Self-Aggrandizement: Crazy Theories Archives

Guy Opinion
Filed January 28, 2008 5:59 PM.

One beauty trend I really don't understand is tweezing off all your eyebrow hair, then penciling your eyebrows back in as a thin, surprised-looking line.

That's supposed to be attractive?

Logastellus
Filed January 15, 2008 1:44 PM.

I've long enjoyed the word 'dingleberry'. However, it was only yesterday that I learned 'dingle' is a real word meaning 'a deep, narrow cleft between hills', which makes 'dingleberry' undoubtedly the greatest neologism, ever.

Lazy Web
Filed September 5, 2007 3:55 PM.

This morning, still unrecovered from our long labor day weekend of too much activity, too little sleep, too much food, and too little time to clean our (normally anal-retentively clean) apartment as it's slowly descended into pigsty-dom, Jess suggested that we really needed another vacation, but that this one should be a 'bed vacation': a few consecutive days where we never have to leave the bed, except perhaps to take a shower while the bed vacation staff changes the sheets.

Would-be entrepreneurs, if you start a business that makes this happen, I will totally invest. So long as I can do it from my bed.

Appellation
Filed May 2, 2007 3:05 PM.

In the past year or so, at least five of my friends have had children. And while that makes me contemplate my own fast-increasing age, it also makes me think long and hard - though still far pre-emptively - about the important topic of baby names.

As readers of books like Freakonomics already know, economists have extensively researched the impact of names on things like job prospects and lifetime earning potential. And while the jury's still somewhat out on the details there, I'm convinced we'll soon be seeing a new, much more clearly fiscally-driven trend in baby names: baby branding.

To illustrate: if I have a daughter, I'm naming her Palmolive. For a son, definitely Chef Boyardee.

The revenue opportunities from being a life-long product placement should at least cover their college costs, if not first homes and even eventual retirements.

Pure capitalist genius.

One Down
Filed December 14, 2006 3:18 PM.

Whenever I walk past Bryant Park and see the speed chess players contemplating their next moves, it occurs to me that I should be good at chess. I don't really know why I should, except that it just sort of seems like the kind of thing at which I'd excel.

In reality, however, I am a terrible, terrible chess player. Atrociously bad. Perhaps due to an early lack of practice - through my entire childhood, I played less than five games. But, a few years back, thinking it might still not be too late, I even downloaded a chess game for my then Palm smartphone. And after a month or so of practice, I was just as pathetic, the computer opponent continuing to easily manhandle me at even the easiest level.

Still, last night, watching the documentary Wordplay, it similarly occurred to me that I should probably be good at crossword puzzles. On this one, I even had justification: I like wordplay. I know a lot of words and stupid facts. And I secretly like puzzles, despite rarely having the patience to figure out more involved ones.

But, like with chess, and perhaps due to that very lack of patience, I'd actually never before completed a crossword puzzle - not even a Monday USA Today. So, this afternoon, with documentary-driven determination, I pulled up an online crossword collection, and set off on a Monday New York Times.

And while, admittedly, it took me nearly twenty minutes, I got the damn thing done, and done right. With a little practice, I'm fairly sure I could even work my way through later, harder days of the week.

But, of course, if it turns out I can't, I'm not overly concerned. As I did with chess, I'll simply declare it a pursuit for pasty losers, and claim I never really wanted to be any good at it in the first place.

Practice
Filed December 8, 2006 2:03 PM.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Aristotle

Friends who read this site often ask: "what the hell is wrong with you?"

Or, more specifically, "why would you possibly want to post random details about yourself online?"

And, indeed, that's a question I ocassionally ask myself as well. But, in stacking up the few reasons to self-aggrandize against the many sensible reasons to not, I inevitably remember that this site, more than anything else, is meant to shame me into regular writing.

Knowing that, somewhere out there in the ether, several thousands of you are inexplicably checking self-aggrandizement every day, I feel compelled to sit down and write something. Which, as every writing teacher I've ever had loved to remind, is more than half the battle, the writerly part of your brain, like a muscle, strengthening with exercise or atrophying from disuse.

So, as we careen towards January 1st, and I begin my standard obsessive process of taking stock of the year past and charting the one ahead, I've been considering the easily undervalued importance of doing things - like writing for this site - regularly, the power of habits in chipping away, day in and day out, at the things I most want out of life.

Still, I realize that some habits are more easily stuck to than others. Which leaves me glad that, if nothing else, I can probably retain at least one lauded by the Great Emancipator himself: getting rip-roaring drunk.

"I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice."
- Abraham Lincoln

Let us drink to that. And let us do so, like clockwork, each and every day.

Doctor!
Filed December 3, 2006 6:19 PM.

With my sniffles continuing, I headed online for cutting-edge curative ideas, and stumbled upon the suggestion for a useful piece of medical equipment: a hair dryer.

Apparently, at least two doctors claim that blowing the dryer up your nose for three to five minutes at a stretch, a few times a day, works wonders.

To me, the science seems compelling. Rhinovirus grows best at temperatures around 91 degrees, and dies above 105. So, significantly raising the temperature of your sinuses and nasal passages for a few minutes should kill much of the virus, and reduce the ability of the rest to reproduce. Plus, warm air dries everything out, temporarily shrinking tissue and relieving sinus pressure. Finally, heat interrupts the histamine reaction, preventing swelling and sensitivity to other allergens.

All of which, as I said, seems to make sense. The problem being that blowing a dryer up your face causes you to turn bright red, which in turn causes your girlfriend to collapse on the floor, hysterically laughing at the impractical stupidity of this whole idea, which prevents you from doing it more than once.

Still, the empiricist in me kind of wants to try again. Any smarter folk than I with some anecdotal evidence or scientific rationale care to spur me on?

Signed
Filed December 1, 2006 5:17 PM.

Every six months or so, Barabara Graustark, now editor-at-large for The New York Times, and previously editor of the "Living" sections, takes me out to dinner, to pick my brain for story ideas, and then to steal my signature drink.

Every good alcoholic needs a signature drink, a fallback choice at fine drinking establishments. And every good alcoholic knows the best signature drinks are those whose recipes are duly swiped from fellow hard drinkers. For the past year, mine has been the Sidecar, up, nothing on the rim, according to a recipe stolen from an agent at CAA. Before that, a Grey Goose martini, up, very dirty, courtesy of a Napa vineyard owner. But, of late, those Sidecars have seemed stale, the dirty martinis even further out-of-date.

So it was, while watching Casino Royale, a particular thrill to hear James order what I'd long known to be a real Bond martini: a Vesper Lynd, named after his love interest in that first Ian Flemming novel. In the other Bond films, James had simply ordered his martinis as 'vodka, shaken, not stirred'. And for good reason, the Vesper Lynd sounding more gasoline substitute than cocktail:

3 parts Gordon's Gin
1 part vodka
1/2 part Kina Lillet

Still, on a lark, I ordered one up while out in California for Thanksgiving. And again on two subsequent evenings. Then, this afternoon, I stopped by the inimitable Morrell Wine to requisition a bottle of Lillet for my own liquor shelf. Now, once my cold clears (and, let's be honest, likely before), I'll be mixing up countless iterations of this remarkably counter-intuitively smooth-drinking beverage.

It seems I've found my new signature drink. And, even better, stolen it from the very best.

Also, Post-it Flags
Filed August 28, 2006 2:21 PM.

Like most twenty-somethings, in the couple of years post-college I occasionally considered the idea of grad school. Then, one day, it occurred to me that the only part of school I really missed was the late-summer school supply buying spree.

So, each year since, at the end of August, I trek over to Staples and shop till I drop. It may not yield a degree, but a bag full of new highlighters and three-ring binders is close enough for me.

Correlation, Causation
Filed June 13, 2006 10:32 AM.

A large survey conducted by Esquire magazine, on "the state of the American male", determined that liberals have 60% more sex than conservatives (3.9 hours a week versus 2.4), and that atheists and agnostics have 20% more sex partners than those who believe in God (10.7 versus 8.8).

Most people would likely assume that's because agnostic liberals like myself have lower moral standards, and therefore more sex.

I, however, contend that causation runs the opposite direction: there's nothing like dating / sleeping with a lot of women to shake your belief in God, or to cause you to support your right to marry men.

Lightning Round
Filed May 30, 2006 9:51 PM.

Just one week back, I wrote about an ex who pointed out that my life seems to largely consist of a single recurring pattern: sleeplessness, illness, then the avid (drunken) pursuit of women.

And though, at the time, I maintained I was 'mainly entrenched in avid (drunken) pursuit', a week packed past bursting with train rides, business dinners, bar mitzvahs and funerals dragged me deeply enough into sleeplessness that I'm now nursing a spring-allergy-driven sinus infection.

Thanks to the miracles of modern antibiotics, however, I'm already on the upswing. Which means I should be, fortunately, back to avid (drunken) pursuit by the end of the week.

The Looking Glass
Filed May 1, 2006 10:27 PM.

`Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where--' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

I've long been fascinated by the neurobiology of attention - the interactions of parts of our brains like the hypothalamus and the reticular activation system. Each day, all day, we're bombarded by sensations; yet, somehow, we filter out the vast majority, letting through a select few. Reading a book, we lose ourselves in the pages, blocking out completely the world around us. Or, talking at a cocktail party, we tune down others' conversations, focusing in on just the words of our conversational companions.

I'm reminded of that particularly when I buy something new. I remember, in college, purchasing a Toyota Celica, and suddenly finding myself passing hundreds of other Celicas on the highways and streets. Not because, of course, people had suddenly rushed out to lease similar cars; but, rather, because my brain decided the ones that had always been out there were, for the first time, interesting enough to pass through to my conscious mind.

All of which is to say that I believe the brain is largely cybernetic. Not in the computerized sense of the word, but closer to it's Greek root, 'kybernetes', which means something akin to 'steersman'. It begins with an end in mind, then focuses us on and readjusts us towards those things that bring us closer and closer to that goal.

Which leaves us floundering, then, when the target isn't clearly locked; without somewhere we want to end up, like Alice, it doesn't much matter which way we go.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately, mainly in the context of dating, of big city romance. With so many potential partners - an embarrassment of riches - we urban singles are weighed down by the tyranny of choice. There are so many people who might be right, and so many more who might be just a bit righter still than whomever we're currently with.

But most of us, at a very basic level, don't have any idea of what 'right' looks or feels like in the first place. We drink our way from date to date, trying to guess, hoping our hearts or guts or friends or mothers, or even the Cheshire Cat, will somehow jump in to tell us when we've found it.

So, for weeks, I've been brainstorming my way through my own sense of 'right', my own list of qualities I think I'm looking for. I've been quietly analyzing the long happily married couples I know, squaring that with my own experience, adding ideas, crossing off items, and boiling things down to the bare essentials: things I can look for that, alongside the requisite lightning bolt, would leave me happily ever after. In short, a target, an end in mind that my subconscious might, day by day, guide me towards.

And while my list is still brewing, certainly not yet ready for public consumption, I did, earlier this week, find at least one item that seems sure to make the final cut. Dr. Dan Gottlieb, a quadriplegic psychologist and guest on NPR's Fresh Air, related the story of a young woman who he'd seen in his practice. "I feel like my soul is a prism," she told him. "But everybody sees just one color. Nobody sees the prism."

As someone too long practiced at playing social chameleon, I find her concern hits particularly close to home. Which is why, among anything else, I can see the appeal, or perhaps the necessity, of ending up with someone with whom I could always be my full, garishly multi-colored self.

Make a Difference
Filed April 19, 2006 11:54 PM.

Last night, I was having drinks with a few friends who work in private asset management for exceedingly wealthy families. A few rounds in, one friend observed that, while such families are inevitably hell-bent on building their net worths, they're also textbook examples of the law of diminishing returns. Which is to say, from a quality of life perspective, the first billion makes a far bigger dent than the second.

At the same time, this afternoon I found in my mailbox a pitch letter for a 'sponsor a young Sudanese refugee' program. For just a dollar a day, it explained, I could change the life of an African child.

And while, certainly, such sponsor programs are exceedingly noble in their goals, they also seem to be a dime a dozen. Which prompted me to combine the two threads - sponsorship and billionaire families - for a brilliantly outside-the-box business idea:

For just $10,000 a day, I can help those families sponsor a young New Yorker. (Namely, me. Though, not being greedy, I'm totally happy to start a list for other such civically-minded volunteers should a sufficient number of sponsoring families take the call to action.)

Like that kid in Sudan, I'd be more than happy to write a monthly letter to my sponsor. I'd even include pictures: me at Nobu enjoying an omakase dinner, at the Hotel Gansevoort with table service and a bottle of Cristal.

And, in turn, I'd even be happy to sponsor a whole village of those little kids in Sudan. Take that, foes of trickle-down economics.

A few friends in the legal world have pointed out that it may be a long road to 501c3 status for this burgeoning nonprofit, given our near-sighted government's narrow understanding of 'need'.

But, I'm convinced that, regardless of donation tax status, smart families interested in really changing lives should be quick to sign on. I'd tell you as soon as they do, but, to be honest, it may take a few weeks to install an internet connection on my new private Bahamian island.

Paradox
Filed February 13, 2006 6:14 PM.

I've recently noted two beliefs strongly held by nearly every one of my female friends:

Equal pay for equal work.
The guy pays on the first date.

Sorry, ladies; choose one.

Stuff It
Filed December 28, 2005 5:28 PM.

If it's Christmas, it's also annual 'sinuses full of snot week', a joyous holiday marked with much tissue usage and the consumption of bowl after bowl of chicken soup.

I'm celebrating thusly myself, and have noted that friends around the blogosphere are sharing in the fun as well. So, to everyone colded, flued, or sinus infectioned, take solace in the collective nature of our pain. Misery, as they say, loves company.

Intern-tainment
Filed July 19, 2005 4:43 PM.

For a while, I've thought about getting goldfish, or maybe an ant farm. Today, however, I realized it's far easier to plug in an iSight camera, point it at Cyan's interns, and watch them on live video stream in a corner of my computer screen.

At least as entertaining as fish or ants, and I don't even have to feed them.

Principium
Filed June 16, 2005 6:36 PM.

I realized the other night that life is sort of like a big game of Scrabble: you get these random pieces dealt to you by the fates, and your job is to look at what everybody else is making of their pieces, then figure out how you can arrange your own alongside to add new meaning to it all.

At four in the morning, at least, thoroughly plastered, that's deep.

Vestmented
Filed May 10, 2005 5:35 PM.

[As running two companies seems to have been eating into my writing time, blog entry ideas have been piling up, unposted, for the past week. I'm hoping to start chipping my way through the list over the next few days. To wit:]

Mark Twain once famously observed, "clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." Which is the primary reason I get dressed in the morning. And, more to the point, why I try to do it well.

As countless studies have shown, the way we dress deeply impacts what others think of us, how likely they are to listen to us or to do what we ask. Sure, we all occasionally chastise ourselves for so blithely judging books by their proverbial covers. But, whether or not we should, we most certainly and subconsciously do. Which makes pulling clothes from the closet a strategic exercise. How does a given shirt make me feel? How does it make me appear in the eyes of others?

It's important enough that, spending my days the past week bouncing between meetings with filmmakers and meetings with investors and corporate execs, I've even stooped to mid-afternoon changes, pulling from two disparate subsets of my wardrobe.

Most business books, on the subject of clothing, advise that you dress to match the people with whom you're meeting. Which, like most advice doled out in business books, is hopelessly misguided. Far better, instead, to dress to match their expectations of how someone in your position is 'supposed' to look.

The jeans, blazer and vintage button downs, then, come out not for the filmmakers, but for the staid execs, a group for whom sunglasses worn indoors bespeaks a certain desirable level of cool, rather than suggesting total douche-bagdom, as it would to fellow filmmakers. Similarly, then, the suits come out for meetings with screenwriters or prospective key cast. Without a tie, certainly, and perhaps erring towards DKNY shirts rather than Polo Ralph Lauren's, but still formal enough to say, "yes, I'm intimately familiar with the finer points of GAAP and SEC filing laws."

This 'dress like they want you to' rule is not a recent discovery. Instead, it's something I stumbled across my freshman year in college. Having just launched SharkByte, I quickly found that the odds of success in a new-client sales pitch were directly proportional to the number of electronic gizmos I clipped to my belt for that pitch.

Or, as I so tastefully summarized the idea to the Wall Street Journal: "show them a laptop and they'll wet their pants."

Coined
Filed May 3, 2005 3:02 PM.

Newman's Law of Playlist Positioning: The most embarrassing songs on your iPod invariably alphabetize to the very first-judged top of your song library. (C.f., Abba, Aerosmith)

Money Method
Filed March 18, 2005 1:28 PM.

Though I've previously advocated anal-retentive wallet maintenance, I realize now there's a dangerous organizational progression possible therein. Particularly, even after a wallet has been pared down to its bare minimal contents, there's still the question of arranging the bills themselves. While the first few steps make good sense, each further crosses ever deeper into the realm of undeniable OCD. Monitor carefully.

Un-crumpling bills.
Ordering by denomination.
For divided billfolds, placing ones in the front compartment, and larger bills in the back.
Putting all the faces forward.
Ordering within denominations by serial number.
Quickly penciling in 'extreme makeovers' for the less comely presidents.

While I respect the intention, it's simply not in the cards for every president to have a flowing, luxuriant Andrew Jackson pompadour.

breaking points
Filed June 28, 2004 1:45 PM.

Saturday night, Colin held a small 25th birthday shindig at the fine Virgil's Real BBQ in Times Square, involving countless pitchers of beer, several extremely large plates of hush puppies, and Colin putting in a remarkably strong showing against the Pig Out dinner sampler, affectionately nicknamed 'the tour of mammals'.

Though the party degenerated into general drunken merriment on our roof, in a sober conversation earlier in the day, Colin admitted to being slightly freaked out by hitting the quarter of a century mark. And, with my own birthday just weeks away (July 16th, hint, hint), I similarly spent much of Sunday angsting about what turning 25 means, where I'm headed in life, where I want to go - in short, all the various and sundry sorts of possible soul-searching.

But, having observed friends of all ages, I don't think Colin and I are unusual in having 25 angst. In fact, I'm now fairly certain that there are at least two big, scary ages, and that what those two ages are precisely largely breaks down by gender.

For guys, 25 is the first, as it signals the end (or, rather, should, though rarely actually does) of drunken collegiate stupidity. There's a sense amongst guy friends that, up to 25, everything is sort of a warm-up lap, doesn't actually count in the grand scheme of things. But, at 25, we're suddenly playing for keeps. Marriage starts seeming like a real possibility. Jobs are swapped for 'careers'. A general plan, a basic route through life, starts falling into place.

The second guy freak-out, then, is at 40, the first time that we, after blithely rolling full-throttle ahead on our laid-at-25 plans, stop and consider whether those were the right plans after all. Then, as they almost certainly weren't, there's the realization that wholesale reinvention would take altogether too much work, and that it would be vastly simpler to simply buy an overpriced sports car while pushing any nagging doubts into the back of our collective male unconscious.

Girls, on the other hand, blaze through 25 without batting an eyelash, only really slowing down at 30. Or, more precisely, at 29 - while we guys lack the foresight to start freaking out early, not really worrying about big issues into they're shoved down our throat, girls, looking foreword, see 30 coming and start freaking out at least a full year in advance. Thirty's a particularly big age for unmarried women, because, by then, there's a definite sense that their friends are snatching up 'the good ones', and that, increasingly, their own love lives involve scraping towards the bottom of the guy barrel. So, the unmarrieds tend to go one of two routes: deciding that perhaps romance needn't be like a movie, and settling for the first guy who doesn't hit them or scratch himself (much) in public; or deciding that, actually, romance does need be like a movie, and that they're willing to wait out for the real thing.

This second group, the 'I'm okay with my life as it is, and I don't need a guy to fill some gaping void in it, though, if a good one came along, that would be great' group, then coasts along until 35 (or, again, more accurately, 34). At that point, the biological clock starts ticking increasingly loudly, and the sense of having all sorts of time gets replaced with a sense of having an ever-shrinking window for practical baby-popping. Usually, this group of girls has spent years convincing themselves that perhaps they don't want kids anyway, and, having to constantly argue that fact against insistent ovaries (from what I've seen, a losing battle) is at the crux of the crisis and self-reinvention 34/35 requires.

At least, that's how I see it.

Still, in my own life, I'm pleased to say I emerged from this weekend's soul-searching with a slightly refined, though basically consistent, life vision. I'm hoping it holds for the next three weeks, until my birthday itself (again, July 16th, hint, hint), at which point I'm sure I'll be tossed back to angstful ground zero, spending all day curled in the fetal position under the covers, rocking, sucking my thumb, and muttering quietly to myself.

urinal etiquette
Filed March 1, 2004 10:26 PM.

While I was at Yale, the neuroscience major was tied in to the psych department. Because of that, neuroscience majors were required to take a few 'soft' psych classes. Which is how, in my sophomore year, I ended up in Psych 150 - Social Psychology. Frankly, I hated the class. The research we studied was garbage, and the teaching was at a third grade level. When we were assigned a final project - executing a piece of original field research - I realized I had my chance to let the teacher know what I thought of the class. In an effort to mock the careful study of the inane that characterizes social psychology, I chose the topic of urinal etiquette. Ironically, I got an A.

---------------------------------------------------------

The "Number One" Social Norm

Very few social norms are completely rigid; most are violated, at least occasionally or under special circumstances. Riding in an elevator, for example, people will speak to each other instead of simply looking at the door if they already know their fellow riders. Occasionally, even strangers will strike up conversations during an elevator ride. Other norms, like eating with utensils or not sitting on the table, are sometimes ignored as well. Although the violators may be looked down upon, these violators do exist. However, up to the time of my experiment, I had neither seen nor heard of anyone breaking the strict laws of urinal etiquette. For the benefit of my female readers, I must first try to explain the tacit yet complex code that governs men’s room interactions. Central to urinal etiquette is the ‘veil of silence’ that descends upon men in public bathrooms. Female friends have, on occasion, reported actually speaking to each other between stalls, which is frankly inconceivable in the men’s room environment. Male best friends, or even brothers, upon meeting in the bathroom will usually ignore each other completely, perhaps acknowledging each other with a subtle nod. Strangers in the bathroom will never speak to one another, unless politeness dictates a curt ‘excuse me.’ Even these small recognitions are lost when either party is actually using the urinal. At the urinal, people will not make eye contact, and almost never even look to either side. Usually, while urinating, men look straight ahead, scrutinizing the tiles or wallpaper. Looking down, except when zipping or unzipping, is also frowned upon. Another key aspect of urinal etiquette is that of urinal selection. The rules of selection are most obvious in a nearly empty bathroom. If a man is to enter a standard four urinal bathroom while another man is using one of the end urinals, the first man will usually select the urinal two away from the occupied urinal. Choosing the urinal immediately adjacent to the occupied urinal might be seen as a sexual advance, while choosing the farthest away urinal might be seen as an act of blatant homophobia, or some expression of contempt for the individual already urinating. Knowing this, men entering an empty bathroom will even consciously choose an end urinal so as to make urinal selection as painless as possible for anyone who might enter while the first person was still urinating. In bathrooms of other sizes, and in increasingly crowded bathrooms, even more complex formulas govern urinal selection. However, in all situations, the basic principle of creating distance between individuals applies. This basic principle was the first that I violated. Armed with this knowledge of basic men's room conduct, I set upon my mission of systematically breaching this and each of the other tenets of bathroom behavior.

I began my research in the Commons bathroom, beneath Woolsey Rotunda. This bathroom proved to be an ideal site for field research, since the bathroom is rarely crowded, often used only by one person at a time, but still visited fairly frequently. The bathroom consists of a row of eight urinals, facing four toilet stalls at the far end and a couple of sinks closer to the door. In my first set of trials, I decided to violate the situational norm by selecting a urinal directly next to someone else. I waited by a column in the Rotunda, across from the stairs to the bathroom. When a subject would enter the empty bathroom, I would follow him down several seconds later, and take the urinal immediately next to the one my subject was using. Although the reaction that this caused varied, all of the subjects made small moves to create personal space, rotating slightly to face away from me; several subjects also cleared their throats. However, only in one of my five trials did the person I was next to demonstrate unambiguous discomfort. Within ten seconds of my taking the urinal next to him, he zipped his fly and hurriedly walked out of the bathroom without urinating.

I decided to up the ante in my second set of trials by simultaneously violating a second urinal norm, silence. The normative social influence of the situation was so powerful that I myself felt noticeably uncomfortable during these trials. In this experiment, as in the last one, I followed the subject down and assumed a position next to his. In this set of trials, however, I also addressed the subject with either a quasi-rhetorical remark (‘The weather is really terrible today”) or a direct question (“What are they serving for lunch today?”). None of the four subjects that received the indirect remark responded verbally, but the remark seemed to trigger an even greater level of discomfort than my presence alone. One of the subjects chuckled nervously (similarly to the nervous participants in the Milgram ex[eriment), while another stopped urinating within seconds and walked out quickly without washing his hands. The direct question created an even greater reaction. Perhaps this is because the question brought the norm of urinal etiquette into conflict with conversational norms. Usually, not answering a direct question is considered impolite; in the men’s room, however, the ‘veil of silence’ is rarely broken. In the case of two of the four subjects that I questioned, the conversational norm took precedence. However, while responding, both of these subjects looked deliberately away from me. (It should be noted that, despite speaking, I looked directly ahead for these trials.) The other two subjects, those who ignored my questions, also turned to look away from me.

In my third set of trials, I decided to break the third major principal of urinal etiquette by looking at my subjects. Although I intended to run four trials this way as well, I ended up running only two. The second subject, a middle aged physical plant worker, reacted so strongly that I decided to terminate this part of the experiment (mostly for my own safety). The first subject responded to my glances in a manner similar to that of the subjects in the previous set of trials. He coughed nervously, rotated away from me, and left the bathroom very quickly after finishing. The second subject, however, confronted me directly. “You little faggot – what the fuck are you looking at?” he exclaimed. In this trial, I was the one beating a hasty retreat! Fortunately, I escaped unscathed, and with a greater appreciation of the strength of the social norm of urinal etiquette.

Obviously, the normative social influence of urinal etiquette is quite strong. The more interesting question is why. In my opinion, the source of these norms is the biologically driven instinct of self preservation. Culturally, we are conditioned to feel most exposed when naked; pants unzipped, using the urinal, people feel particularly vulnerable. Without any physical divide between the urinal user and others, the urinal user creates personal space in an effort to feel safe. This space can be both physical, in the sense of choosing urinals farther away from each other, and cognitive, by ignoring all of the social norms that acknowledge another’s existence (i.e. eye contact or conversation). Unlike in other social situations, where an invasion of personal space would simply trigger movement away to reestablish a comfortable boundary, the urinal user is fairly stationary. Except for shifting body orientation, there is very little that can be done to reestablish personal space once that space has been violated. This explains the stronger reactions from the subjects that I spoke to or looked at; their personal space violated once physically, violating their cognitive personal space moments later constituted an inescapable double invasion. Clearly, the issue of personal space is at the root of urinal behavior

To gather further support for this theory, I decided to run one further trial. This time, I used the bathroom next to Davies Auditorium. This bathroom is smaller than the Commons bathroom, with only three urinals, all of which are separated physically by wood dividers. In the four trials I executed in this bathroom, I also took a urinal next to the subject, and again addressed the subject with the same quasi-rhetorical remark as before (“The weather is really terrible today.”). In this case, however, three of the four subjects responded (as compared to none in the Commons experiment). The subjects here, even the one that did not respond, showed relatively lower levels of discomfort. Also, until I spoke, none of the subjects appeared nervous or uncomfortable at all. In this situation, the physical wooden dividers between the urinals created the personal space lacking in most urinal situations, thereby negating the strong reactions usually caused by my urinal etiquette violations. Such results support the theory of bathroom behavior as an attempt to generate personal space, perhaps driven by the desire for safety.

betwixt and bewildered
Filed February 8, 2004 11:35 PM.

Several months back, I spent a fair amount of time (arguably too much) thinking about the right sort of dog to get, should I decide to get a dog. As I don't suspect I'll be so doing at any point in the near future, that may seem an odd line of pursuit. But, to be honest, it was a question that had plagued me since moving to New York; if nearly all dog-owning New Yorkers look eerily like their dogs, was there a sort of dog that looked like me? More importantly, was I supposed to find a dog I looked like to begin with, or to find one somewhat similar and then hope it or I would evolve towards the other over time, until, perhaps, our relative appearances met in the middle, somewhere between where we both began.

Recently, however, I've begun to think the same rule also applies to people in relationships. Not necessarily that couples begin to look like each other (though, certainly, they sometimes do, especially if stooping to the faux pas of all faux pas: matching outfits), but that, over time, people become increasingly similar, in terms of interests, opinions and activities, to their significant others. A quick review of relationships past certainly bears the theory out at least in my own life. From swing dance to indie rock, socialist political views to dubious mental health, I've been swayed in all sorts of directions by girlfriends. And while some of the changes were rather temporary (leaving me, post-breakup, thinking things like: "you know, I'm much more of an indoor person than the last six months of hiking might have led me to believe."), others have stuck with me permanently.

Which, with a handful of dates on the immediate horizon, is sort of a scary thought. Not only am I now looking for a girl I like, a girl who likes me, a girl with whom I can imagine a shared future, but also a girl who evolving towards over the course of a relationship won't leave me scarred for life.

duel
Filed January 28, 2004 2:32 PM.

Received a Friendster message from the lovely Rina, entitled "Regarding a very strong statement", reading:

Everyone knows that Whitesnake's "here I go again on my own" always beats Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a best of karaoke match. [ed. note: post that triggered her wrath]

I apologize. I just dont appreciate lies within the blogging world.

- Rin

To which I responded:

Actually, I'm pretty sure the song is named just "Here I Go Again", but nice try on adding some extra lyrics to the title to make it sound more impressive.

None the less, Whitesnake's Whitesnake is clearly a rockin' and entirely karaoke-worthy album, "Here I Go Again" being particularly perfect for wailing away on if the singer (like most) has no discernable sense of pitch.

On the other hand, the backup vocals only appear during part of the chorus (and only involve one additional voice), whereas Bohemian Rhapsody gives you license to bring an entire drunken hoard up to the mic. Plus, Queen has both pansy falsetto *and* that weird back-and-forth between falsetto and bass, which, while vastly exceeding at both ends the vocal range of anyone drunk enough to think the song is a good choice, makes for considerable entertainment.

I rest my case.

j

puppy progress
Filed January 28, 2004 1:40 PM.

Several months back, I determined that, were I to get a dog, it would be a beagle.

At the time, I promised to give the issue of prospective names some serious consideration, and I'm pleased to say I've now come to a definitive conclusion: when/if I get a beagle, I'm naming him Darwin.

pioneers & settlers
Filed January 23, 2004 1:35 PM.

For years, parallel to this blog, I've maintained an offline journal. In part, it's filled with trains of thought too personal for mass consumption. The remainder, however, consists of observations of the world, discourse on physics, economics, biochemistry, art and literature - any number of topics on which I'm completely unqualified to pontificate.

This morning, for example, I woke up suddenly and inexplicably fascinated by the apparent similarity between adjacent underwater and above-water ecosystems. Pen in hand, I scrawled down a solid page and a half on "wet/dry biomatching" (to coin a phrase), contemplating the Monterey Bay (its tall kelp forests mirrored by the evergreens of the surrounding hills), or the islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago (whose thriving coral reefs match well the dense low scrub that covers the majority of the islands themselves).

This is the sort of stuff my brain pops out if left to its own devices, and I'm never sure what to do with it. Were I a biology grad student, I could construct a PhD thesis around the observation, fleshing out the strength of the correlation, honing in on causative factors (available sunlight or nutrients, weather patterns). Instead, I simply jot my thoughts down amidst any number of others, hoping that one day my thinking will become useful - either to me, in a future endeavor, or to whomever discovers the journal, once I'm gone and pushing up daisies.

Growing up, I always wondered why Da Vinci (a personal hero), who (obviously) journalled far more insightfully than I, followed through on so few of his fantastic inventions and groundbreaking observations. Over time, I've come to believe the answer lay in Da Vinci's reliance on apprentice painters - once he had sketched out a work, fleshed out the tough spots and carefully lit segments, the rest was handed off to his assistants, to people whose talent and passion was directed more towards coloring between the lines than to drawing lines to begin with. Not, I don't think, because Da Vinci believed himself to be too important to do such work himself, but because he realized he would only be happy when doing something new, rather than expanding and improving something pre-existing.

Watching friends and colleagues at work and play, I'm convinced that distinction holds just as much today as it did in Renaissance Italy. People break down into two groups - pioneers and settlers - and very few people are as unhappy as those inadvertently trapped in the wrong camp.

to coin a phrase
Filed January 20, 2004 10:41 PM.

Evite archaeology: digging through the invite list on a electronic invitation in an attempt to figure out how you know the sender.

terms of endearment
Filed January 16, 2004 3:03 PM.

[Or, lessons learned from '70's porn.]

Though I've never really been one to use pet names (attempts - honey, dear, baby - rolling off my tongue awkward and insincere), I've recently realized that regular use of the name 'kitten' could only improve a relationship.

gematria
Filed January 16, 2004 2:44 AM.

Despite my otherwise rather rational, skeptical nature, I must admit to harboring a slew of small but long-standing superstitions. My conscious mind's best efforts to the contrary, at gut level I've always strongly believed in the power of lucky underwear, for example, or the importance of holding my breath while driving through tunnels.

Similarly, while my rational brain rejects the notion of a higher power predestining the flow of the universe, some pre-rational part of me has always been fascinated by signs, by portents and premonitions - especially numeric ones. Hit my pillow just as the clock clicks to 12:34, and I'm certain the following day will be a good one.

Which is why I've been secretly pleased and perplexed by the number of times in the past week (four, at current count) at which my purchase total or change received rang out to exactly $14.92.

1492. Columbus and the proverbial blue ocean. But what does it mean? Am I bound for a long journey? Headed out on some more metaphoric form of exploration? About to discover something? To pioneer something? Or simply to bring death, disease and enslavement to an unsuspecting native people?

ghost of hotels past
Filed January 12, 2004 9:24 PM.

Another change in this iteration of self-aggrandizement: I'm eschewing my solitude in the blog universe to cross-link and riff off of other bloggers' posts I enjoy.

The first victim: Ms. Aubrey Sabala, who today dissects a past relationship and its tie to a specific place - Atlanta's Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Her post struck a chord particularly because I had just finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, which touches a bit on ghosts, on how a place can be haunted by its past inhabitants.

That seems to me so frequently the case with relationships - a place, a song, even a smell can bring back a memory of a person, of times shared with that person, so very powerfully. I like Aubrey's post a lot - especially the last paragraph - because I'm not sure we can ever fully banish those ghosts, completely exorcise them. The best we can do, I think, is acknowledge them, learn to live with them in the background, while focusing on the living, the here and now.

And, of course, if you happen to have an Atlanta Ritz-Carlton ghost that isn't quite far enough gone yet to coexist with peacefully, I happen to know that particular hotel serves one hell of a dirty martini. A little liquor goes a long way in putting such hauntings in their place.

superstition
Filed October 4, 2003 7:41 PM.

Despite an overall rather rational, scientific view of the world, I still possess a strong belief in the existence and power of "lucky" underwear.

color me clueless
Filed September 30, 2003 8:51 AM.

Recently, I spoke with a female friend in the midst of planning out the repainting of her apartment. All the rooms would be white on three walls, she told me, with the fourth a different color in each. She then proceeded to list off the colors for various rooms - the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom - hoping to give me a sense of what the final results might look like. And while I nodded my head in understanding as she went through the list, expressed appreciation for the keen visual sense it clearly evidenced once she had recited through them all, I must admit I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

In short, we guys suck at color names. Sure, we might be able to tell you that 'cerulean', 'periwinkle', 'aquamarine' and 'robin's egg' are all shades of blue; but if you were to line up four color samples, there's not a chance in hell we'd be able to figure out which is which.

The problem, I suspect, stems from our Crayola'd youth. While most girls had the six-thousand crayon pack (the one with the little built in sharpener), we guys had the eight crayon standard. Inevitably, we'd even lose one, and not know the name for 'orange' until our early teens.

At which point, even if we were to studiously review every crayon out there, we'd still be doomed to fall horribly behind. Because, once high school rolled around, girls began to pore through the J.Crew catalog, the Banana Republic or L.L.Bean. And while we were just beginning to wrap our minds around the difference between 'orange yellow' and 'yellow orange', girls were contemplating 'heather', 'oatmeal' and 'burnt sienna'.

Sure, a few lucky guys have caught up - graphic designers, for example, or professional painters. But even for them, I suspect it's a bit like learning a foreign language; no matter how good your Swahili, you'll never truly sound or think quite like a native speaker.

In other words, for even our best and brightest, we guys are pretty much a lost cause. We'd blush with embarrassment about it, but, frankly, we're not entirely sure what color we're supposed to turn.

searching doggedly
Filed September 18, 2003 11:12 PM.

New York is a city full of dogs. More than any other urban center I've visited, it teems with canine companions. Mornings and weekends, the streets are lined with a vast array of sizes and breeds out for much-needed walks, their poop-scooping owners closely in tow.

Each time I see one of those dogs pass, I'm inevitably struck by the similarity between the dog and its owner. Head to any park in the city, and the old claim - that people look like their pets - is immediately and empirically observable as true.

Which, over the past few years, has been a cause of slight distress to me. Because, while my current travel schedule and living situation don't easily accommodate a four-legged friend, I'd certainly love to pick up a pooch at some point in my not-too-distant future. And, frankly, I had no real idea what sort of dog would be my match. Obviously, such decisions beg the question of who does the adapting; do people start looking like their dogs, dogs like their people, or do both meet somewhere in between? Whatever the answer, it certainly seemed to me imperative to find a dog that might bring out the very best parts of myself.

So, this evening, while procrastinating on completing a major business document, I set out to wade through the furrier parts of the internet, searching for a breed from which I might one day draw a dog of my own. After several hours search (sadly, I'm not kidding about that time tally), I've settled upon the rather definitive answer: I am, apparently, a beagle person.

Beagles, it seems, are quick, clever, happy and curious, though fare rather poorly in obedience training, having an unusually strong sense of wanting to do things their own way. Small, slender and muscular, they need lots of exercise, bore easily if not mentally stimulated, and seem to have a knack for getting into trouble by following their nose.

Who knows. Next time I have work I'm trying to avoid, I might even set out to preemptively find some good potential beagle names.

underwear
Filed August 17, 2003 5:22 PM.

For whatever reason, we guys often form bizarre attachments to pieces of clothing, strong emotional connections that effectively prevent us from noticing their increasingly well-loved condition. Favorite t-shirts yellow at the armpits, favorite jeans fray at the hems and zipper, yet we can't possibly imagine actually retiring them. And nowhere is our love more apparent than with underwear; given the choice, we'll keep washing and wearing a trusty pair of boxers until it's disintegrated to nothing more than a waistband and a few hanging threads.

As women rarely hold such forgiving opinions of overly scruffy clothing (and underwear in particular), it behooves any guy with an eye towards impressing the ladies to (at least occasionally) view the contents of his closet (or, at least, his underwear drawer) with a cool and dispassionate eye. This very morning, I did so myself, examining each pair of boxer-briefs, and I'm afraid the results were not good:

Total Pairs: 11*
Pairs in Good Condition: 2
Pairs in Acceptable Condition: 1
Pairs with Weirdly Ruffled Waistbands (ed. note: due to elastic losing it's stretch after too many washings): 3
Pairs with Small Holes: 3
Pairs with Holes in Front Large Enough that the Proverbial Mouse Might Escape the Proverbial House: 2

As much as it pains me to say it, I think it's time for a serious drawer cleanout and underwear shopping spree.

* This is nearing the bare acceptable minimum number of pairs. Guys mainly do the wash only after running out of clean underwear, re-wearing all the cleaner looking pairs inside out, and then sometimes even wearing bathing suits as underwear. Clearly, then, the more pairs owned, the less frequent the need to do the wash.

the asshole spectrum
Filed August 4, 2003 9:20 AM.

Whenever I hear a 'nice guy' bemoan the fact that women seem to constantly pass him over for jerks, I can't help but think he might be overestimating his innocence. Nobody, after all, is a gentleman 100% of the time, just as nobody is 100% bastard. Instead, we men inevitably inhabit the spectrum between those two extremes.

Further, 'nice guy' lament to the contrary, women don't actually prefer men on the asshole end of the spectrum; they don't even prefer men at the fifty-fifty split. Instead, as careful observation of female friends will quickly reveal, most women look for guys at the 10% asshole, 90% marriage-material mix: someone charming, sweet and wonderful the vast majority of the time, yet with independence, backbone, a handful of unpredictability and a bit of edge.

So take that to heart boys. If booty's your aim, be nice. But not too nice. Aim for 10% asshole. Or one-up what women say they want and head for the thing their behavior shows they like even better: the 80% nice guy / 20% asshole mix who they alone can tame into the ideal 90/10.

free advice
Filed July 18, 2003 5:22 PM.

If you happen to be going to a karaoke birthday party this evening in the East Village, there will inevitably be a group of guys attending who think it's really ironic to perform "YMCA". Which is a shame, because that same group could easily instead perform "Bohemian Rhapsody", by far the best karaoke song ever, especially if someone is ready to nail the Freddie Mercury part.

Guy Opinion Filed January 28, 2008 5:59 PM.

Logastellus Filed January 15, 2008 1:44 PM.

Lazy Web Filed September 5, 2007 3:55 PM.

Appellation Filed May 2, 2007 3:05 PM.

One Down Filed December 14, 2006 3:18 PM.

Practice Filed December 8, 2006 2:03 PM.

Doctor! Filed December 3, 2006 6:19 PM.

Signed Filed December 1, 2006 5:17 PM.

Also, Post-it Flags Filed August 28, 2006 2:21 PM.

Correlation, Causation Filed June 13, 2006 10:32 AM.

Lightning Round Filed May 30, 2006 9:51 PM.

The Looking Glass Filed May 1, 2006 10:27 PM.

Make a Difference Filed April 19, 2006 11:54 PM.

Paradox Filed February 13, 2006 6:14 PM.

Stuff It Filed December 28, 2005 5:28 PM.

Intern-tainment Filed July 19, 2005 4:43 PM.

Principium Filed June 16, 2005 6:36 PM.

Vestmented Filed May 10, 2005 5:35 PM.

Coined Filed May 3, 2005 3:02 PM.

Money Method Filed March 18, 2005 1:28 PM.

breaking points Filed June 28, 2004 1:45 PM.

urinal etiquette Filed March 1, 2004 10:26 PM.

betwixt and bewildered Filed February 8, 2004 11:35 PM.

duel Filed January 28, 2004 2:32 PM.

puppy progress Filed January 28, 2004 1:40 PM.

pioneers & settlers Filed January 23, 2004 1:35 PM.

to coin a phrase Filed January 20, 2004 10:41 PM.

terms of endearment Filed January 16, 2004 3:03 PM.

gematria Filed January 16, 2004 2:44 AM.

ghost of hotels past Filed January 12, 2004 9:24 PM.

superstition Filed October 4, 2003 7:41 PM.

color me clueless Filed September 30, 2003 8:51 AM.

searching doggedly Filed September 18, 2003 11:12 PM.

underwear Filed August 17, 2003 5:22 PM.

the asshole spectrum Filed August 4, 2003 9:20 AM.

free advice Filed July 18, 2003 5:22 PM.