Friday, July 10, 2009

The Ben Franklin Effect

1. Do me a favor, will you? You will probably like me more, and I will like you more. Ask somebody to do you a small favor, and you are quietly manipulating them. Don't feel guilty about it either, Jew. "In the words of Benjamin Franklin, who famously observed the paradox and for whom it is named, 'He that has once done you a Kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.'"

2. Watch something on the Discovery Channel about the Human Body. Learn and forget the name of the fight/flight hormone, then research it only to find "adrenaline" which we all knew.

3. High fives with elbow gaze.

4. Awkward social situation- silence. Acknowledge it. "This is awkward silence, isn't it? Well, don't worry. I don't believe in awkward."

5. Think about Charlie Chaplin.

6. Run, scantily clad and preferably overweightly and unattractively, through a crowd of middle-schoolers in Oakland. Absorb the comments and laughter of 13-year old boys. Every once in a while, it's important to hold your face up to the distorted middle school mirror. That should be the only time you do this.

7. Make a found poem of conversations you overhear. Make sure it is a direct quote, not a paraphrase. Today's selection: "[All they got is] big cocks." (paraphrase) Is that the right way to use those brackets? I love using brackets in a quote.

8. Use brackets whilst paraphrasing a quote.

9. Create rough percentages of the smells around you. For example, the hallway at the Athol apartment in Oakland: 63% cat piss, 7% stale sausage, 5% sweat, 10% hipster vomit 5% generic urine, 10% sweet stench of homeless

10. Make a collage of tough bad-asses, or in the words of Amy Sedaris said, "Make a self-esteem collage using pictures of other people you wish you were."

11. See how many Oakland parking tickets you can accumulate.

12. Question everything.

13. Indulge in crushes. All is well.