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The Rolling Eyes of Truth
I’m really not much of a liar. I really suck at it. I think it’s because my face gives everything away anyway so why bother.
I suppose deceit is kind of in my vocabulary in that I can withhold truth because I’m pretty good at not saying anything.
In that line of thinking I watched the “Invention of Lying” last night, a Ricky Gervais movie. It’s about a world where people don’t lie. Not because of moral beliefs but because they don’t know what a lie is. It hasn’t been invented yet. But what gives humor to most of the scenes involving lying is not the lying, but the inability for people to filter their honest thoughts (in this case usually negative ones).
The premise was that if you think it, say it. This premise was applied fairly unevenly throughout the movie but we’re not here to dog the movie so we’ll move on.
The movie, though, was clearly written by an extrovert. The idea that if you can’t lie then you must speak your true thoughts is clearly an extrovert idea, the concept of using the act of speaking to think. So the movie portrays a world of people who just blurt things out.
Now if an introvert wrote the movie, the movie might suck because it would be a world of people who thought better about verbalizing the truth and therefore be mostly silent. Well, maybe it wouldn’t suck. It would have to be very different.
It would have to be filled with voiceovers and thought bubbles. There may not be any real dialog at all.
Or you could have it be a hybrid of extroverts and introverts. The extroverts would blurt out their honesty. The introverts would have their honest thoughts voiced over.
It could get pretty weird. Because the reality is that if you can’t think a lie you can’t express a lie, whether verbally or physically through body language. There is no deception, no deceit.
So no fake smiles. Wouldn’t that be a tough crowd? If someone says a true bad thing about you, you couldn’t even nervously chuckle or smile. You’d have to frown or cry. You couldn’t fake smile at someone’s moronic comments.
The good thing is that I could still roll my eyes, which is one of my favorite things to do, especially in meetings. Because when rolling my eyes I am expressing a genuine feeling, a true (from my perspective) thought. But just like in the movie, the truth is not always appreciated or wanted.
Like they say, the truth will set you free. Whatever! (Cue eye roll).
Posted in Freedom, Personality
Tagged deceit, extrovert, eye roll, filter, introvert, liar, lying, Ricky Gervais, truth
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Laughing at January’s Little Joke
It’s about contrast I suppose. I was driving this morning looking up at the sky, crystal clear and boldly blue, and I was thinking how does something so vibrant feel so oppressive?
Yes, it has something to do with the -17 degree temperature in contrast with the deep blue and the warmth of the sun through the window. My mind tells me it should be warm. My body tells me it is not. They are at odds.
Yet strangely enough I felt oppressed and not depressed, which is the normal reaction to a midwinter deep freeze. I think maybe it is a pressure thing. The blue sky and warm sun lifting my spirit only to have sub-zero temperature push it back down. Pressure. The weight of oppression on your shoulders. You can feel it just as if you were wearing a 75 pound back pack, tugging your shoulders down.
January thinks the polarity is pretty funny. A practical joke of sorts. Hmm.
I think I have a pretty good and open sense of humor. I tend to be able to find humor in many things, maybe too many things. Irreverent, I suppose, at times. I like lots of different forms of humor as well. There is one, however, form of humor I have never much enjoyed.
Practical jokes. Or pranks. Or punking is I guess what they call it now days. I’m not saying there is not humor in practical jokes. I’m not saying practical jokes are stupid or you shouldn’t like them. They just don’t make me laugh.
I think I know why. It’s a combination of three things. The first is about my being easily startled, really easily. So the idea of someone going through elaborate measures to startle me doesn’t seem remotely funny. Second is the element of discomfort a prank places on someone. I’m an introvert. Social discomfort is not funny.
But obviously the pranks I am witnessing are not occurring to me so what’s the big deal, right? Well, it’s the third factor. Empathy. Just watching the pranks makes me feel their discomfort, makes me feel that moment of startledness. Not pleasant. Not funny.
So what do I do with January’s little joke. The sky and sun say come on out, it’s fine out here. Then I go out and the air temperature goes, ha, got you and laughs. That’s not funny.
But you know what January? I’m going to laugh. I’m going to laugh and enjoy the warm sun through the window. And I’m not going to go outside. Because I know. Oh, I know.
I’m going to let the warm sun hit my face and I’m going to smile. The oppression will slip away. And I’ll laugh. And January will laugh. Because we both know we’re playing a game.
Posted in Personality
Tagged cold, January, oppression, polar vortex, practical joke, Practical jokes, prank, sense of humor
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The Polar Vortex and Fulfillment
The Polar Vortex is some cold stuff. Sixty mile blizzard winds are blinding and biting. Two feet of snow is a back breaker.
But what bothers us as a society is not that it’s cold or there are white out conditions or that the snow is heavy. What bothers us is that it stops us from our pursuing our go-go-go life styles. These things are a big inconvenience.
Mother Nature is not going to dictate what I do and don’t do. Who does she think she is? I have important activities to do.
And sometimes common sense wins. We actually cancel things. We put our livelihood above our constant need for action. Good for us.
I’m not saying we don’t need to be tough and take a stand against the weather. We just need a little common sense.
But it’s not whether we take a stand against the weather that is of question here. It’s our reaction to having to be still that is disturbing. Inactivity is the bane of our existence. We must be distracted from ourselves.
You would think in a world where we constantly put ourselves on the go, in a world where the expectation is that you will always be on the go, we might take advantage of the pass given to us by Mother Nature to just take a breather.
In fact it would be a perfect time with the wind whipping at 45 miles an hour and the temp well below zero, to slow down and reflect. Maybe even reflect for just a moment on the notion that activity is not productivity, that activity is not fulfillment.
Maybe stop and think that maybe your life isn’t fuller because you fill it with activity. Maybe it is actually the opposite.
You need to engage in activities that bring you fulfillment. Then you need to engage in doing nothing so that fulfillment, that contentment can soak in. Give your mind and body time to process and synthesize the experience instead of jumping to the next thing.
It’s like feeding foods into a food processor. If you shove things into it faster than it can process it, the processor will jam or under-perform or malfunction. That puree you were hoping for won’t be very puree like at all if indeed anything comes from it at all.
The Polar Vortex is an opportunity. Listen to Mother Nature. Be still.
Posted in Freedom, Personality
Tagged activity, blizzard, fulfillment, mindfulness, Mother Nature, polar vortex, productivity, stillness
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Don’t Judge Me, At Least Not Always
There I was. In front of the Central high school. Otis was trying his best to shove and bury me in a snow pile.
From the outside it looked as if big bully was abusing the runty kid. Someone should have done something. All I remember was laughter. No one intervened.
It wasn’t what it appeared to be though. It wasn’t bullying. Otis was my best friend and indeed was twice my size. Though at times I think I was more his toy than his friend, which explained why he was so curious to see if he could actually bury me in the snow bank. Kind of like seeing if you could pull the arms off Stretch Arm Strong, which he may have tried at sometime as well.
But from the outside it probably looked pretty abusive. I am sure people were thinking, what a jerk. I suppose a lot of things are not what they seem. So often from the outside we think we know what’s what, but we don’t. Nor would it be reasonable that we would know. We put what pieces we have together and see if we can make out the picture. Then our mind fills in the blanks.
Unfortunately our minds fill in the blanks based on who we are and what we know. Not based on what is.
Perhaps it’s unavoidable. A survival thing. Need to fill in the picture well enough to know whether you should run or not.
I suppose that’s where judging come from. It’s both good and bad, which is why we caution ourselves to withhold judgment, especially snap judgments. We try to be like Mr. Spock and withhold assessment when there is not enough data.
But sometimes we need to judge so we can act. Being completely nonjudgmental may lead to depraved indifference. That doesn’t sound good either.
So maybe it’s a question of when and why. To understand the appropriate necessity to judge and act.
I forget the point I was trying to make here. Oh well, don’t judge me for that. Be calm and carry on.
Posted in Freedom, Personality
Tagged bully, judging, judgment, Mr. Spock, perception, snap judgments
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The Magical Power of Arbitrary Thresholds
It’s six below. Yes, that’s pretty cold. It’s certainly colder other places so this isn’t about how cold it is here.
It’s about that pesky negative sign. You see six below is cold but so is two above cold. They’re really not that much different. On an intellectual level I know this.
But there’s something about that negative sign. It’s like an evil talisman attached to the temperature. As soon as it shows up I feel instantly colder. I feel instantly less inclined to go outside. Everything about my attitude changes. I mean, I do fight back. I’m not just going to take it. But I have to make a conscious effort to fight back.
It’s so weird. It’s some mental barrier that’s been attached to some random number. Why does this have power over me?
Another mental barrier number for me is seven. As in seven a.m. Getting up before seven is a huge challenge and dreadful inconvenience. Even 6:55 causes panic and consternation. Oh my God, I’ll have to go to bed early to get up that early. Turn that alarm ten minutes ahead to 7:05 and all is good with the world. I can stay up all damn night. I think I’ve been that way since junior high when I was put in charge of getting myself up and at it. It’s a horrid mental hurdle. I probably need therapy for it.
Thirty minutes is another one. As in a thirty minute commute. I’ve worked in a lot of different locations and so my commute has varied over the years. Anything over thirty and my life is being ruined and time sucked from me by a giant soul-sucking vacuum cleaner. Under thirty minutes and life is good.
These are such clear delineations. I wonder how many others I have. Maybe a lot of them. Who knows. Maybe these are just the easy ones to notice because they’re attached to a number, something specific. Are they good or are they bad? I suppose they’re bad because they introduce totally unnecessary stress.
Maybe they’re like bad habits. They just need to be reprogrammed with positive reinforcement instead of negative. Rewards instead of angst. If I have to get up before seven I get a reward like a double espresso with a dash of cream (though I suppose that could create quite the caffeine dependence if it the dreadful pre-seven waking went on and on ). Or if there is an awful negative on the temperature reading, I get steaming hot chocolate. Nummers.
If the commute is over thirty minutes, then I get, a… um… hmm… I got nothing. Just say no to thirty minute commutes.
Posted in Personality
Tagged alarm clock, arbitrary thresholds, cold, commute, habits, mental blocks, negative sign, temperature
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The Future of Paste: All for One and One for All
I’m pretty sure I don’t often notice packaging failures. But this morning when I went to grab the tooth paste and grabbed the hand lotion instead, I realized I had encountered a packaging failure.
What was this packaging failure, you ask? Simply that the hand lotion was packaged in a tooth paste shaped tube. With the label down I was unable (and yes, too lazy) to confirm that it was tooth paste. Not to worry, I did not brush my teeth with hand lotion.
But what if I had? In fact what if in the future I do it intentionally? Intentionally? Yes. Because the future is nanobots.
Nanobots in the tooth paste to do better whitening. Nanobots in the hand cream to perform better moisturizing. Nanobots in the shampoo to achieve better conditioning. Nanobots everywhere.
Imagine a universal paste filled with nanobots. If you put the paste in your mouth, the nanobots know they are in your mouth and initiate teeth cleaning processes. If you put the paste on your hands, the nanobots know they are your hands and perform moisturizing processes. If you put the paste in your hair, the nanobots know they are in your hair and perform conditioning routines. The non-essential ingredients are left inert based on the context.
UniPaste. (as opposed to UniCream, which would definitely be a marketing failure). One paste to rule them all.
In fact, maybe we fill the UniPaste with nutrients so you can eat it. The nanobots converting the paste to the appropriate nutrient strings based on your body chemistry for maximum absorption and efficiency. Or maybe I just smear it all over myself and the nutrients absorb through my skin. You won’t even have to bother eating anymore.
Life would be so simple. At the grocery store I would just need to buy 20 tubes of UniPaste a week. Oh, the heck with going to the grocery store. The government would know all I need is UniPaste and deliver a gallon a week to my house. Government issued UniPaste, a step up from government surplus cheese for sure.
Next up, Soylent Cream.
Posted in Entertainment, Food
Tagged hand cream, hand lotion, lotion, nanobots, nutrition, packaging, tooth paste, UniPaste
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A Super Bowl of Science
The Super Bowl is coming. It will come with great fanfare. With rabid infatuation. With outrageous amounts of money. With constant media coverage. With glorification of the star athletes.
And yet the Super Bowl is just the tip of the iceberg of all that comes before it. The amount of resources and money and attention tied up in the regular season games is staggering. And then there are the resources tied up in the farm system, otherwise known as college football. And that’s staggering too.
The success is hard won, for sure. I don’t want to rain on someone’s success and eat lots of sour grapes and be the Super Bowl Grinch. Yet I sometimes despair that we as a nation expend so many resources on rewarding athletic competition. And I despair because I read the news and hear a constant bemoaning that we lag behind the world in science and education. And yet our leaders wonder why we have problems?
Where is the glorification of the science star? Where is the glorification of innovator? Where is the glorification of the engineer?
You get the behavior you reward. And we reward athletes and movie stars. We reward them with money but more important we reward them with our attention. And we all only have so much attention to give. So we heap on them untold attention and we wonder why we and especially our youth don’t have any attention left for education and science. We need to turn this attention deficit on its head.
We need a Super Bowl of science. Heap some attention and reward on those who excel there. Maybe the sports that have so wildly succeeded should give back to the nation that has made their success possible. Maybe for every game that pro and college football play they should sponsor an academic event. Events in all areas of academics. Followed by a series of playoffs and championships.
I know there are academic super bowls out there. They are obviously not getting enough love. We need our famous and successful nerds and geeks to join the fray. We need that Revenge of the Nerds mentality back.
It’s about the raised awareness, about the attention. Not just children’s attention, but everyone’s. It starts with me. It starts with you.
Posted in Freedom
Tagged attention, college football, college sports, education, Grinch, revenge of the nerds, science, super bowl, The Super Bowl
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Halliburton and the Off World
The future is closer than you think. I know this because I was in oil boom country in North Dakota last week. The activity there is crazy. This is the land of fracking after all.
I was driving one evening after dark down Broadway, the main road through Minot, when I stopped at a lighted intersection. Across the street up on a building was one of those electronic billboards that flash new ads every couple seconds.
When up pops a Halliburton ad. It was some guy in a red hard hat majestically surveying some landscape with rigs off in the distance. It oozed with the spirit of frontiersmanship. And adventure. And opportunity.
Blade Runner. That was the first thing to pop into my head. It reminded me of the floating advertising blimps in Blade Runner that had the Utopian-like ads for the Off World. I swear it was just like that.
In Blade Runner the Off World might be likened to immigration to America, where yes there was opportunity but yes there was also extreme hardship. The Blade Runner ads seem to skirt the hardship issue. Fortunately the Off World had Replicants to do a lot of the dangerous work. Very handy.
Unfortunately the North Dakota Oil Boom doesn’t have Replicants ( as far as I know). And I assure you working in the oil fields of the wind swept North Dakota tundra in the middle of January is probably akin to the Off World.
But Blade Runner is set in 2019. So Halliburton has a few years yet to develop Replicants. But will they? And actually, why would they when they will always have access to the world’s poor to play the role of the Replicant.
So someone else will have to develop the Replicant. Maybe it will be the companies that manufacture robotic vacuum cleaners. Vacuuming. Fracking. I mean someone has to go around cleaning up those oil spills. Rosie the Robot isn’t quite Roy the Replicant but it’s a start.
Posted in Entertainment
Tagged Blade Runner, fracking, Halliburton, North Dakota, oil boom, replicants, robots
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Sandwich Difficulty of Nine
Is there a correlation between difficulty to eat and gastro-enjoyment?
I was confronted with question last night when I ordered a sandwich at Mort’s Deli. It was called the Toots. The complexity of the sandwich was apparent from the description.
At its heart it was a roast beef sandwich. It started with two pieces of marble rye. Followed by two latkes (shallow-fried pancakes of grated or ground potato, flour and egg, often flavored with grated onion or garlic and seasoning), one on top and bottom. And then the roast beef in the middle. You then were given sour cream and apple sauce to smear on the latkes.
At this point it is messy but still manageable. But then you are asked to dip the Toots in the au jus. And that’s where it fell apart, really fell apart. The viscosity of the apple sauce and sour cream allowed the latkes and the roast beef to begin shifting about. Then the au jus began to dissolve the marble rye, causing structural failure. The latkes and roast beef broke containment and plopped into the au jus.
Execution fail. But don’t despair, the latke and the roast beef where rescued from the au jus in all their over-soaked glory. Maximum flavor achieved. Execution be damned.
I like a good challenge. Of course challenges involve difficulties that must be overcome. Because the difficulties provide rewards. Even in failure the attempt to master the difficulty can be rewarding.
And no, all of life’s difficulties are not as rewarding and tasty as a Toots sandwich. But they can all be rewarding in some way. You always have the choice to feel good about overcoming a challenge. You have to learn to let yourself feel good. You have to give yourself permission to feel good for the effort, success or failure.
You can’t hold out for the perfect score. Life would be pretty barren if we didn’t enjoy the little things, the little efforts.
Eat a Toots: succeed and feel joy. Clean the bathroom: succeed and feel joy. Become president of the USA: fail and feel joy.
Some say there is no joy without difficulty. I say there is no joy if you don’t let yourself have joy.
Posted in Food, Freedom
Tagged Food, joy, latke, messy, reward, roast beef, roast beef sandwich, Toots
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Fortress of Dissolitude 