Apostrophe Now
January 07, 2004 // Link
Welcome to the Internet. I see you’re new here. Look around. Get comfortable. It’s a big place, but most of it is friendly. Actually, most of it is trying to sell you something, but much of the rest of it is friendly.
I’ve been assigned to fill you in on some of our literary conventions. You didn’t think you could just spell words accurately and use correct grammar did you? Oh no, we have a different way of doing things here. We call it: illiteracy. It’s all the rage with the cool kids.
The first thing you should know is that if two words sound the same, they are interchangeable. No need to fret over homonyms around here, no sir! Feel free to mix words like “there” and “they’re” and “their” randomly and inconsistently—none of us can tell them apart anyway. Such freedom, huh? I knew you’d like that. Soon you’ll be checking out whether reports to see what you should where.
It gets better. The words don’t even have to be true homonyms as long as they sound vaguely similar. To those of us who have embraced Internet illiteracy, there is no difference between “then” and “than,” or between “accept” and “except.” If you can except that, than you’ll do fine hear.
Pretty good so far, right? Well there’s more, and it’s all about ease of use. Your convenience is paramount. For instance, throw out your capital letters because you won’t need them any more. We’re all about lowercase in these parts. The first letter of a sentence? Lowercase. Proper nouns? Lowercase. See how easy it is?
However, don’t go thinking you can do away with your shift key. It’s important to type characters that require the shift key, like exclamation points (can’t have enough of those!!!). That way your reader will know that you could capitalize letters, you’re just choosing not to because you want to express your individual and unique style. And like everybody else, your individual and unique style is that of an asshat.
Speaking of exclamation points, that brings us to punctuation. The general rule for punctuation is an easy one: don’t. That’s right, you can just leave it out altogether! Life is so good here on the Internet. Remember, the goal when you write on the Internet isn’t to communicate, it’s to express. No need to fret over interpretation or specificity. Just embrace what is easiest for you. I’ll tell you what: just be as lazy as possible and you’ll fit in fine.
If you really must punctuate there are three things you can do to fit in. The first is to end your sentences with either two periods or at least four of them. Never use just one period, and never three. Your individual and unique style calls for two periods at the end of a sentence. Or four periods. Or perhaps sixteen. My personal rule of thumb is to depress the period key and keep it held down whenever I pause while writing.
The second of your individual and unique punctuation choices is to remember that on the Internet an apostrophe is used for two things only: first, the word “it’s” should contain an apostrophe in all instances except when substituting for “it is”; second, an apostrophe indicates that a noun is plural. Thus: “the jogger’s ran buy the car’s while listening to there MP3’s.” There is a simple elegance to Internet punctuation.
Your third individual and unique punctuation choice concerns the comma. Oh how we love the comma. What’s fun about the comma is that it can be used anywhere. It is a meaningless mark and that is the key to its joy. Personally I like to finish writing first, then go back to sprinkle fistfuls of commas liberally and randomly about. I’m the Johnny Appleseed of punctuation.
On the other hand, what you must take care not to overuse—in fact, not to use at all—is the return key. Paragraphs are unwelcome on the Internet. Remember that the goal of your writing is expression without communication. Nothing forwards that goal so much as serving up your text in a giant homogeneous mass like something from a literary spittoon. If at first you still struggle with the urge to use paragraphing, you can always simply substitute a particularly long series of periods.
Finally, a brief word about spelling. Remember the ease with which we dealt with homonyms? That’s nothing when compared to the simplicity of Internet spelling. First, you can just make up your own words. If it is even remotely possible to pronounce any given string of meaningless characters the way you intend, then that’s good enough. You can type “b” instead of “be.” You can type “do u c?” instead of “do you see?” You can type “i ownz j00! i am a haxx0r!” instead of “I live in my parents’ basement and have never kissed a girl.”
If you do not know how to spell a word just toss out a guess with as many letters doubled as possible, and then tack “(sp?)” after it. Embrace the delicious irony of writing something on a computer attached to the world’s largest system of information access and still not being bothered to spell correctly. The purity of the scorn you can show for your reader in such a simple action brings a tear to my eye. I love this place.
As always, the rule is that you matter but your reader does not. Do not waste your own time whenever you can more conveniently leave the work to your reader. You matter! You have things to do and places to go! Let the peons untangle your text and puzzle over its interpretation. Let their eyes squint and their brows arch. Their efforts are inconsequential. Meaning is meaningless. You have better things to do than to make yourself clear.
Befuddle your reader, mislead your reader, but above all disdain your reader. Welcome to the Internet. Pull up a keyboard and just start to bang away on it.
With your face.
You’d Better Shop Around
January 14, 2004 // Link
Romantic comedy is the genre of movies that begin with a helicopter shot of the New York city skyline and end with the formerly brusk man kissing the formerly aloof woman on a park bench. The middle bits don’t matter too much, but the bench is important.
One example of the genre is You’ve Got Mail, written and directed by Nora Ephron. It stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, respectively. If you enjoy this movie and would like to continue to do so, you should skip this week’s column. I’m going to go to a dark place with this one. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
In most ways You’ve Got Mail is much like every other romantic comedy: after their “cute meet” the leads are at first attracted to each other, then they can’t stand each other, then they fall in love despite themselves, then they go look for a bench.
When first we meet Tom’s immediate family, we learn that his father is a serial groom. Pops is preparing for his fifth (or so) marriage, this time to a younger lady named Gillian. Just after the 15 minute mark of the film, the boys discuss the local book shop competition:
TOM
A children's book store,
Shop Around The Corner.
It's been there forever.
GRAMPS
Cecilia's store.
TOM
Who's that?
GRAMPS
Cecilia Kelly. Lovely
woman. I think we might
have had a date once...
or...maybe we just
exchanged letters.
Gramps’ evasive story is not very convincing, and it’s reasonable to assume he got a leg over. Shortly afterward, he tells us a bit more about this Cecilia hottie who used to own the book shop:
GRAMPS
She was too young for
me, but she was
enchanting. Her
daughter owns it now.
Aha, so now we know that Cecilia was Meg’s mom and that Tom’s grandfather had a fling with her. Portents abound. (This information is repeated at 30:10 when the Fox gang walks through their newly opened store and Gramps pines on again about his “enchanting” lost lady in case we missed it the first time.)
Early on, Tom spends the day with two little kids, Annabelle and Matt. At 21:31 they’re met by Gillian, the gal in line to become Tom’s pop’s latest wife. She greets Tom by saying “kiss me, I’m going to be your wicked stepmother,” though she says it less like a greeting than a come-on. When Tom goes to kiss her on the cheek she moves her head at the last second to kiss him on the lips. More portents of inter-family naughtiness.
Tom spends the day with the two little kids, and at 25:27 they bump into Meg at her book shop:
ANNABELLE
My dad gets me all the
books I want.
MEG
(Looking at Tom)
Well, that's very nice
of him.
ANNABELLE
Oh, that's not my dad.
That's my nephew.
MEG
I don't really think
that he could be your
nephew.
TOM
No no, it's true.
Annabelle is my aunt.
Isn't that right aunt
Annabelle?
ANNABELLE
Uh huh, and Matt is--
MEG
Wait, let me guess.
(To Matt)
Are you his uncle?
MATT
No.
MEG
His grandfather? His
great grandfather?
MATT
I'm his brother.
TOM
Matt is my father's
son. Annabelle is my
grandfather's daughter.
We are...an American
family.
Meg and Tom go on to discuss her mom, who raised Meg alone while running the shop. Tom is obviously drawn to Meg, and he equally obviously recognizes her name from what Gramps had told him.
Why give all this family history? If we are to grant Ephron the benefit of the doubt and assume she is in control of what she writes, then this is all here for a purpose.
So what do these details tell us? First, they reinforce the earlier idea that Tom’s father and grandfather got it on throughout their years. Second, since Annabel is still a little girl we know that Gramps was still getting some during, and after, his time with Meg’s mom. Third, they let us know that this is a family (and a movie) in which strange cross-generation connections are made.
We have established that the Foxes are wolves who have fathered (but did not play father to) multiple kids with multiple gals across generational divides. We have established that Meg was raised by her mom without a father around, and that each Fox was raised by nannies because their mom’s weren’t around. Plus we have established that Gramps was heavily involved with Meg’s mom during a time when he was very much sexually active, and that she was much younger than he (thus if they had had a child, she would now be around Meg’s age).
These are carefully established points detailed in repeated scenes, not casual items tossed about offhand. It is therefore reasonable to infer (in fact, I’d argue it’s an inescapable conclusion) that Gramps got it on with Cecilia and fathered Meg.
Thus, Meg is Tom’s aunt. More to the point she is his blood relative.
There is additional corollary for this theme throughout the movie. For instance, Tom’s family gathers for an in-home recital by one of the unidentified children (could be a daughter, or in this family it could be somebody’s great grandmother). At 44:19 Tom’s future stepmother Gillian moves to sit down beside Tom and puts her hand on his thigh. (In the end we learn that Gillian has taken up the Fox tradition and run off with the nanny.)
Another example comes at 1:34:23, when Tom talks to his Pop on one of the Fox boats. Both of them have just broken up with their respective gals. Pop lists some of his recent exes, most of whom were Tom’s nannies, and then he asks:
POPS
Who did you say you broke
up with?
TOM
Patricia. You met her.
POPS
Would _I_ like her?
There are more examples spread throughout the movie, but I leave them to you to ferret out. Part of the fun of the film is finding one more reason to make a face when somebody says something that at first seems innocent but which on second thought is kinda gross.
Every romantic comedy has one moment around which the whole film revolves emotionally. In Never Been Kissed it’s Drew Barrymore standing alone in the baseball field. In Truly Madly Deeply it’s the hopping scene. In Tremors 2 it’s when the scientist strikes her October 1974 Playmate pose for Fred Ward. And in You’ve Got Mail it’s when Tom says to Meg, “Don’t cry, shopgirl.” It’s okay for you to get a little misty when he says that, but it’s also okay for you to say “ewwwww.”
You’ve got mail, alright. And it’s from prison.
Do You Copy?
January 21, 2004 // Link
I used to be all for human cloning. It was fun taking the rational side of the debate, using thoughtful consideration to decide my stance instead of knee-jerk hysteria. I knew the difference between cloning and photocopying, and I understood the simple concept that cloning somebody produces a “genetically identical” person rather than an “entirely identical” person.
Plus there was the fun of laughing at the anti-cloning arguments made by politicians, clerics and movie producers (who are, as we all know, the three groups best able to grasp and pontificate upon advanced scientific concepts).
But I’m giving in. I’ve decided to give up the fight and side with the sophists. I’m weary of weathering wave after wave of fallacious newspaper articles, film plots, and radio chat shows. I’m going to pick up my picket sign and join the shout of “Hey hey, ho ho, inevitable scientific advancement has got to go!”
But first, I want to make sure I have our arguments straight so I can fight the good fight against cloning.
To start with, we’re afraid that somebody will produce an army of Hitlers, right? Sure, we understand what that would require: first finding his DNA, then finding an army of women willing to be impregnated with Hitler babies, then sending that army of tiny-mustache babies back in time to raise them with Hitler’s exact influences until they all simultaneously rise to power in pre-World War II Germany). But the strength of our stance lies in our conviction not our logic. I get that now. I’m one of us. (Whoops, gotta watch my phrasing).
I think we’re also worried that cloning humans will lead to all kinds of “playing god” as scientist run willy nilly about their labs with our genetic code. I now embrace our fears, irrational though they are. I agree that we must stop those damn Frankensteins from knocking off copies of us or our bits. If we go blind, we don’t want any damned cloned eyes that would let us see again—god wants us to be blind! If we have an organ fail, we’d rather gamble on our body rejecting a transplant instead of using one of those evil cloned sure-things—god wants us to roll the dice! If we have a flawed or mutated gene, we’d rather leave it to chance whether our kids will be born with debilitating diseases—god helps those who steadfastly refuse to help themselves!
Let’s see, what else? Oh right: we’re going to have to outlaw abortion. We’re certainly not pro-lifers since we’re arguing that the government should make laws restricting our reproductive rights while imposing protection upon embryonic cells. So that’s it for abortion and it explains why the “religious right” is so keen on the cloning debate: it’s a terrific back door to reversing current abortion laws.
This religious aspect ties into our main argument, and main fear, which is that clones are unnatural. They might not even have any soul (or at least a limited ability to sing R&B). Now that I’ve embraced our side of the debate, I accept this. I accept that we must do away with cloning because genetic equivalency is abhorrent. Of course, that also means we must kill one of every twin. Those natural clones are...unnatural. In fact, since twins are born at the same time and generally raised together they will be far more similar than any clone born and raised decades apart from her genetic donor. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m afraid.
While it’s pretty easy to tell which is the evil twin (it’s the one with the goatee) I think it’d be best to play it safe and have them all fight to the death for my amusement. We can set up gladiatorial rings and use loudspeakers to pump in Star Trek fight music.
I’m really enjoying my new anti-cloning stance. It’s so much easier and more fun than having to ensure my arguments are informed or logical. I love being able to pretend my irrational fears are really a highly developed social conscience.
I’d love to say I look forward to the day when the debate is over and we have won, but even with my newfound anti-cloning belief I still recognize our stance as being about as tenable as every other time politicians and religious leaders attempted to impose limits on scientific advancement. Somehow, much to our terrible disappointment, we ended up with an Earth that wasn’t at the center of the universe, an Earth that was round, an Earth that was too old, an Earth that was too big, and monkeys as our ancestors.
While snobbish future generations may very well scoff at our anti-cloning trepidation much as we now scoff at bloodletting and phrenology, at least we have the satisfaction of knowing we used up all their oil and they’re stuck with our landfills. So there.
640K Really Was Enough After All
January 28, 2004 // Link
The Macintosh computer turned twenty years old this week. I’m a fan of Macs, if only because they let me feel smugly superior when I talk to Windows users. That, plus I’ve noticed the good guys use Macs in movies while the bad guys use PCs, and I know what color my cowboy hat is.
But while I adore Mac OS X and all it’s never-crash, no-virus, fast-as-hell goodness...I can’t help but notice we’ve not come a long way, baby. For all their big LCD screens and nineteen button mice, today’s computers are not so very different from what we were using 20 years ago.
Two decades ago we had mouse-driven computers with graphical user interfaces and sufficient computing power to offer us word processors for creative writing and homework, spreadsheets and databases for number crunching and records keeping, graphics programs we could use to make posters and newsletters, and tons of addictive games to keep us from actually doing any of that other stuff.
It was only a couple years later that computers had multitasking so we could share data easily between applications, high resolution printers for quality output of our work, hard drives to store thousands of our digital documents, and of course even more addictive games which still kept us from getting that other stuff done.
Lode Runner was single-handedly responsible for depriving the world of more great novels than anything else this century.
In the past twenty-plus years of bigger and bigger bits and bytes what have we really gained? Our computers now have massive drives capable of storing millions of those old documents—but we can’t really store more documents than before because our old 4K word processing files have ballooned to two thousand times the size of the actual text we type.
In 1980 I had an Apple ][+ computer that could execute about three hundred thousand instructions a second (it was a 1MHz computer, but it took multiple cycles to perform one instruction). I’m typing this article on a computer that can perform well over a billion instructions per second. So my current computer is almost four thousand times faster than that old Apple box...but I don’t write any faster on it. I can’t say that I actually find my documents any faster on my dual-processor Power Macintosh than I did on that 1MHz computer. I can’t say that my writing has improved thanks to the addition of equation editors and the other new so-called features in modern word processors. In fact, the auto-formatting and other nonsense actually slows me down since I have to fight to keep my text intact, so I now write using a plain text editor with fewer features than the software I used back in the days of skinny ties and parachute pants.
I know I must sound like one of those old “when I was a kid we had to walk to school in the snow every day, uphill both ways, without shoes, or socks, or pants, but dammit we wuz happy!” fellows. But the truth is I had spell checkers and WYSIWYG displays and e-mail more than two decades ago, and my basic computing productivity has been little improved by buying a few dozen computers for more than a few dozen thousand dollars. As far as I’m concerned the last great leap forward for using a computer came in 1983 with the introduction of lowercase letters. Except the letter j. For some reason that didn’t come along until Spring of ‘86. We’ve been coasting ever since.
My eyesight might have benefited from my big LCD screen, but not my diction. The only thing that’s really new is the world wide web. So chalk one up for porn, but there goes the benefit to my eyesight.
So what’s my computer doing with this four-hundredfold increase in processing power? It’s showing off. The icons are bigger, the windows slide around the screen, and everything generally pulses or rotates or shimmies or dances an ancient Phoenician mating dance when my mouse even comes near it. There’s ear candy, too. Things beep or whistle or clang or croon when they’re clicked. Or sometimes just because they feel they’ve been ignored to long.
In short, my computer has gone from being a fancy typewriter that made disturbing grinding noises when I saved files on big actually-floppy floppy disks, to a fancy typewriter that yells “yoo hoo!” at me repeatedly while I’m working and then tries to sell me something to enlarge my penis.
Twenty years has not given me a computer that makes me a better writer. It’s given me a computer that’s starved for attention. It’s given me dancing paperclips and flashing advertisements. It’s given me fifteen different ways to access the ten commands I actually need, but it’s buried them among a hundred menu items I ignore.
And porn. It’s given me a whole helluva lot of porn along with the blinking lights and sound effects. Just a bunch of flashing and bleeping however you look at it, which makes redundant all that “add inches now!” spam since as far as I can tell the sole purpose of the internet is to enlarge my penis, however temporarily.
With all this sound and fury in computerland I can’t help but suspect I’m being intentionally distracted from something. And I think that something might be the fact that I keep buying new computers whose sole purpose is to distract me from the fact that I keep buying new computers whose sole purpose is to distract me from...and so forth.
At what point do our word processors not need a new feature that has nothing to do with the actual act of writing something? At what point do our spreadsheets not need one more way to graph a simple series of numbers?
At what point do we not accept the idea that fixing the errors in our software requires that we pay for a new version which only runs on a faster computer? At what point do we not accept the idea that our new faster computer is slowed down by all the useless features and errors in our software?
And at what point do we say to ourselves, we have reached the point where we do not require any more pornography?
I bet you were with me until that last bit.