That and It

I am trying to come up with testable hypotheses on the risk-taking behavior and power dynamics of sexual harassers in the workplace. This is not going well. I have nothing intelligent to say. So I am not going to say anything intelligent.

Instead, I will offer a personal blog post typical of a navel-gazing pseudo-intellectual, only I don't have a cat. But typical of all solo bloggers, I will endeavor to elevate narcisism to something along the lines of a Handy-esque "deep thought," like "You know when That happens? Yeah. Isn't That strange? I never thought of That that way. Wouldn't it be funny if That were always the case? Why don't we think more critically about That? Why hasn't anyone ever come up with a unified theory of That? Yeah. What's up with That?"

And that, my friends, it the typical structure of a space-filler post by a navel-gazing hipster pseudo-intellectual. I mean, substitute anything for "That"--an independent German cinema festival; when the sophomore album is actually better than the debut, defying all expectations; when you stand in line and realize you stood at the wrong end so that actually you are not in line at all but just standing there, and perhaps that is very much like all of life--give any mundane, stupid, boring, non-interesting topic to a pseudo-intellectual blogger, and s/he will try to make it sound like it would be original and interesting to talk about it using big words and metaphors.

Anyway, this is not That kind of post. It is even more stupid than That. It goes along the lines of the other not-cat-blogging post, the Stupid Obvious Observation. Basically, the structure of that is "It. Yes, It. It can be funny, can't It? Isn't It interesting?" The answer to this is "No." Nothing this mundane and obvious can be made interesting. It is like your cat or baby: it may be interesting to you, but not enough to say out loud or share with the world. In such cases, you should keep the thought to yourself.

So without further to do, the Obvious It of the Day:

Hair is Porous and Absorbs Odor

(Below, actual text of a procrastinating email that has been already sent, to my deep chagrin. In my defense I wrote more interesting emails full of interesting, insightful observations of That today, but they are not-bloggable):

"Sometimes I wish I remembered more from science classes: I forget how porous hair follicles are. Tonight, after I made myself yet another plate of pasta (it is always either pasta with pesto or spinach penne with ricotta) while reading an article, I couldn't take it anymore and went for a walk. And now my long, lovely, shiny black hair smells like cigarettes and chimney smoke, from the pack of guys smoking on the corner of ____ and ____ and a good number of houses that must be warmer than mine. Ewww. It's like how whenever I go to The Coffee Shop, I emerge smelling like Sumatra beans. I like the smell of coffee though, so I think that I smell delicious after I go to coffee shops. Like, I want to sniff myself after going to the shop, and feel like a very sophisticated scratch-and-sniff sticker. But right now I smell like a crotchety old man though. An old man named Ned."

Sometimes, I really wonder about myself. Half of what I write is interesting and I hope useful. Another 1/4 of what I write possibly funny and insightful. And then the remaining 1/4 is the above: pointless drivel and crap, and the people in my life are very indulgent and affectionate.