Just Treat it Like a Movie.

have you ever noticed how a movie can ba an absolute, catastophic, neolithic failure, but people will refer to it in one of two ways.
1. the redeeming quality
well the movie was horrendous. the acting was awful. the casting was poor. the cinematography was less than interesting. BUT jlo is in it, and she has a nice butt.
2. the qualifier
well the movie wasn't good, but for movies about Robert Redford doing a lot of running, and trying to avoid going to a Chinese prison, and shaming a Chinese lawyer, it was pretty good.

somehow these methods seem perfectly reasonable, as if any movie can be saved by minute changes in presentation. given this new found fact of social behavior, i have decided to refer to all things in the same manner.

examples in dialogue
"how was having your wisdom teeth out?"
"well, horribly painful. shaming, because the opiates made me a bumbling fool. it also was not too great to get three dry sockets, or to go to a movie in theaters and be so drugged that i forgot i even went, but the mouthwash they gave me tasted pretty good."

"how did the big test go?"
"well, for being a test that brought my GPA down, so i will no longer make the deans list, and will significantly reduce my chances of getting into a top graduate school, and having taken me 4.5 hours and only finishing half of it, and getting carpal tunnel syndrome from writing for so long, and having my pants spontaneously catch fire during it, it was the best test i have ever taken."

"why do you drive a mini van, instead of something...age appropriate, and efficient?"
"well it does get horrible gas mileage, and it is loud, and is dangerous in the snow, and not very fast, and annoyingly hard to park, and has a ridiculous stopping distance, and being scratched and dented to all heck and having over 150,000 miles on it, but it is really nice if you need to take a bunch of kids to soccer practice."

"how's it going?"
"well it is easily the best day that i have ever had, for a day when i found out that i have a cancer eating my body like an unstoppable rebel force, and i will probably meet an untimely and extremely painful death."*

i figure this new method will give me an optimistic edge allowing me to see things in some kind of great light, making everything suddenly okay. i see no reason why this will not solve all my problems."

* note, i am not really dying, just an example.