You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2008.
First Peanutopolis, then Nougatocity, now Substantialiscious. Snickers is building quite a lexicon.
Snickers Substantialiscious
And the meaning:
Substantialiscious Definition
For those hard of seeing: “Substantialiscious \sub-’stan(t)-shu-’li-shus\ (noun). The weight of something when you weigh it with your tongue.”
I think the definitions are getting better. If Hubby brings me another wrapper, I’m going to have to start a dictionary. Who is the wordsmith that Mars has hired? Instead of being just a tool, Hubby says I’m now the whole toolbox.
Because it is Halloween, here is the temptation I have to contend with:
Halloween Candy
Excuse me while I go steal a piece. Happy Halloween!
A few mornings ago, I was listening to my iPod and decided to revisit the music of No Doubt, starting with songs on the Rock Steady album. Gwen Stefani is/was the lead singer of the group and has since produced a couple of solo albums. As I was listening, I wondered what it would be like to pair her with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (NIN). Artistically speaking, of course. Reznor appears to surround himself solely with male creatives. Perhaps he’s worked with women in the past and I’m in the dark because I’m a recent fan. In any case, I’d like to see how both Reznor’s and Stefani’s work would be impacted by teaming up.
When it comes to creative work, sometimes you’ve got to do something extreme in order to enhance your work, or give it a new direction. I’ll give you an example from my visual arts experience. During my final semester of college, I was pregnant with Eldest Son and miserably morning, noon, and night sick. I had a 400-level drawing class with a very understanding teacher. It was an independent study, so I was the only one “in class.” My teacher wanted to go easy on me, so he suggested I get a notebook and produce scribble drawings for the duration of the class. All I had to do was scribble. That’s it. When I first started, I produced complicated scribbles with distinct patterns. As the time passed, my scribbles became more free-form. By the end of the class, I was producing quick, one-line scribbles.
The strange thing about this seemingly easy exercise was that it loosened up the rest of my drawing, which tended to be precise and painstaking. After learning to scribble, I could produce other drawings faster, while maintaining accuracy. (Ironically, Eldest Son is now in a class where he is doing scribble drawings.)
While Stefani and Reznor have dissimilar styles that may not work well together, the exercise of pairing them might bring a new richness to the music of both. Reznor’s music is dark, although not as dark as it used to be. Stefani’s music is sugar and spice, with a tablespoon of piss and vinegar. (I’m thinking of her No Doubt songs “I’m Just a Girl,” ” Excuse Me Mr.,” and “Making Out” and her solo songs “Crash” and the cheerleader stomp, “Hollaback Girl.” She’s not a girl to mess with.)
I’ll have to admit, it’s not an intuitive Frankensteining of the Talent Pool, but I think there’d be some interesting sparks produced.
My husband brought me a candy bar wrapper. Thus . . .
Snickers Nougatocity
Yes, it’s another Snickers bar wrapper with a weird word dreamed up by some ad agency on it. First with the Peanutopolis and now with the Nougatocity. Try pronouncing Nougatocity without a pronunciation guide. It looks like Nougat-oh-city, which is odd. If you put the emphasis on the “to,” it works better. (Like in the word meritocracy.) There is a pronunciation guide inside the wrapper, but it’s not quite right because it only shows emphasis on the last syllable. (Why am I being fussy about an invented ad word?)
Of course, the ad agency also came up with a definition for Nougatocity:
Nougatocity Definition
In case that’s tough to read, it says: “Nougatocity \ nü-gat-ä-si-tE\ (noun). A heightened yet fleeting state of accomplishment that makes you realize how unbelievably unmotivated you normally are.” I have to say, this definition is funnier than the one for Peanutopolis, although nougat is sticky, so maybe that state of accomplishment is more than fleeting.
You may now call me a tool. Silly as this ad campaign is, it’s got me posting about it on my blog. The Mars company sure has my number. Really, they do. Ironically, I’m reading a chapter on data mining in a book about advertising called “Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here” by David Verklin and Bernice Kanner. If Mars is smart enough to invent this ad campaign, surely it is tracking what is being said about its products online.
Normally, advertising messages are no more than mosquitoes to me. I swat them away. But, sometimes, one catches my attention. This particular one works because it’s quirky and plays with language, even if the definitions of the made-up words are less than satisfying.
Our Argentinian Daughter (AD) left yesterday, on her way to New York for a few days with the rest of the Argentinian students, who’ve been visiting the past three weeks. AD is a delightful girl, fun, intelligent, quick-witted, with a good command of the English language. She likes the music of Evanescence. During her visit, we found her trying to figure out the piano line to one of the band’s songs on our keyboard.
This particular exchange lasted for 23 days, including the day of arrival and the day of departure and was jam packed with events scheduled by the school or by other host families. When I counted up the days we had free to ourselves, there were only 6. Due to the schedule, we regretted not getting to know Argentinian Daughter as well as we would have liked. Things were so hectic that we didn’t even know that her dad is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer until the day before she left. (We wish him well!)
Daughter really did the heavy lifting with Argentinian Daughter, escorting her to the various events and making her comfortable. (We attended several events, too, but many of them were planned for the kids.) Daughter could have a career in working with people from other countries, if she wants to.
Argentinian Daughter was fascinated with our food, some of which is much spicier than that eaten in her country. She bought a number of things to bring back to her family, especially to her older brothers, whom she very obviously adores. She bought peanut butter and marshmallows, and I can’t remember what all else. We gave her a big jar of Nutella. AD was willing to try anything we prepared, which made cooking fun. She and one of her friends prepared us and another host family a hearty dish that they eat at home. I didn’t catch the name of the dish, but I’d describe it as a rice-based stew. It included chunks of beef, potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic, along with lots of rice, all mixed together. They diced some tomatoes for a fresh little salad that we ate on top of our stew.
AD shared with us that her area of Argentina is a diverse mix of cultures, many of whom immigrated to Argentina after World War I. Her family is of Eastern European dissent. She is involved in the Ukrainian ballet, which is not like classical ballet done in toe shoes and tutus. Instead, it’s a very active folk-type dance that is popular among boys as well as girls.
She explained to us how her school day is different from that of Minnesota children. Argentinian students get a siesta midday. During siesta, they go home for lunch. Some might have additional classes later in the day, but it depends on what the student is studying. Some only have morning classes.
The Argentinian students enjoyed seeing our fall colors, with AD and Daughter spending some time in a leaf pile. The one thing AD really wanted to see while she was in Minnesota was snow because her region of Argentina is semi-tropical. Unfortunately, she missed it by maybe an hour. It was snowing in central Minnesota around the time she was due to be on her plane to New York.
My brain is spent. I’ve had a productive day. I ordered the ISBNs needed for Greenville, plus got a sizeable chunk of my Woo Woo Teacup Publishing website done. Whew! It’s the kind of thought-intensive work that makes it difficult to shift over to writing blog posts. Whenever I have difficulty moving from a task into writing, I find that it helps to spew whatever is on my mind or whatever I’m doing onto a page and that’s enough to get me to writer’s mind.
Right now, I’m typing this while talking to Young Son #2, who wants to go to Dairy Queen to alleviate his boredom. Daughter just yelled up the stairs to tell us that DQ is closed for the season. Young Son was visibly disappointed. Now my son is telling me about a dollar that is stuck in a vending machine at school and how various students have attempted to get it out. He brought a tweezers to try, but another student had pushed the bill farther into the machine with the reasoning that if he couldn’t have it, then no one else was going to be given a chance to have it either. Now Young Son is grousing because he doesn’t have a video game to play. Now he’s teasing his sister. I think I need to find him some work to do. I don’t play the boredom reliever in our household. As soon as I say there’s work to do, the kids find ways to occupy themselves.
Now Daughter is complaining about cat hair. It clings to her clothes, which she can’t stand. She said she’s not going to own cats when she moves out, nor dogs. “We either need to shave our cats or get a lint roller,” just popped out of her mouth. Apparently, we’re going to be getting a lint roller soon.
Now Young Son is whimpering. “Why are you whimpering?” I asked. He whimpered again and then said, “No, you didn’t ask me if I was whimpering.” He’s giving me shit, claiming I’m old, telling me he doesn’t like being written about because it’s bullying. Can you tell he’s reading over my shoulder? “No, I’m not!” he said.
I just sent Young Son to do the dishes, with the promise of money for a video game if he gets the job done. He indicated that I played right into his scheme – “Annoy Mom ’til she gives me what I want.” Guess I am the boredom reliever. At least I’ll get the dishes done in the deal.
My blog celebrated its one-year birthday this week – on October 23. Happy birthday, blog!
Within this year, the blog has been viewed 22,437 times (up to today) and has received 1,177 comments. I’ve posted 333 times – 334, if you count this post. The busiest day here was October 1, 2008, with 143 views. The most popular post that day was Neil Gaiman’s W i f e , which has also received more views than any other post – 1,035. The second most popular post is Free Pencils, with 382 views, followed by my About page, with 320 views.
Thanks, everyone, for reading and commenting and making this such an enjoyable adventure!
I could not find a file I needed today at work. It’s not that I misplaced it; instead, it’s one my co-worker has charge of and I couldn’t figure out where she had filed it. For those who know me well, they know that when I can’t find something, I’m not fun to be around. I get desperate as the search drags on without success. Frankly, I was ready to throw a fit today, which is completely unprofessional, so I contained myself. Barely. After looking for the better part of an hour, I had to give up, which made me feel like a complete failure.
I moved on to some research I was conducting on a local music store owner. My research was indicating that the man’s business had been located in three different locations, but I couldn’t confirm the third location with more than one source. I looked and looked and looked for another source, but couldn’t find one before having to leave work for the day. And, you know what? It didn’t bother me in the least. Even though I was essentially dealing with the same sort of situation – not being able to locate what I was looking for – when it comes to research, I’m totally cool with it.
I explained my observation to my other co-worker and she indicated that not figuring out research questions bugs her. Not me, and the reason why is that research is unending. When you get one question answered, inevitably it leads to several more questions. Also, often answers are simply not available within the resources at hand. They might turn up in an unexpected resource later, and then again, they might not. The very nature of research keeps me from getting upset about it.
But if I can’t find an object, watch out!
When my siblings and I were growing up – high school age, actually – we used to tease my dad about how old he was. We would tell him that when he was growing up, the world was all black and white. Of course, we were referring to the fact that television was only in black and white when he was younger and we grew up with color television. Once color television came along, the whole world became colorized. Yes, we were being silly. That’s why it was fun.
Tonight, though, I found a story on Discover’s website that shows we may not have been far off the mark. According to a study done, those who watched black and white television as kids are more likely to dream in black and white, even after they are fully grown and have presumably seen color television. Those who watched color T.V. as kids dream in color. Isn’t that wild?
The article says that those who grew up without any television dream only in color, so I guess we’ll have to admit that the world was colorized prior to Dad’s childhood, but we can still tell him that the world was black and white when he was a kid.
I don’t know how Wired magazine manages to do this. While I generally can’t get enough of what’s in its pages, sometimes one of its writers will say something that so ticks me off that I want to hurl the magazine across the room. Usually, it comes in the form of some holier-than-thou, geek-speak prognostication, and, boy, is there one in this month’s Wired. (It’s the November 8, 2008, issue. It’s not online yet, or I’d link you to the offending article.)
According to Paul Boutin of Valleywag, blogging is dead. There are too many big name, commercial blogs out there for the little fish to make a go of it, so why bother? Don’t even think of starting a blog, if you haven’t got one, and if you do, Boutin says you should get rid of it. His opinion is that Twitter and social networks are the place to be, but that Twitter will be dead in a few years, too.
It’s at this point that I want to snort derisively and say, “Why are we bothering to be online at all if everything we do will be dead in two years? What a colossal waste of time and energy. Let’s all just head outside, play Kick-the-Can and forget about digital technology.”
Instead of having a snit fit, let me say in a more polite fashion that I’m not buying what Paul Boutin is selling. While I love Twitter, I can’t say everything I need to say in 140 characters. I need a blog for expounding, for creating substance with words. Not everyone has the patience or verbosity for a blog, and that’s okay. Twitter is great for the terse and busy.
What Boutin seems to be missing is that blogging has become its own distinct form of writing, like the essay, or short story, or poem. It has an intrinsic beauty arising from the brevity of most posts, the ability to insert links and visuals, and the timeliness of topics covered. Blogging, of course, is what the blogger wishes to make of it, whether he wants to reveal his heart through using the form as a personal journal, or she wants to report her take on the local news.
The act of blogging should not be confused with the application that allows one to blog. The blogging app, be it WordPress or Blogger or others, is easy-to-use and affords people a way to establish an online presence without having to learn to write code to create a website. While there are most certainly ways to keep improving blogging apps, why would anyone want to kill off such a brilliant tool?
Even though people may start abandoning their blogs based on Boutin’s advice, or because newer, quicker apps come along, those that appreciate the form should stick with it. There are plenty of people out there who still don’t know what a blog is, let alone Twitter. Should those who enjoy blogging deny these folks the potential of discovering blogs by ditching the effort before they arrive? Should those of us who want to blog in our personal, quirky ways cede the blogosphere solely to commercial interests? How undemocratic. (One of the best sources of background information on Sarah Palin has been Mudflats, a non-commercial, personal blog about Alaskan politics.)
One more question on the topic and then I’ll end this post: Will Paul Boutin give up blogging on Valleywag now that he’s pronouced blogging dead?
[Addendum: October 20, 2008, 5:29 p.m. CST: In what appears to be a display of multiple personality disorder on the part of Wired magazine, I found this report indicating that blogging is alive and well: http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/six-apart-ceo-d.html. Okay, people, make up your minds!]
[Addendum: October 22, 2008: The Wired magazine article can be found here. Several other blogs, besides the one mentioned in the comments section of this post, have discussed the Wired article.]
[Addendum: October 25, 2008: Here is a fabulous, but long, piece about blogging as a form of writing by Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic. It's called "Why I Blog." I found it through the blog Dangerous Intersection.]
[Addendum: November 9, 2008: Another article, this one from the Economist, gives a more nuanced look at the evolution of blogging.]
[Addendum: November 10, 2008: A post called "Who Killed the Blogosphere?" by Nicholas Carr. Found by way of a tweet from Brian Clark of Copyblogger. And another, also found through a tweet from Brian, this one by Duncan Riley at The Inquistr. And this one, also from The Inquisitr, blasting Paul Boutin for his pronouncement that blogging is dead.]
[Addendum: November 13, 2008: A post from NotionsCapital about how blogging keeps dying. Mike Licht, the blog's author, has linked several more articles about the death of blogging within his post.]
My sister called last night with a harrowing story. Her granddaughter was almost kidnapped. The baby, who is only about six months old, was in a shopping cart at Wal-Mart with her mother. Mother was at the checkout and paying her bill when a man came up from behind with a cart. Within moments, he was taking off with both his cart and the cart with the baby. Mother freaked out and chased after the man and gave him the what-for. My sister seemed to indicate that she swore at the guy and asked him what he thought he was doing. His lame answer? “I wanted to see the baby over here.” Yeah, right. Mother was so upset that all she could think to do was leave the store and get home immediately. She put the baby in her vehicle and quickly got into the driver’s seat. A woman came up and tapped on her window and demanded that she put her cart away. Mother told her, “No way!” and explained what happened without getting out of the vehicle. Then she drove home.
Once home, perhaps after telling relatives what had happened, she decided she needed to call Wal-Mart and report the incident. Store employees were very concerned and took her story seriously. (From my sister’s telling of the story, I’m not sure how the checkout person reacted when the incident first took place.) Wal-Mart employees suggested she call the police. She did. An officer worked a double shift and was able to pull the guy over. The man was using an assumed name. Turns out there was a warrant for his arrest in another state and that he had fled prior to being brought in. He had previously been convicted of . . . child porn and rape. [Shudder.]
Upon reflection, Mother did exactly the right things. First, she was attentive enough to notice the man immediately. Next, she opened up a can of whoop-ass on him, causing a scene and getting the baby back. When she was in her vehicle, she did not follow the woman’s order to put her cart back. The woman may have been in cahoots with the man by trying to get Mother to leave her baby. While Mother perhaps should have reported the incident while she was still at the store, her high emotion didn’t make that an immediate priority. Once she had calmed down enough, she followed through with contacting the proper authorities. Kudos also to the officer who worked overtime in order to nab the guy. Thankfully, what could have turned into a horrendous criminal act became merely a scary situation that ended well.
