Professor Yeti

Recently I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, a wonderful pop science survey of recent research in psychology. While the book never addresses spirituality, it inspired much layman’s hypothesizing, which inevitably cross-pollinated with my habitually mystical musings. One of the resulting hybrid blossoms was this: I think, from a psychological perspective, that invoking deities or spiritual beings could actually influence reality.

Let’s rewind. The findings in Blink support the idea that what we think consciously and what we perceive unconsciously can significantly affect our actions. Scientists at New York University found that by sprinkling cue words in “scrambled-sentence tests,” they influenced test subjects’ behavior: after certain tests, for example, the subjects walked more slowly or acted more politely. Words can “prime” our subconscious toward acting in certain ways.

Prayers and religious verses likely work the same way. They immediately shift the “mode” in which the reader or listener is thinking, and, over time, the cumulative effect is to make that spiritual mode more the norm. In the much-publicized brain science conference in which the Dalai Lama took part, Richard Davidson proposed that monks’ years of meditating had actually changed the structure of their brains. The brains’ adaptability, both in the short term and the long term, could be influenced directly by spiritual practices.

But where do gods come in? One study in Blink found that a simple instruction caused one group of students to perform significantly better on Trivial Pursuit questions than the control group. The first group simply spent “five minutes beforehand to think about what it would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind.” If what this suggests is true, it is a momentous discovery. If focusing your mind on a personification of a certain quality (such as a professor) can enhance that quality in yourself, this act could naturally include supernatural beings such as spirits, saints, and gods. If it could work with Einstein, why wouldn’t it work with Athena, goddess of wisdom? Or with Ares, while gearing up for a battle? Maybe “What Would Jesus Do?” is a powerful thing to keep in mind, despite being clichéd. Maybe poetic invocations of the Muse really do make poetry flow more freely from poets’ fingertips.

A question which quickly arises is: if praying and thinking about Jesus makes you more like Jesus, why are there so many people full of hate in Jesus’ name? My hunch is that chanting “God Hates Fags,” or dreaming eagerly of the Rapture’s storms of brimstone, will cause you to miss out on the effects of imagining a more loving Jesus. One might guess that George Bush summons the image of God the Almighty Potentate more than he does the image of Jesus the Guy Who Ate with Prostitutes.

What is perhaps more frightening to me than the thought that the religious might be right about the power of prayer — at least as concerns abilities and character — is that they might be right about the negative effects of pop culture. If imagining professors helps you on tests, what effect does imagining Beavis and Butthead have on your actions? Or Batman? Or the characters in Street Fighter 2?

I can remember vividly my middle school experience of reading Redwall for the first time: I dreamed so strongly about Matthias the warrior mouse that I felt differently. Just walking in the park with my family, I felt like I was in an epic story, that there were heroic things in store for me. No doubt such culture-inspired dreams have their impact, whether measurable or not. And if imagining warrior mice can shape your psyche, is it any different than being shaped by gods long present in the cultural imagination?

I leave the answer as an exercise for the scientists. But I believe this argument — that invoking deities has definite and potentially helpful psychological effects — is much more powerful than the dismissive “religion as delusional crutch” argument, in terms of accounting for why spirituality could have evolved in the first place.

And whether or not you think evolutionary psychology holds water, the idea is frankly magical. What we hold in our thoughts will bear fruit. Dreaming of Socrates brings us closer to embodying Socrates. When Edmund Spenser set out to write The Faerie Queene as an epic which would, by the very act of being read, transform the reader into a moral being, his scheme was not wholly crackpot. The thoughts we recieve could be as tangible as the molecules we breathe.

Jonathan Wichmann (jonathanwichmann@gmail.com) does his brain-rewiring at the Northfield Buddhist Meditation Center.

This month we’ll look at golf. The following is from an article in which golfer Ernie Els describes how he recovered from a severe knee injury and made it back to the professional tour.

By the time the World Match Play Championship came to Wentworth in September, I was able to walk around the course, watch some of the golf and practice chipping and putting. Soon after that, I graduated to the drill you see here. Sophie gave me two rubber balance disks to stand on while I hit pitch shots. The disks make you pay close attention to where your weight is at address and how it moves through the swing. Because the disks are unstable, you have to use the small muscles in your legs, back and stomach to stay balanced. It’s a great workout, and it also makes you feel very solid over your feet when you get back on the grass. The disks worked so well that I’m taking them with me when I travel this year. . . .

Once I was hitting balls again, I spent a lot of time on the phone with David Leadbetter, talking about what I needed to do to get my swing back in shape. My biggest issues were with my posture — which had gotten slumped — and my takeaway. I was getting too active with my hands and whipping the club inside at the start of my backswing, which put me in a too-upright position at the top. From there, I almost couldn’t help but swing a little bit over the top — and my divots went straight left. For my posture, I straightened my spine and pulled my shoulders back at address. On the takeaway, I want the club to feel light and in line with my left arm. Once I did that, all my power came back immediately. It was quite a relief to be able to hit the same shots I always have.

Source: Golf Digest

Beginning when I was just a young girl, I’ve been known as being a bit moody in the morning. Who can blame me? Most days, getting out of a warm bed to sit at a cold desk (or in the summer, get out of a cool bed to sit in the hot sun) seems like a sick joke.

The only thing that could rescue my mood was a really great breakfast. I dreamed about eating pancakes with lots of syrup, scrambled eggs with bacon, and delicious, delicious sausage. It was a rare morning in my youth when I was served any of these. Most mornings my dad would make hot Malt-o-Meal cereal for my siblings and me. Malt-o-Meal cereal is okay, but certainly nothing worth jumping out of bed for (hence the mood). If you’re not familiar with it, hot Malt-o-Meal is sort of like a shy cousin of oatmeal. We usually got the chocolate kind.

Next I entered into the cold cereal phase of my life. Maybe my dad got tired of making us breakfast in the morning, or maybe we revolted against Malt-o-Meal. I’m guessing it was a bit of both. At that point, my mom started buying cereal, which turned out to be mostly Rice Krispies or Cheerios, i.e. healthy cereals. Aided by a little grocery-store coaxing, my mom began experimenting with sugary cereals. My favorite was Cookie Crisp, the next best thing to eating cookies for breakfast.

Now I’m at a point of my life when I have the ultimate power: the power to choose my own breakfast. Within reason, I can eat anything I want in the morning. If I really want to, I can eat a Denver omelet every morning. Why don’t I? Well, for one thing, I don’t usually feel like preparing a big meal first thing when I’m still groggy. For another, I may as well forget about eating it and just staple the omelet to my thighs, because that’s where it’s going to end up anyway. So the ideal breakfast food is delicious, easy to prepare and reasonably healthy.

This breakfast search of mine lead me back to the cereal aisle, to Raisin Bran. I always thought of it as an adult cereal, one that people only ate because it was good for them. I bought it.

The first pour of Raisin Bran into the bowl shows that the advertising is right: there are a lot of raisins, or at least more than I expected there to be. The bran flakes look healthy and brown. The amount of raisins in the package brings up an interesting question. As far as I’ve seen, each box, no matter what the size, claims that it contains “two scoops” of raisins. Does this mean that the smallest box gets the same amount of raisins as the largest box? That would be absurd. Could it mean that all boxes get two scoops, but the scoop size varies according to the size of the box? I’d like to know.

My first bite is crunchy and includes two raisins. My second bite is identical to the first. The hearty crunch of the bran flakes is offset by the soft, chewy sweetness of the raisins. As I continue eating the cereal, each bite is delicious and contains at least one raisin. Forget about those kiddie cereals — Raisin Bran is delectably sweet.

I’ve heard some people complain that Raisin Bran flakes get soggy in milk. I think these people are being unreasonable. Of course they get soggy in milk — every cereal does. Even the cereals that say they don’t get soggy actually do. It’s the way of the world. I’ve come up with two simple solutions to this common problem. The first solution, which I promote, is to eat the cereal fast enough so that the bottom flakes only get a little bit soggy. The second solution, which I’m not really a fan of, is to pour yourself a little bit of cereal with milk, eat it, and then pour yourself some more. . . . Doesn’t this seem too work-intensive? Just eat it fairly quickly.

I believe I’ve found in Raisin Bran my personal best breakfast. I give it high marks in preparation time and overall deliciousness. I’ve also heard it can help keep you regular, but I guess I’ll find that out in time.

Melinda Cameron wakes up happy now.

In the past few weeks, America has watched with keen interest as the Senate Homeland Security committee has grilled various public officials on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Amidst all of the excitement and fanfare that accompany Senate hearings, however, a simple fact has been oft-overlooked: Michael Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, wants me back. I observed his testimony with an eye toward objectivity. After all, as a journalist covering an investigation of the greatest natural disaster in our nation’s history and the equally-disastrous failure of our government to respond, I cannot allow whatever personal relationship I shared with Mr. Brown to cloud my primary mission to cover the story with integrity. It does not help me fulfill that mission when Brownie scratches his nose in that way he sometimes does. Nor does it contribute to the public’s understanding of the magnitude of FEMA’s culture of incompetence when he lightly touches his chin in that sensuous way that recalls our weekend away in the Poconos. When he teasingly wets his lips before answering, with one eye on the C-SPAN feed begging me to take him up on the offer of an apartment key (because, in his words, I was already over there all the time, and not because he wanted a more committed relationship), it demeans the public debate, these hearings, and the passion (if brief) we shared.

Michael, I’m asking you to stop this madness. You’re only hurting yourself, and I think Lieberman may be starting to figure out that something’s up. I’m with Secretary Chertoff now, and if you can’t handle it then maybe that should finally make it obvious to you that it wasn’t meant to be in the first place. It already is to everyone else. Don’t call me.

Michael Barker is realistic about the prospect of the DLC capitalizing on recent Republican gaffes. He lives, writes and improvises in Chicago. Beef with FEMA? Send it down the chute to michael@professoryeti.com.

I’ve always loved the Winter Olympics. But this year I noticed a sport I’d never seen before, biathlon. It sparked my interest. Then I learned that it was a sport where people shoot targets after skiing for long distances.

Now, I grew up in Michigan, and people there like to hunt. Even so, I am not a fan of biathlon. It just seems like two things that were tacked together with no thought to whether they meshed or not, so I went around making fun of biathlon for being a ridiculous sport. I even went so far as to say curling made more sense. Then last week I looked up some of the sports under consideration by the Olympic Committee. Have you heard of korfball? I sure as hell hadn’t. To make matters worse I still don’t know what korfball is - I tried to find out so that I could make fun of it. I went and looked it up, figuring anything called korfball would be funny enough for me to poke fun at for an article for Professor Yeti. And you chicken shits were too afraid to tell me what it was!

Hey, korball people! I’m calling you out. You and I are gonna rumble unless you can tell me what the hell korfball is. Maybe that’s why the Olympic Committee won’t let you play in any Olympic Games. I went to the website and now all I know is that your sport was invented by a gym teacher and you have a net. You just make the rules up as you go, don’t you? It’s like Calvin ball.

Come on, now, even tug of war knows what it is. Yeah. Tug of War. It was a fucking Olympic sport for a while. Bunch of dudes pulling on the rope, and there was a gold medal for it. I looked it up, not that I can do that for korfball.

But let’s face it, the biggest problem you’re facing is the fact that you call your sport korball. That doesn’t really sound like sport. I mean, if you tell me one of the following is an Olympic sport: topless women’s rugby or korball, I’m actually going to choose topless women’s rugby. What does that tell you about the name korfball? You wonder why biathlon is in and you aren’t? Biathlon just sounds Olympic. It’s nice and simple: bi-athlon. Two athlons . . . which I think means sport . . . I don’t know. I’m drunk right now, what do you want from me, korfball? I hope it’s not respect, because I’m too drunk for that. You drove me to this korfball, your bullshit sport made so little sense I said, “I need a drink . . .”

Hell, you’re in the same category as chess. Chess, while really complicated and amazing, is not a sport. When was the last time you saw someone weight training for chess? And you aren’t any more valid than chess. Actually you’re less valid than chess because chess already has international support. I don’t even know why chess feels it needs to be an Olympic sport. It seems like a bad idea all around.

Word to the wise, chess people. If it does become an Olympic sport, the U.S. will dump scads of cash into becoming internationally dominant. From there it’s just a short step to Mountain Dew sponsoring it and someone moving “Ra6-g6″ screaming “Extreme!” and flipping the table. . . .

Actually, I’d pay to see that.

Ian Macleod would never pay to see korfball.

Five Things Not to Do with a Faberge Egg

1. Boil it
2. Crack it
3. Put ketchup on it
4. Attempt to eat it
5. Throw it out the window

Five Great Men Who Most Likely Did Not Wear Underpants

1. Julius Caesar
2. Christopher Columbus
3. Jesus
4. Mitch Hedberg
5. Isaac Newton

Five Reasons to Get Old

1. AARP membership
2. That much closer to the grave
3. Excuse for bad driving
4. No longer have to worry about birth control
5. Hawaiian shirts ’ lots and lots of Hawaiian shirts

Five Botched Cliches

1. Never give a gift horse to the pool man
2. Everything that goes up must come straight from the boiling pot
3. Different strokes ruin the cookie batter (or at least make it less good)
4. An ounce of prevention is better than a stitch in time and even better than a black kettle
5. The bigger they are, the harder they work hauling logs to Candyland

Dear Professor Yeti,

If Napoleon were interested in palindromes and he spoke English, he would have made the utterance “Able was I ere I saw Elba.” Truly, this is the perfect melding of general history and harmless wordplay. Can you think of any other perfect meldings – either in the history/wordplay category or in other spheres?

Dennis Peturka, Jackson, Mississippi

Dear Dennis,

Most closely related is “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama,” which also neatly fits into this category that you have contrived. There are other decent examples, though, such as the musician Madonna, who in her heyday perfectly melded the normalized Western conception of female attractiveness with religious nomenclature, making her the hottie iconoclast she was. Also, the country of Iceland, with its frigid northern climes and stunning technological and ecological savvy, perfectly melds the austere wilderness of yesteryear with computer-centric, twenty-first-century man. And then Bob Dole, when he made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman shortly after getting demolished by Clinton in the 1996 presidential election, perfectly combined the cadaverous Republican Party with the a-political, homework-shirking high school students who watch late-night television. When Dole was asked, “How did you feel the night after the election?” he replied, “I slept like a baby . . . every two hours I woke up and started bawling.” In fact, I wonder if Dole had shown this much personality from the get-go, if he would have fared better at the polls. . . . Anyhow, I believe three examples are enough.

Sincerely,

Professor Yeti

Dear Professor Yeti,

My sister and I have never gotten along. Now that we’re both grown, I see no reason to continue visiting her or even talking to her. Our blood relation seems a flimsy pretext. Any thoughts?

Sissy Kenwood, Flagstaff, Arizona

Dear Sissy,

As distressing as I find it that you’ve been unable to make a bond with your sister, I must concede that you are correct — there’s no sense in the two of you forcing each other to do something that neither of you enjoys. That said, I would strongly suggest you take time to reflect upon all of your personal relationships (positive or otherwise) and consider if you’ve getting all you can out of them. I don’t want to sound presumptuous, but it seems you may have some problems making connections with others. Or perhaps you’re leaving out significant information about your sister? Is there something about her that’s particularly unbearable? Did she cause you trauma in your childhood? Without more information, I can do little but acknowledge that your actions are correct, though they give me marked pause.

Best Wishes,

Professor Yeti

Dear Professor Yeti,

In the past ten years, I’ve farted audibly exactly twice. The first time, I was at a wedding and just before the bride said, “I do,” I let out a real screecher. It was very embarrassing, particularly since I was the best man. The second time was at a funeral, just after I finished giving the eulogy. Things had gone well until that point, but a string of bubbly farts ruined the somber atmosphere. Needless to say, for a moment I wished the funeral had been my own.

I tell you this, Professor Yeti, because I’m getting married next week and am deathly afraid that a gastro-intestinal faux-paus will ruin the happiest day of my life. Do you have any advice? I don’t know what to do because in all other situations, I never fart.

Frankie Feckle, Sparks, Maryland

Dear Frankie,

I will try to use the word “buttocks” as seldom as possible. But your thinking of your rear so often before your wedding is unhealthy. So what if you’ve had two regrettable bum-related incidents? If the incidents were the result of nervousness, the best solution would be to avoid being nervous about them happening again. And if they were sheer statistical improbability, I’ve calculated the chance of such an incident happening again as miniscule: in the past ten years you’ve been alive 315,360,000 seconds and I estimate that during only four of those seconds has loud gas been emanating from your tush: you’ve allowed noisy steam out the caboose only 0.0000013 percent of the time! Don’t worry!

I know my advice comes across as insensitive and as an oversimplification, but if you look at it from my perspective, you’ll see that the problem is more hilarious than serious, and such an attitude should prevent another noxious flare-up.

Yours,

Professor Yeti

Professor Yeti is a world-famous expert and advice columnist. Please send correspondence to: professoryeti@professoryeti.com.

According to my boss, an affinity for the color orange is a sign of mental imbalance. I’m not entirely sure if he was kidding, though it made me consider the two situations in which one ever sees people attired in a bright-orange outfit: in prison and on the hunt. Perhaps at the circus as well, on an individual with an outlandish hairdo, a red foam nose and oversized shoes.

Orange is a color that is bolder and more outrageous than any of its brethren on the palette, extreme in is associations, both positively and negatively — here, after all, is both the most humorous and most sinister hue. A man walking down the street in an orange suit is wacky. A man walking down the street in an orange jumpsuit should be reported to the police.

I’ve noticed that I feel differently when I wear orange, in part because of its connotations — it makes me feel, by association, tough, menacing, bold, idiosyncratic. That hue midway between red and yellow, draped over my body, somehow seems to project both an endearing, humorous outlook on life — Look at me! I’m wearing orange! I’m charmingly eccentric! — and the unstated threat that perhaps I am an escaped convict.

Most of all, wearing orange (peach? tangerine? light clay??) makes me, an introvert, stand out. I’m not saying that merely by outfitting myself in a particular color, I become more interesting, more intriguing to strangers; it’s not like it’s a magnet that draws people over and starts a conversation. But . . . maybe it helps. If nothing else, orange draws stares and smiles, more so than other colors, and although those stares are not necessarily always wholly friendly — I might, after all, have recently tunneled out of prison — at least there’s some level of attention directed my way. I enjoy wearing the boldest of colors because I am not, myself, at all bold.

It took me a while to realize why, exactly, I have an appreciation for this hue, why I find it oddly enjoyable to sport it. But once I thought about the symbolism of the color orange, I began to ponder its history. Was I simply projecting a desirable attitude, an endearing sensibility, onto myself, or was this truly a color that had, broadly speaking, an irreverent history and associations? In short, is orange different, somehow, from other colors — not in the technical, red-mixed-with-yellow sense, since it is obviously singular in this manner, but in how people think about it?

A bit of research was in order, beginning with the Lands’ End catalog, that font of offbeat color terminology. Synonyms would surely offer some insight, I thought. Sure enough.

In the world according to clothing retailers, at least this one (and my experience tells me that this is true of most others as well), yellow is known as “jonquil” and “bright sun”; what most of us would label “navy blue” is “deep lake blue”; green is “washed soft moss,” “light balsam,” “soft meadow green,” and “Aegean green”; and red is also known as “deep rose,” “scarlet,” and “cherry.” (This is, of course, a partial list of the myriad color variations dreamed up by Lands’ End’s copy writers.) Orange? There’s “spiced orange” and “soft orange,” neither of which I find very creative.

Then again, though, this speaks to the relative lack of natural occurrences of this hue: greens, blues and browns are everywhere you look, but orange just doesn’t appear in the great outdoors much, and when it does, it’s with other colors (sunsets, autumn leaves) or in less-than-benign settings (poisonous berries, tigers). The most obvious association, of course, presents the problem of homonyms, one not presented by any other of the major colors (just imagine if the standard term for yellow were “banana”).

Mother Nature, for one, seems to agree with my thesis.

In cultural associations, too, this is a hue that is truly an outcast, the black sheep, as it were, of the color wheel.

Blue is famously royal, and orange is literally the opposite of blue, which I take to mean that orange is the true tone of the proletariat, particularly the grumbling, even revolutionary masses. Indeed, one of the most remarkable and effective power-to-the-people political movements or events in recent history was the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, in response to obvious electoral fraud during that country’s presidential election. In the United States, in the lead-up to the 2004 Iowa caucuses, Howard Dean’s campaign operatives swarmed the state in what they deemed “The Perfect Storm.” Their trademark attire, their attempt at a defining look that would capture the attention — and votes — of Iowans? Blaze-orange stocking caps. Screamin’ colors for Howlin’ Howard.

Thanks to Alice Walker’s book, we know that God is in the color purple. Thanks to UPS, there’s an advertising slogan for the color of mud and mocha: “What can Brown do for you?” Green, of course, is the color of money, but also a reference to all things environmentally-friendly. Pink means breast cancer or perhaps gay pride. Red is still, to many people, a symbol of Communism; it also marks love and/or lust, as evidenced by all the leftover Valentine’s Day detritus you see this time of year. Blue? Water, skies, music sung by musicians who have sold their souls at Southern crossroads, little pills for men with erectile dysfunction. Yellow means slow down. Black and white have their deeply-entrenched symbolism of conflict, their yin-yang dichotomy that wends its way through seemingly all aspects of life.

Orange has its breakfast beverage, its Clockwork, and its Agent, the latter two conjuring up images and associations that are intrinsically sinister.

If a color can be said to convey an attitude, it is clear that orange is — or has come to be — a bold, strange color. And if attitude is formed in part by nature and in part by nurture, it is clear that this status has developed in the environment and been cultivated and perpetuated by humans.

Similarly oh-so-profound things can be said for other colors, of course. But orange is such a misfit color, and therefore seems, to some degree, more appealing. The fashion cognoscenti seem to have finally caught on to this, and I recently read a couple different breathless reports saying that orange is, in fact, the new black. I hope, though, that this trend will prove to be as ephemeral as most, and I will once again be able to wear my orange shirts with the pride of a fashion pariah.

Doug Mack’s favorite color is green. Honest. Send color preferences and fashion tips to (doug@professoryeti.com).

Things I’ve Meant to Buy
By Alex Starace
“A review of socks, CD shopping, a restaurant, and fancy cheese.”

This is what a fair number of my shopping experiences are like: after eating my usual noon-hour breakfast, I realize I have to go out and buy some software. Already, there’s a problem: What store has it? I assume a bookstore would carry desktop software, but since I never shop anywhere I don’t know. I think about calling Borders, but this would involve me getting a phone book, sorting through it, finding the right location, calling them up, and annoying them with the question: “Can you tell me if you have such-and-such in stock?”

I figure, Okay, I’ll just walk down there and buy the thing. So off I go, mildly peeved and convinced they won’t have it. Ten minutes later, I arrive at the store, ready to walk up to the product, pick it off the shelf, and carry it over to the check-out aisle . . . but I can’t find the software section. All the other customers are standing around happily browsing and chatting, content to fritter their lives away. Outwardly I look a tad bit stressed; inside, I’m apoplectic.

An employee walks by.

“Do you have a software section?” I ask her.

“No,” she says.

My face twitches. Here I am, ten minutes from a car, a phone, or a phonebook, and I still don’t have the software. The saleswoman offers: “I’d recommend going to Best Buy or OfficeMax — they would have it.” This is at least helpful. I thank her and start to leave. And then she calls after me, “You know, you can just download it off the internet! That’s easier still!” I thank her and return home, not especially grateful that I could have taken care of this whole ordeal in five minutes from my computer — but, indeed, she’s right. I download it (for less money, too) from the company’s website and I’m done.

As you may guess, I have little patience for shopping or browsing (even in bookstores and video rental places), and mostly I end up frustrated and annoyed, even when I end up getting exactly what I want. I have a theory on why this is: shopping, to many people (or at least to me), is like being stuck in rush hour traffic. Let me explain: I used to have a day job in an office where I had to dress up a little, where my work was humiliating and hellishly monotonous, and where I didn’t like many of my co-workers. Every day, as soon as the clock hit 4:28, I was jubilant to be done and was often literally jogging out the door. In my mind, I was already at home, in casual clothes, talking to my friends on the phone, making dinner plans. I’d happily get in my car, pop a good tape in the tape deck, and head for the freeway.

Twenty-five minutes later, I’d still be on the freeway. By this point, I’d inevitably have developed a strong urge to go to the bathroom, my head would be pounding and I’d be stuck in traffic. In my mind, I’d been free, done — so gloriously finished with my daily allotment of hell! And yet, there I was, in my little heated box, traveling at zero miles per hour on a stretch of road that was designed for travel at speeds in excess of 60.

Of course I was enraged! It wasn’t that I disliked driving per se, but that driving then, at that moment, was such a goddamn imposition (and one that I never chose to endure, but one that was thrust upon me) that I couldn’t help but get angry. It was as if my boss had said to me, “Alex, you’re done with work, go home! Your eight hours are done!” but then he calls after me, just before I’m out of ear-shot, “Oh, but wait! There’s still a half hour left. You won’t get paid for it, but it will be equally as pointless and frustrating as work! Try not to be in a bad mood, though!”

It’s the same with shopping. Once I decide I need something, I already imagine having it — it’s decided; the item will be in my apartment. And so when it ends up taking me an hour or two to actually go out and get it, it’s something I’d not planned on — something that feels like an imposition. Clearly, the problem is the circumstances of the purchases: I have, on occasion, enjoyed browsing, but only when my goal has been to go browse. (Similarly, I’ve on occasion enjoyed driving, but usually when my purpose is to drive around.) And that’s why I’m so excited about the review you’re about to read: whenever I buy things for my journal, the process of buying them will be part of the fun.

Perhaps I should describe. Now that I’ve kept the same job for nearly a year, I have some disposable income lying around (it’s amazing how much money you can save when your year isn’t punctuated by huge gaps of unemployment), so now I’m going to spend some of it for the sheer pleasure of it . . .

Socks

I’ve had my eye on Smartwool socks for quite a while; I’m not a sock person (I go barefoot around the apartment), so normally I wouldn’t be tempted, but these socks have two things going for them: 1. they can be worn on consecutive days and remain dry and odor free (amazing, if it’s true) and 2. they are apparently the most comfortable socks ever (which, again, if true, is something I’d want to get my hands on).

Previously I’d been warded off by the price, but, considering my little stash of money, I went out and got a pair. When I got home, I was so excited that I wanted to put them on while I was lying on the couch reading — a situation in which I’d normally never wear socks. But with these socks, Why the hell not? So I put them on and they gripped well — I was impressed — and they were comfortable. Nice socks, I thought. But after about three minutes, I realized I don’t like wearing socks, so I took them off. It was at this point that I began to get worried.

The next time I wore them was a few hours later at work, where I had to stand my entire shift. I figured it’d be awesome to have good socks as I stood, but I couldn’t stop thinking of the following chart:

Amount spent — article of clothing
$0 — my work shirt
$2 — my winter hat
$5 — my jeans
$12 — my winter coat
$12 — customized t—shirt that I was wearing as an undershirt
$14 — my work shoes
$15 — the brand—spanking new socks I’d just bought

If you’ll notice, the socks were the most expensive article of clothing I’d worn to work that day. Socks! They cost more than my winter hat and coat combined! I’ve always prided myself on getting deals (that’s how I got this extra money to spend in the first place) and now I’m going and blowing it on socks?!? . . . Fucking socks?!?

Final Analysis: At work that evening I felt like a complete moron and having nice socks didn’t make me feel any better. What was I thinking? …Grade: F

CDs

I went to Cheapo, a local new-and-used CD store, and sold the following for a total of $6.25:

• Third Eye Blind — Third Eye Blind
• Tori Amos — Little Earthquakes
• The Bagpipes and Drums of Scotland
• The Doors — Morrison Hotel
• Garbage — Version 2.0
• The Wallflowers — Bringing Down the Horse
• Mark Mallman — The Red Bedroom

Then I spent $24.45 on these CDs:

• John Coltrane — The Best of John Coltrane
• The Cranberries — Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?
• Tom Waits — Frank’s Wild Years

So it cost me $18.20 to acquire three CDs, while, in the process, getting rid of seven deadweights. I should have been pleased, but my trip to Cheapo was anxiety-ridden because I’d told myself that I’d only buy used CDs to save money (the thought of spending forty-odd dollars to acquire three CDs is unconscionable to me) and this caused three major problems:

1. There were some specific albums I had in mind, particularly this Friends Forever album, but because they only had them new, they were out of my price range, leaving me disappointed and annoyed at the cost of a single new album.

2. I had to flip through bins looking for CDs that interested me. I didn’t find this in the least bit entertaining mostly because it wasn’t fun looking at things I either didn’t want or wasn’t willing to pay for. I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t like searching — I want to find and be done with it.

3. Both the Tom Waits and John Coltrane were the only available used CDs of each of the artists, giving me the sneaking suspicion that I was buying the worst Waits and Coltrane albums. (Why else would they be the only ones people were willing to sell back?)

As I left the store, I felt about as stupid as I did about those $15 socks. However, this was to be expected: the last time I purchased a CD was in July of 2004 (Jolie Holland, Escondida), meaning that I have a CD-purchasing phobia.¹ I’d designed this exercise in part to ameliorate my fear, so the true test wouldn’t take place until after I got home and had a couple weeks to enjoy the albums.

And enjoy the albums I did. Coltrane’s is exactly what I’d hoped for: it’s good listening while I’m making dinner and very sophisticated — it makes me feel cool just to have it playing. As an added bonus, I’ve found that after a stressful Saturday-night shift at work, it’s incredibly relaxing to come home, turn out the lights to my apartment, lay on the floor, and listen to a few tracks of Coltrane with my eyes closed. (While you’re out socializing, this is what I’m doing.)

Equally enjoyable, though in a completely different way, are The Cranberries. What can I say? I’ve wanted this album since 1999 and now I finally have it. Basically, I just listen to the two songs (”Dreams” and “Linger”) that were radio hits, and I listen to them over and over and over. And over. And it’s awesome — best five bucks I ever spent — I mean, “Do you have to? Do you have to? Do you have to . . . let it linger?” Yes, in fact, I do. Again and again. . . . And then I flip to “Dreams” for a while. . . . And then back to “Linger.” Again and again — over and over. . . . God bless Dolores O’Riordan.

Finally, there’s Tom Waits’ Romantic operetta Frank’s Years, which is intricate and strange and has the affecting earnestness that makes Waits not just good but one of the greatest musicians of his era. As usual, his lyrics are fantastic and his selection of instruments is wonderfully eclectic. This is an album I’ll listen to a lot.

Final Analysis: My first round of music purchases continues to yield pleasure and my CD-purchasing phobia is cured: in the next couple of months I’m gonna march my ass right into Cheapo and buy that Friends Forever album with no regrets. …Grade: A

The Ecopolitan

The Ecopolitan is a vegan restaurant that serves only raw food. No cooking, no meat, no bread, no nothing. Just raw food — mostly vegetables. When I first heard about this place, my response was, “You mean, they put a carrot on your plate? . . . Is that a restaurant or a grocery store? . . . What can they do if they can’t cook anything?” I was assured that it was actually a bit more complicated: “No, no, see, they shred up the carrot, and then they put like olive oil on it and stuff.” While I’ve always had a soft spot for vegetarianism, and I like organics and the idea of eating healthily, I remained skeptical: Not cooking anything? I mean, come on.

Yet the building is alluring. I walk past it and think: I could go in there and pay fifteen dollars for shredded up carrots. That would be cool. I want to do that. And part of me knows that the food’s actually probably really good and really healthy — and really fresh. And also, they have this thing called an oxygen bar, where you pay a lot of money to suck pure oxygen out of a tube for a few minutes. It was the oxygen bar that finally got me: I had to go there.

The decor is relaxed, and the restaurant is in the front room of what used to be a stately house. I ordered a Comet’s Tail — a non-alcoholic drink served in a shot glass that consists of beet water, ginger, and jalapeño. It was spicy and actually really good. For my entree I had zucchini spaghetti with Alfredo sauce. But this was not regular spaghetti nor was it regular Alfredo sauce. Since The Ecopolitan doesn’t cook anything, actual spaghetti is not possible: what I got were literally long, thin strips of zucchini topped with a sauce somehow made out of macadamia nuts. There were also bell peppers, mushrooms, and salad greens. It was served chilled.

I was so excited that I considered going vegetarian right then. It was delicious and fresh and everything had to be super healthy. Already I had in mind what I was going to order the next time I went there. I considered taking their “uncooking” lessons and buying more vegetables and generally becoming a healthier, more virtuous person — it was really cool, cool enough that my enthusiasm hadn’t completely died down even several hours after the experience. (Though I’m not becoming a vegetarian any time soon, and likely not taking any of their uncooking lessons.)

Final Analysis: Thankfully, I was priced out of the oxygen bar: five dollars for your own personal breathing mask (a one—time purchase), then eight bucks for a fifteen minute session — I simply hadn’t brought enough cash. But I still managed to drop twenty dollars (including tax and tip) for lunch. My overall grade would be higher, except I know I’m going to blow quite a bit more money there in the near future — which is both good and bad. …Grade: B+

Fancy Cheeses

As an aspiring aesthete and someone who wants not necessarily to be a snob, but merely to be capable of it, I was distressed when, at a party, as I was sampling some cheese and I found myself thinking, “This is mediocre Brie. Very mediocre, but acceptable enough to eat,” and just then, as I was thinking this, someone hovered by and said, “Ah, have some more Camembert!” I nearly yelped in discontent — I was ashamed. I fancy myself a gourmand — especially a lover of Brie — and this confusion was an almost mortal blow to my fancy-pants pretensions. There it was: I wasn’t able to tell the difference between Camembert and Brie. Embarrassing, as if I’d just asked at a hoity-toity party, “Is it Merlot or Chardonnay that’s white wine?” (Honestly I don’t know, but anyhow…)

In my defense, however, all of this happened at a homemade-vodka tasting party, so I was pretty toasted at the time (and the vodka was delicious — thank you, Ian!) and so I’ve decided to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Before that night, I had never knowingly eaten Camembert — and it was clearly similar to Brie, so perhaps, I decided, I should take the trouble to sit down and sample both, and after doing so, if I could discern a difference, I could restore my puffed-up self-conception. So I went out to the grocery store and returned with Carr’s Table Water Crackers, Knudson Organic Vegetable Juice, a fresh D’Anjou pear, a wedge of Delice Camembert, and a wedge of Tour de Marze Brie. I set them all out on the kitchen table and I realized: only good things could come of this! I would use the vegetable juice as a palette cleanser and the crackers and slices of pear as cheese vehicles. And so I began.

And quickly I realized why I’d confused Camembert to be mediocre Brie. The Brie is mushy, pungent, wonderful.² The Camembert is less mushy, much less pungent, and therefore less wonderful. Camembert, if this makes any sense, is the flatter, more boring version of Brie. I would venture to say I don’t even like it that much.

So it’s settled and I can tell the two apart: I closed my eyes, swapped around two cheese-laden crackers, picked one up, munched on it a bit, and guessed what type it was… and got it correct. So now I can resume fancying myself as having snob capabilities.

Final Analysis: There’s nothing quite like savoring a delicacy alone, in the privacy of your own home — like when you’re sitting eating caviar (toasted French bread spread with butter, lemon juice and parsley on top of the caviar) thinking, Oh my god, this is fabulous, munch, munch, Oh my god, just fantastic, munch, munch. It’s like your tastebuds are the only of the five senses functioning and it’s just so glorious. Yes, glorious, and all this cost only fourteen dollars — not bad considering I still have enough food left over for at least three more sessions of onanistic gormandizing. …Grade: A

Conclusion

I still don’t like shopping — if you’ll notice, my pleasure from the objects I purchased always derived from enjoying the item, not obtaining it. And I also learned this: being cheap makes unnecessary expenditures all the more exciting — if I normally did crap like this, I’d never have enjoyed it half as much as I did. I mean, How often does eating some cheese make your entire day awesome? Only when you don’t do it much.

So it’s back to my frugal ways — self-denial makes the pleasure all the better, although I have to admit I’m going to buy a few more things than I used to, because the indulgence feels pretty darn good.

Alex Starace (alex@professoryeti.com) plans on attending many baseball games this coming summer.

1. CDs cost so much money and I don’t enjoy them as much as most people (or at least I don’t listen to music as often) and so it doesn’t make sense for me to buy them: I can just make due with what’s around me (roommate’s CDs, old CDs of mine, copies burned for me out of pity, the radio). My major fear is that once I start spending I won’t stop — and then I’ll be dropping fifty dollars a month on music, which is way too much.

2. Try as I might, I simply can’t think of any words to describe the flavor of Brie. And believe me, I tried — I ate a lot of Brie, each bite with pen in hand, ready to record a sudden flash of inspiration. …Delicious!

There’s a new woman in my life. Her name is Ashley. She’s finicky and demanding, needs to be fed often, and I have to treat her right if I want to stay warm all night long. I moved in with her a month ago, and haven’t really thought about anyone else since. Sometimes I get burned, but I couldn’t live without her — because she’s my wood stove, an Ashley Automatic, and she’s the only way my roommate and I are heating our house this winter. Lame metaphors aside, Ashley is more than just a stove. Sometimes she’s a third roommate, sometimes she’s a time consuming piece of shit, and almost always she’s an efficient, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly heat source. Made of dark intimidating cast iron, with a round belly and ornate feet, she dominates one corner of our living room, a not-entirely-benevolent empress looking down condescendingly on the piles of wood offerings we lay at her feet. Never in my life have I invested so much time and energy in staying warm before, and the experience has been a memorable one.

It’s important to note before we go any further that when I was little I thought my house would burn down. Someone, probably a mean older kid on the playground, gave me the impression that everyone’s house caught fire eventually, and thus it was only a matter of time before mine burned as well. I made careful escape plans for every room, listed which possessions and pets I would take with me when I evacuated and placed them in convenient spots by the exits, practiced climbing out of second floor windows, and otherwise remained paranoid for most of my young life. Despite all this careful preparation for the “inevitable,” I still had nightmares regularly about being caught in house fires and not being able to escape. “Dad,” I once asked, “can we just set our house on fire now so that it doesn’t happen later, when we don’t expect it?” When I reached middle school, however, and we hadn’t had a single fire, not even in the kitchen, I began to realize I’d been suckered into undue anxiety for no reason. Eventually my fear of fire subsided and was replaced by other, more normal fears like heart attacks and boys and speaking in public. I thought I’d moved on.

When I was suddenly confronted with the idea of having open flame burning continuously in my place of residence, however, some of my old worries resurfaced. They were stoked (ahem) by my father, who found out where I was moving and began to warn me almost constantly about the dangers of chimney fires and errant hot coals and carbon monoxide, beyond what was probably necessary. He insisted on dismantling the chimney and peering inside to check for blockage while I climbed up on the roof and shined a flashlight where he requested. Only after he gave me the official “all-clear” and I installed myriad smoke and CO detectors was I allowed to truly move into the house. And all this while I was running the backup propane heater instead of burning wood. The seeds of paranoia had been replanted, and the worrying began!

When I spent my first real night in the house, a cute little cabin with excellent views of the nearby bay, my roommate was gone on vacation. I came home from work after dark, hungry and tired and cold, and decided that it was the night to make a fire for the first time. Thus began a drama that has been oft-repeated ever since. I was determined to do it right and prove that I was suitably “outdoorsy” and “practical” by getting a roaring fire going right away, so I opened the door of the stove wide, and set about crumpling newspapers into a nice little tower. Once I deemed the newspaper pile high enough, I added several sticks of kindling in a teepee-like shape all around the newspaper. Looked good so far, so I struck a match and held it near the paper. It seemed to work well — the paper burned fast and hot, so I shut the door to let it catch. I waited patiently . . . and waited some more . . . and finally opened the door to add the larger pieces of wood I’d carefully chosen from the woodshed out back. But, to my surprise, the stove was dark. The paper had burned so quickly that none of the wood had caught fire, and I was back to square one. OK, I said to myself, more paper this time, and no more messing around. Another, larger tower was created, with more kindling as well. The contraption was lit, and the kindling started to burn. Excited about my success I tossed in a large piece of wood on top of the whole shebang — only for it to put out every single flame in the stove in one large, depressing puff of smoke. I was getting annoyed at this point. I had other stuff to do besides build a fire, and I didn’t want to go to bed in a cold house. I could have just turned on the propane and given up, but that would have been letting Ashley win. If I wanted respect from this stove I’d have to earn it. So I tried again . . . and again . . . and again. Finally, half an hour later, on the sixth try, using most of the newspaper and most of the kindling, I got a respectable fire burning.

Making the fire was only the first hurdle, however. I definitely wasn’t prepared for how loud burning things are. A healthy fire makes intense wooshing noises, crackles, pops, thuds, thunks, knocks, and all sorts of other unidentifiable sounds. As I lay in bed that first night I couldn’t sleep, never knowing what new noise might emanate from the living room and whether that noise meant that things had gone awry. What if the fire had escaped its home in the stove, and I’d soon have to be spraying down the couch with an extinguisher? Eventually I fell into a restless sleep, however, and morning dawned bright and happy. The house, miraculously, was still intact! I’d successfully created cozy fireplace warmth, on my first night in the new house on the bay! Life was good again, and I thought that Ashley and I would get along just fine.

And we have gotten along just fine, for the most part. When my roommate and I are both around, often we’re home enough to keep coals burning for days at a time, which makes life much easier. Sometimes it still takes me an hour to really get a fire going, though, and often I end up setting off the smoke detector, waving burning sticks around the living room, or revealing in some other way that I’m not quite as good at this fire stuff as I’d like to be. And there are still all sorts of new and different things to worry about that people who are used to having their heat hidden in the walls don’t even think about. One is leaving the house. There’s nothing quite like looking in awe at the raging, savage flames in the wood stove, and then leaving those flames alone with all of your most valued possessions for several hours while you go to the store or the bar or the coffee shop. I can’t drive away from the house without first looking intently at the chimney and trying to judge the smoke coming out. Is that normal? Is it too hot? Is it too smoky? How would I know if something’s wrong? Often, embarrassing as it is, I go back into the house again before I leave just to make sure everything is OK. And of course it always is — not a single loose spark, escaped flame, or errant carbon monoxide molecule thus far. Ashley may be fickle, but she hasn’t done us wrong yet.

I have similar issues with going to bed at night. In order for the heat to last while we’re sleeping, we need to make sure that a) the fire has been burning long enough for coals to have formed, which usually means that the house has acquired a certain base layer of warmth that will stick around for a while (thank you, Mr. Insulation Inventor); b) we put enough fresh wood on the fire to burn for several hours; and c) we turn down the air-intake mechanism so that the wood burns as slow as possible and close the flue so that the heat stays in the house better (as opposed to vanishing up the chimney). This is quite an addition to the nighttime routine, which usually just involves brushing, flossing, and putting on pajamas. It also means that we usually have to suffer through an hour or two of intense heat (over 90 degrees, at times) so that the house isn’t freezing cold when we emerge from our bedsheets the next morning (shiver) — the rather undesirable alternative being getting up in the middle of the night to put more wood on, which isn’t very much fun. It’s a lot to think about.

But living with a wood stove isn’t all just extra work and being too hot or too cold all the time (although it is both of those things, for sure). There’s something about it that transcends all those annoyances and inconveniences. When a person has to think so intently about the most basic of necessities, keeping warm, the rest of life’s problems often seem trivial or fleeting in comparison. In that way, spending time with Ashley is just like having a talk with a good friend — it puts things in perspective and cheers you up. It also forces you to slow down. As I learned on that first night of fire building, you can’t hurry a fire. Creating a good one requires you to gather wood carefully, construct the fire skillfully, and wait for the conditions to be just right to add more wood. Even when I’m feeling panicked, like there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done, and negative thoughts are turning over and over in my head, the fire makes me stop, observe, and have patience. It doesn’t care how many schools I have to apply to or errands I have to run or people I have to e-mail — it just exists, or not, depending on your willingness to create it. You can’t ask for a better life lessons to be sitting in the corner of your living room every day.

And as I write these words, I’m sitting across the room from Ashley, hearing her whir and crackle. Those noises, which used to give me fear, are now more comforting than anything else — you’ve got a fire, they say, you’ll be warm tonight, and therefore everything will be okay. Thanks, Ashley, for teaching me that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go gather some more wood.

Erin Quigley (erin@professoryeti.com) and her roommate are having a potluck this weekend, if you’d like to attend.