Design Your Perfect...

Hello Friends.

The Doc and I are not ideal road-trippers. For one thing, we rarely drive in the city, so a car trip means a long trip, and Google directions, and a visit to the cheapest gas station, and a trunk full of anxiety. Also, I don't drive, so Jon does all of it. I feel guilty about that, but not guilty enough to acquire the skills innate to most 16 year-olds. So I am the navigator, and together we quickly unravel at detours, single-lane highways, unclear signage, and air conditioning vs. window opening.

One thing we often overcome, though, is traffic. Similarly, we can wait for a late entree, or stand in line at the grocery store. This isn't because we're exceptionally patient men (realtalk: why does it take so long to toast something? I feel like I can put a bagel in there and trace my family history back to the Middle Ages waiting for a slight brownness), but because we're experts at this hallmark of lazy time-passery: Design Your Perfect...

Dream: Bring one of my Design Your Perfect...s to fruition.

Goal: Achievable. Design Your Perfect... is a game I'd like to take credit for, but everybody plays it when they're stuck at work, or sitting on hold, or trying to fall asleep. You can play it alone, but like racquetball or orgasm, it's better with a partner. It's that thing where you design your perfect certain thing in your mind. I think one of my Design Your Perfects will see the light of day not because I make it so, but because my ideas are so good, surely a more savvy and connected person would make it happen. Here is what I mean:

Plan: Share my brilliant ideas so that, together, we can Design Your Perfect...

Restaurant. Okay, get a load of this brilliance. Your table is not a table but a tablet! A giant touchscreen tablet on which you can read, scroll and, most importantly, select, your menu items! So Dad orders a steak, Jonny gets a burger, Susie gets chicken fingers, and Dad's girlfriend just gets water with a twist of lemon because she's self-conscious in her new role and doesn't want to be perceived as the children's biological mother. So you select your items, then confirm your order, then a busser or host comes by to double-check, and your orders get fired to the kitchen. This practice will eliminate the personal touch of a server, which is a drag, but will combine the food quality of a sit down restaurant with the convenience of fast food. Plus it will virtual end disputes of "Who got this order wrong?". If you don't remember ordering the chicken, you can scroll through the tablet history and see that you, in fact, did. Also, no substitutions, no dressing-on-the-side, no this instead of that. If you don't like everything on your plate, don't order it. And don't come to my restaurant.

Towel. You choose your towel like you do fabric for furniture. You pick your favourite colour, texture, and absorbency rate, and you pay by the yard. I am not a big fat man, but I am a big tall man and I also have a weird chest, so I need a towel wide enough to cover both the upstairs and the basement. Plus, I feel like people would invest in a "Just For Me" kind of towel. We had to buy new ones recently and I just picked up cheap red ones at Sears. Because they are both cheap and red, red linty fuzz comes off the towels and lands on our heretofore clean bodies. I have, at different points, thought I had varicose veins, warts, and some kind of penis rot, when all I was truly suffering was red towel lint.

Bed. Bigger, longer. Change nothing else.

Telephone. I know small is the new big when it comes to phones, but with tiny earpieces and mouth-holes, I never trust that my telephone communique is being adequately heard. I predict that the next evolution in telephonics will not be smaller, more sensitive devices, but entire phone rooms. Imagine, hearing your Uncle Pinkus drunkenly mourn your Aunt Darla on his weekly Sunday call in Bose-quality surround sound, and knowing that he could hear every uncomfortable shift in your chair, every throat clear, every blink. Maybe that's a bad example, but imagine how appealing this might make phone sex, for example! ("I have a boner" "I know! I just heard it!")

TV Guide. This one is super simple. Most TVs now have that thing where you press Guide and it shows you all the shows that are on and you can scroll through at your leisure. Why don't they have an algorithm similar to Netflix where it just tells you what you'll want to watch based on your previous viewing? So instead of showing you channels one through ten, it shows you the top ten programs currently on that you're probably gonna watch. I don't need to scroll through news, news, Olympics, Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers' Journal, when it could just say, "America's Funniest Home Videos from 1998 is on CMT. Shall I switch the channel now and turn it up to max?" UM YEAH!

Window screens that detect when it starts to rain and closes your windows for you.

One cup coffee makers but instead it's a butter dispenser. "Now serving: One piece of toast. *SMISH*". Thanks, machine!

Day. I had Wednesday off this week, and the whole thing, tops to tails, was glorious. I woke up late, caught up on Q: The Podcast while buying eggs (why does Jian Ghomeshi sound like we're at a sleepover and he's whispering to me so his Dad doesn't get up and yell at us? Just talk normal, Jian! It's just another Jann Arden interview, we'll get through it). Then I made some eggs and toast, then I went swimmin', then I walked downtown until I got that Rorschach sweat stain I get on the front of my shirt when it's hot out, then I read my book in the park (I'm reading this and it's so good). Then I came home, ate some chicken, now I'm writing you. Also, Later with Jools Holland is on and he has Manic Street Preachers, Herb Albert, Phil Collins, Boy George, and Mark Ronson all on one show. That's a show! That's a day! I didn't even do laundry (memo to colleagues, I'm coming to work in rags tomorrow)!

The thing about Design Your Perfect... is that it allows you to divulge in harmless fantasy with a friend or loved one. I'm lucky to play Design Your Perfect... on the regular with my main man (and general practitioner), Dr. Jon. I know if I were to design my perfect companion, he'd come pretty close.