Troubled With Ahchoo

From Chuck Lorre Productions, #275:

ASK CHUCK!

Dear Chuck,


At a recent dinner party, I found myself in an awkward situation when the host, a devout atheist, sneezed between spoonfuls of his gazpacho. Without thinking, I said, "God bless you." He gave me a withering look and said, as if to a child, "Golly gee, I sure hope he does." The other guests exploded with laughter, while I imploded with humiliation. To avoid future embarrassment, what is the correct response when an atheist sneezes?

Troubled with ahchoo

Dear Troubled,


First, a little background information. Saying "God bless you" following a sneeze is thought by some to have originated in the sixth century in order to protect the sneezer from falling ill to the bubonic plague. Another possible origin is that people once believed that the devil entered the body during a sneeze and saying "God bless you" could help ward him off. Since the plague has killed something like two hundred million people and the words "God bless you" have, in all likelihood, been said countless times to Glenn Beck, we can safely assume the phrase has no real power against germs or demonic possession. What it does contain is simple human courtesy -- a means by which we express concern for one another. As to how to respond to a sneezing atheist, well, that's easy. Simply say, "Sounds like you're coming down with something, I hope you don't die and rot in a box."

Moving Along

From Chuck Lorre Productions, #248:

I believe that Newton's first law of motion is the reason we will emerge from our current economic woes. That law states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. How does that relate to the financial #$%*storm we're now cowering under? Allow me to explain. There are slightly less than seven billion people on this planet. Assuming that roughly half that number are either too young, too old, too lazy, or too loaded to work, that still leaves almost three and a half billion people getting up in the morning to chase the almighty dollar, the transcendent rupee, the zen yen,the dear ol' euro, the what's goin' on yuan, the... well, you get the idea. Now, call me crazy (and many have called me far worse), but I happen to think that three and a half billion motivated people is one big damn object in motion. And the only thing acting against that object is the friction caused by a small bunch of greedy, dumbass, screw-the-pooch, Ivy League pot stickers (the unbalanced force). I therefore assert that the unbalanced force (you know who you are, shame on you), will eventually be overwhelmed by the object in motion (three and a half billion people with pluck, aka pluckers), thus allowing the object in motion to continue its relentless journey forward, thriving and conniving until it is once again slowed down by other unbalanced forces, or a very large meteorite. Or a plague. Or fundamentalists with nukes. Or atmosphere-eating nanobots. Or a super volcano. Or Skynet. Or Cylons.