Column: A Note On The Meaning Of Life

So, in a fit of perhaps virtually limitless nostalgia, I enlisted the support of an elder friend to help me put together some essential facts to enlighten my readers, so they wouldn't do silly things, like major in Marketing. We were sharing an inordinate amount of an impudent Bordeaux to lubricate our efforts. I wrote the kernels of wisdom we derived on a series of cocktail napkins stained with a very lovely purple. Here are the fruits of our labors: "Avoid explosives." This was perhaps an inauspicious beginning, but a helpful piece of advice, nonetheless. We then had a streak of some rather prosaic conclusions. "If the daily routine of your job does not fascinate you, the general theory of your profession is irrelevant." "The allocation of finite resources is the root of all evil." "Modern civilization began with the invention of insurance." "Macintoshes are unquestionably better than IBM PCs." "Smart people learn from other people's mistakes without having to repeat them." "Most things are governed by unarticulated rules, no matter what the job description says, and if you have to ask, you're screwed." "If it makes you feel weird, it's probably bad for you." "If it makes you feel good, it's probably bad for you." "If you want to understand someone's argument, replace your name for theirs and vice versa." "People who write to Dear Abby talking about their friends are usually taking about themselves." "Lying pays off in the short term, but destroys you in the long term." We then moved into some more esoteric observations. "The alliteration between lawyering and lying is no accident." "Money can buy happiness, but happiness is fleeting, by definition." "The trip there is always longer than the trip back." "Much of life's beauty lies in its ambiguity." "The shortest distance between two points is an ad hominem attack." "All altruism is in the end motivated by selfishness." "A mile a minute is faster than sixty miles an hour." "Art is life's indispensable frivolity." "If there is a God, he's a statistician." As our tongues grew thicker, we inevitably moved on to the subject of human relations. "Nothing makes you feel better or act like more of a fool than the genetic imperative." "The strongest qualitative confirmation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is the interaction between men and women." "The couple that always gets along is in terrible trouble." And, of course, as the cortex grew utterly stunned, we turned to the existential dilemma. "If death is no big deal, why is it called 'life insurance'?" "Nothing improves your reputation like death." "The only thing worse than dying is thinking about dying." "Death is God's way of saying 'heads I win, tails you lose'." We concluded with this ominous observation: "We are prisoners of space destroyed by time." · Well, after my body cleared out some rather unpleasant metabolites, I looked over these scrawled gems and decided, nahh, no way! These are things you have to learn from experience, so no one is going to listen to me about this stuff, most especially those guys on Locust Walk who wear their caps backwards and bark out "Dude!" in every sentence. Then, I realized that there was one essential piece of information that I could pass on that would really make a difference. You see, when you try to play the rhythm parts that Keith Richards does for the Rolling Stones on a guitar with a standard tuning, it never sounds right. Well, kids, here's the news: It doesn't sound right, because it isn't right. This is the secret -- Keith uses an "open G" tuning. The standard tuning, from low to high, is E-A-D-G-B-E. Tune the first, second, and sixth strings down one step and you have D-G-D-G-B-D. This is the key to nirvana. Let's use the fret numbers instead of notes from the low to the high strings (because I cannot write music). Take the song Start Me Up from Tattoo You. The opening figure goes like this (barre across the fifth fret with your index finger): 5-5-5-5-5-5; 5-5-7-5-6-5 (etc.) Yup, that's it!!! You toy around with this simple two-chord arrangement and you have it all. For example, a variation on these two chords is also the introduction to Sad, Sad, Sad from Steel Wheels: 5-5-7-5-6-5; 5-5-5-5-5-5 (etc.) What could be easier? If you master this, you are in for untold hours of fun and excitement. Now for the adventurous, here's the real introduction to Brown Sugar (you'll have to provide the timing). 12-12-14-12-13-12; 12-12-12-12-12-12; 5-5-5-5-5-5; (twice) 5-5-7-5-6-5; 5-5-5-5-5-5 (four times). 8-8-8-8-8-8; (twice) 8-8-8-10-8-8; (twice) 8-8-8-8-8-8. 5-5-5-5-5-5; (twice) 5-5-7-5-6-5; (twice) 5-5-5-5-5-5. 1-1-1-1-1-1; 1-1-3-1-4-1; 1-1-1-1-1-1; 3-3-5-3-4-3; 3-3-3-3-3-3. 5-5-7-5-6-5; (three times) 5-5-5-5-5-5. Have fun. But remember, Keith would also agree that we are prisoners of space destroyed by time . . . John Cooke is really weird. He also happens to be a former lawyer from Washington, D.C., but he is currently a post-baccalaureate student studying a pre-medical curriculum. No Mayonnaise In Ireland appears alternate Fridays.

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