Reservoir Dogs style.

It was after a disagreement about tipping etiquette.

MH: Oh. OK, who should I be then? C: Whatever you want. MH: I don't know what I want to be. C: That's normal, and even ideal. You'll see a lot of kids your age working through this, experimenting with being skaters or stoners or girls gone wild or whatever. You don't have to pick anything right now, and really, you're probably ill-equipped to do so. Really ill-equipped. I'll give you an example. In my first year at college I became the guy who collected all the swords. MH: How did that happen? C: I walked by one of those sword shops and thought, "Why not me?" MH: So I should be the guy who collects swords? C: You can't be that guy any more. No one can. They don't let you have swords in dorm rooms now, I'm guessing because of the things that happened in my first year at college. MH: Oh. C: I went through three roommates. MH: Oh. C: Not "went through" went through. Not with all three anyways. Two of them just moved out; they were fine. MH: Oh. C: Not "fine" fine. They were pretty messed up mentally. MH: I'll admit to being a little concerned with the roommate thing too. More so now, in fact. C: The whole roommate thing is regrettable. Let's say that you're maybe trying to be a Proust-reading cigarette enthusiast, and you've got some guy trying to be a varsity volleyball player sleeping eight feet away from you. It's just not going to work out. These semi-random assignments can vary between being "awkward but basically acceptable" to "sworded assault." My only recommendations are to try not to antagonize him too much, and don't leave anything around worth stealing. Also, masturbate discretely. MH: Quiet wanking, got it. C: No, that's "discreet" masturbation. "Discrete" masturbation means "separately" or "individually." MH: So.... C: Unassisted wanking. MH: You know, I feel like the more you explain to me, the less I know. C: Can't see the forest for the masturbating trees, hey? All right. So the reason we don't want you being a ninja or an edged-weapon wielding co-stroker, is that those are poorly chosen, immature self-realizations. As you try to figure out who the new you is, you need to start small. MH: Like how? C: Just be yourself, only cooler. MH: How do I do that? C: Get a better haircut. MH: What's wrong with my haircut? C: When was the last time you changed your hairstyle? MH: I don't know. Like three or four years ago, I guess. C: You should probably do something about that. Look, I'll tell you a story. MH: Uh oh. C: For a long time, the only haircut worth having was the Zack Morris.

C: And in fact, I had this haircut up until about 2003, which it turns out was about 10 years later than I should have. This didn't really do much for my social life, and may have explained why I was spending so much time hanging around sword shops, chatting with Sword Gord. MH: That's awful. C: No, that was just an honest mistake. What was awful was switching to the Rachel.

MH: Holy s**t. C: It turned out that that style had also gone out of fashion by that point, and was also, problematically, mainly a cut for women. So when choosing your haircut, don't read an article in a six-year old Newsweek about a haircut and then ask for it sight unseen. MH: I'm still not too sure why I need a new haircut anyways. C: Because you're out in the real world now, trying to convince it to love you, and give you jobs, and, even possibly to give you love-jobs. So you'd do well to start paying attention to how the real world acts and behaves and grooms its hair.

C: And how you do that is by looking at the people around you. Find someone who looks like they know what they're doing. Someone draped in girls, or with a cool looking dog. Then, take their haircut. Don't actually "take it" take it. Scalping isn't cool, not currently at least.