Part 20 (1/2)

23.

2010.

I don't get apps. Not as in how they work, but why, in fact, they're called ”apps.” Because you know what? They're programs. They are compendiums of code, compiled in a manner that when you execute them in a computing environment, they perform a specific task. Like a program. Exactly like a program. Because they are programs. So why not call them programs?

Is it because programs is an ungroovy kind of word? Is it for the same reason station wagons are now called ”crossover vehicles”? Will the hip young things using Foursquare on their iPhone to let the world know their apartments are unoccupied and ripe for looting be filled with horror if their cute little larceny abettor were called a program? Does the word conjure up intolerable images of a chunky, misshaven nerd, hovering asthmatically over a Commodore 64, waiting the 20 minutes until Omega Race downloads off the ca.s.sette by strapping on a feedbag of Cheetos and Mallomars and settling down with the latest copy of Byte? Is the word really that bad?

I certainly admit that ”app” is a nice phoneme of a word, and that ”program” doesn't lend itself to such shortening; ”There's a prog for that” doesn't quite have the same ring. And I don't really have a problem calling programs ”apps” as long as I can tell my brain it's short for ”application,” which is a specific genus of program, rather than a wholesale replacement of the word. But I don't think that's how people generally use the word, and it just makes me want to shake my cane and get the kids off my lawn. Recently I read a piece about what it will mean when we switch over to app-based operating systems, and I was all, what? So the new hotness is a screen on which icons are used to access the programs they represent? Just like the Macintosh in 1984? Somebody get me a chair, the future is blowing my G.o.dd.a.m.ned mind.

I like apps. I like the little computers we use to run apps, which fit in my hand and have the same processing and visualizing power a forty pound hulking desktop and a fifty pound CRT screen had a decade ago. I'm not entirely sure why we need a new word to describe these little programs. And while I'm at it, I'm also not sure why you're still on my lawn.

Todd Akin Aug

21.

2012.

Representative Todd Akin has decided to stay in the Missouri senatorial race, bucking the national GOP, which desperately wants him tossed under the bus for the spectacularly stupid ”legitimate rape” thing, and you know what? Good for him. Leaving aside my own love of political schadenfreude here, the dude did win the Republican primary fair and square, did he not? He is the plurality choice of Missouri's Republican voters, isn't he? He didn't strangle kittens, set them on fire, and insert them into an unmentionable part of some adorable puppy's anatomy, did he?

No; all he really did was say out loud something that an apparently non-trivial number of conservatives seem to believe, i.e., that some rapes are rapier than others, and (probably less common, at least I hope) that at the rapiest level of rape, you probably aren't gonna get knocked up. It's appallingly stupid and wrong, of course. But that doesn't mean he (up until Sunday, anyway) didn't believe it, or that saying something appallingly stupid and wrong but entirely within the penumbra of conservative thought should disqualify him from partic.i.p.ating in a race he earned the right to be in, through a democratic process. ”You stupidly said out loud what many of us actually believe,” shouldn't by any rational standard be a reason for his forfeit.

Yes, he's embarra.s.sing the GOP presidential candidate by staying in a race after Romney said he should drop out, and yes, the Democrats will use Akin's comment and his extraordinarily restrictive anti-choice views (reflected, incidentally, in the official GOP platform) like a cudgel on the Republicans every single day that Akin stays in the race. But why is that Akin's problem? By all indications, he was not the favored candidate of the national GOP anyway, so no skin off his nose. The national GOP says they're not going to send him money, but if they want to take the Senate, they're not likely to do it without him, so I imagine sooner or later they're going to slip some cash his way regardless. So again, what impetus does Akin have to do anything other than run? For the rest of the GOP, it's about control of the Senate; for Akin, it's whether or not he has a job come next January. He sure as h.e.l.l doesn't have any reason to quit, and winning, should he win, will be sweet indeed.

And yeah, Democrats binging on schadenfreude, he could win. Even after the ”forcible rape” flub, he was still up a point in the polls against Claire McCaskill. He might sink-as I understand it, making an a.s.s of yourself on live TV takes a few days to sink in with the polls-but then again he might not. He apologized for his stupidity, and pitched it in a way that will resonate with evangelicals, for many of whom he is the ideal candidate. Don't kid yourself that he's lost the race already. And of course, that's just one more reason for him to stay in.

I wouldn't vote for Akin; I don't know why anyone would want to vote for someone so heinously ignorant of human biology, which I suspect is indicative of other vasty swaths of ignorance in his mental makeup. I wouldn't encourage anyone in Missouri to vote for him either, as we already have enough appallingly ignorant people in the Senate without adding him to their number. But do I think he should be the GOP senatorial candidate for the state? Absolutely. If Mitt Romney, the national GOP or anyone else has a problem with it, they should bring it up with Missouri's Republican voters. He was their pick for the gig. I think you have to respect that, even if you shake your head that they could choose so poorly.

Tom Becker Apr

2.

2010.

Let me tell you about Tom Becker. In 1991, I got my first full-time professional writing gig, as a movie critic for the Fres...o...b..e newspaper. Tom was the a.s.sistant Features Editor there, which is to say he was my boss.

There are many things that are important for a young writer, but the one I want to focus on at the moment is this one: That it helps to have the right editor at the right time. When I started at the Bee, I was 22, young enough that I got carded at the first ”R”-rated movie I was sent to review, and madly, truly, deeply full of myself, because, hey, I was 22 years old and I spent my time watching movies and interviewing movie stars, so obviously I was doing something right, you know? Basically, I was a bit of an a.s.s. Had I been matched with the wrong editor, bad things would have happened.

Tom was, very simply, the right editor for me. I think Tom very quickly sized me up for what I was-a young guy who had the potential to let his ego get in the way of his development as a writer-and also quickly figured out what it was I needed from him, and then set to providing it to me. Tom's method was to be calm and sensible, to give me enough of a lead to try things and then reel me in during the editing process and show me where things needed to be fixed and why. I can't say I always agreed with him-I was a bit of an a.s.s, remember-but how he worked with me did the job just as much as what he did when he edited. It's a long way of saying that he did his job in a way that didn't set off my ego and insecurities. Over the time I worked with him, I did indeed become a better writer.

That being said, I truly learned to appreciate what Tom did for me not when I was at the Bee, but when I left it and took a job at America Online. One of my tasks was to be an editor, and I spent not-inconsiderable time with writers, finding ways to make their writing better, and also finding ways to do it in a way that didn't collapse those writers into tight little b.a.l.l.s of neurosis. Once I did my stint as an editor, I went back to look at some of my raw writing from my Bee years and was horrified at how unfinished it was, and how much it really had needed an editor-how much, in point of fact, it needed Tom Becker.

Shortly thereafter I had reason to visit Fresno again, and on a visit to the Bee I went over to Tom's desk, to thank him for the help he'd given me, and to apologize to him for being, as previously mentioned, a bit of an a.s.s while I worked with him. Tom was amused, and very gracious, and also, I think, happy to know that his work and patience had been recognized and valued, even if that recognition had been a bit late in coming.

I do recognize it and I do value it. What Tom Becker did for me and for my writing helped make it possible for me to go on to do everything else I have been able to do. He's also responsible for me recognizing that as famously solitary as writers are alleged to be, we really don't work alone. Our words-and our skills as writers-very often do need help, which we get from editors, copy editors, proofers and all the other people between the writer and the audience for our words. Writers are fortunate to have people who strengthen our skills and our work, and it doesn't hurt for us to recognize that fact. I may or may not still be a bit of an a.s.s, but I know how much more of an a.s.s I would look like without the help I get from editors and others. I owe that sense of realism, and humility, to Tom.

Tom pa.s.sed away on Wednesday, at peace and with family and friends by his side, in his home. Tom had known for some time that this was coming and from what friends tell me handled it in the gentle and orderly manner I remember him having. I was fortunate to have been able to say goodbye to him before he left us, and to thank him again for everything he'd done for me. He wrote something to me then which I don't think he would mind me sharing with you: It makes me happy to know the influence I had on you. I was never sure at the time. You always seemed like a wild horse running free on the plains. All I tried to do was get you to look in the right direction every now and then. Sounds like I did just that. Thanks so much for remembering and absorbing my teachings and editing. I consider my life as a journalist and editor successful and full with the positive influence I had on you and others. And that makes me happy. I always was trying to teach as I went along. I think I did with you. Now you are spreading the word to others, so maybe there will be fewer hurt feelings and more working together between writers and editors in the world thanks to your stories about me. I am honored.

In fact, it is I who am honored, to have worked with Tom and to have been taught by him. And I am honored to be able to tell all of you this little bit about him and about how he was important to me.

If you are a writer, in Tom's honor I would ask you to think about the editors and others who have helped to you to become the writers you wanted to become. Everyone else, think on your teachers and mentors who with patience and humor and possibly even a bit of love looked past your unformed nature, saw what you could be, and helped you be just that.

Your appreciation of their work would be a fine memorial to my friend, teacher and editor Tom Becker. You might not have known him, but I bet you know someone like him. Let that person know that you know what they did for you. You won't regret it.

Twitter Apr

3.

2009.

Ben rather crankily wants to know my thoughts on: Twitter: A revolution in information consumption & dissemination OR I don't give a f.u.c.k what you want for breakfast.

What Twitter is, frankly, is a public exhibition of what used to be a private activity. It's phone texting-its character limit is right in line with the character limit on SMS texts-but rather than to just one person it goes out to dozens, or hundreds, or thousands, depending on who you are and how many followers you have. That Twitter has become ma.s.sively popular is unsurprising because texting is ma.s.sively popular; indeed, I have a suspicion that if you told most people under the age of 35 that they had to choose between texting or making voice calls, voice communication would drop to next to nothing. For a generation that grew up texting, Twitter isn't a revolution, it's simply an expansion of how they were communicating anyway. And in point of fact, it's even better than blogging for quite a lot of people, because when you're limited to 140 characters, you don't have to feel bad about not having all that much to say.

That most Twitter communication is aggressively ba.n.a.l should also not come as a huge surprise. First, news flash: people are ba.n.a.l. Yes, all of us, even you (and especially even me). Even the great minds of the world do not spend all their time locked in the contemplation of the mysteries of the universe; about 90% of their thoughts boil down to ”I'm hungry,” ”I'm sleepy,” ”I need to poo,” ”Check out the [insert secondary s.e.xual characteristics] on that [insert s.e.x of preference], I'd really like to boink them,” ”I wonder what Jennifer Aniston is doing right now, John Mayer can no longer tell me on his Twitter feed,” and, of course, ”Look! Kitty!” That the vast majority of Twitter posts encompa.s.s pedestrian thoughts about common subjects like food, music, tech, jobs and cats is entirely unsurprising, because this is what people think about. h.e.l.l, even Stephen Fry, patron saint of Twitter, tweets about what fruit he's having and what's going on with his iPhone. And he's more clever than any six of the rest of us will ever be. When Stephen Fry tweets about his G.o.dd.a.m.n snack, you can be forgiven about tweeting that, say, your cat has fur (which, in fact, I have just now done).

Second, phone texting, Twitter's technological and philosophical predecessor, was not known as a place for weighty, meaty thoughts-it was known for ”Where R U?” and ”IM N claz N IM SO BORED” and other such messages of limited scope and mental appeal. But that's pretty much what texting is for: Short thoughts about not much. That Twitter, shackled as it is to 140 characters per post, is not the Agora Reborn should not come as a huge shock.

However, this is a feature, not a bug. Twitter, along with text messages, IMs and to some extent blog posts (although not this particular blog post) and social networking pages belong what I think is a relatively new category of communication which I call ”Intermediary Communication”-which is to say communication that exists between the casual, spontaneous and intimate nature of oral communication (talking to a group of friends, as an example) and the more planned, persistent and broadcasting nature of written communication. Intermediary communication feels spontaneous and intimate, but it exhibits the persistent and broadcast nature of written communication, and this is what often gets people in trouble-the famous ”oh c.r.a.p I talked s.h.i.+t about my job on my blog and my boss read it and now I'M FIRED” thing, exemplified by Heather Armstong.

But while this intermediary communication has its pitfalls, it also has its advantages. Fact is, the reason Twitter is so popular is that people like all those ba.n.a.l little messages that skitter across the service. For the people you know-friends, family and co-workers-those ”I'm eating fruit now” messages take the place of the little, not-especially-notable interactions you have on a daily basis that add up to a familiar and comfortable sense of the world and your place in it. When in fact you can't see those friends, family, etc on a daily basis, these ba.n.a.l tweets still group them into your daily, unremarkable life, and in doing so make them seem closer and therefore more of a part of your world. Twenty years ago you'd maybe make time to call distant members of your tribe once a week, and that sort of punctuated, telegraphed communication would have to do. Twitter (and other intermediary communication like it) puts them quite literally back into the stream of your life. This is not a bad thing.

For the people you don't know-the celebrities whose feeds one follows-the ba.n.a.lity of Twitter makes you feel closer to them, too. Hey! Stephen Fry eats fruit! I eat fruit! He's just like me! And then you send Stephen Fry a reponse tweet about the fruit you had, and bask in your fruit-enjoying fraternity. Does this benefit Stephen Fry somehow? I suspect not; a shared liking for juicy, vitamin-C-bearing foods is probably not a bond that directly translates to Mr. Fry's agent landing him quality roles; likewise, I'm not sure John Mayer's hyperactive tweetery making him look like geek America's spastic younger brother is going to translate into music sales. But I don't think marketing is why Fry or Mayer fiddle about with Twitter; I think they do it for the same reason everyone else does. And in both cases it's probably nice for them to have a halfway ”normal” communication channel.

(There are celebs who look at Twitter as just another marketing avenue, mind you. You will know them by the fact their feeds, in addition to being ba.n.a.l, are also boring.) All of which is to say that the ba.n.a.lity and silliness and unremarkable pedestrian nature of Twitter is what the service actually has going for it-it's baked into the service's DNA. It's why it's successful and why it (or something very much like it) will continue to be successful going forward.

(This entry: 6,091 characters. Not suitable for Twitter. Which is, you know. Why I keep the blog.) The Venereal Disease Channel Imaginatizes Greatastically Mar