Total Perspective Vortex
What really happened to Trillian? Theories abound, but you can see what she's really been up to on this blog. If you're looking for white mice, depressed robots, or the occasional Pan Galactic Gargleblaster you might be better served here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/.
Don't just sit there angry and ranting, do something constructive.
In the words of Patti Smith (all hail Sister Patti): People have the power.
Contact your elected officials.
Don't be passive = get involved = make a difference.
Words are cool.
The English language is complex, stupid, illogical, confounding, brilliant, beautiful, and fascinating.
Every now and then a word presents itself that typifies all the maddeningly gorgeousness of language. They're the words that give you pause for thought. "Who came up with that word? That's an interesting string of letters." Their beauty doesn't lie in their definition (although that can play a role). It's also not in their onomatopoeia, though that, too, can play a role. Their beauty is in the way their letters combine - the visual poetry of words - and/or the way they sound when spoken. We talk a lot about music we like to hear and art we like to see, so let's all hail the unsung heroes of communication, poetry and life: Words.
Here are some I like. (Not because of their definition.)
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Smart Girls
(A Trillian de-composition, to the tune of Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys)
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Smart girls ain’t easy to love and they’re above playing games
And they’d rather read a book than subvert themselves
Kafka, Beethoven and foreign movies
And each night alone with her cat
And they won’t understand her and she won’t die young
She’ll probably just wither away
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
A smart girl loves creaky old libraries and lively debates
Exploring the world and art and witty reparteé
Men who don’t know her won’t like her and those who do
Sometimes won’t know how to take her
She’s rarely wrong but in desperation will play dumb
Because men hate that she’s always right
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Life(?) of Trillian
Single/Zero
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Have you seen I Write Like? It's kinda fun. I'm not addicted but I did give it a whirl with some different types of blogs and a few chapters of Just Drive, She Said.
I'm not all ego tripping on it. Mainly because it says I write like some, um, well, you know, some authors that, well, hmmm, how to say this, um, some authors that I like but give me cause for reflection on how I think. Because I write what I think, exactly how I think it. And if these authors were the same, then, well, I mean, okay. Let's take a quick look at the list.
Dan Brown
J.D. Salinger
William Gibson
William Foster Wallace
Kurt Vonnegut
Chuck Palahnuik
Margaret Atwood
Dan Brown? Huh? And not just once. A lot of times. Huh? Okay. True confession. I read Angels and Demons and the Da Vinci Code. I know. I know. I know. I know this is a surprising revelation. Look, I read a lot, okay? I don't date. I don't watch a lot of television. I read. And yes, sometimes I read some not-so-great books, okay? (I promise I've never read Sidney Sheldon or Jackie Collins.) I don't understand the I Write Like algorithm, maybe it's a super simple one and merely mentioning God or Jesus automatically puts you in the Dan Brown result category. Or maybe I'm just a very predictable, trite, conventional thinker. (Sorry, Dan, you seem like a nice person, I'm just sayin', you know, we're not talking Dickens, Faulkner, Twain or Adams when we speak of your writing.) Because that's where I'm going with this - not with the writing, but the thinking. I don't give a toss who I write like, but, because I write exactly how I think I am mildly curious to any insight I might glean from it. Apparently I think like a Dan Brown book.
Except for when I think like a J.D. Salinger book.
I mean, really, who doesn't admire, respect and love Catcher in the Rye? No one, right? Everyone loves that book. Everyone loves J. D. Salinger. No arguing that he was a gifted original. And a recluse and apparently an uptight perfectionist. Nice. Reclusive, yeah, I'll buy that, I'm becoming more that way every day and I'm really not bothered by it. But uptight perfectionist? I hope not.
But apparently Matthew and the gang in Just Drive, She Said, are very Salinger-esque because 10 chapters put in the I Write Like-ubator all produced the same result. J.D. Salinger. I suspect it has more to do with the first person narrative than anything else. Algorithms are not subjective. But if that were the case everything written in first person would garner a J.D. Salinger result. So, there are other defining criteria. A few other chapters scored me a William Gibson. Okay...um. You know, Neuromancer's pretty cool, actually really cool, but, um, cyberpunk? Me? Huh?
I like Infinite Jest. A lot. A lot. (O.N.A.N.? Come on, that's gotta be one of the sharpest, funniest, saddest comments on modern society to date.) But. Um. Okay. Um. Well. Huh. It was a sad day when David Foster Wallace killed himself. Life is excruciatingly painful for some people. I do not condemn people who kill themselves. I only hope they find peace in their final decision. I give them the same respect I give anyone else. However. A few suicides have deeply affected me beyond sorrow and left huge irreconcilable voids in my life and heart. A college friend. Kurt Cobain. And David Foster Wallace. So much more to give the world and so much sadness, leaving us all wondering and longing for what might have been. While the possibility of thinking like a David Foster Wallace book is humbling and interesting, it also kind of annoys me. 1) I'm not worthy; 2) It makes me gut wrenchingly sad; 3) Huh?
This is when I thought, "This is stupid. It's a dumb algorithm which has nothing to do with actual writing or thinking. It's merely processing patterns and spitting out the highest matching result. I may have written, thought, one sentence that shares similar characteristics of some of these authors' prose and ta dah, result. Pffft."
But of course I forged ahead.
And the Universe said, "Mock us and we will mock you in ways you cannot imagine."
Chuck Palahniuk. Fight Club? Swutting Fight Club? I think like swutting Fight Club? Jane, stop this crazy thing. I'm not going to discuss this because there's no need to say more.
But I had to try it again in order to cleanse myself of the growing paranoia and concern I had over how I think. "No wonder I can't find a job or man, I think like a Dan Brown, J.D. Salinger and Chuck Palahniuk book. Who's going to hire or date that psychotic mix of a personality type?" What started out as a fun little game was turning into a trip to a self-introspection maelstrom. It's like throwing dice, just one more time, the next roll will be better, then I'll quit, after a good roll I'll quit. (Not that I know a lot about throwing dice. I'm just saying, you know, that kind of a game.)
And it was really starting to bother/concern me that every author was male. Not one woman in the bunch. Okay, maybe they just haven't loaded many female authors' stylemarks into the database. And really, if Jackie Collins came up I'd be a) greatly amused and b) petrified. Still. There are plenty of great female authors surely some are in the data base. And at the very least I like to think I think like a woman, or that I have female characteristic in my thought processes.
Okay, here we go. C'mon, sixes, or whatever the double six writing style equivalent is. Uh-oh. Here we go. That made me think, "Who would I want to think like, in literary terms?" Sure, there are loads of characters I like and admire, but we're not necessarily talking about specific characters. Like I said, algorithms are objective and I'm pretty sure the J.D. Salinger thing keeps popping up because of the first person narrative. Not because of any subjective similarities to Holden Caulfield. So it's more about the essence, the feel for the entire book and the characters in it that would "match" my thought process.
So, you know, obviously, Douglas Adams. Okay, the whole woman thing. My name is Trillian but I am Arthur Dent struggling and confused and wondering and trying to make the best of the weird situations in which I find myself on this trip that is my life(?). That really is me in a nutshell and hence my affinity and fascination with HGTG. But nope, Douglas Adams is either not in the I Write Like database or the one thing I thought I knew for sure about myself is, actually, wrong. Which, ironically, comically poignantly, would be very much an Arthur thing.
Awww crap. Kurt Vonnegut. Really? Kurt Vonnegut? Another man and Kurt Vonnegut? I mean, again, I love his books, and obviously he is another gifted individual whom everyone respects and admires. Brilliant, clever, imaginative yet real. I could go on for days about Vonnegut's books and insight and the raw, pure genius of his gift and what he gave the world. And oh yeah, heh heh, he just happened to be a graphic artist...and he was an agnostic who lauded the lessons of Jesus...so, yeah, that's interesting. Maybe agnostic graphic artists all think alike, even the one's who write Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five.
Feeling slightly concerned but buoyed, maybe I was onto something with the whole essence of the author thing, I forged ahead.
Finally, finally my results netted a female author. Finally, I think like a woman! Margaret Atwood. Handmaid's Tale. Decent book, horrible movie. And another Canadian. That's it, we're done. I'm outta here. This is a stupid.
And I walked away. I just walked away from it.
And then I walked back to it. And wrote about my I Write Like experience. And fed what I wrote about I Write Like into the I Write Like-ubator and:
And you know, hey, I guess there are worse things than thinking like a Kurt Vonnegut book. I guess cool with that. And now I'm wondering how to use this insight about myself to find a job and a man.
I cut and pasted a few job/company descriptions and online dating profiles into the I Write Like-cubator. Heh heh. Well, this could explain why I'm unemployed and single. None of the jobs I applied to or men I found resulted in a Kurt Vonnegut result. Not that I want a Kurt Vonnegut-esque job or boyfriend, but I thought it might be a good place to start, some common ground, if we think alike, like Kurt Vonnegut, then maybe we'd at least understand each other.
However. The job description for a job I recently applied to netted this result:
Okay, okay, well, that's something. I had a David Foster Wallace result so maybe the writer of the job description and I have enough in common to form a good working relationship. Fingers crossed. I actually really want a shot at that job, it sounds like a good one for me. Here's hoping David Foster Wallace will be the tie that unites me with an employer and we'll work happily ever after.
So now, instead of using I Write Like for it's intended purpose it's become my new Magic 8 Ball. I'm cutting and pasting all sorts of text into it and looking at the results. Job descriptions and online dating profiles were just the beginning. I pasted in email from my sister, my friends, my mortgage company...I won't say I'm obsessed, but, uh, there is an addictive quality to it.
My sister writes like Raymond Chandler, one friend writes like Stephanie Meyer (a-ha! So there are women in the database!), another friend (male) writes like James Fenimore Cooper and my mortgage company writes like David Foster Wallace, which I find infinitely jest-ful.
And on that note, if you're feeling J.D. Salinger-esque, chapter VI of Just Drive, She Said is now live. It's one of the William Gibson-esque chapters. I have no idea why, I cannot crack that code. (See, I'm so not Dan Brown!)
Thursday, July 15, 2010
But hey, at least I'm not alone. Too bad all of us single jobless, homeless, car-less people can't find a place to share, a commune sort of thing. Based on the stories I've read and heard we have the skills, education, experience and expertise to achieve world domination if we could all just get together in one place . And yes, there's some comfort in that. It's not personal. Loads - millions - of educated, professional people are unemployed and can't find jobs and are losing their homes. It's bad for everyone but I contend it's worse for singles - we live alone, we make it or break it on our own and we spend long, scary, lonely nights worrying and crying and trying to think of a plan...on our own.
When we lose everything we truly lose everything because we don't have the intrinsic things married couples rely on to console themselves. "We haven't lost everything, we still have each other..."
Many of us singles pour the energy we would channel into a relationship with a significant other into our careers. Our careers matter to us, a lot. Some argue too much, and I agree to a certain extent. But when no one wants to date us and the one thing we have going for us is a successful career, naturally we throw ourselves into it. So when we lose our jobs...well...it's devastating. And we have to deal with being unemployed on our own and deal with the emotional upheaval and anxiety on our own. There's no intrinsic consoling, no getting in touch with what really matters: Spending time with the spouse and kids and forming stronger familial bonds.*
Instead we console ourselves with the stories we hear about other jobless, homeless singles. "Hey, it's not just me. There are loads of other jobless, homeless, loveless singles out there struggling, too." Because that's what people tell us. Married people. People with jobs. People with homes. They quickly tell about someone they know, a former coworker or friend, who's "just like" me. Or they forward links to stories about people "just like" me. That's how I came across this. A friend (married, new house, just back from vacation in Italy) forwarded it to me. "See Trill? This sounds just like you except you didn't have a car to repossess. At least you're not alone." Oh. Right. I'm not alone. (Looks around emptied condo for signs of someone else there. Looks at the meager boxes of possessions - socks and underwear, mainly - for signs of someone else's stuff. Looks at dwindling bank account, solitary signature on mortgage and income tax return for signs of someone else there, too.)
*And there's that pesky religion issue. I know, if I just let Jesus into my heart I would never be alone. But remember, I'm the kid who had Jesus as an imaginary friend for a lot of years. When Jesus was my best friend I still felt alone, though. (Which explains why I had an imaginary friend.) And back then I Believed, oh man how I Believed. But I still felt alone. So. Ya know. I'm just sayin'.
Apparently God and Jesus dislike unemployed single people more than unemployed married people because there are more single unemployed people than married unemployed people. That or Satan has more tricks up his sleeve to use against us unemployed singles. Maybe when it comes to Satan there is safety in numbers.
