intellectual properties

raincheck

i shared this last week, so maybe you’ve already read it, but it tickles me in numerous ways, perhaps because i’ve gone to bed early the last TWO friday and saturday nights, so i’m reposting it here for posterity.

Please can we not go to the party? The reason I ask is because I am not feeling very well. There’s something wrong with my head. Or my stomach. Or my arm. It’s kind of an all over body ache, the sort of thing that probably would not show up on any sort of medical exam, but which I am confident is quite contagious. To be safe, I think we should probably just stay home.

I know you are excited to go to the party. You enjoy getting dressed up and drinking good wine and making conversation with all of our friends, many of whom we have not seen for a long time. They are great people one and all. They are without exception terrific, and I am proud to consider them my friends. At the same time, I do not need to see any of them ever again.

I find that a lot of socializing is simply a way of communicating that we like each other. When we stand around the party sloshing our wine around and catching up with each other, essentially we are just saying “I like you” over and over again. All social conversation can be reduced in this way. You say, “I like you.” I respond, “I like you, too.” Then, after that person is out of earshot, we talk to other people about how much we dislike the first person.

Think about how good staying home will be for the environment…

–Michael Ian Black, for McSweeney’s

and it goes on, brilliantly.

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