You probably know that too, but believe me, that degree of ineptitude permeates every corner of my life, every day. (And yes, I'm aware that that sentence came out unintentionally funny. I decided to let you enjoy it, too.)

Here's a taste of my life. Witness these two search ads, one for Bing, which Microsoft desperately wants you to use as a verb, the other for the company whose name you already do.

Remember when your middle-aged dad tried to impress your friends by saying that Wham! was, like, totally rad? That ad strikes exactly the same note. And it makes me cringe with embarrassment exactly the same way.

"Look! We, like, totally get that you think vampires are cool! We're cool too!"

Alternative intended message: "Use Bing, die horribly."

Now look at Google's brilliant ad. Simple. Elegant. Amusing. Sweet. Unmuddled. About its own product and not someone else's. And not embarrassing after 15 minutes have elapsed in pop culture.

So, to summarize these ads' messages: Google changes your life, and Bing ends it.

My first indication was when she figured out the difference between shower lengths. If she sees me get out of the shower in less than a minute, she goes right into her kennel because she knows I'm adjourning to the hot tub. This was welcome.

Soon after that, she figured out how to lower the car windows. This was unwelcome.

Now she listens to my phone conversations. If she hears Dirt's ringtone, she gets up and listens attentively to what I say. And if she hears "See you in a few," she goes batshit, because that means she gets to play with her friend Evie.

At this pace, she'll eclipse my own intelligence by 6 o'clock tonight. I think. Maybe I should have her do the math.

• Beautiful
• Married

"Understood."

But bloom a friendship did, and, determined to start this off on the right note, I invited her, her husband and their kids over for dinner. All was apparently well. And then one night Anna and I were chatting when suddenly she went into confessional mode. Her husband had had an affair last year. Aw, crap.

"I will miss you," Allie said the next day, not entirely kidding.

The next time I saw the husband, I latched on to him to discuss football, and somehow we got to talking about the significant amounts of time Anna spends doing volunteer work. I told him how awesome I think he is for helping to accommodate all that time away from their home and kids. He snorted.

"I just had to put my foot down about that. When I've been working all day, I want a meal on the table and I don't want to have to deal with the kids n'shit. I said, 'You know, I'm sorry, but you are the woman. You need to take care of this shit,'" said the cheater of his wife, who incidentally also works all day.

I relayed this conversation to Allie. She sighed resignedly. "Seriously, what IS it with you?"

"It's a gift."

"See, I don't think it is."

Months have now passed, and if I had any nefarious designs, I obviously wouldn't be writing about Anna here. But all that backstory was necessary for you to fully appreciate how the following development makes me feel. A couple times a month, she and I will be talking, and I will make a remark, and she'll reply "That's exactly what my husband said! You two are so much alike, I swear!"

Charmed.

Charmed n'shit, even.

This is, of course, complete bullplop. Steelers fans may travel well, but a good many of those fans woke up in their own beds on game day.

Is this because they're front-runners? Sure, some of them. More likely they're displaced Pittsburghers. There are large pockets of them in every major city. The numbers are truly astounding: when the steel industry collapsed in the 80s, Pittsburgh shed 150,000 jobs and over half (!) of its peak population. They scattered across the country and raised families. They are a "nation" in the looser meaning of the word: a body of people of common origin who may or may not be in the same location. They are, in other words, the lost tribe of Pittsburgh. And what connects them are the sports loyalties of their forbears. That's why their provincialism about the Steelers can seem a little...much sometimes. The ties run deeper than merely football.

It is unique. Or rather, it was.

As I look at the Saints prepare for their first Super Bowl, something looks familiar. A different sort of calamity hit New Orleans, a far faster and more devastating one. Its people scattered across the country and haven't returned. And now you see it: the lost peoples of that particular nation are stirring. They're seeking one another out and gleefully commiserating. They finally have something happy to share, the word "share" being more operative than even "happy." They're returning home, figuratively if not literally.

It's wonderful to see. I don't know that anyone could be as happy for them as this Steelers fan. I suspect that I know just how deep this joy is running.

You dat.

12:05 - Heh heh. I hope my iPad comes with wings for heavy flow.

1:30 (on phone) - "Did you hear what they're calling the Apple tablet? Yeah! I'm gonna call it my maxi-pad and the iPhone my panty liner. Har, har!"

3:30 - Wow, there's a lot of tampon jokes going on out there. I guess it was sort of obvious.

4:03 - Ugh, I'd better stop with the tamPod jokes.

7:30 - My god, every media outlet, every discussion board, is saturated with people who think this is an clever joke. Stop embarrassing yourselves. Give it a rest, already.

9:04 pm - (comedian) "I hope my iPad comes with wings for heavy flow."

9:04 pm (me) - "Oh, HAR HAR. Moron."

Really, can you remember a joke going from hilarious to unfunny pop-cliche so rapidly? By comparison, "Yeah, that's the ticket" and "Talk to the hand" were multi-generational epics.

The metaphoria in which I was drowning reached its apex in the hot-dog aisle. "We need to get these," she said. I grabbed the very package she was tapping with her extended index finger. "Not those!" she scoffed. "They have to be all-beef. Duh!"

This, this is why all of my friends are women. Deep down, they're just wired better.

Interview debacle #2 occurred months later, when I applied a job as a library clerk. My interviewer was a cool middle-aged woman who listened to a lot of Teddy Pendergrass. I didn't know that yet, though. During one of my utterly incoherent, rambling answers, I mentioned having recently moved from home. "...but, you know, I wasn't kicked out or anything, it was more like my mom, um, died, kinda, so it was more like home left me than it was I left home, if you think about it, so it's not like I..."

"Wrap it up."

"Right. Bless you."

I saved my best work for Microsoft. I had just gone to the brink of bankruptcy over a girl, which resulted in the humiliation of my having to borrow money from another girl. And my first interviewer asked me that most original of questions: "Why do you want to work at Microsoft?"

I was confused by the question. "Your checks clear, don't they?"

Over the ensuring years, I would conduct many, many interviews, but two stand out.

Interviewee sitting in my guest chair realizes who I am: "Oh! Were you the contractor who called the manager a 'cocksucker' at the staff meeting and didn't get fired for it?" I've always loved his qualification. Apparently the manager was called that a lot.

Interviewer: "Do you know [name of wretched person]?"
Me: "Ugh, what a cunt."

Yes, I've come a long way since squinting in pain in that restaurant's bar. A long, classy way. And you know what? I was offered every single one of those jobs. Must have been that interviewing class Ohio State made me take.

Thank god it's not my team against the Saints in the Super Bowl. Who outside of Indy can morally root against that town getting some good news?

My 1st through 17th instincts were to leave a bunch of blank space after that sentence. But that wouldn't be honest. Here we go:

• Juice boxes are kiddie heroin. Well, no, these days heroin is kiddie heroin. Juice boxes are kiddie methodone. First, I started stocking them for my friends' kids. Then one day when I was out of all other beverage options, I drank one. Now I'm blowing transvestites for juice boxes.
• There's a time and a place for issuing unreasonable demands, and it's when your parents are contextually compromised. In terms of kids, this means shrilly demanding ice cream as an entree...when in a restaurant with your parents' friends. In terms of me, it means asking my boss, Flo, for paid time off...when in front of her new boyfriend. How accommodating she can be!
• Properly finessed, my friends have no rights in front of their four year old.  This is how it works. If I press all the right buttons, if I embody exactly how they're trying to teach their kid to behave, right in front of the kid, they are morally compelled to play along. Example: "Katrina? May I ask you a question, please? May I please have half of your cupcake? Please? Thank you! Yum! That was very nice of you. Sharing is caring! May Annalie have the other half, please?"
• Band-Aids cure cancer. The placebo value of a Band-Aid cannot be understated. No abrasion or cut is necessary for it to be the right and only remedy. A kid could have an ear infection and it would still take a Band-Aid to get him to stop crying.
• The ultimate way to punish my friends for having kids is the kids themselves. A well-planned gift delights and annoys exactly the right people. Have another juice-box, Junior! Have some chocolate-covered espresso beans! Want some Silly String? Here's your drum-set! Here's your empty Star Wars action figure carrying case!

I had heard this argument before, usually from guys who are surprised that I'm friends with an ex. They not only don't understand why I would want such a horror to happen; they don't understand how it possibly could. I explain my ex-ship rules, to no avail. Once they wash their hands of someone, they very deliberately don't look back.

Pity. They're missing out on a unique kind of friendship. And just as much, they're missing out on a unique kind of closure. For every Allie, who's very much still a grudging participant in my life, there are a dozen Holy Fucking Shit Girls.

They weren't necessarily girlfriends, but I definitely had put some effort into dating them. And long after those efforts ceased, I got a glimpse where their life's arc had carried them after me, and I exclaimed "Holy fucking shit."

My dodged bullets tend to fall into one of these categories:

The bun warmer said she never wanted to have kids, and now she's surrounded by four children on her Facebook picture.

Defining characteristic then: incredibly fun

Defining characteristic now: incredibly religious

The ticking bomb was arrested two weeks after I broke up with her and consequently fired from her civil service job. She moved back in with her mother.

Then: seemed kinda nuts

Now: kinda nuts

The innocent bystander spent her time before and during our courtship complaining about all the guys in her orbit, guys she'd never, ever led on. They could handle neither her unambiguous message nor proximity to her radiant beauty. And then she spent her time after our courtship saying the exact same things about me. Oh.

Then: constantly fending off the "unwanted" advances of men

Now: zero healthy adult relationships with men

The navel gazer spends all of her time analyzing why her obviously atrocious choices tend to reveal themselves, over time, as atrocious choices. A big fan of being told it's not her fault, she single-handedly keeps the self-help book industry afloat.

Then: "God, she's deep and introspective."

Now: "God, she never learns."

The herbalist spent most of our relationship assuring me that except for pot, her druggie days were behind her. This was a lie.

Then: making herself a pipe out of my Diet Coke can

Now: running a skanky nightclub

The professional victim is incapable of making good choices. For whatever reason, she is hopelessly incompetent. She never plans, she gives the wrong people too much credit, and she's confident everything will work out just fine, my heart attack notwithstanding.

Then: wholly dependent on me

Now: wholly dependent on someone else

The day planner is always concocting grandioise schemes. Her Indian name is She Who Talk'm Shit. At any given point in her life, she's got seven different five-year plans. School, career, motherhood, marriage, divorce, relocating, home ownership, business ownership, tap-dancing lessons, ponzi schemes: all of her much-discussed dreams have exactly one thing in common.

Then: babbled endlessly about plans on which she would never actually follow through

Now: babbles endlessly about entirely different plans on which she'll never follow through

The lily-padder insisted that the guy I thought was trying to get into her pants was just a friend. Moreover, my irrational jealousy was indicative of some serious issues I should attend to in therapy.

Then: me in her pants

Now: him in her pants

The goody-to-skank was downright virginal when we were together, but afterward started banging firemen, personal trainers, and bartenders.

Then: kinda clingy

Now: asks me to lend moral support by accompanying her to her AIDS test

I wouldn't miss seeing that for the world, hon. That's pure gold.

In this same category for me: Howard's End and Gosford Park. I also fell asleep during Analyze This, but I think that was more the tequila/vicadin combo than any sin of Robert DeNiro's.

It's also a movie I walked out of. With about 20 minutes to go.

Not that it was horrible. It was not. It's well-crafted, well acted. It just bored me. About the fourth time our protagonist was slowly defusing a bomb that might or might not go off, the ritual had for me become dull routine. And I reached a tipping point: with 20 minutes left to go, I realized that my lack of interest had reached such a state of inertia, the movie wasn't going to be able to budge it. "I'd rather get to bed early," I thought.

And then I watched the adoring reviews roll in. Those must have been some 20 minutes.

Hurt Locker was unusual in that my hooks are usually much, much faster. Take the latest Sherlock Holmes. Thirty minutes in, I found my mind wandering. For as unusual as this take was on Holmes, it was far from a unique take on modern bombastic CGI crapfests. Seen 'em. Next.

Prior to that, I think Shrek 3 was the last film I'd bolted. I loved the first two Shreks, but the third one was a nonsensical, empty-headed cash-in. By the time frogs were singing "Live or Let Die," I was thinking I'd really rather not sully my memories of the first two films any further. End scene.

Ah, Natural Born Killers. I found it a heavy-handed and unbearable piece o'crap. I don't remember much, other that not being able to afford the price of the ticket and afterward feeling positively nauseous about having wasted the money.

I ran out of Moulin Rogue about a half-hour in, during the intolerably shrill and stupid scene with Ewan McGregor hiding from the Duke in Nicole Kidman's bedroom. It made me want to claw my eyes and ears off. Later, I gave the film a second chance at home. I still hate that scene and, indeed, skip it entirely. But man, did that film rebound afterward. I'm fond of it now.

I'll never forget that Fucking Amy's Dad walked out on Sleepless in Seattle because of its obvious moral decay: "John, you won't believe this, but they...they...they showed a girl lying sleepless next to her fiance...in bed!"

Can you top that inanity? What films have you walked out on?