And now, an urgent message from the planet you live on

It happens every time. I make it through an entire day with my temper relatively unperturbed, I’m feelin’ good about life, and then I make the mistake of seeing what the cable news people are saying. These pundits, who seemingly spawn like rabbits, and engage the world with roughly the same level of competence, are more effective at dousing optimism than a cold bucket of ice water. Crushing hope for humanity is their most reliable skill; does congress have a medal for that kind of thing?

 

“So how ’bout this weather?” asked one of them during a recent broadcast on – shock of all shocks – Fox News. “You know, this whole cult of global warming ... I really think this is the year it dies, considering the weather we’ve had this past weekend.”

 

Wow. Just ... wow. Open palm, insert forehead.

 

It’s hard knowing where to start. In a lot of ways, it’s easier to understand why an everyday John or Jane may not grasp the science of global climate change, because even though that science is relatively simple, it’s not a layperson’s job to follow it. One can certainly argue – and I do – that it’s in a person’s best interests to keep abreast of scientific developments, because it increases our understanding of the natural world, and our place in it. But there’s nothing forcing anyone. That’s disappointing, and can lead to frustration; but hey, if I’m the only guy at the party talking about the quantum theory of gravity, I’m that much more likely to score the phone number of the nerdy bespectacled woman sipping tepid wine by the Barcalounger. This has never once happened, by the way, but my random foray into fantasy has a point.

 

Which is simply that a TV pundit is supposed to follow these things closely, and to understand them properly. They’re the ones disseminating ideas to the very public that may not have the time, or the interest, to dig closely into the matter themselves. And if they’re not going to impart proper information, then their only ostensible purpose is to raise my blood pressure to levels that would explode the heart of a Shetland pony.

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I’m a huge dork. Considering my professed interest in space exploration and Batman, this should hardly come as a revelation. Due in part to this nerdiness, I know that the “warming” in global warming refers to worldwide averages, largely focusing on ocean temperatures – it doesn’t mean you and I will be wearing shorts in January anytime soon. It’s winter in Maine, and it’s going to be cold. That doesn’t unravel decades of climate research. Saying, “It’s cold today, so global warming is a hoax!” is rather like looking out your window at night and saying, “It’s dark out, so that must mean there’s no such thing as the sun!” And if it happens to be an unseasonably warm day, then the whole argument collapses under its own faulty interior logic. If five minutes of unscientific observation makes someone an expert at something, then I’m poised to replace Bill Belichick as coach of the New England Patriots.

 

So what do rising ocean temperatures mean? Well, it means arctic and Antarctic sea ice will start to melt (ahem), species of animals will become displaced from their natural habitats (AHEM), and weather patterns will change, increasing the number of extreme weather events like hurricanes and blizzards (ahemAHEMcoughcoughcough). Turns out that’s what happens when you take the sludge left over from dead dinosaurs and pump it into the atmosphere. We call this the greenhouse effect. It’s like the planet is swaddled in a blanket of triceratops farts.

 

This is backed up by multiple reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international consortium of climate scientists. This is a group, by the way, which is unburdened by make-believe pressure from the “special interest groups” of cable pundits’ impressive imaginations. Yet these “news” boobs persist in ignoring evidence, and spreading the notion that global warming is somehow a matter of opinion.

 

It isn’t. It’s a matter of fact.

 

Somehow, a combustible mix of cable punditry and anti-science nincompoops have turned this into a political issue. A narrative has evolved that giving credence to climate science is an inherently liberal trait, and skepticism an inherently conservative one. So those who take their cues from their favorite talking head programs – who hew unapologetically to one ideology or the other, facts be damned – are influenced by politics when politics aren’t the issue. This isn’t right versus left, red versus blue. It’s truth versus fiction. And unless anti-science, pro-ignorance forces eat some humble pie, truth is going to lose.

 

I know I blow the trumpets of science a little loudly at times, but that’s only because of how shockingly misunderstood it’s become in recent years. It’s not a set of unchanging, arbitrary instructions foisted upon countryfolks by an antiquated Greek god. It’s a picture whose resolution gets sharper with each passing day. Lines become clearer, smudges resolve themselves. There are missteps and misunderstandings, it’s messy and imperfect, but the course always corrects itself in the end, and we’re continually arriving at milestones of understanding. The picture gains clarity. And then one day, we take a step back, view it from a distance, and realize we’ve learned something about ourselves. That’s really kind of beautiful. 

 

It’s a shame that doesn’t make for ratings-grabbing television, because if pundits wanted to impart something positive and real for a change, that’d be a nice place to start. A little something to warm our spirits during a cold winter, perhaps.

 

So. How ’bout this weather, huh?

 

What's in a name?

Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I legally changed my name to something outlandish, like Jeffrey Garfunkle Tyberius Dimplebottom III. This is the kind of handle that demands a silk bathrobe and an overpriced sports car. At the very least, I could start smoking pipes indoors and nobody could say a darn thing about it. “Do you know who I am?” I’d ask defiantly, and by the time I was done telling them, they’d forget about their gripe and migrate to the chili dip.

 

It would be an odd thrill to have one of those laborious trust fund names – or even something simple and cool, like Billy Blaze, or Andy Awesomepants. The fact that this is actually possible – that there exists a means of legally changing our names to whatever we want – is kind of scary in a sense, as if we all harbor the potential to alter reality in some fundamental way. I’d never be able to pull the trigger, myself; I’ve grown into my name, and even though it sounds like an uncomfortable gastrointestinal disorder, it’s my identity. It’s me. I don’t know if our names define us or if we grow to define our names, but after a span of decades, I’m in too deep at this point, doomed to spend eternity sounding like a man who farts loudly in hardware stores.

 

Yet people change their names all the time, mostly married women who have adopted their husbands’ last names to indicate that I may no longer consider dating them. As a man, I’m relegated to the role of wondering what it would be like to practice a new signature, which would have the potential to complicate things in the future, since it’s still technically possible I could become a famous Major League pitcher. 

 

Obviously, it’s become tradition for a woman to assume her husband’s name, although there are instances when this practice is reversed – New Hampshire politician Dick Swett may want to consider this. The problem here is that it brings to the fore some thorny issues regarding gender inequality, issues that aren’t easily resolved. Unlike less progressive parts of the globe in which women are relegated to secondary roles, like homemaker or Vice President, the Western world is increasingly cognizant of the benefits of unchaining the fairer sex from antiquated values. But even if a woman decides to keep her birth name upon marrying, as is her prerogative, a marriage often produces children, and those children need names. You can’t altogether drop the practice of having surnames, because then the very idea of family would degenerate into confusion and inbreeding. And we’ve already got one Alabama.

 

So in this situation, choosing one name over the other in is one of those mildly uncomfortable necessities, like picking the music for that weekend drive to Laconia. (She says Shakira, I say Metallica. I will fight her to the death over this.)

 

Here, I recommend starting a new tradition: Choosing the name that would result in the fewest instances of schoolyard taunts and swirlies. This is where the process starts to get fun, because picking a handle for a child – or a pet, or a car, or the mole on the bridge of your nose – is one of life’s great arbitrary pleasures, one of the few instances in which one can let loose with unrestrained creativity. 

 

Let’s say Billy Boogerbeater marries Betty Butterballs, and both decide to keep their names, since both families have a rich tradition that can be traced back to Colonial Williamsburg. They saddle their firstborn with Boogerbeater, since in the 1980’s, Betty Butterballs bore the brunt of brazen brutality from boorish bullies in backwater Birmingham. Now the fun begins. There’s an entire encyclopedia of boys’ and girls’ names from which to choose, and if none prove satisfactory, Billy and Betty can simply go the celebrity route and name their offspring after acorns, or their favorite brand of saltwater taffy. All they need to keep in mind is that the life of this kid will, in some measure, be shaped by a name that defines their identity. Choose unwisely, and the child will grow up confused and resentful, and write meandering rants that indicate deep mental disturbances.

 

I suggest Bobby or Becca. No need to get fancy.

 

Thorny gender issues aside, the very concept of the name is almost as curious as the languages and cultures that spawn them – these words that mean us, that arrest our attention across streets and playgrounds and office buildings. 

 

Can an identity be reduced to letters and syllables? In 1973, Elton John recorded the original version of “Candle in the Wind,” which was written as a kind of farewell letter to Marilyn Monroe, who had died 11 years earlier. But Elton never mentions her by her stage name. The first line of the song begins, “Goodbye Norma Jean.” No matter how famous she became, “Marilyn Monroe” was never anything more than a phrase, a fiction that allowed her access to a certain kind of world. She was Norma Jean Mortenson. The world may not readily recognize that, but even during the height of Monroe mania, if someone had shouted “Norma Jean!” to her across a crowded theater, she would have turned her head to look. We can call ourselves whatever we want, change our names to symbols or the brand names of all-weather tires; but when Billy and Betty sit down to name their child, they’ll bequeath to it a jumble of letters weighted with more meaning than any other word in any other language. It’s the name that will appear in songs written about it, the one that will turn his or her head when spoken aloud. That’s a lot of responsibility for the parents, inventing a whole person in the space of one quick breath. And for the child, it’s an inescapable part of them, as intractable as height, or the length of their forearm.

 

So I guess I’ll keep Jeff Lagasse, out of respect. But let’s face it, Jeffrey Dimplebottom has a certain ring to it.

 

Miracle cures

It’s been about half an hour now, so I should be good. For a while, though, it was touch-and-go. It started with a hastily devoured meal, packing away food at a rate that would shame those impossibly skinny misfits who wolf hot dogs competitively. Then came the first involuntary hic.

 

Sometimes if you stop and notice that first hiccup, give it the attention it demands, you can harness mysterious body forces to will the process into submission. Really let it know who’s boss.

 

Hic.

 

Just not this time.

 

Nope, this was one of those fits that poses the greatest annoyance to the human body since the invention of neckties. A spurt of diaphragm contractions so rapid and intense, the only logical conclusion one can draw is that the chest cavity itself is slowly revolting, organizing a biological coup on the level of smoke-stained Panzer tanks and scowling army generals. It’s maybe (definitely) an unwarranted exaggeration to compare my chest to Hitler, but that’s what frustration has driven me to. Plus there’s a World War II documentary airing on the History Channel. Quick observation: He really didn’t trim his mustache very well.

 

Hic.

 

Everybody’s got a goofy home remedy for the hiccups, and most of them come from a scary aunt with warts on her knuckles. Mine was handed down to me from some forgotten relative, lost now to time, who told me that all I had to do was hold my breath, take a sip of water, swallow, exhale, then hold my breath again and repeat, and keep doing that through a medium-sized glass of water. I tried it, and it worked, and I still do it to this day; but even as I do it, the practical part of my mind is slowly shaking its head in shame. It knows the likely reason for the remedy’s success: Performing this foolish exercise makes the glass last about half an hour, by which time the hiccups have probably vanished anyway. The remedy, then, basically amounts to a kind of superstition, a wooden cross and garlic held up to the snarling face of that sneakiest and quietest of bodily afflictions, the Evil Hiccup. Capitalization definitely earned.

 

I think I had an inkling, even as a child, that there was something odd about this homespun hiccup trick. But that didn’t stop me from spreading the amazing news. Heck no. I’d tell anyone with two ears and a frontal lobe about my amazing miracle cure, so fervent was my belief.

 

In fact, I’ve got a clear memory of passing on this water-riffic weirdness to a girl named Rachel, who was a classmate of mine in fourth grade, and whose real name I’m using because I’ve got nothing embarrassing to share, for once – except maybe her habit of singing off-key to New Kids on the Block. (Whoops. Sorry Rachel.) In a display of skepticism that was impressive for a 10-year-old, Rachel didn’t believe in my trick at first; to get her to try it took some skillful coercion on my part, by which I mean I gave her my little cardboard container of chocolate milk. Between that and an especially aggravating hiccuping fit, she was persuaded to give it a go, pouring herself a glass of water from the faucet in the back of the classroom. She swallowed it down with a grade schooler’s end-of-the-world desperation, which was somehow rendered more poignant by the fact that she was wearing pigtails and a Power Rangers T-shirt. 

 

And what do you know? Her hiccups stopped. At that point, I ceased to be Jeff Lagasse, dorky fourth-grader, and became Jeff the Golden God, hiccup-slayer, purveyor of magic and wisdom. I treasured the reverent look with which she favored me, because to that point, the only respectful glance I’d been able to score from girls was due to my ability to fit half a bag of Cheetos in my mouth.

 

Hic.

 

Naturally, my faith in the water method deepened. I pictured the ripple effect this encounter would produce: Rachel would tell her friends, and they’d tell their friends, and in a matter of months my cure would sweep the nation, becoming the biggest phenomenon this side of neon windpants. I’d be famous! Television appearances, magazine interviews! The cover of Rolling Stone!

 

It took adulthood for me to realize that if the water method was indeed a legitimate cure, it would have been discovered by now, and there’d be no such thing as hiccups. The trick works for me, and did for Rachel, but that can easily be chalked up to the lottery of body chemistry and physiology. To this day, everybody’s got their own unique remedy – some of them downright ludicrous, requiring the banishment of anything resembling dignity. I’m talking tongues sticking out, weird throat-clicking, people standing on their heads. Line up 20 people who are trying to conquer this plague, and you’ll see 20 different reasons to call the men in white coats. It’d be the most pathetic display since Pauly Shore’s performance in “Biodome.”

 

All that aside, I think I’m good. It’s been a healthy chunk of time since the last hiccup, and I’ve got that easy-breathing, out-of-the-woods feeling. But just in case, I think I’ll keep some water handy. Because you never know when –

 

Hic.

 

Ah, crud. Here we go again.

Pic your friends

 

 

How’s my new head shot? Ya like it?

 

It’s one of about four photos ever taken of me that doesn’t make me depressed. This is saying something. In order for a portrait to not convince me that a ski mask should be grafted permanently onto my face, the photo has to meet several conditions: A) It has to be taken at just the right angle; 2) It needs to be lit well, or else I look like some lurking, predatory sea mammal; III) I need to not be wearing a black T-shirt illustrated with a skull dripping blood from its eye sockets; and •), my expression has to lie somewhere between neutral and mildly amused. Any less and I look like a stoned burglary suspect. Any more, I look insane.

 

Credit for the photo goes to a dear friend of mine, who I’ll dub “Zelda” because I’ll probably divulge something inappropriate about her at some point, like her weird butt scar that looks like Don Rickles. (See?) I explained to Zelda my myriad photo phobias, and she replied that I was being vain. How this is any more vain than shaving or wearing a shirt is a mystery to me, but Zelda earned a reprieve from any criticism of her logic when she took the first decent photo of me since Halloween. And the only reason that one was any good was because I was dressed like the supervillain Rat King and scowling like a pro wrestler through layers of gauze and makeup. Come to think of it, something that goofy may have made an appropriate head shot itself, considering my tendency toward poop jokes and boob references. Note to self: Always dress like the Rat King.

 

Truth is, I hate posing for photos, and I know for a fact I’m not alone here. As a photographer, it’s often been my task over the years to take portraits of people who would much rather be eating a box of broken dinner plates, or watching congressional hearings on C-SPAN. I could always relate. And it’s perhaps that empathy that allowed me to make people feel more comfortable than they otherwise would have; a few soothing words, a reassuring joke, and they’d usually relax just long enough for me to grab a decent shot. Otherwise they’d bear the look of captives in a third-world dungeon on the verge of swallowing a cyanide pill. Those tend to not make stellar Christmas cards.

 

There’s nothing more cringe-worthy, at least for the subject, than assuming a stilted portrait pose. For exhibit A, I submit a particularly harrowing experience I had when I was nine, when I was photographed by a woman whose creepiness could only have been enhanced by a box of sugar cookies and a windowless van. Unhappy with my school portrait that year (a common enough sentiment), my mother took me to the local mall, always a mecca of fine art, for a professional re-do. I can’t remember if it was my mother or the photographer who made the suggestion, but at one point I found myself in a bizarrely unnatural pose, my right leg propped high on a footstool, hands folded over my raised knee, chin tilted as though I were a Civil War general surveying the ruins of some still-smoking battlefield. Even decades later, I remember myself thinking some version of the following: “I’m not Ulysses S. Grant. Nobody stands with their leg like this, except maybe superheroes and frontier cowboys. I’d better be getting ice cream for this.”

 

The photographer kept exhorting me to loosen up and smile – as if a fake photo-smile is in any way compatible with loosening up. That smile, the one found in countless photo albums and under endless numbers of refrigerator magnets, is something we work on and perfect over time. It becomes muscle memory; “Oh, someone’s taking my picture? Photo smile!” And we set our eyes and our mouths and our heads a certain way, and in doing so maintain some semblance of consistency, a branded image that’s uniform across complex webs of Facebook albums and living room walls.

 

But when you’re nine years old, you haven’t had a whole lot of practice at it – especially if you’re nine years old in the early 1990’s, before digital photography turned everyone into a seasoned fashion model. So every time I was told to smile, I’d stiffen up tight as cow leather on a baseball. Then I’d try loosening up, but lose the smile in the process, standing there slack-jawed like some stupefied ogler at a Vegas revue. At a certain point, the photographer assumed a rather disconcerting bedside manner, cooing at me in toddler tones and demonstrating the pose she wanted me in by straightening her back and bouncing on the balls of her feet. Any condescension I may have felt was overpowered by the fact that this bouncing movement set in motion a series of distracting undulations of her considerable bosom; it was like roiling waves in a thunderstorm, and felt nearly as life-threatening. As compelling as this was, it triggered a flood of terrified thoughts: Does she want my bosom to bounce? Is she flirting with me? I’m nine! Gross!

 

To this day, when you walk into my parents’ living room, you’re confronted by a prominent eight-by-ten of nine-year-old me, hands folded, face afflicted by discomfort and sexual confusion. And I never did get any damn ice cream.

 

You know why Zelda is such a dear friend? Many reasons, but near the top of the list is that she doesn’t make me uncomfortable, or distract me with unruly body parts. She also didn’t make me pose like an 18th Century French aristocrat. I stood in her living room, we grabbed a few pressure-free shots, and I was out of there in less time than it takes to say “Matt Lauer’s colonoscopy video.” Note to self: Stop watching the “Today” show.

 

Now if only Zelda could take each and every shot of me from now until the end of time, I wouldn’t have to walk around dressed like the Rat King.

Numbers racket

As a younger man, the transition into a new year seemed somehow significant, a major event of sorts. Friends and I would gather around a TV to watch the ball drop in Times Square; and then, as with any big-deal moment, we’d consummate the celebration by cracking open bottles with swashbuckling pirates etched into the glass, tip back our heads, and awaken hours later in a tangled mess of limbs and confusion: Did I really dance the tango with the neighbor’s dog? Where are my pants? 

 

I’d say you can’t buy memories like that, but calling them “memories” would be misleading. It implies remembering things.

 

Fun at the time, but years later, I’m glad to have left that era behind. Partly, of course, this is due to age; you can’t do that kind of thing forever, at least not without the feeling that your head is filled with burly construction workers, feverishly jackhammering blocks of concrete. Increasingly, though, I find the whole New Year’s phenomenon curiously arbitrary. 

 

I mean, we kind of made the whole thing up.

 

The Gregorian calendar, which most of use, has sort of become the de facto international standard, but it’s basically an invention of the Roman Catholic Church, whose timekeeping ability is only surpassed by its predilection for really pointy hats. Back in the day (1582, to be exact), the robe-enveloped men who ran things were pissed off about Easter, the date of which kept floating around like Keith Richards’ lazy eye after a coke binge. They wanted the holiday, which is tied to the spring equinox, to come about a little more predictably. So they reformed the old Julian calendar. Which itself was a reform of the Roman calendar. Which was based on Greek lunar calendars, which were based on some guy in a toga pointing at the sky and yelling, “Hey look, the moon!” This is all according to Wikipedia, which, as we all know, has never been wrong about anything.

 

As for January being the start of a new year, well, we owe that one to Roman dictator and Shakespearean murder victim Julius Caesar. When he wasn’t busy revolutionizing the salad, he was inventing the Julian calendar, whose months were named after Roman gods. January’s namesake, Janus, was the god of doors and gates, and had two faces, one looking backward and one looking forward, a physical trait envied by algebra teachers the world over. So January, thought Caesar, was a natural fit to kick off the new year, which was typically marked by riotous celebrations and wine-fueled orgies. Nice to know some things never change.

 

All this is to say that our demarcations of time are random, the historical equivalent of a blindfolded child trying to pin the tail on the donkey. That Wednesday marks the start of 2014 – that we even recognize it as 2014 at all – is the result of happenstance. While human beings were building civilizations and devising ways to more precisely define time, the earth was oblivious, spinning on its axis and Tilt-A-Whirling its way around the sun with perfect indifference. We’re still the only species that cares that it’s 4:07 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 27. To the planet, and everything else that lives on it, time is a rhythm, not a number or a name. The sun rises; it sets. Seasons change. For most living things, that’s enough.

 

Not so for we people, with our watches and clocks and Garfield calendars. Humans like to compartmentalize. That’s what timekeeping basically boils down to: dividing our lives and our history into digestible chunks, so we can ascribe to them significance, meaning. As midnight approaches on Tuesday, we’ll be the only ones taking note; while owls and anteaters plod on with their lives sans ceremony, we’ll be wearing goofy plastic 2014 glasses and sipping champagne to the tune of some awful boy band draped in feather boas. We’re weirdos, you and me. Okay, mostly me.

 

I guess when you deconstruct it to that degree, it’s easy to condemn New Year’s celebrations as being superfluous. They mark the passage from one arbitrary number to another, while absolutely nothing of note actually changes, except of course for varying levels of drunkenness. But subdividing an abstract does have one advantage: It allows a person to cut off ties with one era and look to the next with optimism and – is it too corny to say? – hope. I’ve never put a whole lot of stock in New Year’s resolutions; if it’s June and I need to drop five pounds, I’m dropping them in July, not waiting six months. But sometimes people need that dividing line, a looming threshold on which they can fixate, so they may galvanize their will. It’s like a boxer psyching himself up for the big fight, except when all is said and done, most of us won’t be bleeding from the ears and sport a face that looks like a chewed Trident.

 

In other words, it’s sometimes helpful to erase the slate, even if we have to invent the slate in the first place.

 

I still don’t know if I’ll ever truly get it, this fixation on a number, but that’s the way I’ve got it worked out in my head, and it’s fragile. So as 2013 slides into its grave and celebrants toast its successor, I’ll stifle my confusion and go with the flow. It’s all you can really do during this strange period between celebration and living.

 

As the minutes tick away on Tuesday, my only thought will be: Do I still have a 10-year-old bottle of Cuervo stashed in some forgotten cupboard? It’s gotta be around here someplace.

 

Wire the long face?

In mere days – days! – I’ll be sitting on a carpeted living room floor, surrounded by a dizzying kaleidoscope of torn wrapping paper and flung bows, one of which will invariably be stuck atop the head of a confused housecat. Buried beneath this festive camouflage will lie boxes filled with Christmas gifts, and although Santa usually plays his cards close to the chest, at least one of these gifts is bound to be an electronic device of some kind – something that plugs into a wall and probably makes a whirring sound.

Being a man (sort of), I’m genetically programmed to like these things; buried in the male DNA are instructions to drool over shiny things that power to life by flicking, turning, or pressing something. That’s why guys tend to drool over stuff like electric drills and televisions, much the way a puma will drool in sight of a picked-over deer carcass. These analogies may get more disgusting as we go along.

Even though I love loving this crap, these flashy gizmos with their lights and loud noises, what accompanies them is pure evil: The necessary, yet troublesome, scourge of wires. Tangly, knotted, mind-of-their-own electrical wires. They’re the most insidious plague to befall humankind since the mullet.

I keep a junk drawer in the kitchen, right? Just about everyone has one of these; you never know when something around the house will break, and you’ll need to scrounge parts from the old portable cassette player you used in 1986. When I first crammed said drawer with heaps of misfit detritus, I tried to be organized about it. I placed the items in carefully – cell phone charger, can opener, an ancient Game Boy from another life – and coiled the corresponding wires into tight curlicues so pristine they could have passed as modern conceptual art. Like those confusing exhibits you see in which someone places a Burger King wrapper next to a dirty diaper, and claims it’s an exploration of the human soul vis a vis the digestive system.

Such attention with which these items were stored. Such care. Such delicate placement. And what happens when I open the drawer to retrieve a set of AA batteries? It looks like the contents were shelled with heavy artillery. Like the rubber bands flew a tiny plane over my electronic Hiroshima and dropped a big fat A-bomb.

 It’s not just that the wires fall slack with time. Logic would dictate that, even if the coils were to gradually loosen, they would still maintain some semblance of their basic shape, and stay segregated. But no. They’re tangled, twisted, knotted like shoelaces, wrapped up in a bizarre lover’s embrace that can only be undone with time and patience and a crack team of NASA engineers. It takes no effort at all to store these items, but the delicacy of a seasoned heart surgeon to restore them to order.

Only after long, stressful minutes of untangling am I able to recover enough sanity to ask the obvious question: How does this happen?

At first, it seems physically impossible – a mathematical enigma that would blow Stephen Hawkins’ glasses straight off his face. When asked about it, most people invoke theories that conjure the work of mythical creatures, like elves or gnomes. Any rational person would discredit the existence of these fictional beings, hallucinations of Tolkien and Suess and the self-proclaimed Lizard King who lives in the Dumpster near my house. But when you’re dealing with an issue so stupefyingly mysterious, you suspend your disbelief.

It’s easy to see how the scene would unfold: Elf Team Six, comprised of tiny men the size of peach pits, assembles on your kitchen table, having snuck in through the pet door. Buford, the elf with the hairlip and the uncontrollable flaulence, fires his grappling hook toward the uppermost drawer closest to your sink; one end hooks around the brass handle, and other is fastened to the centerpiece that holds the wax candles scented like cougar butts. The elves shimmy their way across this makeshift tightrope, nudge the drawer open, and pounce headfirst into this wire-rich eden. Then they tangle everything, light up cigars, raid your fridge and eat all your cheese.

Bastards! Infidels! Stupid jerks!

But wait. Turns out there’s a scientific, elfless explanation.

See, scientists are nerds, and some of these nerds have developed something they call knot theory. This is real. The math is complex, but according to Cracked – a website dedicated to explaining weird crap – the gist is this: Most of these wires are round in circumference. This means they lack aerodymanics and friction control. Since there are many more configurations in which wires can be tangled than untangled, the laws of physics dictate that a tangled arrangement is much more likely, statistically. So whenever there’s movement – jostling, rumbling, opening and closing – the wires move, unfettered by friction, and seek out one of these more probable tangled arranegements. This is called action-reaction motion physics. That’s why, when a college student tosses her headphones into a backpack and walks across campus to basket weaving class, she pulls them out to find the wires twisted into the kind of knots that could tie a sail to a clipper ship.

Physics! It’s a gas.

With the proliferation of wireless devices, this stands to become less of an issue. But as long as gadgets need to be charged, we won’t purge the world of wires completely – meaning junk drawers like mine will continue to be havens for disarray, confusion, and anarchy.

So when I rip the wrapping paper from my long-awaited Christmas loot, I just might squeal with delight if one of those gifts happens to be tube socks.

Ye Old Internet Shoppe

There’s this love-hate relationship I have with the Internet. On the one hand, it’s drained people’s attention spans like pus from a cyst (sorry, that was gross), and I’m pretty sure I just spent the last 20 minutes in a trance, looking at someone’s random collection of silly and embarrassing wedding photos. On the other hand, I no longer have to leave the house to do my Christmas shopping, which pleases me as both a consumer and a reclusive hermit.

 

Grudgingly, I do have to acknowledge that, yes, there are a handful of benefits to the in-person shopping experience that you miss out on by going the eBay route. No mall excursion would be complete without the honeyed background noise of Johnny Mathis singing about his ring-ting-tingling; that’s always a nice touch, although after a while it just sounds like he’s crooning about a rash. And mall Santas are always fun, unless you’re one of them, in which case there’s a pretty good chance you’ll finish your shift looking like you’ve gone a few rounds with Clubber Lang from “Rocky III.” 

 

I jest, of course; the sights and sounds of the season are among the more compelling reasons to get up off the couch and into the thick of things. (That and walking off Aunt Ethyl’s Thanksgiving pie.) But every year I find it more and more difficult to suck up my courage and walk through those automatic sliding doors. Maybe it’s a function of getting older, but fighting crowds and jostling elbows to get a prime deal on a toaster is less rewarding than it used to be. At their worst, holiday crowds feel like a giant mosh pit at a heavy metal concert, only they’re more violent, and no one seems to be having any fun.

 

Sites like Amazon and NewEgg have become especially attractive now that the holiday shopping season has nearly overshadowed Christmas itself, devouring it with the flesh-hungry fervor of a rabid wildebeast. Black Friday has now given way to Thankless Thursday; rather than settling in with family for an afternoon of gorging on goopy turkey innards, the way Thanksgiving should be, many people now spend that kickoff to the season camped outside big-box stores like they’re waiting to score prime seats for a Springsteen show. Retailers have brazenly ignored the languid vibe of that hoiday in favor of keeping their doors open, presumably because people would rather trounce their neighbors for ten bucks off a TV set, and all in a kind of mad rush that rivals Spain’s annual running of the bulls. In fact, being chased through narrow streets by a bull is less likely to result in injury, since bulls tend not to place much value in the entertainment potential of a discounted Iron Man Blu-Ray.

 

Contrast that with one of my recent online shopping splurges. Here’s the scene: Me in a tattered hoodie bespecked with ketchup stains, butt sinking into a couch cushion, feet up on a makeshift ottoman. Laptop on a table in front of me; steaming cup of herbal tea within arm’s reach. Music playing through the TV, volume low. Mellow lighting. Not a soul in sight. Solitary, peaceful, quiet.

 

Ahhh.

 

That’s what holiday shopping should be like. No garish displays featuring cartoon Santas using Gillette’s latest shaving technology; no long lines at the register, where the cashier has the hollowed-out expression of someone who’s trapped inside a North Korean prison camp. Just me, my debit card, and the strangely disquieting sound of Ted Nugent shredding on a hard rock version of “Deck the Halls.” I didn’t even have to wear pants. (Turns out I did, but it’s nice just to have the option.)

 

It’s hard for me to acknowledge the superiority of the online experience given my antipathy toward technology run amok. Not to sound like an old fuddy duddy, but between wi-fi enabled refrigerators, smartphones that cook waffles and clean your underwear, and Facebook profiles for peoples’ pets, enough is enough. Gadgets and whiz-bang machines are supposedly designed to bring people closer together, but it’s now easier to make eye contact with someone over a Skype connection than it is in person. There are benefits to this – living in a digital world lowers the possibility of randomly running into Pauley Shore – but increasingly, society is a fractured mirror, and the blunt instrument of its damage is inscribed with the Apple insignia. 

 

Only something drastic, like holiday fever, could drive me to seek shelter in a cyber store. I won’t do all my shopping online; once I’ve covered the major purchases, I’ll hit up local shops and mom-and-pop outfits for the odds and ends. Those are usually the best places to find the more unique items, like candles that smell like beaver poop, or wood sculptures of Maine black bears riding tricycles. And unlike the big-box stores, these little nooks in the wall still know the value of an understated Christmas motif: A few tasteful lights, a mellow instrumental holiday album on the stereo, and a manageable traffic flow that avoids human logjams. If that was still the soul of Christmas giving, I’d gladly exchange the hoodie for a reindeer sweater and hit the bricks, seeking those gifts that warm hearts and make eyes sparkle. Maybe someday the tide will turn that way once again.

 

Until then?

 

On eBay, on NewEgg, on Etsy and Bulktix! On Bookswim, on GameFly, on EToys and Netflix! From the guts of my laptop plugged into the wall, I’ve got my free shipping ... so to hell with the mall!

 

TGIT

Thursday’s an awkward day to have a holiday. In some professions, a Thursday holiday translates into a blissful four-day weekend, and if I worked in one of those professions, I’d probably be ranting about something else, like candy cigarettes, or Toronto’s crack-smoking mayor. Another time, perhaps. Another time.

 

The way things are now, last Friday was a regular workday, and workdays that follow straight on the heels of a festive national event never feel quite right. If a holiday is punctuation, then celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday is like an exclamation point right in the middle of a sentence. It’s a headliner playing before the opening band. It’s weird.

 

Not that I’m complaining about a day off, mind you. Every year, it’s a mind-bending ritual, spending a random weekday in front of a football game, cramming my face with can-shaped cranberry goop, and passing out face-first in a dinner plate caked with congealed gravy. It’s not an experience one typically has in the middle of the week, or, you know, ever. In fact, if it weren’t for Thanksgiving, I might never have discovered the perverse joy of chasing banana bread with gooey pie and a still-dripping turkey heart. Stop me when this starts getting gross.

 

It’s a glutton’s delight, but its placement is curious. Why Thursday? Thanksgiving is a secular holiday – not like Christmas, which is consistently held on the same date each year, one determined by men who probably knew Latin and wore robes that vaguely resembled Snuggies. The placement of Thanksgiving is completely arbitrary, so even if it was settled during an era when the typical two-day weekend had yet to exist, the very nature of its genesis suggests that it could be changed with relatively little effort. Thursday is ingrained as a tradition, granted. But frankly, a lazy three-day stretch of meaningless sports and too-tight belt straps is a tradition I’d be all too ready to embrace, as long as we could still dress our school kids like pilgrims and cartoon turkeys. One of the great joys of a holiday is making children look silly.

 

I’m a curious dude, so I did a little searching, trying to find out why it’s on Thursday in the first place. The answer is less satisfying than I had hoped. Some holidays have clear and simple origins: The signing of the Declaration of Independence gave rise to Independence Day; Easter got started because Christians believe Jesus was all like, “Screw you, death,” and rose from the grave, probably with a pretty mean hangover. These are explainable traditions.

 

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that got refined over the years, and the further back in time you look, the fuzzier its origin becomes. It’s like trying to read a road sign when it’s a mere speck of dust on the horizon. In 1941, Congress formalized the holiday, which was based on the Thanksgiving-on-Thursday event that had been observed since 1863, which was started by Lincoln, which was based on a national day of thanks established by the first Continental Congress, which killed the cat that ate the rat that lived in the house that Jack built.

 

In other words, no one truly knows how in blazes we ended up with it. (We’re told tales of Native Americans and pilgrims getting along famously during a harsh winter, but c’mon. It smacks of mythology.) I’d take that history with a grain of salt, though, ‘cause I got it from the website of a horse rescue in Massachusetts.

 

If you were around in the days of horse-drawn carriages and unruly hyena beards, then I guess a Thursday Thanksgiving wouldn’t have been that big a deal. The standard Monday through Friday, nine-to-five workweek had yet to be spawned by the industrial revolution, and life moved at a pace that was stately and slow; there was no such thing as hopping in the Volvo and hightailing it from Portland to Providence, arriving at cousin Lemmy’s bungalow in time for the opening kickoff. With the average person’s social radius set at about a mile and a half, you simply put down your spade and pickax, dressed in your best overalls, and cooked a sumptuous bird for your nine brothers and sisters, most of whom probably lived in the auxiliary barn with a bunch of flatulent cows.

 

Arrangements are a bit more complex these days; life moves at a speedier clip. So speedy, in fact, that it’s often difficult to take a moment and do what the holiday suggests we do in the first place: Take stock of the things for which we feel thankful. That’s hard to do with just the single day off, and doubly so if you’ve got to squeeze in a 500-mile round trip, punctuated by a gargantuan meal that could drag a tweaking meth addict into a peaceful slumber. 

 

Thanksgiving’ll probably be on a Thursday until the end of time, which I guess is fine – it’s nice to have some warm holiday time with family no matter what day of the week it is. But that won’t stop me from dreaming of a Friday holiday, and a three-day weekend dominated by excess and intentionally bad food choices.

 

‘Cause then we’d really have something to be thankful for.