Weekend assignment

Weekend Assignment #183: Make up a poll for people to play with. The poll can be on any subject you want -- it can be serious or funny or silly or whatever (although funny's always, you know. Funny). If you're not on AOL Journals or for some reasons you don't want to use AOL's poll function, there are other poll options for your blog; here's one, for example.

Ah, polls. I love polls. They're so seemingly scientific, while in fact being virtually useless as a means of gathering meaningful information. I believe the poll has at last found its most suitable home: the Internet. Consider this a short tutorial in the creation of Internet polls of great political and philosophical import.
   The poll answers you offer your readers need not all be obviously on topic. In fact, it is common practice to include at least one non-sequiter option, ostensibly for comedic effect, but as will be explained, there is a very good reason for doing so. The following pol makes use of the most popular version of this feature: the 'pie' option.

   Yeah, so it would have been a little more topical a couple of days ago. How about this one?

   This one uses the alternate 'Planet X' option, which may be included if a 'pie' selection is not desirable. The 'pie' and 'Planet X' options are an important part of any poll. They allow the voters a selection that says, "your poll does not address my feelings on this issue. In fact, I think you are an idiot." Failing to include one of those two options usually indicates a frighteningly bad case of takingmyselftooseriousitis. Or, sometimes it reveals a case of tryingtoartificiallyskewtheresultsosis.
   The above poll uses a less common double-non-sequiter system, in which one option is usually an in joke that very few people will recognise. The use of an in-joke non-sequiter in no way frees the user from including a 'pie' or 'Planet X' option. However, if as a pollster, one can invent another, more universal nonsense selection, one may feel free to use it in place of the others. 'Kitten' might be usable...unless the poll is about cats...or pets...or busty actresses.
   Avoid creating, and participating in polls in which there are only two options. Most will make use of a false dichotomy to attempt to lend credence to a particular position. Especially avoid any poll that asks for a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer. It is almost certainly a form of a "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question. Take, for example, this poll:

   Does it matter how you answer that one? Not to me it doesn't. Herewith ends your short, introductory tutorial on Internet polls. Go forth and pollify.

Oh, yeah...

Extra credit: Have you ever participated in a political poll?

No.

Tags: memes, weekend assignment, polls

100 movies

   Jaquandor, at Byzantium's Shores, inspired by Tosy and Cosh, whom I have never read, has taken on a bit of a 'meme project.' He intends, as do I, else I would not be writing these words, to list one hundred movies that he likes (well, I'll probably stick to movies that I like). Note that these are not necessarily my opinion of what are the best 100 films ever. I could probably make a list of 100 movies that are generally considered to be great films, that I haven't ever seen. They may not necessarily even be the best 100 films I have ever seen. They are just 100 movies that I have seen and really liked. At least two or three of them are, I will readily admit, bad movies... 

I know you are, but what am I?

   When I first decided to do this (about halfway through reading Jaq's first ten), I thought it might be hard to come up with 100 movies that qualify. Having spent twenty minutes on Google I am now faced with the unenviable task of paring about twenty titles off my preliminary list.
   Jaq, and Tosy before him, numbered their lists, in reverse order; starting at 100 and working their way down to 1. Because I am not going to even try to rank these movies in any way, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to present them, in blocks of ten, with a little bit of commentary. In fact, I am going to number my rough list, from one to one hundred, and then use a random number generator to select what order they are presented in. Just because.
   OK, here we go...

THE AWV LIST OF 100 MOVIES I REALLY, REALLY LIKED

The first 10...

The Rock - Sean Connery, Nick Cage, a bunch of really big guns, and a yellow Ferrari. What's not to like?

The Last Temptation of Christ - It's a shame so many Christians condemned this film without ever actually having seen it. It's nothing like they said it was. If any of you Christians out there had a problem with this movie, I'd be interested in hearing what it was.

Stargate - Kurt Russell rocks! Always has, always will. How many men do you know who are banging Goldie Hawn? Huh? Yeah, I thought so. Suck it, Chuck Norris!
   Several years ago at a home theater seminar, the presenter used a scene from the movie Just The Ticket, in which Andy Garcia uses a Stargate LaserDisc as demo material to sell a big screen TV and surround sound stereo set. Comedy gold! The rest of it pretty much sucked, I understand. Still, I enjoyed the metaness of the demo within a demo.

The Transporter - Jason Statham kicks everybody's ass. Over and over again. About now you'll be beginning to detect something of a pattern in my selections, I think.

The Road Warrior - Pattern confirmed! Besides, there had to be at least one Mel movie on this list, and it sure as hell wasn't going to be Forever Young.

The Hunt For Red October - You might suspect you sense another pattern forming here... I will neither confirm nor deny the allegations. Have you seen this movie? They make a submarine jump out of the water fer chrissakes!

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Here lies proof of the random nature of this list. Had I been ranking these in any way, this would most likely have been number one, and the last movie I listed. The random number generator says I put it here. Not much to say here but the fact that Peter Jackson did a remarkable job with these films. The entire trilogy really belongs together as one movie, but being forced to break them up, this one is my favourite of the three.

This is Spinal Tap - Any old, dyed-in-the-wool rock 'n' roll fan has to love this movie. I'm a fan of all of Christopher Guest's oeuvre, but this one is the funniest to me, because I recognise myself in the absurdity of the rock 'n' roll posturing they lampoon. As mock documentaries go, this one goes to eleven.

Ghostbusters - Who you gonna call? Um...this'll come up again, as well. The only thing funnier than Murray, Ackroyd, and Ramis fighting the 'Stay Puft Marshmallow Man' is the fact the Ackroyd actually believes ghosts are real. "Nice thinking, Ray."

Beverly Hills Cop - Eddie at the top of his game...before his game got old. Nowadays, the best he can do is talk like an ass - I meandonkey.

   There you have it, the first ten films on the list of movies I really like. What are your thoughts?

                    next ten >>

Tags: memes, 100 movies, blogplugs

Check, 1, 2, 3... Check, check!

   This is an experimental post for the purposes of testing the poll feature of AOL Journals R13 install. Please vote if you are able.

Tags: AOL Journals, R13 install, polls, test, booyah!

"Bigger than Jesus"

   Much has been made over the revelation recently of Mother Teresa's private papers and correspondences that show her to have suffered a crisis of faith for most of the last fifty years of her life. The first commentary I read on the matter was on Friday, at Atheist Revolution, in a blog entry rather hyperbolically titled, "Mother Teresa an Atheist?" 
   It was a comment on that entry that first brought to my attention the phrase, "dark night of the soul," described by the commenter as "a time in the lives of saints where they don't "feel" the consolations of the faith. It is considered a trial and not an actual lack of faith. It forces the soul to rely upon the rational basis of the faith and not mere feelings and emotions which are fleeting and often deceptive." (We'll just leave aside the irony inherent in the use of the word 'rational' in that sentence for today.) In the next day's National Post newspaper, religious columnist Father Raymond J. DeSouza expanded on the idea in his article, "Mother Teresa's darkness."

It is a form of agonizing spiritual purification, in which the soul draws very close to God. Yet God is infinite, and infinitely beyond our finite senses, so He appears as nothingness -- hence the nada, nada, nada refrain of St. John of the Cross. It is not that God is nothing, but rather that infinity appears that way to the souls who see deepest. It is something like a powerful telescope; the greater its range, the more empty the heavens appear to be. It is only to those stuck on Earth that the skies seemed crowded with stars.

   This is, of course, spin doctoring of the highest order. It is the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" mantra of the woo-woo community pushed to its most extreme. The fact that one cannot feel the presence of God, the theologians would have us believe, is proof that one has approached him more closely than the average person. Absence of evidence, they tell us, is, in fact, evidence of presence. And they say it with a straight face.
   I am in awe of their fortitude in the face of such silly rhetoric. Reading Father DeSouza's column, I find myself giggling upon discovering such statements as, "To be sure, she knew [the absence of God] as only those closest to God know it," and flat out guffawing over, "[n]ow we have discovered that her realism was borne of daily contact with God as He really is..." Um, absent?

   I wish to point out to Reverend DeSouza the point at which his argument completely fell apart for me. It was his use of the analogy of a large telescope looking at the sky. That analogy reveals that Father DeSouza, like so many of his colleagues, has willfully kept himself blind to the realities of our universe, and the science that reveals them, in order to protect his God Delusion.
   Ray (can I call you Ray?), when you train a powerful telescope on a small section of sky that, to the naked eye, appears devoid of stars, do you know what you see? You see more stars. And if you choose a small section of that small section, and zoom in again, do you know what you see?Uh huh, more stars. And you can perform the same exercise over and over again with the same result. Eventually, what you begin seeing are not individual stars, but crowded fields of galaxies, composed of billions of stars each. And when you zoom in on those, even more galaxies are revealed beyond them.
   This, Ray...Raymond...Father DeSouza, is the true nature of infinity. And it's far, far larger than any God you can imagine.

Tags: skepticism, religion, national post, mother teresa, hubble deep field

Last minute Weekend Assignment

   I'm sneaking this one in last minute. John's Weekend Assignment hasn't really spoken to me for a while, but I forced myself this week because it was an opportunity to be obnoxious, and I haven't done that for a week or so.

Weekend Assignment #180: Go to this bumper sticker generator, and create a bumper sticker. Then post it in your journal. The generator page gives you a number of options to play with, so you should be able to have fun with it. Naturally, keep it reasonably clean; I have to link to it, after all.

Extra Credit: How many bumper stickers does your car have in real life?

OK, so here's an obnoxious bumper sticker I'd like to see out there:



This one isn't obnoxious, but I'd love to have one:



And obnoxious again, maybe, but on a more traditional bumper stickerish topic:



Extra Credit: There are no bumper stickers on my car. There have never been any bumper stickers on any car I have ever owned. Even if I owned one of the above stickers, I wouldn't put it on my car.

Tags: memes, weekend assignment, bumper stickers

What though on hamely fare we dine...

   It's one of those odd things you remember about someone without knowing why. Inconsequential in the bigger picture, and completely irrelevant to one's opinion of the person, just a funny little detail. In the case of my Grandmother, it's mushy peas.*
   She would take a can of peas that had already been sitting, sealed in their own juices, on the grocery store shelf for about a year and a half, and boil them for two to three hours until you weren't sure if they were really peas, or maybe a plate of left-over mashed potatoes she had forgotten to throw out three weeks ago. I always thought it was because she didn't know how to cook them properly. I mean, in our house we just took the bag of Green Giant peas out of the freezer, and put some into boiling water for exactly the time listed on the side of the package.** Was she not reading the directions?
   Today I read something that suggests her peas were coming out exactly the way she intended all those years ago. Apparently, she was just being English. Which is somewhat odd, because I always thought she was Scottish. Should I cancel the kilt I have on order?


* To be fair, I'm not sure if this is an authentic memory of my grandmother, or one I have appropriated from my mother after listening to her talk about her mother-in-law.

** Today, I'm more likely to eat peas raw, standing in the garden having just picked and shucked them. But that's about my other Grandparents...

Tags: family, memory, English, Scottish, mushy peas

Patrick's Saturday Six

   I participate in Patrick's Saturday Six meme only very occasionally. This week's set of questions piqued my interest, so here are my answers...

1. Considering all possible factors about a person that make us different, like age, appearance, religion, race, origin, sexual preference, etc., with 10 being the most prejudiced and 1 being the least, how do you think you would rate yourself?

2. You’re having a problem with a product or service and you call customer service. You are finally connected with someone who has a thick accent that sounds difficult to understand. What is the first thing that goes through your mind?

3. A co-worker you like tells you that his or her church is holding an “open house” and is encouraging people of other faiths to visit. You and your co-worker are of different faiths. How likely would you be to attend?

4. Take the quiz: Are you prejudiced?

5. You lose a big promotion to someone who you considered to be less qualified than you are, despite the fact that you are only going by instinct in making that determination. If your boss later pulls you aside and explains that because of a growing effort to promote diversity, the other person was selected over you. What would your first reaction likely be?

6. Your car breaks down in a neighborhood in which everyone is of a different race than you: are you more likely to be uncomfortable?

   OK, those were the questions. Here are my answers:

1) I'm not sure I completely understand the wording of this question. I assume it is asking how prejudiced I think I am on a scale of one to ten, with one being the least prejudiced and ten being the most.
   I'm not naive enough to think I'm not prejudiced at all. I don't want to be prejudiced, but I know I am to some extent. We all are. My first reaction to this question was to estimate my own level of prejudism at a two or a three. Then, recognising that we all have prejudices built into us by our upbringing that we may be blind to ourselves, I upgraded that to a three or a four.

2) "Why do they call it customer service when their employee is unable to communicate effectively with their customer?"

3) This question is different for me than for many. In my case, the co-worker and I would not be of different faiths. The co-worker is of a faith, and I am of no faith. I would absolutely not attend, but I don't consider that to be a prejudiced reaction. If he offered me free kidney dialysis, would you expect me to accept, just to be respectful?

4)

You Are Not Prejudiced

Not only are you color blind, but you're also ethnicity blind, gender blind, and sexual orientation blind. You don't judge someone until you truly know them. And even then, you're probably reluctant to judge. You try to treat everyone equally. Everyone has a fair chance with you. Good job - there's not a prejudiced bone in your body.

Are You Prejudiced?

   Look, the quiz has a higher opinion of me than I do.

5) I tell my boss that I feel sorry that the company will be less competetive in its marketplace because it has less capable people in key positions. Hiring a less qualified person based upon some kind of affirmative action plan may look good on the surface, but it isn't good business practice.

6) It depends on the neighbourhood. Now, that may well be a prejudiced statement. Unfortunately, it is also a realistic one.

Tags: memes, Saturday Six, prejudism

Ouch!

   I have been cited for failure to exercise care and control in the operation of a folding utility knife. Mr. Ho says I'll have to take a corporate refresher course in safe handling and usage of pointy and sharp objects. He's joking. I think.



   That's seven stiches, if anyone's counting. Not including the internal ones you can't see. Here's the culprit.



   It happened so fast I didn't even get any blood on the blade. The doctor compared it to those scenes in the Samurai movies where people don't even know they're dead until the two halves of their body start sliding apart. I thought that was kind of a silly analogy, but I didn't say so. It's one of my little life rules. Don't make fun of your emergency room physician.
   So I'm on light duty at the Kwik-E-Mart. No heavy lifting for one full week. At least with my left hand.

Tags: injury, blogplugs

'Nuff said

   Sometimes, when you find yourself without anything to say, the solution is to post an entry that doesn't require additional commentary. For example, tonight I was grocery shopping. At the checkout counter, nestled amongst the National Enquirers, and Women's Weeklys, and Celebrity Gossip rags, was this:

   They say the most important factor in successful marketing is to know your market...

Tags: skepticism, humour, hyperbole

Pumpkin's meme

   Pumpkin is Dawn's daughter. She made up her own meme. It's the current rage in J-land. Far be it from me to ignore a bandwagon. Herewith, find my responses to Pumpkin's meme.

1   What's your favorite movie???

   Definitely not 300. That freaking sucked. I'm serious, if you're standing in the video store, and you can't think of anything to rent, and your significant other comes up to you with 300 in his or her hand, and says, "what about this?" Take my advice. Just gouge your eyes out right there in the store. Use your fingernails, your car keys, whatever is to hand. It's a far, far better thing than watching that pitiful excuse for a movie.
   So, my favourite? Gotta be The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I know, that's three movies. So the first one, The Fellowship of the Ring. Yep, that's my fave.

2    What's your favorite color???

   Blue. I guess.

3    What's your favorite ice cream flavor???

   Rolo. Mmm, Rolo!

4    Where do you want to go on vacation??

   Australia.

5    What's your favorite animal???

   Black panther.

6    What's your favorite T.V. show???

   Hmmm, of all time, or currently on? Current, I'm guessing Pumpkin meant. So, Battlestar Galactica, followed closely by Heroes. Neither of which I get a chance to watch on a regular basis. ::pout::

7    What's your fav. drink???

   Right now it's a mixture of mango punch and cranberry cocktail. But I might get sick of that soon and go back to hard scotch on cold rocks.

8    What's your favorite flower???

   Marigolds. They keep the ants away from the tomatoes.

9    What's your favorite pet???

   Shadow. Duh!

10   What's your favorite book???

   It'snot a Harry Potter book. Sorry to disappoint you, Pumpkin. I usually answer this question with Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Maybe you can read it when you get a few years older.

Tags: memes, pumpkin's meme