Internet problems

I got up really late this morning. And even after I woke up, I stayed in my bed for hours, just kind of tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling, not able to summon the will to stand up and get going. I reached for my cell phone and killed another hour or two on the mobile Internet. It’s gotten to the point where I can stay on the Internet indefinitely, not doing anything at all. I’ll go through my Facebook news feed, reading the statuses of my Facebook friends, a lot of people I haven’t even spoken to in years, just kind of indirectly keeping tabs on everybody’s lives.

And it’s weird because a lot of people don’t really use Facebook anymore. Or if they use it, they only lurk in the background, they’re not actually posting daily content. So it’s just this weird mix of friends, relatives, people that I went to school with twenty years ago, people that I’ve worked with ten years ago. And so I can always waste ten or fifteen minutes scrolling all the way the down, keep scrolling, keep loading more stories.

Then to Twitter. I’m really bad at Twitter. As in, I’m not really actively involved. I’m following something like seventy people, but I don’t really know how I chose those seventy. I’ll follow people on a whim, usually because Twitter suggests it. When I first started using it, I’d see a funny Twitter joke and I’d be like, “Ha! Follow!” only to realize that maybe that was the one funny thing that this person ever wrote in an otherwise boring list of daily nonsense. Like why am I following Ensign Wesley Crusher from Star Trek? If I ever tweeted out, “I’m drinking an IPA!” that would be a huge waste of everybody’s time. But Wil Wheaton does it and somehow I’m reading about it. I guess Twitter is really just like a backup Facebook, like if I’m very bored and I seriously just want time to disappear I’ll go through the feeds of all of these people that I really don’t have any connections to at all in real life.

And look at that, Reddit has a mobile app too. Whereas Facebook and Twitter are perfect for eliminating time in ten to fifteen minute chunks, Reddit is a great way to make a whole day vanish, as if you never had off in the first place. Let’s just look at stupid pictures and lame jokes, but indefinitely, a never ending sea of blue links to be clicked and mindlessly consumed. I sometimes have to make it a conscious activity just to refrain from even going to the home page, it’s that dangerous.

The worst part is, if and when I ever pry myself away from Reddit, I’ll get all anxious, looking at the clock, seeing how I’ve let the day totally slip away, something I had, time that I’ve lost that I’ll never get back. I’ll jump up, not standing up entirely, but I’ll leap up in bed and think, I’ve got to do something here, I’ve got to get going. But then I’ll look at my phone again. Well, after I check Facebook. I’ve been on Twitter and Reddit for so long that by now there has to be a whole new list of status updates to scroll through. And the process repeats itself.

There’s no escape. It’s not like I can just not have a phone. What am I supposed to do? How do I turn it all off? I can’t. I don’t know what else I’d do. And I can’t even turn to anybody or anything for any guidance. History doesn’t have any advice. We’re in new territory here. The great minds of humanity never had to deal with such bullshit problems like Facebook and Reddit. How can Plato or Socrates or any of the other great philosophers help me out when I can’t even get through a whole sentence without being distracted by the email sound going off on my iPhone? And look at that, it’s junk mail! What a surprise!

There’s no going back. We can’t turn off progress. But there’s got to be a better way.

Assert yourself. Get aggressive.

Sometimes you’ve got to really assert yourself, you’ve got to get really aggressive. Like when you’re on line at the post office, and it’s one of those lines that’s just snaking all the way around the poles, those fabric strips that come out of the poles, is there a name for those things? Line formers? Am I making myself clear here? They use them at airports. Like you’ll be waiting forever to give your passport to the ticket lady so she can take your baggage. But maneuvering around those line formers, with all of your suitcases, and your luggage. Is there a protocol? What’s the protocol? What’s the protocol for when you’re on one of those lines, it’s moving so slowly, and maybe you’re having some trouble getting your two rolling suitcases around the corner, and there’s a guy right behind you, he’s only got a carry-on, and so when you both round the corner, all of the sudden this guy’s standing not behind you, but next to you, and he’s creeping up. Now there’s another turn coming up. Does this guy think he’s going to weasel his way ahead? Just because he’s only got one small bag? And to be perfectly honest, the bag looks a little big, like he probably should be checking it in. And you know you’re going to get on the plane and of course this guy’s going to be sitting right in front of you, and his oversized carry-on, it’s going to take up way too much space in the overhead compartment.

But assert yourself. Get aggressive. At least passive aggressive. As you go to round that second corner, maybe try to block him with one of your rolling bags. Maybe knock over one of the line formers, try to make it look like he knocked it over, and when the airline representative comes over, she’s not saying anything yet, just kind of walking over as a result of the line former falling down, the fabric’s stretching, compromising the integrity of not just this pole, but potentially the entire zigzagged line. And right as she’s about to say something like, “What’s going on here?” you point to that guy, Mr. I’m-Such-A-Great-Packer-I-Don’t-Have-To-Respect-My-Fellow-Line-Waiters, and you say, “He did it.” Watch. That guy’s going to be taking a special trip to the TSA security office.

That guy’s in trouble. That guy might end up on some sort of a problem list. But what about all of these little kids? If you had little kids, you might think to yourself, this would be a lot easier. It might seem harder, having to navigate them plus your luggage plus your kids’ luggage. Think about it, kids are always knocking over those line formers. Or they’re pulling out the fabric. Or they’re jumping under the fabric, back and forth, knocking somebody else’s luggage into a line former, a TSA guy shows up, “I’m sorry sir, you’re going to have to come with us,” every mess these kids make, whoever they bump into, it’s like, “Did you just get knocked into by some kid? Yeah, you’re going to have to come with us.” And then finally after you’ve fended off the carry-on guy – you were very assertive! – you still can’t get your kids to sit still, to just stop running around and wait in line, please. So they stand quiet, for a minute, because you yelled at them, but every time they get to a new line former they silently unclip the fabric and it zips all the way back into the pole. And then you have to try to fix it. And that’s when the airline representative is going to turn on you. It’s unavoidable.

But wasn’t I talking about the post office? It’s all very similar, just no TSA. And I don’t know how your post office is laid out, but at mine there used to be this shortcut line, like if you were just picking up a package, you didn’t have to wait on the general line. But they’ve since done away with that, and now everybody waits. So you’ll be waiting for ten, fifteen, forty-five minutes when you see somebody just head right over to the last window, like pretending that they didn’t know the express line has since been eliminated, and nobody’s saying anything, not a clerk, no other line waiters.

You’ve got to get aggressive. You’ve got to assert yourself into the situation, tell that guy, “Listen buddy, back of the line, all right?” to which he might just kind of look at you, not responding but thinking to himself, “Why don’t you just mind your own business, all right?” So then you repeat yourself. And maybe there’s a postal police officer there, it doesn’t always happen, but they make rounds to the branches every now and then, and he might come over and be like, “What’s the problem?” so you can say something like, “No, I was just asking this guy where he gets his fireworks shipped in from,” and the postal police guy won’t even say anything, he’ll just look at the line cutter and point to that door in the corner, like let’s go have a little chat in that office over there, OK?

Snacks, pants, fruit roll-ups

I need to get a snack. I’m starving here. Breakfast didn’t cut it this morning. And I ate it at eleven, so I can’t justifiably go out for lunch already. Maybe I’ll have lunch at like three, three-thirty. Dinner? Close to eleven. I’ve got to start getting breakfast ready a little earlier. Lately I’ve been getting into this bad habit of going to the deli and buying those giant black-and-white cookies as a snack. Sometimes like twice a day. That amount of sugar can’t be good, for anybody, I don’t care how much running around I do to try and justify that much snacking. Also, it can add up to be an expensive habit. Cookies. Sugar. Eggs. Black and white frosting. Three fifty please. Here you go sir. See you in five minutes.

I need to iron my pants. Whenever I’m done with work I always just put them in my backpack and change into my jeans. Fine, but then I leave them in there, all night, overnight, and then I’m running late for work the next day, I just grab my backpack, I haven’t even touched it since I threw it on the ground when I walked in. That’s OK. I mean, it’s not great, not ideal, but it’s all right. I have this patented method of putting my clothes in my backpack. Instead of folding my clothes, I stretch them out slightly and then roll them up. That way I just unroll them the next day, in case I forget to unpack everything when I get home, which I always do, another bad habit, just like the bad eleven o’clock breakfast habit. By the way, it’s not really patented, the roll up method, or maybe it is, I don’t know, but it’s not patented by me. I just always say it’s patented, like I invented it, because at least one person is going to be like, “You didn’t invent that!” and then I’m like, in my head, bingo. And I get into a whole fake argument with this person about how, yes, I did invent it, how they must have heard about it from me.

I need to stop making up stories, running my mouth, talking about total nonsense with random people, drawing people into fake arguments about the Rob G. patented roll-up method for folding your clothes. There’s always that moment like three quarters of the way into one of these fights, when voices start to rise in volume slightly, and the corners of my mouth start to similarly rise, like I can’t fake it anymore, like it’s now obvious that I’m just talking for the sake of talking, wasting everybody else’s time.

I need to clarify, however, that even if I haven’t necessarily invented the roll-up method, I’ve definitely made it my own, incorporated it into my life to such a degree that, if these kind of things were to be measured, I’d easily be one of the top ten, top five even, on a list of people that most exemplify, or most take advantage of this roll up folding. I’m not kidding. Like I can pack for a whole week’s vacation in a tiny duffel bag. The trick is to roll up everything, underwear, socks – individual socks rolled up individually – all of those small things that you’d normally not even bother to fold up at all, “They’re so small. Why fold them up? They barely take up any space at all.” Because all of that little space adds up. The only thing is, if you’re flying, I’ve often time run into the problem of, because I’ve packed so efficiently, utilized basically every available square inch of space, my luggage winds up weighing in much heavier than most other travelers’. And so, one, TSA might get suspicious, “What do you have in there?” and they’ll insist on going through everything, unrolling everything, “Why is everything rolled up like this?” and then, I shouldn’t, but I can’t resist, I’ll say something like, “Oh that? It’s the Rob G. patented innovative roll-up method for packing,” and maybe a group of TSA agents will have formed, most of them kind of bored, wishing they didn’t have to look through everyone’s luggage, but one of them take the bait, might be like, “Are you kidding me? You didn’t invent that,” and I’ll be like, Yahtzee, in my head anyway, going through the whole non-argument, and then having to reroll everything, every sock, every shirt, all while I’m just trying to get through security, make it to my gate in time, I had such a late start, too late a breakfast, and why did I stop for a cookie on the way in, and, two, (remember I said “one” earlier? This is two) you have this densely packed duffel bag, what if it winds up weighing more than the fifty pounds the airline allows each traveler to include with the price of their ticket? It’s not unreasonable to imagine a heavy bag, an even heavier heavy bag surcharge.

I need to start packing smarter for my vacations. I’ve become so accustomed to rolling everything up, to fitting everything into such a small space, to being able take everything with me, that it’s too much, packing takes forever. I wind up with too many clothes for what’s supposed to be a relaxing getaway. Note to self: next time, less clothes. Maybe regularly folded clothes. Maybe. Probably not. Just less clothes. Or a smaller duffel bag? Note to self within note to self: look up prices on smallish duffel bags.

I still need a snack. I should really get some fruit. Something healthy, some calories. Fruit roll-ups? No, regular fruit. I need to get off this roll-up thing.

If you could come in tomorrow, that’d be great

I was at work the other day, my last day of the week, looking forward to two consecutive days off, just as soon as I finished this one shift. And then I heard one of my managers going around to all of my coworkers asking them if they could work tomorrow.

Shit. It’s not that I feel too much pressure to work when I don’t want to. I don’t have to say yes. But it’s like sometimes I’ll say no, and then the manager will go around and ask everybody else, and everybody else will also say no, and then the manager will come back to me, he or she will be like, “Can you please work tomorrow?” and they’ll have that begging look in their eye, and in that one moment of desperation all barriers are broken down, the invisible and, I would say, artificial authority that separates me as a human being from them as another human being.

And even though I don’t want to, I’ll sometimes start to feel bad. I’ll look the manager in the eye and curse my empathy as I agree, albeit begrudgingly, very obviously begrudgingly, like a way over-exaggerated, “Ughh … fine. I guess. Fine.”

But not this day. I had just finished a long week. I had been looking forward to these days off. “Hey Rob, could you work tomorrow?” “Sorry boss, I can’t help you out.” And he walked away, started making the rounds to the rest of the staff.

A lot of the time when the managers get really desperate to cover a hole in the schedule they’ll start cutting these deals. If I have my own scheduling problem sometimes I can use their desperation to my advantage, like depending on how badly he needed tomorrow covered, I could be like, “Well, let me off two days from now and you’ve got a deal.”

But again, I really, really didn’t want to go to work, so I didn’t even try it. I overheard him asking a coworker, “Come on, work tomorrow. I’ll buy you a free lunch.” Free lunch. That used to be tempting for me. Normally all restaurant employees get fifty percent off anything on the menu, and I feel bad going to work and then giving them some of their money back. So the offer for a free meal is cool in theory, but I’ve never really feel comfortable taking advantage of this particular perk.

First of all, I have to sit in the restaurant, like at a table, like some other waiter or waitress is going to have to serve me my food. This is always slightly weird, for me anyway, to be on the receiving end of what are my normal day-to-day tasks. I know it’s probably all in my head, but I can feel everybody in the restaurant watching me, judging my order, looking at me strangely if I’m sitting by myself.

And what am I going to order anyway? If the manager gives me a free lunch and I order something expensive, something really good, isn’t that going to be seen as me taking too much advantage of what should have been a simple gesture of gratitude? I’d feel kind of bad being like, “Fuck it. Give me the fifty-dollar New York strip. Ha!”

So yeah, the free lunch trick doesn’t really work on me anymore. Honestly, I’d rather spend my lunch break going to Chipotle anyway. Jesus Christ I’m so addicted to Chipotle. Sometimes if it’s really slow I’ll sneak out even when it’s not my lunch break and have a quick burrito.

But all of that’s entirely beside the point. My boss must have received a bunch of flat rejections from everybody else, because I saw him coming my way. Come on Rob, I told myself, stay resolute, don’t make eye contact.

“Rob,” he started. I already had my mouth halfway open, I was about to say something like, “Listen, there’s no way I’m working tomorrow. I’m really sorry, but absolutely no way.” I was about to say that. But he continued, “work tomorrow and I’ll give you a bottle of wine.”

And before I even had time to make sense of the offer, I blurted out, “All right. Deal.”

What the hell? I felt like Kramer in that episode of Seinfeld where he forgoes his lawsuit against the coffee shop because they offer him free coffee for life. Deal? I don’t know what got into me. I was just blindsided by the uniqueness of the offer. I’d never heard of anybody getting a free bottle of wine.

So yeah, I had to work the next day. It wasn’t that bad. I haven’t tried the wine yet. I think I’m scared to open it up and taste it. The whole thing seems so illicit, like what’s wrong with me that I can be instantly convinced to turn on my own convictions for a bottle of wine? It better be a good wine. I know that it’s going to be a mind game, like that first sip, regardless of what my tongue experiences, my brain’s going to override, saying, “Yes. This is good. Yup. This is great. This was totally worth it.” Although, I also know that, after it’s done, that same brain is going to second-guess itself, “I guess. Was it good? I don’t know. It was OK. It was, you know, it was winey,” and I’ll be left confused, unfulfilled. So yeah, I’m just staring at it, maybe I’ll never drink it. Maybe next time I’ll hold out until they offer me a bottle of bourbon.

Gridlock

Everyone’s always complaining about gridlock, about political gridlock, how we can’t get anything done because everything moves so slowly, so inefficiently. What’s the answer? I think the answer is more gridlock. Think about it, think about real gridlock, like traffic. Say it takes you two hours to get to work. That sucks, but you’ll still do it. What are you going to do, move? Quit your job? No, you’ll just complain about how it takes you too long to get to work everyday.

But let’s throw in even more gridlock. Let’s see what happens when it takes you three hours to get to work. Or four hours. Or let’s add so much gridlock that movement, all movement in all cars, it just ceases completely. Traffic stops. Eventually people put their cars into park, they get out, start walking around, they look to the other drivers and everybody’s just kind of looking at each other, you know, those faces like, “Huh? What’s going on? Can you believe this?”

Believe it. Three hours pass. Four, five, the sun starts to set. Nobody wants to leave their car right there, stuck in traffic on the expressway, but what are you going to do, starve? Are you going to go to the bathroom right there, right outside your car door? No, your car’s going to run out of gas eventually, your cell phone’s going to die. Just follow everybody else out of there, walking toward the nearest exit.

And then you make it to that exit and you look around, everybody’s looking around, the traffic is just as bad off the expressway, cars at a total standstill, not an inch for any vehicle to maneuver anywhere. The gridlock is absolute. So you start heading, which way? How long is it going to take to get somewhere, to get back?

Finally you get home, dirty, tired, you open the front door and your body just starts kind of breaking down on itself. You’re not even that big of a crier, but it’s like the weeping has started somewhere deep within, like your muscles are sobbing, and you just want to take a shower, get some rest.

And the gridlock never clears up. It’s like you open the door and all you can hear are police car sirens, fire trucks blaring their horns, like it’s going to do something, like the noise is going to cut through to the source of the traffic. Soon all of the delis are out of groceries and your neighbors start hoarding bottled water and batteries.

So everybody, not knowing what to do, they turn on their TVs, and it’s the mayor, it’s your governor, the President. The gridlock is everywhere, the traffic taking up literally every available inch of maneuverable space in the country. So taking some executive action, the President hires wrecking crews, strong men, anybody out there with a wrench, some tools. “Get out there,” he tells us, “just start taking apart cars, hauling everything to the side of the road. Let’s get this done.”

And that’s it I guess. Cars would start to be dismantled and people would make sure nothing like this happens ever again. Because things can’t start to get better unless they start to get unbearable first. Nobody’s going to stop buying gas at five, six, seven dollars a gallon. But five thousand dollars a gallon? Eight million dollars for a college education? Forty-eight hour lines to vote? Yeah, once it gets that bad, somebody will figure out something. We’ll all demand that somebody figures out something. But just keeping things the way they are, yeah, a two hour commute to work sucks, but we’ll all just complain, everybody gets used to complaining, everything slowly getting worse.