I’m going to let you all in on a little secret. Actually, I don’t know if I want to do that, because I heard sharing a secret with a person turns them into a friend and I definitely don’t need or want one of those. Friends are too messy and they always betray you anyways. For now, just pretend you knew this thing about me and we can just pretend to be co-workers. You can easily ignore co-workers and just treat then just like acquaintances because you don’t choose them. You can leave them every day without ever acknowledging that they exist. Actually, that makes them the same as your siblings. Cool. A whole bunch of people I can ignore without feeling bad.

Here’s the little secret. I am not funny. I’m not insightful or interesting. In fact, the only thing that I have cultivated myself and didn’t learn or inherit from anyone is my bitterness. That is the only thing that is uniquely me. Thus, the reason my parents gave me the name Ben, and blogs were created. Bitterness isn’t a trait for me. It’s not even my personality. It’s my identity. It’s my blood, my DNA, my fingerprint, or my dental records. When I die from a bloody murder, the CSI guys will just need to look at the bitterness on my face to identify me. No one else has the same unique BNA (Bitteroxyribo Nucleic Acid) that I do.

Every other trait or piece of personality I have I stole from other people, places and things. I rented my sense of humor from pieces of other people. I stole pieces from my mom, hacked some parts from the Simpsons, some from my first college roommate and a sprinkle from my other dormmate. When I became a dad, I was required to take at least a few pages from the Dad Joke Book, no matter how hard I fought against it. Thankfully, I’ve balanced out the dad jokes with an injection of The Office and a few portions copped from Community.

Since I borrow so much of my sense of humor from The Office, I invested a lot of time into learning their ways. When Brian Baumgartner (who played Kevin in the Office) came out with a podcast that explained the history of the Office, I of course listened to it. When interviewing one of the people from the Office, he asked them what helped the Office become such a success. More importantly, they explained how Michael Scott went from despised boss in the first season, to the beloved boss that no one wanted to see leave at the end of Season 7.

The Office showrunner Greg Daniels revealed how he changed things in Season 2. He said that Michael could be horrible for 90% of the show, but the last 10% of the show, he had to show just a little bit of humanity by the end of the episode. People just needed to see that he wasn’t a total monster and he needed a little backstory about why he was that way. One example is at the end of the episode where Michael spends all day torturing his employees about who he will fire. At the end, they show him at home giving a ton of candy to kids on Halloween, where you see his desire to have children someday. You almost see his desperation to want to get married just so he can have kids. No one at the Office ever sees it.

I’ve basically stolen the 10% idea from them. I have so much bitterness and rage and anger about so many things, that if I wrote about all these things like I do in my journal, you would never want to read it. So I package my bitterness into rants sprinkled with 10% humor just so you guys don’t report me to the FBBI (Federal Bureau of Bitter Investigations) as someone who could go postal at any time. I give you just enough humanity to think that I am human.

It’s also how I manage to go out into the public and deal with people. As an introvert, I would be pretty happy staying indoors watching TV, reading books and playing video games 7 days a week and 25 hours a day, but some family members think they need money for food, roofs, and a couple of walls, as well as money for sports and clothes. So, I go to work 5 days a week, because for some reason employers think that things can’t be done in less time than 40 hours. Occasionally they want me to go to sports games and such outside of the home as well. I’m bitter that they haven’t figured out how to broadcast high school wrestling matches on ESPN 12 yet.

So, when I’m required to leave the house, I use the 10% rule. I use my horrible real personality 90% of the time, and then pull a rabbit out of my personality hat, and give people a 10% pretend niceness. It’s just enough so they don’t ever want me to come back, but enough to where they don’t call the cops on me. I don’t want them thinking I’m 100% Oscar the Grinch, even though I am. I just have to remember my acting lessons where I pretend to be relatable.

You wouldn’t be able to withstand 100% Gale Force Bitter Ben winds. No house would be safe. It would be like looking directly at the sun. I give you the blog version of sunglasses and 93 million miles of distance so don’t all turn into a bitterness puddle melting on the sidewalk. You’re welcome. Here are some Bitter Friday Giftures to soften the bitter blow…

Yeah…

Don’t think that by me sharing that secret with you…

Nope…

Just like siblings…

We just occupy…

I’m basically just an amalgamation of…

Community…

And the Simpsons…

I’m not here to entertain you…

In order to save you…

I throw in just…

So just remember, my 10% rule is for the safety of the world. If I ever unleash the full 100%, you will all wish that a hurricane, meteor shower, tornado and the sun absorbing the earth would happen instead of the Bittering. Stay safe out there!!!

ARRRGGGHHHHH

Bitter 10% Ruler Ben