Here are three insights of use to no one…

1. Don't lie on the street and have a construction worker ride his jackhammer and drive the sharp-edged side into your forehead.

This is a useless insight on many levels.

Jackhammer X-ray

For one thing, most people don't ever contemplate doing this. If they consider suicide, it's by jumping off a high bridge or something.

But no one, to my knowledge, has ever considered doing this. At least they haven't said so to me, and I know crazy people. What no one ever contemplates doing and never will is by definition irrelevant, stupid, expensive, or psychotic. Taking the jackhammer through your forehead should not be on anyone's agenda and should never be discussed or written about in novels. It is not an insight. It is hardly an idea. It is a concept without a cause. It is not even a legitimate thought really. Think about it.

You could argue that someone has thought of doing this, but it's got to be under one in 100 million people. This person is a societal outlier. In my exploration of the world of useless insights, I deal with the masses. My intent is to waste their time and make them unfortified. For these purposes, maniacs are off the radar.

Even if told you that when the jackhammer sliced through your forehead it would probably be so powerful it would go right through your skull to the other side, this would not mean anything. It won't happen. Guys who wield jackhammers have streets to dig up, not foreheads to drive through. They need to put food on their tables. Your bloody face and skull mean nothing to them.

This jacking is shock theater but it doesn't get you, me, or the jackhammer user any more edified. In effect, this is just kicking another can down the road forcing someone else to sort this issue out. No one has any use for such useless behavior. Kicking a can be an insightful way to approach a problem, but this is about jackhammers. Stay on message, please.

2. When you think about why you exist, it's important to remember that you are going to become dust one day.

While it's sad you will become dust—and you will, Holmes—that does not have a direct relationship with why you exist. You exist because two people procreated. This is not insightful. It is biology. The fact that you are going to be dust one day is a separate issue.

Disconnected ideas that make no sense and get you no further in your understanding of yourself are no way to spend your time. Unless, of course, you want to be less insightful. That would be an insightful approach to life. It would also be useless.

3. Put straightforwardly, a plug should be inserted into an electrical outlet, on the wall or elsewhere.

You already knew that. Someone taught you this when you were young. Let's say you want to turn on a light in the den in your home. You see that you need to insert the plug into the wall to turn it on. You do that. The light goes on.

Knowing this adds nothing to your life. You would have been better off not reading this and doing almost anything else. Your time has been wasted and so has mine. You are no more knowledgeable than you were before.

Burn all of this.

Stop reading now.

You may even be feeling more useless for having read this. I assure you I feel more useless for having written it.

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