As I stir the ice in my rocks glass and take a sip of my apple juice I realize that maybe, just maybe, I have gone soft as the world has thrown a copy of a copy of a copy into the ubiquitous kiln of time and hardened it into clay.

I pretend to have a hang nail to give me something to do and realize that there are a few original ideas left. For example we could:

*write a movie with such witty dialogue and snappy repartee that everyone laughs through the lack of plot and dubs it a cult classic (a term that perhaps ironically, perhaps sadly, has nothing to do with real cults.). think about releasing the film in black and white.>>

*take whatever is popular and overdone and do it again... perhaps combine ideas. In the contemporary, I am thinking something involving dragons, orphans (or children whose horrible parents turn out to not really be their parents, and life is not horrible, they are not a loser, they are actually very, very special), penguins, and pirates. Perhaps a dragon riding penguin who was raised by pirates --but his father was killed by the worst pirate of all -- who, naturally, turns out to actually have been the father. If white doves are worked in-- bonus.>>

*give a book a title so pretentious it is painful not to read it. The Best Book You've Never Read or This Book WILL Change Your Life jump to mind.>>

*put a girl with her nipples showing on the cover.>>

*put a guy with his nipples showing on the cover.>>

*write about misunderstood youth, wasted youth, or the journey toward growing up and finding oneself. Use an exotic setting or a dire circumstance. Bonus if you can invovle fantasy/magic without ever really explaining how this came to be. --Double bonus if you write at least three books --each one a cliff hanger promising to explain it all in the next book-- where nothing really happens...>>

*write a tv show where one episode leads into the next. Best if working with a title that implies a finite storyline (Prisonbreak, 24, Lost, How I Met Your Mother) yet the story never, freaking ends. >>

I strongly feel these shows would be more to the point by skipping the whole cliff-hanger ending with extremely intense music during the closing credits by just rolling footage of a guy in a leather bomber jacket water skiing and jumping over a shark.>>

*Choose letters of the alphabet and title a book after each one. Ex: S is for Sue Grafton is an overpaid hack. >>

*Use numbers to come up with extremely creative titles for a series of high-stakes, face paced, thrillers with canned dialogue and action sequences as realistic as Ashlee Simpson's nose. Ex: 1st Response, 2nd Wind, 3rd Time's a Charm, 4 rhymes with Whore...>>

*Save all your internet chats (or myspace messages) for a year. Copy and paste them into a document, then organize it graphically so that each page looks like your web browser... and force a storyline out of it. Better yet steal these same year's worth of message from a 15 year old girl. >>

*Write a pile of crap that works best as a movie, include nudity, and wait for someone to buy up the rights.>>

*Use an excessive dose of sarcasm and cynicism with everything you write.




And as I wind down I wonder if I ran out of steam, if my juice ran out of punch, and if this train ever truly reaches its destination --assuming there was a heading when she berthed.     

First I'd like to thank Before The World Ends Productions for supporting and promoting The Worst Case Scenarios. We've been putting a lot of effort into making the small amount of comedy that we've made thus far, and even so it has been a fun journey. As I was looking at the website today I started wondering if those visiting were aware of what a worst case scenario is. Many people may see the site, see our comedy, or even just hear about something we've done and think they know what a worst case scenario is, but I wanted to make sure that everyone is on the same page, and that everyone knows exactly what a worst case scenario truly is. I watch a lot of television, and I also watch a lot of movies. While watching all this filmed entertainment you see a lot of the same jokes played out over and over again. One joke that is played out a lot is the white upper class family having a daughter that brings home a black guy. Ha, ha, funny, the guy doesn't fit into what they are used to! That's hilarious! One might even say, "lol ; )". Not me, I wouldn't say that. I would say, "I hope something funny happens, like this guy robbing the whities, or maybe raping the dad." While watching one of these movies I thought that some people might get confused into thinking this is a worst case scenario, but it's not, this is simply an uncomfortable situation. A worst case scenario is something like freshman year of college when a friend of mine took some squid and hid it under one of the drawers in my bed while my roommate and I were out of town for the weekend. As we entered the dorm, from the other end of the building, we could smell something strange in the air. I was thinking that one of the Hawaiians in my hall was cooking their nasty smelling home cooking, and as we walked towards our hall I could tell that it was one of the girls living near me. With every step you could actually feel the stink becoming a part of you. As I recall the worst thing was when I opened the door and stepped inside. It felt like being punched with a sack full of dead animal. My roommate actually threw up as we entered the room. Immediately I went upstairs to my friend's room (which unknowingly to me was the one who had actually put the squid under my bed) and told him about how it smelled in my room. I could still smell the stink as I sat telling him how great his prank had worked, and I went the extra step of spraying his cologne in my mouth because it actually tasted like I had eaten road kill. To this day this is my least favorite experience. The smell stayed for months even though he admitted what he had done and spent hours scrubbing everything in the room. It wasn't until another friend dropped a full bottle of Jose Cuervo that broke and mixed together with the dead animal aroma to smell of a closed down mexican restaurant. That my friend is a worst case scenario. I'd love to say that was the last of these occurrences, but alas, my life is full of these kinds of situations. If you have a worst case scenario you'd like to get off your chest, feel free to let me know, I'd love to hear about it.

Somewhere in our evolutionary scale there was a person who invented the faux sideburn. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably have one and think it is a real sideburn. What I'm talking about is the long hair that comes down from about your ear level and hangs down as if it were a sideburn. This is not okay. You see it a lot on women who choose to have short hair (more on that in a moment) and you also see it a lot on young people who can't grow sideburns, but the most prominent place that I've seen it recently is on "emo" people. I've actually been seeing it more and more on "adults" and I'm wondering who said that it was an okay thing to do? If you can't grow a sideburn, let alone two, you should just deal with it, there is no growing your hair long and pretending you have sideburns. This action reminds me of the Sierra Mist commercial where the guy has a beard comb over. What would possess you to think this is okay? Listen emo guy, I feel for ya, you're probably the only person in the world that life has shit on, and I know that must suck, because no one else has ever had their heart broken, or had uncaring/mean/violent/abusive parents, or simply parents who did not understand them, or didn't get their music, or whatever the fuck you're so "fuck the world" (although you would probably say "ftw") about, but there is no need to subject he rest of the world to looking at your poor excuse for sideburns. A person's hair says a lot about them, and as you are always saying you are being pigeonholed, maybe you shouldn't pigeonhole yourself into the douche bag category right off. On to the women who have this hairdo. Listen, ladies, I love ya, every single one of you, but having a man's haircut isn't helping your case. Realistically there are very few women who can pull of the "man cut" and each of them is divinely attractive. So, when you see a picture in a magazine of the most beautiful women with this mando, don't think it works the same for everyone. If you are unattractive, and especially if you sort of look like a man anyway (as most women I've encountered that have the mancut do) don't go to the extreme and make your sexuality even more ambiguous. it sucks that for some reason you were dealt a card that makes you a Shim, but you have to deal with that the best way you can. The responsibility lies on your shoulders to figure out how to make yourself look like an attractive woman, and to let people know what you are, don't put on camouflage. Finally I want to say to the kids with F.S., don't worry, there is help for you. There is a new invention called the razor, or even scissors, or even just ask your barber to hit those up too and you will be saved the embarrassment of living with F.S. If I haven't been clear enough yet, let me just say, no one is fooled by your sidetrickery.