...I've been experiencing a new form of guilt.

It's blog guilt. The guilt the comes of not updating your blog for almost two weeks. Neglecting it to the the point that a full third of my followers are giving me shit about it in the comments section of my last blog. Do I have any excuses? Sure i do. But none anyone would find satisfactory. Such is the nature of an excuse, the instant it becomes satisfactory, it graduates to the level of 'rational explanation' never to look back. But in the interest of satisfying your curiosity, here's the best I can do.
I've been busy. Busier, I suppose. It's not that I've had my attention completely engaged for every waking hour of the past 11 days. But between new job and often leaving new job to go immediately do something else i feel that my time has been spoken for. Of course that doesn't mean I couldn't have just stayed up and extra hour to write, if only a little. but lately the balance of my free time has been spent not at home.
I have a lot of friends who are busy, and I am not envious of them. I'm sure I would grow exhausted if my time were so regimented, and would hate the feeling that by taking any of it back for myself I'd be stealing from my own temporal collection plate. Nor do I think much of the idea of racing from one event to the next and wonder if such behavior is a symptom of the fear of being alone with one's thoughts. That's a pretty bold assumption. And I'm rarely so quick to psychoanalyze anyone given my own neuroses but I am the only person I know who goes on four mile walks with just my thoughts to keep me company. The only person I know for whom that alone time is so important. I'm sure the people around me see that behavior as it's own symptom of something in me.
This has all gone and gotten much deeper that I intended. What started as a brief mea culpa about my laziness in keeping up with this writing has become a whole different beast. Ooops. Sorry, I'd hoped to keep this one mercifully brief and as far outside of my weird mind as possible. No such luck. Let me hastily conclude this by saying, I intend on sticking with this, writing here. Hopefully soon this will be my alone time. And will become as valuable and as necessary to me as those four mile walks.

...foldin' t-shirts.

So it's come to this. Only a handful of posts so far and I'm so devoid of ideas that I'm forced to blog about homemaking tips. Fear not, as this one doubles as a guaranteed-to-get-you-looked-at party trick.
Does your current t-shirt folding technique leave something to be desired? Than look no further than 'the Gravity Fold', and let Isaac Newton fold your t-shirts for you. (Note: Newton has been dead for 282 years and can't so much as fold a protein let alone your laundry.)
Since moving back to Cincy from New York I've missed by-the-pound, drop off laundry service more than just about anything else. I could drop it off in the morning, go home and go to bed, and then pick it up, clean and folded, before I had to go to work at night. And they almost never lost my socks! Since then I've been schlepping my canvas bag of dirties over to friends' houses to clean them, but never wanting to fold my dry clothes until I got home always resulted in a wrinkly, unrecognizable heap of fabric. But now, at least where my tees are concerned I have a new, high-concept, ultra-modern method for folding, which is really more performance art than chore. I'm saving minutes upon minutes which I can then use to blog about all of the minutes I've saved. Genius.
While some of the less cultured of my friends may look at how, with a deft flick of the wrist, I transform a pile of cast-off Jersey knit into a sharp cornered rectangle of retail ready perfection, and deride it as witchcraft. They fail to see the natural beauty of my technique. Just as the origami master will turn squares of paper into birds and all kinds of other shit. So to do I, with grace bordering on transcendence, make the ordinary into art.
Please observe the above video to see for yourself, presented in highly accurate Japanese for accuracy's sake.

...a lapsed academic.

Not true actually. It's hardly just been lately. I dropped out of college eight years ago having found the University of Cincinnati to be nothing more than high school with a bigger yard. About once a week I do regret not having a degree in something but I'm sure if I did have one I would regret not having a degree in something better. Like Lego engineering. But because it's what I would've spent most of my time and money on in college anyway, I've tried to remain a reader. Which, while I don't find it to be a particularly darling feather in my cap, people I barely know always seem to want to know what book I'm reading. As I'm reading it. Their interest immediately going on an Ambien drive as soon as I say something like "It's a history of water politics in the American West." I may need to start making up fake premises for the books I read just to keep anyone from trying to come to conclusions about my personality.

(Warning. Snarky content.)
"What's your book about?"
"It's the story of a local news anchor and Applebee's franchisee who discovers that the agribusiness who supplies his ranch dressing is dosing it with sedatives (from and even bigger pharma-company) to pacify suburbanites into becoming drooling mega-consumers. And while trying to get to the bottom of the conspiracy he is stymied left and right by his corporate media bosses (even bigger still) who are hell bent on influencing the subdued masses into electing their CEO as emperor of the Northern Hemisphere."
"Oh, that sounds good. What's it called?"
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."

I've poorly utilized a lot of blog space to make the follow simple statement. Lately I've been reading much more. And while most of it has been fiction, I took a break to read The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. In it the author imagines, with the help of dozens of scientists and conservationists, what would happen to the planet if all human life vanished. The 'how' of the human extinction is beside the point but to satisfy my Sci-fi nerdliness let's just say it was a nano-bot apocalypse. The book catalogs of all the crap we are currently and constantly venting, dumping and leeching into the natural world. Then describes how many of those releases wold stop instantly after we had vanished. While other sources of poison would slowly start to gurgle in our absence as giant oil storage containers failed and each of the 441 nuclear power plants on Earth either burned or melted down. I'll let you ponder which option is preferable. And as scary as it all is nothing in the book chilled me quite as much as the following.

Explode the acronym VHEMT and you get the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. No kidding, it's exactly what it sounds like. And, while what it sounds like is pretty fucking grim, a visit to the VHEMT (pronounced, yep, vehement} reveals some alarmingly rational thought about dealing with the Earth's number one problem. Us.



Despite the name, no one in this group seems to be promoting Futurama-esque suicide booths or fascist, government imposed child quotas. Merely, that if people, of their own free will, chose to have no, or at most one child they may be doing one of the more green things any family can do. While thought provoking, as the youngest of four it saddens me to think about a whole shitload of kids growing up without siblings. Until I think of how many people's lives would be enriched by a family of three adopting a fourth or a family of two adopting two more (like my Mom's brother and his wife did). The more I think about the intentions of this group the more I wonder why I found the idea so shocking in the first place. Except that I simply never considered the well being of the planet as part of family planning. It's always weird to think about something you've never thought of before.
Based on what is obviously intended to be a shocking name for their organization, I went to the VHEMT website expecting to find comic book levels of madness and villainy and instead found smart folks thinking radically and even whimsically about a very serious problem. Like opening a door menacingly labeled 'BEARS!!' only to find it filled with the gummi variety.
Fear not friends of mine who are recent parents, I'll not show up at your door wearing an "Extinction, it works" tee shirt mumbling about diapers in landfills. My shock regarding the Extinction Movement has more to do with the shock of accepting a seemingly bat-shit crazy idea as more valid than at first glance. Here's hoping I can continue to treat all ideas presented to me fairly regardless of their outward appearance.

Whew! Congratulations to you for getting through what is so far my most tangent filled post yet. And congratulations to me for doing it without bringing up that stupid octuplets lady. Today's blogging lesson is FOCUS. I'll try harder in the future to keep things on one note.

...holding it while at work.

So, I go to the restroom in the office building where I'm now working and I see the above notices taped to the tile above the urinal. I wonder just how bad things have gotten, economy-wise, to make guys feel like they need to pee from across the room just to save the wear and tear on their shoes. So sad. What's next? Washing your hands with wishes and dreams?

I do enjoy the way the second notice is worded. There is something strangely ritualistic about the phrase "Please step up to urinal."

Please step up to Urinal.
Genuflect before Urinal.
Do not look Urinal directly in the drain.
Make a generous offering to Urinal. (Cake?)
You may ask one question and one question only of Urinal.
Bow in reverence, flush then go reflect on the glossy, porcelain wisdom of...
URINAL!!!

Here's hoping things remain at least this bizarre at the new job.

...looking for a new word for shy.

I don't feel like I have a lot of memories from my childhood. At least ones that form some kind of narrative. I tend to remember instances of no more than a few brief moments. Often these memories are reinforced through repetition, and one of the strongest of these originates with my Mom. I don't remember any one specific instance of this but I do feel like some variation of it happened regularly.

I'm looking at the ground and hiding quietly behind her legs, in the folds of her floor-length skirt, and she's explaining my behavior to whomever it is I'm hiding from.

"He's shy."

And I was. She was right. I can't know for certain when I started being shy. Maybe it's always been there, but it's weird to think of my four-year-old brain doing all of the same electrochemical stuff my 29 year old brain does. To me a child's brain is just some tiny machine consisting of cartoon mice operating brightly colored, plastic clockwork. But I suppose that just like now, something in the firing of my synapses told me to hide. And I did.

Eventually after so many times of hearing the words "he's shy" from my Mom I started to understand just what that meant. I was withdrawn, intimidated by the world and the people around me. And I embraced it. "This is Matt. He is shy." Everything else falls into place behind that introduction. Every quirk of behavior explained. It occurs to me now that this may be the first aspect of my own personality I was ever aware of.

And as I grew up being shy became something to rely on. If something didn't work out the way I wanted, it was pretty easy for me to attribute it to being shy. Even if the explanation made little sense I would still find a way to rationalize it. Hiding became a powerful tool.

Then something strange happened. Without being fully aware of what was going on, during the last few years of high-school I found some confidence. It may have arrived partially on the affectionate fingertips of girls who, inexplicably to me, seemed to be noticing who I was. And through that I started to develop other new personality traits including a subtle, Matthew Luken version of defiance. Which may be how I came to cast off any idea of continuing my education. And likely how I found myself in my early twenties, out in the larger world and once again shy. And now without my Mother's skirt to shroud myself in.

It's much later than that now, and I remain shy. And I'm starting to wonder at what point a person goes from being shy to being something more like a recluse. It seems like the word 'shy' is reserved exclusively for children and marsupials. Just like the word 'bashful' is only ever used to describe dwarfs. So now my shyness is going to need a new word which is likely going to need to be painted with a darker brush.

Lately being shy feels different. More like an exile than merely hiding. I find myself at parties, invited by friends and welcomed warmly by people I've only just met. But before long I feel myself receding into the background as if all of the sudden I'm viewing this revelry from high above on a balcony or from a across a wide and empty valley. From time to time I may shout something across the divide but for the most part I only ever seem to be observing. Pretending to be a part of the fun but always certain of just how transparent my fraud is.

I'm aware of the extent to which alcohol acts as a social lubricant in these situations. And that when I'm not drinking, at least not at the rate that everyone else is, I shouldn't be surprised when I get left behind on the slide. But I can't help but feel like there is something larger going on here. Something with a less simple explanation than not enough booze. I'm sure that there is.

In the meantime I'm worried that being shy will give way to being withdrawn which is nearer still to living my life as though I've vanished entirely. And that makes me wonder if I can choose not to be shy. Or at least choose to understand my shyness in a different way. And as I think about it now, I know that being a shy child predicted much of who I am today. And just as I made being shy an integral part of my identity as a kid, I need to embrace the fact that as an adult, I am not meant for a crowd. I'll never stand out in one so I don't need to worry about failing. I need only embrace the fact that the interactions that will matter most to me will almost always happen one on one. And that craving quiet is not necessarily the same thing as being a recluse.

It's not so much that I'm shy, it's that I'm contemplative and discerning in how I meet the rest of the world. Serene.

... a tad snarky, and feeling guilty for it.

I was in a bus shelter after work yesterday minding my own when I found myself in a lunk-headed but mercifully brief back and forth with someone who I'm certain was a New York Post journalist. Here is a transcript, with a cameo by my internal monologue.

New York Post: Are you waiting for the bus?
ME: (IN A BUS SHELTER and also not painting a landscape.) Yeah.
NYP: Which one?
ME: The twenty-seven.
NYP: Has it been by yet?
Internal Monologue: Yeah, it has. But in eager anticipation of this conversation and because my ears aren't quite as frostbitten as I'd like them to be, I waved it on by. Imagine my irrepressible glee when I saw you coming towards me, literally brimming with insightful and penetrating queries. Lay another one on me Larry King. Perhaps you'd like me to describe just what the aneurysm you're going to cause me feels like.
ME: Not just yet.

Of course I didn't snark this person out right. I would never do that. But was I being a jerk for even thinking of a retaliatory salvo of venom? This person's questions, while powerfully stupid, were harmless and cost me nothing. But my almost instantaneous reaction was to get all indignant that any of my woefully underutilized brainspace be taken up answering a question as dumb as "has the bus you're waiting for already come and gone?" In my continuing effort to grow, I'm not sure that being so shitty is behavior consistent with the person I want to become. Scarier still, I not sure I know how to react any other way.

This whole episode comes just two days after I mostly ignored an NPR interview with author and New Yorker film critic David Denby, who's new book Snark describes how vitriol, like the kind I dredged up at the bus stop, is damaging the way we communicate. Much of the author's disdain for snark seems to come from the anonymous and dark corners of the web. Where message board posters, on topics from comics to needlepoint, claw blindly at each other like kittens in a burlap sack. His concern being that any random troll with a chip on their shoulder can cause lasting personal and professional damage to anyone of their choosing. And can do so at no cost to themselves and with little fear of reprisal on account of the anonymity afforded them by the web. At the same time Denby applauds the use of snark for satirical purposes by people like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. I applaud them too, but it seems to me that the only way the author can provide to distinguish between what are and aren't acceptable uses of snark is that those that can get away with it be previously identified as satirists. Or, unless you're funny, you can't be snarky without also being an asshole. And while the Daily Show is almost always more entertaining than just about any message board out there, I'd like to believe that the fair use of language extends to us all regardless of how well known we are.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this book was born of one too many hateful, anonymous message board postings deriding Mr. Denby's opinions on film. And while it may have one of the most 'no shit' premises in recent non-fiction I still may have to read it if only to find out how we (I) came to be so angry.

*NOTE: I have since listened to the whole interview twice.

...having my emotions manipulated by a GE commercial.

Just so you don't think this blog is all about me whining. I present this. The latest in GE's decades long 'We're not so bad, really.' campaign. But this one is different. It has what could only be described as the most adorable couple ever to shill for a heartless multinational. With more chemistry than Dow and ADM put together and enough charm to collapse a star (not to mention that bamboo scaffolding) I don't understand why these two aren't on the cover of every People and Hello! from here to Sichuan province. Just watch this and then try not to run out and buy a new toaster to warm your little heart.