This Is a Book

by Demetri Martin

  Some Possible Careers

  Drug mule

  Bouncer

  Reality TV personality

  Exterminator

  Network television executive

  Human shield

  Civil War reenactor

  DMV employee

  Dental hygienist

  Conclusion

  This Career Assessment Profile has included a lot of helpful information, which you should take some time to process. If you do your best to apply your strengths and address your non-strengths you will fulfill your career and personality potential. Also, given your particular profile, it is important that you try your hardest not to kill anyone.

  More Statistics

  Every year drunk driving is responsible for over 20,000 stories that start with “Bro…”

  “Yes” actually means “No” 100% of the time, when the question is “Can I give you some advice?”

  For the price of just one cup of coffee you can feed a child a coffee.

  4 in every 8 math teachers think that they should be 1 in every 2 math teachers.

  Europe contains more than 85% of the world’s armpit hair.

  The leading killer of daredevils is the ground.

  The ces that this statistic makes sense are 1.2% in 5/9 out of π

  In a blind taste test, 100% of the people tested preferred the taste of things that were not just shoved into their mouth by surprise without any warning.

  Surveys indicate that 1 in every 1 person is you.

  Over 370 trillion points are earned in pinball every year, which totals less than 1 impressive achievement per year.

  If every person took 5 minutes less time in the shower, then people who take showers that are only 5 minutes long would start to smell.

  Anvils appear 1000% more frequently in cartoons than in real life.

  The average American household contains 2.5 television sets and 4.5 idiots.

  1 in every 20 people is double-jointed. The other 19 really don’t care or need to do a demonstration.

  It is safer to fly in a plane than it is to fly in a car.

  Excerpts from My Often-True Autobiography

  “I love you,” she whispered into my ear. I was quiet for a moment. Then I turned to her and said, “I love you too, darling,” but I kind of burped it. It was all in one long burp. I could have done more words with it too, but I decided to cut it short. I remember the look in her eyes. It wasn’t a good look.

  There’s an old Russian saying that goes some way or another. I don’t know it. And I don’t speak Russian. But I sometimes think about it and wonder if it is relevant to what I am going through at the time. But, probably not. I mean, what do Russians know about hunger, anyway?

  As soon as I jumped out of the airplane, I realized I had forgotten my parachute. Thank God we were still on the runway.

  When people said, “Why does your grandma have a mustache?” we’d say, “Because she’s Italian.” And when they said, “And why the top hat?” we started to realize that there was something wrong with Grandma.

  There I was, hanging from the side of the mountain with Eric dangling below me. I knew that if I cut the line he would die, but if I didn’t we would both die. I thought for a long moment and decided that I would try, with all of my might, to pull him up. I wasn’t sure if I had enough strength left, but he was my friend and it was do or die. I took a deep breath and then, after quickly securing a verbal promise from him for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, I pulled him up to safety. Afterward, I knew Eric was grateful that I had saved his life, even if he was too proud to tell me.

  And suddenly everything made sense. I knew what I had to do. I needed to quit my job. But before I could do that I needed to get a job to quit. Ideally, one that would suddenly make everything make sense when I quit it.

  “Dad,” we pleaded, “can we keep him?”

  He smiled and said, “Keep him? Hell, we’re going to eat him.”

  I was talking to this guy at a party and he said, “ ‘Can’t’ is not part of my vocabulary.”

  I said, “Wow. You’re not going to believe this, but something impossible just happened.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You just exceeded your vocabulary, at the beginning of that sentence you said there.”

  Then someone got punched. I think it might have been me.

  I used to have this poster on my bedroom wall that said, “I am me. I can do anything.” Sometimes I would look at it and think, “Poster, you are in for a rude awakening.”

  I hadn’t been home since the summer the synchronized swimming team drowned. It was tragic, but beautiful. Apparently, one of them got a cramp.

  Someone was in the house. I was terrified. I stood still. I knew in these situations that the best thing to do was to get out of there. You’re not supposed to try and fight. But at the same time, I really wanted to take the stereo. Plus, judging from the pictures of the home owner I saw on his desk, he seemed pretty small.

  We started to see less and less of each other. And that’s when I knew it was quicksand.

  It was just after I turned twenty that my parents told me I was not adopted.

  We used to take some of the smaller animals the taxidermist had stuffed and put them back into the woods. This would lead the other animals in the woods to think those animals had “attitudes.” You’d see a forest squirrel go up to one of the stuffed ones and try to be friendly. The stuffed one would just stare off into space. Then to see the look on the other squirrel’s face… it was great. Years later, the taxidermist ed. We found out he was buried. I always thought that was a wasted opportunity.

  Winter became Spring and Spring became Summer. Then Summer became Fall and Fall turned to Autumn. By the time Autumn turned to Winter I realized that there had been a synonym in the seasons.

  He shoved me. I shoved him back. The bar became silent.

  “You got a problem?” he said, almost bursting out of his T-shirt.

  “Do you want to step outside?” I replied.

  “Let’s go!” he said. He had a murderous look in his eye and a murderous earring in his ear, too.

  A minute later we were outside. My veins were coursing with adrenaline. The crowd spilled out behind us, like some sort of jelly that likes to watch fights.

  He held up his fists. “All right, you little—”

  “Do you want to step more outside?” I asked. I pointed to the awning just above us. “We’re not fully outside yet… because of the awning.”

  He looked up at the awning. “Um… Okay.”

  We moved over a little more, out from under the awning.

  “Come on. Bring it on, little man,” he said as he took a step towards me.

  “Do you want to step over there?” I said.

  He paused, and said, “We’re outside now. What’s the problem?”

  “Oh, what are you, scared?” I replied.

  “No. I’m not scared. Let’s go over there.”

  We walked over there. The crowd followed.

  “Now get ready to die,” he said, stretching his enormous torso like a gorilla.

  “No, I meant do you want to step over there?” I explained. I pointed. He looked.

  “Just a little farther,” I continued, still sounding pretty threatening. I knew this tactic wouldn’t work for much longer, but by now we were pretty close to my car.

  “All right. But that’s it,” he warned.

  “Fine,” I said.

  We moved again. The crowd was ready for the fight. He looked at me. I looked at him and said, “What’s that over there?” Then I ran for my car.

  I can’t tell you how much I wish I had left my car unlocked that night.

  From what people tell me, I did manage to get to the car door for just a moment.

  Camping with the family was a lot of fun, especially when we did it on purpose.

  She was sexy. She had long hair and long legs. She had long arms, too. Her legs and hair were the parts that
I found most attractive. Now that I think about it, her arms were really, really long. I don’t remember her name, because everyone called her by her nickname, Ape Arms.

  You never forget your first kiss. And that’s what makes it so hard to forgive my uncle.

  The Word Awards

  The annual Word Awards were held last night at Vernacular Pavilion. Here are some of the ceremony’s highlights.

  The word allege was honored for being the all-time most overused word in television news. The winner allegedly beat the second-place word, suspect, by a wide margin. Allege denied allegations that it won only because reporters are allegedly too stupid to think of other words to use. Allege thanked all the reporters for their “insane repetition” of it, and confirmed allegations that it will continue to be overused by people who work in the news media, many of whom allegedly don’t even know what allege means.

  Whom received a Lifetime Achievement Award for its special service to pompous assholes. Whom extended a special thanks to people who “correct others who mistakenly use ‘who,’ ” saying, “I dedicate this award to them, without whom this would have not been possible.”

  Sesquipedalian shared the award for Most Autological Word with autological. The winners beat out fellow nominees, letters and nominee for the prize. Winner was, once again, barred from competition for being too presumptuous. Presumptuous was not available for comment but managed to irritate people nonetheless.

  The Ensemble Award for the Least Frequently Used Combination of Words went to I was wrong, which was presented by last year’s winner I have a drinking problem.

  The word word was honored for officially regaining its intended meaning after spending more than two decades in hip-hop where it has meant “yes, that’s correct.” Word began its embarrassing stint there in the late twentieth century when young rappers paired it with up (e.g., “Are you going to come correct?” “Word up.”) and soon thereafter started to appear without up. Up, meanwhile, had been recruited with in by the very same community, who used it to say things like “I was all up in there” for reasons that are still unclear. <

  The Award for the Word Used Most Frequently When It Is Not Actually Justified went to awesome, which narrowly beat out genius. Many were surprised that literally was not nominated, literally.

  The Parlance Memorial Award, given to the word that is most frequently whispered, went to cancer again this year, continuing its remarkable streak.

  Your and you’re performed a short comedy routine about just how stupid people on social networking sites are. Yore, who is famously reclusive, delighted the assembled crowd with a surprise cameo during the routine.

  The night’s best-dressed word was slanted, who fittingly arrived on the red carpet in italics.

  Albeit won the Award for the Word Least Likely to Appear in a Tattoo.

  The Award for Best Comedy Word went to cahoots, beating out crowd favorite fart and longtime champion titmouse.

  The ceremony was briefly interrupted by a loud group of nucular protesters, who demanded that nucular be recognized as a word. Spotted among the protesters were idiot and supposebly (who, like nucular, is not a word but is nonetheless uttered every day by many, many people in America).

  The Vernacular Lifetime Achievement Award went to invent for coming up with itself.

  Finally, the coveted Onomatopoeia Prize went to shphlaah for the sound of a fat man accidentally sitting on a calzone.

  Goodbyes

  I am bad at goodbyes. It’s a problem I’ve had for as long as I can remember.

  My parents once told me that even before I could talk I had trouble with goodbyes. As a baby, when someone said goodbye to me, I would stare back at them and loudly fill my diaper as I crawled onto their lap.

  When I was a toddler my parents began to put me in the basement whenever it came time to say goodbye. If they didn’t, when somebody said goodbye I would panic, do a little dance, and then run full-speed into the wall. I don’t remember doing this. I was too young. But the permanent marks on the wall (and on my head) are pretty good evidence that this happened.

  My mother and father tried to explain away my goodbye difficulties as a phase, but things only got worse when I entered elementary school. I became even more agitated during goodbyes, often yelling directly into people’s faces and then breaking down in tears.

  By the time I got to high school, I had developed a full-blown problem. If someone even uttered the word “goodbye” I would tackle them. I earned a reputation for being not only clingy but also “holdy” (because once I had the person on the ground I would hold them as hard as I could).

  When I left for college I didn’t know how to say godbye to my family, so I just snuck out of the house the night before while everyone was sleeping. I think my parents understood that I needed to do that, even if they were a little hurt by it. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to ruin that goodbye after I ran into our dog, Buster, on my way out of the house. Saying goodbye to Buster proved to be so difficult that I ended up throwing him directly at my parents, who were sleeping.

  It’s strange that I am so bad at goodbyes. I mean, no one else in my family has a problem with them. I have an aunt who has trouble with “see you soons,” but that’s about it. What’s even stranger is that I’ve always been very good at hellos.

  If I’m meeting someone for the first time I can simply say “Hello.” No problem. And I can also change it up pretty easily if the situation calls for it. For example, if I’m meeting an attractive woman for the first time I’ll say, “Helll… llloo” in a very seductive way as I look her body up and down and slowly walk around her. Incidentally, in my experience it’s amazing how many women are bad at hellos, often turning a hello immediately into a goodbye right after a man has skillfully greeted and circled them. But I guess that’s no surprise when you consider how stuck-up a lot of women are.

  Anyway, I thought that waving might be a good way to get better at goodbyes, so I focused on that for a while. But even waving presented challenges. Sure I can easily wave hello (I mean who can’t?) but when I try to wave later on in the conversation, as a goodbye, I get tripped up and just end up saying “hello” again.

  Sometimes, to avoid the inevitable awkwardness, instead of saying goodbye I’ll just keep the conversation going. Then I don’t have to deal with the goodbye at all. That’s not always the best tactic, though. I once ended up getting married because of it. When the relationship finally did end, the best I could do was “toodles.” Man, that definitely did not help things when our divorce went to trial.

  I saw a therapist for a while. Whenever I went to see him we would stand in his office and say goodbye to each other for the entire session, which inevitably put a lot of pressure on the end of every session. It often made leaving his office very confusing. Part of the problem, he told me, is that I suffer from what is called “separation anxiety” coupled with a more serious condition called “separation aggression.”

  While therapy didn’t cure me, it did help. I got pretty good at saying other things instead of “goodbye,” like “I’m going over there now” or “I am not going to stay here anymore.” I learned that if I make an announcement about the next thing I’m going to do, that works quite well (i.e., “I am now going to get into this taxi” or “I’m going to go into that bathroom now and take a dump”).

  Part of the problem is that I just can’t read situations that well. If we’re saying goodbye to each other, I don’t know if we should hug or kiss on the cheek, or just hold legs. I end up guessing. So far I’ve been wrong every time that I’ve guessed “hold legs.”

  My friend John is so good at goodbyes. He can say anything and it sounds right, like “Cheerio” or “Peace” or “I’ll see you in Hell.” That guy is prolific at goodbyes. Not me. I probably couldn’t even say goodbye to someone who was falling off a cliff. The best I could do is shrug and make a face like, “Well, what can you do about cliffs?”

  It’s not all bad though. When I want
to seem distant, not being able to say goodbye works well for me. One time I broke up with this girl and she said, “Goodbye.” I didn’t say anything. Then she said, “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I said, “No U-turns.” She walked away, thinking that I said something deep. But I was just reading a nearby sign out loud.

  People sometimes ask me what I’m going to say when it comes time to die. I honestly don’t know. I’ll probably go “Ughhh” and make believe that I died. And then, after everyone leaves, I’ll really die. But I bet by then our society will have robots that can help you say goodbye, or there will be some sort of self-puppeting thing you can hook up to yourself to do it for you.

  Hey, look! What’s that behind you?

  The End.

  Contents

  Front Cover Image

  Welcome

  Dedication

  How to Read This Book

  ONE