Say what it means
You know what has been really pissing me off this week?
Rhetorical question, of course you don’t. But if you hang on a sec, I’ll tell you.
It’s when terms, important terms, are used incorrectly so often that people believe the new meaning.
Let’s start with a simple example: chaise longue. This means “long chair” in French. People started mispronouncing it “chaise lounge” because they didn’t know any better and were apparently suffering from mass dyslexia. Rather than be correct, manufacturers of chaises longues changed the names on their product boxes to match the error (I’m not making this up).
Why is this a problem? Because when I say chaise longue and some bozo corrects me, it causes me to grind another layer of enamel off my teeth. Pick a language — If you don’t want to speak French, just call it a lounge chair.
Okay, maybe I’m making much adieu about nothing. So let’s look at something more important: Y2K, the abbreviation for “year 2000”. More specifically, it has come to mean “the computer glitch that almost ended the world in the year 2000”.
Since the world didn’t end in Y2K, the news media commonly refers to Y2K as a “hoax”. In fact, you don’t even need to say “hoax” anymore, it’s implied.
Well, I can tell you as someone who spent two years on a Y2K project for a big telecommunications company, Y2K was not a hoax. We found lots of stuff. It was mostly cosmetic stuff, but it all needed to be fixed.
Why is this a problem? Calling Y2K a hoax is wrong, and frankly, insulting.
It’s safe to say Y2K was overblown, but in 1998 we had no idea how bad it was going to be. Plus once the Y2K ball got rolling, companies were charging huge bucks to go through your code looking for problems, and COBOL programmers were emerging from IT gulags to fill ridiculously lucrative programming contracts. Thus lots of people had incentive to exaggerate the problem. This does not mean it wasn’t a problem.
Here’s another example: UFOs. What does UFO mean? No, it doesn’t mean “flying saucer”. That’s exactly my point.
UFO means unidentified flying object. So when someone asks me if I believe in UFOs, I say, “well duh”. Any object that is flying that I can’t identify is by definition a UFO.
I see UFOs all the time. Are any of them alien spacecraft? Probably not. But I don’t know. They are unidentified.
Why is this a problem? Because you can’t describe unidentified flying objects as UFOs anymore. So now you say, “I saw this thing last night, it was in the sky, I don’t know what it is, and it was flying.”
“Was it a UFO?” your listener asks, with a smirk that says, You’re an effing loon.
“No, no,” you respond quickly, “it was just a thing in the sky. It might have been flying, or not. I don’t know what it was. Stop looking at me that way. It wasn’t a UFO. Forget I said anything.”
Bugger that, it was absolutely a UFO. Check the definition.
Another example: global warming. It’s the hottest topic around right now. No other term causes more heated arguments. This one gets me steamed too, but for a different reason.
Global warming means the world is getting warmer, and this is a fact. The Earth’s temperature has been going up and down ever since it grew an atmosphere, and we happen to be in a warming period. A few thousand years ago, the Earth was in an ice age. Since we started keeping accurate temperature records in the last century, we have seen the Earth’s temperature rise over one degree. We can compare pictures of glaciers from decades ago with pictures now, and they are unmistakably smaller. Some are almost gone.
However, even the biggest deniers aren’t blind or stupid (I hope). They aren’t denying that the world is getting warmer. They are denying that humans have had an effect on it. However, the media no longer makes that distinction, and so neither does the unwashed masses.
Why is this a problem? You can’t have a debate on something if you can’t agree on the terms you will use.
People are confusing their hatred of Al Gore with rising sea levels. One is an opinion, the other is a fact. You can argue until you are blue in the face that your SUV isn’t contributing to global warming, but in the meantime, Venice and Tuvalu are drowning, and Miami is next. Whether you should junk your Suburban for a Prius is a completely separate argument.
You can say climatologists are crying wolf so they will get bigger research grants. Possible, but don’t you think the loudest deniers (e.g. energy companies and business friendly politicians) also have their own agenda?
Astute readers will have noticed I’m still using the term “global warming” over its latest incarnation “global climate change”. Why? Because that is another debate. Does a warming Earth cause more hurricanes in summer and random cold snaps in winter? Most climatologists say “yes”, but putting the two together means the unwashed masses see them as the same and throw them both out.
Damn, it’s good to get all that off my chest. I feel better now.
A cavalier look at ideas
Ideas are cheap — in fact, they are free. That’s why you can’t patent ideas, only inventions or processes. It’s what you do with the idea that matters.
How many times have you said, “Hey, he stole my idea!” Well, what did you do with it?
For example, how many people had the idea to fly to the moon and plant a flag in the dust? How many of them actually did it? Are all those left behind going to sue NASA for stealing their idea?
Also, ideas come and go. If you get a good idea, immediately write it down… or not. Really, if you forget it, it probably wasn’t that great an idea in the first place. Plus another idea is already on its way.
The problem isn’t lack of ideas, it’s the lack of time, ability, or drive to make something of them. Or in the case of planting a flag on the moon — money.
Plus what goes around comes around. Maybe you have an idea you can’t put into action, but someone else could. It’s not costing you anything to give it away, is it?
Of course, that’s the rational side of my brain talking. The irrational side of my brain is always worried about running out of ideas. So I write down every idea no matter how lame and they are all mine, mine, mine.
A couple of manly lunches
A manly meal has three main requirements:
(1) can be made during your average television commercial break, or a series of such breaks;
(2) can be eaten in front of the TV;
(3) is full of meat, because meat is synonymous with manliness;
(4) there is danger involved in its preparation.
Steak and burgers definitely fit these criteria because you can cook them during commercial breaks on a backyard grill. A grill is fraught with peril because it can go foomp! and singe your eyebrows. Not that it has ever happened to me.
Pizza also fits these criteria because you put it in the oven during one commercial break and pull it out during the next commercial break. And really, an oven is almost as dangerous as a grill — you can burn your forearms pulling out your pizza, especially if your attention is still on the TV. Not that it has ever happened to me.
To the above list of manly meal requirements, I’d like to add:
(5) low-carb, because obesity creates man-boobs which are decidedly un-manly, and fortunately low-carb diets work like crazy for men.
So here are a couple of low-carb recipes for lunch you can do in the microwave:
Hey! you scream. How is a microwave oven dangerous? Well, I’m sure you have seen The Mythbusters superheating distilled water in one. Kaboom! ‘Nuff said.
Manly lunch 1:
Dump a couple big scoops of Carolina BBQ pork on a plate, add lots of chopped celery, and a small scoop of Smart Balance mayo. Optional: some bell peppers and tomatoes, and white cheese (cheddar doesn’t work here). Roll into a ball, nuke to warm it up, and that’s it.
Carolina style BBQ is vinegar based, not tomato based. This cuts out a lot of sugar and it means you can taste the celery.
Manly lunch 2:
Take pieces of cooked chicken, add some chopped onion, a big scoop of Smart Balance mayo to add flavor and moisture, and chunks of your favorite soft cheese. Add random veggies like chopped peppers if you have them. Mix with fork, nuke to melt the cheese, and that’s it.
If you try any of these, tell me if you like ’em. Have any manly recipes of your own?
Internet balls: the nasty disease
There is a peculiar affliction raging through the internet. It has been incubating for some time. In fact, I have seen outbreaks since the dawn of the Web, but I have never seen it as bad as this.
I’m sure you have seen manifestations of this disease — we have all seen it — but I believe I am the first to give it a name. I call it “internet balls”.
Internet balls afflicts mainly males starting from early adolescence and continues until near retirement age, presumably when testosterone production begins to wane. Its base cause is the anonymity that the internet provides. The primary symptom is the testicles swell from Raisinets to cantaloupes whenever the afflicted person logs on to an internet forum.
This disease causes a normally meek person to become aggressive and belligerent. Adolescents who are normally sullen and reticent suddenly gain the ability to spout nonstop streams of profanity and insults. Older sufferers suddenly become experts on current events and are convinced that everyone of a different opinion must be a moron.
Unfortunately the disease is highly contagious. We saw evidence of this with the early internet phenomenon called “flame wars”. Here, a patient zero, often called a “troll”, would seed a banal conversation with insults. Patient zero instantly infected the other forum users who would respond with insults of their own. The conversation rapidly degenerated into curses against “yo momma” with racial and homophobic overtones.
In advanced cases, internet balls can spill over into reality, in the form of bumper stickers and Tea Party rallies. People who are normally friendly and reasonable become xenophobic and mule-headed when placed in groups of other people with like opinions.
Treatment options are limited, but effective. The simplest option is for afflicted persons to act online the same way they act in real life. The second option is for them to unplug their computers from the internet so they won’t be tempted to turn into assholes.
It also seems likely that the symptoms of internet balls could be alleviated or eliminated through the use of medical marijuana.
Plotter versus Plodder
I admit it — the title was an attempt to be cute to grab your attention. Anyway, tonight’s title matchup is: do you plot when you write, or do you start writing and see what happens?
In the red corner, we have The Plotter: he lays out his entire story before putting virtual pen to paper. He believes thou shalt describe everything in excruciating detail from your characters to your opening to your conclusion because thou wantest not to lie in endless fields of rewriting and thou wantest total control over thine story lest it begin to wander into the land of the Philistines and above all, thou hatest surprises and thou doesn’t want thine reader to be surprised either.
In the blue corner, we have The Plodder: he pulls an idea from the ether and starts writing. Characters form as the story plods along. The plot plods along. Nay, plot germinates from the idea. It blossoms into a story fertilized by the author’s imagination and copious lattes. It explodes into a glorious climax before gently falling back to earth to seed the next idea. The author snores contentedly while the reader smokes a cigarette.
I think my blue bias has leaked through somewhat. Plus these views are overly simplistic, naturally. I don’t think any writer fully sits in the red or the blue corner.
Anyway, people often speculate, which method is better? I have my own thoughts on the subject.
All the books on writing that I read in my formative years said to outline everything ahead of time. For me, that kills interest in the story. I just want to friggin’ write, man. I always figured I was doing it wrong. Then I read Stephen King’s On Writing and it was such a relief. Turns out, King (my hero) doesn’t plot either.
Plodding does require extra rewriting, I admit. Sometimes I wander a bit. Sometimes I have to discard entire pages that aren’t working, but I’m okay with this. I don’t mind editing myself, and no writing is ever wasted. If a scene doesn’t work, I save it in a slush document for possible use later. Yay computers.
I do Plot a little bit. I create character sketches and interviews before I start. While I’m gaily tapping away, I generally know what the climax of the current set-piece will be, and I have a pretty good idea how the story will end. It’s like hiking through the mountains — I can see the next signpost, and I can see the peak where I want to be by suppertime, but I don’t yet know which path I’ll take to get there.
I’m the first audience for my stories. I write them because I like reading them. That’s my motivation for writing in the first place. I’m telling myself a story, and I can’t wait to see how it spins out. I don’t want to spoil my own surprise.
Plus if it’s a surprise to me, it should be a surprise to my reader.
What it comes down to is, I can’t write any other way than I do. I have tried.
I feel I should wrap this up in a general conclusion: whatever works for you, that is what you should do. No one is going to know whether you Plotted or Plodded if the story is good.
If the story sucks, try the other corner.
What about you? Are you a Plotter or a Plodder?
(another) Midnight Writer 