Emotional arcs

I had an interesting experience today - the writers out there may appreciate this.

Someone had written an account of a harrowing ordeal - the sort of thing you'd find in Readers Digest (and I don't mean this disparagingly, that's just the best way I can think of to explain the kind of ordeal involved). My co-worker was assigned to translate it, and I was asked to edit the translation. (This is a bit different from normal editing - we normally don't touch structure, but we're excruciatingly critical about word choice.)

First I read the text through for plot. I don't normally do this, but I was far more curious than usual about what happened. As I read I marked a couple things that I thought could be improved, but I didn't indicate how to improve them. I just wanted to see what happened. My reaction at the end of that was "Wow, that was a pretty harrowing ordeal," but emotionally it didn't have much more impact than a newspaper article.

Then I went back to do proper editing, thinking of ways to improve the things I'd marked, making sure that everything was clear so the reader doesn't have to make any effort to understand, making sure that it sounded natural in English. I tweaked a few places, replaced one or two awkward metaphors with more typically English cliches (a good thing in translation), inserted a few synonyms, and re-ordered one or two sentences to make sure the emphasis was where it needed to be.

My reaction at the end of this was like I had gone through an emotional experience. Not the most hard-core of emotional experiences - it was like a perfectly serviceable episode of television drama that had nothing wrong with it but never knocked you off your feet - but completely unlike anything I've had before from work.

I don't normally work on material with emotional arcs. If it has a plot, it's either set out as a series of facts, or it's supporting a thesis to convince the reader of something. But this one was simply telling a story of an ordeal, for people who have never been through that sort of ordeal. I've gone through emotions when translating material with difficult subject matter, but you really have to get inside the text when translating (I find it's more mentally intensive than writing itself, although not everyone agrees on that) so you generally experience the plot from far more inside than the average reader does. I always figured editing was more on the surface, and I certainly didn't expect that it would be so much more emotionally involving than simply reading, especially after I'd already experienced the plot. The emotional arc had already been built by the author and renovated by the translator; I was just walking around with touch-up paint, and yet I came out feeling like I had been sawing wood and hammering nails all day too.

Quote of the moment

"A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together." - Garrison Keillor

That is precisely why I dislike it so much.

I keep my home secular and xmas-free for the same reason you batten down the hatches against a storm. I shudder at the idea of an xmas party at work for the same reason you'd shudder if your boss said "I have an idea! Let's all go outside and frolic in the thunderstorm!" I hate early arrival of xmas shit in stores for the same reason you'd hate having the stores overrun with umbrellas and raincoats in anticipation of a storm coming next week when all you really need is a sunhat for the sunny day forecast tomorrow. I hate xmas music for the same reason you'd hate the song "Singing in the Rain" if it was played in all public space whenever there are raindrops in the forecast.

If xmas were just this thing that happened organically, I wouldn't care. But it's so fucking in your face all the time, it just make sme want some peace and quiet.

In the words of Eddie Izzard, get your slander correct

"I tried to sell the niqab during the Taliban time but they got mad at me," shopkeeper Ahmed Shah told the Toronto Star. "The Vice and Virtue Department came to my shop and accused me of polluting with Western ways. They beat me, they took away my niqab and told me never to try this again."

Yes, you heard right, a niqab.

Spins on the dinner party question

We all know the question: Choose X people, living or dead, to invite to a dinner party. The real question they're asking is who you'd want to have a conversation with and why.

But let's play with this a bit.

What if, instead of having a dinner party, you got to have a one-on-one conversation with each person?

Suppose, in addition to interesting conversations, you also had to have a successful dinner party where everyone had charming conversation and a good time?

What if the dead people could tell you about death and whatever, if anything, happened afterwards?

Suppose you could feed the guests Veritaserum? (This assumes that they'd have their normal inhibitions under the standard dinner party, which I think people sometimes forget or disregard when answering that question.)

Suppose you could include fictional characters?

Suppose, instead of a dinner party, it was a game of truth or dare?

What if it was a book club? Which book would you read?

Suppose any language barriers between everyone involved do exist?

Suppose the guests know each other by reputation? Suppose they've somehow never heard of each other? Suppose some have and some haven't as would happen organically IRL? (e.g. Hitler knows Jesus by reputation, but not vice versa).

27

I turn 27 later this month. I've been mulling that over, and I like it. I think it sounds like a properly grownup age. 25 and 26 worked that way a bit - demographics tend to do 18-24 or 18-25 as an age group so I had aged out of that group when taking surveys and stuff - but 27 feels older. Which is odd because internally I'm still the same person I was when I was 9, and when I look in the mirror I see the same person I was at 13 (with a better figure, less acne, and better glasses, but I don't think I look older, just better put-together). I feel both like I should be acting more grownup, and that I can relax a bit and be secure in my adulthood. So on one hand I'm buying books on real estate, and on the other hand I'm wearing a red coat instead of sensible black.

The one thing I'm going to have to get used to though is not being in an exceptional place for my age. Because I was born in December and because I was lucky enough not to have any major stumbles in my educational career, I was 13 when I started high school, 16 when I started taking OACs, 18 when I started uni, and 22 when I got my current job and my first very own apartment. All of those are just a bit young, just young enough to be interesting and make people think I'm perhaps a bit exceptional. But at 27 I am (as perceived by the outside world) in the same place I was when I was 22, which is perfectly respectable but no longer exceptional. Which is fine - I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be that doesn't involve a lottery win or a miraculous convergence of factors outside my control - but does require that I change my way of thinking before I make a fool of myself.

In praise of windows

I'm sitting here watching it snow. It's -7 with a windchill of -14. The wind is blowing directly at me at 30 km/h. And I am perfectly comfortable.

Usually when we appreciate technology it's newer things, but, when you think about it, it's awesome (like at least a million hotdogs) that we have the technology to make big clear windows that still keep the cold and the wind out.

Post your Bach recommendations here!

I need more Bach on my iPod, but I'm utterly overwhelmed by the options available.

I'm looking for something that does for my brain what the Goldberg Variations does. Yesterday, while I was struggling with an particularly gruesome medical translation, my iPod serendipitously gave me the Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould's 1981 version, if you're interested). The counterpoint just soothed my distraught brain and got me through the text. It was like my brain was enjoying a hot bath and a glass of wine and a massage. I need more music like that.

While I am aware of the historical context, I don't want anything that screams "Look at me, I belong in a church!" (played on the organ, sung by a choir, etc.) My negative associations with the church are just too strong. Also, I don't want anything that's so well-known it's become a cliche and can be reduced to a ringtone. For example, despite their contrapuntal virtues, I am completely immune to Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, or Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I'll take non-Bach recommendations too if you have some, but I do think it has to be Baroque counterpoint.

Recommendations of specific recordings would be great, but if you're not a recording geek I'll take specific pieces too.

Things They Should Invent: free valet parking for hospital emergency rooms

I've been to the ER once, as a child with a non-critical but still ER-worthy problem. We had to park in an underground parking garage. I don't remember whether this was a massive inconvenience because that was the last of my worries at the time, but I'm certain we had to park underground and I am certain that you can't just park in front of the hospital doors.

But parking underground is the most difficult parking of all! I know, I know, some people do it every day, a lot of people do it without any trouble. But if there's one thing that people are going to have trouble with, it's parking underground. This isn't something you want to deal with in an emergency situation! The patient shouldn't have to wait while you try to manoeuvre the car between the wall and the big concrete pole. The patient shouldn't have to go into to ER all alone while you deal with the parking. And the driver is probably going to be rather frightened and stressed, which isn't the time to be dealing with fussy parking manoeuvres.

What they should have is valets right in front of the ER door. You unload the patient, hand over the keys, and they deal with the car. Let the patient's caregiver go into ER with them, and let a calm and experienced third party play Tetris with big expensive machines.

Things They Should Invent: earbud-holder earrings

So you're going about your everyday life, listening to music to maintain your happy place and drown out the sounds of that homeless guy who keeps propositioning you and the insipid xmas music that they've been playing in all stores everywhere since FUCKING HALLOWEEN! But then you need to talk to someone, to pay for your groceries, for example. So you take your earbuds out. But where do you put them? If your iPod (or whatever) is in your pocket, the earbuds will dangle perilously close to the ground. If you throw them over your shoulder or put them through your beltloop or whatever, it's a rather complicated process to put them back, especially if you care about getting the right bud in the right ear.

The solution: attractive, functional earrings that you can somehow hang your earbuds on. You just remove them from your ears and somehow attach them to your earrings, so they're right there a centimetre below your earholes. Perhaps they could even design them so that if you take the earbud out of your ear, it will fall naturally onto the earring without your having to fiddle with some kind of hooking mechanism. No more getting wires all tangled up, no more accidentally stepping on your earbuds, no more rudely leaving one earbud in because you can't figure out what to do with them.

I have no idea what the specific design should be like, I'm leaving that for people with aesthetic sense.

Materialism and self-esteem in kids

So apparently, low self-esteem causes materialism in children, and parents are supposed to counter this by complimenting their children to raise their self esteem. (Ignore any dollar amounts mentioned in this article - the Globe and Mail lives in a different order of magnitude than the rest of us - and just focus on the message).

I see a couple of problems with this.

1. When I was a 12-year-old with no self-esteem, there was nothing my parents could possibly have done to raise it, because the source of the low self-esteem was my peers. Yes, parents, can easily do things to make it worse, but they can't make it better (all together now: life isn't fair!) My parents did try to raise my self-esteem, but all it did was destroy their credibility because clearly they didn't know what they were talking about - no matter what they said to support me or how they tried to advise me, I was still tormented at school. In fact, sometimes I was tormented because of what they did to try to help me - being spotted doing outdoor activities with a parent was worth a threat to spraypaint obscenities onto our lawn (no, I don't know how the bullies calculated that sort of thing), using a turn of phrase provided by a parent was worth at least two days of mockery, etc. No amount of parental reassurance would have negated the fact that I was treated like I was subhuman by dozens of people.

2. "Those with low self-esteem were more likely to arrange a hodge-podge of cars, money, jewellery, sports equipment and - among the youngest bunch - stuffed animals. The children with high self-regard assembled images related to friends, family and outdoor activities such as camping."

Camping is a hobby/activity. Sports are also a hobby/activity, an argument can be made for cars being a hobby/activity, and stuffed animals are both a hobby/activity and a friend. (I dare you to find anyone whose young childhood relationship with their stuffed animals was materialistic rather than affectionate.) They seem to be arbitrarily claiming camping to be superior to other hobbies/activities based on the fact that it takes place outdoors. In other words, this study would rate my self-esteem lower because I'm geeky and arachnophobic, and therefore love my computer more than camping.

3. Again thinking back to my low self-esteem days and the material things I wanted at the time, I never wanted material objects as status symbols in and of themselves; rather, I thought the function they served would help raise my standing in the world or make my life more pleasant. For example, I wanted a discman so I could listen to music more often, thus bringing my pop cultural knowledge up to an acceptable level, plus it was far more socially acceptable to be seen alone listening to music than to be seen alone doing nothing, and headphones would allow me to either tune out or plausibly pretend not to hear the things that were hissed behind my back rather than getting "Oooh, I'll bet her mother told her to just ignore us!" It wasn't the discman itself that I thought would help me socially, it was the ability to listen to music wherever and whenever.

Actually, now that I think about it, although my self-esteem has skyrocketed since its nadir in middle school, my materialism is probably higher now than it was then. Part of this is because I now have disposable income (which still feels new to me), but I think part of it is actually because my self-esteem is higher now - namely the part of my self-esteem that they're talking about in the article, the part that's based on parental approval. You see, my parents value frugality, so to Be Good I was supposed to not want material things. So I tried very hard to not want material things in order to Be Good. Then in university I tried very hard to spend as little money as possible so I could put myself through school and no one could accuse me of being spoiled. But getting a proper grownup job was a huge boost to my self-esteem. I used to feel like the whole world was looking over my shoulder disapproving of my life choices (the side-effect of being a B.A. student among scientists and mathematicians and engineers) but now that I've proven myself and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, I can shop freely. Camera phone, iPod, ridiculous special-ordered dictionaries, the complete works of Eddie Izzard on DVD - I have a job, I can afford it, so WTF do you care? Also, especially in the area of fashion, having higher self esteem makes me more willing to take risks, which I never dared do back when I was trying to be invisible. The red purse, the tall shiny boots, the fascinatingly-cut green skirt - I never would have dared try any of this as a teenager. But now that I'm brave enough to wear it, it comes home with me in a shopping bag rather than being passed over on the rack.

It would be interesting to further compare grown adults' desire for material objects with that of their younger selves. I don't think your materialism gets noticed as much when you're an adult, probably because you don't have to ask for things, you just quietly go out and buy them. Also, more things fit unquestioned into adult life. If I express the desire for a cordless phone that can do call display, it is automatically assumed that I have a good reason rather than that I'm spoiled. I don't expect to keep acquiring material goods at the same rate for the rest of my life because one does build up a reserve, but I see no reason (apart from poverty, of course) why my "I want that - I'll buy that" threshold or my standard of comfort would lower as I age.

What about you? How does your desire for material goods compare now with when you were younger with lower self-esteem?

iPod does pathetic fallacy

The snow is beautiful. It's those big fat wet flakes that can't help but fall gracefully, sticking to everyone's hair and clothing like it's a movie.

Unfortunately, my jacket is not quite warm enough, my bags are just a bit too cumbersome, the wind is blowing right in my face so I can barely see for the snowflakes on my glasses, the snow on my body is melting the instant it touches me so my hair is plastered to my head and water is dripping down my nose, and the snow on the sidewalk is creating a messy icy slush that, in the dark under the streetlights, makes it impossible to tell whether my next step will be into an inch-deep puddle or onto a greasy patch of ice.

My boots, pants, hair, makeup, glasses, purse, and groceries are all a terrible mess, and I am miserable. But, nevertheless, the snow is truly beautiful.

For this walk home, my iPod serves up k.d. lang's cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

Computers and their attempts to read my mind

I needed to upgrade my French-English dictionary, so I went to amazon.ca and typed in "Collins-Robert". The first result? Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat in DVD.

Then iTunes serves up Close Every Door from that very musical.

So I proceed with my shopping, poke around and price and compare with the US prices (Canadian's better in this case), and just as I'm finalizing my purchase of my French-English dictionary, iTunes has Eddie Izzard forgetting the French word for "tiring".

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

This book is a story of Gen. Xers in New York in the dot-com bust. The plot is there, it's a story, it does its job, there's nothing wrong with it. But that's not what's cool about the book.

The first thing that's cool is the way the author does detail. Usually I'm not fond of excessive detail because it seems unrealistic to me that people would notice that, but here it just seemed spot-on. For example, early on in the book the author describes a character's make-up, from that character's point of view, in terms of the character's own perception of the flaws of her make-up and the flaws on her face that it's concealing. And it was an absolutely perfect description of my own face at the time I was reading it. It's like the author was inside my head when I look in the mirror around 3 pm and was articulating in words all the thoughts that pass through my head as wordless concepts. As the book went on I stopped noticing the descriptions of detail (which is good, it means they didn't overwhelm the book) but in every case it was exactly right without getting overwrought.

The second thing that was very cool is a spoiler. If you read the rest of this, it will stop you from having "Whoa!" moments of realization if you read the book. So you might want to stop reading now. But if you're still here, the second cool thing is that the book is set in the months leading up to September 11, but this is never explicitly mentioned (until Sept. 11 actually happens, that is). Months are mentioned, a few hints are dropped, so you might figure it out or you might not. I figured it out because a movie was alluded to (by namedropping the real-life actress who starred in it), and I happened to remember where in res I was living at the time that movie came out, thus being able to work out that it was 2001. I think if my life had been more stable during that time and I had been living in one place for several years, I would have missed it. Casually dropped into all this are references that would become more significant after Sept. 11. Firefighters are included in a list of people who might be thought of as heroes. The skyline of Manhattan is mentioned, without mentioning any specific buildings. It's all very subtly done, as is appropriate given that the characters had no idea what was coming.

This makes me really curious about how this book will stand up to the test of time, how it will look to readers 20 or 50 years from now for whom this setting is nothing but a history lesson.

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: ugly glasses protest for better insurance

Optical coverage in the health insurance of absolutely everyone whose insurance details I know is insufficient. Every insurance plan I'm familiar with (which includes university employees, teachers, steelworkers, some hospital workers, and all levels of public service) pays a limited dollar amount, and many don't even cover the cost of lenses.

This is unacceptable. Insurance companies should - actually OHIP should - cover the actual cost of glasses (or, at the very least, lenses), not just "Oh, you need glasses, okay, here, have $200." But the problem is that because glasses are so important - we need to wear them on our faces, all the time, to see - people end up coughing up whatever it costs to get a decently functional and reasonably attractive pair of glasses.

But imagine for a moment if everyone stopped doing that. Everyone started buying only what was covered by their insurance. Ugly square plastic glasses abound - not the hipster kind, the kind you'd expect to see on a serial killer who's been in jail for 20 years. Everyone does without anti-glare and without sunglasses. Everyone who does have glasses is walking around with smudged lenses and crooked frames. Everyone whose doesn't have insurance coverage (or doesn't have enough coverage to buy even lenses) is walking around squinting unattractively, unable to drive if their licence has conditions.

That would certainly show the world how insufficient our insurance plans are, making the powers that be more willing to increase coverage for both the haves and the have nots. Unfortunately it will never work because no one who can possibly make the money work will be willing to make themselves blind and unattractive.

Downtime at work

When I get home from work, I'm tired. My brain is like a computer that badly needs to be rebooted, with all kinds of extra little file fragments floating around in the memory, taking up processing power. (I have no idea if I mixed that metaphor, but you know what I mean.) I need to just tune out, close myself off from the world, and reboot my brain before I can do anything, sometimes before I can even do anything interactive online.

I'd always thought this was your basic introvert overstimulation, but I think it's something more than that. At my previous job, which involved far more work with people, I didn't have this happen. I walked out of the office and my head was clear. Sometimes I was tired, yes, sometimes I was cranky, but my brain didn't need rebooting.

So I've been thinking lately about why exactly this is, and I think it comes down to one difference: at my previous job, downtime was allowed; at my current job, I'm supposed to be actively working at all times.

At my previous job, part of the reason I was there was simply to staff a campus office in case anyone calls or drops by. People did all the time, of course. Some days I didn't even get to sit down. But there wouldn't necessarily be people. There was the possibility that I could just sit at my desk and no one would come ask me for help all day. We did have was a long schedule of where all the equipment needed to be at what time, and we did have a queue full of requests. But if all the equipment was where it was supposed to be, I'd looked at the whole queue and done everything I could, and no one had asked me to do anything else, I was perfectly justfied in sitting at my desk doing nothing. Plus we were allowed to play on the internet or do homework or whatever if there was nothing else we were supposed to be doing. So it gave me a sort of motivation - get all this shit done, and then I can get some work done on that assignment or watch Homestar Runner (we didn't have Youtube back then). Most days I didn't get to do this - most days I was running around like crazy - but the sentiment that when all these tasks are done I can have some recreation just helped push me through the rush.

But at my current job, we're supposed to be in the office doing proper work all day long regardless of our productivity. If I finish two days' quota in four hours, I am still required to stay at the office and keep working for the rest of the day. And even if I did manage to finish all my work (which has never ever happened - they're quite good at keeping us full) recreational internet usage is strictly forbidden, so I'd still have to sit at the office until the end of my designated work hours in case any new work comes in. So basically there's less motivation to get the job done. I still meet all my deadlines of course, but when I finish a task, all I have to look forward to is continuing to work at at least the standard pace until quitting time, then coming in at the same time tomorrow and doing the same thing, etc. etc. for several more decades. Of all the jobs I might possibly have this one has the least struggle per dollar earned, but the daily and hourly motivation still leaves something to be desired.

I think this is why I work faster from home. Because I can reward myself and don't have to put on the appearance of working (while it's true that no one would scold me for staring into space - it is purely mental work, after all - I can't blog or read comics while trying to clear my head) I can work in productive bursts and do something irrelevant in between rather than having to spend the whole day trying to maintain a constant work pace. So it looks like I should be working towards being in a position to work from home more often...

Things They DID Invent: Songza!

A few months ago, I proposed "Youtune" as an audio equivalent of Youtube. Turns out Songza does this. Their catalogue is not as comprehensive as I'd like - I can still outsmart it - but it's not even 2 weeks old yet so we'll give it some time.

Let's see if this embedding thingy works...



Edit: It sounds like this the soundtrack of the music video, rather than being the actual song as recorded on the album. (That's what's up with all the talking at the end. Here's the video in question - it is one of the best videos I've seen and definitely worth watching.)

Don't run a reader poll when you aren't giving the readers enough information

Boys, 8 and 9, charged with raping an 11-year-old girl.

Obviously this raises one major logistical question, and a series of smaller ones. You can't expect the reader to form an informed opinion without more information on the choreography of the alleged incident, as well as how much theoretical grounding in the subject matter all the parties involved had.

Now I totally understand if they can't publish this information. You have crimes involving minors, you have sexual assault charges, you have a case that has not yet gone to court. There are several layers of reasons why they can't publish all the information the reader needs to informedly evaluate the situation. Which is fine.

Just don't run a reader poll when you've provided so little information!

Nothing fruitful could possibly result from polling the readers based on insufficient information! It's tacky and cheap and sensationalist, and no good can possibly come of it. Run your poll on a more fully-informed story instead.

Vitamin D + acne update

Further to my hypothesis about Vitamin D's effect on my skin:

I've just gone through a full cycle without the Vitamin D, and my skin has behaved normally during this time. Apart from my normal clogged pores, there were only two minor zits of note, both adjacent to my period and neither of which left a scar.

When I start my next cycle next week, I'm going to resume the Vitamin D for another month just to observe what happens.

Fashion tips for people with narrow shoulders

If you have narrow shoulders, don't buy a purse with flat shiny straps. The straps will slip off your shoulders far more readily than regular purse straps, which is particularly problematic if both your hands a full of heavy grocery bags and the purse contains several valuable pieces of personal electronics.