The Prisoner's Dilemma

Hey team so today I was sitting inside of a Starbucks working on my infinitely recursive screenplay about working in a Starbucks and I was having an intriguing conversation with myself.

"Hey," I said, "I've got an interesting an wonderful paradox for you."

"A most ingenious paradox?" I asked.

"Yes, a most ingenious paradox." I replied.

"But I wasn't born on a leap year"

"What?"

"Nevermind, what is your paradox?"

"Okay," I said, "if you were tasked with being on a firing squad and you had to execute a prisoner, when would you shoot?"

I thought carefully for a second. "I guess I would shoot last out of all the executioners."

I laughed. "Excellent!" I love it when people figure out my riddles. "Now why would you choose to shoot last?"

"Well, I suppose I would want to be the last person to shoot because they would most likely be dead by the time my shot burrowed into them. This helps me out, morally speaking, because I would be the least likely to have killed the prisoner."

"Exactly!" I yelled, getting even more excited. "But here comes the issue. What if all the guards know they should shoot last?"

"Well," I scratched my chin, deeply in thought, "I guess nobody would shoot at all since they would all be trying to be the last of the group to shoot the prisoner!"

"Correct once again!"

"And if that were the case the prisoner can be content knowing he will never be executed!"

"Oooh, no, no, not at all." I said in disbelief. "The prisoner will be constantly terrified with the knowledge that his death could, nay, will be imminent!"

"But wait," I said, "that can't be. We will all be vying for the golden opportunity to shoot him last. Nobody will shoot."

"Aren't you forgetting the most important element in this fine doozy of a situation? People are jerks, and the prisoner knows this! It's only a matter of time before the charade of moral responsibility is dropped and the truly horrible nature of humanity is revealed"

"Aha just like in that one book I read"

"Which book?"

"I don't know, pick one. You've got like a 50 percent chance that's the theme." I said, sipping my mocha latte supreme baha fajita in a very hip manner.

"Oh, right."

We sat in awkward silence for a few long moments. I gazed into my eyes and I could tell I was deep in thought.

"That's a helluva paradox, friend." I nodded happily, completely oblivious to the incredulous stares of every single customer at Starbucks. Clearly they were interested in my screenplay.

Look at this existentialism I could spend hours breaking this down

Hey team life can sometimes be difficult as a robot working on an assembly line. I sometimes feel saddened by the fact that I don't seem to have any purpose in life other than to create things for others. Although it does seem to be a common theme in many sappy Christmas specials that it is better to give than to receive and that everyone feels better by making others feel better, but we autonomous limbs really need to feel loved sometimes too.

So I turned to Jeff the assembly line worker next to me who is a nice man in his 40s with 3 kids and lives a decent although blue collar life and said "Jeff, do you ever sometimes stop and wonder if you could do more with your life? Like, seriously, take everything to the next level and uproot yourself from the factory floor and go write a screenplay and live your dreams or something?"

Jeff turned to me and said "Hey I don't think you can talk"

"Oh yeah hahaha whoops I forgot" I replied and went back to my work.

You should always derive major life lessons from dream sequences

Hey team so last night I was asleep and having what I could only describe as an attempted nightmare. There was some sort of horrible ghastly demon thing that was following me and telling me horrible repressed truths about myself that I know are true but refuse to admit because it's the only way I can feel good about myself.

Fortunately for me, however, I seemed entirely disinterested in all the horrible ghouls and creatures wandering around. I just sat there, humming along gaily and I could tell the evil spirits were getting frustrated. Eventually they had no choice but to give up and leave me alone entirely.

So the moral of the story you should take away from this kids is that apathy is the best weapon towards anything. Bullies? Ignore 'em until they go away! Psychotic evil dictators? If you don't give them any attention, they'll get bored and find someone else to pick on! Crazed Viking warriors pillaging your town? Just sit on the corpses of your family and sing a merry tune!

Papers and copiers and printers and faxes oh yes!

Hey team I want to tell you all a story about my crazy office life I assure it is much more exciting than water coolers and fax machines and staplers it is a story of excitement and romance and comedy all mixed up into some wretched teen comedy starring Michael Cera.

So anyway I working diligently at my desk watching a bootlegged copy of Judge Judy season 143 episode 982 the one where Mon'ique is suing her boyfriend Ba'roque because she gave him money to  paint their house but instead he ending up sleeping with prostitutes and quite honestly I don't blame the man it was a legitimate mistake to make and could have happened to anyone. After the episode I go back and count my dry-erase markers like I do every day and I noticed the most horrible thing: one of them was missing.

I knew exactly who did it, too. The only culprit could have been my office mate, who must have stepped in to play the prank on me while I had briefly ducked under my desk for my mid-late-afternoon nap. Now we all like to have a lot of fun and mess around all the time but this had gone way to far and I decided to get my revenge on him by sawing his desk in half.

Content with my work and not particularly phased by the convenient placed and necessary power tools I headed off to lunch. As I made my way down the hallway, I ran into my office mate. I tried to avoid him, but given that he is actually a hole in the fabric of space and time he is rather large and difficult to maneuver around.

Now obviously you are asking yourself how I ended up working with a hole in the fabric of space and time instead of say, a human or a relatively competent chimpanzee or dolphin. You see we were put in our small, out of the way office because those evil people over in HR decided that we were both terrible at dealing with customers and fellow employees so we should work well away from the rest of society. I don't exactly see how I fit in with Devin (that's the hole's name, you jerk) but that is okay I am making the best of my situation.

So anyway Devin stops and hands me my dry erase marker and says "Sorry for borrowing it buddy but it was needed in a parallel dimension for most of the morning its mother was sick and dry erase markers are like chemo there" and I nodded and suddenly felt an emotion I have hardly ever experienced. I think it is called remorse. I had remembered what I had done to Devin's desk and felt terrible. I had to keep him away from the office until I could right what was wrong.

"So Devin!" I said quickly, turning him around, "how about we go and get some lunch together?" He hesitated but agreed and fortunately I quickly remembered that Devin was a vegetarian so we couldn't go to the slaughterhouse like I usually did for lunch. "Okay I'm going to go gnaw on the bushes outside for a while" I said, while I quietly congratulated myself for coming up with a great vegetarian meal on such short notice.

Devin seemed okay with it and came out and starting gnawing on the bushes with me. He was getting into it and so I snuck back inside and ran back to the office where, to my surprise, there was a big party of people there with a cake for me! Devin walked in and said "we knew we could set you off by taking that marker so that we could throw you a birthday party" and we all celebrated and ate carrot cake which was delicious and I was so happy.

See everything always works out if you just do whatever you feel like doing with no thoughts about the consequences.

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