Your letters:
Ryan:
Why do ’80s parties continue to be popular? I see ’80s theme nights all the time, but no ’90s theme nights. Isn’t it time to move to the next decade? Is it because the ’90s have no identifiable theme?
The 1990s DO have a theme, but who the fuck wants to go to a party where everyone is dressed in Tevas and listening to Rusted Root? (NOTE: Our site’s recent endorsement of Tevas hurt my essence.) No sane person wants to relive the ’90s ever again. They fucking sucked.
But the ’80s? Lemme tell you something: The ’80s were awesome. People like to goof on the ’80s for the clothes and the music and the hair, but only as a defense mechanism to hide their true affections. Socially aware people like to bitch about the greed and decadence of that decade only because they feel bad about secretly getting shitfaced and jamming to “Hungry Like the Wolf” every other weekend. The ’80s have enough old crap to feel vintage, but also enough modern crap to feel timely. That’s why Hollywood has rebooted virtually every ’80s movie. They’re not remaking ’70s shit like Five Easy Pieces anytime soon.
Plus, middle-aged people like me LOVE to lord our pop culture over younger generations, which means that we are actively forcing our ’80s shit upon all you kids out there, the way horrible Baby Boomers did with us and the ’60s. (Christ, the ’60s … I wish Buffalo Springfield had fallen down a well). And since we’ve remade every last piece of ’80s culture for your generation, you’re gonna do likewise for the NEXT one. Every subsequent iteration of American pop culture will just be a mutated form of ’80s content. This is why my kids like Star Wars, bad-but-addictive pop music, and Minecraft’s shitty eight-bit graphics. We’re just a few years away from Ready Player One being reality. I am okay with this.
Scott:
My 9-year-old asked me how much it would cost to buy the world. What do you think? Hundreds of trillions, probably, but how would you even go about computing that, if possible?
Earth isn’t listed on Zillow. But people HAVE tried to quantify its value in the past, with the estimates ranging for four and a half to five quadrillion dollars. That takes into account all of Earth’s assets, business holdings (the GDP of the entire world economy is roughly 77 to 100 trillion dollars a year), natural resources, real estate, and available pornography. Not a bad price! I hope someone buys us and mounts us on the front of a very large spacecraft as a cosmic hood ornament.
But the real deals are to be found elsewhere in the solar system. One of the articles linked above notes that our neighbors are basically worthless:
On one side there’s Mars; ringing in at a modest $16,000. Venus fares far worse, valued at about a penny.
There’s no fucking way Mars is worth just $16,000. If I could buy it at that price, I would! If you wanna build a Mars colony or land some tin-can rover on the surface of MY planet, you better be ready to pony up. Buying Mars would be the ultimate long-term investment. Soon, Earth will become overheated and uninhabitable, and when mankind has to find a new home planet, I will stand to make a handsome profit. I could be like Cohaagen in Total Recall. If you fuckfaces want air, you’re gonna pay top dollar for it. TRY TO STOP ME MWAHAHAHAHAHA.
Also, if I owned Mars, I would rename it GRUNDLETOWN.
Adam:
How much would you have to be charged per month for your current home internet plan before you go back to the Stone Age and cancel it? Assume that all other providers charge the same amount, and that there are no other alternatives.
The other day Verizon jacked up my internet out of the blue (the Verizon strategy is to get to you agree to a two-year fixed price and then raise the shit out of that price once you have conveniently forgotten that your initial price had a two-year expiration date), and so I called and begged them to lower it back down. And they did, but not ALL the way down to where it once was. Now it’s like 10 bucks more a month. I took the deal instantly. Even if they had said to me, “Fuck you, we’re keeping you on the Unlimited Ass-Fucking Plan,” I still would have agreed. What other choice is there? Go to Comcast? I’ll take a pencil up my dick before I go to Comcast. I’m no fool.
Anyway, if we’re talking about a scenario where I’m only getting gouged on my home internet, then I’d say the tipping point would be $400 to $500 a month. This situation obviously varies by income, but I don’t think you could ever justify spending $500 a month for home internet when you could get it for free at a local library instead. Frankly, going out of the way for internet access would probably improve my life. My kids and I would make actual eye contact more than twice a day. Whole new world.
But if we’re talking about a scenario where I CAN’T get the internet anywhere ever again if I don’t pony up, then I’m probably selling off the house and the car and at least one child to stay tethered. I’m not going back to the Analog Age. I know I just said nice things about the 1980s, but fuck that. I don’t actually want to LIVE in them again. Whenever the internet goes out at my house, I panic as if I’ve just contracted Glanders. It’s a legitimate crisis. And I’m the reasonable one! You should see children in 2016 react during an internet outage. They turn to rage INSTANTLY. There’s no consoling them. WHY WON’T YOUTUBE LOAD, DADDY?! MAKE THE INTERNET WORK AGAIN, YOU COCK.
Dunzo:
What is the proper technique in a public restroom for handling the jagged edge of toilet paper? It’s obvious someone ripped it while wiping themselves, but do you just fold that into your wad, or do you tear that off and start clean? There are times it looks like someone tore it with their teeth. I don’t trust my fellow citizen that much.
I still use the jagged edge. I just fold it into the wad. The way I see it, if some animal has wiped his germ-ridden fromunda all over the stall, any effort I make to avoid his DNA—from using a seat cover to starting the TP along a fresh perforation—will be futile. All I can do is wash my hands vigorously. That’s the best and only defense against contracting anal leprosy.
Chances are, the edge of that TP is jagged because the TP used in public toilets is so cheap and shitty. I could wad up 9,000 sheets of it and still feel like I’m holding nothing at all. How many times have you tried starting a new wad of that paper, only to end up creating a lengthwise tear that circles all the way around the goddamn roll? Or how many times have you encountered a roll that’s stuck in place, and the goddamn paper rips off every time you pull? OUR SUBPAR TOILET PAPER IS A SIGN OF AMERICAN INFRASTRUCTURAL DECAY. We need to transition away from it in favor of flushable wipes, or a new kind of reusable cotton poop chamois. The time has come to invest in brown energy.
Chet:
If you win the Super Bowl, how often are you wearing the ring?
Never. Maybe I would enlarge it and use it as a sexual aid, but otherwise, everyone knows that Super Bowl rings look fucking stupid. It’s an ugly mob ring on steroids. Also, if you wear one every day, you’re a GLORY BOY who’s too distracted living in the past to win the next game. This is why every championship coach keeps his Super Bowl in a ring box somewhere and only busts it out before some big game, to make his players ooooh and ahhhh and, like, really want to win. What that coach DOESN’T say is that his old lady banished the ring to the attic five years prior because it’s a gaudy piece of junk. I would pawn off that shit within five minutes of winning it. Only a real asshole would wear one regularly. Like Ditka.
Adam:
When are the Capri Sun people coming out with 32-ouncers?
Parents would never stand for it. A regular Capri Sun bag sends 596 grams of sucrose directly into your child’s bloodstream. You can’t just sell children a Capri Sun the size of Franzia bag. There would be riots in the streets. BIG SUGAR has already been reduced to hawking slim cans of bullshit artisan Pepsi at stores. They’re too scared to introduce the Capri Sun multi-straw udder.
Cody:
Who has the ugliest/worst color scheme in the four major sports? In my opinion, the three worst are the Colorado Avalanche (a failed attempt to mix up the typical red and blue), the Jacksonville Jaguars (look at those ugly-ass helmets!), and the Anaheim Ducks (is every day Halloween?).
I’m clearly biased, but I say it’s the Packers. I have never understood, and will never understand, how people have been deluded into thinking the Packers’ unis are attractive. Tradition has blinded them. Just because those unis are old and storied doesn’t mean they look good. They look like SHIT. They’re as ugly as the fans who root for Green Bay. YEAH I SAID IT. Looks like a Hannukah bush someone hosed down with French’s mustard. And yet old farts will be like, “Now there’s a classic look!” Fuck that. The Packers uniforms are garbage. Here are some additional color-scheme offenders:
* The Marlins. Just because your team is named after a fish doesn’t mean your color scheme has to look like $10 worth of fish tank decorations.
* The A’s. Like the Packers, but sadder. When the A’s wear their grey away jerseys, I wanna commit suicide.
* Titans. Baby blue! AWWWW WIDDLE MARCUS MAWIOTA NEEDS TO GO BEDDIE BYE NOW.
* Jags/Sharks/Panthers. From the deeply unfortunately teal expansion of the 1990s came two color schemes that still look like they belong on the side of a box of Dunkaroos. Come on, you two. Get with the times. No one wants to wear that shit anymore. You may as well send guys out onto the field in Hypercolor shirts.
* Rams. “How can we make our uniforms as depressing as the city we just fled? I GOT IT.”
* Dolphins. They ruined a perfectly decent uniform for no good reason. These are gift-shop uniforms now. I think that Florida teams like using bright colors to accentuate the sunny climate, but every team from there ends up looking like the WLAF Orlando Thunder as a result.
* Celtics. Fuck that green.
* Bruins. And the yellow, too. Fuck your stupid old boring uniforms, Boston.
Zach:
My wife and I recently found out she was pregnant with our second child, which was pretty unexpected. While I had originally wanted two kids, she had convinced me that one was enough, and we were moving forward as such, so it caught us a little off guard. (My wife cried for like four days.) Anyway, we’ve told a few people (our parents, bosses, and close friends), and when they ask if we were trying or planning on having another kid, I’ve been telling them the truth, that this was an accident. At what point should I stop saying this baby was an accident? I feel like it’s bad karma, or something bad could happen with the baby if I keep referring to it as a mistake.
Yeah, stop doing that. If you want, tell people it was a SURPRISE. “Surprise” is the proper word for it. That suggests that it could be a happy and positive development, instead of a black, blood-spattered sign of impending personal ruin. If you openly call it an accident, you’ll sound like you’re about to sell the kid on Craigslist. You need to adjust your attitude or else you’ll never be able to cope. Besides, you’re gonna end up adoring the little fucker anyway. That’s how they trick you into having more.
You’d be surprised how often parents will volunteer this sort of information, by the way. Once you’re cloistered away in a house filled with small children, you will gladly open the vault to ANY adult who comes within 15 feet of you. I’ve seen it happen to every mom with a glass of wine in them. “Well, turns out little Jimmy discovered the wonders of his own boner today! SAVE ME. PLEASE SAVE ME FROM THIS HOUSE I HAVE NO ONE ELSE.”
HALFTIME!
Sean:
What’s the most rhymed word in music history? The Beatles put “love” in every other line, so maybe it’s up there?
It’s not “love,” because that word has few rhyming options outside of “of.” (For this reason, love/of may qualify as the most rhymed pairing in music history.) I think the obvious winner is “you,” because almost every song is addressed to “you” and because you can rhyme it with “do,” and “new,” and “blue,” and “who,” and “loo,” and “moo,” and “Jew,” and “Marilyn McCoo.” Slate did a study of rhyming couplets, and “you” appeared in four of the 20 most common pairings. Only “me” (naturally) matched it. I blame Bono and Bono alone for the overuse of these pronouns.
Justin:
I always eat the fortune cookie after Chinese food. I guess it was the first time my wife noticed how I ate it, and she was appalled that I bit into the cookie, took my fortune out, then finished said cookie. She insists you break open the cookie to get the fortune, THEN eat the cookie. Whose side are you on?!
The wife. I break the cookie first so that I don’t end up munching on paper (even though, flavor-wise, there’s not much difference between the cookie and the paper). I split the cookie in half, and then it shatters into a hundred pieces, half of which go onto the floor. Then I read the fortune, and it’s fucking stupid. For this reason, I propose that we replace the fortune cookie with a new complimentary dessert. How about a Twix bar? I’d shit my dick if there was a free Twix bar in the delivery bag. I bet I could dominate the delivery market if I promised a Twix bar with every order. Golden House better watch its ass. There’s a NEW player in town.
James:
What’s the right way to wash dishes? I think my idea makes the most sense: you pre-soak all the dishes with a quick rinse, then take the sponge and clean off everything with no running water yet, THEN you rinse again to get off the suds and whatever else has mixed into it.
Do you have a dishwasher? What I do is rinse off all the dishwasher-safe crap with running water, load the dishwasher, and then fill the remaining dirty pots with soap and water and walk away, praying someone else finishes the job. That’s my preferred way of going about it.
Once my wife tells me that I’m being a lazy shit and need to finish the pots, I bitch and moan and then scrub out the remaining dishes by using one of the sudsy pots as my base of operations. I soap up the dish brush from there and get to work on the rest. Same with baby bottles. I used to fill one bottle with soapy water and then spread it to the remaining valves and nipples. It was a good system. All baby bottles should be burned.
I do NOT suggest filling the whole sink with soapy water, because there will come a day when you reach down into the dish swamp and impale your hand on a shrimp fork. That’s a lousy moment, and I don’t want it to happen to you. Also, never use a sponge to wash dishes, because it will dry out your hands, and because sponges have lousy scrubbing power. Invest in a dish brush, preferably one with a handle that lets your hands stay relatively pristine. My parents refuse to own a dish brush. It’s maddening. I gotta spend every Christmas laboring away at a turkey platter with a fucking piece of steel wool. They’re insane.
Cam:
Can you eat a hamburger upside-down? I get really bothered when I make a hamburger and place the bottom bun on top by accident. The classic picture of “bottom bun, patty, lettuce, tomato, condiments, top bun” has ruined me.
I fuck up sandwich orientation more often than a grown man my age ought to, but I will always grit my teeth and eat the sandwich that way instead of trying to reconfigure it. Once the beefy juices and condiments have infiltrated the bun, there’s no going back. You’re stuck with an upside-down burger and you HAVE to eat it. It’s a terrible moment of revelation. Well, it’s not as bad as discovering mayonnaise inside, but it’s still a big letdown.
Zach:
If we only look at the starting five, could the Warriors beat the Eastern Conference All-Stars?
Oh, God, yeah. Look at the starting five that repped the Eastern Conference this year:
LeBron James - F, Cleveland Cavaliers
Paul George - F, Indiana Pacers
Carmelo Anthony - F, Knicks
Dwyane Wade - G, Miami Heat
Kyle Lowry - G, Toronto Raptors
That team is a goddamn mess. The Warriors would thrash them. The SPURS would thrash them. Your average all-star team is a poorly constructed roster of washed-up fan favorites, ball hogs, and egomaniacal MEGA BUCKS GLORY BOYS, none of whom will accept defined roles. If that team had to play a seasoned team like Golden State (which is, itself, a team of all-star-level talent) with no practice, forget it. They’re doomed. In fact, I would take pretty much any league-leading team over a hastily assembled all-star team in a one-off exhibition. TEAM GAME! Why, I’d take a squad of undrafted tight ends to beat Carmelo any day of the week!
Dan:
Would Thin Mints be better if they were thicker or thinner than they are now? Or I guess they could be at optimal thin-ness, but that is not likely.
I say they’re at optimal thin-ness. Any thinner and they’d be too brittle, shattering on the first bite. Any thicker and they’d be too dry. You don’t think the Girl Scouts focus group this shit? There’s probably a squad of 11-year-old brand managers out there right now, flagging down people at the mall and paying them $15 each to hook them up to electrodes for an hour to optimize the cerebral pleasure center’s reaction to a box of Tagalongs. Those Girl Scouts don’t fuck around. They’re very thorough. Trust them with your cookie measurements.
Brian:
For the first 27 years of my life, I was extremely religious (Mormon). But then I hit a breaking point and abandoned my upbringing, culture, and entire way of thinking. Since then I’ve swung into a complete nihilistic view of life. Before, I at least had the fantastical view of our humanity as basically an RPG with really sweet end-game content to look forward to where I would get to someday have my own god damn planet. Whereas now I lay awake at night dreading going back to my office where my coworkers have ostracized me and spend another eight hours sitting in a cube, which I now assume is what gave J.K. Rowling her inspiration for Dementors. Every second I spend at work feels like another pointless drop in the bucket of my precious wasted lifespan. So, yeah, any tips or advice on dealing with this?
Nihilism is bad. I know that comes off as hypocritical coming from me, a member of the Gawker Media Crusade To Hate Everything. But it’s true: if you think everything is stupid and pointless and there’s no hope of anything getting better, then you’re probably not gonna be a hit at parties. It’s not gonna get you anywhere.
If your job is REALLY crushing your spirit, you obviously need to start looking for a new one, or you need to start thinking about more drastic changes: moving, changing careers, etc. That’s all terrifying, but if life sucks now, it’s not like you have much to lose. Reach out to whoever the hell you can and see if they can help. Take a week off and go somewhere completely different to remind yourself you’re not stuck in a sewer drain forever. Don’t assume that just because shit is bad now that it has to be permanent. It’s never too late to make big changes, especially if you don’t have kids. Kids will fuck you over in that department.
You are at a moment in time when our collective faith in humanity is … not good. The seas are rising. Nothing in the Middle East will ever be resolved. Employers are bleeding their workers dry of free time and benefits. Resources are drying up. Trump. It’s easy to look at all that and think, Well, we’re doomed, so nothing matters. It’s easy to lose faith. And I don’t mean religious faith, but faith in EVERYTHING. But you have to have some measure of hope. Even if you secretly think it’s a fool’s errand to believe things will get better—even if it’s a 1,000-to-1 shot that mankind will manage to unfuck itself—it’s worth mildly deluding yourself so that you can get through each day without a pall cast over you. We can figure it out! I swear! ONE DAY WE’LL ALL GET OUR SHIT TOGETHER AND HAVE FLYING CARS AND CHEAP JAPANESE WHISKEY, YOU’LL SEE.
Ben:
Is it okay to wear an OJ Simpson jersey ironically?
No. Never wear a jersey ironically. If I’m plunking down $200 for a goddamn jersey, I better LIKE the player I’m repping.
Conor:
Could a good high school varsity soccer team beat a team of 11 NFL players that have never played soccer before, or would the NFL players’ physical dominance make up for their lack of skill? Also, the NFL soccer team is made up of players from a mix of positions, so it’s not like 11 offensive linemen.
Is Odell the goalie? I’m taking the NFL squad if that’s the case. Your average NFL player is an athletic freakshow—a gifted prodigy who can take to virtually any sport with ease, the way a musical savant can just pick up an instrument and play. I’m not betting against world-class athletes. Even if scrappy little Crotchburg High has all their passing drills down, I still say Von Miller would ruin their shit.
Email of the week!
I work with a guy who is the same height as me (5'10"). I’ve noticed that every time he walks through a doorway, he ducks his head just a little bit, whether it is a doorway in our office (which are 10 feet high) or my home (I’ve actually had his family over for dinner). No matter the height of the doorway, he always ducks his head, completely unnecessarily.
I finally asked him about it last week, casually (I promise), and this was his reply: “In my former life, I was a giant—11 and a half feet tall. So it’s just a habit of mine to duck through doorways because of that.”
I should state that this individual is an excellent worker, dependable, and not weird in any other way. Like I said, I’ve had his entire family over for dinner, because they are nice, normal people. I’ve brought up the giant thing again just to make sure he isn’t just trolling me (which I was hoping was the case). No, this guy sincerely believes he was an 11'6" giant in his former life, and THAT is why he ducks through doorways today even though he is half that height.
I go bowling with him every other Thursday. He is a good friend and a genuine person. Should I just let it go and maintain my friendship, or should I react to this red flag and assume he is going to murder my entire family in our sleep, then duck through the doorway on his way out?
Leave him be. He may be cannibalistic.
Adequate Man is Deadspin’s self-improvement blog, dedicated to making you just good enough at everything. Suggestions for future topics are welcome below.