Gravity Trouble - Cartoon Thursday - An Engineer's Aspect

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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Gravity Trouble - Cartoon Thursday

Cleaning the top of the refrigerator is a dangerous task. For that matter, I can make any cleaning chore hazardous. I used to chalk it up to mere klutziness, but after thorough analysis, I believe that term is too general. My klutziness can be broken down into three distinct components:

1. Laziness - I don't really like to clean and organize. If I can combine steps to reduce the amount of time I have to spend cleaning and/or organizing, I will do it! For instance, when I clean the top of the refrigerator, my prime directive is to to minimize how many times I have to climb up and down the stepladder (or chair or handy stack of books). I will carry and balance as many things as humanly possible to reduce my number of trips.

2. Boredom - I also get bored. Bored, bored, bored. As soon as I begin cleaning or organizing, the boredom strikes. Pushing a vacuum back and forth, back and forth, back and forth… Carrying groceries into the house--out to the car, into the kitchen, out to the car, into the kitchen… And, of course, climbing up and down, up and down, up and down… It's almost hypnotic, which brings me to my third component…

3. The Thought Funnel - As soon as the boredom firmly takes hold, my mind wanders. It wanders in a rambling pattern, picking up thoughts, putting them down, playing with ideas, until it finds "The One Idea."  Once The One Idea is stumbled upon, my mind starts digging until I've carved out a "Thought Funnel." More often than not, I step over the edge and spiral deeper and deeper in the Thought Funnel until my mind is focused like a laser on The One Idea. At this point, I am just a mindless robot balancing bowls, plates, cups, knives or whatever I am juggling because of my laziness.

Hypnotized by boredom, at the bottom of the Thought Funnel, disaster strikes! All it takes is one robotic step off a chair, into a wall, onto a rogue skateboard, whatever.  That's when I blame it all on gravity.

So today, as I sat here with the lump on my head and my myriad of bruises, I made a cartoon about it.