Thursday, October 20, 2011

Mystery Solved.

I’m listening to the Muppet rendition of songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, Devil Went Down to Georgia, and Benny & the Jets. Apologies if this post is… well, a bit, odd.
At work, I drink a lot of caffeine. Those of you who follow my endless 140 character rants on Twitter (it’s just like here except smaller! Yeah, I wouldn’t follow me either), know that my preferred drink is Sugar-Free Amp  -- PepsiCo, I am currently accepting offers to be your spokesperson. Waiting by the phone. Just. Call.
Right, so I like caffeine now. I didn’t used to drink it prior to working for the video game industry, so that must tell you what living on the internet (that should totally my job description on LinkedIn by the way) will do to you. When you drink as much caffeine as I do, you become relatively well acquainted with the washroom. The loo. The privy. The toilets. The restroom.
Sometimes, in the afternoon, I’ll see that one of the stalls is sitting there with the toilet seat up. This isn’t a unisex facility. Just for the ladies. I started to see it nearly every day. Thoughts raced about what person in the office was doing it.
This whole mystery reminded me, one day, of a lecture from my college Anthropology days (why did I just make it sound like I’m reminiscing about drugs or something?). Our professor was teaching us about Practice Theory and performativity. We were discussing the works of Pierre Bourdieu and the professor introduced the concept “doxa”. For anyone who didn’t dabble in Anthropology, doxa is a term that refers to something that “goes without saying because it comes without saying” for someone. Whatever it may be is just so engrained in one’s society that he or she cannot imagine it being any other way. This was the example she used to demonstrate this phenomenon:
Professor X (meaning anonymous, not referencing Charles Francis Xaviar… although that would be the coolest! Totally saving that rant for another day) was visiting a foreign country and walked into a public restroom. She checked under the stalls to see if anyone was occupying any of them. Saw no feet, so she opened the door. Upon opening the door, she walked right in on someone who was perched on top of the toilet seat (why this person didn’t lock the door, I don’t know, so don’t ask). Professor Xaviar was so taken aback by this incident because she couldn’t even imagine using the facilities in any other way than she was used to. It was hard to wrap her mind about it. DOXA!
So one day I see the lid to the toilet seat up again and think of that story. I start wondering, “Wow! I must be encountering real life cultural differences right here at work. Not stupid cultural differences like how silly Canadian accents sound. But genuine differences and this can start a dialogue about how diverse America really is!”
Then, the inevitable happened. My bubble was burst. My detective skills failed me. If this had been LA Noire, I wouldn’t have completed the case. The game wouldn’t even have given me the option to skip the scene after three tries. Also, I probably would have killed someone with that fucking car. You drive, I have to look over the case notes.
One fateful day, I walked into the bathroom and noticed the stalls had just been cleaned. All the toilet seats were up. Obviously, I was just continually noticing the one toilet seat that no one had bothered using since someone cleaned.
Looks like I’ll never be one of those meddling kids.

EDIT: I have officially added "lives on the internet" to my LinkedIn profile. Changed "lives" to "resides"... you know, to sound professional.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Postcards

I want to be perfectly clear about this: postcards ruin vacations.

No one likes them, even if you thought you did, and here's why...

Say you're planning a big vacation. You'll be gone for awhile and decide you should send a reminder to those friends and family at home who obviously weren't cool enough to get invited, but you want them to know that despite this you still like them. There you are, honorably making a list of names and addresses. You make a mental note to also find your passport.

Days later, you're in sunny ____________ (or if you have absolutely no sense of traveling when the season is good, you're in jesuschristthatbugwashugeandthatwasmylastumbrella _____________). After a tour of something touristy you thought was important to see but really was a huge waste of time, you get dumped into the gift shop. Great opportunity to shake off the disappointment and pick up some postcards. 

"I'll write a note on each of them and address them tonight at the hotel!" you say to yourself smugly. What a great friend/daughter/brother-in-law you are. WRONG. You'll definitely be too tired that night. Writing gets put off but it still looms over you, a slight damper on the remaining days of your trip. 

Maybe you are a better person than I am and you diligently sat down and spent time telling your loved ones interesting tidbits about your travels. I can tell you're feeling smug again. Now you are faced with the problem of finding stamps. 

In this hypothetical situation, you're in a foreign country and it's your first time visiting. So clearly you are unfamiliar with the postal service and have to figure out where to buy stamps, how many you need, and where the post office or post box is. All this is happening while you could be doing way more awesome things like enjoying your trip.

If you're like me, and because I don't know you I have to assume you are, then you return home with a bunch of postcards (some of them already written or half addressed) that you didn't have time to mail or were too incompetent/lazy to figure out how to mail. Maybe you can just send them from home and hope that no one notices where it was mailed from? Obviously that would make you a terrible person, and even you would judge yourself, so you don't do that.

You are now left with a stack of postcards that remind you of your secret shame every time you open that junk drawer you keep meaning to clean out.

This may be semi-autobiographical and I possibly use postcards that were meant for friends and family to decorate the walls of my office. I might be a bad friend/daughter/brother-in-law.

I hate postcards.