I think you know your life isn't going exactly as planned when you find yourself wondering how much money you could get for selling one of your organs.

This was the idea I contemplated yesterday while examining my current state of almost embarrassing brokenness.  Just exactly how much could I get for one of my kidneys?  I have to tell you, if somebody offered me five grand for one right now, I'd take it in a shot.  I might even give a long hard thought about one or two thousand.  Less than a thousand, I might have to pass.  It seems to be a moot point, since I have absolutely no idea how much I could get for a kidney.  I mean, kidney buyers aren't exactly the type of thing you can just look up in the Yellow Pages.  And a cursory glance at craigslist.com found no one else in the market of buying or selling kidneys, leaving the exact value of said organ a mystery.

But, seriously, if I could get good value on a kidney…I'd give one up.  Kidneys are the things we have two of, right?  And you only need one?  Or is that your liver?  Damn, I probably should look that up.  You definitely don't want to sell an organ and find out afterwards that it was something you needed to…you know…live.

And actually, selling organs for money isn't really a habit you want to get into anyway, because really, how far can you get in life doing that?  How many organs can any one person have that they can do without?  I don't know the answer to this question, but I'm guessing the number has to be less than a dozen, making organ selling a short-term financial solution at best.

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't mention at this point that I do have a long term option available to me that is similar to selling organs, and that would of course be going to a fertility clinic and selling my…uh……you know.  My "male seed."  My "baby batter."  My "boys."  My "egg whites."  My "happy juice."

In case you haven't figured it out yet, we're talking about masturbating into a cup here, foks.

(A quick editorial note: As I am typing this, Microsoft Word has just brought it to my attention that I DON'T know how to spell the word "masturbating"…which being that I am both a male and have a degree in English seems terribly wrong, somehow.)

Here's the deal: while on the surface this seems like the absolute perfect money making opportunity, I got to tell you, I don't think I could do it.  Not because I'm worried about someone else having kids with my DNA that I don't know about, because I could care less.  I'm sure as hell not using them for that purpose, so if it brings happiness to someone else, more power to them.  But just because…that's way too much pressure for me.  I've taken, on a couple of different occasions, drug tests for new jobs, and I have a hard time PEEING when I know there is a nurse outside the door, waiting for my urine.  How the hell am I supposed to get off knowing there's some poor, bored, 9 to 5 nurse waiting at the front desk for me to bring the results to her?  I can't even fathom what I'm supposed to fantasize about to get over that mental hurdle.

The point here, people, is I'm poor.  And being poor, I've discovered, is very, very boring.  Also: frustrating.  So it was with a great deal of relief that my persistent agonizing over my money problems was interrupted yesterday by a little good-bye hang out with Siri Hellerman.

I met Siri Hellerman when we were playing opposite of each other in a production of You Can't Take it With You earlier this year.  In a week, Siri is moving to Hawaii for a year and a half because she is the LUCKIEST BITCH IN THE WORLD.

I'm just kidding.  But not really.

The point is, Siri and I had a date with Bennigans, alcohol, and Futurama on DVD, because those are pretty much the three pillars of our relationship.  While we were waiting on our food at Bennigans, Siri asked me a standard question that lately is pretty much the bane of my existence.

"So, how's life?"

This is a very normal, polite, average thing for a friend to ask another friend when they are conversing.  And I fucking hate it.  Because I can't answer it honestly and positively at the same time.  So I can either answer it like this:

Well, Siri, I'm dead broke because I have a job that doesn't pay shit, I'm not making any progress on anything I would like to accomplish in my life, and I'm wildly unhappy, probably more because of my own mental state than any actual outside, controllable factors.  I'm a jaded, cynical, broken, bitter old man at the ripe age of 28.  Also, my toe hurts.  The middle one, on my right foot.

But I can't answer like that, because nobody wants to listen to me whine, least of all myself, and what the hell can she do about it?  So what's the point of bringing down the mood?  But the only other alternative is to answer like this:

Fine.

Which A) is not entirely accurate and B) makes for a very short conversation.

So I settle for a nice middle ground, with a little bit of whining…just enough so we have a little something to talk about.  Well, maybe there was more than a little whining…I don't really remember.  But there was some, causing Siri to finally bestow this declaration upon me:

"Tim, your problem is, you don't listen to anyone else's advice."

This is funny, because I honestly don't remember ever RECEIVING anyone else's advice recently.  But, to be fair, I guess that sort of proves Siri's point: if I'm not listening to people's advice, how would I remember it?  So Siri's advice: listen to advice.  That's good advice.

Now, back to my apartment for drinking and Bender.  Here is what I have realized about drinking: alcohol doesn't make you feel less depressed.  It just makes all the regular, simple aspects of life so difficult, you literally don't have enough power in your brain to dwell on being depressed.  For example, going to the bathroom.  When you have to walk to your bathroom, which by the way for me is a mere 10-yards from my living room, and you get up and the entire building is spinning, and you have to concentrate INSANELY hard just to walk in the straight line required to get from point A to point B…well…you don't really have time to think about your emotional woes.

Despite my extreme intoxication, I was able to accomplish one minor feat.  Here is a most excellent picture I took of Siri, who managed to pass out for about a half hour halfway through Futurama but before we concluded the night with Cheaters:

That's an empty bottle of Sprite on her head, in case you're wondering.  I would have balanced some more cool things on her, but that's all I could find at the time.

(Another quick side note: how big of a nerd am I?  Most girls would be nervous about passing out in a guy's apartment because they might be sexually molested.  Girls who pass out in my apartment get random objects placed on their skulls and then get laughed at.  Now, I'm not by any stretch saying it's a good thing to take advantage of a passed out female…but you have to admit it's a hell of a lot cooler.)

After Siri had sobered up, we said goodbye and she left.  I was still quite drunk, and I attempted to read some more of "The Know-It-All", a terrifically funny little memoir by A.J. Jacobs…but unfortunately Mr. Jacobs' writing was weaving and crawling across the pages too much for my eyes to follow properly, leading me to do something I don't normally like to do, which is go to bed drunk.  Supposedly going to sleep drunk is what gives you a hang-over, but I have yet to have even one hang-over, and so I have decided that I am hang-over proof.

I marveled at my imperviousness to alcohol's aftereffects as I drifted off to sleep, and wondered briefly if I could make any money off of that.  I decided I'd worry about it in the morning.