Everybody will try to tell you that the hardest part of a break-up is the crushing devastation you experience when you lose the person to whom you’ve given your heart, and your heart along with it.

Everyone is wrong. Obviously, the real tragedy you’ll encounter is losing his friends, who turn out to be much cooler than he is. Because as delightful as you may be, they’re his friends, and thus their loyalties lie ultimately with him.

My ex-boyfriend had such a devoted entourage that he sent forth one of his minions on a quest to collect a camping chair he’d left at my house following our break-up. Never mind that his minion neglected to bring as collateral the items I’d left at his place, including a pristine stainless steel wine bottle stopper, the loss of which has devastated my attempts to split the consumption of a Ninkasi 22oz Believer ale into two evenings of indulgence. As I hurled the camping chair at the minion’s head gently handed over the camping chair to my ex’s loyal friend, we exchanged expletives pleasantries regarding the recent disintegration of my relationship.

Minion: I heard from a friend of your ex’s first cousin’s neighbor’s sister that you’ve been in contact with [name to be withheld for confidentiality]. You realize that [name to be withheld for confidentiality] was friends with [ex whose name not worth mentioning] first and thus he retains sole custody of friendship in the event of your break-up, which occurred yesterday at 2:00am PST at your place of residence.

Me: It’s true that I have been in contact with [name to be withheld for confidentiality] but I assure you I obtained prior permission for said contact from [ex whose name I've forgotten]. And while it’s true that [ex] and I may have briefly exchanged the requisite post-traumatic 24-hour period of grossly virulent emails, we are now on sufficiently amicable terms to allow continued contact with mutual friends.

Minion: I was unaware of cordial relations and remain skeptical that a treaty has been reached so soon after battle. I will consult [ex] and if it is determined that you speak the truth, I will begrudgingly allow continued contact with mutual friends. It will be noted in the post-breakup paperwork that these friendships belonged first to [ex] and thus [ex] may revoke your cavorting privileges with said friends at any time. Now kindly remove this camping chair from my head so I may take my leave.

And so it came to pass that at the culmination of our failed relationship, I was given the green light to maintain friendships with his friends, for which I was truly appreciative.

It is not always the case, however, that an ex will so generously invite you to remain included in his circle of friends. Moreover, there are those cases in which remaining within the circle of friends creates a false sense of hope, for one or both parties, of impending reconciliation. There is generally a legitimate reason for a break-up, a reason which can become easily clouded if 48 hours later you’re immersed in the same circle with the same ex, possessing the same feelings you held just 48 hours earlier.

So don’t immediately plunge into the same circle, no matter how comfortable and familiar it may feel. This advice is easiest to swallow if you’ve maintained your other friendships. Letting his friends become your primary friend group is like betting your life savings on a hand of poker before seeing your cards. You’re going to need that twenty dollars someday, and you’re going to need the friends to whom you can freely and privately bash your ex share your sad feelings about your recently imploded relationship.

For more break-up advice, act now and purchase Troi’s helpful handbook, “Breaking Up Is Not Hard To Do, But Staying Together Sure Is,” and receive tips on the latest break-up technologies, including via instant messenger, text message, and even by cleverly downloading a break-up song onto his iPod! Breaking up has never been so easy!

–Troi out

for a limited time only, more available than your average man

But a good beer is comparatively easy to find, especially if you live in Portland, which boasts more breweries per capita than any other city in the United States. So while you may not find the perfect man, the perfect craft beer may still be within reach.

If you’re wondering what makes a craft beer crafty, let me assure you that it has nothing to do with arts and crafts, which is quite a relief for someone such as myself whose 7th-grade arts & crafts teacher told the class my self-portrait looked like an alien (I thought it was a compliment—-I love science fiction—-until she flunked me), nor is a craft beer the kind of beer you drink to get over the trauma of being called an alien by your 7th grade arts & crafts teacher. Rather, a craft brewer is small (producing less than 2 million barrels of beer annually) and independent. And while 2 million barrels may not sound small to the last person who tried drinking 2 million barrels of beer, it is nonetheless relatively small when compared to a craftless beer corporation such as Anheuser-Busch, whose production well exceeds 100 million barrels annually. Most importantly, craft beers can be absolutely delicious, whereas I bet you’ve never heard someone say, while sipping on an Anheuser-Busch creation, “Oh, this Bud Light is absolutely delicious!” unless he was in a Superbowl commercial.

If you’ve yet to try it, my first suggestion is Sierra Nevada’s Summerfest lager. For those of you not familiar with Sierra Nevada’s beers, their most popular standard brew is probably their pale ale, and their winter offering, Celebration Ale, is definitely worth the celebration. Even their stout is far and away the best stout in a bottle I’ve yet to try. Their Summerfest lager is light (5.0 ABV) and hoppy without being overpoweringly so. I’m not typically a huge lager fan (I’ve heard they cut down trees), but this is a lager that appeals even to environmentally-friendly darker beer lovers such as myself.

If clearing forests isn’t your style, another craft beer to write home about (for me, I guess that would be the alien home planet from which my arts & crafts teacher thinks I sprouted) is Deschutes brewery’s 2010 Once a Decade Ale, which is more like Nine Times a Decade Ale for me when I add up the number of bottles I’ve purchased over the last few months. Vaguely reminiscent of a barleywine-style ale but without that sickeningly sweet finish, the Once a Decade Ale (also known as Jubel 2010) is 10% ABV, aged in oak pinot barrels, and is my favorite craft find of the year. And much like finding a good boyfriend, you won’t find another beer quite like it for at least a decade, so stock up on a few before they’re gone for good and break one open every couple of years to temper the dry spell. Speaking of opening your beer, the biggest trick to the Once a Decade Ale is its wax-dipped cap, which can be troublesome to open. I began with more conventional methods such as using a standard bottle opener. But when mainstream methods failed me, I panicked and resorted to biting, clawing, stabbing, and coaxing, while my roommate finally found success melting down the wax with a lighter. However, I’ve since seen effortless cap removals with your tried and true average bottle opener, so perhaps it was just me. It usually is.

So while choosing the right boy may be challenging, choosing the right craft beer is entirely possible—-if you’re fortunate enough to call Portland home.

–Troi out

So, this is how you do it. First, it rings. You don’t really have any part in this. It either rings or it doesn’t. Well, you can force somebody to call you. But then it takes away the whole surprise element of receiving the call in the first place, plus, you will seem pretty uncool. So back to my instructions. The phone rings. You pick up the receiver. My grandparents found this very difficult. They thought phones without a cord had an appearance akin to a walkie-talkie, and they answered it accordingly (HA HA, a-CORD-ingly, as in telephone cords, those things telephones had in my grandparents’ day before the dawn of cell phones). In other words they held the section that should be next to your ear as if it were the mouthpiece and talked into it. Nobody ever talked back. Don’t make this mistake; ensure you answer the phone in such a manner that some section of the phone lies in the vicinity of your ear. This will enhance your communicative success rate by at least 75%. After you place the phone in its proper place on the side of your head so that you can speak and listen, and so that it meets ergonomic requirements for head and neck comfort, you should produce a verbal utterance. “Hello” is commonly accepted. “Goodbye” is funnier. It’s also the standard usage according to Philip K. Dick’s science-fiction universe in “Counter-Clock World.” After saying hello, you may notice you like the sound of your voice and continue to talk. This is not proper phone etiquette. You instead wait for the caller to respond and express his or her justification for his or her call. Listen skeptically and judgmentally. There is usually some fault you can find with his or her answer. For example, if a “friend” is “just calling to say hello,” it is standard to follow with an accusation such as, “Well, you already said that!! Why are you still on the line?!” Then slam the phone down. But remember proper phone etiquette; make sure to say “goodbye” first. (Or “Hello,” if you like Philip K. Dick.) Another phone call excuse that should instantly put you on suspicious guard is a caller who is in any way friendly. A friendly caller is called a “solicitor.” He or she is not your friend. If your caller sounds friendly, slam the phone down as suggested above. Then change your number, change your name, and move to another city, preferably another state, and just to be safe, maybe another country. You might also want to change your haircolor. You may choose a brand that covers gray.

To subscribe to my free* pamphlet, “Answering the Phone Only Looks Easy,” please send your check or money order in the mail. And please send it to me. Not a solicitor. Solicitors are not your friends. But I am.

*Nothing is free in life. Get used to it.

–Troi out

Dear Readers,

These days, it’s not enough to have preferences, or to express them verbally. No, these days you don’t actually own your predilections until you’ve publicly proclaimed your preference via our society’s newest communicative modality, facebook. This phenomenon is reflected in the following conversation that has surely not been embellished as my readers have come to expect my fact-driven journalistic integrity as a cornerstone of my posts:

Me: Hey Ricardo, would you like my newest blog post, please?

Ricardo: Um, I do like it. I like it, Troi, it’s good.

Me: No, I mean “like” it. Click the “like” button. It’ll show up on facebook, and other people will “like” it too.

Ricardo: I don’t understand why I have to press a button to prove that I like your post.

Me: JUST DO IT, IT’S NOT REAL UNLESS IT’S WITNESSED BY FACEBOOK!!

The idea, I explained to Ricardo once I’d taken my medication and restored my sense of calm, is simple. People like to operate under the misconception that we’re unique beings. We create our very own unique facebook page, which looks uncannily like everybody else’s unique facebook page, and then we further establish our autonomy by identifying our unique sets of interests, which we demonstrate by liking those interests on our public facebook forum. We are disconcerted as we notice 5,357,922 other people, 5,357,921 of which are our facebook friends, share these same interests, so we keep clicking, sure that nobody else likes “losing their balance and falling over, but then getting back up again and looking around to make sure nobody noticed, and nobody did notice, so, like, cool!” but it turns out, damn it, that everybody has fallen over and nobody likes to be caught falling over, and maybe we should create a page about not falling over, and we can be the first to stand up straight and like it, too.

Ricardo: That doesn’t sound simple at all. Also, you talk too fast.

Let me put this another way. My old church pastor, Friedrich Nietzsche, used to preach about the idea of the herd mentality. The herd mentality comes from the root word “herd,” meaning, “Dude, I herd you were doing this, I like, totally want to do it too!” and the root word “mental,” as in, “Alright, man, but we’re, like, totally mental for trying this–it’s SO crazy, dude!” The herd mentality refers, then, to the idea that no matter how crazy a particular activity seems, people can be persuaded to participate in it if there are enough people already doing it. Ergo, (Yes! Cross off “using the word ‘ergo’ in a blog post” from my bucket list!) if one member of the human herd likes one of my previously undesirable blog posts, it follows that other humans will experience a higher likelihood of similarly tolerating the post.

Ricardo: Wait—-I don’t think Nietzsche was your church pastor—-

I didn’t hear Ricardo say this during our conversation, of course, as he said it over the phone and didn’t post it as a status update, our socially-accepted medium for stating one’s spontaneous thoughts, opinions, and rebuttals.

Since Ricardo has not yet liked my post, I arrive at the inevitable conclusion that he, and perhaps many of you, have not become fully acquainted with the practice of liking things, having previously engaged in the formerly acceptable practice of expressing your opinions in the form of a verbal comment. While I have not personally engaged in the practice of liking (I find it to be dull and derivative, whereas I find writing entire blog posts about it to be refreshing and fun!), I have witnessed others who are bonified experts at liking all sorts of things and can offer you a step-by-step guide of the process.

STEP 1: Find something you like.

STEP 2: Don’t say you like it! This is a classic newbie mistake. Instead, search for a small tab with an “F” near the thing that you like. This is the Facebook “like” button. This is what you use to convey your preference to others.

STEP 3: Place your hand, palm down, onto your mouse, move the pointer onto the facebook tab, and click so that you can show all of your friends what you like.

A typical question I get asked when I am traveling the globe, from NE Portland all the way to SW Portland, to train herd members in perfecting their facebook preferences, is what one should do when one likes something that does not have the designated preference-expressing facebook button available.

“I really like my piano,” one naive student said to me the other day, “How do I show that I like it?”

“No you don’t,” I explained. “Remember, if it’s not on facebook, it doesn’t exist.”

“But I really like my piano,” she insisted, “I feel strongly that I should be able to let people know I like it!”

I gave her an “F” —-and that doesn’t stand for “Facebook.” Some people just aren’t ready to embrace the communicative restrictions placed on us by technological advances.

So, Readers, I hope that you have appreciated your lesson, and if you have, don’t forget to show it by liking this post.

–Troi out

*My apologies to my good friend Ricardo, for having grossly altered our conversational exchange without obtaining his prior permission. If Ricardo would like to express any qualms regarding this matter, it is requested that he do so using established societal norms by writing of his displeasure on my wall.

Dear Readers,

Those of you who are fans of my earlier works, “Trying to charge my videocamera with my cell phone charger,” “Vacuuming up my cell phone charger,” and “Running over my Ray Ban sunglasses with my car,” will be thrilled to discover my latest installment, “Plugging my videocamera into my computer using the wrong cord.” Please note the following conversation that was, thankfully, overheard by none:

Troi: My computer isn’t recognizing my videocamera. I can’t import my video footage. This is the end of the world as we know it.

Friend: Did you plug it in using the firewire cable? That is the correct cable.

Troi: I used the first cable I could find that had an end that fits into the camera and another end that fits into the computer. This is how the pros do it.

Slightly Exasperated Friend (SEF): What does the cable look like?

Troi: It looks like a fork thingy.

SEF: That’s your problem. That’s a USB cable. You need the firewire cable—-the one that looks like a Y.

Troi (escalating into typically dramatic agitation): All of my cables look like forks! This is the end of the world as we know it!! How can I live if living is without a cable that looks like a —oh wait, here it is. This is the cable I need to plug in? Cool, thanks.

SEF: No problem. Except, you really need to learn the difference between a USB cable and a firewire cable. You call me about this same problem every week.

Later over dinner, as I profusely apologized for my weekly calls regarding the ambiguity of computer cables and my general inability to independently solve simple technical problems without a step-by-step tutorial from my friend, he assured me that, while I’m surely not the brightest crayon in the box (although everybody agrees I’m about as bright as a crayon), there are those crayons who didn’t even make it into the box. One such crayon grew increasingly frustrated a few years back as my friend told her that she needed to move her mouse to the designated link and click.

“It’s not working,” she bemoaned to my friend over the phone as he attempted long-distance technical assistance.

“Well, what are you doing?” he asked calmly, having developed extraordinary patience during similar interactions with me.

“I’m putting the mouse on the computer screen, and then I’m clicking, just like you said!” she replied, as she touched, not the mouse pointer, but her entire mouse to the screen.

I’m proud to report I’ve never done that.

The moral of this story is obvious, but if you’re not smart enough to identify the difference between a USB and a firewire cable, you might miss it. Allow me therefore to proclaim my moral plainly: If you want to appear smart, do not confess your brainless blunders on your public blog site.

Oops.

–Troi out

Dear Readers,

“Excuse me Mister, in which aisle can I find the drinks that will simultaneously induce kidney, liver, and heart failure?”

For every five hundred reasonable coffee drinkers out there, there exists a hater who professes not to partake of this sweet caffeinated nectar. Of these outliers, some claim to appreciate the taste of tea, a pallid beverage made from soaking twigs or pine needles or whatever in hot water. While they appreciate the goodness of caffeine, tea drinkers are not to be entirely trusted. They have been known to exhibit suspicious behaviors such as drinking out of a miniature cup, raising their pinky daintily as they sip their anemic elixir, and consuming microscopic scones and miniature triangular-shaped egg salad sandwich wedges. One can only wonder what these tea drinkers are hiding behind that raised little finger.

While these tea drinkers are unusual, they are generally considered safe. Typically, tea drinkers make good friends. They demonstrate a remarkable ability to sit or stand in one spot without twitching for extended periods of time, they use a standard speech rate that doesn’t sound like a recording played in fast-forward mode, and best of all, they fall asleep at night, thus contributing to their pleasant demeanors.

While you need not fear the tea drinkers, Readers, you need to be aware of the dangers of those persons who drink neither our decadent staple known as coffee nor its diluted alternative known as tea. These persons belong to a third caffeinated category. They are known only by the name of energy drinkers.

Energy drinkers are a superhuman species that have evolved as their bodies have adapted to previously toxic levels of blood caffeine content (a 16 oz can of Red Bull contains 160 mg of caffeine) as well as the energizing and athletic-enhancing addition of the nonessential amino acid taurine. Energy drinkers are the rock stars of any party, outlasting even the most hard-core coffee drinkers. Due to their amped up nature, however, energy drinkers can be real monsters when crossed, and they’ll fully throttle you if you give them any red bull sh**.

While an energy drink is generally considered safe in limited quantities, some research indicates its blend of caffeine and taurine puts energy drinkers at risk for potentially harmful side effects related to changes in heart rate and blood pressure. For this reason, energy drinkers are encouraged to limit their intake to one drink a day. Combining their energy drink with alcohol (such as the ever popular red bull & vodka or the “jager bomb” –rock star energy drink mixed with jagermeister–) is also a poor idea, as it can lead to cardiovascular risk and shortness of breath, among other risks.

Remember, Readers, whether you’re a coffee, tea, or energy drinker, your pursuit of good caffeine is admirable. And don’t forget that regardless of which beverage you choose, you’re wrong, unless you choose coffee.

–Troi out

Dear Readers,

As you know, a morning without coffee is really no morning at all. There is no way to get to lunch, and the subsequent afternoon, and finally that favorite time of day I like to call time to get off work, without having begun the day with a small* mug of delicious local brew with my good buddies Batdorf & Bronson (also known as Dancing Goats), the coffee roasters.

*Small like a 7-11 Big Gulp is small.

Sometimes Batdorf and Bronson’s prices are through the roof —- which means that I have to climb onto my roof and sell each individual shingle in order to afford a 12 ounce bag—-but spending the extra roof shingle for a company like this is well worth the price. Batdorf & Bronson’s coffee is fair-trade certified, which means that in exchange for a super-size morning cup of coffee, my colleagues and clients are presented with a tolerable Troi who is both awake and amiable in general demeaner, which is a pretty fair trade if you ask me. Fair-trade coffee also supports a better life for farmers by adhering to strict criteria regarding price, environmental sustainability, fair labor conditions, and trade, among others. A fair price, particularly, ensures small coffee farmers are earning wages that exceed the cost of production, eliminating the cycle of poverty and debt.

Batdorf & Bronson’s coffee beans are also shade grown, meaning that their beans have been protected from sunlight, reducing their risk of melanoma. Maverick beans that sneak out of their shade grown home in their quest for a good suntan are required to wear a good-quality UVA/UVB sunscreen of at least SPF 30. In addition to having good skin, shade grown beans are grown, as their name suggests, in the shade of trees. These nitrogen-fixing trees enhance the soil and the growth of plant life as well as provide a natural habitat for birds that is not readily available in more recent hybrid coffee bean varieties that grow in direct sunlight. Birds in shade-grown coffee environments offer natural insect control by way of frequent foraging, reducing or entirely eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides.

In contrast to shade-grown beans, the newer, sun-friendly hybrids require chemical fertilizers and pesticides, resulting in soil erosion, water runoff, and soil depletion and necessitating the need to clear rainforest for new planting soil. Not only is this an unsustainable practice, but many bird populations have been declining as a consequence of the shedding of shade-growing practices.

My good friends Batdorf & Bronson have also been purchasing 100% of their electricity from renewable resources since 2000. I much prefer my energy unrenewable (I hoard coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power whenever I can get my hands on them, for no reason in particular), however, Batdorf & Bronson seem to think they’re doing the environment a favor, and any company that produces such tasty coffee can’t be completely wrong about its energy practices.

If you’re likeminded in your search for coffee that you can feel good about drinking, click here to see some fair-trade certified coffee options. If you’re a fan of Peet’s Coffee, try their fair trade blend.

Happy Coffee Drinking!

–Troi out

Dear Readers, it is most fortunate [for you] that today you are provided the windfall of reading a post that is not written by me. That’s right, today’s guest blogger is a leading sportswriter* for an esteemed sports magazine* and has written dozens of articles about sports* that have been read all over the nation* and also maybe in other nations.*

*Not really, but I wanted to give him a nice introduction.

As published in the New England Journal of Kickball

Kickball is a common enough game. You might see it on any school yard on any given day or even at the occasional municipal playground being played by the neighborhood kids or inebriated adults. But few, if any, of these participants take into account the serious risks posed to them by their participation in this sport. Please consider the following:

THE BALL
Kickball is a game loosely based on the rules of “Kick” – where one person kicks the ball to another and then the recipient returns the kick in a timely fashion, and “Baseball” – where 9 players get together and stand around for a few hours looking intently at each other and occasionally scratching themselves (hopefully the two are unrelated). But in this Kickball adaptation, you must kick a ball as hard as you can that has been hurled at you. I ask, why the violence? Couldn’t the ball simply be placed in front of the kicker? Or to even further prevent any injury, might I suggest that there be no ball at all and that the kicker just yells out loud what his “kick” would have done. “Single to the left center gap,” the kicker would say, and then the fielders would react accordingly. Surely you can see where both kicker and fielders would be at low risk for injury in this situation.

THE LINE CHALK
I bet you have played on many a lined field, but you have to ask yourself just what goes into those lines. On some fields the chalk has been upgraded to a biodegradable paint, but in many kickball stadiums where budgets are tight and generally conserved for beverages, the more traditional chalk is used. This poses both a physical and internal health risk. Physically, the chalk makes a ridge on the base path with which to catch a cleat or stub a toe, thus rendering the base runner useless for his team with torn muscles and broken bones. Internally, everyone is at risk from the “dust.” Yes folks, you never knew it, but much like the DDT of the 50s and the 60s, line chalk is hazardous to your health if inhaled. It is mass produced mostly outside nuclear energy plants, where the condensed dust from the cooling towers is harvested for this precious commodity. So not only is it highly poisonous; it is also mildly nuclear reactive which is why it glows so well in the dark.

Please refer to the chart below that has nothing to do with Kickball, but which makes my report look substantiated and important when in fact I stole borrowed the format from the New England Journal of Medicine.

Total Numbers of Drug Shortages and Shortages Involving Sterile Injectable Drugs in the United States, 2005–2009. Lots of drug shortages in Kickball too. Obviously the drugs are all going to Football and Baseball. That is why there are no big “Home Run” kickers these days.

In conclusion, you are better off doing hours of dubious internet research before partaking in any activity no matter how harmless you think it might be. You can never tell when imminent death will await you around the corner doing exactly what you thought would have been the safe thing to do. Next week… “Tetherball and What the Duty Teacher Didn’t Tell You About it.”

Source Information
Sources? What you think I need to verify this stuff? Are you kidding me… I had a graph!

Dear Readers,

tacky, but free

So as my nearby beloved Hollywood Video recently became another casualty to the new generation of netflixers, it held a final closing sale to part with its cinematic stock. “Everything Must Go!” reported the banner strewn across the front of the store. “Prices marked down 30-50%!”

Now, I’ve never taken a business class, and I presume the definition of a liquid asset to be a really tasty microbrew, but I know the urgency connotated by “must” (Troi on a road trip of more than 10 minutes in duration: “We must stop now and find a rest area!”) and if everything really must go, wouldn’t marking it down by 100% speed up the exit of products from a store?

And it’s not just Hollywood Video’s oversight. In this economy businesses are closing their doors with lightning speed, each closure allegedly necessitating the elimination of all unsold stock, and yet not a single business uses my suggested catch phrase: “Everything must go. So come in and take it. For free.”

You may have heard that everyone’s favorite word is their own name. This is a misnomer. Everyone’s favorite word is actually “free.” Everyone’s favorite short phrase incorporates both their first name and the word “free,” as in, “Hey [insert your name here], did you hear about the free [insert object here]?”

A price reduction of 100%, rendering an item entirely without cost, is irresistible to the average American. Consider this: Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shoppe. People stand in line for hours salivating at the anticipation of a miniature confection that will take 1/100th the time to consume. And in Portland, our Ben & Jerry’s is downtown. The only way to get there is to take public transportation, which costs $4.75 for an all-day pass (which, face it, you’ll need if you’re waiting in line for that free cone), or to drive, which requires the price of public parking at $1.60/hour. It would be cheaper to walk to the nearest Fred Meyer and buy a half-gallon of Tillamook ice cream, which, if you were wondering, is bigger than a free cone at Ben & Jerry’s. But you don’t hear anybody saying, “Hey, it’s free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s! Let’s go to Fred Meyer and buy a half-gallon of Tillamook ice cream!” Instead, you hear them saying, “Hey, it’s free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s! Let’s drive down there, pay our life savings in parking fees to the city of Portland, spend three hours waiting in line in the Portland rain, and receive a single spoonful of ice cream in return for our troubles, because it’s free.”

And it’s not just Free Cone Day that sucks us in. Upon moving out, my roommate recently attempted to unload his surplus of worthless belongings onto my already sizable collection of worthless belongings.

“Look what a great pencil-holder this tacky ceramic teacup makes!” he suggested hopefully after carefully arranging my stray pencils in an awkward arrangement in the teacup.

“No way,” I answered firmly. “I don’t want your stuff. Get rid of it.”

“But…..it’s free,” he continued. “You don’t have to pay a thing for it!”

“FREE??” I exclaimed excitedly. “I’ll take two tacky ceramic teacups, then!”

Dangle the word “free” in front of us, and suddenly our whole outlook on consumerism changes. The words “Buy one get one free” add a whole new lure to the purchase of previously undesirable products. I recently bought mascara on a “buy one get one free” sale at Fred Meyer. I don’t even wear mascara. Certainly, it would have made more financial sense to buy no mascara for free than to buy two tubes of mascara at some cost to me. But the only word I saw was “free,” and now I’m trying to sell mascara on eBay.

“Free” is indeed a magical word. So Hollywood Video would do well to take my financial advice and mark down their movies by 100%. Because if “everything must go,” that should do it.

–Troi out

Comment now on Troi’s newest post for a chance to win a FREE* year’s subscription to her bestselling blog!

*All sales final. No exchanges or returns, no matter how unpleasant the reading experience.

So as I drove home from work today, I listened to OPB to catch up on the latest news from around the world; the BP oil spill, Sarah Palin’s newest book (I’m Roguer Than You Are, or something), and the most recent threat to mankind: Grasshoppers.

Wait…..what?

Yes, Readers, grasshoppers are the latest terrorists in a slew of enemies threatening to bring down the northwestern region of this great nation. According to OPB, a severe grasshopper invasion has been headed straight for the Northwest, predicted to be the most formidable grasshopper infestation since the Great Grasshopper Hostilities of 1933 when grasshoppers became privy to the fact that humans were covering them in chocolate and eating them. Legend has it that during the GGH, Grasshoppers became so tyrannical that they stopped hopping and began jumping from place to place, and some even went so far as to begin hopping in non-grassy terrain, like on soil and sidewalks. (They also apparently munched on a few crops, obliterating farmers’ harvests, or something, whatever.)

As frightening as our green adversaries sound, there is hope on the horizon. OPB reports that the northwest’s rainy late-May weather, which differs from previous years’ rainy late-May weather in no way whatsoever but apparently bears mention anyway, is well-timed as it provides a cold and damp climate that is ideal for breeding diseases and fungi that could knock baby grasshoppers right out of the grassy field. If these late-May weather patterns remain consistent, grasshoppers’ numbers should be dropping over the next few years, which is OPB’s nice way of saying frogs won’t be the only things croaking in the near future.

Now that’s just mean. Grasshoppers aren’t my favorite insect, either, and certainly, I wouldn’t keep one as a pet, anymore, but to report on their demise as a celebratory story (“But enough about the unstoppable oil gushing through the Gulf for the next five years, here’s Bob with a heartwearming tale of death to grasshoppers”) simply doesn’t seem fair to the little green guys. I mean, it’s not like the grasshoppers are hurting anybody (except organic and sustainable farmers’ crops, farmers’ livelihoods, and the food supply).

I think there’s an easy alternative to all of this grasshopposition that simply hasn’t been considered due to the strained relations that have endured since the Great Grasshopper Hostilities of 1933. Why not offer grasshoppers an incentive not to chew on crops meant for human consumption? (Hear me out on this one. My ideas are highly underrated—-to date, nobody has actually used one of them. I’m flummoxed.) We all know that grasshoppers are vegetarian. And we all know that nobody actually eats brussels sprouts. Yet brussels sprouts continue to be grown, to sit on grocery store shelves under the pretenses that somebody, somewhere, will actually buy them, and they continue to rot, unbought. Why not just place brussels sprouts in areas of high grasshopper traffic, with a sign that says, “Grasshopper Food.” Grasshoppers will surely see the sign and forgo their usual diet of farmers’ crops in favor of a nutritious brussels sprout. Crops will flourish, humans and grasshoppers will co-exist peacefully, and my family will stop trying to serve brussels sprouts during Christmas dinner.

–Troi out