Seriously... I'm Kidding

character in a movie. I’m in a recording booth and I have big headphones on and I’m talking into a big microphone. And since there are no cameras I don’t have to wear any pants.
    There is a sound engineer. Hi, Jerry! I’m waving to him right now. He’s sweet. He’s waving back. Hi! Now he’s holding up a sign. “My name isn’t Jerry. It’s Mike.”
    Anyway, since you have the benefit of being able to hear this, I thought I would include some bonus material of me making strange noises.
    For those of you who are reading this the old-fashioned way and can’t hear me, I’ve printed the noises below and I encourage you to use your imagination to think of what they might sound like coming out of my mouth.
    Meeeeee
    Faaaaa
    Coooooooooo
    Gooooooood morning
    Bowwwwwww
    Babowwwww
    Yellowwwww
    Kentucky!
    Pop
    Pop pop pop
    Kerplunk
    Lemonade
    Sylvia
    Click
    Pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah
    Pew pew pew pew pew pew pew
    Shhhhhhhhh
    Harumph!

Honesty

    T hey say honesty is the best policy. But is it?
    It is. Actually, honesty is one of the qualities I find most attractive in a person. (Another one is nice ankles.)
    Honesty is so important and yet a lot of times it’s hard to find in people. I’m not saying any of you are liars. I don’t know you. I’m sure you’re sweet and nice and have never “accidentally” dropped a jury summons down a garbage disposal. Maybe you’ve never uttered so much as a fib in your whole entire lives. But let’s face it, you probably have. We all have. Well, I haven’t. I’m always honest.
    Okay, see? That was a lie. And I’m sorry.
    We might not go around spewing huge, sweeping, outrageous lies, but in one way or another most of us lie every now and again. I actually read a statistic that on average people lie four times a day. I don’t know exactly what four lies people are telling each day but I do know that people tend to lie about their age, their weight, their natural hair color, and how cute their friends’ babies are. “What a cutie-pie. Look at those ears! You have to—can’t miss ’em! So cute.”
    I also know that people lie on their résumés. People lie under oath. People lie to their doctors, which I’ve never quite understood. I know you might be embarrassed about how you got that bite on that particular part of your body, but you have to be honest about it so a trained professional can help you.
    I really try my best not to lie. That’s true. I try to give my honest opinion on things. I try to tell it like it is. Give it to ’em straight. Lay it on the line. Be up-front. Keep it real. Not say false… stuff. I don’t know any other sayings. I try not to lie.
    Sometimes it’s hard because I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. So there have been times when a friend will get a haircut and I will see it and my initial reaction is “Oh my God, you look like a streetwalker who got caught in a wind tunnel.” But I obviously can’t say that because that would be an insult to streetwalkers. So I have to say, “I love it! It looks great!” But when I say it my voice goes up about three octaves. “It looks greee-aaattt!” So I’m certain they know I’m lying.
    How come when we lie our voices go up so many octaves? It’s a dead giveaway. It happens when we dole out compliments we don’t mean and it happens when we say things like “You didn’t have to get me anything!” or “What do you mean you weren’t invited to my party? You’re always invited!” Everyone knows what those mean. “You definitely had to get me something” and “You haven’t been invited back to the house since the urn incident of ’04.” And it’s a mathematical fact: the higher the octave, the bigger the lie. “I didn’t even hear my phone ring!” is usually like a four on the scale. “You think I’m sleeping with someone else?!” is off the charts.
    I can tell when people are lying to me when they start their sentence with “I have to be honest with you.” They may as well say, “Listen, I’m about to lie straight to your face.” Why do people need to clarify when they’re being honest? Does that mean everything else they’ve ever said has been a lie? Yesterday they said they liked my sweater but they didn’t say they were being honest. Does that mean they hated it?
    It’s so strange to me. It almost feels like they’re giving me the option to not hear the truth. As if when they say, “I have to be honest with you,” I might say,