gettingittogether

Some people like to talk about matter. Things. Objects. The mundane. They like to talk about refrigerator repairs, baseboard and wallpaper choices. And they talk about these subjects with great zeal, sharing their home renovation narratives and observations with others who will, hopefully, share their enthusiasm. I have found that the people who talk most about Things are those who –maybe more than others– relate to the world physically. These people use sight, touch and an overall visual-spatial understanding to navigate the world. They tend towards more literal production and interpretation of meanings than they do poetic, metaphorical or tangential ones. I even want to say that their more physical-visual orientation to the world somehow manifests itself in their well-tended-to bodies, but that may be going to far. That may be irrational. In any case, these people exist. They are about. 

It seems important to be cheese literate. Here is a list of cheeses that I know about: havarti, cheddar, mild cheddar, sharp cheddar, marscarpone, mozzarella, feta, brie, bleu, chevre, parmesian, reggiano, swiss, christmas appetizer cheese ball cheese, provolone, cheeze whiz, velveeta. That’s all. Why is cheese literacy important? Why isn’t bread literacy or fish literacy more important? Are there foods to know about? Like, is knowing your steak cuts more important than knowing your cheeses? And is knowing your cheeses more important than knowing your wines? And what does it mean to know a good green bean casserole from a bad one? Food literacy. It’s more uppity than car literacy. If someone told me about all the different varieties of bleu cheeses, I would think that person what more classy than someone who knew all the models of BMWs. I might think both of them were assholes unless these people were chefs or car salespeople. Literacy. It’s important to have literacies. To be literate in important Things. I aspire to lots of literacies. 

How do you decide if something is “worth it?” How will you know if the effort you put toward something will result in  value? Enough value? I wonder what academic disciplines are interested in this question. I know economists are interested in this question. Maybe philosophers. I wonder who else. Mathematicians, I bet. In fact, I’m sure some math person out there has created a formula that helps you find out if inputting a certain amount of effort into a situation will garner satisfactory results. The formula tells you if your expended effort produces a result of less, equal or more value than the effort itself. But how would effort be measured? And is the effort physical, mental, emotional or some other form of energy outside of this Cartesian framework? Whatever this formula, I want it. I want it because I have many goals, but I don’t know how much effort I have to expend in order to meet these goals. There must be some multiplier that this formula employs. The Wast of Time Multiplier or “WOT Mulitiplier.” Do you know what it is? How is it represented? How can I start using it to enhance my life?

Something is really wrong in TV land. Seriously wrong. Wheel of Fortune is on when Jeopardy is supposed to be on and now all jeopardy-watching mothers who have traversed time zones to be with their children are  yelling at their children’s TVs, maddened by regional programming discrepancies. It must be really hard. It must be hard to enter a new reality — a reality where TV weather interstitials show maps of new states, where the weatherpeople have weird accents, where everything is different and frustrating. “Why are the roads like this? What is a ‘feeder road?’ I don’t know how you get around; the streets are all messed up here.” And the food. What will the traveling mothers do when confronted with new regional cuisine? Some will balk, and some will decline even to visit a strange regional restaurant. Mothers visiting New Orleans from the northeast will shun cajun food. Mothers visiting the Cape from New Mexico will grimace at the crab dishes. Why, I wonder, Why can’t they just change? Why can’t they adapt? 

Howie Mandel is the goateed Anton Szandzor LaVey  of Christmas game show capitalist degradation. He is the ringleader; families on display squawk with glee, standing on a cotton-snowed stage, pointing to numbered santa’s-helper-esque sexy snow babes holding mystery prize boxes. “I choose box number 13!” The sexy game show snow babe smiles and flaps open her box labeled “13.” The camera quick-zooms on the box as it opens and the prize sign is revealed: “$500!” The snow babe kisses her hand and blows the kiss to Howie. Lights swirl, Howie grins. I haven’t watched this show before but it looks totally fucked. Some late capitalist Faustian take on the game show. Howie serves as the cold, smiling but detached MC, offering prizes — or treachery — to optimistic American families. Families that could “sure use that new car!”

I was born with no energy, into a body that wants to lay. In fact, I could be typical. There is a law of biology that states that an organism will expend the minimum amount of energy in order to meet some goal; we were born for caloric efficiency. But there are two ways to be calorically efficient, and one is good and one is bad. The first way, which is the way I tend to be, is the bad way. In this mode of operation, the organism simply declines to expend calories, resulting in doing nothing and being worthless. This is efficient. Nothing wagered, nothing lost. One stays at zero. In the second mode, the organism is active and involves itself in a smattering of healthy and productive enterprises. One expends energy, which is undesirable, but one reaps the benefits of an active, engaged life. Over time I have become part of  a world of organisms that operate in this latter mode, and for years I have been adapting to this world. Do I like it? Is it working for me? I was in the kitchen today musing aloud about this topic to someone born energetic. I told her I was naturally sedentary. “Yeah, you can’t be like that  in advertising,” she said. Then I ate cookies. 

I have some ideas about what the cat is doing now that he’s on tour. He’s under a house, obsessively pawing at a half-dead rat or bird. He’s out in the rain, soaking up that terrible, trembling wonderful exposed feeling that one experiences after a long time away from the natural world. He’s in some neighbor’s house eating their Christmas cookies and reveling in all the new attention. But cat, I wish you would call. I know it’s been hard over the past few months with the cone over your little cat head and the shitting in the small, humiliating litter box in the utility room. If you don’t call, I’m just going to have to assume that you never liked it at our house in the first place, and that you’ve embraced a new outdoor cat unabomber militia life. I hope it’s not true, my cat. I hope you will come back.

When you win an award, it’s like everyone gets to see, publicly, that everyone else agrees, publicly, that you are special. This fact points to another fact: there is a difference between being publicly special and being privately special. There is a difference between private roles and public ones, and awards help reinforce these roles. Ok, but who cares? I just want an award. I want to feel special in any way. Notice me! Recognize me! Validate my reality and share in it! I need you to do this. If you don’t, I feel lost, unvalidated, ++unawarded++!! Today I will not win an award. Today is lost. I am not special today, only sleepy and resentful of having to station myself at the text minion station… my desk. My text minion desk. Where I hang all my minionly accoutrements and decorations in order to look upon them and see that the authors of these posters and magazine pages share my reality. O! 

And by “affording,” I mean “bearing.” Can you bear a certain something? Like nuclear fallout? Can you afford it? Is it a possibility you should weigh? A few signs point to clear skies and a healthy air intake for us, for me, but a few other signs indicate that a nuclear bomb will explode and I will absorb gamma rays that will corrode my cells and turn me cancerous. These signs point to nuclear fallout, and they are real. Nuclear fallout is a possibility, and you need to think about that. Can you afford nuclear fallout? Should you move away from the government testing zone in order to decrease the chance that you will be affected? But you should really think about this move: you relocated to Nevada or Arizona or wherever the hell it is that they do all that nuclear shit because it was cheap and you really liked it there. It was a nice place and it did a lot for your mood. You’ve been happier since you moved there. But now this. Should you freak out and just leave because of the treat of nuclear fallout, or should you stay and enjoy it there in your cul-de-sac, the round suburban comfort-n-joy dream that you may never get to have again if you leave? Risk. It’s all about risk-taking. Cul-de-sac fattiness with the risk of nuclear fallout, or a fleeing, a fleeing into… a non-nuclear what?

Is it me or are people writing and speaking in acronyms more than they were, say, 10 or 20 years ago? This question dawned on me a minute ago when I noticed the online ad for a “3G phone” on my Pandora interface. (And now I wonder if my use of “interface” doesn’t point to a greater use of technical jargon in general.) Ok, I think I want to rescind my thesis that people are using more acronyms and say, rather, that technical jargon has infiltrated the popular vernacular so much so that I feel the need to note it. This infiltration bothers me. I think it encourages people to use tech jargon inappropriately. I also think it encourages people to use tech jargon at the cost of using more better-er words. For example, I use the word “interface” more often than I should, and I apply it to things that are indeed “interfaces” but which I could more accurately describe with other words. I’m listening to the Bee Gees station on Pandora. I am so fucking into them right now. Shit.