Encounters with Stupidity

My advisor has a rubber stamp of his name, Robert T. Downs. He stamps all of his books so when others in the lab "borrow" his books for long periods of time, he can easily spot and recover his books. I saw this, and thought it an excellent idea. I'm somewhat obsessive about labelling everything as mine (if it is). Business cards are cheap in large quantities, so I ordered 1000. I cut out just my name. Add some cyanoacrylate (super glue) and viola! you've got a nice raised-letter semi-permanent label. My mouse is labelled. My computer, my monitor. My stapler and 3-hole punch. I even wrap labels around my writing utensils at work. (There is a general lack of writing utensils in our lab, so mine tend to diffuse away from my desk to other desks, table, and into adjoining rooms.) Recently I decided that I needed to expand into rubber-stamp territory. I ordered a nice rubber stamp and have since enjoyed the satisfaction of stamping my name in many of my books. No matter that I've already hand-written my name in most of my books, usually in multiple places. The inside cover always has room for one more stamp. Am I neurotic? Of course. But does all this stamping make me feel warm and fuzzy? Yes!

When my previous roommate went back to Japan, she left a bar of soap, among other things. The other things included arcane textbooks, a coverless body pillow, a variety of size zero women's clothes, and a semi-broken AM/FM/cassette player. Most of this stuff found its way to the local Goodwill, but the soap ended up in the soap tray next to my bathroom sink. I wash my hands frequently, but I prefer liquid soap, so the bar of soap languished in its sink-side tray, unused. Gradually, though, I began my Whole Life Consolidation Effort (WLCE). This partly entailed the development of a compulsive need to use up extras of anything. For example, before the WLCE, my toiletries cabinet contained a dozen-odd partially used bottles of hair conditioner. In the WLCE era, I am working my way through these bottles, one by one. Each time I empty a bottle I carry it with pride and joy to the recycle bin, relishing the moment I toss the bottle through the air and into the recepticle. Later I get to savor my consolidation effort yet again as I carry the bin out to the large recycle bin outside. When the recycle truck comes very early Thursday morning, I wake up momentarily and peek out the front window to watch the big metal arm lift the bin high over the truck and my various recyclables cascade through the air... for just a moment, I think I catch a glimpse of the conditioner bottle. Now that the waste is off my property, I feel less burdened. One more bit of junk and clutter is gone, permanently, from my life. I can almost feel my house rebounding isostatically, like the upper Midwest, Canada and Scandanavia after the glaciers melted away.

In this spirit of cleansing, one day I hefted the abondoned bar of soap. It was taking up part of the volume of my bathroom. Something needed to be done. I turned on the water in the sink and frothed up my hands with the bar of soap. It gave off a pleasant fragrance. Soon, I was totally ignoring the liquid hand soap, and using the bar soap almost exclusively. I expected the job of soap dissolution to last about a month. This job didn't require a trip to the recycle bin -- the dissolved soap simply washed down the drain, removing mass and a volume of material from my house with almost no extra effort on my part. Weeks went by, and the soap bar was maintaining its size rather well, despite my extravagent and extended soap-frothing sessions. I washed my hands four or five times a day, at least, and each time I lathered up throughly. Still, the soap persisted, in line with its stoic and inanimate nature. It occurs to me that liquid soap is actually diluted soap, like many products these days. Or maybe we use about ten times more liquid soap than we truly need. A bar of soap is soap in its essence, its most condensed form. A bar of soap is the neutron star of the hand-cleaning-product galaxy.

Seasons came and went, I left the country a time or two, and went up to Seattle. I washed my hands, and my current roommate and his guests probably did as well. Still, the bar persists. Even to this day. In Cyprus I foolishly acquired a replacement bar, breaking my new cardinal rule: never acquire anything. In my blind optimism and faith in dissolution rates, I figured the bar of soap waiting back in Arizona had perhaps a week or two remaining. Wrong! The replacement bar waits patiently behind the current reigning bar. It's time is coming to an end. I will celebrate the moment I rinse the last soapy molecules down the drain, and gently lift the replacement bar into the soap tray. At that time, I will be in possession of ONE bar of soap, the perfect number of most things.

A friend recently pointed out that I have several blogs, several websites, and myriad email addresses. Such are the pitfalls of the digital online net-age. Let me expose my own stupidity, before I expose that of others (that is the point of this blog): let me count my email addresses. One at geo.arizona.edu, one at arizona.edu, one at Yahoo!, one at Hotmail, at least two at Gmail, one for The Slant newsletter, and who knows how many at Pair networks, who hosts Sabkha.com, and this blog. Antiproliferate = consolidate! For the last six or eight months, I've been in consolidation mode. Many full trash bins, trips to Goodwill, and yard sales later, I have 26.7% less stuff (by weight). Finally I can see my life hiding under the clutter. Now I must tackle my room and my workshop areas. Currently these areas are 49.86% more cluttered than the rest of my existence. Consolidation and simplification spread rapidly, like any low-viscosity fluid. I'm hoping they will spread into my digital life.

I'm addicted to caffeine. I started drinking coffee my first year of graduate school. Recently I reached the Caffeine Intake Level (CIL) of ~3 cups a day, plus 2 or 3 cans of caffeinated soda. That is a problem. Nervousness, insomnia are the results of this CIL. Of course, "getting more work done" is also a nominal result of the caffeine. In reality, though, being amped on caffeine becomes your normal state, the status quo. Then one must turn to crank to get wired. That's no good. Last year in the San Juans, Colorado, I didn't have coffee for a few days. The result was a migraine-like (as far as I can tell) headache that dissipated only after a cup-an-a-half of yummy coffee in Montrose, where they also fixed the fuel vapor hose on my Subaru. I try to reduce my CIL, but the results are invariably a nasty headache. Yeah, I could ease myself off. But my brain, in association with biochemistry of the rest of my body, now equates COFFEE intake with CAFFEINE intake. Results = I crave coffee. My favorite bean to brew at home is Trader Joe's Columbio Supremo. They make a decaf version, it's a bit pricier. Never mind they sell the excess removed caffeine to Coca Cola so they can sell it back to me in my Diet Coke. My plan. Gradually replace the caffeined coffee with decaf, bean by bean. I will begin with one decaf bean adrift in a sea of caf-beans. Gradually, I will work my way down to half and half decaf/caf beans. At the end, months from now, I'll be tossing just 3 or 4 caf-beans into my grinder. Then, one fateful day, perhaps I'll put only one solitary caf-bean into the Black & Decker to be pulverized. Providing 0.000000001 mL of caffeine.