How To Survive The Black Friday Shopping

AAAAAAAtttention, shooooppers!!!

Black Friday is upon us, shoppers!  Black Friday is war, Black Friday is hell, Black Friday is chills, thrills and occasional kills, and I, drill sergeant X, am here for the drills!  I am here to make lean, mean shopping machines out of your sorry just-browsing rookie asses!!

Did I say something funny?? DID I SAY SOMETHING FUNNY, SHOPPER?!?!? Drop and give me twenty!  Now you look at this twenty-bill very carefully, shopper!! Do you want to save those twenty dollars?  DO YOU???  Do you want to save twenty dollars AND LIVE, shopper?? Then shut up and listen to what I have to say, unless you want your dead body to be found covered with packing peanuts and stuffed in a cardboard refrigerator box marked for in-store pickup for your family’s convenience!!!

Anyone here who’s weak and doesn’t feel they’re up to the task?  Anyone here who’s having second thoughts??  Anyone here with heart conditions, who’s trample-intolerant, or allergic to stab wounds???  If you as much as had to think about it, I’m gonna give you 20 seconds to pack your stuff and crawl back home to your wussy Amazon shopping – and I do mean Amazon, because even eBay’s online auctions would pose too much danger for you, weaklings!

Now, those of you who stayed… at ease, shoppers. I see a few scarred faces of seasoned Black Friday veterans, but I see newbies, too. Why do you need to shop, you ask? You need to do this for your country, shoppers. You need to buy stuff to support the economy – Chinese economy, Indian economy, Indonesian economy, all the world economies!  The fate of the entire world hangs in balance on your shoulders, shoppers! Remember what President George Bush said after 9/11 – by going shopping is how we shall defeat the terrorists.

Why on Black Friday, you ask?  Because this is the day when you get the most bang for your buck!  You’ll spend a buck and you’ll get banged up so hard in the process that your mama won’t recognize you!  But you follow my cues, shoppers, and you just might live to see the daylight on Saturday!

Rule Number one! Do NOT go shopping on Black Friday!  Yes, you heard me right, shopper!  You take your positions AT LEAST a week before, otherwise you might as well drag your asses back to your basement and try your luck next year!  You take positions right here in line in front of the store, yes, right here at the front lines, and you take advantage of the high ground – so no lounging up in the parking lot, you get your asses all the way up on the sidewalk!

Rule Number Two! You’ll need provisions, you’ll need supplies, you’ll need rifles and shotguns. They don’t call it “hunting for bargain” for nothin’!  You’ll need a tent. What? You DON’T own a tent, shopper? This means that you gonna have to buy one this Black Friday, so you could pitch a tent for the next Black Friday! Add that to your shopping list – and I better see it tattooed on your ass, shopper! Take your cell phone with you so that you could call for reinforcements, and don’t forget the phone charger cord, because you never know when you may have to strangle somebody to move up one spot in the line!

Rule Number Three! No matter what, you DO NOT give up your position, shopper!  Not rain, not wind, not fire are to deter you from completing your mission!!! But what about Thanksgiving, you ask? What about family, turkey, cranberry sauce cylinders, you say? Forget about it, shopper. Do you realize that Thanksgiving Day is a made-up holiday, and was invented by professional Black Friday shoppers who wanted to weed out as much competition as possible! A day to get together with people you try to avoid 364 days a year, and to eat a bird-shaped blob of tasteless chewy paste, that you would never in your right mind order at a restaurant?  You call THAT a holiday, shopper???

Engage your Target, shoppers!

Rule Number Four!  Preparation is half the battle! Prior to BF-Day, scour the target store, familiarize yourself with the floor (getting a job at the store can help), map the shortest route to the shelf you need to get from the door, and practice, practice, practice some more! Do practice runs from the entrance to the target shelf at least ten times a day, and time yourself each time, until you are satisfied.  Then run, run, run again, until you can get from the entrance to the shelf, then to the checkout, then clear out to the parking lot in under 15 seconds wearing a blindfold!!!

And keep one final thing in mind, shoppers: on Black Friday, all people fall into two categories: cashiers and obstacles!

Are you ready, shoppers?? Are you ready to crush and trample your fellow man to save five bucks?? Are you ready to wreak havoc and devastation in your path when the store doors open at precisely oh-two-hundred hours?? ARE? YOU?? READY???

Three! Two! One!  ATTAAAAAAAAACK!!!!

How to Reach the 21st Century Student

This post was quest-written by Darlin’, a not-at-all-disgruntled-teacher, from keyandarrow.com

On the same degree to which my preteen students often leave me perplexed, they almost simultaneously make it all worth while, and I must take time to ponder the ways to reach these complex creatures.  What I have discovered thus far: 

Step 1:  It’s All in the Name.  Introduce yourself as Ms. or Mr. (Insert last name first initial here).  Anything longer than that will take too long to enter into their smart devices.  Plus, it’s more difficult for them to turn your last name into an insult; i.e., Ms. Wright is Ms. Wrong, Mr. Johnson’s Johnson, and Mrs. Brown makes me frown.  See?  Easy.

Step 2:  It’s All in the Presentation.  Begin class with a video.  Make sure they know how long the video is.  This is the only thing that matters.

Step 3:  What are We Doing?  It doesn’t matter if it’s written all over the whiteboard and your forehead, you must answer this question as soon as possible, or the 21^st Century student will seem to mimic spontaneous combustion or what might be commonly mistaken as a seizure.

Step 4: No, We Are NOT Having a Free-Day.  But you are free to do whatever I ask you to do.  Completely free.

Step 5:  Yes, We Are Going to Have Fun Today.  Everything we do is fun.  You must get them to understand this.  Assess them quarterly over their mastery of this topic.

Step 6: Avoid Four-Letter Words. Like T-E-S-T, for example.  Instead, use words like “assessment” or “tell-me-how-much-smart-you-are-assignment.”  You must also announce the test tell-me-how-smart-you-are-assignment every five to ten minutes, perhaps with the aid of an old-fashioned megaphone, so they don’t accuse you of not telling them about it.  If not, the risk you are willing to take must outweigh speaking into a giant cone.

Step 7:  No, Your Parent Did NOT Forget Your Homework.

Step 8: If All Else Fails, Tap Dance??

Step 9: Tangents.  They are way too skilled at this for their own good.  You must develop a thick skin, even if they ask you to describe the careful process you took to ensure the pie you baked last night for your book club in which nobody there seemed interested in how many hours you worked to get the crust just right and the tartness just tart enough but not too tart because all they cared about was “was there enough wine?”  No, not even that.

Step 10: If at All Possible, Allow Smart Devices.  It doesn’t matter how boring the assignment, it just got ten times better because you allowed them to peck at tiny keys.

Step 11. Birthday Parties Are More Important Than Your Homework Assignment.  Don’t be hard on them for this; your students may not include “priorities” in their vocabulary.   However, don’t bother them by asking them to look it up in the dictionary; “dictionary” is not in their vocabulary.  According to them, dictionaries date back to the Cretaceous period.  Instead, repeat the following helpful phrase, “GOOGLE the word, “p-r-i-o-r-i-t-y.”

Step 12:  I Lost it Sometimes Means I Don’t Plan on Looking For It.  Make friends with the copying machine.  Though, I’m warning you, she’s a beast.

Step 13:  One Direction is Your Favorite Band, Too.  Don’t know who they are?  Just say it.  You’ll thank me later.

Warning: Listen at your own risk.

Step 14:  Relate Everything to Pop Culture.  Peruse the following examples for guidance:

Language Arts Lesson: Avoid fragments in your writing, or you’ll appear as though missing an essential like that Miley Cyrus.  Math Lesson: One was recently divorced, and one recently had a child.  How many Kardashians do you have?

Step 15: Don’t Underestimate Them.  They might just create your next frustrating iPhone update.

In Jest,

Ms. W.

How to get your driver’s licence

At the ripe ‘ol age of 33, I can officially now say that I have a driver’s licence.  So what took me 17 years you ask? Well it’s a long story, really it is. To sum it up, I just …

How To Win Or At Least End An Argument Part 1: Some Simple Techniques

Guest posting monster Dr Frood is not a real doctor, but he is a real boy. He resides in the darkest dungeon of the internet and is prone to exaggeration and lies.

In honour of the latest twists and turns in the soap opera we used to call American politics, it’s worth brushing up on your own powers of argument and persuasion. In the coming weeks, this lecture series will demonstrate the methods for winning or at least ending arguments using science.

This lecture series will avoid jargon like ‘straw man’ or ‘ad hominem logical fallacy’ except where it doesn’t, because such language doesn’t get you laid.

We’ll start things off lightly with some simple techniques appropriate for any occasion, be it pub, children’s party or board meeting.

Understand Your Opponent’s Jargon

Debating jargon like ‘cognitive dissonance’ et al should be avoided at all costs because you have some self-respect. Likewise anything that looks, smells or tastes like Latin, such as ‘et al’. But you need to understand jargon so that you can properly call your opponent a pompous douchebag when they use it.

There are many formal and informal logical fallacies, but here are some of the more common ones:

Ad hominem: if he or she calls you a twat, that’s ad hominem – it’s not about the merits or otherwise of your argument(s), but all about you personally. Example: ‘Obama was born in Kenya.’

Straw man: an argument that is misrepresented by your opponent as superficially similar to the one you actually made, but which crucially is indefensible. Example: “it’s necessary to balance civil rights and the state’s powers of intrusion.” “So what you’re saying is that you want the terrorists to win.”

False dichotomy: an apparent choice between two options, that actually isn’t. A common example would be freedom of the individual vs security of the people, but we’ve already used that one. Example: you have a choice between a burger or a pie. But the menu says that you can have a pie filled with burgers. Or lasagne.

Confirmation bias: we actually all do this so it’s good to be aware of it. Your brain retains things that reinforce your bias and edits out contradictory evidence. Example: I think that people who call themselves ‘spiritual but not religious’ are wankers – every time I meet a wanker who calls him-or-herself spiritual, that impression is reinforced. There are many otherwise lovely people who also describe themselves in such terms, but I can’t recall ever having met a single one, even if I have lived with one or two of them over the years.

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That’s enough of all that. Let’s get on with winning.

Use Jargon To Your Advantage

At some point one of you will become even more pretentious than I am. If your opponent reaches this point first, say something like ‘I’ll see your straw man and raise you an ad hominem: you’re a dickhead.’

This is an exception to the ‘no jargon’ rule because technically you’re being funny, which good-natured liars claim makes you attractive.

Use Your Words

At some point in the argument you will experience a sinking feeling, a gut realisation that your opponent is more clued-up on the subject at hand, be it who was a better space captain: Kirk or Picard, or why you should do the washing up more often.

You will find that the tide is turning against you. But at this point it is important to keep your head and use your words. It doesn’t matter that he or she can reel off statistics that prove that actually the Eurozone isn’t the UK’s biggest political and economic concern; or that he or she has taken the bins out every week for the past seven months and it’s your turn.

All you have to do is say the following:

“Ah, well now you’re talking semantics.”

Because no one actually quite knows what that word means or even if it’s a bad thing to do. Crucially, they won’t want you to know that they don’t know that a word you’re pretending to know is not in fact a word that either of you knows. Win.

Use Your Words Part 2

But say that your opponent has deployed the ‘semantics’ argument. You’re not sure how to react. Here’s what you say:

“No I’m not.”

Ball. Back. In. Your. Face. Loser.

Win.

Introduce A New Element

Men who’ve been married for a long time will know that this comes instinctively to wives.

You think you’re fighting about whose responsibility it was to buy more fabric softener, and out of nowhere she sucker-punches you with ‘well I still can’t believe that you said what you did to my aunt Sheila, you know how sensitive she is. And while we’re on the subject, would it kill you to put the toilet seat down once in a while?’ And boom, instant fluster.

Your opponent thinks you’re arguing about the merits of expanding the permanent security council of the UN, suddenly BAM! ‘Yeah, well camembert is just shit brie’.

Whoa, I just totally changed your perspective and stuff.

Use Your Fists

Pretty self-explanatory, and afterwards they’ll have quite forgotten whatever rapier-like point they were about to use to pierce through your entire argument and leave you looking like a small-minded bigot. Win.

The caveat here is that if your opponent is bigger than you, or looks like a biter, you’ll probably get beaten to a pulp. On the plus side, this will mean that your opponent has lost his or her temper and therefore you’ve won by default. Win.

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The rest of this series will go into a lot more detail about a variety of options, including the invention of fictional experts and studies and the advantage of getting your opponent very, very drunk.

Next time: the proper use of the filibuster.