Horray!

There is a cool weblog I follow (that means I have made the blog slightly easier for me to find by adding a link to my virtual dashboard. It does not mean I check in on it very frequently) called "Robot Apocalypse". I found this blog while searching the web for pictures of robots with which I could illustrate the Cautious Carl Model of Social Devolution. "Finally!" I cried aloud, "Another person worried that no one is paying enough attention to the impending takeover of humanity by our own robotic creations!" What I loved about the blog was how serious the author took the threat. I thought that was really the best way to go. If your going to do something silly, be seriously silly. Like how a joke is much better when the person telling it can do it without laughing himself.

My illusion of a perfect prophet of robotic mayhem has recently been shattered. I looked on the blog for updated signs of the robo-times, and saw this:

Robotic Skin means more sensitive Robot Over-Lords. (Horray?)

Like you, the thing that stood out to me most was the word "horray". Maybe the phrase "Robot Over-Lords" stood out most to you, actually, but I am used to that idea already. When I saw "horray", it was clear that it was being used sarcastically. What was unclear was why it was spelled that way. My faith in the warning voice unshaken, I began to search the post for clues as to why he would purposely misspell "hooray". It must be a pun based on technical robo-jargon, I thought. Like maybe the thing that makes the Robot Over-Lords' skin so sensitive is a new HOR chip, or something. But after combing the entire post, I was left to concede that my leader in the anti-robot revolution may have made a mistake. And that is a pill hard to swallow, my friends. Almost as hard to swallow as the pill he sent to me with instructions to take it at sunset on the eve of summer solstice, 2012.

Things you can't say OR write.

This is a sequel to the post before the last one, made possible only because The Minister of Older People emailed me back! Thank you, sir! You'll remember that The Minister had expressed in an email a thought that didn't quite make perfect sense upon first reading it. However, the general idea of this thought would be easily understandable had he expressed it vocally during a conversation, because the listener's brain would process it quickly without subjecting it to a grammatical breakdown. Well, The Minister is at it again, but this time he's unleashed a thought that would force even the quickest of cerebella to seize up in confusion:

What is the and schedule?

Thanx,

The Minister of Older People

Imagine, if you will, that you were sitting at your desk, and a coworker popped his head into your office and said, "what is the and schedule?" If you have imagined this even half as vividly as I have been able to, there is no need for me to dissect it any further.

When I read this in the email, I grappled with it for a few seconds, and then, as we humans do, I extracted whatever sense I could from it. The best I could come up with was that The Minister would not be able to attend the event on March 26th, and was asking for April's schedule of events. If he had sent the email from his phone, his phone could have auto-corrected his "apr" contraction of "April" to read "and". Yes, I thought, that must be it. So I emailed back to him a list of April's events. I received this reply:

I said I would be there this Saturday the 26^th – my question is what is the schedule and/or agenda for the 26^th

I humbly beg your pardon, Minister. Of course that is what you were asking.

Spring training

Did you know that there are other blogs besides this one? I was reading the one that lives next-door to this one, and the author had written about how excited he was about baseball spring training. He lives in Florida where many Major League teams hold their preseason camps, and he was planning to attend a friendly game between two out-of-state teams. Sounds like a nice time. In his post about spring training, he included a map that shows where teams are holding their camps in the southern part of the state. This map was originally created for women who wanted to serve baseball players with paternity suits:

It occurred to me that spring training must not be nearly as much fun for Florida-based teams as for the others. The New York Mets are excited to get away from the rainy weather of the northeast. The Detroit Tigers are excited to get away from Detroit. Players from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis are tweeting: "OMG, road trip! So stoked to start working on my tan, yo!" But for Florida players it's like, "great, we have to go play baseball in a smaller stadium that's an hour away from our regular stadium. Great, I have no valid excuse to get me out of going to dinner with those people tonight, because I'm still in Florida. Awesome."

It's like when your cousins come to visit from Arizona when you're a little kid, and for them it's a vacation, because they're in a completely different place than where their everyday lives are based. And you try to jump on the vacation train and your mom's like, "have you finished your chores? You can't play with your cousins until you've finished your chores." And you say, "but they're going swimming!" And your mom says, "go get ready for your piano lesson."

I feel badly for Florida's professional baseball players because while all the other players in the country are on vacation, they're stuck at a piano lesson.

Things you can say but not write.

There are some things that are better said than written. For example, it probably wouldn't be a problem if you were standing in your backyard watering some plants and you said, "Hi, Barry Gibb. You are my soul mate. I'm going to come into your house while you're asleep and steal your socks, so that I can make a shirt out of them. Then I'm going to fill up your bathtub with pictures of me and my cats." You could say that, and chances are nothing bad would come of it. But if you wrote that down in the wrong place (like in a letter addressed to Barry Gibb), you could get into some trouble. Most likely the police, at the behest of Mr. Gibb, would make an inquiry, leading to an awkward series of questions like, "why did you write that letter? Why do you have so many pictures of you and your cats dressed up like old-timey sailors? What's in that envelope addressed to Olivia Newton-John that's in your mailbox?"

(top to bottom: an old lady, her autographed picture of Barry Gibb)

You know she wants to wear a shirt made from Barry Gibb's socks.

So clearly, we have to be careful. Life is but a delicate traipsing around other people's comfort zones. There are many other things that pass normally in conversation, but cause bemusement when encountered in print. Most of them are not nearly as extreme as that weird letter to Barry Gibb. Here's a real-life example found in an email I received today. No names have been changed, because no one was innocent:

March 15, 2011

Hi Raithburne,

I have tried to call you back and your service does not recognize your name. yes, I would like to attend on the 26^th of march. I can be reached at:

๑๐-แปด-เจ็ดสอง = home

สิบสอง-สี่-๘ดส = cell

The Minister of Older People

"I have tried to call you back and your service does not recognize your name." If, in the flow of a relevant conversation, this sentence was uttered, it would most likely be taken to mean, "I couldn't figure out how to navigate your office's voice mail menu to find your extension." But when read, it seems like nonsense. Like the words just spilled into the email before The Minister of Older People had time to organize them into a cohesive thought.

The thing about writing that's different than speaking is that when words are spoken, they are usually followed by more speaking, allowing enough time for the listener to process the thought but not enough time to actually analyze the form in which it was presented. But if the same words are written, they are there for good, stuck on the page or the screen, to be read over and over. So if the writer doesn't take the time to fine-tune those words, it's all too easy for the reader to pick them apart and find no real meaning behind them.

The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if what my correspondent meant was that when he reached our general voice mail system, he just started shouting my name into the phone. Which is not how our voice mail system works, but it might explain what he wrote in the email (it also would make a hilarious 30-second video). In light of this possibility, please disregard everything you have just read. Thanks anyway.

Oh captain, my captain...

Today NCAA.com is playing a game called "How Crazy Can We Make Four Women's Basketball Coaches Look?" And NCAA.com is winning. Here's their game-clinching play, the move that put the final nail in the coffin:

Somewhere, a teenager is being asked by his friends, "hey, isn't that your mom?" And somewhere, a teenager is saying, "nope."

Funeral hats

Here's a thing that happens to many people at some point in their lives, and they usually feel a bit badly about it. Imagine, if you will, that you see an acquaintance dressed more nicely than usual. You know how they normally dress, and to your knowledge, there is nothing particularly special about today. As a normal, marginally optimistic person, you will likely assume that this garb of respectability betokens some happy occasion. Perhaps your friend is attending a wedding later, or is preparing for a job interview, or has tickets to the opera. And that same normal person inside you will probably constrain your mouth to say something like, "hey, looking sharp! What are you all fancy for?"

But this is where the situation has the potential to go sour. If your friend answers, "I'm going to a funeral," don't you feel like a jerk-idiot? Yes, you probably do. It is in the spirit of this feeling that I propose a method of dress for funeral-goers that will help them avoid any extra pain at the hands of well-meaning (but ultimately insensitive) friends.

FUNERAL HATS

There is nothing about a suit and tie that tells you whether the man wearing them is dressed for a funeral or The National Dog Show Presented by Purina. He may be mourning the loss of a loved one, or maybe he is showing his prize collie who is named, not surprisingly, Angela Merkel (you thought I was going to say "Lassie", didn't you?). You don't want to hurt this man, you care about his feelings, but chances are you will say something like, "hey, are you showing Angela Merkel today? Good luck!" But imagine if this man were wearing one more simple item of clothing that would differentiate him from other eager dog owners while maintaining the dignity that a funeral occasions. Something like this hat:

This hat is unique. But it is by no means irreverent. It is shiny enough to look special, but modest enough to seem like it belongs at a wake. There could be no mistake where a man was headed if you saw him donning one of these. "He is on his way to a funeral," you would think to yourself, "I shall offer my condolences and then leave him be."

This piece of ladies' headware, modeled here by Miss Aretha Franklin at the inauguration of President Obama, is funeral-perfect. It is subdued enough in color to suggest the solemnity of remembering one who has passed from this life, but flamboyant enough in style to suggest that, while you may have just lost someone dear, there is still beauty in the world. And, unless you bump into Aretha Franklin on her way to President Obama's inauguration, you can be assured that a woman would only be wearing this hat to attend a funeral. And what makes you think you will soon be meeting Aretha Franklin? Who are you, Quincy Jones?

This funeral hat, while obviously less polite than the men's and women's models, is perfect for children. Kids don't like going to funerals. It makes them uneasy, reminding them of all the uncertainty in their lives. But if they have something intriguing to distract them, they can sit quietly through a funeral appearing all the while to be pious and contemplative. It will never be apparent that they're really thinking about how great it would be if they had a real pet shark who rode atop their head, helping them out of scrapes and offering words of encouragement. The gray tone of the hat will match whatever funeral attire the child is wearing, but also send a warning to all nearby not to mention anything that could set the presently sensitive child off (like "death" or "great-grandma" or "doctor's office").

Author's note: If the funeral is for the victim of a shark attack, DO NOT dress your child in his funeral hat.

Chimichangas

Sometimes it's just like, "No. Go away. You leave me the hell alone while I eat my chimichangas. I miss my family and I want to go home." You know?

A goat.

Improv. It's a thing that lots of people think that they do well. It's a thing that not as many people as think they do it well, do well. Now that the cumbersome sentence is out of the way, let's dive right in. I don't have a ton of experience with improv sketch comedy (I have three experiences viewing it, zero participating in it before a live television studio audience), but there is one thing I've noticed that I would imagine is uniform among all live improv sketch comedy settings, save the very highest-caliber.

What I've noticed is that there is no place for subtlety in dialogue. At least in the live setting. Because what you have is a bunch of nerds (comics) running around on stage trying to keep the energy going, which means they have to have a symbiotic flow going with the audience. And from what I can tell, the industry-standard way to maintain the energy is to be noisy. The three times I went to improv sketch comedy performances (if it's improvised is it a performance? Or just like an accident on a stage?), the comics who scored the biggest laughs were the ones who forced a punchline by yelling. "A...GOAT!" is one exclamation I recall was quite popular with the crowd. That kid was killing that night. Killing.

I think that's too bad. Because most of the humor in life is derived from attention to small details. Like what a very overweight CEO does with his hands during a deposition. Or the way a cat tries to get something out of a cardboard box. Or all of the filler words and pauses a person uses when they're trying to give you an answer to a tough question they know nothing about (today I was on a phone call with a guy who said "for sure" like 37 times). Stuff like that can be very funny. But in a live setting, there isn't enough quiet space or audience attention span to work with that medium. So it turns into a Jim Carrey movie situation: it's funnier if you're a little drunk. The problem for me? I am never drunk. That's why it's sometimes hard for me to sit through Jim Carrey movies (especially "Ace Ventura". Especially that.)