Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

I've been checking out PostSecret for a while now, but I hadn't posted about it simply because I wasn't sure what to say about it.

It's a place where people can post anonymous confessions of whatever they want, but they have to do it by putting it on a postcard and mailing it in. So people make up all sorts of fancy custom postcards. It's really interesting.

Today though, the NYTimes mentioned it, and they really put their finger on something I was sensing but couldn't quite articulate.

One odd thing about PostSecret is that there's a real disconnection between what the confessions are and what the readers think they are. One reader from Texas wrote, "Thank you so much for building a window into so many souls, even if it only shines light on the darkest part." A reader in Australia wrote: "Each is a silent prayer of hope, love, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, guilt, happiness, hatred, confidence, strength, weakness and a million other things that we all share as human beings... there is no fakeness here."

No fakeness? Oh, but there is. And it is the fakeness, the artifice and the performance that make this confessional worth peeking at. The secret sharers here aren't mindless flashers but practiced strippers. They don't want to get rid of their secrets. They love them. They arrange them. They tend them. They turn them into fetishes. And that's the secret of PostSecret. It isn't really a true confessional after all. It is a piece of collaborative art.

Anyway, it is pretty interesting. Check it out here: Post Secret

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Dean's World has got a neat post about grammatically correct, but unusual sentences, starting with the one above. In the comments section, they've got another fun one.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Both sentences are grammatically correct, and make perfect sense if you can just parse them.

Tee hee. I like stuff like this.


UPDATE!! Another good one!

The horse raced past the barn fell.

Still grammatically correct and perfectly sensible... if you can work it out!

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A while back I posted about an article I'd read by Steven Johnson where he suggested that, contrary to popular impressions, today's pop-culture (TV, Movies, Video Games, Internet) is actually making us smarter.

Since I already talked about that, and since I'll talk about it more after I read his book (Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter), I won't go too much into the subject here except to point out that he was on NPR's "The Connection" this morning. You can listen to the show here.

Today, I just wanted to talk a little bit about one aspect of what he said, that being that there is a clear trend demonstrating that TV and other pop-culture media are getting more complex and sophisticated.

Many people, when presented with this idea, disagree, citing numerous voyeuristic or pandering shows on the air today, and fondly recalling the favorite shows of their childhood.

But this ties right in to my earlier post about nostalgia. They are not comparing apples to apples. A tacky, voyeuristic show like The Bachelor shouldn't be compared to M*A*S*H, it should be compared to The Newlywed Show. A crappy modern sitcom (pick one, there's lots) shouldn't be compared to Cheers, it should be compared to Three's Company or Charles in Charge.

Instead of trying to compare "Today's TV" all in one bunch, try to find the best specific parallels to individual shows. There's a lot of crap now, and there was a lot of crap then. But most of the crap that we had then has either been forgotten completely or absorbed into camp. Think about it, you may well get a kick out of catching a rerun of Saved By the Bell, or whatever shows you used to watch "back then", but think. Are you enjoying it on its own merits, or are you enjoying it because it brings fond memories?

So we remember the best about TV "back then" and we compare it to the worst about TV "today" as though it were all one big homogenous lump. It's not a fair comparison.

People do this about everything. For example, if you ask people in polls if they think crime is getting better or worse, they will almost always say worse, even though statistics show that violent crime is way down. They hear about a crime that just happened, so it's on their mind. Whereas all the crimes that happened 20-30 years ago have all faded into nothing, so they make an erroneous assumption that things are worse now, simply because today's problems are right in front of us, and yesterday's are gone.

It all comes down to assumptions. To take it back to the subject that brought me here, until recently, I would have agreed with the statement that "Society is getting dumbed down."

But why did I feel that way? Is it because I was making a legitimate comparison to society the way it really was? Or is it because I was frustrated by stupid people? I think the answer is clearly the latter. There's no question that there are dumb TV shows/movies/people out there today. But there always have been. There is a human tendency to focus exclusively on what we can see at any given moment, meaning that today's problems are worse than yesterday's simply because yesterday's problems aren't bothering us anymore.

So what's my larger point? *shrug* Not really sure, except that we as a society make a lot of assumptions about the way things are/were, and they aren't always accurate. Sometimes we just have cultural blinders on that don't let us see anything that's not right in front of us. My larger point then, is just to keep that in mind. To occasionally take a moment to question your assumptions and see if they are really derived from reality or whether they're just a form of mental short-sightedness.

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Color me impressed. Pick up some of these, and you'll definitely be earning some stares. Especially check out the spinners.

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Look, there's a hell of a lot of NumaNuma stuff out there and if I were to spend all my time searching through it just to put links here on my site, I'd never do anything else. So here it is, the definitive Numa Numa Link.

http://www.garybrolsma.net

In case you were not already aware, Gary Brolsma is perhaps better known as the "NumaNuma Guy"

Okay *claps hands like a blackjack dealer* I'm out.

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I'm working from home today, and I just received an automated telemarketing call. No person on the other line at all, just a recording, suggesting that I could save money by switching to sattelite TV.

Now, recorded marketing calls aren't new, but this one started with:

"Hi, this is Jake." (Pause) "Yeah, I just wanted to give you a call to let you know that you can save a lot of money by getting rid of that pricey cable and going to sattelite TV."

Now, presumably, this is supposed to trick me somehow into listening long enough to hear their offer. I guess they think that I'll hang up as soon as I realize it's a recorded telemarketing call, (and they're right,) so they picked a recording that is supposed to sound like just some guy calling me with a hot tip. Now to me, that actually produces a more negative reaction because I'm annoyed that I've A) Received a telemarketing call at all, B) Been tricked into listening longer than I would have, and C) Jake? Who the F^#@ is Jake? For all I know, Jake could be a huge liar. I have to know someone pretty well before I'll take their advice on something as important as my PayTV service, and for this "Jake" character to try to skip that process is presumptuous and frankly a turn-off.

Basically, my question here is to ask if they actually make ANY money at all with this kind of service? I mean, with a recording, it depends on the customer being sufficiently not-annoyed and proactive enough to actually write down the number and call them back? Does ANYONE actually do this? Or do they just figure that it's so cheap to try that if even 1 out of a thousand actually goes for it, they'll still come out ahead?

It's like those spam emails where they don't even bother with a phony sales pitch, instead they just have a link and a bunch of gibberish so they don't get nailed by spam filters. Who in their right minds would ever click on a link with something like: "QWMBKG>S sTHEUTU< sTEI&$#DS$HTK http://www.URAmoron.com SETEHUKKBNEHH>!!!!!!!"

Again, is it just that it's SO cheap to send these that it doesn't even matter if 99.99999% of recipients just delete it immediately? I just don't get it.

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Check this out: The Rally Squirrel

It's a story from last Summer, but still pretty cool.

CLEVELAND -- Call the squirrel a lucky charm. Call it a streak-buster. Call it what you might like, but the Indians are calling the darn squirrel that disrupted the Indians-Yankees game Wednesday night at The Jake a welcome distraction.

But manager Eric Wedge might be more than willing to give the squirrel free reign Thursday of the landscape at The Jake if it would bring his Indians, a team that had been riding a nine-game losing streak, some more good luck.

Also, Sugar Bush, the Superstar Squirrel!

Dean's World just posted about a pretty cool commercial for a (British?) under-arm deodorant that offers "over-the-top" protection.

Check it out here.

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Hooray, the freedom of school bands to play unintelligible sixties rock tunes is safe once more.

Benton Harbor lifts ban on band performing Louie, Louie

This is a real victory over the forces of... something...

I don't know, whatever.

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Okay, so I already posted about how a Michigan School Board has banned a school band from playing "Louie, Louie" because of "raunchy lyrics."

Frankly, I had always thought the actual lyrics had been almost a moot point because there's no way in hell you can actually tell what they're saying anyway. However, if the school board thought they were dirty, then they clearly must have had some idea what was actually being sung. So in the interest of curiosity, I did a little research and found this:

The Lyrics and Music of Louie Louie

It goes into some detail about the history of the song, the FBI investigation, and includes several variations of what the "Dirty" lyrics are supposedly singing. However, I am ultimately in agreement with their conclusion, that the actual lyrics are as follows:

Looweeloowhy ono sadday we gowgow
yeh yeh yeh yeh yeh sadday looweeloowhy oh bebay sadday we gowgow

Ayfain liyelkurwl away onee
eektatsh ahip oconstalee
ale wine shit wine all alowe
eenever acow aamay gitome

Aloowee loowhy nanananana heywegowgow
Oh no addeeloowee loowhy oh bebay heddeweegoddegow

Wenite andayo afaildefee
kaykogorld ocontoflee
a on ay shit awayteedair
agul ayrow mowinherrair

Aloowee loowhy oh no heddewegowgow
ya ya ya ya ya sadday loowee loowhy oh bebay heddeweegowgow

OWKAYLITSGITITOOWERITENEOW

teey.... teteeynow ingamymoowabow
theymuppeelow they peepeealow
theypayinarhear my artegen
aymebber ay mebbelayergen

Looweeloowhy ono sadday we gowgow
yeh yeh yeh yeh yeh sadday looweeloowhy oh bebay sadday we gowgow
Ayseddewegoddegownow
Beybeeconnoweekot
Etco!

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A school board in Michigan has banned a school band from playing Louie, Louie!!

Benton Harbor Superintendent Paula Dawning cited the song's allegedly raunchy lyrics in ordering the McCord Middle School band not to perform it in Saturday's Grand Floral Parade, held as part of the Blossomtime Festival.

In a letter sent home with McCord students, Dawning said "Louie Louie" was not appropriate for Benton Harbor students to play while representing the district — even though the marching band wasn't going to sing it.

Wow...

Banned because of raunchy lyrics? Wow...

I don't even know what else to say.

I will, however, direct your attention to this bit at the end of the article.

"Louie Louie," written by Richard Berry in 1956, is one of the most recorded songs in history. The best-known, most notorious version was a hit in 1963 for the Kingsmen; the FBI spent two years investigating the lyrics before declaring they not only were not obscene but also were "unintelligible at any speed."

Thanks to Dave Barry's Blog...

Elizabeth Bear pointed me toward this over at her blog.

A size-comparison chart for famous science-fiction spaceships!

Way cool!

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