Tag Archives: general crankiness

What I Hate About Facebook

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We all complain about Facebook – from privacy issues to the lack of a “dislike” button to strange-acting news feeds. But there are a few other things I see all the time on Facebook that bother me even more.

Chain letters. You remember chain letters that came in the mail. You had to mail out a certain number of copies by a certain date or risk dire consequences. Or maybe you were supposed to send $1 to the next person on the list and eventually receive thousands in return. Some of them even required saying of a certain number of prayers in exchange for blessings from God (or more specific payoffs).

(God and angels are not fairy godmothers. They’re not in the business of granting wishes.)

I never liked these when they came in the mailbox and I like them even less online. In addition to those standard types are ones requiring the reader to cut and paste a paragraph into his or her own timeline and see how many people respond. (For some reason simple sharing is not allowed.)

I don’t see the point of these, especially when they say “I know who will pass this on and who will not.” If you already know, why bother posting the thing at all?

Ridiculous pass-alongs. Somehow the most annoying of these are the pass-alongs that say if you have a granddaughter/niece/dog /service member/victim of cancer in your family you love with all your heart, share this picture of a candle or a ribbon or a flag. Nearly everyone qualifies for one or more of those, but passing around the images is kind of pointless. An actual picture of said granddaughter/niece. etc. would make more sense. One or two. Not thousands.

Also pointless are the ones that say share if you hate cancer or pass this on if you disapprove of animal abuse. Who’s going to admit they like cancer or heartily approve of animal abuse?

If you look closely at some of these memes – as well as the humorous ones – you will find that they originate at radio stations. You can tell by the call letters. Why do radio stations care about cancer or animal abuse? They don’t. They are doing what is called “like-farming.”

Since online music streaming, iTunes and iPods, internet radio stations and podcasts, and services like SiriusXM, radio stations have fallen on hard times. In order to charge more to advertisers, the stations must prove that they have listeners – responsive listeners at that. By putting a meme online that everyone will want to like and share, they are proving that their station gets attention – not for its music, however.

Famous characters. Nowadays we see beloved icons of our childhood – primarily cartoon characters – being used to support assorted social and political causes, or just to deliver some lame-ass joke. The creators of Kermit the Frog, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, and Calvin and Hobbes certainly never intended their characters to be used as vehicles for assorted, sometimes controversial, opinions. (Charles Schulz would probably have been okay with the religious memes.)

If a company like MetLife wants to use Peanuts characters in its advertising, they have to – and do – pay large amounts of money. Not so for the people who create Facebook memes. And they largely get away with it. Internet memes are so anonymous that it can take forever to figure out whom to sue.

And while we’re on the subject, I am so bloody tired of the Minions. These repulsive blobs appear everywhere, commenting on everything, joking about any topic. They are this millennium’s Smurfs, only yellow. The jokes or sayings aren’t even that funny usually, but apparently someone thinks that having a Minion presenting it will improve the humor.

Click bait. Ever since Ye Olde days of newspapers and magazines, headlines have been meant to draw readers into an article. But at least they gave some idea what the article was going to be about. Not so anymore. Headlines of the variety “A person did this and you won’t believe what happened next” appear on news feeds with stunning regularity.

Again, as with like-farming, this is simply meant to raise the number of click-throughs and generate excess interest for a story that’s not really all that fascinating.

I particularly dislike headlines of the sort that say “You’ve been doing X wrong for years” (eating sushi, flossing) or “What’s the best time of day to x?” (drink water, take vitamins). Someone somewhere thinks they know better than we do. What’s the best time to drink water? How about when you’re thirsty?

But if you really don’t want me to read your article, your meme, your opinion, or your joke, there’s a really easy way to do that – make it unreadable. Professional graphic designers and typographers make mistakes that render their efforts futile. Imagine what can be done in the way of illegibility by someone with no training at all.

So I beg of you – if you want to put an inspirational saying atop a lovely nature picture, by all means do so. But check out the color of the picture and the color of the type you’re using. White type on a light blue or pink background is not suitable even for those whose eyes aren’t failing. Screen captures are also notoriously hard to read. I know you can blow them up but it’s a real pain and most of the time I don’t find it worth the effort. I scroll right by.

Sometimes I don’t know why I bother with Facebook at all. Probably for the videos of kittens and pandas.

 

Procrastination Isn’t All Bad

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I’ve put off writing this post as long as I can.(1)

The truth is, I’ve been a procrastinator all my life. The number of library books I’ve returned past their due date adds up to quite a sum in fines. I always tell myself that this isn’t a character flaw, it’s just a way of supporting the library with my funds as well as with my votes.(2)

The one thing that I haven’t been able to procrastinate about is worrying. As soon as worry niggles its way into my mind, there it is, taking up residence, and threatening to stay for the duration.

However, the reason that I say procrastination can be good is that, if you wait long enough, whatever it is you’re putting off may just go away.

Once my husband and I were vacationing in Boca Raton. There was going to be a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral, on the other coast, on the day we were supposed to leave. Dan very much wanted to see the launch. I would have liked to as well, but I thought it would make our drive home to Ohio one of crazed madness, driving too far too fast, and not enjoying anything. We would arrive home stressed, exhausted, and angry.(3)

So we postponed having the fight. There were still a few days before the launch and there was a telephone number to call for updates. Every day Dan called and every day they reported whether it was still on schedule or on hold. Many of the days we called it was on hold. Eventually it got to the point where there was no way we could stay for the launch, make it over to the other coast of Florida, and still have enough time to get back to Ohio before we had to go to work.

The point is that at that time neither one of us could be angry about it. Dan missed seeing launch, but not because I was being a bitch about it. I got my long, leisurely drive back home without Dan being a resentful Mr. CrankyPants. In that case, procrastination may have saved our marriage.(4)

Here’s another example of procrastination as a marriage-saver. It’s in my nature put off large purchases by shopping around. Dan is more of the “see-what-you-want-and-buy-it” type of consumer. When we need a major appliance I procrastinate by comparing models, prices, ease of service, delivery charges, and so on. Then when I go out of town for any reason, Dan simply buys the appliance he likes best while I’m away.(5)

Useful as I find it, I am trying to break – or at least lessen – my habit of procrastination. That’s one reason I’m lying here in bed, beset by two kinds of antibiotics plus probiotics, allergy pills, antihistamine pills, and all the usual meds I take just to get through daily life. I have promised myself that I will post on my blogs every week on Sundays. To do that and do it well (or reasonably) I need to start writing by Wednesday at the latest.(6)

Fortunately my Samsung Galaxy Android tablet allows me to dictate. Then when I feel better I can go downstairs to the real computer and edit. Hemingway is said to have advised writing drunk and editing sober. I suppose writing while medicated and editing while recovering is at least close to the spirit.

Defeating procrastination is a question of whether you have power over it or it has power over you. With me, I guess it’s about six of one and half dozen of the other, or a little more on the procrastinating side. But I don’t have time to worry about that now. I’ll get to it later.

 

(1) See what I did there?

(2) It’s less easy to explain away how I managed to procrastinate on filing my taxes. I’m pretty sure that my next investment will have to be a tax attorney. When I get around to looking one up online.

(3) At least I would have. Dan would have skipped the angry part, since he would have gotten his way.

(4) I won’t say I’m recommending procrastination for everyone, all the time. I’m just noting that it has its uses.

(5) That’s also how he ended up with a pet hedgehog, which I suppose is better than a major appliance, though definitely not as useful.

(6) In high school and college I could put off writing like a champ. It was seldom that I ever wrote a paper more than a day before it was due. And I got away with it. Now I can’t – or at least don’t – do that anymore. Either I’ve gotten worse at procrastinating, worse at lying to myself, or better at realizing that my work needs more work. Whatever the reason, I definitely procrastinate less, when it comes to writing.

 

Christmas Comes Creeping

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It’s that time of year again – the time when we all bitch about Christmas Creepage. You know – how Christmas decorations and other fol-de-rol appear earlier every year, so that now they practically impinge on Halloween.

You get no sympathy from me. Here’s why.

First, it’s not going to change. Some businesses have decided to close on Thanksgiving “to be with family,” despite the fact that the only thing anyone buys on Thanksgiving are the dinner rolls you forgot to pick up when you bought the fried onions and mushroom soup for the traditional, little-beloved green bean casserole. But that’s a different matter.

Christmas creepage is purely a matter of the bottom line. If starting the decorating and selling didn’t make a difference in profits, the stores wouldn’t do it. But they both expect and get the Pavlovian response – reminding people of Christmas reminds people that they haven’t finished (or perhaps even started) shopping yet.

Therefore, creeping Christmas tut-tutting belongs in the same category as “You know as soon as they finish paving this road it’ll just be time to pave it again” and “Why do the hot dogs and buns never come out even?” Ritual plaints with no hope of resolution. So if we stop worrying about when the bells start jingling, we can expend our nerve endings on really important matters like “Forget universal health care. Why is there no universal law about where we can buy booze on Sundays?”

That said, there is another reason that angsting over the continual push-back of Christmas starting dates is an exercise in futility. Just as with starving orphans, there is always someone who is worse off than you are.

Consider the employees who work in those stores that commence holiday frivolities sooner than you would like. The clerks and stockers and servers have to put up with hearing the same Christmas tunes every shift, every hour, every day. Mostly involving the colors red (-nosed reindeer) and silver (bells), or speculations on what Santa may or may not be doing (checking lists, kissing Mommy, delivering hippopotami). Because, let’s face it, there are only so many Christmas songs in existence, especially secular ones appropriate to be associated with commerce.

You may not realize it, but there are professions in which preparations for Christmas start even earlier. Religious publishing, for example. So much lead time is required to put out a monthly magazine that editors must start planning their back-to-school issue before school adjourns for the summer. The Christmas issue has to be in process before Labor Day, at least. By the time Christmas actually arrives, the employees threaten to have a breakdown if one more person says, “the reason for the season” or puts up a display of a kneeling Santa.

Craft stores, I think, have it the worst of all. They not only have to sell kits and supplies for making Christmas decorations, they have to sell them in time for crafters to finish them before Thanksgiving (or earlier). Roughly the Fourth of July.

As for me, I’ve pushed Christmas preparations all the way back to January 1st. I once worked in an office in which all the women wore Christmas sweaters, and non-ironically at that. Some even wore Christmas sweatshirts on Casual Fridays, but that leads us back to the craft store dilemma.

I refused to give in to the price-gouging that ensued in December, not to mention the fact that I felt most of the sweaters fell into the category of Ugly Christmas Sweaters. So I waited till January and bought the leftovers at bargain prices. I thought the leftover sweaters were by far the nicest, since they didn’t feature the gung-ho-ho-ho excess of the more popular ones.

I finally acquired a respectable collection (you need four or five, at least, because of course you can’t wear the same one again and again). Then I left that job to go freelance. The Christmas sweaters now reside on shelves in my closet, longing for the day when I get invited to a holiday party. Which doesn’t happen often, probably because no one trusts me not to show up in a Grinch sweater.

 

 

Memories for Sale

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What cretin thought “Try a Little Tenderness” would be a good theme song for toilet paper?

What ad agency madman imagined that “Human” – a song about infidelity and confession and forgiveness – would be just peachy for an insurance company commercial featuring an air conditioner dropped on a car?

There are too many examples to list here: Quaker Oats “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”; Fiber One “Total Eclipse of the Heart”; Yoplait “All Day and All of the Night.”

I’ll tell you who thinks these up. Young people.

They count on their targeted demographic being too young to remember the songs as a part of their life, one that brings backs memories and feelings and events. High school. First love. First sex. Who cares if the lyrics don’t match the product? If a single word from the title remotely relates to the product, or the melody is pretty or energizing or attention-grabbing, that’s fine.

It was bad enough when all you had to fear was hearing The Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” or “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” strangled with strings while you were riding an elevator or shopping for groceries. (Yes, that was me gagging in the elevator.) But now even the songs of the 80s are “oldies” and considered fair game. The pitches invade every home that has a TV or computer. Which means pretty much everyone except the Amish.

I know that past a certain date the songs are public domain and the writers/singers get no royalties. I know that even if the company does have to pay royalties, they are but the tiniest drop in the bucket labeled “marketing expenses.” I know that sex – the underlying content of most popular songs – sells.

But what they’re selling are my memories and yours. Try to pick your favorite from the days when you related strongly to a song. Then imagine that singer going door to door peddling something. Gordon Lightfoot selling encyclopedias. Janet Jackson selling make-up. Hootie and the Blowfish selling patio awnings. Pink selling food storage devices.

You can’t. For one thing, no one sells door-to-door anymore except those guys that sell questionable steaks. Many people order everything from underwear to financial advice over the Internet. But you get the idea.

Of course the youngsters’ uppance will come. Years from now they will hear Lady Gaga or Nicki Minaj or Fall Out Boy being used to hawk hoverboards or maple bacon vodka or tampons. And they will cringe. Deservedly. And the ghosts of their elders will rub their wizened hands and cackle with glee.

Until that time, however, when faced with The Who’s “Who Are You?,” the only answer is, apparently, “I’m a shoe.”

 

C’mon. Share the outrage. What slices of your life have been trivialized by advertising? What memories have been reduced to background noise or crass commercialism? What songs would you like to take back from the hucksters and reclaim as the soundtrack to your life?

When I Say Shoes…

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When I’m out and about, I often say that I need to go home and take off my shoes. And when I say “shoes” I mean “bra.”(1)

I know that bras are necessary (2) and that they have improved over the years. No longer do you need to have the torpedo tits that restrictive, pointy bras of the 40s and 50s produced.(3)

Modern bras give you lots of choices. There are sports bras (4); ones with privacy petals and others with cut-outs for your nipples; padded and push-up; plain and fancy (5); cotton and satin and nylon and leather; emphasizers and minimizers, strapless or racer-backed, front-closing or back-closing or slip-ons, maternity bras and nursing bras, underwired and torture-free.(6)

There are even training bras, which I totally don’t get the point of. They can’t be training breasts, which don’t exist yet, or if they do are hardly in need of support or restraint. Are they for training girls never to let the straps show, which would be an Occasion of Sin for young boys? Or just training girls to be uncomfortable the rest of their lives?

Because bras are simply not comfortable, not even the ones that lack threats of being impaled. Don’t tell me that if a bra fits properly, it will be comfortable and that I’m just Doing It Wrong. I measured myself in the approved manner, including that silly bent-at-the-waist position where your boobs point at your toes.(7) I rounded down to the smaller band as the manufacturer’s website recommended and the ridiculous cup size involving letters of the alphabet I never knew existed.(8)

I still ended up with something that impaired my breathing and felt like a boob straitjacket. The band was so tight that I had to ask my husband to help me get it on and properly hooked. This is not his natural skill set, given his teenage experiences with the opposite procedure.

Of course, for us busty gals, free-boobing isn’t really an option.(9) I always keep a loose jacket near the door so that if I have to greet proselytizers or run after an escaping cat I won’t present the spectacle of flapping and jouncing tits making the important message on my nightshirt (10) impossible to read.

I remember the days when I could free-boob. Back when my tits were pert and perky, even if I wasn’t. That particular ship sailed long ago, I’m afraid. While gaining weight increased my boobage, gravity was not my friend.(11)

I understand that small, cupcake-like breasts have their advantages. You don’t have to fear button-front shirt gaps. There’s a better chance that you won’t have to buy different-sized bikini tops and bottoms and don’t have to worry about your tits flopping out of your strapless cocktail dress when you enter a twist contest, creating a scandal.(12) But I also hear that it’s more painful to have a mammogram when you have less tissue to squish.

Since we’re talking about breasts, for some reason I’ll let a gay man have the last word.

Here’s a excerpt from an interview with David Sedaris, which is posted on pastemagazine.com (http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2013/07/drinks-with-david-sedaris.html). For some reason it just resonated with me.

A woman the other night—she came to the reading and she said, “You got me to put my bra back on.” And I said, “I beg your pardon?” And she said, “Someone put it on Facebook that you were gonna be here. I’d gotten home from work and I’d taken my bra off. And when I take my bra off, it’s off for the night.” She said, “But this time I put it back on so I could come out.” She said, “NO ONE does that.” So I started asking women “When your bra is off, is it off for the night?” And they were like, “Hell yeah.” And that’s just something I never knew about women. It never occurred to me that women would have a “bra policy.” That they’d be like, “Sorry. I can’t. It’s off for the night.” It’s like, “You called me. You need a sober driver to pick you up from the bar?” And they’d have to say, “My bra’s off. I can’t. You have me mistaken for someone else…”

 

(1) Shoes too, actually. My feet have an unfortunate tendency to swell and give me cankles.

(2) At least for me, at this stage of my life.

(3) Unless you’re Madonna or one of her wanna-bes. Another bad look for most women is “tits on a platter,” facilitated by corsets and bustiers, that you sometimes see at renfairs.

(4) Made memorable by soccer player Brandi Chastain.

(5) I understand leopard prints and zebra prints, stripes, polka dots and little hearts. What I do not understand is a bra-and-panties set embellished with Marvin the Martian. I saw this in a retail store, not a science fiction convention.

(6) To me, an underwire feels like an upside-down guillotine, ready to lop off my breasts if I move wrong.

(7) I mean, really – the point, er, purpose of a bra is to prevent your nipples from pointing at your toes.

(8) I knew the letters existed, just not the cup sizes.

(9) Except that I work at home, in my nightshirt, so really I do it practically every day. I might wear even less, but my study is on the ground floor and the blinds are up because the cats like to look out and pretend they can catch birds.

(10) “I ❤ my bed”

(11) Gravity is not our friend in so many ways as we age. Just to mention one, getting multi-packs of bottled water off the bottom shelf in the grocery.

(12) That actually happened to me. The strapless dress and the twist contest. Not the flopping out. I practiced at home.

 

Where Music and Politics Meet

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This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From California to the New York Island,
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.

This, the chorus of Woody Guthrie’s famous American ballad, is all that most people know of the song. It is repeatedly sung at patriotic events, civic occasions, and celebrations of American holidays.

According to Wikipedia, Guthrie wrote the song “in critical response to Irving Berlin‘s ‘God Bless America,‘ which Guthrie considered unrealistic and complacent.”

If people know any more of the song, then they know one or two of these verses:

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway,
I saw below me that golden valley,
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled, and I followed my footsteps
To the sparking sands of her diamond deserts,
All around me a voice was sounding,
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, then I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling,
A voice was chanting as the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

There are other verses, though, that aren’t commonly sung or even remembered. In them Guthrie spoke of the plight of ordinary people caught in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl and the economic crisis that afflicted the whole nation. These verses are usually left out because of their political/economic message, which were deemed sympathetic to communism.

One bright sunny morning, in the shadow of the steeple,
By the relief office I saw my people,
As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if,
This land was made for you and me.

Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me,
Was a great big sign that said, “Private Property,”
But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking my freedom highway,
Nobody living can make me turn back,
This land was made for you and me.

Another verse, added by Guthrie’s friend, folksinger Pete Seeger, takes the political/social message even further, and includes a Bible reference:

Maybe you’ve been working as hard as you’re able,
But you’ve just got crumbs from the rich man’s table,
And maybe you’re thinking, was it truth or fable,
That this land was made for you and me.

With the political season heating up, Woody Guthrie has been much on my mind lately. Politicians have been quick to use popular songs in their campaigns based on their titles, but ignoring the lyrics. “This Land Is Your Land” was used in 1988 by George H.W. Bush. Guthrie, being long dead, couldn’t complain.

Other choices have been, well, problematic. In 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot used Patsy Cline’s version of “Crazy,” a song about hopeless love. In 2000, George W. Bush was threatened with a lawsuit by Tom Petty to stop the candidate from using the singer’s “I Won’t Back Down,” and was criticized by other performers for using their tunes. (Primary candidate Mike Huckabee was also asked in 2008 to stop using Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.”)

As The Washington Post reported,

“The most famously misread song may have been Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” During his 1984 reelection campaign, President Reagan praised Springsteen’s “message of hope” during a stop in New Jersey. It wasn’t clear which song, or songs, Reagan meant (and there’s no record of Reagan’s campaign actually playing the song), but many assumed he was referring to “Born,” the title track of Springsteen’s best-selling album at the time. The song, of course, is about the opposite of hope; it’s the anguished cry of a Vietnam veteran, returning home to bleak prospects (“I’m ten years burning down the road/Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go”). Springsteen later expressed irritation at being made an implicit part of Reagan’s morning-in-America reelection rhetoric.

Nor is this a phenomenon whose time has passed. Although the election season has barely started, there has already been at least one controversy. Canadian singer/songwriter Neil Young (who of course can’t vote in American elections) can still express his opinions of them.

Young objected when Donald Trump’s crew played “Rockin’ in the Free World” during Trump’s trip to the podium to announce his campaign for President. As breitbart.com noted (http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/06/23/after-shaming-trump-neil-young-allows-bernie-sanders-to-use-campaign-song/), “an official statement from Young’s camp immediately responded, “Neil Young, a Canadian citizen, is a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for President of the United States of America.” He had not authorized Trump’s use of the song, though the candidate’s campaign manager asserted that they had paid for the rights to do so. (Rights to use a song can usually be purchased from the music publisher.)

Back in the ’60s and ’70s, folksingers wrote songs specifically about the various issues that arose in elections (“The Draft-Dodger Rag,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” CSNY’s “Ohio,” “National Brotherhood Week”). That song trend was satirized in Tom Lehrer’s “The Folk Song Army” and is rarely seen these days, except perhaps on open mic nights at local bars and coffee shops. The day of protest songs sung by thousands at rallies or played on the radio has largely given way to the shouting or chanting of slogans (“Feel the Bern”) or general feel-good patriotic pop or country-pop songs. “God Bless the U.S.A.” might just replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” as our national anthem. (It is easier to sing.)

God, I miss Woody Guthrie! I bet he’d have a thing or two to sing about this election cycle.

By the way, what do you suggest? Let me know what you think would be a good campaign song – for either side.

Dodging Nosy Questions

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“So, when are you and Janet going to give your mother grandchildren?”

“Why spend $300 per hour on a shrink when it’s not going to do any good anyway?

“Why do you always eat junk food when you know you have high blood pressure?”

“Are those boobs real?”

Questions you can’t answer. Questions you don’t want to answer. Questions you want to slap a person for asking. Questions that are just begging to start a fight. We all hear them, sometimes from our nearest and dearest, and sometimes from total strangers.

There is an answer – other than “Shut up and leave me alone,” which may indeed be your initial reaction, but usually isn’t the best solution. (Except maybe to the boobs question.)

Noted linguist and author of The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense Suzette Haden Elgin recommended a technique called the “Boring Baroque Response.” It’s not a skill everyone has at the ready, but with a little practice, you can expand your ability to deflect the nosy and the belligerent.

The essence of the Boring Baroque Response (or BBR) is storytelling. No matter the question, you stare off into space and launch into the longest, most rambling story you can. Here’s an example:

Idiot: “Why do you always eat junk food when you know you have high blood pressure?”

You: “That’s interesting you should ask. It reminds me of when my parents and I were visiting Cousin Jim and Cousin Addie – you know, the ones that lived near Natural Bridge and had that kitchen that was painted all black. And whenever we visited my sister and I played in the hayloft. But it didn’t have hay, it was really bales of straw. Dried-out corn cobs, too, which they fed to the animals, like the mule. I rode that mule once, bareback, and you wouldn’t believe how bony its backbone was! Anyway, Cousin Addie was making biscuits and gravy – sawmill gravy with milk, not red-eye gravy with coffee – and Cousin Jim always said….”

Keep going as long as necessary until the questioner gives up and goes away. As Elgin noted, “A response like this delivers the following message: ‘I notice that you’re here to pick a fight. Do that if you like, but it’s not going to be much fun for you, because I won’t play that game.'”

According to Elgin, the secret of the BBR is to deliver it with a straight face and a thoughtful, reminiscing tone. Sounding sarcastic or snotty will give away the game. And although the example was (vaguely) related to food, as the question was, it doesn’t have to be. The story can be about your sister and how she wanted to be a veterinarian, which she would have really been terrible at because….Well, you get the idea.

My husband had a version of the BBR that he used when he worked in community-based corrections. He would regale the “clients” with stories full of analogies – “You know when they make steel how they forge it first in really high heat and then plunge it into cold water. Well, that’s kind of like….” He could rarely get out more than a sentence before the listener would edge away, saying, “No stories, please, Mr. R. I’ll behave. I’ll be good. Just no story!”

I don’t know if Elgin ever heard it, but the best BBR I know is the monologue that Grampa Simpson produced when asked to break up a union meeting:

“We can’t bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways…. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m’shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. ‘Gimme five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say. Now where were we… oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. I didn’t have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones….”

Now that’s classic TV! Just like the episode of WKRP when Mr. Carlson had an idea for a promotion and Les was supposed to report on it live from the shopping center, but the one store didn’t want him standing in front of it because customers couldn’t get in, so then….

 

 

Weeding Followers, Friends, and Fans

etc., racism, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , ,

Name-calling. Shaming. Trolls. Hate speech. Threats. Doxxing. These are increasingly common on the internet.

They are also problems I don’t have, given the relatively few Facebook friends I have, the relative civility of most of them, and the relatively slow growth of my blogs.

Personally, I have only ever blocked a couple of people on Facebook, one for use of the “n-word.” I don’t often post about controversial topics on my timeline, though I’m sure people can figure out my general leanings from the things I do post and the comments I make on others’ posts. I accept friend requests from people I know, who are on all points of the political and social continuum. Some of my friends and I disagree totally on, and stay away from discussing, sensitive issues.

But I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at how other people handle such problems.

First, let’s look at someone whose situation is similar to mine: a private citizen, Georgianna, who has unfriended and been unfriended. She says that what has pushed her over the edge at times is situations like this:

On posts I made about shootings of unarmed blacks by cops, [the person in question] kept commenting things like why do they riot and why do they run if they’re not guilty. I ignored those. The final straw was when I posted about Cecil the Lion and he commented what about all the babies murdered by abortion. His posts were off topic, annoying, and displayed stupidity. I was done.

I guess I just got tired of folks highjacking my posts for their own purposes and not adding substance.

Fair enough. I think that sums up most people’s experiences. But what about more public figures who regularly discuss – indeed, argue about, promote, or decry – volatile topics?

Tom Smith is a professional singer/songwriter with a modest-by-national-standards but impressive-in-certain-circles following. His songs and his Facebook posts clearly show a progressive/liberal bent. Among his friends and followers are a rather large number of highly opinionated people (I am one of them), and the comments on his posts can run into the hundreds.

Because he began fearing for his blood pressure, Tom established Rules covering comments and what would get a person blocked.

1: BE POLITE DAMMIT. You don’t have to be polite to whatever person or persons are the subject(s) of the original post, although I will not tolerate name-calling or crude sexual insults or fat-shaming or anything like that. But, by damn, you WILL be polite to your fellow commenters. You are all guests at a party at my place, and I don’t like it when my friends fight, especially IN MY FRONT ROOM.
2. Facts. Back up any assertions with facts — to credible sources, please. Breitbart.com, anything associated with Fox “News”, The Weekly Standard, anything by Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pam Geller, Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, or Bill O’Reilly are ESPECIALLY right out. They are known, proven liars and nutbar conspiracy theorists. If you got it off Reddit or Free Republic or Townhall or someplace like that… get some confirmation from the damn New York Times or Washington Post or CNN or BBC.
3. I reiterate: no sexual shaming. No fat “jokes”. No ethnic jokes. (Yeah, I know a shitload of ’em. Some people just take them wrong). Nothing that you think might be triggery. You can swear your head off, if that’s your style — it certainly is my style sometimes. But, basically, if you have to stop and ask yourself if it might really offend someone, there’s a decent chance it will. Use your words, and find a different way to phrase it.
4. Did I mention facts? Whatever you think you know about climate change, Planned Parenthood, Benghazi, Obama’s birth certificate, or the wonderful benefits of fracking, there’s a good chance you have at least some misinformation. No, not that site. No, not that one either. Science denial will get you Blocked faster than two days of eating peanut butter.

Recently, Tom has (quite sensibly, in my opinion) moved his political postings to a separate page called Political Noise (https://www.facebook.com/politicalnoise?pnref=story), where he has basically the same rules as above, but has also articulated this:

If conversations go off the rails, if people are snarling at each other and no one’s going to change each other’s minds, I will step in and say ENOUGH. When that happens, THE THREAD IS CLOSED AND I EXPECT YOU TO STOP COMMENTING. We’ve reached the loud, circular phase of the argument, and it’s time to let it go and move on.

If someone is being a particular jerk about things, I may hit you with the Ban Hammer and say BUH-BYE. Usually, this is just for a couple of days. If you’re a really special snowflake, however, it may be permanent.

He adds: “Anybody got a problem with that? Tough. My wall, my rules. Now. Go forth and play nice.”

As of a few days ago, Tom’s main Facebook page is reserved for personal updates and musings, his professional page (https://www.facebook.com/tomsmithonline?fref=ts)  for his music, and the new page for political/social opinions.

Then there’s Jim Wright, widely known writer, blogger, Navy veteran, and unrepentant curmudgeon, whose website Stonekettle Station (http://www.stonekettle.com/) and Facebook page are platforms for his strongly worded and often iconoclastic views. He has maxed out the number of Facebook friends allowed. His rules (which I asked permission to quote, so don’t bother reporting me to him):

Things that get you booted off my Facebook page:
1. Acting like an asshole.
2. Acting like an ignorant asshole.
3. Acting like an asshole to other commenters.
4. Acting like a condescending asshole by explaining to other commenters “what Jim ‘really’ meant.”
If you act in this manner, you will be summarily removed. Period. There will be no warning given ….
_________
Addendum: You get booted, DON’T email me begging an explanation, forgiveness and/or reinstatement. I already gave your slot away. If you don’t want to get booted, don’t act like an asshole. If you’re not sure what I consider acting like an asshole is, then err well on the side of caution. I am not going to argue about this.

Jim has also been known to publicly mock any truly and/or amusingly stupid comments, tweets, or messages, and, under certain circumstances, to send forth his “minions” to do likewise.

Another Famous Writer weeds out friend requests in advance. Apparently he goes to your home page and looks at whether you post cat photos and pass-alongs from Upworthy and Buzzfeed. I quit trying. I like cat photos and sometimes find Upworthy and Buzzfeed interesting. If that rules me out for his roster of friends, so be it. I have plenty of friends who follow things that I consider dopey. Then again, I’m not even within shouting distance of the Facebook friend limit.

All things considered, I am glad not to be even a semi-public figure (except insofar as my blogs make me one, which is not very far at all) – and glad to have non-troll friends, however opinionated.

What’s in a Number?

etc., funny things, humor, journalism, language, , , , , , ,

The Top 5 Breakfast Sandwiches in L.A.

12 Reasons to Hire a Wedding Planner

11 Grammar Lessons From the CIA Stylebook

10 Fun Uses for Old Card Catalogs

9 Bizarre New Snacks to Try

5 Weirdest Gins and Vodkas You Can Buy

4 Words Parents and Kids Should Never Say

What do all these headlines have in common? That’s right – numbers.(1) Now read them again without the numbers. Are the headlines any better or worse? Reasons to Hire a Wedding Planner. Fun Uses for Old Card Catalogs. Weirdest Gins and Vodkas You Can Buy. What’s wrong with those?(2)

I never understand number-crunching headlines.(3) I always find myself asking, “Why 10 fun uses and not 9 or 11? And couldn’t the Wedding Planner have stopped at 10? Or bumped it up to a baker’s dozen?”(4) Someone somewhere must have done a study revealing that if a headline has a number, more people will read it.(5)

Maybe it helps people plan their day: “5 breakfast sandwiches and I’m done! That should be just about right for my morning dump. I’ll save the CIA grammar one for lunch hour.”

There are a few things I know after years of editing, and one of them is this:(6) If you mention a number in the headline, it is a solemn vow to the reader. There should be that many fun uses for old card catalogs – no more, no less. All the readers with OCD are checking.(7)

Even more annoying are the headlines that combine letters and numbers: The 3 Cs of Forklift Safety.(8) Or worse, the ones that try to help you remember the number of points with a stupid acronym: The CHILD Plan for Preventing Tantrums. Invariably, one of the letters is an Elastic Man Stretch (I – Invent something for the child to do.), or the author calls it the CHiLD Plan because she can’t think up an I any better than “Invent something for the child to do.” (9)

Maybe this fixation with numbers began with David Letterman’s top 10 lists. Maybe it was Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. Maybe it was even pop music’s Top 20 or childhood’s Ten Little Indians rhyme (or, I suppose, Agatha Christie’s mystery novel).(10)

However it started, it doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon. There are probably 5 or 14 or 600 reasons for that. I’m sure I’ll be reading about them all by next month, if not sooner.(11)

(1)  Also, they’re all real headlines, even the one about the CIA Stylebook.

(2) Nothing. Except the gin and vodka one. The only flavored gin you need is lime and the only flavor to add to vodka is more vodka. A friend once wrote a song in which he mentioned “cranapple schnapps.” He had no idea how prophetic he was being.

(3) Though I am fond of numbers. I even celebrate Pi Day, March 14, yearly.

(4) 2 Reasons No One Says “Baker’s Dozen Anymore.” No one knows that it means 13, and bakers don’t give away free cupcakes anyway, especially if they’re for a gay wedding. Plus, the bakery boxes are all made to hold 12. Oops. I guess that would be 3 reasons.

(5) There’s probably also a study that says whether the number should be odd or even, though our sample headline writers don’t seem to have read it. I know that in graphic design, odd numbers are preferred – 3 bubbles filled with text, 7 scallops in the top border, and so on. I think it’s a rule invented by the same people who insist on 3-letter acronyms: LOL, FTW, AAA, WWW, TIL, RLS, IBS, OCD, ADD, WTF? I’m just glad there’s a website where I can look up what they all mean.

(6) Another one is this: Those hyper-annoying cards that fall out on your feet when you’re thumbing through magazines? They have a name. They’re blow-in cards. No one knows who invented them, so you can’t send hate mail. The kind that don’t fall out on your feet are called bind-in cards. No one knows who invented those either, so you can’t send a thank-you card.

(7) With any luck, the editors, nearly all of whom are at least a little OCD, will be checking.

(8) Conceal the keys. Conceal the keys. Conceal the keys.

(9) Invest in a sugarless candy’s stock. Insist your spouse take your child to the grocery. Instruct your child in anger management. Increase your dosage of Xanax.

(10) Although I expect that today’s children recite more politically correct counting rhymes and no mystery editor would let such a title through these days.

(11) Sorry about all the footnote numbers. They probably made this post more complicated than necessary.

Post-Feminism: Back to the Future

etc., government, racism, religion, social policy, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Now that we’ve got the marriage equality question settled for all time (1), I think it’s time we turned to a brand-new, never-before-contemplated issue of social concern – women’s rights.

That’s right. We women want rights.

What rights, you ask?

Well, I dunno. There are so many.

The right to fair wages. The right to be believed when reporting a rape. The right not to be abused by a partner and to get something more than a restraining order that doesn’t work. The right to affordable, good-quality child care. The right to be represented in groups that make decisions about women. The right to have children or not, as we decide. The right to health care, mental health care, places in homeless shelters. The right not to be assaulted by fellow service members.

I could go on. So could you, I bet.

But, just as we’re now living in a post-racial society (2), I’m told we’re living in a post-feminist society.(3)

I’ve also heard that one of the reasons the Terrifying Gay Agenda (4) is having such current success is that they found a specific issue to organize around – marriage equality. Not “Treat Us Like Human Beings” or “Don’t Discriminate in Jobs and Housing” or “We Want Equal Rights.”

And those are some of the problems with the women’s movement – we’re not organized, we don’t have just one issue that we can knock off the list above, and “Change Society” is too vague.

So let’s narrow it down to one. For myself, I’d like to be mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. And that means the Equal Rights Amendment.(5) All we have to do, according to the experts at http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/, since the one proposed in 1972 was passed (6), is just get enough states to ratify it to put us over the top – three whole states.

The ones that haven’t ratified are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia. I figure Illinois is a good place to start. Then, I don’t know – Nevada? North Carolina? Virginia? What do you think?

But let’s do it. Then see what happens with all those other issues. I’m betting the ERA will have a good effect on many of them, and more besides.(7)

What’s that? It isn’t a good time to bring up women’s rights? The climate in the country isn’t conducive to the issue? There’s no chance of it happening?

Well, was it a good time to bring up marriage equality? Was the climate of the public discussion in favor of that? Was the country ready for it? Take a look at all the strict constitutionalists scrambling to figure out a way to defy the Constitution (8), and you tell me.

And to those who say that it’s an empty gesture, that an Equal Rights Amendment will make no real difference in women’s lives, think about what happened once black people were mentioned in that foundational document. No, it didn’t change everything for the better right away. But it sure got the ball rolling.

And I don’t know about you, but I sure would like to see some ball-rolling on behalf of women.(9)

(1) *snerk*
(2) *snerk* again
(3) I had a t-shirt that said “I’ll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy.” My husband and I both wore it until you couldn’t see the letters anymore. I’d get another one if I could remember what catalog we found it in.
(4) As the joke goes, it includes brunch at 11:30, decorating committee at 4:00, and a dance at 9:00. It’s probably the dance that terrifies people.
(5) Here’s the full text:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Fifty-two whole words. Scary, isn’t it?
(6) Yes, the ERA actually passed, although almost no one remembers this. It was the ratifying that did it in.
(7) Back in the day, when the ERA came around the last time, it was sneeringly referred to by some as the Equal Restrooms Amendment. Which is actually a topic that still needs addressing. Women’s bathrooms in public buildings need more stalls than men’s to achieve parity. Women need a stall for each excretory (and hygiene) function. Men conserve space using urinals; for some unfathomable reason, they’re willing to pee without walls and doors.
(8) And/or the Supreme Court. And/or the President, for that matter. Anything mentioned in the Constitution, really, except the Second Amendment.
(9) yet more *snerk*