Hobbies for the Bored Soul
by Jim Steinberg
(Illinois, USA)
Life is a journey. If you’re reading this article, then you happen to be taking a little detour and coming on a Jim Steinberg adventure. Fasten your seatbelts, turn off your cell phones and welcome aboard.
We all start hobbies for many different reasons. Maybe we’re looking for meaning in our lives, maybe we want to do something fun to pass the time, maybe (let’s face it) we just want to impress the ladies. This is not a “how-to” article. I simply have many, many interests, and a month is fairly good amount of time to at least get a general idea of whether a hobby is worth the effort. Every month, I’ll try out a new hobby that’s either so obscure, you’ve never heard of it, (Extreme Squirrel Tag) or common enough that you’ve heard of it, but you’re not sure if it is worth it.
Hobbies take up a lot of time and there’s a certain skill level involved before the hobby becomes enjoyable, or impressive (once again to the ladies). So I, your gallant adventurer, am here, ready to embark on different hobbies and tell you whether they are meaningful, time killers, or worthy of being used to impress girls. Unfortunately, some hobbies make you want to kill impressive girls, but please don’t. That would be mean.
I have an extremely addictive personality. That’s why I can never try drinking, smoking, or anything else cool. My Sensei, Master Park always said, “Turn your weakness into your strength.” Except in a cool Korean accent right before describing a fight he had been in. True story. So instead of avoiding anything remotely addicting in life, I’ll take up different hobbies and become addicted to them. In this way, I can try out everything you’ll ever want to. I have the money, I have the time, and I have the time. (It’s 9:30!)
Ooh, a Rubik’s Cube. It seems like a fairly popular hobby, but less people know how to solve this than you think. Before starting this hobby, I scouted the town looking for people who had one, noted what they looked like, and came to one conclusion.
THE RUBIK’S CUBE IS NERDY.
That’s the blunt statement. The only people I saw carrying around these were a few males. Even if more than one boy had a cube in the same general area, they never seemed to interact with each other. An educated guess would say this is a hobby for non-social people, but I have a much more interesting theory. It’s especially interesting because I made it up right now. The Rubik’s Cubes odd color combinations reveal a secret pattern that repels the female species. Every person I found with a Rubik’s Cube was more than ten feet away from a girl in every direction. Once inside this ten foot “buffer” zone, a girl will experience extreme discomfort, maybe leading to a panic attack. If you don’t believe me, try pushing a random girl towards a person solving a cube. You don’t even have to know her. She’ll try resisting by shouting things to get you to stop.
I drew a graph of the learning curve of a Rubik’s Cube to give you an idea of how much effort it takes. To start off with a simple method of solving, you only have to memorize about seven series of combinations. Even that can be a lot though. Then you can solve one in about five minutes with practice, it’s just those same combinations every time. Now some people aren’t satisfied with five minute solving. They take it to the next level. Why only about seventy different series of combinations and suddenly you can solve a cube in less than a minute. That’s how the “pros” do it. Wait a sec, pros? You can be a pro at a hobby that amounts to nothing other than your own satisfaction at solving a puzzle? It’s not even really solving, you’re just using the series of steps you memorized.
Frankly, it’s just like flying a kite. I advise that you should fly a kite instead, actually; the fresh air will do you good after staring at a computer screen for hours a day trying to decrease your solve time.
This is the Learning Curve of a Rubik’s Cube. You can probably solve your first cube in three days or less depending on how interested you are. I still had some questions about this hobby though.
Why is this seen as a hobby only enjoyed by intellectuals? Is there anything intelligent in memorizing a few things that you found on the internet? I could google and memorize the entire cast of Desperate Housewives, but it doesn’t mean I’m any smarter. Although that would probably spark more conversations with girls than a method to speedier cube solving.
The Rubik’s Cube. Virtually no cool factor. In fact, if you try to impress people with this skill, the most you may get is an, “ah, okay.” Coupled with a mocking smile as the person watching you pities how you wasted your time learning this meaningless skill. I feel regretful; I want the time I spent learning it back. In addition to that, if you decide to stop solving one, (which you will, once you realize there’s nothing more to it besides using the same combinations over and over) you may forget everything you knew just as quickly as you learned it. I took a week off and now I can’t do more than eighty percent of the cube. You know what though? I’m proud to say I can no longer finish a cube. The matching colors at end when you solve is just a colorful trophy that says, “Congrats! Planning on starting something that’s, oh I don’t know-productive-anytime soon ?” But if you want to learn, go ahead. Anybody who wants to can solve a Rubik’s Cube…unless they’re colorblind.
Sorry, but I know you’ll enjoy squirrel tag.
*Extreme Squirrel Tag? Tune in next time, when I try it out! Can you tag a quirrel despite its ability to run faster than you, climb up trees, and give you rabies? I can’t wait to figure out!
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September 14 2008 07:41 pm | Uncategorized
September 15th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Pretty funny, actually. Yeah, rubik’s cubes are bitches, but I don’t think the point of learning how to solve a rubik’s cube is to, well, solve a cube. Namely, the point of learning all those combinations isn’t to waste your time to make yourself look intelligent; by learning them and then consequently applying them correctly, you’re increasing your mind’s ability to problem solve and working out it’s reasoning and logic capabilities, which are quite useful in almost every other situation in life.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:18 am
We’re going to have to go squirrel tagging sometime Jimmy.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Hah. You just melted off some faces with that burn! Until this article came about, I too lived under the false assumption that rubrics-cube solvers are intellectual. Thank you for this intervention. As for the squirrel tag… Was it based off that old commercial? I think that Squirrel tag is a great hobby… You need wit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ536tNZleg