Theme Translation

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.

Wordweeds

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.

The Mother of Invention

The life of an inventor is difficult. It’s not very glamorous or exciting, and it’s pretty hard work. The worst part is that the more successful you are, the harder your job becomes. Once people see that you have a knack for thinking up ideas to make life easier, then they expect that your next invention will be better, and that the next one will be even better than that, and that the one after that will be the best idea you ever had, and it just gets worse from there.

But the life of an inventor is fulfilling; you know that every light bulb moment you have will eventually help people in some way or another. More so if you’re someone who formulates new ways of conserving energy or dreams up an amazing new method of transportation. But even a lowly As-Seen-On-TV inventor can improve the lives of his fellow humans.

You probably haven’t heard of me. Or maybe you have. I’m the guy who came up with those heating/cooling cup holders a couple of years ago (“A thermostat for your beverage!”), and before that it was the headband comb (“Comb and accessory in one! Never be without a comb again!”).

Right now I’m working on my next big idea. But after a couple of weeks of brainstorming, tossing out mediocre ideas and improving the good ones, I’m beat. The past couple of mornings I have had to work really hard to gather up the willpower to get out of bed. This morning I had particular trouble.

As I lay there staring at the ceiling, waiting for a concept to appear in my head and trying to think of a way to force myself to get up, a thought appeared: “I should invent a way for people to stay in bed when they really should be going to work instead.”

And there it was. I could see the commercial in my mind: smiling actors carrying briefcases as they walked into the office, all while ensconced in snuggly duvet-like warmth; holding travel mugs of coffee while waiting for the bus, as they were nestled in varying stylish colors and patterns of comfort; attending an early morning meeting with colleagues, but still burrowed down in the same luxurious feeling they had woken to that morning. I could hear the marketing manager’s excited praise already: “It’s going to be bigger than the Snuggie!”

With such an encouraging fantasy to motivate me, I couldn’t wait to get to work. I leaped up, wrapped my down comforter around myself, and headed out for a walk around the block. Surely I could figure out a way to make that “sleeping in on a weekend” feeling portable.

I wasn’t very far from my front door when the first chilly early Spring air tried to permeate my shell of contentment. There was no way it could dishearten me; it only cooled my legs despite the flannel pajamas I wore, and I was confident that I could figure out a way to prevent chilly early Spring air from cooling the legs of the future purchasers of my product.

I rounded the corner at the end of the block and found that the gust of air I had experienced earlier had only been a light breeze, and folded the comforter more tightly around my head to ward off the icy fingers of the late Winter wind. But some clever designing, maybe fastening it into some kind of close hood… that would surely keep the icy fingers of a late Winter wind away from the heads of the future purchasers of my product.

I was halfway around the block when I passed one of the ladies from the senior living center down the street, who was out walking her dog. The bewildered look she gave me triggered another daydream, only this time it was more nightmare than fantasy: reviews. “Makes you look like a crazy person,” said one reviewer. “Nothing at all like being in bed,” said another. And finally, “If I wanted to walk around draped in a bed sheet, I’d throw a toga party. Honestly, who comes up with these things?” Then I heard the disappointed voice of the marketing manager echo through my head: “The Snuggie may look a little silly, but the reason it works is that you’re only looking silly in the comfort of your own home, not in a professional or business setting.”

I mourned the sacrifice of comfort to the fashion gods all the rest of the way back to my apartment, where I shut out chilly early Spring breezes, late Winter’s icy fingers, and the scorn of the shortsighted masses.

I had planned on going straight to the drawing board, but figured I’d warm myself up first, so back to bed I went. As I nestled down under the covers, my own body heat working together with the goose down in my comforter, I considered that this setback was probably a good thing, and that my bed was where I should have been all along.

Then I had my first actual good idea: “I’m going to stay in bed today,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll be ready to get back to work tomorrow.”

“I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention… arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”

―Agatha Christie

Mistrust Not Unfounded

“I don’t trust you,” I told the weather. “The winter has frozen all my hopes of spring.”

It tried hard to thaw my hopes. It was the hottest March 16th in twelve years, beating the previous record by nine whole degrees.

But the next day it was forty degrees cooler; my hopes remained frozen, my mistrust not unfounded.

Typical Love Story

It was the oldest story in the world: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, for the sake of girl boy immediately dumps perfectly good girlfriend, perfectly good ex-girlfriend reveals her desire for revenge. So, you know, your typical love story.

Ethan and Madeline had a blissful eight weeks together. Near the end of the seventh week, he was beginning to forget Natasha's screeching as building security hauled her away: "How dare you treat me like this! Like garbage! Like a disgusting bug you can just squish under your shoe! You'll be sorry! You and that stupid slut you left me for!" Thankfully summer fashions had just started arriving in all the magazines, and Madeline rushed out to buy several short, flouncy dresses that distracted him completely.

It was a lucky thing that he had those few final days of happiness, because the ninth week, it happened.

Madeline was pretty hurt. It seemed like Ethan just... stopped calling. She didn't know why, or if she had done something, or if something terrible had happened to him. He was just gone.

She happened to run into Natasha several weeks later at a coffee shop, and wasn't able to hold back a few tears when she asked if Natasha had heard from him. The jilted woman shrugged. "You know men, honey," she said. "If you give them your heart, they'll rip it apart." Madeline didn't find any comfort in these words, but she nodded, understanding Natalie's position. Instead, she quietly apologized for the way things had happened. Natasha laughed good-naturedly, patted her on the arm, and said, "Don't worry about it, sweet thing, I figure we're square now."

Madeline smiled sadly and turned away just in time to miss Natasha's triumphant smirk.

Because, in fact, Ethan wasn't gone. He was at Madeline's apartment, waiting for her to come home. That's all he did these days. When it happened, when he found himself shrinking down to minuscule size, there wasn't much else he could do. He found that though he could still run, he couldn't move nearly as fast as Madeline could at a walk, and so he resigned himself to Natasha's inevitable revenge.

He didn't want to leave Madeline. He wanted to be near her always. He had told her so, two days before it happened. He would never think of leaving, but he didn't want her to see him the way he was now. At best, she would never believe it; at worst, she would drive him away.

The closest he could come to her now was when she stopped moving for the night. He would climb slowly onto her bed and nestle next to her ear, where it rested on her pillow. "I will always be here," he would whisper. "I will love you forever." Occasionally he would give into the desire to touch her, just lightly, carefully, so that she wouldn't wake up and find him there.

In the hours that he was alone, he wracked his brain to think of a way to get a message to her. He was too light to press the keys on her laptop, and his feather touch didn't register on her smartphone or iPad. Conventional writing utensils were of course too heavy for him to lift. One morning an opportunity finally arrived: the normally meticulous Madeline was in a rush and didn't have time to clean up a small pile of sugar that had been spilled on the counter. Ethan eagerly ascended to the counter as soon as the apartment door closed to begin his message.

But what would he write? "I still love you, Madeline. -Ethan" was the first thing that came to mind, and he began his work. But white sugar on a white counter would be difficult to see, and Madeline was sure to clean it up immediately when she got home, so he had to make it visible to her eye... which would be hard with the little amount of sugar that he had to work with. He decided to shorten the message: "I love you -E". She would surely understand that. It soon became apparent, however, that even his abbreviated message would be too long. He would have to settle for a heart with his first initial inside. That would have to be enough.

He was almost finished when the door opened and Madeline and her brother Jeremy walked into the kitchen. Ethan had lost track of time, and scurried off out of sight, trying not to mar his work.

"Ugh! Did you see that?!" Madeline yelped. "I knew this would happen!" To Ethan's dismay, she swept his message, his entire day's labor, off the counter and tossed it in the sink. Then he watched from his hiding spot as she got out a bottle of chemicals and proceeded to scrub the counter, muttering about vermin and early work meetings and vowing never to leave her apartment in such a state again.

"It's not the end of the world, hon," Jeremy said, kissing her on the top of her head and giving her a rather un-brother-like squeeze. "Besides, this is kind of an old building. It might not be your fault, either; maybe your neighbors are slobs."

Madeline shuddered. "I hope not," she said. "If I see something like that again, I'm going to move out."

A week later Ethan wasn't quite sure what to do. Jeremy had stayed late into the evening, as he had been doing quite a bit recently, and when Madeline went to bed, Jeremy went with her. It was time, Ethan decided, to admit that he had been living in denial for a month or two. When Jeremy had first started coming around, Ethan had just assumed that he was Madeline's brother. She hadn't ever mentioned having a brother, but now Ethan could acknowledge that it was what he had wanted to believe. He couldn't allow the thought of Madeline finding someone new to enter his mind. He couldn't believe she would give up on him; he had never given up on her.

But, he decided, that didn't mean that he would have to leave. He climbed up to his usual nightly position on Madeline's pillow and threw caution to the wind. Jeremy wasn't the only one who could be close to her. As he whispered his vows of love for what seemed like the hundredth time, Ethan climbed onto her shoulder and kissed her.

It was too much.

Madeline awoke with a scream and Ethan found himself tossed violently across the room. He landed on soft carpet in the corner next to Madeline's slippers as Jeremy started awake.

"What is it?!" he cried.

"It was crawling on me!" Madeline exclaimed, brushing her hands across her body, attempting to banish the feeling of violation. "I can't take this anymore; I'm going to have to find a new place."

Ethan watched as Jeremy put his hand on Madeline's shoulder and gave her a comforting smile. "Maybe... we could find a place together," he said. Ethan saw Madeline's face transform as a happy look came into her eyes. He could remember when she looked at him that way, and Ethan could feel his heart breaking.

He could barely hear Madeline agreeing to the proposal. All he could hear were Natasha's words echoing back to him: "How dare you... treat me like a disgusting bug you can just squish under your shoe... you'll be sorry..."

Ethan knew he had no other choice. Before Madeline could reach her slippers, Ethan stepped out into view. He heard Madeline's scream before it left her throat. He heard Jeremy assure her that he'd "take care of it." He saw the shoe descending, but did nothing to preserve his life. He didn't have a reason to anymore.

That weekend, the superintendent of Madeline's building tried to talk her out of moving. "We've never had a single roach in this building!"

"Tell that to my little trespasser," Madeline replied.

"I'll have the whole building given a once-over. A twice-over. You're such a good tenant, Miss Brooks, I'd hate to see you leave."

Madeline shook her head. "My boyfriend and I are talking about getting a place together. And it really feels like it might just be time to move on."

Natasha sipped a cappuccino in her favorite coffee shop and leisurely perused apartment listings. One caught her eye, and she grinned, taking another long sip of her drink. She waved to the barista to bring her another, and a satisfied smile settled itself onto her face. There is no one more smug than a villainess who knows she has won..

Thursday in History: Coequal

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.

That Time UPS Delivered Stuff to My House Twice in One Day

There are several ways to gain entrance to my house. Six, in fact (not counting several convenient but unorthodox window options). There are several ways to gain the attention of the inhabitants of my house if you need to gain admittance, or, if, say, it is your job to place items into the hands of said inhabitants. Conveniently, these attention-getting devices are all placed right next to the most obvious entrance, all in an easy-to-see row.

There are two electric doorbells and an old fashioned crank doorbell that sounds like the ringing of the rotary phone that we had when I was a kid. It’s fun to ring. My kids do it all the time.

So say that you were, for example, a person whose livelihood depended on your timely taking various things to various locations and placing these things into the hands of people waiting for them. How would you gain the attention of the inhabitants of my house?

Obviously the answer is: show up first thing in the morning and bash your fist on the side of the house Big Bad Wolf style. Why use any conveniently placed attention-getters? Then, before any baffled inhabitants can stumble awake Chicken Little style (“The sky is falling! It’s the end of the world as we know it!”), abandon the most obvious entrance and brave the broken stairs up to the second floor by the side of the house to battering ram on that door. By the time you get back safely to the ground, the baffled inhabitants are sure to have pants on and be ready to receive the package that was so important it was necessary to stage the audio equivalent of World War III.

“That staircase is not a good idea,” I sleepily admonished as I opened the door, “and… there are doorbells right there,” I gestured two inches to my right with the package he had thrust into my hands.

If you loved your job enough to put forth that much effort to gain the attention of the inhabitants of a house, how would you respond? Would you say, “I’ll keep that in mind, thanks for the tip.” Would you say, “Oh, wow, I totally didn’t see them; sorry for startling you.” Or would you say in an annoyed tone, “Does the person on the label live here? Good, that’s all I need to know,” and walk away? (He’d already started out the morning with a Big Bad Wolf motif, he probably just figured he should end with some huffing and puffing.)

Since I was already up, I went about my day, slowly recovering from the shell-shock of being violently frightened awake.

That afternoon, the doorbell rang.

Surprisingly, it got my attention.

I went to the door and saw a package sitting on the threshold and a different brown-uniformed person than the one who had launched an attack on my home that morning walking toward a big truck idling on the street.

“Ringing the doorbell; what a strange idea!” I exclaimed to myself as I picked up the package.

“What?” the UPS guy called, turning around.

“Thank you!” I yelled back, giving him a wave.

“You’re welcome!” he said, waving back.

I’ll let you guess which interaction I preferred.

Maybe the next time we move it’ll have to be into a house with a huge, obvious doorbell, maybe with a big blinking sign to make sure no one misses it. Although, I guess since no UPS person has missed our normal doorbells since, maybe we should just make sure to move into a house made of brick.