Black Friday No More

Going through the list of catalogs piled on the kitchen table and hearing about the deals some of my friends acquired, I was amazed by just how good it gets on Black Friday. Not being in a position to buy much, I've generally avoided the Black Friday shopping spree, but it struck me this year that a disciplined shopper with a firm and restrictive list of needed items might really make out pretty well.  I'll have to wait until next year to test the theory, but until then, the rest of us might want to make sure the day isn't just an excuse to indulge our shopaholism.

Automation=Evil=Must Die.

So after spending an estimated 5,730 hours navigating automated phone menus in an effort to get the trivial pieces of information I’ve needed in various situations throughout my life, I’ve come to the conclusion that automated phone menus are going to be the downfall of our civilization.

It all started with a creative type, probably a liberal arts major-turned consultant who dreamt up the idea of the automated phone menu, allowing business, government offices, and customer service departments worldwide to eliminate call centers in lieu of some low monthly fee to be paid directly to him. 
“Eureka!” he shrieked, knocking over his chair as he leapt to his feet, unsettling the cup of chai tea next to his legal pads of poetry and Great Business Ideas.  “This automated menu could do wonders for businesses, government offices, and customer service departments worldwide, enabling them to reassign high-paid employees taking calls, thereby freeing up all sorts of assets to boost the economy and hyperinflate my bank balances!”

Well, I’m sure that guy did all right for himself, but it’s been one sad story of waste and disappointment for the rest of us ever since.  Just try to estimate how many hours you’ve spent hitting “4” to manage your account, only to be dumped into a dead-end menu that has nothing to offer you in your moment of need and giving you no options to extricate yourself.  * doesn’t work.  # doesn’t work.  *67 doesn’t work.  Repeating obscene phrases at high decibel levels into the earpiece doesn’t work.  All that’s left to you is to end the call and start again, or curse God and die.

I would imagine the ratio of total dollars saved by those who make use of automated menus to total dollars of employee productivity lost while navigating those labyrinthine systems and venting to their coworkers is on the order to 1 to 20.  That’s not even close to what it would be if we factored in property destruction.

Maybe if that lady at the KC, MO Police Tow Lot hadn’t let her phone sit on hold for 25 minutes while toasting marshmallows over a fire fueled by the reams of meaningless paperwork offered in sacrifical homage to the pitiless and cruel Solemn Arbiter of Motor Vehicles by countless millions, I would be a free man today.

A Brief Announcement From Our Sponsors

You know, much as it pains me to say it, my life over the last few weeks could be a laptop ad.  String together a few sequences of my computer use, slap some kind of "Empowering You To Be You" slogan on there, and call it good.  This battered old IBM Thinkpad given to me by one of my father's co-workers has been a thoroughly useful companion--it's come in handy for entertainment on a transatlantic flight, for taking class notes, touching up the day's photos, snagging Spanish news podcasts off the internet, playing movies while I was laid up with a cold, compiling video clips, making international phone calls for pennies a minute, researching hostels in Rome, maintaining a budget in three currencies, purchasing European rail passes, and keeping my music collection on hand when I need some peace and quiet.

Part of me says I'd be fine without it--and I certainly would--but another is very, very glad that I Can Be Me... though I had to peel off my "Friends Don't Let Friends Decapitate Infidels" sticker off the back of the LCD before making my way into a local internet cafe.  All for the best, I suppose.

On My Mind

Not to get all hot and bothered over politics, but it's ridiculous. The press is getting this whole "Honduran struggle for democracy" all wrong. In a recent editorial by a Venezuelan journalist, the situation was clarified: we are witnessing the enormous courage of the Honduran people in the face of a den of miscreants that are putting all sorts of pressure on this country to collapse under the weight of Chavez' machinations. Well, Chavez and his OEA stooges weren't expecting the response they got--one that is uncharacteristically forthright and upstanding for a central American military (from my limited and stereotypical knowledge of history), which has sought to preserve the operations of democracy rather than rout them.

Those who are interested in following the situation more closely (believe me, socialism / communism is alive and well in this neck of the woods), you can follow it at "Honduras Abandoned," a blog run by an amateur journalist on the ground in Tegucigalpa whose reports have been more in accordance with the news reports here than on CNN and the NYT.

http://hondurasabandoned.blogspot.com/

Also of interest is a recent article by a gal who is studying the effects of language on the processes of thought. This question delves deeply into how we understand ourselves and our relationship to truth, and being in the midst of rewiring my brain for another language myself, it does cast an interesting light on the process.

Believers in cross-linguistic differences counter that everyone does not pay attention to the same things: if everyone did, one might think it would be easy to learn to speak other languages. Unfortunately, learning a new language (especially one not closely related to those you know) is never easy; it seems to require paying attention to a new set of distinctions. Whether it's distinguishing modes of being in Spanish, evidentiality in Turkish, or aspect in Russian, learning to speak these languages requires something more than just learning vocabulary: it requires paying attention to the right things in the world so that you have the correct information to include in what you say.

Read the article in full here (it's pretty short):

"How Does our Language Shape the Way We Think?" by Lera Boroditsky

On the Proceedings in South Bend

My first response to the footage of the arrest of a priest and other peaceful protesters on the Notre Dame campus was embarassment ... couldn't they at least come up with a hymn that had a little more resonance with the public than "Immaculate Mary"? I mean, that means something to Catholics, but to the rest of the world it just looks like kookery. I felt bad about it, and all sorts of little voices started whispering about my apathy and lack of commitment over a tragic injustice. But it was just humiliating to watch those security personnel pick up a grown man, a priest, from the street, and haul him off for "trespassing."

And then it hit my why my sense of embarrassment wasn't entirely misplaced: through the camera lens and TV screen, I was eavesdropping on a private affair--a family affair. In a flood, the words of St. Paul washed over me:

When one of you has a grievance against a brother, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, matters pertaining to this life! If then you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who are least esteemed by the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no man among you wise enough to decide between members of the brotherhood, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is defeat for you. (1 Cor 6:1-7).

Calling security personnel to haul away your brother in Christ? An elderly priest, no less?

Can this get any more ridiculous?

Sometimes, People Are Just Wrong

When people ask for feedback, tell them what you really think. Affirmation without criticism is insulting. It implies either an inattentiveness to what has actually been done, a judgment that the one who has humbled himself to receive help is incapable of improving, or flagrant disgregard for the good of your fellow human being.

All are sins against Christian charity. So quit it.
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Reality Is Not Episodic

It's recently become clear to me why television is boring.

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death has gotten me thinking about television and in what ways it's affecting culture. He traces the shift in public discourse over the years in which the printed word was the sole medium available, through the rise in the telegraph, to the present day in which the medium of TV has gained ascendancy (the book was written in the mid-80s so I would imagine he'd have something to say about the internet … especially bloggers). His motivation in writing is simply this: television has become an uncritically accepted reality in our world. Why is that, and how did it happen?

I'll leave a treatment of that question to a later post, but I'm going to go ahead and tell you why television bores me.

Most television shows operate on a formula that has been proven to attract viewers, fit within given limits imposed by the medium, and provide opportunities for the insertion of lucrative advertising. This formula runs something like this:

1 Situation
2 Conflict / unknown is introduced
3 Situation is thereby altered
4 Process of repair / reconstruction / discovery
5 Situation is restored.

1 and 5 are the entry and exit points for the show. They must be identical in order to allow the next episode to pick up at essentially the same situation. 2-4 are the "raw material" in which characters are revealed and developed. Because of the nature of the medium, no conflict or unknown can be introduced that cannot be resolved in 22 or 46 minutes (the actual viewing time of a half-hour or one hour show after commercials are removed). The exception to this is the season finale, in which one is allowed to leave the audience hanging for the season premiere to follow some months later. Any tension, ambiguity, or confusion must not persist beyond when the credits begin to roll. If more consequential or complex material is included (say, a developing romance between main characters), it is unfolded in manageable chunks, and sufficient innuendos are placed so as to draw the regular viewer into the mounting tension that in all likelihood will be satisfactorily resolved.

Characters, to the degree that they have any interior life at all, do not reflect on a given conflict / unknown beyond the time constraints of an episode (think Doogie Howser's diary). This reflection is rarely carried out in a sustained fashion, and is tolerated only to the degree that it advances the process of repair / reconstruction / discovery. Characters do not advance in age or wisdom unless they have the misfortune of being children, in which case writers come up with appropriately altered conflicts / unknowns commensurate with the unavoidable physical development in their actors.

Depending on the nature and genre of the show, the details change, but the basic format stays the same. It's discernible in some way, shape, or form in every other entertainment show out there, whether past or present. The fact that certain shows currently deviate slightly from this formula (Battlestar Galactica, Lost, etc.) and have received great acclaim is the exception that proves the rule.

What bores me about this is not just the repetitive structure, but the incredibly narrow slice of dramatic material available for treatment in this 22/46 minute window. Someone gets fired, someone gets restless, someone finds a dead body, someone wants to have sex with someone else, someone gets in trouble at school, someone buys a motorcycle, etc. etc. Nothing's inherently wrong with this way of packaging entertainment. I suppose on some level it's perfectly legitimate. But at what point do we lose contact with the bigger things? I happen to be blessed to live in a community that spends very little time (relatively speaking) watching TV; what about the rest of the world? Television is so fundamental a right that the government is subsidizing the transition from analog to digital signals by offering to purchase receivers for those who cannot afford to buy them. There is no one too poor not to have television!

It's not too far of a stretch to say that most of the world lives in the world of television, and takes it utterly for granted. Specifically, our entertainment has been so restricted to television and movies that it's hard to think of a popular form of entertainment that has not been affected by it in some way. Even pop fiction is written and published with the above format in mind (think of the reactions to The DaVinci Code, and how few of the chapters were more than a page or three long).

Some might say that all the above criticisms are precisely why television is so enjoyable: ready-made, easily digestible packets of entertainment and escape that are always ready for a quick excursion from the humdrum of daily life. Who says entertainment is supposed to be something that takes work? Why can't it be a good thing to sit back and rest the mind for an hour or two with some old, familiar faces?

The point isn't so much about "unwinding" or not, but the question of whether we are still capable of being stretched beyond facile and insipid approaches to human existence. "Sure," Mike Teavee chirps in between clicks of the remote. "I just don't want my TV doing it for me."

A man wiser than I interjects, "We all build our castles in the air, Mike. The problem is when we try to live in them."

Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean.

Eudora Welty

Question For You

Is it possible to receive a gift with such joy and gratitude that the very acceptance of it is all the response the giver could ever want?

Quick Question For You

What was yellow--
the very color itself--
yellowness--
before there was an eye to see it,
or lips to lend it a name?