Imagine, if you will, that before you are two cookies.

One is your typical chocolate ship affair – warm and moist, fresh from the oven, and chocked full of milk chocolatey chips … perfectly delicious in its own right.  In fact, if you wanted to, you could just pour yourself a glass of milk, dive right in and enjoy its tender morsels right now.

But you don’t…

You don’t because while Cookie #1, in all of its freshly baked glory, would be a grand choice for your immediate dessert-munching needs, you – being the confectionary connoisseur that you are, simply find yourself wanting just a bit, well, more. There’s nothing to be ashamed of – if anything, you should expect an eruption of applause for your impressive sweet tooth and its strive for excellence!  We could all take a lesson from you as you defy traditional portion sizes and boldly choose what only those with big ambitions and even bigger appetites dare to choose.

That’s right – for you, it’s all about Cookie #2.

We’ve all heard about this cookie before – it comes with a reputation not to be trifled with, along with its own to-go bag if one is unable to consume the beast in a single sitting.  Dwarfing its predecessor by several magnitudes of awesome, this mammoth creation strikes fear into the hearts of dentists the world over and for the rest of us, well, we just enjoy bite after seemingly endless bite of its delicious sustenance more than life itself.  In fact, those minutes while we’re savoring those delectable morsels are no doubt some of the most wonderful moments we’ll ever know … maybe not above your wedding night or when your first child is born, but they’re definitely still in the top five and unless you end up living just a really boring life, that’s still pretty impressive!

“But why a giant cookie when you could just as easily eat several small ones instead?” you ask, somewhat condescendingly as if to imply that you’re somehow better than those of us who choose to live large and not settle for less.  Well, jerk – the reasons why giant is clearly superior to non-giant are actually quite simple:

• More Gooey Middle – the interior of the cookie, sans crust, if you will, is clearly superior to the borders and with giant cookies, that’s all the more middle to love!
• Definitely Not a Pig – while plowing through half a dozen Oreos in one sitting may lead to on-looker reactions citing your hog-like resemblance, enjoying a single, albeit giant cookie results in nothing of the sort because despite being the same quantity of cookie by volume, a giant cookie is still but one cookie.
• Appetite: Fulfilled – lesser cookies may leave you wanting more, and yet afraid to go back for seconds in fear of said oink-worthy implications, but giant cookies always leave you satisfied the first time around.

And of course, the most significant selling point of all for such supersized sweets is that simply put, bigger is better. Sorry, guys, but whether we’re talking dogs, diamonds, or even delicious desserts, size matters and anyone who claims otherwise has never had to walk their girlfriend’s bun-sized dog or take a bridezilla shopping for engagement rings.  The same holds true for cookies, though thankfully without all of the violence and embarrassing laughter – a cookie is just a cookie, but a giant cookie is worth its weight in chocolate chips!  Sure, they may cost a bit more than your average, everyday wafer, but at the end of the day, $2 for a few minutes of satiated bliss still seems like a bargain to me…

So embrace your impeccable taste in holding out for Cookie #2, my friends – may its succulent sweetness comfort your soul on rainy days and make the sunny ones even brighter, may its seemingly endless sustenance serve as your inspiration to live life to its fullest, may its warm and gooey center be the highlight of your days.  Bon appétit!

It was one of those nights when it just really would’ve been nice to have a small, green, mystery-solving Muppet from your childhood around…

More specifically, it was a dark and stormy Wednesday evening, and I was just returning home after a long and arduous day of not being home. And most importantly of all, it was garbage day – an entire day here in suburbia that’s dedicated solely to the disposal of our junk, doodads, and other decaying perishables. I mean, I don’t want to brag, but it’s a pretty big deal around here, and better yet … it’s something that we get to do every single week!

(except on weeks where there’s a holiday or the garbage men decide to skip work in favor of catching some rays at the beach…)

Nonetheless, that didn’t happen on this particular Wednesday and without folly, our garbage was faithfully picked up and whisked away to some no doubt environmentally-friendly facility out of sight and out of mind precisely as scheduled. In fact, all seemed right with the world, knowing that our household was officially garbage free for another week … that is, until I returned home that fateful evening to find that despite the garbage being disposed of successfully, there was still something afoot … whether it was trouble or mischief or possibly even just raccoons was still to be foreseen…

You see, ordinarily on this special day, I come home to find our empty garbage can resting comfortably at the end of the driveway, but mind you, this was no ordinary day, primarily because … and you may have guessed it by the title of this column … while the empty garbage can itself was found exactly where expected, the device used to cover this receptacle (commonly referred to as a “lid”) was nowhere to be found! It was as if it had simply grown legs and walked away, except that such an act wouldn’t be simple at all because at least the last time I checked, our garbage can lid was an inanimate object incapable of such mobility.

Unable to find any professional detectives willing to take on my case, I knew that if this mystery was ever going to get solved, it was going to require sleuthing from none other than yours truly … which could’ve really gone either way because of all the things that I’m extraordinarily famous for, getting to the bottom of things traditionally isn’t one of them unless we’re talking about a gallon of chocolate fudge ice cream, but enough with the fat jokes, for there’s a garbage can lid mystery to be figured out!

Now I’ve learned from watching many an episode of Scooby Doo and Duckman, the first step towards solving a case is choosing some people to potentially blame it on – some call them “suspects,” others call them “scapegoats,” but they’re really all the same thing. In the instance that you’re aren’t actually able to figure out who dunnit, these will be the folks who will ultimately get pinned with the crime, and since I really didn’t know much about solving mysteries anyways, it just seemed easier to skip past that whole investigation process and get right to the part where justice prevails! The way I saw it, the Case of the Missing Garbage Can Lid had three potential perps:

• those damn neighbor kids – always seen poking around my yard, getting into “mischief”
• the wind – able to rip off entire roofs in a single, hurricane-force bound, so what’s to stop it from playing Frisbee with my lid?
• some random dog – again with the Frisbee analogy, although admittedly it’d have to be a pretty big dog to be heaving that thing around!

At this point in the game, it could’ve been any of them, really, or even some bizarre collaboration of all of them combined – those damn neighbor kids could’ve came riding in on some random dog, stole my garbage can lid right out in plain sight, and then used the lid itself like an oddly-shaped kite to harness the mighty powers of the wind and soar away to safety. I have no way of knowing … like I said, I’m not a detective. All I know for sure is that somewhere out there, someone or something is living the highlife with a misappropriated garbage can lid, whereas here I am left unsure of how our next garbage collection day will unfold, considering that I no longer have a suitable cover for my trash receptacle. Fortunately with putting our latest out on Wednesday during the lid’s last successful run, we won’t need to make use of our secondary weekly pickup date tomorrow, however next week will come soon enough and looking into the future without a lid, I just don’t know what we’re going to do…

The moral of our sad, unresolved story here today? Be sure to bring in the empty garbage can as soon as the trash is picked up? No. Haul your garbage to the dump yourself so as to never risk such tragic lid loss that I’ve endured? Nope. When you first buy your garbage can, pay close attention to what your neighbors already have so that if your lid mysteriously disappears on a dark and stormy Wednesday evening, you still have the option of pilfering theirs as a replacement later?

Is it possible to even buy just the lid anywhere?! My detective skills tell me that I’m about to find out…

We did it, folks!

It’s been a long and arduous road for tortilla chip fans around the globe, however these are the times when we finally get to see the cheesy payoffs for all of our efforts. That’s right – we tasted, we voted, and now we triumphantly get to savor those tasty just desserts, or in this case just sides, as the votes have all been tallied and it’s official. In the battle between Wild White Nacho and Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ, there could be only one new flavor to grace our grocery and convenience store shelves, and that triumphant winner is none other than my own personal favorite, Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ…

What’s that? Serious, you have no idea what in the world this nacho-crazed fool is talking about?! What, do you live under a rock or other remote and also quite desolate location that prevents you from keeping up on whatever the big snack food crazes of the moment are? So sad…

But that’s ok because while tragically uninformed with regards to the potato chip world and all of its delectable glory, you are lucky in that you currently find yourself in the glow of a world-renowned snacking savant, so prepare to bask away as I patiently, but perturbedly bring you up to speed on what will no doubt be recorded in future history books as the single most important event to take place in the year 2007 … aside from that whole presidential pardon of Cheney’s creepy grin thing, anyways!

You see, it all began with a potato chip company and a dream – presumably a dream of not putting all of its eggs in one new chip flavor by offering up an unprecedented two chip flavors and leaving we, the people, to decide which delicious offering should remain on the shelves of our local grocery stores and which should go the way of the Arby-Q and disappear from the consumers’ grasp forever…or at least until enough time passes that they can be brought back for a limited time and charged a premium for. Either way, the Doritos company faithfully put their latest creations in our hands and encouraged us to let our snacking do the talking. The results of that suspenseful taste test now stand true on this very day…

It’s because of these reasons that today is a day for celebration – a day when man, woman, and child can join hands, cheesy fingertips and all, in harmony, savoring the feeling that the best nacho chip was crowned king on this momentous occasion for the world to enjoy. Although the road was long and filled with a variety of snacking distractions, it’s good to know that now all of that is behind us and the rewards of said battle are quite clear – not only long-sought-after bragging rights against that good fer nothin’ White Nacho crowd, but even more importantly still … knowing that we can walk into our local grocery store pretty much any time we want (assuming that they’re open for business, of course – our victory doesn’t circumvent the law) and within a matter of minutes, pending that other patrons honor the 10 items or less line appropriately, we can be basking in the sweet flavors of cheddar and BBQ as they mingle across our taste buds in a symphony of tortilla-loving magic.

Here’s to a long and fruitful shelf life for the newest permanent member of the Doritos family – Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ Doritos. May your flavors bring your parent company enough profits so that they don’t strip you of your crown a mere six months from now when the end of year figures are tabulated…

If there’s one thing I fear more than being exposed as an utter failure at life after I prove myself to be unsuccessful in the realm of New Years resolutions, it’s the compounding idea that on top of all of that, I’m going to get stuck watching eleventy-gajillion hours of American Idol between now and kingdom come.

I know I’m not the only one out there who finds themselves getting sucked into watching this epic embarrassment of talent across our fair nation, and it no doubt usually starts for each of us in roughly the same way. A girlfriend, boyfriend, BFF, or HTMLFF has a borderline obsession with the show, which results in our being coerced into watching an episode or three so as to not wind up sleeping on the couch or removed from our BFF’s MySpace Top-8 or something even more treacherous. And it all seems so innocent at the time – we moan beforehand, slip in plenty of sighs during the various lulls, and are sure to groan “Thank God that’s finally over!” as the credits finally put an end to Seacrest’s inane chatter, but deep in our subconscious – in places of the mind normally reserved for remembering advertising jingles (“N-E-S-T-L-E-S … Nestle’s makes the very best choc-late!”) and all the birthdays of The Three Stooges (October 5^th, June 19^th, October 22^nd) – an unheralded addiction is already beginning to develop…

It’s easy enough not to pick up on at first, as you randomly catch yourself reminding the other person about Idol Night where you’ll both sit and stuff your faces full of pizza and nachos and laugh about how amazingly talented these people think that they are, even when it’s plain to everyone but their mothers that they have the vocal talents of a rabid wombat who’s been locked in a closet with William Hung. And you know that it’s gone south when you don’t even find yourself feeling the least bit guilty about relentlessly mocking these hopeless failures for being so darned clueless to their ineptitude anymore – it’s like watching a freak show with sporadic, but thankfully infrequent interruptions by a select few who actually do have talents outside of chiseling gum off of the bottoms of desks at the local high school for the rest of their days.

Of course, the trouble is that while it may very well be the freak show that gets us subconsciously hooked, but in only a few seemingly short weeks those hilarious audition shows are behind us and now we’re in for the long haul. You know, when it seems like there are more hours of Idol on in a given week than actual hours in a day, and heaven forbid you dare to take a week off or get yourself sidetracked because catching up is pretty much unpossible without dedicating entire days to Idol catch-up and just as an FYI, most employers don’t exactly consider Idol catch-up to be an acceptable use of sick time.

And I guess the worst part of it is that despite all of the moaning and groaning and attempts to render ourselves deaf in order to reclaim roughly 87 hours of productive time a week while American Idol is on the air, deep down we know all too well that at the end of the day there’s really no escaping this TV show. We’ll watch, we’ll watch some more, we’ll even text our votes each week to the number on the screen, and when it’s all over we’ll gather around the water cooler at work the next day to whine about how Vanessa was robbed or how dreamy Jake looked during his hypnotic trance rendition of Love Me Tender. It’s really all we can do during the 19 weeks that this Simon Fuller creation dominates the airwaves, our brainwaves, and ultimately our lives. Well played, you magnificent bastard…

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few things that I’d like to get done while I still have control of my own destiny. Sevener out!

Why do we get ourselves into debt???

No, seriously – I want to know because when I read a headline stating that 65% of Americans have at least $5,800 of revolving credit card debt to their names*, it makes me question the sanity of 65% of Americans…and it certainly doesn’t help that the same article reports that 52% are overweight* and another 112% are still convinced that Dr. Phil and a few weeks of Weight Watchers are the answers to their prayers*, either…but that’s an entirely different column altogether (refer to Are You Happy Now? Are You?! for my opinions about that issue…). Nope, today we’re going to talk about money, my general lack of any, and if we have any free time left at the end, I might show you some pictures of my new cat, too…

So if you’re anything like me, and statistics show that a whopping 247% of you are*, you like buying stuff, which is pretty understandable because, well, stuff is great! It entertains, it amuses, it even makes Julian Fries…and that’s not even the deluxe model! Stuff is always there when you need it, you can always just go out and buy some more if you happen to run out, and most importantly, it never, ever has a “headache.” Whoever said that we shouldn’t get attached to material goods must not have had a lot of stuff himself, that’s for sure!

We all have our own little treasures that we collect, much to the dismay of our friends and significant others who still seem to be convinced that love is more important than material possessions – as if! Myself, I’m a big movie buff and often boast of a DVD collection that rivals many video stores these days. I also hoard Disney memorabilia like it’s going out of style and it goes without saying that a portion of that previously mentioned DVD catalog no doubt played a direct hand in putting Eisner’s kids through college! Among my other collectible fetishes range everything from classic video games to books of every shape, size, color and genre, snow globes, old-fashioned pub glasses, and just about anything that you could slap a fish on…or at least a picture of a fish, that is…

…and it’s because of my love for all of this stuff that I, along with 65% of the folks around this country *, find ourselves buried under literally mountains of credit card debt! It’s like comedian Tim Cavanagh once said, “Imagine only spending just as much as you got paid!” What’s the fun of having it if you can’t have it right now, really?! Well, thanks to the powers of the charge card and low introductory rates, you can have it now, along with a limited edition, gold-embossed collector’s case to store it in – does it get any classier than this? This signed certificate of authenticity says an emphatic NO!!!

Now this far into the column, you’re probably beginning to wonder exactly when I’m going to lay it all out and explain to you all, in easy to follow instructions, step-by-step what you need to do to get yourselves out of debt…but who do you think you’re reading here, anyways?! I’m just as bad off as the rest of you, and possibly even worse as soon as my latest Sounds of the 80’s compilation 20-disc set arrives next week, so turning to me for financial advice is pretty much like turning to Donald Trump for directions to the nearest McDonalds. Besides, why would I want to steer my good friends away from buying everything that their cheesy, platinum-edition hearts desire – stuff is great!

So if you take just one thing from today’s column…and even that may very well be an oversight also, just remember this – it’s not necessarily he who dies with the most toys that wins, but actually he whom is designated as the sole benefactor in the will of he who dies with the most toys! Happy spending, and may the collection agencies always be one step behind you…

* Disclaimer: 87% of statistics are made up on the spot, but that’s an entirely different column…

Next to Christmas, it’s one of my favorite times of year – out with the old and in with the new! Just forget about your girlfriend leaving you for another woman or your boss firing you so she doesn’t feel as guilty about dating your ex-girlfriend, for there’s a new year ahead and who could think of a better time to get your life in order once in for all?! Who indeed, and so we all gather around with our champagne glasses in hand, beckoning in the new year with a kiss from the pretty girl just lucky enough to be standing nearby and a list almost a mile long of things we’re going to do differently the following morning.

We’ve all got our own lists, some with only a few key points and others filling pages upon pages with goals that’ll no doubt be thrown to the wind by mid-January at the latest, and if you’ll let me cue to in to a little secret, I’ll tell you this – it certainly makes the job of us columnists pretty easy for a day or three! Ask just about any columnist, no matter what they’re actually supposed to be covering, and they’ll be able to tell you months upon months in advance that their closest deadline that falls around New Years will no doubt cover his or her own resolutions – it’s pretty much a gimme, really. Mind you, I’ve been doing this for a year or three already, so I thought it might be a little more fun this time around to try something different…

When it all comes down to it, it’s honestly not that difficult to write up a few goals for yourself, now is it? Lose some weight, save some money, stop kicking the neighbor’s cat as you leave to go to work each morning – the list pretty much writes itself. Keeping this in mind, rather than bore you all with my own list of New Years resolutions (…of which the highlights I actually just already gave you anyways…), I think that it would be much more enjoyable to present to you some very special resolutions that I’ve devised for other people instead! Honestly, it’s always more fun to focus on the problems of others rather than even attempt to address your own anyways, and besides, why beat yourself up over such silly nonsense when you can just as easily berate the guy next to you?! Of course, you may not want to mimic my intentions here exactly if your subject just happens to be that huge guy sitting next to you at the bar who most likely eats entire chickens for breakfast and could probably bench press your car, but as I’m really not too concerned about any of these folks ever reading my column, at least I’m in the clear!

To Madonna…
Stop thinking that your immense stardom can actually have a positive effect on the careers of performers generations behind you. By all means, feel free to keep making out with them in public, just don’t expect any major career advancements to come from it!

To President Bush…
Just keep your eyes on the horizon. We all know how difficult this presidentiary bit has been for you and that you pretty much have felt like a deer in the headlights for the past three years, but it won’t be long now and all of that will be far behind you – nap time will be here soon enough.

To Ashton Kutcher…
Please stop trying…period. Honestly, I always thought that you were hilarious on That 70’s Show, and I can understand that now you’re moving on and are trying to convince an audience that you can be a serious actor, too. Let me tell you this – running somebody’s car into a brick wall or getting them investigated by the FBI on MTV is no way to get there!

To Peter Jackson…
Don’t ruin a good thing. Even though the opportunity probably won’t even present itself until another year or two down the road, do all of us Tolkien fans a favor and omit any plans to bring The Hobbit to the silver screen as well. Sure, it sounds like a good idea now, but don’t let that giant pile of money fool you – the series was amazing…can we just leave it at that?

To Michael Jackson…
Limit your poker nights to people over the age of thirty-five. I’ve still got faith in you, but even you’ve got to admit that the case is getting tougher and tougher to argue, so why not just make this year a little easier on yourself and keep them above the legal limit, eh? …poker nights – everything’s an innuendo these days with you, man…

To Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger…
By all means, if you have any questions…anything at all, really, don’t hesitate to ask for help! Being the governor is a tough job and sometimes, contrary to popular belief, simply blowing up everything within a three-mile radius just doesn’t solve all of your problems. Just remember that you’ve got an experienced staff at your aid and it never hurts to get a second opinion! Oh yeah, and whatever you do, please don’t touch the red button…

To Every Single Person in This Town That Actually Still Believes That the Buccaneers Will Bring Home the Championship Again This Year…
Find a new team to support…someone who actually stands a snowball’s chance in hell. Seriously, though, I know how excited we all were when our hometown team won the Super Bowl and brought tons of publicity to the Tampa Bay area, but you have to understand one thing – it was all a fluke. It’s never going to happen again, so take my advice and enlighten yourself to the ins and outs of Professional Women’s Bowling or something…you’ll thank me later.

And Finally, To Saddam Hussein…
It’s time to take one for the team and just turn yourself in. We all understand the whole “I hate America”­-thing that you’ve got going, but we’ve just got better things that we could be doing with our time. And besides, it won’t be long before another season of Survivor is starting up here shortly, and I’ll be damned if my TV show is going to get interrupted again because another one of your stunt doubles got trampled by a camel or something! Do us all a favor and just cut the act, for Hollywood’s sake…

Ok, so it doesn’t exactly apply in this particular case, but it’s just too good of a lyric to pass up nonetheless! (fifty bonus points if you can name the song and artist…) Anyways, if you haven’t heard the good word already, I’ve finally moved out of the desolate wasteland known as Northern Michigan to a, well, let’s just say a more populated area. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had some good times up here – just me and a six-pack and ‘ole Mother Nature, but the times they are a changing and it’s about time I fed that craving for traffic jams and longer lines at the grocery store and good, old-fashioned metropolitan violence I’ve found that you just can’t get up there in the sticks!

Unfortunately, however, I’m also quickly learning that a certain stigma looms over the single man as he attempts to make it in this dog-eat-dog world, and that stigma says basically, well, men are pigs. Of course, it’s tough to avoid this one because at some point it’s kind of undeniable – sure, a lot of men are pigs…some of them are my friends! Nonetheless, I still like to think that I, myself, am not a pig in most aspects, so herein lies my little predicament – how do I go about maintaining this studly machismo that the ladies seem to love so much while at the same time doing my very best to beat down this ugly stereotype that my peers have so ignorantly established for us? Well, I’ve always believed that enlightenment should begin in the home, so without further a due, here’s my plan thus far…

Top Five Stereotypes I Vow to Defy in My New Apartment:

5. Despite how undeniably cool I might have thought they were in my earlier years, love beads, shag carpeting, and black light posters will have no place in my new home.

You can also count on me having furniture actually purchased in a store, too – hand-me-down, spring clean-up pieces are a thing of the past. Let there be no doubt in your mind that the couch you’ll be sitting on has never been occupied by any member of the Rodentia family.

Also, as comfortable as they may be, no beanbag chairs, either. Well, maybe in the boudoir… *wink* *wink*

4. My kitchen pantry and refrigerator contents will consist of more than just Ramen noodles and beer.

I’m not at all afraid to admit it – I’m a guy that actually likes to cook. I know…I can hear the snickering already, but take a look at somebody like Emeril or Bobby Flay and then tell me that you’re standing by that childish, out-of-date stereotype.

Either way, just remember that when you’re dining on frozen chicken pot pies for the 80^th time that month, I’ll be savoring a fresh tuna noodle casserole that would make your mother green with envy!

3. I won’t leave dirty clothes lying around, nor allow dirty dishes to build up in the sink.

Ok, I don’t really do these things anyways, but it never hurts to let the ladies know that you’re house-broken, if you will, just in case you ever want to have any visit sometime in the next century! Besides, with a dishwasher and washing machine within only a few feet of each other, there’s a limit to just how much laziness is actually tolerable…

2. The walls won’t be plastered from floor to ceiling with grotesque and derogatory pictures of naked women in unrealistically flexible positions.

Nope, I’m a modern guy and that means that rather than making the trip to the local newsstand to get my fix, all I have to do is log on and within seconds, I’ve got access to more pornography than God. For only $14.95 a month, I’ve got access to download gigabytes upon gigabytes of the hottest, nastiest, well…you know, on the Internet, all of which will end up safely and securely stored on a large array of hard drives in a new, dedicated computer in my office, appropriately named PornBot3000.

And no – you can’t have its IP address!

1. And finally, unlike countless generations of single men that have walked before me, I will not walk around my apartment naked, just because I can…

…but actually in hindsight, there are many reasons why I might walk around my apartment naked! The fact that few can see me anyways up on the second floor, or that this is Florida and sometimes it’s just too damn hot to bother with wearing clothes, or even that the human body is a beautiful thing that should be shared with the world, not hidden from it, are all perfectly good reasons.

I could go on, mind you, but that’s an entirely different column altogether. I do plan on touching on this topic again in the future, however, so keep an eye out for All Men are Pigs, and I’m OK with That… coming soon to a newsstand or website near you! Until then, be sure to wipe your feet before coming inside and for God’s sake, please use a freaking coaster!!!

I like to think that I’m pretty organized most of the time, but then again I also like to think that I’ve still got a chance to father Liv Tyler’s children, so perhaps I’m not the best judge anymore! I do tend to keep most of my work fairly organized – ask me about any project and I’ll show you a list of three or four others that have to be completed before I can even start, but when it comes to keeping track of physical items, that’s when I get really bad. Ideas, thoughts, concepts – no problem, I just write them down in any of several notebooks and I know exactly where to look, but ask me where my hairbrush is and I’ve met my match…

It actually kind of surprises me that I have yet to come across missing something that I really need so far – it’s always little stuff like brushes, forks, entire pads of post-it notes – items that are easily replaceable and will no doubt turn up the second I return home and open the new package. Lately it seems that a great deal of my hangers have turned up missing, which I’m finding particularly odd because I haven’t bought a new shirt in ages and if anything, I’ve thrown several away because they no longer resemble anything even close to shirts. Logic would only suggest that I should, in fact, have an abundance of hangers lying about, but until the mystery is solved, I’ve got an increasing pile of folded shirts accumulating at the bottom of my closet. It won’t be long before I won’t have any hanging up at all, but I’m not giving in and buying more this time – I did that with the Sock Monster and things have just never been the same around my laundry room!

What’s really horrible is when you lose something that isn’t nearly as replaceable – keys, cellular phones, and children all fall into the category and anyone who’s been in this situation knows that it’s not pretty! About a month ago I suffered a fate that is quite comparable to death with my lifestyle – I lost the remote control. Not just a universal one or anything – I’ve yet to come across one of those babies that can actually control my entire system without encouraging me to put my head through a wall in the process – but it was what you would consider the most important control of all. I have separate remotes for my VCR, DVD player, and stereo, but this one controls both the television and the digital cable receiver and without it, all is pretty much lost in my world of home entertainment! It turned up about three days later after the dog decided to have pity on me (I knew she had something to do with it – I was just surprised that she went that long without any food!), but now no one leaves my living room, including the dog, until all remotes are safe and sound. I’ve considered getting some of those little chains like they have for pens at the bank, but maybe that might be too much?

The one I don’t even realize, and probably the one that I always feel the worst about, is forgetting somebody’s name – especially when they’re someone new that you’re trying to become more acquainted with. It’s one thing to throw out a “Hey, man…” or “How’s it going, dude?” to somebody that you went to high school with or met at a random party in college, but it just doesn’t flow nearly as well with that babe from the copy room that you’d like to take out to dinner Friday night! “Baby” and “Honey” may work for you temporarily, but eventually she’s gonna want to hear her own name and nothing ruins a night quicker than either calling it out wrong or even throwing in the towel and admitting that you’re completely clueless! The only advice I might give for this one would be to repeat her name over and over once you initially hear it, in your head or even out loud, whatever works! If you can persuade her to wear a nametag, that’s even better, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin with suggesting that one…

Forgetfulness can be taken quite personally, but when it all comes down to it, it’s human nature and there’s very little we can do, short of carrying around a list in our back pocket, to ensure that we don’t miss a beat and end up looking foolish! As far as I’m concerned, though, the human mind has been known to work in mysterious ways, so perhaps I’m actually forgetting these things for a reason? The nameless face could be reminiscent of a person who I never really enjoyed being around in the first place, while the missing television remote could very well be a message that I need to get up off the couch and get a little exercise for a change! I’m always being told that I need to cut my hair, so maybe I’m just inadvertently telling myself that the time has come to make the change? Those may be very good and true, but then what’s the excuse for the contents of my closet being spread out on the floor?!

I actually had a good one for this, too, but just like the entire point of this column, that too has long since been forgotten! If anyone figures it out, be sure to drop me an e-mail and let me know, but just in case, I’m going to the store for more hangers tomorrow – I’ve been told that my own version of folding indicates that I need to learn how to iron as well. Yeah, that’s exactly what I need – something else for me to forget…