Articulation

Today at work, I found myself working on an iPhone with some corrupted code in its operating system. While speaking to the customer, a lady in pink flopped down at the end of the bar, just in time to hear the last half of my conversation as I assured the customer that everything would be OK and I explained the steps that would need to be taken to get the phone's data back. As I walked around to go reset the phone, the woman in pink looked at me and said, "What part are you from?" Her accent was decidedly British.

This seemed to be an incomplete question to me, and I replied with the only thing I could immediately think of: "Come again?"

"What part are you from?"

"I'm sorry - what part of what? Do you mean where am I from?"

"Yes."

"Oh, sorry. I misunderstood. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia."

She seemed taken aback. "Really?" she said.

"That surprises you, it seems," I remarked.

"I thought I'd come across another expat losing his accent - you're very articulate and your manner of speaking is very English."

I smiled at that and thanked her, saying that she'd essentially made my day right there. I explained to her that my grandmother was from Great Britain, and that in partially raising me until I was two, she effectively canceled out whatever Southern accent I might have otherwise picked up.

In short, thank you Nana!

Democracy

I sympathize with the artist (Stephan Pastis of "Pearls Before Swine") in this being something that absolutely terrifies me.

There is already a good portion of the populace that takes the word of their favorite pundit or news outlet as pure, unadulterated fact without any question or personal research. Forming one's opinion - especially on matters of policy that affect others - based solely on another's word is lazy and dangerously shallow. Ideological laziness amounts to little more than willful ignorance and should be inexcusable in even a mostly-intelligent society, but it tends to be passed off as the norm on both sides. If a member of "the team" or "the party" says it, it must be true. Period.

Take Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, for example - while arguing his case for stripping Planned Parenthood of federal funding before the Senate, he said that abortions accounted for 90% of the organization's services rendered. This statement was run unquestioned and unchecked on most news outlets as part of their budget coverage, but many right-leaning new shows and blogs slanted it as a shocking "ZOMG!! Think of teh childrens!" statement against the women's health organization and its apparently-prolific serial murder of unborn babies by the high percentages. As tends to happen when hot-button issues are raised on either side of the aisle, a reactionary derp-storm ensued. "How dare the federal government use our tax dollars to kill babies!" raged the right. "90 percent - that's like three-quarters! Defund the baby-killers!"

(Editor's note: federal law already prohibited the use of federal funding for abortions, so while the outrage was a moot point to begin with, when has logic and fact ever stopped a good rage? It's the whole "Keep the government's hands off my Medicare!" type of argument again).

Right about a day later, logic had found time to breathe after a severe laughing fit, and it brought some fact-checking to the table. It turns out that while Planned Parenthood does indeed provide abortion services, those services actually accounted for just 3% of services rendered in its most recently-released numbers (2009, IIRC). The majority of the clinic groups services included contraception, pregnancy tests, STD screenings, and women's health services including PAP smears (which, contrary to a Fox News reporter's indication, cannot be done at your neighborhood Walgreens). When contacted for an explanation as to why there was such a chasm between Senator Kyl's numbers and reality, his office replied that the senator's declaration on the Senate floor - given as part of a factually-persuasive declaration of reason to remove funding - was "not intended to be a factual statement."


In normal circles, a statement made with the deliberate intent to not be factual is called a lie. Or if you're one of the internet's famed "1337 h4xx0r$" and trying to get a reaction out of an under-informed observer by making a ludicrous, inflammatory statement which you don't even believe yourself, possibly a troll.



Somehow, I doubt that Kyl looked like this when he left the floor that day.

So, in the absence of "Troll" as an explanation, the senator had two options left as explanations. They are as follows: "Ignoramus" and "Liar."

At best, "it wasn't meant to be a factual statement" could mean that Senator Kyl was making his statement in ignorance. He might genuinely have not known that the numbers were bad. He might have thought that whatever homeschooled seven-year old he has doing his research was really onto something and never bothered to check for himself. Again, ideological laziness, much like his followers - "These numbers fit our argument - let's go with those. Why would we fact-check? They fit our argument!"

At worst, however, he knew he was lying but said it anyway and didn't plan on getting called out on it. It's not surprising, to be honest - when a point needs to be made and facts don't support that point, who has time to bother with facts when there's a chance that a lie will never actually be checked out? Such has been the story of politics from the earliest days of man, and so will it continue for the foreseeable future. For me, though, it makes a great barometer as to who needs to be voted out of office.

Neither option is particularly good for an elected representative to admit to, but seeing as how Senator Kyl has removed his incorrect statement from the Congressional record, I personally lead towards "liar" instead of "ignoramus."

Someone needs to fire his publicist. And someone else needs to fire his senator.

¿Cómo Se Dice "Trollface" en Español?

While in Walmart this evening, I passed (perhaps foolishly) through the cookie aisle as I picked up a few things. In this aisle, I came upon a middle-aged Hispanic woman and her young child - maybe two or three years old. The child was pitching a fit over something - given the aisle I was in, I had a reasonable guess as to why - and his mother was trying to quiet him down. As I came towards them, the woman briefly locked eyes with me and then turned to her child and uttered a Spanish phrase that I had heard many times before in similar situations:

"Cállate o el gringo te va llevar."

"Be quiet or that white guy will take you away."

Apparently there is a superstition among certain segments of Hispanic culture that white guys ("gringos," to use the occasionally-derogatory colloquialism) will will steal away small children, usually to sell them, but the motive tends to vary by whim of the storyteller. In a way, the concept is similar to American culture's "boogeyman" or "Bloody Mary" (or if you're a South Park fan, Biggie Smalls), in that the kid's mind creates this ambiguous entity that will do them harm if they do or don't do certain things. Santa Claus fits the mold too, but so far as I'm aware, Jolly Old St Nick his never been accused of kidnapping naughty children; that would make for a great SyFy Channel Special, though.

In any case, I'd seen it before. Having spent two years living in Guatemala, I was made an occasional scapegoat and boogeyman in similar situations. I also came to be fluent in Spanish during that time, and that skill has served me well in many circumstances over the years. My accent has atrophied greatly due to lack of daily use, but my vocabulary and my comprehension are still decent, and my blonde hair and white skin give me great cover and a brilliant element of surprise, as few expect a "gringo" to be able to speak Spanish beyond "Where is the bathroom?" and "One more beer, please."

The little boy looked at me coming towards him and briefly stopped whining. His mom looked up at me at the same time, so I decided to break cover. As I passed by, I looked down at the kid and smiled at him.

"Házle caso a tu mama," I said in Spanish. ("Pay attention to your mom.")

The little boy's face became this:

Mom did this:

. . . and I walked away grinning like this:

Root of All . . .

Money can buy one all sorts of things: it can buy you a supercharged Range Rover Sport, for example. It can buy flashy, oversized chrome rims with low-profile tires for said Range Rover. It can buy spirits by the shot, bottle, gallon, and/or keg of one's choosing, thereby facilitating one's need to purchase the services of a designated driver such as myself.

For all its apparent power and lust-worthy influence, however, money seems to be utterly helpless, incapable, and otherwise stupefyingly-unable to obtain certain important commodities. For evidence, one need look no further than the Range Rover's middle-aged owner; en route to his north Scottsdale home, no fewer than six times this gentleman let loose earth-shattering, underwear-soiling blasts of methane. Then, clearly proud of his achievement, each time he proceeded to snicker and giggle like a 10-year old schoolboy, causing his wife to turn a visible-in-the-dark shade of red.

When it comes to procuring even one iota of restraint, dignity or class, even the collective wealth of all the Earth's billionaires proves staggeringly impotent.

Questionable Interior Design

Picture a beachside condo: mere feet from high tide's sapphire waters, it is separated from the deep by a stripe of white sand, foam-crested waves lapping onto it with a soothing swishing sound. Birds cry as they fly by, fish occasionally breach the ocean's surface, and cottony clouds drift by lazily in the expansive heavens. Relaxing in the living room after a long day with a wall-sized window through which to view it all, doesn't it make for a beautiful feeling? Nature's awe-inspiring wonder makes one feel at peace and assures that even in the midst of chaos and unpredictability, the world is indeed a wonderful place.

Now picture the window: it is shaded by a black velvet overhang on top, draped on a three-inch thick brass rod by large, chrome rings. The rod hangs slightly askew, the left side a few inches lower than the other due to a combination of bad planning and shoddy materials - the shafts of the nails and screws meant to hold the bracket are clearly visible as gravity has proved the stronger force. On either side hang sheer curtains of divergent colors: the left is striped in varying shades of blue with golden stitching forming an irregular, inconsistent pattern, as though hand-sewn by an apprentice tailor at 3am after a night at the bar. The right curtain is a spectrum, ranging from the deepest crimson to a pale pink; it has the same erratic, unintelligible stitching patterns crisscrossing through its mostly-opaque panel as its comrade on the opposite side.

Behind the thin curtains on both sides, tenuously suspended by a length of sagging fishing line, hang two thick, brown blankets. Though presumably meant as blackout curtains, their density is insufficient to completely block out the outside light, as they give a slight glow when hit by the sun. When drawn with the main curtains, the combined bulk and color bunch up together and turn the slightly-transparent curtains a stomach-turning shade of vomit when drawn together and combined with the outside light.

The media coverage of the Tucson shooting of Congresswoman Giffords is this window. The reprehensible partisan blame-game and name-calling has shielded from view the real, inspiring story. The major talking points have revolved around who is ideologically at fault:

"Obviously the right's lax stance on gun control laws are to blame here - how else would a lunatic have gotten ahold of a weapon?"

"No, of course not - if gun laws weren't so tight to begin with, another responsibly-armed citizen might have stopped the gunman with a 50-cent bullet and saved the taxpayers a lot of money."

"You're both wrong - it's obviously Sarah Palin's fault. Her violent rhetoric and blood libel against the left planted the idea."

"B . . . but . . . Obama! Death panels!"

"I blame Bush! Assault weapons!"

Look, my point is this: out of all the current events that either side could have picked to politicize, this tragedy is probably the most inappropriate one possible. The negativity and vitriol being slung back and forth in our major media outlets is nothing short of appalling. Yes, the event is unspeakably tragic - many people lost their lives and even more were hurt, but exchanging accusations and insults as to who is at fault will do absolutely nothing to remedy the issue. The man at fault has been arrested and his motives are as yet unknown. The fault lies with him - Jared Loughner - not with the left's politics nor the right's. Let us lay blame on the perpetrator and leave the rest to the judicial system without demonizing any outside forces, regardless of the tact or logic they may or may not possess.

Therefore, why not pull the curtains back - or better yet, take them out of the picture altogether? The magnificent view through the window is Congresswoman Giffords' recovery - despite being shot in the head, her progress has been nothing short of miraculous. She will be transferred to a rehab facility in Texas very soon, and her doctors seem optimistic about her chances (Link).

Is it too much too ask for someone with the appropriate stroke within the media to take the high road on this one and ignore those who insist upon trudging through negativity's gutter? We, the public, deserve better, and more importantly, Congresswoman Giffords and the rest of the victims deserve better.

Facebook Facepalm

I discovered today that Facebook has a new security feature in place that kicks in when you log in from an unknown computer. Cool enough, I say - my bank has the same feature in place, and given the rampant rise of identity theft and the abuse of other people's personal information in this ever-more-technological day and age, I think that it's a good step overall. The last thing I want, after all, is for someone with a tiny social circle and a large bank of spare time to send out funny kitty video viruses and Viagra ads through my Facebook profile.

Interesting side note: for some reason, my phone knows that the "V" in "Viagra" is supposed to be capitalized and corrected me when I failed to do so. I'm not entirely sure what that says about what Apple thinks of its user base given that they clearly thought to include that in the iOS autocorrection data bank. Perhaps they expect me to start talking to my reflection in building windows or to buy a classic muscle car.

In any case, Facebook did not seem to think things all the way through when they designed their system and their methods of accountholder identification. The first step is a bot-thwarting "Captcha," wherein you identify a pair of words in an image to ascertain your humanity, as opposed to a spam-machine. I'm not entirely sure how the technology works, but it generates random words into an image that a computer program supposedly cannot read, thereby preventing spammers from creating dummy accounts by the truckload and flooding our Walls with flotsam. If you're still not sure what they are, they usually look like this:


Sometimes they look like this:


And sometimes they look like this:


Googling "CAPTCHA fail" brings other amusing examples.

The second step in the re-Facebooking process is a multiple choice option of email/text verification, security questions, or a Facebook original: Identify Your Friends. This last option brings up a few friends' profile pictures and asks that you identify them out of six choices. Easy enough, right - if you're really you, you should know who [insert your name here]'s friends are. All would be fine and dandy were it not for a few annoying Facebook trends with which you, dear reader, may be familiar or even guilty of participation.

When I logged in via a work computer today, this is what I was presented with:


For the sake of reiteration, Facebook is asking me to identify which of my friends these are. Based on their profile pictures.

::Ahem::

Why So Serious?

I initially tried to express my thoughts on this into a Facebook status update, but I found myself too verbose. Facebook wouldn't take it, but I want to make sure to post it:

I am absolutely in awe of The Daily Show's writing staff after having watched the opening segment on Monday's episode. In the wake of Saturday's senseless tragedy in Tucson, theirs was a stunning and well-spoken response to both the tragedy and the shameless finger-pointing from punditry that has emerged. The ridiculous amount of partisan hackery and attempts by one side to blame the other for the actions of a near-certifiable nutcase have been nothing short of sickening and so far, The Daily Show and Colbert Report have been the only ones to refuse to engage in such lunacy.

What does it say when a comedy network is left to be the voice of reason in mass media? What happened to integrity and civility in journalism and politics? I am glad someone fills that role, but it seems absurd that the duty of calling for sanity and decorum be left to the programs whose original - and yet, still continuing - mission is to ridicule, mock, and satirize.

When the jester can no longer mock, something is surely amiss in the kingdom.