All’s Fair in Love & War, Texas is now live!

After months of preparation, All’s Fair in Love and War, Texas is finally live. Check it out, tell your friends, tell your friends’ tweens and teens!

I realize it might not look like it to the untrained eye, but this website was a lot of work. (Work which, I have to admit, I mostly enjoyed.) It’s built on Wordpress, but it was my first attempt at building a WP theme from scratch. So I had that learning curve to tackle, which was respectable. (If I had it all to do over again, I would probably start out with the Thematic theme and build a child theme from there. I discovered Thematic when building a website for my husband’s job, and it’s wonderful.)

So I built the theme myself. And then I ran into some coding problems. See, from the beginning I knew I did not want to create just anther blog-based serialized novel. There are TONS of those on the net. Given my penchant for the web and “new media” in general, I wanted to create something that, as far as I was aware, hadn’t really been done elsewhere. Building upon some basic beliefs I have about how web users assimilate information and knowledge (about which I have an article coming out on A List Apart some time this fall) I knew I wanted to create a narrative that had many points of entry and exit. I wanted my readers to choose for themselves which narratives to follow. And moreover, I wanted to take all the work out of it. I wanted choosing a narrative to be intuitive and easy.

So the first thing I needed to do was create metadata for each story. Which characters are involved? Where does this story take place? Which story line does it fall into? And I needed to display this metadata in a way that would make sense to the reader, yet wouldn’t be overwhelming.

Turns out, there’s not a way built into Wordpress to do this. You can tell Wordpress to show you the children of certain categories, but you can’t ask Wordpress to show you the children of X category ONLY if this post belongs to the parent category (an subsequently, only if it belongs to the children categories!) This was a fundamental navigational aspect I needed for this site. I needed to say, “Okay, Wordpress, show me the children of the Characters category that this post belongs to, and then show me the children of the Places category this belongs to, and then show me the children of the Events category this post belongs to.”

I tried to make Wordpress do this. I really did. But Wordpress just stuck its tongue out at me. Real mature.

So I cried. (Yeah, neither mature nor productive, I know, but I’m prone to breakdowns when code fails. This is after the cursing has ended.) I cried because I couldn’t get it to work, and because if I couldn’t get it to work, the entire project was going to fail. Without this aspect, the website would be just like tons of other web novels out there.

Then I posted about my troubles on Twitter where a very kind English bloke offered to help me. And to make a long story short, he fixed my problem. And he’s awesome.

Then I ran into another problem. Each story potentially belongs to several different narratives – certain characters, certain places, certain storylines. I wanted my readers to choose how they read the story, but how was I going to make it possible for them to continue in their narrative seamlessly? I mean, when they got to the end of the story, the “next” button would always point to the next chronological post, but not necessarily the next post in the narrative my reader had chosen. So if they only wanted to read posts featuring the Prime of Darkness, they’d have to locate the POD archive, select a post, read, then go back to the archive, find the next post, read it, and so on.

Unacceptable.

I needed to provide navigation that suited the narrative. But how could I know which narrative they were on? How could I know how to help them get to the next post in their chosen narrative?

I considered a lot of options. I thought about adding navigation for every possible exit point. But even with a healthy dose of Ajax, that seemed clunky (and it wasn’t easy to code, as it turned out.)

Then I stumbled upon a plugin that allowed me to do exactly what I wanted. When you choose a link from an archive, the next/previous navigation remembers what archive you came from, and lets you navigate only that archive. So if you’re looking at the Prime of Darkness archive and you click a post, you will navigate only that story line.

Not only acceptable, but awesome.

And after that, the site took off running.

I ran into other, less technical, problems, too. The fact that I can’t draw was a huge obstacle, so I decided to just include illustrations where I could create something that looked halfway decent. I worked hard on the character avatars, and while certain avatars that I made early on could stand to be redrawn, I am mostly very happy with them.

All in all, I count this project a huge success. It works as intended. (There is one small bug that I still don’t know how to fix, but it’s a bug I can live with for now.) It’s different from the other hundreds of digital narratives out there. I’m proud of the voice, and the character, and what I’ve managed to accomplish, more or less by myself.

It’s a happy day :)

Making Badass Free Culture on the Web

Photo by Burned Popcorn

Years ago I worked for a semiconductor company with a compelling initiative: to bring internet connectivity to 50 percent of the world by the year 2015. It was an idea that excited me then. I imagined children in Botswana and Uruguay with their OLPCs signing on to the internet for the first time, exploring literature, art, cinema, critique. I imagined them gleefully clicking through a complex, net-native narrative that was educational, entertaining, and unfolded in an organic, meaningful way. I imagined them blissful participants in a wonderful, intricate, global conversation.

And then I realized that the web I hoped these children would find was a web that didn’t exist yet. And worse, I realized that we, the web creators, were doing very little to make that web a reality.

We made a mistake early on, at the very beginning of the worldwide web going mainstream. When we all rushed out to grab a .com, when we collectively decided that .com was the extension to have, we set the web on a very lopsided course. We unconsciously gave the web over to business and commerce — an ownership and dominion Sir Tim Berners-Lee certainly didn’t envision or intend, and one that hasn’t done us enough favors. We’ve engaged in many conversations, given many presentations, and written many articles on why good web content, smart design, and semantic, standards-compliant markup are important for business. And that’s important — somebody has to make the business case in order to protect web professionalism as a viable industry and fund our technological and philosophical advancements. Without the porn industry, we wouldn’t have DVDs. 

However, we’ve lost sight of the other side of the web. Our approach to the web thus far has been very yang: organized, compartmentalized, hierarchical, linear, objective. And that’s been great for folks who want to sell a product or idea, or disseminate information. It hasn’t, however, been so great for folks who want to learn, experience, and explore. If we want to build a more balanced web, if we want to build a web that is good for culture as well as good for business, we have to start having different conversations and asking different questions. 

We need to change the way we think about the web.

Vote for our SXSW interactive panel, Creating Badass Free Culture on the Web. Help us show these old school blokes how to make the web more badass.

Collaborative Annotation Online

As part of an ongoing project, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to make the web better for learning.

Yesterday, I was nostalgically flipping through an old copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, a booklet I’ve had since high school. The summer after our senior year, three friends and I purchased a copy of The Portable Emerson, cut out the Nature chapter with an Xacto knife, and had it bound. A group of amateur philosophers, writers, and artists, our goal was to create something beautiful out of something that had so inspired us. We wanted to collect our disparate views and emotions of this work and share them with each other in an artistic fashion. So we spent the summer passing the booklet around, reading, adding notes in the margins and the white pages we had cleverly added. The artist among us added illustrations; our philosopher included favorite quotes by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (which often had nothing, specifically, to do with the text, but was obviously inspired by something she saw in the pages.) At the end of the summer, the booklet was well loved and worn, and filled not only with margin notes but also with art, tangential thoughts, and the personalities of the four girls who had given pieces of themselves to the work.

Even though I’ve read Nature several times since that summer, I found my friends’ notes inspiring, and not merely because they brought back memories. Their insights did not always mirror my own, and having immediate access to another person’s perceptions, thoughts, and reactions is a valuable part of the learning process. This is why class discussions are so beneficial. Talking things out is helpful. 

Blogs make conversation about a piece of online writing possible: readers can leave messages, ask questions, share information about the work. But in reading deeper, more complex works, I always find this commenting system very limiting. Reading user comments at the end of a work feels tacked on; it doesn’t feel organic the way reading margin notes in a library book does. 

When I’m engaged in an online reading, I want to see relevant user notes contextually. I want to see their thoughts, questions, and links in the place where they make the most sense. Post-reading conversation in the comments is still good and necessary, but as I’m reading, inline margin notes would do wonders for my ability as a learner to absorb, recontextualize, and integrate these other thoughts.

This morning, I stumbled across Clive Thompson’s article on Wired about the future of reading (specifically reading books), and from there found The Golden Notebook Project which attempts to do something similar to what I dreamed up. Seven women read a single book and included their notes on the page – as a reader, I can see the notes immediately instead of having to read them all at once at the end.

I like the approach, but it doesn’t quite go far enough. I want to be able to read someone else’s article, highlight a particular sentence, and link that sentence to another piece of relevant information elsewhere – whether that’s an image, an article, or a video. But unlike a Wiki, I want personalities preserved. I want to see who is making the notes, who is thinking the thoughts. I want my reading of this document both to inform me but also to allow me to explore new relationships. 

It would get messy. For popular reads, it would be impossible. But I still like the idea. I like the possibility.

But what I would like even more would be a central repository where works could be published specifically for collaborative notation and hyperlinking. I want to see works that are creative commons (or which the author has granted permission) to be republished on another website – a virtual library of sorts – where registered users can comment and link. Reader comments and annotations can be rated by other users such that certain comments can be filtered out when they become overwhelming. I think I’d prefer to see comments on mouseover or on-hover rather than on the side of the page – I find that format distracting. But I do think there’s possibility here for learning, for exploration, and for discovering new relationships and resources.

Of course, as with all user generated content, a huge problem would be separating chaff from the wheat, combatting ego monsters, dealing with trolls, and the various other methods people employ to ruin online experiences. So I recognize this pie-in-the-sky collaborative annotation and hyperlinking could be too fantastic for reality. Still, it’s what I want. And maybe if I put it out there, someone can make it happen in a way that works. Who knows? I have faith.

Distant Observer

photo credit: Frodrig

He watched the family on the mall with a detached joy, a rare bubble of melancholic desire that welled up from someplace within him he’d forgotten existed. He watched as the father placed a hand on the small of his wife’s back, her upturned face smiling and aglow as the children frolicked beneath them, their shrill laughter floating up to the balcony where he stood in silence. He noted the way the gentleman’s head bent to speak to his wife, their conversation hushed and earnest, the way the wife’s smile was for him and him alone. They had fallen into that rhythm he had once known so well, in step with the march only long married couples could hear. Theirs was an easy interaction, punctuated by unaffected expressions of interest and contentment.

Had he stood on that same mall not so long ago, in a world not so very different from this, and been looked down upon by another balcony dweller lost in his own reverie? Had he once, in a moment of unadulterated completion, looked on his wife with eyes that saw only her good? Was there ever a time for him as whole as the moment he now witnessed? And did the man he watched know at all how lucky, how undeservedly, goddamned lucky, he truly was?

He never realized he’d been rubbing the place on his finger where his wedding band used to be.

Worlds of Music, Worlds Apart

photo credit: gasheaduk

My husband came into my office this morning as I was listening to Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” and asked, “So, what do you think about Joe Satriani suing Coldplay? Do you think they stole from him?”

I hadn’t yet listened to Satriani’s song, so I downloaded it from iTunes, closed my eyes and listened.

My father is a songwriter, and I spent much of my formative years curled up on the couch with my eyes closed listening critically to his compositions: did the lyrics fit the melody? Was the emotion clear? Did that chord progression work? Did that rhythm need to be changed? Is the song believable? What do I feel and see at the funky breakdown? And does the song tell the story it’s supposed to tell?

In high school, I studied opera. My voice teacher had asked me to learn a new aria, “Se il padre perdei” from Mozart’s opera Idomeneo. When I came into his studio one Saturday morning he pulled out the new music, set it on the piano stand and said, “Before you sing this, I want you to know what the song is about. It’s about a woman — ”

“Who has lost her father and her homeland, but is reconciled to her new life in Crete. Yes, I know, I translated it,” I said.

He cocked his head to the side. “You did what?”

“When you started having me sing in Italian, I bought a dictionary and a basic grammar book. How am I supposed to sing these songs if I don’t know what they mean?”

My voice teacher laughed, shaking his head. “You know, in all the years I’ve been training singers, none of them has voluntarily translated the music. You might be my first student who really gets it.”

Now, I don’t know if that says something about me or the tenacity of his previous students, but for me to sing anything without an understanding of the story behind the song would be apostasy. Music wasn’t something I, as a singer, made with my vocal chords and diaphragm. It is something that passed through me, something I drew down from Heaven via the instrument of my whole body. I had to sing the right notes, yes, but I also had to interpret the music, to find the story borne of the perfect relationship between notes, depth, and feeling. If the mechanics and body of song are the mathematical notations that can be distilled and put to paper, its soul is that numinous quality that cannot be reduced, or quantified, or taught. It is instead a Mystery, that which must be experienced. I had to know, intimately, that which I dared sing. Music as I understood it both then and now was more than a progression of notes coupled with words. Music was never simply a melody, or a harmony, or anything that can be mathematically reduced to tones, intervals and durations. Music, as a human art form, has meaning, character, texture. It is the language of the human condition, and in it, if we allow ourselves the freedom to go, we are gifted with wide vision, and an experience of interconnection that is itself worthwhile.

So as I closed my eyes and listened to Satriani’s song “If I Could Fly”, I reached back to childhood and listened to the music with a critical ear, with my whole self. I reached back and listened with my heart the same way I listened to Kiri Te Kanawa sing “Se il padre perdei”. I listened not only for melody and rhythm, but for purpose, and meaning, and emotion, and story. And as I listened to the song, and as I recognized the chord progression undoubtedly in question, I said to myself, “Yes, this part right here…they do sound similar. And if these songs were little more than this riff, or if these songs shared much else in common, I’d have to side with Satriani on this one. But these songs cannot be reduced to four measures of similarity, and anyone who listens to these songs with their whole selves should be able to appreciate how different they really are.”

It’s no secret that I am a Coldplay fan, but in this I don’t think my opinion is biased. It isn’t as though I can’t hear the similarity; of course I can. Anyone with half a musical ear has to be able to hear the similarity not only of the chord progressions in question but also the rhythm and tempo. But where a work of literature may be plagiarized by the lifting of ideas and sentences and their subsequent placement in another work, I’m not so sure musical plagiarism can be so defined. Music is distinct from language and literature not only in its deep roots in mathematics, but in its deep connection to the essence of what it means to be human. I think of babies who, lacking any cultural indoctrination or training, will still dance automatically given a good beat. It’s natural for them. And while different cultures have formed distinct norms in musical taste and construction from everything from scale to composition, the fact of music, that fact of its deep affect on us, is universal. We find something in the totality of music that speaks to us. We don’t find that spark in any one aspect: we are not enlivened by intervals, or rhythms. We aren’t moved to rapture by a melody alone. It’s the entire recipe that lifts us up, or turns us off, or causes us to dance, bristle, laugh, cry. It’s the melding of timber, tone, harmony, that makes a piece of music what it is. The soul of music is somewhere in the relationships between the pieces that compose it.

That’s significant, I think. We can’t, or at least shouldn’t, deconstruct music to the point that is made up of interchangeable widgets that can be moved from here to there. We can’t reduce a song, even a common pop song, to its notes, or its lyrics, or its meter, or its key. When I listen to “Viva la Vida” and “If I Could Fly” next to each other, they feel different. They paint with different pigments on the canvas of my insides. They elicit different responses, take me to different vistas. And while both are beautiful and there is a similarity for a certain segment of song, I can’t reduce either song to that riff, certainly not to the point that I could deny the originality in Coldplay’s song such that I could call it wholesale plagiarism. Maybe others can. And I can’t speak from a legal standpoint because not only am I not a lawyer, but also because my issues with copyright law are long and punctuated. For me, this isn’t a legal question, and it’s a good thing I’m not on the jury because I’m not sure I could remove my point of view on the sanctity of music as a whole organism from the legal back and forth.

I’ll be watching and listening for how this case unfolds. It’s interesting to see how others respond, and how lawyers on both sides will make their cases. But it’s sad, I think, when these things go to trial. I think we lose a bit of our culture and our humanity when we try to build code and law around artful endeavors and creative pursuits. I long to live in a world where the commercial benefits the creative and not the other way around. We have a long way to go, if even we can get there from here at all. In the meantime, I will enjoy both the Satriani piece and the Coldplay piece not for their transient similarities, but for the very different worlds they generate in the universe of my emotional life.

This Is My Children’s America

photo credit: b_d_solis

My grandfather is 12 years old. He is the illegitimate son of a wealthy, white plantation owner and a black house servant. His father passes away, and his will indicates that the plantation shall go to his only son. But my grandfather is black, and his white half-siblings take their claim to court. The court does not grant the illegitimate, half-breed child his rightful home.

My mother is 18 years old. She is standing before the Dean of the School of Engineering where she has applied. She wants to be a draftsman. She’s smart; her grades are good. She’s skilled at what she does. “Quite frankly, Miss, I already have two women in my department, and I am trying have them thrown out. I am disinclined to accept another woman into this school.” My mother walks away, ashamed of her hips, her breasts, her uterus, of being female. 

My stepfather is 46 years old. He is a successful Los Angeles lawyer with his own firm and impressive client portfolio. He is trying to buy a new home for his new wife and three children. The neighborhood is upscale, conservative, in a good school district. His initial application is approved. Then the homeowners, and the neighbors, meet him, with his dark, black skin. And suddenly the house is not available. This neighborhood is not for him. Black skin does not go with their carefully manicured lawns.

I am 11 years old. I am watching Dangerous Liaisons. I am enthralled by Glenn Close in her fabulous makeup and beautiful period clothing. When I grow up, I want to be an actress like Glenn Close and wear such fabulous outfits. But I look at my brown skin, and I remember that I cannot play a French aristocrat. I will have to settle for a Creole maidservant, like Thandie Newton in Interview with the Vampire. Hollywood doesn’t make beautiful movies about people who look like me.

My son is 6 years old. He is watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. He is watching his mother cry, but he doesn’t understand why she is crying. He watches his father, who is white, come into the room and embrace his mother. He hears his father say, “On behalf of my people, I congratulate your people.” He doesn’t know what that means, or why his mother says “Thank you.” He is watching Barack Obama, and watching the crowds, and he wants to be President of the United States some day. And though he is black, though he is descended from a long line of black mothers and fathers, today we know that my son can.

Today we have done right by my people, and by my son, America. Now we need to do right by our daughters. Let’s keep taking the bricks down. One block at a time.

God bless America.

Technologies of Validation

photo credit: amburn.everett

As I sit here watching the Presidential debate, I am simultaneously reading people’s responses on Twitter (specifically, all the talk about McCain repeatedly using the term “my friends”).

I’m fascinated by the responses. I’m fascinated by the similar things so many people have picked up on. I’m fascinated by the way we relay our thoughts and feelings, and more interestingly, that we are relaying our feelings about the election and the candidates with utter strangers via virtual real-time conversation.

Someone told me that what she likes about Twitter is the fact that it makes her feel less alone. She can be by herself in her home office, and yet being surrounded by Tweets from both friends and strangers centers her and helps her see herself as part of a vast network of artists, writers, politicians, mothers, and carpenters all out there doing the work. Twitter, for her, is a window through which she can see a busy world. 

I am watching the debate alone, but I am also watching the debate with hundreds of other people. Hell, with hundreds of other people who are annoyed that John McCain keep saying “my friends”. I can choose my company that specifically. That’s astonishing.

My mother was taught that neither politics nor religion is discussed in polite company, and yet one generation later I can sit here and not only read but participate in disparate “conversations” about these politicians, their eccentricities, their gaffes, their policies, and their presentations. We are free to discuss our fears, what we found amusing and what pissed us off and, astoundingly, to feel like our opinions and feelings on these things matter.

Maybe that’s the real value of technologies like Twitter. They make us feel that we matter.

What could we do as people, as individuals, if we felt that our opinions our strengths, our unique qualities truly mattered? What could we accomplish if we believed with our whole hearts that our words, thoughts and actions could actually affect and change the world around us? 

I’ve always known technology would change the world. I’m not sure I was aware of the many degrees of truth nestled in that belief.

Can’t Get Smart on Junk

photo credit: SideLong

I treat myself to a latte at the coffee shop every now and then. It’s one of the few ways I can make myself get dressed in the morning. (I have concocted a dozen ways to drop my kids off at school without so much as brushing my hair. It involves disguises: hats, scarves, and not looking the car-door-opener-ladies in the eye when they wish me a good day). Recently, I began seeing a woman there with two children reading a workbook I recognized as Saxon Math — a popular homeschool curriculum.

I homeschooled my daughter for a little over a year: I taught her to read, to add, to user her imagination. After a while my patience wore out and I kicked her to the public school curb. However, as she gets older and her brain needs more challenging, I’m finding that her public school curriculum isn’t cutting mustard, and I’m needing to spend more time supplementing what she’s learning in the classroom.

Last Wednesday, I saw the woman again, and I decided to go over and talk to her. This isn’t something that I normally do. In fact, I’m very shy around strangers. When I was little my mother would give me a dollar at the grocery store to buy a candy bar, but I was always too afraid to give it to the cashier. No candy bar for me — my loss. My mother said she always thought I was just being a pain in the ass, but if I was, it’s an awkward proclivity that I’ve never quite outgrown.

But this is my daughter’s education at stake, so I walked over to her and introduced myself. “I noticed your kids doing Saxon Math,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I was wondering if I could pick your brain about a good English curriculum.” I explained my position and expressed a concern that my daughter wasn’t reading the right material to expand her vocabulary or sharpen her grammatical skills. “I read all the time,” I explained, somewhat exasperated, “and was an avid reader at her age. But I don’t know how to help her get the most out of what she’s reading.”

The woman said, “What do you spend most of your time reading?”

“I read on the internet a lot, actually,” I said, realizing the truth of it for the first time.

The woman chuckled. “Oh hell, that’s not reading. Can’t get smart on junk.”

Her comment took me aback for a second. All the blogs and articles I read — that doesn’t count? The intelligent conversations I contribute to, though admittedly few and far between, aren’t valid if conducted over the internet? But after I blinked a few times and realized that she wasn’t being condescending, I recognized the reality before me. That’s where we stand as internet readers and writers — purveyors and consumers of junk. That’s how bad our reputations have gotten. That’s how lousy the web is considered to really be.

A few weeks ago I was debating with a friend who said she would never vote for someone who wasn’t well educated. When pressed as to what that meant to her, she said she meant someone who had attended an ivy league school (“Or Stanford, I guess,” she stipulated) and earned an advanced degree. 

“I don’t know why we cling to such a narrow definition of education,” I said. “We talk about being educated as something that happened to us in the past, mostly when we were quite young all things considered. I’m 31 now, and my education continues. There isn’t a day you don’t find my nose in a book or find me researching the things that I believe will make the world a better place. Those of us who care continue to educate ourselves long after we have graduated from academic halls. Yet it’s where we went to school, all that while ago when we were young, that continues to matter.

“Why are we so shortsighted?”

“Well,” my friend said, shrugging, “It’s a mater of verification. I know what it means to have a J.D. from Harvard. I don’t know what you mean by your laissez-faire education. For all I know, you’ve been doing all your studying on the internet.”

BAM!

The internet was supposed to be the savior of information. It was supposed to be a great educator. It was supposed to be bastion of knowledge, a crucible for new theories, new ways of thinking, new dialogues and interactions. Where did we go so drastically wrong?

The other day I read an article on Slate about blogging, and how most money-earning blogs produce quantity over quality. But the article does go on to address Merlin Mann’s recent announcement that he will quit wasting time writing nonsense he doesn’t care about and get back to the business of writing what he loves and making more time to do good work.

Mann’s decision to do this struck a chord with me the first time I read it, too: I felt a twin soul at work, striving to get the web — and his life — back on its feet as something valuable and cherished, not some place to spew bullshit and watch the dimes roll in. Mann’s passion may not be beautiful web content per se, but in his own way he certainly contributes greatly to that.

The article concluded, “Friends don’t let friends read bad content.” And I said to myself, “And friends don’t let friends write bad content, either. My daughter’s reading that shit. We’re educating ourselves with it.” If I stop writing bad content, and if you stop, and if we all focus on what is true and worthy and brilliant, there won’t be any bad content to read.

Fantasy? Maybe. Probably. But the dream is the thing.

But how do we know if we’re writing bad content? How do we know if what we’re saying is true and real? I admit, sometimes it’s hard to tell. How do we take what is real and true for us and present it in a way that interests others, that arrests attention, that makes others not only look but see? When everything around us is false and distracting, how do we get down to the business of being genuine? And how do we do it day after day, alone in a wilderness of bullshit?

Tenacity? Community? We’re talking about a fundamental paradigm shift. We’re talking about taking our work seriously and putting all of ourselves into it. We’re about recognizing that the words we write and publish shape the way people think and live. If education is the constant internalization and interpretation of inputs, then the web is a significant educator, and I’m not sure it’s doing the job as well as it needs to. In fact, that’s a lie. The fact is I’m sure it isn’t. And I know that I have been a contributor to that.

But not today. That’s my vow. Not today, and not anymore. 

Open Letter to the Economy

Dear Economy:

I know we are not in the habit of talking; in fact, I feel much as an agnostic must feel upon addressing God. So by way of introduction, allow me to share a memory with you. My little brother Aaron and I were in the car with my father. I was 19 or 20, my little brother 7 or 8. They were recounting the events of a Lakers basketball game. My father expressed dismay at Rick Fox’s abysmal performance. My brother, shaking his head of blond curls, laughed, “Rick Fox sucks.”

My father, a proponent of rearing children to use the English language to the best of their abilities and also of teaching children not to denigrate others, replied, “Rick Fox could do better.”

My brother rolled his eyes. “Yeah, a lot better.”

I don’t wish to be rude or to denigrate you, Economy, but in the words of my father, you could do better.

Read the rest of this entry »

Using a Brain That They Keep In a Jar By the Door

I can always count on the General Public ™ to piss me off.

I was listening to the radio the other day, and something the deejay said made me so angry I almost had to pull over to the side of the road to call in. (I know what you’re thinking – does she have anything better to do than dial in to radio shows? The truth is my morning commute is – well, was, as my company has now gone out of business – an hour long, so I had plenty of time to listen to a whole lot of BS on the radio, and there is only so much BS you can take before you want to start screaming something sensible, just to remind yourself, and hopefully everyone else, that there are still intelligent people in the world.)

Anyway, the deejay had just seen Wall-E, and he said he liked it, except that it portrayed fat people as lazy and he wasn’t down with that.

I banged on my steering wheel. I threw my hands up in the air in disbelief. How anyone could sit through that movie and completely miss the point is beyond me.

Read the rest of this entry »