Author & Consultant
Charlie Price
Essays
Charlie Price occasionally publishes an essay. Some may be featured here, so check back from time to time.
Household Clutter Leads to Extinction! Charlie Price 1/09
First you have to remember that thirty thousand years ago another darned ice age had caused property values to soar in southern France. The four to six bedroom caves in good neighborhoods had already been snapped up by those pesky Cro-Magnons. Most Neanderthals families, arriving from the north one step ahead of the glaciers, got stuck in shallow three-bedroom, one-bath, holes-in-the-wall with a tremendous dearth of closet space. Worse, the Cro-Magnons’ giant sloth harvest had been unusually productive and many of their households could afford a mammoth to take the kids to soccer. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to be from Germany. Everyone had to keep up with the Thags.
Originally the Neanderthals were able to cope with inadequate closet space since Pleistocene fashion mores dictated wearing casual single skins around the cave, small (but drafty) aprons for root-gathering, and loin-cloths for hunting. Dancing around the campfire could be done naked. Of course that had to change as temperatures dropped and pretty soon everybody and his uncle wanted a bear-skin coat. Great for winter, but in summer, where are you going to put it? The few wall nooks began to bulge and everyone became jealous of each other’s cranny.
Suffering from thick clothing and a paucity of storage, it is easy to understand recent studies citing cave clutter as the primary agent of Neanderthal extinction. I myself have experienced Insufficient-Depository-Alarm when attempting to manage the personal shell mound in our home where my wife, though less than half my size, has commandeered the only walk-in closet and barricaded it with tops, bottoms, unders, overs, slacks, skirts, shawls, shorts, vests, sweaters, capris, leggings, armings, gloves, socks, hose, camisoles, and fabric tarpaulins of indeterminate purpose. Did I mention shoes? Such an innocuous word.
Anyway, back to the floor-plans. Fortunately food refrigeration was not an issue as most things stayed frozen eight months a year including late-arriving relatives who couldn’t find room close to the fire. Pantries were non-existent because every bit of food was always immediately eaten right down to the glue on the labels. Furniture? Clunky to put it mildly. Large rock couches were difficult to rearrange and took up quite a bit of parlor space. Fallen trees made poor tables and reading torches were constantly setting everyone’s fur on fire.
As you can imagine, using the rear of the cave for toileting worked beautifully for the first 30 generations but after a while, things begin to pile up. The insects and small rodents that rooted in the offal were as much of a problem as they were a good snack. People fought over sleeping areas on the cave periphery much as we do in our own homes and the niches that weren’t taken up by trundle-beds, hunting-mallet displays, and ritual paintings, were usually filled with stacks of dry fluff for fire starting.
With no armoirs, no cellars, no laundry rooms, clutter abounded. The local dump was so similar to the cave that no one considered using it for overflow and thrift stores were quite a bit more selective than they are today because all the best business locations were taken by mastodon dealerships and hide-scraping salons. Frustrated, hopeless, overcrowded, just like my wife and me, the Neanderthals simply ran out of room and began to scuffle over storage capacity. Conversations deteriorated. Grunt. (Where are the antihistamines?) Grunt. (You used them last, Batdung.) Grunt. (Have you seen the bone needle I made yesterday?) Grunt. (It’s in your nose you idiot.)
After prolonged negotiation, my wife and I solved our closet problem. I would stack my clothes on the workbench and dress in the garage. Along with my clothes, however, that space has gradually evolved into the default repository for everything that no longer fits in the house proper. While we are still able to wind our way through labyrinthine corridors currently unblocked by used furniture, priceless heirlooms, un-hung art, moving boxes, bargains, books, and broken electronic paraphernalia, the leftover mishmash has migrated to my dressing room where once automobiles dwelled, smug and shiny. Not complaining, mind you, but the industrial dumpster we rented is buried somewhere under this haystack of flea market flotsam .
Thus, it is easy to see how gradually the entire Neanderthal species expired in much the same way that we have misplaced our hamster and our nephew. Clutter creates a war of attrition that even lug-nuts like Cro-Magnons can readily win just by giving things away and holding quarterly sales in their driveways. My wife and I have decided to follow their example and eliminate clutter once and for all. We’re going to start next week and I hope that’s not too late since I haven’t been able to find her for several days.
by Charlie Price
Several times this week male pattern blindness has been brought to my attention, first by my friend Donna who raised the issue of men’s refrigerator myopia. She wonders what prevents males from finding whatever we’re looking for.
Husband: “Darling, what in the bloody hell did you do with the mayonnaise this time?”
Wife: “I don’t know, Honey, I haven’t used it lately.”
Husband: “Well, when you take it out of the fridge and don’t put it back, we will all get botulism and die.”
Wife: “Isn’t that it, a couple of inches from your hand in the door shelf where we always keep it?”
Husband: “Oh. Well, it was hidden behind the tube of wasabi.”
This has been an ongoing issue in my own home since a couple of years ago when my wife escalated to the insidious practice of hiding my things where I put them. There are few things more annoying than, after a prolonged fruitless search, having someone else find the missing object where I set it. Take yesterday. My calculator. She obviously took it off my office desk to work on her taxes, leaving it god-only-knows-where in the labyrinth of our home. Useless to ask her, since she would feel guilty immediately and deny it. Lucky for her I found it close to it’s usual spot where someone had put it while reorganizing my papers.
Particularly at home, I am vexed by a perverse intergalactic cloaking device that assiduously conceals the very object of my current desire. My wife, however, has an intuitive grasp of object locations. I suspect this is part and parcel of a primordial nesting instinct. She can find things with the subtle, fractally inspired template that she carries in her amygdala, the almond shaped limbic mass that’s also loaded with crystal-clear emotional memories of my misplays since we met in the seventies. e.g. “This is just like the time you told the
we’d bring chicken salad without consulting me.”
I don’t remember the incident, don’t care for chicken salad, and who are the
?
Lately, I have come to feel this location phenomenon is inversely related to the asking-for-directions issue. Let me elucidate since I am quite comfortable in that arena. There are hundreds of good reasons never to ask for directions.
A. It must be here somewhere or else why am I driving on this street?
B. Those people don’t know. They’ll spout gibberish and I’ll get farther afield trying to follow their instructions.
C. Conceptually, there is no such thing as “lost” when one is going someplace. We have left X and are in transit to Y. Some prefer Euclid. I prefer Chaos Theory. I am here. It is there. With cheerful persistence, sooner or later we will both be there. Case closed.
D. Everyone knows the straightest distance between two points on the globe is a circle.
E. As several philosophers have expounded, a problem is only a problem if one considers it so. I don’t conceive wandering toward a destination as a problem. Rather it is an opportunity. Fraught with the bloom of potential. Only the narrow-minded would toss an expeditious-arrival into the equation. And speaking of equation, Einstein pointed out space and time are relative. Thus, no matter how you slice it, X to Y is an adventure based on perception.
F. As Heisenberg postulated we can never conclusively know what we are and where we are at the same time. In this instance, it is imminently clear what we are: a couple arguing in the front seat of an automobile. Therefore, where we are becomes impossible to establish. If I knew where we were in space, I would simultaneously lose my identity.
G. And since Zeno conclusively proved we can’t get there anyway, what use could inquiring about directions possibly serve?
Most reasonable people will conclude that asking for directions obscures a destination and prolongs a journey.
And conversely, asking my wife where she put the clothing/utensil/document that I was working with a few minutes ago allows me to find it immediately. Who actually placed what, where, is immaterial and assessing blame will be difficult now that I have disarmed the video cameras.
According to my Wikipedia Research, Isaac Newton rather closed the book on this subject with his first two laws.
· An object at rest will be in the wrong place.
· An object in motion will be moving in the wrong direction.
Thank you for allowing me to clear that up.
Respectfully submitted, Your Positional Logician, Charles Price
Charlie Price divides his time betweem homes in Redding and Dunsmuir. He’s a business coach, consultant, writer and author of “Dead Connection” and “Lizard People.”
Certainly this is a fearsome subject, one that other male friends and I have carefully examined in a variety of men’s gatherings, e.g. breakfast meetings, fishing trips, March Madness and round table discussion groups.
There are two predominate sentiments: “I am afraid in my 70s I’ll wind up lying alone in a seedy Tenderloin hotel drooling and insensate in my pee stained underwear awaiting my next stroke.”
And, “My mate and I fought about pee stains again this morning and she’s threatening to rent one of those plastic outdoor privies.”
The subject becomes an issue in my home in relation to my wife monitoring our upstairs bathroom floor. At least twice a week when I am leaning against the wall trying to hook a sock over one of my distant feet or plundering through drawers searching for another Ibuprofen, she will remark, “Aren’t you going to do anything about those pee stains . . . the ones around the base of the toilet?”
I go into the bathroom and look.
“I cleaned the bowl,” she clarifies.
I nod. Yes. Snow white. Gleaming. I hate to think of the next time I will use it since it currently seems clean enough to eat on.
“See?” she says, patiently.
I nod. I do not see.
“Right there around the base.”
I nod.
“Will you get on that?”
I nod.
She leaves, slightly irritated. You can’t get good help these days.
I get down on my hands and knees and stick my head down below the rim of the toilet. A couple of hairs. To be expected, I believe. Some flotsam and dust bunnies back toward the wall between the shower stall and the toilet water-feed line. Assembled particles around the Comet and the toilet brush canister. And lo, there, right up against the bead of white silicone that seats and seals the toilet is a pale lemon blemish the size of a postage stamp. But I am butt in the air, head to the tile, wedged between the shower and toilet, and I can barely make it out.
How has my wife seen it in the first place and how did the smudge trigger an ongoing alarm? To me, it is akin to driving along Interstate 5 while my passenger says, “Did you see that gum wrapper between the green sign and the cattle fence? Let’s stop and pick it up.”
Yes, in an ideal world there should not be a gum wrapper on our roadways or a smudge anywhere in the bathroom. The high roof gutters should not be clogged with a viscous gradoo of spruce needles and oak sludge. The oven should not have volcanic lumps sitting in the bottom by the heating coil. The microwave should not have brightly colored christmasy specks all over the roof of its heating compartment. The vegetable bin should not have inert furry salamanders lurking under last year’s carrots. The remnants of every lunch eaten during travel should not be shriveling and fermenting under my car seats.
Does it matter that for many years, drinking one’s own urine was a health cure? Does it matter that when water supplies dwindle, one’s own urine is prized? Does it matter that urine can be a sterile treatment for wounds? Does it matter that holy men routinely drink their own urine as part of their personal purification process? Does it matter that Japanese devotees bathe in urine to enhance their skin quality? Does it matter that urine is universally respected as a treatment for everything from infertility to immune disorders? Apparently not.
Now I love my wife substantially more than I love my urine, or her urine, for that matter. But I believe her priority regarding the eradication of urine traces is misplaced. She puts it at No. 4 on life’s platform, right after eating, sleeping and exercise; in other words, in the arena of proper waste elimination. I, myself, do not include the wiping of urine spots in the category of proper waste elimination. I include it in the category of obtuse and picayune time-spenders to be postponed until after the flood/fire/earthquake. Or, put another way, I have it as the thirty-nine thousandth, seven hundred and twelfth priority for daily living.
This is clearly a difference of opinion.
However, respecting obvious gender differences, I will do the following:
- Endeavor to never miss. (I will not sit and pee at this stage of my life for the concomitant psychotherapy would be prohibitively expensive.)
- Endeavor to notice, bend, and clean the floor when I miss.
- Endeavor to cheerfully respond by slithering around and under the toilet lip when she so requests.
- Endeavor to demonstrate my cheerfully open mind and sunny disposition during the enactment of my duties.
Respectfully submitted,
Your fellow toiletician, C. Burl P.
http://donigreenberg.com/2008/01/23/ps-urine-analysisby-charlie-price-2/
Male Host Behavior and Guest Relations Overview
----Charlie Price August 2008
Thanks to manifold case studies, we now understand that when dealing with company as a couple, the main role of the masculine-designation partner of any gender is to do the inviting. For example: “Why don’t you all come over for dinner this evening and we’ll whip something up?” Having taken responsibility to reach out socially, the man’s job is largely over. Well, he could remember to tell his wife. That courtesy makes it easier for her to do the last minute shopping. A simple, “Harvey and the guys like lots of meat,” or “Remember, the Whitfields are lactose intolerant,” should be sufficient. Again a little planning is in order. If you call her after four, she may not be able to reschedule her late appointments so she can leave work early in time to buy the best cuts.
A considerate man’s second level of responsibility arises when the guests ring the doorbell. Recognizing that his wife’s hands are probably gooey from the béarnaise sauce,
the man should launch himself out of the recliner and open the door with the hearty, “Welcome All! What would you like to drink?” The most effective way to deliver the drink orders is by passing through the kitchen on your way back to the recliner. If the guests are your old high school buds, your polo team, or your Maintenance Department, it is important not to become embroiled in discussions of details such that one of your friends may have picked up the Remote before you again become seated. When your company is another couple or two, the Remote issue becomes mute.
Thus, with a group such as your fishing partners, your primary task becomes watching sports together and waiting for the drinks and food to arrive. Suggestions to the kitchen area can be made while maintaining television contact and should preferably be clothed in the form of questions, e.g. “Can you find the half-gallon of cocktail peanuts and bring them out here so Bruce won’t have to eat all my Cheetos?”
On the issue of details, I seriously doubt that any of your pals will order a Manhattan. Rather, you should anticipate ale, a stalwart Rioja, bourbon, and the occasional martini. Should your company be couples, you will also want to chill a fluffy but surreptitious little gewürztraminer. The beer should already be in the fridge, the automatic ice-maker takes care of the bourbon, and you can pre-mix the martinis. Be careful that evaluating your mix-ratios doesn’t lead to somnolence. Further, the thoughtful host always selects in advance a tray that is easy for his wife to carry.
While hosting other couples, the male Guest Relations responsibility changes subtly. Sans sports, the good host should keep the conversation rolling with political opinions, movie reviews, picaresque teenage adventures, and bizarre camping tales. Anecdotes recounting your mate’s foibles can also be particularly entertaining. The superior host remembers to offer helpful suggestions such as “Let’s make sure the Onion Rings are served hot,” or “You might want to scrape together that simple chocolate soufflé.” Again, this is best done prior to the guest arrival, as, once the camaraderie begins, it is difficult to recall constructive intentions.
At the end of the evening the penultimate host asks his mate if she would like a back rub. One never knows where this kindness will lead. And the ultimate host, eschewing his own need for appreciation, verbally thanks his mate for a job well done and acknowledges her contribution to a successful evening, before he returns to the television to check the late-breaking scores.
