TED Talk inspires man to get his shit together after four more episodes of 'Scrubs'
Dan Kalmar | CBC Comedy | Posted: August 4, 2016 6:08 PM | Last Updated: August 4, 2016
VANCOUVER, BC—14 minutes into a 22-minute TED Talk on bee migration, 26-year-old Douglas Perlis realized this morning that the story was a metaphor for his own life, probably. As he listened to the talk on his MacBook Pro at a Starbucks with no headphones, Perlis felt the first stirrings of an epiphany that he was meant to change the world.
"Things are going to be different around here," claimed Perlis as he wiped chia seeds from his beard. "Right after this talk. And a nap."
Not wanting to rush into anything too life changing, Perlis explains that he should probably start by casually mentioning to every last one of his coworkers tomorrow that he watched a TED Talk. Then, in about a week, he'll begin considering plans for how he will harness his true potential. Ultimately, he feels it would be best to wait until after his summer vacation to Buffalo – and then his parents' anniversary is coming up after that. He says he shouldn't be forced to choose the future over his parents, given that they pay for the insurance on his 2014 Toyota Prius.
"Right after all those things it's definitely going to happen," he says firmly.
"My grandfather always said opportunity only knocks maybe five or six times in your life," Perlis offered to the man beside him at Starbucks who refused to look up from his copy of Shantaram. "Mind you, he was a Jehovah's Witness so that might have just been a joke he used when he forcibly entered people's homes."
When questioned about what meaningful and concrete way he intended to change the world, Perlis responded by first incorrectly attributing a Mussolini quote to Marcel Proust and then talked for another 15 minutes about synergy and paradigm shifts. Asked to explain what a "paradigm shift" is, Perlis lowered his voice and awkwardly laughed that he doesn't remember much from Grade 12 geometry.
Moments before Perlis was about to embark on the first steps in his journey of a thousand miles, a second TED Talk about gluten-free gluten autoplayed and he decided the future could wait a bit longer.