Ten-hut! Look alive, you sap-sucking excuse for a soldier! Living among people is a dangerous enterprise. The problem with most people is that they are human beings, and I'm glad I'm not one. Learn these techniques, and there may be hope yet for your survival in modern society.

Tempered Indifference
 Sometimes, silence is the best answer. This is true when any answer other than silence can hurt your position. Since this tactic is effectively inaction, it is the least aggressive deployment in your arsenal. Even so, with shrewd usage it can be an effective weapon.
 
The Wife: "You left the toilet seat up again!"
You: "..."

In this example, you have neither conceded your position nor refuted the issue posited. You have also set yourself to plausibly deny the circumstances presented, if pressured. Taking it a step further, where circumstances permit, you can plausibly deny you actually heard the statement. When properly applied, the target may eventually forget why it accosted you in the first place, or simply give up altogether.

This is the weapon of choice of husbands everywhere.

The Radar Jammer
 This technique works best when you need to end a conversation quickly and there is little chance of collateral damage (i.e., causing an incident that might embarrass you). When done properly, it stuns the target into a perplexed silence, granting you a few precious moments in which to make a hasty retreat. It works best when delivered in a hurried, self-important, preferably deadpan tone of voice, and when the subject matter of your sentence is absurd or shocking.
 
Sidewalk Activist: "Sign my petition?"
You: "Can't, sorry. I left the oven on at home and my dog's on fire."
 
In the above example, clearly (hopefully), you have lied about your oven being left on. You have conducted a value judgment in which the benefit of escaping the conversation outweighs the cost of lying. Your dog will not be happy.
 
The radar jammer is a technique of moderate aggression. Thus, it should be used where the situation warrants, or when Tempered Indifference fails. Do not overuse this technique in too short a period, as its effects will sharply drop off after the first salvo. If, after launching the Radar Jammer you cannot escape in time, or the technique fails to work, it may be reattempted, but its chances of success are impaired.
 
The Punctuated Freakout
This is the flip-side of, and the payoff to, Tempered Indifference. It is the double-edged sword in your armory, honed to a ludicrous edge. Caution is advised when considering this weapon, for it is just as important to know when to use it as when not to, as it becomes markedly less effective each time it is deployed. Thus, it is the nuclear warhead of your armaments.

The reason this technique is called the Punctuated Freakout is because you must first have mastered Tempered Indifference. You must have cultivated a reputation for being even-tempered for this to work to its fullest. Hence, your "Freakout," as we'll discuss later, is "Punctuated," or rarely seen, but appropriately triggered given the circumstances.

The "Freakout" portion must be precisely that. Freaking out is an art that escapes precise definition, but one aspect remains constant: you must go all out. You cannot execute a halfway Punctuated Freakout, much as you cannot halfway launch a continent-incinerating nuclear missile. Common aspects of freakouts include: blind rage, shouting, flipping tables, tossing chairs, kicking down cubicle walls, tossing computer monitors out windows, flinging documents into the air, sweeping the contents of a desktop to the floor, punching wall plaques, etc.
 
A Punctuated Freakout may get you fired (or promoted, or arrested), will likely get your point across, and will certainly be memorable, but most importantly, it will get your point across.
 
Yes, I did repeat that part. Got a problem with that? I didn't think so.

Here's one for all you word mavens out there: bowdlerize. It's when you substitute an offensive expression for a family-friendly one. And I'll do better than just use it in a sentence, professor. I'll demonstrate its meaning in a poorly drawn comic strip about gender double standards.

The comic strip below got me an A- in English vocabulary, a B+ in sociology, a D in art, and a visit to the dean's office.

I most deserved the grade in art.

College education for the win!

A friend of mine was considering names for his soon-to-be-born first child and asked my opinion. During what would normally be a happy occasion, we nearly came to blows, all over a disagreement on baby names. For the sake of the forthcoming child, I'll not mention the name his parent suggested. Suffice it to say that some parents aren't qualified to name their pet goldfish.

Apparently, some countries have gotten so fed up with random fistfights over baby names that they've passed laws on just this subject. Countries with baby-name legislation have an "approved" list of baby names, and forbid parents from naming their children anything else. Generally, countries with this sort of law will not register a child given an unauthorized name, and birth records will simply reflect "Girl" or "Boy" on that child's vital record. This brings up a creepy tangent -- what happens to a child who grows to adulthood and yet is a non-citizen? I personally don't know, nor do I know anyone in that predicament. Even so, the threat of social ostracism, or being a living non-person, tends to scare parents into naming their kids something acceptable, for the benefit of everyone else.

Sadly, I don't live in a country that values that benefit. Americans consider it their liberty to name their children anything they want, going so far as to call it an important, constitutionally-protected expression.

Apparently, then, a parent's liberty to name his child Bonkzillius (a name I just made up, but I've heard worse) outweighs the eighteen years of ridicule, shame, and abuse that child will endure until he becomes an adult, when he may legally change his name to Steve.

Before you throw bricks at me and label me a fascist, consider this: do we really want all the sci-fi geeks naming their kids Hyperion? Do we want all the roleplaying game nerds calling their progeny Excelsior? Or all the doctors' kids Caduceus? Or the lawyers' Res Ipsa?

Hell, can we put up with all the carnies naming their kids Spin-A-Whirly, after the ride in which those children were conceived?

I don't think I can, nor would I want to.

You know you've heard it. You just don't remember or won't admit to it.

You'll hear it piped through the speakers in any trendy chain coffee shop or other place hipsters have historically gathered. You'll know it by the hesitant guitar notes and presence of "new cool" instruments like the ukulele. The singer usually mutters his verses with extreme trepidation. The singers' vocal styles range between high-pitched, like a candidate for a boy's choir, or brassy, like a reject from Muppets voice acting tryouts. The themes behind the songs are usually so safe to the point of being insipid -- travel, relationships, sometimes something so trivial as "it's raining."
 
Hipster music is unobtrusive; it knows it's not the reason why people go to coffee shops. It never comes to the fore because it's not mainstream, it's not corporate ("You just don't get it, man!"). It hasn't sold out, or at least it claims it hasn't. Its image depends on its audience not knowing it has, in fact, sold out to The Man.

Oftentimes, the volume is turned low so the music provides a barely-audible back beat to the chatter in the café, although sometimes it's annoyingly loud. On that note, when it's turned up too loud, it's really annoying because the genre seems to be about music that doesn't want to be heard. The vocalists mumble. A mumble that sounds like a roar is paradoxical, it's something you don't come across every day and when you do, it seizes your attention and doesn't let go. Like a train wreck. It's an awful thing to see and you don't watch it because you want to, you watch because it's something you don't get to see every day -- whether you want to or not.

All this begs several questions: who listens to this? Does anyone? Were you to go to the music store, would you find a section devoted to coffee shop music? Would you feel embarrassed at the look you'd get from the music store clerk on asking him where that section was?

On that last note, if you'd feel embarrassed at all, it's probably because you know what you're doing is wrong. Take off your scarf, it's a hundred degrees out. And take off your sunglasses too, you're indoors. Spit out that cigarette, it's not even lit.

Friends don't let friends listen to Hipster Muzak.