There’s so much inherent pain and suffering in life—disease, death, drug abuse, hunger, homelessness, reality-based t.v., plans for a new Britney Spears museum —it strikes me, frankly, that we certainly don’t need to create more.

Nonetheless, most of us live our lives like TV newscasters: we hype and exaggerate the bad stuff, padding the rest of our air time with meaningless banter. Jaws clenched, veins popping out of our foreheads, we scurry through our days, our lives, with a sense of urgency that ought to be limited to situations in which Klingon vessels have us locked on target and (damn it, Scottie!) the shields are down.

And what’s more, we’re consumed, competitive even, about our complex problems, convinced that our lives are busier and more demanding than everyone else’s.

“I’m busy.”
“Me, too. I’m really busy.”
“I’m going nuts, I’m so unbelievably, incredibly busy.”
“I’m so busy, I had breakfast last night.”

“I don’t have time for breakfast! I’ve got an I.V. line running straight into my arm. Also, since I don’t have time to go to the bathroom, I have a catheter.”

It’s weird.

Oh sure, not as weird, perhaps, as the Teamsters local in Oakland, California, which protested Mills College’s use of goats to clear brush on its land, suggesting that the college ought to either replace the goats with its members, or “unionize the goats.” But still. Weird.

In an effort to combat these ongoing woe-is-me, idiotic melodramatics, we’ve started a new tradition at my house.  Something we should’ve started a long time ago.  At dinnertime we proceed around the table, each of us naming at least one thing that was terrific about the day.

It’s a refreshing exercise. Particularly when you consider the fact that my young son often offers up such grateful revelations as, “One thing that was really good about my day is that I didn’t stick peas, or rocks, or anything up my nose.”

Great. Double bonus. Not having to do nostril excavations with the sort of medical tools normally found in the silverware drawer is a real highlight of my day, too.

Nasal passageways not withstanding, learning to focus on the positive, take stock of what’s right, and actively appreciate it, as opposed to staggering around in all the negative crud, takes practice. Particularly since, at every stage in life, in every situation—we are surrounded by idiots.

Idiots who are destined to go through Life so focused on the “static,” that they can’t hear the music.  So focused on the static, that they can’t hear the traffic and weather.  So focused on the static, that they can’t hear the news at the top of the hour.  So focused on this metaphor that it may be time to sign up for an obscure literary workshop in the backwoods of New Hampshire.

Idiots make it their life’s work to impress others.  They never understand what is really important in life.  They breed with other idiots, creating all sorts of miniature, little idiots.  The Little Idiots eventually become the Big Pillar Idiots of our society—inept bosses, Nazi homeowners associations, clueless spouses, unruly children, moron drivers, and the sort of restaurant waiters who insist on smothering your sandwich with expensive dijon mustard when you specifically requested the cheap stuff.

They’re everywhere.

The last time I went to New York, I arrived from the west coast on a red-eye.  I showed up at the hotel where I’d pre-paid my non-refundable reservation with a credit card. It was raining and I was pregnant.

“Sorry, we gave your room away when you didn’t show up,” the woman at the front desk informed me.  “And we’re totally booked.”

“I paid for that room, it was mine until check-out.”
“But you weren’t here.”
“I’m here now.  That’s my room until check-out.”
“We assumed you weren’t coming.”
“I PAID IN ADVANCE FOR THAT ROOM!”

“There’s nothing I can do,” she said.  And I believed her.  Do you know why?  Do you?!  BECAUSE SHE WAS AN IDIOT!  She’d gone to Advanced Idiocy school.  She majored in Pretension and Attitude.  She spent summers at Camp Butthead.

The same camp my local Federal Express delivery guy went to. I mean, does he really need to get out of his truck at my house swinging a bat?  Waving a can of mace? Hissing, growling, and making murderous death threats to my dogs? I feel it sends a bad message.  The body language is all off.

So when my dogs react to the baiting, running him down like a hapless wildebeast on the sub-Saharan plain, and when a hotel employee looks at an exhausted, drenched, pregnant woman and says, “there are no rooms at the inn,” I try to look for a lesson in all this.

Namely, we live on Planet Idiot.

A-ha! you say.  You’ve found your own life filled with idiots.  Starbucks idiots who fill your cup halfway, when you’ve specifically stated, “No, I don’t need any room for cream.”  Parent idiots who don’t quite get the fact that their kids are pains-in-the-rear, smiling bemusedly as their little darlings chase the neighbors' cats.  Career-driven idiots who look constipated, on and off the job.

What can a non-idiot possibly do to remain functional amidst all this idiocy?  You’re expecting to get that right here? In the blasted introduction? What are you, an idiot?

Oh sure, I could tell you what’s important in my life— a disconnected answering machine, a house bigger than Aaron Spelling’s, a dream that, someday, all soups would be chunky enough that we could eat them with a fork, a hope that my bank teller will stop making me show I.D. when I’m depositing cash, for the love of God--but that wouldn’t necessarily be your version.

In a nutshell, this book is a compass.  A road map.  A survival guide.  It will teach you, my friend, how to navigate your way through all the Idiots and Their Workings, how to focus on priorities, and how to laugh in the face of fear, challenges, pain, and your partner’s sexual performance.  I will present real-life situations to you, situations within which we all find ourselves, and I will offer specific, usable, advice.  Lessons.  Tid-bits to e-mail to your friends and family, or stick up on the fridge at work.  Or to place under the short leg of the kitchen table.

Yes, in just a few minutes a day, you will learn how to be happy, successful, and at total peace in your life, while firming your thighs, making a fortune in the stock market, and planning an inexpensive, but imaginative, dinner party using empty toilet paper rolls for center pieces!

And in the end, you will have all the skills necessary for living among all the blasted turkey-butts, right here on beautiful Planet Idiot.