Lost in Translation » All About Me

A thought, re: Top Ten Worst lists

Chris Anthony — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 03:37:03 +0000

The internet is a place that loves to hate things*. Its denizens love equally to make Top Ten Worst Whatever lists, because showing disdain is much more fun than showing enthusiasm. (I don’t really mean any judgment there; I think Roger Ebert was probably right when he wrote that a negative review is more fun to read than a positive one and more fun to write.) There are sites where the authors are so relentlessly negative about things that the pages they want to recommend are merely categorized “Things That Don’t Actively Suck”.

Since I’m a gamer I tend to run across a lot of Worst Games lists. Likewise with movies and Worst Movies lists. And since the Internet is a place with a lot of information, a large desire to fit in, and a disturbingly pervasive zeitgeist, a lot of games and movies make these lists time and again. For video games, we have E.T. the Extraterrestrial (which almost singlehandedly collapsed the home video game market in the early 1980s) and Custer’s Revenge (revenge rape porn** on the Atari 2600, and no I am not making this up, and no I will not link it to you). For movies, it’s fare like Manos: the Hands of Fate (“popularized” by its feature on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and North (great actors, actually kind of an interesting premise, catastrophically bad implementation).

These entries turn up a lot. And when I say “a lot” I mean “on every list of this kind”. So here’s a thought: let’s give them a bye. Let’s all universally acknowledge that yes, these games and movies are stinkers. If someone put one on the coffee table you’d run out of the room holding your nose. We get it. The next time you make a Top Ten Worst Whatever list, look for entries that you know are on every other list out there – and remove them. Make a note at the beginning: “Yes, we know ET was absolute crap. We’ve all agreed on that. It transcends the scale. For the purpose of this list, it’s actually in negative numbers. Let’s move on.”

Because, really, I’d like to see a Top Ten Worst Games where I didn’t know with absolute certainty what was going to be #1 on the list. I think we can all agree that that would be a good thing.

* It entertains me that I have a pre-existing WP tag for “kvetching”.
** Man, the Google hits I’m going to get for that.

A quick DIY tip: repairing headphone cords

Chris Anthony — Fri, 21 May 2010 21:51:44 +0000

I learned this today and it’s come in handy twice: Broken or severed headphone cables can be repaired with a utility knife, some electrical tape, and a lighter or matchbook.

If the cord isn’t completely severed, use the knife to cut it at the break; then cut again about half an inch in either direction. This will leave you with clean ends on the cord.
Very carefully slice around the cord about an inch away from the end. You should be cutting through the insulating sleeve around the wires, but not through the wires themselves. Once you can see the wires, use your thumbnail to pull the sleeve off and expose the wires. Do this on both severed ends.
Modern headphone cords generally come with one of two kinds of wiring: either copper wire wrapped around an inner core (with more wiring inside), or a set of three or four colored wires. Which you have determines which step you should take next.
For copper wrapped around the core:
- Carefully unwrap the copper and pull it away from the core (without breaking the wires). Then use the knife to even more carefully slice the core casing about 1/4″ from the end of the outer sleeve. You’ll expose a very slender set of wires, probably with some white insulating fiber mixed in.
- Separate the inner wires from the fibers and snip off the fibers as close to the “base” as you can.
- Spread the wires so that they’re pointing in opposite directions.
For colored wires:
- Spread the wires apart so that they’re as far from each other as they’ll go.
- Light the lighter or a match and hold it to one of the wires. The wires are colored because they’re coated with enamel; the enamel will melt if you apply enough heat. Repeat this step for each of the wires, being sure to blow out the flame on the wire if it gets too close to the “base”; you want to have some color remaining at the base so that you can tell which wire is which. Do this even for the copper-colored wires; many manufacturers use clear enamel on that wire too.
- Use a very, very sharp utility knife to scrape away the remaining enamel (which will be black and lumpy). Ideally you’ll be left with gleaming copper wire. You can also use solvent to remove the burned enamel.
Now that you have clean, separated wires, bring the ends together. Twist together each set of matching wires – one from each end per pair – as tightly as you can.
Make sure that the exposed wires don’t touch outside of their assigned pairs. (This is the other reason for leaving enamel near the base of the colored wires; the enamel is non-conductive and won’t complete the circuit like the bare wires will.)
At this point, plug your headphones in and test them. If the sound is satisfactory, continue. If not:
- For colored wires, red is generally left channel, green is right channel, and copper is ground. If the sound is coming through both headphones, but it’s very quiet, you need to adjust the ground connection.
Once you’re satisfied with the sound, cut short lengths of electrical tape (no more than 1/2″). On each twisted pair, set the wires in the middle of a length of tape, with the tip just inside the end of the tape, and fold the tape over, producing a “flag”. Do this more than once if the exposed wire is longer than the width of the flag.
If you can do so without affecting sound quality, lay the flagged wires along the insulated cable and tape them down. (This provides stability and means there’s less of a chance of you accidentally banging a connection around.)

And you’re done!

On adulthood

Chris Anthony — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:04:12 +0000

“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adults themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence… When I was ten, I read fairytales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” – C.S. Lewis

Special

Chris Anthony — Sun, 02 May 2010 17:00:54 +0000

I ran across this panel in the comics page today, and couldn’t get my mind off it. I see this kind of unconscious condescension (and I do think it’s unconscious) all the time among people who are considered “creative” (and the reciprocal self-deprecation among people who aren’t). “You don’t decide to be an artist, you’re born one” and, conversely, “oh, I couldn’t draw a straight line to save my life, so I could never be an artist”. Guys, let’s stop this right now: the only thing preventing a person from becoming an artist is the lack of reinforcement for the process of becoming. In plain English: there’s not enough apparent reward to make us want to put the work in. In plainer English: if we’re not artists, it’s because we don’t want to practice.

Consider this hypothetical parallel (cribbed from Betty Edwards). Imagine that when a child arrived in preschool, she was given a book (no pictures, just words) and told to figure out what to do with it. No instruction, no examples. If, at the end of the day, she’d managed to piece together a few words, the teachers would label her “a reader” and encourage her to further develop her reading. Her parents would smile and say “oh, her uncle Dan was a reader – it runs in the family”. The other kids, the ones who hadn’t been able to make sense of the book (again, without instruction or guidance), would have mandatory, rudimentary classes throughout grade school, with assignments like “read this short story” – without any explanation as to how one was to do that – and by the time high school rolled around, reading would be an elective, taken at high levels by the “readers” and avoided by everyone else except to fill requirements.

If it’s unacceptable to think of reading that way, why do we treat art exactly as described? Show an early predisposition toward art, and you’re a “born artist”. Don’t, and you “just don’t have the talent”.

I’ll follow that with a caveat: I do believe that there are people to whom practicing a creative craft is more inherently rewarding than it is to others. At the same time, there are people to whom the practice of law is more rewarding than it is to others. I don’t think anyone would argue that law takes vast amounts of study and practice. Why would we believe that art is any different?

One of the songs I learned when I took piano lessons in my youth had the lyric “If I had even a fraction of Vladimir Horowitz’s talent, I’d practice all day”. It’s exactly the opposite: Vladimir Horowitz has his talent because he practices all day. Artists don’t draw/paint/etc. because they’re talented, they’re “talented” because they’ve spent years drawing/painting/etc.

Why do we persist in the “talent” myth? Because it’s reinforcing. Talent allows those with to believe that they’re special, that they possess a gift that separates them from the unskilled hoi polloi; and it allows those without to believe that their inability to do what they want to do is out of their control, instead of something to be worked past.

This is not to diminish the accomplishments of artists – far from it. But let’s recognize them for their hard work and real accomplishment – not for some imaginary “talent”.

Water off a duck’s back

Chris Anthony — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:00:34 +0000

A few years after I graduated from high school, I was back in my hometown for the summer and a kid I knew from school came up to me at the grocery store. “I was always impressed by you,” he said. He’d been one of the guys who relentlessly tormented me – about being shy, about my weight, about how I was the Smart One instead of the Sports One. “You just kept going. You didn’t give a crap about what anybody said. Water off a duck’s back, man.”

He’d been to therapy because he was abused as a child and became a bully to compensate. It was the only way he’d known how to get the anguish out. “I wish I had your coping mechanism.” It was a therapy term. “Nobody should have to put up with that shit. I’m sorry.”

Funny how different we look from the outside.

Inspired by this post by Kyeli.

On horses

Chris Anthony — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:36:15 +0000

About twenty years ago, my sister took horse-riding lessons. She was At That Age, where every girl wants a horse*, and for a couple years she lived the dream. There was no horse that was particularly hers, at least as far as I remember, but she rode every weekend, and read up on horses and riding when she couldn’t actually be on the horses. In the fifth grade I checked a book out of the school library about a girl and her horse, and devoured it; and when I told my sister about a particularly vivid scene where the heroine had loped around on her horse, my sister told me in no uncertain terms that there was no such speed as a “lope” and the author clearly didn’t know what she was talking about.

One summer, my sister and I both went to the same camp that revolved around horses. (I think I was starting to feel left out.) She rode, while I did archery and crafts and such. We did all have the opportunity to get on a horse, though, and walk around a bit. They were very well-behaved horses, but when I got on mine, we walked around a bit like we were supposed to and then he reared up a little and I was so startled that I fell off. I figured that my turn was up, so I started walking away. The trainer shook her head. “When you fall off the horse, you get back on.” Then she led the next kid over to my horse and that was the end of my riding experience.

I thought about that day today, for the first time in about twenty years. Today was an exceptionally hard day, in Havi’s parlance. Money stress, and family stress, and work stress – all the big problematic stressors showed up and made a big mess of my day, and every time I’ve tried to push through and get going again, something else comes up to slap me back down. It’s been, to coin a phrase, one of those days.

There’s a significant part of me that’s trying to retreat. One of the things I tend to do when I’m stressed is to go into a quiet room and listen to water falling. In this house, since the only quiet room tends to be the bathroom, I’ll go in and run the shower for a few minutes. Often I’ll turn the showerhead outward, so that it’s spraying against the curtain, and let the pressure and heat relax me. I can’t express how much I’ve wanted to do that, pretty much all day. But instead, for whatever reason, that horse trainer’s voice keeps coming into my head. I can still hear her – with perfect clarity, my memory tells me, although twenty years and the shame and dizziness from falling off a horse have probably introduced a few artifacts. “When you fall off the horse, you get back on.”

So instead of retreating and finding a safe spot, I’ve been getting back up. Every time I fall or am knocked off the horse, I dust myself off and get back on. That trainer keeps prodding me. “No more being the ten-year-old who fell off a horse and just walked away,” she says. “It’d be easy to walk away. You could wipe the slate clean and never have to worry about it again. But if you want to be stronger, and show the people around you what kind of person you are, then you look the horse in the eye and get right back up on its back.”

When you fall off the horse, you get back on.

It’s hard. These difficulties hit me in what’s charitably called the solar plexus. I get dizzy. My vision contracts and I feel my skin tightening and growing hot. My stomach hurts, and I spend a moment reeling. But then I breathe, and smile for ten seconds like my dad taught me to do, and start going again. In the face of so much difficulty I want to be strong. I want to show the people around me that I can come out the other side and be okay. I want to get back on the horse. And it’s strange, because even though today has sucked so hard that Hoover is filing for patent infringement, I’m feeling better about myself than I have in years.

* Yes, I know, you hated horses and wanted a machine gun.

On being an adult

Chris Anthony — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:38:27 +0000

This is a Very Personal Ad, in the style of Havi’s. In fact, I pretty much copied it directly from my comment there. I too am trying to get better at asking for what I want. Unfortunately, most of what I want is internal…

Here’s what I want:

I feel like I’m still a kid. I was young for my class (August birthday) AND I was skipped ahead a grade, so I was always about two years behind everyone else in school. So I always feel like the youngest one in the room.

I take myself WAY too seriously. Even though I was young for my class, I was still the oldest of three children, and I felt like I was constantly being told to “be mature” and “just deal with [perceived hardship or favoritism] because [I'm] older”. I stopped taking piano lessons because my sister was also taking them, and she got precedence on practice time because she was younger, and by the time she was done my mom was sick of hearing the piano so I never got to practice. Long story short, I learned at an early age to take myself REALLY seriously because it was the best way I’d found to Act My Age.

Even if I felt like I was Younger Than Everyone Else.

So what I want is a way to be myself without feeling like I’m way too young to be taken seriously (I’m older than Naomi, for heaven’s sake) and without feeling like I have to take MYSELF excessively seriously.

How this could work:

I’m actually open to advice on this one. Suggestions that aren’t just “suck it up and grow up” are welcome. I’m really not sure how to proceed. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts about this.

My commitment:

I will do my best to notice when I’m feeling excessively young or taking myself too seriously. I will do my best to correct for it, without BLAMING myself for it. Just because it’s a part of me I’d rather not have doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad to have it.

Moments with Monsters

Chris Anthony — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:24:56 +0000

Havi has been talking a lot recently about Monsters – the parts of yourself that are holding you in a stuck pattern. Havi encourages addressing your monsters, identifying with them, seeing what they need, and helping them see what you need. As part of my progress toward Life On My Terms, I’ve wanted to address my monsters for a while, and today I got the opportunity to do that. I woke up this morning believing that my monsters were goblins, part of a tiny but teeming army, all gnashing their teeth and bearing spears. After listening to Havi’s Habits Detective recording this afternoon, I became convinced that what I was really seeing were just the foot soldiers – each of them a part of the stuckness but under the control of a General – and that the General was the Monster with whom I needed to deal.

I was expecting to have a conversation with my Goblin General when I sat down this evening. I started sketching my Monster – part of engaging these monsters is visualizing them – and I was surprised.

Hello, Monsters, I said. “Monsters”. Because: I see three of you. All three had little goblins scurrying around below them, carrying out orders.

The first was – is – me, but colossal. A parody of overweight. Hand in a bowl of popcorn and candy, too heavy to even sit up, having to look over his massive stomach to meet my gaze. You’re how I see myself, I said. You want to protect me from disappointment.

He nodded, with effort. “Look, giving up isn’t so bad. You get to relax all the time. You get to eat tasty food. And you’re still alive, right? I mean, you’ve lived through everything so far. Why not assume that’ll hold?”

I turned my attention to the second. He was me, too, but just a head, with no body, floating next to the first. I’d thought I’d recognized his expression out of the corner of my eye, but when I really looked I realized I was mistaken. I thought he was angry, passing judgment, telling me how awful I was. Instead he was worried, eyebrows raised, brow furrowed a little, his frown one of compassion rather than upset. You’re trying to protect me too, I said, just in a different way.

“Do you really want to put your work out in front of everybody?” he asked. “You don’t really think it’s any good, so why should you think anyone else will think so? And since you don’t think you’re improving, you’re probably right. No sense in continuing to practice if you’re not going to get any better.”

I looked at the third. This was difficult, because he was a long way off. He was recognizably me even at that distance, but the me I’d like to be in my wildest dreams – successful, thinner, and happy. You’re trying to protect me by staying away from me, I called out.

He shouted back: “It’s such a long way to your goals, and you’ll have to move so slowly to get here. It’s so much easier and pleasant to stay where you are; I’m just trying to save you effort. And you remember how much you dislike driving long distances? Getting here is even harder than that.”

I sighed, and spoke so they could all hear me. O my Monster Selves, I said, thank you for trying to protect me. I know that you want me to be happy and you’re just doing your jobs. It’s hard for you to see me try and fail.

But I need something from you: I need to move forward. I need to get going again. I need to start taking risks and putting myself out there and getting things done.

Self-Image Monster, I said, I won’t live through becoming you. I am already dangerously unhealthy. I need to change in order to live. Instead of encouraging me to give up, would you please protect me by reminding me that that’s not how I want to be?

The first monster nodded again. “But,” he said, “you have to make me a promise. I want to change too. I’m your self-image and if you can’t live being me, then I can’t live being me either. I want to change.” I agreed.

I turned to the second. Concerned Monster, I need you to drive me to improve instead of discouraging me. Help me keep moving forward by helping me recognize what I have left to do. You’re good at seeing my shortcomings; help me turn them into successes instead.

The Concerned Monster was recalcitrant. “You’ll still get laughed at and judged,” he said. “You’ll still get hurt.”

Let’s give it a trial, then, I told him. Until the end of the month. If nothing horrible has happened, then we’ll keep going.

“Okay,” he said, “but only if I get to decide what counts as horrible.”

I turned to the third and pulled out a megaphone. Future Monster, I am willing to move as slowly as you need me to, if you will help me by standing still, so that I know that my journey has an end. When I reach you I promise that you can move away again so I have something new to aim for. I won’t stop just because I’ve reached you.

He said nothing, but a green sign popped up next to me. It had “Future Me: ?? Miles” written on it in white Futurist lettering. I took that as a positive sign.

The little goblin armies had scattered. They were nowhere to be seen.

I got up and opened my eyes, and here I am.

Your thoughts

Like Havi, I’m practicing asking for what I want. Here’s what I’d like to receive in the comments:

Your experiences with your monsters.
Support and friendly chatter.

What I don’t want:

Criticism of my methods or results.
Other kinds of thrown shoes.
Shoulds, judgment, and other kinds of negative thoughts.
Non-productive “advice”.

Thanks for reading!

The first day of the rest of my life

Chris Anthony — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:50:44 +0000

Written and drawn over the course of two hours today. Consciously minimal cleaning-up.

My new model for goal-setting

Chris Anthony — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:57:15 +0000

I’ve decided to adopt a new model for goal-setting, because resolutions and concrete goals just aren’t doing it for me. I still haven’t figured out – a month and a half in – how I want this year to pan out, but I do have some things I’d like to change and things I’d like to do.

I’m taking a three-prong approach to this, because it seems like the most logical way to go about it. All of the below start with “I want to…”, but they’re divided into sections according to their function.

Intentions

These are aspects of myself that I’ve decided I want to change, or actions that I want to take. They’re not endpoints; they’re processes and beginnings. (You might recall my issues with process, and focusing on these is a way to work on that.) They’re roughly analogous to Havi’s “My commitment” section in her Very Personal Ads. My current intentions are that I want to

improve my posture;
exercise more frequently;
eat better (by which I mean both higher-quality food and food that’s better for me);
do at least one thing each day that makes me actively happy;
spend at least one hour each day learning a new skill;
spend less time in front of the computer; and
write more often.

Desires

On my paper list, this went under the heading “What I Want”, but I figured for the formal writeup it’d be better to have a consistent naming scheme. These are the desired results of the intentions. They’re deliberately vague, to represent that this is, in fact, a process; I’ll never be done improving. I can’t just get to 180 pounds, say, and decide that okay, I’m done that agenda item; by keeping my desires nebulous, I’m reminding myself to keep moving forward.

As a result of my intentions, I want to

feel healthier, lighter, and more active;
improve my skill in things I actually enjoy doing;
be generally happier with myself and my life; and
help my family be happier with me and with their lives.

Milestones

These are concrete, but they’re not goals; a goal implies an endpoint. Rather, they’re signals that I’m moving ahead in my intentions and achieving my desires.

In the pursuit of my intentions and desires, I want to

release a Flash game;
finish 10,000 words on a single writing project;
have someone commission art from me; and
hold a brief conversation in a modern non-English language.

Your thoughts

Like Havi, I’m practicing asking for what I want.

What I’d like to receive in the comments:

Your intentions, desires, and milestones.
Thoughts on how I could start on my intentions.
General support.

What I don’t want:

To quote Havi, practical concerns (“you realize you need X because…”).
Negative thoughts.
Shoulds.
Judgment.
Non-productive “advice”.

Thanks for reading!