You Could Get Me A Chunky . . .

When I was a little kid, ten or so, one of my older sisters dispatched me to the corner store (the old North Forty convenience store on the corner of Ion and Yellowstone; it's a vacant lot now) to buy her one of these:

She wanted to cut the wrapper and post it below a picture of her boyfriend. Had she told me that, the name of the candy might have stuck in my head a bit firmer. But since I was a clueless kid with a bad memory, this is what I came home with:


It just wasn't the same. I got hollered at. Mom came to find out what the hollering was about. In a true example of parents not wanting justice but quiet, my sister was dispatched to the store to buy her own Big Hunk, while I was left at home, consoled with the Chunky I'd brought home.

Ah, those childhood memories . . .

We spent a lot of money at that store. I clearly recall one day riding my hideous, orange, banana-seated bicycle to North Forty, my backpack heavy with glass pop bottles to redeem, ten cents each. A bolt broke on my seat (the bike's not my personal seat) and the seat fell off. I landed on the backpack. Nothing broke. Why the clerks at the store bothered with us little kids returning pop bottles all the time, I'll never know. They were money, I suppose. Some states today offer that same kind of redemption on plastic obblte, 5 cents, 7 sents, or so. Not where I live. So that source of ready cash, for kids who didn't get an allowance, is dried up. Now my oldest gets an allowance, but he's not interested in going down to the corner store for candy. He's saving up for a $90 Lego Indiana Jones kit. He's much more focused than I was. He would have brought his sister home the Big Hunk.

The store suffered an odd fate. For a while, it shared the building with a Kirby vacuum dealership. Then the dealership left, and the other half of the building was turned into a video arcade. Then, for some reason, the building was literally sawed in half, with half of the building residing behind a house off First Street. The other half doggedly hung on in its original configuration for a while, but then it was destroyed to make way for . . . nothing. I still drive by there now, wondering what happened. I miss its old neon (yay! neon!) "North 40" sign, vaguely remember when it had one of those "Union '76" orange balls hovering above it. Now it's all in my head, vying for space with the other random memories I have.

Crapanimation Debut!

Thanks to my daughter, six years old and our resident artist, I have now branched out into the world of animation. Walt Disney, obviously, has nothing to worry about.

Super Chunk!

While perusing two of my kids' library books today, I found another example of how chunking works/doesn't work/perhaps doesn't matter.

My son, a third-grader, brought home two books that, on the surface, appear to be very similar. One is on earthworms, the other on snakes. Both are geared to introduce kids to these animals, to describe their variety, what they eat, how they work, what they do and where they (the kids, not the worms or snakes) can go for further information. But the ways the books were presented were peas and carrots. Both, however, are chunked.

In the earthworm book -- the heavily-chunked one -- starts with a table of contents, followed by a page called "fast facts," which talks in brief about the kinds, ranges, habitats, food, and young of worms, followed by a series of pages (appearance, homes, eating and enemies) each accompanied with a picture. Each topic gets one page, no more, and sometimes a bit less. Then there's a hands-on activity, words to know, and a list of places where my kid can read more. The text is informative, if a bit repetitive, and flows in simple, subject-verb sentences.

The other book on snakes is completely different. The writing is more complex, posing questions, using a more conversational tone and incomplete sentences. (We also "get to know" the writer thanks to a blurb at the back; the earthworm author gets no such treatment.) The chunking is present, but not as easily evident. One topic follows the other, but they're not set off by headers, nor limited to one page. The only graphical hint that the subject is changing slightly is the drop-cap that begins each section. At the end there is a section that mixes "words to know" with descriptions of various snakes. We also get an index, along with places to "find out more."

As I mentioned, one of these books clearly has chunking stamped throughout, while the chunking in the other is more subtle. If my son were required to write a report on either snakes or earthworms, however, based on these books, I'd urge him to use the earthworm book, since the heavier-handed chunking offers him more clear start and stop points for various items he might want to mention in his report. If, however, he were asked to offer a book report on one of these books, I'd urge the snake book, as the author uses language and photos more skillfully to incite curiosity and have the reader pose questions.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: I still believe some texts will lend themselves better to chunking than others. However, other elements of writing style also have to be taken into account in deciding how "heavy" the chunking may appear in the text. In general, these two books appear similar. But in the specific, they approach the subject matter differently. Might it be safe to assume that chunking in some documents is desirable, the the heaviness or lightness of the chunking might depend on the end goals of the text?

It's a squishy answer I'm not sure I like all that much, but it's easy to see how taking a light or heavy approach at chunking might make some pages more useful than others -- depending on how users want to use the pages. With chunking, we might be able to influence how users use what we present. But still comes the question of the week: How do we choose? There's got to be an answer somewhere, Sloth.

Truck Update II

Yesterday at work, I got two phone calls from the crook mechanics.

The first was, ostensibly, to follow up on whether the clutch was working. I chickened out and said yes, failing to add that it was working because we had another mechanic fix it. Then they asked about the ball joints. I got braver. Said we had another mechanic look at them, and he said they were just fine.

"Ooh," the caller said. "Because they were really loose." She knows this because she's reading from the computer (the description plus its accompanying exclamation points) not because she actually saw the loose ball joints.

I sense they're late on the boat payment and are fishing for dumb customers. And I admit, when it comes to car repair (and, I admit, to most things) I have dumb written all over my face. See this entry for the reasons why.

So I leave it at that.

Later, while I'm frantically trying to get some paperwork done, they call again. Thank heaven for caller ID. I let the phone ring, then go to my handy e-mail to listen to the message (a distinct advantage of VoIP over ordinary land line). This time, it's the mechanic, in full Consernation Mode, offering to show me the loose ball joints if I cared to come by the shop. Uh huh. As if I could tell a loose ball joint from a badger hole. Buddy, we got our second opinion, from a mechanic we've been going to for years. He says the ball joints are fine. If anyone is going to stop by your shop to observe the loose ball joints, it's going to be our mechanic, not me, because then you two can have a Godzilla-Mothra style battle while I watch from the sidelines.

Two different worlds, I suppose. In 2005, when the truck threw a rod, we took it first to the crook mechanic, and then our regular mechanic. Both offered to fixy fixy. But our regular mechanic did the fix for $2,000 less. The crook mechanic only comes into the mix because the regular mechanic is a 60-mile round trip from home. But we still go to him, for obvious reasons.

To Chunk or Not to Chunk

As the poor, poor readers of this blog know, I'm working on a masters degree in technical writing. The subject of the week: When do we know when a web text needs to be chunked or not. My initial thoughts:

I came up with a few instances when you might not want to chunk. Some are better than others:

Non-chunking:
1) The text naturally does not chunk.
2) The text is a narrative, essay, article or other block that readers will read/need to read to understand/enjoy to the fullest.

Chunking:
1) The text is used by audiences with vast differences in experience and knowledge, with some chunks directing the experienced user to different areas.
2) The text is used to explain how to do something, or describes something that is done in steps, or, in "real life" is done in steps. I'm thinking here of DIY instructions, or chunking text to guide a person through the process of buying something online.

These are pretty shaky at the moment. I'll keep thinking.

Here's another one that just struck me: Chunking works for texts we're used to seeing chunked. It would be pretty weird, for example, to read a Bible chapter not broken into verses.

Then, my thoughts start to break down. The question is much more complicated than I'd thought:

Just realized as I was sitting here, contemplating my bellybutton, that one of my favorite books on the shelf above my head is chunked and breaks one of the rules I set for non-chunking. So we can chuck the "narrative" rule out the window.

The book is "The Final Days," which focuses on the Nixon White House during the Watergate scandal. It is very nicely chunked, first with a "cast of characters," a lengthy list of people mentioned in the book. Very helpful, because the story is complicated.

Then the text itself is chunked, as the authors switch from one scene to the next, one viewpoint to the next, rather like cutting scenes in a movie. So I need to modify the narrative no-chunk rule:

If a narrative is complex, chunking is natural in separating events, identifying characters, settings and such.

How would this apply to the web -- well, if this book were presented as a web page, I'd definitely want it chunked, perhaps with cross-referenced links between the individual threads that the authors weave together. That might be one of those new web texts that Prof. Hailey mentioned -- a book where one can read one thread in its entirety, without interruption, but then get back into the linear flow of events.

So in dealing with multiple narrative threads, a cast of thousands, chunking would be beneficial.

And more exceptions:

I think whether chunking would or would not work in this situation depends on the purpose of the writing. I can see in some cases -- such as a report we'll have coming out next week at work detailing our performance during a management self-assessment on a new waste process -- where chunking is going to be valuable in helping us identify our strengths and weaknesses in a hurry. It's going to be a complex matter, needing a lot of background and analysis, and it will lead itself naturally to chunking because of that need for analysis.

It's a tough call. It's like whenever people ask me how to write something -- I don't have the vocabulary to tell them, aside from the boring grammar mechanics that makes their eyes glaze. Part of me thinks we can come up with a comprehensive philosophy on chunking versus non-chunking, part of me wonders if we'll be stuck with I'll know the chunking situation when I see it. But that's a cop out, because we have to have some kind of ground rule in order to see it. Argh.

So it's a tough question. Looking to the Internet for help is, of course, problematic, because you either run into the “chunk it or else camp” or the “chunk it because you're supposed to chunk it crowd” or the “chunking?” crowd. Must admit I was in the third category for a long time. Now I'm in that netherworld where I'm at the back of the temple where the idol of chunking is worshipped, wondering if there's some benefit here or if I should go back out the door. I can see the benefits, but I know it's not a blanket approach. Must keep thinking.

Something Daunting

Speaking of writing, here's a chiller: We at Uncharted have decided to put out our first book, ostensibly to protect our copyright in the realm of book publishing, and partly because we think it'll be fun. The subject: Eastern Idaho, from Paul to Island Park. The principal author: Me. That makes me nervous.

It'll be one of those print-on-demand books -- we'll be using blurb.com. We look at it as a way to introduce what Uncharted is, and what we can do. Hopefully, it'll sell enough in this area to make it all worthwhile. (Do I count this as publishing? By the raw sense of the term, yes, simply because we're publishing. I, for one, hope to have it published under the auspices of the Handbook for the Recently Deceased Press. From a practical standpoint, no, this does not count as publishing, because we're using a vanity press.)

A Writing Exercise

A good friend of mine, who shall remain anonymously in England, asked me a few days ago why I write. After some long, windy e-mails, I suppose I can sum up the reasons why I write as follows:

1) Why not?
2) It's fun.
3) Beats working.

Would I like to publish? Yes. Will I die if I don't? No. I enjoy writing for the sake of it. So here's something I've written. It's incomplete, to be sure, but it's fun to pull it up and work on it. Must confess it's kind of inspired by Walter Wangering Jr.'s The Book of the Dun Cow, but happier.

It's part of the opening chapter to something I call Doleful Creatures. That sounds happy enough.

(A note to the developers of Open Office: Blogger DOES NOT like your metadata.)

The animals of Purdy Farm knew something had to be done.

They gathered in the barn on a moonless night, cattle sweeping the stalls, the roosters herding their harems, the pigs grunting sleepily, the crows lining the rafters overhead.

Adora Belle, a Guernsy cow, was nervous of the crows. They didn’t belong to the farm particularly, they did no valuable work. But Littlebottom the cat and Janos the donkey convinced her they had as much a stake in what went on in the barn as any animal that worked at, burrowed under, flew over or snuffled through the farm. The crows had even managed to talk up the meeting enough in the woods and fallow prairies that a family of porcupines, three bright-eyed raccoons, a moth-eaten badger and a gaggle of field mice were in the barn, clustered close together, eyeing the others with awe and suspicion.

Across the barnyard, past the wagon-barn and the well, Farmer Purdy snored in his cot in the living room, close to the fire. His sleep was fitful. He woke often, to poke the fire, to sit up and cough a bone-rattling, hacking cough into an old spotted handkerchief. As he sat in the darkness, the room illuminated fitfully by the glow from the fire grate, he spotted the pile of paperwork on his cluttered desk. He coughed again, shivered, rolled into his blanket and turned back to the fire, his back to the desk.

“Is everyone here? Is anyone missing,” Adora Belle asked over the cackle of the crowd. The animals settled, a bit reluctantly. A mother mouse tried to shoosh her brood who’d started a game of hide-and-seek in the milking pails and butter churn.

“This is prob’ly all that’s comin,’ Belle,” Janos said. He looked around the barn. It was not as crowded as he would have liked. But so many had gone. The horses. Most of the cattle. All of the sheep. Only one of the sheep dogs remained, a depressed creature who slept in the hay loft and tried, once in a while, to halfheartedly herd the chickens. Someone had even taken the scarecrow Ma Purdy made years back, leaving the fields open to the crows that shuffled on the rafters, trying hard not to relieve themselves on the animals below.

Adora Belle cleared her throat. “We’d like to thank,”

“Kin we dispense with the speeches, miss, and get to th’ point o’ this meetin,” the badger asked. He stopped his own speech with a fit of coughing as the crows chuckled overhead.

“Easy, grandfather, don’t make this speech your last,” a crow shouted. The others laughed.

The badger stopped coughing. “Fine for you flightly young’uns to make fun of an old badger,” he said. “Freeloaders that you are, flyin’ in when the corn and raspberries is ripe, never doin’ nothin’ but eatin.’”

A crow dropped form the rafter, flew a tight corkscrew and landed with a thump on the ground in front of the badger’s snout. “Pretty preachy for a codger who hides in the woods all day, scared of his own shadow,” it said. “Don’t see you hitched to the plow!”

The badger snapped at the crow, making it hop backwards into a startled chicken. “I don’t work here, aye, but I don’t pilfer, either,” he said.

“Gentle friends, gentle friends,” Adora Belle lowed, stepping lightly over the chickens and ducks to the spot where the crow and badger eyed each other. “We don’t have time for fighting. We’re here,” she said, “to stop the Closure.”

All the animals in the barn heard the capital letter, the older ones explaining to the younger ones what they’d just heard. Closure. The word had been whispered, lowed, clucked, squeaked and grunted among animals living on and near the farm since Littlebottom first brought it to them two weeks ago. No one was really sure what it meant, but Littlebottom knew it meant the farmer had retired to his cot, growing more ill by the day. He rose only to stoke the fire, visit the outhouse and to stare forlornly at the papers piled on his desk.

“Aye, the Closure,” the badger shouted. “We wood folk have heard talk of the Closure from yon crows and mice,” he said. “None of us understand much what it means. I know closures when it comes ot tunnelin, but there be no tunnels o’ concern o’ the farmer on Purdy Farm. Ever sicne I closed that one the skunks had dug into the root cellar. Soft livin’ they was lookin’ for, yes, not knowin’ that in my time I seen soft livin’ bring the poison, the traps, the shotgun, I have.”

“Is that what happened to your face, grandfather,” the young crow laughed.

“Nay,” the badger said. “Lost me eye and me ear in a scrap, I did. Just as you’re about to. And if I can’t find yon ear, I’ll go fer the brain! An’ I doubt I can find that.”

“Get him, Chylus, get the ratbag!” the crows in the rafters shouted. A few flew off, circling over the badger and crow, hoping for a better view of the fight. The chickens cackled and ran, crashing into each other and the other animals as they tried to find places to hide. The filed mice lined up on the lip of a pail, leaning forward expectantly. The porcupines stepped nervously from one foot to another, not wanting to witness a fight but unwilling to flee, lest they put an eye out with one of their quills.

“Silence,” Janos whispered. “Silence.”

The donkey joked often to Adora Belle that he wasn’t a donkey at all. Wheezing in his raspy voice, he said, “I’m all hoarse.” But over any din, be it cackling chickens, a gale ripping shakes off the barn roof, the roar of a tractor, all the other animals could hear Janos’ whispers. They quieted. The crows flying overhead made a few more passes, then flew back to their roosts in the rafters. Chylus, eyeing the badger suspiciously, hopped back, turned and flew to a rail on one of the stalls. The badger stared evilly up at him.

Adora Belle spoke. “We haven’t time to fight amongst ourselves,” she said. “Littlebottom will tell us why we’re here. Littlebottom!”

The cat looked up from his perch on a pile of gunny sacks. HE stood up, stretched, then leisurely walked to the center of the crowd of animals, tail erect, walking daintily as if on the carpet in the Purdy farmhouse hallway.

“Someone needs to put a quill up that cat’s bottom,” one of the porcupines said. The field mice nearby twittered. They did not trust Littlebottom one bit. They’d lost too many relatives to be friendly with any feline.

Littlebottom glanced at the mice and licked his lips. Then he turned, jumped onto a bale of straw near where Adora Belle stood, turned a few times, then settled on his bottom, his back to the mice and wood folk, addressing the farm animals. “Two weeks ago, while perusing the farm mail, Farmer Purdy stumbled across an envelope which, upon opening brought him distinct physical, and as you all know, mental anguish as well,” Littlebottom said. “This was not, I knew immediately, the same kind of physical duress that overtakes Farmer Purdy when he reads his bills, his bank statements nor even the letters from his sister Patricia, who lives in a townhouse in the city and fills her letters with her absolutely horrid memories of growing up on the farm, questioning him in every letter why he insists on hanging about with filthy pigs and ducks and why don’t you just sell the farm and bring Littlebottom and live with me, well, not with me, but nearby, perhaps on the other side of town where the rent is cheaper and more fitting to a man of your social proclivities. Those letters almost always put him in a rage, and whether it’s cold or not, dinner time or not, he always stuffs them in the stove and scratches around for the matches.”

“Get to the point, please, Cat. We haven’t got all night,” the porcupine father said.

Littlebottom gave the porcupine a sour look, over his shoulder. “I was just getting to the Closure,” he said. “There are four of them, or so he read from the letter two weeks ago. Four Closures. They’re coming from the bank, because the letter came out of the same kind of envelope he gets his bank statements in, except this one had a lot of red lettering on the front that I couldn’t quite make out.”

“Probly cause Purdy didn’t read it,” Chylus said. “That cat’s no reader.”

“What’s a bank, now,” the badger asked. “Never get nothin’ from the banks I know, down at the stream.”

“A bank,” Littlebottom said, not turning to face the badger, “is, well, sort of like a church, I believe. I’ve never been to one. But when Farmer Purdy gets his letters and there’s one from the bank in the pile, he always says something like, ‘It’s from the bank. Lord, what do they want now?’ He always talks about not having enough in the bank. It’s probably because he doesn’t go there that often. Ma Purdy used to take him to church every Sunday. I think they went to the bank on occasion, too, but since she passed, God bless her, he’s been to neither.”

“Ma Purdy was a right beast,” one of the crows said. “Threw apples at us. Put out the scarecrow.” The murder of crows, as a whole, shuddered. They hated the scarecrow, rejoicing the day it was blown away during a thunderstorm.

“What do we care that a Closure’s coming, four of ‘em or not,” one of the pigs grunted. “Maybe better pickings once they come. Slop’s been a bit thin, lately.

Graffiti

I've shown you a few things I've found in the books I buy at the thrift store. Today, here's something I found on one of my books.

First, the front cover, from Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain. You can tell it's all 1970s, because if it were written today, it would have a much cooler cover with eye-spearing graphics and such, not this lousy alphanumeric kitsch (not that I mind the alphanumerics; I think they're kinda nifty; certainly more creative than just splashing color all over the place). And clever, since the man is shown with low light from above and just behind him, so as to conceal rather than reveal:


It's an edition of the book published to coincide with a movie based on the book, so the person on the front cover -- not quite sure who it is but it looks like Martin Landau -- is actually in the film, apparently in one of the sequences when these intrepid people are going through a decontamination process to enter a secret government germ warfare lab.

Now the back cover, with the image of the man repeated:


Then a blow-up of the upper left corner of the back cover. It's a bit dog-eared, but the message is clear:


It's a bit lost under the dog-ear, but I can extrapolate. Iit says "Where are my pants?" A fair question, I think. I giggle each time I see it.

Noo Nee Noo Noo Noo Noo . . .

Though my children are growing up in a televisonless household, there's only one thing I regret them not seeing: Sesame Street. It seems cruel to send them through life without knowing the likes of this guy:

I don't really care if it's anachronistic to have an animated typewriter teaching me (or my children) the alphabet. A computer would accomplish the same thing, but not have the nifty typing noise or the bells or the ratchet of the paper going in and out. He'd also have to have a little cart following him with the printer on it, since there aren't computers that come with printers installed these days.

But back to the memories: Or this song (which, for a brief time when Elder Duckworth was AP, was the unofficial song of La Mission Francaise de Bordeaux).

Scary thing is that there's a generation of Americans that grew up on this stuff. In a decade or two, it's a fair bet we'll be in charge of the country. In the late 2010s to early 2020s, it's a fair bet the man or woman sitting in the Oval Office will, during a cabinet meeting or visit to the United Nations, spot an old typewriter and, in his or her head, immediately start humming, "noo nee noo noo noo, noo neee nooo neee noooooooo. . . " If that isn't scarier than four more years for Dubya, I don't know what is. (I'm not sure who does the Typewriter Guy's voice, but part of me thinks it's Bill Cosby. I'm likely wrong, but can't seem to find any proof to the contrary.)

Segue: Jeff Hale, the San Francisco animator who created Typewriter Guy for Sesame Street is also the same Jeff Hale who starred in Hardware Wars, viz:

Truck Update

Contrary to popular belief, our truck is not about to explode, incontroverting passers-by with automotive shrapnel and making me look really silly sitting in the middle of the highway, amidst the wreckage, clutching the steering wheel, as is called for by comic convention.

In the words of our trusted mechanic: "Those guys are crooks. None of that work needed to be done."

He's fixing the clutch, which I know through use isn't working. He's also going to pack the truck's bearings, as they need to be packed, But the other dire emergencies the first mechanic saw do not exist, at least to his worldview.