Voodoo Time Dot Com

Remember that time about four years ago when you were tying your shoe and the shoelace broke? Or how about the time, that same year, when you were stuck in traffic behind the same car for an hour and you thought you’d never forget its license plate number? No..?

Remember that moment, about four years ago when you heard the Twin Towers were gone? I do, quite well. You might even remember what you were wearing at the time; which I do not. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what I wore yesterday. This is a memory gap that causes me some anxiety, as I occasionally get an uneasy feeling that I may have been wearing the same clothes for several consecutive days. And of course, you can’t trust anyone to tell you these things. A bizarre and comical quirk of human nature is that, for whatever reason, most people are reluctant to inform their neighbors of bits of twig in their hair, spinach between the teeth, or the conspicuous presence on the face of an errant nasal escapee.

(That last bit was just a fancy attempt to avoid using the word “booger”, which, now that I think of it, was rather out of character for me.)

So why is it that we remember some things for our entire lives while other things are forgotten almost immediately? Why can’t I remember my eighth birthday, but can still remember what our home telephone number was at the time? And why do some things that seem worth remembering at the time fade into oblivion while things I wish I could forget are seared into my cerebrum forever? The motivation behind this question is best illustrated by two similar experiences.

In college, I had a particularly difficult time with Finance 302. I came to hate that class. I would study nearly everyday, and when exams came around I couldn’t remember anything I had read. It was terrible.

Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum had a jingle they used to play in their television commercials (which you are now humming as you read this). I came to hate that jingle. I would hear it nearly everyday, but if there were an exam in which I was asked to write the lyrics to the Juciy Fruit jingle, I could do it. It’s terrible.

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if we could remember everything - every word we’ve heard or spoken, every e-mail we’ve ever written, every bowel movement - all as if they had just happened. Some people seem to have this ability to remember everything (my wife would have me believe she does). It seems like this would be an immensely useful evolutionary advantage if for no other reason than to cut down on the amount of smalltalk between acquaintances.

“Hey, remember that time when I ate that really big sandwich?”
“Yes.”
“Er… Of course you do.”
…
“Well, I’ll see you later then.”

Also, the game show Jeopardy probably would not exist.

In the interest of science, I’ve decided to try to fool my brain into memorizing a really mundane event, like clipping my toenails or washing my car, and see if I can still remember it twenty years from now. Or maybe I’ve already done that, and just don’t remember.

Bye for now.

As I mentioned several months ago — twelve (zwölf) months ago, to be exact — I am learning to speak German. My studies began in earnest only a couple of (ein Paar) months ago when I purchased a self-paced audio package. Even if you’ve never done one of these courses before, you already know how it goes.

“Viederholen Sie, bitte: Gunther habe kein Geld.”
“Gunther has no money.”

“Ich weiß nicht, wo meine Frau ist”
“I do not know where my wife is.”

…and so on.

By now I’ve logged something like twenty (Zwanzig) hours in my car repeating various phrases meant to teach me the fundamentals of German speech. The course is quite good, and already I am pleasantly surprised by the variety of phrases I can construct with only the tiny bit of the language I’ve learned so far. And at the same time, I am learning loads about German culture.

For example, in lesson two (zwei) I learned how to communicate my cravings for beer and wine. And the subsequent lessons have had me informing waiters, friends, hotel clerks, and whoever will listen that I would like to drink a beer. Or wine, please. Not until lesson seventeen (siebzehn) did I learn how to ask for water. But it is well known that the German people have a passion for beer. No surprises there.

There also seems to be an inordinate amount of socializing going on in and around hotels - especially between acquaintances of the opposite sex, and involving alcohol. Take, for example, this exchange from a recent lesson.

Hello, Gunther.

Yes, at the hotel.

If all goes well, I hope to visit Germany later this year and speak to the people in their language when possible. Unfortunately, I don’t see much chance of being able to sneak my most practiced phrases into casual conversation. Given my current marital situation, I don’t imagine I’ll have the opportunity to approach a young lady and ask, in my best German, “Excuse me. I don’t know where my wife is. Would you like to drink wine with me in my hotel?”

Auf Wiedersehen.

I received my annual web-hosting bill a couple weeks ago, which reminded me that I actually pay about $100 per year to keep this big blank page out there on the Internets. While my inner narcissist would never allow me to cancel my hosting service — thereby unfairly depriving the world of my alternating acerbic and saccharine witticisms — it occurred to me that financing this website for its own sake is hardly the sort of intelligence one brags about at Mensa socials.

Fortunately, this is a situation which can easily be remedied by my just sitting down and typing something already. I say “easily”, but the reality is anything but. To say I have writer’s block is to say that the sun is yellow. Technically, it’s the truth, but the description hardly captures the true intensity of the condition. Mine is a block that could prevent even the most prolific of Harlequin novelists from describing the heaving of another bosom ever again. Children the world over should pray nightly that J.K. Rowling never sees the likes of this block - lest Harry Potter languish as a Hogwart’s fifth-year forever.

But it is not entirely fiscal responsibility that again brings me face to face with the blinking cursor. I seek power. Afterall, if L. Ron Hubbard can start a religion after writing mediocre science-fiction, why can’t a blogger? Likewise, in a 2001 census, 0.7% of British subjects identified themselves as Jedi. And it is estimated that there are more Klingon speakers in the world than there are speakers of Navajo. The lesson here is, in a world of more than six billion people, if you speak loudly enough, someone is bound to think you’re a damned genius.

So there it is. My latent messianic complex is the hammer, and my keyboard the chisel that will chip away at this writer’s block until only the rubble of obscurity is left behind. Then shall I begin my ascent into fame, adulation, and my eventual deity. There will be statues and obelisks erected in my honor, and the streets shall flow with the blood of the nonbelievers.

Therefore, the question is, when the inquisitors arrive (and they shall), and they look through your bookmarks, will you be found wanting?

Bye for now.