“Does this look like a herpes to you?”

“I’m just saying that if you’re walking down the street at 2 a.m. with your pants around your ankles, maybe you deserve to get a public intox, you know?”

Question: “Did you make it through the flood okay?”

Response: “No, I died. Now, I’m here haunting this Chinese buffet for all of eternity.”

Ah, the joys of found dialogue. As a writer and devoted people watcher, nothing makes you feel better and brings you more joy than a wonderful nugget of found dialogue.

Random snippets of other people’s conversations, no matter how brief or out-of-context, will always make your life seem slightly less crazy by comparison.

“She looks like the Blues Traveler and Waylon Jennings had a child that they only fed mayonnaise.”

“Forget your car being towed, dude. There’s blueberry syrup on the wall. On the wall!”

“Tomorrow, it won’t be today.”

These fragments don’t have to make sense.

Even if you can put them in context through further eavesdropping, it doesn’t do much to help them.

I argue leaving them as is provides a more interesting window for interpretation and meaning-making, allowing you to impress your own version of reality on these people and their problems.

“I am not going to have a conversation with you about which Golden Girl is the hottest.”

“I think he’s the father, but it might be this other guy or his brother. It was a crazy Wednesday.”

“His back hair had back hair.”

When you find great examples in the field, write them down immediately.

Use a napkin, a gum wrapper – whatever you can find – to preserve the quote’s accuracy for posterity.

I have several notebooks at home that contain nothing but found dialogue, other people’s words and thoughts to be analyzed and made into something I want them to say.

It’s a real power to be able to take the words of others and make them say or mean what you want them to.

It’s one of the nice things about being an English major: we can control words.

“Why is there a kiddie pool filled with syrup in our backyard?”

“If you’re at the apartment, why are there horse noises in the background … There’s a horse in our apartment?”

“If she’d trim the mustache a bit, she’d look less like Stalin.”

Some don’t require much thought or interpretation.

Some may cause aneurisms if you try and decipher meaning for too long.

Write them down and walk away.

Give yourself time to digest the phrases and nuances of the words.

Consult with friends. They may have an interpretation you couldn’t come up with alone.

“I know there’s a cheeseburger on my head, but does it have bacon on it, because I really don’t like bacon.”

“He looks like Jesus, but eviler. Evil Jesus, the one that kicks puppies and steals from the elderly.”

“I’m okay with not knowing your uses for hot sauce in the bedroom.”

Some of them will be inappropriate.

You may feel bad for overhearing such things.

Don’t let the guilt get you; if they’re dumb enough to talk about it in public, you’re allowed to make fun of them and steal their quotes for your enjoyment.

“I found the green Hungry Hungry Hippo in the freezer. The yellow one is still at large.”

“My Tivo has Nazi sympathies.”

“I was going to say Sloth from ‘Goonies,’ but, you’re right, she looks more like the talking trash heap from ‘Fraggle Rock.’”

Go out and search, dear readers.

There’s a vast treasure trove of quotes out there just waiting to be found and explored.

Claim them as your right; release that bold spirit of manifest destiny that lives with in the heart of every true American.

Carpe dialogue, and happy hunting.

Cliff McCollum is managing editor of the Gulf Coast Newspaper Group