26 February 2013

Four lexical gustatory examples

For anyone new to this blog or who doesn't know, I have two mild forms of synesthesia: sound color (I see colors when I hear certain sounds, notes or songs) and lexical gustatory (tasting certain things, or craving tastes, when I hear certain sounds or words) - I'm going to abbreviate this LG for now. The latter is much more fun, but as I said, they're both mild and don't surface that often. Well! Yesterday, I discovered a new LG synesthesia cue for me: the word "stickers" makes me taste and/or crave gummy candy. Neither the pearly kind nor the sour kind - the classic, transparent/jelly kind. I excitedly tweeted this, got into a mini conversation with Mikey Il about it, and then realized that sharing four of my lexical gustatory cues with you guys might be fun.

Lexical gustatory synesthesia

Media channel is celery. This one came up between 2 and 5 years ago. I'm thinking it was when I was still at Naked NY, since the nature of our work had us talking about media channels all the time. This is a very refreshing, crunchy pair of words for me.

Stickers is gummy candy. I have of course heard the word before, but for some reason when I read it out loud from an email yesterday, I flung up in my seat, ran to the kitchen, and ate a bunch of gummy Vitamin Cs and ginger chews. Every time I've uttered or heard the word since (I've been saying it a lot), I have the same sensation, taste, or craving.

Check is Doritos. Well, sort of. This one is fairly old, and I first remember it happening in middle school some time. It's not only the word check, but most words with a hard "ch" sound, and an "E" somewhere in the word. But the E has to be pronounceable. It can either be a short E, like in checkers, check, or Chester, or a long E, like in cheese, cheat, or cheek. Soft "ch" words don't count ("chenille" doesn't do anything for me in an LG way, for example, other than picturing a pile of cooked, blue-tinted glass noodles, but I'm not sure what that means either!? That literally just happened.).

Couch is my first LG cue ever, when I was about five years old. It happened while listening to a Teddy Ruxpin tape. There was one story where he and Grubby, and maybe some other characters were exploring the inside of a couch, and it was this big adventure. Every time Teddy Ruxpin said couch, I got this desire to eat something. But I couldn't figure out what, for years and years. Almost 20 years later, on the way to White Plains for a client meeting, a team I was on stopped to pick up lunch. The second I bit into my first-ever potato empanada, I yelled out loud, "OH MY GOD, IT'S COUCH!" I didn't realize this was due to a form of synesthesia yet, so it was a little awkward explaining what the hell I meant by my outburst.

Fun? Should I do more of these? Do any of you guys have any forms of synesthesia? Please tell me. I've never met or spoken to one before.

25 February 2013

Protecting the liquid gold.

I had heard about the epidemic of Tide thefts over the past couple of weeks, but finally read this article about it. Really interesting to hear about both the psychological and social roots that have slowly led to this bizarre cultural phenomenon, and the economic ramifications of it. All that blended with a bit of new knowledge on inventory, stocking, reselling stolen product, and the rise of this mass theft resulting in part from keener analysis on risks and benefits. It all lingered in my mind by today, at best, until I was met with this at a local drugstore:

Tide security.

Derrick pointed out that this is leather-jacket-level security. I asked the associates about it as well; apparently the hardware is so new that they still fiddle with the plastic tools that unlock each bottle. Which reminded me of this paragraph:

For stores, stopping Tide shoplifting presents unique challenges. Most frequently stolen goods—GPS devices, smartphones, and other consumer electronics—are pricey, light, and easily concealed. They’re also not routine purchases, which means they can be locked up until buyers ask for them. Bulk goods like detergent are harder to run off with, but they’re also bought by dozens of customers daily—lock those products up, and a store manager adds more time to his customers’ errand runs, potentially sending them to shop elsewhere. “Any time you secure something, it impacts the sale of that item at some level,” says Jerry Biggs, the director of Walgreens’ Organized Retail Crime Division.
This reminds me of something I'd hear about on the Freakonomics podcast; remember the cobra effect?

23 February 2013

Some Wurtzel quotes.

Until tonight, I had never read anything by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Is that crazy? Is it bad? Should I be embarrassed? I feel like it is, and I should be.

I read this article in New York Magazine, and my evening went from a little listless to a tornado of underlining and ripping pages out and taping them together elsewhere. Assorteds --

Meanwhile, most people who think they are practicing law are actually making binders, and my guess is that most people who think they are doing whatever important thing they are doing are making binders. The binders from law firms go to a locker in a warehouse in a parking lot in an office park off an exit of a turnpike off a highway off an interstate in New Jersey, never to be looked at again. No one ever read them in the first place. But some client was billed for the hourly work.

The best lesson I have learned from David Boies is patience. He deposed Bill Gates for twenty hours to get the answer he needed, so David believes in time.

Even when you are picking out a dog, it has to be true love and not a list of pluses and minuses or a bunch of desirable traits you would describe on OkCupid. There is no substitute for magic. I have only ever known love at first sight, and I know it when I see it.

I am Potter Stewart wandering through an overwhelming emotional life that only makes sense on contact. It’s all pornography to me, all of life is so visually rich and it all hits me absolutely like flat sheets of hard rain so that the only feeling I trust is the one that comes down in a devastating way. When I meet people who tell me that they are immune to the power of beauty or that they don’t get overwhelmed by plain old lust, I don’t think they are lucky; I think they are missing all the fun. And all the pain, of course.

We would have coffee and paprika biscuits in bed on Wednesday mornings.

The list of things I can’t be bothered with goes on forever. The list of things that bother me goes on forever.

Now, in a whole long day of croissants in the morning and multiple dog walks and stops at the bodega for yogurt and jam, I may speak with people I care about only in type.

I already know that the article will make some people roll their eyes, and, reading the first dozen or so comments, have seen even more - disgust, contempt, offense, and all out wars between commenters. As I read, I was in some inner part of my brain, and was only reading the words and visualizing it all. When I wake up and pull myself outward a little, it does seem to be a paradoxical blend of consciously describing being in the moment and all the way at the F extreme of the F/T continuum, and being at a high enough perspective to also consciously point out the shortcomings of a life led with intention, planning, and within a social construct of sorts. ANYWAY.

17 February 2013

Hacking the block lamp

I got one of these Design House Stockholm block lamps four years ago; for three of those years, it sat in pieces in a corner. Once the bulb burned out (or I knocked the filament loose, oops), I could not for the life of me find a replacement – the website suggested a 25W candelabra, but none that I could find would either a) fit into the glass encasement, or b) fit into the strangely small barrel of the cord. It befuddled associates across a few hardware stores.

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Finally, we got fed up and decided to scrap the original cord entirely and build a new one.

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photo 4

We made this with a 7W candelabra bulb, seven feet of lamp wire, a two prong male plug, and a bulb barrel socket screw thingie. I also picked up a pack of vinyl bumpers (replacing the originals that had fallen off over time), to keep the glass from sliding around and chipping.

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We're not quite done yet; right now you can only turn it on by plugging it into the wall. We bought one of those wheel click switch things to add, but further decisions will wait for another weekend. For now…

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…let there be light.

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