Wisdom and Advice

I'm a grad student and my former advisor told a story about getting frightened by a life-size cardboard cutout of Taylor Swift while staying with family. Then we fell out hard, like real hard, like I said I thought sexism and racism were affecting my experience of grad school and he thought that I was directly threatening to sue him, and now all I can think of is making my own life-size cardboard cutout of Tay-Tay and hiding it somewhere he'll find it. How do I exorcize myself of this need for vengeance? It's not fair to me, to him, or, of course, to Taylor Swift.
— Can't Just Shake It Off

I think you are asking the absolute wrong person this question because my advice is: do it. DO IT. The only way out is through. If you feel that you absolutely must not make a life-sized cardboard cutout of Taylor “Surprisingly Tall” Swift, then consider making 100 very small ones and hiding them all over his world. Under his windshield wipers, through his mail slot, in every drawer of his desk at work. Inside his pillowcase so that when he lies down there’s a strange sensation under his head and he has to reach his hand into the dark fabric pocket he sleeps on at night, and who’s in there? It’s Taylor, motherfucker, she is EVERYWHERE.

Are tapeworms VHS or Beta?
— Cobwebs Cobwebs

8-track: kind of obsolete, but still charming.

What if a law passed worldwide that no more buildings could be made? Like, the number of buildings that the world has, that's it, that's the end. No additional construction on buildings to make them bigger either, but you can build up. And you can make buildings better. But if you destroy a building, that's it forever. What If?
— Latitude Brown

I give it like five years until 99% of the buildings in the world are GONE. Between earthquakes and hurricanes and floods and wildfires and bombs and kaiju, buildings get destroyed all the time. The only buildings that would still be around as of 2030 would be fucking castles and IKEAs. Have you ever looked at an IKEA from the perspective of a giant monster that’s trying to destroy buildings? Impossible. Skyscrapers, now those are easy. They’re like toothpicks. They’re tall and fragile and just WAITING to get swiped by a huge lizard tail. But an IKEA? Low center of gravity, large solid base, full of stabilizing flat-pack furniture, compartmentalized to avoid the spread of fire and/or people? Bulletproof. Enjoy your future of huddling in the IKEA marketplace, trying to pillow your head on a pile of unthawed meatballs.

Just kidding. Only the highest echelons of society would get access to the meatball pillows.

What would be the worst “buy one get one free” sale of all time?
— A.M.

Tapeworms. Hear me out: I know it seems like a bargain, but what are you going to do with a second tapeworm? It’s not like you have the real estate to host them both at the same time, and it would be terrible manners to give the extra one as a gift because the recipient will certainly guess that you’re just trying to offload a spare. Besides that, why is your tapeworm retailer trying to move inventory that fast? What are they trying to hide? Where parasites are concerned, I say it’s worthwhile to pay full price every time.