The Tetris System: minus the puffery, this would basically be about staring in the mirror at the objects in your periphery, reciting self-actualizing mantras ("I am the Warrior-King"), not eating food past their expiration date, not eating certain foods, not mixing certain foods together and not eating at certain times of the day. For example, to engage your Process Mind at its highest level, you will not eat raisins, blend milk or yogurt with processed snack foods and not eat peanuts between the hours of 2am and 6am. Since people already do this, it will give them a sense of accomplishment. It'll have a laundry list of symptoms of various maladies that can be cured by following certain pseudo-spiritual dietary guidelines.
Another tip: to help get you over the Creative Awareness Paradigm hurdle from Level 2 to Level 3: don't eat things you find on the ground and stop wearing belts.
2. In this Salon article, it quotes a statistic that says 70% of mothers would choose to not have kids again. If you've been around my family long enough, you'll have heard my mother's refrain: "In my next life, I'm not having kids." Now it makes so much more sense.
That article also stirred a couple of memories in me. Walking to work one day, there was 2 women with strollers in a gossipy discussion about friends. One of them said, "When is so-and-so going to have kids?" "Oh, S&S gave him an ultimatum that she'll leave him if they don't have kids soon." "That's good." But actually it's not good. These are things you should work out before you are married.
I also had this conversation a while ago - to breed or not to breed - with someone at my work (2 jobs ago). The main problem was that I can't understand why anyone would ever want kids and she couldn't understand why I would never want kids.
3. The Select Comfort Bed advertisement that was at the tail end of the 4:30 AM Saved By The Bell: The College Years (which is right before the first episode of The Creek) refers to "your sleep partner." I imagine two people who do nothing but share a bed together. They climb in bed, don't talk, just sleep. Leave voicemail for each other, "Hello, it's Bruce - your sleep partner. I need to sleep right away. Could you come to the bed as soon as possible. Thanks."
4. My top five video bowling scores: 258, 235, 231, 228, 221.
5. One thing that I really worry about is the mixture of avocation and vocation. I love screwing with baseball statistics and finding these strange mathematical or data quirks that no one really cares about. I can do this for hours on end and lose all sense of time. But if I were doing this as a job, I think it would take a lot of effort to keep it in That Place where I can get completely lost in time while do it.
6. Here's how to pour a Slurpee. 1. Don't be a Scrooge - get the biggest cup size. Put the lid on. 2. Pour your Slurpee. 3. Wait a second, grab a napkin, hold it over the hole on the top and kind of slam the cup down on the metal counter a few times until a nice amount of space opens up in your cup. 4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 a few times. 5. Get a straw, but check to see if they have the Big Gulp Straws that are a little thicker than the large Spoon Straws.
Not many people realize how much air is locked inside the Slurpee product. You can get a lot more value by getting rid of as much of it as possible. Just pour a normal Slurpee (the kind that unaware, ignorant people pour) after you've poured an optimized Slurpee and notice the difference in density. Then slyly grin at how much extra value you allowed yourself to receive.
