Monthly Archives: August 2011

Aug 31 2011

Rejuvenation

I have an appointment with my doctor in a little bit here this morning. Since it’s an early appointment, I didn’t go into work right away. There was no point in going in just to leave 45 minutes later.

And while I hope the doctor can help me figure out what the hell is wrong with my leg,  why it hurts pretty much 24/7/365, why it feels zombified, or that he can at least point me to someone who this time ‘just doesn’t seem to see anything wrong,’ I will say that I already feel much, much better today. It’s amazing how much hitting the snooze a few extra times and taking a leisurely breakfast and having time to play with the cats can do for the ol’ soul and system.

Aug 24 2011

no thanks. i’m really good at super-sizing myself.

There’s a TEDx conference here on campus in a few weeks that I think will be pretty cool. Here’s some info from the website:

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED Conference invites the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes.

Sounds awesome, right? A conference devoted to creative thinking? Can I get a ‘hell yeah?!’ I jumped at the chance to be a part of this.(1)

Except:

From the offer I was just given, these purportedly creative thinkers somehow believe that everyone in the world can fit into either a small, medium, or large t-shirt. It’s like they’ve never gone to Walmart. Or a food-court. Or outside.

America is a country obsessively devoted to the pursuit of happiness, so much so that we fail to know what to do when we’ve attained happiness. As in like we’ve had a pleasant meal and our stomachs are full. We’re satiated, yet we actively continue to pursue happiness and order dessert.(2) So there are a lot of incredibly overweight people around here.

Including yours truly, of course. Which I had to openly admit to in responding to the email inquiring as to which too-small t-shirt I might like to have free of charge:

If they make them in 3- or 4X, I’ll take one. If not, don’t worry about it. I’ve spent my entire life avoiding at all cost special consideration from others simply because I can’t seem to put the fork down.

It’s bad enough that I pretty much never take my shirt off in public(3) and am even incredibly self-conscious about it in private.(4) That I’m forced to cop to my own corpulence at work is a low point amongst low-points. That I’m offered the choice of a) taking a t-shirt too small for me to wear or b) making someone go out of their way to get the fat man something he can use is just embarrassing.

I’m going to have to gorge myself tonight in order to cope with the stress these creative thinkers have caused me. So thanks, TEDx. The next ten pounds are on you, damn you.

  1. Even though it does technically qualify as professional development, something I try to avoid with the same determination as I might avoid a leper peddling leggings covered with smallpox.
  2. I know this from pure experience, my friends.
  3. I’m certain the real reason they made everyone get out of the water at Disney’s Blizzard Beach when we were there was just in the hope that I would put my shirt back on and/or leave.
  4. I avoid mirrors like old movie-vampires.
Aug 23 2011

off to class

And today’s my turn to start class. Just one: Shakespeare and Adaptation. Apparently there’s something called adaptation theory(1) that I know more or less zilch about,(2) but I like the professor and I heart Shakespeare like no one’s business. Plus pretty much the only reason I’m taking grad class is to talk about Infinite Jest, which is itself an adaptation of Hamlet. So it should be a good time, though I expect to be plenty busy over the next few months.

This assumes, however, that I make it to class in the first place. Because riding your bicycle on a college campus is like courting suicide, or at least imprisonment due to bicycular homicide.

  • Students, like students everywhere, have a weird sense of invulnerability,
  • And also are so terribly me-centered that their surroundings are more of an afterthought,
  • And which really, what surroundings? since everyone has their heads down as they text away on cell phones

Yesterday a young woman actually veered in my direction as I was less than twenty feet away simply because she was intensely focused on typing on a small touch-screen. I thought for sure there’d be blood on the sidewalk, the only variable being whose blood it would be. But thanks to one of my classic Bo’s-super-fast-reflexes-save-someone-else-from-imminent-harm-while-at-the-same-time-causing-himself-not-so-much-harm-as-simply-embarrassment maneuvers, everyone was just fine.(3)

Hopefully today won’t include a repeat.

  1. Which really I guess doesn’t surprise me that much. Lately I’ve come across so many different kinds of theory that you could examine our most-Millennial USA through the type of theory we embrace. Theory theory, if you will.
  2. But that’s the point of the course so in +/- sixteen weeks I should know way more.
  3. With apologies to the dude who got a more-than-he-bargained-for view of my underwear.
Aug 22 2011

three new things

Even after all the time Ashley and I have spent together, yesterday something new happened. Actually three somethings new.

Thing the first: She woke up at 8AM on a weekend…and stayed awake.

This is tantamount to Lindsay Lohan turning down free alcohol – it just never happens. Usually Saturday and Sunday mornings are my time with the cats, my time to read or do research, my time to watch movies she won’t like and play video games because I can count on her to sleep until probably noon or so. When she sat up in bed I figured she needed to use the restroom. But she stayed in bed and even more surprisingly her eyes stayed open and she voiced her intent to remain part of the conscious world. I was about as surprised as if I’d woken up with an opposable toe or a prehensile penis. Then I learned why she was up.

Thing the second: She woke up early…to read.

Ashley’s not much of a reader. Not that she doesn’t like books, but they have a habit of putting her to sleep. Almost every time I’ve seen her sit down to read for class I’ve seen her asleep 30 minutes later.(1) So it was very strange that as I did my normal Sunday routine – cats, laundry – she was awake and reading in bed. It’s like those dreams in which you go to work and everything’s totally normal…except maybe all the furniture has fur or all the people are green.

Thing the third: Ashley in professional-type attire

This was maybe more jolting than when she sat up at 8AM. Ashley is very much a blue-jeans kind of gal. Even her nicer clothes are what I’d call relatively simple.(2) So when we went shopping for more professional clothes, it was something I’d never seen her in before. And she looked stunning, of course. But it was odd, like seeing your boss in a ballcap or something.

And the reason for all of the strangeness?

Today Ashley starts graduate school for a Master of Science in Biomedical Science, Human Donation Science.

In layman’s terms, she’s looking to become a transplant coordinator and/or an organ-procurement specialist.

Every time she’s ever talked about a potential career her interest has always been to help people go through what she’s gone through. At first she wanted to do art therapy, to help children in hospitals deal with being in hospitals. But she’s now settled upon this, and I think it’s perfect for her. She’s not sure which aspect of organ-procurement she wants to be part of, but part of the program is to learn that sort of thing. She wants to help others give and receive the gift of life just as she did.

Wish her luck in your spare thoughts. And cheer her on. She’s gonna be great.

  1. Though of course reading for class is totally different and way more narcotizing than regular reading.
  2. Of course, what I know about women’s clothes could fill a dwarf’s thimble, so…
Aug 17 2011

going out with gowalla

As far as location-based, check-in services go, there’s not much beyond the check-in that I find worthwhile. Sure, Foursquare offers specials for mayors, or in some cases just for checking-in. Facebook Places lets you check-in with friends. Google Latitude lets you see where your friends are pretty much in real-time.

But: Every single time I’ve tried to redeem a Foursquare special I’ve had to explain what it is. Or the clerk had no idea how to actually redeem the special, leading to an awkward situation in which we both know I’m being totally up-front and honest w/r/t the special, that I’m not just trying to get something for nothing, but I end up not getting it anyway.

Or: I don’t want to check-in with my Facebook friends because I have no idea how their settings may be set and don’t want to inadvertently compromise their privacy. Not that I have stupid friends, mind you, but Facebook’s privacy settings are about as easy to navigate as a kayak in a hurricane.

And: Who has the time to watch where their friends are and are going all the time? And why would I? Let’s say I see a pile of my friends hanging out at a local coffee shop. Or a bar. They’re all there. Except me. I don’t need a check-in service to make me feel bad about myself; I do that well enough on my own thank you very much.

So: enter Gowalla.

No specials. No mayors. No real-time.

Instead, you have a passport. And the point of Gowalla is to make your passport as awesome as possible. In other word, the point of Gowalla is the journey, not the destination. You collect stamps, pins and items. Some of the pins are accomplishment-based(1). Some of them are for having completed trips.

 

And it’s the trips that I enjoyed while at Walt Disney World.

Here’s an example: I saw that there was a trip called Walk in Walt’s Footsteps. This one interested me because I have a huge amount of respect for Walt Disney. Some of the required stops on the trip were rides I’d have done anyway: The PeopleMover, Carousel of Progress, Spaceship Earth, and One Man’s Dream. I remembered these from our previous trip and enjoyed them.

But some of the others I never would have ridden if it weren’t that I wanted to complete the trip: Peter Pan’s Flight, The Great Movie Ride, WDW Railroad, and The Wildlife Express Train. Of them all, I really enjoyed the WDW Railroad, and I’m really glad Gowalla sort-of pushed me to ride it.

And to me, that’s what a location-based service should do. It’s more than just an over-inflated way of saying “Bo was here.” And it certainly shouldn’t be an advertising conduit. It should be a way to take your trip further, to do things you wouldn’t have done. To push you to explore. In a tech-culture that allows to me watch riots happening on the other side of the world, that offers myriad form of virtual entertainment, I appreciate anything that asks me to experience things for myself.

Especially if it also has really cool stamps.(2)

  1. Say, 25 check-ins or 10 friends.
  2. Thanks to Dave for reminding me about Disney World’s awesome Gowalla stamps.
Aug 3 2011

Casey Anthony is purportedly in Ohio and even though I live here and also know several small children and am not entirely sure that she’s in fact innocent, I am pretty much okay with it

TMZ is reporting – with purportedly photographic evidence – that Casey Anthony is living in Ohio. I’d like to chalk this up to rumor, except that TMZ, as annoying as they are, have an even more annoying tendency to be right.(1)

So then okay. Casey Anthony, who TMZ rather insensitively refers to as ‘the most hated woman in America,’ is possibly sharing the same geo-political space as yours truly. Facebook is already rife with groups wanting Ms. Anthony out of Ohio. There are a lot of people I know who I think will be ridiculously offended by this fact. I can think of three of my relatively constant readers who will be upset.(2)

But I’m not too worried about it. Here’s why:

1. The court of public opinion doesn’t mean anything these days.

The public is lied to on an almost continual basis. Rolling Stone has an article this month, in part, about how the manufacturers of plastic grocery bags are warping science so that their profits don’t take a hit. From the Sarah Palin book of self-promotion, Michelle Bachmann wrangles reality to make her statements true. The Huffington Post has an article just today about how ABC will continue covering Ms. Anthony’s story without paying her for exclusive rights,(3) obviously implying that the news source have been paying for news. Which is something we all know but ignore.

These examples might not be direct lies, but they certainly take the notion of ‘truth’ as something more constructed than reported, as David Foster Wallace might say. So public opinion – always subject to the ever-suspect crowd-mentality – regarding Ms. Anthony is heavily mediated by organizations dedicated to making money, not to reporting facts. In other words, people are reacting violently to lies and half-truths. I’d rather my reaction be informed by what I know of the truth: that a jury of her peers found her not-guilty of the first-degree murder of her young daughter. Those twelve people know more than I do; I will defer to their opinion.

2. This is America, people.

The phrase innocent-until-proven-guilty was friggin’ born here.(4) Or at least you’d think so the way we use it to defend all kinds of behaviors. But here’s the quintessentially American catch: we only use that phrase to defend our own behaviors. Everyone else is guilty as hell. Even after proven innocent.

If it’s unAmerican to think differently I will – gladly – be unAmerican.

3. Wait. Let’s check that source again…

Sure, in the photos Ms. Anthony is wearing an Ohio State University hat.(5) And sure, the other article says she’s in Ohio. But where’s the proof? Nothing in any of those photos puts her in any location other than sidewalks, a street, and a store.(6) Sure it kinda looks like Ohio to me, but Hollywood once made New Zealand look like Middle Earth. I can’t trust an image to look like a given place any more than I can trust that all people wearing OSU gear are only in Ohio.

(From TMZ.) Yeah...that Starbucks cup doesn't narrow anything down either.

4. Well okay. Maybe she did do it.

But does that reasonably mean that she’s a danger to all kids in the state of Ohio? Maybe just the little girls?

There have been individuals in human history who were in fact dangerous to an entire people. Hitler comes to mind. Crusaders. The Grand Inquisitor. The Grand Dragon. Jeffrey Dahmer.(7) Ted Bundy. Ms. Anthony is none of these people. At best she’s on the level of O.J. Simpson. And where is he these days? No one cares.

So sure, maybe she got away with murder. But that in no way means she’s a priori dangerous to anyone else.

5. But people just don’t want her around.

Sure. I get that. Bad karma and whatnot.

But here’s the thing: you know where she’s really not wanted? The place she’s called home for several years now. Her lawyer is fighting a judge’s having recalled Ms. Anthony on a probation case partially on the basis that returning to Orange County and being made to live there for year would be incredibly dangerous for her.(8)

So assuming 1) public opinion has been shaped by money-mongering media, 2) it is constitutionally unAmerican to believe Ms. Anthony guilty after having been proven innocent, 3) the source claiming her to be in Ohio is questionable, 4) she’s not a mass-murder or Hitler, and 5) about the worst idea for her is to stay in Florida, then I’m kind of okay with her being in Ohio if that’s where she is.

At worst we could consider it attrition for pretty much re-electing President George W. Bush. At best we could consider it a chance to prove ourselves nice enough to allow a young woman to reorganize herself, get her life together, and maybe try to do something worthwhile. At least she’s not a Michigan fan, right?

  1. They were all over Michael Jackson’s death before the other news-sites had figured out that he’d been rushed to a hospital.
  2. So like 75% of my readership.
  3. Forgive me for linking to Ms. Ross’s irony-laden story. The story is valid even though the irony she steeps it in is distracting and unnecessary, especially for a proclaimed optimist. Or is she being ironic about that?
  4. Well, more like woven obliquely into the fabric of our constitution.
  5. Sorry. A THE Ohio State University hat.
  6. Which they claim is an Old Navy.
  7. Who actually was from Ohio.
  8. http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/03/florida.casey.anthony.probation/
Aug 1 2011

google+, minus the friends

The internet is already crawling with praise and criticism of Google’s new social network, Google+. I don’t have much to add one way or the other, honestly. At least, not in the technical vein. Nor in the aesthetic vein.

Yet I would nonetheless like to talk about why I love Google+. And I can sum it up in one word: Circles.

Allow me to redact that just a bit. I love Google+’s circles(1) largely because they’re not something else: Friends.

Facebook’s rampant use of the word friend has been bothering me for years. Only someone inherently and terribly lonely would create something that allows him to have friends without ever having to leave his dorm-room. That part make me sad.

What makes me angry is that Facebook requires a relationship between me and someone else. If I want to know what that person is up to, I have to request that that person be my friend and he or she has to accept my request.

What, are we in second grade?

Friendships are not asked for, nor do they rely upon overt acceptance. You know someone is your friend through actions and statements, not because you passed her a note in class. And more importantly, you know someone is not your friend because you stop talking to them. You cease being interested in that person’s life. For whatever reason. The trickle of their life ceases to affect your own.

Facebook changes that. It allows you only to be friends. If you don’t want to see someone’s updates you can either de-friend them (aggressive) or hide their updates (passive-aggressive). There is zero middle-ground. So real-life friendship-breakups get even more complicated by a social network, which strikes me as about the most ridiculous aspect of modern times.

Facebook also doesn’t let me know what people from high school are up to unless I’m willing to call them my friends. But I’m not willing to do that. I haven’t talked to most of them in nearly two decades; there is no reason to think of them as friends. So when people send me friend-requests I deny them almost purely because of that word.

On Google+ I would simply get a notice that so-and-so added me to a circle. I don’t have to approve it. I don’t have to do anything at all. I don’t have to add him or her to a circle. In fact, nothing about Google+’s circles(2) implies any type of two-way relationship. He or she could have added me to a circle they call ‘Narcissistic Windbags’ for all I know.

But I wouldn’t know. That’s the point.

In other words, Google+ just lets me keep tabs on someone, or vice versa, without forcing any type of relationship.

Furthermore, when I check my Google+ stream(3) I can limit it to any circle I want. So I could conceivably have a circle of former-high-school classmates that I check up on, say, once a month. I don’t have to know that they’re playing some inane game. I don’t have to see pictures of their 2.3 standard-issue. I don’t have to hear what they think of Republicans whilst I’m trying to see what my actual, real-life friends are up to.

Google+ gives me a way to control which pieces of information I’m seeing, and which pieces I’m sending to whom. I’ve added several people from my workplace to a Google+ circle though I will never add them on Facebook. This is simply because Google+ lets me – very simply – control which content of mine that they can see.

So when I post that I saw a fox cub on my bike ride, I don’t mind including my work-circle because most of them live locally and might be interested.

But when I post about having made good friends with a vat o’ mojitos, I exclude the work-circle because none of them need to know I got maybe more than my fair-share of drunk on Saturday.

And I don’t have to think of them as friends. Because they’re not. They’re just in my circle.

What I call that circle is my secret. But I will say that not a single one of my circles is called Friends.(4)

  1. That’s the most awkward apostrophe-s construction I’ve ever made.
  2. See note 1, supra.
  3. Think of your Facebook news-feed.
  4. NB:If you want to add me to your circle you can find me here.