prismguard's Open Salon Blog

Insulting Google Ad Campaign

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:01:54 -0500

When I clicked onto a Tetris site this morning, a flashing bright-red ad at the top of the page blared an offer to reveal to me data on my criminal record.

I felt insulted and repelled by this unsolicited invitation to supply non-existent information, but I continued with my Free Tetris activity until the ad finally stopped blinking.

Eventually the angry red crapola was annoying enough to get me to try to cancel it. Instead, I was sent to a Google site ecstatic with its own cleverness and extolling, by way of its "made you look" tactics, the "dynamic potency" of using Google Ad or Ad Google or whatever brand its lunacy failed to emboss on my memory.

And, of course, the site supplied countless avenues for signing up with this or that specific ad avenue, but NO Contact Us application with which I could express my disgust with Google's puerile, demeaning, utterly negative campaign that had had the absolute opposite effect on this Googler than they so venally hoped for.

Evading the threat of customer feedback is the only bright (if understandably cowardly) aspect of this tasteless backfire.

Laments About Language, Like, “Literally”

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 13:10:52 -0400

pigsarms.com.au

"And I Am Unanimous In This!"

In the late 1950s, Winston cigarettes introduced an ad campaign that ignited a nationwide discussion about proper grammar. Much ado was made of the fact that “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” instead of “as a cigarette should.” In fact, subsequent Winston made the grammar glitch the focus of their ads. The debate was an interesting one, since “like” sounded and “felt” more appropriate to that slogan. After all, "What do you want? Good grammar or good taste?"

adrants.com

As a new teacher in my twenties, I more frequently traveled long distances on trains, planes, and buses. Small talk with the stranger seated next to me often included the good-natured exclamation, “An English teacher? I’ll have to watch my language!” I dismissed it then; now it’s a burr of nostalgia.

There are quirks of English I also am dismissive about, like ending a clause with a proposition like “about,” for instance—though I remain true to the American dogma of comma placement within quotation marks. I see no reason for omitting the middle “e” in the word “judgment,” and I’m content if “whom” continues to fade out of our vocabulary.

designbliss.com

Nor am I upset by texters’ adopting the language of heart candies of Valentine’s Day: “I M 4 U”; “Str8 BFF”; etc. And, though it grates each time I hear it, I rationalize that Generation Techs was too confused and/or lazy to learn how “effect” and “affect” function differently as nouns or verbs, so it displaced them by turning the noun “impact” into a verb.

A colleague at my last college employment was desperate for acceptance as a scholar, but was as slack as Mrs. Slocum (and she was unanimous in this!) when referring to “a phenomena,” “the media is,” and (my biggest beef) “between you I.”

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

I can accept the generalizing singular of “a bacteria is,” but I can’t fathom why the “preposition and object pronouns” rule so eludes, for example, well-salaried writing staffs for TV series. “The gift is for me. The gift is for you and me. The gift is for you and I?????” Why do so many Americans not get this?

Here are other abrasive bugaboos that cause me to wonder about the dissipation of American English:

“A small amount of American voters favor that proposal.” Oh, really? What “amount” is that: from their ankles down, from the neck up, the pancreas but not the gall bladder? “Amount” measures parts of a solid group (“amount of sugar, of money, of credit”), while “number” refers to individual entities within a group (“number of voters, of grains of sugar, of dollars, paid or unpaid bills”).
How does this generalizing into a collective mentality reflect on the thinking processes of Americans? (As an ancillary, what particular medium do they envision when “the media is” is uttered?
“All idiots are not always wrong.” Try this instead: “Not all idiots are always wrong.” Or “All men are not created equal” v. “Not all men are created equal.” And
“I want to see Juan and Vera at different times so I can confer with both of them separately.” No: “I want to see Juan and Vera at different times so I can confer with each of them separately.”

uncyclopedia.wikia.com

But the language trend that most prompted this blog entry involves this year’s most tedious populist cliché. When the Internet first took prominence in the Nineties, the buzz word was “interactive”; the first decade of the new millennium also enjoyed a series of catch phrases that were as popular as those yellow polka dot ties of the late Eighties.

For apolitical youth, there was the socially binding pleasure of “No you dih-in't,” “I'm like, No Way, and she's like, Way!” and “I really mean it ... Not!”

Meanwhile, the media promoted “until the fat lady sings,” which got replaced by “if I tell you I’ll have to kill you,” which has since lost precedence to the current favorite “thrown under the bus.” Doubtless, doctoral students are correlating these phrases with the pre-bubble-bursting '90s economics, the Cheney era war mentality, and the 2008 financial crises, respectively.

What I find almost hilariously ironic is that fact that, in a era when large amounts—no, I mean numbers—of Americans proudly don’t read books and have limited their exposure to the onus of reading to the boundaries of a Tweet, the words “literally” has become so commonplace as to be rendered “literally” meaningless. “Literally” instead of what? “I was literally astonished” v. “I was figuratively or virtually astonished”?

lisakoski.hubpages.com

For some reason it has replaced the association with “actually.” Is there some tacit admission here that “actual” experiences are indeed so detached from the genuine (so “virtually” nascent) that they require the heft of a more authoritarian word for them to impact—no, I mean affect—the listener? Perhaps the nearly boastful illiteracy of Gen Techs equates the vagaries of genuine experiences with those of that activity that has status somewhere but is not personally practiced. As in: the experience was as uniquely real and remarkable as that reading thing is kinda supposed to, like, be.

jokesprank.com

Orwell warned us that language could be siphoned off into “ungood” simplifications that, by limiting how people expressed their experiences, curtailed the richness of those experiences and thus enshackled the populace. And Orwell published 1984 in an era when literate Americans were not such a minority!

antranik.org

The media have—yes, have!—reduced both language and the interpretation/ judgment (sigh) of experience so relentlessly (and with the sensation-addicted public’s complicity) that personal identity has entropied.

Privacy, learning positively from one’s mistakes, appreciating the rewards of delayed gratification, enhancing the skills and pleasures of extended face-to-face conversation, etc.—such are the casualties of my generation’s upbringing in an era measured by the speed of one’s thumb on a mini-keyboard by a generation who sees no irony in watching Lawrence of Arabia on the screen of a cell phone, or in texting after each phrase during the presidential debates rather than “literally” evaluating the speeches’ contents.

digital-rights.net

"Literally" Impossible? Way!

Testing! Testing!--Let's Standardize Mediocrity in America!

Thu, 4 Oct 2012 11:10:53 -0400

momilani.k12.hi.us

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hardtime.htm

Let's engage in a formal test on "literacy" and "learning"--especially since formalized testing is so prized. Get out your Number Two pencils and ... oh, that's right I forgot: the texting thumb has made pencils as passe as the typewriter and the rotary phone. Well then, tweet your interactive "comments" as to the correct answers for the following formalized questions:

"Literacy" occurs when a reader is able to:
(a) associate individual words with their general definitions;
(b) discern that a series of words conveys one logical message;
(c) identify subtextual inferences in prose passages or poems;
(d) detect the writer's motives from what's omitted in a text;
(e) decide which multiple choice answer is the "least untrue."
Formalized testing teaches us:
(a) that our role is to guess someone else's (better) opinion;
(b) that competing with everyone else for a score is our value;
(c) how our worth will be rated at our jobs, in our lovelives, etc.;
(d) how to understand and resolve life crises in adulthood;
(e) that, whatever the issue, there is only one "right" answer.
MATH PROBLEM: If Chicago teachers claim that elementary public schools contain forty students per classroom, and Chicago politicians maintain that the school system as a whole enjoys a ratio of one teacher for every sixteen students, what is the average number of students in the private schools where the politicians' children are enrolled?
Teaching methods other than standardized testing:
(a) are too difficult to measure, thus too impractical as tests;
(b) distract students from the data someone says they need;
(c) wildly claim that engaging the arts reinforces skills;
(d) get in the way of orderly, focused instruction;
(e) are more expensive than stacks of generic test booklets.
The primary goal of American education is:
(a) preparing the young to become unquestioning consumers;
(b) protecting the young from "unwholesome" non-binaries;
(c) enforcing obedience and checking weapons at the door;
(d) equating homework with a learning experience;
(e) lists of high test scores as measures of intelligence,
proficiency, and success of teachers and administrators.
ESSAY QUESTION (CHOOSE ONE): 500 Words Minimum
(a) Compare and contrast W. H. Auden's poem "The Unknown Citizen" to a billiard ball.
(b) Refute the claim that school-/ nationwide standardized testing conditions students to define themselves as failures, and bases both intellectual and community worth on "objective" (i.e., impersonal, unrefuted thus "valid") criteria.
(c) During a thermodynamic process, the temperature T of an object changes as heat Q is applied or extracted. A more correct definition of the entropy S is the differential form that accounts for this variation.

We could go on with questions about (a) the phrasing of questions and of answers (including not only trick questions but also the conditioning of test-takers to expect and accept the prospect of trick questions); (b) the pressure to cheat (felt by testees, testers, administrators, school boards, etc.); (c) unintentional ambiguity, arbitrariness, cultural biases, emphasis on data that is more "testable" than relevant, etc.; (d) errors in marking responses onto an answer sheet, scoring the answer sheets, etc.; and (e) fthe non-subjective value of standardized tests by which students/ administrators assess teachers and teachers assess students. But what would such an exercise ... excuse me ... prove?

Fill in the blank.

Hulu, Netflix, Even (gasp) Buy This GUARDIAN Episode

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:09:22 -0400

THE GUARDIAN
"Big Coal" (Season 3/ Episode 2)

Script: David Hollander and Nick Santora
Director: Mel Damski
Cinematography: James R. Bagdonis

Cast: Simon Baker, M. Emmett Walsh,
Henry Gibson, Nick Searcy

This 2003 episode is a must for the 2012 electorate.

Election or no election, make the effort to find it and watch it.

A White Duffer's Song Book: Good Tunes, Great Lyrics

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:08:43 -0400

pumpthatjam.com, tube.7s-b.com, bcdb.com, stinkylulu.blogspot.com, amazon.com, parabrisas.com, flickr.com, mardecortesbaja.com, flickr.com, doctormacro.com, thelitpub.com, keeynote.com rumphy.wordpress.com, greenlightmusic.com, last.fm, afistfulofsoundtracks.blogspot.com, article.wn.com

Here, without commentary (nor excuses), is a selection of music clips ranging from guilty pleasures to timeless classics: it's up to others to determine which are which.

A faint thematic thread somewhat connects one song to the next, but the real determinant here is pleasure derived from lyrics worth listening to--again, for their trenchancy, their candid emotion, or simply their clever silliness.

Artists range from Helen Morgan to Henry Gibson, the Boswell Sisters to a math-oriented PBS series of a generation or more ago, Jan Clayton (aka to some as Lassie's mother) to Tracy Nelson.

Some selections were omitted because they were introduced by (to me) jarring and noxious commercial ads.

"The Angle Dance"/ Larry Cedar (Square One TV)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqIki33mTgs

"Girl at the Ironing Board"/ Joan Blondell & 1934 Cartoon

"For the Sake of the Children"/Henry Gibson (Nashville)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3TzXk5eong

"My Idaho Home"& "Dues"/ Ronee Blaklee (Nashville)

"Down So Low"/ Tracy Nelson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThhOewiZWu8

"What'd You Do To Me?"/ The Boswell Sisters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFAy_B0S6HY

"What'll I Do?" (Irving Berlin)/ Last Kids Picked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6T7w2d2r28

"Bill" from Show Boat (Jerome Kern)/ Helen Morgan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HeasqkO1Ko

"Brite Side"/ Debbie Harry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKjOfQ_rCY8

Sitting Pretty Medley/ Jack Haley & Ginger Rogers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WM-PwDI_RY

"Long-forgotten Fairytail"/ Magnetic Fields
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ0u8VRJQzo

"Pressure"/ Billy Joel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu10CgX0USw

"The Company Way" (Frank Loesser)/
Sammy Smith & Robert Morse (How to Succeed ...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGhTr8lDCV0

"Live the Life I Sing About"/ Marion Williams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy1OlJGrtt4

"Endicott"/ Kid Creole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktJefZ3MsgE

"200 Years"/ Henry Gibson (Nashville)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUZ_zSWLwGo

"Going Home"/ Jan Clayton (The Snake Pit)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ZVUlzFmJ0