Wednesday night was a bummer.
After working a twelve hour day, I stumbled through the door tired and thirsty. I tossed my briefcase and lunchbox onto a side table and collapsed into a chair in the dining room and started writing my Derby recap. Shortly thereafter, Roommate Nick’s delicious smells of dinner soon began to emanate from the kitchen, and I decided I better get some nourishment. What better way to satiate my immediate sugar necessity than with a nice tall glass of Orange Juice.
Let’s take a short pause from the narrative to describe my somewhat unusual/stupid method of getting myself a glass of juice. Are you familiar with Rick Richter’s Neutral-Lose principle? I think I’ve mentioned it before. It goes like this: Men often put themselves into situations where the best thing that could happen is nothing at all. Example: “OH MAN! I bet I can throw this cup of laundry detergent across the room into the laundry machine!” In this instance, the best thing that happens is Neutral: detergent in the machine – and of course the opposite event is a pure lose. Laundry detergent everywhere.
I follow this principle pretty much all the time – for example, whenever I get Orange Juice. I open the door, balance the glass on the door, and then pour my juice. Wednesday started off as normal. I placed the glass delicately on the refrigerator door, but just after I retrieved the juice bottle, I noticed that the iron was on in the living room. I promptly jogged over to the iron and unplugged it, but upon turning around I saw that the refrigerator door was closing. I had mere moments to dive across the foyer and catch the falling glassware.
I leaped as the glass started tumbling to the ground. I am disappointed to report that it shattered in my hand. Glass became lodged in my palm at four points, including a sizable gash in the fleshy part of my palm.
Blood? Everywhere.
I promptly put pressure on my palm to try and stop the bleeding, I sent a picture to Darcy M.D. who informed me that it wasn’t deep enough to warrant stitches or any professional medical treatment, and then I washed it in tap water tabasco sauce and wrapped it aggressively. A few hours later, the bleeding stopped!
And now I’m wounded, though I’m pleased to report that my bandages have been reduced from giant absorbant pads to normal bandaids. I’m also pleased to report that this has not influenced my guitar playing.
Has this convinced me to stop balancing glassware on the refrigerator door? The jury is still out.
You have to make some changes, my friend.
Thanks for the introduction to the Neutral-Lose principle, and holy crap is that hilarious.
Sorry about your hand, but at least the internet got some healthy LOL’s out of it.
I submit that you had two Neutral-Lose moments…
1st with the glass on the door.
2nd with DIVING ACROSS THE FOYER TO CATCH FALLING GLASS!
Also, continuity question: Was Nick in the kitchen making the delicious smells or had he wandered? I’m trying to visualize your flight path and whether you were going to land in his knees.
oooh, good question. The action was actually surrounding Second Fridge. Second Fridge is located in the foyer – not the kitchen. It would have been extra hilarious if I had done this in the kitchen and crashed into Nick resulting in all of us with gross mortal wounds.
SECOND Fridge?
So one fridge just for the food that MikeD needs?
Makes sense.
Jesse, we should have thought of that earlier!
I disagree with your example of the Neutral-Lose principle. If you were to get the laundry into the machine, it wouldn’t be truly neutral since the outcome is not simply detergent in the machine, because YOU would have been influenced also. You would feel awesome, which in part is positive. But if we dig deeper, it would still be NET negative, since in the future you’d think you had an aptitude for such things and it would surely encourage more stupidity – arguably far more than if you just missed the first time and deemed it “impossible”, as anyone who tries daring feats tells themselves in denial of the fact that they just suck at whatever it was they were attempting. Not only would you try it again (and in all likelihood fail), but you’d keep trying in order to prove to yourself (and your disbelieving friends) that you could at one time accomplish such a feat. So it’s more like “Lose now – Lose continuously later”, a.k.a. “no win”. Unless of course you video tape every stupid thing you do, which records miracle instances of success. In that way, this blog does a great job in helping you to avoid the no win condition.
To be fair though, putting OJ on the door of the fridge is truly pointless and does fall into the “Neutral-Lose” in my book.
Kinda like Kung FU party Tricks. Remeber the punching a watermelon? I sure do!
http://www.mikedidonato.com/2007/05/29/kung-fu-party-tricks-volume-2/
Then there was the one time the trick worked on the first try. kicking the marshmallow into your buddies mouth. Thats the only time I can think of any of them working as intended first time out.