Think By Design

New Year’s Day will forever remind me of tex-mex food, Spanish, and anuses. Yes, anuses. No, nothing strange and sordid. Well, not sordid, anyway.

So, A few years ago, my wife and I were driving home after Christmas and stopped at a tex-mex restaurant that we both like in Waco. Pulling into the parking lot, I noticed that the restaurant’s marquee proudly proclaimed a Spanish translation of “Happy New Year” on one of the busiest streets in town. Or at least, I’m reasonably certain that was the intent. About a decade prior, I graduated from Baylor University, also in Waco, and did so with a Spanish minor. Some questioned the wisdom of this curious pairing with a major in Computer Science. Clearly, there was divine provenance at work. Baylor is, after all, “Thee University”!

As we entered the restaurant, I found a Spanish-speaking employee through a clever combination of racial profiling and overhearing him speak Spanish to another co-worker. Pulling the hispanoablante aside…

me: Um. You know your sign out there? The one that says, “Feliz ano nuevo”?

him: Sî, yes?

me: Well, the “n” in “ano” needs to have a tilde, so it says “año”.

him: Huh?

me: “Ano”. You need to change the “n” to “ñ”. “Ano” means “anus”. The sign doesn’t say, “Happy New Year”. It says, “Happy New Anus”.

him: “Anus”? I don’t know what is this?

me: <Oh boy> Umm. Anus. Part of your bottom? The hole in your bottom? <starts checking his pants for a hole.> Oh, I can’t remember the cuss word in Spanish… Anus. Where poop comes out. <light bulb goes on> Asshole! “Ano” is the medical term for an “asshole”! Not like a person, but the part of your body!

Finally, he got the message and I only had to explain it to a couple more of his co-workers who didn’t seem convinced at first. Not sure if they ever fixed it or not, though.

A friend posted a link to a Criagslist ad where somebody was selling a yoga mat. I thought it was funny. Like, really funny. (I’ve done the Bikram style yoga he’s referring to.) It occurred to me that, being an ad on Craigslist, it would have a limited shelf life. I thought that was just tragic. So I created this. (Original author is Dan Sherman.)

Yoga mat for sale. Used once at lunch hour class in December 2009. Usage timeline as follows:

11:45a
Register for hot yoga class. Infinite wisdom tells me to commit to 5 class package and purchase a yoga mat. I pay $89.74. Money well spent, I smugly confirm to myself.

11:55a
Open door to yoga room. A gush of hot dry air rushes through and past me. It smells of breath, sweat and hot. Take spot on floor in back of room next to cute blonde. We will date.

11:57a
I feel the need to be as near to naked as possible. This is a problem because of the hot blonde to my left and our pending courtship. She will not be pleased to learn that I need to lose 30 pounds before I propose to her.

11:58a
The shirt and sweats have to come off. I throw caution to the wind and decide to rely on my wit and conditioning to overcome any weight issues my fiancée may take issue with. This will take a lot of wit and conditioning.

11:59a
Begin small talk with my bride to be. She pretends to ignore me but I know how she can be. I allow her to concentrate and stare straight ahead and continue to pretend that I don’t exist. As we finish sharing our special moment, I am suddenly aware of a sweat moustache that has formed below my nose. This must be from the all the whispering between us.

12:00p
Instructor enters the room and ascends her special podium at the front of the room. She is a slight, agitated Chinese woman. She introduces me to the class and everyone turns around to greet me just as I decide to aggressively adjust my penis and testes packed in my Under Armor. My bride is notably unfazed.

12:02p
Since I do have experience with Hot Yoga (4 sessions just 5 short years ago) I fully consider that I may be so outstanding and skilled that my instructor may call me out and ask me to guide the class. My wife will look on with a sparkle in her eye. We will make love after class.

12:10p
It is now up to 95 degrees in the room. We have been practicing deep breathing exercises for the last 8 minutes. This would not be a problem if we were all breathing actual, you know, oxygen. Instead, we are breathing each other’s body odor, expelled carbon dioxide and other unmentionables. (Don’t worry, I’ll mention them later.)

12:26p
It is now 100 degrees and I take notice of the humidity, which is hovering at about 90%. I feel the familiar adorning stare of my bride and decide to look back at her. She appears to be nauseated. I then realize that I forgot to brush my teeth prior to attending this class. We bond.

12:33p
It is now 110 degrees and 95% humidity. I am now balancing on one leg with the other leg crossed over the other. My arms are intertwined and I am squatting. The last time I was in this position was 44 years ago in the womb, but I’m in this for the long haul. My wife looks slightly weathered dripping sweat and her eyeliner is streaming down her face. Well, “for better or worse” is what we committed to so we press on.

12:40p
The overweight Hispanic man two spots over has sweat running down his legs. At least I think its sweat. He is holding every position and has not had a sip of water since we walked in. He is making me look bad and I hate him.

12:44p
I consider that if anyone in this room farted that we would all certainly perish.

12:52p
It is now 140 degrees and 100% humidity. I am covered from head to toe in sweat. There is not a square millimeter on my body that is not slippery and sweaty. I am so slimy that I feel like a sea lion or a maybe sea eel. Not even a bear trap could hold me. The sweat is stinging my eyeballs and I can no longer see.

12:55p
This room stinks of asparagus, cloves, tuna and tacos. There is no food in the room. I realize that this is an amalgamation of the body odors of 30 people in a 140 degree room for the last 55 minutes. Seriously, enough with the asparagus, ok?

1:01p
140 degrees and 130% humidity. Look, bitch, I need my space here so don’t get all pissy with me if I accidentally sprayed you with sweat as I flipped over. Seriously, is that where this relationship is going? Get over yourself. We need counseling and she needs to be medicated. Stat!

1:09p
150 degrees and cloudy. And hot. I can no longer move my limbs on my own. I have given up on attempting any of the commands this Chinese chick is yelling out at us. I will lay sedentary until the aid unit arrives. I will buy this building and then have it destroyed.
I lose consciousness.

1:15p
I have a headache and my wife is being a selfish bitch. I can’t really breathe. All I can think about is holding a cup worth of hot sand in my mouth. I cannot remember what an ice cube is and cannot remember what snow looks like. I consider that my only escape might be a crab walk across 15 bodies and then out of the room. I am paralyzed, and may never walk again so the whole crab walk thing is pretty much out.

1:17p
I cannot move at all and cannot reach my water. Is breathing voluntary or involuntary? If it’s voluntary, I am screwed. I stopped participating in the class 20 minutes ago. Hey, lady! I paid for this frickin class, ok?! You work for me! Stop yelling at everyone and just tell us a story or something. It’s like juice and cracker time, ok?

1:20p
It is now 165 degrees and moisture is dripping from the ceiling. The towel that I am laying on is no longer providing any wicking or drying properties. It is actually placing additional sweat on me as I touch it. My towel reeks. I cannot identify the smell but no way can it be from me. Did someone spray some stank on my towel or something?

1:30p
Torture session is over. I wish hateful things upon the instructor. She graciously allows us to stay and ‘cool down’ in the room. It is 175 degrees. Who cools down in 175 degrees? A Komodo Dragon? My wife has left the room. Probably to throw up.

1:34p
My opportunity to escape has arrived. I roll over to my stomach and press up to my knees. It is warmer as I rise up from ground level – probably by 15 degrees. So let’s conservatively say it’s 190. I muster my final energy and slowly rise. One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. Towards the door. Towards the door.

1:37p
The temperature in the lobby is 72 degrees. Both nipples stiffen to diamond strength and my penis begins to retract into my abdomen from the 100 degree temp swing. I can once again breathe though so I am pleased. I spot my future ex wife in the lobby. We had such a good thing going but I know that no measure of counseling will be able to unravel the day’s turmoil and mental scaring.

1:47p
Arrive at Emerald City Smoothie and proceed to order a 32 oz beverage. 402 calories, 0 fat and 14 grams of protein — effectively negating any caloric burn or benefit from the last 90 minutes. I finish it in 3 minutes and spend the next 2 hours writing this memoir.

3:47p
Create Craigslist ad while burning final 2 grams of protein from Smoothie and before the “shakes” consume my body.

4:29p
Note to self – check car for missing wet yoga towel in am.

(Link to the original posting – don’t know how long it will stay alive, though: http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/spo/2597736393.html

I got up this morning and went through my usual routine. Took a shower, got dressed, snapped a couple photos of the half-asleep dogs, etc. For breakfast, though, I took plan B, which means swung by Chick-Fil-A on the way to work and ordered my off-menu fave: A bacon-egg-and-cheese bagel.

As I pulled the Styrofoam container out of the bag, glaring up at me from the lid was a bright neon-orange-red sticker screaming in large, capital letters, “BACON!” Now, in the spirit of journalistic integrity, the sticker didn’t actually have an exclamation point. I’ve added it to give you an idea just how loud-and-proud this sticker really was. You could have backlit the sucker and not significantly enhanced its prominence.

But given that stickers don’t taste very good, nor are they particularly filling, I managed to pull my attention back to the task at hand: stuffing my face. So, off to work I went, delighting in the happy goodness of my cheesy, eggy, baconey, bagely breakfast comestible. On a side note, the answer is “yes, I do eat while driving”. If this sends you into fits and threatens your “potty controls”, then … well, I guess I’ll just recommend keeping a spare. Otherwise, you’re pretty much out of luck.

So. Breakfast eaten. Work started. Day progressing as usual. Sometime around mid-morning, I finished off my water and stopped by the break room for a refill. A couple of female co-workers were there discussing the pros and cons and personal preferences of reheating fish and seafood in a communal break room. Now, as a computer geek, I’m aware that the well-established standard procedure for this kind of situation (particularly if the females in question are attractive) is brief to moderate incontinence, followed by attempted escape from the general vicinity, punctuated by collisions with solid objects. If you’re an attractive woman, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re a computer geek, just reading this brings back at least a dozen personal traumas.

A few years ago I got tired of the bruising and excess laundry, so I adopted my own strategy:  join the conversation and hope for the best. Which I did. Without much traction. Body language was evasive. Eye contact was erratic. Almost … distracted? Back to the standard procedure (minus the incontinence and collisions – I’ll get those next time)! So, having refilled my water and feeling as though I had somehow escaped certain destruction, I headed back to my desk.

A few minutes later, another female co-worker (also one of my best friends) stopped outside my office, leaned in, and said, “Uhhh. It has been … brought to my attention that … you have a bright orange sticker on your crotch.” Not what I was expecting. I’m confused. She pointed to indicate that I should probably just stop thinking about it and check the aforementioned anatomical region. I pushed back from my desk, looked down, and dead center on my “anatomy”, screaming up from it’s self-appointed showcase in all it’s attention-getting glory, a neon-orange-red sticker yelled, “BACON!”

We laughed, and laughed. And laughed. The co-worker who notified my friend of the “wardrobe malfunction” came by and we laughed some more. She said, “Well, at least it didn’t say ‘SAUSAGE’!” More laughing. And a couple emergency trips to the bathroom.

I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to read the word “bacon” with a straight face ever again.

Source: “Notes on Prejudice,” by Isaiah Berlin. The New York Review, October 18, 2001. ©The Isiah Berlin Literary Trust 2001.

Few things have done more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups (or tribes or states or nations or churches) that he or she or they are in sole possession of the truth: especially about how to live, what to be & do-and those who differ from them are not merely mistaken but wicked or mad & need restraining or suppressing. It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right, have a magical eye which sees the truth and that others cannot be right if they disagree.

This makes one certain that there is one goal & one only for one’s nation or church or the whole of humanity, & that it is worth any amount of suffering (particularly on the part of other people) if only the goal is attained … the belief that there is one & only one true answer to the central questions which have agonized mankind & that one has it oneself-or one’s leader has it-was responsible for the oceans of blood, but no Kingdom of Love sprang from it-or could. There are many ways of living, believing, behaving; mere knowledge provided by history, anthropology, literature, art, law makes clear that the differences of cultures & characters are as deep as the similarities (which make men human) & that we are none the poorer for this rich variety; knowledge of it opens the windows of the mind (and soul) and makes people wiser, nicer, & more civilized; absence of it breeds irrational prejudice, hatreds, ghastly extermination of heretics and those who are different; if the two great wars plus Hitler’s genocides haven’t taught us that, we are incurable. …

Compromising with people with whom you don’t sympathize or altogether understand is indispensable to any decent society; nothing is more destructive than a happy sense of one’s own-or one’s nation’s-infallibility, which lets you destroy others with a quiet conscience because you are doing God’s (e.g. the Spanish Inquisition or the Ayatollas) or the superior race’s (e.g. Hitler) or History’s (e.g. Lenin-Stalin) work. …

Another source of avoidable conflict is stereotypes. Tribes hate neighboring tribes by whom they feel threatened & then rationalize their fears by representing them as wicked or informer, or absurd or despicable in some way….

All these stereotypes are substitutes for real knowledge-which is never of anything so simple or permanent as a particular generalized image of foreigners-and are stimuli to national self satisfaction & disdain of other nations. …

Nationalism … is the strongest & most dangerous force at large today. It is usually the product of a wound inflicted by one nation on the pride or territory of another. …

Conquest, enslavement of peoples, imperialism etc. are not fed just by greed or desire for glory, but have to justify themselves to themselves by some central idea: … the white man’s burden; communism; and the stereotypes of others as inferior or wicked. Only knowledge, carefully acquired & not by short cuts, can dispel this, even that won’t dispel human aggressiveness or dislike for the dissimilar (in skin, culture, religion) by itself. Still, education in history, anthropology, law (especially if they are “comparative” & not just of one’s own country as they usually are) helps.

(If you don’t see a Paypal donate button, please click here.)

I have a request.

We recently received an email from an acquaintance of ours. Essentially, it was a goodbye letter. The acquaintance is a widow who lives with a small dog (named Squeaky) in a small apartment here in the Dallas area. Nothing extravagant or fancy. Her job was a support role to Realtors and individually selling homes. Until a couple of months ago, there was still enough business to pay the bills, but that has gone away.

She has taken the only job available thus far working at a gas station. The job pays just over minimum wage, offers maybe 30 hours per week, and does not provide benefits. It isn’t nearly enough to cover the bare essentials of food, shelter and transportation, much less what she owes and was unable to pay when there was no income at all. In addition, she is pursuing any assistance she can get from the state and private charities, but as you may know these organizations are facing steep challenges as donation have dried up even as the number of people needing assistance has swelled.

When we visited her this past Sunday to drop off some groceries, she was trying to box up anything she valued most, preparing for the possibility of living out of her car because she knew that the current job would not even be able to cover rent. We looked at the situation with her from a number of different angles, and there are no easy answers, no quick fixes.

In order to help her avoid becoming homeless (quite literally), we made a commitment to assist with food, rent, and other bare essentials for the next two months, and to do what we can to help find a job that will sustain her. Still, I expect the shortfall to be $500/month. If by that time she has not been able to make sustainable job arrangements, we’ll need to really get creative on the housing situation, though I don’t currently know what form that might take. I hope to not find out.

So, I’m coming to each of you for assistance to help keep one person from becoming homeless and losing the ability to pull themselves back up onto their feet. It would be painful, but not impossible, for me to do it alone – and I’m prepared to do so if necessary. Working together, though, we can distribute the load. I’ve included a button to the right where you can make Paypal donations. If 100 of us can put in only $10 over the next two months, we can see this through.

Questions I would have:

• Why should I help this person and not someone else? I can’t answer that for you. This is the situation presented to me, and I’m presenting it to you. We have a choice to make here and now. I know what my choice is, and I hope you join me.
• How will I know what effect my donation has? I’ll try to provide updates on this page, Facebook, etc. I’m throwing this together pretty quickly and haven’t done it before, so it may not be smooth. And there is no guarantee of success.
• How do I know my donation is going to things that really matter? We are not just handing over cash. Whenever possible, we will pay the payee directly.
• How do I know this is a real person? At this point, I guess you don’t. Call it an act of faith. If you know me even a little bit, you probably know that I don’t make things up and pass them off as the truth. You may learn who she is as we help try to find a job for her, but for the most part we want to respect her privacy as much as possible. For a self-sufficient person to be in this situation is already a pretty severe shock to self-esteem.
• What if you end up with more than you need? If this happens (wouldn’t that be a great problem!), the remaining proceeds will be donated to a local food pantry, or other charity trying to assist people in need with basic necessities. I’m playing this by ear, so I don’t have one singled out.
• What’s to keep you from running off with the cash? Well, nothing, I suppose. Except that my parents, sisters, friends, extended family, etc. are all getting a link to this request, too. And while I do have my share of vices and foibles, coveting money just isn’t one of them. If it isn’t mine, I’m fine with that.
• Is this tax deductible? No, unless you plan to cheat on your taxes and claim it as such. Which I don’t recommend. Unless you plan to drop a large chunk of change, it would be negligible anyway.