[this is a repost someone requested from 2004, “ask pud” the early years]

Pud,

Isn’t touching the door handle on my way out of the public restroom going to negate tne hand-washing I just performed?

Thanks,
Falling Water

Follow these steps:

1. Pee
2. Grab paper towel
3. Turn on faucet with paper towel, place towel next to sink for later use
4. Wash hands
5. Turn off sink with previously-stored paper towel
6. Discard towel, grab a new one and dry hands
7. Use damp paper towel to open door, exit restroom
8. Discard paper towel #2

Personally, I wash my hands before touching my dick.

Dear Pud,

I’ve been making love to my neighbor’s goat for the past five years. By some act of God I’ve recently managed to get a real girlfriend. Should I end it with with Dave (the goat), or try and get some three-way love going?

Big M.

Big M.,

I applaud your commitment to your newfound love, and your desire not to cheat on her. However, though largely frowned upon by modern society (and your new girlfriend), it’s not technically cheating if you engage with another species.

There’s only one way to keep the girl while not depriving yourself of man-goat love. It does unfortunately involve bidding adieu to Dave (the goat), but face it, he had a nice personality but other goats are just as supple.

Anyway, your girlfriend is always nagging you to mow the lawn. Tell her you’ve done the research (don’t tell her it was on Ask Pud) and a goat in the backyard would not only be a cute pet, but it would feed on the grass, keeping it nice and short.

She’ll thank you, and you’ll have a new goatfriend.

Pud,

Why do the women in my office all flirt with me when I have no interest in them?

Captain Kewl

Captain,

They flirt with you because they know you’re gay. Which, incidentally, is why you have no interest in them. Just doin the math…

Pud

Pud,

I am usually pretty good at determining if someone is cool or not. But Stephen Colbert stumps me. Should I find Stephen Colbert cool or not?

Jason

You should indeed consider Stephen Colbert to be “cool.” He is smart and funny, with a good grasp of of pop culture and has the potential to be great.

But his shtick is too inconsistent to have any long-term success.

For example, he’ll do some story in his newscaster parody persona, and then all of a sudden switch to more serious interview-guy with his guests. And while interviewing, he’ll snap in and out of the schtick persona, which is almost always less interesting than his guest.

It’s annoying to people, and if he wants lasting success, he needs to choose a persona and stick with it. (yeah yeah…so do i:)

I’m in Chicago right now, speaking (on a panel) at an online advertising conference tomorrow morning.

But tonight is all about big-ass cake.

I’m going to Hugo’s, which is the sister restaurant to Gibson’s, the famous Chicago steakhouse with the big-ass cakes. The picture below was taken at Gibson’s on my previous trip to Chicago, a few years ago on my book tour. I have been assured that Hugo’s has the same cakes.

Carrot cake from Gibson’s, 2001

“Muddy Bottom Pie”, 2006

Freak strawberry found at my friend Max’s house

I’m scared all the time. Should I kill myself to obtain some much-needed relief?

Yes. But before you do, realize that the universe has been around for billions of years and will be around for billions more. As people on this speck of a rock called Earth, we’re only alive for what might as well be a nanosecond in time. So while killing yourself might chop a few years off your life, your lifespan is already insignificant, so there’s kind of no point in killing yourself — we’re already dead.

You’re born, you die. Try to do as much fun shit in the middle as you can.

Pud,

Why do ALL of my leather belts become warped and curved after wearing them just a few times?

- Thomas

As you cinch your belt to compress your abdomen, the belt leather is scraping across the metal buckle. If you’ve ever scraped a piece of ribbon across a scissor blade to make it all curly, it’s the same effect. From now on, suck in your gut and get the belt all the way through the buckle without touching the leather to the metal. Kind of like playing Operation (hmm i should make an online version of that game, as a test of mouse control).

Anyway, do as I say and your belt troubles will be history.

My site Fuckedcompany.com (full disclosure: I haven’t been the one updating the front page for more than two years) is the first Google search result when you search the letter “F“. Actually it shows up after the Ford stock quote, but that’s not a real search result.

Cool!

I gots my video back on YouTube, after it was deleted (due to my stupid password selection) a few days ago.

Here it is!

I love Google like the next guy, and when they released Google Desktop Search I was psyched, cuz I’m always searching for crap on my hard drives. And it beat the hell out of Windows’ search feature. But I found Google Desktop results to be awkward, lacked control, and didn’t always update quickly and properly.

So the other day I installed Microsoft’s version, MSN Desktop Search. Aside from Microsoft’s clunky old-school download page, it’s way more robust than Google Desktop. The main different is the user interface. Rather than opening your results in a browser window like Google Desktop, MSN Desktop Search launches its own application.

While launching the new MSN app means it takes a few extra seconds for your results to load, the MSN application is feature-rich and lets you find what you’re looking for much more easily. It also seems to index stuff way instantly — I can be in the middle of typing an email, do an MSN Desktop Search, and the email I’m currently writing shows up in the results. Confusing at first, but then I realized how cool that was.

Anyway, there you have it.

- pud