The TAG theory

Today I went to the library café to get a sandwich and an apple. I’m waiting on a line that’s doubling back and forth a couple times since it’s rush hour, and after about a minute or so of waiting I get to the fruit section. I reach for an apple and am stopped by a man behind the counter: “sir we ask that you please use the tongs”. Innately and internally my first response is an enthusiastic “fuck you dickhead” while I jump up and use my balls to slowly roll the apple down to a height where I can grab it. This might be an overreaction, so I’ll consider using my second internal response: “do you have a disposable latex glove I can use to grab the tongs to grab the apple?” After all, if it’s a problem with another hand touching a place where your hand is going to touch, doesn’t this make sense? But I’m such a pleasant citizen that I go to my third (and most pleasant! Because I’m pleasant) internal response: “why do I have to use tongs to grab an apple?”

He replies: “Well some people don’t like other people to touch things that they’re going to eat. If it was a banana it’d be a different story.” Immediately I’m thinking that in this case—those people are wrong. I have mathematically derived a list of places where this would make sense, or where it could be considered appropriate to require tongs in grabbing an apple[i] (this is an end-note). Since a library at a university does not fall under any of these four mandatory axioms that I have derived for tong-apple-grabbing (TAG)—we conclude that it doesn’t not make sense to use tongs in grabbing apples at a university library.

Another idea came to mind…

It seemed to this man, (or whoever instated the policy and required this man to enforce it) that people who preferred to use tongs to pick up apples made up a “group” and that the group’s wishes had to be respected. I see it differently. Even if they are a group—they are wrong. I envisioned a conversation where the man says to me: “these people have a certain view, and even though there might be evidence to suggest they are wrong, they still make up a large demographic and as a result they have to be respected.” I hoped I’d be lucky enough for a documentary of the holocaust to come on the TV, so that we could both watch hundreds of soldiers goose-stepping in the name of genocide and I could say, “you’re right man.”

This analogy has some faults in the sense that the people who are using tongs to pick up apples aren’t doing the same sort of “harm” as Hitler did to the Jewish or Gypsy people. But I would like to make sure it is understood that there is concrete and tangible harm being done to me in this case. No, it is not nearly as bad as the holocaust—it’s hardly a comparison. But it is bad. Tonight I will lose at least an hour of sleep thinking about this (at the very least) and other things like this. Tomorrow I will lose another hour, on an issue the same or philosophically comparable to this. These things have happened for years. 1 hour * 7 hours (a week) = 7 hours lost. 7 hours * 4 = 28 hours (a month). 28 * 12 = 252 hours (a year), 252*5(an approximation of how long these things have been on my mind) = 1,260 hours. Those hours will and have affected my health. Grades, social endeavors, sports practices, societal duties: these things have suffered. This is actual harm done. It’s not genocide—but it is tangible. It is not victimless. If you want to be nitpicky about hours (there’s no way he loses an hour a sleep a night over that), there are many nights that I’ve lost all my sleep over it. So this suffices as an appropriate average to me. One response might be that I should get over it, which prompts my first internal response: “fuck you dickhead”, followed by my second internal response: “(something about my balls),” followed by my third external (and very pleasant) response: “Why should I? And if I do, what comes next if this is left unchecked?”

Authors Note: If you have any mathematical proofs to submit that contradict my four axioms of tong-apple grabbing (TAG), please submit them to:

Sam Fishman

The University Press, Office 116A

Princeton, NJ, 10067

---

[i]

1) A sperm bank cafeteria

2) A malaria support group meeting: a meeting that people with malaria attend in order cope with their illness (and evidently to eat apples).

3) A farmer’s market inside of a dog’s asshole (I realize this example is controversial: one might argue that while inside of a dog’s asshole it might be considered trivial to grab an apple with a tong since you’re already inside of a dog’s asshole, and any extra bacteria from your hand would have a negligible impact on your health as a result of this).

4) A private practice clinic specializing in switching the location of your hands and your reproductive organs. (Again, this is controversial: other tools might be required besides tongs in order to pick up an apple in this case)

First Radio Broadcast

A buddy of mine asked me if I wanted to do a short broadcast on a radio station for five minutes earlier tonight. I had the idea to do a segment called ""On the bluehill with Tony Bluehill" about a week ago. It would be a short broadcast that was funny, accessible, philosophical, and unambitious. I got pretty nervous about it a few minutes before I went on, peed three times, messaged a few friends that happened to be online at the time to listen in for support.

The experience was very nerve-wracking but I loved it--definitely going to do more of them, so if you know anyone in the radio business at your school/neighborhood contact me and I will write something.

I timed myself at about 5:30 when I ran through the ideas before I went on the air. I tend to mumble and speak very fast, so in practice I went through slowly. I ended up taking 10 minutes and was cut off about 30 seconds before I finished. I thought they'd already taken me off the air when I said "i'm almost done!" and "you cut me off!" The DJ seemed to not understand how to handle the situation, I didn't realize I had gone for ten minutes until someone told me afterwords. I'm sorry for any trouble I caused at the station.

When I went on the air I made an intro joke about a little known fact that Nirvana was the son of Led from Led Zeppelin (they had just finished playing Nirvana) and started "on the bluehill". I have a near-transcription of the radio show that I put some thought into and I hope it's enjoyable. I'm told the audio quality was bad and a lot of things were missed, hopefully I can get a copy of the audio one day.

Hello, welcome to the bluehill. I’m Tony Bluehill. We’re going to have a lot of fun. Before I begin, I’d like to say thanks to ----, the ----, and ------, who’s support and dedication to the Bluehill makes this possible. Since it’s our first time on the bluehill, my intentions are directed but susceptible to change, so if there’s something you particularly enjoy or dont, let me know. If I think you’ve got the right idea we’ll work with it. Or I’ll ignore you.

What I want to do, above all, is to entertain. To do this I’ve got a plan—to bring you into a world that I live in on a daily basis. I hope that you’ll enjoy this world. I want to make you laugh, while proposing philosophical dilemmas and ideas that I face in my life. Ok, so let’s get to it.

I was at a party the other night talking to a girl I’d just met. We were sitting at a table. I looked to the other side of the table and saw a large book on female anatomy. On the cover was the title of the book, the author, and a surprisingly large picture of a vagina. I asked if the book was for a class. She asked if my mother drank while she was pregnant with me.

I was in math class and a freshman girl sat next to me. She kept looking over at me, smiling too. Seemed alright. I did my best smile. She asked me what my major was, I said, “hamburger logistics”. She asked me what that was and I said, “any logistics relating to hamburgers.” She told me her friend was minoring in condiments and would do well to be on top of me.

What both of these stories have in common is that they didn’t happen. They didn’t happen in the way I described, but the things that I said happened; I lied about the responses. Did you think they were funny? There’s other things involved in them that we might get to today, probably not. First lets talk about what was actually said. In response to my question about whether the textbook was for a class or not, she said, “uh, ya” and looked like she wanted to be somewhere that I wasn’t. In response to my hamburger logistics answer she said “oh” and decided to stop speaking.

What happened in these two cases, that the type of response I sought to elicit was so different from the outcome? Before I go into that, lets make it very clear what my intentions were: I’m not a predator, I didn’t pick these stories because of a prejudice towards women or math students—that would be foolish.

My intentions were to be funny; and in the words of Larry David, to “elevate small talk to medium talk.” In one case: a suggestion at an obsession with female anatomy (the vaginal sort), and another, avoiding another boring conversation about majors.

So either I’m doing it wrong, or they didn’t want to hear it. I’m more inclined to think they didn’t want to hear it. A statement I’ve heard from people in an attempt to answer this kind of question is: “those people weren’t the right audience for the joke.” Effectively saying, “those people want the same conversations and pre-composed sentences with words like “chill” and “nice”. I think that statement is arrogant. Maybe even unfairly arrogant.

I believe these women were put-off because I wasn’t playing by the rules of how someone usually speaks the first time they meet—I was violating this social contract of conversation in a math class, or at a party in the earlier hours before everyone’s drunk. I don’t know what a social contract is, but it seems I have violated it in both cases. So, is that why it is funny? Because they are absurd things to say? Maybe it is my ignorance regarding the contract in those particular moments? If so, why didn’t I remember signing a contract in the first place? I think that in order to have gotten the responses I sought, I would’ve had to approach these people more delicately. Maybe tell my actual major and that I liked her shirt, and after things had settled down I could pull out a hamburger joke. The problem, in addition to having to waste more time talking about nothing, is that the time may never come: you may never get your hamburger joke. You’d have wasted your time with a person who knows you as well as a doorknob does. That person will never know about the individual things you’ve got to say, hopefully interesting things you’ve got to say, and you won’t know if they’ve got some hamburger jokes of their own.

I’ll leave you with a one last story and a thought. A few days ago I was at a market buying some lunch. It was one of those places where they’ve got food from all around the world. I go to buy a gyro from the greek section. I’m at the cashier and I’m curious about the proper pronunciation of the word so I ask her, “Do I say hee-row and preserve the etymology and pronunciation of the word and the possible cultural and societal ideas that the word communicates, which I have no idea about frankly. OR, do I just say “gyro”, after all I’m probably pronouncing it wrong anyway, I doubt any of these ingredients are authentically greek, so this thing might be a different food item all together, and maybe calling it hee-row would be offensive to the greeks. The cashier says, “that’ll be five dollars” and reaches for my money.

I’m not mad, I’m not upset, at the time I laughed. In life…so far as I can tell, there are people who don’t want to deal with those things, and rightly so. The point is, you have to know when to make the call, when to make your hamburger joke. Not everyone is going to be interested in what you have to say, so use your instincts. Whatever those are. So the cashier doesn’t care, the girl in your math class might. The guy at the bar might. And don’t lose hope either, sometimes things will come up, and you’ll see the world is just as insane as you are. Think about this: a group of people in a boardroom, successful people, people with more money than most people will ever have, decided together that the sequel to sex and the city, Sex and the city 2, the feature film about sex and the city, HAD to be 2 and a half hours long. That was it, “if we’re gonna make this movie guys,” they said, “it’s gotta be 2 and a half hours long.” I’m not sure it had to be two and a half hours long, and I’m not sure any explanation would make me believe otherwise.

So what do you think? How does one deal with these issues in conversation? I’m testing the waters here. Should I tell more stories and analyze less? These are decisions I plan to make, and hopefully you’ll all have some helpful words. Things will only get better on the bluehill: Especially since i’ve decided that the subject for every show will be hamburgers and reproductive organs. I’m Tony bluehill, and I hope you’ve enjoyed your time with me here on the broadcast. Have a good night.

-FR