Spring Cleaning

Welcome back to The Jerx.

As you'll notice, I've cleaned up all the Splooge. I mean, the posts are still there, but the design is now back to the normal Jerx site.

Some quick notes before we move forward...

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I removed the Amazon and Vanishing Inc affiliate links from the side bar. I prefer the esthetic of the site without them and they weren't used often enough to merit keeping them there. As I've stated, this site is going to be around as long as people continue to support it. But the impression I get from you guys is that you'd rather do so in more pro-active, direct ways. That's cool with me. I think with a smaller audience that's probably the way it needs to be done anyway. 

You can still find the links on the Support the Site page if you're so inclined, they just won't be in the sidebar.

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Regarding the Splooge post about slowing time, Marc Kerstein reminded me about this app where you take 1 second of video every day and it puts it all together into one video. 

I like that idea too, although I think pulling out your camera can sometimes be a more intrusive way to capture the highlight of your day than writing down one sentence at the end of the day. Especially if the highlight of your day was getting a blowjob from your barista or something.

I will probably end up doing both: keeping the one sentence journal and keeping the 1 second video diary. The journal capturing what's going on in my mind and the video capturing the external experience.

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Also via Marc Kerstein's twitter I was turned on to Patrick Kun's youtube videos which collect his Instagram performances. They're called Unseen Magic and there are 5 up so far. Here is the most recent one.

As far as I'm concerned, this is about as perfect a representation of magic as you'll see online. Patrick is super skilled. Everything is quick and fun and visual. And it's magic for the sake of magic. It's not some bullshit "prank," it's not using magic to tell us about neuroscience, it's not some hacky interactive trick. He talks the way a normal human does to other humans as opposed to like he's trying to sell you something. The best compliment I can give is that it makes me want to get out and perform.

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Hey guys, quit trying to bait me into making fun of Rick Lax. Rick got upset when I called him a "dull whitey" in this post. So I told him I wouldn't tease him anymore, and that's that.

So when people like Paul Sherman email me things like this:

Subject: How did Rick Lax do it?!

Andy,

Had to pass this along:

https://www.facebook.com/DeceptionExpert/videos/538131729702018/

Spooky, right?! I mean, how could he have known what planet or star I would think of, when the only limitation was that it begin with the last letter of the name of the first superhero I could think of?

Well, it took me a while, but I think I've finally cracked it, and now I'm working up my own routine with a similar method. Would love to get your feedback:

Quick, think of your favorite manufacturer of gelatin-based desserts.

Now think of the last letter of that manufacturer's name. Example: Knox = X.

Are you thinking of your letter?

Now think of an American President or a Canadian Prime Minister whose last name begins with that letter. So if you're thinking of "C," you might think "Jean Chrétien."

Are you thinking of a president or prime minister?

Focus.

Are you focusing?

Well I Hope you don't Change your mind, because right now you're thinking of President Barack Obama.

Like and Share!

Best,
Paul

... there's really nothing for me to say. Yes, Rick's trick is phenomenal. I suppose if you were a master of linguistics or a "deception expert" like Rick, you might be able to discern a pattern in the last letter of many of the most popular superhero names.  

Superman
Batman (and Robin)
Ironman
Wonder Woman
Spider-Man
Aquaman

Maybe there's a pattern. Is there? I don't know. Give me a minute... I'm just not seeing one. Sorry, I'm not an alphabet expert, fer chrissakes. I just don't have the time it would take to examine them that close.

And then I just think of the name of ANY planet (or star) that begins with the last letter? Such freedom!

Most people would suggest that Rick's examples give the trick away. If you're thinking of the Hulk or Thor, he notes, you'd be thinking of the letter K or R. Now just think of your favorite planet (or star) that begins with a K or R. 

Ooh... hmm... do I have to narrow it down to one? So many possibilities. How will I ever choose?

But I think it's just the opposite. And I would actually flesh out those example so people realize just how many options they have. "Perhaps you're thinking of the Hulk. And the last letter is K, so you're going through your mental catalog of stars and planets that begin with K and removing one. For example... maybe K-Pax, the home to Kevin Spacey's character in the movie of the same name."

"Or if you're thinking of Thor, your letter would be R and you might be thinking of your favorite star: RA 05:55:10.306, Dec +07:24:25.35 (2000.0)."

And the great thing is, by mentioning these common examples you make it less likely for your spectator to name them. Sweet!

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Before the lifestyle blog transition, I mentioned I'd hopefully be posting a new trick on here that didn't fit in the book. As of now there's a small possibility the trick is going to be used in an upcoming tv special. So I'm waiting to hear back on that. If it is used, then I'll make a secret explanation site that will go out to the people who bought the book after the special airs. If it's not used then I will post it here in the relatively near future for everyone.

The Secret To Happiness

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet

Following up on the previous post on how not to shit your pants, here is how to achieve eternal happiness.

Two caveats:

1. I'm trying to explain something that is my natural mindset, and I'm not quite sure how to do it. It would be like if you had a fetish for testicular trauma. That's not something someone talked you into, that's just how you are. So how would you try and talk someone else into it? Maybe you can't reason someone into this way of thinking. I don't know.

2. There's a chance if you adopt this mindset you'll be seen as some stepford-wife type automaton. A lot of people see happy people as superficial, or one-dimensional, or mindless. If people get the sense that you're happy most of the time, then they'll think you're an idiot or a liar. "Poor guy. He's too dumb to realize he shouldn't be happy. Or he's lying about being happy."

People can’t conceive of a virtue in someone else that they can’t conceive in themselves. Instead of believing you’re stronger, it’s so much easier to imagine you’re weaker. You’re addicted to self-abuse. You’re a liar. People are always ready to believe the opposite of what you tell them.

-- Chuck Palahniuk - Survivor

The good news is, when you know the secret to happiness, you don't really give a shit about what people say anyway. 

And it may be a mistake to call it the secret to happiness. I don't know what will make you happy. If you don't have things in your life that bring you joy, you're screwed. These don't have to be big things, they probably shouldn't be in fact. If your happiness is dependent on a perfect relationship, with a loving family, and a rewarding job; your happiness is very tenuous. That's a lot of shit that's outside of your control. If your spouse cheats on you with your boss, your world crumbles. You need to be able to find your happiness in smaller things -- that is, happiness in: finding new music, excitement for films that are coming out, friends, a really good grilled cheese, sports, sex, nature, meeting new people, a new magic book, pets, skipping work, a back massage, television, doing nice things for others, jokes, this website... these sorts of things.

This is the part of the equation people understand: you need to appreciate the small pleasures. But the corollary to this is even more important: you need to forget the big miseries.

You can't really forget them, of course, but you can recontextualize the things that lead to unhappiness: failure, mistakes, tragedy, disappointment, rejection and loss.

Why is the Basketball Hoop Ten Feet High?

That's not a riddle. I'm genuinely asking. Why is it ten feet high? You've gone out and shot baskets before, right? Wouldn't it be a lot easier if it was five feet high and five feet in diameter? Then you could just walk up to it and drop the ball in without all that hectic jumping and throwing of the ball. 

But no one would ever play that game. Not only is it not the game you would play with someone else, but it's not the game you would play with yourself. Even when no one else is around we still crave challenge and adversity. We're entertained by them. 

The Secret to Happiness: Treat Your Life Like an Auto-Scrolling Video Game

Remember the auto scrolling levels of Mario where the background moved along at a constant pace and you just have to keep going or you get crushed or pushed off a cliff or something?

That is life.

The difficulties in life are like the pits, and the bullet things, and the turtles with wings. Those are the things that make the whole process interesting. A game without them would be dull to the point of unplayable.

The mistake we make is imagining a "perfect" life as a life without difficulties. The perfect life is not a life without these things. The perfect life is one where you skillfully navigate through these things.

When you see life like this, you don't look at loss, pain, failure, mistakes, and tragedy as some kind of karmic abuse meant to punish you. They're just the obstacles that are there to challenge you and make the game rewarding. 

When you play a game and you're struck with some impediment, you're not like, "Oh, why me! What did I do to deserve this?! How will I ever pick myself back up again?" You're just like, "Hmmm... okay... now what's the best way to handle this?" And you actually become better going forward because you're constantly learning from your difficulties, not just bemoaning them. You might think you'd have to be a robot to handle the difficulties in life the same way, but I think once you view life from this perspective it just becomes kind of automatic. 

Let's say your wife got trampled to death during a terrorist attack at Wrestlemania. You might think, "I'd just be a broken man. I'd never be able to move on." Well, what good does that do anyone?  It's not an insult to your former wife's memory to feel the pain and then quickly press on. No amount of suffering is going to bring her back. There's nothing noble about being paralyzed by sorrow. So you look at the situation and say,  "Hmmm... okay... now what's the best way to handle this?" I don't know what the answer to that question would be for you, but there is an answer. 

We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. 

-- Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet

When I explain this idea to people -- that I don't think of bad things as bad things -- but just the impediments that have randomly been spat out at you that you get to deal with in your life, some people have compared it to the philosophy of Stoicism. 

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 

-- Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

Of the philosophical writings I've read, I've understood like 40%. Most of it is way over my head. But of that 40%, much of what I've agreed with does come from the Stoics. But my personal philosophy kind of veers off wildly from their's. Stoics believe you shouldn't let negative things affect you. But they also think you shouldn't really let positive things affect you that much either. 

That's not my scene. That feels like playing it safe to me. Worse, it feels like surrender. "Okay, here's the deal, universe. I won't get too high so you can't slap me back down to earth. Okay?" I think it's better to just wring every drop of happiness and get as high as possible on every good thing in your life. And fuck it if things don't work out as you'd hoped at every moment. That's part of the game. 

If you're not sure where to start with this mindset, I suggest trying it with something simple that frustrates you. Maybe traffic or those idiots you work with. Instead of being bothered or angered by every bozo who cuts you off or co-worker who screws up yet another project, just look at them like the Goombas in Mario. The goal of the game is to get through these things, not freak out about them.

(I had to learn this myself when I first came to New York City. It used to bother me to no end the way tourists would move about the streets. Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. Stopping at the end of escalators! THE MOTHERFUCKING END OF ESCALATORS!!!! Ok, so I still have some residual issues to deal with. I would wonder how I could get more upset with someone walking slowly than I was with someone... say, stealing money from me. It was because I recognized the latter as an obstacle and those I was okay with. It was inconveniences that would really get under my skin. I had adopted this mindset on a macro level before I had it on a micro level. But inconveniences were always going to be there, so the game was going to be in how I handled them. After that realization, when someone would do a dead-stop in the middle of a crowded sidewalk so they could get a closer look at a building or a pigeon or some shit, I would no longer ask them if they'd been kicked in the fucking head by a donkey. Instead I'd swiftly swing around them, tapping them on the head gently with my open palm and saying "boop" while I went. That was my way of "killing" them in the game in my mind. And I was a much happier pedestrian.)

The goal of this attitude is happiness, but the side-effect is that you become fearless. Not brave really, because you're not acting in the face of fear. You just genuinely don't have fear of things. If loss, pain, failure, mistakes, and tragedy are just seen as the challenges you get to work around in the game of your life, they become neutral at worst. You sign up for the marathon. You ask the girl out. You quit your job and start your own business. And if these things don't work out, you just continue forward. And soon you realize that most of these mistakes and failures you were concerned about don't even present themselves as obstacles later on. You adopt the mindset that adversity is there for you to maneuver through. Which allows you to feel free to attempt things you might not have for fear of failure. And then you learn that failure didn't even present the adversity you thought it would. 

But Andy, I don't want challenges and obstacles. I don't want to overcome things. I just want an easy life. That's what would make me happy.

Okay, okay, I hear you. Do you want to know the easiest way to go through life? Be fucking braindead! You won't have to pay rent. No one will turn you down for a date. You won't have to put Christmas lights up only to take them down a month later. You can be fed through a tube and shit through a tube. It's your dream life. Go huff copier toner.

[Next Week: I bring even more happiness to your life as this site reverts to The Jerx and we talk magic.]

How To Not Shit Your Pants

If you ever have to go to the bathroom really bad, like maybe you're in your car and you're 10 minutes from the next rest stop, start stroking your junk. Being sexually aroused blocks out your need to shit.

Well, it works for me, at any rate.

This may not be the best idea if you're on public transportation.

Also, be careful when you're driving. If you end up crashing into the median you'll be found in the worst of all possible situations: with your dick in your hand and your underpants full of dookie. And then it will work its way around everyone who attends your funeral that you got turned on by shitting yourself. Then someone will be like, "Ah, damn, I wish he hadn't died. I have the doubly-perfect nickname for him now." And everyone will be like, "What's that?" And he'll say, "Skidmarks." And everyone will be all, "RIP, Skidmarks."

The Meta-Universal Conversation Interjection Conversation

Okay, I admit it. That last "tip" was bullshit. There was no University of Delaware study. If you walk up to a group and say, "Oh... shit!" they're likely to think you're a little strange, at best. Even if it fits in perfectly with the conversation, it's still odd to just inject yourself into a discussion with no preamble.

But now I've set you up for the Meta-Universal Conversation Interjection Conversation.

Here's how it works. You enter the party or the gathering. Everyone is paired up or grouped off. You find a group that looks cool and slide your way into the conversation.

"Ohhhh... shit!" you say.

They all turn to you and cock their heads wondering what your deal is.

"Hmmm...," you say, "Well... I guess that was bullshit. Sorry. I was feeling a little awkward on my way here because I don't really know anyone. And I googled some tricks to work your way into a conversation. And I found this one site... I don't know... it said 'Oh shit' was like a conversational skeleton key that could fit into any exchange. Apparently the University of Delaware did a study on it. I don't know what I was thinking."

You take out your phone and show them this post (the previous post) that you had been reading in your car before the event.

You see? I didn't just give you a universal conversation interjection. I gave you a complete ice-breaking conversation that is at least mildly interesting and makes you look:

a) relatable - Everyone has had a situation where they feel a little awkward at an event where they don't know anyone
b) confident - Confident enough to acknowledge feeling awkward and then be self-deprecating about it

Now, if you happen to hit it off with the group of people or someone in that group, I suggest you come clean and have the Meta-Meta-Universal Conversation Interjection Conversation Conversation. This is where you say, "Look, I knew that 'oh shit' thing wasn't going to work when I said it. I just thought you looked like a fun group and that was my excuse to come talk to you."

At least, that's how I'd play it.

The Universal Conversation Interjection

If you're at a party or a gathering of some sort where you don't know anyone, it can be awkward to work your way into a conversation, especially if everyone has already splintered into little groups.

So here's what you do. Just squeeze your way into the circle of people or sit at their table. You don't need to know what they're talking about. And then say, "Ohhhh... shit!"

This exclamation seamlessly fits into any conversation.

"I just got engaged!" -- "Ohhhh... shit!"
"I just got fired." -- "Ohhhh... shit!"
"I'm going to Tahiti." -- "Ohhhh... shit!"
"I found a duffel bag filled with cash." -- "Ohhhh... shit!"
"My wife just drove my kids into the lake." -- "Ohhhh... shit!"
"Did you hear what Trump said?" -- "Ohhhh... shit!"
"How many guys can I blow and not be gay?" -- "Ohhhh... shit!"
"What's a four-letter word for excrement?" --  "Ohhhh... shit!"

This isn't just me talking. In 2012, The University of Delaware studied over 200 conversational interjections and "Oh, shit," was rated the highest in regards to situational appropriateness and meaning (the second highest rated interjection was, "Damn... that's fucked up"). Apparently the phrase is something of a conversational Rorshach test. People project a meaning on it that goes with whatever the nature and flow of the conversation is.

Give it a shot the next time you're feeling a little out-of-place at a social function.

How To Slow Time

I live a charmed life. The only thing that really bums me out is when I think, "Oh, look. Twenty years have passed and it feels like 18 months." So I'm always looking for ways to slow time. Not slow the present moment. It's easy to slow the present moment. Put your dick in a George Foreman Grill and the next 30 seconds will feel like an eternity. I'm actually looking to speed up the present moment, because when the present moment passes quickly it usually means good things are happening. 

It's my experience of life and my view of the time that has passed in aggregate that I want to slow and expand. You can say, Tough shit, time is time. You can't make it seem any slower. But that's not quite true. 

Imagine we were in Estes Park, Colorado looking at the Rocky Mountains in the distance. 

"I can make those mountains bigger," I tell you. You disagree. The mountains are the mountains, you can't change their size. 

So we drive to the base of the mountains. "Look up," I say, "The mountains are now bigger. What was once a jagged line on the horizon now towers thousands of feet above and is thousands of miles in length. You now feel dwarfed by something you previously could have blocked out of view with a playing card. I made them bigger."

You would vary rationally argue that I didn't make the mountains bigger, just your perception of them. And that's true enough, but when we're talking about time, your perception of it is all that matters. 

So how do we make time bigger (longer/slower) and more expansive like we did with the mountains? We need to get closer to it. You can't physically get closer to time, of course, but one of the effects of being closer to something is being able to see it in more detail. So to make the life we've lived seem longer and richer we need to see it in more detail. So to slow time we need to create details -- moments that stand out from the constellation of the everyday.

Details are: taking part in new experiences, meeting new people, trying new activities, learning new things. If you pack your life with these you get a much more detailed view of the time that has passed. It seems closer, richer, and slower. We all understand this when we look at time in a micro sense. That day you spent exploring NYC -- seeing the sites, trying new foods, watching a Broadway show -- likely feels fuller and more rewarding and "larger" in your memory than that day you had off from work where you watched a Law and Order marathon and ate a tray of brownies (although that can be great too if it's not the norm).

This is certainly not a new concept. I'm only offering a new way of looking at it that might resonate with some people and some practical tools to help achieve this at the end of this post.

One of the people who put it best, and most succinctly, was Joshua Foer in his book, Moonwalking with Einstein.

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear. That's why it's so important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

The problem is that for a long time our culture didn't respect a life full of details. And I would say that many, if not most, people are still in that mindset. "He met his wife at age 18 and then spent 45 years working for Xerox," is seen as a success story instead of what it's at least as likely to be: a genuine, fucking nightmare.

I'm not saying you need to get a divorce or quit your job. I'm just saying society doesn't put a ton of value on those things that create a detailed life. It's almost seen as immature if you're an adult and you seek novelty and adventure. So recognize that perception is working against you.

Here are two techniques that I've used to "stretch out psychological time" and "lengthen the perception of my life," as Joshua Foer puts it.

Easy Mode

If you were leading a more vibrant, varied life, what time of day would you most likely be involved in some new activity or endeavor? Let's say you sleep a normal schedule and have a regular day job. If that's the case, then maybe 7:30 at night is when you have the most potential for varied activities. Go into your phone and set an alarm to go off every night at 7:30. Then, every day when the alarm goes off, you make note of what you're doing and you write it in a journal or put it online somewhere. This isn't a diary. I mean, it is, kind of. But it's just a diary of what you're doing at 7:30 every night. 

Eventually you're going to feel pathetic if you have a journal or a twitter feed or a spreadsheet on your computer filled with the exact same boring thing day after day. At some point you'll start planning some interesting things just so you can write something different. You don't want to die and have your grandkids uncover a foot-locker with 18 years worth of journals in it and for every day of those 18 years you've written the same thing, "7:30 - Watched Jeopardy." Is that what you want your legacy to be? Your family arguing for years to come if you were a psychopath or just feeble-minded?

Keeping a record will just be very gentle encouragement that you might want to plan to have something interesting to write for that day. Thus, making memories, adding detail.

Hard Mode

Think about the moments you remember in your life, the big and small ones. Think about the things you remember from the last week, last month, last year, last decade, and beyond. Now try and bundle them into some very loose categories in regards to what those things have in common. 

For me, my memorable events tend to fall into one of these categories:

• Doing something for the first time (whether an achievement of some kind or just trying something new/going somewhere new)
• Meeting someone for the first time
• Taking part in an activity that could only occur on that specific day (a concert, a sporting event)
• Interacting with someone I hadn't seen for a long time
• Doing something related to some celebration or holiday
• Enjoying some seasonal activity in nature (snowboarding, going to the beach)

Now go get yourself one of these journals. This is a "one line a day" journal which, as you might expect, is a journal set up so you write one line per day. Not only that, but it's a five year journal. It doesn't cycle through the year 5 times. Each page is devoted to a date and there are five entry slots on each page. So you write the entries for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 all on the same page for April 11th, or whatever. This is a nice way to see what you were up to on that date over time.

Now, here's what you're going to do. You're going to get this book and every day you are going to do something that falls into one of the categories you've outlined. So, for me, every day I do something for the first time, or I meet someone new, or I take part in some day-specific activity, or I interact with someone that I haven't interacted with for at least 6 months, or I partake in some celebration or holiday activity, or I enjoy some kind of seasonal activity in nature. 

I tag every day of my life with a new memory.

If I asked you in December what your memories of 2015 were, you would tell me three to five things (maybe not even that much) and then you'd say, "Wow, that year flew by." But if you asked me, I would have an archive of 365 memories that would blossom out in front of me. 2015 explodes with memories for me -- each line in the book unfurls in my brain reminding me of more moments of the event or the evening it describes. I am at the base of 2015 and see it in overwhelming detail. It's not off in the distance where it seems small and inappreciable. 

I'm not saying you have to have a year of 365 life-altering memories. Just memories of any sort. My book is filled with a number of big events: moving out of my apartment of 10 years, the start of new relationships, new work projects, starting this blog. But I don't need a book to remember those things. Its value is in tracking the smaller moments that get lost or that simply wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been actively pursuing them: visiting new restaurants, contacting old friends, hearing new albums for the first time, going to see an author speak, taking a class, going on a 10 mile walk during the first snowfall of the winter, surfing in the swells of Hurricane Joaquin on Rockaway Beach, sexual conquests, baseball games, and on and on and on.

Is it hard work? No. It requires effort. And I'm not suggesting anyone do this who doesn't see the value in it. I'm just saying it's something that has had a positive effect for me. You don't need to invest a lot of time or money every day. There are plenty of memories that can be made quickly and easily. If trying to do something novel every day is too much, then just try a couple of times a week. Just don't cheat yourself out of the experience by half-assing it. "I've never had ketchup on broccoli. That's my big new experience for the day." No. It doesn't need to be momentous, but it should be something of note. To keep myself constantly in the habit, I just don't let myself go to bed until I have a memory worth committing to paper.

Again, if this sounds like torture to you, don't do it. It never feels like a chore to me. I just think of it as a hobby of collecting memories.

Slowing Time and The Jerx

This actually does play into my magic philosophy as well. I was looking through a draft of the Jerx Book and noticing this trick takes 20 minutes, this one takes 3 hours, this one happens over night, this one goes on over the course of a week. The reason I like these immersive presentations is that they resonate longer with people and that gives them the chance to be memories that last. The sad thing is, if you perform your three best traditional card or coin tricks for a person, and then ask them to describe them a few days later, they will give you the most vague interpretations you've ever heard. "Some cards changed. And there was the one where you dealt them in four piles. Three piles? No, four piles." Okay. Great. But it doesn't have to be like that. For example, I have a trick in the book that starts at night and then concludes when you wake up in the morning, where the trick (supposedly) takes place in your's and the spectator's dreams. People remember the exact details of this effect for years. Partly because it's a simple effect to get your head around, and partly because they live with it for 8 or 10 hours. They don't just remember they saw a trick, they remember the trick.

(One of the most embarrassing things magicians say is, "Oh, I don't do Out of This World with a full deck. It takes too long. I just use 20 cards." It takes too long? So instead of making the process interesting you're going to make it dull for as short an amount of time as possible? That's your plan? My version of OOTW not only goes through the full deck, I actually add two phases to the trick. And one of the phases --the longest one-- isn't even magic! But it gets people's rapt attention.)

My point being, the idea of audience-centric magic, taking your time, and creating engaging presentations isn't something you're doing for you. It's for the spectator. Because magic (and this is something that dumb congressional resolution fails to mention) may be the one art form that is best suited to creating moments that don't blend in to the days that surround them. 

How To Make A Relationship Last Forever

This idea is not original to me, but I'm not quite sure where I first read it. It's very powerful. Be careful if you plan to use it. Do you really want that cruddy relationship you're currently in to go on forever? There's nothing wrong with letting it just play its course. Not everything is meant to be eternal.

This idea is mainly for people who live together, but you can use a variant on it if you're still in the dating stage as well. Here's how it works: You make an agreement with your partner that whenever one of you is out of the house, the other person has to throw a little celebration when you return home. So instead of what you do now -- no acknowledgment, or a mumbled "hey"-- you have to pause your show, or set aside your laptop and make a fuss over your partner's return. Even if he/she just left 20 minutes ago.

For example:

She returns from the work, I jump off the couch. "Oh my god! YES!!! You're here!" I do a lap around the living room, hi-fiving the dog and the floor lamp. I do the Icky Shuffle. I pick her up and twirl her around and dip her back for a deep kiss. "Look how beautiful you look," I say. Then I start chanting her initials, "S.L.M! S.L.M!" like I'm chanting "USA! USA!" I plop myself back on the couch. "This is the best day ever," I say.

Or I return from the store, she takes off her headphones and turns from the computer. "WHAT??!!!! It's you? It's really you?!" She jumps into my arms and covers my face in little kisses. "Andy's here! Everyone, Andy's here!" she yells to the ficus plants. She walks over to the window, opens it, and calls out to no one in particular, "He's home! He's finally home!"

Does that seem like hard work? No. How many times are you separated and reunited throughout the day? 4 or 5 at most? So you're looking at maybe 3 whole minutes at most of celebrating each other each day. You might think it's not very meaningful if done in jest, but I disagree. The celebration itself may be a bit of a goof, but the reason for doing it isn't. You are making an effort. And not only does a playful, loving interaction set the tone for the rest of your time together that day, you're also saying that you're willing to put energy in to an undertaking whose only stated purpose is to make your partner feel better and to keep your relationship strong. 

Yes, you're acting like a dog would act when its owner comes home (if a dog could verbalize and do the Icky Shuffle). There's a reason for that. You know what you never hear? "I don't know. I've just kind of fallen out of love with my dog."

This isn't something you do for a week to revitalize your feelings for each other or something. It has to be the new ritual for as long as you're together. 

You might say, "My boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife would never go for that." Okay, well dump them then. You think it's noble to continue a relationship with someone who won't even feign joy at seeing you for a couple minutes a day? This is the only life you've got and that's who you're choosing to spend it with?

In fact, your willingness to indulge in and continue this exercise can serve as a bellwether of your feelings. If you're not willing to take 2 minutes out of your day for the sake of your relationship, that should tell you something about your investment in that relationship.

But if you are, then you have this thing that you're doing just for each other. And it's these types of shared private things that strengthen a relationship. You might say that you don't want to be in a relationship that needs these kinds of rituals. But they all do. Relationships are like air-mattresses that have been manufactured with a slow-leak in them. I think by definition they all have the leak in them. But if you are continually pumping more air in, you'll never notice it. And when relationships first start, everyone is always pumping in air: 

I bring you flowers for no reason
<whoosh>

You surprise me with tickets to see a band I like
<whoosh>

I leave a secret love note in your purse.
<whoosh>

You surprise me with my favorite meal
<whoosh>

But then time passes and we stop doing these things. But we don't notice an issue immediately because that air mattress is still pretty full. Then, without warning, one day I wake up and find all that separates me from the hard-wood floor is a thin piece of vinyl. 

Can I pump it back up? Yeah, I guess, but that's a lot of effort for this old air mattress. Maybe I'll just get a new one. Or, more likely, I'll continue to miserably sleep on the floor for the next 40 years.

Relationships are hard work, people will say. But really it's just a matter of a little bit of effort done consistently. A couple of puffs of air a day and you never notice the mattress deflate. We all know that one old couple who seems to have this tremendous relationship. "They're 85 and he still makes her breakfast everyday. And she still rubs his feet every night before bed." Yes. Ok. But they don't do these things because they have a great relationship; they have a great relationship because they do these things.

The mandatory welcome-home celebration is just an easy and fun way to pump in a little air on a regular basis.