My first two days of the job were orientation. The vast majority of orientation involved watching Computer-Based Learning modules, or CBLs. CBLs could last anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours, and you basically sit there listening to someone narrating instructions on some aspect of your job. At the end, you take a quiz to check if you learned everything. There were tutorials on spill cleanup, hazardous waste disposal, spill cleanup, another one on spill cleanup, and many other things. I completed around twelve hours of CBLs in total, over two days.
Now, loathe as I am to disparage them, these CBLs were not what I would describe as "fun" or "interesting". In fact, I may be inclined to describe them the opposite way. Example: Halfway during the CBLs, I noticed that if I pulled my earbuds' audio jack out of the computer very slightly, the voice of the narration became distorted -- like Darth Vader talking over a staticky radio. I listened to the rest of my CBLs this way, and it was the most fun I had during the experience.
As I sat there, I recalled my relatives back in China who were getting paid less than a dollar an hour to inspect some screws. Think about this. My time is worth nearly ten times as much as theirs is. The work I do in one month is equal in value to the work they do in the better part of a year. Someone who makes $100/hr looks down on myjob with equal disdain, and they can't even see my relatives from where they're standing.
These facts are a little disturbing to me. It's scary to think that our employers dictate the value of the very time we have. Time is a communal part of the human experience, yet our hours and minutes are worth wildly different amounts.
When I hear I song, there is chance it will become a Rampage Song. This means I listen to the song nonstop for anywhere from a full weekend to two weeks (depending on quality). I don't listen to any other song for the duration of the rampage -- no radio, nothing.
What's weird is the song doesn't even have to be of good quality for it to become Rampage material. Here are some songs I don't even like which somehow made it on the list:
Payphone -- Maroon 5
Why Does the Sun Shine -- They Might Be Giants
Check Yes, Juliet -- We The Kings
Fine By Me -- Andy Grammer
Angels of Death -- Immortal Technique
Feel free to make fun of me for this list, and rest assured there are ten times as many good songs I've rampaged.
Let's talk about how these rampages feel. First, the songs are usually pretty catchy. I'll bob my head or beatbox or sing along to them (whichever is appropriate -- sometimes all are). This phase lasts for a few dozen listens. Eventually, the song is no longer discrete. It blends in to my environment -- it is a fifth wall in my room, another dimension of my car, another element of my existence. It follows me, or do I follow it? It doesn't matter. It exists as I exist.
Better still is what happens afterwards: Song association. I listened to Here I Am Aive -- Yellowcard for two weeks straight while writing a math essay. Now, whenever I hear that song, I immediately think about math. In fact, it's weird to listen to it without doing math. Similarly, I have song associations for going swimming, playing tennis, driving, and certain video games.
I think the following Charles Bukowski quote is appropriate:
I watched the Lorax recently. The plot is as follows:
A boy named Ted lives in Thneedville, where everything is artificial because all the truffala trees (read: trees) have been cut down. He likes a girl named Audrey, who has heard of trees before and really wants to see one. Wanting his relationship with Audrey to progress to the Next Level, Ted decides to go get a tree. (This is his only motivation to get trees, ever).
Ted's opponent is the insidious Mr. O'Hare, who is so evil he actually sells air to people. It's in O'Hare's interest to keep trees away from Thneedville because trees provide clean, fresh air which just won't gel with his plans of making more money. O'Hare prefers to keep the air polluted so people will buy his air. This is one of the most over-the-top caricatures of corporatism and anti-environmentalism I've ever seen. It's a laughable character. But O'Hare does have one scene-stealing moment (more on that in a bit).
In a development that surprised precisely zero people, Ted succeeds in obtaining a truffala seed from some guy with the unfortunate name of "The Once-ler" who tells him to plant it in the middle of the city. (Why the Once-ler didn't just plant it himself, I have no idea). He rallies the city behind him and they sing a song about it:
My favorite part of the song -- of the whole movie, actually -- comes at 1:30, where the villainous O'Hare sings a solo:
My name's O'Hare, I'm one of you
I live here in Thneedville toooo
The things you say just might be true
It could be time to start anew
And maybe change my point of viewww
(beat)
Nah! I say let it die!
Then, in a moment that made me actually laugh out loud, the guy starts singing "Let it die, let it die" while dancing and clapping. The music cuts out and it's just him, goin' crazy a cappella. At the end of his impassioned, impromptu solo, he asks, "C'mon, who's with me?" with a big smile on his face. Of course, it fails miserably.
The reason this was so funny is because my mind conceived of a scenario in which O'Hare actually changed everyone's mind. Imagine: After several bars of "Let it Grow", O'Hare sings his solo, starts dancing, clapping -- then people start nodding to the beat, the music cuts back in, and everyone's jumping around, dancing, clapping joining him, singing "Let it Die". Cut to Ted standing in utter disbelief as the people rally around O'Hare and raise him up. Everything returns to normal and Ted still doesn't have a girlfriend.
This idea was so funny to me that I composed the song Let it Die for the fun of it. For best results, read the lyrics while watching the video above so you get the tune.
You don't know me but my name's Vee
I just teach Thneedville history
And we're only here cuz there's no trees
So I say let it die
My name's Ben, and my name's Dirk
We think the Lorax is a jerk
And those dumb trees will never work
So we say let it die
Let it die, let it die
Trees will make the children cry
Plant a seed inside the earth
It's not a blessing, it's a curse
Let's celebrate O'Hare's rebirth
We say let it die
My name's Sal and I am three!
I really like artificial trees
They come prepackaged with batteries
I say let it die
I'm grandpa Dan, I'm old, I have grey hair
I remember when trees were everywhere
My allergy raised the price of my healthcare
So I say, let it die!
Let it die, let it die
Trees will cut your knees and thighs
Maybe it's just one tiny seed
But trees' bark will make you bleed
Let's never change the life we lead
We say let it die
My name's Ted, I'm one of you
I live here in Thneedville toooooo
The things you say are just not true
It must be time to start anew
We have to change our point of viewww
So I say let it grow
Let it grow, let it grow
You can't reap what you don't --
C'mon, who's with me?
Nobody!
Youuu greedy dirtbag!
Let it die, let it die
To truffalas, we say goodbye
Plant artificial trees inside the Earth
We'll always know those trees' market worth!
Let's celebrate those truffalas' dearth
We say let it die
We say let it die
Let it die, let it die
There's lots of air for us to buy!
It's just one tiny seed
But it has the capacity
To destroy this city's economy
Kill our jobs and society
O'Hare's air is nearly free
We say let it die
I had additional lines for lobbyists, economists, and biologists but there's no room in the original song for them. Oh well.
One of my new favorite card games is Mao. It's a game wherein you are initially under the control of an authoritarian dictator. No one ever tells you what the game's rules are; rather, you have to figure them out as you play. Whenever you make a move that is contrary to the game's rules, you get punished.
As you begin to figure out the rules of the game, you can start punishing other people whenever they break a rule -- and even make rules of your own. Each round, a new rule appears. Because of this, the game's complexity and ridiculousness increase rapidly, until everyone is under an oppressive bureaucracy of dozens of rules and playing a single card can result in many punishments.
I like Mao for a lot of reasons. For one, it's a brilliant political satire of Communist China and the police state system. Hidden rules are everywhere, and you, the citizen, are brutally and mercilessly punished for violating laws you never even knew existed. You must blindly struggle through this dark, mysterious world, desperately careful to avoid any missteps. As people begin to acclimate to the game, they are eager to punish their fellow compatriots -- who were just as blind as they were -- and learn to always praise Mao, to never question the ruleset, to under no circumstances disobey the dictates of the state. The threat of punishment silences everybody. Loyalty becomes of the utmost importance. The law is king, is god.
Mao is also a good metaphor for life. No one knows all the rules of life -- although some may know a few more rules than others -- nor is there any win condition. Rather, life just keeps on increasing in complexity as you and a few friends try to stumble through it together. The more you figure out, the more you become aware of your own ignorance. Laws are mutable and relative. People in positions of power have tremendous amounts of control over people not as lucky. The desire for success and the desire to satiate your own curiosity counterbalance the tendency of life to harshly punish anyone's mistakes. Life doesn't care who you are or what you've done in the past. A punishment is a punishment.
The game is hilariously fun. Laugh as people curse in frustration, and then punish them for cursing. Cackle as they constantly misplay cards, and then punish them for their errors. Guffaw as the people who were once your friends begin to experience a deep, burning hatred towards you, and then punish them for their animosity. Become nervous as you see them slowly figure out the rules, see their eyes light up as they punish someone for the first time. Panic as the ever-expanding ruleset spirals out of your control, out of everyone's control, so that the game becomes an unintelligible chaos, a whirlwind of cards flying to and fro, hither and yon. Play Mao.
For one, you don't want too many rules. Too many rules leads to a restriction on creativity, growth, and innovation; progress becomes bogged down in a labyrinth of bureaucracy in which any hope of newness dies. Too many rules easily leads to abuse of authority, oppression, and the stifling of individuality. I'm picturing mounds of paperwork and the U.S. Congress. Neither of those is a particularly attractive image.
Too few rules doesn't work either. Even Fight Club, the ultimate anti-establishment anarchist organization, had rules (two of which I'm currently violating).
Think about the game of chess. Given a chess board and a full set of chess pieces, and being told nothing else, it's not easy to have fun. There's nothing substantive there; the board is just a piece of wood, and the pieces are the worst set of action figures ever conceived. But add in the rules of chess, restrictions on how pieces move, how to capture, win conditions, and so on -- then, there springs out a rich, complex strategy game, loved by some of humanity's greatest minds. By making the board and pieces more restrictive, by imposing more constraints on piece interactions, we've actually increased the amount of stuff we can do with them. We've turned a wood platform and some figurines into a deep, multifaceted battle of wits and planning.
Similarly, math and science are kind of like rules we use to understand and describe reality. Logic, a ruleset on how to think, has guided our thought process from the invention of the wheel to quantum supercomputing. Progress is achievable only through a framework whereby we have some rules on how to think. The human construct of language is a ruleset on how to make noises and create symbols in the same way other people make noises and create symbols. In this way, we can communicate within a framework.
I'm not sure what to think about rules. Do they impede progress, or do they facilitate it? Probably both. The truth is usually complicated.
Here's a thought experiment that's been bouncing around in my head lately, and I apologize in advance for its rather morbid nature: What is the worst day you could be diagnosed with terminal cancer?
You first thought might be your birthday or Christmas, but I beg to differ. On those days, you have the full support of your friends and family, ready to comfort you. No, I submit that the worst time to receive this news would be on April Fool's Day.
The first of April is a cutural construct that immediately demolishes any trust between you and your companions, replacing it with a pervasive, resonant paranoia that refuses to go away. Not only are your words worthless on April Fool's Day, you also have to suffer through others' merriment and hilarious pranking while staring death in the face.
In fact, April Fool's Day changes a lot of things. If the September 11 terrorist attacks had happened on the first of April, I feel like the American cultural landscape would be very different. I imagine a cruel god ruling this universe, laughing at his own brilliance, already planning his next big caprice.
My point is this: Timing is everything. An Olympic sprinter trains his whole life, gives up his favorite foods and activities, relentlessly pushes his body to the limit every day, undergoes a grueling exercise regimen that sacrifices his friends and family, takes steroids to further enhance his performance, risking everything -- then on the day it counts, he starts a tenth of a second too early and gets disqualified. He starts a tenth of a second too late and loses.
Computers designed for trading stocks know when a particular stock is worth .01 cents more in Chicago than in New York. They will buy millions of shares of this stock in New York, then immediately resell them in Chicago. This price disparity only exists for nanoseconds. A single miscalculation in price, and investors lose millions of dollars in less time than it takes for you to blink your eyes.
A surgeon coughs while performing a delicate surgery and kills the patient. A woman is late for her train by two seconds and meets the love of her life at the station. James Earl Ray blinks and misses his shot on Martin Luther King, Jr. Every millisecond is the same length of time as any other millisecond, but some of them have the capacity to alter the course of human history.
What's the takeaway here? Attentiveness. Focus. Importance. Each of your milliseconds matter. Make the most of them.
I've liked science since I was young. For example, I conducted an experiment when I was nine or ten years old: I wanted to see what would happen when I combined a cheap packet of hot sauce, Listerine mouthwash, and toothpaste (brand forgotten). I did not have any kind of hypothesis -- even to this day, I am unsure of what I was hoping to accomplish. Lacking the proper equipment, I emptied a nearby box of dominoes and mixed all the components together in the domino box. I also diluted the contents with some water, for whatever reason. Then I went to bed, excited for the results.
Later that night, a horrible smell woke me. Turns out the domino box was not at all watertight (I has stupidly assumed it was watertight because it was made of metal, although now I suspect it may have been made of faux metal) and the hot sauce mouthwash toothpaste concoction was leaking everywhere. Horrified, I tried to dump the evidence -- but the smell quickly permeated the house, waking my father. To my surprise, he helped me clean up the mess without saying a word of reproach. (Years later, during a visit to China, he would repay me in kind by snoring so loudly it registered on the Richter scale. Seriously, I could feel the floor rumbling.)
This early version of the hot sauce Listerine toothpaste experiment was imperfect, and so would undergo another iteration when I was in seventh grade. I'd learned from my previous mistakes. This time, I set a goal in mind: To create the most vile-smelling mixture of solutions I could find. I wanted to be able to market this thing as a chemical weapon of some sort, produce some odor so damaging the UN would ban its manufacture on a global scale. I don't know why I wanted to do this; something about watching the world burn, maybe.
The finished product was a mixture of hot sauce, Axe body spray, insect repellant, sunscreen, yeast, and some other mysterious item I've forgotten. My friend assisted me in its production. We mixed the ingredients with noses pinched, placed the finished product in a tiny, watertight container, covered it in cellophane, and let it sit for a month in my friend's desk drawer. During this month, we both forgot about it. Then I went over to his house one day, he happened to open his desk drawer, and we rediscovered our experiment. We reached for the cellophane cover, removed it --
Imagine that smelling a delightful flower is like your nose getting a massage. A rotten egg is like if someone gently tossed a pillow at your nose. The smell of our creation was like a nuclear apocalypse, except if fecal matter had the properties of Uranium-235. This analogy may have gotten away from me.
I'm not sure why it smelled so bad. Something about yeast fermenting? That mystery ingredient I failed to remember? Something ironic about Axe body spray?
Anyway, my friend's dog went crazy and we almost spilled the stuff all over ourselves. The very fact that we didn't was an aversion of a national tragedy. We immediately rushed outside to bury the disgusting substance, which we barely accomplished without passing out. We have never spoken of it since, although the mention of chemical weapons has made us glance at each other uncomfortably. For all I know, the mixture is still buried in a park somewhere. I leave the exact location undisclosed to save the UN the trouble of banning it globally. Woe to the human race should some madman -- someone who actually wants to watch the world burn -- discover it.
