Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to buy a company hovercraft. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. It’s…
We all want to be more efficient, so I’ve found as many quick, easy methods to streamline your life as I could threaten Google into giving me. And so you’re sure there’s actual merit to all of these practices, I’ll also be testing them out first. Hopefully nothing goes horribly awry here! Why do I hear a violin sting every time I say that?
Day 1:
Most Efficient Way to Sleep
Every night, we bend to Big Slumber’s twisted whims, sacrificing perfectly good video game and pornography time just to lay completely motionless in week-old laundry for eight hours. We must destroy sleep. And for that, we turn to something called polyphasic sleeping. The basic idea is that there are five stages to normal sleep, but only one of those is actually important: the REM phase, where dreaming happens. By cutting out the bullshit sleeps, you can shake down your brain until it gives up and learns to slip directly into REM the second you close your eyes. It’s basically mugging the shit out of your own mind to steal its dreams. It’s fucking awesome.
There are several types of polyphasic schedules, but for the purposes of this test, I will be using the Uberman system, which consists of sleeping only 20 minutes per session, once every four hours.
Ideally, once you’ve grown accustomed to that schedule, you’ll only need a total of two hours of sleep for every 24-hour period. I started this last night, and it’s working pretty OK so far. I’m a bit tired now, but I find that the naps refresh me just enough to keep going. However, it is supposed to take roughly a week to retrain your brain, so this is more of a passive test. We’ll see how it progresses as time passes.
Day 2:
Most Efficient Way to Stir Liquids
According to the Japanese, everything you’ve done today, you’ve done completely wrong. They are to efficiency what Wade Boggs is to whatever Wade Boggs does — some kind of marsh monster, I’m assuming? Like the secret identity of Swamp Thing? Shit, I don’t know: Sleep deprivation is making it kind of hard to focus.
Anyway, there’s a Japanese method that’s about to call into question everything you know about stirring powder into liquids. It’s going to turn the powder-dissolution world on its fucking ear! Are you sitting down? Are you ready for this? The best way to stir a powder into a liquid is actually by using lateral motions, not the conventional circular pattern we all know and love.
For those of us who frequently stir powders into our drinks and the drinks of others, this method could save literally dozens of seconds every month! Hey, speaking of stirring powder into things …
Most Efficient Way to Take Adderall
This sleep schedule is killing me. I just put the milk outside and tried to drink out of the dog. Something must be done. Luckily, the drugs forum (the best forum) has a more efficient way to ingest our recommended daily intake of Vitamin A(dderall): Just take a teaspoon or two of baking soda an hour beforehand. See, the effectiveness of amphetamines depends largely on the pH of the stomach, and alkaline agents like baking soda help speed the initial absorption, as well as decrease the efficiency of the elimination process.
In short: takes effect sooner, lasts longer. Technically, this works on all amphetamines, but of course a quick Google search tells me Adderall is the most widely available legal one, so let’s all just assume that’s the thing I’m stirring into my Grape Flavor-Aid.
Most Efficient Shoe Lace Knot
I don’t know if it’s the polyphasic sleep finally paying off, or just the Ol’ Nippon Swish kick-starting my amphetamine cocktails, but I really feel like I could (and should) fight some kind of snake right now. The closest thing I have to that on my agenda, however, is tying my shoes. Let’s do the SHIT OUT OF THAT!
This is the Ian-knot, so named for the intertwined duality inherent in the many roles of Sir Ian McKellan and holy shit I can type so fast look at this! You can just tell that sentence was fast, right? By reading the words? They read fast as shit, right!?
Hey, OK, task at hand: Begin with a normal starting knot, cross the two laces and tuck one under and through. Then you do th…
… w-what is this, witchcraft? I don’t – Listen, I don’t have time for this. The website says you do this:
“The right (blue) lace is held between the right thumb and forefinger whilst the left (yellow) lace is held around the left thumb and forefinger, using the other fingers of the left hand to hold the lace taut. This move creates two loops, one with the loose end behind, the other with the loose end in front. Use the middle finger of the right hand to push the loose end of the right lace behind, whilst the left hand simply rotates forwards to swing its loop across to the right. This next move crosses the two loops over each other. Use the left thumb to push its loose end over to the right, whilst the right middle finger continues to push its loose end all the way between the left thumb and forefinger to end up inside the left loop. This tricky move requires each hand to use the two fingers inside its own loop to grab the loose end of the other hand’s loop. Use the left thumb and forefinger to grab the loose right end, then the right thumb and middle finger can grab the loose left end. This final step simply completes the knot by pulling the loops tight.“
See, efficiency is already paying off! Copy/pasting those directions was way faster than explaining them. Found the process a little incomprehensible? So what!? You don’t need to understand shit, buddy; you’ve got fucking witch shoes now. Oh, and as a bonus, not only is this the fastest common knot, but it will almost never come undone — even while kicking dozens of furious snakes!
Get off my feet!
GET OFF MY FEET, SNAKES.
Day 3:
The Most Efficient Way to Drink
I have found the Uberman schedule to be astoundingly effective, and if a few of the neighborhood cats want to give me disturbing orders as a side effect, so be it! However I now find myself, if anything, a bit too awake. I can actually see through people’s intentions, and I cannot emotionally deal with the things they truly think about me. Maybe it’s just an adjustment period in the sleep schedule, or maybe I wasn’t supposed to factor this Japanese meth-punch into my new routine, but regardless, I need to dial it back a little. So this is as good a time as any to explore the most efficient way to have a nice relaxing drink or 12 (and without consequences!).
In 2004, a double-blind, placebo controlled crossover trial found that prickly pear extract inhibits the production of inflammatory mediators associated with the symptoms of hangovers, if consumed approximately five hours before drinking alcohol.
Further, most negative effects of alcohol are only caused in the first place by toxins called congeners, which mostly show up in dark liquors like red wine, bourbon, whiskey and tequila. Clear liquors have significantly fewer toxins. So if pear extract counteracts the effects of congeners, and clear liquors have the least to start with, then does pear vodka theoretically cancel itself out? I’m going to assume yes.
I’m going to assume yes forever!
Most Efficient Way to Peel a Potato
For maximum efficiency, I have started Nippon Swishing whatever legal amphetamine I said I was taking right into the pear vodka. Now I want — nay, need — a potato, for reasons that are unclear to me at this time.
As with all things, we must do this as efficiently as possible.
Step 1: Cut a thin slit around the circumference of the potato.
Step 2: Boil until soft.
Step 3: Plunge into a bowl of ice water for 10 seconds.
Step 4: Grasp skin by each end, and pull off.
Step 5: Become the thing you fear.
Day 4:
Most Efficient Way to Move
Walking is proving difficult, and I assume that’s because I’ve become too efficient to do things suboptimally. I have sown the Google, and reaped this: The most efficient way to run is heel-striking. The key is to simply contact the ground with your heel first. This was a little awkward, walking on just my heels, and I ended up kind of stilting around like Jack Skellington.
But eventually I nailed it. (PROPTIP: Think of it less like “walking,” and more like “repeatedly stabbing the Earth with your feet.”)
The most efficient way to move in general is called slipstreaming, and the beauty of it is that it’s beneficial to all parties. When an object travels in the slipstream — a kind of air wake left behind by another object — the rear object requires less power to maintain its speed, while the leading object actually moves faster, because the rear object reduces the low pressure region behind it. Of course, the two objects have to be moving at a pretty fair clip and nearly touching to achieve this effect, but I haven’t found that to be a problem: Every single time I disjointedly doll-walk right up behind somebody, they take off like a fucking shot.
BUT I CAN ALWAYS KEEP UP WITH THEM.
THANKS SLIPSTREAMING!
Day 5:
Most Efficient Way to Boil Water
Did you know that a drip brew coffee maker is seven percent more efficient than even a high end electric kettle and I really wanted to put a question mark back there but it’s like I can’t actually catch up to my fingers so I’m trying to trick them into stopping with an exclamation point!
Most Efficient Way to Pack
Roll
everything.
ROLL.
EVERYTHING.
Most Efficient Way to Fold a T-shirt
Hi Japan! I love you so much, you crazy archipelago! Actually I love everything because everything is fantastic and I am riding on a boat of euphoria cresting a wave of endorphins that’s about to crash down and utterly obliterate a coastline of contentment. Hey, what’s this shit about T-shirts? Fuck yes, let’s do whatever this is as hard as possible!
So I set the shirt down flat, front side up. Then I grab this side just off center, pinch the top edge right above that, then I … fold it …
… inside of … itself?
No.
No, that’s not right. It’s wrong. All wrong. Everything is wrong.
Something has turned. Japan just violated my universe and nothing is going to be OK. Nothing is ever going to be OK again.
Day 6:
Most Efficient Way to Think
Thinking is a boulder I can no longer push up this hill. I type now only because somebody (a mad man, perhaps?) told these fingers to start, and now they won’t stop. I pray for the brief moments of respite that periods grant me. They are an oasis of relief in a desert of empty, worthless words. I need some help figuring a way out of this mess, and so I turn to mind-maps: Allegedly, a more efficient way to think.
Mind-maps are diagrams representing words, ideas, and the various ways the DMV is trying to track your emotions. The key to mind-mapping is to intuitively align whatever concepts are in your mind along a series of branching paths, each ending in madness and death (except one that ends in candy, seen here).
And I’ve got to say, this practice really has helped. Before, I was plunging headlong through a thick miasmic fog full of clowns and bastards, each wanting to simultaneously entertain and fuck me. But now I have reached out and grasped the universe just off center, and at the top edge, I pull. I am folding the universe into itself into itself into itself. The center cannot hold, because the center is a pussy. We will not yield — not to bastards, not to clowns — because now that we have a mind-map, we need only follow it to its inevitable, and in retrospect, obvious conclusion.
Most Efficient Way to Kill a Man
The number 9 is the most sinister number. It wants you to think it’s a six, but it can’t quite pull that trick off; even if you flip it upside down there’s something just slightly wrong about its presentation — like the flat deadness you see behind the eyes of every single stewardess. Clearly, if any number knows how to kill a man, it’s 9. Here is a brief list of efficient murder: Mostly temple-blows and neck-smashing. But wait, what’s that down there — the 9th most efficient way to kill a man?
“The Coccyx: A powerful blow to the tail bone. Fatal.“
Yes.
I say again: Yes.
In Conclusion:
I have hopefully just slept for 65 hours. That time is gone, and sleep is the best explanation for its absence. I do not know where I am. I suspect it is a Denny’s, by the sheer volume of palpable sadness and pancakes. I have no idea what all of this was for; I just wanted to tie my shoes faster. That’s all. Just shave a minute or so from my footwear routine. Now I’m looking at like … like some kind of Bizarro map of Candyland tattooed on my chest?
I don’t want to make too many assumptions here. The last … however many days have passed are naught but a series of rapid, disturbing still images, devoid of context or morality — like attending a slideshow where your parents have accidentally mixed up their amateur porn with the vacation photos. But it’s this section here in the upper left that’s really troubling me.
Listen, don’t say anything out loud — never trust a Denny’s — but if, at some point during my disappearance, the actor Judge Reinhold suddenly died from mysterious ass-related injuries, blink twice.
Wait, no, blink once; more efficient.
