“I’m From Silicon Valley and I’m Here to Help”

In the years to come, we will probably come to recognize the phrase “I’m from Silicon Valley and I’m here to help” as the most frightening phrase uttered.

Their latest creation?

They have this nifty little app that will let you out your friends who have a spotty voting record, who are registered Republicans*, or who are the scum of the earth because they whine about politics all the time but don’t ever make it to the polls.

Oh, they won’t tell you that on their website. There’s a lot of things they won’t tell you about on their website. But that’s what’s going to happen.

It’s Vote Shaming, from Your Friends!

When the geniuses at Buzzfeed look at your app and think, yeah, this is a little creepy, you might have a problem.

Yes, it’s true voting records are public records. And thanks to the vacuousness of the techies, it’s information that can now easily be weaponized.

I know that’s not their intent. But once you offer a service to the masses, you no longer control how the masses use your service. Some will use the app to gently remind their friends to go vote. Others will use the app to shame those who don’t hold their own political views or for other nefarious mischief. Voila the birth of yet another tool that will be used in the “us-vs-them” mentality that is poisoning our politics. If you can’t convince your opponents with logical statements and reasoned argument, SHAME THEM WITH PUBLICLY-AVAILABLE VOTER DATA!

But remember, “VoteWithMe is 20 times more effective than traditional get out the vote methods,” they claim on their website. No matter they don’t substantiate that claim in any way, but they CLAIM IT SO IT MUST BE TRUE.

Pardon my cynicism. I see their pure intent. I see the stars in their eyes. Yet I also see how the Internet takes a good thing and pounds it into the ground.

So use the app if you want. Persuade your friends in swing districts to vote – since those are the votes that count the most, apparently; forget that all politics is local and follow the Democratic mantra of getting the vote out, winning the popular vote for president, yet failing twice in the past 16 years to win the Electoral College and then INEXPLICABLY failing to do anything about the Electoral College because amending the Constitution is, like, SO HARD.

Or support Electoral College-elected demagogues who suddenly want to do lots of cutting and pasting in the U.S. Constitution. It’s up to you.



*Not that some registered Republicans – or Democrats, for that matter, don’t deserve to be publicly shamed from time to time. It clears the tubes.

At Least it's A Classy Earworm

This has been my earworm as of late. At least it's a classy earworm.

No Redemption for Milkshake Duck

I only read about Kelvin Pena afterwards.

Reading about him inspired two thoughts:

1. What the hell is “milkshake ducked”?
2. Dude, come on.

The first thought was easily answered. A milkshake duck is how the Interwebs refers to someone who briefly basks in Internet fame, only to have a “sordid” past surface to tarnish the fame.

Apparently, Pena, who gained fame as Brother Nature – and naturally branded it and is selling, probably, t-shirts and deer-related merchandise thanks to his relationship with a handful of deer which show up in his backyard to eat carrots and such, sent racist and other stupid tweets as a pre-teenager.

This means, according to the Internet, his Internet fame is tainted and over and he must needs be shunned forevermore because any association with him means you would kiss Hitler full on the lips given a chance.

This leads, of course, to the second thought.

That second thought is not directed at Pena, who acknowledges his past stupidity. It’s directed, rather, at the rest of us who probably all have sordid thoughts in our past – or even our present – but since we’re not Internet famous, they can remain solidly in their closets.

We’ve become so cynical. It’s like we all go into the Wabac Machine and are all present when Ron Ziegler, press secretary for US President Richard Nixon, uttered the famous “This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative,” in trying to explain the Watergate scandal which eventually brought Nixon down.

Sure, we think. He’s repentant now. But he said UGLY THINGS in the past so that must mean he’s an UGLY PERSON, no matter his apologies and what appears – on Pena’s part, not necessarily Nixon’s – to be contrition. ANY ASSOCIATION with Scumbag Brother Nature means you accept his past ideas, even if he now rejects them and admits he said them as an attention-seeking geek who should have known better and certainly knows better now – and very likely knew better before the rage started.



To me, it’s a faux rage that denies forgiveness. It’s spite writ large for everyone to see.

Ten Influential Films -- and the Real People I Connect With Them

Facebook -- and other social media, probably -- has got a thing going where we post an image a day for ten days from films that've had a lasting impact on our lives.

As I, like Jack Handey, am rich in television (and film, for that matter) there are a lot to try to cram onto a list of ten. I'll try my best.

Neat thing is that as I thought about the films I'd put on the list, I connected the films to people in my life, so it's a film/person association.

Day One:

Inspector Clouseau looking for cleues in "Revenge of the Pink Panther. This film reminds me of my Dad. Back in the dinosaur years when we'd rent a VCR and some movies. we'd almost always come home with a Pink Panther film. Dad loved the slapstick and the idiot accent (he had his own, of Dutch extraction).

I was lucky enough to serve a mission in France, so seeing these movies knowing a bit of the language certainly changed them for the better.

Day Two:

I first read "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" sitting in one of the back corners of Mrs. Barrett's third-grade class. Shortly after I finished reading the book, they announced the film. I was stoked. This was the first movie, as a kid, I wanted to see. We went to the expensive theater ($4.50 a head at the time) to see it. And it did not disappoint.

Well, maybe a little. It was my first introduction to Hollywood altering books for movies. But as I think of this film, I think of my elementary school teachers, who were always kind enough to stick me in the back of the room next to the library books.

Day Three:

Though there are many people associated with "The Three Amigos," the memory that sticks out the most is my mission companion, Elder Omerza, listening politely as I sang "Arizona Moon" from this film to some French members who wanted to hear us sing. I think he was relieved I volunteered when they asked us to sing them something. And maybe they were too stunned by my rotten singing to ask for an encore, even from Elder Omerza, after I was done.

Day Four:

This was me as a kid, but absent the self-confidence. Chunk knew he was fat, was tired of the other kids pointing it out to him, but he just rolled with it (no pun intended). So this is a me film.

It's also a sister Chris film, since Chris is the one who introduced us to The Goonies, and who still calls me Chunk -- lovingly, of course.

Day Five:

Oh my goodness. How many people in my life does this film involve? Probably all of them, to be honest. Dad chuckled at it. Everyone thought I looked like Ralphie. And now, as a father, I see a lot of myself in The Old Man. I think this film has a character and a mood for everyone at every time in their lives. I even use the video of Miss Shields correcting papers to let my students know I'm working on theirs.

Day Six:

Two people come to mind whenever I watch this film:

My wife, of course. She is Gwen deMarco, and laughs at herself whenever she finds herself repeating what the computer says. But she's also badass enough I don't want to mess with her.

Then my brother-in-law Carl. He's a very serious kinda guy, but I got to hear him giggle all the way through this film.

Day Seven:

This film. This is an Albert and Jeff production. They love humor, they love nonsequiturs, and they love knowing that if anyone in the family asks "where do these stairs go," they can respond "they go up," and everyone will immediately know what's going on.

Day Eight:

If Ghostbusters is for brothers, this film is for sisters. Maaike and Sherri, because they know the film just as well as I do and can quote the most obscure lines from it. And also Marina, who doesn't have a connection to this film per se, except I remember many nights at home, listening to her play the guitar and sing. Of anyone in the family, she helped me appreciate a good singing voice and good songs, which this film has in abundance.

Day Nine:

This one. This one represents many of the fine folk I know only grace of myths and legends, or at least the Internet. If I'm in a funk after work, I know I can come home and on a good day find someone griping about Fop, complaining about geographic oddities or lamenting about the livestock. Thanks, folks, for the low-cost therapy you provide.

Day Ten:

A funny film, both as in funny ha-ha and a film to make you think you're living your own life funy. When Brother Warnick showed us this film in either my first or second year at college, I had to wonder what it meant for me, a punk kid.

Decades later, it means a lot.

It means don't get a brain cloud and then not get a second opinion.

So this film reminds me of my college years, and the many friends I had there who were always willing to give me a second opinion.

Delusions of Adequacy

I’m trying not to draw any conclusions. However . . .

This week begins the grading of Part One papers. Right now, based on topics and outlines, I judge about half of my students will produce Part One papers that broadly fit with the expected outcome, meaning they will identify and analyze a problem and briefly outline the solutions they’ll explore in Part Two.

The other half will need more coaching, with about a third to a half of those again getting on the right track for Part Two. The remainder will continue to struggle with the paper through Part Three, when blessed relief arrives and we get to move on to a different assignment.

These outcomes, and rough percentages, occur in my classes whether or not I aggressively push at the beginning to help them understand what this three-part paper is about, and how to succeed at it. And from conversations I’ve had with my wife, who probably puts in five hours for each hour I do in class, these percentages hold the same for her as well.

So for those conclusions I’m reluctant to draw:

How much do we, as instructors, have to bang our heads on the wall to help students understand what’s expected, particularly when the outcome in the aggregate, appears to be the same whether or not great effort is expended?

So this is the problem I need to examine in my own version of this paper. Or maybe something spun in more positive light that makes me sound less lazy.

It’s hard to say additional professional development is a solution. My wife has a current teaching certificate in English. That was her major in college. I have little training in teaching. Yet our outcomes mirror each other.

I’d be interested to see if there’s a correlation between teaching this class online as compared to teaching it in the classroom. Do we struggle with physical and psychological distance in the online classroom that leads to poorer outcomes – or are the outcomes the same whether the class is taught online or face-to-face? Given the physical and psychological barriers between classroom teachers and online teachers at BYU-Idaho, finding this out might be difficult. I could perhaps pose the question in the BYUI teaching forum (but does it include only online instructors, or all instructors?) or in one of the Facebook forums I’ve discovered (which may suffer the same separation).

Nevertheless, I think I’ll ask in our online forums if other instructors in this course see the same percentages. Can’t hurt but to try. And perhaps I need to better quantify what I’m seeing in my own classes in order to make a case – for something; I don’t yet know what – down the road.

And maybe there’s nothing to be done. This is just how it’s going to be.

If only I could chase away these feelings of inadequacy.

Perhaps they’re better than delusions.

Infamous. Infamous?

COME TO SANTO POCO PUT ON SHOW STOP THE INFAMOUS EL GUAPO

Clearly, knowing where the period is in this sentence – and getting past the clunky language of telegrams – is crucial to understanding this sentence, and The Three Amigos fail miserably at it.

Nevermind that without the misunderstanding we have no story. Because the senders of this telegram had to settle for the ten-peso version, tragedy (“I’ve been shot already!”) and comedy (“Lip balm?”) ensue.

So I agree with Joe Moran, professor of English at Liverpool John Moores University when he says “If you want to write well, learn to love the full stop. See it as the goal towards which the words in your sentence adamantly move.”

But some of the rest of what Moran writes would fit in well with a comedy of words.

Moran decries the advent of texting and chatting online, where “[w]e live in a digital age that likes to pretend that writing is speech. We tap out emails, texts and update our social media profiles in the places – busy commuter trains, cafes and streets – where we also talk. We write as if we were talking. This kind of digital writing is often done quickly in the hope of an instant response. It is a slightly interrupted way of having a conversation.”*

Considering that most early records of written communication are little more than accountancy made permanent, I have to wonder how much tweed is stuffed up Mr. Moran’s bum.

Writing and speech have often had a hostile relationship. The Linguistic Society of America has a few choice words on the topic:

Written language is associated with political and economic power, admired literature, and educational institutions, all of which lend it high prestige. In literate societies, people often come to think of their written language as basic; they may regard speech as inferior. Nevertheless, writing can be perceived as colder or more impersonal than speech.

The best books I’ve read are mixtures of both writing and speech. Writing as we speak – and this applies to nonfiction as well as fiction – allows us to remove some of the tweed from our bums; to remove the colder, impersonal air that writing can entail. Some writers are better at this than others. And there are times when we want the cold informality of the written word, rather than the casualness of speech. But both styles have their places, can often be intermixed successfully. Neither should be regarded as better than the other, but rather should be seen as equal partners to be called upon when the need arises.

Our ears – used to speech – can tell when something sounds written, particularly when it’s delivered in an active medium like a radio play, a movie, or such. The nuance of circumstance, context, and place help us – complex linguistic creatures that we are – to tell when a character is cleverly written to appear stiff and wooden, and when a character’s lines are poorly written.

Our brains – used to writing – can tell when something sounds casually out of place, irreverent, or informal when the opposite is called for. Yet we can begin to hear characters speak in our minds – we often give them distinct voices, too – when the casualness of transcribed speech allows us to hear the characters speaking. And this goes for those characters who are cleverly-written to sound as if there’s tweed in their bums.

Learn to write both ways, young man, and the west will be yours, even if El Guapo turns out to be a big, dangerous man who wants to kill you. He certainly didn’t sound that way in the telegram.

*We can also see Moran is no fan of the Oxford comma, but that’s fodder for another post.

Our Savior's Love

Had something happen today that first sent me down one path of thought, but quickly brought me to this one:

We have to remember when we go after the one sheep who has strayed, they may come back to the fold with traumas from their time away, or even their previous time with the flock, that will manifest in ways that will startle and frighten the flock that did not stray. This is when the flock needs to show the increased love the Savior speaks of.

Conversely, for some, showing that love can be as hard as surviving the aforementioned trauma. The flock in general is not used to shocks or forgets them easily, and will occasionally react to trauma revisited inside the flock in ways that will seem panicky or cruel. This is when those who stray need to deepen their well of forgiveness.

The flock needs greater practice in showing love. Those who stray need to forgive the occasional panics and realize they do not mean the flock does not want them there.

I don't know about the veracity of this path. But it seems more compassionate than where I started out.

We're all Becoming Daleks

I should probably start to watch Dr. Who.

Specifically, the episodes featuring the Daleks.

Because we’re becoming Daleks. Every last one of us.

Study the metaphor. According to Wikipedia, the Daleks were created for the Dr. Who television program as “violent, merciless and pitiless cyborg aliens who demand total conformity to their will, bent on the conquest of the universe and the exterminations of what they see as inferior races.”

I’m going to expand that metaphor just only slightly, adopting the accepted metaphor used by British society in general:  “English-speakers sometimes use the term metaphorically to describe people, usually authority figures, who act like robots unable to break from their programming.”

It’s necessary to include this expanded metaphor, lest those who are “woke” attempt to say they aren’t among the Dalek-like.

Now shift here:

In democracy, it is difficult to win fellow citizens over to your own side, or to build public support to remedy injustices that remain all too real, when you fundamentally misunderstand how they see the world.

That comes from Yascha Mounk, a lecturer on government at Harvard, writing for The Atlantic.

He writes about the disconnect between the “woke” and the “resentful.” You’ll recognize them:

They’re the ones you typically see shouting at each other loudly in any public or social media space, both assured that they are right and those who don’t believe exactly like them are troglodytes not worthy of licking the scum off their boots. They’re human Daleks.

Mounk writes further than though both camps believe they speak for the majority, they do, in fact, speak only for a minority on either end of the political spectrum. He looked at a study that considered support for political correctness. The study found support for PC culture – which the survey left undefined – was much more narrow than most people believe.

Mounk writes:

For the millions upon millions of Americans of all ages and all races who do not follow politics with rapt attention, and who are much more worried about paying their rent than about debating the prom dress worn by a teenager in Utah, contemporary callout culture merely looks like an excuse to mock the values or ignorance of others.

The gap between the progressive perception and the reality of public views on this issue could do damage to the institutions that the woke elite collectively run. A publication whose editors think they represent the views of a majority of Americans when they actually speak to a small minority of the country may eventually see its influence wane and its readership decline. And a political candidate who believes she is speaking for half of the population when she is actually voicing the opinions of one-fifth is likely to lose the next election.

It’s the classic Pauline Kael, even if you stick with the original quote, not the paraphrase.

It also shows up in things like this.

Because clearly the liberals on the Supreme Court should absolutely refuse admission to the newest justice based on the woke’s opinion, which everyone shares because that appointment is still “convulsing” the nation.

Or is it?

Maybe it’s time for all of us to get out of our own special little worlds, shed the Dalek suits, and bask in the sun of actually listening to each other.

The Visit of the Big Failure

Some days, you get time.

Time to sit and think.

And where that time is idle time and the stuff you sit and think about is trivial, well, other things get thought about.

Skeletons. We all have them, real and metaphorical. I think a lot about them in fall and spring, when the time seems to slow down and there’s lots to think about, or at least lots of time for thinking.

Every year it seems, I have what I call the Big Failure. They seem to come in the fall for some reason, disturbing my sleep as they days get shorter and as Orion rises in the sky. Maybe it’s Orion’s fault. But most likely mine, and my tendency to be paranoid and overanalyze things.

I get to thinking about taking time off. I took a Thursday off a few weeks ago – not connected to this year’s Big Failure. I have time to take more. But then I’m underfoot at home and it doesn’t really help matters, so I may as well not do it.

I am being purposely vague; this is a public place, after all. I’ll know enough that reading this, five years down the line, ten years down the line, I’ll still remember what the Big Failure this time was. Unless, of course, I’m dealing with yet another more modern Big Failure, which is always possible.

Also, because this too shall pass.  It’s not career-ending or anything like that. Time heals all Big Failures. Though you think time would also be a contributing factor into reducing the frequency of Big Failures which, perhaps, it has.

Still.

Part of me wonders if it isn’t biological. I think most family members face the Big Failure to varying degrees. We all have our own little dancing skeletons.



UPDATE: This year’s Big Failure seems to have gone out with a whimper and not a bang as expected. Or else it’s just waiting in the wings for the right time to explode. Maybe it’s time I got out my reorg boots.

Social Media Fasting

Over the weekend, Russell M. Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to which I belong, suggested women in the church take a ten-day “fast” from social media. To be seen in context here:

I invite you to participate in a 10-day fast from social media and from any other media that bring negative and impure thoughts to your mind. Pray to know which influences to remove during your fast. The effect of your 10-day fast may surprise you. What do you notice after taking a break from perspectives of the world that have been wounding your spirit? Is there a change in where you now want to spend your time and energy? Have any of your priorities shifted – even just a little? I urge you to record and follow through with each impression.

Clearly, this isn’t a “social media is bad” moment, but more of an invitation to reflect on how time is used, and how that used time might be inviting negativity.

President Nelson invited youth to participate in a similar fast in April.

It now begs the question: What about the men?

Surely this admonition to avoid negative influences that wound our spirits applies universally. And clearly, taken in the wider context of admonitions and advice given this year both in April and this past weekend, examining how we spend our time and finding better uses for it is a good idea.

I’m considering a fast of my own. Maybe my perception that social media allows me an outlet to speak and joke with others might fade as I spend more time speaking and joking with the real people living in my house with me. You know, wife and children.

Although I have to give social media credit for this: I keep in touch so much better with my siblings through Facebook than I ever have in “real life” or via phone. Maybe that’s a shortcoming I need to conquer; a presence online is pale compared to a presence in person. But an online presence is better than nothing at all.

There are a few things that could be cut out, however:

• Buzzfeed, what with their foul words in the headlines even
• Fark, what with their foul words everywhere
• YouTube -- or at least selective parts of YouTube -- where the scum reside.

President Nelson Will Now Speak [Brace Yourselves]

This is where we're at. Or where we will be when January 2019 rolls around.

Very interestingly couched this announcement was, amid the message of "OK, you've got more time on the Sabbath Day. Now look at how you're observing the Sabbath and make better use of the time you've got. Remember, this is NOT a Sunday-only religion."

I Dislike First Person, or All the Good Writing Advice Comes from Futurama

I’ve finally read enough books written in the first person to decide this: I do not generally like books written in the first person.

Funnily enough, I don’t mind if one of the characters narrates the story – I’d have to pound on the McGurk Organization’s Joey Rockaway if I did mind – but perhaps that’s because good ol’ Joey isn’t telling me about things happening as they happen; he’s telling us things after events have transpired.
And I may have stumbled across the principal reason why I don’t like first-person writing: throbbing temples.

In almost every first-person book I read, a character’s temples are throbbing. All sorts of crazy is going on around them, but they focus on the throbbing temples. I guess it’s a way to show a dazed character, to show us as readers they’re in mortal danger yet have throbbing temples, THROBBING TEMPLES. We just don’t see the danger because THROBBING TEMPLES.

Too much time inside the character’s head.

And this is ironic, considering I’ve got a book in the works that is being told partially from the first person.

Maybe there are good examples of first-person writing out there and I haven’t yet stumbled across them, or have simply forgotten about it in the wave of all the good third-person writing that I’ve consumed.

There are ways to get inside a character’s head without stabbing the reader with the first-person “I”. Terry Pratchett does this well, particularly with his Sam Vimes and Tiffany Aching books.

And maybe I’m a snob, poisoned by so many good books told from a more omniscient perspective that reading a few from the first-person that aren’t all that great turns me off the style, which like hanging an onion on our belts, is the style at the time.

This could very well be a difference between writers who are able to show well versus writers who have to tell. And it inspires me to read these good authors again and again to pound this facet of writing into my head.

Cue the angsty Futurama Devil Robot again:



If the folks at nownovel.com are to be believed, I think the rule most often broken by first-person narratives – and the one that grates the most on me when it is broken – goes stregit to the show don’t tell phenomenon. To quote:

Because the narrator uses the first person ‘I’ (and sometimes the plural ‘we’) to tell the bulk of the story in first person narration, you may be tempted to begin sentences with ‘I’ a lot. Take this sentence for example:

‘I saw that the door was closed and I heard a faint scratching noise coming from within the house. I thought it sounded like someone trying to dig a tunnel out.’

The words ‘I saw’, ‘I heard’ and ‘I thought’ all place the reader at one remove to the unfolding events. The reader isn’t seeing, hearing or thinking these things through the narrator. The reader is being told about the narrator’s experiences.

Telling rather than showing can be defined as “overusing words that place distance between the narrator and [the] reader,” if I can borrow a phrase from nownovel.

Another rule that gets broken often is nownovel’s No. 5: “Vary the way your narrator expresses feelings, thoughts, and experiences.” Many of the first-person novels I’ve read have narrators that use one method – and one method only – to get these thoughts across. Points for consistency, but it grates after a while.

I also appreciate nownovel’s points on starting a story in first person.