me: Things aren’t going right for me.
Victor: How do you mean?
me: I can’t make things with words work.
Victor: Could you be more vague?
me: My thing with the words in it isn’t working right.
Victor: Your…head?
me: Sort of. The creative part that makes words fit together properly. There’s probably a word for it. I’d probably know what it was if my head wasn’t broken right now.
Victor: Your head is always broken.
me: Yes, but most of the time that works in my favor. Right now everything is cloudy and I’m exhausted and I think I might be depressed but also I think maybe I’m not depressed and that life is just shitty. But it isn’t shitty so I must be depressed. I wish someone would invent one of those things they used on Star Trek that you could just run over your body and it would be like, “Hey, you’ve got the flu” or “Your endorphins are all fucked up” or “Your body is fine but your head is all shitty and it’s not your fault so just wait it out and it’ll get better.” Why don’t you invent that?
Victor: I’ll get right on that.
me: And make it an app so I can put it on my phone. You’ll make millions.
Victor: So just, invent a machine that detects everything medically wrong with you?
me: And then put it in my phone. It doesn’t even have to be completely accurate. It could just say, “Wow. How are you even standing right now? You’re so brave. You should be in bed. Show this to your spouse so they know that you’re like some kind of machine for even being alive right now.”
Victor: Huh.
me: Or maybe sometimes it could say, “You’re super healthy but I think a gypsy put a curse on you. Find another gypsy to take it off.” That way you don’t have to go to the doctor, and also you’re keeping gypsies in business.
Victor: I don’t know that that’s a business.
me: It should be. Although, now that I think about it, I knew gypsies in Houston and they never cursed anyone. So maybe make it a poltergeist and have the person drink holy water.
Victor: I don’t think you’re supposed to drink holy water. Aren’t people getting dunked in that stuff all the time? That seems unsanitary.
me: Then the next diagnosis should be “Back so soon? You probably got dysentery from that holy water. You should have boiled it first. Always boil your holy water.” This business makes itself.
Victor: I’m going away now.
me: And we could sell pills to people. Like last week this girl pinned a picture of home-made pills filled with glitter and she was like “Glitter emergency pills. Bad day? Open a pill, throw glitter around” and I was like, “Wait. We’re angrily throwing the glitter in the office of the person who pissed us off, right? Because I could get behind that. Glitter never goes away. It’s like a shiny grudge you leave behind to remind people how much you hate them. Where do I buy these pills?”
Victor: And?
me: She has not responded to me.
Victor: Well, she’s smarter than I am.
In the end, Victor did not agree to make me any apps so I need someone who knows how to make one. Ideally it would diagnose all illnesses immediately, but if that takes more than a few days to build I’m fine with an app that just gives you random diagnoses like “Your hair looks amazing” or “Answer is fuzzy. Try again later” or “That bitch in the next office is intentionally making you crazy. She needs some glitter, STAT.” And then we’ll take all the money we make on the app and invest it into making more glitter pills, which we’ll sell for almost nothing because if there are enough glitter pills out there then people will use them and you’ll be able to tell assholes as first sight because they’ll always have glitter on them. It’s like a tracking system for assholes. So, maybe I didn’t cure world disease, but I’m helping people to identify assholes before they get their shittiness all over you, and I’m pretty sure that deserves a Nobel Prize in whatever category “Halting Assholeness” falls under.