• The other day, while I was clipping coupons from the grocery store flyers, I noticed that there weren’t any coupons for canned pears. I was, as you can imagine, aghast. I immediately took pen in hand and wrote out five separate handwritten letters of complaint regarding this lack of customer service. As I was about to throw out all the flyers, I noticed that on the back page was a coupon for 25% off canned pears. Boy, did I feel like a fool. But I mailed those letters anyway, because in them I also criticized their zucchini displays, calling them “vulgar”, “overtly sexual” and “setting unreal expectations”. All in all, a good day’s work.

• Here’s some good advice for when you get into a heated argument with someone. Hold up your hands and say, “Wait just a goddamn second! You and I both know what this is REALLY about!” When they demand to know what that is, you just haul off and punch them in the throat. Actually, you can skip that part about saying things to them and just go straight to the throat punching. It’s like they say, “An intelligent exchange of ideas never solves anything.”

• Back when I was a bus driver for the corrections department, I picked up a lot of good tips on how to “get one over on the screws.” One neat trick is to put all your drugs in a condom and then very carefully (making sure that it is completely sealed and will not break open by accident), shove it deep, deep into the inside pocket of your coat. Apparently, the guards almost never check those inside pockets. Also, there’s this other one about how you can take an ordinary knife and fashion it into a perfectly serviceable toothbrush. Now that I think about it, I might have heard wrong.

• Fine, I stole the lab coat and yes, I sneaked into the room, but I tried to explain as calmly as possible to the patient that a man of my social standing and unimpeachable reputation doesn’t require some silly diploma to practice medicine. In fact, I took his rude demands to be a great insult. He wouldn’t relent and finally, I would have no more of it and promptly removed his appendix. Or maybe his liver. In any case, what’s so hard about dentistry anyway?

• I’ve often been described as a “renaissance man” because I bathe infrequently but also because I’m a prolific artist. My artwork has been described as “ugly”, “poignant”, “stupid”, “perfect”, “amateurish”, “brilliant”. “pointless”, “downright sexy” and “displaying no discernable talent” but that just means I have to try harder and keep writing every second critique myself.

• I often ponder my former corporate life and wonder why I didn’t rise higher than I did. Why didn’t I get the corner office? Why didn’t I make the big bucks? But then I remember that every day I would draw a stick man, write my boss’s name under it with a thought bubble above that read, “I’m stupid! Duhhhhhh!” Then I would walk into his office, hand it to him and say, “Your wife told me to give this to you.”

• It’s a well-known fact that dogs can smell fear. That is why they are so seldom invited to events that feature public speaking.

• I always feel bad for the Jesus people who go door to door, spreading the good news that God is mad at us. They always get doors slammed in their faces or told to get lost or end up the recipient of some other rude act. To make up for that, I always try to make them feel welcome. Whenever I see them coming, I strip naked, open the door and beckon them inside. It’s what I like to call, “extending the olive branch”.

• All my years as a marine biologist had prepared me for exactly that moment, but when the waiter said I had to choose between lobster and crab, I panicked.