compulsion

. . . or is it obsession? I get confused. The screen says: 6:17 in its lean, sans serif sleekness. It tells me the time, doesn't it, that screen. Various symbols tell me if I have a text, a message from someone near or far. Press the home button. Wake it up. "It" is a device. Thank God-the Universe-the cosmos that I'm not on Facebook. There'd be more curating, checking, calculating, catching up, observing, weighing, reacting. At least I know my Twitter presence is utter, vacuous nonsense. Swipe the screen again. Wake it up. What's the latest? What is the latest notification, the crawl of lights on a building at Times Square, my own personal, idiosyncratic version of it. What about the hum, the vibration. Wasn't that it, a nearly imperceptible hum on the table at the coffee shop. Or was it the phantom hum, the one people falsely feel in their pocket even when it is not there. Click home. Or side button. Alert it, rouse it. What if I am missing a reply, taunt, compliment, accusation, headline, warning, omen, fact, fiction, question, assertion, tug, pat, hug, shove. But I just looked. I just saw the screen, moments ago. Nothing but ennui and quotidian banality. Is that it, a compulsive craving for excitement spurred by something, anything, good, bad, or indifferent? Indifferent, you say? Isn't "it" infinitely indifferent to my whims, wants, fears, validations, excretions, accretions, and deletions? Click. home screen. Nothing changed. Just the time. 6:29.  

camaraderie

Four men, all over 60. (For an inning, 5 men, one under 60.) Syracuse Chiefs game. Section 204. Common bonds, shared stories. What do older men share? Family, work, loss, youth, survival, names. And talk. Of the game. And what once was. Stories. Jabs. Laughter, lots of it. Camaraderie. Comrades. Comrade: "One who shares the same room." Even when it is a ballpark. We skipped the fireworks. We've seen enough of those for ten lifetimes. Life is grand. In the grandstands.

Sign of the Ties

I've taken up this habit of going out of the house occasionally without tying my shoes.

Sometimes. (Can something really be a habit if you only do it now and then?)

Especially early in the morning when driving my daughter to school. I'm just walking to the car and back.

Or maybe stopping to buy something called a newspaper.

It must look awful.

Slovenly.

Is this a sign of some old-age decrepitude, an icon of shabby decay?

Or is it a sign of saucy, youthful insouciance?

quote

"You have to live in the now, and you make your now."

-- Suzanne Farrell, as quoted in The Washington Post, October 5, 2008

A profound observation, really. And the quotation has two provocative and evocative elements: the part before the comma and the part after the comma.

It reminds me of someone I knew 20+ years ago in New Jersey. He was a member of a 12 Step program. He would say, "The now. N.O.W. There's no other way." It took me in my denseness a while to get it.

Vision Fission Fusion

The other day, my Zen Calendar had this quotation:

"As a man is, so he sees." -- William Blake

I dare say, au contraire:

As a man sees, so he is.

It's odd that a zen calendar wouldn't see things that way, the latter way. After all, see the whole universe in one drop of dew on a blade of grass. That sort of thing. I remember a line in one of John Updike's Rabbit books, Rabbit Is Rich, I believe, something like, "When you feel better you see better." That too. Or vice versa. It might all sound counterintuitive, but it's the same thing as: "You can act yourself into a new way of thinking." When I first heard that, I thought they were crazy, but it has turned out to be empirically true for me and many others.

Avoid Brain Brownout

More studies support my crusade, um, campaign, against multitasking.

As reported on NPR, a study by Dr. David Meyer of the University of Michigan is among the latest.

He says that multitasking causes something like brownout in the brain and harms performance and is addictive and will give you warts (well, he said some of that).

I've been telling you folks.

Now help the struggling economy and go out and buy one of my Age Quod Agis products, but not while doing something else.

p.s. For those who forgot, "age quod agis" is a Latin phrase that means "do what you are doing." Thank you. See, shameless capitalism still exists in this age of bailouts. (I wish they'd bail me out; it would cost way less than a billion or two, give or take.)

Carpe Diem Et Cetera Add Dollares

Big news! I sold my first "Age Quod Agis" product.

My Wackyjackystees Webstore (also found at Laughorism.com) is poised to zoom into the capitalistic stratosphere. I see retirement coming, oh, 0.5558733429 seconds earlier!

"Age quod agis" is Latin, for "Do what you are doing." This is the mantra for all uni-taskers universally united in opposition to manic multi-taskers.

If a Jesse Bechtold of Texas, USA, does not return his Age Quod Agis mug in the next 30 days or so, Pawlie Kokonuts clears $1.40 (which actually merely goes as credit toward my monthly fee of six bucks or so).

The tides of entrepreneurial elan are turning!

Of course, the day my ship comes in, I'll be at the airport.

Tsk Tsk, Multitaskers!

I told you so.

I've posted many times about the futility of so-called multitasking, a word incidentally spawned from computer-geek talk.

As noted in an article in yesterday's New York Times, recent findings by neuroscientists, psychologists, management professors (try managing in the real world), and The Laughorist indicate the following:

• "Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes." -- David E. Mayer, cognitive scientist
• "Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ablity to process information." -- David E. Mayer
• "...a core limitation [of the human brain] is an inability to concentrate on two things at once." -- Rene Marois, neuroscientist
• "We are under the impression that we have this brain that can do more than it often can." -- Rene Marois
• "The older people think more slowly, but they have a faster fluid intelligence..." -- Martin Westwell, 36, deputy director of the Institute for the Future of the Mind, at Oxford University
• "I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task." -- Eric Horvitz, Microsoft research scientist
• "Nah nuh nah nuh nan ah! 'Age quod agis' rules!" -- Pawlie Kokonuts, The Laughorist

Incidentally, the Times juxtaposed this page 1 story with a story immediately above it about Sierra Leone diamond miners who make $1 a day or less. I guess they don't have to worry about, um, multitasking. Multiasking (for justice) is more the reality.

A Paean to the Pain of Multitasking

Multitasking.

I loathe the very word with its self-important, mutlisyllabic tut-tutting of schoolmistress- or drill-sergeant-inspired legalism; with its hidden "tit" and its phony "asking" and its stern "ulti"matum and its usurping pretender "king." And I despise the word's very origins, which describe the functions of a computer's central processing unit, as if we and our brains were no more than CPUs dressed up in so much flesh and neural wiring. And most of all I detest the reality of multitasking.

Quite simply, I ain't built for it. Call it ADHD, genetics, impatience, zen, Luddite Syndrome, or Old School, but it drives me to distraction. (Well, by definition, multitasking thrives on distraction, doesn't it? That's the secret fun of its legion of admirers.)

E-mails, phone calls, oral requests, written demands on real paper, taps on the shoulder, cellphone messages, electrodes attached to the cerebral cortex. Sort it all out. Prioritize (another loathsome word; why not rank?) it all. Do it all now. Do it all at once. Do it all perfectly.

At work we are besieged, inundated, swamped by multiple tasks competing for our attention and action. It's almost enough to send me packing, out the door, strolling off with a secret smile. Job ads clamor for candidates who excel at multitasking, as if proficiency in this were a badge of valor, an iconic medal of honor for those bloodied but unbowed in the mercantile wars.

I suppose so-called multitasking (also termed "engaging in polychronistic activities") has its place (you sex fiends out there will suggest soixante-neuf). I suppose real battlegrounds, ICUs, and homes may be suitable venues for multitasking ("honey, can you hold on that orgasm while I text back my boss on those merger numbers?").

But multitasking (hyphenated or not) is not for me.

Besides, does the pitcher pitch and bat simultaneously? Does the quarterback throw and receive at the same time? Does the pilot take off and land concurrently? Can a president (ahem, this president) successfully think and talk simultaneously? Should a soloist perform ensemble?

I say, do one thing and do it right, rather than five things simultaneously and shittily.

But that's little ol' me. Alas, I recognize I am sadly out of step with the modern world. (Or still haven't recovered from vacation.)

That's why I like the Latin phrase I suggest as an antidote for this current rage:

Age quod agis --

which means, "Do what you are doing" (and presumably, not something else at the same time).

Now, back to work, folks!

Laugh. Or....
Else.

Listing Listfully and Listlessly

My life is cluttered, and lists are part of the clutter. Lists reside on tiny pieces of paper that I carry in my pockets, with the left side used more than the right. Lists abound on my desk on sticky Post-its of neon colors. I have even taken lately to drawing up a list at the start of the workday. It's an exhaustive list inventorying all the anticipated tasks of the day: responses to calls, e-mails, queries, comments, asides, requests, deadlines, and stated or implicit demands of disparate pieces of paper on my glass desk, a desk as transparent as my orderly attempts to rein in my rampant disorder. (I am ending this paragraph right here in homage to Lenny Cohen.)

Then I numerically rank each task, perhaps stopping at ten. Then I cross off each completed task.

This list-ordered tasking seems to settle me down and focus my efforts. It works until intrusions of yet other tasks.

Or does it work at all? And will it last?

List last.

Last list.

Lost lust.

Lust lost list last.

List lost lust last.

I just love the lilt of those four words.

Et cetera. Inter alia. Age quod agis.

Where was I?

If am without lists, does that make me listless?

Or do the lists themselves make me listless, tricking me into thinking listing equals doing?

In consulting my Oxford English Dictionary, or OED, I am thrilled to find the deep and criss-crossed layers of listing and its variants and associated forms. (Yes, such a finding thrills me, and I make no apologies for it.) The word list offers a rich playground for any list maker.

(But I will be brief. I need to pack for Berlin -- and alas I have for now successfully avoided lapsing into all kinds of blatant Wall metaphors, analogies, and paradigms.)

My OED tells me that list in some associated form or other (to say nothing of Franz Liszt!) refers to:

hearing,
the ear,
a border,
a hem (as in [ahem!] a silken piece of ooh-la-la! cloth you know where),
an earlobe,
part of a head of hair, such as a beard,
a scar,
a ring around the foot of a column,
a place of combat,
a staked enclosure (plural = the starting point of a race),
joy,
delight,
appetite,
craving,
lust (you knew it would come to that),
the careening of a ship (such as the ship of state embarking on certain courses of action),
a roll or catalog of words (such as This parade of nouns),
to please,
to care for,
to listen (I've barely begun to touch the verb forms)

insert ellipsis points here

This is just for starters. (Does that make it UNjust for finishers? hahahar!)

The list goes on.

Or could,

But I am getting listless.

Laugh. Or....

Else.