psychology | write/geek

Wrong: a modest trumpposal

Something occurred to me late in the 2016 presidential race.¹ Everybody was like “this guy lies and never faces consequences,” but was going about it in pretty much the least effective way possible.

I’m sure folks who hold this opinion were well-meaning, but they seemed to be coming from a time where being caught lying is the worst thing a public official can do. Slimy politicians are supposed to, what, recoil with shame, mumble an apology and exit the spotlight?

That’s obviously not the playbook now, and it should have been clear to anyone even a little awake in 2016. So can I just propose some slick new language for describing a case where a public statement doesn’t quite match up with reality?

You don’t call it “inaccurate” or “unfactual.” We’re all very impressed that you went to college.

You don’t call it “lying” because that’s what 4D-chess-playing businessmen do when they negotiate, I guess.

The word you’re looking for is “wrong.” They’re wrong, you say they’re wrong.

Wrong helps keep a record. It classifies the statement into a clear category, helping reinforce objective reality in a time where it’s needed.

Wrong is, at the same time, a little soft and assumes the best intentions. Swing and a miss. Good hustle out there, little buddy—you can’t hit ’em all.

Wrong is, most importantly, universal. You could be a middle school dropout and remember the feeling from, I don’t know, multiplication tables or something. Being wrong isn’t game-over, but each wrong stings a little.

At some point, if anyone’s actually keeping score, consistent wrongness writ large in headlines for years on end makes a case for malpractice. And who the fuck would tie up their identity supporting somebody who’s just so loudly and consistently wrong, in public, all the time?

I know, I’m sorry I kept this to myself.[↩]

Can’t take much more of this

I was in the backseat of a car maybe a month ago when the new X-Files (2016) came up. None of us had heard whether the series was coming back for a permanent run or what. Someone looked it up on their phone and found it would only be six episodes.

“Oh, thank goodness,” I sighed.

My response baffled the front-seat occupants, one of whom asked what I had against the The X-Files. I explained badly, as I often do on the spot, how age has shown me that more isn’t always better, and my already loaded media diet means I just don’t have time or energy for that much new stuff.¹ Fewer episodes equals better.

A lot of times I’d rather appealing stuff just not exist than have to exert the willpower needed to not to care about it. Everett today is thankful Seinfeld quit early. Everett today was pissed when 99% Invisible went weekly. Everett sighed and stared out the window at the news of Blade Runner 2. Everett is way too good at finding stuff he cares about, and really bad at ignoring stuff that sounds like it might be cool.

Tom Chandler has this problem with podcasts. I, um, also have this problem with podcasts.

(P.S. If you’re David Lynch, make all the new Twin Peaks you want. I’ll accommodate.)

I wanted to add, but didn’t, that I always thought Milennium was better than The X-Files, because that would just confuse them and might make them think I really did secretly hate The X-Files but wouldn’t own up to it. I’m getting better about staying focused while talking, keeping the extraneous details I’m just dying to share to myself.[↩]

Deliciously clever dessert marketing

dessert

I went to a restaurant recently, one that could be placed comfortably in the same genre as Cheesecake Factory. Nice atmosphere, food’s great. But what stood out most to me was the way they marketed desserts.

What would you think the top reason is that people don’t order dessert? I’d guess that the first or second (the other being health/weight concerns) is that their entrée leaves them too full to eat more. How do you sell a dessert to someone who’s too stuffed to eat one? Get them to order it before they’re stuffed.

Our server initially mentioned, then reminded us on almost every appearance she made at our table, that all of their desserts are delicious, made-to-order and take up to 30 minutes to prepare, so my dining companion and I should get our dessert order in early if we don’t want to wait.

This might not give a non-critical thinker pause, but — you know — I tend to notice when someone’s reaching for my wallet. I also understand that restaurants tend to run at pretty slim profit margins, and how important attach rates of desserts, drinks and appetizers are to their business.

They really want you to have that slice of cheesecake, even if they’re probably going to be boxing it up to-go. Clever, huh?

The word calamity makes me smile (and now I know why)

Words are special things to me, and when I was a smaller geek and would try to figure out the meaning of unknown words, I would often form a mental image of a word’s meaning based on, often times, another word it sounded like (regardless of whether the two words actually had anything to do with each other). Sometimes, I’d actually use context to help decipher the meaning of the mystery word, but that wouldn’t always lead me to the right answer.

From time to time, I’d be unable to shed this first impression of a word, which would stick with me even after I would learn the word’s actual meaning. I’d have these false images sometimes pop into my mind when I’d hear the word itself used elsewhere, even knowing full well what it really means.

So when I found myself, in more recent years, finding the word calamity to be, of all things, bizarrely amusing, I began to seriously question how this could be. It’s not like I find calamities themselves funny. And the word is not one I hear used much on a day-to-day basis, and it certainly isn’t one used to describe things that are supposed to be funny. It’s not nearly as well-used as its synonyms catastrophe, disaster, or even tragedy. So why would I find it difficult to suppress a smirk when hearing or reading about something that someone described as calamitous?

Here’s what truly brought my strange relationship with the word to a head: I used to work for a company with pretty strong ties to the Philippines, so when the rather deadly Typhoon Ondoy (a.k.a. Ketsana) rolled through the country during my time employed there, the storm, and its effects, were more than just the headline or two that they may have been to most Americans. Reading pretty extensively about the storm, both through news reports and firsthand accounts from many of our customers, I noticed, a handful of times, many pinoys using calamity to describe what had happened there. To what we owe their word choice is not something I understand or am really concerned with, actually. More important was the involuntary smirking effect the word had on me.

That I could find myself amused by something so strange, in the face of tales and photos of death and destruction, was something I found unsettling, so I later thought hard about where this feeling likely came from. I can’t quite remember how I made the connection, but it eventually hit me.

That cute little guy to the right is Calamity Coyote, a character from the early-90s animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures, a show that may not have made as lasting an impression on me as others from the era did, but is one I definitely remember watching. (I remember the theme song very well, for what that’s worth.) Calamity is also a relative of Wile E. Coyote, or something.

Lacking any other context to explain to my single-digit-aged self the meaning of the word calamity, I must have assumed that it meant… well, something funny! Because, you know, the show was made up of funny characters doing funny things, so this unknown word must mean something funny.

It makes perfect sense to me, and feels like the explanation, the true creation myth I’ve been looking for. I can’t imagine where else a younger Everett would have come across that word, and it’s not one I’ve seen enough times in the intervening years, making this one of those wrong definitions I still just can’t forget.

Do you have any words that have a special meaning to you, one that’s completely different than what the word really means? Or perhaps that even tickle your funny bone in an equally irrational way? (I really do want to know.)

Warmth, fuzz at 60 MPH

Last Friday evening I was alone, driving south on one of South Florida’s fine expressways, when I had the strangest moment of, for lack of a better term, empathy.

(This is notable because the word with which I would expect myself to have ended that sentence is “contempt.”)

The driver in front of me, piloting a Mitsubishi that was either silver or gold (difficult to tell which in the half-light of the expressway’s overheard streetlights), wasn’t driving at a pace that was to my liking, so I decided I would pass them. I engaged my turn signal and began merging over to the next lane. They must have sensed, from the amount of time I had spent behind them, that they were not driving at a pace that was to my liking, so at the exact moment I started moving over, they too started moving over in the same direction I was. (Of course, they did so without signaling,¹ which is the South Florida Standard.) Just as simultaneously as we began them, we aborted our lane changes, as we each noticed the other’s attempt.

It was at this moment that I felt a warm, fuzzy feeling, the likes of which I almost never experience while driving down here. In that moment, I became quite aware that there was a person driving that Mitsubishi. It’s easy to forget that the other cars on the road are driven by people, especially at night when it’s not so easy to see them through their windows. But in that driver’s moment of obvious self-correction, it could not be clearer.

Also, I will not let it go unsaid: the events that unfolded made it clear that the person in front of me actually looked in their mirror before attempting to change lanes! Their careful consideration only makes me aware that they were at least a bit like me.

Around here, that’s saying something.

That’s fine, really. Had they signaled and done the other noted things, I would not be writing this post, because I would have died that night, from some sort of shock.[↩]

How to kick your own ass

So last night I was letting my mind wander while sitting around playing some Cave Story,¹ trying to decide whether I should blog the story of how I learned the word “residence” (yes, these are the things you think about when you are me), when I had a funny thought. Yes, a second one.

It went a bit like “Everett, you could share bits like that on your blog, but you do realize that in doing so, you’re cannibalizing content that you could be saving up for the memoir you may one day write, right?”

I chuckled at the thought and concluded that the story of how I learned the word “residence” may not, after all, make for that great a blog post. But in another moment of insight, I took my secondary thought to its logical conclusion: if I were serious about considering writing a memoir (and I wasn’t), perhaps at this point in my life I should worry more about who would even want to read such a book.

That’s not to put down my life and those who have played a role in shaping it, but… sorry you guys, I just don’t think it would make a compelling book. And a life spent sitting around wondering if I should write a book about my life seems even further away from a life worth writing about.

I wondered if maybe this principle (one worrying more about some potential future, at the expense of the present, which could be better used to get one to their desired future) is something that a lot of people do, something that has broader implications than some hypothetical, self-indulgent tome. Consider the example of relatively not-well-off people who oppose that which would be beneficial to them, by, say, having political leanings that do more for those who are much better off than they are. Why would they do this? Do they actually think they’re likely to be in that other class someday? Planning on winning the lottery, much?

It’s one thing to plan for the future. But it’s another to fetishize some outcome that, be real with yourself, is unlikely to happen… and is all the less likely, yet, if you sit around daydreaming about it.

Awesome, awesome game. Free download here for Windows/Mac/Linux/etc. or buy it for $12 on WiiWare.[↩]

Corporate logos, visual puns and the juvenile brain that just didn’t get it

When I was young, I just didn’t get it.

See, I was located squarely in Piaget’s pre-operational stage of development, and something funny seems to happen there: you’re only able to take things at face value, missing out on subtlety, double-meanings, sarcasm… and all that good stuff that isn’t stated bluntly. Once you’re a fully cognizant individual, you can appreciate all of that.

As a teen, or perhaps slightly earlier, I was suddenly able to see these sorts of things for what they really were. Well, most things. But for a certain class of things that I first experienced during my pre-op stage, I continued having trouble seeing them for what they truly represented. Here’s an example:

the classic Burger King logo When I was growing up, this was the Burger King logo. (I also walked uphill to school in the South Florida snow, both ways. Kids these days.) It’s pretty simple, right? The words represented the meat, between a couple of buns. To whom was that not abundantly clear that the logo is a burger?

To me.

I didn’t realize that until I was a bit older (high school, maybe), at which point it just hit me. It was not for lack of exposure; I had been eating at Burger King practically since birth. I had a birthday party there in elementary school. I was in the goddamn Burger King Kids Club!

The fact that I was exposed to this logo so early in life is precisely why I took it for granted. I missed the visual pun; as far as I was concerned, the logo looked the way it did because that was just what the Burger King logo looked like. I simply couldn’t imagine it any other way, or having any other purpose than telling people who see it on the side of a building that they’re looking at a Burger King location.

I had no such difficulty with the stupid-simple McDonald’s arches. It’s just a big “M.”

old-school Milwaukee Brewers logo Here’s another example of a logo I didn’t fully understand or appreciate. For the record, I wasn’t a Milwaukee Brewers fan, but at the age of four or five (and thanks to a friend’s father) I found myself with a huge collection of contemporary baseball cards. Again, until I was much older, all I saw in this logo was a stylized baseball and glove… which to a child, seems a perfectly appropriate logo for a baseball team. And your average sports-team logo is on the literal side.

I believe it was at some point in college that I noticed the subtle lettering in the Brewers’ logo. What a brilliant design!

There’s a completely different class of logos that are more subtle, with something intentionally hidden within. You don’t need to be a youngster to miss it.

These tend to be great:

the Goodwill logo the FedEx logo Amazon.com logo

The FedEx logo is widely celebrated, its pun masterfully subtle. It only occurred to me it a few years ago, while driving to work one day. I was behind a FedEx truck. Then it hit me. (Thank you, I will be here all week.)

As for the Goodwill logo, this blog comment made me see the light, or rather, the huge “g” in negative space. I had always just seen it as a face.

The day I realized that the Amazon logo wasn’t mean to be a smirk was the day I saw the A -> Z.

Can you think of any other good examples?