In doing so, maybe you’ve flexed your muscles with previous incarnations of WFME’s You Decide — where your democratic tendencies are allowed to breathe, stretch, contemplate and ruminate. Maybe you’ve found that when given two distinct choices, you feel your soul scream out from inside of you and you feel more alive than ever before. Or not.

Either way, it’s time for you to decide if you’d rather walk around with a ziploc bag filled with water or a severed left arm.

It’s not often you see someone walking around with a ziploc bag filled with water. Sure, people walk around with ziploc bags filled with carrots, celery, cookies, crackers, candy, slices of fruit, cold cuts, halves of sandwiches and so on. But a bag filled to the brim with clear, innocent spring water?

What would people think?

Personally, if I saw someone walking around with a ziploc bag filled with water, I’d want to know why they were carrying around a ziploc bag filled with water. I might even stop them and ask, “Hey my friend — why is it that you’re carrying around a ziploc bag filled with water?” Surprisingly, if it was me carrying the ziploc bag filled with water and you were the guy asking me that question about the ziploc bag filled with water, I’d probably respond back to you something like, “Well, water bottles are so bulky and they don’t fit in your pocket. But ziploc bags filled with water? So much easier.”

And you’d walk away thinking I was a loon.

But what about if I was walking around with a severed left hand? You know, the whole hand, cut off at the forearm. Now, it wouldn’t be bleeding or anything (I would have cauterized it prior to taking it out on the town) but I would carry it around everywhere I went. And you would probably want to know why I was carrying a severed left arm around with me so much so that you’d probably ask something like, “Hey my friend — why is it that you’re carrying around a severed left arm?” And if it was me being asked such a question, you’d probably get an answer like: “Um, it was my brother’s and, um, that’s all I have to say on the subject.”

And you’d walk away thinking that my brother was probably in some accident and I must love him a ton because I’m carrying around his severed left arm with me everywhere I went — you might even think to yourself something like, “Man, that Pauly is one emotional and family-loving sonuvabitch.”

And you’d be right.

And that’s why if I had the choice between carrying around a ziploc bag filled with water or a severed left arm — I would pick the severed left arm ten times out of ten times. Because some guy carrying around a ziploc bag filled with water is about five seconds from being thrown into an insane asylum because it makes zero sense to be walking around with a ziploc bag filled with water. But carrying a severed left arm? There’s some sanity to that, believe it or not, and you could probably even get onto an airplane these days with a severed left arm way before you could get on a plane with a ziploc bag filled with water.

It’s the difference between an overly-emotional guy fascinated with medical science and research and some crazy guy carrying around a ziploc bag filled with water.

Severed left arm. All the way.