Berry good, not purrr-fect

We’re facing a very real idea shortage. I submit as evidence: a well-known and respected comedian just had a special on Comedy Central a few weeks ago, and he made a joke about his wife asking him, “Does this dress make me look fat?”

I suppose I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt -- maybe he thought he was the first person ever to make a joke about that, like how Columbus thought he was the first person to discover places that already had people living in them.

I do empathize with the comedian; new ideas are just plain hard to come by. With so many people thinking about so many things (mostly during commercials), it’s hard to come up with something all your own.

Just try to think of a cool new car name that’s never been done. The all-new Dodge Bicep? Introducing the Toyota Streaker? The cool ones are already all taken. That’s why fancy car makers, always one step ahead of the game in finding new ways to heat up your backside, gave up long ago. They just stick random numbers and letters on their cars. Here’s how that process goes: “Eh, we’ll call this one Four. No? Okay, Z4. Whatever.”

While new ideas can be hard to think up, there are also some old ones that we badly need to stop recycling. To help get these ideas out of circulation, I propose the following punishments:

• If you’re a politician, and you accuse another politician of playing politics, you have to propose a law that would force Phil Mickelson to accuse Tiger Woods of playing golf.

• If you’re a writer for Cat Fancy magazine, and you use the term “Purrrrr-fect,” you have to neuter yourself.

• If you notice out loud that MTV doesn’t even play music anymore, you have to let Keith Richards move into your basement.

• If you are selling something with berries in it, and you call it “berry good” on the packaging, you have to go to the mall dressed like Catwoman (think Halle Berry).

• If you’re on The Apprentice and you use the phrase, “at the end of the day,” you have to tug on either a mall Santa’s beard or Donald Trump’s hair.

The only reason I can fathom that Apprentice contestants incessantly say “at the end of the day,” is that they think it makes them sound smarter. In my few years of professional life (I’m no longer an amateur liver), I’ve learned that if you really want to seem smart, you should wear jeans tucked into your socks and line up the buttons on your shirt incorrectly. If you are the biggest slob in the building, you are probably the smartest. And if you somehow manage to be bald and have a pony tail, you probably deserve a raise.

Genuinely smart people don’t have to compensate by dressing nicely. The slogan for the Men’s Wearhouse should be, “You’re going to like the way you look: really, really dumb.” The smart guy probably isn’t the one in the suit – it’s the one who doesn’t know that his work shirt was meant to be an undershirt.

If you will excuse me now, I have to figure out how to put on this tie.