(October 4, 2004) — Welcome to America. A place where anything is possible, even a nice, shady tree that is really a giant cell-phone antenna. Exploring the limits of such endless possibilities can often be quite ridiculously entertaining, even if it seems to border on insanity. Suppose you’re sitting in your room doing nothing and have a sudden urge to explore the aforementioned possibilities. So you grab the nearest tub of canary yellow paint, slowly creep to the living room where your brother is watching television, and proceed to dump the whole thing over his head. You run back to your room as fast as you can, disposing of the empty tub in the meantime. Once in your room, you sit on your bed, open a book and pretend to read. Soon after, your newly canarified brother runs into the room yodeling at the top of his lungs about how he’s going to cremate you and use your ashes as kitty litter. You slowly look up with an angelic, oblivious expression, and proceed to pretend to have absolutely no idea what your brother is talking about. Your skills are so advanced that you eventually convince him that he is just imagining things, and that there is no yellow paint in sight. Your brother, rendered speechless, bewilderedly walks out of the room, eventually loses his mind, and your parents are forced to send him to a mental institution. There he spends the rest of his pillow-cushioned days scantily clad in pinstripe pants and a straightjacket. Meanwhile, you go on to live your life with the satisfaction that you are living proof of how easy it is to screw with people’s minds these days. Say hello, dear comrades, to the lovely world of pointless manipulation.