Panel of Judges.

Probably, you care what people think of you. Probably you care too much. While it is true that first impressions can be important, relying on them too much is kind of a cop out. Lazy people too lazy to bother getting to know someone properly will rely on first impressions to write people off, and thus, judging a book by its cover. For instance, they say that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at their shoes. But I don’t know how accurate this would really ever be. Like if a person is wearing plastic bags, you will think that maybe they’re homeless, but I’ve gone to university classes or grocery stores wearing crusty old slippers, or duct taped holey shoes, and I’m pretty sure that I had a home at the time. It’s not like there are specific shoes that go with different jobs either, like police shoes, or janitor shoes, or taxidermist shoes. Except for clowns, they have their own shoes. Speaking of clown shoes, they’re also a good example that shoe size doesn’t always reflect foot size, so you can’t count on that assumption either. What about those goofy looking morons who walk around wearing those super pointy dress shoes? Surely their feet don’t actually come to a sharp knife-like sheik style curly conclusion like that? Hence, shoe shape does not equal foot shape.

And forget about thinking that you can tell where they’re coming from, or where they’re going, based on their shoes, and all that Forrest Gumpshit stuff, because if you see someone wearing soccer cleats, you might assume they’re playing soccer soon, but now your guard is down, and maybe they’re actually about to kick you in the nuts. Look out! I guess getting kicked in the nuts by a steel-toe shoe would be the most painful. Clogs or even elf shoes would be quite painful as well due to their shape, and also would be tremendously humiliating. You’d sure feel like a loser if and when they’d start dancing around you, as you lay on the floor, in the foetal position. A clown kick in the balls, with the squeaky shoes, would probably be the most embarrassing and humiliating of all, though, you know, because it would squeak once or twice upon testicular connection. Also, it’s usually a pretty wide shoe, and would probably strike each individual gonad with equal force.

Anyways, if shoes are off the table, but you still would like to effectively try and judge a book by its cover, then here are a few accurate ways to gauge someone’s personality, just by observing some random thing about them.

You can tell a lot about a person by…
how drunk they currently are.

This completely depends on context too, but is mostly self explanatory. If you see someone dancing around with their shirt off, at the office, on their desk, while simultaneously peeing themselves, slurring their speech, holding a whiskey bottle, and talking about how the government stole their best pair of bowling shoes, and you’ve seen this happens three times this week, then you can safely say that they have a problem. You might also wonder why they still have their job. What’s your company’s problem? That does look like fun though, doesn’t it? If they can get away with it, then why can’t you? Now you join them. Now you have a problem too. Oh no! You barfed on the floor. Oh well, that’s the janitor’s problem. What are you looking at? What’s your problem, man?

“That's mister Vice President to you. Pack up your things, you’re both fired.”
“No problem! I hated this job anyways.”

Unemployment is a huge problem.

You can tell a lot about a person by…
which finger they use to pick their nose in public.

Be careful picking in public. You’re giving away hints about who you are. Some of you might find it wrong to pick in public altogether. Well, you are considered to be snobs. You can generally be spotted by your huge nose, turned up at the rest of the world, completely full of snots which are entirely visible from the outside. You won’t clean house, and we can all tell. You know when someone has one just barely hanging on to the outer rim of their nostril, swaying with the wind of each exhale, and you just want to yell at them to take care of it? Well I like to throw one of those little tissue packs at them. It’s well worth the dollar. If you’re more normal, and you realize that there is an urgent need to empty out after a long day of breathing in crusty air, but still care what other people think, then you will likely first attempt the thumb pick. This tells the rest of us that you don’t want to offend us with visible boogers or whistling nostrils, but also don’t want to make it too obvious and gross us out. Now that’s class. Unfortunately, due to its larger size and awkward positioning, you often can’t get anything meaningful with the thumb. Sometimes you’ll even be cursing yourself for having clipped your nails the night before.

“Curses! If I only had yesterday’s superior longer thumb nail I could have gotten this thing out by now. Why did I clip!?!”

Usually you just work at it a bit and loosen it up for your next line of defense, the index. You gain much more reach with the index. You should, however, be careful not to start digging when anyone is looking directly at you. You can still hide most of the nostril with the thumb, in case someone glances your way, but for the initial penetration, you should make sure the coast is clear. Remember, the key word here is class. If you successfully pluck one out of the nose, you might have to move up to the middle and ring finger, but only to roll it into a flickable morsel, not to dig. Be sure to only ever flick it onto the floor or a small child. Never use the smear technique, unless you can smear it onto a tissue, or else you risk smearing your reputation if someone spots it. Also, it is important to notice that the middle finger and ring finger never entered the nostril. The index and thumb are the only ones that should penetrate the nostril in public.

If you’re caught using the pinky to pick in public, then it tells the rest of the world that you’ve completely given up on yourself, and should be arrested, immediately. There is nothing more disturbing than catching someone in the midst of a full-on backhanded pinky dig, with the elbow raised in the air, and making that nose pick face like they’re trying to pull their eyeball out through their nostril, eyes watering ever so slightly. You obviously mustn’t care what the rest of us think of you, or that we’re scared you might start bleeding if you dig any harder. And don’t think that wrapping a tissue around the pinky somehow excuses you. It’s still revolting to see, especially since we know you’ll end up examining your findings after the gold dig is over. The same goes for rolling up a tissue and using it like a soft sixth finger. That's bullshit.

Remember, if you see a person with a very long pinky nail, sure, they may be a flamenco guitarist, or they may be an honest to goodness coke fiend, but be careful, because they just may be a public pinky picker, and no one wants to see that. Look away! Jeepers creepers, get a room.

You can tell a lot about a person by…
their breath.

You can tell what kind of food they’ve been eating, if they’re a smoker, if they’re drunk, if they’ve recently had a genital in their mouth, if they’re dehydrated, if they’re sick, if they’re all minty fresh, what kind of gum they like, if they’ve had too much coffee today, too much tea, if they forgot to brush their teeth, remembered to brush their teeth, if they’ve recently napped, or any number of other smelly giveaways.

Most importantly, if you are able to detect such subtleties in their breath and can even clearly see the texture of the shit caught in their teeth and of their gums, then this means that the person is definitely a close-talker. This, in turn, means that they are one of the worst people to talk to ever, and are potentially psychologically damaged. Careful, they're grabbing your arm to pull you in closer!

You can tell a lot about a person by…
whether they wipe their ass sitting down or standing up.

You may or may not have realized, but there are indeed two popular methods utilized for wiping in the modern day afterpoop routine. The timid people, more reserved and prudish, tend to remain seated, possibly in an attempt to conceal the fruits of their labour. I’m no scientician or psycho-analysisser, but that sounded totally legit. The standing people, on the other hand, are proud and fearless. They like to properly examine their output before extinguishing the smelly fire. They check for inconsistencies and take mental pictures to remember length and girth, and compare with previous efforts. Some people claim to be somewhere in between, but these people are indecisive, and that to me, screams of sitters. Standers are sure of themselves, and proud to be standers. The sitters of the world are sneaky, untrustworthy types.

That’s why I believe that the automatically flushing toilets were conceived by politician-sitters to try and convert the proud standing people of the world into more passive sitters. Now, for the standers, on these auto toilets, wiping has become a race against the auto clock. If you miss that first round flush, your autographed paper is still sitting in the bowl, un-flushed and exposed, alone. Now you have to sit back down, not knowing how long you need to wait until you can get back up and make it flush again. It hardly seems fair. Those damn sitters probably wipe, and then walk away and never look back. Well, probably they pull up their pants first. But I bet they don’t even care if it clogs. Not the standers. They are considerate, they stand, they watch, and they make sure everything goes down smooth. They also pull up their pants before walking away though. Some sources have told me that most automatic toilets have an override button, but I think that’s bullshit. I haven’t ever seen one. That sounds to me like a rumour started by sitters to try and keep the standers from rioting.

“There must be a button here somewhere… I guess I just don’t see it…”
“Haw haw haw, those fools. There’s no button! Yes… Sit back down! Good…Sit...”

While we’re on the subject, the courtesy flush becomes a little awkward, for both sitters and standers, with the automatic toilet, doesn't it? Because, either you have to get up and walk away a little, even though you know you might have another round coming, or you have to lean forward far enough that the toilet thinks you’re no longer there. The problem with leaning really far forward is that you’re bent over far enough that someone outside the stall can now see your head. Now they know it’s you, and that you were in the midst of such a dirty experience, that you required a courtesy flush.

Now that I think about it, I suppose that in a public bathroom, you could tell a lot about someone by their shoes though, by looking at the shoes in the stall, and then later recognizing them walking around in the workplace, or school, or street, or wherever.

“Hey, I know those shoes. Second floor bathroom lunchtime diarrhea guy, right?”
“STOP JUDGING ME!”

Here’s a question. When a sitter is at home and runs out of toilet paper, and the cabinet is empty, and then they have to leave the bathroom to go get some more elsewhere in the home, do they stay in the seated position the whole time? These are the kinds of questions I ask myself, when I probably should be doing my job instead.

You may be wondering how you would even find out if someone is a sitter or a stander, especially when we are talking about first impressions, and you just don’t recognize their shoes from any previous bathroom visit. Well, that’s easy. Follow them to the can and wait. Duuhh. Or just ask them.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Wallace.”
“The pleasure was all mine, Alfred… say, do you wipe your ass standing up or sitting down. I just want to get to know a bit more about who the real you is.”

You’ll make a lasting impression. That’s what all of this was about anyways, wasn’t it? I guess it wasn’t about that at all. Oh yeah: Learning to not judge a book by its cover, except for certain cases where you should. Never judge a book based on its shoes, or else you might get kicked in the nuts. Unless you saw those shoes in a bathroom stall, and can then assume a certain level of knowledge regarding the frequency and style of their bowel movements. Also if the book has swords and dragons and dwarves and shit, then it could potentially be a really lame read. These are all just very loose guidelines. Now, go use the power of observation! I’m sure I’ll think of some more ways to judge the covers of books later. I’ll be sure to let you know.

That’s it. I need to go out to buy some shiny new shoes and books.