Last Friday I went to the Museum of Science and Industry with a couple of friends. It's a pretty cool place. One of the highlights included seeing the U-boat they have on display. The thing's an actual honest-to-goodness U-505. It's huge. People lived, worked, fought and slept on the thing. It navigated the ocean. And to see it just sitting there in a gigantic room causes one of those moments where your mind gets thrown back against a metaphorical wall and the rest of your body seems to go right with it.
There was this exhibit that was dedicated to the human body and mind. It turned out to be a pretty fascinating exhibit – maybe one of my favorites of the whole museum – but our main reason for visiting was that we just wanted to see the giant hamster wheel that they had there. (I took a little run on it and then discussed how it reminded me of Double Dare with one of the museum's attendants.)
My favorite exhibit within that one, though, was this one called Mindball. Two players wearing headbands sat on opposite sides of a table. A little ball sat in the middle of it. The headbands would measure the alpha and theta waves in your brain for the sake of a little bit of competition. The object of the game was to have the lowest level of brain wave activity – to be more relaxed than your opponent, basically.
A weirdly difficult task, it was. Try forcing yourself to be relaxed. It's pretty hard. Throw in someone "competing" with you and a crowd of people and things get a little bit trickier.
At one point there was a little girl and her mother sitting across from one another at the table. They were playing the game, both trying as hard as they could to completely relax. The little girl, though, won in a very big sort of way. Her alpha and theta waves were pretty low. It probably helped that her mother's were pretty high, too.
"No fair," her mother said as she took off the headband. "You don't have bills to pay or kids to take care of. You don't have anything to be worried about."
"But it's easy," the girl replied. "All you do is sit down and don't think about anything."
All you do is sit down and don't think about anything.
To have a mind like that.
8/23/2011
8/10/2011
The Cheese Lady
So let's pretend you have this job. You work at a sandwich shop. Not a Subway or a Quiznos or a Jimmy John's. A nice, premium sort of sandwich shop; a sandwich shop you haven't heard of. A hypothetical sandwich shop.
And let's say that one day while you're on the job, a woman walks through the door. She asks for a sandwich, as folks who come through that door are wont to do.
The woman wants a sandwich with cheese. The thing is, though, she wants extra cheese.
"You people don't put enough cheese on your sandwiches," she says. "So I want extra cheese, but I'm not going to pay for it."
You're aware that this isn't the way you usually do things. Typically – typically – when one requests an extra topping at your hypothetical sandwich shop, they have to pay for it. One could make an argument that the underlying principle at work here – you want something extra, you have to pay for it – is just One Of Those Obvious Things about capitalism. But this woman can not be swayed otherwise. Trying to explain this concept to her – a concept which, to you, is so obvious that you can't remember the last time you thought about it – is difficult.
Your manager comes over. He attempts to explain to the woman how the process works: "Some things on the menu are things you have to pay for. You are by no means obliged to purchase any of these things, but if you make the decision to do so, you have to pay for them." You find this explanation pretty damn clear, albeit (probably unintentionally) kind of condescending. But that's the way it goes when you try to explain something you take for granted to someone unfamiliar with that concept.
The woman is still not swayed. "I am not paying for that cheese," she says. "There should be more cheese on there, and I am not paying for it."
You and your manager silently agree that this is going nowhere. And so your manager just makes the sandwich with extra cheese, cheese that costs the woman nothing.
Once she gets her sandwich she seems friendly enough. Then she leaves. After that, throughout the day, your co-workers will bring the woman up every now and then. They'll shake their heads, laugh to themselves – not in the most kind way. You'll do it too.
And then something will cross your mind. You'll realize that this woman – this woman who you will call The Cheese Lady, who will eventually become something of an inside joke, a one-dimensional character – this woman actually has a life that you do not know about. That there is more to her than bizarre complaints about cheese. That she has had a full life leading up to that moment, that she has probably did some very wonderful things, that she has probably done some not so wonderful things, that she might even have children or a husband or a wife or something. And yet to you and the others she is and will forever be The Cheese Lady.
And something about this makes you feel a little strange.
And let's say that one day while you're on the job, a woman walks through the door. She asks for a sandwich, as folks who come through that door are wont to do.
The woman wants a sandwich with cheese. The thing is, though, she wants extra cheese.
"You people don't put enough cheese on your sandwiches," she says. "So I want extra cheese, but I'm not going to pay for it."
You're aware that this isn't the way you usually do things. Typically – typically – when one requests an extra topping at your hypothetical sandwich shop, they have to pay for it. One could make an argument that the underlying principle at work here – you want something extra, you have to pay for it – is just One Of Those Obvious Things about capitalism. But this woman can not be swayed otherwise. Trying to explain this concept to her – a concept which, to you, is so obvious that you can't remember the last time you thought about it – is difficult.
Your manager comes over. He attempts to explain to the woman how the process works: "Some things on the menu are things you have to pay for. You are by no means obliged to purchase any of these things, but if you make the decision to do so, you have to pay for them." You find this explanation pretty damn clear, albeit (probably unintentionally) kind of condescending. But that's the way it goes when you try to explain something you take for granted to someone unfamiliar with that concept.
The woman is still not swayed. "I am not paying for that cheese," she says. "There should be more cheese on there, and I am not paying for it."
You and your manager silently agree that this is going nowhere. And so your manager just makes the sandwich with extra cheese, cheese that costs the woman nothing.
Once she gets her sandwich she seems friendly enough. Then she leaves. After that, throughout the day, your co-workers will bring the woman up every now and then. They'll shake their heads, laugh to themselves – not in the most kind way. You'll do it too.
And then something will cross your mind. You'll realize that this woman – this woman who you will call The Cheese Lady, who will eventually become something of an inside joke, a one-dimensional character – this woman actually has a life that you do not know about. That there is more to her than bizarre complaints about cheese. That she has had a full life leading up to that moment, that she has probably did some very wonderful things, that she has probably done some not so wonderful things, that she might even have children or a husband or a wife or something. And yet to you and the others she is and will forever be The Cheese Lady.
And something about this makes you feel a little strange.
8/02/2011
The Man at the Cultural Center
I was at the Cultural Center earlier today waiting for an appointment. The Cultural Center has this one area that is kind of like a library but much noisier. The point is that it's air conditioned and has comfy chairs. It's a nice place to read and/or wait for an appointment.
This man sat down in the chair next to me. He had a violin case on his lap – the thing had a bunch of stickers from various locales on it. (The thing being his case, not his lap.) He sat there for a while and tapped out a few emails on his iPod touch.
Eventually he looked over at me. "What are you reading?" No "excuse me." Just a direct question.
I talked a little bit about the book I was reading – What The Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell. The best I could do to describe it was to say that it was a bunch of essays about a bunch of different things. "One is about food products sold on television," I said. "There's another one where he tries to figure out why Heinz Ketchup doesn't have a serious competitor."
He nodded appreciatively. And then he started talking.
There was this book that he read – The Long Emergency, a book about what happens to society and the world when we run out of oil. He went on an intelligent (if not lengthy) monologue about stuff that ranged from how we'll never come up with an alternative form of energy in time, how he makes more money sometimes when he openly begs for money instead of playing ("But I'm not homeless," he explained), the internet as a means of destroying our privacy, and the weirdness of Ikea.
"Look at that bookshelf," he said – clearly from Ikea. Clean, black, simple, but a little cheap looking.
"It's the successful synthesis of three different countries. You have America. American sold, no doubt created by the assembly line, a distinctly American thing. And China. Made in China, I'm sure, on an assembly line. And then there's the Scandinavian part – the design, the image. That's the part that people pay for.
"But if it weren't for all of those parts," he said, "it'd be nothing."
I had to leave shortly after that. My spare thoughts in the hours after weren't unlike the ones that I'd had while I listened to him. I mostly tried to figure out if he was eccentric or very intelligent or just crazy. And I think I've settled on a little bit of all of the above.
This man sat down in the chair next to me. He had a violin case on his lap – the thing had a bunch of stickers from various locales on it. (The thing being his case, not his lap.) He sat there for a while and tapped out a few emails on his iPod touch.
Eventually he looked over at me. "What are you reading?" No "excuse me." Just a direct question.
I talked a little bit about the book I was reading – What The Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell. The best I could do to describe it was to say that it was a bunch of essays about a bunch of different things. "One is about food products sold on television," I said. "There's another one where he tries to figure out why Heinz Ketchup doesn't have a serious competitor."
He nodded appreciatively. And then he started talking.
There was this book that he read – The Long Emergency, a book about what happens to society and the world when we run out of oil. He went on an intelligent (if not lengthy) monologue about stuff that ranged from how we'll never come up with an alternative form of energy in time, how he makes more money sometimes when he openly begs for money instead of playing ("But I'm not homeless," he explained), the internet as a means of destroying our privacy, and the weirdness of Ikea.
"Look at that bookshelf," he said – clearly from Ikea. Clean, black, simple, but a little cheap looking.
"It's the successful synthesis of three different countries. You have America. American sold, no doubt created by the assembly line, a distinctly American thing. And China. Made in China, I'm sure, on an assembly line. And then there's the Scandinavian part – the design, the image. That's the part that people pay for.
"But if it weren't for all of those parts," he said, "it'd be nothing."
I had to leave shortly after that. My spare thoughts in the hours after weren't unlike the ones that I'd had while I listened to him. I mostly tried to figure out if he was eccentric or very intelligent or just crazy. And I think I've settled on a little bit of all of the above.
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