It’s a slur against someone. You’re such a do nothing!  

And yet, I strive to do nothing. Oh, how I love me some irony.

I try to do nothing every morning for ten minutes; it never works out. I spend the time – usually capping out around four minutes – worrying about what I have to do. Blog. Work out. Plan lessons. Check messages and email. Meetings.

Doing nothing is hard work. When we do nothing, we tell the world that we aren’t playing by its rules for a little bit and we go against our instincts and our guilt. This morning, in an effort to do nothing, I made a list of ways to do nothing. Again, irony.

Go to a Café on a Weekday Morning  

One of my students told me that every morning he sits in a café downstairs from his flat. He gets a coffee, leisurely scrolls through his phone or reads. Sometimes, he said, he just sits there.

I was almost as impressed as I was incredulous. On a weekday morning!?

This seems the most defiant of Do Nothing activities. With a whole day of responsibilities ahead of me, my brain and fingers are on overdrive. I can’t stop moving or thinking. If you can enjoy a cup of coffee on a weekday morning without guilt or stress, then I will gladly suffix your first name with Lama.

Day Drink

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I was on the metro once when a German tourist realized he’d had his wallet lifted at the airport and shouted “Sheize!” before storming off the car. Every single person on that car cracked a smile. To this day it is the only time I have ever seen a group of Czechs smile on public transport.

The Czechs love a bit of Schadenfreude – deriving pleasure at someone else’s misfortune. And while I have certainly undertaken aspects of my adoptive country’s cultural habits, like enjoying apocalyptic silence on trams or embracing socks and sandals, this one came as a shock.

I have always prided myself on two things: First, I don’t wish bad things on people, and second, my unusually soft thumb hair. As for the former, I usually wish the best for people and genuinely want them to be happy and healthy. But I have come to understand that I sometimes enjoy seeing people sweat, and my motivations are nationalistic.

For example, there are few things more satisfying than seeing British people become socially uncomfortable. The British are very open about their social awkwardness, but witnessing the push of this particular envelope induces a mildly orgasmic reaction.

A couple of years ago, a British colleague walked into the office only to be confronted with the horror of a surprise birthday party. The agony of discomfort that overtook him as it dawned on him that the party was something like a horrible beauty. I thought he might throw himself out of the window. When they handed him a cake and a handsomely-wrapped present, he almost cried. I wished I’d had a beach chair and a tub of popcorn.

Nearly as satisfying is watching an American food order go wrong. Americans love nothing more than ordering a meal and modifying it until it no longer resembles the meal from which it originated. Anyone who has ever taken any part in a meal near any American knows exactly what I am talking about. Can I get the burger but with chicken instead of beef, with half sweet potato fries and half russets, with kosher sea salt on the russets only? Instead of barbecue sauce, can you do a frog demi-glace with sautéed mushrooms in eggplant oil, and instead of lettuce can I get onions fried in baby-tofu seal fat? Thaaaaanks!

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We all have guilty pleasures. A pleasure is only guilty when you don’t want other people to see you enjoying that pleasure. So the guy who says “My guilty pleasure is hanging out on the back of my truck drinking Jack Daniels and listening to Johnny Cash” is full of crap.

That guy’s guilty pleasure is dancing around in a towel lip-syncing to Taylor Swift’s Blank Space (this is said with absolutely no experience of having done this).

So let’s just be clear what we’re talking about. Things that you love to do that you don’t want anyone seeing or knowing you do.

Dropping Everything to Excrete

This is more about being 43 years old than a guilty pleasure, but it’s something I don’t want people to see me doing. It all boils down to a window of opportunity consideration. Something has to come out of your (mostly) exit only portals and you go somewhere and let your body do its own yoga.

Trust me. Embrace this. One day you will, nonetheless.

Emotional YouTube

I will not go into details. But with a few drinks under my belt, I am not watching intellectual conversations between Dick Cavett and Gore Vidal.

Singing Songs in French

…which is a language I do not speak. So I just sing gibberish in what I sort of gather is a French accent. Which, again, is not accurate in any way.

My Interview with Conan O’Brien

He was a big fan of my book. We had lattes.

Nightshirts

At bedtime in movies and television, women wear a T-shirt and nothing else and guys wear pajama pants and maybe a T-shirt. It’s masculine and suggests that he’s ready for any emergencies that might occur during the night.

For years I wore pajama pants. And while I slept everything below my waist would become the temperature and humidity of the Amazon. Invariably I’d wake up in the middle of the night and chuck my pants across the room.

I finally came to terms with the fact that I’d rather be comfortable and look feminine than uncomfortable and look masculine. And so I simply wear a longish T-shirt and nothing else. And while you might suggest that is girly, I remind you that Ebenezer Scrooge navigated his way through three Christmas ghosts wearing a nightshirt, and my below-waist sleepy time climate is mild.

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Though I was ready to buy almost any story I heard, I found Easter pretty unlikely when I was a kid. Jesus is sold out by his friends, denied by his legions of followers, killed in a horrible way, buried in a cave, and then after three days emerges, relatively unperturbed as to recent events.

Nah. Never bought it.

Part of my disbelief hinges on the pictures. In the hundreds of artist representations depicting Easter that I saw growing up, above my grandmom’s living room couch or in all of my grade schools, Jesus always seemed a bit wiser, calmer, inspired, a whole lot holier, and maybe a bit roughed up. He definitely appeared ready to move on up to the next place.

Of course now I look at those pictures with a different perspective. With more experience, I see a dude resurrected, climbing out of a pit after a long dark winter, both literal and figurative. Sticking with that metaphor, in the pictures it’s the beginning of spring, lighter, easier going. In almost all of these pictures, sunlight is dramatically present.

I always supposed that the whole scene was meant to convey Jesus’ transition from man to God. Coming out of the grave. Rebirth. In better condition. Transition from man to God. The sunlight. God, grace, optimism, divinity. The liberation from earth and the ascendance to Heaven. But now I think that’s all a crock.

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By far the best aspect of being alive at this time in history is the ability to watch nine years of a sitcom in about a month. And so it came to pas that I spent Sunday binge watching The Office (U.S). This also satisfies my tendency of falling on trends about seven years after everyone else.

The Office is one of the pioneers of mockumentary style sitcom, which masterfully combines quirky characters, improvisation, and cringe humor to a level that is painful to watch and yet irresistible.

I am now finally getting jokes people have been making for about thirteen years concerning The Office, I’m on The Office Memes on Facebook, and I say “That’s what she said!” about three times a day. But most of you have been there and you have done that. This is Harry Potter all over again.

In the last episode one of the show’s most annoying characters, Andy Bernard, is giving an interview. Andy Bernard constantly talks about his glory days as an A Capella singer at Cornell University. If he’s not doing that, he’s talking about a future goal. He is so lost in past nostalgia and future pipe dreams that he is often lost on what’s happening in the present situation. In his final interview he mentions how he now works at Cornell University, which is what he has always wanted, but he finds himself constantly talking about his “good old days” which is now his friends from The Office. It is this annoying character who then makes the entire series’ most poignant observation: “I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

I suppose this struck a chord for a couple of reasons. First off, nostalgia can be one tricky siren. We often review the past with rose colored glasses, exaggerating the positives of the situation (freedom, friends, fewer responsibilities), while editing out the bad aspects (no money, no stability, loneliness). I think it’s very human to long for the days of yore.

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Two days ago, Burke sent me an attachment with this message: Please do this!

You’ve seen those weird Facebook apps. What will you look like at 75? What would you look like with makeup? What would you look like if you were hit by a train?

This one: What would you look like if you were the opposite sex?

Never. Never, in my entire life, a life filled with unrestrained oddity, weird self queries, and idiotic reflection, in all of that time, have I ever once even considered what I’d look like as a woman.

Until now.

At first, I thought no. I won’t do this. Why? Well, sharing the photo would mean placing myself at the mercy of my friends, a great deal of whom are extremely clever and witty (read: cruel bastards) who would never let me forget how I looked as a woman.

Don’t share it, you say?

Well I don’t know if you’ve read this, but recently it’s become public that Facebook isn’t keeping our private data so private. Someone has invaded the playground. Not that this is so surprising, it’s just another rung in the story of how Facebook has gone from a place to catch up with old friends and see pictures of their cats, cars, and children to a place stinking of acrimony. It’s now a virtual place where a complete fucking asshole named Donald Trump is the child king in one way or another, and it’s a place where we now hear collocations like security breach and harvest data. And it turns out that our information is being given out top be used against us, thus confirming the most heretofore paranoid people. People are terrified of their embarrassing (read: naughty) pictures and conversations going public, which other people would delight in, were they not terrified about their embarrassing (read: naughty) pictures going public.

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I applaud China’s decision to implement the idea of not only rating social credit, but also punishing social transgressors and the socially awkward and rewarding the socially attractive. It’s about time that crimes such as accruing debt or hanging out with someone of a lower social status is punishable. How many times I’ve thought that someone who blocks a footpath with their bike or who issues an insincere apology should be added to a blacklist.

Once they’re on this list, they can be dealt with via appropriate recourse, which could be travel restrictions or, we can only hope, being completely socially outcast.

If there’s one thing social interactions and faux pas need, it’s more bureaucracy and legal punishment.

I’m pretty socially perfect. I fit in with snowflakes and rednecks. One of the cooks where I used to work said I had Street Cred because I drank Olde E. People always say things to me like: “You rock!” I break very few social rules, almost to a pathological degree. I always know what to say. I am a delight at a funeral! I am also super good looking but humble enough to know not to call attention to it; I am hyper aware of blocking people’s paths with things, mostly because I’m terrified of coming into contact with strangers’ calves or elbows. I don’t own a bike, and I have very little debt, which is one of the positive byproducts of having very little money. (That’s 5-18^ths of a demerit. Hm)

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We are all the heroes of our own story. And in our fantasies, news headlines reveal just that about us. Man Saves Family from Fire; Penguin Publishes Manuscript Found in Garbage, Becomes Instant Classic; Man, Though not Classically Attractive, Rated on Personality and Immediately Named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year and Sexiest Man Alive.

In our faceless way, we rock! And we want the world to know it.

But if there’s one horrifying reality, it’s that we are mostly mundane little creatures. And while our oddities, day to day struggles, and epiphanies mean a great deal to us, they wouldn’t amount to much when headlined on the New York Times.

Man Sends Colleague Irritated Text in Meeting that could have been (short) Email

Man Horrified to Learn that his Cat Posts aren’t Seen as Ironic by Bulk of Friends

Man Constantly Worries about Accidentally Sending Dick Pic to Entire Contacts List

Man Flays Boss in Mock Argument in Shower

Man Constantly Thanks Deity he Doesn’t Believe in that Nobody can Read his Mind

Man Occasionally Mentions Passing Interest in Birds to Make Himself More Sophisticated

Man Breathes Deeply when Burrito Loco is out of Wraps: Pretends Zen Attitude, but Really Afraid of Ending up in Viral Video

Man Thinks Joking about Practicing Casual Conversation Makes it Less Insane

Man Almost Loses Eye after Biting Cat’s Tail

Man Goes Berserk in Toilet after Boss Asks about Email she’d Sent Twenty Minutes Before

Man Realizes he Doesn’t Hate Taylor Swift after Hearing One of her Songs

Study Shows Man Understands Significance of Cultural Sayings Seven Years after Significant: True Story

Man Hums to Warn Urinators that He’s Pooping in Stall

Man Dreams of Bludgeoning Czech Clerk to Death with her Own Stamp

Man, 43, Stunned that Airplane Lifts off

Incensed Man Writes Blog after Realizing he only Gets about Thirty Facebook Friends in Feed: Facebook Does Not React

Man Suffers Nervous Breakdown after Students Refuse to use Target Language

Man Disillusioned after Mark Hamill Doesn’t Send him a Birthday Tweet

November 8^th: Man Shaves Mustache after Nobody Realizes he’s Being Ironic

Man Feels Satisfied after Doing Laundry and Food Shopping on one Saturday; Will Reward Self with Reading and Maybe a Beer Later

What would be your life’s headlines?

I cooked spaghetti and meatballs for a friend on Saturday. I never feel more like my grandmom than when I am adding pinches of salt to tomato sauce that I made from scratch. Or when I am kneading balls of meat and spices. Of course, the apron helps.

I am never going to appear on a television show for my cooking skills. Or for any reason, I guess. (well, not unless those Queer Eye gents ever respond to my emails.) But for the last five or so years I have developed my cooking skills so that I can not only state that I am a competent cook, but I can mean it.

But it has been a long road.

Like many of those who were raised by my mother, I didn’t grow up learning to cook. There was no need; my mom spoiled us. She cooked every day (sometimes after working eight to ten hours). At times, she relied on quick and easy standards to quell the voluble hunger pangs of the four kids and the dentist banging their forks on her kitchen table. There was mac and cheese, hotdogs, grilled cheese, and tomato soup. But more often than not, there was homemade pasta dishes, meatloaf, vegetables, or potatoes.

Besides occasionally reheating dinner or putting meat in between two pieces of bread, I didn’t raise a finger to feed myself from the age of 0:001 to17.8.

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