Have you ever been in a room full of people who could do nothing but complain about their lives – their work miseries, their truculent or distant family members, their various syndromes? Did you know, deep within yourself, that you had suffered the worst among them, even if you lacked the means to prove it? Do you want the sympathy, attention, and possible memoir revenues that come with having documented proof of your Alpha-Victim status? If so, then you need
The Traumometer!
The
Traumometer (pronounced like “thermometer,” but with a world of hurt
behind every syllable) uses widely accepted scientific principles in generating
proof that you, alone among all to whom you compare, have suffered the most.
With the Traumometer and a home computer, you can just follow these simple steps:
1. Have everyone in the room take the Trauma Matrix-Maundering Person Inventory (TMMPI), an easy-to-answer questionnaire thatprovides a general sense of what level of pain each individual has experienced. With its state-of-the-art DVD-ROM multimedia interface, the TMMPI surveys your whining friends about everything from actual traumatic experiences to annoyances like subway delays and armpit rashes.
The TMMPI also employs a special recursive scoring process to determine whether certain traumas may have been actually caused by the person taking the inventory. Fellow employees complaining about their boss micromanaging them just because of a few little errors… Drivers who bemoan everyone else's poor driving each time they look up from their cell phones…Dinner party guests who loudly berate the assembled company for refusing to let that abortion issue die… The TMMPI will catch 'em all and call them on their bogus claims on everyone's sympathy!
2.
While the TMMPI provides an outline of the types of traumas people have endured,
it cannot measure the depth of those feelings. After all, some people are just
much more sensitive than other people. A hangnail for some people is as devastating
as a double amputation is for others. This is the key capability that distinguishes
the Traumometer from traumatization gauges that rely on tests alone: it incorporates
an electro-dermal sensing system (EDSS), a heart-rate sensor, and a respiratory
activity sensor, similar to the suite of indicators used in lie detectors.
When pondering the pain and pressure that have defined your very existence, your body undergoes temporary biochemical changes. Their severity indicates the level of trauma you've experienced. The Traumometer hooks into your computer's USB port on one end and into the sensors on the other. All you have to do is sit back and relive the horror! After a few mathematical manipulations, the Traumometer will give you a hard number on how much you've suffered, on a scale of 1 to 10.
3. Sometimes, the scores of two people competing for the title of top traumatized testee will be so close that the Traumometer cannot tell which person has endured the most agony. In this case, the Traumometer will administer a special additional question to both of you, so you can have the satisfaction of knowing that one of you is more worthy of attention than the other!1
We're confident that the Traumometer can sober up happy hour, calm family dinners, and resolve those heated debates that constantly rack therapy groups like no other machine ever could. But don't take our word for it! Just ask these satisfied customers:
"I
always knew that I led the most painful life of anyone in my dorm, and the fact
that I was raised in unimaginable luxury in Potomac didn't even begin to account
for my myriad sorrows. Now, however, I have proven it, and I am even dating
one of those girls who think it is their life's mission to reclaim basket cases!
Thanks, Traumometer!" — Nathan Trufflefeatheringstone, College Park,
MD
"For
the longest time, the other people in my poetry group didn't think my poetry
was any good, because I used to rhyme 'sad' and 'dead' a lot, when I rhymed
anything, and I used a lot of metaphors with the moon. But now that they know
I'm an 8 on the Traumometer, they can barely summon words to describe my poems
after I read them. So powerful my poems are, like the full light of the moon
on the barren countryside." — Briana Thompson, San Francisco, CA
"Every
time the girls from the office and I would go out to Arby's, we would have these
kind of one -ups about whose life was worse. Ever since the Traumometer put
me at a 9 and the other girls at 5 or below, though, we all just stare blankly
at each other after we get our roast beef and cheeses. It's much more pleasant
this way." — Arlene Dixon, Biloxi, MO
So don't sit around while other people take the sympathy that's rightfully yours! Get the Traumometer today!
1 The special additional question is: "Are you the registered owner of this Traumometer?"