Things that are Weird: Gyms

We live in America, the land of excess, the land of waste. Nothing provides greater evidence of this extreme lifestyle of wanton superfluity than the gym.

We have so much caloric energy in the United States (or even most of the world) that we are willing and able to waste it by performing pointless and repetitive tasks in an air-conditioned box. People run for miles on treadmills and go absolutely nowhere. They end up burning hundreds of calories an hour and all they’ve really done was read the lips of whatever CNN panel show was being played on the big screen.

Sometimes when I go out for a run, I pass a homeless person. The men and women sit on the sidewalk in tattered clothes trying their hardest to conserve energy. They don’t know when their next meal will be or how big or small it could be. They sit like withering flowers in the Washington heat as I whir[1] past.

Sure, there are tremendous health benefits to exercise, and not everyone goes to the gym just to burn calories.[2] But it is a bit like leaving a window open while the heater runs in the dead of winter because you’re getting too hot. We’ve got all this extra energy, so we’re just going to burn it off and let it dissipate uselessly into the ether.

Of course there really isn’t a better way of dealing with this. We can’t all be obese. There just aren’t enough of those Hoveround mobility scooters.

But it’s still weird, isn’t it? We have created meccas to consuming calories, calories that we don’t need, that our bodies can’t really use. And right next door, in the same strip mall, we’ve got shiny buildings filled with equipment meant to just burn all of those calories right away. It’s a socially acceptable bulimia.

Still, make sure to get at least 60 minutes of exercise a day.

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[1] Read as “hobble while gasping for air and clawing at a stitch in my side”

[2] Based on my observations, gymnasium are often used for talking on cellular devices or, depending on the time of year, as a setting for a particularly important mating ritual known as “flexing into a large mirror”

Things that are Weird: Shaving

Every couple of days and/or whenever I feel like it, I hurt myself. I pick up a sharp instrument, something composed of four separate scything blades, and scrape that instrument over the most sensitive and precious skin on my body.

I don’t always cut myself, in fact, I rarely do. I don’t usually get razor burn or bumps or other outward signs of irritation, but it still hurts, even if it’s just a little bit of pain. My face, that thing we think is so important, is left a little raw, feels a little bit stung by whichever morning breeze I eventually expose it to.

Then I go back to the bathroom a few days later, stand in front of a mirror and do it all over again, just to whisk off a few imperceptible millimeters of hair that will grow back in an instant.

I get that shaving feels good. Those days when I do it (which are only Monday, Wednesday and Friday as I am still not technically a Man yet) I cannot stop rubbing my hands over my never-been-smoother cheeks. “Who replaced my face with a baby’s ass?”

But it’s still ridiculously weird, isn’t it? I mean, razor blades are sharp. They’re really sharp. They’re sharp enough that sometimes people take them into bathtubs and use them to slice open their wrists. And we men rub them against our face.

Sure, the things designed to not kill you immediately, and most of the time the worst you’ll get is a little nick, but again, think about how close a man could be to bleeding out all over his bathroom countertop. Just a tiny slip while shaving the neck, and not even Chuck Malarchuk’s doctor could save you.

And what about straight razors? They’re for the closest shave and the closest you’ll ever be to dying in a barber’s chair.

People do this every day. I just think it’s weird, that’s all. Think about it. It’s kind of weird, isn’t it? We do this, we’re expected to do this, commercials on television tell us to do this thing with an instrument that is inherently dangerous, could and most likely will cause damage to ourselves and everyone just walks around like it’s no big deal, like it’s some sort of rite of passage.

Oh, the things we do for vanity.

Sonder

There is a window in my room that looks out over the Potomac River. Along that river runs a road, some kind of freeway that connects the District of Columbia with other places. Every night, between about 4:30 in the afternoon and 8:00 in the evening, that road is filled with cars. It's rush hour, D.C. Style. And it's completely surreal.

In each of those cars is a human being. Each of those human beings has a mind. Each of those minds has its thoughts. Those thoughts can be anything. Those thoughts can be the most hopeful fantasies, the most depraved perversions and the most dilapidated secrets. These people, these kinds, these thoughts, they all have families. They all have loves and interests. They all have memories of happy moments and sad moments. Some of those memories are similar to the memories that I have, like the first time going to the beach, or calculus class or Boy Scout camp. Some of those memories, those thoughts and frustrations are nothing like any that I had or could have or would be capable of having at any point in my life, like what it's like to be a minority of ethnicity or sexual preference or what it's like to have red hair or how enjoyable listening to Justin Bieber is.

A this point in my evening, I step back from the window, whisper "whoa" to myself and go back to eating Bon-Bons and watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory. Then I start thinking again.

Regardless of how similar or dissimilar this collective cacophony of thoughts are to each other, there are common in that none of me involve me, or, depending on what your commute is, you. And this thought exercise, this process of feeling insignificant and ignored is limited to the Monday through Friday drivers of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Think about the other 6 billion people who populate the world, whom you don't know, who don't know you, whom you care next to nothing about because your life is complicated, entertaining and troubled enough as it is already, who care next to nothing about you because their life complicated, entertaining and trouble enough as it is already.

It's astonishing to consider the enormity of all this information. Personal identities, names, home addresses, work addresses, spouses, names of friends, names of enemies, names of pets, memories of losing virginity, memories of the first day of school all stored on 6 billion brains by 6 billion different people. The information on all of these brains is not completely unique, but it is distinguishable, and the ability to distinguish the various data is quite important. And, if we're lucky, our names, our appearances and our voices might make up a few bytes of this mountain of gigabyte after gigabyte of knowledge.

For some reason this realization, somehow encapsulated in the term "sounder" smacks of profundity. At least, that's how it strikes me. Holy shit, am I small. Holy shit am I insignificant. Holy shit, am I unique. Holy shit am I special. Does this mean I can still consider myself important?

But it maybe it, this feeling of realization, this feeling of insignificance and this feeling of uniqueness, maybe it should be countered with a simple "no shit." Because, really, there are 6 billion people living on this planet. And, you arrogant prick, some of them live and experience the world and form relationships and fall in love and construct narratives with themselves playing protagonist. Because they're human beings. And you do the same thing. Because you're a human being too. Why would you expect any differently? Why would it take some "whoa" moment, some profound realization to consider that human beings, regardless of who they are, where they're from or what they've been, are similar to you? Are you that lacking in compassion, in empathy?

Because I am a human being, and I have constructed a complex narrative for my existence, a story line in which I am the main character and the "good guy" and I have filled this narrative with so much information that I can barely keep track of it all. And I would prefer to think at my existence, this complex, winding narrative that I have spent so much time building, is at least a little bit important. So you can attribute any lack of compassion, any failures of empathy on my part, to that.

Of course, that excuse isn't good enough. At least, it shouldn't be...

Stuck in My Own Mind

Sometimes I do this thing where I look at my hand. I pretend like I'm looking at my hand like a movie scientist looks at some really important movie object in all those movies about scientists looking at objects.

Sometimes I rotate my hand slowly. Sometimes I flex my hand. Sometimes I use my other hand to pinch the flab around my hand. Most of the time I imagine that my hand is separated from me by a thick pane of glass, that I am a tourist at some hand zoo. And I look at my hand like its some sort of exotic animal that I have only seen in zoology textbooks and late night Google Images search results.

Every time I do this, I feel like I am participating in this grand philosophical thought experiment, probably to distract myself from the clear signs of some dissociative and/or schizophrenic mental illness.

Mostly, while I am studying my hand, I try to imagine that I am studying the hand of another person or that I am some other person studying my hand. Sometimes I try to imagine myself as an alien, whose appendages are formless, green and slimy. (Such a creature is able to manipulate physical objects through some telekinesis, obviously). Imagine the wonder such a creature would feel while looking at this dry structured, very purposeful and (in my case) very pale piece of flesh stuck at the end of a much longer piece of flesh. Weird, right?

Just imagine, considering the perceptions of the same alien life form, looking at the other aspects of society. Have you ever though about how weird a dog actually looks, forgetting that you have spent your entire life being programmed to coo instinctually at the sight of any on of those creatures? What about the strip malls with which most suburbanites are intimately familiar? Human beings have spent fortunes, have spent centuries and countless lives building up and growing familiar with a very specific society and then asserting that many elements of this society are fundamental to human existence. Why do we need careers? Why has every society decided that the shiny yellow shot from the ground is so goddamned valuable? Has nobody had any reservations about defeating inside the same building you eat, sleep and fuck? Why do we expect every dwelling to have four walls, a door and a roof, if not a few more windows? Expectations are weird. Reality is weird. Hands are weird!

Hands! Nearly everyone has hands, so nearly everyone has overlooked how potentially weird hands could be. Just because humans are one of the few species to have opposable thumbs, we think that our hand is the most evolved a hand could be, even though its designed hasn't been updated in over a million years.

This video explains everything:

Unless you are English or some kind of freak not-British darts aficionado, I assume you watched this video with the same mixture of confusion and amusement and confusion as I. First of all, what the hell is going on? Second of all, why is everyone getting so excited? Finally, why is nobody else in the video as confused as I am? Why are they acting as if apoplectic clearing is the appropriate response to watching a bald man throw darts at a cork board? Why does this bald man feel entitled to strutting around this pub/sporting complex like he got away with fucking his boss's wife, then knocked his boss out with a single punch, then became his boss's boss, then fired his (now former) boss, then threw some darts at a wall?

But then why do Americans act like it isn't at all weird to pile one hundred thousand people into a concrete bowl and watch grown men carrying a leather ball and run into each other? Why do people care so much about Harry Potter or Lindsay Lohan's personal life? Of course the weirdest bit about all of this is that nobody ever thinks anything about it is all that weird. How many of those darts fans ever thought about how odd it was to go absolutely crazy over a bald man throwing pointy objects at a wall? Probably none...

Obviously these questions have their own sociological answers about the roots, development and mixing of various cultures. But those are too scientific, too clinical and generally unsatisfying to my interests. It's entirely fascinating how trapped we become because of our concept of what is "normal," by what we become familiar and comfortable with.

I don't think that thinking this way is particularly useful. There is no grater philosophical statement to be made besides to encourage people to look around, examine their situations and consider how weird everything is, how much weirder everything could be, how normal everything is, how normal you think you are and how normal someone else thinks you are not.