Internetainers Rhett & Link are having a week of holiday giveaway contests called Christmasicality. This five day celebration of merriment began yesterday, but I did not take part... mostly because I couldn't figure out how I would go about attaching a toilet cleaner to a candy cane. But today, as I knew they would, they posted a writing prompt: a five sentence story that includes the words "sniff," "stairs," and "shampoo."
I don't care whether I win or not, I had fun writing my story! Only five sentences and I have to include three specific words? It's like they designed the contest just for me!
So, without any further ado, here is my submission to the Tuesday Christmasicality:
Every family has their own weird holiday traditions. Some families decorate their tree together, others bake cookies, and one family I know actually roasts chestnuts over an open fire. But in my family, the holiday festivities don't start until Grandma shows up. She opens the door, takes a huge sniff, and all the children come running. They know that no one will be opening presents until after we shampoo the stairs.
I'm pretty much always reading something on the internet. And I do it no matter the topic: it could be a headline about social media, entertainment news, or something that happened to the British Royal family that everyone else thinks is wildly interesting but I think is a shame because a family should be able to live their lives without everyone thinking that everything they do is wildly interesting.
But what I love to read on the internet the most is the good things. The nice things. The WONDERFUL things.
Today I shot a glance at the top 3 headlines in my facebook news feed and did a double take. "#BrusselsLockdown: Cat Photos Take Over Hashtag After Belgian Police Request Social Media Blackout." Cats on the internet? Not news. Police moving to capture terrorists? Sadly, something we're hearing about often. The two of them together? ...Interesting.
I never really thought of terrorists using twitter to check up on those they are terrorizing. But it's not like twitter is a secret good-guys-only radio channel where we whisper among ourselves. It's social media. That means that anything that anyone posts publicly (and I'm pretty sure that twitter doesn't have "private tweets") can be seen by anyone else in the world. That's pretty much the point of twitter: broadcasting your thoughts to the world and getting everyone to pay attention to you. So if you tweet that you saw a strike force sneaking down the alleyway near your apartment, anyone can see that, including the members of the terrorist cell who are holed up in the basement of the building at the end of the alley.
Belgian police are hunting for those responsible (or for those aiding those responsible) for the attacks on Paris ten days ago. It's pretty difficult to keep your movements covert when every single person has a device that connects them to everyone else. So the police asked people not to report their movements on social media. It's unnecessary to say "you never know who's watching," because they do know: the people they were hunting were watching.
So instead of quieting down on social media, instead of tweeting about something else entirely, instead of shutting down their twitter app and watching a movie, Belgians exploded the hashtag. #BrusselsLockdown went viral. With cats.
Too much information is sometimes even worse than none at all. If there's too much, it's hard to sift through it to find something that might be useful. Instead of finding snippets of intel about where the police were or what they were doing, the only thing terrorists could see when searching the hashtag were Belgian cats. Cats lounging. Cats purring. Cats dressed up in little costumes. Cats on lockdown, locking down the internet, and keeping the movements of the police safe from the bad guys.
Yesterday I found this fun website called 750 words. It's a free writing tool to help writers set and keep writing goals, and sharpen their skills by practicing them every day. It's got a function that keeps track of how many words you're typing as you type them, and saves your work every couple of seconds. After you're done you never have to look at your writing again, so lots of people use it to journal and get bad feelings out by writing them down.
I have a lot of trouble free writing. I never saw the point. To me, if you're going to write something, you should take a little time and think about what you want to say before getting it down. I like to edit as little as possible. I was the one always getting in trouble during English class because I'd glare at the clock during free writing instead of putting a pencil to the page. "I don't know what I want to write!" I'd protest to my frowning teacher. "Then write THAT!" she'd reply. My glare would grow deeper, because I knew in my heart that writing "I don't know what to write" is a HUGE WASTE OF TIME, and of my writing talent. If you're going to write, write something interesting.
Anyway.
What makes 750 Words even more fun is that when you're finished, it shows you all kinds of stats about your words: how long it took you to get them down, how many breaks you took during that time, and how many words you typed per minute. Then, it shoves eight or nine pie charts in your face, showing you the main feelings of your writing. Yesterday I wrote about a game I'm playing called Neko Atsume (Kitty Collector), and mostly whined about the money mechanics, so my stats for that day say that I was mostly "self-involved." Well, yeah, but it wasn't a bad thing. There was also a chart that informed me that I spent most of my words on the subject of money. I didn't need a colorful pie chart to tell me that, but it's pretty, and I like the font. There are a few bar charts near the bottom of the page that I'm not sure about yet, but since today I'm writing about something completely different, I'm hoping that I'll be able to puzzle them out when I look at my stats from THIS piece.
I had so much fun with the site yesterday that I told my very-busy-doing-National-Novel-Writing-Month writing partner about it so that she could check it out if she wanted to. I don't like to recommend things to people unless I know they're not going to come back to me and say "hey, this thing you told me to check out is crap; why did you tell me about it?"
So that's why I was so disappointed this morning, when I was poking around on the site and saw a teeeeeny tiny bar at the top that said something along the lines of "you're enjoying your 30 day free trial of 750 words!" And I was like... "Um, I'm WHAT?"
Usually when a site makes you pay to use it, they won't let you sign up for any kind of free trial without giving them the goods so that they can start charging you the second your month ticks over. But there was NOTHING about paying after a certain time, or paying at all, when I signed up. Just name, email address, password, make sure your password is right. No check box for a terms of service, making sure I knew what I was getting into, nothing.
I was really looking forward to using the website to get back into the habit of writing every day, since it was super easy for me to fall out of it. And based on some of the things that other users are saying, it's a really fun way to do it... and it gets addicting. "We hook you with the free Flamingo Badge, and you'll be paying us five bucks a month for the Super Squirrel Badge!"
I guess I'll stay... I mean, I do have 30 days. I really enjoyed taking days off of writing, though, and just relaxing on the weekends, back when I was posting every weekday on my blog. If I'm going to pay to write, I'd feel bad taking a day off to relax, even if I needed one.
Also, there's no italics. I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT ITALICS. (Apparently caps lock will have to do.)
The original theme song for the 1966 Batman television program is Batman. The hero and his tune are inseparable. I’m not sure what people did without it for the first twenty seven years of his existence. I can’t see an image or symbol of Batman’s without getting that musical hook stuck in my head. “Na na na na na na na na…”
When Batgirl arrived on the scene, the writers decided to add a bit with her returning to her own “Batcave” on a tricked out purple motor scooter. Here’s how the planning for this plays out in my head:
Writers: “So, as she rides down the street, she’ll push a button. A section of brick wall will lower, then seal back up after she drives inside.”
Yes-men: “Genius!”
-3 months later-
Post-Production: “Um, guys? What are we supposed to do for audio over this sequence? As it is, she’s just zooming down the street. Do we want ambient traffic noises? Is there a voice-over or something?”
Writers: “Oh, crap! Uh… well, bounce it over to the music guys. Get them to write whatever to put over it.” Post-Production: “Are you sure?” Writers: “Yeah, why not? The theme song is gold. Hey, have them give her a theme song! Something swingin’!”
-Twenty minutes later-
Music Department: “They want us to do what?!” Post-Production: “Hey, man, don’t, uh, Batarang the messenger. They want a Batgirl theme song, probably about 45 seconds long, for a vehicle sequence.”
Music Department: “But what about lyrics? They’re the word people.”
Post-Production: “We have faith in you; the show’s theme song was a pretty big success, after all.”
Music Department: “The theme song is just the word ‘Batman’ over and over again.”
Post-Production: “Is it? Huh. Well, people like it! You’ll figure this one out, too. Just make sure it’s outta sight.”
-Two weeks later-
Writers: “What the hell is this?!”
Yes-men: “It’s, uh… modern.”
Writers: "We're never using this again."Yes-men: "That's probably for the best."
The reason I think that the song was last minute is because the whole thing is pick up like after pick up line. Though the lyrics are very 60s, so they're a bit difficult for a 21st century audience to understand. That's good, because over half of the audience in my home is under the age of six, and the content of the song isn't appropriate for that age group. It's also too bad, because I wouldn't mind if my three year old was singing anything other than the Batman theme at the top of her voice, every single moment of the day. Because this is The Internet (and also for my own amusement), I decided to translate Batgirl's disastrous theme song out of swingin' 60s slang and into the more comprehensible language of today. I can only assume that my version is a true-to-life representation of the way "hip" "young" people speak to one another in today's world.
Batgirl, Batgirl!
Batgirl, Batgirl!
I would like to get to know you better.
Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Batgirl, Batgirl!
Batgirl, Batgirl!
Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?
Those are some nice shoes. Do you want to make out?
Are you currently in a committed, exclusive relationship?
Batgirl, Batgirl!
Seriously, are you in a committed, exclusive relationship?
Batgirl!
Now all that's left is to put it to the original music. ...There might be just a few timing issues.
I tweeted about my #momlife this morning, and when I checked twitter again this afternoon in an effort to distract myself from working, I noticed that Famous Footwear had made a little poster of my tweet.
He's done this every morning for the last week or so.
This could mean one of two things:
#1: They’re trying to get people to use their hashtag #momlikeaboss
or
#2: I’m totally famous now.
I’m just going to go ahead and assume the latter. If you need me, I’ll be basking in the sun on the deck (that’s what famous people do, right?)… where I’m sure my son will soon join me, if only to knock over my glass of water.
One of the wonderful things about language is that it is constantly changing. The world changes; we invent new things that need names, so we make something up. We smash two existing words together, replace the first letter of a word with a different letter, or just completely pull something out of the air. Sometimes these brand new words don’t survive very long. They’re like little plants; some shrivel up, and some take root in the middle of the yard and just grow, no matter how much you try to stop them.
When the latter happens, there’s nothing we can do. We have to resign ourselves to our fate, dig in our heels, and add them to the dictionary. The following words have been added to Merriam Webster this year, and I thought a few of them required a little explanation, since not everyone sits around in the backyard (or on the internet) watching wordweeds grow.
:) To anyone who grew up without a computer, this combination of a end parenthesis and a colon is just punctuation. But if you’re wondering why it’s used by people all over the world every day, tilt your head toward your left shoulder. It’s a smiley face! Someone sending an email to a friend might use it to convey their tone. Since they’re not talking on the phone, their friend can’t hear whether they’re sad, angry, or amused, and a phrase such as “Like that’s going to happen!” can leave them wondering how they should feel. Tossing a little smiley face on the end of a sentence lets the reader know that the writer was smiling while sharing their thought, and that they should smile, too. The term emoji is “borrowed from Japanese, literally, ‘pictograph.’”
This chart of emoji was included in an interesting article about art and psychology on wired.com.
I shadowed a copy writer at my local newspaper once for a high school class and learned that coming up with the right headline for an article is an art form. Some news articles speak for themselves; no one is going to turn away from a piece headed with the words “MAN WALKS ON MOON.” Others require a little... help: “Single Mom’s Simple Weight Loss Trick Shocks Scientists!!!” A headline like that makes the reader mildly interested; if they were holding a newspaper, they might turn to page A5, but on the internet, they click on it. Newspapers don’t make you sign up for their service before you can read an article, but some websites do, and most likely a headline like that would take you to one of these. You’d have to give up your email address, make up a password, and click a link in a verification email before you were able to read the article you clicked on, and at the end of the rigmarole, you might forget why you started down this rabbit hole in the first place. Headlines that make you so curious you don’t mind jumping through the loops of a website that’s going to constantly bombard you with advertisements are called clickbait. Beware.
This photo (which accompanied an article on clickbait) was found at baekdal.com.
Have you ever been looking through old vacation photos from 1993 and spotted someone you didn’t know milling around in the back of the photo? You and your family are standing there in front of a pretty rock at Garden of the Gods and there, in the edge of the picture, is some guy in a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. He may have innocently wandered into the shot, but… what if he didn’t? There was no word for jumping into a picture for the purpose of mischevious amusement in 1993, because back then every single person did not have a camera/computer/telephone in their pocket. Today, there are a lot more pictures being taken, and a lot more opportunity to leap in front of your cousin while she is taking a picture of herself. We call it a photobomb.
There are so many more words growing in the world (and on the internet) today! Maybe they’ll eventually make their way into the “official” books, joining other gems such as jeggings, meme, and eggcorn, or they may die an early death. Either way, this is definitely an interesting time in the history of language.
Some wordweeds, sadly, die an early death.
This Mean Girls gif is from a cool blog called Lord of the Nerds,
at the end of a piece about why that movie is so awesome.
I’ve seen some pretty ridiculous holidays surfacing in the last few years. It seems like you can turn any random Tuesday into an internationally celebrated event whenever you feel like it. What kind of event? Who cares! We’re humans and this is the internet; there is no shortage of things to party about.
I was thrilled when I glanced at the trending topics adorning my twitter feed and saw this: “#NationalHighFiveDay.” I thought, “Finally! Something ridiculous I can get excited about!” Then I thought, “I’d better make sure that this is really a thing.”
The best part is, it’s not just a day to high five your bros; it’s actually doing something productive! Though the holiday itself has been around since 2002 (giving away high fives & lemonade on the University of Virginia campus), they’ve been “doing good” in an official capacity since 2010. This year, donations on their website will go toward building awareness about childhood obesity, but in the past, High-Five-a-Thons were held to benefit cancer research, and in 2013, victims of the Boston Marathon bombings.
So celebrate! High five one of the aforementioned bros. Donate! (It doesn’t have to be to the NH5D people, any favorite charity will do!) Even talking about it helps! And if you feel called upon to do all three of these things, then I have a very special gift for you (and I’ll bet you can guess what it is)!
HIGH FIVE
(this video has nothing to do with National High Five Day, it's just awesome)
I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s. One thing I will never forget from my childhood (along with our telephone, rented from the phone company, and my pink bicycle with its huge banana seat) is exercise videos, and watching my mom jump, kick, and punch along with them. I never thought she was silly for wanting to exercise, but I couldn’t help but find amusement in the videos: the silly outfits, the ridiculous music, and the exercisers themselves—some videos seemed to be made for no other reason than to employ out of work dancers. I often wondered how anyone could keep up with the videos; the exercises seemed to be more for people in perfect shape than normal folks hoping to lose a few pounds. How could anyone hope to follow along?
This video has been floating around the last couple of days, and though I can tell it’s sped up to keep up with the song (I’m not a huge Taylor Swift fan, but it’s a catchy tune), I think the most hilarious thing about it (aside from the memories it brings to my mind) is the fact that in 1988 there was an Aerobics Championship.
Okay, so in the time it took me to write this, TS’ label yanked the video from youtube, but it’s still amusing. Here’s Buzzfeed’s solution to the big bad label ruining all our fun. Haters gonna hate.
On this day in history in 1850, the very first National Women’s Rights Convention was held. Among other things, it aimed to change public opinion about the status of women and move society toward “Woman’s co-equal sovereignty with Man.” Susan B. Anthony, one of the most famous advocates for women’s rights, was not in attendance, but was converted to the cause when she read a speech given by Lucy Stone at the convention:
“We want to be something more than the appendages of Society; we want that Woman should be the coequal and help-meet of Man in all the interest and perils and enjoyments of human life. We want that she should attain the development of her nature and womanhood; we want that when she dies, it may not be written on her gravestone that she was the “relict” of somebody.”
On this day in history in 1915, around 30,000 women marched down Fifth Avenue in New York City for the right to vote.
And on this day in history in 2014, the internet is in a screaming match about women. This isn’t terribly surprising, as the internet is usually in a screaming match about something, anything. This screaming match started when a bitter ex-boyfriend posted a rant about a female game developer he had been dating. Anonymous jerks online rallied to his side without checking any facts, and this woman (and her family) were deluged with threats and obscenities. Many humans who actually stopped to listen hoped that the movement would tire itself out and go find something else to do.
But it didn’t; instead it took a new turn. Sure, the game developer’s father isn’t getting as many offensive phone calls as he was, but that doesn’t mean that those behind the movement are finished. Now that they’ve got attention, they’re lashing out at anyone who speaks out against them. Well, any woman who speaks out against them.
Anonymous online jerks are resourceful. They can find many things. Women online aren’t even allowed to look like they’re mentioning this movement, because they are afraid that they will be next. “...Seeing another gamer on the street used to be an auto-smile opportunity, or an entry into a conversation starting with, “Hey, dude! I love that game too!” Me and that stranger automatically had something in common,” Felicia Day wrote on her tumblr earlier this week. “For the first time maybe in my life... I walked towards that pair of gamers and I didn’t smile. I didn’t say hello. In fact, I crossed the street so I wouldn’t walk by them. Because after all the years of gamer love and inclusiveness, something had changed in me. A small voice of doubt in my brain now suspected that those guys and I might not be comrades after all. That they might not greet me with reflected friendliness, but contempt.” Within minutes of putting up her post about how this movement has changed the way she feels about the community that she loves, Felicia Day’s home address and personal email address were posted online by an anonymous jerk.
I guess we could ask why these anonymous online jerks are acting this way. Is it because they think that feminism is a bad thing? Is it because they want to show that they have power over women? Or are they just doing it because they’re anonymous and because they can?
I’m not sure what should or can be done to slow down or stop this internet screaming match. Maybe we need to have another National Women’s Rights Convention. Maybe we need to march en masse down Fifth Avenue. Maybe enough of us need to stand up and shout that stalking someone or threatening to rape them falls under criminal harassment, not the right to free speech.
I suppose that it could be argued that the currently women are enjoying the “coequal... perils... of human life,” but what Lucy Stone spoke out for at that first NWRC was not just for women to have to put up with the same kind of crap that men do. It was for “all the interest and perils and enjoyments of human life.” She was speaking out for coequal status, coequal benefits, and coequal respect.
In 1850.
I think the one thing we can expect is that this issue isn’t going to quietly go away anytime soon.
Facebook amuses away many of my hours. It keeps me in touch with friends, provides me with a source of news about local and world events, and allows me to keep up with what the internet is yelling about today.
One of my favorite sources of amusement recently has been the “Trending” news stories which facebook seems to think are important for me to see. Thankfully, this section comes with a feature that allows me to get rid of any headlines I like, and an option to say why I’m getting rid of that particular item. I’ve been trying to train it to only show me things I actually think are interesting.
Over the past month or so, I’ve convinced it that I don’t care about tennis, golf, major league baseball, or the NBA. Now it only shows me NFL news, and the very occasional international football (soccer) story. There are very few headlines in the world of music that I’m interested in, whether it’s about a feud between two hip hop artists or who has released a new album. And I’m usually not really super excited about technology news, because newly-unveiled items don’t often make it into my hands.
There are so many other interesting pieces of news that I would rather hear about. International conflicts, disease outbreaks, and national politics are things that should be news.
The one thing I haven’t been able to completely banish from my facebook trending news feed is the TMZ element. These sorts of stories fall into the “I know nothing and I care less” category. The only time I care about celebrities is when they may happen to be appearing in a movie or series that I’m interested in. But for some reason, I can’t get facebook to stop telling me about people whose personal lives it has no right to be butting in on. I don’t care who is having a baby, celebrating a commitment ceremony, or trying to get their child support payment lowered. Unless they want me to buy them a shower gift, invite me to their wedding, or babysit their kid, I don’t need to know about the inner workings of their lives, or even second-hand rumored stories about the inner workings of their lives.
I enjoy reading the headlines of the day, as long as they’re actually important or interesting enough to me to spend my time on, like things that actually have an impact on the world. And just so you know, facebook, a news story titled “Actress X adopts kitten with boyfriend” will never have an impact on the world.
Then I googled “seriously how do I even use reddit”
I generally tend to stay away from stuff online that will take a week and a half to learn how to navigate. And I’m even more apprehensive about reddit, which I only ever hear bad things about. It’s as though the entire website is holding a sign that says “abandon hope all ye who enter; here there be trolls.”
It’s even more intimidating because I know there’s a reddit for, like, everything. Cows? Probably. Chick Fil A? Most likely. Sandwiches? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Also I have no idea what’s going on with any of the millions of arrows all over the place. Am I supposed to use them to like/not like certain posts? There are too many, and I am afraid I will be overwhelmed by reddit's cascades of arrows.
So even though I’ll probably never sign up and actually learn how to use reddit, I might head over to the writing prompts if I ever need an idea, or just a laugh.
