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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88496158781843952942019-12-11T04:12:03.224-05:00TinkerXAndy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-36809890144168175082015-11-14T14:59:00.002-05:002015-11-14T14:59:29.404-05:0065 cures for 8 major holiday maladiesChristmas is supposed to be about joy and giving and family and fun and hope. That sometimes doesn't happen for us. Partly because we focus on the wrong things, partly because joy is a habit that must be practiced and learned. So, firstly... do you suffer from any of these eight classic holiday maladies?

PETER PANIC: You mourn your carefree youth, symbolized by Christmas, since the holiday can serve as a metaphor for All Things Wonderful About Childhood. Christmas, therefore, makes you feel old and worn out. Symptoms: overindulgence in youthful activities (snowball fights, hot cocoa, mistletoe shenanigans) and/or a disturbingly fey insistence that you only be given "fun stuff" as gifts.

GNOSHTALGIA: You believe that Christmas Joy can best be achieved through gustatory means; that is, by cooking and baking everything possible and feeding it to everyone possible as often as possible as much as possible. Symptoms: asking friends to borrow space in their fridge for cookie dough balls; giving treats to everyone who stops by your house no matter the reason (UPS man, census taker, bill collector); carrying fudge in your purse or glove compartment "just in case;' knowing more than one recipe for fruit cake by heart. "Gnoshstalgia" is often opposed by...

YULEMIA: You are completely unable to enjoy any holiday food at all, ever. Can manifest as health or weight concerns ("These things are nothing but butter and sugar!"), or as a negative reaction to the extended holiday season food orgy ("You people have been feeding me candy and pie and cookies since Halloween!"), or as resentment of the idea that "food is love" and, therefore, if you don't eat someone's goodies, you don't like them ("OK! OK! I'll have another piece of fruitcake). Symptoms: carrying fudge (that you took but have no intention of eating) in your purse or glove compartment.

GRINFERIORITY COMPLEX: You aren't as full of cheer as you once were (or as you recall having been), and you feel vaguely guilty about not being in the appropriate spirit. Which makes you feel worse, since feeling guilty is also bad. Symptoms: a spiraling, self-reinforcing chain of negativity eventually leads you to ignore Christmas as much as possible, which really doesn't make you feel any better, but at least doesn't remind you of how lousy you feel.

POSTAL TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER: The compulsive need to mail or deliver all kinds of presents, cards, family update letters, cakes, cookies, pies, fruit baskets, mix tapes, recipe books, decorations and other holiday items. In some part your mind, you are "spreading holiday cheer," but in reality you are doing it to check things off against some cosmic list of "everything that needs to get done." Symptoms: you begin planning your holiday mailing schedule and collecting boxes in August, and you start shopping for next year before this Christmas has actually arrived.

ANGORAPHOBIA: Fear of buying someone something they're allergic to, that doesn't fit, that's age inappropriate... i.e., "the wrong gift." Symptoms: all you ever get people are gift cards.

BUY-POLAR DISORDER: You strictly measure the monetary value of gifts you receive and scrupulously attempt to return gifts of equal or slightly greater value. Symptoms: you visit Web sites to investigate the costs of gifts received.

MALLUCINATIONS: You are preoccupied with finding bargains for gifts. You will turn away from the purchase of something on your list because you are sure you saw it somewhere else for less. Symptoms: you end up doing all your shopping last minute, buying things that make no sense (or gift cards), because you couldn't force yourself to pay "full price."

Obviously, I'm being tongue-in-cheek here. And I mean absolutely no disrespect to people with actual, clinical mental health problems. But, at the same time, there is often a grain of truth in satire. And I bet you see yourself in at least one of these diagnoses. I know I do.

So how do we get back to something more fun, more joyful, more about the heart and less about the wallet? I don't know. But I like to try. So here's my list of ways that sometimes help.

Merry Christmas.

Make a family calendar. What I mean is a yearly calendar. One with the days of the week across the top and a different page for each month. You know. You've got one on your kitchen wall or in your cube at work. You can get them at bookstores in about a million styles and themes. Horses, cars, pin-up girls, trains, Civil War battles, cartoons, food. You name it, there's a calendar. Don't buy one! Make one for your family. Then fill it in with all the important family dates; birthdays, anniversaries, etc. If you like, go to the library and ask to see a copy of "Chase's Book of Annual Events" and add birthdays of famous people you admire. Or the dates of stupid holidays like (I'm not kidding), "Answer Your Cat's Questions Day" (January 22) or "Yell 'Fudge' at the Cobras in North America Day" (June 2). When you give this to someone, they'll think of you every day. Or make it for your own house with the help of family and friends. Either way, it's a way to insert Christmas thoughts and joy into every day of the year.

Create your own ornaments. Why is your Christmas tree covered with random, generic, glittery balls? You just went and bought a tree... and put it in your house. How fun is that? That's excellent weirdness, isn't it? I mean, we all do it and it's such an embedded part of our Christmas culture... but, come on! Once a year, for a couple weeks, you put a tree in your living room. Step outside the moment for a moment and realize that in this age of technology and cleanliness and logic... well, that's just pretty odd. In a great, special, odd, different way. So... celebrate the uniqueness of your Christmas tree! Celebrate the oddity of having a big ol' spruce or balsam soaking up sugar water in your family room. Celebrate the strange and beautiful by decorating it in strange and beautiful ways. My favorite, as a kid, was to take a styrofoam shape (bell, star, even a simple ball), and stick a bajillion sequins to it with pins. If you make it with fun and love, it will increase the Christmas joy. And that's shiner than any sparkly bauble you can get at Walmart.

Lego nativity scene. Really, that should be all I need to say for this one. If I have to explain it to you, you're thinking too hard. C'mon. Lego nativity scene.

Toys from tots. There are many organizations that gather up toys for kids who don't have them. And that's fantastic. But kids also love to make and give stuff around the holiday season, and may not have the resources. Organize an effort to provide a crafty sort of event where all the necessary parts and instructions for making neat holiday stuff are available to a group of kids who otherwise wouldn't have access. My bet is that if you or your organization provided the stuff and the supervision, your local public library could help you find a place to do it. Or have your church sponsor the event for another organization that works with kids who need a hand. You can combine this one with a visit to a nursing home, too. Bring along whatever great stuff the kids make and have them decorate the home. For bonus points, give each kid a box or bag with enough of the craft bits to make another one or two of whatever you're making. That way they can do it again for someone they care about, or to decorate their own space. Or they can teach a friend or sibling. Do not award prizes. Try not to be too preachy, either. Nothing spoils a good, crafty experience like paying for it by sitting through a sermon. Give everybody a print-out of the Christmas story to read later, or have a nice (short) prayer at the beginning. But don't turn your religion into a "pause from our sponsor." That's not the message you want to send. Cookies are nice, too. Don't forget the cookies.

Make a truly edible gingerbread house. I don't know about you, but gingerbread houses make me nuts! Why? Because they're made of food -- beautiful, delicious cookies and candy -- and you can never, EVER, **EVER** EAT ONE!!! How spiteful is that? I mean, if you want to make a pretty house that you can't eat, make it out of colored glass or sharp, shiny stones or... I don't know... colored pencils. That would be fine. I'd never look at a Crayon House and think, "Why won't they let me eat it?" But, nooooo.... Every gob-smacked gingerbread house I've ever seen has been "hands off" (and more importantly, "teeth off"). Feh! Where's the fun? I mean… C'mon! How cool would it be to make one of these things, and then take the gloves off? Cry, "Havoc!" and let slip the toddlers of war! Release the viscous children! Attack, children! Attack! Devour the house! Bwa-ha-ha! I don't care if you stick six graham crackers together with peanut butter and put one gum-drop on top for a chimney. Do it, and then let the kids get all Godzilla on it. Or chomp down yerself. You know you want to.

Decorate somebody else's space. Carefully. Tastefully. Always within the bounds of office rules/etiquette and the law/fire-code. But how nice would it be to enter your office (cube…) and find a wee, unexpected holiday trinket? Totally anonymous. Or to come home and have a strange, lovely wreath hanging on your lamp-post? Put a small, stuffed penguin with a Santa hat on someone's dashboard today.

Group shoebox calendar. Warning: takes planning. Everybody in your gang (family, office, church-group, etc.) brings in enough shoeboxes to make 25. Everybody puts something in them to help decorate the common space. Wrap them (and keep the innards secret), then randomly assign numbers 1-25 to them. Or more or less if you're doing a non-religious thing. Do 31 and make it a "New Year's Calendar." Whatever. Then, on each day, get together as a group, open the appropriate box (take turns, now) and use it to brighten the day and make the place niftier.

Bad Mojo Wreath Voodo. OK… this one will probably not go down well for many church youth groups… but it's meant with a sense of humor, so chill out. Have everyone in your gang (family, group) write something that bugs them on a piece of colored paper that matches (or not) the cheapest, driest, most flamable wreath you can find. Decorate the wreath with the slips of nastiness. On the day of celebration, burn (or otherwise destroy in a more work-friendly manner) the Wreath of Spite. Celebrate the destruction and release of the things that bug you.

Holiday bird-feeder. I like bird-feeders. So do my squirrels. Oh, well… But mostly they either look like weird plastic contraptions or little A-frame tenements. Help a bird out. Decorate a special bird-house/feeder for the holidays.

Odd snow sculpture. We all make the snowmen. Yes, yes. Lovely snowmen. Do it up different this year. Make a snow carving of your company's logo. Never mind. Don't do that. How about a UF-SNOW? Unidentified Freezing Snowcraft? Or a guy climbing up your front tree? Or a giant hand? Don't be overly critical of your work… just get some friends together and get stupid with the snow.

Tissue paper wreath. This is an easy project, dredged up from my days as a summer camp arts & crafts director. It's simple, quiet and can keep little hands busy for hours. Take a coat-hanger and bend it out so that the triangle part is round. Keep the hook the way it is, please. Now, cut colored tissue paper (or white, if you're a freak) into strips about 2″ wide and 10-12″ long. Fold each strip around the now-round part of the hanger, and twist the ends together like a, well… a twist tie. That makes the paper cling to the hanger, eh? Do that about a thousand more times. It looks cruddy until you start really filling it out, then it looks fun and festive. Please do not use electric lights with wreaths made from paper.

Crayondles. Make some candles out of old crayons. How? I don't know. Ask Google.

Advent destructo-calendar. Rather than pop little toys/charms out of an advent calendar every day in December before Christmas, instead build a model or print a picture of something you'd like to be done with. Kind of a pre-New-Year's-resolution game. Then divide the thing up into 25 (or 31 if you want to do the New Year gig), and on every day in December, pull that sucker down!

Holiday spaz origami. People get so bent out of shape (ha) about making perfect, tasteful little origami things. That's way to obsessive for holiday time. Get some colorful paper and start folding, cutting and pasting things together. Make a mess… but make it a glittery, shiny mess. Find order in the chaos. Or not. Enjoy the 2D-becomes-3D magic. Discover what shapes lurk in a crumpled up ball of tinfoil. Make little birds out of the covers of old magazines and spray paint them gold and put 'em on the tree. Don't overthink it. You'll discover more shapes and more new models if you just, well… get spazzy.

Lights on other stuff. People always put lights on their house. Now, I love that, and I don't want to discourage it. But one year, back when we were living with my folks in Boston, we put lights around our lamp post. Got more compliments on that. You got a mailbox? Light 'er up! Koi pond? Let it glow! Heck, why not just try a new pattern of lights. Like, just hang them all randomly out an attic window so it looks like your house is puking lights. Maybe not. Then again, what the heck.

Rewrite "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Let's face it, hollering, "Fiiiiive gooolden riiings!" is way fun. Way, way fun. You can not resist, so don't hold back. But what's even more fun, is hollering your own family version that only you and the clan know. Because, really… doesn't singing about how your true love gave to you… "eight maids a milking" make you a bit… uncomfortable? I mean… dude gives people for Christmas? That ain't right. Bob and Doug McKenzie not withstanding, your own version will be more fun. My son, just this morning, was singing, "Fiiiiive gooolden delicious!" Hilarious.

Indoor snow-ball fights. We spent two years of my childhood in California, after having lived in Boston, and with parents who grew up in New York. Snow ball fights are a required element of winter joy. Indoor? Substitute aluminum foil balls, rolled-up socks, styrofoam (messy), newspaper wads, etc. instead of snow. The point is to throw things. Banzai!

Mall caroling. It's hard to find places to carol. Outside can get very cold. And, with kids in tow… well, it's tough. Check with a couple local malls and arrange for a time to invite anyone who'd like to participate to meet, get song books, and walk around the mall singing. See if you can arrange for an accordion player. Seriously. It adds to the cheer. If you want to charge a couple bucks to participate and also collect donations from listeners and then give the money to a local toys-for-tots charity, that makes the whole deal more righteous, and more palatable to certain civic types.

Grown-up PJ party. Notice I did not say "adult." This is not a chance to play spin-the-bottle. This is about getting back to childishness. Come in PJs, bathrobes, bunny-slippers, blankets, etc. Bring your favorite (hopefully holiday related) bed-time story to read aloud to the group. Drink cocoa w/ tiny marshmallows (yes, and some brandy or JD) and have candy canes and graham crackers for snacks. Sit on the floor around the fireplace. Watch all the old Rankin-Bass claymation holiday specials on VHS. Sing a few carols. Play…

Insane White Elephant. The basic principles of a White Elephant gift exchange apply, but anyone who has their gift taken can keep stealing from anyone who hasn't yet had their gift stolen that turn. The more people playing, the more fun. No "deceased" gifts in this version, either. Until you've had a gift stolen on any given turn, it's in play.

Make-a-wreath party. We used to do this at the church I grew up going to. You show up with the basics of an advent wreath (styrofoam torus and a bunch of evergreen branches), and the host provides all kinds of add-ons; candles and holders, bells, ribbon, holly, berries, etc. Good times, and a wreath to take home, too.

Semi-formal holiday martini party. In the old days (the 1950's), people dressed up to go to holiday parties. And while this may still hold true for some work-sponsored events, more and more often, work holiday parties are tired, dull affairs. Most of the ones I've been to are, anyways. So, on your own, get some friends together and dress all high-class, and drink funky, fun martinis. No reason grown-ups can't have grown-up fun around the holidays, too.

Remembrance time. Around the table, have family members or friends recount their best (or most interesting) holiday memories. Yes, it's corny. But corny is good during this time of the year. Embrace the corn.

Tell your faith's holiday story with sock puppets. You never real own a story until you tell it. I know this, because I played King Nebuchannezzar in a 4th grade production of, "Cool in the Furnace." I now own The Firey Furnace. Be that as it may… You can hear the Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Solstice, etc. stories again and again. But until you write out a script, make your own sock puppets for the players, fashion a stage from a major appliance crate and put on a show for the grown-ups… do you really grok the holiday's true meaning? I think not.

Mix-up the classics. Get the book versions of classic holiday tales like Rudolph, Santa, Frosty, Night Before Christmas, A Christmas Carol, etc. Get some index cards. Write character names, major attributes ("nose glows," "miser," "made of snow," "elf,") and plot points ("comes down the chimney," "ridiculed by reindeer," "just settled down for a long winter's nape") on them and keep the categories separate. Now go back and read one of the originals, but when someone (usually a child or me) yells "stop!," insert a random card from the appropriate face-down pile. So you end up with something like: "Rudolph didn't like all the other reindeer calling him names, so he…""Stop!""… gave Bob Cratchit money to help with Tiny Tim's legs." You can keep going with the original story, substituting other zaniness, or switch over to the one from the card. Whichever seems like more fun to you.

Personalize "A Christmas Carol." Rewrite (or just re-think) the Dickens' classic and perform it. Text available here for free. The characters and story really lend themselves to satire and revision, and you can do a very short version and people will still get it, because we all know it so well. Film it and put it on YouTube, please, too.

Christmas kids parade. If you'll have a passel (any more than 2) of kids around at some point, give them all a cheap musical instrument, or a home-made one. Put on some classic holiday music, real loud, and have the kids march around the house banging, blowing, slapping, stomping, etc. Please note that adults and dogs should be encouraged to join the band. This is a good way to blow off steam and sugar after the whelps get their second wind on Christmas morning.

Red and green food party. If your last name begins with A-J, bring red food. If it begins with K-T, bring green food. U-Z? Silver or gold. OK… maybe not.

Poetry party. Get some nice paper and pretty pens. And yellow legal pads for first drafts. Put holiday words on scraps of paper and put 'em in a hat. "Joy," "Presents," "Egg Nog," "Sledding," etc. Everybody gets a word and writes a poem, which somebody else gets to take home.

Host starving artists/musicians. Find a local artist (or two) or musician (or three) and invite them to your office, church, Rotary, etc. holiday party. Ask them to play or bring their art for sale, and introduce them around. Art/music are tough businesses. Artists/musicians make cool guests. Extend them a happy holiday hand, and give your friends the gift of culture.

Make your own envelopes. A dear friend of mine (Hi, Susan!) once sent me letters every few months in hand-made envelopes. Hers were made from interesting magazine ads. How cool is that? If you want to get fancy, do a search on the Internet for "make envelopes" and such. But the easiest way is to get the envelopes that go with whatever cards you're mailing, carefully bust 'em apart, trace them on funky paper (magazine pictures, wallpaper, wrapping paper…) and then cut, fold and glue (or double-sticky clear tape) them together. People may expect hand-made cards. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Or hand-made envelopes. Festivisimus!

Photoshop your kid(s) into other (classic) pics. I first saw this done to Raphael's "The Sistine Madonna, Detail of the Angles" painting. The point is to have fun and take a picture folks will recognize and include people they will recognize. It doesn't have to be a serious pic, either. I would think that your kid climbing the Empire State Building to put a star on top would be hysterical. Use this instead of a regular picture-of-your-kids card because… well… because it's goofy.

Gift cards for chores, favors, hugs, etc. These were a big item when I was growing up. Don't know if other people did them. The idea was to make gift-certificates or gift cards that "entitled the bearer to (1) one doing of the dishes upon presentation of this card." You can make these intimate for your honey (I won't get into those variations here, thank you), or appropriate for work. For example, I once gave my boss ten "Andy will now pipe down" certificates. Upon presentation, I was obligated to shut my pie hole. She only ever handed me two. I believe she traded the rest in for some magic beans. Or they may be floating around on eBay… Hmmm….

"Puzzle Party" cards. Take, buy or make a nice picture and turn it into a jigsaw, either yourself or at Kinkos. Mail one piece to each person you're inviting to the party. When they come, they add their piece. Depending on how corn-ball you are, you can hold forth on how we're all a part of the holiday panorama of joy, etc. etc. It also serves to increase the guilt factor that motivates people to come to your party, since if they don't… their piece will be missing. Ha!

"Family News" cards from the future. I love this one. Lots of families I know write a very nice update about what's been going on over the last year. It's nice to hear, but… mostly it ends up being, "Dad's still working and maybe going a bit more stir crazy. Same for mom. The kids are in school and are a year older." Yawn… I like the idea of fast-forwarding a bit and writing your "Holiday Family News from 2035." Keep it just as straight-faced and boring, but mention which dimension Mary got lost in on the way to work this time. Talk about how the Martian embassy lost your passport on your 2nd honeymoon cruise, etc. etc. Much more fun. Cloning humor goes over big in this one, too.

Mystery cards. Send a really nice holiday card, maybe include a gift certificate, but with no indication of whom it's from; no names, no return address, etc. Why? To bug the crap out of somebody you love. And isn't that what the holiday season is all about?

Return-reply cards. Send people a card with a self-addressed, stamped envelope or postcard inside to send back to you. Put questions on it you'd like answered, like… what do you want for Christmas next year? How the heck are ya? Which holiday movies did you see and like or hate? People love to be interactive. Give the gift that gives something back to you.

Custom mouse pad card. They will throw away the picture of your kids. But if you put that picture on a custom mouse pad… it's a keepsake.

Origami cards. Do your regular card, but include a piece (or more, if necessary) of origami paper and instructions for making an ornament, decoration, etc. Your local library has holiday origami books, I bet. Again… the point is to do something different… with a little extra un-Grincy flavor.

Library cards. Yes, it's a pun. Things, for many of us, may be tighter this year. Do a friend a favor and get the instructions on where their nearest, local library is. Put that in a card along with 10 or so recommendations of books to read or movies to watch that you know the library has. For book/video gifts, it's often the thought or idea that really does count. Use your library's resources to give the thought without the expense. This is also a very "green" gift, so… that's good, too!

MadLibs card. Create a card but leave spots for verbs, nouns, place names, etc. Put the spots for them to write those in on the front, with directions not to open the card until they do, and then to read the card with the answers put in. Hilarious hijinx will ensue.

Color-it-Themselves-Cards. Get some card stock for your ink jet printer. It works fine, really. I do it all the time. Create a line drawing, or scan in a picture and then trace the edges. Whatever. What you want, when you're done, is a card with pictures that look like they're from a coloring book. Outside, inside, both… go nuts. Then mail it along with a pack of 3-5 tiny colored pencils. When it arrives, your friends/family will have a neat little activity to share with their kids.

Surrogate shopping party. So many of us have someone or several someones on our lists that are impossible to shop for or that we just have a mental block on. Fine. Get together for dinner and share an equal number of those folks with each other, along with a few details and a dollar ceiling per gift. Then release yourselves into a mall with a time limit. Then get back together and share the swag. I guar-ohn-tee that your friends will find stuff for your hard-to-getters that you'd never have thought of. If it ain't right? Well, 'tis the season to return stuff.

Thought gifts. They say, "It's the thought that counts." OK. So, this year, only give thoughts for the holidays. Make this the year that you and yours agree to take whatever your budget for gifts was and either give it to a charity or stick it in a savings vehicle; your call, I'm not preaching here. But for yourselves… take the time to actually say the things you haven't said. Give "the thought" behind the gift. If you're a spiritual person, pray or meditate on the subject for a bit. Do it in a card if you like, or via email. Don't make the logistics as much of a pain as shopping/wrapping/etc. That's not the point. But all the major religions that are celebrating this time of year have gift-giving as a central notion not as a potlatch per se, but as a metaphor for love, friendship, community, etc.

Gifts for the future of the group. Have everybody get everybody something that will only really "work" when you get back together. Pick a group-y activity like a picnic or game night, and have everyone get/give gifts that will be brought together again each time you do that thing.

Recommendations or reviews. I get lots of gift certificates. And that's cool. But it still means I need to figure out what I want to get with the thing. If you give someone a gift certificate (especially to a book or music store/site), provide a list of 5 or 10 ideas that you think they'd like. Write little mini-reviews of books you've read, movies you've seen, etc. that made you think of the person. Make the list fun, funny or serious… but it will add personality and thought to what can seem like a somewhat generic offering.

Make part of the gift yourself. Homemade gifts are special, when they come from adults as well as kids. I recently received a CD from a friend, and it was wrapped in a handkerchief that he'd tie-dyed himself. How cool is that?! If you give someone a coffee machine, create a custom mug for them, too.

Gifts with a story. Write a fictional story about how the gift you're giving came into your hands. Make it funny, sweet, odd, implausible… whatever. It will make the present more memorable.

Don't overthink. We spend so much time (well, I don't, but "we" do) trying to figure out the "perfect gift" for people. Unless you're sweetie is waiting for a ring, or your 8-year-old will DIE without a particular Lego set… there ain't no such thing. Part of the fun of gifts is getting something you wouldn't ever have bought for yourself. If it wasn't, we'd just give each other money. Bleh. So give something odd and unexpected.

Share kids. Childhood is a big part of the holidays; both our own and our kids'. If you don't have kids and are friends with someone who does, offer to babysit so that they can go out and shop, and then do one of the craft things above. If you do have kids, and know folks that don't, invite them over for an event where the kids will play a part. Holidays go better with runts.

Gift from your past. Find something that was highly meaningful to you as a child, or in the past, and give it to someone along with the story. Could be a book or movie or a type of clothing. Could be the board game, "Risk," if you're a giant geek like me.

Start a bizarre, personal holiday tradition. I heard somewhere (can't find it online, sorry… it may be apocryphal) that Amy Grant's family explodes their Christmas tree after New Year's Day with fireworks. I'm neither hot nor cold on Ms. Grant, but… that's flippin' awesome!!! So many of our holiday traditions are either copped from cultures that really aren't our own anymore, or have been entirely kidnapped by the media/mercantile world. Why not invent a new ritual that's just for you and your family? Stuff a sock with toys by the fireplace? Why? I sure as heck don't know. How about, instead, everybody in your family writes one line of a nativity poem. Or fight some gingerbread man wars. Or make advent candles from last year's used crayons. At my house, we've now been playing street hockey the day after Christmas for several years with all the in-laws. Why? Bob wanted to one year. After three years… It's a tradition!

Overtip, ridiculously, at least once. Food service is tough work. And around the holidays, it's even worse. People are out-and-about, running like mad, full o' holiday spirit, and, often, not very nice to the wait staff. And because we're spending more than we should on various baubles, bangles and beads… we're often a bit penurious when it comes to the everyday stuff. Which hurts the folks whose livelihood depends on our largess. So. At least once, between Thanksgiving and New Year, when you get good service and a nice smile with your meal… leave a $20 tip on a $13 lunch meal. Or, what the heck… leave $50 to cover a $22 dinner. Or $100 for a cup o' joe. Seriously. Don't make a big deal out of it. Do it, as the scriptures say, "In the dark." But do it. You'll make somebody's whole season.

Start a yearly journal. Very few people keep a journal. I'm a professional writer, and I don't. I'm supposed to, but I write at work, and I blog, and I write poetry and fiction and, and, and… So I've never had a daily journal. But what I do have is a notebook that I take out about once a year. Often around the holidays. And, in my case, I write in it the names of people — everyone I can remember — that I've met during the last year or so. And, of course, I go back and read the earlier entries and reflect on how lucky I've been to have known so many wonderful people. The names are my "touchstones" to the past. The names are bookmarks in my memory, because people anchor the most important events in my life, I think. Anyway… that's what's in my "annual journal" for the most part. Yours, of course, can be anything you want.

Share a resolution. We don't keep our New Year's resolutions, for the most part, because we are not really accountable to ourselves. We cheat and look the other way. So share a resolution with a friend or family member; let them hold you accountable, and vice versa.

Share a resolution. No, this is not a repeat. In this case, I mean make a resolution that includes another person. For example, resolve to have a game-night once a week with your family, or to go for a walk 3 days a week with your spouse. Resolve to send an email back-and-forth at least twice a month with a friend you don't see much anymore. Resolve to cook healthy for me, and I'll cook healthy for you twice a week. Resolve to help your boss with his annoying habit of not taking minutes/notes at meetings, and he can help you with your attempts at better process management. So many things that we want to accomplish are impossible alone. Resolve to be better together.

Visit someone else's ceremony. When I was in confirmation class as a young Methodist lad, our pastor took us to a Passover Seder service at one of the nearby Jewish temples. It was a great way to learn about the similarities and differences between my faith and that of my Jewish friends, and to drink wine as a 15-year-old. Find out what and how others are celebrating around this time of the year. You'll end up experiencing your own traditions more deeply, I guarantee.

Random, pleasant social comments. Pick a number higher than 10. Probably safer if you also keep it under 500. Leave that number of random, lovely Facebook comments, Twitter replies or blog comments. Combat the shrill trollery and nastiness with a touch of good humor and friendliness. No need for it to explicitly say "Happy Holidays." Just be nice to someone online.

Give to a charity you don't normally connect with. Stretch a bit. If you mostly give at church, find a secular charity that does something you agree with. If you tend towards issues of hunger, try education. I'm not saying don't do the stuff you usually do… but find out about a new one. When our giving becomes rote, we lose something of the original reason we were moved to give. Get out of your comfort zone and find a new way to share.

Invite someone different to a holiday dinner. Single people or folks that can't leave a college campus, newly married couples just moved to a new city… there are lots of people who don't have a nice, large, rowdy chunk of kin to celebrate the holidays with. Bring 'em along for the ride. You'll be surprised at home much they enjoy many of the things about your holiday mess that tend to irritate or frustrate you. And that will give you new perspective on your own joy.

The 12 Days of Compliments. Start on any dang day you please, and compliment or thank one person in a way you wouldn't normally. Really try to think of something specific, honest and meaningful. On the next day, hand out two of these compliments. By day 12, it will have become almost second nature, and that's a gift for *you* to enjoy all year long.

Share a booth/table with strangers. At least once during the holiday season you will be seated to eat at a restaurant where there's a line behind you. People still waiting to eat. And if you're two people, and you are going to be seated at a table for four, turn to the next couple in line and say, "Hey… why don't we share a table. Not the bill or anything. But we can eat together. Save you a little time, and we all get to meet somebody new." Use your own words.

Pay the toll for the car behind you. Between December 1 and January 1, every time you go through a toll-booth, use the lane with the guy in the booth, rather than the correct change lane. When you pull up, hand the guy enough money for two tolls and say, "I'm paying for my friend behind me. Wish him a Merry Christmas when he comes through, ok?"

Sing carols (or any songs, really) while doing chores: I sing while I do the dishes. It's a rule. I have to, or it's no fun for me. You'll find, after awhile, that you don't mind the chores as much.

And the last one is something hard... but giving gifts isn't always supposed to be easy...

Forgiveness. One of the worst barriers to experiencing spiritual, holiday joy is the sense that we are not worthy. Whether directly or indirectly, too much gift giving is often a substitute for the resolution of actual issues. And one of the issues that really can weigh us down this time of the year is a grudge. Whether you're holding one against someone else, or they're mad at you about something… take care of it. If it's so far in the past that the person is dead, moved on, out-of-touch,etc., then talk to a friend, therapist or confessor of some kind. Get rid of it. I don't care what your religion is or if you have none. The burden of unforgiveness is a strain on the holidays for us all. That loss will be a great gift to yourself.

I hope you enjoyed reading the list. If you do one or more of them, let me know in the comments. Or not. I enjoyed writing it.

Merry Christmas. And Happy Holidays. Be ye kind, one and all, to each other and to yourself.

Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-71202544420954862312015-09-25T00:22:00.001-04:002015-09-25T00:22:19.662-04:00Effect, Meet Cause -- What Everyone Gets Wrong About Advertising

This is a very good article and makes some great points about the media, online content, privacy, IoT and robots. You should go read the whole thing. But, like almost all media analysts and tech experts, Maciej Cegłowski gets the advertising cause/effect backwards. He writes:

In the beginning, there was advertising. It was a simple trinity of publisher, viewer, and advertiser. Publishers wrote what they wanted and left empty white rectangles for ads to fill. Advertisers bought the right to put things in those rectangles. Viewers occasionally looked at the rectangles by accident and bought the products and services they saw pictured there. Life was simple. There were ad agencies to help match publishers with advertisers, figure out what should go in the rectangles, and attempt to measure how well the ads were working. But this primitive form of advertising remained more art than science.
The old chestnut had it that half of advertising money was wasted, but no one could tell which half.
Emphasis mine.

The mistake is a common one, because it looks at advertising from the perspective of the consumer of media and advertising; the audience. That's how we perceive the bargain. There is content out there we are interested in; newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, etc. Someone wrote or recorded something I'm interested in -- sports, movies, guns, cooking, music, whatevs -- and as I go and read, watch, listen, I will put up with some advertising in order to enjoy the content.

Nope.

The advertising (or the intent to advertise) came first. Some nice people with nice products wanted you to know about them. They had money that they could spend on making that happen. There was no media. So they got together with content creators and said, "Hey, this is what I want to sell. These are the people I want to sell to. You make some content and we'll pay for it with this advertising."

Don't believe me? Look up the history of soap operas. The originators of them were advertising agencies. There was nothing on the radio that appealed to the women they wanted to sell homemaking products to. So they invented radio dramas modeled, loosely, after the serial romance stories found in women's magazines.

Which were started by advertisers. To sell things to the same group of people. But radio was more immediate and newer and interesting and could pump out shows every day without the cost of printing or mailing.

There is, of course, content that you pay for directly. Books, movies, music, etc. Sure. And that looks (to you) a lot like the other content. Because you consume it similarly. But from a production and pricing standpoint, it's very different.

There are historic entertainments that didn't start out with advertising (some sports being a good example). It got added over time. And so that's closer to the model Cegłowski suggests. But, remember... that content had been paid for earlier by tickets or patrons. So... why did we add advertising? To pay for them? But they were already paid for?

It's a subtle distinction, but important. In any content relationship involving advertising... advertising comes first. Nobody (much) builds a magazine or radio show or TV program around an idea and then hopes for ad revenue. They build in order to sell ads.

Our enjoyment is secondary. That's not immoral. It's just not always comfy.

Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-27942494117471345572015-05-16T18:58:00.002-04:002015-05-16T19:04:16.983-04:00Peeved Medium. A review of "Mad Max: Fury Road"

So the title of the post isn't really a pun. I'm not sure what it is. It's there because I can't summon the energy to be clever or interesting about a film which was neither.

Sigh.

If you're disappointed in that gag, rest assured you're not as disappointed as I was in the film itself.

Here's where a reviewer has to make sure that you understand that s/he's not a film snob. Because if you don't like an actiony-packed-edy movie like this, that's the first reason people might think. Establishing my b-movie bona fides should only take one sentence for y'all:

I've seen all the "The Fast and the Furious" movies.

Now that that's out of the way...

I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to love it, actually. I'd heard from a couple people online that it was an amazing, action-packed ride through a post-apocalyptic hellscape. I read one review snippet that said it was "ballsy," one said it would leave you "speechless." One called it "surprisingly tender." As I look on Metacritic, I see that it has an average score of 89/100 and only one neutral review opposed to 42 positive ones.

Which might lead someone to think... did you miss it, Andy? Did you miss the allegories? The metaphor? The deep layers of meaning? The artistic flourishes? The various homages? The culture war references? The mash-ups?

This is where most reviewers won't, but I will, remind you that I'm a poet and have a degree in English Lit.

I didn't miss that stuff. It's just that it's all thrown in so randomly and heavy-handedly that I can't tell if it's meant to be a tapestry of chaos or just chaos. It's energy and craft masquerading as art. It's volume masquerading as depth. It's verbs masquerading as action.

There are a lot of verbs, to be sure. So booms. Very stunts. And much of the film is beautiful and haunting in terms of the cinematography.There is *artistry* in there aplenty, from the stunts to the backdrops to the costume and make-up design. Lots of individual parts where I thought, "That's very nicely done."

But a movie is supposed to have a story. At least one. And characters you care about. Again... at least one. We have no idea why Max is where he is now. I get it, I know. Right. He's the Wanderer. Right. So... We care about him why? He gave up on... what? He has these weird flashbacks to little girls whom he let down and... nothin'. Same for Charlize's character. I get it. She's saving some few of the people whom the bad guy is being Very Bad to.

Even the action, after awhile, stopped being interesting. Because it was, essentially, the same. Car/truck/cycle with spikes goes fast, shoots things, blows up. The first 15 minutes of that was spectacular. The 2nd 15 minutes of that was interesting. Minutes 31-90 of that were... not.

The audio? There is nothing like dialogue in this movie. The few times there are lines that aren't there for exposition it is almost impossible to hear what they're saying over the ambient booms, bangs and roars and the score, which I found very heavy handed.

I read a lot of sci-fi. I read a lot of weird fiction. I've written some weird fiction and some very weird poetry. I like weird. I like it a lot. And I wanted this to be some kind of super-action-flick-meets-high-art-extravaganza. The trailer gave me goose-bumps.

The movie itself didn't.

I'm sorry. Again... I wanted to love this movie. But while spectacular visuals and action can enhance a good story and decent characters and make an otherwise decent film incredible, they can't fill the void left by no story and flat characters.

Gotta give this one a D+

Because if you go to all that effort on the frosting, the lack of cake seems even more appalling.

Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-29589963405685676972015-05-06T19:02:00.001-04:002015-05-06T19:02:32.971-04:00A most joyful, terrifying dreamAs the son of a shrink, I grew up talking about dreams. I'd come downstairs on a Saturday -- the day I got to sleep long enough to make it through a dream before waking -- and sit with my Dad in his study. He'd stop working on billing or bills and we'd talk about my dream. He was good at providing both a Freudian analysis and "an accurate one," as he'd call it. That is, let's look at the symbolism, but let's also just think about what you're going through. Helpful, insightful and often fun times.

I have had lots of very weird dreams. Years ago my subconscious stopped trying to torture me with monsters and last-minute tests or work assignment and went to unsolvable or a-logical puzzles. Like, "You must arrange these names in numeric order and lay them out in the shape of grass." I'd wake up both stressed out and pissed off that my brain had been able to trick me, again, into getting all worked up.

But I hadn't had a real nightmare in many years. Until a few months ago.

I watch "Mad Men" and love it. I think it's the closest thing to poetry that TV has generated. And because it's about marketing, my field, the metaphors used often apply to my life directly, even if the substance doesn't.

One thing that became clear to me as I watched the first few years of the show was that, on some level, I wanted to be Don Draper. He is a philandering, shallow, self-centered, self-denying, chain-smoking, alcoholic, inveterate liar whose choices have made him deeply unhappy, probably unlovable and, I fear, eventually doomed.

But lawd a' mighty, what a very fine looking man. With a job that is, basically, the dream of anybody in Old School Marketing Town -- the Idea Guy. The guy who is paid to simply Think the New Thing.

And he's good at that. He's not telling tales when it comes to his job... which is thinking of new tales to tell. So, yeah... Of course he's an advertising genius. He's been spinning and branding his life forever. It's deep doo-doo and I love it and, some days, I fear it.

But still... Yeah. Don. Jeez. On some level, I would've loved to have been him.

Until my nightmare.

I often dream exceptionally realistic scenes and people. I've had dreams whose scenery and players I remember with more detail than my entire sophomore year at high school. Really crisp, colorful, highly exacting scenes.

This was one of those.

In it, I was older than the 48 I am now. It seemed maybe... late 50's. Maybe early 60's. I had thinning hair. Yeah, for those who know me, no... That wasn't the nightmare. I was wearing an expensive three-piece suit and sitting in an opulent, sky-high office. Big office. Great view of some urban metropolis... Maybe NYC, maybe Chicago or Boston. Didn't matter. But it was gorgeous. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Thick, dark red carpet. Huge oak desk.

One wall was covered with pictures of me with famous people in various settings. Clients, friends, vacation buddies, etc. It also had various degrees and awards displayed. And the shelves were likewise filled with trophies and awards and mementos of a very successful career.

In the dream, I knew who I was. The head creative guy at one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. Don Draper + 20 years. I had more money than the Catholic Church. I had entire offices full of people working for me. I had power and influence. I was The Guy You Called When You Needed The Idea That Will Save You.

I was not a bad man. I was not evil. I was not hated by my employees. I was just very, very dedicated to doing my job.

And I knew, in the dream, that that had had (fun to say three times fast) some personal costs. I was in the process of a third divorce. I had pictures of kids from all three marriages on my desk. And I was looking at them when the phone rang.

It was my second wife, with whom I knew I had eventually come to be quite cordial. Her name came up on the Caller ID, and I answered expecting to hear about some event that she wanted me to attend or someone who needed a job or an introduction. We were socially close.

No. She had called to tell us our daughter, who was 22, had killed herself with a drug overdose.

I have never, in any dream, felt the kind of sheer and complete terror/horror and pain as I did at that moment. I felt responsible for her death and my wife's completely numb grief. I couldn't breathe. I looked at the pictures of my kids on the desk and felt like the entire world should end so that I didn't have to feel that way anymore.

I prayed to God that I could go back in time and change something. Whatever that might be. Something that would keep this horrible, painful, shattering thing from happening. Prayed that I could take The Other Path. That I could choose differently and do things differently and be another man that wasn't the man who was about to vomit on the nice, dark red rug.

And then I woke up.

And for about half a second, I thought that my real life was, in fact, the second chance. That I had been that man... that slightly balding, rich, successful, powerful man. And that I had been sent back to do it again. To live a different life. To be... me. Instead of him.

What an awesome dream. What an awesome, awesome dream.

Now I watch "Mad Men" with a lot less angst. Because I know that, no matter how much I might envy Don his chiseled good looks, I will never, ever again envy his fate.

Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-75465189579227071862015-04-26T19:32:00.000-04:002015-04-26T19:33:44.251-04:00
Film review of "Ex Machina:" soft core Pornocchio
Note: there will be no spoilers in this that aren't in the trailer. Other than to say, if anything in the movie surprises you, you haven't ever read, seen or considered anything about AI.

There is a certain genre of film that seems to want to replace ideas, dialogue, action or plot with any/all of the following:

Long, slow pans of empty rooms

Long, slow pans of empty landscapes

Long, slow shots of the actors sitting, thinking

Long, slow shots of the actors sleeping

Long, slow shots of the actors walking through empty rooms

Long, slow...

You get the picture. There's usually either creepy electronica of some kind in the background or vaguely classical compositions that feel both eerie and elusive. There's a sense that you are being given time to digest the depth and purpose of the sparse dialogue. You're being invited to soak in the ambiance in order to pick up on the subtle double and/or hidden meanings. You're allowed to peer inside an editorial process by which, like Proust, the film maker explicitly makes known the structure of the internal by exposing the art of the external.

Or whatever.

I often like these movies. As a change of pace, especially, from stuff like the "Variously Fast and Furiouser" or the upcoming "Mad Max: Fury Road" shenanigans that should, it seems, come with a warning that it might cause epilepsy or a micro stroke. It's nice to go slow, enjoy the dialogue and have some pretty things to watch and listen to.

Up to a point. And then it's just boring and you realize that, maybe, the director and script writer didn't have that much to say after all and are filling 45 minutes of the film with long, slow pans of [for x = 1-?, next x].

There are lots of interesting discussions and observations and plots to pull out of the subject of "strong" artificial intelligence. That is, some kind of man-made program that goes beyond calculation into the real of cognition. "Ex Machina" is, explicitly, a long form exploration of a Turing Test, by which a reclusive, kinda douchey billionaire means to use one of his employees to determine if his artificial intelligence is truly intelligent.

We know, having seen the trailing and going into the movie, that the answer has to be "Yes." Because of the 4th Law of Robotics: hot chick robots are totally alive. Again... if you're six years old and the concept is new to you, there may be some interesting bits (ahem) in here... but for the rest of us, it's a foregone conclusion that she must be alive, because she's cute, petite, has somber dark eyes and looks directly at the camera in a wistful sort of longing way.

It's soft core Pornocchio.

I know, that was in the title of the review, but I'm inordinately pleased with myself over that one.

The two male leads do a decent acting job. The females aren't really allowed to, because if they were too emotional that would seem... I don't know. Non-robotic? Out of character in a film that is overly serious? I would have enjoyed seeing Ava, the robot girl, laugh or do a jig or anything besides seem properly grim and fey.

Anyway... I enjoyed it more than this review might indicate. There are a few interesting moments. There are some really dumb technology things that I won't complain about because it would be tedious for you and me. Except for one, which I'll leave as a question for anyone else who has seen the film:

Key cards? Srsly?

Anyway. I'd give the film a solid "C." Nice CGI, lots of pretty cinematography and enough little, "Oh, that was a nice little bit," to keep it from being super boring. The discussion around a Jackson Pollock painting is one of those saving graces.

I would have been much more interested if the robot looked like me.

---------------------------------

Unrelated to the film... Something to keep in mind when thinking about or discussing strong AI... When (if) it comes, it may have an intelligence that we do not recognize at all. Or it may not recognize us as intelligent. Or we, humans and AI, might completely miss each other. Like a sea creature and a mountain butterfly. Same world, different worlds. The idea that we'll design something enough like us to love, hate, talk to, fuck or frighten us is a kind of anthropomorphism in and of itself.

That might make an interesting movie, too.

Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-54821926620064397052015-02-15T17:58:00.003-05:002015-02-15T18:02:28.138-05:00"Kingsman" review: like the Piranha Bros., cheery but violent

In the Monty Python sketch, "The Piranha Brothers," the eponymous siblings are described as, "A cheery lot. Cheery... but violent." I can't think of a better description of the overall tone of "The Kingsman" than that.

For a movie whose action starts relatively slowly, there ends up being a lot of cheery violence. I mean... a lot a lot. If you are disturbed by the gratuitous deaths of hundreds of bystanders and generally innocent (or at least non-main-villainous) crowds of fellow humans... think twice. If, however, you can take your bloodbaths with a handful of salt, you'll find yourself doing that thing where you laugh and go, "Awww... Garrrg... Blaaahhhh..." at the same time. A kind of laugh-groan-yuck noise where you laugh because it's well done and, frankly, pretty funny but groan because, well... lots of death. And then you feel bad because you're laughing at people getting their blanks blanked off or blanked up or blanked in... and then you feel bad for feeling bad because, really... did you go to this movie thinking it would be a serious treatment of... er... anything.

Warning... mild spoilers coming about some character attributes, but nothing that will spoil the plot. I promise. Because if you don't know the plot, you've never seen a tongue-in-cheek spy movie.

Colin is great. Love seeing him playing, essentially, a classier version of Bond. The ass kickings he hands (foots?) out are the main joy of the film. The main character hunk (don't know him, don't care) did a fine job of jogging through almost every "lower class kid surprises his 'betters' and makes good" trope in the book. Samuel L. Jackson (with an inexplicable lisp) is... just odd. Don't understand the casting, didn't understand his character's motivation (not surprising: it was given 11 seconds), don't understand the reasoning behind his Grand Evil Scheme. He serves his purpose only barely, which is a shame, as I generally love SLJ. His henchman (henchwoman?), Gazelle, played by Sofia Boutella has prosthetics similar to the "Flex-Foot Cheetah" legs but, of course, with blades in them. And while that makes for a neat henchwoman gimmick, it could have been much more interestingly used. Yes, there are a couple good fights where she bounced around on them, weaving a ballet of death. But it seemed like whomever was in charge of Colin's fights got the good writers/choreographers, and she got the 2nd stringers. Similarly, the spy gizmos were somewhat disappointing and all, essentially, warmed-over Bondage items.

The tone is, really, what saves this movie from being average. It doesn't take itself seriously, doesn't expect you to, and -- having given itself (and us) that kind permission -- goes off in its chosen direction with willful abandon. The couple major surprises that are popped on us (that's a pun; come back after you've seen the picture) are fun and inventive and the filming is joyously over-the-top music-video-meets-sam-peckinpah. While there is not a lot of meat on this bone, there is also no fat. Which means... I guess... It's just a bone. Which, as dogs will tell you, makes a fine toy.

I give it a B+ and encourage anyone who can enjoy casual, almost glib and merry buckets of colorful violence to check it out. As said of Douglas Piranha, "When he was young, he was keen on boxing. But when he learned to walk, he took up putting a boot in the groin."

If that sentence makes you smile at all, you'll like "The Kingsman."Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-56885931318852400982015-02-08T11:46:00.002-05:002015-02-08T11:47:29.850-05:00Risk for two: mad mods for classic board gameA Facebook discussion about the various versions of Risk (LOTR, Star Wars, etc.) and different rulesets about reinforcements reminded me of the insanely modded version of the game I played when I was a kid with my friend, Derek. We did a lot of camping in those days, even in the cold months at either end of the season, and that often meant a few hours inside a camper or tent if it was particularly nasty out. Derek was a couple years older than me and introduced me to both Risk itself, and to the idea that you can play whatever rules you want, as long as everyone agrees ahead of time. I was around 12 or 13, and my brother wasn't quite old enough to enjoy more complex games yet, so Derek and I ended up modding the hell out of Risk, since playing standard rules with two players is both boring and infuriating.

Any of the following rules/mods can be taken alone, or lumped together. Or, of course, altered until unrecognizable from the original.

1. City States

Probably the most important for making two-player play a bit less unbalanced. After picking your colors, take a third color (we always used black) and assign at least one random territory in each continent as an independent city state. We generally put one each in Australia and S. America, two in N. America, Africa and Europe and three in Asia. Each city state gets 10 units. They are not reinforced unless attacked; after any attack on a city state that doesn't wipe it out, add one unit of partisans. After a player attacks a city state for the first time, it will then get a one die standard attack roll against all adjacent territories in which you have units. If that roll wipes out the last player unit, the territory becomes annexed to the city state with 5 units.

The city state rules make it hard to both attack the human opponent, defend against him/her and try to wipe out a whole continent. When combined with the alternate reinforcement rules below, it makes the game take a LOT LONGER, but allows for some very different strategic planning. Including deliberate pestering of city states near your opponents main areas and deliberately losing to them in order to create new annexes. Heh.

2. Alternate Reinforcements

We dumped the regular reinforcement rules even in 3+ person play. Way too much swinging back-and-forth with huge swings based on the cards. Three main changes:

Regular reinforcements = territories owned divided by two when it's your turn and divided by three when it's anybody else's. Yes, you get reinforcements when it's not your turn. Attacker deploys reinforcements first. Again, this makes for a longer and more defensive game.

Continents' value adjusted up by +3 for each. This has the effect of making the smaller continents more valuable relatively.

Cards reinforcements: turn over a random card each turn. That territory gets +3 reinforcements. If playing with City States, they don't get them. We basically hated how important random card matching and hording became in later game stages.

3. Navies

This is a weird one, but we had fun with it. At the beginning of the game, take a 2nd color for your navies. You use the big (x10) pieces as carrier groups and get 3 of them. You use the little ones as destroyers and get 10. They can start on the coast of any territory you have. You can move them once per turn to the coast of an adjacent territory. Carrier groups can transport up to 10 troops each and can shell adjacent territories based on two-times the number of troops carried. Carrier groups defend, however, as only one unit, plus any destroyers in the same "sea territory." Carrier groups cannot attack other sea units. So while they are powerful, they are vulnerable. You can't have more than 3 carrier groups and 10 destroyers (we defended this idea based on fuel availability, but we were pre-teens, so whatever) at any time, but if they are destroyed, you can trade regular units in any territory adjacent to sea at the rate of 3 units per destroyer and 10 per carrier group. This makes your original carrier groups relatively valuable and encourages irrational expansionism that often comes up short. You're welcome.

4. Nukes

At any time you can trade 20 units in one territory for a nuclear missile with defensive strength of zero. There is a three turn count-down, during which if the nuke is destroyed, it goes away. On the third turn after it was created, it can be used to either: a) wipe out all enemy (or city state) units in one territory, anywhere in the world (or all sea units in one sea territory), or; b) halt all enemy reinforcements (offensive and defensive), worldwide, for the next two attacking turns. This was the "EMP" version of the attack, and we thought ourselves very clever.

- - - - -

We tried some rules for air units (fighters and bombers) similar to the navy rule, but that got too complicated... At some point, you can just hang up Risk and play Tactics II or Panzer Blitz or something. We also tried some rules that prevented massive, multi-turn build ups of forces based on the idea that the populace would eventually not like huge standing armies hanging out for multiple years. But that required turn counters and... bleh.

Anyway. I just realized today that I had never chronicled these most excellent mods, and the Internet is where I'm supposed to put this stuff so that the group mind can benefit.

Selah.

Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-63390456374877213142014-12-17T23:03:00.005-05:002014-12-17T23:08:05.873-05:00 Heisenberg's Second Date
You said, "Yes." I don't know why.
The first went, I thought... bad.
To say the least. Your grace,
my clumsy humor not matched
so much as all opposed and all that
wine spilled on and in your shoe.
Why would you say, "Yes" to more?
I thought I knew before I called.
I thought I knew half way through
the first. All the awkward
silences. The food sent back.
The mention of the film
your ex was in. All that
and still the magic, unhoped... "Yes."

The joy of being wrong
is in me like a flare of burning paper.
And now I do not know
where this will go
but I am glad, so glad,
I so fucked up
the measurements.Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-12281821091748011692014-10-19T10:28:00.002-04:002014-10-19T10:28:34.229-04:00Taking education from information to knowledgeTHIS article is the antidote to the stupid "Google is making us stupid" article I posted about yesterday. In the hierarchy of learning, we move thusly (mostly my definitions, blending some stuff I've picked up):

 1. Noise (undifferentiated stimulus). 2. Data (differentiated stimulus with understood measures). 3. Information (relationships between data). 4. Knowledge (how to use information usefully). 5. Wisdom (how to apply knowledge more usefully over time).

Schools used to be about teaching kids how to find and memorize information. Then they'd go to work and develop knowledge skills (and hopefully some wisdom). In a world where information seeking is much less frictional, we can either make the grotesque error of trying to add friction back into information finding ("Google is making us dumber") or we can move "up" one level in how and what we teach, seeking to impart knowledge -- the ability to *do useful and interesting things* -- to students rather than fill them up with information that is trivially obtained in most cases now.

I've said this for years: artists get it (it's one reason I love teaching at CCAD). You can't learn to draw, paint, sculpt, design, etc. by reading books about it. You have to DO THINGS to learn to do them. A lot of the new-ish pedagogy of entrepreneurship and leadership in business is built on understanding this ("fail early, fail often," etc.). In the arts and music, this is known as "practice." You don't pick up a guitar and expect that a knowledge of musical theory will make you a great player. You have to play for thousands of hours.

My brother John had a great book about the business of acting that he loaned me many years ago. Not the craft, but the biz; how to get an agent, when to join a union, etc. etc. At one point, the author says that there will be times when you'll be the most talented person at an audition, but you still won't get the gig. Because they need someone taller to match the romantic interest. Because they need someone who is less handsome or more quirky looking or can ride a motorcycle. His summation of this is profound:

"As children, we are rewarded for being 'good.' As adults, we are rewarded for being 'useful,' and nobody teaches us that transition."

Education needs to train people to be useful. And I don't mean in the "trade skills" kind of way. We need to train kids to be useful as thinkers, inventors, creators and cognizant citizens. We need them to understand not just how to learn, but how to learn to *do* things. How to move from being good information gatherers to knowledge hunters.
Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-47518598289968160292014-10-19T10:27:00.000-04:002014-10-19T10:27:20.350-04:00Articles about how Google is making us dumber are making us dumber
Read this article and then come back.

[rant on] I AM SO TIRED OF THESE "TECH IS MAKING US STOOPID" ARTICLES! The wrong-think in here is extraordinary. First there's this gem:

"The gap between a question crystallizing in your mind and an answer appearing at the top of your screen is shrinking all the time. As a consequence, our ability to ask questions is atrophying."

Is it? It is? How do you know this? Is there research that suggests that we're less able to ask questions? Is there a link you could share? Or did you not know how to ask Google the right question to find some research on the subject?

 And this fun bit...

"But knowledge doesn't just fill the brain up; it makes it work better. To see what I mean, try memorizing the following string of fourteen digits in five seconds: 74830582894062. Hard, isn't it? Virtually impossible. Now try memorizing this string of fourteen letters: "lucy in the sky with diamonds." This time, you barely needed a second. The contrast is so striking that it seems like a completely different problem, but fundamentally, it's the same. The only difference is that one string of symbols triggers a set of associations with knowledge you have stored deep in your memory."

AAARGHHH!!! So much wrong! So very not! First of all, let's please not conflate "information" with "knowledge" or "memory." Three different things! And the lyrics to "Lucy in the Sky" were already in my head! ARRGGHHH! So I didn't need ANY TIME to memorize it. But even if it were, memorization is also not information or knowledge.

 The author closes with ye olde chestnut that humans should do what we're good at, and computers what they are. He says, "Wikipedia and Google are best treated as starting points rather than destinations." RIGHT. THEY ARE. ALMOST ALWAYS. Because the answer to my question (the information) is going to relate to one of two kinds of situations.

1) Casual, impact-free curiosity. This is the realm of IMDB and a lot of Wikipedia queries. "Who was that guy in 'Home Alone' with the shovel?" or "What was the name of Herod's wife?" These are questions for which the information itself is, generally, the desired end result. I'm not going to do anything with that information besides just know it. Maybe it's for something that will stick, maybe not. The only difference between doing this online vs. old school is speed and convenience.

2) Questions asked because you will be using them to accomplish something. For example, "Recipe for gluten-free birthday cake," "Directions to Pittsburgh from Columbus," "How to get grease out of a tie," "Where to shop for ladders," "What should I weigh?" etc. etc. In each case, the information (if used) will be part of a series of activities that will, together, generate knowledge. Because knowledge is information in a useful format. For example, if I get a good recipe and don't make the cake, I have not increased my knowledge. I cannot tell you if it is truly a good, gluten-free cake. Nor if it's a cake at all. Nor how hard to bake, how expensive, how nice it smells. Once I bake it, though, I have knowledge of the value of the recipe.

And that's a good way to understand the difference between what Google can do for you and what it can't. Google can find recipes. Only you can bake a cake. Google can give you some information (some good, some better, some awful, some wrong). Only you can turn it into knowledge.
 Here's what I resent about articles like this, however. The conflation of these very different mental tasks absolutely ignores the cost (in time and money) of acquiring information in the pursuit of knowledge. Now, I'm not talking about "question 1" type stuff above. If you want to be an expert on a certain type of information, memorization and long-form research will be key. If you want to lecture on a topic, you need to know it in your own widdle haid. But if I don't know that there are (for example) freeware alternatives to Photoshop, I might spend a LOT of time and money saving up for Photoshop, only to find that it doesn't help me. The quick answer to the question, "Are there free alternatives to Photoshop" will free up a lot of my resources to actually DO THE KNOWLEDGE GATHERING THING (image editing) that I'm interested in.

Yes. There are types of thinking that we should all pursue. Yes. Curiosity is important. Yes. Deep, frustrating, interesting problems require that you practice doing deep, frustrating, interesting research. But helping me find the nearest gas station or the expected weather in Chicago is not going to atrophy my creativity or invention.

FWIW, they said the same stuff about teaching "regular people" to read back when the printing press came out. Since farmers and peasants etc. have no need for school learnin', why would they waste their time on books? I translate this sentiment into modern times by asking, "Since many working people's jobs don't require deep knowledge of arcane details and trivia, why should they have access to a tool that allows them 'easy' answers they don't know how to earn on their own? They should have to be scientists and inventors to know that stuff."

In closing, if you think you can learn how to play an instrument, drive a car, have better sex, etc. from the Internet, you're already dumb without Google. To learn things, you have to do things. All Google, Wikipedia, IMDB et al do is remove some of the friction from gathering the necessary parts to START learning. [/rant]

PS: I've NEVER been any good at memorization and I've never had a bit of trouble (either pre- or post-internet) doing creative, layered, long-form thinking. The two are categorically different activities IMHO.
Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-37445861210812542832014-10-04T16:28:00.000-04:002014-10-04T16:28:01.273-04:00Safe Words: A Zombie Sonnet Deep down inside, we knew we were bad.
All of us. Everywhere. Everyone had
a cellular knowledge of what we had done
to all of our victims. And now we have come

to a drought of fresh blood. To a desert of flesh
where the ground is a stone, where the wind just a breath
of enmity, apathy, memory, dawn.
Alone with our horror. Our hunger now gone

to sleep with its victims, now marrow and hair.
The scent of them absent. No trace of them where
there once was a bike path, a playground, a mall.
We wait for a sign. We'll wait here while all

of the stars flicker out. Until time itself ends.
To reunite, finally, for dinner with friends.

Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-48565731747222293052014-09-27T09:43:00.002-04:002014-10-04T16:28:32.909-04:00Medium
Deep winter made Amelia Jesus.
"Mimi" to her friends, she skates the lake behind the farm
where no cows graze and no corn grows.
Walking on the water where
she'd dived last summer, touched the bottom,
swam to shore, kissed Donnie Blake
while they both dried in sun and breeze.

Sixteen soon, by next December she will drive
to see him weekends, stay the night, and maybe
maybe maybe maybe let him let him let him...

She slides a thin skin of change. A scant few inches
held between the piercing blue of Christmas sky and
a black like swollen pupils, grown to try
and catch the last pale winking light.

It never broke before.

"Wait until Christmas," was the rule. But whether
Mimi was a little heavier with muscle mass
from soccer and a lot of yoga
or the ice was thinner... still remembering a long
long Spring.

It didn't hurt. She wasn't even scared.
Couldn't feel the cold. Body soaked with shock
and chemicals and vertigo and
all she sees is white above. The pale
thin skin of change.

Her mother's shouts of, "Mimi! Mimi! Mimi!"
the last sounds heard as fingers tap
one last time
on something solid
and Amelia remembers,
"Oh, yes... Jesus dies." Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-59272764947200933162014-09-21T17:57:00.000-04:002014-09-21T17:57:01.955-04:00Review: Disney's Maleficent -- Pure Girl Power Magic[NOTE: There will be massive spoilers after I do the review part, but there will be an angry wall of asterisk thorns, so you'll know when to stop.]

I'm an unabashed Disney fan. Love the movies and the parks. And they've done some really great retellings and revivals of classics in ways that I've generally found pleasing. But nothing, to me, really compares with the truly awesome and inspiring redux of "Sleeping Beauty" that is "Maleficent."

For those who know me, let me say this: I am not being sarcastic; there is no dagger hidden behind this review. No bloody prick of irony. I promise on my black, ribald heart that I truly enjoyed this film and was actually quite moved by it. Both by the very different take on the story itself, and by the sheer guts it took somebody/somebodies at Disney to attempt such a radically and beautifully feminist retake on what is, arguably, one of the weakest of the original Disney classics and, frankly, a pretty horrible original tale from the Grimm Brothers' dank vault. As much as I never liked the original nor the Disney film, I loved this movie.

If you see it for no other reason, do so because of the 100% pitch-perfect casting of Angelina Jolie as Maleficent. I loved that she was cast as Lara Croft in the "Tomb Raider" franchise, but was deeply disappointed by those movies. She was great in them, but they basically sucked. In the case of "Maleficent," she's super, the writing is solid, the action is good and the story/message succeeds on at least two levels at all times, three if you count the frisson between the original and this retelling. There is a minimal amount of cheesy cuteness, mostly limited to the three fairy god-aunts who aren't horrible. Yes... we need Happy Meal toys to pay for these movies, so it's a fair exchange. If they'd had about two more minutes of screen time, they'd have been annoying, but managed to feel more "Rosecrans and Guildenstern" than Jar Jar Binks.

The king (Sleeping Beauty's Father), Stefan, played by Sharlto Copley was somewhat uninspired and blocky and I wished they'd gone for someone with a bit more... elan... for lack of a better word. He was serviceable, but I couldn't really fathom the "why" behind the casting when there are so many other folks who could have done better. To be fair, I didn't like him in either "District 9" or "Elysium," either. If you did, then you'll be fine with his take on the role here.

Elle Fanning was lovely and did what she was supposed to do, which was to make us all fall in love with her. They could have held back a bit on the glorious, glowing nimbus of hair and ripe, apple cheek make-up a bit... but we need those signals and the movie is ostensibly for kids, so there you are: she needs to look like a princess, even when hiding out in the woods.

Maleficent's steward/crow/dragon, played by Sam Riley, was a pleasant surprise. A little humor, a little gentle nudging, excellent special effects during transitions... he was lots of fun to watch.

Now... if you want to watch it without knowing basically everything about it that makes it truly interesting, stop here and go see it and then come back and either agree/disagree with me on the stuff below. This is your warning... Beyond this point, there by prickly spoilers.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

If you've ever studied folklore with any seriousness, you know that Grimm's Fairytales are full of sex, mayhem, psychological darkness and some truly heinous social shite that really didn't deserve to be handed down for generation after generation. Good writers? Sure. Sometimes. Important work in terms of the canon of western entertainment and culture? Of course. But, lord almighty, read any deeper than a wishing well and those are some weird, troubling messages down in the depths.

"Sleeping Beauty," or, as the Grimms titled it, "Little Briar Rose," is simply awful. Again, if you've done any exegesis of folklore (especially the Grimms), you'll know that it's chock full o' sexual symbolism. Go read the original (well, the translation) at the link above. It's short.

The message? In brief, the "curse" of the thirteenth fairy (the one in black) is, of course, the "curse" of menstruation. That horrible, ugly, filthy, burden that God has placed on the daughter's of Eve ever since she caused the fall of man. The curse arrives, of course, with blood and the arrival of adulthood. This curse sets up a wall of thorns that, for 100 years, protect the sleeping beauty from men who would claim her as their own. Eventually, the curse is broken -- interestingly, in the original, NOT by the kiss of true love, but simply be the odometer of time -- and the kingdom can go on about its business while the random hero whose timing was right gets to marry the princess and enjoy her post-thorny beauty.

Classic stuff. Girls as victims of nature and whim. Exploration as danger. The discovery of "women's work" (spinning) as the trigger for a fugue state between pure childhood and the sexual duties of a grown-up. Men -- even a random man whose only virtue is being there at the right time -- as the answer.

It's a crappy narrative from a misogynistic time that didn't deserve the effort the 1959 Disney film put into it. But it was free, public-domain writing for Disney to pilfer (that's another rant), and so we got a decent animated classic with a bit more meat on the bones, spruced up for the American audience of the time. But the central message was left largely the same, more's the pity.

Not so with today's "Maleficent."

So much better. So, so, so much better. So much more complex, so much more heart, so much more thoughtful and -- if I had a daughter -- so much more appropriate for a modern look at some of the themes treated casually and superficially (and sexist-ly) by the original. Here come the spoilers, kids...

In this version, Maleficent starts with wings. Great, big, beautiful wings that let her fly all over her the fae lands of which she is not the queen... but sort of the leading cheerleader. The kingdom next door is run by a king who's a simple, European flavor of conquering asshole, and he wants the moorlands (the faerie kingdom) for his own.

Maleficent, a girl at the start of the film, meets a young boy from the human world, and they become friends. When he learns that the iron in his ring can hurt her, he throws it away as a gesture of his friendship. Over time, they become closer, and share what Maleficent believes is "true love's kiss" at the age of sixteen.

However... The king, having tried once to overthrow the moorlands (serviceable action-set-piece Ents vs. Knights), promises that whomever vanquishes Maleficent will be his heir. And so Stefan, eager to rise from his place as a servant, drugs the trusting Maleficent. At the last moment, he cannot quite kill her... but cuts her wings from her instead, bringing them back to the evil old king as proof of valor and coin of reward. He is made king, and given the princess' hand in marriage.

The scene where Maleficent wakes up and realizes her wings are gone is shockingly stark and brutal for a Disney film. We do not see the actual butchery, but Jolie's shrieks of, first, shock and surprise and, eventually, horror and pain over what has happened to her are, essentially, those of a rape victim. She has had the source of her joy and power severed by the man she thought loved her, and she descends into darkness and revenge almost immediately.

Hearing those screams, you know, "This ain't your daddy's Sleeping Beauty."

Her pain and anger transform the faerie kingdom from a land of bright, amusing hi-jinx into a dark, sinister wood of grief and shame. When, years later, she hears that Stefan and his queen are expecting a daughter, she goes and lays upon the girl the curse we know so well from the original. Although, in this case, she (not another fairy) is the one who mitigates it with the codicil, "The curse may be broken by true love's kiss." This, she makes clear to her crow-familiar, is irony: there is no such thing as true love, and so the curse will remain in place forever.

The king, trying to prevent fate, adheres to the original, hiding the spinning wheels and sending his daughter, Aurora (an interesting name choice, compared to "Briar Rose" from the original) to be raised by the three "good" (read: charmingly eccentric) fairies so that she won't be able to prick her finger and trigger the curse.

Maleficent, of course, cannot help but spy on the baby/child/teen's life, and, over time, becomes more and more enamored of the girl. She brings her food when the three ninnies give the baby raw vegetables, saves her from wandering over a cliff, and generally keeps trouble off the girl's path. When, at sixteen, Aurora goes to the wall of thorns and calls out to her unnamed benefactress, she (Aurora) claims that she has known all along that her "fairy godmother" was the "shadow" watching over her. Maleficent acknowledges the fact, and the two become, openly, friends.

Skip forward a bit through some emotion-building scenes... and a prince from another land wanders by to be smitten by the girl's beauty. Check. Set up for true love's kiss.

Maleficent tries to break her own curse a few days before the girl's sixteenth birthday, but can't... her original need for revenge was too strong. Instead, after Aurora (discovering that Maleficent is the source of the curse) goes back to the castle, Maleficent magics the prince behind her (ironically, in a spell-bound sleep which lasts far longer than the eventual nap Aurora will take) and deposits him in the castle.

The prince, prodded by the good fairies, kisses Aurora and... nothing. "You see?" says Maleficent to her crow... "It is as I told you. There is no such thing as true love."

You see where this is going, don't you? Of course you do.

Maleficent, truly saddened by her own earlier act, bids goodby to her god-daughter, promising to keep her safe and "miss your smile" every day of her life. Tears in her eyes, she kisses the girl on the cheek and... yup. That's true love's kiss.

Not the random act of prince-ness. Not the man who waded through various symbolic brambles and menstrual yuckiness. Not the guy in charge of providing the next generation's batch of little princes... the woman whom her father had disfigured and raped before she was born.

Cue big fight, which, well... we need, of course. The crow becomes a dragon, King Stephan is even more brutal and awful. Aurora discovers the case where Stefan kept Maleficent's wings and frees them. They reattach and she is restored to her flying prowess. She and Stefan fight on the tower of the castle, and, in defeat, he grabs her in a bear-hug and jumps off the edge. If he can't win, at least they will both lose. Maleficent frees herself at the last minute and hovers, somewhat sad, over the lifeless body of the man who had once set aside iron in the name of friendship.

Aurora moves back to the woods, which go back to being colored like a Disney movie instead of an Edward Gorey book. She's made queen of both lands, the briars come down, and everyone lives happily ever after. I was a little disappointed that the new prince showed up just long enough to make a kind of, "Hey... Maybe later?" face at Aurora, who batted her eyes a bit and looked OK with the idea. Yeah, yeah... Princess needs a prince... I guess. But I'm sure, at one point, the idea was tossed around that there didn't need to be a prince, really. The End...

SO, SO, ***SO*** MUCH BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL!!!!

I'm going to assume that we owe all this chunky, girl-power, feminist goodness to Linda Woolverton, the main writer on the film. She's worked on a number of Disney films, and so knows her oeuvre very well, almost meticulously sticking to language and plot that, while new to the story, never feel out-of-place or non-Disney. That's a hard row to hoe, people. Many props to her for really, really hitting this one out of the theme park.

For those of you who didn't spend four years doing postmodern, textual deconstruction, here are the main, symbolic points of the new version that make me inordinately happy:

Maleficent's power is not, originally, evil. She is a natural creature, using her magic to help heal and inspire others. She is the joy of being a girl with wings.

An act of male-power-base barbarism and really brutal violence causes her to lose the part of her power that provides freedom, perspective and the ability to move among worlds. That's a big deal. She still has lots of magic... but now it's all about protection (from the evil kings) and revenge.

Stefan does this solely for worldly power. Maleficent, upon hearing that he's been made king, cries out in rage and confusion, "For this you stole my wings!"

The second victim -- the daughter, Aurora -- becomes the vehicle by which Maleficent lets go of her hatred. Watching and protecting her, as mother-to-daughter, is what heals her heart.

Aurora herself isn't just a stick-figure. She asks questions, makes conclusions and takes some action.

Aurora's actual mother sickens and dies when her girl is removed from her life. For the king, a daughter is only as good as her ability to whelp heirs and attract suitable suitors. The mother of the princess is, in the absence of the political vehicle of her daughter, useless.

The king becomes obsessed with killing Maleficent, although that won't break the curse. Knowing what he does of the power of iron to harm the fae folk, he turns over the entire production of his economy to the creation of iron weapons. While the visual imagery used isn't (thankfully) too phallic... "hard iron" being cast to kill the powerful she-witch isn't exactly subtle stuff, either.

The "evil" faerie queen isn't a Man-Hating-She-Bitch. Her familiar is, while not an equal, a friend who eventually seems more like a buddy than a servant. The Ent-like tree warriors have a fairly male vibe, and Maleficent respects them as the guardians they are. The new prince is heralded as a possible way to save Aurora, and Maleficent treats him... well... not with much respect, but certainly with some affection.

There's all kinds of chewy, allegorical goodness in here. We truly sympathize with Maleficent's anger and wish for revenge. We see Stefan's lust for power as a destructive thing, both at the personal and kingdom-level of badness. We like watching Maleficent's heart melted by the baby/girl/teen and enjoy her interplay with her crow.

It's truly great stuff. And has, at its heart, the benefit of being true to the way the world actually works, rather than a simplistic, moralistic, misogynistic (ahem) fairy tale. The world is a worse place when men let their lust for power drive them to acts of violence and degradation. The reward is never worth the price, personally. There is healing to be had in forgiveness. There is, finally, "true love" for those who care for their daughters beyond keeping them pure as a vessel for the next generation of cruel tyrants.

You don't have to watch this movie as a feminist recast of the original to enjoy it. There's plenty of Disney-style fun and emotion to be had regardless. But if you give yourself just a moment to examine the delta between the female roles in the original and those in this remake... well, if you're anything like me, it will go from being a PG, family-friendly action-romp to a new classic with some important and relevant messages for mothers and daughters to share.

Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-70010648865200598802014-06-16T22:23:00.000-04:002014-06-16T22:23:33.363-04:00This tastes awful... try it. My review of "3 Days to Kill."I was at a restaurant once with Neil, one of my best friends of all time. I used to drink cola, so I ordered one and when it came, I was surprised that not only did it not taste like good cola, it did not taste like cola. It did not taste like food/beverage substance. It tasted like something that shouldn't be in your mouth at all. Like when you're a kid and you suck on a battery or if you inadvertently pop a piece of chalk in your mouth thinking it's a mint (note: I once saw an MD/PhD do that, so it's not so far-fetched).

I basically retched a bit, made a really bad face and a noise of some kind. Neil asked if I was OK and I said that, yes, I was, but... "This is awful! Try it!" And I pushed the cola across the table to Neil.

Who looked at me and said, "I'm your friend. Why would you want me to try something awful?"

Which is an excellent point. And one that I conceded to him immediately. There is no earthly reason why I should want someone I like to do something that I already know is bad/wrong or taste something that has more in common with cleaning products than actual beverage.

And yet... and yet...

There's something there, right? When you see or hear or smell or taste something that isn't just bad... but out of the realm of normal for that thing. To make sure that you're not insane. To confirm with someone whose opinion you value that, yes, indeed, that cola tastes like the inside of a a shoe that's been used to house a hamster for a couple months.

There's something there. Right? Right. And that's why I want you to go, right now, and watch the movie "3 Days to Kill." To confirm for me that, yes... it's that strangely awful. That it's not just a kinda sad excuse for an old man's spy flick... but that it really, truly is differently bad.

If you need a bit more convincing, my wife agrees with me. This tastes awful. You should try it.

Our boy is out of the house for five nights at camp, so we got Chinese food and streamed the movie from Amazon. I figured... Kevin Costner. OK. He's easy to watch. I usually like him. Luc Besson was one of the writers. OK... he's done some fun stuff. But what started out as a kind of... disappointingly cookie-cutter old/ex spy flick turned into something very, very close to theater of the absurd. Please note: I am now going to spoil the movie. So if you want to watch it and be surprised, stop reading. I guarantee, however, that your enjoyment will not be diminished by knowing what's coming. Because, like finding a post-it note on your plate beneath the piece of key lime pie you just finished, knowing it's there only makes you more curious about... what the hell? Here are some thing that happen in this movie, in no particular order:

He is diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer that has metastasized to his lungs. I don't know if this is a real thing, and I'm not sure why it wasn't just lung cancer. There was no reason why it shouldn't just be lung cancer, except...

A sexy CIA agent (who seems to be 22 or so) offers him an expensive, experimental drug that might save him or give him more time than the 3-5 months the doctor predicts.

The experimental drug causes seizures that can be alleviated with vodka.

I am not kidding.

The main bad guys are "The Albino" (who is an albino), and "The Wolf," (who is not a wolf).

Still not kidding.

Elevator decapitation

A family of charming Jamaican (I think?) squatters living in his house. Whom he threatens, then allows to stay. Until the grown daughter has a baby. That is then named after him; Ethan.

Subway decapitation.

Going on a nice daddy/daughter date on carnival swings and for cocoa, followed directly by daughter going to a club where she's roofied and nearly gang raped. After which dad teachers her how to ride a bike.

After which, at some point, dad teaches her how to dance in preparation for her prom... to the song, "I'd like to make it with you."

Applying a car battery to a fellow's ears to torture information out of him, and later asking the same man for advice about how to raise a daughter.

Threatening to torture another man and then asking him to describe, over the phone to his daughter, a recipe for Italian spaghetti sauce.

There's more. There's a very odd moment where the sexy CIA agent is telling him that, "You must not stop until you kill the Wolf," but the words, "the Wolf" are really, really badly dubbed in. Like, you can see her saying, "My koala bear," but the sounds that come out are, "The Wolf."

At some point, I began hoping that this whole film was an "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" thing. Or an art piece. That there'd be a bit at the end where we'd find out that it was all a fever dream while he's in the hospital waiting to die. Because he gets his wife back, of course. After killing 20 or so guys at his daughter's boyfriends father's partner's pre-prom party while she (daughter) blithely has romantic eye-contact with the boyfriend in a room two doors down from the killin'. Because, of course, his daughter's boyfriend's father's partner is... The Wolf!

But there's no twist. It just ends like so many other thrillers, with a kind of shrug/grin about all the killing, a promise to try harder, and a pull-away shot of the sexy CIA agent watching over the beach house and nodding knowingly.

It's fantastically bad. Partly because the actors are really quite good. The cinematography is good. It's got budget. It's got well choreographed fight scenes. For fuck sake, it's got Kevin Costner. Who, while not 1982 Kevin Costner, is still not 2014 Mickey Rourke.

So... I honestly suggest that while this tastes awful... you should try it. I'm truly glad I watched it all the way through. It's like an outfit you see on a mannequin that you think must be a joke... but you need to spend 15 minutes finding a clerk to reassure you and... no. No joke. The ensemble is available for purchase.

On a scale of 1-5 stars, I'd rate this movie "Frosted Donkey."

Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-35674441191498713072014-02-02T14:14:00.001-05:002014-02-02T14:18:12.486-05:00Poetry n' stuffAs part of my four-day weekend of actually doing some stuff that I've meant to for awhile (changing the CMS for my resume and old consulting sites, and switching this blog to Blogger from WordPress), I've moved my poetry from various writing/sharing sites on the web to here. See links in the sidebar. Since Blogger only allows 20 non-post blog pages, I've ganged poems together under some randomly named pages.

You can take a look at The Whole Dang List or Page Eggplant, Page Mighty Mouse, Page Humidor, Page Charlemagne and Page Mitosis. Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-65135792166912584692014-01-31T22:49:00.002-05:002014-01-31T22:49:44.276-05:00Conversion experienceI started TinkerX in 2005. I'd been blogging for a couple years about legal marketing, and when I started working at OCLC, I wanted a place to do non-work writing, so this was it. I enjoyed doing the initial setup with WordPress, and liked playing around with the various templates and settings.

Then comment spam took over.

This is a modest blog. To say it is a modest blog is possibly even a great overstatement... or understatement. What I mean is that I don't have lots of readers. Maybe only a few. I had a couple posts with 10+ comments, but mostly none. That's OK. I chiefly do this for myself. I was deeply glad that one of my posts, on the game "My Team, Your Team," was turned into, "The Superest" book... but that was the height of its fame.

Not lots of readers. But lots of lots of comment spam.

In the last year, since the last time I did a comment purge, I had more than 32,000 spam comments waiting in the queue. And, at a point int he past, before WordPress anti-spam stuff caught up with the volume, about 20,000 had managed to sneak through and get posted to the blog without my consent.

About every six months, it gets so bad and the security issues with WordPress (and, to be fair, other self-publishing tools/services) so compromised, that my web host makes it mandatory to update to a newer version of WordPress or SQL (the database behind the scenes) or PHP (the code). That's a pain in the ass for a blog that's mostly supposed to be for me to just randomly spew about movies or poetry or the weather.

So I converted it to Blogger, which is what you're seeing now. To my great sorrow, however, in order to convert the posts, I had to drop ALL the comments, because the volume was so high that they made the export file from WordPress waaaaay to big to import into Blogger.

Meaning: the fake comments from spammers (may they rot in hell) killed the few comments from real people. Comments that made me happy, because it meant that someone was reading my junk and getting something out of it. Comments that had some thought and humor. Comments from friends, family and lovely strangers.

Perhaps this is a good reminder that everything is, after all, ephemeral.

Perhaps it's just another example of how a few shitheads tend to ruin it for the rest of us.

Perhaps I'm over thinking it.

Anyway... Perhaps having this blog hosted by Google -- who does a pretty damn good job keeping spam out of my email -- will mean I blog more often and get some new comments and make some new friends.

Perhaps.Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-44194595596364491142012-05-07T17:07:00.000-04:002014-02-01T13:52:04.852-05:00GolemHe does not love her.
He loves a volume of space
shaped just like her,
filled with [

shed dander clips cuts shredded gift voodoo
scented soap fetishes crink nipple eye lock
fashion skin scraps
pinched laughter traps
bone shadows
black hollows
fake numbers
lost tatts
cloudy
flirts

] need.Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-69162936374885370842012-05-06T17:52:00.000-04:002014-02-01T13:49:45.037-05:00The ABC's of job hunting for designers: D = Direction[See previous post for intro and ABC. See here for the Google Doc version of the whole tham ding.]

"D" is for "Direction"

The most important quote for marketing, imho, and when looking for a job is from "Alice in Wonderland:"

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" [said Alice]

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat."I don't much care where," said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

Or as a VP of mine used to say: "If you succeed, and you don't know why, it's an accident and probably won't happen again. If you fail and don't know why, you've learned nothing... and that's just a waste of everybody's time."

I'm not saying you need to know what you want to be when you grow up before hunting for a job to keep the wolves at bay. I'm saying you need to have a plan for even the most random-ass job search or you won't get anywhere, except somewhere random ass and less interesting/profitable than you'd probably like.

So here are some very tangible, very measurable things you can do to help at least face in some direction when searching for a job:

Set written goals based on this list and any other activities you hear about. Lots of people know more than me. Write down what they say.

Get a friend to keep you honest. Tell him/her/them what your goals are. Ask them to beat you with a frisbee if you don't do what you said you'd do.

Write down all the possible different job titles for all the different jobs you might possibly accept. This will help you when doing job searches online. Keep the list updated with new titles you find during your search. This will help you learn what other people call what you want to do.

Write down the names of twenty (at least) companies that you think you might want to work for. This will help you check their websites every week for job openings (some of which you won't find on the Monsters of the world).

Contact the HR departments of each of those companies. Explain you're searching for a job and that you find the idea of working at their company something to aspire to. Ask for their advice on how to best present yourself for future jobs. Don't ask for a job at that point; you're making a new friend, not pimping (yet). Ask what you can do to make yourself more attractive as a candidate. Ask if you can stop by sometime and meet with them and/or get a brief tour. You are doing all this in order to have someone at the company besides the hiring manager of a future job as a contact there. HR people are good at this. They want you to like their company, and they want to help you get a job, even if it's somewhere else... because their stock-in-trade is referrals. They might send your resume to someone you've never considered, because they're better at thinking about jobs like that. Do this until you've got contacts at all 20 (or more) companies. Then make a point to re-contact each HR person you've heard from at least every 3 months. Or if you know of someone else who might fit a position they've got posted. Think about the relationship from their point of view.

Go back and do that last thing. Seriously. If there's one tip I have on this list that will bear fruit, it's the cultivating HR friends thing.

Set some stretch goals. If you find you're getting comfortable sending out 3 resumes a day, try doubling that.

Have both a "designer-y" resume and a "boring Word resume" available. Art directors and heads of agencies will want to see the pretty-pretty one. HR people want the Word one.

Think about the next job. Not the one you're going for, but the boss of that one. Look for those positions in the job listings, too. If they're hiring a new art director, odds are they'll be asking him/her to hire some designers. When you find those jobs, add them to your HR contact list from above.

Looking for a job is a job. Most jobs provide helpful people called "bosses" who set directions for you. While looking for work, you're your own boss... which basically sucks. I know. I've done it. I'm sorry... there's no help for it. Get together with a group of friends once a week and report what steps you've taken. Celebrate with each other, even if you don't have jobs, or don't have the one you want. Why? Because you're a designer... a creative person living in the Age of Content. You rock and your talent will be rewarded.

Sooner rather than later, if you set yourself some directions.Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-87377087268133674762012-03-31T05:36:00.000-04:002014-02-01T13:50:08.836-05:00ABC's of Job Hunting for Designers: Intro and ABCI've now given a talk on job hunting for designers about... five times. I like the talk. It's smooth, goes down easy, and leaves a pleasant aftertaste (I'm told). So at this point, why not serialize it on the Web? It's all my wisdom on how designers can help themselves get into a new or better job faster, and prepare for a lifetime of doing work they'd rather be doing. And because we need to have info delivered to us in reasonably edible chunks, I broke my thoughts up into 17 groups and stacked 'em around the alphabet. So we'll put these up one at a time and see if folks find them helpful.

These tips are not meant to be exhaustive or fool-proof, obviously... but they also conform to the main rule of the Hypocratic Oath: first, do no harm. I don't think any of these ideas can hurt your job search. Many of them just make sense... but aren't regularly applied.

Anyway... good luck on your job search. The document version of all these tips is available as an open Google Doc here: http://tinyurl.com/ABCjobs4designers. So if you need something portable, give that a whirl.

ABC = Always Be Creating

Please note that I did not say, "Always be creative." Everyone is creative (that's another set of blog posts, I think). You need to always be creating things, though, if you want to earn a living as a designer. If your day gig doesn't let you (which may happen), you need to do it on your own time. If your day gig forces you to be minimally creative in ways that seem to deaden your soul while actively making your artistic spirit hurt... same thing. Go home and be one with your canvas, clay, charcoal, ukulele, dancing, etc. You need to keep doing stuff or your creativity will wither and die.

That's the real difference, I think, between people who say that they're not creative and those of us who believe we are: doing it.

When you're trying to sell yourself as a designer, you will invariably be interviewed by one of two types of people: another creative person, or a non-creative (business person, manager, etc.). Here's the thing -- in both cases, you need to be doing interesting creative things to impress them.

Why? Because if the other person is a creative, they get it. They understand how hard it is to remain inspired and purposeful in our arts. And they want to work with someone who can do that and who, maybe, might even rub off on them a bit. I have met very few truly creative people who are jealous of other creatives' talents and achievements: we tend to be impressed and supportive of them, since they are often unique.

[Note: that's a difference between some people who are very money-oriented and those who are more creative/art oriented. A buck is a buck is a buck. If your business activity made $2 and I made $4, I'm twice as good as you. Doesn't work that way with creativity. There is no zero sum: we can both be twice as creative and can use that to inspire each other, not take away.]

The other kind of people -- those who generally believe themselves to be non/less creative -- are always super impressed by our hobbies, our ongoing learning/dedication to craft, the outputs of that, how we externalize our muse. It's like magic to many people.

So... either way, you want to be able to talk about stuff you're working on, even if you're not working. Some of it should, obviously, be related to what you want to do for a living... but it doesn't all have to be. Lots of it can be only marginally related, but it shows that you are dedicated to improving the artistic center of yourself, which is really what you're selling when you're trying to get a gig: your ability to create.

Some specific thoughts on how to stay creative when you're not working (or when you are, but aren't being particularly challenged/stimulated):

If you've gone two weeks without learning something new about your craft(s), do something about it

Improve design around you

Do work for free; church, civic organizations, family, friends

Put yourself on a schedule for trying/creating new things: one new (whatever) per day, week, month. Set goals and stick to them (or do them ahead of time)

When I first developed this presentation, for example, and decided to organize it around the alphabet, I decided to learn new Photoshop tricks for each of the slides' main graphics. So even though all the slides are, essentially, just letters, I made myself do more than just illustrate the letters in ways I already understood. Do a search on "Photoshop tricks" and you'll find about a bzillion responses. I did that, found about 15 that I thought looked cool, and worked them into the slide graphics. They're not fantastic graphics or stunning pieces of art... but the process helped my learn Photoshop that much better.

Some resources that might help provide inspiration:

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/

www.visual-literacy.org

http://krazydad.com/colrpickr/

www.mrpicassohead.com/create.html

http://drawn.ca/

www.smashingmagazine.com

So your homework for today is: pick a project. Something you haven't done before. If you haven't written poetry, go do that. If you can design a logo for something weird in your life (your pet, lunchbox, pet's lunchbox), do that. But, today, figure out what the next thing you'll create should be. And then get to work.Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-60146508640743035642012-03-11T17:45:00.000-04:002014-02-01T13:52:14.935-05:00New poem: Alone or Dark
Alone or Dark

Heisenberg is not your friend.
Would you want, in the end, to know
both

where?
and
when?

No such luck. Bend
to see the object, hot and bright,
of your desire. Your movement
changes light. Your eye, warm metal,
glides like wind. Unseen but stiff enough
to stretch and send dry leaves against
the wooden fence. A scratch heard faintly
by the one you stalk.

Walk
slowly, softly past.
The warmth of want
will alter orbits, warp fine lines
and change the curve and comfort of her path.Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-72597437702553839802011-12-17T14:17:00.000-05:002014-01-31T21:23:10.681-05:00The unhealthy love at the root of our economic ruin[This post is based on a comment I made to a Facebook friend, where he'd asked, "Is there anything good and/or hopeful in the current economy?" My reply was shorter than this, but basically makes the same point]

A reason for hope in this economy? Yes. I think there is. I'm beginning to see signs that people are wakening to realization that the real question is not "how much?" but "why?" when it comes to the idea that money is the quintessential measure of human value.

Since the Baby Boomers hit adulthood (see: Yuppies, Reagan, "The Secret of My Success"), there has been (mostly from the Right, but also from the technocratic left) a growing belief that the chief purpose of being an American is to contribute economically. Perhaps it is even the sole purpose. Success as a human is a measurement of wealth, and vice versa.

The kids of the Boomers are now becoming young adults, and have grown up seeing how this attitude affects their parents; divorce, depression, disillusionment. I've read a couple articles about how Boomer parents, having raised their kids to be super-achievers, are surprised to learn that their children want to do things related to community, education, non-profits, service, etc.

Let's get one thing straight before this goes any further: I am a capitalist. I believe in the free market, venture capitalism, the general sensibility of the model and the idea that people should benefit from their work. I believe that the universe is unfair, and that it is not the job of the government to even everything out. I don't want the government involved in any area of my life where I'd be better off on my own or working with folks in the private sector who have their own reasons -- economic or otherwise -- for being involved. That being said, I do think that we're all better off when we cooperate on certain large-scale projects that have national or very widespread influence. We can argue about which of those projects is sensible -- armed forces, healthcare, education, highways, etc. -- but I don't hear anyone sensible arguing that we need no government; just that we need smart government.

So what's my beef? If I like capitalism and I like money (and I do), why would a benefit of a shitty economy be the realization that money ain't the be-all and end-all of existence? Is it just sour grapes on a class level? Moral justification or compensation for being less well-off than we thought we be? I don't think so. I think it's deeper than that.

Money, as we know, is useful stuff. I like my gadgets as much as anyone. When we look at the Cold War, we can see lots of justifications for our economic model vs. socialism; money helps not just be a counter in the game, but it's the score. If a company can build the same product for less money, it's doing something better. That's the basic idea of a market economy.

Again: no argument that money and capitalism is good. But it's not the only good, and it certainly isn't the chief good. Why? Here's the first quotable moment for you:

When the central idea of a country -- or a life -- becomes fixated on economic value, we greatly reduce our potential for learning, friendship, creativity and joy.

Example: I think that the Web is, at its heart, a wonderfully enabling technology across many levels of participation. Yes, it helps giants like Amazon be more efficient. But it also lets me, personally, do all kinds of things that have nothing to do with making myself (or, really, anybody else) rich.

I've made new friends on these here tubes . I've written more poetry in the last 10 years than in the previous 20 before that, chiefly because I have found people to share it with. I used Lulu/Amazon to layout and print my father's book of meditations before he died, which was a great happiness to him and our family.

None of these things has anything to do with being wealthier. A couple of them cost me a few bucks, but I never did any of them with the idea of making more money.

The Web helps us realize: we are more than the sum of our bank accounts.

Wall Street, Washington and Hollywood are scared of us figuring that out; hence all the DRM, "three strikes," SOPA nonsense. If we find more and more ways to be content, productive, accountable, flexible, transparent, engaged, creative, vocal and -- dare I say, happy -- that do not involve spending money, they lose a hold on us. They lose power and the ability to monetize our self worth.

Part of the current reaction to our growing income inequality isn't just "it's not fair that you have so much and I/we/they don't," but another, more visceral objection: "It's not doing you any damned good to be that rich. It's toxic. It's stupid. It's not making you happy, and the systems you've set up to defend your inexplicably unhealthy attitude are robbing others of some really important stuff like education, health, human rights and basic economic security."

My Dad, the shrink, used to say, "Neurotics build castles in the air. Psychotics live in them." For the last 30 years or so, we've been operating on a collective neurosis that says money is what makes an individual worthwhile, what makes our nation great, and is what deserves authority. What we've begun to see in the last few years is how that neurosis -- which manifests in a variety of unhealthy ways for those suffering from the disorder -- has progressed to psychosis: a loss of contact with reality. And when those with the most economic power are enabled to act on their delusions, they impact us all.

Cue the second quotable bit:

 It's one thing to make the argument that my riches are more important than yours. It's another to defend the idea that maintaining my psychoses takes precedence over your basic welfare.

That's what we're seeing in the OWS movement; a questioning of the basic order of systems that no longer make sense unless you buy into a highly structured, almost magical set of rationalizations about money. This isn't class warfare; nobody is saying it's bad to be rich. What we're saying is that it's unhealthy to try to frame every challenge in terms of promoting personal (and corporate), monetary wealth. Let's look at some examples:

Newt Gingrich's <a href="[This post is based on a comment I made to a Facebook friend, where he'd asked, "Is there anything good and/or hopeful in the current economy?" My reply was shorter than this, but basically makes the same point] A reason for hope in this economy? Yes. I think there is. I'm beginning to see signs that people are wakening to realization that the real question is not "how much?" but "why?" when it comes to the idea that money is the quintessential measure of human value. Since the Baby Boomers hit adulthood (see: Yuppies, Reagan, "The Secret of My Success"), there has been (mostly from the Right, but also from the technocratic left) a growing belief that the chief purpose of being an American is to contribute economically. Perhaps it is even the sole purpose. Success as a human is a measurement of wealth, and vice versa. The kids of the Boomers are now becoming young adults, and have grown up seeing how this attitude affects their parents; divorce, depression, disillusionment. I've read a couple articles about how Boomer parents, having raised their kids to be super-achievers, are surprised to learn that their children want to do things related to community, education, non-profits, service, etc. Let's get one thing straight before this goes any further: I am a capitalist. I believe in the free market, venture capitalism, the general sensibility of the model and the idea that people should benefit from their work. I believe that the universe is unfair, and that it is not the job of the government to even everything out. I don't want the government involved in any area of my life where I'd be better off on my own or working with folks in the private sector who have their own reasons -- economic or otherwise -- for being involved. That being said, I do think that we're all better off when we cooperate on certain large-scale projects that have national or very widespread influence. We can argue about which of those projects is sensible -- armed forces, healthcare, education, highways, etc. -- but I don't hear anyone sensible arguing that we need no government; just that we need smart government. So what's my beef? If I like capitalism and I like money (and I do), why would a benefit of a shitty economy be the realization that money ain't the be-all and end-all of existence? Is it just sour grapes on a class level? Moral justification or compensation for being less well-off than we thought we be? I don't think so. I think it's deeper than that. Money, as we know, is useful stuff. I like my gadgets as much as anyone. When we look at the Cold War, we can see lots of justifications for our economic model vs. socialism; money helps not just be a counter in the game, but it's the score. If a company can build the same product for less money, it's doing something better. That's the basic idea of a market economy. Again: no argument that money and capitalism is good. But it's not the only good, and it certainly isn't the chief good. Why? Here's the first quotable moment for you: When the central idea of a country -- or a life -- becomes fixated on economic value, we greatly reduce our potential for learning, friendship, creativity and joy. Example: I think that the Web is, at its heart, a wonderfully enabling technology across many levels of participation. Yes, it helps giants like Amazon be more efficient. But it also lets me, personally, do all kinds of things that have nothing to do with making myself (or, really, anybody else) rich. I've made new friends on these here tubes . I've written more poetry in the last 10 years than in the previous 20 before that, chiefly because I have found people to share it with. I used Lulu/Amazon to layout and print my father's book of meditations before he died, which was a great happiness to him and our family. None of these things has anything to do with being wealthier. A couple of them cost me a few bucks, but I never did any of them with the idea of making more money. The Web helps us realize: we are more than the sum of our bank accounts. Wall Street, Washington and Hollywood are scared of us figuring that out; hence all the DRM, "three strikes," SOPA nonsense. If we find more and more ways to be content, productive, accountable, flexible, transparent, engaged, creative, vocal and -- dare I say, happy -- that do not involve spending money, they lose a hold on us. They lose power and the ability to monetize our self worth. Part of the current reaction to our growing income inequality isn't just "it's not fair that you have so much and I/we/they don't," but another, more visceral objection: "It's not doing you any damned good to be that rich. It's toxic. It's stupid. It's not making you happy, and the systems you've set up to defend your inexplicably unhealthy attitude are robbing others of some really important stuff like education, health, human rights and basic economic security." My Dad, the shrink, used to say, "Neurotics build castles in the air. Psychotics live in them." For the last 30 years or so, we've been operating on a collective neurosis that says money is what makes an individual worthwhile, what makes our nation great, and is what deserves authority. What we've begun to see in the last few years is how that neurosis -- which manifests in a variety of unhealthy ways for those suffering from the disorder -- has progressed to psychosis: a loss of contact with reality. And when those with the most economic power are enabled to act on their delusions, they impact us all. Cue the second quotable bit: It's one thing to make the argument that my riches are more important than yours. It's another to defend the idea that maintaining my psychoses takes precedence over your basic welfare. That's what we're seeing in the OWS movement; a questioning of the basic order of systems that no longer make sense unless you buy into a highly structured, almost magical set of rationalizations about money. This isn't class warfare; nobody is saying it's bad to be rich. What we're saying is that it's unhealthy to try to frame every challenge in terms of promoting personal (and corporate), monetary wealth. Let's look at some examples: Newt Gingrich's recent I get the feeling that lots (most) of the people I care about feel this way: money ain't the center of our lives. That it has become the center of our republic is a kind of national schizophrenia that, I hope, we are beginning to recognize and can treat. There are signs that people are wakening to realize that the real question is not "how much?" but "why?" when it comes to the idea that money is the quintessential measure of human value. Since the Baby Boomers hit adulthood (see: Yuppies, Reagan, "The Secret of My Success"), there has been (mostly from the Right, but also from the technocratic left) a growing belief that the purpose of being an American is to contribute economically. Perhaps the sole purpose. Success is a measurement of wealth, and vice versa. The kids of the Boomers are now becoming young adults, and have grown up seeing how this affects their parents; divorce, depression, disillusionment. I've read a couple articles about how Boomer parents, having raised their kids to be super-achievers, are surprised to learn that their children want to do things related to community, education, non-profits, service, etc. I got no problem with money. It's useful stuff, and like my gadgets as much as anyone. But when the central idea of a country -- or a life -- is economic, you so greatly reduce our potential for joy, learning, friendship, creation. So: hope. I think that the Web is, at its heart, a wonderfully enabling technology across many levels of participation. Yes, it helps giants like Amazon be more efficient. But it also lets me, personally, do all kinds of things that have nothing to do with making myself (or, really, anybody else) rich. I've made new friends on these here tubes -- witness Bryan Alexander. I've written more poetry in the last 10 years than in the previous 20 before that, chiefly because I have found people to share it with. I used Lulu/Amazon to layout and print my father's book of meditations before he died, which was a great happiness to him and his family. We are more than the sum of our bank accounts. Wall Street, Washington and Hollywood are scared of us figuring that out; hence all the DRM, "three strikes," SOPA nonsense. If we find more and more ways to be content, productive, accountable, flexible, transparent, engaged, creative, vocal and -- dare I say, happy -- that do not involve spending money, they lose a hold on us. On top of all the primary meanings of the Occupy movement, one of the subtler, framing messages I kept seeing/feeling was this: those kids, out there in the snow in rain in tents, are having way, way, way more fun than the 1-percenters up in the boardrooms looking down on them. Part of the current reaction to the growing income inequality isn't just "it's not fair that you have so much and I/we/they don't," but another, more visceral objection: "It's not doing you any damned good to be that rich. It's toxic. It's stupid. It's not making you happy, and they systems you've set up to defend your inexplicably unhealthy attitude is robbing others of some really important stuff like education, health and basic economic security." It's one thing to make the argument that my riches are more important than yours. It's another to defend the idea that my psychosis is more important than your welfare. I get the feeling that lots of the people I care the most about feel this way: money ain't the center of our lives. That it is at the center of our republic is a kind of national schizophrenia that, I hope, we are beginning to recognize and can then treat.">recent ideas about child labor. What's most distressing to me is not that he thinks children should work, but the assumed ideal that work is the cure for what ails needy children. It's as if you went to your mom because you were being bullied, and she suggested you pay them off. It's a focus on economic value, even as a hallmark of development.

The Copyright Term Extension Act (aka, "The Mickey Mouse Extension Act"). In order to protect fictional works from possible loss of future profit, we borked the entire system that our Founding Fathers put in place -- the one that, you know, helped make the US one of the greatest hotbeds of invention in the history of the world.

Buckley v Valeo. Money = speech in terms of political contributions. For those of us who really believe in the inalienable rights of humans, this one is like a firecracker in the pants. How in heck can money be speech, if there are people (and companies) who have billions of times more wealth than others? It is entirely fair that money = power in terms of economic leverage. That's the point. If you have $100,000 you have the right to buy 100x more stuff than someone with $1,000. But the idea that you have the right to 100x more speech?

That last example is one of those truly bizarre judgments that begins to really point out how we've moved from a widespread, chronic neurosis (the idea that money is the most important thing) to an acute psychosis: those with this mental illness are making changes to the systems we all rely on in order to support their particular, flawed view of value, values and national identity.

I will take just a moment for a quick shout-out to my fellow Christians to ask the following:

Do you really believe this? Do you believe that God loves the rich more? Are you less of a worthwhile person if you have a job that you really enjoy, but that makes less money? Did you have children chiefly so that they would take care of you, monetarily, in your old age? Did you marry your spouse because he/she was a capable breadwinner and apt to provide good cost-benefit balance to the relationship? How often do you smile, laugh or feel warm about "money stuff?" Does spending it really make you happy? Does earning more of it give you particular pride? If, as Christians, we are meant to emulate Christ, can you point to one verse in the Bible that suggests he owned *anything* let alone was wealthy? Were His friends the well-off types? Did he ever say, "Blessed are the dough-makers, for they shall inherit major stock options?" I challenge anyone who calls themselves a Christian to back up the idea that money matters AT ALL to God, except in how we use it to help others.

We all know the end of this scripture, but here's all of 1 Timothy 6:7-10: For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

That's what we're seeing on our national and global stages: ruin and destruction, brought about by the temptations and traps of money-centric morality, philosophy and politics.

I've never cared that much about money. Like I said, I enjoy it. I'm glad I can earn a good living doing something I enjoy. But I truly believe that you can't buy happiness. Some recent research confirms this: beyond a certain point, having more money doesn't make you any happier.

I get the feeling that lots (most) of the people I care about feel this way: money ain't the center of our lives. That it has become the center of our republic is a kind of national schizophrenia that, I hope, we are beginning to recognize and can, therefore, treat.

There are signs that people are wakening to realize that the real question is not "how much?" but "why?" when it comes to the idea that money is the quintessential measure of human value.

Since the Baby Boomers hit adulthood (see: Yuppies, Reagan, "The Secret of My Success"), there has been (mostly from the Right, but also from the technocratic left) a growing belief that the purpose of being an American is to contribute economically. Perhaps the sole purpose. Success is a measurement of wealth, and vice versa.

The kids of the Boomers are now becoming young adults, and have grown up seeing how this affects their parents; divorce, depression, disillusionment. I've read a couple articles about how Boomer parents, having raised their kids to be super-achievers, are surprised to learn that their children want to do things related to community, education, non-profits, service, etc.

I got no problem with money. It's useful stuff, and like my gadgets as much as anyone. But when the central idea of a country -- or a life -- is economic, you so greatly reduce our potential for joy, learning, friendship, creation.

So: hope. I think that the Web is, at its heart, a wonderfully enabling technology across many levels of participation. Yes, it helps giants like Amazon be more efficient. But it also lets me, personally, do all kinds of things that have nothing to do with making myself (or, really, anybody else) rich.

I've made new friends on these here tubes -- witness Bryan Alexander. I've written more poetry in the last 10 years than in the previous 20 before that, chiefly because I have found people to share it with. I used Lulu/Amazon to layout and print my father's book of meditations before he died, which was a great happiness to him and his family.

We are more than the sum of our bank accounts.

Wall Street, Washington and Hollywood are scared of us figuring that out; hence all the DRM, "three strikes," SOPA nonsense. If we find more and more ways to be content, productive, accountable, flexible, transparent, engaged, creative, vocal and -- dare I say, happy -- that do not involve spending money, they lose a hold on us.

On top of all the primary meanings of the Occupy movement, one of the subtler, framing messages I kept seeing/feeling was this: those kids, out there in the snow in rain in tents, are having way, way, way more fun than the 1-percenters up in the boardrooms looking down on them.

Part of the current reaction to the growing income inequality isn't just "it's not fair that you have so much and I/we/they don't," but another, more visceral objection: "It's not doing you any damned good to be that rich. It's toxic. It's stupid. It's not making you happy, and they systems you've set up to defend your inexplicably unhealthy attitude is robbing others of some really important stuff like education, health and basic economic security."

It's one thing to make the argument that my riches are more important than yours. It's another to defend the idea that my psychosis is more important than your welfare.

I get the feeling that lots of the people I care the most about feel this way: money ain't the center of our lives. That it is at the center of our republic is a kind of national schizophrenia that, I hope, we are beginning to recognize and can then treat.

Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-46592254987563753842011-09-14T03:04:00.000-04:002014-01-31T21:23:10.671-05:00Geek out: the last pockets of geekLiz Danforth pointed me to the Speak Out with Your Geek Out project. I very much like the idea of people being open and proud of their geekery. It's a great idea and I encourage all my very geeky friends to add their voices to the mix.

I will say, though, that geekery isn't what it used to be. When I was growing up, it was hard to be a geek, nerd, etc. Harder than today, I think. And this isn't just a, "When I was a boy, gravity was heavier," kind of thing. Patton Oswald said it better than I could in his Wired article about ETEWAF (Everything There Ever Was, Available Forever). I'm also not sure that it's just an adult's pining for the past, or the fact that it is generally much easier to be an adult than a child or teen.

I was a geeky child... but as Patton says in his article, many of the things that set me apart as a geek are now much more mainstream. I liked Dungeons and Dragons. I was one of about nine kids in my HS class of 400 who did. Now something like 10 million people play WoW and another gazillion (including my son and I) play Magic the Gathering. I read Tolkien and Narnia by the 6th grade. I knew one other kid who had done so. Now every kid (and their parents) have read Harry Potter, the Twilight books, the Percy Jackson novels, Lemony Snicket, etc. I played computer/video games when all we had was the TRS-80. Everyone plays the Wii now, including my mom. I programmed computers when that was entirely weird, new, odd. I sang in chorus at school and choir at church and was routinely called a "music fag" by other kids because of it; now "Glee" is incredibly popular, as are all those various talent shows on TV.

As Patton says, I'm not sure if I should be glad because we, the geeks, won... or sad because the geeky kids of today don't have to try as hard at it, and therefore can't feel as much joyful, ironic separation from mainstream culture.

About the only two geeky things I did that still seem somewhat out-there to me are Latin and poetry. And I stopped studying Latin in college when it became clear that I was really very bad at it. Poetry, though I stuck with.

I'm not saying that kids don't take crap for off-kilter pursuits anymore. I'm sure many still do. And I'm not saying that something has to be socially shunned for a hobby or interest to qualify as geekery. You can geek out on something as "cool" as motorcycles, art films or cajun cooking. Being a geek is more, I think, about intense, inward-focused interest than giving a rat's ass either way what others think.

I'm just saying that it's very odd for me that when I tell my friends' teenage kids that I build and play mountain dulcimers, they routinely reply, "That's so cool! Can you show me how? Where can I get one?"

Hunh? First of all, you should be shunning your parents' friends. They are not cool; we are not cool. How did it happen that parents and teens now hang out? It started happening awhile ago. I played GURPS with some friends, and quite a few of their teen kids played with us. We all got along very well. The kids seemed pleased to be allowed into the mix, and the adults were glad to have a new generation to share and play with.

To repeat: hunh? When I was a kid, I had a great relationship with my parents. We did things together, sure. My dad and I loved bad movies and canoeing. That was OK. But having them hang out with my friends while we played Avalon Hill board games? Nope. No thanks. And I think my dad would have felt the same way.

Don't get me wrong; I'm pleased. My son and I play MTG with his friends. I think one of their dads plays, too. We should have a "generation wars" event [They already, Dan and his friends, arrange "Magic the Gathering Gatherings," which cracks me up]. I hope we can continue in this way all through middle and high school. It's nice to be friends with your kid and his friends. It's friendly.

But it, too, takes some of the shine off the geek thing, I think. It just seems too... normal? Happy? Well-adjusted? Functional?

So... I'm left with poetry. For years I didn't mention to people that I wrote poetry, because the face they usually made translated roughly to, "Oh. Sure. Well... you're not going to make me read it, are you?" Then, about fifteen years ago, I would bring it up once in awhile: still got a reaction as if I said that I liked to shave Disney characters into the fur on the back of my dog. Which, frankly, pleased me. As my other geeky pursuits became mainstream, having one, special, lonely thing that set me apart kind of felt... right.

I remember when, around 1995, I started talking about computer games around someone I'd just met and he said, "Oh, I'm a huge fan of 'Sid Meier's Civilization!" And I thought, "Wow. That was unexpected." Since then, I know all kinds of people who game. It's the new normal. Same for fantasy books, music and being computer geeks.

Poetry? Not so much. Once in awhile a student of mine will ask to share some poems they've worked on. Or I'll mention that I write to a friend and they'll confess that they, too, have sometimes dabbled. The people I actively talk about poetry with are ones I've met online in dedicated poetry forums.

Which, I need not remind you, didn't exist when we were kids. Unless, by "we," it turns out someone reading this is actually still a kid. Then... never mind.

Part of what has made me internally (to my mind) strong, morally consistent and emotionally hardy was that I'd spent so many years trying to reconcile the enjoyment I felt in my pursuits with the general disregard in which they were held by the world in general. In the main, I'm "glad we won." I'm glad that my kid can do geeky things without being picked on. That people can pursue a wide range of interests in very odd (seeming) corners, and find like-minded friends pretty easily on the Web. I know that bullying still happens, but it seems that it's more isolated and less tolerated.

But some strange, quiet, secret part of me still enjoys the fact that I get the, "Oh. You're a weirdo," look when I say, "I'm a poet." Not all the time. And less frequently these days. But it's still a joy, some days, to be a weirdo.

My hat's off to those kids (of any age) whose pursuits give them great pleasure, but make them targets of ridicule, abuse or just loneliness. You aren't alone. We were never alone. And we aren't now.

Take some comfort in the fact that your hardship will, one day, be the foundation of your joy.Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-17491909150186086572011-09-12T17:30:00.000-04:002014-01-31T21:23:10.664-05:00Chaos and order, cities and corporations, scaling and notNeat post from JP Rangaswami over at "Confused of Calcutta." I enjoy reading his stuff and he also gave a great ReadWriteWeb talk on gamification (that's mostly about other stuff... in a good way). One of the questions he poses is basically this: "Why do cities scale well, but corporations don't."

This goes back, in many ways, to the great bit from "Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision" by Stephen R. Donaldson that do so love to quote. It's long, but this is my blog, so there:

For convenience, history is often viewed as a conflict between the instinct for order and the impulse toward chaos. Both are necessary: both are manifestations of the need to survive. Without order, nothing exists: without chaos, nothing grows. And yet the struggle between them sheds more blood than any other war.

The instinct for order is an expression of humankind's devout desire for safety (which permits nurture), for stability (which permits education), for predictability (which permits one thing to be built on another)—for equations of cause and effect simple enough to be relied upon. Indeed, without resistance to change, growth itself would be impossible: resistance to change creates safe, stable predictable environments in which change can accumulate productively.

The instinct for order is therefore aggressive. It actively opposes any alteration of circumstance, any variation of perspective, any hostility of environment or intention. It fights to create and defend the conditions it seeks.

The impulse toward chaos is a manifestation of humankind's inbred knowledge that the best way to survive any danger is to run away from it. This instinct focuses on the resources of individual imagination and cunning, rather than on the potentialities of concerted action. Its most common overt expression involves an insistence upon self-determination (freedom from restriction), individual liberty (freedom from requirement) and nonconformity (freedom from cause and effect). However, such insistence is primarily a rationalization of the desire to flee—to survive by escape.

Therefore the impulse toward chaos is also aggressive. The very act of escape breaks down systems of order: it contradicts safety, avoids stability, defies cause and effect. Like the instinct for order, it fights to create and defend the conditions it seeks.

Nevertheless stability and predictability themselves would be impossible without chaos. Chaos exerts the pressure which requires order to shape itself accurately. Without accuracy, order would self-destruct as soon as it came into being.

For these reasons, the struggle between order and chaos is eternal, necessary—and extremely expensive.

Maybe corporations don't scale well because they are top-down, with an over reliance on order (management). Cities grow bottom-up, through chaos (craziness not just tolerated, but nurtured). Crazy = chaos. Management = order. Too much of either, you get no growth. Too much crazy = anarchy. Too much order = stagnation. Maybe corporations start out somewhat chaotic (at the level of entrepreneur), but order ends up being imposed on them both internally -- as we fight to maintain some kind of status quo -- or externally, as outside forces such as laws, competition, market changes and time push us into more rigid forms.

So... the question may be less, "Why don't corporations scale well?" and more, "How are cities different than individuals?"

It may be that looking at a corporation may be more like looking at any individual in a city. One person (or many) may (will) fail, fall sick or die in the process of a city's growth. We don't say, "The city is bad because it killed one person." And people (as animals) don't scale well. Maybe in this metaphor, the entire industry or the market or an entire economy is the city. And corporations are doomed to live and die, succeed and fail, more as individuals.

So... how do cities differ from individuals? Sounds like an odd question, but if corporations are more like people (and we call them corporations, eh?), maybe understanding the city vs. person dynamic would help corporations grow better/happier.

Perhaps cities scale better because they are made up of many more individuals with very different overlapping, intersecting goals. And those purposes touch/influence each other. In "Emergence" Steven Johnson talked about places like the salons of Europe and scientific coffee houses of the early Industrial Revolution; places where very diverse ideas got a chance to rub up together. Emergence -- that is, major intellectual growth -- needed a hothouse where very different types of thought had to jostle each other. If you read any of James Burke's books ("Connections" is a good start), you'll find that many great inventions were built out of odd, dissimilar mash-ups of ideas.

Which makes me wonder: would a company that did a few (or many) very different things end up doing them all very badly, or get remarkably better at some/all of them? And by very different, I mean like a software company also bottling fruit juice. Or a hospital also running a baseball team.

As long as I can remember reading about businesses, I've heard it accepted as God's truth that you shouldn't (as a company) try to do to many things. "Stick to your core competency," is pretty much gospel. And, "Pick one thing and be great at it." But what if you want your "one thing" not to be product, service or industry-specific... but passion-specific? Or artistic stance-specific? Or metaphor specific?

I read recently (can't remember where; sorry, would love to cite) that the reason Apple has done so well is that it didn't define itself as a "company that made computers," but as a "company that loves to please customers with great industrial design." OK... well... sure. And that's why they could make iEverything and do OK, because people went to that well for one thing -- good, human-centric design. Which could be manifested in desktop computers, laptops, phones, MP3 players, tablets, etc. You're not buying i[Thing]. You're buying design.

What if your company's main product was laughter? Or peace? Or (alternately) fear? Or relaxation? Let's take that last one for a spin...

If I wanted a company that produced relaxation, where would I start? Would I buy a successful bed or furniture company? Or license/produce some really mellow music? Or look into what foods are conducive to relaxation? Or which exercises/meditations work best? Well... I'd probably do all of those things. Eventually. Or work to tie together companies that did them in a way that increased relaxation for all their customers (who wanted to relax, that is). I would probably end up doing lots of very different things, from an industrial standpoint; but if everything I did helped my customers to be more relaxed... we all win. And maybe that would scale better, because it wouldn't rely solely on building more efficient beds or better/cheaper IP lawyers, or working with specific insurance companies. What we used to think of as specific products/services would become part of a more meta (sorry, you can't get a post this long from me without a "meta" thrown in) supply chain with something much less tangible, but much more... important?... vital?... interesting?... at its core.

Maybe corporations don't scale because they make their core competency a *thing* and not an *aspiration.* I do not mean this in any kind of soft-hearted, wishy-washy, hippy-dippy way. I'm not talking about "let's build a joy factory!" I'm talking about a hard-heated approach to a business where the main product... the main metrics... are more about an effect than a widget.

Maybe that's why Starbucks and Disney do so well. Starbucks is mostly about coffee, sure. But it's really about treating yourself to a mini vacation. So you can also get expensive little cookies there and off-beat CD's. And Disney isn't about any single product: it's about fun. Whether that's at the movies, the theme parks, the TV shows or through toys and games. Disney sells fun.

If that's the case, then many corporate metrics are measuring the wrong things. Efficiency is great (in the case of a city), when you're thinking about your commute. Good, fast, safe, short route. Lovely. But when it comes to... dating? Dining? Entertainment? Shopping? Architecture? Friends? Civic spaces? None of those things are judged in terms of efficiency.

In short, maybe corporations are cities made only of roads. Easy to measure, easy to understand. But way less likely to attract tourists, artists, bands, and newlyweds.

Thanks, JP. I haven't blogged in a long time. This was an interesting topic to think-out-loud about.Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-7672450020077015082011-07-03T13:10:00.000-04:002014-01-31T21:23:10.657-05:00New poem: Truce?I hated lawn work growing up.
The forced, hot chore of green conformity.
Mule to a manual, rotary blade.
Slave to some dim, inbred, feeble sense that
we were long-lost, distant kin
to kings with gardens, gardeners and time.

Time to care for useless weeds.
Time to force conformity.
Time for our mad hierarchy
of measured, soft suburban warfare
fought with gestures, eyebrows, jokes and sighs.

You can't fight. At best you might
retreat the field for condo life or fob the job
on pros and neighbors' kids. But that's not peace.
The grass still wins.

Until the day she lay down flat, barefoot, stretched out
on her back, closed her eyes, tipped back
her head, sighed deeply, smiled and said,

"I love the feel of fresh-mown grass."

An armistice? Perhaps.Andy Havenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849615878184395294.post-36244206726106048792011-04-23T19:52:00.000-04:002014-01-31T21:23:10.650-05:00New poem: Ocean FloorThere are rumors of sky.
Last words of swimmers, fallen
from waves. Limbs unkempt,
sleep-sown hair tossed
over wet, windy, winding sheets.

Eyes swollen, pressure kissed,
or eaten by the curious
fish who want to taste last sights.
Synesthesia, second hand.
Pearls of life dissolve,
melt on tiny tongues.

A child's game, the rumors pass
from lips to ears to lips,
stirred by confection, convection, consensus.
Rattle, final, homogeneous,
uninteresting and petty.

"Yes, there is sky. It's where
they make the dead."Andy Havenshttp://email@example.com