Is it nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of the 16th Century?

Lori & Merlin

This weekend I’ll be rising to a new level of nerdishness. Oh, I suppose I’ve always been a little nerdy; I mean, I know the “T” in James T. Kirk stands for “Tiberius.” I once stayed up all night playing Dungeons and Dragons. I own a T-shirt with Carl Sagan’s face on it.

Nerd stuff, without a doubt.

But this weekend, I’ll be descending a rabbit hole into a world of dorkishness unparalleled by any I’ve visited previously. I’m talking about that touchstone of doofdom, the epitome of geekishness, the holy Mecca of dweebism everywhere and the only thing nerdier than a Star Trek convention: I’m going to a Renaissance fair.

That’s right; grown men in tights rattling off interjections like “Forsooth!” and “Prithee!” and “Wouldst thou holdest mine lance whilst I visit yon Port-o-Potty?”

My teeth hurt just thinking about it.

So why am I going? Let me put this question to you: Why does an otherwise reasonable man do anything he would never, left to his own devices, do? In fact, why does a man do anything other than fish, drink beer and lay around in a hammock?

The answer is obvious and as old as the reason for Adam’s eviction from his cushy pad in the Garden of Eden: a woman.

My new sweetie, it turns out, loves loves loves Renaissance fairs. I’ve tried to put her in touch with various self-help groups that exist to assist people with this problem, but she refuses even to acknowledge her bizarre addiction.

Last night she showed me the many period outfits she has worn to Renaissance fairs in years past. These are not off-the-shelf “hot wench” Halloween costumes. In addition to her many other talents, Lori is a master seamstress and her 16th Century garb is as good or better than anything you’re likely to see on a BBC biopic detailing the life of Leonardo da Vinci.

She takes this Renaissance nonsense seriously, man! I have little doubt that, were time travel available, she’d be living back there right now.

All my rational discourse falls on deaf ears: “They had no cable TV!” I say.  “They had no toothpaste, no toilet paper! No electric sewing machines with which to create Renaissance festival costumes. Come to think of it, they had no Renaissance festivals at all (which may be the best thing you can say about the era).”

But Lori won’t listen.

So we’re going. To make matters worse, last night she took my measurements for a costume of my own. A shirt. Or to stick with Renaissance authenticity and all that, a jerkin. I know I’ll feel like a jerk in it, but as a man, I’m required to do all sorts of ridiculous things in the name of love.

In the words of Shakespeare (who had to endure the Renaissance the first time around), “There’s the rub.”

The Bard was talking about death; all I have to endure is an afternoon with men in tights. Ah, I guess it won’t kill me.

Forsooth.

I don’t care what the Stones say, time is not on my side

I was driving past a bank the other day while listening to NPR, which is all I listen to since public radio is advertising-free and commercial radio advertising is loud, obnoxious and in my estimation, the work of the Devil. 

The announcer made note of the time: 3:30 p.m.  Exactly the same time as appeared on the bank’s big LED sign.  And my dashboard clock.  And my cell phone.  All left no doubt that it was, unequivocally, 3:30 p.m.

Thanks to online standards and ridiculously precise digital timekeeping mechanisms, every working clock in the time zone read 3:30 at that moment. Exactly sixty seconds later they all read 3:31.

I’m not sure why, but this sort of accuracy bothers me greatly. It makes me feel I’m no more than a tiny component in some vast, roaring machine hurtling blindly through the cosmos, an insignificant cog in a madly complex mechanism whose ultimate purpose I cannot begin to fathom.

That may indeed be the case, but I don’t want to be reminded of it. Perfect timekeeping does that. It reminds me the seconds are racing by so fast my eyes water.

I like my time to be sloooooow, loose and plastic, a Dali painting filled with melting clocks and rubbery scenery.  

I like pocket watch time. The old Elgin I inherited from my grandfather kept fair time. It regularly gained or lost as many as 15 minutes in any 12-hour period. If I forgot to wind it, it would cease keeping time altogether. I wound and set it each day at noon, when the bells at the Methodist church down the street signaled midday.

It wasn’t accurate, but it was accurate enough. If I arrived at an appointment early, I waited. If I arrived late, someone else waited. It generally amounted to only a few minutes either way and nobody was swept from this mortal coil due to 120 seconds unexpected “down time.”

My friend Héctor, who grew up in Mexico, once told me that when an appointment was set in his hometown it might be for a specific location, but the agreed-upon time would often be for either “the morning” or “the afternoon.” It wasn’t uncommon to wait an hour or more for the person you were meeting.

That’s how he remembers it from his youth, at any rate. This was a relaxed culture in which there was time to read a book, enjoy the scenery, gaze at a pretty señorita. Smell the roses.

I imagine all that’s changed these days. The modern Guadalajaran is undoubtedly just as time-obsessed as any busy Manhattanite. 

Elizabeth, another friend, just accepted a teaching position in a remote Alaskan village of 301 souls. Napakiak is considered “off the road,” which is Alaska-speak for “so far from civilization that the only way you can get there is by small airplane, row boat, or snowshoe, but usually a combination of all three.”

Her new house boasts a huge hole in the roof, along with (at best) sporadic electricity and plumbing. She does her laundry in a sink at the elementary school where she also sleeps because of the hole in her roof. There is (gasp!) no Internet.

It’s a rough and tumble existence, but I’ll bet the few timepieces in the village are all set to slightly different times, if the villagers bother to wear watches at all.

So far, the move has been tough on Elizabeth, but she’s a tough girl; she’ll be able to take whatever the Great White North can dish out, I’m guessing. And I have to admit I envy her the new, slower pace of life.

Especially the free time she has when classes let out for the day at 3:30. Or 3:15. Somewhere in there.

Mike Taylor's latest paperback, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available from Robbins Book List in Greenville, Michigan and in ebook format from Amazon.

If only I could list the ways I’m disorganized, I might not be

TO-DO LIST:

1) Make list.

2) ...

That’s as far as I’ve ever gotten when it comes to list-making. I am by nature lazy and disorganized and I’m sure having a few lists in my life would help assuage this situation. But I just can’t get past that first step.

My sweetie makes lists all the time. Lori makes lists reminding her to make other lists. I don’t understand this bizarre, obsessive behavior, but it seems to work for her.

She keeps white boards on the refrigerator (three of them!) filled top-to-bottom with lists of things that need fixing around the house. Some of the items on these lists have been there for years. 

“Fix dishwasher,” for instance. The last time that dishwasher worked, Ronald Reagan was president.

Still, most of Lori’s “to do” list items eventually get done. 

At first, I thought her lists were kind of cute. Then I realized some of these “to do’s” were intended for me. Suddenly, they were less cute.

But the white board lists are just the tip of a very large organizational iceberg. Her everyday lists — there are usually three or four of ‘em — occupy several notebook pages on the kitchen counter. These include items such as “brush cats” and “dust CD rack” and about half are checked off at any given time.

Lori works long hours at her “real” job, works a part-time second job, and is an incredibly talented artist who produces beautiful (and I hope eventually lucrative so I can retire and be taken care of by a rich woman) creations.  Additionally, she maintains a household with only minimal help from my lazy self.

She’s busy. I don’t feel she needs the added pressure of having to deal with all the stuff on her to do lists, but she keeps making them anyway; no amount of reasoning or cajoling on my part seems to dissuade her. I don’t know how she can stand all that responsibility.

Our recent up north trip, for example; in the time she spent making preparatory lists prior to our departure day, I could have packed, driven to the beach, consumed several margaritas while watching the sun set, gotten a good night’s sleep and then driven back home again.

Her vacation list covered things like “pack extra socks,” “feed hermit crabs,” “unplug iron” and “lock garage door.” There were like 80 items on her list, things that had to be taken care of before beaches or margaritas could even be considered!

My list … I’m kidding, I had no list. I just threw a couple T-shirts in my old, broke-zipper suitcase and tossed it in the trunk of the car. I forgot half the stuff I needed, sure, but I saved all kinds of time I might otherwise have spent making lists.

Instead, I watched a couple “Law & Order” reruns and went on a bike ride.

I seem to remember an Aesop fable from my childhood having to do with an ant and a grasshopper. The ant was a list-maker type; the grasshopper was not.

Things did not end well for the grasshopper.

I hate stories with morals.

TO-DO LIST:

1) Never read Aesop again.

2) … uh…

I’m hoping kitchen knives don’t figure too prominently in my new relationship

It’s been a long time since I was last in any sort of domestic partnership with a member of the fairer sex. For the past five years, I’ve lived a carefree bachelor existence, unhampered by the constraints and responsibilities that accompany a romantic relationship.

In that time, I’ve somehow managed to forget what it’s like to share a household with a woman. In the past week it’s all begun to come back to me. 

Now, if you’re thinking this is going to be a column in which I whine about all that’s now expected of me, think again. Lori’s great; easy on my eyes and easier still on my psyche.

If she has any crazy lurking beneath her warm, loving exterior, she’s keeping it well hidden. That’s fine by me, at least until the morning all that repressed rage bubbles to the surface and she comes at me with a kitchen knife.

Until then, all is good. And there’s alway the chance she’s really as wonderful as she seems. Life’s a crap shoot anyway and the odds this time seem pretty good.

But back to the things I’m now recalling about living with a woman. 

If I’m going to be very late, I should call. If I’m inviting my idiot friends back to the house at 3 a.m. after a gig with the band, a little advance notice to the missus is a good idea. The correct answer to the question, “Do these pants make my behind look big?” is “No!”

Stuff like that. Bothersome stuff guys tend to forget if they’re single for a long time.

Mostly, however, being with a woman again just makes life easier. There are all sorts of things I’ve had to handle myself for the past few years that now happen as if by magic.

Toilet paper, for example; I no longer have to buy it. It simply appears in the cabinet beneath the sink. The dishes, at least half the time, wash themselves. The rest of the time I wash them, but that’s OK, it’s still a reduction in dish-doing of 50-percent. 

In fact, all household chores are reduced by 50-percent.

There’s a washer and dryer here. My old apartment was too small for either. I will miss my friends from the laundromat, but I gotta admit it’s nice to not have to slog my baskets full of dirty socks across town every Saturday afternoon. Detergent, which I always used to forget to buy, is right there by the washer. I don’t even have to think about it!

Also, there’s money again. Two incomes are twice as good as one, it turns out. And since Lori was smart enough to choose a profession other than writing, her income is substantially higher than mine. I like a woman of means.

I’m sure there’s lots of other stuff about being in a relationship I’ll remember as we go along. Hopefully, most of it will continue to be good stuff.

With a little retraining, I’m hoping I’ll be able to get the hang of this relationship deal again. If not, well, it’s probably too soon to think about hiding the sharp kitchen knives, but maybe that’s something to keep in mind.

Just in case.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in ebook format from Amazon.com. 

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 548-8273

Here’s the buzz on the shocking new Pavlovian bracelet

Every so often I start thinking the world has gone nuts. Yeah, yeah, psychiatrists don’t like that word, nuts. But the only psychiatrist I ever saw professionally — nearly 30 years ago — displayed a jar of cashews on his coffee table, so what does that tell you?

Your shrink may diagnose your condition as “paranoid schizophrenia,” but you can bet that, as you tearfully pour out your life story, he’s thinking acorns and demented squirrels. For this, he gets a hundred clams an hour.

But this column isn’t about psychiatry or its overpaid practitioners. It’s about the nuts.

It’s about one nut in particular, Maneesh Sethi, who recently invented and is now trying to market the Pavlok Wristband. It’s a “fitness device,” according to the pre-release publicity.

I assume the name is a twist on the moniker of famed behavioral physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who figured out he could make dogs salivate by ringing a bell. I used to be able to do the same thing with my dog, Kipper, simply by unwrapping a Snickers Bar, but for some reason Pavlov got famous and I did not.

But I digress. Frequently.

The Pavlok Wristband works like this: if the wearer completes his regularly scheduled physical workout — jumping jacks, pushups, whatever — the wristband does nothing. It just sits there on the wrist. If, however, the wearer slacks off and engages in what I believe to be a far more rational activity, such as going to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet followed by a long nap, the wristband delivers an electrical shock. Not a lethal shock, but one strong enough to be very, very uncomfortable.

The idea is that, like Pavlov’s salivating pooches, the negative reinforcement (which is psycho-speak for “things that really tick you off”) will encourage you to stick to your workout schedule, lose weight and get all the pretty girls when you go to the beach next summer.

Are you picturing acorns and demented squirrels yet?

How about if I tell you the prototype, available now, sells for $249.99? The production model, slated to hit the shelves early next year, will run about $149.99; cheaper, but still pricey for a device whose primary function is to inflict pain on its wearer.

I have no idea what percentage of the population suffers from masochism (the psychiatric term for folks who like to hurt themselves -- the sort who enjoy marathon episodes of “Dancing with the Stars” for instance) but I’m guessing most of these will be early adopters.

Though I sometimes harbor lingering doubts as to my own sanity, I doubt I’ll be buying one. I may be nuts, but I’m the kind of nuts that’s the opposite of a masochist. I not only DON’T like to hurt myself, I tend to become really irate if other people try to do so. 

I just know I would not enjoy a piece of jewelry that sends 50 volts up my arm every time I fail to run laps at the gym.

If Mr. Sethi wants to sell me a Pavlovian bracelet, it’s going to have to deliver results through positive reinforcement, not negative. I’m thinking here of a wristband that reproduces the sensation of, say, spending a night on the town with actress Heather Graham or drinking a couple margaritas at a nice Mexican restaurant — something like that.

But don’t expect me to drop two large on a bracelet that hurts. That’s just — say it with me — nuts.

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 548-8273