Portfolios

My latest project has been an online portfolio. I've been wanting to put one together for a while now, but haven't had the technological skills to do so-- and actually, I still don't.

But what I do have is a friend, i.e. Carol, who does have the skills to put together this kind of thing-- and already has. See her portfolio here. And thanks to Steve, I have Dreamweaver. So it's now or never!

My first step is finding a server. Not sure how I'm going to go about that (probably with a lot of help from Google)... I'll keep you posted.

This article, although targeted to design professionals, has some good general tips for setting up a portfolio. Definitely worth a read.

And, just for fun, this is one of my favorite portfolios, by an artist I found while wandering around DeviantArt one day a couple of years ago. Her new portfolio is here; her old one is here.

Mrs. de Winter

I read the book Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier over the summer; it took me by surprise. I expected it to be a classic version of a trashy romance novel... and at the beginning, it met my expectations. Du Maurier's style is simplistic, almost juvenile-- while the writing is not bad, per se, neither is it well-polished. But the more I read, the more I realized what a competent author du Maurier really was. Her style mirrors the theme of her novel: coming-of-age from naivete to consciousness. And despite the simple premise-- a young second wife trying to fill the unfamiliar shoes of her predecessor-- Rebecca proved to be a tale well worth the study.

Tonight, I watched Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation of du Maurier's novel. It was the first Hitchcock movie I have ever seen, and I have to agree that he deserves the title of master. Rebecca ranks among one of the best film adaptations I have seen. The characters looked and acted exactly as I had imagined them-- though, of course, that is not the only criteria for an effective adaptation. Hitchcock flawlessly tread the line du Maurier had mapped between light innocence and dark forboding; the balance between lightness and evil, happiness and pain. Joan Fontaine's performance as the second Mrs. de Winter was spot-on: everything, from her facial expressions to her posture to her timid girlishness, was perfectly in tune with the unsure, innocent character laid out in the novel. Her subsequent transformation into a grown-up was equally elegant in its execution, and, I thought, more marked than the character's change in the book. In a way, Rebecca reminds me of the Audrey Hepburn classic Sabrina (later remade with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond). Sabrina deals with the same kind of transformation from girl to woman, just without the ghost story. But Hepburn and Ormond have nothing on Fontaine-- while these portrayers of Sabrina succeeded in conveying a silly, bookish girl, they did so in a way that showed too much of the confidence that Sabrina would grow into. Fontaine, on the other hand, presents a character who is painfully reminiscent of adolescence-- the young Mrs. de Winter is never quite up to speed, never quite has all the information, never quite feels at ease at the Manderley estate. She is the young teenager finally old enough to attend a party with her parents, dressed in elegant clothing that doesn't feel as if it fits right, expected to use more pieces of silverware than she knows what do with, uncomfortable and outclassed by the ideas discussed among guests, uncertain of the correct etiquette for anything, even something as small as what to do with your napkin or where to leave your handbag.

In sum, go and read the book Rebecca and then watch the film. Both du Maurier and Hitchcock do a beautiful job of telling a tale that is a little too familiar for our taste-- yet at the same time, keeps us glued to the story, enraptured.

Health care: worth it?

This is from an article by the Social Security Advisory Board, entitled "The Unsustainable Cost of Healthcare." It was compiled in September 2009.

"Studies have examined whether increases in medical spending have provided a good value: whether advances in medical care have led to large enough improvements in health and life expectancy to be worth the expense. Harvard health economist David Cutler and his co-authors found that averaging across all ages, increases in medical spending between 1960 and 2000 provided reasonably good value, with an average cost per life-year gained of $19,900.12 For individuals age 65 and over, however, the average cost of adding one more year of life had increased from the 1970s to the 1990s from $46,800 to $145,000. The authors note that their estimates for the 1990s would fail many cost – benefit criteria. Other studies suggest that at current high levels of spending, additional dollars are not improving outcomes."

I think this hits the crux of the health care debate: how much is too much? At what point do we have to throw in the towel, so to say, and accept death as the natural next step in our lives? Is it at the point where another year costs more than we could earn in a decade? Or do we keep on fighting to live, throwing pitchforks full of cash in the burning fire of disease, until technology is exhausted? Is one year of grandma's life worth bankruptcy for her children, who will survive years after her?

For those in the medical field, this has got to be a huge ethical dilemma. Their job is to keep people alive... but sometimes, maybe, it's better to let a person go.

Who is that masked man?

Note: I wrote this a while ago. It's a condensed version of a 20-page paper I wrote earlier this year on a topic that I thoroughly enjoy. Hope you do, too!

I’m lying on the bed in my brother’s room staring at a giant BATMAN poster. I gave him the poster last year for Christmas because it matched his newly-painted color scheme. And, of course, because you can’t go wrong with Gotham’s Dark Knight.

In fact, it seems that no one can go wrong with the caped crusader. Introduced to the world in the May 1939 issue of Detective Comics, the dark knight recently turned seventy—yet still ranks near the top of the “cool” charts, if the success of Jonathan Nolan’s 2005 and 2008 Batman films are any indication.

Think of the other seventy-year-olds you know. How many of them can boast a fan base to compare with Bruce Wayne’s? To be fair, Bruce doesn’t show his age in the same way that great-aunt Millie does. And Bruce Wayne to Millie is probably not the same as the Bruce Wayne you know. Batman’s seventy years have not been consistent, except in one respect: he has always been there to help his readers cope with their particular brand of reality.

Superheroes were born in the 1930s, and Batman was at the front of the wave. His only predecessor is Superman, who made his debut in 1938. It is not a coincidence that these icons were born concurrent with what is arguably the greatest economic crisis in American history. Bradford Wright, author of Comic Book Nation, defines these early superheroes as a literary fanfare for the common man. “The new heroes in Depression America turned out to be the American people themselves,” he writes. The economy’s massive heart attack brought out the best and worst in Americans, both in reality and in fiction.

In the case of the worst, Gotham City’s antagonists started out as realistic thugs: robbers, mob bosses, the usual crowd of miscreants down at the station. However, as the depression years gave way to World War II, Batman grew too big for petty thieves. When America outsourced its enemies to faraway countries like Germany and Japan, Batman outsourced his villains, too. Or rather, upsourced. Instead of trading out for evildoers from Zimbabwe or Estonia, the caped crusader traded in dozens of regular villains for a few super villains. Americans could identify with Edward Nygma’s insane motives about as well as they could identify with the Axis powers: i.e., not at all. Yet in the midst of the crackpot chaos that emerged to tromp through Gotham, Batman was a beacon of light, reassuring citizens of both Gotham and America that an unfathomable enemy is not necessarily an undefeatable one.

But as crisis resolved and security returned, heroes fell by the wayside. According to Bradford Wright, “superheroes after World War II had far less to say about their world than ever before… victory ushered in an era that seemed to fulfill all that superheroes had fought for.” Batman of the fifties and sixties seems farcical compared to the modern, solemn caped crusader. The world was getting more complicated—McCarthyism, Korea, eventually hippies. A simplistic superhero fighting villains from outer space let comic book readers take a break from the world around them and enjoy, for a little while, a story in which good and evil were clearly defined.

Batman’s campiness hit its pinnacle in the 1960s television series: The Adventures of Batman and Robin. But the series didn’t last long. The escalating political turbulence of the 1970s preempted a reinterpretation of the dark knight. In the words of Dennis O’Neill, one of the men who reinvigorated Batman for the audience of the 1970s, “The world has changed… and Batman has changed with it.” In his new incarnation, O’Neill and his partner, Neal Adams, redefined Batman’s roots as the dark knight, renewing his relevance to the world that created him.

O’Neill and Adams’ reinterpretation of Batman set the stage for Batman’s depiction in the next decade. Frank Miller’s six-part 1986 comic series The Dark Knight Returns depicts an older, jaded vigilante; Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman is a dark, stylized interpretation of the caped crusader.

The 1990s brought mixed images of the dark knight. Tim Burton’s subsequent Batman film, Batman Returns, continued an eerie portrayal, and Batman: the Animated Series presented a dark-colored cartoon with content suitable for adults as well as children. Its dark images betray a theme deeper than good-beats-bad: it acknowledges, in no uncertain terms, the dark side of justice and the dark sides of life.

Meanwhile, Joel Schumaker’s Batman and Robin and Batman Forever fit the happy-go-lucky mold of the 1990s, an upbeat version of a hero still coming down from the 1960s camp-heaven high.

Batman of the 2000s has been defined to this point by Christopher Nolan’s grim Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Nolan portrays Batman in the tradition of O’Neill, Adams, Miller, and Saturday morning cartoons: a dark force for darker justice in a world that hopes, one day, to see a light.

***

Unlike the case with many superheroes, it’s not just nerds and preteens who admire the bat. What is it about the dark knight that speaks to us as a cultural collective? There must be a reason that we have held on to the caped crusader through the years, molding him to fill the needs of each generation. Is it because he is just a normal guy? No radioactive spider, no parents from Krypton. He is a person who has been wronged, and who now uses his power to combat evil—yet is not exactly the flawless force of Good.

The thing is, Batman has spoken to us since long before superheroes hit the scene in’38. He has gone in different guises—the guise of a red wildflower, the mask of a fox—but has been working on the people’s behalf for centuries. He is Emma Orczy’s 19^th-century Scarlet Pimpernel: by day a drawling aristocrat, by night a daring resistance fighter against the atrocities of the French Revolution. He is Zorro, the masked man of Mexico, slashing his Z to scare off the bad guys. The hero of the people.

It’s all there: wealth, double lives, dashing heroics, vigilante justice. Secrets. Lies. But underneath, a thread of good. Despite the pain and suffering they cause, Batman and his forebears work to deter future pain and suffering, especially of the innocent—even if it means sacrificing themselves, in any number of ways. Perhaps this is why this type appeals to the West: these men are modern mythology’s version of a Messiah. Batman is of the people and not of the people, man yet Infinite incarnate. He is the best and the worst, the leader and the follower, the beginning and the end. He shows us that hope still runs in the dusty California desert, or seaside Calais, or the seedy streets of Gotham. Someone is willing to save us from ourselves. A man and more than a man. A paradox hidden within a strange suit and a cryptic name. Jesus Christ for the pulp masses. And don’t we all need a savior, by whatever kind of name?

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Batman!

Like a ton of bricks...

So it just hit me on Saturday that I'm graduating. Aka, won't be coming back. This is how it hit me:

"S*%t. I'm going to miss these people."

It's not necessarily my friends who I hang out with on weekends that I'm going to miss. It's the people who have sat beside me for three years' worth of classes; it is the people who smile at me when I pass them in the hallway; it is the people who gather for a spontaneous debate in the middle of Dukes between class. Some of these people make me smile; some of these people make me think; some of these people have no idea how much I rely on them to get me though my week.

So, thanks, you guys.

The end.

Improper Comma Use: Angry Edition

Let me introduce you to my friend the comma. This is him: ,

He may not look like much, but boy oh BOY can he make a difference. In the book A Dash of Style, author Noah Lukeman doesn’t dance around the problem with this punctuation mark: “the comma is schizophrenic.”

Lynne Truss’s ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ (which, incidentally, is a fantastic read) articulates the problem with commas: not all commas serve the same function.

“More than any other mark, the comma draws our attention to the mixed origin of modern punctuation, and its consequent mingling of two distinct functions: 1) to illuminate the grammar of a sentence; 2) to point up—rather in the manner of musical notation—such literary qualities as rhythm, direction, pitch, tone, and flow. This is why grown men have knock-down fights over the comma in editorial offices: because these two rules of punctuation sometimes collide head-on—indeed, where the comma is concerned, they do it all the time.”

(See? I told you it was good.)

Long story short, commas mess with your head.

A post to exhaustively fix all of the comma problems that make me want to pull out my fingernails with a pair of tweezers would be far too long for this blog. Instead, it would be a thesis, or possibly a year’s worth of posts in a new blog altogether. So for the sake of everyone’s well-being, Angry Edition will focus on a very particular comma problem that makes me go home and drink: titles vs. appositives. Ready? Here we go.

1. The TITLE.

I especially see this problem in newswriting, because we use titles every time we introduce a person. Example: “President Barack Obama admitted yesterday that he is a very tall man.” In this sentence, ‘President’ is, obviously, Barack Obama’s title. Got it. That’s easy. Let’s try another: “Plane crash survivor Evangeline Lilly commented on the tragedy.” This is a little bit trickier, because ‘plane crash survivor’ is not the kind of thing that you put on your business card. A more conventional example is this: “Junior sports management major Megan Erbes sits next to me in class.” This is like ‘plane crash survivor.’ Both are long descriptive tags, but they function as titles. Why am I telling you this?

BECAUSE UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU EVER, EVER, EVER USE A COMMA HERE.

“Junior sports management major, Megan Erbes” is WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG (etc.). Why? Because ‘Megan Erbes’ is what all those words in front of it are modifying. Putting a comma in there makes it look like ‘Megan Erbes’ are throwaway words (aka, an appositive—we’ll get to that). Would you write “President, Barack Obama admitted…blah blah blah”? No, you wouldn’t. ‘President’ is treated as if it is part of his name. Well, ‘Junior sports management major’ is now part of Megan Erbes’ name. (Sorry for all those initials, Megan. Hope you weren’t planning to monogram anything anytime soon.)

We fixed a huge problem with this is in the paper last week (and good thing—I might have had an apoplectic attack if it had printed). One of the headlines read: “ONU alum, VonAlmen wins audition.” (Or something to that effect.) NO no no. Why? Because ‘ONU grad’ is modifying ‘VonAlmen.’ Don’t make VonAlmen look like a throwaway. It should have read (and did read) like this: “ONU alum VonAlmen wins audition.”

Even though this mistake puts me in a tizzy, I can understand why it’s confusing. The reason is this:

2. The APPOSITIVES.

I think appositives are really cool. It lets you include long titles or descriptors without making the sentence confusing. Appositives are framed by commas—it’s basically the equivalent of parentheses. An appositive looks like this:

“Barack Obama, president of the United States, admitted last week that he was very tall.”

See what just happened there? Instead of ‘President Barack Obama’, we stuck his title after his name. This sentence is the equivalent of:

“Barack Obama (president of the United States) admitted last week that he was very tall.”

Cool, huh? I can also say this:

“Megan Erbes, a junior sports management major, sits next to me in class.”

The important part of the subject is still Megan Erbes, but now we can throw away her title, because in this sentence it’s not really necessary to know that she’s a junior sports management major.

BUT WAIT… there’s more.

Sometimes a title is not really a title. Take this example:

“One of the plane crash survivors, Evangeline Lilly, was on site for the memorial service.”

I know, that just ripped a hole in your universe of titular perfection. But it makes sense. In this case, ‘Evangeline Lilly’ is acting as an appositive. Her name is less important than the fact that she is one of the survivors. And there’s another difference. Check out this example:

“Plane crash survivor Evangeline Lilly was on site for the memorial service.”

In the first example, the sentence could stand alone without the name, because it has already been established that there is one specific survivor to whom the author refers. In the second case, “Plane crash survivor was on site for the memorial service” is not good English.

(Note: “A plane crash survivor, Evangeline Lilly, was present…” would be correct, however. The article “a” indicates that there is one particular survivor.)

What it all boils down to is that you have to be able to identify your subject. Is your subject Megan Erbes? Or is it a plane crash survivor? Is your title just a bunch of adjectives, or is it acting as a noun phrase? Ah, grammar. A good test is trying to take out different parts of the sentence. If you can take out the name, it is an appositive. Frame it with commas. If you can take out the title (**and it comes AFTER the name), frame it with commas. If you can take out the title but it comes BEFORE the name, it is most likely a title and should NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT have a comma.

Use good sense. And use commas correctly. And then I won’t have to come to your house and break your stuff. Win-win-win situation.

Nothing fun to write about

I've been meaning to write something new for your (i.e., O'Connell's) enjoyment (and subsequent harrassment). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to think of anything postworthy that was not whiny, fatalistic, or angry. (Topics I have considered, in nonparallel construction: living your backup plan, dating is overrated, improper comma use: angry edition, and how much I hate the Gilmore Girls.)

So instead of putting you through any of those painful diatribes...I'll brag a little bit.

Please turn to page 3 in this week's Northern Review and admire Steve's senior project... and my AWESOME GRAPHIC.

I'm proud of this exploding computer. It is likely the most amazing Photoshop project I have ever produced. Admire it for a while, then come find me and tell me how fantastic I am. Or, you know, go tell other people. That works, too.

Lack of communication (otherwise entitled: Leah and Rob's Quasi-Dutch Adventure)

Today, in the shadow of ONU's new windmills, Robert Allen and I tiptoed through (okay, past) the tulips on an ultimately fruitless adventure quest to find the fabled noontide Ableism speaker. (Unfortunately, neither of us had wooden shoes. It was unfortunate.) We knew that there would be a speaker at some point in the day based on an abundance of 8 1/2 x 11 posters tacked to all available boards around campus... unfortunately, said posters failed to mention a time or place for the event.

So, being the diligent students that we are (and wanting to satisfy our requirements for O'C), we hoofed it to McIntosh to start our search for the event. No luck. It was not in the Wishing Well, it was not in the Activities Room, it was not in the Ballroom, it was in none of the upstairs conference rooms... So we continued our quest by advancing to a new location: the library. Although the library desk workers were very kind and tried their best to be helpful, it was to no avail. The speaker was not in the library. The desk worker recommended we search the Chapel.

And we did. No luck. The only yield from that dead end was a pamphlet on religious tolerance, which we perused as we continued our quest to Mathile. Again, fruitless. We checked Meyer-- likewise, no. Unable to think of any better strategy, we checked at the Mac desk. Nope, no Ableism speaker scheduled for anyplace that the Mac desk schedules. The worker recommended we check Dicke.

...And we did. Nothing. At this point, it was a half hour after the event supposedly started, so we discontinued our search.

Although I didn't end up attending the Ableism speaker, this experience has made me consider apathy from another angle. Perhaps it's not always that people are apathetic-- perhaps it is simply that the communication is missing.

Example: Most people would likely agree that genocide is more pressing an issue than the fate of dolphins in Japan. However, Japanese cruelty to dolphins somehow gets more press than genocide. Why? I think it is the communication element. Firstly, people can identify with dolphins. They're cute like Flipper and they swim. Okay. They live in a happy little world of ocean and porpoises. Okay. And then a certain Japanese industry comes and kills them. NOT OKAY. People can show images of carved up, dead dolphins. Audiences are appalled. "Not the cute dolphins!"

Now: genocide. One, it's difficult to identify with victims of genocide. We are used to living a life that is removed from violence or serious harm. We have a hard time putting ourselves in the shoes of those who live in constant fear. Secondly, it's more difficult to broadcast images of desecrated human bodies than desecrated dolphin bodies. Dolphin bodies make people angry. Human bodies make people scared. Nightmares are involved.

My conclusion? Apathy for genocide and interest for dolphins are created because of effective communication. Given, it is more *difficult* to communicate the problem of genocide than of dolphin-cide (I don't quite understand why, but it is). Maybe this is an extreme example, and I haven't necessarily worked out all the kinks of this analogy, but I think I'm making a valid point.

It's all communication. If the Ableism speaker had a poor turnout, I'm willing to bet it was because of poor communication. Robert Allen and I would have been there if we had been provided with a date or time.

Also, I think this ties in with my theory of apathy as a defense mechanism. We can't care about everything; our default is to not care until an issue becomes relevant to us. Duh. That makes sense. So the challenge is for advocates to make issues relevant their audience. An advocate's job is to make people care-- to break the apathy. This is done through clear and effective communication. Note the "and effective." Clear communication is one thing; effective communication is something more entirely. You can clearly communicate facts, but until you make those facts relevant to my life, I'm likely to take the bait.

And that's the point of advocacy-- or awareness, I guess. To make something relevant enough that another person becomes interested in it, or another person changes their behavior because of it. If Unite for Awareness week has a low turnout, it is not exclusively the fault of students who are apathetic. It is also in part because the relevancy of these events has not been clearly expressed.

This ties in to Steve's idea that apathy can be a good thing in determing what is and isn't an issue. If a talk about sex has a huge turnout, but a talk about bullying does not, that is probably telling you that college students see sex as a more relevant issue in their lives than bullying. That doesn't necessarily mean that bullying should not be addressed, but it indicates that the issue should definitely be looked at more closely to find the angle that will mean something to its audience.

In sum: apathy is not just the fault of people who don't show up for events. Most people have something the care about-- it just might not be the same issue that you want them to care about. It takes clear and effective communication in order to convince others to take up a particular cross. Crosses are heavy.

Further summation: Windmills and tulips... I feel like I should learn some Dutch. Or at least get a cool Dutch girl hat.

End note: Thanks to a saving phone call from Carol, I discovered that the event was actually at 4:30 p.m. in Mac Activities, so I did get to attend! It wasn't overly dynamic, but it was well presented. Essentially, the presenter, a teacher at Marimor in Lima, showed a video and discussed how to treat those with physical or developmental disabilities. It's mostly common sense-- treat everyone as a competent human being. We watched a ridiculously corny video about disability awareness, which was entertaining. A man from Lima who cannot speak delivered a speech via voice machine. That was pretty cool. A girl with a skin disorder spoke about her problems. As to audience, probably more than a dozen and less than twenty were in attendance. All but four of them, I believe, were physical therapy majors. Due to the poor publicity for the event, I have reason to believe that the point was not to attract a bunch of people, but to cater specifically to pre-physical therapy students, who are likely to encounter developmentally disabled clients in their careers. To that end, it was great-- those attending had pertinent questions and seemed genuinely interested. I don't see this as an example of apathy so much as an example of targeting a specific audience and catering to their concerns-- probably a better strategy, in this case, than generalization.

Sibling Appreciation

When my brother was born, I cried.

My grandma brought two-year-old me to the hospital and my mom showed me a new, tiny baby and said, “Look, Leah. This is Weston.”

I barely glanced at the baby in her arms. Okay, this was Weston. That was what Mom and Dad said they would name the baby if it was a brother. But if it was a sister, they were going to name her Claire. So naturally, the first words out of my toddler mouth were “Mommy, where’s Claire?"

The confused conversation that followed went something like this:

Mom: “We didn’t get a Claire, honey. We got a Weston.”
Me: (sobbing) “But I wanted a Claire!!!!”
Grandma: (leading me out of the room)

I can just imagine how fun that was for my parents. When my other brother was born, I was six years old. And there were probably two reasons why I didn’t cry about his gender: a) I had already been disappointed once, and didn’t expect much this time around; b) I had found a patch of poison ivy the day before, and I was so swollen that the only way my mom could recognize me was by my dress and pigtails. I bet that was fun for my parents, too.

In spite of my sobs and shenanigans, respectively, at my brothers’ births, and despite my intense disappointment at the realization that I would have to tough it out as the “only girl,” I’m glad I got two brothers. After all, would I have learned all the original Pokemon by name if I had been blessed with a Claire? Would I have watched Power Rangers or learned to play baseball? I doubt it. I might have had a better handle on fashion, but I would have missed out on frog-hunting expeditions and learning how not to be grossed out by fish worms.

So here’s to you, Weston and Daniel. Thanks for teaching me that there is more to life than Barbies and French braids. Thank you for teaching me that being older does not mean being taller. Thank you for demonstrating that yes, a 12-year-old wrestler can flip his 18-year-old sister over his back, and with little difficulty. Thank you for sharing your love of all things amphibious and all things sports, even if it didn’t always rub off. At the very least, I think frogs are cute and that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a million times cooler than Polly Pocket.

What makes you thankful for your siblings? Whether it’s your little brother, big sister, or some variation on that theme, take some time out this week and let them know why you admit to being related to them—or just let them know you thought about them today. Because even if you didn’t get that Claire you wanted… well, having a Weston worked out pretty well after all.

End note: This story is the basis for the URL of my blog. It is not, however, related to the title of my blog. "Sister for Sale" takes its name from a Shel Silverstein poem, linked here.

Further note: apologies to Lydia. This is not new material.

OMG Rediculous...

Sorry for the series of short posts lately, but I have a very important public service announcement to make. In fact, it deserves being written in all capital letters.

THE WORD RIDICULOUS IS NOT SPELLED WITH AN E.

R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S.

PLEASE STOP MISSPELLING THIS WORD.

That is all.

Runways rediscover curves

Is this article true?

If so, that puts me... 4 sizes closer to being the same size as a model.

Could this be an indirect social consequence of the recession? Or maybe just a general consensus that anorexia actually *doesn't* look good on anyone.

The Land of Joy.. and Joy-ness...

EVERYBODY FREEZE. I just found out that there is an online community of people who APPRECIATE CROSSWORD PUZZLES. And it includes more people than just me and my grandpa.

Why am I so excited about this? Because now I know there are people out there who would sympathize with me when I complain about what crap USA Today puzzles are, and who would NOT counter my whining about not being able to create crosswords with the ever-present information that "there are computer programs that just make them for you, you know." (NOOOOO! Computer programs are not okay! That's like saying that artistic masterpieces can be created with presets on Paint. This recommendation hurts my soul.) These are people who notice the themes in crossword puzzles and expect the individual clues to play into the theme like the notes in a symphony or a fugue or something that produces a similar gestalt effect.

Check out this link, which began my enlightenment. (And this one, just because I think the header is cute.)

Regardless, I'm thrilled to learn that there is a whole world of crossword puzzle nerds out there. I am in no way to their level, but I hope to someday join their ranks. These people are smart-approaching-Mensa-levels, sophisticated, witty, creative, and clever. They find joy in a beautifully-constructed challenge of spelling and synonyms. Ahh. Pure bliss.

And, for the non-nerds in my audience, here is the inspiration for the title of this post. Just for kicks.

Surprisingly critical

Before you read this blog, please read this article about Mark Twain. It's from the New York Times.

I'm confused as to why the author of this article acts like it's big news that Mark Twain wrote critique in the margins of books he read. Does the general public really think that being a writer is something completely different from being an editor or a critic? Do writers really think that?

I hope not. I firmly believe that it is a writer's job to be a jack-of-all-trades: creative writer, technical writer, reporter, editor, critic, evaluator. If it's print on paper, writers should be familiar with it: how to interpret it, how to write it, and how to make it better. I admit, my career goal may make me biased: I want to be an editor. So obviously I'm fixated on learning how to fix things.

But at the same time, in order to do something well, you must understand what it means for something to be good. You must be able to evaluate others' work and decide what qualifies as good and bad in order to develop an idea of what you want to write and who you want to emulate. A writer can't improve until he or she knows how they can improve. Being an editor is necessary in order to improve as a writer-- and in order to be as successful an important a writer as Mark Twain, you have to be one hell of a self-editor.

I apologize for the somewhat questionable line of reasoning-- it's midnight, and I'm not waxing as concisely as I normally manage. But the point remains: a good writer HAS to be a good editor. So why is it surprising that Mark Twain-- one of America's most celebrated writers-- is also a critic? He has to be in order to practice his craft with such a degree of success.

Duck and Cover

I feel as if I'm slacking. In March, I did a good job of updating this blog regularly. This month, I've fallen behind.

But I have a legitimate reason: April is national explosive awareness month. ...Okay, not really. But ever since high school, I have noticed that absolutely everything that is even remotely important happens in April. (Well, except for Christmas. Thank goodness.) I'm not exactly sure why, but EVERYTHING happens in April. In the words of my friend Sarah, "the world explodes in April."

In honor of April and any subsequent detonation, here is a video that I highly recommend. It's called 'Duck and Cover.' (Source: YouTube)

Happy 110th, submariners!

Lucky you: for this post, I'm taking a break from my usual informative habits, and instead am just going to tell you what I did this weekend.

First, some background. My friend Megan (center, below) is married to Brad, who is a submariner in the Navy. Until she finishes her bachelor's degree this summer, Meg is living in Ohio while Brad is living 12 hours away in Connecticut at the sub base. Long story short, Meg called me a couple weeks ago and asked if I wanted to be her driving buddy to go to the April 10 Navy ball. I mean, how many people have the opportunity to go to a Navy ball in their lifetime? Of course I said yes.

The thing about going to the Navy ball is that you have to be accompanied by a sailor. And since Brad has more than one friend who would have appreciated a date, Meg invited my friend Kait (left, below) to come, too.

I've known Megan since preschool and I've known Kait since first grade. We can get a little ridiculous. Anyway, this is us:Meg and Kait picked me up in Ada at 2 p.m. on Friday and we headed out for Connecticut. I drove through Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is a very wide state. Four or five hours wide, in fact. (But at least I didn't have to drive through New York or Jersey!) We ended up pulling into Brad's house in CT at about 1 a.m. Then we went to sleep, because after twelve hours of travel, that's all you really want to do. Brad and Meg are in the process of moving into their house, which is a very nice size, so there were a lot of boxes everywhere. The only real furniture they had was a sectional that was big enough for about four people to sleep end-to-end, which was a lucky break for Kait and I, because their floors are tile. ...Anyway.

On Saturday, we went with Brad and Megan to visit a Siberian husky breeder in order to pick out a puppy. There were a lot of puppies. I'm not a dog person, but after spending time with the puppies, I almost wanted one of my own. They were really sweet. (Although some of them had just opened their eyes, so when you held them they started screaming because they were scared of heights. It was cute, but very loud.) Brad and Meg picked out a black and white puppy. They christened her Maya. She's sweet. They get to take her home in mid-May.

By the time we got back from the puppy excursion, it was time to get ready for THE NAVY BALL. Woohoo! So... we did that. The men looked very sharp in their dress blues. (Note: Navy uniform pants have 13 buttons instead of a fly. Megan calls them birth control pants-- 13 chances to say "no!") Me, Kait, and Megan looked very sharp in dresses. Because, you know, we're not in the Navy and could wear whatever we wanted.

Brad's friends Daniel and Kevin were Kait and mine assigned dates for the night. It was awkward. But hey, it was a Navy ball, so the novelty totally made up for it.

The ball was the 110th celebration of submarines. The ball involved a three-hour dinner program and then dancing and such. (In the end, we left after dinner and skipped the dancing. We proceeded to have our own party back at Brad and Meg's house.) The program honored submarines lost in the line of duty, from pre-WWI to the present. Cadets from the Naval academy did a choreographed salute thing (not really sure what to call it) which was cool. We met a LOT of sailors.

At Brad and Meg's, we played cards and took photos and generally had a good time. I went to bed at 3 in the morning... and woke up at 9 a.m. to pack and leave for Ohio by 10. Good times, though.

The drive back was pretty much just like the drive there. Let me just say that I love car trips. I like looking out the window and seeing new things, I like the drama of trying to pass other drivers/avoid cops/stay on the road/navigate new places, I like spending time talking or listening to the radio or singing or being ridiculous. So the drive back was a fun time. We stopped and had a picnic at a rest stop in Pennsylvania because the weather was so beautiful and because we had stuff to make sandwiches. Yum! In the words of Kait: "This rest stop is so nice. It has picnic tables... and butterflies..."

All in all, the weekend was really fun. It had car trips... and dress blues... and a once-in-a-lifetime (probably) opportunity to attend a Navy ball. :)

Note for those who care: I made my dress. I'm most proud of this because I didn't use a pattern. Epic win! During the ball, this led to an involved discussion between me and the sailors about sewing. They have to sew a lot of patches and etc. on their uniforms. Too bad they are a little skittish around sewing machines...

Grace Kelly

Besides "Killer Queen," which I love, my favorite song is probably Mika's Europop hit "Grace Kelly." In case you don't know the song, this is it:

My friend Kait brought this song to my attention after she spent some time in Paris, France. Apparently they played this song all over the subways. It's pretty catchy.

Anyway, back to the point. After listening to Grace Kelly, I naturally wanted to know who Grace Kelly was. This, therefore, is Grace Kelly:

Grace Kelly (1929-1982) was an American actress and, by her 1956 marriage to Prince Rainier III, Princess of Monaco. She was ranked number 13 on the American Film Institute's 1999 list of top female American stars. Kelly's film career began in 1951 at age 22. Kelly's films include "Rear Window," "To Catch a Thief," "High Noon," and "Dial M for Murder."

Despite her later station as Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly's acting career was riddled with scandal. The tabloids linked her to nearly every big-name actor of her day.

Kelly met Prince Rainier in April 1955 when she was the American deleate to the Cannes Film Festival, held in Monaco. Rainier proposed to Kelly in December that year while he was touring the United States. They were married April 15, 1956. Kelly and Rainier's marriage produced three children: Caroline, Albert II, and Stephanie.

Besides being an icon of style, Grace Kelly was also a noted philanthropist. In 1964 she founded the Princess Grace of Monaco Foundation, a charity to help children with disabilities or special needs not covered by social services. The Princess Grace Foundation-USA was created after Kelly's death to further the arts in the United States through fellowships, scholarships, and assistantships.

The History of Sex... kind of

For my roommate’s birthday, I gave her a pretty spectacular gift (if I say so myself): The History of Sex, in DVD form, courtesy the History Channel online shop. Besides being a good conversation starter (“I see you have… the History of Sex… on your end table…”), the set of documentaries are really interesting. Subsets of history include the ancient world, the eastern world, the middle ages, “From Don Juan to Queen Victoria,” and the 20^th century.

“From Don Juan to Queen Victoria” was by far the most interesting of the documentaries. It covers… well, Don Juan to Queen Victoria. Fictional libertine Don Juan, created in the mid-1600s, began the documentary with a characterization of the liberal 17^th-century mindset. To make a long story short, there was a lot of sleeping around.

Which makes it all the more stranger to see the end of this chapter in The History of Sex. By the time the late 1800s roll around, women can’t even show their ankles. The program documents instances of married women who didn’t know what sex was. I’m still not sure how that happens, but hey. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

Most people know, or have heard, that Queen Victoria was famous for being a prude. But that doesn’t completely explain the late-1800s attitude that sex = taboo. How can a society go from free-for-all-skirts-around-your-ears to strait-laced Puritans in a mere 200-300 years? Take modern society: each generation is successively more permissive than those before it. (Imagine watching a movie like… say, Zombieland, with your mom. Feel a little awkward? I mean, I know it did when I watched Zombieland with my mom yesterday.) Back to the task at hand. How does a generation go from syphilis-ridden to sex-free if the normal trend is in the other direction?

According to The History of Sex, the reason for this prudence is economic. It is between Don Juan and Queen Victoria that the middle class starts to emerge. And as the middle class gains wealth, they want to be equal to the ruling class. Unfortunately, as The Great Gatsby can attest, old money likes new money about as much as Democrats like Sarah Palin. Money wasn’t enough to make the rich folks accept them, so the middle class reverted to other tactics. If they couldn’t be the upper class’s equals, they would just be better.

The way to be better, in the eyes of the middle class, was to be better-behaved. So instead of raking in the cash, the ratcheted up the rules. They created the angel in the house, the virginal, modest, chaste image of womanly perfection, in retaliation against not being let in to the exclusive clubs of aristocracy. And society has been sexually frustrated ever since. (I’m fairly certain that this is also where get obsessive etiquette, a la Emily Post. Oh, emerging middle class, how can we ever thank thee?)

But at least we have a sense of irony. As society becomes more liberal, we get boutiques like Victoria’s Secret—which, incidentally, takes its name from the same prudish queen who lent her moniker to Victorian Era. Yep: I imagine Queen Victoria is rolling over in her grave every time someone unhooks one of her secrets.

Project

I want to try this. Who wants to help me?

http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/ice-candle-673590/

Pretty sure I have paraffin wax. All systems go.

The Revolution has Begun?

Note: This was written in class as a response to this video. I thought it was worthwhile to post here.

“Good” and “bad,” firstly, are artificial constructs. The connotations of these concepts changes over time. In the late-1800s Bible Belt, “bad” behavior (i.e., behavior that would send you to hell) included “speaking with levity,” according to a religious tract I saw in a museum display. Today, a regular joke section in Reader’s Digest assures readers that “laughter is the best medicine.”

So it’s difficult to assign the label “good” or “bad” to face-recognition advertising. As far as the purpose of advertising is concerned, this innovation is beyond good: it’s something out of a fairy tale. Retailers can finally control how their advertising dollars are spent-- no longer hit-and-miss mass advertising, but promotions tailored to their audience. If only the target demographic is viewing a particular ad—we’ll use feminine products as an example—returns on investment increases substantially. The Tampax retailer is probably slavering over this idea: he only wants to reach the percentage of total audience who is female and who needs feminine products. If he can pay for advertising to just that target, which means not paying for the audience of males, children, and postmenopausal women, his return on investment goes up per viewer.

From the consumer’s side, this is also a good situation. Dad and the boys no longer have to be exposed to those awkward Tampax spots; instead, they can see ads for things that they might use: fishing equipment, sports cars, bigger and better TV sets. They are less likely to perceive these tailored ads as junk, and more likely to stop in the store.

This is most beneficial for a company like WalMart, which sells just about everything, or other general store or department store business models. They can really put this technology to use because their diverse array of products can literally appeal to any target group.

In the utilitarian sense, then, this technology is fantastic. It saves consumers the time of wading through irrelevant advertising; it saves companies considerable risk. What more can you ask for, as a business or as a consumer?

But it’s not about asking for; it’s about looking forward. The label of “bad” comes from an understandable uncertainty. The way we perceive advertising is in a state of change. The very definition of advertising-- the mass-appealing, static “dirty little secret” of an industrialized economy—is changing. That’s scary. It’s as scary as the information revolution caused by the Internet—an upheaval that is still making waves as we work to redefine the way we have understood information since writing was invented. As long as general consensus reflects the early-1900s attitude of the crassness and vulgarity of advertising, facial-recognition advertising will be perceived as “bad”—despite the multiplicity of benefits, in cash and consumer satisfaction, that it provides.

Is that satisfaction worth a perceived invasion of privacy? That question will be answered in the course of advertising’s own revolution, which has already begun. In all likelihood, I imagine facial-recognition advertising will become almost standard. It just makes too much sense—and when have questions of morals stopped anyone?

For Kristen

Sunday I made the trip to Bowling Green to attend my friend Kristen’s senior undergraduate flute recital. Since she is a talented musician and has a work ethic that puts Protestants to shame, it was a fantastic concert. This post, therefore, is dedicated, in honor of Kristen, to Menken and Schwartz.

…Okay, rewind. How did I go from flute recitals to Menken and Schwartz? (And who are Menken and Schwartz? We’ll get to that…)

The answer is fifteen years of friendship. Kristen is basically my sister. When we were little, our families traded babysitting—her mom would watch me and my brothers on Mondays, my mom would watch Kristen and her brothers on Fridays—so that our mothers (both of whom did the bookkeeping for their husband’s small businesses) would have a free day to work. And even though you didn’t need to know all that… well, it’s the human interest angle, right? Right.

Incidentally, Kristen’s mom was my piano teacher for twelve years. That may end up being important in the following anecdote (and if not, then just write it off as more human interest).

Pocahontas came out when I was approximately seven. Kristen and I LOVED (loved loved loved loved… etc) it, like most little girls our age. I had Pocahontas clip-on earrings; she had a Pocahontas Barbie doll; etc. Our most prized possession (I say “our,” but really it was Kristen’s), however, was a piano book of songs from Pocahontas. Too bad we were seven years old and could not even hope to play them.

By the time we were old enough to play the music, the book was long lost. If I saw the book today, I’m sure it would be “Easy Big Note Edition” or something that most people could play in their sleep. But at the time, it was the Eldorado of piano music. We wanted to play it SO BADLY…

Which brings us to Menken and Schwartz. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz are the reason that the Pocahontas song book even existed. They are the guys who came up with the music. And if you don’t know their names, I’ll bet you know their work.

Composer Alan Menken (born 1949, as per Wikipedia) has won eight Academy Awards, for films such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas (of course), and, more recently, Enchanted. In the wonderful world of musical theatre, his credits include music for the stage version of Beauty and the Beast and Little Shop of Horrors (which if you haven’t seen, you should. Here’s a link to the title song).

Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz (born 1948, again from Wikipedia) may or may not be my own personal hero. Lately, he is probably best known for the musical Wicked, an adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s book of the same name. Schwartz has three Grammys, three Academy Awards, and a has been nominated for six Tonys. (A joke for those of you who are casual 30 Rock viewers like I am: all he needs is an Emmy to win Tracy’s lusted-after EGOT.) In all seriousness, though: Stephen Schwartz writes sweet stuff. Other notable stage credits include Godspell and Pippin. Film credits include Godspell, Pocahontas, the Prince of Egypt, and Enchanted.

To end:

Go run the hidden pine trails of the forest. It’s nice outside.