Ninjas moved my cheese

On another note, did you know that if you wanted to say something funny, all you have to do is add the word “ninja”? For example, if the receptionist were to take a good message for you, you could tell her “Thanks, you’re like, a real ninja receptionist today.” She’d love it. She’d think it was funny somehow. Well, at least funnier than if you had left out the word “ninja”. Think of a sitcom idea with a ninja as the title character. Every week you can tune in to see the high jinx of Joe Bob, Redneck Ninja, or The Adventures of Gina: Dental Hygienist by Day, Ninja Assassin at Night! Ninjas are inherently funny. A real laugh riot.
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Did you know that For Better or for Worse could be dramatically improved if the last line of every strip were replaced with “I hate my life and I want to die.”? Without the “I hate my life..“ line, even having John Patterson wear “Ninja Dad” t-shirts wouldn’t help this sorry comic.
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I was told not to put off saving for retirement until tomorrow, because “tomorrow
never comes.” If that were the case, then why bother saving for retirement?

I saw a badly produced news clip of some woman asking around the streets of NYC about retirement savings. Everyone had a decent plan, but no one thought that anyone else had a plan. The clip didn’t have the self awareness to note that odd coincidence. Even the interviewer chick seemed unsure of why she was asking these people questions. It had the weight of your typical Cosmo article, where all the points presented were “researched” by asking four or five young, white collar women in Manhattan some vague and leading questions.

Cosmo mag contributor: “I have to write an article on women who took back their cheating boyfriends? Hey Paula, didn’t your boyfriend cheat on you?” “Yeah.” “Did you take him back?” “He’s good-looking and I’m a sucker.” She writes: 100% of women take back cheating boyfriends. …and those boyfriends should really have tried to go out with their ex-girlfriend’s co-workers instead.”

I find it interesting how people can divulge the intimate bedroom secrets to friends, but clam up, lie or remain exceptionally vague when it comes to dollars and sense. Monica Lewinsky thought she was keeping a secret because she blabbed to only ten other people, but how many people did she talk to about converting from a traditional to a Roth IRA?
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Do you know about “Who Moved My Cheese?” It’s some kind of management book. There’s a kid version that I got from the library, and the kids seem to enjoy it. I always want to read it as if it were the Brooklyn version “Who da F—k Stole My Friggin Cheese, G-d Dammit!!” The plot is that there are these mice looking around for this magical cheese, and when they find it and eat it, they have to get moving and find some more. It’s all about working hard to achieve your goals. The way it reads to me is a metaphoric euphemism for doing drugs.

When the characters find the magic cheese, they get unnaturally excited. When they eat it, they begin to hallucinate better lives for themselves. I laugh out loud at that page. One mouse dreams of playing with new friends at school. What, like the friends he has right there aren’t good enough? Another imagines scoring the winning goal in cheese soccer. No, they couldn’t just say plain old “soccer”. What makes me laugh at that one is that the goal is being scored by blowing past the hapless goalie, who is the mouse friend helping him find cheese. This cadre of cheese-quest mice is apparently an association by convenience, and not of mutual respect. There are statements made like “magical cheese makes you feel good about yourself” and other pushy things. Yeah, that’s what a heroin dealer would say, isn’t it?

So, after all the cheese is consumed, the type-A mice run back into the maze to look for new cheese, because they’re jonesing bad. What happened to actually accomplishing those lofty goals they dreamed about? Their entire lives revolve around finding cheese. Then they find it. Then they eat it and have big dreams. When it runs out, they go find more cheese. If you replaced the magic cheese with magic mushrooms, the book still works.