August 2009

There were 18 posts published in August 2009 (this is page 2 of 2).

On the Proper Use of ‘Me’ and ‘I’

This article was originally published at Foldedspace on 14 September 2006. I’ve been noticing this error again lately, and so wanted to revisit the subject.

Listen people, this is easy: you do not always use the word “I” when speaking of yourself and another person.

I’m going to be called a grammar Nazi for devoting an entire weblog entry to this, but it’s driving me crazy. Over the past week I’ve seen this error a dozen times — and from smart people who should know better.

What am I talking about? We’re taught from a young age that it’s polite to say:

Jane and I are going to the store.

That’s well and good for the nominative case, when you and Jane are the subjects of the sentence. But it does not work if you and Jane are the objects of the sentence. This sentence is an abomination:

The man gave ice cream to Jane and I.

This is WRONG, and it hurts my brain. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. I’m serious. It drives me insane. Would you say this?

The man gave ice cream to I.

Of course not! Politeness does not take precedence over grammar. The proper sentence in this case is:

The man gave ice cream to me.

And if you’re talking about yourself and another person, then the proper form is:

The man gave ice cream to Jane and me.

I know that sounds wrong, but it’s better than “Jane and I”. Far better. And if you really want it to sound better, then ditch your notions of the polite and say:

The man gave ice cream to me and Jane.

However, the real answer to your dilemma is to use the handy clear and concise first-person plural.

The man gave ice cream to us.

Isn’t that nice?

Are you confused? Here’s an easy way to tell whether you should use “Jane and I” or “Jane and me”. Ask yourself: if this sentence were only about me, which would I use, “I” or “me”? Use the same pronoun when talking about yourself and another person. Seriously. That’s the rule.

You make Kris and I weep when you do this.

Thundarr the Barbarian

The year: 1994! From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction! Man’s civilization is cast in ruin! Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn…

A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil.

He is: Thundarr, the Barbarian!

When I was a boy, I loved Saturday morning cartoons. My family didn’t often own a television (which, in retrospect, was a good thing, though I didn’t like it at the time), so I had to catch my cartoons at other kids’ houses.

One of my favorites was Thundarr the Barbarian, which effectively combined everything that was great about Star Wars, Conan, and Kamandi into a delcious campy whole. Even now I’m entertained by episodes on YouTube. Here’s “The Battle of the Barbarians” (in two videos):

“Listen! The sounds of destruction, and of humans in danger!”

“Who is this Barbarian? Attack!”
“Send me all your metal warriors, wizard!”

Ah, the good ol’ days.

A Consistent Complaint

For five years during the mid-1990s, a science fiction television called Babylon 5 ran in syndication for in major U.S. television markets. I remember reading about its production in Starlog magazine several months before the two-hour movie debut. I was excited. Though a dedicated Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, I was eager to see more science fiction on television.

The debut of Babylon 5 came, and I thought it showed glimmers of promise. It had an interesting premise. It was undone, however, by stiff acting and an even stiffer script.

Still, when the actual run of the show began several months (a year?) later, I watched it. I really wanted to like it. I never did. The stiff acting only got stiffer, and the scripts were terrible. The dialogue was so wooden you could build a table from it. Everything was overwrought. I stuck with the show for 2-1/2 years before finally giving up.

Changeling

Recently, Kris and I watched a film called Changeling, which was produced and directed by Clint Eastwood. I didn’t know much about the film going in, but had the vague impression it was supposed to be good. If I recall correctly, it was nominated for several Academy Awards.

Changeling takes place in 1928 Los Angeles, California. It tells the story of Christine Collins, whose son Walter disappears one March afternoon. Walter is one of several L.A.-area children who have vanished, and the film explores the difficulties Christine has in discovering what happened to him. One of the film’s themes is the corrupt nature of the city’s police department.

There is an interesting story here. The broad outlines are interesting, but they’re smothered beneath overwrought acting and wooden dialogue. (You can see where this is going.) The movie is riddled with internal inconsistencies and details that ring Not Quite True. But mostly it’s an exercise in excessive melodrama.

“This film is awful,” I told Kris midway through.

“I know it,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re watching this.”

But we stuck with it, all 2 hours and 22 minutes. “Won’t this ever end?” Kris asked at one point.

Finally, the credits rolled. And as they did, I burst into a maniacal laugh (the laugh Kris hates so much).

“What?” she asked. “What’s so funny?”

“The writer,” I said, choking back tears. “J. Michael Straczynski! I should have known.”

J. Michael Straczynski

Straczynski was the writer and creative force beyond Babylon 5, that wooden science fiction show from the mid-1990s. (He’s also written a number of comic books, all of which are equally bad.) If I had realized he was the writer of Changeling, I would have been able to recognize his touches throughout. So heavy-handed! Characters with no apparent motives! Dialogue so wooden that you could build a table from it!

I realize that Straczynski has many fans. I grant that this may be one of those cases where everybody likes something — Mad Men, Neil Gaiman, cream cheese — and I’m just somehow unable to “get” it. That’s fine.

But it amused me to no end that the things I hated in Changeling were the same things I hated in Babylon 5. At least I’m consistent about my dislike of Straczynski’s work.

Footnote: For a decidedly different take on this film, check out Michael Rawdon’s review.

Writing for Different Crowds: Why I Chose to Combine All of My Blogs Into One

Via e-mail, Cory asks:

You consolidated a good number of sites into your personal site, Foldedspace. Why did you choose that route? Was it just easier to maintain one site than many, or did you find a lot of overlap in what you wrote? I’m just starting to blog again, but I have a good four different subjects I’d like to write about, and I’m trying to decide whether to separate them into distinct sites or keep them together, as you have.

This is a great question.

When I originally set up my blog empire, I thought it would be fun to have  several niche blogs. In a way, it was. Around various parts of the Internet, I had:

  • Animal Intelligence, a blog about animal intelligence
  • Bibliophilic, my blog about books
  • Comic Strip Library, a comic-strip blog that I never actually started
  • Four Color Comics, a blog about comics
  • Get Fit Slowly, the health and fitness blog I co-authored with my friend, Mac
  • Get Green Slowly, my blog about environmentalism (which never got beyond domain registration)
  • Get Rich Slowly, my main money blog
  • Money Hacks, my other money blog
  • Oak Grove Crossing, the group blog I was going to start with friends to write about our neighborhood.
  • Spiral Bound, my stillborn blog about paper and notebooks (yes, really)
  • Success Daily, a stillborn blog about success topics
  • Tech Lust, a gadget blog that never got going
  • Vintage Pop, my blog about U.S. popular culture from before 1950.

I’m not the only one who has this blog addiction. My friend Jim Wang (from Bargaineering) is perhaps the worst of the lot. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he has dozens of blogs. I keep finding new ones.

But with every blog, there’s a certain “overhead” of attention required, and I found that as my personal finance blog grew and grew, I had less time to devote to each of my many niche sites. They fell dormant. They stagnated.

Perhaps worse, this site (in its foldedspace.org form), which had once boasted a small but close community, also fell into disuse. At one time, I wrote at Foldedspace nearly every day, and we had many lively conversations here on a variety of topics. As I fragmented my writing into many little niches, that went away.

Eventually I realized that I was doing myself a disservice. I wanted to write about this other stuff, about animal intelligence and comic books and fitness, but having separate blogs for each topic was just too much of a barrier, both for me and for potential readers. A couple of months ago, I came to the conclusion that it was time to reclaim the diaspora, to bring the children back to their ancestral homeland. I wanted to resurrect Foldedspace and to use it to feature all of my non-financial writing.

My big worry about re-merging everything was: Would anyone read this Frankenstein monster of a site? It occurred to me that it didn’t matter. I don’t write these other blogs for an audience, really. I write them for me. If there is no audience for a Foldedspace that explores a hodge-podge of subjects, that’s fine. I’m at least writing for myself and for a few close friends.

So I made the move. I cut back to two blogs: Get Rich Slowly and Foldedspace.

From the standpoint of maximizing audience and maximizing revenue, this probably makes little sense. But Foldedspace doesn’t need to yield either of these things for me to be happy. (In fact, I’ve removed all ads from the jdroth.com version of Foldedspace.) It just needs to be a spot where I can write about cats and comic books, and about blogs and bicycles.

This is a very long answer, and I don’t think it really addresses Cory’s question. For me, it made sense to combine everything into one blog. For Cory, it may not. All I know is that since I made this move a few weeks ago, I feel invigorated. I’m excited about writing again. It feels great to have Foldedspace operational once more.

A Walkable Neighborhood

Dave and Karen are in the process of purchasing a new home in the Sellwood/Westmoreland neighborhood. (Where does Sellwood end, by the way, and Westmoreland begin? I get the divide between Westmoreland and Eastmoreland — it’d be hard not to — but I don’t now where to draw the line with Sellwood.) Part of the reason they chose this new house is that it’s in a “walkable neighborhood”.

I’ve given a lot of thought to what a walkable neighborhood is lately. I have some definite opinions on it.

Last fall, Andrew and I had a conversation about Dave and Karen’s househunting. He mentioned it would be nice if they moved in near him and Courtney. (Dave and Karen are godparents to Andrew and Courtney’s children.)

“Yeah,” I said. “But I think they’re looking for a walkable neighborhood.”

“This is a walkable neighborhood,” Andrew said. I can’t remember if I debated the point out loud, but I certainly did internally. Andrew and Courtney live in a nice place, but I consider it only borderline walkable. It’s just a little too far away from the community center. It’s three-quarters of a mile to the nearest grocery store, and it’s the same distance to the public library. (They do have a park very close at hand, though.)

I mentioned this story to Paul and Tiffany the other night. They were divided on the walkability of the Cronks’ neighborhood. (Tiffany voted “yes”; Paul voted “no”.)

But what is walkable?

The other night, I tried to use our own neighborhood as an example to Tiffany. I forgot to ask her if she ever walks to the grocery store (probably not often), but that would have been the best way to make my point.

Tiffany lives 1.2 miles away from Kris and me. It’s exactly a one-mile walk for her to get to Fred Meyer. (It’s a 0.9-mile walk for us here at Rosings Park.) That’s not much further than Andrew and Courtney have to walk to the grocery store. I don’t think Tiffany would argue that we live in a walkable neighborhood, yet it’s not far off from the one the Cronks live in.

Tangent: This is one reason I think it’s a shame that Oak Grove’s downtown area is dead. There are two bars and two minimarts and a variety of smallish shops. But most of the businesses that open here cannot stay in business. The community cannot or will not support them. People are so car-bound that they don’t bother to walk up the hill to shop for groceries. There used to be a grocery store on the corner of River and Oak Grove, but it died a year or two before we moved in to Rosings Park.

Again, what is walkable?

As I say, I’ve given this question a lot of thought. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been on a personal campaign to use my car less. I’ve been walking to all sorts of places I used to consider unwalkable. I walk the 2-1/2 miles to downtown Milwaukie to visit the comic book store and my favorite taco place. I walk two miles to the mower repair shop (and then push my mower two miles home). And today I walked 2-1/2 miles to the credit union in Gladstone; 2-1/2 miles up McLoughlin to get pizza, to go to Goodwill, to go to Fred Meyer, to stop at the liquor store, and to go to the bank; and then I walked a mile home.

You know what? It’s a hell of a lot of fun. Yes, my feet hurt. Yes, I’m tired. But it feels awesome to not be in the car. It feels fantastic to be listening to the birds and seeing people and actually noticing new roads and new businesses.

But I don’t think what I’m doing is normal. What I’m doing is unusual. Yes, technically it’s possible to walk my neighborhood, but it’s not something many people do. I wouldn’t call it walkable — not like the Hawthorne area or Northwest.

To me, a “walkable neighborhood” doesn’t mean a neighborhood where people could walk to-and-from stores; it means a neighborhood where people do walk to-and-from stores. That’s a subtle but important difference.

According to Walk Score:

  • Andrew and Courtney’s neighborhood is “somewhat walkable” (Walk Score of 68).
  • Kris and I also live in a “somewhat walkable” neighborhood (Walk Score of 65). Our house in Canby had a Walk Score of 83; it was “very walkable”.
  • Tiffany lives in a “somewhat walkable” neighborhood (Walk Score of 52).
  • Dave and Karen’s current house is a little more walkable than Tiffany’s (Walk Score of 54). Their new house will have a Walk Score of 85, which is “very walkable”.
  • Paul and Amy Jo are “car-dependant”. Their house has a Walk Score of 43 — and that’s with the map giving them credit for stuff in Lake Oswego! (The map is dumb and doesn’t account for the river that’s in the way. Or maybe it thinks they can take the railroad bridge.)
  • Chris and Jolie live in a “walker’s paradise” up on Hawthorne. Their apartment has a Walk Score of 97.

Dave and Karen want a neighborhood where people do walk to stores. And they’ve found one.

L’homme Lit: Using Rosetta Stone to Learn French

Kris and I are a planning a trip to France and Italy next autumn (meaning: autumn 2010). Details are vague and sketchy right now, but we’ll put our plans together over the next few months.

One thing we both want to do, though, is to learn French. Kris had four years of Spanish in high school, and I had a total of 2-1/2 years of German and one semester of Spanish in my educational career. (Plus I tried to teach myself Latin five years ago.) But neither one of us is really conversant in a foreign language. That’s a shame.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been researching options for learning French.

  • We could buy French textbooks and learn from them.
  • We could take community college classes.
  • We could use free online websites.
  • We could pick up some “learn French fast!” compact discs.

Of these, I think the community college classes would be most effective. Unfortunately, that’s also the least convenient way for us to learn. I kept hoping for a better solution.

Then I began to notice that many people praised Rosetta Stone, a computer-based language program. I’ve seen the Rosetta Stone ads in magazines for years, but never really paid attention. And when I saw the price for the software ($450! On sale!), I just about died.

Last weekend, Kris and I went to see a movie at Clackamas Town Center. Afterward, we wandered the mall. We haven’t been in a mall in years, and it seems like a foreign place to us now. It’s like a different world.

One of the new things that seems to have sprung up is the endless line of kiosks down the center of the mall walkways. These places are staffed by aggressive salespeople looking to hawk their wares. Except at Clackamas, there was a Rosetta Stone kiosk with a decidedly non-aggressive salesperson. We stopped to look at the software. After a ten minute trial, we bought it.

Rosetta Stone uses an “immersion” method to teach languages. You install the core software on your computer, and then you can add language packs. These language packs are designed to immerse you in the language. There’s no English involved at all.

Each language course is divided into three levels. Each level is divided into several units. (There are four units in first-level French.) Each unit is divided into several lessons. Finally, each lesson is divided into several (5-15) exercises.

The exercises all use big photographs of people doing stuff. There are various exercises related to these photographs, and there’s a hell of a lot of repetition. One photo might show a man reading, for example. In the first lesson of a unit, you’d simple look at the photos and listen to a native speaker give you vocabulary. (The reading man would be: “L’homme lit.”)

There are vocabulary lessons, reading lessons, writing lessons, and more. There’s never any explicit grammar lesson (you’re not taught about gendered nouns or the dative case, for example), but instead you’re expected to pick up the grammar buy perceiving the difference any sentence structure in various contexts.

Kris and I have been using Rosetta Stone for the past few days. It’s fun. And effective. Our French knowledge is very limited, but it’s fun to use what we do know. When Max the cat hopped on the counter while we were making dinner last night, I was able to say, “Le chat cuisine.” We both found that funny. (Really le chat just wanted to mange, not cuisine.)

I’m a little skeptical that Rosetta Stone will provide deep knowledge, but I could be wrong. The first level only has four units, and we’re about to start the fourth unit already. Our vocabulary is very limited (colors, a couple of motion verbs, stuff to do with people), as is our grammar. I have high hopes that levels two and three have much greater depth and introduce much more vocabulary.

Actually, for our vocabulary, I’m planning to take a stack of sticky notes and sticky the hell out of the house. I’ll put a la table stick on the table, a de porte sticky on each door, and a la chaise sticky on my favorite chair.

With practice, Kris and I should be able to carry on a French conversation with Lisa or Laura (or Pierre!) before long.

Update: Haha. I’m so green at my French that I had the verb “to read” incorrect in the headline. I had “lis” instead of “lit”.

The Sausage Factory: Thoughts on the New Media and the Old

I’ve been working a little with a PR rep lately, and it’s given me a glimpse into a new world — a world I don’t particularly like.

From my experience, sound personal finance tips are timeless. We may get tired of hearing them, but that doesn’t change the fact that they work. The reason they’re repeated so often is because they’re effective.

As a result, when I write about various aspects of personal finance at Get Rich Slowly, I tend to cover the same themes repeatedly. That’s just the nature of the beast. I try to explore topics from new angles or give added color, but there are only so many ways you can write about “buy low, sell high” or “spend less than you earn”.

In Search of the New…

The PR rep I’m working with feeds me potential interviews with reporters for major media outlets. I’m happy to provide help when I can. But some of the requests from the reporters drive me nuts. There’s a certain group that is after new! tips. I get that they want to have original content and share new ideas. That’s great. But a lot of this seems forced.

Here’s an example of one request I saw recently:

I am writing an article about money-saving travel trends for the Los Angeles Times.

These must be new, very different, a little over-the-top/fun, perhaps (not necessarily) green must haves an in this down economy angle travel-related ideas/services/products of interest to readers who may no longer have as much (or any) disposable income.

They can be related to hotels/restaurants/transportation, you name it, I’ll look at it if it fits my protocol above.

Please note: a little over-the-top, new, different are key requirements. For example, I dont want to hear about hotels that are offering a third night free type thing. Ideas that are creative, that might wow readers, are what I’m looking for.

I don’t mean to pick on this writer — which is why I’m not naming names — because this is indicative of the way many reporters approach stories.

The Forest for the Trees

I think this approach misses the point, and in a big way. When you emphasize novel saving ideas, when you go for over-the-top, you’re ignoring the methods that have been proven to work. Again, just because we’ve heard the same tips 20 times before doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hear them for a 21st.

I’m also bothered by how the financial media manufacturers its stories. (It’s not just the financial media — I’m just using that as an example because I’ve seen it first-hand.) Some outlets — especially television — go into a story with the end in mind: “Let’s write about somebody who bought a house and was duped into a subprime mortgage and now is facing bankruptcy!”

Again, maybe that makes for a compelling story, but it’s also sensationalistic. And it’s not telling the truth — not in the larger sense. That is, the media is telling the truth about that individual, but by focusing on him, they’re ignoring the 98% of the population who are in different circumstances. They highlight the extreme in an effort to shock us.

On the Money

I saw this first-hand a couple of months ago when I made a short appearance on a major business television network. They asked me to write my story for them. It had to be something I could read aloud in under sixty seconds.

After I submitted my copy, one of the show’s editors worked with me for a couple of hours to refine the script. “Can we say this?” she’d ask, as she altered sentences. What she wanted me to say was true, but it was emphasizing all the wrong things.

When we were finished with the revisions, there was nothing in the piece about Get Rich Slowly, which is the single most important factor in my financial turnaround. It was like telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood without mentioning the wolf while emphasizing the fabric of the hood.

The Sausage Factory

Earlier this year at the old Foldedspace, I wrote about this experience:

These stories are manufactured, just like a cardboard box. They’re not reported. The “journalists” create the story they think their audience wants, and when they contact me, I’m just an ingredient

Bill, one of the fellows working with me, listened to my complaints, and then he said, “J.D., you can’t look at it like that. You can’t expect it to be straight reporting because it’s not. You have to think of it like sausage. What they’re producing is sausage. The media is a giant sausage factory. You don’t want to know what goes into the sausage or how it’s made. You just have to trust that what comes out at the other end tastes good.”

The more time I spend interacting with the traditional news media, the less I trust it. I don’t trust the liberal media, I don’t trust the conservative media — I don’t trust any of it. I don’t believe I’m being told the Truth.

Turning to Blogs

If I want the Truth, I turn to blogs. I know that I may not be getting truth from them (meaning they may be disguising bits of info, like names and dates, in order to protect friends and family), but I’m getting the Truth (meaning they’re not lying to me about the Big Picture). To me, this is more important.

Traditional media often gets on its high-horse when talking about blogs because “bloggers don’t have to meet rigorous fact-checking standards”. I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. What does it matter if you get the facts straight, but you’re totally distorting what they mean? Plus, I’ve had enough reporters screw up the facts I give them to know that they’re no more reliable than bloggers.

Old media is dying. I, for one, will not mourn its passing.

Update: Via Nicole: The corporations that own our largest media outlets are controlling and censoring the content of their news organizations based on the unrelated interests of the parent corporation. It’s not exactly what I wrote about above, but it’s pretty damn close. It’s another type of processed meat.