Do you ever wonder why the clock has twenty-four hours, hours being sixty minutes, minutes being sixty seconds? What I love about the way we tell time is that it is so arbitrary and so irrational it could be a paradigm for the human mind. Sixty seconds, sixty minutes, twenty-four hours? Could we have picked up a more odd-ball scheme of weird combinations and divisions. What is so utterly irrational about the way we measure time is that a day isn’t really twenty-four hours–it’s always a couple of second off. What is totally irrational about our time keeping system is how we imbue meaning with different hours of the day, when we eat, start work, get off work, when we get up, when we go to bed. It’s after midnight now, and I should be in bed, but I’m not. I’m not the only one who stays up late. The clock has little influence over me at night, but during the day it sure has me chasing my tail. Today was the perfect example of having to hit certain marks in order to avoid total chaos. I sometimes feel like I’m a bit of a slave to the clock, which is a feeling I definitely don’t like. Midnight is the witching hour, but that is only so much bunkum and huey. The actually meaning of the clock is zero, nothing. The hours and minutes which we so carefully count and measure have no intrinsic value other than periods of time, and even that idea is a strange one–time moves forward? We create all of these linguistic conventions which drive our thinking in certain directions, but who’s to say that time doesn’t really move backwards? I have no idea if that last idea makes any sense at all. Time moves in a direction? Can we prove this? Is time a thing? Or a construct derived from the linguistic patterns of our verb system–past, present and future? Wouldn’t it be great if we could make time stand still while we finished a particularly problematic task? Or do we bend under our metaphors and acquiese to the idea that time flows like a river, and all rivers lead to the ocean, which is death. The passage of time marks our own mortality, one way or the other, as we get older, count hours, days, weeks, years–our system just gets nuttier, no saner–we get closer and closer to that mortal tomb where someone, someday, will drop our bones. For some time is the enemy–plastic surgery, exercise, diets, hormones–for others it is a close friend. The minute before midnight, the last minute of the day is like an abandoned, rusty old car that sits out on the highway of time, lost in its own solitude. No one ever plans lunch for this hour, dates are mostly over by this time, for better or worse, nobody plans a meeting for 11:59 pm. It might be a good name for a dog or horse, but I’m afraid you would end up shortening it to “Elev,” which is rather unsatisfying. Our time system is crazy. Maybe we just need to get over it. It is so ingrained, however, in our collective psyche that it is impossible to change it. The disruption caused by trying to reform our current crazy cat system of base psycho would be so great that the world would probably stop. Wrist watches would be useless, especially the round analogue variety which are so popular with my generation. People using digital watches can go do whatever they want because the digital watch is a bit of a paradox anyway. Why digitize an essentially nutty and arbitrary system at all? The best part of our time keeping system? No one ever questions the irrational complexity of the system in the first place. Let’s just make up a new system–one day, ten hours, each hour is a hundred new minutes, each minute a hundred new seconds. Make it fit the rotation of the earth the best you can. Now that is completely arbitrary, but it’s rational arbitrary and much easier to understand–no a.m. or p.m.
Category Archives: Weird rant
On 11:59 pm
Do you ever wonder why the clock has twenty-four hours, hours being sixty minutes, minutes being sixty seconds? What I love about the way we tell time is that it is so arbitrary and so irrational it could be a paradigm for the human mind. Sixty seconds, sixty minutes, twenty-four hours? Could we have picked up a more odd-ball scheme of weird combinations and divisions. What is so utterly irrational about the way we measure time is that a day isn’t really twenty-four hours–it’s always a couple of second off. What is totally irrational about our time keeping system is how we imbue meaning with different hours of the day, when we eat, start work, get off work, when we get up, when we go to bed. It’s after midnight now, and I should be in bed, but I’m not. I’m not the only one who stays up late. The clock has little influence over me at night, but during the day it sure has me chasing my tail. Today was the perfect example of having to hit certain marks in order to avoid total chaos. I sometimes feel like I’m a bit of a slave to the clock, which is a feeling I definitely don’t like. Midnight is the witching hour, but that is only so much bunkum and huey. The actually meaning of the clock is zero, nothing. The hours and minutes which we so carefully count and measure have no intrinsic value other than periods of time, and even that idea is a strange one–time moves forward? We create all of these linguistic conventions which drive our thinking in certain directions, but who’s to say that time doesn’t really move backwards? I have no idea if that last idea makes any sense at all. Time moves in a direction? Can we prove this? Is time a thing? Or a construct derived from the linguistic patterns of our verb system–past, present and future? Wouldn’t it be great if we could make time stand still while we finished a particularly problematic task? Or do we bend under our metaphors and acquiese to the idea that time flows like a river, and all rivers lead to the ocean, which is death. The passage of time marks our own mortality, one way or the other, as we get older, count hours, days, weeks, years–our system just gets nuttier, no saner–we get closer and closer to that mortal tomb where someone, someday, will drop our bones. For some time is the enemy–plastic surgery, exercise, diets, hormones–for others it is a close friend. The minute before midnight, the last minute of the day is like an abandoned, rusty old car that sits out on the highway of time, lost in its own solitude. No one ever plans lunch for this hour, dates are mostly over by this time, for better or worse, nobody plans a meeting for 11:59 pm. It might be a good name for a dog or horse, but I’m afraid you would end up shortening it to “Elev,” which is rather unsatisfying. Our time system is crazy. Maybe we just need to get over it. It is so ingrained, however, in our collective psyche that it is impossible to change it. The disruption caused by trying to reform our current crazy cat system of base psycho would be so great that the world would probably stop. Wrist watches would be useless, especially the round analogue variety which are so popular with my generation. People using digital watches can go do whatever they want because the digital watch is a bit of a paradox anyway. Why digitize an essentially nutty and arbitrary system at all? The best part of our time keeping system? No one ever questions the irrational complexity of the system in the first place. Let’s just make up a new system–one day, ten hours, each hour is a hundred new minutes, each minute a hundred new seconds. Make it fit the rotation of the earth the best you can. Now that is completely arbitrary, but it’s rational arbitrary and much easier to understand–no a.m. or p.m.
On the Terminator
This is not a movie review or a commentary on the ex-governor of California. I think, though, that the Terminator as metaphor is extremely interesting in our post-post-modern consumer driven distopia. Some would say that the Terminator series is just an odd curiosity, super-violent, time-paradox wasteland, designed to distract and entertain, fleece the movie-going public of its hard-earned money. The Terminator series, at least the sequels, are pretty much that–exploitation, but at least the first movie has an interesting premiss about the way we interface with our machines. The success of human development–technology, innovation, progress–is primarily based on how we interact with our machines, how we make our machines better at what they do, and how these machines make our lives better. My personal story starts with analogue telephones and television, transistor radios and not much more. Cars were “analogue” as well, depending not on circuit boards for their time, but mechanical points and rotors. The world, however, driven by rampant capitalism, does not stand still and companies all over the world have fought to improve all of these gadgets. Analogue computers, which were fairly common in the sixties had minimal computing capacities because all analogue data must occupy physical space. In a world of punch cards and reels of magnetic tape, computers never could get very far in terms of speed or computing capacity. With the advent of digital storage, however, combined with miniaturization, computers and micro-computing chips have revolutionized everything about computers and their application in the real world. The hyper-computers of today little resemble the clunky Fortran processors of the seventies. In just one generation we have developed hand-held devices that even forty years ago were unimaginable. Cell phones are not just cell phones. They are complex computing devices that can link up with main frames around the planet to process every kind of information that exists. Now that miniaturization and ultra-fast processors have combined to create small super-computing devices, is the next step a generation of computers that are self-aware? Now, I have never had a computer talk back to me or to give me orders, but there is always a first time for everything. Several other writers, including Ray Bradbury, have already pondered a future in which the machines we use to do our work, take over, rebel, and start to eliminate us as pests. Distopian literature, apocalyptic literature, has always been popular with certain groups, especially in times of social stress and economic downturns as an expression of existential angst, but who doesn’t have a smart phone which is connected to the Web? Who doesn’t have a tablet connected to the Web. The idea of desk top computers, the huge innovation of the 80’s, is almost quaint today, and they are disappearing the way of the Dodo bird. Soon we will be just a mass of routers and wi-fi, wireless digital communication. We haven’t gotten to the Terminator yet, but we are tinkering around with robots, and as the processors become smaller and more efficient, so do the machines that they drive. I wouldn’t dream of warning anyone about the eminent take-over of the machines, but their already ubiquitous nature, their enormous capacity for change and innovation, and their extremely broad application into every area of our lives might suggest that the machines are already here and taken over a broad spectrum of our day-to-day activities. Something to think about, anyway. “It was software, in cyberspace.”
On the Terminator
This is not a movie review or a commentary on the ex-governor of California. I think, though, that the Terminator as metaphor is extremely interesting in our post-post-modern consumer driven distopia. Some would say that the Terminator series is just an odd curiosity, super-violent, time-paradox wasteland, designed to distract and entertain, fleece the movie-going public of its hard-earned money. The Terminator series, at least the sequels, are pretty much that–exploitation, but at least the first movie has an interesting premiss about the way we interface with our machines. The success of human development–technology, innovation, progress–is primarily based on how we interact with our machines, how we make our machines better at what they do, and how these machines make our lives better. My personal story starts with analogue telephones and television, transistor radios and not much more. Cars were “analogue” as well, depending not on circuit boards for their time, but mechanical points and rotors. The world, however, driven by rampant capitalism, does not stand still and companies all over the world have fought to improve all of these gadgets. Analogue computers, which were fairly common in the sixties had minimal computing capacities because all analogue data must occupy physical space. In a world of punch cards and reels of magnetic tape, computers never could get very far in terms of speed or computing capacity. With the advent of digital storage, however, combined with miniaturization, computers and micro-computing chips have revolutionized everything about computers and their application in the real world. The hyper-computers of today little resemble the clunky Fortran processors of the seventies. In just one generation we have developed hand-held devices that even forty years ago were unimaginable. Cell phones are not just cell phones. They are complex computing devices that can link up with main frames around the planet to process every kind of information that exists. Now that miniaturization and ultra-fast processors have combined to create small super-computing devices, is the next step a generation of computers that are self-aware? Now, I have never had a computer talk back to me or to give me orders, but there is always a first time for everything. Several other writers, including Ray Bradbury, have already pondered a future in which the machines we use to do our work, take over, rebel, and start to eliminate us as pests. Distopian literature, apocalyptic literature, has always been popular with certain groups, especially in times of social stress and economic downturns as an expression of existential angst, but who doesn’t have a smart phone which is connected to the Web? Who doesn’t have a tablet connected to the Web. The idea of desk top computers, the huge innovation of the 80’s, is almost quaint today, and they are disappearing the way of the Dodo bird. Soon we will be just a mass of routers and wi-fi, wireless digital communication. We haven’t gotten to the Terminator yet, but we are tinkering around with robots, and as the processors become smaller and more efficient, so do the machines that they drive. I wouldn’t dream of warning anyone about the eminent take-over of the machines, but their already ubiquitous nature, their enormous capacity for change and innovation, and their extremely broad application into every area of our lives might suggest that the machines are already here and taken over a broad spectrum of our day-to-day activities. Something to think about, anyway. “It was software, in cyberspace.”
On an endless winter
Winter is a strange season. I look forward to the cool weather all summer. As a child I would get up every morning hoping for that first snow which might fall in the dark of night while all were asleep. The cold weather and snow would eventually show up, much to my delight, but by the first of March most everyone, including myself, would be tired of winter coats and boots, gloves and scarves, hats and mittens, our shielding from the icy cold of winter. One expects January and February to be ugly. That’s just the way it is in Minnesota in winter, but March is a different matter entirely, wildly unpredictable, windy, stormy, cold, warm, wet, muddy–a mess. It might warm up in March, but only to make you weep later when the winds of a St. Patrick’s Day storm blow cruelly across the plains. April is usually when things turn warm. Yes, you might get a little snow, but when the sun shines in April, the temperatures go up, the grass turns green, and the dandelions come out. Birds sing, the lilacs smell wonderful, and the trees begin to leaf out. This is a normal April: people get their gardens ready, the snow finally melts in the shadowy places, and people begin to put away the winter stuff. Going out without a jacket is pure pleasure, the snow is gone, and when precipitation falls, it isn’t frozen anymore. This is a normal April. The endless winter of 2013 has had the people of the midwest in chains for quite some time, adding insult to injury by dumping a foot of snow on the midwest on May 2nd. Winter just got ridiculous. It isn’t that I have never seen snow in May, but not a foot. When I was sixteen, I saw a couple of slushy inches fall on May 4th, but they were gone by noon, and that year had not been particularly problematic in terms of cold or snow. This year, the year that will be known as the year spring never arrived, has been the year of the endless winter. April has been brutal with a continuous string of snowfalls that have tested both the patience and the humor of the people in the Midwest. The winds have been icy, the snow deep, you can’t even see the grass, and trees are as bare now as they were by the end of November. The snow shoveling people have been over the moon, making money hand over fist. Cities have used up their supplies of sand and salt, and don’t have money for more. Snowplowing budgets have long since been in the red, and then a blizzard hit the central plains again, this time on the second day of May. Spring is now about a month and a half behind. The farmers are concerned about getting in their crops. Local high school baseball teams have been playing in the gym. Tennis players look longingly at snow-clogged courts and think whimsical thoughts of playing in the sun with sweat dripping down their faces. The grass, plastered under the snow, is brown and dormant, the dandelions are no where to be found. The normally warm, sunny air of May still blows mean and cold, the winter jackets hang wearily from the shoulders of the pale riders of daily life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Colorado and Kansas, the Dakotas, Iowa. These people, who normally can tolerate a lot of bad weather, are weary, tired of the constant storms, the ice, the huge piles of snow. For now, the gardens go unplanted, prom goers must wear overcoats, slipping and sliding over the ice as they go to dance. The ravages of winter still litter the landscape, no trees have bloomed out, the corn crop is unplanted, and the white-tail deer are beginning to wonder if summer will ever come. In the meantime, the people begin to clear away the snow, again.
On an endless winter
Winter is a strange season. I look forward to the cool weather all summer. As a child I would get up every morning hoping for that first snow which might fall in the dark of night while all were asleep. The cold weather and snow would eventually show up, much to my delight, but by the first of March most everyone, including myself, would be tired of winter coats and boots, gloves and scarves, hats and mittens, our shielding from the icy cold of winter. One expects January and February to be ugly. That’s just the way it is in Minnesota in winter, but March is a different matter entirely, wildly unpredictable, windy, stormy, cold, warm, wet, muddy–a mess. It might warm up in March, but only to make you weep later when the winds of a St. Patrick’s Day storm blow cruelly across the plains. April is usually when things turn warm. Yes, you might get a little snow, but when the sun shines in April, the temperatures go up, the grass turns green, and the dandelions come out. Birds sing, the lilacs smell wonderful, and the trees begin to leaf out. This is a normal April: people get their gardens ready, the snow finally melts in the shadowy places, and people begin to put away the winter stuff. Going out without a jacket is pure pleasure, the snow is gone, and when precipitation falls, it isn’t frozen anymore. This is a normal April. The endless winter of 2013 has had the people of the midwest in chains for quite some time, adding insult to injury by dumping a foot of snow on the midwest on May 2nd. Winter just got ridiculous. It isn’t that I have never seen snow in May, but not a foot. When I was sixteen, I saw a couple of slushy inches fall on May 4th, but they were gone by noon, and that year had not been particularly problematic in terms of cold or snow. This year, the year that will be known as the year spring never arrived, has been the year of the endless winter. April has been brutal with a continuous string of snowfalls that have tested both the patience and the humor of the people in the Midwest. The winds have been icy, the snow deep, you can’t even see the grass, and trees are as bare now as they were by the end of November. The snow shoveling people have been over the moon, making money hand over fist. Cities have used up their supplies of sand and salt, and don’t have money for more. Snowplowing budgets have long since been in the red, and then a blizzard hit the central plains again, this time on the second day of May. Spring is now about a month and a half behind. The farmers are concerned about getting in their crops. Local high school baseball teams have been playing in the gym. Tennis players look longingly at snow-clogged courts and think whimsical thoughts of playing in the sun with sweat dripping down their faces. The grass, plastered under the snow, is brown and dormant, the dandelions are no where to be found. The normally warm, sunny air of May still blows mean and cold, the winter jackets hang wearily from the shoulders of the pale riders of daily life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Colorado and Kansas, the Dakotas, Iowa. These people, who normally can tolerate a lot of bad weather, are weary, tired of the constant storms, the ice, the huge piles of snow. For now, the gardens go unplanted, prom goers must wear overcoats, slipping and sliding over the ice as they go to dance. The ravages of winter still litter the landscape, no trees have bloomed out, the corn crop is unplanted, and the white-tail deer are beginning to wonder if summer will ever come. In the meantime, the people begin to clear away the snow, again.
On falling asleep
How is it, exactly, that we con ourselves into sleeping each night, into that vague simulacrum of death? Sure, sometimes we don’t even notice our eyelids drooping as we watch some mind-numbing sitcom or police drama on the tube, but for the most part falling asleep is an active, conscious effort that we make each night. For the insomniacs in the crowd this is a very sensitive subject because long after the vast majority of us have collapsed into slumber, they are still up patrolling the passage ways of the night–eyes open, hearts beating, lonely and confused about why the rest of the world can plunge itself into gentle oblivion so easily, jealous that they cannot do the same. In fact, the harder insomniacs try to sleep, the more they stay awake. I go to sleep when I am tired so that I don’t really have to ponder the process of falling asleep. My strategy is simple: try to forget the events of the day, get as comfortable as possible, and then, don’t worry about falling asleep. Sleep usually shows up presently when I have taken care to do the other things. Part of my sleep preparation is my routine before going to sleep: contacts come out, (I’m officially blinder than a bat), teeth get brushed, flossed, and rinsed, and under the covers. It never varies from one day to the next. But if I go to bed too early, I wake up at three a.m., and then what do you do? Get up and read a book? Watch reruns of Perry Mason? Patrol the halls with the other ghosts? I think the secret to falling asleep is getting your mind to stop running the day’s scenarios–the conversations, the conflicts, the whatevers that will keep you thinking and awake. I like to write a bit (like right now) before bedtime and let my mind stretch itself before turning the lights off–I make my brain just a little tired from creating something new, and it’s easier to get it to switch off when the lights go off. Some people read, but that is a little too passive and a little too easy. I’ve greeted the morning sun a few times while engrossed by one text or another, so that is not the best solution for me. Falling asleep is a bit of a paradox, though, because you have to actively do something, but that activity might be enough to keep you awake. At some point, just before you drop into the black unconsciousness of sleep, you have to convince yourself that your mind is blank, nothing else matters, that swirling down into the unknown maelstrom of sleep is okay. There is something about the darkness of night that swaths you gently in the sweet bonds of sleep, that helps your body send out the correct chemicals for shutting down the power plant and turning off the brain for awhile. I think I am lucky in that I can sleep almost anywhere, including the subway (not recommended), airplanes, the dentist office, church, and of course, if your house has a sofa, I can sleep on it with no prompting whatsoever. I can sleep sitting up. I have fallen asleep in lots of theaters. I have fallen asleep at times when this was not the most convenient or correct thing to do. Cars are a natural sedative for me, so if I have to drive, I always get well-rested before I travel. Cat-naps are heaven sent. I have no fear of falling asleep or of sleeping, and my only sleep problems arise in connection with jetlag, which really messes me up, and the older I get the worse the jetlag gets, which really sucks. I hate resorting to chemicals aids for sleeping, so when I go to Europe, I just know that for about a week, my sleep patterns will be off. Time to say good night and go to sleep. The Sandman is calling.
On falling asleep
How is it, exactly, that we con ourselves into sleeping each night, into that vague simulacrum of death? Sure, sometimes we don’t even notice our eyelids drooping as we watch some mind-numbing sitcom or police drama on the tube, but for the most part falling asleep is an active, conscious effort that we make each night. For the insomniacs in the crowd this is a very sensitive subject because long after the vast majority of us have collapsed into slumber, they are still up patrolling the passage ways of the night–eyes open, hearts beating, lonely and confused about why the rest of the world can plunge itself into gentle oblivion so easily, jealous that they cannot do the same. In fact, the harder insomniacs try to sleep, the more they stay awake. I go to sleep when I am tired so that I don’t really have to ponder the process of falling asleep. My strategy is simple: try to forget the events of the day, get as comfortable as possible, and then, don’t worry about falling asleep. Sleep usually shows up presently when I have taken care to do the other things. Part of my sleep preparation is my routine before going to sleep: contacts come out, (I’m officially blinder than a bat), teeth get brushed, flossed, and rinsed, and under the covers. It never varies from one day to the next. But if I go to bed too early, I wake up at three a.m., and then what do you do? Get up and read a book? Watch reruns of Perry Mason? Patrol the halls with the other ghosts? I think the secret to falling asleep is getting your mind to stop running the day’s scenarios–the conversations, the conflicts, the whatevers that will keep you thinking and awake. I like to write a bit (like right now) before bedtime and let my mind stretch itself before turning the lights off–I make my brain just a little tired from creating something new, and it’s easier to get it to switch off when the lights go off. Some people read, but that is a little too passive and a little too easy. I’ve greeted the morning sun a few times while engrossed by one text or another, so that is not the best solution for me. Falling asleep is a bit of a paradox, though, because you have to actively do something, but that activity might be enough to keep you awake. At some point, just before you drop into the black unconsciousness of sleep, you have to convince yourself that your mind is blank, nothing else matters, that swirling down into the unknown maelstrom of sleep is okay. There is something about the darkness of night that swaths you gently in the sweet bonds of sleep, that helps your body send out the correct chemicals for shutting down the power plant and turning off the brain for awhile. I think I am lucky in that I can sleep almost anywhere, including the subway (not recommended), airplanes, the dentist office, church, and of course, if your house has a sofa, I can sleep on it with no prompting whatsoever. I can sleep sitting up. I have fallen asleep in lots of theaters. I have fallen asleep at times when this was not the most convenient or correct thing to do. Cars are a natural sedative for me, so if I have to drive, I always get well-rested before I travel. Cat-naps are heaven sent. I have no fear of falling asleep or of sleeping, and my only sleep problems arise in connection with jetlag, which really messes me up, and the older I get the worse the jetlag gets, which really sucks. I hate resorting to chemicals aids for sleeping, so when I go to Europe, I just know that for about a week, my sleep patterns will be off. Time to say good night and go to sleep. The Sandman is calling.
On complaining
I must admit a major failing in my character: I complain way too much. In an ideal world, all machines would work, everything would occur on time, there would always be an empty parking spot, the food would be hot and tasty, the drinks cold and refreshing. People would not text and drive. Drivers would pay attention to what they are doing, and waiters would always get their orders right. Yet, I don’t live in an ideal world: potholes are real, delays are common, waiting in line is the order of the day, so I complain. I complain about slow service, high prices, a lack of time. I complain about complainers. I got caught in a huge traffic jam on I-35 this afternoon through no fault of my own–seven cars had suffered a chain-reaction collision and the wreckage was blocking two lanes of the highway. My biggest complaint in life has to be a lack of time to do the things I really like to do, such as eat and sleep. Being both hungry and sleepy at the same time is depressing. I love to complain about the endless lines at check-outs in big box retailers, who don’t care at all about making me waist my time waiting to by a pizza. I have the same complaint about some doctor’s offices–not all are horrible, but some are just unbearable. We should be able to bill them for wasting our time. I endlessly complain about the weather. Bugs, enough said. Rude people everywhere. Students who cut class, don’t do their homework, fail exams, and then contact me because they are worried about their grade. I complain about the airlines, but I realize that airlines are complex and prone to scheduling disasters. I complain about the prices that certain professions charge: plumbers, mechanics, doctors, lawyers. Why should they have all the fun separating hard-working people from their cash? I complain about bumpy, pot-hole filled roads. I hate stoplights with a pure passion and have an endless series of complaints about how stupidly they are programmed–by people who never drive through them. All parking lots need to be complained about. I complain about how loud television commercials are, how stupid most of the ads are, how idiotic their arguments are for buying their products. Do the commercial makers think we are all cretins? Sometimes I complain about how fat the rest of the world seems to be getting, but that seems like a rather useless complaint when you look at all the food opportunities we have everyday. I hate the aggressive driving I encounter everywhere. Photocopiers are often the object of my ire. It bugs me when people cannot answer their cell phones. I complain about people talking and texting while they drive. I think it’s very thoughtless when a dog owner leaves the dog’s gifts where someone might step in them. I complain about politics, but no one wants to hear what I have to say. But does complaining actually help? I often complain without thinking about the pointless nature of my complaints, the fact that no one cares, that I am just making myself more unhappy by articulating, lustily, my disagreement with the world. I’m sure this is a short list–there are more things I can complain about–but by complaining, I can get my cares off of my chest, and maybe put some of it behind me. The problem is this: my complaints are often well-deserved but the wrong people are hearing them, which makes them irked and me sad. Yet, unless we complain will we ever change the world? Sometimes complaining can make a difference, and passive indifference will only make a bad problem, worse.
On complaining
I must admit a major failing in my character: I complain way too much. In an ideal world, all machines would work, everything would occur on time, there would always be an empty parking spot, the food would be hot and tasty, the drinks cold and refreshing. People would not text and drive. Drivers would pay attention to what they are doing, and waiters would always get their orders right. Yet, I don’t live in an ideal world: potholes are real, delays are common, waiting in line is the order of the day, so I complain. I complain about slow service, high prices, a lack of time. I complain about complainers. I got caught in a huge traffic jam on I-35 this afternoon through no fault of my own–seven cars had suffered a chain-reaction collision and the wreckage was blocking two lanes of the highway. My biggest complaint in life has to be a lack of time to do the things I really like to do, such as eat and sleep. Being both hungry and sleepy at the same time is depressing. I love to complain about the endless lines at check-outs in big box retailers, who don’t care at all about making me waist my time waiting to by a pizza. I have the same complaint about some doctor’s offices–not all are horrible, but some are just unbearable. We should be able to bill them for wasting our time. I endlessly complain about the weather. Bugs, enough said. Rude people everywhere. Students who cut class, don’t do their homework, fail exams, and then contact me because they are worried about their grade. I complain about the airlines, but I realize that airlines are complex and prone to scheduling disasters. I complain about the prices that certain professions charge: plumbers, mechanics, doctors, lawyers. Why should they have all the fun separating hard-working people from their cash? I complain about bumpy, pot-hole filled roads. I hate stoplights with a pure passion and have an endless series of complaints about how stupidly they are programmed–by people who never drive through them. All parking lots need to be complained about. I complain about how loud television commercials are, how stupid most of the ads are, how idiotic their arguments are for buying their products. Do the commercial makers think we are all cretins? Sometimes I complain about how fat the rest of the world seems to be getting, but that seems like a rather useless complaint when you look at all the food opportunities we have everyday. I hate the aggressive driving I encounter everywhere. Photocopiers are often the object of my ire. It bugs me when people cannot answer their cell phones. I complain about people talking and texting while they drive. I think it’s very thoughtless when a dog owner leaves the dog’s gifts where someone might step in them. I complain about politics, but no one wants to hear what I have to say. But does complaining actually help? I often complain without thinking about the pointless nature of my complaints, the fact that no one cares, that I am just making myself more unhappy by articulating, lustily, my disagreement with the world. I’m sure this is a short list–there are more things I can complain about–but by complaining, I can get my cares off of my chest, and maybe put some of it behind me. The problem is this: my complaints are often well-deserved but the wrong people are hearing them, which makes them irked and me sad. Yet, unless we complain will we ever change the world? Sometimes complaining can make a difference, and passive indifference will only make a bad problem, worse.