tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79459715943932228822023-11-16T02:43:15.362-05:00Our Bewildering UniverseOfficial blog of Derek Leif, perhaps the only ukulele-playing black belt-wearing novel-writing librarians in the world (hey...visit his website at www.derekleif.com, why don't you...)Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-89023627214014205512013-12-22T14:40:00.001-05:002017-08-27T11:40:52.262-04:00A New Home (fiveminuteawesome.com)<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.derekleif.org/" target="_blank">Yes, folks, I actually set up a site that I use frequently, and my blog will be there. Click here to get to it.</a></span>Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-70613833979877594042013-04-21T23:43:00.000-04:002013-04-22T09:14:27.005-04:00An Open Letter to Amanda Palmer About Asking, Receiving, and Giving<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkZ6A9_q3CSHlOmY9fEBwbJfLY_hlKvr04Fh3G91wMpQJaosixmZr2qHC1-oIFD7h8I6yxKpQI6jy4xw-T7lHFcRmtUPV24Q1uqay2ZQwLhMfec8plB500T59pNQwK0my6DA6EYgZkYV9l/s1600/0227_amanda-palmer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkZ6A9_q3CSHlOmY9fEBwbJfLY_hlKvr04Fh3G91wMpQJaosixmZr2qHC1-oIFD7h8I6yxKpQI6jy4xw-T7lHFcRmtUPV24Q1uqay2ZQwLhMfec8plB500T59pNQwK0my6DA6EYgZkYV9l/s400/0227_amanda-palmer.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dear Ms. Palmer,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I admit that I’m one of those people who knows far more about the controversy you’ve stirred up than the actual
work you’ve produced. I’m really sorry, and I’m trying to fix that by listening
to your stuff (which I'm really enjoying, by the way, although please forgive me if I don't listen to "Do it With a Rockstar" at the middle school library that I run, let alone watch the video while I'm working there; cool video though, and props to Wayne Coyne). </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve read a lot about you, and I couldn’t
help but notice that much of it was heated, angry, and just plain mean. It had little constructive value, and, because I found myself
thinking about it (and because I like to think and write), I wanted to offer my
thoughts. I hope they are more intelligent and tactful that some of the other essays I've read.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course I’m perhaps thinking way too much of myself to believe that anyone outside of my loyal fan base of about 25 people is going to read my thoughts (let alone you), but
still, a man can dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To offer my thoughts, I need to do two things first, so be
patient with me:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The first thing is give people who don’t know
about you a brief background. This will help them understand who you are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The second thing is to offer an opinion that I
have about the way giving and receiving (which goes hand in hand with asking)
works. This will “set the table” for my
thoughts on this whole controversy thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">First, a bit about you, for the uninitiated (you and your
fans can skip the next eight italicized paragraphs, of course):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Amanda Palmer is a musician/performance artist best known
for being one half of a group called The Dresden Dolls. The pair were a kind of
cabaret act, half music, half theater. After they broke up, Palmer pursued a
number of solo projects, and also began a relationship with fantasy writer Neil
Gaiman that blossomed into a marriage.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Lately, in addition to her fame as a musician and performer,
Palmer has become just as famous—if not more so—for having an almost mystical
mastery of social media, making use of it to publicize her work, build her
fanbase, and sell her material. Recently a TED presentation by Palmer, “The Art
of Asking,” became a viral video sensation. In the presentation, which you can
watch below, she talks not only about how she developed a rabid following, but
also how she made use of social media to ask for, and get, lodging,
possessions, and services (for example, she mentions, at the 4:23 mark of her TED
talk, soliciting for a neti pot in Melbourne, and having a nurse drive to the
cafe she was in to deliver it personally).</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xMj_P_6H69g" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Finally, she discussed how she launched one of the most
successful Kickstarter campaigns in history. She turned to her fans to fund her
newest music release, and they responded in droves (and it’s not like they were
doing it to get the music, as Palmer gives away all of her music for nothing).
Palmer sought to raise $100,000 in this enterprise, and she ended up raising
$1,192,793. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>And this is where Palmer became embroiled in controversy. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Throughout her career, Palmer would invite people to come on
stage and play with her. People would take her up on it, and in exchange,
they’d get some food, some drinks, and some merchendise.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>They did not, however, receive money.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>This raised the ire of people, particularly after Palmer
raised so much more money than she expected in the Kickstarter campaign. People wrote scathing pieces, each with a blunt message: Amanda, you should have paid these people.
Compounding this was the fact that Harlan Ellison—a good friend of her
husband’s— has some strong words for anyone who provides services for no money:<o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mj5IV23g-fE" width="560"></iframe>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Many argued with this, saying that those who played with
Palmer were perfectly fine with getting what they got, because they also
received the chance to play with Amanda Palmer, which was clearly priceless to
them. In the same vein, those who put her up when she tweeted that she needed a
place to stay got to enjoy the company of an extremely interesting person for a
few hours, one who they greatly admired (which again, was of high value to
them). And as for that nurse who gave her the neti pot: Palmer sat with her,
and the two of them had a wonderful conversation, which that nurse will no
doubt remember forever .</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay. Now that everyone has the 411 on you, let me get the
following paragraphs out of the way (they are in yellow). These are some thoughts
of mine that are important for an understanding of my thoughts on the
controversy concerning you. These are paragraphs I ask you (and your fans) to
read, and, once again, bear with me; it really is important, so here goes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">One:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">Everything has three values: the material, the practical,
and the spiritual (or aesthetic, for those who don’t believe in spirits).
Here’s what I mean. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">—My wedding ring cost about 1100 dollars (material), <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">—is about a quarter ounce of gold (which has a variety of
practical uses), and…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">—is my wedding ring (which gives it immeasurable
spiritual/aesthetic value to me). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">Two:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"><i>Everything</i> is a transaction; “free” just means that money,
or tangible barter items didn’t exchange hands. If I give money to someone on
the street, I’m getting something in return for this: the satisfaction of having
helped someone less fortunate than myself. If I give my uncompensated labor to
a friend by helping them move, I’m getting the satisfaction of helping a friend
(and may get his or her labor in return, someday). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">(This by the way, is why, despite what Harlan Ellison says,
I’m okay with making no money for writing this. For me, the value of simply
having a number of people reading my writing—because, remember, unlike you, I’m
nobody—is huge. For someone like Harlan Ellison—who’s a professional writer and
a celebrated one, and whose services as a writer are far more valuable—it
follows that he’d never write for no money, because the spiritual value of
simply being read simply isn’t worth anywhere near as much to him as it is to
me.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: yellow;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(In other words, my writing, </span>moneywise,<span style="font-family: inherit;"> just isn’t worth what his
writing is. That will change in the future. Sorry if that comes off as arrogant, but the only way to succeed at something is to fake it till you make it.)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So. Okay. We have a system of exchange here:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">People give you:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Time and labor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Possessions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Lodgings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Food<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Great memories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Great stories (which often include anecdotes about how your
music has changed their lives, which also means that you get...)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--The satisfaction of having affected people with your work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">…and in exchange, they get:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Great conversation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Great stories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Great memories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--The satisfaction of having given to someone they greatly admire<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And this is a big, big deal, and as someone who works with
adolescents, I can’t begin to tell you how respect I have for you if you give
even <i>one</i> young adult a sense of self worth. And I know, of course, that there
are legions of young adults who you have inspired to harness their own
creativity. For those people, the chance to meet you and play with you is a
commodity whose spiritual value is, in my opinion (and I mean this) infinite.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nowhere was the value of the intangible but vital things
that you give to people more apparent than in an anecdote you told at the five
minute mark of your presentation. You discussed how a poor family of
undocumented immigrants from Honduras put you up in their apartment and
insisted that you and your band use the beds while they used the couches. You
then discussed how you asked yourself: was this fair?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The next day, you told us, the mother of this family kept
wanting to give you things, telling you that nothing they could do would equal
what your music had given their daughter. Clearly, for her, your presence in
their home—and the experiences and memories that came with it—were of an almost
infinite value. Because of that you said to yourself: yes, this is fair,
because, as you said in the TED talk, you clearly gave them a great deal (some
time with you) in exchange for what they gave you (food and lodging, and a
great story to tell at TED). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So now that we’ve gotten to this point: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I know that to those who read Forbes, the response, of
course is: hey, she has this commodity—herself—and she knows how to market it.
Good for her. If someone is willing to give her all of that for her presence,
more power to her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I get this. If I had dinner with your husband and you and
footed the bill, I’d still feel like it was a good deal, because I would get
some great conversation with two people I admire (I love your husband's writing, by the way). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But if you were asking yourself, in that bed, if it was
fair, I think it’s fair to ask this: if you got far more for something than you
planned to get, what would you do with all that extra stuff you got?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Because maybe there have been times where you <i>did</i> get more than
you gave, or, at least, more than you expected to get. And if that has happened, it will happen again. When it does, you have a couple of choices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of them is to justify it to yourself. “Hey,” you can say
“someone gave me this freely, so I should have no compunctions about accepting
it.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The other is to look beyond a gesture that you made when you
were discussing your stay with the family from Honduras. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s about this,” you said, moving your hand back and forth
so as to say “I gave them this, they gave me that.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I think it’s more than that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You’ve created a community that has a chance to move beyond
back and forth. It can be a web of giving and receiving, in which you are not
merely the recipient of giving but, also, a conduit for it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Just follow me on this, please:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You made almost one million one hundred thousand dollars more than you planned to
on your Kickstarter campaign. And yes, you can keep it all. It’s yours. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And I honestly don’t think you have to pay those musicians
if they agree to work for no money. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But consider this: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you got more than you expected, what if you took a large
chunk of it, and practiced giving on a scale that none of us could ever
accomplish ourselves? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">An immigration lawyer costs about 1000 dollars for services
that include being present at the citizenship interview, and the application
fee for citizenship is 675 dollars. Can you imagine helping that family from Honduras become
U.S. citizens, and then being able to tell your fans, at one of your concerts,
that their contributions allowed you to do this? You would be giving your fans--your community--something so valuable that they would remember it always: the satisfaction of
having helped some members of the Amanda Palmer community (which often feels like a family) become U.S. citizens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And, of course, we can’t even measure the value of the U.S. citizenship you
would be giving to that family. What, I wonder, would they give to the world
after you were our conduit for giving that to them? It’s a dazzling thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And what if there were some young women who would never have been
able to go to the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls who were now able to go because
you took some of that money and set up some scholarships? Can you imagine how
your fans would react if you told them that their generosity allowed that to
happen?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">No, I’m not saying that you have to do this with every
dollar above that $100,000 that you were hoping to raise. Keep a whole lot of
it. All I’m saying is that you’re in a position to give all of us so much more
for some of that extra money. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You’ve been fortunate enough to experience the powerful feeling touching many lives for the better, and you have the chance to help a
lot of other people get that same experience, that same feeling.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Look, you got what you got, and you get what you get. And I
don’t deny that you give. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">All that I’m saying is that you could give all of us more of
a chance to feel like we’re giving as well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s all I’m asking.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yours Truly,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Derek Leif</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Black Belt Librarian</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-89675403049716791872013-04-14T18:42:00.003-04:002013-04-15T21:24:25.701-04:00Inspiration is a Cat<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTd_c9xb-Zap_7o83JX8d66X3zG1fLnTh6izs5si5brHpceBqrOf0NJ-8Izvyv2MFci5Ct4dAWUiV1E-qbLzW8xCHZOfMOE2FYy9OO7ZDbVG_9wChTDmUXvn5ICtxYy35Vsn2C3KQhDFYn/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTd_c9xb-Zap_7o83JX8d66X3zG1fLnTh6izs5si5brHpceBqrOf0NJ-8Izvyv2MFci5Ct4dAWUiV1E-qbLzW8xCHZOfMOE2FYy9OO7ZDbVG_9wChTDmUXvn5ICtxYy35Vsn2C3KQhDFYn/s400/images.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you want to understand
how inspiration works, you need to get yourself a cat. Not a dog. A cat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Inspiration isn’t a dog. It isn’t something that’s
going to come to you when you call it. It will not greet you when you come home. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It will come to you when it’s
damn good and ready.<br />
<br />
Inspiration, like a cat, is not something that you own. It
is something that owns you, and you must feed it and and tend it and expect nothing from it whatsoever. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It will often demand your attention when you
are in the middle of something else. It will also demand your
attention—loudly—at the most inopportune and inconvenient hours. It will get
indignant if you don’t heed this call for attention, and it will not leave you alone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Occasionally it will bring things to you that are revolting.
You will wonder where, in the name of all that is good and decent in the world,
it found this awful thing that is now at your front door. You will realize that
the best thing that you can do is just say thank you, and then go back to feeding it and caring for it in the hopes that it will bring you something nicer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There will be times that it just won’t come to you. You
will have no idea why it has chosen to take this leave of absence. Nonetheless, you must keep on attending to its health.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So that means, for me, writing all of these words, which is
the equivalent of all those times I’ve opened cans of cat food, and all those
times, just before I’ve left the house, that my cat has suddenly decided that
now, not a few minutes ago, is the time that I must give it my full and
undivided attention. Yes, I know that I could just leave the house, but, I
mean, you should hear this plaintive meow; it tears your heart out. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do all this because every once in a while, there will actually be moments where everything works out. It’s a
glorious thing.<br />
<br />
Sometimes it evolves from an inventory of the items
that are on my desk at this particular moment (a desk lamp, my keys, my
sunglasses, my checkbook, my Moleskine pad, my wallet, a Sharpie pen, four dollars, a Blue Snowball microphone and a diagram of a Choose Your
Own Adventure book).<br />
<br />
Sometimes it evolves from a cluster of words that emerge from a session of
freewriting (I'm still trying to figure out where to use the words "Gypsy Mischief" that somehow spilled on the page between a bunch of other disjointed words). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or it may come from considering something from a different point of
view.<br />
<br />
I've spoken into a microphone many, many times. Have I ever considered this from the microphone's point of view?<br />
<br />
What would it be like if a
microphone could talk, after all the time it spent listening to all the things
that people had said to it?<br />
<br />
If you had a conversation with a
microphone it would be a patient listener, the sort of listener that would pause
for a long moment and say “well, what do<i> you </i>think about that?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If a microphone were your friend, you'd be able to talk to it at any hour of the day when you were feeling down, and it would listen to
you. Occasionally, it might say something like “yeah, that’s really rough,” but
for the most part it would just sit there patiently, letting you talk as long
as you needed to, never growing tired of you. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If your friend the microphone were on the other end of a telephone conversation, it wouldn’t pretend to listen to you while checking its email. It would really listen to
you, and if you ever needed to recall something that you said to it your
friend the microphone, it would be able to remember it exactly. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Of course this could be a problem if you had a falling out with your friend the microphone. Your friend the microphone would be able to share everything with everybody. Your microphone would be able to write a tell all book complete with direct quotes of the most private things you said to it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Headphones, meanwhile, wouldn't listen very much, but they'd be great conversationalists. They'd be lively and exciting, if a bit self-centered.<br />
<br />
Headphones would be the one friend of yours that your other friend, the microphone, couldn’t listen to. Your friend the microphone would say to you “I…I
can't listen to this person. I just can’t. I'll just start screeching if I have to listen to that person.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s just the way it works. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
So get a cat. Feed it. Care for it. And be ready for it when it decides to give you some attention.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-85658346870288230612013-04-10T13:07:00.001-04:002013-04-10T17:55:29.551-04:00On Being a Shotokan Karate Tournament Red Shirt<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi933LkF8Cj7V-2oqNDAha9NALnebxPuaiaLtza-P-R4vEYJ6jzNTKxuNWuCO1H_XXAKxOBUv_D_NSqrXmtDl7lNsOx_GAp-uIBZqsWl_eYSlZ1U4qOfBFP-pDr-XNPtsM7FjGT720zEDJx/s1600/Red-Shirt-star-trek-17957470-480-480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi933LkF8Cj7V-2oqNDAha9NALnebxPuaiaLtza-P-R4vEYJ6jzNTKxuNWuCO1H_XXAKxOBUv_D_NSqrXmtDl7lNsOx_GAp-uIBZqsWl_eYSlZ1U4qOfBFP-pDr-XNPtsM7FjGT720zEDJx/s400/Red-Shirt-star-trek-17957470-480-480.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
For those of you who never watched the original <i>Star Trek</i>—or
just weren’t die hard fans—there is an expression from the show called “the red
shirt.” It refers to the fact that in the beginning of virtually every episode,
the major characters—usually Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and McCoy, although Sulu and
Chekov came along from time to time—would beam down to a planet, and usually take a rank and file crewman along with them. This crewman inevitably wore a
red shirt, and this crewman inevitably died in the first five minutes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is that way with just about everything. In any war, there
are people who fall in the first few seconds of battle. In any reality show
that involves people competing for a prize, there is the first person to be
voted off the island, the first person to get the sad news that they will not
be an American Idol, and the first person to have Donald tell them that they’re
fired. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And so it is with sports elimination tournaments. In the
first rounds, there are inevitably competitors who are no doubt proud that they
got there in the first place, but who, nonetheless, are the first
to go. They are, in the world of sports, the “red shirts” who beam down with
Kirk, Spock, Scotty and McCoy, only to have have McCoy kneel over them minutes
later and say “He’s dead, Jim.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I know this because I am one of these people. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This is not to say that I’m terrible. When I played
baseball, I learned to catch the ball in the outfield, get the ball to the
cutoff man, and hit the occasional single. I was pretty decent at
gymnastics as well. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So it is with Shotokan Karate. I am a black belt. I am good.
I am proud that I took this up late in life, got as far as I did, and continue
to improve. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I also love entering tournaments. One of the things that
Master Teryuki Okazaki, the head of the organization of which I’m a member (The
International Shotokan Karate Federation) says is that tournaments are part of a
student’s training, and he couldn’t be more right. I always learn a little bit
when I compete, and I always leave these tournaments with a good story to
share.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And I never get very far. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Again: I am good at this. I’m just not <i>great</i>. In
karate, the best I get is one of my senseis nodding and saying “good…much, much
better.” When I get those complements—which always come after a whole lot of
work, often for the smallest scrap of progress—I’m thrilled, as I know I’ve
earned the right to pat myself on the back.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And so, in these tournaments, I compete in matches in which
I—who is, once again, quite good—competes against people who are <i>amazing</i>.
And I do mean amazing. If you want to get an idea of what I compete against,
take a look at these three guys, Carl Shaw, Hiroyoshi Okazaki, and Frank Garber
from the 1994 JKA (Japanese Karate Association) Shoto Cup, performing a kata
called Kanku Sho.<o:p></o:p></div>
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(For the uninitiated, a <i>kata </i>is a set of moves—sort
of the martial arts equivalent of dance steps—designed to teach various
offensive and defensive techniques.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cWqDXpJRig0" width="560"></iframe></div>
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(And yeah, I know you’re probably saying “but that was 20
years ago.” Yes, it was 20 years ago. And Pete Sampras retired from tennis, and
if you played him, he’d beat you like a one legged stepchild. Trust me, I
watched Carl Shaw compete last Saturday, and he’s still awesome.)</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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So to reiterate: I am a Shotokan red shirt. I will continue
to compete, and, in all likelihood, as I continue to compete against folks who
are among the best in the world, I will continue to be one of the first to go. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This is a great thing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is great because <i>anyone</i> could stay in their
comfort zone, and never really push themselves to try something that doesn’t
come easy to them. Yeah, I could keep sitting here, blogging all day, updating
my website, writing stories, working on my books, and being all comfortable in this comfort zone of writing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But boy, would that be boring. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is good for the soul when you notice how much respect people who are great at something have for you
when you are merely good at it, but work as hard as all those folks do. When you do
this, they always want to help you, and share whatever wisdom they have to
give. In the time that I've studied Shotokan, I've been the recipient of some of
the most helpful and constructive advice I’ve ever received from anyone,
anywhere. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, by hanging out with people who are as good as these
folks are, it allows me, a mere mortal, to really appreciate…well, just how
good these people are. There is something special about developing an
understanding of what it is to do something, anything, well. There is
greatness all around us, but often we simply don’t have the eyes to see it; whenever we
acquire the ability to recognize greatness, the world gets a little bigger, and
a little better.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have two choices. The first choice is to lament my early
demise, while the second, and far better choice, is to enjoy the ride, however
brief, and then take in the greatness that competes long after I’m gone. And
fortunately, unlike the unlucky red shirt, I get to dust myself off, and try
again next year, where there is always the promise of a better showing, and,
perhaps, an appearance in the second round.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-64929207545125088012013-04-02T22:59:00.000-04:002013-04-03T06:44:44.714-04:00The Towering Inferno: An Appreciation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieKrr4_PyKqSaRUb7xUXNQbzFMVyMc4Uyz4-SY4td-D-v6OA7Js7uzoXAFod5MqCGYUY0brMp5mfZeNQcJ644RN1LS0lFT5CfCMoauiXif-rvjaizK8Q8FR3meE_E9HF0yH1ChsrjZZUn0/s1600/inferno.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieKrr4_PyKqSaRUb7xUXNQbzFMVyMc4Uyz4-SY4td-D-v6OA7Js7uzoXAFod5MqCGYUY0brMp5mfZeNQcJ644RN1LS0lFT5CfCMoauiXif-rvjaizK8Q8FR3meE_E9HF0yH1ChsrjZZUn0/s640/inferno.jpg" width="425" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.derekleif.com/" style="font-size: 15px; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 18px;" target="_blank">(First: shameless self promotion. Click anywhere on this paragraph and you’ll get to my website, www.derekleif.com. The website has links to stories--okay, <i>one</i> story, but there will be more, promise--and a link to the PDF of my book <i>Revision</i>. It also has a link to Amazon so that you can buy a Kindle version of that book, if you so desire.)</a><i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>WARNING: This essay is one big spoiler. If you haven't seen the movie and don't want to know what happens, just see the movie first. I would like to point out, however, that the title, </i>The Towering Inferno, <i>kind of gives away a sizable chunk of the plot. </i></span></b><br />
<br />
I was just the right age when the Greatest Film Ever came out.<br />
<br />
Every nine year-old--at least every nine year-old when I was growing up--had a Greatest Film Ever. Said film had a unique characteristic: it was, quite simply, the Greatest Film Ever. Consequently, when referring to said film, my nine year-old peers and I would describe said film thusly: "it's The Greatest Film Ever."<br />
<br />
Generally speaking, these were films where things either burst into flames or blew up. Also, in these films, people often blew things up.<br />
<br />
And once again, and I cannot state this enough: things blew up. They blew up real good. Oh, yea<i>h.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I'm afraid I'm going to get nostalgic. Before kids spent their entire afternoons playing <i>Halo </i>or <i>Skyrim</i> or <i>Team Fortress</i> or <i>Call of Duty</i>, they did this thing called pretending. Granted, nine year-olds of my generation spent a lot of time watching television in the afternoon, but we did actually get out from time to time, and we pretended.<br />
<br />
Pretending went this way: you pretended. You pretended you were someone else, and your friends pretended they were someone else, too. A lot of times, a Greatest Film Ever provided the inspiration for pretending.<br />
<br />
Sometimes a person's Greatest Film Ever was a movie that came out long before we were born. For example, when my friend Michael Bacal and I would play at his house, we would act out <i>The Guns of Navarone</i>, because, for Michael, <i>The Guns of Navarone, </i>which came out in 1961 (five years before we were born), was the greatest film ever. He always wanted to be Gregory Peck, and I had no problem with this; I got to be David Niven.<br />
<br />
In retrospect, it was a shrewd move, as David Niven has all the good lines in that film and gets to blow everything up. This made him aces in my book, particularly considering that when I was nine I was going through an awesome pyromania phase, blowing up ant hills with firecrackers and imagining that there was this television reporter ant saying "I'm here at a scene of unspeakable carnage." Michael, meanwhile, blew up his models with the highly flammable rubber cement with which he glued them together.<br />
<br />
I ought to point out here that I actually had eclectic tastes that forecast the kind of Joe Sensitive guy I'd turn out to be. I watched films with my dad, but I watched films with my mom, too, and I loved musicals and romances like <i>Breakfast at Tiffany's.</i> These were great films, and I always loved watching them when they were on.<br />
<br />
But as great as these films were, none of them were the Greatest Film Ever.<br />
<br />
Again: I actually had friends who were girls, and I actually would have been one of the few young males in the 1970s to play the board game <i>Mystery Date</i> had it not been for the fact that the game was a hand me down from my friend's older sister, and that a bunch of the pieces--not to mention the rules--were missing. And yes, I did indeed play house.<br />
<br />
It just that...well, playing house was not the same as blowing things up, or saving people after other things blew up or burst into flames. Sweetness, sensitivity, empathy....these are all fine things, and I like to think that I developed these things as I grew up. So yes, I played with girls...but I did wish that maybe just once in a while, instead of playing house, they'd want to be Irene Papas in <i>The Guns of Navarone </i>and stand a post.<br />
<br />
In other words, what I'm saying is this: when I was nine years old, <i>The Towering Inferno </i>was The Greatest Film Ever.<br />
<br />
I can still recite the ad copy from the television commercial: "Steve McQueen and Paul Newman RACE AGAINST TIME as one tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense." And indeed, it was. Oh, yes.<br />
<br />
This film came out in 1974. I was nine. It was the reason for living.<br />
<br />
Though the pacing is slow compared to today's hyperactive action films, it's a genuinely good film, of a genre that was way popular in the 1970s: the disaster movie. A name that became synonymous with disaster movies is Irwin Allen, who produced a number of fun TV shows from the 1960s: <i>Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea; The Time Tunnel; Land of the Giants; </i>and, of course, <i>Lost in Space</i>. Allen also made a name for himself directing the action sequences of two classic disaster movies: <i>Inferno </i>(the director of the non-action sequences was an excellent director named John Guillermin), and <i>The Poseidon Adventure </i>(Ronald Neame--a superb director and screenwriter whose credits included such films as <i>The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Brief Encounter</i> and <i>Great Expectations</i>--handled the non-action sequences in this one).<br />
<br />
The plot is simple (Read: <i>The Towering Inferno</i>): Paul Newman plays Doug Roberts, an architect who has designed this huge skyscraper for a multi-gazillionaire named Jim Duncan (William Holden). Unfortunately, we learn, Duncan gave the job of building the thing to his scuzzy son-in-law, Simmons (Richard Chamberlain), who cut corners to save money. In doing so, we learn, Simmons created an incredibly hazardous electrical system that generates far too much heat, and has, in effect, turned the building into a firetrap.<br />
<br />
The film takes place on the evening of a building dedication party, way up on the 135th floor. Given the title of the film, you've probably guessed by now that things do not go as planned.<br />
<br />
And that's it. You really don't need to know any more.<br />
<br />
Well, okay, there is one more thing, but before we get to that thing, we need to discuss Paul Newman, and the major theme of the movie.<br />
<br />
When we meet Paul Newman at the beginning of the movie, he's having a really good time with Faye Dunaway, who plays his girlfriend, Susan Franklin. And hey, that's a good thing: Faye Dunaway was, at the time, one of the most absolutely drop-dead gorgeous women on the planet. For a young man who's put away such childish things as playing pretend, Faye Dunaway is a really nice step up.<br />
<br />
But that's just it: when I saw <i>The Towering Inferno</i>, I wasn't ready to put away childish things, because I was a child. And at the beginning of the film, all I could think was: great, Paul Newman is an utter wuss in this film.<br />
<br />
Yes, I thought, sitting there in the United Artists Cinema 150 in Syosset (which has since become an Equinox health club), Paul Newman isn't an <i>action hero</i> in this film. He isn't cool the way he was in <i>Butch Cassidy and the Sundance</i> kid. All I thought was: great, he's just going to spend the whole film being Faye Dunaway's <i>boyfriend</i>.<br />
<br />
Snooze.<br />
<br />
But then, quite wonderfully, all that changes. And of course, what causes it to change is that beloved agent that goes hand in hand with the rule that, in The Greatest Film Ever, things must blow up: fire.<br />
<br />
Oh, glorious fire. Explosions. Death. Destruction.<br />
<br />
And it's clear, as the film goes on, that all that wussy romance stuff doesn't belong, because the boys have taken over. Robert Wagner plays this guy named Bigelow who's romancing his secretary, Lorrie, played by Susan Flannery. He dies, and so does she.<br />
<br />
Not only that, but Robert Wagner dies like a complete tool. He tells his secretary that he's going to run out of the office though the walls of flames that now stand between them and the elevator, boasting about how fast he ran in high school.<br />
<br />
We hear an all-strings refrain of the film's kitchy love song "We May Never Love this Way Again," a Maureen McGovern song we heard earlier in the film, which, immediately, for an obsessive fan of these things, echoes McGovern's number 1 hit "The Morning After" from <i>The Poseidon Adventure.</i><br />
<br />
Wagner leaves the office, runs two steps...and then promptly crashes into a table, which causes him to go up like a protesting Buddhist monk.<br />
<br />
Lorrie, meanwhile, choking on smoke, throws a chair through a window to get some fresh air, which cause the flames to immediately shoot toward the open window, engulfing Lorrie in flames and hurling her out the window.<br />
<br />
Awesome. Simply awesome.<br />
<br />
Clearly, the film is saying, we don't have time for this pansy lovey-dovey stuff. Things are burning. Things are blowing up.<br />
<br />
As this nine year-old would have told you in 1974, we need heroes.<br />
<br />
In other words, we need a fireman.<br />
<br />
This is why, for me, back in that movie theater, there was, in an uncertain world, one irrefutable fact:<br />
<br />
Steve McQueen was God.<br />
<br />
McQueen plays San Francisco Fire Department Chief Michael O'Hallorhan, and from the moment he enters the film it's almost as if Paul Newman resdiscovers his inner child.<br />
<br />
Suddenly, Paul Newman becomes cool: he rescues a woman (Jennifer Jones) who's baby sitting two kids; he proves himself to be an acrobat when the stairway blows up due to a gas explosion, which causes him to tumble down the twisted metal of the wrecked bannister so that he must climb back up and help the woman and the two kids climb down; he climbs around an elevator shaft so that he can go through the ceiling and around a door blocked with cement; he rigs up a scenic elevator so a couple of people ride it down via gravity.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, Jennifer Jones dies as well when she falls out of the scenic elevator. Earlier, we've seen her in a tender romantic scene with Fred Astaire, who plays a con man, and from that moment, we know she's a goner. Basically, in this film, if you're involved romantically with anyone, you're toast, unless you have Steve McQueen's protective force field of coolness to protect you.<br />
<br />
And man, does McQueen just pile on the cool. McQueen insisted that his character have exactly the same number of lines of dialogue as Newman, and considering that he doesn't appear until 40 minutes in the film, he has a lot of catching up to do. That means he does a lot of the talking while Newman does a lot of the listening. And through it all, it's almost as if this authoritative coolness mojo spreads to Newman, who just becomes cooler by the minute.<br />
<br />
And Newman needs to be cool, because he and McQueen have a mission: in order to put out the fire, they must detonate a series of water tanks on the top floor of the building. This, in so many ways, made the film some sort of cosmic experience for me when I was nine. Not only had I seen fire, explosions, and the incineration of countless wusses, but I was treated to what made this film, for me, The Greatest Film Ever:<i> a conclusion to a film about fire, death and destruction in which the way to save everybody is to blow stuff up.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Oh, glory.<br />
<br />
Finally, at the end, we see the bond a nine year-old in 1974 was waiting for: surrogates for him and his best friend, up there staring fire in the face and making it back down. And Paul Newman, by this point, has redeemed himself for his wussiness early on in the film: though McQueen knows how to rig explosives, it's Newman who knows where they need to place them.<br />
<br />
After placing the explosives, they have to run back down, and it's just...it's just glorious stuff. Newman has the air tank, and McQueen is wearing the flame resistant suit, and they're going back and forth, Newman giving McQueen air so that McQueen can hold a door against a wall of flames so that Newman can fun past it.<br />
<br />
This was fodder for more childhood reenactments with my friends than I can even count.<br />
<br />
So everybody ties themselves down, John William's music swells with the lower brass beating out steady quarter notes as the higher brass takes you through the the first two sixteenth notes of each measure.<br />
<br />
How many times did my friends and I sing "DUH-DUH (tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick), DUH-DUH (tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick)?" Many times. Many, many times.<br />
<br />
And it's just a monumental explosion. Water everywhere. Flames slowly dying.<br />
<br />
It's Miller time.<br />
<br />
And it's almost as if, having proved himself, we don't mind that Paul Newman snuggles up to Faye Dunaway. He deserves it.<br />
<br />
But it's not as if McQueen is going to let him go soft. He tells him that they were lucky, they only lost about 200, but one day, 10,000 people are gonna die in these firetraps until someone asks the fire department how to build those things.<br />
<br />
All right, Newman says, I'm askin'.<br />
<br />
In other words, Newman will get romantic with Faye Dunaway, but if Steve McQueen ever comes calling so that they can blow stuff up, Newman won't let him down.<br />
<br />
For a nine year-old, it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and the end of a perfect movie.Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-71733853892563662742013-03-31T00:23:00.000-04:002013-03-31T01:40:42.879-04:00An Amusing Game of Miscommunication: Google Translate Telephone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.derekleif.com/" style="font-size: 15px; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 18px;" target="_blank">(First: shameless self promotion. Click anywhere on this paragraph and you’ll get to my website, www.derekleif.com. The website has links to stories--okay, <i>one</i> story, but there will be more, promise--and a link to the PDF of my book <i>Revision</i>. It also has a link to Amazon so that you can buy a Kindle version of that book, if you so desire.)</a></div>
<br />
As many of your have probably figured out by now, I just have <i>way</i> too much time on my hands. I mean, think about it: I've actually written a blog entry in which I turned the 1973 animated version of <i>Charlotte's Web </i>into a horror movie involving mass insanity, devil worship, and allusions to <i>Lord of the Flies </i>and <i>Animal Farm</i>. <a href="http://derekleif.blogspot.com/2010/03/revolting-musings-on-1973-animated.html" target="_blank">If you should want to read that, well, my sympathies, first of all, but for what it's worth, you can find it by clicking here. </a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://derekleif.blogspot.com/2009/11/films-i-loathe-number-one-in-continuing.html" target="_blank">Anyway, when I'm not blogging about things such as that, or how much I loathe the film <i>Mr. Holland's Opus </i>(yes, you can read <i>that</i> one by clicking on this sentence), I try to think of new and amusing things to do with the digital tools at my disposal. </a><br />
<br />
One such tool is Google Translate. I find Google translate way cool, and I used it in my last entry to reach out when I discovered that a couple of folks from Russia checked out my blog.<br />
<br />
Of course, as I did this I kept my language as simple as possible. I knew that as good as the translation algorithm was, there still would be a lot that wouldn't quite make it to the other side.<br />
<br />
I really saw this when I took what I had translated to Russian, and then translated it <i>back</i> to English. Inevitably, the cracks began to show, particularly if I used idioms.<br />
<br />
Here's an example. Let's start with this bit of "The Oldest Established," from <i>Guys and Dolls</i>:<br />
<br />
<b><i>There are well-heeled shooters everywhere, everywhere</i></b><br />
<b><i>There are well-heeled shooters everywhere.</i></b><br />
<b><i>And an awful lot of lettuce</i></b><br />
<b><i>For the fella who can get us there.</i></b><br />
<b><i>If we only had a lousy little grand</i></b><br />
<b><i>We could be a millionaire!</i></b><br />
<br />
Now, let's translate it to Russian:<br />
<br />
<b><i>Есть богатых стрелков везде, везде</i></b><br />
<b><i>Есть богатых стрелков во всем мире.</i></b><br />
<b><i>И очень много салата</i></b><br />
<b><i>Для парня, который может доставить нас туда.</i></b><br />
<b><i>Если у нас был только маленький паршивый великий</i></b><br />
<b><i>Мы могли бы быть миллионером!</i></b><br />
<br />
...and now let's translate it back and see what happens:<br />
<br />
<b><i>There is plenty of shooters everywhere, everywhere</i></b><br />
<b><i>There is plenty of shooters worldwide.</i></b><br />
<b><i>And a lot of salad</i></b><br />
<b><i>For a guy who can get us there.</i></b><br />
<b><i>If we only had a lousy little grand</i></b><br />
<b><i>We could be a millionaire!</i></b><br />
<br />
Okay, pretty good. It's actually kind of endearing, the way it turned "lettuce" into "salad".<br />
<br />
But this got me thinking (which, as my friends can tell you is usually a bad thing): what would happen if I took a set of English sentences, and then translated them into another language, and <i>then translated that translation into another language</i>?<br />
<br />
And what if I did that a few times?<br />
<br />
What would it look like once it had completed its journey back to English?<br />
<br />
And so, with that thought, I created a new game that I call Google Translate Telephone.<br />
<br />
Telephone, you may remember, is the party game in which someone starts with a phrase, and then whispers it to someone else. This person then whispers it to the next person, and so on, until the last person says what he or she heard. By this time, of course, the phrase has totally changed.<br />
<br />
Let's give it a whirl. We will start with English:<br />
<b><i>I think that these people are lepers. I will ask them if they could please use a hand sanitizer before using the salad bar. I would not like them to contaminate the bacon bits.</i></b><br />
<br />
and translate it to Russian:<br />
<b><i>Я думаю, что эти люди прокаженных. Я буду просить их, если они могли бы, пожалуйста, используйте дезинфицирующее средство для рук, прежде чем использовать салат-бар. Я бы не хотел, чтобы они загрязняют кусочки бекона.</i></b><br />
<br />
then we'll take that Russian translation, and translate it to Czech:<br />
<b><i>Myslím si, že tito lidé jsou malomocní. Zeptám se jich, jestli by se prosím pomocí ruční sanitizer před použitím salátový bar. Nechtěl bych, aby znečištění slaninu.</i></b><br />
<br />
then to Greek:<br />
<i><b>Νομίζω ότι αυτοί οι άνθρωποι είναι λεπροί. Θα τους ρωτήσω αν θα παρακαλούμε χρήση απολυμαντικό χεριών πριν χρησιμοποιήσετε το salad bar. Δεν θα ήθελα μπέικον ρύπανση.</b></i><br />
<br />
then to Haitian Creole<br />
<b><i>Mwen panse ke moun sa yo se lepre. Yo pral mande si ou ta tanpri itilize dezenfektan pou men anvan ou sèvi ak ba a sòs salad. Mwen pa ta renmen polisyon bekonn.</i></b><br />
<br />
To Japanese:<br />
<b><i>私はこれらの人々がハンセン病患者であると思います。あなたはサラダバーを使用する前に、手指消毒剤を使用してくださいならば、彼らは尋ねます。私はベーコン汚染を好きではないだろう。</i></b><br />
<br />
to Arabic:<br />
<i><b>أعتقد أن هذا هو والأبرص هؤلاء الناس. قبل أن تتمكن من استخدام شريط صلاد، إذا كنت يرجى استخدام المطهر، وطلبوا منك. ولا أود التلوث لحم الخنزير المقدد.</b></i><br />
<br />
to Korean:<br />
<i><b>이이 사람들의 나환자이라고 생각합니다. 당신이 샐러드 바를 사용하기 전에 세제를 사용하십시오, 그리고 경우에 그들은 당신을 부탁드립니다. 나는 오염 베이컨을 기원하지 않습니다.</b></i><br />
<br />
to Hebrew:<br />
<b><i>חולי צרעת, האנשים האלה חושבים. השתמש בחומר ניקוי לפני שתשתמש בבר הסלטים, ואם הם שואלים. בייקון זיהום אני לא מתפלל.</i></b><br />
<br />
to Esperanto:<br />
<i><b>Lepro pacientoj, ĉi tiuj homoj pensas. Uzu detergento antaŭ uzi la salato trinkejo, kaj se ili demandas. Lardo polucio mi ne preĝas.</b></i><br />
<br />
to Traditional Chinese:<br />
<b><i>麻風患者,這些人認為。使用清潔劑之前使用的沙拉吧,如果你問。黃油污染,我不求。</i></b><br />
<br />
back to English:<br />
<b><i>Leprosy patients, these people think. Use detergent before use salad bar, if you ask. Butter pollution, I do not seek.</i></b><br />
<br />
What's awesome about this, of course, is that it has turned it into something that you could imagine Yoda saying while deep in the indignities of Alzheimer's.<br />
<br />
But let's <i>really </i>give this game a run for it's money. Let's take a paragraph replete with idioms, and see how it comes out at the other end of a Google Translate torture session.<br />
<br />
Hmmmm...how about this:<br />
<br />
<i>English:</i><br />
<i><b>I want to give Google Translate a run for its money, so I'm going to feed a lot of English idioms into it this time around. I think that it will strike people as funny just how much stuff gets lost in translation. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it or anything, I think that what's going to emerge at the other end of this is a nearly incomprehensible mishmash of linguistic fragments, utterly devoid of any coherence whatsoever. I really think the prospect of translating this into anything understandable is going to hit a wall pretty quickly. </b></i><br />
<br />
and let's <i>really </i>have fun with this by feeding it through nothing but languages far different from English.<br />
<br />
Our first stop is Iceland. This, by the way, is a language in which its inhabitants are fiercely protective of it, which has resulted in the language being much the same as it was hundreds of years ago (there is actually a language board that approves of additions to official Icelandic; they had a tough time when personal computers came to the forefront, as it was necessary to have words for such things as "operating system").<br />
<br />
This is pretty cool, really: if you're a kid in Iceland reading their epic legends, the stuff reads as if someone wrote it yesterday. At the same time, I'm sure that a number of the things I wrote are going to hit a wall when Google frantically tries to do its work:<br />
<br />
<i><b>Mig langar að gefa Google Þýða að hlaupa fyrir peningana sína, þannig að ég ætla að gefa mikið af ensku idioms í það að þessu sinni í kring. Ég held að það muni slá fólk sem fyndið hversu mikið efni týnist í þýðingunni. Í staðreynd, ekki að setja of fínn a benda á það eða eitthvað, ég held að það er að fara að koma fram á hinum enda þetta er nánast óskiljanlegt mishmash af tungumála brot algerlega gjörsneyddur hvaða samhengi alls. Ég held í raun möguleika á að þýða þetta í neitt skiljanlegt er að fara til högg a veggur ansi fljótt.</b></i><br />
<br />
Now, from Icelandic, hmmmm....how about translating that Nordic speak into Swahili. Yeah. Swahili.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Mimi nataka kutoa Google Tafsiri kukimbia kwa pesa zao, hivyo mimi nina kwenda kutoa mengi ya Nahau Kiingereza katika hilo wakati huu. Nadhani itakuwa mgomo watu kama funny stuff kiasi gani anapata waliopotea katika tafsiri. Kwa kweli, si kwa kuweka pia faini uhakika juu yake au kitu chochote, nadhani ni kitakuja mwisho mwingine ni karibu incomprehensible mishmash ya lugha kuvunja kabisa bila ya yoyote muktadha wowote. Nadhani, kwa kweli, uwezo wa kutafsiri hii ndani ya kitu chochote inaeleweka inaenda kuitwanga ukuta pretty haraka.</b></i><br />
<br />
And from there, let's take a trip to...hmmm...Azerbaijan. Yes. I like it:<br />
<br />
<b><i>Google onların pul üçün run, mən hazırda deyim English bir çox vermək gedirəm Tərcümə vermək istəyirəm. Mən bu stuff tərcümə itirildikdə necə çox məzəli insanlar tətil olacaq. Əslində, bu və ya bir şey çox gözəl nöqtə qoymaq üçün deyil, mən bu dildə demək olar ki, anlaşılmaz dolaşıq tamamilə heç bir kontekstində olmadan qırdı olan digər sonuna gedir edirəm. Mən əslində, qabiliyyəti olduqca tez divar edib gedən aydın bir şey bu tərcümə, düşünürəm.</i></b><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From Azerbaijani, let's now take these words on a trip to....India. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Hindi translation:<br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<b><i>गूगल अपने पैसे के लिए चला जाएगा, मैं वाक्यांश मैं अंग्रेजी का एक बहुत कुछ करने के लिए जा रहा हूँ का अनुवाद करना चाहते हैं. मजेदार कितना सामान अनुवाद में खो जाता है, तो मैं लोगों को हड़ताल करेंगे. वास्तव में, यह एक बहुत अच्छी बात पर या कुछ डाल दिया है, लेकिन मैं कह सकता हूँ कि भाषा अस्पष्ट, उलझन में है और किसी भी संदर्भ के बिना पूरी तरह से तोड़ दिया है, मैं दूसरे छोर पर जाने के लिए करना चाहते हैं. मैं वास्तव में करने के लिए दीवार बहुत जल्दी से स्पष्ट कुछ अनुवाद करने की क्षमता है करने के लिए जा रहा हूँ, मुझे लगता है.</i></b></div>
<br />
And...well, Vickey's dad is from Portugal, so:<br />
<br />
<i><b>Google terá a duração de seu dinheiro, eu tenho um monte de frases em inglês que eu vou deseja traduzir. Material quanto engraçado se perde na tradução, por isso vou atacar as pessoas. Na verdade, é uma coisa muito boa para colocar ou algo assim, mas eu posso dizer que a linguagem vaga, confusa e quebrou completamente sem qualquer contexto, eu gostaria de ir para o outro lado . Eu realmente gosto da parede muito rapidamente some'm claro vai ter a capacidade de traduzir, eu acho.</b></i><br />
<br />
And from there, let's visit the Promised Land:<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>גוגל תפעל לכסף שלהם, יש לי הרבה משפטים באנגלית שאני רוצה לתרגם. חומר כמצחיק הולך לאיבוד בתרגום, אז אני אתקוף אנשים. למעשה, זה דבר טוב מאוד למקום או משהו כזה, אבל אני יכול לומר ששפה מעורפלת, מבולבלת ושברתה לחלוטין ללא כל קשר, אני רוצה ללכת לצד השני. אני ממש אוהב את הקיר במהירות רבה כמובן some'm יהיה היכולת לתרגם, אני מניח.</b></i><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
I never noticed how cool Hebrew looks in italics. Anyway, it's a small world. Next stop, Japan:<br />
<br />
<i><b>Googleは彼らのお金のために働くだろう、私が翻訳したい英語の多くを持っている。ユーモラスな材料は翻訳で失われているので、私は人々を攻撃します。実際には、それは非常に良い場所か何かですが、私は、その言語が曖昧と言うことができ、混乱し、完全にマーサにもかかわらず、私は反対側に行きたい。私は本当に、非常に迅速に壁が好きもちろんsome'm翻訳することができます、私は推測する。</b></i><br />
<br />
(I'd like to point out how "Google" has managed to survive this entire trip intact. I also have no idea how "some'm" got in there, nor do I know why it struggles to remain untranslated.)<br />
<br />
Anyway, let's keep moving. I give you Urdu, the national language of Pakistan:<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>گوگل ان کے پیسے کے لیے کام کریں گے، انگریزی کی ایک بہت ہے کہ میں ترجمہ کرنا چاہتے ہیں ہے. ونودی مواد کی وجہ سے یہ ترجمہ میں کھو گیا ہے، میں لوگوں پر حملہ کرے گا. سچ تو یہ ہے کہ اگرچہ یہ ایک بہت اچھی جگہ ہے یا کچھ اور ہے تو آپ کا کہنا ہے کہ اس زبان غیر واضح، مبہم ہے، مرتا کے باوجود مکمل طور پر، لیکن میں نے دوسری طرف جانے کے لئے کرنا چاہتے ہیں کر سکتے ہیں. تم سچ میں ترجمہ کر سکتے ہیں کورس کے some'm دیوار بہت تیزی سے محبت کرتا ہوں، مجھے لگتا ہے.</b></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
...and while we're at it, let's hit the Arabian Peninsula:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>جوجل ستعمل لأموالهم، والكثير من اللغة الإنجليزية التي يتم ترجمتها إلى يريد. انه مضحك لأن يتم فقدان المحتوى في الترجمة، وسوف تهاجم الناس.سچ تو یہ ہے کہ اگرچہ یہ ایک بہت اچھی جگہ ہے یا کچھ اور ہے تو آپ کا کہنا ہے کہ اس زبان غیر واضح، مبہم ہے، مرتا کے باوجود مکمل طور پر، لیکن میں نے دوسری طرف جانے کے لئے کرنا چاہتے ہیں کر سکتے و. يمكنك حقا ترجمة سريعة جدا some'm بالطبع أحب الجدار، على ما أعتقد.</b></i><br />
<br />
...and we're clearly starting to hit a wall here, because when we try to translate it from Arabic, some characters just remain untranslated, as if Google Translate is just saying "no more, please...no more." But there will be more. Oh, yes, there will be more.<br />
<br />
Let's go to Thailand:<br />
<br />
<i><b>Google จะทำงานเพื่อเงินของพวกเขาและจำนวนมากของอังกฤษซึ่งเป็นที่ต้องการแปลเป็น มันตลกเพราะพวกเขาจะสูญเสียเนื้อหาในการแปลและจะโจมตีคน. S چ Tu یہہےکہگ r چہیہیک B ہทีچھی J گہہے O کچھ ur ہے Tu پککہ na ہےکہ S Zaban ไม่ชัดเจน Mb ہ ม. ہےมาร์ธาکے Baugod M ک มล. พัฒนาپ r, เพื่อیک n M یںยังไม่มีข้อความที่ے Dousari พรรค ม.ค. ےکےลี่ےک RNA چہทีےہیںک R S T کے จริงๆคุณสามารถแปลได้อย่างรวดเร็วมาก some'm แน่นอนฉันรักผนังผมคิดว่า</b></i><br />
<br />
to the Philippines:<br />
<br />
<i><b>Tatakbo ang Google para sa kanilang pera at ng maraming ng Ingles, na isinalin sa. Nakakatawa dahil sila ay mawala ang mga nilalaman na i-interpret at pag-atake ng mga tao. S چ Tu یہہےکہگ r چہیہیک B ہ t چھی J گہہے O کچھ ur ہے Tu پککہ na ہےکہ S Zaban malinaw Mb ہ m ہے Martha کے Baugod M ک-unlad ML پ r, sa یک n M یں N. ng partido ے Dousari Jan ےکے Li ےک RNA چہ ےہیںک RST کے ako ay napakabilis, maaari mo ba talagang some'm kurso na gustung-gusto ko ang wall, tingin ko.</b></i><br />
<br />
(and still, "Google" survives.)<br />
<br />
to Malaysia:<br />
<br />
<i><b>Google bertanding untuk wang mereka dan banyak bahasa Inggeris, diterjemahkan. Lucu kerana mereka akan kehilangan kandungan untuk mentafsir dan menyerang orang. S چ Tu یہہےکہگ چہیہیک B r ہ t چھی J گہہے O ur ہے Tu کچھ پککہ untuk ہےکہ S Zaban jelas Mb ہ m ہے Martha کے Baugod M ک pembangunan ML پ r, n M یں یک N. ے Dousari Jan ےکے Li parti ےک RNA چہ ےہیںک RST I کے pantas, anda benar-benar boleh some'm tentu saya memuja dinding, saya fikir.</b></i><br />
<br />
to China (traditional Chinese, mind you...none of this simplified stuff):<br />
<br />
<i><b>谷歌爭奪他們的金錢和大量的英語翻譯。有趣,因為他們將失去內容進行解釋和攻擊。小號چ塗یہہےکہگچہیہیکB Rہ噸چھیĴگہہےØ烏爾ہے塗کچھپککہ到ہےکہ小號咋辦明確MBہ米瑪莎کےہےBaugod中號ک發展MLپR,N MیںیکN.一月Dousariےکے李ےےک黨的RNAچہےہیںکRST我کے快,你才能真正some'm當然,我很喜歡在牆上,我想。</b></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
And let's hit hit Iran, and make it Persian. Just because:<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>گوگل برای رقابت برای پول خود را و بسیاری از ترجمه انگلیسی است. جالب توجه است، چرا که آنها را از محتویات را به تفسیر و حمله را از دست بدهند. صور چ پوشش داده شده یہہےکہگچہیہیک B R ہ تن چھی J گہہے Ø تو ہے پوشش داده شده کچھپککہ به ہےکہ در بوق و کرنا قرار به روشن MB ہ سکته قلبی ماشا کےہے Baugod متوسط ک توسعه ML پ R، N M یںیک N. ژانویه Dousari ےکے لی ےےک حزب RNA چہےہیںک RST I کے سریع، شما واقعا می تواند برخی از 'متر البته، دوست داشتم به دیوار، من فکر کردم.</b></i><br />
<br />
(at this point, you'll notice Google translate is just sort of throwing up random letters, as if it's having a seizure or something)<br />
<br />
On to Norway. We've been sadly neglecting Scandinavia:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>Google å konkurrere for pengene, og mange av de engelske oversettelsene. Interessant, fordi de mister innholdet til å tolke og angripe. Hva slags ہ BR Y ہہے K ہ GCH ہ Y ہ Yk dekket Ch ھ Y J G ہہے Ø ہے du dekket ہے K ہ KCH ھ PKK ہ å sette trompeten til MB ہ Mi K ےہے Masha K D gjennomsnittlig Baugod ML c R, NM Y ں Yk N. Januar Dousari ے K ے Lee ےے K partiet RST I K ے RNA Ch ہےہ Y ں K rask, kan du virkelig ha noen 'm selvfølgelig, jeg elsket veggen, tenkte jeg.</b></i><br />
<br />
...did you know that Google Translate also has the ability to translate into Basque? Neither did I:<br />
<b><br /></b>
<i><b>Google dirua lortzeko lehiatuko dira, eta English itzulpen asko. Interesgarria, bere edukiak interpretatzeko eta eraso galtzen dutelako. Zer ہ BR Y ہہے K ہ GCH ہ ہ Y yk estalitako Ch ھ YJG ہہے Ø ہے ہے K ہ ہ KCH ھ PKK estali tronpeta jarri MB ہ Mi K ےہے Masha KD batez bestekoa Baugod ML c R, NM Y ں yk N. urtarrilaren Dousari ے F ے Lee ےے K party RST RNA IK ے Ch ہےہ Y ں K azkar, benetan ahal izango duzu 'jakina m, horma maite dut, pentsatu nuen.</b></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
And you know what? I'm getting homesick. Let's translate this back into English. Now, just to remind you, this was what I wrote before we went on our journey:<br />
<br />
<i><b>I want to give Google Translate a run for its money, so I'm going to feed a lot of English idioms into it this time around. I think that it will strike people as funny just how much stuff gets lost in translation. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it or anything, I think that what's going to emerge at the other end of this is a nearly incomprehensible mishmash of linguistic fragments, utterly devoid of any coherence whatsoever. I really think the prospect of translating this into anything understandable is going to hit a wall pretty quickly. </b></i><br />
<br />
....and this is what I ended up with:<br />
<br />
<i><b>Google will compete for money, and a lot of Inglesa translation. Interestingly, because the loss of its contents to interpret the attack. What ہ BR GCH ہ ہ ہ Y Y Y ہہے K Ch covered ھ YJG ہہے Ø ہے ہے K ہ ہ ہ MB KCH ھ PKK to cover the trumpet ےہے Mash Mi K KD Baugod average ML c R, NM AND ں yk N. January Dousari ے F ے ے IK Lee ےے K Ch party RST RNA ہےہ Y ں K fast, you can really 'm of course, I love the wall, I thought.</b></i><br />
<br />
There's no place like home. There's no place like home.<br />
<br />
So okay, let me get rid of all the stuff that just completely got lost on the way there and the way back, and see what I'm left with. To tell you the truth, there's actually a sort of haunting, poetic beauty to it (I also strained out RNA and RST, along with "Dousari," which has no meaning that I know of, but nonetheless sounds like the name of a character in <i>Dune</i> or something):<br />
<br />
<i><b><span style="color: yellow;">Google will compete for money, and a lot of Inglesa translation. Interestingly, because the loss of its contents to interpret the attack. What covered to cover the trumpet Mash average AND January Lee party fast, you can really of course, I love the wall, I thought.</span></b></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
At this point, of course, I set a challenge for myself: how do I write a narrative that actually uses this, consecutively, so that it makes some sort of sense? Hmmm....let's see, let's see (okay, I'll insert a couple of words for the sake of syntax, and I think you'll see, cyberpunk sci-fi is pretty much the only avenue open to me):<br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span></b>
<i><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b>"Google will compete for money," I said, as the clean coal smokestacks belched thick sulfuric acid clouds into the night sky.</b></span></i><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"And a lot of Inglesa translation, if you know what I mean, huh?" Snix said, elbowing me as one of the plutonium mine workers lining up for their weekly pay envelope, suddenly fell on the ground, his body wracked with seizures. Poor guy. Radiation protection suits ran you at least 35 Kelzigs, and that was with the new currency. </span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">All around me, people spoke in two or three dozen slangs, tongues that had sprouted from language track brain implant mods that allowed kids to have their own teen speak, sort of the way they spoke gibberish back in the 21st century so as to confuse their parents, and keep their secret plans between them. </span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">You could actually get a euphoric rush from particular translations of great works. All across the world, programmers frantically tweaked languages, creating new dialects every day. One of the more popular ones was a grafting of the ancient romance languages into a Spanish/French/Italian/Greek/Latin/Hebrew/Aramaic hybrid called The Inglesa Translation.</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">But these implants led to more hacks inside a person's head than you could imagine, and that's where Snix and I came in. All across the wireless network, trolls prowled, attacking someone's mind with words as sweet as an "I love you" on the lips of a child bringing breakfast in bed to Mom on her birthday. </span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Those seemingly sweet, innocent words were part of an innocent language of childhood, a popular implant. The user, with the implant, processed language in such a way that every word felt fresh and new. </span></i></span></b><br />
<i><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b><br /></b></span></i>
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It made any user vulnerable to a neural hack attack, though. </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It was a simple concrete language, and in giving it the joy of childhood, the programmers realized they would have to lose something, and that something was the more sophisticated syntactical constructs, the parts that interpreted abstract ideas, which were, so many times, the foundation of duplicity. </span></i></span></b><br />
<i><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b><br /></b></span></i>
<i><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b>Because of the loss of its contents to interpret the attack, this simplistic language, with its innocence and wonder, gave its user a decreased awareness of any guile or deceit in the thoughts of the trolls that now invaded the mind.</b></span></i><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">When a joy stealer entered the mind, he first pilfered the simple joys of each day. The first cigarette. The morning cup of coffee. From there, it was a simple matter to reach back into the person's memories of single-digit-age birthdays, and holiday mornings when the family exchanged gifts.</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">They called it The Trumpet Mash, because it actually gave its victim a moment of pure, timeless bliss before all the joy left their mind via the neural language implant, traveling through the network to the subdural processor chip of the troll who stored those joys, and sold them on the black market at a premium. </span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">So Snix and I were following those signals, and every so often, we got lucky and busted some punks, and a few people actually kept their joy. For another day, at least.</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">But this took time, and while we covered the network, who watched the station, where the forces of good, already stretched thin, kept criminals overnight before they were arraigned the next morning?</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">What covered the station while we were on our daily beat, which was to cover the Trumpet Mash with a net of law and order? Did we even have four cyberdogs in front of the station house tonight? Or were they out stopping drunken fights, they way they always did?</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">On one of the holographic billboards, the trailer for the newest January Lee film played and repeated, played and repeated. </span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Two kids, out of their minds on about a hundred different languages at the same time, were so overcome with the understanding of the world from so many viewpoints that they spoke in monosyllabic, euphoric bursts:</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"Oh, man, this isn't even CLOSE to the way I felt yesterday! This is, this like, AVERAGE, AND..."</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"JANUARY LEE!" the other screamed, seeing the holographic trailer.</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"JANUARY LEE!" the first kid screamed back, "PARTY! FAST!"</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"You can really party fast, of course," the second kid said, before crumpling up in hysterical laughter. </span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I just watched them, scanning the network with my digital optics, seeing the signals as they shot here and there, looking for anything out of the ordinary as the signals went in out of people's heads, in and out. </span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I leaned against the wall, sipping my coffee.</span></i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: yellow;"><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I love the wall, thought. </span></i></span></b><br />
<i><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></i>
...and when you think about it, don't we <i>all</i> love the wall?<br />
<br />
But I digress. I'm sure you can come up with ways to mess around with Google Translate far more amusing and creative than <i>I </i>could have come up with. Use it. Enjoy it. Amuse yourself.<br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-57602368778829098692013-03-26T18:54:00.002-04:002013-03-26T18:55:30.989-04:00Exploring the Underside (The Secret Life of Coke Zero)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ElzlvcEbVA66sfP2Scd4qs4iNctKRcKhNggtfy9S-1txxeQygDWxSI_FnJoC1bR6cIFNG0JtL4ZbbOCfHvAZdZAeHLKvPb4iICuuX3iZf1CERwM-sjmzccaDoMM5GWuD0boKKBm1Xoah/s1600/CokeZero.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ElzlvcEbVA66sfP2Scd4qs4iNctKRcKhNggtfy9S-1txxeQygDWxSI_FnJoC1bR6cIFNG0JtL4ZbbOCfHvAZdZAeHLKvPb4iICuuX3iZf1CERwM-sjmzccaDoMM5GWuD0boKKBm1Xoah/s320/CokeZero.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
So today's writing exercise was to Explore the Underside. In other words, take a person and look at the other side of them. If there's a hero, explore their not so nice side; if there's a villain, explore the softer side.<br />
<br />
I was drinking a Coke Zero when I was doing this exercise (my consumption from diet soda, with its vile brew of chemicals, has dwindled down the occasional indulgence every now and then). I started to think about Coke Zero, and how Coke Zero has a side no one knows.<br />
<br />
The surface of it is chemicals that are horrid for you. I’m trying to imagine that there’s actually another side to this. If Coke Zero were a character, it wouldn’t be a cool rock star heroin addict. There would be this corporate chemical quality to it, and it would shake your hand with an insincere smile.
<br />
<br />
But maybe, if you spoke to Coke Zero, there would actually be a sensitive side. He would speak of his rich heritage, having descended from the mind of pharmacist Joseph Pemberton, and he would read about his great grandmother, who was a wild party animal with traces of cocaine in her system.
<br />
<br />
And then he would study the fashions of that decade, and though he was a ruthless chemical corporate public relations officer would could make the public believe that the BP oil spill was good for the ocean, there would actually be this touching moment where he would nostalgically long for the days when everyone wore green tinted glass, and came from machines that sold you for a nickel, when people sung about you by telling the world they wanted to teach the world to sing.
<br />
<br />
“Coke <i>was</i> it,” he would say wistfully, thinking of the jingles with which people remembered his relatives. “People would have my relatives, and have them with a smile. Good times, good times.”
<br />
<br />
But then the moment would pass. There would be tons of work on his desk. It would be necessary to somehow convince the public that it was a good thing that children were morbidly obese, that their teeth were rotting out of their mouths. As it always had been, as it always was, and as it always would be, people had to believe that he was good for them, or at least that he didn’t cause any harm.
<br />
<br />
"You don't know the <i>real </i>Coke Zero," he'd mutter to himself. "All of you just think I'm some Aspartame filled cauldron of toxicity. But I have dimensions. Honest I do."<br />
<br />
Then suddenly, his fist would slam the table.<br />
<br />
"I AM NOT DIET COKE'S LESSER KNOWN BROTHER!" he would exclaim "DIET COKE IS <i>MY</i> BROTHER!"<br />
<br />Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-75090676470545989392013-03-24T23:35:00.000-04:002013-03-25T19:58:01.577-04:00In Which I Contemplate Accomplishing a Literary Stunt that No One, to My Knowledge, Has Even Attempted Before (Or: "Bits," an Example of a Genuinely Insane Form of "Constrained Writing.")<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2V5QkmPTElzGmWsOQ1dA_hgcCmrurTZQHSh7yXg7Qa0Xqszvyf3WieAjHY21KkRXasmkETHv_hCtdUIH79TlzJVTXVcimhCLmT7mpc8tkrNveWkOjkVKninxB3QWJZ84MdJb7BdupAKMd/s1600/word.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2V5QkmPTElzGmWsOQ1dA_hgcCmrurTZQHSh7yXg7Qa0Xqszvyf3WieAjHY21KkRXasmkETHv_hCtdUIH79TlzJVTXVcimhCLmT7mpc8tkrNveWkOjkVKninxB3QWJZ84MdJb7BdupAKMd/s400/word.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
My friend Jeffrey Pomerantz calls the literary something or other I created a "xanolex," which apparently means "to lose words." A friend of Jeff's a poet named Paul Jones, said that the correct term for it is a "thanatolex."<br />
<br />
Whatever you call it, I did it, so if one of those words becomes an official word in the English language, well, maybe I'll get into the Oxford English Dictionary yet.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://derekleif.com/styled-53/styled-54/" target="_blank">What I did was write a story of about 1,100 words that didn't repeat a single word. It is a science fiction story called "Bits," and you can find it on my website. Just click on this paragraph, and you'll get to it.</a><br />
<br />
I'm not in the habit of bragging, but now is one of those times where I'm going to do so.<br />
<br />
I am impressed with myself.<br />
<br />
Think about it. The. And. By. For. But. To. This. That. You. Me. He. She. Him. Her. The. In. Out. Who. What. When. Where. Why. How. A. I. Those. These. Which. Said. Once. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.<br />
<br />
Imagine writing more than four double-spaced pages and not being able to use any of these words twice.<br />
<br />
And now imagine, as you go through it, that you find a place where you used the same word twice. Maybe you used the word "gesture" more than once. So you change one of those "gesture"s to "hand signal."<br />
<br />
But you can't, because you've already used "hand" someplace before. So you change "hand" to "signal with fingers."<br />
<br />
But you can't do that, because you used "with" somewhere else. So you change it to "finger signal."<br />
<br />
But then you find out that you used the word "fingers" already.<br />
<br />
You get the idea.<br />
<br />
(And yes, I practically wore out the "Find" function on my word processor, hunting for multiple occurrences of the same word. And yes, I had to call the thing a "narrative processing program" in my story, because, of course, I needed to use "word" at the beginning.)<br />
<br />
Ultimately, I blame my friend Tom Harrington for this.<br />
<br />
Tom is a friend of mine from back in the day at UMASS. He is one of those people I have not seen in years who I still call a best friend. He's that kind of guy.<br />
<br />
Tom has an identical twin brother, Bill. I would not know Bill if it were not were Tom, and Bill really was the one who started all this.<br />
<br />
Yes, my friend Jeff was really the one who read Bill's comment on one of my Facebook posts and thought to himself "hmmm....what could I do to reduce my friend Derek to insane, whimpering ball of retentiveness?" But Jeff would not have done this had Bill not posted the Facebook comment that inspired Jeff to lay down his challenge, the challenge that, surprisingly, did not result in a nervous breakdown.<br />
<br />
(Another friend of mine, my karate sensei Mike Katayanagi--who is an extremely detail oriented guy--said that he almost lost his mind simply <i>reading</i> it and hunting for a multiple word use.)<br />
<br />
It began so innocently. Last Monday--March 18th, to be exact--I was proud of myself. I'd cranked out a couple of hundred words of my next book, and had passed the 12,000 word mark (12,189, to be exact). I was proud.<br />
<br />
So I posted my word count on Facebook:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="clearfix mbs pbs -cx-PRIVATE-fbTimelineUnitActor__root" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(229, 229, 229); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; text-align: left; zoom: 1;">
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<span class="fcg" style="color: grey;"><span class="fwb" style="font-weight: bold;"><a aria-controls="js_21" aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_21" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1508681343" href="https://www.facebook.com/derekleif" id="js_22" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer;">Derek Leif</a></span></span></h5>
<div class="-cx-PRIVATE-fbTimelineUnitActor__timestamp fsm fwn fcg" style="color: grey; line-height: 15px;">
<a class="uiLinkSubtle" href="https://www.facebook.com/derekleif/posts/4561909894984" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">March 18</a><br />
<div class="uiSelector inlineBlock audienceSelector timelineAudienceSelector audienceSelectorNoTruncate dynamicIconSelector uiSelectorNormal uiSelectorDynamicTooltip" style="display: inline-block; margin-left: 1px; margin-top: -3px; max-width: 200px; vertical-align: top; zoom: 1;">
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<a ajaxify="/ajax/privacy/privacy_menu.php?iconsize=small&oid=4561909894984" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="1" aria-label="Your friends" class="uiSelectorButton uiButton uiButtonSuppressed uiButtonNoText" data-hover="tooltip" data-label="" data-length="30" data-oid="4561909894984" data-tooltip-alignh="center" data-tooltip="Your friends" href="https://www.facebook.com/derekleif#" rel="toggle" role="button" style="-webkit-box-shadow: none; background-color: transparent; background-image: none; background-position: 100% -202px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: auto; border: 1px solid transparent; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-weight: bold; line-height: 13px; max-width: 169px; padding: 2px 20px 2px 8px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;"><i class="mrs defaultIcon customimg img sp_6kv7bx sx_a154fd" style="background-image: url(https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/yw/r/hJLyaPZeSvx.png); background-position: -40px -544px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: auto; display: inline-block; height: 12px; margin-left: -2px; margin-right: 1px; margin-top: 2px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: top; width: 12px;"></i></a></div>
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<div class="-cx-PRIVATE-fbTimelineText__featured" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<span class="userContent">Word count: 12,189.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
I've been doing that as a sort of spur to keep writing. Every day that I work on the book I post the word count so that now if I slack it's going to be obvious to all of my friends that I'm not writing.<br />
<br />
(and a quick aside, by the way: I have very few Facebook friends. Some time ago I got rid of all the Facebook "friends" who were not my friends, particularly those from high school. Okay, actually, I unfriended <i>everybody</i>, and then, after I'd gotten that out of my system, asked about 25 people if they'd mind being my friend again. <a href="http://derekleif.blogspot.com/2011/09/unfriending.html" target="_blank">You can read about that by clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
Anyway, Bill then posted:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="UFICommentContent" id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0]" style="background-color: #edeff4; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">
<a aria-controls="js_19" aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_19" class="UFICommentActorName" content="Bill Harrington" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100002616354926" href="https://www.facebook.com/bill.harrington.31" id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Bill Harrington</a><span id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]">You say that's the word count, but I'll bet you used a couple of them more than once.</span></div>
<div class="UFICommentActions fsm fwn fcg" id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1]" style="background-color: #edeff4; clear: both; color: grey; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; padding-top: 2px; text-align: left;">
<span id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0][0]"></span><a class="uiLinkSubtle" data-ft="{"tn":"N"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/derekleif/posts/4561909894984?comment_id=4430252&offset=0&total_comments=4" id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0][1]" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><abbr class="livetimestamp" content="March 19 at 3:18am" data-utime="1363677531" id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0][1].0" style="border-bottom-style: none;" title="Tuesday, March 19, 2013 at 3:18am">March 19 at 3:18am</abbr></a><span id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0][2]"> via </span><a class="uiLinkSubtle" content="mobile" href="https://www.facebook.com/mobile/" id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0][3]" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">mobile</a><span id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0][4]"></span></span><span id=".reactRoot[188].[1][2][1]{comment4561909894984_4430252}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[1]"> ·</span></div>
<br />
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(Incidentally, Bill does not stay up until the wee hours trolling through Facebook. He lives in the U.K., where it's five hours later.)<br />
<br />
Bill's comment prompted me, on Tuesday, to update my novel progress thusly:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="clearfix mbs pbs -cx-PRIVATE-fbTimelineUnitActor__root" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(229, 229, 229); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; text-align: left; zoom: 1;">
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<span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Word count: 13,494*. The asterisk is at the request of</span><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100002616354926&extragetparams=%7B%22group_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/bill.harrington.31?group_id=0" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Bill Harrington</a><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">, who quite rightly pointed out that fact that there are many words that I used more than once, such as "the."</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
Granted, Tom tried to rush to my defense with:<br />
<br />
<div class="UFICommentContent" id=".reactRoot[172].[1][2][1]{comment4566005517372_4432019}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0]" style="background-color: #edeff4; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">
<a aria-controls="js_20" aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_20" class="UFICommentActorName" content="Tom Harrington" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000488932866" href="https://www.facebook.com/tom.harrington.14" id=".reactRoot[172].[1][2][1]{comment4566005517372_4432019}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Tom Harrington</a><span id=".reactRoot[172].[1][2][1]{comment4566005517372_4432019}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[172].[1][2][1]{comment4566005517372_4432019}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]">Based on Bill's criteria, Gertrude Stein never wrote anything over 100 words.</span></div>
<br />
But the damage was done, and this was the point at which Jeff decided to demonstrate what a sadistic man he can be when he sets his mind to it.<br />
<br />
I mean, I love to write. If someone gives me a challenge, I'm going to at least give it a shot.<br />
<br />
Jeff probably knew that when he posted:<br />
<br />
<div class="UFICommentContent" id=".reactRoot[172].[1][2][1]{comment4566005517372_4432221}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0]" style="background-color: #edeff4; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">
<a aria-controls="js_18" aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_18" class="UFICommentActorName" content="Jeffrey Pomerantz" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=2735801" href="https://www.facebook.com/pomerantz" id=".reactRoot[172].[1][2][1]{comment4566005517372_4432221}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Jeffrey Pomerantz</a><span id=".reactRoot[172].[1][2][1]{comment4566005517372_4432221}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[172].[1][2][1]{comment4566005517372_4432221}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]">I hereby challenge you to write a minimum of 1,000 words without repeating any even once. It would be even more impressive than writing a novel without using the letter S.</span></div>
<br />
Actually, there is a term for writing without a particular letter: <i>lipogram</i>. For example, if I have to rewrite "Mary Had a Little Lamb" without the letter "A," I might get:<br />
<br />
<i>Sweet girl M, with little sheep</i><br />
<i>With pretty wool, white snow,</i><br />
<i>Wherever precious sweet M went</i><br />
<i>The sheep would surely go </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Thank you. Thank you very much.<br />
<br />
For the record--I don't have my<i> Book of Lists</i> handy, but it's in there somewhere (actually, <i>The Book of Lists 2, </i>I think)--there was a poet who actually wrote several <i>Mary</i> lipograms, each leaving out a letter (The one without "I" began: <i>"Mary had a pygmy lamb..."</i>).<br />
<br />
Perhaps the most celebrated lipogram was the certifiably insane work <i>Gadsby</i>, a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. This genuinely deranged project involved writing a 50,000 word piece of fiction....<i>without the letter "E." </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<a href="http://spinelessbooks.com/gadsby/" target="_blank">(Here's a link to the book, by the way.)</a><br />
<i><br /></i>
This is madness. About two-thirds of all the words in the English language have the letter "e." Check out how awkward the sentence following this one is when we leave out the letter "e." Look, if you will, at this cluster of words, and see, if you will, how difficult a task it is to tap out a bunch of words that lack this vital...um....wait...can't tap out that word, can I..so I will tap out...character.<br />
<br />
And that was one sentence.<br />
<br />
The author, in the introduction, claims that he actually tied down the "e" key so he wouldn't accidentally let an "e" slip in there.<br />
<br />
To give you an idea of how awkward writing can get without that vital letter, here's an excerpt:<br />
<br />
<i>Upon this basis I am going to show you how a bunch of bright young folks did find a champion; a man with boys and girls of his own; a man of so dominating and happy individuality that Youth is drawn to him as is a fly to a sugar bowl. It is a story about a small town. It is not a gossipy yarn; nor is it a dry, monotonous account, full of such customary “fill-ins” as “romantic moonlight casting murky shadows down a long, winding country road.” Nor will it say anything about tinklings lulling distant folds; robins carolling at twilight, nor any “warm glow of lamplight” from a cabin window. No. It is an account of up-and-doing activity; a vivid portrayal of Youth as it is today; and a practical discarding of that worn-out notion that “a child don’t know anything.”</i><br />
<br />
...you get the picture.<br />
<br />
With this stunt of mine, I have joined the ranks of people who have written a piece of "constrained writing;" that is, writing that has some sort of strict rule. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing" target="_blank">Jeff (<i>him</i> again) sent me the Wikipedia link, which is here.</a><br />
<br />
I am proud to now be a member of such a club (I was also pretty impressed with the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" thing too, if you want to know the truth). At the same time, however, it's mighty nice to once again be back in the world of multiple uses of the same word, and all 26 letters of the alphabet. Suddenly, all the rest of my writing seems a lot easier.<br />
<br />
<br />Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-87763632721661001962013-03-19T14:51:00.001-04:002013-07-08T16:54:45.521-04:00Conjuring Hugh Jackman (Or: Why the Film "The Prestige" is, Alas, a Bit Hard to Swallow) (Or: An Amusing Lesson in Physics)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV7tVQNdZMUohJmQ4haXUzJekQwkSuwXkSCVCv2d2lk7xEhQc8ipCXC4YbB35zTfclG-S-QhdaetIZfLAuhsPH1WOwLUkW4cb3MZPYTsWZt6OpqnBdGUzL0LjxQU8T-HWUBXOTlyhSO1HY/s1600/image.php.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV7tVQNdZMUohJmQ4haXUzJekQwkSuwXkSCVCv2d2lk7xEhQc8ipCXC4YbB35zTfclG-S-QhdaetIZfLAuhsPH1WOwLUkW4cb3MZPYTsWZt6OpqnBdGUzL0LjxQU8T-HWUBXOTlyhSO1HY/s320/image.php.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(First off, a warning: if you have not seen the film <i>The Prestige</i> and would like to avoid spoilers that will basically give away the entire film, then stop reading. Go see the film, and then read this. I have now warned you.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay, time for a glib science lesson that is nonetheless pretty cool. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It all involves Einstein’s legendary formula E=MC2, and the film <i>The Prestige.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To set this up, let’s make E=MC2 really simple (physicists probably won't like this, but so it goes). Then we’ll get to <i>The Prestige</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Trust me, it will be amusing. I found it amusing. Admittedly, I wrote this, but I still found it amusing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So okay:</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">E=MC2…</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">…Means, as we all know:</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Energy=Mass x The Speed of Light Squared</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Which means…</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Energy=mass x a really, really big number</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Which means….</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The amount of energy you can get from something= its mass x a really big number</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Which means</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The amount of energy you can get from even a small amount of something=a really big number, as in, a whole lot of energy.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In order to really see this formula in action, you need to have atoms either break apart or fuse together. When this happens, there’s a certain amount of what was there before that simply….isn’t there anymore. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To repeat: yes, when atomic bombs blow up there’s a certain amount of uranium (or plutonium) that simply…isn’t there anymore. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The thing that makes this mind blowing is that if you can convert matter to energy, the reverse is true. If you have a huge amount of energy kicking around you can actually create matter from it.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So to simplify this (and physicists, I know that this is a gross simplification; be kind, or just…I don’t know, go play with your Higgs boson particle):</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">1 gram of stuff can get you the energy equivalent of about 20,000 tons of TNT (that was the destructive power of the Little Boy atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima).</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">…So if you have the energy equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT kicking around, you can make a gram of stuff.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay. The next thing we’re going to do is convert those units of energy from tons of TNT to an energy unit called a <i>joule</i>. We need to do this for the other stuff that comes later in this post (and I’ve just about gotten to the point where I’m going to explain what this has to do with the film <i>The Prestige</i>).</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now if we consult Wikipedia (which I’m consulting, in spite of its notorious unreliability, due to the fact this is a blog entry, and not a physics paper), we find out that 1 gram of explosive plutonium (okay, not uranium, but just bear with me) will yield 89.9 terajoules of energy. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Once again: considering that this is a blog post, let’s just say that 1 gram equals 90 terajoules, or 90 trillion joules.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So you need 90 trillion joules of energy to create one gram of something.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">(Remembering, of course, that 90 trillion joules of energy was the yield of the Little Boy atomic bomb.) </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So now let’s get to <i>The Presitige.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In <i>The Prestige</i>, a key element of the plot involves a fictional device of Nicola Tesla’s that allows people to create duplicates of themselves. It just conjures these duplicates out of thin air; there’s no need, for example, to gather large clusters of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen. All you need is this device. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hugh Jackman uses this device to create many, many copies of himself. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s talk about how much energy it takes to create even <i>one </i>Hugh Jackman. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, admittedly, I’m not using the Hugh Jackman from <i>The Prestige </i>as my model. Instead, I’m using Wolverine Jackman, became Jackman gained an insane amount of weight in pure muscle to look as jacked as he did in those films, consuming about 6,000 calories a day. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now. To make the math clean, let’s just put his weight, fully clothed, at 220. He weighed a bit more than 210, and clothes can weigh a few pounds.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">(And anyway, the film makes it clear that <i>anyone</i> can make a duplicate of themselves. So I’m making a duplicate Wolverine Hugh Jackman. It’s my right.) </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I say 220 because that easily converts to 100 kilograms.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In other words, Hugh Jackman Wolverine weighs about ten thousand grams.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, let’s remember that it took about 90 trillion joules of energy just to create one gram of something. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But if we want to create one Wolverine Hugh Jackman, we need to create <i> one hundred housand grams of something</i>.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If we multiply 100,000 by 90,000,000,000,000, we get 9,000,000,000,000,000,000 (nine quintillion) joules.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, considering that there are many other things that we see created in this film—rabbits, top hats—let’s make it easy for ourselves and just round it up to ten quintillion. That allows us to simplify it, in scientific notation, as 10 to the 18<span style="font-size: 9px;"><sup>th</sup></span> power. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So…how much energy is 10 quintillion joules, the amount of energy necessary to conjure one Wolverine Hugh Jackman (and some top hats and rabbits) out of thin air?</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Put it this way: 10 quintillion joules, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)" target="_blank">according to Wikipedia</a> (and there’s a way cool diagram at <a href="http://circlon-theory.com/HTML/joules.html">http://circlon-theory.com/HTML/joules.html</a>) is the yearly electricity consumption of South Korea.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wait, there’s more. One element of the plot concerns the fact that Hugh Jackman creates copies of himself frequently, which means that it’s entirely possible that he’s created 100 copies of himself (a concept with which, no doubt, many women have no problem whatsoever). </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To create 100 Hugh Jackmans, you’d one sextillion joules (10 to the 20th), which is the entire annual energy consumption <i>of the world. </i>Again: this is <i>all</i> energy, not just electricity.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, to mess with your mind even further, here’s a sobering fact:</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a lot of energy at all. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In a day, the earth receives 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 to the 22<span style="font-size: 9px;"><sup>nd</sup></span>, or 100 <i>sextillion</i>) joules of energy from the sun.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s enough energy to create 10,000,000 Hugh Jackmans.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And that, of course, is only a fraction of the total energy that the sun puts out in a day, which is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 to the 32<span style="font-size: 9px;"><sup>nd</sup></span>, or 1 <i>dectillion</i>) joules of energy. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is enough energy to produce 100,000,000,000,000,000 (100 <i>quadrillion</i>) Hugh Jackmans.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And this is small potatoes compared to a supernova (an exploding star), which gives off so much energy, that it’s just a lot easier to express it in my new unit of energy measurement, The Jackman (which, as you may remember, equals 10 quintillion joules of energy). </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A supernova is 1 septillion Jackmans. That is, you can create 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 to the 23rd) Hugh Jackmans from a supernova.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And a supernova is just one star. It is estimated that there are about 100 sextillion (10 to the 20th) stars in the universe.</span><br />
<br />
This effectively means that if every star were to spontaneously explode and devote all energy to creating Hugh Jackmans--if, in other words, it were Jackman's Universe, and no one else (and nothing else) lived in it--there would be 10 to the 43rd, or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Hugh Jackmans in the Universe.</div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The science lesson is over. Go have a donut. And watch <i>The Prestige</i>. It’s a great film.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-82045347593547348582013-03-15T08:13:00.001-04:002013-03-20T20:55:00.165-04:00On Consulting the News for Something to Write About (Or: The Adorable Little Higgs Boson Particle)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-TaEGFemnlVxXdf3pQhnPgXZG2niRIy6xwQu6dT9vuqR6q_ejbojJE0glu3K4hlQUUK2vVaOnXBbZWIy6r9bjXpOk0aYljB4GHO5Kp635CfymhDGjrpoOMp4PPNuRa1H3DzUVle7jfEEP/s1600/650px-CMS_Higgs-event.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-TaEGFemnlVxXdf3pQhnPgXZG2niRIy6xwQu6dT9vuqR6q_ejbojJE0glu3K4hlQUUK2vVaOnXBbZWIy6r9bjXpOk0aYljB4GHO5Kp635CfymhDGjrpoOMp4PPNuRa1H3DzUVle7jfEEP/s320/650px-CMS_Higgs-event.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.derekleif.com/" target="_blank">(First, shameless self promotion: I have a website, and I wrote a book that you can read on said website. To get to all these things--along with a bevy of essays that are snappy and witty, thank you very much--click here.)</a><br />
<br />
An update: I've had, honest, 102 views of my blog <i>from the Ukraine</i>. And yesterday, I got two views from <i>Saudi Arabia.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Anyway:<br />
<br />
When I need something to write about, I turn to a wonderful book called <i>The Observation Deck </i>that offers fifty prompts for writing. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Observation-Deck-Writers-Present/dp/0811814815/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363343140&sr=8-1&keywords=observation+deck" target="_blank">(Writers take note: you can get a copy of it by clicking here).</a><br />
<br />
One of the prompts is "consult the news."<br />
<br />
In "consult the news," you go through news stories and write about something. For example, this prompt says, a small <i>New York Times</i> article was the spark for Truman Capote's <i>In Cold Blood</i>. I was not aware, until I read this particular prompt, that the book--the true story of two miscreants, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, who murdered the Clutter family in rural Kansas when a burglary went horribly wrong--began with a one column piece buried deep inside the paper.<br />
<br />
It other words, the smallest thing can get you writing. And as I think about the smallest thing, my mind turns to the discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle that physicist Leon Lederman called "The God Particle (many other physicists hate this term, by the way, because it sensationalizes the whole thing; still, it's way cool)."<br />
<br />
Without getting too technical, the search for the Higgs boson is one of the reasons that, a few years ago, they built a massive, multi-billion dollar particle accelerator underneath Switzerland (and parts of France, I think). Deep beneath Switzerland (and France, I think) subatomic particles travel 17 miles in an instant, and hit each other. When this happens, the particles break open, revealing even tinier particles.<br />
<br />
In 1964, Peter Higgs, along with five other physicists (Robert Brout, Francois Englerts, Gerald Guralnik, C. Richard Hagen, and Tom Kibble) first theorized the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle that is, to particle physicists, what Hydrogen is to chemists...that is, the building block of, well, everything, the "something" that gives everything mass (and thank you Wikipedia, and I apologize if I got any names or details wrong). Since then, scientists have tried to get a "sample" of this particle with a particle accelerator.<br />
<br />
And yesterday, it seems as if they did just that. I loved reading about how 83 year-old Peter Higgs got to see, in his lifetime, the confirmation of a theory he formulated almost 50 years ago.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://gawker.com/5923618/the-non+nerds-guide-to-the-god-particle-the-holy-grail-of-particle-physics" target="_blank">(And also, by the way: here's an article that explains this way better then I did.)</a><br />
<br />
(A disclaimer: the discovery of this particle is still tentative, by the way, but still, the team of scientists are almost certain that they were successful.)<br />
<br />
Instantly, as the news kept churning out with information about the "search for the Higgs boson," I could not help but imagine physicists reduced to subatomic size, all of them wearing pith helmets, accompanied by a subatomic camera crew for a subatomic Discovery Channel special.<br />
<br />
"Ah, the Higgs boson particle," the voice over in my mind said, as I imagined watching subatomic television, "since a team of physicists first theorized its existence in 1964, it has been camera shy. But now, for the first time, we're able to record this particle in its natural habitat."<br />
<br />
Instantly (for I'm afraid this is the way my mind works), I saw these subatomic naturalists parting subatomic reeds, and gasping as, for the first time, subatomic cameras caught this subatomic particle that sort of looked like a subatomic koala bear, munching on subatomic eucalyptus.<br />
<br />
Then I imagined these same scientists domesticating these particles, and imagined subatomic families going to subatomic stray particle shelters, adopting little bosons, quarks and leptons. I imagined these families spoiling those particles, so that they ran all over the subatomic house, chewing on subatomic furniture and barking so as to keep subatomic neighbors late at night.<br />
<br />
Then it became necessary to call a subatomic Caesar Millan, "The Fermion Whisperer," who said stuff like "just because he gives the universe mass does not mean that you can let him push you around. You must be the atom, the particle leader, and realize that your fermion is in YOUR orbit, not the other way around."<br />
<br />
"You must exercise your particle every day, and show him who's boss" this subatomic Caesar Milan said, "or else the particle will get angry, and enter the red zone, where it will feel as if it must fight. And this is when I get calls from people who say 'my little pet is destroying the fabric of the universe.'"<br />
<br />
Finally, this subatomic Caesar Milan looks all thoughtful and reflective, in a Heisenbergian sort of way:<br />
<br />
"Buy there is something even more important to think about," he says. "If you're not there to observe your little darling misbehaving, <i>is he even misbehaving at all? </i>There's so much uncertainty here."<br />
<br />
So this is what happens when <i>I </i>consult the news. This is <i>my</i> problem.<br />
<br />
Any enterprising readers/writers who wish to consult the news will, doubt, come up with something far less glib, and--appropriately enough for a post that's all about the mass of the universe--far more substantial.<br />
<br />
(Speaking of which, I just thought of a joke:<br />
Q: What did the Higgs boson particle with self esteem issues say to his therapist?<br />
A: "I just don't feel like my existence is substantial in any way.")<br />
<br />
(And an old Higgs boson joke that I just came across in that article to which the link above takes you:<br />
A Higgs boson particle walks into a Catholic church. The priest says "we don't allow hypothetical particles in here." The Higgs boson says "but without me, you can't have mass!")<br />
<br />
I gotta go.<br />
<br />
<br />Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-32798393178452011232013-03-12T11:26:00.001-04:002013-03-21T08:23:08.679-04:00Why I have a notepad in my back pocketSince I was 19, I've pretty much written every day. I always carry a notepad with me, usually in my back pocket. I like Moleskines, because they have a little pocket in the back cover in which I can stash a few three by five notecards for when I have to leave a small note for someone.<br />
<br />
This has often come in handy. There are things that I would have lost forever had I not scribbled them down, sometimes in the jagged scrawl of someone who had been asleep ten or fifteen seconds of earlier. <br />
<br />
A sample of one page:<br />
<br />
<i>"What'll it be?" asked the waiter.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>"That's just it," she said, sobbing, "you always ask me 'what'll it be' or 'what'll I have,' and I don't KNOW what it will be, or what I'll have."</i><br />
<br />
Such things, of course, can lead to:<br />
<br />
<i>"I'm so alone," she said, dabbing at the corner of her eyes in a futile attempt to stanch the flood of tears that were making her mascara run, "and the worst part is, I don't know my future. I mean, I have a B.A. in Art History. ART HISTORY, for God's sake! What am I going to do with that, become an art historian?"</i><br />
<br />
And now I wonder: what if Art History were the hot, up and coming major of the 21st Century? What if suddenly people's lives depended on the knowledge of Rembrandt's chiaroscuro technique? What if the dialogue at a job interviews included:<br />
<br />
"I don't see any Mondrian on your resume; I'm sorry, but we're looking to design a rotary engine according to the aesthetic specifications of his work, so I'm afraid you need some more experience. You might want to try Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; RPI has an excellent program devoted to De Stijl."<br />
<br />
With this said, wouldn't it be awesome if there actually were a program in, I don't know, Abstract Expressionist Engineering? Wouldn't it be great if there were a class where a professor said "so...what exactly was Gottlieb Daimler trying to <i>tell</i> us in his design for the internal combustion engine? And where do we see the influences of Nicolaus Otto in Daimler's work?"<br />
<br />
Then I could see this same professor turning to his class, and saying:<br />
<br />
"And how will <i>you</i> make your mark in the art world? What engine will <i>you</i> design that will make someone simply sit in a museum for hours as your work makes them transcend their very existence, and rise to a higher plane of consciousness?'"<br />
<br />
Similarly, wouldn't it be great if engineering teachers taught art? Then you would have classes where the professor would turn to the class and say "remember Richard Serra's massive Skullcracker sculptures?"<br />
<br />
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<br />
"....Well, who's to say we can't design one that flies?"<br />
<br />Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-59614535787406631542013-03-12T07:15:00.001-04:002013-03-12T17:40:25.318-04:00Thanks for devoting over 3,000 years to reading this...So here's the thing: I know my cousin Angela and my friend Jim read the last blog post, in which I discussed baking cookies with your children. I figured I'd hit a pretty large demographic with that one, because a lot of people bake cookies with their children.<br />
<br />
Or, maybe, actually, outside of my cousin and Jim, I hit a different demographic: the people who don't bake cookies with their children at all. Maybe there's someone out there I don't even know, someone who spends so much time at work that they have no time for their children.<br />
<br />
Maybe, yesterday, they were sitting there, glass of wine in their hand, reading my essay and crying while Harry Chapin's "Cats in the Cradle" played for the twenty-fifth time.<br />
<br />
(I realize this begs the question: if said parent had time to drink wine and listen to "Cats in the Cradle" twenty-five times, couldn't they have found some time to bake cookies with their children?)<br />
<br />
The point I'm making here is that I just checked the analytics of yesterday's blog post, and in addition to my cousin and Jim, there are three other people who read what I wrote yesterday. I wonder who they are.<br />
<br />
I've actually had a few posts in which my readership has drifted into the hundreds. <a href="http://www.derekleif.com/styled-39/styled-44/index.html" target="_blank">Some time ago, I wrote an essay about Phineas Gage, the guy who lived on after a pole went through his head (it's actually on my website's essay collection, and you can find it here)</a>. That one actually got hundreds of readers, and is probably my most-read piece of writing ever.<br />
<br />
And yesterday, besides Jim and Angela, there were those other three people. As I sit here at the beginning of the day, cup of coffee by my side, I think of how grateful I am to all these people.<br />
<br />
I look at it this way: we're not on the planet for a whole lot of time. In fact, when you think about the age of the universe, it gets kind of depressing. Time is a precious thing.<br />
<br />
And yesterday, five people devoted some of that time to reading what I wrote.<br />
<br />
It probably takes something in the order of ten minutes to read these blog posts. That means that if a person who reads my blog posts lives to the average age of life expectancy in the United States, they gave up ten minutes out of the seventy-eight years that they will be on this planet. That means that they devoted 1/4,099,680th of their lives to my writing.<br />
<br />
This is a lot, relatively speaking. If the universe--which is about about 13.7 billion years old--devoted the same proportional amount of time to reading my writing, it would be giving up 3,341.7 years of its life, or 5.56 years for every second it spends reading my blog post.<br />
<br />
And I tell you, if I were a universe and a parallel universe read my blog posts--let alone five parallel universes--I'd be grateful. Furthermore, I'd want to tell those other parallel universes that often things that seem trivial to them might be interesting to me.<br />
<br />
24 hours is the same proportional chunk of our lives as 481,208 years is to the universe. If the universe had a blog, it could conceivably have thought that yesterday just wasn't all that exciting.<br />
<br />
I could see the universe saying to me "man...I have nothing to write about. I mean, I'd like to go back to the old days, back to the Big Bang, when things were <i>really </i>happening. Yesterday was so lame. All that happened yesterday was that Homo Erectus evolved into Modern Humans."<br />
<br />
"Of course, at the beginning of the day, humans didn't have a name for them or anything, but now they do. Of course, if I told you about yesterday in detail, it would probably bore you. I'm sure you don't want to hear anything about Neanderthals; they got there at, like, 8AM, and were gone a few hours later."<br />
<br />
"You know," I'd say, "instead of drinking wine and listening to 'Cat's Cradle' like, two billion, six hundred and thirty four million, six hundred and fifteen thousand, three hundred and eighty four times, you could have devoted 20,0050 years (one hour, proportionally speaking) to baking cookies with your kid. I mean, Crikey, man, don't tell me that, when you look at all those stars, you don't see a little bit of yourself in them."<br />
<br />
Anyway, if you've gotten this far, thanks for staying with me. It was, like, The Bronze Age when you started reading this (and I'm sure it felt that way).<br />
<br />Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-38860643388981406312013-03-11T22:34:00.003-04:002013-03-12T17:40:54.651-04:00Why I Wish You'd Update Your Blog, My FriendHere's why, if you're one of my (very few) friends, that you owe it to me to update your blog.<br />
<br />
First, I know it's dispiriting. I write, I post, I get, like, five or six pageviews<i>.</i><br />
<br />
But still, I write.<br />
<br />
I do it because I love it when my friends write.<br />
<br />
There's something about a friend's updated blog that always seems puts me in a good mood. North Korea is important news, but for me, the <i>most </i>important news of the day concerns how my friends are doing.<br />
<br />
"You have a dog," I can say to a friend with a smile, "I've been keeping up with current events."<br />
<br />
Yes, there are Facebook posts, but I'm greedy. I want more.<br />
<br />
I don't just want to know about those chocolate chip cookies that you baked with your kid, I want to know that you do this because when you baked cookies with your mom you kind of felt like it was one of those special times where one of your parents had set aside this chunk of their life just for you and only you, and that now you're baking cookies with your kid because you want to keep that tradition going, and want your kid to know that they're always going to be the most special and perfect thing in creation to you, no matter what happens.<br />
<br />
Anyway, in the news of Derek Leif's life, I can tell you that right now, at this moment, he is listening to Russ Borris's show <i>The Alternate Side </i>on WFUV, specifically the song "Ceremony" by New Order. It is a good song. It makes him think of how this band rose from the ashes of Joy Division after lead singer Ian Curtis took his own life, two months shy of 24.<br />
<br />
And such songs make Derek Leif think of the good things that rise out of the most devastating tragedies. This, in turn, makes him think of the fact that each and every one of his friends probably has had, by this time, one or two certifiably tragic events in their lives, probably more.<br />
<br />
And yet they bake cookies with their kids, or, in the case of Derek's friends, make french toast with their daughter, put powdered sugar on it, then raspberries on the side, and then, after putting a cup of coffee on the right side of the tray and a mimosa on the left, take a picture of their daughter bringing Mom breakfast in bed.<br />
<br />
That is the news at this time. Good Night, and Good Luck.Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-43664433868926764632013-03-11T15:57:00.001-04:002013-03-12T17:46:50.189-04:00Musings on a Starbuck's Coffee Stirrer Thingee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
To the left of me is one of those plastic things that they put in the opening of the lids of Starbuck's coffee cups so that the coffee doesn't dribble on you when you're bringing it back to your table. Years from now, someone will clean out their house and come across one of these stirrer things, and say "remember when Starbuck's used to put these things in the opening of the lids of the coffee cups?"<br />
<br />
Maybe, for someone, that green stirrer thingee might be a keepsake from their lives that means more to them than anything else in the word.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it reminds them of a time when they bought a cappuccino for a person they had a secret crush on, and how the object of said crush dipped the stirrer into the cappuccino so that it had a dollop of foam on it, and then drew a mustache on the person who had a crush on them, causing that person to feel all tingly and feel like the must lucky person in the whole wide world.<br />
<br />
And then I could see fate separating these two people for some reason, and then I could see them meeting, like, years later, and totally hitting it off, and at some point, the person who had a crush on the other person would talk about how they were going through this box of stuff from years and years ago, and how they came across that Starbuck's stirrer thingee, and how, for a long while, that was this person's most precious possession.<br />
<br />
For all I know, perhaps it still is.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-9654158360482436562012-12-23T17:23:00.000-05:002013-04-08T10:23:57.239-04:00Some Thoughts on Comfort Food Writing (or..Writing an Essay about Not Being Able to Write an Essay)(A quick note: if you want to read some of these posts in an easier-to-navigate essay format, simply go to <a href="http://www.derekleif.com/">www.derekleif.com</a>. It's that simple.)<br />
<div class="p1">
<br />
<span class="s1">I keep journals. Long ones. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I hardly read them. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Okay, better explain this...</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>There is a type of writing I do--a type of writing I've done for almost 25 years, in fact--that I playfully call "comfort food writing." </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">This is a euphemism for "writing that accomplishes little, if anything, but fills a part of my day." </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I often do this writing in the morning, when I'm drinking my coffee and can't think of anything to write. Often, it will go something like this:</div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><i>Can't think of anything to write, can't think of anything to write, can't think of anything to write. Stuff on the counter includes the new issue of Wired, a microfiber cloth for cleaning fingerprints off of my iPad, a 3.5mm audio jack for said iPad, something from National Grid concerning meter readings in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and a Christmas card for the previous owners of the house, who clearly didn't tell everyone that they've moved.</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></i>And then I'll move on to the self-indulgent stuff. I love the self-indulgent stuff:</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><i>Still writing. Why do I just write this self-indulgent stuff that will never see the light of day? Why, for 25 years, have I gotten up and written what, at times, has been upwards of 2000 words that have no practical use whatsoever?</i></span><br />
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></i>Then I'll probably start talking about my past. I so enjoy doing that:</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><i>Why, in college, did I not take up the ukulele? Now I know how to play an instrument in which I can actually write down ideas for chord progressions, which means that, had I known how to do this back then, I would have been able to collaborate with all those folks in the dorm who played instruments. True, I played drums, but that's not exactly an instrument that you can play on your own to get song ideas. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>And don't even get me started on karate. Boy, could I have used that in eighth grade. I would have beaten the people who bullied me to a bloody pulp. Those would have been good times. </i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></i>...then, of course, I come to the wallowing self pity. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><i>Why am I just sitting here, drinking coffee, doing nothing? I could be practicing karate. I could be composing songs. I could be writing novels. Why, in God's name, am I not doing this? I have friends who seem to do so much with their day, so much with their lives. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>And these people seem so capable of getting things done. They're posting to their blogs. They're working on their websites. They're composing songs. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I could be doing this. If I actually had started doing things years ago, I would be...</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></i>Stop. That's enough. I think you get the idea. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Self indulgent writing--my term for the writing in which you write it for no one but yourself--is, as I said before, the comfort food of writing. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Yes, there's a place for it. For the first fifteen minutes of the morning, there's something to be said for just letting go in a free write. Peter Elbow recommends this in <i>Writing With Power,</i> another writing advice book in which I read the first 15 or so pages and then gave up. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>(There are many, many books in which I've read the first 15 pages and given up. You have no idea.)</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Anyway, yes, there is a place for that kind of writing. Ray Bradbury also talks about a second cousin of this type of writing in the introduction to his massive story collection. In Bradbury's case, it's all about making stream of consciousness lists, such as:</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><i>The moment in time. This moment in time. A second. One fraction of a second. The Big Bang. The first instant of The Big Bang. Slicing that first instant into ever smaller pieces, paper thin, molecule thin, element-splitting thin, electron-spinning thin, quark-spinning thin. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Thin enough to split a quark. I like that. I like that part. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Janet Jackson saying "I like that part" from the song "Nasty Boys," which my friend Naomi played in her Toyota Supra endlessly during 1986, when Ashe battled zombies in "The Evil Dead," and asked who's laughing now as he cut off his arm with a chainsaw. Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics saying that theres's nothing more beautiful than a revved up chainsaw. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>And so on. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>And so it goes. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Linda Ellerbie signing off at the end of NBC's evening show "Overnight," when she would say "and so it goes, and so we go." This before the age of infomercials, when you actually had to put something of substance on the air between 12 and 6 in the morning, although most stations signed off well before six with the national anthem. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>The national anthem, and then snow on the TV. Think about it: most people growing up in this day and age have never seen video snow; just a blue screen and a message on the set that says something like "signal not located." </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>But we don't have a signal. No frequency. What's the Frequency, Kenneth? An assault on Dan Rather, and an REM song. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Billy Bob Thornton on Real Time With Bill Maher talking about 60s music, and saying "alright, I'll give you U2 and REM...what else came out of the 80s?" </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Forgetting, apparently, The Pixies, The Replacements, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Big Daddy Kane, NWA, Fishbone, They Might Be Giants, Husker Du, The Dead Milkmen, Miracle Legion, Black Flag, The Suicidal Tendencies, The Stray Cats, Fugazi, Minor Threat, The Silos, The Feelies, X, Billy Bragg (who yes, started performing in 1977, but who really didn't rise to prominence until the 80s), The Smithereens, The Raybeats (okay, formed in 1979, but their first record didn't come out till 1981), Jane's Addiction, Tracy Chapman, The Indigo Girls, The Cowboy Junkies, Throwing Muses, and a host of others I've forgotten about, but which someone far more knowledgable about music could add to. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></i>But enough about useful writing like that, the kind of writing that could actually inspire something of worth.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>No, I'm talking about writing that really doesn't accomplish any purpose whatsoever except to justify sitting in the same place, drinking coffee, and doing nothing of any consequence. Yeah. That's the kind of writing that I'm talking about.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Writing such as:</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><i>Okay. Here's what I'm going to do. Today I'm actually going to write some fiction. I'm going to practice my uke and write a song, or at least get started on one. I'm going to practice karate. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Above all, I'm going to get up and stop writing this self-indulgent crap and stop drinking so much damn coffee.</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>But here I go again, making plans on which I will never follow through. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Friends of mine follow through on their plans. They do things. They make things. They are the correct weight. I hate these people. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></i>And, once again, I'm off.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Sometimes I think that I will simply spend the rest of my days writing things that will never see the light of day. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I will be haunted by this till the end of my existence.</span></div>
Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-74259046004554108632012-11-24T21:24:00.002-05:002012-11-24T21:24:55.233-05:00Yeah, Yeah...I know. Long Time Since I Wrote. I Included Some Cool Links to Make it Worth Your While.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJarPLY-hqVY2yg0mJrhKqBecBhwvB8u3lwEAREPaosL6FxxtwtolXZTZp8Sc9BM1XjUI80ZcGSAmq5W3dxIDS2cQYJ1Lj-f_x_gRK3IOLW5OMNxcu28OksA_p0yk9mdLbzb9CyayrZ0C-/s1600/prince_randian2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJarPLY-hqVY2yg0mJrhKqBecBhwvB8u3lwEAREPaosL6FxxtwtolXZTZp8Sc9BM1XjUI80ZcGSAmq5W3dxIDS2cQYJ1Lj-f_x_gRK3IOLW5OMNxcu28OksA_p0yk9mdLbzb9CyayrZ0C-/s320/prince_randian2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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(First off: this photo was just to get your attention. It's a picture of Prince Randian, "The Caterpillar Man." Born without arms or legs, he appeared in sideshows for years, and stars in the 1932 Todd Browning film <i>Freaks. </i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66Pgw_nUlMw" target="_blank">Here's a clip of him in that movie, lighting a cigarette with nothing but his lips and teeth</a>.)<br />
<br />
(And a bit of trivia: <i>he rolled that cigarette, too.</i> Think about that.)<br />
<br />
So there are reasons that I haven’t written in ages. Honest.<br />
<br />
…and that’s all I’m going to write about that.<br />
<br />
Look, if you’re one of the three or four people (on a heavy web traffic day) who even reads this thing, here’s what I notice when I read other blogs:<br />
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I notice that I give up at about the seventh line. It just goes on and on, and it bores me until I can either click away from it, or chew aluminum foil.<br />
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What I’m saying is: do you honestly, really care about why I haven’t written in a while?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
No.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
I wouldn’t.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
If I were reading my blog, it would be because I was first:<br />
<br />
--done checking my email<br />
<br />
--done checking to see if someone liked my Facebook post<br />
<br />
--done using Stumbleupon for a while..<br />
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--done looking up the Wikipedia article on Robert Wadlow (The Alton Giant, the tallest man in history at 8 feet 11.1 inches).<br />
(<a href="http://www.altonweb.com/history/wadlow/" target="_blank">Here's an article about Wadlow</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N4bg1btzY4" target="_blank">here's a video of him</a>.)<br />
<br />
--done looking up Robert Earl Hughes (who Robert Wadlow reminded me of, being that Wadlow was the tallest man, and Robert Earl Hughes, at 1069 pounds, was, for a number of years, one of the heaviest, and <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=hk0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA81&dq=%22Robert+Earl+Hughes%22&lr=&ei=LhWrS968MITylQTGl5CmDQ&cd=12#v=onepage&q=%22Robert%20Earl%20Hughes%22&f=false" target="_blank">you can read about him in this Life Magazine article</a>; of course, since then, the mass production of hydrogenated soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup made made it necessary for me, before reading a blog, to also be…)<br />
<br />
--done looking up Wikipedia’s list of the world’s heaviest people (the heaviest of whom was John Brower Minnoch, at 1400 pounds; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brower_Minnoch" target="_blank">you can read about him by clicking here</a>)<br />
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--Done contemplating the fact that John Brower Minnoch married a 110 pound woman, and fathered two children with her.<br />
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--Done laughing as this in turn makes me cackle at my contemplation of the horror of the conception of Pebbles Flintstone, whose mother was thinner than one of her father’s fingers<br />
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--Done continuing to laugh as I contemplate the David Cronenberg filmlike image of Pebbles’s birth, considering that her head was wider than her mother’s body<br />
<br />
--Done flipping through the notepad I carry with me, which includes quotes from the utterly wretched film <i>Manos: The Hands of Fate</i>, which I’m currently putting to a song for my electric ukulele.<br />
<br />
--Done picking up my ukulele and writing down some chords to my song <i>Manos: The Hands of Fate</i>.<br />
<br />
(<a href="http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1068572,00.html" target="_blank">here's a link to a wonderful Entertainment Weekly article about the film</a>.)<br />
<br />
--done looking up Harry Earles (the diminutive star of Freaks, who appeared as a member of The Lollypop Guild in The Wizard of Oz, who I looked up because all of this writing about unusual people).<br />
(Earles, by the way, performed with his entire family of midgets under the stage name The Doll People. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doll_family" target="_blank">You can read about them by clicking here</a>.)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
--Done watching an amazing video of Jamy Ian Swiss doing some card tricks on Craig Ferguson (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXK1MV-f0Us" target="_blank">click here for that video</a>)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
--Done watching an amazing video of Ricky Jay doing a card trick (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWvRorX0KhQ" target="_blank">click here for that trick</a>)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
--Done watching Marco Tempest doing a remarkable magical presentation at a TED conference (<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_the_magic_of_truth_and_lies_on_ipods.html" target="_blank">click here for that video</a>)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
--Done watching carnival sideshow historian and all around cool guy Todd Robbins eat a light bulb (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECoWZtFO-pU" target="_blank">click here for that video</a>)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
--Done rereading the extremely cool email Todd Robbins wrote me, in which he included directions for walking on glass barefoot without cutting yourself<br />
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--Done reading a page of David Foster Wallace’s <i>Infinite Jest</i>, which I plan to finish sometime in 2014<br />
<br />
--Done with many, many other time wasting things that come to mind<br />
<br />
Then, after all that, after I’ve exhausted all the stuff that I can do to avoid getting back to editing my book, I just might want to have my time wasted in such a way that I feel as if I did something besides waste my time.<br />
<br />
Here’s what I’m saying: if I’m gonna take the time to check the local news of what’s going on in my friend Derek’s life, I want that news show to be awesome.<br />
<br />
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4iNOguCNFQ" target="_blank">Speaking of which, you might be getting bored at this point, so here’s a video of a massive explosion at a Danish fireworks factory</a>.)<br />
<br />
Admittedly, when I think of the friends who are unfortunate enough to actually read my blog (all two or three of them), I’m well aware that my life isn’t all that interesting.<br />
<br />
But maybe that’s actually a plus. A blog that’s too interesting is depressing, because when I compare the interesting life that the person is leading to the depressing life of quiet desperation that I’m leading, I get depressed.<br />
<br />
This is why I never, ever read Neil Gaiman’s blog.<br />
<br />
No, when I’m reading blogs, I know that I have to punch my weight. I don’t want one of those blogs by someone who’s flying off to the Philippines to sign Tagalog editions of his books. I compare that to my sad, sorry existence and feel an enuui that is as weary as Clint Eastwood’s scrotum.<br />
<br />
No. What I want is something I enjoy reading, something from someone who’s just living life the way I’m living life, and trying to make it readable.<br />
<br />
And speaking of readable, if I’m reading the news of my life, here’s what I want:<br />
<br />
First off, I want short paragraphs. I just can’t read the long paragraphs.<br />
<br />
You know those paragraphs in Thomas Pynchon novels (and David Foster Wallace novels, for that matter) that go on for, like, seventeen pages? I get lost in those. I drown in black ink.<br />
<br />
(Speaking of which: this is the reason that I’ve gotten hold of a version of Infinite Jest in Word format, where I actually chop up the paragraphs into shorter, more readable paragraphs. For the record, there’s something gleefully empowering about rewriting David Foster Wallace. I’m just waiting for some intellectual snob to shriek about how I’m defiling a master, just so that I can look at him or her and say “look…it’s not worth killing yourself over.”)<br />
<br />
(<a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/video/harry-kahne" target="_blank">and it's been far too long since I put in a link to something interesting. Here's a link to a video of Harry Kahne, "The Multiple Mental Marvel," who was able to write backward, read, and speak at the same time, among other things. Trust me this video is incredible.</a>)<br />
<br />
I admit it: when I’m reading online, I want those James Patterson paragraphs, the ones that are maybe three sentences, tops.<br />
<br />
In fact, I really don’t mind one sentence paragraphs.<br />
<br />
Come to think of it, I don’t even mind one-sentence paragraphs that come one after another in rapid succession.<br />
<br />
They’re just easy to read.<br />
<br />
And I like things that are easy to read.<br />
<br />
Sorry.<br />
<br />
I just do.<br />
<br />
I guess what I’m saying is, even if there’s nothing going on, I want the nothingness to be amusing. Yeah. Amusing.<br />
<br />
If I’m forced to read my own writing, I find myself saying “Derek…if your life is dull, you gotta put in other things.<br />
<br />
Write about the joys of the greatest show of all time, World’s Scariest Police Chases. While you’re at it, write about World’s Wildest Police Videos.<br />
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TIun536HFo" target="_blank">For kicks and giggles, click here for an awesome video in which a guy steals a tank and drives it on the freeway. The only thing that would make me happier than watching this video is finding out that Richard Rostholder, who terrorized me in eighth grade, is dying of terminal cancer</a>).<br />
(if you want to be technical, Richard Rostholder changed his last name to Perello for some reason, and went on to produce the film Beerfest. As is the case of all victims of bullies, I Google people who made my life miserable.)<br />
<br />
<br />
Write about the challenges involved in taking a drink of water, and then, with the water still in your mouth, attempting to listen to former Life Goes On star Chris “Corky” Burke’s rendition of The Mamas and the Papas’ California Dreamin’ without spraying the water all over the place.<br />
<br />
And yes, I know that for writing this, I must go to hell. Yet I offer this: if ever there was a great line that belongs in a summer action film just before the hero does what a hero’s gotta do, it would be “hey…somebody’s gotta go to hell.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah,” the hero’s sidekick would reply “the same way that, if we listen to Chris “Corky” Burkes rendition of “California Dreamin’” with water in our mouth we spray it all over the place.”<br />
<br />
“Life goes on,” the hero says.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
And I tell you, at that point I cry. I cry as if Dino De Laurentis’s monkey just died.<br />
<br />
I cry the way I cry harder that Jerry Lewis’s clown cried when those kids went to the gas chamber.<br />
<br />
(I oughtta stop here and say that the previous sentence is a reference to the 1972 Jerry Lewis movie The Day the Clown Cried, in which Lewis played Helmut Doork, a supposedly-real-life clown who entertained concentration camp victims. Really. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bsf3-GfE_JoC&lpg=PA42&dq=the%20day%20the%20clown%20cried&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Here’s a link to a great article about this film from the gone-but-by-no-means-forgotten Spy magazine</a>).<br />
<br />
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aJFSpkxjtY" target="_blank">Oh...here’s a video of Chris “Corky” Burke in concert</a>.)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Anyway, back to things to write about:<br />
<br />
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYGGCVE2lKY" target="_blank">Oh, and…uh…if you’re getting bored, here’s a link to the video of Evel Knievel wiping out after his jump over the Caesar’s Palace fountain. It’s glorious</a>.)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Write about Ed Gein, the inspiration for the films Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=j1YEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=ed%20gein%20life%20magazine&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q=ed%20gein%20life%20magazine&f=false" target="_blank">Here is a link to the December 2, 1957 article about him</a>).<br />
<br />
Write about Willard Wigan, who creates works of art that can fit inside the head of a pin (<a href="http://www.willard-wigan.com/gallery.aspx" target="_blank">here’s a gallery of work from his website, by the way</a>).<br />
<br />
Write about The Museum of Jurassic Technology, perhaps the coolest museum on the planet (<a href="http://mjt.org/" target="_blank">here’s their website</a>).<br />
<br />
Write about Phineas Gage, the guy who had a five-foot pole pass through his head…and lived. <a href="http://derekleif.blogspot.com/2010/03/phineas-gage-or-stupid-brain-damaged.html" target="_blank">Oh, wait…I already wrote about that; here’s the link</a>.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
In short, be kind. Write words that people want to read.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-85012998304385735422011-11-15T22:40:00.001-05:002011-11-16T12:57:02.894-05:00The Kids Who Create (and Blow Up) Worlds (and Cover Them With Lava)<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Okay..Mr. Leif, the first thing you have to do is make a shelter. If you don’t make a shelter, the mobs will kill you (creepers, most likely, but ghasts, zombies, spiders, slime, and silverfish are also out there). Just use your pick to dig through the trees, and grab the logs when they appear. Use those logs to make sticks. Use those sticks to make a crafting table.“</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“And remember, Mr. Leif, you have to kill a cow. If you don’t kill a cow, you’re not going to have food, which means you’ll starve. Also, you’re going to need the the leather that you can make from the dead cow.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">These are the exact words spoken by one of my students during seventh grade lunch recess, which takes place during seventh period (that would be 12:36 to 1:20, for those who don’t have our school schedule memorized). </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This student was trying to help me stay alive. I was, after all, playing the “Survival Mode” of Minecraft, not the “Creative Mode,” which, for some reason, all of my students tell me to avoid at all costs. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So it’s survival mode. Yes. I must survive.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And I’m realizing that it’s going to take a long, long time for me to have the slightest idea how to survive. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. For those you who know about Minecraft, just…just skip a whole bunch of paragraphs. You don’t need to read it. Go play whatever video game your parents let you play.</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Okay, now…for those of you who’ve never heard of Minecraft (meaning, I’m going to guess, an awful lot of parents who are utterly bewildered by their child’s fascination with Minecraft):</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Minecraft” is a low res game (the graphics are blocky, as if this is a game from the late 1980s), and it’s a first person game in which you build things as opposed to shoot at them. You start out with a simple tool, and with this tool—with which you dig resources, starting with wood—you gradually build more tools. Having then built tools, you build a dwelling, and as you keep doing this, you start acquiring tools that allow you to collect ever more specialized resources, which in turn allow you to build more specialized things. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Or, to put it another way:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Minecraft is a game where you go from prehistoric to civilized human, and, once you’re there, gives you vast power over the world you’ve built.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I still haven’t really played “Minecraft,” but I’ve watched my seventh graders play it, and I’ve watched them explore it, and I’ve watched them establish domination over their world, and furnish it with incredible structures (there are single-player versions, where you’re the only settler, and, therefore, God). </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I find this incredibly cool, but I must point out something: </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Every boy who plays this game likes to blow things up, and/or cover everything with lava. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Every last one of them. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yes, you can create gunpowder in this world, and it seems that once boys have built their virtual palace and gathered all of their earthly needs, their legacy, when people in this Minecraft World write about them, will be “He was a cruel God who blew up endless things, and covered whole cities with lava.” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yes, I have seen an entire mountain covered in lava. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I believe the student who did this said something like “Mr. Leif, come over and look at the mountain that I covered in lava.” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This is what middle school boys would do to the world if they had dominion over it. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Which is why I think girls should play Minecraft. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To be sure, I know that many girls enjoy blowing things up, and probably enjoy the prospect of covering the earth with lava. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It's just that I think girls would do other things besides blow things up and cover them with lava. I'm sure they would create certain zones in this world where you could blow things up (and cover them in lava), but then have other parts of this world in which people exchanged ideas on such topics as “what else is there to do besides blow things up and cover the world with lava?”</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Soon girls would, I don't know, be organizing virtual dances in these worlds, and everyone would immediately feel comfortable dancing, no one would be awkward. Every style of dancing would be in fashion at these dances, so even jumping up and down would be an acceptable dance move. </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In this virtual world, many male and female Minecraft players would meet while jumping up and down at one of these virtual dances. Then they would each think that the other looked cool just jumping up and down, and would subsequently start to hang out together in the real world as well. Aw...</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Then they each build worlds in which, from a distance, you would see that the entire world was a carefully designed mosaic portrait of that person they met at that virtual dance, a portrait that you could only see when you traveled through virtual outer space. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And of course, by this point, having created space travel in this virtual world instead of blowing things up, girls would create whole galaxies of worlds whose inhabitants live in harmony and dress well. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And the boys in these worlds do other things besides blow things up and cover them in lava. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So now, perhaps in this other place, girls would finally get a chance to show a guy the right way to build a world. </span></div>Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-11073585732320335262011-11-01T18:41:00.000-04:002013-04-21T13:23:17.483-04:00The Kid With the Neon Green Racing Flats (Not Running Shoes, Racing Flats)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr-1ADvw0LalWvd9YAK16V23eRdXWR6ly__jNNURLhqSJCA-05iCfsF3sxmU41qLn2OnAaFqYNMwrrFR489ztXNWEWCNxhXAzk1wfkeURCVTTnesCTcmq4YhX3OOy0kJJM6pv4wXLJD1zY/s1600/Racing_Flats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr-1ADvw0LalWvd9YAK16V23eRdXWR6ly__jNNURLhqSJCA-05iCfsF3sxmU41qLn2OnAaFqYNMwrrFR489ztXNWEWCNxhXAzk1wfkeURCVTTnesCTcmq4YhX3OOy0kJJM6pv4wXLJD1zY/s320/Racing_Flats.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
"They are RACING FLATS, Mr. Leif, not running shoes."<br />
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So said the email from the owner of the racing flats (<b><i>not</i></b> running shoes) shown in the photo above. Said student would also like me to add that she plays the cello, is a high honors student (not simply an <i>honors</i> student, she would like me to clarify, but a <b><i>high honors</i></b> student), took Math Research (which entails so much more work than the general research class that I teach that they really should call it Honors Research, or, more appropriately, College Level Research), and, presumably, solved the country's debt crisis before lunchtime.<br />
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I have written a paragraph about this student, and already, I am tired.<br />
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I suspect that this student does not sleep. Or, quite possibly, said student is like rechargeable batteries, where she talks (a lot) and moves around (a lot) and does (a lot) of things (well), and then, quite suddenly, says "Tired, must sleep," and simply lapses into a coma-like sleep for a couple of hours, after which her eyes snap awake, and she says something like "Awake. Day begins," and once more starts doing (a lot) of things (well).<br />
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I was not like this in middle school.<br />
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Okay, to be sure, I did stuff. I acted in shows. I played drums in the band and orchestra, and was, in fact, the section leader. I was in honors classes.<br />
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I was not, however, a high honors student.<br />
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I was one of those kids who drove teachers mad. I scored high on aptitude tests, but somehow couldn't quite make the jump from the standardized tests that measured my intelligence to academic tests that measured my grade point average. When it came to academics, I was often...average.<br />
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Anyway, about this student:<br />
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She is a middle school student, and she runs a mile in six minutes.<br />
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...and here we get to the heart of the matter.<br />
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Okay, when I was 19 and in the best shape of my life, I ran a mile on a whim. Granted, I ran it in jeans and a tee shirt, and I ran it at night, so I couldn't check the stopwatch setting on my wristwatch to push myself a bit more. Still, I cranked out a respectable 5:51.<br />
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In other words, as an adult, I was only able to beat this student's time by nine seconds.<br />
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Such things are humbling. And if you work in a middle school, that is only the start of it. For if you really get to know your students, you will find out that there are countless people who are already, in their early teens, doing things better than you ever did (or will do) them in your life.<br />
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In other words, I have had numerous students who I know could run circles around me athletically, musically, and academically.<br />
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You get used to it, and you learn humility; if you don't have this humility, I can't see how you'll make it as a teacher (or, in my case, a school librarian). You learn to accept that many, many people will do many, many things better than you. And having accepted that, you are free to do something genuinely life affirming: you can cheer these students on. And having done <i>that,</i> you are then free to notice something equally wonderful: this is a great way to make a living.<br />
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Too often, there are news stories about kids doing awful things (particularly now, the day after Halloween). You would often think, from reading these stories, that the next generation is basically a brainless, shambling zombie attack, bent on nothing but destruction.<br />
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The more that I embrace my central tenet of this blog--to write nothing but positive things about students--the better I feel about the future.<br />
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Today, when I was discussing my writing of this blog entry, a number of other students said that I should write about them.<br />
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"Fine," I said, "just come in tomorrow ready to talk about something you're proud of."<br />
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I know that the more I do this, the more students will approach me (I hope) about aspects of them--their accomplishments, their abilities--that they want the world to know about. I know, if this becomes a steady source of writing, that I will often write about students who already have a level of mastery of various skills that will leave my abilities far, far behind. This, I now know, is a great, great thing.<br />
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This student is already a better academic, a batter athlete, and a better musician that I will ever be. Good. There are many other students like this student.<br />
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I want to talk to them, and I want to write about them. So many of them embody what journalist Pete Hamill called "The Talent in the Room."<br />
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And Pete Hamill writes far better than I ever will. Trust me. <a href="http://www.petehamill.com/" target="_blank">Click here if you don't believe me, and you can read some of his stuff and see for yourself; this guy rocks. </a>Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-34356399363661040292011-10-22T14:14:00.000-04:002011-10-22T16:54:56.795-04:00The Kid Who Gave Me a Shoutout<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of the things that takes some getting used to is the fact that people actually take the time to read the things that I post. </div>
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Astonishingly, it would appear that my readership has grown to the double digits. </div>
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My ode to a student who dares to wear steampunk welder's goggles (<a href="http://derekleif.blogspot.com/2011/09/kid-with-steampunk-welders-goggles.html">which you can read here</a>) made me nervous for a day or two. I feared I would get email from concerned relatives of the student, saying that I had somehow traumatized said student by mentioning him in my blog.</div>
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Surprisingly, the opposite was the case. I got some genuinely kind emails from folks (not just this student's family) saying that it was wonderful that I wrote about this student. People need encouragement and approval, they said, and to let this student know that there's an adult who prizes their individuality is an awfully good thing. </div>
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To which I say: this works both ways. </div>
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I would love to tell you that I'm able to work without the slightest concern as to whether students respect me, or, for that matter, like me. I would love to tell you that I am able to make all of my decisions without the slightest thought as to my own ego. I would love to tell you that I completely, thoroughly, totally understand that school is all about the students, and that as a teacher (okay, librarian), 100 percent of my concerns involve nurturing my students intellectual and emotional growth, and I'm able to completely shut out any desire for their approval. </div>
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Alas, I am human. </div>
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I know. I get it. I cannot let concern over student approval get in the way of the need for a disciplined and well-run classroom. I cannot let this concern get in the way of stepping in when I see student disrespect of any kind, be it for the school, for teachers (and librarians), or other students.</div>
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(I need to stop, by the way, and underline something: ESPECIALLY OTHER STUDENTS. Few things bring me closer to the boiling point than witnessing students disrespecting other students, either through physical torment, or even more insidiously, through verbal taunting. Anyone who said "names can never hurt me" never attended middle school. Hating is real, and it destroys the soul, particularly in this modern age of social networking; I find it disgusting.)</div>
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(Oops...another digression before I go on. I don't have too many iron-clad rules for my blog, but one of them is this: I WILL ONLY WRITE POSITIVE THINGS ABOUT MY STUDENTS. There are a number of teacher blogs out there that complain about students; this will not be one of them.)</div>
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So...anyway. About receiving student approval:</div>
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Heck, it's a nice thing. </div>
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Yes, the graphic at the top of this blog entry is from a student's Tumblr blog, and the student in question sent me a link to that entry. I would be lying to you if I told you it didn't make my day. </div>
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When you work in a school, you live in something of a vacuum. You don't really know what students think of you behind your back. There is, after all, that vast world that exists beyond the boundaries of school, which is that world of The Rest of Their Lives, when they talk about what they <i>really </i>think of you, and, occasionally, empty those thoughts into their text messages, their social network posts, and, yes, their blog entries.</div>
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It is a life affirming thing to have a student let the world know that you are doing the right thing. </div>
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To that student, I offer my sincere thanks. </div>
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(And, by the way, to said student, I offer my sincerest apologies for not including a link to your Tumblr blog. It is worth explaining why, and in doing so, might help shed a light on the minefield that is writing about students at the school in which you work.)</div>
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(The world of the middle school student--in fact, the world of anyone between the ages of about 11 and about, oh, 30 or so--is replete with expressed thoughts and feelings that may not always contain words and ideas appropriate within the walls of a middle school. I do not use these words or expressions in school, and, in fact, to set an example and be a role model, I don't use them in this blog.) </div>
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(I want students to express themselves. At the same time, I have a reputation to uphold. Alas, posting links to student blogs invites an avalanche of implications and insinuations that will tie my writing to my student's lives. Sadly, even in the virtual world, I must draw a line.) </div>
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(So, though I don't provide a link to this student's blog, I nonetheless, once again, offer that student a sincere thanks for the shout out.) </div>
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(And by the way...the zombie thing has to do with a research project I have students do in which they study how to survive in the event of a zombie attack. As any reader knows, this is a valuable and useful skill to teach the future of this country.)</div>Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-89743267570819895652011-09-22T22:25:00.002-04:002011-09-28T22:05:42.596-04:00500 (Or, a Writing Ritual)I need to get to sleep, because I'll be getting up at 5:30 tomorrow. I will then shower, shave, and get dressed, but I won't put on my button-up shirt over my undershirt just yet.<br />
<br />
I need to write first, and It's not as comfortable to write while wearing a collared shirt and tie. I need to be relaxed. I listen to Brian Eno's "Ambient" music while I do this. I've referenced Brian Eno's "Ambient" music in another journal entry; I love that music.<br />
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I now know this: I'm a morning writer, and I have a quota: 500 words.<br />
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It doesn't take long. I'm working on the first draft of a novel, and I just put the words down. I've charted out the plot. I know where I'm going. I write 500 words, and it advances the plot by another inch or so.<br />
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I didn't do this until recently. For more than 20 years, I kept journals, dumping random thoughts onto many, many computer screens over the years.<br />
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And until recently, that personal obsessive writing (I called it "comfort food writing") was pretty much all the writing that I did. Then I went to Los Angeles. I have no idea what it was about Los Angeles that snapped me into this groove, but now I can't get through a day without writing 500 words of fiction.<br />
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I do it this way: I pick one project (I have a whole bunch of other projects lined up), and I call it my JWTDT project. This stands for "Just Write the Damn Thing." I have no idea whether it's any good. I don't care, really. I just want to finish it, polish it, and then be able to say "hey...I wrote a book."<br />
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Then I will start another, and this next project will, too, be a JWTDT project. After I'm done each morning with my 500 words, I'll spend some time revising the previous JWTDT project.<br />
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I will write these books one after the other.<br />
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I'm in good company with this sort of thing. Anthony Trollope wrote every morning for three hours, making sure to write 250 words every fifteen minutes. If he finished a book while he was in the middle of writing session, he would write "The End," and then start another book. That's the way I am, and that's the way that I'll write.<br />
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I've already gotten into this mode that doesn't dwell too heavily on how good this is going to be. I know that whatever I write, the next thing that I write will be better than the previous thing that I wrote.<br />
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And once I write those 500 words of JWTDT writing, I'm free. Free to write emails to friends. Free to write a stream of consciousness rant. Free to scribble an outline for a vague plot so that it starts to take shape.<br />
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It used to be 500 words of journal writing, and then 250 words of fiction in the morning. Now it's in reverse. I write those fiction words, and then type out my journal entry. I often pick up my uke in the middle of these sessions and strum a few chords. Right now, I'm teaching myself to play a classical ukulele version of "Waiting Room" by Fugazi. I am enjoying it, and making progress on shifting from F Minor to C# Major. Soon I will learn the chorus; it's tricky.<br />
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I don't have much more to say about this. I write every morning. On weekends, I'm going to shoot for 1,000 words. that's 4,500 words a week or, if I just write 500 words on the weekends, it's still 3,500 words.<br />
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Anyway. Tired. Bedtime. Good night.Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-88353008781088957392011-09-21T22:10:00.012-04:002013-03-12T12:49:10.605-04:00The Kid With the Steampunk Welder's Goggles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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To all my loyal readers, all half-dozen of them: you're rolling your eyes, I know. Steampunk has become a cliche. You've been all over this stuff for years, what with your manual typewriter computer keyboards, your penny-farthing motorcycles, your round-trip tickets to Europe via airship, and your autographed copies of <i>The Difference Engine.</i> </div>
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As for me, I had no idea welder's goggles were such an integral part of the whole steampunk getup until one of my students came into the library wearing them. </div>
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I asked to try them, and immediately, I wanted a pair. </div>
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I now have a pair. They make me happy. </div>
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When I ordered the goggles on Amazon, by the way, every comment said "Great Steampunk Goggles!" </div>
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I felt behind the curve.</div>
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My affinity for welder's goggles, by the way, had nothing to do with the steampunk thing. I like them because I liked <i>Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. </i>Also, the goggles make me look like one of the scientists from <i>La Jetee, </i>or as if I belong on the cover of Thomas Dolby's <i>The Golden Age of Wireless.</i> </div>
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Now, about the kid:</div>
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There's something life affirming about a middle school student who wears a Victorian vest, a pair of welder's goggles, and proudly carries around "The Steampunk Bible." It would be one thing if this were a middle school trend, but no; this kid is alone. </div>
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Most of us would never have been able to pull something off like this back in the crushingly conformist environment of middle school. This kid, however, does it effortlessly. </div>
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One of the best parts of my job is seeing a student who has the courage to be different, to completely be their own person. I meet a number of these students, as they often seek refuge in the library either after school or during lunch recess. They are not out of sync with the world; the world is out of sync with them. </div>
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It gets better. </div>
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As this kid showed me his welder's goggles, he talked about how he took a pair of 3-D glasses, and, with a Dremmel, fashioned a pair of 3-D lenses that fit inside his welder's goggles. </div>
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So he wears welder's goggles to 3-D movies. </div>
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This kid deserves a medal. </div>
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I know that among the geekeratti, steampunk is mainstream, past its selling date. But it's still barely on the radar here at middle school. And this kid is there, with his welder's goggles, thinking of plans, no doubt, to create a clockwork interface for an Ipad, and to use, in the place of a cel phone, a flock of passenger pigeons. </div>
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Priceless.</div>
Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-75543185063924919052011-03-23T14:58:00.005-04:002011-03-24T10:18:44.301-04:00A Real Sentence Concerning the Vicious Cycle of Livestock Bullying Other Livestock<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG-xf_6ekFXTZgRcVS0xJGqdMgAlEyaRBTOzOHT1CF_zSshTgzH800p63bbRPoMaP0zFf2vWTy_uurkBh-nYvwtUisYIdvOTrgOErwGLv0fdgJjVpYFUuVilSql5yM4IjAabxX51k09jMB/s1600/buffalo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG-xf_6ekFXTZgRcVS0xJGqdMgAlEyaRBTOzOHT1CF_zSshTgzH800p63bbRPoMaP0zFf2vWTy_uurkBh-nYvwtUisYIdvOTrgOErwGLv0fdgJjVpYFUuVilSql5yM4IjAabxX51k09jMB/s320/buffalo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>(With the warmest admiration for William J. Rapaport, professor of many, many disciplines, SUNY Buffalo. Obviously.)<br />
<br />
(And by the way, Professor Rapaport's website is <a href="http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/BuffaloBuffalo/buffalobuffalo.html">here</a>, and the Wikipedia article about Professor Rapaport's sentence is<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo&oldid=209568145"> here.</a>)<br />
<br />
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.<br />
<br />
Let me explain.<br />
<br />
The above sentence describes a sad but true fact about bullying: victims of bullying often become perpetrators themselves...often upon the very beings that their assailants push around.<br />
<br />
This phenomenon is particularly apparent when the livestock in question are buffalo. Not bulls, not cows; only buffalo.<br />
<br />
And specifically, it is particularly noticeable when the livestock come from Buffalo, New York.<br />
<br />
To simplify things, let's call those livestock "Buffalo buffalo."<br />
<br />
Furthermore, it is necessary to describe the kind of bullying that takes place. Simply stated, these buffalo like to push around their own kind. They like to shove them hard.<br />
<br />
They like to buffalo them.<br />
<br />
Even more insidiously, they like to push them around--or "buffalo" them--in a style not found in any city but Buffalo, New York. In fact, so unique is this style of pushing around, this style of buffaloing, that when the perpetrator does it to another perpetrator, they are said to "Buffalo buffalo" them,<br />
<br />
Put simply, buffalo from Buffalo, New York, tend to push around--or "Buffalo buffalo"--other buffalo from Buffalo, New York.<br />
<br />
So Buffalo buffalo "Buffalo buffalo" Buffalo buffalo.<br />
<br />
But it gets worse. The livestock that these bullies push around tend to pick on other livestock in the same fashion.<br />
<br />
In other words, Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo "Buffalo buffalo" themselves "Buffalo buffalo" Buffalo buffalo.<br />
<br />
Or, to put it more simply Buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo "Buffalo buffalo" "Buffalo buffalo" Buffalo buffalo.<br />
<br />
Or we could just lose the quotation marks, in much the same way that a track and field coach, upon commenting on one of his or her high jumpers choosing to vault backwards (as opposed to the traditional Western Roll) might just write, in correspondence, that his athlete tends to "Fosbury Flop it," choosing not to put quotation marks around "Fosbury Flop."<br />
<br />
Then we could just write this sentence plainly, as a sad commentary on the cycle of bullying among upstate livestock:<br />
<br />
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.<br />
<br />
Tragic.<br />
<br />
(And by the way: The Fosbury Flop is named for Dick Fosbury, who used his unconventional technique to win a high jump gold medal in the 1968 summer olympics in Mexico City. You can read more about it <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosbury_flop">here</a>).Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-59281324289110945782010-06-29T18:26:00.001-04:002010-06-29T18:27:07.653-04:0050 Word Film Reviews (number 1 in a series): Vanishing Point (1971)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyl4HF2c5bs3I9cyOTMzikRnk9z5EzUyXdJcnmYpVqCxkGjEjDZOM8KscN5Q2RRoSVVHB-ikF_4y3CwqwYkgRKI1wo4GDNrki58SnSBiXkxa2WxvOUf3AY4YjFmDg33shVnkoH15TH0Od3/s1600/vanishing-point.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><b><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyl4HF2c5bs3I9cyOTMzikRnk9z5EzUyXdJcnmYpVqCxkGjEjDZOM8KscN5Q2RRoSVVHB-ikF_4y3CwqwYkgRKI1wo4GDNrki58SnSBiXkxa2WxvOUf3AY4YjFmDg33shVnkoH15TH0Od3/s320/vanishing-point.jpg" /></b></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>(I know; I need to get these to under 140 characters. I'm working on it. I just felt like broadening out a bit to, say, fifty words. Yeah. Fifty.)</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><br />
</span> </b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"> Kowalski. Just...Kowalski. If you have seen this film and ever considered driving a car way too fast, it's just..it's Kowalski. Trust me. Barry Newman. The Man. The Myth. Kowalski. Say it soft, and it's almost like praying.</span></b></span></span></div>Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-69739327015986958692010-04-11T14:23:00.007-04:002013-04-22T22:07:40.061-04:00Missing the Pop Culture Zeitgeist Completely (Or, a Response of Sorts to an Essay About “The Runaways”)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDp0spMu_h8sp6EiT7eH_1Y4RCOfdhICIvWhC1b6sJa9y2Xx50eCD25hJzZSXI0jV4q9HnCrffRhFYPRJhssaIj6N8El_JNEZVwaBXsF7yK5qLRwUhMeRJ1p_5cjchdNwNQmT0qBwYGne5/s1600/joan.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458949414396758098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDp0spMu_h8sp6EiT7eH_1Y4RCOfdhICIvWhC1b6sJa9y2Xx50eCD25hJzZSXI0jV4q9HnCrffRhFYPRJhssaIj6N8El_JNEZVwaBXsF7yK5qLRwUhMeRJ1p_5cjchdNwNQmT0qBwYGne5/s400/joan.jpg" style="height: 320px; width: 320px;" width="400" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIEMxcLKExwMH-fFB390Ldo7bjfkTamkSXcQ4GXeM1BiVRO7v_xlW5MQQ4Ge0YEO6CSHVcN4HVWI7EBXIY5vEHLyYkooUoLLPKXA5V_Xahcm63Aen2jNwKLvT2coyyX55WUzGmQFDBG-pY/s1600/jgeils.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458949408831259346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIEMxcLKExwMH-fFB390Ldo7bjfkTamkSXcQ4GXeM1BiVRO7v_xlW5MQQ4Ge0YEO6CSHVcN4HVWI7EBXIY5vEHLyYkooUoLLPKXA5V_Xahcm63Aen2jNwKLvT2coyyX55WUzGmQFDBG-pY/s400/jgeils.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 337px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
I haven’t seen the film <i>The Runaways </i>yet, but I know I’m going to like it. I’m a sucker for
70s nostalgia; I enjoyed “Dazed and Confused,” and count “Boogie Nights” as one
of my all time favorite films.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I find it interesting, however, that thoughts of The
Runaways turn neither Carolyn’s thoughts nor my thoughts to the 1970s. In
Carolyn’s case, the band turns her thoughts to her halcyon early 1990s days in
New York, specifically the Lower East Side. In my case, the band turns my
thoughts to my bleak early 80s days on Long Island, specifically Great Neck.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For me, The Runaways mean Joan Jett. And for me, Joan Jett
means March of 1982. Because, in March of 1982 the number one song in the
nation was Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And at first I hated that song.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Specifically, I hated that song—and hated Joan Jett—because
she had knocked another song off the top of the charts, a song that was on its
way to a record for weeks at number one. I now must admit that at the time, I loved
that song more than I loved Joan Jett, who has become an icon.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In much the same way that some teenagers must have passed up
the Beatles concert at Shea Stadium for the chance to see Soupy Sales at a
nondescript location, I passed Joan Jett by, and bet my passion on another
song. And now, for the rest of my life, I must live with the fact that I chose
this song and this band over Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That song was “Centerfold” by the J. Geils band.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you grew up in the 1980s going from thoughts of Joan Jett
to the J. Geils Band is a bit like driving a sports car at top speed, slamming
on the brakes, and whipping the steering wheel around so that the car faces in
the opposite direction. The paradigm shift—particularly with the benefit of hindsight—is
so dramatic, so jolting, that the brain feels as if it is spinning around in
its skull case.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Time has, of course, been far kinder to Joan Jett than the
J. Geils Band. Joan Jett has become an iconic symbol not just for strong
independent women, but also for strong independent lesbians. This is not to say
that you have to be a lesbian to be inspired by Joan Jett; as Carolyn’s essay
made clear, any woman of any orientation could find her story inspiring.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is not to take anything away from the J. Geils Band.
They were a fun band that worked their way through Boston pubs, and in addition
to “Centerfold,” they’re probably best known for the fun song “Love Stinks.”
“Freeze Frame,” the title track from the album on which “Centerfold” appeared,
which reached number four on the charts but by now faded from most people’s
memory, was a catchy, upbeat tune.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But no offense, even though Peter Wolfe is a way cool guy,
The J. Geils Band did not even hold a flickering candle to the force of nature
that was Joan Jett. This was, after all, the woman who founded her own record
label, Blackheart Records, and released the sensational album “Bad Reputation.”
In addition to its scorching title song, this album also has one of the all
time great album cover photographs (that's the one at the beginning of this
article, where Joan is airborne).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me put it this way before moving on: I bypassed Joan
Jett for a band that featured a harmonica player who willingly referred to
himself as "Magic Dick."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So “The Runways” makes me think of Joan Jett, and Joan Jett
makes me think of J. Geils. This in turn, makes me think of myself at the age
of 15. And this, in turn, forces me to contemplate an inescapable truth:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
God, what a pathetic little pencil-necked geek I was.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Put it this way: I know what a genuine pencil-necked geek
is. I know this because of the novelty song by professional wrestling manager
Freddie Blassie called, appropriately enough, “Pencil Necked Geek.” I know this
because the song figured prominently on Dr. Demento, a radio show that played
novelty records.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so, while my only two friends in tenth grade listened to
such bands as The Bad Brains, Stiff Little Fingers, The Sex Pistols, Public
Image Limited, The Cure, The Stray Cats, The Buzzcocks, The Undertones,
Ultravox, Kraftwerk, The Dead Kennedys, Squeeze, The Jam, The Specials, Gang of
Four, Talking Heads, The Clash, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Nick Lowe,
Dave Edmonds, Rockpile, Madness, and countless others, I was obsessively
listening to “Fish Heads” by Barnes and Barnes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
True, some the sharp musical tastes of these friends rubbed
off on me, and I did indeed listen to these bands, dilettante that I was.
Nonetheless, as these friends matured and I remained trapped in the immaturity
that comes from listening to too much Weird Al Yankovic—not to mention being
trapped in the body of an eleven year old in tenth grade—these friends outgrew
me and began to drift from me. Sensing this, I switched schools, and
transferred from Great Neck South to Great Neck North.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The story has a happy ending. Once at North, a group of
girls took me under their wing, and I sort of became their mascot. My musical
tastes blossomed, and a few years later, I was in a band with some of them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was sort of like how I imagine it would have been if I
had been in a band with Joan Jett in high school. I like to think that if I had
gone to high school with Joan Jett, she would have beaten the crap out of
anyone who picked on me. I would have been proud to drum with her band, and
would have felt the way Encyclopedia Brown felt when he befriended Sally
Kimball.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eventually I realized the error of my ways. I went on to
listen to such great girl groups as The Pretenders, Throwing Muses, The
Breeders and the Donnas. I often played with female musicians who were far more
talented than I was, and felt not intimidated, but just honored that they considered
me good enough to sit in with them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So it is with bittersweet memories that watch The Runaways
trailer, and it will be with bittersweet memories that I watch the film. Back
then, I had little to guide me in the treacherous minefield of what is worth
listening to, and what isn’t. Fortunately, I eventually had a group of strong,
understanding women who knew that childlike adolescent omega males often need
nothing more than a few big sisters to guide them in the right direction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<!--EndFragment-->Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945971594393222882.post-42817229830860302402010-04-02T01:55:00.005-04:002010-04-02T11:40:26.836-04:00Be Glad This is Not Your Job (Or: a Trip to an Egyptian Exhibit at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Puts Things in Perspective)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4-TnXbxeKopI7Yd-e-sop08jB2GA4r1c3g0CddIKTl_ieUZbp0W3IiuwirdOJUY281Vpoh9x_KENecYyb2gQwiEdplcTaJsUt0IgWVr6mCGrkhLhdlH74Cb5FqYEfWdrFQvsujE2UI9Do/s1600/horussons.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 318px; height: 324px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4-TnXbxeKopI7Yd-e-sop08jB2GA4r1c3g0CddIKTl_ieUZbp0W3IiuwirdOJUY281Vpoh9x_KENecYyb2gQwiEdplcTaJsUt0IgWVr6mCGrkhLhdlH74Cb5FqYEfWdrFQvsujE2UI9Do/s400/horussons.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455414901442294754" /></a><br /><div>I visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston yesterday, and I’m glad I’m not Qebehsenuef (pronounced keh-buh-SEH-noo-wef).</div><div> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Let me get you up to speed. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Vickey and I are vacationing in Boston. Because Vickey is an artist, we’ve made it a point to visit art museums. If you’re in Boston and you want to visit art museums, you make it a point to visit The Museum of Fine Art, which is sort of the grand old museum of Boston. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s a great museum, full of classic works, but when we went we spent most of our time checking out an exhibit called <i><a href="http://www.mfa.org/tomb/">The Secrets of Tomb 10A.</a></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The exhibit displays the contents of the tomb of Djehutynakht (juh-HOO-tuh-nahkt), a bigwig Egyptian governor who clearly had a lot of wealth. Even though robbers cleared out most of the valuables from the tomb long ago, the plaster and wooden artifacts—such as the coffins—remained. A team of restoration experts spent a century restoring the contents of the tomb—which the robbers had thrown around when they ransacked it—and it’s a great exhibit, complete with, among other things, the restored coffins (which have extraordinary artwork on them) and 36 models of the various boats that were to carry Djehutynakht and his wife to the afterlife in style. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When we talk about Egypt and we talk about tombs, we need to talk, of course, about mummification. We know that mummification made the body’s face look like that of Osirus, the god of the dead. We know that mummification preserved the body for the perilous passage through the afterlife, one that would be either on land or sea. We know that passage on land took the soul through perilous peaks and valleys, and past The Lake of Fire of the Knife Wielders. We know that passage by sea took the soul past such monsters as Dog Face, Great Face, He of the Sharp Teeth, Protector of the Two Gods, and (my favorite) He Who is Driven off With Two Faces in the Dung.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s glorious stuff, this afterworld journey, and it sets the mind thinking of the pantheon of Egyptian gods. There’s Ra, god of the sun; Nut, goddess of the sky; Seth, god of the desert; Amun, god of creation; Thoth, god of writing and wisdom; Hathor, goddess of love, music and dance; and, in addition to many more, Horus, the patron god of Egypt.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And it is with Horus that we now come to Qebehsenuef. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To understand where Qebehsenuef fits into this, let’s go back to mummification for a moment. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Here’s another thing we know: when priests mummified a body, they removed the organs to aid in the preservation of the body. Each of the organs went into a container called a canopic jar. In the passage through the afterlife, various gods looked after each of these jars, making sure that the soul would have all the body parts it needed in the afterlife. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One of these jars was on display at the exhibit, and as the information placard said, this particular jar was protected by Qebehsenuef.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For this was the job of Horus’s children (and I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to pronounce their names). Imsety protected the liver. Hapi protected the lungs. Duamutef protected the stomach. Finally, Qebehsenuef protected the intestines.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I said that I was glad I wasn’t Qebehsenuef, I wasn’t entirely accurate. What I should have said was that I’m glad I’m not any of these four guys. Let me elaborate. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">If Christian theology is a good model for this kind of thing, being the child of a god is a lot like being Michael Corleone from <i>The Godfather.</i> Often, a parent has a career in mind for their child, and it’s usually an unpleasant job. To make things worse, the kid usually has no choice but to do whatever mom or dad tells the kid to do. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Granted, there are exceptions. Eros has a lot of fun making people jealous of each other, and Perseus did his father proud with that whole Gorgon business. Still, these are the exceptions; most of the time, the kid’s got a rough road ahead.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Which leads to my point, which is this: poor Qebehsenuef.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I mean, imagine the guy. He goes to college, probably majors in English. Maybe he writes a witty column for the school paper. People like him, and girls go out with him from time to time. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Granted, he’s not as cool as Thoth’s kids. Thoth’s kids write the kind of stuff that sparkles, and Hathor’s kids play in a band that’s going to be signed any day now. Even better, this is, for these kids, something that their parents totally support; after all, writing and making music are, for these kids, just carrying on the family business.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That’s not the case with Qebehsenuef, though, and that’s why he dreads graduating from college. Because no matter how witty those columns are, Qebehsenuef has to go into the family business. It doesn’t matter that he’d rather work at a radio station, or perhaps an alternative newspaper; once he graduates, he will, for the rest of eternity, need to guard one set of intestines after another through the afterlife. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Take a moment to imagine this. At cocktail parties, the children of Thoth discuss how they inspire poems and political manifestos. The children of Hathor discuss the music and dance that they inspire, which also, no doubt, fan the flames of passion and love.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Qebehsenuef, meanwhile, tries his best. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“You know,” he says, “it’s not just anyone who can shuttle intestines through the afterlife. It takes real skill.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At this point, the woman he’s trying to talk up nods politely and strikes up a conversation with one of Thoth’s kids. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So think about this when you’re in your cubicle lamenting the less desirable parts of your job. You can always leave your job if it gets excruciatingly painful, but Qebehsenuef can’t. He’s stuck in that cubicle for an eternity, with a desk full of travel coupons, all of them for one underworld trip after the next. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But it doesn’t end there. Because one other thing that the exhibit made clear was that over time, mummification became something was no longer limited to the pharaohs. As Djehutynakht showed, if you had the money, you could be a mummy. This means that Qebehsenuef now had countless more intestines to shuttle through the underworld, again and again and again. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It just puts things in perpective.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>Black Belt Librarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656319833199500201noreply@blogger.com1