Why do people still commit crimes in Metropolis? I have never understood this. This is where Superman lives, his home base, his chosen city which he has pledged to defend, and people still continually commit crimes there. I mean, I suppose the occasional mugger might get away with something just by the law of averages since even Superman can’t be everywhere at once, but a big, noisy bank heist? An armored car hijacking? Odds are the guy in the cape is going to step in and ruin all those carefully laid plans. And what about the really massive stuff? Huge alien attacks, giant robotic armies, whatever sort of new death ray Lex Luthor built in his garage this week, they always target the one spot on the planet that has an essentially invulnerable, super-strong demigod protecting it. And this happens every single week!

Folks, wake up! This guy has not lost a fight in over fifty years (Doomsday doesn’t count) and whatever you have planned, he’s going to most likely stop you. You’ve spent months working on your big plan: scheduling timetables, recruiting henchmen, securing weapons– why waste all that effort? So here’s what you do: Take your dastardly master plan and just relocate it. Rob a bank in Iowa. Land your invading alien horde in Wyoming somewhere. Use your mind ray to enslave Topeka or something. Your odds of success are going to increase astronomically. Oh, sure, he might still get wind of what you’re up to and try to put a stop to it, but he’s got travel time, has to check the map first, there’s air traffic to consider… It might just buy you enough time to get away.

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I think it’s fantastic that Lunesta, the sleep-aid drug, designed and marketed to help you fall asleep, lists among its side effects: May cause drowsiness. Well, yeah, I would really hope so. That’s what people are paying for, after all.

Even better, the asthma drug Advair warns patients that taking it “may increase the chance of asthma-related death.” Well, that’s a nice change from all those regular medicines that try to prevent your disease from doing more harm to you.

I think my personal favorite, though, has to be the anti-depressant drug Zoloft. Not for the side effects, but for the actual effects. They come right out and say this in their ads: “Although the cause is unknown, depression may be linked to a chemical imbalance in the brain. Zoloft may help to correct this imbalance.” So they are admitting that a.) they don’t know what causes the problem b.) they might have kind of an idea about something related to the problem (c.) their product might affect what they think may be related to the problem although it doesn’t outright cure it and d.) they’re not entirely sure what, if anything, their product does.

Of course, if you want to talk side effects, Zoloft lists “sexual dysfunction” as a possibility. Great, take a guy who’s already depressed and make it so his junk doesn’t work. The suicide rate’s going to skyrocket.

The miracles of modern marketing… er, medicine.

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Somebody explain crying to me. What sort of weird-ass biological response is this? I’m sad, so therefore my eyes are going to produce a surplus of tears, which will then spill down my face. If I’m really sad, I’ll produce not only an excess of tears, but also of mucus, and I’ll breathe in hitching little gasps. Also, my face and eyes will turn really red, I won’t be able to see, and my expression will border on the horrific.

What is this? Is there some sort of survival mechanism I’m overlooking here? Was the original intent that if you were cornered by a sabretooth tiger, terrified you were going to die, you’d cry and blubber, and he’d be so disgusted by the display that he’d wander off to find something more dignified and less damp to eat?

And where did “boo-hoo” come from? Nobody says that when they cry. “Wah” I can see, but “boo-hoo?” See? The entire process makes no sense. I say it’s time we just stop doing it.

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In any televised news story about a family pet, there will be at least one shot of the animal sniffing the camera lens.

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I’m sure you’ve heard this said a time or two in your life. Someone says they won’t do or sell something, “not for all the tea in China.” And I’ve never fully understood the logic. First off, I wasn’t offering you tea, nor any other drinkable dried-leaf beverage. And I certainly wasn’t offering China’s tea. I have no right to China’s tea. It’s China’s, and currently my trade relationship with that country is approximately zero.

But the real mystery to me is why anyone would want all the tea in China in the first place. This doesn’t sound like a good thing to have. It’s a storage nightmare to begin with. You’d have to rent out so many U-Stor-Its that it would offset any financial benefit you might gain from your sudden tea windfall. That’s assuming you could even sell any of the tea. People are willing to pay for tea from China, but I think they might question buying a big bag of Bob’s Homegrown Tea out of the back of your van. And if you are in fact getting all the tea, that includes the immature plants as well, so you’re going to need roughly twelve million acres of acidic soil, a massive irrigation system, a full-time staff to maintain and harvest the plants, shipping facilities, and on and on.

So since they’re apparently not the most savvy of businesspeople, the next time someone tells you they won’t do something “for all the tea in China,” counter-offer with “half the maple syrup in Vermont,” or “roughly a third of the potatoes in Idaho.” They’ll likely come back with “three-fifths of the cabbage in California,” or “an amount not less than one-eighth the corn in Indiana.” With enough back-and-forth offers of food-based barter, you might eventually talk them down to a can of Pringles and a couple of kumquats.

If you’re feeling generous, throw in a box of tea.

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I find it odd that people will complain loudly and violently at the pumps about paying three dollars a gallon for gas, then go inside and drop two-fifty on a 64-oz Coke without batting an eye.

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Attention cell-phone slaves: The standard ring-tone that came with your phone is annoying enough. You do not need to compound the misery of those around you by loading more cutesy, “individuality-defining” sounds and songs onto the accursed devices. I do not need to be subjected to the theme from The Sound of Music that sounds like it’s being played by a musical greeting card. The original tune was bad enough.

And under no circumstances should any classical piece of music be used by a cell phone for any reason. If modern-day songwriters want to allow their creations to be bastardized into those hideous beeps to gain even more wealth off their mediocre talents, let them. But Beethoven’s Fifth is entirely inappropriate as a precursor to one of your friends calling to find out if you want to go hoist some brewskis later.

So leave your phones set to their factory ring settings. Or better yet, just leave them off.

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Whenever I hear about some major natural disaster somewhere that leaves thousands dead, and the news media jams all those human-interest stories down our throats about what people are doing to help cope with the devastation, I always wonder why they don’t talk to the undertakers. Here’s a group of people who are going to be swamped for the next few weeks, and I doubt they’ve got a lot of volunteers lining up to lend a hand. Just once I’d like to see an undertaker on the evening news saying, “That’s right, Carol. We’ve got just a whole bunch of bodies here, some without heads–they’re going to be hard to identify–and we need to prep each and every one of them. We’re out of freezer space and have no electricity anyway, so we’re putting bodies wherever we can find room. Even got a couple propped up in that broom closet behind me. We’re really short on embalming fluid right now as we weren’t expecting this kind of volume, so we’ve been using a mix of Vasoline and Windex and just kind of hoping for the best. I’ve been working eighteen, twenty hours a day, putting limbs back on, matching up parts, reshaping skulls, pulling and tagging organs. My team’s been killing themselves (sorry) and we’re making some headway, but there’s a long way to go yet.”

Come on, that’s at least as interesting as the guy handing out sandwiches.

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I find it hard to take anyone seriously who uses the phrase “super-duper” in a conversation.

Also, “rinky-dink.”

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Have you ever been dining with someone and they take a bite of something, then make this horrible, scrunched-up face? Their mouth kind of turns down at the corners while their eyes squeeze down to slits. They turn red, cords stand out on their neck, and they start beating on the table, chewing through sheer force of will until they finally swallow the offending food. Then they dive for their glass and drain whatever’s in it in three or four large gulps, liquid trickling out of the corners of their mouth in their haste to wash away the horrible taste. Then they sit there panting for a moment, trying to regain their composure and control their bile. Finally they look at you and say, “That was the most hideous, God-awful, fly-blown piece of rancid filth I have ever had in my mouth. Here, try some.” And you do!

I’ve decided I’m just going to take their word for it. Food, in general, shouldn’t make you cry.

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