He always reaches over and takes the last of your french fries.

He weaves in and out of freeway lanes so you can’t pass.

He leeches off your internet connection to download porn.

He fumbles with ATM machines with a huge line standing behind him.

He talks about what happened this week on Lost without asking if you’ve already seen it.

He refers to himself as a “consumer advocate,” the way other people refer to themselves as “unusually dichotomous” or “crazily spontaneous.”

He claims to be “anti big business” but makes it his own business to be on television for no real reason.

He thought The Bucket List was pretty funny.

His supporters talk at you with a frightening, glassy-eyed intensity that make Obama fans seem mellow by comparison.

You should have heard what he said about you when your back was turned.

Like everyone else, I hate mattress shopping and I’ll gladly wait until my old mattress is sagging like Hilary Clinton’s poll numbers before buying a new one. But finally, after dreaming that I was being swallowed whole by the Staypuff Marshmallow Man, I realized that there was nothing to be done but go out and shop for a mattress.

It was Saturday of a President’s Day weekend, which celebrates all the Presidents except for Harrison (c’mon, the guy died of pneumonia 31 days after being inaugurated), so the mattress store was pretty empty. I walked in.  I found the area that more-or-less matched my budget.  (Hint: it wasn’t the $8,000 section. Who spends that kind of money on a mattress? They’re not even stuffed with hundred dollar bills.) I cracked my knuckles. I did a few stretching exercises.  My mental iPod kicked in and started playing Moby’s “Jam for the Ladies.”

And then I sprang on the mattresses.  I flopped on them and pretended to take a nap. I somersaulted off of them. I leaped from on top of them and did a brilliant triple dismount, landing agilely on my feet and only lightly spraining my toe.  I wiped the sweat from my brow and did the whole routine again.  My mental iPod segued into “Footloose,” and I bounded from mattress to mattress like an 18-year old mullet-headed Kevin Bacon.

After jumping off my favorite mattress and sliding across the floor on my knees, I stopped to take a break and calibrate my findings.  At that moment, the salesman came over to talk to me. “I hope you’re finding everything you’re looking for. And please, feel free to lie on the mattresses and find the one that’s right for you.”

I realized that he hadn’t seen me. I said, “Uh, yeah, I’m actually doing that.  I figured it was okay to test the mattresses when you’re shopping for one.”

He laughed. “You’d be surprised. It’s often a chore to get people to try the mattresses.”

“What, really?”

“They just feel uncomfortable about it.”

Christ. I may not be the most spontaneous or hedonistic guy in the world--the closest I’ve been to anything like Burning Man was when a bagel accidentally caught fire in my toaster oven--but even I know that when you shop for mattresses, all bets are off. You snore, you drool, you jump, you bounce. Bring your Significant Other and spoon. It doesn’t matter. It’s a mattress store, not an art gallery.

This brings to mind some of most poignant words that I’ve ever heard.  I often see them hanging up in picture frames in houses and over people’s desks at work. They inspire me. I call them the Mattress Mantra, and they should be the bywords of mattress shoppers everywhere:

Haggle for them like you really need the money
Roll around on top of them like nobody’s watching
Bounce off them like you’ve never been hurt.

It took me the longest time to figure out what all the fuss about waterboarding was.  It sounded like a fun thing to do in a lake or the ocean, like surfing or windsailing. I would read about the C.I.A. using this practice on prisoners, and I was all, so what? What else did they do, take them out to the country for a nice picnic?

Eventually I figured out that it was a serious form of torture where you tie someone face down on a board and souse them with water until they experience the sensation of drowning.  That didn’t seem like such a fun way to spend a day.  And I guess now I’m confused all over again, because this form of torture is being used because it doesn’t leave any physical marks although it can cause excruciating pain.  If that’s the aim, why not just make them watch the current season of Nip Tuck?

Ever notice that no one ever gives up religion for Lent? 

It’s always chocolate or beer or ESPN.  I say, challenge yourself with a stretch goal. “In forty days I will return to my faith, but for now I’m just going to worship this old pagan goat’s head.”

I have an idea for a surefire money maker that would appeal to all ages. It would be an exhibit that allows visitors to walk around and look at people whose bodies had, a long time ago, been trapped in a glacier.

Particularly princesses. With their bright pink dresses still visible through the blue, frozen haze. Caught like a snapshot in time, their eyes milky, their bejeweled hands outstretched as though, at the moment of their demise, they thought they could claw their way back to life.

I’d call it “Disney On Ice.”

I found a few pages of an unfinished screenplay over the weekend, and this scene made me smile although I have no recollection of writing it.  It takes place in a record company where our protagonist, Peter, works as a talent scout. He and his friend Abby are meeting a new artist that the label might want to sign, a hardcore rapper type.

MACHETE: I’m Macheté.

He pronounces it “Mash-sheh-TAY.”

PETER: Machete?

MACHETE: No, Macheté. With an accent at the end.

PETER: Wait a minute...I know you.

Macheté looks at him suspiciously.

PETER: You’re Tim Mason. You were in that boy band, The Virgin Daquiris.

MACHETE: Long time ago, bro.

PETER: Yeah, but you had that number one song, “I’m Your Sir Galahad”!

Macheté glares at him.

ABBY: He hates to talk about that song.

PETER (singing): “I’m your Sir Galahad, and you’re the Gal I had...”

MACHETE: Can it.

PETER: Catchy tune.

Macheté takes a menacing step in Peter’s direction.

MACHETE: Maybe you’d like to catch my fist.

ABBY: Boys, boys.  Let’s respect the fact that Macheté is moving on, upgrading his image.

MACHETE: Yeah, urban sound’s better for me than that boy band crap. Allows me to channel the pain of my youth.

PETER: Pain, what pain? I read about you, you were middle-class suburban. What do you sing about, your Mom putting parental controls on the TV so you couldn’t watch Skinemax?

That’s the last straw. Macheté LUNGES at Peter. They collide into a table, knocking over glasses.

ABBY: Jesus!

She wades into them, forcibly separates them.

MACHETE: He insulted my honor!

ABBY: Peter just doesn’t understand, uh, the code of the street.

PETER: What, you mean the cheat codes for Grand Theft Auto?

I have no idea where I was going with the scene, but I do like the idea of a character named “Macheté” with an accent.  Maybe that’s a whole story right there.