When my car stalled in the middle of MacDade Blvd, near the Nautilus Fitness Center, I saw my future.

The Plymouth Duster had been patched together for years.  Literally.   Once I found myself  epoxying chicken wire over a dent in the right passenger door and painting it with Rustoleum.  Then I lost myself again, and for years she took me to and from class, climbed the Allegheny mountains and transported kegs of beer to mythic realms where Bon Jovi and Madonna still reign as King and Queen (no one can convince them otherwise).

Anyway, it was a sad day when the tail pipe fell off and careened along the median strip, causing mayhem for the traffic coming in my rear-view mirror.  But the day that I’m recalling — that time of the infamous stalling in the midst of rush hour — is not that day…

During that particular turn of the Earth’s axis I called my father, an automobile mechanic for over forty years, and asked him for help.  I called him from the counter of the fitness center where I belonged and where the body-building guru had once taken a look at my torso and asked me if I’d left “my chest at home.”   My dear ol’ Dad could be just as calloused when it came to my feelings, but as I described for him the car’s diagonal position in the road and how we were about to make the evening news, he seemed downright cheerful and calm.  ”I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said at 5:35 in the afternoon, and with the Fidelity Bank sign blinking the digits of 5:45 he appeared in his greasy overalls and got to work.

First on the agenda involved a problem I failed to mention over the phone.  That is, in my haste to exit the vehicle and run across the parking lot, I had locked the keys in the car.   (Don’t ask me how.)   And so, with the trusty bent-clothes-hanger technique, Mr. Fix-It opened the door.   He then popped the hood and stuck his head into the guts of the engine.  He yanked, twisted, tightened and told me to get in the driver’s seat and try to start her up.

I did and nothing happened.  Nothing…
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 - Let’s Talk -

I need a new cell phone. My current cellular telephone is a lemon.  I’ve had it for almost 6 years. During our time together I have spent more money on new batteries than it would cost to get a new phone.
It’s age means the following 1) Randomly turns itself off 2) Freezes when the camera is activated 3) Is unable to send pictures to certain smart phones 4) Sends texts to wrong people, sends multiple copies of one text, unscrambles big words sent from newer phones.

I know I need to move on. But I love my phone. And each time I walk into a Verizon store I’m reminded of the way our culture chants: build something a lil’ fancier, now convince the peoples to buy it.

I’m hoping to reach our 6 year anniversary, then I will gracefully find a new partner in crime.

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Earlier this week , my fellow Barker Scott experienced my greatest fear as a blogger.  Okay, I have a lot of fears as a blogger:

1. That my terrible grammar (syntax, diction, voice) will convince readers that I am not fit to be a blogger, let alone a graduate student in an M.F.A program,

2. Therefore I will shame or make my M.F.A program look bad.

3. I might write a post that offends or insults someone.

4. I will seem self-involved and conceited (without fail).

5. I’ll get into a debate with someone who disagrees with what I’ve written and not be able to successfully articulate my side of the argument. Read more »

Since today is a holiday, I’m guessing that many of you won’t be spending extensive time on the interwebs, and I’m not going to test your patience with a lengthy post. Instead, here’s a few tidbits for your enjoyment:

1. New Wes Anderson movie trailer, if you haven’t already seen it. I believe my actual reaction to someone sharing this was, “I just peed a little.”

2. Portland’s version of community libraries.

3. A roundup of religion-approved sex toys. Not just for Christians, either– Jews & Muslims can get some, too.

4. If you thought Bark was a Tebow-free zone, think again, my friends. (And yes, the religious sex toys provided a natural lead-in for this.) To mark his exit from the playoffs and in the hopes that we won’t hear about him for a while– at least until he pays for more obnoxious ads during the Super Bowl– I give you…Tebowie.

5. For all you Apple diehards: NPR wants you to know where and how all those great products are made.

If you’re lucky enough to have the day off, enjoy the hell out of it, all right?

Jill Abramson

In March there was much debate about whether people would begin subscribing to the New York Times since the newspaper began charging for previously free online access. I decided that I would finally make good and subscribe. One of the reasons I hadn’t yet was because the massive amount of paper involved in a daily newspaper subscription horrifies me. But with the new subscriptions, online-only access was going to be an option—the perfect option for me.

The weird thing is that I continued to be able to click on what seemed like unlimited articles each month. This is where the first of two embarrassing parts of this post comes in. After telling people, with pride, that I read the New York Times online, I discovered I had never read more than the 20 free articles in a month. I don’t suppose reading less than one article a day really counts as being a legitimate “reader” of a newspaper. Read more »

Looks like the logo of an evil spy-movie corporation. For all your concerns about messaging, DARPA, you sure seem to be doing it wrong (Photo Credit: DARPAOutreach).

So in my student-teaching gig over at Bancroft Alternative, we’ve  been busy building rapport by discussing how storytelling shapes and defines human experience. From classic literature and poetry to the writing in modern hip-hop and video-games, story is everywhere, I tell my students. It’s a compelling idea, and it’s been a great way to engage kids who’ve been otherwise inured to learning by a society that still views them as bottom-feeders, as the dregs. This is what I tell them: Stories can have meaning, sure, but they can also be a form of connection with other people; stories can share, empathize ,convince, impart identity. Told effectively, they can even imbue a sense of purpose.

Now, in the context to which I’m currently applying the doctrine, storytelling sounds really positive. Right? Right. That is to say, it does so until I open up Wired and find this article by Dawn Lim, who reports that US defense-skunkworks DARPA is busy tooling around with what they call the “neurobiology of narratives.” Put simply, DARPA seeks to decode and understand the neurochemistry of storytelling, seeking to map how narrative affects the brain-chemistry of potential terrorists. They’re basically looking for the biochemistry of story and belief, in the hopes of predicting future terrorist actions or counteracting with their own propaganda.  The project name sounds like a LinkedIn group for MFAs: “Narrative Networks.”

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Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

(Author’s note: Forgive me. I know it isn’t my day, but I felt that something needed to be said. – S.M.)

I owe a lot to Steve Jobs. The Apple II was one of the first machines I ever explored, from kindergarten on through grade-school. I know that Jobs wasn’t involved with Apple at that time, having been forced out of the company shortly after my birth; still, it was his company, always was, and his ingenuity allowed those computers to be there in the first place. It allowed me those first tentative interactions with technology.

Later, as an angry misfit junior-higher, my school’s guidance counselor used to man the computer labs after-hours, allowing us free reign of all the Macintosh computers and educational software he had available. I explored audio editing and computer-aided design; I drew my first digital illustration (a supernova), traversed early 3D-rendered environments, and even explored 3D Atlas, a mid-90′s precursor to Google Earth. I wrote my first short story on a Macintosh. In a very real sense, the company that Steve Jobs created got me started on the path to writing. Read more »

"We lost good people on that server."

In case some of our readers hadn’t figured it out yet, I’m a bit of a geek. I may be a student of the humanities but I love science, I love technology, and my other big passion besides writing is video-games. It could be argued that the 1996 PC title Riven, a haunting game that explored the wonders and ethical dangers of storytelling, was actually responsible for my initial desire to write. I’ve found it compelling over the last decade to watch as electronic media emerges as an art form unto itself, and I follow developments related to that sphere with great interest.

Of course, as with any innovation, the results are not always shiny-happy-progress. Sometimes the results are actually harmful; more often than not, though, they’re just stupid. Kotaku’s Brian Crecente reports that a recent documentary by UK studio ITV features purported footage of “IRA terrorists” armed with Libyan anti-aircraft weapons, shooting down a Royal Army helicopter in 1988. The footage, while certainly riveting, is actually gameplay from 2009′s online combat shooter ARMA II. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen ARMA being played, and the graphics are quite good, if a bit dated. On the average low-quality TV screen some viewers, unfamiliar with modern conveniences like “video games” or “that awful rock-and-roll music,” would likely not even notice. That said: come on, guys. ITV claims this was a mix-up over use of the wrong clip, but any video editor worth his salt should have picked up on this right away. The glitchy, stilted movements of the soldiers in the beginning should have been a dead giveaway. Read more »

look, ma, i'm in the news *sent from an iphone

Yesterday, Jason posted about companies ditching fulltime employees for freelancers, and hypothesized that freelance gigs will only get outsourced. The big East will replace him. Based off of a quick glance of Chinglish Fail, I want to say: Easy Tiger, fall down carefully. All your base are belong to us.

I’m not afraid of China. I am afraid of Narrative Science. Narrative Science, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a company that makes computer-generated journalism. A few algorithms can pull together sabermetrics, Wikipedia, and a photo and compose a sports story. Or election information, financial reports, market research, and local news. The question is: will the computer put journalists out of work? Or maybe even kill the field of journalism?

I’m imagining a future where the local news doesn’t poll Facebook users for a little Beat on the Street section (“What do you think about the recent snowstorm? Send us a pic!”), but will be entirely woven from status updates, photographs, event pages, and open notes. It will work like Watson and Google Translate and however Narrative Science works, relying on what’s already been said to articulate a synopsis of current events. We will all be citizen journalists, for better or worse. Our typos and 1337 shortcuts will be the New Journalism. Crash blossoms will fill headlines. News will be half gossip. The public and the private spheres will finally, totally fuse. We will protest and then accept. English will get weirder.

And then, in ten years, Narrative Science will use your Gmail account and write a memoir for you, sell it as an ebook for $3.99 on Amazon, and you’ll get a tiny percentage of the cut and a lot of public embarrassment. After all, even a kid in China costs a lot these days. 

Which Student Are You?

I think you’re supposed to do the butterfly through seas of academic research, and I can only do the doggy paddle. In any case, I’ve been submerged for days and my head probably hasn’t dipped under as much as it’s supposed to, but I’m getting the gist of what’s down there below the surface.

I’m looking into research that helps explain mental shortcuts people make in order to take stances on complex topics without knowing much about them. These are some of the things research has found that we do:

We fit ourselves into identity groups and align our views with others in our groups. Then, as we see additional information about a given controversial topic, we take note of the parts that reinforce our own view of how the world should be. Also, we tend to ascribe the greatest level of authority to those who represent our own views.

The result? We tend to become increasingly polarized on issues even as we are exposed to balanced arguments and data.

At this point, you may not be stunned. But the most interesting part of the research I’m looking at is the way in which this power team* has grouped us. Read more »