Needle, Meet Haystack

I’ve been reading Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson’s Chew on This over the past few days, and one particular story stood out to me: the cultural impact of one Mr. Charlie Nagreen.  Back when he was 15 (in 1885), Charlie invented the hamburger.

While there are a number of different stories about how the most popular American sandwich-type food was created, that’s the one that the authors chose, but it really wouldn’t have mattered.  Charlie, like dozens of other potential burger-creators, has been relegated to the back pages of obscure food history books.  Instead, there’s a better chance that people have heard of Ray Kroc from McDonald’s or Dave Thomas of Wendy’s.  Heck, there are probably tens of thousands (if not millions) of people who think that Colonel Sanders invented fried chicken.

Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile.  The Wright brothers didn’t invent the airplane.  Thomas Edison didn’t really invent the light bulb.  Alexander Graham Bell wasn’t the only person who invented the telephone that week.  And yet, these names are the ones that we’re taught in school.  These are the people we remember, while the real innovators languish in obscurity and high-prize questions on game shows.  One is tempted to ask why these names stick out against all others, but the answer is simple:

They did it better.

Social networking was brought into the mainstream with Friendster, popularized with MySpace, and (arguably) perfected with Facebook.  Only one of those companies exists today with any real social currency, and it’s not the ones who created the field.

In introductory business classes, students are taught that a key component of a company’s competitive advantage is being first to market.  Establishing a strong presence early on to quickly gain full market dominance is what can make or break a company.  Any competitors will be seen as copies of the original, and will have to struggle to make a name for themselves.  But in a competitive environment, that’s exactly how a new industry grows and evolves.  Being the first is a disadvantage for long-term gains; rivals can observe the strategies, successes and failures of the originators to satisfy consumer needs more adequately.  Originality and innovation in business limits those who came first, as they will always be judged by that opening salvo, while opponents are free to innovate without the PR concerns.  This is what’s happening to Apple right now.

When the iPhone first came out, it was a revelation; never before did so many realize that they had been doing so little with their mobile devices.  One piece of hardware changed an entire industry overnight.  But now, competing platforms like Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile have had time to observe and refine their own tactics, and they are consistently chipping away at the iPhone’s industry dominance, thanks to scandals like “Antennagate” and mass criticism of antiquated hardware.  Since Apple created the category, expectations are higher for its products; those competing against it have no such concerns.

It’s important to create new and original things; it’s how the world continues to grow, change and evolve.  But uniqueness and differentiation can come at the cost of recognition and reward; it can be more advantageous (and easier) to hang back in the wings to learn and plan out better tactics to improve on what others have made.  Being first does not always equate to being the best.  So it really comes down to one question: do you want to be the person who invented the hamburger, or the person who perfected it?

I really, really, REALLY effing miss screen names.

I miss screen names like the RIAA would miss suing people who download a tracked copy of the Bee Gees greatest hits collection.  I miss screen names like Rice Krispies Treats Cereal, the greatest thing to ever pass from bowl to spoon.  I miss screen names like honors students miss Wikipedia when there’s a big research paper due tomorrow morning and the Internet is down.

I miss screen names, and it’s all your fault.

Back when the Internet was just becoming widely available and nodbody knew quite what to do with it besides fart around on different Geocities pages and figure out the difference between a “www name” and an AOL keyword, every one of us used a screen name as a barrier to protect ourselves from the hidden dangers of the Information Superhighway.  The only people who shared their real names were celebrities, CEOs, politicians and crazy perverts who were trying to trick you into giving them your checking account information.

There was no Bob, Susan, Joan or Steve; there was SportsFan1987, Flirty_Girl_006, KnittingInWoolyArmor and FordTrucksSuxX837103124.  We defined ourselves by our passions and interests, the identities that we wanted to have.  A screen name was a big fuzzy blanket you wrapped yourself in to keep out the cold winds of the chat rooms and forums.

The anonymity and the name barrier gave us confidence to speak as we might not to the outside world; they let us be true to the thoughts we’d never given voice to.  Your pleasant neighbor who collected your mail during a weekend trip to Albuquerque might also be the guy cursing out Cubs fans until 3 in the morning.  The barista at your local coffee shop might trade dominatrix photos on her lunch break.  People kept their lives compartmentalized between the Real World and the Digital World.

And then, someone thought that it would be a good idea for all that to stop.

One could say that social networks that encourage Real Name usage, enhanced by automatic logins on other pages.  Some might instead look to those who decided that an “appropriate email address” contains a person’s name.  It could even be attributed to a general growth and comfort that the average person has with their computer and the exchange of information; we want to be open and to share with the world, so it’s natural that we go in, openly and honestly, as ourselves.  But whatever (or whomever) the source, one thing is clear: by removing the walls of privacy that come with a screen name, Internet Society made a conscious decision to permeate the day-to-day structure of our offline lives.

Instead of hiding our opinions behind a fake name and goofy picture, we confront people head-on as ourselves.  Our missteps and mishaps can be recorded for posterity, living forever in the non-tangible world online.  Of course, this is still speculation.  Even Google co-founder Eric Schmidt isn’t sure what’s going to happen:

“‘I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,’ [Schmidt] says. He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.” -Google and the Search for the Future, the Wall Street Journal

We’ve gone from being encased in armor to standing around as naked as the day that we were born.  We no longer have Online and Offline Names; they are one and the same.

Sure, there are still forums and locations for anonymity.  Online gaming is a popular choice for escapism, but gaming with friends often leads to people being called by their given names.  Dating sites let you pick a screen name like in the old days, but many members will instead choose to use their name in its place, or might just introduce themselves by name with their profiles.  If you want, you can make up a new identity for yourself  and lie online; it’s hardly a misdemeanor or socially frowned-upon activity.  However, the ease of communication and openness, coupled with the fearlessness among the denizens of the web makes using a false name in most circumstances seem unappealing and deceptive.

The early days of life on the Internet were about discovery.  The modern days of life on the Internet are about openness.  Which is a good thing, but only in theory.

When a person brings together two different parts of their life, like work and friends, for example, their personality becomes an odd mish-mash of the separate elements that they display in either scenario.  One rarely interacts with co-workers in the same way that they would interact with friends.  In these scenarios, people seem almost alien to members of both groups, showing characteristics that neither audience finds comfortable or recognizable.  Finding that balance is neigh-impossible because there really isn’t one – we don’t act the same around all people, and rarely find ourselves in situations where we need to do so.  But the blending of an Internet Self with a Real World Self creates this exact instance, but to a degree and scale where it is necessary to be the same all the time.  There’s even a lucrative field dedicated to navigating this new social curse: personal branding.

So you’re pulling together two parts of your life that you hoped would never meet, like your significant other and photos your parents have of you in the tub when you were three, and you have to make a lot of quick decisions about how you will present yourself.  Will you go full-bore, being honest and outspoken without the safety of a screen name to protect you, or will you keep your mouth closed to preserve your current reputation?

We are all living in the old adage about people in glass houses; the question is if we want to keep the glass smudge- and scratch-free, or if we’re willing to knock down a wall so we can explore the rest of the world.  It’s a choice with no clear victor for either option, and it’s one that millions of us struggle with every day.

I really miss screen names.  There were no hard decisions then, because I could be who I wanted to be without reality intruding on my little slice of Shangri-La.  I wasn’t even aware that I was in a glass house, and the only thing I was concerned about was exploring and comfortably expressing myself.  These days, I don’t have that option.  Anonymity on the Internet just isn’t the same.

When you’re peeling an orange, what do you think about?  There’s the region it was grown in, the grove and tree that birthed it, the (possibly migrant) hands that plucked it off the tree, the packing and shipping over hundreds of miles, the grocer’s research into where to display it, and finally, the psychological influences that led to your purchase.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of different events, from the biological and chemical to the sociological and economical, that led that one piece of citrus fruit into your hands.  But if you’re like me, all you’re probably thinking is Why is it so dang difficult to peel one of these things?

When we look to the past, we discover strange things, and find connections that we never knew were there.  And this can be done with anything, or anyone.  Like, say, the musical career of Lady Gaga, which actually began (relatively speaking) with Motown Records, and artists like Marvin Gaye.

Jerry Heller was a manager who worked for Motown before forming Ruthless Records with rapper Eazy-E in 1987 as a vehicle for Eazy’s group, N.W.A.  One of N.W.A.’s members, Dr. Dre, went on to even greater stardom as a solo artist and took others under his wing, like Eminem, who in turn discovered 50 Cent.  50 signed Akon, who created his Konvict label, which signed artists including T-Pain and, you guessed it, Lady Gaga.  Time from N.W.A. to Gaga (old school gangsta rap to modern revisionist pop): about 20 years.

It’s almost biblical, in the sort of begetting chain one could find in book 5 of Genesis.  One thing leads to another in a linear fashion, the string growing longer as we move forward.  The greater the length of the string, the more daunting it becomes, while the likelihood that anyone will look backwards decreases.

It’s like that overused nugget of truth from philosopher George Santayana: “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”  Unfortunately, Santayana didn’t count on history happening too fast for most people to remember current events, much less those in the past.

There are more ways to communicate and record things than ever before.  Most of our communications are in a digital form that can be stored forever.  Any data, from your cousin’s roommate’s ex’s stylist’s weekend shenanigans to the socio-political climate in a third-world country, is permanently part of a worldwide data structure.  The phrase “information overload” gets thrown around by pundits quite a bit, but the problem is the opposite: information diversion and under-representation.

Let’s say that you want to look up a summary of a single episode of the show Lost, like this one.  In it, there’s a mention of something called a Zodiac boat, manufactured during World War II by a company bought by the Carlyle Group, who deal with leveraged finance, something that caused the collapse of some large business called Long-Term Capital Management, which is somehow related to a Nobel Prize-winning Economics person who is not Paul Krugman, whose theories were used by Bill Clinton, a guest on the final episode of Larry King Live, which was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel one time, whose show is on ABC, home of the now-ended Lost.

Now, what’s the most important piece of information from that very roundabout, Give A Mouse A Cookie link-clicking extravaganza?

Seriously, what is it?  How can you even tell?

Information, whether it’s pertinent or not, factual or fallacious, interesting or boring as all get-out, is on an equal level of accessibility, and the connections between completely disparate entities can only increase as time goes on.  To be fully knowledgeable about anything, one must trace its roots to gain the right data.  And though the strings can only grow longer and become more entwined, following a single thread can make things more manageable.

It’s like focusing in on peeling an orange: difficult at first, but totally worth it once you get to the center.  But there is no visible correlation between that orange and “Just Dance.”

Look, folks, Valentine’s Day is coming up, and there’s a statistical possibility that you don’t have anyone to spend it with other than junk food and your DVDs.  Sure, you might tell your friends and family that you’re “okay” and that you don’t need the “crass commercialized holiday forced on us by greeting card and chocolate companies” before you run off to quietly sob in a corner somewhere, but it all comes down to this: everyone deserves to be with somebody.

Bars and clubs are unreliable meat markets at best, and the odds of finding you’re perfect match for the next few weeks at a spin class at the gym or in the late-19th century historical fiction section of your local bookstore are slim at best.  Luckily for you, the Internet is here to help, with tens of legitimate sites that can help you forget all about the S.A.D. (Singles Appreciation Day) and get glad with a cuddle buddy!  There are scores of potential significant others for you to choose from and woo at your leisure – and heck, you’re already online!

But before you go off to pounce on scores of unsuspecting singles on the World Wide Web, there’s a few things that you should keep in mind.  Here’s some tips and tricks I learned during my time as a (quasi-) dating coach:

1. Every picture you see is a lie. Let’s put it this way: if you were going to advertise your best self, would you put up the picture that most accurately represents your day-to-day appearance, or one that makes you look smokin’ hot?  There’s no way to gauge exactly what a stranger looks like, so a good rule of thumb is to add an imaginary 10 to 15 pounds to the object of your affections.  At worst, you’ll have underestimated, but at best, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
2. The more specific you are in your profile, the less it will help.  This might sound counter-intuitive, but part of the appeal of online dating is that you’ll be meeting new people that you don’t know much about.  The aura of mystery and the opportunity for discovery make every interaction exciting.  But those who over-share information seem a bit too trusting of strangers, and can come across as needy or a little crazy.  Don’t be afraid to share who you are, but don’t give away all of your secrets before you’ve even talked with someone.
3. Those “flirt” buttons don’t do shit.  Seriously.  They’re passive, silly, and as functional as a Facebook poke.  Just send the person a dang message if you want to talk to them; you’ll come across as a lot less creepy.
4. There are false accounts.  There’s spam accounts on dating sites, just like on any social network (unfortunately).  If someone seems a little “off” in a way that makes you suspect that they’re not actually a real person, or at least not a real person who’s interested in the services that the site has to offer, stay away, or beware the wrath of penis enlargement pills and Nigerian princes.
5. Don’t be cute, charming or quirky – just be nice.  As we’ve discussed before, written messages don’t always translate smoothly between the writer and their audience.  What you think may make you sound suave, intelligent, funny or unique might instead make you sound creepy, dumb, lame or cliché.  Read over everything you write – you never know how your audience will react, but you can at least try to minimize the damage.
6. Nobody wants to be reminded that they’re on a dating site.  Even if it’s a Friday night and they’re home alone with a glass of wine with the soft glow of a laptop screen the only light in the room, glancing lazily through pages of potential matches, the worst thing you can do is remind someone that they’re on a dating site.  Though the stigma is slightly lessened from the early days of the Web, many consider joining a dating site a “last resort” and prefer to think of their experiences as social networking or joining an online community.  Some may even deny that they met their significant others online, coming up with a lie about a cooking class or charity project.  It’s deflating to the ego to many that they’re on the site; don’t make it worse by reminding them of the fact.
7. Update your profile.  Constantly. Here’s a neat little trick for getting more people to see your profile: make a change or two every few days.  Most dating sites love to show how active their members are, so even the tweak of a few spaces, letters, phrases or sentences will be enough to put your info at the top of the list when others log in.  As an added bonus, it’s a great way to catch typos and other errors.  You don’t want to be the goofball with the profile that says that you’re 21 in one place and 24 in another, do you?
8. Don’t drag things out for too long.  Think you’re ready to ask the person you’ve been chatting with out for some IRL romance?  Bring it up!  Since both of you are on a dating site (even though chances are that at least one of you won’t admit it), your communications, unless otherwise stated, carry the undertone of interest in actual dating.  So don’t worry about social pressure or awkwardness – you’re both already in the right mindset for dating.  And if you wait too long, you’ll be in the dreaded “friend zone” before you even meet.
9. You can’t take things personally.  If you send someone a heartfelt first message, professing your undying love, lust or like for them and never receive a response, don’t get mad or upset.  Don’t send them a second message asking why they’re such a frigid, unfeeling jerk.  Instead, shrug it off and move along.  The nice thing about a dating site is that there’s a literal list of people with whom you might be compatible and interested in.  And similarly, don’t feel compelled to respond to every message; choose someone because you like them, not because they like you.
10. It’s easier to get a date in real life.  Lies and deceit in pictures and profiles, days’ worth of waiting on messages to approximate a real conversation, miscommunication in messages, the awkwardness of asking for someone’s name, compatibility quizzes and all of that crap?  Completely unnecessary if you just go up to someone you’re interested in and strike up a conversation.  When you’re already in each others’ physical presence, the approach might be more difficult, but the conversation and connection can actually be easier.  So do your best to get exposure to the world of dating offline, too.  After all, there are plenty of people you might connect with who haven’t heard of the dating site you’re using, much less signed up for it.

That’s all there really is to it – and take it from me, I’m an expert!*  So what are you waiting for?  Go get ‘em, tiger!

…Or stay in with a gallon of ice cream and your Mad Men season 4 box set.  The choice is yours.

* Sort of

A few readers sent me messages recently telling me that they weren’t able to share a link to Tuesday’s post about climbing a mountain to their Facebook pages, as it had been flagged as inappropriate or abusive by the site.  And while the climb itself was a bit abusive, there wasn’t really anything in that post from which could draw claims of impropriety.

A negative review that I posted to Yelp about a local pizza joint was flagged as possibly spammy because it seemed to contradict the overwhelmingly positive (and quite undeserved) general consensus.

I’m just too hot for the Internet these days.

Then again, it’s not just me.  Censorship seems to be ramping up everywhere.  It’s even affected one of my childhood friends in a most unfortunate way:

Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly the same thing.  After all, both Yelp and Facebook use programs to determine what gets censored, as having employees sift through millions of accounts and daily posts would be both costly and inefficient (though real live people do step in from time to time).  But maybe that’s the problem.

On a basic level, anything that a person creates is on the same level as everything else.  A story, a sandwich, a theory, a chemical additive and even a phrase all exist in the realm of things available to the public (even if used privately) – anyone can access, or at least talk about them.  The work itself can exist within a vacuum, but only when not put in the scope of other things that belong to a similar category.

As people began to judge and compare things, it was decided that some were more socially acceptable than others (or at least some things should be reserved for individuals of a certain age range, like at the movies) – an invisible council was formed to patrol and censor items that could be seen as socially detrimental or low in utility to the masses.  And while this was a flawed system, it worked, as it operated under the assumption that there were humans behind the decision-making process.

George Carlin’s famous “Seven Dirty Words” bit (video or transcription) makes a strong case for just how arbitrary the system is:

“There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993…to 7. They must really be bad. They’d have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large.”

Carlin goes on to explain how silly it seems that the seven words (originally Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits) are removed from our dialect, even though they each have more value than some commonly-used bits of language.  Ain’t people funny in the stupid stuff they do? He seemed to ask.  Society’s a strange thing, folks.  But at least it was done by people.

The problem with censorship by electronic program is that the system is too restrictive; it’s following a basic program designed to approximate what may or may not be offensive, but does so without full context or any understanding of content.  A computer program attempting to determine whether or not something should be censored is literally as effective as shooting a loaded gun off in a dark room.  Sure, you might hit the target, but how will you even know if you were facing the right direction?

In the case of the extended metaphor, you turn the lights on.  Which, in this case, means bringing in human involvement.  And that circumvents the purpose of the programs in the first place.  Any effectiveness or efficiency is lost the moment that a non-silicon brain must look at what’s going on.

Using any sort of program to censor things is just about as ludicrous as censoring them in the first place.  The defense that it’s to “protect” people is a nice way of saying that censoring limits the ability to have a truly open discourse about anything.  After all, how can you have a full conversation when half the room cannot speak?  Maybe instead of using computers to protect us from the evils of mountain climbing and poor restaurant reviews, we should try a decidedly more human trait: common sense.

I’m pretty sure no one has invented a program to take care of that one yet.

There’s a lot of terrifying stuff out there in the world: war, poverty, genocide, mimes, incurable diseases, racism, platypuses, climate change, and even more.  But there are things that are just on the fringe of human consciousness that are even more terrifying…

5. Mole People - Just think about it for a second: a subterranean species with powerful drilling tools, evolutionarily adapted to live in harsh climates with low oxygen and possibly even molten lava.  This doesn’t even touch on the fact that they might have access to fault lines all over the world.  Of course, everyone knows that Mole People are photophobic, but have you ever seen 30 Days of Night?  There are ways and means of getting around that little “sunlight” issue.  And speaking of that film…

4. Vampires – When you get right down to it, vampirism isn’t seductive and sexy so much as it is terrifying in its implications.  Sure, it confers greater strength and sexiness and bat-transformation abilities, but with them comes a severe iron deficiency and a much greater importance for proper dental hygiene.  When you think about it, vampires are transmuting a viral pathogen with the express intent of either making you their lunch or making you their bitch.  There’s far too much minutiae to go into here, but really, an entire secondary species with a proclivity for my quite vital blood?  That’s almost as bad as…

3. Zombies - They want to eat your brains.  And after reading You Might Be A Zombie and Other Bad News, there’s a very real possibility that this sort of thing could happen.  Oh, I’ll be fine, you might think.  I’ll grab a shotgun or a chainsaw or a shovel and mow down those undead SOBs. But think about it: could you really shoot an old lady in the face just because her higher brain functions were switched off?  Or what if it happened to your friends or family?  Perhaps it says something worse about us if we pull the trigger too quickly.  It’s a living death, a primal state from which others would never recover, becoming a shambling set of mindless drones (kind of like the ladies on those real Housewives shows – zing!).  But at least it’s a terrestrial issue, unlike, say…

2. Aliens – Considering the distance between Earth and the nearest planet that could possibly have intelligent life and the ability for interstellar travel, any race that can reach us right now is going to be (literally) light-years ahead of anything that this planet has when it comes to science.  Hell, we’ve barely gone past our moon when it comes to manned spaceflight.  So if a bunch of visitors from another planet were to touch down, they would probably be here with about the same good intentions that the early European settlers had towards the indigenous peoples of the Americas.  But before we’re about to be blasted into oblivion or cooked for dinner, there is one thing that terrifies me above all else, and it is a person, and that person is a man…

1. Jesus – Wait, what?  Why is Jesus the most terrifying thing to me?

First, let’s get this out of the way: it has nothing to do with my personal religious beliefs, my perception of the Christian faith, or even my thoughts on resurrection.  No, this has to do with the global role of religion, as well as the precarious socio-political balance of the world.

Suppose tomorrow, the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans (who were more or less the same) turned out to be real.  There is a literal personification of lightning and storms, a literal representative of the ocean, and definite proof of who controls the underworld, and what it’s like.  They are the absolute answer to the creation stories and the questions that have long plagued mankind.  Would you believe it?  Would you think that it was a hoax or a part of a conspiracy?  Would you begin worshiping them?

Seems a bit far-fetched, right?  But that’s the exact kind of crisis of faith and conscience that would permeate through every non-Christian person in the world if it turned out the New Testament was complete fact.  And that’s not even considering the reactions of the governments of some countries that follow more extremist beliefs, or the denials by religious leaders who might be a bit more liberal with their interpretations of scripture and their beliefs.

In short, it could get very messy.  And it’s quite scary.  Of course, Mole Man Zombie Vampire Jesus from Outer Space would be even scarier.

You know what?  Let’s just replace this entire list with “rabid land sharks with human brains.”  Because that’s at least something I’m pretty sure would be confined to SyFy Channel original movies.

During a recent chat, a friend told me about an organization he’s volunteering with where those who donate their time read various periodicals and books aloud into recorders, and the recordings are then given to organization that help the blind, so they can enjoy works not available in an audio or braille format.  Now, this particular friend happens to have a voice like butter to the ears, so I’m glad that he’s getting that audible chocolate on the airwaves.  But I digress.

I rarely consider what life must be like for those without sight.  The thought mostly pops into my brain when I bump into something in the dark, or when I’ve been staring at my computer screen for so long that everything gets fuzzy and blurred to the point where I can barely distinguish colors and shapes.  When I think back to my Harry Potter days and how my eyes magically seemed to get better so that glasses were no longer necessary, I don’t consider that it could have gone the other way, too.  But then again, vision is something that our society takes advantage of, to the point where it makes functioning without it nearly impossible.

Consider your daily life: most if it revolves around visual objects and places, like your computer, smartphone, driving a car, or even watching people while you speak with them.  While in the past, when most people were illiterate, sound and vocalization were crucial to communication and survival, it’s now become sight and ocular stimuli that are so necessary to all of us.  The best answer to the “would you rather be blind or deaf” question took a 180 somewhere around the early days of the 20th century, and that side of the argument has only grown.

Back before much of the Western world became literate, everything, from math to science to religion, was mostly passed along via speech.  Even great works of literature started out as stories told for generations – everything from The Odyssey to Grimm’s Fairy Tales to the inspirations for the works of Shakespeare.

And even after reading came into vogue, our first modern communications – the radio and the telephone – were based on aural reception.

The advent of movies, television and computers have pushed sound into the background.  These days, sight has become so powerful that it’s now a novelty to be without it.  Consider occasional “dining in the dark” evenings at posh restaurants, or pitch-black establishments like San Francisco’s Opaque.  The super-hero Daredevil‘s power is that he’s a blind guy who can “see.”  Really.

This has changed the way that we communicate, too.  I recently met a woman who, while fine with chatting online, texting, and meeting people in person, could not stand to use the phone.  She told me she’s even cut people out of her life for their insistence on calling her, or for having the gall to leave her voice messages.  As with many visually-focused people, technological advances have allowed her to minimize the time she spends speaking with people, without influencing the time she spends talking with them.

As much as we might love music, the sounds of the city, the giggle of a child or the sound of bacon sizzling, it’s become much less necessary to do so.  Instead, it’s all about what’s in front of us: what we can see, what we can visualize, what is apparent right in front of us and can be understood in no uncertain terms.  Without sight, our utility is much more diminished than if we couldn’t hear.

So take a few minutes today, close your eyes, and listen.  You might be surprised about how much you’ve missed.

If you’re confused as to where the first post is, it’s from last year.  Check it out here.

1994

If you’re one of the fortunate few to have been in your elementary school band, you might recall that one of the first songs that everyone learns is “Jingle Bells” – it’s easy, repetitive, and can be played in such a way that a bunch of 8-year-olds with only a cursory grasp of how to use their instruments can knock it out of the park.  And if you were only middling in your skills, you would still participate.  And if you were in the band and middling in your music skills and played in the percussion section, that meant that you got to shake the sleigh bells during the song.

This is pretty much the worst and most boring thing ever.

Your entire role for the song is to shake the sleigh bells on every beat.  Dun-dun-dun.  Dun-dun-dun.  Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.  Over and over and over from beginning to end.  No changes, no fancy techniques, just that same shake on those sleigh bells, over and over and over for the longest two-and-a-half minutes in the history of the universe.  Which would be bad enough, but you’re playing it more than just on the night of the concert.

You’re playing it in band class every day.

Dun-dun-dun.  Dun-dun-dun.  Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. The flutes sure have a nice part, and they’re all pretty girls there.  Maybe I should switch to the flute, you think, shaking the bells absentmindedly.

Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.  Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.  The song goes on.  Man, John’s really wailing on that saxophone down there.  It’d be pretty cool of I played the same instrument as him.  We could do dueling jazz saxes or something.

Dun-dun-dun.  Dun-dun-dun.  Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.  Hell, even the tuba guy’s doing more than I am.  And they never give the tuba guy anything to do.

So, after that single, horrible eternity of shaking sleigh bells over and over, you make a promise to yourself.  You’ll never settle for being just “good enough” or running in the middle of the pack.  You can and will be better.  It won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.  You won’t have to ring the bells anymore.  And you’ll be able to play songs that are a lot more fun.

2004

Most people might not think so, but Die Hard is a really good Christmas movie.  Think about it: you have a man heroically overcoming the odds to reunite with his wife over the holidays, a greedy villain who doesn’t understand The Meaning Of Christmas (TM), a hip-to-that-era sidekick, and explosions.  It’s got all the bases covered.

Some people might see John McClane as a more Job-like figure, facing trials and tribulations as a way to prove himself and his devotion, but it’s really more of a penance he’s paying, a physical payback of karma regarding his earlier (off-screen) sin of not having enough holiday cheer, or trying to maintain his relationship with his wife.  Only by embracing the spirit of the season and overcoming his fears of developing relationships (as exemplified through his issues with the police force on the ground and his camaraderie with Sgt. Powell) does he achieve his happy Christmas ending.

It’s a film that entertains the senses and touches the heart in a way that the series could only do again through the introduction of Samuel L. Jackson in the third installment.

So please, TBS, how about you stop showing A Christmas Story all day and give us a different kind of holiday cheer?

1999

I spent the entire day making preparations.

Sure, I wasn’t overly concerned with that whole “y2k” mess that tinfoil hat-wearing kooks and bored news stations were running with, but I was a little apprehensive, especially regarding my state’s preparation for the event.

Every outdoors/camping section of every store from Target to Sports Authority to Sears was thoroughly cleared out.  REI couldn’t get things in fast enough.  And if you were a fan of canned goods or astronaut ice cream, forget it; it was all gone.

Of course, this was the year I was hoping to get a new sleeping bag.

I heard stories from many friends saying that that year, instead of getting the video games or CDs or other stuff they wanted, their families had been far more utilitarian with their gifts.  Lots of pocket knives, canteens, thermal underwear and survival books were given out that Christmas.  And sure, there were a few fun things sprinkled in, but there seemed to be an overwhelming number of batteries to go along with them.

So there I was, hanging out at my dad’s store, lamenting my poor fortune in sleeping bag-acquisition, when I realized that if it was the end of the world, it wouldn’t have to be so bad.  In some ancient cultures, 14 was middle age!  And hell, I’d already finished elementary school a while back.

So on that Christmas morning (or Saturday, as we non-Christians call it), I slept in, watched The Mask on VHS, played with my dog, drank some hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows, and relaxed.  If all I had was a week left to live, it wouldn’t be full of stress or trying to cram in new experiences.  I would just be happy.

So whenever we get towards the tail end of the holiday season, and people start harping on the end of the world in the coming year, I’ll continue on with the fine tradition of relaxation.  It’s a lot better than the alternative.

But I’d still like that sleeping bag, please.

A long time ago, before people really cared about recording the date or time, haircuts were few and far between, mostly because it wasn’t a fun process.  Some people would try to hold still as they pulled the hair taut while others sawed at the follicles with a dagger.  Some people rubbed two rocks over the hair until it fell off.  Far braver individuals tried to tease the nearby wolves just enough so that their hair would get bitten off.  And those who didn’t want to waste time with such concerns simply pulled it out.

It wasn’t artistic, comfortable, efficient or quick; it was necessary.

But still, many people paid the dagger-welders and the rock-rubbers a good amount of seashells and shiny beads for their services.  After all, hair that was too long would block one’s vision, and it could catch on fire during evening gatherings.  People grew to accept these options as their only choices.  And so it went, for many years.

On a particularly dull day in the spring, a young villager sat in his family’s hut, idly playing with two of his father’s old knives, made from the bone of a long-dead animal.  He carelessly flipped and tossed them, fighting invisible beasts and dueling with warring tribes.  When suddenly, on one particularly unfortunate toss, one of the knives found itself lodged in his hand.

Though the wound was quickly dressed, he now found his usefulness reduced by half.  He no longer had access to both of his primary tools, and could only handle one thing at a time.  But he stared at the two knives, and began to think up a way that he could use both of them, even if he had five less fingers to do it with.

Walking near the river, he peered over to the water, and found a crab scuttling just beneath the water’s surface.  Its pincers opened and closed as it darted back and forth, and that’s when the boy had an idea.

He took the two knives and a few scraps of leather and metal that he had laying around, and joined them together.  His fingers squeezed the back of the contraption, pushing the blades together.  After some practice, he had figured out how to use twice as many knives with half the hands.  He proudly showed his invention to his parents, moving his fingers like the crab’s pincers, opening and closing the mouth of the blades.  He was quite proud of himself, and thought that they would be too.

“Why did you destroy two of my old knives?” his father asked, fairly unimpressed. “What good is this thing you’ve made?”

His mother agreed.  ”What would you use those for?  There’s not enough space between the blades to cut the head off of a mouse!”

“Put those down; I’ll take them apart later.” his father said, walking out of the room while shaking his head.

The boy’s shoulders slumped, and he set down his invention in shame.  ”And don’t forget,” his mother added as she left, “You have your semi-annual hair-slicing appointment in ten minutes.”

Right before he left, the boy grabbed the tool.  He was going to find a way to make it work.

The hair-slicing was taking a very long time.  It seemed that the hair-slicer’s blades weren’t sharp enough to do the job well, and the boy’s hair was just a bit too short for a rock-grinding session.  ”I don’t know what to do,” the slicer said.  ”I have no idea how I’m going to slice your hair.”

The boy rummaged through his satchel and pulled out the contraption he’d been working on.  He flexed it once or twice, the two blades scraping against each other, making a slightly screechy sound.  He smiled and looked up at the slicer.  ”I’ve got an idea – try these.”

By the time it was done, the slicer was so impressed with what happened that he asked the boy if he could make him more.  The boy said that he would need some time, but he could share them with the slicer, as long as he got a share of the profits.  ”This isn’t slicing!” the older man cried with glee.  ”This is something else – it cuts to the chase and does the job much better!  These ‘shares’ of yours change everything!”

And so, more and more people found out about the new thing called cutting, and it quickly spread throughout the camp.  An inventive hunter discovered that they helped with post beast-hunting cleanup.  A gatherer found that they made grabbing different plants much easier.  And someone, hearing the word “shares” for the first time being yelled from a distance, misinterpreted the term and gave the item its new name, shears.

The boy’s inspiration and willingness to take a risk not only created a new tool for everyday use that made peoples’ lives easier, but also changed once-common practices to make way for more efficient, effective and enjoyable ones.  Though there was nothing wrong with how things had been done before, there was a better way to do them.  Over time, people in other tribes discovered the shears, until they could be found the world over.

And that’s why, even today, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who trims their hair by rubbing two rocks together.

I had this strange dream the other night where I was at a fancy shindig on New Year’s Eve wearing a tux and tails with a top hat and monocle* and was surrounded by all of my friends here in Phoenix, who were mingling and chatting and having a great time.  This, of course, was when I realized that I was dreaming.

Most people have several distinct “groups” of friends, usually separated by how you know each other.  Maybe you have one group from work, another of old chums from high school, another from a club or organization, and so on.  There might be a little overlap with some of the group members (not counting you), but beyond that, they stay in their own separate categories, never to meet or bridge the gap.

Have you ever tried to change that?  Maybe you bring together a few college buddies and some friends from your “band” (more like sitting around, having beers, talking about music, amirite?) and hope that they get along.  Instead, it can be a time filled with prolonged silences, awkward glances, and you, stuck in the middle, grasping at straws to keep all parties active and interested.  So why, when they have a common denominator (you), do these different sects of friends have a more difficult time getting along together than a diamagnetic object and a magnet?

It’s actually because they have one common denominator: you.

It’s like when you’re in a dance club and see everyone huddled around in their circles of friends like it’s the 8th grade homecoming dance; everyone has something in common (in this case, location), yet they don’t want to exit their comfort zones.  It’s the same principle with crossing over friends from different groups; they don’t want to risk offending you or leaving their social comfort zones either.

Sometimes, you’ll get lucky and there will be enough in common that your friends can become friends.  But usually, the best way to do that is to remove yourself from the equation.  A larger-scale get-together, like a party, actually works pretty well for this.  Instead of a smaller, more intimate setting, where social interaction seems mandatory, it’s optional when there’s a larger group.  There’s less of a feeling that mingling is required, but it is encouraged.

It’s odd to think that we keep our friendships in their own little bubbles, autonomous, unique and sometimes secret from each other, destined to only be truly integrated on Facebook.  And speaking of which, isn’t it one of the strangest feelings in the world is to find that two disparate social contacts know each other on a social network through no introduction of your own?  It just seems…unnatural.

We could have any number of reason for segregating our different friendships, but the truth is that different groups have different utility to us.  One group might be more for emotional support and road trips, while another might be for playing a quick game of basketball on the weekend or a bi-weekly poker game.  Regardless, all of these different friendships, separate as they may be, help us in their own ways.

So maybe it’s better that there’s less crossing of the streams and more autonomy among the sets of friends that many of us seem to have.  But if you ever find yourself in a tux with a top hat and a monocle, surrounded by all of them, don’t worry about it!  It might not be a dream after all…

*I’m seriously planning on doing that this year.