Do you ever wonder if octopuses came from outer space?
Did Bianca Censori pay a wardrobe consultant who told her to show up at the Grammys buck naked? That’s like hiring an interior decorator who burns down your house. There was a baby bunny in my backyard on Tuesday night. It hopped past me at Mach 3 as I was wheeling out the recycling. Then a guy at the gas station complimented my scarf, which was weird because Wednesday is “Pay a Compliment Day.”
I really need my Star overlords to replace my 2012 MacBook. The fans are constantly whirring. Sometimes the screen blinks rapidly and reboots. I can sense a catastrophic crash is imminent.
Overlords, am I supposed to file future columns via carrier pigeon?
An octopus has three hearts, blue blood and can shape-shift.
No, I’m not on LSD. I’m just practising my “purposeless chatting,” which according to a story in Psychology Today is the key to a happy relationship.
Similar to past keys to happy relationships — listening, quality time, shared goals, emotional intimacy, kindness, forgiveness, open communication, shared disdain for the Toronto Maple Leafs — this one is straightforward.
From the story: “Purposeless conversations are the opposite of problematic relational efficiency. They are a way back to friendship, to playfulness, to imagination, to laughter, enjoyment, and curiosity.”
While I’m reluctant to take advice from anyone who uses the ghastly Oxford comma, I read the essay with the hope I might learn how to segue from “Honey, Donald Trump wants to turn Gaza into a Taj Mahal casino” to “Honey, if Canadian Tire started a restaurant chain, would they serve food on rims instead of plates”?
What if Tim Hortons sold motor oil? Would your car feel bloated and queasy?
The Psychology Today author begins with an anecdote. His kids are finally asleep. He and his partner retire to a balcony couch with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream. Apparently, “everyone knows that there’s never enough cookie dough in Ben and Jerry’s.”
I did not know that. Then a frozen miracle!
He exhumes a chunk of cookie dough “the size of my hand!”
Cue the purposeless chatting. The couple were so thrilled about this colossal dough they spent 30 minutes dreaming up a fantasy backstory: “We imagined a factory worker named Jenkins who, whether by accident or not, put too much cookie dough in and, as a result, got called into the manager’s office and was fired. And then his wife left him. And on and on.”
I guess you had to be there. I’m not sure I could pull off such gustatory fanfic.
My wife and I are tucking into a rim of brussels sprouts. One of them is the size of a baseball. I tell her there was a farmer named Abacus who moonlighted in a biolab where he spent his breaks sprinkling somatotropin hormones on sprout seeds while cosplaying as the Incredible Hulk. Abacus was on the verge of creating the first 100-pound sprout when he was tragically killed by a meteor.
Would my wife play along with this purposeless chatter? Or would she ask if I had a fever as she rummaged through the trash to see if those sprouts were imported from Chernobyl?
If anything, expect purposeless chatting to be on the rise. Small talk becomes a coping mechanism in challenging times. When the world feels like it is spinning off its axis, people seek solace by talking about anything else. So don’t be surprised if strangers blurt out ephemera in elevators and loved ones offer make-believe tales about how Pedro Pascal is a top-secret CIA hologram.
No human can act as masterfully as that man. I look forward to Season 2 of “The Last of Us.”
Have you been watching “Severance”? That show can really dunk my wife into the deep end of purposeless chatting. She’s constantly searching for internal logic. And I’m like, “Honey, it’s a show about office workers who received neurological brain chips that bifurcate their memories so that the worker (innie) has no experiential recollection of their (outie) identity beyond the office.”
But I do love when her theories morph into cosmic reflections. Sometimes they are brilliant and provocative. Sometimes they make no sense. Sometimes they are so disturbing I sleep with one eye open.
Her purposeless chatter is a stained-glass window into her soul.
More from the Ben & Jerry’s egghead on his imaginary friend: “Jenkins has become a character in our lives and a kind of secret code word that reminds us not only of that evening but also of our shared playfulness and friendship.”
Fair enough. But I always hated Jenkins. He stole my bunny.
