help me help you

a few months ago, we met a new friend through our group who made a concerted and admirable effort to invest 'let's get to know each other' time with everyone at parties.

she was nice, hot, blonde, and...boring. at the time, i was at the 'i don't need any more friends' stage, and had absolutely zero interest in spending 15 minutes with someone whose sole hobby was 'running.'

'running?' my friend had asked in her 15-minute session, expecting more.

'yup.' uncomfortable smiling.

'ah so. umm...tell me more about that. ...do you like to run...fast?'

several weeks later, her absence of personality showed at a party where she revealed that her 'interesting thing about herself' was that her favorite tv show was 'dancing with the stars.'

if this is your interesting fact, i highly encourage that you lie and something like, 'every monday night i dream that i'm the host of a popular cooking show on the food network and everyone in the audience is an alligator,' or 'i made out with wilmer valderrama and watched nicole ritchie eat shit walking out of the ivy on the same day, thenceforth known as the Best Day of My Life.'

because boring people are like death, we were both outraged for about 5 minutes, during which i had a brilliant idea. if she wanted 15 minutes with me, i would first send her to my help center, and request that she submit questions to me directly only if she had specific inquiries that hadn't been answered. watching a show that is consistently a nielsen top rated show because it is also watched by millions of other people is, by definition, the opposite of interesting.

help centers are big at my company. building a good help center for our products is important because giving people the information they need saves them from having to ask us questions, and us from having to answer them.

in this vein, the Annie Help Center would include information such as

• vitals

this will include the boring things such as date of birth, place of birth, siblings, etc. essentially, all the information people are obliged to include in your passport and at the beginning of your obituary.

• favorites

this will include favorite foods, colors, restaurants, dogs, hyphenated artists, animals, hobbies, etc (cheeseburgers, gold, amarena, huskies, jay-z, pandas, playing piano drinking beer reading newspaper).

• dislikes

just as important as the favorites. this will include crucial data points like driving, people who think that hosting parties with a pimps and hos theme is unique, cooking, being hot and sweaty, cleaning, waiting for neurotic friends to get ready for parties, and reading.

• apartment tour

i like my apartment, and i think it's safe to say that if you don't like my apartment, you probably won't like me either. it includes one plant, one piano, seven space invaders, eight plates, and lots of shoes.

• frequently asked questions (faqs)

this section will allow people to browse frequently asked questions such as, 'is annie mad at me?' 'why is she so awesome?' and 'i found these dopeass sunglasses in the hallway. are they hers?'

• virtual conversation

if you're missing me, this section will be for you. it's going to like those choose your own adventure books, except a lot less exciting. you'll be able to start a conversation with a number of popular salutations such as 'hi,' 'hello,' 'what's up,' 'yo,' 'bleh,' and 'fuck you.' each response will have a unique response ('hey,' 'hi,' 'jack shit,' 'ahoy,' 'seriously,' and 'fuck you too you look like crap'), followed by another selection for continuing the conversation.

i will have to try hard to learn how to build a website and to not fall asleep out of boredom while writing the content for it.