3/25/05: Bad Habits

I've got a lot of bad habits.  I eat crappy food, I procrastinate, I waste a lot of time on the ol' intanet. I used to drink too much until October of 2004. Pretty much any weak-minded habit you can get sucked into, I've got it covered. I never got into any really dangerous habits, but that's mostly because I'm too much of a puss to try scary stuff.

Perhaps my worst habit is television. Every night, within minutes of my arrival back at the apartment, the TV is on. It generally stays on until I go to sleep. It's on through dinner, and it's on during the verbungling hours. It's basically the third member of our household. 

It would be one thing if I was sticking to substantial stuff with real mental nutritional value, like MTV's "Real World/Road Rules Challenge".  That would make sense. But often it's just on, humming away in the background, occupying a substantial part of my brain activity, preventing me from doing anything particularly productive.  It could be anything, especially in HD, and I'll give it some degree of attention.

It's been about three months since I read a book all the way through. TV is just too easy.  And if it's not TV, I'm puttering around on this website, which is also not doing anything to enrich my brain.

When you think about how much there is out there in the world to learn and observe and soak in, it's really quite arrogant to attempt to create anything, be it a painting, song, novel, or bullshit website. It's like you're saying, "At this moment in time, I have more to offer the world than the world has to offer me."

Which, of course, for even the world's major geniuses -- the Picassos, the Faulkners, the Dursts --  is just not true. The world always has more to give you than you could ever hope to give it back. Logically, every free second should be spent pursuing more knowledge, more art, more good shit. It's out there. With luminaries like the aforementioned, you can forgive them for their hubris. Without it, they'd just be schmucks like you and me, and the world would be a far less interesting place. 

In fact, if nobody had any creative arrogance, the world might not have more to offer than you could offer in return. It would be like that commercial from a couple years back where the guy reaches the end of the internet*. If only ten people throughout history had had the balls to put themselves out there in some way, most of us would quickly exhaust all available art. Then, once you had read all four books ever written, and gazed upon both of the world's paintings, and heard the only song ever recorded, you'd eventually get so bored that you'd find the courage to make something of your own.  And you'd have every right to do so.  And the cycle would begin.  In fact, maybe that's how creative output got started many years ago. Some dude wrote a bad poem, everybody in the world read it, and 1% of them thought, Shit, I could do better than that.

But now I am off the path once again.  What I was getting at is that my mind has become very flaccid. It's not being fed the right foods. As a result, I have little of substance to offer. But my arrogance is still just** strong enough to keep putting out this stupid site, despite being fully aware of the riches of wonderful existing material that I should be pursuing in my available free time.  Verbungle.com is another bad habit, just slightly above laying in front of the TV and watching Odd Couple reruns.

I wish an Odd Couple rerun was on channel 11 right now.

So I've got these bad habits.  And I know I shouldn't cling to them. But I do. It makes you think about the old tough guy standby, "I'm gonna drop you like a bad habit." It's supposed to convey confidence, like, I'm gonna knock you out the way I knocked out my Tussin addiction. 

But since in reality most of our bad habits are with us for years if not forever (otherwise they wouldn't be so bad), the statement actually translates as "I'd like to kick your ass, but I'm simply not up to it.  It's too tough for me."

In honor of this lame discussion of bad habits, here is today's challenge, worth 15 verbungle.com genius points. In 117 words or less, make a case for why people should continue to smoke cigarettes, or start smoking them if they haven't already.  You can leave it in the comments section, and you don't have to wait until noon, you can get cranking right away. You can make multiple submissions if it's a slow Friday. Saturday at noon is the deadline.  At that point, we will evaluate all submissions and make a decision on who has made the strongest argument, and they will receive the points.

***

Today at work I went in to take a leak and someone had just absolutely killed the bathroom.  It smelled like the bowel movement of a man who had eaten nothing but Slim Jims for the last five years.  Thick and musty and overpowering.  Of course, the culprit had already abandoned the scene of the crime, so I ran the risk of getting blamed if I passed someone on my way out. I put one arm over my nose and mouth and peed as quickly as I could, then I rushed out the door. Sure enough, as I washed my hands (sink is outside the bathroom), a VP I know strolled past me on his way into the kill zone.

"Hi Hans," he said in a friendly tone.

There was nothing I could do.  This guy was going to go in there and smell the carnage, and in his mind I would be the man responsible.  His image of me would forever be associated with that thick fecal cloud he was about to experience.

Sure enough, when I saw him five minutes later and I said hello, he just kind of looked at me as if to say, "Nice work, you animal."

My question is this: would it have been inappropriate for me to say, as he walked past me, "Look, Billy, I wouldn't go in there unless you absolutely need to.  And if you must go in, I want you to know I had nothing to do with what you're going to discover in there"?

***

Let's all pull for Wisconsin in tonight's game and throughout the rest of the tournament.  I had kind of forgotten they were still alive and now I've got a nice Friday night game to watch.

* That really was a brilliantly simple spot. Its underlying message (that quality material on the internet is finite) resonates more powerfully with each bullshit website that crops up.
** My apologies to Pete B. for my continued abuse of italics. I know it gets your goat, but what can I say? It's a bad habit and I'm gonna keep doing it.