Tussling Over Towels

The day after Thanksgiving in the US is referred to as Black Friday. It marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping ‘season’—that Christmas needs a whole ‘season,’ particularly of shopping, to reach its birthday celebration zenith seems to me a tad ridiculous—and is ‘celebrated’—I use this term loosely—by large retail outlets that launch the occasion, one could say with a kind of pathos, ‘festivities,’ with big promotional sales.

It is the busiest shopping day of the year in the US.

The attractiveness of these low low prices, along with the sense of hysteria that has built up around the day—a froth-at-the-mouth, eye-rolling, elbow-y, hyper hysteria one can only associate with the allure of bargains; the drooling embodiment of lust when you take the desired human out of the picture and replace them with a cheap television or a nifty hat stand—has led to early morning line-ups or camp-outs of hundreds of people who eventually surge into the store as a singular, aggressive entity as soon as the doors are open.

The specially trained employees who man the door action roll out of the way of the rush to the safety of their cash drawer.

Trampling is common, along with cheap shots to the ribs to slow down rivals.

The tent city left behind is a haunting ghost town, rustling in the pre-winter winds, and is sad in the sense that all those abandoned abodes will likely be replaced by cheaper newer releases after the day's shopping is done.

This mass, still running with forearms at the ready, begins to disperse into the outlet’s aisles. These partitions, a way of orderly life in retail, become a bewildering physical obstacle to the throng who cannot comprehend why what they want is spread out through the store as opposed to being safely stowed in one place awaiting their arrival—maybe, a specially designed, well-lit cavern, guarded by motor-cyclists.

As they split up, each figure in the group begins their escape from the collective consciousness and comes back to their self. Yet, it is a self compromised by the material needs coursing through their blood and soul; a self that knows itself only by its own primal urge to have that winter coat and that specially designed salad spoon capable of perfect tossing and dressing with a single fell swoop which Oprah said you should buy.

 

They sport credit cards as hand extensions and a sixth-sense instinct for the best deal that is only heightened in this competitive environment: a kind of mangled flight-or-fight state of mind. Indeed, it becomes almost paternal: people suddenly ‘know’ when the item they came for is under threat of being sold out; it is in danger and must be purchased. Nothing will stop them.

Super human strength becomes a norm to both fend off competitors and carry multiple items in awkward positions all about the body: under both arms, on a shoulder and, sometimes, balanced precariously on the head. An individual, in the heated midst of these sales, is suddenly capable of tucking a 50 inch plasma television beneath one arm, with a Furby Boom! perched on the box, and a child on one hip. With their free formarm they push a trolley loaded with cooking utensils—a new cutlery set, plates, fry pan, bread maker—a stack of DVDs, and a new tent.

Communication is broken down into a few basic words: ‘where?’ ‘want’ ‘how much?’ and ‘mine.’

Every year there appears to be something that is in particular demand, which leads to all manner of childish name-calling and aggressive encounters, primarily break-dancing knife fights. Lest we forget the Tickle Me Elmo debacle of 1996. A great many desperate mothers, fathers and misunderstood individuals with an Elmo fetish lost their life that day.

This year, according to this report from the Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/30/walmart-towels_n_4365047.html, people were going particularly crazy over towels, with Walmart releasing a report noting that they had sold 2.8 million units.

People love towels. I get that. I love towels. They’re useful devices or, if you will, swathes of fury fabric. They dry you if you’re wet or, if you just wet them with some cold water and drape them over your forehead, cool you down if you’re hot. They can mop up messes. They can be used as rudimentary slides or sleds on wooden floorboards. They can be used as whips: get it wet, roll it up and flick it out, targeting, in particular, the buttocks. The crack of the towel, accompanied by the yell of irritation of the whipped one, are sounds of pleasure to anyone with some measure of cheek.

I’m sure someone could make them into a neat fashion accessory if they really wanted: a literal ‘just-got-out-of-the-shower’ look.

But, for all those fantastic uses (at this point, I should clarify that I am not being sponsored by a towel company, although these guys do a stand-up job: http://www.bigtowelcompany.com/), it is hard to see why people, as per the Huffington Post report, would get so nasty in their procurement. Why would people fight over towels? Surely, a super-cheap Brazilian cotton towel, with an astronomical absorbency rating, and excellent post-wash life would not inspire people to duel.

Yet, despite their usually benign nature, towels caused great discord on Black Friday. Why?

The answer is actually quite simple.

 

Firstly, as per basic chi, bathrooms need to be spiritually unified places and matching towel sets are valuable in bringing good spirits to bear in attempting to achieve this heightened state of nirvana. And if fighting for an inner-bathroom-peace is wrong, then, really, what is right? Everyone knows this and although such peace is unquantifiable it just isn't usually this well-priced.

 

And, secondly, who wants to pay a lot of money to be dry?

(Plus all those uses! Get on it people.)

Some Facts About Echidnas

1. The hedgehog and sandshrew are their closest marsupial relatives.
2. Besides being a natural and passive deterrent, their spikes can be detached and hurled as projectiles to ward off the aerial assaults of fruit bats.
3. Their long snouts, or beaks, are remarkable. Not only is it an effective tool in their daily consumption of ants, termites and bush grapes, this snout can also be, and is, used as both a snorkel apparatus and disguise when the Echidna is forced to flee to reedy water. They dive in, tilt themselves vertically, stick their snout above the water amongst the reeds and slowly propel themselves with their spikes until they smell that the threat has gone away.
4. Contrary to popular and scientific opinion, their stout legs are actually strong enough to enable them to jump, although it is more of an exaggerated hop, over many difficult obstacles, like gumnuts and sleeping dingos.
5. Their pre-mating ritual sees them hop around in circles whilst bristling their spikes and flicking their snout. They accompany this with the sonorous sounds of their ‘mating wail’: a curious noise that has been compared with the trumpeting of an elephant, although at a much higher, whale-like pitch. Some have theorised (White 2000; Grey 1998) that this ‘wail,’ besides operating as a signal of intent, also scares away koalas. The Echidna is a self-conscious creature and does not care for the leering eyes of these tree bears.
6. Their actual practice of mating is a deft physical performance with much spike hurling, fainting and tumbling down hills. It is an oddly beautiful and graceful performance, which inspired the Kama Sutra position of the same name. ‘The Echidna,’ as it is written in this tome, remains one of its most difficult, but rewarding, sexual acts.
7. Their offspring are called squiggies.
8. Unlike most marsupials they migrate in summer and winter. One of the great natural sights in the world is to watch this migration or, as it has become affectionately and practically known in most scientific and bird-watching communities, ‘Spiky Trundle.’ Every winter they move 12 feet to the east and every summer they move 12 feet to the west.
9. Their preferred habitat is the space between two mossy boulders. They mark this territory with daily security waddles and warning hops that leave behind marks in the dirt alerting other Echidnas and bush/boulder dwelling animals to the fact that this spot is taken.
10. Although they jealously protect their turf, they are also sharing, considerate critters and are well known for their communal honesty and notion of the 'fair go.' It is these particular traits which we, as humans, identify with. Thus explaining the common phrases, 'honest as an Echidna' and 'come on, mate, give him an Echidna.'

Why Documentaries Make Me Happy

It is enjoyable passive learning given clarity by the gentle tone of David Attenborough’s well-educated and happily curious voice that perfectly captures the whimsy of any moment that involves any animal, particularly the desman, as they go about their day-to-day rituals once mysterious to us, but given clarity by the gentle tone of David Attenborough’s well-educated and happily curious voice that can rise to great lecturing heights, soaring above the crashing of waves as he surveys the natural habitat of the sea otters that we had thought cute in their sinuous agility and tummy eating: a curious oddity given clarity by the gentle tone of David Attenborough’s well-educated and happily curious voice.

The Screaming Goats of Borges

The Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, in his bizarre short story/meta-literary essay, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” has his arch-Catholic narrator make the acute observation that ‘Fame is a form of incomprehension, perhaps the worst.’

I cannot think of a better way to formulate a notion of fame; or, rather, I cannot think of a better way to understand the modern state of fame itself. Characterized as an inherent quality of the famous individual(s), fame becomes the defining feature of their famousness. It assumes its ‘incomprehension’ when the originating skill or set of skills that exposed the famous person to a wide audience, hence granting them their fame as that person-who-does-this-thing-really-well-and-makes-me-happy-when-they-do-it—singing, acting, playing guitar, dare devilry, whatever—becomes both overrated and secondary to the fame itself. They are known for their skill, but it becomes imbued with much greater significance than its quality warrants as the very fame they achieved on its back comes to displace it while artificially elevating it.

They are famous for being famous because they got famous doing that thing they are famous for. The thing that granted them fame is suddenly and peculiarly incomprehensible, lost to the insecurities and strange contexts and hyperbole of the fame it assisted in the finding of.

This, predictably enough, is a product of their audience who basks in and cultivates the incomprehension of their idol’s fame. They lose the seeding idea of their admiration and replace it with wide-reaching and far-fetched theories that attempt to make sense of the collective consciousness that has created the famous person before them. The actual sense, even role, of the famous person is lost to the transference of this fame that inevitably distorts their actual substance.

It is a practice of impossible self-identification in an Other that attempts to ascertain what makes someone famous on more familiar, normal and non-famous terms that cannot possibly account for the ambiguities and inexact art of fame itself. Thus, it is a symbiotic relationship that can only result in utter, albeit often deeply buried and well masked, confusion that, eventually, comes to define it and generate it.

In this ‘Modern’ age, nothing speaks more for the idiosyncrasies of fame’s incomprehension than the Internet. It is remarkable for the fact that it almost eliminates, even skips past, the traditional need for skill and embraces, instead, the intrinsic incomprehension of fame. YouTube, then, is essentially a tribute to the pleasures of having no idea why a fat man wearing only a koala mask, fairy wings, Power Ranger underpants and some fetching loafers, who dances around waving a toilet role and screaming, ‘BANISH THE TOXIC PANTHER CATS!’ has achieved 3 million views. He is famous for being that guy, and, ultimately, we try to dissect why he is that guy. We make him famous in our incomprehension, our desire to relate ourselves to this mystery who has achieved 3 million YouTube views. But he cannot be related to, because he probably has no comprehension of why he is doing this and why he is suddenly famous.

He’ll embrace it. Fame will become him. We’ll make him fame.

Of all the things that are ‘famous’ on the Internet at the moment, I find myself gravitating toward the sudden and, if you think about it, abnormally strange love of goats.

These are creatures that have been best known for being grumpy, eating anything, crossing bridges protected by trolls (which may be what discussion forums need to ward of trolls: digital billy goats) and ramming things. Also, their cheese isn’t too bad.

The Internet has revealed, however, that they are also capable of making a screaming sound that has hauntingly similar qualities to humans

and, more particularly, Taylor Swift.

Also, they are capable of human emotion; of appearing so chuffed with themselves that they can be thought of as ‘genuinely stoked.’ These are faces that can cheer one up in even the darkest moments of living (when you’re out of lives on Candy Crush). They should be the face of Christmas.

https://www.facebook.com/genuinelystokedgoats

What this all essentially amounts to is the perfect form of incomprehensible fame as proposed by Borges.

As I have sort of suggested, fame is about relating oneself to someone or thing bigger. It is about locating a like-ground, even as in the process of elevating someone or thing to fame we demolish any real similarity. Fame is incomprehensible in the act of its creation.

Superficially, goats that sound and look like humans are famous because we see ourselves in them—we are all screamingly content goats at heart. But, beautifully and perfectly, they have no comprehension of their fame (like my hypothetical fat man), which makes them potentially endlessly famous. And we have no comprehension about why, besides the power of the Internet, we suddenly find them more relatable than we did before.

We bestowed the initial fame on them for their curious and weird human mimicry, which in itself is something we cannot comprehend as being possible in such a usually cantankerous asshole of an animal. What we find, then, is a desperate need to share them with others and share, in particular, their incomprehensible fame.

Screaming and smiling goats are famous because of their incomprehensibility that defines their own naivety as Internet superstars and our own bemusement at their self-sufficient fame.

They’re probably screaming because they don’t want to be one hit wonders. No one has the heart to tell them that that is pretty much self-defeating.

Will Somebody Please Think of the Candy?

There is nothing like the wanton destruction of candy to relieve the anxieties of existence.

Of course, I could be referring to a kind of escapist ingestion: a tub of unwrapped Starburst, a spoon, some tissues and a bad film to assist in the gradual, sugary euthanasia of stress.

Add some tears and it all becomes delicious salt water taffy.

However, this is not the case. I don’t think I am capable of being so obliquely cliché, which is as arrogant as it sounds. If I’m going to work the stereotype, I’ll turn to symbolism. The simple defamiliarization of the Hollywood grief process is pretty much below me.

I am possessed of greater ambition.

Appropriately, I don’t eat candy; I crush candy. I crush it on my iPhone. With a few swipes of my finger, I reposition and manipulate the candy into vertical or horizontal lines of three to five like colours—orange, green, red, blue, purple—and mutter, ‘cop that,’ as I watch the candy explode before me. Then I proceed to crush more of their brethren.

The goals of this activity are beautifully simple: achieve a certain score; or bring some random non-candy objects to the bottom of the board (presumably to free them from the suggestive tyranny of the cardboard puppet characters ((I’m thinking of you Unicorn)) who populate this oppressive realm); or eliminate all the ‘jelly’ (the most insidious breed of candy: the most resistant to being crushed). When I achieve any one of these goals and, thus, win, I pump my fist in momentary celebration knowing full-well that more of the pixelated surgary bastards are awaiting their destiny at my hands.

Elation has become for me a flash of Tasty or Divine after a particularly dynamic combo.

My sense of wonder is the moment before putting two ‘special’ candies together. My anticipation of the imminent havoc is a quiet instant of utter satisfaction. ‘I did it,’ I tell myself, watching the destruction unfold.

I think now in terms of how to best assemble or manoeuvre things into a position so that other things happen. I desire a reality of endless combos.

As a means to eliminate the concerns of the outside world, the crushing of candy is a particularly grand anaesthetic. I wage a war on the proliferation of distracting colours and sweets—surely standing in for the cloying elements of the low-brow—by being distracted by them. I am crafty like this. I get inside the game to win outside it. I let it take me, but I am aware of its hold, aware of my addiction—the first step to healing—and from this peculiar vantage point I occupy two realms: the ‘low’ of the game as a means of evolutionary escapist victory; and the ‘high’ of my innate understanding of its core messages.

I am a transcendent Candy Crush player.

Its ‘low’ element is the Darwinian pursuit of triumph where you must be stronger and smarter than the candy to continue your evolution in the game. It is directly reflective of the human mission to continually adapt to the changing parameters of our reality, and is ‘low’ in the sense that, in this, it appeals to our basic need for survival.  The fact that it is widely played then lends it an aura of collective accomplishment, of belonging to the wider network of the human race staring down the rigours of day-to-day living with light-hearted entertainment. It answers to the inner hunter—to crush—and gatherer—to collect more levels—in each of us.

Moreover, as it is a game, it also creates a release from our reality, even as it paradoxically challenges us, even forces us, to recognize how we engage with it. I identify with its artificial world and take a primal joy in its simplicity as a means of personal and collective illumination, and, then, the simplicity through which I conquer it. Everything becomes more bearable after I crush candy. In this crushing, I face down the world and I commit to the saga of its title.

As for its ‘high’ element, well, surely it has something to do with its analoguous relation to the war on obesity and, as noted, the syprupy spectacle of the low-brow, which it inserts itself within to undermine. It may appeal to our 'low' instincts to 'grow' and to 'belong' as humans, but it is wryly critical of certain elements within our society that impinge on this development: the unhealthy binge eating of candy and the poorly conceived elements of popular culture.

 

However, what I find most intriguing is its ironic commentary on addictive consumption. We are displacing eating actual candy, and all the physical joys it commits on our taste buds, with crushing game candy. At times, I can almost taste the sourness of the yellow ones before I commit them to a line and eliminate them. I wonder why I don’t just go out and buy some sour lollies. Then I think, in all honesty, it is easier to just crush them here. The rush is about the same. We eliminate our sugar addiction by addictively eliminating fake sugar.

Anyway, back to it. I feel reality creeping back in.