Sundry Drive No. 1

I think Sundays here will be a day for some half-thoughts, links, stupid pictures, reader mail, etc.

Regarding mail, I will generally not use your full name unless the subject is something innocuous and I know you well enough to know your cool with it. (As in we've shared a bunch of emails or you've outed yourself as a reader by following me on twitter (I don't really post on twitter. I just use it to see what other people are up to. And if you do follow me I'll probably end up replying with something inappropriate to something you write, so I wouldn't bother.)) Your secrets are safe with me. You don't have to pull an Andi Gladwin and write in with a bunch of fake email addresses. Every day it's a new one. "You should really do a post on how Joshua Jay's new haircut stinks." or "How about a series of posts on Joshua Jay's haircut? What a joke. Thanks, Randy Shadwin." And all the emails are like gladwinfan1@gmail.com and gladishthemagish@rocketmail.com. You're not fooling me, Andi.

---

So did Criss Angel really save that guys life, or what?

I mean, the answer is, "of course not." But the only scientific proof we have is that that guy hasn't killed himself yet, which is the only acceptable reaction to the thought, "I owe my life to Criss Angel."

---

E.M. writes:

Is there a reason you don't have comments on your blog? I know you'll attract a lot of hate, but that's part of the fun isn't it?

This is a question I've received a few times. The truth is, having no comments is my gift to you. Every other site on the web wants your feedback. But here you can just read my site, register for yourself how you feel about a given post, and move on.

Also, as I wrote to E.M.:

As far as comments go, I just never really looked at my site as a place for people to discuss ideas. It's just a place for me to say whatever I want and then people are free to like it or not. Plus I just want to be constantly moving forward and thinking up new things, not debating ideas I had weeks or months earlier.

That's not to say I don't like getting feedback. I do. But if someone has an issue with something I said, or wants to educate me, or just wants to say something nice, they can email me. Problem solved. 

If you've read this site you know my preferred performance style is one-on-one. I like to imagine that's the way I'm writing too. That I'm having a one-on-one interaction, just with a lot of people at the same time. If that makes sense. It's just you and me, princess.

---

---

I used to have an attorney who was a regular reader of the old site. I don't know if he's found his way to this one yet. If you're an attorney, send me an email, because I have an idea for a post that I think will get me sued.

---

Have a good Sunday. Enjoy the funny pages.

Impish

Happy 4th of July, Americans! 

And happy 4th of July to everyone else as well, I mean, it's still the 4th of July for you too. What's that? You're in Ethiopia and follow the Oromo calendar? Well... I feel foolish. Happy Gidada of Wacabajjii to you.

Saturday! In the park! I think it was the Gidada of Wacabajjii!

---

I'm working on the poster for my big stage show. Just trying to nail down the artist who's going to do my portrait. I'm thinking of going with the theme of imps whispering the secrets of magic to me. But mine is going to be more realistic because you'll see an imp in my ear and I'll be frantically scribbling down how to do a false transfer with a sponge ball or how to construct a mirror base or whatever he's telling me on a clipboard.

I mean, in most of these posters the magicians could not seem less fucking interested. Look at this guy, he's practically saying, "Ugh, I get it! Enough with the whispering already. And will you please be careful with my incense burner? That's not a toy, you guys!"

And then there's this poor sap. This image seems to depict a half-second after he realized the "imp" that was whispering in his ear is really a guy named Teddy, a power-bottom he found on Craigslist one night when his wife was out of town. "I'm happily married, Teddy. I'm not a homo. I despise homos. I was only experimenting. It was supposed to be a one night thing. What? Yes... I do like how you're styling your mustache now. It's very... sensual. NO! Go now, Teddy. Go far, far away. This relationship is not appropriate for an eminent magician."

My poster will be different than all the other ones in the history of magic because in my poster one of the imps will be whispering straight into my butthole. I think it's more realistic that way because there are probably some stupid imps too. Like imps that don't understand anatomy. And when you first see it, you'll probably laugh. But then you'll look more closely at the imp's face and it will be clear he thinks he has something really important to tell me, but I'll never know because he picked the wrong orifice. And then you'll imagine the imp eagerly watching my show later in the evening with an excited smile on his face that, over the course of the show, becomes weaker and weaker as he begins to realize I'm not going to take whatever advice it is he was trying impart. And as the show closes he just sits there staring blankly, his eyes welling up, while around him the other imps laugh and curse and stuff and he thinks, "He doesn't value my input. He ignored everything I said." And then my poster won't seem so funny anymore. In fact, it will seem a little sad. Which will be good because that's the kind of emotional journey I expect people to go on when they see my show too.

A True False Memory

For the purposes of this site, I sent an email out to some friends last week asking them what their favorite or most memorable moment was in regards to any trick I've shown them or strange experience we've had together. One of the nice things about performing magic as an amateur is that you get to cycle through a lot of different material. You don't have to perform the same six effects over and over (unless that's your thing). The downside of that is I've forgotten a lot of the tricks I've worked on, and some of my best ideas I only performed a couple of times before moving on. So it was nice to get a few dozen replies to my question because it reminded me of some things I haven't done in a long time and gave me a number of ideas for future posts. Hell, even if you don't write a magic blog I think you should email your friends and ask them what tricks were most memorable or enjoyable. It's educational. And it's entertaining to hear not only what they remember but how they remember things happening.

One of the laziest bits of writing in magic, primarily in the area of mentalism, is when people are explaining their effects and there's a big, glaring weak spot in the method. And rather than justifying that weak spot presentationally, or improving on it methodologically, they gloss over it by telling us that people won't remember it. Or better yet, they'll misremember it as something better. "While the constraints you place on the selection process will limit your spectator's options to just four cards, they will remember the effect as them having had a free choice of any card." Oh, will they?! How fortunate! Fuck this card trick, I want to learn how you can read the mind -- in fact read the future memory -- of a spectator you've never met and their reaction to a performance you haven't seen. That's impressive.

Of course spectator's do misremember effects. It's just naive to think that they always do so in the same way, and that they always do so in a way that covers up the shitty parts of your trick. 

Moving on. One of the responses to my email above contained my favorite misremembering of a trick I've performed. And it turned an effect which I thought was kind of quirky and artistically appealing into something that was either the height of whimsical or nightmarish depending on your perception.

This was my friend, Lexi's response to the email:

My favorite tricks were the ones with the pig and mice [Ed. note: I did a trick with a baby pig and mice for her birthday one year.] and the one with the dress of course. [Ed. note: One night I told her I was going to "Pretty Woman" her and take her out dress shopping in her mind. There was a wrapped present on the table. I had her design a dress in her head and when she was done she opened the present to find that dress. Of course, there was more to it than that, BUT THAT IS WHAT THE AUDIENCE WILL REMEMBER!]

But the one I think of at least once a week, or whenever anyone is chewing gum, is the gumball trick!

I should explain something. Here is one of the corners of my living room.

Yes. I'm a grown man with no kids, but I like candy, okay? Deal with it. When people see this for the first time I tell them it's an art instillation. And that's kind of true, but it just happens to be one that changes over time as my friends and I eat from it and I replenish it with new stuff. Is it immature? Maybe. I like it and other people love it. Look, pedophiles are evil people, but they have the right idea: people like candy. And most everything is chosen with a purpose. I have tricks I do with a lot of it. Bubble gum cigarettes lead to some interesting conversations and cig manipulation. And I haven't met a woman of any age that doesn't enjoy donning a candy necklace and ring pop and they are all too happy to share them with you. And if you can't transition from sucking something on her hand, or biting something off her neck, into other playfully romantic actions then you're out of luck. Take your dick, wrap it in bubble-wrap, and bury that shit 10-feet deep in a time-capsule, because brother, you ain't going to need it.

If you look in the upper left-hand corner, you'll see a bit of red plastic hanging on the wall. It's one of these. 

Everyone assumes it's just a picture of a gumball machine, but it's actually a working gumball machine. You turn the knob at the bottom and gum comes out below it. 

So when my friend said "the gumball trick," I wasn't actually sure what she meant. Because I've done multiple tricks with gumballs. You can set one of these frames up so you know the colors of the first two gumballs to come out, and obviously you can use that bit of knowledge as part of an effect that's built around taste or color.

When I emailed my friend back about which gumball trick she meant, she replied:

The one where your eyes turned into gumballs!

Say what? I thought.

And then I remembered. This was about four years ago.

My friend comes over and hits the gumball machine, like she does every time she comes over. I ask her what color she got and she tells me green. I ask her to grab one for me. She turns the knob and one falls into her hand.

"What color is it?" I ask.

"It's red," she tells me.

"Okay, come to me and put it between my teeth."

She walks over to me and puts the gumball in my mouth and I hold it between my top and bottom front teeth. I point to the gumball and then suck it back into my mouth and start chewing it. "Look at my eyes," I tell her. She does, then after a beat, I close them and swallow the gum with a big gulp. I immediately open my eyes and now they are bright red. She screams, and a moment later my eyes are back to normal.

As many of you have probably gathered, this was my presentation for Biokinesis by Berk Eratay. Done with contact lenses like these:

I had thought that having my eyes change to the color of a "randomly" chosen gumball would be a neat trick. And it was. But the fact she remembers this as my eyeballs changing to gumballs is 100 times better and not something I would have predicted, although it makes sense to me now. (I'm not that great a mentalist, I can only tell you how someone misremembers my trick after they actually misremember it that way.) 

Dear Mentalists

Sometimes it seems like mentalists are the saddest kind of magicians. Oh, I know they'll tell you they're not magicians at all, and that is, in fact, one of the outward expressions of their sadness. "I'm not a magician, I'm a mentalist." Mmhmmm. If someone said, "I'm not a musician, I'm a tuba player!" You'd think, Oh, here is someone with wildly low self-esteem and a need to differentiate himself to make himself feel special. Or you'd think, Does this idiot not know that one of these things is a subset of the other?

"Mentalism is different than magic," they'll say, "because people often believe that it's real." And that's true enough, but are you really trying to define yourself and your work by the most ignorant members of your audience? That seems like a bizarre artistic approach. You'll often hear them brag, "This woman came up to me after the show and asked me if I could contact her grandmother in the spirit world." They say this like it reflects well on their performance. But if you look at something like acting, it is usually the people on soap operas whose fans approach them in real life as if they are the characters they play. Susan Lucci deals with this much more often than Daniel Day-Lewis. And this isn't because soap opera actors are our best actors. It's because of the demographic that is drawn to soap operas -- a demographic that confuses fiction with reality. What I'm saying is, if you have a lot of people who watch your show and then come up to you after to ask you where to find their aunt's missing ring, you likely have a show that appeals to dumb people.

More than any other area of the Magic Cafe, the mentalist section (Penny For Your Thoughts) is filled with people who want their audiences to believe they have real powers. And not just in the moment of the performance, but they want people to think they have real powers in real life. There are even members who claim that they really do have some kind of supernatural gift. I don't think they have any concept of how sad they appear to everyone else there. These people tend to be the most awkward and alienating on that message board. Why would you think adopting that posture would come off any differently in real life?

This need to be seen as real has affected the methods used in mentalism as well. It's a lot easier to delude yourself into believing you have some special power when you're not using a peek wallet. So there's been a big move towards propless mentalism. 95% of this is grade-A cat-shit. They confuse removing the props with removing the process.

Speaking of the word process, one of my friends told me once that she didn't eat any sugar. Later I saw her putting honey on something. I asked her why she would eat honey when she wouldn't eat sugar.

"Honey is natural," she said. "Sugar is processed."

"Honey is processed too," I said.

"Uhm, no it isn't."

"Of course it is," I said. "It's processed by bees. What difference does it make what species is doing the processing?"

This was a sad and disturbing notion for my animal loving friend.

Mentalists suffer from the same blind spot: they forget about the fucking bees. You don't just get the honey. Something has to make it. Something has to make an effect as well. You can't just concentrate on what the effect doesn't require (i.e., "no props"), and ignore the fact that sometimes by stripping the props you make the method a hot mess.

Derren Brown wrote in his early books about "invisible compromise," a concept that clearly was misunderstood by many mentalists. (Although what can you expect from a group that has spent 10+ years confusing his presentations for his methods?) Invisible is not the same thing as intangible. Yes, it's great if things don't have to be written down; if you can get rid of billets, and center tears, and peeks. But if you replace the writing down of information (a one-step physical process) with a 10-step mental process, that's a step backwards and hardly "invisible."

"I can tell someone their birthday without them writing anything down!" Right, and they only have to do a fucking trigonometry problem in their head to accomplish this. For anyone who actually performs for people (and isn't just creating methods to appeal to other performers) it is painfully obvious that, if anything, these mental processes are often more restrictive and invasive than the physical ones. I can think of a dozen different contexts that would be interesting to an audience to reveal a PIN number that I've peeked. But if you have to go through a long, dull mental process to figure out the number, you can't tack on an interesting fake process after that. You've already shown them the process; it's you asking questions and having them do a bunch of math in their head. Instead of making the compromises invisible, you're just substituting in a whole different (and usually worse) set of compromises. And then you pat yourself on the back for making it "propless." Meanwhile, this is the experience you create...

You: Won't you be astounded when I reach into your mind and touch your soul by revealing your PIN code which you never wrote down?

Them: Hold on... let's see... carry the six... so that's 22... add those digits together... that's four. Okay my Lucky Secret Money number is four. I'm supposed to add that to my birthday? I'm sorry... what were you saying?

We're STILL #1!

This is an update on a post I first did 10 years ago. And guess what?! We still got it, guys!!!

What entertainers are most likely to be child molesters or associated with child molesters?

Google search results:

1. magician + "child molester" = 264,000 results
2. dancer + "child molester" = 245,000 results*
3. comedian + "child molester" = 233,000 results
4. actor + "child molester" = 195,000 results
5. singer + "child molester" = 148,000 results* 
6. "porn star" + "child molester" = 128,000 results
7. juggler + "child molester" = 81,500 results
8. clown + "child molester" = 59,400 results 
9. "celebrity impersonator" + "child molester" = 30,600 results*
10. ventriloquist + "child molester" = 24,800 results
11. "one man band" + "child molester" = 6,460 results
12. "knife thrower" + "child molester" = 1,050 results
13. "plate spinner" + "child molester" = 54 results

* I'm guessing these all got the "Michael Jackson bump."

Guys, "magician" more than doubled priest + "child molester" (104,000)! Priests!!!

We're 1000 away from teacher + "child molester" (265,000). And teachers have to deal with those tempting little bottoms every day. We get a crack at them maybe once a year. And it's usually at a party, with a bunch of other people around. That's a high stress environment for a molester!

It puts a whole new spin on some of those "compliments" magicians get. 

"I wish the kids were here...." What's left unspoken is, "because you just reminded me I need to keep a closer eye on them."

"I wouldn't want to play cards with you!" they say. "Because that might mean you're in my house, in raping distance of my children," they mean.

There's no good way to look at those numbers. Either it reflects reality, and this hobby does attract creeps. Or maybe it doesn't reflect reality. And that's good news for the kids. But it's not great news for magicians. Oh, you just seem like child molesters. Well, that's great. But who could blame anyone for finding magicians disturbing? What with their pathetic obsession with keeping secrets, and their desire to be seen as possessing powers they don't really have, of course magicians come off as anti-social weirdos. And it's not that big of a stretch to say, "Yeah... I can see this guy masturbating to a Gymboree catalog."

Let's Dish: Did Bish the Magish Vanish?

I received an email the other day that read:

In your references to the MCJ blog, there has been absolutely no mention of Glenn Bishop (by the way, did you know that his father was the famous “Bish the Magish”?). 

What do you know of him, his whereabouts, and activities these days? 

2 memories of the Bish. The time he posted a video of himself bringing the 4 Aces to the top of the deck with a horrible and obvious multiple shift and then stacking them for a poker deal in only EIGHT shuffles. When attacked for how stupid it was, he tried to claim he had to spot each Ace, cull it, and shuffle it into position. As if we all forgot about the multiple shift. 

And one of your great lines/observations (that I’m going to mangle in my paraphrase). In reference to his work doing Hypnotism shows for schools, you said something to effect of: Yeah hypnotism shows for High School kids are really tough to pull off. “Timmy, stop clucking like a chicken and sit down! The hypnotism show is about to start.” 

On my old site, Glenn Bishop was a big source of fun for about a month or so. I don't really remember it all that well. I just remember he liked to speak on the Cafe and in other places with great authority and spoke highly of his own wisdom and skill. But he wrote with all the finesse of a semi-illiterate at-risk-youth forced to write a personal essay about his hobbies before he'd be let out of detention: "I like to play the basketbal with Tony and Kris. It am a game I like. I like to bowns the ball and dunk with a big jumpy. B-ball is for fun and so I am to." And he would post videos that could best be described as unwatchable.

But his best quality was that he wanted to engage. He didn't back down. He had zero self-awareness that our back and forth was completely one-sided. He was like a guy setting baseballs on a tee for me and saying, "I'm playing baseball!"

My favorite thing I ever read (and I don't just mean about The Magic Circle Jerk, I mean of everything I ever read in my life, like I put this ahead of To Kill a Mockingbird) was a blog post he wrote entitled: A Magic Terrorist or A Sick Little Boy. [I ask now as I asked at the time, why can't I be both?]

A Magic Terrorist or A Sick Little Boy? 

Who is the sickest most twisted little boy in magic. Andy the little boy known as the magic circle jerk. 

Why is he the sickest most twisted little boy in magic?

Because he started a blog that was started for the only reason of knocking, insulting and terrorizing magicians in magic.

If you think that is funny think about that for a moment. The fact is this sick little coward started a blog just to run down magicians he doesn't like. 

Plus he hides like a little coward behind his little screen name Andy.

Many young people think that this guy is funny at his low attempts at humor - but insult train wreck humor is only funny when they are not the person that is being insulted. 

Plus the fact that this blog was started for the reason (and only reason) to attack people in magic. And to hide and terrorize people in magic. Like a little kid that throws water balloons from a balcony and then runs and hides. 

Second - this little kid is a sick - sick idiot!

Why?

I feel that people that pick on people with disabilities are the sickest and the lowest form of sub humans that exist on the world.

He really must have a very low self image of himself to do that plus start his little "revenge" and "terrorist" blog and do it for so long. 

I suppose that little people that can't make it in magic the right way have to do something!

But Andy the circle jerk isn't funny - there is nothing funny about a "magic terrorist!"

Oh, my god, I love that so much. "Second - this little kid is a sick - sick idiot!" I wish we were all friends in real life and we could hang around my apartment and whenever one of us got on the other's nerves for farting too much or pulling our scrotum out of our zipper and asking if anyone wanted any gum, we could look at each other and say exasperatedly, "This little kid is a sick - sick idiot!"

Another one of my favorite things Glenn did was when he lectured everyone on how to write press releases. He said to make sure you end them by writing the word "Forty." He said, "That is the way that newspaper people tell the editor that that is the end of the story…." But it's not, of course. Tradition has it that press releases often end with -30-, but you don't even really need that in the present day. I do dearly hope that Glenn ended some press releases with "Forty." Someone mangling something they unnecessarily did to look learned or professional is hilarious to me. It would be like if there was a conversation over a CB radio and the guy on the other end was like, "I'm heading over the bridge," and then Glenn nods at you knowingly and pics up the handset, and you're expecting him to say "10-4" but instead he says, "8-73, good buddy." 

After that incident, people were constantly ending their emails to me by writing "Forty."

At one point I was posting about Glenn every other day and he was coming back at me on his blog and it was just delightful. And then one day I got done reading one of his posts and I was getting ready to dissect it with my reply, and a question arose in my mind, long after it should have... "Oh, wait... is this guy retarded?" And I don't mean that in the clinical way where someone is developmentally slow, but usually sweet and guileless. Because he clearly wasn't that. But i just mean like... well... if you had said to me, "You know, he went in for a brain transplant and the doctor completely forgot to bring the brain and so they put in a baked potato instead." I wouldn't have questioned you. I would have been like, "Oooooohhhh... alright, okay, now I understand." And I thought, "Should I really be arguing with a baked-potato brain?" So at that point I removed most of my posts about him and they are now completely lost in the aether. I don't know if that was the right way to handle it. But that's what I did.

But where is Glenn now? I haven't really seen him lecturing people on the forums. But I'm not on the forums much myself. So I went to his website. It's an absolute masterpiece of web design. 

He really plays up being called "Mr. Hypnotist." Glenn, I'm not quite sure that's the compliment you think it is. When people are too disinterested to even learn your name, that's generally not a great sign. Nobody beams with pride when they hear, "Hey, Mr. Janitor, go mop up those feces." So when you hear, "Mr. Hypnotist, did you order buffalo wings?" or "Mr. Hypnotist, you're blocking the hallway," I'm not sure you should be promoting that. Would you put this on your business card: 

Glenn Bishop

The Man Called... "Hey you"

Here's a pic of Glenn performing his hypnotism show.

How much do you want to bet that's the audience and not the people on stage?

"Son, get up, there's a show going on."

"Please, Mr. Hypnotist, just wake me when it's over."

I particularly like the "About Us" page.

I like the question mark. Even they can't believe you're interested in reading more about Glenn. "Are you serious? You know there are like a billion pages on the web you could be reading, right?" It seems to say.

But I feel like his website hasn't been updated in years, and I was wondering if he was still around and doing okay. I googled him but just found a lot of his old posts and mentions on message boards and such. I thought maybe he had tried to revitalize his performing character with a new mature style and a sexy new name to match, so I googled "Bishop the Magishop," but got nothing.

Finally I searched for him on facebook, and I was not disappointed.

Is this... what is this? I mean what is it supposed to be? Is it supposed to be real? Is it real? It looks like one of my deranged readers mocked it up in photoshop as a goof. Like if I had a "Create a Glenn Bishop Marquee Contest," this would have been the winning entry. I'm so confused. What happened to this theater? Who designed that signage? It looks like a goddamned ransom note. Is it the Main Street Cinema? How could they possibly allow that to be the front of their fucking place of business? It looks like pictures of those theaters that bravely remained open during The Blitz. If some guy built that for you and he was like, "Okay, I'm done now." Wouldn't you be like, "Wait, wait, wait, this looks like total dogdick. Tear this down and do it right."

Does someone want to break it to Glenn that a cinema is where you show movies, not live magic shows? I mean, I suppose it's possible. Maybe in an old movie theater with a lot of room on the stage in front of the screen. But those old theaters hold many 100s of theater goers. You really "sold out" that theater, Glenn? A week in advance? That's huge news. Why is there no record of it anywhere? Also, just a quick business tip, you don't put "Sold Out" on the front of the box-office if there are still tickets left for another night, as you mention in your post. That kind of dissuades people from purchasing tickets.

And Glenn, why is there absolutely zero information on where this theater is and how to get tickets and all that on your facebook post? Why bother posting if you're going to leave everyone in the dark like that? Why is there no mention anywhere at all in the vast extent of the internet about these sold out shows? Did you hypnotize everyone at the end to forget they attended? I wouldn't put it past you, you little scamp!

Oh, Glenn, I've missed you and your antics so much. It's great to reconnect like this.

Forty.

The Dust

I will show you fear in a handful of dust. - T.S. Eliot

I wish I was performing magic 100 years ago because -- if my reading is to be believed -- at that point in time if you had to ditch an item during your performance you could put the hand with the item into your pocket and say you were reaching in for some "woofle dust," ditch the item, come out with nothing, and pretend to sprinkle some invisible dust around. This is actually a technique described in some of our seminal texts. And not as a goof. Tarbell isn't like, "Ditch the coin when you reach into your pocket for some 'woofle dust.' No, I'm just shitting you. For fuck's sake, don't really do that." I don't think Tarbell says "for fuck's sake" anywhere in the entire course.

So I wish I was performing magic 100 years ago, because apparently audiences were so undiscriminating that you could just use this technique and everyone was just like, "Alright." Women would turn to their husbands and say, "Oh, he's reaching into his pocket for some woofle dust, dear." And he would just reply, "Mmm-yes, yes. A little dust of the woofle. Indeed." You could get away with anything! Meanwhile I'm here in 2015 and if I say something like, "I have a half-dollar." I'm shouted down with, "Bullshit. No such thing."

(An alternate theory, of course, is that no one really bought the idea of woofle dust in the past either and that magic has a long history of taking the easy way out presentationally and taking the audience for idiots. and it's not so much a suspension of disbelief we foster with these presentations, but a disengagement with the audience that leaves them too disinterested to call us out on our nonsense.)

Anyway, I've decided that one of my goals with The Jerx is to bring back the use of woofle dust as a presentational ploy, not just for myself, but for all of you as well. But this time we need to make it something that an audience can really believe in. If we can do that we will have a very powerful tool in our arsenal. Imagine being able to ditch something in full view with the audience not suspecting anything. But guys, it's going to take a lot of work to make reasonable people believe there is an invisible dust that you can sprinkle on things to make magic occur. You're going to have to invest some time and money into this. But I've laid it out for you step by step. Just follow the plan below over the course of the next 6 months or so.

The following presupposes you're a straight, married male. Mutatis mutandis, as they say.

Step 1 (Early July): At your next party or bbq, gather everyone around. Ideally 20+ people. Ask to borrow a coin. Take it with your right hand, and then place it in your left. Say, "I just need a little woofle dust." Reach into your right-hand pants pocket. Pull your hand out and then pat your pocket. "Oh...," you say, "I guess I forgot my woofle dust." Give the coin back to the person who gave it to you and walk away.

Step 2 (Mid-July): Leave an empty sandwich bag like this on a counter or coffee table in your house.

Wait a few days and someone will eventually throw it out. A day or so after they do, ask innocently, "Did you see like a clear sandwich bag on the table here?" When they say they threw it out, completely freak out on them, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you a fucking idiot? Why are you touching my stuff?" When they say it was just an empty bag you say, "That was the last of my woofle dust, you fucking moron!" Go root through the trash, making a huge mess on the kitchen floor. Don't clean it up. Instead go on a two hour walk or drive and when you come back don't speak to the person for three days.

Step 3 (August): At your next party or family function following that incident, gather everyone around to watch a trick. Ask to borrow a quarter. Do a false transfer retaining it in your right hand. Ditch it in your pocket as you reach in for some woofle dust. Pretend to sprinkle the dust over your left hand. When you open your left hand your spectators see what you had hidden in there at the start of the trick, which is the middle section of a folding quarter. Get really angry and say, "Goddammit. I knew I shouldn't have gotten this Chinese woofle dust, but somebody threw out my good stuff. [start muttering] This shit can't even vanish a full coin. There's no way that was pure woofle. They must have cut it with baby laxative or something." Say something racist about the Chinese.

Step 4 (Late August): If you share a computer, leave this ad that I placed on Craigslist last week open in your browser for your wife to find. (If you're reading this in the future and the ad is gone, you can find a pdf copy here.) If you don't share a computer then print it out and carry it around with you for a couple of days in your pocket, so it gets worn in a little. Add some handwritten notes to it: phone numbers, prices, and an indication that perhaps you're considering prostituting your wife for some woofle dust. See below.

Leave this out somewhere where your wife will find it.

Step 5 (Mid-September): Take 20% of the money out of your savings account or your children's college fund. Leave the receipt for this transaction somewhere conspicuous. Go out of town for three days without telling anyone. Come back in the middle of the night and crawl into bed with your wife. When she wakes and asks where you've been just say you thought you had a line on some magic supplies. When she says, "Is this that 'woofle dust' stuff again? Did you take money out of our account to buy woofle dust?" Bury your head in her chest and sob and say, "I'm so sorry. I got scammed. I'm so sorry!" Really play it up. You want to make this dramatic enough that your wife will be spreading around these issues to all your friends, family, and neighbors, trying to get their advice.

Step 6 (Late October): About six weeks later burst through your front door and give your wife a big kiss on the lips. Tell her you want to take her out to dinner "someplace fancy." Explain to her that you've got a line on some woofle dust and you just need $5000 to make it happen. But tell her it's an investment and you won't ever have to buy more ever again. Be real excited. Happier than you've been in months so she can't refuse you. Once she agrees, apologize for the way you've been acting. Tell her you know you haven't been yourself recently. And you're so sorry for losing that money and for the time you blew up at her for throwing out your woofle dust. Tell her you'll always keep this new batch on you so nothing can happen to it. 

Step 7 (Late October): Act like you've made the deal and return to normal at home.

Step 8 (Early November): When your wife is out of the house, drill a 6-inch diameter hole in your coffee table. Rough up the inside edges of the hole some so it's not too clean looking. When your wife gets home say, "Sorry, sweetheart. I spilled some woofle dust on the table. I'll replace it." But don't ever replace it, just let that hole be a constant reminder of what woofle dust can do.

Step 9 (Mid-November): A couple weeks later, when your wife is doing laundry, take all the clothes out of the washing machine, put them in a trash bag, and put them in a dumpster behind an Arby's or something. Sneak back into your house. When your wife asks you if you removed the clothes from the washing machine be like, "What? Why would I do that? Sweetheart, you are losing your mind... wait... oh god, honey... please tell me you didn't wash my jeans that were on the bed." When she admits she did, start to flip out because your woofle dust was in the pocket of those jeans. Act like you might get violent, then switch to despondent, start to cry, and say, "What are we going to do? We don't have more money to spend...." Then with a steely, solemn determination say, "Ok. This is the only way." And leave the house.

Step 10 (Mid-November): Come home a couple hours later, your face and shirt spattered with blood. "Problem solved," you say, as you stare off into the distance. Your wife is screaming at you to tell her what happened. "I got more woofle dust," you say, vacantly. "He didn't want to give it up, but I got more." As your wife wails, you continue, "Don't worry, my love. They'll never find out about it. You have to trust me. I made him... well... his body... it took a lot more than I intended... but it's gone now for good."

Step 11 (December 31st): "Who wants to see a magic trick!" you say at your New Year's Eve party. A crowd builds around you. You ask to borrow a quarter. You take it in your right hand and false transfer it into your left. "I just need a little woofle dust," you say, as you reach into your pocket to ditch the quarter. Many in the crowd stiffen and a nervous energy passes through as word has gotten around your social circle about the damage woofle dust has caused in your life. Perhaps none in the audience know the full, awful truth, but as you reach into your pocket many of them think about the toll a controlling substance has had on their life, some will think a sympathetic thought for you and your wife, but here's the great part, none of them will be thinking, "I bet he's ditching a coin."

After you sprinkle the invisible dust over your left fist, open your hand slowly to show the coin has vanished.

Someone standing next to your wife will pat her on the hand and say, "A new year is coming, dear. It will be okay."

Somewhere a child exclaims, "That woofle dust is powerful stuff!" 

"Yes," your wife murmurs, to no one in particular. "Too powerful."

It's just that easy!  And now you can use the woofle dust justification with impunity.