What To Do When Your Arm Is Stuck In A Vending Machine

Step One: Empty your bladder in a wide arc. The pungent scent of your urine will keep predators at bay. When night falls, it will also glow, providing a much-needed source of light.

Step Two: Scream for help. When someone arrives, sink your teeth into their neck. Lock on tightly. Chomp and gnaw until their jugular is severed. You now have a source of food for at least two weeks.

Step Three: Freak out. Let fear sink in and make you wild-eyed. Thrash about with reckless abandon, accomplishing nothing.

Step Four: Smash your head into the vending machine repeatedly. Do not stop until you are unconscious. You're going to need plenty of rest to get through this ordeal.

Step Five: Reach into your pocket with your free hand and pull out a phone. Use this phone to go online and read about Blizzard's latest Diablo 3 announcement. Sign an online petition to declare your anger at the fact that the game will not allow mods, will not let you play without an internet connection, and will include a cash shop where you pay actual dollars for items.

Step Six: Still angry at the Diablo 3 thing, throw your phone in anger so that it is broken or at least out of your reach.

Step Seven: Contemplate the removal of your arm. Ask passers-by if they have dull pocket knives or jagged rocks. Prepare a tourniquet. Steel yourself for the act. Feel your breath come in shallow gasps. Change your mind at the last moment when you recall a scheduled hand-shaking session with a colleague. The meeting is very important, and your airline ticket reservation can not be canceled.

Step Eight: Take your free arm and stick it in the machine next to your trapped arm. Attempt to pull it back out. Realize that it, too, is stuck. Stay perfectly still for ten seconds. Whisper, "Fuck."

Step Nine: Kick off your shoes. Contorting your body, use your toes to pull a pen and notepad from your pocket. Teach yourself how to write with your feet. In large letters, write "H" then "E", and so on until your message is complete. Use your toes to take the note and dip the top in a pool of sticky drying blood. Now secure the note on the face of the vending machine. There. Now people will see your message: HEY, THIS MACHINE IS OUT OF ORDER. USE ANOTHER ONE.

Step Ten: Wait until the vending machine guy comes by on his weekly visit. Allow your heart to fill with joy as he approaches. Salvation at last! Ask him to do you a favor and bring you a glass of water. When he leaves, curse yourself for forgetting to ask for a straw. Lap at the water like a dog.

Step Eleven: You know how desperate situations can sometimes grant people superhuman strength, like a mother lifting a crashed car to free her children? Get some of that superhuman strength. Use it to pull the vending machine away from the wall. Good. Now walk out of the building.

Step Twelve: Go to college. Preferably MIT. Get a degree in engineering. Come up with some sort of device that can safely extricate trapped arms from vending machines. Have it mass produced.

Step Thirteen: Use your earnings to purchase a shawl that discretely covers the vending machine attached to your arms.

Step Fourteen: Find someone that loves you for who you are, and not your fortune or the seven foot tall device that your arms are trapped in.

Step Fifteen: Discover that your marriage is falling apart. Realize that no matter how hard they try, your significant other will never truly be able to get past the vending machine. Out of desperation, visit a plastic surgeon and have your vending machine turned into a sports car.

Step Sixteen: Attempt to return home, only to realize that the plastic surgeon left the car doors locked and your arms firmly stuck in the trunk.

Step Seventeen: Push the car home. At a stoplight, meet a famous race car driver who seems very interested in the sports car attached to your arms. Agree to sell the car so he can modify it and use it as his primary race car.

Step Eighteen: Find yourself being dragged behind the car at over 200 miles per hour during the biggest race of the year. Die within seconds from a heart attack after realizing that the car's sponsor is the very company that made the vending machine your hand got stuck in all those years ago.

Step Nineteen: Have your memory honored when the race car driver wins the championship, your remains dangling from the trunk every weekend of that glorious season.

Step Twenty: At the gates of Heaven, find yourself being asked your biggest regret in life. Carefully consider this question. Finally, answer that it would have to be the fact that sticking your second arm in the vending machine hadn't worked the way it should have.

– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)