This is all Graham’s fault.

He mentioned the other day that he was working on a Rubik’s Cube. I would claim to “remember” them in a reminiscing kind of way, but I wouldn’t be able to get away with it, seeing as how it came out before I was born. I never really played with one before. Interestingly enough, they’re coming back in popularity, probably for that very reason. Nobody my age has played with them.

So on my way home from work yesterday, I went out and bought one. Ten bucks. Cheap entertainment. It was a good thing I bought it on a non-posting day, otherwise nothing would have gotten posted. I scrambled the cube and preceded to solve it. It took like four hours. I also cheated in the sense that I looked at the nearly worthless little pamphlet that comes with the thing, as if it’s at all helpful.

The sort of help I needed evidently does not exist. I checked out a bunch of sites today, and without exception, the fifteen or so that I perused are simply lists of instructions. “Do this” they say with authority, followed by non-standardized Rubik’s Cube solving notation, detailing a 9 step series to flip a misaligned face.

This is not how I work. I want general instructions. Like “to get this piece over here and keep everything else the same, you have to do this”. Disregard colors. Tell me the general rules. I’m sure there’s a site like that out there, I just haven’t found it—because I’m glued to the dang cube!

I’ve solved it twice now, so you’d think I’d be happy. But no. I keep practicing it. I have this irrational goal in my head of being able to solve it in one minute. I don’t want to be a speed cuber, necessarily, but I think it would be worthlessly impressive to be able to solve one quickly. No point. Just ego boosting, I suppose. But regardless, I have to keep messing with the thing so I get better.

I took it to work today, tucked in my left coat pocket. I only played with it for a few minutes because I couldn’t think of any good excuses if I got caught. (”Uh, yeah, this is…uh. WHAT’S THAT?” Runs away) But when I’m home, I’ve got it next to my computer. So I sit down intending to do something productive, such as type this entry. Then I look at the scrambled cube. Then I start visualizing moves in my head as it’s on the desk. I turn back, attempting to ignore it. Three seconds later, I have it in my hands, spinning rows, twisting columns. The next time I look up, an hour has disappeared.

The obession will pass. This happens to me often enough: I get irrationally interested in the dumbest little things which completely occupy my time for a few days, then having absorbed all I can in that short period of time, I fail to ever return to the topic it again. On the other hand, I still stumble around on the piano almost every day.

This is completely changing the subject, but there was another thing that was bothering me to no end today. It was made worse by the fact that my mind was trying to be occupied by Rubik’s Cube, but was continually interrupted by this other phenomenon. This struggle with my brain trying to make up its mind, made me—the part of me that pretends that it’s seperate from the brain—really annoyed.

I’m talking, of course, about the earworm phenomenon. That’s what the Germans call it; we just call it by the bland term “getting a song stuck in your head.” While this is bad enough, I’ve discovered an even more insidious variation to this common mental disorder. I’ve realized that it’s possible to get songs stuck in your head to which you don’t know the words.

This happened when I wandered by a radio playing that so-called “soft rock”. This is music that was “pop” sometime last year, but has a half-life of four months. Having nowhere else to stick it, the “popular” music goes on the most generic sounding radio stations possible. The ones that are only played where generic-ness is key: retail environments, for example. Chart toppers have been reduced to subconsciously making people walk slower through the store so they buy more.

Anyway, what this means is that I hear a song, the melody of which I’m intimately familiar. But having never actually listened to the song with any bit of concentration, I have no idea what the words are. Oh, sure I might know the chorus or some key phrase here or there. Despite this, the song still gets stuck in my head. Half the time I can’t even look up the song and get it un-stuck by listening to it because I don’t even know the title! In this particular instance, I did, if only because the title is prominently featured in the song itself.

At the risk of cursing you all to the same earworm I endured today, I will tell you the song. It was Breathe by Faith Hill. I don’t know the words, so in my head it’s an indistinct voice going “da na nana da da nana da da na na da dana naaaBreathe. Just breathe.” Now imagine the line “Breathe, just breathe” repeating over and over in your head for hours at a time. Now imagine that while simultaneously visualizing Rubik’s Cube moves.

Now try to write a blog entry. That’s right: doesn’t happen.

-Ted