Avery Edison's Internet Diary

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I got a sneak preview of the script for The Dark Knight Rises.

Annoying my girlfriend with questions about the hotel paradox.

• Can I ask you a hotel question?
• No, we don’t spy on the guests.
• That’s not the– You don’t? That’s disappointing.
• You had an actual question?
• Yeah. Yes. There’s this… I think it’s a paradox, a thought experiment about a hotel with an infinite number of rooms.
• Does it have a spa?
• Is that important?
• It can’t be a very good hotel if it doesn’t have a spa, or, like, a pool.
• Maybe it’s a boutique hotel. A small operation.
• A small, boutique hotel… with an infinite number of rooms.
• Fine. It has a pool.
• How big is the pool?
• Infinitely big, okay? Can I please get to the actual paradox.?
• You’re gonna need a lot of chlorine…
• So this hotel has an infinite number of rooms. And they’re all occupied.
• You mean the hotel is at full capacity.
• If you want to use hotel-talk, sure.
• Stands to reason if we’re talking about hotels…
• There is a hotel. With infinite rooms. And every single room is in use.
• (It’s at full capacity.)
• And another guest arrives, late in the evening.
• Uh oh.
• Exactly. Where do you put the new guest?
• Well, you can’t put him anywhere. All the rooms are taken.
• Actually, what you do is move the guest in room 1 to room 2, move the guest in room 2 to room 3, and so on, and then put the new guest into room 1. Clever, right?
• You’re never going to get all those people to switch rooms. Do you have any idea how much of a hassle that is?
• It’s just a thought experiment…
• Every room has to be cleaned between guests, you know. Just how many maids does this hotel have?
• Um, I suppose… an infinite number?
• Oh, so there’s one maid per room? That’s incredibly inefficient.
• How many rooms can a single maid clean, then?
• About seven, maybe eight.
• Okay, so the hotel employs an infinite number of maids, divided by seven.
• Make it “divided by three”, to account for shifts.
• Fine. But do you see the paradox? Although every room is full, that doesn’t mean that no more rooms are available.
• We’re still working on the premise that this new guest is going to be given a room?
• I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t.
• Uh, how about because if you want a hotel room, you make a reservation? You don’t just turn up on the night expecting to be accommodated. The staff has enough on their plate worrying about the infinite amount of pee in the pool.
• I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to a swimming pool.
• You and the hotel owner both.

Music and lyrics.

Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes: I think the song should be called “No Scrubs”.

Other TLC member: Scrubs? You mean, like, like the things doctors wear?

Lisa: No, no, a scrub is a guy who thinks he’s fly.

Other: Really? That’s a term people use?

Lisa: Oh, absolutely.

Other: I’m not sure about this…

Lisa: If it helps, a scrub is also known as a buster.

Other: It sounds like you’ve got a pretty good plan for this song. How about you just write it yourself and take all the credit?

Lisa: Really? You’d do that?

Other: I am more than happy to entirely disassociate myself from this work.

Notice of loans past due.

We would like to inform you that the following books are outstanding:

- Political Theory In The Post-Revolution Landscape
- Residual Fallout Levels (Years 2047-2057)
- Outliars: A Who’s Who Of Banished Rabble-Rousers And Exiled Heretics
- Organizing In Secret For Dummies
- Oxford-Cambridge-Thoreau Atlas (Now Includes Forbidden Sectors)
- The Dissident’s Cookbook
- So You’ve Decided To Represent Yourself In Court - Where You Need To Go, What You Have To Do, And Who You Should Bribe
- Lexicon Of Prison Slang
- Re-education Made Easy!
- The Art Of Escape – Vol. II: Secret Tunnels, Hidden Aircraft, Camouflage
- Surviving Isolation.
- Can I Eat That? Flora and Fauna of the Outer Sectors
- I Lived In Exile, And So Can You!
- Coping With Radiation Poisoning: A Survivor’s Guide

If these items are not soon returned, your borrowing privileges may be revoked and you may be subject to judgment by your sector authority.

This message dispatched with consent of Super-President Thoreau (hail Super-President Thoreau), checked for subversive materials by the Cloister of the Word, and printed on recycled paper.

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You ever do that thing where you spend way too long on a stupid idea?

See, because… graboids are… they’re pre-cambrian, so they would’ve… they would’ve been around when… dinosaurs…

I’ll be in my cubby.

“My Industry Is Dying!” (A Text-Based Video Game.)

You are in an office. In front of you is a memo informing you that profits are down, in part due to file-sharing.

- Angrily crumple memo.

You crumple the memo, the sharp paper making small cuts in your hands. The sting is cathartic, and you feel relieved. Still, the problem persists - how to get customers buying product once again?

- Alienate customers.

You sue many former customers, recouping some small amounts of cash. However, profits are still dwindling. How will you save your company?

- Alienate customers.

You have already alienated your customers. How will you save your company?

- Alienate cutomers.

You have alrea-

I haven’t read “Animal Farm”, but this is how I imagine it goes down.

Pig: Let’s overthrow the farmer, or something. I think Communism?
Other Pig: I bet we won’t be corrupted by our power and become even worse than the evil we attempted to destroy. That’s the lesson, right?
Cow: I’m confused about why we can talk.
Pig: Just go with it.
Chicken: Cluck-cluck.
Pig: The chicken is an idiot because she only has two legs.
Other Pig: Yes, we have made arbitrary decisions about the inherent morality of legs.

Experimentation.

Me: Our cats are lucky they have each other. Who else would lick the tops of their heads?
Her: Well, I guess it would have to be me.
Me: That would suck. It’s so weird how cat tongues can lick all that fur and barely pick up any, but human tongues are like glue and you just end up with a mouthful of hair.
Her: Yeah, probably.
Me: No, definitely. That’s definitely what happens.
Her: …
Me: I guess this is how you find out that at one point in my life, I licked a cat.

tomoatmeal:

What the letter said was that I found her very attractive and that I’d seen her walking her dog a lot and so I just wanted to say hello.  It also said that I’d watched her several times through a window, but not like HER window or anything.  I meant through my car window when I was driving.  And that “watching,” sounds so creepy.  It was more like I just happened to glance over and see her. 

That was the gist of it.  And I didn’t have any paper so I wrote it on an old traffic ticket envelope and put it under her windshield wiper blade.

“Hey!” she screamed.

I started to respond, but she marched right by me and up to the parking enforcement officer who I guess was standing behind me.

“I was parked just fine!” she screamed.  “What is this, some sort of bullshit quota you have to fill?!”

He didn’t like the accusations and so he fired right back.

“I didn’t give you a ticket!”

“Liar!”

“Man oh man,” I thought. 

And I guess she was having one of those days because she pulled a gun out of her purse and shot the parking officer three times in the chest.  Then, she put the gun barrel in her own mouth and pulled the trigger.  It was a huge mess.

“Well, I guess that’s a no,” I said, in a real sitcom-y voice. 

“WAY-TO-MAKE-IT-ALL-ABOUT-YOU,” boomed the helmet fastened to my dog’s head that converted his barks to English.

I poured the remainder of my expensive latte on the dog’s helmet, which caused it to crackle and malfunction.

The right girl was out there somewhere.  And I would find her.

Next to me, the dog’s helmet made a crackling noise.  A sarcastic crackling noise.

Always love Tom Oatmeal, but love this especially.

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(McSweeney’s rejection #487.)