Dear Bugaboor,

Tell me this happens to you, too: you’re entering a grocery store, oh-so-eager to carelessly stuff your shopping cart with whatever edibles that happen to land in the crosshairs of your famished and unhealthy whims, when by chance you encounter a vague acquaintance in the little “airlock” space between the front doors. The encountered individual (encountee?) is likable enough that you don’t instinctively pivot to avoid eye contact, but sufficiently distant from your social core that a lengthy, engaging conversation is out of the question.

Paralyzed by your dithering reflexes, you find yourself wading clumsily through small-talk with them, while visions of avocados and Fig Newtons dance in your head. To your surprise, the chat is short and painless, no doubt helped by the fact that your feelings of social ambivalence are mutual, and so you both smile and “part” ways — through the turnstile. Together. Three minutes later, you re-encounter the encountee in the bathroom-product aisle while reaching for a 12-pack of toilet paper. Momentarily embarrassed at being “caught” buying an ass-related product, you blurt out a lame quip, like “uh, fancy meeting you here,” or “so you buy toilet paper too, eh?” Encountee replies with the expected chuckle of courtesy, and then you part once again, sarcastically congratulating yourself on your social finesse while trying not to picture the departed acquaintance pooing. Awkward moment: resolved.

But: then, as you veer into the catch-all aisle containing light bulbs and bleach, you notice the encountee heading straight for you from the opposite end. One unwitting re-encounter is fine, but a re-re-encounter is too much for you to handle! You now realize that there’s no avoiding the fact that you’re bound to run into this person again and again (and again); you wind up spending so much time planning what to say at the next inevitable encounter that your shopping groove is thrown off-kilter, and you wind up standing in front of the cashier wondering why you’ve just purchased rubber bands and chocolate-flavoured cereal.

What is to be done? I don’t want to be (or at least look) antisocial, but I also don’t know how to handle running into the same person eleven times in a row!

— Simon

*

Dear Simon,

If I were an alien of the “abducting” variety, I would keep my human specimens in a mock grocery store, because it’s such a great venue for witnessing a range of human behaviour. The combination of diverse crowds, gruelling lineups and ill-defined social conventions are great fodder for all kinds of subtle confrontations that would surely delight my alien mind.

Anyways, your dilemma is common one, a clash of social expectations, imaginary obligations, and the oh-so-human desire to not be a dick. Lucky for you, I’ve thought this through.

You have three options:

Option #1: Friend or foe?

Let’s face it: the root of your panic isn’t your frequent run-ins per se, but rather the hazy, mushy-middle status of your acquaintanceship with this person — regardless of who “started it,” your re-encounters stem from an initial encounter (hence the “re”), after which you evidently decided that this person isn’t close enough to you to share an entire grocery-shopping odyssey with. Would that have been so bad? Possibly.

So, make a choice: friend or foe — well, not foe, but “stranger.” If you choose the latter, then you won’t feel bad when you ignore them. Or has the acquaintance-o-meter tilted just tad too far toward “friend” to justify this behaviour? Maybe a snub, or even a subtle walk-by nod, will no longer suffice. Maybe you should be friendly. It may not be an easy choice, but it’s one you’ll have to make: is this person a beloved chum, or are they nothing to you?

Why? Because the social conventions associated with either end of the chum-stranger dichotomy are attractively unambiguous and difficult to botch. Friends are friends, and strangers are strangers. Period. If you choose “friend,” you’ll know to strike up lengthy conversations upon every meeting and ask personal questions each time. Heck, maybe you’ll fall in love. Or, if they don’t respond in kind and your uncalled-for friendliness strikes them as a hollow gesture, then they will avoid you altogether. Problem solved.

Option #2: Ninja… VANISH!

Faking best-friendships? Demoting innocent acquaintances? What are you doing? People are going to think you’re a social mutant or a patient with a day-pass or something. You don’t deserve this pressure, so sidestep the issue entirely and HIDE!

Really: the worst part of the situation isn’t the mechanics of forced conversation (or the avoidance of such), it’s the mutual self-awareness that makes the situation absurd. First encounter aside, you know that the two of you aren’t close enough that either of you should feel pressure to stop and chat. And they know that. And you know that they know that — they know this.

You know?

So avoid this person’s gaze at all costs. What? They’re twenty feet away, now headed for the broccoli you were thinking of buying? Get an artichoke instead. It’s good to try new things!

Pardon me? They’re in the middle of the toiletries aisle, reaching for the face wash that tops your list? Well… I hear olive oil does wonders for the skin. It’s good to try new things!

Some people might call you a coward, arguing that you can’t keep up this sort of behaviour forever, and that if you relax a little, the social world won’t daunt you so — but don’t worry, you won’t be able to hear them from the meat freezer you’ve ducked-and-covered behind.

Option #3: Territorial Pissings

Disregard all I’ve said. Pseudo-friendliness and/or social cowardice will get you nowhere, or worse: into a somehow more awkward situation. Your minds are likely plagued with the same thoughts (okay, maybe not the pooing thing), so why not quell this quandary with a bit of dialogue?

Surely there’s some way of negotiating your shopping routes so they don’t overlap. Maybe you could divide your shopping lists alphabetically, so that you could fill your cart with everything from apples to mustard while the other person grabs Nyquil through zucchini, and then switch. But… I guess that could still lead to re-encounters, since grocery stores don’t tend to organize themselves in this manner (grocers do tend to forsake the Webster’s gospel).

In times of uncertainty, I tend to ask myself: what would a wolf do? And then I tend to answer myself: pee on things and avoid other wolves, of course! (Or however wolves work.)

My point, if it isn’t obvious, is that the most effective solution would be to divide the store geographically, shop for a negotiated amount of time in your respective realms, and then flip. This not only guarantees a maximum of one re-encounter (at the turf-crossover nexus), but also gives you something meaningful to discuss during your initial encounter with the acquaintance. Bonus!

*

Remember, Simon: you can judge, hide from, or strike a deal with grocery-store acquaintances, but you can’t fool yourself into thinking you won’t run into them again. And again. And again. So, hunt and gather (okay, just gather) your nutrition wisely. Strategize.

Close (re-)encounters await.

As everybody knows, only Hawaiians and robots don’t lose their minds during winter. I never escape the madness, which makes me wonder why it always takes me so long to realize that I’ve become unhinged by the siege of endless nights and sub-arctic air.

For me, the first “aha” moment typically strikes during some predictably bleak, jarringly cold and drearily lightless pre-morning in late January. I’ll be sitting there, curled into a jittering, fetal ball while tangled under a twisted mass of drool-stained blankets (as you do). Suddenly, my frenzied session of maniacal laughter and invisible-chair-rocking comes to a sudden halt, whisked aside by a spontaneous moment of clarity. As the fog lifts from my mind, my eye-crossing and tongue-speaking subside for just long enough to think aloud:

“Wait a second… this isn’t normal. The sun isn’t dead — it’s negligent! But it will return.”

This little hiccup of reason is both a gift and curse. It sparks the light at the end of the tunnel, but only to reveal the depressingly epic length of the frozen trek that remains. It’s a miserable path of ice engraved with a trail of frosty letters:

W — I — N — T — E — R —- H — Y — S — T — E — R — I — A

S.A.D.?  Christ, no — I.N.S.A.N.E.

Ignorance isn’t bliss, but self-awareness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when the “self” in question is a pale, shivering product of the arctic blues — a bleary-eyed sap who’s grown bitterly jealous toward any mammal that can hibernate without red-wine assistance. The only bright side is knowing you aren’t alone, and that anybody who claims to be unaffected by the black vacuum of winter are most definitely worse off than yourself. But it’s only a step. You’ve still a long a long way to go, baby, and every battle needs a plan.

Well, since you’re asking, or not, I offer you five potential strategies for helping you make it through the season of death and dark.

(no, you’re dramatic!)

1. Denial.  Have Old Man Winter’s chilly, chapped tentacles really stolen your soul? Or are you… fine? Better yet… is it even winter? Never underestimate the power of denial. But can it be summoned at will? It’s certainly worth a shot, so go for it — take a step outside, board up the doors of perception and enjoy the “beautiful” day!

And why wouldn’t you enjoy this sunny, sunny day? The birds, the bees, the humid, humid breeze; doesn’t it feel good to wear shorts again? Yes. It does. Hell, go for a dip — the water’s fine!

Don’t let the paramedics tell you otherwise.

2. Health is wealth. And wealth is good. Your body is your temple, and you need any kind of blizzard-resistant shelter you can get right now (metaphorical shelter included). Hey, there’s a reason Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod are always grinning like idiots. They’re healthy as heck! So stay away from sloth and crack.

Exercise: The only good thing about winter is that it infuses daily life with rigorous exercise — providing you can summon the will to make it out of bed. Given the plethora of snow/sleet/frozen-rain that falls from above, you’re bound to deliver at least one robust (and conveniently cardio-intense) set of fist-shakes per day. Try using both fists. This, combined with months of exhausting bouts of sidewalk-snow-trudging, doorway-puddle-jumping and stuck-car-pushing is bound to rock your body to Muscle Town.

Diet: An apple a day keeps the doctor away — so do not eat apples, unless you have a death wish. Medicine-deterring fruit aside, I’ve also heard it’s a good idea to avoid sweet and starchy foods. That’s right: your daily smorgasbord of bread, chocolate and lasagna (and yes, even chocolate lasagna) may be bogging you down, serotonin-ally speaking.

Try reducing your breakfasts to the mouthful of road salt and frozen gravel the bus kicks toward your face every day on the way to work/school. Try replacing your nightly stumble-inducing pitcher of carb-heavy beer with a “hibernation”-inducing pint of scotch (Body Breaaak!).

Your health-care vigilance will be rewarded with a well-earned summer of lazy hedonism, bodily neglect and generally reckless behaviour. It’s an investment.

3. Paint your eyelids.  Wait, hear me out: you’re looking for light, right? Well, what could be lighter than white? Nothing, that’s what. So, the more eggshell primer you slather on your ‘lids, the brighter your days will become. It’ll be like angels have licked your eyes. You won’t have seen this much white since the time you accidentally stumbled into that Barenaked Ladies concert.

What’s that? You don’t want to look like an idiot? Well, beggars shouldn’t be choosers, but if you must, then you could always paint some pupils in the middle of your whitewashed eyelids. Eyes are eyes, right? You’ll look ever-watchful, never-fatigued and you can rest happily, even if a few (or lot of) people think that you look like a schizophrenic cartoon character.

4. Limit your alcohol intake.

Just kidding!

I’m only kidding. Relax.

5. Eat, drink and be miserable. Spoiler alert: no matter which approach you take, you probably aren’t going to win the war against ice-steria. As we’re products of our surroundings, the house always wins — particularly when it’s too cold a thing to leave. But hey, don’t let it get you down (if you’ve any downward mobility left, that is). Acknowledge, and carry on like “normal.”

Drink: the high blood-alcohol level will just mean that you’ll be all the harder to freeze.

Eat: your body is cuckoo for carbs and fat right now, and if you try and resist, you’ll probably just wake up in the night eating a bag of flour or something. Besides, without your bodily neglect, where will you find the motivation to exercise?

And, of course, be a little miserable, like everybody else. I mean, if everybody is miserable, then nobody is miser—well… no, everybody will still be miserable. But it’s an easy time of year to get away with complaining a lot. Which is pretty great.

Winter may suck, but look on the bright side: it’s also why we have so few weird parasites here in Canada. Fact. So, the next time you get slushed by a passing bus, just wipe the road salt out of your burning, burning eyes, take a deep breath and remember our nation’s unofficial motto:

CANADA: Where you can swim with an open wound without any risk of becoming a host to a festering colony of genital-eating worms.

Dear Bugaboor,

You strike me as the kind of person that finds himself in socially awkward situations on a very regular basis. I need some advice to help me deal with a common predicament of mine.

Here’s the scenario:

Picture yourself approaching the entrance of a shopping mall/library/any-other-place-with-the-audacity-to-not-install-automated-doors. The gap between you and the building is closing, but you’re still a fair distance from the doorway (approximately 23 feet, or thirteen seconds of walk-time). Looking ahead, you notice that somebody is currently in mid-entrance, with one foot indoors and their head tilted slightly to the side. You happen to catch their peripheral vision, causing them to reflexively hold the door open for you, despite their considerable underestimation of distance. This unwitting samaritan would have marched straight through the doorway had they not made this awkward-moment-inducing miscalculation. But miscalculate they did, and while their toe isn’t tapping, it’s clear that they’ve committed to their fumbled courtesy and are prepared to wait. The ball is in your court. What DO you do?

– Anne Nonnamus

Dear Anne,

Thanks for your letter! I’m at home in the land of the awkward, so you’ve asked the right guy. Consider me your spray-on can of “Gaffe-Away.”

You have three choices:

Option #1: The Mad Dash

GO! GO! GO! This off-duty Boy Scout (or Brownie) has clearly made an effort to lighten your daily load, so don’t make them wait! What do you think they are, your serf?! Hell, you don’t even know this unhurried altruist! Who knows what may have sparked their humanitarian act? Maybe they thought you were much closer than you really were when they decided to hold the door. Maybe they’re trying to make the world a better place and have taken a “trickle-up” approach, hoping that small acts of kindness will accumulate over time, ultimately steering humanity toward the greater good. Maybe their true love was once maimed in a door-opening accident. Can you really be sure that this person isn’t making a painful sacrifice by holding the door open with a broken arm? Maybe they think that you have a broken arm, and are practicing a little ground-level health care. Maybe their arms are broken, and they think that your arms are broken as well, but dammit, they’re too noble to care!

Enough about broken arms. They’ve met you halfway, so hop to it! Even if you have to do a mad dash-dive through the entrance and grab your blown-off hat once inside à la Indiana Jones, there is no time to waste. You’ll look like some kind of fool, but at least it’ll be clear that you care.

Option #2: The Blind Eye

The road to hell is paved with good intentions (and the bones of the damned), so forget about this overzealous do-gooder! It’s they who have put you in an awkward spot. You didn’t ask to be treated like royalty. I bet they think you have inadequate motor skills to carry out the task. I bet they think that you have useless little T-Rex arms, but oh, how wrong they are. You could slap them in the head with either of your Herculean limbs, but alternatively, you could simply “happen” to not see them holding the door for you. What are they going to do, yell at you to hurry up? No, that would tarnish the altruistic persona they’re evidently working to build. Divert your gaze, and maintain course! If they give up and release the door, then it will be like nothing ever happened, and this will all be behind both of you. If they’re still holding the door by the time you arrive, belated eye contact and mumbling of “thanks” should dissipate any suspicion.

But make sure you divert your gaze toward something while looking anywhere but ahead, so as to not look like a fool and reveal your ruse. There’s always stuff in the sky. If your door-lemma occurs in the darkness of night, look down at the palm of either hand and start listing off food items aloud. Mr. (or Mrs.) Doorstop could hardly hold it against you for checking your grocery list, right? Remember to mix a few unconventional ingredients (e.g. paprika, anchovy paste, cupcake sprinkles) into your “list” so that it doesn’t sound fake. If this doesn’t deter suspicion, absolutely nothing will.

Option #3: The Yellow Belly

You know what? To hell with groceries — bail! Do you really need new food already, or are you just being greedy? Surely there’s a can of lentils in the musty nether-regions of a forgotten cupboard somewhere, and one can usually find packets of fast-food condiments in the back-left of their “everything” drawer. So many starving people out there, and here you are with your dust-gathering lentil cans. Scram! Take a sudden U-turn and march yourself directly away from this weird moment. The doorman/woman will probably just think you were approaching the wrong store. If you would like to avoid this situation and save face, you could also pretend to be running toward a needy being, like a freshly-mugged elder or a choking puppy. Don’t worry about looking like a spastic dolt — just remember that old saying: Dignitas  est  aliquid nimisraten (“Dignity is kinda overrated”).

*

So, there you are, Anne. Not one, but three solutions for your quandary. This shouldn’t be your awkward situation to deal with, but deal with it you must.

Whether you choose to leap toward their untimely gesture, deny their existence until the last possible moment or flee the scene entirely, you can sleep secure in the knowledge that you’ve done your very best.

Hope this helps!

Dear Santa:

I know. It’s been a while. I never write! But listen up: your holiday is in serious trouble. I’m not talking about the whole “war on Christmas” balderdash (don’t like the sound of “Happy Holidays”? Get a real problem!), but your big day is being threatened on a number of fronts. I know you’ve got a lot on your mind right now, but it’s up to you to save Christmas. Don’t worry — I’m here to help.

Some thoughts:

1. Cut your costs. It’s no secret: times are tough for everybody. There’s an economic depression going on, and a life of Santahood couldn’t be cheap. You only work one day a year. No doubt your heating bills are pretty wild, living as you do in the frozen wasteland of the North. Food costs are skyrocketing, and you don’t strike me as a starving man. I’ve read that a chocolate bar costs, like, ten bucks in Nunavut, and I’m assuming that you get gouged more with every northward step. You must be in the red (and I’m not talking about your fuzzy little costume).

What to do? Slash your primary cost: presents. How? Well, for starters, this “naughty list” thing is out of hand. Aside from sounding dated and making you sound like a bit of a pervert, you’ve either slackened your list-standards over the years, or have grown lazy in the list-enforcement department. How many snotty little rich kids got new iPads last Christmas? My Guess: too many. Your list-makery (or possibly your list-checkery) has devolved into a gratuitously generous crapshoot. This isn’t even about fairness, Kringle. Justice, schmustice — this presents-for-all attitude is costing you. Big time!

At the very least, get on the surveillance thing. You really need to re-establish the yuletide panopticon that used to frighten the children so. Right now you’re a bit of a Little Brother, if you know what I mean. Do you really know when I’ve been sleeping? Do you have any idea when I’m awake? I have my doubts. The squeakiest wheels are getting the greasiest gifts; it’s time to act. Facebook, phone-hacking, camera-stuffed teddy bears, CCTV, the Patriot Act — it has never been this easy to spy on the public. There’s no excuse. The more you realize that behind their dimples and baby fat, many children are devious, bite-sized tyrants, the fewer goodies you’ll have to dish out on C-Day.  Less work for the elves, fewer time-wasting chimney-stops and less weight for Rudolph et al. to lug about. Triple-win.

Also: no presents for toddlers. Seriously. Humans at that age are conveniently devoid of long-term memory. Take advantage of these half-baked, jelly-brained, doe-eyed-goldfish minds that are so easily bought off with cookies and enthusiastic sounds. It should be easy to get away with. They’ll be too busy falling into sharp things or attempting/failing to speak (or whatever it is that two-year-olds do) to notice that they’re being duped. I don’t remember what I got for Christmas when I was two; it might as well have been an empty box.

2. The ONE day of Christmas. Not the twelve days of Christmas, and certainly not the three-month candy-caned clusterfuck it’s become! Christmas fatigue is wearing people thin. Do you remember when it used to be a one-day affair? Sure, people prepped for a week or two beforehand, but it’s since swollen into an unstoppable yule-tide of malignant commercial tripe! I’ve no qualms about Christmas being a flashy, in-your-face affair, but it needs to know its place — the month of DECEMBER. It’s nice to hear that Carey and Bieber are getting along so well (gross), but to hear it while I’m grocery shopping on Halloween is a real kick in the silver-bells.

This isn’t even about my Scroogedom. Okay, it is, but it’s also about saving your holiday, Santa. This painfully protracted Christmania flushes out my holly-jolliness long before the 25th, and I can’t be alone. Come New Year’s, I’ll be red/green colourblind. I know it’s not your fault, Nick, but you’ve got to somehow rein this beast in before it spreads out so thin that it loses whatever sanctity it still has. After all, if every day’s Christmas, then no day is Christmas.

3. Location, location, location. First of all, I‘d like to commend you on your clever little sweatshop scheme. What’s better than basing your operation in the least regulated mother of all tax havens? Doing so in a tax haven with no labour laws whatsoever! And by keeping your elf workforce in a region that isolated, they’ll never even clue in to the reality of their exploitation and quasi-feudal lifestyle. But you need to expand, a) to boost productivity, and b) because it’s only a matter of time before Nike, Apple, Wal-Mart and the rest of the gang wake up and follow suit by opening up shop in your turf. You’ll be crowded out before you know it.

The good news is that there are plenty of places in the world that are barely more regulated than the North Pole. Rent out some factories in a one of those free-trade zones in a warm, developing country somewhere.

It’s an ideal arrangement for a manufacturing kingpin like yourself; they’ll have the North Pole-esque lack of regulatory oversight you’ve been looking for, and you’ll have a place to summer!

4. Axe the Christians (figuratively speaking). Let’s face it: you and the Christians share an uneasy truce. Yeah, you were a saint and all, but that was then, and you’ve since become a symbol of secular celebration to many of the devout. Sure, God-fearing parents will tolerate Santa-worshipping for a little while (a direct violation of Commandment #1), knowing that they couldn’t possibly vanquish from a child’s imagination the giddy thought of a gift-bearing jolly man who understands the true value of cookies. But before long, they take the child aside, and —

Sorry, Toby, but there’s no Santa Claus. He just. Doesn’t. Exist. Mistletoe is a weed, all reindeer have black noses, and you cost me money. I would’ve told you sooner, but did you really believe in a big bearded guy with impossible surveillance capabilities and limitless mobility that lurks above and judges everybody, hooking them up if they’ve been good?  Well, that’s GOD’s job, mister. And from now on, HE’s the Christmas guy, not Santa — who, I repeat, does not exist. Here’s a cookie.

Just saying: if they don’t have room for you, maybe you don’t have room for their presents. Leave them out of the present-picture, and you’ve got 2.2 billion fewer boxes to stuff into that sky-sled of yours (which can’t be that roomy). Christmas is already a little exclusive — why not take it one step further?

5. The neo-carol nightmare. Say what you will about McDonalds, they’re pretty clever when it comes to deterring hoodlums from loitering out front; never have I heard jazz as atrocious as the squawky, syncopated syrup they blare through the loudspeakers outside their main entrances. If this sonic drivel itself doesn’t drive away the packs of preteens that would otherwise love to claim these greasy gateways as their posse’s stoop, the possibility of being identified as a cheesy-jazzophile by pedestrians must act as an impediment of some sort.

My point? New holiday music is the “bad jazz” that nauseates much of the hearing public away from the “front entrance” of Christmas. I’m not talking about Bing Crosby and the gang here, or any of the other classic renditions with warm and nostalgic aesthetics that were recorded in a time before spray-on snow and pre-ornamented plastic trees. I’m talking about the annual, mould-like layer of superfluous Christmas albums spawned by future-ghosts-of-Vegas (Celine, Mariah, Britney, etc.) who substitute sincerity with overproduction. Thanks to these jolly leeches’ attempt to out-Michael-Bolton each other, formerly tolerable songs have devolved into hollow, plastic photocopies-of-photocopies-of-photocopies that have been washed free of any original feeling. “All I want for Christmaaas—” is for them to shut up.

This isn’t your fault, and frankly, I’m not sure what you can do about it. Maybe sprinkle some magic Santa-dust across the globe, inflicting seasonal deafness upon a public that would be better off not never having heard the Chipmunks sing.

Or however it is that you work.

*

Well, I hope this helps. Drop the chestnuts and rally the elves. Macaulay Culkin, Tim Allen, Charlie Brown, Chevy Chase and Ernest have all saved Christmas, and now it’s your turn. Threats are abound. There is no “war” being waged against Christmas, but that doesn’t mean it can’t collapse under its own weight. Holidays do go extinct — just ask the Feast of the Ass (an actual extinct holiday). So get your ass in gear and save the Feast of the Turkeys.

Three HO’s to you, kind sir!

They’re out there. Horizontal hoodlums, corpse-stiff and perched atop vehicles, mailboxes, counters and anything else they can balance their board-like bodies on. Face-down for the masses. Waiting for the electric click of a friend’s digital camera, hoping to taste whatever semblance of fame the Internet can offer. “They” are anybody with a camera, an Internet connection and more time than sense. They are “plankers.” Their hobby: planking. One of the most bizarre viral activities that have been popularized online, planking has united an atomized group of young and bored attention-seekers under a banner of pointlessness. And, well, I don’t get it.

A strange hybrid of stunt and photography-contest, planking consists of lying face-down and stretched out as flat as possible while balancing atop random, unusual or perilous surfaces. Plankers have pictures taken of themselves in these ridiculous and often dangerous poses, which are then posted on social media sites where countless other plankers also contribute their own efforts, all hoping for re-posts, re-tweets and Facebook “likes” (the currency of social media). That’s it. That’s planking. And sweet Jesus, it is hot.

A plank’s value (or “epic-ness,” if I am to use appropriately hipster-esque lingo) is judged by the degree of difficulty or absurdity evident in the photo, along with technicalities such as good posture, pointed toes/fingers and the like — think ballet, minus the “doing anything” part. People have planked in and on increasingly strange and life-threatening places, including street lamps, speeding motorcycles and even building-ledges. Some have realized the danger a little too late; Acton Beale, a 20-year old thrill-seeking Australian, likely had this “aha” moment during a fatal seven-storey plunge that followed his failed balcony-railing plank. Yet the fad carries on.

Most plankers don’t go to these extremes, and all of the biggest planking sites warn people to “plank safely.” But that only deepens the mystery — if not adrenaline, what does drive a planker? It offers no tangible rewards of any kind. It isn’t a statement. Quite the opposite: It is the epitome of meaninglessness. Unlike some other viral trends, it stands no chance whatsoever of leading to anything else. Is it the distant possibility of experiencing some kind of ephemeral e-fame? Social media’s spotlight of attention is fleeting and unpredictable, but its ability to make content “go viral” does offer a cheap shot at some kind of global recognition for little in exchange.

One of the Internet’s unintended side-effects has been a democratization of fame, for better or worse. On one hand, this seems like a reasonable, egalitarian trend. After all, why should Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s antics deserve any more shallow attention than that guy who planked in the middle of a baseball field during a Major League game? It’s possible that the prerequisites for public recognition have been diluted to such an extent that these people are now getting their international “coverage” because of the pointlessness and stupidity of their endeavours, not despite it. It fits snugly within the hipster ethos: the trivial, ridiculous and lame are now cool, because cool is lame, and any “ironic” proclamation of such is worthy of widespread attention. And widespread attention they get: just ask “planking-on-the-escalator-guy,” “Golden-Arches-planker” or “guy-who-planked-on-Mr. T.”

Young people may have finally found a coolifying craze so useless, hollow and fundamentally irrelevant that they’ve managed to ridicule-proof themselves. They beat their critics to the punch: the scoffery is built-in, acting like a vaccine. Plankers don’t mask the meaninglessness of planking — they revel in it. Not only that, but any mockery of a planker’s “work” is only likely to give it even more street-cred. It’s a route to hipster-glory with minimal chance of social risk; after all, if you stand for nothing and practice nothingness, you can never fail, right?. All you have to lose is your obscurity!

But while the thought of engaging in such pointless feats in strange and perilous locations may seem like a common strive for attention adapted to the Internet age, maybe it’s not quite as simple as that. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom for having an illogical tendency toward embarking on meaningless, vaguely competitive and death-defying activities, even when there is no audience at hand. It’s the same “because-it’s-there” logic that drives people to climb mountains, free-dive to dangerous depths and hunt for deadly beasts with little nutritional content. This weird characteristic is found in societies past and present, albeit in different forms. It’s a trait that transcends both time and culture. Who knows, maybe it’s fueled the evolutionary success of our species — though really, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t led to our extinction (yet).

While the planking trend certainly shouldn’t be feared or dwelled upon, neither should it be ignored by virtue of its triviality and dada-esque meaninglessness. After all, a culture’s “pointless” activities define it and its members as much as its culturally-significant rituals do. And if there’s one thing young people hate, it’s being defined by anybody other than themselves. If they were looking for a way to reject society’s demand for safe recreational behavior and meaningful action, they have certainly found it. Critics may ridicule planking for its senselessness, but such scorn will only serve to fuel the phenomenon. If they stop giving plankers the attention they so clearly crave, the fad will (like all other internet fads) be whisked away along with everything else in the poorly-attentive world of social media.

My computer has performed an illegal operation and needs to be shut down. I already pressed one for English. The printer is jammed. Windows is (still?) waiting for the program to respond. A car alarm has been blaring outside my door for 45 minutes now. My grammar-checker is functionally illiterate. My cell phone is (already?) dead. If I still owned a VCR, it would currently be flashing 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, 12:01, 12:00…

To hell with progress — technology sucks! I know, I know, I’m currently complaining about this to a computer that is dutifully beaming every bitter byte of my brainless bile into the Web. It rarely complains. But that isn’t enough for me. Electronic gadgetries fail me on a daily basis; every product’s new-and-improved successor finds some new way to drive me to the brink of hysteria. The risk of accidental suicide is the only thing that prevents me from throwing fallible electronics into the toilet.

Technology and I share an abusive relationship — just ask the string of battered and worn computers I’ve left in my wake over the past decade. I fall in love with every computer I buy. Things between us are great for a while, until a key goes wonky or a program catches a bug. Then, I fly off the handle. I resort to bullying and brute force in a boorish attempt to make things work, which tends to exacerbate the very problem I was trying to solve. I accuse it of making promises it can’t keep (it never listens).

Yelling and threats of physical assault are commonplace. It pleads with me: “I can change! Upgrades are available! I’m only in beta!” But by then, the thrill is gone, and I move on. I toss imperfection aside, and replace it with something similar, only new. And improved. And so it goes, the cycle resumes, and each subsequent replacement faces the Goliath of my endlessly skyrocketing expectations.

Who’s to blame for my ruthlessness? My knee-jerk reaction is to point my technologically-deprived flesh-and-bone finger at the marketing specialists of computer manufacturing companies. Their sleek television ads frequently dazzle me with shimmering visions of a wireless and wait-less future, a message glorified by random celebrities (or their discount-priced-but-equally-attractive counterparts) who serenade me from their angel-white, Matrix-esque netherworlds.

Damn you, Jeff Goldblum!

Or should I blame myself for being such a chump with fickle and easily-manipulated expectations? I fancy myself as an aggressively independent person, impermeable to the hypnosis of advertising. High-tech or not, I try to appreciate the tools I use in my life for what they are, not for what they’re not.

I try. And I fail.

I’ve grown increasingly intolerant of any perceived technological imperfection — a technofascist seeking to stamp obsoletion out of existence. Against this mentality, technology doesn’t stand a chance. I’ll never be fully satisfied with my tools so long as something even remotely faster/better/bigger/stronger is in development.

I’ve lost the ability to wait for electronics to perform their functions, and have gained one hell of a sense of entitlement in the process. If the wait-time is greater than zero, I sense defect, inadequacy or worse, I feel betrayed by progress. Resist as I may, the ideology of “instantism” is seeping ever-deeper into my toe-tapping, clock-watching mind.

So, what’s the cure for my towering expectations? Self-inflicted deprivation comes to mind. You don’t realize what you’ve got until it’s gone, right? Maybe if I hid in the forest for a few weeks, far away from the modern world, my radical “instantism” would fade. But this is easier said than done — it’s not as easy to pull a Ted Kaczynski as it used to be. Even the forests are rife with cell-phone towers, GPS-tagged animals and the invisible echoes of radio waves. In other words, I would literally have to live under a rock atop a mountain somewhere to shield myself from the glowing hum of modernity. And let’s face it, I would only wind up hungry, filthy, and complaining about the technological flaws of my latest animal-clubbing device or acorn-powered stove.

This is a mindset, not a failing of today’s electric tools. Or maybe a bit of both. But had I lived in any other time, I would probably be every bit as impatient and insatiable as I am now. I would have been the only one in Ancient Rome complaining about insufficient plumbing, the only caveman griping that fire just isn’t bright enough for my particular caveman needs. People (like me) are so difficult to satisfy because our eyes are locked ahead, angrily waiting for the next big thing to come out, already having forgotten the shortcomings of whatever it is we’ve upgraded or left behind.

Really, I just need to go easy on progress. I need to find a way to relax a bit, to clear my mind. It’s not always an easy thing to do, but no worries — I hear there’s an app for that.

The awful truth: we spend every single moment of every single day of our lives walking within, sleeping through, and breathing in clouds of coitus-powder. Plants: they have no shame, forever puffing out plumes of their dirty love-dust while pouncing on every pollen-hungry pistil in sight. I don’t know why the bees condone this. It’s not a pretty sight — not that I would know, since my eyes are blood-red, parched, and caked with the seminal powder currently clouding the August sky. Filthy, fornicating flora and their concerted fits of meaningless sex!

Keep it in your pants, plants!