February 2nd, 2007

Brian: I am just counting the microseconds until I can go home. Bleah ... So how is your day going?

Ken: Yeah, likewise, counting down. Let me out of here. The early bird may catch the biggest worm, but then he feels like shit the rest of the day.

Brian: Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Ken: Funny, you always have great logic to support my natural tendency towards laziness.

Brian: This is a proud moment, realising that my own innate laziness might actually be harnessed to demotivate others.

Ken: I've also heard the argument that lazy is smart. It's not everyone who can find easier ways of accomplishing things.

* * *

Ken and I often have such chats. Sometimes they are more intelligent, sometimes less. Usually, we end up reaffirming that we are too smart for our own good. Too lacking in bullshit tolerance and too involved in integrity. What we don't often talk about is this sobering thought: We are on a path to blazing glory of self-destruction if we don't somehow learn to turn the volume down on our bullshit meters.

Put it this way:

Last night I was in the supermarket with my wife. We came across the toilet paper aisle (what a weird society we live in that presents an entire aisle of toilet paper to chose from ...) and I noticed that the steady downward march of sheet count in toilet paper rolls continues. A so-called "double roll" which used to be 500 sheets, then dropped to 396 for a while, is now dropping again. Some people call a double roll 330 sheets, some call it 352 sheets (all numbers for 2-ply same-sized sheets).

Well, it infuriated me for a moment. I pointed out the lower counts to my wife who hung her weary head at yet another of my rants about what seems to her more pointless contention. To me it is intelligence insulting—I asked my wife if it didn't bother her, insult her, infuriate her, that the price for an item remains the same yet the quantity falls steadily over the years, as if we were being told that the manufacturers thought we were all too stupid or lethargic/complacent to notice. Or, worse, that they don't care whether or not we notice because their product is a virtual necessity and we couldn't change the price or quantities even if we wanted. (Like banks, there appears to be an arms-length observationally-based collusion among paper manufacturers.)

She said that it did not infuriate, or even particularly concern her. It was just another example of life being life for her.

And then I tried to explain that it bothered the hell out of me because I go through life resisting urges to be dishonest: I don't cut corners, I don't push my luck, I consider others' rights and property. And yet, entire industries nickle and dime me and everyone else to within an inch of death, and do so as quietly as possible (the weasel cowards) in, I guess, hopes that we won't notice.

Oh, and it also pisses me off that most people don't notice. It just means that I am more sensitive to this dishonest shit than most other people. And so is Ken, and that is why we have to be careful to somehow find a way to dull the senses that grow more raw and sensitive as we get older. As we learn and experience more, we grow more attuned to the bullshit, not more used to it. We seem to get caught up in the daily (and ever-growing) crappola that gets dished out with greater ease and faster response times, and I swear upon what little is left in my mind as important: Our escalating sensitivity will kill us if we let it.

Because, as I said, we are smart and honest, and—for whatever reasons—have built upon our base levels of integrity with ever-more layers. And now we are straying into crazy-making territory. Soon non-lateral-thinking doctors will come by our rooms and chat with us for an hour at a time about why we are in this Home for the "Honest" in the first place.

An emotional meltdown about the decreasing number of sheets of toilet paper in my roll can't ever possibly be construed as normal in this shallow, appearance-based, duplicitous arsehole-run-and-approved society, no matter how normal that behaviour really is.

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