shiny object and forget he’d ever said anything about a trees column.

Meanwhile, if a staffer were ever to approach Randy about doing a trees column, Randy would squint at the person and declare his idea stupid. (Which of course it would be.) So Crazy Crazy Jean and I weighed our options. We could bribe a reader to call in and suggest to Randy that we provide extensive Sundance coverage, but that was risky. For one thing, we didn’t know any actual readers who thought that. For another thing, Randy might see through the ruse and get mad at us.

But then we remembered: Randy hated his predecessor the Rev and disliked all of his policies on principle alone simply because the Rev had thought of them. So when CCJ and I laid out our proposal for Sundance coverage, and Randy was getting that squinty look in his eyes, I casually added, “Now, in the past, we haven’t done much with Sundance. The Rev didn’t think it was ‘interesting’ to our readers.” I said this with great incredulity, the subtext being, “Can you believe what a moron the Rev was?,” when of course in secret I agreed with him.

That’s all it took. Upon hearing that the Rev ignored Sundance, Randy became a staunch pro-Sundance advocate. He authorized us to reserve two hotel rooms in the Park City area for the festival, and to send three writers up there full-time. There would be front-page coverage, and each day’s features section would have a page devoted to it. He would cover our gasoline and food expenses. All told, it would cost the paper well over $1,000, but it was worth it — not in terms of reader response, because of course the readers didn’t care, but in terms of CCJ, another writer and me getting to spend all our time at the film festival for free.

2004: By now I didn’t work at the Herald anymore, Randy having extended his well-known impulsive behavior into the realm of firing people. Crazy Crazy Jean didn’t work there anymore, either, because I got her fired two weeks after she got me fired. (Note to journalists: Don’t rat on one of your colleagues for committing a vague ethical violation when you yourself have been plagiarizing CD reviews on a regular basis.)

But my friend Smacky still worked at the Herald, and he was one of the writers covering the festival. Randy had not realized that the previous year’s exploits had been a waste of Herald resources, so the same plan was in effect, including the two hotel rooms. Smacky’s room had a couch with a fold-out bed, so he let me share his room — which means even after the Herald fired me, it continued to pay my way at Sundance.

2005: Smacky doesn’t work at the Herald anymore, and the writer I know who’s covering Sundance is a married woman, so sharing her hotel room probably wouldn’t be appropriate (or even pleasant, if her husband were staying there, too). So I was on my own this year, covering Sundance with no assistance whatsoever from the paper that fired me 17 months ago. But I did run into another Herald writer, an old pal of mine, who told me that Randy is still crazy, still hasn’t caught on to the whole Sundance scam, and that the Rev and Crazy Crazy Jean are working for different newspapers in — where else? — Florida, land of the crazies. Maybe I’ll get press credentials for the Miami Film Festival and share a hotel room with them there.

My friends who live in Las Vegas told me it was snowing there a few weeks ago. Snow in Las Vegas! Hell had literally frozen over. Do you realize how many things had to happen now? I was going to have to pay my BYU parking tickets, eat at Arby’s and set foot in Florida again.

The snow was newsworthy because it was unusual, but I find even ordinary weather interesting. I like discussing the weather, and I think we should all do it more often. It’s a courteous subject, one that can be broached even in the most mixed of company. People used to talk about it all the time, back when more people were farmers and when even non-farmers were at the mercy of the elements due to there being no air conditioning or central heating. Back then, a heat wave or a cold snap affected you. Nowadays, it’s something to complain about, sure, but it doesn’t cause you hardship for any longer than it takes you to scurry from one climate-controlled area to another.

So gone are the days that inspired the witticism, “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”? Today, no one even talks about it, and we actually have the technology to do something about it, as explored in the futuristic cautionary tale “Superman III.”

This is too bad. (The lack of weather conversation, I mean, not “Superman III.”) (Although “Superman III” is too bad, too.) The weather is the one subject everyone has feelings about, the one subject everyone actually could discuss. You might not care about religion, politics, art, film or books. But you care about how hot it is outside, or how much precipitation there is, or how beautiful the blue sky is, or how the breeze coming off the lake is just this side of rancid. If religion and politics are the two topics not to discuss in polite company, the weather is their opposite.

If you say, “I sure hate this humidity,” you don’t have to worry that a hard-line humidity proponent is going to accost you with pro-humidity rhetoric and accuse you of being ignorant for not seeing it his way. This is very different from religion and politics, where if you express an opinion, people will get all up in your grill and try to change your mind.

Think of all the pleasant conversations that could be had among strangers, at bus stops and in grocery-store lines, if we would all just talk about the weather. Sure, the citywide book club aims at giving everyone a conversation starter — but that requires reading. Discussing the weather just requires going outside. Or heck, even just looking outside.

And so I enjoy talking about the weather. I like saying to people, “Nice day, isn’t it?” or “Think the rain will let up?”? Apart from making me feel like a character in a Mark Twain novel, it’s a chance to notice the world around me, to remember that we have nature even when tall buildings and loud traffic have infiltrated it. I feel remiss when it’s 6 p.m. and someone says, “Nice day, isn’t it?”? and I realize I hadn’t even noticed. To let a nice day blow past you without paying attention to it — well, that’s just ungrateful. If I were in charge of the days, I wouldn’t go on making nice ones if no one ever noticed them.

Hey look! It’s time for another stimulating edition of “Ask Eric Stuff,” the popular game from Europe where people ask Eric stuff and he answers them! As always, you may contribute your own questions to “Ask Eric Stuff” by going to this page and following the simple instructions, which have recently been translated into English from their original Latin.

Dear Eric: What is your opinion of “hot-saucing,” the current controversy in parenting wherein the parent punishes bad behavior by putting drops of hot sauce on the child’s tongue? — Tabasco Mom
Dear Hot Momma: I am in favor of any method of child-rearing that will leave the youngster emotionally scarred and which resembles torture. So, hooray for hot sauce!

Dear Eric: I just moved out to college and I was wondering how often I should wash my bedsheets. My mom always changed them for me but now it’s up to me and I have no idea when I should wash them. — On My Own in Owatonna
Dear Ownatowna: Sheets should be washed when they become scratchy or abrasive to the touch, or when making your bed in the morning causes them to produce a crackling noise.

Dear Eric: My girlfriend keeps wanting me to nibble her ears. How do I explain in a nice way that I find her ears totally disgusting, what with all the waxy buildup and general uncleanliness? — Grossed out in Green Bay
Dear Gross: Your girlfriend’s ears are waxy and unclean? That’s strange. They were fine when I was nibbling them last night! WOOOOT!

Dear Eric: My sister told me a really big secret, and she told me not to tell anyone. Can I tell my husband? — Keeps No Secrets from My Man
Dear Blabby: Only if the secret is about him, or if it’s especially juicy, or if you’re having dinner and you can’t think of anything else to say.

Dear Eric: My family makes fun of my boyfriend because he can tie his shoes with his toes. They think it’s a stupid talent. How do I convince them that if they look beyond that, he’s a really great guy? — In Love in Lubbock
Dear Lubby: He can tie his shoes with his toes? What’s the point of that? If he’s tying them with his toes, then obviously his feet aren’t in them, which means they don’t need to be tied. Your boyfriend is a moron. I don’t know how to convince your family he isn’t.

Dear Eric: How do I put the magic back into my marriage? — Bored in Boise
Dear BIB: Pull a rabbit out of your wife’s blouse. When she asks how it got there, say, “I love you” and give her some flowers. Then run away before she has time to think about it. (Note: Take the rabbit with you.)

Dear Eric: How do I teach my son to not eat from the floor? — Harried in Hurricane
Dear Harry: Quit leaving food on the floor, you dirty pig.

Dear Eric: I was asked to participate in a musical program. I was supposed to sing or play instruments for four songs, but the director cut three of them. I am so upset. What should I do? — Really Good Musician
Dear Humble Musician: Do a really crappy job on the one number you’re still doing. That will show them!

Dear Eric: I want to substitute honey for sugar when I bake. How should I alter the recipes? — Cooking Queen
Dear Cookie: Replace your five-pound bag of sugar with a one-gallon jug of bees.

Dear Eric: I’m graduating from BYU soon and I’m not sure what to do once I’m out. Do you have any advice? — Confused on Campus
Dear Campy: I don’t know what to do once you’re out, but whatever you do, don’t come out while you’re still at BYU!

Dear Eric: I’m thinking of getting a digital camera. What kind of features should I look for when shopping for one? — Photo Phanatic
Dear Phan: I know they’re supposed to have pixels. Get one with pixels.

Dear Eric: The people who live directly upstairs from us stomp around constantly and it drives us crazy. What can we do to stop the insanity? — Tested to the Limits
Dear Teste: Get a set of earplugs. These will be very useful for when you go upstairs and shoot your neighbors.

How many times has this happened to you: You’re sitting at home, doing nothing, completely bored — and suddenly you’re dragged into an international crisis that makes the next 24 hours of your life a non-stop roller-coaster of explosions and death! What’s that you say? It’s never happened to you? Then apparently your name isn’t Jack Bauer!

But now the adventures of Jack Bauer, hero of TV’s “24,” can be YOUR adventures, too! Simply follow the instructions in this handy guide and you’ll soon find that your life is every bit as thrilling and bloody as Jack Bauer’s!

VOCABULARY: To be a CTU agent, you must speak like one. Learn the following terms and work them into your daily conversation.

INTEL: n., information or data.
Example: “Caitlyn, I have just received intel that indicates you were totally flirting with Spencer at the dance last Saturday!”

HOSTILE: n., enemy.
Example: “Caitlyn, look out! There is a hostile approaching, and she’s mad that you were flirting with Spencer!”

OPERATIVE: n., employee or agent.
Example: “When the toilet overflowed, I had to call Rodney’s Qwik-&-EZ Plumbing, and they sent out an operative to fix it.”

PROTOCOL: n., standard procedure or policy
Example: “I could see most of the man from Rodney’s Qwik-&-EZ Plumbing’s butt crack, which I believe is protocol.”

* * * * *

BONUS TIP: Replace all the light bulbs in your home with 10-watt bulbs for that “CTU headquarters” feel.

* * * * *

SCHEDULING: As a Jack-Bauer-in-training, you must make effective use of your time. Follow this template for scheduling your daily activities.

8:01 a.m. – 8:58 a.m.: drive; bark instructions on cell phone; stop occasionally to shoot someone.
8:59 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.: attempt something outlandish, foolish and/or impossible.
9:01 a.m. – 9:58 a.m.: drive; bark instructions on cell phone; stop to rescue daughter from bear trap.
9:59 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.: attempt something outlandish, foolish and/or impossible.
etc.

* * * * *

FIELD QUESTIONS: Answer the following questions as though you were Jack Bauer. Growly whispering is not necessary.

1. You are driving the kids to soccer practice when you encounter heavy traffic due to a minor fender-bender that occurred up ahead. What do you do?
A) Get out of your car and leap from hood to hood until you reach the source of the traffic jam, waving your gun as you do so.
B) Take one of the victims of the fender-bender as a hostage and shoot your way to the front of the line.
C) Shoot one of the people involved in the fender-bender and cut off his leg with a saw, and then somehow take down a chopper, too.

2. Your spouse calls you from work and says, “Honey, I was thinking about picking up some Chinese take-out for dinner.” What is the correct response?
A) “Dammit, that’s not the right move!”
B) “Dammit, there’s no time!”
C) “The chow mein is the real target! I repeat, the chow mein is the real target!”

3. The copy machine in your office is malfunctioning for the third time this month. What do you do?
A) Alert your boss to the urgency of the situation by shooting a co-worker in the head.
B) Notify your superiors that you believe the manufacturers of the machine are Middle-Eastern terrorists, then set fire to the copier in order to draw them out of hiding.
C) Inject yourself with heroin so the police will come, thus getting your office mentioned on the nightly news, thus reminding a executive of the Xerox company (who watches that particular news show every night) that he needs to send someone out to service the machine.

* * * * *

You are now prepared to be Jack Bauer. The world is in peril! Get out there and make it worse, and then ultimately make it sort of better!

On a recent Saturday afternoon I opened my door to exit my apartment so I could walk to the nearby arthouse theater and watch something foreign or lewd, when my roommate said something that caused me to stop and converse with him briefly. The door remained open as we spoke, and as we did, our home was invaded by kittens.

Yes, kittens, two of them. They were very young, and they mewed in a most adorable fashion as they walked tentatively and curiously into my apartment, in much the same way as I had done when I moved in (though my mewing sounded more like, “Why is there an overhead light fixture in the water-heater closet but not in the living room?”). I glanced up and down the hall and saw no signs of an overbearing mother cat, nor of an angry dog, nor of a little girl in pigtails wearing her mother’s fancy hat and trailing a tea set behind her, nor any of the other reasons I could think of that two kittens might be on the run.

How did the kittens get into the building? Even if they knew the security code to access the main door, they wouldn’t have been able to reach the keypad to type it in. Why, it’s four feet off the ground, and these kittens were no more than six inches tall! Had they been assisted somehow? Had they loitered near the door until someone exited, then quickly scampered in before the door shut? And once they were inside, how had they made it up to the third floor? The elevator buttons, as with the security keypad, would be much too high for them to reach, and navigating the stairs would have been perilous for kittens of such little height. They must have had good reason for being there, to go to such trouble. Had they friends in our apartment building? Business to attend to? Were they hired goons there to make a kill, like John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction”? Were these hit-kittens?

My roommate, Greg, and I discarded the last theory, not just because the kittens seemed to be carrying no weapons of any kind, but because they were the cutest li’l guys you ever did see. I’m allergic to cats, but not to kittens. I think it’s because kittens have not yet developed their dander, or their keen powers of evil, whatever it is specifically that I am allergic to. And so Greg and I were delirious under the power of the kittens’ adorability, cooing and chucking them under the chin and continue to wonder where they belonged.

This lasted for one minute. Then I really needed to leave if I was going to make the movie on time, and I don’t know what Greg was doing. Whatever his plans for the afternoon were, they did not include tending to misplaced kittens. They obviously were not strays; surely they belonged to someone in the building, probably on our floor. Someone was probably already sick with worry over their absence. So we, um, put them back into the hallway and closed the door. And I hurried to the elevator and made sure they did not follow me.

I want you to know, I was torn about this. I am not in the practice of abandoning lost animals, and even though I assumed they’d be found by their owners in a matter of minutes, I still worried about whether I should have stayed behind to see the matter through. But if I missed this screening of the movie, I’d have had to wait until Monday. Why throw your entire schedule out of whack just because someone can’t keep track of his pets?

When I got home a couple hours later, the kittens were not in the hallway anymore. On the door of the Korean family who lives down the hall from me was this sign: “Found two kittens. If kittens are you please knock door.” Now, see, this is what I would have done if I’d been able to stick around: welcome the kittens into my home (well, let them stay there, I guess, since they’d already barged in) and put up signs announcing my discovery of them. I probably wouldn’t have used that exact wording, no, but the idea would have been the same. My Korean neighbors seemed to have the right —

Hang on. The Korean family had custody of the kittens? My mind raced. Do Korean people ACTUALLY eat cats, or is that just one of those racist stereotypes (“racist” here being defined, as it usually is in modern America, as “something that makes reference to a race, whether negative, positive or neutral”)? What had I done?! Had my insistence on getting to the movie on time consigned the kittens to death? Were they even now sitting in a big black cauldron over a fire as the Koreans cut up carrots and potatoes to make a stew, like Bugs Bunny in “Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt” (1941)?

I calmed myself. If the neighbors were planning to eat the kittens, they wouldn’t have put a sign on the door. They’d have simply whisked the cats inside with a glance up and down the hall to make sure there were no witnesses and commenced cooking. Still, what if the owner didn’t come in time?

Later that evening, I noticed the sign was gone. Either the kittens’ owner had come and knocked the door, as directed, or else the kittens had been dispatched in some other, more culinary manner. I guess I’ll never know what actually became of them. But if they were eaten, I’d like to think they were as delicious as they were adorable.