by Richard Timothy | Mar 4, 2011 | Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Public Service Announcement
It always seems to happen, once a year my immune system decides to go on holiday and I catch a cold that keeps me on a strict regiment of cold medicine and unconsciousness. Due to being under the influence of night time cold medicine, but at a state of consciousness that my mind is sure I’ve had enough sleep for the day, I figured I’d get this week’s Smirk created and shared, before the sleepiness comes for me again.
That being said, here are a few things I’ve noticed this week in correlation with me being sick:
- I have a kick ass voice when I’m ill. I could be a blues singer with a voice like this, I’ve got enough bass for it. Imagine the voice of Louie Armstrong, now drop it an octave or two and there I am. Granted, once I get better I have a voice that makes the sound of ally cats engaging in “behind closed doors” acts a melodious and almost operatic experience.
- I’m pretty sure I’ve exceeded my over sleep quota for the month and possibly year. I’m pretty sure I’m owed one all-nighter in the next little bit once I get better.
- It is staggering at the sheer amount of mucus your body can produce when it decides that whatever it is inside you that is making you ill needs to be evacuated from your body. In a week I have got through three full rolls of toilet paper… for my nose (an important distinction I feel) and two boxes of tissue… for the same nose. I now have the face of someone who has a problem with huffing gas fumes for recreational purposes.
- It’s amazing how much time you get to spend alone at home, even when your partner is there. Yes, they make it very clear that they love you, but they don’t want to be around you… something about our wedding vows not including sharing each others cold if possible. Well, that and she has her conference next weekend that she refuses to be ill for. I do think she has willed my cold to bugger off and leave her alone, and it has.
- Working for people that will let you work from home while you are sick is pretty groovy. The trouble is, when you are blowing your nose every three to five minutes, it makes being productive a little difficult. Of course this holds true if I was at work working as opposed to at home working, it’s just that at home I can wear pajamas and grab a blanket when the fever kicks in. Plus, I get to feel good about myself for not sharing what I’ve caught with my co-workers.
- One word of warning though, do not have a Doctor Who marathon while waiting for the night time cold medicine you took to kick in… I have not spent that many dreaming hours running to or from “end of the world” scenarios in my entire life. Although my dream self is much more fit as a result.
- Oh… and one last thing… if you have a case of the sneezes, make sure you put a layer of plastic wrap over what you are reading… especially if it’s a library book. It can take a while to clean things up otherwise.
I think that’s gets to be it for today. My brain feels like it’s starting to move slower that the rest of me. Night time cold medicine always does that to me when it starts to kick in, I’ll move my head to the left and then it feels like my brain will move in that direction to catch up. Good thing I don’t have to drive home. With all that being said, I’m officially at that point where I’d happily give up my Barry White voice of soul and my excess of sleep for a clear head and dry nose. Until next week, when I’m a bit more, well, me, stay happy, keep smirking, and keep healthy. I’ve got enough cold for at least ten of you, so you should be in the clear.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: blowing nose and sneezing.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Feb 25, 2011 | I Think There's a Point, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Inner child… what does that even mean? I hear it all the time, and apparently its one of the key things you need to get in touch with in order to understand happiness better. I wonder, do you think when this younger generation gets middle aged and starts attempting to get in touch with their inner child they’ll try text it first? You know there will be a “contacting your inner child” app by that point with a text option… if texting still exists at that point.
Here’s a brilliant marketing idea, make tequila and name it Inner Child. The slogan could be, “Get in touch with your inner child.” Granted, the inner child you would be getting in touch with would be the one that likes to take off all its clothes and run around naked. Then again, that’s already one of the side effects of tequila. Ok so maybe it doesn’t actually create a liquid connection to your inner child that enjoys running around naked, but it certainly prompts it to make an appearance. Plus, its clever marketing, focusing on what will likely happen if you drink it in the first place. That way when you see the YouTube video of you running around the backyard naked, there’s really no shame or surprise. You were well informed of this prior to taking that first drink.
For the sake of today’s Smirk, I thought it best to start with defining this phrase and the intended use I have for these words. For some, inner child is considered to be one’s soul. For others it is simply the second album from Shanice. Wikipedia considers it to be, “…a concept used in popular psychology and Analytical psychology to denote the childlike aspect of a person’s psyche, especially when viewed as an independent entity.” For my intended purpose, I think the concept of the inner child is a kind of connection with that pure unforced joy we experienced when we were young, we didn’t have to try to create it or force it… we just experienced it.
Some of these experiences of unforced happiness are things like:
- Blowing on someone’s stomach for the sake of making loud flatulent noises that cause both you and the receiver to giggle profusely.
- Realizing that you can literally throw fireballs, sort of. All you need to do it let the marshmallow you are roasting in the campfire catch fire and then in an attempt to make it go out, you wildly shake the stick back and forth allowing the fiery ball of melting goo to fly off the stick and through the air, thus sticking to a tree, car, tent, or person nearby.
- If you walk around the house with a blanket over your head, no one can see you because you can’t see them (a great way for sneaking cookies by the way).
- If you are running to fast on the grass and you need to stop quickly, dropping to your knees works best.
- Peddling your big wheel down the driveway as fast as you can and then pulling on the hand break will cause it to skid around so you are facing the opposite directing, which you are certain no one on the planet has ever done before.
That’s the thing about being little, you are a constant self proclaimed genius. You discover things everyday that you are certain no one has ever discovered before, because if they had, they are so amazing that someone would have obviously told you about it. These are things like:
- Making mud pies.
- True insults end with the word head or face, i.e. you are a doody head, or a poopy face.
- It is possible to bounce a basketball against the ground so hard that it bounces up and makes a basket.
- You can eat flower pedals.
- If you hit a rock with a tennis racquet it will fly at least twice as far as it would if you were to throw it.
- Those big cushy rectangles individually wrapped found in your parent’s bathroom under the sink make convenient knee pads because they already have those little adhesive squares, but for some reason cause your mother to yell at you to get into the house. Then as you are ordered to take them off you are laughed at and instructed to never touch her knee pads again, which you do, only this time you wear them on your knees under your jeans instead of on the outside.
The thing I’ve noticed about this inner child concept is that there are still instances or situations that cause people to respond in the same way they did as a kid. Usually it seems to be connected to the root experience of unexpected (or surprise) joy. One of my friends responds to these moments by throwing his hands in the air like he’s about to descend the steep part of a rollercoaster. My sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh chooses to open her eyes as big as she can, and I swear I can almost her inner child say, “Did you see that?” as if she had just witnessed the most amazing thing ever. I on the other hand am a clapper.
I don’t clap like I do at a sporting event, or a play, or some type of performance where applause is the acceptable exchange of appreciation and admiration… or in some cases obligation. No, I clap like kids clap when they do something they consider to be amazing and are so filled with joy towards their own greatness that the only thing they can think to do is clap. It’s that open palm clap too, where the fingers extend out and away from the palms, as if they are concerned that their fingers might get tangled up if they touch while their palms connect to make the clapping noise.
Once I started looking at this concept, I realized I clap like this all the time. Like at our wine party this month, I started clapping this way when my friends walked into the house, the uncontrollable joy of seeing them instantly compelled me acknowledged this by means of me clapping like a little kid. I’ve also noticed that in situations where I begin clapping like this I begin the clapping by saying, “Yay!” The thing that triggered this realization was when I was hanging out with my nineteen month old nephew. He came over a while ago so we could watch him for the day and when I saw him my inner child snuck out and I said, “Yay!” and I started clapping, which got him to start clapping… when I looked at my hands I realized we were both clapping in the exact same way.
It’s a good feeling, when you realize that connection in yourself with yourself. It’s also refreshing that there are still those uncontrollable joyous moments in life where you can’t help but celebrate it, or at least acknowledge it the same way you did when you were little.
I like to think that we all unknowingly have our inner child getting out occasionally. If you’re not sure how yours gets out, keep a look out for it, it’s bound to turn up. And if you do know, by all means embrace it and share it. I’d be curious to know how many clappers like me there are out there. So, from me to all of you…
“Yay!” clap, clap, clap.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: inner child, kid clapping, adult in swing, and blowing on tummy.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Feb 14, 2011 | My Cutie Baby Sweetie Pie, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Reviewed and Recommended
With today being the celebration of Juno Fructifie (and no, not the Feast of Lupercalia, that doesn’t happen until tomorrow the 15th), or St. Valentine’s Day, or Valentine’s day, or Single Awareness Day, or National Send Flowers Day, or a stupid Hallmark holiday exploiting love to make money… so a kind of National Hallmark Pimp day maybe? Anyway, I thought I’d let this piece form on its own throughout the day. A sort of work in progress concerning my mental journey concerning encompassing the random stroll my mind took today… on the day of love.
Valentine’s Day in Japan
Did you know in Japan the custom on Valentine’s Day is that only women give chocolates to men? Amusingly enough this tradition came about due to a typo from the executive of a chocolate company during initial campaigns to introduce their chocolate to the Japanese. The common practice is for women to give chocolate to all male co-workers, and to only their female friends. However when Valentine’s falls on a Sunday, instead of giving regular chocolate women will give the cheapest quality chocolate to the unpopular co-workers. So if you are a jerk at the office in Japan, you can rest assure that one of these years, if you continue to follow your jerk-like behavior, everyone is going to let you know on the same day, where you will receive literally pounds of shitty tasting chocolate that is probably more wax than it is chocolate.
I think the weirdest thing about that is that it would mean there is a company out there that intentionally creates nasty tasking, cheep chocolate so that women in Japan can purchase it and give it to some jerk on the random event that February 14th falls on a Sunday. I mean, I would think that to make their points they should just purchase and hand out chocolate flavored Ex-lax bars to the people they don’t like. I know it’s what a few girls I knew did with boys they didn’t like at school growing up… which might explain why I was so afraid of girls when I was in high school… hmmm.
I will say that in the 80s Japan did invent White Day, which is a sort of reply day for Valentine’s Day, which takes place on March 14th. On White Day the men in the office are expected to give white chocolate replies to all the women that gave him chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Still, it seems like a lot of work to make up for a typo.
Happy Shag Day
Is it just me or is Valentine’s Day kind of like the official Happy Shag Day of the year? Kudos to Valentine’s sticking to its Pagan roots in that regard. Think about it though, Valentine’s is a courting day were gifts like chocolates, flowers… or garments that are suggested to be worn under other articles of clothing, but are expected to be worn with no outerwear other than a long coat. All for the sake of setting the mood, which was set the second the lingerie was picked out.
What to have some fun? Go into a store that sells lingerie and browse. When a salesperson… commonly a woman, approaches you and asks, “Can I help you?” Tell them yes and pull something off the racks and ask her to hold it up (next to her, not in front of her – no need to come across as a creepy, well, creep) for you to look at. Then walk up and take the piece off the hanger and drop it on the floor. Take a few steps back and evaluate its appearance on the floor. If it looks good, let the salesperson know you’ll take it. Besides, you know and they know that is where it is going to spend most of the time anyway.
The point is that it seems all of the activities people partake in on this day seem to be devised as a precursor for the festivities people interact in as they wrap the day up and spent some time enjoying each other’s company. I know it’s a superficial holiday, but I like that it helps remind people of why they love the person they’re with. A day that reminds people to love instead of fight (or act ambivalent), is just pretty damn cool.
No Longer a Christian Holiday
Did you know that Valentine’s Day was removed from the Catholic calendar in 1969? (I bet we could blame the hippies.) I guess it makes sense it kept hold of many of its pagan roots, even though they tried to replace the Pagan holiday with a Christian one. I mean even eventually using the cherubim to depict that meddlesome bastard Cupid in Catholic sanctioned art during the time is a prime example of this. The only thing vaguely religious about this holiday anymore is its name. Apart from that, there is nothing religious, well Christian, about this holiday anymore. It’s one of the few ‘Pagan turned Christian’ holidays that won out in the end. Not that it’s a contest, but it’s nice to see that out of so many holidays that were adopted and revised for the changing political and religious times, that some pieces of those original works were able to survive.
To Angela
My sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh asked me if we were going to do anything for each other this Valentine’s Day in regards to a gift… I told her “sort of”. Meaning, I had a plan, but I was going to surprise her with it… meaning, you are welcome to keep reading it if you want, but the rest of this Smirk for her, about her, to her…
Angela,
When you asked me what I was thinking about the other night when I was working in my office, and I started to say something and then stopped, well I was thinking about Mello Yello, yes the drink. What I was going to tell you is that when I’m at work and I get the hankering for a mid to late afternoon beverage, I go to the break room and up to the drink machine housing three rows of Mello Yello and I start smiling, know why? Because it reminds me of you.
Ever since you told me years ago that when you were a kid you would always get Mello Yello when you went to the store, and that it was your favorite childhood drink, when the thirst arises I’ll get one and take it back to my desk. Then for the rest of the day there you are, well there the memory of you is, wrapped in a plastic bottle with a small green screw top, filled with an almost florescent liquid that I’d swear glows in the dark after you crack the bottle over your knee and shake it up. The thing is, the drink is really nothing like you, mainly because you are not artificially sweet in any way. Being sweet is very much an all-natural thing for you. Still, out of all the selection available, I get the drink you loved as a child, because it reminds me of you.
I love it when I come home and find you working away while wearing one of my goofy tee shirts. Even though a lot of what you are working on is a solitary and time consuming process, I feel like you wanted me there in your day. When you raid my closet and let one of my shirts wrap around, holding you all day, and keeping you warm during those times when your office gets a little chilled, it makes me happy to see that the memory of me got to spend the day with you in that way.
I love your childlike enthusiasm for show and tell. I know every time you’ve purchased something because of that look on your face when you walk into the house. It’s not just your big eyes giving you away, but you’re whole self can barely contain the excitement you are holding inside, not just because you are genuinely excited about what you got, but because I know how excited you are about sharing it with me. That inner excitement and infectious desire to share with others is one of the things that I find so beautiful about you. When you begin to share with others, you lead, and as you lead you fill others with excitement not just about life in general, but about their own life.
Your addiction to pretty stationary is… well yes, something we both agree you have a problem with, but I get it. It becomes clear every time you use that stationary to write a letter or send a card, or create some type of correspondence that is going to fill another person with acceptance, love and joy. You get more excited about using up your stationary treasure and giving that beauty to others than you do in actually getting it in the first place. That is why I have kept every letter you have ever written me and have my office filled with the cards you have sent me.
Besides being one of the most stunning women I’ve ever seen, one of the reasons I love to watch you is your reaction to life and the joy you carry into life of all your friends… and it is an honor to hold you in that space where you are not just my love, or my wife, but as my best friend as well. Our home is always full of laughter and I love that a day does not go by where we don’t tell the other how much we love them. I know we say it all the time and thing I love most about us saying, “I love us” is that it is becomes more so with every passing day.
You want to know why I think butterflies are such a fitting symbol of you, because that is exactly what you have done to my life. My life with you has forever transformed in something more. Filled with more life, more beauty and more love than I ever expected possible. You are my butterfly, and because of that I am free. Thank you my dear, sweet, beautiful wife… my Angela. Happy Valentine’s Day, I love you.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: Valentine’s Day, ex-lax, shag, Mello Yello, show and tell, and blue butterfly.
by Richard Timothy | Feb 11, 2011 | I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Something I Know Nothing About
I have acquired a fairly functional existence where I have managed to avoid most things that carry with it the identifier of “sport.” Let’s take football for example, which is actually a completely inaccurate descriptor of the American sport “Catch, Run, Hit.” With the culmination of the latest football season now at a close, which was celebrated this past Sunday… the day of the “big game,” I thought I’d devote today’s Smirk about not only the topic of sports, but about the big game itself.
No, I didn’t see it. Traditionally I don’t know who is even playing in the Super Bowl until the weekend of. Thanks to my office mates, the majority who, despite my complete and utter lack of interest, still continue to attempt to educate me in the much celebrated art of “talking sports.” It is thanks to these people that I am always able to learn on the Monday after the game who actually won. Apparently this year it was a bunch of people that like cheese, which I am in full support of, since I too like cheese. What a real treat, next time you make grilled cheese sandwiches to dunk in your tomato soup use smoked Gouda… Mmmmm… smoked Gouda, you’ll thank me, I promise.
The point is that over the last five years, contrary to my best efforts, I have actually learned a few things about sports… twenty, probably more, but twenty is a number I’m willing to commit to at this point. Here is about half of what I’ve learned about sports over the past five years:
- Brett Favre is essentially a 75 year old football player and those are football years by the way, which are a lot like dog years except without all those hours spent trying to teach them to catch a Frisbee in their mouth. Also, turns out he has recently show reoccurring commitment issues in regards to his retiring from the sport.
- Eli Stone does not play football, some other guy named Eli does. I know this seems like a mute point, but trust me, to those that follow the game, it is an important distinction.
- Lions play on the grass and Ducks play on the ice.
- There is some guy who plays football who legally changed his name to the number of his jersey, but in a different language. He did this so he could have his number on her jersey twice, once numerically and once in a foreign language. This seems like a bit unnecessarily redundant, and I was convinced that the story was a ruse that football fans use to “out” none football fans, but I have been assured it is true… Google has confirmed it as well.
- The Utah Jazz use to have a mailman on their team, or something like that.
- Oh, and Arnold Palmer is not just a tasty drink. It is actually the name of a guy who played golf who drank so much of the half lemonade, half ice tea drink that the entire planet got together and decided to name the beverage after him… well done there.
- Michael Jordan was the one who liked to make faces when he’d dunk the ball.
- There was a guy named Bo in the sports world that apparently “knows” things.
- And finally, it would appear that every sports team has an arch nemesis.
I pretty sure I know more than that, but those are the first things that came to mind. I will say that my guessing skills on whether a team plays basketball or football has gotten a lot a touch better as well.
On to the Super Bowl then… now is it just me or does anyone else find it a little amusing that a group of large men get together each weekend to beat on another group of large men all for the chance to win a gem encrusted ring at the end of the season. I mean isn’t football really just televised “fighting for jewelry” with a ball thrown in there as a way to decide the victor and so the camera has a designated target to follow throughout the game? Ok, most would disagree with me, but I do feel it’s a point worth mentioning.
I know it has been apparent over the years, but this year it really struck me… the Super Bowl really doesn’t seem to be about the game, it seems to be a kind of Oscars for commercials. I cannot even begin to count how many times, leading up to the game, I heard people say, “The best part about the game are the commercials,” or “I only watch the game to watch the commercials.” This is baffling to me. This major sporting event has become, in a sense, the commercial and the commercials have become the game. As the game is playing people stand around the kitchen snacking on food, check their email, or Facebook, text friends, take a potty break, do homework, and so on, but when the game stops and the commercials come on, everyone goes running into the television room to watch with anticipation to see what the next commercial is going to be. The true attraction of the Super Bowl… the commercials!
When I got to work Monday after the big game, no one talked about the game. There were no references to spectacular catches or plays that had to be watched again on YouTube because they were so amazing. No, but what I did hear was the endless chatter about the commercials during the game. One coworker even had a web page open so that he could review all of the game commercials and vote for his favorite. Then in a week he can go back and discover the true winner of the Super Bowl. The first thing my office mate said to me that morning was about his favorite commercials. He had me pull up this two favorite so I could see them and share in his advertisement created joy.
It’s been almost a week since the game ended, and I have not heard one mention of the teams involved. However, people are still talking about the commercials. Just today, as I was walking down the hall on my way to the break room, I overheard the people in front of me debating about which Doritos commercial was the game’s best. Amazing.
I guess there was one thing that was talked about a bit in regards to the game. It was the fact that and ex-Mouseketeer blundered the words to the National Anthem… just one more reason why people should stop letting Disney raise their children. I’m just saying. Hopefully the sheer embarrassment of that performance will keep Aguilera from performing live for… hell if it’s even a month it will have been worth it.
The whole thing does make me smile though. The most anticipated and watched sports event of the year in the US and all people seem to remember is which thirty second collection of images made them laugh the most. You know I wouldn’t be surprised if companies start doing their own product placement in commercials to help with the cost of a Super Bowl ad, that or to get double exposure for the price of one.
Take an ad for a hybrid Ford. Introduce a sleek attractive couple on a super sexy road trip and now throw in the image of this couple eating a bag of Lay’s brand potato chips… wink, wink, nudge, nudge – two products advertized for the price of one. Then as payback, Lay’s gets their own commercial slot. In their ad they use a Ford SUV for the family that is driving thorough a nature preserve while everyone is eating from their own bag of travel size Lay’s brand potato chips. Then enter a group of sneaky raccoon’s. One begins to mime a Van Halen air guitar solo getting the family to stop the car and watch in giggly delight. The others raccoons sneak in though a rolled down window and steal all the bags of chips, ending the commercial with some lame over used phrase like “Everybody wants some.” Again, one commercial, one price, two products… you know it’s just a matter of time before they start doing this.
Until then, enjoy your commercials and if you’re lucky maybe you’ll get to see some of that thing they call football.
Anyone feel this way about the big game? I mean I know I’m not a fan, but it does seem to be coming in second when competing with the commercials. Any thoughts?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: football, sports knowledge, watching tv, and raccoon.
by Richard Timothy | Feb 4, 2011 | I Do Suggest, I Think There's a Point, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Working Observations
I found this delightful little antidote the other day and shared it on my Facebook wall. I liked it because for me it was so resoundingly true every time I work at home. The clever observation was, “I worked from home the other day and got a lot of stuff done, which has led me to the conclusion that pants limit productivity.” I was going to leave it at that until a friendly, well, friend commented, “I hope there’s a smirk coming for this one.” In truth, up until I read that comment there was no… actually there was a Smirk in the works, it just wasn’t about that. However, thanks to Sarah’s comment, I gave it some thought …
Now I’m not sure why, but there seems to be the expectation that when you work from home, the last thing you put on is your pants, and that is usually around noon, but only if you are leaving the house for lunch. Otherwise, the pants get put on just before the misses gets home. This brings me to an interesting point, working at home without pants on is typically a male tradition, women prefer sweats or pajama bottoms instead, and since men are the pantless performers of the working from home stage, our only pant wearing requirement is at the curtain call at the end of the day, when the wife gets home.
Usually, it’s one of those things women don’t get, but men do. We really can’t describe why we get it and can’t comprehend for the life of us why women don’t. When we emerge triumphantly from our home office without any pants on after a fully productive day, women don’t care; they just shake their head and order us to, “Put on some pants.”
So why is it that I’m more productive when I’m not wearing pants? Here’s what I’ve come up…
Reason 1: A Cooler Self Increases Energy and Alertness
I am of the belief that when the temperature rises, my vigor and productivity wane. The warmer it gets the more I feel like I’m being wrapped up in a preheated blanket that has just been pulled out of the dryer, accompanied with the mental euphoria I get when eating a piece of fresh homemade bread that has just come out of the oven, which instantly begins melt the butter as soon as the butter touches it. See just the thought of that level of warmth gets me feeling a bit lethargic. Well that and makes me want to call my dad to see if he’s baked any of his homemade bread this week.
The warmer it gets the more I just want to nap out for a bit, and pants, they add insulation to the body’s natural thermostat, warming you up with fewer surfaces to vent out the constant heat your body is creating. Now let’s remove the pants… ah that’s much better. I’m not overheating at all. Actually, I’m cooling down quite nicely, which transforms me into being more awake and more energized, hence crating a higher level or productivity.
Reason 2: Physical Constriction Leads to Mental Constriction
According to my personal experience, when a part of the body is constricted that feeling transfers to the brain and then back to the entire body. If I am wearing jeans the natural outcome in the manner in which they fit around the body is to bunch up, either around the back of my knees when my legs are bent, or, and most commonly, around my unmentionables. I have to keep standing up and pulling my pant legs down to remove that uncomfortable restrictive feeling. The problem is that when you wear pants, even pants that fit perfectly or pants that are too baggy or too tight, the constant pulling up or down, or unbunching this or rearranging that, your body is very constricted, which translated into a restrictive work flow.
Remove the pants and you remove this anti-work block. If you remove the element that is hindering your ability to focus on your work, you become more focused on what you need to get done. Your mind isn’t constantly distracted from your work because something doesn’t feel right, or is simply uncomfortable. Removing the pants means reinforced focus to your work.
Reason 3: Pockets Lead to Distractions
Pockets hold distractions. Don’t get me wrong, they are very handy at the right time, in the right place, say like when you win at slots and all those coins start pouring out. The more pockets you have the more coins you can carry. However, when it comes to working, pockets seem to hold nothing but distractions. Cell phones for instance, a lot of people store them in their pocket or in little holsters attached to their pants, usually by means of a belt. Then the phone goes off people not only stop working, but it takes a while for them to readjust their entire body to be able to get access to their phone. This is a constant distraction from work for many, not just the phone, but the digging around for the phone in your pocket and then the rearranging of one’s seated working position to put the phone back.
Let’s take the phone out of the equation. I am a firm supporter of using the pocket function on my pants… I put things in them all the time. Just yesterday as I was at work I leaned back in my chair to stretch and my hands brushed against my front pockets and I felt a bump. I had put something in my pocket… what was it? Now I had to investigate… oh yeah my voice recorder. I have a little hand held voice recorder for ideas… Smirks, stories, funny thoughts, something I need to remember to do, and so on. I get some rather grand ideas when driving from time to time, and pulling over to jot them down or hoping I still remember them by the time I get home has proven to be a less than efficient way to keep those thoughts… that’s why the recorder.
Turns out I had three messages on the thing with no recollection as to what they might be. So clearly I had to distract myself from work long enough to listen to those messages. The first one was a success, because I had remembered to take the trash out. The other two were possible Smirk topics, which I made a note of. Now had I not been wearing pants I would not have had any pockets, and without pockets comes the lack of having things in pockets… long story long, the ability to get distracted is greatly reduced without pockets, and if you don’t wear pants you don’t have pockets and you remain more focused on your work.
Sure some people are going to suggest that the reason people get more done working at home is a result of few interruptions, but let me just point out that if you let people come to work without any pants on then people would interrupt you a lot less at work too… see, once again the “no pants” work ethic prevails.
I’m not saying these reasons are grounds for the business office attire standards around the world to change, but when it comes to working at home, these are pretty legitimate reasons for why I feel I’m more productive working without any pants on verses working at home with pants on… or working at work with pants on for that matter. I’m sure the same reasoning still applies; the only trouble is that if it became a standard some people would find the prospect of working in an office with a “pants optional” dress code a bit distracting. I would like to point out that if your gripe is that guys might go out of their way to distract a coworker that they fancy, pants aren’t going to make a lot of difference. You already know who those people are and they are already distracting the coworkers they fancy… ok thongs might be an issue, but that’s the reason for a dress code damn it.
It’s not a perfect science just yet, but I still believe there are some valid supporting points. If you are a supporter of the “no pants increases work productivity” work ethic I’d be curious to hear some of your reasons for increased productivity when you work from home pants free… or did I cover it well enough?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: working at home in boxers, woman pointing, napping at work, phone in pocket, and no pants.
by Richard Timothy | Jan 28, 2011 | Adolescent Shenanigans, I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, When I Was a Kid
I saw a bag of marbles at the grocery store yesterday and it got me thinking about my life, filling me with amazement that I’m still here after all these years. Not that I ever tried to ends things early… well not intentionally, but I think that’s the thing about the adolescent and teenage years, we all sort of try without really thinking we’re trying… meaning we don’t really make a lot of educated guesses at that age about what we’re doing and if it’s safe. Actually we might, it’s just that we don’t have a lot of education on what we want to try, and usually when something is cool, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s smart. I don’t know about you, but when it came to doing something cool verses doing something safe, 9.9 times out of 10 I was going to be doing something cool.
Yep, marbles are responsible for today’s reminiscent Smirk about life, but more than that, about surviving life. I grew up about three blocks from the high school, and two and a half block from the high school wood shop, which was in its own building close to the high school. Starting in grade school up until I left town, I would spend a lot of time at the shop, thanks to my dad being the shop teacher. Next to the high school shop was the big field that all the school buses lived in during the summer months. Now, when I was in grade school, the bus field wasn’t always the bus field.
At that period in my life the field was the schools dump. It collected piles if random waste, broken desks, old books, retired chalk boards, etc. However, the field did have one additional thing that made it one of the most magical places in town. It had a huge enclosed outdoor fire pit. The whole thing was made out of sheets of ½ think steel welded together. Three walls were around five feet high and the forth wall, the mouth of the pit, was between two to three feet high. That way the janitors could easily feed it whatever they wanted to, and at the same time once the fire was well under way, they could keep piling things on. It looked a bit like an outdoor fireplace for the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk.
On this particular day, all of the boys were at the shop, and it turned out dad needed some help spray painting a few things. I always wanted to help out when I could, but when you have little fingers attached to little hands, getting a good hold on a spray paint can, while trying with all your might to push that damn nozzle piece down far enough to get some paint to come out, took a lot more effort than I expected it would. About five minutes later my spray finger had more paint on it than the wood I was trying to paint, so I stopped helping and started playing instead. I do remember being fascinated by the rattling noise each spray paint would make when I shook them up, it was like I had my own set of metal maracas. I’d shake them up and do a little cha-cha-cha dance around the shop. It was my oldest brother Dave who unraveled the rattle mystery when he showed me that very day a spray paint can marble. It was a marble making all that noise… who knew?
I wanted one, but my dad said it was too dangerous to try to get marbles from a pressurized empty can of spray paint and that he’d get me some marbles sometime soon. As an adolescent “sometime soon” equates to about one minute shy of forever. If he wasn’t going to help, I was going to have to take matters into my own hands.
As I walked outside of the shop I noticed that there was a faint stream of smoke coming from the pit, and started heading that way. The closer I got I noticed that the pits guardian, the janitor, was gone. Apparently, he had finished burning the piles of trash he was assigned to and had disappeared while the hot coals continued their journey into cool ash. That is when I had a brilliant idea… I could melt the cans and get the marbles out of them once they’d melted. How easy and safe was that? I ran back to the shop and started filling my arms with the empty spray paint cans sitting in the trash. Realizing that I could be more efficient with the number of cans I could take with me, I got my “go to” partner in crime Mike, my brother who is just a year older than me. He liked the idea of free marbles too and together with our arms full of empty cans we headed toward the giant’s fireplace full of smoldering ashes.
Having no idea what to expect, we opted to do a test run and threw only throw one can in to see what would happen. For a few minutes there was nothing. Mike even grabbed a stick and started poking at the can. Shortly after that the entire pit started to hiss. In looking back it was probably the plastic nozzle melting and letting out the left over compressed air, but at the time it was the sound of an awakened fire snake hissing as the foolish adventurers that had wandered into its pit, ready to strike its magma filled fangs into whoever it was that woke it up. We ran from the noise as fast as we could. Then, half way between the pit and the shop, we heard a loud bang.
We skidded to a stop, well Mike did, I inadvertently chose to drop to my butt, and then skidded to a halt. We turned and looked back at the pit… had someone just blown up the fire serpent? Then, out of what must have been sheer dumb luck because it couldn’t really have been anything but, a marble fell past my head and thudded to the ground about three feet away. It was mostly gold, the same color as the paint in the can we had tossed into the ashes. I picked up the marble, it was lingering between warm and hot, and some of the paint came off and stuck to my fingers. “It’s the marble from the can,” I yelled, as we both started running toward the pit. When we got there, we peeked over the edge and looked in. Sure enough, the bottom of the can was gone leaving the remains completely empty.
The prospect of having more cans explode for our amusement while marbles fell from heaven got us a little excited. Soon three cans were in the pit, cooking up a little “boom” where a marble would pop out to let us know it was done. At least we had enough sense to not stand in front of the mouth of the pit while we waited for the cans to pop. With three explosions in the making, we knew we needed to take cover. When the first can blew we were hiding behind a few old broken desk tops, we heard a ping and then a shattering sound. The marble had failed to escape. It shot against the inside wall of the pit and disappeared into a cloud of tiny glass shard snowflakes… and I bet no two glass flakes were the same.
The second and third blew at almost the same time. One shattered and one shot out of the open top. We both lost it in the sun, but as I started walking back to the pit Mike yelled, “Don’t move.” I stopped, though not sure why.
“But…”
“Shhhh,” Mike insisted, listening with the same intensity as a hungry baby watching Baywatch.
Then I heard it, a thud about twenty feet behind the pit. We raced towards the noise and began searching fervently for the little glass ball that had just hit the ground. Ten minutes of crawling through the grass resulted in two little boys empty handed and heading a back to the pit for another go. We only had three more cans, and I didn’t want to share my marble. So the last three cans were thrown in one at a time so we could focus on finding only one marble after each can popped.
The first one… “boom, shatter”. Damn. The second one… “boom, ping”… that was new. We waited for sound of the thud, once it hit we ran toward the sound. Surprisingly, this one was just lying on a small mound of dirt. Turned out the noise was the marble skinning against the edge of the pit wall on its way to freedom, it knocked out a small sliver of glass, but it was still whole and counted as one for Mike. The last one sounded a lot like the first one, but when we walked back to the pit we noticed that half of a marble was sitting just outside of it. Mike called dibs. His logic was since he had two pieces that were both missing bits then he should get the two damaged marbles to make up for the one whole one that I had. I wanted to argue his logic, but at the time I really could find no flaw in it.
With the cans all gone and each of us with a trophy, we headed back to the shop to see if there was anything else we could throw in the “still very active and ready to burn” pit. There were no more spray paint cans left in the trash, but we did manage to find one can of WD-40. The spray nozzle had broken off sending the can to the trash way before its time was up. The best part, the can was almost completely full. I felt a little like the first time I fed my dog Peanuts peanut butter, he had no idea what it was, but he sure enjoyed the hell out it. Since the can was almost full, this meant only one thing… run as fast as possible once we threw it in the pit. We had even set up some cardboard boxes to hide under with eye holes cut out so we could watch what happened in safety.
It took about five minutes for the magic to take place, which, when hiding in a cardboard box, waiting patiently is equivalent of spending three hours looking at a spreadsheet on an Apple IIe full of someone else’s tax receipts from the 1970’s. Three minutes in, we were talking about it being a dud, suggesting to the other to go check it out. It wasn’t until we had gotten out of our cardboard fortress of protection and took a step toward the pit that the can’s hard metal shell breached and its contents blew.
A fireball filled the entire pit and shot about fifteen feet out of the open top. It wasn’t terribly loud, but the flame and cloud of black smoke that billowed out was anything but stealthy. It was time to get back to the shop and hang out with an adult that would vouch for us being good kids in the event anyone showed up asking questions, because someone was bound to show up. In fact, in less than a minute of us getting back to the shop door we saw a the janitor, the one that always scared the bejesus out of me by just looking at me, walking toward the pit with a very angry look on his face.
As he stood next to the pit, his hands on his hips, he looked around for some evil doer to come out and fess up. This was our cue to walk back in the shop and find something else to do… like clean the paint off our new round shiny treasure. As we were drying off our hands and marbles with the course brown paper towels that all wood shops at every high school is required by law to use, we both agreed that the day had held the coolest thing either of us had ever seen, and made a pact not to ever tell mom or dad about it, and we haven’t to this day… well, unless they just read this Smirk, in which case… Mom, Dad… it was all Mike idea, I swear!
Sadly, ever since that “marble in a can” day the pit always had supervision whenever we would go check it out during “burn days”. It was like the trying to get past the Black Gate to get to Mount Doom. In truth it probably saved us from at least a handful or eyebrow grow-back sessions, and possibly the loss of a digit or two. So to the scary janitor that was assigned to keep an eye on the burning trash, thanks for keeping us safe… from ourselves. Eventually, they took out the old burning station and converted the school dump into the bus storage field… but the buses had all sorts of treasures in them, so it was a pretty good trade off. Of course, that’s an entirely different story.
This was one of many bad for the sake of “cool” experiences I’ve had during my life, and I’ll admit, when I look back, I’m impressed I’m still here… and thankful as well. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a thing.
I’m convinced everyone has at least one, “… and I’m still here” stories from their youth, I’d love to hear one of yours.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: marbles, spray paint can marbles, kid searching in grass, burning trash, kids in cardboard box, and the Black Gate.
It always seems to happen, once a year my immune system decides to go on holiday and I catch a cold that keeps me on a strict regiment of cold medicine and unconsciousness. Due to being under the influence of night time cold medicine, but at a state of consciousness that my mind is sure I’ve had enough sleep for the day, I figured I’d get this week’s Smirk created and shared, before the sleepiness comes for me again.
