If hair were currency, how would you spend yours? Would you grow it long and flowing, or keep it close-shorn?
Money wouldn't grow on trees, it would grow on heads.
Hats would be more popular, and wallets less. And hair thieves armed with razors and scissors would be rampant in locker rooms. Hair nets would be a must-have fashion accessory, especially while you were travelling overseas. Better yet, a turban.
Every month there would be a stick-up at the salon. Of course, the hairdressers would be more like bankers, and you'd likely keep a safety deposit box there. You'd still want the latest look, but you'd keep the extra hair put away someplace safe.
You could sign a contract for extensions that you promised to pay back with natural growth--plus interest of course.
The wealthiest men would have voluminous beards, flaunting their wealth and their good fortune, while those impoverished baby-faced boys would look on longingly, rubbing their hands over bare cheeks, or weak stubble, and wishing for a better lot in life.
And the women? Why wax away prosperity in the name of vanity? Men would be after those with the bushiest eyebrows and perhaps a faint little mustache, too. Hairlessness would be undesirable in either gender. It's not a lot, but maybe it's worth more. But we'd all be walking that line between beauty and wealth; fortune and fashion.
You'd still wish on eyelashes the way you wish on pennies, and strands of hair stuck to your couch cushions would replace the spare change buried in the crevices.
And what about pet owners? Owning a cat might be as lucrative as owning a cow or your own chickens--maybe more so. You'd brush your cat when you needed a little extra spending money, or shave it when you needed a lot. And you'd never let the thing outdoors again.
If hair were currency, you'd have a period of your life where your earning power was high and then it would taper off, leaving you to depend on your hairier relatives. You'd watch your hairline even more grimly, worrying about the future, hoping you've set aside enough to last you through your twilight years.
Let's put it this way, if your bank balance were your hair, would you be bald? Would you already owe next month's growth on things you bought last Saturday? Would you just have enough to scrape by, admiring your polished scalp every time a bill came due, wondering what you can do to grow it faster?
Maybe fish oil, I heard that helps.
Your hair grows at a regular rate so you could learn to budget. See how far you could stretch an inch, or how far you could fudge it.
It's really too bad hair can't be spent like money, but in at least some respects, maybe it would be better to treat money more like hair -- be grateful for what you have, and be careful what you do with it.
11/25/2013
11/18/2013
passing in hallways
We do a lot of passing in hallways around here--
a lot of glancing up, sideways, lowering the eyes,
timing their upward tic for the most accurate moment
while passing, smiling and uttering the shortest of "hi"s.
How much do you really have to say to each other anyway?
Strangers inhabiting the same space for the requisite forty hours.
You know names, vague details about a life outside, a family,
or sometimes only where their desk is.
You can't just stop in the hallway and strike up a conversation--
it's too late for that, and besides, you both have things to do,
so you smile, nod, utter a name, sometimes not fully vocalized,
when your voice was unprepared and you just croak instead,
sometimes just a sound that resembles hey or hi, sometimes
just a smile with closed lips and eyes that catch each other
maybe a dozen times a week, with furtive, carefully timed flashes
while passing in hallways, and you say only nothing,
because what else is there to say?
a lot of glancing up, sideways, lowering the eyes,
timing their upward tic for the most accurate moment
while passing, smiling and uttering the shortest of "hi"s.
How much do you really have to say to each other anyway?
Strangers inhabiting the same space for the requisite forty hours.
You know names, vague details about a life outside, a family,
or sometimes only where their desk is.
You can't just stop in the hallway and strike up a conversation--
it's too late for that, and besides, you both have things to do,
so you smile, nod, utter a name, sometimes not fully vocalized,
when your voice was unprepared and you just croak instead,
sometimes just a sound that resembles hey or hi, sometimes
just a smile with closed lips and eyes that catch each other
maybe a dozen times a week, with furtive, carefully timed flashes
while passing in hallways, and you say only nothing,
because what else is there to say?
11/05/2013
are you there?
"Are you still there? I can't hear you. If you are there, please press any key."
"Are you still there? I still can't hear you. If you are there, please press any key."
The computerized caller had hit a snag, receiving a response from my computerized answerer, and the resulting voicemail at first annoyed me that yet another computer had been calling. It seems every time I answer the phone, it is a computer reminding me about my prescription, or about my library books, or about my health coverage.
And if it's not a computer voice urging me to speak to it like a normal person or at least press a button, it's the nearly-as-robotic recording of a person. Even when they are animated about changes to the auto insurance laws or about the cruise tickets I've got coming to me, I hang up in disgust that the commercials are starting to come through on my private phone now. There are days that I would just as soon be rid of the thing if the only calls I'm going to get are commercials and computers.
Then there are the real people on a live call that only sound like recordings. They're sitting in some giant dark room far below weak, pale flourescent beams, watching their computer screen as it dials, dials, dials, bringing far away voices into their headsets, voices interrupted during dinner, during a show, while driving, at the office, or just pulled away from the newspaper or magazine they were reading moments before.
I did that job. I got so many answering machines--mostly recorded computer voices, the same two or three machines seemed to answer phones all over the country. I'd click a button on my screen to call back and then turn to read another few paragraphs of my textbook while my computer dialed the next number. I did my best to sound human and engaging on the phone, but I've gotten so many calls from someone rattling their script in the 7th hour of their 8 hour shift, the third or fourth shift of the same script, the same call, the same opening over and over and over, hundreds of times a day. Do something mechanical long enough and it's hard not to become a machine. That's what we're programmed for.
I learned that the human voice has a frequency range of about 13,000 hertz and that the telephone can only transmit about 6,000 hertz of that range, which explains why everyone's voices sound altered over the phone. The upper and lower threshholds of our voices are dropped out, preserving the core range, squeezing it down and pressing it through the wires, beams, and various tiny computerized components to be spit out as a close facsimile on the other side. It's pretty incredible even with its shortcomings, that a thin artificial diaphragm can so closely replicate the sound of a deep sigh or a genuine burst of laughter. But that very compression is one of the things that can trick you into thinking
I can still hear the eerie computer's voice asking if I am there. I wonder how many times a day the computer on the other end begs someone's voicemail to press any key - any key. Perhaps the next advance in communication technology will be a computerized answering service programmed to answer the phone as if it were us, a computer that knows enough about our buying habits and preferences to respond to surveys, and sophisticated enough to convert important reminders about due dates and appointments into calendar notifications. Then those high-powered business people won't say "I'll have my people call your people," they'll say more truthfully, "I'll have my machine call your machine."
Whenever that technology comes along, all it will do will be to replace a strange computer with a familiar one. It will just be one more technological buffer between people, building yet another wall and making it even harder to interface with another actual human being. Meanwhile, the commercial people will find more and more invasive ways to get through, no matter how sophisticated our defenses, no matter how isolated we make ourselves, until, every time October rolls around, you'll be curled up in the dark basement of your soundproof chamber pressing your hands against your skull trying to keep the campaigns from beaming telepathically into your consciousness: "if you are there, please think any number."
"Are you still there? I still can't hear you. If you are there, please press any key."
The computerized caller had hit a snag, receiving a response from my computerized answerer, and the resulting voicemail at first annoyed me that yet another computer had been calling. It seems every time I answer the phone, it is a computer reminding me about my prescription, or about my library books, or about my health coverage.
And if it's not a computer voice urging me to speak to it like a normal person or at least press a button, it's the nearly-as-robotic recording of a person. Even when they are animated about changes to the auto insurance laws or about the cruise tickets I've got coming to me, I hang up in disgust that the commercials are starting to come through on my private phone now. There are days that I would just as soon be rid of the thing if the only calls I'm going to get are commercials and computers.
Then there are the real people on a live call that only sound like recordings. They're sitting in some giant dark room far below weak, pale flourescent beams, watching their computer screen as it dials, dials, dials, bringing far away voices into their headsets, voices interrupted during dinner, during a show, while driving, at the office, or just pulled away from the newspaper or magazine they were reading moments before.
I did that job. I got so many answering machines--mostly recorded computer voices, the same two or three machines seemed to answer phones all over the country. I'd click a button on my screen to call back and then turn to read another few paragraphs of my textbook while my computer dialed the next number. I did my best to sound human and engaging on the phone, but I've gotten so many calls from someone rattling their script in the 7th hour of their 8 hour shift, the third or fourth shift of the same script, the same call, the same opening over and over and over, hundreds of times a day. Do something mechanical long enough and it's hard not to become a machine. That's what we're programmed for.
I learned that the human voice has a frequency range of about 13,000 hertz and that the telephone can only transmit about 6,000 hertz of that range, which explains why everyone's voices sound altered over the phone. The upper and lower threshholds of our voices are dropped out, preserving the core range, squeezing it down and pressing it through the wires, beams, and various tiny computerized components to be spit out as a close facsimile on the other side. It's pretty incredible even with its shortcomings, that a thin artificial diaphragm can so closely replicate the sound of a deep sigh or a genuine burst of laughter. But that very compression is one of the things that can trick you into thinking
I can still hear the eerie computer's voice asking if I am there. I wonder how many times a day the computer on the other end begs someone's voicemail to press any key - any key. Perhaps the next advance in communication technology will be a computerized answering service programmed to answer the phone as if it were us, a computer that knows enough about our buying habits and preferences to respond to surveys, and sophisticated enough to convert important reminders about due dates and appointments into calendar notifications. Then those high-powered business people won't say "I'll have my people call your people," they'll say more truthfully, "I'll have my machine call your machine."
Whenever that technology comes along, all it will do will be to replace a strange computer with a familiar one. It will just be one more technological buffer between people, building yet another wall and making it even harder to interface with another actual human being. Meanwhile, the commercial people will find more and more invasive ways to get through, no matter how sophisticated our defenses, no matter how isolated we make ourselves, until, every time October rolls around, you'll be curled up in the dark basement of your soundproof chamber pressing your hands against your skull trying to keep the campaigns from beaming telepathically into your consciousness: "if you are there, please think any number."
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