The Joe Pilato

Prediction: -t cuts funding to everything that doesn’t interest him -citizens donate to shore things up -t looks around at a cut budget with no consequences and declares himself the Best Businessman Ever

Imagine a cafe with board games on the shelf. A group of friends shows up, selects Monopoly, and starts a game. They round the board, buy things, make deals, etc. As each person leaves, they hand off their assets to friends who’ve joined them at the cafe. This goes on for some time. Now you show up. “Great,” you think. “I love Monopoly!” So they deal you in. You get the same amount of money as the beginning players did. But they don’t reset the board. The deeds are all bought. Massive capital has been built. The properties have been developed. The only remaining piece is the wheelbarrow. You try a few rounds but there’s nowhere safe to land. You make your measly salary each time around, and maybe you even land on Free Parking (with the house rule that you get the cash in the middle), but that cash is gone before long and you find yourself hoping for bank errors in your favor. The other players might even give you discounted rents to keep you and your salary in the game but there’s simply no way up. Any protests you make about fairness are met with disdain. “Hey,” they’ll say, “you were given the same resources as everybody else and we’re all playing by the same rule; we’re just making better use of what we have.” Sometimes I wonder who would end up on top if we flipped the board.

I’ve been rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender and just watched The King of Omashu, where we meet Bumi. Couple of things I didn’t notice before: three kids are charged with vandalism and brought before the king. The king! For vandalism! How crime-free is this city that you get brought before the most high court for smashing some cabbages? And during the meal that he throws them, Bumi mentions, apropos of nothing, that chicken skin is removed from drumsticks because his people were getting fat--this place is fucking crazy.

"Learning the ropes" seems innocuous until you realize the other way to say it is "getting the hang of things."

I've never in my life wanted to smoke a cigarette but I've always wanted to flick one. I've even been practicing--you should see me with a toothpick.

What if my cat-like reflexes are keeping me from meeting the love of my life in a round-the-corner hands-full crash? I can't be head over heels if I'm light on my toes.

Idea: an app that tracks celebrity body sizes so you know whose clothes you should be trying to buy off eBay.

Snapchat should allow tags on snaps so you can know if they'll be loud or nude or so cute that you'll go Awwwww in front of your coworkers.

I never worried what people were doing with remote controls until I started going to hotels that presented them in bags that said Fresh.