There seem to be a lot of shameless people out there in the world. As Capitalism continues to change cultures around the world, I find that more and more people feel okay about selling their image, their identity, or even patches of their skin in an effort to make a quick buck. (People in Asia have begun to permanently tattoo themselves with corporate logos in exchange for a small salary, or one time payment.) I’m all about Capitalism, and it’s natural reflection of mankind’s competitive nature, but while making a buck, and being rich, is the goal of most capitalists, I think somewhere along the line, I got a little confused, because I don’t really care all that much about the end result of a competition, so much as I like to pay way too much attention to statistics, and to enjoy the act of competing. I’m so warped, that I turn almost every event of my day into a “Personal Competition” between Me, Myself, and I. This way I get to win and lose in everything I do, all the time, and I get to keep statistics all the while, which makes me incredibly lame, but also sort of well rounded, like a perfect oval – uh, I mean circle.
This week I went to the grocery store to pick up a few vegetables, an apple, a snickers bar, and some beer; my standard shopping list. When the woman at the counter rang me up, the total came to exactly eighteen dollars. I was overwhelmed with the same emotion that a lottery winner feels, because I had never scored an even total at a grocery store! So I excitedly asked the cashier how often people with more than ten items hit an even number with their bill. She gave me a ‘you are clearly psychotic’ look, but then admitted that it was actually pretty rare, and gave me a nice condescending smile to reward me for taking notice. She then quickly slumped back into her ‘I hate my job’ demeanor, and neglected to further reward me for my awesome grocery mart ‘score.’ I feel like I should have had some sort of prize waiting for me, because I think the odds of scoring a perfectly even shopping total is pretty damn low, and I won, damn it, I won. I still feel like bragging about my supermarket score, since it’s the first time it ever happened to me in over twenty years of shopping, but no one else seems to care one iota (thanks again, roommates). But I’m the one who is keeping the stats, and so I know that I’m a winner!
When I’m bored, I always create games to play, and there’s nothing like a private game to pass away a chunk of time. Whenever I’m bored on a bus, train, or plane, or in line, or a waiting room, I play the following game: I imagine that if there were some horribly tragic accident, like an apocalypse, who, out of all the women of age in the room, I would try to procreate with, if forced to restart the human population on earth. Ideally, it would be just me and a room full of women to myself, but according to my games’ rules I have to pick just one, and try to imagine what we might have in common, and how it would all work out. Lastly you have to come up with your post-apocalyptic pick up line. It’s fun.
I’m currently involved in so many personal competitions, that I’m starting to lose track of them all. For example, up until the publishing of this column, most of my friends probably didn’t realize that I am competing against all of them, in my own secret, creative competition, to be the last of my original group of high school and college friends to NOT have a career, a wife, and my own home. Yes, that’s right, for some dumb reason, I think it will be personally rewarding to be the only loser at the next couple of weddings I am invited to, who doesn’t have a serious girlfriend, a solid career, and a really nice car. And I want to look happy about it, as I attend the affair in a rental tuxedo and hover around the free bar, scanning the room for my ‘post apocalyptic wife.’
Once a week, we have to put our cans and newspapers out for recycling. (We have to recycle, it’s another fascist Oregon law, and if you’re caught throwing out recyclables, then “the man” will take you from your home in the middle of the night and beat you with whips made from recycled whips.) From the time we set our recycling bins on the curb, and close the front door, it takes less than two minutes, on average, for an army of ‘Can Burglars’ to rush up to our curb with their stolen shopping carts, and raid our bin for every single returnable bottle and can. These Can Burglars (aptly named by my roommate) reflect the finer aspects of competition and capitalism: These men and women are so quick, unobtrusive, and reliable, that I think they put every government worker to shame, and maybe even most of the regular members of the American work force as well (it’s because they work for themselves). They rove the suburban ghetto flats of Portland, constantly trying to outsmart and beat out their competition to get enough cans and bottles to buy themselves the necessary ingredients for life (beer and cigarettes). My only problem is that they make me want to take a stab at can collecting, to see if I can beat them at their game.
The most obvious form of competition in our society, aside from the stock market and the work force, is sports. It takes a lot to make me cry, but I’ll admit that I’ve shed some tears the last few times that the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball failed to win in the first round of the playoffs. But I’m ultra-competitive, and I believe that when the things that I love and believe in the most in this world fail, it’s a reflection of my own failure and inability. I’m a competitive freak, and baseball is my religion: I attend the Church of A’s on an almost every day basis (church is only closed on get-away days and for rain outs). And I live and die with my Green and Gold. Baseball used to be the American pastime because it’s a long and grueling competition, but its role has slipped, and I think it’s because attention-span-impaired Americans prefer personal competition to group competition. Instead of putting stock in a team for months on end, they’d prefer to watch the highlights of the highlights of some sports clip show, and then check their fantasy stats online from work the next day. They care not about real teams, but only about their fantasy teams. This trend in modern sport depresses me, and I am now simply resigned to waiting for fantasy backyard croquet to sweep the nation.
The worst aspect of our competitive, and so-called ‘free market’ is the scam that we call insurance. (I swear, sometimes Adam Smith’s invisible hand directs me to order another beer, and to stop thinking so much—this is why I no longer believe in free will, or free markets). Insurance is contradictory to my competitive nature. Insurance is betting on the fact that you will get hurt or injured at some point, and that you will need someone else’s help. I feel that it takes a lack of personal pride and positive thinking to smile and accept this sort of logic. Even though I’ve used health insurance several times, I still refuse to ‘give up’ in my lifelong competition to stay healthy enough that I’ll never need another doctor’s aid to survive. If they called insurance something else, like “a whoops I really screwed up fund” I think I’d be much more likely to buy into it, but the term ‘insurance’ makes me feel dependant on others to protect me, and that hurts my pride – and I do not like the feeling of hurt pride! (Side note: Hurt pride is up big over Pride at the end of the first quarter of my life, but pride still has a chance to even things up before the half, for those keeping track).
Speaking of ridiculous machismo pride, when I first started driving, one of my best friends nicknamed me Al Unser Jr. Jr. because of my fiercely competitive style of driving. It wasn’t the typical teenager approach to driving, in so far as I had no real need for speed, I just had an intense desire to get everywhere I could by the quickest route and the least amount of traffic possible. Unfortunately, this juvenile desire has not begun to regress in my twenties, and if anything, my desire to achieve the perfect car trip has greatened. Every day I time myself on my trip to and from work, and try to score the best time that I can, keeping track of red lights I am forced to wait at, and how many busses I can avoid being stopped behind. All the while, I imagine my car to be something like the space vehicles found in the video game F-Zero. There are few pleasures like the intense thrill I reward myself with for beating out my fake competition on my daily commute.
So I guess that I’m weird, and not just because I imagine that I’ll meet my future wife while ducking beneath a Rite-Aid counter to shield ourselves from a terrorist attack, but mostly because I notice everything around me, and not only do I notice all these things, but I always remember these things, and I then catalogue them in my twisted head to use as reference points for understanding the bizarre phenomenon that is our crazy world.
I notice things like the fact that no two human beings clear their throat the same way; everyone seems to have their own routine, style and technique for clearing out that ‘hard to reach phlegm’. I’ve noticed that fortune cookies often come with advice or a proverb, and should be renamed “advice cookies.” I’ve noticed that when you eat asparagus, your urine smells really strange—and I know that a lot of other people notice this too— but have you noticed that if you use a manual clutch to start a car from third gear, the ensuing scent is exactly the same as asparagus urine? I’ve noticed that when I go to clean my ears with a Q-Tip, I am unhappy when the tip comes out too clean, because I feel like I must have missed something in there. So I go back in, deeper, feeling an indescribable thrill as I risk my hearing ability in a contest of skill to get a little more wax, so that I can feel like I’ve achieved something remarkable. I’ve also noticed that most people think that blind people can ‘sense’ if they are staring at them, and so they avoid eye contact with them (myself included). This is incredibly humorous, since blind people are, um, blind, and have no way of telling if you are staring at them! You can’t hear if someone is staring.
I’ve also noticed that a lot of people don’t ask enough questions. No I’m not talking about the Bush Administration, for once. I’m talking about things like the crowbar. Did a guy named Crow invent the crowbar? And what is it supposed to be used for, besides threatening intruders, and breaking into homes? Aside from demolition teams, I’ve never really seen anyone use one to do anything ‘not crime-related.’ Do they sell crowbars at “Thieves ‘R Us,” where you can get lock-pick kits, ski masks, and gun silencers at a discount rate? I just noticed that I’m rambling, which is the one thing I excel most at, but it seems to have no marketable use. So I’ll end this personal competition here, and declare myself a winner, because I wrote another column by my own personal deadline.