Dear Guy Standing In Line At The Coffeeshop:
The world moves so fast now, doesn’t it? Technology gets more complex by the minute, and the gadget you bought yesterday just might be obsolete tomorrow. It’s hard to keep up. So, perhaps it’s understandable that you are a little unclear on this particular concept. Allow me to enlighten you:
Cell phones are not walkie-talkies.
While it is certainly possible to hold your phone six inches from your face while you talk into it, it is both unnecessary and makes you look like a jerk.
We–and by we, I mean every single person in your immediate vicinity–are not interested in hearing both sides of your conversation. Your side alone is quite sufficient, thank you very much. While it is fascinating that you are doing nothing, just hanging out, and will catch your homie later, it is not information that is vital to my existence, and your loud voice (coupled with the thousand other loud voices just like yours) exacerbates my latent autism. Everyday living in this modern age gives me plenty of reasons to want to assume the fetal position and rock myself into catatonia. I do not need you to give me one more.
But I’m not here to fruitlessly berate you. I want to give you the tools you need to successfully deploy your personal mobile communication device.
There’s this hole, see, in the phone, and sound comes out of it. There’s this other hole, in the side of your head, and sound goes into it. I don’t know if you know this, but you can put hole A next to hole B, and sound is then directly transferred from the phone to your ear! It’s, like, private and stuff. Crazy, I know.
But why might one want such exclusive access to the words coming out of one’s phone? Why not broadcast the minutiae of one’s day to day to anyone unfortunate enough to be close by? It’s like facebook, right?
My answer to that question (and I hope you’ll bear with me for using words that were clearly not in your parents’ vocabulary) is that it’s fucking rude. This may seem outlandish to you, but for many reasonable people, that alone is reason enough to refrain from certain behaviors in public. It’s the reason I don’t fart in your face, flick my boogers in your direction, or openly laugh at you when you trip on the curb.
But perhaps you are a reasonable, thoughtful person, and it’s brain cancer or mind-altering microwaves that have you concerned. While I certainly applaud the care you take with your health, there are better solutions than polluting your immediate environment with noise. Using a headset, for instance. Or relocating your Hey wuzzup / Not much / Whatcha doin / Nothin, you? / Nada conversation to the texting environment. You could meet your friend in person, perhaps over a delicious cup of coffee. (Trust me when I tell you that eye contact and body language really do add nuance and depth to interpersonal communication. No, it’s true.)
Or maybe you could stop having completely pointless conversations simply to distract yourself for a few more moments from your overstimulated existence. Human beings all over the world and throughout every age have dealt with–and even developed an affinity for–silence. It can be done.
If, however, none of these options appeal to you, I have one final request: please stop getting angry when the barista–whom you approached, not the other way around–”interrupts” your conversation with your pal on the other end.
Mucho Grande Mocha Java Frio? $4.89.
Not being a douche? Priceless.
Yakkety yak,
js
PS – As a reminder, the following conversation opener is never appropriate:
“Hello? … No, I’m in a movie.”
Should you find these words coming out of your mouth, shut it immediately, pull the battery out of your phone, and flagellate yourself with it until you bleed.
Be all that you can be
I finally got around to watching Bigger Stronger Faster*, which I bumped to the top of the queue on a friend’s glowing recommendation. I appreciate how the film takes the issue of anabolic steroid use in sports as a jumping-off place to analyze larger themes of competition, perfectionism, and even American exceptionalism. It’s thought-provoking stuff, and made me rethink my own views on steroid use.
I must admit to being a product of the afterschool special “education” on this subject: I’ve always known that steroids were bad, had harmful side effects, and were right to be illegal. Thing is, I couldn’t really support any of those opinions if I had to–I knew them to be true in the same way I knew George Washington could not tell a lie and drinking Coke with Pop Rocks would make your belly explode. Everybody knows this stuff, right?
The problem with common knowledge is much the same as the problem with common courtesy: we all think it’s reliable, but when we really need it, it doesn’t deliver.
Director Chris Bell does a fairly even-handed job examining cultural attitudes toward steroid use, showcasing the absurdities of the political/legal establishment’s involvement and challenging those knee-jerk, “steroids, bad!” reactions so many of us have. This film would be worth watching on these grounds alone, but Bell goes one better: he couches the entire discussion in the larger context of our cultural obsession with superlatives, and how the drive to be the best can both inspire and destroy.
Chris’s brother Mark epitomizes the darker side of the pursuit of the American Dream: he seems utterly broken by his failure to become the next Arnold. As he sees it, if he isn’t the absolute best, then he is no one, nothing. Being ordinary is the worst fate he can imagine. On film, he looks like the saddest, most pathetic man alive when he talks about his next grand scheme for getting back on top. Home, wife, family all mean nothing; he has identified one path to happiness, and one only. And it’s unattainable. How’s that not a recipe for disaster?
His attitude is poignant precisely because it has become epidemic in our society. Witness the plague of reality TV shows now upon us, each designed to produce fame for any reason. Garner your fifteen minutes, the message is, and your life has not been lived in vain. How many chase that phantom dream, and how many are shattered when they don’t catch it? (Or when they do, for that matter.)
I’ve had my draught of that Kool-Aid, though it’s mostly worked itself out of my system by now. But I did spend a large part of my twenties fairly broken up about the fact that I hadn’t “lived up to my potential.” No brilliant first novel, no MD or PhD behind my name, no contribution to the history books. Not the best, so: nothing. No one.
Some people fear snakes or heights or clowns. My biggest fear for most of my life? Being a disappointment.
So while competitive sports isn’t my arena and I would never choose an injectable performance enhancer, I can certainly relate to the underlying dissatisfaction that leads one down such a path. But I’ve seen the pathology it perpetuates, and I propose that it takes an exceptional person indeed to hold herself to the never-good-enough measuring stick and not end up miserable. Contentment, not settling, is the other road in that yellow wood.
I’m happy with the choice I made.
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Posted in Commentary + Philosophy, That's Entertainment!
Tagged being the best, Bigger Stronger Faster movie, steroids