Author Archives: Michael Chasin

Gravity Hill

Nationality: American
Age: Nineteen
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

Informant describes an optical illusion creating the appearance of a hill on which the rules of gravity don’t appear to apply in the conventional sense. Cars left in neutral roll up instead of down, water trickles up, etc. The kids in the neighborhood would say that a group of children getting killed or something of that nature is what gave the hill its unnatural properties, though the informant doesn’t buy into those explanations, instead calling it an illusion but not elaborating on how exactly it’s caused.

Informant speaks of multiple “gravity hills” in various locations around the world, likely wherever the conditions for the illusion arise. I’ve heard of these as well (possibly on an episode of Mythbusters or the like) and don’t find it strange at all that such an illusion would cause quite a stir in those prone to belief in supernatural phenomena.

Water Wars

Nationality: American/Puerto Rican
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

A game played by the students at my informant’s high school. The rules are as follows:

$5.00 cost to enter the game, which is organized on Facebook. Everyone splits up into teams of two and attempts to spray the others with water guns. The game is played out over several weeks, with players trying to assassinate each other in the hopes of winning the pot made up of all the entrance fee money.

Players’ homes, cars, and the school parking lot are considered safe zones. Everything operates on the honor code, with players honestly communicating whether they’re “assassinated.”

Players have a tendency to get highly invested in the game’s outcome, leading to inventive and extreme scenarios. For example:

–A boy dressing up in a girl’s outfit to provide a decoy.

–Jumping off a roof to escape a 9:00 AM siege and get to school on time.

–Using a dry ice bomb to lure a player out of his home with an explosion in his front yard (leading to police involvement and a year’s ban on the game).

Not much lurking beneath the surface here, as the reasons for the game’s existence seem to be for fun and profit. Assassin games like this certainly aren’t uncommon, but this might be the most organized example I’ve heard of, and certainly the only one played for actual cash. Impressive, really.

Los Ociosos Trabajan Doble

Nationality: American/Puerto Rican
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

This is a Spanish proverb my informant’s Puerto Rican mother would say to him. Translated it means “the lazy work twice as hard” meaning that lazy people, to avoid having to exert themselves, will end up putting more effort into finding a shortcut than it would have taken to just do the work in the first place.

The example my informant gave was that he would be in bed and want to turn off the light. Instead of getting up and taking a few seconds to walk across the room, he would throw his shoes and whatever else was at hand at the light switch in an effort to flip it. Before long, it became apparent that the far simpler solution would have been to gather the resolve to momentarily get out of bed. Situations like this would prompt my informant’s mother to recite the proverb.

A clever and simply stated way to chide lazy people that actually offers a practical reason to stop procrastinating and do a task (for the purpose of exerting less effort in the long run). Normally I’d expect a moral impetus behind a proverb like this, but that doesn’t seem to be the thought process.

The Priest and the Cat

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

Transcribed from interview with my informant:

“There’s this priest. He goes outside one day, he sees that there’s a cat in a tree. Of course being a priest and a good man he wants to get the cat down from the tree, but for some reason he decides he’s going to go down the most cartoon-y route possible.”

“His neighbor has a pick-up truck, so what he does is he borrows his neighbor’s pick-up truck and then ties a rope to one end–the first end of the rope he ties to the tree, the second end to the back of the truck. Now he thinks he’s going to be able to bend the tree down just far enough that he’ll be able to reach up to the branch, get the cat, and put it safely on the ground.”

“However, the rope snaps midway through- the rope snaps midway through, the tree shoots back upwards and the cat goes flying into the sky. The priest searches all over for the cat, never finds it. Then about two weeks later he’s at the grocery store. He sees this woman who is buying cat food and he knows this woman hates cats, so he asks her ‘Why are you buying cat food?'”

“She says ‘Well you’re not going to believe this but the other day I was talking to my little girl. She said she wanted a cat very badly. I said to her you can have a cat when God gives you one. So she went outside, went on the ground, and started praying. Then out of nowhere a cat flew out of the sky and landed in front of her.'”

My informant heard this story from his Catholic priest in Nantucket, who would apparently end every sermon with some sort of a joke. He couldn’t remember the particular sermon this story was attached to, but suspected there was some thematic connection between the above narrative and the sermon.

This particular joke is interesting in that at its root, it concerns the actions of a priest being mistaken for divine intervention, perhaps speaking to some concerns of the Catholic faith. Notably, the priest was unaware of the consequences of what he did, so the point might be that providence governs our actions whether we realize it or not.

Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

“You fall down seven times, but you get up eight,” as related by my informant, is a Japanese proverb meant to inspire perseverance, especially in the face of repeated failures.

In Japanese the expression is “Nana korobi ya oki.” This translates literally to mean “seven falls, eight getting up.” The characters are: 七転び八起き.

My informant is learning the Japanese language, so the fact that this expression came to mind for him before all others might indicate the prevalence of this expression in Japanese culture, emphasizing the societal importance of never giving up regardless of how hard it might be to carry on.