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The Art of Fearlessness

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Everyone’s a critic.

This statement has never been truer than it is in today‘s face-paced digital age of instant outrage. We live in a time when throngs of people scream with incredulous outrage over an overpriced, colorful liquid sugar beverage while many of those same people laugh and point fingers at more than half a nation outraged at the fact that their leader is a toxic dimwit suspected of treason. But make no mistake, regardless of where their criticism is directed, their opinions will be plastered all over the internet a heartbeat before they even finish their thought.


And then we have the world of art.

I don’t know if a work of art is “good” or not, I simply know if I like it, and I suspect this is true for most people. Where I differ from a lot of other folks, though, is that I am also a creator. The written word is my medium, and if I know one thing, it is that a piece of writing is near the top of the list of things people will criticize.

Whether I am pouring my heart and soul onto the page and exposing my flaws and vulnerabilities, or writing something that only opens tiny windows into my life that people need to squint and strain to see through, what you are getting is a part of me. My metaphorical DNA is woven into everything I write but I give it to you freely and with full knowledge that feedback may not be favorable.

However, if someone takes my words out of context, or attempts to change their meaning without my consent, then we are going to have a problem. You see this happen all the time with political attack ads, where an opposing candidate takes an out of context partial a quote from their rival and plasters it all over the television insisting “the other candidate” is a  terrible person. This type of forced context switching is commonplace with written and spoken word and it turns out that the visual artistic realm is not immune either.

Take a recent dust-up involving the famed Wall Street Charging Bull statue and its new counterpart Fearless Girl.


Wikipedia

Fearless Girl materialized on March 7, 2017, and initially had a plaque at its base which read, “Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.” Why is “SHE” in all caps,” you ask? Good question. 

A fellow by the name of Greg Fallis wrote a good piece breaking that down. The summary is this: SHE is the stock ticker symbol for a “Gender Diversity Index” fund held by State Street Global Investors and, working with the advertising company McCann, commissioned the artist, Kristen Visbal, to create the statue.

But here’s the thing. Fearless Girl was placed in front of and facing Arturo Di Modica’s statue Charging Bull and when Di Modica became aware of this he expressed displeasure. He asserts that with the presence of Fearless Girl that the meaning behind his sculpture has been lost. He created it as a symbol of a strong and powerful America and now that symbol has been distorted.

Greg Fallis’s article was well researched, well written, and made solid arguments in favor of Di Modica’s stance. He also got thoroughly roasted for having the nerve to share his thoughts with a public that salivates at the opportunity to dig their incredulous teeth into a good controversy.

I read one particularly good response to Fallis’s article written by Caroline Criado-Perez. She highlights the existing patriarchy within the art world, particularly with regards to sculptures scattered about the UK. You should read what she has to say about it. It will be time well spent. In a nutshell, her argument is that Fearless Girl being placed in front of Charging Bull simply calls it out for its patriarchal representations.


Essentially, Fearless Girl exists to force you into feeling something very specific about Charging Bull – and society in general.

Criado-Perez argues that this is a good thing and in doing so she is criticizing Di Modica for creating a male-centric piece of art, she is criticizing the city of New York for allowing its continued presence on a busy cobblestone corner, and she is criticizing everyone who has ever made the decision to display a male-centric piece of art instead one depicting women.  


Her message is clear: Fuck you, Charging Bull, and the patriarchy you rode in on. 

Wikipedia

I find it difficult to disagree with her, but when I view it through the eyes of Charging Bull’s creator, what I see in Fearless Girl is a highly effective piece of viral marketing attempting to alter the DNA of his work. I have no attachment to Charging Bull. I didn’t know its history until Greg Fallis pointed it out. But I do know Charging Bull existed just fine on his own for three decades and Fearless Girl appears to have been put there to alter its meaning. To me, it marks a distinct difference between art and marketing. Had it been done in any other way I am sure I wouldn’t even be writing this post.


It is this blurred line between art and marketing that is what’s tripping me up. It seems to get into all sorts of conversations about intent and interpretation and I don’t happen to think there are a lot of answerable questions in that realm.

Just to be clear, I love what Fearless Girl is and what she represents. I don’t love that she was created as a marketing tool at the expense of someone else’s art. I also don’t love the fact that the company who brought Fearless Girl to life, with its message of greater corporate gender diversity, has a mere 5 female executives out of 28 and only 3 out of 11 board members who are women. Is, “Do as I say not as I do,” really the message here or are they making a mea culpa statement and State Street is simply the best of a sad lot?

At the heart of it, I feel manipulated and I suppose some will argue that that is what art is supposed to do. I honestly don’t know if it is, but it seems to happen whether or not artists intend it to. At the very least it got me thinking, and that’s a good thing because where there are people thinking there are also thought experiments. I spent my formative late high school and early university years studying physics and a powerful tool used in that discipline were what Albert Einstein called “gedankenexperiments”. 

Gedankenexperiments is the German word for “thought experiments” and they are essentially a way of thinking in hypotheticals to assist in organizing thoughts around a particular problem. I came up with one to help me clean up some of the jumbled thoughts I had on the topic of Fearless Girl versus Charging Bull. It goes like this: 

Someone places a statue in front of Fearless Girl. That statue depicts a mother standing on her own with a sort of perturbed stance and equally perturbed look on her face. This woman is holding out her hand toward Fearless Girl as if to say, “Give it to me” or “We’re going home, now!” The new statue is given the title Frustrated Mother.

The questions this scenario raises are plentiful. How would the creators of Fearless Girl feel? How would the supporters of Fearless Girl feel? How would the creator of Charging Bull feel? Would Fearless Girl become Petulant Child, Defiant Girl, or Stubborn Youth or would Frustrated Mother be viewed as a parent trying to protect her child, one who is unaware of the dangers of the world, from Charging Bull?

Let us take the thought experiment in another direction and further say that at the same time Frustrated Mother is installed, Charging Bull is removed. What happens then? Frustrated Mother can exist on her own without Charging Bull but she can’t exist, not in the same way at least, without Fearless Girl. On the other hand, Fearless Girl has always needed something else to realize its full impact. 

Unless that is, you turn her around.

Turn Fearless Girl and have her face the other direction, towards nothing in particular, and it doesn’t matter what is going on behind her, whether it is Charging Bull, Frustrated Mother, Donald Trump or some other catastrophe. Fearless Girl becomes Fearless and Independent Girl and no matter what is going on around her, the look of determination and confidence on her face would scream, “I got this.”

To that, all I would have to say is, “Hell yes she does!”

~ Andrew


Links:

    Feel The Burn

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    If you are one of my regular eight readers you may have noticed I have been posting more consistently lately. Rest assured that was a conscious decision. Aside from getting into a regular rhythm for writing, I find it quite enjoyable to crank out 800-1200 words every week and put them out into the world.

    If you have been paying attention you may also have noticed some themes developing. That was also a conscious decision.  I took some advice from a good friend and writer, S.J. Cairns, who scooped the tip from BadRedhead Media‘s Rachel Thompson (who is also a top-notch person in addition to being über knowledgeable about all things book marketing).

    That is not to say that you will not see posts outside of those themes, but it is a safe bet that if you see a new post on the site that it will fit into one of the following:

    • Views into the world of a new-to-the-industry writer;  
    • Communities (neighbourhood, writing, social); 
    • Creativity (how people find inspiration, what forms it takes, how to recognize it, what to do when it comes to you, the importance of it); and 
    • Self-Improvement, personal growth, mental and physical health.

    This week I’ve decided to share a bit about some self-improvement, physical health division.

    As you read a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I started exploring our neighbourhood by walking. Getting our 10,000 steps a day has made a big difference in both our lives but my wife wanted to do more.

    So, back in October of 2016, we joined a gym. It was a new “boutique” style gym called Orange Theory Fitness. It was not opening until January 2017 but for signing up early we got special pricing as well as access to sessions before the official opening.

    Each class has up to twenty-four participants that are split up into two groups: treadmill and rower and at the halfway point in the almost hour-long class, the two groups switch. Each workout concentrates on either endurance, strength, power, or some combination of the three (or all three). The treadmill folks do interval walking, jogging, or running appropriate for the type of workout that day. The rowers obviously row but also do a selection of cross training exercises, free weights, and TRX.

    You wear a heart rate monitor while you workout and your stats are displayed on big monitors in the gym. The goal is to spend a certain amount of time in various zones:

    Grey = 60% or less of your maximum heart rate
    Blue = 61-70% of your maximum heart rate
    Green = 71-83%
    Orange = 84-91%
    Red = 92% and up

    If you can spend a minimum of twelve minutes in the workout in the orange zone the theory is that your body will continue to burn calories for up to two days after your workout.

    At the end of your workout you get an email with the number of calories you burned in that workout, the number of “splat points” you earned (1 splat point = 1 minute in the orange zone), what your average heart rate was, and how many minutes you spent in each zone.

    Orange Theory Fitness workout summary

    For the record, Orange Theory Fitness is not paying me anything to write this post. They will not even know I am writing it until I tag them in the Facebook post and mention them on Twitter when everyone else finds out about it. That said, if you are looking to getting into fitness outside of the house in a fun, respectful, and challenging environment I would recommend them. I am not a fan of fitness and even less of a fan of group fitness and I genuinely enjoy going. 
    Whether is is joining a gym, getting out of the house to walk in the fresh air, doing yoga in the basement, or walking on the spot during the ten minutes you have to make lunches when the kids are in bed for the night, I can personally speak to the mental and physical benefits of being active. 
    My wife and I have been going to Orange Theory twice a week since December 26 and the results have been noticeable. She has lost a bunch of weight and is jogging on the treadmill the entire block (as opposed to spells of walking) and even increased her speed by more than 2 mph! 
    Andrew (5th from the left at the back) and his wife (to his left) at the second
    ever Orange Theory Fitness Guelph (Ontario) location
    I was in terrible shape when I started and had to walk the entire block on the treadmill. Now, I am close to jogging the entire time. My heart rate still spends a lot of time up in the orange and red zones but it takes a lot more to keep it there and I need to get close to 100% of my max before I start to even feel uncomfortable. I am not sure if I am sleeping any better but I can tell you that I am less tired during the day and generally have more energy. 
    I have even started to see some small but significant changes in my appearance. I am still rocking the dadbod, but today I put on my pink golf shirt that I bought a couple years ago with a Golf Town gift card I got from my mom for my birthday, and for the first time since I first tried it on in the store it did not show off my man boobs. 
    April 14, 2017 and moob free!

    ~ Andrew

    Screw You, Rules and Rules That Screw You

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    Rules. From the games we play to the governments that run nations, rules are everywhere. Sometimes we refer to them as “rules” and sometimes they carry a tad more gravity and we use the word “law”.

    An example of a generally good rule is the, “three strikes and you’re out,” one they have for baseball. You can’t just have as many strikes as you want, that would be ridiculous, and limiting it to one or two seems like you’re not giving the batter enough of a chance. Three seems like a good number. Three strikes and you’re out is a keeper.

    Another good one is, “Thou shalt not kill”. I really like this one. If more people followed it I think the state of many things would improve.

    But then, especially when it comes to less murder-related events such as sports, there are some pretty stupid rules. Just ask Lexi Thompson.

    Lexi is a professional golfer on the LPGA and was playing in that league’s first major championship (there are four majors in a single golf season and are considered to be the most elite competitions). Golf has a lot of rules, but the thing is, for just about everyone who plays, the rules – and the penalties that come with breaking them – are self-imposed. Yes, even the professionals. There are rules officials on course, but they can’t be everywhere at every time. Most of the time the players police themselves, but on occasion, the viewers get involved. 

    Lexi was twelve holes into the final round when a rules official notified her that a viewer had emailed the LPGA and said that a day earlier, Lexi had incorrectly placed her ball on the green before a putt. This is a rule in golf. When you’re on the green you can mark your ball, pick it up, clean it, remove any debris from the area, and replace your ball. You must replace the ball in the exact same spot as it was when you marked it. In Lexi’s case, she picked up her ball in order to reorient it to suit her needs and placed it back down – less than one inch away from where it was marked.

    As insignificant as the infraction was, Lexi broke the rule. The penalty for this infraction is two strokes. The thing about this particular incident, however, was the email didn’t come in notifying the league about it until after the round was completed. As such, Lexi had unknowingly signed an incorrect scorecard. The penalty for that is another two strokes (previously it has been a disqualification!)

    So, more than halfway through her next round, Lexi found herself the recipient of a four-stroke penalty in a tournament that she was leading by two strokes with only five holes to play. She battled back to tie the score after eighteen holes but lost on the first playoff hole and was denied her first major championship victory – because of one stupid rule and one asshole viewer.

    I think it’s fine if you want to allow viewers to police golfers. I also think it’s fine that there is a penalty for such an insignificant thing as half an inch distance discrepancy. What I don’t think is fine is how Lexi was penalized for signing an incorrect card, that, at the time, she had no reason to believe was incorrect. Change the rule so that incorrect card signing penalties aren’t levied if the round has ended.

    If you want to see the video of Lexi’s incorrect ball placement you can see it here:

    http://www.golf.com/tour-news/2017/04/02/lexi-thompson-given-four-stroke-penalty-after-viewer-notifies-lpga-rules-violation

    Let’s go from a shitty rule that ended up costing one person several hundred thousand dollars to what I consider to be a great rule that could end up costing one company millions.

    The rule: the Oxford comma.

    The scenario: a contract document between a company and a union had a clause that was missing an Oxford comma.

    “…people involved in the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of…”

    It’s that last bit that’s of interest. “Packing for shipment or distribution” is different than, “packing for shipment, or distribution.” The company argued that “packing for shipment” and “distribution” were two separate functions but the union argued that, as it was written, it was one.

    The result: the court agreed with the union. 

    You can read more about it here:

    I’m a big fan of the Oxford comma. Clearly, using it can help clarify a sentence and omitting it can cause confusion (and as we just saw, a lot if money). So my take on it is this: I think of using the Oxford comma the same as I approach fighting climate change. There are times when it doesn’t seem necessary, but you’re never going to make things worse by doing it.

    If you’re going to have a rule, why have a complicated rule when you can have a simple one? In other words, quit your suckitupbuttercup and just use the fricking Oxford comma already, and if you want me to stop using it you are going to have to pry it from my cold, pale, and dead hands.

    ~ Andrew

    The Importance of Others

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    I have touched on the subject of online writing groups a couple of times before but this time I would like to come at it from a different angle. I thought I would share a bit about what I love about one of the writing groups I am in and then see what some other writers I know have to say about a group they are in as well.

    There are all kinds of online writing communities. Some are straight-up critique groups, others are for folks all with the same publisher, some are there for people to shameless self-promote, and still others are there to help with motivation, word counting, and goal tracking.

    I am in half a dozen online writing groups on Facebook incorporating all but the shameless self-promotion, but I have to tell you my favourite group of them all brings in all the elements and then some. As someone who is generally annoyed by people but is also fascinated by them and values friendships this group is a little slice of internet heaven for me.

    Here are just a handful of the things that make this writing group my first destination in the morning when I open up Facebook and usually the last place I visit online before I got to bed:

    • Advice in this group is never dispensed without someone having asked for it. 
    • There are no agendas.
    • It is not political (except for a unanimous distaste for the current U.S. President).
    • Occasional shameless self-promotion is welcome, but more often than not group members are promoting other group members. 
    • It is not always about writing. Friendship and emotional support are in abundance. 
    • Inappropriateness is high, but respect for everyone, their beliefs, and their experiences is paramount. 
    • It is diverse, not just in writing experience, but in age, gender, and geography. 
    • There are two different views on the Oxford comma (those who are in favour of it and those who are wrong). 

    As you can see, there is a lot there to like. But I am just one person. So that is why I reached out to a number of writers I know who are either in my favourite writing group or another one of which they are fond. Here’s what they had to say:

    “I love our group. No downsides. We are shoulders, soundboards, and friends beyond multiple borders. Filled with people who changed my life in more ways than just writing.”

    “This group is about respecting and caring for one another and the work we’re doing, rather than using one another for our own means.”

    “Respect, encouragement both in real life and fictional, friendship, love and a true safe space amidst the faceless 1’s and 0’s of the digital social media universe.”

    “As one of the few members who hasn’t had any fiction published, I like being in this group because I still receive a lot of tips and pointers, encouragement for my non-fiction writing, and encouragement to get off my ass and actually write some fiction. There’s more to be had here: lots of love and respect, a lot of humor… and some of you are just darn cute.”

    “I’d heard that anyone can achieve their writing goals simply by hard work and honing their craft, but I have discovered that’s nonsense. Behind every Harry Potter is a Ron, a Hermione, a Mad-Eye Moody, and a Dumbledore. Everyone needs a team, a group of people you can trust, be yourself with, even if you’ve got a bit of the Voldemorts that day, and share in your victories. I was lucky enough to be invited into a group like that and I would urge others to find their peeps and stick with them.”

    “Unfailing, unquestioning love and support, including a well-aimed kick in the ass when it’s needed.”

    “It’s a safe, non-judgmental place for [us]. No one cares if you are a newbie, a wanabe, or a published author. People will listen to your ideas or concerns and offer advice when asked for, hugs when needed and lots and lots of talk about no pants and cookies which just makes my day “

    There you have it, folks. The votes have been tallied and the results are in. Writers, who are stereotypically known for being solitary hermits who hammer away at a keyboard in some writerly-looking cave only coming up for coffee and chocolate actually value the interaction and camaraderie that comes with being part of a community.

    I, for one, couldn’t be more thrilled. It is nice to know that you are part of something bigger than yourself and even nicer to know that there are so many of us out there who value the importance of others.

    ~ Andrew

    A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood

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    I used to be an active person until one day I wasn’t. Inertia being what it is, a bad back, a handful of concussions, and sheer laziness have seen to it that it has been like this for a number of years now. On top of that, my day job is one that has me sitting on my butt virtually all day, and on top of that, I have a minimum thirty-minute commute to get my sedentary ass to my cushy sit-down job and back again nine hours later. 
    Then, about a year ago my wife started making a concerted effort to walk 10,000 steps a day. That, combined with some other dietary and lifestyle changes and she started to lose some weight. Looking down a belly that was starting to hang over my belt I decided that I would join her on her walks and for Father’s Day that year she bought be a fitness tracker like the one she had (a Jawbone Up!). 
    The game was now afoot. 
    If you’re not familiar with fitness trackers they are just step counters with an accompanying app on your phone. You set a daily target and it buzzes or flashes a light or gives you a virtual high five when you hit your goals. I have mine set for 10,000 steps a day, which is entirely arbitrary but works out to somewhere between 7.5 and 8km – which, if you’re counting, is a crapload more than one, which also happens to be my previous daily average for the last several years. 
    It’s amazing the difference gamification of something as simple as walking can have. At any point throughout my day I can fire up the app on my phone and get a screen that looks like this: 
    I pretty much ignore the calorie burn statistics, but I like the graph and stats immediately below it. That’s a screenshot from Saturday and you can see there was one big walk in the middle there. Most days I will have a couple spikes because I’ll get up from my desk twice a day and go for a walk at work, either on the treadmill in the gym or outside on the walking paths through the greenspace that snakes its way around my office. 
    The people at Jawbone also have a trend feature in the app and you can get graphs set to daily, weekly, or monthly time periods and take a look at how you’re doing. As you can see from my graph for the past seven months, once the weather started to get cold my monthly step count dropped significantly: 

    I expect to have better averages once the weather warms up again (soon!) and my wife and I will reintroduce our nightly post-dinner walks around our neighbourhood. Which brings me to another wonderful benefit of getting off the couch and leaving the house. You get to discover your neighbourhood and meet the people in it.

    Since we started walking together around the neighbourhood we’ve been down just about every side street within a three or four kilometers of our house. We have also finally made our way into some local businesses while we were at it and supported members of our community.

    The one thing that has amazed me more than anything else since I started walking was the fact that only a few thousand steps from my front door were not one but two fabulous wooded areas with walking paths (one dirt and one paved multi-purpose)! If we go on a long walk (more than 6,000 steps) and the ground is dry we’ll go through the woods. It is like entering a different world with beautiful, tall trees, small critters, and birds.

    For the houses that border the wood, it is literally right in their backyard but for me and my wife, it’s pretty darn close and we had lived in this neighbourhood for almost seven years before we discovered them.

    I will call this one “Harry Potter Wood”.
    Image courtesy Google Earth.

    The one with the paved path. It’s about 1km start to finish.
    Image courtesy Google Earth

    If you haven’t gathered by this point, I have been converted. Granted, I am not turning into a fitness freak or anything, but I feel healthier, I’ve lost a bit of flab and noticed a bit of muscle where there never used to be, I get to spend some quality time with my wife, support local business, and meet my neighbours. I have yet to identify a downside.

    Plus, I get a congratulations notification on my phone when I reach 10,000 steps!

    ~ Andrew

    WTF? :-P [sic]

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    Looking at the title of this post you might think the topic could be any number of things. This is not a post about profanity, though I have written a blog post touching on that topic that was quite successful. In fact, that post currently sits second on my all-time views list behind by sneakily-titled Size Matters post. Nor is this a post about punctuation, though with the legal vindication of the Oxford comma coming this week I could have touched on it. Nor is this (necessarily) a post about the evolution of language and how today the word “literally” literally includes a definition that means “figuratively”, though that’s probably the closest I can get to describing the topic.

     Today I want to talk about abbreviations, acronyms, and emojis.

     Now, I am generally of the opinion that a person shouldn’t police another person’s language. In fact, a friend of mine argued quite effectively with me once about how this is not only pedantic but also at best culturally insensitive and at worst racist.

     That said, SRSLY. WTF?

     Look, I can LOL and WTF with the best of them, but when I see stuff that’s exclusively gibberish it makes me cringe. In my head, I’m very much a “Use your words!” type of guy. If it’s a friend I’ll respond with something snarky or smartass-y but most of the time my internal monologue is freaking out. For me, it’s about time and place. It’s about context. Sometimes a smiley face is a perfect response. Other times it is too casual or aloof. In other words, know your audience.

     I’ve seen people completely wig out over the fact that every tweet, post, or comment isn’t written with perfect spelling and impeccable grammar. I presented many of the same arguments my friend did when we spoke on this topic to one individual and was subsequently accused of contributing to the dumbing down of society and being anti-education.

     I will agree that in some contexts my expectation is that text should be grammatically sound with no spelling mistakes. Take as an example a job application or resume for a job in which written and oral communication in English is essential. Alternatively, I can tell you that I’ve personally hired people who have submitted resumes that were sub-par in the areas of grammar and spelling. They were computer programmers and they needed a base level of English skills (oral, comprehensive, and written) to be proficient. English wasn’t their first language, but holy hell could they write code.

     Additionally, some abbreviations have been around for decades or even longer. Do any of these look familiar?

    • i.e. – Latin, id est, meaning “that is” and used to shorten the phrase “in other words”.
    • Et al. – Latin, et alia, meaning “and others” and used to round out a list of names instead of writing them all out.
    • e.g. – Latin (surprise!), exempli gratia, meaning “for the sake of example” and used when, well, giving an example (e.g. this list).

    Tangent:

    This reminds me of one of my high school math teachers. He was at the chalkboard one day and writing something out and someone asked him a question and he didn’t know the answer. He turned around and while juggling his chalk he said, “I don’t know. I would rather tell you that than make something up or dance around it. I’ll let you in on a secret, though. Most of the time when a teacher doesn’t know the answer they’ll say, ‘It’s Latin.'”
    The class appreciated his honesty and on we went with the lesson. A few classes later he was at the chalkboard again and was giving an example of something and he wrote “i.e.” on the board and then another phrasing of whatever it was he had just written. Almost immediately one of my classmates thrust her hand in the air. “Sir,” she said. “What does the ‘i.e.’ stand for?”

    The teacher’s shoulders started to bounce as his laughter overcame him. Within a few seconds, the laughter spread to everyone in the classroom. The teacher turned around and with tears streaming down his cheeks from laughing so hard managed to blurt out, “It’s Latin.”

    I never did find out if the girl who asked the question genuinely didn’t know what “i.e.” meant or if she just saw a golden opportunity for a laugh and took it.

    Given that abbreviations, short forms, and other informal words and phrases are so widely used, what makes some of the common terms used today unacceptable? It seems that if they originate from Latin then they get a pass but if they originate from social media they are trash words that have no place.

    I can see both sides of the argument and as mentioned earlier I break it down into context. More specifically, formal versus informal. To me, any formal correspondence (work emails, resumes, letters [do people still write letters?], schoolwork, etc) should be held to a different standard than informal correspondence (text messages, casual emails, social media posts & comments). That means in formal correspondence no emojis and no non-industry acronyms. You can GTFO with that stuff, as far as I’m concerned.

    I asked my daughter and two of her friends (all in the 9th grade) if they felt the need to use texting lingo in any of their schoolwork and they looked at me like I had two heads. Granted, it’s a small sample size but all of them agreed that using “LOL” on a test, paper, or as part of their homework would be unprofessional. One girl heard of someone using text message based acronyms in a paper and they received a zero (I suspect this might be an urban legend propagated by the English teachers in order to scare students into utilizing a more historically conventional vocabulary).

     Here’s an experiment that you can help me with. A teacher gives her class the following instructions:

    Email me a short paragraph of three or four sentences explaining your thoughts on the use of profanity in society.

    On a scale of 0 to 10 (ten being perfect), how would you grade the following responses?

    I think that there is a time and a place for profanity. You can’t just run around saying, “What the Fuck?” and “Get the fuck out!”, but some sometimes, “Well, shit,” sums it up perfectly. Also, in many languages and cultures different English words mean different things. I don’t know how my words will be interpreted and vice versa. The best thing to do in that situation is to add a smiley face. 

    Put your response and rationale in the comments below. If Blogger is being a pain and won’t let you do that then you can email me at potatochipmath@gmail.com and I’ll paste it into the comments (let me know if you want to be identified (and how) or if you’d rather remain anonymous).

    ~ Andrew

    What’d I Miss?

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    It’s been a while. Thank you for not forgetting about me. Aside from my open letter to McDonald’s (which, if you’re listening McD’s, I am still really pissed about) I haven’t posted anything in more than six months. That’s a long hiatus, but… BUT I have some exciting reasons as to why the absence.

    First of all, after my last post back in August 2016, I started a project which would have a significant impact on my writing career. I renovated the basement bedroom of my house and turned it into a writing room. A friend of mine down in Boston, Richard B. Wood, did this earlier in the year and dubbed his new creative space The Lair. Being a homegrown lad from The Great White North, the name for my space needed a Canadian touch and after much deliberation (entirely too much, some would say) I decided on Lair North, Eh? though around the house it commonly goes by The Writing Room.

    Having a dedicated space to go and have uninterrupted time to create was of paramount importance. If I was going to make the leap from being a writer to being a published author I was going to need to take it seriously (more seriously than I had been) and give writing its own time and place. The room needed to be comforting and inspiring and filled with all the tools to help me bring my ideas to life.

    I still need to put a few finishing touches on it (I need a small end table, a few pieces of art, and some blinds) but the transformation was extensive.

    Before:

    After:

    Everything in the new room has a purpose:

    • The little half-sized guitar is there because I occasionally write lyrics (really the only form of poetry I am capable of). 
    • The is some art that’s there and more to come because the presence of art pleases my muse. 
    • I have my NaNoWriMo victories on the wall hanging above a photo of my aforementioned friend, Richard, pointing his finger at me with the heading “Shouldn’t You Be Writing?”. These are great motivators. 
    • What was once a door to get into the circuit breaker panel is now a chalkboard (and also a door to get into the circuit breaker panel) for keeping lists and scribbling random notes. 
    • There is my wife’s BA (Political Science) and my B.Sc (General Science) from the University of Waterloo. These are accomplishments that we are both very proud of. 
    • There’s a chair for reading, relaxing, napping, and thinking (Winnie The Pooh has honey and I have my La-Z-Boy). 
    • A lamp because… well, we had an extra lamp and nowhere to put it. 
    • Books. There are lots and lots of books. The whole family has books on those shelves. I just wish I had more room for more books. 
    • Finally, to the left of me when I’m sitting at the keyboard there is my shelf of inspiration and usefulness. 
      • The top of this little bookcase sits books that my friends have written, music CDs they’ve created, and one bottle of beer that my friend Jon crafted (links to all the stuff below). 
      • Underneath that shelf are reference books, how-to books, Stephen King’s On Writing, a space pen, a Rubik’s Cube, an Oxford English Dictionary (because Webster can kiss my butt), and some golf balls from my brother-in-law’s memorial golf tournament (Ryan passed eight years ago today – also my birthday – and I miss him every day).

    The rules of the room are simple:

    1. Closed door = Do not disturb.
    2. Don’t touch the laptop (it’s super finicky and on its last legs).
    3. If you’re done with a book, put it in a bookcase (alphabetical by author last name, or on the shelf of inspiration ordered by height).
    4. If you want to read a book, take one (just bring it back when you’re done. See rule #3).

    So, what has happened since the room became a usable space?

    Well, as some of you may know, a couple years ago my daughter had surgery to correct a severe case of scoliosis. My wife, not finding much helpful information for parents going through something similar, started a family blog so we could share our story and hopefully help other families. The blog was a great success, with families from all over the world finding the site and learning from our experiences.

    Wanting to bring our story to as many people as possible, and always with something more to say, I compiled all the blog posts and sectioned them off into various phases (waiting for a surgery date, preparing for a second opinion, pre-op, surgery, post-surgery, etc.) Before each phase, I added my own take on what was happening at that time. I also added an introduction bringing everyone up to speed on our daughter and what life was like before the diagnosis, a question and answer section, and a lessons-learned section at the end.

    It was a lot of work, but it was work I was able to accomplish, uninterrupted, at Lair North, Eh? over the course of a month. Once that was done, I got right into NaNoWriMo for the sixth year in a row and every day over the course of November you could hear the sounds of me typing and talking to myself. I am happy to say that for the fourth time in those six years I managed to write more than 50,000 words and win NaNo!

    Then, a break for the holidays where I fiddled here and there with a few things and tried to figure out what to do next. Come the new year, however, something was brewing. I was showing the scoliosis book to a few trusted friends to get feedback and it was suggested that I get it in the hands of one of their publishers.

    I won’t go into details (to protect the innocent and all that jazz), but suffice it to say that the manuscript for Bent But Not Broken: A Family’s Scoliosis Journey made it into the hands of Oghma Creative Media and a few weeks later I signed a contract to have the book published!

    So, what happens now?

    Well, the first step was to get all the words in the manuscript looking good for the fine editors over at Oghma. The next step was to provide all the images that would be used and place an image tag in the manuscript so the formatting people would know where stuff goes. Then, I need to caption all the images (close to fifty of them) and secure permission to publish any of the images that were not either a family photo or a medical image from my daughter’s personal medical record.

    Once all that was done, off to the publisher it went. There, an editor will look it over and the process of fixing and re-writing begins. A lot of the book was blog posts and I’m hoping there won’t be any substantive changes made to those since they were written in-the-moment. I expect the narrative parts that I wrote will tighten up and give the book a nice pace.

    At some point down the road, once we are all happy with the words there will be copy edits, formatting, and cover design.

    When it is all said and done, at some point in the first half of 2018, we should have the book in stores and available for download, and who knows, maybe later on next year you’ll see another title from me hitting the shelves as well.

    ~ Andrew

    Who’s on my shelf of inspiration?

    Would You Like Epinephrine With That?

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    Dear McDonald’s Canada,
    I’m not sure where to start. I find your recent decision to not just introduce nut allergen-riddled products to your restaurants but to also avoid the containment of said allergens baffling. My son has a potentially deadly nut allergy so I have been thinking about this quite a bit since the news came to my attention. So far, I’m left with more questions than answers. The first of which is:
    What were you thinking?
    My instinct is to answer that question on your behalf with, “You weren’t,” however I know for certain that this was not the case. You had signs and posters made up, for crying out loud. This wasn’t an ad-hoc decision made at some corporate retreat. This was a deliberate, strategic decision that contained forethought and planning and no doubt myriad changes to the corporate employee handbook.
    Speaking of employees, you haven’t just ruined dinner for hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of Canadians. You have now made the conscious decision to make your work environment unsafe for any employees with nut allergies. What had previously been a safe workplace is now potentially deadly. Another question that immediately came to mind was, “Did you take this into consideration when you made the decision?” If you did, I hope this was communicated well in advance and I trust you also more than adequately compensated the employees that were affected.  
    McDonald’s used to be a restaurant you could count on, for families on the go, for travelers, for kids looking for their first job, and you have just pulled the rug out from under a good portion of those people. 
    What were you thinking?
    My family has seen first-hand all the good work you are doing with Ronald McDonald House. We take great pride in supporting a company that makes such a profound difference in the lives of families living through unspeakable circumstances. But now you’ve turned around and slammed the door in the face of not just hundreds of thousands of your customers, but throngs of supporters as well.
    Is it worth it? Tell us, multi-billion dollar faceless corporation, how much more money do you think you will make with these new products? How much more is it compared with how much you think you are going to lose from angry families like mine? The difference should be in the millions of dollars. Seriously, you must genuinely think you will come out on top to the tune of millions. If not, I can’t imagine how this decision was ever made. 
    What were you thinking?
    How much more would it have cost to deliver new menu items in a manner that was allergy safe? You already have pre-packaged peanuts. Would providing a similar alternative in these cases really have hurt your bottom line that severely? I keep coming back to the idea that this wasn’t thought through, but your actions thus far show this was not the case. You knew what you were doing. 
    What were you thinking? 
    This does not seem like the action of a restaurant chain that cares about its employees and customers.  This seems like something Donald Trump would do and in my mind, his approval rating is higher than yours right now. On behalf of all the individuals and families who live with nut allergies in this country, I implore you to re-think your decision. 
    Make McDonald’s great again.
    Sincerely,

    Andrew Butters

    Peeing Into The Digital Wind

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    I’m beginning to think that the internet, especially the social media aspect of it, is probably the most intricate and fascinating social experiment in the history of the world. There’s an old saying that goes, “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one and everyone thinks everyone else’s stinks.” This is what the internet has become. Hundreds of millions of people with their own special opinion on EVERYTHING and a whole bunch of them chomping at the bit to point out what’s wrong with everyone else’s, especially yours.

    I get it. I really do. It’s so hard to resist. You know you’re right. You are right! You must let all the people know you’re right. I’ve been there a thousand times. Hell, I’ve been there as recently as this weekend. Try as I might, I would not bite my tongue and had to chime in on something that, had I left well enough alone, would have left me in a perfectly calm state. As it was, I was left frustrated and disappointed and all I accomplished was completely wasting half an hour of an otherwise wonderful day.

    http://www.reactiongifs.com/

    That’s all fine and dandy when it’s average folk arguing with each other over average things. What really makes my head turn is when there’s a company + customer dust up. When I see this happen the first thing I try to do is determine which party is batshit crazy, then I typically root for the other one. If both parties involved are off their rockers then that’s even better. Without a horse in the race, I can just sit back and enjoy the show.

    I am left wondering what the ever loving hell is there to be gained – on either side – by engaging in these shenanigans? In many cases, it’s the company that ends up looking the fool. The old adage, “The customer is always right,” seems to ring true, at least in the court of public opinion (even though it’s really bullshit). Occasionally, though, a company will come out on top and boy-oh-boy is that fun to watch. There is something thoroughly satisfying about watching an internet asshat get their just desserts.

    For an example of this, we need to look no further than The White Moose Café in Ireland. Café owner/manager, Paul Stenson, took exception one day to some vegans who frequented his café and slagged him in a review. For the record, Paul had no problem with vegans frequenting his restaurant but expected a little heads up beforehand. Instead, their expectation was that he would be able to cater to their very specific dietary needs on a whim. What Paul did next was nothing short of genius.

    He fought back and he fought back hard.

    Have you ever heard of the joke “The Aristocrats”? It’s a go-to amongst comedians, often told in the company of other comedians. The whole point of it is to take it as far as you can in terms of obscenity and offensiveness. Gilbert Gottfried is renowned for using this joke to turn around a crowd of comedians that were gathered for a roast of Hugh Hefner shortly after 9/11. Gilbert told an offside joke that could be easily categorized as being “too soon”. He got boos. He got heads shaking. He got finger wags of shame. Then he busted into The Aristocrats. By the time he was done all was (mostly) right with the room again. More people were laughing compared to the moments before he took the mic so it’s safe to say he pulled off one of the greatest comedic recoveries ever.

    Well, our friend Paul, the owner/manager of The White Moose Café in Ireland, after getting his crappy review from the angry vegans, he launched into his very own rendition of The Aristocrats. He went full-blown five-alarm batshit crazy with his responses at one point [sarcastically] posting, “Any vegans attempting to enter our café will be shot dead at point blank range.” Buzzfeed chronicles the whole sordid affair and it is pure gold.

    The end result? The White Moose Café is now one the busiest establishments in Ireland, likely giving the Blarney Stone a run for its money. If I ever go to Ireland I’m stopping by to give Paul some business. I just hope I can get a table and don’t have to step over too many dead vegans while standing in line.

    Used with permission from The White Moose Café

    On the other side of the coin, we have M. R. (Michael Robb) Mathias and the website Fantasy Faction. It should be a really simple relationship. The writer writes and publishes (in this case self-publishes) and the readers read, review, and discuss the writer’s work (utilizing the comments section on sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble as well as the handy dandy Fantasy Faction forum).

    Now, I once had the good fortune of meeting Chuck Wendig at a writer’s workshop and the writer/reader relationship was briefly discussed. In a nutshell, once that book leaves the writer’s hands, it’s no longer about them. Reviews are for readers, not writers. At no point should a writer inject themselves into a conversation about their work – at least not in a public forum like a review site or forum and certainly not unless they were invited. Full stop.

    It would appear that Michael wasn’t in attendance that day because he took his own “Aristocrats” approach and it failed miserably. Michael posts some self-promoting thing to a forum. Forum moderators move it to the self-published and small press section. Michael takes exception to this and, in the public forum, unleashes an egotistic rant that will go down in infamy as “Mathias’s Meltdown”.

    You can read a summary of the meltdown here, or you can take a gander at the original forum discussion or peruse what twitter was saying in real time. I have read them all end-to-end and all I can say is, wow! Of course, to a certain extent “any press is good press” applies here (I’m sure he got a few sales out of the whole exchange) but when forum posters (not just the mods) are calling you out for being a twatwaffle, the right play here is not to double down on being a twatwaffle. There were at least half a dozen ways Michael could have navigated those waters and not drowned. As it is, he has the distinction of out batshit crazying Anne Rice.

    Image released to the public domain by Anne Rice

    All things considered, if Google search results are any indication and you have an online presence as a company (or brand or content creator etc…) you are more than likely going to end up like M.R. Mathias and not Paul Stenson from the White Moose Café.

    In summary, be careful out there. Online engagements are a lot like peeing into the wind. It may provide you with some measure of relief but all you really do is end up smelling foul and having to explain to everyone why you’re such an idiot.

    ~ Andrew

    Grace, too

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    In December 1991, Canadian rock legends RUSH started their Presto tour in Hamilton, Ontario with Jeff Healey as the opening act. It was thought that a couple nights later in Toronto, that Healey would open as well. Ticket sales were slow, or so the story goes. A friend of mine scored us a pair of tickets in the sixth row, just off center, and on the day of the concert my high school walls were buzzing. At least, the dozen RUSH fans in the two thousand student body were buzzing. A rumor was circulating that Jeff Healey wasn’t going to open, instead, it was going to be The Tragically Hip.

    I was a counselor in training back in the summer of 1990 when The Hip’s first full album, Up To Here, was making waves on the shores of Sparrow Lake – and Lake Ontario, and pretty much any other lake, small town, city, or metropolis in The Great White North. At the time it was one of my favourite albums. The album that outdid it, though, was their next one. The 1991 gem, Road Apples. So, by the time December of that year rolled around The Tragically Hip had become Canada’s band, and I was going to get a front row seat (okay, it was the sixth row, but who’s counting) to see them open for the band that previously held the title.

    That concert was everything it promised to be, and then some. I watched Gord Downie belt out hit after hit of hard hitting, good old fashioned rock-n-roll married with lyrics that were pure genius. When he lay down with half his body hanging over the stage and screamed the lyrics to New Orleans Is Sinking while pretending to do the front crawl I knew I was witnessing something truly unique. Part man, part machine, part poem, Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip were rewriting the national anthem.

    Twenty-five years later an entire country was collectively winded from the gut-punch news that Gord was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. Doing what I can imagine only a few people in the world could do, Gord and the band decided they would go out the way they came in. That is, with a bang, and they set out do play a series of gigs – exclusively in Canada – with their magnum opus to come in a six-thousand-seat venue in their band’s birth city of Kingston, Ontario.

    The Hip could have sold a hundred thousand tickets to that show. Hell, they could have filled Downsview Park in Toronto and close to a million people would have shown up. Interest was so high in tickets for these concerts that, after the debacle with getting seats (tickets going up on Stub Hub for thousands of dollars within seconds of going on sale), the national broadcaster, CBC, committed to airing the concert free of editing and commercials as well as streaming it live on their website, YouTube, and Facebook. Over four million people watched the entire broadcast and almost twelve million tuned into it at some point.

    Let that sink in.

    A rock band from Kingston, Ontario, population roughly 120,000, had one-third of the entire population of Canada tune in to watch a portion of their final concert.

    Several politicians from several levels of government and all party affiliations were in attendance but the one that stood out the most was none other than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in addition to clapping and cheering in a concert t-shirt, showed his love and appreciation for Gord and the band in a series of tweets:

     
     
     

    Praise, well wishes, prayers, and thoughts came from all over the world but I think former Saturday Night Live cast member and king of late night television, Jimmy Fallon, said it best:

    And Pearl Jam took a moment out of their concert at Wrigley Field to say a few words.

    Articles much better than this one were written and I have got to tell you, the list of news outlets covering this event blew my mind. A partial list (each linking to the article):

    Personal stories were in abundance. So what is mine? Aside from the above introduction, I don’t really have one except to say that The Hip went from being the best-kept secret in Ontario to having throngs of loyal fans. I described it to a coworker today as having this feeling that in 1990 they were this obscure band that had a few good songs I liked and in 1991 it was as if they had always been playing on the soundtrack of my life.

    After that night in Toronto, I only managed to see them a few more times but their music was everywhere to be found. My good friend and former physics lab partner is a big fan and when we shared an apartment not many hours would pass without a Hip song being played, or strummed on the guitar, or sang poorly over Kraft Dinner being eaten straight out of the pot. I remember listening to their album Phantom Power on the radio in the car on the way up to the cottage with my then-girlfriend now wife. There’s a lyric in the song Fireworks that goes, “She said she didn’t give a fuck about hockey and I never saw someone say that before,” and that pretty much summed up our relationship right there. She always sings that part loud and proud when we’re together and we hear that song.

    The stories, they go on and on and on and on. Throw a rock at a group of Canadians and you’ll hit someone with a story about the Tragically Hip. So what is it about them that brings together millions of people to say goodbye?

    For starters, the lyrics are masterfully woven from the threads of Canadiana, set to guitar, drums, and bass that make you want to sing along and move, and delivered with the rawest of emotions. For a good number of Canadians, the band speaks directly to them using tools and talent a rarified few possess.

    The online Canadian encyclopedia gives us a glimpse into the poetic genius of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip with an exhibit outlining the stories behind of a handful of the band’s most popular songs. For people who have never heard of the Tragically Hip to people that have committed every lyric to memory, this is a must-see. They lifted the name of the exhibit from a song off the album Fully Completely.

    What sums it up most aptly for me is lifted from two lyrics from one of my favourite Hip songs off the album Day For Night (which, in a sick and twisted bit of coincidence features the song titled Inevitability of Death):

    “Armed with will and determination, and grace, too.”

    “Armed with skill and its frustration, and grace, too.” 

    Gord Downie did it all. He did it with will and determination and even with all his skill, he showed us his frustration. And he did it with grace, too.

    ~ Andrew