A Writer Needs

A writer doesn't need a pen or paper.
Doesn't need good ideas.
Doesn't need an exciting life.
Or language skill.
Or a talent with words.
Or originality, or wisdom, or clarity.

There's only one essential.
All else is fungible.
A writer needs an audience.

All writing is a conversation.
You need to have in mind who's reading.
It's not exactly that you need to know your audience.
I think the harder task is to pick your audience.
It's a good idea to find and listen to someone
who you will want to read and like it.
Finding is hard. Listening is harder.
Deciding who they are may be the painfullest.
Feeling blocked just means you've failed at picking.

Do you write a manual for the layperson?
Or the towering ivory priest?
Or the person you were just before you learned it?
Or will be after you forget it?
Do you try to make it useful to some,
and just bearable to others?
And who will you forget?

Are you writing to your boss who will pay for it?
Or the lost love you almost met?
Or that obscure acquaintance who expects you to do well?
Or that guy who criticized something you wrote last year,
and it stung and stuck?
Or an archaeologist from the next civilization?
Or me.

Or that person you'll never know
whose life you'll change.
Or the person they almost are,
the person they want to be,
and you so want them to be.
Or the person who should have been
but probably won't
but might
but won't
but may.
Do you pretend you can create a person
just by wishful thinking
and talking to them?

Yes I think that's what I need to write.
To create the person, word by word,
elbowing and ribbing their becoming,
out of my muddled, clabbered yearning
idea made flesh.

Starbucks called the cops on me!

Got to be a difficult headline to make these days.

Technically a Starbucks employee called a mall cop who called the police on me. It wasn't really a Starbucks thing. This was personal.

Montreal, Canada, where I'm staying for July has La ville souterraine, The Underground City, a sprawling mall beneath the pavement that's temperate year round. This summer Sunday morning on the way to Mont-Royal park I was leaving the Peel Metro station and wandered into a part of the mall called Les Cours Mont-Royal.  Most stores were shuttered but a Cafe Starbucks was lit. An oasis of taste in the middle of low ceilings that smell like 1970. A few workers were busy in the narrow space behind the cagey mechanism that mall shops use when they're closed. I snapped a photo to send to the kids. While fiddling with putting a sad emoticon over the photo, a worker in bright green apron started sliding the cage door open. Hallelujah, what a storybook day this is turning out to be. I photographed the same scene with him in it, feeling very lucky and looking forward to a delicious fix.

He barked out that it is illegal to take photos of people without their permission and asked me to delete the photo. He approached and insisted on watching me delete the photo. I refused. He said he would call the police. Another employee called out from behind the cage confirming that it was illegal what I'd done. While the first guy watched as I hit the back button in Snapchat which deleted his photo. He was not satisfied and wanted to see my Snapchat gallery. I didn't know what that was. The second employee who had come out from behind the counter offered to show me. I said I'm leaving now. The first employee called to a security guard who confirmed that it's illegal to take photos of people without their permission, and that I was now obligated to convince the party that I had deleted the photo. Hashtag that feeling when you're in a strange country and it's stop-making-sense time.

I told him I'm leaving now. He said I can't leave.

"Are you police?"
        "No."
"Are you detaining me?"
        "Yes."
"Can I see your badge?"
        "It's back in the room. If you come with me I'll show you." He pointed down a long low side hallway.
"I'm not going anywhere with you. Do you have the right to detain me?"
        "Yes. I can make a citizen's arrest."

He was standing very close. He began a long conversation with his lapel, most of it in French.

I was immediately reminded of Matt Harding's arrest in Greece for taking pictures dancing in front of the Parthenon, as recounted in his hilarious book. (That book really is excellent, not much longer than this blog post but a hundred times more interesting.) I knew I had way less courage to spend, but the recollection primed me to be a little defiant of silly demands. I wasn't about to physically challenge Paul Blart or anyone else. But like Matt said, I was curious how far we were all willing to go with this.

When he was done I asked what happens next? "We wait for the police." At first he said all I had to do was convince the guy I'd deleted the photo and this could all be over. He called out to a custodian and asked her to go get his badge. She was exasperated at the whole thing but then offered to take his subway sandwich back to his office while she retrieved the badge. (The guy had been about to have lunch.) After I saw his badge I offered to show him my snapchat thingie whatever-it-was. But by then he wanted to wait for the police. I had the impression he didn't want to be empty handed, so to speak, when the police got there.

"I'm sitting down." I sat at a table in front of the store.

Something clicked. I turned to the security guard. Starbucks calling the police on someone, that might be newsworthy. He had a very strange look at that moment, for some reason I remember it vividly. He showed no sign of knowing what I was referring to. He inhaled deeply. Or maybe he thought "No, man, that's not at all what this is," but with no trace of contempt. It was almost sagely. In fact his hostility in that moment kind of melted away. Before then he seemed as if he was walking that fine line that authority figures know well, of keeping the situation calm, but ready to respond vigorously to any escalation. Anyway he explained this was not Starbucks calling the police, it was this guy's personal privacy I had invaded. Canada was starting to make a little more sense.

Two guys in uniform show up. They conversed with the security guard in French. One asked me how I was feeling. Then he asked again. He didn't ask me anything about my version of events.

"Are you police?"
        "We're paramedics."

They explained to the security guard that when you make a 9-1-1 call and don't specify the emergency they send everything. (Earlier there had been a French conversation with a fire guy too. I thought he was just passing through.) The paramedic took my pulse and blood pressure and asked at least four times if I was on any medication. (No times four.) He asked me to sign a form refusing to go to the hospital. He said 135 over 90 was pretty good for a 59-year-old. He could have added, one who may be about to be arrested. He said it was very unlikely I'd be arrested and probably I wouldn't be fined. The security guard on the other hand had been talking up the possibility of a fine, as well as a lawsuit from the Starbucks employee.

I asked the paramedic, "Does the security guard have any authority to detain me?"
        "No, no he doesn't" They conversed in French, then the paramedic seemed to walk it back.

I can't say how long it took the police to arrive, maybe half an hour. There were two, a man and a woman. The man cop gestured for me to stay seated when I started to stand. They talked for a while in French with everyone. The man cop looked me in the eye for a long moment before he spoke to me. He could have been sussing my state of mind. He could have been practicing his Jedi mind trick. The woman cop approached, and after I mangled a "Parlez vous Anglais?" at her, she asked "So what happened here?"

What I did next was pretty dumb. I asked -- as politely as I could muster -- if I could see their badges. The woman cop seemed perplexed, pointed out her shoulder embroidering, her uniform, her equipment. The man cop barked contemptuously "Okay we're having none of that here," and pointed to the various features of his uniform, including his conspicuous gun. I apologized, explaining that a cop in Miami had once told me to always ask to see badges, but then I remembered he had been plain-clothes. So rules are to be leavened with prudence.

I explained my morning plans, the unclosing store, the photos. The police confirmed that all I had to do was delete the photos. The woman cop knew about Snapchat gallery. She reached for my phone and offered to do it for me but I explained I needed to learn. So that's what those double-squares are for. No Starbucks photos there. From there it all started winding down. The police seemed to defer to Starbucks employee numéro un. Was he was satisfied? He nodded. I thanked Security Guard Michael, and Paramedic Giorgio. I still wanted a latte. But sometimes even I know when it's time to bail.

I left chatting amiably with the cops. (I know the best minds of our day say never talk to cops. Yeah I'm just not going to not do that. Not there yet.) I said this must happen a lot with dumb tourists. No this almost never happens. Instead of a guy in a strange country, suddenly I was just a strange guy on planet normal. They pointed the way up the street to Mont-Royal. An ambulance at the curb with flashing lights, I groaned, "Don't tell me he's here for me." Nope, he was only there partly for me. Canada politeness.

My regret is that I didn't think to ask the cops or the paramedics or the security guard or ANYone if I could take THEIR photo in front of the Starbucks. Wouldn't that have been sweet to post here? Now my dad or my brother Doug could have totally pulled off something like that. One big group selfie, the Starbucks employees would have joined in with smiles all around. My way is more like, okay now everyone disperse and go back to your lives with a gut full of WTF just happened.

I was mildly keyed up throughout the whole thing. My worry peaked when I thought, hey this really could be another hefty Canadian fine. You see my first day in Montreal I got three tickets for three different gaffes. Another story. Short version: read all the signs and read up on local laws. It wasn't a language issue, French is easy enough to translate. I misunderstood arrows. Twice. They do things differently here.

Case in point, I count eight people on at least five different payrolls who participated dutifully in my little drama, assiduously righting a cybercrime. Seriously? I wondered, is this where we're all headed. (After some research I conclude, nope, Montreal is just weird. More on that later.)

Privacy is an issue on the ascendant. The morality, legality, and value of privacy are all debated heatedly. The cost of privacy on the other hand is unambiguously on a precipitous rise. It may turn out to be one of those mortal questions like what's the value of safety, or human health. I'm a big fan of all these things, but it's obvious they're on trend to bankrupt us. If they don't, I can't picture what exactly restraint will look like. This is going to be difficult.

: : :

So here's the part where I come clean and confess all the ways my click-baity title misled you. My dumb little story was different from the far more interesting one earlier this year for several little reasons and three big ones. It was an hour inconvenience, I felt more annoyed than unsafe. More surreal than unfairly treated. More like an absent-minded anthropologist than a second-class non-citizen. Most of the time I felt in control. Those differences are small because they were limited to the day and limited to me. I sense much bigger differences.

1. I was detained exclusively for something I did (took the guy's photo), plus something I didn't do (double-delete it for mister camera-shy). I have no reason to suspect anything like this will happen to me again if merely change one specific behavior. And it's an easy change. I never felt as if I might be treated differently because of who I am. No pattern here, this was one-off. 2. I could have ended the episode at any time by giving up something that cost nothing. And if I'd done a little research I could have avoided it entirely. I felt in control throughout. 3. There was no clue that all my descendants will have lots of experiences like this all their lives. I was thinking how my kids are going to laugh about this. I'll finally have something to post that's interesting to them. It was a temporary puddle of dumbness I was in. I never felt as if the rules for me -- and for them -- were forever going to be a little more strict, a little harsher, a little bleaker. This was freak weather, not climate change. Amusing and soon to be over. Not like it's always going to be this way.

So I'm three degrees of underqualified to know what the business end of racism feels like. I had a little taste of organized coercion today. Of putting up with a bit of stupidity and overkill. I was on edge all day from it. I'm something of a virtuoso at hiding feelings, but this one is likely to strike out someday soon. I'll be on watch. Anyway I have to respect as beyond my horizon what it's like living with the kind of adversity that's got the three multipliers listed above.

I did look it up, and this photography permission issue is different in Quebec. Goes back to a 1988 incident in Montreal, and a 1998 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada. One blogger called it Canada's Most Controversial Photo.

I'm all about making up reasons and purposes after the fact. A secondary reason I came to Montreal was to have new experiences. This was so unexpected, and I have no clue how it might change me, but I'll keep a look out. Just now realizing something. It may have nothing to do with it, but in the hours since I've had a bunch of really nice interactions with several different people. For some reason I wasn't awkward today.

VisiBone Paper Is Going Off The Air

I have stopped selling VisiBone paper products today to free up resources for another project. That project is called qiki. I think it could be a big deal. It will take some time before I have anything to show that will earn your strong aha. If you'd like to know when I do, then please follow this blog. And watch qiki.info

VisiBone was a gas. The final tally was 62,060 products to 97 countries. The fan mail was enormously encouraging. I treasure the conversations and the connections. But it always took a lot of time and expense to keep up. I'm simplifying so I can make something better.

Qiki was envisioned as an ultra-slim wikipedia. Brief answers to direct questions. It was going to be the online version of the VisiBone quick reference cheatsheets. But that wasn't enough so it ballooned. Crowdsourced answers to crowdsourced questions. Now Stack Exchange has done a breathtaking job at that kind of thing haven't they? But something is missing before it can go to the next level. It's too siloed and it's too indirect making a living at it. So it ballooned again. I have a guess as to what's next, and I'd like to try it out.

It would be nice to start the Information Age. I see two obstacles. We never really figured out how to pay for information. I believe one day it will be both the joke and the punchline that we called the stuff intellectual property. This isn't anything like turnips or turbofans, information is deeply different.

Second, the challenges at hand require greater energy, wisdom, and integrity than any group can provide today. The biggest corporations and the biggest governments are already suspect, and our disappointment in them is rising. They are not up to tasks that are up front. I don't know how to make it all work, but I have an idea how to find out. That's what qiki will try to do. In very very small beginnings.

Hope you stay tuned.

It Costs A Lot More Than It's Worth, And Yet There Is No Substitute

Gin must really be something.  Haven't tried it myself, but Stephin Merritt's song is spot-on in every other respect.  So that got me thinking about what other things are unjustifiable and irreplaceable too.  Besides Love and a Bottle Of Gin, what else requires so much time or money or tedious effort, or has so many odious consequences, that it hardly makes sense why anyone bothers?  And yet, you know, nothing else in the world comes close.

• children
• marriage
• home
• sex
• sleep
• travel
• exercise
• democracy
• consensus
• salt, before 1945
• God, after 1859
  
• communication skills
• freedom of speech and press
• randomized, double-blind trials
• space exploration
• thinking

In each case, even considering the cons outcount the pros, who would wish a world without it?

We Be Social

From the Human Mirror mission,
©Improv Everywhere

Humans are social animals.  Glaring evidence is in the fact that subways work.  What creatures can you imagine packing into a metal tube, approaching the limits of breathing space, and then you shake it, and bang it around, and every one of them is like "We be cool."

First, they don't eat each other, even if most are carnivorous and some are very hungry.  That is a significant accomplishment, a vast refinement over the natural order.  There's virtually no killing or maiming.  Each comes out possessing the identical accoutrements with which they entered, a violation of this rule being rare and celebrated.  Even the most delicate etiquette of eye contact is by and large gracefully observed.

If you started reading this with a vague bristling resistance to the idea that a subway car is a paragon of civility, just think how much keener is the evidence then:  not only are humans hard-wired to get along peacefully with strangers, you are soft-wired to expect it.

Mouse Pad Elves

((First written 12/13/2009, then hid on the shame shelf, behind the cringe jar. Dusted off months later, long after all the old orders were filled along with many new ones.)) 

It feels fantastic to be emerging from late-product purgatory. I put a lot of customers through some egregious tests of patience with the hexagonal mouse pads. I believe I can see the gorilla with a flashlight and it is in fact the opening of the tunnel. I've just resolved ((again this was written 12/13/2009)) the last issue with being able to manufacture the mouse pads entirely in-house. It was long and dramatic and agonizing and here is my whiny story.

If the very idea of making mouse pads from scratch strikes you as fundamentally alien to the 21st century western hemisphere, well I feel your pain more than you could know. Googling for anything related to making mouse pads unleashes a cavalcade of schwag purveyors. I suspect more than 1% of Earth Domestic Product (EDP) goes into putting logos in landfills. Search for the raw materials? Answers are flooded with all the companies bragging about the features of their schwag. Schwag braggarts. (I like saying schwag so much that I even like to type it.) As further evidence that google is not omniscient, "Barely There" is the trademark for the ultra-thin non-skid substrate I use in my mouse pads, but it's also a million times more commonly a trademark for, er, this other stuff.  Very different stuff.  And if you want you can go find out for yourself, but I warn you it could be distracting.

So why should I fight the tide, why not do it the easy way, and (pretentiously leading question alert) why pretend there's anything special about the mouse pads I make? If I would only make mouse pads as everyone else does, I could sell them for $3 each and still make mostly profit. I'd order 10,000 at a time from China and they'd have all manner of outlandish special features and I'd never run out. If you work in print at all you know the limited color gamut of the CMYK ink printing process. Well I've gone to outrageous lengths to get beyond it, and it doesn't fit the schwag "industry" at all. I tried to communicate to suppliers in Asia that I need to print the paper for the mouse pads using a custom color process, ship to them, and they'd use that paper in the mouse pad, coating the top with a clear but friction surface, and the bottom with the nonskid pantyhose stuff, and ship the result back to me. Ok be honest, did you really follow that last sentence? Now imagine if English were not your mother tongue but merely your third-cousin, twice-removed, by-marriage-only-then-divorced tongue.

I had a supplier in California (without mentioning Diran Afarian of mousepad.com by name) who had been making the mouse pads for years and doing an excellent job. But last summer he finally gave up, returned all the prints to me and politely declined to try any further. My take was that he'd automated his shop so much to keep up with competition that my jobs required too much manual intervention. (Seriously, Diran is still a hero in my book for trying, and oh yes I did change the layout on him.) Finally I located some samples of the materials and tried to make the mouse pads by hand myself. Turns out that a U.S. penny has exactly a 3/8" curve radius, just like the corner rounding I had been using. I will let you imagine why that matters, but the point is the mouse pads came out looking pretty darn good despite humble methods. Though I needed some machinery if I was ever going to keep up.

Each time I changed mouse pad manufacturer in the past I'd have to pay a hefty "die charge" a particularly apt term. I thought dies were a big deal. A die is a strip of metal with a knife-sharp edge, curved into a special shape and pressed into a slot in a carrier, usually plywood. Turns out if you find the guy who makes them, they're not such a big deal at all. However, much bigger deals are the presses that push the die into the material and make the cut. Literally, tons are involved. They are very heavy, very dangerous, and very expensive. Or so I thought, until I discovered that the crafting industry has done some amazing things in recent years. I don't know how many people use those infomercial paper cutting machines, but there seems to be a lot of them, and some of the companies (not the infomercial ones) have made some gadgets that will last more than a weekend. In fact they come with a lifetime warranty.

So making mouse pads in-house had many challenges: (1) finding the materials (2) buying less than a shipload (about a dinghy load) (3) die (4) press.

((Updated 3/30/2010)) The fifth and funnest challenge was to get the upside-down materials to line up to the die when cutting. For this I actually got to make some electronical purty lights, thrashing the work/play boundary yet further. I'll explain this contraption if more than 2.5 people actually read this post. Basically, see the teeny red and blue lights at the corners? They line up with the pink and blue bullseyes.

The Most Important Government Job

The most important job in the U.S. government now: Secret Service.

And I do not mean the counterfeiting guys. Though I realize they are busy too.

Cracking Happiness

I recall someone once drawing an analogy between writing a paper for a grade and cracking a combination lock. It's apt for so many quests: money, affection, understanding, music, health, goodwill. Perhaps happiness itself. I turn a lot of knobs. I hear a lot of clicks. Being close feels about the same as being far — qualitatively separate from being there. Winning buys a little time, and rehearses for the next gig. Among my cringe-worthy idioms is "having a life" but I guess it conjures the set of knobs I am currently working. Some pithy wisecrack belongs here to distinguish this from pathetic whining, but I'm still working that knob too. I'll let you know when something clicks.

SARAH PALIN'S SECURITY CLEARANCE

(Below is a respectful and good-natured reply to a [slightly rearranged and numbered] post by John F. Wear on the Marine Open Discussion Forum on military.com, originally written by Tom W., and first forwarded to me from my strong-willed-yet-oh-so-feminine, gorgeous, mouthy, Republican sister Penny, whom I've madly adored since I was two and a half. She is affectionately known as the white sheep of our family, for some reason. The following are excerpts of John's post, and my replies.)

Before you dismiss the fact that Sarah Palin is Governor of Alaska, consider this: 1. Alaska is the first line of defense in our missile interceptor defense system, that protects the entire nation from ballistic missile attacks.

Really? We can "intercept" and "protect" the nation from ballistic missile attacks?? Are those just fancy terms for watching and yelling?

2. The Alaska National Guard is on permanent active duty, unlike other Guard units. As governor of Alaska, Palin is commander of The 49th Missile Defense Battalion of the Alaska National Guard. She is briefed on highly classified military issues, homeland security, and counterterrorism. Her exposure to classified material may rival even Biden's and certainly by far exceeds Obama's.

Have the The 49th Missile Defense Battalion of the Alaska National Guard been terribly busy lately? How about ever?

3. Palin is privy to military and intelligence secrets that are vital to the entire country's defense. Given Alaska's proximity to Russia, she may have security clearances we don't even know about.

Oh, so it's a ground issue as well, you know, a Bering Land Bridge thing? Do analysts assert that 12,000 years since anyone tried invading that way is no excuse for a lapse of vigilance?

4. She's also the commander in chief of the Alaska State Defense Force (ASDF), a federally recognized militia incorporated into Homeland Security's counterterrorism plans.

Isn't it true that 93% of the actual work of the Alaska State Defense Force has been to field complaints from irate online merchants about suspicious accounts purporting to be from asdfasdfasdfasdfasdf?

5. According to the Washington Post, she first met with McCain in February, but nobody ever found out. This is a woman used to keeping secrets. She can be entrusted with our national security, because she already is.

Isn't watching the arctic skies for incoming ballistic missiles already about the most harmless conceivable federal job? It's really not much basis for the least.

: : :

(Elder sister speaks: “Love clouds your vision, little brother. The only part you have correct is strong-willed and mouthy. In real life I'm just a 61 year old disillusioned conservative Democrat that thinks the selection of candidates is so poor it's more like voting for which of your knees you want to receive a bullet. I'm not the white sheep - I'm the sheep with the more ordinary life. I don't know about the madly adoring part, but you have my love and admiration for life. You're way too sweet always. p”)

Bluffing The Time Ninja

My new time management trick: pretend I'm already an expert at choosing what to do. That I always know the optimum way to spend time; and I'm always doing exactly that until inventing the next optimal task. I appreciate the positive-feedback, self-reinforcing-illusion loop:

1. The better I do it, the more I believe in it.
2. The more I believe it, the better I do at it.

Even while playing some bit role, of a sucker doing something I couldn't argue my way out of fast enough, I tell myself "The Ninja Knows" and pretend it's what I decided to do. Gullibility is a boon sometimes. Another example, the ninja says writing this blog entry will invest more ownership in the tactic. Rationalizations, party of two or more, your circular table is ready.

This is now the leading candidate for displacing the time management strategy I've been using for decades:

1. Berate myself for wasting time until I work harder (at something blameless)
2. Blame others for distractions and for not helping, or for helping poorly, at least until they leave me alone (this works eventually)
3. Avoid and agonize over unfun undones, then do them with inner melodrama, then seek sympathies and distractions as if deserving them

The best part of bluffing the time ninja is I no longer have use for stress or resentment. I'm actually kinda serious, I've been practicing this for about forty-eight hours now, and it is actually kinda working. Use your inner ninja.

Questions That Time Out

Question	Timeout	Default Answer
Do you want coffee this morning?	12 sec	Yes
Anybody here?	10 sec	No
Hey, how about we watch *this* movie?	7 sec	No
(in a horror movie) Honey are you all right?	6 sec	No, I'm dead
Need help with that?	5 sec	Yes
Do you want the last piece of pie?	4.5 sec	Yes
Are you going to eat that?	4.2 sec	Yes, or No but I'm disgusted you want to eat after me, but by letting you know that I'm vaguely insulting myself
(after being struck by a car) Are you ok?	4 sec	No
(from mother) Is there a new girl / boy in your life?	3.9 sec	Yes but you would not approve of her / him, or No but I'm afraid you'll help, or Maybe except how to tell you it's a boy / girl
So, did you like my casserole?	3.8 sec	No
(from mother) Are you happy in your life?	3.6 sec	No but if I let you know I'll never get off the ph... Darn it.
Who farted?!?	3.5 sec	Me
Are you choking?	3.2 sec	Yes
You didn't eat the last piece of pie did you?	3.1 sec	Yes
I didn't offend you, did I?	3 sec	Yes
Do you like my new dress / haircut / nose job?	2.8 sec	No
Do you love me?	2.5 sec	No
Are you happy I'm pregnant?	2.2 sec	No
Are you having an affair?	0.64 sec	Yes
(implicit with all unconcluded email exchanges) Do you still like me, or foresee any advantage at all to association with me?	72 hours, or 3 times median response time	No*

* or Yes, I'm still composing an eloquent, original, charming way to get it across
or No, I'm still composing a face-saving way to avoid saying so
or Yes, but not enough to notice your last email had a question in it
or No, and I can't believe you haven't picked up on it yet
or Maybe, but something more interesting is happening in my life
or Don't know either, but other neglected emails have scrolled yours out of view

Double Irony

Making fun of people who ridicule is at least intellectually dangerous. If you care about being mistaken for the wrong team, that is.

PunditMom raises some interesting questions about the, shall we say conversation-stimulating new cover of the New Yorker. (I call it a double-irony because it makes you ask, 1, are they making fun of the Obamas, Muslims, or Black Panthers? Or, 2, of the people who infer an association?) Mocking the number one team is highly fashionable. The interesting observation PunditMom makes is that it's not only unfashionable to mock the number two or three team, but those who do are passionately censured. It's unfashionable *not* to censure said mockers.

Ethnically mixed societies at uneasy peace are nothing new of course. And so there must also be a long precedent to the effect PunditMom illuminates. Some sound reason for the rigid byzantine rules of political correctness. Here's a try at answering her question. Once ethnic groups begin commercial integration, insulting the disadvantaged groups must be stifled. Otherwise you got your insurrection. So when someone says "whatever you do, don't disrespect Muslims" they may be channeling subconscious instincts "don't encourage Muslim revolt". Think it's sincere? The best way to appear sincere is to believe it yourself. Just notice how rarely westerners get passionate about anything else Muslim. But hey, I'm really very content with selfishness doing more good than evil.

Back to the complexities of double-irony. After Obama is elected, I look forward to the doubly-ironic political cartoon (here and now I predict it) where U.S. Christians parade Obama as a conspicuous human shield on display for the benefit of the Muslim world, wearing a sandwich board "Lookit his name, will you? Now PLEASE don't hurt us!" I think it might be the shrewdest ever phantom campaign platform. Not for duping Muslims, but Christian voters.

Speaking of double-irony, reminds me of Nellie McCay. Is she mocking feminists? Or feminist bashers? Probably the latter, but I revel in not being sure. I adore ambiguous people because I think the rest are just up to something that will ultimately confuse me more.

Things I like whether they cause cancer or not

Inspired by Gwen:

• breathing
• focused conversation when at least one party tries to understand more
• failing to find the end of a conversation for good reasons, e.g.
  • spawning new converations
  • matryoshka-doll-like complexity
• music and other art soul-to-soul
• how big my home planet is
• brevity
• clarity
• accuracy
• trying for all three no matter how impossible
• five senses
• ten fingers
• two hands
• the company of children
• the company of women
• I like my coffee:
  • strong and creamy
  • great smelling
  • savored patiently
  • at time very hot, at times very chilled
  • the option to bottle for later
• making a person laugh
• making a person think
• making a woman come
• the universe's patience
• discovering new delusions
• irony
• meditation
• building
• figuring things out
• inventing memes
• tahini
• rivers
• mountain tops
• hard physical labor, followed by
• hot shower, followed by
• healthy food, followed by
• movie that changes, followed by
• verbal analysis, followed by
• cuddling, snuggling, kissing, etc., followed by
• nap
• silence
• solitude
• cosmology
• blue skies with cool air with white sunshine
• hot water
• cold air
• any change in weather
• first light
• thwarting waste, decay, misunderstanding, filchery
• useful originality
• smiles
• brushing her clean, healthy, dry hair
• skin
• eye contact
• patience
• persistence
• birdfeeders
• uncluttered, light, airy workspace
• starting something
• finishing something
• purpose
• inspiring people

The Russian Roulette Fallacy

You cannot judge the wisdom of a decision using information unavailable at the time the choice was made. Winning (surviving) a round of Russian Roulette doesn't mean you weren't a moron for playing.

I first thought of this after a trade show in Chicago. The boss ordered everyone to stay and help pack the booth. A bunch of us had earlier flights and were itching to get to the airport. We mutinied. On the cab ride I hoped for heavy traffic, so we could be "right". It would have been harder to condemn our rebellion if we'd gotten to the airport just in time, hustling to catch our flights. Versus hours sitting at the gate, that would have been shameful. But these inconveniences had no bearing on whether it was a wise choice to leave when we did. We had no reliable way to know the traffic or airport conditions before we became part of them.

Finding weapons of mass destruction had no bearing on whether invading Iraq was a good idea. A motivated government, unfettered by scruples, will always find clever ways to thwart scientifically rigorous, politically correct weapons inspectors. Getting away with it would have been global Russian Roulette. Five rounds with no bad result (spinning the chamber each time) are exactly as dumb as a sixth that backfires. Five nations evading weapons inspection for no good reason may appear quite similar to the one with a great big, nasty reason. There's no reliable way to know even today who else would be arming if Saddam were still in power.

On the other hand, one white-hat affable Texan is not a smart way to police the globe. It's only a matter of time before someone perfidious and creative gets the role and does some real damage. The important question is how can we earthlings invent a body we can trust with enough power to makeover a country's governance when that is a wise decision. We're going to have those — a person or group with that much power, and a time and place that needs that call — some way or another. The question that matters is how we will choose that decider and that enforcer.

On News

All news tends to distort, and intimate news distorts perversely. Great storytellers are almost always liars.

(with apologies to Lord Acton, who said “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men...”)

Strictly Optional Customer Service

(From an ongoing discussion with a particularly shrewd customer, I've devised a new customer preference question, to keep pace with this modern, networked, customer-righteous age.)

How would you like your customer service?

• Humorous
  • Irony
  • Camp
• Stuffy
  • Use "Sir" or "Ma'am" every sentence
  • Use a lot of big vague words
  • Ask lots of questions
• Obsequious
• Obtuse
• Chatty
• Bored Indifferent
• Bipolar
• Tourette Syndrome
• Abusive
  No profanity Mild profanity Sailor Blush
• Baby Talk
• Animal Noises
  Farm Tropical Rainforest Cartoon
• Ebonics
  Northern Urban Southern Rural Faked by Suburban White Boys
• Incomprehensible
  Native English Logorrhoea Heavily Accented English Unfamiliar Language Made-Up Language
• Loving
  Motherly Avuncular Creepy
• Sultry
  Female Male Gay Male Butch Dyke Indeterminate Gender
• Sassy
  Flo from "Alice" Louie from "Taxi" Lucy The Slut from "Avenue Q"

The Bet

Always a surprise. Losing this bet with myself is a boon I understand little and appreciate less. Setting: a tough problem lingers and bleeds away my righteous flow. Frustrated, I eventually remember The Bet, always with great skepticism. I never feel confident I can solve a nagging issue taking a walk or a shower or a dump. So I bet myself I can't, and then lose.

A software bug, or a thing I gotta write, or a person I gotta deal with. I scoff. Keep grinding away. I'm such a pit-bull persistoid, letting go for extended distraction feels unwholesome. But it works often enough to require some practice and some twenty-cent shifts. I wonder whether it's better to play it out cynical or confident. I'm leery of jinxing either way, so my standard attitude is cautious ambivalence. Maybe that's optimal. I do think it helps to soak in the matter to the point of frustration first.

It keeps working. A lot. I'm sure I've blocked memory of failure, but I really can't remember not coming away with a solution. Am I being clear? I have a difficult problem. I do something else for a while, convinced I won't think of a solution during that time. Bet myself I won't. And then I nail the solution. Bet lost, I feel like a winner.

Lately I've been working on a new round of online ads. (I make cheatsheets for web designers, condensed collections of arcana to jog memory when composing in the languages of web sites. If you've ever tried to remember some obscure technical fact you once knew, that's what a cheatsheet helps with. And that's why the theme of "memory" is in all my (successful) ads.) I like showing off with double-entendres. For example in one ad I use "Be more than just a memory." Meaning 1: cheatsheets augment your rote memory. Meaning 2: surpass has-been status. Out of several dozen slogans I took the half dozen that performed best and added a third slogan in fine print, and tweaked its visual attention-getting powers. (I wish I could remember who first called that "chimp-attract" but I love the term. It belongs somewhere between wiktionary and urban dictionary.)

I had a nice set of new ads done and checked the stats one more time. I had somehow overlooked my raciest ad. Anti-Freudian-slip? The text version was rejected by Google out-of-hand, but I have so far gotten away with it inside a Flash animation. I didn't think it was performing well, but over time it proved to generate the most bang for the buck of all the ads. (Puns intended. You'll see.) Here was the two-slogan version:

1. Not what it used to be?
VisiBone cheatsheets (logo)
2. Viagra for your memory.

Now of course I wanted some solid product hawking, plus a trace of shameless attention-grabbing innuendo. But even more (here's where the high vanity kicks in) I wanted some kind of sublime message. Something noble and inspiring. Tall order, eh. (Get it?)

I have this lofty, snooty theory: The only real commerce is turning one's own ideas into something useful for many. It is the connection so forged, however tenuous, with those many. All else is fake or practice. If you hate your job I look at you as a pimply teenager in the dark with smut. Ok, you might learn something that'll please your true love someday, but mostly you're wasting your time. Even worse is when you confuse pathetic habits with being pathetic, as in doing a half-assed job for people you can only half stand. So I care about my customers for three big reasons. They sustain my avoidance of a real job. They slake my ego with fan mail. And most of all for this discussion they keep me smug on my high horse point about forging ideas into usables.

So I care about people using what I make because I'm vainglorious, in a tastefully understated way. (Don't you think?) I wanted the third slogan to shout out to all my hardworking customers, something to encourage and inspire and light their rockets. Whenever I try to write along these lines the first attempts feel corny or patronizing. Yuck. I was stuck on this one ad for days. The others flowed, but this one stalled and galled. Until I remembered The Bet: I bet myself I could not think of a good third slogan while taking a shower.

Once in a while I get an idea that makes sense and works. Like all the most precious quests, the best aim is indirect. All comedy deserves at least a little credit for the risk of appearing stupid, as this may seem to me in a few days, or to you right now. But the shower epiphany felt pretty good. (No, that one was not innuendo.)

Here's the three-slogan version:

1. Not what it used to be? VisiBone cheatsheets (logo) 2. Viagra for your memory. 3. Make room to remember your finest hour. Cause it's coming.

(GIF) (SWF animation)

The last line used to start with "Make it bigger." I hated taking that out, but it really was over the top. Not just dangerous for Google-censure, but so much worse, dangerous for prospect-censure as stoopid. (But you do see the pun I left in there, right?)

So here's my theory why The Bet works, that is, why I keep losing it: Distracting my overbearing left brain (verbal, persistent, obtuse) allows my timid right brain (visual, intuitive, flakey) to wander free and work her magic. No matter how long I keep her chained in her tiny cage, she still flies and she still smiles on me from time to time.

Funny how mindless (e.g. conformity) means you don't think, thoughtful (e.g. gift) means you care, careless (e.g. email attachment) means you need to resend, and resentful means you very much do mind.

Why there are no good pick-up lines

There are no good pick-up lines. There are just good people you got to know suddenly. You only call them "pick-up" lines when they don't. Just like you only call it advertising when it's poorly targeted. When 100% targeted you call it stuff I need.

When you call it anger it's useless and needs to stop. Otherwise it's called an emergency, or an emergent cause célèbre.

You don't call whining and complaining what you know how to satisfy with worthy effort.

You call it planning when you don't know what to do.

You only call it stress when you're disappointed in yourself.

"Confusion is the beginning of all things but not their end." —Gibran

You put on a to-do list what you want permission to put off.

You call it work after obligation has outpaced opportunity. While conniving and obsessing and goofing off, you leave it for other people to make up words for whatever the heck it is they think you're doing.

You only name a struggle what you're preparing excuses to lose.

You don't call alive what's finished. Life is a mess. You only call gross what is or once was living. (So you should only clean up your space on those days in which you're absolutely sure you're alive. Thus closes the loophole for slobs.)

Intimacy is a memory, or an observation, or a wish, for a wordless, timeless non-place. A faraway dream of nearness.

There's only sorrow and regret for what's almost hopeless. The NTSB never cites gravity.

You call future what you hope holds your finest now. You call past what you hope doesn't.

Fast,True, Easy — Pick Two

All questions include an implicit contract. If the contract were explicit, the questioner would choose what kind of answer they wanted:

1. brief
2. complete
3. comprehensible

Pick two.

For example the question "How are you?" may be answered:

• brief, comprehensible: "Fine."
• brief, complete: (some obscure, technical, psychological term that may not have been invented yet)
• complete, comprehensible: (what happened so far today, and the day before, a dozen or so of your recent thoughts, your life history, your most annoying habits, your best powers concealed as charming traits, your heart rate, blood sugar and bank balances)

Define yourself by what you choose. You'll be defined by what you forgo.