The short answer:

Sadly, no.

The long answer:

When I moved into my apartment last year, I didn’t know my current roommate, whom we’ll call P. Of course, I generally assume that people are reasonable unless proven otherwise, so things were okay at first. Then on the second day I left a plate in the sink overnight, and P left me a note telling me not to let the dishes pile up. I found this less than reasonable.

But then I thought, sure, it’s a little annoying, but perhaps it’s just a preventative measure, so I washed my plate and let it slide without annoying me too much. Of course, that was before P repeatedly left the sink full of dishes for weeks and weeks on end. I guess that’s not really a reason to hate P either, but since P also has a habit of using the blender early in the morning, taking showers without closing the bathroom door, taking up all the cabinet and counter space with items that never seem to be used, not taking out the trash or knowing how to recycle, randomly leaving items in the middle of the bathtub, leaving the front door open and the lights on, having loud sex, and once, leaving an alarm clock blaring in a locked room on a Saturday morning for two hours before it automatically shut itself off, I’ve taken the liberty. Oh, but don’t think I don’t fight back. I haven’t bought any toilet paper in months.

I feel that I am not a terrible roommate. I don’t play loud music, I don’t make huge messes, and I don’t steal other people’s stuff. If someone asks me to do something reasonable, I’ll do it. And while I don’t really like a lot of people, I don’t really dislike them either, so the chance that I end up rooming with someone who really displeases me should be pretty small, right?

But let’s take a look at my record:

At my eighth grade summer camp, I was voted Most Likely to Evict His/Her Roommate, but I’m pretty sure the election was rigged. After all, the award didn’t even exist until after I’d already done it.

My freshman year of college, I had one roommate whom I absolutely despised. But not all bad came of it: it’s one of the few times I’ve straight out told someone that I don’t like them.

My sophomore year of college, I had two roommates whom I hated. Luckily I managed to avoid them by entering and exiting through the bathroom.

During the summer before my junior year, I attended an undergraduate research program and I again hated one of my roommates. It’s not often that I not only don’t like someone but also think they’re a bad person.

During senior year, in order to avoid any more annoying roommates, I decided not to say a single word to one of my roommates all year, and I’m proud to say that I succeeded. There were some awkward elevator rides, but it was only nine floors.

It has therefore come to my attention that I may have a little bit of a problem with roommates.

I almost feel like there’s just something about living with someone that makes me not like them. (As evidence, I lived my parents for all those years, and by high school, they were driving me crazy.) It’s like one of those psychology experiments where they pack people into a small room until they all go crazy. (Or is that just the subway?) My home should be a place where I don’t have to worry about annoyances, and so any that arise become magnified to the point that I basically hate everything.

But I sort of suspect that while I’m writing about all these roommates whom I’ve hated, they’re all writing about their weird roommate QM who doesn’t talk or buy toilet paper. The truth is that I’m not very personable, and maybe if I were just willing to get to know my roommates a little bit better, I’d accept that they are not in fact satanic demons.

But I’m getting my own place in August, so screw that.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

I’m not so sure anymore.

The long answer:

When I was a kid, I always enjoyed having my hearing tested in school. Perhaps this is just because I never had any problems with my hearing, as opposed to, say, my vision (I’ve worn glasses since third grade). Then again, I never had any problems with head lice or scoliosis or spelling either, but those tests were far less enjoyable. Somehow putting on those headphones and listening for those boops and beeps felt like a little musical game at which I just happened to be awesome. And even though the nurse never told us how well we did unless we failed, I’m pretty sure I never missed a boop. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had told me my hearing was superhuman.

That’s why I’ve never really given much thought to how good my hearing actually is; I’ve just assumed that I hear perfectly fine. But last week, I could tell that my right ear was getting increasingly plugged up with wax until eventually I could hardly hear out of it at all. I realized then that it was time to get my ears irrigated.

If you’re unfamiliar with the procedure, they basically just spray warm water into your ear until the canal is clear. Apparently my family is very ceruminous, for both my mother and my sister have needed their ears irrigated in the past. It isn’t painful, but eventually you kind of start wondering how water isn’t shooting out your other ear by now. In any case, it didn’t take very long to get both my ears cleaned out, and so I was soon back to normal.

Or so I thought. But I quickly became acutely aware that something was different, that my hearing seemed distinctly more sensitive than it had before. I heard this strange swoosh sound, and it took me several seconds to realize that I had just accidentally brushed my finger against my shirt. It seemed that I was now hearing high frequencies much louder than I’d been used to. Everything, the jingle of my keys, the flush of a toilet, the cracking of a knuckle, sounded oddly nuanced.

On the one hand, it was pretty cool, like having superhuman hearing. On the other hand, it was sort of troubling. If this is what all these things sound like when my ears are unclogged, what sorts of things had I missed when my ears were clogged? And how long had I been hearing things through clogged ears, thinking they were normal? I haven’t taken a hearing test in a long time. Perhaps my hearing had been impaired for years without me knowing, and it would have stayed that way had an intrepid (albeit really, really gross) blob of earwax not decided it was time to show me otherwise.

This brings us to the question at hand. Of course, being a good listener doesn’t mean that one is good at hearing but rather that one is good at understanding, empathizing, and interpreting. I’ve generally considered myself to be a good listener, but honestly, I’ve never given it very much thought. Nobody’s ever told me that I’m a terrible listener, but that doesn’t mean that I’m very good at it. Maybe like all those hearing tests I took in grade school, all I know is that my listening is passable. And while I’d like to think my listening skills are superhuman, that’s probably not the case either.

Honestly, it could be that my listening is okay but not nearly as good as I think it is, just as my hearing may have been okay for years but not nearly as good as it is now that my ears are clear. You could say that I haven’t had a real listening test in quite awhile, so maybe I need to get my listening ears cleaned and I don’t even realize it. Unfortunately, I doubt that would be as easy as a few sprays from the Elephant Ear Washer System.

A former friend of mine used to say that people aren’t really listening, they’re just waiting for their turn to talk. (Actually, I think she got it from Fight Club.) I used to think that that’s just cynicism, but now that I’ve started thinking about how good a listener I really am, I have to admit that it might be true with me sometimes. Still, I’d like to believe that if someone really wants me to listen to them, then I’d be able to do it, but I don’t really know. Maybe, then, it’s time for me to see about getting my listening checked out in some way, any way. Listening is, after all, the cornerstone of any relationship. Or so I hear.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Yes, for short periods of time.

The long answer:

I have a problem with nuts. It is not that I don’t like nuts; it is perhaps that I like nuts too much. You see, I rarely have a craving for nuts. However, whenever I have a can of nuts in my possession, I can’t resist eating the nuts constantly, even if I’m not hungry. As a result, the nuts disappear at a truly alarming rate, and a single can of nuts rarely lasts more than a couple days. And then I cry “Nuts!” because I am left sad and without nuts, and I wonder why I had to go and eat all my nuts.

Heartbreaking, I know.

But this behavior of mine is not just limited to nuts. In fact, I find I have a habit of getting very enthusiastic about things for a short period of time. I call it, for lack of a better term, “going nuts.” The problem is that when I go nuts about something, inevitably I lose interest rather quickly. It is as if I am being consumed by it with such intensity that eventually there isn’t anything left to consume. And then I am left wondering why I was so foolish as to waste all that energy for something that really doesn’t deserve it.

I had never really thought about this until my freshman year of college when I got a harmonica through Secret Santa. I had always thought it would be cool to learn the harmonica, but I’d never gotten my hands on one until then. And so I practiced all the time. One day while I was practicing, my roommate, whom we’ll call B, said to me with disdain, “I guess you’re one of those people that just go crazy about something until they finally get sick of it.” This was just a passive-aggressive ploy by B to make me stop playing, so I did. I was also a little offended, but luckily I already hated B for unrelated reasons, so it wasn’t a big deal.

I didn’t think much of it until later, when I actually did get sick of the harmonica. To be fair, I still enjoyed picking it up from time to time, but somehow it just didn’t feel as exciting as it did before. That’s when I realized that B was right. Nuts.

This same pattern has happened to me countless other times. I’ve gone nuts about juggling and drawing and Rubik’s cubes and card tricks and jazz piano and Dr. Seuss and origami and psychology and sudoku and writing and backgammon and cartooning and badminton and sitcoms and poker and blogs and making long lists without commas. And while I still enjoy these things, it just isn’t the same as it was when I was nuts about them, and I can’t even fathom why I went nuts about them in the first place.

It’s distressing to me that I can’t seem to control my own enthusiasm. If it were up to me, I’d perfectly balance everything that I like so as to develop my interests gradually. Instead, I often find myself either unable to think about anything except for my current fascination or else with a heap of unfinished projects about which I just don’t care enough anymore to finish. As a result, I find myself being incredibly unproductive much more often than I’d like. I’ve tried to fix this habit of mine on occasion, but never to any avail. (It’s a tough nut to crack.)

But maybe it isn’t all bad. At least I’m learning new things instead of sitting around bored all the time. And perhaps one day I’ll find the one thing that perpetually excites me and my life will be complete. Or perhaps one day I’ll find that I have so many unfinished projects that my life will never be complete. Regardless, I think I’ll just have to learn to live with the fact that I’m not going to stop eating nuts anytime soon.

And sure, nuts are fatty, but it’s the good kind of fat.

Cheers,
-qm

“what if God was just an idea? like how good and bad are just ideas of concepts?”
-James

The short answer:

I don’t really see how it matters.

The long answer:

In college I once found myself taking a few classes on Japan, mostly because it is not often that a course description contains the words “ninja” and “samurai.” One of the few non-ninja, non-samurai facts that I learned was that Christmas is a popular holiday in Japan, despite the fact that less than one percent of the population is Christian. While they still celebrate family, romance, and togetherness, it is much more commercial in Japan than it is in the United States. Apparently, the traditional Christmas dinner is KFC, followed by a specially-made Christmas cake. (That was not a joke.)

Undoubtedly, all the Christians who live in Western countries are appalled by this and think that they should get back to true religious values, such as putting a pine tree in your house, putting toys in big red socks, and (SPOILER ALERT!!!) lying to your children about Santa Claus. But, in case it is not clear from my flippant remarks, I certainly don’t care how people celebrate the holiday, and I’m not sure why anyone else does. Of course, that’s easy for me to say since, even though I celebrate Christmas, I’m not at all religious.

Frankly, I don’t understand everyone’s obsession with religion and God. Even though I’m an atheist, I don’t go around telegraphing it (or should that be cell-phoning it?). Whenever one of the first words out of someone’s mouth when describing himself is a religion, I am taken a bit aback (unless he happens to be a religious authority of some sort). Is your religion really one of the best descriptions of who you are? I suppose you could argue that it just gives me a quick summary of your core values, but since most religions advocate being a good person in roughly the same way, the only thing I really learn is whether you’re busy on Saturdays or Sundays.

Likewise, I’m not sure why people care so much about whether God exists. Why does it matter? Would the world be fundamentally different if there were or were not a God? Given that it isn’t clear whether God exists or not, it isn’t clear what effect the existence or non-existence of God has on our world, so I don’t see how things could be different in any concrete way. In other words, if I, as a non-believer, were to imagine what a world with God was like, I could see it appearing exactly like it is now, and I still wouldn’t believe in God. Likewise, I feel like a theist could imagine that a world without God could appear exactly like the world is now, and she still would believe in God. (Of course, it would make a difference if everyone knew whether or not God existed. But since it is apparently in the nature of God not to reveal that there is a God, and it is also in the nature of the absence of God to not reveal that there is no God, that’s never going to happen.)

Therefore, given that it is impossible to know for sure whether God exists, I find it hard to rationalize how the existence or non-existence of God can affect anyone’s life. Some may believe that, as is famously attributed to Dostoevsky, “if there is no God, then everything is permitted.” But really, if you need the existence of something imperceptible in order to be a good person, then I’m not sure how you can convince yourself that you’re a good person even if God exists. Of course, perhaps you don’t believe that there can be a notion of good and evil without God, but I feel that the fact that even rabid atheists can believe in right and wrong indicates that morality isn’t something determined by God.

Instead, perhaps morality is simply something that has become hard-wired into our brains through years of evolution due to its usefulness in sustaining the human race. Perhaps then the notion of God is something that, too, has stayed around because of its benefit to humanity. Or maybe it’s just stuck like that jingle in your head that you can’t get rid of. Or maybe God really does exist and I’m going to hell. I guess there’s no way of knowing for sure, and like so many other puzzles that have no answer, I feel better not thinking about it; it isn’t going to change the way I live my life or celebrate Christmas. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t think about it, so if you like, ponder it over your next bucket of fried chicken and let me know.

This post was a little heavy-handed, but I figured this question had been lying in my inbox for long enough. As always, if you have any deep or fluffy or personal or random questions and you want to hear my take, leave me a comment and I’ll do my best. I especially encourage questions about ninjas.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Not as often as I should.

The long answer:

A lot of people I know have this strange ritual that I don’t really understand. They will pay to go into some building where apparently they do things like run in place or lift and drop heavy objects repeatedly for an hour. They call it “working out.” I’m not exactly sure what it is in them that they feel needs to be worked out of them. Perhaps sweat. Or nonachiness.

I think, then, that it goes without saying that I am probably out of shape. I say “probably” because I’m not exactly sure what being “in shape” means. Does it mean that my actual physical dimensions are those of a healthy person? If so, then my shape is perfectly fine, thank you very much. (As you may recall, I’m sort of lucky, and as such, I have been blessed with a fast metabolism.) But if it means that I am willing or able to exert myself in any sort of physical task, then, no, I can’t really say I’m in shape. What can I say, I’m a lazy bum.

Part of it is that I don’t really see the point of working out. As far as I can tell, the main reason that people exercise is so that they feel slightly less like hell the next time they exercise. I don’t need to exert myself that much in my daily life, so why should I pretend that I do? I suppose people also exercise to lose weight, but if anything I’m light enough that I should be trying to gain weight. Honestly, if I started to exercise, I might lose so much weight that one day I’d disappear. Yeah, that’s a good excuse.

I think I’ve gotten lazier over the years. When I was a kid, I ran around all the time. (I’ll have you know that I was the fastest kid in my second grade class.) But as I grew older and wiser, I must have decided that there really wasn’t any point to running in circles. Also I don’t have to take a mandatory gym class anymore.

That isn’t to say that I just sit around all day. (At least not every day.) But aside from the occasional bicycle ride to work or shoveling of snow, I don’t exercise for a meaningful length of time very much. And since millions of doctors and health experts tell me this is a bad thing, I feel that I should probably believe them. I mean, when was the last time millions of people were wrong? (The short answer: November 2, 2004.)

Recently, my sister obviously must have gone through the same reasoning, because she went out and bought a Wii Fit. I’m unconvinced that she is actually becoming much more fit because of it. But given that, like me, she has quite reasonable physical dimensions, it certainly would appear to the casual observer upon learning that she has a Wii Fit that she must, in fact, be a wee bit fit. And so now that she is at least able to superficially convey that she might very well be in shape, I have started to feel guilty about perhaps not being in shape, if in fact I am not.

That’s why I have started to do push-ups every other day. I admit it isn’t much, but at least I feel like I’m not just a lazy bum, even if I still am. I just wish I had been blessed with shorter arms.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

As long as they’re good.

The long answer:

This past weekend, I found myself in quite the puzzling situation. From this statement alone, some of you may be able to guess what I was doing, but for the rest of you, think of it as a puzzle to figure out.

In any case, it occurred to me that I like puzzles far more than the average person. For instance, many people like to do sudoku. But I had heard of sudoku before it became a worldwide phenomenon. (Little known fact: sudoku originated in the United States under the name “Number Place.” No wonder it never caught on.) As another example, many people like to do crosswords. But I’ve done a crossword without the grid using only the down clues. (Actually, there was a group of us, but I figure that any attempt to perform such a task is crazy enough.)

As such, I’ve done a lot of puzzles, both easy and hard. But I find that the most frustrating puzzles are not the ones that are the most difficult but the ones that are poorly made. It’s the difference between doing a Saturday New York Times crossword and doing a crossword full of “crosswordese,” obscure words that only occur in crosswords because the constructor had trouble filling that part of the grid. Personally, if I were to make a crossword, I’d make sure to try to use every word in the grid in casual conversation. (“On the cruise, I saw an erne flying alee that was as playful as Asta.” “What?” “I saw a white-tailed sea eagle flying towards the side of the ship away from the wind that was as playful as Nick and Nora’s dog from the 1930s comedy The Thin Man, of course.”)

Good puzzles should have clear logic and unique answers. The best puzzles should cause you to think in some way in which you haven’t thought before. They should somehow use familiar things in an unfamiliar manner. Regardless of how hard they are to solve, you should know with certainty whether your solution is correct. If you can’t solve them, then upon learning the answer, you should think, “Why didn’t I think of that?” And if you can solve them, well, then there should be nothing more satisfying than that “aha!” moment.

Maybe the reason I like puzzles so much is that I wish the whole world was more like a puzzle. As you may recall, I’m kind of a sitcom snob, and I find that the best sitcoms are those that give you something to think about and figure out. You may also recall that I don’t think you should try to figure people out, since they aren’t puzzles meant to be solved. And with all the uncertainty in this world, isn’t it be nice to have something that has a definite answer, something to strive for that we know is out there for us to find, if only we can think of it?

But, alas, the world is full of unsolvable mysteries and questions without answers, and as much as I would like Questionable Me to answer them, that isn’t going to happen. I guess that means I’ll have to settle for curling up with a good crossword every now and then. Now, what’s a six-letter word for “toast”?

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Eh.

The long answer:

I enjoy watching Iron Chef from time to time, but I don’t really have a good reason for it. As far as I can tell, there are only three reasons to enjoy watching it: you like to cook good food, you like to eat good food, or you enjoy the ridiculous dubbing. But my best dish is scrambled eggs, I’ll eat anything as long as it’s served on some sort of plate, bowl, or trough, and I also watch Iron Chef America, so there goes that theory.

Perhaps it is just that I like the idea of being able to cook, even if I’m not very good at it myself. It is, after all, essentially magic. Somehow a chef takes raw foods, which are basically inedible, and turns them into something delectable. I would be no more amazed if they could do the same with rocks.

If I were to write a cookbook detailing my own personal techniques, it would be called How to Cook Stuff. There would be one recipe, for “stuff,” and it would go something like this:

1. Put stuff in a big pan.
2. Put pan on stove, stirring occasionally, until stuff appears cooked or twenty minutes have elapsed, whichever comes first. (Tip: Remember to turn on stove!)
3. For seasoning, sprinkle in any and all spices that happen to be within arm’s reach until stuff no longer tastes like cardboard.
4. “Enjoy!”

(Alternatively, replace steps 1-3 by “Microwave to taste.”) It usually ends up tasting okay, but I’m sort of partial to the taste of salty cardboard.

My mother, of course, is convinced that even this limited cooking knowledge escapes me. I’m pretty sure she thinks that if it were not for the good people at Kellogg’s and Campbell’s, I would go weeks without eating. As such, whenever I go back home, she always gives me a large amount of food to take back with me. Naturally, I think her cooking is, well, just like Mom used to make. But I can only eat microwaved leftovers so many days in a row before either I get sick of it or it goes bad, whichever comes second, and then it’s back to uninspired stuff.

Perhaps the problem is that I am neither an epicure, nor a foodie, nor a gourmet. Maybe if I were pickier about my food, I’d have more of a motivation to make something good. To wit, my older sister is the pickiest in the family, and she’s also the most adventurous chef. She probably wouldn’t call herself a chef, but anyone who, when faced with a craving for pasta, decides to make fresh pasta from scratch is enough of a chef to be called one in my book. (I’ll put it in the preface.)

I don’t think that right now I’m in the demographic of people who are expected to be great cooks, so there’s no real pressure for me to learn the difference between all those blender settings yet. But maybe one day when I’m bored, I’ll take it upon myself to learn to cook something other than stuff. I’ll host a lavish dinner party, and you’ll all be invited. Until then, you can always come over for breakfast. I do make a mean scrambled egg.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

I don’t believe in resolutions.

The long answer:

I’ve made New Year’s resolutions in the past. Last year my resolution was successful, but only because it was for me not to do a certain stupid thing that I won’t describe presently (maybe later). In previous years I think I’ve resolved a few times to “be happy,” but since I don’t ever recall being substantially happier one year than the year before, they’ve probably never been successful. I think once I resolved not to make any more resolutions. At least I lasted a year on that one.

Someone once told me that he didn’t believe in making New Year’s resolutions. His reasoning was that there is no way you can feel very good about what has happened once the year is done. If you don’t fulfill your resolution, then you’re a pathetic failure. If you do, well then congratulations, you did something you set out to do, and honestly, you’d have been a pathetic failure if you hadn’t. So congratulations, you are not a pathetic failure. Now, where’s the booze?

I read an article once that said that something like ninety percent of New Year’s resolutions fail. And these were people who were extra motivated to complete their resolutions, since they were in a study about completing resolutions. And a large percentage of these resolutions were something vague like “be nicer” or “enjoy life more.” So sometimes I wonder why people even bother anymore. But I have a couple ideas that might help resolutions succeed more often.

One problem with New Year’s resolutions is that people tend to forget all about them if it isn’t either January or December. I don’t think about how great costumes and candy are in March, or how great barbecues are on the Fourth of January, or how I don’t know what love is in October, or how great trees and administrative assistants are in November, so why would I think about resolutions in June? Similarly, nobody thinks about not thinking about resolutions when they make their resolutions, and therein lies the problem.

Maybe if people took these seasonal considerations into account, more resolutions would be completed. We should only make resolutions that we can complete in two months with a ten-month break in the middle. For instance, instead of resolving to exercise every week, which apparently requires a year-round commitment, one could resolve to shovel more snow or be nicer to Capricorns on their birthdays.

My other idea is to make resolutions at other times of the year. Honestly, January 1 is sort of an arbitrary date for the start of a new year anyway, so why not also make Halloween resolutions (“wear more masks”), or Administrative Assistants’ Day resolutions (“collate more”)? Perhaps if we were not so accustomed to thinking of resolutions as something that we should consider only once a year, we’d be more like to consider them more than once a year.

But as it is now, the way that our society deals with resolutions seems to be inherently flawed, so I can’t say that I really believe in making a New Year’s or Arbor Day resolution. Still, I feel like I should say something about what I want to happen in the coming year, so how about I try to write in this blog every week? Well, except maybe in February through November.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Yes, but not that kind of game.

The long answer:

A friend of mine, whom we’ll call K (there’s no K in his name, it was just the first letter I thought of), recently recounted to me an experience that he had on a blind date with a woman he met online, whom we’ll call F (I don’t actually know her name, it was just the second letter I thought of). I wasn’t there, of course, but from the way he described it, I imagine it might have gone something like this:

K and F are having dinner at a casual restaurant. It’s early, but things are going well so far.
F: So, tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you like to do?
K: Oh, I like to play games.
Suddenly, F frowns and becomes hostile.
F (indignantly): Oh really. What kind of… games?
K: Um… like… board games…
(silence)
K: …Parcheesi…

It therefore occurs to me that not everyone likes to play games.

Most games are enjoyable to play for many people. This makes sense, as most games were created to be fun. (One notable exception: The Game, which I just lost. Then again, The Game is not really a game so much as it is a tool to identify losers.) So it’s somehow surprising to me that at some point it became a bad thing to “play games.”

I should perhaps clarify that I am not referring to games like Boggle or bridge or pool; even if you don’t like to play these traditional sorts of games, you would probably still accept that one can enjoy them without being evil—unless perhaps you live in River City, Iowa, where they can only spell trouble. No, I am referring to a much more sinister type of game, the kind that dear F hates so much. It is the kind of game that a cat might play with a mouse. Yes, I am referring, of course, to World of Warcraft. (Make that a mouse and keyboard.)

But seriously, our dear F apparently doesn’t like people who “play games” in relationships, and I can understand where she’s coming from. Even though I like Clue as much as anyone, that doesn’t mean that I want there to be a mystery about what’s been going on in the kitchen with the candlestick. So I don’t deny that it’s often a bad thing to “play games,” I just think that we shouldn’t call it “playing games.”

To wit, there are certain aspects of playing games that are not present in the relationship situation. For instance, in most games, the players are participating out of their own free will. Everyone knows the rules (exception: the Infield Fly Rule). There is also a well-defined goal, and it’s generally supposed to be fun for everyone. But with the secrets and deception that sometimes occur in relationships, it’s not as if both sides have agreed upon the rules of the game in advance. Really, it’s more like hunting, where one person is trying to trap the other, and while it may be fun to play the hunter, it’s no fun to play the game.

Perhaps it is just human nature that we have the urge to play games with one another. That’s why if I ever find myself in a relationship, I’ll try to make sure that any games that we play are actually games. Think how much fun it could be if both people knew the rules! And maybe it won’t work out, but that’s okay. After all, it’s how you play the game, right?

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Today.

The long answer:

Since you don’t know me, you probably didn’t know that my birthday was today. Then again, most people who do know me also didn’t know it was my birthday, that is, unless they were reminded by Facebook.

When I was little, my birthday was always a big deal. For weeks before the big day, I’d be sure to remind everyone that it was coming up, because I thought my parents might forget if I didn’t tell them seven times a day. And even though I didn’t have elaborate birthday parties, it felt like a special day. After all, anything that comes only once a year has to be special, right? Plus I liked getting free stuff.

But nowadays, I don’t really care if anyone knows it’s my birthday. Perhaps it’s just that after twentysome of these things, I’ve realized that they really aren’t that special. Sure, it only comes around once a year, but so does Arbor Day. Of course, I’ve not developed an aversion to free stuff, but I’ve never gotten any really good gifts anyway, so I doubt I’m missing out on much. I tell myself, I’ll just stay in, do nothing, and be content, again, like Arbor Day.

At least, that’s my attitude on every day except my birthday. Since my expectations have been set so low, how could I possibly be disappointed? But I manage. Truthfully, my birthday has been pretty depressing these last few years. The most exciting thing that’s happened on my birthday in recent memory was a few years ago when I got a birthday card in the mail. (It wasn’t even a surprise, though, since I had mentioned to the sender that I don’t usually get cards, so she told me she’d send me one.)

For the past few years, I’ve just had dinner and cake with my family, who all happen to live nearby. Since my birthday fell on a Tuesday, we observed it on Sunday when everyone was free. I don’t really get any presents (this year I got some sort of ID holder with keyring). For the cake, we can’t be troubled to put on a candle for each year, so we just put on two. This year I failed to blow them out with one puff.

In some ways, it feels a little presidential not to celebrate my birthday on my birthday, but on the other hand, it means that I don’t really have anything to do on my actual birthday. I decided to take the day off, slept until one, went out to dinner with some family, and then came back alone and had some leftover cake. And now I’m writing in this blog.

I’m not really sure what I’d like to happen on my birthday. Maybe I’d like to look back on the year that has just past and be satisfied with it. Usually when it comes time to blow out the candles and make a wish, I think about the wish I made last year and how it hasn’t come true. To counteract this, I’ve started to make my wishes increasingly vague, but they still don’t come true. This year I couldn’t think of anything to wish for. At least next year I won’t be disappointed by that not coming true.

There’s an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry goes out on a first date with an attractive woman with whom he gets along quite well, but then he learns that it’s her birthday and wonders why she isn’t out with people she knows. As it turns out, the explanation is just that “she’s a loser,” even though it’s never made clear why that is. I always identify myself with her, a woman who’s destined to be alone on her birthday for a mysterious reason that no one can truly describe. I guess that’s just how the world works sometimes.

Sorry for being so depressing today; it’s the birthday talking. I’ll feel better by the last Friday in April.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

I don’t try to be.

The long answer:

I’ve been a fan of magic ever since I was a kid. Of course, I’ve never really believed in magic, because if it were real, it wouldn’t be relegated to circuses and children’s birthday parties. The fact is that no matter how amazing a magician’s act, I know it’s all just an elaborate trick. For some, this would ruin the performance, but I just see it as a puzzle to figure out, a tricky puzzle, if you will.

I sometimes wonder why people like magic. Most of the time, people don’t like to be tricked. If I trick you into giving me ten dollars, you’ll demand your money back. But if David Copperfield tricks you into paying a hundred dollars just so you can watch him trick you repeatedly, not only do you not demand your money back, but you applaud him for it. It is, perhaps, his greatest trick of all.

Unfortunately, we cannot all be as dashing or as talented as David Copperfield, which means that most of the time we cannot get away with being tricky. Indeed, even though I enjoy magic tricks, clever puzzles, and sitcoms with twist endings, I hate it when people lie to me. Of course, if they later explained that they were just trying to be tricky, I’d probably forgive them, where by “forgive” I mean “punch.”

I don’t like being “forgiven,” so I try my best not to be tricky. For instance, I don’t lie that much, nor do I try to pull pranks on other people. Those are certainly big steps towards untrickiness, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not tricky. The difficulty is that even if I am not tricky in any obvious way, there are more subtle ways to be tricky than by talking like the Riddler all the time.

One common way that I’m tricky is that I sometimes misrepresent myself. I have the tendency to say that I’m bad at something when in fact I’m reasonably good at it. For instance, I might tell someone that I’m not that funny. In reality, I know that while I am not nearly as funny as a real comedian, like Jerry Seinfeld or David Letterman, I’m still probably way funnier than many people, like my mom or George W. Bush or Jay Leno. It’s not really a lie, since on a grand scale I know I’m not that funny, but still I’m being sort of deceptive.

I’m also tricky in other ways. I sometimes don’t say quite what I really think just to be nice. I have, as you may recall, begun letters using “Dearest” instead of “Dear” for ironic effect, which I now realize may have been a little too tricky. Even the very fact that I’m a fairly private person could be construed as being tricky; since not everyone knows everything there is to know about me, by hiding information aren’t I being a little tricky?

It seems that no matter how hard I try, I always have the tendency to be at least a little tricky. But perhaps there’s some good in that. If nobody were ever tricky, then there would be no mysteries, no surprises, nothing to figure out. And while that’s something we strive for in fast food, it would make our relationships a little bit boring, wouldn’t it? Perhaps, then, the reason people find each other so fascinating is the same reason that people like magic: people love the unexpected.

Also, the assistants are hot.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

No, I’m just lazy.

The long answer:

Throughout the years, I’ve owned a number of daily planners, and although I am not much of a daily planner myself, I have tried to use them as much as I can. But one book can only swat so many flies, and there are only so many papers that need to be weighed down, so inevitably I feel that these planners have gone to waste.

My first problem with planners is that I’m not used to having a book tell me what to do. Thus, I would never remember to look in the planner every day unless I had another planner to remind me. But then I’d need another planner to remind me to look in that one, and so on, and my apartment isn’t big enough to fit all these planners—unless each one were half the size of the one before it. Maybe that will work… or maybe there will be issues that I can’t see.

In any case, I concede that a planner can be useful for remembering things, but I feel that I do fine with that on my own. The real problem is that using a planner properly requires you to go through the trouble of actually figuring out when things need to be done ahead of time, which is in direct contrast to my system of figuring out when things need to be done once it is too late. And then, once something is in the planner, that’s really no guarantee that it will ever get done at all.

What I’d really like is if the planner could somehow prevent me from waiting until the last possible moment to do something. However, this is impossible, because even if I wrote in my planner that I had to get something done before it actually had to be done, I would know that it didn’t really have to be done by then. It’s like trying to trick yourself into getting up earlier by setting the time on your alarm clock forward ten minutes. Sleepy Me always remembers that Awake Me changed the time and so will feel no qualms in hitting the snooze button one more time. If anything, Sleepy Me will try to spite Awake Me by sleeping in even later, not realizing that Sleepy Me and Awake Me are the same person. (Sleepy Me is crafty, but not that smart.)

Therefore, there’s nothing stopping me from putting off anything and everything that isn’t urgent, except of course the overwhelming, soul-crushing dread that I won’t get it done on time. And come on, dread shmread, right? If it has to get done sooner or later, I say later sooner than sooner. This means that in high school I wrote a lot of papers in one day instead of the allotted one month, and that at times I have gone twice as long without doing laundry than I should be hygienically able. And if everything always gets done, is it really so bad? If anything, by putting things off, I end up worrying about them for less time (albeit with a far greater intensity).

Some people would say that this makes me a procrastinator, but I’m not a huge fan of that word. Somehow the use of such a big word seems like an attempt to justify the behavior. It’s not that I don’t want to write that paper, or do laundry, or go to the store, or write this blog entry, I’m just a procrastinator. You’ll notice there’s no big word for someone who gets things done on time, and that’s because being a concrastinator needs no justification.

The truth is that I’m just being lazy, and there’s really no justification for that. It doesn’t make sense that I’m so lazy, since I should have learned well enough by now that when I put something off, it rarely becomes more pleasant. But, alas, that urge to hit the snooze button one more time always remains, and so perhaps I am destined to get up late and let two months pass between blog entries.

At least I’m wearing clean underwear half the time.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Not really.

The long answer:

When I was a kid, my family often used to go on lengthy road trips. I’m not sure why families decide to do this since, inevitably, the father spends most of his time driving, the mother spends most of her time complaining, and the kids spend most of the time asking whether they are there yet. I also find it strange that kids have such an obsession with getting there, for once they are there, they never find it very interesting. I guess it’s all in the journey.

We traveled to a lot of places around the country, and honestly, I don’t remember most of them. The other day, I happened upon two friends of mine who were listing the states that they had visited, but first they had to agree on what counted as visiting. The first rule was that you had to exit the vehicle you used to get there (including an airport if you were on a layover). The second rule was that these family trips didn’t count unless you really remembered them. That seemed like a big restriction, but then again, if I couldn’t tell you what I saw in Wyoming, I may as well not have gone. (By this reasoning, no one’s been to Wyoming.)

Perhaps these road trips have left me a bit jaded, because I don’t really enjoy sightseeing. Do I really care if I never see some given national monument before I die? Not really. I don’t think that on my deathbed, I’ll be wishing that I had seen Mount Rushmore. And that’s one of the good monuments. Most monuments are not nearly as interesting. Take Four Corners, for example. It isn’t a spectacular manmade sculpture, nor a magnificent natural wonder. No, it’s just a small plaque in the ground where people decided to make an arbitrary boundary one day. If they had wanted, they could have made another Four Corners with different states somewhere else—that plaque looked pretty cheap.

Even if I did feel like going somewhere, I’m not sure that I’d ever be motivated enough to overcome the hassle of the trip itself. First you have to suffer through a stuffy plane, train, or automobile ride. Then you have to be prepared to spend a lot of money for food and hotels and such. Then you have to accept the fact that it really wasn’t worth taking the trip in the first place. Then you have to suffer through it all in reverse. I’d much rather just lock myself in a closet for a few hours, burn some money, and then go watch TV.

But some people feel the need just to get away from it all sometimes. They envision basking on a white sandy beach on some tropical isle, sipping a mai tai, and admiring all the “assets” that the island has to offer. But I don’t enjoy beaches (as you may recall, I’m more of a winter person), I don’t drink, and any exotic local I approached would probably just tell me to kiss their asset. Maybe I should envision visiting Alaska instead. It’s a pretty enough place, especially for people immune to cabin fever like me, I’d drink lots of hot cocoa, and I think I could get Inuit.

Perhaps my problem is just that I don’t crave excitement. I can be content to stay inside for an entire weekend, or to keep my curtains closed for days, or to do the same thing day after day. And maybe this is okay sometimes, but I realize that I may be missing out on something. After all, a lot of people enjoy travel, so why can’t I? Maybe all I need is one really good trip, one that isn’t plagued by carsickness and annoying siblings. Maybe my paradise is out there somewhere in the world, and it’s my job to find it. All I know is I’m not there yet.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Vacation.

The long answer:

That was the long answer.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

No.

The long answer:

It’s a fact of life that most people like kids. I guess there’s a good reason for this: if no one liked kids, then no one would have them, which would sort of be a problem for the existence of the human race. But just because you like the idea of having kids doesn’t mean that you actually have to like kids themselves. I personally don’t really like kids at all, and frankly, I don’t really see the appeal of them either.

For one thing, I don’t understand why people think babies are cute. Ordinarily, if you were to meet someone who was short, fat, bald, and did nothing but lie around and cry all day, you would not think that he or she was cute. But somehow, people think all babies are adowable. Of course, most adults are generally not considered to be adorable, let alone adowable, so it makes me wonder when everyone gets so ugly. If we were smart, we just wouldn’t grow up, thus staying adowable forever. This would also have the advantage of not having to work or become toilet trained, but I can see why everyone decides to grow up eventually. You can only take so many mashed peas.

People tell me I was a baby once. I’m sort of skeptical about it, since I don’t really remember myself, and I don’t look anything like a baby, do I? But according to my research, over eighty-four percent of adults were once babies, so I guess I probably was, too. However, I don’t see why that means I have to like all of them. You wouldn’t expect an ex-alcoholic to like all alcoholics. And I suppose that being drunk is not exactly the same as being a baby, but since both have trouble walking, neither is allowed to drive, and both throw up on themselves from time to time, I think the analogy is valid.

Little kids are a little better than babies, but still I don’t see why I’m supposed to like them. I didn’t like a lot of kids when I was one myself, so why should I like them now? They’re uncouth and immature, and they can often do annoying, mean, or stupid things. Sure, we punish them if necessary, but then if they turn around and do one endearing thing, suddenly they’re precious again. If we took the same sort of approach towards discipline with adults that we do with children, prisons wouldn’t have all those locking doors, just lots of corners.

We tend to excuse kids because they “don’t know any better,” and certainly that much is true. All kids are stupid. (Sure, it’s said that Mozart composed his first piece at the age of five, but could he tie his own shoes?) This might seem a bit harsh, but I mean it only on an absolute scale. There are plenty of “smart” kids out there—indeed, I’d like to think that I was once one of them—but they’re only really smart in comparison to other kids. Despite what Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? might have you believe, most adults are smarter than basically all kids. This is the reason why we don’t let kids vote: they’d all write in SpongeBob SquarePants or John McCain.

Do I ever want to have kids of my own? I guess that if you never have kids, you’ve sort of failed at life, so I don’t have much choice in the matter. And even though I don’t really like kids, I can see myself taking a rather perverse glee in molding something in my own image, so maybe I should give it a shot sometime. Either that or I could take up sculpture.

Sometimes I think that I’ll never have kids. It’s not that there’s any physical reason why I should be unable, unless you count undesirability to the opposite sex. But there are kind of a lot of steps that you need to go through to make a kid, of which I have not yet accomplished the first—buy clay, or rather, meet someone who can stand me. The whole process seems so complicated that right now, to be honest, having a kid seems inconceivable. (Pun!) Combined with my overall aversion towards kids, it may very well never happen.

But I’m still young, so there’s a lot of time for things to change. Who knows, maybe I’ll find that there’s something to like about kids, and that having one isn’t as difficult as I thought. After all, it’s been done billions of times, so it can’t be that hard, right? (Then again, it’s not so easy a kid could do it.)

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Perhaps not enough.

The long answer:

I am not a very gullible person. Just as I am substitious, I like to maintain an unhealthy skepticism about everything. To wit, I never believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny when I was a kid, I’ve never been rickrolled, and I’ve never believed in any of the other absurdities listed in Wikipedia under gullibility.

Therefore it’s somewhat disturbing to me that when I’m asleep, I will believe basically anything. For some reason, night after night, every dream that I have seems perfectly normal when I’m in it, even though it never is. I could be working in an orphanage in Liechtenstein, and I never stop to think: “Wait a minute, I don’t remember ever traveling to Liechtenstein. And why am I working here if I don’t like kids? Also, since when do I have X-ray vision?”

Sometimes I try to find ways to figure out if I’m dreaming or not. I’ve found that a good clue is just to think about whether I’m dreaming or not. Sometimes I’ll think to myself, “Well, it’s possible that I’m asleep,” and really that should be a good enough indication. After all, when I’m awake, I never think that there’s any chance that I’m asleep, so if I ever think that I might be asleep, it must mean that I am. But apparently I am skeptical even when asleep, so I don’t want to do anything crazy that I wouldn’t do in real life, just in case I am awake. Instead, I just go back to defusing that bomb that I found in the laundry like I do every day.

That’s the problem with dreams. They’re usually pretty enjoyable, but they have a way of clouding your judgment that makes it hard to remember what’s realistic and what isn’t. Something can seem perfectly reasonable when you’re lost in a dream, but then when you wake up, you can’t believe how foolish you were. Unfortunately, this can also be true about the sorts of dreams that you have when you’re awake.

As you may recall, I am not really a dreamer. I feel like most people dream about their future lives and loves, but I don’t. Sometimes I think that having dreams is just a recipe for disappointment. Dreams are never easy to attain; that’s why they’re dreams. Most dreams must never become realized. And you know, it must feel terrible to be on your deathbed, never having fulfilled a lifelong dream. And even if you do fulfill your dream, what is there left to do afterwards? Die? That sounds awfully morbid, but it’s either that or get a new dream that probably won’t get fulfilled either.

But sometimes I think it’s worth getting some dreams. When I was in college, I remember hearing a lot of statistics that went something like this:

“College freshman were polled on their long term goals. Of those who had very detailed career and life goals—‘I plan to be a successful urologist at Beth Israel Medical Center, have a boy and a girl, a loving wife with blonde hair, a summer home in the Hamptons, and an elephant-shaped paperweight in the upper right corner of my desk’—99.9% of them went on to fulfill them (and the one guy who didn’t was killed by a falling piano). Moreover, of the ones who did not have very well defined goals—‘Paperweight? What?’—all of them became that bum on the street who you always sidestep on your way out of CVS.”

I’m paraphrasing, of course, and even though 28% of statistics are wrong, the point remains. Maybe, dreams give us direction but not distance, and sometimes direction is all that we need. Still, I wouldn’t want to follow Gatsby’s green light off the end of a dock, so some caution is still in order.

As much as I am confounded night after night by how irrationally I act, I wouldn’t want to go a night without dreams—they practically make logs worth sawing. Perhaps this is the right attitude to take towards all dreams. Sure, they make us do things out of the ordinary, they may not end up helping us in our lives, and we shouldn’t just blindly believe in them, but maybe they are just there to make life worth living, even without X-ray vision.

Cheers,
-qm

“What’s in a question?”
-Robert

The short answer:

Mu.

The long answer:

I did not ask many questions when I was little. About seventy percent of the questions that I asked before I turned ten were, “Are we there yet?” In school, I was never one to participate much in class. Naturally, my teachers always encouraged us to ask questions, but I could never come up with one that I felt was sufficiently inspired, that is, that I felt wasn’t dumb. Of course, my teachers always used to say that there are no dumb questions, but I think they’d have to retract that claim if I asked who would win a fight, Mozart or Beethoven. (It’s a dumb question because clearly the answer is Beethoven.)

Somehow, I’ve always found it harder to come up with questions than answers. This is strange, because aren’t there more questions in the world than answers? After all, there exist unanswerable questions but no unquestionable answers. But perhaps it makes sense, because an answer is based on something that you know and a question on something that you don’t know, and surely I know that there is more that I don’t know than I know. In fact, there’s more that you don’t know that you don’t know than you know that you don’t know, or that you don’t know that you know, or that you know that you know, you know? Yes, perfect sense.

Is there any inherent value in a question? For instance, a true sentence is a statement about the world. Somehow, I feel that it retains its truth even if no one reads it. But a question doesn’t say anything; it merely provokes a human mind into thinking about it. If there is no one there to read it, does it really mean anything? Perhaps it means as much as that proverbial falling tree sounds. Since I’m not a philosopher, such questions hurt my brain, so I try not to ask them. But since I’ve already asked one, is there any way to unask it? Aah, there I go again.

Along with rock gardens, rakes, and motorcycle maintenance, Zen Buddhism is famous for its kōans. Replete with falling trees, clapping hands, and dogs that may or may not have Buddha nature, kōans often contain questions that intentionally defy rational explanation so that the listener can try to understand them on a more spiritual level. I have to admit that I am not a spiritual person, so do such questions still mean anything to me? Should they? I’m just glad none of them ever appeared on the SATs.

Could we survive without sentences that aren’t questions? Wouldn’t we feel unresolved all the time? Isn’t there an improv game in which you’re only allowed to ask questions? Doesn’t it get old surprisingly quickly? Why is that? Is it because you can turn any sentence into a question by reversing the order of the subject and verb and ending with an upward inflection?

As much as the very nature of questions confounds me, I’ve come to enjoy asking them. Too often we rely on what we know, and it’s nice sometimes to try to determine where the boundary lies. And I’d like to think that I’ve outgrown my fear of asking dumb questions or giving dumb answers. After all, questions are designed to highlight uncertainty, so we should not expect that we always know what to say. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying.

So I guess that brings us to the matter at hand. What’s in a question? No, What’s on second.

As you may recall, I started this blog almost two months ago with the intention of answering reader questions. I admit, it’s been a lot of talking to myself, but since I did that before anyway, at least now it’s socially acceptable, sort of. And so, for any readers out there, don’t be shy, ask a question! I’ll try my best, but don’t expect any brilliant answers. My teachers always said that there’s no such thing as a wrong answer, but they’re wrong, of course. For instance, Mozart.

Cheers,
-qm

“I’m going to assume that having close friend(s) is an important goal to you, just as I think it is important to many other people. With that assumption, I have 2 related questions – what qualities are you looking for in a close friend, and how can you find people with those qualities so that you can have a meaningful, close relationship?”
-Daisy

For the first part of this response, see: What makes a friend?

The short answer:

By chance, until I find a better way.

The long answer:

Given that I have an idea of what my perfect best friend should be like, it is now my job to find her. Unfortunately, this is not an easy task, considering that, as I described, she probably doesn’t exist, ontological arguments be damned. But a rough approximation would also do me just fine, so the question becomes, where is she?

It’s difficult to meet friends, and it’s difficult in a different way than how finding love is difficult. While a guy can go to a bar with the sole intention of meeting a woman, there’s no similar place to find a friend. While hitting on someone in a bar somehow seems reasonable, I would be pretty weirded out if some guy came up to me and said that he wanted to be friends. (“Come into the bathroom and meet my other ‘friends.’”) You can’t just post an ad on Craigslist saying that you’re looking for a best friend that meets a set of specifications. Actually, you can, but you can’t expect any responses. Actually, you can, but you can’t expect any of them not to be weirdos.

Most people meet friends naturally, that is, they meet them through social events or hobbies or work or mutual friends or the like. If you’re out doing something that you like or that you do all the time, of course you’re bound to find people similar to yourself who are prime targets for friendship. However, this strategy doesn’t really work for me, not only because I don’t like doing things with other people, but because my ideal friend isn’t me.

Sometimes I think to myself, if I weren’t me, and one day I just happened to randomly meet me, would I become friends with me? And I think the answer is maybe not. What would we do all day? If I’m sitting around doing nothing, I don’t need someone like me who is always content to sit around doing nothing also; sometimes I really want someone who will drag me out to do something. I suppose we could spend the time talking to each other, since I already spend a little more time talking to myself than I’d like to admit, but then again, I wouldn’t say anything I don’t already think or know. The truth is that my ideal friend, as I’ve described her, is not like me in a lot of ways. Frankly, I know a lot of people who superficially appear to be like me, and I’m not really interested in being friends with any of them.

It’s also especially difficult for me because many of the qualities that I’m interested in are not obvious. They are things that you can only really learn about a person if you take the time to get to know them and open up to them. And let me tell you, I’ve invested a lot of time in people that I thought could be close friends with me only to find out that things just wouldn’t work out for some irreconcilable reason. Perhaps you think that I’m too stubborn, or that my standards are too high, but it hurts to find out that you can’t trust someone like you thought you could, that they really aren’t who you thought they were, so please excuse me for being a little picky.

Sometimes I think that there’s no way I could ever hope to find this friend. Most people like her are probably not looking for friends like me, and it seems like our paths are unlikely to cross through the course of our daily lives. (In fact, if I were ever to run into someone like her and she wanted to be close friends with me, I’d almost be tempted to think, what’s wrong with her?) But people sometimes meet random other people, so I’ve not given up hope yet. Still, I’d like to think that there’s a better way.

Maybe I should try Craigslist.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

Sadly, I can’t always tell.

The long answer:

I didn’t take very many art classes in college. Regardless, they saw fit to confer an Artium Baccalaureus upon me, yet I don’t feel that I know that much about art. Is it possible that I fooled them? It’s not like they give these out to everyone that graduates.

I don’t think I can consider myself to be an artist. Aren’t artists people who create art for a living, people who create art that other people care about? Sure, I have probably created a mediocre work of art at some point, but that doesn’t make me an artist. If it did, then anybody who has some sort of artistic hobby would call themselves an artist. And even though they do, that doesn’t make them right or me an artist.

If there is one thing that artists (and so-called artists) will never agree on, it is the definition of art. I would like to think that, like Justice Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio, it is enough to say, “I know it when I see it.” (Disregard the fact that the “it” he refers to here is not art, even though those who enjoy “it” might very well call themselves Bachelors of Arts). The problem is, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

In college, I used to take a shuttle from my dorm to class. Near the shuttle stop, someone in the dorm had put up on the wall a small folder containing poems for you to read while you wait—a pocket full of poesy, if you will. One day, I decided to give one of these poems a read, and I thought it was pretty terrible. Later I was bored, so I checked online to see who this poet was; surely it was just some English major in my dorm or something. But of course the poet was a world famous, award-winning poet whose name I don’t remember. It was then that I realized that I am not well versed in the art of verse.

Still, I don’t have any trouble calling poetry art, even if I don’t fully appreciate it, because I know that many people do appreciate it. On the other hand, is this reasonable? I am not suggesting that all of poetry is a sham, of course, but what about other forms of so-called art? The most prominent examples are probably modern paintings, many of which look like they were painted by four-year-olds (and in some cases are). Again, I do like some abstract art, but sometimes I worry whether I think of something as art only because other people say it is. I’d hate to be in the Museum of Modern Art one day, deeply contemplating a sculpture involving a mop and bucket, only to have a janitor come by and take it away. Then again, maybe that’s part of the exhibit.

Is art still art if no one recognizes it? Perhaps art is the man-made analogue of the proverbial falling tree. This year’s Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing was awarded to Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post for his article “Pearls Before Breakfast,” which details the story of world-class violinist Joshua Bell, playing some of the greatest classical music ever written in a Washington metro station and having it fall on mostly deaf ears. Along the same lines, a Belgian channel Klara.be had modern artist Luc Tuymans create a painting on a street in Antwerp, and it, too, went largely unnoticed. Perhaps people are just too busy nowadays to contemplate a work of art, or perhaps art out of context is not easily recognizable as such. But if the very purpose of art is to evoke our sensibilities, can a work that fails to do so really be called art?

Maybe the conclusion to be drawn from this is that art is an illusion. Instead of recognizing a sculpture as a work of art, we should recognize the reaction that it produces within us. Indeed, it is this experience that should appeal to you, whoever thou art.

Cheers,
-qm

The short answer:

They aren’t smart enough.

The long answer:

I am not afraid to admit that I am a sitcom snob. Show me a good sitcom, and I will want to watch it repeatedly; show me a bad sitcom, and I will want to stab it repeatedly. You may be surprised that I even watch sitcoms: as you may recall, my preferred style of comedy is pretty dry, and most sitcoms are, after all, more renowned for their outlandish situations and wacky antics than for their ability to not appear funny.

To give you a sense of which sitcoms I think are good, here are my favorites: Seinfeld, The Office (both British and American), Arrested Development, Frasier, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, Cheers, 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, and The Larry Sanders Show. There are a number of others that I will also watch and many others on which I am not fit to pass judgment, but generally I feel that most other sitcoms are bad. Even within my favorites, there are some episodes or seasons that I almost can’t bear to watch. Like I said, I’m a snob.

There has been a lot of talk for the last decade about “the death of the sitcom.” I’m fairly young, so I can’t really compare today’s sitcoms with those during any Golden Age or Renaissance, but typically the argument is that the public is tired of listening to six characters repeating setups, punchlines, and clichés on a living room couch with an audience laugh track for twenty-one minutes. Since reality shows are exciting and cheaper to produce, they have therefore been taking over television lineups.

I’m pretty sure that, to use one of those detested clichés, reports of the death of the sitcom are greatly exaggerated. However, I would certainly agree that sitcoms have some work to do before they can hope to win back the hearts, laughs, and minds of America. The solution I propose may seem absurd or foolish, but I think it may bear more credence than you might expect.

Make sitcoms smarter.

I even feel ridiculous writing that. America doesn’t want to watch smart television shows; if they did, there wouldn’t be any need for PBS telethons, and there would be even more CSPANs than there are now. If anything, America wants stupider shows, right? (As evidence, I submit Deal or No Deal, a show in which a contestant takes an hour to pick random suitcases and push a button when a number on a screen is big.) But shows can only get stupider for so long, and eventually people will want something smarter. I just hope it happens before season 27, Survivor: Podunk, Indiana.

I consider all of my favorite sitcoms to be smart. A smart sitcom is not necessarily one that has smart characters or takes place in a smart environment, but it should have intelligent dialogue, intriguing situations, interesting characters, and intricate plots. In other words, it should take some thought to enjoy. I want my sitcom writers to show me that they are smarter than I am. Sometimes I like to keep a tally: whenever something happens in a sitcom as I expect, I get a point, and whenever something happens that I did not expect, they get a point. If I ever win, it means that the writers are not doing their jobs. (I would normally say, “Either that or I watch too many sitcoms,” but, nah.)

Being smart does not preclude a sitcom from being ridiculous. On Seinfeld, every plotline is ridiculous, but it is undeniably smart. (Find me another show that can consistently weave four funny plotlines together in one episode.) Some of the most memorable episodes of Frasier are its farces, in which an event (typically a dinner party) carefully escalates from normal to utterly ridiculous within ten minutes. Arrested Development is completely unrealistic, and yet it is so full of wit, plot twists, and obscure references that you cannot watch it without feeling like you are missing out on something.

On the other end of the spectrum, being smart does not preclude a sitcom from being realistic or heartwarming. The humor in The Office thrives because of its realistic awkwardness, and the underlying love story (especially in the British version) is one of the most bittersweet that I have seen on any show. The first five seasons of Cheers were the best largely because of the dynamic between Sam and Diane and the new facets of their relationship revealed each season. Even How I Met Your Mother, which is not widely seen on lists of great sitcoms, makes my list above (the first two seasons at least) not only because their method of storytelling is meant to keep the viewer on edge but also because they know how to balance drama with comedy.

In some ways, the old sitcom formula is dying. People want to see something new and different, and this is the reason that single-camera comedies without laugh tracks are becoming increasingly popular. But really, it takes more than just a change in format. People want to see something different, and so, for all you sitcom writers, I dare you to be different. I dare you to be smarter than your viewers, to write a show where there is not a joke every fifteen seconds, to write jokes that are hard to catch or understand on one viewing, to write story arcs that don’t resolve every half hour, to explore your characters’ psyches, to make profound statements, to be true to life or else satirically false, to intentionally confuse and delight your audience. I dare you to try to write a work of art. Nay, I double dare you.

Because I’ll be watching.

Cheers,
-qm