The Importance of Things We Take For Granted, a Tribute to Andy Rooney

I wish to salute the 1,001 conveniences of modern life that we take for granted. There's a vast range of various variables concerning the size/significance/importance/etc of these things, and I could live, no, survive (there's a difference), without many of them, but all are important to one degree or another or they wouldn't exist.

Dr. Deirdre McCloskey, the subject of a recent post, would call them market-tested betterments. They exist because someone had an idea, and multiple someones found the implementation of that idea useful.

Paper towels, or rather a lack thereof, is the genesis of this column. I live in the attic of the large house that me and my freakishly large household lease from our tight fisted but blessedly mostly absentee landlord. It's quite pleasant, as far as starving artists garrets go. It's a finished attic and my hunger pangs will be alleviated shortly via my portable refrigerator and my microkiller. Incidentally, my late wife called call microwave ovens microkillers, for no reason other than it made us both smile and just sounded right. It still works for me. Miss ya' babe.

However, I'm out of paper towels, which I discovered yesterday, much to my horror, when I was doing a bit of cleaning. This means that I'll have to use two paper plates instead of one since I don't have a paper towel to place betwixt the pre-cooked snausage (please refer to microkiller justification above) patties I'm rapidly becoming obsessed about (I told you I was hungry) and the aforementioned paper plate. See, without a paper towel to serve as a pork grease absorber ("pork fat rules!") a second paper plate will be needed to prevent pork grease from leaching through and leaving a spot on my desk, which apropos of nothing, is actually a high-quality, six foot long (30" wide) utility table. Well, it's apropos to me, I like a large desk/workspace.

[Marie-Louise and Dana, are glancing at each other, and me, nervously, as if to say, no, you ask him if he's having a breakdown of some sort.]

Lest you think I'm having some sort of breakdown, fear not. I'm merely setting the stage for what follows.

[Dana heaves a sigh of relief; Marie-Louise smiles and administers a brief back scratch of encouragement.]

See, everything mentioned above, except the utility table that I use for a desk, are relatively recent inventions. All of them exist in the background of my life, I take them for granted and give them very little thought except for when they stop working (or need cleaning). I'm a firm believer in, and derive much enjoyment from, cleanliness in general. However, I don't enjoy having to do the work necessary to effect a clean environment.

I suspect this is genetic. For those of you that don't know, or may have forgotten, I am descended from a very old European aristocratic family. By the time I came along, years of deep dissipation had caught up with them and when I was kidnapped by gypsies my family refused to pay the ransom (it's complicated). This led to a series of events that culminated in my "father" winning me in a poker game at the Gem Saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota.

I've always felt that I was destined to have a small, devoted coterie of servants (to whom I would be exceptionally kind) to deal with all the daily humdrumery. I've also assumed that at some point I would be independently, but not embarrassingly, wealthy and would live the life of a mildly dissipated, but nevertheless enlightened, dilettante. I'm still cautiously optimistic but I'm 62.75 years old chronologically speaking (39 spiritually) which means I only have 38.25 years left.

At this point, I'd settle for enough dough to take the Stickies to Disney World. But none of this has anything to do with the Importance of Things We Take For Granted so I better move on. Dana and Marie-Louise are starting to look jumpy again.

I go to great lengths to use paper towels responsibly. Primarily because I'm cheap relatively poor frugal. Also, for environmental reasons, though I must admit that while I suspect paper towels degrade quickly and efficiently and constitute no threat to mother Earth, I don't actually know. Better safe than sorry.

But there it sits (I've secured a fresh roll.) A pristine, white, sanitary sentinel. While I'm an enthusiastic user of rags, because I'm cheap relatively poor frugal, but sometimes only a paper towel will do. When certain things need cleaning, I must have paper towels.

Stoicism...

[What!]

Bear with me.

Stoicism, I refer to the now mostly ignored philosophy (not an attitude) that teaches that the remedy for longing for stuff we don't, or can't have, is to be aware of the stuff we do have and contemplate how we would feel if we were to lose it. Paper towels for example. Or computers.

I have lived without both paper towels and computers. I need to check in with my older sibs for verification but I don't remember having paper towels in our house when I was a kid. I do remember being amused when my roommate (I was about 25 at the time) came home with not only paper towels but with a paper towel holder/rack/dispenser as well (which was installed with limited success so we stopped using it eventually and just left a roll sitting on the kitchen counter).

I was amused because paper towels seemed like a waste of our limited resources, and besides, that's what worshrags were for (see ubiquitous My Pillow commercial wherein the "inventure" of the My Pillow brags about it being machine worshable). However, over the years I've developed a deep and lasting affection for paper towels. Oh, I also have a deep and lasting affection for my My Pillow.

And computers. I lived without a personal computer for more than half my life and I'm so old I personally know people that don't use one, don't even own a cell phone. I currently don't own a cell phone, but for the record, I was an early adopter and had given up my landline very early on just to see if I could, and I did. But now I hate them, cell phones I mean, but there's no point in getting into that just now, so I won't.

I love my computer, it's a current events junkies/music lovers/dilettantes delight. "Need input!" And unlike a cell phone, If I choose to ignore it occasionally to read a real book or play around with my keyboard (as in music, as in piano, not the device that I'm typing this on), that I'm going to someday actually learn how to play, when I'm out and about in the world no one will approach me, wild-eyed and salivating, demanding to know, "when was the last time you checked your phone! I left you a gazillion messages!" Sorry, I said I wasn't going to go into that.

But the other day Mark's Toy IV, my current computer, for some mysterious reason wouldn't let me fire up Chrome, my window on the world, my access to all the stuff that I keep in the cloud -- until I rebooted, which fixed everything. Phew! Which set me to thinking about Stoicism and how appreciating what you have is much better than bitching about what you don't.

Have you ever wondered why phew starts with the letter p? I miss you, Andy Rooney.

Have an OK day.

©Mark Mehlmauer 2016

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The Secret of Life

The secret of life is that so-called real life is just high school with money. Once you embrace this notion, much becomes clear.

When I was in school, I noticed a phenomenon that has not changed. Much has changed since I graduated from high school in 1971 and the subsequent, but unrelated, beginning of the collapse of Western Civilization in 1972. (1972 was the year disco songs started showing up on the charts). I'm certain it hasn't changed because I have several hundred grandchildren, all children of the new millennium, all of whom I monitor closely.

[Aside: I help to support this sticky syndicate of savages in various ways for various reasons. I've been unusually lucky in that all of them, without exception, are fundamentally kind. Thanks to good parenting they're all well aware that while it's sometimes difficult to discern the straight and narrow path, it does exist, and should be followed if at all possible. I believe that the future will benefit from the fact they're in the world. 

Also, I'm reasonably confident that if I help them out as much as I can now, they'll make sure a certain old crank will never starve, or go without internet access, even if it's just from guilt.]

Where was I? Oh, yeah. As a young callowyute, I found it interesting that kids of only slightly different ages were often radically different creatures. Grade levels served as a reliable index. Every September, when I returned to school after another summer of back-breaking work in our family steel mill that was located in the Sou-side-a-Pittsburgh, it was the same.

Most of the kids that were one grade level behind me, the one that I had been in three months previously, were childish and dorky. Most of the kids that were one grade ahead, who were in the grade I was now in, just three months ago, were cooler than me and seemed to know something I didn't know.

[Begged question: Why is the American school calendar still built around an agrarian economy that no longer exists?]

As a callowyute, I was taught that at some point this process would end; that I would be a grup. All that was necessary after that was a slow but steady accumulation of skills and wisdom which I would pass on to the callowyutes in my life. Of course, I wouldn't be like most grups, I'd still be cool. I'd never wear socks with sandals. I'd open a vein rather than wear an all-polyester outfit that included a white patent leather belt and shoes (and sandals with socks). I'd only drive cool cars. Etc.

[Legally speaking, in the US at least, we're adults, or at least callowyutes with privileges, at the age of 16, 18 or 21, depending on the subject at hand and/or the location. Science tells us that H. sapiens are not fully mature until roughly the age of 25. This explains a lot. I find it interesting that car insurance companies figured this out before I was born based strictly on statistics. No theories, opinions, or legal judgments were needed or called for. The careful collection and verification of the facts was all that was needed. Life as it is, not as we would like it to be. We need more of that.]

Once we finally fully mature we spend the rest of our lives waiting for the next dramatic step -- that day we will wake up filled with wisdom and certainty -- which never actually happens. We never graduate. The rate of change slows down, the lines blur, the average reasonably well-adjusted 40-year-old will find the average reasonably well-adjusted 30-year-old lacking, in specific as well as vague ways.

Most will gradually/slowly/painfully get better at impulse control and learning to share the playground with others, perhaps even pick up a bit of wisdom here and there. Many will not. We will start out confident that we won't be like our parents; that our lives will be _______, _______, and _______! Then our lives will mostly just happen to us.

You're probably in better shape than me. I'm almost 63 years old and over think everything but in my heart of hearts, I'm the same horny, insecure callowyute destined to be a rockstar and enlightened Taoist master that I was in high school -- just less so (thank God).

We will do our best to keep the boat in the middle of the stream and going in the right direction. For a tiny minority, this will be easy, not so much for most. Some will win, some will lose, most will tie.

We will do the job, take care of the kids and the parents that are morphing back into kids, keep the car running, etc. Since it's relatively easy to fool most callowyutes/ourselves/other grups, we will all participate in a lie agreed upon (HT: David Milch). We'll all pretend to be well-adjusted grups when in reality we're just high functioning high school kids.

Have an OK day.


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©2017 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

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The Secret of (Occasional) Happiness

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." This quote is often attributed to Confucius but a minimum of googling will reveal that it's impossible to accurately credit anyone for it. However, I would argue that the truth of this particular adage is obvious. 

Unfortunately, reality is often a poor substitute for what should be. Life is indeed what happens to us while we make other plans. Rather than choosing a job we love, most of us are destined to choose the best job we can get. 

Then, once we have it, we have to decide if we're going to hang around or try and find a different one, a better one. And then, that the bright and shiny new job we get may ultimately turn out to suck sweaty socks. Oh well, at least it (hopefully) pays better. Hmmm, now what should I do, make the best of it or should I start looking for another job? If I...

[For the love of my higher power! exclaims Dana... 

(I'm beginning to think it's not political correctness after all, that some organizations 12 step program is at work, but of course, it's none of my business)

Would it be asking too much to ask if this is going somewhere?]

Point taken. OK, let me put it this way. Getting paid to do a job we love is the ideal job. At this level you're actually getting paid to do your work, not a job. Your work is those one or two things that you would keep getting out of bed for if was revealed to you that (without a doubt) you only had a relatively limited amount of time left and that once you died, that was it, there was nothing coming next. I'm not claiming it's possible to be certain of either of the two preceding statements. Hey, it's just a thought experiment. 

You're work, as I define it anyway, could be anything from what you're doing in that secret laboratory hidden under the garage that not even your snifficant other knows about --  trying to create the new millennial Frankensteen -- to an obsession with collecting football cards.

Much research has been done to determine what makes us happy and the official answer is, well, one of 'em anyway, earned success (there's even a TED Talk). While I agree that earned success does make people happy, as well as the well-researched reasons as to why it does, what about all the folks that in spite of their best efforts have had to settle for limited success (at best)?

Worse yet, what about the individuals that led exemplary lives, always gave more than they got, and died, often badly, still worrying about how they were going to get the car repaired?

Someone to love that loves you back (a dog will do) and interesting work is the secret of (occasional) happiness. 

Oh, and before I forget, the word occasional is very important in that the nature of reality, on the planet Earth at least, is that everything contains its opposite and that opposites are two sides of the same coin. That statement requires its own column but it must be mentioned because you have to always keep in mind that while being happy all the time is impossible, so is being unhappy all the time. Just wait it out and try and consider not making any important decisions or doing anything dumb until the dark clouds pass. Trust me on this...  

[Caveat: Freely acknowledging that I'm not a mental/emotional health professional and that some would argue that even the world amateur overstates my qualifications, if you're happy, or miserable, all the time, there may be something wrong. Please consider contacting a professional.]



Someone to love that loves you back (a dog will do) and interesting work is the secret of (occasional) happiness. 

"But I don't love anyone and no one loves me, not even a dog." Bonkercockie. The minute you give up on the notion that love will fill you will light, solve all your problems, and make you, Happy (the Hollywood version of love), the sooner the smoke will clear. You like at least one someone, probably more than one. There's at least one someone, probably more than one, that likes you. When you stop pursuing/waiting for the Hollywood version you'll dramatically increase the chances love will find you. While you're waiting -- like, be kind, and be likable.

"Interesting work? I'm just not that into anything, never have been." Bonkercockie. The minute you give up the notion that you'll find, and/or follow, your bliss and then you will be filled with light, all of your problems will be solved, and you will be, Happy (Hollywood again...), the sooner that smoke will clear. 

The owner of a successful vacuum cleaner repair shop (who's not deeply in debt and has no trouble paying his/her bills) who is indifferent to vacuum cleaners, but never tires of making the perfect pint of ice cream in the back room, has interesting work.

Good dog! Where's that goofy cat...  

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

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©2016 Mark Mehlmauer