Misc. or "Musings" or something

I really need to delete this post before you’re old enough to read this site. I don’t want you believing that I’m an immature loser, even if it’s true.

There’s this app you enjoy on the iPad called Bartleby’s Book of Buttons. And there’s this scene where Bartleby and Captain Kinkaid are aboard the H.M.S. Pickle, which is a submarine. And they meet this giant squid. And Captain Kinkaid says…. well, how about you just have a look:

Oh man, I’d like to not giggle when I hear this. But I can’t. It cracks me up every time. So I do a lot of chuckle stifling.

Anyway, I had a little spare time this weekend. And having the Jim the Squid comment on video, I felt compelled to take it to the next level. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is the Jim the Squid Remix:

It’s getting harder to see the stuff I want to see in my Facebook News Feed without the aid of third party browser add-ons. And maybe I’m getting old – well, I guess it’s a fact that I’m getting old. But I’m having a hard time understanding how Facebook’s “Frictionless Sharing” is supposed to be a good idea. What’s more, I haven’t taken the time to really understand all of the ways that Facebook tracks my behavior on other sites, but people whose instincts I trust have been expressing alarm about recent Facebook privacy developments. It seems like Facebook is getting more and more aggressive about capturing and commoditizing my data while offering less and less to me in return.

Since I am probably on my way out the door at Facebook, I’m going to stop expending the (admittedly tiny) effort to double post at Facebook and at Google Plus, and will from now on just post at Google Plus. I will still read and comment at Facebook. But if Google keeps up the pace of development of Plus, and if Facebook continues to be creepy, I imagine I will eventually opt out of Facebook altogether (if opting out is still allowed when the time comes).

Why would I be more comfortable with Google, who is also extremely eager to capture and commoditize my data? There’s the fact that Google already owns my balls. I am only partly kidding. There is something to be said for minimizing the number of media companies with total visibility into my electronic life. Google is already in my email and on my phone, so advantage Goog.

More relevant to this post, Google Plus seems to work more like Facebook used to: it allows me to decide what to share and when. Google knows every song I listen to through Google Music, just as Facebook now apparently knows everything I listen to through Spotify. Facebook’s default assumption going forward seems to be that all of that data should be shared, whereas Google assumes I don’t want to share that data unless I decide otherwise. In general, I am finding that my news feed at Google Plus is higher quality than my Facebook news feed, and I assume that is related to the fact that every Google Plus post I see is the result of another user’s conscious decision to share the post with me (or to share it with a group I have opted in to).

Anyway, to those of you who decide to investigate Google Plus, look me up when you get there.

I just learned: In American English, it may be appropriate to use “different than” (instead of “different from”) if the words following it constitute a clause. Especially if (and this is the cool part) the clause is elliptical. So if you mean “Angelina and Jennifer are not the same person”, you would say “Angelina is different from Jennifer”. But if you mean that the way things are with Angelina is not the same as the way things were with Jennifer, you can say “Angelina is different than Jennifer”. (Source)

I love this about English — the subtle shades of meaning available to authors and speakers. I’m sure it’s true of all natural languages in varying degrees. I understand the lofty goals of linguistic prescriptivists (i.e., those who pass judgment on what uses, syntaxes, spellings, etc. are right and which are wrong) and authors of constructed languages (i.e., L. L. Zamenhof, the guy who came up with Esparanto (click here if you know of Esparanto and have a passing familiarity with the Eagles)). But I suspect that they lack appropriate reverence for the beauty of the tangled underbrush that they are so eager to clear.

I don’t think that I’m being elitist, really. I think you might could argue that I’m in favor of an aspect of English that makes it difficult for outsiders to learn and for native speakers to master, all because I have had the luxuries of time, money and access to education that allow me to appreciate it. But “different than” points up the problem with that argument. From my very brief reading this morning, it sounds like the prescriptivists had all but killed off “different than” as an acceptable use. I suspect that it did not end up in the American Heritage dictionary because it was revived by the literati, but because it persisted in everyday English. And it persisted in everyday English because people who don’t have MFAs found it useful.

Good news, everybody! I just opened the back door to let the dogs out, and I was not – NOT – met by a squishy wall of warm moist air that wraps itself around my legs and makes me wonder whether I’ve pissed myself.

I realized today that nearly all of the movies in my media software can be grouped into one of a very few buckets. (This gives me cause to wonder whether I may not be as amazingly interesting as I had previously thought.) Here are a few:

Zombie Movies - Because I like movies about the undead.

• 28 Days Later
• 28 Weeks Later
• Army of Darkness
• Dawn of the Dead
• Dead Snow
• The Gates Of Hell
• Jennifer's Body
• King of the Zombies
• Night of the Living Dead
• Planet Terror
• Shaun of the Dead
• Zombieland

Noir - My definition of film noir is a little on the loose side.

• Blade Runner
• Blood Simple
• Chinatown
• City Confidential
• Detour
• The Killing
• L.A. Confidential
• The Long Goodbye
• Miller's Crossing
• Pi
• Red Rock West
• The Third Man
• To Live and Die in L.A.

Pet Directors - These are movies made (more or less) by some of my favorite directors.

• 12 Monkeys
• 2001 A Space Odyssey
• A Serious Man
• Beetlejuice
• Blood Simple
• Coraline
• Death Proof
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• Dune
• Fargo
• Frankenweenie
• Inglourious Basterds
• Kill Bill Vol. 1
• Kill Bill Vol. 2
• Lolita
• Machete
• Miller's Crossing
• Once Upon a Time in Mexico
• Paths of Glory
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure
• Planet Terror
• Shining
• Sleepy Hollow
• The Big Lebowski
• The Killing
• Vincent

Kung Fu - And similar. Some of these aren't really kung fu movies, but are listed here because they involve a lot of graceful ass kicking.

• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Hero
• House of Flying Daggers
• Kagemusha
• Kung Fu Hustle
• The Matrix
• The Matrix Reloaded
• The Matrix Revolutions
• My Young Auntie
• The One-Armed Swordsman
• Red Cliff
• Red Cliff II

I had other categories, but I'm tied of this blog post now and it's hard to imagine that anyone else would not be.

A while back on this site, I got into a discussion with someone about the word “deplane”. The discussion really boiled down to an argument over whether the primary function of the dictionary should be prescriptive (i.e., telling people what words are included in a language) or descriptive (i.e., describing language as it is spoken). As I recall, my interlocutor, Erik, was arguing for a prescriptive approach — “deplane” is not a real word, it isn’t really needed (why not say “exit” or “disembark”?) and it should be avoided. I held a different view — people say “deplane” and people know what it means, so it’s a word and that’s fine.

I have been meaning to try to reopen that discussion, though that is not the purpose of this post. I ran across an article last night about the broader prescriptive/descriptive debate, and in thinking about it this morning I thought of a reason why our views on the topic might be so divergent. (After all, linguistics is both prescriptive and descriptive, so any argument takes place between two points on a sliding scale.) Erik is an American living in Spain and, if I’m not mistaken, has learned Spanish as an adult. If that’s right, he has probably depended on people and other resources to be prescriptive about how Spanish is spoken. Even though our discussion was about an English (non)word, Erik’s experiences probably gave him an appreciation for the real world value of prescription. (I, on the other hand, studied enough Latin and German in high school and college, respectively, to get my required language credits and not a semester more and I am not particularly concerned with the comfort of ESL students.) Erik made some comments in our discussion that should have cued me to this context.

I still think I’m right on the broader point — I do not see what harm would be avoided even if one could stop people from saying “deplane” — and I still find the question fascinating. But I should have established the parameters before launching into debate on the topic. It’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way more than once, and you would think I would keep it in mind: don’t dive into a clash over the relative merits of different ways to do things without first asking “for what purpose?”. In this case, I should have started by filling in the blank in “is prescription better or worse than description for accomplishing __________”. It probably would have been helpful to agree (as I think most reasonable people would) that prescription is generally better for educating non-native, non-fluent speakers before moving on to the more interesting questions.

(The title of the post comes from the Simpsons. The Springfield town motto is “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” In one episode (which features the quietly creepy Donald Sutherland), one school teacher tells another that she never heard the word “embiggen” before moving to Springfield. The other teacher says “I don’t know why. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.”)

This is Jack, the cat. He lives here. Here are some fun facts about Jack!

Aliases. At various times in his life, Jack has gone by Jackamus, Jacko, Whacko Jacko, Jackie and Moe. His two sisters have been called, among other things, Curly and Larry.

Age. Old. Jack’s presumptive birthday is on April 1, and April 1, 2011 will be his 14^th.

Ocular Plenitude. Not so great. Jack only has one eye (his left). Jack really only had a few weeks with two eyes and seems to get along fine with one. (Good thing about his belonging a predator species, I guess.) The vet left the dead eye in place (eww!) while Jack was growing rapidly during his first year, then scooped, snipped and stitched him into the rakish man of mystery you see before you today.

Origin Story. The year after I graduated, I was living in a house at the beach with some old college chums. One of them was a really wonderful person named Brooke, whose parents were veterinarians with a practice over on Roanoke Island. Jack and his sisters were brought into the vets’ offices, and Brooke decided to help Jack (and eventually one of his sistors) get adopted by bringing them to spend a few days in our tiny crowded shack. Days turned into weeks turned into months, and then suddenly I’m the last one at the house with two cats, so I guess that makes them mine. I was happy about that, by the way. Jack was awesome.

Jack is Awesome. He was so little and cute at first, just hiding and poopin under the end tables and stuff. Awwww. Jack grew up to be really big for a house cat. He purrs like a freight train. You will think that I am exaggerating, but the following is all true. Sometimes I would let Jack stretch out on my head while I was laying on the couch watching TV or something. Sometimes, a particular part of his chest would end up on top of my ear. And more than once, I had to shift because the purring was uncomfortable and left me with a ringing in my ears. It’s a fact.

Jack is a big baby. You know how cats sometimes knead a blanket or your couch our your flesh before they settle down for a nap? This is an inborn reflex, and helps to stimulate mother’s milk flow when they are nursing. I’ll bet cats keep doing it when they’re grownups because of its association with simple comforts. Jack kneads with a fervor and persistence that can only be characterized as pathological. He’s a psycho kneader. Awesome! And when he really gets going, his eye kind of rolls back and he starts to drool. When I type it out, that doesn’t sound so adorable. But sometimes it’s nice to be kneaded.

Jack is not a dog, but is kind of doggy. When we lived in Cary, NC, we used to go for walks around the neighborhood. Jack and his sister would walk with us. Also, Jack will come when you whistle. Well, when I whistle. You can’t whistle, and even if you could you don’t know the special whistle. You may one day recall it as the whistle I use to help your mother find me when I become disoriented in the grocery store.

You are not allowed to sleep with Jack. It is sad but true. We have let you try sleeping with our other cat in your room with mixed results. You just don’t like to go to sleep when there are mammals around you could be talking to and playing with. So Jack’s super purr, his devotion to passionate kneading and the fact that he is a big cat and it really hurts when he steps on your hair and you’re trying to sleep – all of this means no sleeping with Jack for you. I mention all of this just because it’s kind of a shame. But for his old age, Jack is a perfect little kid’s cat – patient, affectionate and docile. (In his outdoor days, Jack was known to bring home dead stuff from time to time, but I’m pretty sure that all of the victims had been snuggled to death.)

Turns out Jack is mortal. Probably. I guess there’s still room to be proven wrong on this. But he has gotten a bit thinner over the last year and a little slower getting up onto the table where we keep the cats’ food. He went in for an annual checkup a couple of months ago. There was nothing in particular wrong with him, but the vet did volunteer some advice on how to recognize a turn for the worse. 14 is old for a cat, particularly when six of those years were spent as an indoor/outdoor cat. So I’ve been thinking about Jack’s mortality and how you may not have very concrete memories of him when you’re older. So I figured I’d write a few things down.

Next up (probably sometime in May, given my blogging pace) we’ll meet Grace before moving on to the canidae. Until then, here are some more pictures of Jack.

Jack and his sister as kittens.

Jack not respecting personal space.

Jack with a shaved butt because he got himself into a fight (or didn’t get himself out of it fast enough). The handful of times Jack had catfight injuries, they were always on his hindquarters.

Jack finding a puppy to be not super awesome.

C’mon dude, it’s a cat with a ribbon.

Jack’s big-ass yawn.

Jack tolerating cousin Claire.

Stances of the put-upon teenager

In 2003, Radiohead ran a contest called “the loophole”. They posted audio samples to a website (digitallandfill.co.uk) and invited people to mix them into tracks. They chose 100 winners in five groups of twenty and hosted each group for download for a few weeks. Someone has archived the samples and instructions here.

I downloaded probably 40 or 60 of these, and still have 24 of them. The files I still have are most likely the ones I enjoyed the most. They never got deleted, anyway. So I probably shouldn’t spend so much time wondering what the other 76 sound like.

But I do. Some of the tracks I still have are really excellent. Many of them are surprisingly evocative. Some sound like tracks that were cut from Autechre’s Tri Repetae for being too melodic. Almost none of them is gratuitously long. I never listened to the original samples, so I don’t know how much of their aural goodness is Radiohead and how much is the more-or-less random talent drawn into the contest.

So I’ve looked around a couple of times over the years and can’t find anyone offering the collection of loophole tracks. A few of the tracks are still up for download at the creators’ websites. But if you are looking to download the collected output of the winning loophole participants, good luck to you. I don’t think you’ll find it. This is unfortunate, but it also gives me a little bit of a thrill. If you were paying attention to one largely unpublicized website for a few months in 2003, you had a chance to obtain some good music for free; if you weren’t, then too bad for you. It’s an antidote to the feeling that, on the Internet, everything lives forever.

Android was kind to me this morning as I ferried the various McCords to their daily routines:

• Amy Winehouse – Rehab. I have explained to you that “rehab” is like timeout for grownups. And that Amy didn’t want to go, but probably needed to.
• Bunny Wailer – Free Jah Jah Children. I am trying to teach you to recognize reggae when you hear it. I don’t know why. It’s a difficult thing to do without covering a lot of other background first.
• The Modern Lovers – Roadrunner. You: “I really liked that song!”
• The Cure – Close to Me (Closet mix). Nice work identifying the sax and trumpet; “flute” was apparently your first brand new concept for Wednesday, October 13, 2010. The YouTube link for this one goes to the awesome Lady Sovereign’s awesome track that is built on the Cure’s track. But we were listening to the Cure this morning.
• Belly – Slow Dog. I don’t know why she’s shooting that dog.
• Veruca Salt – Twinstar.
• The White Stripes – The Hardest Button to Button. You: “nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh!” Can I be the only person who wishes Jack White had hired the B-52s guy for the line “had a brain that felt like pancake batter”?
• They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in Your Soul.
• The White Stripes – Black Math.
• of Montreal – A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger.

Nice work, mr. personal mobile pseudorandom selector!