The News

You probably like to know what's going on in the world, but not because you care. You just need to be able to hold small-talk conversations about current events without letting everyone around you find out that your social skills are as fake and deep as the Los Angeles river. The worst thing that could ever possibly happen in your entire life is to have your fake social skills tested by someone you don't know. Having nothing at all to say when this happens will probably cause you to die or move to another city.

One of the best methods of keeping yourself informed is the Internet. And one of the best places on the Internet to get your news is from the Yahoo! home page. This page gives you the headlines of the five most important things going on in the entire world at that moment. Sometimes one of those five things happens to be that monkeys have attacked old people in New Delhi. Or that a Russian ex-model has gone missing. Or that scientists have found out why people like chocolate.

Reading only headlines should be considered a sufficient substitute for reading the actual article. And this is all you need for most everyday conversation. If a coworker asks you, "Have you heard about what's going on in New Delhi?", all you need to answer is,"Yeah. I can't imagine how scared old people must be there now, what with all the monkeys." Sometimes, if you're really unlucky (which you are), someone will talk about more details than you could glean from the headline and expect a response. In this case, you can always change the topic really quickly and desperately, or fake a seizure.

Another great way to find out about what's going on in the world is to look at people's status updates on Facebook. You are likely already addicted to this anyway. But if you don't follow sports at all, this is a great way to find out, sometimes in real time, about how various sports teams are doing. Your ignorant friend in Cleveland probably updates his status to say things like "Bobby is so damn proud of his Browns right now!", or "Bobby wants to find the coach of the Browns and kill his whole family." This is also a good way to find out which of your friends to be the most ashamed of.