Snappy answers to stupid candy wrappers

I’ve been too long absent from my Hoffman Lens duties. Between a huge writing project and the usual ebb and flow, I just haven’t been particularly Lens-y lately. However, while I was searching for something else I ran across something I wrote some time ago and never posted. It seemed like it would make a good Lens, so here it is.

At the time I wrote this, Dove chocolates came in foil wrappers that had “inspirational” thoughts printed on the insides. I wasn’t sure if they were intended to inspire me to start a paper route or jump off a bridge, but what they actually brought me mindful of was “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” a regular feature of Mad Magazine back when I was a kid.

In “Snappy Answers,” someone would ask a stupid question – “Is it raining outside?” – and then the soaking wet party would have a choice of barbed replies: “No, I’m participating in National Walk Around Soaking Wet Day” or “Rain? Thank heavens! I thought this was something else” or “No, God is crying because He just realized that He created an idiot.”

Then at the bottom Mad always included a blank so you could come up with your own snappy answer. A friend of mine has the best solution: the direct reply. “Is it raining outside?” “Yes, it is raining outside.” Save some work.

As I’m generally not fond of the bumper-sticker wisdom approach to life, I thought perhaps I’d treat the bonbons’ bon mots to a little snappy answering. I apologize in advance for the obscure media references that crop up here and there.

 

Linger over chocolate longer

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

Be your own valentine

Mmm, so what did you have in mind? Take myself out for a candlelit dinner? Maybe go by myself to a chick flick? Get myself drunk? Go home, dress up in lacy undergarments, have sex with myself all night long, then forget to call myself the next day? Or should I just buy myself some more chocolates?

Share a secret

John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a cabal of right-wing extremists with ties to U.S. intelligence agencies. Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?

Make someone melt today

Okay, but it’s gonna take a lot of hydrochloric acid if you want the job done right.

Chocolate always loves you back

As opposed to caramel, which never even bothers to give you a reach-around

Live your life with an attitude of gratitude

Make that one up yourself? Wait, I’ve got another for you. Taco Bell, it’s from hell.

Sleep under the stars tonight

I got this one in a bag of Valentine’s Day Dove chocolates. Perhaps this was actually intended for some Southern Hemisphere market where February isn’t the middle of the goddamn winter. Maybe I can wiggle out of this by pointing out that the stars are constantly all around us (even when we can’t see them), so really I don’t have any choice but to sleep under them (and over them and between them and so on).

Share a sunset

No, I think I’m going to keep the next sunset to myself. So this evening I’m the only one who gets to look at the setting sun. Do you hear me, everyone? Don’t you dare look at my sunset!

Watch the sun come up

But what if the sunrise belongs to someone else? We’ve already established that the sunset this evening belongs exclusively to me. What if somebody out there already claimed dibs on tomorrow morning? I’d be horning in without even knowing it.

Hug someone today

And then when you get sued for sexual harassment or arrested for assault, you can always say, “The Dove wrapper told me to do it.”

Memo to self: you’re the best!

Do the dumb things I gotta do. Touch the puppet head. (Wait, what?)

Don’t think about it so much

Fine advice from a company that manufactures little glops of grease and sugar.

Watch reruns, they replay your memories

I don’t even know what to say about this, except perhaps to point out that it’s a run-on.

Smile. People will wonder what you’ve been up to.

Particularly if you can learn to smile like Anthony Perkins at the end of Psycho.

Whisper in the dark

Didn’t H.P. Lovecraft write a horror story about this?

Flirting is mandatory

What is this, the corporate slogan at the company that holds the record for most sexual harassment complaints?

There’s a time for compromise … it’s called “later”

This must be the aforementioned company’s primary negotiation strategy

It’s definitely a bubble bath day

Looks like I picked the wrong day to give up bubble baths.

Discover yourself

Yep, there I am.

Listen to your heartbeat and dance

Me. Me and. Me and my. Me and my rhythm box. It never eats. It never shits. It is pre-programmed. So what? So what? So whaaaaaaaaaaaa (Wait, what?)

Go to your special place

Oh, I’m in my special place right now.