Time

There’s always something that is occupying one’s time. There’s always some reason that one just does not have enough of the unit of time to complete some task.

At the start of this new year, without committing to a resolution, I am hoping that I can commit to giving the counter productive work a balancing act of time to the productive work.

What is it about having time versus having “the” time to do something that keeps us occupied?

It’s a new year. It’s 2010. It’s all about time.

The year of the Tiger.  The year to take the time to evaluate a situation, stalk it, then pounce on the task with full effort.

In Place of a Food Pyramid,

In place of a food pyramid of my eating habits, I present many building blocks.  Many rectangles.  And why is it called a food pyramid?  Why not just a food triangle?  The pyramids were built with thousands of blocks of relatively the same size.  We are not expected to eat thousands of different things of the same quantity, are we?  They are asking us to eat a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a lot more of this, and a lot less of that.

In lieu of a pyramid, I propose a highly complex, inclusive, inducive, all-encompassing, all-knowing shape–the merimekko.

If there’s one good thing that came out of my tech career on wall street in one of the big banks getting a bang for your tax payer buck, it was the glorious charts we learned how to create.  Mesmerizing charts.  Dazzling charts.  Utterly useless and over indulgent charts.

In walks the “merimekko chart.”

The vertical axis represents the daily consumption of the item, the horizontal axis represents the day of consumption AND the amount of time spent during that day consuming said item.  Ingenious diagram.  Showing two elements of time at once.  Dazzling.

There’s just dabs of water.  I should be drinking a lot more water.  Without having that water cooler and or water bottles to lug around I just don’t drink enough.  Something just eeks me about drinking out of the tap. Maybe it was all that time spent living in New Jersey where you could smell the water in your glass as you brought it up to your nose.

Salt.  I eat lots of salt.  At night I eat salted pumpkin seeds.  Shell and all.  You get more salt by eating the shell.

Soy sauce.  I can put soy sauce on anything, except on the above chart.

Hot sauce.  Tabasco’s the best.  But any other will do.  Louisiana style.  Not too much keen on the green ones.  They are just eh.  Can’t go too hot and spicy, like the chipotle ones.  That’s just raw pain.

There should be a pickle in this diagram somewhere.  So throw in a pickle a day, or every other day.

See, for all the analysis there is, if there are leftovers in the fridge, I’m pretty much going to just eat that.  But for the most part this is what I’m dealing with.  Days and days of coffee, scotch, rice, and meat.  I used to be a fruit and green tea guy, but there’s no time anymore.  There’s just no time to eat a piece of fruit.  It’s just too damn messy.

What?  No time to eat fruit?  Impossible.

The apples get in between your teeth, then you gotta floss.  The bananas always leave some residue on your fingers.  Pears are just annoying as hell.  They just drool everywhere.  Peaches.  Drooling.   Watermelon’s pretty good, but you can’t really eat that during the day at the office.  You’d be spittin’ seeds at the whiteboard while the guy is trying to draw the sales curve and it just wouldn’t carry the right tone in the meeting.

Grapes are good, but then again, you have to wash them and put them in a bowl and then wash that.  Raisins are better, but again, residue on the fingers.

Do you get my point?  You might as well just keep drinking coffee all day.  Someone there at the office will make it.  You’ll get your water intake for the day (8 cups of water = 8 cups of coffee).  You get your caffeine for the day.  So you’re productive now.  And then, you get some fiber and stuff, and you know what I mean so I don’t have to elaborate on that one.

So coffee it is.  Just drink that and you’re pretty much covered.  Have some crackers or saltines or something, so you don’t dehydrate.  Get the salt in the system.  And then maybe some peanut butter on hand for some calories.  That should pretty much get you through the day.

Good luck!  Keep a log of it.  Let me know how it goes.

Drive-thru/through. Just drive away.

Anything that tries to depict its efficiency by the embedded convenience of cutesy spelling should be a clear sign of how bad it is for you.

The Kwik Mart.

Krazy Kars for sale.

Toys ‘R Us.  (note subliminal message for future generation to begin associating texting with toys, toys with phones, mommy can I have the new toy/phone?)

Glory and the Drive-Thru

America’s landscape is pock-marked with drive-thrus.  Once known for purple mountain’s majesties and its fruited plains, America has streamlined the processing of amber waves of grain into one delectable treat after another.  And in true capitalist fashion of giving the customer what he wants, one doesn’t even have to leave the car.  What could be more American than stuffing those fat cheeks and bloated ass of yours without even having to stand up?  What could be more democratic than the power of choice? (Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King etc.) What screams “freedom” louder than your decision to do nothing?

Drive-Thru Technology

If you have seen Lethal Weapon, you know the biggest take-away from that movie is that they always F-you at the drive thru.

“Have a Good One!”

“Have a good one” is one of those empty phrases that people tack to the end of a conversation on their way out of the space they’ve just occupied.  It harkens back to the days of where we would have spoken something of the likes of “Good Day, Sir” and turned and walked out, except those phrases were useful.
There’s something about having that awkward moment of silence/s from the time we finish speaking to the time we exit the space we’ve just occupied.  Perhaps it’s the training, the habit we’ve seen on television where each conversation is so neatly crafted and packed.  At the end of each conversation there is a scene cut into a new situation.