Just like the cake

-You should learn to dance.

-I can't dance.

-Uh, yeah, that's why you should learn.

-I can't learn. I'm just not a dancer.

-That doesn't make sense. You can learn, just like I did.

-Yeah but you have an aptitude for dancing, you just "get" it.

- . . . So you think I'm good dancer because I have a natural ability to dance?

-Right.

-And it has NOTHING to do with me spending all that time at lessons and dance nights, being taught by experienced dancers and getting pointers from girls I danced with?

-Well . . . there's that, but you were able to learn it in the first place because you just understood the concept.

-Let me get this straight, you're saying that every person has a preset list of things that they "get," and those are the only things they can learn how to do?

-Yeah, either you have an aptitude for something, or you don't.

-And you believe this despite the fact that everyone you know has learned how to divine complex meaning from little figures scratched on a piece of paper, operate large pieces of machinery to take them safely across hundreds of miles, and remember thousands of details about the natural, economic, and social worlds they live in?

-But those things are easy!

-No they aren't. They're all incredibly complex. Yet you can do all of them. What happened, did you just get lucky and wind up having an "aptitude" for all of them?

-It's not the same. Dancing and music and other creative things require you to understand them from the beginning.

-That's even more ridiculous. No human society has ever existed without music and dancing, they are one of the most natural things for a human being to take part in, and they're a hell of a lot more natural than long division. The only difference is that you decided you HAD to learn how to read, you HAD to learn to drive a car. You never stopped to think that you COULDN'T. Where, in the course of learning all the things that you know, did you decide that certain things were IMPOSSIBLE, were MAGIC. And why are you letting that abominable idea rob you of something that could be beacon of your life, stirring your soul and connecting you to other people in a way that's as intimate and real as the deepest conversations you've ever had? "Aptitude" is a lie. It's a horrible lie and I am sick of people using it to forget how amazing they are. Anyone can dance*, anyone can write, anyone can sing. You may never be Mario Andretti, but damn it you can learn to drive, and it can take you anywhere.

- . . . Left, Right, Rock-step, huh?

-Yep.

*Except for that one guy. Sheesh! Dude is NEVER going to get it.

I'm like a shark

Being a techie forces you to become a master of the analogy. Computers are a strange dark art, where everyday work is done in a theoretical soup of pictures generated by words, words which are themselves descended from tiny pockets of electrical charge that represent, in a kind of philosophical mind trip, the vague concepts of "yes" and "no."

So when someone asks you what is, to their mind, a simple question about why this nebulous rabbit hole failed to represent . . . oh, say, the first level of "Desktop Tower Defense" or a far less respectable game of "Solitaire," you generally want to shake that person firmly and scream, "BECAUSE IT'S A MIRACLE THAT IT WORKED IN THE FIRST PLACE! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? SOMEONE WROTE WORDS ON A MAGIC BOX AND THEY CAME TRUE!"

But you can't do that. At least not more than once. TRUST ME.

Instead, you must learn to delve back into the ethereal and find some way to explain to users (by which I mean normal, healthy people) how to fit this madness into their lives.

And that's how I came to realize that browsing the web is like throwing a little party, where each of the pages you visit is a person you invite over. If you limit the guest list to those you know well, you'll have a fun, safe time. But put up a flier for the party in your local downtown area (analogous to searching Google for "free screen savers" and clicking all the links you get back) then your party will be populated with strangers who spill drinks on the carpet, throw things at your TV, and stop up your toilet (None of those examples are direct analogies. Don't try to figure out their computer equivalents.)

So when someone asks me how they could possibly have gotten a virus, or some spyware, or 30 gigs of Hollywood movies divided into thousands of .rar files on their computer, I like to imagine that person standing in the defiled, burning wreckage of their former home on the morning after a flier party, confident that this isn't their fault.

But if that's who the strangers are, then who are your web browsing friends? Even trusted friends aren't perfect, right? They each have their own little quirks, and it's worth reviewing what each friend contributes to your gathering.

-CNN.com is a pretty good guy, generally. He's always up on current events and can converse, at least a little, about nearly anything. The only troubling part is his obsession with Britney Spears, who he talks about with the same regard that he has for the Iraq war and major political shifts.

-Fark.com has a lot in common with CNN, but you should usually keep them apart. Fark is very knowledgeable and current, but she has a cynical sense of humor and likes to make fun of everyone, including CNN. Secretly, I suspect CNN is bitter about how often Fark is more up-to-date than he is.

-ESPN.com is your all around sports guy, a staple of the good party. He knows all the scores, remembers all the big plays, and is generally fun to be around. Too bad he has a tendency to get on a single topic and run it completely into the ground. Inexplicably, he too is prone to ramble about Britney Spears.

-Facebook.com is your gossipy socialite. She knows everyone, even knows who knows whom, and is on top of every relationship, breakup, and engagement. She's great to have around, for the most part, always reminding you of someone's birthday or an upcoming event. Just make sure to specify how much of your information she's allowed to repeat, because otherwise she'll broadcast it to everyone you know.

-Wikipedia.org is a total geek, no doubt about it. He talks so much that critics constantly accuse him of making it all up, even though they're hard-pressed to find any examples. But say what you want, he's the only guest that can talk history and light saber fighting styles with equal fervor.

-*

*UpdatedEveryFriday.com is generally funny, sometimes incisive, but talks about video games WAY too much.

Scurry

I took a psychology class in college that required me to spend a certain number of hours as a guinea pig in psychological research classes. I was assured that this was so I could further my understanding of the methodology involved with formal research, and had nothing to do with creating a cheap and constant source of test subjects. It said so in the syllabus. That same document also said that I would fail if I didn't participate, even if I aced every other part of the class. I guess this important "understanding of the methodology" I was getting couldn't be reflected in a test score.

But I did learn from the experience. I learned two things, in fact:

1. If you want someone to go out of their way to help you, one way is to arrange things so that they have no other choice.

2. Psychological researchers are liars, and mostly they just like to mess with people.

About two sessions into my indentured service I realized that every study was it's own little joke. No matter what the sign-up sheet SAID the research was about, it's actually about some other thing:

"We're testing the correlation between intelligence and memory!" (But really they want to know if you think better around an authority figure)

"We want to know how different colors affect people's reaction time!" (Actually, we just want to see if you'll shock someone to get a piece of chocolate.)

"What's the relationship between family history and career choice?" (Haha, you're about to be sprayed with WATER!)

Once you understand the kind of formula they're working under, every session becomes a little game called "What are they really testing?" You begin questioning every little detail of the experiment, wondering how many of the people with you are actually confederates. Eventually you develop a pretty good eye for it.

Which is why I know that the construction near the building I work in is a complete ruse.

It started innocently enough. Just a few fences to block off the work area. For a while a gate was left open, so people could cut through when walking to and from their cars. Then sometimes that gate would be locked, but another gate (around the corner where you couldn't see it) would be closed but NOT locked. That was a little suspicious, but still reasonable.

When they put big, black sheets across every fence, though, I knew something was up. They'd gotten their control data, now they were adding conditions to see how people would react. It's a rat maze. A real life, sociological rate maze, and it's getting more elaborate every day. Currently, going from my car to my office involves walking around the border of my parking lot, through the green space, then down a set of stairs before finally (and this is the best part) walking right past the little snack store.

At last, I see where it was all going. No doubt this study is being sold as "how minor inconvenience affects office morale" when really it's closer to "how a big black fence can make for crazy-good soda sales."

Any day now, I expect to find a piece of cheese on the sidewalk.*

*Before immediately being sprayed with WATER!

Catching Down

A few years ago, as the Norwalk virus stormed through my social circle, I realized something important.

Now granted, I came to this conclusion while I was still sick, after spending a whole night in my bathroom, so between the illness and lack of sleep I might have been borderline insane. But here's what I realized:

Throwing up due to illness is a strangely spiritual experience.

Why?

Spirituality is about freedom. You achieve it by looking outside yourself, even forgetting yourself. It is a long hard road of letting go, and realizing that no one is liberated who clings desperately.

And that's where vomit comes in. Because no one, absolutely no one, can sit hunched over a toilet bowl and think:

"Wow, I am really in control of MY LIFE."

That moment does away with some other statements, too. Like:

"Nothings gonna get in my way!"

and

"I don't have time for this, I have important things to do!"

When you throw up, those thoughts are completely drowned out by a much louder, more primal voice that says: "ACTUALLY, YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL OF ****. YOU ARE AS FRAIL AS ANY LIVING THING AND NO MATTER HOW BUSY YOU ARE, YOU'RE GOING TO BE SICK, RIGHT NOW, NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO. YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS."

So there you are. No more faith in your own little plans. No concern for your belongings, your status, or your dignity. Not worried about the future, not burdened with the past. Absolute presence, wholly focused on the present. An empty vessel.*

It's not a bad start.

*Ba dum, bum.

If you're confused, see last week's post.

It's like baseball.

I don't remember learning how to play baseball, or kickball either. I understand bases and outs the same way I understand brushing my teeth or getting dressed, the logic to it is an ancient foundation in my mind, so old that it has always been.

And that's what sandwiches were for Earl. Sandwiches were like baseball. Bread, something else, bread. Of course! How else would you do it? Sandwiches just made sense, which is precisely why it took a long time before he realized that he was good at making them.

Looking back on his life now, his sandwich aptitude had always been there. Earl started making his own lunches at an early age, once he realized that his mother would never understand how some jellies went with crunchy peanut butter, some went with smooth, and only a select few were reserved for extra-chunky.

And he can remember being asked to make sandwiches for school events, parties, all kinds of things growing up. At the time he hadn't thought much of these requests. Someone asked him to make sandwiches, he liked making sandwiches, it was perfect. It never occurred to him that sandwiches could be a direction for his life.

It wasn't until Earl got his first job at "Vaguely Sounds Like a Foreign Word for 'Bread", when he got his first look at the dark world of corporate sandwiching, that he knew he'd found his purpose. The job had been a difficult time for Earl. Everyday was a new fight with the kitchen manager, another reprimand for "improvising," another explanation of why "asiago" and "chipotle" were not magic deliciousness potions. The kitchen manager didn't understand. Recipes aren't commandments, they're someone else's best guess! If everyone followed the recipe exactly there would be no recipes except the first one!

Earl remembers that job with sadness, yet it was one of the most important things that ever happened to him. Until you see someone doing it wrong, you don't realize how important it is that other people go out and do it right. Only in the moment after he screamed "But they won't even taste the mayonnaise, and it will keep the oil from making the bread soggy!" did Earl, stunned at his own sentence, know he had a gift.

The gift became work, the work became learning, the learning became mastery. The mastery became blackened beef, cheddar, fried egg, and tomato, all on a fresh onion roll.

Thanks Earl.*

*His name is probably not Earl, but man that sandwich was good. Really good.

Oh! Continuity!

There's a restaurant in Athens. I don't want to mention it by name, but let's just say it's called "The 'abrasive particles or granules, as of sand or other small, coarse impurities found in the air, water, etc." You know, the one out on A Son of a King or Queen Avenue? You following me?

It's a great place and always has been. But as long as I've been going there, every entree has come with a free side of surl.

The waiting staff isn't bad, by any means. But you always got the impression that you're patronage was not so much "welcomed" as "being tolerated and you had better tip well and not require too many refills.

It's the kind of restaurant where the menu states clearly that they don't divide checks unless you ask them to up front. There's another great restaurant in Atlanta, lets say it's called "The 'a whirling mass of water, esp. one in which a force of suction operates, as a whirlpool", that enforces the same policy.

Well, in the past year or so, "The 'abrasive particles or granules, as of sand or other small, coarse impurities found in the air, water, etc." establishment has really lightened up. The current wait staff has been known to be downright friendly, even pleasant toward customers. But the funny thing is that they didn't have to. The restaurant was doing fine, even when the surliness was at it's peak.

It's the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld, all over again. If you make a good enough product, you don't have to be particularly nice about distributing it. No matter how many people you anger, there will always be those who appreciate your work enough to come back. If you love the art, you can put up with the artist. Being brilliant is his job, and that's enough. We don't need him to be in a good mood all the time.

And that kind of tolerance is what you need to keep in mind when I tell you about yet another surly restaurant. It's just around the corner from "The 'abrasive particles" actually. Let's just call it "Large Urban Baked Good."

Now there are a lot of people who don't think this establishment is anything special. It's a little pricey for a lunch place, I'll admit, and while their menu items are all of high quality, nothing really stands out.

Unless you order the special of the day.

I have only ordered the special sandwich of the day at "Large Urban Baked Good" twice, but they were the best two sandwiches I have ever eaten.

These sandwiches were not invented, they are composed, intricately balancing, no, juggling, juggling flavors.

The restaurant is home to a "Sandwich Genius." I'm sure of it.

*Next week: The Sandwich Hero's Journey

Independence Durr

MOISHE
I think you better sleep this off.
Go back inside before you catch a
cold.

Slowly David looks up towards Moishe, an idea.

DAVID
Pops, you're a genius!

MOISHE
What'd I say?

DAVID
A cold? Of course.

. . . and that's how we saved humanity from the evil aliens. This guy's dad chattering on, and he happened to say something that, when taken in a different context, gave his son the idea for a ridiculous plot device.

But I don't mean to pick on "Independence Day". This little "you're a genius" riff is used in just about any movie where the heroes have to figure something out. Yet "ID4" will always be the prime example of scriptwriting's "dumb luck" because the fly's "give the alien's a computer virus" idea makes so little sense:

1. The super-advanced aliens who have mastered interstellar travel probably got their computer networking down a long time ago. That virus wouldn't get very far, unless one of them was running Outlook Express.

2. The fly wouldn't be able to program a virus for a completely foreign system using a computer language he knows nothing about in just a few hours.

3. On the chance that he was a skilled enough programmer to accomplish #2, he wouldn't be using a Mac.


Do the writers of these movies not understand how insulting this "immaculate solution"* trope is? Even with all the human race has accomplished and all the bright minds working in science and technology fields, our only hope for salvation is that Ian Malcolm will have some inane, drunken chat with his father. That's the extent of our problem-solving ability.

And I understand that "ID4" isn't "Apollo 13." It's not supposed to be a serious, intelligent look at how smart people solve problems in desperate times. "Independence Day" is a movie where Bagger Vance kills the aliens. Period. But if the problem-solving is so unimportant, why not just handle it like this:

DAVID
Pops, you're a genius!

MOISHE
What'd I say?

DAVID
A cold? Of course.

A soldier runs into the room excitedly.

SOLDIER

Hey, we stopped the alien invasion!

DAVID

What? How?

SOLDIER

Larry figured it out. Did you meet Larry? Really
smart guy, Ph.D. in Physics I think. He studied
the shield on the alien ship we captured, then
through trail-and-error he came up with a missile
payload that would disable it. We took the designs
over to Greg, the military R&D guy, he's been
designing missiles for, like, 40 years or something.
He equipped some ICBMs with Larry's device and
brought down the mother ship a few minutes
ago. Now we're just waiting for Agent J to get in his
little airplane and mop up the rest.

DAVID

Wow, I guess . . . I guess those guys have it
covered, then.

SOLDIER

Yep . . . wait, did you have an idea too?

DAVID

Oh, uh, yeah, kinda. But don't worry about it,
seems kinda stupid now.

*The only time in recorded history when this has actually happened was when Vance and I were playing "The Curse of Monkey Island" in high school. He solved one of the most obscure puzzles in that game because he had the cursor over a particular inventory item while singing a particular "Barenaked Ladies" song. It was incredible.

Telling Stories

The following is a story I enjoy telling whenever vegetarianism, meatball subs, or the Mellow Mushroom pizza restaurant come up in conversation:

"A co-worker told me that she was at dinner with a vegetarian friend, and he ordered a hamburger. She was really startled, and asked why he'd be ordering meat. He confessed that he'd given up his hardcore-vegetarian lifestyle forever.

'What happened?' she asked.

'Man . . . ' he replied, 'it was those meatball subs.'

At the time, this guy was working as a cook at Mellow Mushroom. 'I was making a meatball sub the other day, and when I took it out of the oven it just smelled so good. I don't know, I just had to take a bite out of it. And before I knew it, I'd eaten the whole thing and had to make a new one for the customer. And from that point on, it was over. Meat is GOOD."

I think it's a great story.

The only problem is that, as I found out recently, it's almost a complete lie.

It wasn't a meatball sub*, it was a chicken club. And he wasn't taking the sandwich out of the oven, he was just cutting up some chicken to put into it. And he only decided to eat a small piece of the chicken, just a piece, not the whole thing.

Somehow, in retelling the story, I managed to change almost everything about it. And I guess that's forgivable. People embellish stories all the time without meaning to.

But the terrible part is that I fully intend to continue telling MY version of this story with all the lies in it.

It's just better that way. No one wants to think that a vegetarian got turned to omnivority by a little piece of chicken. No one hears the true version and thinks, "Wow, yeah, small pieces of chicken ARE good. I could go for a small piece of chicken right now!"

But a meatball sub? Now that's the kind of thing that lures you to the culinary dark side. No meat-eater would have a problem with meatball subs acting as a mascot for our dietary choice.

And that's why, in my version, he HAS to eat the entire sandwich. We can't have him eat a little of a meatball sub, herald of all animal consumption, and say, "Eh. Alright. I guess I'm ok with meat." No, he has to be so overwhelmed that he finishes the whole thing.

This gives me an insight into every urban legend, successful politician, or Moist von Lipwig in the world. Each person authors their own little story of the world, and a lot of the time, the story isn't particularly interesting. And if someone else comes along telling a better story, people will believe that instead, even if they know it's full of lies.

*But I was so convinced that it was, I made sure to get one the next time I went there.

Remake how we got to where we are.

By now you've probably seen the "Chocolate Rain" video. Well maybe you have. I'm never really sure, because it's hard to know exactly where the "veil of geek" drops. I spend a lot of time on the internet, and so do many of my friends, and after a while I forget that a lot of people live normal, healthy lives in a world where Chad Vader and the Alabama Leprechaun aren't fixtures.

But just in case you're not familiar with the internet's canonical works, let me enlighten you on one of them since it's important to today's post. I give you Tey Zonday's "Chocolate Rain":



Let's pause here for a moment and think about what you just saw. Was the song really "bad?" Can you even call it that? I wouldn't say it's "good." I'm certainly not burning it to a CD and Sharpie-ing the words "Driving Music" on the top.

Yet I can't bring myself to classify "Chocolate Rain" in such simple terms as "bad" or "good," because that's not what I take away from it. What I really want to say is "I can't believe this thing exists, but it does. Holy Crap." Is there a word for that?

But I'm not here to talk about "Chocolate Rain," I just needed you to know about it before I got into my real subject.

"Cherry Chocolate Rain"

I've already discussed with you the soda industry's desperate pleas for attention, as you might remember. This season Dr. Pepper is up to their usual antics with "Diet Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper." And guess how the Dr. Pepper company decided to advertise their new assault on adjectives . . .

Oh yes . . .

Yes they did . . .



When I watched that video the first time, something BROKE inside of me. I felt it about the time "Mista Johnson" came out and started rapping about Tey's "move away from the microphone" note. There was a loud "pop" in my head, and suddenly I felt like I should be doing something outside.

It's hard to explain exactly what happened to me, but I'll do my best:

Imagine if you helped to invent the first automobile. Just you and some machine-loving friends, old railroaders and steamboat workers probably, building it inside an old shed. And then you started a company, with you and your buddies on the forefront of an exciting new field. As the years passed you kept up with every innovation, every major shift in thinking, because cars were your thing, darn it, you were there when it all began! Even when you started getting old and knew it was time to retire, you found it hard to walk out the door because you still loved those machines so much.

Then one day you came into the office and someone had invented a hover-car. Yep, Steve in R&D made anti-gravity, and got it to run off of your light-compact engine.

And for some reason, you knew you were done. It wasn't that you were upset about the hover-car. You were proud, in fact, that someone from your company had accomplished it. But you were done. Buy me a cake, hand me a gold watch, nice working with you fellas, but I'm out.

That's how "Cherry Chocolate Rain" makes me feel. I was around when this whole "internet" thing started. I watched it grow and change and develop into what it is. And even when "Web 2.0" sites like Wikipedia and YouTube came along, I was ok with that. It was a weird thing to think about, the users of the site providing all the content for the site, but I got it.

I understood how someone could perform one of the most bizarre songs ever and get twelve million people to watch it, specifically because it was weird.

But when that someone then got paid to sing a song ABOUT his first song, and used that second song to discuss how weird it is that he's famous for performing a really strange song, well . . . I don't know. I'm not mad about it. Good for him. But I'm done.*

*This does not have any real implication. Also, I still can't spell "chocolate" on the first try.

And don't get me started on folding them.

What do you wash your towels with?

Soap and water.

What gets on your towels when you use them?

Soap and water.

And towels don't get dirty, how could they? You don't use them unless you're already clean. So then why do you have to wash towels? Aren't they getting washed each time you use them?

Maybe the problem is that, eventually, all that soap residue builds up, so when you use the towel you just get all lathered up again. But then that means that, when you wash towels, you're using soap to clean off soap.

Don't think about that idea for too long, it's like an Escher painting for your mind.*

Washing dishes is strange too. Ever had a sink full of dishes that you've been meaning to wash for three or four days? I do right now. But clearly I'm getting along just fine without those dishes, so do I even need them? What the heck have I been drinking out of these past four days? I can't remember.

I guess I don't need towels either, for that matter. I mean I'm going to be dry eventually. Towels are just there for my impatience. I refuse to drip dry for ten minutes, I'd rather towel dry for three minutes and then do a whole extra load of laundry every week.

And speaking of cleaning, how come so many "earthy" people who "love nature" also keep really clean houses. It seems like they'd never have to clean, dirt and bacteria are some of the most natural things in the world. "Why do you have a vacuum, don't you love all this nature on your floor? Take my shoes off? Why? I'm just tracking in nature! Oooh, look what nature is growing with the little bit of milk left in this glass!"

People forget that most of Nature is trying to kill you.

*If it weren't for my horse . . .