First of all, I’m surprised I fooled so many of you yesterday. I’m a huge liar. You know this. I’m almost constantly lying. How can you tell if I’m lying? Well, you can’t. It’s because I’m sometimes telling the truth that I’m an even more effective liar. But really, you should have known.
That said, here’s a relatively truthful story about what happened to me yesterday.
I mentioned a while back that I’d be sampling beef and cheese lean pockets. And as a quick summary, beef is to me as a shotgun is to Kurt Cobain. Too soon?
Anyway, I quickly realized that the most punishing aspect of the focus group would not be the lean pockets, but would instead be my fellow focus group attendees. Their brain powers combined would barely qualify them to watch Dora the Explorer. I can see the group of them now, sitting in front of a television, three of them wetting their pants out of fear of the talking picture box.
We were given four whole lean pockets, one at a time, and told to eat as much as we could to get an accurate sample. As usual, I was doing my damnedest to mess with the results.
I was right in the middle of the group, so whenever the group leader would ask for opinions, I would listen carefully to what the other folks had to say (which I learned quickly was a pointless endeavor) before saying something completely opposite, and bringing up something out of left field.
For example, after tasting the first lean pocket, the comments went like this. See if you can guess which one is mine:
“The meat is too hard? Like, I think it should be softer? Like, not as hard? But more soft?”
“I like this one because it doesn’t taste like pizza.”
“Need more meat. More meat.”
“The cheese is too stringy. I like cheese to be stringy, but not really stringy, just a little stringy. But it was good. I loved it.”
“This doesn’t taste like a Philly Cheesesteak. I did not like it.”
“Did you put mayonnaise in these things somehow? I think I caught some mayonnaise in there. Oh god, I hope it was mayonnaise.”
“The beef is too pink.”
And finally, “This tastes like rubber.”
To which the group leader responded, “Tastes like rubber, or has the texture of rubber.”
“Oh, the texture. … And the taste.” I don’t think that participant knew what the word “texture” meant.
And so the taste test went on like that, my brain cells throwing themselves against the insides of my skull in a desperate attempt to escape the rampant, unbridled stupidity. I swear, if they could bottle stupidity like that, it would become a dangerous, dangerous weapon. Can you imagine all that concentrated stupid being used to wipe out the intellect of an entire country? They could probably call it American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. But I digress.
The one thing that kept me sane the whole time was the near constant supply of hilarious “that’s what she said” jokes running through my head. Almost anytime anyone said anything, it was funny. Just try it with the samples from above. I’ll wait.
But I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
Oh good, you’re back. What a terrible song. Anyway, you can see the potential for hilarity was high, and I was almost fooled into thinking the funniness would outweigh the bone-shattering, mind-crippling dumbness, but every time I would think the dumbness was over, one of the participants would say something like this:
“My favorite cheese is gouda, but I can’t ever find in anywhere.”
I wanted to smack her and say, “Really? Really? You can’t find gouda? That’s funny because I’ve seen gouda in every grocery store I’ve ever been to in my life. Ever. It’s not a fancy cheese. You get it in those shitty fucking Christmas meat and cheese gift baskets that are nice enough to say, ‘I was thinking of you’ but not nice enough to say ‘for more than twelve seconds’. I hate you. You’re an idiot.”
Eventually the session ended, we headed back out to the lobby at the front of the building, and we were given our compensation in the form of a check. Ten seconds later, my ass turned into a Howitzer and I pretended their toilet was the Luftwaffe as I launched a mighty blitzkrieg- hellbent on porcelain annihilation.
Wow. That was a lot of confusing war/feces/Nazi metaphors at the end there.
