Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

To highlight the futitily of party politics, a retired Britisher is running for office as a Jedi Knight. His platform:

“There really is no place for the posture politics of Westminster at this very local level of government…If it is a job for council to cut grass, the question should not be whether to paint the lawnmower New Labour red, Conservative blue or Liberal Democrat gold but rather how often and how short do the people of Thornbury want their grass cut.”

(Thanks to Hetty W for the link.)

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

All over Prague, posters for Pirati Z Karibiku kept teasing me–now at last, back in the USA, I got to see the new pirate movie.

It is awesomely silly fun–and the awesomely silliest is Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. Depp says his portrayal was inspired by legendary bad boy Keith Richards, and by legendary cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew.

Super special effects and sword fights, too. For more raves, read Rotten Tomatoes. For fun trailers, see the official website. For one gripe, listen to this: inspired by rum-drinking characters, I went out and bought myself a bottle of rum, and it doesn’t taste good at all. It tastes (to me) like medicine.

Yo ho, ho ho, ho ho, ho–I guess the laugh’s on me.

Franz Kafka was a cute little boy–the only surviving son of prosperous parents. Many photos from his childhood make clear their pride and affection.

Later, a metamorphosis began. Kafka’s first published work was a diatribe against his family’s noisiness. He wrote a long denunciation of his father, showed it to his mother, and asked her to deliver it–she refused. Kafka continued to live in, and to complain about, his parents’ apartment for most of his life.

I don’t think we need to explore Kafka’s “fundamental metaphysical fear, uncertainty, and alienation” to understand the central image of “Metamorphosis”–
“My-parents-stopped-seeing-me-as-their-darling-son-and-started-seeing-me-as-a-hideous-bug!”

My own delightful children never make me think about hideous bugs, except maybe when Mira gives me cool insectoid presents or Amity blogs about beetles rolling balls of dung by moonlight!

Once upon a time, the old story goes, a wise man created a man of clay and brought this “golem” to life to do his will. One day, however, the wise man lost control of his creation. Its enormous strength was unleashed in massive violence–until the wise man got control again and turned the golem back into lumps of clay.

Many versions of the story exist. Supposedly, it  inspired Mary Shelley to create her story about Frankenstein.

Most recent versions associate this story with a real and notably wise Rabbi living in Prague, Rabbi Loew. The oldest stories are simple wonder tales, where the golem is used for various household chores and goes wild by uprooting the local village fountain when asked to bring water.*

Later, the golem had a nobler purpose–to protect Prague’s Jews from Christian violence. Interestingly, as the golem’s purpose became nobler and more important, so too did his rampages become more violent and frightening.

Doesn’t this sound like the current debate about artificial intelligence? I mean, if your idea of a robot is a cute little mechanical vacuum cleaner, who cares if the darn thing goes out of control? But as our modern secular rabbis make ever-more-powerful servants for themselves, the more things the rest of us have to worry about….

*The folk image of a fountain that, even uprooted, continues to pour out water seems strange to moderns who picture the pipe lying under the fountain. After World War II, many Soviet soldiers who occupied Eastern Europe came from very primitive Siberian villages. It was commonplace for such soldiers to steal faucets and stick them in trees because they imagined that water was somehow magically inside faucets.

Walk in the footsteps of George Washington or Tip O’Neill. Experience the grim Colonial graveyard near Harvard Square or the marbled Victorian vistas of Mount Auburn Cemetery. You can visit Brattle Street’s elegant Tory Row or some really, really ugly modern architecture.

For even more options, and to make reservations, get the pdf you can link to from the Cambridge city page.

I sure hope it doesn’t rain here on July 5.

Scientists decoding the human genome announced that just 78 genes separate men from women. The BBC then published a list of guesses at what those genes do.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Women drive on the stretch of road they can see. Men move through the landscape by car.

Men do not even bother to look for something, then ask where it is and hope that it was the woman who put it away.

Men use I or me when they should use we or us. Women use we or us when they should use I or me.

Men speak in sentences. Women speak in paragraphs.

These are my favorites because they make me laugh by reminding me of some, not all, of the real men and women I know.

Speaking of real men and women, Dave Winer today links to a lovely piece he wrote a few years ago about boys, adventure, and a dangerous tumble down the side of a mountain. On the way down, exhilarated, safe, he points out his cuts and blood to a little boy:

Look, I fell down the mountain! I smile happily. I’m OK! Everyone laughs.

Boys dig this (I’m a boy too). In our best moments, this is what being a man is about — taking risks, falling down, getting up and laughing at our good fortune.

I know Dave means by this what he says he means–that men (like women) find inspiration and comfort in living up to their ideals.

There are a lot of things that aren’t “fair” when you compare the lot of men and women. Women live longer. Men earn more. Women make jokes about men and don’t like it when men make jokes about them. (Of course the opposite is also true–it just depends on which social group you hang out with.)
I did
a Google search on “it’s not fair” and came up with almost 90,000 results. Here, in the order I found them, are the top six:

1. Health Care is under attack in Ontario and transsexuals have been unfairly targetted.
2. During the Iraq war, ClearChannel radio news had a blatantly pro-war slant.

3. The playing field for DB2 backup and recovery is not level.
4. Global inequalities condemn many people to live in hopeless poverty.
5. Pollution and nationalism create problems for many species.
6. Some national park roads are impassible when it rains.

Some of my favorite bloggers–one is Halley–say honest blogs in a personal voice are the wave of the (business) future. I disagree, for two reasons.

1. Honest blogging can hurt your career.
2. I don’t think your boss should expect to buy your “personal voice”.

1. How can your blog hurt your career? A recent conference summary at JOHO lists just a few ways. Federal law protects you by forbidding prospective employers to ask certain questions–“How old are you?” “How many children do you have?” But if you post such info in your blog–that protection is gone.

Once you are hired, you can be fired for stuff you post in your blog. It doesn’t have to be stuff like “Our product sucks.”

Suppose you have even one co-worker who doesn’t like you. Suppose this co-worker finds something “naughty” in your blog–you smoked dope, or you played football pools on company time, or whatever. Suppose this co-worker brings this to your boss–your boss could be in big trouble if he doesn’t act, even if he doesn’t want to–just the same way an airport security person could lose her job if she doesn’t confiscate tiny pocket knives.

2. How can you business-blog in a personal voice? If you write stuff your boss wouldn’t like, see problem #1, above. If you are careful not to write stuff your boss wouldn’t like, how is this honest and personal?

If your boss requires you to business-blog, can you do it during normal business hours? Or are you expected to blog “as a professional”–that is, after work, cutting into your family time?

Bzzzz–is that a scooter approaching, or a flock of buzzwords? A2O! AOS! Anyone for audio caffeine?

Buzzwhack’s Buzzword Compliant Dictionary has short definitions, full of attitude, for stuff like this. I even get their “BUZZWORD OF THE DAY”–and today’s definition took a (buzz)whack at Segway:

EPAMD: Electric Personal Assistive Mobility
Device. A term coined by Segway in an attempt to
convince state legislators its motorized
two-wheeler is not a “vehicle.” Vehicles aren’t
allowed on sidewalks, have to be registered like
cars and require drivers to be licensed. How many
vehicles, er, things meet the EPAMD definition?
Only the Segway and nothing else.

PR giant Burson-Marsteller’s super-aggressive hype campaign for Segway is a major case of a big ugly tail wagging a cute little dog. (Speaking of super-aggressive hype campaigns, Burson-Marsteller also fronts for Botox.)

Kinda makes you wonder–how much of the cost of a Segway goes to BM?

“I find it’s often hard to take a good picture of someone wearing a HELLO stick-on label.”

Jim Roberts of Noded raised this excellent point in his comment on my blogpost yesterday. Have you ever wondered:

• why photos of people at conferences look so bad?
• why your passport photo looks like Uncle Bill on a bender?
• why some photographers take gorgeous pictures, but most take photos so bad our subjects wish their heads had been cut off?

Answer: there are force-fields in our universe that make (some) people look terrible in (some) photos. These “Photogenicity Inhibiting Force Fields” or PIFFs are my own contribution to physics and metaphysics:

• Why do PIFFs attach to objects like HELLO badges?
• Why do PIFFs pervade the world of “Official” photos?
• How do photographers like Niek get rid of PIFFs?
• Why is everyone in my family but me immune to them?

As soon as my lawyers pin down the trademark, copyright, and patent rights to “PIFF”, I’ll be unveiling this for the New York Times.

“The years teach much that the days never know.” Ralph Waldo Emerson “The true measure of success isn’t money or power. It’s laugh lines.” send a postcard